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THE MAN FORBID 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN DAVIDSON 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 EDWARD J. O'BRIEN 
 
 M 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 THE BALL PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 1910 
 

 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Copyright 1910, by 
 THE BALL PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 @CU'3653 15 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FACE 
 
 Introduction 7 
 
 The Man Forbid 21 
 
 Pre-Shakespearianism 33 
 
 Banderole's Esthetic Bill ... 41 
 
 On Writing a Causerie 55 
 
 The Criticism of Poetry . , . . 65 
 
 Tete-a-Tete 75 
 
 A Spirit 89 
 
 Tete-a-Tete 99 
 
 A Would-be Londoner 109 
 
 The Art of Poetry 125 
 
 Thoughts on Irony 133 
 
 George Meredith's Odes . . . .139 
 Evolution in Literature . . . .151 
 
 Tete-a-Tete 155 
 
 Poetry and Criticism 163 
 
 Tete-a-Tete 169 
 
 Tete-a-Tete 183 
 
 Chanctonbury Ring 195 
 
 By-Ways 207 
 
 Prose Eclogue 219 
 
 On Interviewing 231 
 
 On the Downs 247 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 JOHN DAVIDSON has given notable 
 work to his generation as a poet^ as a 
 novelist^ as an essayist_, and as a critic. All 
 his literary work comprehends a philosophy 
 of life, and whether or not this philosophy 
 be original or echoed, true or false, the fact 
 remains that it has had a strongly marked, 
 though not always clearly recognised, influ- 
 ence on English letters. If his views of life 
 seem merely the result of mental indigestion 
 brought on by an overdose of Nietszche, it 
 is likewise true that his forceful expression 
 gave to these views a more serious hearing 
 by a larger audience than had hitherto been 
 granted to most English followers of the 
 Apostle of the Uehermensch, 
 
 By reason of his doctrines, the facts of 
 his life are interesting, if only for the light 
 they shed on the pathetic though not uncom- 
 mon contrast between this man's dream and 
 
 7 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 his deed. For like many more before him he 
 glimpsed the Grail, but only through a mist 
 of error which he lacked the will to disperse. 
 Yet inasmuch as he followed the quest long 
 and faithfully, ere he succumbed to the 
 final weakness, the chronicle of his days is 
 ennobling, and though simple as far as out- 
 ward happenings were concerned, shows much 
 complexity in the literary product. 
 
 John Davidson was born at Barrhead, in 
 Renfrewshire, Scotland, on the eleventh of 
 April, 1857- His father, the Reverend Alex- 
 ander Davidson, was a minister of the 
 Evangelical Union. The boy's training was 
 hardly academic in the true sense of the 
 word, and was limited to what he was inclined 
 to gather in The Highlanders* Academy in 
 Greenock, where he acted as a sort of pupil- 
 teacher, and in the course of a single session 
 at the University of Edinburgh. Leaving 
 college in 1877, he wrote his first play, now 
 known as " An Unhistorical Pastoral," which, 
 however, was not published until over ten 
 years later. As a boy he had worked as an 
 assistant in a chemical laboratory in Green- 
 ock, and later as assistant to the Town Analyst, 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 and the training which this occupation gave 
 him was utilised to no little advantage in later 
 days when he sought for an apt simile to 
 convey his meaning. Upon leaving the Uni- 
 versity, he took refuge in teaching, and be- 
 tween 1877 and 1889 he gave instruction in 
 numerous private and charity schools, devot- 
 ing his leisure to poetic and dramatic compo- 
 sition. In 1890, he came up to London, and 
 eked out a scanty subsistence by writing ar- 
 ticles and reviews for the Glasgow Herald 
 and the Speaker, until his poetry began to 
 attract the attention of the literary public. 
 For the next few years his career was that of 
 the successful journalist who elevated his 
 craft by the sheer energy of his effort to a 
 position where it might probably be called 
 inspired. The irony of his life was this. 
 Potentially capable of leadership, he bowed 
 to public opinion and followed the line of 
 least resistance. The immediate success was 
 possibly greater; the ultimate painful out- 
 come is unhappily well-known to everyone. 
 In the latter part of April, 1909, he suddenly 
 disappeared, leaving behind him manuscripts 
 which clearly revealed a suicidal purpose. 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Several months later his body was discov- 
 ered, and to-day the world mourns him as a 
 talented genius whose will-power succumbed 
 to despair. 
 
 To turn from John Davidson's life to his 
 work is as if the reader's mind were suddenly 
 to be plunged into an over-stimulating cur- 
 rent of mental activity. The effect is pleas- 
 ant, but it is a shock. No matter what the 
 form of Davidson's expression may be, 
 whether it be prose or poetry, essay or drama, 
 we are brought face to face with a strongly 
 combative intellect which does violence to 
 our beliefs, and half convinces us by sheer 
 force of epigram and paradox. What more 
 shocking mental stimulant can be found than 
 such an interrogation as this, which stands 
 all by itself in " A Rosary." " Is not hope 
 only a more subtle form of despair ? " These 
 arresting questions, or statements such as this, 
 ** Dignity is impudence," are invariably 
 novel, and their appeal to the reader's intel- 
 lectual pride is so subtly calculated as to take 
 by storm the position which a more suave and 
 ordered argument would leave intact. By 
 reason of this and other characteristics, John 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 Davidson has succeeded in founding a school 
 in contemporary English composition which 
 may be briefly characterised as the apotheosis 
 of journalism^ and whose chief exponent to- 
 day is Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. Even the cas- 
 ual reader will observe far more than a super- 
 ficial resemblance,, for example, between 
 " The Napoleon of Notting Hill " or " The 
 Club of Queer Trades/' and John Davidson's 
 less familiar, though by no means inferior, - / 
 novels, " Perfervid " and " The Good Men." 
 Nor is this resemblance confined to fiction. I 
 think there is a very marked similarity in 
 thought-processes, to say the least, between 
 the critical essays of John Davidson, as they 
 appeared week after week in the columns of 
 ** The Speaker," and the causeries and re- 
 views by Gilbert Chesterton which appeared 
 not long afterward in the same critical jour- 
 nal. 
 
 This type of creative work is neither 
 healthy nor healthful. Think of Dr. John- 
 son turned Pierrot, and the reductio ad ab- 
 surdum is complete and immediate. The 
 pose is delightful, — indeed it is almost fully 
 justified, — but it lacks enthusiasm. It is 
 
12 . INTRODUCTION 
 
 not fresh and natural: it is forced and arti- 
 ficial. It takes different forms, you may say. 
 True: but whether your would-be Dr. John- 
 son is a follower of Davidson or a follower 
 of his master Nietszche^ the net result is the 
 same. For the external is all that is copied: 
 the red blood of enthusiasm, though not the 
 counterfeit fluid of force, is almost completely 
 lost. The absurd public antics of Gerard 
 de Nerval and other French symbolists, which 
 Symons relates, and Gilbert Chesterton jump- 
 ing in and out of hansom cabs, as related by 
 himself, seem equally artificial. The truth of 
 the matter is that the fin-de-siecle pose is be- 
 ginning to seem old-fashioned, and that this 
 reaction from it is in danger of going to even 
 more violent extremes. For this reason, it is 
 important to know just what John Davidson, 
 who holds the balance between the two, really 
 stands for. If he had been the strong man, 
 like Dr. Johnson, the study of his work would 
 have been more valuable. As it is, he is the 
 sole bridge that we have between the period 
 of the malade imaginaire, and the Kipling 
 period that followed. The two periods may 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 seem identical in point of date, but the fact 
 remains, I think, that the so-called fin-de- 
 siecle era was experienced long before it was 
 expressed, and that England suffered less 
 from it than any other nation. 
 
 The contemporary man who is potentially 
 strong but vacillatingly weak, if he have an 
 original mind and a magnetic personality, is 
 bound to suffer much in the conflict. To him 
 both sides appear to have much of truth, and 
 in endeavoring to live his life, he is torn be- 
 tween two ideals seemingly wide apart as the 
 poles, — the one apparently symbolising 
 death, and the other life. The suffering is 
 born of delusion, for as a matter of fact, the 
 two are one, and both are evil, since spiritual 
 death for itself and bodily life and progress 
 for itself are one and indivisible and false. 
 Villiers de I'lsle Adam, the typical symbolist, 
 informed his countrymen that his continued 
 existence reminded him of the bored playgoer 
 in the front seat of a proscenium box who sat 
 through the play only out of courtesy for 
 the feelings of his neighbors. Kipling, on 
 the other hand, preaches the gospel of the 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 body. You cannot be an animal and live only 
 out of politeness. It is a contradiction in 
 terms. 
 
 Davidson sought the magnificent vision, 
 and found it neither in Symons nor in Kip- 
 ling. Being a child of his century, he turned 
 to Nietszche. Though he repudiated evolu- 
 tion, and wrote a novel to attack its absurdi- 
 ties, as another has done after him, he found 
 relief and inspiration for his thought and 
 expression in the cymbals and sunrises of 
 Zarathustra. Here, at last, he breathed a 
 clearer, brighter air. In " Sentences and 
 Paragraphs " he had written as follows : — 
 
 " The chief hindrances in the consideration 
 of any matter are the thoughts of others. It 
 is not so much a test of genius to think 
 originally, as to know what one actually does 
 think. Some men upon most subjects have 
 two judgments: a public one for daily use, 
 and a private one which they deceive them- 
 selves into the belief they never held. There 
 are decent, honest men who opine the opin- 
 ions of others, jDcrsuaded that they are their 
 own; few indeed can detach their proper 
 thought from the mass of ideas.** 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 Realising this truth then, he turned, as I 
 said, to Nietszche. He was fortunately too 
 clear-sighted to follow his master absolutely. 
 As the ostrich buries its head in the sand, so 
 Nietszche buries his nose in the upper air, 
 and refuses to look at the slime in which his 
 feet are dabbling, conscious only of a pleas- 
 ant, titillating coolness. Let us be primitive, 
 but let our minds be clear, says Davidson, 
 and he looks at the misery beneath him, and 
 forgets the blue sky above. Both are wrong, 
 but both mean well, for Nietszche and David- 
 son are alike striving. Both endeavour to 
 pull the human race up with them, but David- 
 son is content to lift them, earth and all, to 
 his own level, while Nietszche pulls men up 
 by the roots, and pelts them at the stars for 
 playthings. Davidson plays with his and 
 other men's souls: with Nietszche mankind, 
 including himself, is only a toy for the firma- 
 ment. 
 
 I have emphasised this distinction so 
 strongly for a special purpose, wishing to 
 bring out the fact that Davidson was in no 
 sense an imitator. He saw his own individ- 
 ual vision, and if it was an Inferno, so much 
 
16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the greater was his courage in voicing it. He 
 saw it in terms of poetry, and he expressed 
 it nobly, for the sense of beauty was ever 
 uppermost. He had the lyric mind, and it 
 was his misfortune to be a Scotsman. Meta- 
 physic has killed more minds than it has ever 
 cured, and the Scotsman is ever prone to dis- 
 putation. That is one reason why Dr. John- 
 son detested Scotsmen. He considered them 
 too individualistic. That is the reason why 
 Scotsmen, apart from the immortal Boswell 
 who was surely no true Scot, detest Dr. John- 
 son, and why John Davidson detested the 
 literary and ethical standards of his day. 
 For this reason, and this reason only, he pre- 
 cipitated a strong reaction in poetry and 
 prose, which, together with the anvil-blows 
 of a young Indian journalist, saved English 
 literature from being annexed to France. 
 
 Is it not well to sound a note of warning? 
 The intellectual earth nowadays is flat, and 
 contemporary England, in running away 
 from a monster that is dead, may fall over 
 the bounding precipice of the land of com- 
 mon-sense. Shaw and Chesterton are a por- 
 tent. Their method is defensible: their con- 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 viction seems open to question. Yet their 
 influence is great^ — almost overmastering. 
 John Bull would do well to look to his other 
 island before it is too late, for there, and 
 there only, lies the fresh spirit of romantic 
 beauty which can save English letters from 
 itself. 
 
 The present collection of essays may be 
 looked upon as a sequel to " Sentences and 
 Paragraphs." Gathered in the same man- 
 ner, from the dusty files of a forgotten peri- 
 odical, they have their significance as an 
 emphatic statement of some of John David- 
 son's most individual and stimulating views. 
 This interest should have been suflicient to 
 have ensured their preservation, and it is the 
 editor's excuse, if such be necessary, for his 
 undertaking. 
 
 Edward J. O'Brien. 
 
 January 24th, 1910. 
 
THE MAN FORBID 
 
THE MAN FORBID 
 
 THE long undulating seaward slope 
 of the cliffless Downs is always, in 
 clear weather, an unsatisfying prospect. 
 The face of the Downs, starved, discon- 
 tented, and unkempt, lowers gloomily on 
 the sea under rain ; in the sunshine, a pale, 
 bleak radiance plays over it, as of a land 
 hoping against hope. The cliffless Downs, 
 that is. Where the white escarpment tow- 
 ers along the beach, the seaboard has a 
 different personality ; more engaging con- 
 tours, greener turf, a lofty attitude, a 
 splendid place immediately surmounting 
 the tides. The precipice gives strength 
 and dignity ; the slow, serpentine declivity 
 creeping to an undistinguished shore is 
 as dispiriting as a string of blind beg- 
 gars. But in the evening the low-lying 
 
 21 
 
22 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 Downs seem to rise from their supine pos- 
 ture ; cloaked in the dusk they beckon and 
 whisper, and you go to meet them again. 
 Strange sounds, strange beings appear 
 upon the Downs in the gloaming, if you 
 have the ears to hear, the sight to see. 
 There and then the Itinerant met the Her- 
 mit, The Man Forbid, who neither hopes 
 nor fears, nor hates nor loves. Where he 
 lives none can tell. Sometimes he haunts 
 the desert, sometimes the snow-clad moun- 
 tains. The Itinerant met him on the 
 Downs. The day had been dull and wet, 
 but towards sunset the clouds broke up a 
 little and the rain ceased. Above the sea, 
 slanting like a ledge of dark jade, hung 
 a purple haze rimming the horizon. Above 
 the haze disordered brands smouldered 
 darkly. The depth and intensity of the 
 crimson fire filled and possessed the mind; 
 it was difficult to see the overhanging leaden 
 cloud, or to note the golden background 
 of the fire, the fainter yellow, the pale 
 green. Away from the west, cross-hatched 
 
THE MAN FORBID 23 
 
 vapour flushed rosy red and quickly faded 
 into pencil marks. Behind Cissbury Ring 
 an immense rampart of steel-blue cloud 
 rose menacingly. In the north the shadow 
 of night already loomed. As the Itinerant 
 watched the passage of time from the 
 verge of Erringham Valley, a hand was laid 
 on his shoulder, and a face peered into 
 his, the face of The Man Forbid. 
 
 " I know who you are," said the Itin- 
 erant at once. " What do you want with 
 me ? " 
 
 " I come to warn you ! " 
 
 " To warn me.^ " 
 
 " Yes. That is my only touch with hu- 
 manity : I would have others avoid my 
 fate." 
 
 " What is your fate.? " 
 
 " I shall tell you. I became so close a 
 comrade of the day and the night and the 
 time of the year, so submissive a lover and 
 student of men and women, that I forgot 
 all I had ever learnt from books. Then it 
 seemed to me that I stood erect for the 
 
24 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 first time ; and I looked with compassion 
 on the multitude beside me, bent double 
 under toppling libraries. I noted that the 
 heavier his load of libraries, and the more 
 prone his attitude, the happier the porter 
 seemed to be. I saw vast hordes of peo- 
 ple engaged in tilling the soil, and in many 
 other occupations, the majority of whom, 
 w^henever they could snatch an interval of 
 leisure, spent it in grovelling under heavy 
 burdens of printed matter, which, if they 
 had none of their own, they would beg, 
 borrow, or steal. ' Good people,' I cried 
 earnestly, ' throw off your burdens and 
 stand erect. Few are they who are helped 
 by books.' " 
 
 " I agree with you there," said the Itin- 
 erant ; " I have never learnt anything from 
 books. One only gets out of books what 
 one brings to them : that is to say, litera- 
 ture, so far as it affects the individual, 
 Is only a confirmation of his experience." 
 
 The Man Forbid resumed his discourse 
 without heeding the Itinerant's interrup- 
 
THE MAN FORBID 25 
 
 tion. " ' Few are they who are helped by 
 books. Will you die, then, crushed under 
 libraries? The printing-press works with- 
 out ceasing ; already your spines are curved 
 by the weight of the literature of thirty cen- 
 turies. Throw it all off ; stand up ; and see 
 the world for yourselves — ^ day and night, 
 and life and death. Do not think the 
 things someone has said of these ; but keep 
 watching them, and you will become excel- 
 lent, for we are what we contemplate ! ' 
 But they mocked me and told me the story 
 of the fox who lost his tail. I replied with 
 the story of the monkey, who also lost 
 his tail — in order to become a man ! I 
 said to them, ' Break with the past. All 
 that men have imagined, thought and 
 felt — art, philosophy, and religion ; all 
 that is only a spiritual tail which must be 
 got rid of if your souls are to develop.' 
 But they laughed me to scorn and pelted 
 me away with pamphlets and tomes. Then 
 I ceased to concern myself with the world 
 of men, and fixed my mind on Nature. 
 
26 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 Darkness and light, colour and sound, and 
 life and death filled me with their unsay- 
 able meaning. Again I turned to my 
 brethren, straining under piled-up libraries. 
 I could not refrain from the attempt to 
 express my thought. Not being a musi- 
 cian I was unfortunately unable to employ 
 pure sound. Language, so much more 
 dense a medium than music, refracted my 
 meaning sadly, although I chose my words 
 well. Nevertheless some of the book-por- 
 ters seemed to understand my songs, and 
 for a short season pronounced them beau- 
 tiful and true. Only for a time, however ; 
 because their minds were so preoccupied 
 with the load of libraries that they quickly 
 tired of anything else ; and once more re- 
 sented bitterly the suggestion that they 
 were wasting their time and strength in 
 supporting the accumulated thought of 
 thirty centuries. There was no harbour 
 for me among men. I left them, and grad- 
 ually man and his fate became indifferent 
 to me. Then also Nature, day and night. 
 
THE MAN FORBID 27 
 
 and life and death, ceased to interest me — 
 me, a feeble inhabitant of one of the most 
 insignificant spheres among myriads of 
 myriads that roll in space. The whole 
 substantial universe, systems and suns, and 
 life conscious and unconscious, appeared 
 to me only the momentary and impertinent 
 irruption of a shining, sounding spectre 
 into the empty, dark, and silent infinite. 
 And all this — nay, I shall leave you with a 
 smile — all this because I had cut my spir- 
 itual tail off^. The orang-outang, I sup- 
 pose, sat his tail off in the course of many 
 centuries. At any rate, you will not make 
 a monkey human by caudatomy. Nor will 
 you make men divine by cutting them off 
 at the root. It was a false analogy, that 
 of the tail. Man grows out of the past ; 
 his tap-roots descend, drawing nourishment 
 from every stratum, and are warmed by the 
 central fire. The scission of the smallest 
 rootlet will hurt his growth. It is not un- 
 derground that he must tend his develop- 
 ment, but in the sunlight, and with the 
 
28 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 winds and the dew. I have warned jou. 
 Mj heart is a husk ; my brain a mere mir- 
 ror. Men shrink from me. I am indiffer- 
 ent, and feel neither joy nor grief; but 
 since men loathe me, I know that they 
 would not be as I am. You keep too much 
 alone; you wander about on the Downs. 
 Day and night, life and death, engage your 
 thought, enthral your fancy. The ideas 
 with which men have filled and adorned 
 their environment, the ideas which they per- 
 ceive to be there, are distasteful to you. 
 You would break entirely with the past. 
 But I warn you, I warn you. Resort to 
 the knife, and you will find that it is not 
 an unbecoming and useless tail you sever 
 with manful stroke, but spiritual suicide 
 that you commit." 
 
 The Man Forbid vanished as suddenly as 
 he came ; and the Itinerant pulled himself 
 together. Had he thought of using the 
 knife? He would consider the matter in 
 his study. Meantime night was thronging 
 into the sky. Behind him the Downs had 
 
THE MAN FORBID 29 
 
 receded and sunk low. Beneath, the Nor- 
 man tower stood up shadowy, a ghostly 
 dead grey against the darkening sea. The 
 blue slate roofs, the red tiles, the red and 
 yellow chimneys of the town, appeared 
 and disappeared in the gloaming, dim 
 flashes of colour among the black groups 
 of leafless trees in the churchyard and the 
 gardens. The soft white plume of a train, 
 with ruddy under-feathers glowing in the 
 furnace fire, wheeled through the swarthy 
 branches. Two lamps were lit in a narrow 
 back street. Not a breath of wind stirred. 
 The sunset, burning slowly, smouldered out 
 above the sea ; and the opposing lamps, 
 golden-hued, took heart in the night. The 
 smoke from a thousand fires curled into the 
 air; good people were at supper; and the 
 sound of a song rose faintly. 
 
PRE-SHAKESPEARIANISM 
 
PRE-SHAKESPEARIANISM 
 
 NOW is " a voice of wailing heard and 
 loud lament " ; our young men see 
 visions and dream dreams. All the woe of 
 the world is to be uttered at last. Poetry 
 has been democratised. Nothing could 
 prevent that. The songs are of the high- 
 ways and the by-ways. The city slums 
 and the deserted villages are haunted by 
 sorrowful figures, men of power and endur- 
 ance, feeding their melancholy not with 
 heroic fable, the beauty of the moon, and 
 the studious cloisters, but with the actual 
 sight of the misery in which so many mil- 
 lions live. To this mood the vaunted 
 sweetness and light of the ineffective apostle 
 of culture are like a faded rose in a char- 
 nel-house, a flash of moonshine on the Dead 
 Sea. It is not now to the light that " the 
 
 33 
 
34> THE MAN FORBID 
 
 passionate heart of the poet " will turn. 
 In vain the old man cried : — 
 
 Authors — essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, 
 
 rhymester, play your part, 
 Paint the mortal shame of nature with the 
 
 living hues of art. 
 Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own 
 
 foul passions bare; 
 Down with Reticence, down with Reverence 
 
 — forward — naked — let them stare. 
 
 This ironical Balaam-curse has become a 
 message. It must all out. The poet is 
 in the street, the hospital. He intends the 
 world to know that it is out of joint. He 
 will not let it alone. With whatever 
 trumpet or jew's-harp he can command he 
 will clang and buzz at its ear, disturbing 
 its sleep, its pleasures ; discoursing of dark- 
 ness and of the terror that walks by night. 
 " Down with Reticence " — that kills the 
 patient ; " down with Reverence " — for 
 whatever has become abominable. Do they 
 delight in this ? No ; it is only that it is 
 
PRE-SHAKESPEARIANISM 35 
 
 inevitable. Democracy is here; and we 
 have to go through with it. 
 
 The newspaper is one of the most potent 
 factors in moulding the character of con- 
 temporary poetry. Perhaps it was first of 
 all the newspaper that couched the eyes 
 of poetry. Burns's eyes were open. 
 Blake's also for a time; and Wordsworth 
 had profound insight into the true char- 
 acter of man and of the world ; but all the 
 rest saw men as trees walking; Tennyson 
 and Browning are Shakespearian. The 
 prismatic cloud that Shakespeare hung out 
 between poets and the world ! It was the 
 newspapers, I think, that brought us round 
 to what may be called an order of Pre- 
 Shakespearianism. It was out of the news- 
 papers that Thomas Hood got " The Song 
 of the Shirt " — in its place the most im- 
 portant English poem of the nineteenth 
 century ; the " woman in unwomanly rags 
 plying her needle and thread " is the type 
 of the world's misery. " The Song of the 
 Shirt " is the most terrible poem in the 
 
S6 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 English language. Only a high heart and 
 strong brain broken on the wheel of life, 
 but master of its own pain and anguish, 
 able to jest in the jaws of death, could 
 have sung this song, of which every single 
 stanza wrings the heart. Poetry passed by 
 on the other side. It could not endure the 
 woman in unwomanly rags. It hid its head 
 like the fabled ostrich in some sand-bed of 
 Arthurian legend, or took shelter in the 
 paradoxical optimism of " The Ring and 
 the Book." It is true William Morris 
 stood by her when the priest and the Levite 
 passed by. He stood by her side, he helped 
 her; but he hardly saw her, nor could he 
 show her as she is. " Mother and Son," his 
 greatest poem, and a very great poem, is 
 a vision of a deserted Titaness in London 
 streets ; there was a veil also between him 
 and the world, although in another sense, 
 with his elemental Sigurds, he is the truest 
 of all Pre-Shakespearians. But the woman 
 in unwomanly rags, and all the insanity and 
 iniquity of which she is the type, will now 
 
PRE-SHAKESPEARIANISAI 37 
 
 be sung. Poetry will concern itself with 
 her and hers for some time to come. The 
 offal of the world is being said in statistics, 
 in prose fiction: it is besides going to be 
 sung. James Thomson sang it ; and others 
 are doing so. Will it be of any avail .^ We 
 cannot tell. Nothing that has been done 
 avails. Poor-laws, charity organisations, 
 dexterously hold the wound open, or ten- 
 derly and hopelessly skin over the cancer. 
 But there it is in the streets, the hospitals, 
 the poor-houses, the prisons ; it is a flood 
 that surges about our feet, it rises breast- 
 high. And it will be sung in all keys and 
 voices. Poetry has other functions, other 
 aims ; but this also has become its province. 
 
BANDEROLE'S AESTHETIC BILL 
 
BANDEROLE'S ESTHETIC BILL 
 
 4 4xroU'RE gloomy, Banderole." 
 X "I always am in March." 
 " How's that? " 
 
 " Because in March I mourn for my 
 Esthetic Bill." 
 
 "Your Esthetic Bill?" 
 " Yes, have you never heard of it ? " 
 " Never. Tell me about it. Banderole." 
 "Shall I? Well, I suppose I may. But 
 I must premise. Look at me, Magsworth. 
 If you were to characterise me, you would 
 say that I am a man of a passable appear- 
 ance, with — ah — a certain undignified 
 frankness — shall we call it ? — and a 
 pleasant voice. Come, now, we've known 
 each other for about a week ; and that's 
 your opinion, isn't it? Well-spoken, well- 
 looking, carelessly frank — and shrewd 
 withal? " 
 
 41 
 
42 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 " Yes ; I may think that you are per- 
 haps a httle partial to yourself; but that's 
 about my opinion." 
 
 '' Quite so. That is the opinion I have 
 of myself; that is the opinion all my new 
 acquaintances form of me ; but it is not the 
 opinion of my old friends ; and in six 
 months it will cease to be yours if you 
 continue knowing me." 
 
 " I shall continue knowing you if for 
 no other reason than to test the truth of 
 what you say." 
 
 " Very well. It was not until I was 
 forty that I discovered what my intimates 
 thought of me. Until my fortieth year, 
 the good-natured, undemonstrative defer- 
 ence with which those who knew me best 
 treated me appeared to me a tribute to my 
 shrewdness. I use the word ' shrewdness ' 
 now ; six years ago I should have employed 
 some such phrase as ' great talents,' ' in- 
 disputable capacity,' or ' remarkable 
 gifts ' ; but I have had a lesson." 
 
 " Lessons are learnt occasionally even in 
 
BANDEROLE'S ESTHETIC BILL 43 
 
 these days, when people are afraid to 
 acknowledge that they were ever taken 
 in — even by themselves." 
 
 " Quite true. One day, a apropos of 
 something I had said, an acquaintance ex- 
 claimed, ' You can't mean that ! It's not 
 in keeping w^ith the transparent simplicity 
 of your character.' I forget what it w^as I 
 had said, but that remark about myself was 
 a revelation to me. I went home with it, 
 and sat down and thought it out. Clearly 
 my intimates considered me a merely in- 
 genuous person ; brusque people took the 
 edge off their manners in dealing with me, 
 not because they feared me, but because 
 they looked upon me as a child; and the 
 wind was tempered for me generally. It 
 was a painful process, I can tell you, hav- 
 ing my eyes couched of the self-complacent 
 belief that others thought me a thorough 
 man of the world. Then for awhile I liked 
 my being misunderstood. To have the rep- 
 utation of a simpleton and to be a Machi- 
 avelli is to enjoy a position of great 
 
44 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 power; and I went about for weeks rev- 
 elling in 'a perfect analysis of the motives 
 of all my acquaintances — I saw how they 
 wanted to protect me, to aid me, to save 
 me; I had only to ask for a thing to have 
 it ; everybody wished to be able to say, 
 ' I, too, did something for that dear fel- 
 low Banderole.' I tired of that, however, 
 and determined at last to appear in my 
 true colours ; but it was a most hopeless 
 undertaking." 
 
 " It has been said that there is nothing 
 more difficult to live down than a good 
 reputation." 
 
 " And well said ; I found it so. When 
 I did anything in the role of Machiavelli, 
 people took it as a joke, and it was decided 
 that my simplicity of character grew daily 
 more transparent. It was to no purpose 
 that I said the bitterest things about all 
 my friends ; they simply quoted them to 
 each other as Banderole's latest, and agreed 
 that none but a man of the most ingenuous 
 nature could have detected and character- 
 
BANDEROLE'S ESTHETIC BILL 45 
 
 ised their faults and foibles so unerringly. 
 I despaired of ever appearing as I really, 
 am in the ordinary walks of life; so after 
 much cogitation I hit upon a distinctly 
 original idea. Did you ever have a dis- 
 tinctly original idea.? " 
 
 " I'm not sure." 
 
 " Well, if you ever have one, you will 
 enjoy- it, at first; and then you will be in 
 an agony till you make up your mind 
 what to do with it. One's first penny in 
 one's first breeches' pocket is an icicle com- 
 pared to one's first original idea. There 
 are so many things you can do with an 
 original idea. You may exemplify it in 
 your life — " 
 
 " And get run in." 
 
 " You may put it into a magazine ar- 
 ticle — " 
 
 " And be snubbed for a plagiarist. You 
 may imbed it in a play, or bury it in three 
 volumes ; you may paint it, or carve it, or 
 sing it ; and nobody will look at it or listen 
 to it." 
 
46 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 " You understand the matter. But if 
 you put it into a Bill and get it passed, 
 why, there you are for ever and ever with 
 the British Constitution. So I drew up a 
 Bill incorporating my original idea. By 
 that Bill I expected at one stride to step 
 upon a pedestal and exhibit once for all 
 that breadth and subtlety which, as long as 
 I was only one man more in the street, 
 escaped the observation of even those who 
 knew me best." 
 
 "But you were never in Parliament?" 
 
 " No ; but the Marquis of WagstafF's 
 son promised to get his father to introduce 
 the Bill into the House of Lords. You 
 see, it was really a sort of sumptuary Bill, 
 and the Lords was the proper place for 
 it, I was told. I called it a ' Bill for the 
 Beautifying of Britain,' or, briefly, an 
 ' ^Esthetic Bill.' " 
 
 " Umph ! Go on ! " 
 
 " The Bill arranged for externals only." 
 . " Right. If the outside of the platter be 
 
BANDEROLE'S ESTHETIC BILL 47 
 
 clean, it follows that the inside will also 
 be clean." 
 
 " I am glad you think so. It was my 
 opinion. I have found that the best shops 
 make the finest show, in spite of proverbs 
 to the contrary. I made no attempt to be 
 comprehensive, believing that, if in one or 
 two vast concerns an aesthetic reformation 
 were effected, the details would practically 
 work out themselves. I began with rail- 
 ways. My Bill provided that railways 
 should be bordered all their length by gar- 
 dens, and so become, as it were, rivers of 
 flowers flowing across and along the whole 
 land. The lines themselves were to be 
 made of steel, damascened with arabesques 
 in brass and silver. The stations were all 
 to be castles, kiosks, pavilions, with draw- 
 ing-rooms, dining-rooms, smoking-rooms, 
 upholstered artistically. I worked out a 
 new type of carriage superior to anything 
 that has ever been seen before ; and I in- 
 troduced a clause requiring all electricians, 
 
48 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 under a heavy penalty, to labour at the de- 
 velopment of electro-motion. I made it 
 penal to advertise in railway stations ; but 
 that was covered by a general clause for- 
 bidding all mural and open-air advertise- 
 ment. It seems to be so simple. Stop 
 advertising, and nobody would be a penny 
 the worse. On the contrary, a great many 
 people would be infinitely better in temper 
 and digestion, for you would reduce meas- 
 urably the worry of competition." 
 
 " And what about those whose occupa- 
 tions would be gone — advertising agents 
 and bill-stickers .f^ " 
 
 " My dear Magsworth, my JEsthetic 
 Bill provided occupation for more people 
 than are ever likely to want work. Con- 
 sider the immense army of gardeners re- 
 quired for the railway borders, of skilled 
 craftsmen to keep my damascened lines in 
 order. In everything I touched I provided 
 work — artistic work for thousands." 
 
 " Yes ; but about this advertising. There 
 are many miles of dead wall in suburban 
 
BANDEROLE'S ESTHETIC BILL 49 
 
 lines that would be even more sombre and 
 depressing were it not for the enamel and 
 colour of wines, perfumery, etc." 
 
 " I would have the bill-stickers taught 
 fresco-painting — they can already wield a 
 brush ; and they should then cover these 
 walls with designs and pictures." 
 
 "And the economy of it? How, for 
 example, would your railways pay? " 
 
 " The simplest thing in the world. The 
 Government would, of course, take them all 
 over; there would be only one class and 
 one fare — a penny ; you would stick a 
 stamp in your hat and go anywhere — 
 from Charing Cross to Westminster or 
 Wick. What would be the result of such 
 an arrangement? Why, Britain would 
 practically reside on its railways ; and you 
 would have on every line, not a constant 
 succession of trains, but one long unbroken 
 train, going and coming, all day, all night. 
 And the income — I've worked it out. 
 Suppose twenty million people travelled a 
 day — and I consider that below the aver- 
 
50 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 age — you would have, at a penny a head, 
 considerably over £30,000,000 per annum ; 
 but at least two-thirds of the passengers 
 would return the same day, which would 
 give you a gross income of £50,000,000." 
 
 " Figures like these speak for them- 
 selves. And how did you get on with Lord 
 WagstafF? " 
 
 " Well, when I had the Bill drafted, I 
 read it to Wagstaff's son. He was in a 
 hurry at the time, but promised to tell his 
 father about it. I offered to send him a 
 copy, but he said he must speak about it 
 first. Next week he went off for a two- 
 years' tour round the world, and I don't 
 believe he said a word to his father, for 
 I wrote the Marquis three times, and re- 
 ceived no reply. It was in March I drew 
 up my Bill. I have never had such a time 
 of pleasurable excitement since — hence my 
 gloom." 
 
 " And you never got on the pedestal? " 
 
 " No. Yet I expounded my bill to all 
 my friends. It is my unfortunate reputa- 
 
BANDEROLE'S ^ESTHETIC BILL 51 
 
 tlon as a merely ingenuous person that 
 stands in the way. I have overheard peo- 
 ple, after the most eloquent exposition, say- 
 ing, ' Sweet soul, Banderole,' ' Delightful 
 creature,' ' So simple and confiding.' Now, 
 Magsworth, honestly, tell me your opinion 
 of my Bill." 
 
 " I really haven't time. I have to go — 
 I'm afraid I'm off on a two-years' tour 
 round the world." 
 
ON WRITING A CAUSERIE 
 
ON WRITING A CAUSERIE 
 
 1 SUPPOSE I am at liberty to tell the 
 reader that this is my first causerie. 
 Every reviewer thinks he can write a 
 causerie, and doubtless that is why the edi- 
 tor has asked me to try my hand; it is at 
 least a new experience to be held up as a 
 warning to other would-be causeurs. 
 Doubtless some people are bom temble 
 examples, some achieve the distinction, and 
 some, like me, have it thrust upon them. 
 It is satisfactory to know that the more 
 egregiously I fail, the greater ought to be 
 the benefit to others. Yet nothing, I am 
 afraid, will warn aspiring reviewers ; like 
 other contributors they are " all in a man- 
 ner fierce," and it is so easy to say " / 
 could have done better." 
 
 What would you do if you were asked to 
 55 
 
56 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 fire off a causerie, your first causerie, at 
 an hour's notice? 
 
 It is said that Horace Vernet, painting 
 some battle or other, caused a constant 
 fire of muskets to be kept up in his atelier, 
 and worked amid the noise and smoke until 
 the picture was finished. Why, of course, 
 then, when you are asked for a literary 
 causerie point-blank, you will load your 
 table with books you like and dip into 
 them here and there until the pure liter- 
 ary mood flushes your nerves and the fluent 
 sentences come. And with the sentences a 
 subject, and here it is: The Books that 
 have a Literary Effect. 
 
 Not all good literature has invariably a 
 literary effect. One of the best of our 
 living poets finds that his Muse takes wing 
 whenever he reads Milton. On the other 
 hand, a novelist of some standing screws 
 his courage to the writing mood by a care- 
 ful perusal of the advertisements of houses, 
 etc., in a morning paper. Here, indeed, 
 the law of contraries may seem to apply ; 
 
ON WRITING A CAUSERIE 57 
 
 and yet, though Carlyle prepared himself 
 for the task of rewriting the first volume 
 of his " History of the French Revolu- 
 tion " by a three weeks' debauch of Mar- 
 ryat's novels, Goethe sought inspiration 
 for his Iphigenie in a careful copying of 
 Winckelmann's drawings of Greek sculp- 
 ture. 
 
 Literary biography, caressing one with 
 the triumphs of others, is a sweet incentive. 
 To read of the easy success of Scott always 
 gives the novelist confidence. Here is 
 Lockhart's " Life," the most enchanting, 
 if not the greatest of English biographies. 
 I think I can always write after looking 
 over a page or two of Lockhart ; but I 
 will not betray myself to the Philistines by 
 reading any of it just now. Only, I must 
 quote one passage. This is the first op- 
 portunity I have ever had of doing so : 
 it is really an opportunitj^ ; I did not men- 
 tion Scott in the interests of the quotation. 
 The best piece of writing in Lockhart's 
 " Life," after some passages by Scott him- 
 
58 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 self, is, in my opinion, Mr. Adolphus's ac- 
 count of his visit to Abbotsford, and the 
 best thing in Mr. Adolphus's account is 
 his description of Scott's laugh. Having 
 portrayed Scott's face, with a particular 
 stress on his eyes, Mr. Adolphus goes on 
 to say — 
 
 Occasionally, when he spoke of some- 
 thing very audacious or eccentric, they would 
 dilate and light up with a tragi-comic, hare- 
 brained expression quite peculiar to himself; 
 one might see in it a whole chapter of 
 " CcEur-de-Lion " and the Clerk of Copman- 
 hurst. Never, perhaps, did a man go 
 through all the gradations of laughter with 
 such complete enjoyment and a countenance 
 so radiant. The first dawn of a humorous 
 thought would show itself sometimes, as he 
 sat silent, by an involuntary lengthening of 
 the upper lip, followed by a shy, sidelong 
 glance at his neighbours, indescribably whim- 
 sical, and seeming to ask from their looks 
 whether the spark of drollery should be sup- 
 pressed or allowed to blaze out. In the full 
 tide of mirth he did indeed " laugh the 
 
ON WRITING A CAUSERIE 59 
 
 heart's laugh/' like Walpole; but it was not 
 boisterous and overpowering, nor did it check 
 the course of his words; he could go on tell- 
 ing or descanting while his lungs did " crow 
 like chanticleer," his syllables, in the strug- 
 gle, growing more emphatic, his accent more 
 strongly Scotch, and his voice plaiiitive with 
 excess of merriment. 
 
 This is surely the most wonderful de- 
 scription of a laugh. There is that very 
 crow in Shakespeare referred to by Mr. 
 Adolphus, and there is also that exquisite 
 Shakespearean, " he will laugh you till his 
 face is like a wet cloth ill laid up," and 
 there is Carlyle's description of Teufels- 
 drockh's laugh, but in none of these is the 
 conception, gestation, and birth of the 
 dimpled, rosy offspring of a great man's 
 good-humour traced with such loving art 
 and such perfect science as in this immortal 
 paragraph of Mr. Adolphus's. 
 
 Perhaps, however, writers, when not in 
 the vein, are rather coaxed and soothed 
 to their work by some minor writer that 
 
60 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 thej love than spurred to it by emulation 
 of the greatest men of letters. Hazlitt 
 is such a source of inspiration. No one 
 has a greater indifference to what has been 
 said before than he. He is, as strikingly 
 as Byron, the creature of his own will. He 
 raises or lowers his subject to himself. 
 " He exists not by sympathy, but by an- 
 tipathy." One can be as strained, as pet- 
 ulant as one likes — one can say anything, 
 after a page of Hazlitt. No, not any- 
 thing ; not if you know his essay on Byron. 
 That pulls a man up. Hazlitt, in a very 
 fine frenzy, had been calling Byron names ; 
 he had even thought very little of " our 
 author's turn for satire," and had " written 
 thus far," when news came of Byron's 
 death. Immediately Hazlitt recognized the 
 peevish strain of his invective ; he had not 
 known that he had been writing Byron's 
 epitaph. Then follows a very splendid 
 passage : " Death cancels everything but 
 truth, and strips a man of everything but 
 genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural 
 
ON WRITING A CAUSERIE 6l 
 
 canonisation. It makes the meanest of 
 us sacred; it instals the poet in his immor- 
 tahty; and hfts him to the skies. We 
 consign the least worthy quahties to ob- 
 livion, and cherish the nobler and imper- 
 ishable nature with double pride and fond- 
 ness." Hazlitt was a great man. 
 
 Here I have written something which is 
 neither essay nor review, and which ■ — ■ 
 need not therefore be a causerie ! I see a 
 subject, nibble about it a little, and then 
 go off and lug out, as if it were a new 
 discovery, a famous old quotation that 
 everybody knows. Then I make another 
 dash at the sub j ect, and — take refuge in 
 another quotation. It is at least, I hope, 
 one way of writing a causerie, although I 
 have mentioned only two out of twenty 
 books I laid on my table. 
 
 The unmethodical way, let us call it. 
 Want of faculty, when rightly considered, 
 is really a kind of faculty. If one really 
 possesses a talent for doing things the 
 wrong way, the power of putting the cart 
 
62 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 before the horse with InfaHible exactitude, 
 and an irresistible tendency towards the 
 employment of that figure which gram- 
 marians call hysteron-proteron, one may be 
 said to have a gift. 
 
 Still, it is well to be modest: this may 
 not be a causerie, after all. It is true — 
 as Isabey said — that to paint a picture is 
 not a question of drinking the sea : " It is 
 simply a matter of taking a few of the 
 colours on my palette and spreading them 
 upon a piece of canvas." But Isabey said 
 also to another painter, " Decidedly you 
 were born to be a surgeon. Your voca- 
 tion dominates you : you wish to paint a 
 boat and you paint a tumour." 
 
 Many men always sneer at themselves 
 when they have done their best. 
 
THE CRITICISM OF POETRY 
 
THE CRITICISM OF POETRY 
 
 ANYONE who has ever trusted himself 
 knows that knowledge is in the air; 
 and that in brooding, in loafing, in living, 
 knowledge is absorbed by the pores of the 
 body. The eyes and the ears are the main 
 thoroughfares of knowledge, but there are 
 many by-ways intractable to sight and 
 hearing, devious and. erratic in supposition, 
 but as marked and inevitable as the seem- 
 ingly wanton paths of fish in the river or of 
 birds in the air. The body, the whole 
 body, is also the soul. It is the nerves, the 
 heart, the liver, the germs of life that ap- 
 prehend and think and feel. The seat of 
 memory is probably in the muscles. The 
 brain is only a register and sifter — at the 
 highest an alembic. Imagination gathers 
 the flower of the whole anatomy. It is in 
 this that the poet differs from the thinker, 
 
 65 
 
66 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 with whom it is the habit at present to con- 
 found him. A thinker is one who has per- 
 mitted his brain, the chief servant of his 
 soul, to get the upper hand, just as the epi- 
 cure gives the reins of power to his palate. 
 In the poet the whole assembly of his being 
 is harmonious ; no organ is master ; a dia- 
 pason extends throughout the entire scale ; 
 his whole body, his whole soul is rapt into 
 the making of his poetry. Every poet is a 
 new experiment ; all poetry is empirical. 
 And this is simply saying over again that 
 there is such a thing as poetry, and that 
 poets are born into the world ; but as poets 
 and poetry are rare, it may be no disservice, 
 remembering that such a thing as a " boom 
 in poets " has been talked of, to remind the 
 running reader that the poet is the most 
 exceptional of men. 
 
 How is poetry to be recognised.'' Lit- 
 erary criticism has a comparative method, 
 the employment of a foot-rule or tape-line 
 obtained by the study of accepted poetry, 
 a method not altogether to be despised. It 
 
THE CRITICISM OF POETRY 67 
 
 is, of course, the only possible method of 
 dealing with the huge body of imitative 
 verse ; but it does not commend itself to 
 me in the criticism of actual poetry except 
 as a most subsidiary aid. Poetry is the 
 product of originality, of a first-hand ex- 
 perience and observation of life, of a direct 
 communion with men and women, with the 
 seasons of the year, with day and night. 
 The critic will therefore be well advised, if 
 he have the good fortune to find something 
 that seems to him poetry, to lay it out in 
 the daylight and the moonlight, to take 
 it into the street and the fields, to set 
 against it his own experience and obser- 
 vation of life, and, should he be a poet 
 himself, to remember how it was that he 
 wrote his own poetry. In this way I re- 
 duce culture, which is only experience at 
 second-hand, to its proper place as the 
 merest handmaid of criticism. 
 
 It seems to me that Mr. Victor J. Daley's 
 " At Dawn and Dusk " deserves, in some 
 measure, this actual criticism. The influ- 
 
68 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 ence of Mr. Swinburne is apparent in 
 " Years Ago," of Poe in the series called 
 " Fragments," and of other poets in his 
 ballads and sonnets. But " In a Wine 
 Cellar " is an authentic Australian poem 
 by an Australian poet : — 
 
 No vintage alien 
 
 For thee or me ! 
 Our fount Castalian 
 
 Of poesy 
 Shall wine Australian, 
 
 None other be. . . . 
 
 It has no glamour 
 
 Of old romance. 
 Of war or amour 
 
 In Spain or France; 
 Its poets stammer 
 
 As yet, perchance; 
 
 But he may wholly 
 
 Become a seer 
 Who quaffs it slowly; 
 
 For he shall hear, 
 Though faintly, lowly. 
 
 Yet sweet and clear. 
 
THE CRITICISM OF POETRY 69 
 
 The axes ringing 
 
 On mountain sides, 
 The wool-boats swinging 
 
 Down Darling tides^ 
 The drovers singing 
 
 Where Clancy rides. 
 
 The miners driving, 
 The stockman's strife; 
 
 All sounds conniving 
 To tell the rife. 
 
 Rich, rude, strong-striving 
 Australian life. 
 
 Once more your hand in 
 
 This hand of mine ! 
 And while we stand in 
 
 The brave sunshine. 
 Pledge deep our land in 
 
 Our land's own wine ! 
 
 This is new and free. In " The Poet 
 Care," there is the same freshness, the 
 same novelty. 
 
 Care is a poet fine: 
 
 He works in shade or shine. 
 
70 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 And leaves — you know his sign ! — 
 No day without its line. 
 /' 
 
 He writes with iron pen 
 Upon the brows of men ; 
 Faint lines at first_, and then 
 He scores them in again. 
 
 Then deeper script appears: 
 The furrows of dim fears. 
 The traces of old tears_, 
 The tide-marks of the years. 
 
 To him, with sight made strong 
 By suffering and wrong, 
 The brows of all the throng 
 Are eloquent with song. 
 
 It is not to the purpose to say that this 
 has been said and sung before. It is here 
 sung newly, at first-hand, by a poet living 
 at this present day in the fifth continent 
 of the world. Adam and Eve said it to 
 each other when they began to grow old. 
 But it is all to say over again ; it is the 
 mission of the poet to state the world 
 
THE CRITICISM OF POETRY 71 
 
 afresh. The critic of words and phrases 
 will find much to except in Mr. Daley's po- 
 etry, although some of his workmanship 
 is excellent, especially in his more conven- 
 tional pieces : " The River Maiden," and 
 " His Mate " are particularly fine. But 
 academic questions of rhyme, rhythm, and 
 diction have little more to do with poetry 
 than epaulettes and pipeclay have to do 
 with strategy. Poetry is not always an 
 army on parade ; sometimes it is an army 
 coming back from the wars, epaulettes and 
 pipe-clay all gone, shoeless, ragged, 
 wounded, starved, but with victory on its 
 brows. 
 
tete-1~t£te 
 
TETE-X-TETE 
 
 Cosmo Mortimer. Ninian Jamieson. 
 
 NINIAN JAMIESON. Among your 
 many theories, have you a theory of 
 poetry, Cosmo? 
 
 Cosmo Mortimer. I have! I have a 
 theory of poetry. Poetry is that which 
 had better not be expressed ; silence being 
 impossible, poetry endeavours to atone its 
 betrayal of secrets by beauty of utterance. 
 It is a question, however, if perfect form 
 is a sufficient excuse for lyric poetry. It 
 would be difficult to defend the direct ex- 
 pression of passion and emotion, and its 
 publication by one man for others to read. 
 For my own part all lyric poetry, " The 
 Battle of the Baltic," or a sonnet of 
 Shakespeare's, Shelley's " Cloud " or a 
 love-song of Burns, holds me shamefast. 
 
 75 
 
76 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 I read such things furtively, and shp the 
 book under a cushion and swear at the 
 poodle if I'm dropped on. 
 
 N. J, Then you'll have small regard 
 for the poetry of women. 
 
 C. M. I can't endure it. But of course 
 you know I think women constitutionally 
 inferior to men. 
 
 N, J. But intellectually.? 
 
 C M. Yes, of course; intellectually 
 women have far and away the best of it. 
 Since the world began, their intellects have 
 been unintentionally trained at all hazards. 
 The result is that they can neither think 
 nor feel. They have not been allowed to 
 eat and drink as much as men, to use 
 their limbs with the freedom of men, to 
 see all sides of life, to take an unrestricted 
 share in the work of the world, to wander, 
 to loaf, to disregard conventions ; their 
 muscles, their nerves, their blood, and their 
 vital organs, the seats of thought and emo- 
 tion, are in a state of hebetation compared 
 with those of men. But their intellects — 
 
TETE-A-TETE 77 
 
 by intellect I mean brain, you understand 
 — their intellects are developed so dispro- 
 portionately as to constitute the one por- 
 tent in the world. It is the intellect of 
 woman unprovided with proper food and 
 exercise of personal experience which has 
 built up Society as unconsciously as the 
 coral insect makes continents ; blindly, 
 ruthlessly, with an hourly sacrifice pitched 
 into the streets of a percentage of the 
 healthiest womanhood. Woman rules the 
 world; the thirty million wretched males, 
 drilled and batoned into utter cowardice, 
 in order that they rriay submit to be shot 
 down at long range in cold blood, have 
 their monstrous being solely that women 
 may reign and be supported in ever-grow- 
 ing comfort or luxury by the remaining 
 males. 
 
 N. J. It is a helpful point of view, 
 Cosmo ; no doubt of it. But you are very 
 discursive. We began with a theory of 
 poetry; and I started the subject because 
 I am curious to know what you think of 
 
78 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 this. It is from a poem called " Mother- 
 hood " in a volume entitled " In This Our 
 World " * by a poet of the name of Stet- 
 son. 
 
 C. M. Stetson? Don't know him. 
 
 N. J, American. Now : — 
 
 Motherhood: seeing with her clear kind eyeSj 
 Luminous, tender eyes, wherein the smile 
 Is like the smile of sunlight on the sea, 
 That the new children of the newer day 
 Need more than any single heart can give, 
 More than is known to any single mind. 
 More than is found in any single house. 
 And need it from the day they see the light. 
 Then, measuring her love by what they need. 
 Gives from the heart of modern motherhood. 
 Gives first, as tree to bear God's highest fruit, 
 A clean, strong body, perfect and full grown, 
 Fair for the purpose of its womanhood, 
 Not for light fancy of a lower mind: 
 Gives a clear mind, athletic, beautiful, 
 Dispassionate, unswerving from the truth; 
 
 * Small, Maynard & Co., Boston. G. P. Put- 
 nam's Sons, London. 
 
TETE-A-TETE 79 
 
 Gives a great heart that throbs with human 
 
 love, 
 As she would wish her son to love the world. 
 Then, when the child comes lovely as a star, 
 She, in the peace of primal motherhood. 
 Nurses her baby with unceasing joy. 
 With milk of human kindness, human health. 
 Bright human beauty, and immortal love. 
 And then.^ Ah! here is the New Mother- 
 hood — 
 The motherhood of the fair new-made 
 
 world — 
 O glorious New Mother of New Men! 
 
 What do you think of it.^^ 
 
 C. M. Well, the verse itself Is not inter- 
 esting ; but the matter is good didactic stuff 
 of Its kind. Clearly the work of a manly 
 fellow. 
 
 N. J, This writer's rhymed verse Is 
 better, I admit. Stetson has distinct gifts 
 of Irony. In " An Obstacle " a " hulking 
 prejudice sat all across the road," Immov- 
 able by entreaty, passion, invective, until at 
 last — 
 
80 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 I took my hat, I took my stick, 
 
 My load I settled fair, 
 I approached that awful incubus 
 
 With an absent-minded air — 
 And I walked directly through him, 
 
 As if he wasn't there. 
 
 That's good; and so is this "A Brood 
 Mare " — a healthy, broad horse-laugh : — 
 
 I had a quarrel yesterday, 
 
 A violent dispute. 
 With a man who tried to sell to me 
 
 A strange, amorphous brute. . . 
 
 Said I, " Do you pretend to say 
 
 You can raise colts as fair 
 From that cripple as you can 
 
 From an able-bodied marcf* '* 
 
 Quoth he, " I solemnly assert. 
 
 Just as I said before, 
 A mare that's good for breeding 
 
 Can be good for nothing more." 
 
 Cried I, " One thing is certain proof; 
 One thing I want to see; 
 
TETE-A-T£tE 81 
 
 Trot out the noble colts you raise 
 From your anomaly." 
 
 He looked a little dashed at this. 
 And the poor mare hung her head, 
 ** Fact is/' said he, " She's had but one; 
 And that one — well, it's dead ! " 
 
 C. M. A passable stable joke with a 
 crude application to the coddling of 
 women. 
 
 N. J, If poetry is, as you assert, that 
 which had better not be expressed, how 
 does that rank? 
 
 C. M. No class, my dear sir! It is 
 exactly what must be expressed, and con- 
 sidered until the eyelids ache. Here is a 
 man in earnest, as no woman can ever be ; 
 he uses any weapon that comes to hand, 
 hit or miss, poetry or doggerel. Note 
 that a woman would never do that; she 
 would lose the battle searching for an agate 
 for her catapult, while the man was sling- 
 ing mud and macadam all the time. 
 
 N. J. Ha ! Well ; listen to this : — 
 
82 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 The female fox she is a fox; 
 
 The female whale a whale; 
 The female eagle holds her place 
 As representative of race 
 
 As truly as the male. 
 One female in the world we find 
 
 Telling a different tale. 
 It is the female of our race 
 Who holds a parasitic place, 
 
 Dependent on the male. . . • 
 The race is higher than the sex. 
 
 Though sex be fair and good; 
 A human creature is your state. 
 And to be human is more great 
 
 Than even womanhood ! 
 
 C. M. I understand Mr. Stetson now; 
 I see what he is driving at. The fight be- 
 tween the sexes which, with the help of 
 Christianity, ended in the triumph of the 
 female, and the establishment of marriage, 
 the family and home, he wishes to see re- 
 newed. He would have women dethroned 
 and brought down into the arena to com- 
 pete with men — not some women, but all 
 
tSte-a-t^te ^s 
 
 women. Probably he is right; it is the 
 tendency of things at present. But before 
 women elect to fight they should know 
 that they have everything to lose ; and once 
 they abdicate, they can never possibly 
 attain again to the high position they have 
 held for several centuries. In the arena 
 they would be beaten ; and would imme- 
 diately begin again, however unconsciously, 
 to build upon their sex, not upon their 
 humanity — accepting Mr. Stetson's dis- 
 tinction — a latter, inferior empire of mar- 
 riage, family, and home ; it is the nature 
 of the female to nidify. Her intellect, 
 functioning as instinct, leads her infal- 
 libly to dominion ; but the moment she 
 employs intellect consciously as intellect, 
 society will dissolve ; man will once more 
 become a hunter ; woman, a captive breeder 
 and beast of burden. 
 
 N. J. But you said just now that the 
 intellect of woman constitutes the one por- 
 tent in the world. 
 
 C. M. So it does ; because she is becom- 
 
84 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 ing conscious of it. She begins to know 
 that her brain is, to start with, a more subtle 
 and powerful organ than man's ; further, 
 she feels that it has been developed to 
 prodigious form and pliancy by thousands 
 of years of intrigue, chicanery, stratagem 
 in securing against all the individual in- 
 terests of the male a soft nest for herself 
 and her young. " Now," she says, " now ; 
 I shall have my own again! This slow 
 brain, this dull procreating brute of a man 
 shall be put in his place at last. He shall 
 know that I have been his conqueror all 
 the time." That will precipitate the sex- 
 ual fight in its elemental form ; and then it 
 is the big, hard chest able to endure a bat- 
 tering-ram that wins in the long run, brain 
 or no brain. 
 
 N. J. Let me read you another 
 verse : — 
 
 For the sake of my child I must hasten to 
 
 save 
 All the children on earth from the jail and 
 
 the grave. 
 
tStE-A-TETE 85 
 
 For so, and so only, I lighten the share 
 Of the pain of the world that my darling must 
 bear. 
 
 You see : this American poet is a woman 
 — Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson. 
 
 C M, There you are ! She makes me 
 think she is a man ! Women are orchids ; 
 there is no end of their deceptive appear- 
 ances. 
 
A SPIRIT 
 
A SPIRIT 
 
 MR. YEATS uses the wind as a sym- 
 bol of desires and hopes : " Wind 
 and spirit and vague desire have been asso- 
 ciated everywhere." His poems, in " The 
 Wind among the Reeds," are Hke the breath 
 of a spirit, a keen and exquisite song. 
 
 Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, 
 
 Enwrought with gold and silver light. 
 The blue and the dim and the dark cloths 
 
 Of night and light and the half light, 
 I would spread the cloths under your feet: 
 
 But I, being poor, have only my dreams; 
 I have spread my dreams under your feet; 
 
 Tread softly because you tread on my 
 dreams. 
 
 Tread softly, because it is not a mortal 
 dream that the winds awaken. It is dif- 
 ficult to believe that Mr. Yeats has not 
 
 89 
 
90 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 been dead for many years, and now revisits 
 the glimpses of the moon, the first trav- 
 eller to return from the undiscovered coun- 
 try. He has at least been with the Sidhe, 
 the people of the Faery Hills, whose realm 
 is not to be frequented with impunity if 
 one would retain an interest in ordinary 
 things. Although free of their company, 
 Mr. Yeats has not yet lost human sym- 
 pathies, as the delightful " Fiddler of 
 Dooney," will tell : — 
 
 When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, 
 Folk dance like a wave of the sea; 
 
 My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet, 
 My brother in Maharabuiee, 
 
 I pass my brother and cousin : 
 
 They read in their books of prayer; 
 
 I read in my book of songs 
 I bought at the Sligo fair. 
 
 When we come, at the end of time. 
 
 To Peter sitting in state. 
 He will smile on the three old spirits. 
 
 But call me first through the gate; 
 
A SPIRIT 91 
 
 For the good are always the merry^ 
 
 Save by an evil chance, 
 And the merry love the fiddle. 
 
 And the merry love to dance: 
 
 And when the folk there spy me. 
 They will all come up to me, 
 
 With " Here is the fiddler of Dooney ! 
 And dance like a wave of the sea. 
 
 Even here, however, the human sym- 
 pathy is three parts tolerance ; Mr. Yeats's 
 heart in this volume " goes out " most 
 fully to a time " when the stars " shall 
 " be blown about the sky like the sparks 
 blown out of a smithy." 
 
 It is the recurrent burden — 
 
 While time and the world are ebbing 
 
 away 
 In twilight of dew and of fire. 
 
 The wind cries in the sedge to the wan- 
 dering Aedh: 
 
 Until the axle break 
 
 That keeps the stars in their round, 
 
92 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 And hands hurl in the deep 
 The banner of east and west, 
 And the girdle of light is unbound, 
 Your head will not lie on the breast 
 Of your beloved in sleep. 
 
 And in the meantime the Sidhe call, and 
 come between the poet and the world of 
 men and women. In their company he 
 has attained a knowledge and insight into 
 the way and beings of the twilight, un- 
 seconded in our time. By reason of this 
 he is an original poet of note. It is the 
 Sidlie that point out to him : 
 
 Old men playing at cards 
 
 With a twinkling of ancient hands, 
 
 and that tell him how to describe " pearls 
 pale " fingers and " dove-grey " seaboards. 
 His song is, indeed, like the voice of a dis- 
 embodied spirit. Secrets are known, to 
 him. He has a passport for the debatable 
 land between the living and the dead; its 
 marches are his daily walk; and his con- 
 versation is with Caolte, who was a flaming 
 
A SPIRIT 93 
 
 man, with Niam, the beautiful woman who 
 led Oisin to the Country of the Young, 
 and with his own creatures, Aedh, Hanra- 
 han, and Michael Robartes, who are to him 
 " principles of the mind," rather " than 
 actual personages." With these are his 
 walk and conversation, and with the living 
 seers of Ireland; for it is all actual, and 
 his first-hand acquaintance with the extant 
 faery lore, of his country quickens his 
 whole treatment of fairy mythology. Such 
 a passage as the following in Mr. Yeats's 
 copious notes brings the reader face to 
 face with the subject in the flesh and in 
 the spirit. " I once," says Mr. Yeats, in 
 his own person, 
 
 " stood beside a man in Ireland when he saw 
 it (the Tree of Life) growing there in a 
 vision^ that seemed to have rapt him out of 
 the body. He saw the Garden of Eden 
 walled about, and on the top of a high moun- 
 tain, as in certain mediaeval diagrams; and 
 after passing the Tree of Knowledge, on 
 which grew fruit full of troubled faces, and 
 
94 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 through whose branches flowed, he was told, 
 sap that was human souls, he came on a tall 
 dark tree with little bitter fruits, and was 
 shown a kind of stair or ladder going up 
 through the tree, and told to go up ; and near 
 the top of the tree a beautiful woman, like 
 the Goddess of Life associated with the tree 
 in Assyria, gave him a rose that seemed to 
 have been growing upon the tree." 
 
 In another note Mr. Yeats writes: 
 
 " A faery doctor has told me that his wife 
 * got the touch ' at her marriage because there 
 was one of them (the Sidhe) wanted her; and 
 the way he knew for certain was, that when 
 he took a pitchfork out of the rafters, and 
 told her it was a broom, she said, * It is a 
 broom.' She was, the truth is, in the magi- 
 cal sleep, to which people have given a new 
 name lately, that makes the imagination so 
 passive that it can be moulded by any voice 
 in any world into any shape.'* 
 
 These passages, without the poems, 
 would show that Mr. Yeats is no mere anti- 
 quarian ; that he is not actuated by a tame 
 
A SPIRIT 95 
 
 literary interest in faery lore. They show 
 that he has a hving and intellectual regard 
 for what is to most only a faded mythol- 
 ogy, and that he is of an individuality rare 
 at any time, rarest in ours. 
 
TETE-X-TfiTE 
 
TETE-X-TfiTE 
 
 Parolles, Hamlet, 
 
 PAROLLES, I have desired much to 
 meet you, my lord, in this limbo 
 where we now are. It has been my life- 
 long habit to frequent the company of 
 my betters ; and — Oh no ! my lord ! you 
 must not give me the go-by. Nor could 
 you: I stick like a burr. If you will not 
 talk with me now, you may come to do so 
 in some more relaxed mood, when your 
 loquacity — for you are as talkative as I am 
 — might lead you to say more than your 
 memory would delight to recall as a no- 
 secret shared with so ill a counsellor. 
 
 Ham. You are of the same forge and 
 bellows as myself — that world within the 
 world which Shakespeare made. I will talk 
 with you now. 
 
 99 
 
100 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 Par. It is of this world of Shakes- 
 peare's making that I would talk. 
 
 Ham, Sometimes I think it is the only 
 world. Shakespeare found the world an 
 empty nut and put a kernel into it. 
 
 Par. Maybe; but human intelligence 
 has eaten and digested that kernel at last, 
 and the shell yawns for a new lining. 
 Shakespeare, my lord, has been found out. 
 It is I who am Shakespeare, not you. 
 As I said three hundred years ago. 
 
 Who knows himself a braggart_, 
 Let him fear this ; for it will come to pass 
 That every braggart shall be found an ass. 
 
 I have come into my own again, my lord. 
 Hitherto, Shakespearian has meant simply 
 Hamletian. The good-natured world — 
 for the actual world is at the last and in the 
 gross exceedingly thoughtless and agree- 
 able — I say, my lord, the good-natured 
 world, highly flattered at its supposed re- 
 flection, dressed its mind in the magic mir- 
 ror of Hamlet, and fancied itself Shakes- 
 
TfiTE-A-XfiXE 101 
 
 pearian. But Hamlet and Prospero are 
 only the vanity of Shakespeare. I, Parol- 
 les, am the true Shakespeare; and I can 
 prove it. 
 
 Ham. It is possible to prove anything 
 by circumstantial evidence. Go on ; I con- 
 sented to talk with you. 
 
 Par, I am the true Shakespeare; be- 
 cause, with the exception of the nurse in 
 Romeo and Juliet, who is liker Shakes- 
 peare than any other of his creations sav- 
 ing myself, I am the only really live char- 
 acter in all his plays. Falstaff, Richard, 
 Juliet, lago, Nym, yourself, my lord, are 
 merely fairies, good, bad, or indifferent. 
 Mark you, my lord, mark it well : I do not 
 imply that Shakespeare intended me for 
 himself. I am the sub-consciousness, the 
 inmost fibre of the man — the Judas of 
 very self, which every artist unbeknown 
 creates for his own betrayal. This men 
 begin to recognise; and the moment they 
 are fully aware of the self-deception of 
 their Hamleto-Shakespearianism the em- 
 
102 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 pire of Shakespeare is destroyed, and the 
 world becomes once more an empty nut. 
 
 Ham, And you come into your own 
 again, videlicet, nonentity. 
 
 Par. No, my lord; I alone remain, the 
 self-pilloried monster, the Judas-Shak^s- 
 peare who cozened the foolish world for 
 three hundred years. 
 
 Ham. Were we not spirits, and 
 although I should be unclean afterwards 
 until the evening, I would beat your face 
 into a jelly with my hands. 
 
 Par. Oh ! my lord, we know you can 
 unpack your heart like a drab, and say 
 more than you dare do. That I am Shakes- 
 peare is made apparent to any awakened 
 intelligence by the fact that what was sub- 
 conscious as Parolles becomes conscious as 
 a palliated, a self-excused characteristic of 
 Hamlet, the mirror, the false, the magic 
 mirror which Shakespeare held up to na- 
 ture. But my main proof, my impreg- 
 nable rock, is the book of sonnets. And 
 here, my lord, is a new edition (I buy 
 
TETE-A-TETE 103 
 
 them all: it is my book) a very good one, 
 too : published by Mr. John Lane, of the 
 Bodley Head, my lord, in the Albany. The 
 book, I am impelled to point out by some 
 hidden power, connected, doubtless, with 
 my recrudescence, introduces a new illus- 
 trator, Mr. Henry Ospovat, a Muscovite, 
 to the English public. It was an original 
 idea to illustrate Shakespeare's sonnets, and 
 a very questionable one, I think ; hardly an- 
 swered in the affirmative by Mr. Ospovat's 
 pictures. 
 
 Ham. Let me see them. Mr. Ospovat's 
 art is of Rossettian origin, I should say. 
 His pictures are interesting in themselves: 
 some of the faces are unmistakable types. 
 As comments on the text they are sug- 
 gestive; there is subtlety in the painted 
 beauty allowing the sonnet, which has 
 caught fire at the candle lighting her mir- 
 ror, to flare away in smoky flame as she 
 reads it. I like these illustrations ; and 
 it may be that it is just such works as 
 Shakespeare's sonnets that should be illus- 
 
104 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 trated rather than dramas and stories con- 
 taining pictures in themselves. It is, how- 
 ever, still a question with me whether or 
 not one art is prostituted in illustrating 
 another. 
 
 Par. The old doubter, still ! Well, my 
 lord, these sonnets are the evidence in chief 
 for my identity with Shakespeare. In 
 them I have written myself down infamous 
 in the last degree: the hack and slave 
 of Southampton and Pembroke; the go- 
 between for courtiers and their mistresses ; 
 a fatuous fool ; a debased sensualist ; and — 
 You have broken my jaw, my lord. Was 
 it well done to strike one who cannot strike 
 back by reason of his inferior rank.? How 
 the devil did I suddenly become embodied! 
 I thought we were spirits ! Ugh ! I've 
 swallowed a tooth ! 
 
 Ham. You shall now go to your place 
 in limbo and read this book from begin- 
 ning to end, " The Mystery of Shakes- 
 peare's Sonnets," an attempted elucidation 
 by Mr. Cuming Walters. It will help you, 
 
TETE-A-TETE 105 
 
 perhaps, to understand that Shakespeare 
 was greater than either you or I ; that you, 
 by many degrees inferior to the average 
 sensual man, are less alive than almost any 
 other character Shakespeare portrayed, 
 lacking, as you do, both conscience and 
 imagination. Beside you Pistol is beau- 
 tiful and Bardolph sweet. What have you 
 to do with the faults of Shakespeare .^^ 
 Who is there at all that shall judge him.^ 
 It is law all the world over that men must 
 be judged by their peers. Where are 
 those who may sit with Shakespeare .? 
 Dante, Goethe, Hugo, Ibsen, are parochial 
 beside him. Cassar, Charlemagne, Crom- 
 well, Napoleon, are of a different order. 
 Read Mr. Walters' book. He will clear 
 your mind of the loathsome cant with which 
 some men in the street have befogged 
 Shakespeare for themselves. Respect the 
 interesting elucidation Mr. Walters offers. 
 I believe there is much truth in it. I my- 
 self am likest Shakespeare of all the beings 
 he made. Those tables on which I scrib- 
 
106 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 bled against the wall of Elsinore that one 
 may smile and smile and be a villain, are 
 perhaps, the very tables on which Shakes- 
 speare wrote his sonnets. So extraordi- 
 nary a being would keep an extraordinary 
 commonplace book. His sonnets are mem- 
 oranda, written principally for himself, 
 and although some of the matter is repro- 
 duced in the plays, the meaning of much 
 of it can only be guessed at. The persons 
 of the sonnets are the symbols of a poetic 
 shorthand of which the key perished with 
 Shakespeare himself. Mr. Walters makes 
 as fine a guess as may be. But whether 
 you accept it or not, never again read into 
 the sonnets a loathsome meaning. 
 
 Par, Well, my lord, well. But I can 
 tell you this, that Shakespeare's day is 
 done. There is an end of him. 
 
 Ham. If so, then, the end is not to 
 come ; if it be not to come it will be now ; 
 if it be not now yet it will come : the readi- 
 ness is all. Shakespeare has been ready 
 for the better part of three centuries. I 
 question if Time is ready yet. 
 
A WOULD-BE LONDONER 
 
A WOULD-BE LONDONER 
 
 SANDRIDGE came to London too late 
 for what he wished to accomphsh. 
 His ambition was to be a Londoner. It 
 is true the Londoner is made, not born ; but 
 at the very latest the process must begin 
 at twenty-five. Sandridge was two-and- 
 thirty when he left a North of England 
 town, a circle of interesting acquaintances 
 of which he was the centre, and a roomy 
 old-fashioned house of his own, for Lon- 
 don, solitude, and a modest apartment near 
 Oxford Circus. 
 
 In the provincial bosom, faith, even at 
 thirty-two, meditates metropolitan mira- 
 cles ; Sandridge expected to have the Lon- 
 don mountains removed by a member of 
 Parliament who was his second-cousin. 
 
 " Ah," said the Member ; " you must be- 
 gin to learn the ropes at a club." 
 
 109 
 
110 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 Needing for himself all the influence he 
 could snatch, he resented Sandridge's un- 
 connected state, and refused him a single 
 bone. That is the use of the fable of 
 " knowing the ropes " ; nobody believes in 
 it; but it is very convenient to refer to 
 when you are asked for assistance. 
 
 " It's a shame," grumbled the Member. 
 " A man's relatives ought to be able to 
 help him instead of requiring help." So 
 he put up his cousin at an expensive new 
 club. 
 
 " Let him find out the ropes there if he 
 can," he snarled to an acquaintance. 
 
 " As well there as anywhere, when you 
 think of it, though," he continued, recon- 
 sidering. " Have you found out the 
 ropes? Has anyone ever found out the 
 ropes ? No ; there's no rigging about it. 
 It's simply a huge tumbling coil of hemp 
 and iron, all tarred with the same stick ; 
 and you get hold of a hawser-end or a 
 chain-cable, and hang on or drop off." 
 
 In the smoking-room of the new club, 
 
A WOULD-BE LONDONER 111 
 
 Sandrldge made diffident remarks about the 
 young Disraeli, the young Bulwer, about 
 Count D'Orsay, about great talkers, about 
 personalities who had been powerful out- 
 side of politics, literature, and art : these 
 were the Londoners he had talked of with 
 such confidence in the North. He and his 
 friends had discussed their waistcoats, their 
 eloquence, their repartees, their influence 
 on fashions of dress, fashions of speech, 
 fashions of thought. 
 
 In a month's time Sandrldge's diffidence 
 changed into taciturnity. The younger 
 clubmen chaffed him, and called him " the 
 Disraelian Johnny." He withdrew into 
 corners and moped in anterooms. One 
 afternoon Lieutenant Hopeby of the Pur- 
 ple Guards lounged in beside him: he was 
 a very exquisite giant, twenty-three years 
 old, guileless, as certain about everything 
 as a child of seven, and his forte was 
 patronage ; he felt himself an amateur 
 Providence, and was always on the look-out 
 for somebody to console. It was he, and 
 
112 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 Sandridge knew it, who had struck out the 
 phrase, " the Disraehan Johnny " ; but it 
 was also he, and he only, who had given 
 any real attention to Sandridge's remarks. 
 
 " Well, old chap," began Hopeby, in his 
 paternal way. " Let's have a comfortable 
 talk. How do you get on? Do you find 
 yourself becoming a regular Londoner? " 
 
 Sandridge blushed to the roots of his 
 hair; but he was quite powerless. He 
 thought, writhing mentally, how Disraeli 
 would have touched this youngster with a 
 point of flame able to drill a passage even 
 through his armour-plating of conceit ; 
 whereas he hadn't a leaden dart to throw. 
 
 " I am afraid," he stammered, " I am 
 too old. Art is long and life is short, you 
 know." 
 
 " But you mustn't say that," replied 
 the Purple Guard kindly. " Look at — 
 what's his name ? — the old Roman who 
 began to learn Greek on his death-bed. 
 It's never too late to learn, as the penitent 
 
A WOULD-BE LONDONER 113 
 
 thief said. But what's your difficulty, 
 Sandridge ? " 
 
 " Nobody ever asks me anywhere ; I 
 never have a chance to — " 
 
 " To what? Come, old chap." 
 
 " Well," said Sandridge, shifting un- 
 easily in his chair, " it's not like me to 
 talk in this way — ah — Hopeby ; but I 
 seldom have a chance to talk to anybody 
 now. I'm awfully ambitious " — he could 
 have bitten his tongue off at every word. 
 " You've heard my idea of the Londoner, 
 his place and power. My intention is to 
 be a Londoner of that kind. I have edu- 
 cated myself for such a position by the 
 study of — by many studies; just as one 
 is educated to take orders — or for the 
 army. But I get no opportunity to — to 
 exercise my functions." 
 
 " Hard on you — eh? But I say, you 
 know, you're quite an original, Sandridge. 
 It's a new branch; deportment's nothing 
 to this. You should have a professorship, 
 
114 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 my boy ; teach them to be Londoners. I 
 saw an article in a paper the other day — 
 ' Wanted, a New Occupation.' Here you 
 have it : ' The Art of Being a Londoner, 
 in twenty lessons.' You could charge 
 what you like ; and you'd get it — for a 
 time." 
 
 "But I'm demoralised," rejoined Sand- 
 ridge, overlooking Hopeby's banter. 
 " The fellows here don't understand me." 
 
 Then he added very slowly, measuring 
 his words, that sometimes faltered, and with 
 eyes that flickered! between confidence and 
 timidity : " I take it that I have not yet 
 met a foeman worthy of my steel. At a 
 dinner of celebrities I believe I could at 
 once make my mark." 
 
 The Purple Guard sat up and stared at 
 Sandridge for fully a minute. 
 
 " Yes," continued Sandridge, misunder- 
 standing the other's silence, and feeling, to 
 his own surprise, as secure as a man who 
 has led the ace of trumps for the last 
 trick ; " yes, Hopeby, my place is in those 
 
A WOULD-BE LONDONER 115 
 
 circles where conversation is understood. 
 Here every man is full of himself and his 
 own little affairs. They talk of the club 
 cuisine^ of their regiment, of an actress, 
 or of a billiard-player: a thought, an epi- 
 gram, only makes them raise their eye- 
 brows. I feel among you like an eagle in 
 a dovecot." 
 
 The Purple Guard sat back and watched 
 Sandridge through his eyelashes. 
 
 " Conversation is like piano-playing," 
 went on the would-be Londoner, " and is 
 not truly valued except by virtuosos. 
 Most of you fellows, now, would as soon 
 hear a piano-organ as Paderewski. I have 
 practised talking; we used to practise it 
 for hours daily in the North — the genial 
 initiative, the sudden digression, the calcu- 
 lated repartee, the retort in ambush, the 
 fitted apologue, the grooved anecdote, the 
 cascade of words, the slow sententious 
 movement, the intolerant harangue ; we had 
 an art and practice of talk with a termi- 
 nology all our own. Yes, Hopeby, I have 
 
116 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 it in me to make a great name as a con- 
 versationalist." 
 
 The Purple Guard sat up again. His 
 surprise was over. It took this young man 
 a very short time to docket and dismiss any 
 revelation of character. 
 
 " You're one of the queerest chaps I ever 
 met, Sandridge," he said ; " and I'll tell 
 you what I'll do for you. You know my 
 uncle, the Pope ? " 
 
 " Your uncle, the Pope.? " 
 
 "I see you don't. Major Hopeby- 
 Bonner, my uncle, is one of the best talk- 
 ers in London, or has that reputation, 
 which is better. Somebody of consequence 
 whom he snubbed called him the Pope, and 
 the name stuck. Now, he's dining here 
 with me to-night. You come too, and the 
 pair of you can talk for a wager." 
 
 Sandridge accepted in a faint voice. 
 He wished that it had been anybody but 
 Major Hopeby-Bonner's nephew who had 
 asked him, because he would have preferred 
 to decline the invitation. He and his 
 
A WOULD-BE LONDONER 117 
 
 friends had discussed the Major: his novels, 
 poems and essays had all been declared in- 
 ferior, the work of a callow amateur. 
 Rumours of his gifts as a talker had also 
 reached the North, and it had been decided 
 that he was a mere farceur, on a level with 
 the jester of antiquity. Sandridge had 
 imagined himself brushing off like flies such 
 people as Major Hopeby-Bonner ; to be 
 asked to meet him as a man of the first 
 importance blew the foundation-stone out 
 of his aerial castle. But he quickly built 
 another one ; told himself it would be prac- 
 tice : went to his room, drank tea, and 
 dipped into Lives of Carlyle, Beaconsfield, 
 Macaulay, and Houghton till dinner-time. 
 
 The Purple Guard introduced Sandridge 
 to his uncle as " a talking chap, too." 
 Sandridge, perspiring, wondered what Car- 
 lyle would have done in such a circum- 
 stance. 
 
 Major Hopeby-Bonner, like most gar- 
 rulous people, was a reticent, bashful man, 
 who plunged into speech because silence 
 
118 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 was accompanied with the discomfort of 
 greater self-consciousness. 
 
 "Talk," said the Major, "is diluted 
 silence. I confess I could never carry 
 more than a thimbleful of neat silence in 
 an evening." 
 
 " The idea," rejoined Sandridge, very 
 white, and in an unsteady voice, but wish- 
 ing to say something strong at once, 
 " is — ah — hardly — is not — quite — It 
 might have been phrased differently." He 
 was thinking that Beaconsfield would never 
 have said anything so vulgar. 
 
 " It might," assented the Major, much 
 amused. " How would you phrase it.^^ " 
 
 " Well, I would have said," stammered 
 Sandridge, " that — you remember, Car- 
 lyle — . Really I think there is nothing to 
 beat the proverb ' Silence is golden.' " 
 
 " A good proverb. But what is the con- 
 nection ? " 
 
 " The connection ? — Eh — we were 
 talking of silence. At least I think so." 
 
 The Major smiled and went on with his 
 
A WOULD-BE LONDONER 119 
 
 soup, and the Purple Guard said half aside 
 to Sandridge : " Bravo ! that must be ' the 
 retort in ambush' — eh? You've floored 
 him; he hasn't a word to say, you see." 
 He added, " What dd you think of London, 
 Sandridge? " 
 
 " It's — very big," stammered Sand- 
 ridge, " and enormous crowds, and buses, 
 and — I understand the fogs are dread- 
 ful." He had no idea of what he was 
 saying: he was going over in his mind the 
 sentences that had passed between himself 
 and the Major, trying to improve, or ex- 
 plain away, his own ineptitude. 
 
 " Ah ! ' the slow sententious movement,' " 
 murmured the Purple Guard. 
 
 " I have been in London half my life," 
 said the Major; " and yet the mere speak- 
 ing of the word ' London,' the overhearing 
 it said casually, often thrills me with a sense 
 of terror, and wonder, and delight." 
 
 " Mesopotamia," trolled the Purple 
 Guard. 
 
 Sandridge, still several remarks behind 
 
120 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 time, struck in: " The connection, Major 
 Hopeby-Bonner, between what you said 
 about silence and what I said is perhaps 
 at first sight not very evident; but — " 
 There he paused, and' for the Hf e of him 
 could not resume his sentence. 
 
 " We're w aiting for ' the sudden digres- 
 sion,' " said the Guardsman ; and the Major 
 smiled encouragingly. But it was all over 
 with Sandridge ; he went hot and cold, 
 turned ghastly pale, pleaded illness, and 
 withdrew. 
 
 That was his last appearance in a club 
 or any haunt of men for a long time. He 
 ceased all correspondence with his old 
 friends ; he hid away his biographies and 
 books of table-talk ; took all his food in 
 his own room ; walked about the streets at 
 night muttering to himself ; grew grey and 
 bent ; and was watched by the police. One 
 autumn evening, feeling that actual mad- 
 ness beset him in his solitude, he slipped 
 into the Cafe Cosmopolite. The band had 
 just ceased playing a selection from II 
 
A WOULD-BE LONDONER 121 
 
 Trovatore as he entered the dining-room, 
 and the crowd was somewhat subdued. 
 Many noticed Sandridge, and were moved 
 by his appearance. His furtive hfe had 
 given him a stealthy, ghding motion. His 
 grizzled hair, which he wore long, had 
 gone off his forehead, and showed a high 
 brow ; his beard was also long and wizard- 
 like. His slender, stooping figure, pale 
 face, and deep-set, haunted eyes interested 
 some spectators, and made others uneasy. 
 He felt the impression he created, and was 
 gratified. Next night he returned, and 
 soon formed a habit of dining at the Cafe 
 Cosmopolite every evening. He enters, a 
 cold, self-centred figure, with wolfish, wan- 
 dering eyes, like those of one who had been 
 racked; and glides to his chosen seat. 
 Women catch their breath as he passes, and 
 all who see him for the first time ask who 
 he is. Some think him like a picture of 
 Christ; others, like Mephistopheles. The 
 waiters know nothing of him ; but tell coun- 
 try visitors that he is this, that, or the 
 
122 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 other celebrity, according to fancy. He 
 must be served in silence ; points out on the 
 card and on the wine-list what he requires, 
 and eats ravenously. He is never heard to 
 utter a word except " Go away ! " if, as 
 sometimes happens, a waiter forgets and 
 addresses him. 
 
 He is the type of failure, and a legend 
 begins to grow round him. His ambition 
 was paltry, but he pursued it highly. De- 
 feated in his effort to be first, he refused 
 any other place; and it is this element of 
 greatness in his character which makes him 
 now so impressive an apparition in the Cafe 
 Cosmopolite. 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 LIBERTY of utterance, spontaneity, 
 is the mark of the highest poetry. 
 To be spontaneous is the whole art of 
 poetry, and especially distinguishes it from 
 the artifice of poetry. It is therefore the 
 main object of artifice to appear sponta- 
 neous. The master-artificer of our time, 
 more skilled than Pope, accomplished be- 
 jond praise, never attained greater liberty 
 of utterance than in the serenade in 
 Maud: — 
 
 She is coming, my own, my sweet; 
 
 Were it ever so airy a tread, 
 My heart would hear her and beat 
 
 Were it earth in an earthy bed; 
 My dust would hear her and beat 
 
 Had I lain for a century dead; 
 Would start and tremble under her feet, 
 
 And blossom in purple and red. 
 125 
 
126 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 The master-artist of all time was never 
 more at ease than in the overture to Twelfth 
 Night: — 
 
 O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art 
 
 thou ! 
 That, notwithstanding thy capacity 
 Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there, 
 Of what validity and pitch soe'er. 
 But falls into abatement and low price, 
 Even in a minute ! So full of shapes is 
 
 fancy, 
 That it alone is high-fantastical. 
 
 There is no prompt effect in the blank 
 verse to equal the quadruple knock of the 
 artificer's rhyme; Shakespeare's careless 
 fault, the rhyme " there " — " soe'er," is 
 worse than Tennyson's repeated subjunc- 
 tive " were it " ; but nothing in the blank 
 verse requires such a resolute countenance 
 or puts so much constraint on the imagina- 
 tion as Tennyson's conclusion, " purple 
 and red." It appears, then, that the care- 
 lessness of the artist is unconsciously simu- 
 lated by the artificer, the exigent form the 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 127 
 
 instinct of the latter selects entailing dif- 
 ficulties that make faults. Poetry is the 
 most empirical of all the arts ; in a sense 
 every poet is a charlatan ; he can give no 
 authority except his own experience, his 
 own imagination ; in the last resort he can 
 give no authority at all ; he cannot tell : it 
 was the Muse. Whether he be artificer or 
 artist, and the true poet is always both, it 
 is liberty of utterance he seeks. Poetry is 
 the least artificial of all the arts ; it is at 
 its best when it is most archaic. This is 
 not a matter of obsolete words ; rather it 
 is an eschewing of libraries, a getting back 
 to the earth divested, saving the harp and 
 sword, of all the inventions of man's hands 
 and mind. Thus the freest utterance is 
 always to be found in the narrative or the 
 drama. Subconsciousness, which the poet 
 singing in his own character inevitably ob- 
 scures — that is to say, the eternal, the 
 voice of the species — becomes audible in 
 personation. The Elizabethan-Jacobean 
 age, the great period of the drama, is also 
 
U8 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 the great period of poetry, when every aid 
 to free and full utterance was employed in 
 the disdain of art. It was in The Spanish 
 Tragedy/ that Kyd revealed the new and 
 excellent way of the madman. Here was 
 liberty at last ; everything could be said ; 
 and the kernel of the world appear through 
 the rent in the heart, the crack in the mind. 
 Hieronimo announces the woe of the awak- 
 ened intelligence trembling on the verge of 
 madness in three lines, three crude lines that 
 are not surpassed by any piercing utter- 
 ance of Hamlet, Timon, or Lear : — 
 
 This toils my body, this consumeth age, 
 That only I to all men just must be, 
 And neither gods nor men be just to me. 
 
 It is a cry wrung from the inmost heart. 
 These words do not occur in the additional 
 matter; they are Kyd's, and they are the 
 cognisance of Elizabethan tragedy.' 
 
 In his quaint, erudite, and most readable 
 preface (to the Temple edition). Professor 
 Schick says of the play itself : " It is like 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 129 
 
 an enchanted garden, where Hfeless wooden 
 puppets seem to wait for the magician who 
 is to wake them into life. We know that 
 the magician did come, and of old Jeronimo 
 he made Hamlet and Lear, out of Horatio 
 and Bellimperia he made the loveliest of all 
 wooing-scenes in Romeo and Juliet, of the 
 play within the play he made the most 
 subtle awakener of conscience." 
 Kyd's fate has been that of most pio- 
 neers. The crops of others wave on the 
 land he cleared. But it would be easy to 
 revive and perpetuate his memory. The 
 Spanish Tragedy was so seminal in its own 
 time, and, above all, was so influential in 
 determining the character of some of 
 Shakespeare's greatest work, that its regu- 
 lar publication as an appendix in popular 
 editions of Shakespeare would be much 
 more to the purpose than the inclusion of 
 Edward III., for example. Meantime, we 
 have Mr. Dent's admirable " Temple Edi- 
 tion," which I hope will be widely read. 
 Professor Schick's " wooden puppets " is 
 
150 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 extreme. Hieronimo, although only the 
 outline of a character, is made by Kyd the 
 mouthpiece of his own actual woe, and the 
 " Painter's part," the interpolation whose 
 fame eclipsed that of the play itself, and 
 which might have been hurriedly written 
 by Shakespeare, will arrest and hold the 
 most careless reader. 
 
THOUGHTS ON IRONY 
 
THOUGHTS ON IRONY 
 
 BEHIND phenomena I have found an 
 inexorable irony. Phenomena them- 
 selves are often beautiful ; but perhaps they 
 are only accidentally connected with spirit- 
 ual truth, skin-deep, the complexion of this 
 irony. I may ultimately find that irony 
 includes beauty, and is greater than beauty. 
 If poetry, aided by science, should find that 
 truth is ugly, poetry will say so ; but, as 
 nothing is ugly to science, perhaps poetry 
 may learn a lesson. 
 
 n 
 
 Worshipful Irony, the profound " Irony 
 of fate," is doubtless responsible for Ren- 
 anism, and all 'isms, but is derived from 
 none of them. 
 
 133 
 
134 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 It is centric, the adamantine axis of the 
 universe. At its poles are the illusions we 
 call matter and spirit, day and night, pleas- 
 ure and pain, beauty and ugliness. By it 
 our enterprises are whirled away from our 
 most resolved intentions. A playwright, 
 wearing out his life in the abortive effort 
 to found a county family, makes the litera- 
 ture of the world Shakespearian centuries 
 after his death ; the Pilgrim Fathers colo- 
 nise America in the name of the Highest — 
 that Tammany may flourish in New York ; 
 and out of the beautiful Shakespearianism 
 may come evil ; out of Tammany, good. 
 
 Irony is the enigma within the enigma, 
 the open secret, the only answer vouchsafed 
 the eternal riddle. 
 
 ni 
 
 I am not a Mocker ; Mockery and Irony 
 are not synonyms, as I understand them. 
 It is true I called love " a mere broker for 
 posterity;" but the image is homely, 
 illuminative, and without disdain. The 
 
THOUGHTS ON IRONY 135 
 
 advent of the Kingdom of Heaven was once 
 likened to the approach of a thief in the 
 night. 
 
 Mj concern Is not exclusively with " the 
 best, the noblest, and the happiest of men," 
 but with the universe as I can grasp it. 
 Irony is not a creed. The makers of creeds 
 have always miscalled, denied some part of 
 the world. Irony affirms and delights in 
 the whole. Consciously, it is the deep 
 complacence which contemplates with un- 
 alloyed satisfaction Love and Hate, the 
 tiger and the nightingale, the horse and 
 the blow-fly, Messalina and Galahad, the 
 village natural and Napoleon. Uncon- 
 sciously, it is the soul of the Universe. 
 Steep Irony in Chaos, and the universe will 
 string itself about it like crystals on a 
 thread. Whence comes Chaos? Whence 
 comes Irony .f^ There is no reply. To be- 
 lieve that the universe was made is the 
 essence of anthropomorphism. I would 
 have no more interest in a made universe 
 than in an eight-day clock or a suburban 
 
136 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 villa. Thought cannot conceive, nor fancy 
 call by any name, the manner and agency 
 of the becoming of the universe. But I 
 perceive the universe as a golden bough of 
 Irony, flowering with suns and systems. 
 
GEORGE MEREDITH'S ODES 
 
GEORGE MEREDITH'S ODES 
 
 IT is as easy to find fault with the man- 
 ner of Mr. Meredith's poetry as with 
 the manner of Shakespeare's, or with that 
 of any authentic writer, and there are those 
 who hasten to do so. Mr. Meredith has 
 of course always enjoyed the approbation 
 of his peers and the reverential suffrage of 
 his younger contemporaries, but the class 
 which is attracted by the literariness 
 of literature, second-hand minds whose 
 thoughts are echoes, who have memory 
 without judgment, and who, when they 
 themselves attempt literature, " draw from 
 a model," are now, and have been for long, 
 so loud in the daily and weekly press, that 
 a great poet like Mr. Meredith cannot find 
 in contemporary criticism the mirror the 
 poet needs, and is compelled, in his own 
 
 139 
 
140 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 words, " to look elsewhere." Censorship 
 is that function of criticism which medi- 
 ocrity most affects. By finding fault it en- 
 deavours after a feeling of equality with 
 that which is above it, unaware that admi- 
 ration is the only and, happil}^, the gen- 
 erous means by which the lesser nature 
 can reach the level of the greater. 
 
 I see a pitman, somewhat ragged as to 
 his attire, who has laboured all day under- 
 ground, trudging home and humming a 
 tune by the way. A snob, on horseback 
 perhaps, or in a brougham, on a bike, or 
 on foot and ragged too, looks after him 
 and cries out, " I say, my man ! Look 
 here ! There's a hole in your coat ! " 
 That represents much of the criticism of 
 the day — contemptible in quality, impor- 
 tant by its prodigious volume. The writ- 
 ers of it are unable to connect criticism 
 with understanding. Not to understand, 
 but to stand over what is offered and in- 
 sult grossly, seems to them in all good 
 faith the natural thing to do. Decent 
 
GEORGE MEREDITH'S ODES lil 
 
 honest people, whose vision is a cul-de-sac 
 ending in a blank wall, and with whom 
 detraction is a merit, have doubtless always 
 existed in large numbers, have muttered 
 their comments upon occasion, and served 
 the purpose of the ages in some occult 
 but necessary manner. " Now," a vehe- 
 ment writer says, " a free press has en- 
 dow^ed ineptitude and dulness with most 
 unnecessary power and prominence, and 
 made of them an actual portent. They 
 are everywhere ; they creep into the best 
 periodicals ; no editor can cope with them. 
 At one time the ranks of the enemies of 
 literature were recruited from its own out- 
 casts, poets and novelists of ambition who 
 had failed; but the native black rat has 
 been eaten out or hunted into the lowest 
 sewers by the hordes of vigorous brown 
 rats, writers, namely, more or less suc- 
 cessful, to whom literature is only a trade, 
 and writers whose reviewing is their only 
 connection with literature. To have an 
 opinion, or to profess an opinion and be 
 
142 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 able to state it, is all the qualification re- 
 quired — the vast increase in the space 
 devoted to books in the periodical press 
 provides the opportunity. I suppose there 
 is no one who can put two sentences to- 
 gether who has not w^ritten a review and 
 been paid for it. There are shillings, 
 guineas to be had, weekly, monthly — 
 pin-money, pocket-money. The result is 
 that the word ' literature ' has become 
 nauseous in tKe ears of the world ; that an 
 authentic manner is considered affectation, 
 and whatever cannot be read at break-neck 
 speed is passed over as obscure." There 
 is probably much truth in the remarks of 
 this vigorous writer. Certain it is that, 
 whereas music, art and the drama are more 
 or less handsomely served by responsible 
 critics, poetry and fiction remain pretty 
 much the prey of anonymity. 
 
 " Mr. Meredith is a poet : we admit that 
 this man is a poet; but what is he doing .^^ 
 Why, he is making poetry ! The man is 
 actually singing ! We can't stand that ! " 
 
GEORGE MEREDITH'S ODES 143 
 
 Here you have the essential objection 
 taken to all true poetry, to all true things. 
 If you can seem to be busy about a matter, 
 like a bishop, for example, or a high priest, 
 you are applauded of all men; but if you 
 are actually doing it, like the tinker of 
 Bedford or the Wayfarer of Galilee, you 
 are not by any means applauded of all 
 men. Or the cry may be, " Yes, Mr. Mer- 
 edith is a poet ; but his principal work is 
 in fiction : he is only a minor poet." This 
 is the unconscious jealousy of men which 
 cannot tolerate that one person should 
 have two reputations. And as for his be- 
 ing a minor poet, why, all contemporary 
 poetry is minor poetry. Not until it has 
 been loaded with the thought and emotion 
 of generations of readers can poetry be 
 said to be of age. It is the centuries that 
 give poetry its majority. 
 
 I now wish to illustrate, as far as can 
 be done by extracts, the power and splen- 
 dour of Mr. Meredith's " Odes in Contribu- 
 tion to the Song of French History." 
 
144 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 From the third ode I make no quotation, 
 as it is a reprint. In the first, " The 
 Revolution," is the following description 
 of France risen against tyrants, — 
 
 " War's ragged pupils ; many a wavering line, 
 Torn from the dear fat soil of champaigns. 
 
 hopefully tilled. 
 Torn from the motherly bowl, the homely 
 
 spoon. 
 To jest at famine, ply 
 
 The novel scythe, and stand to it on the field ; 
 Lie in the furrows, rain-clouds for their tents ; 
 Fronting the red artillery straighten spine; 
 Buckle the shiver at sight of comrades strewn ; 
 Over an empty platter affect the merrily 
 
 filled; 
 Die, if the multiple hazards around said die; 
 Downward measure a foeman mightily sized; 
 Laugh at the legs that would run for a life 
 
 despised; 
 Lyrical on into death's red-roaring jaw-gape, 
 
 steeled 
 Gaily to take of the foe his lesson, and give 
 
 reply. 
 Cheerful apprentices, they shall be masters 
 
 soon ! 
 
GEORGE MEREDITH'S ODES 145 
 
 This of France mated with Napoleon, 
 " the man-miracle," " earth's chosen, 
 crowned, unchallengeable upstart," " the 
 arbiter of circumstance," is from the sec- 
 ond ode, — 
 
 ** Nor ever had heroical Romance, 
 
 Never ensanguined History's lengthened' 
 
 scroll 
 Shown fulminant to shoot the leven-dart 
 Terrific as this man, by whom upraised, 
 Aggrandised and begemmed she outstripped 
 
 her peers; 
 Like midnight's levying brazier-beacon blazed 
 Defiant to the world, a rally for her sons ; 
 Day of the darkness; this man's mate; by 
 
 him, 
 Cannon his name. 
 
 Rescued from vivisectionist and knave. 
 Her body's dominators and her shame; 
 By him with rivers of ranked battalions, 
 
 brave 
 Past mortal girt : a march of swords and guns 
 Incessant; his proved warriors; loaded dice 
 He flung on the crested board, where chilly 
 
 Fears 
 
146 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 Behold the Reaper's ground, Death sitting 
 grim, 
 
 Awatch for his predestined ones 
 
 Mid shrieks and torrent-hooves; but these, 
 
 Inebriate of his inevitable device, 
 
 Hail it their hero's wood of lustrous laurel- 
 trees 
 
 Blossom and print of fresh Hesperides, 
 
 The boiling life-blood in their cheers." 
 
 In the last ode, " Alsace Lorraine," Mr. 
 George Meredith, the foremost man of let- 
 ters in England, utters a high and noble 
 message to France and to all men, the old 
 message of renunciation with a new brav- 
 ery in it : — 
 
 " As light enkindles light when heavenly 
 
 earthly mates, 
 The flame of pure immits the flame of pure, 
 Magnanimous magnanimous creates. 
 So to majestic beauty stricken rears 
 Hard-visaged rock against the risen glow; 
 And men are in the secret with the spheres, 
 Whose glory is celestially to bestow. 
 Now nation looks to nation, that may live 
 
GEORGE MEREDITH'S ODES 147 
 
 Their common nurseling, like the torrent's 
 
 flower. 
 Shaken by foul Destruction's fast-piled heap. 
 On France is laid the proud initiative 
 Of sacrifice in one self-mastering hour, 
 Whereby more than her lost one will she reap ; 
 Perchance the very lost again regain, 
 To count it less than her superb reward. 
 Our Europe, where is debtor each to each. 
 Pass measure of excess, and war is Cain, 
 Fraternal from the Seaman's beach. 
 From answering Rhine in grand accord. 
 From Neva beneath Northern cloud, 
 And from our Transatlantic Europe loud. 
 Will hail the rare example for their theme ; 
 Give response, as rich foliage to the breeze; 
 In their intrusted nurseling know them one; 
 Like a brave vessel under press of steam, 
 Abreast the winds and tides, on angry seas. 
 Plucked by the heavens forlorn of present 
 
 sun. 
 Will drive through darkness, and, with faith 
 
 supreme. 
 Have sight of haven and the crowded quays." 
 
 Mr. Meredith's " Odes in Contribution 
 
148 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 to the Song of French History," is, in 
 some respects, the most important book 
 that has been given to the world for many 
 years. It offers the heart of England to 
 the heart of France ; it takes a proud step 
 forward in the intemationalisation of litera- 
 ture ; and it contains the first profound 
 notes of the new epic — the epic of 
 Democracy with Napoleon for hero. 
 
EVOLUTION IN LITERATURE 
 
EVOLUTION IN LITERATURE 
 
 THE evolutionary idea is a misleading 
 one in literature even more than in 
 science and philosophy. Since the Ptole- 
 maic system, nothing more satisfactory 
 to common sense has been offered in any 
 branch of knowledge than evolution ; but 
 it is now supposed that the sun does not 
 go round the earth, and it may very well 
 be that the apparent descent of man is a 
 sense-illusion also. It is known that oak 
 trees do not grow from pine-cones, 
 although an oak and a pine may stand 
 side by side. It is known that monkeys 
 never beget men although they frequent 
 the same regions. Because Victorian lit- 
 erature succeeds Georgian literature, and, 
 at an interval, that of the first James, 
 this epoch of letters is not necessarily 
 
 151 
 
152 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 related to those as child and great-great- 
 great-grandchild. I suggest that English 
 literature is a forest rather than a planta- 
 tion ; a land of upheavals and disarranged 
 strata that science can make little of yet, 
 at least ; and a place of meteorites of which 
 the earth can tell nothing. I suggest that 
 evolution, reversing the proverb, cannot 
 see the trees for the wood; and that gen- 
 eralisation, most helpful in dealing with 
 classes, is mischievous applied to individ- 
 uals. I suggest that intelligence — poet, 
 thinker, sinner, authentic person, or what- 
 ever the fortunate-unfortunate may be 
 called — will accept no creed ; that 
 although evolution is bound to rule the 
 minds of men for hundreds of years to 
 come, intelligence knows it will be dis- 
 missed, as the idea of creation is being dis- 
 missed now ; and that intelligence, although 
 compelled sometimes to use the evolution- 
 ary idea in order to be comprehended by 
 contemporaries, is unfettered by that idea. 
 
TETE-X-TfiXE 
 
TETE-X-TfiTE 
 
 James Boswell. Dr. Jolvnson, 
 
 JAMES BOSWELL. How, sir, would 
 you define Poetry? 
 
 Dr. Johnson. Poetry is the entertain- 
 ment of the imagination by aesthetic inven- 
 tions in language. 
 
 J. B. Does that definition not apply as 
 well to prose? 
 
 Dr. J. It does in a limited measure ; 
 but poetry, alone in verbal art, excites the 
 imagination to the highest pitch and sat- 
 isfies the aesthetic desire it arouses. 
 
 J. B. Is it possible to state how poetry 
 does this? 
 
 Dr. J. Yes, sir. The restraint upon 
 prose is one of common sense; whereas 
 the restraint upon poetry is that of 
 rhythm. 
 
 155 
 
156 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 J, B. Rhyme, sir? 
 
 Dr, J. You talk like a fool, sir. 
 Rhyme is not essential to poetry. It is 
 the restraint of rhythm which is the source 
 of the pleasure poetry gives. The differ- 
 ence between prose and poetry is the dif- 
 ference between walking and dancing. 
 The former is an exercise, or a means of 
 transit from one point to another; and 
 having got into the way the walker has 
 nothing to do but follow his nose at what- 
 ever pace and length of stride he chooses 
 or utility requires. The latter, as it 
 happens, exercises the dancer ; but the pur- 
 pose of the dancer is to take and give 
 delight, and in all his gyrations, sallies, 
 twists and turns, poses, steps and pirou- 
 ettes, he is obedient to the strictest law 
 of rhythm. 
 
 J. B, But, sir, Kemp, the Elizabethan 
 actor, danced all the way from London to 
 Norwich, which was surely a transit from 
 one point to another. 
 
 Dr. J. Sir, your illustration is imper- 
 
TETE-A-TETE 157 
 
 tinent. It was the Morris that Kemp 
 danced, with bells at his ankles; in itself 
 a comic performance related to dancing, 
 as Hood's punning ballads are related to 
 poetry; and, as Kemp reiterated and pro- 
 longed it in his notorious itinerary, a per- 
 version of function more ridiculous than 
 it would be to reprint " Faithless Nelly 
 Gray " over and over in a score of vol- 
 umes of the bulk of the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica. 
 
 J. B. Two anachronisms, sir! You 
 live long before the Encyclopaedia Britan- 
 nica and Thomas Hood. 
 
 Dr. J. They are nothing, sir, to the 
 anachronisms I expect to commit in the 
 course of this conversation. 
 
 J. B. To resume, sir. Rhythm is not 
 confined to poetry. Let me quote a 
 passage from Sir Thomas Browne : — 
 
 Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the 
 irregularities of vain-glory, and wild enormi- 
 ties of ancient magnanimity. But the most 
 magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian 
 
158 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 religion, which trampleth upon pride, and 
 sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pur- 
 suing that infallible perpetuity into which 
 all others must diminish their diameters, and 
 be poorly seen in angles of contingency. 
 
 Dr. J. The passage takes me between 
 wind and water, both by reason of its 
 meaning and the stateliness of it. I did 
 not, however, set out to deny that there 
 are rhythmic sentences in prose. And 
 I grant also that a queenly walk, a lofty 
 carriage, are more to be admired than 
 ordinary dancing. What I maintain is 
 that the rhythm of poetry, being, unlike 
 that of prose, fettered by metre, delivers 
 poetry from the law of common sense, as 
 a prisoner is delivered from the ordinary 
 responsibilities of life. To be a prisoner 
 is itself, both for the observer and the 
 sufferer, a more interesting, a more ab- 
 sorbing, condition than to be free. Every 
 spontaneous action and word of a pris- 
 oner assume extraordinary significance ; 
 and the expression or concealment of his 
 
TETE-A-TETE 159 
 
 emotions, his very nonsense and grimaces, 
 obtain a value of which freedom knows 
 nothing. The dancer and the poet are 
 prisoners, and as long as they move, yield- 
 ing to their impulses and exerting their 
 energies in their chosen or imposed fet- 
 ters, they arrest and hold the attention, 
 and, in proportion to the beauty and pas- 
 sion of the art displayed, entertain and 
 satisfy the imagination of the spectator, 
 of the listener or competent reader. 
 
 J. B. I am astonished, sir, to hear you 
 maintain that poetry is above common 
 sense. 
 
 Dr, J. It is so, nevertheless. Attempt 
 to translate Mercutio's Queen Mab speech 
 into prose, and see what you will make of 
 it. Or take a serious passage — Othello's 
 famous image — 
 
 Like to the Pontick sea, 
 Whose icy current and compulsive course 
 Ne'er knows retiring ebb, but keeps due on 
 To the Propontick and the Hellespont; 
 
160 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent 
 
 pace, 
 Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble 
 
 love, 
 Till that a capable and wide revenge 
 Swallow them up. 
 
 Reduce this to prose and it would be im- 
 possible to read it with a sober face. It 
 is the metre, the lightning dance of it, 
 that lays common sense under a spell. To 
 say it slowly, would almost be to translate 
 it into prose. Poetry is like music, and 
 must be taken at its proper time ; and here 
 the verse leaps, straining to the cataract of 
 the close: 
 
 Till that a capable and wide revenge 
 Swallow them up. 
 
 I am certain that I have not been enabled 
 to speak according to my wont, and have 
 been made to say things altogether out 
 of character, as well as anachronistic ; but, 
 sir, I am always glad to be resuscitated 
 under any conditions not dishonourable. 
 
POETRY AND CRITICISM 
 
POETRY AND CRITICISM 
 
 4 4 X T is very questionable whether a poet 
 M can have any vital interest in any 
 poetry except his own. I think a poet 
 gradually ceases to take any interest in 
 literature as literature. As part of life, 
 literature, whether it be poetry or prose, 
 occupies an inferior place in the world. 
 Compare literature, for example, with eat- 
 ing and drinking, with making love, with 
 making money. Literature in the banquet 
 of life is now a Jiors d'oeuvre, now a ciga- 
 rette ; no more than that. Consider, then, 
 what an insignificant thing the criticism of 
 literature must be. I often wonder who 
 reads reviews ; with the exception of the 
 reviewer and the author reviewed, who are 
 they? People read books from the libra- 
 rian's list and from gossip at dinner, not 
 upon the advice of the critic." 
 
 163 
 
l64> THE MAN FORBID 
 
 " Then where is the use of criticism? " 
 
 " It has no use, of course ; but apart 
 from the question of utihty, this enormous 
 production of books of all kinds, and the 
 daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly waste of 
 criticism is the result of enchantment. You 
 must never forget that the whole world 
 is enchanted. People can't help them- 
 selves ; they have language, they have pens 
 and paper; one writes, another writes. 
 And it is all inferior, the very highest of 
 it, to a thing done. The power of the pen 
 has been grossly exaggerated. Napoleon, 
 not Goethe, made the modern world. 
 Everybody knows the life of Napoleon and 
 its meaning — " the tools to him that can 
 handle them." Every man goes Nap ; and 
 the women want to play too." 
 
 " I'm afraid you'll be very cruel to the 
 poets." 
 
 " Oh no ! A poet is always a man of 
 inordinate ambition and. inordinate vanity. 
 If his every book is not universally pro- 
 nounced the finest poetry since Shakespeare 
 
POETRY AND CRITICISM 165 
 
 he incontinently breaks his heart. But if 
 he is really a poet his heart mends again, 
 and is the stronger for the catastrophe. 
 I do not say this to signify that I purpose 
 splintering hearts out of kindness. I 
 merely indicate that I understand the po- 
 etical temperament, and that if I should 
 hurt anyone, I know the immense recuper- 
 ative power of the poet too well to be 
 over-concerned; and everybody will tell 
 you that if a poet or any other writer can 
 be killed by criticism the sooner it is done 
 the better." 
 
tete-X-t£te 
 
TETE-1-TETE 
 
 Froude. Carlisle. 
 
 F 
 
 ROUDE. I have often thought that 
 we need in hterature something anal- 
 ogous to Pre-Raphaehtism in art. 
 
 Carlyle. What is Pre-Raphaehtism? 
 
 F. I hardly know. The Pre-Raphael- 
 ites were, I believe, artists who picked up 
 art not where Raphael left off but where 
 he began. 
 
 C. It doesn't matter much. Their 
 idea, I dare say, was to get rid of all con- 
 vention, and begin art over again for 
 themselves. And that was highly com- 
 mendable. Something analogous to that 
 is desirable in literature. Tennyson with 
 his confections of passion for use in ladies' 
 seminaries, and Browning with his frantic, 
 terrified optimism, and the restless, over- 
 
 169 
 
170 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 hasty spinning-jenny in his head, are not 
 much to my hking. They both of them 
 represent England of the broadened fran- 
 chise and repealed corn-law; they are 
 bourgeois to the core, and rose to emi- 
 nence with the rise of the middle class, 
 the dominant factor in the life of the cen- 
 tury. 
 
 F, What do you say to " The City of 
 Dreadful Night," by James Thomson? 
 
 C. Thomson's poems will always com- 
 mand attention because they sprang di- 
 rectly out of his life. I think that he was 
 by Nature endowed beyond any of the 
 English poets of his time. There are no 
 half -measures with Nature when she really 
 takes a matter in hand. And so she gave 
 Thomson, let us say, passion and intellect 
 second only to Shakespeare's ; fitted him 
 for the fullest life — not that he might 
 occupy and enjoy, however. Nature is the 
 great spendthrift. She will burn up the 
 world some day to attain what will prob- 
 ably seem to us a very inadequate end ; and 
 
T^TE-A-TfiTE 171 
 
 in order to have things stated at their 
 worst, once for all, in English, she took 
 a splendid genius and made him — an 
 Army schoolmaster ; starved his intellect, 
 starved his heart, starved his body. All 
 the adversity of the world smote him; and 
 that nothing should be wanting to her 
 purpose, Nature took care that the very 
 sun should smite him also ! And how gal- 
 lantly the victim bore himself! Time will 
 avenge him: he is among the immortals. 
 He, indeed, is a Pre-Shakespearian. 
 
 F, Ha ! What do you mean by a Pre- 
 Shakespearian ? 
 
 C. I mean, first of all, Shakespeare 
 himself. Shakespeare was no Shakespear- 
 ian. Often the name of a cult is a mis- 
 nomer. Three centuries of English inepti- 
 tude have made of Shakespeare — not only 
 the popular Shakespeare, but the Shake- 
 speare of the schools — a very tame and 
 bloodless portent indeed, the smug person 
 written of by Hallam, Tennyson's " Shake- 
 speare, bland and mild." They have made 
 
172 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 of him a sort of statue of Memnon, with an 
 infinity of notes, it is true, which responded 
 to the sunset as well as the sunrise, and 
 to other reagents ; but still an automaton, 
 a musical box which could play any tune, 
 with a preference, surprising in mechan- 
 ism, to go off with Hamlet. Precisely into 
 Hamlet, the mediocrity, the man in the 
 street ; a loquacious person ; a busybody, 
 given to reading books after dinner and 
 scribbling on the margins ; one that kept 
 a diary and wrote letters to the newspa- 
 pers. A Parliament-man, a debater! He 
 would have been a good bishop, a good 
 under-secretary ; and might have remained 
 solvent as a stock-broker. This is the 
 Shakespeare of the English ; the cult of the 
 Shakespearians. Hamlet, the middle-class 
 man, stares out of all our middle-class lit- 
 erature ; and there is practically no other 
 in England. Hamlet ! Why, Shakespeare 
 was himself a world: Coriolanus and Fal- 
 staff are the poles of him: Hamlet is no- 
 body ; I prefer lago. 
 
TETE-A-TETE 173 
 
 F. Would you have our literature de- 
 velop out of lago and Thersltes? 
 
 C. I would not have it develop out of 
 Shakespeare at all. I would have men put 
 Shakespeare aside for half a century. He 
 is in the way. Suddenly we find that 
 Shakespeare blocks the road. He was ad- 
 mirable, he was necessary before steam ; 
 the world would have been at a standstill 
 without him. Now it can't get on because 
 of him. Steam, electricity, and the news- 
 paper have made Shakespeare out of date ; 
 it is they that have turned the world upside 
 down ; they and a little word Evolution 
 have wrought in sixty years a greater 
 change than was elaborated in all the cen- 
 turies from the first Christian community 
 to sansculottism. Men don't know it, or 
 hate to recognise it ; they try to be what 
 their literature is, what their old establish- 
 ments are or seem. They read Hamlet and 
 are Shakespearian in an empire the inhab- 
 itants of which are mainly Mohammedans, 
 Brahmans, Fire-worshippers ; in a country 
 
174 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 where the race for wealth has set morality 
 coughing and sweating in a galloping con- 
 sumption ; at a time when the aristocracy 
 of intellect — (the English from the most 
 heraldic peer to the sireless apprentice are 
 the middle-class of Europe, the prosperous, 
 pushing shop-walkers of the world) ; at a 
 time when the aristocracy of intellect have 
 set their crucibles in the furnace, and have 
 thrown in everything, themselves and all 
 the past, the English are reading Hamlet. 
 The hen thought the sky was falling 
 when the pea dropped on her head ; but 
 the skies have fallen — on the wicked game- 
 cock across the Channel, thinks the Eng- 
 lish bird of dawning. We are a great 
 race. 
 
 F. Out of what, then, is this desirable 
 Pre-Shakespearianism to evolve? 
 
 C Out of a reverence for fact. 
 
 F, That has been tried in the cult of 
 le sens du reel, in realism, in naturalism. 
 
 C. I did not say a reverence for matter- 
 of-fact. 
 
 -y 
 
TETE-A-TETE 175 
 
 F. Indeed it was a hideous develop- 
 ment. 
 
 C. Oh, much adverse comment has 
 been ehcited by the writings of a certain 
 school; but the acute stage is past, and 
 literature has been purged of some of the 
 peccant humours that accumulate during 
 periods of transition : the python comes 
 forth brilliant from his old skin, but the 
 process of sloughing is not comely. That 
 matter-of-fact fiction, as far as it suc- 
 ceeded in being matter-of-fact, was the 
 mere lifeless eschar of literature ; through 
 it the new tegument appeared living and 
 healthy. But truly it was in dead earnest. 
 It tried to wrap its imagination in a nap- 
 kin, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, 
 and go about with a notebook painting its 
 epoch. That could not last ; that could 
 not even get begun. The point of view ^ 
 of realism was essentially the Devil's point 
 of view. The adversary, the accuser, 
 started out with notebook and stylographic 
 pen. 
 
176 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 F. It might have shamed our easy-go- 
 ing sinners to know that the chance of 
 escaping detection was much minimised 
 when the Devil learned shorthand. 
 
 C. Oh, no ! for the Devil, when he set 
 himself to examine the matter carefully, 
 discovered that man is a stomach, first and 
 last. For some time, this discovery, like 
 the discovery of the New World, was a 
 thing expected, a thing known — but how 
 to get there? Like all great achievements 
 it was quite simple — easier than setting 
 an egg on its end, or sailing to America. 
 
 F, How, then? 
 
 C. By asserting it. " Man is a stom- 
 ach." Great is assertion. At once the 
 complex world is simplified. It is found 
 to consist of beef and greens, which man, 
 the stomach, can distil into blood. But 
 how is this? What has happened to our 
 sublime theory of irregular verbs? How 
 has the stomach become saddled with this 
 Old Man of the Sea, these entirely supere- 
 rogatory organs which perform the unwar- 
 
tStE-A-TETE 177 
 
 rantable functions of thinking and imag- 
 ining? How much better if man had been 
 as the hydras, patent reversible handbags 
 that Hve most self-sufficingly in ditches, and 
 can be turned outside-in without damage. 
 Alas ! man is not a hydra. The great dis- 
 covery turned out to be no discovery. The 
 realist assiduously attempting to set down 
 whatever is commonplace, whatever is mat- 
 ter-of-fact, en pleine platitude, struggling 
 to circumscribe his sens du reel by those 
 things only which can be touched, tasted, 
 smelt, found himself, to his amazement, 
 haunted at every step by a ghost which 
 would not be laid — Imagination, in all 
 men, but most unescapably in himself. He 
 has to write alone, in his study, far from 
 the presence of the people and business of 
 his work. And the bulk of his realities is 
 picked up at second-hand — from reports, 
 from conversations, newspapers, documents. 
 There is no help for it, but to imagine. 
 The attempt has been made, from the Dev- 
 il's point of view, to state man as a stom- 
 
178 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 ach, and, in order even to get the attempt 
 started, it was necessary to employ what is 
 divinest in man — his imagination. 
 
 F. But we are no nearer the fountain 
 of a desirable Pre-Shakespearianism. 
 
 C It will come ! It will come ! The 
 first bubblings of it may be heard 
 already. 
 
 F. Where? where .^^ Shall I, for ex- 
 ample, find a rill of it in Nietszche? 
 
 C. In Nietszche ! How dare you men- 
 tion Nietszche to me? A great man; a 
 man of unexampled divulsive power, but 
 spoilt for want of a knowledge of my writ- 
 ings. And it is your fault — your meagre 
 nature that could make no more of me than 
 that ill-tempered, lugubrious figure you so 
 often bored to death. Your life of me is 
 the worst disservice literature has ever suf- 
 fered. Out of it the world knows me, and 
 cares not for my books on that account. 
 It is Froude, not Carlyle, that the world 
 and Nietszche know; of you Nictszche's 
 final word on me may be true : " He is an 
 
TETE-A-TETE 179 
 
 English atheist who aspires to honour for 
 not being: one." It is false of me. The 
 realist would state the world as stomach. 
 Nietszche stated it as Chaos. Both have 
 been called Diabolists ; but there is no such 
 being as a Diabolist. Even those wretched 
 creatures who celebrate the black mass are 
 in that very act non-diabolic, for they are 
 endeavouring to worship. God, as well as 
 the Devil, is in all men. Had I written my 
 " Exodus from Houndsditch " I would have 
 employed the Devil to burn up the weeds, 
 but I would have saved the ethical hemp- 
 stalk of it. In Nietszche's " Exodus from 
 Houndsditch " he has burnt up the moral- 
 ity, too ; he could see nothing else for it 
 but that. Woe's me ! The message which 
 is in the very name Diogenes Teuf elsdrockh 
 has fallen on stony ground! 
 
 F, I have heard that Nietszche, having 
 destroj^ed the whole world of thought, in- 
 tended a reconstruction. 
 
 C. He did. He meant to restate the 
 world as Lust for Power. 
 
180 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 F. Would you recommend Englishmen 
 to read Nietszche? 
 
 C I would indeed. Such a tonic the 
 world of letters has not had for a thousand 
 years. Nietszche set himself, smiling, to 
 dislodge the old earth from its orbit ; and 
 — it is something against such odds — the 
 dint of his shoulder will remain for ever. 
 
tete-1-t£te 
 
TETE-X-TfiXE 
 
 Baptist Lake. Islay Ingl'is. 
 
 BAPTIST LAKE. I haven't seen you 
 for five years. Where have you 
 been ? 
 
 Islay Inglis, In Dover, for a holiday. 
 
 B.L. Dover? Well! 
 
 7. 7. I know what you mean ; but I tried 
 Folkestone, and found it intolerable. I 
 sat on a chair on the Leas all a forenoon. 
 The band played; the seated crowd, all on 
 chairs, mainly ladies, hushed and solemn, 
 glanced furtively at labelled fiction, cau- 
 tiously turning the leaf. Gentlemen, 
 groomed like carriage-hacks, attired in hot- 
 pressed suits they seemed afraid to crease, 
 conversing at intervals in diplomatic whis- 
 pers, trod the withered turf — withered and 
 beaten to powder by the unslaked steps of 
 
 183 
 
184 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 the march of summer and the superfine 
 tread of uneasy fashion. The flame-tipped 
 music of Carmen, the molten sapphire of 
 the sea, the saffron beach far down, and the 
 lofty sun emptying its inexhaustible urn 
 of fire, were all tamed and fettered to the 
 living death of a well-to-do crowd, en- 
 chanted out of humanity into the likeness 
 of unedified and unedifying creatures. At 
 Folkestone Holiday is a Function. 
 
 B, L. Terrible ; but accurate, I fear. 
 Function is the gangrene of modem social 
 life. But what led you to Dover .? 
 
 /. I. Chance. I — . 
 
 B. L. Now, how often have I asked you, 
 Islay, never to use the word " chance " ? 
 The use of misnomers is the propagation of 
 ignorance. Endeavour always to think the 
 unthinkable ; give at least a new name to 
 the unknown, and in time you will pave the 
 abyss and cast a bridge over the Milky 
 Way. You went to Dover, you say, actu- 
 ated by the profound law which led you 
 there. Well.? 
 
TStE-A-TETE 185 
 
 /. 7. My first intention was to walk 
 about Romney Marsh. You know " the 
 earth is divided into Europe, Asia, Africa, 
 America, and Romney Marsh." Romney 
 Marsh is, I suppose, one of the newest 
 pieces of land in the Old World. No an- 
 cient Briton ever trod its southern verge; 
 and the waves rolled over it while the neigh- 
 bouring seaboards echoed the drums and 
 tramplings of three conquests. There 
 must be virtue in such virgin soil. It is 
 the true country for Antaeus. But there 
 was no room in Dymchurch, not even in 
 the inn — the virtue of the land is known to 
 many. So I forwent Romney Marsh, and 
 took rooms on the Marine Parade in Dover 
 after that dreadful experience at Folke- 
 stone. 
 
 B. L. Was that beautiful girl with you 
 — Rose Salerne, who drank shandy-gaff 
 with the thirst of perdition in the " Rose 
 and Crown " at Pilgrimstow? 
 
 /. /. Rose Inglis now. Baptist. 
 
186 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 B. L. You married her ! Mj dear boy, 
 that was exquisite of you. 
 
 /. /. I think it was exquisite of us both. 
 
 B. L. And so daring ! 
 
 /. /. True ; the marriage of a really in- 
 telligent couple is now the most daring ex- 
 ploit reserved for the adventurous. 
 
 B. L. It was more daring to go to 
 Dover for a holiday. 
 
 /. /. Not for me. I was quite at home 
 in Dover. The majority of the holiday- 
 makers' there are of the lower-middle class, 
 to which I belong. 
 
 B. L. The lower-middle class, Islay ? 
 
 I. I. Yes ; the fountain of aristocracy 
 — not, of course, the parasitical aristoc- 
 racy of birth and title, but the best blood 
 and brain of the world. Consider it briefly, 
 at a venture. Homer, Virgil, Dante, 
 Shakespeare, Goethe, Burns, Carlyle, all of 
 humble extraction. 
 
 B, L. Dante? 
 
 /. /. On the mother's side, certainly. 
 
 B. L. Cervantes? 
 
TETE-A-TETE 187 
 
 /. /. There must be exceptions ; but 
 although Cervantes' parentage was of rank 
 on both sides, in order that what was best 
 in him should appear he had to be brought 
 lower even than the lower-middle class ; out 
 of slavery and prison he came, the greatest 
 man as man of those who lived by writing. 
 
 B. L. And what about men of action? 
 
 /. I. Zenghis Khan, Tamerlane — 
 sheepstealers and landloupers ; Moses, the 
 son of slaves in Egypt ; Mahomet's father, 
 although, like all the lower-middle class, 
 related to some of the highest families, was 
 a poor man ; Alexander of Macedon, Julius 
 Caesar, William the Conqueror, Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln — a tide of 
 elemental blood beat in the hearts of all 
 these. 
 
 B. L. Alexander, the son of a king and 
 of a king's daughter? 
 
 I. I. The son of a king's daughter, the 
 luxurious Olympias ; his father may have 
 been anybody : Philip himself was willing 
 to ascribe the paternity to Jupiter. Wil- 
 
188 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 liam the Conqueror, the tanner's grandson, 
 is a typical example ; Robert of Normandy, 
 the parasitical aristocrat of birth and title, 
 in order that his son might be more than 
 that, was compelled to select his mother 
 from the lower-middle classes. Of escutch- 
 eons that seem without a blot, who can tell 
 how many mothers, in order that their sons 
 might be great, had to fall back on illegiti- 
 mate fathers? 
 
 B. L. I should like to see you attempt 
 a grammatical analysis of that last sen- 
 tence ! So, then, in order to support your 
 theory, you would tarnish the fame of 
 queens ? 
 
 /. /. Nothing is sacred to the theorist. 
 But you make me outrageously discursive. 
 I say, I went to Dover with Rose; and we 
 delighted in it, because it is a holiday resort 
 of the lower-middle classes. We sat on the 
 beach and watched the young Mahomets 
 and Tamerlanes at play ; we paraded the 
 pier to the strains of the military band; 
 and all the evenings were Elysian with the 
 
tete-a-t:6te 189 
 
 electric illumination of the Marine Parade. 
 The wandering minstrel sang — 
 
 Rhoda rode a roadster on the road to 
 Ryde; 
 I also rode a roadster on the road by Rhoda's 
 side; 
 When next I ride to Ryde with Rhoda she 
 will be my bride: 
 I bless the day that Rhoda rode a roadster ! 
 
 and we applauded, and gave him twopence. 
 We went to the theatre thrice in the fort- 
 night (twice a year is all we can endure 
 in London) and had the vitality to survive 
 the artificial dulness of The Lady Slavey, 
 and the academic morals of Liberty Hall 
 and The Idler. At night the moon laid 
 out along the sea a rouleau of silver discs ; 
 the Calais Phare twinkled intermittently, a 
 yellow lantern, and Cape Gray Nose burst 
 in anapestic flame — two white, one red — 
 across the Channel, visible from the Bell 
 Harry Tower in Canterbury, sixteen miles 
 inland. On the evening of Dover Regatta, 
 
190 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 a magician from London with magnesium 
 and pyrotechnic sorcery fanned the pale 
 cliffs into a red passion of flame and rolling 
 smoke ; the castle shone white ; catherine- 
 wheels whirled agonised; rockets scaled the 
 heavens in vain ; the archways in the cliff- 
 face glowed like the gates of hell ; and the 
 youthful Tamerlanes and Mahomets gazed 
 awestruck from the pier-head on Satan's 
 invisible world displayed. In the daytime 
 we visited all the Cinque Ports : Hastings, 
 with its grey castle and gay crowd ; Win- 
 chelsea, sad and sweet, haunted and haunt- 
 ing, to which the sea was twice a traitor — 
 by inundation, and then, in cruellest irony, 
 by desertion ; Rye, pleasant, compact on 
 hilly streets — an old church with gilded ' 
 quarter-boys, and, through an old gate, 
 masts and the misty sea ; the two Romneys, 
 silent, deserted in that strange new land 
 where the grey rails glisten across beds and 
 bars of shingle, and shining meres spread 
 among loops of flat green land; Hythe, 
 with its treasure of hacked skulls — Briton, 
 
tete-a-t£te 191 
 
 Saxon, Roman, Dane, gathered from a 
 long-forgotten battlefield; and Sandwich, 
 oldest, greyest, quaintest of English towns, 
 looking mournfully from three high 
 churches at the distant treacherous sea. 
 And on Sundays I went to Calais to be 
 shaved. 
 
 B.L, To Calais? 
 
 I. I. That is an operation I could never 
 achieve without hacking m^r face; and as 
 the barbers are all closed in Dover on Sun- 
 days and I had omitted to tryst one, we 
 went to Calais. Return tickets, fifteen 
 shillings ; luncheons, six shillings ; Figaro, 
 half a franc — twenty-one and sixpence for 
 a shave. You see, we were on a holiday. 
 
 B. L. You have described to me an 
 actual, unconventional, and high-spirited 
 holiday. I should have enjoyed it myself. 
 
CHANCTONBURY RING 
 
Extracts from the following essays have 
 appeared heretofore in an English volume 
 but they are published now for the first time 
 in their entirety. 
 
CHANCTONBURY RING 
 
 STEYNING, an ancient town of a reti- 
 cent aspect, most picturesque, but fin- 
 ished, full of variety and engaging detail, 
 stands on the highway to Horsham where 
 the road rises to a spur of the Downs. It 
 is a place of gables, oaken beams, shingle 
 roofs, mature-looking wooden houses, a 
 place of stepped pavements and of old gar- 
 dens. The railway approached it, but kept 
 its distance. Nothing has soiled it ; it be- 
 longs to a prior century. One would be 
 glad to see it once a week on an afternoon 
 of mellow sunshine ; then its warmth, its old 
 homeliness, the sense of room about it, and 
 of the easiness of life, deliver the thought 
 and refresh the fancy like a well-dreamed 
 sleep. Its air of mystery is never wanting 
 either. Deep doorways, overhanging eaves, 
 
 195 
 
193 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 beams strained and bent, narrow entries, 
 windows low and broad, or high and secret, 
 are loaded with meaning. Towns and 
 houses are your only ghosts. Finger on 
 lip, Steyning haunts the foot of Chancton- 
 bury Ring, a picturesque phantom of the 
 old order, a stationary ghost likely to tarry 
 long since the nineteenth century itself has 
 failed to lay it. 
 
 Out of Steyning the by-way to Chanc- 
 tonbury Ring runs for a short mile through 
 a narrow valley, and then ascends the flank 
 of the Downs. In the close silence of the 
 steep-banked way, sounds drifted or swung 
 at anchor : the carnival music of the thrush ; 
 the starling's castanets ; the muted cymbals 
 and triangles of some stubborn hammering 
 bird. On either hand leafless elms rose 
 from the crest of the slope, and bonfires of 
 dark green boxwood, whose new leaves 
 flamed like greenish gold, studded the op- 
 posing acclivities. Ground-ivy, darker even 
 than the boxwood, whose new leaves flamed 
 like greenish gold, festooned the way ; night 
 
CHANCTONBURY RING 197 
 
 and the sea were mixed in the hue of this 
 ivy, and its white veins ghmmered hke pen- 
 cilhngs of foam. DandeHons, broad and 
 thick-rayed, as richly petalled as chrysan- 
 themums, and of a golden hue unrivalled 
 by any flower, shone out in clusters and con- 
 stellations, stars of the first magnitude in 
 a galaxy of cuckoo-buds amid a sky of 
 violets. 
 
 The wind was easterly, and its shrill pipe 
 made itself heard as soon as the road left 
 the valley and set itself against the Down. 
 But here the northern slopes are fledged 
 with beech, and the hills looked comely 
 even in the bleak weather of this wintry 
 April. Violets and hyacinths diapered with 
 purple the russet beech-mast, though the 
 cowslips hoarded their gold in their pale 
 green chalices. The white-starred branches 
 of the blackthorn sprinkled the prevailing 
 bronze and purple of the covert with sparse 
 sprays of silver; and the emerald banners 
 of the downy, crisp, and pleated beech- 
 leaves claimed the time for middle-spring. 
 
198 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 in spite of the attempted piracy of winter. 
 In a bight of the land, the white, chalky 
 plain, shaded with the sprouting down of 
 the young corn, showed where the tide of 
 harvest will run far up, and break against 
 the swelling hill. 
 
 When the crest of the Downs was 
 reached, Chanctonbury Ring was still a 
 mile away ; from the long easy slope of the 
 ridge, the back-bone of the world in that 
 neighbourhood, Sussex stretched out on the 
 one hand, and Sussex and the sea on the 
 other — great and varied prospects, but 
 constant quantities for a mile: an inter- 
 locutor became at once desirable. That is 
 the secret of the proficient, the truly pere- 
 grinate wayfarer. Given a winding road 
 with constant surprises, a straight, confined 
 road leading to the unknown, or a steep 
 ascent that taxes the breath, then the way- 
 farer is naturally occupied in observing, 
 in expecting, or in enduring; but when he 
 reaches some agreeable and unexacting 
 path, with the goal in sight, and wide. 
 
CHANCTONBURY RING 199 
 
 detached, far-reaching views on either 
 hand, he must let his mind go. Should he 
 compel it in the strict way of observation 
 he errs lamentably, and will find the land- 
 scape unsatisfying ; he must think of some- 
 thing else. Best of all would be an actual 
 companion : on the lonely top of the Downs 
 constant recourse must be had to imaginary 
 people, disputatious or otherwise, who sur- 
 prise one by starting subjects thought to 
 be at rest, by talking of men and things 
 one had laid on the shelf. The Imaginary 
 Disputant began about Ibsen and the per- 
 sonality of dramatists. 
 
 " In my opinion," said the Disputant, 
 " no writer reveals himself more fully than 
 the dramatist. It is inevitable. The mo- 
 ment you begin to consider the springs of 
 action and the motives of conduct, there 
 is one subject always at hand from infancy 
 to death. Unconsciously, perhaps, at first 
 your intimate acquaintance with this sub- 
 ject appears in your work ; then, if you are 
 not a mere botcher and charlatan, sooner or 
 
200 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 later the true source of man's knowledge of 
 human nature is revealed to you. It is a 
 terrible revelation ; but you cannot, you 
 dare not, ignore it. You try to, doubtless ; 
 you even think you succeed in doing so ; 
 but your own accent and semblance are 
 heard and seen in the vilest wretches, the 
 grossest fools, as well as in the sweetest 
 natures and the most heroic characters 
 wherewith you mask the good and evil in 
 yourself." 
 
 " But can a dramatist not portray at all, 
 then, another than himself? Dramatists 
 have drawn women successfully, for ex- 
 ample." 
 
 " Yes, but think of the women. Wher- 
 ever there is vital power at work the dram- 
 atist's people are of one mould and order. 
 Compare Ibsen's women with Shakespeare's. 
 However widely each author's women may 
 differ among themselves, Cleopatra and 
 Imogen are hardly distinguishable from 
 each other when you contrast them with 
 Hiordis and Asta Allmers. This sub-con- 
 
CHANCTONBURY RING 201 
 
 sciousness, what is basic in the dramatist, 
 appears in all his creations." 
 
 " Well, of course, it must do so ; when 
 you come to think of it, it cannot be other- 
 wise." 
 
 " Yes, but the literary world generally 
 seems loath to acknowledge it. Fear lurks 
 behind the loathing, I think. Byron is the 
 type of the protesting author, terrified at 
 the self -betrayal in his works." 
 
 " About Ibsen, however. He has be- 
 trayed himself — he, the strongest, most 
 self-contained of all poets and dramatists ? " 
 
 " Strong, but not self-contained — any- 
 thing but self-contained. His plays smoke 
 with his personality. That is the very note 
 of the man: that is his originality. The 
 characters in the best-known of Ibsen's 
 plays, his later ones, professional, middle 
 class, and lower-middle class people, are as 
 dull and uninteresting as they can be ; and 
 yet he has peopled the imagination of the 
 Europe of his time with these undistin- 
 guished beings, because they are all Ibsen. 
 
202 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 They were metal of no mark or value: 
 Ibsen alloys them with his personality, 
 stamps them with his image and super- 
 scription, and they become current 
 throughout the world. A mistaken real- 
 ism seems to advise the drawing of men 
 exactly as they are. If it could be done, 
 you would have at last something worthy 
 to be called a caput mortuum; but it is an 
 impossibility. You could no more take 
 crude man and place him in a novel or a 
 play — 'that is, make him literature, than 
 you could make a lump of iron ore into a 
 carving-knife by laying it on the table 
 along with a fork and steel. Humanity is 
 the raw material of literature ; the smelt- 
 ing, the fining, the casting, the shaping, 
 the damascening are the work of the crea- 
 tive artist, whose indispensable medium is 
 his own personality." 
 
 " Well, then, how would you describe the 
 personality of Ibsen ? " 
 
 " Ah ! I am too near him — and here 
 we are at the top of the hill." 
 
CHANCTONBURY RING 203 
 
 In the British-Roman work on the sum- 
 mit of Chanctonbury a plantation grows 
 now. A woodman with measured stroke 
 drove wedges into the bole of a tree, and 
 his boys played beside him. A crescent- 
 shaped coppice of beech uncut for years 
 girdled the hill. In the sheltered hollows 
 beeches clustered ; beech groves clad all the 
 northern slopes. The leaf-buds of the 
 beech, small spear-heads of bronze, washed 
 the downs with a dark ruddy hue like the 
 dull glow of a furnace door. The haze on 
 the horizon beat and flickered, a heavy eye- 
 lid drooping over the sky. White gables 
 stood out on the plain, apparitions among 
 the dark, budding woods. Red roofs, the 
 smoke of houses, cream-white ribbons of 
 road, touched the green and purple ground 
 with points of colour and light. Seaward 
 the furze scattered gold over the rolling 
 land down to the shingly beach ; and the 
 pearl-grey sea under a sky of hammered 
 iron shone with an inward lustre treasured 
 in its deeps and garnered from many a 
 
20^ THE MAN FORBID 
 
 shining summer. The east wind sighed 
 and wailed, but through its forlorn note 
 there sounded a sheep bell from the fold 
 and a cuckoo's mellow chime. 
 
BY-WAYS 
 
BY-WAYS 
 
 THE road was from the sea Inland, and 
 then, for a mile, parallel with the 
 shore, skirting the verge of the cliffless 
 Downs. The wind, from the south-east, 
 sharp and vapoury, carried brine and haze 
 over the southern counties ; but its trans- 
 parent burden was barely visible in the 
 strong sunshine ; a pallor, as of the thinnest 
 coating of varnish, overspread the faint 
 blue sky. The sun, an hour past noon, 
 showed small and round, shorn of its beams 
 by the dim haze ; hot and glittering, all the 
 same,* like an eye-hole opening into a vat 
 of molten silver. Upon the horizon the 
 vapour began to build itself up in tiers and 
 courses ; but the rest of the firmament was 
 clear, save for the thin veil of mist and one 
 solitary plume of white cloud that streamed 
 
 207 
 
208 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 from the top of heaven. A wooded park, 
 like a broad hem, edged the sunken Downs. 
 Groves, avenues, and single trees resounded 
 with the business of the rookery. The in- 
 cessant, harsh, sibilant-raucous noise, rising 
 and falling in gusts and squalls, swept the 
 park from end to end. Sometimes a plan- 
 gent voice soared out of the ground-tone 
 in wild protest against the universe or a 
 thieving neighbour; now a cloud of rooks 
 would rise and adjourn from their tree- 
 tops to a select space in the air, and there 
 gyrate and discuss a knotty point with the 
 unparliamentary liberty the problem re- 
 quired; or the low, deep-toned, self-satis- 
 fied caw of experienced and well-to-do 
 rooks, who had settled themselves for the 
 season weeks ago, would become distinctly 
 audible in some Jull of the stormy outcry, 
 some reprieve of that friction which the 
 clan-economy of a rookery entails. 
 
 After the park was passed, the low naked 
 Downs rose and dipped like sluggish waves, 
 like stagnant waves enchanted and sus- 
 
BY-WAYS 209 
 
 pended there in ungainly and painful pos- 
 tures. Indeed, there is nothing in land- 
 scape more unsatisfactory to the aesthetic 
 sense, more uncomfortable to the mood of 
 the spectator, than the seaward slope of 
 the Downs. Where a bold escarpment 
 fronts the Channel the unnatural condi- 
 tion of these bereft hills is not perhaps so 
 forcible in its pathetic appeal ; but even 
 then the nakedness of the land distresses. 
 These low, rolling hills should be covered 
 with forest, as they were originally. It is 
 nature's plan. The mid-Surrey hills, or 
 the Chilterns between Wendover and 
 Prince's Risborough, in conformation and 
 distribution the very images of the South 
 Downs, are perfect in the richness, the se- 
 crecy and repose of their wooded, their 
 heavily draped contours. But this unfor- 
 tunate range by the sea is doomed to thrust 
 out along the shore its naked slopes and 
 mounds like the limbs and shoulders of 
 plucked fowls. The expense of a luxury 
 is not calculable in currency alone ; the 
 
210 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 beauty of the South Downs is the prime 
 cost of Southdown mutton. 
 
 But the furze blooms even here. Most 
 incongruous it seems, a bracelet of gold 
 and emerald high up on a brawny arm, all 
 muscle and goose-flesh. One has to be 
 fanciful to keep these Downs in coun- 
 tenance. The ploughed land, however, 
 puts no strain on the imagination. Labour 
 has redeemed it. Nothing is more beauti- 
 ful than a ploughed field; and here, where 
 the alloy of clay and chalk shines in the 
 silver-gilt and deeply chased furrows of the 
 broad fields, there seems to pass over the 
 face of the earth a smiling promise of the 
 golden harvest asleep in its bosom. Yet 
 these splendid fields, like many other 
 passages, must be separated from their con- 
 text before their beauty and prophecy be- 
 come apparent. In their place upon the 
 shivering Downs, when the sun is veiled and 
 the south-east comes with a fierce sting, 
 they might easily be mistaken for pieces of 
 sacking, old corn-bags, hung on the flanks 
 
BY-WAYS 211 
 
 of the exposed land in lieu of a blanket. 
 
 The song of the lark has taken entire 
 possession of the air. Like a heaven-high 
 vine it garlands the whole firmament. In 
 the rookery or here, again, passing a row 
 of sheepf olds where the hillside is plaintive 
 w^ith the bleating of lambs, the larks are 
 inaudible ; but when these undergrowths, 
 jungles, and mere wildernesses of sound are 
 past, the hanging gardens of the larks ab- 
 sorb the senses. From dawn till dusk, and 
 from the middle-spring through the full 
 blaze of summer to the smouldering golden 
 moons of autumn, these garlands of sound, 
 leaf and flower and fruit, fresco and fan- 
 tasy and arabesque, will wreathe and over- 
 run the shining air. 
 
 A raw path leading northward, with an 
 unbarbered hedge on one side and forlorn 
 market-gardens on the other — a path that 
 seemed bound to end in a slough of 
 despond, pulled itself together suddenly, 
 and with a certain air of knowing its busi- 
 ness well enough, stepped into Portslade, 
 
212 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 a village in a cup. This is the inland 
 Portslade, a mile above the railway one 
 known to the South Coast traveller. On 
 one lip of the cup, a short Early English, 
 ivy-covered tower of St. Nicholas balances 
 itself sturdily ; and the yellow lichen that 
 lacquers the shingle-roof makes it a glory 
 and a wonder — like the roof of heaven 
 " inlaid with patines of bright gold." 
 Here, indeed, a green-gold lichen gilds 
 every rough surface that the sea-wind can 
 reach. Stems, branches, twigs of trees, 
 railings that have been long without a fresh 
 coat of paint, the plaster of the walls and 
 of the houses, are all enamelled with the hue 
 of chrysoprase. 
 
 A back way led to the northern brow of 
 the hill, where a ghostly windmill overlooks 
 Hangleton. Hangleton Place, a Tudor 
 manor ensconced in the valley, is now a 
 poultry-farm ; and in Hangleton church- 
 yard is buried Dr. Kenealy. The tomb- 
 stone, erected by public subscription, as 
 one had forgotten, is a table of grey gran- 
 
BY-WAYS 213 
 
 ite with florid mosaics in red and blue ; a 
 cross on the top, and a four-square band 
 of shamrocks and roses, with dates of 
 birth and death about it ; also this text, 
 " Thou shalt be recompensed at the resur- 
 rection of the just." Curiously enough, 
 on the morning of the day the Itinerant 
 stumbled on Dr. Kenealy's tomb the very 
 remarkable impostor whose notoriety the 
 doctor had shared ended his career in a 
 poor lodging off the Edgware road. More 
 years ago than the Itinerant cares to re- 
 member a boy engaged in weighing por- 
 tions of 16.6 grammes of beet for precipi- 
 tation with acetate of lead in the 
 polariscopic analysis of sugar, saw through 
 the glass of the chemical balance in the 
 Public Analyst's Laboratory in Cathcart 
 Street, Greenock, a vast moon face at a 
 window in an upper storey of the Tontine 
 Hotel opposite. Three quarters of the 
 face were visible — for more than an hour, 
 dull, motionless. No one seemed to come 
 into the room. Did " the Claimant " sit 
 
214 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 there to be seen of men? He was to lec- 
 ture in the Town Hall that night. Per- 
 haps he was recapitulating his speech. At 
 any rate, he sat there for more than an 
 hour, expressionless and motionless. He 
 did not appear to watch the bustle in the 
 street; he did not smoke; he did not drum 
 on anything with his fingers. He simply 
 sat still. To exist and digest was enough 
 for this man apparently. In all likeli- 
 hood he never experienced a truly unhappy 
 moment. He was only an automaton 
 cunningly fitted with digestion and mem- 
 ory. If conscience be deleted, life is much 
 simplified, three-quarters of it, conduct 
 namely, becoming a blank. The deletion, 
 or at any rate the subordination, of con- 
 science is well known to be a main factor 
 in many a reputation ; and Arthur Orton 
 had certainly obtained the upper hand of 
 his. Ask the clearest conscience in the 
 world to sit for an hour motionless, with 
 no one in the room, and nothing to do ! 
 It is not conscience that performs feats of 
 
BY-WAYS 215 
 
 that kind ; they are the achievements of 
 genius, or of beings whose monstrous de- 
 fects seem to be equivalent to the posses- 
 sion of genius. 
 
 The square tower of Shoreham Church, 
 a landmark for miles, stood out on the 
 way back, and in front of it the sea, imme- 
 diately under the sun, shone with pale gold ; 
 but the rest of the Channel was dark and 
 narrow, for the haze had thrust its broad 
 bastion close in to the land. The haze, 
 indeed, had become the main feature in 
 that part of the world. Built up on the 
 horizon, a magical foundation, the grey 
 vapour, like a fragile urn, enclosed the 
 spaces of the air. At the round mouth of 
 the urn, high up, the sky appeared, a pale 
 blue disc against which the song of the 
 larks beat in vain, echoing back in showers 
 of golden notes. 
 
PROSE ECLOGUE 
 
PROSE ECLOGUE 
 
 Basil, MenzieSy Brian. 
 
 BRIAN, Have you ever written short 
 stories, Basil? 
 
 Basil, Never ; nor can I read them. 
 
 Brian. I rather hke them. 
 
 Basil. Then your palate's gone — I 
 mean your mental palate. I still prefer a 
 sandwich : bread — meat — mustard. The 
 short story is mere mustard, the scanty 
 dish which Grumio, that " false, deluding 
 slave," jeered Katharina with. 
 
 Brian. Your short-story men are your 
 only pickle-merchants. 
 
 Basil. Occasionally they are good men 
 gone wrong; oftenest they are single- 
 prong men. 
 
 Menzies. Single-prong? 
 
 Basil, Yes. Some men are tridents, 
 21Q 
 
220 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 some are dinner-forks, some are pitch- 
 forks, and some have but one prong. Of 
 these last are the short-story men, the 
 " strong men " of fiction. They remind 
 me of the Parisian chiffonnier, who gathers 
 from frequented places with his pointed 
 stick odds and ends of paper and rags. 
 They are an insufferable nuisance; their 
 pens are always ready furbished; if you 
 so much as hint an idea, an experience, an 
 episode, they stab it up at once and thrust 
 it into their wallets among an omnium 
 gatherum of other half -ideas, experiences, 
 and episodes, where it lies till it is " high," 
 and is then brought forth as " strong 
 meat." 
 
 Brian. And who are the dinner forks.? 
 
 Basil. Average men, I suppose. 
 
 Brian. And the pitch-forks? 
 
 Basil. Why, you are pretty like one, 
 pursuing relentlessly a passing remark. 
 
 Brian. And the tridents? Come, the 
 tridents ? 
 
 Basil. My friends and I. 
 
PROSE ECLOGUE 221 
 
 Menzies. Good. Did you know that I 
 had written short stories? 
 
 Brian, No ! Tell us all about it. 
 
 Basil. What is there to tell except that 
 for every story he wrote there is a grey 
 hair on his soul.^ 
 
 Menzies, That is true. But I would 
 confess ; I have never told it to anyone, 
 the stories having been anonymous. The 
 first one was of a woman I knew; a tall 
 fair Scotchwoman, with a perfect oval 
 face and large pale eyes. In her twenty- 
 fourth year she married a painter and set 
 herself to destroy his temperament. I 
 met her in her father's house shortly after 
 she had spoiled her husband, body and soul ; 
 and she told me the story herself. " He 
 kept talking to me," she said, " of tem- 
 perament, temperament, temperament. 
 What is temperament? Do you know? 
 Does anyone know? I have no tempera- 
 ment ; but I suppose he had, for he was 
 different from me. He liked all kinds of 
 stupidity and foolishness — little children. 
 
222 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 religious people, romance, and sentiment. 
 After the honeymoon, when he went back 
 to his easel, he nearly swooned at the sight 
 of it ; for I had determined to see of what 
 stuff his temperament was made, and had 
 painted a leer on the faces of his figures. 
 He tore up the canvas and began anew. 
 As soon as he had a face drawn, at night 
 I put a leer into the eyes or a wicked 
 smile on the lips. He went to his easel 
 every morning shaking with terror. I had 
 now fully made up my mind that he should 
 get rid of his temperament and become as 
 strong as I, for I rather liked him ; he 
 was very handsome. So I persevered with 
 his faces, and was amazed at his persist- 
 ence. At last one morning he asked me to 
 stay beside him while he painted. He 
 drew and coloured the heads of three 
 cherubs with extraordinary rapidity and 
 force, the practice which my device had 
 secured him having increased his skill im- 
 mensely. The faces were sweet and beauti- 
 ful; and he asked me if they were not so. 
 
PROSE ECLOGUE 223 
 
 I said I rather liked them, but that I saw 
 nothing particularly sweet about them: 
 charming little imps, I called them. 
 ' Then I am a lost man,' he cried. ' Some- 
 thing terrible has gone wrong with me. 
 Day after day I paint what I think beauti- 
 ful faces ; these that I have just done seem 
 to me adorable. You see them as they 
 are, leering and malicious ; and to-morrow 
 I too shall see them as they are. Some 
 subtle paralysis has attacked me.' Next 
 morning, as usual, he found his faces impu- 
 dent or malignant. I comforted him, and 
 told him to struggle no more against his 
 own nature, but to follow this inferior bent 
 which proclaimed itself in spite of him. 
 ' I will,' he said. ' It may work itself out.' 
 Then an evil spirit took actual possession 
 of him, and he painted loathsome and hor- 
 rible things. He was a weak man ; his 
 temperament had only been degraded, not 
 yet destroyed. One night I changed his 
 diabolic into angelic faces ; and in the 
 morning he came to me weeping tears of 
 
224 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 joy. * I have worked it out,' he cried. 
 ' I am free of it. Yesterday, while I de- 
 signed what I thought the most wicked 
 group of countenances ever imagined, I 
 was painting divinities. Come and see 
 them.' I excused myself till the after- 
 noon ; and he, happy and jubilant, went 
 out to walk off his excitement. In his 
 absence I changed his divinities into idiots 
 and maniacs. When at length he led me 
 to his studio he had no eyes for anything 
 but me. I felt him watching me as I 
 stood in front of his picture. I looked at 
 it, and then with cold surprise at his glad, 
 eager face. The blood left his cheeks like 
 a lamp that's blown out; he glanced at 
 his picture, and fell in a tremor on the 
 floor. I helped him to a seat, placed my- 
 self opposite him, and told him how I had 
 manipulated his canvases in the hope of 
 enabling him to master his temperament. 
 When he realised what I said, he slid from 
 his chair glaring at me as if I had been 
 a wild beast about to devour him. I moved 
 
PROSE ECLOGUE 225 
 
 to help him again, but he shrank from me, 
 shrieking, ' Keep off ! ' He crept back- 
 wards on his hands and knees, growhng 
 and glaring at me hideously. He reached 
 the door and kicked at it as a beast might, 
 flinging out his legs. He has never stood 
 erect since ; he lives in a stall and eats out 
 of a manger; the asylum doctor says he 
 cannot recover. What is temperament? 
 Have I destroyed his, or is it now rampant? 
 How weak he was ! Is temperament what 
 people used to mean by soul? " What do 
 you think of that? 
 
 Brian. It's very strong. 
 
 Basil. Very fair mustard. 
 
 Menzies. Right! It's just mustard, 
 and not really strong; no bread, no meat, 
 merely condiment. In the famous old 
 image, it is a convulsion ; sometimes six 
 men can't hold a feeble epileptic. But I 
 got to like fits, especially as I found that 
 I possessed the knack of taking them; so 
 I had a series in various periodicals ; and 
 got good money too : people are always 
 
226 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 generous to a man in a fit. Gradually, 
 however, it became more difficult to fall 
 into them ; I had to work myself up — 
 with stimulants. At last nothing would 
 cause them ; and I took to feigning them 
 — picking up episodes like the chiffonnier 
 in your image, instead of creating: in my 
 own image, chewing soap in order to foam 
 at the mouth like the impostor in the 
 street: and nobody but myself knew the 
 difference. 
 
 Brian. But you don't apply this gen- 
 erally.^ There are plenty of good short, 
 strong stories by good strong men. 
 
 Basil. Good condiment. 
 ■ Menzies. Good convulsions : most inter- 
 esting, attracting great crowds ; but only 
 convulsions. 
 
 Basil. Any one line of actual poetry 
 is worth a million short stories. 
 
 Menzies. Here's one. " Up rose the 
 sun, and up rose Emily." 
 
 Brian. Yes ; but they are geniuses — 
 
PROSE ECLOGUE 227 
 
 great men, some of those short-story 
 writers. 
 
 Menzies, My dear Brian, we are all 
 geniuses nowadays. 
 
 Basil. Admirable ! All men are gen- 
 iuses : it is only a difference of degree. 
 
ON INTERVIEWING 
 
ON INTERVIEWING 
 
 PROSE ECLOGUE 
 
 Basil — Sandy — Brian — Menzies, 
 
 BRIAN, Did you ever interview any- 
 body, Basil? 
 
 Basil. Yes ; but I shall never do the 
 like again. 
 
 Brian, I suppose you felt very small. 
 
 Basil. Yes. Not nearly so small, how- 
 ever, as the man I interviewed; of that I 
 am certain. 
 
 Sandy. I suppose it is really a degrad- 
 ing thing for both parties. 
 
 Brian. Were you ever interviewed? 
 
 Basil. No ; but once I was asked to be. 
 
 Brian. And what did you reply ? 
 
 Basil. Why, I said I was much obliged, 
 but begged to decline, because I thought 
 
 231 
 
232 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 it a very illegitimate advertisement for the 
 interviewee, and a most illegitimate way of 
 turning a guinea for the " interwiever," as 
 they used to spell it in France. He argued 
 with me, and I explained what I meant. I 
 told him that if he were interested in my 
 great unread works and in my personality, 
 the thing for him to do was to buy the 
 works or read them in the British Museum, 
 and then write his article ; that that would 
 be a journeymanlike proceeding, creditable 
 and reflecting credit. Interviewing, I said, 
 was a most miraculous device whereby a 
 man's brains were picked with his own con- 
 sent. I told him that the very highest 
 kind of man must perforce become a snob, 
 however temporarily, the moment he sub- 
 mitted to the question ; and that the " in- 
 terwiever " in the exercise of his trade was 
 on the same footing as a lacquey. I 
 pointed out how injurious it was to pander 
 to the idle curiosity of the public, and de- 
 clared that if my books were not to be 
 read for themselves, they should certainly 
 
ON INTERVIEWING 233 
 
 not be read because of a mawkish interest 
 in me. 
 
 Brian. That's what Keats said; he 
 would have no " maw^kish popularity." 
 
 Sandy. Yes, but interviewing is some- 
 times quite legitimate, I think. For ex- 
 ample : if a man happens to be a great 
 authority on a public question which has 
 become critical, an interview might be the 
 best way of publishing his opinion. 
 
 Basil. That, of course. But we were 
 talking of the personal interview, which is 
 the interview par excellence. 
 
 Brian. The only one, to all intents and 
 purposes. Anything else is quite excep- 
 tional. 
 
 Menzies (with repressed passion). 
 Mawkish, did you say.? You called it 
 mawkish ? 
 
 Basil. Hillo, Menzies, old chap! 
 What's the matter with you.? 
 
 Sandy. Menzies has been interviewed 
 two or three times recently. 
 
 Brian. The devil he has ! 
 
234 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 Basil. It was Keats called it mawkish, 
 Menzies — Keats. Pistols if you like ; but 
 remember, it was Keats. 
 
 Menzies. Where is the use of talking 
 about Keats? There was no interviewing 
 in his time; besides, he was only a child 
 when he died. His remarks on conduct are 
 not of the least consequence. 
 
 Sandy. Oh, come ! 
 
 Menzies. I mean what I say. Keats 
 was a great man, and would have been, had 
 he lived, a consummate artist in living as 
 well as a consummate artist in poetry. But 
 as far as life went, he was only in the 
 nursery when he died. The school of life 
 is marriage and paternity. 
 
 Basil. Yes; well .f^ 
 
 Menzies. Well, it is this word mawkish 
 I want to get at. What's the meaning of 
 it? I see it dealt about in reviews pretty 
 liberally. The meaning of mawkish? De- 
 fine — define ! 
 
 Basil. It meant loathsome, maggotty, 
 making the gorge rise; but it has lost its 
 
ON INTERVIEWING 235 
 
 stronger meaning. You never see it ap- 
 plied to Zola. Now it is used of affected 
 sentiment, of gush, of unctuous morality, 
 of artistic cant, of religiosity, of general 
 flabbiness. 
 
 Menzies. Then the world is full of 
 mawkishness. 
 
 Basil. Chockfull. 
 
 Menzies. In that case I cannot help 
 being mawkish on occasion ; for I myself 
 am and have nothing ; moods drive through 
 me; individual moods, and the world's 
 moods. 
 
 Basil. Nonsense, Menzies ! You're not 
 going to make yourself a " terrible exam- 
 ple " of everything, are you.^^ 
 
 Menzies. What if I have no choice? 
 
 Basil. Oh, and that was why you sub- 
 mitted to the " interwiever " ! How many 
 times were you interviewed? 
 
 Menzies. Four times. 
 
 Basil. And about what? 
 
 Menzies. Myself. 
 
 Basil. Well, in the most dispassionate 
 
236 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 t 
 
 way and speaking with the authority of one 
 in an advanced form in the school of hfe, 
 I say that it was mawkish. 
 
 Menzies. I was annoyed at the word at 
 first, but I am quite wilhng to admit that 
 it was mawkish. 
 
 Basil. And glory in it ! 
 
 Menzies. No ; I don't glory in any- 
 thing. All that I contend is that I am 
 quite willing to be called mawkish along 
 with the majority of mankind, my meaning 
 being, of course, that there is no such thing 
 as mawkishness ; that to have fits of senti- 
 mentality, to gush, to sermonise, to talk 
 cant about art, to be pharisaical, to be 
 interviewed — is to be human. You never 
 can understand a thing by sneering at it. 
 I would abolish all such words as mawkish, 
 maudlin, snob, cad, cant ; they are despite- 
 ful, intolerant words. See here. In 
 Bacon's time Philosophy included Science; 
 now Science includes Philosophy. Litera- 
 ture has hitherto stood apart, embracing 
 when it chose, in a more or less cavalier 
 
ON INTERVIEWING 237 
 
 manner, both Philosophy and Science ; but 
 in our time Science is going to embrace, 
 has already flung its arm about. Litera- 
 ture, and — 
 
 Sandy. Oh, oh ! 
 
 Menzies. But it is not a question of 
 whether one likes it or not. The thing is 
 happening before our eyes. Both the 
 method and the result^ of science have 
 been applied to fiction by Zola, to the 
 drama by Ibsen : these two are the most 
 powerful literary influences of our time — 
 like them or not*; that is so — and what 
 they have started must go on — 
 
 Sandy. But romance .^^ 
 
 Menzies. Romance must just " fettle 
 its fine joints " to the yoke of science, or 
 betake itself to a nunnery ; and my point is 
 that, as science knows neither intolerance 
 nor despite, the words mawkish, maudlin, 
 snob, cant, cad, etc., are unscientific, and 
 therefore meaningless and illiterate. 
 
 Basil. But what has all this got to do 
 with interviewing .f^ 
 
238 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 Menz'ies. Everything. In literature we 
 have had Creators and Spectators ; now we 
 are having Experiencers. All our work is 
 becoming more and more consciously auto- 
 biographic ; and we must invite experience, 
 we must offer ourselves to the vivisection of 
 circumstance. Remember, I am saying 
 nothing as to whether this is a temporary 
 disaster for literature or not. But that it 
 is being done, and that it will be done uni- 
 versally, I am certain ; and I am equally 
 certain that in the end it must make im- 
 mensely for beauty, and that faculty in 
 beauty called righteousness. The Experi- 
 encer is here: I see him and her at every 
 turning — I shan't mention names, but 
 there they are — many minds, but all of 
 one mood to see the thing that is, to shirk 
 nothing, to have done with trappings, to 
 lay bare, to encounter, to say, as well as 
 be, what we are — not what we might imag- 
 ine ourselves, not even what we would like 
 to be. And this is a great mood, I think ; 
 the mood in which men and women wish to 
 
ON INTERVIEWING 239 
 
 be and to be known as they are, to respect 
 and to be respected, to love and to be loved 
 simply for what they are : the very greatest 
 mood since the time of Shakespeare, when 
 men saw themselves as demigods. 
 
 Basil. It is very interesting, Menzies, 
 and I believe I see your meaning. But 
 about this interviewing. 
 
 Menzies. Well, I was simply submitting 
 to an experiment ; and although my inter- 
 viewers — three gentlemen and a lady — 
 were most accomplished and agreeable peo- 
 ple, I own I didn't like it. 
 
 Basil. What did you not like about it? 
 
 Menzies. I was just very uncomforta- 
 ble ; and there was that most horrible of all 
 feelings — a desire to say more than was 
 necessary, such as Topsy yielded to when 
 " 'f essing " to Miss Ophelia. 
 
 Sandy. But you didn't yield to it. 
 
 Menzies. Oh, I said things I shouldn't 
 have said, and left unsaid things I should, 
 both in matters of fact and opinion. 
 There you are : you are asked a question. 
 
240 » THE MAN FORBID 
 
 and you give an answer more or less 
 thoughtlessly, sometimes appearing to be 
 interested in matters to which you are quite 
 indifferent. 
 
 Sandy. But you see a proof, don't 
 you? 
 
 Menzies. Oh, yes ; and I made some 
 changes, but not many, and none of them 
 essential, because I did not wish to appear 
 other than I was. A mistake, I see clearly 
 now. My mind works so slowly that I 
 had to be interviewed four times before I 
 found the real meaning of the personal 
 interview. 
 
 Basil. And what is that.^^ 
 
 Menzies. Instead of giving plain an- 
 swers to plain questions, I should have been 
 prepared with an ideal autobiography 
 couched in telling phrases, and so have 
 established a legend — a splendid back- 
 ground for myself. 
 
 Basil. That would have been very sci- 
 entific ! 
 
 Sandy. I guess Menzies is ironical. 
 
ON INTERVIEWING 241 
 
 But I don't agree with Basil about the 
 ethic of the interview. The interview is 
 here; you may develop it or degrade it, 
 but you cannot destroy it. 
 
 Menzies. Right. The interview existed 
 in embryo in the first movable type. In- 
 deed, any publication is an interview ; and 
 its direct employment to-day is inevitable. 
 There is no limit to its indirect employ- 
 ment. The congregation has an interview 
 with the preacher, and the interview, called 
 a sermon, is published for the world to 
 read; the lecturer, the platform speaker, 
 is interviewed by his audience ; and what 
 are the speeches in the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment but the nation interviewing the 
 powers that be? We have already Gov- 
 ernment by Interview. 
 
 Sandy. Bravo ! And it seems to me 
 that out of the personal interview some- 
 thing of real importance may be evolved. 
 The want of mutual charity between men 
 and women, trades and professions, cliques 
 and coteries, classes and masses, between 
 
242 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 peoples and continents, is, of course, the 
 result of mutual misunderstanding. How 
 could this gulf of enmity be bridged over 
 better than by people in all ranks of so- 
 ciety, and in all the ends of the earth, 
 opening frankly their minds and hearts to 
 each other in daily interviews in every 
 newspaper? 
 
 Brian. By Jove! Reform the world 
 by interviewing! 
 
 Basil. I like this better now. That is 
 what Menzies was driving at a little while 
 ago. Literature, even newspaper litera- 
 ture, must become consciously autobio- 
 graphic. We can never go back on Rous- 
 seau's " Confessions," Goethe's " Fact and 
 Fancy," Carlyle's " Reminiscences." We 
 must — How did Menzies put it? 
 
 Sandy. I remember. We must be, and 
 be known, just as we are; respect and be 
 respected, love and be loved, for what we 
 are. 
 
 Basil. Yes. The world has been stand- 
 ing on too great ceremony with itself; it 
 
ON INTERVIEWING 243 
 
 must now take itself into its own confi- 
 dence. 
 
 Menzies. Good. That is the only way 
 in which we can come within hail of the 
 time, long-preached, long-prayed-for, and 
 so long of coming, 
 
 " When man to man the world o*er 
 Shall brithers be for a' that." 
 
ON THE DOWNS 
 
ON THE DOWNS 
 
 IT was time to walk about the world 
 again. That which happens to most 
 men and horses, at least once in their lives, 
 most frequently at the end, had happened 
 to the Itinerant ; circumstances had obliged 
 him to stumble on between the shafts long 
 after he should have been turned out to 
 grass. Standing in his cab-rank one day, 
 very limp and doleful, he said to himself, 
 " I've had enough of this ; I'll give my 
 last kick and die on the spot." So he 
 flung out with all the vigour at his com- 
 mand; but instead of kicking his last and 
 dropping down dead, he only threw over 
 the traces, and smashed his match-box of 
 a hansom. Finding himself at liberty, he 
 promptly set off down the street, and was 
 out of sight before the drowsy cabmen, 
 lounging against the railings of the church, 
 
 247 
 
248 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 grasped the fact that he had left his situ- 
 ation. Fear of capture made the running, 
 and he soon reached the Downs. 
 
 Leaving the more hteral simihtude of a 
 cab-horse, and retaining the spirit of it, 
 the Itinerant did not at once, nor, indeed, 
 for a considerable time, betake himself to 
 grass with the assiduity becoming a true 
 Nebuchadnezzar. When a Scotsman finds 
 himself at cross purposes with life, what 
 course does he follow.? He may say to 
 himself, as the Itinerant did, " I will go 
 and walk about the Downs." Or he may 
 say, " I will write a great poem " ; or " I 
 will go and preach in Hyde Park." He 
 may say this, and he may say that, but he 
 invariably does one of two things. He 
 either sits down and drinks deeply, 
 thoughtfully, systematically, of the amber 
 spirit of his country, or he reads phi- 
 losophy. The Itinerant read philosophy. 
 Doubtless, philosophers never read philoso- 
 phy : they have no necessity to do so. The 
 universe is as clear to them as a crystal 
 
ON THE DOWNS 249 
 
 ball, or a soap-bubble, or a whinstone — 
 each according to his own theory. But to 
 the ordinary layman and heavily-burdened 
 wayfarer, above all to Scotsmen at cross 
 purposes with life, philosophy is a sad 
 temptation. To the very man in the street, 
 indeed, it occasionally happens that the 
 riddle of the universe grows vehement in 
 its appeal ; and, however secretly and 
 shamef astly, " the poor inhabitant below " 
 examines again the interpretations that 
 have been wrought out by others ; sets 
 himself to answer the problem anew ; finally, 
 burns his books, shaves, dines at a restau- 
 rant, and returns to Piccadilly and the 
 bosom of his family. 
 
 The Itinerant, then, shut himself up with 
 the Downs behind and the sea in front, 
 and read many books that he had read 
 before, and many that were new to him. 
 Remembering that both Sterne and Brunei, 
 the former at least preceptively, the latter 
 by example, recommend horizontal repose 
 as the surest eliminative of cerebration, he 
 
250 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 lay on his back for days at a time, think- 
 ing, or trying to think ; but that luxurious 
 attitude seems to be reserved for the happy 
 subhmation of humour and science : its ef- 
 fect upon the Itinerant was only to pre- 
 cipitate him more deeply in the turbid 
 solution to which his reading and brooding 
 had reduced all things. Not a moment 
 too soon he shifted the venue ; climbed out 
 of the metaphysical lye and reached the 
 Downs at last. 
 
 It was the end of January. There had 
 been no winter ; but now it seemed about to 
 begin. Although the wind was westerly, 
 it blew harsh and cold, rasping over stub- 
 ble and furrow. In a broad, almost level 
 field on the lowest slope, an old plough- 
 man stumbled behind his team: the horses 
 were stiff and rusty ; the plough mouldy 
 and out of date ; an urchin, small and 
 elvish, the ploughman's grandson probably, 
 held the bridle; the heavy clayey soil 
 stuck so close and thick that the clumsy 
 share had to be scraped with a hoe at either 
 
ON THE DOWNS 251 
 
 furrow-end. A very ancient implement, 
 and most unsteady ploughing ; the lines of 
 the old peasant's laboured poem did not 
 run smoothly on the sheet of earth he 
 scored: but the sun and the rain and the 
 seasons will make it all right; the golden 
 crop in the autumn will rustle as richly 
 over the shaky scrawl of the worn-out hand 
 as over the polished lines of the steam- 
 plough. 
 
 In a belt of trees above the ill-ruled 
 field a throstle sang a shrill prelude ; weeks 
 ago he thought the spring had come, the 
 season was so mild. His pipe will be mel- 
 lower later on. Down in the churchyard, 
 in the early summer, the passenger (the 
 churchyard here is a thoroughfare for 
 pedestrians) may catch a tapping sound 
 among the gravestones — the mavis crack- 
 ing snails with savage glee ! The snail is 
 the mavis's oyster: and when he has lubri- 
 cated his throat with a dozen or so, his 
 notes become the purest and most spiritual 
 to be heard in the grove. 
 
252 THE MAN FORBID 
 
 Suddenly, the bells rang out from the 
 church-tower. It was Saturday afternoon, 
 and the ringers were practising. At the 
 very first bob of the bells, a flight of star- 
 lings in a high swart clump of twisted 
 boughs, resenting the artificial sound, sweet 
 as it seemed in the distance, or prompted 
 by the well known professional jealousy of 
 the passerine order to emulate music so 
 space-filling and important, broke out into 
 a frenzied chattering, surged madly into 
 the air, and swooped down upon the gar- 
 dens of the sea-coast town. The Norman 
 tower from which the ringing came stood 
 out a reddish brown against the grey-green 
 sea. Not a sail was visible. Like an 
 enormous shelf of glossy, oily, well-planed 
 slate, the long, broad water sloped up 
 against the sky. A slab of dingy opal, 
 greasy, with a pale emerald flame, travel- 
 ling over it transparently, the sea leant on 
 the stony firmament as on a wall. Behind, 
 the sinuous Downs, grey, green, and red — 
 old land, budding crops, and fresh earth 
 
ON THE DOWNS 255 
 
 — rocked and swayed with the motion of 
 the world; and the Itinerant, falHng into 
 a trance, had a vision which dehvered him 
 from the spell of his own thought. 
 
 He beheld a young man, like a demi- 
 god, build up alone, but with the help of 
 many obsequious genii, a noble palace of 
 porphyry roofed with gold. In the pal- 
 ace were many sumptuous suites of apart- 
 ments which the demi-god, helped by his 
 genii, furnished and adorned with all that 
 was convenient and beautiful from the ends 
 of the earth. In the palace also were lofty 
 galleries dedicated to the various arts and 
 sciences. When all was ready the demi- 
 god married a beautiful goddess, who gra- 
 ciously condescended to share his palace of 
 porphyry and gold; and they filled their 
 house with their friends — gods, demi- 
 gods, heroes, and men and women. Joy- 
 ful children were bom to them; and they 
 spent their time happily in their family, in 
 the enjoyment of friendship, in the study 
 of all that might be known, and in the 
 
254, THE MAN FORBID 
 
 pleasures of the arts. But the builder of 
 the palace was dissatisfied. In a chamber 
 at the top of his highest tower he brooded 
 on the mystery of the universe. " What ? " 
 he said ; and " Why ? " He wrote many 
 volumes answering these questions ; but al- 
 ways at the end of each volume he found 
 the questions starting up again. At last, 
 when he was old, one night in his lonely 
 chamber an invisible power seized him, led 
 him through all his galleries, and through 
 the offices of his palace, out by a little 
 postern, where at his feet lay a deep pit, 
 which he knew was dug for him. Before 
 he stretched himself in it, all his thought 
 and speculation rushed through his mind 
 once more, and yearning to say some word 
 that should be an answer to the question of 
 the world, he cried aloud, lifting his face 
 to heaven for the last time, " Live to Die ! " 
 At the very moment of his utterance and 
 upward glance, there issued from an oppo- 
 site postern, leading out of another palace 
 of porphyry and gold which had been built 
 
ON THE DOWNS 255 
 
 there at the same time as his own, an aged 
 figure in every respect like himself. But 
 the second demi-god, hearing the cry 
 " Live to Die ! " raised his voice, and, with 
 a wrathful gesture, replied, as they fell 
 into the pit together, " Die to Live i " 
 
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