A 
 OSA 
 
 1» 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE 
 
 Joseph Whitmore Barry 
 dramatic library 
 
 the gift of 
 
 two friends 
 
 of Cornell University 
 
 [ 934 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4525.D5R7 1904 
 
 A rosary, 
 
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 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiii 
 
 liiiiiiiiiU 
 
 3 1924 013 469 543 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 3469543 
 
A ROSARY. 
 
A ROSARY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN DAVIDSON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON AND CO. 
 
 1904 
 
 MB 
 
 KM VI l<! 11 Y 
 
/\ yytufb 
 
 CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE, 
 
 I. Fate i 
 
 II. Shakespeare 2 
 
 III. Ode on the Coronation of Edward VII., of 
 
 Britain and of Greater Britain, King . 6 
 
 IV. Majorities 12 
 
 V. Question of the Mess-room . . . 17 
 
 VI. The Pale Woman and the Gaunt Man . 18 
 
 VII. Saying of an Untamable Mediocrity . . 20 
 
 VIII. Overheard in Epping Forest . . . 21 
 
 IX. A Landscape 24 
 
 X. Style and Stylism 25 
 
 XI. At Cross-purposes with Life . . . 25 
 
 XII. Uses of Women 28 
 
 XIII. A Landscape ... 3a 
 
 XIV. A Parable 31 
 
 XV. A Questionable Utterance ■ • • 35 
 
 XVI. Temperament 39 
 
 XVII. Opinion 43 
 
 XVIII. An Underbred "Man 44 
 
 XIX. A Fable . . . . . . . 46 
 
 XX. Force of Suggestion 49 
 
 XXI. Illusion of Similarity .... 5a 
 
 XXII. The Wind . . . . . • . 5* 
 
 XXIII. Sonnet from " La Reine FiamMette " . . 57 
 
 XXIV. Vulgarity . . . . . . . 58 
 
 XXV. Authors . . . . " • • • 59 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 XXVI. Butterflies, from "Pour la Couronne" 
 XXVII. Despair. 
 XXVIII. A Neurotic Cyclist 
 XXIX. The Music-hall , 
 XXX. Portraits and Romance 
 XXXI. Hope .... 
 XXXII. Malignity . 
 
 XXXIII. Literature and Philosophy 
 
 XXXIV. The Power of the Pen 
 XXXV. A Rookery . 
 
 XXXVI. Crying for the Moon . 
 XXXVII. The PrimeCost of South Down Mutton 
 XXXVIII. Critic and Author 
 XXXIX. The Wastrel 
 
 XL. Knight-errantry . 
 XLI. The Loose Wave . 
 XLII. Women and Encyclopedias 
 XLIII. Sin .... 
 
 XLIV. Villanelle . 
 XLV. Plays and Playwrights 
 XLVI. A Wonder of the World 
 XLVII. The Map of England . 
 XLVIII. Cuckoo Fair 
 XLIX. Chaucer 
 
 L. Contemporary Poetry . 
 LI. Conscience . 
 LII. Eclogue of the Downs 
 LIII. Eclogue 
 
 LIV. Ibsen .... 
 LV. Song from " La Reine Fiammette " 
 LVI. Ennui 
 
 PAGE 
 6 7 
 
 68 
 7i 
 75 
 76 
 
 84 
 
 85 
 86 
 88 
 89 
 90 
 
 9i 
 
 92 
 
 99 
 102 
 112 
 
 "3 
 118 
 120 
 121 
 133 
 135 
 136 
 141 
 142 
 142 
 143 
 J 57 
 164 
 
 174 
 175 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Vll 
 
 LVII. At the Door . 
 LVIII. Life and Death . , 
 LIX. The Dyer's Hand . 
 LX. Likeness and Unlikeness 
 LXI. Highest and Best 
 LXII. Sympathy and Responsibility 
 LXIII. Evolution 
 LXIV. Personality . 
 LXV. A Thing Impossible 
 LXVL A Distinction with a Difference 
 LXVII. At Twenty-one 
 LXVIII. Blake .... 
 LXIX. God .... 
 LXX. Necessity 
 LXXI. Shakespeare's Flower . 
 LXXII. A Modern Instance 
 LXXIII. The Soul 
 LXXIV. Sappho .... 
 LXXV. Sunset in the West End 
 LXXVI. Criticism 
 LXXVII. Forks .... 
 LXXVIII. The Song of the Lark 
 LXXIX. Mr. Meredith and Nature 
 LXXX. The Poet 
 
 PAGE 
 177 
 179 
 179 
 182 
 183 
 183 
 184 
 
 185 
 l8S 
 186 
 186 
 188 
 191 
 191 
 192 
 
 J 93 
 195 
 196 
 
 202 
 203 
 203 
 204 
 205 
 209 
 
A ROSARY. 
 
 i. 
 
 FATE. 
 
 " If a man escapes suicide at twenty, crucifixion at 
 thirty-three, insanity at forty, and St. Helena at 
 forty-six, he may do something." 
 
 " He may, but there are worse rocks ahead." 
 
 "Indeed?" 
 
 "There is Coventry, for example, which is not 
 by any means a City of Refuge : he might be sent 
 to Coventry." 
 
 " True ; but he could still work in Coventry." 
 
 " Very busily; ropes of sand are spun there, the 
 best in the kingdom, warranted to dissolve in the 
 making all the time." 
 
2 A ROSARY. 
 
 II. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " There comes up to London in his twenty-third 
 year a penniless ruffian from Warwickshire. Mus- 
 cular, with a thick neck ; fierce gray eyes of extra- 
 ordinary size and lustre ; dark red hair upon a 
 great and exquisitely-shaped head. He is hungry 
 for pleasure and power ; these, first of all. Secondly, 
 he wants to escape from his wife and children. 
 Thirdly, he has determined to restore the fallen 
 fortunes of his family. Having no connections, 
 there is only one thing for him to do. He goes to 
 the theatre, thrashes the bully of the loafers, and 
 secures the bulk of the tips for holding horses, etc. 
 He improves his wardrobe; quotes poetry to the 
 young bloods; gets talked of by the management; 
 is interviewed ; found to be very presentable, with 
 a good voice ; is taken on as super ; brags his way 
 into a speaking part; criticises everybody and 
 everything savagely; is allowed to try his hand at 
 revision ; succeeds, and makes the most of it; pooh- 
 poohing and elbowing the other authors aside; 
 
A ROSARY. 3 
 
 insists on a share in the concern ; takes home all 
 the manuscripts he can lay hold of; becomes in- 
 dispensable ; in fine, attains the dominant partner- 
 ship. He puts out his money to advantage, buys 
 his father a coat of arms, and the best house in 
 Stratford. Then, when he himself has been thrust 
 aside by the new men, he leaves London and 
 sulks out the last three years of his life alone and 
 friendless. To power, except in his theatre, he 
 never attains, the statesmen who tolerate him re- 
 ceiving his remarks on politics with a glance at 
 the ceiling, just as Ludwig of Bavaria whistled 
 when Wagner offered advice in matters of state. 
 But of pleasure he has his fill — and of pain ; and 
 into his plays he pours his joy and misery, making 
 the theatre his confessional and the public his 
 confessor. That is Shakespeare — Shakespeare at 
 last, shown up by foreigners." 
 
 " I do not think so. Shakespeare was a great 
 impersonality." 
 
 " Ancient nonsense ! " 
 
 " I understand you. Do not think that I have 
 any belief in the gentle Shakespeare of the shop- 
 men's calendars — a sort of simpering curate gone 
 
4 A ROSARY. 
 
 wrong. I would even agree with you that Shake- 
 speare must have conducted himself somewhat in 
 the manner of a ruffian on his arrival in London. 
 Indeed, I have been told that an unknown man, 
 penniless, and without university or other recom- 
 mendations, has still to practise ruffianism in a 
 measure at the outset of his career. But Shake- 
 speare disliked the r6le, especially when he had 
 made acquaintance with the true ruffian — Parolles, 
 Pistol ; and dropped it as soon as he could. When 
 I call Shakespeare an impersonality I do not 
 mean that he was without ambition, passion, 
 character; I do not mean that the finest and most 
 poignant passages in his plays are not precisely 
 those where his own experience helped him most ; 
 but I mean " 
 
 " You mean, when you call Shakespeare a great 
 impersonality, that he was a great personality." 
 
 " Without personality it is of course impossible 
 for a person to be. I must get at my meaning 
 some other way. This is it. Shakespeare was a 
 different order of being from men like Carlyle and 
 Tolstoi ; there was little in him of the fierce re- 
 action against the world which distinguishes the 
 
A ROSARY. 5 
 
 reformer and the prophet. All men, writers and 
 others, are impressionists. Carlyle and Tolstoi 
 struck back when the impression hurt them ; 
 Shakespeare, under the whips and scorns of time, 
 cried out in ' Lear,' cursed in ' Timon,' but he 
 never hewed at the world as Carlyle did ; he for- 
 gave it, and shook hands a little scornfully in the 
 ' Winter's Tale ' and the ' Tempest.' " 
 
 " I do not like to hear you call Shakespeare an 
 impressionist." 
 
 " But he was an impressionist. We are all im- 
 pressionists. As I have often said, most people 
 have souls like wafers, that can take only a slight 
 impression. Shakespeare's soul endured the signet 
 of the universe without resentment ; he cried out, 
 but he submitted/' 
 
A ROSARY. 
 
 III. 
 
 ODE ON THE CORONATION OF EDWARD VII., OF 
 BRITAIN AND OF GREATER BRITAIN, KING. 
 
 We crown our King, the son of her whose fame 
 Has hallowed monarchy ; we crown our race, 
 Accomplishing a thousand years of war, 
 Of travail and of triumph greatly borne. 
 Wherefore in England's lordly measure, tuned 
 When the long-buried past resurgent sought 
 Embodiment anew, when recent shores, 
 Unknown, but dreamt-of, in the night of Time, 
 Appealed to fate for utterance virginal, 
 And the profound insatiate soul of man 
 Required a deep-toned, more material song : 
 In England's lordly measure, armed and winged 
 When England conquered sea-room for her ships 
 And first began to mould the modern world, 
 It well becomes our honour to acclaim 
 This noble birth of Time, mature at length, 
 Imperial Britain, risen above the sea, 
 Enthroned and of her destiny aware 
 
A ROSARY. 
 
 When every eager pulse of Matter ached 
 
 To yield its new idea and be glad, 
 
 An ancient subtle thought, a loftier hope 
 
 Than any mediate life of plant or beast, 
 
 Imbued the inmost womb, and urged a way 
 
 Throughout the range, of being, climbing up 
 
 From lowliest cells to forms uncouth that walk 
 
 Abashed and wistful that they are not Man, 
 
 The deep primeval aim, so long delayed, 
 
 So late accomplished ; for the steadfast Earth, 
 
 A Spartan mother, passionate as Love, 
 
 Patient as Time, implacable as Truth, 
 
 In travail with her son nine epochs, vowed 
 
 Millenniums of remorseless discipline 
 
 To shape the hero of eternal dreams. 
 
 The steadfast Earth, the parent, treasure, home 
 Pleasance and sepulchre of all her kin, 
 Assured of her design, by simple craft 
 And great undid the parasitic cord 
 That tethered Britain ; closed and soldered well 
 The magic hoop of ocean set with storms, 
 Wedding this isle for ever to the world. 
 At once from orient valleys, folk on folk, 
 
8 A ROSARY. 
 
 Horizon-haunting Aryans westward thronged, 
 
 Instinctive wanderers borne in nebulous drifts, 
 
 Till Rome with iron axle wound an orb 
 
 Of light far-gleaned and thrice empurpled power — 
 
 A sanguine orb high-pitched in heaven awhile, 
 
 Whose crimson beams on Britain's argent cliff 
 
 In setting splendour lodged and tarried long, 
 
 Before mortality asunder burst 
 
 The power and light of that luxurious star. 
 
 Foam-necked forthwith the war-keels plied the 
 
 deep; 
 Hengist and Horsa, Cerdic, Ivar, Cnut, 
 The Conqueror — Jutes, Saxons, Angles, Danes, 
 Norsemen and Normans into Britain surged, 
 The fertile, temperate, envied isle of fate. . 
 Confronted there, they wrestled tribe with tribe 
 Of those who ventured furthest, dared the most, 
 Through sounding centuries at Brunanburgh, 
 Senlac and Bannockburn and Flodden-field. 
 Molten and founded in one cast of men, 
 As in a furnace heated seventy times 
 With love and hate the fuel and the flame 
 That feed the roaring blood-red hearth of war ; 
 And yoked with willing or reluctant clans, 
 
A ROSARY. 9 
 
 Their greater travail seized them when the dawn 
 
 Of pure intelligence — discovered shores 
 
 And vision whetted to behold with power — 
 
 Assailed the mediaeval firmament, 
 
 And launched the world-debate of old and new 
 
 Whose present rumour shrouds the echoing past. 
 
 The doom that thundered in their blood — that 
 
 beat 
 In every brimming star whose sea- washed lamp 
 Beckons the sleepless rapt adventurer — 
 Athwart unhallowed destinies, nor stayed 
 By falling empires, and the desperate clutch 
 Of palsied creeds in ruined fanes aghast, 
 O'er many a smitten field and sanguine sea 
 Advanced on hazard, terror, and the night 
 With Liberty and Justice for the World. 
 
 Thus they, magnanimous, a guide innate 
 
 Obeyed unwitting, till a drowsy fire 
 
 That smouldered southward flamed to heaven in 
 
 wild 
 Belated war as of the Heptarchy — 
 Tribe against tribe again of that grim folk 
 
io A ROSARY. 
 
 Who venture furthest, dare the most, and are 
 The valour of the earth : not otherwise 
 Could Boer and Saxon weld enduring peace. 
 Then was it Britain o'er the tropics flung 
 Her bridge of ships from England to the Cape; 
 Then trusty British people, east and west, 
 Vaulting the Indian and Atlantic main 
 From blood-bought continents and treasured isles, 
 In Britain's day of need upheld her hands, 
 Forbade her foes to doubt one heart and strength 
 Inspired and armed her sea-linked Ocean-State, 
 And gave the world to know how great a thing 
 Had risen at last above the tide of Time, 
 Imperial Britain, mighty and aware. 
 
 So forged, so tempered, like the adamant 
 
 In Nature's crucible, our sovereign race 
 
 Thrust through the earth its way : a breed of men 
 
 Concerned alone to be what them behoves ; 
 
 Forthright regarders, looking not askance 
 
 Through doctrine, lifeless vision turned to stone 
 
 And lenses warped and flawed, but seers indeed ; 
 
 Perceivers deeply versed in certainty, 
 
 Who challenge light with light of faithful looks, 
 
A ROSARY. ii 
 
 Within whose souls a lamp self-nourished burns 
 
 As on an altar fed with sacred fire ; 
 
 Doers, endurers, fighters, poets, kings, 
 
 The genius of the Universe that leaves 
 
 Its shadow in the abyss, and unperturbed 
 
 By ill-conditioned good or evil blent 
 
 With passionate aspiration, every hour 
 
 Sloughs off the past to reach a truer truth, 
 
 A beauty more divine, a destiny 
 
 Still unimagined in the dreams of fate. 
 
 We crown our King, we crown our sovereign race, 
 And garner now the harvest of our blood 
 Broadcast in battle for a thousand years, 
 The seed, the token, the courageous price 
 Of Liberty and Justice for the World — 
 Our blood that with imperial purple dyes 
 The quartered globe, that stains and turns to wine 
 The shadowy depths of ocean's jewelled cup, 
 Making a sacrament of all the earth. 
 
i2 A ROSARY. 
 
 IV. 
 
 MAJORITIES. 
 
 A Labourer, breaking flints by the roadside, sat 
 down at noon to drink his cold tea and munch his 
 bread and onions. A Hawker and a Beggar pass- 
 ing that way from opposite quarters, joined him ; 
 and the three shared their provender and dis- 
 coursed of life and livelihood very wisely. But 
 before they knew where they were they disagreed 
 upon some unimportant point. The Labourer 
 seized his hammer, the other two brandished their 
 staves, and a triangular duel began which might 
 have ended in a broken head or two — and might 
 not, for they were very discreet warriors. The 
 issue remained undecided, however, because a 
 Philosopher came by. This Philosopher had as- 
 serted, in season and out of season, that life is a 
 battle for recognition, and that those who risk 
 death in order to assert themselves become Masters, 
 and that those who prefer life under any condi- 
 
A ROSARY. 13 
 
 tions become Slaves. Some, very ignorantly, had 
 called him a Nietzscheist; others, who knew at least 
 that there were men before Agamemnon, had 
 declared him to be a confirmed Hegelist, and 
 had inquired with infinite scorn if he carried the 
 Absolute in his waistcoat pocket ; others had in- 
 sisted that he was an atheist ; others, again, had 
 called him a perverted voluptuary ; and other 
 some, aiming at a comprehensive and therefore 
 paradoxical curse, had denounced him in bitter 
 terms as a Sensualistic Puritan ; but all were of 
 one accord, friends and foes, believers and un- 
 believers, in holding him to be an enemy of man- 
 kind, and had, on that account, hustled him out of 
 the town. 
 
 "Hold, men! hold!" cried the Philosopher, as 
 soon as he drew near enough to make himself 
 heard. 
 
 The Labourer, the Hawker, and the Beggar de- 
 sisted promptly, and, leaning on their guiltless 
 weapons, attended to the remarks of the Philo- 
 sopher. 
 
 " You have hit upon a very inferior method of 
 waging the battle of life," said the Philosopher. 
 
14 A ROSARY. 
 
 " You ought to debate the matter. I shall gladly 
 act as umpire, and award the victory to him who 
 holds fast by his self-assertion." 
 
 " And what will you award to him who doesn't ? " 
 asked the Labourer 
 
 " To him who surrenders his claim for recogni- 
 tion," answered the Philosopher, " I shall award 
 his single self-consciousness." 
 
 "Go on!" cried the Hawker. "We want no 
 umpire here, and less language. This is a med- 
 dlesome fellow. Take that ! " And without more 
 ado he hit the Philosopher on the head. 
 
 " And that," said the Beggar ; " and that," said 
 the Labourer, plying stick and hammer. 
 
 " How now ! " cried an Artist, coming over the 
 brow of the hill with a sketch-book under his arm. 
 " Three against one ! Shame ! " 
 
 "But," said the Hawker, "he planted himself 
 on us as umpire." 
 
 " It doesn't matter what he did," said the Artist. 
 " Three against one is not Art." 
 
 " But it 's good enough in War," said the Philo- 
 sopher, suddenly angry; "and very tolerable 
 Philosophy too. Men are entitled to take every 
 
A ROSARY. 15 
 
 advantage of strength and numbers. We live in 
 an age of the divine right of majorities." 
 
 " What have we here ! " cried the Artist scorn- 
 fully. "A scrimmage of conceited metaphysicians?" 
 
 " He calls you conceited metaphysicians," said 
 the Philosopher, appealing to his late assailants. 
 
 "And we won't stand it," said the Hawker. 
 " We have the divine right of majorities on our 
 side." 
 
 Whereupon all four fell upon the Artist, and 
 would have left scarce a whole bone in his body, 
 had not a Fool who haunted the neighbourhood 
 chanced to come that way. 
 
 " Asses ! " cried the Fool. " Beasts ! Leave the 
 honest gentleman alone ! Four against one ! How 
 did this quarrel arise ?" 
 
 " Why," replied the Hawker, " the Labourer, the 
 Beggar, and I fell out about a matter of no conse- 
 quence; and this Philosopher took upon himself 
 to pacify us. While we were basting him for his 
 impudence, up comes the Artist and calls us a set 
 of conceited metaphysicians. Now you in your 
 turn interfere; and each one of us means to set 
 his individual mark on your carcase." 
 
1 6 A ROSARY. 
 
 " Not so ! " cried the Fool, stepping aside. 
 " Ignorant men ! Are you not aware that the 
 source of all quarrels is misunderstanding, and 
 that in order to avoid misunderstanding it is 
 necessary to make no attempt to understand? 
 Men can never understand each other. Each is 
 walled about in adamant. All speech, written and 
 spoken; all Art — do you know what Literature, 
 Philosophy, and Art are ? " 
 
 " My business ! " said the Philosopher. 
 
 " It's no matter," said the Artist. 
 
 " Very poor potatoes ! " said the Beggar. 
 
 " Very inferior road metal ! " said the Labourer. 
 
 " But we're willing to be enlightened," said the 
 Hawker. 
 
 " All speech, all Literature, all Art," said the 
 Fool, " is only the tapping and scratching on the 
 walls of their cells of prisoners who have never 
 been anything else but prisoners, and can have 
 no closer communication with each other than 
 such muffled noises as their adamantine walls 
 permit." 
 
 " Prisoners ! " exclaimed the Hawker, who had 
 just completed a month for petty larceny and was 
 
A ROSARY. 17 
 
 trading without a licence; "I was never in gaol 
 in my life, nor anyone here. Get out ! " 
 
 Immediately the five attacked the Fool, and so 
 mishandled him that he went lame for the rest of 
 his life. 
 
 " Good ! " said the Beggar when they had kicked 
 the Fool into the ditch. " There is a public-house 
 by the wayside not a furlong off. Let us rest and 
 refresh ourselves." 
 
 And they did so — at the Beggar's expense, for 
 he was the richest man in the company. 
 
 V. 
 
 QUESTION OF THE MESS-ROOM. 
 
 Question of the mess-room : " What is a cad ? " 
 Answer by an Impersonality: "A cad is one 
 whom snobs dislike." "A la bonne heure! And 
 what is a snob ? " " Ask the cad." 
 
 Remark by an U nregenerate : "To be converted 
 is to become a snob or a cad." 
 
1 8 A ROSARY. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE PALE WOMAN AND THE GAUNT MAN, 
 
 "What is this that's wrong with me?" said the 
 pale, dark woman, answering the gaunt, dark man. 
 " I am the woman who refused to suffer. I declined 
 all responsibility, all relationship. My life was to 
 be a long holiday ; and I set about to enjoy the 
 world. My father being an invalid, it bored me 
 to wait on him, so I left him to the doctor and 
 the nurses. My lover wanted to marry me ; but 
 marriage would have brought children and many 
 duties, therefore I refused him. I travelled, I 
 studied, I perfected myself in the Art of Life, and 
 left Conduct to the Philistines. I could not endure 
 the thought of disease, of poverty, of sin. I moved 
 only among healthy, happy, irresponsible people, 
 who knew nothing of care or sorrow. But they 
 possessed a secret I could never surprise. I have 
 not experienced an hour's satisfaction since I first 
 took thought for myself. The woman who fled 
 
A ROSARY. 1 9 
 
 from suffering ran into the arms of ennui. And 
 you ; what is the matter with you ? " 
 
 "I," said the gaunt, dark man, "am he who 
 determined to understand Good and evil, right 
 and wrong — these, I thought, are the blinkers on 
 the eyes of men by which Bigotry, Society, Use- 
 and-Wont prevent their seeing too much in order 
 to drive them more easily. I blamed nobody ; I 
 praised nobody , I neither loved nor hated ; I 
 would not punish ; I would not reward ; I would 
 be intelligent and understand. And, indeed, every- 
 thing and everybody became to me as clear as 
 crystal. Yet I am full of terror and misery, and I 
 know that I understand nothing at all." 
 
 " We are monuments of chagrin," said the pale, 
 dark woman, with a harsh laugh. 
 
 "We may as well commit suicide in company," 
 said the gaunt, dark man. 
 
 " Not to-day," said the pale, dark woman. " I am 
 going to hear the new fiddler. But to-morrow, if 
 you like, at this hour." 
 
 " Oh, to-morrow ? " said the gaunt, dark man. 
 " To-morrow I am going to see someone I haven't 
 met for twenty years. But the day after. 
 
2o A ROSARY. 
 
 " The day after ? " said the pale, dark woman. 
 •' I can't make the appointment, for there 's no 
 saying what I may be doing the day after." 
 
 " We'll leave it open, then," said the gaunt, dark 
 man. 
 
 VII. 
 
 SA YING OF AN UNTAMABLE MEDIOCRITY. 
 
 A saying of one of those Infinite and Untamable 
 Mediocrities who rise to great power and glory in 
 all ages : " It is in their attack that men reveal 
 themselves ; the object of assault is always their 
 own original sin. There is no more exalted quack 
 than Carlyle ; no more intolerant Philistine than 
 Matthew Arnold." 
 
A ROSARY. 21 
 
 VIII. 
 
 OVERHEARD IN EPPING FOREST. 
 
 A tramp asleep in a brake in Epping Forest was 
 roused by the singing of a Nightingale in a haw- 
 thorn bush beside him. 
 
 " Tee-oo, tee-oo, tee-oo-coo-too, 
 
 Tsee, tseetsy, pitsirrurst, 
 Coo-orr-orr, ptksooa, coo-roo-true, 
 
 Tsatsoo, dlodlitzidurst," 
 
 went the Nightingale. 
 
 " Hello ! " cried the Tramp, " are you singing in 
 your sleep ? " 
 
 " I wakened singing," said the Nightingale. 
 
 " And I," said the Tramp, " wakened in the act 
 of making a poem — a thing I never did before 
 either awake or asleep." 
 
 " Let 's hear your poem," said the Nightingale. 
 
 " I remember only one verse," said the Tramp. 
 
 " Repeat it," said the Nightingale. 
 
22 A ROSARY. 
 
 " It went this way," said the Tramp. 
 
 " Heaven ? It never was created. 
 
 The other place I know quite well ; 
 For when my soul was amputated 
 
 I seared the stump in Hell." 
 
 " That 's a very bad poem," said the Nightingale ; 
 " and I don't know exactly what to think of a man 
 who has such poems in his sleep." 
 
 " I wakened making a poem too," said a Truant 
 on the other side of the bush — a lusty schoolboy 
 he was, who had run away from school because of 
 the spring. 
 
 " Let's hear it," said the Nightingale. 
 
 " I remember only two verses," said the Truant, 
 " and what they mean I don't know." 
 
 "No one ever can tell the meaning of songs and 
 poems ; they are just themselves," rejoined the 
 Nightingale. " Repeat the verses, boy." 
 
 " They went this way," said the Truant. 
 
 " Her name is Pagan Polly ; 
 
 She dances by the sea. 
 She was once her mother's dolly ; 
 
 Now she belongs to me. 
 
A ROSARY. 23 
 
 " Sometimes, when we mustn't be jolly, 
 
 We bend a stubborn knee ; 
 But we dance after Pagan Polly 
 
 On the margent of the sea." 
 
 " Good," cried the Nightingale. " What do you 
 think of this ? 
 
 Le bon Dieu m'a donne une femme 
 Que j'ai tant-tant, tant-tant battue. 
 Que s'il m'en donne une autre, 
 Je ne la battrais plus-plus-plus 
 Qu'un petit, qu'un petit, qu'un petit ! " 
 
 "Why," said the Tramp, "this is a more excel- 
 lent song than the other." 
 
 " I'm glad you like it," said the Nightingale. 
 
 " Where did you learn it ? " asked the Truant. 
 
 " I learned it," replied the Nightingale, " in a 
 country called France." 
 
 Whereupon the Nightingale flew away to an- 
 other bush, while the Tramp and the Truant 
 addressed themselves again to sleep. 
 
24 A ROSARY. 
 
 IX. 
 
 A LANDSCAPE. 
 
 The wind was easterly, and its shrill pipe made 
 itself heard as soon as the road left the valley and 
 set itself against the downs. But here the northern 
 slopes are fledged with beech, and the hills looked 
 comely even in the bleak weather of a wintry 
 April. Violets and hyacinths diapered with pur- 
 ple the russet beech-mast, though the cowslips 
 hoarded their gold in their pale green chalices. 
 The white-starred branches of the blackthorn 
 sprinkled the prevalent bronze and purple of the 
 covert with sparse sprays of silver; and the 
 emerald banners of the downy, crisp, and pleated 
 beech-leaves claimed the time for middle-spring, 
 in spite of the attempted piracy of winter. In a 
 bight of the land, the white, chalky plain, shaded 
 with the sprouting down of the young corn, showed 
 where the tide of harvest will run far up, and surge 
 and break against the swelling hill. 
 
A ROSARY. 25 
 
 X. 
 
 STYLE AND STYLISM. 
 
 Style is always imperceptible: stylism one notes 
 at once. Stylism is the attempt to achieve style — 
 that is to say, the attempt of self-consciousness to 
 be unconscious; the attempt to say something not 
 in its own manner, but in a predetermined manner. 
 Scott has style ; Stevenson is a stylist. 
 
 XI. 
 
 AT CROSS-PURPOSES WITH LIFE. 
 
 When a Scotsman finds himself at cross-purposes 
 with life, what course does he follow ? He may 
 say to himself, " I will go and walk about the 
 downs." Or he may say, " I will write a great 
 poem " ; or " I will go and preach in Hyde Park." 
 He may say this, and he may say that, but he 
 invariably does one of two things. He either sits 
 
26 A ROSARY- 
 
 down and drinks deeply, thoughtfully, systematic- 
 ally of the amber spirit of his country, or he reads 
 philosophy. Verily, to the ordinary layman and 
 heavily-burdened wayfarer, above all to Scotsmen 
 at cross-purposes with life, philosophy is a sad 
 temptation. Even to the man in the street it 
 occasionally happens that the riddle of the universe 
 grows vehement in its appeal ; and, however 
 secretly and shamefastly, he re-examines the in- 
 terpretations that have been wrought out by 
 others ; sets himself to answer the problem anew ; 
 finally, burns his books, shaves, dines at a res- 
 taurant, and returns to Piccadilly and the bosom 
 of his family. 
 
 Once I shut myself up with the downs behind 
 and the sea in front, and read many books that I 
 had read before, and many that were new to me. 
 Remembering that both Sterne and Brunei, the 
 former at least preceptively, the latter by example, 
 recommend horizontal repose as the surest elimina- 
 tive of cerebration, I lay on my back for days at 
 a time, thinking, or trying to think; but that 
 luxurious attitude seems to be reserved for the 
 happy sublimation of humour and mechanical 
 
A ROSARY. 27 
 
 device ; its effect upon me was only to sink me 
 more deeply in the turbid solution to which my 
 reading and brooding had reduced all things. 
 Not a moment too soon I shifted the venue ; 
 climbed out of the metaphysical lye and reached 
 the downs. 
 
 In a belt of trees above an ill-ploughed field a 
 throstle sang a shrill prelude ; weeks ago he 
 thought the spring had come, the season was so 
 mild. His pipe will be mellower later on. Down 
 in the churchyard, in the early summer, the pas- 
 senger (the churchyard here is a thoroughfare for 
 pedestrians) may catch a tapping sound among 
 the gravestones — the mavis cracking snails with 
 savage glee ! The snail is the mavis's oyster : 
 and when he has lubricated his throat with a 
 dozen or so, his notes become the purest and 
 most spiritual to be heard in the grove. 
 
 Suddenly the bells rang out from the church 
 tower. It was Saturday afternoon, and the ringers 
 were practising. At the very first bob of the 
 bells, a flight of starlings in a high swart clump 
 of twisted boughs, resenting the artificial sound, 
 sweet as it seemed in the distance, or prompted 
 
28 A ROSARY. 
 
 by the well-known professional jealousy of the 
 passerine order to emulate music so space-filling 
 and important, broke out into a frenzied chatter- 
 ing, surged madly into the air, and swooped 
 down upon the gardens of the sea-coast town. 
 The Norman tower from which the ringing came 
 stood out a reddish brown against the gray-green 
 sea. Not a sail was visible. Like an enormous 
 shelf of glossy, oily, well-planed slate, the long, 
 broad water sloped up against the sky. A slab 
 of dingy opal, greasy, with a pale emerald flame 
 travelling over it transparently, the sea leant on 
 the stony firmament as on a wall. Behind, the 
 sinuous downs, gray, green, and red — old land, 
 budding crops, and fresh earth — rocked and swayed 
 with the motion of the world. 
 
 XII. 
 
 USES OF WOMEN. 
 
 " Women should be left to educational and eccle- 
 siastical employment, and to the amusing arts." 
 
A ROSARY. 29 
 
 " Good. Let them keep up a knowledge of 
 Latin and Greek, of astrology, theology, history, 
 and all ignorant inventions and lying reports of 
 the past. 
 
 "Yes; and let them write the novels and the 
 plays : indeed, the pantomime-boy and the lady- 
 Hamlet should take entire possession of the 
 theatre ; it should be as indecent for men to act as 
 it once was for women." 
 
 " And for a man to write a play should be the 
 unpardonable sin." 
 
 " It should. And the Houses of Parliament 
 should be given over to women too ; and " 
 
 "Young women, you mean." 
 
 "Young women? Oh! Not old wives, as 
 now ! I see ! Yes ; and women should have en- 
 tire control of finance and all businesses." 
 
 " Leaving men ? " 
 
 " Leaving men free to govern, to do justice, to 
 advance in science and the sciences, to be poets 
 and philosophers, to be silent and intelligent, and 
 to walk about and understand the universe. 
 
30 A ROSARY. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 A LANDSCAPE. 
 
 The wind roared in the hedge, and the fieldfares 
 were blown about the downs. A twittering and 
 chaffering of diverse birds, like the sounds of 
 ebony drumsticks struck together, of silver casta- 
 nets and muted triangles, pinked and laced the 
 thunder of the wind. Larks crested the concert 
 fitfully, trying their voices. The high wood sur- 
 rounding the town stood out against the sea, its 
 coral buds and black timber blended into masses 
 of purple. In the west, across the Adur, the, 
 white gable of the Pad Inn haunted the foot of 
 Cissbury Hill like a steadfast apparition. Masts 
 rose among the chimneys. A thin cloud veiled the 
 sun. The sea, dark and shining, shook like a lake 
 of quicksilver, and a heavy curtain of vapour hid 
 the horizon. 
 
A ROSARY. 3I 
 
 XIV. 
 
 A PARABLE. 
 
 A Protagonist came into the Market-place early 
 in the morning, and, seeing a pedestal vacant, 
 stepped up and took possession. He found him- 
 self above the Churches, the Schools, and the 
 Shops ; he overlooked the Earth and the Sea, 
 and beheld on either hand the sunrise and the 
 sunset. 
 
 The first of the townspeople who entered the 
 Market-place to begin the Religion, the Studies, 
 and the Business of the day failed to see him, or 
 saw him without observation. In a little while, 
 however, a Busybody noticed the Protagonist 
 standing on the pedestal. "What are you doing 
 there ? " he cried. 
 
 The Protagonist made no reply. 
 
 " Come down, sir ! " cried the Busybody. 
 
 But the Protagonist heeded him not. 
 
 Many people joined the Busybody, and shouted 
 
32 A ROSARY. 
 
 to the Protagonist to come down ; and shortly, as 
 the news spread that someone had got upon the 
 pedestal, the whole population poured into the 
 Market-place as angry as it could hold together, 
 because in his secret heart every man-jack had 
 appropriated the pedestal to himself. 
 
 For four hours the multitude shouted without 
 ceasing, " Come down off that pedestal ! Come 
 down off that pedestal ! " 
 
 But the Protagonist kept looking at the sun. 
 
 At last, in the evening, when the multitude had 
 roared itself hoarse, the Protagonist addressed 
 them and said, " Good people, when you see any- 
 one standing higher than you, it is ignoble to bid 
 him descend : the only becoming and courageous 
 course is to get up beside him." 
 
 Now, as the pedestal was higher than the 
 highest steeple, the multitude thought that the 
 Protagonist flouted them, for they were unaware 
 that he had made but one step of it. With cries 
 of rage they endeavoured to overturn the pedestal; 
 but, being a monolith of adamant based in the 
 centre of the Earth, it withstood all their efforts. 
 Then they brought ladders and fire-escapes ; how- 
 
A ROSARY. 33 
 
 ever, the highest reached but halfway up. Some 
 mounted on towers and pinnacles with hydrants 
 and lariats, yet they could not come at him to dis- 
 lodge him. 
 
 Whilst they were consulting what to do next, 
 one who had taken no part in the siege of the 
 Protagonist, but had remained preoccupied with 
 his own thoughts, cried out suddenly, " How did 
 you get up ? " 
 
 The multitude turned upon the Questioner with 
 looks of admiration and astonishment; in their 
 very natural anger it had never occurred to them 
 to consider the means of the Protagonist's ex- 
 altation. Facing about immediately from the 
 Questioner and gazing up at the Protagonist, they 
 awaited his reply in breathless silence. 
 
 The Protagonist said, "I stepped up." 
 
 Much perplexed the multitude looked again 
 towards the Questioner ; and he, standing upon a 
 bourne-stone at the back of the Market-place, 
 looked earnestly at the Protagonist for the space 
 of a minute. Then he made a sign with his hand, 
 and the multitude, understanding, opened a way for 
 him. Without halt or hesitation, the Questioner 
 
 D 
 
34 A ROSARY. 
 
 walked across the Market-place and got up beside 
 the Protagonist. 
 
 " It is delusion!" cried the Busybody, breaking 
 the silent amazement of the multitude. 
 
 But first one and then another, taking his 
 courage in his hands, followed the Questioner; 
 and when a score or two had mounted the pedestal, 
 some of them resenting, humanly enough, the 
 Protagonist's priority, seized him and flung him 
 down into the Market-place, where his corpse 
 became serviceable as a stepping-stone. In a 
 little while everyone who could lift one leg after 
 the other stood upon the pedestal, above the 
 Churches, the Schools, and the Shops, overlooking 
 the Earth and the Sea, with the sunset and the 
 sunrise on either hand. And the paltriest souls 
 who got up were able to congratulate them- 
 selves, much to their astonishment, on this at 
 least, that " there was plenty of room at the top." 
 
A ROSARY. 35 
 
 XV. 
 
 A QUESTIONABLE UTTERANCE. 
 
 Poetry is not always an army on parade : some- 
 times it is an army coming back from the wars, 
 epaulettes and pipe-clay all gone, shoeless, ragged, 
 wounded, starved, but with victory on its brows ; 
 for Poetry has been democratized. Nothing could 
 prevent that. The songs are of the highways and 
 the byways. The city slums and the deserted 
 villages are haunted by sorrowful figures, men of 
 power and endurance, feeding their melancholy 
 not with heroic fable, the beauty of the moon, and 
 the studious cloisters, but with the actual sight of 
 the misery in which so many millions live. To 
 this mood the vaunted sweetness and light of the 
 ineffective apostle of culture are like a faded rose 
 in a charnel-house, a flash of moonshine on the 
 Dead Sea. It is not now to the light that " the 
 passionate heart of the poet" will turn. In vain 
 the old man cried: 
 
36 A ROSARY. 
 
 " Authors — essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, 
 
 rhymester, play your part, 
 Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living 
 
 hues of art. 
 Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul 
 
 passions bare; 
 Down with Reticence, down with Reverence — 
 
 forward — naked — let them stare." 
 
 This ironical Balaam-curse has become a message. 
 It must all out. The poet is in the street, the 
 hospital. He intends the world to know that it is 
 out of joint. He will not let it alone. With what- 
 ever trumpet or jew's-harp he can command he 
 will clang and buzz at its ear, disturbing its sleep, 
 its pleasures; discoursing of darkness and of the 
 terror that walks by night. " Down with Reti- 
 cence" — that kills the patient; "down with 
 Reverence" — for whatever has become abomin- 
 able. Do they delight in this? No; it is only that 
 it is inevitable. Democracy is here ; and we have 
 to go through with it. 
 
 The newspaper is one of the most potent factors 
 in moulding the character of contemporary poetry. 
 
A ROSARY. 37 
 
 Perhaps it was first of all the newspaper that 
 couched the eyes of poetry. Burns's eyes were 
 open; Blake's, perhaps, for a time; and Words- 
 worth had profound insight into the true character 
 of man and of the world; but all the rest saw men 
 as trees walking; Tennyson and Browning are 
 Shakespearian. The prismatic cloud that Shake- 
 speare hung out between poets and the world! 
 It was the newspapers that brought about what 
 may be called an order of Pre-Shakespearianism. 
 It was in the newspapers that Thomas Hood 
 found the " Song of the Shirt" — in its place the 
 most important English poem of the nineteenth 
 century; the "woman in unwomanly rags plying 
 her needle and thread " is the type of the world's 
 misery. The " Song of the Shirt " is the most 
 terrible poem in the English language. Only a 
 high heart and strong brain broken on the wheel 
 of life, but master of its own pain and anguish, able 
 to jest in the jaws of death, could have sung this 
 song, of which every single stanza wrings the heart. 
 Poetry passed by on the other side. It could not 
 endure the woman in unwomanly rags. It hid its 
 head like the fabled ostrich in some sand-bed of 
 
38 A ROSARY. 
 
 Arthurian legend, or took shelter in the paradox- 
 ical optimism of "The Ring and the Book." It is 
 true William Morris stood by her when the priest 
 and the Levite passed by. He stood by her side, 
 he helped her; but he hardly saw her, nor could 
 he show her as she is. " Mother and Son," his 
 greatest poem, and a very great poem, is a vision 
 not of a woman but of a deserted Titaness in 
 London streets; there was a veil between him also 
 and the world, although in another sense, with his 
 elemental Sigurds, he is the truest of all Pre- 
 Shakespearians. But the woman in unwomanly 
 rags, and all the insanity and iniquity of which 
 she is the type, will now be sung. Poetry will 
 concern itself with her and hers for some time to 
 come. Not much of the harlot: she is at ease in 
 Zion, compared with actual woe. The offal of the 
 world is being said in statistics, in prose fiction: 
 it is besides going to be sung. There it is in the 
 streets, the hospitals, the poor-houses, the prisons; 
 it is a flood that surges about our feet, it rises 
 breast-high. And it will be sung in all keys and 
 voices. Poetry has other functions, other aims; 
 but this also has become its province. Will it be 
 
A ROSARY. 39 
 
 of any avail ? No; nothing that can be done 
 avails. Poor-laws, charity organizations, dexter- 
 ously hold the wound open, or tenderly and hope- 
 lessly skin over the cancer. Poetry has no spell 
 to cure it. The world cannot be changed until it 
 falls back into the sun. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 TEMPERAMENT. 
 
 There was once a tall, fair Scotswoman, with a 
 perfect, oval face, and large pale eyes. In her 
 twenty-fourth year she married a painter and set 
 herself to destroy his temperament. I met her in 
 her father's house shortly after she had spoiled 
 her husband, body and soul; and she told me the 
 story herself. "He kept talking to me," she said, 
 " of temperament, temperament, temperament. 
 What is temperament? Do you know ? Does any- 
 one know ? I have no temperament ; but I suppose 
 he had, for he was different from me. He liked 
 all kinds of stupidity and foolishness— little child- 
 ren, religious people, romance, and sentiment. 
 
40 A ROSARY. 
 
 After the honeymoon, when he went back to his 
 easel, he nearly swooned at the sight of it; for 
 I had determined to see of what stuff his tem- 
 perament was made, and had painted a leer on 
 the faces of his figures. He tore up the canvas 
 and began anew. As soon as he had a face drawn, 
 at night I put a leer into the eyes or a wicked 
 smile on the lips. He went to his easel every 
 morning shaking with terror. I had now fully 
 made up my mind that he should get rid of his 
 temperament and become as strong as me, for I 
 rather liked him; he was very handsome. So I 
 persevered with his faces, and was amazed at his 
 persistence. At last one morning he asked me to 
 stay beside him while he painted. He drew and 
 coloured the heads of three cherubs with extra- 
 ordinary rapidity and force, the practice which my 
 device had secured him having increased his skill 
 immensely. The faces were sweet and beautiful ; 
 and he asked me if they were not so. I said I rather 
 liked them, but that I saw nothing particularly 
 sweet about them: charming little imps, I called 
 them. ' Then I am a lost man,' he cried. ' Some- 
 thing terrible has gone wrong with me. Day after 
 
A ROSARY. 41 
 
 day I paint what I think beautiful faces; these 
 that I have just done seem to me adorable. You 
 see them as they are, leering and malicious; and 
 to-morrow I too shall see them as they are. Some 
 subtle paralysis has attacked me.' Next morning, 
 as usual, he found his faces impudent or malignant. 
 I comforted him, and told him to struggle no more 
 against his own nature, but to follow this inferior 
 bent which proclaimed itself in spite of him. ' I 
 will,' he said; ' it may work itself out.' Then 
 an evil spirit took actual possession of him, and 
 he painted loathsome and horrible things. He 
 was a weak man ; his temperament had only been 
 degraded, not yet destroyed. One night I changed 
 his diabolic into angelic faces; and in the morning 
 he came to me weeping tears of joy. ' I have 
 worked it out,' he cried. ' I am free of it. Yester- 
 day, while I designed what I thought the most 
 wicked group of countenances ever imagined, I 
 was painting divinities. Come and see them.' I 
 excused myself till the afternoon; and he, happy 
 and jubilant, went out to walk off his excitement. 
 In his absence I changed his divinities into idiots 
 and maniacs. When at length he led me to his 
 
42 A ROSARY. 
 
 studio he had no eyes for anything but me. I felt 
 him watching me as I stood in front of his picture. 
 I looked at it, and then with cold surprise at his 
 glad, eager face. The blood left his cheeks like a 
 lamp that's blown out; he glanced at his picture, 
 and fell in a tremor on the floor. I helped him to 
 a seat, placed myself opposite him, and told him 
 how I had manipulated his canvases in the hope 
 of enabling him to master his temperament. 
 When he realized what I said, he slid from his 
 chair glaring at me as if I had been a wild beast 
 about to devour him. I moved to help him again, 
 but he shrank from me, shrieking, 'Keep off!' 
 He crept backwards on his hands and knees, 
 growling and glaring at me hideously. He reached 
 the door and kicked at it as a beast might, fling- 
 ing out his legs. He has never stood erect since; 
 he lives in a stall and eats out of a manger; the 
 asylum doctor says he cannot recover. What is 
 temperament? Have I destroyed his, or is it now 
 rampant? How weak he was! " 
 
A ROSARY. 43 
 
 XVII. 
 
 OPINION. 
 
 " Opinion," said Mr. New-wine, " is like linen, 
 easily soiled. It ought to be changed at least 
 once a day." 
 
 " No," said Mr. Old-bottles; " opinion is like the 
 skin, easily enough soiled, but as easily cleansed; 
 and only to be changed by gradual and impercept- 
 ible process. The rapid-change artists of opinion 
 have no opinions, precisely as the employers of 
 rouge and poudre-de-ris may be said to have no 
 complexions." 
 
 " For my part," said Mr. Equable, " I think 
 opinion is neither the dress nor the skin of the 
 mind, however useful such imagery might be in 
 debate. Opinion is properly only the blush and 
 pallor of the mind, its freckles and its rashes. It 
 is powerful, and can and does kill, as a cold or a 
 fever may; but it is not part of the constitution of 
 the mind. We must learn to say ' I know,' not ' I 
 think.' " 
 
44 A ROSARY. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 AN UNDERBRED MAN. 
 
 An underbred man of wealth, amazed and delighted 
 to find himself accepted at last, and oozing with 
 complaisance and self-congratulation, began to 
 talk at a dinner-party of the difference between 
 white wine and red. 
 
 " There is too much to digest in red wine," he 
 said, smiling across the table. " I come out in 
 spots if I drink it: temporary spots, of course," 
 he added, in a confidential aside to his left-hand 
 neighbour, a calm, smiling youth. " Hock, on the 
 other hand — I can drink bottles of it without 
 knowing it." 
 
 Glancing round the table and noticing im- 
 perturbable gravity or a faint smile above every 
 plate, he conceived he had made an impression, 
 and continued more briskly: "I prefer hock, 
 everything considered, to champagne. The boy 
 likes champagne ; the grown man, hock. Curiously 
 enough, however, I prefer mutton to beef, pheasant 
 
A ROSARY. 
 
 45 
 
 to grouse, whiting to salmon, and cafe au lait to 
 cafe noir." 
 
 Glancing round the table again, he was surprised 
 to find the eye of the genial host fixed upon him 
 with a certain menace, and all the guests talking 
 quietly in couples, except his neighbour on the 
 left. 
 
 " Ah! you are waiting to confab with me," said 
 the underbred man. " I seem to have put my foot 
 in it," he added. 
 
 "Both feet," said the calm youth; "but you 
 needn't be concerned. I have seen and heard new 
 arrivals of all kinds — politicians, authors, artists, 
 manufacturers — and they say the same things 
 precisely: some, like you, out of sheer goodwill, 
 and some, precipitately, in an effort to overcome 
 an embarrassing self-consciousness." 
 
 " Indeed, sir!" said the underbred man in sub- 
 dued tones, looking with awe at his companion. 
 
 " Yes," replied the calm youth ; " they all say 
 it ; we expect it of them. You mustn't regard it 
 as a mistake. On the contrary, it illustrates the 
 solidarity of the species. Out it comes : ' I prefer 
 white wine to red ; and, for that matter, I would 
 
46 A ROSARY. 
 
 rather drink hock than champagne any day. Mutton, 
 of course, well boiled, with caper sauce ; and for 
 birds, give me a plump pheasant, tasting like green 
 corn. Coffee ? Yes ; but with milk. Once for all, 
 the fancy for cafe noir is the merest pretence ; 
 nobody likes it.' Oh, I have heard it all a thousand 
 times ! It is very beautiful ; it is quite cosmical." 
 
 "Quite?" queried the underbred man, turning 
 pale. 
 
 " Cosmical," said the calm youth, syllabically. 
 
 " Ah, to be sure," rejoined the underbred man, 
 relieved upon one point, although dubious upon 
 the general scope of the calm youth's remarks, and 
 silently ruminative for the rest of the evening. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 A FABLE. 
 
 " Yes ; one's past haunts one," said the Badger. 
 
 "And there are huntsmen that tar it on," 
 grumbled the Fox. 
 
 "In some cases," said the Badger. "What I 
 
A ROSARY. 47 
 
 regret — occasionally, when I can't sleep — is my 
 clumsiness and the awkward things I have done." 
 
 " Umph !" said the Fox. " What about Farmer 
 Jenk's honey?" 
 
 " Oh!" cried the Badger, " that was all in the 
 way of business. I am a robber to trade, like 
 yourself." 
 
 " I never did a clumsy thing in my life," said 
 the Fox; " but I am often troubled with remorse. 
 Especially the sound of ' Tally-ho ! ' makes me 
 remorseful. Then I think of the harmless birds 
 I have killed and eaten ; and the future looks 
 black." 
 
 " Remorse, cousin," said the Badger, " is, as you 
 must very well know — it 's in all the books — the 
 most wretched kind of self-pity. Remorse proceeds 
 from an indigestion of events ; and the mind, you 
 must remember, is in the abdomen. You eat some 
 dandelion; get your liver right; and churn up these 
 untoward happenings into experience. That 's the 
 cure ! 
 
 " It's very easy for you to talk. It's not only 
 my stomach and liver: it's my conscience that 
 troubles me." 
 
48 A ROSARY. 
 
 " Fiddle-de-dee!" cried the Badger. "Conscience 
 is simply enlarged liver." 
 
 " How do you know?" 
 
 " My good fellow, it 's in the books." 
 
 " Is that really the case?" said the Fox, some- 
 what comforted. " I'll take a turn at the dandelions 
 then." 
 
 " A capital salad," said the Badger. " Goes well 
 with a spring chicken.' 
 
 "Indeed!" said the Fox, wistfully. "You re- 
 commend the spring chicken as part of the cure?" 
 
 " A sine qua non," cried the Badger. 
 
 " Well, if it 's medicine I don't mind," said the 
 Fox. 
 
 " Medicine? It 's the very life of you !" said the 
 Badger. 
 
 " It becomes clear to me," said the Fox, as he 
 climbed to the top of a knoll, from which he could 
 survey several poultry-yards, " that what we call 
 mind, conscience, etc., has no real existence." 
 
 " Except physiologically," said the Badger. 
 
 " Quite so," said the Fox. 
 
A ROSARY. 49 
 
 XX. 
 
 FORCE OF SUGGESTION. 
 
 It has been suggested to mankind that there are 
 formative influences, and the hypnotic subject pro- 
 ceeds at once to invent them. But there are no 
 formative influences. Men are what they are. The 
 bread-and-butter I ate thirty years ago is no part 
 of me now. I know nothing about it : I do not 
 remember, nor do I wish to: I go on. It is the 
 unfortunate gift of expression that has seduced men 
 into speaking and writing : one says a thing and 
 another accepts it, because he also wishes to say a 
 thing and to have it accepted. Thus the legends 
 accumulate, and The Legend assimilates them all. 
 To me it is strange that men should still suppose, 
 because they can speak and write, that therefore 
 they can say what they think and feel. It is not 
 true : thought and feeling are themselves, and can- 
 not be expressed : words are another thing — 
 themselves also : even action is a poor proxy. 
 Speech, written or oral, represents cerebration and 
 
 E 
 
50 A ROSARY. 
 
 emotion as little as the House of Commons repre- 
 sents Great Britain. Virgil wanted to burn the 
 "^Eneid": it was not wh A he meant. It is probable 
 that the whole literature of the world is a lie. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 ILLUSION OF SIMILARITY. 
 
 The crowning example in our time of the illusion 
 of similarity is, of course, the purblind theory that 
 Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays ; but I have no 
 doubt the cecity of this will be eclipsed two thousand 
 years hence by Mr. Herbert Spencer's Independ- 
 ent Observer, when he finds among the dibris of 
 an extinct civilization a page of the " Iliad " and a 
 few " Leaves of Grass," and forthwith discovers 
 that the Homeric hexameter developed out of the 
 amorphous rhapsody of Walt Whitman. 
 
A ROSARY. 51 
 
 XXII. 
 
 THE WIND. 
 
 When the wind blows on the Sussex shore it takes 
 possession of all, the precincts of land and sea and 
 sky. From whichever quarter it comes, it is an 
 invasion and pervasion — a sack of the town, a raid 
 on the Downs, a sweeping of the Channel, and a 
 rout of the clouds. It sings its own triumph, and 
 laughs like a conqueror. Above the town on the 
 shoulder of Thundersbarrow Hill the pageant of 
 its victory can be heard, felt, and seen. 
 
 " I am amazed at you. I see into your mind ,' 
 it is displenished. Not a thought, not a memory, 
 not even a regret in a dusty corner! Do you think 
 it becoming at your time of life to permit yourself 
 such an indulgence ?" 
 
 " Surely. The world begins anew every morning 
 for those who choose. What are the thoughts, 
 memories, and regrets of the entire population of 
 the globe in the presence of a new day? Every 
 dawn, every second begins the future. Listen ! 
 
52 A ROSARY. 
 
 Through the song of the wind I can hear the 
 moments dropping into the abyss, and no power 
 can fish them up again. Why should we lug about 
 with us the memory of the past? Happy recollec- 
 tions ? Yes ; but these are only recalled when the 
 present is tiresome or bitter. Let us be happy; and 
 happiness will come." 
 
 "Monstrous! I thought you, of all men, knew 
 that happiness is impossible ! " 
 
 " Nothing of the sort! With a brilliant wind like 
 this it is impossible not to be happy. There's 
 oxygen in it — ozone — life. And it's flung at you; 
 it envelops you ; it bathes you; pounds and pinches 
 you; makes you over again." 
 
 Just at that moment they came on a Shepherd 
 lying in the lee of a hawthorn bush, and humming 
 to himself a passage from the second act of 
 " Tristan und Isolde." 
 
 " Shepherd, he here is angry with me because I 
 have made a clean mind of it this morning, and 
 come out to let the wind have its will. Am I not 
 right to do so ? For example : do you indulge in 
 vain regrets?" 
 
 " Never," said the Shepherd. 
 
A ROSARY. 53 
 
 " But," said the other, " I don't understand this. 
 May I ask you some very personal questions ? " 
 
 " Fire away," said the Shepherd. 
 
 " Did you ever have a grievous disappoint- 
 ment?" 
 
 "Oh, yes!" answered the Shepherd cheerfully. 
 
 " Did you ever do anything that could be dis- 
 tinctly called wrong? " 
 
 " Sometimes," answered the Shepherd, with a 
 graver cheerfulness. 
 
 " Did you ever make a fool of yourself ? " 
 
 " Often," answered the Shepherd, with what was 
 for him a somewhat hard glance. 
 
 " Then you can tell the marines that you have 
 no regrets." 
 
 " I have no intention of doing so," answered the 
 Shepherd; " but if a marine were to ask me just 
 now, I should certainly say as I say to you — No, 
 I have no regrets. That I have had regrets is as 
 certain as that I shall have them, life being what 
 it is; but I do not keep them long. I have another 
 use for my experience than to regret it." 
 
 "And what is that?" 
 
 " To digest it, of course. If I hadn't been able 
 
54 A ROSARY. 
 
 to assimilate my experience I should have been 
 dead in my teens." 
 
 " Bless my soul, do you mean to tell me that 
 you are not ashamed of your mistakes? " 
 
 " Always at the time in despair over them," 
 answered the Shepherd. " But I do not call them 
 mistakes ; it is only fools who make mistakes : wise 
 men at once translate everything into experience. 
 A sound mental mastication, and a eupeptic con- 
 science are the first of gifts. Further, any man 
 summing up in himself the species, can digest, if 
 he is worth his salt, the whole misery of the world : 
 he can distil perfume from rottenness, weave you 
 beauty out of filthy rags, and wring a song from 
 the heart of despair." 
 
 As we turned away, the Shepherd resumed his 
 tune from " Tristan " — 
 
 " Those who death's dark night boldly survey, 
 
 Those who have studied her secret way — 
 
 The daylight's falsehoods, rank and fame, 
 
 Honour and all at which men aim, 
 
 To them are no more matter 
 
 Than dust which sunbeams scatter." 
 
A ROSARY. 55 
 
 The wind was west by north-west, exceedingly 
 fresh and virile, young, bold and splendid. Every- 
 thing bowed to it, made way before it; it was 
 Spring walking over the waters, riding gloriously 
 over the land. Trumpets and drums went before 
 it, the music of its march. The stark hedges 
 ruffled it bravely, as the wind went by ; the grass- 
 green, budding crops, soft like down, rippled at its 
 feet. Over the shires from the Atlantic it trampled 
 with the rush of a charging host across Erringham 
 Valley, took Thundersbarrow Hill at a leap, and 
 reached the North Sea through Sussex and Kent. 
 
 As for the ruffling hedges, their pink spines and 
 coral buds glowed all day, and their stiff branches 
 creaked. Out of the ploughed land yellow breasts 
 and brown wings started in gusts, wheeled, twit- 
 tered, and dropped as if blown down; nor was the 
 first lark more fortunate; once and again he rose, 
 a forlorn hope against the swing and thunder of 
 the wind; every time he was outsung, outclassed, 
 and tossed back to earth ; and at every new defeat 
 he sprang up, well aware that he had been beaten, 
 but with a stout nonchalance essaying it once 
 more; it was practice and training for him. " I 
 
56 A ROSARY. 
 
 know," he seemed to say, " that the time will come 
 quickly when the whole earth and sky will be full 
 of my singing." 
 
 On the slope of Thundersbarrow Hill, among 
 the green down of the budding crops, newly 
 ploughed land lay in stripes — an alloy of clay and 
 chalk inlaid with malachite; for the sun and the 
 wind have a rich palette and a magic spell where- 
 with to colour, clothe, and transform the naked and 
 the uncouth. Like sheets of copper from which 
 the silver gilding had begun to fade, like webs of 
 cloth-of-Bagdad woven of silver and gold, the clay- 
 chalk fallows spread fresh from the plough. A 
 dark red drift of poppies on a ground of emerald 
 clover overran them last summer; in the coming 
 season they shall rustle in Ceres' rich brocade. 
 
 Where the plough had never been the furze was 
 waiting, dark and gloomy — a prickly, sceptical 
 plant. Once, twice, many times it burst into gold; 
 but how can it tell that its good fortune will follow 
 it every spring? At any rate, it can possess its soul 
 in patience, and look out and down upon the 
 world, sinister and aloof. 
 
 The broad, wide sea, like molten silver founded 
 
A ROSARY. 57 
 
 in a shelving mould, whose confines were the shore 
 and the horizon, weltered and curdled in crisp, 
 smooth, resplendent curves as the mail-clad wind 
 tramped over it — the tread echoing to the sky, 
 and yet barely felt upon the glittering plain, aerial 
 strength and lightness triumphing at a touch. The 
 Norman tower stood black against the silver ; like 
 ebony, clouds crossed the sun and lined the dazzling 
 shield of waters. In all the precincts of the land, 
 the sea, the sky, the wind of spring came conquer- 
 ing and to conquer. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 SONNET FROM " LA SEINE FIAMMETTE." 
 
 With blossoms gathered in the Milky Way 
 
 I twined a wreath for her whose least desire 
 My captive soul would evermore obey; 
 
 But she disdained my gift of starry fire ; 
 So I disdained myself, and flung my life 
 
 Against the wall of many a leaguered town, 
 And leapt before the vanguard to the strife ; 
 
 But, seeking for a grave, I found renown. 
 
58 A ROSARY. 
 
 I summoned then the ocean to my aid, 
 
 And wooed from wintry winds the kiss of death ; 
 
 But all the waters murmuring delayed, 
 
 And all the sullen tempests held their breath. 
 
 No hope for me beneath, no hope above; 
 
 Death scorns my life, my mistress scorns my love. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 VULGARITY. 
 
 Vulgarity is the affectation of the manners of a 
 class to which one does not belong, and is common 
 in all ranks. An authentic person will, of course, 
 have his own individual manners as well as those 
 of his order — unless he becomes a misanthrope, 
 when he loses all manners, or a victim of anthro- 
 pophobia, when in his terror he is apt to affect all 
 manners. 
 
A ROSARY. 59 
 
 XXV. 
 
 AUTHORS. 
 
 Successful Author. Unsuccessful Author. 
 
 U. A. You have got into a very inferior, very 
 helpless mood. 
 
 S. A. How is it inferior? 
 
 U. A. Because it is the mood of the partisan. 
 
 S. A. The mood of the partisan may be inferior, 
 but it is not helpless. Party is the combined lever- 
 and-fulcrum that moves the world; the party in 
 power, the lever; the opposition, the fulcrum. 
 
 U. A. Yes ; but I think the principle of western 
 politics should be confined to its own sphere. The 
 enduring example and the necessity of internal 
 antagonism in the political world have had a baleful 
 influence on Literature ; because Literature ought 
 not to be divided against itself. Literature, intended 
 to be the most powerful of levers, is splintered into 
 an assortment of single-sticks, shillelaghs and 
 shinties, all playing against each other. Were these 
 
60 A ROSARY. 
 
 united in one great beam, with the world for fulcrum 
 we could shift the universe. 
 
 S. A. How is the lever to work ? 
 
 U. A. By a study and statement of things as 
 they are. 
 
 .S". A. But how could that help? Schopenhauer 
 has not made the world any better, although he has 
 stated its true nature once for all. 
 
 U. A. I deny that Schopenhauer has stated the 
 true nature of the world; but you will find one of 
 the most perfect statements of the world I am 
 acquainted with if you complement Schopenhauer 
 with Nietzsche — II Penseroso with L? Allegro. 
 Briefly, Schopenhauer says, " the world is evil and 
 this evil is bad and to be shunned." Nietzsche says, 
 " the world is evil and this evil is admirable and to 
 be desired." The one prays, "lead us not into 
 temptation"; the other, "deliver us up to the 
 evil." 
 
 6". A. Well. How do you propose to integrate 
 your lever ? 
 
 U. A. We have the Incorporated Society of 
 Authors. 
 
 5". A. We have; a trade union antagonistic to 
 
A ROSARY. 6 1 
 
 Literature, since it concerns itself entirely with 
 business. 
 
 U. A. Surely; we must have the fulcrum ^pro- 
 perly adjusted. The membership is close upon a 
 thousand — a thousand men of letters united for a 
 common aim, the protection of their own property. 
 But it will not end there. I foresee a great future 
 for the Incorporated Society of Authors. It is the 
 seed of a new hierarchy, a government by the 
 holiest, that is by the healthiest, the fittest. How 
 would you define Literature ? I should call it the 
 Art of Understanding. And here you have a 
 thousand men of letters all devoted to the Art of 
 Understanding, which is the prime correlative of 
 the Art of Governing — a thousand ready-made 
 Governors inspired by the loftiest motives, await- 
 ing the fullness of time to take command of the 
 world and lead it in the way it should go. It is an 
 astonishing and uplifting thought. The maturity 
 of this purpose, inherent in the Society of Authors, 
 will be achieved in the miraculous manner of the 
 beanstalk of fable the moment the Society becomes 
 fully conscious of its destiny; and the method of 
 stimulating this consciousness in the Society itself 
 
62 A ROSARY. 
 
 and of arousing the attention of the world is one 
 and the same, namely, a study and statement of 
 the world as it is. In poems, plays, novels, articles, 
 no new dreams, no old mythologies, no inventions, 
 no praise or blame of anything; only a statement 
 of the world as it is. Kings, priests, legislators, 
 philosophers have hewed, racked, shaped, and 
 criticised, while the world steadily became worse, 
 and a rare voice here and there stated it hopelessly 
 or with some idea of betterment. But if the whole 
 force of the intelligence of Britain were turned 
 steadily on a statement of the world as it is, and 
 if the forty millions that inhabit these islands were 
 got to realize the true nature of the world, I see 
 only one alternative in place of suicide at the rate 
 of a million a day. 
 
 S. A. And what is that? 
 
 U. A. An invitation to the Society of Authors 
 to take charge for pity's sake and try to amend 
 the dreadful thing they had revealed. 
 
 S. A. The Incorporated Society of Authors 
 may develop into something important, but I doubt 
 it. The world of letters was never in itself a 
 republic, and is not likely to become an oligarchy 
 
A ROSARY. 63 
 
 over others. I am entirely satisfied with the 
 Society as it is : auditor of accounts and agree- 
 ments, reformer of business abuses and counsellor 
 of the inexperienced. Personally I should resent 
 the slightest attempt to control the work of its 
 members. Suppose it were to undertake some such 
 scheme of self-aggrandizement as you suggest ; it 
 could be brought to a beginning of success only 
 by the methods of the Society of Jesus — secrecy 
 and a graded obedience ; and if it emerged into 
 any position of power at all, your men of letters 
 would share the fate of the Jesuits, because any 
 possible open-air government is stronger than all 
 the secret societies. 
 
 U. A. You are unwilling to believe that the 
 world changes — I do not say improves. The 
 kaleidoscope is turned, and click-clack, the pattern 
 shifts. Power has been in the hands of kings, 
 priests, aristocracies, oligarchies, plutocracies — 
 
 S. A. Stay now ! Plutocracy — that is what we 
 have in France, America, and Britain, countries 
 supposed to be democratic. In Britain we have 
 practically manhood suffrage ; the power is there- 
 fore in the hands of the working-men ; and what 
 
64 A ROSARY. 
 
 do they do with it ? They elect to represent them 
 in the House of Commons their masters and em- 
 ployers, and can do nothing else ; because the 
 franchise is an automatic machine which wealth 
 alone can set in motion. The Incorporated Society 
 of Authors as a governing body would be some- 
 what unwieldy ; the inevitable result — a committee 
 of management, equivalent to Parliament under 
 the present regime ; and within that, a bureau 
 taking the place of the Cabinet. The members of 
 that committee of management and of that bureau 
 would be — as it is now in all elective bodies — pre- 
 cisely those best able to be elected, and not by 
 any means those best deserving election : good 
 fellows, like myself, with one hand on the public 
 pulse and the other in the public purse, providing 
 the stimulant or the pill as indicated — entertainers 
 gauging their success by their bank account. I, 
 for example, who purvey pseudo-religious fiction, 
 would naturally become Minister for Public Wor- 
 ship ; our champion detective- story ist would go 
 to the Home Office ; our Prime Minister — 
 
 U. A. Oh, but you interrupted me before you 
 heard the details of my scheme. No single author 
 
A ROSARY. 65 
 
 ought to be better able to secure election than any 
 other author — so far as money goes, at any rate ; 
 therefore every author's private means, and the pro- 
 ceeds from the publication of printed matter of every 
 kind, must be pooled in order that every member 
 of the society may have the same amount of income. 
 
 S. A. {Laughs consumedly.) 
 
 U.A. It is no laughing matter! Such an arrange- 
 ment as that would itself detach the Society of 
 Authors from this worldliness, and be a promise 
 and proof of its authentic mission as the one com- 
 petent governing body. I understand the full sig- 
 nificance of what I propose: it means that every 
 member of the Society of Authors must become 
 what is called a fanatic, and be willing to sacrifice 
 everything for the good of men. 
 
 S. A. Beyond a doubt that is what it means ; 
 and I for one would decline. Literature is freedom, 
 and the divine right of individuals. I have got 
 into the way of making money, and like doing so. 
 I like the applause also, and to know that hundreds 
 of thousands have a warm corner for me in their 
 hearts. Nevertheless I have the highest reverence 
 for Literature, believing it to be the greatest thing 
 
66 A ROSARY. 
 
 in the world. The one enemy of man is fanaticism, 
 moral, religious, aesthetic, or mercantile; and 
 Literature is the bulwark between man and his 
 foe. Literature preserves man from sensuality, from 
 spirituality, and from intellectuality, and keeps him 
 intelligent. 
 
 U. A. Whatever do you mean ? Literature 
 represents the deepest abysses of sensuality, the 
 utmost detachment of the spirit, and the fiercest 
 intellectual pride. 
 
 S. A. I know ; and I had the ambition at one 
 time — it smoulders still — to be a really representa- 
 tive author; to write a gospel by John, and an 
 anti-Christ by Nietzsche, the plays of Shakespeare 
 and the novels of Flaubert, an amorous epic of 
 Casanova and the autobiography of Madame 
 Guyon. Goethe, I suppose, approaches the idea of 
 a representative author; and Goethe makes for in- 
 telligence more than any writer I know. Intelli- 
 gence, not righteousness, is the salt of the earth. 
 Chaucer, Montaigne, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shake- 
 speare, Moliere, Voltaire, Goethe, Burns, Emerson 
 keep the world sweet, and make a true diapason 
 in body-and-soul, uniting spirit, sense and mind in 
 
A ROSARY. 67 
 
 one harmonious intelligence. Literature is free- 
 dom, and the law of freedom is this : " Thou shalt 
 not require thy neighbour to vote as thou dost, to 
 believe as thou dost, to think as thou dost, nor 
 expect thy neighbour to be other than he is ; for 
 no two people are alike." 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 BUTTERFLIES, FROM "FOUR LA COURONNE. 
 
 At sixteen years she knew no care; 
 
 How could she, sweet and pure as light ? 
 And there pursued her everywhere 
 
 Butterflies all white. 
 
 A lover looked. She dropped her eyes 
 That glowed like pansies wet with dew ; 
 
 And lo, there came from out the skies 
 Butterflies all blue. 
 
 Before she guessed, her heart was gone ; 
 The tale of love was swiftly told; 
 
68 A ROSARY. 
 
 And all about her wheeled and shone 
 Butterflies of gold. 
 
 Then he forsook her one sad morn; 
 
 She wept and sobbed, " Oh love, come back." 
 There only came to her forlorn 
 
 Butterflies all black. • 
 
 XXVI 1. 
 
 DESPAIR. 
 
 It was not a handsome day by any means. In the 
 west of Sussex the Downs crawl to the sea in a 
 very undignified style ; in some places, indeed, 
 they never reach it, but are hopelessly lost in salt 
 marshes. Under a thin coating of snow, a mesh- 
 work shroud, with a leaden sky above, the land- 
 scape was forbidding in the last degree. But it 
 behoved me to go out. So I went up by Erring- 
 ham Valley, where is a good road over the Downs. 
 " Here you are again, wandering about in your 
 aimless fashion ! What do you mean by it ? " 
 
A ROSARY. 69 
 
 " It is necessary to be cheerful. I find it above 
 all things necessary to be cheerful. Understand 
 I don't reject despair ; it is probably the normal 
 mood of a contemplative intelligence ; but as I 
 am still more than a mere spectator of life, my 
 moods are therefore active. Passive despair is a 
 form of cheerfulness ; active despair is a first class 
 explosive : passive despair is glycerine ; active de- 
 spair, nitro-glycerine. You can't blow yourself up 
 all the time — can you ? " 
 
 " But why not occupy your intelligence, as you 
 call it, with some important study for your own 
 benefit and that of mankind ? " 
 
 " That is the highway to despair — a path I 
 have travelled, and will travel. But what I want 
 you to understand is the necessity of being cheer- 
 ful ; the criminal negligence, the deep disgrace 
 involved in not laying up a stock of cheerfulness 
 whenever it can be begged, borrowed, or stolen." 
 
 " Come now !" 
 
 " Somewhat too vehement, I daresay, but my 
 meaning is, that to indulge in cheerfulness is to 
 get into form for despair — you see ? That is to 
 say, for hope ; because despair, as you, being a 
 
70 A ROSARY. 
 
 philosopher, must know, is the highest power of 
 hope." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Despair is the highest power of hope. It is 
 the only index and exponent of hope. And so I 
 come out into the open air to lay up a stock of 
 cheerfulness, wherewith to encounter, to equate 
 despair, the root and dawn of all hope." 
 
 " But how do you do it — on a day like this ?" 
 
 " The wind is raw, but it thunders through this 
 hedge — do you hear? A muffled thunder of gongs, 
 drums, cymbals, behind a thick curtain. And if 
 you look at that hedge you will note that the 
 spines of the hawthorn are alive, that they are 
 murrey-coloured, have sap in them, are straining 
 to the branches. You will also see that the leaf- 
 buds are like jewels of coral, but warm and preg- 
 nant with green foliage. And I tell you that to 
 observe these things, and keep them in my mind, 
 and roll them over in my fancy like a sweet 
 morsel, is to store away cheerfulness, to put by a 
 purse of pleasure, and lay down a pipe of gener- 
 ous wine." 
 
A ROSARY. 7 i 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 A NEUROTIC CYCLIST. 
 
 Looking behind us we beheld a strange figure on 
 a bicycle, which by a happy accident shot past 
 instead of into us. It was the figure of a short, 
 stout man, with long hair flying in the wind, his 
 head thrown back and his legs sticking out on 
 either side of the machine as if they had no con- 
 nection either with him or it. The road was not 
 nearly so steep as the lie of the land, because it 
 was cut deeply into the flank of the Down, and a 
 cyclist of ordinary skill could have spun through 
 with ease ; the spectators therefore concluded that 
 this was a beginner attempting a descent for the 
 first time. The cyclist did not reach the bottom. 
 Trying apparently to turn up the bank where the 
 acclivity was least, he upset his cycle and came 
 down with a grunt on his side. "It's all right," 
 he said, holding up the hind wheel and spinning 
 the pedals. " The danger 's over for the day." 
 "Over for the day?" 
 
72 A ROSARY. 
 
 " Yes," answered the cyclist, turning the pin 
 and leaning against his cycle; "if I fall at all, 1 
 always fall three times, and that's the third time 
 to-day." 
 
 "How's that?" 
 
 "Well, you see," rejoined the cyclist, lighting a 
 cigarette, "I'm what's called neurotic." 
 
 " Oh ! " We considered dubiously the cyclist's 
 red cheeks and burly figure. 
 
 "There's no doubt about it," continued the 
 cyclist. " I didn't believe it myself at first. I eat 
 and drink as well as anybody, and attend to my 
 affairs successfully ; but every now and again, in 
 the very midst of a good dinner, I have a sudden 
 fit of absence of appetite, and in the press of busi- 
 ness am overtaken by absence of mind. At last I 
 went to a doctor, for I sometimes made odd and 
 annoying mistakes that were neither good for my 
 health nor my purse ; and he told me I was 
 nervous and advised me to get a bike. I laughed 
 at him, but he said, looking at me curiously, 
 ' You've no time to waste about it either; you get 
 a bike. You should be able to ride in a fortnight ; 
 and then every day, or as often as the weather 
 
A ROSARY. 73 
 
 and the roads permit, you should take a run of 
 two hours.' I told him I would show him whether 
 I was nervous or not, and went off and bought a 
 bike at once — not this bike, but a good ordinary 
 roadster. I didn't ride up to the doctor's door the 
 first day — nor any day ; and I've been riding for 
 six months. I had to have a tutor ; it was a full 
 fortnight before I could go alone at all, and a 
 month before I could dispense with assistance ; 
 and even then I couldn't mount from behind in 
 the ordinary way. I was so disgusted that I sold 
 the roadster and bought a cob — this one, low- 
 framed, you see. I simply sit down on it. Well, 
 the doctor may have meant the bike to cure me ; 
 up to the present it has only made me conscious 
 of my weakness. At first I fell off it every day. 
 I didn't run against anything or upset — simply, 
 after half an hour, I threw up my hands, flung out 
 my legs and fell off. I couldn't explain it to any- 
 body, I did it. Then, much to my surprise, six 
 days went past without a mishap, but on the 
 seventh down I came ; and ever since there 's not 
 a week passes without a day of tumbles. It may 
 be coming down a hill like this ; it may be in a 
 
74 A ROSARY. 
 
 crowded street, or on a lonely level road; my 
 thoughts may be far off, or they may be fixed on 
 my cycle — no matter ; the wheels glide away from 
 me without warning, and I come plump on the 
 ground. I've never sprained anything to speak 
 of, but I'm black and blue from head to foot. 
 And as I told you, if I fall once and have a mile 
 or two to ride, I invariably repeat the accident 
 twice over." 
 
 " But aren't you afraid?" 
 
 "Horribly," said the cyclist. "Just now I 
 thought I was done for. I made sure I would 
 collide with you and break my neck." 
 
 " Why the deuce didn't you put on your break?" 
 
 " That 's just it," replied the cyclist as he mount- 
 ed his machine. " If I weren't neurotic I would^vX 
 on the break; but I am neurotic, you see, and I'm 
 bound to go tumbling about the world on a rover 
 cob. If you keep both feet on the pedals and both 
 hands on the bar you can't fall off of yourself, cer- 
 tain sure ; but there 's a solution of continuity in 
 the flow of my nervous energy as regards biking 
 once a week, and I take my hands off the bar and 
 my feet off the pedals, and there I am in the road. 
 
A ROSARY. 75 
 
 That 's the form of my neurosis in the matter of 
 velocipedes. Good day! " 
 
 " The man 's a fool. ' 
 
 " Oh no, he 's a philosopher." 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 THE MUSIC-HALL. 
 
 " The Wise-innocent is no theatre-goer, preferring 
 upon his rare nights out the senilities, puerilities 
 and infantilities of the Music-hall." 
 
 " Very well said ! That is the attraction of the 
 Music-hall: cheerful indifference to the claims of 
 the intellect and the spirit, and a prompt, powerful 
 and continuous appeal to the elementary and the 
 subconscious, to what is permanent from first to 
 second childhood." 
 
76 A ROSARY. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 PORTRAITS AND ROMANCE. 
 
 Two Men. 
 
 ist Man. Do you visit the National Portrait 
 Gallery sometimes? 
 
 2nd Man. When I lived in London I never 
 could pass it without going in to look at the bust 
 of Cromwell — the bust with the dint in the fore- 
 head. It is not a heroic bust, rather an under- 
 statement of the man; but you can stand face to 
 face with it in its corner. There is the head of one 
 about to issue a mandate that none may gainsay. 
 It is worth looking at often. 
 
 ist Man. But are you not attracted by the 
 modern portraits? 
 
 2nd Man. Not greatly. That of Lord Law- 
 rence, bull-necked and lowering, by Mr. G. F. 
 Watts, with fire, humour and honesty in its eyes, 
 demands acceptance, so does the same artist's 
 ethereal portrait of Gladstone at fifty-six, although 
 the extreme candour of the eyes might be called 
 childish rather than childlike. 
 
 ist Man. But Mr. Watts's literary men? 
 
A ROSARY. 77 
 
 2nd Man. The best of these is, I think, the 
 portrait of Matthew Arnold. The Carlyle is a de- 
 bauch of ferocity. The pallid, almost expression- 
 less profile of Browning may be rightly symbolic 
 of the morbidly healthy all-inquiring intellect that 
 never quite grasped the idea of intelligence — " I 
 was ever a fighter " ; but a suggestion of the joy of 
 strength rather than of its apathy would have been 
 more helpful. 
 
 i st Man. What do you mean by the apathy of 
 strength ? 
 
 2nd Man. Unintelligence. To be strong to 
 the end, it is necessary to shut up many windows, 
 to be deaf on either side of the head at will, to 
 fetter the mind. Frederick the Great did so, and 
 lived his life out. Cromwell could not, and died 
 before his time. To know, to understand, and 
 therefore to sympathize with, and love all men, 
 even the worst, and yet to have to rule them, to 
 have to punish them — the greatest men die of that. 
 Caesar was dying of it. Diocletian and Charles V. 
 had to give it up. 
 
 You cannot be 
 
 Both strong and free. 
 
78 A ROSARY. 
 
 ist Man. Whose doggerel is that? 
 
 2nd Man. Mine. 
 
 ist Man. Well, I don't believe it. It's a Gos- 
 pel of Cowardice. 
 
 2nd Man. A Gospel of Cowardice ? That fails, 
 as all definitions do, outside exact science. Epi- 
 grams are the resource of weak minds, as meat 
 extract is of weak stomachs. 
 
 ist Man. Possibly. They say vegetarians are 
 great makers of epigrams. 
 
 2nd Man. I have not noticed that. But you 
 have allowed the figure to run away with you. I 
 should say that the mortification of the roast-beef 
 stomach increases the vitalityof the roast-beef mind. 
 
 ist Man. Go back to the Portrait Gallery. 
 What about Mr. Watts's Tennyson? 
 
 2nd Man. Unhuman, and not divine; but a 
 remarkable picture. It is liker a copy of a mask 
 rather than a portrait. It is most typical of Mr. 
 Watts's method; this outlandish countenance, this 
 unearthly mask called a portrait of Tennyson, is 
 overladen with meanings foreign to the subject. 
 It is a personal utterance of the artist's — a lyric, 
 like his Gladstone and his Rossetti. One has only 
 
A ROSARY. 79 
 
 to glance up at the brilliant drama of Mr. Sargent's 
 Coventry Patmore to perceive the sheer abyss be- 
 tween subjective and objective art. 
 
 ist Man. But I have heard you say that the 
 dramatic presentation of character can never be 
 vital without an alloy of the author's or artist's 
 personality. 
 
 2nd Man. Yes, but it is the other way about 
 in the case of Mr. Watts's lyrical portraits: how- 
 ever unconsciously, this artist is himself the subject. 
 The people he paints are the alloy — little more, 
 indeed, than the language of his song. 
 
 ist Man. What makes you think Mr. Watts's 
 portrait of Matthew Arnold his best picture ? 
 
 ■2nd Man. His best likeness, I meant; not by 
 any means his best picture. Because there is very 
 little of Mr. Watts in it. I should say that Mr. 
 Watts, when he painted Matthew Arnold, did not 
 know him ; had little sympathy with his writings 
 and only the slightest personal acquaintance. 
 Therefore Matthew Arnold is not varnished, gilded, 
 sized and hidden by the artist's personality as 
 Tennyson is — known, studied and absorbed, man 
 and poetry. Mr. Watts's Matthew Arnold is a 
 
80 A ROSARY. 
 
 cold, correct reproduction: it is just the wistful, 
 confused, yet sedate and grave face of the man 
 whose final utterance on poetry was " a Criticism 
 of Life." 
 
 ist Man. Ah ! you don't accept that utterance? 
 
 2nd Man. No. To criticise is to judge, to ap- 
 praise, to forgive, and condemn — a necessary but 
 thankless office. I should rather say that Litera- 
 ture is a Statement of the World (you have lured 
 me into definition), and Poetry, being the inmost 
 heart of literature, might be called an Interpreta- 
 tion of the World. There is no Criticism in 
 Shakespeare; Parolles and Timon are stated and 
 interpreted as gently as Adam and Hamlet: there 
 is no Criticism in Ibsen; Peer Gynt, fool, liar and 
 dastard, is stated, and interpreted as sympathetic- 
 ally as Brand, the heroic Titan. Burns's " Holy 
 Willie's Prayer," commonly supposed to be a 
 scathing satire, is not satire; it is drama, every 
 line of it tingling with the humane feeling of the 
 poet for the disgraceful creature he interprets. No ; 
 it is Religion that is a Criticism of Life, not Poetry. 
 The existence of society depends — 
 
 ist Man. We can discuss that again. Stick to 
 
A ROSARY. 8 1 
 
 " Poetry no criticism." The poet, I understand, 
 must not condemn, must not blame." 
 
 2nd Man. That is the ultimate fate of the poet, 
 I believe. A thoroughly awakened intelligence 
 does not despise anybody or anything. 
 
 ist Man. It must be very annoying to be a 
 thoroughly awakened intelligence. 
 
 2nd Man. Ah! you mean that flippantly. Now.it 
 is unwise to be flippant. Speak your mind directly. 
 
 ist Man. Well then, I say that that is a part of 
 a Gospel of Cowardice. He who has abdicated or 
 lost the power to condemn deserves exile, deserves 
 to be interdicted from fire and water. 
 
 2nd Man. But are not all Gospels either gospels 
 of cowardice or gospels of ruffianism ? — the latter 
 being only an allotropic form of cowardice. I 
 mean that gospels are for the weak; the strong 
 need no gospel — except as a purchase, sometimes 
 wisely used, upon the weak. When I say that a 
 thoroughly awakened intelligence is not entitled 
 to blame anybody or anything, I am not inviting 
 you or anyone to become a thoroughly awakened 
 intelligence. If the world were intelligent, I don't 
 see how it could go on. Thus, it is absolutely 
 
 G 
 
8a A ROSARY. 
 
 necessary for men and nations to fight, or to com- 
 pete in some way, in order to find out which is 
 the best man and the best nation; that, at any 
 rate, is the history of the world hitherto. Now, 
 the perfect intelligence cannot fight, cannot com- 
 pete. Intelligence, fully awake, is doomed to 
 understand, and can no more take part in the 
 disputes of men than in the disputes of other male 
 creatures. 
 
 ist Man. Then a perfect intelligence is a 
 monster? 
 
 2nd Man. Monster, if you like, but in no 
 opprobrious sense. There was once a handful of 
 uncut diamonds that lay together in a shell among 
 the bric-a-brac of a dilettante. By chance a ring, 
 containing a many-facetted brilliant, fell into the 
 shell. " What a monster! " cried out all the dusky, 
 uncut gems. 
 
 \st Man. Then men are made intelligent by 
 cutting ? 
 
 2nd Man. By cutting, by grinding ; and even if 
 the process be one of utter, unending misery — for 
 full intelligence is impossible — with every new 
 facet there is a new rainbow. 
 
A ROSARY. 83 
 
 1st Man. These seem to me very romantic 
 notions. 
 
 2nd Man. And so they are. The world is best 
 stated in terms of Romance. And here I should 
 like to make a distinction. Romance and Roman- 
 ticism are not by any means one. Romanticism 
 bears somewhat the same relation to Romance 
 that sentimentality bears to sentiment ; only I do 
 not dislike Romanticism so much as I do senti- 
 mentality. For example, I read the other day 
 " Cyrano de Bergerac " with considerable pleasure, 
 although it is the sheerest Romanticism. 
 
 1st Man. Romanticism is an unintelligent at 
 tempt at Romance. Is that your meaning? 
 
 2nd Man. I would not put it that way. Roman- 
 ticism is a thing in the air; if it touches the world 
 at all it is only as a tangent, whereas Romance is 
 a diameter; the former is "Hernani"; the latter, 
 " Hamlet." 
 
 1st Man. Romance, then, is your message to 
 the world? 
 
 2nd Man. I have no message. I would state 
 and interpret. 
 
 1st Man. But what would you say to me now, 
 
84 A ROSARY. 
 
 or to anyone who wanted advice in the deafening 
 clamour of the times ? 
 
 2nd Man. If any person should have the mis- 
 fortune to be so very much in need of advice as 
 to apply to me, I should say, " Look at things for 
 yourself" — a very antique saga. The foolish 
 attempts of most men to see with the eyes of 
 others, and the malign attempts of some to compel 
 the rest to see as they do, are the causes of nearly 
 all the ignoble misery in the world. He who 
 says, " You must see things in this light," is the 
 arch- traitor. He who says, " See for yourself," 
 points out the way of deliverance. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 HOPE. 
 
 Is hope only the subtlest form of cowardice? 
 
A ROSARY. 85 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 MALIGNITY. 
 t 
 
 " All men and living beings are at all times and 
 in all they do and dream both the agents and the 
 victims of the malignity inherent in the nature of 
 things. The moment a man understands himself 
 he becomes mad or commits suicide ; and when- 
 ever one man understands another he tries to kill 
 him." 
 
 " Surely not. To understand all is to forgive 
 all." 
 
 " No, a million times! To understand all is to 
 fight and slay. War, upon whatever excuse it be 
 waged, is always the effect of a sudden insight 
 into the true nature of the world and man. Life is 
 something which should never have been; and so 
 in fiery moments of intelligence we kill each 
 other." 
 
 "If that be so, all living things are eminently 
 courageous." 
 
 "Yes; just as they are all eminently foolish; 
 
86 A ROSARY. 
 
 the courage and the folly hardly differing in 
 degree." 
 
 " Still, merely to live is to be brave." 
 
 " But foolish." 
 
 " Nevertheless, we are all intelligent in the end, 
 for we all die." 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Said the Critic to the Playwright, " Why do you 
 study Philosophy so much? Surely the time is 
 wasted for one whose work is Literature." 
 
 " I have been," said the Playwright, " a student 
 of Philosophy since I could read, and shall be 
 till I die; an intermittent student, sometimes sub- 
 missive, sometimes recalcitrant, and I do not 
 regard the time as wasted. Lately I have read 
 little else, as it became imperative for me to 
 search out the relation of Literature to Philosophy 
 — that is to say, the relation of the Soul of Man 
 to the Universe." 
 
A ROSARY. 87 
 
 " And have you found that relation? " 
 " I have found a relation which satisfies me in 
 the meantime. It is clear that these two worlds, 
 Literature and Philosophy, are related and divided 
 by a profound antithesis, and yet exist within 
 each other, like the intermixed spirits in the 
 seventh gulf of the Inferno; but without the 
 horror and torture of Hell. I perceive the identity 
 of Spinoza's God, Hegel's Absolute, Fichte's 
 Transcendental Ego, Schopenhauer's Will to 
 Live, and Nietzsche's Will to Power. These all- 
 embracing categories are titles which Man in his 
 madness has conferred on Matter. It is the aim 
 of Philosophy to integrate the appearances of 
 Matter, to know and present them as a Universe 
 or Unity. It is the aim of Literature, which 
 keeps on absorbing and will ultimately include 
 all Science, to know and present Matter as it is 
 disintegrated into individuals, men and women, 
 plants, animals, elements, suns, and systems. I 
 hold by Literature, but the soul cannot live by 
 Literature alone; wherefore I have recourse to 
 the madness of Philosophy." 
 
 " You cannot serve two Masters." 
 
88 A ROSARY. 
 
 " No, but I myself can be master in one world 
 and acolyte in the other." 
 
 " You will still find it a divided duty. 
 
 " A divided duty is always a fruitful furrow in 
 Art. But I shall find it what I make it." 
 
 " Save us ! What a dust you do raise." 
 
 " Ah now, you want to be ironical! " 
 
 " Surely you have no objection to irony." 
 
 " On the contrary, irony is perhaps the last word 
 of philosophy, the nearest approach to truth." 
 
 "What is truth?" 
 
 " Truth is the reconciliation of antagonisms. 
 Irony integrates good and evil, the constituents of 
 the universe. It is that Beyond-Good-and-Evil, 
 which somebody clamoured for." 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 THE POWER OF THE PEN. 
 
 The power of the pen has been grossly exagger- 
 ated. Napoleon not Goethe made the modern 
 world. Everybody knows the life of Napoleon 
 
A ROSARY. 89 
 
 and its meaning, " the tools to him that can handle 
 them." Every man goes Nap; and the women want 
 to play too. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 A ROOKERY. 
 
 The road was from the sea inland, and then, for a 
 mile, parallel with the shore, skirting the verge of 
 the cliffless Downs. The wind from the south- 
 east, sharp and vapoury, carried brine and haze 
 over the southern counties ; but its transparent 
 burden was barely visible in the strong sunshine. 
 A pallor, as of the thinnest coating of varnish, 
 overspread the faint blue sky. The sun, an hour 
 past noon, showed small and round, shorn of its 
 beams by the dim haze, but hot and glittering, like 
 an eye-hole opening* into a vat of molten silver. 
 Upon the horizon the vapour began to build itself 
 up in tiers and courses; but the rest of the firma- 
 ment was clear, save for the thin veil of mist and 
 one solitary plume of white cloud that streamed 
 from the top of heaven. A wooded park, like a 
 
90 A ROSARY. 
 
 broad hem, edged the sunken Downs. Groves, 
 avenues, and single trees resounded with the 
 business of the rookery. The incessant, harsh, 
 sibilant-raucous noise, rising and falling in gusts 
 and squalls, swept the park from end to end. 
 Sometimes a plangent voice soared out of the 
 ground-tone in wild protest against the universe 
 or a thieving neighbour; now a cloud of rooks 
 would rise and adjourn from their tree-tops to a 
 select space in the air; and there gyrate and discuss 
 a knotty point with the unparliamentary liberty 
 the problem required ; or the low, deep-toned, self- 
 satisfied caw of experienced and well-to-do rooks, 
 who had settled themselves for the season weeks 
 ago, would become distinctly audible in some lull 
 of the stormy outcry, some reprieve of that friction 
 which the clan-economy of a rookery entails. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 CRYING FOR THE MOON. 
 
 People who cry for the moon should never be 
 blamed. It is necessary always and at all times to 
 
A ROSARY. 91 
 
 cry for the moon. There is a proverb in Scotland, 
 " If ye bode (ask) for a silk goon ye'll get the 
 sleeve o't," and if we persistently cry for the moon, 
 we may be rewarded in time with a piece of green 
 cheese. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 THE PRIME COST OF SOUTH DOWN MUTTON. 
 
 There is nothing in landscape more unsatisfactory 
 to the aesthetic sense, more uncomfortable to the 
 mood of the spectator than the seaward slope of 
 the Downs. Where a bold escarpment fronts the 
 Channel the unnatural condition of these bereft 
 hills is not perhaps so forcible in its pathetic 
 appeal ; but even then the nakedness of the land 
 distresses. These low, rolling hills should be 
 covered with forest as they were originally. It 
 is nature's plan. The mid-Surrey Hills, or the 
 Chilterns between Wendover and Prince's Ris- 
 borough, in conformation and distribution the very 
 images of the South Downs, are perfect in the 
 richness, the secrecy and repose of their wooded, 
 
92 A ROSARY. 
 
 their heavily draped contours. But this unfortunate 
 range by the sea is doomed to thrust out along the 
 shore its naked slopes and mounds like the limbs 
 and shoulders of plucked fowls. The expense of a 
 luxury is not calculable in currency alone; the 
 beauty of the South Downs is the prime cost of 
 Southdown mutton. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 CRITIC AND AUTHOR. 
 
 Critic. Author. 
 
 C. Why do you reply to criticism? It has 
 a very ill effect. Everybody knows what lies 
 behind it. 
 
 A. What lies behind it? 
 
 C. All that is bad in art. I once heard an 
 embittered painter express it nakedly at that 
 naked hour before the dawn when evil stirs in the 
 dreams of innocent sleepers, and rises foul and 
 hateful to the surface of the consciousness of many 
 
A ROSARY. 93 
 
 who are awake. He said, " No artist, that is, no 
 person who prostitutes his emotions and passions 
 for pay cares a tinker's damn for what is written, 
 said, or thought about his pictures, his books, his 
 acting, or his music, as long as he makes money. 
 It is when his income dwindles that he begins to 
 reply to criticism. That," he added, " is my experi- 
 ence, and I have observed it in others." 
 
 A. The one-sided, harsh, economic truth. It is 
 my experience also. But I go behind that. I re- 
 cognize a transcendental reason in an author's 
 replying to his critics. Thus 
 
 C. One moment. I also transcend. The critic 
 is related to the artist — author, painter, or whatever 
 he be — as judge only. Thus, in reading a new 
 book, I regard the writer as upon his trial for a 
 capital offence. There are in the world already the 
 poems of Homer, the Book of Job, Dante's " Divine 
 Comedy," the plays of Shakespeare, the novels 
 of Balzac, Schopenhauer's "World as Will and 
 Presentation." These and others are the silent 
 counsel, the silent witnesses, and the silent jury; 
 upon their advocacy, upon their testimony, and in 
 compliance with their verdict I adjudicate. The 
 
94 A ROSARY. 
 
 effect of my sentence on the author's economies is 
 no concern of mine ; neither is it any concern of 
 mine whether my sentence meets with public 
 approval or not. My position is one of neutrality; 
 my function to execute absolute justice. 
 
 A. That, I believe, is the definition of the ideal 
 critic — who, of course, cannot exist: to be neutral 
 is to be self-ostracised, to execute absolute justice 
 would be to commit suicide. No criticism has any 
 effect or any value, that is to say, lives, however 
 temporarily, in the minds of men, unless it takes a 
 side : it must appreciate or depreciate. 
 
 C. I think you exaggerate in this matter of 
 praise and blame. English Literary Criticism is a 
 little older and a little wiser than it was in its 
 irresponsible childhood. You must remember that 
 English Literary Criticism is still only a youth. 
 From Sidney to Dryden I should call the gestation 
 of English Literary Criticism. With Dryden it is 
 born. It reaches its teens perhaps in Matthew 
 Arnold ; and is not yet out of them. Indeed, I 
 feel certain that Literary Criticism will not become 
 adult until Science has adopted it under the style 
 of a Criticism of Literature; and then no one who 
 
A ROSARY. 95 
 
 is not a master in Biology will have any status as 
 a Critic of Letters. 
 
 A. I agree, although I fear we talk of a distant 
 time; of a time when no one shall be entitled to a 
 cure of souls who is not a master in physiology and 
 a practised pathologist. But you were saying ? 
 
 C. That Literary Criticism, although not yet 
 become a Criticism of Literature, is a little wiser 
 than it was. It is true there are individuals, and 
 even coteries, I am told, quite capable of swearing 
 hard for or against an author. Indeed, I am ac- 
 quainted with a harmless brother craftsman whose 
 great desire is to kill a poet. He has attempted the 
 lives of several in dailies, weeklies, monthlies, 
 quarterlies, but as yet he carries no scalp for three 
 reasons that cancel each other like the terms of 
 certain divorce pleas. Firstly, the public, although 
 still beautifully willing to lend an ear to the most 
 flattering applause, has come to suspect violent de- 
 preciation. Secondly, my harmless brother crafts- 
 man attacked reputations which had no existence 
 except in his imagination — namely, the supposed 
 reputations of writers unknown to the public. 
 Thirdly, the writers attacked, and the two or three 
 
96 A ROSARY. 
 
 hundred people who regularly bought their books, 
 were of independent minds, and quite indifferent 
 to this or any other critic's opinion. 
 
 A. Who is this harmless person ? 
 
 C. I mustn't tell you his name. He is a veteran 
 of much literature, occupied and concerned with 
 nothing else; the old style of critic, unsophisticated 
 and militant. It is that imaginary poeticide of 
 Macaulay's, of course, which he wishes to rival. 
 He is unable to understand that a battalion of 
 Macaulays would fail to kill one single poet. If 
 Montgomery died on account of Macaulay's article, 
 it was not because Macaulay said he was no poet, 
 but because in his heart he knew it was true. This 
 critic, however, is, I believe, an exceptional sur- 
 vival. Literary criticism now tries more or less 
 consistently to say what a thing is, and only in the 
 second and third places to say that the thing is 
 good or bad, liked or disliked. 
 
 A. I agree with you, and in this I approach the 
 ground of my transcendental relation to criticism. 
 
 C. Let 's have it. 
 
 A. I will. In the struggle for existence all men 
 are related to each other as destroyers or protectors. 
 
A ROSARY. 97 
 
 In no order is this relation closer or more direct 
 than in the world of letters between the critic and 
 the author, notwithstanding the fact that authors 
 of wide and assured popularity are in a large 
 measure independent of literary criticism. They 
 were not so at the start. Authors, on the other 
 hand, with small or fluctuating constituencies are 
 very dependent on written criticism for encourage- 
 ment, no matter how strong they may be in char- 
 acter or genius. Writers of ability, for want of 
 appreciation, have been thwarted, turned aside 
 from their true development, and sometimes 
 silenced. Carlyle himself, unsurpassed in strength 
 among men of letters, seriously considered the 
 advisability, midway in his career, of laying down 
 his pen altogether. The struggle for existence in 
 the literary world resolves itself, therefore, into a 
 fight for recognition. The author must live in the 
 minds of others or not at all ; and if he finds that 
 he is not alive in the minds of his critics, and that 
 their criticism will not help to extend his self- 
 consciousness into the self-consciousness of the 
 world, he will feel constantly impelled to reply to 
 them in the hope of entering into their mental ex^ 
 
 H 
 
98 A ROSARY. 
 
 istence. That is the transcendental and therefore 
 most human relation I perceive between the author 
 and the critic ; and for my part, the conditions of 
 literature being what they are, I think the author 
 is amply entitled to his reply. 
 
 C. You are talking the sheerest Hegelism. This 
 is Hegel's doctrine of the fight of recognition which 
 produced the status of master and slave — the first 
 germ, I should say, of Nietzsche's antinomy in 
 morality. That is what you are aiming at! To 
 have the critic the slave of the author ! 
 
 A. No, sir. I would have the critic and the 
 author loyal enemies or loyal friends. 
 
 C. I suppose that is the only relation in all 
 spheres while the world lasts. Those who are not 
 for one are against one. 
 
A ROSARY. 99 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 THE WASTREL. 
 
 An eyesore to the tourist on the shoulder of the 
 knock 
 Above the green-fledged larches where the 
 squirrel keeps its house, 
 The pale dissenting chapel, like a pharos on a 
 rock, 
 With strong, pathetic preaching that the very 
 dead might rouse, 
 Was lighted for an hour and twenty minutes by 
 the clock, 
 While the cushats moaned and muttered deep 
 among the rustling boughs. 
 
 With Conybeare-and-Howson laid on thick for 
 local hue, 
 And Meyer's and Lange's comments to elucid- 
 ate the text, 
 
 The minister exhibited a panoramic view 
 
ioo A ROSARY. 
 
 Of the story of the wastrel and the father that 
 
 he vext : 
 Of little but his Bible and his creed the preacher 
 
 knew, 
 And dogma like a razor his emotions had un- 
 
 sexed. 
 
 Then came the modern instance, and the congre- 
 gation stirred, 
 And scrutinized the pew in which the preacher's 
 family sat. 
 " I knew it," thought each member, " at the very 
 opening word ! " 
 And felt as perspicacious as a dog that smells 
 a rat: 
 The preacher's wife and daughters seized their 
 Bibles when they heard ; 
 And his son, as red as poppies, stooped and 
 glanced at this and that. 
 
 "But recently," the preacher said, "to London 
 town there went 
 A youth from our vicinity against his father's 
 wish ; 
 
A ROSARY. 101 
 
 To make a fortune — honestly, if possible — he 
 meant, 
 Forgetting quite how God examines both sides 
 of the dish : 
 Unless a holy life exhale to Heaven a savoury 
 scent, 
 We know how very profitless the loaves are and 
 the fish." ... 
 
 The wife and daughters shrivel up and shut their 
 • eyes and cry, 
 As the preacher drives the lancet home and lays 
 their heart-strings bare ; 
 But the wastrel, cool and clammy, feels a wind of 
 fate go by, 
 And hears his pulses clank above monition, 
 praise and prayer — 
 " Oho, for London Town again, where folk in 
 peace can die, 
 And the thunder-and-lightning devil of a train 
 that takes me there ! " 
 
102 A ROSARY. 
 
 XL. 
 
 KNIGHT- ERR ANTR Y. 
 
 "The need of knight-errantry was never greater 
 in the world than now," said the ingenious gentle- 
 man, Don Quixote de la Mancha, to his squire, 
 Sancho Panza, as they lunched together on bread 
 and cheese in a coombe of the Downs, while 
 Rozinante and Dapple, trespassing at their will, 
 feasted on the young corn. 
 
 " Persuade me of that if you can," said Sancho 
 Panza. " In this country of England, whither 
 the enchanters that persecute your worship have 
 carried us nolly-wolly" — 
 
 " You must mean nolens volens, or perhaps willy- 
 nilly, Sancho," interrupted Don Quixote. 
 
 " Master of Mine," quoth Sancho, " how often 
 have I besought your worship to let me go my 
 own way? What does it matter about the words 
 when the meaning is as plain as the nose on your 
 worship's sorrowful countenance? God help me 
 with my own ! Give me the ass that carries me 
 
A ROSARY. 103 
 
 rather than the horse that throws me ; for he who 
 goes softly goes safely; and who goes safely goes 
 far. Too much is worse than nothing, and little 
 sticks kindle a great fire; and though you can 
 never fill a greedy eye, yet one day the glutton 
 gets enough, and that is when the gravedigger 
 feeds him with a spade." 
 
 "Devil of a man!" cried Don Quixote, "will 
 you never be done stringing proverbs as germane 
 to the matter as a rosary to a swine's snout?" 
 
 " Sir, if you had not interrupted me," replied 
 Sancho, " I would have strung no proverbs ; but 
 come out plump with the thing I want to say; for 
 one beats the bush and another catches the birds ; 
 and the thief will tell you if I am an honest man." 
 
 " Enough said, Sancho. What is this thing that 
 you want to come out with?" 
 
 " In this country of England," replied Sancho, 
 " I have heard a word which is likely to put the 
 nose of Knight-errantry out of joint once for all." 
 
 " And what word is that, Sancho?" 
 
 " Science, your worship," quoth Sancho. 
 
 " Science put the nose of Knight-errantry out 
 of joint!" cried Don Quixote. "Sooner shall the 
 
104 A ROSARY. 
 
 incomparable beauty of the peerless Dulcinea del 
 Toboso become as dust and ashes in the memory 
 of this her captive knight ! Neither science nor 
 nescience shall ever be able to dislocate the 
 meanest joint or member of that most glorious 
 calling, whose inenarrable renown, inadequately 
 celebrated even in the most powerful speech of 
 men, extends and radiates to the end of the earth. 
 But tell me, Son Sancho, what is this that you 
 have heard of Science?" 
 
 "Why, sir," replied Sancho, " I have heard of 
 a new horse called Sociology out of Biology by 
 Science-in-General, which they say can take a 
 heavy handicap and outstrip Rozinante any day; 
 and on this horse, it was told me very seriously, 
 all governors of islands, countries, empires and 
 continents are riding forth even now to the de- 
 fence of the weak against the strong and the 
 righting of widows and orphans, and the over- 
 throw of robbers and tyrants." 
 
 "Whoever says," answered Don Quixote in 
 high wrath, "that Rozinante is not the noblest of 
 all chargers, past, present, and to come, the soundest 
 in wind and limb, of unparalleled strength and 
 
A ROSARY. 105 
 
 substance, the most docile on a journey, and the 
 most terrible in the shock of battle, lies in his 
 throat. And as for Sociology, Sancho, I have 
 something to say to you about that ; and in order 
 that you may apprehend my meaning fully, it is 
 necessary that I should inform you of some mat- 
 ters concerning the Government of England, the 
 country in which we now are. Know then, Sancho, 
 that the Government of England has been mon- 
 archic for many hundreds of years: but as there 
 are two to a bargain, besides the monarchy there 
 has always flourished some other archy or cracy, 
 just as in men, within and over and above the 
 body you have the soul. For a long time this soul 
 of England was a Theocracy, but one of the 
 monarchs, a very terrible man, who hacked and 
 chipped at his people, for all the world as one 
 whittles a stick out of sheer ennui — Bluff King 
 Hal they called him : this unfathomable monster 
 said to himself one fine morning, ' I'll be the 
 Theocrat as well as the Monarch'; and he set 
 about it straightway, starting a fermentation so 
 prodigious that time could not clarify it in less 
 than a century and a half. Then they found, as 
 
106 A ROSARY. 
 
 Tom Fool could have told them they would, that 
 things were pretty well where they had been be- 
 fore; only instead of a Theocracy, the soul of the 
 state was now a Philosophocracy." 
 
 " Heaven be my aid," said Sancho, " Master of 
 my soul, what a word is that! Philoso — what? " 
 
 " Philosophocracy, Sancho, or perhaps I should 
 say, Metaphysiocracy," replied Don Quixote. 
 
 " Have a care, Signor Don Quixote," rejoined 
 Sancho anxiously. " These are not words to be 
 said lightly : a merciful man should have mercy on 
 his own jaws, especially if, like your worship's, 
 the slings of the shepherds and herdsmen have 
 made an inroad in them already." 
 
 " Brother Sancho," said Don Quixote, " meddle 
 with what concerns you, and attend to my discourse 
 in silence. How often must I drill it into these 
 gross ears of yours that the first virtue of squires 
 is silence? Reply not! Swallow down that mouth- 
 ful of proverbs, dull ruminant, and listen to me. 
 I say with the advent of William of Orange the 
 soul of England became definitely a Philosopho- 
 cracy. Instead of an Absolute Monarchy and the 
 Divine Right of Kings, there was established at 
 
A ROSARY. 107 
 
 the dictation, or rather, by the inspiration, of the 
 two famous sages, Hobbes and Locke, a Limited 
 Monarchy and the British Constitution. But 
 wicked enchanters, flinging their spells into the 
 spongy air from the neighbouring country of 
 Gaul during a time of turbulence and upheaval, 
 unloosed a baleful spirit of inquiry which kept 
 nagging and nibbling at the Philosophocracy, and 
 which has now, finally, by one of the subtlest and 
 most astounding pieces of sorcery recorded in 
 history, transmogrified the said Philosophocracy 
 into a Plutocracy, supposed — and that is the 
 miracle — by the majority of the inhabitants of this 
 deluded island to be, not a Plutocracy, but to all 
 intents and purposes a Democracy. Now, Sancho, 
 it is upon the very back of this new horse, Soci- 
 ology, that the Plutocracy rides, the backbone of 
 Sociology being that Things-Must-Be-as-They- 
 Are, its forelegs the Struggle- for- Existence, and 
 its hind-legs the Survival-of- the- Fittest. The 
 meaning of this is that men in power and thinkers 
 and artists have renounced all endeavour towards 
 the realization of what we sometimes call the 
 Kingdom of Heaven, and have consciously re- 
 
108 A ROSARY. 
 
 lapsed into a state of savagery, in which every 
 man's hand is against his neighbour's, and nation 
 armed against nation. The warfare is one of 
 stratagems, of starving, of chicanery, of corners, 
 of syndicates, of trusts, companies, and combina- 
 tions. Front-de-bceuf no longer shuts up unwary 
 travellers in his dungeon till they have paid an 
 exorbitant ransom; but the capitalist for his private 
 profit regulates the price of the necessaries of life ; 
 and the production of food and clothing, of coal 
 and iron, has passed from the control of the need 
 of the consumer into the control of the greed of 
 the shareholder. A war similar to this civil one of 
 commerce, with its indirect ruin, which the in- 
 dividual carries on, international strife is also 
 engaged in on an extended scale, employing, 
 besides, the most terrible and direct means of 
 slaughter and destruction ever invented on the 
 earth. There are twenty millions of men in Europe 
 trained to arms, and a conflict in which they shall 
 all be involved is generally expected. Bethink 
 you, Sancho, what it behoves us to do. Of all 
 men, I, Don Quixote, am the most famous written 
 of since the beginning of the Christian era. Not 
 
A ROSARY. 109 
 
 Achilles, not Sigurd, not Orlando, not Hamlet, 
 not Faust, but I, Don Quixote de la Mancha, am 
 he whose name the world would cherish should 
 all others be forgotten. Something sublime is 
 expected of me at this crisis in the affairs of men ; 
 and therefore it is, Sancho, that we have been 
 carried hither to this country of England, not, as 
 you surmised, by wicked sorcerers, but by the 
 sage and noble-minded enchanter who super- 
 intends the business of my life; because in this 
 country, although the soul of its Limited Monarchy 
 is now a Plutocracy, there remains more liberty of 
 thought, speech, and action than in any other, be 
 it Empire, Kingdom, or Republic. More liberty, 
 I say, and a more liberal mood in men. Here, 
 therefore, is the field for that greatest of all ad- 
 ventures reserved for me alone, and which shall 
 result in the establishment of a new order of 
 knight-errantry, whose glory and renown shall as 
 far exceed the old as the sun exceeds the farthing 
 splendour of a tallow-dip. Following the counsel 
 of the most noble, the most reverend, and the 
 most enlightened of all sages, the famous Musco- 
 vite Count, I shall enforce all comers, on pain of 
 
no A ROSARY. 
 
 instant death at my hands, to accept the doctrine 
 of the Non-Resistance of Evil. As all men know, 
 it is the dealer of the second blow who causes the 
 fight. If there be an end of retaliation, there is a 
 beginning of endless peace. I shall go forth, 
 Sancho, into the highways and the towns, and 
 compel the men of England to Non-Resistance. 
 The money-lender shall burn his bills ; the ' bull ' 
 and the ' bear ' shall lie down in peace together ; 
 the company promoter shall spend his substance 
 in the endowment of orphans and the portioning 
 of widows; and the magistrate shall bestow upon 
 the thief double what he stole, and offer his own 
 neck to the knife of the murderer. I'll have it so, 
 Sancho. All or nothing is the motto. These 
 things I shall compel men to do at the point of 
 my lance." 
 
 " May I ask your worship a question?" said 
 Sancho demurely. 
 
 " Ask, Sancho," said Don Quixote. 
 
 " What kind of lesson in Non-Resistance of 
 Evil will your worship give men by attacking it 
 lance in rest?" 
 
 "You know naught of the matter, Sancho," 
 
A ROSARY. in 
 
 replied Don Quixote. " Evil must be attacked 
 and overthrown in order that it may cease to be 
 resisted. Merely to speak against it is to resist it. 
 You never can have Non-Resistance of Evil, 
 Sancho, until there is none to resist." 
 
 " Truly," thought Sancho, " this master of mine 
 is madder than ever, for he contradicts himself at 
 every turn." But he said aloud, " Signor Don 
 Quixote, all that your worship says may very well 
 be ; for a strong man never wanted a weapon ; and 
 every fox must pay his own brush. The Emperor 
 of Germany, as the French say, is King of Kings; 
 the King of Spain, King of men; the King of 
 France, King of asses, and the King of England, 
 King of devils; and he that is embarked with the 
 devil must make the passage along with him." 
 
 " For once, Sancho," said Don Quixote, as he 
 mounted Rozinante and led the way over the 
 Downs, "your proverb hits the mark." 
 
ii2 A ROSARY. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 THE LOOSE WAVE. 
 
 On the other side of the road, between the post 
 office and an old-fashioned inn, a wide gap, where 
 a tenement had been burned to the ground, opened 
 on the English Channel two furlongs away. The 
 sloping sea — from any position above it the sea 
 seems to lean up a little against the sky — that 
 portion of the sloping sea, partitioned off by the 
 gables of the post office and the inn, had been my 
 stage and camera obscura in the winter of '96-97. 
 Whatever I desired to behold appeared on that 
 gray-green plane. By day or night the curtain was 
 never lowered, the lid never shut. Gray-green by 
 a preference of its own it seemed to be, but all 
 manner of lights were turned on from daybreak to 
 dusk, from dusk to daybreak, by the dawn, the 
 moon, and the night. Storm danced over it; the 
 foam, like footlights, flared along the beach. No 
 gauze and floundering men to make the surge 
 here, nor artifice of sound required at all ; the wind 
 
A ROSARY. 113 
 
 slashed and dug and flung the sea about, and the 
 loose wave drew the shrieking shingle down. 
 
 "Ha! 'The loose wave drew the shrieking 
 shingle down' — a misquotation from Tennyson." 
 
 " No, Tennyson has ' the screaming wave,' but 
 I have never seen or heard it so. When a long 
 roller breaks on the beach it becomes in a measure 
 detached from the rest of the sea ; actually may be 
 seen to pause, sustained behind for a moment by 
 the next roller, before it flows back and under with 
 a soft rippling sound of its own on the sand, and 
 with the same sound of its own, if you could hear 
 it, on the shingle : the noise the rebellious pebbles 
 make resenting the murmur and embrace of the 
 wave is the scream or the shriek one hears. ' The 
 loose wave drew the shrieking shingle down.' " 
 
 XLII. 
 
 WOMEN AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS. 
 
 Mrs. Scrambler. Maud Emblem. 
 Mrs. S. Oh, my dear, since we last met my 
 studies have advanced prodigiously. I assure you 
 
ii 4 A ROSARY. 
 
 I never read " The Family Herald Supplement " 
 now, and I'm not even tempted to do so. I am 
 a representative woman — fully representative. I 
 bought " The Times " edition of the " Encyclo- 
 pedia Britannica," and I revel in it. At first I 
 couldn't get on at all. I tried Philina's plan in 
 " Wilhelm Meister": you remember, with the wild 
 boy and the sand-glass ; — but, by the way, a very 
 overrated book, my dear. There are fine things 
 in Goethe, that we all admit ; but " Meister," 
 " Wahrheit und Dichtung," and the conversations 
 and journeys ! — my dear Maud, there is a man as 
 busy as he can be making a fetish of himself ; and 
 that glorious ass, the world, falls down and worships. 
 Goethe is the fetish and the medicine-man in one, 
 as Matthew Arnold pointed out before me — 
 
 " He took the suffering human race, 
 
 He read each wound, each weakness clear; 
 And struck his finger on the place," 
 
 and kissed the wound to make it well — or ought 
 to have tried. But I don't really care for Matthew 
 Arnold either. He was fetish and medicine-man 
 in his own way, too; and Nietszche and Carlyle, 
 
A ROSARY. 115 
 
 and Ruskin and Emerson — fetish, fetish, fetish! — 
 self- fetishism all through ! They got on the nerves 
 of the world, however, and are there still, some of 
 them. But we're going to change all that. It is the 
 day of cheap encyclopedias; learning is dumped 
 down at our doors, carriage paid within the London 
 postal district; and the past is wiped out once for 
 all. Elbow-room, my dear Maud, elbow-room ; 
 that's what you need. The necessary literary 
 lumber of the ages is condensed into a score of 
 morocco-bound volumes in a revolving book-case, 
 and there you are ready to begin the world over 
 again for yourself. This is the greatest epoch in 
 the history of the race. The groves are cut down 
 for match boxes ; the graven images ground into 
 insect powder, and the iconoclast is WOMAN. 
 Bravo us! 
 
 M. E. There is much in what you say, Mrs. 
 Scambler. Women are perhaps in a better position 
 to overthrow the tyranny of the past than men. 
 But will we? Take such vested interests as the 
 Ecclesiastical and Educational establishments, 
 which are the endowment of the tyranny of the 
 past. What are we doing with regard to them? 
 
n6 A ROSARY. 
 
 Women are still the mainstay of the first, and we 
 are fighting tooth and nail for a share in the latter. 
 On the day a woman became a wrangler the Revo- 
 lution was set back two hundred years. 
 
 Mrs. S. That 's because we are fools, my dear. 
 Fancy! They have in America the Rev. Jemima 
 Smith! We are on a wrong tack in the meantime. 
 Instead of developing woman, the supposed eman- 
 cipated are, high and low, perversely imitating 
 man — in dress, in education, in manners, and 
 customs. They want to wear trousers; they have 
 clubs, congresses ; they are stockbrokers ; they 
 address meetings; they are journalists, reviewers; 
 would-be manikins — that's all! How unwittingly 
 they flatter the vanity of men ! They — we, have no 
 originality; we are merely imitative — in the mean- 
 time. But inexpensive dictionaries and encyclo- 
 pedias, my dear, will drag the Revolution back 
 again by the hair of the head. Every woman will 
 sit in her study with her little pots of Bovril, and 
 defy these minotaurs of universities. We will leave 
 men their literature, their music, painting, sculp- 
 ture, and we will evolve new arts of our own. 
 Think of it, my dear— A NEW ART! I have one 
 
A ROSARY. 117 
 
 at the back of my head ; an art that shall develop 
 entirely out of womanhood; which men will imitate, 
 but never do anything original in. Oh, we shall get 
 our own again when we cease trying to be men! 
 Echo the men? It's not good enough for me, 
 Maud! A NEW ART! I will have it! Somebody 
 said recently, " while the changed order has moved 
 farther and farther away from the Old Ideal, the 
 New Ideal still hides behind the horizon." With 
 us, Maud! I am sure it is with us! The Ideals of 
 men have all been tried and found wanting; the 
 New Ideal, still in the nest of Time, will be hatched 
 by the complete emancipation of woman. 
 
 M. E. There are those who think that Ideals 
 have had their day, Mrs. Scambler, and expect 
 that the New Order will draw its inspiration from 
 Ideas. 
 
 Mrs. S. Ideas instead of Ideals ? Yes ! 
 
n8 A ROSARY. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 SIN. 
 
 " Who is that standing by the wayside in forlorn 
 attire, but with a cheerful countenance, whom most 
 of the passers-by shrug the shoulder at?" 
 
 " That is one who committed a sin." 
 
 " A sin ! Only one sin ?" 
 
 " Only one sin." 
 
 " But surely every one commits one sin at least?" 
 
 " No, a sinner is a Phoenix for rarity, because 
 there is only one sin that can be committed." 
 
 " What is this one sin ?" 
 
 "He whom you see standing there, forlorn but 
 cheerful, appealed to intelligence." 
 
 "In Heaven's name and the Devil's ! Appealed 
 to intelligence !" 
 
 "He wished to exact intelligence from human 
 beings." 
 
 " A toll which no one who knows the race would 
 dream of imposing ! Why could he not be content 
 to appeal to some prejudice, moral, religious, philo- 
 
A ROSARY. 119 
 
 sophic, or aesthetic ? Why could he not be content 
 with the appeal to the bosoms and businesses of 
 men?" 
 
 "Why indeed?" 
 
 " But upon what did he appeal to intelligence ? 
 Some new gospel or theory of the Universe ? 
 
 " No ; he has no message, no evangel." 
 
 " Is he a satirist, then ?" 
 
 "No!" 
 
 " What on earth is he ?" 
 
 " A sinner, as I said." 
 
 " Yes, but what is the exact nature of his sin, of 
 his appeal to intelligence?" 
 
 " He states the world." 
 
 " States the world ! As it is ?" 
 
 " That is part of his aim." 
 
 " What intolerable malice ! Why don't they kill 
 him off-hand ?" 
 
 " Some have tried repeatedly, and will again. 
 But he is not entirely without friends. Besides, he 
 will take a lot of killing, that one." 
 
120 A ROSARY. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 VILLANELLE. 
 
 The power we would amass 
 Escapes our faint desire; 
 The hours like coursers pass. 
 
 The world 's a magic glass, 
 
 Wherein while we admire 
 The power we would amass, 
 
 And trim our hopes, alas, 
 
 Wild-eyed and shod with fire 
 The hours like coursers pass ! 
 
 Though arms of beaten brass 
 Match not the soul's attire 
 Of power we should amass, 
 
 With Pegasus at grass, 
 
 We saunter in the mire, 
 While the hours like coursers pass. 
 
A ROSARY. 121 
 
 Leave mead and hippocras : 
 With Hippocrene aspire 
 To power we must amass. 
 
 Relinquish creed and class; 
 
 Pursue through brake and briar 
 The power we shall amass, 
 On the swift hours as they pass ! 
 
 XLV. 
 
 PLA YS AND PLA YWRIGHTS. 
 
 Actor- Manager. Playwright. 
 
 P. Well, I've read this play. 
 A. And what do you think of it? 
 P. I can't recommend you to produce it. 
 A. Yes; but what do you think of it? 
 P. Does that matter ? What do you think of it ? 
 A. I think without exception it is the best play 
 I ever read— as literature, as drama, and as play. 
 P. But? 
 A. (Shrugs his shoulders?) 
 
122 A ROSARY. 
 
 P. Let us quit the humbug of the profession 
 and be honest. You think this play, which I have 
 just read and condemned, the best in the world as 
 literature, as drama, and as play? 
 
 A. The humbug of the profession is not nearly 
 so rank as the ordinary humbug of society. 
 
 P. Granted ; it is the difference between nut oil 
 and tallow. But what I want is friction and the 
 smell of fire. 
 
 A . As much as you like. 
 
 P. This play, then, is in every respect the best 
 you have read ? 
 
 A. That is my opinion. 
 
 P. Well ! (Shrugs his shoulders.) 
 
 A. You pulled me up for shrugging a moment 
 ago. Let us have friction and the smell of fire. 
 
 P. Then, sir, I think that you are either a 
 pitiful coward or an ineffable fool if you hesitate 
 to produce the best play in the world. 
 
 A. Cowardice and folly are the unoiled names of 
 prudence and audacity. 
 
 P. I prefer that ; you are either too prudent or 
 too audacious. 
 
 A. I am afraid friction and the smell of fire are 
 
A ROSARY. 123 
 
 not congenial to you ; you run off the rails at once. 
 You will find a little lubricant go a long way. 
 
 P. True, manners are the complexion of society; 
 and a touch of rouge is indispensable. 
 
 A. In the sunlight as well as in the limelight. 
 
 P. But we're still off the rails. Tell me why 
 you hesitate to produce a play you think so 
 highly of? 
 
 A. Because it is so entirely new in mood and 
 idea. 
 
 P. Ah, you love the old forms and traditions — 
 Brown, Smith, Robinson, and the ever-popular 
 Shakespeare. I am glad you are so true an artist : 
 all art is conservative. 
 
 A. At any rate I feel that there is a working 
 good-and-evil spirit of change in this play which 
 makes me pause. 
 
 P. You exaggerate. There is nothing really 
 extraordinary in the play ; to depart from conven- 
 tion is not necessarily to create a new convention. 
 No, sir; you are misled by a specious red-herring 
 novelty which kills the old scent; and you are 
 begging the question when you declare that this is 
 the best script you ever read as literature, as drama, 
 
i2 4 A ROSARY. 
 
 and as play. A play which contains a " working 
 good-and-evil spirit of change " may be as litera- 
 ture, as drama, and as play the best in the world 
 — although I think it ludicrous to describe this one 
 in such terms; but what about the one thing need- 
 ful? Is this play an actual evening's entertainment? 
 Is there any money in it? You know very well 
 there is not. The author of this play has none of 
 the true artistic spirit that recognizes without a 
 chemical test on which side its bread is buttered. 
 Further, there is no part for you in it. You could 
 of course play the hero — you can play anything; 
 but it is clear that this play was not written for you. 
 
 A. On the contrary the author intended it for 
 an evening's entertainment, and wrote it for me 
 upon my commission. 
 
 P. Oh! And do you find yourself in it? 
 
 A. In some respects I do — a gesture, a tone, a 
 thought; because the mistake the author made was 
 this; instead of writing a part for me, consciously 
 or unconsciously he tried to write me into the part. 
 
 P. But / always do that! Come, come, my dear 
 sir! The plays I have written for you, were they 
 successful ? 
 
A ROSARY. 125 
 
 A. They were highly remunerative, as you 
 know. 
 
 P. They were; and just because I endeavoured 
 in each of them to put you into the play. 
 
 A. Curious. Your plays recommended them- 
 selves to me mainly because my parts were so 
 utterly unlike myself, or rather I should say, so 
 utterly unlike anything human or inhuman, that I 
 could supply all the flesh and blood, and mould 
 them exactly to my own fancy. 
 
 P. No doubt, no doubt ; there is much in what 
 you say. At least I can understand that is how the 
 parts would seem to you. That is exactly how 
 Hamlet must have seemed to Burbage. By the 
 way, do you know the tragedy of Shakespeare's life? 
 
 A. Well, I have always understood that every 
 artist's life is necessarily a tragedy. 
 
 P. Yes, of course, in a general sense. I myself 
 am often very miserable. But I mean the tragic 
 side of Shakespeare's theatrical life. It is very 
 interesting — the details of it. 
 
 A. The details? 
 
 P. Yes. You know Shakespeare was a very 
 weak and a very vain man. 
 
126 A ROSARY. 
 
 A. Was he? 
 
 P. No doubt of it. 
 
 A. Well, if it gives you any pleasure to think 
 so — 
 
 P. Honestly, it does; it is very consoling. 
 When one hears this man praised as the supreme 
 intelligence, it gratifies one's amour propre to re- 
 member that he was weak and vain. Have you 
 ever heard of a writer, at one time of some note 
 in academic circles, called Walter Pater? 
 
 A. What has he to do with it? 
 
 P. Why, this; he points out somewhere that 
 expression in literature — he means the literature of 
 the whole world — achieves its highest in Claudio's 
 speech in " Measure for Measure." You remem- 
 ber: " Ay, but to die, and go we know not where 
 ... in thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice," etc. 
 Now that is a poetical expression of utter collapse; 
 and if this terrified outcry is the high-water mark 
 of Shakespeare, then Shakespeare must have been 
 weak. 
 
 A. It does not follow. Strength is not loquacious 
 either in pleasure or in pain. As soon as you have 
 expression you have an element of weakness; and 
 
A ROSARY. 127 
 
 Shakespeare, you must remember, was by way of 
 being a dramatist, and had to express; so when he 
 depicts a weak man overwhelmed with terror he 
 makes him say something. 
 
 P. True, but there is no courageous speech in 
 Shakespeare, not of Othello, nor of Coriolanus, 
 that equals in effect Claudio's terrified outcry; and 
 I conclude that what Shakespeare expresses best 
 must have been most " liable and congruent " to 
 his own nature. 
 
 A. Again I don't agree. You forget that poetry, 
 like every other art, is an entity in itself, has a 
 nature of its own. Setting aside music, poetry is 
 the most expressive of the arts ; therefore it seized 
 upon the opportunity of Claudio's speech to have 
 this greatest terror of man's, the dread of death, 
 uttered once for all — if Pater is right, which I doubt. 
 
 P. Very well, then, poetry, after music, being 
 the most expressive of all the arts, and expression 
 being, as you have said, necessarily compounded 
 of weakness, it follows that poetry must seize upon 
 weak men as the instruments of its will; and 
 Shakespeare, as the greatest poet, was inevitably 
 the weakest man. 
 
i28 A ROSARY. 
 
 A. One of the weakest, doubtless; and one of 
 the strongest: Shakespeare was humanity. 
 
 P. I don't care how you put it so long as you 
 grant he was weak. What I want to say is this — 
 that the true protagonist, the great hero of the 
 English drama, was Burbage, not Shakespeare. 
 Burbage was a splendid, powerful personality; 
 and it was only when Shakespeare was writing, 
 not a part for Burbage, but Burbage into the part, 
 that he succeeded to the height. Hamlet, Othello, 
 Macbeth, Lear, Antony — these are, all of them, 
 the magnificent, many-sided Burbage, plus Shake- 
 speare's imagination and gift of expression. The 
 two most successful writers for the stage are 
 Moliere and Shakespeare : the former because he 
 wrote himself into his parts; the latter, because he 
 had a permanent model in Burbage. Whenever 
 Shakespeare strays too far from his model — in 
 Posthumus, for example, or Leontes — he pro- 
 duces something inferior. That was the tragedy 
 of Shakespeare's theatrical life: he knew his in- 
 capacity to create a great part unless he were 
 imbued with the idea of Burbage; he loved and 
 hated his model, and wrote the sonnets to him. 
 
A ROSARY. 129 
 
 A. Ah, the Sonnets! There is no possible 
 or impossible theory about Shakespeare that 
 can't be proved from the Sonnets. By why all 
 this? 
 
 P. Well, if the author of this play endeavoured 
 to write you into the leading part, he did as I do, 
 and as Shakespeare would have done. The fact 
 that he has failed is a sign of his incapacity. 
 Who is it? 
 
 A. {Mentions a name.) 
 
 P. Oh-h-h! I know where we are now! My 
 dear fellow, you can't possibly produce his play, 
 even if it were as good as you think. 
 
 A. Why? 
 
 P. Because — it would never do. Don't you 
 know the history of his connection with the stage ? 
 
 A. No. Is there any history? 
 
 P. Not in the significant sense of your inflec- 
 tion. What I mean is that seven years ago he 
 adapted a play which was produced successfully, 
 and that since then he has prepared eight plays, 
 none of which have been produced. 
 
 A. And what do you gather from that? 
 
 P. I gather that the man's reputation as a play- 
 
 K 
 
130 A ROSARY. 
 
 wright is destroyed. Play after play is announced, 
 and nothing comes of it. The result is that 
 managers, critics, playgoers, all shake their heads 
 and the author gets a bad name. 
 
 A. Therefore I should help hang him. "Him 
 that's down, down with him." 
 
 P. There 's a lot of truth in proverbs. 
 
 A. There is; but the right use of proverbs is 
 not understood. People say, " Give a dog a bad 
 name and hang him," shrug their shoulders, and 
 allow what they consider the inevitable to happen. 
 Now that is very stupid; we are not here to abet 
 but to correct the evil of the world. With regard 
 to the author of this play, which you dislike, I 
 know for certain that four out of the eight plays 
 you spoke of were approved by those they were 
 written for, and their production arranged; and 
 that two of them, one in England and one in 
 America, were put into rehearsal. 
 
 P. And why weren't they produced? 
 
 A. You know the conditions of the stage as 
 well as I, and the thousand and one mischances 
 that may occur. 
 
 P. And the author's not to blame! 
 
A ROSARY. 131 
 
 A. There is no one to blame, as the author 
 himself would probably tell you — unless it be the 
 natural philosophers who have not yet coded the 
 laws of chance. 
 
 P. I suppose he doesn't care. 
 
 A. The author? On the contrary! Have you 
 no imagination at all? Here is a man with some 
 fame in the world and a brilliant opening as a 
 playwright. Play after play by him is announced : 
 some are considered unsatisfactory; but four, as I 
 said, are approved of, their production promised, 
 the characters cast, the parts distributed, and in 
 three cases rehearsals begun. One or other of these 
 plays would have succeeded — perhaps all four; 
 and the author would have been able to go on, if 
 not with greater goodwill, at least with greater 
 confidence and greater power. Not care! The 
 marvel to me is that he hasn't died of chagrin. It 
 is a labour and a torment of Sisyphus and Tantalus 
 combined. 
 
 P. Why doesn't he leave it alone then ? 
 
 A. The theatre came to him in the first instance, 
 and repeatedly since. The theatre is pledged to him. 
 
 P. But as a matter of business? 
 
i 3 2 A ROSARY. 
 
 A. He who counts only the cost never does 
 anything. I'll produce his play. 
 
 P. My dear sir, you mustn't — you mustn't do 
 it. The man has a bad reputation: as a matter 
 of fact he is not orthodox. I was present in a 
 company where he was some little time ago. 
 That about Sophocles came up— "who saw life 
 steadily and saw it whole." Says he, " That has 
 very little meaning for me. Christianity came 
 after Sophocles ; and Darwin has come since 
 Shakespeare." Some one said "Nietzsche." "Oh," 
 says he, " Nietzsche is the most divulsive force in 
 the history of letters. But there is no need why 
 we should concern ourselves about his philosophy, 
 or about Mr. Herbert Spencer's. A new Philo- 
 sophy — it will not be called an Evolutionary 
 Philosophy when it arrives, and will be neither 
 aphoristic nor synthetic — is an attempt to forestall 
 posterity. The new mood and matter must pass 
 through the fire of poetry before it can become a 
 system ; and that will take hundreds of years, 
 precisely as Christianity had to pass through the 
 fire of religion before it could be stated as a 
 pessimistic philosophy by Schopenhauer." Not 
 
A ROSARY. 133 
 
 only is this man heterodox, but I am very much 
 afraid he might be called an independent thinker. 
 
 A. How very terrible! I'll produce his play. 
 You don't understand him at all. He is an artist 
 as well as a thinker, and can appeal to the emotion 
 of the world as well as to the intelligence of the 
 few. I'll produce his play. 
 
 P. It will be a failure. 
 
 A. I am very glad to have your opinion; but 
 you and I are the last people in the world to know 
 whether a play will succeed or not. Two out of 
 every three plays produced in London fail ; and it 
 is you and I and our compeers who make the 
 selections. The managements and their advisers 
 have no right to an opinion on the fortunes of a 
 play: production is the only test. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 A WONDER OF THE WORLD. 
 
 The old timber bridge at Old Shoreham is the 
 most spider-legged, fragile, and merely temporary 
 
134 A ROSARY. 
 
 structure conceivable. Erected more thanacentury 
 ago, doubtless as a do-no-better to be superseded 
 in a year or two when the times improved, it still 
 spans the Adur, a passable, tolled, authentic bridge. 
 A capful of wind, the buffet of a wave, would seem 
 at any time quite enough to scatter its spindle- 
 shanks in the river. But its levity is its safeguard, 
 and it will probably continue to straddle across 
 from Old Shoreham Church to the Pad Inn for 
 another century, one of the wonders of the world 
 in its own quarter. You cross it of a morning on 
 the road to Cissbury Ring with a certain degree 
 of pleasure. It is not uncomely; it is also vener- 
 able, and yet nimble looking, like a hale old soldier 
 in perennial splints : it is quaint, airy, fascinating 
 — a primitive walking-skeleton of a bridge, the 
 root idea of it being, in all likelihood, a footpath 
 on stilts. 
 
A ROSARY. 135 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 THE MAP OF ENGLAND. 
 
 If you look at a map you feel certain that England 
 will hold together as long as its counties are so 
 securely dovetailed : but, on the other hand, when 
 you look at the rectangular divisions of Australia 
 and the United States you wonder how long it is 
 to last — this juggling trick whereby these cubes 
 are held together in the air. Take a look at a 
 coloured map, and see how well mortised into each 
 other the English counties are : Middlesex clamped 
 into Hertfordshire; Hertfordshire rooted in Middle- 
 sex; Bedfordshire shaped into five counties as if 
 it had been poured into a mould; Warwick riveted 
 into Worcester; Derby held between Stafford and 
 Leicester as in a vice, and York with a holdfast 
 sunk deep into Lancashire, and a great spike 
 thrust in between Westmoreland and Durham, 
 The country was put together to last: when Fate 
 takes a job of this kind in hand there is no scamped 
 work. 
 
136 A ROSARY. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 CUCKOO FAIR. 
 
 Heathfield, which the good people of the district 
 call Hefful, lies dispersedly in the hollows and on 
 the crests of the East Sussex Hills, and is rather 
 a district than a town. The road from Heathfield 
 station to Cade Street, the hamlet where Cuckoo 
 Fair is held, crossed the roof of the world in that 
 neighbourhood. Through the trees that skirted 
 the way the landscape stretched northward visible 
 for miles. In the soft gray April light it made a 
 very admirable and gracious wealden prospect — 
 villages and farms, purple wooding, fields and 
 fallows, gathered and held in a dark network of 
 hedges, irregularly meshed, but close and holding 
 well together the rich country. At the Crown Inn 
 the road to Cade Street turns off the highway ; but 
 before visiting the fair, lunch was imperative. 
 
 The Crown Inn stands alone on the highway 
 half a mile from Cade Street. Although so far 
 removed from the fair it seemed to be a special 
 
A ROSARY. 137 
 
 resort of the farmers and drovers attending it. 
 The sour smell of cattlemen pervaded the house. 
 Frowsy heads, tobacco smoke, and a quite unin- 
 telligible dialect filled the bar and the passages. 
 Entering the public room, where one man was 
 eating and two chattering, I was promptly invited 
 to another apartment, the inn parlour. There some 
 of the better-to-do farmers were at table, the simple 
 fare being roast meat and bread and cheese, good 
 and plentiful, and the eating notably expeditious. 
 A young man, after shaking hands with an old 
 farmer at the head of the table, left as I entered. 
 When he had gone the old farmer complimented 
 a middle-aged farmer, about to leave also, on 
 having so desirable an apprentice. 
 
 " Yes," said the middle-aged farmer, donning 
 his overcoat ; " he has a lot to do, and he does it 
 well. I couldn't have an ornament idling about. 
 It wouldn't pay me even if I had five hundred a 
 year with him — unless I could lock him up during 
 the day. One useless hand pulls everything back." 
 
 The last remark bears internal evidence of 
 currency, and was, indeed, uttered with a proverbial 
 twang. The old man applauded it, and smiled 
 
138 A ROSARY. 
 
 with the naive pleasure which the simple-minded 
 feel at the sound of accepted wisdom from the lips 
 of superiors ; for to the old farmer the middle- 
 aged farmer with the apprentice was something of 
 a hero. 
 
 "If you make the lad a man like yourself he'll 
 do well," he said. 
 
 The middle-aged farmer laughed a laugh com- 
 pounded of deprecation and assent, and declared 
 that all his apprentices had turned out well. 
 
 "He keeps three hundred cows," said the old 
 farmer respectfully, when the great man had gone. 
 
 The fair itself was disappointing and insignificant 
 in the last degree. It is true the press of it was 
 over before I arrived; but the general opinion was 
 that nothing deserving the name of a horse had 
 been seen all day; and there was only one cheap- 
 jack, one sweetstuff stall, and not a single merry- 
 go-round or show of any kind. The staple of 
 trade, a furry, ragged animal, long-limbed, hammer- 
 headed, tame and tractable with hunger and over- 
 work, occupied the costermongers and hawkers 
 with much "hy-hying," and difficult galloping for 
 another hour; then of a sudden the world collapsed 
 
A ROSARY. 139 
 
 there; the muddy effervescence had effervesced; 
 the dusty, petty market was over and done. The 
 trampled, soiled road, a row of travelling vans in 
 a lane, a black-eyed gipsy on a fence, and a dozen 
 stout drinkers in the Half Moon Inn remained, the 
 lees and sediment of an unfit survival. Indeed, 
 the whole business was phantasmal ; nobody seemed 
 to know why exactly he had come there, and every 
 outland visitor hurried away as soon as he could, 
 wondering what devil possessed him. 
 
 Cade Street is named after Jack Cade, and a 
 squat pillar a few steps east of the Half Moon 
 bears this inscription: 
 
 " Near this spot was slain the notorious rebel 
 Cade by Alexander Iden, Sheriff of Kent, a.d. 
 1450. His body was carried to London and his 
 head fixed upon London-bridge." 
 
 Then follows an inept quotation from Hall's 
 " Chronicle " : 
 
 " This is the success of all rebels, and this fortune 
 chanceth ever to traitors." 
 
 " I object to that quotation. Here is a whole 
 countryside misled by a decayed platitude. Cade 
 and Jameson fail; Cromwell and Clive succeed. 
 
140 A ROSARY. 
 
 Treason and rebellion are not a circumstance to 
 success; it is the cause and the man that make 
 success, whether the method be constitutional or 
 unconstitutional. I should cut a fresher platitude 
 than that on Cade's pillar if it were mine." 
 
 " What would your inscription be ? " 
 
 " Why, this, perhaps : ' The weak to the wall ; 
 nothing succeeds like success.' That would be 
 like a thorn in the mind of the peasant. It would 
 have a meaning for him; he would read it every 
 time he passed it. If he began to grow smug and 
 contented with his lot, my inscription would take 
 him by the neck, and shake him out of his fancied 
 security : ' The weak to the wall ! I am there now, 
 and something worse is in store. Behind the wall 
 the Union awaits me.' My inscription would stimu- 
 late him; would keep him miserable: would help 
 him towards a germ of soul." 
 
 " Soul! ' The weak to the wall ; nothing succeeds 
 like success' ! How can you beget soul by such a 
 paltry statement of materialism ? " 
 
 " I did not say it would beget soul, but I do 
 say that these crude, one-sided sayings of a 
 harsh worldly wisdom can plough dull natures, 
 
A ROSARY. 141 
 
 turn up the soil at least, and give the sower a 
 chance." 
 
 " The sower! What sower?" 
 
 " Experience, which is both the plough and the 
 harrow, and the seed and the sower." 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 CHAUCER. 
 
 To say of Chaucer that he remained a child is to 
 say sooth. He is the lusty boyhood of English 
 literature; but the said lusty boy was also an inde- 
 fatigable student of books and of the world, with 
 an exquisite tone in his young voice besides, and 
 a thought beyond the reach of his soul. This lusty, 
 romantic, free- thinking boy was in England the 
 first of the moderns; a century before Montaigne 
 we had in and for England the first of the moderns : 
 a thing to brag of, a memory to worship. 
 
i42 A ROSARY. 
 
 CONTEMPORAR Y POETR V. 
 
 Contemporary poetry is always minor poetry. 
 Not until it has been loaded with the thought and 
 emotion of generations of readers can poetry be 
 said to be of age. It is the centuries that give 
 poetry its majority. 
 
 LI. 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 The deletion of conscience is well known to be 
 a main factor in many a reputation. There are 
 beings whose monstrous defects seem to be 
 equivalent to the possession of genius. 
 
A ROSARY. 143 
 
 LII. 
 
 ECLOGUE OF THE DOWNS. 
 
 Lucian. Urban. Eustace. 
 
 Urban. Skirting the southern seaboard, over- 
 land 
 The wind tramps from the Atlantic, drums and 
 
 gongs 
 Aerial, the music of his march. 
 The hedges ruffle bravely when he comes, 
 And shake their branches busked with coral buds, 
 The pregnant spiceries of leaf and flower; 
 On this hand and on that the forests bow ; 
 And harvests, newly sprung, a shallow tide — 
 The emerald down of golden crops to be — 
 Ripple and press about his shining feet. 
 
 Eustace. This way — across the valley. 
 
 Urban. Look behind ! 
 
 The sea ... Be patient, now; and wait! The sea 
 Leans up along the towering firmament; 
 In crisp resplendent curves the mail-clad wind 
 Advances channelward with echoing tread ; 
 
144 A ROSARY. 
 
 Against the silver main your Norman tower 
 Looms black; with ebony the sharp clouds zone 
 The belted sun ; and shadows overscore 
 The dazzling waters. 
 
 Eustace. Under Erringham, 
 
 Up Thundersbarrow Hill, through Mossy Bottom, 
 Past Crooked Moon, and over Truleigh Top, 
 Behind the tree-shorn Downs, by Small Dole, 
 
 Beeding, 
 Bramber, and on to Steyning, where we dine. 
 
 Lucian. We range from height to hollow, storm 
 to calm, 
 And vent our hoarded or our new-come minds. 
 
 Eustace. I met a starling yesterday ... I swear 
 By iEsOp, then, I did! High on a pole, 
 Above the humming wires he sat : the sun 
 Adorned his damascened and burnished vest; 
 He quivered like an artist as he plied 
 His castanets, his yellow, clattering bill : 
 An ostracised and rebel bird, alone 
 Where myriads of his friendly kind abide. 
 "Hello!" I cried, "What ails you?" "Who are 
 
 your 
 He snapped disdainfully. " I am," I said, 
 
A ROSARY. i 45 
 
 "Acquainted with the tongues of beasts and birds, 
 A wandering understander, well-disposed. 
 Tell me the matter." "Oh, it's simply this," 
 The creature grumbled, flouncing to the hedge: 
 "I'm more intelligent and capable 
 Than any other starling on the Downs. 
 I proved it to the world in countless ways ; 
 Impressed my unapproached pre-eminence 
 On every mind, and claimed authority. 
 They would have none of it ! In me behold 
 A most ill-used, unhappy passerine." 
 "But did you, in and out of season, point, 
 Illustrate and extol your gifts?" said I. 
 "Oh," went the bird "importunately." "Then 
 You failed, perhaps, on the offensive side. 
 Did you," I said, "with resolute assault, 
 Unflinching hardihood and poignant skill, 
 Attack, expose, deride and hold to scorn 
 The faults and foibles of the other birds?" 
 "Profound observer — for a man! I did," 
 The starling cried. "'Twas meat and drink to me. 
 And all day still, though no one hears, I scold 
 The deep depravity of aviankind." 
 "What brought about this ignominy then?" 
 
146 A ROSARY. 
 
 "My awkwardness," the bird said; and became 
 More unctuously familiar. "I'm so wise, 
 So able, and transcend so far the bounds 
 Of starling sense, that all attempts to share 
 The social duties of my kind abused 
 Opinion, and the stigma stuck: A gauche, 
 Impertinent, disgraceful fowl, they said, 
 Whom, nobody gets on with, beast or bird! 
 And me a seraph, struggling hard to dwell 
 On any terms at all with Hottentots! ' 
 "True; gaucherie," I said, "is vanity, 
 Quintessence of conceit in man and fowl." 
 "Vanity? " said the dubious starling. "Yes; 
 A bird abandoned, who conceives himself, 
 The centre of the universe, records 
 The highest tide of vanity. You know 
 You have no soul." "No soul?" the starling 
 
 barked. 
 "No soul," I said, "and hence your gaucherie. 
 You think yourself of paramount respect, 
 And like a stranded grayling misbehave, 
 Having no soul; for soul alone concerns 
 The universe. Now man, of yore enfeoffed 
 In absolute monopoly of soul, 
 
A ROSARY. 147 
 
 Without effrontery may claim to be 
 The core of all creation. What I say" — 
 "The pot said to the kettle," croaked the bird, 
 And sought at once a more secluded perch; 
 While I began to brood of what and why. 
 
 Urban. Of what and why? Nay, here and now, 
 below, 
 Among the gables, dip and mount the masts 
 Of coasting schooners; from the chimney-tops 
 The smoke, spun-off, and woven by the wind, 
 Is looped across the harbour. 
 
 Lucian. What and why: 
 
 Conundrums all men ask, before the world, 
 Or shamefast and in secret. 
 
 Urban. Here and now, 
 
 Uncatechizable, the fieldfares, blown 
 About our ears, like withered foliage whirl. 
 
 Lucian. I saw not here and now, but in a land 
 That lies to windward of our crowded sail, 
 A hero built a palace roofed with gold, 
 The panel-work of sandal, and the walls 
 Of orient alabaster. Genii, 
 Obedient to his talisman, adorned 
 The lofty chambers, galleries, and courts 
 
148 A ROSARY. 
 
 With beauty fetched from ancient treasuries, 
 Elaborate looms and caves of earth and sea! 
 A goddess loved him ; left her bower in heaven 
 To marry him; accomplished all his heart, 
 And bore him sons and daughters happily. 
 They lived in sweet contentment with their friends, 
 Gods, demi-gods, heroes, and men and women; 
 They studied all there was to know; they pleased 
 Themselves with art; and fought and overcame 
 Titanic rebels. Yet he dwelt alone. 
 For in his tower at midnight, "What," he said, 
 "And why?" and many folios filled with words 
 That never caught an echo of the truth. 
 One night when he was old an inner power 
 Bestirred him in his wistful solitude, 
 And drew him down through all his garnished 
 
 halls, 
 His colonnades, and fragrant arbours, out 
 By a little postern where a pit was dug — 
 For him, he knew at once. Before he laid 
 Him down to take his ease eternally, 
 Remembering all his thought, he yearned to speak 
 A word that might resolve the doubts of men. 
 So lifting up his forehead to the night 
 
A ROSARY. 149 
 
 Instinct with stars, he shouted, "Live to Die!" 
 That very moment of his upward look, 
 And anguished utterance, from a wicket-gate 
 There issued opposite a hermit old, 
 Expelled his poortith by the self-same power 
 That drew the hero from his pageantry. 
 Marking the pregnant words, inane to him, 
 The hermit raised his voice and called J aloud 
 With wrathful eyes and gesture, as they fell 
 Into the pit together, " Die to Live!" 
 
 Urban. I hate your destitute antinomies 
 That paralyze the will ; and better love 
 The labourer busy in the bottom there, 
 Than airy palaces of wiseacres, 
 Or living tombs of envious eremites. 
 He stumbles on behind the plough as stiff 
 And rusty as his team ; the share, disedged 
 And out of date; an elvish urchin jerks 
 The bridle ; and at either furrow-end 
 Perforce he scrapes the clumsy blade, so thick 
 And greasily the heavy soil adheres. 
 An ancient implement, unhandsome work : 
 The numbers of the peasant's poem halt 
 A little on the sheet of earth he scores. 
 
15© A ROSARY. 
 
 But showers and summer sunshine, time and tide, 
 Were never known eclectic; golden crops 
 When autumn reigns, delight to decorate 
 The shaky scrawl of overlaboured hands, 
 As well as rigid lines of tireless steam. 
 
 Lucian. Yes; but we cannot fling these questions 
 off: 
 They're in the blood, not fashionable wear, 
 And drive the simplest and the subtlest mad. 
 
 Eustace. And each of us makes answer as he 
 must, 
 In life and death, in every aim and deed, 
 Unwittingly — and gallantly. 
 
 Lucian. Nay, some, 
 
 Beside themselves, attempt to solve in speech 
 What hearted action only can atone. 
 Fantastic things men dream and do, distraught 
 By rebel sense, usurping soul, remorse, 
 Incongruent appeals and challenges, 
 Chiefly about the period when begins 
 The conflict in the tissues and the blood 
 Where age subdues the tyranny of youth. 
 
 Urban. Let youth and sense be tyrants still: 
 accept 
 
A ROSARY. 151 
 
 The sign — The Fox and Hounds! — What nook is 
 this? 
 Lucian. The least of hamlets, all unknown in 
 maps; 
 Disdained in country guides; a forge, a store, 
 Three dwelling houses and a wayside inn, 
 Behind the Downs ensconced. 
 
 Urban. A dingy room: 
 
 The smell of stale tobacco; a cribbage-board 
 With pegs of Swedish matches; almanacks; 
 And taproom sawdust. Oh, escape, escape! 
 
 Lucian. But taste the Sussex ale before you fly; 
 And, for a reason, keep the room in mind. 
 
 Eustace. Why, this is honest malt; and in these 
 times 
 Of tar and cent per cent, that 's something still. 
 Urban. But watch the sky-scape through the 
 drabbled panes! 
 The livid clouds, o'errun with glittering light, 
 Shrivel and flicker up the firmament 
 Like tinder in a chimney, or shadowgraphs 
 Against a sheet; and the blue welkin, domed 
 And mantling with its watchet dust, the flower 
 Of azure, overhangs the world. Out! Out! 
 
152 A ROSARY 
 
 Eustace. The wind has fallen; and not a whisper 
 
 stirs 
 The brimming silence; earth enchanted, waits 
 A counter-spell. 
 
 Urban. I love that litter, strewn 
 
 About the stithy yard: machines and ploughs; 
 Old toothless harrows; rollers, rusty, cracked 
 And clotted o'er with tell-tale soil; wheel-tyres 
 Of sorts in bunches on the gable : all 
 Reposeful, genial and luxurious. 
 
 Eustace. A prying woman opes a door and peeps — 
 But not at us, she makes believe. She turns; 
 She hesitates, she saunters purposeless, 
 Then grasps her gown foothot across the way, 
 And puts a period to the silence so. 
 
 Urban. A smothered, gurgling sound ; a scarf of 
 
 smoke 
 Hung out upon the chimney-stack! The bellows 
 Coughs and rumbles, sooty cobwebs blown 
 To tatters in its throat; the muttering flames 
 Burst from the drenched and close-raked dross; 
 
 the shoe 
 Cries on the anvil as the dull clang rings 
 Of dead, on living iron, every blow 
 
A ROSARY. 153 
 
 A bruise. A rustle in the hedge; some full, 
 Round notes, like water-drops that slowly plunge 
 In a deep, mossy well, the blackbird pipes 
 With saffron bill ; the assembled starlings scold 
 In budding tree- tops, and the brazen catch 
 And madrigal of fifty chanticleers 
 In fifty farms responds and dwindles wide 
 From knoll to knoll round Chanctonbury Ring 
 That copes with sable crest the silvery air. 
 
 Eustace. Now for your memory of The Fox 
 and Hounds. 
 
 Lucian. When first I came on this forgotten 
 den 
 A year ago, I met a savage oaf, 
 That skulked and tippled in the frowsy room 
 So little liked by us. His eyes, deep-sunk, 
 Shifting and fiery, special menace held: 
 The internecine war of youth and age 
 Embroiled him, soul and body. " Sir," says he, 
 Waving his tankard, " did you ever hear 
 The Cat-call of the Universe?" " Not I," 
 I said. " A time may come," he hisses. " Weeks 
 And months the beast is silent. Suddenly at night, 
 When the club-bore is doling anecdotes 
 
i54 A ROSARY. 
 
 And pallid waiters yawn; or in the House, 
 Just on the stroke of twelve, as Mister Smith 
 ' Ventures to think,' while a sub-secretary 
 Sole on the Treasury-Bench for supper frets; 
 Or on a stair in some perspiring crush, 
 Where wit and wealth compete for elbow-room 
 Awaiting all who reach the fabled top, 
 I hear the Cat-call, and forsake the world." 
 "What do you mean by Cat-call?" "Don't you 
 
 know ? 
 The Cat-call of the Sphinx, the Universe." 
 " I know the ancient guess: Four feet at dawn ; 
 At noon, a biped; triple-legged at night." 
 " Not to the purpose, sir," he cried enraged; 
 " And nothing can compel me to believe 
 It took a parricide to find it out; 
 Or that the Sphinx fell down and broke her crown 
 When OZdipus made answer. Sphinx is now 
 A symbol of the Universe; her call, 
 The queries what and why, intolerably 
 Hurled into my ears at inauspicious 
 Times, with subtle craft and iteration fell, 
 More vehement than a tunnel-nearing train, 
 A factory whistle at the break of day, 
 
A ROSARY. 155 
 
 Or siren of a liner in a fog. 
 
 Here, in this upland public-house I hide, 
 
 As you will — mark it — when you hear the Call. 
 
 Strange sights you'll see — as I do now! Look 
 
 there ! 
 On Truleigh Hill a huddled city, built 
 Of blackest marble; houses, spires and towers 
 Without a door or window; pinnacle 
 And buttress furred and coated with a nap 
 Of soot — a rusty black upon the hewn 
 Or burnished marble's dense or glossy tint. 
 Between the courses swart smoke coils, crushed 
 
 through 
 By stifling pressure. Hark! The city reels 
 With heavy noise of voices numberless, 
 Shouting in unison — the muffled roar 
 As of a thousand bulls of Phalaris, 
 The bellowing of men in agony." 
 "Come out," I said, " Too much tobacco, beer, 
 The rancid room " — " No, here I stay," he cried, 
 " Until that roar becomes articulate. 
 Then will the Cat-call of the Universe 
 Be shouted down for ever." 
 
 Urban. Mad, I think. 
 
156 A ROSARY, 
 
 Lucian. A humourist in Hinnom rather ; 
 scorned 
 By fame; by fortune jilted; flayed and raw 
 As to his vanity ; bankrupt in love ; 
 But by a habit soldered into life, 
 Transmuting pain to pity, grudge to grin, 
 And solving all in morbid fantasy. 
 
 Urban. Some natures cannot leave the City of 
 Dis. 
 
 Eustace. And few escape a bitter sojourn there. 
 
 Lucian. But here are we at Steyning — reticent, 
 Antique ; a tranquil place of oaken beams 
 Bow-bent with age; of gables, shingle roofs, 
 Of wooden houses, gardens, hanging eaves. 
 The railway came, but kept its distance; past 
 Is present here; old homeliness, a sense 
 Of room, and of an actual ease in life 
 Deliver and refresh the jaded thought, 
 Like a new image or a well-dreamed sleep. 
 Nor is an air of mystery wanting: doors 
 Withdrawn in shadowed entries, windows broad 
 And low, or high and secret, keep account 
 Of whispers, vigils, burning glances, tears — 
 Known only to themselves, mute witnesses 
 
A ROSARY. 157 
 
 With meaning stored and memories of men. 
 Oh, towns and houses are your only ghosts ! 
 Unlaid by Time that tosses ruthlessly 
 In hallowed bournes his plume of brindled steam, 
 Finger on lip, this Steyning haunts the flank 
 Of Chanctonbury Ring, a phantom town, 
 Forlorn a little, waiting by the way 
 With silent welcome for the wanderer. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 ECLOGUE. 
 
 Basil. Sandy. Brian. Menzies. 
 
 Sandy. What do you think of H , Basil? 
 
 Hasn't he come to the front with a rush? 
 
 Brian. Come, Basil, what do you say? 
 
 Sandy. Basil's jealous; he is annoyed when we 
 talk of men who have attained popularity. 
 
 Brian. I daresay. So am I, sometimes. Most 
 obscure authors are jealous of the successful ones. 
 
 Sandy. What do you think of H , Basil? 
 
 Really able, isn't he ? 
 
158 A ROSARY. 
 
 Basil. Very able. But why must we talk of 
 
 H , or of anybody? Let us discuss humanity 
 
 without mentioning individuals and literature with- 
 out naming books. Or better still, let us leave men 
 and things alone, and simply express ourselves. 
 
 Sandy. Bravo! Let us go in for mere and sheer 
 egotism ! 
 
 Basil. You don't quite catch me. I don't mean 
 that we should talk about ourselves. Let us express 
 ourselves ; let us utter our quintessences. 
 
 Brian. And how is that to be done ? 
 
 Basil. Perhaps it is not to be done; but let 
 us try. 
 
 Sandy. {After a short pause.) Well ? 
 
 Basil. Brood, Sandy, brood. Be silent and wait. 
 Only speak when something wells up from your 
 inner consciousness ; it may be your quintessence, 
 the cream of your being. 
 
 Sandy. {In a deep voice, after a long pause.) Re- 
 viewing is in a parlous state. 
 
 Brian. Oh, not that ! 
 
 Sandy. Here followeth the cream of me, willy- 
 nilly. Reviewing is in a parlous state. Poets and 
 novelists review poetry and fiction, turning, all 
 
A ROSARY. 159 
 
 overstrung and raw, from their own creative labour 
 to express an opinion on the creations of others ; 
 chokefull of themselves and bristling like the fretful 
 porcupine with preconceived ideas, their judge- 
 ment is constantly at fault. We need a new school 
 of reviewers ; a race of great men who shall stifle 
 their own creative energies and devote themselves 
 entirely to the exposition of the productions of 
 others. Observe: not the creative critic, not the 
 critic as artist; he is all for himself, and does with 
 the works of others as the silkworm does with the 
 leaves of the mulberry ; but the critic who shall 
 look at the author's work from the author's point 
 of view. 
 
 Brian. The old cry, Sandy, of the author under 
 the lash. There is so much fairly-written stuff 
 published nowadays, which is nevertheless neither 
 fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring, that the 
 most Protean temperament is soon worn out. 
 
 Sandy. I know, I know. But we have no critics. 
 To have an opinion about a book and to be able 
 to express it does not make a man a critic. We 
 have had no literary critic since — well, I had 
 almost said since Dr. Johnson. 
 
160 A ROSARY. 
 
 Brian. Nonsense! 
 
 Menzies. Right, Sandy ! We have expounders 
 of theories of literature and mouthpieces of cliques, 
 but no critics. 
 
 Brian. And what else was Johnson ? He had a 
 foot-rule for everything, as much as Matthew 
 Arnold. The fact is, as far as my observation goes, 
 we are only beginning to have critics at last. You 
 find an irresponsible person who gives a hastily- 
 formed impression without the exhibition of any 
 standard or the statement of any formula ; you feel 
 as if you were falling through space, and you want 
 somebody to clutch you up with a catchword. But 
 that is criticism. The critic must have wings, and 
 so must the reader; literature and literary criticism 
 don't exist for those who can only walk. But we 
 are drifting sadly. We were to discuss literature 
 without naming books, and humanity without talk- 
 ing of individuals. Basil, has your cream risen yet ? 
 
 Menzies. Leave Basil alone. It is an old saying 
 that criticism is simply autobiography. 
 
 Sandy. Yes; but autobiography is not neces- 
 sarily criticism. 
 
 Menzies. No ; and that is where many writers 
 
A ROSARY. 161 
 
 go wrong. Having heard that criticism is auto- 
 biographical, they drag in their sevennight's stint 
 of epigram and paradox; and if they should allow 
 themselves to be affected by the book they are 
 supposed to review, it is only to follow the will-o'- 
 the-wisp of association far from the starting point, 
 because they have also heard of impressionism. 
 
 Sandy. That is a much abused and misunder- 
 stood word. All literature was from the beginning 
 impressionistic. In Homer and Shakespeare you 
 have deep impressions of the universe, as you 
 have in Thackeray and Zola impressions of the 
 surface of passing phases of portions of modern 
 life. The spread of education has made the sen- 
 sitized mind more common than it was, and so all 
 kinds of incomplete and shallow people are able 
 to record the impressions of which they are capable 
 — superficial colour, half-tints and side-lights, odd 
 shapes, echoes. 
 
 Menzies. That is so. And the mood of these 
 shallow people, who are many, begins to affect 
 the few who should know better. Detraction of 
 Shakespeare, for example, is to be heard in most 
 unexpected quarters. He has none of Snuburb's 
 
 M 
 
162 A ROSARY. 
 
 sense of exquisite horror in the first buds of spring, 
 and would have been unable to appreciate the 
 manner of MacSquirt's curious work in silver- 
 point, inspired by twelve years' study of the 
 Bayeux tapestry ; therefore he was neither poet 
 nor artist; and that being so, it is a matter of no 
 consequence that he was the greatest man who 
 has expressed himself in literature. 
 
 Sandy. This prattleaboutartis thecantof the age. 
 
 Brian. What is an artist ? 
 
 Sandy. Define. 
 
 Menzies. An artist, as he is imagined, at any 
 rate, by those who keep up the outcry about him, 
 is an inhuman being with the outward appearance 
 of a man, who confounds right and wrong like a 
 place-hunter, and sense and nonsense like a poli- 
 tician; a monster whose conscience is in his 
 palate, and whose soul was given in exchange for 
 a bottle of Benedictine and a world of hysteria. 
 And yet he is as earnest and as brave as a martyr: 
 his aim is to be open to all influences, to encounter 
 the full stress of life. 
 
 Brian. And in order to do so you say he gets 
 rid of his conscience, his soul, his humanity? 
 
A ROSARY. 163 
 
 Menzies. Yes. It is like taking down the walls 
 of a house to ventilate it. 
 
 Sandy. I always like what Goethe said : counsel- 
 ling himself, his advice was, " Take refuge in 
 Art." Now, Goethe wasn't an artist; he was a 
 great man, who found a way for himself in the 
 endeavour after art; and I should say that the 
 born aesthete might find himself in the endeavour 
 to be a great man. 
 
 Menzies. Has that any meaning, now? 
 
 Brian. Not much, I think. You may as well 
 say that it becomes a man religious by nature to 
 endeavour to be irreligious. 
 
 Sandy. I wouldn't put it that way; but you 
 know as well as I do that the fault of the votary 
 is a want of healthy interest in life. 
 
 Menzies. Of course; we must all do daily battle 
 with our prepossessions. 
 
 Brian. Well, Basil; you've had time to make 
 your cream into cheese. 
 
 Basil. No; I've been listening. And I've come 
 to the conclusion that it is impossible to express 
 oneself absolutely; it must be in terms of men 
 and things. 
 
164 A ROSARY. 
 
 Menzies. I have sometimes thought that we 
 might have a higher language, like the higher 
 mathematics — pure expression, as it were. 
 
 Basil. Poets have tried it; but it 's useless de- 
 siderating speech for which there is no subject. 
 
 Menzies. Nevertheless, if the world lasts long 
 enough there may yet be an actual Literature; a 
 Literature unwarped by arriere pense"e of prophecy, 
 entertainment, or edification; a Literature which 
 will be a Statement of the World. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 IBSEN. 
 
 " In my opinion, no writer reveals himself more 
 fully than the dramatist. It is inevitable. The 
 moment you begin to consider the springs of 
 action and the motives of conduct there is one 
 subject always at hand from infancy to death. 
 Unconsciously, perhaps, at first, your intimate 
 acquaintance with this subject appears in your 
 work; then, if you are not a mere botcher and 
 
A ROSARY. 165 
 
 charlatan, sooner or later the true source of man's 
 knowledge of human nature is revealed to you. 
 It is a terrible revelation ; but you cannot, you 
 dare not, ignore it. You try to, doubtless; you 
 even think you succeed in doing so; but your 
 own accent and semblance are heard and seen in 
 the vilest wretches, the grossest fools, as well as 
 in the sweetest natures and the most heroic char- 
 acters wherewith you mask the good and evil in 
 yourself." 
 
 " But can a dramatist not portray at all, then, 
 another than himself? Dramatists have drawn 
 women successfully, for example." 
 
 " Yes, but think of the women. Wherever there 
 is vital power at work the dramatist's people are 
 of one mould and order. Compare Ibsen's women 
 with Shakespeare's. H owever widely each author's 
 women may differ among themselves, Cleopatra 
 and Imogen are hardly distinguishable from each 
 other when you contrast them with Hiordis and 
 Asta Allmers. This sub-consciousness, what is 
 basic in the dramatist, appears in all his creations."" 
 
 "Well, of course, it must do so; when you 
 come to think of it, it cannot be otherwise." 
 
1 66 A ROSARY. 
 
 " Yes, but the literary world generally seems 
 loath to acknowledge it. Fear lurks behind the 
 loathing, I think. Byron is the type of the pro- 
 testing author, terrified at the self-betrayal in his 
 works." 
 
 " About Ibsen, however. He has betrayed him- 
 self — he, the strongest, most self-contained of all 
 poets and dramatists." 
 
 " Strong, but not self-contained — anything but 
 self-contained. His plays smoke with his person- 
 ality. That is the very note of the man: that is 
 his originality. The characters in the best-known 
 of Ibsen's plays, his later ones, professional, middle- 
 class, and lower middle-class people, are as dull 
 and uninteresting as they can be; and yet he 
 peopled the imagination of Europe for a while 
 with these undistinguished beings, because they 
 are all Ibsen. They were metal of no mark or 
 value: Ibsen alloys them with his personality, 
 stamps them with his image and superscription, 
 and they become current throughout the world. 
 A mistaken realism seems to advise the drawing 
 of men exactly as they are. If it could be done, 
 you would have at last something worthy to be 
 
A ROSARY. 167 
 
 called a caput mortuum; but it is an impossibility. 
 You could no more take crude man and place him 
 in a novel or a play, that is, make him literature, 
 than you could make a lump of iron ore into a 
 carving-knife by laying it on the table along with 
 a fork and steel. Humanity is the raw material of 
 literature; the smelting, the fining, the casting! 
 the shaping, the damascening, are the work of the 
 creative artist, whose indispensable medium is his 
 own personality." 
 
 " Well, then ; how would you describe the per- 
 sonality of Ibsen ? " 
 
 " Here is Ibsen himself — prim, resolved, mag- 
 netic." 
 
 " Sir, it is quite clear to me that no play is of 
 the least importance unless every word and charac- 
 ter in it has been minted from the author's person- 
 ality." 
 
 "That is not your real meaning," said Ibsen. 
 "You wish to say that no character, however 
 carefully studied from life, can have any vitality in 
 literature unless it has been alloyed 'with the author's 
 personality, and cast over again." 
 
 " Yes ; I believe that is more my meaning. The 
 
1 68 A ROSARY. 
 
 author adds a percentage of himself and makes 
 bell-metal of what was before harsh, untunable, 
 and impossible in any steeple, tower, campanile 
 or buoy. But, sir, I have heard it said that it is 
 impossible to pluck the heart out of your mystery; 
 that no one can find you in your plays." 
 
 "A mistaken judgement," said Ibsen. "My 
 originality, like that of all original writers, consists 
 neither more nor less in just this — that I have 
 written myself large over all my work." 
 
 " Have you, sir? Then may I ask you to extract 
 your personality from your plays ? " 
 " I could not attempt it." 
 
 " Let me put a question or two. Do you con- 
 sider yourself morbid ? " 
 
 " I do. Stagnation, ease, does not interest me; 
 only disease. Follow me closely in this ; it is not 
 mere word-catching. Life is the disease of the 
 universe. The universe, I take it, is in pain with 
 life; but life itself is joyful till it in turn becomes 
 diseased, and conscience is diagnosed. My work 
 has been one of diagnostication, and my discovery 
 and revelation is this — that conscience, the disease 
 of life, is now itself diseased : the mistletoe, the 
 
A ROSARY. 169 
 
 disease of the oak, has broken out into new 
 wretchedness of its own. It is my statement of the 
 new wretchedness of the world that appeals to the 
 world ! " 
 
 " Then am I right in regarding you only and 
 always as the literary artist ? " 
 
 " On that I am not competent to pronounce. At 
 one time many regarded me as the law and the 
 prophets. As I said, you will find me in my plays." 
 
 " I wish you would extract your personality 
 from your plays." 
 
 " I would rather not attempt it. Frankly, I seem 
 to myself a man of such magnitude that neither 
 my contemporaries nor I can take my measure." 
 
 " Sir, there is one side of your personality that 
 has struck me very particularly of late. I mean the 
 sinister, misanthropic, devilish mood, which in 
 another age would indubitably have made you, 
 for a portion of your career at least, a persecutor 
 and torturer." 
 
 " I would not call myself a torturer," rejoined 
 Ibsen hastily, startled out of his reserve., " My 
 neurosis takes the form of anthropophobia rather 
 than of misanthropy. Mankind terrifies me. The 
 
170 A ROSARY. 
 
 vision of the joy of life, a riddle and a menace, 
 haunts me — that is to say haunts the conscience 
 of the age as it haunted St. Anthony; but the age, 
 being creedless, cannot lay the radiant apparition. 
 My later plays are spells pronounced in vain 
 against this terrible obsession. Sometimes the 
 spells are of masterful directness, as in ' Rosmers- 
 holm ' and ' Little Eyolf,' where the joy of life 
 appears to be overcome ; sometimes, with back- 
 ward mutters of dissevering power, as in ' Hedda 
 Gabler,' ' The Master Builder,' and ' Borkman,' 
 where the joy of life, to repeat again my hateful 
 phrase — is represented as triumphant; and note 
 that the victory in every case entails the perdition 
 of the puppets engaged on either side. Life eats 
 its children. I am hag-ridden by that idea." 
 
 " In a measure you are, I believe ; and a certain 
 degree of terror enters into your misanthropy — 
 for I insist that you are a misanthrope ; but I 
 cannot admit, as you seem to suggest, that you do 
 not control your utterances, that you do not know 
 very well what you are about." 
 
 " Then," said Ibsen, " do you regard me as an 
 apostle with a message ? " 
 
A ROSARY. 171 
 
 " No, I don't. It is true a critic extorted from 
 you yourself the confession that you are on the 
 side of the knouters, and there can be no doubt 
 that you believe the world ought to be distressed 
 by Literature in order that it may be quickened 
 to a livelier, more intelligent consciousness. As I 
 said already, your extreme intolerance might have 
 made you a persecutor in favourable circumstances, 
 but not now, as being impracticable, because your 
 intolerance, it seems to me, has gradually come to 
 embrace every thought of man's heart, although 
 you are too sane to wish for one fell stroke at a 
 universal neck. No ; I incline to the opinion that 
 you are the literary artist before everything. It is 
 true you caused a panic in certain quarters, and still 
 people study you and puzzle over you, searching for 
 light. But you have no message ; you only state." 
 
 " I state all sides." 
 
 " Perhaps. But the devil's standpoint is a very 
 favourite one with you." 
 
 "The devil's standpoint," mused Ibsen. 
 
 " Sir, is it not your ambition to start aperpetuum 
 mobile of thought? " 
 
 " Yes," replied Ibsen. " My inferior ambition, 
 
172 A ROSARY. 
 
 that is — the ambition inextricably associated with 
 the desire of lasting fame. But where are you 
 leading me ? What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Pray sir, do not misunderstand me. I know 
 and respect the Diogenes in your nature, but I 
 am now considering the Teufelsdrockh in you — so 
 abundant by your very greatness, the height and 
 depth of your humanity. In ' The Pretenders,' 
 your play of 1864, I think I detect your sub- 
 consciousness fully — the hidden Teufelsdrockh, 
 which in you, as in mankind itself, broods over 
 methods of perpetuating evil, and dreams of ever- 
 lasting torment." 
 
 "True," assented Ibsen: "my lower nature is 
 embodied in the diabolic Bishop Nicholas." 
 
 " Yes, sir. Let me recall the plot of ' The 
 Pretenders.' A letter in the possession of Bishop 
 Nicholas would solve the doubt that has set King 
 Hakon and Duke Skule at variance, and divided 
 Norway against itself; but on his death-bed, the 
 Bishop, by a special exercise of fiendishness — and 
 a brilliant instance of your unmatched stagecraft 
 — causes Duke Skule unwittingly to destroy this 
 letter, in order that both Hakon and the Duke 
 
A ROSARY. 173 
 
 may doubt and believe by turns, still swaying to 
 and fro, and finding no firm ground beneath their 
 feet — perpetuum mobile! That is the Bishop's dying 
 catch-word — perpetuum mobile. ' I am not strong 
 in Latin,' he ruminates; 'but it means somewhat 
 that has power to work eternally throughout all 
 
 ages. If I myself, now could but ? That were 
 
 a deed to end my life withal! To set wheel and 
 weight and lever at work in the King's soul and 
 the Duke's; to set them going so that no power on 
 earth can stop them. If I can but do that, then 
 shall I live indeed; live in my work — and, when 
 I think of it, mayhap it is that which is called 
 immortality.' There is no character in the great 
 gallery of your painting which is so deeply branded 
 on one's imagination as Bishop Nicholas. It is 
 this vast egoism, with its complementary, deep- 
 set misanthropy that writes ' Peer Gynt ' after 
 ' Brand,' and ' The Wild Duck ' after ' The 
 Enemy of the People,' as if you were muttering 
 to yourself, ' My readers! You think the problem 
 of life is solved? See, I upset the fat in the fire 
 again. Did you, mannikins, dream then that you 
 had the heart of my mystery, that I had shown you 
 
174 A ROSARY. 
 
 the sign of the times? You shall have no sign 
 except the sign of the deluded mechanician — 
 perpetuum mobile!- Is there, sir, as much of 
 Teufelsdrockh in you as that?" 
 
 " Have you read," asked Ibsen, ignoring the 
 question, ' When We Dead Awaken ' ? 
 
 " I have. It is a most beautiful play — the apo- 
 theosis of madness." 
 
 " That is not unfair. One word before I go. My 
 Mystery. From ' Emperor and Galilean ' onwards, 
 I have dealt with madness. That is my secret. I 
 found out, as Shakespeare also found out, that 
 madness is the thing. You cannot have the essence 
 till the shell is broken and the kernel bruised." 
 
 LV. 
 
 SONG FROM " LA REINE FIAMMETTE." 
 
 The bees beseech the bashful flowers, 
 " Oh, open wide your scented bowers 
 And lead us where the honey drips!" 
 Your kisses murmur on our lips 
 The song the bees sing to the flowers. 
 
A ROSARY. 175 
 
 Impassioned April asks the snow, 
 " Oh, crystals cold, when will you flow 
 In molten tides beneath my beams? " 
 And love says to our hearts it seems 
 What April whispers to the snow. 
 
 The stars entreat the waning moon, 
 " Good-night, but come again ; come soon 
 To light the adoring universe." 
 Your pleading eyes in ours rehearse 
 The cry the stars send to the moon. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 ENNUI. 
 
 " What are you doing? " 
 
 " Killing time." 
 
 " You know better; you know you are eluding 
 thought. At the back of your mind you feel that 
 the first station of the passionate pilgrimage to 
 intelligence is ennui." 
 
176 A ROSARY. 
 
 " Don't worry me! The appeal to intelligence 
 is always distressing." 
 
 " Certainly; because men in their hearts do not 
 wish to be intelligent; they dimly guess that there 
 are racks to be stretched on, fires to pass through, 
 before intelligence is attained ; and they resent the 
 torture." 
 
 " Naturally! To be intelligent is to be unnatural. 
 To be intelligent would be to understand the 
 Universe. Now the Universe does not wish to be 
 understood." 
 
 " True ; she puts men off with her specious 
 ' open secret.' " 
 
 "I know nothing about that; but it is not 
 human nature to be intelligent; and I for one 
 decline. Anything but that! I'll make money; I'll 
 go to church, or to the theatre; I'll ride motors, 
 read novels, and drink large quantities of alcoholic 
 beverages; but I refuse intelligence. And I ask 
 you — I put it to you candidly, was anybody ever 
 intelligent? Is intelligence possible ? " 
 
 " At any rate, it is pleasanter to be strong." 
 
A ROSARY. 177 
 
 LVII. 
 
 AT THE DOOR. 
 
 From a clime where the land's fair face 
 
 No manner of usage mars, 
 And the wind, blowing pure out of space, 
 
 Gathers the scent of the stars, 
 He came, where the air has a sulphurous breath, 
 To the turbulent City of Death. 
 
 At the end of the world far down, 
 
 Obscure in the dark abyss, 
 Like a planet of baleful renown, 
 
 Glimmers the City of Dis : 
 As pulses that flicker the dim windows beat, 
 For the fog overflows every street. 
 
 And he heard — as he stood heart-sore, 
 
 But eager to enter in, 
 All alone, in his shroud, at the door — 
 
 Sadly transcending the din, 
 
 N 
 
178 A ROSARY. 
 
 A voice which he thought had been singing above 
 In the peaceable Kingdom of Love. 
 
 He had won, he had lost, hard-driven; 
 
 He knew what it is to wait; 
 And he fell at the last out of Heaven 
 
 Laughing aloud at his fate; 
 But he never knew fear till her wailing came 
 O'er the walls of the City of Flame. 
 
 From a clime where the land's fair face 
 
 No manner of usage mars, 
 And the wind, blowing pure over space, 
 
 Gathers the scent of the stars, 
 He came where the voice of his dearest one fell 
 On his shuddering soul out of Hell. 
 
A ROSARY. 179 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 LIFE AND DEATH. 
 
 " Cultivate a good opinion of yourself; cultivate 
 
 the highest opinion of yourself. Thus only can 
 
 you dispense with the world." 
 
 " But why should I dispense with the world? " 
 " Because you will have to do so when you die. 
 
 All men should live as if they were already dead." 
 "To whom, then, shall Caesar appeal? " 
 " To Time, the Caesar of all things." 
 
 LIX. 
 
 THE DYER'S HAND. 
 
 "The most tragical words in all literature are 
 Shakespeare's complaint — 
 
 ' And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.' " 
 
180 A ROSARY. 
 
 "Why should these words appear to you so 
 tragical ? " 
 
 " That this paragon should have been dependent 
 on playing and on the writing of plays for a living ! " 
 
 " I am certain it was not his occupation that 
 perturbed Shakespeare ; but the mere fact of his 
 having to work for a livelihood. Had he been a 
 provision-dealer or a stockbroker, a professor, a 
 banker, a surgeon, Shakespeare would have com- 
 plained of the dyer's hand. It was his dependence 
 that galled him. He never forgave Fortune that 
 he was not a gentleman." 
 
 " He was one of Nature's gentlemen." 
 
 " The phrase ' Nature's gentlemen ' has always 
 seemed to me the most pitiful pretence. If you 
 mean by Nature, Fate and Fortune, all gentlemen 
 are, of course, Nature's gentlemen. Shakespeare 
 was not one of them." 
 
 " What is a gentleman ? " 
 
 " A man of birth, breeding and affluence. There 
 are very few gentlemen." 
 
 " But was it not inferior in Shakespeare to be 
 discontented with his lot ? " 
 
 " I leave that to the moral censor. I am certain 
 
A ROSARY. 181 
 
 Shakespeare was jealous, not of gentlemen only, 
 but of kings and emperors ; and if he had pos- 
 sessed an income of a thousand pounds a day, he 
 would have felt himself robbed so long as another 
 could boast of an income of a thousand guineas a 
 day. It was the will of Shakespeare, as it is of all 
 men, to be king." 
 
 " Pardon! It is not, and never was my will." 
 
 " You think so, because your self-consciousness 
 has not been broached yet. When that tap is set 
 running, men learn what vintage they are of. To 
 be king! To be the highest; to have all power, 
 all wealth ; to be absolutely inviolable ! " 
 
 " And the anarchist's bomb, the revolutionist's 
 bullet?" 
 
 " Nothing : like typhoid or pneumonia, forms of 
 death, and not always fatal. A man must have been 
 sick with the dream of kingship before he is in- 
 teresting." 
 
1 8 2 A ROSARY. 
 
 LX. 
 
 LIKENESS AND UNLIKENESS. 
 
 All alike men breathe, eat and drink, procreate 
 and die, entertaining themselves body and soul. 
 They think that they are making empires, painting 
 pictures, writing poems, founding religions : exer- 
 cise and entertainment of their functions ; that is 
 all. But while there is this likeness there is abso- 
 lute and universal unlikeness, from the mood and 
 manner of heroism down to the finger-print of the 
 criminal. No two minds understand in the same 
 way the simplest idea. And when it comes to 
 Religion ! Consider the bungle of Saul, also called 
 Paul, from which the western world suffers yet: 
 that hysterical endeavour to apply universally the 
 inapplicable sayings of Jesus — the exquisite, purely 
 private, individual sayings of Jesus. Consider the 
 bungle which Tolstoi makes to-day in the same 
 attempt. It is always something entirely different 
 from what their masters meant that disciples under- 
 stand. Neo-Platonism, Neo-Catholicism, Neo- 
 Hegelism! Hell! Let no man be another's disciple. 
 
A ROSARY, 183 
 
 LXI. 
 
 HIGHEST AND BEST. 
 
 The appeal to what is highest and best in men 
 does not pay ; a seeming appeal to what is highest 
 and best does. I suppose the wealthiest corpora- 
 tions in the world are the Roman, the Greek, the 
 Lutheran and the Anglican churches. As a trade, 
 as an art, Religion pays ; but whenever there is an 
 actual attempt to transcend, the crucifix and the 
 stake are ready : ostracism for the man of indepen- 
 dent means, death by starvationTor the poor man, 
 are prompt and inevitable. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 SYMPATHY AND RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 " I have no sympathy with people who do not do 
 what they want to do ; and if they are doing what 
 they want to do they require no sympathy." 
 
1 84 A ROSARY. 
 
 " But who can do what he wants to do ? Only 
 those with independent incomes." 
 
 " I sometimes think so, too." * 
 
 " I always think so. No one who has not an in- 
 dependent income can be held responsible for any- 
 thing he does or says." 
 
 " And are people with independent incomes to 
 be held responsible ? " 
 
 " I cannot tell : I have never had an indepen- 
 dent income." 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 EVOLUTION. 
 
 We have mastered fire and lightning, water and 
 wind, and made them serve us in war and commerce, 
 in business and pleasure. These are powers of 
 Nature; and what more is this complex force, 
 Evolution, of which men speak in fear and trem- 
 bling ? Like other powers of Nature, it is and has 
 been a bad master ; but we shall shortly tame it, 
 and make it a splendid servant. 
 
A ROSARY. 185 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 PERSONALITY. 
 
 Personality, adored by mobs, is that which per- 
 sonalities hate in each other. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 A THING IMPOSSIBLE. 
 
 Literary criticism implies a contradiction in terms. 
 It is impossible to give an account of one art ex- 
 cept by another. Browning, the boys' poet par 
 excellence, couldn't have written the "criticism as 
 well as the poetry," in spite of his threat. Wagner 
 gave a more or less successful account of his 
 endeavour and meaning in music by the medium 
 of another art, Literature namely; besides, he has 
 his complex art of Music-drama, three arts in- 
 terpreting and complementing each other. Ros- 
 setti also was able to employ two arts as the com- 
 
1 86 A ROSARY. 
 
 plements of each other in a very special way. 
 But literary criticism is impossible. Literature 
 already exists in a literary form. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 A DISTINCTION WITH A DIFFERENCE. 
 
 " If I must live with any one, give me a heartless 
 woman." 
 
 "Heartless?" 
 
 " Yes ; because a heartless person is never 
 selfish." 
 
 LXVI I. 
 
 AT TWENTY-ONE. 
 
 One age is chivalrous; another is puritanic; an- 
 other licentious ; this one cultured. The floods of 
 chivalry, of puritanism, of licence, have each sown 
 deposits in the strata of society, like fossils in 
 black marble. The plasm of society has moulded 
 itself round these and engrossed them. There 
 were absurd knights; puritanism was itself an 
 
A ROSARY. 187 
 
 absurdity ; licentiousness, unspeakable : these 
 bigotries being past, the world is better for them. 
 One age, poetry overruns the wilderness of so- 
 ciety; another, the religious feeling; in another, 
 the beast is rampant : this age would let none of 
 these run riot, but carefully tending them all, pro- 
 duce a well-ordered garden. The world is always 
 young, and always sowing wild oats, with their 
 deeply penetrating roots, their golden straw, and 
 beautiful ears heavy with grain. At present, edu- 
 cation is sown broadcast, a wild oat likely to yield 
 a rich harvest. But it is a wild oat, an excess, a 
 bigotry. How much can I know? Let me have 
 the keys of the arcana of all science; let me dis- 
 cover an intermaxillary bone in man, and the idea 
 of plants. Give me to read every book and carry 
 in my portmanteau a diamond edition of the Greek 
 classics to write transcripts from by the way. 
 Let me mourn Theophile Gautier in melodious 
 threnodies in four languages. Give me to know 
 harlots, actresses, and the lady presidents of bene- 
 volent societies; let me be hail-fellow-well-met 
 with blacklegs, pickpockets, prize-fighters, poets, 
 princes, popes; let me be stroke of a University 
 
1 88 A ROSARY. 
 
 crew, swim the Channel, winter in Italy, and shoot 
 seals in autumn in the northern seas. My organs 
 are over-sensitive: let me climb the steeple of 
 Strasburg Cathedral and look down till my giddi- 
 ness is conquered, and listen to its bell till my ears 
 are burst or their delicacy strengthened. I am a 
 woman: I will translate .#£schylus; I will write an 
 epic ; I will don male attire and study every grade 
 of life; I will speak on platforms; I will study 
 medicine; I will pass competitive examinations 
 with men; I am just beginning: I know not what 
 I will do. We are cultured, ploughed, and sown 
 and harrowed over and over again: we turn up 
 the seeds, too, to behold their fermentation and 
 growth, so that there is as yet no crop; but the 
 seeds die not, and the harvest will be. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 BLAKE. 
 
 The portrait of Blake betokens in the large, 
 prominent, beaming eye a powerful mind, audacious 
 
A ROSARY. 189 
 
 and original — consciously original at all hazards. 
 There was once nobility in the fine forehead, and 
 there is still strength in the chin. The other 
 features are those of a gossiping old woman. In- 
 tolerance, confusion, childish impatience sit be- 
 tween the wrinkled eyebrows, pucker the stubby 
 nose, and pout in the petulant and garrulous 
 mouth. It is an utterly reckless and abandoned 
 face; the debauch of imagination pursued for years 
 without restraint, with no law or licence except 
 the craving for cerebral excitement, even though 
 followed in the loftiest region the human intelli- 
 gence can attain, seems in the case of the physic- 
 ally temperate and chaste Blake to have had the 
 same effect on his features as is commonly ascribed 
 to a course of sensuality. Impatience was Blake's 
 chief characteristic: in respect of it he did verge 
 on madness; it kept him ignorant, incompetent, 
 poor — at the mercy of the Cromeks and the Hay- 
 leys. On the one side it held him grovelling on 
 the level of Joanna Southcote; on the other it 
 enabled him to touch the hem of Shakespeare's 
 garment, and the hand of Michelangelo. A most 
 extraordinary being! He would not be tamed or 
 
igo A ROSARY. 
 
 taught. In his infancy his father gave up the task 
 as hopeless; in his fourth year he saw men like 
 trees walking, or at least a tree full of angels; and 
 when he came to man's estate, there was nobody 
 to purge his eyes. He imprisoned himself in his 
 imagination, and became a mystic and system- 
 monger; with him thought and language grew 
 one with the thing thought and spoken of : figures 
 of speech hardened into articles of faith. If you 
 can imagine the eccentric and miraculous motions 
 possible to a human being enabled to move about 
 the world without having to bear the weight of 
 the atmosphere, you have a material notion of 
 Blake the mystic, bearing no weight of learning 
 and knowledge, and so performing fantastic evolu- 
 tions at which men laugh and the angels weep. 
 The mystic will soon be forgotten; not so soon 
 the sweet, keen singer whose songs are dew and 
 light. 
 
A ROSARY. 191 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 GOD. 
 
 Although there were no God, God would remain 
 the greatest notion man has had. It is a question, 
 however, whether this notion will be permanent 
 in the mind of the race. If it should be permanent, 
 and there be any truth in Evolution, who can say 
 that God may not yet be evolved ? 
 
 LXX. 
 
 NECESSITY. 
 
 The mother of invention ? Yes ; and the mother 
 of all mistakes, and the prophetess of failure. 
 
1 92 A ROSARY. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE S FLOWER. 
 
 "Shakespeare's flower?" 
 
 " The wild rose. I think the roses are men- 
 tioned oftenest, although he may have said finer 
 things about the violet and the cowslip." 
 
 " I question if he has. Now that you remind 
 me of it, Shakespeare has an image of the rose 
 and the canker-worm, and it appears in all his 
 earlier work, and in every stage of development 
 from the unadorned question in ' Lncrece ' — 
 
 ' Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?' 
 
 to the perfect utterance in ' Twelfth Night' — 
 
 ' She never told her love, 
 But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, 
 Feed on her damask cheek.' 
 
 This is Shakespeare, the artist. An image haunts 
 him, and he attempts to lay it again and again; 
 he does not go away from it, but rather encourages 
 its visits, until at last he puts it to rest, embalmed 
 in Viola's sweet-smelling words." 
 
A ROSARY. i 93 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 A MODERN INSTANCE. 
 
 "Won't you play? I'll give you thirty in a 
 hundred." 
 
 " I can't be bothered." 
 
 "Then, of course, the game's not worth the 
 chalk." 
 
 " Not to me. I am like the old elder in Moray- 
 shire who told the kirk session one Sunday 
 evening, when each member — the outlandish idea 
 of it! — was required to state what he considered 
 his own special gift or grace, that he had a ' great 
 talent for nait'ral rest.' " 
 
 " Meaning sleep ?" 
 
 " Perhaps that was in his mind too ; but he 
 meant inertia, I think." 
 
 " It is really a disease." 
 
 " That may be. I know of a man who has the 
 utmost difficulty in getting out of any enclosed 
 space — drawing-room, restaurant, theatre, church. 
 He seems to be enchanted, like a rooster in a 
 
 o 
 
194 A ROSARY. 
 
 chalked ring. I watched him one night at a house 
 in Curzon Street. The rooms were crowded, and 
 he wandered about them for a stricken hour, look- 
 ing very purposeful all the time. When his conduct 
 was noticed he became the one subject of talk ; a 
 lane developed for his convenience through the 
 reception-rooms ; but he remained entirely un- 
 conscious of the effect he created, following his 
 nose resolutely. At last I spoke to him : he seemed 
 to know nobody there. ' Do you think I could 
 get out of this ?' he asked me anxiously. ' It might 
 be managed,' I said. ' For example ' — we were 
 standing in the hall — 'there's the door.' 'But I 
 haven't my hat and overcoat ; and the footman 
 must call a cab.' These things were put right for 
 him ; but when the footman intoned, ' Hansom- 
 carriage blocks the way! ' he hesitated on the 
 threshold ; his face grew pale, then livid ; he drew 
 back and looked round at me with a desperate 
 smile. ' I'm coming with you,' I said. He clutched 
 my arm, and we entered the cab together. Im- 
 mediately he began to smoke a madura cigar, and 
 became entirely cheerful and the best of company." 
 " A recurring paralysis of the will like that must 
 
A ROSARY. 195 
 
 be an affliction ; but I suppose most people with 
 nerves really alive have occasional experiences of 
 the kind ; indeed I should say there are no grown- 
 up folk in the world who have not at some time or 
 other been puzzled by inability to do some simple 
 thing they wished to do." 
 
 " Probably ; but I took this man to be a strayed 
 king, unaccustomed to attendance, and yet, un- 
 known to himself, miserable in the last degree 
 unless he is served obsequiously." 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 THE SOUL. 
 
 From aimless conflict and the tangled urn 
 Of asps, decaying flowers and Dead-Sea fruit, 
 The dross and vapid recrement of life, 
 The soul of man in golden human cells 
 Of wrought experience sedulously built, 
 A sweeter aromatic honey hives 
 Than reservoirs of carder-bees that drain 
 The perfumed nectar of the wilderness, 
 
196 A ROSARY. 
 
 And store it underground in mossy founts. 
 Unhappy wisdom tastes and learns to laugh 
 With dulcet breath ; unhappy folly tastes 
 And learns its own inherent happiness. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 SAPPHO. 
 
 Playwright. Interviewer. 
 
 I. I understand you have made a play out of 
 Daudet's " Sapho." 
 
 P. Yes. 
 
 I. What do you think of the novel? 
 
 P. I am afraid I have become too familiar with 
 it. It leaves me with a memory of superficial 
 realism and essential unveracity, and a dull sense 
 of something nauseous. 
 
 /. I agree with you, in a measure. To begin 
 with, I think the title a shameful abuse. 
 
 P. So do I. Of the actual Sappho, whose 
 "soul seems to have been made up of love and 
 
A ROSARY. i 97 
 
 poetry," and whom the high poets of all ages have 
 adored, there is nothing at all in Daudet's book. 
 You remember the epigram by J. D., ascribed to 
 Marlowe, " In Gellam," who was 
 
 " no more 
 Than a sweet, filthy, fine, ill-flavoured whore." 
 
 That is Daudet's Sappho, with the added nasti- 
 ness implied in the ridiculous La Gournerie's 
 phrase, " Toute la lyre." 
 
 /. And that is not your Sappho ? 
 
 P. Of course not! 
 
 I. Has the idea of the true Sappho influenced 
 your reading of the character of your heroine? 
 
 P. It has, very considerably. She comes be- 
 fore me like one of those 
 
 "gay creatures of the element 
 That in the colours of the rainbow live," 
 
 all compact of mirth, of love and poetry; a de- 
 lightful overflowing nature that should have been 
 guarded from the cradle, wandering unprotected 
 in the waste places of the world; but preserved 
 from the worst partly by that fond gaillard on 
 
1 98 A ROSARY. 
 
 which Burns relied, and mainly by a real sanity of 
 body and mind. 
 
 /. You have just quoted Milton. Have you 
 employed verse in your play at all ? 
 
 P. I have. I believe that blank verse can be 
 employed even in the most modern play very 
 effectively and with perfect propriety; and when 
 it was proposed to me to make a version of 
 " Sapho " — it was so long since I had read the 
 novel that I had almost no memory of it — the 
 idea occurred at once that here might be the 
 source of a modern play in which no one could 
 find verse out of place. 
 
 /. And you are still of that opinion ? 
 
 P. Yes. As we have already agreed, the title 
 is misleading: there is no poetry in Daudet's 
 woman; but I trust there is in mine. 
 
 /. Have you used much verse? 
 
 P. A good deal. 
 
 /. Can you tell me what it is that determines 
 the use of verse in your dialogue? 
 
 P. Yes; I use it when it occurs to me to do so. 
 Then, in revisal, some of that will be reduced to 
 the ranks again — i.e., to prose. 
 
A ROSARY. I99 
 
 /. Does the alternation of prose and verse not 
 suggest patchwork rather? 
 
 P. No. It does to the eye on the printed page 
 of course; but it is not so actually. 
 
 /. Then how do you manage the transition 
 from prose to verse? 
 
 P. It is as natural as can be. Pentameter lines 
 constantly occur in writing prose dialogue, as they 
 do also in actual speech; and you proceed from 
 one of these. 
 
 /. And what kind of blank verse do you 
 write ? 
 
 P. In plays I write dramatic blank verse: that 
 is to say, the speaker attends to the sense; and 
 the lines look after themselves. 
 
 /. I confess I don't quite see it. A work of art 
 should be a whole. 
 
 P. I know where you are. You open up an 
 endless question — the debate of the homogeneous 
 and the heterogeneous. For my part I prefer 
 what is called the heterogeneous or artistic play 
 as against the homogeneous or artificial one. Life 
 is heterogeneous ; and art must be parallel to life. 
 "As You Like It," a most heterogeneous and artistic 
 
200 A ROSARY. 
 
 play, is much closer to life than the artificial 
 homogeneous "School for Scandal." 
 
 /. And is the plot of your play as diffuse as 
 that of "As You Like It"? 
 
 P. Oh no! My plot is simple and compact. I 
 am referring to variety of mood and the con- 
 sequent variety of expression. 
 
 /. But life, or let me say, the world, is also 
 homogeneous. The heterogeneous, indeed, is the 
 homogeneous. 
 
 P. Quite so; and we march serenely into the 
 Serbonian bog. 
 
 /. No ; I come out of it ! — You have spoken 
 unkindly of Daudet's " Sapho." Do you remember 
 that it was written with a purpose ? 
 
 P. Oh, yes ! Daudet inscribed it " for my sons 
 when they are twenty years old." I, however, 
 am quite certain that such a book as Daudet's 
 " Sapho " defeats its purpose. You will not disgust 
 young fellows bent on a mud bath by showing them 
 how muddy it is : on the contrary, you increase 
 their curiosity and incite them to the plunge. 
 
 /. Have you a purpose in your play ? 
 
 P. I would not use the word purpose. But 
 
A ROSARY. 201 
 
 certainly I wish everything I write to have 
 meaning. 
 
 /. Meaning? 
 
 P. Yes; meaning. 
 
 /. Well. Do you follow the incidents of the 
 novel closely? 
 
 P Those I have selected; yes, pretty closely; 
 although they receive generally a different com- 
 plexion. 
 
 /. And the persons ? 
 
 P. Alice Dore, Rosario Sanchez, De Potter, Le 
 Grand pere, and some minor people I have rejected, 
 as not belonging to my play ; and those I have 
 selected I have recast. 
 
 I. By the way, do you know Daudet's own 
 version in collaboration with M. Adolphe Belot? 
 
 P. I have not seen it performed ; but I have 
 read it very carefully. 
 
 /. And did you benefit by it? 
 
 P, Very much. It showed me definitely what 
 not to do. 
 
 I. Ah ! And what do you think of your own 
 version ? 
 
 P. I have answered too many questions already. 
 
202 A ROSARY. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 SUNSET IN THE WEST END. 
 
 Over the Marble Arch a crimson sunset flared 
 and sank behind Hyde Park; the lamps in Oxford 
 Street gleamed like flakes of light fallen from the 
 sun as he toiled up and down the sky, a seeming 
 Pre-Copernican, bearing the burden of day. In 
 Bryanstone Square, Portman Square, Grosvenor 
 Square, Berkeley Square, and in the garden of 
 Devonshire House, elms, limes, and maples began 
 to look grey and ghostly as darkness climbed 
 quickly out of the east. Dusky green ivy, dusky 
 crimson creepers draped many of the high houses. 
 The sparse leaves in the lofty elm-tree tops spotted 
 the pale lavender sky that kept still a gleam of 
 day, though all was dark below. The chill wind 
 whispered of winter; night set in; and in Piccadilly 
 life, like a tidal wave, began to rise and pour 
 towards the theatres and halls and hidden nooks 
 in which it clangs and seethes and spends itself. 
 
A ROSARY. 203 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 CRITICISM. 
 
 I see a pitman, somewhat ragged as to his attire, 
 who has laboured all day underground, trudging 
 home and humming a tune by the way. A snob, on 
 horseback perhaps, or in a brougham or a motor 
 car, or on foot and ragged too, looks after him and 
 cries out, " I say, my man! There 's a hole in your 
 coat ! There 's a hole in your coat ! " 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 FORKS. 
 
 " Some men are tridents, some are dinner-forks, 
 some are pitch-forks, and some have but one prong. 
 Of these last are the short-story men, the ' strong 
 men ' of fiction. They remind me of the Parisian 
 chiffonier, who gathers from frequented places 
 with his pointed stick odds and ends of paper and 
 
204 A ROSARY. 
 
 rags. They are an insufferable nuisance; their pens 
 are always ready furbished; if you so much as hint 
 an idea, an experience, an episode, they stab it up 
 at once and thrust it into their wallets among an 
 omnium gatherum of other half-ideas, experiences, 
 and episodes, where it lies till it is 'high,' and is 
 then brought forth as ' strong meat.' " 
 
 "And who are the dinner-forks? " 
 
 " Average men I suppose." 
 
 "And the pitch-forks?" 
 
 " The critics." 
 
 " And the tridents." 
 
 "My friends, and I." 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 THE SONG OF THE LARK. 
 
 The song of the lark has taken entire possession 
 of the air. Like a heaven-high vine it garlands the 
 whole firmament. In the rookery or among the 
 sheepfolds where the hillside is plaintive with 
 the bleating of lambs, the larks are inaudible ; 
 
A ROSARY. 205 
 
 but when these undergrowths, jungles, and mere 
 wildernesses of sound are past, the hanging 
 gardens of the larks absorb the senses. From 
 dawn till dusk, and from the middle-spring through 
 the full blaze of summer to the smouldering golden 
 moons of autumn, these garlands of sound, leaf 
 and flower and fruit, fresco and fantasy and 
 arabesque, will wreathe and overrun the shining 
 air. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 MR. MEREDITH AND NATURE. 
 
 In Mr. Meredith's poetry Nature is always intel- 
 lect. Even when he writes of " Woodland Peace," 
 it is the peace of faculty, not absorbed in con- 
 templation, but employed in strenuous thought. 
 Nature with him is above suffering; she under- 
 stands, and rejoices in her agonies as in her tri- 
 umphs : 
 
 " We brood, we strive to sky, 
 
 We gaze upon decay, 
 
 We wot of life through death, 
 
206 A ROSARY. 
 
 How each feeds each we spy. 
 We question not, nor ask 
 The silent to give sound, 
 The hidden to unmask, 
 The distant to draw near. 
 And this the woodland saith : 
 ' I know not hope or fear ; 
 I take whate'er may come; 
 I raise my head to aspects fair, 
 From foul I turn away.' 
 Sweet as Eden is the air, 
 And Eden-sweet the ray." 
 
 Since Nature is intellect containing all knowledge, 
 the singing lark becomes " the hills, the human 
 line," the meadows, the fallows, labour, the dance of 
 children, "thanks of sowers, shout of primrose- 
 banks " ; in fact, the lark is Walt Whitman in his 
 knowledgable mood — a joyful, incarnate catalogue. 
 Everything is busy; rapt in thought, and in the 
 embodiment of its ideas : 
 
 " I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where 
 
 now 
 The moor-faced sunset broadened with red light ; 
 
A ROSARY. 207 
 
 Threw high aloft a golden bough, 
 
 And seemed the desert of the night, 
 
 Far down with mellow orchards to endow." 
 
 Nature, as intellect, is supernatural ; her witchcraft 
 transcends all alchemy, and the poet, speaking for 
 her, produces such magic as these italics — and in 
 her own method, by employing, namely, what the 
 builders reject, a helpless inversion, which were it 
 not poetry, would be unspeakable doggerel. It is 
 in " Love in the Valley," a boy's poem, redistilled 
 in manhood, that one finds the fullest, because 
 least conscious, statement of intellectual Nature. 
 Woman, the intellect and matrix of the world, is, 
 perforce, the very sign and substance of Nature to 
 the passion and character of man. The ideal crea- 
 ture in " Love in the Valley " — a poem perfectly 
 unique, strung of the treasure found once at least 
 where the rainbow meets the land — is the type of 
 Nature : 
 
 "Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows, 
 Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon. 
 
 No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder : 
 Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon. 
 
2o8 A ROSARY. 
 
 Deals she an unkindness, 'tis but her rapid measure, 
 Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no 
 less : 
 Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers 
 with hailstones 
 Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and 
 bless. 
 
 t? gp ^p ^p , iff 
 
 Stepping down the hill with her fair companions, 
 
 Arm in arm, all against the raging West, 
 Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches, 
 
 Brave is her shape, and sweeter unpossessed. 
 Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking 
 
 Whispered the world was; morning light is she. 
 Love that so desires would fain keep her change- 
 less; 
 
 Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free." 
 
 Mr. Meredith conceives Nature as a passionate 
 intellect, constantly becoming ; happy in her pains 
 and pleasures, and not without a thought for those 
 who cannot be happy; a restless and untiring 
 experimenter in seasons, tempests, light and 
 shade, sunsets, blossoms ; terror and mystery to the 
 
A ROSARY. 209 
 
 coward, to the merely emotional animal ; love and 
 mystery unveiled to strength and talent. 
 
 " Never is Earth misread by brain : 
 That is the welling of her, there 
 The mirror : with one step beyond, 
 For likewise is it voice ; and more, 
 Benignest kinship bids respond, 
 When wail the weak, and then restore 
 Whom days as fell as this may rive, 
 While Earth sits ebon in her gloom, 
 Us atomies of life alive 
 Unheeding, bent on life to come." 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 THE POET. 
 
 Anyone who has ever trusted himself knows that 
 knowledge is in the air; and that in brooding, in 
 loafing, in living, knowledge is absorbed by the 
 pores of the body.- The eyes and the ears are the 
 
210 A ROSARY. 
 
 main thoroughfares of knowledge, but there are 
 many by-ways intractable to sight and hearing, 
 devious and erratic in supposition, but as marked 
 and inevitable as the seemingly wanton paths of 
 fish in the river or of birds in the air. The body, 
 the whole body, is also the soul. It is the nerves, 
 the heart, the liver, the seed, that apprehend and 
 think and feel. The seat of memory is probably 
 in the muscles. The brain is only a register and 
 sifter — at the highest an alembic. Imagination 
 gathers the flower of the whole anatomy. It is in 
 this that the poet differs from the thinker, with 
 whom it is the habit sometimes to confound him. 
 A thinker is one who has permitted his brain, the 
 chief servant of his soul, to get the upper hand, 
 just as the epicure gives the reins of power to 
 his palate. In the poet the whole assembly of his 
 being is harmonious; no organ is master ; a diapason 
 extends throughout the entire scale; his whole 
 body, his whole soul is rapt into the making of 
 his poetry. Every poet is a new experiment ; all 
 poetry is empirical. And this is simply saying over 
 again that there is such a thing as poetry, and that 
 poets are born into the world, A poet is always 
 
A ROSARY. 211 
 
 a man of inordinate ambition and of inordinate 
 vanity. In his heart he says, " I want my poetry 
 to be remembered when Homer and Dante and 
 Shakespeare are forgotten." 
 
 THE END. 
 
 CHISWICK PRESS : PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. 
 
Price $s. net. 
 
 THE 
 
 KNIGHT OF THE MAYPOLE 
 
 A COMEDY 
 By JOHN DAVIDSON 
 
 " This drama has the rare merit of being good to read, and it looks as if it might be put 
 on the stage with success. Charles II. is an excellent figure, the man we know him to 
 have been, yet showing the gaiety, the good nature, of which at least in his earlier days 
 he was capable. There is plenty of humour in the play, and really powerful verse of the 
 serious sort." — Spectator. 
 
 " Stands out by its good workmanship and artistic finish. The poetic speeches of the 
 hero have a youth and a virility about them." — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " Has abundant vigour and individuality with no lack of dramatic vitality." — West- 
 minster Gazette. 
 
 " Arresting and delightful reading from beginning to end. The characters speak strength 
 and spontaneity in every line." — St. James's Gazette. 
 
 "Drama, which we recommend to all our readers who love pure English." — Daily 
 Mail. 
 
 "It has an unforced sequence of naturally developing incident, a sequence which 
 catches and holds the interest of the reader in itself, apart from dialogue and literary 
 treatment. Having taken it up, we found ourselves lured on to the end, agreeably and 
 without pause." — Academy and Literature. 
 
 " Was there ever dialogue like this before ? One would like to see ' The Knight of the 
 Maypole ' acted, so as to interrogate one's own sensations. An experiment like Mr. 
 Davidson's piques one's interest." — Manchester Guardian* 
 
 Price 55. net. 
 
 SELF'S THE MAN 
 
 A TRAGI-COMEDY 
 By JOHN DAVIDSON 
 
 (( Admirably adapted for the stage."— Glasgow Herald. 
 
 "The best of reading." — Mr. A. B. Walkley in The Morning Leader. 
 
 "The central figure, the elected King of Lombardy, is a solid piece of character-draw- 
 ng. " — L i it- rat n re. 
 
 "The heroine, Osmunda, is one of those true and noble women whom Mr. Davidson 
 has the gift of creating." — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 "Taking it as a whole it deserves to be described in most emphatic terms as a success, 
 for it is comely in shape, full of fire and heart, a monument to Mr. Davidson's intellectu- 
 ality, and as fresh as sunrise." — Literary Worlds 
 
TESTAMENTS 
 
 By JOHN DAVIDSON 
 
 No. I. 
 
 THE TESTAMENT OF A VIVISECTOR 
 
 " The question is simply, has Mr. Davidson written a strong poem ? The 
 answer is, yes. . . . The ' Vivisector ' ... in essentials is a figure so 
 majestic that in the words of Poe — 
 
 1 Hell rising from a thousand thrones 
 (Should) do (him) reverence.' " 
 
 — Academy. 
 
 ' ' Here you have Mr. Davidson at his best, strong, unforced, and himself, 
 reaching distinguished utterance through sheer authenticity of emotion and 
 imaginative realization. He sees, he feels what he sees, and vents it with 
 trained faculty of speech: the result impresses by its vital adequacy." — • 
 Daily Chronicle. 
 
 No. II. 
 THE TESTAMENT OF A MAN FORBID 
 
 " Poetry anyhow : words that spring together with cohesion, alive and 
 instinct with beauty. . . . The poem is in our judgment the best thing he 
 has done." — Pilot. 
 
 "The second of Mr. John Davidson's essays in a very unconventional 
 manner takes the form of a strenuous effort to penetrate below the surface — 
 to break with a tradition that is no more than a vast mass of parasitic 
 growth about the essential spirit." — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 "Magnificent blank verse, strong, rhythmical, and imaginative. . . . The 
 poem has all Mr. Davidson's sinew and undeniable poetic individuality. 
 The close is on a note of sheer beauty. "—Academy and Literature. 
 
 " The second of Mr. Davidson's projected series of ' Testaments ' is 
 vastly better than its predecessor, . . . and it contains towards the end a 
 magnificent passage full of rapturous delight in natural beauty." — Athenceum. 
 
 " It must be conceded that Mr. John Davidson is able with tremendous 
 force to deliver himself of what he wishes to say, and that this ability is on 
 the increase." — Literary World. 
 
No. III. 
 Price is. net. 
 
 THE TESTAMENT OF AN EMPIRE- 
 BUILDER 
 
 " Passage on passage of sustained power, passion, or beauty. ... A 
 masterful poem." — Academy and Literature. 
 
 "Nervously written, and contains passages of great beauty ... of 
 the force and grim sincerity of the utterance there can be no doubt." — 
 Athenaeum. 
 
 " A magnificent piece of imaginative writing. " — Mr. William Archer 
 in The Morning Leader. 
 
 "He states fact in terms of poetry, and the statement sears one's con- 
 sciousness. He is the first poet to digest the new wonders of science which 
 have subtly changed the old cosmogony, and made the very foundations of 
 existence crumble away . . . the poem teems with prodigal beauty of phrase 
 and image." — Mr. James Douglas in The Star. 
 
 ' ' Certainly he puts the case in a manner to scare the polite Imperialist. 
 This Empire-Builder cannot agree that evolution has entered on a mild 
 stage of benevolence, and this rejection of comfortable euphemisms is serious 
 and arresting. ... It is impossible to refuse admiration for work of such 
 beauty and distinction." — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 " 'All these I saw at home in Heaven.' Where, then, was Hell? The 
 dreamer at last discovered it, and a more terrible conception never entered 
 even the tragic brain of Dante." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 " The third of a series of powerful poems in blank verse from the pen of 
 Mr. John Davidson, and it yields to none of them in freshness and vigour of 
 imagination, or in the strength and flowing colour of its imagery." — Scotsman. 
 
 " Impressed we are, as everybody is bound to be. Mr. Davidson does 
 write poetry. His thoughts flash like lightning; his heated emotions melt 
 strange and familiar words into cohesion . . . instinct with beauty, alive, 
 full of imagination and originality." — Birmingham Post. 
 
 Ready shortly. 
 
 No. IV. 
 
 THE TESTAMENT OF A PRIME 
 MINISTER 
 
 With this number the format will be changed. The series will 
 be continued in octavo volumes.