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LITERARY RECREATIONS 
 
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LITERARY 
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 First EdUion Ociohir 1918 
 Reprinted October 1918, 1919 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The President of the Board of Education said 
 the other day that in these dark. times we were 
 entitled to draw consolation whence wft might, 
 and that there was a legitimate source of con- 
 solation in the spread of the reading habit. Mr. 
 Fisher has seen evidences of it in every omnibus, 
 tram-car, and railway- carriage. Even in the 
 trenches, he added, much reading goes on. There 
 are probably few men who,, like General Smuts, 
 have studied the Critique of Pure Reasm -during 
 a raid ; but Mr. Fisher has known instances df 
 officers enjoying the solace of Keats and Milton 
 under the hottest fire, and an anecdote is recorded 
 below (p. 46) of a man in the Lancashire Fusiliers 
 who went into battle with a book by Ruskin. 
 Perhaps, therefore, it may not be taken as any 
 sign of undue detachment from the stress of 
 great events that the author of this little book 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 has found occasional respite from official work 
 in putting together a few slight chapters of 
 literary recreation. 
 
 So much had been written by way of apology 
 when a stern sentence in one of the literary 
 journals confronted me. A book about books 
 can only be justified, said the reviewer, if it is 
 itself a work of accomplished art or if the writer 
 communicates to his readers a sincere pleasure 
 taken by himself. I can have no hope of re- 
 ceiving absolution on the first score, but may put 
 in a plea in mitigation. The commonwealth of 
 art and letters needs for its sustenance" those who 
 study as well as those who make. The chapters 
 here collected are conscious at least that literature 
 is an art, and that profit may be had from con- 
 sidering its laws, methods, adjuncts, and vehicles. 
 As for the second of the -possible justifications 
 for a book about books, it is certain that no 
 pleasure can be given where none has been felt, 
 but it does not follow, because an author has 
 amused himself by writing, that his pleasure 
 will be contagious. Every writer must take his 
 chance, and I can only hope that these jottings in 
 
PREFACE 
 
 vu 
 
 a library may here and there, in the hands of a 
 sympathetic reader, serve^to pass an idle hour. 
 
 The first of the papers here collected was 
 printed in the National Review, April 19 14, 
 and the paper here called Fifty Tears of a 
 Literary Magazine was written for the Jubilee 
 number of the Cornhilt (January 19 10). The 
 others are now printed for the first time. One 
 of the papers and parts of another were read 
 before the New College Essay Society on occasions 
 during recent years when I have been honoured 
 by an invitation to revisit its meetings. The 
 papers and discussions at that Society, and at 
 similar bodies elsewhere, are among the pleasantest 
 of many an Oxford man's recollections, and are 
 perhaps not the least valuable part -of a University 
 education. The author of a clever novel has 
 touched the point. " I am tempted to wonder," 
 he says, " whether it much matters what a man 
 be taught, so long as he meet enough men who 
 have been taught something else." Dr. Horton, 
 who was one of the greater lights of the New 
 College Essay Society in my undergraduate days, 
 has devoted a page or two of his Autobiography 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 to memories of its free and varied debates, and 
 
 in a reference to me has found not unkindly 
 
 fault with my controversial tone in those far-off 
 
 days. He bids us hope that the Society's sittings 
 
 will be resumed in a Future World. In echoing 
 
 my preceptor's pious hope, I will apply, in due 
 
 humility, a story told of M. Van de Weyer. A 
 
 friend went to see him during his last illness and 
 
 expressed a hope that they might meet again in 
 
 the Hereafter. " Ah ! let us hope so," he 
 
 replied, " and that you will find me in an editio 
 
 nova et emendatiory 
 
 E. T. C. 
 
 May iztA, 191 8. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Art of Biography j 
 
 II 
 
 Some Remarks on Ruskin's Style .... 34 
 
 III 
 
 The Art of Indexing . . . . . • S5 
 
 IV 
 Fifty Years of a Literary Magazine . . -77 
 
 V 
 Literature and Modern Journalism . . .113 
 
 VI \ 
 
 Words and the War . . . . • .142 
 
 ix \ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 VII 
 
 .; PAGE 
 
 A Study in Superlatives i?^ 
 
 VIII 
 The Poetry of a Painter . . . . .211 
 
 IX 
 
 /The Second Thoughts of Poets .... 246 
 
 INDEX 319 
 
I 
 
 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 The title of my Paper ^ is a challenge, not, I 
 hope, to the better opinion, but certainly to 
 accepted practice. From time to time, indeed, 
 voices are raised to describe the difficulties which 
 confront a biographer and to enumerate the 
 qualifications required in a successful practitioner 
 of the art. Such lists are so formidable that if 
 they were believed, the wonder would be that 
 any biographies should ever be written. But they 
 are not believed. There ts a larger output in 
 biography than in any other classes of books, 
 except those of Theology and Fiction, under 
 which latter head it has sometimes been suggested 
 that Biography — and History also — should be 
 included. You remember what " Mr. Sludge 
 the Medium " said : 
 
 Such a scribe 
 You pay and praise for putting life in stones, 
 Fire into fog, making the past your world. 
 There's plenty of " How did you contrive to grasp 
 
 1 Read to the New College Essay Society at Oxford, March 7, 1914. 
 
 I B 
 
2 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 The thread which led you through t;his labyrinth ? 
 How build such solid fabric out of air ? 
 How on so slight foundation found this tale, 
 Biography, narrative ? " Or, in other words, 
 " How many lies did it require to make 
 The portly truth you here present us with f " 
 
 The fault in some modern biography is not, 
 however, that it is fanciful, but that it is artless. 
 It is the fashion in these days to write a man's 
 life imrnediatfely after he is dead, when authentic 
 documents are numerous and personal recollec- 
 tions still fresh. The difficult thing is to giake 
 the documents tell a coherent stdry and to fuse 
 the varied recollections into a living impression. 
 The difficulty is sometimes not recognised, and 
 in other cases is deliberately avoided. It is 
 thought that personal acquaintance with the 
 subject is a sufficient qualification. Or, on the 
 other hand, the task is put, as it were, into com- 
 mission ; different friends are invited to contri- 
 bute their recollections, and no attempt is made 
 to weld them into a whole. A picture to which 
 one brush contributed the eye, another the mouth, 
 and so on, would only by a miracle present an 
 intelligible likeness. There is indeed a certain 
 interest in the composite biographies which give 
 impressions of the subject from a succession of 
 different angles. It is the same kind of interest 
 that belongs to Tk'e Ring and the Book ; but 
 Edward FitzGerald thought that even Browning 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 3 
 
 had failed to work the book into a ring, and that 
 the poem remained " a shapeless thing." Lord 
 Tennyson's Life of his father, admirable in some 
 respects, is from this point of view rather material 
 for a biography than itself a finished work of art. 
 A very high authority is responsible for opinions 
 which might lead to the conclusion that biography 
 is not a conscious art at all, but that anybody or 
 everybody is competent, with luck, to write a 
 good Life of somebody else. The book which 
 by common consent is the greatest biography in 
 the English language was written, said Lord 
 Macaulay, by " one of the smallest men," " of 
 the meanest and feeblest intellect," that ever 
 lived. Many of the greatest men that ever lived 
 have written biography, he added, but a dunce 
 and a fool has beaten them all. Macaulay's 
 critical authority once reigned paramount, and 
 his judgment on the Boswell of Johnson's Life 
 dies hard. The Professor of English Literature 
 in this University has, I am aware, pronounced 
 Boswell to be a man of genius ; adding that " the 
 idle paradox which presents him in the likeness 
 of a lucky dunce was never tenable by serious 
 criticism, and has long since been rejected by all 
 who bring thought to bear on the problems of 
 literature." This, I hope ydu will agree, is the 
 better opinion ; but I am not sure that it prevails 
 quite so fully among serious critics as Professor 
 Raleigh's words suggest. Another Professor of 
 
4 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 English Literature — ^also a member of this Uni- 
 versity — has recently published some observations 
 on tlie same subject ; and, while he does more 
 justice than Macaulay to Boswell's skill, he yet 
 seems to me not quite to hit the real point. 
 Boswell's chief virtues as a biographer are, says 
 Sir Sidney Lee, those of " the faithful hound " 
 and " the parasitical temper " ; his book is great 
 because he " did much which self-respecting 
 persons would scorn to do " ; and " the salt of 
 his biography is his literal reports of Johnson's 
 conversations, reports in the spirit of the inter- 
 viewer." I cannot agree here with Professor 
 Lee. For one thing, as an old journalist, I must 
 demur to the suggestion that the spirit of the 
 interviewer is literalness. I am afraid that there 
 are politicians and ambassadors, more perhaps in 
 other countries than in this, who know to their 
 cost that it is nothing of the kind ; and where 
 the medium of the interview is rightly and truth- 
 fully used, its method is never simple literalness. 
 The ablest interviewers I have known were 
 Mr. Stead and Edmund Garrett. The general 
 accuracy of their interviews was seldom, if ever, 
 impugned ; but they never took a note, and did 
 not attempt to reproduce with slavish literalness 
 every word that was said by their subjects. I 
 have always regarded as a masterpiece in this sort 
 of journalism an interview, so called, between 
 Garrett and Cecil Rhodes. I know of no state- 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 5 
 
 ment within so short a compass — I do not think 
 that there is any statement of whatever compass — 
 which embodies so vividly so much of jthe manner, 
 character, and ideas of Mr. Rhodes as this pre- 
 sentation by Garrett of the substance of several 
 conversations. It does so not because Garrett 
 was a faithful hound or a parasite — he was neither ; 
 but because he had quick perception and was a 
 literary artist. And so with Boswell. Call him 
 by what contemptuous names you will, for the 
 opportunities which he sought and used ; but 
 do not suppose that any faithful hound with 
 like opportunities could have written Boswell's 
 Johnson. The book is no doubt unique in a 
 fortunate conjunction — of Johnson, a great 
 man and a good, willing to talk, with Boswell 
 at hand to draw him out, to remember, and 
 to collect. But the unique conjunction would 
 have failed of its actual result if Boswell had 
 not been possessed of biographical genius. He 
 had an instinct for what was interesting and 
 characteristic; he knew how to arrange, select, 
 plan, and present. 
 
 The point can be enforced by comparing 
 a:nother famous biography, in which also there 
 was a peculiarly fortunate conjunction. Every 
 one, I imagine, would include Lockhart's Life of 
 Scott among the six best biographies in the English 
 language, and some good judges have placed it 
 second to Boswell's Johnson. Scott was almost 
 
6 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 as good a biographical subject as Johnson, and 
 Lockhart had intimate knowledge 6{ his father- 
 in-law. Nevertheless Lockhart's book is not so 
 good a biography as Boswell's. On the one hand, 
 Lockhart's Scon is often spun out with letters and 
 diaries of other people which add very little to 
 our knowledge of Scott himself. On the other 
 hand, those who have^ delved deep sometimes 
 complain that Lockhart misses many things which 
 he must have known or could easily have found 
 out, and which lovers of Scott would dearly like 
 to know. Ruskin, one of whose many abandoned 
 literary projects was a Life of Sir Walter, goes 
 so far as to say that " Lockhart is always incon- 
 ceivably silent about the little things one most 
 wants to know." But what is all this except to 
 say that Lockhart was not so fine an artist in 
 biography as Macaulay's dunce ? 
 
 Biography, then, is an art. What are its 
 conditions and laws ? The rule which is most 
 commonly and most strongly laid down by those 
 who discourse on the subject is Brevity ; and 
 doubtless many biographies, perhaps most, are 
 too long. But there are some awkward facts 
 which the preachers of biographical brevity have 
 to face. One is that two of the best biographies 
 in the English language are also two of the 
 longest. Sir Sidney Lee, as is natural in an 
 editor, has laid great stress on brevity ; but I 
 have noticed that many — I am not sure that I 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 7 
 
 might not say all — of the vefy longest articles in 
 the Dictionary of National Biography are from the 
 pen of the professor of brevity. And nobody, 
 I am sure, who has read those articles has ever 
 wished that they had been shorter. Professor 
 Lee's biographies are models of condensation. 
 If they are longer .than others, it is because their 
 subject-matter was of more importance. In a 
 recent review of a somewhat long biography, the 
 author was asked with some asperity why he had 
 not modelled his work on Tacitus and Plutarch. 
 To require of an ordinary practitioner genius such 
 as theirs seems to be rating the art of biography 
 a little high ; nor is the collocation of the two 
 names particularly happy, for the method and 
 scope of Tacitus and Plutarch severally are as 
 different as is their style ; but the reviewer's 
 remark suggests some observations. Tacitus, the 
 supreme master of biting brevity, was short in 
 his biographies because he was writing not 
 biography but history. Plutarch's Lives, though 
 by one standard ^f comparison phort, are by 
 another long. He wrote not so much individual 
 biography, as collective ; and if his scale be 
 compared with a collection such as the National 
 Dictionary, it will be found that Plutarch's Lives 
 are long. 
 
 Length or shortness in biography must 
 obviously be relative, not only to the importance 
 of the subject and the quantity of appropriate 
 
8 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 material, but also to the design of the book as 
 a work of art. In the kindred art of graphic 
 representation there may be sketches and finished 
 portraits, and among the latter whole-lengths, half- 
 lengths, and heads. An intelligent critic does not 
 say that the sketch of a head in half-a-dozen lines 
 by Phil May is bad because it is not wrought 
 with the minuteness of a portrait - piece by 
 Holbein ; nor is a play in fi^^ acts by Shakespeare 
 declared too long because Browning gave a life's 
 drama in the fifty-six lines of" My Last Duchess." 
 Southey's Life of Nelson — ^that " immortal monu- 
 ment raised by genius to valour " — was not too 
 short because Lockhart's Life of Scott was long. 
 The question whether a sketch or a full-length 
 is in any particular case the more appropriate 
 biographical method depends upon another factox. 
 Has the person's life-story been told before, are 
 most of the relevant facts already known, or is 
 there material available which is both new and 
 important ? In the former case, the better 
 method is that which the French call a " study," 
 and in which, for grace and lucidity, they are 
 unsurpassed. Brevity is therein the wise counsel. 
 Yet the pursuit of brevity by those who might 
 have told us more about great and interesting 
 people has involved us in much loss. " Many 
 other things I could now say of him," wrote 
 Anthony a Wood in closing his too short account 
 of a famous Oxonian, " relating either to his most 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 9 
 
 generous mind in prosperity, or dejected estate 
 in his worst state of poverty, but for brevity's 
 sake I shall now pass them by." Much that we 
 would gladly know about Richard Lovelace is 
 therefore lost to us. Let us be thankful that no 
 evil genius was at Boswell's elbow to persuade 
 him for brevity's sake- to cut down his anecdotes 
 of Dr. Johnson. 
 
 The proper criterion to apply to products of 
 the art of biography is concerned nof with size 
 but with Relevance. The pages in a biography 
 may be rightly many and rightly few. The book 
 is condemned unless they are relevant ; just as in 
 the case of a picture detail can only be right if 
 it is pertinent. But relevant to what ? In con- 
 sidering this question we shall come pearest, I 
 think, to the essential conditions of the art ; and 
 the words with which the Father of Biography 
 prefaces one of his most famous Lives will carry 
 us far oh the way to the heart of the matter. 
 " We shall now proceed," says Plutarch, " to give 
 the lives of Alexander the Great and of Caesar 
 who overthrew Pompey ; and, as the quantity 
 of material is so great, we shall only premise that 
 we hope for indulgence though we do not give 
 the actions in full detail and with a scrupulous 
 exactness, but rather in a short summary ; since 
 we are writing not Histories, but Lives. Nor is 
 it always in the most distinguished achievements 
 that men's virtues or vices may be best discerned ; 
 
lo THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 • but very often an action of small note, a short 
 saying, or a jest shall distinguish a person's real 
 character more than the greatest sieges or the 
 most important battles." How many biographies 
 would have been better done had these words 
 been taken to heart ! Yet Plutarch's instructions 
 may be pushed too far. " He is the greatest of 
 biographers," says Mr. Frederic Harrison in a 
 pleasant chapter of Among My Books, " because 
 he thoroughly grasped and practised the true 
 principle of biographic work— to make a living 
 portrait of a man's inner nature, not to write the 
 annals of his external acts. The conventional 
 biography records what the person did\ the true 
 biography reveals what the person was.''* That 
 is a true saying, and every biographer should bind 
 it about his neck when setting himself to his task. 
 Yet it is not quite'the whole truth. In the case 
 of a man of action, a Life which left out what he 
 did would be absurd. Who would be satisfied 
 with a Life of Gladstone which said nothing of 
 his Budgets, his Midlothian campaign, his fight 
 for Home Rule } You cannot show what such 
 a man was except in relation to what he did ; but 
 the essential thing is at the same time to bring 
 out the relation between what he did and what he 
 was. Few, I suppose, will dispute Mr. Harrison's 
 judgment that Plutarch's Life of Alexander is 
 " the most masterly portrait ever- painted with 
 the pen — far more true, more real, and more 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 1 1 
 
 graven on the memory of ages, than are all the 
 laborious studies of all the annalists ancient and 
 modern " ; though Professor Freeman, I think, 
 preferred ArriaiTto Plutarch. Yet Plutarch tells 
 us a great deal about what Alexander did. His 
 Life is a masterpiece of biography, not because 
 Plutarch left out actions and events, but because 
 he made them the index of a mind and a character. 
 There is a remark to this effect in a British 
 classic which in the opinion of at least one com- 
 petent judge 1 may be set up as a rival to Boswell's 
 "Johnson. " If," says Roger North in his Life of 
 the Lord Keeper, " the history of a life hangs 
 altogether upon great importances such as concern 
 the church and state, and drops the peculiar 
 economy and private conduct of the person that 
 gives title to the work, it may be a history and a 
 very good one ; but of any thing rather than of 
 that person's life." To keep the man in the 
 foreground, to make him stand' out as a person 
 from the background of event, action, and circum- 
 stance : that is the essential duty of a biographical 
 artist. It is also his greatest difficulty ; and that, 
 perhaps, is a reason (though others might be 
 suggested) why, as has often been remarked, the 
 
 ' Robert Louis Stevenson, who used to take the Linies of. the Norths with 
 him on his travels. It was not only that as a Scot he had to be critical of 
 Johnson, It might be argued that as a work of art Roger North's should 
 be counted the better, because, unlike Boswell's, it owes nothing of its 
 excellence to the subject. Unlike Johnson the Norths were dull, I owe 
 this note to my friend the late Mr, B, R, Wise. 
 
12 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 best biographies are more often of men of letters 
 than of men of action. 
 
 The biographer, then, must be relevant to 
 individual character. He is to remember 
 Plutarch's words ; he is to write not Histories, 
 but Lives. Often he may from the nature of his 
 material make fresh contribution to history ; and 
 it is worth noticing in this connection that 
 Plutarch, in another place, explains that his 
 reason for passing lightly over much in the Life 
 of Nicias is that he has nothing to add to the 
 inimitable narrative of Thucydides. If, on the 
 other hand, a biographer find new material at 
 hand, he must become a historian ; yet even so, 
 if he desires to make < his book a work of art, the 
 history must be subordinated to the biography. 
 A book which proclaims itself the Life and Times 
 of Somebody is a hybrid little likely to possess 
 artistic merit as biography. The true biographer 
 will similarly beware of Somebody and his Circle. 
 His work is to be relevant to an individual. Of 
 course a man's family and friends, and his dealings 
 with them, are always some part, and often a 
 large part, of his own life. Such dealings come 
 within Plutarch's category of " things which serve 
 to decipher the man and his nature." Who could 
 gain a true idea of Dr. Johnson -apart from his 
 friends } But one of Boswell's many artistic 
 merits is that the Doctor is always at the centre 
 of the circle. A like reason is not available in 
 
I . THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 13 
 
 the case of men who lived aloof; and thus, if 
 Lord Rosebery's book on Cha,tham were to be 
 regarded as a biograpliy — a description, however, 
 which it expressly disclaims — there are sketches 
 in it which cannot be considered wholly relevant ; 
 though, to be sure, their omission would remove 
 some of the most brilliant pieces of that admirable 
 torso. If there be a fault in Sir George Trevelyan's 
 Early Life of Charles James Fox^ it is a tendency 
 to discursiveness ; though, here again, it were 
 ungrateful to wish anything away from what is 
 one of the most delightful biographical studies 
 in our language. 
 
 It is, however, in relation to the family of the 
 subject of a biography that the rules of relevance 
 are most often and most flagrantly disregarded. 
 For my part I generally find the conventional 
 first chapter on Ancestry as tiresome as — dare L 
 say it i* — ^the introduction to a Waverley novel. 
 I am aware that there is a school which claims 
 that biography should adjust itself to the newest 
 scientific lights or theories, and trace the hero's 
 descent in such a way as to serve the need of 
 students of heredity and genetics. Sir Sidney 
 Lee has, however, dealt with this claim so admir- 
 ably in his Leslie Stephen Lecture on Biography, 
 that I shall pass it over lightly. Except in specfal 
 cases such researches into hereditary influences, 
 even in the first degree, are often a snare to the 
 biographer. Plutarch set the fashion, and after 
 
14 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 telling us, in the introduction to the Life of 
 Alexander, aforesaid, that he is concerned only 
 with what throws light upon a person's real 
 character, proceeds forthwith to relate Alexander's 
 descent from Hercules and to give us particulars 
 of his father and mother on the eve of their 
 marriage. I leave them aside in the decent 
 obscurity of a foreign tongue. The greatest 
 expert in genetics would derive no light from 
 them. The dreams and omens of ancient bio- 
 graphers reappear in the pages of the moderns 
 as ancestral incidents or circumstances invested 
 with far-fetched significance. Mr. Chesterton 
 makes some excellent remarks in this connection 
 at the beginning of his Life of Browning, There 
 is a theory that the poet was descended from 
 feudal barons ; another, that he was of Jewish 
 blood ; a third, that there was in him a strain of 
 the negro. We are shown how easily each of 
 these hypothetical descents can be made from the 
 poet's writings to appear significant ; " but," 
 asks Mr. Chesterton, " is there in the world a 
 biographer who could lay his hand upon his heart 
 and say that he would not have seen as much 
 significance in any three other nationalities .?" 
 And he proceeds in a passage of excellent chaff 
 to show how significant it might have been if 
 Browning's ancestors had been Frenchmen, his 
 grandfather a Swede, or his great-aunt a Red 
 Indian. Mr. Chesterton here hits on the head 
 
I ' THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 15 
 
 what is a very common " sin and snare of bio- 
 graphers." They " tend to see significance in 
 everything ; characteristic carelessness if their 
 hero drpps his pipe, and characteristic carefulness 
 if he picks it up again." When such character- 
 istics are traced back to ancestors in the third and 
 fourth degree, the thing becomes as tiresome as 
 ridiculous. Until at least the laws of heredity 
 are better determined, I suggest that biographers 
 would be well advised to draw the line before 
 they reach great-grandfathers. For the bio- 
 graphical relevance of grandfathers there does 
 seem to be a case ; the classic instance is that of 
 Governor Pitt, whose fiery blood descended, in 
 tord Rosebery's phrase, " like burning lava " to 
 his grandson, the Earl of Chatham. As for a 
 man's brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins, 
 many biographies are full of them most 
 superfluously. 
 
 Another danger of biographical irrelevance 
 lurks in a Life and Letters. ' " It is too much the 
 habit of modern biographers," says Ruskin, " to 
 confuse epistolary talk with vital facts." The 
 letters whiclJ a man writes, as also those which 
 Ke receives, may indeed be relevant and vital 
 biographical fact. They may or they may not. 
 In the case of the letters written by him, it depends 
 much upon his powers of expression and habits 
 of self-fevelation. In the case of letters received 
 by him, it depends entirely- upon whether they do 
 
1 6 THE ART^ OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 or do not throw light on his own actions and 
 character.! These rules of the art of biography 
 ar^ more obvious than observed. Many bio- 
 graphies are packed with letters which have no 
 closer relation to the subject of the book than 
 that he was the recipient of them. Here is an 
 extract from a modern biography : " The follow- 
 ing interesting letter from Chichester Fortescue 
 deserves to be included in these pages, if only 
 for the remarkable prophecy of a Home Rjile 
 party in the House of Commons which it 
 contains." Qui s'excuse, s'accuse. In a Life of 
 Chichester Fortescue his prophecy in 1866 might 
 be relevant, but the biographer was writing the 
 Life of an altogether different person, in relation 
 to whom the letter has no relevance whatever. 
 Of course a biographer's temptation in this matter 
 is great. He finds interesting things in the 
 papers before him, and rather than pass them 
 over, he flings relevance aside and brings them 
 in. It is a temptation which requires some 
 strength of artistic conscience to resist ; but the 
 resistance may find its reward. The man who 
 writes a biography full of irrelevant good things 
 will have them picked out by others who will 
 fit them into their proper places. He does but 
 
 ' In a review of Lord Morley's Recollections it was complained that 
 the author allowed himself to have all the best of it in his correspondence 
 with the Government of India because he gave all his own letters and none 
 of Lord Minto's. Lord Morley might reasonably have replied that he was 
 writing not a Life of Lord Minto, but his own. 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 17 
 
 open a quarry. He wJio writes with strict 
 respect for the conditions of his art may carve 
 a statue. 
 
 . Sometimes there are accidents in the making 
 of biographies whereby letters which would have 
 been more relevant in one place are given where 
 they are less relevant in another. There is a 
 curious instance in the case of two important 
 biographies which recently appeared almost simul- 
 taneously of men who for part of their lives', were 
 in close official relations-^Lord Clarendon and 
 Lord Lyons. One of the most memorable events 
 in the diplomatic career of Lord Clarendon was 
 his proposal for general disarmament in 1870 — ^a 
 proposal which anticipated certain suggestions of 
 our own day, and which at the time was promptly 
 followed by the outbreak of the Franco-German 
 vWar. Absit omen I '^ In Sir Herbert Maxwell's 
 Life of Lord Clarendon the affair receives bare 
 mention in a few lines. In Lord Newton's Life 
 of Lord. Lyons it is the subject of a most interesting 
 chapter, and many documents relating to it are 
 published. Yet the initiative was Lord Claren- 
 don's. He was, indeed, prompted in the first 
 instance by the French Government ; but he 
 made the proposal 'his own, and pushed it con 
 amore. Lord Lyons, on the other hand, was in 
 this matter nothing but a rather unwilling and 
 wholly sceptical intermediary. It cannot be said 
 
 ^ This was written in March 1914. 
 
1 8 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 that the letters are irrelevant to the Life of Lord 
 Lyons, but they would have been far more relevant 
 in the Life of Lord Clarendon. One is tempted 
 to wish that some biographical clearing-house or 
 exchange could be established whereby the proper 
 material might find its way to the proper place. 
 
 Next to Relevance, in the canons of the 
 biographer's art, come Selection and Arrangement. 
 Anything that is irrelevant should be excluded, 
 but not everything that is relevant can be included. 
 Selection must depend primarily of course upon 
 the determined scale ; but even in a full-length, 
 two -volume biography, wholesale rejection is 
 necessary. It is, however, quite as easy to err 
 by leaving out as by putting in. The portrait 
 may be rendered incomplete, and even false, 
 by undue reticence, as well as by inconsiderate 
 babbling. Biographical " indiscretion "is a term 
 commonly applied only to the latter error, but 
 the forriier sometimes merits it no less. There 
 was a striking instance in the biographical treat- 
 ment of a modern man of letters. The authorised 
 account of his life took the form of a selection 
 of his private letters. Singularly frank in some 
 directions, the selection was so severely reticent 
 in others that the editor took a subsequent 
 occasion to correct the entirely misleading im- 
 pression — obscuring some of the hero's " most 
 characteristic traits " — which the original volumes 
 had necessarily created. I think that the editor's 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 19 
 
 second thoughts were well-advised ; but who can 
 be sure that the correction will catch up the 
 misleading picture ? Every one is familiar with 
 such phrases in a biography as "Of his domestic 
 relations this is not the place to speak," or " There 
 are some aspects of his life and character too 
 sacred to be here put down." Such remarks show 
 a misconception of what biography is, and are a 
 confession of failure. To tell " sacred " things 
 aright requires the nicest tact, but to leave them 
 altogether untold is to strip the biography of the 
 things best worth telling. It is to turn the key 
 on the heart of the subject. 
 
 Arrangement is a difficulty no less great than 
 selection. By the laws of human life, a bio- 
 grapher has, it is true, a beginning and an end 
 prescribed to him ; but between the birth and 
 the death of his subject, how great is the call upon 
 his art for proportion, order, convenience, lucidity 
 and all the other branches of arrangement ! The 
 infinite variety among the lives of different men, 
 their difi^erences in number and kind of interests, 
 occupations and actions, require a corresponding 
 variety in the method best adapted to each 
 particular case. Any practitioner of the art must 
 be accounted peculiarly fortunate and success- 
 ful if he is not told, whatever method he has 
 adopted, that he would have done better to follow 
 another. In the case of a full and varied life, 
 the severely chronological method, consistently 
 
20 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 applied throughout, is almost certainly the worst. 
 It becomes worse than 6ver, in a biography which 
 is mainly composed of letters, if these too are 
 given in mere chronological order., The object 
 of the biographer is to produce an ordered 
 impression, not the effect of a kaleidoscope. To 
 give within the compass of a few hundred pages 
 a coherent account of the innumerable facts, 
 thoughts, reasons, circumstances, which make up 
 a human life calls far more insistently than is 
 always recognised for architectonic art. 
 
 One condition of the biographer's art remains 
 to be noticed, but it is so obvious that very few 
 words about it will suffice. The biographer mvist 
 be honest. He must have general sympathy 
 with his subject, for without it he cannot hope 
 to gain the insight which will enable him to 
 understand and to interpret. Lewes's Life of 
 Goethe^ which Leslie Stephen, than whom there 
 could be no higher authority, accounted one of 
 the greatest of English biographies, fails, if at 
 all, only because Lewes's " general prepossession 
 against German style and dislike of the mystical 
 and allegorical may disqualify him for adequate 
 appreciation of some aspects of Goethe's genius." 
 But a biographer's sympathy should be neither' 
 blind nor undiscriminating. I will quote words 
 from two modern masters of the art. " No 
 partiality, no grudge," says Lord Morley, after 
 Cicero. " I had no choice," says Sir George 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 21 
 
 Trevelyan in the second edition of his famous 
 Life of Macaulay, " but to ask myself, with regard 
 to each feature of the portrait, not whether it 
 was attractive, but whether it was characteristic." 
 There is danger in each extreme. The great 
 biographies may reveal the hero's faults, but they 
 do so frankly, and the predominant note is 
 sympathy. A touch of ambiguity or a scratch 
 of over-candid friendship may spoil the effect. 
 Mr. Purcell's Life of Manning is to my thinking 
 one of the best of modern biographies, but it Just 
 missed the very highest rank by leaving an 
 uncomfortable sense of ambiguity in the writer's 
 standpoint. What has set some readers against 
 Froude as the biographer of Carlyle — ^though for 
 my part I rank the Life of Carlyle among the 
 masterpieces — ^is a suspicion that he bore some 
 grudge. Charles Eliot Norton, who, however, 
 is hardly an impartial witness, found the book 
 " artfully malignant." The sugar-candied mood 
 is as dangerous as the too candid. What spoils 
 Dowden's Life of Shelley is a partiality passing 
 the boujids of common sense. Of the excessive 
 partiality of many a biography written by adoring 
 relatives, it is needless to speak. 
 
 In discussions about art the dispute i% per- 
 petual over the relation, in sphere and importance, 
 between subject and treatment. In painting let 
 us agree that you may make a fine work of art 
 out of a pumpkin or a hide ; but in the art of 
 
22 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 biography there is no purse to be made out of a 
 sow's ear. Half the battle is won when the artist 
 has got hold of a good subject. A bad biography 
 can, indeed, be written on a good subject ; but 
 it is almost as difficult to make a complete failure 
 with a good subject as to make even a passable 
 success with a bad subject. It is not always 
 recognised, however, wherein the goodness of a 
 subject from the point of view of biography 
 consists. Moral goodness is of course not in 
 itself a sufficient recommendation. There are 
 excellent biographies, and autobiographies, of 
 rascals, and there are very dull books about saints. 
 Neither is it sufficient alone that the subjects 
 should be persons of importance in their day. 
 The first qualifications of a good subject are that 
 the life of the man or woman should be really 
 memorable, that there should be a marked per- 
 sonality behind the actions, that the character 
 should be distinctive and interesting. The 
 practice of biography differs widely in its choice 
 of subjects from these requirements of the art. 
 It is held that Cabinet rank, or membership of 
 the Royal Academy, or the episcopal bench and 
 so forth, qualifies a man if so facto to become the 
 subject of a biography in two volumes. Every- 
 body, I expect, could name a political biography 
 — and if a dozen people were asked to do it, a 
 dozen different books would very probably be 
 named — ^from which the resulting impression was 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 23 
 
 only a wonder how and why. the hero attained 
 his high place. Such a result, it may be said, is 
 true to life, for the wonder is sometimes expressed 
 of living Cabinet Ministers or of other persons 
 officially stamped as great, wise, and eminent. 
 But this is an inadequate result of a work of art, 
 and is never what the avfthor intended. The 
 failure arises sometimes from the simple fact that 
 the politician, though eminent in place, was in 
 truth a very commonplace person ; and in other 
 cases because the hero's life was too entirely 
 political. Politics in themselves are among the 
 most intractable forms of biographical material. 
 The temptation to write history and not lives is 
 then peculiarly strong ; the difficulty of sub- 
 ordinating the background to the figure is great ; 
 and, moreover, the outward actions are often not 
 an index of the man, the political medium is a 
 distorting mirror. " Bismarck, reading a book 
 of superior calibre, once came upon a portrait of 
 an eminent personage whom he had known well. 
 Such a man as is described here, he cried, never 
 existed ; and he went on in graphic strokes to 
 paint the sitter as he had actually found him. 
 ' It is not in diplomatic materials, but in their life - 
 of every day that you come to know men.' " ^ 
 One comes to know more of Bismarck from 
 Busch's Diary than from any collection of the 
 Chancellor's public acts. The official lives of 
 
 1 Lord Morley's Notes on Politics and History, p. 52. 
 
24 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 contemporary politicians, though rarely forming 
 first-rate biographical material, may nevertheless 
 afford valuable material, or footnotes, to history, 
 arid by that standard they may perhaps fairly 
 claim to be judged. 
 
 A second element in the goodness of bio- 
 graphical subject is the existence of material of 
 self-expression clothed in attractive and intelligible 
 language. Such material may exist in the shape 
 of diaries, memoranda, letters, or recorded con- 
 versations. It is sometimes laid down as a 
 general rule that a biographer should not interpose 
 between the reader and the subject but should 
 leave the subject to reveal himself. There is a 
 large element of truth in this rule, but it may be 
 stated far too absolutely. The practice of some 
 of the best biographers conforms least to it, and 
 only in the rarest cases will strict adherence to it 
 produce a full, true, and sufficient picture. Per- 
 sons vary infinitely both in their gifts of self- 
 expression and in their candour. Some are 
 morbidly self-abasing •^, others are careful always 
 to give themselves le beau role \ others leave no 
 key under their own hand with which to unlock 
 their hearts. There are, as somebody has said, 
 three forms of truth about every man : there is 
 what, he seemed to himself, to his friends, and to 
 his enemies. The biographical artist has to seek 
 a final impression of " the true truth " by con- 
 sidering and condensing all the factors. But the 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 25 
 
 existence of such material as was indicated just 
 now is an enormous help. The greatest of 
 mankind are sometimes, however, the most lack- 
 ing in the gift or habit of self-expression, and 
 this is one reason why biographies of great men 
 are often the least satisfying. There is an awful 
 aloofness about such men, and the best art of 
 biography cannot bridge the gulf : 
 
 Thin, thin, the pleasant human noises grow. 
 
 And faint the city gleams ; 
 Rare the lone pastoral huts — marvel not thou ! 
 The solemn peaks but to the stars are known, 
 But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams ; 
 Alone the sun arises, and alone 
 
 Spring' the great streams. 
 
 Dr. Johnson was a great man, but he was 
 clubbable and communicative, and so Boswell 
 had a perfect subject. The elder Pitt screened 
 himself from his fellows. His letters on public 
 affairs are pompous and. involved ; his family 
 letters are for the most part stilted. It is difficult 
 to come into close touch with a man who writes 
 to his favourite son that " all the Nine will sue 
 for your Love " and that the College is " not yet 
 evacuated," he supposes, " of its learned garri- 
 son." Lord Rosebery wrote some interesting 
 pages on this topic in the preface to his fragment 
 on Chatham, concluding, in consequence of the 
 lack of suitable biographical material, that " the 
 complete life of Chatham is not merely difficult 
 
26 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 to write, but impossible. It is safe, indeed, to 
 assert that it never has been written and never can 
 be written." He did not know that the word 
 impossible is unknown to the learned garrison 
 of this College. Mr. Basil Williams in his recent 
 hife of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, has filled 
 what had been a conspicuous and even a dis- 
 creditable lacuna in English literature. He has 
 given us a biography of one of the glories of our 
 race and State, which is well-proportioned, admir- 
 able in style, and sane in judgment. It would 
 be interesting to know whether Lord Rosebery 
 finds reason for withdrawing his obiter dictum. 
 If he does not, it will not be from any fault on 
 the part of the author of the new Life of Chatham ; 
 it will be from defect, which even he was unable 
 to .supply, in the material. The account of 
 the statesman's speeches,' triumphs, difficulties, 
 schemes and eflfbrts, could hardly be bettered ; 
 of the inner springs of his action, of the life of 
 the man in undress, there is still something to 
 seek. The great Commoner had- no taste for 
 self-revelation, and would have brooked no 
 Boswell. 
 
 The puissant English Minister of a later age 
 was, from one point of view, an ideal subject 
 for a biographer's art. Mr. Gladstone was not 
 only a great man concerned in great actions, but 
 his character was of many-sided interest and 
 of fascinating complexity. " Robert Browning, 
 
I THE ART /OF BIOGRAPHY 27 
 
 writer of plays," might in him have found " a 
 subject to your hand." But from another point 
 of view, the subject was less ideal. Mr. Glad- 
 stone was voluminously communicative in letters 
 and in speeches — the speeches reported verbatim, 
 not conjecturally pieced together like Chatham's. 
 He was the greatest speaker of the age, but the 
 speeches were oratory, not literature, and much 
 of their fascination disappears with the flashing 
 eye, the resonant voice, the eloquent gesture, the 
 eager personality of the man. And then as a 
 writer of letters, diaries,- and memoranda Mr. 
 Gladstone did not shine by any habitual concision 
 or pungency of phrase. The biographer of 
 Disraeli will here be at the advantage ; and not 
 less the biographer of Lord Salisbury, if I may 
 judge by such few private letters and notes as I 
 have seen. Lord Morley's private material for 
 the Life of Gladstone was, I imagine, rather 
 voluminous than easily tractable. And this is 
 the reason of a judgment which I once heard , 
 passed upon the book by a friend. " Whenever 
 Morley fills the page by direct recital or other- 
 wise, the book is uniformly interesting ; when 
 he brings Mr. Gladstone on in propria persona^ 
 it sometimes tends to drag." Iwas too good a 
 Gladstonian and too much absorbed in the 
 contents to have noticed this diflference when I 
 first read the book, but I petxeive what my friend 
 meant. Mr. Gladstone as a writer was not light 
 
28 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 of hand, and this was one of many difficulties 
 the consideration of which must enhance any 
 craftsman's admiration for Lord Morley's great 
 'achievement. 
 
 One of Mr. Gladstone's contemporaries has 
 more recently been the subject of a biography 
 which also is markedly successful. John Bright 
 was a great orator, but you cannot make a good 
 biography merely .out of speeches, even though, 
 as in this case, they possess literary form. He 
 was a great man, but his scope was somewhat 
 limited. His mind was not very flexible ; his 
 interests did not cover a very wide range. Nor, 
 except in his best speeches, was his manner of 
 self-expression particularly attractive. I took 
 up Mr. Trevelyan's Life of him with somewhat 
 anxious curiosity. In Garibaldi's romantic ad- 
 ventures he had the advantage of a splendid 
 subject, which he treated with contagious gusto 
 and with perfect art. But what would he be 
 able to make of a subject so different, and by 
 comparison so humdrum, as John Bright .'' I 
 think that most readers have found that the book 
 holds them from the first page to the last. Mr. 
 Trevelyan has overcome the difficulties of the 
 subject by due subordination of external circum- 
 stances to personality, and by impressing the 
 force of a noble and simple character upon every 
 chapter of the Life. 
 
 Mr. Trevelyan's books suggest another re- 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 29 
 
 flection on the materials in the art of biography. 
 Unchastened hero-worship is, as we have seen, 
 out of place in biography ; but generous symr 
 
 -pathy is essential, and in biography, as in the 
 novel or the drama, contrasts and foils are often 
 useful. The hero demands a villain ; and the 
 subject for a sympathetic biography may be 
 accounted additionally fortunate if the material 
 
 ■ aptly provides a villain of the piece. When ~ Mr. 
 Gladstone is the hero, the villain is ready-made 
 to the biographer's hand in Mr. Disraeli. As 
 soon as Disraeli's biographer reaches the point 
 at which those two dominant personalities fill the 
 stage with their conflict, the parts will of course 
 be reversed. Did not Mr. Gladstone himself say, 
 in a speech here in Oxford, which I well remember 
 hearing as an undergraduate, that his mission in 
 life had become " to dog the footsteps of Lord 
 Beaconsfield " .'' In Mr. Trevelyan's Life of 
 John Bright^ where the hero is the opponent of 
 the Crimean War and the popular tribune on 
 behalf of Reform, the villain is Lord Palmerston, 
 whcr-carried thrdugh the war, and in domestic 
 affairs pursued from the Liberal side a Con- 
 servative policy. But in the jbooks about Gari- 
 baldi the same statesman plays, among the sub- 
 sidiary characters, the part of hero to Austrian 
 and other villains. Thus in the biographer's 
 pages " one man in his time plays many parts." 
 I hasten to add that Mr. Trevelyan is obviously 
 
30 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 alive to the humour of the situation ; and in the 
 Life of Bright pleads the necessity of biographical 
 art for dealing so harshly with the stalwart English 
 gentleman who " snapped his fingers in the face 
 of the priests and despots." 
 
 One of the ironies of the art of biography is 
 that the lives which, from some points of view, 
 are best worth writing are those which nobody 
 will read and which, therefore, are seldom written. 
 The Lives for which a loud demand creates a 
 constant supply are of the people who have made 
 open mark in the world ; but they are not always 
 those which are inherently most memorable. 
 " Lives in which the public are interested," says 
 Ruskin, roundly, " are scarcely ever worth writing. 
 For the most part compulsorily artificial, often 
 affectedly so — on the whole, fortunate beyond 
 ordinary rule — ^and, so far as the men are really 
 greater than others, unintelligible to the common, 
 reader, the lives of statesmen, soldiers, authors, 
 artists, or any one habitually set in the sight of 
 many, tell us at last little more' than what sort of 
 people they dealt with, and of pens they wrote 
 with ; the personal life is inscrutably broken up 
 — ofteh contemptibly, and the external aspect of 
 it merely a husk, at the best. The -lives we need 
 to have written for us are of the people whom 
 the world has not thought of — far less heard of — 
 who are yet doing the most of its work, and of 
 whom we may learn how it can best be done." 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 31 
 
 There is some exaggeration in this, though 
 Ruskin saves himself, it -will have been noted, 
 by saying of the lives in which the public are 
 interested that they are, not never, but scarcely 
 ever, worth writing. But that there is truth in 
 his statement will be admitted, I think, by any 
 one who is fond of biography and who recalls 
 how many of- his favourite " Lives " are of little- 
 known perspns. Ruskin's words come from his 
 preface to Ihe Story of Ida, a very charming and 
 touching biography of a Tuscan peasant-girl by an 
 American writer. Miss Francesca Alexander. In 
 an able critical article I saw that some one named 
 as the best biography in the English language 
 the'Life of Dr. John Brown by Dr. Cairns. I read 
 the book in consequence, and though I think 
 that judgment of it capricious, it is certainly a 
 very interesting and well-written biography. Yet 
 the book is, I imagine, little read, and the subject 
 of it is perhaps little remembered except as the 
 father of another Dr. John Brown, the author of 
 Rab and Marjorie. There have been good critics 
 — Dr. Garnett among them — who accounted 
 Carlyle's Life of Sterling not merely a -biographical 
 masterpiece, but the author's most completely 
 satisfactory performance. Carlyle may perhaps 
 be given the curious distinction of having written 
 both one of the best short biographies in the 
 language and one of the worst, by which latter 
 description I have heard a competent authority 
 
32 THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY i 
 
 call his Life of Schiller. For the writing of the 
 Life of John Sterling, two men of genius and one 
 of high literary ability contended — Mill, Carlyle, 
 and Archdeacon Hare. Yet Sterling achieved 
 little, and made small mark in the world. Mr. 
 Chesterton, from a different aspect, touches a 
 point somewhat similar to Ruskin's, and, again, 
 with a note of paradoxical exaggeration. The 
 real gospel of Dickens, he says, is " the in- 
 exhaustible opportunity offered by the liberty and 
 the variety of man. Compared with this life, 
 all public life, all fame, all wisdom, is by its nature 
 cramped and cold and small. For on that defined 
 and lighted public stage men are of necessity 
 forced to profess one set of accomplishments, 
 to rise to one rigid standard. It is the utterly 
 unknown people who can grow in all directions 
 like an exuberant tree. Many of us live publicly 
 with featureless public puppets, images of the 
 small public abstractions. It is when we pass 
 our own private gate, and open our own secret 
 door, that we step into the land of the -giants." 
 What Mr. Chesterton says of the sphere of fiction 
 and caricatilre may be paralleled, I think, in that 
 of biography, I know of readers who make the 
 Dictionary of National Biography their supper book 
 or bed-side book. They would tell us, I expect, 
 that its fascination resides not so much in the apt 
 and lucid biographies of the more famous men, 
 but rather in those of many of the lesser known. 
 
I THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY 33 
 
 men whose lives have never formed the subject 
 of biography elsewhere, but who disclose un- 
 expected points of vivid oddity or otherwise of 
 marked character ; or of men, again, whose 
 capacities found no favouring tide of circumstance. 
 What is really memorable, even for influence and 
 eflFect, is not always what has been marked by the 
 world's coarse thumb. " The growing good of 
 the world," said George Eliot, in closing the story 
 of a life of partial failure, " is partly dependent 
 on unhistoric acts ; and that things are not so 
 ill with you and me as they might have been, is 
 half owing to the number who lived faithfully a 
 hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs." 
 
II 
 
 SOME REMARKS ON RUSKIN'S STYLE 
 
 Mr. Asquith, in a scathing depreciation of the 
 literature of art- criticism, makes exception of 
 Ruskin for his " intellectual independence," 
 " spiritual insight," and " golderi-tongued elo- 
 quence." And indeed the concurrent judgment 
 of the best authorities places Ruskin very high 
 among the great masters of English prose. Lord 
 Morley, by no means sympathetic to Ruskin 's 
 point of view, has named him as one of the " three 
 giants of prose style " who strode across the litera- 
 ture of the nineteenth century. Matthew Arnold, 
 who disliked Ruskin personally, has cited a 
 passage from Modern Painters as marking the 
 highest point to which the art of prose can ever 
 hope to reach. Tennyson, on being asked to 
 name the six authors in whom the stateliest 
 English prose was to be found, gave : Hooker, 
 Bacon, Milton, Jeremy Taylor, De Quincey, and 
 Ruskin. And Lord Acton mentioned Ruskin 
 among those wha " doubled the opulence and 
 
 34 
 
n RUSKIN'S STYLE 35 
 
 significance of language and made prose more 
 penetrating than anything but the highest poetry." 
 
 What are the secrets of Ruskin's mastery ? 
 Elsewhere I have written at length on his models, 
 his studies, and his methods ; but I think that at 
 bottom it nearly all comes to this : that he had 
 something to say, that he said it in the way that 
 was natural to him, and that nature had endowed 
 him with exquisite sensibility. You may analyse 
 a style into its component parts as system- 
 atically as you like ; you may trace, label, and 
 collate as diligently as you can ; and you will be 
 little nearer in the end than in the beginning to 
 the secret of a great writer's charm and power. 
 The fessential features are those which are un- 
 derived and incommunicable. The style is the 
 man. 
 
 In the case of Ruskin's writitig the child was 
 father of the man. The essays on " The Poetry 
 of Architecture," which under the nom de plume 
 of Kata Phusin he contributed to the Architectural 
 Magazine^ were written while he was an under- 
 graduate at'Christ Church. They indicate already 
 his point of view, and contain in germ much of 
 his maturer work. And, as he said of them in 
 later years, these boyish pieces " contain sentences 
 nearly as well put together as any I have done 
 since," and show " the skill of language which the 
 ptiblic at once felt for a pleasant gift in me." 
 The gift was &f nature. The glow, the Qolour, 
 
36 RUSKIN'S STYLE n 
 
 the music, the exuberance of language, are found 
 in his notes and diaries, as Mr. Frederic Harrison 
 has truly said, no less than in his finished books. 
 Mr. Harrison had seen diaries of 1849. In the 
 Library Edition of Ruskin's Works many are 
 given of earlier date, and the same thing is true 
 of them. He was to see more, to feel more, and 
 to learn more ; but throughout his working life 
 he saw with his own eyes, he felt with his own 
 heart, and what he learnt was knowledge at first 
 hand. He read widely and discursively, avoiding 
 commentaries and seldom entering into critical 
 or historical inquiries. The original texts were 
 all he cared to consult in literature ; and in 
 scientific inquiries, if he consulted other re- 
 searches, he soon came to the conclusion that he 
 had better begin over again from the beginning 
 for himself. He confesses it in a playful letter, 
 which I think is one of the happiest of all his 
 exercises in that gentle art. He is apologising 
 to Mrs. Carlyle for delaying to call, and, after 
 giving other excuses, goes on thus : 
 
 Not that I have not been busy — and very busy, too. 
 I have written since May, good 600 pages [of Modern 
 Painters], and am going to press with the first of them on 
 Gunpowder Plot Day, with a great hope of disturbing 
 the Public Peace in various directions. In the course of 
 the 600 'pages I have had to make various remarks on 
 German Metaphysics, on Poetry, Political Economy,' 
 Cookery, Music, Geology, Drras, Agriculture, Horti- 
 
n RUSKIN'S STYLE 37 
 
 culture, and Navigation ; all which subjects I have had 
 to read up accordingly, and this takes time. During my 
 studies of Horticulture I became dissatisfied with the 
 Linnaean and Everybodyelseian arrangement of plants. 
 I have accordingly arranged a system of my own. My 
 studies of political economy have induced me to think, 
 also, that nobody knows anything about that, and I am 
 at present engaged in an investigation, on independent 
 principles, of the Natures of Money, Rent, and Taxes, 
 in an abstract form, which sometimes keeps me awake 
 all night. My studies of German Metaphysics have also 
 induced me to think that the Germans don't know any- 
 thing about them ; and to engage in a serious inquiry 
 into the Finite realisation of Infinity ; which has given 
 me some trouble. . . . But I am coming to see you. 
 
 Ruskin's habit of studying only original 
 texts, or actual phenomena, regardless of what 
 other people had written around the texts or 
 discovered about the phenomena, is obviously 
 a source both of weakness and of strength. It 
 accounts for some of his waywardness and 
 ingenious perversity, but' it encouraged the 
 suggestiveness of his thought and preserved 
 ^hat " intellectual independence " of which Mr. 
 Asquith speaks and which was noted by John 
 Stuart Mill also as characteristic of Ruskin's 
 writing.* 
 
 1 In John Stuart Mill's Diary of 1854 there is this passage : "It is long 
 since there has been an age of which it could be said, as truly as of this, that 
 nearly all the writers, even the good ones, were but commentators : ex- 
 pounders and appliers of ideas borrowed from others. Among those of the 
 present time I can think only of two (now that Carlyle has written himself 
 out, and become a mere commentator on himself) who seem to draw what 
 
38 RUSKIN'S STYLE u 
 
 Ruskin, then, had something of his own to say, 
 and he said it in his own way, but this does not 
 mean that he took no pains in saying it. He 
 tells us in his autobiography that his literary work 
 was done " as quietly and methodically as a piece 
 of tapestry," but he took infinite trouble in getting 
 the stitches right. His command of language 
 was due, he says elsewhere, to " the constant 
 habit of never allowing a sentence to pass proof 
 in which I have not considered whether, for the 
 vital word in it, a better could be found in the 
 dictionary." The study of his manuscripts that 
 was made by Mr. Wedderburn and myself for 
 the Library Edition shows that Ruskin's search 
 for the right word, for the fitting sentence, was 
 often long, and paragraphs and chapters were 
 written over and over again before they satisfied 
 him.^ And this revision was applied not only to 
 his more elaborate passages, but no less to his 
 most simple writing. Cardinal Newman — a great 
 master of simple and lucid English, greater in 
 these particular respects, if we take the whole 
 
 they say from a source within themselves : and to the practical doctrines 
 and tendencies of both these, there are the gravest objections. Comte, on 
 the Continent ; in England (ourselves excepted) I can only think of Ruskin." 
 ' Ruskin carried on his revisions to the stage of proofs, revises, and re- 
 revises. Dr. Furnivall vpas told by Ruskin's father that the publisher came 
 to him one day exhibiting a thickly scored Anal revise and explaining that 
 "tontinuance in such practices would absorb all the author's profits. " Don't 
 let my son know," said the old gentleman ; " John must have his things as 
 he likes them ; pay him whatever would become due, apart from corrections, 
 and send in a separate bill for them to me." Few authors, it may be feared, 
 are blessed with so indulgent a parent. 
 
11 RUSKIN'S STYLE 39 
 
 body of their writings, than Ruskin — submitted 
 to the same discipline. " I have been obliged," 
 he said, " to take great pains with everything I 
 have written, and I often write chapters over and 
 over again, besides innumerable corrections and 
 interlined additions." 
 
 In the Note-Books of Samuel Butler, the " Enfant 
 Terrible of Literature " (as his editor calls him) 
 has this passage : 
 
 I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains 
 with his style and was at the same time readable. Plato's 
 having had seventy shies at one sentence is quite enough 
 to explain to me why I dislike him. . . . Men like Newman 
 and R. L. Stevenson seem to have taken pains to acquire 
 what they called a style as a preliminary measure — ^as 
 something that they had to form before their writings 
 could be of any value. I should like to put it on record 
 that I never took the smallest pains with my style, have 
 never thought about it, and do not know or want to know 
 whether it is a style or whether it is not, as I believe and 
 hope, just common, simple straightforwardness. I cannot 
 cqnceive how any man can take thought for his style 
 without loss to himself and his readers. 
 
 It was wicked of the author of Erewhon to lay 
 hands on his father, the author of the Republic^ 
 and his remark on Newman is unintelligible to 
 me, for the ease and limpidity of Newman, with 
 however great pains attained, are always felt 
 rather than seen. Yet there is an element of 
 truth in what Butler says, and it is necessary to 
 
40 RUSKIN'S STYLE ii 
 
 distinguish. He who takes overmuch thought 
 for his style is in danger of losing the way to 
 excellence ; but the mischief comes, not from 
 taking pains about his manner of saying a thing, 
 but only when the manner begins to be of more 
 moment than the matter. " In the highest as in 
 the lowliest literature," says Mr. Pater, " the one 
 indispensable beauty is, after all, truth — ^truth to 
 bare fact in the latter, as to some personal sense 
 of fact, diverted somewhat from men's ordinary 
 sense of it, in the former ;. truth there as accuracy, 
 truth here as expression, that finest and most 
 intimate form of truth, the vraie ve'rife." 
 
 All the masters of good style say the same 
 thing. Renan, for instance (of whom Mommsen 
 characteristically admitted that he was " a true 
 savant in spite of his beautiful style "), said of 
 St. Sulpice that its conternpt for literature made 
 it ** perforce a capital school for style, the funda- 
 mental rule of which is to have solely in view the 
 thought which it is wished to express." " The 
 absolute condition of Good Writing," said 
 Edward FitzGerald, " is the saying in the most 
 perspicuous and succinct way what one thoroughly 
 understands. This, of course, includes Good 
 English, or it would not be perspicuous to others, 
 however clear to oneself. Really, the Perfection- 
 is to have all this so naturally that no Effort is 
 apparent ; and so the very best Style where there 
 are no marks of it." 
 
n RUSKIN'S STYLE 41 
 
 Butler wrote with admirable lucidity, and if 
 he did it with artless facility he was by so much 
 the more fortunate than most other writers. 
 John Stuart Mill, whose writing is eminently 
 smooth and lucid, has recorded in his Autohio^aphy 
 the assiduous course of reading by which he 
 sought to clarify his style ; and even so, " after 
 revision and re-revision of a piece he felt so little 
 satisfied of its exact conformity to its purpose 
 that he could only bring himself to send it to 
 the printer by recalling how he had felt the same 
 of other writing that people thought useful." ^ 
 Butler succeeded for the most part in conveying 
 to understanding readers the exact sense, or 
 nonsense, which he desired. But how difficult 
 this is — to secure the absolute accordance of 
 expression to idea — ^to find the exactly right 
 words for conveying from one mind to another 
 the facts, perceptions, fancies, impressions, associa- 
 tions which a writer intends ! It is so difficult 
 that in the straining after the effect there is always 
 a danger of the manner overcoming the matter. 
 
 Ruskin, in his earlier writings especially, did 
 not escape this danger ; and, as he often be- 
 moaned, he had to pay the penalty. " All my 
 life," he said in conversation with Mr. Spielmann, 
 " I have been talking to the people, and they have 
 'listened not to what I say but to how I say it ; 
 they have cared not for the matter, but only 
 
 ^ Lord Morley's Recollections, vol. i. p. 59. 
 
42 RUSKIN'S STYLE ii 
 
 for the manner of my words." He became 
 increasingly conscious of this disadvantage, and . 
 his middle and later writing is, with some 
 exceptions, better than his earlier. In one of 
 his Oxford lecturies he pointed this out to us.^ 
 It was a lecture upon Style illustrated by a wide 
 range of literary and artistic references to Turner 
 and Carpaccio, to Virgil and Pope, and Sir Walter 
 Scott and the Book of Job, and I remember not 
 to whom else, and incidentally by citations from 
 his own books. He began with the old maxims 
 that ars est celare artem and that the foundation of 
 right expression in speech or writing is sincerity. 
 The two principles are closely related. " When- 
 ever art is visible there is a trace," he said, " of 
 insincerity, a certain degree of coldness. When 
 there is perfect sincerity, the art, however magnifi- 
 cent, is never visible — the passion and the truth 
 hide it. The drawing of the Greta and Tees, 
 for instance, of Turner — ^it is the best I have ^ — - 
 it looks as if anybody could have done it. And 
 in the best writing it will seem to you as if, 
 whether it speak of little things or great, it 
 couldn't have been said in any other way."^ 
 
 The fault of Ruskin's earlier writing is that 
 it calls attention to its manner by palpable dis- 
 play ; the improvement in his later style is that 
 
 1 The lecture was for the most part extempore. I gave a few recol- 
 lections of it in my Studies in Ruskin {1890). Ruskin's own notes for it 
 are printed in vol. xxii. of the Library Edition. 
 
 ^ Now in the Collection of the Ruskin Drawing School at Oxford. 
 
n RUSKIN'S STYLE 43 
 
 the manner is seen less distinctly and the matter 
 thereby gains weight. In the lecture to which 
 I have referred Ruskin himself illustrated these 
 points by reading, first, a passage, much admired 
 when it appeared in the first volume of Modern 
 Painters, and, then, the peroration, much derided 
 at first, of Unto this Last. The earlier passage 
 is this : 
 
 He who has once stood beside the grave, to look upon 
 the companionship which has been for ever closed, feeling 
 how impotent there are the wild love and the keen sorrow, 
 to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or 
 atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for 
 the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur 
 that debt to the heart, which can on^y be discharged to 
 the dust. ) 
 
 " With my present knowledge of literature,'' 
 said Ruskin, " I could tell in an instant that the 
 person who wrote these words never had so 
 stood beside the dead. Being capable of deep 
 passion, if he liad ever stood beside his dead 
 before it was buried out of -his sight, he would 
 never, in speaking gf the time, have studied 
 how to put three ^s one after another in (^ebt, 
 discharged, and c/ust." And then he turned to 
 what he called the central book of his life and 
 read this : 
 
 And if, on due and honest thought over these things, 
 it seems that the kind of existence to which men are now 
 summoned by every plea of pity and. claim of right may. 
 
44 RUSKIN'S STYLE n 
 
 for some time at least, not be a luxurious one j — consider 
 whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury would be 
 desired by any of us, if we saw clearly at our sides the 
 suffering which accompanies it in the world. Luxury is 
 indeed possible in the future — innocent and exquisite; 
 luxury for all, and by the help of all ; but luxury at present 
 can only be enjoyed by the ignorant; the cruellest man 
 living could not sit at his feast, unless he sat blindfold. 
 Raise the veil boldly ; face the light ; and if, as yet, the 
 ^ light of the eye can only be through tears, and the light 
 of the body through sackcloth, go thou forth weeping, 
 bearing precious seed, until the time come, and the king- 
 dom, when Christ's gift of bread and bequest of peace 
 shall be tfnto this last as unto thee ; and when, for earth's 
 severed multitudes of the wicked and the weary, there 
 shall be holier reconciliation than that of the narrow 
 home, and calm economy, where the Wicked cease — not 
 from trouble, but from troubling — ^and the Weary are 
 at rest. 
 
 Now that passage is better, said Ruskin, than 
 the other, " because there is no art of an im- 
 pudently visible kind in it, and not a word which, 
 as far as I know, you could put another for, 
 without loss to the sense. It is true that ■plea 
 and -pity both begin with ^, but -plea is the right 
 word, and there is ho other which is in full and 
 clear opposition to claim" As we are on points 
 of style, I will add that Ruskin went on to mend 
 the passage somewhat. " Were I writing it 
 now," he said, " I should throw it looser, and 
 explain here and there, getting intelligibility 
 at the cost of concentration. Thus when I say : 
 
II RUSKIN'S STYLE 45 
 
 Luxury is possible in the future — innocent and 
 exquisite ; luxury for all, and by the help of all — 
 
 that is a remain of my old bad trick of putting 
 my words in braces, like game, neck to neck, and 
 leaving the reader to untie them. Hear how I 
 
 should put the same sentence now : 
 
 <*- 
 
 Luxury is indeed possible' in the future — innocent, 
 because granted to the need of all ; and exquisite, because 
 perfected by the aid of all. 
 
 You see," he said, "it has gained a little in 
 melody in being put right, and gained a great 
 deal in clearness." 
 
 Such are among the points in which Ruskin's 
 style shows a progressive improvement, and 
 which, as I often noted in editing his works, he 
 kept constantly in mind when he revised his 
 sentences. It may have surprised some readers 
 — especially such as know Ruskin only from 
 selections of his purple patches — ^to hear him 
 speaking of conciseness as characteristic of him. 
 But so it is. He was a master not more of rhe- 
 torical pomp and of the long rolling sentence than 
 of concentration closely packed with thought. 
 Here is a passage — not irrelevant to some 
 discussions of the day — which is among those 
 which he was happiest,. he said, in having written. 
 It comes from a lecture delivered at Bradford 
 and called " Traffic " : 
 
 The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic 
 
46 RUSKIN'S STYLE n 
 
 element in the soldier's work seems to be — that he is paid 
 little for it ahd regularly: while you traffickers, and 
 exchangers, and others occupied in presumably benevolent 
 business, like to be paid much for it, and by chance. I 
 never can make out how it is that a inight-ermnt does 
 not expect to be paid for his trouble, but a pedlar-errz,nt 
 always does ; — thit people are v^illing to take hard knocks 
 for nothing, but never to sell ribands cheap; that they 
 are ready to go on fervent crusades, to recover the tomb 
 of a buried God, but never on any travels to fulfil the 
 orders of a living one ; — that they will go an)w^here bare- 
 foot to preach their faith, but must be well bribed to 
 practise it, and are perfectly ready to give the Gospel 
 gratis, but never the loaves and fishes.^ 
 
 If" this passage has a literary fault, it is over- 
 concentration. And here is another piece of 
 concentrated thought — 9. passage which Mr. 
 Frederic Harrison has " always taken as a mastfcr- 
 piece of wit, wisdom, and eloquence " : 
 
 In a community regulated only by laws of demand 
 and supply, but protected from open violence, the persons 
 who become rich are, generally speaking, industrious, 
 resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, 
 unimaginative, iiisensitivfe, and ignorant. The persons 
 
 ' The passage comes from T%e Croivn of Wild Qli-ve, about which 
 book thi^anecdote is told, " Ruskin would have appreciated the gratitude 
 of a nian of the Lancashire Fusiliers, of whom a sergeant of the Lancets 
 wrote ! ' He had two ghastly wounds in his breast, and I thought he was 
 booked through. He was quietly reading a little edition of Ruskin's Crcfwn 
 of Wild Olive, and seemed to be enjoying it immensely. As I chatted with 
 him for a few minutes he told me that this little book had been his com- 
 panion all through and that when he died he wanted it to be buried with 
 him. His end came next day, and we buried the book with him' *' {Wett- 
 viin%ter Gazette, Match 23; igij). 
 
n RUSKIN'S STYLE 47 
 
 who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely 
 wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, 
 the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informedi 
 the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, 
 the clumsy knave, the open thief, and the entirely merciful, 
 just, and godly person. 
 
 These passages both belong to Ruskin's 
 
 middle period. Of his altered manner of writing 
 
 in, descriptive passages, a good instance may be 
 
 obtained by comparing the pieces which he wrote 
 
 at different periods about his favourite among 
 
 the sepulchral monuments of Italy, the Ilaria 
 
 of Querela in the cathedral of Lucca. His 
 
 affection for his beautiful work is shared by the 
 
 peasantry. " We have often," says the Arundel 
 
 Society's note on its engraving, " seen the 
 
 Lucchesi, on leaving the Duomo by the door 
 
 beside which the monument is placed, stoop and 
 
 press their lips for a moment to the sweet up- 
 
 ■ turned face." ^ There are four descriptions of 
 
 the monument in the Library Edition, of Ruskin's 
 
 works. The earliest is given in a letter written 
 
 to his father after first sight of it. This is chiefly 
 
 interesting as showing how first impressions were 
 
 worked up, as in this case in the following passage 
 
 in the second volume of Modern Painters : 
 
 In the Cathedral of Lucca, near the entrance-door of 
 the north transept, there is a monument by Jacopo della 
 
 ' The monument, then placed against the wall of the north transept, 
 W3? }» J891 removed to the centre and protected by an irqp railing. 
 
48 RUSKIN'S STYLE n 
 
 Querela to Ilarla di Caretto, the wife of Paolo Guinigi. 
 I name it not as more beautiful or perfect than other 
 examples of the same period, but as furnishing an instance 
 of the exact and right mean between the rigidity and 
 rudeness of the earlier monumental effigies, and the morbid 
 imitation of life, sleep, or death, of which fashion has taken 
 place in modern times. She is lying on a simple couch 
 with a hound at her feet ; not on the side, but with the 
 head laid straight and simply on the hard pillow, in which, 
 let it be observed, there is no effort at deceptive imitatibn 
 of pressure. It is understood as a pillow, but not mis- 
 taken for one. The hair is bound in a flat braid over 
 the fair brow, the sweet and arched eyes are closed, 
 the tenderness of the loving lips is set and quiet ; there 
 is that about them which forbids breath ; something 
 which is not death nor sleep, but the pure image 
 of both. The hands are not lifted in prayer, neither 
 folded, but the arms are laid at length upon the body,- 
 and the forms of the limbs concealed, but not their 
 tenderness. 
 
 If any of us, after staying for a time beside this tomb, 
 could see, through his tears, one of the vain and unkind 
 encumbrances of the grave, which, in these hollow and 
 heartless days feigned sorrow builds to foolish pride, he 
 would, I believe, receive such a lesson of love as no 
 coldness could refuse, no fatuity forget, and no insolence 
 disobey. 
 
 It is a fine passage : Mrs. Laurence Binyon 
 includes it, I see, in her interesting selection of 
 Nineteenth Century Prose, but Ruskin's later de- 
 scriptions of the same monument (1874, 1878) 
 are, I think, better. They are too long to quote, 
 but I will give one extract ; 
 
11 RUSKIN'S STYLE 49 
 
 Her hands are laid on her. breast — not praying — she 
 has no need to pray now. She wears her dress of every 
 day, clasped at her throat, girdled at her waist, the hem 
 of it drooping over her feet. No disturbance of its folds' 
 by pain of sickness, no binding, no shrouding of her sweet 
 form, in death more than in life. As a soft, low wave 
 of summer sea, her breast rises ; no more : the rippled 
 gathering of its close mantle droops to the belt, then sweeps 
 to her feet, straight as drifting snow And at her feet 
 her dog lies vratching her ; the mystery of his mortal life 
 joined, by love, to her immortal one. 
 
 If any reader cares to refer to the descriptions 
 in full, he will see that all the points noticed in 
 Modern Painters are included, but that greater 
 simplicity is attained, while the art of the writing 
 is less obtrusive, the intensity of the feeling is en- 
 hanced, and in some details there is closer fidelity 
 to fact. One point was noticed by Ruskin himself. 
 " In Modern Painters" he said, " I foolishly used 
 the generic word hound to make my sentence 
 prettier. He is a flat-nosed bulldog." 
 
 All this illustrates a fact than which none 
 impressed me more in the course of my long work 
 in editing Ruskin. He revised and elaborated in 
 order to clarify, to chasten, to deepen, and to im- 
 press. Elsewhere I have illustrated this statement 
 by setting out from his manuscripts and proofs the 
 stages through which some of his most eloquent 
 pages passed on the way to their ultimate form.^ 
 
 ' See my Life of Ruskin, vol. i. ch. xviii. Many other instances may be 
 found by reference to the Index to the Library Edition. 
 
 E 
 
so RUSKIN'S STYLE ii 
 
 "It is the chief provocation of my life," he 
 wrote to a friend, "to be called a word- 
 painter." He was a word-painter, but he painted 
 always " with his eye on the object " and with 
 his mind on the thought. This is especially 
 true of his work as a descriptive writer. Sir 
 -Charles Walston has a chapter on " Ruskin 
 a's the fouiider of Phaenomenology of Nature." 
 The claim had already beefl made by Ruskin 
 himself. Of his studies, in Modern Painters, 
 of the nature^ and form of clouds he sa:ys that 
 they are " usually thought of by the public 
 merely as vS^ord-painting," but that they " are in 
 reaility accurately abstracted,, and finally con- 
 centrated, expressions of the general laws of 
 naturial phenomena." He instanced a passage 
 in the chapter of the fourth volume called " The 
 Firmament." " The sentence, ' Mutmuting only 
 wheH' the wind« raise them or rocks divide,' 
 does not describe!, or word-paint, the sound of 
 waters, but (with only the admitted art of a 
 carefully rei?terated r) sums the general causes of 
 it ; while, again, the immediately following 
 senten'ce, defining the limitations of sea and 
 river^ ' restralifted by established shores and 
 guided through unchanging channels,' attempts 
 fiO word-painting, either of coast or burn-side, 
 but states, with only such ornament of its sim- 
 plicity as could be got of the doubled t and 
 doubled ch, the fact of existing rock structure 
 
II RUSKIN'S STYLE 51 
 
 which I was, at that time, alone among^ geologists 
 in asserting." Of his writing in such sort he was 
 " Mot ashamed to express my conviction that it 
 was unlikely to be surpassed by any other author." 
 In editing his Works, which included" a study of 
 things drawn as well as of things written, I saw 
 reason for thinking that Ruskin's conviction 
 was not too thrasonical. Th«re was in him a 
 combination of gifts and studies which raust 
 always be very rare. It was not only that he 
 was possessed of acute sensibility and of a most 
 original mind, together with a great mastery of 
 language. To his work as a descriptive writer 
 he brought the further qualifications of an 
 amateur in some branches of natural science and 
 of an accomplished and most industrious draughts- 
 man. He was something of a botanist and more 
 of a geologist and mineralogist. Of his drawings 
 the catalogue which I compiled for the Library 
 Edition, thoT3!gh it is mainly limited to engraved 
 or exhibited drawings, contains 2145" pieces?, 
 " People sometimes praise me as industrious," 
 he says in his autobiography, " when they count 
 the number of printed volumes which Mr, Alien 
 can now advertise. But the biography of the 
 waste pencilling and passionately forsaken colour- 
 ing, heaped in the dusty corners of Brantwood, 
 if I could write it, would be far more pathetically 
 exemplary or admonitory." He used to say that 
 he kept skies " bottled like his father's sherries," 
 
52 RUSKIN'S STYLE n 
 
 and I doubt if he ever sat down to describe any- 
 thing with the pen which he had not spent hours 
 in drawing with the pencil. He was a word- 
 painter, but he was much else. 
 
 The matter may be brought to a test. Take 
 any of his good passages of description and see. 
 I will name five examples, not as being the best, 
 but as having some interesting association : 
 
 The chapter on " The Region of the Rain- 
 Cloud " in the first volume of Modern Painters. 
 This chapter ends with a comparison of the 
 rendering of the phenomena by Turner and 
 Claude respectively and is referred to in this 
 scene of Morris's Oxford life : " He would often 
 read Ruskin aloud. He had a mighty singing 
 voice, and chanted rather than read those weltering 
 oceans of eloquence as they have never been 
 given before or since, it is most certain. The 
 description of the Slave Ship or of Turner's skies, 
 with the burden, * Has Claude given this } ' 
 were declaimed by him in a manner that made 
 them seem as if they had been written for no end 
 but that he should hurl them in thunder on the 
 head of the base criminal who had never seen 
 what Turner saw in the sky." 
 
 The description of the narcissus fields on the 
 mountain-side above Vevay in the third volume 
 of the same book. This is the passage which 
 Matthew Arnold selected. " There," he said, 
 " is what the genius, the feeling, the tempera- 
 
11 RUSKIN'S STYLE 53 
 
 ment in Mr. Ruskin, the- original and incom- 
 municable part has to do with, and how exquisite 
 it is ! " 
 
 The description of the old tower of Calais 
 Church in the fourth volume. A " glorious 
 thing," said Rossetti of it. In the Library 
 Edition I have - printed the first draft of the 
 passage, and by comparing this with the final 
 form a reader may note how the author omitted 
 superfluous words, pared down alliterations, and 
 knit the sound into closer harmony with the 
 sense. 
 
 The description of an old boat at the beginning 
 of The Harbours of England. " No book in our 
 language," says Mr. Frederic Harrison, " shows 
 more varied resources over prose-writing, or an 
 English more pure, more vigorous, more en- 
 chanting," and of this hymn to the sea-boat he 
 adds that it is "as fine and as true as anything 
 ever said about the sea, even by our sea-poets, 
 Byron or Shelley J' 
 
 And, last, the description of the Rhone at 
 Geneva in Praterita. This is of peculiar inter- 
 est as being the latest piece of the kind which 
 Ruskin wrote with any elaboration. I had heard 
 Sir *Charles Walston in a lecture at the Royal 
 Institution select this passage, as a masterpiece 
 of observation, analysis, selection and rhythm, 
 for a test which he suggested, and I was curious 
 to know when it was written. Chancing to meet 
 
S4 LUSKIN'S STYLE m 
 
 Ruskin not long afterwards, I asked the question. 
 He told me (and indications in his diary confirm 
 his recollection) that it was written in May 1886 
 — a date some months after one of Jiis serious 
 illnesses and a few weeks before another. 
 
 Now take the subject of any of these passages, 
 or sit down to write out a description of anything 
 else touched by Ruskin — a cathedral front, a 
 blade of grass, or a picture by Tintoret — or 
 where a corresponding passage from some other 
 author can be found, bring that itito account 
 and then compare th'e result with Ruskin's work. 
 Wherein would the difference be found to con- 
 sist .'' Not merely, I think, in difference of 
 eloquence and rhythm ; but we should most of 
 us find that we had stated, or that most of the 
 other authors had stated, fewer facts and conveyed 
 the impression of fewer or less significant thoughts. 
 To Ruskin's writing at its best may be applied 
 what he lays down about the art of painting. 
 " Finish," he says, " simply means telling more 
 truth " — truth, in the words already .quoted from 
 Mr. Pater, " either to fact or to some personal 
 sense of fact,' diverted somewhat from men's 
 ordinary sMise of it." 
 
Ill . 
 
 THE ART OF INDEXING 
 
 ^ A servant with this clause 
 
 Makes drudgery divine : , 
 
 Who sweeps a room as for thy iaws 
 Makes that and th' action fine. 
 
 There is no book (in the category of generaj 
 literature) so good that it is not .ma4e better by 
 an index, apd 410 book so bad that it ,.ni^ not 
 by this adjunct escape ifche worst ,copdenanatio;i. 
 Carlylcj the foe of Pryasdust, reserved his 
 heaviest fire for thos,e n^enxbers ,of the species 
 who had not even the decency to index tj?.^rri- 
 sdves. He gives a list of books ^t the ibeginning 
 of his Cromwell: " Enormous folios, ,these and 
 many others haverb^gn priAted, and somrC of them 
 again printed, but never yqt ,edited-rTT:^4ited as 
 you edit wagonloads of .broken bjciick^ ag4 4ry 
 mortar, simply by tumbling up ,th.e w^gon,, J^.Qt 
 one of those monstrous ,ol;d volu;^es has so WW^ 
 as an available Index ! " 4^4 Agaii" ,^t the 
 beginning of his M^iedric.^,; 
 
 Books born .mostly ef. Chaos, which iwant^ll ithijigg, 
 even an index, are a painful pljject. ... The ^r^t^^jn 
 
 55 
 
S6 THE ART OF INDEXING in 
 
 Dryasdust, otherwise an honest fellow and not afraid of 
 labour, excels all other Dryasdusts yet known. . . He 
 writes big books wanting in almost every quality; and 
 does not even give an Index to them. Enough : he could 
 do no other : I have striven to forgive him. 
 
 The strife was hard and not, I imagine, success- 
 ful, for Carlyle is credited with the saying that a 
 publisher who issues a book without an index 
 should be hanged. The Roxburghe Club, think- 
 ing that trial should precede execution, proposed 
 that the omission of an Index, " when essential," 
 should be an indictable offence, and Lord Camp- 
 bell, in a more practical spirit, proposed that in 
 such a case an author should be deprived of 
 copyright. In spite of such fulminations, authors 
 and publishers continually offend, and even when 
 an index is given it is tqo often done in- a per- 
 functory and slovenly manner. " A dreary book 
 crowned by a barren index," says Lord Rosebery 
 _,of Forsyth's Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena, 
 writing as one who had barely survived " the 
 hideous task " of reading his way through those 
 " indigestible " and massive three volumes. The 
 fact is that the importance of the art of indexing 
 is little understood. Many people do not even 
 know that it is an art at all. 
 
 Two classes of books in particular should 
 always have a good index — the best books and 
 the most unreadable books. The best books, 
 because there is so much in them that a reader 
 
in THE ART OF INDEXING 57 
 
 will want to find again ; the worst books, because 
 lacking an index they are without any reason for 
 existing at all. Take, for instance, the Parlia- 
 mentary Debates. No man of sense reads them 
 for pleasure. They are valuable only for refer- 
 ence, and a book of reference without a complete 
 index is almost a contradiction in terms. For 
 many years Hansard was indexed as badly as 
 could be. It is now much better done, because 
 the entries are fuller and more numerous. 
 
 Should even a novel have an index } There 
 is high authority for answering, as the parlia- 
 mentarians say, in the afHrmative. Dr. Johnson, 
 in writing to Mr. Richardson about Clarissa 
 Harlowe, said : 
 
 I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the 
 reader recollects any incident, he may easily find it, which 
 at present he cannot do, unless he knows in which volume 
 it is told ; for Clarissa is not a performance to be read 
 with eagerness, and laid aside for ever; but will be 
 occasionally consulted by the busy, the aged,^ and the 
 studious ; and therefore I beg that this edition, by which 
 I suppose posterity is to abide, may want nothing that 
 can facilitate its use. 
 
 The egregious Mr. Croker has it that Johnson's 
 proposition was so absurd that it can only be 
 ascribed to a desire on his part to minister to 
 Richardson's vanity. But not every one is, like 
 Lord Macaulay, a walking index to Clarissa, 
 who, it should be remembered, is in seven' or 
 
5^ THE ART OF INDEXING in 
 
 even eight volumes, and there is a great deal to 
 be^'said for Johnson's suggestion. A biography 
 cannot be considered complete without an index. 
 Why not also a novel ? The great .characters 
 -of fiction are much more worthy of memory, 
 and do in fact live much longer, than the subjects 
 of most biographies. " For the life after death," 
 says Samuel Butler of Hamlet, Don Quixote, 
 Mr. Pickwick and some others, " it is not neces- 
 sary that a man or a woman should have lived." ^ 
 It must, however, be admitted, that for a novelist 
 still alive to furnish his books with an index 
 would be a dangerous presumption. Richardson 
 might have carried it off, for his Pamela and 
 Clarissa went forth conquering and to conquer, 
 but hardly .another could so venture. When time 
 has set its seal on a novelist's work comes the 
 day for an index. The Dickens Dkiiotiary and 
 the Key to the Wavirley Novfih have deserved well 
 of two or three generations of readers already. 
 
 If it be a sin to put out any good book without 
 adding an index, still more is he to be condemned 
 who edits the Collected Works of a good author 
 without doing so. The more volurriinous and 
 the more miscellaneous the author, the greater 
 is the need of a full and analytical index. Carlyle 
 
 ^ Disraeli had said something like this in his speech at the Royal Literary 
 ■F^und dinner in 1868 : "Without books those imaginary charactecS/as they 
 are called^ but which are really much more vital and substantial than half 
 our acquaintances, would no longer exist. There would be no Hlamlets, no 
 Don Quixotes, no Falstaffs." 
 
ni THE ART OF INDEXING 59 
 
 had this service done to his Works during his 
 life ; Ruskin has had it done to his after his 
 death, for though he sometimes nibbled at under- 
 taking the task himself he lacked time to fulfil 
 it. He knew the need acutely. " I have left 
 the system of my teaching widely scattered and 
 broken," he lamented. "-Alphabetical -indices," 
 he says elsewhere, " will be of little use unless 
 another and a very differeat kind of index be 
 arranged in the. mind of the reader," and he 
 proceeded to analyse the contents of one of his 
 books in logical sequence. This is what the 
 elaborate Index at the end of the Library Edition 
 aimed at doing for the whole body of his writings. 
 " The work of Ruskin," says a &ench expositor, 
 '* is a forest where paths and branches cross each 
 other without end." " One must feel," says 
 another critic, " that true justice would only be 
 done to the works of Ruskin if with infinite labour 
 some symipathetic and congenial spirit possessed 
 of much sobriety and system were to arrange the 
 whole of the works and to distribute passages 
 taken from them all under new heads, with a 
 simple, ioitelligible, and orderly classification." 
 Of these requirements, the infinite labouf was 
 forthcoming ; and with the I«dex just mentioned 
 in hand, any reader .of Ruskin has the means of 
 doing the thing" for himself. There are other 
 modem writers in whose case the jieed is not so 
 sore, but yet is felt. Take Matthew Arnold, for 
 
6o THE ART OF INDEXING in 
 
 instance. He was discursive ; he touched many 
 subjects lightly, he leapt (as Mr. Birrell has it) 
 from bough to bough, and he often returned to 
 the same bough in different books. If you 
 want to know all that he had to say in defining 
 the essence of poetry or in description of the grand 
 style, you have to collate passages scattered in 
 many different essays, and there is no index to 
 help you in the search. The late Lord Coleridge, 
 in a Prefatory Note to the second series of Essays 
 in Criticism, says that Arnold intended to write 
 something more about Shelley. Lord Coleridge 
 added, what is very true, that " in order to gather 
 the mind of Mr. Arnold on the whole of any 
 subject it is necessary to read -more than one paper, 
 because in each paper he frequently deals with 
 one aspect of a subject only, which requires for 
 sound and complete judgment to be supplemented 
 or completed by another. It is especially neces- 
 sary to bear this in mind in reading what has 
 become his last utterance on Shelley." Yet the 
 editor of his complete works gives us no index 
 at all. Another book which badly wants indexing 
 is Froude's ever-delightful Short Studies on Great 
 Subjects in four volumes. I have often thought 
 that the money spent in producing Editions de 
 Luxe is all very well, but necessaries should come 
 before luxury, and an index is a necessary. I 
 have even wondered whether some of those who 
 have edited modern authors would not have 
 
Ill THE ART OF INDEXING 6i 
 
 done better service by indexing than by " intro- 
 ducing " them. A friend of Francis Douce, 
 the antiquary, had a curse of his own for those 
 who sent out a book without an index where one 
 was obviously wanted. He damned them " ten 
 miles beyond Hell." For my part I think that 
 simple damnation is enough in the case of a 
 single book, and that the extra ten miles of Douce's 
 friend might be reserved for those who collect 
 an author's works without indexing them. 
 
 A specious defence against indexes has some- 
 times been made out of the argument that every 
 one ought to read, mark, karn, and inwardly 
 digest a book as he goes along, that therein he 
 makes an index for himself, and that if he 
 finds, it ready-made he is spared this wholesome 
 discipline. Public men, when they ^ address 
 Institutes or Students* Unions, make much of 
 various mechanical aids to serious reading. We 
 are told how Sir William Hamilton used to make 
 an abstract of a book as he went along, distinguish- 
 ing different groups of subjects by different- 
 coloured inks ; or how Gibbon, reversing the 
 process, made an abstract before he read a book 
 of what he expected to find therein, subsequently 
 noting any new points ; or how Home Tooke 
 made notes of books on visiting-cards, slipt them 
 through a slit into his desk — " put it into the 
 post-office " was his phrase — and afterwards 
 sorted them out for reference. And so forth and 
 
62 THE ART OF INDEXING iii 
 
 so forth. It is quite true that no printed index is 
 li'kely to fill the same place as these private aids 
 tO' memory. But that is no reason why the 
 printed index should not first be supplied. It is 
 iniolerable presumption on the part of an author 
 to suggest that his words are too precious,, too 
 worthy of being learnt by heart, for an index to 
 be giveni. " Thomas Fuller long ago- disposed 
 of such pretence in a passage of sound sense and 
 quaint humouc : 
 
 An Index is a necessary implement, and no impediment 
 of a book, except in the same sense wherein the carriages 
 of an army are termed impedimenta. Without this, a 
 large author is but a labyrinth without a clue* to direct the 
 reader therein. I confess there is a lazy kind of learning 
 which is only indical ; when scholiars (like adders which 
 oidy bite the korse's heels) rabble but at the tables which 
 aire caicei librorum, neglectiiiig the body of the book. But 
 though the idle deserve no "crutches (let not a staff be used 
 by them,, but on them), pity it is the weary should be 
 denied the benefit thereof, and industrious scholars pro- 
 hibited the accommodation of an .index, most used by 
 those who most pretend to contemn it. 
 
 Let it be granted, then, that every book which 
 is worth anything shouW have a good index. 
 But "what is a good index ^ There is much 
 ignorance on this point, and many indexes are 
 skimble-skamble performances. Take such a 
 simple thing as an index to a poet's poems. The 
 other day I Wanted to refer to Tennyson's two 
 
Ill THE ART OF INDEXING 6:^ 
 
 translations from the Iliad, and turned for quick 
 help, as I suipposed, to the " Index to the Poems " ; 
 but the help was not forthcoming, for only one 
 of the pieces was indexed under " Iliad," the 
 other appearing under " Achilles." The maker 
 of that index worked without brains. But we 
 shall better be able to discuss errors in indexing 
 if we start from first principles. An index is 
 meant to be a pointer and to serve as a time- 
 saving machine. It should enable a reader, 
 first, to find readily the place where the author 
 has said a particular thing, and, secondly, it 
 should enable him to find all that the book has 
 said on a particular subject. 
 
 In applying these principles, I lay down as 
 the first rule. One book One index. It was once 
 a custom to have several indexes to one book, 
 in order, I suppose, not to mix up titles in- 
 congruously. There would, for instance, be an 
 index of persons and places, a second of subjects, 
 a third of words, and so forth. The practice 
 was common in editions of the classics, and the 
 Latin phrases were often used in English books 
 ^-index locorum, rerum, verborum, and so forth. 
 Such multiplication of indexes is an unmitigated 
 nuisance. It makes reference less easy. One 
 index alphabetically arranged is the only right 
 plan. 
 
 But what should be included in the index } 
 How many and what kind of titles should there 
 
64 THE ART OF INDEXING in 
 
 be ? Macaulay has a saying on this subject from 
 which I must take liberty to dissent strongly : 
 
 " I am very unwilling," he wrote to his publisher, 
 " to seem captious about such a work as an index. By 
 
 all means let Mr. go on. But offer him with all 
 
 delicacy and courtesy from me this suggestion. I would 
 advise him to have very few heads except proper names. 
 A few there must be, such as Convocation, Nonjurors, 
 Bank of England, National Debt. These are heads to 
 which readers who wish for information on such those 
 
 subjects will naturally turn. But I think that Mr. 
 
 will on consideration perceive that such heads as Priest- 
 craft, Priesthood, Party Spirit, Insurrection, War, Bible, 
 Crown, Controversies, Dissent, are quite useless. Nobody 
 will ever look at them ; and if every passage in which 
 party-spirit, dissent, the art of war and the power of the 
 Crown are mentioned is to be noticed in the Index, the 
 size of the volumes will be doubled. The best rule is to 
 keep close to proper names, and never to deviate from 
 that rule without some special occasion." 
 
 This may be a good rule in the case of a 
 history, and proper names are what should 
 always be included in an index whatever else 
 be omitted. In the case of Macaulay's own 
 History his rule is the more appropriate because 
 the work is stronger in its personal sketches 
 and in appeal to the imagination than in discussion 
 of general problems. But Macaulay had in- 
 teresting things' to say on many subjects, and 
 
 Mr. , to the great advantage of Macaulay's 
 
 readers, did not confine himself to the few general 
 
Ill THE ART OF INDEXING 65 
 
 heads for which he had the author's express 
 permission. " Nobody will ever look for them," 
 said Macaulay of this and that suggested title ; 
 but how could he tell ? Lord Rosebery in a 
 speech a few years ago, foresaw a day when the 
 world itself could not contain the books that 
 should be written : libraries would cover all the 
 ground, and the only help was, he suggested, a 
 periodical bonfire. He forgot, by the way, that 
 this is the age of tubes. Space may be extended 
 downwards, and the underground store-rooms 
 of the Bodleian Library at Oxford have provided 
 accommodation for ages to come. It is a chasten- 
 ing thought for all literary men that, bonfire or 
 no bonfire, most of what is written to-day will be 
 as dead a hundred years hence as though it had 
 never been. But who can say to-day what will 
 be wholly valueless ,then ? Nobody can. The 
 scientific world has been all agog with Mendelism. 
 The new " ism " is revolutionising biology, and 
 if the biologists have their way it may revolu- 
 tionise politics and social reform. But what 
 was the origin of Mendelism ? where was the 
 sacred script found ? It was a stray article 
 which lay ignored for thirty -five years in an 
 obscure periodical, just the sort of thing that 
 a hustling librarian might have turned out as 
 fodder for Lord Rosebery's bonfire. An index- 
 maker, then, should have no prejudices or par- 
 tialities, and every subject on which he finds any 
 
66 THE ART OF INDEXING m 
 
 substantial discussion in the book should be 
 included in the index. He is working for an 
 unknown future and for readers whose tastes and 
 interests he cannot know. Of course, in making 
 an index exhaustive, he must use some discrimina- 
 tion. Opie's answer to the man who asked how 
 he mixed his colours — " With brains " — is appli- 
 cable to all arts and crafts, however humble. 
 
 A good index, then, will have a great many 
 titles. Double entries are sometimes advisable 
 if an index is to be adapted to ready reference. 
 I agree with the writer who said that " time is 
 of more value than type and the wear and tear, 
 of temper than an extra page of index." Take, 
 for instance, the case of Hansard already men- 
 tioned. A speech should be indexed under the 
 speaker's name, but also under its main subject. 
 Every indexer must have certain rules before 
 him, but he will do well not to follow them 
 slavishly. In the construction of an index there 
 are cases when it is necessary to do, as some 
 architects have to be told, and make a sacrifice 
 of symmetry to convenience. The one thought 
 which an indexer should never forget is how 
 best to save the time of those for whom he is 
 working. 
 
 Next, how are the entries under any given 
 head to be arranged } Wrong answers to this 
 question cover most of the vices which an index 
 can exhibit. The most frequent and the most 
 
Ill THE ART OF INDEXING 67 
 
 .heinous is the practice of following a subject- 
 heading by long strings of page numbers without 
 any indication of what you will find on the several 
 pages. This is to fob you oflF with an index 
 which is no index. Of course, if the references 
 to a particular person or subject are few or un- 
 important, a simple reference to the pages may 
 be excused ; but when they are many and varied, 
 an index of that kind sets you, if you are in search 
 of a particular passage, to look for a needle in 
 a bundle of hay. Some indexers know that 
 this will not do, but they weary in doing better, 
 and, after sorting out a certain number of the 
 references, fall back into simple numbers undfer 
 the sub-heading " Otherwise mentioned." Here, 
 again, there is sometimes reasonable excuse for 
 the practice : it is a sound plan to preserve 
 proportion and to distinguish between sub- 
 stantial references and mere passing allusions : 
 the latter may rightly be lumped together under 
 " Otherwise mentioneid." On the other hand, 
 it is very tiresome to find, after long search, 
 that an important reference is concealed under 
 that head. Lord Morley's Life of Gladstone is 
 furnished with an admirable index, as was meet 
 and right in a work which, besides its other 
 merits, is a most valuable book of political refer- 
 ence. I remembered that somewhere there was 
 record of Mr. Gladstone's attitude towards Mr. 
 Chamberlain at the opening of the Irish contro- 
 
68 THE ART OF INDEXING in 
 
 versy in 1885. The references to Mr. Chamber- 
 lain are for the most part clearly distinguished 
 in the index, but the particular passage which I 
 had in mind only disclosed itself after search 
 among the " other mentions " (iii. 191). 
 
 Where, then, a book contains many mentions 
 of a person or a subject, the indexer must analyse 
 them and tell you not only on what page each 
 mention will be found, but also what is the subject 
 of the mention on each page. This is the most 
 difficult and least mechanical part of an indexer's 
 work. If the reader thinks that anybody can 
 do it, let him try his hand and he will learn better. 
 It needs much time, thought, and judgment to 
 seize the true sense of a passage, to decide what 
 description will best facilitate reference, and then 
 to make the entry with the concision required 
 in an index. Nearly as bad as an index which 
 omits a proper reference is one which gives you 
 a blind reference. The classical instance in this 
 sort is alleged to occur in a law book : 
 
 Begt, Mr, Justiccj his great mind, p. 101. 
 
 On turning to the page one is supposed to have 
 found the statement that " Mr. Justice Best 
 said he had a great mind to commit the man for 
 trial." I believe that the entry has never been 
 traced to any authentic source, but it serves as 
 an example of how not to do it.. If the entry 
 does really exist, it may have been the jest of a 
 
ni THE ART OF INDEXING 69 
 
 bored or spiteful indexer, and this possibility 
 sug|fests a further point. The maker of an 
 index to another man's work must be impartial. 
 His business is to be a sign-post^ not a critic. 
 Mr. Wheatley in his exhaustive monograph has 
 given instances of the way in which in the 
 eighteenth century the index was sometimes 
 used as an instrument of party propaganda. 
 Thus William Bromley had published a plati- 
 tudinous book of Travels^ and his Whig oppo- 
 nents put out as an election squib an index in 
 which all his most platitudinous passages were 
 collected j as, for instance : 
 
 Boulogne, the first city on the French shore, lies on 
 
 the coast, p. 2. 
 February, an ill season td see a gardfen in, p. ^3- 
 
 The squib missed fire, for Bromley was returned 
 and was elected Speaker. It must be attributed 
 to the intellectual arrogance of the Whigs that 
 an addiction to platitude was thought likely to 
 count against a parliamentarian. Still, Macaulay 
 who knew all these things may well have said 
 (as reported) to his publisher, " Let no damned 
 Tory index'my History." 
 
 We may now suppose our indexer to have 
 read through the book. He has the stock of 
 slips on which the purport of each passage which 
 he intends to index is indicated. He has sorted 
 them out under proper names or subjects. How 
 
70 THE ART OF INDEXING in 
 
 is he to arrange the entries under each heading ? 
 It is at this stage, as it seems to me, that most 
 indexers go wrong. The plan generally adopted 
 is to arrange the entries in the order in which the 
 passages indicated by them occur in the book. 
 Now if the author is a very methodical and 
 orderly writer, if you know the order in which 
 he treats his subjects, if you remember roughly 
 whereabout in a book or a volume a passage 
 occurs, such an index may serve you. But it 
 is'seldom that these conditions exist, and if they 
 do not, the index compiled on the assumption 
 that they, do will serve you very badly. An 
 instance will make the point clear. 
 
 The indexes and summaries which are supplied 
 to Carlyle's complete works were, it is believed, 
 the work in main of his neighbour and volunteer 
 assistant, Mr. Henry Larkin, who " helped me," 
 says Carlyle, " in a way not to be surpassed for 
 completeness, ingenuity, patience, exactitude, and 
 total and continual absence of fuss." " You 
 wanted work," said Carlyle to him, " and you are 
 likely to get it." This can well be believed, ' 
 for Mr. Larkin had first volunteered his services 
 when Friedrich was in progress. The indexes 
 to that book and to Carlyle's works generally 
 are well done, but in one respect they are de- 
 ficient. The index to Friedrich contains under 
 his name twenty-one half columns of close print. 
 The entries give well enough the subject of each 
 
in THE ART OF INDEXING 71 
 
 reference, but they are not sorjted out under 
 any sub-heads, being arranged, irrespective of 
 subject, in the order in which they occur in the 
 seven volumes. The index is hopeless and 
 helpless if you want to find readily where Carlyle 
 reports £i particular saying or to trace the author's 
 scattered references to the gifts or character of 
 his hero. Of course, where the essence of the 
 matter is chronological and the book itself is so 
 arranged, the arrangement of index entries in 
 a corresponding order may serve, but even so a 
 certain arnount of subdivision is desirable. 
 
 With this proviso I should lay down two 
 rules : in every long heading in an index there 
 should be sub-headings, and the order of arrange- 
 ment under each should be alphabetical. The 
 observance of these rules greatly adds to the 
 labour of the indexer, but it also greatly helps 
 facility of reference. It is impossible to carry 
 general rules much further. The number and 
 kind of sub-heads must depend on the nature 
 and volume of the matter in hand. But a few 
 hints, suggested by common mistakes in indexes, 
 may be oilered. In the case of entries dealing 
 with persons it is clearly desirable to separate 
 general references from those which deal with 
 particular books, speeches, letters, or whatever 
 else they may be. In the case of a voluminous 
 writer, it may often be helpful to divide his 
 references to general subjects into (i) leading 
 
72 THE ART OF INDEXING ni 
 
 ideas and principal passages, and (2) general 
 references. In the case of (2), entries should be 
 alphabetical, but in the case of (i), the order may 
 well be explanatory and logical. 
 
 Who should make the index ? In old days 
 an author generally did the work himself, and 
 Bayle cites with approval the whimsical remark 
 attributed to a Spanish bibliographer that the 
 index of a book should be made by the author 
 even if the book itself were written by some one 
 else. Certainly there is a flavour about an index 
 made by an author himself, especially if he is 
 a humorist, which is lacking from others. One 
 shares the chuckle which Lowell must have 
 enjoyed when he put into the " Index to the 
 Biglow Papers " : " Babel, probably the first 
 congress, 164 ; a gabble-mill, ib. " ; or Ruskin, 
 when in an index which he began for his hotch- 
 potch called Fors Clavigera he wrote down : 
 " Parliamentary talk, a watchman's rattle sprung 
 by constituencies of rascals at sight of an honest 
 man, 37." ^ The author of Erewhon, too, was 
 fond of indexing or beginning to index his books, 
 and must have enjoyed this entry for a new edition 
 of Alps and Sanctuaries : " Crossing, efficacy of, 
 
 * The humour of the following reference to Fors Cla-vigera, in an index 
 by another hand, was perhaps unconscious. Rusicin had written : '* If you 
 have to obey the whip as a bad hound, because you have no nose, like the 
 members of the present House of Commons, it is a very humble form of 
 menial service indeed." What an indexer made of the passage was this : 
 " House of Commons, its members have no noses, z8," 
 
Jii THE ART OF INDEXING 73 
 
 152," remembering how the Tablet had read 
 his remarks on that subject in a devotional rather 
 than a biological sense. The same author obvi- 
 ously enjoyed himself in making the elaborate 
 index which he added to the second edition of 
 his Evolution Old and New, as in this entry 
 referring to one of his pet aversions : 
 
 Genius, Mr. Allen says I am a, 388. 
 
 There is a serious reason why an author should 
 make his own index, or, if he does not, should 
 let the indexer work at his elbow. There is 
 nothing like making an index for discovering 
 inconsistencies and needless repetitions. 
 
 Few authors, however, have the patience to 
 make their own indexes, but those who have not 
 should recognise the importance of this adjunct 
 to their work and make due acknowledgment of 
 the collaboration. To do this would tend to 
 establish indexing as one of the minor literary 
 arts. There was a time when indexers had a 
 certain status. Macaulay gives them a place, 
 albeit the last, in the press which occurred to 
 get near the chair where Dryden sat at Will's 
 coffee-house. " There were Earls in stars and 
 garters, clergymen in cassocks and bands, sheepish 
 lads from the universities, translators and index- 
 makers in ragged coats of frieze." It is better 
 to have your ragged coat noticed than not to be 
 noticed at all. How seldom it is in modern 
 
74 THE ART OF INDEXING in 
 
 books that the name of the index-maker is given 1 
 I should like to believe that whenever nothing 
 is stated to the contrary the author has made the 
 index himself. But a bitter cry which I read a 
 fe'vy years ago in The Book Monthly makes this 
 belief difficult. " Why is it," asked the writer, 
 " that" the erector of sign-posts through copious 
 volumes gets so little public recognition 1 Those 
 useful pages have involved much reading, skill, 
 judgment in the marshalling of scattered refer- 
 ences into orderly companies. ' Index by So- 
 and-so ' in the forefront of a book would be at 
 least as reasonable as ' Wigs by Thingummy ' 
 on the programme of Hamlet." 
 
 What, it may be asked, is the proper scale 
 of an index } No general answer can be given. 
 The scale must be governed by considerations 
 which differ with the nature of each individual 
 book or author. I have had the curiosity to 
 measure some of the ample indexes mentioned 
 in this paper. Carlyle's index-scale is, roughly, 
 as I to 36. Ruskin's Works (Library Edition) 
 are in thirty-eight volumes : the index makes a 
 thirty-ninth volume, but its print is very small. 
 The index to Morley's Life of Gladstone is on the 
 scale of I to 30. The scale of Butler's index to 
 Evolution Old and, New is as i to 17. The record 
 for length of index in proportion to the length of 
 the book was held until the other day by Free- 
 man's Norman Conquest: the scale is as i to 14, 
 
Ill THE ART OF INDEXING 75 
 
 but in this case the print of the index is large. 
 Lord Morley's Recollections has now easily beaten 
 this record. The book itself occupies '760 pages ; 
 the index, in small print and double column, 
 76 — precisely as i to 10. Another feature of 
 this index, besides its length, is worth riotice. 
 Here and there Lord Morley's index discloses 
 a name or a reference not given in the text : this 
 is often a good plan, as saving a footnote and 
 rewarding the user of an index by a piece of 
 information withheld from a less careful or curious 
 reader. 
 
 A perusal of the pages of an index, and even 
 the process of making it, are not dull, dead things. 
 I confess that when I look into a new book, 
 especially if it be one which I have not yet bought, 
 I turn first to the index. If the index be at all 
 full there is no better way of sampling a book. 
 From reviews you never can tell. The reviewer's 
 taste, if he blames, may not be yours. And if 
 he praises and gives you specimens you may find 
 that he has picked out all the plums and that 
 the rest is leather and prunella. An index gives 
 you a taste of the quality at once, which perhaps 
 may be why some authors and publishers are so 
 shy of it. As for index-making, it is very labour- 
 some, especially in the case of editing a book or 
 collected works by some one else, but the work 
 has its alleviations. "I find index -making," 
 wrote Ruskin, " more difficult and tedious than 
 
76 THE ART OF INDEXING iii 
 
 I expected. It is easy enough to make an index, 
 as it is to make a broom of odds and ends, as 
 rough as oat straw ; but to make an index tied 
 up tight, and that will sweep well into corners, 
 isn't so easy." It is not easy, but if you persevere 
 you may find the same sort of satisfaction that 
 a good housewife is said to find in a spring- 
 cleaning or a scholar in rearranging his books. 
 Then again an index, if it be adequately full and 
 analytical, brings the compiler and the user into 
 a close relation with the mind, work, and method 
 of the author which is hardly possible in any other 
 way. The satisfaction of finding order evolve 
 itself out of seeming chaos, the pleasure of noting 
 intellectual connections have relieved, I doubt 
 not, many a long day, month, and year of an 
 indeicer's otherwise dull labour. Still, when all 
 is said in this sort, the art of indexing is long and 
 tiresome. A master of worldly wisdom gave this 
 among other injunctions to his pupils : " Never 
 drudge." The scholar, when trial is made of 
 his patience, acts on a different precept : " Never 
 grudge." 
 
IV 
 
 FIFTY YEARS OF A 
 LITERARY. MAGAZINE 
 
 lodi, Comhill Adagazine, from its commence' 
 ment to the present time, illustrated with several 
 hundred engravings, clean, in the original wrappers, 
 in all 599 parts, forming lOO volumes. j1 Bargain, 
 being a remarkably cheap series of this important 
 and interesting periodical, from the library of a 
 gendeman in the country, containing most valuable 
 information not to be found elsewhere, contributed 
 by w^riters of eminence, on subjects biographical, 
 historical, literary, etc., and stories by the most 
 celebrated writers of fiction. Invaluable to the 
 general reader. 
 
 I NEVER come upon an entry of this sort in a 
 catalogue without a certain pleasure, which the 
 bookseller's zeal cannot utterly destroy, nor yet 
 without a certain pang, which his wiles cannot 
 wholly assuage. Habent sua fata Ithelli 1 So, 
 then, popular magazines which in these days 
 one sees casually bought, roughly opened, lightly 
 (discarded — ^the moment's plaything of a listless 
 
 77 
 
78 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 reader in the railway — ^were once carefully stored, 
 each number set scrupulously in its appointed 
 place, preserved " in the original wrappers," 
 too, and " clean " ; yes, and by readers not a 
 few are so kept even unto No. 599 — not the least 
 valued possession, it may be, in some *' King's 
 treasury " of the rectory, the manse, or the house 
 in the wold. In looking up an old volume of 
 the Cornhill the other day, I came upon " A 
 Scribbler's Apology." It is unsigned, but was 
 written, if I mistake not, by a valued contributor 
 whose articles on popular science were for many 
 years one of .the attractions of the Magazine. 
 ■He seems to have had a premonition that before 
 long he would lay aside his pen for ever. He 
 makes his retrospect and concludes, in the 
 scribbler's favour, that he has been " earning his 
 livelihood, not indeed like the shoemaker with 
 a clear consciousness of social worth, but in a 
 relatively harmless and unblameworthy fashion." 
 It is a too modest claim. The thoughts, the 
 information, the reflections contributed by him 
 and hundreds of " scribblers " besides, on other 
 subjects, have fired many a s'park, aroused many 
 an interest, thrown light on many a dark place, 
 we cannot doubt, among thousands of readers. 
 The Cornhill, or other favourite magazine, has 
 been the monthly visitor, eagerly expected, gladly 
 welcomed, and sometimes, as we have seen, 
 never- allowed to leave. And in this continuity 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 79 
 
 of life even the occasional article by some unknown 
 pen — the happy thought which, perhaps once 
 only moved an else silent mind to effective ex- 
 pression, or the one successful essay, it may be, 
 , of an often -rejected contributor — -shares equal 
 place, by right of inclusion between the yellow 
 covers, with the papers of some great master of 
 style, or the stories " by the most celebrated 
 writers of fiction." Such are the pleasant 
 thoughts which my bookseller's catalogue suggests. 
 But then comes the pang. "A complete set 
 of the- Cornhill." It is to be found in many 
 libraries, public and private. But of the many 
 copies printed of each number, how fdw, in the 
 case of any magazine, can ever hope to survive ! 
 And then, even when each copy has been pre- 
 served, there comes the time of dispersal or 
 dissolution. What will be the fate of my book- 
 seller's set } Honoured place and worthy bind- 
 ing, let us hope (with a good impression of the 
 cover dVily pasted in), in some other library. 
 But sets are often broken up, and the disjointed 
 members enjoy but a precarious spell of life. 
 A large mass of the literature contributed to 
 magazines is doomed by inevitable laws to 
 oblivion. One. reads a striking article, and 
 says, " I must keep this " or " make a note of 
 that." But few of us do it. The Cornhill, 
 however, by resolute adherence to one good 
 prg^gtice, encourages us. It is lightly stitched 
 
8o A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 with honest thread, and the favourite article can 
 be readily taken out for preservation, if' we will., 
 The inventor of wire -stapling, which prevents 
 ready opening of the pages, which rusts and 
 which requires a carpenter's operation for its 
 removal, will have to endure, I warn him, long 
 years of penance in the bookman's purgatory. 
 Thackeray's latest books, the last pages of Char- 
 lotte Bronte, the first appearances of -many a 
 poem by Tennyson, Robert Browning, Mrs. 
 Browning, Meredith, and Swinburne, and of 
 many a collected volume by Matthew Arnold, 
 by John Addington Symondsj by Leslie Stephen, 
 by Robert Louis Stevenson, and a host of other 
 " writers of eminence," are all to be found in the 
 back numbers of the^ Cornhill. If a book-lover 
 has not the requisite space to keep the whole set 
 of the Cornhill, what a collection of" first editions " 
 he might make by cutting its threads 1 But 
 this is a counsel of perfection which few follow. 
 " A back number "I It has become a pro- 
 verbial phrase for what is dead and done with. 
 Many of the contributions made by the great 
 men survive, indeed, in collected books ; but 
 they are often prodigds, and discard much of 
 their original writings. A considerable amount 
 of their work, and a great mass of admirable 
 work by lesser known authors, survive only in 
 the back numbers, and it is a shadowy survival. 
 Well, the handiwork of the happy shoemaker 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 8i 
 
 of the " Scribbler's Apology " does not last for 
 ever ; it is something, in literature also, even to 
 serve the passing hour. To those whose occa- 
 sional writings are buried in a magazine I would 
 commend a vision of the bookman's paradise 
 as seen by William Blake ; and in such comfort 
 as it may bring, let me include the sorrows of 
 rejected contributors. " Ah, well, my dear," 
 said he to his wife when publishers proved 
 unkind, " they are printed Elsewhere — and 
 beautifully bound." 
 
 I have referred to the novels in the Cornhill. 
 It was out of the serial publication of fiction that 
 the idea of the Cornhill and of other popular 
 magazines at low prices arose ; and this chapter 
 in the history of the British publishing trade is 
 curious in that the offspring, as it were, absorbed 
 its parent. Fifty years ago it was a common 
 practice to issue novels in monthly instalments. 
 A happy thought occurred thereon to Mr. 
 George Smith, the only begetter of the Cornhill. 
 There had been the monthly reviews for a century 
 and more, and there was the serial publication 
 of novels. Smith's idea was to combine the two, 
 giving to the public, at the price of the then 
 cheapest magazine, both the contents of a general 
 review and the monthly instalment of fiction. 
 In the popular price he was not absolutely first 
 in the field, for Macmillan's Magazine, also at 
 
 G 
 
82 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 a shilling, had started two months ahead of him, 
 but it made at that time no great speciality of 
 fiction. The best fiction by the best writers was 
 Smith's plan. On this side of it, the history of 
 the Cornhill with its successive contributions 
 from Thackeray, Anthony TroUope, Charles 
 Lever, George Eliot, Mrs. CJaskell, Wilkie 
 Collins, Charles Reade, William Black, James 
 Payn, Henry Seton Merriman — to speak dnly of 
 those who have passed away — is the history of 
 British fiction. The magazines with-their serials 
 have continued from that day to this ; the serial 
 publication of novels, apart from them, has 
 ceased to be. 
 
 The mainstay of the new Magazine, as con- 
 ceived by Mr. George Smith, was to be a monthly 
 instalment of a novel by Thackeray, and as soon 
 as he had made terms to that effect he went 
 ahead with his scheme. It was a happy after- 
 thought which led him to persuade Thackeray 
 to become editor as well as chief contributor. 
 Anthony Trollope has left it on record that in 
 his opinion Thackeray was an indifferent editor. 
 Trollope was a large contributor and a warm 
 friend, and he ought to have known ; but the 
 reasons he gives do not carry conviction. Thack- 
 eray had too thin a skin, it seems ; had not the 
 necessary hardness of heart ; found it painful 
 to reject contributions from widows and orphans 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 83 
 
 with nothing but the res angusta domi to recom- " 
 mend them. Thackeray hated doing it, we know ; 
 he has told us so in his Thorns in the Cushion ; 
 but the question is, " Did he do it all the same ? " 
 If he did,, the pang of the kind heart interfered 
 nothing with the efficiency of the editor. I have 
 looked for the articles of which TroUope may 
 have been thinking as palpably below the Corn- 
 hill standard, and protest that I cannot find them. 
 FitzGerald, it is true, speedily scented a taint of 
 decline, but he was an epicure. " Thackeray's 
 First Number," he wrote, " was famous, I 
 thought : his own little Roundabout Paper so 
 pleasant : but the Second Number, I say ; lets 
 the Cockney in already : about Hogarth : Lewes 
 is vulgar : and I don't think one can care much 
 for Thackeray's novel." What a standard does 
 FitzGerald set in ruling out G. A. Sala's illustrated 
 paper on Hogarth, and George Henry Lewes's 
 Studies in Animal Li/i?, and hovel the Widower 
 as not good enough for the Cornhill ! A 
 second count in TroUope's indictment is that 
 Thackeray was unmethodical ; never took to his 
 desk, I suppose, at the same hour each day, to 
 turn out a regulation number of words by the 
 clock ; did not, it is more specifically alleged, 
 answer letters promptly and decide the fate of 
 contributions, m/««/(?r ; dilly-dallied with trouble- 
 some affairs ; even lost a manuscript now and 
 then. All this one can well believe. A letter 
 
84 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 has been printed from Thackeray to Sir Henry 
 Thompson which bears upon the point. 
 " Hurrah," he wrote, " have found your leg ! " 
 — a sentence cryptic enough until it is explained 
 that the great surgeon had at Th^ckeray'a^ re- 
 quest written a paper for the first number of 
 the Magazine describing an operation " Under 
 Chloroform," that the editor' mislaid the manu^ 
 script, but that ■' the leg " turned up in time for 
 a later number. No harm was done. It was 
 a capital article, equally good at any time. 
 
 Again, Thackeray was not afraid of what,, 
 if it appeared in the newspaper Press of to=day, 
 might be called sensational journalism. In one 
 of his earlier numbers he published under the 
 title " Stranger than Fiction " a sufficiently 
 startling account of some spiritualistic stances, 
 which excited much attention and controversy 
 at the time. The editor's note was as follows : 
 " As Editor of the Magazine I can vouch for 
 the good faith and honourable character of our 
 correspondent, a friend of twenty-five years' 
 standing ; but as the writer of the above astound- 
 ing narrative owns that he would refuse to believe 
 such things on the evidence of other people's 
 eyes, his readers are therefore free to "give or 
 withhold their belief." An ingenious exercise 
 in the art, not unknown to some other editors, 
 of making the best of both worlds ! Thackeray 
 had, too, what the journalists call "a keen eye 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 85 
 
 for copy." There is a letter from him to Anthony 
 TroUope which well expressfes a craving common 
 to all " enterprising editors " : 
 
 I hope you will help us in many ways besides tale- 
 telling. Whatevef a man knows about life and its doings, 
 thiat let us hear about. You must have tossed a good deal 
 about the world, and have countless sketches in your 
 memory and your portfolio. Please to think if you can 
 furbish up any of these besides a novel. When events 
 occur, and you have a good lively tale, bear us in mind. 
 
 " A good lively tale " 1 The " new " jouthalist 
 calls it^ i believej " a good news story." 
 
 • ■•••• 
 
 What were the worst thorns in the editorial 
 cushion .'' The necessity, I imagine^ for one 
 thing, Df hurting the susceptibilities of con- 
 tributors by considering those of Mrs. Grundy. 
 
 The lady's decrees vary frotti generation to 
 generation^ and the fortunes of a magazine are 
 ftota this point of view a chapter in the history 
 of conventions and taste. In these days stronger 
 meat is often presented in public than was per- 
 Miissible in mid-Victorian times. " Thackeray 
 has turned me out of the Cornhill" wrote Mrs. 
 Browning in May 1861, "but did it so prettily 
 and kindly that I, who am forgiving, sent him 
 another pofcm. He says that plain words per- 
 mitted on Sundays must not be sjjoken on 
 Mondays in England, and also that his * Maga- 
 zine is for babes and Sucklings.' " " Lord 
 
86 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 Walter's Wife," though it contained " pure 
 doctrine, and real modesty, and pure ethics," 
 was thus ruled out on account of Mrs, Grundy. 
 Thackeray's letter was printed by Lady Ritchie 
 in the Cornhill for, July 1896, and appears also in 
 the Letters of Mrs, Browning. Every one who 
 remembers the letter, or cares to turn it up, will 
 know how greatly Thackeray hated doing the 
 thing, and with what admirable and gracious 
 taste he did it. He had his reward. He lost 
 a good poem, it is true, but he got another, and 
 he kept a deeply valued friendship. The bio- 
 graphy of a later editor of the Cornhill admits 
 us behind the scenes of another tragi-comedy 
 of a like kind. It was one of the CornhilTs privi- 
 leges to print Mr. Thomas Hardy's Far from 
 the Madding Crowd. Leslie Stephen admired 
 the tale greatly ; but there was a point at which, 
 he averred, " three respectable ladies had pro- 
 tested," and they were representatives, he doubted 
 not, of other Mrs. Grundys. " I am a slave," 
 he wrote, in pleading for " gingerly treatment," 
 and afterwards in declining The Return of the 
 Native. " Such were noses," comments Stephen's 
 biographer characteristically, " in the mid- 
 Victorian age." Happily Stephen's sacrifice to 
 Mrs. Grundy left no more sting behind it than 
 Thackeray's. 
 
 The nose of orthodox convention was equally 
 acute in spheres other than the relations of the 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 87 
 
 sexes. To the early numbers of the Cornhill 
 Ruskin contributed some papers on political 
 economy {^et de quibusdam altis), entitled Unto 
 this Last. At the present day, when economic 
 thought and political practice have come largely 
 into line with Ruskin's ideas, it requires some 
 effort of the historical imagination to realise the 
 storm of indignant protest which the essays 
 raised. It was as fast and furious as any theo- 
 logical heresy-hunt. Ruskin's papers were de- 
 nounced in the Press as " eruptions of windy 
 hysterics," " utter imbecility," " intolerable 
 twaddle " ; he himself was held up to scorn as 
 a " whiner aijd sniveller," screaming like " a 
 mad governess," " a perfect paragon of blubber- 
 ing." Even a cool and detached observer like 
 Philip Gilbert Hamerton was shocked at " those 
 lamentable sermons appearing in the Cornhill 
 Magazine. : When a great writer is once resolutely 
 determined to destroy his own reputation," he 
 wrote in " A Painter's Camp," " it is no doubt 
 well to do it as speedily, as publicly, and as 
 effectively as possible ; but Mr. Ruskin's real 
 friends cannot help regretting that he should 
 have given his crudest thoughts to a million 
 readers through the medium of the most popular 
 Magazine of the day." By other critics the 
 attack was pressed against the editor and the 
 proprietor of the Magazine. " For some in- 
 scrutable reason," wrote one, " which must be 
 
88 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 inscrutably satisfactory to his publishers, Mr. 
 Thackeray has allowed, etc. etc." Such blows 
 Weht 'hoflxe, and after four of the essays had 
 been published, the conductors of the Magazine 
 bowed before the' stornii Thackeray had to con- 
 vey to his friend a sentence of excommunicatien. 
 Ruskin did not quarrel either with Thackeray 
 br with Mr. Smith, but he was deeply hurt. 
 He believed that Unto this Last was his best book 
 -^ttiost pregitiant in ideas, and most successful 
 in style. His repute at the time was as an art- 
 critic, but great men seldom accept the popular 
 judgmeht of their several achievements. Heine 
 dismissed his lyrics as " not worth a shot," but 
 accounted himself great as a tragedian. Goethe 
 took no pride in his poems, but much in his 
 seientifiC researches. Mr. Gladstone was prouder, 
 I suspfect, of his studies in Olympian theology 
 than of any political exploit ; and Paganini, 
 when complimented after a concert on his violin- 
 playing, asked impatiently, " But how Were you 
 pleased with my bows .i* " The more Ruskin 
 was acclaimed as an art-critic and a word-painter, 
 the more he reserfted not being appreciated as 
 an economic thinker. He has had his will, for 
 at the present day it is a fashion to discard his 
 art theories and accept his economics. Unto 
 this Last has become the most widely dispersed, 
 and perhaps the most influential, of all his writ- 
 ings. But this is not to cast any reflections upon 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 89 
 
 Thackeray's judgment at the time. An economic 
 heretic, like the poet of Wbrdswotth's PrefaceSj 
 " has to Gi-eate the taste by which he is to be 
 adttiifed." The conductor of any popular maga- 
 zine or other " organ of public opinion " may 
 well be a little ahead of his public, but he cannot 
 afford to be too much ahead. Ruskin fared ho 
 better under Froude in Eraser's Magal&ine than 
 under Thackeray in the Cemhill. The economic 
 essays were resumed in Fraser^s shortly afterwards, 
 and met there with a like suspensory order. 
 
 " Thou shalt not shock a young lady " : this 
 Leslie Stephen used to say was the first editorial 
 commandment ; nor shock accepted creeds either. 
 Yet it is difficult to draw the line, and Stephen 
 printed W. E. Henley's Hospital Outlines and 
 several chapters of Matthew Arnold's Literature 
 and Dogma, The difficulty of steering a course 
 between the " three respectable ladies " on the 
 one side and the critical judgment, unfettered by 
 conventions, on the other, must always be among 
 an editor's most annoying worries. Thackeray 
 was neither a pachyderm nor" d man of busi- 
 ness habits ; and after two years aiid a half of 
 " thorns in the cushion " he resigned the editorial 
 chair. His editorship (Anthony TroUope not- 
 withstanding) was a brilliant success. The suc- 
 cess of the Magazine had indeed been ensured 
 from the day when Thackeray's editorship was 
 known. 
 
90 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 The Cornhill, as Dickens said, was " before- 
 hand accepted by the public through the strength 
 of his great name." He made notable con- 
 tributions himself, and was able to ensure 
 them from others. Not that he was alone in 
 the field, but his friendships and his literary 
 standing enabled him to come off never second 
 best. One would like to have been an unseen 
 spectator at Farringford when Mr. Alexander 
 Macmillan and Thackeray successively journeyed 
 thither to cozen contributions out of Tennyson. 
 Macmillan' s had " Sea Dreams " ; the Cornhill, 
 " Tithonus." I do not know which of the 
 friendly rivals had first choice, or that any choice 
 was given to either ; but who will dispute that 
 " Tithonus " is the better poem .'' Tennyson 
 himself did not. Thackeray's first six numbers 
 included contributions, besides his own and 
 Tennyson's, from Matthew Arnold, Charlotte 
 Bronte, Emily Bronte, Mrs* Browning, Mrs. 
 Gaskell, Tom Hood, Washington Irving, Charles 
 Lever, G. H. Lewes, Lytton, George Macdonald, 
 Monckton Milnes, Laurence Oliphant, Adelaide 
 Procter, Father Prout, Ruskin, Fitzjames Stephen, 
 Anthony Trollope, and (among artists) Leighton 
 and Millais. Did ever a first volume make a 
 braver show ? Thackeray, however, did not 
 rely merely on names, and indeed, in i860, not 
 all of these names had yet the full authority which 
 they afterwards acquired. The signed stories, 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 91 
 
 poems, illustrations were all- of their authors' 
 best, and there were added unto them many- 
 articles in which the subject-matter was certain 
 to attract popular attention. The success of 
 the Magazine was instantaneous and well sus- 
 tained. The circulation reached what was then 
 the unprecedented figure of 100,000. An 
 American friend of Thackeray has recorded a 
 pleasant scene showing the editor's delight. 
 Thackeray had gone for a holiday jaunt to Paris, 
 where he met J. T. Fields. They walked about 
 together, and whenever they passed a group of 
 excited talkers on the boulevards, Thackeray 
 would stop and say, " There, there, you see ! 
 The news has reached Paris. The circulation 
 has gone up since my last accounts from London." 
 The proprietor was equally pleased, and in his 
 generous way doubled Thackeray's already not 
 inconsiderable salary, as editor, forthwith. Thack- 
 eray's resignation had little effect, I think, on the 
 success of the Magazine. For two good reasons. 
 He continued to contribute, and the Thackeray 
 tradition long survived. Also, he had founded 
 something of a school in magazine literature : 
 there was always somewhat of the Thackeray 
 touch in the Cornhtll. 
 
 • ■.*.• 
 
 ** Have newspapers souls } " The question, 
 which I have seen debated in ingenious articles, 
 has a morbid interest for some of us. " The 
 
92 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 soul, doubtless, is immortal-^where a soul cart 
 be discerned." It is not easily to be discerned 
 even in long-lived newspapers ; though as these 
 have sometimes a policy which does not always 
 change with every ^ssing gUst, the rudiments 
 of a soul niay now and then be traced. But can 
 A magazine, which is professedly a miscellany, 
 which brings together articles on all subjects, 
 often with no link except that they are contained 
 within the same cover — 'Can a magazine have a 
 soul ? In turning over the pages of the hundred 
 volumes of the Comhiit^ I have been on the search, 
 and I believe that I have fouftd it. The range 
 of subjects is very widp^ the methods of treatment 
 are infinitely various. Politics and public affairs 
 have for the most part been avoided, though the 
 fringe of them is often touched. They are not 
 always touched to the same effect. So, again, 
 ih the innumerable articles on literature and 
 morals, of travel, of anecdote, and of criticism, 
 the wiriters have different opinions, different 
 manners, different points of view. Sometimes 
 in turning from Leslie Stephen to J. A. Symonds, 
 ftbfti Fitzjames Stephen to Matthew Arnold, 
 oi* in passing from " The Great God Pan " to 
 " Parrots I have Known," I have given up my 
 search for the common soul of the Cornhill. 
 Yet on a general retrospect I seem to have a 
 cleaf impression of a certain unity. The " note " 
 of the Cornhill is the literary note, in the widest 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 93 
 
 sense of the term ; its soul is the spirit of that 
 humane culture, as Matthew Arnold describes 
 it in the pages, reprinted ffoni the Cernhill, of 
 Culture aifid Anarchy. Any collector of the 
 Cornhill who treasured his or her 599 numbers 
 in the original parts was well- qualified, I dare 
 aver, to graduate in Uteris humanioribus. 
 
 The form in which this spirit has most par- 
 ticularly expressed itself in the pages of th© 
 Cornhill is thq essay— ^not necessarily the essay 
 on literary subjects, but the essay which, what- 
 ever its subject, treats it in the temper of 
 humane letters. Thackeray set the model in his 
 Ronnd^baut. P<?/f^rj-*-rma8terpieces of style, and 
 " models," as Leslie Stephen ha9" said, *' of the 
 essay which without aiming at profundity gives 
 the charm of the playful and tender conversation 
 of a great writer." This was what I meant by 
 " the Thackeray touch " which hgd never for- 
 saken the Cornhill. It reappears, with equal 
 grace if with somewhat sjighter texture, in the 
 essays which during many years past have ap- 
 peared in its pages from the pen of his daughter, 
 and perhaps most notably in those " Blackstick 
 Papers," eveji the first of which, in December 
 1900, many of its- present readers remember. 
 Leslie Stephen was a prince of essayists, and the 
 number of his contributions in that sort to the 
 Magazine is very large. Many were reprinted 
 in Hours in a Likr&^; the identity of several 
 
94 A -LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 others, not reprinted, was disclosed in Professor 
 Maitland's Memoir, but these are only a tithe of 
 the whole number. Stephen sometimes sought 
 to put readers off the scent by appending to his 
 essays initials other than his own. I know not 
 why ; perhaps because he modestly but un- 
 necessarily feared that readers might have " too 
 much Stephen." Stephen's Cornhill essays were 
 in many respects unlike Thackeray's ; they 
 were more strenuous, connected, and direct ; 
 perhaps the sap was a little drier, for Stephen 
 was no sentimentalist ; but they have a very 
 pleasant flavour of their own, and a refreshing 
 commoi^ sense which is not so common as it 
 might be in "the modern essay. "The only 
 sting in it," said George Meredith of Stephen's 
 " Cornhill style," " was an inoffensive humorous 
 irony that now and then stole out for a roll over, 
 like a furry cub, or the occasional ripple on a 
 lake in grey weather." ' After many years of 
 " L. S.," readers of the Cornhill found a new 
 series of essays signed " R. L. S." — " not the 
 Real Leslie Stephen," as was explained to Mr. 
 Gosse, " but a young Scot whom Colvin has dis- 
 covered." Nine of the essays which Stevenson 
 collected in Firginihus Puerisque, and several 
 of those in Familiar Studies of Men and 
 Books, made their first appearance in the 
 Cornhill. The first so to appear, on " Victor 
 Hugo's Romances " (August 1874), was also 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 95 
 
 the first piece, Stevenson used to say, in which 
 he had found himself able to say things in the way 
 in which he felt they should be said. " L. S." 
 did a good turn to " R. L. S." in taking so much 
 of his early work, and not less a good turn to 
 readers of the Cornhill, who for some years had 
 the pleasant chance of finding an essay by Steven- 
 son in its pages. And here let the great army 
 of the rejected take comfort. Even the most- 
 discerning of editors sometimes make mistakes, 
 and even " R. L. S." did not always find the 
 door open. The essay on Raeburn, included 
 in Virginibus Puerisque, was rejected by Leslie 
 Stephen and by at least two other editors. The 
 series of " Cortihill essays " has been continued 
 in later days in the Pages from a Private Diary 
 and the Provincial Letters of Dean Beeching, 
 and in many a page signed " E. V. L.," or 
 " A. C. B." But it were invidious to particularise 
 further. I have said enough to establish my 
 point that the Cornhill has been an Alma Mater 
 of the essay. 
 
 Magazines, like newspapers, often have a 
 tradition which survives many changes of editors. 
 I do not think that all the changes in the editor- 
 ship of the Cornhill could be detected by in- 
 ternal evidence, but there are certain landmarks. 
 Thackeray resigned in March 1 862, and then the 
 editorial labqurs were for a time in commission, 
 
9$ A I.JTERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 so to speak, shared by Button Cook, Frederick 
 Greenwood, and George «Smith himself. In 
 1 871 Leslie Stephen was appointed to the chair, 
 I can detect little difference in the character or 
 quality of the Magazine during the first twelve 
 years (1860-71). There is a. reason for this, I 
 suspect, other than the one already indicated. 
 In the land of Cornhill there was a succession 
 of prime Ministers, but the Sovereign remained 
 the same, and his influence, though exercised 
 with unostentatious tact, was, I suspect, great 
 and constant. Mr. George Smith was strong 
 where Thackeray was weak. If the editor was 
 unmethodical, the proprietor was the soul of 
 punctuality and orderliness, sparing no trouble, 
 entering into every detail. The method and the 
 handwriting sometimes proclaim the man. I 
 have been permitted to unlock and peep ^t the 
 most sacred arcana of the Cornhill Magazine. 
 They consist of a series of leather cases, each 
 containing half a dozen little ledger?,. In these 
 Mr. Smith entered, month by month, in his 
 own minute and pleasant hand, the subjects of 
 all the articles gnd illustrations, the prices paid 
 to every author aod artist,^ the number of copies 
 sold of each number and of each volume. For 
 many years, there is no trace of any assistance 
 from clerk, or deputy. It is easy to see that the 
 Cornhill was among the dearest to him of his 
 many and multifarious enterprises, Thackeray 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 97 
 
 called him "^the Carnof of our Recent Great 
 Victories." Thackeray's immediate successors 
 would not, I imagine, have said otherwise. 
 
 • 
 
 With the accession of Leslie Stephen in 1871, 
 Mr. Smith may have somewhat relaxed his direct 
 control upon the Magazine. The Master of 
 Peterhouse is quoted by Stephen's biographer 
 as saying, " It may safely be asserted that from 
 Thackeray's day to our own no English Magazine 
 has been so liberally interfused with literary 
 criticism of a high class, and at the same time 
 remained such pleasant reading, as the tornhill 
 under Stephen's management." I believe that 
 Dr. Ward's verdict will be endorsed by all who 
 remember or refer. The fiction was as strong as 
 ever, and the general contents were varied and 
 readable. Stephen's editorship was the time not 
 only of very many pieces from his own pen, but 
 of Stevenson's essays, as aforesaid, of Symonds's 
 Greek Poets and Sketches and Studies in Italy, of 
 many articles on art or literature by Mr. Gosse 
 and Sir Sidney Colvin, of Tennysohian and other 
 studies by Churton Collins, of Johnsonian studies 
 by Dr. Birkbeck Hill. Comparing the Cornhill 
 of Stephen's reign (1871-82) with that of his 
 predecessors, I find that the purely literary 
 element had become more emphasised, and we 
 know from Stephen's biography that this increase 
 in pure literature was accompanied by no corre- 
 
 H 
 
98 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 spending accession of popular vogue. Did Leslie 
 Stephen provide a Magazine of which the times 
 were unworthy ? I do not think so, but we will 
 consider somewhat of this question on a later 
 page. 
 
 In 1882 Stephen resigned, and a new era in 
 the history of the Cornhill was inaugurated. He 
 had recommended his friend, James Payn, as his 
 successor, and Payn's editorship lasted for four- 
 teen years. The price of the Magazine was 
 reduced from a shilling to sixpence, and the 
 illustrations were gradually dropped. The Corn- 
 hill note remained in many a pleasant essay, 
 Payn's own Literary Recollections among the 
 number, and the articles on popular science — 
 always a feature of the Cornhill from the earlier 
 times of R. A. Proctor to the later of W. A. 
 Shenstone — were regiilarly contributed by Grant 
 Allen. Never did philosopher insinuate his 
 doctrine so persistently as Allen when he used 
 to describe the evolution of the colour of flowers, 
 or trace back the genius of Michael Angelo to 
 the savage's scrawls upon a cocoanut, or assure 
 us blandly that we can draw no true line between 
 a baby's admiration for a bunch of red rags and 
 the critic's admiration of a Sistine Madonna. 
 But the! predominant feature during Payn's 
 editorship was an abundance of short stories. 
 They were excellent, for Payn had a shrewd 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 99 
 
 judgment in such things, and no popular magazine 
 is complete without some of them* But there 
 were many other caterers in this service, and 
 some Cornhillers were not ill-pleased when the 
 price was restored under his successor to the 
 familiar shilling, and there was room again for 
 a larger supply of the miscellaneous articles in 
 the old style. 
 
 Payn's health broke down in 1896, and from 
 the middle of that year, for several months 
 onward, I seem to detect a new hand at the helm. 
 We become more military, more consciously 
 patriotic. We have an Englishman's Calendar 
 provided for us each month, to remind us of great 
 deeds. We seem invited to a new way of life. 
 But here, again, the true Cornhill note was well 
 maintained, and at this period we make first 
 acquaintance in the Magazine with the " Private 
 Diarist " and " E. V. L." Of the editorial 
 conduct of the Magazine in these and in later 
 years it would be unseemly to speak at large. 
 Nevertheless, it would be ungrateful for the 
 Cornhill and its readers to forget the debt they 
 owe to the short reign in the editorial chair of 
 Mr. St. Loe Strachey. One of the pleasantest 
 features of the early history of the Cornhill was, 
 we have been told on authority, the monthly 
 dinner which Smith gave to Thackeray and his 
 contributors, and it is likely enough that in a 
 
loo A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 different form the same friendly relations among 
 those chiefly concerned in the Magazine have 
 from time to time been revived. But the Thack- 
 eray touch counsels silence. Was it not in con- 
 nection with such a gathering that he wrote his 
 scathing piece " On Screens in Dining-Rooms " ? 
 If there have been friendly tables, oval or round, 
 for consultation or conviviality, of such gather- 
 ings, as of other august councils in the realm, no 
 records are taken. One remark alone I will per- 
 mit myself. " That such letters as passed between 
 George Smith and Leslie Stephen are often pass- 
 ing, we may hope — if we are optimists." So 
 Professor Maitland, in his characteristic way. 
 That optimism is here no vain creed will be 
 admitted by every one who had the good fortune 
 to be brought into touch with another editor of 
 the Cornhill, the late Reginald Smith, whom to 
 have known was itself a liberal education in 
 human kindliness, in thoughtful courtesy, and 
 in love of letters. 
 
 ' As I open the little Cornhill ledgers once 
 more, turning, ,as any particular entry chances 
 to attract me, to the volumes of the Magazine 
 itself, I am struck by the vast quantity of " good 
 copy " which lies buried in its pages — " copy " 
 good now for the sake of its authorship, now 
 fof its. intrinsic merit, now for its anecdotic 
 interest, and often for all three. What a mine 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE loi 
 
 for the bibliographer — and for such studies in 
 " The Second Thoughts of Poets " as I have 
 made in another chapter — are these volumes 
 and these little ledgers 1 Here, to take an in- 
 stance or two, in No. 7 of the Cornhill was the 
 first version of a piece familiar to readers of 
 Matthew Arnold's poems under the title " The 
 Lord's Messengers." " Men of Genius " he 
 called it in the Cornhill, where also there is this 
 additional stanza at the beginning of the poem : 
 
 Sileilt, the Lord of the world 
 Eyes from the heavenly height, 
 Girt by his far-shining train, 
 Us, who with banners unfurl'd^ 
 Fight life's many-chanc'd fight -^ 
 Madly below, in the f lain. 
 
 I suppose it was the " Us " that caused the poet 
 to withdraw the stanza. The rest of the poem 
 was much revised, sometimes for the better. 
 Again, every one knows the first Kne of Tenny- 
 son's " Tithonus " : 
 
 The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, 
 
 and some of us have listened to lectures in which 
 the repetition has been dwelt upon as a peculiar 
 beauty. And so no doubt it is ; but it was 
 adopted by the poet only as a way out of a weak 
 beginning, for in the original Cornhill version 
 (February i860) the first line is this : 
 
 Ay me ! ay me ! the woods decay and fall. 
 
I02 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 In another of the poet's contributions to the 
 Cornhill (No. 48), the " Attempts at Classic 
 Metre in Quantity," the student of Tennyson 
 will find many revisions and some added notes, 
 with here and there an alternative rendering. 
 The " barbarous experiment, barbarous hexa- 
 meters " — suggested) I suppose, by Matthew 
 Arnold's then recent lectures on Homer — show 
 no alteration in the final text, but the " Specimen 
 of a Translation of the Iliad in Blank Verse " is 
 very different. 
 
 A bibliographer, unless he have access to the 
 little ledgers, will find it less easy to trace the 
 articles unsigned and never collected which were 
 contributed by men or women who were famous 
 already, but for one reason or another withheld 
 their identity, or whose names were not then 
 given because they were as yet unknown. Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds once said to Dr. Johnson, what 
 Boswell had " often thought, that he wondered 
 to find so much good writing employed in the 
 Reviews when the authors were to remain un- 
 known and so could not have the motive of fame." 
 " Nay, sir," replied Johnson, " those who write 
 in them write well in order to be paid well." 
 Mr. George Smith has told' us himself that he 
 did not stint his prices. A single number of 
 the Magazine, he said, once cost him ;^ii83, 
 and I find that during four years he paid no less 
 than ^^32,280 to literary contributors, in addition 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 103 
 
 to £4-37^ to artists for illustrations. But those 
 were the days of Thackeray and George Eliot, 
 when twelve guineas a page were paid for the 
 Roundabout Papers and a single month's instal- 
 ment of Romo/a cost £,$^3- 
 
 " I have had two applications for the lecture 
 [" Heine "] from magazines," wrote Matthew 
 Arnold to his mother, " but I shall print it, if 
 I can, in the Cornhi//, because it both pays best 
 and has much the largest circle of readers." 
 Johnson's answer to Reynolds gave only half 
 the truth ; Arnold's remark gives the other half. 
 Good writers wrote well for the CornMlI, whether 
 they signed their articles or not, both " in order 
 to be well paid " and to be well read. 
 
 The biographer no more than the bibliographer . 
 can afford to neglect searching the files of the 
 Cornhi//. The invaluable Poole will help him, 
 but that index to the periodicals does not include 
 incidental references. Take Leigh Hunt, for 
 instance. Lord Houghton said that the best 
 thing in Thackeray's first number was an essay 
 on Hunt, entitled " A Man of Letters of the 
 Last Century." It was written by Hunt's son, 
 and is a very good accovwat. -But a personal 
 reminiscence by George Smith, thrown in casually 
 many years later, is better. Smith had given 
 Hunt a cheque. " And what am I to do," asked 
 Skimpole-Hunt, " with this little bit of paper ? " 
 
:o4 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 Smith exchanged it for bank-notes. When Hunt 
 reached home they were accidentally burnt. 
 Next day he returned to Smith in great agitation. 
 This, however, had not prevented him from 
 purchasing on the road a little statuette of Psyche, 
 which he carried, without any paper round it, 
 in his hand. Smith volunteered to go with 
 Hunt to the Bank, and they were shown into a 
 room where three elderly gentlemen were trans- 
 acting business : 
 
 They kept us waiting some time, and Leigh Hunt, 
 who had meantime been staring all round the room, at 
 last got up, walked up to one of the staid officials, and 
 addressing him said in wondering" tones, " And this is the 
 Bank of England ! And do you sit here all day and never 
 see the green woods and the trees and the flowers and 
 the charming country ? " Then in tone of remonstrance 
 he demanded, " Are you contented with such a life ? " 
 All the time he was holding the little naked Psyche in one 
 hand, and with his long hair and flashing eyes made a 
 surprising figure. 
 
 « 
 
 A surprising figure indeed, and a delicious 
 picture ! It is worth many pages of less vivid, 
 though more formal, portraiture. Many such 
 biographical glimpses will reward a diligent 
 searcher in the Cornhill files — of Cardinal Wise- 
 man, for instance, and Cardinal Newman, of 
 Jowett, of Landseer, of Leighton, and above 
 all of Thackeray. It is pleasant to light upon 
 an appreciation of him, in which Charles Dickens 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 105 
 
 recalls times " when he unexpectedly presented 
 himself in my room, announcing how that some 
 passage in a certain book had made him cry 
 yesterday, and how that he had come to dinner 
 because he couldn't help it and must talk such 
 a passage over." 
 
 Another feature which strikes me as I turn 
 over the files is the large number of what may 
 be callejd footnotes to history. The earlier 
 numbers of the CornUll were rich, for instance, 
 in fragments of the Garibaldian epic recorded by 
 actors in the scenes or by, friends who had the 
 accounts at first hand. It was fitting- that Mr. 
 George Trevelyan, who made that epic live again 
 in a more material age, should have been the 
 medium in the Cornhill only a few years ago 
 of printing some further instalments in this sort. 
 The histoiy of the Risorgimento involves the 
 ambiguous character of the Emperor of the 
 French. Some aid towards the solution of that 
 problem may be found in the Cornhill picture of 
 " Loms Napoleon painted by a Contemporary." 
 " He likes to be absolute himself, but he wishes 
 all who are not his subjects to be free." So 
 wrote Senior in his journal : a shrewd reflection. 
 The politicians of to-day say that this is a trait 
 of human character which explains the attitude 
 of a good many people towards the rival claims 
 of Protection and Free Trade. Is there anything 
 
io6 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 new beneath the sun ? The world of to-day 
 is all agog about flying. So it was thirty-six 
 years ago : turn up the Cornhill, No. 1 59, and 
 you will see. It was unkind of Grenville Murray, 
 though, to recall an old saying that the taste of 
 the French for aerostatics — ^from the days of 
 Froissart's apprentice of Valenciennes and Cyrano 
 de Bergerac's voyage to the moon onwards — 
 was " due to their natural and national levity " ; 
 but he made a good shot at the end of his article ; 
 " Men of the present day say that the dirigible 
 airship is impossible ; our grandchildren or our 
 great-grandchildren may prove the contrary." 
 He was only out by a generation or two. R. A. 
 Proctor was not so happy in his patriotic con- 
 fidence (December 18 '76) that "Arctic voyages 
 by seamen of other nations than our own will 
 not succeed." Again, turn to the Cornhill, 
 No. 13, and you will find an article of protest 
 written round a description in the Times — not 
 the Telegraph — of rain as a " pluvial visitation." 
 I turn a few more pages, and come upon one of 
 Richard Doyle's " Bird's-Eye Views of Society." 
 It is entitled " Small and Early," and the letter- 
 press preaches a little sermon agamst " asking 
 more than your rooms will hold." The mid- 
 Victorian crinolines have gone, but only to make 
 room for a yet more populous crush. The more 
 the world changes, the more it remains the same. 
 Illustrations of the saying are one of the things 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 107 
 
 that always reward a search among old records 
 or old files. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 And then, again, there is what I have called 
 the anecdotic interest, to which the bookman 
 may add the bibliographic interest. The early 
 files of the Cornhill are rich in such associations. 
 The first number was issued in December 1859. 
 On the 28 th of the month Macaulay died in his 
 library; the Cornhill was on the table beside 
 him, open at the first page of Thackeray's Lovel 
 the Widower. The collector of the Magazine 
 " in the original parts " has that interest, dear 
 to collectors of first editions, of handling the 
 number or the volume in the self-same form in 
 which it issued from the press. With heightened 
 interest one may turn to the beautiful " Round- 
 about " in No. 2 — " the outpouring of a tender, 
 generous nature," said Macaulay's brother — 
 in which Thackeray applied to Macaulay, Scott's 
 dying words to Lockhart : " My dear, be a good 
 man. Nothing else will give you any comfort 
 when you come to lie here." I like, too, to 
 handle the very page, as it first appeared, on 
 which Thackeray introduced the opening chapter 
 of Charlotte Bronte's unfinished novel — " those 
 few and fine words of introduction " which 
 Swinburne characterised as " among the truest 
 and noblest, the manliest and the kindliest, that 
 ever came from his pen." 
 
io8 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 • ■•••• 
 
 For the amateur of English" engraved illustra- 
 tions the back numbers of the Cornhill are an 
 equally rich mine. Here is to be found much 
 of the work of Leighton and Millais, of Frederick 
 Walker and George Pinwell and Frederick 
 Sandys, of du Maurier and Helen Allingham, 
 of G. D. Leslie and F. Dicksee, translated for 
 the most part by the sound school of wood- 
 cutting of the brothers Dalziel. Leighton *s 
 illustrations to Romola showed, said Ruskin, his 
 " advancing power," and Leighton's biographer 
 truly accounts it a fortunate coincidence that 
 George Eliot should have written a Florentine 
 story at a time when the pai!nter was available 
 to illustrate it. I gather, however, from George 
 Eliot's letters that she must have been a little 
 exacting. _ Leighton's pictures, though " deli- 
 ciously beautiful," were sometimes " not just 
 the thing " she wanted. Two gifted workers, 
 each steep'ed in Florence, were moving on parallel 
 lines which would not meet. TroUope, whose 
 novels were illustrated for the Cornhill by Millais," 
 was less particular, or the artist was more com- 
 plaisant ; for TroUope in his Autobiography is 
 warmly enthusiastic over the skill with which 
 Millais interpreted his characters and situations. 
 But none of the Cornhill illustrations are, I think, 
 more pleasing than those of Frederick Walker. 
 " Who of our readers," asked Sir Sidney Colvin 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE 109 
 
 in a memoir of the artist in the Magazine, " has 
 not known and taken delight in that sympathetic 
 touch ? Have we read about Philip in church 
 beside the children ? We may follow and see 
 him there, the great rough head bent beside those 
 smooth cheeks and ringlets. Have we delighted 
 in the manly spirit of the young Huguenot of 
 Winchelsea ? We turn the page and see how 
 Denis Duval ^nd Tom Parrott, for their good 
 luck, went upstairs to look at Denis Duval's 
 box with the pistol in it 1 " These and many 
 a score of other dainty images meet the eye as 
 one turns over the old volumes. The repro- 
 duction, made necessarily from electrotypes, is 
 sometimes a little rough ; to see the illustrations 
 at their artistic best one should go to the impres- 
 sions from the wood-blocks themselves in the 
 " Cornhill Gallery," which was issued separately, 
 reviving pleasant memories of Lucy Robarts 
 and Lord Lufton, of Baker and Lovel, of Philip 
 on his way through the world, of Cousin Phillis, 
 of Lily Dale and Adolphus Crosbie^ of Romola 
 and Tito. The " illustrations of the 'sixties " are 
 now in favour with cpUectors, who do not find any 
 abiding satisfaction in the mechanical output of the 
 photograph and the process-block. The Cornhill 
 Magazine played a great part in sustaining during 
 the 'sixties and the 'seventies a now expiring art. 
 A word or two on the Cornhill cover, and I 
 have done. V^hy Cornhilll Mr. George Sinith 
 
no A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 named the Magazine from the then seat of his 
 publishing house, " It has a sound of jollity 
 and abundance about it," wrote Thackeray. 
 The same kind of note was struck in the colour 
 and design of the cover. The design takes us 
 back to mid - Victorian days and the artistic 
 schemes which the Queen and the Prince Consort 
 centred " in her halls of glass " (as the original 
 version of Tennyson's Dedication has it). The 
 cover was designed at Sir Henry Cole's suggestion 
 by Godfrey Sykes, a student at the newly founded 
 schools at South Kensington, and the original 
 design is still to be seen at the Victoria and 
 Albert Museum, in the Department of Engraving. 
 George Smith used to say that he was chaffed 
 about the sower scattering with his left hand. 
 Well, the artist might reply, " I am not an 
 agricultural labourer," and a left-handed sower 
 is at any rate less of a solecism than a mower 
 swinging his scythe from left to right — a spectacle 
 which may be witnessed on the walls of a certain 
 public gallery in London. But I protest that 
 the artist had a deep meaning in his apparent 
 deviation from realism ; he intended to signify 
 that the editor of the Cornhill would distribute 
 good 'seed and overflowing measure even with 
 his left hand. I like, too, the absence of any 
 advertisement of contents from the cover. Good 
 wine needs no bush. A " Contents slip " is 
 indeed now lightly attached, but that, I take it, 
 
IV A LITERARY MAGAZINE iii 
 
 is only a concession to chance customers. The 
 regular Cornhiller was advised by the cover from 
 the first that he would always find good cheer 
 within. Whether it were an article by " L. S.," 
 let us say, or " R. L. S.," whether a story by 
 Thackeray or TroUope or George Eliot, he 
 would duly find on turning the pages ; there 
 was no need to anticipate his pleasurable excite- 
 ment. So I read the cover. 
 
 With Fudge, or Blarney, or the Thames on fire 
 
 Treat not thy buyer ; 
 But proiFer good material^- 
 
 A genuine Cereal, , 
 Value for twelve pence, and not dear at twenty, 
 Such wit replenishes thy Horn of Plenty. 
 
 So wrote " Father Prout " in introducing 
 No. I of the Cornhill Magazine. The promise 
 of cover and of inaugural ode has been kept 
 through all the changes and chances of fifty 
 years. I close the old volumes and turn to 
 No. 599. The names are different, and the 
 subjects ; the quality of the contents and the 
 nature of the treatment are the same. There is 
 still the Thackeray touch ; still the Cornhill note. 
 That the tradition may be handed on from 
 pen to pen for another fifty years will be the 
 pious wish of every lover of humane letters. 
 It is sometimes feared, however, that the pa,lmy 
 days of the literary magazine are numbered, 
 and in a certain sense this is true. The Cornhill 
 
112 A LITERARY MAGAZINE iv 
 
 at its start attained, as we have seen, a circulation 
 unprecedented at that time in the history of 
 magazines. In the present day the greatest 
 circulations belong to periodicals of a very 
 different kind. We hear much in this connection 
 about a decadence in the popular taste. I do 
 not believe it. The fallacy consists in an implied 
 assumption that persons who fifty years ago 
 would have read the Cornhill or MacmillarCs or 
 the Temple Bar now read the more frivolous of 
 the illustrated magazines. The fact is that the 
 latter class of readers were fifty years ago reading 
 either nothing or periodicals far more rubbishy. 
 That is one side of the case^ and there is another. 
 The market for good literature, whether in 
 books or in periodicals, is larger to-day than 
 it has ever been, but the supply is provided 
 by many more competitors. " Beware of the 
 English periodicals," wrote Mrs. Browning to a 
 friend in 1 864 ; " there's a rage for new periodicals, - 
 and because the 'Cornhill answers, other specula- 
 tions crowd the market, overcrowd it ; there 
 will be failures presently." A shrewd forecast. 
 In old days the literary demand was concentrated 
 upon a few periodicals. At the present time any 
 one periodical which desires to attract the larger 
 public has to consult many tastes, and the supply 
 of litera,Ty articles is scattered in many places. 
 There are fewer literary magazines, but in the 
 magazines there is as much literature. 
 
LITERATURE AND MODERN 
 JOURNALISM 
 
 I WONDER if any public man of our time, in 
 making a speech about books, has ever refrained 
 from having a fling at the newspapers. " I am 
 not going," said Mr. Birrell the other day,i " to 
 say anything about the. Superiority of books over 
 newspapers." When an old .parliamentary hand 
 or a lawyer says " Far be it from me to say," 
 one knows what to expect. And though Mr. 
 Birrell's good sense saved him from the absurdity 
 of implying that everything which is bound up 
 as a book thereby becomes literature, he yet 
 allowed us to see clearly enough that he shares 
 the common belief that the newspapers are 
 dangerous rivals, if not the open foes, of good 
 books. Is this belief well founded ? 
 
 It finds some countenance in the fact that 
 journalism, which in the eighteenth century was 
 
 ^ At the reopening of the Gladstone Library at the National Liberal 
 Club, October 30, 1917. 
 
 "3 1 
 
114 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 closely and honourably connected with literature, 
 fares badly at the hands of the Victorian writers. 
 When a new editor goes to the Daily News, his 
 friends think to say something kind by hoping 
 that he will enjoy sitting in the chair of Charles 
 Dickens. They forget that though Dickens was 
 the first, he was also probably the worst and 
 certainly the shortest-lived editor that the Daily 
 News ever had ; he occupied the chair for 
 precisely twenty-six days — a period which must 
 be accounted short even in these days of frequent 
 changes in Fleet Street. He did, indeed, leave 
 a friend to take his place, but Mr. Forster seems 
 to have found, the work equally uncongenial. 
 After a few months he in turn departed, and 
 Dickens warmly congratulated him. " I certainly 
 am very glad, "he wrote, " of the result of the 
 Daily News business, though my gladness is 
 dashed with melancholy to think that you should 
 have toiled so long. I escaped more easily." 
 Having turned his back on journalism, Dickens 
 cast no regretful glances. On the contrary, he 
 gave a parting kick. In republishing some 
 Daily News articles — the Pictures from^ Italy — he 
 referred to the " mistake " he had made in con- 
 tributing them to a newspaper, and apologised 
 to his readers for his indiscretion, pleading that 
 it was only a " brief" one. , I am afraid,, there- 
 fore, that in any study of modern journalism 
 Dickens must figure less as the creator of the 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM 115 
 
 Daily News than as the creator of certain famous 
 types in fiction. Every one remembers the 
 Watertoast Gazefte, " at whose double extra 
 numbers -Queen Victoria shakes in her royal 
 shoes." Without naming them as shall be 
 nameless, I think it would not be difficult to 
 recall writers of to-day who, in more pompous 
 terms perhaps, but with like assurance, claim 
 earth-shaking powers. So, again, the mag- 
 nanimous Pott was a very ridiculous creature — 
 very unlike, I am sure, the great editors of to-day. 
 But in all Dickens's grotesques there is a basis 
 of truth to nature, and the suspicion haunts me 
 that even in my own time and experience I have 
 heard some echoes — far-away echoes, perhaps, 
 but still echoes — of the fierce rivalries of the 
 Eatanswill Gazette and Eatanswill Independent : 
 
 The Independent, Sir, is still dragging on a wretched 
 and lingering career, abhorred and despised by even the 
 few who are cognisant of its miserable and disgraceful 
 existence ; stifled by the very filth it so profusely scatters ; 
 rendered deaf and blind by the exhalations of its own 
 slime, the obscene journal, happily unconscious of its 
 degraded state, is rapidly sinking beneath that treacherous 
 mud which, while it seems to give it a firm standing 
 with the low and debased classes of society, is, neverthe- 
 less, rising above its detested head and will speedily engulf 
 it for ever. 
 
 But journalists are not the only professional 
 people who are deeply sensible of each other's 
 
ii6 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 shortcomings. That Dickens's caricature was 
 not exaggerated in point of style is shown by this 
 piece which I cut out of a London newspaper 
 not many years ago : 
 
 They are the only faction in the world which seeks 
 to identify themselves with the passions of helots and the 
 manners of the gutter. Contemptible in the spirit of 
 their hatred as they are impotent in its display, the sorry 
 spectacle they present is that of the ecstasy of venom with 
 which the viper renews the attempt to gnaw the file until 
 it is cured of its appetite by its diet. 
 
 But Dickens poured ridicule on everything that 
 deserved it. For instance : 
 
 Mind and matter glide swift into the vortex of im- 
 mensity. Howls the sublime, and softly sleeps the calm 
 Ideal, in the whispering chambers of Imagination. To 
 hear it, sweet it is. But then outlaughs the stern philo- 
 sopher, and saith to the Grotesque, " What ho ! arrest 
 for me that Agency. Go bring it here ! " And so the 
 vision fadeth. 
 
 This passage was the production of one of the 
 Literary Ladies. And pages not unlike it may 
 be found within the bound copies of books 
 to-day. I do not mean to suggest, however, 
 that it is only as " literature " that stuff and 
 nonsense are palmed off. 
 
 Then there was Thackeray, who was the creator 
 of the Pall Mall Gazette of fiction. He called 
 it " a journal written by gentlemen for gentle- 
 men." But I think that anybody who reads 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM 117 
 
 Philip carefully will come to the conclusion that 
 the paper edited by Mr. Bickerton for Mr. 
 Mugford was a paper edited by a snob for a 
 vulgarian. All the literary men of the period 
 seem to have combined to guy the journalists. 
 There is Matthew Arnold, for instance, with his 
 conversation in Friendship's Garland on the 
 character of Mr. Bottles. Mr. Arnold had 
 ventured the opinion that Mr. Bottles was 
 hardly a man of delicacy. The remark, we are 
 told, had an extraordinary effect upon the only 
 journalist present : 
 
 Delicacy, said he, — delicacy — surely I have heard that 
 word before. Yes, in other days, he went on dreamingly; 
 in my fresh enthusiastic youth, before I knew Sala. 
 
 Even Lord Morley, journalist as well as man 
 of letters, dismissed the newspaper press, in his 
 famous piece on " Compromise," as " that huge 
 engine for keeping discussion on a low level." 
 I really believe that the only Victorian writer who 
 has a good word for the better possibilities of 
 modern journalism is Carlyle. He scoffed, indeed, 
 at the able editors and their unwearied thrashing 
 of straw. That they could do it and live was, 
 he said, a- crowning instance of human vitality. 
 But at any rate he recognised that journalism had 
 or might have a mission : 
 
 A preaching Friar settles himself in every village, and 
 builds a pulpit which he calls Newspaper. Look well. 
 
ii8 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 thou seest everywhere a new Clergy of the Mendicant 
 Orders, some bare -footed, some almost bare-backed, 
 fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach zealously 
 enough for copper alms — and the love of God. 
 
 Praise, or even recognition, from Carlyle is praise 
 indeed ; but then a journalist may perhaps be 
 haunted by a fear that the Sage may in reality 
 have been making a Gargantuan guffaw — a 
 literary attitude not unusual to him. It is on 
 record that Carlyle replied to a young man who 
 said that he wrote for the papers, " Journalism 
 is just ditch-water." As for Carlyle's disciple, 
 Ruskin dismissed the output of modern journalism 
 as " so many square leagues of dirtily printed, 
 falsehood." 
 
 Skits and tirades of this kind, though they 
 have served to encourage the idea of literature 
 and journalism as antagonistic forces, do not 
 carry us very far. Certainly a man of supreme 
 literary genius such as Dickens does well to keep 
 away from journalism. He should -not sacrifice 
 even to the best of papers or parties powers 
 which were meant for mankind. If Dickens had 
 taken his editorial duties seriously and stuck to 
 his chair, he would no doubt have made a great 
 name for himself as an editor ; but at what a 
 loss 1 Hard Times we might still have had, 
 perhaps, for that book was almost an educational 
 and political tract; but in all probability we 
 "should have had no Dombey and no Copperfield. 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM 119 
 
 If there be any journalist who figels that he has 
 the power of writing a David Copperfield, by 
 all means let him quit journalism ; though if his 
 present engagement be a good one, he would be 
 well advised to be sure before throwing it up 
 ■ that his unwritten masterpiece be indeed a 
 Copperfield. 
 
 A quieter and more subtle thrust was delivered 
 at modern journalism by another man of letters. 
 It is in Leslie Stephen's biographical introduction 
 to the Letters of J. R. Green. Stubbs, Freeman, 
 and Green belonged to a mutual admiration 
 society. Thorold Rogers bade us look where 
 
 ladling from alternate tubs 
 Stubbs butters Freeman, Freeman butters Stubbs. 
 
 What was left over was bestowed on Green, but 
 there was one thing about him which the other 
 two could not forget or forgive. Green wrote 
 for the newspapers. Perhaps that alone might 
 have been condoned — even Freeman wrote in 
 the papers^but Green wrote and was widely 
 read. He was, in other words, a good journalist, 
 and Stubbs and Freeman exchanged laments on 
 this lapse from the drier paths of history. Leslie 
 Stephen cannot deny the impeachment. So, like' 
 a loyal biographer, he seeks to blunt its edge. 
 It is quite true, he says, that Green wrote habitu- 
 ally, successfully, and profitably- for the journals, 
 but he was not therefore and of necessity a 
 
120 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 journalist, for " by journalism we mean writing 
 for pay upon matters of which you are ignorant." 
 It is fortunate for journalism that Leslie Stephen's 
 words appeared after the great Oxford Dictionary 
 had passed the letter J, or this might have been 
 added to other mordant definitions. There is 
 a horrid element of verisimilitude in it.. There 
 was once a journalist, it is true, who belied the 
 definition. " Mr. Lowe will be very happy to 
 undertake to write for the Times on any subject 
 on which he possesses sufficient information." 
 But this modesty of limitation is, I imagine, rare ; 
 and, besides, what is sufficiency of information 
 for journalistic purposes .'' I doubt if many 
 confirmed journalists could truthfully say that 
 they had never written for pay upon matters of 
 which they were largely ignorant. A moment's 
 reflection will show that it must be so, and 
 Stephen's is a true definition, so far as it goes, 
 because it covers some of the distinctive features 
 of journalistic writing, though it is not only in 
 journalism that men and women write for pay 
 upon subjects of which they are ignorant. One 
 reason why a certain superficiality is inherent in 
 daily journalism is that newspapers are written 
 in a hurry. Take, for instance, the conditions 
 of dramatic criticism. The critic has no brief, 
 and no time to get up his case. He has to form 
 his impression of the play in circumstances by 
 no means conducive to calm judgment. As 
 
V ^ MODERN JOURNALISM .121 
 
 quickly as he can he has to describe the story — 
 if he can find it ; to give an idea of the dialogue — 
 if he can remember it ; and then to add some 
 general critical remarks on the performance and 
 the performers, making due allowance for first- 
 night nervousness and sometimes for first-night 
 hitches. And all the while the editor is sending 
 messages, less or more polite, to know how much 
 longer he will be, and the printer, impatient 
 devils, to fetch the final slips. I was amused to 
 read an outburst about the superficiality of the 
 dramatic critics. "How many of these gentle- 
 men," asked the writer indignantly, " ever sit 
 down with their heads on their hands to ponder 
 for hours and attempt to do justice to work 
 which may have cost months and even years of 
 toil ? " The answer must be, Not one of them. 
 I am afraid that a dramatic critic, working under 
 the conditions just described, who should rest 
 his head on his hands to ponder for hours, would 
 be liable to have that head somewhat rudely 
 bruised. I believe that the difficulty is at the 
 present day met to some degree by inviting the 
 critics to dress rehearsals ; but the case may 
 serve as an illustration of one of the reasons for 
 superficiality in the work of journalism. And 
 there is another. A journal written only by the 
 learned would not appeal to capitalists as a 
 " commercial proposition." The salary list would 
 be prohibitive ; and even if it were not, and a 
 
1 22 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 newspaper written only by experts were produced, 
 -hardly anybody would read it. The journalist, 
 it seems to me, stands in a middle position between 
 the expert and the complete ignoramus. When 
 he starts upon a subject he often knows very 
 little about it, but he sometimes picks tip much 
 as he goes along. In this respect 1 4o not know 
 that journalism is very unlike a good deal of 
 literature. At any rate I know of one charming 
 and successful author who applied to himself a 
 saying, first coined, I think, by Disraeli. " When 
 I want to learn a subject," he said, "I sit down 
 to write a book about it." 
 
 Let it be admitted, then, that there is a large 
 element of truth in Leslie Stephen's definition. 
 But it is not the whole truth. The case from 
 which it started shows this. Green's Stray 
 Studies were written for the papers, and were 
 good as journalism. What appears in the papers 
 may be well or ill informed and well or ill written, 
 and if Stephen choose to say that only the latter 
 is Journalism, the dispute becomes one about 
 words. The point I wish to make is that during 
 the time when Victorian writers were pouring 
 scorn as men of letters upon journalism, the men 
 of letters themselves were busy at it, and that 
 many men whose principal work was injournalism 
 were hardly less entitled to be so called. Matthew. 
 Arnold's' Friendship's Garland was written for 
 the Pall Mall Gazette. J. A. Symonds, Pater, 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM 123 
 
 Oscar Wilde, and many other well-known literary 
 writers, were reviewers. Churton Collins wrote 
 turn -overs for the Globe. Andrew Lang was 
 a leader-writer. And will any one deny that 
 Frederick Greenwood and his successor John 
 Morley wrote admirably as journalists } And 
 what is worth adding is that these and many other 
 writers in the press formed something of a 
 school. It must often have been noticed by those 
 behind the scenes that in popular belief the name 
 of a particular writer was erroneously attached 
 to examples by a different hand of what had 
 become a model. The connection between litera- 
 ture and journalism is still close, and there is 
 as much good writing in the press as at any earlier 
 time (though also, for reasons presently to be 
 noticed, there may be more worse writing) ; but 
 it would be impertinent for me to particularise. 
 
 It may be true — I think it is — that there is 
 a sharper differentiation of functions, a more 
 trenchant division of labour, than was once the 
 case in English journalism. Delane would be 
 much surprised to hear that in most great news- 
 papers of to-day there is not only the editor, but 
 a City editor, a News editor, a Literary editor, 
 and so forth. ' A " good story " does not mean 
 in these days a literary story ; and what is called 
 live journalism is not literary journalism. Litera- 
 ture has, as I suppose some would say, been 
 taught its place. But the place is still consider- 
 
124 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 able, and in some respects it is larger than it 
 was in an earlier generation. The differentiation 
 of functions of which I have spoken has been 
 made necessary by the greater width of range 
 in modern journalism : 
 
 Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas, 
 Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli. 
 
 The lines may not inaptly be taken as the " bill " 
 of the modern newspaper, and is not this in accord 
 with the spirit of literature ? In this widening 
 of interest, which is characteristic of modern 
 journalism, literature itself has had a share. I 
 can remember the time when a column of book- 
 notices in a daily newspaper was a daring in- 
 novation. In old days the notice of a book in 
 the Times newspaper was an exceptional event. 
 The fact was recalled to me when I was compiling 
 a bibliography of Ruskin. The appearance of 
 Modern Painters was at the time a great literary 
 event, but from the first volume to the last, 
 1843 to i860, the Times never noticed the book; 
 though, Ttrangely enough, when some of Ruskin's 
 verses had appeared in a Christmas Annual — a 
 false literary start — they were hailed as marking 
 the advent of a new poet. Who can imagine 
 either the ill-timed neglect or the ill-founded 
 notice in the Times of to-day } It seems to me 
 that the weekly Literary Supplement of that 
 paper shows a higher and a more evenly sustained 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM 125 
 
 level of literary merit than I can remember in 
 any newspaper of my time. And I. might point, 
 too, to the leading theatrical notices in the same 
 paper. I have heard actors and dramatists and 
 actor-managers complain of them sometimes. I 
 always beg them in reply to remember the claims 
 of literature — and Aristotle. The increased allot- 
 ment of space to literary affairs somewhat puzzled 
 and irritated printers who had served their 
 apprenticeship under the old r^gijne. On one 
 occasion an editor sent up to the comppsing- 
 room a rather long account of Matthew Arnold. 
 " Who is this M. Arnold ? " one of the printers 
 was heard to ask, " and how many more columns 
 of him is the editor going to shovel up .? " " You 
 wait," replied a more literary and a more tolerant 
 " companion," " till Ruskin goes off, and then 
 you'll see something 1 " And they did, but 
 that was in another paper, and there was not a 
 murmur of surprise. Even in papers with larg^ 
 circulations, the publication of a great book or 
 the death of a great man of letters has come to 
 be recognised as an event no less, or not so very 
 much less, than a Test Match or the affairs of a 
 cinema artist. The newspapers even sell books, 
 and the skill of some of them in passing off old 
 bopks for new would do no discredit to an 
 auctioneer who was passing off new pictures for 
 old. Even at a critical period of the great war, 
 and at a moment when they were talking about 
 
126 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 a politico-military crisis at home, the newspapers 
 all treated the publication of a book by Lord 
 Morley as a principal event of the day.^ The 
 war itself has illustrated incidentally the literary 
 strain in modern journalism. For various reasons, 
 some of which I have noticed in another place,^ 
 the war correspondent's work is very different in 
 function and in opportunity from what it was in 
 the times of Russell and Forbes. It has been 
 in the hands of able writers, and the effects at 
 which jthey have aimed have been in large measure 
 literary. The importance which moderri editors 
 seem to attach to literary opinion has been shown 
 by the fact that many of them turn to the popular 
 novelists of the day to tell their readers how the 
 war may be lost or won. 
 
 All this, it may be said, is perhaps true ; but 
 when in these days the newspapers are held up 
 as the enemies of good books, reference is made 
 to the prevalence of a class of papers newer than 
 that of which Matthew Arnold spoke when he 
 coined the phrase " The New Journalism." ^ 
 
 The newer journalism is often denounced for 
 its personalities, and it is implied that in former 
 times the newspapers were in this respect other 
 and better. Nothing could be more untrue. 
 
 - ' fi«o//e«/oKj, published on November i6, 191 7, a few days after Mr. 
 Lloyd George's speech in Paris. 
 
 2 In my study of Delane, p. 82. 
 
 ' In the Nineteenth Century for May 1887, the reference being to Mr, 
 Stead's Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM" 127 
 
 There are more personalities published because 
 there are more newspaj)ers, but the personalities 
 are much less offensively personal. The fact 
 is of course that the press in its tone and manners 
 reflects those of the world of which it is a mirror, 
 and only forgetfulness of the past can lead any- 
 body to suppose that the tone and manners of 
 to-day are not an improvement upon those of 
 a century ago. Take the evidence of caricature. 
 The distance that separates Tenniel or his present 
 successors and Gould from Gillray and Rowland- 
 son is enormous. The character of some of 
 Gillray's pictures must be seen to be .believed. 
 One or two instances may be recalled of the way 
 in which he represented the leaders of the Whig 
 party on the news of the Battle of the Nile. One 
 caricature shows the Duke of Norfolk with many 
 empty port bottles beside him in a revolting 
 state, while saying that Nelson and the British 
 fleet is a sickening toast. Another represents 
 Nelson bringing home two uncommon fierce 
 French crocodiles from the Nile as a present to 
 the King : they are Sheridan and Fox. In 1802 
 the Peace of Amiens had caused the First Consul 
 to be treated with more show of civility. But 
 Fox's visit to him gave the caricaturist another 
 chance. Mrs. Fox was represented as a sphere 
 of vast circumference in every direction, while 
 Fox, equally rotund, is made to bow so low as 
 to produce sartorial dissolution. The social 
 
128 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 caricatures of the time are coarser and not less 
 ferocious. The English caricatures of to-day are 
 refinement itself compared with them. 
 
 The idea that modern journalism is harmful 
 to literature because its scrappiness encourages 
 triviality and desultoriness is founded, I submit, 
 on a misconception akin to that noticed in the 
 preceding chapter. It is quite true that a journal- 
 is*nof scraps has come into existence during the 
 last generation. I have often read the account 
 which Sir George Newnes is said to have given 
 of the fateful hour of its birth. He and Lady 
 Newnes were turning over some daily newspaper 
 and voting it dull. At last a paragraph caught 
 their eye which seemed really interesting. " Now 
 that, my dear, is what I call a tit-bit." " You are 
 right," said the other, and " why should we not 
 start a paper to consist of tit-bits all the time ? " 
 At that moment the eggs of an enormous brood 
 of Tit-Bits, Answers, Scraps, Scrapings, Cuts, 
 and the foundations of fortunes and reputations 
 afterwards enhanced in other spheres were laid. 
 There is no authority for the surmise that the 
 parent tit-bit was a paragraph which calculated 
 the number of postage-stamps which, arranged 
 in a row, would reach from the earth to the moon. 
 It is a mistake, I may add, to suppose that the 
 world of Tit-Bits journalism is entirely occupied 
 with the diffusion of useless knowledge. It 
 should also be remembered to its credit that it. 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM 129 
 
 has always abstained from seeking to raise the 
 blush of shame on the cheek of modesty, which 
 is more than can be said of some forms of modern 
 literature. It may even be claimed that the 
 " Home Journals " of which I am speaking have 
 in some dim and incipient degree a literary scope. 
 I have been told by one who was likely to know 
 that the real secret of their popularity is to be 
 found in the answers to correspondents or women's 
 pages, which serve up moral platitudes. Every 
 one who has glanced at such pages knows the 
 kind of thing. " Cheer up, little woman, and 
 remember that every cloud has a silver lining." 
 Or, " Do not let sad thoughts grow upon you. 
 The clouds may be dark, but yet there will be 
 light." What are these things but crude and 
 prosaic echoes of the Tennysonian School with 
 its 
 
 O let the solid ground 
 
 Not fail beneath my feet 
 Before my life has found 
 
 What some have found so sweet — 
 
 or 
 
 Somewhere beneath the sun, 
 
 These quivering heart-strings prove it, 
 
 Somewhere there must be one 
 Made for this soul, to move it ? 
 
 But I must not press this point too far. Per- 
 haps the best that can be said for scrappy journal- 
 ism is that it affords to millions of people an 
 innocent pastime. But does that constitute an 
 
I30 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 offence against literature ? From some of the 
 tirades levelled against it one might suppose 
 that the fascination of Tit-Bits and its like had 
 seduced serious minds from the immensities, 
 that if the great public were not reading daily 
 scraps and weekly snippets it would be sending 
 into ever and ever new editions all the weighty 
 books which now miss that felicity. But the 
 fact surely is that the journalism of scraps is read 
 to-day by people who in an earlier generation ' 
 would have read nothing at all. It is a delusion 
 to suppose, when one sees, say during the luncheon 
 hour in the City, boys and girls in St. Paul's 
 Churchyard devouring their favourite Scraps or 
 Cuts that they would otherwise be immersed in 
 contemplation of the Cathedral or the study of 
 philosophy. The vogue of this new journalism 
 has been due to the coincidence of a great cheapen- 
 ing in the cost of paper with the opening of new 
 reading strata by the spread of popular education. 
 It is probable that the newspapers are school- 
 masters which bring a certain number of the 
 great public to read other things. It is certain 
 that the extension of the popular newspaper 
 press has synchronised with an extension of cheap 
 editions of classical literature, and' it is unlikely 
 that the publishers put these reprints upon the 
 market solely from a disinterested love of good 
 literature. They are issued, one must suppose, 
 because they are bought. Whether they are 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM 131 
 
 always read is, I admit, a further question. " No 
 furniture so charming," said Sydney Smith, " as 
 books " ; the saying has a new meaning in these 
 days when books are sold at drapery stores and 
 commended, like lingerie, for their daintiness. 
 An ingenious friend of mine once wrote, or 
 intended to write, a paper on the connection 
 between modern literature and' bijou residences. 
 The gravest indictment in the name of litera- 
 ture against modern journalism was drawn a 
 few years ago by the President of the Authors' 
 Society. In acknowledging the award of the 
 gold medal of the Royal Society of Literature^ 
 Mr. Hardy said : 
 
 An appreciation of what is real literature, and efforts 
 to keep real literature alive, have become imperative, if 
 the taste for it is not to be entirely lost, and with the loss 
 of that taste its longer life in the English language. While 
 millions have lately been learning to read, few of them 
 have been learning to discriminate; arid the result is an 
 appalling increase every day in slipshod writing that would 
 not have been tolerated for one moment a hundred years 
 ago. I don't quite like to say so, but I fear that the vast 
 increase of hurried descriptive- reporting in the news- 
 papers is largely responsible for this in England ; writing 
 done by men, and still more by women, who are utterly 
 incapable of, and unconscious of, that grin of delight 
 which William Morris assured us, comes over the real 
 artist either in letters or in other forms of art at a close 
 approximation to, if not an exact achievement of, his 
 ideal. Then the increasing influx of American journals. 
 
132 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 fearfully and wonderfully. worded, helps on the indifference 
 to literary form. Their influence has been strongly 
 apparent of late years in our English newspapers, where 
 one often now meets with headlines in staring capitals, 
 that are phrases of no language whatever, and often in- 
 comprehensible at a casual glance. Every kind of reward, 
 prize, or grant, therefore, v^hich urges omnivorous readers 
 and incipient writers towards appreciating the splendours 
 of English undefiled, and the desire of producing such 
 for themselves, is of immense value. ■"• 
 
 As for journalese, as it is called, the thing is 
 horrible, but a journalist may be pardoned for 
 quarrelling somewhat with a term which seems 
 to imply that, the style in question is peculiar to 
 newspapers. No doubt there are reporters, and 
 leader-writers also, who make it a rule always to 
 vary a word when the same would do, and never 
 to use one word if two can be found. 
 
 Of the first of these sins that beset the journal- 
 ist, the gentlemen who summarised the cricket 
 results for the papers, used before the war to 
 furnish every day a terrible example ; as, for 
 instance : 
 
 At Lord's, Leicestershire scored 334 against M.C.C, 
 and Ground. Kent, at Leyton, hit up 426. At Brighton, 
 Sussex made 315. Hampshire, at Southampton, compiled 
 a score of 381. At Bristol, Gloucestershire were dis- 
 missed for 100. 
 
 Delane must have turned in his grave at such 
 senseless variations of phrase — Delane of whom 
 
 ' Times, June 4, 19 iz. 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM 133 
 
 we are told that he applied even to the smallest 
 paragraphs a constant vigilance in order that a 
 standard of correct English should be maintained. 
 " I remember," says Dean Wace, " his being par- 
 ticularly indignant with the use of the slipshod 
 phrase that a marriage, or a funeral, or a race had 
 taken place. It was mere slovenliness of ex- 
 pression, he said, instead of saying that a marriage 
 had been solemnised or a race run." 
 
 Of the second fault, a report of a royal wedding 
 which I have by me may serve as an example. No 
 simple word is used. The marriage was the 
 nuptials, small was exiguous, black clothes were 
 sable habiliments, the bishop was the sacerdotal 
 dignitary. And then everything was doubled — 
 slip or hitch, uncertainty or delay, smoothly and 
 securely, accessories and embellishments, and 
 so forth throughout. It were superfluous to 
 name the paper.'^ But the best efforts of the 
 young lions in their native lair are sometimes 
 eclipsed elsewhere. Not long ago I noticed 
 in a provincial paper a good instance of the 
 manner in which a statement may be beaten out. 
 What the reporter had to say was that at the 
 meeting which he attended there were speeches 
 
 ' It is curious tliat the same word has passed into the language to express 
 two precisely opposite conditions of style; For the word " Telegraphese " 
 the New English Dictionary gives these meanings : ' (i) The concise and 
 elliptical style in which telegrams are worded, (z) An elaborate or inflated 
 style, such as was attributed to leading articles in the Daily Telegraph 
 newspaper. 
 
134 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 and music. The stereotyped formula for that 
 statement is : " The programme consisted of • 
 speeches interspersed with vocal and instru- 
 mental music," which, as journalese goes, may 
 be considered almost concise. My reporter 
 meant to improve upon the fo^nula, and this is 
 how he did it : 
 
 The programme of the evening was alike interesting 
 and instructive, consisting of music and oratory, music 
 that unlocks the depths of the human heart and bears 
 away the soul captive to visions of higher things than the 
 jingle of the money-changer's gold; and -oratory that 
 crystallises these emotions into spoken articulated words, 
 and gives a concrete appreciation of the facts of the day 
 where there had previously been only an abstract sense 
 of altruism. Both music and oratory v^ere of a high 
 character. The tone of the meeting was appreciative 
 while the musicians charmed it, and enthusiastic when the 
 orators appealed to it. 
 
 That young man almost deserved the' additional 
 eighteenpence, or whatever sum it was, that 
 his long-winded ingenuity was worth to him, 
 especially if (as I like to think) he was at the same 
 time enjoying a joke at the expense of his editor. 
 But this kind of stuff is not peculiar to journalism. 
 Are there no sesquipedalian orators or precious 
 litterateurs ? And I remember an Oxford lecture 
 by Ruskin in which he laughed at himself and 
 said that people no longer thought him a fine 
 writer, because now if he thought some one's 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM 135 
 
 house was on fire he only said, " Sir, your house 
 is on fire," whereas formerly he used to say, 
 " Sir, the abode in which you probably passed 
 the delightful days of your youth is in imminent 
 danger of inflammation." The style of the 
 paper with the largest circulation to-day is less 
 Corinthian than was that of its predecessors, 
 and the war tends to restrict verbosity in the 
 press generally. " Smaller Papers, Shorter Para- 
 graphs " is a standing heading, for which relief 
 .many thanks have, I hope, been given. 
 
 Let mqdern journalism bear its proper share 
 of the blame, but it is not the only, and perhaps 
 no longer now the worst, sinner. It is a delusion 
 to suppose that the descriptive reporters are the 
 only people who do violence to the majesty of 
 English undefiled. Professor Quiller-Couch, in 
 hi^ admirable lectures " On the Art of Writing," 
 has shown from a wide range of examples how 
 often English is superseded by Jargon. The 
 recent growth of bureaucracy is responsible for 
 much corruption of the language, and a writer 
 in the Times has turned the tables on those who 
 scoff at journalese by asking them to consider 
 " officialese," with its p9mposity of phrase and 
 its wretched cliches. Journalese with all its 
 faults is for the most part at least intelligible. 
 Can as much be said for the language which is 
 used by the various Controllers .'' Here is a 
 sample : 
 
136 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 Where the year ending September 30, 19 14, is adopted 
 by a brewer for the purposeof computing standard barrelage, 
 and the brewer proves to the Commissioners that he has 
 closed any brewery and it has not since been used as a 
 brewery, so much of any beer so brewed at the closed 
 brewery as the Commissioners think just in the circum- 
 stances shall be deemed to be beer brewed at the brewer's 
 brewery. 
 
 A journalist suggested tjiat the real purpose 
 of this Order was that its recital might be set 
 by the police as a new " drunk or sober " test. 
 Here is another Order fearfully and wonderfully 
 worded : 
 
 As from the dates hereafter mentioned the price of 
 coal sold or offered for sale at the pit's mouth directly or 
 indirectly by the owner of the mine or on his behalf for 
 use in the United Kingdom shall be a price exceeding by 
 nine shillings in the case of mines in the South Wales and 
 Monmouthshire and Forest of Dean districts and six 
 shillings and sixpence in other cases or such lower sum as 
 may be fixed by the Controller of Coal Mines in any 
 particular case the price of coal of the same description, 
 sold in similar quantities, and under similar conditions 
 affecting the sale at the pit's mouth at the same coal mine 
 on the corresponding date (or as near thereto as, having 
 regard to the course of business, may be practicable) in 
 the twelve months ended the thirtieth day of June nineteen 
 hundred and fourteen. 
 
 Who can wonder that an editor, on being asked 
 to print this Order for the enlightenment of the 
 public, headed it "A Cryptic Message," and 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM 137 
 
 appended -a note saying, " We fear we cannot 
 undertake to interpret it for our readers " ? There 
 is military officialese also, as perpetrated, for 
 instance,, in the official War Bulletins. I am not 
 now thinking of these documents from the point 
 of ^aew of their relation to factSj though when 
 the time- comes an interesting study might be 
 made by comparing the bulletins of the several 
 belligerents in respect of their use of euphemism, 
 meiosis, exaggeration, suppressio vert and sug- 
 gestio falsi. I do not think- that the British 
 bulletins would have anything to fear from such 
 a comparison, but at present I am thinking only 
 of style. In their sobriety and restraint the 
 bulletins of the British commanders have been 
 good, but their English has sometimes been at 
 fault. For instance, we were told one da:y that 
 " A further 77 prisoners have been brought in." 
 This is a phrase, founded on French, but it is 
 not English. 
 
 The modern journalists, then, are not the only 
 jargoneers. Yet Mr. Hardy was not ill-advised 
 in pointing his plea for pure English to journalists 
 in particular. It is they who have the greatest 
 opportunity to do well and who at the same time 
 are under the strongest temptation to do ill. 
 " Next to the man who knows how wisely to 
 form the manners of men and to rule them at 
 home and in war," Milton held in honour " the 
 man who strives to establish the method and 
 
138 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 habit of speaking and writing received from a 
 good age of the nation, and, as it were, to fortify 
 the same with a kind of wall, the daring to overleap 
 which let a law only short of that of Romulus 
 be used to prevent." ^ It is the journalists who 
 hold or breach this fort. They write more than 
 other men. They are more read than other 
 writers. Millions of people read nothing except 
 what the journalists write. At the same time, 
 in no calling is the pursuit of excellence more 
 arduous than in journalism. In many respects, 
 as I have shown, the necessary conditions in which 
 the journalist has to turn out his tale of bricks 
 or thrash his straw are adverse to it. Again, 
 the temptation to be slovenly and slipshod is 
 great owing to the obviously evanescent nature 
 of the journalist's output. There was a dinner 
 some years ago when competition among the 
 London evening papers was beginning ,to be 
 very keen, and one of them had recently increased 
 its size. The late Mr. Harry Cust had made 
 one of his sparkling after-dinner speeches, and 
 as it was a dinner of the Omar Khayyam Club, 
 a rival editor turned to Mr. Cust and said : 
 
 I Each morn twelve pages brings, you say ; 
 Yes, but where goes the page of yesterday ? 
 
 I expect that there are times when even the most 
 conscientious journalist has* thought with relief 
 
 ' Quoted by Lord Morley in his Studies in Literature, p. 224, 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM 139 
 
 of the quick oblivion which awaits his labours. 
 But this is to sink into the weak-mindedness 
 spoken of by the poet.^ There is nothing which 
 a journalist should cultivate more scrupulously 
 than the craftsman's conscience, and there is no 
 better training in this than the study of good 
 literature. There has been much talk among 
 j;purnalists about a qualifying test, and schools 
 of journalism have been founded, especially in 
 America, where, from the point of view here 
 discussed, they are not less needed than else- 
 where. In any such school these words by John 
 Bright should be written up for all to read, markj 
 learn j and inwardly digest. " If my manner of 
 speaking is good," he wrote when an old man, 
 " it may have become so from reading what is 
 good." And again : " It is' a good thing to use 
 few words and the best words, which are those 
 which are simple and forcible, with no needless 
 use of adjectives, too many of which spoil speaking 
 and writing. To assist in attaining to a practice 
 like this, the reading of good books — I mean 
 well-written books — ^is helpful, so that the eye and 
 the ear and the mind may become familiar with 
 good language." The habit of good literature, 
 
 1 And oh, when nature sinks, as oft she may, 
 ■- Through long-lived pressure of. obscure distress, 
 Still to be strenuous for the bright reward, 
 And in the soul admit of no decay, 
 Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness ; 
 Great is the glory, for the strife is hard.. 
 
I40 LITERATURE AND v 
 
 the cultivation of a literary conscience, may easily 
 lend some light to hours of obscure drudgery. 
 Much of the work of the journalist 'is humble 
 and insignificant. He has, it is true, his golden 
 opportunities sometimes, which make up for the 
 more numerous hours of obscure drudgery — 
 opportunities to strike some blow for a cause in 
 which he believes, to help in righting a wrong, 
 to form and not merely to follow public opinion, 
 to nerve, it may even be, a nation's purpose. 
 This is an aspect of journalism, however, outside 
 my present scope ; but even in the humdrum 
 hours there may be the craftsman's pleasure and 
 credit in doing the job as well as a man can and 
 as the conditions of the case admit. In review- 
 ing, one may read and try to understand more 
 or less of the book which he criticises. Every 
 leading article may be more or less pointed, and 
 more or less fair. An interview may reproduce 
 more or less of what the victim said. A report 
 may give more or less of the speaker's real points. 
 A " news story " may be more or less veracious. 
 Even a headline and a contents bill may be less 
 or more misleading. And above all, anything 
 and everything which a journalist writes may 
 less or more defile the fount of pure English. _ 
 The writer, however humble may be his sphere, 
 who has some knowledge and appreciation of 
 good literature, may always keep an ideal before 
 him. He will be capable, in Mr. Hardy's 
 
V MODERN JOURNALISM .141 
 
 words, of " that grin of delight which William 
 Morris assured us comes over the real artist either 
 in letters or in any other forms of art at a close 
 approximation to, if not an exact achievement 
 of, his ideal." 
 
VI 
 
 WORDS AND THE WAR 
 
 Nations write their autobiographies, it has been 
 said, in three manuscripts — the book of their 
 deeds, the book of their words, and the book of 
 their art. The British Empire is writing its his- 
 tory to-day in the deeds of its sons on land, at sea, 
 and in the air. What expression will be given to 
 these deeds by art or literature remains to be seen, 
 though The Muse in Arms has shown some worthy 
 first-fruits ; but meanwhile records of the great 
 war are being impressed every day, often uncon- 
 sciously and unobserved, upon the palimpsest of 
 our language. " New occasions teach " new words 
 as weir as " new duties." A page of history maybe 
 summed in a new word or phrase, or (as is hardly 
 less significant) in the altered use of an old one. 
 The newhorrorsof thewar are told in such words as 
 gassed^ tear-shells^ shell-shock, barbed-wire disease ^ ; 
 
 ' This last term occurs in the Agreement between the British and German 
 Governments on the Treatment of Prisoners, July 191 7 [Parliamentary 
 Paper, Cd. 8590). It means a form of nervous brealcdown. For an amus- 
 ing misconception, see Lord Newton's account, in the House of Lords 
 (April 24, 191 8) of his negotiations with the Turks. 
 
 142 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 143 
 
 its heroisms in the story of those who went over the 
 top. What record of common effort and Homeric 
 manhood on the part of the y^ustralian and iVew 
 Zealand ^rmy Corps will be enshrined for ever 
 in Anzac and Anzac beach ! What an instance 
 of the tragic irony of history is contained in the 
 recorded use of the phrase the steam-roller'^ to 
 signify the supposed irresistible advance of the 
 Russian hosts 1 What a chapter in the history 
 of the woman's movement is told in the terms, as 
 strange as the story they tell — the TFaacs and 
 the fVrens ! ^ Nor is it only in the field of 
 military action that the tremendous times in which 
 we live are being recorded in the use of words. 
 Archbishop Trench in his fascinating little book 
 On the Study of Words introduced one of his 
 chapters with the lines of Keats : 
 
 some watcher of the skies. 
 When a new planet swims into his ken, 
 
 " The feeling wherewith we watch the rise above 
 the horizon of words, destined it may be 16 shine 
 for ever as luminaries in the moral and intellectual 
 
 1 » 'pjjg immense legions of Russia are continuing their unconquerable 
 advance " {Times, leader, August 25, 1914). "Our task is stonewalling, and 
 that of the Russians is steamnlUng" {Times, "Our Military Correspondent," 
 August 29, 1914). 
 
 ^ See articles in the Times — of November 19, 1917, on the Women's 
 Army Auxiliary Corps: "The men call them 'the Waacs' (pronounced 
 Wack), and the women have accepted the title " ; and of January g, 1918, 
 on "Women for the N«vy : Rank and Rating in the Wrens": "Though 
 the uniforms are not yet quite ready, women desiring to offer ihtir services 
 %o the ^oijjen's Royal Nasal Service (the Wrens) can do so at once." 
 
144 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 heaven above us, will not be very different from 
 his." Of the growth of new words and phrases 
 in this aspect also the present war furnishes 
 examples. 
 
 Every change in military conditions is reflected 
 in a changed use of words. Mr. Lloyd George 
 has often said that the present is a war of guns. 
 This is not the whole truth (for, though the guns 
 prepare the way, it is still the infantry who drive 
 home), but the statement is yet largely true. It 
 may already be traced in the language. Hitherto 
 the word heavy in its special military use has been 
 applied to the cavalry, as in Tennyson's " Charge 
 of the Heavy Brigade." When Thackeray in 
 Pendennis wrote of " the band of the Heavies 
 playing at Brightoji,", he referred to the House- 
 hold Cavalry ; and when, in Charles O'Malley, 
 Lever said, " We'd better call out the heavies," 
 he meant the Dragoons; but when a correspondent 
 at the present front says that " we are waiting for the 
 heavies to come up," he means the heavy guns. 
 
 The war of guns is also a war of trenches, 
 and much of its story is connected with the word 
 dug-out, " Dug-outs I have known " was the 
 title of a lively article " by a Subaltern " who 
 " classed dug-outs under four headings : palatial, 
 bearable, purgatorial, and Boche " {Westminster 
 Gazette, July 14, 191 7). The word is not new. 
 The Dictionary has a passage to illustrate it of 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 145 
 
 the year 188 1 : "Instead of dug-outs in the 
 prairies, he found the farmers living in large, 
 handsome frame houses." The next edition 
 will have to add some account of the luxurious 
 dug-outs in the German lines ; perhaps also, if 
 the bombardment of London from the air con- 
 tinues, of other places of cover. " Dive for your 
 dug-out is a pretty -safe maxim in London," so 
 an officer on leave from the front wrote in the 
 Times in an account of the raid on July 7, adding, 
 " Remember always there are the bullets and 
 splinters of your own shrapnel, and the duds 
 that fall without bursting." Duds is an old word 
 with a new meaning. From rags and tatters, 
 it came to be applied contemptuously to soft, 
 worthless fellows, and now to shells that do not 
 go off, as above. 
 
 In another sense the term " dug-out " will 
 record for future generations an" important aspect 
 of Britain's military effort. Here is a quotation 
 which will do as well as another to illustrate the 
 use of the term as applied to a retired officer who 
 is taken from his retreat to resume active duty : 
 
 In the old days of the war the Travelling Medical 
 Board consisted of a R.A.M.C. regular Lieutenant- 
 Colonel (usually a dug-out), a regular Lieutenant-Colonel 
 of a combatant unit (usually a dug-out), and a R.A.M.C. 
 Lieutenant or Captain (a civilian turned soldier), the 
 first-named being President.^ 
 
 ^ New Statesman, June 30, 1917. 
 
146 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 It is an expressive term, conveying the gentle 
 note of contempt which is discernible in the 
 passage just quoted. The word is not included 
 in the Oxford Dictionary (D volume, dated 1897), 
 nor yet in ihe Addenda of September 19 14. 
 The new use must have been invented by some 
 young man still rejoicing in his strength and in 
 fulness of professional employment. It is a 
 variant of Dug-up, which term was, if I remember 
 aright, often applied to some veteran called up 
 to complete a side in cricket. Dug-out does some 
 injustice to the spirit of men who willingly offered 
 themselves, and when the history of the war is 
 written the term will be one of honour. A 
 professor of history has already rescued it 
 from contempt. He points out that, when 
 Lord Kitchener's plans were made known, the 
 German newspapers were confident that the 
 New Army either would never materialise for 
 sheer lack of cadres, or that if it did the men 
 would be useless from want of training by 
 competent officers ; and then he goes on to say 
 this : " Sarcasm has occasionally been Javished 
 on the dug-outs, but they did much to save 
 the situation. There were a certain, number 
 of 'commissions given to ineligibles ; there were 
 a certain number of incompetent dug-outs 
 placed in command of units which they failed 
 to train or discipline up to the standard of 
 the majority. Nevertheless, granting the exist- 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 147 
 
 ence of these exceptions, the great feat was yet 
 accomplished." ^ 
 
 No class of word-coinages is more interesting 
 than those which apply the names of persons or 
 -►places as the names of things. There is no 
 surer evidence — ^unless it is to be found in the 
 signs of public-houses— -of the great place filled 
 by a man in popular fame than that his name 
 should acquire this secondary immortality in 
 the mouths of men. Sometimes the name is 
 connected with a deed or a peculiarity of the 
 hero ; sometimes the greater his fame, the more 
 trivial the thing named after him. Cavour 
 became the name of a cigar, Gladstone of a travel- 
 ling-bag. This last coinage was merely a trick 
 in giving a popular name to a trade novelty. One 
 would like to think that it was suggested by the 
 statesman's famous phrase about Turkish " bag 
 and baggage," but Mr. Fisher, of the Strand, 
 was selling "Gladstone bags " at an earlier date. 
 On the other hand, Gladstone's Budget of 1860, 
 reducing the Customs duties on light wines, 
 caused his name to be given to cheap claret, as 
 in this schoolmaster's version of an epigram ; 
 
 Tucca, what makes you mix your port 
 With gkdstone of the viler sort ? . . . . 
 Your friends perchance deserve to die, 
 But why your precious wine — yes, why ? 
 
 ' Professor Oman in a Victoria League pamphlet entitled " Britain's Part 
 in the War," J917. ' 
 
148 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 Such atrocity is not peculiar to the days of 
 Martial, for in the Dictionary, under " Gladstone," 
 there is this quotation from the Daily Telegraph : 
 "The finest Chlteau - Laffitte was introduced 
 alongside the most rasping Gladstonian." Bobby 
 and peeler were so named, as everybody knows, 
 from Sir Robert Peel's institution of the Metro- 
 politan Police. The ancestor of all broughams 
 was " an odd little sort of garden chair " in which 
 the Lord Chancellor used to drive about. Great 
 commanders have been similarly used. The 
 mighty n2ime oi Napoleon was given to a game of 
 cards as well as to the gold piece of his coinage. 
 Wellington (as also Napoleon again) became the 
 name of a boot ; Garibaldi of a lady's blouse — 
 of any colour, though originally of the hue of 
 his red shirts, The present war will preserve at 
 least one great name in a worthier connection. 
 Kitchener's army, Kitchener boys, the Kitchener crowd, 
 Ki, Ki, and , the like terms, passing into popular 
 use, will be standing memorial of his military 
 insight and the magnetic attraction of his name.'- 
 The names of places also often become the 
 names of ^things, and of this process previous 
 wars have furnished examples. When a new 
 aniline dye was discovered in 1859, it was named 
 after a battle that had just been fought, magenta. 
 
 ^ The First Hundred Thousand, being the Unofficial Chronicle of a Unit of 
 Ki, was the title of the excellent book by "Ian Hay," and "When Ki 
 does its bit " of an article in the Cornhill Magazine, January 1918. 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 149 
 
 The man who so named it may have had no 
 secondary thought in his mind ; but, if so, he 
 coined better than he knew in associating a 
 crimson stain with a fiercely contested battle. 
 Our chemists are said to be busy in such re- 
 searches now, and the battles of the present war 
 may -perhaps be turned to like purpose. In a 
 different connection we hear a good deal of 
 officers, militant and medical, being stellenbosched. 
 The Afrikander term came into current use 
 here during the Boer War ; Stellenbosch was 
 formerly the district to which officers who had 
 failed in Kaffir wars were relegated, by way of 
 being superseded without formal disgrace. In 
 the present war there have been too many of such 
 cities and districts of refuge for any one of them 
 -to oust " stellenbosch." 
 
 To name weapons or other contrivances after 
 their inventors is an obvious source of new words : 
 Brownings Maxim, Nordenfeldt, Zeppelin are 
 familiar examples. The war has already brought 
 into the language the Lewis, the Mills, and the 
 •JM^, though it remains to be seen whether the 
 names will come into use thus by themselves 
 without the addition of " gun " in the first case, 
 " bomb " in the second, and " trench mortar " 
 in the third. It was not till 1852 that the term 
 shrapnel was officially adopted, though General 
 Henry Shrapnel invented the thing during the 
 Peninsular War. H.M. Landships have too 
 
150 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 many inventors for any one of them to give his 
 name to the things ; besides, they had already 
 been called tanks, secretively — ^a good instance 
 of the use of language to conceal thoughts. The 
 dictionary-makers will have to wait a while for 
 the official names of other new contrivances 
 which the war may have brought forth. For 
 the present T)ora would forbid. Was it in the 
 City or the Law Courts that this shorthand for 
 the Defence of the i?ealm ^^ct was coined .'' 
 
 The names given by the soldiers to various 
 kinds of shells illustrate many different ways in 
 which new words are coined. Some are what 
 the philologists call onomatopceic : the name 
 corresponds, that is, to the sound of the thing. 
 Whizz-hang and fif-squeak are good instances. 
 Others are founded upon a humorous association 
 of ideas, often connected with the prize-ring or 
 the stage. During an air raid on London a 
 soldier back on leave from the front was invited 
 by an old lady to take cover in her house. " Don't , 
 you worry, ma'am," he- said, " one of them bombs 
 is not half as bad as a 'Jack Johnson." ^ The 
 black pugilist's name has been playfully applied 
 to the formidable blows struck by big black 
 shells. " These are the real Jack Johnsons, or 
 coal scuttles, which make a hole big enough to 
 bury a platoon." ^ Why are anti-aircraft guns 
 
 ^ Lloyds s Weekly Ne'ws, July 8, 1917. 
 " Philip Gibba, The Battles of the .Somme, p. 139. 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 151 
 
 called Archies ? The reference may be to a 
 song — so I have been told — that was in 
 vogue at the beginning of the war, " Archi- 
 bald 1 Certainly not ! " The "certainly not" 
 was, rightly or wrongly, attributed to the infant 
 efforts of the guns in question, and the name 
 now survives to illustrate (in an inverted way) 
 the principle also well known to philologists 
 of lucus a non lucendo. Another group of names 
 given by the men to guns and shells has a different 
 kind of home association. Plum puddings" as 
 a name for bombs and sausages for observation 
 balloons require no explanation. In another 
 set of names there is a touch of comic poetry. 
 The deep gruff voice of the 1 5-incher has caused 
 it to be christened Grandmother, and then by 
 analogy the 12- inchers became Aunties. Pill- 
 box^ for the enemy's concrete machine-gun em- 
 placement, is another instance of wrapping up 
 a death-dealing contrivance in a cover of domestic 
 humour. In their choice of words, as in their 
 songs and in their everyday philosophy, the 
 British soldiers are of one mind with the sergeant 
 who, sitting in a trench knee- deep in water, 
 explained to one of the press correspondents, 
 " You know, sir, it doesn't do to take this war 
 seriously." ^ 
 
 " Mathematics must not want words," said 
 De Morgan, " because Cicero did not know 
 
 1 Philip Gibbs, The Battles of the Somme, p. 3. 
 
152 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 the difFerential calculus," and the new art of 
 aeronautics, or aviation, has introduced a large 
 number of new words; — though, to be sure, many 
 of them are derived from the language spoken 
 by Cicero. If any one regrets that Greek has 
 also been called in to make new words, he should 
 remember that the legend of Icarus is Greek, not 
 Anglo-Saxon. It is interesting, by the way, to 
 note that the earliest recorded definition (1753) 
 of aeronautics was " the pretended art of sailing 
 a vessel through the air." On the whole, the 
 words which have been coined to keep pace 
 with the development of the art have been well 
 formed, such as biplane, monoplane, aerodrome 
 (on the analogy of hippodrome). Aerobatics for 
 " stunts " in the air was suggested by acrobat — 
 wrongly of course from the purist's point of view 
 (for the athletic note in acrobat resides in the 
 first part of the word, not in the second) ; but 
 the formation of new words on false analogies 
 is a process familiar in philology. Many of 
 the new words are consonant also with the spirit 
 of motion in the air. Volplane, for instance, 
 seems by its very sound to suggest a gliding 
 descent. Flying is essentially a young man's 
 art, and the boys love to talk in a slang of their 
 own. Here is a piece of recorded conversation : 
 
 First " Hun." " Did you see old Cole's zoom on a 
 quirk this morning ? " i 
 
 Second '' Hun." "No; what happened ? " 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 153 
 
 First " iifK«." " Oh, nothing to write home about . . , 
 stalled his 'bus and pancaked thirty feet . . . crashed com- 
 pletely . . . put a vertical gust up me . . . just as I was 
 starting my solo flip in a rumpty ! " 
 
 This is typical of the conversation to be heard on any 
 aerodrome where two or more flying pupils may be 
 gathered together. 
 
 Cryptic, decidedly, to the uninitiated : the reader 
 who wants a crib will find it in the Daily Mail 
 of July 19, 191 7. Not every piece of this air- 
 man's slang is likely to pass into regular currency, 
 but zoom at least deserves to live. It is, I suppose, 
 onomatopoeic, but at any rate it is a capital 
 example of what are called comprehensive words — 
 of words, that is (like circle or isothermal), which 
 are economical and sum up a whole sentence of 
 definition. Zoom, we are told, describes " the 
 action of an aeroplane which, while flying level, 
 is hauled up abruptly and made to fly for a few 
 moments at a dangerously sharp angle — some- 
 times the only means of avoiding an obstacle 
 when flying low." The same writer explains 
 another excellent word : 
 
 Streamline in aerodynamics means briefly the direction 
 taken by particles of air on striking a moving body, but 
 it also refers to the peculiar shape of many component 
 parts of an aeroplane, designed expressly to give the 
 minimum of air resistance. In this connection the 
 jaunty headgear of the Royal Flying Corps is known as 
 a streamline cap. 
 
154 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 Who was the inventor of " Tommy " as a 
 name for the typical private soldier in the British 
 Army ? History does not record. The clerk 
 who in 1 8 15 used "Thomas Atkins" in the 
 specimen forms in the King's Regulations little 
 foresaw that his casual thought would give a 
 name for ever to the fighting man — " Ambassador 
 from Britain's crown And type of all her race." 
 In the present war there hav& been some deliber- 
 ate attempts at similar coinages. Will the name 
 Tony stick to the Portuguese soldier } On the 
 chance that it may, let the lexicographers note 
 this report from Somewhere in France : 
 
 The cordiality of the relationship between the British 
 soldiers and the Portuguese may be taken as finally 
 cemented by the fact that the latter now have a nickname. 
 They are " Antonio," which is already being shortened 
 to " Tony," a fit counterpart to " Tommy," showing that 
 the rapprochement is consecrated and complete.^ 
 
 What will the American private be called .? 
 According to the New York Sun, the question 
 was settled before he landed in Europe : " his 
 name must be Teddy " : 
 
 " Sammy " does not seem to fit the typical adventurous 
 American fighting man. There is, however, a name 
 that symbolises the true American fighting spirit. Pre- 
 paredness, militancy against miUtarism, the "punch," 
 the Big Stick— Teddy ! ^ 
 
 ' Dailji News, June 29, 1917. ^ Times, June 30, 1917. 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 155 
 
 But deliberate efforts to coin words with a purpose 
 do not always, or often, succeed. Clever people 
 propose, but the common people decide ; and 
 while the New York Sun was suggesting a par- 
 ticular advertisement for Mr. Roosevelt, the 
 French people had adopted the generic Uncle 
 Sam. An English correspondent, describing 
 the arrival of the first American contingent at 
 " A Port in France," records as follows : 
 
 There was quite a discussion on board every ship of 
 the convoy as to what the American soldier should call 
 himself. It was generally agreed that the old name of 
 the Regular infantryman. Doughboy, would fail to carry 
 any conviction, and in casting around for a name it was 
 found that Sammy was the only nickname worthy to rank 
 with our Tommy and the French Poilu. The choice has 
 found an unsolicited testimonial in the unanimity with 
 which the inhabitants of this port address all unknown 
 Americans as Sammee?- 
 
 The origin of war words and phrases can 
 sometimes be given with reasonable precision, 
 but one is inclined in other cases to wish that 
 a professor of language were attached to the 
 General Staff at the front in order to fix the 
 winged words as they fly from mouth to mouth, 
 to pin down the first use, to discover beyond 
 cavil the real significance. How tantalising, 
 for instance, in its indefinite result was the 
 
 ^ Times, July z.. Mr. Punch also suggested the name ; sec his issues 
 of June 13 and August i, 19 17. 
 
156 WORDS AND THE WAR vt 
 
 discussion which occupied the correspondence 
 columns of the Times towards the beginning of 
 the war on the question why the soldiers used 
 the phrase going west for death ! Were the 
 I men talking poetry without knowing it ? Did 
 their purpose hold, with Tennyson's Ulysses, 
 
 To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
 Of all the western stars, until I die ? 
 
 Or, with Wordsworth, did 
 
 Stepping westward seem to be 
 A kind of heavenly destiny? 
 
 Or, on the other hand, to plunge from these 
 heights to plainest prose, was the " Subaltern " 
 right who traced the phrase back to some opera- 
 tions at Aldershot a few years ago when " a Staff 
 officer, complete with eye-glass, galloped past 
 this battalion to which I have the honour to belong, 
 and, in a very high-pitched and fruity voice, 
 shouted to the commanding officer, ' Tell the 
 general that I have gone west.' . . . Ever since 
 then the men have made use of the expression 
 to denote passing away. An officer's servant 
 will regretfully inform his master that his bath 
 water has gone west, i.e. that he has kicked it 
 over. A man will mourn that his proficiency 
 pay has gone west, after having failed to make 
 the necessary score. As was natural, the expres- 
 sion was used with reference to casualties in the 
 present campaign. It has spread to other units, 
 and is now universal." This matter-of-fact ex- 
 
VI WORDS- AND THE WAR 157 
 
 planation may be correct as far as it applies to 
 the particular, unit to which the subaltern refers, 
 but the students of poetry and folklore who 
 intervened in the discussion need not on that 
 account retire. Why did the phrase become 
 " universal " ? and why, for" that matter, does 
 some such meaning attach to going west (as Pro- 
 fessor GoUancz showed) in many different times 
 and places ? We need not assume that every 
 soldier who uses the phrase is a poet or a folk- 
 lorist, but the influence of poetry and tradition 
 is often unconscious, and the words of the Times 
 in summing up the discussion may be allowed 
 to stand : " It would seem that behind this 
 phrase there lingers some primeval tradition, 
 founded perhaps on sun-worship or on the in- 
 stinctive feeling that beyond the sunset is the 
 land of darkness and the shadow of death." ^ 
 
 Philology, not folklore, was at hand to explain 
 the word Blighty, used both as substantive and 
 adjective. No phrases are now more familiar 
 than back to Blighty, a Blighty wound, a Blighty hoy 
 {i.e. a casualty serious enough for transference to a 
 base hospital). There is a newspaper so called, and 
 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has used the word in verse : 
 
 But I'll tell 'em in Blighty, wherever I be, 
 How the Guards came through.^ 
 
 ^ Times, leading article, January iz, 1915. Professor GoUancz's letter 
 was in the issue of January 8 ; the Subaltern's, in that of January ii. 
 ^ Times, June 23 1917. 
 
158 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 Until Anglo-Indians came forward to explain, 
 every one was puzzled to understand why the 
 home country should be called by so unkind a 
 name. In India, we are told, " wilayat "—the 
 government, or.province, of a wali — has come to 
 mean a foreign country, and especially England. 
 In Hindustani patois the word became " bilati," 
 and this was readily corrupted by British soldiers 
 in India to Mighty. No doubt the association 
 of " blight,"" " blighted," commends it to the 
 cheerful irony of the British soldier. 
 
 Adoption has in all ages and tongues been a 
 fruitful source of new words. Our close alliance 
 with the French has naturally added French 
 war-words to English use, and there are some 
 which have already become well acclimatised. 
 The Bosches (or Boches) is the common appellative, 
 especially at the front, for the enemy, and the 
 adjectival form (^e.g. " Boche dug-outs," as cited 
 above) is also frequent. The French word came 
 into slang use, I believe, before the present war. 
 -Was it a corruption of the second part of Allo- 
 broge, which the French dictionaries define as 
 " Homme grossier " } Whatever be its origin, 
 the word is expressive, and sticks. There is 
 enough of antipathy and contempt in it, with 
 a touch of Gallic humour which is absent from 
 the Huns, Hun, Hunnish of English newspapers.^ 
 
 ^ " More than fourteen hundred years ago Attila and his Huns came to 
 Chllons on the Marne, and were forced to retreat to the Rhine after 
 
vj WORDS AND THE WAR 159 
 
 There is righteous indignation, however, in the 
 latter terms, and the German Emperor himself 
 is responsible for them.^ There was once a 
 powerful German tribe who gave themselves 
 the proud name of the franks or the free. A 
 chapter in the rise and fall of national ideals is 
 latent in the fortunes of that word and its de- 
 rivatives, and in the modern application of Huns. 
 Another French war-word which seems likely 
 to be adopted is camouflage. The idea of pro- 
 tective mimicry in war is old, and the invention 
 of a single word to express it meets a felt need. 
 " Auto-canon et ses servants camoufles forment 
 une masse indistincte que ne peuvent decouvrir 
 les aviateurs ennemis." ^ " The King saw all 
 the latest Protean tricks for concealing, or, as 
 we all say now, for camouflaging, guns, snipers, 
 observers, and all machines and implements of 
 
 tremendous slaughter. On the same ground the forces of the monarch who 
 has styled himself the modern Attila are meeting a like fate" {Times, 
 leader, September 14, 1914). A kinf of Prussia had been likened to Attila 
 before William II. 's Chinese allocution ;' see Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay, 
 ch. vii. It' has been painted out in the press that long before the Emperor's 
 day Campbell wrote in " Hohenlinden " of " furious Frank and fiery Hun " ; 
 and this passage in a letter of Byron's, from Ravenna, August 31, 1820, has 
 been recalled : i'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! the Huns are on the Po ; but if 
 once they pass it on their march to Naples, all Italy will rise behind them : 
 the Dogs, the Wolves, may they perish like the Host of Sennacherib ! " 
 But in both these cases the Huns were Austrian. ' 
 
 ^ See his allocution on the occasion of the Boxer rising, July 1900 : 
 " Quarter will not be given. Whoever falls into your hands is forfeit to 
 you ; just as a thousand years ago the Huns under Attila made a name for 
 themselves which is still mighty in tradition and story." 
 
 ^ V Illustration, July 7, 191 7. 
 
i6o WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 war." 1 The verb camoufler and the noun camou- 
 flage ^r& derived from cawoa^^/, which is defined 
 by Littre as " fiamde dpaisse qu'on souffle mali- 
 cieusement dans le nez avec un cornet de papier." 
 Thence the word came to be applied figuratively 
 to any affront, and in previous wars to a particular 
 device in military mining. 
 
 From France, too, come some new words 
 which have been coined to describe certain phases 
 of the enemy's " offensive behind the lines." 
 M. Clemenceau, in a speech in the Senate in 
 July. 1 91 7, described the defeatist campaign 
 carried on in his country through enemy machina- 
 tions in which a principal part was alleged to have 
 been played by Bolo Pasha. The, word 5o/o«»? 
 was thereupon coined, and Mr. Lloyd George 
 gave it an official imprimatur. "Beware," he 
 said, " of people who try to sow dissension, 
 distrust, suspicion, disunion. The enemy, beaten 
 on most of the battlefields, is organising with 
 deadly care and ingenuity an offensive behind 
 the lines. I know what I am talking about. 
 See what has happened in France — they dis- 
 covered it in time — and look out for Boloism in 
 all its shapes and forms. It is the latest and most 
 formidable, weapon in the German armoury." ^ 
 
 Some adoptions of foreign words have a 
 different origin. Fas est et ah hoste doceri, and 
 
 ^ Manchester Guardian, July i5, 1917. 
 '•' Speech at the Albert Hall, Times, October 23, 1917. 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR i6i 
 
 in a few cases it has been found well to borrow 
 from the Germans, but with differences which 
 are subtle and characteristic. There was a picture 
 in Punch 'of a wall in a village reclaimed from 
 the enemy on. which the familiar inscription' 
 " Gott strafe England " had been chalked. A 
 Highland soldier comes up to it and, with a 
 twinkle, crosses through the word " England " 
 and writes above it " Scotland." If any German 
 could ever appreciate all the quiet fun and national 
 spirit implied in this picture, he might be able 
 to understand also the exact nuance with which 
 the British soldiers speak of things being " quiet 
 at the front, sir, except just for the morning (or 
 evening) hate," and the tone in which the word 
 strafe and strafing are passing into conversational 
 use in this country. In something of the same 
 spirit the sneer attributed to the German Emperor 
 has been adopted, and our Old Army bears 
 proudly upon its banners the title, in popular 
 parlance, of the Old Contemptible s. 
 
 The food crisis has caused the Germans to 
 coin an excellent word — Hamstertante. The word 
 is untranslatable, says the writer of a lively article 
 in the Times^ who paraphrases it as " Auntie- 
 who-gets-food-on-the-sly." But hamster is an 
 English word as well as a German — " A species 
 of rodent," says the Dictionary, " which has 
 cheek-pouches in which it carries the grain with 
 
 I "Everyday Life in Berlin," by a Neutral, in tlie Tmes, January zg, 1918. 
 
 M 
 
1 62 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 which it stores its burrows." " Fortunately for 
 England," says an old book on natural history, 
 "the hamster is not indigenous within the precincts 
 of the island." But cases in the police-courts 
 now tell a different tale, and Hamsteraunties would 
 not be a bad word for a certain class oi food- 
 hoarders. 
 
 The political discussions in foreign countries 
 have during this war introduced some new words 
 into our newspapers, as, for instance, trialism 
 (the policy of converting the Dual Monarchy 
 into a Triple, Austro-Hungarian-Bohemian), and, 
 from Russia, Maximalist (or Bolshevist). Mr. 
 Arthur Henderson was blamed in the Times 
 (August I, 1 9 17) for visiting Paris " in company 
 with Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and the four 
 Russian Maximalist delegates." Another news- 
 paper had explained the term : " Leninism is a 
 doctrine of long standing, which had a numer- 
 ous following among Russian Social Democrats 
 many years before this war. Its adherents are 
 commonly called Maximalists, because they hold 
 that any conditions which render a political 
 revolution possible must be equally favourable 
 to the attainment of the ' maximum,' a social 
 revolution." ^ 
 
 It is not only the combatant who has originated 
 
 1 NttUai, July 28, 1917. For a discussion of the origin of the term 
 Bolshevik ( = the biggest, or ■uihole-hogger) see letters by Dr. Hagberg Wright 
 and Mr. J. Y. MacAlister in the Times Literary Sufflement, Feb. 7 and zi, 
 1918. 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 163 
 
 war-words. What volumes of polemic are likely 
 to grow up around the letters C.O.^ no longer 
 denoting Commanding Officer only, but applied 
 also to that very different person, .the Conscientious 
 Objector ! The C.O.'s (new style) are not 
 popular persons, but there is something that 
 sounds a,lmost endearing in the other term for 
 them — the conchies. This term, however, when 
 I last noted it,^ was still in the half-way house 
 of inverted commas. It is only when these are 
 dropped that a new word can be regarded as 
 adopted into the family of a language. A 
 certificate of exemption may be given to an 
 applicant, says the Military Service Act, " on 
 the ground of a conscientious objection to the 
 undertaking of combatant service." Parliament, 
 in its prudence, gave no definition. I do not 
 envy any future dictionary-maker who may feel 
 bound to collate a definition, if he can, from the 
 proceedings of the Tribunals. A generic name, 
 Cuthbert, has been given to supposed shirkers or 
 " slackers " who are exempted in another way — 
 by taking refuge, to wit, in funkholes. These 
 are coinages which the Evening News has made 
 familiar; but " Cuthbert in his creep-hole " would 
 have sounded just as well, or better, and an old 
 English word might thereby have been restored 
 
 ' In a Times leading article of December 29, 1917 : "He gives sucli a 
 good account of the ' conchies ' that we are rather at a loss to understand 
 why so many of them are kept at unproductive employment at Dartmoor 
 and elsewhere." 
 
1 64 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 to currency. '* A poor shifting excuse," says a 
 book of 1 68 1, "a miserable come-off, a very 
 creep-hole." Another new usage which will 
 require some explanation in dictionaries of the 
 future is the comb, meaning the extraction of men 
 from other employments for the Army. The 
 word was plied with great frequency on the day 
 (April 9) fixed for the introduction of a further 
 Military Service Bill in 191 8. "Now," said the 
 Pall Mall Gazette, " that the older men are to 
 be called up, it is imperative that the Govern- 
 ment Departments should at once comb out the 
 young indispensahles whom they have been 
 harbouring." The older men, said the West- 
 minster Gazette, "are not asking jealously and 
 suspiciously whether all the young men have 
 been taken first, whether ' the comb ' has been 
 effectively plied in the Government Depart- 
 ments." The Westminster, it will be noted, 
 half apologised for adopting the not very nice, 
 though expressive, word by putting it in inverted 
 commas ; but later in the day the Prime Minister 
 gave it the sanction of parliamentary usage, 
 introducing also another new phrase. "We 
 must call upon the Civil Service," he said, "to 
 do more, and a clean cut of young fit men must 
 be made. It is proposed that no fit men below 
 the age of 25 should be retained. We comb out 
 beyond that." The " clean cut " had previously 
 been used, as politicians will remember, to denote 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 165 
 
 the total exclusion of Ulster counties from the 
 sphere of the Home Rule Bill. 
 
 The political issues raised by a war, the 
 diplomatic expedients adopted in a peace, are 
 also the occasions of new words or of new senses 
 for old ones. Thus it was the peace which 
 followed the Crimean War that brought the 
 terms neutralise, neutralisation into vogue in the 
 sense of making a place neutral in time of war. 
 " The Black Sea is neutralised," said the eleventh 
 article of the Treaty of Paris (1856), and this 
 was, I think, the first use of the word in that 
 sense, though "neutral" and " neutrality" were of 
 much older currency in the same connection. 
 Belgium, for instance, was created " an inde- 
 pendent and perfectly neutral State " by treaties 
 of 1831-32 and 1839. Such treaties cease 
 to be binding, the German Foreign Secretary 
 explained to the British Ambassador in August 
 1 9 14, when military necessity which knows no 
 other law is involved. The phrase which has 
 been used to express this and other forms of 
 the German national creed has brought another 
 word into world-wide currency. The point of 
 departure was Mr. Asquith's historic declaration 
 of our war aims. " We shall never sheathe the 
 sword, which we have not lightly drawn, until 
 Belgium recovers in full measure all, and more 
 than all, that she has sacrificed, until France is 
 
1 66 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 adequately secured against the menace of aggres- , 
 sion, until the rights of the smaller nationalities 
 of Europe are placed upon an unassailable 
 foundation, and until the military domination 
 of Prussia is wholly and finally destrdyed " 
 (Guildhall, Noveniber 9, 19 14). Mr. Asquith 
 is a master of compression, . but his definition of 
 the fourth of these aims has been abbreviated 
 yet further in' hundreds of speeches, leading 
 articles, and books into " the destruction of 
 Prussian militarism." The word is now on 
 every one's tongue, as in a speech by the Prime 
 Minister in which he spoke of " the aggressive 
 and arrogant spirit of Prussian militarism " 
 (Glasgow, June 29, 191 7); and in an earlier 
 speech by the French Premier of the day : " We 
 want the restitution of the lost provinces and the 
 crushing of Prussian militarism^ for the peace of 
 the world is irreconcilable with its bloody caprices" 
 (April 13, 19 1 5). Or, again, in Mr. Balfour's 
 speech at the Guildhall when he said that " the 
 United States saw with an impartiality perhaps 
 impossible to us what German militarism really 
 meant, not only for those who were actually 
 fighting it at the moment, but for every free 
 community." ^ The world is at war in order, 
 on the one side, to destroy." militarism." What 
 precisely does the word mean } Its history as 
 given in the Oxford Dictionary is interesting. 
 
 ' Times, July 14, 19 17. 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 167 
 
 The first recorded use of the French word in 
 English is in a translation from Garibaldi. He 
 spoke of " an army, bright in glory, yet uhtainted 
 with that disease of modern tinles, known under 
 the sinister name of militarism." ^ Four years 
 later cohaes the prophetic remark : " Prussian 
 officialism is supreme, and Prussian militarism 
 as well." Next, under the date 1891, we are 
 given this passage : " Industrialism as opposed 
 to militarism, is now the central idea of the New 
 World." And there the Dictionary leaves it. 
 An after-the-war edition will have to carry the 
 matter further, drawing out the full and exact 
 meaning of the word by later illustrations and 
 distinctions. Militarism is to be distinguished 
 first, in the spirit of Garibaldi's phrase, from 
 military force. The hope that this war will end 
 war is associated in all practical minds with the 
 idea of military, force, which shall be held in re- 
 serve as a sanction of the decrees of some League 
 of Nations. What Wordsworth wrote in 18 16 
 is still applicable : " The nation would err 
 grievously if she suffered the abuse which other 
 states have made of. military power to prevent 
 her from perceiving that no people ever was, or 
 can be, independent, free, or secure, much less 
 great, in any application of the word, without 
 martial propensities, and an assiduous cultivation 
 of military virtues." This side of the case may 
 
 1 Daily Telegraph, April 28, 1864. 
 
i6& WORDS ANi3 THE WAR v 
 
 be illustrated by reference to a new group of words 
 which have been brought into currency during 
 the present war. Just as the Crimean War gave 
 us z peace-at-any-price party, so this war has given 
 us pacifism and pacifists — words of unscholarly 
 formation, but very commonly used. Pacifism 
 is defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary 
 (an indispensable supplement, as yet, to the 
 larger work) as " the doctrine that the abolition 
 of war is both desirable and possible." In a 
 sense we are all pacifists now, but if aggressive 
 war is hereafter to be made difficult or impossible, 
 it can only be done by bringing superior military 
 force to bear down German force now, and (as 
 already said) by organising force in reserve for 
 the future. The point was partly made in a 
 remark by Mr. Holman, the Premier of New 
 South Wales, which has the advantage for a 
 lexicographer of including two of the words 
 now under discussion : "I am a Pacifist. But 
 if ever there were an inopportune moment for 
 Pacifist propaganda it is now, when we need the 
 most highly perfected military organisation to 
 save us from the very militarism which these 
 gentlemen condemn." ^ If, then, the con- 
 demnatit)n of militarism does not exclude the 
 idea of using military force, what is the idea to 
 which militarism is essentially opposed } The 
 quotation given above, which opposes it to 
 
 ^ Morning Post, June 14, 1 917. 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 169 
 
 industrialism, does not comprise the whole matter. 
 Here is a recent passage which serves as well as 
 any account that I have seen in so few words 
 to explain the two opposed ideas : " Our idea 
 was, and is, that 'latent force ought to be able to 
 conserve peace. The German idea is that nothing 
 but militant force can achieve this purpose. That 
 is militarism, and that is what we are up against. 
 So long as militarism exists the German definition 
 of International Law as trash is strictly correct." ^ 
 The word international was coined by Jeremy 
 Bentham in 1780, and Archbishop Trench, 
 writing in 1855, found it " difficult to understand 
 how we could have managed so long to do with- 
 out it." But the word has been long in advance 
 of the thing in any really effective sense. The 
 word nationalism came into use fifty years later 
 than Bentham's " international," but it had a 
 potent idea behind it. Philosophic historians 
 have sometimes characterised the nineteenth 
 century as the age of nationalism . I f the twentieth 
 century is to be the age of internationalism, a 
 condition precedent is the destruction of PrUBsian 
 militarism. 
 
 The peace, when it comes, will keep dictionary- 
 makers busy. Who can say what precise defini- 
 tions will be -forthcoming of such formulas as 
 No annexations. No indemnities, and the Right., 
 of Self-determination} Already the negotiations 
 
 ^ New ff^imess, June 14, 1917. 
 
I70 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 at Brest-Litovsk have raised the question, When 
 is an annexation not an annexation ? THow will 
 the line be drawn between indetnnity and re- 
 paration ? As ' for the Right of Self-determina- 
 tion, the latter word, as the Oxford Dictionary 
 shows, comes from metaphysical and theological 
 writers, and the subtleties which gathered round 
 it at Brest-Litovsk were in keeping with its 
 origins. 
 
 Meanwhile, as the phrase " Prussian militar- 
 ism " involves fundamental questions of inter- 
 national politics, so there is another war-word 
 which cuts straight down , to first principles in 
 economics. I omitted to make note of the first 
 appearance of profiteering \ but by the time it 
 had Qaught on, the Spectator was to the fore with 
 one of its earnest articles, to point out, more in 
 sorrow than in anger, the wickedness of politicians 
 in using words without stopping to consider 
 precisely what they mean (June i6, 1917). The 
 Prime Minister took up the challenge in a speech 
 to which the Times gave the heading, " Mr. 
 Lloyd George on Profiteering." Here is the 
 passage which will be the locus classicus for defini- 
 tion of the new word : 
 
 The country is entitled to ask from the Government 
 that they will not permit the burdens of the country to 
 be increased by what is called profiteering. Although 
 I have been criticised for using that word, I believe on 
 the whole it is a rather good one. It is profit-eer-ing 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 171 
 
 as distinguished from profiting. Profiting is fair recom- 
 pense for services rendered either in production or dis- 
 tribution ; profiteering is an extravagant recompense given 
 for services rendered. I believe that unfair in peace. In 
 war it is an outrage.^ 
 
 Mr. Lloyd George's distinction is lacking in 
 precision, as we shall see, but this does not 
 invalidate his usage of the new word. New 
 words often follow close analysis, but sometimes 
 they may - usefully anticipate and prompt it. 
 The popular instinct was right in feeling that a 
 new word was wanted here to mark a departure 
 in moral and economic ideas from the good old 
 rule, the simple plan, 
 
 That they should take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can. 
 
 The actual word coined to meet this advance is 
 well formed. There was indeed already an old 
 word profiter^ to which (if one may judge from 
 the passages cited in the Dictionary) a slightly 
 derogatory tone was attached ; but the suffix eer 
 emphasises the sneer. Some words ending in 
 eer are, it is true, void of offence, but in many 
 there is always a contemptuous implication. No 
 one feels flattered by being called a " sonneteer " 
 or a " pamphleteer." The suffix stamps him 
 with the suggestion of fatal facility or incontinence. 
 And so it is meant to be with the " profiteer," 
 
 1 Times, July 2, 19 17. 
 
172 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 and the essential service rendered by the new 
 word is the stigma which it carries with it. Of 
 course much hard and clear thinking will be 
 required before the stigma is translated into law 
 or executive order. Dr. Shadwell has usefully 
 pointed out that " the word prtrfihenng is 
 applied indiscriminately to two distinct processes : 
 (i) Making liioney in a favourable market for 
 which the seller is not responsible ; (2) manipulat- 
 ing the market and artificially raising prices in 
 order to make money. The latter is a cause of 
 high prices, the former a consequence. The 
 distinction," he adds, " is not merely verbal ; it 
 entails moral, legal, and practical differences. 
 The second sort of profiteering is criminal 
 \} should be made criminal] ; it can be peremp- 
 torily stopped and heavily punished without 
 doing any harm at all. The first is not criminal 
 [? is not immoral], and interference is apt to 
 entail the serious consequence of drying up 
 supplies." ^ The distinction thus drawn is real 
 and important, and hereafter it may be expressed 
 by some other new words, but meanwhile the 
 discussion is not ended — perhaps it is only 
 beginning. The Prime Minister, it will have 
 been noted, in defining the new word, drew a 
 distinction between a " fair " and an " extrava- 
 gant " [unfair] recompense. But what is " fair " .'' 
 Mr. Luxmoore (who, if I am not mistaken, was 
 
 J times, June 6, 1917. 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 173 
 
 a member of Ruskin's Guild of St. George) 
 paraphrased Unto this Last and answered thus 
 the question which is involved in Mr. Lloyd 
 George's definition : " The duty of the seller is 
 to supply the public with that which is needed 
 and good for the public as cheaply as he can, 
 taking only such profit for himself as is propor- 
 tionate to the labour spent by him and by his 
 workmen for that end, and proportionate means 
 such as will support them in their rank of life 
 with due provision for old age. The less work 
 he does, the less gain, he deserves. Anytliing 
 beyond that gain is profiteering." ^ Economics 
 are to be moralised, it seems. The profiter is 
 to be invited to consider the old question, What 
 shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole 
 world and lose his own soul } Such are the far- 
 reaching discussions to which attention is likely 
 to be called by the vogue of the new vfotd profiteer. 
 In another sphere the war has suggested the 
 need of a new word, which, however, has not 
 yet been found. What is the British Empire of 
 the future to be called } General Smuts pro- 
 pounded the question in his speech in the Royal 
 Gallery on May 16, 1917. The Empire is not 
 an Empire. It is a combination of a Kingdom, 
 an Empire, self-governing Dominions, and Crown 
 Colonies. " You can see," said General Smuts, 
 " that no political ideas which we have evolved 
 
 1 Times, June 21, 1917. 
 
174 WORDS AND THE WAR vi 
 
 in the past will apply to this world which is 
 comprised in the British Empire, and any name 
 we have yet found for this group is insufficient. 
 The man who will find a proper name for this 
 system will, I think, do real service to the Empire.'-' 
 The search is likely to be long. Nothing that 
 has hitherto been suggested will do. That the 
 old nomenclature was insufficient was recognised 
 when Edward VII. succeeded to the throne. 
 On his coinage, as on that of his successor, the 
 Sovereign is styled " Britt. Omn. Rex," and by 
 Act of Parliament he is declared, to be, besides 
 Emperor of India, King not only of Great Britain 
 and Ireland, but also of " the British dominions 
 beyond the seas." All this, though it recognises 
 the difficulty propounded by General Smuts, 
 gives no solution of it. There is an agglomera- 
 tion of titles but no concise substitution. At one 
 time " The British Commonwealth " was sug- 
 gested, but (apart from other possible objections) 
 the word Commonwealth has now been ap'propri- 
 ated by Australia. General Smuts himself sug- 
 gested, for part at least of the British system, the 
 name " The British Commonwealth of Nations," 
 but that (besides being only partially applicable) 
 is too long. The connecting link of the whole 
 system is the Crown, and this fact may suggest 
 that " The British Realm " would do ; but perhaps 
 the associations of realm are too distinctively 
 English : 
 
VI WORDS AND THE WAR 175 
 
 This toyal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, . . . 
 This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. 
 
 After all, will it be so very hard a fate if we are 
 driven to keep the term " British Empire " to 
 denote the collection of States which in one way 
 or another pay allegiance to a common Sovereign ? 
 " An Empire," said Burke, " is the aggregate of 
 many States under one common head." The 
 terms Empire, Imperial, have an etymological 
 meaning which does not fit all parts of the British 
 system, and some historical associations which do 
 not accord with its principles. But we need not 
 be theslaves of phrases. Words alter theirmeaning 
 as the things which they express alter. Nor are all 
 the associations of Empire such as need make even 
 a Russian Maximalist ashamed. Here is the ideal 
 of the Roman Empire as drawn by the last bf the 
 Latin poets, himself, by the way, an Egyptian : 
 
 She, she alone, has taken the conquered to her bosom, 
 and has made men to be of one household with one name, 
 herself their mother, not their lord, and has called her 
 vassals citizens, and has linked far places in a bond of 
 love. ... 
 
 " We are not a State," says General Smuts, " but 
 a community of States and nations. We are far 
 greater than any Empire which has ever existed." 
 Yes, but why should not the word " Empire " 
 be left to gather a new meaning from the case 
 of an Empire with a diversity greater, and a 
 freedom larger, than any which Rome knew ? 
 
VII 
 
 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 
 
 The superlative degree accords ill, I suppose, 
 with what is called judicious criticism. Excel- 
 lence in art and literature is relative rather than 
 absolute, and to say that such or such a work is the 
 best, the greatest, or the most moving, requires 
 to be qualified and guarded in many relations 
 before the saying can be brought to any strict 
 test. A great living English man of letters was 
 once asked to give the best passages in English 
 literature. He did as he was asked, but took 
 the precaution of quoting Scripture : " There is 
 one glory of the sun, and another glory of the 
 moon, and another glory- of the stars : for one 
 star difFereth from another star in glory." For 
 like reasons, orders of merit and comparative 
 tables are deprecated by severe judges of litera- 
 ture. " We are not called upon," says Lord 
 Morley in his essay on Wordsworth, " to place 
 great men of his stamp as if they were collegians 
 in a class-list." 
 
 We are not called upon, but at times we all 
 176 
 
VII A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 177 
 
 do it ; and though the superlative degree may 
 be discountenanced by the ipore austere judges, 
 yet there is something to be said in favour of 
 good lovers and good haters in literature. For 
 one thing, a positive and absolute judgment has 
 the great merit of being arresting or challenging. 
 You read a qualified or carefully hedged estimate 
 with a correspondingly languid interest, and do 
 not take the trouble, perhaps, to test and examine 
 it for yourself; but when a writer who is entitled 
 to respect tells you that such or such a piece is 
 indisputably the best in the world, then if you 
 know the piece already your attention is at once 
 challenged, or if you do not know it you are forced 
 to refer to it forthwith. It is this which makes 
 Swinburne's prose writings, for all their faults, 
 so full of interest and stimulus. For instance, 
 when we ^ead of a certain ' piece that it is " so 
 much the noblest of sacred poems in our language 
 that there is none which comes near it enough to 
 stand second," that it is " a hymn touched as 
 with the fire and bathed as in the light of sun- 
 beams, tuned as to chords and cadences of refluent 
 sea-music beyond reach of harp and organ, large 
 echoes of the serene and sonorous tides of heaven," 
 who can avoid being roused to curiosity or pro- 
 voked to dissent ? Tennyson said that a good 
 hymn is the most difiicult thing in the world 
 to write, as in it you have to be both common- 
 place and poetical. He liked Heber's " Holy, 
 
 N 
 
178 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vii 
 
 Holy, Holy " better than most ; " it is in a fine 
 metre, too." But the reader will not find Swin- 
 burne's piece in Heber or George Herbert, nor, 
 so far as I know, in any Sacred Treasury or Book 
 of Church Hymns. It is the third part of 
 Christina Rossetti's Old and New Tear's Ditties : 
 
 Passing away, saith the World, passing away. 
 
 If any second piece is to be found worthy to rank 
 with this, it must be sought in the same poet ; 
 and, according to Dante Rossetti, her " Advent " 
 hymn was once pronounced by Swinburne to be 
 " the noblest of all her poems." Passages from 
 this poem, which, though very beautiful, is less 
 haunting in melody than the other, were sung, 
 I remember, at the first part of her burial service 
 in Woburn Square. It is, by the way, a disgrace 
 of long standing to the English Church that, 
 with so great a wealth of religious poetry at choice, 
 so jnuch doggerel should be used in places where 
 they sing. Swinburne, in another essay, cited, 
 not indeed another poem, but a few lines by a 
 very different poet, as worthy to stand beside 
 Miss Rossetti. " It cannot be denied," he says, 
 " that Herrick's sacred verse at its worst is as 
 offensive as his secular verse at its worst; nor 
 can it be denied that no severer sentence of con- 
 demnation can be passed upon any poet's work. 
 But neither Herbert nor Crashaw could have 
 bettered such a divinely beautiful triplet as this : 
 
VII A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 179 
 
 We see Him come, and know Him ours, 
 Who with His sunshine and His showers 
 Turns all the patient ground to flowers.^ 
 
 TKat is worthy of Miss Rossetti herself: and 
 praise of such work can go no higher." Ruskin 
 is another writer who deals freely in arresting 
 superlatives. When we - read that a certain 
 passage is " the noblest group of words ever 
 uttered by man," one turns the page with lively 
 curiosity to find them. His reference was to the 
 epitaph of Simonides oru the Spartans who fell 
 at Thermopylae.^ For " the most vile sentence 
 in the literature of any country or time," one 
 might be sure that Ruskin would go to the 
 political economists.^ 
 
 The personal touch is one of the charming 
 things in writers who are not afraid of the super- 
 lative degree. In an Author's Note to the new 
 
 ' Noble Numbers, 96. 
 
 ' Often translated ; never yet better thanjjy Cicero : 
 
 Die hospes Spartae nos te hie vidisse jacentcs 
 Dum Sanctis patriae legibus obsequitnur ; 
 and by Bowles : 
 
 Go tell tlie Spartans, thou that passest by, 
 That here, obedient to their laws, we lie. 
 
 The epitaph was thus adapted by Edmund Garrett for English use : 
 Tell England, you that,pass our monument, 
 Men who died serving Her rest here, content. 
 3 " As no one will deny that Man possesses carnivorous teeth, or that all 
 animals that possess them are more or less predatory, it is unnecessary to 
 argue a priori that a predatory instinct ... is one of the conditions of Man's 
 nature and consequently of all arrangements of civilised society." The 
 sentence was found in the Transactions of the Social Science Congress ; the 
 date, i860. 
 
i8o A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vii 
 
 edition of his Works, Mr. ' Conrad says that he 
 is " a great foe to favouritism," both personal 
 and literary, but the remark may safely be taken 
 as made half at least in irony, for it serves as 
 introduction to an express permission to think 
 Lord Jim his best book. You cannot know a 
 man intimately without knowing his likes and 
 dislikes. Noscitur a sociis. A man is known by 
 the company he keeps in his reading, by the 
 authors he loves, by his preferences and his 
 aversions. A well-loved writer cites this from 
 Thoreau as " the noblest and most useful passage 
 I remember to have read in any modern author " : 
 " It takes two to speak truth — one to speak and 
 another to hear." The same writer tells us that 
 to his thinking " the noblest passage in one of 
 the noblest books of this century is where the old 
 pope glories in the trial, nay, in the partial fall 
 and but imperfect triumph of the younger hero." ^ 
 Does not the avowal of these preferences throw 
 light on the persuasive sympathy and the manly 
 note which are the secret of the charm of Robert 
 Louis Stevenson ? What a good introduction 
 it is to the quality of the author of Erewhon when 
 he begins the most charming of his books with 
 this avowal : " Most men will readily admit that 
 the two poets who have the greatest hold over 
 Englishmen are Handel and Shakespeare." Or, 
 again, to take an instance in a different sort, what 
 
 1 See Book X. 1183 sej. of The Ring and the Book. 
 
vii A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES i8i 
 
 a light it throws on the limitations of Macaulay 
 that, writing in 1850, he " could not remember 
 that any better poetry had been published since 
 his Lays appeared " in 1842. The interval had 
 seen the appearance of Tennyson's Poems^ The 
 Princess and In Memoriam^ and of Browning's 
 Fifpa Passes and Dramatic Lyrics. 
 
 So, again, with discussions about the best 
 books or the greatest writers, and with attempts 
 to draw up lists of merit : such exercises are partly 
 futile, but they are pleasant. Idem velle et idem 
 nolle- is a bond of friendship, whilst differences 
 about Shakespeare and the musical glasses give 
 a pleasant spice to literary table-talk. Some- 
 times the game is played openly for pleasure 
 and no excuses are made. For instance, in Lord 
 Carlisle's "Journal it is recorded as the most 
 natural and delightful thing in the world that The 
 Club sat for hours discussing the proper order 
 in which to place great writers or famous books : 
 
 May 4.— Dined with the Club. Very pleasant, 
 though select. Something led to my reminding Lord 
 Aberdeen that we both put Macbeth first of Shakespeare's 
 great plays. Lord Lansdowne quite concurred. Macaulay 
 thinks it may be a little owing to our recollections of 
 Mrs. Siddons. He is much inclined to rank them thus : 
 Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet. 
 
 Macaulay played a strong hand at such things,- 
 and no breakfast at the Albany was complete 
 without its class list. Here is the record of one : 
 
182 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vn 
 
 November 29. — Breakfasted with Macaulay. He 
 thinks that, though the last eight books of Paradise 
 Lost contain incomparable beauties, Milton's fame 
 would have stood higher if only the first four had been 
 preserved. He would then have been placed above 
 Homer. 
 
 Elsewhere Macaulay " cannot conceive how any 
 person of the least pretension to taste "can doubt 
 that the proper order is Hdmer, Aeschylus, 
 Milton ; but on this occasion he forgot Dante, 
 whom at another time he placed first of all " artists 
 who have operated on the imagination by means 
 of words," and Shakespeare, whose primacy was 
 to be taken, I suppose, without saying ; for at 
 -another meeting of The Club we read : 
 " Macaulay gave a list of six poets, whom he 
 places above all others, in the order of his prefer- 
 ence : Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Aeschylus, 
 Milton, Sophocles. Milman on the whole ac- 
 quiesced. I fought some battle for Virgil coming 
 before Sophocles, but * What,' said Macaulay, 
 ' did Virgil ever write like the Philoctetes ? ' 
 He would place Lucretius and Ariosto before 
 Virgil." Lord Morley has given us a different 
 list, and admits only four names to it. " The 
 greatest poets," he says, " reflect beside all else 
 the broad-bosomed haven of a perfect and positive 
 faith, in which mankind has for some space found 
 shelter, unsuspicious of the new and distant way- 
 farings that are ever in store. To this band of 
 
vn A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 183 
 
 sacred bards few are called, while perhaps not 
 more than four high names would fill the list 
 of the chosen : Dante, the poet of Catholicism ; 
 Shakespeare, of Feudalism ; Milton, of Protestant- 
 ism ; Goethe, of that new faith which is as 
 yet without any universally recognised label, 
 but whose heaven is an ever -closer harmony 
 between the consciousness of man and all the 
 natural forces of the universe, whose liturgy is 
 culture, and whose deity is a certain high com- 
 posure of the human heart." Considering the 
 long periphrasis drawn up in order to include 
 Goethe, one may wonder that no ism was found 
 to entitle Homer to a place among the band 
 of sacred bards. 
 
 On re-reading Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay, 
 in which innumerable obiier dicta in this sort are 
 recorded, I felt quite reconciled to the part I had 
 played in my journalistic days by inveigling 
 various persons of greater or less distinction to 
 take up Lord Avebury's challenge and draw up 
 for the amusement of the readers of the Pall 
 Mall Gazette rival lists of*" The Best Hundred 
 Books." Other men, while not averse from this 
 kind of pastime, indulge in it only after excuse 
 or throw the responsibility on the ladies. It was 
 thus that Mr. Gladstone once enticed Lord 
 Morley. " By the way," said Mr. Gladstone, 
 " ladies nowadays keep question - books, and 
 among other things ask their friends for the 
 
I §4 A STUl)Y IN SUPERLAflVflS vii 
 
 finest line in poetry " ; after which exordium 
 the two friends seem to have- settled down quite 
 comfortably to a study in superlatives, discussing, 
 after the best line in poetry, who is the greatest 
 Scot, and placing historians in order of merit. 
 
 I suppose no two persons ever chose the same 
 line as the finest in all poetry. Mr. Gladstone 
 was divided between three. " Perhaps," he 
 said, " the most glorious is Milton's," but Lord 
 Morley did not remember which it was, sug- 
 gesting that a reader " might do worse than turn 
 over Milton in search for the finest line." If 
 he wants a short cut to an answer which would 
 pass muster he may turn to an appendix in the 
 Life of Tennyson, where some .of that poet's 
 favourite lines in Milton are collected and 
 annotated. Mr. Gladstone went on : "Or else 
 Wordsworth's ' Or hear old Triton blow his 
 wreathed horn.' Yet what so splendid as Pene- 
 lope's not rejoicing the heart of anybody less 
 than Odysseus : 
 
 juijSc T6 x^ipovos dvSpos tv(j>paivoifii votifia." 
 
 It is worth noting that Tennyson also was in- 
 clined to go to Wordsworth for the finest line. 
 The line in " Tintern Abbey " — 
 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns — 
 
 is, he said, " alrriost the grandest in the English 
 language, giving the sense of the abiding in the 
 transient." Lord Morley gives, not as the .finest, 
 
vn A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 185 
 
 but as " the most melting and melodious single 
 verse in all the exercises of our English tongue," 
 this from Macbeth : 
 
 After life's fitful fever he sleeps well. 
 
 To select the best passages in verse and prose 
 was a ,task set by a magazine -editor to various 
 well-known people some years ago. Among 
 those who responded, and whose preferences are 
 best worth knowing, were Matthew Arnold, 
 Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Swinburne, 
 John Addington Symonds, and Frederic Myers. 
 Their selected pieces covered a wide range. 
 " There was a- pope," wrote Lord Acton once to 
 Mrs. Drew, " who said that fifty books would 
 include every good idea in the world. Literature 
 has doubled since then, and one would have to 
 take a hundred. How 'interesting it would be 
 to get that question answered by one's most 
 intelligent acquaintances. . . . There would be 
 a surprising agreement." It was not found to 
 be so when lists of the Best Hundred Books came 
 to be drawn up, and in the case of the later 
 " symposium " on the best passages there was 
 again little agreement. There was, however, 
 some confusion from a doubt whether the Bible 
 and Shakespeare were or were not to be taken 
 for granted as containing many of the best passages 
 in the world. Leaving them out, I note that only 
 one writer appeared in more than one of the 
 
1 86 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vii 
 
 sets of passages selected by the six men of letters 
 above mentioned. Arnold included in his selec- 
 tions the address of Zeus to the horses of Achilles 
 — a passage from the seventeenth Iliad which he 
 translated in his Lectures on Homer. Meredith 
 gave the twenty-fourth _///W as containing " the 
 highest reaches in poetry " ; Symonds selected 
 a passage from the eighteenth Iliad, and Myers 
 one from the eleventh Odyssey. Arnold for his 
 second piece of poetry chose the stanza froni 
 the saddest of the Odes of Hbrace, which is thus 
 rendered by Conington : 
 
 Your land, your house, your lovely bride 
 Must lose you ; of your cherish'd trees 
 
 None to its fleeting master's side 
 Will cleave, but those sad cypresses. 
 
 Is this Ode the best to be found in Horace } 
 Perhaps for pathos it is, and Ruskin somewhere 
 notes the same stanza as specially memorable. 
 But if one be in a different mood, will any of the 
 Odes seem better than the fifth of the third book 
 — the one which makes so fine a thing of the story 
 of Regulus ? If we may judge from an excellent 
 cha.pter in A Diversity of Creatures, it is Mr. 
 Kipling's favourite. For his specimens of the 
 best prose, Arnold took a passage by Bossuet on 
 St. Paul, which is translated in Essays in Criticism, 
 and Burke's panegyric on Howard, the phil- 
 anthropist. Mr. Hardy's pieces of poetry came 
 from Shelley (whose "Lament" he called " the 
 
VII , A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 187 
 
 most beautiful of English lyrics ") and (with 
 apologies for " so old-fashioned a taste ") from 
 Childe Harold (the description of the Lake of 
 Geneva, Canto iii. 85-87). In prose he selected 
 two passages from Carlyle — the comparison of 
 the growth of the earth to the growth of an oak 
 in the French Revolution and the descriptfon of 
 night in a city in Sartor Resartus. Meredith's 
 selections, which were many, included pieces by 
 Keats, Coleridge (" Kubla Khan "), and Tennyson 
 (" CEnone ") ; and in prose, Charlotte Bronte's 
 description of the actress Rachel as Vashti in the 
 twenty-third chapter of Villette. Swinburne chose 
 passages from the Agamemnon of Aeschylus and 
 from Dante's Inferno. Frederic Myers included 
 passages from Virgil in his list, selecting, charac- 
 teristically, the praise of a country life from the 
 second Georgic {^elS ^^l-) ^"*^ *^^ famous passage 
 from the sixth Aeneid (724-751), in which the 
 poet expounds the doctrines of one great spirit 
 and of reincarnation. No one selected the five 
 lines from the eighth Eclogue which Voltaire 
 pronounced " the^finest in Virgil " and Macaulay 
 " the finest in the Latin language " : 
 
 Saepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala — 
 Dux ego vaster eram — vidi cum matre legentem : 
 Alter ab undecimo turn me iam acceperat annus, ^ 
 
 lam fragilis poteram ab terra contingere ramos : 
 Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error ! 
 Incipe Maenalios. . . . 
 
188 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES, vii 
 Amongst the translations Calverley's is the best : 
 
 Within our orchard-walls I saw thee first, 
 
 A wee child with her mother — (I was sent 
 
 To guide you) — gathering apples wet with dew. 
 
 Ten years and one I scarce had numbered then»; 
 
 Could scarce on tiptoe reach the brittle boughs. 
 
 I saw, I fell, I was myself no more ! 
 
 Begin, my flute, a song of Arcady. 
 
 In awarding superlatives to poets, how much is 
 to be held back on the score of lack of originality ? 
 Virgil borrowed this picture of a country boy's 
 love at first sight from Theocritus. I again 
 quote Calverley's version : 
 
 I loved thee, maiden, when thou cam'st long since. 
 To pluck the hyacinth-bloss&m on the fell, 
 Thou and thy mother, piloted- by me. 
 I saw thee, see thee still, from that day forth 
 For ever ; but 'tis naught, ay naught, to thee. 
 
 It will be noticed that the prettiest touch in 
 Virgil's lines — 
 
 Could scarce on tiptoe reach the brittle boughs — 
 
 is Virgil's own. If the selection had to be not 
 of a passage but of a single line, what would it 
 be ? Probably most people would agree with 
 Professor Tyrrell who gave as " the best line in 
 Latin poetry" Virgil's 
 
 Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. 
 
 In a lord of language such as Virgil, the question 
 
VII A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 189 
 
 of his best thing may be pursued from line to 
 word : 
 
 All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely 
 word. 
 
 Tennyson himself selected for instance of y?hat 
 he meant the-epithet applied to the golden^ bough 
 in the sixth Aeneid — " cunctantem ramum." Pro- 
 -fessbr Tyrrjell, in his delightful book on Latin 
 Poetry, has given other and, I think, better in- 
 stances. The feeblest line in Virgil is, according 
 to Mr. Myers, in the tenth Aeneid : 
 
 Sed non et Troilus heros 
 Dicta parat contra, iaculum nam torquet in hostem — 
 
 " a passage which suggests a modern exercise 
 painfully achieved by a schoolboy and inspired 
 by a gradus." " The very worst line in Latin 
 poetry " was, according to Professor Tyrrell, 
 achieved by Statius when he apostrophised the 
 condition of childlessness as "to be avoided by 
 every effort" {Orbitas omni fugiehda nisu). 
 " No one ever yet agreed entirely with any- 
 body else's golden treasury of elegant extracts. 
 There would seem more, chance of agreement 
 when the field of choice is more restricted. An 
 exercise in this sort which has amused men of 
 letters is to place the five great Odes of Keats 
 in order of merit. I count them as five, because 
 the " Ode to Indolence " is by consent of all 
 good judges an inferior performance ; and that 
 
I90 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vii 
 
 " To Maia," which might have ranked with the 
 others, is only a fragment. The Poet Laureate, 
 in his Critical Essay on Keats, has placed -the five 
 in order and given his reasons. The Cambridge 
 Professor of English Literature, .in one of his 
 pleasant causeries, " From a Cornish Window," 
 has examined the examination work by Mr. 
 Bridges, and finding it faulty, has brought out 
 a Tripos List of his own, degrading one candidate, 
 " Autumn," from first to fourth, and changing 
 the places of all the others. And all the while, 
 unnoticed by the other examiners, a greater than 
 they had, by a nice discrimination of superlatives, 
 given a first to each of the Odes. " Perhaps," 
 says Mr. Swinburne, " the two nearest to absolute 
 perfection, to the triumphant achievement and 
 accomplishment of the very utmost beauty possible 
 to human words, may be that to ' Autumn ' and 
 that on a ' Grecian Urn ' ; the most radiant, 
 fervent, and musical is that to a ' Nightingale ' ; 
 the most pictorial and perhaps the tenderest 
 in its ardour of passionate fancy is that to 
 ' Psyche ' ; the subtlest in sweetness of thought 
 and feeling is that on ' Melancholy.' " It does 
 not appear in what order the poet would have 
 placed the Odes if he had been pressed to give 
 competitive marks. It is clear, from the difi^er- 
 ent order given by Mr. Bridges and Professor 
 Quiller-Couch respectively, that they attach diflTer- 
 ent weight to the various points in which a poem 
 
VII A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 191 
 
 may excel. Mr. Bridges thinks most of perfec- 
 tion of form, and gives a bad mark to a piece which 
 contains any fault. Judging the Odes by this 
 standard, he places the " Autumn " first and the 
 " Grecian Urn " last. That the " Autumn " is 
 without flaw is common ground with all lovers 
 of poetry. That it is possible to find flaws in 
 the " Grecian Urn " must be admitted because 
 the Poet Laureate and the Professor have found 
 them, though it will have been noticed that this 
 Ode, which Mr. Bridges puts furthest from 
 attaining to perfection, is placed by Swinburne 
 with the " Autumn " as nearest to it. George 
 Meredith, too, named, among his favourite pieces 
 in English literature, first the " Grecian Urn," 
 and next the " Autumn." What, then, is per- 
 fection in poetry.? what is the test of " the very 
 utmost beauty possible to human words " ? 
 Professor Quiller-Couch counts as one element 
 in it the power of exciting what he calls " the 
 Great Thrill " — " the sudden shiver, the awed 
 surprise of the magic of poetry." Absence of 
 flaw, orderly sequence, the expression in beautiful 
 words of a true and beautiful idea : these of 
 themselves do not necessarily convey the thrill 
 of which " Q " speaks. It must be felt, and 
 nobody can answer for another ; but for my part 
 I am more thrilled by the second and third stanzas 
 of the " Grecian Urn " than by anything in the 
 " Autumn." In this quality the " Grecian Urii " 
 
192 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vii 
 
 seems to me second only to the " Nightingale." 
 It may, I think, safely be said that a vote of the 
 best judges would place the " Nightingale " at 
 the head of the list. Mr. Bridges, though he 
 places *' Autumn " first, yet admits to the " Night- 
 ingale " that he " could not name any English 
 poem of the same length which contains so much 
 beauty as this ode." Professor Quiller - Couch 
 places it first. Tennyson used to recite lines from 
 the same ode as examples of " the innermost soul 
 of poetry." And Swinburne, though he does 
 not give it the palm for perfection, yet says else- 
 where that "the * Ode to a Nightingale ' is one 
 of the final masterpieces of human work in all 
 time and forall ages." ^ As for the other Odes, 
 every one may place them in what order he will ; 
 or, if he prefer, he may apply to these great works 
 of poetry what William Blake said : " There is 
 no competition among great artists. None is 
 first in the Kingdom of Heaven." The game 
 of examining the five Odes has at any rate the 
 advantage of making the players refresh their 
 memory of, pieces of which it has been said that 
 " greater lyrical poetry the world may have seen 
 than any that is in these, lovelier it surely has 
 never seen nor ever can it possibly see." 
 
 • In yet another place, having occasion to mention single poems by 
 Keats, Swinburne selects neither the " Nightingale " nor the " Autumn " 
 but the " Psyche " or the " Grecian Urn " as " poems which for perfect 
 apprehension and execution of all attainable in their own sphere would weigh 
 down all the world of poetry.'' 
 
vii A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 193 
 
 To enlarge the question and ask, Which is the 
 best ode in the English language ? were to open 
 up a very wide field. The term " ode " is large 
 and variously defined. Odes may be classified, 
 for instance, either according as they are in 
 regular or irregular measures, or according to 
 their motive and subject ; and when we are told 
 that such and such an ode is the best, the finest, 
 &r the_ noblest, we are not much the wiser unless 
 we are told also what is the exact field of com- 
 parison. But "though the question is thus perhaps 
 futile, it has often bdlsn put and answered ; but 
 with one exception no two answers that I can 
 recall are found to agree. Macaulay pronounced 
 " Alexander's Feast " to be " the noblest ode 
 in our language," and herein he had at least 
 one other person to agree with him — namely, 
 Dryden himself, who is reported to have con- 
 firmed a young man's compliment by saying, 
 " A nobler ode never was produced nor ever 
 will be." Dr. Johnson, on the other hand, 
 though not displacing Dryden, said that his poem 
 on Mrs. Anne Killigrew was " undoubtedly the 
 noblest ode that our language ever has produced." 
 Those who disagree with the doctor may tijirn 
 for support to an incidental passage in Matthew 
 Arnold's essay on Gray. To Dryden a very 
 high place must surely be assigned among the 
 writers of English irregular odes, but the first 
 place is given by a modern critic to a later poet. 
 
194 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vn 
 
 Wordsworth's " Ode on Intimations of Im- 
 mortality " is, says Mr. Watts -Dunton, "the 
 finest irregular ode in the language ; for, although 
 Coleridge's ' Ode to the Departing Year ' ex- 
 cels it in Pindaric fire, it is below Wordsworth's 
 masterpiece in almost every other quality save 
 rhythm." Shelley said that the finest ode in the 
 language was a different piece by Coleridge — 
 the " Ode to France," but that is in regular 
 measure. As I have said, we must know what 
 is being compared. According to Hallam, 
 Milton's " Ode on the Nativity " is " the finest 
 in the English language. A grandeur, a sim- 
 plicity, a breadth of manner, an imagination at 
 once elevated and restrained by the subject, reign 
 throughout it. If Pindar is a model of lyric 
 poetry, it would be hard to name any other ode 
 so truly Pindaric ; but ' more has naturally been 
 derived from the Scriptures." So far at least 
 as regular odes are concerned, is it reasonably 
 possible to dispute Hallam's judgment ? Among 
 modern odes in irregular measure, is any finer 
 than Tennyson's " On the Death of the Duke 
 of Wellington " ? The fortunes of this now 
 famous piece have been remarkable. At the 
 time of publication the critics received it with 
 almost universal depreciation ; but a friendly 
 poet wrote to Tennyson to say how greatly he 
 admired it, and added a prediction : " I believe," 
 said Sir Henry Taylor, " that many hundreds 
 
VII A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 195 
 
 of thousands in future times will feel about it 
 as I do, or with a yet stronger and deeper feeling ', 
 and I am sure that every one will feel about it 
 apcording to his capacity of feeling what is great 
 and true." The author of Philip van Artevelde 
 was right. The poem is now recognised as one 
 of Tennyson's masterpieces, and there are pass- 
 ages in it which have passed into the common 
 memory and inspiration of the race. But if is 
 easy to see why the first reception of the ode was 
 different. The public look to a popular poet 
 to give what they have already learnt to admire 
 in him. In form and substance the ode was 
 unconventional ; it was un-Tennysonian. But in 
 losing the Tennysonian smoothness, it found the 
 heroic note. I have often thought that these 
 lines from the passage about the way- to glory 
 may be applied to the poem itself: 
 
 He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting 
 Into glossy purples, which outredden 
 • All voluptuous garden-roses. 
 
 Which is Tennyson's best poem } The ques- 
 tion would be incapable of reasonable discussion 
 without preliminary -agreement on many points. 
 I suppose that In Memoriam is generally regarded 
 as his masterpiece ; but for purposes of com- 
 parison with other pieces, is In Memoriam to be 
 taken as one poem or as a hundred and thirty- 
 three } And is The Princess to be taken as a 
 single piece, or may the wonderful songs be 
 
196 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vii 
 
 treated separately ? Such questions are not 
 worth pursuing, but some individual preferences 
 which I have noted shall here be recorded, 
 because they suggest an interesting reflection. 
 Every one knows the " Stanzas " (as they were 
 originally called) beginning : 
 
 Oh that 'twere possible 
 
 After long grief and pain, 
 To find the arms of my true love 
 
 Round me once again ! 
 
 Swinburne called this "the poem of deepest 
 charm and fullest delight of pathos and melody 
 ever written even by Mr. Tennyson." ^ Lord 
 Curzon, in recording ^ a day spent with Tenny- 
 son, has told us that the poet read the following 
 as " the most beautiful lines which he had written, 
 and among what he hoped would be regarded as 
 the most beautiful lines in English poetry " : 
 
 Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, 
 The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
 And murmuring of innumerable bees. 
 
 These are the last lines of the " small, sweet 
 Idyl " in the seventh canto of The Princess ^ and 
 about this piece the poet's son (confirming Lord 
 Curzon) says : " For simple rhythm and vowel 
 music my father considered his ' Come down, 
 O maid, from yonder mountain height,' written 
 in Switzerland (chiefly at Lauterbrunnen and 
 
 ^ In the Academy, January 29, 1876, 
 " Times, October 29, 1909. 
 
VII A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 197 
 
 Grindelwald) and descriptive of the waste Alpine 
 heights and gorges, and of the sweet, rich valleys 
 below, as amongst his most successful work" 
 Ruskin was of the same opinion. He instanced 
 " the piece of Alp in The Princess " as one of. 
 " the most wonderful things in all poetry." 
 But another writer, entitled to speak both as poet 
 and critic, has singled out a very different piece 
 as Tennyson's " most perfect poem." " Surely," 
 said Frederic My6rs, " the ode ' To Virgil,' read 
 with due lightening of certain trochaic accents 
 in the latter half of each line, touches the high- 
 water mark of English song. Apart from the 
 specific allusions, almost every phrase recalls 
 and rivals some intimate magic, some incom- 
 municable fire. . ■. . We are here among the 
 things that shall endure. It may be that our 
 English primacy in poetry, now sonre four 
 centuries old, is drawing to its close. It may 
 be that the art must pass ere long to younger 
 races, with fresher idioms and a new outlook on 
 this ancient world. But whatever else shall 
 pass from us, Tennyson shall remain." Now 
 the pieces above noted are widely different in 
 metre, in mode, in subject. That three good 
 judges should each select a different one as the 
 poet's most successful work is a tribute to the 
 range and variety of Tennyson's genius. And 
 there is another point. Of the three pieces, the 
 "Stanzas" were first published in 1835, the 
 
198 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vii 
 
 " Alpine Idyl " in 1 847, and the " Virgil " in 1 885. 
 There have been poets who wrote fine things 
 at as early an age, and others who continued to 
 write at as great an age. But Keats and Shelley 
 died young. And, on the other hand, Words- 
 worth's best work was all done between the 
 ages of twenty -eight and thirty -eight (1798- 
 1808); nobody would select as Browning's 
 best anything of later date than The Ring and the 
 Book, published when he was fifty-six ; and Mr. 
 Gosse has written a book to show that Swinburne's 
 fount of inspiration gave out when he was re- 
 moved by Mr. W^atts-Dunton from the society 
 of other friends and led in strings to The Pines 
 at the age of forty-two. Is there any other case 
 than this of Tennyson in the history of English 
 literature, where it may be a question of reason- 
 able discussion whether a poet's best piece was 
 written at the age. of twenty-six, of thirty-eight, 
 or of seventy-six } 
 
 Who are the greatest English men of letters } 
 The question is answered very conspicuously 
 in the reading-room of the British Museum. 
 When the dome was redecorated some years ago, 
 it was decided to place a naine in letters of gold 
 beneath each of the twenty windows. The 
 names in historical order are these : Chaucer, 
 Caxton, Tindale, Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, 
 Milton, Locke, Addison, Swift, Pope, Gibbon, 
 Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Carlyle, Macaulay, 
 
vii A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 199 
 
 Tennyson, Browning — ^and the twentieth place 
 is for the present left vacant, being partly hidden 
 by a clock. Is this to give some twentieth- 
 century genius a chance ? Or is there a subtler 
 intent in placing a timepiece over a nameless 
 scroll ? I have sometimes thought so when the 
 light grows faint in the dome beneath which so 
 many once famous works and records are stored ; 
 
 Thronging through the cloud-rift, whose are they, the faces 
 Faint revealed yet sure divined, the famous ones of old? 
 
 " What," they smile, " our names, our deeds so soon erases 
 Time upon his tablet where Life's glory lies enrolled ? " 
 
 However this may be, I suppose that no list 
 of the sort was ever more canvassed than this. 
 Innumerable students, as they sit and wait for 
 their books, must have looked up to the dome 
 and been challenged to criticism. Are the 
 Elizabethans sufficiently represented .'' Is the 
 eighteenth century over -represented ? Should 
 Dr. Johnson have been left out ? And if Lord 
 Morley were a Trustee of the Museum at the 
 time, what did he think of the omission of Burke .? 
 " The supreme writer of the eighteenth century," 
 said De Quincey of him. " Our greatest English 
 prose writer," said Matthew Arnold. And are 
 both Tennyson and Browning rightly included in 
 a list which finds no room for Keats or Shelley ? 
 Which is the best novel that ever wg,s written ? 
 Two dealers in superlatives have answered the 
 question — differentlyj but with equal assurance. 
 
200 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vn 
 
 " I am going through Don Quixote again, and 
 admire it more than ever. It is certainly the 
 best novel in the world, beyond all comparison." 
 " The best novel in the world is The Vicar of 
 Wakefield^ It is easy to s^e why Macaulay 
 did not give the palm to Goldsmith nor Ruskin 
 to Cervantes. Macaulay greatly admired The 
 Vicar, predicting that its fame would last as long 
 as our language, and nothing ever annoyed him 
 more than a slip qf the pen whereby for three 
 months, between the appearance of one number 
 of the Edinburgh Review and the next, he had 
 presented himself before the world as a critic 
 who thought The Vicar one of Goldsmith's worst 
 books.i But he was a voracious reader of novels, 
 whose ambition- was to make history as interesting 
 as any of them, and he could not pardon the lack 
 of probability and consistency in Goldsmith's 
 story. And Ruskin, though he loved Don 
 Quixote and knew it almost by heart from boy- 
 hood, had reasons of his own, as a tilter at wind- 
 mills, for coming to think it " the most mis- 
 chievous book ever written." " It was always 
 throughout real chivalry to me ; and it is precisely 
 
 ^ The essay on Warren Hastings, as it originally appeared, contains this 
 passage : " More eminent men than Mr. Gleig have written nearly as ill as 
 he, when they have stooped to similar drudgery. It v?puld be unjust to 
 estimate Goldsmith by The Vicar offVakefidd, or Scott by The Life of Napoleon! ' 
 For The Vicar of Wakefield Macaulay meant to put The History of Greece, 
 but neither in writing nor in correcting the proof did he notice what he had 
 actually said. This deserves a note in a study of superlatives as the most 
 unaccountable slip of the pen ever perpetrated by a man of letters^. 
 
vn A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 201 
 
 because the most touching valour and tenderness 
 are rendered vain by madness, and because, thus 
 vain, they are made a subject of laughter to vulgar 
 and shallow persons, and because all true chivalry 
 is thus by implication accused of madness and 
 involved in shame, that I call the book so deadly." 
 Macaulay died too soon to know, and Ruskin 
 had too much horror of the morbid taint to love, 
 a third novel' which may dispute the primacy 
 with the two already named. " The greatest 
 work of fiction ever created' or conceived is," said 
 Mr. Swinburne, " Le$ Miserahles" Others would 
 probably put in a plea for a novel by- Scott, but 
 they would disagree in selecting it. Those who 
 have loved him most find the greatest difficulty 
 in deciding which of his novels is the best. 
 Edward FitzGerald used to say that one of the 
 Sorrows of old age was the thought that he might 
 never live to have this Waverley novel or that 
 read to him again, and he felt the same in the 
 case of each of his favourites in turn. Ruskin, 
 who was another devoted lover of Scott, was 
 constantly drawing up lists of the novels in order 
 of preference, but no two of his lists agree. 
 Seven novels, however, appear in all his lists, 
 namely : Waverley^ Guy Mannering, Antiquary, 
 Old Mortality, Heart of Midlothian, Abbot, and 
 Redgauntlet. If he had been forced to choose, 
 one as the very best, he would, I think, have 
 named Heart of Midlothian. Tennyson preferred 
 
202 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vn 
 
 Old Mortality. Bulwer Lytton is said to have 
 given first place to the one which Ruskin liked 
 least — The Bride of Lammermoor. 
 
 Macaulay, in placing Don Quixote first of all 
 novels beyond compare, was faithless^ for the 
 moment in his allegiance to Jane Austen. In 
 the essay on Madame D'Arblay, he names Jane 
 Austen as second only to Shakespeare in the 
 delineation of character, and in his diary of a later 
 date there is this entry : 
 
 Home and finished Persuasion. I have now read 
 over again all Miss Austen's novels. Charming they are ; 
 but I found a little more to criticise than formerly. Yet 
 there are in the world no compositions which approach 
 nearer to perfection. 
 
 For those readers who have found the taste for 
 Jane Austen difficult to acquire, I hasten to add 
 a contrary opinion. " I know it's very wrong," 
 said Charlotte Bronte, " but the fact is I can't 
 read them. They have not got story enough 
 in them to engage my attention. I don't want 
 my blood curdled, but I like it stirred. Miss 
 Austen strikes me as milk-and-watery, and, to 
 say truth, as dull." And here is an avowal of 
 Edward FitzGerald to like effect : 
 
 I cannot get on with Books about the Daily Life 
 which I find rather insufferable in practice about me. 
 I never could read Miss Austen, nor (later) the famous 
 George Eliot. Give me People, Places, and Things 
 which I don't and can't see ; Antiquaries, Jeanie Deans, 
 
VII A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 203 
 
 Dalgettys, &c. . . . As to Thackeray's, they are terrible ; 
 I really look at them on the shelf, and am half afraid to 
 touch them. He, you know, could go deeper into the 
 Springs of Common Action than these Ladies : wonderful 
 he is, but not delightful, which one thirsts for as one gets 
 old and dry. 
 
 Tennyson, more catholic than his friend, could 
 enjoy Miss Austen and Thackeray as well as 
 Scott. " Delicious " was the word he applied 
 to the novels which Old Fitz found " not De- 
 lightful," and as for the others, he almost agreed 
 with Macaulay. " The realism and Life-likeness 
 of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come 
 nearest," he said, " to Shakespeare," adding, 
 however, that Shakespeare is " a^ sun to which 
 Jane Austen, tho' a bright and true little world, 
 is but an asteroid." Decidedly there is room for 
 wide differences of taste in the world of novels. 
 Does Miss Yonge's Heir of Redclyffe still find 
 readers } It was eagerly read by Lord Raglan and 
 other officers during the Crimean War, and it 
 exercised a dominating fascination, we are told,' 
 over William Morris and his set at Oxford. 
 Canon Dixon, the poet, in mentioning this book 
 as the first which seemed to' him greatly to in- 
 fluence Morris, pronounced it, after nearly half 
 a century's reflection and experience, to be 
 " unquestionably one of the finest books in the 
 world." It is one of the advantages of a study 
 of such superlatives that it may confirm us all 
 
204 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vn 
 
 in the courage of our real likes or dislikes. We 
 can none of us be more heterodox than was Dr. 
 Johnson sometimes, as in his animadversions on 
 Milton and Gray ; or more perverse than Matthew 
 Arnold, as in his freakish saying that Shelley 
 would be remembered more for his prose than as 
 a poet ; or more limited than Macaulay, who 
 could see little to praise in Dickens and Words- 
 worth. 
 
 Who is the greatest historian .'' The question 
 is more manageable, for the- field of reasonable 
 choice is restricted. The Father of History 
 may perhaps be left out, unless indeed we accept 
 Browning's standard : 
 
 Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and glory 
 For daring so much, before they well did it. 
 
 The first of the new, in our race's story. 
 
 Beats the last of the old ; 'tis no idle quiddit. 
 
 But let us put Herodotus aside with a different 
 superlative. By common consent he is " one of 
 the most delightful story-tellers" (Jebb) ; his 
 history is " the most delightful of all story- 
 books " (Harrison ^). The choice of the world's 
 greatest historian then lies between the greatest 
 of the Greek historians, the greatest of the Roman, 
 and the greatest of the English. Each of these 
 
 ^^But there is another claimant for this latter superlative; "When 
 asked the question which all literary people have been asking each othet 
 since the days of Fisistratus, Fox replied, ' I would not say I would rather 
 have written the Odyssey, but I know that I would rather read it. I believe 
 it to be the first tale in the world.' " 
 
VII A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 205 
 
 writers predicted enduring fame for his work, 
 and each claim has been endorsed by posterity. 
 Thucydides composed his history " not as the 
 exploit of an hour but as a possession for all 
 tiftie." The confidence of Tacitus that the glory 
 of Agricola- would endure in after ages has been 
 justified by the genius of the historian. And 
 Gibbon, when he wrote the last lines of his last 
 page, rejoiced not only at the recovery of his 
 freedom, but also at the establishment of his 
 fame. Which of these three is the greatest ? 
 The answer must partly depend on the view which 
 is taken of .the subjects with which they severally 
 deal. If a man holds with Richard Cobden. 
 that " one copy of the Times contains more useful 
 information than the whole of the historical 
 books of Thucydides," or with Robert Lowe^ 
 that a good colliery accident throws the battle 
 of Marathon into the shade, then Tacitus and 
 Gibbon start with a great advantage, though even 
 so it might be the more admired in Thucydides 
 that he should have made so much, in force of 
 dramatic presentment and in profundity of ob- 
 servation, out of events so small in scale. With 
 those, on the other hand, who rate the glory 
 that was Greece as high as the grandeur that was 
 Rome, and still more with those who find in the 
 
 ^ who, however, was probably poking fun at the Civil Engineers at whose 
 Institute it was that, on a convivial oc9asion, he delivered the notorious 
 speech from which I am quoting. 
 
2o6 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vii 
 
 main theme of Thucydides one of the world's 
 great tragedies/ the three historians may be held 
 to start on equal terms so far as the dignity of 
 their themes is concerned. Three modern Writers 
 of repute (and two of them writers of famous 
 histories) have answered the question now before 
 us, and each gives a different answer with equal 
 positiveness. " It is no personal paradox," says 
 Mr. Frederic Harrison, " but the judgment of 
 all competent men that the Decline and Pall of 
 Gibbon is the most perfect historical composition 
 that exists in any language." But Mr. Harrison 
 forgot, when he wrote this sentence as the spokes- 
 man of all competent men, that a few pages before 
 in the same essay on Some Great Books of History^ 
 he had himself pronounced the work of Thucy- 
 dides to be " perhaps the greatest of all histories." 
 Macaulay was of the same opinion, minus the 
 " perhaps " — a word not found in his dictionary. 
 "This day," he wrote in 1835, "^ finished 
 Thucydides after reading him with inexpressible 
 interest and admiration. ' He is the greatest 
 
 1 *' It seems to me now," wrote Ruskin in his Autobiography, " as if I 
 had known Thucydides as I knew Homer (Pope's) since I could spell. But 
 the fact was that for a youth who had so little Greek to bless himself with 
 at seventeen to know every syllable of his Thucydides at half-past eighteen 
 meant some steady sitting at it. The perfect honesty of the Greek soldiers 
 his high breeding, his political insight, and the scorn of construction with 
 which he knotted his meaning into a rhythmic strength that writhed and 
 wrought every way at once, all interested me intensely in him as a writer ; 
 while his subject, the central tragedy of all the world, the suicide of Greece, 
 was felt by me with a sympathy in which the best powers of my heart and 
 brain were brought up to their fullest, for my years." 
 
VII A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 207 
 
 historian that ever lived." " I am still of the 
 same mind," he wrote a year later. " I do assure 
 yoUj" he said in a letter, " that there is no prose 
 composition in the world, not even the De Corona, 
 which I place so high as the seventh book of 
 Thucydides. It is the ne plus ultra of human 
 art." And he went on to say how delighted he 
 was to find in Gray's letters this query to Wharton : 
 " The retreat from Syracuse — ^is it or is it not 
 the finest thing you ever read in your life } " 
 Jowett also was of Macaulay's opinion. Mr. 
 Froude, on the other hand, seems to have given 
 the palm to the Roman historian. " The greatest 
 man," he says, " who has as yet given himself 
 to the recording of human afiairs is, beyond 
 question, Cornelius Tacitus. Alone in Tacitus 
 a serene calmness of insight was compatible with 
 intensity of feeling." And Mr. Harrison's 
 Master, Auguste Comte, called Tacitus " in- 
 comparable," and placed him in the Positivist 
 Calendar next to ^Socrates on account of his 
 profound insight into human nature. There is 
 thus good authority, it will be seen, for any choice 
 one may make between the three greatest his- 
 torians. One thing, it is worth noting, is 
 common to all of them. Each was a scientific 
 historian according to the lights of his day, but 
 each was also aware that history belongs to 
 literature as well as to science. The style of 
 Thucydides, as every schoolboy knows to his 
 
2o8 A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vn 
 
 pain, is involved and difficult ; but, as Professor 
 Jebb has said, no writer has " grander bursts 
 of rugged eloquence " and few have equalled 
 his sense of tragic circumstance. The Roman 
 historian was a more conscious artist, and Tacitean 
 brevity has become proverbial. Tacitus is in- 
 comparable, because for one thing he is un- 
 translatable. The style of Gibbon, though 
 mannered to the verge of pomposity, is remark- 
 able for sijstained weight and vigour. Each 
 was in his different way a literary artist. Which 
 of the three does the reader prefer ? The 
 answer will finally depend in some measure, I 
 imagine, on individual, taste and on the moral 
 judgment which governs our sympathies. Lord 
 Acton is sometimes supposed to be a dispassion- 
 ate historian, but he is always passing moral 
 judgments. " Excepting Froude," he wrote, 
 " I think Carlyle the most detestable. of historians. 
 The doctrine of heroes, the doctrine that will is 
 above law, comes next in atrocity to the doctrine 
 that the flag covers the goods, that the cause 
 justifies its agents, which is what Froude lives 
 for." From this point of view, a good case may 
 be made for Macaulay's favourite among our 
 Three. Tacitus, says one of the best of his 
 translators, took ap unhopeful and cynical view 
 of human nature. The work of Gibbon, says 
 one of his biographers, is more fitted to inspire 
 admiration than love or sympathy. '* His cheek 
 
VII A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES 209 
 
 rarely flushes in enthusiasm for a good cause. 
 The tragedy of human life never seems to touch 
 him, no glimpse of the infinite ever calms and 
 raises the reader of his pages. Like nearly all 
 the men of !his day, he was of the earth earthy." 
 In Thucydides, Professor Jebb finds " that great- 
 ness which is given by sustained' intensity of noble 
 thought and feeling." 
 
 One more question : it has often worried 
 unoffending people — especially those in " situa- 
 tions," as the Duke of Wellington put it, " much 
 exposed to authors. ' ' If in a moment of presump- 
 tion I should send this little book about books 
 to a friend, it may worry him, and so I will give 
 an answer. What is the best and neatest way of 
 acknowledging an unwelcome presentation-copy ? 
 The one indispensable thing is of course to ac- 
 knowledge it promptly before you can possibly 
 be expected to have- read the book. Disraeli's 
 formula, " I shall lose no time in reading your 
 valuable book," has often been quoted and, with 
 variations, adopted. It is clever ; but, unless 
 the vanity of an author has given him the skin 
 of a rhinoceros, the ambiguity of the phrase is 
 likely to prick. For perfection of politeness one 
 must turn to France, and an exquisite example is 
 given in Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay. Zachary 
 Macaulay was in the habit of sending (sometimes 
 with the postage only in part prepaid) copies of 
 Blue-bo6ks and periodicals about the slave-trade 
 
2IO A STUDY IN SUPERLATIVES vii 
 
 to his Parisian friends, one of whom, M. Dumont, 
 wrote : 
 
 MoN CHER Ami — ^Je ne laisserai pas partir Mr. Inglis 
 sans le charger de quelques lignes pour vous, afin de vous 
 remercier du Christian Observer que vous avez eu la 
 bonte de m'envoyer. Vous savez que j'ai a great taste 
 for it ; mais il faut avouer une triste verit^, c'est que je 
 manque absolument de loisir pour le lire. Ne m'en 
 envoyez plus, car je me sens pein6 d'avoir sous les yeux 
 de si bonnes choses dont je n'ai pas le temps de me nourrir. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE POETRY OF A PAINTER 
 
 When I was editing Ruskin's Works I was 
 allowed to inspect the eleven tin boxes in which 
 a large part of the Turner Bequest to the nation 
 had for fifty years been buried in the cellars 
 of the National Gallery, and at the time I gave 
 some account of their contents.^ Mr. Thornbury, 
 whose Life of Turner has some claims to be 
 considered the worst-contrived biography in the 
 language, had seen these treasures, but he made 
 inadequate use of them. The note-books, sketch- 
 books, and bundles of drawings ought to have 
 been used as^ the foundation of the Life^ and the 
 labours of Mr. Fin-berg (^vhich, it may be hoped, 
 will be continued) have already shown what 
 important results may thus be obtained.^ Mr. 
 
 1 In the Introduction to the Turner volume (xiii.) in the Library Edition 
 of Rusltin's Works, published in 1904 ; and in an illustrated volume, 
 Hidden Treamres at the National Gallery, published by the Pall Mall Gaxette 
 in 1905. 
 
 2 See his admirable Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, 
 2 vols., 1909 ; his Turner's Sketches and Drawings, 1910 ; and an account of 
 Turner's "Isle of flight" Sketch-Book in the First Annual Volume of the 
 Walpole Society, 1912. See also the Third and Sixth Volumes. 
 
 211 
 
212 A PAINTER'S POETRY vin 
 
 Thornbury was content to treat this biographical 
 material in a casual manner, and the impression 
 he gave of the note -books was that they are 
 a hopeless muddle -jumble. Such impression 
 accords with the idea which Mr. Hamerton also 
 conveyed that Turner was an ill-educated illiterate. 
 Sir Walter Armstrong has done something to 
 correct this idea, and the note-books themselves 
 disprove it, though, as will be shown in the 
 present paper, they throw a most curious light 
 on the artist's limitations. What Ruskin's father 
 said on examining Turner's house on the day 
 after his death must occur to every one who goes 
 throtigh the boxes in which so much of the 
 artist's work in life was buried : " The industry 
 of the man was as great as his genius," and the 
 industry had method in it. Before setting out 
 on a sketching tour he carefully read up his route, 
 often getting some travelled friend to prepare an 
 itinerary for him, not only marking what towns 
 had good inns, but making notes of picturesque 
 places or effects of which he had heard or read. 
 Then the artist equipped himself with sketch- 
 books of all sorts and sizes. Some are small 
 ^ enough to go into a waistcoat pocket, and are 
 filled with rough scrawls and hieroglyphics, such 
 as were made perhaps in the coach. Sometimes 
 the thumb-nails are of exquisite delicacy and 
 firmness ; as, for instance, in two or three little 
 books containing bits of architecture and sculpture 
 
VIII A PAINTER'S POETRY 213 
 
 done in Rome. Thei;i come the larger sketch- 
 books, used when the artist was settled at his 
 inn ; these contain sometimes pencil - sketches 
 of great delicacy, carried far to completion, and 
 sometimes bolder and rougher outlines, to serve 
 as memoranda of the leading lines in a composi- 
 tion. The books had for the most part been 
 labelled by the painter, as thus : "79. Skies," 
 "84. Studies for Pictures, Copies of Wilson," 
 "18. Studies in the Louvre" — the book last 
 mentioned contains some careful copies on a small 
 scale of pictures in that collection, and is of further 
 interest as including critiques on some of them. 
 Turner'si memory was prodigious, but he had 
 aids to it. Whatever was the work he was en- 
 gaged upon at the time, he was able to refer to 
 his numbered note-books, where every kind of 
 material from nature was stored. The quantity 
 of such material which his industry had accumu- 
 lated is enormous. 
 
 ladustry in another sort also is revealed by 
 the note^books. From the literary point of view. 
 Turner was a diligent reader and self-educator. 
 There are lessons in French. There are notes 
 of historical and literary associations with places 
 where he was sketching. There are extracts 
 from books which he had been reading — among 
 others from the Treatise on the Art of Painting 
 by Gerard de Lairesse, with whom Browning 
 " parleyed." There are critical remarks on 
 
214 A PAINTER'S POETRY viii 
 
 painters and theories of art. As Professor of 
 Perspective at the Academy, Turner was a failure 
 so far as his public lectures were concerned. His 
 delivery was bad, his grammar was doubtful, and 
 he had not the skill to make a difficult subject 
 attractive ; but it has been shown that he wrote 
 and rewrote his lectures with great pains, and 
 that he made himself widely acquainted with 
 the literature of the subject.^ In the sketch- 
 books at the National Gallery, the notes and 
 jottings of all sorts are sometimes carefully 
 written, correct, and consecutive. At other 
 times, carelessly spelt and written, they are 
 unintelligible to any one except to their writer. 
 Above all, the note-books are full of verses, 
 sometimes copied from books or broadsheets, 
 more often of Turner's own composition. He 
 would make as many beginnings or studies or 
 versions of a poem as of a picture or drawing. 
 " His sketch-books," says Mr. Finberg, " contain 
 on the whole even more poetry than drawings." 
 The poetry, such as it is, of so great a painter 
 as Turner deserves some study and suggests 
 questions of far-reaching interest. 
 
 Turner knew good poetry when he read it. 
 " He was well read in the poets," said Lupton, 
 
 1 See an article by Mr. D. S. MactoU on "Turner's Lectures at the 
 Academy " in the Burlington Magazine, vol, xii. p. 343, and two articles by 
 Mr. W. T. Whitley on "Turner as a Lecturer" in the same magazine, 
 vol. xxii. pp. zoz, 255. 
 
VIII A PAINTER'S POETRY 215 
 
 the engraver. " He was fond of talking of 
 poetry," said a friend ; and another reported that 
 he was " a great theatre-goer at one time and was 
 indistinctly voluble on Shakespeare." His taste 
 was shown when in 1798 the Royal Academy 
 allowed mottoes to be inserted in its catalogues. 
 Turner's first quotation was to his picture of 
 " Morning on the Coniston Fells," exhibited in 
 that year (noiy No.' 461, National Gallery), and 
 was taken from the fifth book of Paradise Lost : 
 
 Ye Mists and Exhalations, that now rise 
 From hill or steaming lake, dusky or grey, 
 Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold, 
 In honour to the World's great Author rise. 
 
 " There was a strange ominousness," says Ruskin, 
 " as there is about much that great men do, in 
 the choice of these lines. They express his 
 peculiar mission as distinguished from other 
 landscapists ; they show how his mind was set 
 from the first on rendering atmospheric effects." 
 In the same and in immediately following years 
 the object of his quotations was again to empha- 
 sise the atmospheric effects which he sought 
 to interpret. The best mottoes were still from 
 Milton, as this for " Twilight at Harlech Castle " : 
 
 Now came still evening on and Twilight grey 
 Had in her sober livery all things clad. 
 . . . Hesperus, that led 
 The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon 
 Rising in clouded majesty unveil'd her peerless light. 
 
2i6 A PAINTER'S POETRY viii 
 
 Here Turner took liberty with his text, tele- 
 scoping into one line of irregular length these 
 two : 
 
 Rising in clouded majesty, at length 
 Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light. 
 
 A passage from the sixth book was used to 
 illustrate " The Battle of the Nile " : 
 
 Immediate in a flame, 
 But soon obscured with smoke, all Heaven appeared, 
 From those deep-throated engines belched, whose roar 
 Embowelled with outrageous noise the air, 
 And all her entrails tore, disgorging foul 
 Their devilish glut, chained thunderbolts and hail 
 Of iron globes. 
 
 But the source from which at this period 
 Turner drew most of his quotations was Thom- 
 son's Seasons. In the Academy Exhibition of 
 1798, four of his pictures had quotations from 
 that poem. Thomson is now, I suppose, little 
 read,^ but Mr. Seccombe reminds us that for a 
 hundred years, lasting until the vogue of Tenny- 
 son, Thomson was the favourite poet of the 
 British public. Turner was under the spell, 
 and made many attempts to express his admira- 
 tion in verses of his own. Thomson's cottage 
 was in Kew Foot Lane, and from it he often 
 walked over to visit " Mr. Pope," we are told, 
 at Twickenham. Pope's famous villa, with its 
 
 ' Oscar Wilde once divided books into three classes : (i) Books to read, 
 (2) Books to re-read, and (3) Books not to read at all. Thomson's Seasons 
 lieaded the list under his third class. 
 
vni A PAINTER'S POETRY 217 
 
 grotto and its weeping willow, was demolished 
 in 1 807, and Turner, who himself had a house 
 at this time at Twickenham, was very angry. 
 Indignation wanted to make verses, but they 
 would not come into any coherent or sustained 
 shape. Here from various note-books are some 
 of Turner's attempts to link the fame of Thomson 
 and of Pope in an " Invocation of Thames to the 
 Seasons upon the Demolition of Pope's House " : 
 
 To Twickenham bowers that . . . 
 
 In humble guise should . . . assume 
 
 My self-reared willow, or the grotto's gloom, 
 
 'Twould be my pride to hold from further scorn 
 
 A remnant of his . . . which once the bank adorn . . . 
 
 If then my ardent love of thee is said with truth, 
 
 . . . the demolition of thy house, forsooth. 
 
 Broke through the trammels, and you, my rhyme. 
 
 Roll into being since that fatal time. 
 
 The Baroness Howe, whose agents destroyed the 
 house and stubbed up the trees, v/as more success- 
 ful in demolition than Turner in building a rhyme 
 of poetical revenge. But he tried again and again : 
 
 O Seasons Fair, bedeck- the shrine 
 Of him who made the Seasons shine. 
 
 O Seasons Fair^ guard Thomson's Shrine. 
 He sung the charms of Season's prime. 
 With watery-may his bays entwine. 
 While Phebus o'er our Vallies shine. 
 High then the Coral shell yet fill 
 With distant Thames' translucent rill. 
 With Memory sweet and thrush's thrill, 
 Yet his lyre with Summer breezes, fill. 
 
2i8 A PAINTER'S POETRY viii 
 
 Akenside, Ossian, Scott, and Byron were all 
 successively laid under contribution by Turner 
 to illustrate his pictures — Byron many times : the 
 great picture, exhibited in 1832 (now No. 516 in 
 the National GJallery), is proof of his sympatTiy 
 with the genius of the author of Childe Harold's 
 Pilgrimage. " The loveliest result of Turner's 
 art, in the central period ofit, was," says. Ruskin, 
 " an effort to express on a single canvas the 
 meaning of that poem. . . . While he only 
 illustrated here and there a detached passage 
 from other poets, he endeavoured, as far as in him 
 lay, to delineate the whole mind of Byron." 
 
 It is interesting to remember that while he 
 was thus delineating the mind of Byron, there 
 was a poet who, as it were, had been illustrating 
 Turner's -painting, though the poet had never 
 seen the pictures nor did the painter know the 
 poems. The Turner of poetry is Shelley. In 
 both there is a strain of pensive melancholy 
 joined to a sense of the material beauty of the 
 universe which finds expression in a love of 
 iridescence, colour-depth, and soft mystery. The 
 vast landscapes of Turner's later manner, melting 
 into indefinite distance, recall many a passage in 
 Shelley's Prometheus where the spirits of the mind 
 
 Voyage, cloudlike and unpent, 
 Through the boundless element. 
 
 Turner painted " Queen Mab's Grotto " and re- 
 
vin A PAINTER'S POETRY 219 
 
 ferred in the Academy Catalogue to A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, though the line he quoted is not 
 to be found there. But in the realisation of his 
 dream Turner's grotto, is that of Shelley's Queen 
 Mab rather than of Shakespeare's. The details 
 are different, but the general effect of the picture 
 resembles Shelley's description of Mab's palace : 
 
 irsolitude hath ever led thy steps ' 
 
 To the wild ocean's, echoing shore, 
 ^nd thou hast lingered there, 
 
 When those far clouds of feathery gold, 
 Shaded with deepest-purple, gleam 
 Like islands on, a dark blue sea ; 
 Then has thy fancy soared above the earth, 
 And furled its wearied wing 
 Within the Fairy's fane. 
 
 Yet not the golden islands 
 Gleaming in yon flood of light. 
 
 Nor the feathery curtains 
 Stretching o'er Ihe sun's bright couch, 
 Nor the burnished ocean waves 
 Paving that gorgeous dome. 
 So fair, so wonderful, a sight 
 As Mab's ethereal palace could afford. 
 
 In Turner's " Cephalus and Procris " Ruskin 
 notes the sympathy of the faint rays that are just 
 drawing back and dying between the trunks of 
 the far-off forest with the ebbing life of the 
 nymph. There is just the same touch in Shelley's 
 description of the death of the poet in Alastor : 
 
220 A PAINTER'S POETRY viii 
 
 Now upon the jaggM hills 
 It rests, and still as the divided frame 
 Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood, 
 That ever beat in mystic sympathy 
 With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still ; 
 And when two lessening points of light alone 
 Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp 
 Of hia faint respiration scarce did stir 
 The stagnate night. . . . 
 
 In the picture of Venice called " Shylock " Turner 
 has arranged the clouds of the upper sky in masses 
 of mingling light, every part and atom sympathis- 
 ing in that continuous expression of slow move- 
 ment which Shelley has so beautifully touched : 
 
 Underneath the young grey dawn, 
 And multitudes of dense, white, fleecy clouds 
 Were wandering- in thick flocks along the mountains, 
 Shepherded by the slow unwilling wind.'- 
 
 How essentially Turnerian is this passage from 
 the second act of Prometheus : 
 
 The point of one white star i& q,uiveiing still, 
 Deep in the orange light of widening dawn, 
 Beyond the purplq mountains. Through a chasm 
 Of wind-divided mist the darker lake 
 Reflects it : now it fades : it gleams again 
 As the waves fall, and as the burning threads 
 Of woven cloud unravel in pale air : 
 'Tis lost ! and through yon peaka of cloudlike snow 
 The roseate sunlight quivers. 
 
 Ruskin in a famous passage has described the 
 mingling of tones in Turnejr's " Temeraire " ; 
 
 ' Prometheus, ii. 147. 
 
viii A PAINTER'S POETRY 221 
 
 it might be taken, if one did not know the refer- 
 ence, for a prose version of some scene in Shelley 
 which is luminous ^nd radiant while yet it is 
 
 Dim and dank and grey, 
 Like a storm-extinguished day, 
 Travelled o'er by dying gleams. 
 
 Or, again, take this passage from Julian and 
 Maddalo : ' 
 
 Half the sky 
 Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, 
 Dark purple «t the zenith, which still grew 
 Down the steep west into a wondrous hue 
 Brighter than burning gold. 
 
 The colouring is that of many a sky of Turner's. 
 The quest of the poet in Alastor pursuing an 
 ideal beauty might be taken for a summary of 
 the painter's artistic life : 
 
 Nature's most secret steps 
 ^ He like her shadow has pursued, where'er 
 The red volcano overcanopies 
 Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice 
 With burning smoke, or where . . . 
 
 . . . the starry domes 
 Of diamond and of gold expand above 
 Numberless and immeasurable halls. 
 Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines 
 Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite — 
 
 with this for the end, so true of the painter's 
 latest experiments : 
 
 He eagerly pursues 
 Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade ; 
 He overleaps the bounds. 
 
222 A PAINTER'S POETRY viii 
 
 The parallelism in all this is strangely close. 
 And yet not so strange if there be truth in the 
 fancies of those who believe that a compelling 
 spirit of the time works to like ends in different 
 minds. Dates are here significant. Alastor was 
 published in 1816, Prometheus in 1820, arid 
 Julian and Maddalo (written in 1818) in 1824. 
 The time coincides with that of the transition to 
 Turner's second and more aerial period. And, 
 curiously, the editors of the poet and the painter 
 severally give a closely corresponding accouht 
 of the circumstances which inspired their work 
 at the time. Mrs. Shelley, in explaining the 
 new notes heard in Alastor, says this : " As soon 
 as the peace of 18 14 had opened the Continent, 
 Shelley went abroad. He visited some of the 
 more riiagnificent scenes of Switzerland, and 
 returned to England from Lucerne by the Reuss 
 and the Rhine. The river-navigation enchanted 
 him." And Ruskin, in explaining Turner's 
 transition from grey to colour, puts it down to 
 the foreign tour of 18 19 or 1820 : " When he 
 first travelled on the Continent he was com- 
 paratively a young student ; not yet able to draw 
 form as he wanted, he was forced to give all his 
 thoughts and strength to this primary object. 
 But now he was fr'ee to receive other Imptessions ; 
 the time was come for perfecting his art, and the 
 first sunset which he saw on the Rhine taught 
 him that all previous landscape art was vain 
 
viii A PAINTER'S POETRY 223 
 
 and valueless . . . and a new dawn rose over the 
 rocks of the Siebengebirge." 
 
 In addition to quotations from British poets, 
 Turner drew for his mottoes or references upon 
 Virgil, Ovid, Callimachus, and Homer. In this 
 field he often indulged in a characteristic love of 
 mystification. He liked to put people off the 
 true scent. Alternately he pretended to less and 
 to more borrowing from classical sources than 
 was in fact the case. He was at a dinner-party 
 where his glorious picture of " Ulysses deriding 
 Polyphertius " was the theme of some idle talk. 
 " Come, now," said Turner, " I bet you don't 
 know where I took the subject from." " From 
 the Odyssey, of course," replied his fellow-guest. 
 " Odyssey," grunted Turner, bursting into a 
 chuckle ; " not a bit of it ! I took it from Tom 
 Dibdin. Don't you know the lines : 
 
 He ate his mutton, drank his wine, 
 And then he poked his- eye out ? " 
 
 On the other hand, in exhibiting the " Apollo 
 and the Python" at the Academy in 18 11 he 
 printed these lines, ascribing them to " Hymn 
 of Callimachus " : 
 
 Envenom'd by thy darts, the monster coil'd, 
 Portentous, horrible, and vast, his snake-like form : 
 Rent the huge portal of the rocky den, 
 And in the throes of death, he tore 
 His many wounds in one, while earth 
 Absorbing blacken'd with his gore. 
 
224 A PAINTER'S POETRY viii 
 
 There is a passage about the contest with the 
 Python in the Hymn to Apollo, but the lines 
 which Turner fathered upon Callimachus do 
 not come from him. They were put together, 
 as Mr. Monkhouse showed, from descriptions 
 of two of Ovid's dragons— the Python in the 
 first book, of the Metamorphoses and the Dragon 
 destroyed by Cadmus in the third book. " The 
 jumble is just the mixture of Ovid, Milton, 
 Thomson, Pope, out of which Turner formed 
 his poetical style." "With Ovid's Metamorphoses 
 he was thoroughly familiar, and doubtless he 
 had a Classical Dictionary at his elbow. It has 
 often been suggested that he had no mythological 
 meanings in his classical compositions, for that 
 his only source of inspiration was probably 
 Lemprifere. Even if such were the case, the 
 criticism shows a lack of acquaintance with that 
 entertaining Dictionary, for Lemprifere nearly 
 always adds to his bald and frank recital of the 
 myths an interpretation — according to his lights 
 — of their natural and moral meaning. 
 
 Turner had, then, a considerable knowledge 
 of the poets, and a deep interest at second hand 
 in classical literature ; but the more he read and 
 the more his art of painting developed, the greater 
 became his desire to find poetical expression in 
 poetry of his own making. When the " Views 
 in the Southern Coast of England " were in 
 preparation, he desired to write the letterpress 
 
vni A PAINTER'S POETRY 225 
 
 as well as make the drawings. His first essay 
 was described by Combe, the editor, in a letter 
 to Cooke, the engraver and publisher, as *' the 
 most extraordinary composition he had ever read. 
 It is impossible for me to correct it, for in some 
 parts I do not understand it." Whether it was 
 in prose or verse does not appear, and Turner's 
 prose was often even more unintelligible than 
 his verse. The essay, whatever it was, did not 
 appear ; but he contimied to write verses as he 
 travelled round the coast making drawings, and 
 many passages in the longest and most sustained 
 of his metrical attempts are clearly taken from 
 his drawings, unless indeed the two processes 
 went on together. For instance, in the beautiful 
 drawing of Poole we may see both the deep 
 worn road and the groaning waggon of the 
 following lines : 
 
 A sandy heath, whose deep worn road " , 
 Sustains the groaning waggon's ponderous load ; 
 This branches southwards at the point of Thule, 
 Forms the harbour of the town of Poole. 
 
 Another passage in the same piece describes 
 the drawing of Corfe Castle : 
 
 Southward of this indentured strand 
 The ruins of Corfe's ruined turrets stand, 
 Between two lofty downs, whose shelving side 
 The deep foundations for her towers supplied. 
 
 The drawing of Lulworth Cove is easily recognised 
 in the following lines : 
 
 Q 
 
226 A PAINTER'S POETRY vin 
 
 For Nature jealous has allowed no breaks 
 
 Of streams or valleys sloping save but one, 
 
 And there she still presents a breast of stone : 
 
 Above are downs where press [? browse] the nibbling 
 
 sheep ; 
 Below, the seamews full possession keep. 
 
 Allusions to many other places which Turner 
 then visited will be recognised, says Mr. Rawlin- 
 son, in the long poem which was found written in 
 his sketch-books of the tour. " Strange and dis- 
 jointed as this is, in common with thjs numerous 
 other poetical effusions which Turner continued 
 to produce to the end of his life, it is not devoid 
 of merit, and there are passages in which may 
 be seen, despite the awkward diction, the same 
 vein of romantic imagination which found a 
 happier expression through the medium of his 
 brush." Mr. Rawlinson does not point us to 
 the passages, and it is not easy to find them. 
 Here, however, are some lines which succeed 
 at least in testifying to Turner's sympathy with 
 the heroic in Roman story. He is describing 
 a Roman camp and a fort on the coast : 
 
 Oh ! powerful beings, hail ! whose stubborn soul 
 Even o'er itself to urge . . '.self-control. 
 Thus Regulus, whom every torture did await. 
 Denied himself admittance at the gate 
 Because a captive to proud Carthage power. 
 But his fiercesoul would not the Romans lower. 
 Not wife or children dear, or self, could hold 
 A moment's parley, — love made him bold, 
 
VIII A PAINTER'S POETRY 227 
 
 Love of his country ; for not aught beside 
 
 He loved, — but for that love he died. 
 
 The same inflexibility of will 
 
 Made them to choose the inhospitable hill ; 
 
 Without recourse they stood supremely great. 
 
 And firmly bid defiance even to fate. 
 
 Thus stands aloft this yet encinctured fort, 
 
 " The Maiden " called, still of commanding port. 
 
 So the famed Jungfrau meets the nether skies 
 
 In endless snow untrod, and man denies, 
 
 With all his wiles : precipitous or bold, 
 
 The same great characters its summits hold : 
 
 Thus graves o'er all the guarded area tell 
 
 Who fought for its possession, and who fell. 
 
 An eye to character is shown occasionally in 
 the poem, as in this picture drawn at Poole : 
 
 One straggling street here constitutes a town ; 
 Across the gutter here ship-owners frown, 
 Jingling their money — ^passengers deride — 
 The consequence of misconceived pride ; 
 
 or in this sketch of a village school : 
 
 Close to the mill-race stands the school, 
 To urchin dreadful on the dunce's stool : 
 Behold him placed behind the chair. 
 In doleful guise twisting his yellow hair. 
 While the grey matron tells him not to look 
 At passers-by through doorway, but his book. 
 
 Another picture of child life occurs in some 
 lines written in 1 809 during a wet day at a river- 
 side inn : 
 
 Alas, another day is gone, ' ' 
 As useless as it was begun ; 
 
•228 A PAINTER'S POETRY viii 
 
 The crimson'd streak of early morn 
 
 Check'd the sweet lark that o'er the corn 
 
 Fluttered her wings at twilight grey. . . . 
 
 Not so the cottar's children at the door. 
 
 Rich in content, tho' Nature made them poor, 
 
 Standing in threshold emulous to catch 
 
 The pendant drop from off the dripping thatch — - 
 
 The daring boy — Thus Britain's early race — 
 
 To feel the heaviest drop upon his face. 
 
 Or heedless of the storm o'er his abode 
 
 Launches his paper boat across the road 
 
 Where the deep gullies which his father's cart 
 
 Made in their progress to the mart, 
 
 Full, to the brim, deluged by the rain. 
 
 They prove to him a channel to the main 
 
 Guiding his vessel down the stream, 
 
 The pangs of hunger^ vanish like a dream. 
 
 " Thus Britain's early race " : the passage recalls 
 Turner's famous picture (No. 498, National 
 Gallery) of " Dido building Carthage," in which 
 the principal incident in the foreground is a group 
 of children sailing toy boats, expressive of the 
 ruling passion which was to be the source of 
 future greatness. In the halting verses, as in 
 the accomplished drawings and pictures. Turner's 
 landscape is always humanised. He was of the 
 school to which Byron and Ruskin belonged, 
 and held that what gives to natural scenes their 
 highest power of appeal is association with the 
 life, the labour, and the art of man. Any analysis 
 of a series of works by Turner — such as Ruskin's 
 of the " Liber Studiorum " or Mr. Hamerton's 
 
viii A PAINTER'S POETRY 229 
 
 of the " Rivers of France " — brings out this 
 point, and we may trace it throughout the poem. 
 " The meshy nets " by Thames' side " bespeak 
 the owner poor." The changes of the moon 
 are emblematic of human fates : 
 
 Oft changes on the moon the gleam of joy 
 So fair, so gay, assumes a gloom and woe. 
 And prince and peasant feel alike the blow. 
 
 The sight of a coastguard station sets him to 
 imagine a story of courtship and seduction. 
 The sight of a quarry causes him to picture the 
 summer and the winter labours of the workmen. 
 His constant sympathy with those who go down 
 to the sea in ships and occupy their business in 
 great waters appears as frequently in these verses 
 as in his pictures, though in the former with many 
 a lapse into bathos. Here and there in the poem 
 there are single lines, and more rarely two con- 
 secutive lines, which are really successful in 
 expression. 
 
 Hill after hill incessant cheats the eye 
 
 is a good imitation of Pope. 
 
 The scudding clouds distil a constant dew. 
 
 Where massy fragments seem disjoined to play 
 With sportive sea-nymphs in the face of day. 
 
 Beneath the western waves the marshes lie. 
 
 Even to the sandy frailty of the main. 
 
 But thought created by the ardent mind 
 Proves oft as changing as the changing wind. 
 
230 A PAINTER'S POETRY viii 
 
 These are good lines, but Turner was never able 
 to keep at one level for more than a line or two. 
 He lacked not only the literary instinct, but that 
 power of logical coherence — ordo concatenatioque 
 rerum — ^which is required for sustained com- 
 position. Had he some consciousness of this ? 
 Here are some lines from another note-book : . 
 
 Vacancy most fair but yesterday 
 
 O'er these pure leaves maintained her sway 
 
 Until the pen did immolate. 
 
 But with a stain inviolate 
 
 The spotless innocence retreats 
 
 From every leaf as fancy beats 
 
 Pure like the stream that pours 
 
 From April's cloud the driving shower. 
 
 Hope still accompanies and sighs — 
 
 Hope that v?ith ever-sparkling eyes 
 
 Looks on the yellow melting skies, 
 
 Yet still with anxious pleasing care 
 
 Makes 1 , ^ j- • 
 
 [-every leaf appear more lair. 
 
 Delusion sweet thus tempts us on 
 Till all the -leaves are like to one ; 
 Yet Hope looks back as heretofore 
 And smiling seems to say encore. 
 
 This was a fair copy, for it is in ink, and the 
 author has appended' the note, " Written at 
 Purley [near Pangbourne] on the Thame. Rainy 
 morning — no fishing." There seems to be a 
 humorous sense in these lines that his poetical 
 pastime was but idle ink-spilling after all. 
 
 Hope, however, continued to say encore. In 
 
viii A PAINTER'S POETRY 231 
 
 the Academy Catalogue of 1812, Turner first 
 inserted lines from a " MS. poem, Fallacies of 
 Hope," and from time to time, down to 1850, 
 mottoes for his pictures were attributed to the 
 same source. Sometimes, when his literary in- 
 vention gave out, he appended to the title a bare 
 reference to the same imaginary work — thus in 
 part, no doubt, piquing curiosity, but also, I 
 cannot doubt, desiring to indicate that the pic- 
 tures in question had a place in some general 
 scheme. The mottoes froni the " Fallacies of 
 Hope " were applied to pictures of many different 
 subjects, but especially to those of Carthage, 
 Rome, and Venice. Of Carthage he thought 
 perhaps as typical of the vain pursuit of wealth ; 
 of Rome, of the vain pursuit of power ; and of 
 Venice, of the vain pursuit of beauty. The 
 earliest of his pictures from the story of Carthage 
 was the " Hannibal crossing the Alps," exhibited 
 in 1 8 12 (No. 490 in the National Gallery). The 
 idea was suggested to him partly by a picture of 
 the same subject by Cozens, partly by a storm 
 at Farnley. " He was absorbed," said Mr. 
 Fawkes, " he was entranced. He was making 
 notes of form and cpjour on the back of a letter. 
 I proposed some better drawing-block, but he 
 said it did very well. Presently the storm 
 passed, and he finished. ' There,' said he, 
 ' Hawkey, in two years you will see this again 
 and call it " Hannibal crossing the Alps." ' " As 
 
232 A PAINTER'S POETRY vin 
 
 the picture took shape, Turner wrote these lines, 
 having reference to the pillage of Saguhtum in 
 219 B.C. and Hannibal's expedition into Italy 
 in the following year : 
 
 Craft, treachery, and fraud, — Salassian force 
 Hung on the fainting rear ; then plunder seized 
 The victor and the captive,^Saguntum's spoil 
 Alike became their prey ; still the chief advanced, 
 Looked on the sun with hope, low, broad, and wan. 
 While the fierce archer of the downward year 
 Stains Italy's blanched barrier with storms. 
 In vain each pass, ensanguined deep with dead. 
 Or rocky fragments, wide destruction rolled. 
 Still on Campania's fertile plains he thought, 
 But the loud breeze sobbed, Capua's joys beware. 
 
 In these lines, as one of his biographers remarks, 
 Turner came nearest to good poetry. The 
 conception is fine, and Sagittarius is well intro- 
 duced. The lines which he wrote for his picture 
 of " The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire " 
 (No. 499) are also not devoid of merit : 
 
 At Hope's delusive smile. 
 The chieftain's safety and the mother's pride 
 Were to the insidious conqueror's grasp resigned ; 
 While o'er tlie western waves th' ensanguined sun. 
 In gathering haze, a stormy signal spread. 
 And set portentous. 
 
 The lines written for " Caligula's Palace and 
 Bridge " (No. 512) point the moral which he had 
 in his mind ; 
 
vin A PAINTER'S POETRY 233 
 
 What now remains of all the mighty bridge 
 Which made the Lucrine Lake an inner pool, 
 Caligula, but massive fragments, left 
 As monuments of doubt and ruined hopes, 
 Yet gleaming in the morning's ray, that tell 
 How Baiae's shore was loved in times gone by. 
 
 The references to the " Fallacies of Hope " "in 
 the case of the Venetian pictures were generally 
 references only, perhaps because Turner felt 
 that he saw Venice with Byron's eye and was 
 afraid of putting the MS. poem in comparison 
 with Childe Harold : 
 
 In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more. 
 And silent rows the songless gondolier ; 
 Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, 
 And music meets not always now the ear ; 
 Those days are gone — but Beauty still is here. 
 States fall, arts fade — but Nature doth not die. 
 Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear. 
 The pleasant place of all festivity. 
 The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy. 
 
 The lines well fit the later Venetian pictures by 
 Turner — ^ghost-like dreams, "themselves so beauti- 
 ful and so frail, wrecks of all that they once were 
 — twilight of twilight." If other written passages 
 are wanted to fit his Venices of the " Going to the 
 Ball " and " Returning from the Ball," they may 
 be found in Browning's verse or Ruskin's prose : 
 
 What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants 
 
 were the kings. 
 Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea 
 
 with rings ? . . . 
 
234 A PAINTER'S POETRY viii 
 
 Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to midday, 
 When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do 
 you say ? . . . 
 
 Dream-like and dim, but glorious, the unnumbered 
 palaces lift their shafts out of the hollow sea — ^pale ranks 
 of motionless flames- — their mighty towers sent up to 
 heaven like tongues of more eager fire — their grey 
 domes looming vast and dark, like eclipsed worlds — 
 their sculptured arabesques and purple marble fading 
 farther and fainter, league beyond league, lost in the 
 light of distance. 
 
 Sometimes Turner' aimed only f.t a line or two 
 of verse which should fit the obvious note or 
 subject of the picture. Such is the case of some 
 alternative lines which occur in one of his sketch- 
 books : 
 
 Where is the star which shone at eve . . . 
 
 The gleaming star of eve. . . . 
 
 The first pale star of Eve ere Twilight comes. 
 
 The last line is the best, and Mr. Finberg is 
 probably right in connecting it with the lovely 
 picture called " The Evening Star " which is 
 among the buried Turners first exhibited in 1906 
 (No. 1 991). More often the object of the 
 painter's "long -sought lines''^ seems to have 
 been to suggest to the spectator an under meaning. 
 The critics treated the attempts as definitions of 
 
 ^ See the motto for "The Garreteer's Petition," exhibited in 1809 : 
 
 Aid me, ye powers ! Oh, bid my thoughts to roll 
 In ^uick succession, animate my soul ; 
 Descend, my muse, and every thought refine. 
 And finish well my long, my long-sought line. 
 
vm A PAINTER'S POETRY 235 
 
 the obscure by the more obscure. The picture 
 of " The Exile and the Rock Limpet " was 
 exhibited with these lines from the " Fallacies 
 of Hope " : 
 
 Ah ! thy tent-formed shell is like 
 A soldier's bivouac, alone 
 Amidst a sea of blood. . . . 
 But you can join your comrades. 
 
 The picture (No. 529) represents Napoleon on 
 the shore of St. Helena at sunset, watching a 
 solitary shell. The picture was ridiculed by 
 Thackeray and parodied thus in Punch : 
 
 2»5, The Duke of Wellington and the Shrimp 
 (Seringajpatam, early morning) — 
 
 And can it be, thou hideous imp. 
 
 That life is, ah ! how brief, and glory, but a shrimp. 
 
 The chaff was tolerable, but in this instance the 
 clue given by Turner's lines was both needed 
 and intelligible. Ruskin records how Turner 
 " tried hard one day for a quarter of an hour to 
 make me guess what he was doing in the picture 
 of Napoleon, before it had been exhibited, giving 
 me hint after hint in a rough way ; but I could not 
 guess, and he would not tell me." The disciple 
 had to wait like the rest of the world for revelation 
 through the MS. poem, and this made the rough 
 smooth enough. Napoleon was figured as seeing 
 a resemblance in a limpet's shell to a tent, and the 
 second thought was that even this poor wave- 
 
236 A PAINTER'S POETRY viii 
 
 washed disc had power and liberty now denied 
 to him. There was more excuse for the King 
 of Bavaria who failed to understand Turner's 
 picture of the " Opening of the Walhalla." The 
 picture — painted in honour of the Temple of 
 Art, containing marble busts of eminent Germans, 
 which had been opened on the Danube near 
 Regensburg — ^was thus described in the Academy 
 Catalogue : 
 
 L'honneur au Roi de Bavare 
 Who rode on thy relentless car, fallacious Hope ? , 
 He, though scathed at Ratisbon, poured on 
 The tide of war o'er all thy plain, Bavare, 
 Like the swollen Danube to the gates of Wien. 
 
 But peace returns — the morning ray 
 Beams on the Valhalla, reared to science and the arts 
 And men renowned of German fatherland. 
 
 Turner, it is said, sent the picture as a present 
 to King Ludwig, but the King, unable to make 
 anything of it, returned the gift. Another 
 Fallacy of Hope 1 The wags of the press con- 
 tinued to ridicule -alike the pictures and the verses. 
 Here is what Puxch said of one of the dream-like 
 visions of Venice described above : 
 
 We had almost forgotten Mr. J. M. W. Turner, R, A., 
 and his celebrated MS. poem, the " Fallacies of Hope," 
 to which he constantly refers us " as in- former years " ; 
 but on this occasion he has obliged us by simply mentioning 
 the title, of the poem without troubling us with an extract 
 . . . We will quote for him : 
 
viii A PAINTER'S POETRY 237 
 
 Oh,, what a scene ! Can this be Venice ? No, 
 And yet methinks it is — because I see. 
 Amid the lumps of yellow, red, and blue. 
 Something that looks like a Venetian spire. 
 That dash of orange in the background there 
 Bespeaks 'tis morning. And that little boat 
 (Almost the colour of tomato sauce) 
 Proclaims them now returning from the ball : 
 This is my picture I would fain convey. 
 I hope I do. Alas ! what Fallacy. 
 
 But the old man continued to quote from his 
 imagined masterpiece till the end. Here are 
 some of the latest verses : 
 
 (For " The Fountain of Fallacy ") : 
 
 Tts rainbow dew diffused fell on each anxious lip. 
 Working wild fantasy, imagining ; 
 First, Science, in the immeasurable 
 
 Abyss of thought. 
 Measured her orbit slumbering. 
 
 (For " Light and Colour : The Morning 
 after the Deluge ") : 
 
 The -Ark stood firm on Ararat : the returning sun 
 Exhaled earth's humid bubbles, and emulous of light. 
 Reflected her lost forms, each in prismatic guise 
 Hope's harbinger, ephemeral as the summer fly 
 Which rises, flits, expands and dies. 
 
 (For " The Departure of the Fleet ") : 
 
 The orient moon shone on the departing fleet. 
 Nemesis invoked, the priest held the poisoned cup. 
 
 This picture (No. 554, National Gallery) was the 
 last exhibited in Turner's lifetime.- 
 
238 A PAINTER'S POETRY , viii 
 
 Two things stand out from a survey of 
 Turner's poetry : the persistence of his effort 
 to write verse and the persistent failure of it. 
 His biographers have not always dealt very 
 satisfactorily with this phase of his life's work. 
 Mr. Thornbury was content to make fun of 
 the poems, emphasising the disjointedness, the 
 frequent bathos, and the bad spelling. Mr, 
 Hamerton drew the conclusion that after all we 
 need not take off our hats to Turner, for that, 
 though he painted better than most others, yet 
 we most of us could, if we tried, turn out a-better 
 copy of verses than he ever did. As tf mediocrity 
 in one art put us on a level with genius in another 1 
 There are deeper questions to be considered. 
 First, what was the motive which compelled a 
 consummate master in one art to strive so con- 
 tinually after expression in ' another .i* 
 
 Most men are governed by various motives, 
 and in this case something should be ascribed to 
 Turner's obstinate pride and constant ambition ; 
 perhaps something, also, to mere love of mystifi- 
 cation. He was shy, sensitive, and secretive. 
 He was ill-favoured in appearance. " If they 
 saw my portrait," he said, '* they would not 
 believe that my pictures were mine." Of humble 
 origin, and destitute of the graces, he was not 
 content with his repute as an artist. He liked 
 to flatter himself with the thought that a time 
 would come when he would be recognised as a 
 
VIII A PAINTER'S POETRY 239 
 
 " literary gentleman." He kept men waiting — 
 so he may have thought — for a surprise when the 
 MS. poem so often paraded in the Academy 
 Catalogues should at last be given to an admir- 
 ing world. It may have been one of Turner's 
 Fallacies of Hope that fame as a poet would come 
 to him as the reward of diligence. 
 
 All this may have been, but there must also 
 have been another and a more compelling motive 
 behind his constant endeavour to link his work 
 as a "painter with expression in a different sort. 
 Browning in the most perfect of his poems has 
 some lines which suggest a wider application 
 than he there gives to them : 
 
 What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture ? 
 This : no artist lives and loves, that longs not 
 Once, and only once, and for one only, 
 (Ah, the prize !) to find his love a language 
 Fit and fair and simple and sufficient — 
 Using nature that's an art to others, 
 Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature. 
 Ay, of all the artists living, loving. 
 None but would forgo his proper dowry, — 
 • Does he paint ? he fain would write a poem, — 
 Poes he write ? he fain would paint a picture. 
 Put to proof art alien to the artist's. 
 Once, and only once, and for one only. 
 So to be the man and leave the artist, 
 Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow. 
 
 Turner missed the man's joy (ah, the loss and 
 the pity of it !) : he found no woman of sym- 
 pathetic soul to love him, and sought pleasure 
 
240 A PAINTER'S POETRY viii 
 
 and companionship elsewhere. But the instinct 
 of self-expression, the craving to escape the 
 artist's sorrow, which Browning goes on to ex- 
 plain, were strong within him. In the exercise 
 of his proper art he was open to criticism often 
 unsympathetic or misunderstanding. Shallow 
 critics have fastened on a saying attributed to 
 Turner that " Ruskin read into his pictures 
 things which he himself did not know were 
 there," ^ and have concluded therefrom that 
 nothing more was in the pictures than everybody 
 could see. It is very doubtful whether Turner 
 ever did make that remark, but if he did it would 
 prove nothing. The creators seldom accept 
 what the critics and commentators say about 
 them. When Tennyson was asked what he 
 meant by a passage in an early poem, he felt 
 inclined to answer with Goethe, ** You probably 
 know better than I do, being young " ; ^ and 
 Browning would assuredly have been a silent 
 member of the Bjrowning Society. It does not 
 follow that Tennyson's passage was sound 
 signifying nothing, or that many of Browning's 
 works do not require much unravelling. Turner, 
 in conversation about his works, was " silent as 
 a granite crest," except when he turned the talk 
 down with a jest. Yet the works meant niore 
 
 ' The saying first appeared in the Literary Gazette o{ January 3, 1852. 
 For a discussion of its authenticity see my note at vol. vi. p. 275 of the 
 Library Edition of Ruskin's Works. ' 
 
 '^ Lord Moriey's Recollections., ii. 69. 
 
vni A PAINTER'S POETRY 241 
 
 to him than they were ialways able to tell, and he 
 wanted to be his own interpreter. " What is the 
 use of them except together ? " was one of his most 
 revealing sdyings. He turned to poetry in the hope 
 of finding a medium" that should all-express" him. 
 The hope was fallacious. He stands on his 
 attainment as a painter : that alone, one life 
 allowed him. He was told that the American 
 purchaser of" The Slave Ship " thought the picture 
 indistinct. " You should tell him," he replied, 
 " that indistinctness is niy forte." Indistinctness 
 or worse is the characteristic of his poetry. And 
 here the forte is a fatal fault. He lacked both 
 the logical faculty and the feeling for beauty, 
 and even for coherence, in words. In one of 
 the sketch-books Turner copied out this passage 
 from Lord Holland's Life of hope Feliit de Vega : 
 
 The chief object of Poetry is to delineate strongly the 
 characters and passions of Mankind, to paint the appear- 
 ances 6i Nature and to describe their effects to our 
 imagination. To accomplish these ends the versification 
 must be smooth, the language pure and impressive, the 
 images justj natural, and appropriate. 
 
 He had the imagination of a poet ; his images 
 were sometimes fine and appropriate, but his 
 thoughts travelled faster than his command of 
 language could follow. Some lines at the be- 
 ginning of the " Southern Coast " poem are here 
 significant. He invokes Providence to aid him 
 so that " Perception and reasoning, actiorCs slow 
 
 R 
 
242 A PAINTER'S POETRY vni 
 
 ally" may expand the thoughts that in the mind 
 unawakened'lie and enable them to pour forth in 
 a steady current, not with headlong force.^ The 
 artist's hand obeyed the eye with instant action 
 in drawing, but the reasoning required in writing 
 was a slow and a feeble ally. He tried and tried, 
 but he made no appeal to literary friends to lick 
 his rude efforts into shape. " We have done 
 our best," wrote a friend to Michelangelo, " to 
 alter some things in your sonnet, but not to set 
 it right, since there was not much wanting. 
 Now that it is changed or put in order, according 
 as the kindness of your nature wished, the result 
 will be more due to your own judgment than to 
 ours, since you have the true conception of the 
 subject in your mind." Turner often had a 
 conception of a poetical passage in his mind, and 
 many a piece might have been passable if he had 
 had a Luigi del Riccio at hand to mend the lines. 
 Passable perhaps, and valuable as notes upon 
 his pictures, but no more. , There is no trace in 
 his poetical essays of any magic such as he com- 
 manded in painting. These things come of grace 
 and not by observation, and to Turner was 
 denied the double gift which belonged to Blake 
 and Rossetti. It is still to Turner's paintings 
 and later drawings that we must turn to find 
 his poetry. He never succeeded in explaining 
 
 ' I here adopt some emendations which Mr. Monkhouse made in the 
 text printed by Mr, Thornbury, 
 
viH A PAINTER'S POETRY 243 
 
 them, and like other great works of art in what- 
 ever sort they will convey different impressions to 
 different minds. " He himself told me," wrote 
 his friend, the late Rev. W. Kingsley, " that he 
 did not like looking at his own work ' because the 
 realisation was always immeasurably below the 
 conception,' and again, to use his own words, 
 ' he considered it his duty to record ' certain 
 things he had seen ; and so in these late Swiss 
 drawings he felt that he could only imperfectly 
 record the effects of nature, but he did his best 
 with all his acquired knowledge and power to 
 tell what he had seen. There is so much in these 
 drawings that each requires many pages to describe 
 the ideas expressed. One quality, that of colour, 
 must surely be felt by every one whose colour- 
 sense is not dead. . . . But for the rendering of 
 natural facts and for the poetry, it is hopeless 
 for any one to criticise them who has not in 
 some degree the mental penetration and grasp of 
 Turner, and an imagination almost as vivid." 
 
 The persistence of so consummate a painter 
 as Turner in attempting to find adequate self- 
 expression in verse suggests another femark. 
 Goethe first among modern writers brought home 
 to the minds of men the conception of art as a 
 genus under which poetry, painting, and the rest 
 were to be classified and distinguished. Lessing 
 in his famed Laocoon defined the several^ spheres 
 of sculpture and poetry, and Matthew Arnold 
 
244 A PAINTER'S POETRY vin 
 
 in his "Epilogue to Lessing" tried to see "what 
 painting is, what poetry." Yet it is notice- 
 able, says Mr. Pater, that " in its special mode 
 of handling its given material, each art may be 
 observed to pass into the cdndition of some other 
 art by what German critics term an Anders- 
 streben — a partial alienation from its own limita- 
 tions, by which the arts are able, not indeed to 
 supply the place of each other, but reciprocally 
 to lend each other new forces." And hence the 
 question has been raised whether there is any one 
 among the arts which is the type and measure of 
 them all, and if so, which it is. The question 
 has been much disputed,^ and colours the practice 
 and theories of n\odern schools. According to 
 Mr. Pater, all art aspires towards the condition 
 of music, and Whistler did much to popularise 
 this theory by the musical terms which he adapted 
 to his pictures. " 1 can't thank you too much," 
 he wrote to Mr. Leyland, " for the name Noc- 
 turne as the title for my moonlights. You have 
 no idea what an irritation it proves to the critics 
 and consequent pleasure to me : besides, it is 
 really so charming, and does so poetically say all 
 I want to say and no more than I wish." Where 
 the motive was the combination of two or more 
 dominants, the picture was called a " harmony " 
 or an " arrangement " ; where a single colour 
 
 ^ As, for instance, by Mr. Pater in the essay on " The School of Giorgione " 
 added to later editions of Studies in the Renaissance ; and by Mt. Symonds in 
 the second volume oiiai Essays, Speculative and Suggestive. 
 
viii A PAINTER'S POETRY 245 
 
 was to give the ground-tone, it was a " note." 
 If any one is inclined to push Whistler's theory 
 too far, he should observe, I may remark in 
 passing, the significant use of the words so 
 poetically in the letter to Mr. Leyland. For the 
 rival theory is that all forms of art tend to pass 
 into the condition of poetry, and takes poetry 
 as the standard whereby to judge them. Turner, 
 it is clear, leaned to this latter ^^ew. On the 
 technical side many of his pictures and drawings 
 were studies in colour, but in his mind and 
 intention they were generally much else, and 
 the something else belonged to the domain of 
 the poets. He painted his impressions, and 
 those impressions were largely coloured by 
 thoughts on the fates and fortunes of men and 
 states. The medium in which he possessed 
 mastery was not always well suited to convey 
 the large and vague ideas which filled his mind. 
 He had, as we have seen, a deep sense of the 
 fates of Carthage, but Rossetti with his double 
 gift wisely chose poetry for his ideas of " The 
 Burden of Nineveh/' Turner tried poetry, and 
 failed to supplement his series of pictures by 
 verse. His Anders-streben was towards poetry ; 
 but, in order to hold the balance even between 
 the two theories, I will borrow a figure from one 
 of his biographers : the poetry in his pictures 
 is able, " like music, to start vibrations according 
 to the sensibility of each who hears." 
 
• IX 
 
 THE SECOND THOUGHTS 
 OF POETS 
 
 I WAS looking the other day over some old school 
 and college texts of the classics in which on the 
 interleaved pages various readings were studiously 
 noted and discussed — in preparation for the 
 dread day on which the question might be put : 
 " Which reading do you prefer ? State your 
 reasons." Such questions, with the annotated 
 editions of the classics on which they are based, 
 relate to a stage in the history of scholarship 
 now drawing to a close. When Latin and Greek 
 literature was reborn, the texts of it " teemed 
 with every fault that could spring from a scribe's 
 ignorance of grammar, metre, and sense." Pro- 
 fessor Jebb puts the case by a modern parallel : 
 " Suppose a piece of very bad English hand- 
 writing, full of erasures and corrections, sent to 
 be printed at a foreign press." The classical 
 texts were as full of blunders as would have been 
 a foreign printer's first proof of a passage written 
 by Dean Stanley or Mr. Andrew Lang. The 
 
 246 
 
IX SECOND THOUGHTS 247 
 
 correction of such blunders, the restoration of 
 certainly corrupt texts to comparative and prob- 
 able purity, called for enormous labour on the 
 part of successive generations of scholars. Casau- 
 bon compared his toil in acquiring a connected 
 knowledge of ancient life and manners to the 
 labours of penal servitude, and this perhaps 
 explains the bad temper of rival commentators. 
 But the task of emendation needed something 
 more than labour. Boyle, who had good reasons 
 for making light of such work, dismissed it as 
 "next after anagrams and acrostics the lowest 
 diversion a man can betake himself to." Bentley, 
 with more justice, spoke of " a certain divining 
 tact and inspiration — a. faculty which can be 
 acquired by no constancy of toil or length of life, 
 but comes solely by the gift of nature and the 
 happy star." The exercise of this gift in for- 
 tunate moments must often have lightened toil. 
 How keen must have been Bentley's delight when 
 it came to him in a flash that the meaning of a 
 certain epigram of Callimachus had been missed 
 owing to a wrong reading ! Hitherto it had 
 been taken to say: " Eudemus dedicated to the 
 Samothracian gods that ship in which, after cross- 
 ing a smooth sea, he escaped from great storms 
 of the Danai." One letter only was changed by 
 Bentley,^ and the true meaning was revealed as 
 
 ' Reading iH<r0o)v for irre^eiii', the last word of the first line. The 
 epigram is vi. 301 in the Anthology, 
 
248 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 " Eudemus dedicated to the Samothracian gods 
 that salt-cellar from which he ate frugal salt until 
 he escaped from the troublous waves of usury." 
 Eudemus was not an adventurous mariner, but 
 a needy person who had literally adopted the 
 advice of the Greek sage, " Borrow from thyself 
 by reducing thy diet "-^a maxim which might 
 have been used by the Food Controller and the 
 War Savings Committee. 
 
 The invention of printing has put out of date 
 this kind of acrostic reading, though Bentley, 
 to be sure, was slow to accept the fact. With the 
 text of Shakespeare, playwrights, editors, and 
 commentators have been legitimately employed ; 
 but Bentley, in order to give himself a free hand 
 in attacking the text of Milton, invented the 
 theory that the blind poet's proofs were read by 
 a purblind editor. To Bentley's emendations of 
 Milton one may apply what Professor Bywater 
 used to say, with a mock heroic lowering of 
 the voice, in dismissing a certain reading of 
 Madvig, " But it is too horrible." Modern 
 poets are not exempt, it is true, from printers* 
 or editors' errors. There was Shelley, for in- 
 stance, who wrote with a running pen or pencil, 
 and often in the open air, leaving blanks to be 
 filled up afterwards and making interlineations 
 or erasures is fast as he wrote. Trelawny, who 
 caught him at it in a wood, says that the MS. 
 of the verses, " To Jane, with a Guitar " (Ariel to 
 
IX IN POETRY 249 
 
 Miranda), " might have been taken for a sketch 
 of a marsh overgrown with bulrushes, and the 
 blots for wild ducks." Many of his works were 
 printed in England without submission of the 
 proofs to him in Italy, whilst in the case of his 
 posthumous poems there was great difficulty in 
 deciphering manuscripts in which a page of 
 writing, with " words one upon the other, over 
 and over in tiers," would often yield only two or 
 three available lines. The text of Shelley was 
 thus sometimes as corrupt as that of the classics, 
 and many scholars (Swinburne among them) have 
 been at work with corrections and conjectures 
 upon it. But this was an exceptional case, and 
 in most modern poetry the misprints are few and 
 obvious, though often vexatious enough to the 
 poet. He was a very devil of a printer who 
 took liberties with one of Tennyson's favourite 
 •epithets, and made Ida in The Princess to be 
 " FoUow'd up by a hundred hairy does." It was 
 wicked, too, to make Guinevere pass from her 
 monastery " To where beyond these vices there 
 is peace." But even if the poet had not lived to 
 correct his printer, the restoration of the true 
 reading in such cases would require no acute 
 exercise of ingenuity. There is, however, another 
 field in which the old question, " Which reading 
 do you prefer } " may in the case of modern 
 poetry be asked and considered with pleasure 
 and instruction. Poets often have second 
 
a^o SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 thoughts, and some live to see second or more 
 editions. The study of various readings may 
 then have an interest for others than biblio- 
 graphers or " entomologists of criticism." It is 
 no longer a question of choice between various 
 guesses by scholars or pedants at what a poet 
 might, could, would, or should have writte;n ; 
 the choice is between two or more versions all 
 of which he did write. The study thus becomes 
 an exercise in taste with the pqet himself for 
 master. 
 
 Such study at once reveals that many of the 
 happiest thoughts of poets, many of the words 
 and phrases which might seem most inspired or 
 " inevitable," were, in fact, second thoughts. 
 In the beautiful opening of Hyperion, grey-haired 
 Saturn is placed 
 
 Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star. 
 
 The italicised phrase is . often quoted among 
 poetical gems, but Keats's first thought was more 
 commonplace : 
 
 Far from the fiery noon, and evening. 
 
 Shelley's recollection of a spring day in the pine 
 forest near Pisa has these lines : 
 
 The whispering waves were half asleep,"! 
 
 The clouds were gone to play. 
 And on the bosom of the deep 
 
 The smile of Heaven lay. 
 
IX IN POETRY 251 
 
 The image of the smile of Heaven on the bosom 
 of the deep has been much admired, but in the 
 piece as first printed the third of the lines above 
 quoted was different : 
 
 And on the woods and on the deep. 
 
 In Tennyson's " Palace of Art " is this : 
 
 One seem'd all dark and red — a tract of sand, 
 
 And some one pacing there alone, 
 Who paced for ever in a glimmering land, 
 
 Lit with a low large moon. 
 
 It is one of the best vignettes in the poem, but 
 the order of the lines, the fulness of alliterative 
 effect, the imaginative touch of the third line, 
 were all second thoughts. The stanza as first 
 printed was less perfect : 
 
 Some were all dark and red, a glimmering land 
 
 Lit with a low round moon, 
 Among brown rocks a man upon the sand 
 
 Went weeping all alone. 
 
 One of the most famous of all poems in 
 the English language is full of second thoughts. 
 Mr. Traill in his monograph on Coleridge says 
 of The Ancient Mariner that it was marked by 
 various notes not elsewhere characteristic of 
 Coleridge's poetry, and amongst others by " com- 
 plete equality of execution and an unerring sense 
 of artistic propriety." He does not tell us of 
 which version he was thinking — the original as 
 printed in Lyrical Ballads in 1798, or the poem 
 
252 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 as revised in successive editions.^ It is the 
 final version of i%ij with which most people 
 are familiar, but Derwent and Sara Coleridge, in 
 editing their father's poems, reprinted the original 
 version as well, and it is most instructive to 
 compare the two. Coleridge, the critic, was very 
 frank and severe in his treatment of Coleridge, 
 the poet.2 " My poems have been rightly 
 charged," he said in his Preface to their second 
 edition, "with a profusion of double - epithets 
 and a general turgidness. I have pruned the 
 double-epithets with no sparing hand, and used 
 my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both 
 of thought and diction." This was not treatment 
 which The Ancient Mariner required, for it was 
 conspicuously free from the blemishes in many 
 of the poet's early works, but in other ways the 
 ballad was subjected to equally trenchant revision. 
 Coleridge himself clearly did not think that the 
 piece was marked from the first by complete 
 equality of execution or unerring sense of artistic 
 propriety. He took things out, he put things 
 in, and he made very numerous minor alterations. 
 The revisions fall into three groups. He altered 
 the archaic style throughout; he omitted some 
 grisly passages ; and, thirdly, other alterations 
 were introduced with the object either of making 
 the progress of the story clearer or of improving 
 
 ' The stages of revision may be traced in Mr. E. H. Coleridge's Variorum 
 Edition (1912) of the Poetical Works. 
 
 ^ Some instances will be found in a different connection below, p. 315. 
 
IX IN COLERIDGE • 253 
 
 sound and sense. The revisions of the first 
 two kinds were suggested by artistic propriety ; 
 those of the third kind added polish to the 
 execution. It will be convenient to glance at the 
 revisions in this order, but the groups are not 
 mutually exclusive. In making an alteration for 
 one purpose, a poet often finds that a further 
 felicity is added unto him. The " ancyent 
 Marinere " of the first edition became afterwards 
 " an ancient Mariner " ; and similarly throughout 
 the poem all archaisms of spelling or language 
 were removed. " Ne " (for " nor "), " Ee," 
 " een " (for " eye," " eyes "), " withouten " (for 
 " without "), and various archaic words such as 
 " aventure " and " eldritch " disappeared in the 
 revised version, with incidental improvement, 
 it seems to me, in the beauty of the verses. For 
 instance, take this stanza of the original version : 
 
 One after one, by the horned moon 
 
 (Listen, O stranger to me). 
 Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, 
 
 And curs'd me with his ee. 
 
 The revised version was this : 
 
 One after one, by the star-dogg'd Moon, 
 
 Too quick for groan or sigh. 
 Each turn'd his face with a ghastly pang. 
 
 And cursed me with his eye. 
 
 The primary object of the revision was, in accord- 
 ance with the general scheme, to get rid of " ee " ; 
 but in doing this the poet was able to remove 
 
254 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 the second line, which was a weak one, and he 
 also substituted for the conventional epithet of 
 the moon, " horned," one which is original and 
 striking. One other example in this sort must 
 suffice. In the original there is this verse : 
 
 And in its time the spell was snapt, 
 
 And I could move my een ; 
 riook'd far-fortH, but little saw 
 
 Of what might else be seen. 
 
 In getting rid of " een," the poet rewrote the 
 verse thus : 
 
 And now this spell was snapt ; once more 
 
 I viewed the ocean green, 
 And look'd far forth, yet little saw 
 
 Of what had else been seen. 
 
 Apart from the question of " een," the second 
 line seems to me a great improvement. The 
 removal of the archaic style of the original version 
 was dictated, I cannot doubt, by a sense of 
 artistic propriety. The note of the piece is 
 simplicity and directness. The use of what has 
 been called " Wardour Street English " may be 
 permissible in imitations or echoes of ancient 
 ballad poetry, but the purpose which the poets 
 set before them in Lyrical Ballads — Coleridge in 
 the use of the supernatural, Wordsworth in that 
 of everyday life — ^was directness of appeal, and 
 any trace of affectation was thus felt to be a blot 
 upon the first version of The Ancient Mariner. 
 About the next group of alterations which 
 
IX IN COLERIDGE 255 
 
 the poet made upon second thoughts, opinion 
 may more reasonably be divided. The third 
 part, which contains the account of the Spectre- 
 ship, was very largely rewritten. In the original 
 there is this description of Death as well as of his 
 " pheere," Life-in-Death : 
 
 His bones were black with many a crack, 
 
 All black and bare I ween ; 
 Jet black and bare, save where with rust 
 Of mouldy damps and charnel crust 
 
 They're patch'd with purple and green. 
 
 This verse was omitted upon revision, with many 
 consequential alterations. One of these was an 
 altered description of the woman : 
 
 Her lips are red, her looks are free, 
 
 Her locks are yellow as gold ; 
 Her skin is white as leprosy. 
 And she is far liker Death than he ; 
 
 Her flesh makes the still air cold. 
 
 Such was the first version. Upon revision it 
 became : 
 
 Her lips were red, her looks were free, 
 , Her locks were yellow as gold ; 
 Her skin was as white as leprosy. 
 The nightmare life-in-death was she. 
 Who thicks man's blood with cold. 
 
 The last two lines had to be altered because the 
 description of Death had been cut out, but the 
 alteration makes the sense clearer by naming 
 Death's companion, who had been unnamed in 
 
2S6 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 the earlier version. The same desire to remove 
 the horrible caused the poet to make large altera- 
 tions in the sixth part, which in the original 
 contained this description of the dead crew before 
 the appearance of the seraph-band : 
 
 They lifted up their stiff right arms,' 
 
 They held them strait and tight ; 
 And each right arm burnt like a torch, 
 
 A torch that's borne upright ; 
 Their stony eyeballs glitter'd on 
 
 In the red and smoky light. 
 
 Was the omission of this and the earlier passages 
 an improvement ? There is something to be said 
 on each side. The original Jkcient Mariner is 
 even more weird and uncanny than its successor, 
 and Mr. Derwent Coleridge thought that some 
 of the glamour had been removed on revision. 
 He tells us that Macaulay, who read the poem 
 when a boy at the house of Hannah More, enter- 
 tained to the last a preference for the original. 
 On the other side, Mr. Swinburne entirely 
 commends " the excision of the stanza which 
 described the Death-mate of the Spectre-woman, 
 his bones foul with leprous scurf and green 
 corruption of the grave, in contrast to the red 
 lips and yellow locks of the fearfuller Nightmare 
 Life-in-Death. Keats in like manner cut oflF 
 from the ' Ode on Melancholy ' a first stanza 
 preserved for us by his biographer, who has duly 
 noted the delicate justice of instinct -implied by 
 
IX IN COLERIDGE 257 
 
 the rejection of all ghastly and violent imagers, 
 however noble and impressive in their violence 
 and ghastliness, from a poem full only of the subtle 
 sorrow born of beauty. The same keen and 
 tender sense of right made Coleridge reject from 
 his work the horrors while retaining the terrors 
 of death." The latter is, I think, the better 
 opinion. The piece in losing some pictures of 
 horror retains enough of the uncanny to hold 
 us all with the mariner's glittering eye. 
 
 Of the third class of alterations I must speak 
 more cursorily, for any full account of them 
 would require pages of quotation. For an in- 
 stance of the alterations made in order to render 
 clearer the connections and transitions in the 
 tale, the reader may be referred to the opening of 
 the third part. It was very abrupt in the original : 
 
 I saw a something in the sky, 
 
 No bigger than my fist. 
 At first it seem'd a little speck, 
 
 And then it seem'd a mist — 
 
 not only abrupt, but the second line is a little 
 common. But now see with what admirable 
 art the poet improved matters, • filling in the 
 interval between the parts and leading up more 
 effectively to the new apparition : 
 
 There passed a weary time. Each throat 
 Was parch'd, and glazed each eye. 
 A weary time, a weary time ! 
 How glazed each weary eye ! 
 
 S 
 
2?8- SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 When looking westward, I beheld 
 
 A something in the sky. 
 
 At first it seem'd a little speck. . . . 
 
 The alterations elsewhere in single lines or words 
 bear out the remark of his editor that " of 
 Coleridge it may be said, nihil tetigit quod non 
 ornavit." In retouching he always removed a 
 blemish or added a beauty. One of the most 
 admired passages in the poem is that in which 
 the instantaneous descent of the tropical night 
 is described : 
 
 The Sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out ; 
 At one stride comes the dark. 
 
 These are among the lines which were added 
 upon revision. When the albatross came, " The 
 Marineres gave it biscuit- worms " ; but on re- 
 vision the poet altered thus : "It ate the food it 
 ne'er had eat," which is certainly a more poetical 
 way of putting it. Next as an example of the 
 poet's care to avoid excess, note this : 
 
 The many men so beautiful. 
 
 And they all dead did lie. 
 And a million million slimy things 
 
 Liv'd on — and so did I. 
 
 Upon revision the poet reduced the number of 
 the slimy things which were seen and despised 
 to " A thousand thousand." This may seem a 
 trifling alteration, but the secret of the hold which 
 the poem has upon the reader is that it is every- 
 where so precise as to make us accept it like a 
 
IX IN TENNYSON 259 
 
 ship's logi and Coleridge felt, I think, that any 
 obvious trace of exaggeration weakened the 
 effect. Everybody remembers the line, " Brown 
 skeletons of leaves that lag," but in the original 
 it was, " The skeletons, etc." The substitutiori 
 of the word " brown " is a good example of the 
 poet's careful finish. I have cited only a very 
 few of the minor alterations. A study of th6m 
 all might be an excellent lesson in taste. 
 
 I am aware that one of the modern poets who 
 best repays such study has warned us off from it. 
 " The love of bibliomaniacs for first editions " 
 filled Tennyson, we are told, " with horror. And 
 once he said to me," adds his biographer, " ' Why 
 do they treasure the rubbish I shot from my 
 fuU-finish'd cantos ? ' " " The first editions are 
 the worst editions." " For himself many pass- 
 ages in Wordsworth and' other poets had been 
 entirely spoilt by the modern habit of giving every 
 various reading along with the text " — with much 
 else to like effect. It is clear, however, that we 
 need not take the poet's outburst seriously, for 
 the author of the Memoir — most filial of bio- 
 graphers — gives us ample material of all kinds 
 for a study of various readings, and, whenever 
 there is not much on hand, fills a page or two of 
 the book with copies of verses which his father 
 had discarded. And thanks are due to him on 
 both scores. What Tennyson left over would 
 
26o SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 give him a second reputation if the " fuU-finish'd 
 cantos " were lost. Only a very full poet could 
 have had the heart to strike out of Locksky Hall, 
 for fear that the description of summer isles of 
 Eden should be thought too long, such beautiful 
 lines as these : 
 
 All about a summer ocean, leagues on leagues of golden calm, 
 And within melodious waters rolling round the knolls of palm. 
 
 As for the different readings in what Tennyson 
 did give to the public, a study of his revisions 
 shows how fastidious was the care that he lavished 
 upon his lines " to make them wealthier in his 
 readers' eyes." He reviled the indolent, irre- 
 sponsible reviewers, but he often profited by 
 what they said. It has been charged against the 
 notorious review in the Quarterly of April 1833 
 that it " checked the publication of any fresh 
 verse by the poet for nearly ten years," but was 
 not Horace " the wise adviser of the nine-years- 
 ponder 'd lay " } Lockhart's article was in large 
 part as ponderously silly, as brutal, and as unfair 
 as Tennyson declared, but the reviewer made here 
 and there a palpable hit, and fastened shrewdly 
 (and not without humour) on real faults in th.6 
 poet's early manner. The result was seen in the 
 revisions of 1 842 and later years. I have read the 
 review with a variorum edition in hand. With 
 hardly an exception, every piece or line which 
 Lockhart had guyed was either suppressed or re- 
 
IX IN TENNYSON 261 
 
 written. I remember a lesson at school in which 
 the art of a stanza in the " Dream of Fair Women " 
 was Explained to us : 
 
 The high masts flicker'd as they lay afloat ; 
 
 The crowds, the timples; waver'd, and the shore ; 
 The bright death quiver'd at the victim's throat ; 
 
 Touch'd J and I knew no more. 
 
 The alliteration in the first line, the beauty of 
 the picture, as clear-cut as a cameo in Keats, were 
 dwelt upon ; and then, in the thitd line, the ' 
 poetic substitution of the effect for the cause 
 was adduced as an English, illustration of some 
 passage in Sophocles or Virgil which we were 
 studying. But all this only came to Tennyson 
 on revision. The stanza in the edition of 1833 
 was this : 
 
 The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat. 
 The temples and the people and the shore, 
 
 One drew a sharp knife thro' my tender throat 
 Slowly,— and nothing more. 
 
 " What touching simplicity," Lockhart said, 
 " what pathetic resignation ; he cut my throat — 
 * nothing more ' 1 One might indeed ask what 
 more she would have } " There was no answer, 
 but it was not till a revision in 1853 that the 
 stanza attaineid its final perfection. Many other 
 revisions in this and other of the poems of 1833 
 were made before their reappearance in 1842. 
 " I do not wish," Tennyson had written in a letter 
 which his son dates approximately 1835, " to be 
 
262 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 dragged forward again in any shape before the 
 reading public at present, particularly on the 
 score of my old poems, most of which I have so 
 corrected (particularly ' CEnone ') as to make them 
 much less imperfect, which you who are a wise 
 man would own if you had the corrections. I 
 may very possibly send you these some time." 
 We have them now, and a comparison of the 
 opening lines in the two versions may be taken 
 as a sample : 
 
 1833- 
 
 There is a dale in Ida, lovelier 
 Than any in old Ionia, beautiful 
 With emerald slopes of sunny sward, that lean 
 Above the loud glenriver, which hath worn 
 A path thro' steepdowii granite walls below 
 Mantled with flowering tendriltwine. In front 
 The cedarshadowy valleys open wide. 
 Far-seen, high over all the God-built wall 
 And many a snowycolumned range divine. 
 Mounted with awful sculptures — men and Gods, 
 The work of Gods — bright on the dark-blue sky 
 The windy citadel of Ilion 
 Shone, like the crown of Troas. Hither came 
 Mournful CEnone. . . . 
 
 1844. 
 
 There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier 
 
 Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. 
 
 The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen, 
 
 Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, 
 
 And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 
 
 The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down 
 
IX IN TENNYSON , 263 
 
 Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars 
 The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine 
 In cataract after cataract to the sea. 
 Behind the valley topmost ^argarus 
 Stands up and takes the morning : but in front 
 The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal 
 Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel, 
 The crown of Troas. 
 
 Hither came at noon 
 Mournful CEnone. . . . 
 
 One need not be as wise a man as James Spedding 
 to see how greatly Tennyson improved the piece. 
 The mannerism of too many compound words 
 is gone ; the movement is at once simpler and 
 more stately ; there are new felicities of phrase ; 
 the pictorial effect is heightened. Everywhere 
 in Tennyson's revisions these points may be 
 noticed, as also the attainment of a more flute- 
 like melody, the stripping off of redundancies, 
 the introduction of a higher strain of thought, or 
 of more emotional intensity. There is a good 
 instance in " The Lotos-Eaters." Every one knows 
 the. beautiful passage beginning with the line : 
 
 For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd, 
 
 and ending with 
 
 Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong. 
 
 But this reminiscence of Lucretius and the whole 
 of the concluding passage in which it is embedded 
 were second thoughts. In the first version the 
 poem ended with a rollicking song : 
 
 Like a dreamy Lol^os-eater, a delirious Lotos-eater. 
 
264 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 Apart from the new beauties of the substituted 
 passage, the whole poem gained by linking the 
 ideal of the Lotos-eaters with the gods of Epicurus. 
 This second thought was printed in 1842, but 
 Tennyson was busy with the poem at a later date. 
 Up to i8j^o there was this line : 
 
 To hear the emerald-colour'd water falling. 
 
 But water is emerald not to the ear but to the 
 eye, and the line was altered : 
 
 To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling. 
 
 And again a little further on there was this line : 
 
 The Lotos blooms below the flowery peak. 
 
 But peaks are not flowery, and in 1850 the line 
 became : 
 
 The Lotos blooms below the barren peak. 
 
 Each of these changes is an improvement of the 
 sense, and at the same time in each case the sound 
 gains by a new but not too obtrusive alliteration. 
 The poet was sensitive on this subject. " People 
 sometimes say," he remarked to his son, " how 
 ' studiedly alliterative 'Tennyson's verse is. Why, 
 when I spout my lines first, they come out so 
 alliteratively that I have sometimes no end of 
 trouble to get rid of the alliteration." But here 
 was a contrary case, though, as I have noted, the 
 introduction of the alliterations was not the 
 primary object of the revisions. 
 
IX .IN TENNYSON 265 
 
 Another early poem which owes its final form 
 to many revisions is " The Lady of Shalott." An 
 hour's study in taste might be given by asking of 
 almost every stanza in the piece, Which reading 
 do you prefer ? Here is the first stanza in its 
 original form : 
 
 On either side the river lie 
 Long fields of barley and of rye. 
 That clothe the wold and meet the sky ; 
 And thro' the field the road runs by 
 
 To many-tower'd Camelot ; 
 The yellow-leaved water lily. 
 The green-sheathed dafFadilly, 
 Tremble in the water chilly. 
 
 Round about Shalott. 
 
 Upon revision the latter lines were thus altered : 
 
 And up and down the people go, 
 Gazing where the lilies blow 
 Round an island there below. 
 The island of Shalott. 
 
 Every one must feel the improvement. The 
 note of affectation and a trace of forcing the 
 rhyme (in " daffodilly " to rhyme with " chilly ") 
 have gone ; the second version is simpler, more 
 euphonious, more pictorial. The -next stanza 
 was greatly improved ; the exquisite second line, 
 
 Little breezes dusk and shiver, 
 
 was a second thought. And thus one might go 
 
266 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 through the poem till one reached the last stanza, 
 which originally was this : 
 
 They crossed themselves, their stars they blest, 
 Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire and guest. 
 There lay a parchment on her breast. 
 That puzzled more than all the rest. 
 
 The well-fed wits at Camelot. 
 The web was woven curiously. 
 The charm is broken utterly. 
 Draw near and fear not — this is I, 
 
 The Lady ofShalott. 
 
 The second version was wholly diflFerent : 
 
 Who is this ? and what is here ? 
 And in the lighted palace near 
 Died the sound of royal cheer ; 
 And they cross'd themselves for fear. 
 
 All the knights at Camelot : 
 But Lancelot mused a little space ; 
 He said, " She has a lovely face ; 
 God in his mercy lend her grace, 
 
 The Lady of Shalott." 
 
 There was something eerie in the last four lines 
 of the earlier version which is partly missed in 
 the revision, but the poem gains by the greater 
 emotional intensity, by the note of what the critics 
 call " high seriousness " with which the poem 
 now concludes. 
 
 In the case of /« Memoriam the printed variants 
 are few comparatively; to the length of the poem, 
 but it had been in preparation, and probably 
 was often revised in manuscript, during many 
 
IX IN TENNYSON 267 
 
 years before it was published in 1 850. Here and 
 there, however, lines were retouched long after- 
 wards. A verse in the fortieth stanza was this : 
 
 And, doubtless, unto thee is given 
 
 A life that bears immortal fruit 
 
 In Such great oiGces as suit 
 The full-grown energies of heaven. 
 
 The third line now reads : 
 
 In those great oiEces that suit. 
 
 Which reading do you prefer ? and why .'' The 
 poet himself has stated his reasons. " I never," 
 he said, " put two ss together in any verse of 
 mine," and he instanced the piece which begins, 
 " You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease " : " My line 
 is not, as often quoted, * And freedom broadens 
 jlowly down,' but ' And freedom slowly broadens 
 down.'" It was not, however, till 1883 that 
 Tennyson " kicked the geese out of the boat " 
 in the line above quoted from In Memoriam. 
 
 In the variorum editions of the earlier poems 
 collated by Mr. Churton Collins, and in the 
 Memoir of the poet by his son, many other in- 
 stances of revisions equally interesting are noted. 
 Some were made as late as in 189 1. By a poet 
 who thus to extreme old age polished and revised 
 his verses, the first editions naturally might be 
 dismissed as the worst. Yet it was not always 
 or certainly so. Edward FitzGerald doubted 
 whether the second version of ." The Miller's 
 
268 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 Daughter " was altogether an improvement upon 
 the first. There are two lines in " CEnone " which 
 are given in every book of Familiar Quotations : 
 
 Seff-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
 These three alone lead life to sovereign power. 
 
 But in the first edition the second line was 
 different : 
 
 Are the three hinges of the gates of Life. 
 
 Mr. Herbert Paul, backed by the authority of 
 Lord Coleridge, cannot understand " why Tenny- 
 son rejected that noble and simple line " of the 
 earlier version. The hinges seem to me to 
 creak a little, but let every reader decide accord- 
 ing to his taste! " One should be fearful," said 
 Joubert, " of being wrong in poetry when one 
 thinks differently from the poets, and in religion 
 when one thinks differently from the saints." 
 It is a consolation, in such questions of literary 
 casuistry as we are here concerned with, to know 
 that whatever choice we may make a poet was 
 at one time or another on our side. There is, 
 however, one piece by Tennyson with regard to 
 which it cannot reasonably be held that the first 
 version was the worst, though a reader may be left 
 free to think that the third is the best.^ Every- 
 body knows " The Charge of the Light Brigade," 
 
 ^ As Tennyson (in a different connection) has it : 
 
 Is it so true that second thoughts are best ? 
 Not first and third which are a riper first ? 
 
IX IN TENNYSON 269 
 
 but few probably remember the numerous, exten- 
 sive, and successive alterations to which it was 
 subjected before attaining its now familiar form. 
 Take, for instance, the spirited stanza with which 
 the piece ends : 
 
 When can their glory fade ? 
 O the wild charge they made ! 
 
 All the world wonder'd. 
 Honour the charge they made ! 
 Honour the Light Brigade, 
 
 Noble six hundred. 
 
 So it was written at first, and to this form the poet 
 finally reverted, and he was certainly right, for 
 the second version was tame : 
 
 Honour the brave and bold ! 
 Long shall the tale be told, 
 Yes, when our babes are old — 
 How they rode onward. 
 
 But in another respect the poet's second thoughts 
 were still worse. The first version contained 
 the famous line, " Some one had blunder'd," 
 and this appears also, though in an altered setting, 
 in the third and final version ; but in the mean- 
 while, when Tennyson revised the piece for in- 
 clusion in the M(«a<^ volume, the line was removed. 
 Ruskin wrote to protest. " I am very sorry," he 
 said, "you put the ' Some one had blunder'd ' 
 out of the ' Light Brigade.' It was precisely 
 the most tragical line ifi the poem. It is as true 
 
270 SECOND THOUGHTS rx 
 
 ±0 its history as essential to its tragedy." ^ The 
 thing is obvious, and they»omission was the more 
 strange because the line was oj-iginally the keynote 
 of the poem. " My father's poems were gener- 
 ally based," says his son, " on some single phrase 
 like ' Some one had blunder'd,' and were rolled 
 about, so to speak, in his head, before he wrote 
 them down." Elsewhere in the Memoir we are 
 -told, partly, how the keynote came to be struck 
 out : " Some friends of excellent critical judg- 
 ment prevailed upon him to omit the phrase." 
 If their critical judgment were excellent, it was 
 perverted in this case, we may suppose, by con- 
 sideration of military or political susceptibilities. 
 " Certain people of importance entered. . , . 
 Then I stopped my painting." 
 
 There is no poem which lends itself more easily 
 to a study in taste under the poet's direction than 
 FitzGerald's " golden Eastern lay." Tennyson 
 knew " no version done in English more divinely 
 
 ^ I have heard it objected that to be quite true to history we should read 
 for "Some one had blunder'd," "Every one blunder'd." But this was said 
 by a student of war and was not meant as a literary criticism, any more than 
 was the famous emendation suggested by Mr. Babbage, the mathematician, 
 in " The Vision of Sin " : , " 
 
 Every moment dies a man, 
 Every moment one is born — 
 
 an arrangement which would keep the population in a state of equipoise. 
 Mr. Babbage made the proper calculation and proposed as a second thought 
 for the next edition : 
 
 Every moment dies a man. 
 
 And one and a sixteenth is born. 
 
IX IN FITZGERALI> 271 
 
 well," but we are not told which of the three main 
 versions he preferred. They diifer largely, and 
 the care of pious editors has collated, tabulated, 
 and even indexed the differences. The first 
 edition of FitzGerald's Omar (1859) contained 
 only 75 stanzas. The second (1868) contained 
 no; the order was often changed, and the 
 verbal alterations were many. The third (1872) 
 contained 10 1, and there was again much revision. 
 The variations between it and the last edition 
 (1879) are comparatively few. One source of 
 interest in studying the variations is to note how 
 the translator dealt in process of revision with his 
 Persian original, and this is ground which has 
 been worked over by many scholars ; but Fitz- 
 Gerald's translation (if such it should be called) 
 is an English classic, and greater interest, as also 
 less recondite, may be found in tracing the 
 English poet's search after perfection. " Every 
 quatrain," said Swinburne, " though it is some- 
 thing so much more than graceful or distinguished 
 or elegant, is also, one may say, the sublimation 
 of elegance, the apotheosis of distinction, the 
 transfiguration of grace." Was the perfection 
 attained already when FitzGerald first published 
 his poem, or did his later revision refine it } 
 Mr. Palgrave says of the earliest version that 
 the text was " not, perhaps, always altered in 
 later issues to advantage." This remark seems 
 over-carefuUy hedged. There was more than one 
 
272 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 later issue ; there were hundreds of alterations, 
 and many re-alterations. To say that perhaps not 
 each and every alteration was an improvement 
 is to state what nobody would care to deny, 
 but the proposition is of the kind of which Omar 
 said that after hearing them he " came out by 
 the same door wherein he went." To me it 
 seems that the alterations introduced in the second 
 edition were generally, but not quite always, 
 improvements, and that wherever the text as 
 finally left by FitzGerald differs from earlier 
 versions, it differs, without exception, to advantage. 
 We will take a few of the best, and best-known, 
 quatrains, and the reader shall judge : 
 
 First Edition. 
 
 Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, 
 A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse — and Thou ' ' 
 
 Beside me singing in the Wilderness — 
 And Wilderness is Paradise enow. 
 
 Final Edition. 
 
 A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, 
 A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou 
 
 Beside me singing in the Wilderness — 
 Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow ! 
 
 I do not know what Omar's order would have been, 
 but I am sure that FitzGerald was right in altering 
 Bread — ^Wine — Verse to Verse — Wine — Bread. 
 The music of the lines seems to me to be bettered 
 as well, and the wistful note to be enhanced. This 
 
IX IN FITZGERALD 273 
 
 latter point may be noticed in a seemingly trivial 
 alteration in another beautiful quatrain : 
 
 Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose ! 
 That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should close ! 
 
 The Nightingale that in the Branches sang, 
 Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows ! 
 
 The poet upon final revision altered " Alas " 
 to " Yet Ah," thereby substituting a more 
 poignant note for the conventional " Alas," and 
 at the same time intiroducing an echo in his last 
 line. It is remarkable how much improvement 
 may be made by the alteration of a single word : 
 
 The Moving Finger writes ; and, having writ. 
 Moves on : nor all thy Piety nor Wit 
 
 Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, 
 Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. 
 
 The verse might seem incapable of improvement, 
 but the poet, before he had done with it, altered 
 " thy " in the second and fourth lines to " your." 
 I think that the music gains by the addition of 
 a vowel-sound, and also that the sense of cosmic 
 movement is heightened by the substitution of a 
 more general term for a more particular. Another 
 famous quatrain shows a more palpable im- 
 ppvement : 
 
 They say the Lion and the Lizard keep 
 
 The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep ; 
 
 And Bahram, that great Hunter — the Wild Ass 
 Stamps o'er his Head, and he lies fast asleep. 
 
 One might have thought the quatrain perfect, 
 
 T 
 
274 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 but that the poet bettered it by rewriting the 
 last line : 
 
 Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleef . 
 
 The " crowning stanza," as Swinburne once 
 called it (quoting the first edition), was much 
 retouched, and the variations are of interest : 
 
 First Edition. 
 Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst malce, 
 And who with Eden didst devise the Snake ; 
 For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man 
 Is blacken'd, Man's Forgiveness give — and take ! 
 
 Second Edition. 
 Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make, 
 And e'en with Paradise devise the Snake ; 
 
 For all the Sin the Face of wretched Man 
 Is black with — Man's Forgiveness give — and take ! 
 
 The alteration of the second line is perhaps an 
 improvement as reducing the alliteration of d's. 
 In revising the third and fourth lines, FitzGerald 
 thought, we may suppose, of St. Paul's " wretched 
 man," but the words " Is black with " are not 
 happy. The final version is as follows : 
 
 Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make. 
 And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake ; 
 
 For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man 
 Is blacken'd — Man's forgiveness give — and take ! 
 
 Professor Cowell, who was FitzGerald's master 
 in Persian, told him that the last line was a mis- 
 translation, " but he never cared to alter it." 
 Why should he } It is the most majestic line 
 
IX IN FITZGERALD 275 
 
 in his poem ; and besides, as Mr. Heron-Allen 
 has shown, though there is no original in Omar 
 for this quatrain, there are passages in the Mantik- 
 ut-Tair of Attar which may well have suggested 
 it, and FitzGerald fused much study of Persian 
 poetry into his golden Eastern lay. Such was 
 the case with two notable quatrains which did not 
 appear in the first edition : 
 
 I sent my Soul through the Invisible, 
 Some letter of that After-life to spell : 
 
 And by and by my Soul return'd to me. 
 And answer'd "I myself am Heav'n and Hell." 
 
 Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire, 
 And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire, 
 
 Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, 
 So late emerged from, shall so soon expire. 
 
 In a letter read at a dinner of the Omar Khayyam 
 Club, Mr. Swinburne, after recounting his pur- 
 chase for a penny of a copy of the first edition, 
 went on to say : *' It is the only edition worth 
 having, as FitzGerald, like the ass of genius 
 he was, cut out of later editions the crowning 
 stanza which is the core or kernel of the whole." 
 This is a hard saying. There are only two stanzas 
 of the first edition which are not represented in 
 the later issues ; there are twenty-eight in the 
 final issue which did not appear in the first. 
 Are the twenty-eight, including the two just 
 quoted, worth nothing .? Of the two discarded 
 
276 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 stanzas, Mr. Swinburne doubtless was thinking 
 of this : 
 
 But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me 
 The Quarrel of the Universe let be : 
 
 And, in some corner of the. Hubbub coucht, 
 Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee, 
 
 It is certainly diiBcult to see why this quatrain 
 was cut out. I can only suppose that when 
 FitzGerald rearranged the order of the stanzas 
 and inserted many others he could find no con- 
 venient place for this. It is characteristic, but 
 is it the stanza which crowns the poem ? In his 
 Studies in Prose and Poetry Mr. Swinburne, as 
 I have already noted, quotes as " the crowning 
 stanza " the one beginning with the line, " Oh, 
 Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make," 
 and this stanza, as we have seen, was not cut out 
 of later editions. The book-lover has a natural 
 bias in favour of the edition in which he first read 
 a favourite piece. Perhaps this is the real reason 
 why I like best the third edition of FitzGerald's 
 Omar. It was given to me during my last term 
 at Winchester' by the mother of a school-friend, 
 and, next, it was my book of verse beneath the 
 bough on many a " golden Oxford afternoon." 
 Personal bias apart, however, it is certain that 
 those who know Omar in FitzGerald's first 
 edition alone deprive themselves of two"sources 
 of interest and enjoyment : they miss the study 
 of the poet's refining work, and they go without 
 
IX IN MYERS'S ^7*. PAUL 277 
 
 several beautiful quatrains. The question which 
 edition is now best worth having (I speak of 
 intrinsic, not of bibliopolic, value) admits of no 
 debate. It is the " Golden Treasury " edition, 
 for therein the final version is supplemented both 
 by an exact reprint of the first and by a collection 
 of the stanzas which appeared in the second 
 edition only. 
 
 A poem which has vied with FitzGerald's 
 Omar in popularity is Myers's St. Pauk It 
 appeals to a different audience ; but, apart from 
 its religious address, the distinctive stanza em- 
 ployed by Myers, the faultless rhythmical cadence 
 and the sonorous verbal melody have for fifty 
 years attracted lovers of poetry. The very 
 defects of the piece, as they may be deemed by a 
 severe taste— its sometimes metallic ring, its over- 
 elaboration of phrase — ^have- perhaps assisted its 
 vogue. Between its appearance in 1867 and the 
 poet's death in 1901 there were sixteen editions, 
 and as soon as it passed out of copyright, the 
 book mart was flooded, as in the case of Omar, 
 with cheap reprints of the first edition. As 
 FitzGerald, so Frederic Myers constantly re- 
 touched his poem, adding at one time or another 
 twenty-two verses and discarding seventeen of 
 the original. Some of the new verses, and 
 especially the six in praise of love, are very 
 beautiful, but none have quite the same charm 
 
278 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 that belonged to those of the original version. 
 A similar remark applies, I think, to most of the 
 poet's revisions of lines and words ; one sees 
 why they were made and is forced at times to 
 recognise their propriety, and yet one regrets 
 them. The piece was written for the Seatonian 
 prize at Cambridge, and failed to win it, but who 
 has ever heard of the poem which the judges 
 preferred ? The ftietre adopted by Myers was 
 unconventional. Perhaps, too, the judges failed 
 to find their conception of St. Paul in the poem. 
 Many other readers have been in like case — 
 Ruskin for one. He was introduced to Myers's 
 poems by Prince Leopold, and wrote : " The 
 John Baptist seems to me entirely beautiful and 
 right in its dream of him. The St. Paul is not 
 according to my thought," adding with courtly 
 concession (for the Prince was enamoured of the 
 piece), " but I am glad to have my thought 
 changed." The point is, however, that Myers 
 was not writing a thesis^ on Pauline theology 
 or an historical study of the Apostle's life ; he 
 was writing a poem, and pouring out on a given 
 subject the emotions and imagination of a poet. 
 In the chapters of autobiography prefixed to 
 his posthumous Fragments of Prose and Poetry 
 he tells us, what indeed the poems themselves 
 sufficiently reveal, that the " St. Paul and St. 
 John the Baptist^ intensely personal in their 
 emotion, may serve as a sufficient record of those 
 
IX IN MYERS'S ST. PAUL 279 
 
 years of eager faith." They are the record of 
 the poet's conversion to the Christian faith in its 
 emotional fulness — a conversion which immedi- 
 ately supervened upon a burning Hellenism. 
 " Few men,'-' he tells us in describing his travels 
 in Greece, " can have drunk that departed loveli- 
 ness into a more passionate heart. It was the 
 life of about the sixth century before Christ, on 
 the isles of the Aegean, which drew me most ; — 
 that intensest and almost unconscious bloom of 
 the Hellenic spirit. . . . Gazing on those straits 
 and channels of purple sea, I felt that nowise 
 could I come closer still ; never more intimately 
 than thus could embrace that vanished beauty." 
 It is the fusion of Hellenic beauty with Christian 
 emotion which gives to Myers's St. Paul its 
 peculiar charm, as in these often quoted and justly 
 admired verses : 
 
 Lo as some bard on isles of the Aegean 
 
 Lovely and eager when the earth was young. 
 
 Burning to hurl his heart into a paean, 
 
 Praise of the hero from whose loins he sprung ; — 
 
 He, I suppose, with such a care to carry. 
 Wandered disconsolate and waited long. 
 
 Smiting his breast, wherein the notes would tarry. 
 Chiding the slumber of the seed of song : 
 
 Then in the sudden glory of a minute 
 
 Airy and excellent the proSm came. 
 Rending his bosom, for a god was in it. 
 
 Waking the seed, for it had burst in flame. 
 
2 80 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 So even I athirst for His inspiring, 
 
 I who have talked with Him forget again ; 
 
 Yes, many days with sobs and with desiring 
 Offer to God a patience and a pain ; 
 
 Then thro' the mid complaint of my confession, 
 Then thro' the pang and passion of my prayer, 
 
 Leaps with a start the shock of His possession. 
 Thrills me and touches, and the Lord is there. 
 
 These are among the verses- which the poet, 
 during his many revisions, never altered. Another 
 beautiful section of the poem is that in which 
 the legend of Damaris ^ gave scope for descrip- 
 tions of Athens : 
 
 Ay and ere now above the shining city 
 
 Full of all knowledge and a God unknown 
 
 Stood I and spake, and passion of my pity 
 
 Drew Him from heaven and showed Him to His own.... 
 
 Then to their temple Damaris would clamber. 
 High where an idol till the dawn was done 
 
 Bright in a Kght and eminent in amber 
 Caught the serene surprises of the sun. 
 
 So during many editions stood the latter verse — 
 unforgettable— but in the end it was rewritten 
 thus : 
 
 Then to their temple Damaris would clamber, 
 
 Stood where an idol in the lifted sky 
 Bright in a light and eminent in amber 
 
 Heard not, nor pitied her, nor made reply. 
 
 From the verse thus altered, some of the perhaps 
 too obvious cunning of the alliterative choice of 
 words is removed ; the whole effect is rendered 
 
 ' Acts xvii. 34. 
 
IX IN MYERS'S ST. PAUL 281 
 
 more severe, and the way is better prepared for 
 the conversion of Damaris. Yet it is with a pang 
 that one parts with the exquisite picture of sun- 
 rise on the Parthenon. " I wish," Ruskin had 
 written, " the verses were less studiously allitera- 
 tive, but the verbal art of them is wonderful." 
 Many of the poet's revisions had the effect, and 
 perhaps the purpose, of removing alliterations — ■ 
 sometimes to obvious advantage, where the 
 alliteration had been otherwise otiose, as, for 
 instance, in the line : 
 
 John than which man a grander or a greater. 
 
 The alteration of " grander " to " sadder " was 
 in every way an improvement. In other cases 
 the improvement is doubtful. There is an 
 instance in the fifth verse of the first canto ; 
 
 What was their sweet desire and subtle yearning, 
 Lovers, and. ladies whom .their song enrols ? 
 
 Faint to the flame which in my breast is burning, 
 Less than the love with which I ache for souls. 
 
 Myers — perhaps in deference to a critic ' — altered 
 " ladies " to " women," and half the witchery of 
 the line seems to me to have gone. 
 
 Two of the loveliest of modern poems (each 
 the best-known piece of its author) owe much of 
 their perfection to second thoughts. There are 
 good judges who have called Love in the Valley 
 
 ' George Meredith, in a review of the poem in the Fortnightly (Jan. 
 i868), had cited this stanza as an instance of " laclcadaisacal alliteration." 
 
282 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 the greatest love poem of its century, and any dull 
 fool who supposes George Meredith's verse to 
 be all harsh and crabbed should be made to learn 
 it by heart for his soul's good. But when Love 
 in the Valley is exalted to such pride of place, of 
 which version is it spoken ? It was written in 
 1 851, and rewritten in 1878. The better the 
 judge the greater the likelihood, I think, that the 
 later version is preferred. Tennyson, it is true, 
 was delighted by the earlier,' but we are not told 
 that he knew the later, and I have read somewhere 
 the remark that the later is " intolerable to any 
 reader fortunate enough to possess the first 
 copy." " Intolerable " shows intolerance ; but 
 the writer was preening himself on the possession 
 of a first edition. In the Collected Edition of 
 Meredith's Works both versions of the poem are 
 given, and a pleasant hour may be spent in a 
 poet's workshop by comparing them. The 
 young poet had already in 1851 found the 
 swinging cadence,^ but the very first lines 
 
 ^ A writer in the Quarterly Review (July 1902) has suggested that Meredith 
 may have found a model in the song by George Darley beginning 
 
 Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers, 
 
 Lull'd by the faint breezes sighing through her hair ; 
 Sleeps she and hears not the melancholy numbers 
 
 Breathed to my sad lute 'mid the lonely air. 
 Down from the high- cliffs the rivulet is teeming 
 
 To wind round the willow banks that lure him from above : 
 O that in tears, from my rocky prison streaming, 
 
 I too could glide to the bower of my love. 
 
 Darley's piece is No. 640 in TAe Oxford Book of Verse* 
 
IX IN MEREDITH . 283 
 
 give instances of maturer artistry in the version 
 ^of 1878 : 
 
 Under yonder beech-tree|||g^gj^^j^"'°^|on the green-sward. 
 
 Couched with her arms behind herfj'f ^'J '"?/ Ihead. 
 
 1(1878) golden/ 
 
 A sensitive ear will feel the revision in each line 
 to be an improvement, and the pleasanter sound 
 is wedded to fuller sense. " Single on the green- 
 sward " adds something, and something definite, 
 to the picture, whereas " standing " was otiose, 
 and the change of " little " into " golden " gives 
 colour to the picture. Wherever a stanza of the 
 first version is retained in the second, there are 
 retouchings, and each of these gives a new beauty 
 or removes a blemish. Here is the second stanza 
 of 1851 : 
 
 Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow ; 
 
 Swift as the swallow when athwart the western flood 
 Circleting the surface he meets his mirrored winglets, — 
 
 Is that dear one in her maiden bud. 
 Shy as the squirrel whose nest is in the pine-tops ; 
 
 Gentle — ah ! that she w^ere jealous as the dove ! 
 Full of all the wildness of the woodland creatures, 
 
 Happy in herself is the maiden that I love ! 
 
 It is charming, but the fourth and sixth lines are 
 not up to the level of the rest : the execution is 
 less perfect, and the sentiment is a little common. 
 But see how the master in revising the poem 
 mends matters : 
 
2 84 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow, . 
 
 Swift as the swallow along the river's light 
 Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets, 
 
 Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight. 
 Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops, 
 
 Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun, 
 She whom 1 love is hard to catch and conquer, 
 
 Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won ! 
 
 It is exquisite, and, if the earlier version were not 
 known, one might suppose that the lines came 
 in their inevitable r^ghtness from a careless rapture 
 of imagination. And indeed it may be that 
 to the poet composing in the full maturity of his 
 powers the alterations of 1878 came inevitably 
 and not with observation ; but, however this 
 may have been, the student is free to consider why 
 the lines were recast, and wherein the improvement 
 consists. The grammatical construction of the 
 second and third lines is si'mplified. The swallow 
 " along the river's light " is more pictorial than 
 " athwart the western flood." The weak fourth 
 line of the original version — weak, among other 
 reasons, because there is no likeness between 
 the " maiden bud " and the swalfow— is replaced 
 by a fancy of perfect congruity. The return 
 to the swallow in the sixth line adds yet more 
 to the melody and sequence of the whole ; and 
 as for the alteration at the end, every wise man's 
 son will know that it is better. But one cannot 
 have everything, and there is one discarded line 
 in the earlier version of the stanza — the seventh. 
 
IX IN MEREDITH 285 
 
 "Full of all thewildness of the woodland creatures" 
 — which is not willingly forgotten. Presently, 
 however, as we shall see, the poet gives it back 
 to us with usury. I pass to the third stanza,^ 
 partly for the pleasure of transcribing it, but also 
 because the revision, though slight, is significant : 
 
 When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror 
 
 Tying up her laces, looping up her hair. 
 Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, 
 
 More love should I have, and much less care. 
 When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror-. 
 
 Loosening her laces, combing down her curls, 
 Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, 
 
 I should miss but one for many boys and girls. 
 
 There are some slight alterations in the fourth and 
 eighth lines here, but the significant one is in the 
 fifth, which in the earlier version was " When 
 her mother tends her before the bashful mirror." 
 Was the epithet altered only in order to echo the 
 first line more nearly' (" /aughing," "/ighted ") ? 
 or was it also (as I suppose) because the epithet 
 " bashful " was felt to strike a false note, perhaps 
 as oflTending against good taste and at any rate 
 as not in tune with the naive charm of the rest of 
 the stanza ? Elsewhere in the earlier version, 
 pretty though it is, there are lines and phrases 
 which smack somewhat of the novelette, as where 
 the lover is smitten with " anguish at the thought. 
 Should some idle lordling bribe her mind with 
 
 1 In the poem of 1851, the/o«rM, for the third stanza was omitted in 1878. 
 
286 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 jewels," or where, powerless to speak the ardour 
 of his passion, he catches her little hand. Every 
 jarring note of this kind was removed in the later 
 version, whilst in the fifteen added stanzas we 
 are given a succession of exquisite pictures, 
 " full " themselves " of all the wildness of the 
 woodland creatures," and redolent of every beauty 
 of an English country-side : 
 
 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. 
 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 
 hail-stones 
 
 Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless. 
 
 Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping 
 
 Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. 
 Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, 
 
 Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar. 
 Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting : 
 
 So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. 
 Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well- 
 spring, 
 
 Tell it fo forget the source that keeps it filled. 
 
 Soft new beech-leaves, up to bean'iy April 
 
 Spreading bough on bough a primrose" mountain, you 
 
 Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the sky-fields, 
 
 Youngest green transfused in silver shining through : 
 
IX IN ROSSETTI 287 
 
 Fairer than flie lily, than the wild white cherry : 
 Fair as in image my seraph love appears 
 
 Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eyelids : 
 Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears. 
 
 Could I find a place to be alone with heayen, 
 
 I would speak my hea'rt out : heaven is my need. 
 Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood, 
 
 Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. 
 Flushing like the- dogwood crimson in October ; 
 
 Streaming like the flag-reed south-west blown ; 
 Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam : 
 
 All seem to know what is for heaven alone. 
 
 The love poem of 1851 was transformed upon 
 revision into the most beautiful of " Poems and 
 Lyrics of the Joy of Earth." 
 
 Every lover, and every lover of poetry, knows 
 Rossetti's Blessed Damozel, but most readers 
 know it only in one form and have not marked 
 "the noble care," as a brother -poet calls it, 
 " spent in the rejection and rearrangement of 
 whatever was crude or lax in the first cast." 
 The piece was first written for The Hodgepodge, 
 a manuscript family- magazine, in Rossetti's 
 nineteenth year, and of its original form no copy 
 is extant. Three years later he added four 
 stanzas. and printed it in The Germ (1850). Six 
 years later it was reprinted, with revisions, in 
 The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856). 
 One at least of the revisions then made was sug- 
 gested by Ruskin. Fourteen years then passed, 
 
2 88 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 and the poem, further revised and reduced from 
 twenty-five stanzas to twenty-four, was included 
 in the famous volume of Poems (1870). From 
 time to time, as new editions appeared, Rossetti 
 retouched the piece, the edition of 1881 con- 
 taining his final revision. Which were the stanzas 
 added in The Germ ? What was " the line," 
 as Rossetti wrote to Allingham, which " Ruskin 
 made me alter " ? These questions cannot be 
 answered, but the successive variations in the 
 printed text can be studied, and the poet's letters 
 to his brother sometimes enable us to watch the 
 file at its work. The variatfons are very numer- 
 ous, and some of the lines went through several 
 stages of revision before reaching the final per- 
 fection. It is noteworthy, however, that wherever 
 the poem is pictorial, wherever the poet is describ- 
 ing something which might be transferred to 
 danvas, he saw it clearly once and for all, found 
 at first the exactly right words, and did not 
 afterwards alter either form or colour. Of the 
 actually painted " Blessed Damozel " there were 
 many versions ; the word-painting of her and her 
 company remained unaltered. There are only 
 two exceptions, and they are slight. In the 
 original version the handmaidens sit circle-wise 
 " with bound locks And bosoms covered " ; in 
 the final version the latter line is altered to " And 
 foreheads garlanded." This is an added touch 
 of colour. In the other case a colour-definition 
 
IX IN ROSSETTI 289 
 
 was omitted in exchange for a greater beauty of 
 expression : 
 
 Germ. 
 The blessed damozel leaned out 
 
 From the gold bar of Heaven ; 
 Her blue grave eyes were deeper miich 
 
 Than a deep water, even. 
 
 1870 and after. 
 The blessM damozel leaned out 
 
 From the gold bar of Heaven ; 
 Her eyes were deeper than the depth 
 
 Of waters stilled at even. 
 
 A comparison of the texts discloses many added 
 beauties and corrected blemishes, but one example 
 in each sort must here suffice. For example 
 of the former, take the following stanza. It is 
 one of those in which the poet, in intervals of the 
 vision, gives the thoughts of the lover who still 
 
 dwells on earth : 
 
 Germ. 
 
 (Alas ! to her wise simple mind 
 These things were all but known 
 
 Before : they trembled on her sense, — 
 Her voice had caught their tone. 
 
 Alas for lonely Heaven ! Alas 
 For life wrung out alone !) 
 
 1870. 
 (Alas ! we two, we two, thou say'st ! 
 
 Yea, one wast thou with me 
 That once of old. But shall God lift 
 
 To endless unity • 
 The soul whose likeness with thy soul 
 Was but its love for thee ?) 
 
 U 
 
290 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 Each is beautiful, but the two last lines of the 
 rewritten stanza have a depth of tenderness 
 which is not touched in the earlier version. The 
 stanza which was most often altered by the poet 
 is the seventh ; here, he must have felt, was a 
 blemish to be corrected. A certain quaint sim- 
 plicity and directness is of the essence of the piece ; 
 but once at least if trembles on the verge of bathos : 
 
 (i) Germ. 
 Heard hardly, some of her new friends, 
 
 Playing at holy games. 
 Spake, gentle-mouth'd, among themselves, 
 
 Their virginal new names. 
 
 (6) 1881. 
 Around her, lovers,, newly met 
 
 'Mid deathless love's acclaims. 
 Spoke evermore among themselves 
 
 Their heart-remembered names. 
 
 These are the first and the last versions, but there 
 were several intermediate : 
 
 ■ (2) O. and C. Magazine. 
 
 She scarcely heard her sweet new friends 
 
 Playing at holy games. 
 Softly they spake among themselves 
 
 Their virginal chaste names.- 
 
 (3) 1870. 
 Heard hardly, some of her new friends 
 
 Amid their loving games 
 Spoke evermore among themselves 
 
 Their virginal chaste names. 
 
IX IN ROSSETTI 291 
 
 (4) 1870 (2nd ed.). 
 Around her, lovers, newly met 
 
 In joy no sorrow claims, 
 Spoke evermore among themselves 
 
 Their rapturous new names. 
 
 (5) Tauchnitz, 1873. 
 Around her, lovers, newly met 
 
 'Mid deathless love's acclaims. 
 Spoke evermore among themselves 
 
 Their rapturous new names. 
 
 It is of curious interest to note in these successive 
 retouchings the poet's doubts and reversions. 
 " Heard hardly " is not a good phrase ; yet, 
 after dismissing it in No. 2, Rossetti restored 
 it in No. 3. By this time the second line had 
 begun to displease him, but though he altered it, 
 he still retained the " games." When he was 
 revising the Poems of 1870 for a new edition 
 (No. 4), he dismissed both " Hardly heard " and 
 the games, and he altered the last line. The new 
 first line in No. 4 was a great improvement, 
 and was not afterwards changed ; but the sefcond 
 line was rightly felt to be unsatisfactory. It was 
 altered, greatly for the better, in No. 5. But 
 even yet the poet had not done with the lines, 
 and in No. 6 the names of the lovers, i which 
 had been, successively, " virginal new," " virginal 
 chaste," and " rapturous new," now became 
 " heart-remembered." A stanza, it seems, may 
 go through as many stages as may a soul in the 
 
292 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 upward path to perfection. It may be questioned, 
 I think, whether No. 6 is an improvement 
 upon No. 5, but that Nos. 4-6 are improvements 
 upon Nos. 1-3 is certain. There is only one 
 place in The Blessed Damoze/ where it is difficult 
 to say whether the earlier or the later version is 
 
 the better; 
 
 Germ. 
 
 We two will stand beside that shrine. 
 
 Occult, withheld, untrod, 
 Whose lamps tremble continually 
 
 With prayer sent up to God ; 
 And where each need, reveal'd, expects, 
 
 Its patient period. 
 
 1870. 
 We two will stand beside that shrine. 
 
 Occult, withheld, untrod, 
 Whose lamps are stirred continually 
 
 With prayer sent up to God; 
 And see our prayers, grahted, melt 
 
 Each like a little cloud. 
 
 The later imaginution is very beautiful, but the 
 cancelled passage is too fine to be forgotten. 
 Perhaps it is best to say with Swinburne that 
 "though a diamond may have supplanted it, a 
 ruby has been plucked out of the golden ring," or 
 to borrow words from another poet and decide 
 that " the leader is fairest, but both are divine." 
 Rossetti's retouchin!gs were sometimes due 
 to an almost morbid sensitiveness. In his 
 " Love's Nocturn " he had written : 
 
IX IN ROSSETTI 293 
 
 Fair with honourable eyes, 
 Lamps of a pellucid soul — 
 
 a beautiful figure ; but before it ^passed from 
 manuscript to final proof, Browning's Ring and 
 the Book appeared, and in it Rossetti noted the 
 phrase " lustrous and pellucid soul " applied 
 by Pompilia to Caponsacchi. " The inevitable 
 charge of plagiarism struck me at once," he 
 wrote, " as impending whenever my poem should 
 be printed," and he robbed himself of a felicitous 
 phrase ; the line as it first stood is much finer 
 than either of the later variations : " Lamps of 
 an auspicious soul " (1870), " Lamps of a trans- 
 lucent soul" (18 81). This instance should be 
 a warning to critics who in all ages have been 
 over-fond of seasoning their discovery of parallel 
 passages with suspicion of plagiarism. 
 
 Willing though Rossetti was to retouch his 
 lines jn deference to criticism (as his Family 
 Letters abundantly testify), he sometimes held 
 fast by what he had written. The fine poem 
 "A Last Confession" begins with a licence in 
 geography : 
 
 Our Lcftnbard country-girls along the coast 
 Wear daggers in their garters. 
 
 Mr. William Rossetti, in a note to his brother's 
 poem, remarks that " every one except Dante 
 Rossetti knows that Lombardy has no coast " ; 
 but ignorant, or unrepentant, the poet remained. 
 
294 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 There is an amusing instance of the same kind of 
 thing in his address to the Virgin (" Ave ") : 
 
 Far off the trees were as pale wands 
 Against the fervid sky : ^he sea 
 Sighed further off eternally 
 As human sorrow sighs in sleep. 
 
 The poem was under revision, and Mr. William 
 Rossetti protested that these lines would not do : 
 " Nazareth is quite inland, about equidistant from 
 -the Mediterranean and the Lake of Tiberias : 
 the sea could no more be heard there than in 
 London, or Birmingham. I know one may care 
 too much for objections of this sort, yet I think 
 the local mendacity is too glaring." One would 
 like to know what Shakespeare would have said if 
 some one had objected to him that there were 
 no sea-coasts in Bohemia ; but the later poet's 
 reply to the critic is on record. " I fear," wrote" 
 Rossetti, " the sea must remain at Nazareth ; 
 you know an old, painter would have made no 
 bones if he wanted it for his background." 
 
 Not every poet, however, is so robustly im- 
 penitent of " local mendacity." There is a 
 curious instance in one of the most unequal, 
 but in part one of the best, of Matthew Arnold's 
 poems, " The Church of Brou " (1853). So the 
 poem is named in the early editions, where it is 
 in three parts. The first tells the story of Mar- 
 garet of Austria and her husband, Philibert le 
 
IX IN MATTHEW ARNOLD 295 
 
 Beau, Duke of Savoy ; the second describes the . 
 church where the duke and duchess lie buried. 
 The poet, who had taken his description at second 
 hand from a rhapsody by Quinet, placed the 
 church " 'mid the Savoy mountain valleys," 
 " below the pines," and made " the Alpine 
 peasants climb up " to it "to pray." But the 
 Church of Brou, with its splendid tombs, is not 
 among the mountains ; it is on the hard high 
 road, in the flat and treeless Burgundian plain, 
 a mile from the railway station of Bourg, between 
 M^con and Amb^rieu. The " local mendacity," 
 which was great, was pointed out, and what was 
 to be done ? The mountain touches run all 
 through the poem, but Brou by happy chance is 
 not mentioned in the third, and crowning, part. 
 The knife, instead of the file, was used ; the first 
 two parts were cut out, and the third w^s printed 
 alone, rechristened " A Tomb among the Moun- 
 tains " (1877).^ To be sure, this third part — 
 with its impetuous rush of inspired imagination — 
 is a jewel which needs no setting ; but presently 
 Arnold changed his mind again, and in later 
 editions (1881 onwards) the " Tomb among the 
 Mountains " reappears as part of " The Church 
 of Brou." Perhaps he thought that the poetic 
 
 1 " Matthew Arnold told me himself " — so Mr. Oscar Browning wrote 
 to me — " that the reason why he omitted ' The Church of Brou ' from his 
 Collected Works [1877] was because he found that he had described it 
 wrongly." It appears from his Letters that he passed through Bourg in 1858, 
 but he did not stop to see the Church. 
 
296 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 licence, in matter of geography, was the more 
 justified by the poetic artifice which enhances the 
 effect of the glorious third part by contrast with 
 the tamer introduction. As- it thus stands, the 
 conclusion bursts upon the reader with a sense 
 of delighted surprise. Quinet's prose is closely 
 followed, but the poet makes it his own by apt 
 adornment, and no passage in Matthew Arnold is 
 (in Professor Saintsbury's phrase) more full of 
 ** star-showers " than that which begins : 
 
 So sleep, for ever sleep, O marble Pair ! — 
 
 and ends : 
 
 Then, gazing up through the dim pillars high, 
 
 The foliaged marble forest where ye lie, 
 
 Hush, ye will say, // h eternity ! 
 
 This is the glimmering verge of Heaven, and these 
 
 The columns of the heavenly palaces. 
 
 And in the sweeping of the wind your ear 
 
 The passage of the Angels' wings will hear, 
 
 And on the Hchen-crusted leads above 
 
 The rustle of the eternal rain of love. 
 
 " The Church of Brou " is not the only case 
 in which Arnold fell into some mistake from 
 not having seen places which he described. 
 When he wrote " Tristram and Iseult " he could 
 not have been to Cornwall, or he would certainly 
 have heard how Tintagel is pronounced. In all 
 his earlier editions he made the word a dactyl, 
 as in : 
 
IX IN MATTHEW ARNOLD 297 
 
 To TyntSgll from Ireland bore — 
 Keeps his court in Tyntagil — 
 The palace towers of Tyntagil — 
 Ah no ! she is asleep in Tyntagil — 
 
 and in other lines. The long syllable is properly 
 the second, and when this was pointed out to 
 Arnold he rewrote the lines, as thus : 
 
 From Ireland to Cornwall bore — 
 Dwells on loud Tyntagel's hill — 
 Tyntagel on its surge-beat hill — 
 Ah no 1 she is asleep in Cornwall now. 
 
 The first and the last of these alterations are 
 somewhat perfunctory. The revision was done, 
 I think, less in pleasure than as a school task 
 in correction of false quantities, as sacrifices on 
 the altar of accuracy. The study of Arnold's 
 different editions is full of interest, but rather for 
 Bis rejections, reinclusions, and rearrangements of 
 whole pieces than for alterations in particular 
 lines or words. " The Church of Brou," already 
 discussed, is one instance of rearrangement. The 
 treatment, in successive editions, of the lyrics 
 variously called " Switzerland " and " To Mar- 
 guerite " is another. Why were the poems at 
 one time separated ? Were they all written of^a 
 piece ? Are there other lyrics which may be 
 connected with them ? Who, if any one, was 
 Marguerite ? She had " sweet eyes of blue " ; 
 the lady of "Faded Leaves " had " eyes too 
 expressive to be blue, too lovely to be grey." But 
 
298 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 the poet's reticence has never been broken, and we 
 must beware of chatter about Marguerite. How 
 severe was Arnold's standard of self-criticism is 
 shown by the poems which at one time or another 
 he abstained from reprinting. His reasons for 
 rejecting " Empedocles " were given in the 
 famous Preface of 1853. It was sacrificed to a 
 theory, but was revived in 1867 at the petition 
 of Robert Browning. Why " In Utrumque 
 Paratus " and " The New Sirens " should ever 
 have been rejected it is difficult to see ; the re- 
 instatement was due in each case to Mr. Swin- 
 burne. That Arnold refrained for thirty years 
 from reprinting the memorial verses called 
 " Haworth Churchyard " was due, as Sir Robert- 
 son NicoU has shown, to hesitation about his 
 praise of one of the " two gifted women " ; the 
 poet waived the point at the suggestion of Dean 
 Boyle, who did not see, we may suppose, why 
 the fine tribute to the genius of Charlotte Bronte 
 should be sacrificed to doubts about Harriet 
 Martineau. Unsparing though Arnold was in 
 rejection, he was less careful in revision. He 
 often attained* a perfect felicity, but his ear was 
 far from faultless. He did not alter a line so 
 cacophonous as : 
 
 Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well, 
 
 or so pedestrian as : 
 
 Haunts him that he has not made what he should. 
 
IX IN MATTHEW ARNOLD 299 
 
 There is, however, one instance in which Arnold 
 revised and improved a piece already well-nigh 
 perfect. This is " The Scholar-Gipsy " — 
 
 The story of that Oxford scholar poor. 
 Of shining parts and quick inventive brain. 
 
 The first edition had " Of pregnant parts," and 
 it were needless to dwell on the improvement 
 made by the alteration. The Scholar left Oxford 
 and joined the gipsies : 
 
 And I, he said, the secret of their art, 
 
 When fully leam'd, will to the vi^orld impart : 
 
 But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill. "" 
 
 The last line is perfect and haunts the memory, 
 but it was a second thought. The first edition 
 had "But it needs happy moments for this 
 skill " — ^less happily, because the rhythm needs 
 in that place the weightier sound which " heaven- 
 sent " supplied. A revision in another stanza 
 has been questioned on the point of sound, and 
 has a curious interest for those who know " the 
 stripling Thames at Bablockhythe." There the 
 Scholar-Gipsy was met "trailing in the cool 
 stream thy fingers wet " 
 
 As the slow punt swings round. 
 
 So Arnold first wrote, and so the line stands in 
 the cheap editions which appeared when the 
 earlier versions of his poems passed out of copy- 
 right ; but when the piece was revised for the 
 
300 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 " new and complete edition " of 1877, the line 
 had been altered to this : 
 
 As the punt's rope chops round. 
 
 Each version has been criticised. I remember 
 a letter in the Westminster Gazette in which the 
 writer denounced what was really the poet's 
 first version as " the emendation of some 
 twentieth- century fiend who had never heard 
 the old rope chopping." On the other hand, 
 Mr. George Russell includes the revised version 
 among " in euphonious " lines collected from 
 the poet to show that " where Nature has 
 withheld the ear for music, no labour and 
 no art can supply the want." In this par- 
 ticular case I cannot agree. I think I see why 
 Arnold preferred the second version, and I 
 submit that his preference was sound. The line 
 as first written was pretty, but was too general. 
 It would apply to any ferry where the punt is 
 poled across heading up stream and swinging 
 round to make the other bank. But Arnold, on 
 second thoughts, or perhaps after revisiting the 
 place, remembered that the ferry at Bablockhythe 
 was not of this sort, and decided — true poet that c 
 he was — to make his description more particular. 
 The ferry in old days was worked by a rope 
 which " chopped round " a roller on the boat. 
 The line as the poet rewrote it was less smooth 
 in sound, but was in harmony with the thing 
 
IX IN MATTHEW ARNOLD 301 
 
 described. That he was bent upon enhancing 
 and particularising the local colour may be in- 
 ferred from another alteration in the stanza made 
 at the same time : 
 
 And leaning backward in a pensive dream, 
 And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers 
 Pluck'd in shy fields and distant woodland bowers. 
 
 So the lines were first printed, but on revision the 
 generic " woodland " was altered to the place- 
 name " Wychwood." A happy emendation in 
 every way : the word has a witchery in its sound 
 and for its associations ; the introduction of a 
 place in the northern part of the county adds 
 point to " distant " ; and the country known as 
 Wychwood Forest is still famous for its rich 
 variety of beautiful wild flowers and of gipsy 
 simples. This alteration may serve as the poet's 
 answer in advance to one of the most perverse 
 criticisms ever made by a man of taste. Dr. 
 Garnett of the British Museum thought that, 
 though the charm of Arnold's pieces may be 
 " enhanced for Oxonians," yet " the numerous 
 local allusions which endear the poem to those 
 familiar with the scenery, simply worry when not 
 understood." On this amazing deliverance Pro- 
 fessor Saintsbury has said some faithful words : 
 " One may not be an Athenian, and never have 
 been at Athens, yet be able to enjoy the local 
 colour of the Phaedrus. One may. not be an 
 Italian, and never' have been in Italy, yet find 
 
302 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 the Divina Commedia made not teasing but in- 
 finitely vivid and agreeable by Dante's innumer- 
 able references to his country, Florentine and 
 general. That some keener thrill, some nobler 
 gust, may arise in the reading of the poem to 
 those who have actually watched 
 
 The line of festal light in Christ Church Hall 
 
 from above Hinksey, who know the Fyfield elm 
 in May,_ and have trailed their fingers in the 
 stripling Thames at Bablockhythe, may be 
 granted. But in the name of Bandusia and of 
 Gargarus " — and, as may be interpolated for a 
 modern instance, of Grantchester — " what offence 
 can these things give to any worthy wight who 
 by his ill-luck has not seen them with eyes ? " 
 
 Keats, who might .have beaten them all, and 
 whose felicity of phrase was in his best pieces 
 impeccable, had few opportunities of revising 
 his work after its first appearance in print, and 
 such opportunity may count for much, not only 
 because, as we have seen, it enables a poet to 
 profit by criticism, but for another reason which 
 I think will appeal to every penman. In all 
 literary work it is a great aid to revision to be 
 able to see how the words look in type. Litera- 
 ture is a means of communication from mind to 
 mind. So long as the words remain in the author's 
 mind or in writing by his own hand, he cannot 
 
IX IN. KEATS 303 
 
 bring to bear upon them quite the same detached 
 consideration that becomes possible when they 
 are transferred to cold print. The process of 
 proof-correction fixes the attention and compels 
 the author to put himself more vividly in the 
 reader's place. The author becomes his own 
 critic. Points of obscurity or ambiguity and 
 possibilities of refinement which had hitherto 
 escaped his notice occur to him, sometimes so 
 largely that editors or publishers request writers 
 to observe that pieces should not be rewritten on 
 proof-sheets, while publishers protect themselves 
 by a tax upon authors' corrections. Each new 
 edition that goes to press gives a poet a nev/ 
 occasion for revision, and Keats had few such 
 opportunities, but he had some, and in other 
 cases manuscripts of his have been preserved 
 from which it is possible to trace the stages in 
 the poet's work. A fair-copy manuscript of 
 Hyperion, now in the British Museum,^ discloses 
 many felicitous corrections introduced upon 
 second, and sometimes upon third thoughts. 
 One ihstance has been given on a previous page. 
 There is another in the eighth and ninth lines 
 of the poem. Keats is describing the silence 
 round about the lair of Saturn. " No stir of 
 air was there " — 
 
 Not so much life as what an eagle's wing 
 Would spread upon a field of green-ear'd corn. 
 
 ' An account of this MS, was printed in the Timfs of October 10, 1504. 
 
304 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 So it was first written. In the manuscript the 
 lines were altered thus : 
 
 Not so much life as on a summer's day 
 Robs not at all the dandelion's fleece — 
 
 an improvement, as giving a better picture of 
 stirless air ; but Keats was not yet quite satisfied, 
 and the second line finally gave place to this : 
 
 Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass. 
 
 Certainly an improvement again : " the feathered 
 grass " is prettier than " the dandelion's fleece," 
 and " not one light seed " is better, if only because 
 more particular and more pictorial, than " not 
 at all." The appeal to the mind's eye which is 
 made more vivid by the substitution of a par- 
 ticular statement for a general has been noted 
 several times already, and there is another instance 
 a few lines further on in Hyperion. The Titaness, 
 a goddess of the infant world, is being described : 
 
 By her in stature the tall Amazon 
 
 Had stood a pigmy's height : she would have' ta'en 
 
 Achilles by the hair and bent his neck ; 
 
 Or with a finger eas'd Ixion's pain. 
 
 The picture of the Titaness taking Achilles by 
 the hair was already perfect, but the reference 
 to Ixion was felt to be too general, and Keats 
 altered the last line, thus :. 
 
 Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel. 
 
 Another piece which was greatly improved on 
 
IX IN KEATS • 305 
 
 revision is the sonnet " To Sleep," one of eight 
 almost perfect sonnets, says Mr. Bridges : 
 
 O soft embalmer of the still midnight ! 
 
 Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, 
 Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light, 
 
 Enshaded in forgetfulness divine ; 
 O soothest Sleep ! If so it please thee, close 
 
 In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes. 
 Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws 
 
 Around my bed its lulling charities ; 
 
 Then save me, or the passed day will shine 
 Upon my pillow, breeding many woes ; 
 
 Save me from curious conscience, that still lords 1 
 Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole j 
 
 Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, 
 And seal the hushed casket of my soul. 
 
 But now read this earlier version as found in the 
 Dilke MSS. : 
 
 O soft embalmer of the still Midnight 
 
 Shutting with careful fingers and benign 
 
 Our gloom-pleas'd eyes embowered from the light ; 
 
 As wearisome as darkness is divine. 
 
 O soothest sleep, if so it please thee, close 
 
 My willing eyes in midst of this thine hymii. 
 
 Or wait the amen ere thy poppy throws 
 
 Its sweet death dews o'er every pulse and limb. 
 
 Then shut the hushed Casket of my soul, 
 
 And turn the key round in the oiled wards. 
 
 And let it rest until the morn has stole. 
 
 Bright tressed from the grey east's shuddering bourn. 
 
 Every alteration was an improvement. The 
 
 ^ Mr. Forman suggests (rightly surely) " hoards " for " lords," saying tha 
 Keats would very likely spell it"hords." 
 
 X 
 
3o6 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 fourth line in the earlier version is commonplace ; 
 it was replaced by the beautiful 
 
 Enshaded in forgetfulness divine. 
 
 The eighth line shows an almost equal improve- 
 ment, and Mr. Buxton Forman has noted the 
 high poetic instinct which led Keats on second 
 thoughts to transpose the tenth and ninth lines 
 and place them at the end of the poem. But the 
 crowning example from Keats of the way in which 
 the greatest felicities sometimes come only on 
 second thoughts is to be found elsewhere. It is 
 in the lines of the " Ode to a Nightingale," which 
 have been often quoted, since Matthew Arnold 
 led the way in such sort, as standards of natural 
 magic in words and touchstones of perfection 
 in poetry. The poem was written one .morning 
 under a plum-tree in a Hampstead garden, but 
 perfection did not come in the sudden glory of 
 a minute. The lines were first written thus : 
 
 The same that oft-times hath 
 Charm'd the wide casements, opening on the foam 
 Of keelless seas, in faery lands forlorn. 
 
 A beautiful recollection, even so, of a favourite 
 picture, the Enchanted Castle of Claude ; but" 
 any casements may be wide, and there is no poetic 
 suggestiveness in making them either wide or 
 narrow. And again " keelless " is an ugly 
 word which hisses, and it gives the imagination 
 
IX IN KEATS 307 
 
 less scope than the word which was substituted 
 on revision : 
 
 The same that oft-times hath 
 Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Oi perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.^ 
 
 Half the enchantment of the lines came with 
 the poet's second thoughts. Not always, how- 
 ever, were the second thoughts of Keats the 
 better. Lord Houghton was certainly right in 
 giving us the manuscript version of "La Belle 
 Dame sans Merci" in place of that which was 
 printed in Leigh Hunt's Indicator : 
 
 O what can ail thee, Knight at arms. 
 Alone and palely loitering ? 
 
 So Keats first wrote. Who or what, one wonders, 
 induced him to alter this opening to 
 
 O what can ail thee, wretched wight. 
 Alone and palely loitering ? 
 
 The earlier version sets one of the characters 
 clearly before us in the opening lines, whereas 
 the phrase " wretched wight " is conventional 
 and not distinctive. " The Knight-at-arms," 
 says Mr. Bridges, " gives the keynote of romance 
 and aloofness from real life, and the suggestion 
 of armour is of the greatest value to the general 
 colouring." Moreover, as one of the editors 
 of Keats has sagely remarked, we have already 
 
 ' The original draft of the poem showing these revisions was published 
 by Sir Sidney Colvin in the Monthly Review for March 1903. 
 
3o8 SECbND THOUGHTS . ix 
 
 been told that the wight was wretched by being 
 asked what could ail him. It is easier to under- 
 stand, but not to approve, another alteration in 
 the poem. In describing the lure of the en- 
 chantress Keats had written : 
 
 She took me to her elfin grot 
 
 And there she wept and sigh'd full sore, 
 
 And there I shut her wild wild eyes 
 With kisses four. 
 
 And there she lulled me asleep. 
 
 On revision for the press the lines were altered 
 thus : 
 
 She took me to her elfin grot, 
 
 And there she gaz'd and sighed deep, 
 
 And there I shut her wild sad eyes — ' 
 
 So kiss'd to sleep. 
 
 And there we slumber'd on the moss. 
 
 Presumably it was the " kisses four " and the 
 fun which Keats himself had made of them 
 that caused these alterations. In sending the 
 piece to his brother and sister, Keats had written : 
 " Why kisses four, you will say, why four ? 
 Because I wish to restrain the headlong im- 
 petuosity of my Muse : she would fain have said 
 * score ' without hurting the rhyme, but we must 
 temper the imagination, as the Critics say, with 
 judgment. I was obliged to choose an even 
 number that both eyes might have fair play^ 
 and to speak truly I think two apiece quite 
 sufficient. Suppose I had said seven, there 
 would have been three and a half apiece, a very 
 
IX • IN KEATS 309. 
 
 awkward affair, and well got out of on my side." 
 The letter shows the poet in a pleasant light : 
 it is the sort of letter that Rossetti might have 
 written. But a sense of humour is one thing ; 
 a fear of ridicule is another. Th? revised version 
 was tame compared with the first. Besides, when 
 it comes to counting kisses a poet should not 
 care a farthing for the possible cavil of crabbed 
 greybeards. 
 
 There is one place in Keats about which I am 
 never quite able to make up my mind : 
 
 A 
 Ah would 'twere so with many 
 A gentle girl and boy ! 
 But were there ever any 
 Writhed not at passM joy ? 
 To know the change and feel it. 
 When there is none to heal it 
 Nor numbed sense to steel it, 
 Was never said in rhyme. 
 
 B 
 
 But in the soul's December 
 The faiicy backward strays, 
 And darkly doth remember 
 The hue of golden days. 
 In woe the thought appalling 
 Of bliss gone, past recalling, 
 Brings p'er the heart a falling 
 Not to be told in rhyme. 
 
 Which reading do you. prefer for this third stanza 
 of the song " In a drear-nighted December " ? 
 
3IO SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 " A " is the one that was printed, " B " was 
 found in a friend's album ; ^ and if the choice 
 had to be decided on the last four lines of each 
 version, there could be no question. The last 
 four of " B " are almost banal, and the phrase " a 
 falling " might have been used by Mrs. Gamp. 
 But the case is different with the first four lines. 
 Each of the other stanzas has " December " 
 in the first line and " remember " in the third. 
 Thus version B gains something by the contrasted 
 repetition of the words, and I have often wondered 
 whether, if Keats had lived to revise his poems, 
 he might not have combined the first four lines 
 of B with the last four of A. 
 
 Among the most interesting of refentirs are 
 those which one poet ias made in consequence 
 of the criticism, or at the suggestion, of another. 
 There is a famous instance in Wordsworth's 
 "Thanksgiving Ode (1815)." As first issued 
 (18 1 6) the piece contained the following lines : . 
 
 But Thy most dreaded instrument, 
 In working out a pure intent, 
 Is Man arrayed for mutual slaughter, — 
 Yea, Carnage is Thy daughter. 
 
 The temptation of rhyme had led the poet into a 
 
 ^ I copied' the version from the Athenaum of September 15, 1883, to 
 which journal it was sent by Mr. Francis V. Woodhouse, who had found it 
 in a MS. book belonging to his brother, the friend of Keats. Sir Sidney 
 Colvin tells, us, I see, that the version " cannot yet be regarded as entitled 
 to a place in the established canon of Keats's work " (7Vi»«s Literary Safple- 
 ment, May 2, 1918). 
 
IX IN WORDSWORTH 311 
 
 false step. Byron saw his opportunity and took 
 it. The passage was pilloried in the seventh 
 canto of Don Juan : 
 
 Carnage (so Wordsworth tells you) is God's daughter ; 
 If he speak truth, she is Christ's sister ... 
 
 and Byron, in giving the reference, appended a 
 pungent note: "This is perhaps as pretty a 
 pedigree for murder as ever was found out by 
 Garter King at Arms." The hit went home, 
 and Wordsworth recast the passage thus : 
 
 But Man is Thy most awful instrument, 
 
 In working out a pure intent ; 
 
 Thou cloth'st the wicked in their dazzling mail. 
 
 And for Thy righteous purpose they prevail, 
 
 I have never made a close study of Wordsworth's 
 ow« second thoughts ; but such as I have chanced 
 to note are seldom improvements. If this be 
 the case generally, it is what might be expected, 
 for Wordsworth is of all great poets the most 
 unequal, and his happiest things came by grace 
 and not by reflection. A peculiarly unhappy 
 thought occurred when he revised " the most 
 majestic of his poems, "^ written originally under 
 stimulus from the sixth Aeneid. " Laodamia " 
 is Wofdsworth's " one great utterance on heroic 
 love," and the penultimate passage, as it first 
 came to the poet, was worthy of the Virgilian 
 echo which followed : 
 
 1 F. W. H. Myers. 
 
312 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 Ah, judge her gently who so deeply loved ! 
 Her, who in reason's spite, yet without crime, 
 Was in a trance of passion thus removed ; 
 Delivered from the galling yoke of time 
 And those frail elements — to gather flowers ■ 
 Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers. 
 — Yet tears to human sufferings are due, etc. 
 
 So wrote the Muse, holding the poet's pen ; but 
 the moralist afterwards took the passage in hand 
 and sermonised it into this : 
 
 Thus, all in vain exhorted and reproved. 
 She perished ; and, as for a wilful crime, 
 By the just Gods whom no weak pity moved. 
 Was doomed to wear out her appointed time, 
 Apart from happy Ghosts, that gather flowers 
 Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers. 
 — Yet tears to human sufferings are due, etc. 
 
 Lord Morley in his edition prints this later ver- 
 sion 5 It is one of the many services rendered to 
 Wordsworth by Matthew Arnold in his volume 
 of Selections that he restores the earlier version. 
 The well-known " Lines " on the expected death 
 of Mr. Fox contained this passage : 
 
 A Power is passing from the earth 
 To breathless Nature's dark abyss ; 
 But when the Mighty pass away 
 What is it more than this 
 That Man, who is from God sent forth. 
 Doth yet again to God return ? 
 
 So the poet wrote at the time of inspiration, but 
 
IX IN WORDSWORTH 313 
 
 afterwards ihe reflected and altered the third line 
 into this : 
 
 But when the great and good depart. 
 
 Here again Lord Morley gives the revised ver- 
 sion, but Matthew Arnold restores the original, 
 and his preference will, I think, be generally' 
 approved. The revised version tells us, it is 
 true, that Wordsworth considered Mr. Fox to 
 be a good as well as a great man, and the judgment 
 is interesting, but it is added at the cost of poetic 
 efFect. The lines were written, as the poet's 
 prefatory note tells us, during a walk at evening 
 after a stormy day, and the poet had just heard 
 the tremendous news that the death of Fox was 
 momentarily expected. " Loud was the vale." 
 " Thousands were waiting the fulfilment of their 
 fear." It was the passing of the Mighty that 
 was the note of the piece. 
 
 For one of his retouchings I once owed the 
 poet some grudge. In the second volume of 
 Modern Painters Ruskin describes how Words- 
 worth conceives a group of children as " rooted 
 flowers " which 
 
 Beneath an old grey oak as violets lie. 
 
 I hunted and hunted and could not find the 
 passage. I turned in my extremity to a friend, 
 whose untimely loss was deplored by all students 
 of literature — ^the late Professor Churton Collins. 
 He was good enough to hunt and hunt also. 
 
314 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 and at last pronounced with the emphasis 
 characteristic of him : " I tell you positively that 
 Ruskin is wrong ; the line is not in Wordsworth." 
 A few days later I asked a girl friend, who is 
 fond of Wordsworth, to see if she could find the 
 passage. By chance her edition was an early 
 one, and there in the original version of the 
 poet's " Descriptive Sketches among the Alps " 
 the passage disclosed itself. Wordsworth, not 
 knowing that his comparison of the children to 
 " rooted flowers " was to be the theme of an 
 eloquent eulogy in Modern Painters^ had in the 
 most inconsiderate manner changed them, in all 
 subsequent editions, into the likeness of " lambs 
 or fawns," and placed them 
 
 Under a hoary oak's thin canopy. 
 
 Such are the pitfalls which poets lay with their 
 retouchings, and such the long disappointments 
 and sudden joys of the commentator. 
 
 Sometimes a poet repents, but knows not how 
 to amend. There is a curious instance of this 
 incohiplete repentance in the first line of Words- 
 worth's " We are seven." As originally printed 
 {Lyrical Ballads^ 1798), the piece began thus : 
 
 A simple child, dear brother Jim, 
 That lightly draws its breath, 
 And feels its life in every limb, 
 What should it know of death ? 
 
 Very naturally, Wordsworth afterwards took out 
 
IX IN COLERIDGE 315 
 
 " dear brother Jim.", He thought the rhyme 
 to " limb " ludicrous, and the whole thing too 
 coUdquial even for him. Besides, Coleridge 
 had suggested the line half in jest, and they had 
 let it pass — so Wordsworth says— only for the 
 fun of " hitching - in " a mutual friend whose 
 familiar name was Jim. But when the mild 
 little joke was played out, what was to take its 
 place ? The poet seems to have given it up, 
 and the first line appeared, rhymeless and in- 
 complete, thus : 
 
 A simple child, 
 
 That lightly draws its breath, etc. 
 
 Coleridge, to whose frankness of self-criticism 
 I have already referred, was sometimes content 
 to confess a blemish or an altered opinion without 
 amending the lines. In an early poem he had 
 written : 
 
 He knows, the Spirit that in secret sees. 
 Of whose omniscient and all-spreading Love 
 Aught to implore were impotence of mind. 
 
 Upon revision he let the lines stand, but ap- 
 pended this footnote : "I utterly recant the 
 sentiment, it bein^ written in Scripture, ' Ask 
 and it shall be given you ' ; and my human 
 reason being, moreover, convinced of the pro- 
 priety of offering petitions as well as thanksgiving 
 to the Deity." In one case, although altering 
 a line, he .reprinted the original. The seventh 
 
31 6 SECOND THOUGHTS ix 
 
 stanza of the "Ode to the Departing Year" 
 (1796) thus begins : 
 
 Not yet enslaved, 'not wholly vile, 
 O Albion ! O my mother Isle ! 
 
 and the footnote to the first line is : " O doomed 
 to fall, enslaved and vile — 1796." There is 
 something very winning in such frank memorial 
 of hasty judgment. 
 
 Second thoughts are best, says the proverb, 
 by way of a criticism of life. " Repentirs," 
 says a critic of another art, " are always wrong." 
 Of poetry, neither statement can be accepted as 
 universally, or even generally, true. " The wind 
 bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the 
 sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it 
 cometh." The saying is true of every one that 
 is born of the Spirit of poetry. " What con- 
 stitutes the true artist," says a master of style, 
 " is not the slowness or quickness of the process, 
 but the absolute success of the result " ; and, 
 " as with those labourers in the parable, the 
 prize is independent of the mere length of the 
 actual day's work." Beauty and truth may come 
 together and find the exactly , right words in the 
 flash of a moment, or after many attempts. Yet 
 in the former case Tennyson's saying should be 
 remembered : " Perfection in art is perhaps 
 more sudden sometimes than we think, but then 
 the long preparation for it, that unseen germina- 
 
IX IN POETRY 317 
 
 tion, that is what we ignore and forget." Words- 
 worth wrote best when he revised least ; but who 
 can say how long he " went humming and booing 
 about " (as an old dalesman remembered him) 
 before he " murmured near the running brooks 
 a music sweeter than their own " ? One thing 
 alone is certain in this matter — that poetry is an 
 art, and that " art is long." The new age is 
 sometimes impatient of perfection : 
 
 Thundering and bursting 
 In torrents, in waves — 
 Carolling and shouting 
 Over tombs, amid graves. . . . 
 
 — Ah, so the silence was ! 
 
 So was the hush. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Acton, Lord, Lectures en the French 
 Revolution, on Ruskin, 34 j 
 Letters to Mary Gladstone, on 
 Carlyle, zo8, on the Fifty Best 
 Books, I $5, on Froude, 208 
 
 AddUon, 19S 
 
 Aeronautics, 152 
 
 Aeschylus, 182, 187 
 
 Akenside, 218 
 
 Alexander, Francesca, The. Story of 
 Ida, 31 
 
 Allen, George, 51 
 
 Allen, Grant, 73, 78, 81, 98 
 
 AUingham, William, 288 
 
 Alliteration, 43, 44, 50, 264, 281 
 
 Ancestry, in biography, 13 
 
 Anders-itreben, 244 
 
 Ariosto, 182 
 
 Armstrong, Sir Walter, on Turner, 
 212 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, index to, wanted, 
 60 ; his favourite passages in 
 literature, 186 j obituary notice 
 of, 125 ; poems, revision and 
 rearrangement of, 297-301 
 particular works quoted or referred 
 to : — Church of'firou, 294-6 ; 
 Culture and'Anarchy, 93 ; Em- 
 pedocles, 292, 298 ; Epilogue to 
 LaocoQn, 244 ; Essays in Criti- 
 cism (and other essays) on: Burke, 
 199, Dryden, 193, Heine, 103, 
 natural magic, 306, New 
 Journalism, 126, Ruskin, 34, 
 52, Shelley, 60, 204; Faded 
 Leaves, 297 ; Friendships Gar- 
 land, 117, 122 ; Haworth 
 Churchyard, 298 ; In Utrumque 
 
 Paratus,25,298 ^Letters, 18, 19 ; 
 Literature and Dogma, 89 ; The 
 Lord's Messengers, loi ; The 
 New Age, 317; Revolutions, 
 298 J Selections from Words- 
 worth, 312, 313 ; The Scholar 
 Gipsy, 299 J To Marguerite, 
 297,'; Tristram and Iseult, 296 ; 
 Switzerland, 297 ; Youth and 
 Cain;), 298 
 
 Art is long, 317 
 
 Asquith, H. H., on Prussian militar- 
 ism, 165 ; on Ruskin, 34, 37 
 
 Attar, 27 s 
 
 Austen, Jane, 202 
 
 Avebury, Lord, 183 
 
 Babbage, Charles, 270 
 
 Back numbers, 80 
 
 Bacon, 34, 198 
 
 Balfour, A. J., on German militar- 
 ism, 166 
 
 Bayle, 72 
 
 Beeching, Dean, 95, 99 
 
 Belgium, 165 
 
 Bell, Mackenzie, Life of Christina 
 Rossetti quoted, 178 
 
 Benson, A. C, 95 
 
 Bentham, 169 
 
 Bentley," emendation of classical 
 texts, 247 ; of Milton, 248 
 
 Best, Mr. Justice, 68 
 
 Bible as literature, 185 
 
 Binyon, Mrs., Nineteenth Century 
 Prose, 48 
 
 Biographies, some of the best, 3, 5, 8, 
 10, II, 13, 20,21, 28,29, 31 5 
 some of the worst, 31-2, 211 
 
 319 
 
320 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Biography, an art, i-6 ; ancestry in, 
 1 3 ; arrangement, 1 9 ; author 
 in relation to subject, 24 ; 
 brevity, 6 - 9 j candour, 20 ; 
 composite biographies, 2 ; foils 
 in, 29 ; hero-worship, 21, 29 ; 
 history and, 9, 12, 23 ; indis- 
 cretion in, 18 ; individual char- 
 acter, 1 1 ; irony of (least Icnown 
 lives best worth Icnowing), 30 ; 
 letters in, 15, 20, 24 ; politics 
 and, 23 J relevance in, 9-17; 
 selection, i8 ; subject, 22-33 
 
 Birrell, A., 60, 113 
 
 Bismarclc and Busch, 23 
 
 Blalce, William, 81, 192, 242 
 
 Bobby, 148 
 
 Bodleian Library, 65 
 
 Bonfires for books, 65 
 
 Book Monthly, yi\. 
 
 Bookman's Inferno, 61 j Paradise, 
 viii, 81 ; Purgatory, 80 
 
 Books, and the war, v ; stitching of, 
 79 ; 'versus newspapers, 113 
 
 Bossuet, 186 
 
 Boswell's Johnson, 3, 5, 9, ii, 12, 25 
 
 Bowles, W. L., 179 
 
 Boyle, C, 247 
 
 Boyle, Dean, 298 
 
 Brest-Litovsk, negotiations at, 170 
 
 Bridges, Rbbert, on (Ceats, 190, 191, 
 
 192. 305. 3°7 
 
 Bright, John, Life of, 28 ; on good 
 English, 139 
 
 British Empire, new name proposed 
 for, 173 
 
 British Museum, Keats MS. in, 
 303 ; Reading Room, 1^8 
 
 Bromley, William, 69 
 
 Bronte, Charlotte, M. Arnold on, 
 298 ; in the Cornhill, 107 j on 
 Jane Austen, 202 ; Villeae, 187 
 
 Brooke, Rupert, "The Old Vicar- 
 age, Grantchester," 302 
 
 Brougham, Lord, 148 
 
 Brown, Dr. John, 3 1 
 
 Browning, Mrs., and the Cornhill, 
 85 ; on the Magazines, II2 
 
 Browning, Oscar, 295 n. 
 
 Browning, Robert, 14, 199, 298 ; 
 
 ^posjns quoted or referred to : — 
 
 Ferishtah's Fancies (Epilogue], 
 
 199 ; My Last Duchess, 8 ; A 
 Light Woman, 27 ; Farleyings, , 
 213 ; Rabbi Ben Ezra, 33 ; 
 Old Pictures in Florence, 204 ; 
 One Word More, 239, 240, 
 241, 270 ; The Ring and the 
 Book, 3, 180, 198,293 (Bookvii. 
 935); Mr. Sludge the Medium, 
 I ; A Toccata of Galuppi, 92, 
 
 233 
 
 Browning Society, 240 
 
 Burke, 175, i86, 199 
 
 Busch, Moritz, 24 
 
 Butler, Samuel, Alps and Sanctuaries, 
 1 80, index to, 72 ; Evolution 
 Old and New, index to, 73, 74 j 
 Nate-Books, on irnmortality, 58, 
 on style, 39, 41 
 
 Byron, 198 ; and Turner, 218, 233 ; 
 on the Huns, 159 b. ; Childe 
 Harold, 187, 218, 233 ; Don 
 Juan, on Wordsworth, 311 
 
 Bywater, Ingram, 248 
 
 Cairns, Dr., Life of Dr. John Brown, 
 
 31 
 
 Callimachus, 223, 247 
 
 Calverley, translations from Theo- 
 critus and Virgil, 188 
 
 Campbell, Lord, 56 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, Hohenlinden, 
 159 ». 
 
 Caricature, 127 
 
 Carlisle, Lord, Journals, 181 
 
 Carlyle, Mrs.,' letter from Ruskin 
 to, 36 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 198 ; index to his 
 Works, 58, 70, 74 ; on books 
 without an index, '54 ; on 
 journalism, 117; French RevO' 
 lution, 187 J Life of Schiller, 
 32; Life of Sterling, 31 ; Sartor 
 Resartus, 187 
 
 Carthage and Turner, 231, 245 
 
 Casaubon, Isaac, 247 
 
 Cavour, 147 
 
 Caxton, 198 
 
 Chatham, as a subject of biography, 
 15, 25, 26 
 
 Chaucer, 198 ' 
 
 Cherfils, Christian, Canon de Turner, 
 
INDEX 
 
 321 
 
 Chesterton, G. K., on Browning, 
 14 ; on Dickenr, 32 
 
 Cicero, 151, 179 h. ♦ 
 
 Clarendon, Lord, and disarmament, 
 17 
 
 Class Lists in literature, 176, 181, 
 190 
 
 Classical texts, 247 
 
 Claude Lorraine, 306 
 
 Claudian, 175 
 
 Clemenceau, M., 160 
 
 Club, The, 181, 182 
 
 Cobden, on "Thucydides, 205 
 
 Coleridge, Derwent, 256, 258 
 
 Coleridge, Lord, 60, z68 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., revisions in his 
 poetry, 251-9, 315 ; self-criti- 
 cism, 252 ; Ancient Mariner, 
 251-9 ; Kubla Khan, 187 ; 
 Ode to France, 194 ; Ode to 
 the Departing Year, 194, 316 ; 
 To a Friend (1794), 315 
 
 Coleridge, Sara, 252 
 
 Collins, J. Churton, 97, 123, 267, 
 
 313 
 Colvin, Sir Sidney, 94, 97, 109, 307 «., 
 
 310 B. 
 Comte, on Tacitus, 207 
 Concise Oxford Dictionary, 168 
 Conrad, Joseph, Lord yim, 180 
 Cook, IJutton, 96 
 
 Cornhill Magazine, genesis of, 81 ; 
 George Smith and, 81, 8z, 96 ; 
 a set of, and its fate, 77-81 ; 
 •Alma Mater of the essay, 95 ; 
 anecdotic interest, * 107 ; bio- 
 graphical notes in, 103 ; buried 
 copy in, 100 ; contributors to, 
 82, 83, 90, 97, 103 ; cover, 
 109 ; editors of : — the first, 
 
 82, second, 96, third, 98, 
 later, 99, 100 ; first numbers, 
 
 83, 103 ; footnotes to history 
 in, 105 ; illustrations, 108 ; 
 note of, 92, 99, III ; novels in, 
 8z, 86 ; prices, 102 ; title, 109 
 
 Cory, William, Amaturus, 129 
 
 Courage of literary opinions, 204 
 
 Cowell, Professor, 274 
 
 Crashaw, 178 
 
 Creep-hole, 163 
 
 Crimean War, 165, 168, 203 
 
 Croker, J. W., 57 
 
 Curzon, Lord, on Tennyson,, 196 
 
 Cust, Henry, 138 
 
 Daily Mail, 153 
 
 Daily Neivs, 114 
 
 Dante, 183, 187, 302 
 
 Darley, George, 282 «. 
 
 Delane, J. T., 123, 132 
 
 De Morgan, A., 151 
 
 Denjosthenes, 207 
 
 De guincey, 34 ; on Burke, 199 
 
 Dibdin, T., 223 
 
 Dickens, and the Daily News, 114, 
 
 n8 ; on Thackeray, 90, 105 ; 
 
 David Copferfitid, 119 ; 
 
 Hard Times, 118 ; Martin 
 
 Chunmleivit, 115, 116 ; Pick- 
 
 tvick, 58, 115 ; Pictures from 
 
 Italy, 114 
 Dickens Dictionary, 58 
 Dictionary of National Biography, 7, 3 2 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, as subject of 
 
 biography, 27, 29 ; sayings of, 
 
 58 »,, 122, 209 
 Dixon, Canon, 203 
 Don S^uixote, 58, 200, 201 
 Douce, F., 6 1 
 Doyle, Sir A. Conan, 157 
 Doyle, Sir F. H., The Private of 
 
 the BufFs, 154 
 Doyle, Richard, 106 
 Dramatic criticism, 120, I2t, 12; 
 Dryden, Alexander's Feast, 193 ; 
 
 Mrs, Anne Killigrew, 193 
 Dumont, M., 210 
 
 Edinburgh Review, 200 
 
 Editions de Luxe, 60 , 
 
 Edvirard VII., titles, 174 
 
 Eliot, George, 202 ; Middlemarch, 
 
 33 ; Romolo, 103, 108 
 English language, as written by 
 
 Controllers, 13^; corrupted by 
 
 journalism, 131 seq, 
 English men of letters, the t.weilty 
 
 greatest, 198 
 Essays, 93, 94, 95 
 
 Fields, J. T., 91 
 
 Finberg, A. J., books on Turner, 
 211, 214, 234 
 
 y 
 
322 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Finish in art, 8, 54 
 
 Fii'st editions, 80, 107, 259 
 
 Fisher, H. L. A., j 
 
 FitzGerald, Edward, Letters, quoted 
 or referred to, on : — JaneAusten, 
 202, Browning, 3, ■ CornUll 
 Magazitte, 83, George Eliot, 
 202, Scott, 201, zoz, style, 
 40, Tennyson's revisions, 267, 
 Thackeray, 203 ; Omar Khay- 
 y4m, revisions in, 270-281 
 
 Flying, io6, 152 
 
 Forbes, Archibald, 126 
 
 Forman, H. Buxton, 305 «., 306 
 
 Forster, John, and the Dally News, 
 
 Forsyth, W., Captivity of Napoleon 
 
 at St. Helena, 56 
 Fortescue, Chichester, 16 
 Fortnightly Re-vieio, 186 
 Fox, Charles James, 13, 127, 204 »., 
 
 3". 313 
 
 Franks, The, 159 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, 89 
 
 Freeman, E. A., and Stubbs, 119 ; 
 on Arrian, n ; Norman Con- 
 quest, index to, 74 
 
 Froude, J, A., as editor of Fraser^s, 
 89 ; Lord Acton on, 208 ; Lifi 
 ofCarlyle, 21 ; SAort Studies, 
 60 ; on Tacitus (Lives of the 
 Saints), 207 
 
 Fuller, Thomas, on indexes, 62 
 
 Furnivall, F. J., 38. «. 
 
 Garibaldi, books on, by G. M. 
 
 Trevelyan, 28, 29, 105 j 
 
 blouses, 148 ; on militarism, 
 
 167 
 Garnett, Richard, on M. Arnold's 
 
 Oxford poems, 301 ; on Car- 
 
 lyle's Life of Sterling, 31 
 Garrett, Edmund, 4, 5, 179 ». 
 Geographical licence in poetry, 293, 
 
 294, 295 
 George, D. Lloyd, 144 ; on ! — 
 
 Boloism, 160, comb and clean 
 
 cut, 164, militarism, 166, 
 
 profiteering, 170 
 German Emperor, on Huns, 159 ; 
 
 on Conteraptibles, 161 
 Gibbon, 198 j his method of reading. 
 
 61 ; Decline and Fall, various 
 estimates of, 205, 206, zo8 
 Gibbs, Philip, The Battles of the 
 Somme, 150, 15 1 
 
 Gladstone, W, E., as subject of bio- 
 graphy, JO, 26, 29 ; Homeric 
 studies, 88 ; on the best lines 
 in poetry, 183, 184 
 
 Gladstone bag, 147 ; claret, 147 
 
 Globe newspaper, 123 
 
 Goethe, his place as pok, 183 ; 
 scientific studies, 88 ; on his 
 commentators, 240 ; on the 
 arts, 243 
 
 Gollancz, Professor, 157 
 
 Gosse, Edmund, and the Cornhill, 
 97 ; Life of Sivirtburne, 198 
 
 Gould, Sir F. C, 127 
 
 Gould, Gerald, "Oxford," 276 
 
 Gray, Thomas, on Thucydides, 207 
 
 Great men, aloofness of, 25 
 
 Greek Anthology, epigrams quoted, 
 
 179. 247 
 Green, J. R,, as journalist, 119, 122 
 Greenwood, Frederick, and the Corn- 
 hill, 96 ; as journalist, 123 
 Grundy, Mrs., and the magazines, 
 85, 86 
 
 Hallam, Henry, on Milton, 194 
 
 Hamerton, P. G., on Ruskin [A 
 Painter's Camp), 87 ; Life of 
 Turner, 212, 228, 238 
 
 Hamilton, Sir W., method of reading, 
 61 
 
 Hansard, index to, 57, 61 
 
 Hardy, Thomas, and the Cornhill, 
 86 ; on favourite passages m 
 literature, - 176, 186; on the 
 corruption of English, 131, 137 
 
 Hare, Archdeacon, 32 
 
 Harrison, Frederic, on biography 
 [Among my Books), 10 ; Gibbon, 
 Herodotus, and Thucydides 
 {The Meaning of History), 204, 
 206 ; Ruskin's — Harbours of_ 
 England [Tennyson, Ruskin, 
 and Mill), 53, style, 36, Unto 
 this Last [John Ruskin), 46 
 
 Hay, Ian, 148 
 
 Heber, Bishop, hymns, 177 
 
INDEX 
 
 323 
 
 Heine, 88 
 
 Henley, W. E., Hospital Outlina, 89 
 
 Herbert, George, The Temple (Elixir), 
 
 55 
 Heredity in biography, 15 
 Herodotus, 21, 29, Z04 
 Heron-Allen, E., Some Side-Lighu 
 
 upon E. FitssGerald's Poem, 275 
 Herrick, Noble Numbers, 179 
 Hill, Dr. Birkheck, and the Cornhill, 
 
 97 
 
 Historians, which is the greatest ? 
 Z04-9 
 
 Holland, Lord, 241 
 
 Homer, 184, 186, 204 »., 223 
 
 Hooker, 34 
 
 Horace, 186, 260, 302 
 
 Horton, Dr. R. F., Autobiography, vii 
 
 Houghton, Lord, edition of Keats, 
 103 
 
 Hugo, Les Mishtthles, 201 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, and the Bank of Eng- 
 land, 103 ; the Indicator, 307 
 
 Hymns, 177 
 
 Illustrations of the 'sixties, 108 
 Index, Indexing, an art, 56, 68 j 
 an iniKspensable adjunct, 55, 
 especially to Collected Works, 
 58; prinfciples of: — one book 
 one index, 63, - many titles, 
 64-6, how to be arranged, 66- 
 72 ; as propaganda, 69 ; humour 
 in, 72 ; impartiality in, 66, 
 69 ; pains and pleasures ot^ 
 75-6; punishments proposed 
 for omission of, 56, 61, plea 
 in defence, 61 ; saves foot-notes, 
 75 j scale of, 74 ; use of, in 
 tasting books, 75 ; who should 
 make ? 72 ; makers to be 
 named, 73 
 Interviewing, 4 
 
 Jargon, Jargoneers, 135, 137 
 Jebb, Sir R., on corrupt classical 
 texts, 246 j on Herodotus, 204 ; 
 on Thucydides, 208, 209 
 Johnson, Dr., 199 ; as siibject of 
 biography, 5 {see also Boswell) j 
 on Clarissa Harlo-we, 57 ; on 
 Dryden, 193 j on Milton and 
 
 Gray, 204 5 on writing to be 
 paid, loz 
 
 Joubert, Joseph, 268 
 
 Journalese, 106, 132, 13J 
 
 Journalism, modern, satirised by 
 Victorian writers, 114-20, but 
 contributed to by them, 122; 
 not a foe of good reading, 128- 
 131 '; alleged corruption of 
 English by, 13 1-5, responsi- 
 bility and temptation of in this 
 respect, 138, importance of 
 the craftsman's conscience, 140; 
 personalities in, 127 ; schools 
 of, 139 ; sensational, 84 ; space 
 given to literature, 124-6 j 
 superficial, and why, 120-z, 
 138 ; wide range of, 124 
 
 Jowett, B., 76, 207 
 
 Juvenal, 124 
 
 Keats, the iWe great Odes compared, 
 189-192; revisions in his 
 poetry, 250, 256, 302-310; 
 various references, 143, 198, 
 199, 261 
 particular poems quoted or referred 
 to : — Autumn, 190, 191 ; 
 Grecian Urn, 190, 191 ; Hy- 
 perion, 250, 303, 304 ; In a 
 Drear-nighted December, 309 ; 
 Indolence, 1S9 ; La Belle 
 Dame, 307 ; Maia, 190 ; 
 Melancholy, 190, 256 ; Night- 
 ingale, 190, 192, 306; Psyche, 
 190, 192 ; Sleep, 305 
 
 Kingsley, Rev. W., on Turner, 243 
 
 Kipling, A Diversity of Creatures, 
 on Horace, 186 
 
 Kitchener, Lord, 146, 148 
 
 Lairesse, Gerard de, 213 
 
 Lang, Andrew, as journalist, 123 ; 
 handwriting, 246 
 
 Larkin; Henry, 70 
 
 Latin poetry, the finest lines in, 
 187, 188 ; the worst line in, 189 
 
 Lee, Sir Sidney, Principles of Bio- 
 graphy (Leslie Stephen Lecture), 
 
 4,7.13 
 Leighton, Lord, illustrations to 
 Romola, to8 
 
 y2 
 
3H 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lempiiire's Classical Dictionary, z}^ 
 
 Leopold, Prince, Z78 
 
 Lessing's LaocoHn, 243 
 
 Letters as biographical material, 15, 
 
 20, 24 
 Lever, Charles, Charles CfMalley, 144 
 Lewes, G. H., and the Comhill, 83 j 
 
 t,ife of Goethe, 20 
 Leyland, Mr., and Whistler, 244, 
 
 245 
 Literature, and journalism, 113 seq.; 
 
 and the magazines, 98, 112 
 Local allusions in poetry, 301 
 Locke, 198 
 Loclchart, J. G., Life of Scon, 6 ; 
 
 review of Tennyson, 260, 261 
 Lovelace, Richard, 9 
 Lowe, Robert, as journalist, izo ; 
 
 on the battle of Marathon, 205 
 Lowrell, J. R., index to Biglmii 
 
 Papers, 72 ; " The Present 
 
 Crisis " quoted, 142 
 Lucas, £. v., and the Comhill, 95, 
 
 99 
 Lucca, 47 
 
 Lucretius, 182, 263 
 Luxmoore, H, £,, on profiteering, 
 
 172 
 Lyons, Lord,- Life of, 17 
 Lyrical Ballads, 251, 254, 314 
 Lytton, E. Bulwer, on Scott, 202 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 198 ; death of, 
 107; fondness for literary class- 
 lists, 181 ; History of England, 
 64 ; limitations of, 181, 204 ; 
 quoted or referred • to, on : — ■ 
 The Ancient Mariner, 256, 
 Jane Austen, 202, Boswell, 3, 
 Don Quixote, 200, Dryden, 
 193, indexing, 64, 69, 73, 
 Lays of Ancient Rome, 181, 
 order of poets, 182, Richard- 
 son, 57, Shalcespeare's plays, 
 181, Thucydides, 206, Vicar 
 of Wakefield, 200, Virgil, 187 
 
 Macaulay, Z., Z09 
 
 MacColl, D. S., 214 n. 
 
 Mackail, J. W., Life of William 
 Morris quoted, 52, 203 
 
 McKenna, S., Sonia quoted, vii 
 
 Macmillan, Alexander, 90 
 
 Macmillan's Magazine, 81, 90, 112 
 
 Madvig, J, N., 248 
 
 Magazines, literature and, 98 ; 
 writing in, for fame and pay, 
 102 
 
 Magenta, 148 
 
 Maitland, F. W., Life of Leslie 
 Stephen, 86, 94, 97, 100 , 
 
 Martial, epigram (i. 18), 147 
 
 Martineau, Harriet, 298 
 
 Maxwell, Sir Herbert, Life of Lord 
 Clarendon, 17 
 
 May, Phil, 8 
 
 Med win, T., Conversations of Byron, 
 quoted (Shelley), 194 
 
 Mendelism, 65 
 
 Meredith, George, favourite passages 
 in literature, 186, 187 ; "Love 
 in the Valley," revisions in, 
 281-7 i on Myers's St. Paul, 
 281 n. } on Leslie Stephen, 94 
 
 Michelangelo, poems, 242 
 
 Mill, J. S., and Sterling, 32 ; on 
 Ruslcin, 37 ; style, 41 — 
 
 Millais, Sir J., illustrations to 
 Trollope, 108 
 
 Milton, 198 ; Bentley and, 248 ; 
 finest lines in, 184 ; Ode on 
 the Nativity, 194 ; on good 
 English, 137 ; place among 
 poets. 182, 183 J quoted by 
 Turner, 215, 216 ; Tennyson 
 on, 34, 184 
 
 Mommsen on Renan, 40 
 
 Monkhouse, Cosmo, on Turner, 
 224, 242, 245 
 
 Morison, J. C, on Gibbon, 208 
 
 Morley, Lord, and Burke, 199 ; 
 as journalist, 123 ; Life of 
 Gladstone, 27, index, 67, 74, 
 quoted, 183 ; Notes on Politics 
 and History, quoted, 26, 23 ; 
 Recollections, i6k., 126, index, 
 75 ; on the four sacred bards 
 {Miscellanies, Byron), 182 ; 
 on journalism (Compromise), 
 117 ; on Mill's style (Recollec- 
 tions),ni ; on the most melodious 
 line {Recollections\ 185 ; on 
 Ruskin (Studies in Literature), 
 34 ; ff^ordsworti, 176, 3IZ, 313 
 
 Morris, William, and Ruskin, 52 i 
 
INDEX 
 
 3^5 
 
 and Miss Ybnge, 203 ; on the 
 artist's delight, 131, 141 
 
 Murray, Grenville, io6 
 
 Music, 244 
 
 Myers, F. W. H., favourite passages 
 in literature, 187 ; on Tennyson, 
 197 ; on Wordsworth, 31 1 j 
 St. Paul, revisions in, 277-81 
 
 Napoleon I., 148 
 
 Napoleon III., 105 
 
 National Gallery, buried Turners, 
 
 211 
 New College Essay Society, vii 
 Ntio Mttglish Dictionary (Oxford 
 
 Dictionary), 120, 133 »•, 146, 
 
 148, 161, 167, 17b 
 New Journalism) 126 
 Newman, Cardinal, style, 38, 39 
 
 (Mozley's Letters of J. H. N. 
 
 •'. 477) 
 Newnes, Sir G., 128 
 Newspapers, have they souls ? 9 1 ; 
 
 traditional styles in, 95. See 
 
 also Journalism 
 Newton, Lord, Life of Lord Lyons, 17 
 New JVitness, quoted, 169 
 NicoU, Sir W. Rpbertson, 298 
 North, Roger, Lives of the Norths, 
 
 II, 12 n. 
 Norton, C. E., on Carlyle and 
 
 Froude, 21 
 Novels; serial publication of, 81 ; 
 
 should they be indexed ? 58 ; 
 
 which is the best? 199-Z04 
 
 Ode, which is the best English? 
 
 »9J-S 
 Officialese {Times, Aug. 9, 191 7), 
 
 Oman, Professor, 147 
 
 Omar Khayyam Club, 138, 275 
 
 Opie, John, R.A., 66 
 
 Osborn, E. B., The Muse in Arms, 
 
 142 
 Ossian, 218 
 Ovid and Turner, 223, 224 
 
 Paganini, 88 
 
 PalgraVe, F, T., 271 ; 
 
 Pall Mall Gaxette, 122, 183, 185 ; 
 of fiction^ 116 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, 29 - 
 
 Pater, WaltA, as journalist, 122; 
 
 on Anders-streben in art, 244 ; 
 
 on style, 40, 54, 316 
 Paul, H. W., Men and Letters, 268 
 Payn, James, and the Cornhill, 98, 99 
 •Peeler, 148 
 Pindar, 194 
 Plagiarism, 293 
 Plato, 39, 301 
 
 Plutarch's Lives, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14 
 Poe, E. A., "To Helen" quoted, 
 
 205 
 Poetry, or music, the norm of the 
 
 arts .' 244 ; the finest line in, 
 
 184; perfection in, 191, 316, 
 
 3>7 
 Poole's index to periodicals, 103 
 Pope, 198 i his villa and Turner, 
 
 217 
 Presentation copies, 209 
 Proctor, R. A., 98, 106 
 Proof-reading, 302 
 Prout, Father (F. S. Mahony), 1 1 1 
 Punch, 161 ; on Turner, 235, 236 
 Purcell, E. S., Life of Manning, 21 
 
 Sjjutrterly Revieiii, 260, 282 
 Querela, 47 
 
 Quiller-Couch, Sir A., on Keats's 
 Odes, 190, 191, 192 ; on Jargon, 
 
 135 
 Quinet, E., and Matthew Arnold, 
 294, 296 
 
 Raglan, Lord, and Miss Yonge, .203 
 Raleigh, Prof. Sir W., on Boswell 
 
 {Six Essays on yohnson), 3 
 Rawlinson, W. G., on "Turner's 
 
 poetry, 226 
 Reading, aids to, 61 
 Renan, style, 40 
 Revisions in poetry, loi, 249 seq, 
 
 {See further Second Thoughts) 
 Rhodes, Cecil, 5 
 Riccio, Luigi del, 242 
 Richardson, Samuel, J7 
 Ritchie, Lady, Blackstick Papers, 93 
 Rogers, Thorold, 119 
 Rome and Turner, 226, 231 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 155 
 Rosebefy, Lord, Chatham, 13, 15, 
 
326 
 
 INDEX 
 
 z$, 26 ; NafohoH, 56 ; on 
 bonfires for books, 65 
 
 Rossetti, Christina, Advent, 178; 
 Old and New Year Ditties, 178 
 .Rossetti, D. G., Ave, 294 ; Blessed 
 Damozel, revisions in, 287-92 ; 
 Burden of Nineveh, 245 ; Last 
 Confession, '293 ; LoveVNoc- 
 turn, 292 ; on a passage in 
 Ruskin, 53 
 
 Rossetti, W. M., on local mendacity 
 in poetry, 293, 294 
 
 Rowlandson, T., 127 
 
 Roxburghe Club, 56 
 
 Ruskin, John, diaries and letters 
 of, 36, 47 ; drawings of, 51; 
 intellectual independence, 3 5, 
 36, 37 ; a letter to Mrs. Carlyle, 
 36 J a master of English prose, 
 34 ; use of superlatives, 179 
 Remarks of, quoted, on : — bio- 
 graphy, 15, 30; Don Quixote, 
 200; Horace, 186; indexing, 75; 
 journalism, 118 ; Leighton's 
 
 f'smola drawings, 108 ; Lock- 
 art's Scott, 6 ; Ifyers's Poems, 
 27S, 281; repentirs, 316; 
 Rossetti's Blessed Damozel, 
 287 ; Scott's Novels, 201, 202 ; 
 The Story of Ida, 31 ; Tennyson, 
 197, 269 ; Thucydides, 206 ; 
 Turner, 218, 220, 222, 233, 
 240 ; Vicar of Wakefield, 200 
 ^ Particular works, quoted or re- 
 ferred to : — Collected .Works, 
 Library Edition, 36, 38, 42 »., 
 47, 49B., 51, 53, 59,74, 240 n.; 
 Crown of Wild Olive, 45, 46 «.; 
 Fors Clavigera, index, 72 ; 
 Har hours of England, 53 ; 
 Lecture on Style, 42-5 ; Modern 
 Painters, 36, 43, 47, 49, 50, 
 52, 53, 124, 234, 313 ; Munsra 
 Pulveris, 89; Poems, 124; 
 Poetry of Architecture, 35 ; 
 Praterita, 35, 38, S'. 5-3 i 
 Pre-Raphaelitism, 222 j Unto 
 this Last, 43, 87, 173 
 Style of ! — formed earl}t> and 
 natural to him, 35 ; pains 
 taken, 38, in revising, 49 ; 
 exact use of words, 38 ; early 
 
 manner and hiatter, 41-2, 
 compared with later, 42-4, 
 47-9, 134 ; concentrated, 44-7 j 
 a word-painter, in what sense, 
 50-4 
 
 Ruskin, John James, 38 »,, 212 
 
 Russell, Sir W., 126 
 
 Saintsbury, Professor, 296, 301 
 
 Sala, G. A., 83, 117 
 
 Salisbury, Lord, as subject of 
 biography, 27 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 198 ; quoted by 
 Turner, 2i8 ; WaverlEy Novels, 
 13, key to, 58, which are 
 the best? 201 
 
 Second Thoughts of Poets, interest 
 of, as studies in taste, 250, 259, 
 270 ; felicities often due " to, 
 250 ; ill,u3trations from : — 
 Arnold, loi, 294-302, Cole- 
 ridge, 251-9, 315-16, Fitz- 
 Gerald, 270-7, Keats, 250, 
 302-10, Meredith, 281-7, 
 Myers, 277-81, Rossetti, 287- 
 294, Shelley, 250, Tennyson, 
 loi, 251, 259-70, Words- 
 worth, 310-15 ; not always best, 
 267, 269, 271, 307, 311, 316 
 
 Senior, Nassau William, 105 
 
 Shadwell, A., on profiteering, 172 
 
 Shakespeare, which are tile- best 
 plays? 182; King Richard II. 
 quoted, 175 ; various references, 
 182, 183, 185, 198, 203, 248, 
 294 
 
 Shelley, on Coleridge, 194 ; text of, 
 248, 249 ; the 'Turner of 
 poetry, 2i8; poems quoted or 
 referred to : — Alastor, 219-20, 
 221, 222 ; Julian andlUaddolo, 
 221, 222 J Lament, 186 ; Prome- 
 theus, 2 1 8, 220, 221, 222 ; 
 Siueen Mob, 219 ; To Jane 
 (Ariel to Miranda), 248 ; To 
 Jane (The Recollection), 250 ; 
 various references, 198,- 199, 
 204 
 
 Shenstone, W. A., gS 
 
 Shrapnel, General, 149 
 
 Slip of the pen, the most unaccount- 
 able, 200 n. 
 
INDEX 327. 
 
 Smith, George, and the Cornhill, 88, 
 ^ '1 96> 99 ; anecdote of Leigh 
 Hunt, 103 
 
 Smith, Reginald, 100 
 
 Smith, Sydney, 131 
 
 Smuts, General, v, 173 
 
 Sophocles, 182, 261 
 
 Southey's Life of Nehon, 8 
 
 Spectator on profiteering, 170 
 
 Spedding, James, 263 
 
 Spenser, 198 
 
 Spielmann, M. H., 41 
 
 Spiritualism, 84 
 
 Stanley, Dean, handwriting, 246 
 
 Statins, 189 
 
 Stead, W. T., 4, 126 ». 
 
 Stellenbosch, 149 " 
 
 Stephen, Sir Leslie, as editor of the 
 Cornhill, 86, 89, 96, 97, 98, 
 100 ; his Cornhill essays, 93, 
 III ; on journalism, 120, 122 ; 
 on Lewes's Life of Goethe, 20 ; 
 on Thackeray, 93 
 
 Sterling, John, 32 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, and the 
 Cornhill, 94, 95, ii^i ; favourite 
 passages in literature, 180 ; on 
 Roger North, 12 ». ; style of, 
 
 39 
 
 Strachey, J. St. Loe, as editor of the 
 ~Cornhill, 99 
 
 Stubbs, Bishop, 119 
 
 Style, 35, 39-42 
 
 Superlatives in literary estimates, 
 injudicious, 176, but interest- 
 ing, 177, and revealing, 179 j 
 some dealers in, 177, 199 
 
 Swift, 198 
 
 Swinburne, favourite passages in 
 literature, 187 ; use of superla- 
 tives by, 177 ; quoted or referred 
 to, on : — The Ancient Manner, 
 256 ; Matthew Arnold, 298 j 
 FitzGerald's Omar, 271, 274, 
 275 ; Herrick, 178 ; Keats's 
 Odes, 190, 192 ; Les Mis^rables, 
 201 ; Christina Rossetti, 177 ; 
 Rossetti's Blessed Damozel, 
 287, 292; Tennyson, 196; 
 Thackeray, 107 
 Sykes, Godfrey, 1 10 
 
 Symonds, J. A., and the Cornhill, 
 
 97 ; as journalist, 122 ; favourite 
 passages in literature, 1 86 j on 
 the norm of the arts, 244 
 
 Toilet, 73 
 
 Tacitus, 205, 207-9 
 
 Taylor, Sir H., 194 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 34 
 
 Teddy, 154 
 
 Telegraphese, 106, 1338. 
 
 Temple Bar magazine, II2 
 
 Tenniel, Sir John, 127 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 199 ; his 
 
 best poem, 195-8 ; range and 
 
 variety of his work, 197 j ,long 
 
 period of productivity, 198 ; mis- 
 
 . prints in, 249 ; revisions in, 25 1, 
 
 259-70 
 Remarks by, quoted or referred 
 to, on : — alliteration, 264 ; Jane 
 Austen, 203 ; commentators, 
 240 ; first editions, 259 ; hissing 
 in poetry, 267 ; hymns, 177 ; 
 Keats, 192 ; Meredith, 282 ; 
 poetical germination, 316 j 
 Scott,. 202 j the six greatest 
 English prose writers, 34 ; 
 Wordsworth, 184 
 Particular poems quoted or referred 
 to : — Charge of the Heavy 
 Brigade, 144 ; Charge of the 
 Light Brigade, 269 ; Dream of 
 Fair Women, 261, 269 ; In 
 Memoriam, 195, 267 ; Lady of 
 Shalott, 265 ; Locksley Hall, 
 260 ; Lotos Eaters, 2^3 ; Maud, 
 , O let not the solid ground, 
 129, O that 'twere possible, 
 196 ; Miller's Daughter, 267 ; 
 CEnone, 187, 262, 268 ; On 
 the Death of the Duke of 
 Wellington, 194, 195 ; Palace 
 of Art, 251 ; Poets and their 
 Bibliographies, 260 ; Princess, 
 195, 196 ; Sea Dreams, 90, 268; 
 Tithonus, 90, loi ; To E. Fitz- 
 Gerald, 270 ; To the Queen, 
 no; To Virgil, 189, 197 ; 
 translations from Homer, 63, 
 102 ; Ulysses, 156 ; Vision of 
 Sin, 270 «. ; You ask me, why, 
 - tho' ill at ease, 267 
 
328 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Tennyson, Hallam Lord, Memoir of 
 his father, 3, 259, 270 
 
 Thackeray, as editor of the Corniill, 
 82-9, 91, 95 i the Thackeray 
 touch, 91, 93 ; novelS) 203 ; 
 Lovel the Widirwer, 83, I07 ; 
 Pendennis, 144; Philip, 117; 
 Roundabout Papers, 83, 93, 103, 
 107 J on Screens in Dining- 
 rooms, 100 ; Thorns in the 
 Cushion, 83, 89 ; on Charlotte 
 Brontg, 107 
 
 Theocritus, 188 
 
 Thompson, Sir H., 84 
 
 Thomson's Seasons, 216 
 
 Thoreau, i8o 
 
 Thornbury, Walter, Life of Turner, 
 211, 238 
 
 Thucydides, 12, 205-9 
 
 Times, The, 124, 135, 157, 161,205 ; 
 Literary Supplement, 1 24 
 
 Tindale, 198 
 
 Tit-Bits, 128 
 
 Tommy Atkins, 154 
 
 Tooke, Home, 6i 
 
 Traill, H. D., on Coleridge, 251 
 
 Treaty of Paris, 165 
 
 Trelawny, E., Recollections of Shelley, 
 248 
 
 Trench, Archbishop, On the Study of 
 ff^ords, 143, 169 
 
 Trevelyan, Sir George, Early Life of 
 Charles James Fox, 13, 204 ; 
 Life of Macaulay, 21, 159 »., 
 183, 209 
 
 Trevelyan, G. M., books on Gari- 
 baldi, 28, 105 ; Life of John 
 Bright, 28, 29 
 
 Trollope, Anthony, and the Cornhill, 
 82, 83, 85 5 on Millais's illus- 
 trations, 108 
 
 Turner, J. M. W., character of, 
 223, 238, 240 ; choice of 
 mottoes for his pictures, 216, 
 218, 233 ; fond of poetry, 215 ; 
 industry, 212, 213 ; interest in 
 classical story, 224, 226, 231 ; 
 landscape, view of, 228 ; 
 lectures, 214; note and sketch 
 books, 211-14; the Shelley of 
 painting, 218-22 
 Pictures and drawings : — Apollo 
 
 and the Python, 223 j Caligula's 
 Palace and Bridge, 232 ; 
 Cephalus and Procris, 219 ; 
 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, 
 218; Corfe Castle, 225; 
 Decline of the Carthaginian 
 Empire, 232 ; Departure of the 
 Fleet, 237 ; Dido building 
 Carthage, 228 ; Evening Stat", 
 
 234 ; Exile and Rock Limpet, 
 
 235 ; Fountain of Fallacy, 237 ; 
 Garreteer's Petition, 134 «. ; 
 Greta and Tees, 42 ; Hannibal 
 crossing the Alps, 231 ; Light 
 arid Colour, 237 ; Lulworth 
 Cove, 225 ; Morning on Conis- 
 ton Fells, 215; Opening of the 
 Walhalla, 236 ; Poole, 225 ; 
 Queen Mab's Grotto, 218 j 
 Shylock, 220 ; Slave Ship, 
 241 ; later Swiss drawings, 
 243 ; Timitihe, 220 j Twilight 
 at Harlech Castle, 215 ; Ulysses, 
 223 ; Venice, Going to the 
 Ball, and Returning from the 
 Ball, 233 
 
 Poetry of : — characteristics of, 
 224, 226, 229, 230, 241 i 
 examples of, in mottoes for his 
 pictures, Fallacies of Hope, 
 223, 231, 232, 235, 236, 237, 
 from his note-books, 217, 225, 
 226, 227, 229, 230, 234 ; 
 reasons for his persistent 
 attempts, 238 et seq. 
 Tyrrell, Professor, I,aft'» Poetry, 188, 
 189 
 
 Van de Weyer, M., viii 
 Venice, and Turner, 231, 233 
 Virgil, 182, 187, 261, 311 i the 
 
 best lines in, 187, 188 j the 
 
 worst, 189 
 Voltaire, 187 
 
 Wace, Dean, 133 
 
 Walker, Frederick, illustrations in 
 
 the Cornhill, 108 
 Walston, Sir C, on Ruskin, 50, 
 
 53.59 
 War bulletins, 137 
 War correspondents, 126 
 
INDEX 
 
 329 
 
 War words and phrases, history 
 summed in, 142-4 ; reflect 
 changed or new military con- 
 ditions, 144-6, 152, 163, and 
 new economic and diplomatic 
 conditions, 165 seq. ; adapt 
 names of famous men, 147-S, 
 names of places, 148, names 
 of inventors, 149 j onomato- 
 poeic, 150, 152; humorous 
 associations, 150 ; difficulty of 
 fixing origin of, 155 ; adopted 
 from abroad, 158-62 
 Particular words and phrases : — 
 aerobatics, 152 ; aerodrome, 
 152 ; Anzac, 143 ; Archies, 
 151 ; aunties, 151 ; barbed- 
 wire disease, 142 j biplane, 
 152; Blighty, 157; Boloism, 
 160 ; Bolshevilc, 162 ; Bosche, 
 158; camouflage, 159; clean 
 cut, 164; S.O.'s, 163; coal- 
 scuttles, 150 ; comb, comb- 
 ing out, 164; Conchies, 163 ; 
 Cuthbert, 163 ; defeatist, 160 ; 
 Dora, 150 ; duds, 145 ; dug-out, 
 144, 145 ; food hoarders, 162 ; 
 fnnkholes, 163 ; gassed, 142 j 
 going west, 156 ; grandmothers, 
 151 ; Hamstertanties, 161 ; 
 heavies, 144; Hun, 158 ; 
 internationalism, 169 ; Jack 
 Johnsons, 150 ; Kitcheners, 
 
 148 ; Leninism, 162 ; Lewis, 
 
 149 ; Maximalist, 162 ; mili- 
 tarism, 166 ; Mills, 149 i 
 monoplane, 152 ; Old Con- 
 temptibles, 161 ; over the top, 
 143 ; pacifism, pacifists, 168 ; 
 pill-box, 151 ; pip-squeak, 150 ; 
 plum puddings, 151 ; profiteer- 
 ing, 170 ; right of self-deter- 
 mination, 169 ; Sammies, 155 ; 
 sausages, 151; shell-shock. 
 
 142; steam-roller, 143 ; Stokes, 
 149 ; strafe, strafing, 161 ; 
 streamline, 153 j tanks, 150 ; 
 tear-shells, 142 ; Tony, 154 ; 
 trialism, 162 ; volplane, 152 ; 
 Waacs, 143 ; whizz-bang, 150 j 
 Wrens, 143 5 zoom, 153 
 
 Ward, Sir A. W., on the Cornhill, 97 
 
 Wardour Street English, 254 
 
 Watts-Dunton, T., 194, 198 
 
 Wedderburn, Alexander, 38 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, on authors, 
 209 ; use of his name, 148 
 
 Westminster Gazette, 164, 300 
 
 Wheatley, H. B., on indexes, 69 
 
 Whistler, 244 
 
 Whitley, W. T., 214 ». 
 
 Wilde, Oscar, as journalist, 123 ; 
 on unreadable books, 216 n. 
 
 Williams, Basil, Li/i of Chatham, 26 
 
 Wise, B. R., 12 B. 
 
 Wood, Anthony J, Athenae Oxonien- 
 ses, 8 
 
 Wordsworth, 198 ; his best ten 
 years, 198 ; revisions in his 
 poetry, 259, 310-15 ; particular 
 poems, etc., quoted or referred 
 to : — Advertisementto Thanks- 
 giving Ode, Jan. 18, 18 1 6, 167 ; 
 Descriptive Sketches, 3 14 ; 
 Laodamia, 311 ; Lines on Fox, 
 312; Lyrical Ballads, 254; 
 Ode on Intimations of Im- 
 mortality, 194 ; A Poet's 
 Epitaph, 317 ; Prefaces, 89 ; 
 Rob Roy's Grave, 171 ; 
 Stepping Westward, 156.; 
 Thanksgiving Ode, 1815, 310^ 
 The world is too much with 
 us, 184 ; Tintern Abbey, 184 ; 
 To B. R. Haydon, 139; We 
 are seven, 314 
 
 Yonge, Miss, TheHeir o/Reddyffe, 203 
 
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