LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Essays hy J. C. SQUIRE 
 
By the Same Author 
 
 VERSE 
 POEMS. First Series 
 
 THE BIRDS AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 THE moon: a Poem 
 
 THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 
 
 PARODIES 
 
 imaginary SPEECHES 
 STEPS TO PARNASSUS 
 TRICKS OF THE TRADE 
 
 PROSE 
 
 THE GOLD TREE 
 BOOKS IN GENERAL. 
 
 By Solomon Eagle 
 BOOKS IN GENERAL. Secoud Scries. 
 Bif Solom/)n Eagle 
 
 THE COLLECTED POEMS OF JAMES ELROY 
 
 FLECKER. Edited with an Introduction 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Essays by ' 
 
 J. C. SQUIRE 
 
 NEW '^SIP YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 19S1, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 •^" 
 
 JUN 2\ 1921 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 
 
 ICI.A614779 
 
TO 
 EDWARD SHANKS 
 
NOTE 
 
 The contents of this volume are a selection from 
 articles published weekly in Land and Water 
 since early in 1917. J. C. S. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Childhood in Retkospect 
 
 13 
 
 Keats's Fame 
 
 20 
 
 Short Cuts to Helicon . . . . 
 
 29 
 
 Edward Thomas 
 
 36 
 
 The Wallet of Kai-Lung . 
 
 44 
 
 One 
 
 ^^ Anatole France 
 
 52 
 58 
 
 Natural Writing .... 
 
 . 66 
 
 Secret History 
 
 74 
 
 Mr. Asquith as Author . 
 
 85 
 
 The Infinitives That Were Split 
 
 93 
 
 Dr. Johnson 
 
 100 
 
 A Puzzle 
 
 107 
 
 Tom Thumb 
 
 114 
 
 Sidelights on the Victorians 
 
 121 
 
 Sir Charles Dilke .... 
 
 . 129 
 
 The Utopian Satirist 
 
 . 137 
 
 Jane Austen's Centenary 
 
 145 
 
 Mr. Conrad's Masterpiece 
 
 . 153 
 
 TU 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Four Papers on Shakespeare . .161 
 
 I. Shakespeare's Workmanship . 161 
 
 II. The Blackamoor .... 168 
 
 III. Hamlet 175 
 
 IV. Shakespeare's Sonnets . . 182 
 The Great Unfinished . . . .189 
 
 Walt Whitman 196 
 
 Rohmer 203 
 
 Pope 210 
 
 God Save the King 217 
 
 Midshipman Easy 224 
 
 Jane Ca\^ 232 
 
 Galleries 239 
 
 Initials 247 
 
 Recitation in Public .... 254 
 
 Humane Education 261 
 
 A Subject 269 
 
 GoAKs AND Humour 276 
 
 A Corner of Old England . . . 292 
 
 A Poet's Pedigree 300 
 
 Rabelais 307 
 
 Fame After Death ..... 315 
 
 TUl 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
CHILDHOOD IN RETROSPECT 
 
 Mr. W. H. Hudson is known to many 
 — though not to as many as he should be — 
 as one of the closest and most affectionate 
 living students of birds and beasts, and at 
 the same time as the possessor of a simple and ex- 
 cellent English style. A Shepherd's Life and 
 the studies of wild life at the Land's End and 
 in La Plata have frequently been described as 
 the nearest things we have to the work of Richard 
 Jefferies, and the description is justified. Mr. 
 Hudson has now, in a book boldly entitled Far 
 Away and Long Ago, written a history of his 
 early years. A succession of old scenes came 
 back to him very clearly during a convalescence, 
 and he wrote them down while they were fresh. 
 He has made with them his best book. 
 
 For a book of the kind, it is very diversified. 
 The tone is not varied, the writing glides smoothly 
 on, and the details, whatever their nature, are 
 harmonized and made coherent by that golden at- 
 mosphere, that even transparent glaze rather, 
 that gives kinship to all things remembered from 
 
 [13] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 childhood. But in its material surroundings his 
 was no ordinary English childhood, and he was 
 not an ordinary child. He was born, in the 
 middle of the last century, on the pampas, where 
 his amiable and cultivated parents raised sheep 
 amidst very rough surroundings. The young 
 republic was dominated by the Dictator Rosas, 
 " the Nero of South America " ; the Hudsons' 
 servants and the most of their neighbours were 
 wild gauchos, reckless and cruel, whose festive 
 evenings commonly ended in fights with knives. 
 At an early age he saw a beaten army straggle 
 past his house and murder was a word soon 
 familiar to him. He gives many sketches of 
 the men and women of that day, some of them 
 noble, others utterly vile, but all picturesque in 
 raiment and individual in action ; and the strange- 
 ness of the natives is heightened by their con- 
 trast with the few early English or Scotch set- 
 tlers still clinging to their native conventions. 
 Into that strange community, living in low estan- 
 cias scattered over the almost treeless plain still 
 full of birds and beasts, strange vagrants wan- 
 dered, always on horseback. One was an Eng- 
 lish schoolmaster who would stay at a place for 
 months, then lose his temper and his job, mount 
 his horse, and head for the horizon. Another 
 was the most remarkable beggar in literature: 
 
 [14] 
 
CHILDHOOD IN RETROSPECT 
 
 " He wore a pair of gigantic shoes, about a 
 foot broad at the toes, made out of thick cowhide, 
 with the hair on ; and on his head was a tall rim- 
 less cowhide hat shaped like an inverted flower- 
 pot. His bodily covering was, however, the most 
 extraordinary: the outer garment, if garment 
 it can be called, resembled a very large 
 mattress in size and shape, with the ticking of 
 innumerable pieces of raw hide sewn together. 
 It was about a foot in thickness and stuffed 
 with sticks, stones, hard lumps of clay, rams' 
 horns, bleached bones, and other hard, heavy 
 objects; it was fastened round him with straps 
 of hide, and reached nearly to the ground." 
 
 This freak does not seem so singular in his sur- 
 roundings as out of them. And there are many 
 others, including a lady who, when St. Antony 
 did not send her fine weather, let his image down 
 a well to discover how he liked the wet. They 
 pass over the pages in sequence, come and go; 
 none stay but the family, who linger in the back- 
 ground, a dim but friendly group. 
 
 Mr. Hudson's passion for nature, nourished 
 by his mother, developed early. The naturalist 
 who was to spend years watching English rooks 
 and starlings, began by staring in fascination 
 at scissor-tail tyrant-birds, ostriches and flam- 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 ingoes. At an age when his literary contem- 
 poraries were, at most, ferreting for rabbits, he 
 was trying to catch an armadillo by the tail — 
 the beast, which escaped by burrowing, threaten- 
 ing to drag him into an early tomb if he did not 
 let go. He has none of those astounding stories 
 with which he has sometimes tested one's capac- 
 ity for belief — such as that, told five or six 
 years ago, about the swan which was in love 
 with a trout, followed it daily all over the lake, 
 and finally attacked the angler who caught it. 
 But he saw a dog which dived and caught fish; 
 and he came upon two deer, a ring of does 
 around them, fighting with horns which locked, 
 and never unlocked when they died. He would 
 lie awake in the darkness listening to the snakes 
 sliding and whispering under the floor: snakes 
 fascinated him, with their menacing move- 
 ments and their rich lines. There were green 
 and grey snakes, green and velvet-black snakes, 
 snakes with bellies barred bright blue and crim- 
 son; and he found, and several times tracked 
 down, an unknown velvet-black snake, six feet 
 long, which once drew its heavy length right 
 over his foot as he stood looking into a tree. 
 But it is of the birds and the flowers, and the 
 few and precious groves of trees, that he writes 
 most. Of birds, he must mention hundreds; 
 [i6] 
 
CHILDHOOD IN RETROSPECT 
 
 and the most beautiful of all, he says, were the 
 flamingoes. He describes, with emotion but 
 without laboured effort, how, as a child of six, 
 he walked over a league of meadow, and came 
 suddenly to a wide water where multitudes of 
 birds — wild duck, swans, ibises, herons, and 
 spoonbills — waded or swam ; and nearest " three 
 immensely taU white and rose-coloured birds, 
 wading solemnly in a row a yard or so apart 
 from one another . . . My delight was in- 
 tensified when the leading bird stood still and, 
 raising his head and long neck aloft, opened 
 and shook his wings. For the wings, when 
 open, were of a glorious crimson colour, and 
 the bird was to me the most angel-like creature 
 on earth." He describes later sights of flam- 
 ingoes, standing reflected in a still river at sun- 
 set, flying low over blue water in a long crim- 
 son line; but the most beautiful picture he 
 paints is not here, but is to be found in a dec- 
 orative effect which, in its way, not all nature 
 could excel. There was an orchard of great 
 old peach-trees, with black trunks, standing on 
 a carpet of grass, covered with mounds of rosy- 
 pink blossoms. In these trees thousands of little 
 yellow birds often sat and sang; and one day 
 a flock of small parrakeets came and sat 
 on the twigs, amid the blossom. Such a 
 
 [17] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 picture is fragrant in the memory for a lifetime. 
 The setting of Mr. Hudson's tale is exotic; 
 yet the history is familiar; for, where obstinate 
 calamities have been avoided, it is only in ines- 
 sentials that men's early memories differ. The 
 country of which Mr. Hudson writes is not 
 Argentina; it is the country of childhood, a 
 farther and more beautiful place; and there all 
 men have lived, though not in all men are its 
 impressions equally deep or its influences 
 equally living, and few make a habit of revisit- 
 ing it in imagination. A village street, a 
 church, elms, farmyards and great hollow 
 barns, a blacksmith's forge, meadows with cows, 
 a reedy stream; a fishing-harbour, where nets 
 are dried on the hill and the gulls forage the 
 mud for offal at low tide; a rusty industrial 
 suburb, builders' yards, geraniums, a black 
 canal, and green and red signals in the night: 
 they are all the substantial provinces of that 
 unsubstantial land; the air of them, the speech, 
 the manners, are the same. There were birds, 
 animals, bearded old men, and a slight reticent 
 little girl with pale complexion and flying hair. 
 Aksakoff on the steppes beyond the Volga, 
 Goethe remembering the gabled streets and 
 berobed councillors of Imperial Frankfort, 
 they are looking back on the same world: a 
 [i8] 
 
CHILDHOOD IN RETROSPECT 
 
 world extraordinarily vivid and picturesque, 
 where the strong were more strong, the sweet 
 more angelic, the quaint more odd; where the 
 young newcomer first learned to know in 
 others brutality and love, in himself curiosity 
 and silence, fear, cunning, sympathy, ambition, 
 courage, and cowardice, the desire and dread of 
 danger, resentment, fierce grief, and despair; 
 where scents were acute to the nostrils, where 
 bright colours were first seen, and the wonders 
 of the elements first learned, the sun, the moon, 
 clouds, sky, and stars, trees, flowers and water 
 in its various forms, the wide whiteness of 
 snow, the terror of thunder at night, the steely 
 persistence of heavy rains. Time was long 
 there, before we bothered to count or needed 
 to use the minutes, and under the shadow of 
 powerful authority we enjoyed a liberty like no 
 other liberty; new things came unendingly and 
 adventure was all around. We did not know 
 then that we lived there, and our elders usually 
 forgot it; but we know thirty years afterwards. 
 The knowledge makes the contemplative sort of 
 artist, in whom the mood of retrospection often 
 becomes dominant, desire to set it down before 
 he dies and one reporter has been lost. From 
 this cause many beautiful books have come; and 
 the book that has not yet been written will be 
 the loveliest and saddest in the world. 
 
 [19] 
 
KEATS'S FAME 
 
 A HUNDRED years ago Keats's first volume 
 of poetry was published; and Sir Sidney 
 Colvin's new Life, which, humanly speaking, 
 must be the definitive biography of the poet, is 
 a " centenary tribute " which renders any other 
 unnecessary. That first volume, which ap- 
 peared when Keats was twenty-one, contained, 
 as every critic has observed, much immature 
 and much bad work. Lines like 
 
 Of him whose name to ev'ry heart's a solace 
 High-minded and unbending William Wallace. 
 
 which Sir Sidney Colvin does not quote, beat 
 on their own ground Leigh Hunt's 
 
 The two divinest things the world has got 
 A lovely woman in a rural spot, 
 
 which he does quote. But when everything 
 possible has been extracted to illustrate the 
 tremendous progress Keats made in two years, 
 the fact remains that there were scattered 
 everywhere in the book, passages which might 
 
 [20] 
 
KEATS'S FAME 
 
 have shown any one but a dolt that this was a 
 great poet in the making, and that it contained, 
 moreover, To One who has been long in city 
 pent; Sleep and Poetry, and, above all, the 
 Sonnet on Chapman's Homer. 
 
 The reception that it got is notorious. " The 
 book," says Cowden Clarke, " might have 
 emerged in Timbuctoo with far stronger chance 
 of fame and appreciation. The whole commun- 
 ity, as if by compact, seemed determined to 
 know nothing about it." This is a slight exag- 
 geration. There was a little sale; and this is 
 how the publisher alludes to it: 
 
 " By far the greater number of persons who 
 have purchased it from us have found fault 
 with it in such plain terms, that we have in 
 many cases offered to take it back rather than 
 be annoyed with the ridicule which has, time 
 after time, been showered upon it. In fact, 
 it was only on Saturday last that we were 
 under the mortification of having our own 
 opinion of its merits flatly contradicted by a 
 gentleman, who told us he considered it ' no 
 better than a take-in.' " 
 
 The critics, however, said little about it (except 
 that Keats was unclean) ; their efforts were 
 reserved for Endymion, which came out next 
 
 [21] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 year. With this the friends of " that amiable 
 but infatuated young bardhng, Mister John 
 Keats," could no longer complain that he was 
 entirely ignored. Blackwood led the pack, the 
 Quarterly and the British Critic following. 
 Here is Blackwood's peroration: 
 
 " And now, good morrow to the * Muses' son 
 of Promise ' ; as for the feats he yet ' may do,' 
 as we do not pretend to say like himself, 
 ' Muse of my native land am I inspired,' we 
 shall adhere to the safe old rule of pauca verba. 
 We venture to make one small prophecy, that 
 his bookseller will not a second time venture 
 £50 upon anything he can write. It is a better 
 and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary 
 than a starved poet; so back to the shop, Mr. 
 John, back to ' plasters, pills, and ointment 
 boxes,' etc. But, for Heaven's sake, young 
 Sangrado, be a little more sparing of extenu- 
 atives and soporifics in your practice than you 
 have been in your poetry." 
 
 This passage is well known. What is not so 
 generally realized is the slowness with which the 
 appreciation of him spread even after his death. 
 He had died, and Shelley's great elegy on him 
 was under review, when Blackwood resumed 
 with a reference to him as 
 
 [22] 
 
KEATS'S FAME 
 
 " a young man who had left a decent calling 
 for the melancholy trade of Cockney-poetry 
 and has lately died of a consmnption after hav- 
 ing written two or three little books of verse 
 much neglected by the public." 
 
 A comic analysis of Adonais, with parodies on 
 it, followed. A few men knew what Keats was ; 
 Lamb, Shelley, Leigh Hunt and Keats's young 
 friends. Reynolds, in a later letter, said : " He 
 had the greatest power of poetry in him, of 
 anyone since Shakespeare." Eight years after 
 his death a group of young Cambridge men, 
 including Tennyson, Fitzgerald, Sterling, 
 Arthur Hallam, and Monckton Milnes — 
 Browning, as a boy, had already been inspired 
 by him — were the first group of enthusiasts who 
 had not known him in the flesh. But the pun- 
 dits still remained secure in their crassness. It 
 was in 1832 that the Quarterly, reviewing 
 Tennyson's poems, wrote of him as 
 
 " a new prodigy of genius — another and 
 brighter star of a galaxy, or milky way of poetry, 
 of which the lamented Keats was the har- 
 binger." 
 
 Jeers at Keats*s failure with the pubhc were 
 still well founded in fact. Keats had been dead 
 
 [23] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 nineteen years when the first reprint of his 
 collected poems appeared; and this went into 
 remainders with Browning's Bells and Pome- 
 granates. Four years after this Lord Jeffrey, 
 still flourishing, observed that Keats and 
 Shelley were falling into oblivion, and that of 
 the poets of their age, Campbell and Rogers 
 were those destined for immortality. Lord 
 Houghton's edition of 1848 marks the date of 
 the general recognition of Keats as one of the 
 greatest of our poets. The maintenance and 
 increase of his fame since then cannot be 
 described in detail. " Keats," said Tennyson, 
 " would have become one of the very greatest 
 of all poets had he lived. At the time of his 
 death there was apparently no sign of exhaus- 
 tion or having written himself out; his keen 
 poetical instinct was in full process of develop- 
 ment at the time. Each new effort was a 
 steady advance on that which had gone before. 
 With all Shelley's splendid imagery and colour, 
 I find a sort of tenuity in his poetry." Again, 
 " Keats, with his high spiritual vision, would 
 have been, if he had lived, the greatest of us." 
 And the noblest tribute of all is the Essay by 
 the present Poet Laureate, indisputably the 
 finest thing that has been written about him, 
 and one of the most penetrating, direct and 
 
 [24] 
 
KEATS'S FAME 
 
 — there is no other word — business-like critical 
 studies in existence. " If," concludes that 
 essay, 
 
 "if I have read him rightly, he would be 
 pleased, could he see it, at the universal recog- 
 nition of his genius, and the utter rout of its 
 traducers; but much more moved, stirred he 
 would be to the depth of his great nature to 
 know that he was understood, and that for the 
 nobility of his character his name was loved and 
 esteemed." 
 
 And the words are all the more impressive as 
 they end a study which is utterly unsparing 
 in its detection and analysis of Keats's faults. 
 
 " High spiritual vision," " the nobility of 
 his character"; the phrases will still sound 
 strange to those who take their conception of 
 Keats from erroneous but hard-dying legend. 
 He died of consumption; he wrote, when 
 dying, love-letters which in places are morbid, 
 though they are not, as a whole, so " deplor- 
 able " as is usually made out ; and Byron gave 
 universal currency to the delusion that he was 
 killed by hostile criticism. This combination 
 of facts has perpetuated the notion that he was 
 a neurotic weakling with a hectic genius. 
 It is all hopelessly wrong. Those who knew 
 
 [2S] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 him thought him the manliest of men. Anec- 
 dotes like that of his hour's successful fight 
 with a butcher twice his size whom he had 
 caught ill-treating a cat, are unnecessary as 
 corroboration; for corroboration is present 
 everywhere in his letters, and frequently in his 
 poems. A man who was killed by scurrilous 
 blockheads of reviewers would be a weakling. 
 But — except for the fact that attacks on him 
 made it impossible to earn money by his 
 poetry — he was indifferent to what was said 
 about him. Every great poet knows his own 
 capabilities; and Keats's opinion of those 
 who were vilifying him was briefly expressed: 
 " This is a mere matter of the moment; I think 
 I shall be among the English Poets after my 
 death." He was not over confident. He 
 discriminated between his good and his bad 
 work: "My ideas with respect to it" (that 
 is, EndT/mion) ^ he said, "are very low"; 
 and a little later, " I am three and twenty, 
 with little knowledge, and middling intellect. 
 It is true that in the height of enthusiasm I 
 have been cheated into some fine passages; but 
 that is not the thing." But the only thing he 
 was uncertain about was whether he had done 
 anything good enough to show what was in 
 him: 
 
 [26] 
 
KEATS'S FAME 
 
 " If I should die, said I to myself, I have left 
 no immortal work behind me — nothing to make 
 my friends proud of my memory — but I have 
 loved the principle of beauty in all things, and 
 if I had time I would have made myself 
 remembered." 
 
 Of that he was never doubtful. Ajid he knew 
 accurately the conflicting but not irreconcilable 
 tendencies within himself; the tendency to 
 luxuriate and the tendency to " philosophise." 
 At the beginning the former predominated. He 
 wandered, often led by the rhyme, through 
 mazes of soft and luscious imagery; he held 
 that the greatest poet was he who said the 
 most "heart-easing" things; and the list of 
 his favourite adjectives, compiled by Mr. 
 Bridges, illustrates very strikingly the lan- 
 guorous quality of his dreams and desires. 
 But he was not made to be a slave to these: 
 in the Odes and Hyperion, the richness and 
 vividness and sweetness remained, but the 
 tropical luxuriance had been pruned, and the 
 native strength of his character and intellect, 
 the clarity of his imagination, the absolute 
 accuracy of phraseology of which he was 
 capable, appear with a splendour that makes 
 these poems incomparable with everything 
 
 [27] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 else in our literature but the greatest passages 
 of Shakespeare and Milton. " I think," he said, 
 " poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and 
 not by singularity; it should strike the reader 
 as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and 
 appear almost a remembrance." 
 
 I have not quoted Keats; I have barely 
 referred to a few of his poems; I have made 
 no attempt to discover the secret of his great- 
 ness or expose the beauties of his art. In a 
 space like this, one is forced to fasten on one 
 or two details only when dealing with so 
 great a writer as Keats and so solid a 
 biography as Sir Sidney Colvin's. The 
 structure and peculiar merits of Sir Sidney's 
 volume one must also ignore. But all the 
 material one could ask for is here; the poet's 
 art and thought are very fully illustrated from 
 his own words; there are several important 
 additions to our knowledge of him; and the 
 long critical chapters, especially those on 
 Endymion and Isabella, are as exhaustive and 
 sensible as they are unaffected. 
 
 [28] 
 
SHORT CUTS TO HELICON 
 
 I OPENED the Times Literary Supplement, 
 and my eye was detained by an advertisement 
 which for ten minutes made me oblivious 
 to everything else in the number from 
 " Dramatic Poetry " to " God and the Abso- 
 lute." It was one of those rare advertisements 
 which induce a train of thought. 
 
 And this was it. An institution called the 
 London Correspondence College was inviting 
 the Supplements readers to learn how to 
 write verse. " The field for Verse," ran the 
 invitation, 
 
 " is much larger than most people suppose. 
 Hundreds of journals publish and pay for 
 poetry. Anyone with aptitude can learn to 
 write the kind of Verse editors will pay for, 
 by availing themselves of the excellent course 
 of Instruction provided by . . . The train- 
 ing is individual and progressive; technique is 
 simply explained, and any natural ability 
 the student may have is developed to the full 
 
 [29] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 through his or her own work in connection 
 with the lessons. The fee is quite moderate." 
 
 It was bound to come, and here it is. 
 
 I should greatly like to know — but I suppose 
 that I could not find out without paying 
 money, which I am reluctant to do — what are 
 the suggestions, what the training, given to 
 those who serve with the College their appren- 
 ticeship to the Muse. But I do not know, and 
 I dare not guess, as secrets beyond my 
 conjecture and stunts beyond my devisal may 
 have been hit upon by the Professors of the 
 College, and I should not like even to 
 appear to misrepresent the nature, or the 
 benefits, of their teaching. I may, however, 
 without speculating as to what is their practice, 
 be allowed to reflect on what would be my own 
 should I ever find myself in control of an 
 Academy of Shorthand, Typewriting, and 
 Commercial Poetry. 
 
 Were this country America, or did the 
 present Ajnerican fashion for free verse spread 
 here, the problem would be comparatively 
 uncomplicated. " Technique " could certainly 
 be simply explained, as both rhyme and 
 regular rhythm are foregone, the poet can 
 indefinitely vary his lines, and, for the content, 
 
 [30] 
 
 \ 
 
SHORT CUTS TO HELICON 
 
 all that is necessary is a catalogue of objects 
 seen, heard, and smelt by the writer at any 
 particular moment or series of moments. 
 Here, dealing with the novice, one would 
 instruct him on his morning walks to make a 
 careful note of the objects he saw, and recapitu- 
 late their leading characteristics when he got 
 home; then, killing with one stone the two 
 birds of memory-training and art, he would 
 catalogue any sequence of them. For instance: 
 " misty air, a long straight street of flat houses, 
 a solitary policeman in a shiny cape, a red 
 pillar-box, a boy in the distance, whistling a 
 tune." The next stage in the process would 
 be to write these things down in irregular 
 lines, the shorter the better, made up according 
 to the author's taste or caprice. The last and 
 finishing process consists of the judicious, 
 or even the quite casual, interspersal of dots, 
 and the addition of some single line of reflec- 
 tion, or exclamation which supplies the neces- 
 sary touch of emotion. It would not be safe 
 to leave the student to his own devices at the 
 start; he could quite safely be given a little 
 list of last lines which could be used (prefer- 
 ably in italics) in any poem of the kind. " Oh, 
 God! . . ." is one; "Ah! the pain," is 
 another. Behold the final result: 
 
 [31] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Misty air . . . 
 
 A long, straight street 
 
 Of flat houses . . . 
 
 A solitary policeman 
 
 With a shiny 
 
 Cape . . . 
 
 A red pillar-box . . . 
 
 A boy 
 
 In the distance 
 
 Whistling a tune. 
 
 Ah, God! the pain. 
 
 That, though I may not be able to persuade 
 English readers that this is so, is the sort of 
 " Verse " that in America " editors will pay 
 for," and there is no reason why its construc- 
 tion should not be quite successfully taught 
 by post. But on this side of the Atlantic things 
 are a little more difficult. 
 
 In England " Hundreds of journals publish 
 and pay for poetry," but almost all of them 
 insist upon rhyme, and upon lines of equal, or 
 regularly varying length. Moreover, there is 
 a good deal of difference between the sort of 
 subjects and styles demanded by various 
 papers. I should, therefore, when framing 
 my course for students, begin by telling them 
 to study (as every successful business man is 
 bound to do) the market, and the classes of 
 goods most in demand by the various groups 
 
 [32] 
 
SHORT CUTS TO HELICON 
 
 of consumers. Let the student note (a) 
 the commonest subject, (b) the commonest 
 rhymes, (c) the commonest words, in the poems 
 published by those papers which he decides 
 to exploit. After a little labour he will be 
 able to sort the papers into three or four main 
 categories. He will then decide either to 
 produce several types of goods for the several 
 types of customer, or to concentrate on the 
 largest available market for a single type, 
 thereby giving himself a chance of perfecting 
 his processes, and, by virtue of the advantages 
 inherent in repetitive work, secui'ing maximum 
 output and reducing overhead charges (in 
 which I include the purchase of magazines to 
 see if they have printed anything yet) to a 
 minimum. Let us suppose he decides to adopt 
 the latter, and most efficient, course. 
 
 In accordance with the instructions I have 
 given him, he has found that the subjects 
 most in demand in his group of consumers 
 are (say) love, flowers, joy coming after sorrow, 
 sunset, and maternal affection. The statistical 
 tables drawn up after examination of a 
 thousand specimen poems have revealed that 
 the separate words (excluding, of course, 
 articles and conjunctions) most frequently 
 required are " moon," " roses," " twilight," 
 
 [33] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 " slumber," " lullaby," " you," " blackbird," 
 " joy," " sorrow," and " to-morrow " — the last 
 two, for obvious reasons, being bracketed equal. 
 Amongst the most frequent of the other rhymes 
 are found " moon " and " June," " you " and 
 "blue," "heart" and "apart," "love" and 
 "above," "stars" and "bars," "sun" and 
 " done." Now, whatever liberties may be taken 
 by the advanced student ripe for original ex- 
 periment and research, I should always advise 
 the beginner who means to play for safety and 
 avoid the risk of disappointment to keep as 
 closely to the beaten path as possible. He may 
 or may not save himself trouble by sticking 
 boldly, whenever he writes, to the metre and 
 rhymes of a particular poem in his card-index 
 file. If he prefers to be original he should at 
 least always choose metres and rhymes which he 
 knows, from his tables, to be always popular. Let 
 us say that he decides on a poem about love of 
 eight lines, in two four-line stanzas. For this, 
 if every line (and editors greatly like that) is 
 to have a rhyme, four sets of two rhymes are 
 necessary. How should he next proceed? 
 How select his rhymes? 
 
 To assist him here I should provide him 
 with a little catechism for each class of subject. 
 He can get right there with a few standard 
 
 [34] 
 
SHORT CUTS TO HELICON 
 
 questions such as: (1) Is it to be a happy- 
 poem? and (2) What time of day is it (the love, 
 or the meditation on flowers, or the maternal 
 affection) to take place? These questions give 
 a principle of selection; for instance, in a poem 
 about the day, the sun will properly appear; in 
 one about the night moon or stars may be intro- 
 duced. Our poet has finally decided on love, 
 and on the rhymes " love " and " above," 
 " moon " and " June," " flowers " and " hours," 
 " blue " and " you." Now it is clear that he can 
 make the lines scan by counting the syllables; 
 but where I am in difficulties about assisting him 
 is in regard to the manner in which he shall fill 
 the lines up. It is no good telling him to make 
 them as like his models as possible ; he could guess 
 that much for himself. But suppose he gets as 
 far as this: 
 
 [It is a perfect night in] June, 
 
 [No breezes shake the] flowers, 
 [The golden radiance of the] moon 
 
 [Doth gild the slumbering] hours. 
 
 [I wait beneath your casement,] love, 
 [ ] blue, 
 
 [ ] above, 
 
 [The moon, the rose, and] you, 
 
 and cannot fill up the gaps? I honestly do 
 not know what advice to give. 
 
 [35] 
 
EDWARD THOMAS 
 
 Edwakd Thomas, who was killed in France 
 in 1917, at the age of thirty-nine, wrote a large 
 number of prose books. Even when foi^ced to 
 produce books for money he wrote with distinc- 
 tion and thought for himself; and the best of 
 his English travel books are the work of a 
 man saturated with every aspect of the country. 
 For nearly twenty years he wrote no verse, 
 but in 1913 he began writing poetry profusely. 
 Only a few of his friends knew that "Edward 
 Eastaway," who appeared in an anthology in 
 1917, was he. He was very shy about his 
 verse and had prepared for publication a 
 volume over the same pseudonym. His poems 
 have now appeared with his real name on them. 
 They make beyond comparison his best book; 
 and there have been few books so good in our 
 time. 
 
 Thomas was a tall, quiet, reserved man with 
 melancholy eyes and strong hands, browner 
 than those of professional writers usually 
 are. His poems are like him, they are personal 
 
 [36] 
 
EDWARD THOMAS 
 
 in spirit and substance; they have his quiet- 
 ness, his sadness and his strength. When 
 there is profound emotion behind them it is 
 characteristically expressed in few words and 
 a slight troubled movement of the verse. The 
 language is simple and direct, with few made 
 phrases, inversions or fine adjectives; it 
 moves slowly and reflectively, attuned to his 
 prevailing mood, which might be called a 
 mood of resignation if that word did not seem 
 to preclude the inexhaustible freshness of his 
 response to the beauty of earth, " lovelier than 
 any mysteries." He felt always the pain of 
 death, and change, but that never clouded 
 his faculty for enjoying things; in his ecstasy 
 over the endless miracles of the earth he was 
 sobered by his knowledge of their transience, 
 but he was not one of those dismal people 
 to whom every ephemeral thing is first and 
 foremost an illustration of the power of the 
 abstractions death and change. He loved 
 things for themselves and thought of their 
 beauty more than of their brevity. 
 
 His poems are poems of the earth and of 
 one man who looked at it, not knowing how 
 long he would be able to. It is a lonely man who 
 wanders through the book; when he speaks of 
 other people they are memories or else faintly 
 
 [37] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 and remotely in the background. His human 
 relations here are, we feel, subsidiary to, less 
 intense and passionate than, his relations with 
 nature. He is primarily a nature poet, and 
 a peculiar and interesting one. The " land- 
 scape " of no English poet has been more 
 normally English than his, and few have 
 covered such a range. Most landscape poetry 
 deals with certain special kinds of times and 
 places, dawn, twilight or sunset, mountains, 
 bleak moorlands, ripe cornfields, seas very 
 rough or very blue, summer more than winter, 
 willows more than oaks, strong sunlight or 
 strong moonlight more than the diffused 
 light of an ordinary overclouded day. This is 
 easily explicable. Scenes very definitely 
 coloured, forms obviously decorative, seasons 
 which make a violent appeal to our senses, 
 shapes and shades by their nature and by 
 tradition indissolubly associated with our uni- 
 versal elementary thoughts and states of 
 feeling, will inevitably be those most commonly 
 recalled and described. Moreover, many 
 writers have their own dominant and habitual 
 preferences from amongst these; the exhilar- 
 ating dawns of Wordsworth, the bright, still 
 sunshine of Keats, the large moons and lament- 
 ing beaches of Tennyson come automatically 
 
 [38] 
 
EDWARD THOMAS 
 
 into the mind with the mention of their names. 
 Edward Thomas was unusual in avoiding the 
 usual. Not only did he not go to nature 
 mostly for decoration or for a material setting 
 for his moods, but he did not select, uncon- 
 sciously or deliberately, his subjects. Except 
 that he avoided large towns and the conven- 
 tionally romantic, one may fairly say that he 
 was liable to write a poem about anything 
 one might see at any time of day in a walk 
 across the South of England. He was not 
 haunted by the rare unusual things, the one 
 glorious night of a year, the perfect twilight 
 on a lake, the remembered sunset over the 
 marshes, which will haunt most of us. He 
 was moved by and wrote about the things we 
 pass daily and could look at properly if we 
 cared to; he was like one of those simple and 
 charming water-colour painters who will sit 
 down in front of anything, any ditch, haystack, 
 or five-barred gate, and get the essential 
 into a sketch. White winter sunlight; rain 
 on wild parsley; hawthorn hanging over a 
 reedy pond with a moorhen swimming across it; 
 spring snow and rooks in the bare trees; 
 a gamekeeper's gibbet; the head-brass of a 
 ploughman's team; peewits at nightfall; hounds 
 streaming over a hedge; a February day, thin 
 
 [39] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 sunlight on frozen mud and three cart-horses 
 looking over a gate; old labourers going home 
 — these are the things he wrote about, and 
 many such trifles many times repeated are the 
 English countryside as it is and as it has 
 been. His earth is not merely something brown 
 that goes with the blue at one particular 
 moment or is dark against the sunset at 
 another; it is earth, now dusty, now wet and 
 clogged, which is ploughed and takes its seed 
 and brings forth corn in due season. He is as 
 close to it at one time as at another; the depths 
 of his heart can be sounded by the dint of a 
 hobnail on a path's mud; and he wants no 
 flamboyant sunsets who can find all the beauty 
 and mystery of colour in the curling white and 
 gold and purple fronds of a pile of swedes. 
 
 Any of these poems might be quoted; I 
 will take as an example one of the least 
 conspicuous, a poem less musical than many 
 of them and only indirectly revealing his 
 temperament, one that illustrates scarcely 
 any of his qualities save the closeness of his 
 obeservation and the use he made of the 
 ordinary. It is The Path: 
 
 Running along a bank, a parapet 
 That saves from the precipitous wood below 
 The level road, there is a path. It serves 
 Children for looking down the long smooth steep, 
 
 [40] 
 
EDWARD THOMAS 
 
 Between the legs of beech and yew, to where 
 
 A fallen tree checks the sight; while men and women 
 
 Content themselves with the road and what they see. 
 
 Over the bank, and what the children tell. 
 
 The path, winding like silver, trickles on. 
 
 Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss 
 
 That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk 
 
 With gold, olive and emerald, but in vain. 
 
 The children wear it. They have flattened the bank 
 
 On top, and silvered it between the moss 
 
 With the current of their feet, year after year. 
 
 But the road is houseless, and leads not to school. 
 
 To see a child is rare there, and the eye 
 
 Has but the road, the wood that overhangs 
 
 And undergrows it, and the path that looks 
 
 As if it led to some legendary 
 
 Or fancied place where men have wished to go 
 
 And stay; till sudden, it ends where the wood ends. 
 
 This wood is anywhere and everywhere; we 
 see it continually and take no notice of it; 
 but I think that this poem would mean more 
 than most to an exile in Rhodesia or the 
 Soudan. You get another completely common- 
 place scene — the country station — in Adle- 
 strop! 
 
 Yes. I remember Adlestrop — 
 
 The name, because one afternoon 
 
 Of heat the express-train drew up there 
 
 Unwontedly. It was late June. 
 
 The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. 
 
 No one left and no one came 
 
 On the bare platform. What I saw 
 
 Was Adlestrop — only the name. 
 
 [41] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 And willows, willow-herb and grass. 
 And meadows sweet and haycocks dry, 
 No whit less still and lonely fair 
 Than the high cloudlets in the sky. 
 
 And for that minute a blackbird sang 
 Close by, and round him, mistier. 
 Farther and farther, all the birds. 
 Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. 
 
 And almost more typical still is Tall Nettles: 
 the corner in a farmyard, with a rusty harrow 
 and a stone roller overgrown by nettles covered 
 with dust, except after a shower. 
 
 Where, here and there, the poet is more 
 intimate and gives direct expression to his 
 feelings, he uniformly reaches his highest 
 level of poetry. The best, The Bridge and 
 Lights Out, would be ruined by quotation; 
 there are others, such as As pens , where, stand- 
 ing at crossroads, outside a smithy, an inn 
 and a shop, he listens to the trees talking of 
 rain, and gives the last word on his prevalent 
 mood: 
 
 Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves 
 We cannot other than an aspen be 
 That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves, 
 Or so men think who like a different tree. 
 
 There are one or two poems which touch on 
 the war; the war as a distant and invisible 
 
 [42] 
 
EDWARD THOMAS 
 
 horror subtly troubling the most secluded 
 English fields. The references are brief; his 
 own destiny has made them doubly poignant. 
 But one fancies that dying he may have known 
 that he had left behind him, in the fruits of 
 his recovered youth, work that will make him 
 a known and living man to at least a few in all 
 succeeding generations of Englislimen. 
 
 [43] 
 
THE WALLET OF KAI-LUNG. 
 
 Everybody knows about Mr. Thomas 
 Hardy, Shakespeare, Lord Byron and Lord 
 Tennyson. This does not detract from one's 
 enjoyment of their works; but there is a 
 peculiar and intense delight in good books 
 which are not commonly known. English lit- 
 erature is sprinkled with them, and one's own 
 favourites of the kind one talks about with a 
 peculiar enthusiasm. For myself I continually 
 urge people to read Trelawney's Adventures of 
 a Younger Son and Coryafs Crudities, which, 
 famous enough in the auction room, is seldom 
 enough talked about outside it. The present 
 age, like other ages, produces these books that 
 are less celebrated than they ought to be, and 
 one of them is Mr. Ernest Bramah's The 
 Wallet of Kai-Lung. This work was first 
 published by Mr. Grant Richards in the year 
 1900. For all I know to the contrary, it fell 
 quite flat ; at any rate since that date Mr. Belloc 
 has frequently informed an inattentive public 
 that it is one of the best of modern books, but 
 
 [44] 
 
THE WALLET OF KALLUNG 
 
 one has never heard it mentioned by any other 
 critic. Largely, I take it, on account of Mr. 
 Belloc's recommendation, Methuens have now 
 issued it in their Is. 3d Library. It is a volume 
 of Chinese stories. 
 
 One does not need to have read many trans- 
 lations from the Chinese to understand that 
 there is a distinctive, a unique, Chinese way 
 of looking at things. The late Count Hayashi, 
 m his memoirs, observed that his own country- 
 men, whatever their material successes, could 
 not help feeling inferior in the presence of the 
 civilisation, the rounded philosophy and per- 
 fect manners, of the Chinese gentleman. A 
 man who reads Chinese poetry is in contact 
 with a mastery of the Art of Life. Religion 
 does not come in much except for rather 
 decorative gods and good spirits and demons; 
 once admit religion in our sense and the 
 Chinese conception of life will not hold water. 
 But granted their rationalistic epicureanism 
 they certainly carry it out to perfection. 
 They keep so superbly their balance. Moved 
 by the passions, they stand outside themselves 
 and watch themselves with sympathetic 
 humour. They would have grief but not its 
 abandonment, joy but not its paroxysms; 
 they are conscious of the sweet in the bitter 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 and the bitter in the sweet. They bear pain, 
 and the spectacle of pain, with equanimity; 
 yet their calm does not degenerate into callous- 
 ness, and their comments on the spectacle of 
 life fall through the air like parti-coloured 
 petals, which flutter noiselessly in the wind and 
 show in constant alternation the grey side of 
 irony and the golden side of tenderness. 
 They enjoy beautiful things with an exquisite 
 sensibility, but a careful moderation: wine, 
 flowers, and the sky, snow upon the moun- 
 tains, reflections in the water, song and the 
 laughter of girls. They yield a little to every- 
 thing, but surrender to nothing, save to death; 
 and there they submit courteously, with 
 dignity, and throwing back a glance of no 
 more than whimsical regret. The old Chinese 
 literature is steeped in this philosophy. They 
 have, it is alleged, no literature now on a 
 higher level than that which comes out on 
 the tea-boxes. But the manners and the 
 restraint remain. When the fall of the Pekin 
 Legations was in doubt the then Chinese 
 Minister here, a most enlightened and charm- 
 ing man, was asked what would happen to 
 the diplomatists if the rebels got in. " They 
 will be decahpitated," he said, with a slight 
 inclination. " But what will happen to the 
 
 [46] 
 
THE WALLET OF KAI-LUNG 
 
 women and children? " continued the lady. 
 " They will be decahpitated," he said. " But 
 you, who are so pro-English, what would 
 happen to you if you were there? " " I should 
 be decahpitated." He thought that adequate: 
 it was only decorous to leave any anxieties or 
 strong emotions he had to be guessed. 
 
 Mr. Bramah, in his book, has got the Chinese 
 equanimity wonderfully; the most moving 
 and the most horrible things are told with 
 mild deprecation; the most grotesquely farci- 
 cal situations are analysed and developed with 
 a full sense of their rich ludicrousness but with 
 the very slightest loss of gravity on the part 
 of the narrator. All the characters behave 
 consistently, veiling their actions and their 
 intentions behind the most transparent lies and 
 subterfuges and saying the most offensive 
 things in the politest possible way. For it is 
 to the comic side of the Chinese genius 
 
 that Mr. Bramah chiefly inclines. Now and 
 then he uses China as an illustration of Europe. 
 By transplanting customs and phrases he at 
 once suggests the unity and the absurdity of 
 mankind. In The Confession of Kai-Lung 
 he is frankly preposterous. He describes 
 Kai-Lung's early career as an author in terms 
 precisely applicable to a European literary 
 
 [47] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 failure. He began by falling in love with Tiao 
 T'sun, the most beautiful maiden in Pekin, 
 whom he frequently met 
 
 " at flower-feasts, melon-seed assemblies, and 
 those gatherings where persons of both sexes 
 exhibit themselves in revolving attitudes, and 
 are permitted to embrace openly without 
 reproach " 
 
 (which reminds one of the old lady's comment 
 on the Tango, in one of the late " Saki's " 
 books : " I suppose it doesn't matter if they 
 really love one another"). Kai-Lung was 
 successful in his suit. Then, " on a certain 
 evening," he says: 
 
 " this person stood alone with Tiao upon an 
 eminence overlooking the city and watched 
 the great sky-lantern rise from behind the 
 hills. Under these delicate and ennobling 
 influences he gave speech to many very orna- 
 mental and refined thoughts which arose 
 within his mind concerning the graceful bril- 
 liance of the light which was cast all around, 
 yet notwithstanding which a still more excep- 
 tional light was shining in his own internal 
 organs by reason of the nearness of an even 
 purer and more engaging orb. There was no 
 
 [48] 
 
THE WALLET OF KAI-LUNG 
 
 need, this person felt, to hide even his most 
 inside thoughts from the dignified and sym- 
 pathetic being at his side, so without hesitation 
 he spoke — in what he believes even now must 
 have been a very decorative manner — of the 
 many thousand persons who were then wrapped 
 in sleep, of the constantly changing lights 
 .which appeared in the city beneath, and of 
 the vastness which everywhere lay around. 
 
 " ' O Kai-Lung,' exclaimed the lovely Tiao, 
 when this person had made an end of speaking, 
 ' how expertly and in what a proficient manner 
 do you express yourself, uttering even the 
 sentiments which this person has felt inwardly, 
 but for which she has no words. Why, indeed, 
 do you not inscribe them in a book? ' " 
 
 He does. But while he is absorbed in his 
 labour Tiao accepts " the wedding gifts of an 
 objectionable and excessively round-bodied 
 'individual, who had amassed an inconceivable 
 number of taels by inducing persons to take 
 part in what at first sight appeared to be an 
 ingenious but very easy competition connected 
 with the order in which certain horses should 
 arrive at a given and clearly defined spot." 
 'He completes his work, publishes it at great 
 expense and great loss, and makes a last 
 
 [49] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 desperate bid with an effort to prove that the 
 works of the great national poet were not sheer 
 imitations. Here, in adaptations from Shakes- 
 speare, we lapse into burlesque. There are 
 several quotations like; " O nobly intentioned 
 but nevertheless exceedingly morose Tung- 
 shin, the object before you is your distinguished 
 and evilly-disposed-of father's honourably- 
 inspired demon " — though after all a Boer 
 dramatic adapter did render the same passage 
 as " I am thy papa's spook." This excursion, 
 however, does show Mr. Bramah's style. 
 That style is almost impeccable. 
 
 He keeps it up from start to finish; cere- 
 monial to the point of absurdity, embellished 
 with an unending flow of maxim and euphem- 
 ism. It is not possible here to detail the com- 
 plicated plots of his extremely ingenious' 
 stories. The best of all is The Transmutation 
 of Ling. Ling is a studious youth who passes 
 the public examination and, to his horror, is 
 awarded, not a cosy nook in the Whitehall of 
 Pekin, but the command of a very white-livered 
 band of bowmen who have to resist the contin- 
 ual onslaughts of exceedingly ferocious bandits. 
 His adventurers are numerous and diverse. As 
 I say, I will not tell the story, which Kai-Lung 
 recounts, standing with a rope around his neck 
 [so] 
 
THE WALLET OF KAI-LUNG 
 
 and his toes touching the ground, to a brigand 
 chief with a formidable snickersnee. But one 
 may perhaps quote some of the incidental 
 proverbs, which add much to the grace of the 
 tales. 
 
 " Before hastening to secure a possible reward 
 of five taels by dragging an unobservant person 
 away from a falling building, examine well his 
 features lest you find, when too late, that it 
 is one to whom you are indebted for double 
 that amount." 
 
 " The road to eminence lies through the cheap 
 and exceedingly uninviting eating-houses." 
 
 " Although there exist many thousand subjects 
 for elegant conversation, there are persons 
 who cannot meet a cripple without talking 
 about feet." 
 
 Whether Mr. Ernest Bramah has been to the 
 East or has merely caught the atmosphere of 
 its literature I do not know. I have only 
 recently learnt who he is. But it is not 
 surprising that one who likes good satire, good 
 humour, good romance and good English 
 should find the book worthy of being an insep- 
 arable companion. 
 
 [51] 
 
ONE 
 
 Lovely and pleasant it is to have lynxes 
 for readers. A little while ago I referred to 
 a verbal solecism of which the authors of the 
 King's English — the most salutary and divert- 
 ing of all works on composition — would not 
 allow the use. A reader, whose title to speak 
 is fully equal to that of those authors, at once 
 wrote to say that I need not think that I 
 avoided ugly and indefensible English alto- 
 gether. I am, he says, deep -sunk in one vice 
 which would certainly have been denounced 
 by the authors of the King's English had it 
 been as prevalent when they wrote as it is now. 
 This is the habit of using " One " in contexts 
 where it cannot pretend to represent anything 
 but " I " or " me." He appends illustrative 
 extracts: Four from Oneself, one from Mr. 
 P. F. Warner, one from the Bishop of the 
 Falkland Islands, and three from persons 
 unknown — one of whom writes : " But I have 
 known in the small circle of one's personal 
 
ONE 
 
 friends quite a number of Jews who . . ." 
 Guilty! 
 
 The letter found one in a state in which 
 one's defences are at their weakest. One was 
 (and is) in bed with this loathly influenza, 
 which has just shown its lack of discrimination 
 elsewhere by killing the harmless Sultan of 
 Turkey and sparing the Kaiser. One's head 
 aches. One's spine aches. One's hip-bones 
 and shoulder-blades ache and protrude. Count- 
 less little sharp coughs harry one's outworn 
 stomach. One's throat is a dry stove-pipe. 
 One's brows are tight and one's eyelids heavy 
 with the pressure of one's hot blood. One 
 has no taste for tobacco; one cannot talk, 
 work, think, or drink. All one can do is 
 to shut one's eyes until one is bored with 
 that, and then read until one is exhausted by 
 that. 
 
 I, I, I, I, I have, therefore, taken that 
 course. My reading, as always in these cir- 
 cumstances, has been the Bacon-Shakespeare 
 controversy; when I am very ill indeed I think 
 
 f there may be something in it. For two days 
 I went from volume to volume, and at last I 
 reached Sir Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare. 
 
 \ This is, as is generally admitted, a prodigiously 
 informative book, though its title might more 
 
 [53] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 accurately have been The Probable Life of 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 The perhapses drape the book in festoons 
 right up to the hypothetical last malady which 
 Sir Sidney introduces in these touching words: 
 
 " The cause of Shakespeare's death is un- 
 determined. Chapel Lane, which ran beside 
 his house, was known as a noisome resort of 
 straying pigs; and the insanitary atmosphere 
 is likely to have prejudiced the failing health 
 of a neighbouring resident." 
 
 But it is a great book. It is an encyclo- 
 paedia; its compiler has written with great 
 learning, judgment, and fairness of mind; 
 it is not likely to be superseded unless the 
 Baconians suddenly prove their case. But 
 (I observed on my couch) Sir Sidney has his 
 defects as a writer. His ordinary style, com- 
 pressed and clear, is wonderfully suited to the 
 narration of dry facts. But when he feels he 
 must be picturesque for a time or two, 
 especially when he is attempting a little of that 
 " merely aesthetic criticism " which he eschews 
 in his preface, he is apt to be awkward with his 
 imagery. Especially, he juxtaposes incon- 
 gruous metaphors which, although moribund, 
 
 [54] 
 
ONE 
 
 are not quite dead enough to be put together 
 unnoticed. When he writes of " all the 
 features of a full-fledged tragi-comedy," one 
 [I] cannot help wondering whether " features " 
 was a misprint for " feathers." I was wonder- 
 ing how it was that so sensible and unrhetorical 
 a man as Sir Sidney had left these sentences 
 in this book after so many editions, when the 
 letter arrived informing me, in the pleasantest 
 way, that I had a beam in my own eye. 
 
 But, to continue our metaphors, my withers 
 are unwrung by that beam. I know that I 
 write " one " when " one " does not mean 
 " we," or " everybody," or " any sort of 
 person," but " I," or " me," and nothing 
 else. One does not think one uses " I " and 
 "one" in a single sentence; beyond that one 
 is quite unscrupulous. One will say, for 
 instance, " One opened this book with pleasure," 
 which means, and can only mean, " / opened 
 this book . . ." It is, from my critic's point 
 of view, indefensible and inexplicable. Why 
 do I do it? Or, rather, why do we do it? — 
 for I am speaking now, not only for myself 
 but for Mr. Pelham Warner and the Bishop of 
 the Falkland Islands. The answer is simple. 
 Reader, one is modest; bashful. 
 
 I — for here I will force myself boldly into 
 
 [JS] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 the first personal pronoun — do not like seeing 
 a page of print covered all over with I's. 
 Those I's are so bold, so brazen; they stand 
 up so, they are so tall. Often and often I 
 suppress an " I " as I write, substituting the 
 meaningless, but oh so comfortable and pseudo- 
 nymous-looking, " One." Sometimes, owing 
 to long custom, the operation is performed 
 unconsciously. And often it is done deliber- 
 ately after I have written. The proofs come 
 back to one — here I am, lapsing again — and 
 one is struck by the ubiquity of those little 
 staring marks of egoism. Panic seizes one. 
 " One " offers cover, and one takes it. 
 
 There is the negative advantage; one would 
 be a hypocrite if I were to pretend that one 
 finds in the practice no positive advantage for 
 myself. If a critic writes, " I admit that I 
 did not approach this biography with a favour- 
 able bias, but it was worse than I expected," 
 he is liable to an uneasy feeling when he reads 
 his own words. All these people, he will 
 reflect, may say to themselves, " What the 
 devil are your biases to do with us, and as for 
 your opinion, it is only your opinion." But 
 knock out the first person and put "one"; 
 and forthwith the whole statement seems to 
 acquire the mysterious backing of all man- 
 
 [56] 
 
ONE 
 
 kind. The critic's judgment looks like the 
 inevitable judgment that any sane man was 
 bound to form, that masses of men have simul- 
 taneously formed; there is weight, authority, 
 behind it, something of the weight and au- 
 thority of the royal, papal, or editorial " we." 
 That is not a defence; it is an explanation 
 and a very discreditable admission. I admit 
 that no really courageous or honest man 
 (always excepting Mr. Pelham Warner and 
 the Bishop of the Falkland Islands) would 
 employ so ungainly a device to secure such 
 dubious ends. As I have now confessed, 
 I suppose that it would be futile to try it in 
 these papers any more; my unobtrusiveness 
 will no longer deceive. But if, in the future, 
 it should be found that my works are covered 
 with what I have heard another shy writer 
 describe as " these horrible little telegraph- 
 poles," do not blame me. The responsibility 
 for the change, I hope I have made clear, rests 
 elsewhere. 
 
 [57] 
 
ANATOLE FRANCE 
 
 Mr. Lane's English translation of Anatole 
 France has been appearing for a good many 
 years and there are still volumes to come. The 
 latest is The Amethyst Ring, translated by 
 Miss B. Drillien so perfectly that I shall seldom 
 want to look at the French text again. The 
 book is short. M. Bergeret, the Latin Professor 
 and Antiquary (all M. France's heroes are 
 antiquaries), comes in very little, and then as a 
 sort of chorus. The plot is a slight one and 
 deals with a young Jew millionaire's plot to 
 get an abbe made into a bishop in return for 
 the abbe getting him an invitation to join the 
 aristocratic Due de Brece's hunt. Involved 
 with this are several of the rather libidinous 
 love-affairs in which M. France (who, though 
 he cannot always be consistent in his negation 
 of morality, is always securely non-moral here) 
 delights, and a great deal of discussion of 
 the Dreyfus affair. The love-affairs are of 
 the usual type, purely animal. Young, rich 
 men, selfish, and frequently surly, carry on 
 
 [58] 
 
ANATOLE FRANCE 
 
 surreptitious intrigues with married women, 
 whom they meet for a few hours at a time 
 in hired apartments. Details of furniture and 
 hght, flesh, and hnen are described with a per- 
 fect skill that almost makes the author's goat- 
 ishness tolerable; but the more we have read 
 of M. France's amorous interiors the staler they 
 grow, as they are all so much alike, and we 
 become violently conscious of his obsession. But 
 his outlook on politics is much broader, and his 
 description of the Dreyfus affair is, with all 
 the limitations presently to be indicated, a his- 
 torical document. We get the two sides to the 
 discussion in a normal provincial town: one 
 side taken by a few intellectual professors who 
 ; feel that the Army and the Church ought not 
 I to be allowed to convict an innocent man on 
 general grounds; the other taken by the 
 ! ecclesiastics and gentry, who bother very little 
 about the details as to Dreyfus, but think that 
 it is horrible to question the verdict of an Army 
 j Court and are, anyhow, convinced that the Jews 
 j are eatmg mto the vitals of contemporary 
 I France. No book ever written was more 
 easy to read, but this is not owing to the 
 author's contribution to the Dreyfus discussion 
 or to his capacity for doing more than skim 
 the surface (though he does that with mar- 
 
 [S9] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 vellous justice anl humour) of the opposed 
 cases. 
 
 What we like is what we always like in 
 M. France: the sly digs at everybody, the 
 kindly insight into human foibles, the brief 
 delicious pictures of town and country, church 
 and castle, and the affectionate discourses on 
 antiquities of every sort, religious and ceramic, 
 architectural and armorial. The evidences 
 of M. France's promiscuous learning and 
 catholic taste are sprinkled on every page. It 
 would be impossible to find descriptions more 
 vivid, more certain in their atmosphere, and in 
 their indications of the differences made by the 
 contributions of various ages, than M. France's 
 descriptions of the castles of Brece and Montil. 
 He has an almost physical feeling for the old 
 stones, the plate-armour, the helmets, and the 
 weapons, the books behind their netting in high, 
 old libraries, the corridors, and staircases, the 
 marble mantelpieces, and bronze lamps, iron 
 and brass. He is the most versatile and de- 
 licious connoisseur on record. But as for the 
 rest — well, INI. Bergeret, asked whether truth 
 would prevail, said, " It is precisely what I, 
 personally, do not think,'* and proceeds to ex- 
 plain that falsehood is at once more powerful 
 and more amusing than truth. Thus speaking, 
 
 [60] 
 
ANATOLE FRANCE 
 
 he took the attitude which, though it may not 
 have been natural to M. France, has become 
 second nature to him. 
 
 For M. France has the defects of his qual- 
 ities. He is a connoisseur, an antiquary, a sen- 
 timentalist; but he is a man of the world only 
 in the more limited sense of the word. If he 
 encountered a great living movement his 
 attitude towards it would be, whether for 
 rational reasons he gave it support or not, 
 much the same as that of Pontius Pilate in his 
 own story. The background of his life is 
 the background of the essay in The Garden 
 of Epicurus: an immense cold universe, full 
 of millions of stars greater than this world, 
 and themselves perhaps part of a system which 
 is a molecule in some other system; and, save 
 for specks of matter, and of life, which is an 
 iridescent gleam on the surface of that matter 
 (or, as M. Bergeret in a pessimistic moment 
 put it, part of a process of physical decay), it 
 is all void. He thinks the chance of immor- 
 tality is about equal to the chance of a man 
 named Jones living in any house arbitrarily 
 selected in any street: and apparently he 
 regards the chance in either case with equal 
 indifference. He is not blind to enthusiasms; 
 but he looks down on the enthusiast as a person 
 
 [6i] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 behaving in a quaint and rather pathetic 
 manner. A " charming " manner, in fact. 
 
 Anatole France finds ahnost everything 
 charming, from Tacitus to St. Pierre and from 
 the simple devotion of a girl communicant 
 to the fetichism of Africa — to which he some- 
 where refers as " that charming faith." All 
 the past, all the remains of all the civilisations, 
 all the causes for which men have lived and 
 died, all ancient vagaries of custom, art, and 
 belief, they are all " charming " and they all 
 go into his mental cabinet. His perceptions 
 are most delicate; his sympathy is wide and 
 ready enough to enable him to allow its little 
 due of tenderness to every human suffering 
 and aspiration and joy, its little tribute of easy 
 tears to every soft landscape and every 
 forlorn relic of old endeavour, its little meed 
 of admiration to every heroic effort. But 
 all, all seem small to him and all are in danger 
 of that fatal epithet so suitable to the pastorals 
 of Watteau and the engravings of Eisen, but, 
 however effective at first sight, so misplaced 
 and inadequate when applied to the deep 
 realities of life. He can, in his own colours, 
 recreate the past; he is learned in it, and he 
 has an affection for it. But he deals with the 
 present as he deals with the past, looking at 
 
 [62] 
 
ANATOLE FRANCE 
 
 it from above, with an ironic tenderness and 
 a tender irony. Sometimes, since the living 
 are alive and kicking as the dead are not, he 
 finds that his puppets hit back at him; he 
 cannot (being human) like that, and he has 
 not yet sufficiently recovered his balance to 
 find the French Symbolists charming. But 
 even if he did he would emotionally miss, though 
 he might intellectually apprehend, the essential 
 in them, just as in this book he misses the 
 essential in the best of the Anti-Dreyfusards. 
 He is fair as far as he can be. He no more pal- 
 liates the corruption of financiers and politicians 
 (though he overlooks the ridiculousness of 
 rationalists) than he does the stupidity and 
 bigotry of soldiers, priests, and the old noblesse. 
 But he exhibits them all with a softening veil 
 before them. What they do little matters; the 
 bestiality of the intriguers and the brutes, the 
 burning idealism of those who on the one side 
 thought an innocent man was being persecuted 
 and on the other side felt that France was 
 being befouled by a crowd of rotten politicians 
 and gross and greedy international Jews, alike 
 escape him. He dislikes both injustice and 
 vulgarity; but dislike is as strong a word as 
 one can use. 
 
 He hates nothing: not even the Catholic 
 
 [63] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Church, which, indeed, has had a lifelong 
 fascination for him, although he classes Chris- 
 tianity with the cults of the Ibos and Ojibways 
 and below those of the Greeks. He can see 
 hate; he knows what it is like in other people; 
 he has been tinged with its emanations; but 
 he has not felt it. He thinks it, unless it 
 is uncomfortably close, charming; if it is 
 close he refuses to see it as it is. It is one thing 
 to write of the past as if it were the present; 
 it is another thing to write of the present 
 as if it were the past, and that is what Anatole 
 France has done. He is a connoisseur first 
 and a man afterwards: taste and wit are for 
 him substitutes for morality and religion. 
 All things are trivial and if they are not 
 already charming, time will soon make them so. 
 But the man who finds passion charming has 
 never felt it; the man who finds anger charm- 
 ing has never known it; and the man who finds 
 death charming has never feared it. The 
 philosophy which has dominated Anatole 
 France has made him, with some deliberation, 
 seal the springs of enthusiasm, of love, and of 
 worship. He feels himself larger than life 
 but he is not. The result is that he has never 
 become the novelist he might have been, a 
 novelist like Dickens or Balzac. If he lives, 
 
 [64] 
 
ANATOLE FRANCE 
 
 as I think he will live, he will live as a maker 
 of bijouterie, a craftsman, a witty and dainty- 
 essayist. In his kind he is a perfect artist; 
 that one complains of him is a tribute to his 
 unexploited power^. 
 
 [65] 
 
NATURAL WRITING 
 
 Some time ago I wrote an article on George 
 Meredith which " eHcited " (gentle Jew, I 
 thank thee for that word) an enormous mass of 
 correspondence. It will, or rather (if I may 
 assume an un journalistic candour) it will not, 
 be remembered that I then explained my 
 aversion to much in the character and writings 
 of that great man. My " peg " was a book 
 published by one of George Meredith's relatives 
 and containing certain sidelights on his life. I 
 did not really base my objection to Meredith on 
 facts " disclosed " by his biographer ; it was 
 more general and deep-seated; it was an 
 objection which had its roots in a feeling that 
 in his life and in his writings he was so artificial 
 that one could not discover the real man. In 
 the course of what I hope I may call my argu- 
 ment I complained about the strained tortu- 
 osities and insincerities of his writing. It 
 was on this complaint that the only corre- 
 spondent who disagreed with my article 
 fastened: for most of them wrote emotionally 
 [66] 
 
NATURAL WRITING 
 
 to say that with this key I had unlocked their 
 hearts, that they had always felt a sort of 
 a something about Meredith which they had 
 been unable to define, or that they had always 
 disliked him and never had the courage to 
 say so. 
 
 My correspondent says: "If you object to 
 Meredith's language, how can you tolerate 
 that of Henry James? Why should not a man 
 write as he likes if he has something to say?" 
 Well, I am prepared to face the first question 
 directly. I don't worship any writer for his 
 faults, and I don't think that James, especially 
 the later James, wrote the sort of English that 
 I should like to see repeated. His sentences 
 twisted and sprawled, his metaphors clustered 
 and clung, until it was often necessary to read 
 his sentences several times over to make 
 certain of his meaning. Yet his obscurity 
 and discursiveness seem to me very different 
 from those of Meredith. James did not, as a 
 rule, use far-fetched words, or drag in meta- 
 phors for their own sakes, or elongate sentences 
 in order to produce the effect of a firework 
 display. He was far more likely to use slang 
 words and to tangle his sentences with " as 
 they say," " so to speak," and " at least in 
 so far as," which are ordinary of the ordinary. 
 
 [67] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 His obscurity was the direct fruit of his passion 
 for precision, his complexity was the child of his 
 desire for simplicity. He wanted to state 
 everything accurately; he, therefore, intro- 
 duced sub-clause after sub-clause for the sake 
 of making what he thought necessary reserva- 
 tions, and metaphor after metaphor sprang 
 to his pen to convey just the shade of meaning 
 that he wanted to express. In his later years 
 it was his habit to dictate a typescript, to 
 dictate a second from the first, and to dictate 
 a third from the second. In each round or 
 lap new qualifications and amplifications were, 
 usually clumsily, crowded in, until there was 
 a final draft overfull of detail and very difficult 
 to read. But though his passion for precision 
 might irritate some readers (Mr. H. G. Wells 
 compared his efforts to those of a hippopotamus 
 picking up a pea) who felt that such a degree 
 of intellectual power ought not to be expended 
 upon trifles, even they had to respect that 
 power and the sincerity with which he used 
 it: the hippopotamus is a big creature and 
 this one was admirably painstaking. The 
 one thing nobody ever suggested about James 
 was that he was insincere or pretentious. 
 
 Meredith, on the other hand, was led into 
 obscurity by his desire to impress: he was 
 [68] 
 
NATURAL WRITING 
 
 only intermittently sincere, he liked to " show 
 off," he overloaded his work with superfluous 
 decoration which was often not even good 
 decoration. His obscurities were like the 
 abracadabras of the medicine man; jargon 
 primarily intended to impress the uninitiated. 
 I remember a man telling me that he had spent 
 a day with Meredith and that the novelist, 
 before lunch, had said to him, " Would you 
 like to lave your hands?" Well, a man might 
 say that facetiously; anybody might. But 
 of Meredith it was characteristic. His cheap 
 jewellery was sometimes very glittering, and 
 it was mixed up with genuine gems. He had 
 genius, intellect, and imagination, but he did 
 not trust it. He was not so much afraid to be 
 himself; he positively disliked to be himself; 
 he wanted to be something more brilliant and 
 mysterious, so he expended enormous energy 
 in fabrication instead of being content with 
 creation. He, who when he was natural, was 
 great, usually refused to be. The ordinary 
 I word passed through his mind and, either 
 \ before or after it reached paper, he deleted it 
 i and substituted the unusual, as a rule gaining 
 literally nothing by the change. 
 
 A man should write naturally. Men's 
 ( natures differ. It is natural to some, for 
 
 [69] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 one reason or another, to write parenthetically; 
 it is natural to some to write metaphysically; 
 it is natural to some (as it is to the illustrious 
 author of Wanderings in Arabia Deserta) to 
 use an outlandish compost of words. But 
 whereas I never feel that Mr. Doughty is 
 dragging in his extraordinary Saxon words 
 to bewilder me or compel my admiration, with 
 Meredith I usually feel that he is being 
 self-consciously artificial. We cannot help 
 our natures, our tastes, the bents of our 
 minds; but we can at least be true to 
 ourselves. 
 
 We must be, when writing, as natural and 
 as simple as our natures, given full play, will 
 allow us to be. I must not be misunderstood 
 to say that we should write precisely as we 
 speak. It is not a good thing even to speak 
 exactly as we speak. The M.P. who (Hansard 
 and the newspaper put his orations a Httle 
 straight) says, " Mr. Speaker, I rise to say, 
 I mean I get up to announce that — er — if this 
 Bill, this measure, gets through, passes — er — 
 it is impossible to say what will happen. Sir, 
 the country is well on the way to the road to 
 ruin," is in a manner speaking naturally; but 
 that is not the style one commends. The 
 ordinary reviewer, if he wrote his criticisms 
 
 [70] 
 
NATURAL WRITING 
 
 precisely as he talks, would come out with 
 passages like: 
 
 " We are just about fed up to the teeth with 
 stuff like Mr. Timms's novel. We don't mean 
 it is absolute rot, as the chap has got some 
 intelligence. But he is playing the fool pretty 
 badly, and if he goes on like this God help him." 
 
 But language may be what we call natural — 
 that is to say may fail to make the reader feel 
 that somebody is performing tricks in front of 
 him — without being vulgar, and it may ring 
 sincerely without being colloquial. Meredith, 
 had he had to deliver the obvious kind of 
 judgment recorded in that imaginary extract, 
 would probably have begun with " Come we 
 now to Mr. Timms, ambushed by all the 
 sprites, an eye, distinctly, nay desperately, 
 intelligent still gleaming darkly amid the 
 weedy abysms of the sentimental brake. 
 Icarus, one would say, rather, Daedalus, for that 
 he, etc., etc.," and even after that he would 
 have gone through it barbarously revising, 
 knocking out " ambushed " in favour of 
 " ambuscadoed " or even " embuscadoed," 
 and dropping in adventitious tropes. Writing 
 such as his is at its worst seems to me to have 
 the vilest possible fault: it is "made up," it is 
 
 [71] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 heartless rococo. And if the same criteria 
 that we apply to him are applied to others we 
 shall find that all sorts of English writers 
 stay in our net, and that writers of many 
 different kinds slip through it. Contortions 
 are not in themselves evidence of artificiality; 
 and there is a kind of hollow simplicity and 
 clarity which rings more false than anything 
 in the world. For at bottom " the style is the 
 man," and a style which, whatever its other 
 merits or defects, annoys us by its air of arti- 
 ficiality, is merely the mask of a man who does 
 not really mean, or feel, what he says. Here I 
 must introduce a qualification. Anyone who 
 took the above remarks literally might get the 
 false impression that I was suggesting that, 
 provided two styles were equally free from 
 pose, they are equally meritorious. This 
 would be ridiculous, a man's style is adorned 
 by all kinds of things; some most unaffected 
 people have no ear; others have a mania for 
 digressions; others have a small or inexact 
 vocabulary; whole books have been and will be 
 written about style. But I do lay it down as 
 a postulate that a man should not deliberately 
 festoon his work with insincere archaisms or 
 unilluminating figures of speech, and that every 
 man, in so far as it is consistent with saying 
 
 [72] 
 
NATURAL WRITING 
 
 just what he wants to say, should be as clear 
 in his writing as possible. Even Meredith, I 
 suspect, if he went into a public-house to get 
 a drink, took care that the bar-man should be 
 in no doubt as to what he wanted. 
 
 This, however, is not the last word upon 
 style, which includes many things. 
 
 [73] 
 
SECRET HISTORY 
 
 " We are the people of England who never 
 have spoken yet," is the refrain of one of Mr. 
 Chesterton's old songs, and the thesis of his 
 Short History of England (published by 
 Chatto and Windus), which may be destined to 
 be the most useful of his many useful books. 
 Mr. Chesterton does not pretend to be a scholar, 
 and he would probably not be surprised if he 
 were told that there were numbers of inaccura- 
 cies in his book and numbers of important 
 qualifications out of it. He will go a little too 
 far sometimes for an antithesis, a joke, or a 
 climax; and at some places in his history the 
 learned may say, " This is all wrong." But 
 what matters is that the general motive and 
 arguments are all right. Mr. Chesterton has a 
 knowledge of human nature, a love of his 
 countrymen, a belief in democracy, and, in spite 
 of his strong opinions, a regard for truth. 
 These are not always among the virtues of 
 historians, and historians frequently lack the 
 convictions that men are not born on the earth 
 
 [74] 
 
SECRET HISTORY 
 
 for nothing (that is, that hfe is worth living) 
 and that the test of a civihsation is the sort 
 of life that the majority of its members live. 
 Mr. Chesterton has those convictions and he 
 refuses to accept the common delusion that 
 a civilisation of 1900 must be higher than a 
 civihsation of 1800, because 1900 is after 1800; 
 be, on the whole, is compelled to plump for 
 the brief zenith of the Middle Ages, as the best 
 period of a bad lot in the history of the English 
 people. It is not sentimental mediaevalism, 
 and he is not blind either to the advantages we 
 have over our mediaeval ancestors or to the still 
 greater advantages we might have if we only 
 decided to regenerate our society instead of 
 fatalistically submitting to the operation of 
 " economic forces " — which are usually other 
 words for the unbridled greed or undirected 
 energy of individual men whom we are, if we 
 only care to, at complete liberty to control, 
 silence, lock up, or smite hip and thigh. He 
 looks at the past with the eyes of a decent man 
 who maintains that men have souls and that 
 they should be treated like Christians; and by 
 that test he judges what has and what has 
 not been done. 
 
 Never losing sight of that he gallops at 
 top speed thi'ough English history; he misses 
 
 [75] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 great spaces, but wherever his hoof touches it 
 strikes out fire. Continually he tosses off a 
 sentence, the product of a clear eye and an 
 untainted heart, which will shatter the con- 
 ventional reader's preconceptions. " The first 
 half of English history," he says, " has been 
 made quite unmeaning in the schools by the 
 attempt to tell it without reference to that 
 corporate Christendom in which it took part 
 and pride." There is no need for commentary 
 on this: it is simple truth. And it is equally 
 true that we cannot understand the struggle 
 between Henry II. and Becket unless we 
 understand what the Church stood for as well 
 as what the Plantagenet monarchy stood for. 
 Becket did not lose favour and die merely in 
 order that guilty clergymen should escape 
 the proper reward of their crimes; and the 
 situation cannot be rightly assessed unless we 
 consider Henry's action in going to be flogged 
 at Becket's tomb, and the popular reverence 
 of Becket, together with the legal struggle that 
 preceded the tragedy. The early legends 
 — all our heroes, he notes, are anti-harharic — 
 the Reformation, the Civil Wars and the 
 Eighteenth Century are all treated, perhaps 
 sketchily, but with a verisimilitude that 
 convinces. At every point the orthodox nar- 
 
 [76] 
 
SECRET HISTORY 
 
 rators stand condemned; and everywhere they 
 have failed to attempt to grasp the real 
 mind of the masses of the people and even — 
 if the period is distant enough — that of their 
 governors. Nowhere is this more noticeable 
 than in the common treatment of the Crusades. 
 They were not fought for nothing. They were 
 not fought for gain. They were not fought out 
 of bigotry. There was good and evil mixed 
 in them, but no wars in human history were 
 fought for a better cause and none appealed 
 more strongly to the souls of common men. 
 No more, again, do our historians attempt to 
 visuahse the great buildings of the Middle 
 Ages, and what was behind them: they merely 
 say they are there and give the Middle Ages 
 one good mark for them. Opinions such as 
 these Mr. Chesterton maintains with his usual 
 wit and his usual eloquence; his jokes are 
 seldom forced in this book, and in many places 
 he rises into noble passages of English prose. 
 He lets out with immense good humour and 
 effect at pedants of all sorts, especially anthro- 
 pologists and Teuto-mongers ; and he gives 
 by the way character sketches, particularly 
 two of Sir Thomas More and Richard III., 
 which are both brilliant and plausible. And 
 I he drives home an obvious truth when he 
 
 [77] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 accuses us of magnifying the defects of the 
 Middle Ages by telescoping our chronicles. 
 Certainly if a man were to write in eight pages 
 a history of the last century, mentioning 
 principally the wars and the sweating, he could 
 make us out one of the basest generations on 
 record. And that without falling back upon 
 the ugliness of our civilisation and that mental 
 plague, which, as Mr. Chesterton observes, has 
 left us worshipping in children all that we have 
 crushed out in men. 
 
 The book is not a history. It is a historical 
 essay. It covers two thousand years in three 
 hundred pages, and the general propositions 
 leave little room for the facts which might 
 illustrate them. But it might well be used by 
 a more laborious writer as the theoretical 
 basis for a history on the grand scale. Every 
 contention that Mr. Chesterton advances, 
 every institution that he describes, every 
 trend of sentiment that he detects, might be 
 documented from ruins and records, charters 
 and songs, traditions and laws. The " evi- 
 dences " for such a work lie scattered in thou- 
 sands of books, buildings and memories, not 
 to speak of the minds of living men: the 
 one place where you will never find them in 
 large numbers is a formal history book. The 
 
 [78] 
 
SECRET HISTORY 
 
 manner of writing history has been subject to 
 fashions. At first men compiled — and they 
 were then, at least to some extent, in touch 
 with humanity — very undiscriminating chron- 
 icles in which, if battles received too much 
 attention, at least they were battles and not 
 merely episodes in economic development, 
 and if legends received too generous an accept- 
 ance, at least there was no assumption that you 
 could understand men's deeds without under- 
 standing their dreams. The scientific spirit 
 grew and the development of institutions was 
 given, quite properly, increased attention. 
 The 1297 Parhament of Stow-in-the-Wold, the 
 Charter of Chudleigh, the refusal of the Hemp 
 Subsidy, and other such incidents became 
 landmarks with whole pages to themselves. 
 Anxious to know how the British Constitu- 
 tion, in its widest sense, had reached its present 
 condition, men catalogued ancient laws without 
 really bothering about their origins and ob- 
 jects, and stared hard at ancient offices with- 
 out visualising the men who occupied them. 
 Political economy came into existence, and 
 more was said about exports, imports, the mer- 
 cantile theory, the discovery of the Mexican 
 silver mines, the trading companies, and the 
 Enclosures Acts. Finally, it became a com- 
 
 [79] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 monplace amongst the enlightened that too 
 little had been said about the " condition of 
 the people " throughout history. Green wrote, 
 with a laudable ambition, a work, the title 
 of which recognised this. Paragraphs on the 
 Black Death and the Peasants' Revolt began 
 to be sprinkled with a few quotations from 
 Langland; attempts were made at a sys- 
 tematic study of our forefathers' wages; and 
 the excursus on the manners and pastimes of 
 the multitude became common form. But 
 whatever the narrative fashion of the age, and 
 whatever the idiosyncrasies of particular his- 
 torians, the real history of the English people 
 remains to be written. There have been his- 
 torians who have treated their subjects in a 
 human way, and who have avoided quite openly 
 the dry pseudo-scientific method. One wrote 
 to celebrate the greatness of Tudor England; 
 another to celebrate the triumphs of Whiggery. 
 They were entitled to their opinions and their 
 heroes: but of none of them was the hero the 
 English people, and none of them were pri- 
 marily concerned with the opinions, the emotions 
 and the experiences of the English people. Our 
 histories are all histories of the crust: if kings 
 and aristocrats are not the only people who 
 matter, then politicians and intellectuals are 
 
 [80] 
 
SECRET HISTORY 
 
 the only people who matter. The masses may 
 be completely disregarded or they may be re- 
 garded with a measure, great or small, of sym- 
 pathy: but when they are not forgotten they 
 are, consciously or unconsciously, patronised, 
 and openly or by implication denounced. 
 Above all our history has been run in the in- 
 terests of Industrialism, and where Progress 
 has failed to be progressive historians have, 
 often so naturally that they were unaware of 
 it, blinded themselves to good things we have 
 lost and the manner of our losing them. Eng- 
 lish history is, in effect, a whitewashing of the 
 fait accompli. 
 
 Those are Mr. Chesterton's contentions, just 
 as they were the contentions of Mr. Maurice 
 Hewlett's fine agricultural epic The Song of 
 the Plow, the history of which bears a close 
 resemblance to Mr. Chesterton's. It doesn't 
 matter whether he tells the whole truth or 
 not; at any rate, he emphasises many truths 
 commonly overlooked. And if he also has a 
 log to roll it is, at any rate, a more important 
 log than the others. He, like Mr. Hewlett, 
 ends with the war and the transfiguration of 
 the common disinherited man, called upon at 
 last to confront the nation which above all 
 others had been praised by his professors 
 
 [8i] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 and his politicians as a pioneer of civilisa- 
 tion: 
 
 " He in whose honour all has been said and 
 sung stirred, and stepped across the border of 
 Belgium. Then were spread out before men's 
 eyes all the beauties of his culture and all the 
 benefits of his organisation; then we beheld 
 under a lifting daybreak what light we had 
 followed and after what image we had laboured 
 to refashion ourselves. Nor in any story of 
 mankind has the irony of God chosen the 
 foolish things so catastrophically to confound 
 the wise. For the common crowd of poor and 
 ignorant Englishmen, because they only knew 
 that they were Englishmen, burst through the 
 filthy cobwebs of four hundred years and stood 
 where their fathers stood when they knew that 
 they were Christian men. The English poor, 
 broken by every revolt, bullied by every fashion, 
 long despoiled of property, and now being 
 despoiled of liberty, entered history with a 
 noise of trumpets, and turned themselves in two 
 years into one of the iron armies of the world. 
 And when the critic of politics and literature, 
 feeling that this war is after all heroic, looks 
 around him to find the hero, he can point to 
 nothing but a mob." 
 
 [82] 
 
SECRET HISTORY 
 
 This also the scientific materiahst will call 
 rhetoric, and look for his explanations else- 
 where, not seeing, or blind to their beauty if 
 he does see them, the multitudinous idealisms 
 and loves and loyalties in the host of inarticulate 
 breasts whose only speech is action — and a 
 misleading jest. But there is truth in the 
 rhetoric, and the truth will be told about no 
 large movement of humanity unless the imagi- 
 nation and the emotions are brought to bear 
 upon the facts. Wat Tyler's followers, usually 
 described as " a peasantry resentful of an un- 
 just poll-tax," cannot be comprehended by 
 that phrase; a whole novel would not be too 
 long to display the confused minds of those 
 resentful and then briefly exhilarated men who, 
 I though illiterate and no doubt incapable of 
 J formulating a system which would establish and 
 secure what they wanted, had a Utopia of a 
 sort in their hearts and knew what they immedi- 
 ately wanted, and that in justice they should 
 have it, and were prepared to risk their lives 
 that their class might have it. Mr. Chesterton's 
 l. short passage on the Pilgrimage of Grace lets 
 far more light in on the state of mind behind 
 that rebellion than any amount of " facts " 
 about it backed by lifeless references to " those 
 whose sympathies still clung to the old regime." 
 
 [83] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 But one might come nearer. I happen to re- 
 member the 1906 election and the campaign in 
 the rural constituencies of which I saw a good, 
 deal. A great and successful appeal was made 
 to the agricultural labourer. The outcome of it 
 was a largely unworkable and unworked Small 
 Holdings Act. The Act will get a few lines 
 in the histories: the appeal will probably get 
 none at all. Moreover few, even of the men 
 who made that appeal, and dangled before the 
 labourer the realisation of his age-long hope 
 of work in liberty with a proper reward on the 
 land which is in his bones, exercised their imagi- 
 nations sufficiently to realise what the promise 
 and the disappointment meant to him. For he 
 does not write books, he is slow of speech, he 
 can only vote, after all, for one side or the 
 other, and — in the end — centuries of frustra- 
 tion have made him resigned, and he is quite 
 prepared, as often as necessary, to submerge 
 his useless aspirations in a pint of beer. If the 
 history of England still remains unwritten Mr. 
 Chesterton's book may at least teach the next 
 generation of historians their business. 
 
 [84] 
 
MR. ASQUITH AS AUTHOR 
 
 Excluding collections of political speeches, 
 Mr. Asquith's Occasional Addresses, 1908-16, is 
 his first book; unless, indeed, like most able 
 young lawyers, he wrote something about Torts 
 or Company Law in an earlier age. The book 
 consists mainly of five considerable addresses : on 
 Criticism, Biography, Ancient Universities and 
 the Modern World, Culture and Character, and 
 the Spade and the Pen — the last being con- 
 cerned with classical studies and the place of 
 archaeology. There are also lesser addresses 
 on the English Bible, Omar Khayyam, and 
 other subjects, a Latin speech made at Win- 
 chester, and several obituary " tributes " to emi- 
 nent men deceased. These last, perhaps, would 
 not all have been included had Mr. Asquith not 
 desired to give the public a respectable sized 
 book for its money. 
 
 But the smaller book would have been well 
 worth it. No professional author has con- 
 structed in our time so clear, so compressed, so 
 convincing a defence of the humanities, and so 
 
 [85] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 eloquent a demonstration of their daily prac- 
 tical value as Mr. Asquith has produced in the 
 sporadic addresses of his restricted leisure. It 
 is not to be supposed that he devotes himself 
 entirely to generalisations as to " culture," ab- 
 sorbed discursively, or under curriculum. Both 
 his addresses to students and the others are full 
 of incidental judgments upon books and men, 
 criticisms usually indisputable, and often origi- 
 nal. His criticisms of the literatures of the 
 ancient world, as well as of English books of 
 several centuries, would be well worth having if 
 they illustrated no general argument at all. His 
 tastes are, on the whole, orthodox; one deduces 
 that he is most drawn to the admittedly great- 
 est of writers. But though never eccentric, he 
 thinks independently. The evidences of this 
 are everywhere. One may quote his acute ob- 
 servation that 
 
 " if we were given fewer of a man's letters to 
 his friends, and more of his friends' letters to 
 him, we should get to know him better because, 
 among other reasons, we should be better able 
 to realise how his personality affected and 
 appealed to others." 
 
 One may quote also his illuminating pages on 
 the neglected autobiography of Haydon, the 
 [86] 
 
MR. ASQUITH AS AUTHOR 
 
 painter; his description of Haydon as "one 
 of the acutest and most accomplished critics 
 of his time," and his question, though it be a 
 mere question, why it was that Haydon was 
 not a great portrait painter. We may note, 
 incidentally, as lights on his tastes, that he is 
 a close student of Bacon and a devotee of Sir 
 Walter Scott, and that he believes most of 
 Shakespeare's sonnets to have had no relation 
 with the poet's personal career. I have not, 
 however, space here to enter into such ques- 
 tions of detail; and I must be content, as to 
 Mr. Asquith's general views about culture, to 
 refer readers to the book itself, and especially 
 to the noble passages on pages 25 and 69. 
 Nothing is more remarkable about these ad- 
 dresses than the apparently effortless way in 
 which their author " lifts " to a higher level of 
 eloquence. He favours the sustained perora- 
 tion; but his perorations grow out of, are all of 
 a piece with, what has gone before, instead 
 of being shamelessly stuck on like those of the 
 wanton rhetorician. One result of this, how- 
 ever, is that they are not detachable: one al- 
 ways wants to take in the sentence before, so 
 to speak. Instead of attempting to quote them, 
 therefore, I may be permited to pass to 
 a few remarks upon his way of express- 
 
 [87] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 ing himself: what, vaguely, we call his 
 style. 
 
 In his lecture on " Culture and Character," 
 Mr. Asquith refers to the frequency with which 
 " a man takes an hour to say what might have 
 been as well or better said in twenty minutes, 
 or spreads over twenty pages what could easily 
 have been exhausted in ten." The offence of 
 being " slipshod and prolix " is never com- 
 mitted by him. There is no greater living mas- 
 ter of the summary; and the qualities of his 
 speaking are present in his writing. Lie sur- 
 veys his field from a detached eminence, and 
 sketches its main outlines with precision and in 
 their due proportions. His survey is so simple 
 and straightforward as sometimes to appear easy 
 and obvious; but a man who should succumb 
 to that impression might be recommended to 
 attempt the operation for himself. The cer- 
 tainty with which JMr. Asquith grasps his gen- 
 eral ideas is matched by, and allied to, the 
 lucidity with which he formulates them. No 
 one, I might add, who was not habituated to 
 accurate expression could, when occasion calls, 
 say nothing at all with Mr. Asquith's ease and 
 safety. His verbal instrument is the perfect 
 servant of his mind. It is indeed difficult for 
 a politician to retain a sound style. Whenever 
 [88] 
 
MR. ASQUITH AS AUTHOR 
 
 he rises he must play St. Anthony to beckon- 
 ing hosts of cliches; and according to his tem- 
 perament he will be more liable to yield to one 
 ^evy or the other, to those of wooden pomposity 
 and sham dignity or to those of intemperate 
 rhetoric and sham passion. Mr. Asquith, as 
 a political speaker, has been known, not infre- 
 quently, to lapse into a hollow resonance, and 
 there are a few examples of this pardonable and 
 almost unavoidable humbug in the obituary 
 speeches printed at the end of this volume. But 
 as a speaker — or, rather, a writer — on other 
 subjects he is entirely free from it; and his style 
 is literally a model of its kind. 
 
 It is what is called a classical, what used to 
 be called a "correct" style: the style natural 
 to a man of his intellect and temper. His 
 sentences are close-knit: packed, but easy. 
 Every phrase adds something; but an intract- 
 able content never destroys the balance. In 
 the Latinity of the language, in the structure 
 of the sentences, in the objectivity, imperson- 
 ality, of the writer's attitude, there is something 
 reminiscent of the eighteenth century. There 
 are constant faint traces of Johnson, of Burke, 
 of Gibbon. We observe the affectionate use 
 of words like " denigration " and " fuliginous "; 
 and admirably compendious phrases like that 
 
 [89] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS j 
 
 in which, referring to the production of super- 
 fluous biographies, he speaks of " the monu- 
 ments which filial piety or misdirected friend- 
 ship is constantly raising to those who deserved 
 and probably desired to be forgotten." One 
 has employed the word "affectionate"; and 
 here, of course, is one of the places where per- 
 sonality does come in. Marked proclivities in 
 language are in themselves windows into per- 
 sonality. And in these addresses Mr. Asquith's 
 individuality peeps out in all sorts of ways: 
 in the revelation of his tastes, in the warm 
 mental glow which saves from frigidity the most 
 " scientific " of his paragraphs, and in his fre- 
 quent humour. But he does not write to display 
 his powers of writing; he does not parade his 
 tastes because they are his (announcing them 
 merely because they appear to him to be sen- 
 sible and reasonable) ; and he does not jump 
 over the hedge for any joke or take even those 
 which stand right in his road save in the most 
 delicate and undemonstrative manner. Many 
 readers, by no means obtuse, might well miss 
 the gentle jest in his address to the Royal So- 
 ciety, which was founded by Charles II.: 
 
 " Whether the interest in anatomy displayed, 
 as your annals show, by the Society in its 
 
 [90] 
 
MR. ASQUITH AS AUTHOR 
 
 earliest years was due to the proclivities of 
 its Royal Patron, I do not know . . ." 
 
 The passage on the uses of the bastinado and 
 the knout in criticism might also be quoted; 
 and the charming account of Jeremy Bentham's 
 variegated evenings. His criticisms and apt 
 images are all the more enjoyable because of 
 their subservience to his main purpose: his 
 refusal to allow the garlands to conceal the 
 pillar. And one must mention his extraordi- 
 narily happy and judicious use of quotations. 
 They are never dragged in by the heels to dis- 
 play learning or import a facile colouring; but 
 the few he makes, both from English and from 
 classical authors, are, by their very nature and 
 pertinence, an unmistakable proof of large 
 reserves. His temper, almost always, is ami- 
 able. But just as the even surface of his lan- 
 guage is sometimes abruptly and effectively 
 broken by an unusual or a colloquial word, so 
 his pervasive, easy tolerance now and then 
 yields. Something hard comes into sight, like 
 black rocks under a smooth sea; self-knowl- 
 edge, determination, a settled, though usually 
 concealed, contempt for the complacent stupid, 
 and the pretentious superficial. But he never 
 loses his self-control. 
 
 [91] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 It would be easy to supplement this brief 
 catalogue of some of Mr. Asquith's qualities 
 with a list of the qualities which he does not 
 possess. He has little, no doubt, in common 
 with Rousseau, Shelley, and John the Baptist; 
 like the rest of us, he is something and not 
 something else. But, reading this too slight 
 collection, one remembers the superb general- 
 isation that " conference maketh a ready man, 
 reading a full man, and writing an exact man " ; 
 and one feels that the three processes have here 
 been operating, with uniform success, in one 
 person. 
 
 [92] 
 
THE INFINITIVES THAT 
 WERE SPLIT 
 
 To any writer, unless he be a morose hermit, 
 it must be a pleasure to receive unsolicited let- 
 ters from strangers. I myself — one must take 
 one's illustrations from the nearest available 
 source — receive such letters occasionally. They 
 are as varied as possible. One correspondent, I 
 remember, asked me what was my Christian 
 name; another sent me a flower plucked on 
 the slopes of Hymettus; another, having seen 
 me complain that I had vainly tried for years 
 to secure a copy of the Undertaker's Journal, 
 obtained one from a parishioner, and forwarded 
 it with a letter full of sinister charm. There 
 are letters of congratulation, letters of abuse, 
 letters seeking for knowledge, and letters (alas, 
 too many!) pointing out ignorance. They all 
 relieve the monotony of the post. All are wel- 
 come; save only letters which deal with well- 
 known and unobscure points of grammar. 
 
 Two people write to me about a recent essay 
 in this series. One says that it contained a 
 
 [93] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 SPLIT infinitive; the second that it contained 
 TWO SPLIT INFINITIVES. The first 
 says " I suppose you are one of those who de- 
 fend split infinitives " ; the second assumes that 
 no defence is possible. We can start, there- 
 fore, with the fact clear that there are two sides 
 and two parties to the question. There are some 
 men who would no more split an infinitive than 
 they would split their father's head with an axe, 
 and who, when anybody else splits one, split 
 their sides; there are others who, on occasion, 
 will as cheerfully split an infinitive as a 
 soda. 
 
 Far be it from me to any longer than I am 
 bound to dweU on a subject about which people 
 are apt to so violently differ. But it is, I feel, 
 my duty to briefly confess that there frequently 
 are places in which splitting an infinitive secures 
 an additional emphasis which could not be 
 secured without the split, and places in which 
 an infinitive that is not split makes one at once 
 conscious that the author has tried to, at all 
 costs, avoid a split infinitive with the result 
 that his expression seems strained. 
 
 I seldom split an infinitive. When I do I 
 shall not feel called upon to explain why I do. 
 But I am not content to leave the subject at 
 that. For it has made me aware of something 
 
 [94] 
 
SPLIT INFINITIVES 
 
 about which, however generally it may be ex- 
 perienced, I do not feel altogether easy. It 
 has suddenly occurred to me that although I 
 do not often perpetrate a spilt infinitive, I am 
 often on the verge of doing so. I write down, 
 in the first ardent flight of my fancy, some 
 phrase like " to altogether condemn " or "to 
 exactly express," and then I go back and alter 
 it into " altogether to condemn " or " exactly 
 to express." I now know that when I do this 
 I do not do it because I think it right 
 to do so, or because I think that in all 
 cases the undivided, unseparated, indissolute, 
 integral infinitive is the more elegant. I 
 do it out of sheer cowardice. I am in 
 fear of the pedants. I am (which is quite a 
 good reason) bored by the prospect of getting 
 letters asking for an explanation, and I am 
 (which is not a good reason) cowardly afraid 
 of seeming not to know that infinitives ought 
 not to be split or not to have the taste, the ear, 
 to detect one when I write it. And, realising 
 this, I realise that there are all sorts of other 
 alterations that I make in the same pusillani- 
 mous and unnatural way. 
 
 Is any of us natural? Is there one who in- 
 rariably writes impeccable English at first go 
 off? Is there one who, if he does not, has the 
 
 [9S] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 courage to let his first fine careless raptures 
 stand? I doubt it. Since I first got fascinated 
 by this topic I have asked five or six of the 
 most scrupulous and respected writers of Eng- 
 lish alive what is their practice. Accepting no 
 evasions, I have discovered that every one of 
 them habitually alters things after he has written 
 them. I am not referring to alterations made 
 for the sake of obvious improvement, strengthen- 
 ing of epithet, or clarifications of phrase; I 
 am referring merely to alterations which turn 
 something colloquial and natural into something 
 artificial and grammatical which will stand the 
 scrutiny of the lynx-eyed gentlemen of leisure 
 who seem to have nothing better to do than to 
 look for specks in the suns of literature : errors, 
 easy of commission, but indefensible by the 
 rules. 
 
 The split infinitive is only one thing in a 
 large category. There is " that " and " which " 
 and " who " ; they are continually being ex- 
 changed because one or other of them, although 
 the meaning is quite clear, looks a little wrong 
 where it is put. There is " who " and " whom." 
 How often have I, how often have Dickens, 
 Wordsworth, JNIilton, and Shakespeare (Homer 
 was a Greek, and so eluded the difiiculty) been 
 bothered by the necessity of dealing rightly with 
 
 [96] 
 
SPLIT INFINITIVES 
 
 these preposterous pronouns, revising sentences 
 in which they occur, saying to ourselves 
 "Bother" (or, in the cases of Wordsworth 
 and Milton, "Damn") "it all, is this the 
 nominative after the verb ' to be,' or the accusa- 
 tive after a transitive verb, or what else? " 
 "Who did you see?" we (Shakespeare, etc.) 
 write. The spectres of all the grammarians 
 in the world rise before us as we write; we 
 weakly go back and put an " m " after the 
 "who"; an "m" which we may scatter indis- 
 criminately about our conversation without 
 knowing or caring whether we always have it 
 in the right places. 
 
 Some of us (Shakespeare and Milton, but 
 not so much myself in this instance) write 
 down " It is me," or " It was him." The same 
 ghostly battalion emerges like vapour from the 
 soil; the author looks uneasily over his shoulder 
 and, with a twisted smile, substitutes "It is I " 
 or " It was he." Accuracy has been secured 
 at the cost of naturalness; Cerberus has had 
 his sop ; the mouths of the pedants are stopped, 
 and their tongues will not wag. There is an- 
 other thing still worse: the obligation of " fol- 
 lowing up " pronouns of alternative gender. 
 You find you have to write, for example, 
 a sentence such as 
 
 [97] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 " The story as told by Mr. (jMrs. or Miss) 
 Jones does great credit to his, or her, powers 
 of narration. He, or she, has a very flexible 
 style; and his, or her, sense of humour is often 
 considerably more in evidence than his, or her, 
 respect of persons." 
 
 That Is what you finally evolve. But your 
 first impulse was ("their" having been re- 
 jected as hopeless, since there is only one 
 author) to write " his " all the way, and let the 
 alternative " her " be understood. But you 
 did not dare. You had not the courage. You 
 were afraid that if you did, somebody would 
 think you were slipshod, or somebody else would 
 think you had not noticed that you had brought 
 the feminine in at the beginning, or (worst of 
 all) that somebody else would think you were 
 unaware of the fact that you cannot use the 
 masculine possessive of a feminine possessor. 
 Your sentence, in its final and highly gram- 
 matical form, is just as ugly and awkward as 
 it would have been had you left it as it was. 
 But your reputation for knowing all about the 
 King's English is saved; and you feel that 
 though they may call you foolish, dull, biased, 
 tasteless, old-fashioned, decadent, or profligate, 
 though they may suspect you of forging 
 
 [98] 
 
SPLIT INFINITIVES 
 
 cheques, of secret cannibalism, of garrotting, or 
 of addiction to heroin or cocaine, they will at 
 least not be able to direct against you the far 
 more cutting and humiliating charge of being 
 ungrammatical. 
 
 Ought writers so to contort themselves (note 
 how I have avoided the split by putting that 
 "so" before that "to") for such reasons? 
 Ought they not rather, assuming them to be 
 knowledgeable people and people with a respect 
 for the language which they are handling, to 
 be brave enough to stand by phraseology which 
 they use daily in speech, and which only by 
 slow and laborious effort they can avoid in 
 print? I am sure they ought. But though I 
 still cling to a belief in the occasional split 
 infinitive, I fear I shall not often have the 
 courage to act up to my faith. I have never yet 
 gone to the lengths of the precise London house- 
 holder who has on his door " Do not ring unless 
 an answer be required." But the " Constant 
 Reader," so far as I am concerned, v/ill always 
 retain his power. But if, widening his scope, he 
 goes off grammatical errors into stock quota- 
 tions and cliches (which are certainly at least 
 as reprehensible) almost the whole British Press 
 will go out of business. 
 
 [99] 
 
DR. JOHNSON 
 
 Mr. S. C. Roberts has compiled, the Cam- 
 bridge University Press have pubhshed, and I 
 have just read, a small book called Tlie Story 
 of Doctor Johnson. It is virtually an introduc- 
 tion to Boswell. It is ostensibly intended for 
 children, but I think that there are some mil- 
 lions of white adults who might profitably read 
 it. For BoswelVs Life, though we are all sup- 
 posed to have read it, is, as a fact, by many 
 people taken for granted. They presume them- 
 selves to have read it, just as they presume 
 themselves to be familiar with the Bible, and if 
 confronted with a question about Langton or 
 Dr. Taylor or Topham Beauclerk they are as 
 stuck as if they were catechised about Amos, 
 Habakkuk, or the Epistle to the Galatians. 
 And even if they are conscious, and willing to 
 assert, that they have never opened Boswell, 
 they are usually unaware of the value of what 
 they missed. They think they know Johnson; 
 but they do not. 
 
 Most men who are not illiterate moujiks have 
 
 [lOO] 
 
DR. JOHNSON 
 
 some conception of Dr. Johnson's personality 
 and opinions. They are familiar with the late 
 Reynolds portrait; the wig, the lumbering 
 shoulders and chest, the puffy eyes, fat, seamed 
 face, loose but obstinate mouth. They prob- 
 ably supplement the picture with printed de- 
 scriptions, taken from Macaulay or elsewhere, 
 of his stature and gait, his loud laugh, his 
 domineering habit in conversation, his gross 
 table manners, his dislike of clean linen, and 
 his unpleasing custom of smearing gravy and 
 potatoes over his clothes. They have heard 
 typical sayings. He jeered perpetually at the 
 aspiring and hungry Scot. He said that pa- 
 triotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel; that 
 a ship was a floating gaol; and that, when 
 writing Parliamentary reports, he did not let 
 the Whig dogs have the best of it. And, for 
 the rest, he was customarily abusive, answering 
 questions with " Sir, that is a very silly ques- 
 tion," or " Then, sir, you are a great fool." 
 
 That is the sort of picture of Johnson that 
 lodges in the brain of the man who has not 
 read Boswell; for the man who has not read 
 Boswell is not likely to have read Sir John 
 Hawkins or Mrs. Thrale. That it should exist, 
 and should be so widely dispersed, is proof of 
 the force and weight both of his personality and 
 
 [lOl] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 of Boswell's unequalled portrayal. No dead 
 man lives so widely and so vividly; even Na- 
 poleon is a more shadowy — and would, if he 
 suddenly appeared at a tea-party, be a less 
 recognisable — figure. But the popular concep- 
 tion is wholly inadequate. It does not account 
 for the reverence with which Johnson is by 
 many held, the tender affection which many 
 feel for him, and the verdict of many that, 
 excepting one who is known to us only through 
 his works, Samuel Johnson was the greatest of 
 all Englishmen. 
 
 He who knows Boswell, though he never look 
 at a line of Johnson's frequently very revealing 
 and entertaining original works, knows John- 
 son outside and in. He knows him as the social 
 figure, the Grub Street hack of early, the auto- 
 cratic Great Cham of later, years; the diner- 
 out and conversational giant who was the model 
 of courtesy to women, the tyrannic disputant 
 with men; the independent theorist who often 
 on principle deferred to rank or office, but never 
 cringed to a man. He knows him as a great if 
 erratic scholar, a master of the classic languages 
 from childhood, interested in all human affairs; 
 the learned essayist and the herculean compiler 
 who produced the first, and still almost the most 
 interesting, of our standard dictionaries. He 
 [102] 
 
DR. JOHNSON 
 
 .aiows him as the proud and independent spirit 
 who answered Chesterfield's tardy offer of 
 patronage with the most crushing and eloquent 
 letter in the language; and in whose character 
 and demeanour no change of circumstances 
 made the least difference. But he knows more; 
 he gets below isolated phrases and acts into 
 something deeper in which those were rooted, 
 and of which they were sometimes only the 
 fantastic flowers. He knows that Johnson's 
 character was one of the noblest and his mind 
 one of the sanest and most powerful of which 
 w^e have record. 
 
 Johnson was habitually dogmatic and fre- 
 quently rude. These were faults if you like; 
 but the noticeable point about them is that his 
 friends did not resent them, and that if his 
 verbal brutality hurt a super-sensitive person 
 he always regretted it. But his faults were 
 the defects of his qualities; he did have a grasp 
 of things such as few men have had; Burke 
 was content to receive light from him on poli- 
 tics and Reynolds on painting. The prejudices 
 which are so characteristic of him to common 
 thinking did exist; but he was a humorist. 
 Every humorist has his " stunts," and John- 
 son's prejudices about Scotchmen and other 
 bugbears were largely deliberate and artificial, 
 
 [103] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 kept up in order to give salt to life. They 
 were not ungovernable: five of his six assistants 
 on the dictionary were Scotch, as was Boswell; 
 and, in spite of his remarks about Whigs being 
 rascals and republicans, and suitable candidates 
 for transportation, when he met Wilkes (who 
 really was a rascal) at dinner he talked to him 
 with great spirit and amiability. He had a 
 habit of expressing his Toryism in extreme 
 terms; but it had, as almost all his judgments 
 on all subjects, a hard basis of reasoning tem- 
 pered by common sense, which is often beyond 
 reason. His Jacobitism, if it was hardly a 
 joke, was, at all events, little more than a 
 symbol; he was not the man to worship shib- 
 boleths. He was not without sympathy with 
 the generous parts of eighteenth-century Radi- 
 calism; and if he was strongly anti-revolutionist, 
 it was not because he was deliberately biased or 
 had vested interests, but because, with his read- 
 ing of history and human nature, he formed 
 the conclusion that the necessity in his day was 
 to insist on that need for " subordination " which 
 so strongly impressed his mind. Other men 
 differed; but he could, when he liked, put up a 
 remarkably powerful case for any belief he held ; 
 and even those who share none of his beliefs 
 may well withhold condemnation of the Tory 
 [104] 
 
DR. JOHNSON 
 
 who in the middle of the eighteenth century 
 said that " A decent provision for the poor is 
 the true test of civihsation." 
 
 Johnson, as a pohtician and as a critic, had, 
 like all men, his limitations; but his common 
 sense was such as to deserve the name of 
 genius, and he continually surprises us with 
 flashes of the profoundest insight. For behind 
 his common-sense practicality was a troubled, 
 suffering spirit to which all faiths and all doubts 
 were known, all arguments, all fears, and all 
 hopes presented themselves. The lumbering 
 great " argufy er " and wag was fundamentally 
 a man with a strong imagination and a large 
 heart. He had a horror of death, and fought 
 with it. He wrestled nightly with his besetting 
 sins, chiefly that of indolence. Some of the 
 prayers he wrote for himself bite very deep. 
 He detested sentimental talk, but now and again 
 the strength of his emotions broke through the 
 crust, and a friend would reahse the depth of 
 his affection for mother or wife, or one of the 
 helpless dependents with whom he constantly 
 saddled himself. He was intolerant of pre- 
 sumptuous fools, rough with those who differed 
 from him; nevertheless, he was one of the most 
 generous, affectionate, and natural of men, and 
 one of the most courageous. He said, years 
 
 [los] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 afterwards, that he and Dick Savage, having 
 no money for beds, once spent the night trudg- 
 ing round St. James's Square. They canvassed 
 heaven, earth, and their woes; and in the end 
 agreed " to stand by their country." 
 
 He related it as a pathetic jest; but hardly, 
 one imagines, without justifiable pride. For 
 then, as always, he was consciously resolved 
 not to let his personal distresses warp his judg- 
 ments or distort his ideas of good and evil. 
 The need for " clearing our minds of cant " and 
 the other need of fighting the fears in our minds 
 and the menaces of circumstance, are the two 
 outstanding " lessons " — if one may use the 
 word — that are driven home by his biography; 
 and any child or adult who is led to Boswell 
 by Mr. Roberts's ingenious and well-illustrated 
 manual must, I conceive, benefit morally, as 
 well as being entertained as he will seldom be 
 in a normal life. 
 
 [io6] 
 
I 
 
 A PUZZLE 
 
 I THINK, but I may be in error, that George 
 Meredith himself requested that there should be 
 no " official life " of himself. Certainly such a 
 veto would be natural in him, for he was, save 
 under the veil of fiction, secretive about large 
 portions of his experience. The life recently 
 pubhshed (George Meredith, by S. M. Ellis) 
 is, however, by a cousin of his, and some of the 
 material included appears with the permission 
 of his son; it may, therefore, be regarded as 
 being as near an intimate life as anything we are 
 likely to get. 
 
 It is not a very good book. The author's 
 English is not of the first order; and a great 
 deal of space is taken up with quotations — many 
 of which are superfluous — from Meredith's 
 works. All the industry that has obviously been 
 lavished on it has failed to disinter any informa- 
 tion about several of his early years, and it is 
 in large measure a compilation from letters and 
 the published remarks of Meredith's critics and 
 friends. But what Meredith did in his seven- 
 
 [107] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 teenth year — when he can only be presumed to 
 have been in London — does not seriously mat- 
 ter; and there is no need to complain that the 
 " new facts " produced are not more exhaustive. 
 My complaint is that after reading this book, as 
 after reading Meredith's novels and poems, I 
 still do not know Meredith, am still puzzled by 
 him, and am still (I admit it with all diffidence) 
 irritated by him. That I, an individual, feel 
 like this about a man held by many to be great 
 and good could interest no one but myself; but 
 I know that both my bewilderment and my irri- 
 tation are shared by others. 
 
 I have often asked people, very catholic in 
 their tastes, why they did not like Meredith: 
 I have never got a satisfactory explanation yet. 
 There are a few actions in his life at which posi- 
 tive blame has been levelled. He apparently 
 treated his first wife very badly when, in her 
 last illness, he refused to go to see her. He 
 quarrelled with his father and he quarrelled 
 with his eldest son. His refusal to see either 
 wife or son on their death-beds is here half ex- 
 cused by his shrinking from sickness and death: 
 one can only say that the facts are not complete 
 enough to enable one to form a judgment either 
 way. During his three years of journalism he 
 wrote, for a Conservative paper, violent attacks 
 [io8] 
 
A PUZZLE 
 
 upon the North, Lincoln, and John Bright, al- 
 though his personal opinions were the opposite 
 of those of the paper. He annoyed many peo- 
 ple by his exaggerated secretiveness about his 
 parentage and the place of his birth (which he 
 would never give properly, even in a work of 
 reference) ; ten years after his marriage one of 
 his close friends was merely guessing that he had 
 been married. But people feel a certain remote- 
 ness from him who are unaware of all this; I 
 know I always did myself. It is hard to define. 
 Even " distaste " seems too strong a word for 
 the feeling and the image used by Henry James 
 who, when looking for something wrong about 
 d'Annunzio, compared himself to the plumber 
 searching a house for the source of a bad smell, 
 comes into one's mind only to be dismissed. 
 What is the characteristic that repels? 
 
 Those who have called him a snob because he 
 insisted on writing about leisured Olympians 
 and never mentioned the Portsmouth shop are 
 superficial on the first point and demonstrably 
 wrong on the second; for, in a novel, he ex- 
 pounded his family history without taking the 
 slightest pains to avoid identification. In any 
 event it is not a defect of that sort one is look- 
 ing for, but something far deeper and more per- 
 vasive, a streak which gives a tone to everything 
 
 [109] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 he wrote and all that is recorded of him. What 
 was his character, one wonders? Was he a 
 mind, tastes, a temper, without deep generous 
 affections ? How can one ask that of a man who 
 expressed himself so profusely? Is not the 
 reason that he concealed himself behind a mask? 
 What was there behind the mask? Worse ques- 
 tion of all, was there anything behind the mask? 
 So one question leads to another! One thinks 
 of him as a pretender, a poser, a man who could 
 not be himself. One links up his personal se- 
 cretiveness with the abominable artificialities of 
 his style. These appear early. At twenty-one 
 he writes of a poem to the publisher " It was 
 written immediately on receipt of the intelli- 
 gence which it chaunts " ; and one feels that 
 some common word had been struck out and the 
 exotic word put in; a method of procedure 
 habitual to him when he wrote poems. One 
 reflects on the thinness of the so-called philoso- 
 phy which has deluded many simple people by 
 the pretentiousness with which he covered up the 
 triteness of his earth-worship in difficult jargon. 
 One remembers his most-quoted mots; the thin- 
 concealed platitudinousness of the statement 
 (how on earth do critics persuade themselves 
 that it is brilliantly illuminating?) about man 
 having rounded Seraglio Point but not yet dou- 
 [no] 
 
A PUZZLE 
 
 bled Cape Turk. One thinks of the mounds of 
 tinsel tropes, not images smoking from the 
 heated imagination, but gauds of fancy fabric- 
 ated by a very deft hand. One remembers his 
 indefensible obscurity. The obscurity of Blake 
 was that of the stammering visionary; that of 
 Browning was sometimes the obscurity of care- 
 lessness and sometimes that of over-rapid 
 thought, but there was always something there. 
 The tortuous difficulties of Meredith are made 
 up like the maze at Hampton Court, and when 
 |i you have threaded them you find that there is 
 nothing there, or something quite simple, like 
 a square of green grass. Look at the Woods 
 of Westermain: 
 
 Hither, hither, if you will, 
 Drink instruction, or instil. 
 Run the woods like vernal sap. 
 Crying, hail to luminousness ! 
 
 But have care. 
 In yourself may lurk the trap 
 On conditions they caress. 
 Here you meet the light invoked, 
 Here is never secret cloaked. 
 Doubt you with the monster's fry 
 All his orbit may exclude ; 
 Are you of the stifiF, the dry. 
 Cursing the not understood? 
 Grasp you with the monster's claws ; 
 Govern with his truncheon-saws; 
 
 [III] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Hate, the shadow of a grain; 
 You are lost in Westermain. 
 Earthward swoops a vulture sun, 
 Nighted upon carrion. 
 Straightway venom wine-cups shout 
 Toasts to One whose eyes are out. 
 
 The man who is not annoyed by that is a devo- 
 tee indeed; and Carlyle himself never equalled 
 the roundabout artificialities of a writer who 
 would sprinkle his letters with made-up perver- 
 sions like (I take the first to hand) " I am now 
 bather anew in the Pierian Fount." He would 
 always write " fit not " instead of " do not fit " 
 or " Thank-song " instead of " song of thanks- 
 giving." A vocabulary or an order used by 
 his fellows was an abomination to him. Was it 
 that he was in perpetual dread of thinness, not 
 merely anxious to display, but positively afraid 
 to be himself since himself was not a good 
 enough thing to be? And even when that is ad- 
 mitted, does not something still remain; some- 
 thing quite positively objectionable; an attitude 
 towards things, and especially towards women, 
 which one can only vaguely indicate by calling 
 it a sort of refined gloating? 
 
 So our thoughts proceed. And then we check ; 
 realising that he did great things and that great 
 men found him great. " Not an artist, oh, not 
 an artist," said Henry James to a friend, " biil 
 
 [112] 
 
A PUZZLE 
 
 he did the best things best." Part at least of a 
 poet was in him. The famous things come into 
 one's mind: the scene at the weir in Feverel, 
 stanzas of Love in a Valley, the blossoming tree 
 in The Egoist, the sonnet on Prince Lucifer, 
 and passages in Modern Love. The mystery 
 and the bewilderment return; we doubt his pow- 
 ers but admit his achievement, we call him con- 
 noisseur and poseur, and find him writing of 
 people like a man and of nature like an enthu- 
 siast. But for me, I tell myself this, but still 
 I find that I am not in contact with him, that I 
 do not know him, that I do not relish the thought 
 that there are books of his which still remain 
 unread by me, that I do not genuinely like him, 
 and that when I find that after his death — he 
 complained continually that this was so during 
 his life — the large public still refuses to read 
 him, I am not surprised. A few years ago a 
 small and comparatively cheap edition-de-luxe 
 of his poems was published. Before long, though 
 his name was famous and nobody denied that 
 he had written some beautiful poetry, the book 
 was to be bought cheap as a remainder. I may 
 be confessing my limitations in saying so, and 
 I respect some of Meredith's warmest admirers ; 
 but I never felt more genuinely a democrat than 
 when that book failed. 
 
 [113] 
 
TOM THUMB 
 
 The American nation — as the alcoholic are 
 now learning — does not do things by halves. 
 Having decided to " prosecute the study " of 
 English literature, American Universities are 
 producing critical monographs and exotic re- 
 prints at a pace never before equalled. Great 
 stress is laid, when young men and women pro- 
 duce theses for the literary doctorate, upon the 
 need for tackling new subjects. This attitude, 
 so far as criticism is concerned, has led to an ex- 
 cessive pursuit of minutiae; despairing students 
 have to invent subjects like " The Colour of the 
 Hair of Shakespeare's Clowns " in order to be 
 certain that they are exploring genuinely un- 
 traversed ground. But the passion for novelty 
 shown by those who edit texts is entirely to be 
 commended. It is much more interesting and 
 useful to dig up some obscure but amusing work 
 and annotate it than to produce yet one more 
 edition of Hamlet or Endymion. During the 
 war, American editors have resuscitated several 
 good neglected poets, such as Cleveland and 
 
 ["4] 
 
TOM THUMB 
 
 Lady Winchilsea, and amongst numerous prose 
 enterprises there have been several editions of 
 minor classics of the eighteenth century. One 
 is a competently edited reprint of both versions 
 of Fielding's Tom Thumb (The Tragedy of 
 Tragedies), by Professor James T. Hillhouse, 
 published in this country by the Oxford Univer- 
 sity Press. 
 
 Fielding's most amusing play — the very name 
 of which must be unfamiliar to most readers of 
 Tom Jones — was written when he was twenty- 
 four, and enlarged shortly after. It is a lam- 
 poon on the heroic verse tragedy produced by 
 Dryden and his mouthing successors; and the 
 selection of the fairy-tale of Tom Thumb (who 
 is the bold hero) as its theme well illustrates the 
 extravagant vigour and high spirits of the whole 
 work. Its success on the stage showed that the 
 London public was ready to turn away from the 
 bombast and fustian that the literati had palmed 
 ojff on it; the range of careful reading attested 
 both by its text and by Fielding's solemn foot- 
 notes, prove the absurdity of the common legend 
 that in his youth the novelist was a dissolute 
 
 ).i waster. 
 
 P 
 
 ' The work is so good that even one who had 
 never read any of the plays parodied would 
 heartily enjoy it and at the same time realise 
 
 [lis] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 precisely what these plays must have been. 
 Fielding's humour is at his best in the ironic 
 preface, where he professes to treat the play as 
 an Elizabethan relic from which the authors he 
 is ridiculing have cribbed. " I shall ware," he | 
 adds, " at present, what hath caused such Feuds \ 
 in the learned World, Whether this Piece was 
 originally written by Shakespear, tho' certainly 
 That, were it true, must add a considerable 
 Share to its Merit; especially, with such who are 
 so generous as to buy and commend what they 
 never read, from an implicit Faith in the Au- 
 thor only: A Faith! which our Age abounds 
 in as much, as it can be called deficient in any 
 other." There follow the dramatis personae. 
 Amongst them are King Arthur, " A passion- 
 ate sort of King, Husband to Queen Dollalolla, 
 of whom he stands a little in Fear " ; Tom 
 Thumb the Great; Merlin; Noodle, and Doo- 
 dle, " Courtiers in Place, and consequently of 
 that party that is uppermost " ; Parson, " of the 
 side of the Church " ; Glumdalca, Queen of the 
 Giants, who is in love with Tom Thumb; and 
 these two: 
 
 "Queen Dollalolla, Wife to King Arthur, and 
 Mother to Huncamunca, a Woman entirely 
 faultless, saving that she is a little given to 
 [ii6] 
 
TOM THUMB 
 
 Drink; a little too much a Virago towards her 
 Husband, and in Love with Tom Thumb. 
 
 " The Princess Huncamunca, Daughter to 
 their Majesties King Arthur and Queen Dolla- 
 lolla, of a very sweet, gentle, and amorous Dis- 
 position, equally in love with Lord Grizzle and 
 Tom Thumb, and desirous to be married to 
 both." 
 
 The minor characters are stated to include 
 " Courtiers, Guards, Rebels, Drums, Trump- 
 ets, Thunder, and Lightning." 
 
 Three extremely strenuous and sanguinary 
 acts ensue: intrigues, wars, assassinations. The 
 language is often drawn from the plays paro- 
 died: "extreme" sentences being accumulated 
 with absurd effect. The style may be illus- 
 trated by the Queen's speech when she first 
 hears that her daughter is going to marry (she 
 herself is in love with him) Tom Thumb. 
 Everyone remembers how, in the fairy-tale, Tom 
 Thumb narrowly escaped death by falling into 
 a pudding his mother was making: 
 
 I Odsbobs ! I have a mind to hang myself, 
 
 I To think I should a Grandmother be made 
 
 By such a Raskal — Sure the King forgets 
 When in a Pudding, by his Mother put 
 The Bastard, by a Tinker, on a stile 
 
 [117] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Was drop'd — O, good Lord Grizzle ! can I bear 
 To see him from a Pudding mount the Throne? 
 Or can. Oh can! my Huncamunca bear 
 To take a Pudding's Offspring to her Arms 
 
 Which reminds one of the lady in The Import- 
 ance of Being Earnest, who said her daughter 
 should not " contract a marriage with a cloak- 
 room and enter into an alliance with a hand- 
 bag." A little later Huncamunca, with ludi- 
 crous effect and a reminiscence of Romeo and 
 Juliet, cries: 
 
 O Tom Thumb! Tom Thumb! wherefore art thou Tom 
 Thumb, 
 
 but that is not, as a single line, equal in effect 
 to the end of Glumdalca's passionate outburst 
 when refused by Tom: 
 
 I'm all within a Hurricane, as if 
 
 The World's four winds were pent within my carcass, 
 
 Confusion, Horror, Murder, Guts, and Death. 
 
 A further reminiscence of Shakespeare occurs 
 when the King, at the dread hour of night, en- 
 counters the ghost of Tom Thumb's father. 
 He threatens him: 
 
 Ghost: Threaten others with that Word, 
 
 I am a ghost, and am already dead. 
 
 King: Ye Stars! 'tis well; were thy last Hour to come. 
 This Moment had been it. . . . 
 
 [ii8] 
 
TOM THUMB 
 
 In the end, all the characters kill each other. 
 The moral, says the author, is not less excellent 
 than the tale. It teaches " these two instructive 
 lessons, viz.. That Human Happiness is exceed- 
 ing transient, and that Death is the certain end 
 of all Men; the former whereof is inculcated by 
 the fatal end of Tom Thumb ; the latter, by that 
 of all the other personages." 
 
 There are reasons — that is to say, there is a 
 reason — why Tom Thumb should not be revived 
 in the modern theatre; though the unshrinking 
 Stage Society might undertake it. But though 
 this is a pity, it is a greater pity that no one to- 
 day writes anything like it. Fielding's butts 
 are dead and gone. The plays of Young, Banks, 
 Nat Lee, Rowe, are unfamiliar in detail even 
 to most close students of our literature; Jemmy 
 Thomson's great tragedy is remembered only 
 by the immortal line " O Sophonisba, Sopho- 
 nisba O," which critics (quite justifiably) copy 
 out of each other's books without ever referring 
 to the original; and even the heroic tragedies 
 of Dryden himself are seldom acted, and never, 
 save by Professor Saintsbury, read. But con- 
 temporary game exists at which the writer of 
 burlesque might shoot with far more effect and 
 far more profit to his audience. 
 
 I remember nothing of the kind being done 
 
 ["9] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 except the late Mr. Pelissier's Potted Plays. 
 These, though delicious, were very short and 
 paid insufficient attention to the more preten- 
 tious kind of modern plays which, like the 
 heroics of Fielding's time, are taken seriously 
 by intelligent people. The epigrammatic social 
 comedy derived from Wilde is common enough 
 to be effectively lampooned; so is the drab 
 bourgeois play descended from Ibsen; so is 
 the rural drama, English, Scotch, Welsh, and 
 Irish, of which the type, and the most successful, 
 is Mr. Marsefield's Nan; so is the industrial 
 play in which the hard business magnate is 
 at daggers drawn with his employees and his 
 rebellious progeny. Parody on the stage is a 
 neglected art; but this does not necessarily 
 imply that there is no public for it. And the 
 easiest and most popular thing of all to do 
 would be a musical comedy, in which music, 
 sentiment, and jokes should all burlesque the 
 stuff' we have been given for the last twenty 
 years. 
 
 [120] 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON THE 
 VICTORIANS 
 
 " Bust by Woolner." This phrase is familiar 
 enough in catalogues and guide-books, but very- 
 few people know who Woolner was or what 
 sort of person he was. Nevertheless, Woolner 
 was one of the original seven members of the 
 Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. As such he must 
 necessarily be of some interest to the historian 
 of nineteenth-century art. And I opened his 
 long-delayed Biography {Thomas Woolner, His 
 Life in Letters, Chapman and Hall) in the 
 expectation of learning something new about 
 the Victorian era. By something new I do not 
 mean something really surprising: such as that 
 the great Victorians had blue beards or walked 
 on their heads. What I mean is that I expected 
 something more than the tiny driblet of un- 
 known letters that we usually get in a book 
 published so long after the event as is this 
 one. I have not been disappointed. Woolner's 
 daughter has had the extremely sensible idea 
 of giving us an idea of his life through the let- 
 
 [I2I] 
 
I 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 ters he wrote and received, instead of telling us 
 in the first person, and at prodigious length, 
 what her father said to her mother at breakfast 
 on November 22, 1870, and recording at length 
 the births, careers, deaths, and tombstones of 
 the various dogs he owned in his life. Wool- 
 ner corresponded with many of the most emi- 
 nent men of his time. His most profuse 
 correspondent was Mrs. Tennyson — whose hus- 
 band, usually referred to here as the Bard, was 
 evidently too lazy to write letters himself — 
 and amongst the others were Rossetti, Coventry 
 Patmore, Carlyle, Mrs. Carlyle, Vernon Lush- 
 ington and others of the Pre-Raphaelite and 
 Tennysonian sets. The book is a sort of tail- 
 piece to the existing literature of the period, 
 and all future writers about the Victorian age 
 or its principal figures will find something in 
 it which they will have to quote. It is a notice- 
 able thing — and one that throws a genial light 
 upon Woolner's character — that almost all the 
 hundreds of letters given are familiar and 
 homely in tone. There are very few rhapsodies 
 and there is very little fine writing; when com- 
 municating with Woolner people did not pour 
 out their inmost souls, but, on the other hand, 
 they refrained from anything forced or in the 
 nature of humbug. The book as a whole, there- 
 [122] 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON THE VICTORIANS 
 
 fore, though uninspiring is amusing throughout. 
 Woolner was born in 1825 and died in 1892. 
 In his early years he was the friend of Rossetti, 
 at his death he was an honorary member of a 
 City Company. So it is to be expected that 
 his early correspondence would be more inter- 
 esting than his later, and the expectation is 
 fulfilled. Especially good are the letters he 
 received from Rossetti when, having despaired 
 of earning his living as a sculptor, he was seek- 
 ing his fortune in the gold fields of Australia. 
 Later disciples of the Pre-Raphaelites tended 
 rather to forget that the Pre-Raphaelites were 
 the most robust of men. The apparent discord- 
 ance between their characters and their works 
 is not difficult to explain. They were artists, 
 they were living in a smug, materialistic world 
 which ignored the finer impulses of the spirit, 
 and they went to extremes. It might almost be 
 said that since the world around them thought 
 of nothing but money, they deliberately painted 
 and wrote about people who could not con- 
 ceivably earn their livings, and because they 
 saw around them a generation peculiarly gross 
 and bustling they were forced into the extrava- 
 gance of creating ideal figures who might be 
 deemed incapable of eating, and who in no 
 circumstances could be conceived of as jump- 
 
 [123] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 ing a five-barred gate. But the languorous 
 and swan-necked women of Rossetti, the attenu- 
 ated, almost transparent, princesses of Burne 
 Jones, the gentle Utopians of William Morris, 
 were merely the escapes, as it were, of full 
 natures starved in actual life. Burne Jones 
 was one of the wittiest and j oiliest talkers of 
 the nineteenth century, and filled his letters 
 with uncomplimentary caricatures of himself. 
 The most characteristic story about William 
 Morris is that which records the horror of a 
 high ecclesiastic who, after standing a quarter 
 of an hour in the poet's waiting-room, heard a 
 loud voice come down the stairs : " Now send 
 up that bloody bishop." Rossetti, until he took 
 to drugs, was another of the same mould; and 
 it gives one peculiar pleasure to find from 
 AVoolner's biography that, even at the begin- 
 ning, when the Pre-Raphaelites stood to gain 
 everything from the commendation of so cele- 
 brated a man, Rossetti could not stand the 
 humbug of that pompous though well-meaning 
 pontiff, John Ruskin. " As," he writes, " he is 
 only half informed about art, anything he says 
 in favour of one's work is, of course, sure to 
 prove invaluable in a professional way." Then 
 very shortly afterwards Woolner subjoins the 
 following remarks: 
 [124] 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON THE VICTORIANS 
 
 *' I should like Ruskin to know what he never 
 knew — the want of money for a year or two; 
 then he might come to doubt his infallibility 
 and give an artist working on the right road 
 the benefit of any little doubt that might arise. 
 The little despot imagines himself the Pope 
 of Art, and would wear 3 crowns as a right, 
 only they might make him look funny in 
 London! " 
 
 Add to this Rossetti's description of his own 
 early and much photogravured Annunciation 
 as " my white abomination," and the gentle- 
 man who bought it as " an Irish maniac," and 
 we get a fairly good indication of the essential 
 healthiness of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. 
 
 All through the book there are supplementary 
 scraps for the biographers. In 1857 Woolner 
 wrote to Mrs. Tennyson: 
 
 " I was grieved to hear the death of Mr. Bar- 
 rett, not on the old gentleman's account, but 
 because I know the distress it will occasion to 
 poor Mrs. Browning, who quite worshipped the 
 old man, however unworthy of it he was. He 
 never would be reconciled to her after her mar- 
 riage, but adopted the somewhat odd plan of 
 hating her for the deed. Poor ^Irs. Browning 
 bribed the butler to let her father's dining- 
 
 [I2S] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 room blind remain up a little way that she 
 might obtain one glimpse of him from the 
 street before she started for Florence. She was 
 so weak the poor little creature had to hold on 
 by area rails while she looked her last at her 
 cruel father, then went home and spent the 
 evening in crying. 
 
 " Another of the old gentleman's whims was 
 not to allow either of his sons to learn any 
 business or profession." 
 
 There is a very typical letter from Carlyle 
 (1864) beginning: 
 
 " Deae Woolner — I at once sign and re- 
 turn: — I would even walk in suppliant proces- 
 sion to the Hon. House (if necessary) bare- 
 headed and in sackcloth and ashes, entreating 
 said Hon. Long-eared Assembly to deliver us 
 from that most absurd of all Farce-Tragedies 
 daily played under their supervision." 
 
 The House of Commons we have always with 
 us. That some politicians have their feelings 
 is, however, shown in the story about Mr. 
 Gladstone and " Granny " Granville weeping, 
 in unison, over one of Tennyson's Idylls. This 
 subject is suitable for the pencil of Mr. Max 
 Beerbohm, as is also that other description, 
 
 [126] 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON THE VICTORIANS 
 
 given in a letter from the present Lord Tenny- 
 son (then a child) of The Bard painting a 
 summer-house. He did it, we are assured, " all 
 by himself." The best story in the book, how- 
 ever, concerns a notability whose name is, un- 
 fortunately, not given. He took the sculptor's 
 wife in to dinner and almost completely ignored 
 her. After dinner, in the drawing-room, he 
 came up to her and said: "Mrs. Woolner, if I 
 had known who you were, I should have paid 
 you more attention." Can it have been Sir 
 Willoughby Patterne? 
 
 But what of Woolner? The truth is I have 
 been shirking him. He was evidently the friend 
 of great men, and himself a model of all the 
 virtues. He could certainly make good busts, 
 and his early portraits of Tennyson — before 
 the poet became a prophet and covered his 
 beautiful mouth and chin with a Pentateuchal 
 beard — are masterly. Some of the best are 
 reproduced in this volume: of Sidgwick and 
 Cardinal Newman no stronger or more in- 
 formative portraits exist than Woolner's. But 
 busts are one thing. Imaginative sculpture is 
 another. Woolner, with something interesting 
 before him, could see what was there and model 
 what he saw, though he usually began prettify- 
 ing when he was doing a medallion — which he 
 
 [127] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 always, irritatingly, called a " med." Genuine 
 creative faculty he had none: no powerful 
 thoughts or passions insisting on expression: 
 nothing more than a taste for the drooping, and 
 a mild affection for the softer virtues. His 
 statues of blind boys, bluecoat boys. Heavenly 
 Welcome, Achilles shouting from the Trenches, 
 Feeding the Hungry, Lady Godiva, and (a 
 bad one) The Housemaid, are not Pre- 
 Raphaelitism, nor anything else except sheer 
 undiluted, uninspired, smooth, sentimental, de- 
 generate Victorian descendants of Flaxman. 
 JMr. Dombey might have bought any of them 
 in his softer moments, and one is forced to 
 admit that the most interesting thing about 
 Woolner is his diary of two years in the early 
 Australian diggings. It is vividly and vigor- 
 ously written and, unlike most stories of the 
 sort, it does not conclude its depressing record 
 of failure with the discovery of a nugget as 
 large as a baby's head. Woolner came home 
 richer by nothing save experience, and of that, 
 to all appearance, he made little use. 
 
 [128] 
 
SIR CHARLES DILKE 
 
 In almost every chapter of Sir Charles Dilke's 
 Life, there is enough material for a Quarterly 
 article. His experience of, and judgments 
 upon, foreign politics would in themselves make 
 a valuable book. He was in politics for fifty 
 years; was at one time a candidate for the 
 Premiership; he knew and corresponded with 
 what one may call the front benches of five 
 continents, and touched every sphere of social 
 life. His versatility was amazing. At Cam- 
 bridge he was top of the Law Tripos, Presi- 
 dent of the Union, and, but for his doctor, 
 would have rowed twice against Oxford. He 
 read, it seems, a large part of the contents of 
 the British Museum; he was asked to do Keats 
 for the "English Men of Letters" series; he 
 travelled, rowed, fenced and dined out almost 
 all his life; and he found time to acquire on 
 every subject of current politics an amount 
 of information which was a storehouse for every 
 individual and organisation that ever worked 
 with him. But if it is quite impossible to 
 
 [129] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 review his biography because there is too much 
 in it, from another point of view it is difficult 
 to review it because there is too little. It is 
 largely composed of his own memoirs: but one 
 learns scarcely anything about the essential man 
 from it. 
 
 There is an interesting communication here 
 from General Seely, who says that for a long 
 time he could not make out what on earth 
 Dilke was up to; and how at last he found that 
 his only motive was an unselfish desire to help 
 his more unfortunate fellow-men. It cannot 
 but have been that; but the slowness with 
 which General Seely appreciated it is the meas- 
 ure of Dilke's extraordinary reticence. How 
 far his intimates got past this — how far, that 
 is, he ever had an intimate — one cannot tell; 
 but, dead as alive, the outside observer cannot 
 really feel he knows him. All his life he was 
 to some extent a sphinx, though an active and 
 loquacious sphinx. In later years there was an 
 added mystery; for he possessed, in the public 
 eye, a special secret, whether it was the secret 
 of his guilt or the secret of his innocence. But, 
 apart from that, he did not disclose himself; 
 and it is possible that he did not even know 
 himself. You can only get at his soul by in- 
 ference. And this much is certain — and the 
 
 [130] 
 
SIR CHARLES DILKE 
 
 justice or injustice of his condemnation after 
 the scandal is not relevant here — that no man 
 ever put up a finer show after a knock-down 
 blow. He did not sulk, or take to drink, or 
 even, as he might pardonably have done, retire 
 to the country and read; he faced the music and 
 began a second political career, determining by 
 sheer doggedness to induce his country to profit 
 by a desire and ability to serve her which have 
 seldom been united, in such a degree, in a single 
 man. He succeeded so completely that, at the 
 end of his life, the later Dilke had completely 
 obscured the earlier Dilke in men's minds. That 
 is not failure in the private man. And it is 
 arguable that Dilke was not even a comparative 
 failure as a politician. In these later years — 
 his last two Parliaments saw him sitting, 
 straight-backed, beautifully dressed, fortified 
 with many blue-books, with the new Labour 
 Party — he was directly and indirectly respon- 
 sible for most important reforms, notably the 
 Trade Boards Act. His advice behind the 
 scenes was so freely sought and given that he 
 may properly be regarded as an unofficial leader 
 of the Labour movement. He did far more 
 than he got recognition for; but he had lost the 
 desire for leadership; and, having rehabilitated 
 himself in the eyes of his coimtrymen, he was 
 
 [131] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 not anxious for recognition of any other kind. 
 Influence — to be exercised in the pubhc inter- 
 est — was what he wanted and got. And it is 
 at least arguable that he would have done little 
 more had nothing gone wrong than he did as 
 things were. For, in spite of his intellectual 
 attainments, integrity and force of character, he 
 had drawbacks which critics, for the moment, 
 seem to have forgotten. 
 
 It seems, in short, now to be commonly as- 
 sumed that had it not been for the Crawford 
 catastrophe, Dilke would have become leader 
 of his party and Prime Minister. Gladstone 
 expected him to be, and Chamberlain had 
 agreed that he should be so on account of his 
 superior authority in the House. Speculation 
 on the point is of the " If Napoleon had won 
 Waterloo " type : you may advance many rea- 
 sons for whatever view you hold, but you cannot 
 approach proof. But personally, not only do I 
 think that Chamberlain — leaving other candi- 
 dates out of the question — would have inevitably j 
 overtaken Dilke had the partnership lasted and i 
 prospered, but I cannot easily persuade myself 
 that anything could have made a Prime Min- 
 ister out of Dilke. He was a statesman: and 
 he was exceedingly skilful as a mere politician 
 who knew the best way in which to get things 
 [132] 
 
SIR CHARLES DILKE 
 
 done. His knowledge was immense of many 
 kinds. He was fitted for any ministerial post, 
 and had he become, in later years, Foreign Sec- 
 retary, Colonial Secretary, Secretary for India, 
 Home Secretary, President of the L.G.B., 
 President of the Board of Education, or Presi- 
 dent of the Board of Trade, he would have 
 known more about any of these jobs than any 
 other politician of his time. Everybody who 
 knew him respected him: most people who met 
 him liked him; his constituents, both in Chelsea 
 and in the Forest of Dean, were exceedingly 
 proud of him. A man to be Prime Minister 
 may have far less knowledge, sense and dis- 
 interested patriotism than Dilke; but unless 
 accident has given him the, as it were, auto- 
 matic support of some strong " interest," local, 
 commercial, social or religious, he must have the 
 power of exciting or amusing, at any rate in- 
 teresting, the electorate. Dilke's personality 
 was not of the sort which captivates large 
 masses of electors. Writing himself of a speech 
 he made in his twenties, he says: 
 
 " It was a dreary speech; and, given the fact 
 that my speaking was always monotonous, and 
 that at this time I was trying specially to make 
 speeches which no one could call empty noise, 
 
 [133] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 and was therefore specially and peculiarly 
 heavy, there was something amusing to lovers 
 of contrast in that between the stormy hearti- 
 ness of my reception at most of these meetings, 
 and the ineffably dry orations which I delivered 
 to them — between cheers of joy when I rose 
 and cheers of relief when I sat down." 
 
 This was a peculiar occasion, for the discussion 
 over the Civil List had given Sir Charles a 
 fleeting reputation as a Republican fire-eater 
 and the audiences assembled in a state of ex- 
 citement. As a rule, you got the " ineffably 
 dry " speech without the cheers. In his last 
 ten years his habits of discursiveness and dron- 
 ing had got so acute that he was impossible to 
 follow. ^Vhatever the subject — and it might 
 be anything from Army organisation to the 
 sweated chainmakers of Cradley Heath — he 
 v/ould stand up and pour out thousands of facts 
 in a monotonous, gruff boom, his words periodi- 
 cally becoming inaudible as he buried his head 
 in his notes or turned round to pick up a 
 profusely annotated blue-book from his seat. 
 The Minister concerned would stay; a few ex- 
 perts on the particular subject under discussion 
 would compel themselves to attend, knowing 
 that his matter was bound to be valuable if they 
 
 [134] 
 
i 
 
 SIR CHARLES DILKE 
 
 could only get the hang of it; the rest would go. 
 His character was universally respected; he 
 was admired as a repository of information and 
 wisdom, and a young member, of whatever 
 party, who was congratulated by him upon a 
 speech got a more genuine pleasure out of his 
 praises than from any perfunctory compliments 
 from the front benches. Nevertheless, nothing 
 could stop his audiences from dwindling away 
 or his voice from lulling the survivors to sleep. 
 He knew that his voice was monotonous: that 
 he could not help. But he had also an intel- 
 lectual disability which made him treat every 
 small fact as if it were of equal value to almost 
 any other fact, and a pronounced tempera- 
 mental disinclination to be " rhetorical." He 
 was too reticent to show his personality: and 
 he would not manufacture a sham personality 
 for public exhibition. He hated importing feel- 
 ing into his speeches, however strong might be 
 the passion for justice or mercy behind them: 
 he deliberately refused to make an easy appeal 
 by frequent reference to " first principles " or 
 cultivate those arts of expression whereby poli- 
 tics may be made enjoyable to bodies of men, 
 or even those arts of arrangement whereby 
 they may be made simple and comprehensible. 
 He felt all these things to be humbug, and hum- 
 
 [135] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 bug was abhorrent to him: faihng to observe 
 that, since under our system speeches are an 
 important part of a controversiahst's career and 
 of a minister's administration, it is the business 
 of a man who would lead his countrymen to 
 pay some attention — unless he is a demagogue 
 born — to the technique of " rhetoric." In pri- 
 vate conversation Dilke is reported to have been 
 one of the most interesting men of his age. But 
 on the platform and in the House of Commons 
 he was distinctly and undeniably dull. And it 
 is possible that England would not have stood a 
 Radical Prime Minister who sent her to sleep. 
 
 [136] 
 
THE UTOPIAN SATIRIST 
 
 Mr. Charles Whibley has published, 
 through the University Press, the LesHe 
 Stephen Lecture dehvered by him at Cam- 
 bridge. It was a good lecture, if rather per- 
 meated with Mr. Whibley's political cranks; 
 and its chief object is to show that Macaulay 
 and other critics have been hopelessly astray 
 in describing Swift as a low and beastly ruffian 
 who hated human society and was emphatically 
 unfit for it. 
 
 Mr. Whibley is, of com'se, right. Macaulay 
 and Thackeray were completely wrong. I do 
 not think it is quite just to say that Macaulay 's 
 opinion was founded on Whig prejudices: far 
 more probably it arose from sheer disgust at 
 Swift's frequent filthiness, and from misappre- 
 hension of his custom of representing men, 
 when he was attacking them, as larded with 
 all the disagreeable concomitants of the sty. 
 But vilely as he abused mankind, and habitu- 
 ated though he may have become to exagger- 
 ated invective, his first impulse was an idealistic 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 one. He detested men, not because they were 
 men, but because they were not the men they 
 might be. When he called himself a misan- 
 thrope, he went on to explain that he intended 
 to prove " the falsity of that definition animal 
 rationale^, and to show it should be only rationis 
 capax/' He uses his communities in Gulliver 
 to expose in the most savage way the defects of 
 Western civilisation: but can those who call this 
 " cynical " deny that the defects were there? 
 Mr. Whibley refers very properly to his accept- 
 ance of the " generous creed " of the King of 
 Brobdingnag, " that whoever could make two 
 ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow 
 t upon a spot of ground where only one grew 
 before, would deserve better of mankind, and do 
 more essential service to his country, than the 
 whole race of politicians put together." Mr. 
 Whibley himself has so marked a disbelief in all 
 politicians that he allows this " simple doc- 
 trine " to stand by itself. But the Utopia in 
 Swift's heart even had room for better poli- 
 ticians. Take the introduction to the school of 
 political projectors in Laputa: 
 
 " In the school of political projectors I was but 
 ill entertained, the professors appearing in my 
 judgment wholly out of their senses, which is 
 
 [138] 
 
THE UTOPIAN SATIRIST 
 
 a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. 
 These unhappy people were proposing schemes 
 for persuading monarchs to choose favourites 
 upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and 
 virtue ; of teaching ministers to consult the pub- 
 lic good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, 
 eminent services; of instructing princes to know 
 their true interest by placing it on the same 
 foundation with that of their people; of choos- 
 ing for employments persons qualified to exer- 
 cise them; with many other wild impossible 
 chimaeras, that never entered before into the 
 heart of man to conceive, and confirmed 
 in me the old observation, that there is 
 nothing so extravagant and irrational which 
 some philosophers have not maintained for 
 I truth." 
 
 j It is surely obvious that these are not the 
 sentences of a hater of mankind, but those of 
 one who was continually haunted or tormented 
 by the undeveloped possibilities of mankind. 
 Man is " capable of reason " — and will not use 
 it. Swift himself stated that he would " forfeit 
 his life, if any one opinion can be fairly deduced 
 from that book, [Tlie Tale of a Tub'] w^hich is 
 contrary to Religion or Morality." It depends, 
 of course, upon what you mean by Religion; 
 
 [139] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 and a clergyman of the Established Church was, 
 to say the least, unorthodox when he informed 
 the Houyhnhms that " difference of opinions 
 hath cost many millions of lives; for instance, 
 whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh ; whether 
 the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine.'* 
 But generally speaking, his claim was not ab- 
 surd. Even his obscenities could scarcely give 
 anyone a taste for the obscene, and, compre- 
 hensive though his irony is, he seldom if ever 
 jeers at genuine virtue or makes sport of suf- 
 fering. As Mr. Whibley suggests, it is con- 
 ceivable that his ironic method has misled 
 people; though how anyone in his senses could 
 have supposed that he meant to be taken liter- 
 ally when he argued that the superfluous chil- 
 dren of the poor Irish should be exported for 
 food, it is difficult to conceive. Some, at least, 
 of his contemporaries gave him credit for good 
 intentions. The Irish, at one period, would 
 have risen in rebellion had the Government 
 attacked him. Pope, Harley and Bolingbroke 
 knew the warmth of his affections. And an 
 obscure publisher, who printed his poems, after 
 remarking on the savagery with which he had 
 written about women and Whigs, thought fit to 
 add: "We have been assured by several ju- 
 dicious and learned gentlemen, that what the 
 [140] 
 
I THE UTOPIAN SATIRIST 
 
 author hath here writ, on either of those two 
 Subjects, hath no other Aim than to reform the 
 Errors of both Sexes." Surely a large and 
 lofty aim! 
 
 The same bookseller, in the same apology, 
 made another true, if oddly expressed, observa- 
 tion: "Whatever he writ, whether good, bad 
 or inplifferent, is an Original in itself." Swift 
 was one of the most natural writers we have 
 ever had. He did not bother at all about 
 his sentences: he had a quick, vivid, witty, 
 logical mind, and his style has precisely those 
 I qualities. Mr. Whibley justly compares him to 
 I Defoe, both for his easy simplicity and for his 
 ' power of realistic narrative. To make one be- 
 lieve in Gulliver's Travels was an even greater 
 I feat than that of convincing one that Robinson 
 1 Crusoe really did keep his hold on the rock 
 till the waves abated, land, build a hut, read 
 the Bible to his parrot, make a hat out of goat- 
 skins and see a cannibal's footprints on the 
 sand. But Swift does it, and with the most 
 I wonderfully cunning touches of verisimilitude. 
 1 How pathetically true Gulliver's longing, when 
 amongst the kindly giants of Brobdingnag, to 
 be " among people with whom I could con- 
 verse upon even terms, and walk about the 
 streets and fields without fear of being trod to 
 
 [141] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 death like a frog or a young puppy " ; and still 
 more that other flash: 
 
 " I likewise broke my right shin against the 
 shell of a snail, which I happened to stumble 
 over, as I was walking alone, and thinking on 
 poor England." 
 
 But Defoe, outside straight narration, was 
 clumsy. His satires are almost unreadable. 
 Swift was a supreme ironist: he was as great 
 at saying something by saying its opposite as 
 he was at direct story-telling. That he should 
 have chosen irony as his method of attacking 
 abuses was natural. 
 
 For he was, at bottom, a very reticent man. 
 His friends had often to deduce his good heart 
 from his good deeds, and even in the letters 
 to Stella he usually keeps to the superficies of 
 gossip and scandal. His anger was terrific 
 when it broke out. The most amiable of men 
 with his friends, there was a passion in him 
 which men feared, something in him, it may 
 be, he even feared himself; though it was to 
 that he owed the concentrate force of expression 
 which must have been his chief source of de- 
 light. Vive la bagatelle is the motto (it was 
 his) of a miserable man. Swift was a miserable 
 man; but the causes of his misery, however 
 [142] 
 
THE UTOPIAN SATIRIST 
 
 obscure they may be, were not petty ones. 
 Men are seldom great through being unhappy; 
 Swift is almost unique in English literature in 
 that his unhappiness was not the effect but 
 
 I the source of his power. The " fierce indigna- 
 tion " that, on his own statement, consumed 
 him, had to manifest itself in grim jokes in- 
 stead of exalted rhapsodies. At any rate, the 
 ironical method became second nature to him. 
 And it has delightful results in a small way as 
 well as magnificent results in a large way. He 
 was a master of under-statement. " Yesterday 
 I saw a woman flayed, and you cannot imagine 
 how it altered her appearance for the w^orse." 
 The little incidental jests are scattered all 
 over his minor controversial writings; and even 
 
 ;in the most necessary preface he took every 
 
 I opportunity of gravely pulling the reader's, or 
 even his own leg. One such he defended 
 (speaking as one of " The JMultitude of writers, 
 whereof the whole JMultitude of Writers most 
 
 I reasonably complains ") on the ground that: 
 
 " It makes a considerable Addition to the Bulk 
 of the Volume, a Circumstance by no Means to 
 be neglected by a skilful writer," 
 
 I which is an extremely modern thought. " What- 
 ever," he added, " word or sentence is printed 
 
 [143] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 in a different character, shall be judged to con- 
 tain something extraordinary either of wit or 
 sublime." He was, in his queer way, a dreamer; 
 he was a master of English; a great realist; 
 and a great wit. And if a man should still 
 think he went too far in his exposure of the 
 race of " little odious vermin," to which he be- 
 longed, let him remember two things. One is 
 that Swift projected a work entitled A Modest 
 Defence of the Proceedings of tJie Rabble in 
 All Ages. The other is Swift's own despairing 
 reflection, that " there is not, through all Na- 
 ture, another so callous and insensible a Member 
 as the World's Posteriors, whether you apply to 
 it the Toe or the Birch." 
 
 [144] 
 
JANE AUSTEN'S CENTENARY 
 
 Jane Austen died on July 18, 1817, at the 
 age of forty-one. She began writing early; 
 Pride and Prejudice^ a mature work, was fin- 
 ished when she was twenty-one. But novel- 
 i writing was, to her, in a sense a recreation, 
 like another: and she left only four long books, 
 two short ones, ancl two fragments. These 
 mean so much to her admirers that one of them 
 has seriously suggested that a man's worth can 
 be estimated once and for all by his ability 
 to appreciate her. She had a most " unevent- 
 ful " hfe, and we know very little about it. Yet 
 those who like her feel that they know her 
 more intimately than any other writer. To those 
 who have not read her, she is merely a woman 
 with a name like a governess, who lived at the 
 same period as Maria Edgeworth (another of 
 the same sort) and wrote books with titles such 
 as Emma and Sense and Sensibility, which 
 stamp them as moral treatises of the worst and 
 most edifying kind. But to those who know 
 
 [145] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 her she is unique, a delightful secret, a secret 
 shared by thousands of people. 
 
 Miss Austen lived — as an author — in greater 
 seclusion perhaps than any other English 
 writer. She knew no celebrities and corre- 
 sponded with none: her name did not appear 
 on her title-pages; and her fame did not be- 
 come considerable until after her death. Dur- 
 ing the last year or two of her life her books 
 sold fairly well, and she received, with equa- 
 nimity, two tokens of appreciation. The 
 Quarterly published a considerable review of 
 her work, and the Prince Regent's Librarian, 
 writing on behalf of his illustrious employer, 
 asked for the dedication of Emma. Miss 
 Austen assented, and inscribed the book to 
 the Regent: upon which the Librarian, en- 
 couraged, wrote again, suggesting that the 
 author's gifted pen might properly be em- 
 ployed upon " an historical romance illustrative 
 of the august House of Coburg," which was 
 about to be united, by a holy bond, with the 
 Royal House of England. It is not easy to 
 persuade oneself that George IV. was Jane 
 Austen's only point of contact with the great 
 world: it is absolutely impossible to imagine 
 what a German historical novel by her would 
 have been like. She could not imagine it 
 
 [146] 
 
JANE AUSTEN'S CENTENARY 
 
 either: she explained to the Librarian that she 
 could not undertake any story in which it would 
 be improper to laugh. Treatises with a serious 
 subject were not in her line. " I think," she 
 said, " I may boast myself to be, with all pos- 
 sible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed 
 female who ever dared to be an authoress." 
 
 This is, of course, an exaggeration: and even 
 had it been literally true at that date, she would 
 have lost her proud pre-eminence ten thousand 
 times over by now. She was fairly widely read 
 in history and literature: and amongst her 
 other accomplishments, as her nephew proudly 
 relates, were embroidery of the most masterly 
 kind, spillikins, and cup-and-ball, at which she 
 once caught the ball a hundred times running. 
 One would expect this: she was a human being 
 before she was a woman of intellect: and her 
 propensity for entering into the occupations 
 and amusements of her circle is of a piece with 
 her preference to write about the world she 
 lived in rather than about the myriad worlds 
 she did not live in. Her brain was good enough 
 for anything, but she did not employ it in 
 speculation or controversy or the promiscuous 
 acquisition of facts. One remembers the educa- 
 tion of the two Misses Bertram, who thjught 
 themselves so superior to Fanny Price: 
 
 [147] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 " How long ago it is, aunt, since we used to 
 repeat the chronological order of the Kings of 
 England, with the dates of their accession, and 
 most of the principal events of their reigns ! '* 
 
 " Yes," added the other; " and of the Roman 
 Emperors as low as Severus; besides a great 
 deal of the human mythology, and all the 
 metals, semi-metals, planets, and distinguished 
 philosophers." 
 
 There has been no critic so desperate as to 
 suggest that she was the product of the French 
 Revolution. Her complete detachment from 
 the Great War, which raged throughout her 
 writing career, has often been mentioned. She 
 hoped her brothers or characters in the Navy 
 might pick up a little prize-money: and there 
 her interest ceased. She and her family and 
 her neighbours and her heroines were in Chaw- 
 ton or Meryton, Bath or Lyme Regis: and 
 those arenas were quite large enough for the 
 display of the general affections and particular 
 idiosyncrasies of men and women. She limited 
 her art still further: she dealt only with her own 
 social class, and its outskirts. She must have 
 known farmers and cottagers well enough: but 
 they never appear as characters in her books. 
 It is evident, therefore, that her limitations of 
 
 [148] 
 
JANE AUSTEN'S CENTENARY 
 
 subject were as much a matter of deliberate 
 choice as of opportunity. The genteel families 
 of a country town, the officers of a militia 
 regiment, the local clergy, a great landlord or 
 two, and a sprinkling of governesses and sailor 
 sons on leave: these materials she found quite 
 sufficient for her picture of life. 
 
 England has had few such finished artists. 
 There is only one conspicuous weakness in her 
 books. It is not true that she could draw 
 women, but not men: her subsidiary men are 
 as good as her subsidiary women. But her 
 heroes are shadowy and unsatisfactory com- 
 pared with her heroines. All her novels were 
 written from the heroine's standpoint. In 
 P?ide and Prejudice the author may almost be 
 said to look at the world through Elizabeth 
 Bennet's eyes: in all the other books she is 
 standing, as it were, at the side of her heroines. 
 She knows them intimately: she never troubles 
 to give us the inner history of the young men 
 with whom they are in love. All the other per- 
 sons around them are illuminated and made 
 familiar by the lamp of comedy that is turned 
 on them. This operation cannot be whole- 
 heartedly performed on the young lovers; 
 and even the most impressive of them, Mr. 
 Knightley, and the nicest of them, Commander 
 
 [149] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Wentworth, are rather vague and unexplored. 
 We can deduce the rest of Mr. Bennet from 
 what IMiss Austen shows us: Darcy's per- 
 sonality has great blanks like the old maps of 
 Africa. We have to assume that Darcy, since 
 Miss Austen thought him worthy of Elizabeth 
 Bennet, was an exceptionally fine man: but 
 we know very little about him except that 
 when the plot necessitates it he behaves like a 
 pig, and when the plot necessitates it he behaves 
 like a chivalrous gentleman. This weakness, 
 however, is remarkably little inconvenience to 
 the reader. We are prepared to take these 
 young men at Miss Austen's valuation: the 
 hearts of the women are quite sufficiently ex- 
 posed to make the love-stories interesting; and 
 in any case the love-affairs are not the only 
 props of the books. Their first interest lies 
 in the vision they give us of the everyday life 
 of ordinary families, in the inexhaustible in- 
 terest drawn from the apparently humdrum by 
 a woman of genius. Her people are the people 
 we know. The Georgian setting of harpsi- 
 chords, muddy roads, Chippendale, hahas and 
 Empire dresses, does not make them archaic: 
 it merely makes clearer their permanent moder- 
 nity, the endurance of types of character, of 
 human " humours," impulses, small deceptions 
 [ISO] 
 
JANE AUSTEN'S CENTENARY 
 
 and generosities, and mannerisms of speech 
 and gestm-e. There must have been Miss El- 
 tons, Sir Walter Elliots and Miss Bateses in 
 Athens: they must exist in Samarkand: and 
 one might quite conceivably forget whether one 
 had read about Mary Bennet and her mother 
 in a book or met them at Cheltenham. There 
 they all are, scores of them. We know little 
 directly of their souls: nor do we of most 
 people with whom we dine or drink tea. But 
 few of them — Collins and Lady Catherine, one 
 admits, are Dickens characters — are less real 
 than our acquaintances. And, through Miss 
 Austen, we get far more amusement out of 
 them than we do out of our acquaintances. For 
 Miss Austen had sharper eyes than we. 
 
 Nobody has excelled her interiors, or in- 
 vented such exquisite beginnings and endings. 
 She gets one intrigued in the first sentence, yet 
 without the least effort. And no great writer 
 of English has kept his English up with so little 
 apparent effort. The quiet tune of her sen- 
 tences is never broken, yet never gets dull. She 
 always uses the right word, yet never with 
 the appearance of having searched for it, and 
 the felicities of her humour are inexhaustible. 
 " Mr. Knightley seemed to be trying not to 
 smile; and succeeded, without difficulty, upon 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Mrs. Elton's beginning to talk to him." They 
 are usually as quiet as that: they produce warm 
 flickering smiles as one passes. It is hopeless 
 to attempt to illustrate them here: or to show 
 how discriminating is her sarcasm and how 
 sweet and sympathetic is the spirit underneath 
 it. She was in the line of Addison and 
 Goldsmith, uniting immense sense with great 
 sensibility. Amid the tropical forest of the 
 Romantic movement, she flourished, the most 
 perfect flower of the eighteenth century. 
 
 [152] 
 
MR. CONRAD'S MASTERPIECE 
 
 Mr. Joseph Conrad is now admitted to be 
 one of the greatest living writers in our lan- 
 guage. It took him a long time to get his due 
 from any but a small public. It is with some- 
 thing of a shock that one reads that Lord Jim, 
 of which Messrs. Dent have published a new 
 six shilling edition, was written over twenty 
 years ago, and appeared in book form in 1901. 
 What were the masterpieces which, in that year, 
 overshadowed it? Why was not Mr. Conrad at 
 that stage recognised as the equal of Hardy 
 and Meredith, whose names, bracketed together, 
 used to appear in the reviews ad nauseam? I 
 speak with the freedom of one who at that 
 period was not a professional critic. 
 
 Lord Jim is the story of a man's successful 
 endeavour to rehabilitate himself. The book 
 opens with his failure. With a few other white 
 men he is taking a crowded pilgrim ship, the 
 Fatna, across the Indian Ocean. On a per- 
 fectly still moonlit night she strikes a derelict 
 and her forward compartment, screened only 
 
 [153] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 by a rusty old bulkhead, is flooded. Only the 
 officers know. All over the deck the half-naked 
 pilgrims sleep, sighing and moaning in the heat. 
 The German captain and three companions 
 hurry off in a boat: and at the last moment 
 Jim, undeliberately, automatically, jumps in 
 after them. The ship, as it happens, does not 
 go down; there is an enquiry, and the deserters 
 have their certificates taken away. But to Jim 
 the important thing is not this; it is the knowl- 
 edge that he has failed to live up to the code; 
 the loss of honour in other men's eyes and still 
 more in his own; his unworthiness of his native 
 civilisation and of the service. Wherever he 
 goes, taking odd jobs in Asiatic ports, his story 
 follows him; and once it has turned up, even 
 though men are ready enough to palliate it, he 
 vanishes. He goes always eastward, always 
 hankering for a chance of confirming his con- 
 viction that he is equal to the greatest calls 
 that can be made upon him. And in the end, 
 among savage Malays in the interior of an 
 East Indian island, he gets satisfaction. He 
 lives to know what it is to be absolutely trusted 
 by men and dies celebrating a " pitiless wed- 
 ding with a shadowy ideal of conduct." 
 
 There is no need in a review to disclose the 
 details of this story. But those who think 
 
 [154] 
 
MR. CONRAD'S MASTERPIECE 
 
 Lord Jim Mr. Conrad's greatest book will at 
 least meet with no objection from the author, 
 and INIr. Conrad's best is equal to the best of 
 any other living man. As an achievement in 
 construction, it is in the first rank. ]Mr. Con- 
 rad's method is, as usual, bizarre. The story- 
 is begun by the author; then taken up by his 
 favourite narrator INIarlow, who, on an Eastern 
 hotel verandah, tells what he has seen of Jim, 
 and what he has picked up from others, to a 
 chance group of men lying on cane chairs in 
 the darkness, smoking and drinking; and it 
 ends with documents, written by INIarlow and 
 Jim, received by one of those listening men 
 years afterwards, in a London flat. Each 
 subsidiary contributor to the story is clearly 
 described in his special digression, and there 
 are constant side-stories. Yet the impression 
 with which one finishes is one of unity, har- 
 mony, perfect proportion. There are one or 
 two minor flaws, but they are so insignificant 
 as to be hardly worth mentioning. The digres- 
 sions are not too long; the pains taken with 
 characters only slightly connected with Jim are 
 not wasted, as they always contribute to the 
 picture of the background against which he 
 lived and the world which played upon his feel- 
 ings and thoughts. 
 
 [iSS] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 The book contains a large, if floating, popu- 
 lation of portraits. No figure, save Jim's, goes 
 the whole way through. The others come and 
 go under the rays of the lamp which follows 
 him from Aden to India, from Hongkong to 
 the Moluccas; smart captains, drunken out- 
 casts, ships'-chandlers, merchants, hotel-keepers; 
 "Gentleman Brown," the pirate; Egstrom and 
 Blake, the quarrelsome partners; Stein, the tall 
 and studious old German trader, with his quiet 
 house, his great tropical garden and his col- 
 lection of butterflies; and the notabilities of 
 Patusan, the cringing Rajah, the mean half- 
 breed Cornelius, massive old Doramin, with his 
 ponderous elbows held up by servants, the mys- 
 terious and pathetic girl whom Jim marries, and 
 Dain Waris, who reminds one of the noble 
 young Malay in Almayefs Folly. Jim, him- 
 self, always remains a little vague. Mr. Con- 
 rad's preoccupation with his hero's dominant 
 idea, as deduced from his actions by other 
 people, resulted in Jim being inadequately dis- 
 closed. But the more rapid portraits are all 
 perfect. And in no book of Mr. Conrad's 
 is a greater variety of scenes so surely sketched. 
 There is little elaborate set description. The 
 account of the pilgrim ship's voyage under the 
 sun and moon across the flat ocean, " evenly 
 
 [156] 
 
MR. CONRAD'S MASTERPIECE 
 
 ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleav- 
 ing continuously the great calm of the waters 
 under the inaccessible serenity of the sky," is 
 magnificently, almost intolerably vivid. But 
 when the narrative comes nominally from Mar- 
 low, the descriptions must be kept within bounds, 
 lest the stretched illusion of speech should snap. 
 Even so on almost every page some beautiful — 
 and usually terribly beautiful — scene is bitten 
 into one's mind, and the whole region of Patu- 
 san, the town on piles, the interminable gloomy 
 forest, the moon rising between a chasm in the 
 hills, the muddy waters, the marshes, the stag- 
 nant air, and the immense blue sea round the 
 river's last bend, is pieced gradually together 
 so that one remembers it as though oneself had 
 been there. And it is all done in English of 
 a grave music which, from one to whom our 
 language is not native, is miraculous. 
 
 I think, however, that the book's greatest 
 quality is a moral one. Like the late Henry 
 James, Mr. Conrad scarcely ever preaches, yet 
 is in the best sense a didactic writer. He is 
 capable of speculation about conduct: there is 
 an immense amount of it behind this story. 
 But he brings something else than curiosity and 
 agility of intellect to the discussion. " Hang 
 ideas! " exclaims Mar low, in a half -serious aside. 
 
 [157] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 " They are tramps, vagabonds knocking at the 
 back-door of your mind, each taking a little 
 of your substance, each carrying away some 
 crumb of that belief in a few simple notions 
 you must cling to if you want to die decently 
 and would like to live easy." It is rather too 
 stark a statement; but it is at least a half- 
 truth. Take Jim's act of cowardice, for ex- 
 ample. A good many of our modern moralists, 
 with their mania for destroying the things by 
 which men have lived well for countless genera- 
 tions, would probably argue that he did right 
 in jumping into the boat. The others had 
 gone; the ship, as far as he knew, would in- 
 fallibly sink; there was no earthly chance of his 
 saving the panic-stricken passengers if he 
 stayed; and in any case a man is not respon- 
 sible for an automatic impulse. Other and 
 darker men would even argue that, as the repre- 
 sentative of a higher civilisation, a strong and 
 enlightened man, Jim was even doing his duty 
 to the world by escaping instead of sacrificing 
 himself for the sake of a lot of besotted and 
 dirty Moslems on their way to Mecca. Such 
 arguments, though not until our own time have 
 philosophies been constructed out of them, are 
 not new. They are familiar to every man in 
 the shape of inner promptings. We have all 
 
 [158] 
 
MR. CONRAD'S MASTERPIECE 
 
 lapsed; we all remember things we are ashamed 
 of, cowardices which we cannot forget; and we 
 are familiar enough with the voices which say, 
 "What does it matter?" "To yourself you 
 are the most important thing," " Forget it," 
 " Why bother, since nobody knows," and, very 
 subtly, "It is a man's first duty to be prudent." 
 Circumstances made of Lord Jim, especially at 
 the end, an extreme case. But all the same he 
 was typical. A man's self-respect can only be 
 restored in one way: by doing the second time 
 what he has failed to do the first. A civilisa- 
 tion in which men should spend their time pro- 
 miscuously undermining traditional loves and 
 loyalties by imperfect syllogisms would rot to 
 pieces. If you believe this, even at the risk of 
 encountering the last and supposedly worst 
 charge of being a sentimentalist, you take the 
 romantic view of life : and you will have Mr. 
 Conrad on your side. His books, in spite of all 
 the blood and thunder, both metaphorical and 
 literal, that there is in them, in spite of the 
 black skies behind their lightnings, and the 
 brooding sense of evil that pervades his medita- 
 tions, are an incitement to decent living. I 
 do not know what his nominal religion is, or if 
 he professes any; he is obviously perplexed and 
 oppressed by the cruelty and pain of things. 
 
 [■59] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 But if he sees behind the world a pit " black as 
 the night from pole to pole," he finds consola- 
 tion not in the insane and pathetic assertion 
 that he is master of his own Fate, but " in a 
 few simple notions you must cling to," which 
 the race, after some thousands of years of ex- 
 perience, has discovered to be more effective. 
 
 [i6o] 
 
FOUR PAPERS ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 I: Shakespeare's Workmanship 
 
 What a pleasure it is to get a book on 
 Shakespeare and know before you open it that 
 it will be fresh, frank, and sensible, free at once 
 from old fustian and from new fantasies, and 
 certain to send you back to read your author 
 with increased understanding and enjoyment! 
 Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's Shakespeare^ s 
 Workmanship has all the merits of his previous 
 works and the additional attraction of the great- 
 est subject a literary critic can write about. 
 
 Sir Arthur treats Shakespeare as a human 
 artist, though the greatest: a man capable of 
 indolence, wilful caprice, and occasional inepti- 
 tude: an artist working, like others, under 
 limitations, unwilling (as great artists are) to 
 repeat old triumphs, always attacking new diffi- 
 culties, and sometimes (as in that last group 
 of plays which cover long periods of time and 
 deal with slow spiritual processes) failing to 
 surmount them. With so full a book before 
 
 [i6i] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 him the reviewer can do no more than quote 
 and criticise a few things at random. Sir 
 Arthur throws light on every play and on the 
 principles of art in general; the study of 
 " workmanship " gives him a very wide refer- 
 ence with limits difficult to determine. He is 
 extraordinarily good on Hamlet, in which he 
 says, after all the wiseacres have dowered 
 Shakespeare with all their philosophies and 
 pathologies, there is no " mystery " whatever — 
 except the slight unsolved and usually un- 
 noticed mystery as to why the murdered king 
 was succeeded by his brother, and not by his 
 son. He notes in the Merchant of Venice how 
 Shakespeare was handicapped by his ready- 
 made and preposterous plots about the pound 
 of flesh and the casket. They gave him little 
 room for the natural development of character, 
 he had to concentrate on Shylock or Portia. 
 There ought, says Sir Arthur, " to be a close 
 time " for the discussion of the Trial Scene. 
 
 Discussing criticisms made against the weak- 
 nesses and complexities of Cymbeline, he says, 
 justly, that what Shakespeare did in that play 
 was to create Imogen, the loveliest and noblest 
 heroine in all literature; and that since he did 
 so rare a thing we may assume that that is 
 what he was chiefly trying to do. As You 
 
 [162] 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S WORKMANSHIP 
 
 Like It elicits the remark that it is " arguable 
 of the greatest creative artists that, however 
 they learn and improve, they are always trading 
 on the stored memories of childhood." 
 
 There is one play about which, exercising a 
 reader's right with the utmost deference and 
 diffidence, I dare to differ from Sir Arthur 
 and from the majority of critics. I do not 
 think Macbeth entirely comes off. Sir Arthur 
 remarks, and this indisputable truth has been 
 disastrously forgotten by many modern play- 
 wrights, that whatever a " hero " is, does, or 
 suffers, it is essential that he should command 
 the sympathies of the audience. He sets forth 
 all the case against INIacbeth, and adds that 
 the great poetry which is put into his mouth 
 " drapes him with the illusion of greatness," 
 but that this is not enough, and that he is only 
 saved by being represented as a victim of some 
 fatal hallucination of undefined strength im- 
 posed on him by evil supernatural powers. I 
 thoroughly agree with Sir Arthur's attack on 
 those who under-estimate the importance of the 
 supernatural element in the play, and who fail 
 to understand the spell that a stoiy like that of 
 the witches on the blasted heath must exercise 
 on all imaginative minds. I agree with his 
 diagnosis of Shakespeare's problem here and 
 
 [■63] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 of the means he adopted to solve it. Where I 
 differ from him is in holding, unlike him, that 
 Shakespeare failed. There was, I think, a 
 double failure. Easy though Shakespeare found 
 it to write great speeches and impute them to 
 any character, it was not so easy to convince us 
 that that character really spoke them. The 
 great imaginative passages spoken by Hamlet, 
 by Prospero, and by the raving Lear, we can 
 accept not as Shakespeare's, but as theirs: they 
 spring directly from their intellects and emo- 
 tions as we know them; they are more intense 
 than their contexts, but all of a piece with 
 them. These men have no need to be 
 " draped " with the illusion of greatness, for 
 they are great. With Macbeth it is different. 
 When he says things like 
 
 And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
 The way to dusty death 
 
 the great language is a " drapery." It hangs 
 loosely and awkwardly upon him; it does not 
 belong to him; the greatness is Shakespeare's, 
 and not his; the illusion is not produced. Mac- 
 beth is not made great by the mere loan of 
 a poet's imagery, and he is not made sympa- 
 thetic, however adequately his crime may be 
 explained and palliated, by being the victim of 
 a hallucination. We might feel very deeply 
 
 [164] 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S WORKMANSHIP 
 
 with such a victim had he won our affection 
 or admiration previous to his hallucination or 
 were he, outside that, a fine fellow; but this 
 man has never attracted us at all; and though 
 any weak doomed man must arouse some 
 measure of pity, our interest in Macbeth is 
 nothing compared with that which we feel in 
 Hamlet and Othello and Lear, and even less 
 than that which is stirred by his inexcusable 
 and unhallucinated, but tigerishly resolute, lady. 
 The principal character in Macbeth, in fact, 
 is dull; he makes no appeal; we do not greatly 
 mind what happens to him; and the play, in 
 spite of sublime scenes and poetry, is an illus- 
 tration and a warning to artists who deny, or 
 forget, that no powers of execution and no 
 subordinate achievement can compensate for a 
 central figure who is " unsympathetic," and 
 that it is better for a " hero " to provoke active 
 fear or hate than indifference or half-con- 
 temptuous pity. It is no use having a hero 
 who makes people feel, from first to last, that 
 he wants a good shaking. The mistake was not 
 one that Shakespeare usually made; but his plot 
 beat him. The emotional hold of the play 
 would have been immeasurably greater had he 
 set Macbeth against an equally prominent but 
 lovable character: given him, say, an innocent, 
 
 [165] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 horror-stricken wife instead of a fellow-mur- 
 derer who is not only as incapable as he of 
 drawing our affection, but who incidentally 
 throws him into the shade as a criminal. 
 
 The end of Othello — on which Sir Arthur 
 barely touches — is a subtler matter; whether 
 one thinks the workmanship fails depends upon 
 whether one believes that the most noble and 
 generous Othello, even though a Moor, and de- 
 ceived, and mad with jealousy, really could 
 have — did, in fact — kill his wife. Men in such 
 situations, no doubt, have killed guiltless wives, 
 and some of these men have possibly been 
 strong and lovable people. But I, at least, 
 experience when I come to that death, not 
 those feelings which one has when a tragedy 
 works to its inevitable and natural climax, but, 
 mingled with sickening horror for poor little 
 Desdemona, anger and irritation not against 
 Othello, but against Shakespeare, who is direct- 
 ing him. Sir Arthur, in his brief parenthesis 
 on the play, quotes a lady as having shouted to 
 Othello from the auditorium: " You great black 
 fool; can't you see?'' What I feel like saying, 
 and I can't think my impressions are unique, is 
 not that, but : " Look here, Shakespeare, you'd 
 no right to do this merely because, before you 
 started, you decided that this was the way the 
 [1 66] 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S WORKMANSHIP 
 
 story should go. You know better. You're 
 monkeying with human nature, and you've no 
 excuse." 
 
 Sir Arthur's readers must hope that he will 
 supplement this volume with another covering — 
 with whatever central theme — those plays which 
 are not studied in this volume. There is one, 
 I think, which really should have been here, the 
 main characteristics of Shakespeare's technical 
 aims and achievements being the subject. That 
 play is Troilus and Cressida. Too little atten- 
 tion has always been given to it; and those 
 critics who have, at length, written about it have 
 concentrated too much upon the love-story — 
 drawing, incidentally, from this quite convinc- 
 ing picture of a fickle girl and an embittered 
 lover unjustifiable deductions about Shake- 
 peare's frame of mind when he wrote it. 
 
 The chief interest of the play, and certainly 
 its chief interest as a piece of " workmanship," 
 seems to me to lie in its vividness as a pano- 
 rama, as a series of suddenly illuminated scenes 
 in which many characters, Greek and Trojan, 
 live and move, each with his distinct face and 
 opinions and temper. It resembles one of those 
 bright and crowded " compartment " pictures 
 that the early Flemings painted. If both 
 Troilus and Cressida were left out, the siege of 
 
 [167] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Troy, in sections, would remain; and I cannot 
 think (and I am sure Sir Arthur would not 
 think) that in making that great tapestry- 
 Shakespeare did not know what he was doing, 
 and know that, in drama, it was a novel and 
 difficult thing. 
 
 II : The Blackamoor 
 
 In the last paper I made some remarks about 
 Othello. I will not inflict a literal repetition 
 of these upon my readers (if, as the modest 
 editor said, any such there be), but the gist 
 of them was that the end of the play was not 
 convincing. I argued that, although some men 
 might kill their wives out of jealousy, the 
 Othello whom we have got to know in the play, 
 passionate though he is, would not have done 
 it. All round, it is not an inevitable, but a 
 forced — even a faked — ending, however this 
 may be disguised by the verisimilitude of Shake- 
 speare's detail and the natural splendours of his 
 language. I had never examined the sources of 
 the play, but I thought that probably the plot 
 as Shakespeare found it hampered him: that 
 Othello murdered his wife " in the original," 
 and that the dramatist made him do it in his 
 play in spite of the fact that as the play de- 
 veloped Othello's character grew into something 
 [i68] 
 
THE BLACKAMOOR 
 
 quite unlike that of the murderer. I have now 
 looked up the original, and find confirmation 
 of the theory. 
 
 The story is taken from a collection of fables 
 (Hecatommithi) by Giovanbattista Giraldi, 
 called Cinthio, who was a University professor 
 at Ferrara, and published his book in 1565. 
 Each tale was supposed to illustrate a moral 
 virtue, but which virtue was illustrated by 
 the story of Othello my informant (the Yale 
 Shakespeare) sayeth not. The book was not 
 translated into English, so far as we know; 
 the conclusion being (we are used to these 
 puzzling deductions about Shakespeare) that 
 either Shakespeare knew Italian, French, or 
 Spanish, or else he heard the story at second 
 hand. In Cinthio's tale, " Disdemona " is the 
 only person with a name. Othello is " the 
 Moor"; lago is "the Ensign"; Cassio, "the 
 Captain"; Emilia, "the Ensign's wife"; and 
 Bianca, " a courtesan." Disdemona, against her 
 parents' wishes, marries the valiant Moorish 
 general, and insists on going with him to 
 Cyprus. Mark what follows. lago falls in 
 love with Disdemona, who is attached to lago's 
 wife. Failing to seduce her, lago ascribes his 
 failure to Cassio. Cassio gets into disgrace 
 for striking a soldier; Disdemona intercedes 
 
 [169] 
 
LIFE AND LETTEPvS 
 
 for him, and this gives lago his cue. He tells 
 Othello that Disdemona is in love with Cassio 
 and " has taken an aversion to your blackness." 
 The handkerchief plot is developed, and the 
 ]Moor, convinced, " fell to meditating how he 
 should put his wife to death, and likewise the 
 Captain, so that their death should not he laid 
 to his charge." 
 
 Then, lago and Othello together " consulted 
 of one means and another " — poison and dag- 
 gers — to kill Disdemona, but could come 
 to no conclusion. At last the ingenious Ensign 
 said : " A plan comes to my mind, which will 
 give 3^ou satisfaction and raise cause for no 
 suspicion. It is this: the house in which you 
 live is very old, and the ceiling of j^our chamber 
 has many cracks; I propose we take a stocking 
 filled with sand, and beat Disdemona with it till 
 she dies; thus wiU her body bear no signs of 
 violence. When she is dead we can pull down a 
 portion of the ceiling, and thus make it seem as 
 if a rafter falhng on her head had killed the 
 lady. Suspicion cannot rest on you, since all 
 men v/ill impute her death to accident." The 
 JMoor was pleased with this advice, and accepted 
 it. One night, when he and Disdemona were 
 in bed, the Ensign, who had been concealed in 
 a closet opening into the chamber, made a noise, 
 [170] 
 
THE BLACKAMOOR 
 
 according to plan. The Moor said to his wife: 
 "Did you not hear that noise?" 
 
 " Indeed, I heard it," she replied. 
 
 " Rise/' said the Moor, " and see what 'tis." 
 
 Disdemona got out of bed, and as she ap- 
 proached the closet the other villain rushed out 
 " and beat her cruelly with the bag of sand 
 across her back, upon which Disdemona fell to 
 the ground, scarcely able to draw her breath " ; 
 but with the little voice she had left, she called 
 upon the J^Ioor for aid. But the Moor, leaping 
 from the bed, exclaimed: "Thou wickedest of 
 women, thus has thy falseness found its just re- 
 ward." The poor lady protests her innocence, 
 but lago keeps pounding her until she is sense- 
 less. The two men then lay her on the bed, 
 wound her on the head, and pull down the ceiling 
 of the room. Then the INIoor shouts that the 
 house is falling down, and the neighbours come 
 running in to find Disdemona dead under a 
 rafter. The two murderers escape suspicion at 
 the time. Othello gets to hate lago, fears to 
 kill him, but disgraces him. lago then tells 
 Cassio about the crime, and both murderers come 
 ultimately to bad ends. " Thus did Heaven 
 avenge the innocence of Disdemona " — and 
 demonstrate, as I suppose the Italian moralist 
 
 [■71] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 contends, that it is unwise and unsafe to mur- 
 der one's wife. 
 
 This plot, accepted as Shakespeare's chief 
 source, illuminates three remarkable things. 
 The first is Shakespeare's genius for clothing 
 bare bones; the second is his wonderful sense 
 for noticing weaknesses in his originals, and 
 remedying them; and the third is his occasional 
 failure (as I choose to think it) to let that 
 sense guide him all the way. He saw that 
 Cinthio's Othello was quite impossible as a hero. 
 He could not be kept on that footing with 
 lago; the disgustingly calculated confederate 
 murder was impossible; Othello could not, if 
 he was to obtain any sympathy, be the sort of 
 man who would survive and indulge in recrimi- 
 nations with a blackmailing accomplice. Turn 
 to the death-scene in the play : 
 
 It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul; 
 
 Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars ! 
 
 It is the cause. Yet I'll not shed her blood 
 
 Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow. 
 
 And smooth as monumental alabaster. 
 
 Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men. 
 
 Put out the light, and then put out the light: 
 
 If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, 
 
 I can again thy former light restore, 
 
 Should I repent me ; but once put out thy light. 
 
 Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, 
 
 [172] 
 
THE BLACKAMOOR 
 
 I know not where is that Promethean keat 
 That can thy light relume. 
 
 So to the most beautiful and awful dialogue, 
 the greatest dialogue in Shakespeare, and its 
 close "But while I say one prayer!" "It is 
 too late." That is what takes the place of 
 Cinthio's abomination. Cinthio was scrapped. 
 Othello's character was remade. He grew, 
 under Shakespeare's hands, one of the noblest 
 and most generous of men, a husband worthy 
 of his wife. But he grew too noble and gen- 
 erous, and though Shakespeare used all the 
 resources of his incomparable art to palliate 
 and explain the crime, though the murder in 
 the play is committed by a demented man whose 
 reason has temporarily been destroyed by the 
 breaking of his ideal, and who immediately 
 afterv/ards kills himself in remorse: 
 
 I kiss'd thee ere I kill'd thee ; no way but this. 
 Killing myself to die upon a kiss, 
 
 he did not succeed in making us feel that the 
 thing, granted the characters, had to happen. 
 Othello, I am heretic enough to think, should 
 have ended happily, and been grouped with 
 the " Comedies." But though Shakespeare took 
 every sort of liberty with what, when he found 
 it, was little more than a crude anecdote, it 
 
 [173] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 did not occur to him, or he did not choose, to 
 alter the end, which — when he first began the 
 play — was no doubt the thing which, by its 
 dramatic possibilities, attracted him and towards 
 which he was all the time working up. 
 
 It is one more illustration of Sir Arthur 
 Quiller-Couch's theory that Shakespeare was 
 occasionally hampered by his plots. Sir Ar- 
 thur's own chief illustration is drawn from the 
 Merchant of Venice, where the silly arrange- 
 ments about the caskets and the pound of 
 flesh — which would never have sprung from the 
 imagination of a Shakespeare, but were indo-| 
 lently retained since they were found in his 
 original — hampered him badly, crippled his 
 characterisation, and compelled him to con- 
 centrate upon a few persons and a few scenes 
 for his really great effects. The conclusion is 
 that, like Homer, Shakespeare sometimes nods: 
 an admission that need not be left to those 
 iconoclasts who, not knowing the greatest plays 
 and the greatest poetry in the world when they 
 see them, spend their time attempting to con- 
 vince people that the general reverence for 
 Shakespeare is absurd and that his plays are 
 no better than anyone else's. The late Tolstoy 
 was one of these. 
 
 [174] ' 
 
HAMLET 
 
 III: Hamlet 
 
 Mr. J. M. Robertson will not, I hope, be 
 again returned to Parliament, if election would 
 mean the interruption of the work he is doing 
 upon Shakespeare. He proposes a general sur- 
 vey of " The Canon of Shakespeare "; his books 
 on Titus Andronicus and Shakespeare and 
 Chapman were instalments of it; and a third 
 fragment is his book The Problem of Hamlet, 
 published by Allen and Unwin. 
 
 He begins with a summary of the views 
 expressed by previous scholars. The aesthetic 
 problem has been discussed for two centuries, 
 in England and Germany especially, " latterly 
 with the constant preoccupation of finding a 
 formula which shall reduce the play to aesthetic 
 consistency." Inconsistencies have been found 
 in Hamlet's character and actions; weaknesses 
 in some passages which in other passages do 
 not appear. But " every solution in turn does 
 but ignore some of the data which motived 
 the other." One " subjective school " concen- 
 itrating on Hamlet's character as though he 
 were a real person all of whose words were 
 actually spoken, call him mad, or vacillating, 
 or the slave of sensibility, or " the victim of an 
 excess of the reflective faculty which unfits 
 
 [175] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 him for action." The obvious retort is that he 
 is reckless of his life and frequently prompt 
 in action. Why, then, it is answered, does he 
 delay his mission? He does not, is the reply; 
 but the counter-reply is that he is certainly felt 
 to do so and that on the stage far too long 
 a period seems to elapse. Another school here 
 interposes. There was no weakness in Hamlet, 
 but there were material difficulties in his way: 
 the King was always surrounded by his guards 
 and could not be got at. Of this, however, 
 there is no evidence, and many bewildered 
 persons have finally fallen on the comfortable 
 bosom of the theory that Hamlet was mad and 
 that therefore nothing he did or said is neces- 
 sarily explicable or (on that assumption) in 
 the least inexplicable. The reply to this is that 
 Hamlet was obviously not mad, that we take 
 a painful interest in all he thinks; and that 
 Shakespeare was not so mad as to write a play 
 the central figure of which was throughout all 
 the acts puzzling an audience by speeches and 
 deeds which had no cohesion and leading them 
 to take seriously ruminations which were merely 
 ravings. At all events, save amongst those who 
 pity him as a maniac, Hamlet has few friends. 
 They rebuke his weakness, and " for not kill- 
 ing Claudius either at the start or in the 
 
 [176] 
 
HAMLET 
 
 praying-scene, Hamlet has been the theme of a 
 hundred denunciations by zealous moralists." 
 
 Of recent years there has been a general 
 tendency to examine the texts historically; we 
 have grown conscious of faults in the dramatist 
 as dramatist; faults of idleness (if the word 
 can be used of one so productive) ; faults aris- 
 ing from lack of knowledge and time, from 
 fatigue, from consideration of his audience, and 
 above all — though this overlaps with the first — 
 faults arising from the material he was using. 
 He took his plots secondhand; the crude action 
 and characterisation of the moulds frequently 
 failed to suit what he poured into them. Othello 
 is one instance; the Merchant of Venice is an- 
 other; Hamlet is a third. There was an original 
 barbaric story; there was a play (probably by 
 Kyd) of which Mr. Robertson believes the Ger- 
 man Brudermord to have been an adaptation. 
 Shakespeare's Hamlet was based on Kyd's; 
 incidents which are excrescences on it (this is 
 the theme Mr. Robertson develops with great 
 acumen, though he sometimes forces the pace) 
 derive from Kyd's play; and the contradictions 
 are due to Shakespeare's having failed to elimi- 
 nate stock elements in the story which he had 
 inherited. I think Mr. Robertson sometimes 
 goes too far ; Shakespeare may have " taken 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 on " the feigned madness, but I don't think he 
 failed to make it consistent with our Hamlet. 
 In fact, though much that Mr. Robertson says 
 is convincing, and Shakespeare did undoubtedly 
 fail to produce a thoroughly coherent work of 
 art, I don't find that there is really much that 
 clashes with his hero and his " pessimism " and 
 introspection. 
 
 Even as the play stands, and granted that 
 Shakespeare was to some extent impeded by 
 an inherited plot and the crude characterisa- 
 tion of Kyd or another, are its inconsistencies 
 so very hard to swallow? Read the play as 
 Shakespeare finally left it, see it acted uncut; 
 and, whatever minor stumbling-blocks there 
 may be in the text, whatever outcrops of a lower 
 deposit that Shakespeare had not bothered to 
 remove, does there not remain dominant a con- 
 vincing character, a person Hamlet? Is he not 
 as nearly complete, as positive and as nearly 
 like a living being as any character in a fic- 
 tion can be? Should we not know him if we 
 met him, " larger than human " though he is? 
 Do we find it so easy to define in a phrase the 
 characters of our own friends that we should 
 expect to "reduce him" (as the phrase has 
 gone) to a " fixed and settled principle "? His 
 action may seem inconsequent and his words 
 
 [178]" 
 
HAMLET 
 
 wild, but is there really any difficulty about 
 what have commonly been supposed to be the 
 larger stumbling blocks? To me the brooding 
 Hamlet of the soliloquies is not intrinsically 
 incompatible with the Hamlet who is a good 
 soldier, and a master of fence, who lunges at 
 Polonius through the arras, leaps recklessly into 
 Ophelia's grave, sends his warders to their death, 
 and boards the pirate ship single-handed. It is 
 one thing to attack a pirate when you see one 
 or to pink an eavesdropper; but even a man 
 constitutionally fearless and, when issues are 
 clear, very prompt in action, might well shrink 
 from murdering his uncle in cold blood. Mr. 
 Robertson quite properly asks whether all the 
 professors who rebuke Hamlet for vacillation 
 in that he missed an early chance of killing 
 his uncle would themselves without hesitation 
 have stabbed a man in the back whilst he was 
 saying his prayers, however incestuous a beast 
 he may have been. Even looking at the mattter 
 from their own point of view, treating Hamlet 
 as a real person, " not Shakespeare's creation 
 but God's," those who have argued in so many 
 volumes about Hamlet's weakness of will 
 (largely on the strength of his own distraught 
 self-questionings) show a deplorable lack of 
 ! imagination. And it is lack of imagination that 
 
 [179] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 accounts for the endless discussions as to whetherj 
 Hamlet was mad: that is to say, whether cer- 
 tain of the actions imputed to Shakespeare'sj 
 Hamlet are inconceivable as the actions of a| 
 sane man, such as ourselves. Do they knowl 
 what a highly-strung man is, or what horror is?! 
 He shams lunacy with Polonius; he is brutalj 
 to Ophelia. Reader, have you never, when over- 
 wrought, said cruel and unjust things to some- 
 body you loved; have you never, at moments ofi 
 great suffering or mental irritation, stopped on] 
 the tip of your tongue words even brutaller! 
 and beastlier, which have surged up in a hot I 
 wave against the barrier of your normal sense? I 
 Suppose it were your mother who had married j 
 your father's murderer; suppose the revelation 
 of the crime had come to you suddenly and youj 
 were charged (for the ghost is there and real) 
 to avenge it. Suppose, in spite of your con- 
 viction, that you still wanted some last con- 
 firmatory evidence and that, whilst you awaited, 
 you were racked by thoughts of all the evil in 
 the world and the impossibility of abolishing 
 a crime by revenge, or of ever quieting yourj 
 pain again. Suppose, nevertheless, that you 
 were set on killing the beast and had to secure 
 a certain opportunity. You might retain, as a 
 rule, your self-command; be capable of attend- 
 
 [1 80] 
 
HAMLET 
 
 ing to business when necessary, or acting on 
 sudden emergencies; have quiet intervals. But 
 might you not — especially as you would prob- 
 ably be unable to sleep (a thing of which there 
 may be a hint in the " To be or not to be " 
 speech) — be liable to excesses of violent temper, 
 of distracted bitter talk? Dying, Shakespeare's 
 Hamlet restrained Horatio from suicide with 
 the appeal: 
 
 O good Horatio, what a wounded name. 
 
 Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me. 
 
 If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart 
 
 Absent thee from felicity awhile, 
 
 And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain 
 
 To tell my story. 
 
 So saying, and in his last moments making a 
 clear political arrangement with that decision 
 which was characteristic of him when faced 
 by simple situations, he *' crack'd his noble 
 heart." But his appeal, though Horatio doubt- 
 less responded to it, has fallen on deaf ears 
 elsewhere; and it is his eternal fate to be called 
 a coward by bookworms, and a lunatic by the 
 dull, who have never grasped the fact that 
 others besides lunatics are " of imagination all 
 compact." He has been as unfortunate in his 
 death as in his life. 
 
 [i8i] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 IV: Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 It is twenty years since Messrs. Methuen, with 
 Mr. W. J. Craig as editor, began the publica- 
 tion of the Arden Shakespeare ; ten since Mr. R. 
 H. Case took over general control of the series; 
 and, I should think, at least two since a volume 
 was issued. Mr. C. Knox Pooler's edition of 
 the Sonnets has at last appeared. It is a good 
 edition. 
 
 The notes are considerably more voluminous 
 than the text. This is not always a merit in a 
 poet's editor; and it necessitates an arrange- 
 ment of the page which makes the edition an 
 inconvenient one for ordinary reading. At the 
 same time, a m^an who should habitually read 
 the Sonnets without an occasional hankering 
 for a fully annotated edition, would be more 
 than human. Both their nature and their con- 
 dition make them cry out for explanation. They 
 appear to tell a story; but what story? They 
 are evidently a sonnet sequence; we have the 
 sonnets, but almost certainly not the sequence. 
 They are dedicated by the printer to a mys- 
 terious person whose identification might or 
 might not provide a clue which would illuminate 
 their whole content. They are full of phrases 
 which need explanation, and words which open 
 
 [182] 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS 
 
 the door to conjectui-e; the originals of the 
 greater portion of our text are two evidently- 
 corrupt editions. One of these editions was 
 published, apparently by a pirate, in Shake- 
 speare's lifetime; the other by an ignoramus 
 twenty-four years after his death. On all sides 
 we are besieged by questions. For whom did 
 Shakespeare write them? Are the whole of 
 them meant to hang together? Where does 
 euphuistic compliment end and passion begin? 
 Who were the persons mentioned, including the 
 brother-poet? Which of the thousands of vari- 
 ant readings are correct? What is the correct 
 order? And even — though this is not commonly 
 put — do we possess the whole of them? 
 
 Mr. Pooler is an editor of the cautious and 
 judicious type. His notes on the text — inter- 
 pretations, variants, parallel passage — embody 
 a great deal of what is valuable in the work of 
 his predecessors, and much, uniformly sensible, 
 that is his own. On more general questions, 
 however, he inclines to summarise the arguments 
 of two centuries of commentators instead of 
 parading theories of his own. One positive and 
 exhaustive argument he does carry through, as 
 I think, successfully. He argues, as against 
 Sir Sidney Lee, that Benson for his edition of 
 1640 had no other materials than Thorpe's 1609 
 
 [183] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 edition and The Passionate Pilgrim (1599), 
 which contains two sonnets. Prima facie, there; 
 is a good deal in favour of Sir Sidney Lee's i 
 view: Benson leaves out some sonnets, mis-| 
 describes many in head-lines, muddles them up 
 with other poems, and frequently varies the text. ' 
 But most of his exploits can be explained away 
 as the stupidities of a dolt or the deliberate 
 changes of a knave. Premising that " one blind 
 beast may avoid the hole into which another 
 blind beast has fallen, but it cannot fall into 
 the same hole unless it is going over the same 
 ground," Mr. Pooler collects a very large num- 
 ber of instances to show that, where Thorpe had 
 committed misprints or errors of punctuation 
 which play havoc with the sense, Benson contin- 
 ually follows him. This is not what is called a 
 ** mere " bibliographical question. For in Ben- 
 son's edition, to put it briefly, a great many of 
 the " he's " are altered into " she's," and if it 
 could be proved to be anything more than a | 
 mere adaptation of Thorpe's, the sex of the per- 
 son addressed in most of the Sonnets would be 
 more open to doubt than it is. 
 
 The theory that the Sonnets do not refer to 
 actual occurrences, often propounded (and re- 
 cently supported, by the way, by Mr. Asquith ) , 
 does not seem to me tenable; I do not think 
 
 [184] 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS 
 
 that a poet whose own personal feelings were 
 not directly engaged ever produced sonnets 
 with the ring that these have. There is no 
 justification, on the face of the poet's statements 
 or in the general spirit which permeates the son- 
 nets, for those interpreters who, sometimes from 
 interested motives, have detected abnormality in 
 Shakespeare's love for that friend of whom he 
 said: 
 
 And for a woman wert thou first created 
 Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting 
 And by addition me of thee defeated. . . . 
 
 But he existed; Shakespeare urged him con- 
 stantly to marry; and there was a breach. In 
 spite of all the fever of all the controversial- 
 ists, we do not know who he was. We do not 
 even know whether his initials were W. H.; 
 Sir Sidney Lee thinks that " W. H." was a 
 seedy hanger-on of the publishing trade. Wheth- 
 er the " Dark Lady " has ever been identified 
 with Anne Hathaway, Mr. Pooler does not say, 
 and I do not know. But there are several can- 
 didates for her post, and at least six for that of 
 the " rival poet." The amount of incidental in- 
 formation brought to light by all their support- 
 ers has been enormous; even Baconian research 
 has a silver lining. But nothing near proof has 
 ever been produced. The " Dark Lady " re- 
 
 [i8s] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 mains in the dark, and under " W. H.'s " dedi- 
 cation, as under Junius' title, the motto ^"^ Stat 
 nominis umbra ^' must still be written. 
 
 Possibly the mystery will never be solved. 
 But even if it were, a greater mystery remains, 
 and one that envelopes the Plays as well as the 
 Sonnets. It is the greatest of all Shakespearean 
 mysteries; far greater than the mystery, so ob- 
 sessing to the Baconians, of how " the drunken 
 illiterate clown of Stratford " could have known 
 so much law, grammar, and classical mythology. 
 Why was the greatest of all poets so seemingly 
 careless about the perpetuation of his texts; 
 why did he apparently take no steps to get the 
 bulk of his work published or even to correct 
 the corrupt versions that did get published? 
 Why, in an age when everybody rushed into 
 print, did he leave his manuscripts about to die 
 or precariously survive like foundlings? In any 
 case, had he never said a word about his art 
 himself, this would have been inexplicable, in 
 the light of what we know of human nature and 
 the nature of poets. But, apart from that, there 
 is plenty of quite indisputable detailed evidence 
 that he who envied " this man's art and that 
 man's scope," and who spoke of the " proud full 
 sail " of a rival's " great verse " revered his own 
 calling^. More, over and over again, in the Son- 
 [.86] 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS 
 
 nets themselves he not only shows that con- 
 sciousness of his own powers which great poets 
 always have, but definitely anticipates the dura- 
 bility of what he has written. He never says 
 that he is writing for his private amusement 
 or relief and that he does not care what becomes 
 of his work or whether anyone ever reads it: 
 though that is the attitude that some critics, 
 anxious not to admit any puzzle insoluble, have 
 absurdly imputed to him. What he says is: 
 
 Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 
 Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme; 
 But you shall shine more bright in these contents 
 Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time: 
 When wasteful war shall statues overturn, 
 And broils root out the work of masonry, 
 Nor ]\fars his word not War's quick fire shall burn 
 The living record of your memory. 
 'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity 
 Shall you pace forth ; your praise shall still find room, 
 Even in the eyes of all posterity 
 That wear this world out to the ending doom. 
 So, till the judgment that yourself arise, 
 You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes. 
 
 "Who will believe my verse in time to come?" 
 he asks again. " Do thy most, old Time," he 
 says. " My love shall in my verse ever live 
 long." '' To times in hope my verse shall stand. 
 Praising thy worth " : 
 
 [187] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Your monument shall be my gentle verse, 
 Which eyes not yet created shall o'er read; 
 And tongues to be your being shall rehearse. 
 When all the breathers of this world are dead; 
 You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen. 
 Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men. 
 
 And where he is not promising, but hoping, we 
 see the confidence behind the hope, as in that 
 sonnet with the marvellous beginning: 
 
 Since brass nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, 
 But sad mortality o'ersways their power, 
 How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, 
 Wihose action is no stronger than a flower? 
 
 He had written in some of these sonnets the 
 greatest lyric verse in the world, and he knew 
 it ; verse which in its effortless fertility of image, 
 its " inevitable " directness of phrase, its per- 
 fection of rhythm, must be the idol and the de- 
 spair of every writer who reads it and sees 
 Shakespeare doing a thousand times " on his 
 head " what he himself would be proud to do 
 once. There are contorted sonnets; there are 
 even dull ones; but the best, and the best parts 
 of the others surpass anything in English poetry. 
 And they were, apparently, the by-product of 
 a voluminous professional dramatist. 
 
 [1 88] 
 
THE GREAT UNFINISHED 
 
 It is announced that the late William de Mor- 
 gan, who became a good, a successful and a 
 voluminous novelist at an age when most men 
 are content to narrate their reminiscences from 
 a chair, left two unfinished novels behind him. 
 One lacked only the last chapter ; the other much 
 more. His notes for the missing parts were in 
 existence, and with the aid of these his widow 
 (who had just finished the work when she died) 
 completed the books. 
 
 De Morgan's admirers will await the results 
 with curiosity. Cases are not uncommon in 
 which husband and wife acquire similar habits 
 of style and even similar physiognomies; and 
 every congenial couple with alert minds develop 
 in time a communal sense of humour. Each 
 party sees humour in the same situations and 
 responds to them in the same phrases; after 
 many years, in fact, words cease to be necessary, 
 and the simultaneous joke is flashed from eye 
 to eye. But De Morgan's characterisation was 
 so odd and his method of writing so extremely 
 
 [189] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 personal that I cannot conceive that there will 
 not, however faithfully his ideas are followed 
 up, be very marked joins where his script ends 
 and Mrs. de Morgan's begins. But I do not 
 seriously expect, unless the novels were early 
 ones, that we shall feel much regret that they 
 were never finished by their author. The age at 
 which he started writing was an advantage to 
 him one way: his first books had the benefit 
 of a long and diverse experience; accumulated 
 observations poured opulently forth. But every- 
 thing went into them; he was looking backward 
 and not forward; and his later books contained 
 nothing worth having that was not in Somehow 
 Good and Joseph Vance, and were far below 
 them in quality. 
 
 There is nothing unusual about unfinished 
 books. Our literature is strewn with them, 
 from Chaucer's translation of the Romance of 
 the Rose to Henry James's two delicious and 
 tantalising fragments. Many of the greatest 
 works in literature were never finished. We 
 have only a half of the Faerie Queene that 
 Spenser planned. Virgil — which is not sur- 
 prising since he thought he had done a good 
 day's work if he had written twelve lines — did 
 not complete the JEneid. Byron's Don Juan 
 leaves off at a situation as teasing to the reader 
 [190] 
 
THE GREAT UNFINISHED 
 
 as it was certainly awkward for the characters; 
 and his Childe Harold was never completed by 
 him, though there exists a French continuation 
 by the versatile Lamartine. Keats's Hyperion, 
 his greatest poem, is no more than the torso of 
 a Titan, and we lost something very great in 
 the missing part of Shelley's Triumph of Life. 
 Wordsworth's Excursion is incomplete; of Ma- 
 caulay's History we have but the introduction 
 and the first full-length section, and we may 
 never get such a history of Anne's reign as the 
 most vivid of social historians would have writ- 
 ten. Dostoieffsky's Brothers Karamazoff, long 
 as it is, was not finished; that few people know 
 this is probably accounted for by the fact that 
 few people have got through it. Jane Austen 
 left two unfinished novels; and the list might 
 be extended. But it is not very often that any- 
 one has the courage to complete the unfinished 
 work of a good writer. It is done occasionally. 
 I myself, most inexperienced and reluctant of 
 novelists, have lately received the sacred charge 
 of finishing a work of fiction should its author 
 (who, I am sure, will survive me by many 
 years) die before he has come to the end of it. 
 Marlowe's Hero and Leander, perhaps the 
 loveliest poem in couplets in the language, was 
 continued by Chapman, with results that did not 
 
 [191] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 justify the enterprise. Peter Motteux tried and 
 failed to keep up to that unparalleled level of 
 creative translation that Sir Thomas Urquhart 
 had reached in the early books of Rabelais. A 
 play of Meredith's was licked into final shape 
 by (I hope my memory is not at fault) Sir 
 James Barrie, and " Q," who was unfortunate 
 in having one of Stevenson's duller books to 
 cope with, finished St. Ives. Nobody, I think, 
 has dared attempt an end to Weir of Hermis- 
 ton, an enterprise only less formidable than 
 would be that of rounding off a novel by Miss 
 Austen. I am not sorry that these works are 
 left as they were. But I do wish that some- 
 body, anybody, Mrs. Dickens, Miss Dickens, 
 Master Dickens, or Wilkie Collins, had finished 
 Edwin Drood, for then we should have been 
 spared this eternal controversy. 
 
 It breaks out yearly like prairie fires; you 
 may not notice where it starts, but at more or 
 less regular intervals you are suddenly aware 
 that the air is filled with smoke and flames. 
 They are at it now, for the ninety-ninth time, 
 in the Times Literary Supplement; next time 
 it may be in the Saturday Review, or the 
 Athenceum, or the Daily Mail, or all of them 
 at once. There seem to be tens of thousands 
 of persons in this country who worry over the 
 [192] 
 
THE GREAT UNFINISHED 
 
 Drood problem as chess enthusiasts do over 
 mates in five moves. And the extraordinary 
 thing is that they have a way of talking about 
 the mystery of Drood and his latter end as 
 though they were talking about something that 
 really happened. 
 
 Now I do not see why men should not amuse 
 themselves by trying to elucidate a real mys- 
 tery. Researches and disputations may then end 
 in discovery. It is a comprehensible pastime to 
 attempt to identify the Man in the Iron Mask 
 or to try to demonstrate that Sir Philip Francis 
 did or did not write the Letters of Junius. 
 Somebody wrote the letters of Junius: they 
 exist; new evidence or fresh examination of old 
 evidence may (though I don't think it will) 
 conclusively prove who was the author of those 
 topical polemics, the literary merits of which we 
 are all agreed in so grossly exaggerating. There 
 are still people who think there was something 
 more than William Sharp behind Fiona Mac- 
 leod. There are still those who think that Dr. 
 Johnson, when he said that he " would not be 
 deterred from detecting a cheat by the menaces 
 of a ruffian," did not say the last word on the 
 Gaelic origins of Macpherson's Ossian. They 
 are welcome to their opinions, and they are en- 
 titled to wish for something concrete to support 
 
 [193] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 them. But it is a totally different thing to 
 dispute about who did what and what happened 
 to whom in an uncompleted story which is not 
 a history but fiction. The common-sense posi- 
 tion is that nothing whatever happened to Edwin 
 Drood, that he himself and all his confreres were 
 the acme of inactivity; for the simple reason 
 that there were ( in the highly appropriate words 
 of their own fabulist) no sich persons. 
 
 It is of course a great tribute to Dickens's 
 hypnotic power over the simple-minded that he 
 should have been able to persuade people that 
 his characters were actual men and women of 
 whom he merely chronicled some of the words 
 and deeds. And it is an immense compliment 
 to his literary craftsmanship that even men who 
 do not forget that Drood and Company were 
 fictitious, assume that his art was so perfect and 
 the relation between cause and effect in his 
 works so precise that, given a set of characters 
 and a set of circumstances provided by him, one 
 should be able infallibly to deduce what remains 
 undisclosed from what the novelist, who is as 
 true to nature as Nature herself, has revealed. 
 But I don't think that even Dickens's literary 
 craftsmanship can deserve so high a compliment 
 as all that. 'Not does Dickens's literary con- 
 science. Even if words of his were produced giv- 
 [194] 
 
THE GREAT UNFINISHED 
 
 ing such and such an explanation of the problem 
 and the mystery, and such and such a sketch of 
 the end of the book, I should not take those words 
 as gospel. For he was not so perfect a crafts- 
 man (who is?) as to leave himself no two ways 
 out of a situation, and his conscience was not 
 so relentless as to prevent him from producing 
 the most unlikely effects from his causes, if 
 whim or expediency made him feel inclined so 
 to do. He was demonstrably not above faking 
 a most improbable last act to a novel in order 
 to gratify the sentiment of the public. And I 
 refuse to believe that he, who could make almost 
 any character do almost anything, disguise al- 
 most any man as some other man, resurrect the 
 dead and transform the living, would not have 
 found some way out of his situation which no 
 man will discover by sitting down and exam- 
 ining a fragment. The problem of a novelist's 
 plot is not like a chess problem. There is no 
 mathematical limit to the novelist's solution, and 
 the novelist has no rules to obey; at least if 
 there are rules he very seldom obeys them. 
 
 [I9S] 
 
WALT WHITMAN 
 
 A Japanese, who happened to be visiting 
 England this month (July, 1919), might well 
 think that one of the most established, popular, 
 and closely read of modern authors was Walt 
 Whitman. He would be wrong. The fact that 
 Whitman's centenary has just occurred has led 
 all the critics to write articles about him; but I 
 suspect that it is years since most of them even 
 mentioned his name. He is there all right — 
 on his shelf, classified and ticketed, in case he 
 should be wanted — recognised as one of the 
 most interesting figures in American history; 
 but I doubt if he is currently read anything 
 like as much as he was ten or fifteen years ago. 
 Most educated men, no doubt, have dipped into 
 him. A good many writers are patently under 
 his influence. But he is not read as Keats, 
 Shelley, or Tennyson are read, and his influ- 
 ence is not exercised over our best younger 
 writers, and is, moreover, as often as not, indi- 
 rect, operating through his French disciples 
 upon persons who probably sneer at him. If 
 
 [196] 
 
WALT WHITMAN 
 
 this diagnosis be correct, it will be easy to find a 
 reason ; and the reason is that he was most of the 
 time a bad artist, and deliberately a bad artist. 
 
 He said a good many things about his own 
 writings. He also said, " Do I contradict my- 
 self? Very well, then, I contradict myself." I 
 do not think, however, that this could perti- 
 nently be quoted against one who should see a 
 quite fundamental contradiction between those 
 passages in which he spoke for all the world as 
 if he were the prophet neither of America nor 
 of democracy, nor of anything else, and those 
 other passages in which he bade a world in need 
 of regeneration to listen to his " barbaric yawp." 
 " No labour machine," he writes. 
 
 Nor discovery have I made, 
 
 Nor vpill I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to 
 found a hospital or library. 
 
 Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for America, 
 
 Nor literary success nor intellect, nor book for the book- 
 shelf. 
 
 But a few carols vibrating through the air I leave, 
 
 For comrades and lovers. 
 
 One might think he was Burns or Herrick! 
 Here as elsewhere he seems to forget what these 
 " few carols " were like. Usually it was impos- 
 sible to forget it. And he was never more 
 truthful than when he said, '* The words of my 
 book nothing, the drift of it everything." 
 
 [197] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Unfortunately, comrades and lovers, poets 
 and lovers of poetry, do not as a rule find last- 
 ing nourishment in " carols " of which the doc- 
 trine is everything and the words nothing. Art 
 exists; and if Whitman's statement were liter- 
 ally and always accurate, nobody would read 
 him at all, for his sentences would not convey 
 his meaning. It is still true that his " drift " is, 
 in the mass of his work, the most, the only im- 
 portant thing about him; and "drift" has a 
 habit of getting out of date. When one says 
 that he lost by throwing over the whole appa- 
 ratus of what he regarded as feudal, monarchi- 
 cal, European poetry, people sometimes sup- 
 pose that one is complaining that he did not 
 write in rhyme. That is absurd; nor as a rule 
 did Milton. And Whitman's occasional rhymes — 
 as in O Captain, My Captain, Ethiopia Saluting 
 the Colours, and The Singer in the Prison — 
 are not so elegant as to make anybody wish he 
 had attempted more of them. It is not that. It 
 is that, though he had a natural gift for beau- 
 tiful rhythm, he customarily wrote a sort of 
 spasmodic prose, and, above all that, attempted 
 to do in poetry what, at any rate in his manner, 
 could not be done. He had a gospel — ^vague, 
 but vaguely fine — of democracy and of Ameri- 
 canism. He tried in the light of this to survey 
 
 [198] 
 
WALT WHITMAN 
 
 all life and all effort, and in considerable detail. 
 " I will report," he said, " all heroism from an 
 American point of view." He tried, in a brief 
 pemmicanising way, which usually excluded the 
 wealth of detail which might have made such 
 reports interesting, to report also all history, 
 all industrial and commercial operations, all 
 navigation and science, all physical experiences, 
 and even all geography; and by adding up in- 
 numerable small statements of them and wrap- 
 ping them in a framework of democratic rhet- 
 oric. There are poems of his which read like 
 extracts from a gazetteer interspersed with the 
 highest flights of Mr. Lloyd George's oratory. 
 There are great formless masses and little form- 
 less fragments, formless in general outline as 
 they are in detail — mere exhortation and state- 
 ments, having no artistic (I fall into his phrase- 
 ology!) rapport. Possibly a diet of Leaves of 
 Grass is neither sustaining nor digestible; but 
 it is certainly not eatable. 
 
 Few, I think, except critics in search of 
 themes and desperate men in search of a creed, 
 will in the future read and re-read the enormous 
 mass of Walt's carols. But it will be, in a man- 
 ner, kept afloat. Firstly, because of his per- 
 sonality. It is quite true that " This is no book. 
 Who touches this touches a man." There were 
 
 [199] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 affectations about him. A great deal of the 
 time one feels that his sounding rhetoric is some- 
 thing hollow: that he is " yawping " as loud as 
 he can to keep up his convictions, if not his cour- 
 age. And his cultivated mannerisms are, after 
 the first attraction of their quaintness has 
 passed, repulsive. " Camerado," " Libertad," 
 " Omnes, omnes," and the rest of the jargon; 
 how does it square with his assertion, for he 
 meant to assert this, that he chose the first spon- 
 taneous words he found? He may have shaken 
 the dust of the Old World from his feet (which 
 had never trodden it), but this did not stop him 
 from calling a pavement, in an English poem, 
 a " troittoir," nor did it prevent him from spell- 
 ing " cosmos " with a " k," presumably because 
 he had heard that the Greeks did so; he even 
 went to the length of spelling Canada with a 
 " K ," which the Greeks might have done had 
 they had a chance, but which would scarcely be 
 deemed a natural thing, even by a Spelling Re- 
 former. " Me imperturbe, standing at ease in 
 Nature " ; " Melange mine own, the unseen and 
 the seen " ; a man who was only unself -con- 
 sciously trying to convert people would not con- 
 coct preposterous openings like those; and such 
 sentences ("No dainty dolce affetuoso I," says 
 he!) are sprinkled all over his works. Yet, at 
 [200] 
 
WALT WHITMAN 
 
 bottom, he was genuine and original; he said 
 things that needed courage to say and things; 
 which it gives courage to read. He will never 
 again come with the freshness of appeal that he 
 had forty or fifty years ago. Men then, shad- 
 owed by " the Victorian compromise," hunger- 
 ing for something audacious and brutal, were 
 intensely thrilled by this voice, which came over 
 the ocean crying, " I loaf and invite my soul," 
 " I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and 
 so luscious," proclaiming the most intimate of 
 his physical sensations and unveiling the most 
 shameful of his hypocrisies. We have got used 
 to self-exposure and philosophic egoism since 
 then; Whitman's uniqueness is less extensive 
 and remarkable than it was. But he remains a 
 man peculiar and great, and, in spite of all his 
 efforts, a poet. The gold is scattered all over 
 that great heap of quartz, and a few poems or 
 sections of poems are gold all through. There 
 are Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, The 
 Two Veterans, When Lilacs First in the Door- 
 yard Bloomed, Beat, Beat Drums; a few more. 
 Any stanza of the Dirge might be quoted: 
 
 " Lo the moon ascending, up from the east 
 the silvery round moon beautiful over the house- 
 tops, ghastly, phantom moon, immense and 
 silent moon. 
 
 [201] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 " I see a sad procession, and I hear the sound 
 of coming full-key 'd bugles, all the channels of 
 the city streets they're flooding, as with voices 
 and with tears. 
 
 " I hear the great drums pounding, and the 
 small drums steady whirring, and every blow 
 of the great convulsive drums strikes me through 
 and through." 
 
 But two things must be remarked. One is 
 that when men quote Whitman or anthologise 
 extracts from him, it is from the same few 
 poems over and over again that they quote. And 
 the other is that these are all poems in which 
 Whitman fell (even when the verse is " free") 
 into poetic rhythms and sometimes even into tra- 
 ditional stanza forms. And they are poems 
 in which he did what all must do who success- 
 fully " carol " for comrades, lovers, or anybody 
 else; poems in which he v/rote from the heart, 
 localised the objects he was describing, and saw 
 them clearly, communicated emotion instead of 
 throwing a Dictionary and ten thousand Com- 
 mandments at the intellect, and achieved the 
 highest effects of art by the right use of 
 " words," and the total neglect of what he nor- 
 mally regarded as his " drift." 
 
 [202] 
 
ROHMER 
 
 A YEAR or two ago I drew, or attempted to 
 draw, attention to the peculiar qualities of Mr. 
 Sax Rohmer. Only in a casual and parentheti- 
 cal way, however, for I was ostensibly writing 
 about something else. A holiday, during which 
 my brain has required and received rest, has 
 brought me back to him. I unfortunately left 
 at home half -read — if this personal interpolation 
 may be pardoned — his latest work. I saw 
 enough of it to be relieved of my fear, engen- 
 dered by the last I had read (The Orchard of 
 Tears), that ISIr. Rohmer was going to desert 
 his natural province and attempt to emulate 
 Miss Corelli, an operation for which he is not 
 designed. But the advantage of liking a really 
 popular author like Mr. Rohmer is that one 
 can find his books, in cheap editions, on even 
 the most Philistine of railway bookstalls, where 
 Chesterton, Richard Jefferies, and even Dick- 
 ens are names at which the clerk gapes in be- 
 wilderment or boredom. I had therefore no dif- 
 ficulty, at various stopping-places, in furnishing 
 myself with the old familiar friends. The Mys- 
 
 [203] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 tery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, The Yellow Claw, 
 Tales of Secret Egypt, The Devil Doctor, and 
 The Si-Fan Mysteries. This last I am now 
 reading. How, I wonder again, can any man 
 with a taste for the nightmarish and phantas- 
 magorial, and the desire of an occasional escape 
 from the necessity of exerting his own intellect, 
 deny that Mr. Rohmer is as competent a mer- 
 chant of shocks as exists? 
 
 The Si-Fan Mysteries is good all through. 
 It even does what all good shockers do when 
 their villains are too good to waste, disposes of 
 its villain in such a manner that, although pre- 
 sumably dead, he may well turn up again — 
 like Sherlock Holmes. It begins in a London 
 hotel, where a diplomat, worn to a shadow by a 
 horrible secret, lies dying. It ends in a cave 
 of the sea with pursuers hot on the heels of pur- 
 sued, the lot frustrated, the last diabolical wea- 
 pon foiled. Between this beginning and this end 
 we have met the Man with the Limp and the 
 deadly Flower of Silence. We have spent agi- 
 tated hours in the Chinatown joy-shop, watched 
 burglaries and poisonings, chased cabs, and 
 heard strange knockings. We have learned the 
 secret of the Golden Pomegranates and waited 
 while Sir Baldwin Frazer operated, under com- 
 pulsion, on Fu-Manchu's brain. We have 
 [204] 
 
ROHMER 
 
 rushed from the empty little house by the Bald- 
 win, to the house at Wadsworth, the cafe in 
 Soho, the Room with a Golden Door, and the 
 dungeons of Greywater Park. No ingenuity, 
 no method of transport, and no adjective has 
 been spared. And if we notice, we notice with 
 gratitude and a compliment, that almost the 
 whole of the book's long action has been con- 
 ducted at night, or, failing night, in thick fog. 
 There are, to put it politely, distinct flaws in 
 Mr. Rohmer's style. His sentences are often 
 so spasmodic, his words so repetitive, that one 
 sometimes suspects him of dictation. In several 
 of his books, including The Si-Fan Mysteries, 
 there is a character named Nayland-Smith. His 
 status is odd: he appears to be a Burmese civil 
 servant who gets, whenever Mr. Rohmer wants 
 him, indefinite leave from some undefined au- 
 thority in order to tackle problems that are a 
 little abstruse for Scotland Yard. He is tall, 
 lean, long of jaw; he has a habit, on almost 
 every page, of either " loading " his pipe or 
 letting fall the match with which he is about to 
 light it. A careful artist would not repeat these 
 things so often as Mr. Rohmer does; even the 
 most patient reader is apt sometimes to wish 
 that, for once, Nayland-Smith would break the 
 monotony by employing, on the one hand, a 
 
 [205] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 cigar or a cigarette, or, on the other, a patent 
 lighter. Nay land- Smith's mode of expressing 
 himself is as little varied as his *' business with 
 hands and pipe." I extract a few specimens 
 from pp. 122-123 of The Si-Fan Mysteries: 
 
 " Take my hand," he snapped energetically. 
 " Sit tight and catch," rapped Smith. 
 "Come on, Weymouth!" rapped Nayland- 
 Smith. 
 
 " You don't have to," snapped Smith. 
 
 Very seldom indeed does Nayland-Smith say, 
 cry, continue, resume, observe, rejoin, remark, 
 reply, or interject. I find him occasionally mut- 
 tering or jerking, but the immense majority of 
 his sentences are either rapped or snapped. 
 This, quite apart from the fact that it might 
 well have put his companions off their game, 
 becomes so irritating that the reader would wel- 
 come anything, anything, for a change — even 
 the "he husked" and "he hoarsed " of Mr. 
 Leacock's celebrated burlesque. 
 
 Here are some of Mr. Rohmer's defects; I 
 suppose I had better add, though I personally 
 am corrupt enough to delight in them, the truly 
 terrible words that he invents. In one of his 
 books, all the well-known shuddery words hav- 
 ing been worn to rags, he finds it necessary, in 
 [206] 
 
ROHMER 
 
 order to get one more thrill out of the exhausted 
 nerves, to begin describing things as " bee- 
 tlesque." His shadows are " cloisteresque," his 
 music is " luresome," and the trackers on the 
 roof of the Cafe de I'Egypte look down on " the 
 teemful streets of Soho." But what of that? 
 Words are Mr. Kohmer's slaves, not his mas- 
 ters. He uses them as a great painter uses his 
 colours; he is bound by no conventions, but 
 thinks only of the effects at which he is aiming. 
 And he achieves them. There are many writers 
 of cheap shockers as reckless of English, as un- 
 trammelled by considerations of " verisimili- 
 tude," as resolved to get six thrills to the page, 
 as debonair in the constant use of old materials 
 which themselves or others have found satisfac- 
 tory, as Mr. Rohmer. We know elsewhere — 
 oh! how plentifully elsewhere — ^these mysterious 
 Chinese, these Oriental brass boxes, these opium 
 dens — shells, I should say — these wharves by the 
 foggy Thames, these police boats and floating 
 corpses, these palatial hotels (I should say khans 
 or caravanserais) with their suave managers, 
 these underground tunnels, these furtive serv- 
 ants, these rope-ladders and blow-pipes, these 
 rooms in the Temple, these boomings of Big 
 Ben at midnight. We know, how well, 
 that distraught girl in the rain with the black 
 
 [207] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 scarf over her head and that other hussy, 
 dark-eyed, with the voluptuous lips and the 
 snake bangle, who is " probably a Eurasian." 
 But when we meet them in Mr. Rohmer they 
 have an extra touch of vividness that they lack 
 elsewhere. It is he, and not his rivals, who has 
 left permanently impressed on my imagination 
 the picture of a man shamming sleep in an 
 opium den whilst the local siren, with death in 
 her hands, lifts his eyelids to test him; the pic- 
 ture of a bony yellow arm thrust into the moon- 
 light in a high room. And, to do him justice, 
 he has not left the shocker-maker's cabinet of 
 properties where he found it. The Chinese sci- 
 entific genius who kidnaps illustrious English 
 doctors, hypnotises them and makes them work 
 for the dominance of the Yellow Race is, I think, 
 a novel conception. The wholesale importation 
 of Oriental spiders, scorpions, and snakes into 
 an English baronet's premises has not, I believe, 
 been done before. And some of Dr. Fu-Man- 
 chu's scientific inventions are indisputably new, 
 notably that memorable cross between a fungus 
 and a microbe, used in that case where the fun- 
 gus fell like dust on the explorers and instan- 
 taneously began to spread cankerously over all 
 their flesh. I could give others, only one should 
 not queer the pitch. But I have said enough, I 
 [208] 
 
ROHMER 
 
 hope, to indicate that Mr. Rohmer — though his 
 morals are uniformly as sound as those of all 
 melodramatists — has as vivid and unwholesome 
 an imagination, as fecund a spring of morbid 
 invention, as any writer in the cheap series or 
 out of them. Of course, if one examines his 
 plots and his machinery with the cold eye of a 
 scientific investigator one will very probably 
 arrive at the conclusion that all would not have 
 happened just as he says it does, that his char- 
 acters would not in all cases have behaved as 
 he makes them, and, particularly, that the idio- 
 cies committed in these, as in all mystery books, 
 by the paladins fighting on the side of the 
 angels, in order to give the villains a good run, 
 might in most cases have been avoided. But 
 readers who examine the art of the fabulist in 
 this manner should avoid Mr. Rohmer. He is 
 not for the pedant. He is for those who can 
 fall under his spell sufficiently to believe what- 
 ever he says. Of that company I am one. 
 
 The book is open before me. The last sen- 
 tences on the page catch my eye. The trapdoor 
 is softly closed. The men stand over the panes 
 of the skylight: 
 
 " Look," he said, " there is the house of 
 hashish " — 
 
 I shall stop writing this, and go on from there. 
 
 [209] 
 
POPE 
 
 In a Leslie Stephen lecture published by the 
 Cambridge University Press, Mr. J. W. Mac- 
 kail attempts and gives a fresh survey of the 
 problem of Pope. It was time someone did. 
 The reaction still lasts, and there is still current 
 the view of Pope as a poet of the reign of Queen 
 Anne whose demise was almost as final as his 
 sovereign's, a spiteful little man of some wit, 
 who wrote interminable, maddeningly monoto- 
 nous couplets, which, when they were not about 
 Grub Street, were concerned with nymphs, 
 swains, groves, the finny tribe, and the con- 
 scious main. A widespread view; not, of course, 
 the view of any man at aU familiar with Pope. 
 But even those who have read him do not com- 
 monly do justice to his native powers or recog- 
 nise the elements in him of a quite other kind 
 of poet — a poet of large imagination, alive to 
 natural beauty and the mystery of life. 
 
 Mr. Mackail's lecture would be serviceable 
 did it do no more than call attention to Pope's 
 earlier works, and to the fact that it was by 
 [210] 
 
f POPE 
 
 those that his best contemporaries thought that 
 he would live. Those later works with which 
 Pope's name is now chiefly associated contain 
 stray passages noble in conception, in diction, 
 in march ; the end of the Dunciad testifies to the 
 eye that saw and the hand that executed, years 
 earlier, that vision of the happy solitary who 
 
 Bids his free soul expatiate in the skies. 
 Amid her kindred stars familiar roam. 
 Survey the region, and confess her home. 
 
 Frequently in the Homer, and sometimes later, 
 we have instances of his accurate observation 
 and most felicitous translation of natural ob- 
 jects; the couplet 
 
 Lo where Maeotis sleeps, and hardly flows 
 The freezing Tanais through a waste of snows 
 
 was Pope's own favourite, which shows that his 
 judgment remained sound to the last. But in 
 those early works, which are now so often ig- 
 nored, but on which, we should not forget, his 
 contemporary fame was chiefly based, beauty is 
 frequent, and " the singing voice." 
 
 Mr. Mackail quotes " Wher'er you walk," a 
 quatrain unsurpassable for delicate grace. But 
 !he might have taken his quotations from almost 
 anywhere in Windsor Forest, the Pastorals, or 
 
 [211] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 The Rape of the Lock. His quatrain can al- 
 most be equalled from the third Pastoral: 
 
 Oft on the rind I carved her amorous vows. 
 While she with garlands hung the bending boughs : 
 The garlands fade, the vows are worn away, 
 So dies her love, and so my hopes decay, 
 
 and both Windsor Forest and the Pastorals are 
 full of examples of his feeling for a certain kind 
 of landscape and his art in conveying it. All 
 the Forest passages about hunting, fishing, trees 
 and birds might be quoted. This is character- 
 istic in subject, though the double " while " is 
 weak and those oxen are lifted from Comus: 
 
 Here where the mountains, lessening as they rise. 
 Lose the low vales, and steal into the skies: 
 While labouring oxen, spent with toil and heat. 
 In their loose traces from the field retreat. 
 While circling smokes from village-tops are seen 
 And the fleet shades glide o'er the dusky green. 
 
 Mr. Mackail suggests that he has been disliked \ 
 for using the diction of his own age, and not 
 that of another age. There is something in this, 
 but it is also true, not only that he did the best 
 things best, but that when he is at his finest his 
 diction is least peculiarly of his own time. 
 
 Pope began with a great, not the greatest, 
 
 equipment. In spite of his occasional grandeurs 
 
 it is likely that, had he matured as he began, he 
 
 would have become at all events one of the 
 
 [212] 
 
POPE 
 
 greatest of pastoral poets, a poet covering in 
 his landscape the range from Claude to Wat- 
 teau, seldom far from Dresden in his figures, 
 and making music akin to that of the French 
 and Venetian composers of his century. But he 
 did not mature. It was not, as has been sup- 
 posed, that he either was or became entirely a 
 man with tastes and no feelings, artificial and 
 urban. He did not lose the sense which made 
 him write of a character : 
 
 Tired of the scene parterres and fountains yield. 
 He finds at last he better likes a field. 
 
 But his interests did shift, and his sensibilities 
 did become atrophied; he turned his back on 
 beauty; his music became rarer. Concurrently 
 his versification hardened. The drying up of 
 the singing impulse left his verse rigid; all his 
 art and critical sense could not supply that flow 
 and sway into which emotion would have car- 
 ried his verse automatically. His passion had 
 never been strong; the couplet, with him, would 
 always have been a dangerous instrument; but 
 when his subjects ceased to move him there was 
 nothing to prevent his fondness for neatness 
 getting the better of him. A man can never be 
 too careful about accuracy of phrasing; and all 
 good poets correct. But correction became a 
 
 [213] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 mania with Pope, and it was correction mis- 
 placed. He trimmed until almost every couplet 
 looked like almost every other couplet. He 
 spoke of 
 
 that unwearied mill 
 That burn'd ten thousand verses 
 
 with more truth than he knew. It was then 
 that he was making poetry that " mere mechanic 
 art " against which Cowper and Keats revolted. 
 The couplet got hold of him, the Muse let him 
 go, and he developed vices which a thousand 
 slavish imitators copied. 
 
 The Muse let him go. Mr. Mackail gives 
 several reasons why Pope did not become a very 
 great poet. He refers to the unlyrical quality 
 of his age, the cramping effect of " his method 
 of distillation and concentration," and his " low 
 vitality "; but he gets nearest to the fundamen- 
 tal thing when he speaks of his " artificially lim- 
 ited scope of interest," matter reacting on style. 
 Temperament was at the bottom of his failure 
 to fulfil his promise. He brought himself into 
 a state of mind unfavourable to the highest kind 
 of production. There is a phrase in one of the 
 epistles : 
 
 at night 
 Fools rush into my head and so I write. 
 [214] 
 
POPE 
 
 The consummate cleverness of his satire could 
 never be disputed. It may be argued that he 
 sometimes polished and heightened his invective 
 too much. But as a rule he seizes weaknesses 
 with an infallible malice, and crystallises them 
 into perfect phraseology. Everybody knows the 
 marvellous passage about Addison, the " damn 
 with faint praise " passage ; probably no poet 
 in any language has strung together so compact, 
 so pregnant, so witty a series of epigrams. All 
 his satirical works are thick strewn with exam- 
 ples of that power of saying an acid thing with 
 the utmost possible compression. They are 
 plentiful in the Epistle to Arhuthnot, an exam- 
 ple being his tribute to small critics who write 
 about great authors : 
 
 Even such small critics some regard may claim. 
 Preserved in Milton's or in Shakespeare's name. 
 Pretty ! in amber to observe the forms 
 Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms ! 
 The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare. 
 But wonder how the devil they got there. 
 
 What ease there is in such couplets from the 
 Dunciad as: 
 
 While pensive poets painful vigils keep. 
 Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep, 
 
 and the demolishing lines on Settle, the City 
 poet, who celebrates a civic pageant: 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Now night descending, the proud scene was o'er, 
 But lived, in Settle's numbers, one day more. 
 
 But marvellous though his satire was, it was 
 the symptom of a disease. " Fools rush into 
 my head." That became his condition. He 
 turned away from the great themes, he lost the 
 habit, if never entirely the capacity, of contem- 
 plating and responding to the sublime and the 
 lovely in nature and the heart of man. Lacking 
 that " fierce indignation " which Swift professed 
 and often felt, he spent his days and nights 
 thinking splenetically of people who had of- 
 fended him and people whose only offence was 
 that they had no brains. He came to wear a 
 permanent sneer; he developed a preference for 
 saying a biting rather than a beautiful thing; 
 he chose to be satirical, and he became, though 
 to the last he was liable to make an exquisite 
 phrase or to glide briefly into sublimity, a satir- 
 ist pure and simple. If a man constantly prac- 
 tises satire, that is bound to be his fate; he may 
 have many moods, but if the satirical mood be- 
 comes a habit of mind he is, as a poet, done for, 
 for poetry is the fruit of love, sympathy, humil- 
 ity, and awe, which are no qualities for a witty 
 scourger of fools. 
 
 [216] 
 
GOD SAVE THE KING 
 
 The controversy about the National Anthem 
 has broken out once more. Everybody admits 
 that the words of the existing anthem — its Ger- 
 man tune has a certain massive dignity when 
 sung by a large crowd — are weak. Even in the 
 first verse: 
 
 Send him victorious, 
 Happy and glorious 
 Long to reign over us 
 
 would appear extremely crude to us were it not 
 hallowed by long usage. Mrs. Browning her- 
 self never perpetrated a worse rhyme. And as 
 for the rest, where it is not clumsy it is, to mod- 
 ern sensibilities, offensive. People point out 
 that when we are at peace with the world it is 
 wantonly brutal for us to sing — in the most 
 solemn and feeling way, too — those lines which 
 are the most direct and vigorous of the lot : 
 
 Confound their politics. 
 Frustrate their knavish tricks, 
 
 whilst, session by session, the King announces 
 from the throne " my relations with foreign 
 
 [217] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Powers continue to be friendly." The thing 
 should be rewritten, we are told ; we should have 
 a more competently written poem as our An- 
 them, and one that should embody, not the pas- 
 sions of 1719, but the loftiest aspirations of 1919. 
 From time to time, therefore, new versions ap- 
 pear. The latest was sung the other day " under 
 official auspices." The author of the new verses 
 kept his "name dark, and when he heard what 
 people said about them he must have congratu- 
 lated himself upon his reticence. 
 
 Certainly his effort was very feeble. But I 
 do not think those newspaper critics who de- 
 mand that the Poet Laureate, or Mr. Kipling, 
 or Mr. Smith should produce us a fine new 
 anthem quite understand the difficulty of the 
 task. We may waive the general difficulty of 
 doing things to order, and admit that a great 
 many people have written, deliberately and in 
 response to a demand, ceremonial verses per- 
 fectly adapted to their purpose. But any Na- 
 tional Anthem must be a pecuhar thing, and our 
 own presents special difficulties, which we will 
 come to later. 
 
 The first thing to be observed is that your 
 words must be singable, and the second is that 
 they must be capable of being understood by, 
 and sympathetically sung by, the whole popu- 
 
 [218] 
 
GOD SAVE THE KING 
 
 lation. The author is not to express his purely 
 personal sentiments, nor the feelings or concep- 
 tions of any particular class, defined by locality, 
 political views, or education. He may (to take 
 extreme illustrations) wish that God should con- 
 vert the King to Judaism, or that the King 
 should make war upon the Japanese; but these 
 are not amongst the common and abiding de- 
 sires of the generality of Englishmen. He may, 
 when he looks for what is central in the Eng- 
 land that he loves, think of Chaucer and Shake- 
 speare, of Milton's Areopagitica, of Magdalen 
 Tower, the oaks of Sussex, or village churches 
 at evening with rooks flying about their elms. 
 But he cannot mention them; the personal, or 
 sectional, quality in imagination or taste must be 
 avoided; and, by the same token, all words not 
 in common use, all images that to a labourer 
 would seem recondite, and even all metrical de- 
 vices that would puzzle the simple. He is to 
 find the Greatest Common Measure of the 
 poetical; and, by the time he has found it along 
 his line of search there will probably be very 
 little poetry left. The sentiments of a National 
 Anthem must be sentiments understood and 
 shared by at least a majority of the English- 
 speaking inhabitants of the empire; they must 
 be above dispute, except by cranks, they must 
 
 [219] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 be as comprehensive as possible, and they must 
 focus as great a portion as possible of the emo- 
 tions and thoughts that all patriotic men have 
 about the empire, its merits, and its functions 
 in the world. 
 
 So there is no chance for the specific or the 
 picturesque. Many men have failed with the 
 National Anthem by trying to give it a beauty 
 of detail which it literally is not capable of bear- 
 ing. Possibly the most skilfully written of all 
 new versions was that of the late James Elroy 
 Flecker. His second verse ran: 
 
 Thou in his suppliant hands 
 Hast placed such Mighty Lands : 
 
 Save thou our King! 
 As once from golden Skies 
 Rebels with flaming eyes. 
 So the King's Enemies 
 
 Doom thou and fling. 
 
 And in the later verses he cast his thought on 
 the 
 
 Few dear miles 
 Of sweetly-meadowed Isles, 
 
 celebrating the loveliness of each kingdom. That 
 his version is, as a poem to be read or spoken, 
 immeasurably superior to the old version a child 
 could see. Yet the better it is the worse it is. 
 
 [220] 
 
GOD SAVE THE KING 
 
 Those subtle effects, those chosen epithets, those 
 efforts of the imagination, are, in a popular an- 
 them for singing, all wrong. They would hold 
 the singer up; his attention would be detained 
 by single words; and, beyond all this, he would 
 
 ; certainly be too sheepish and self-conscious to 
 sing such words. A large congregation could 
 only sing this version when men had got so accli- 
 matised to it that they never thought of its 
 meaning. In the ideal anthem, to be sung nat- 
 
 j urally by all men, the poet must put common- 
 places in a manner which will be simple and 
 clear without being too banal. 
 
 Here is a task difficult enough, whatever the 
 metre and whatever the time. But he who 
 would compose new verses to God Save the King 
 has a heavier handicap still. His words must 
 not merely be singable, but they must be sing- 
 able to that loud tune, with its series of hard 
 thumps with a trip at the end of each. And they 
 must be written in a very constricting metre. 
 The end of the line is problem enough. It al- 
 most compels the use of misplaced stresses. But 
 the beginning is a fetter. Each line must start 
 with an emphatic word. It would be prepos- 
 terous to come down with such a whack upon 
 " And," or indeed any conjunctive or unimpor- 
 tant syllable; and the result of this is that each 
 
 [221] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 line must almost necessarily be a complete phrase 
 without run over. 
 
 The difficulties and the perils being such, 
 failure being so easy and success so unlikely, the 
 wonder is that anybody but an innocent or 
 a vainglorious simpleton should be courageous 
 enough to try his hand at the reformation of our 
 Anthem. But such is the attraction of the diffi- 
 cult, such the force of patriotism, and so pow- 
 erful the dislike of the existing Anthem, that 
 even the most sensitive and fastidious artists i 
 are tempted by the problem. I recently spent 
 some days with two who had settled down to it 
 with the determination not to stop until they 
 had produced something satisfactory. Either 
 of them could write finely of patriotism; both, 
 in fact, have done so ; but not all their love of | 
 England and enlightened ideals seemed to be I 
 availing them here, and their delicate ears 
 seemed to be rather an impediment than other- 
 wise with that ruthless tune dragging their sylla- 
 bles after it. If they produce good and inter- 
 esting poems, as they will end by doing, their 
 next step will be to knock out all the original 
 lines and substitute trite ones, to replace most 
 of their concrete words by abstract ones (thus 
 reversing the usual rule), and to substitute for 
 all epithets which have flavour adjectives look- 
 [222] I 
 
GOD SAVE THE KING 
 
 ing quite ordinary. When, finally, they have 
 achieved anthems which are acceptable as to sen- 
 timents, mention all the agreed and large things, 
 amit all else, and can be spoken with as little 
 attention to the particular words as one gives 
 when one says " Pass the butter," they will 
 probably find it difficult to distinguish the re- 
 sults of their labours from the dull effusions of 
 the many poetasters who have essayed the same 
 task. They will look a little atrabiliously at 
 those strings of vapid observations about the 
 wide Empire (or "Empire wide" — to scan). 
 Truth, Justice, Liberty, Freedom, Union, Love, 
 and Peace, punctuated by those periodic God 
 Saves, they will ask themselves whether it was 
 for this that Heaven gave them brains and the 
 gift of Poetry, and they will ultimately — though 
 people do stumble on miracles — think it best to 
 destroy, or at least to conceal, the proofs of 
 their failure to perform the impossible and their 
 lamentable success in producing the bad. 
 
 [223] 
 
MIDSHIPMAN EASY 
 
 It was hot weather. I had intended to read a 
 book about education. But the sun withered 
 up my incHnation, and casting about for some- 1' 
 thing which I should certainly be able to enjoy, 
 and which would not demand from me an intel- 
 lectual effort to which I felt unequal, I bor- 
 rowed a copy of Midshipman Easy, which I had 
 read many times, but not for years past. I 
 found it better than ever, and could not help 
 wondering how it is that Marryat is so often 
 treated as no more than a slightly superior 
 Henty, who concocted " adventure stories " for 
 boys and was an effective recruiting agent for 
 the Royal Navy. 
 
 If there is in the English language a book of 
 the adventurous kind more full of exciting fights 
 and escapes, freer from dull pages, more diversi- 
 fied, more amusing, and, I may add, better writ- 
 ten, I do not know it. It may certainly be 
 argued that the adventures are very crowded, 
 that luck unduly favours the hero, and that the 
 good characters are exceptionally good; but it 
 [224! 
 
MIDSHIPMAN EASY 
 
 is as realistic as a book of the sort could be, and 
 if nothing is to happen in novels that could not 
 happen in normal life, we should have a tedious 
 time of it. The characters are slight, and some 
 of them are caricatures ; but that is bound to be 
 so if incident is what a writer is mainly con- 
 cerned with, and Marryat seems to me to give 
 as good pictures of his people as is conformable 
 with the nature, pace, and rapid change of his 
 story. As an inventor of good incident not even 
 the Stevenson of Treasure Island, not even, I 
 think, Dumas, could beat him at his best. And 
 in Midshipman Easy he was at his best all the 
 time. 
 
 Think of the succession of episodes we have 
 been through before we have come to the end; 
 Jack's early escapades, his encounter with Mr. 
 Bonnycastle, his first burst at the Blue Posts, his 
 battles with Vigors, his three-cornered duel with 
 the bo'sun and the swell mobsman, some of the 
 finest little sea-fights in literature; the "Duty 
 before Decency " incident, the cruise with the 
 mutineers who were cowed by ground-sharks, 
 the rescue of the three ladies and the hoisting of 
 the green petticoat (the emblem of equality), 
 the fight with the padrone and his men in the 
 speronare, the heroic siege in Sicily when the 
 galley slaves battered their way from floor to 
 
 [225] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 floor — there are all these and a hundred minor 
 excitements which were all a part of the day's 
 work; and thrown in are the history of Mesty — 
 Mephistopheles Faust, the Ashantee chief — and 
 the blood-curdling story of Don Rebeira. Hun- 
 dreds of characters of several nations have 
 crossed the scene, and glimpses have been given 
 of half the Mediterranean, and the whole per- 
 formance has been accomplished unerringly. No 
 discursion or discussion is ever kept up a minute 
 too long to keep the reader's attention, and the 
 actual writing is so good that it is difficult to 
 understand that it does not receive more notice. 
 I will quote the very first paragraph of the 
 book: 
 
 " Mr. Nicodemus Easy was a gentleman who 
 lived down in Hampshire; he was a married 
 man and in very easy circumstances. Most 
 couples find it very easy to have a family, but 
 not always quite so easy to maintain them. Mr. 
 Easy was not at all uneasy on the latter score, 
 as he had no children; but he was anxious to 
 have them, as most people covet what they can- 
 not obtain. After ten years, Mr. Easy gave it 
 up as a bad job. Philosophy is said to console a 
 man under disappointment, although Shake- 
 speare asserts that it is no remedy for tooth- 
 [226] 
 
MIDSHIPMAN EASY 
 
 ache; so Mr. Easy turned philosopher, the very- 
 best profession a man can take up, when he is 
 fit for nothing else ; he must be a very incapable 
 person indeed who cannot talk nonsense. For 
 some time Mr. Easy could not decide upon what 
 description his nonsense should consist of; at 
 last he fixed upon the rights of man, equality, 
 and all that; how every person was born to in- 
 herit his share of the earth, a right at present 
 only admitted to a certain length ; that is, about 
 six feet, for we all inherit our graves, and are 
 allowed to take possession without dispute. But 
 no one would listen to Mr. Easy's philosophy. 
 The women would not acknowledge the rights of 
 men, whom they declared always to be in the 
 wrong; and, as the gentlemen who visited Mr. 
 Easy were all men of property, they could not 
 perceive the advantage of sharing with those 
 who had none. However, they allowed him to 
 discuss the question, while they discussed his 
 port. The wine was good, if the arguments 
 were not, and we must take things as we find 
 them in this world." 
 
 Could there be a brisker opening, a livelier, 
 cleaner narrative style? The whole chapter is 
 a model; the concluding paragraph as terse, 
 businesslike, and sufficient as could be: 
 
 [227] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 " In due course of time, Mrs. Easy presented 
 her husband with a fine boy, whom we present 
 to the public as our hero." 
 
 The epigrammatic economy of the style is pre- 
 served throughout the book. There is no strain- 
 ing after phrases. Marryat scatters freely little 
 mots like, " A man who is able and willing to 
 pay a large tavern bill will always find follow- 
 ers — that is to the tavern " ; but these always 
 arise directly out of the narrative — are never 
 (as it were) stuck on. There is none of that 
 terrible sermonising which adds immeasurably 
 to the tedium of Henty and W. H. G. Kings- 
 ton, and is, no doubt, supposed to be " good for 
 boys." Marryat closes his discussions like this: 
 " Here an argument ensued upon love, which we 
 we shall not trouble the reader with, as it was 
 not very profound, both sides knowing very 
 little on the subject." But we can stand more 
 talk from Marryat's heroes than from those of 
 any writer of mere " books for boys." For in- 
 stance, Jack's philosophisings about the rights 
 of man, the ratiocinations by which he consoles 
 himself in the most uncomfortable predicaments 
 are done with delicious lightness. A typical ex- 
 ample comes early, when, after practising his 
 father's equality notions at the expense of the 
 [228] 
 
MIDSHIPMAN EASY 
 
 farmer's apples, he tumbles down the well, and, 
 at the bottom, soliloquises: 
 
 " ' At all events,' thought Jack, ' if it had 
 not been for the bull, I should have been 
 watched by the dog, and then thrashed by the 
 farmer; but then again, if it had not been for 
 the bull, I should not have tumbled among the 
 bees, and if it had not been for the bees, I should 
 not have tumbled into the well ; and if it had not 
 been for the chain, I should have been drowned. 
 Such has been the chain of events, all because 
 I wanted to eat an apple. 
 
 " * However, I have got rid of the farmer, 
 and the dog, and the bull, and the bees — all's 
 well that ends well; but how the devil am I to 
 get out of the well? All creation appear to have 
 conspired against the rights of man. As my 
 father said, this is an iron age, and here I am 
 swinging to an iron chain.' " 
 
 Where has that method been seen since? There 
 is something of it in Peacock. But where had 
 it been seen before? The answer is obvious to 
 anyone who is familiar with the novels of Vol- 
 taire. I am not sufficiently acquainted with the 
 biography of Marryat to know if there is evi- 
 dence that he had read Voltaire. But his mode 
 
 [229] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 of narration is most obviously derived from Vol- 
 taire, and the relations between Eiasy pere and 
 Jack were, I should say, almost unquestionably 
 suggested by those between Dr. Pangloss and 
 Candide. It is a far cry from the subversive 
 sceptic of Ferney to the English post captain; 
 but stranger connections have been estab- 
 lished. 
 
 Marryat is unduly neglected. Midshipman 
 Easy is beyond doubt his masterpiece ; but Peter 
 Simple runs it very hard. These and Poor Jack 
 and the Pirate and the Three Cutters certainly 
 seem to me as works of art, as stories, and as 
 pictures of life, fully equal to the novels of 
 Smollett, even when one remembers Humphry 
 Clinker. Yet Peregrine Pickle and Roderick 
 Random, little though they may be read, are 
 treated as classics in all text-books, whilst Mar- 
 ryat usually has to be contented with a para- 
 graph or a mere " mention " in a list. Is it be- 
 cause his books interest boys and are therefore 
 supposed to be fit for no one else? Perhaps he 
 would be taken a little more seriously in this 
 age of propaganda if the fact were recalled that 
 he consciously (though not excessively) worked 
 with a purpose. He desired not only to write 
 amusing and exciting books, but to expose the 
 brutalities and injustices of the Old Navy; and, 
 [230] 
 
MIDSHIPMAN EASY 
 
 just as the effects of Mr. Galsworthy's Justice 
 were, by ministerial admission, immediately evi- 
 dent in prison legislation, so Marryat's The, 
 King's Own led to changes in naval administra- 
 tion, as the Admiralty frankly acknowledged. 
 
 [231] 
 
JANE CAVE 
 
 I WAS rummaging on a bookstall. I opened 
 a book in faded boards and was struck by a 
 remarkable frontispiece plate. It represented 
 an eighteenth-century lady seated before a large 
 volume and holding a quill pen in an impossibly 
 placed hand. Her hair was elaborately dressed ; 
 on her shoulders she wore a lace wrap, on her 
 head something like a beribboned lamp-shade, 
 and on her face a seraphically complacent smile. 
 The title-page was inscribed: "Poems on Vari- 
 ous Subjects, Entertaining, Elegiac, and Re- 
 ligious. By Jane Cave. Winchester: Printed 
 for the Author by J. Sadler, 1783." This was 
 enough. I bought the book and found it 
 remarkable. 
 
 Internal evidence suggests that this Miss Cave 
 was a Methodist of Welsh extraction, that she 
 held some superior household post, and that she 
 was freely admitted to the society of her em- 
 ployers and their friends, though she " never 
 forgot the deference due " to those " in a sta- 
 tion above her." " Soft affluence," she ex- 
 [232] 
 
JANE CAVE 
 
 plains (in a poem to an unkind lady who 
 doubted if she composed the poems to which 
 her name was attached), had not been her lot. 
 But the Muse, 
 
 tho' she is a guest majesUc 
 May deign to dwell in a domestic. 
 
 Nevertheless, she explains elsewhere, she works 
 under difficulties. No sooner has she felt in- 
 spiration than Duty intervenes: 
 
 Now Duty's call I never must refuse, 
 
 I rise — and with a blush myself excuse. 
 
 She lived, like Jane Austen, in a small world; 
 but, in spite of all impediments, she got enough 
 out of that world to show her quality. 
 
 Her amorous and narrative poems are slightly 
 disappointing. She employs the sham Latin 
 names then in vogue; a betraj^ed maiden is 
 " Credulia " and her betrayer " Perfidio." These 
 poems are mostly banal; it is when she is writ- 
 ing of actual events and experiences that she 
 becomes truly herself. A young soldier marries 
 a young woman. 
 
 Who proof remains 'gainst cannon balls and fire. 
 May by one glance from Sylvia's eyes expire. 
 
 Here she addresses the man; in another epi- 
 thalamium she hails the lady who (this is the 
 final crashing couplet) will never regret: 
 
 [233] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 That you declin'd the pleasing name of B — m 
 And that alone preferr'd of H — rag — m: 
 
 The blanks appear in the original; she little 
 knew when she wrote that 130 years afterwards 
 a man would spend half a morning trying, and 
 failing, to complete the surnames which made, 
 by so remarkable a coincidence, that useful 
 rhyme. She was very adaptable. She wrote 
 for one person a rebuke to a surly housemaid; 
 for another a poem on Castles. It is a fine 
 performance, but put in the shade by her long 
 metrical account of an excursion to a Ducal 
 Seat at Itchen. " The morn did a bad day 
 portend," but it cleared up. They had lunch, 
 and then started for the mansion, where they 
 experienced all the proper emotions: 
 
 A while we after dinner sat. 
 
 Engaged in inoffensive chat, 
 
 Then arm in arm, in pairs we stalk. 
 
 And to his Grace's mansion walk. 
 
 Here, each apartment we behold. 
 
 Doth something of the Duke unfold. 
 
 Magnificence decks ev'ry place. 
 
 And speaks the owner is his Grace. 
 
 Some ancient portraits caught my eye. 
 
 Which bid my bosom heave a sigh. 
 
 For ah ! those once lov'd forms with reptiles lie. 
 
 What a synonym! 
 
 Miss Cave was versatile. She wrote a poem 
 on seeing Lady P. at church, where she was 
 [234] 
 
JANE CAVE 
 
 agreeably surprised to find that (in spite of 
 her rank) Lady P. did not laugh or chatter; 
 she wrote another, " On Hearing Prophane 
 Cursing and Swearing." But death was her 
 favourite subject. The elegiac note is all- 
 pervading, especially in a lament for a gardener 
 who had left his favourite sphere for a better 
 world, Miss Cave having the thankless task of 
 catechising his plants as to his whereabouts: 
 
 Hot-house or greenhouse, next I aske of you 
 But ye unwilling are to tell me too. 
 Of ev'ry plant, and tree, and flower I ask. 
 But none will undertake the painful task. 
 
 This is odd enough, but I doubt if there exists 
 in the language so strange a series of elegies 
 and epitaphs as Miss Cave groups together at 
 the end of her volume. Some of them have 
 lay subjects. There was a bereaved mother 
 to whom each sympathetic herb and plant ad- 
 dressed consolation: 
 
 Prepare, she cries — prepare to meet the blest, 
 And join your Sally in eternal rest. 
 
 But clergymen were her peculiar forte. White- 
 field was the most notable of her subjects; 
 the rest were obscure clerics who, unfortunately, 
 all had names that were incongruous with high- 
 flown surroundings. There was one, the Rev. 
 Howel Harris: 
 
 [235] 
 
 K 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Advanc'd beyond their frowns, beyond their praise, 
 Harris with Angels tunes his grateful lays. 
 He sits with all those radiant hosts above. 
 And swims in seas of pure celestial love. 
 
 He certainly deserved his promotion; his feat? 
 on earth are celebrated with unconscious blas- 
 phemy when Miss Cave hopes: j 
 
 That God from aye, to aye, may carry on i 
 
 Th' amazing work which Harris hath begun. I 
 
 A fellow-subject, or victim, was the Reverend 
 Mr. Watkins. On earth he left a gap. All 
 
 With whom he did in Christian union meet 
 The death of Watkins greatly must regret. 
 
 On the other hand: 
 
 Hark! how the Heavenly choir began to sing 
 A song of praise, when Watkins entered in. 
 
 I wonder what was the motive of the man who 
 suggested that so solemn a poetess and precise 
 a morahst should tackle (as she once did) the 
 subject of Love and Wine, Venus and Bacchus? 
 I don't think that " P. G., Esq., of Winchester," 
 to whom is attributed the suggestion, can have 
 been entirely serious. I see Miss Cave as a 
 person, vain as Mr. Collins and voluble as Miss 
 Bates, apt to go into a huff, very conscious of 
 her own acquirements, in spite of her large as- 
 
 [236] 
 
JANE CAVE 
 
 sumption of modesty. " P. G., Esq." was tired 
 of her presence and her tongue, I think; and 
 when she coyly asked him what he would like 
 her to write about, he named that most unsuit- 
 able of themes, and she — unaware of the twitch- 
 ing on his lips — at once attempted it. 
 
 Whoever and whatever she was she was cer- 
 tainly a nailer. Her book is badly produced, 
 the pages go in and out, so that one is always 
 turning over several at a time. It is obvious 
 that she feared this when she was reading 
 her proofs. It made her angry, and on the 
 '' Errata " page appears the following " Adver- 
 tisement ": 
 
 " Whereas the Printer of this work did en- 
 gage with the Author that it should be printed 
 and completely finished in an elegant, masterly 
 manner, on a new type and good paper, all 
 the same sort, size, and colour. Therefore, if 
 jpon inspection it is found not answerable to 
 che above engagement, the Printer has violated 
 lis agreement, deceived and disappointed the 
 Author, and is wholly accountable for the 
 iefect." 
 
 [t must have been a very strong-minded woman 
 .vho was able to compel her publisher to eat 
 
 [237] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 dirt in public like this. But she must have had! 
 her consolations. Her list of subscribers in- 
 cludes about two thousand names, and even at 
 that several hundred names arrived too late for 
 insertion. She groups them by towns: there are 
 hundreds from Oxford, Salisbury, and Win- 
 chester, and little contingents from Cowes, Gos- 
 port, Fareham, Newbury, and other places. 
 The " travelling " of the book must have been 
 scientifically managed ; never in history, I should 
 think, have so many copies of so utterly feeble 
 a book been sold in advance. And now nobody 
 knows it! 
 
 [238] 
 
GALLERIES 
 
 Mr. Joseph Duveen has presented the na- 
 ;ion with a sum of money to build a Gallery 
 )f Modern Foreign Art. It is certainly needed. 
 The neglect of modern foreign art — especially 
 French and Dutch art — has not been complete 
 n this country; British collectors were early 
 :o appreciate the Barbizon school, and in the 
 last fifteen years there has certainly been enough 
 ivriting and exhibiting to famiharise the public 
 ivith the nature of almost everything that has 
 been done in Europe in our time. But, owing 
 to lack of money, or conservatism, or timidity, 
 3r all of these, it is just to say that for our 
 National Gallery modern painting does not 
 exist. One or two donors have presented us 
 with a few pictures by Corot, Daubigny, Diaz, 
 and the Marises; Courbet may be found at 
 South Kensington and a few provincial gal- 
 leries have gone a little farther. But it is 
 nobody's business to watch what is being done 
 and to see — to put it crudely — that we get in 
 early and cheap. As things stand there are 
 
 [239] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 masters, recognised as such by competent per 
 sons in every country, who are quite unrepre-ii 
 sented in the national collections, and of whom, 
 if things went on as they are, we should, fifty 
 years hence, be buying inferior examples at 
 prodigious prices. We need not have been 
 quite so badly off as we are. If Dr. Bode was 
 able — as he was — to acquire pictures by Cezanne 
 and hang them at Berlin (Cezanne and his con 
 temporaries are also to be seen at ISIunich), and 
 if the Rejks Museum at Amsterdam found van 
 Gogh worthy of a room to himself, it is clear 
 that the care of a collection of old masters, and 
 the liking for them, does not necessarily pre 
 elude a judgment upon and taste for what hasi 
 been done quite recently. But our National] 
 Gallery has laboured under obvious difficulties, 
 and a new gallery and separate control is the 
 obvious solution. There will be little difficulty 
 in starting such a collection. France, Belgium, 
 and Holland will provide the obvious basis, 
 Corot and his contemporaries, the Marises, 
 Mauve, probably Israels and Bosboom. The 
 more venerable critics will be shocked when (as 
 they wiU have to) Gaugin and Cezanne get 
 in ; but they will scarcely lift their voices against 
 Renoir and Degas — who, if I remember rightly, 
 are still totally unrepresented in London 
 [240] 
 
GALLERIES 
 
 There are dozens of other Frenchmen of all 
 sizes from Manet to Boudin and Cazin. Spain, 
 Sweden, and, if we are really enterprising, 
 Russia, wull provide something. It will not be 
 necessary to buy anything German. Since 
 Diii'er and Altdorfer it can only be supposed 
 that German painters have written music. Len- 
 bach was a good academic portrait painter; 
 Menzel (whom they attempted to pass oif as a 
 great master), a skilful, if dull, illustrator; the 
 colour of the romantic Bocklin has to be seen 
 to be believed; and the best of the living Ger- 
 mans would not be conspicuous in our current 
 art shows. We must be grateful for the new 
 gallery; but I should like to add a few qualify- 
 ing remarks. 
 
 To illustrate the limitations of these huge 
 public collections a parallel from literature may 
 be drawn. They are like anthologies. The 
 National Gallery resembles one of those works 
 which give in five or ten volumes representative 
 selections from the world's Greatest Masters, 
 specimens drawn from all countries and periods. 
 The Tate Gallery is like an anthology of nine- 
 teenth century literature; the new Duveen Gal- 
 lery will be like a volume of selections from 
 -nodern foreign writers. Picture galleries have 
 iisadvantages peculiar to themselves, of course. 
 
 [241] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 If they are overcrowded with pictures, one can- 
 not escape the clash and confusion by " open- 
 ing " a wall at one place and then shutting it 
 up again; if they are overcrowded with people! 
 concentration is difficult. And in the ordinary! 
 way, so much trouble and time are involved 
 in reaching them, that the visitor, not knowing 
 when he will be there again, is faced with the 
 necessity of either rushing through them oil 
 getting tired limbs and a crick in the neck. Buij 
 their principal defect as an element in " artistic 
 education " is inseparable from their principal 
 merit; they cover too much ground and they 
 cover it inadequately. Large and, within their 
 reference, " complete " anthologies are, like his-^ 
 tories of literature, indispensable to those wh 
 desire to find their way about. Without sue 
 works we might never come into contact with 
 those writers who are most likely to appeal to 
 us. Were it not for the few examples of the 
 early Flemings in the National Gallery many a' 
 man might never have gone to Belgium and 
 Berlin to see the Memlings and the van Eycks 
 the Matsys and the Patinirs, the van der Wey- 
 dens, Davids, and van der Goes. But you 
 cannot get the fullest and the intensest pleasure 
 out of Milton and Keats by reading the ex* 
 amples of them, however numerous, in the 
 [242] 
 
^ GALLERIES 
 
 Oxford Book of English Verse; still less can 
 you fully know and enjoy Vermeer or Man- 
 tegna from one or two pictures in a National 
 Gallery. It is highly desirable that we should 
 have these enormous museums of pictures, in 
 order that we may easily know the best that has 
 been done in the world and discover, whether 
 we are practising art or merely " consuming " it, 
 our affinities. But it will be a bad thing if all 
 the good pictures in the world get sprinkled 
 evenly throughout the world's great galleries, 
 each gallery achieving its aim of getting one or 
 two examples of every good painter. 
 
 Whenever I see even a single good picture 
 well hung in a private house I reflect how much 
 more pleasure I get out of it there than I should 
 have done had I seen it amid the conflicting 
 clamours of a heterogeneous public gallery. 
 And it is surely a commonplace of observa- 
 tion that an unusual degree of enjoyment is 
 obtained at a gallery which is so fortunate as 
 to possess a whole room, or a whole wall, of one 
 artist's works. How much less effective would 
 ! the Giottos at Assisi be were they scattered 
 throughout the capitals of Europe; how much 
 more effective would the great Ghent altar- 
 piece be if it were reunited instead cii being 
 in pieces at Ghent, Brussels, and Berlin. No 
 
 [243] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 man can get the most out of Rubens, Velasquez 
 or Turner unless he has seen the Rubenses at 
 Antwerp or Munich, the Velasquez at the 
 Prado, or the Turners at the Tate. Surely 
 the ideal would be a dual system under which 
 the great miscellaneous collections were sup- 
 plemented by small, public collections devoted 
 to particular artists or groups of artists. I do 
 not know what sort of public gallery, if any, is 
 owned by the City of Norwich. The only time 
 I was ever there I saw the Cathedral and then 
 found so admirable a hostelry that I was not 
 tempted to explore further. But if it has one 
 I am sure it would be much more delightful 
 and useful were it entirely composed of the best 
 works of old Crome and two or three other 
 Norwich artists, than if it contained, like most 
 provincial galleries, a mixture of minor local 
 works, ephemeral academic successes and du- 
 bious old masters, landscapes by Binks, poor 
 copies of Titian and Palma Vecchio, and 
 painted acres by Mr. Blair Leighton or Mr. 
 Sigismund Goetze. We ought to diffuse our 
 masterpieces as widely as possible without break- 
 ing up the groups. And I don't think there is 
 any doubt that a small town or a country place 
 is a better setting for a one man gallery than 
 a room or a separate building in a large city. 
 
 [244] 
 
GALLERIES 
 
 Three considerable collections exist of works 
 by the late G. F. Watts. People differ, under- 
 standably, about his eminence; but he will do as 
 an illustration. There is the collection of por- 
 traits in the National Portrait Gallery; there 
 is the room full of allegories, including most of 
 his major works at the Tate; and there is the 
 miscellaneous gallery, filled mostly with small 
 things, at his home near Guildford. For my- 
 self I remember that when I visited the last, 
 one small room in a village with trees all 
 around and a haycart in the road, I got more 
 pleasure out of it than I have ever got out of 
 the others, which are surrounded with crowds 
 of other pictures, and have to be approached 
 ! first through London streets and then through 
 j, turnstiles laden with catalogues and guarded 
 by braided commissionaires. I remember think- 
 ing that had I my way I would shift half the 
 Tate Wattses to Compton to join the others. 
 Suppose that the cream of Constable were es- 
 L tablished similarly at Flatf ord on the Stour, in 
 h a little white building by the mill, where his own 
 I river runs through his own valley. Suffolk 
 would have an added attraction; Constable 
 would be seen to better advantage than he 
 ever has been; and a pilgrimage to Flatf ord 
 would be as exciting as a visit to Haarlem, 
 
 [245] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 where, in a very small and otherwise not notable 
 collection, one finds the great series of Halses, 
 painted in and for his own town, and still there 
 to his and the town's glory. Provincial towns 
 beginning collections, and philanthropists mak- 
 ing collections which they intend to leave to 
 the public, would do well to bear this in mind. 
 They should specialise; and where there is a 
 local product worth it, they should specialise 
 in that. 
 
 [246] 
 
INITIALS 
 
 Whenever a journalist wants to write some- 
 thing, and lacks a peg, he invents a corre- 
 spondent who (he states) " writes to " ask, 
 point out, confirm, contradict, qualify, com- 
 plain about, suggest, or urge something or other. 
 I have done it myself. On this occasion, how- 
 ever, the correspondent is a real one. He is real, 
 and I have very great respect for him, although I 
 have never seen him. And although the question 
 he asks, the fact he points out, the practice he 
 complains about, and the changes he suggests or 
 urges, have in the first instance a purely per- 
 sonal relation to myself, I feel justified in men- 
 tioning it because it opens up larger issues. 
 
 The correspondent says, in his mild and 
 diffident way, " Why the hell do you sign your 
 articles with initials ? " Initials, he argues, do 
 not "get over the footlights"; they do not 
 suggest a personality; they are not remember- 
 able. " Surely your initials stand for some- 
 thing. They did not christen you with initials. 
 What does this 'J' represent?" A part of 
 this contention I will admit frankly and without 
 
 [247] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS | 
 
 hesitation. The custom of christening people 
 with initials — although, I believe, long prevalent j 
 in the United States, where X, Q, P, and Z | 
 commonly do duty for a second name — has 
 never caught hold in this country. " J " does 
 stand for something. What is it? 
 
 Well, it may be Jabez. It may be Joseph, 
 James, Jonah, Jeremiah, Josiah, Jehu, Jero- 
 boam, Jedediah, Jasper, Joshua, Jenkin, Joab, 
 Jehoianim, Jehoahash, Jehosophat, or Jerub- 
 babel. If it were Jerubbabel, I cannot deny 
 that " Jerubbabel C. Squire " would " get over 
 the footlights." It would be remembered by 
 every man who had seen it, even casually on 
 a bookstall, for one second; it might even hoist 
 me into universal fame. On the other hand, 
 if it were Jerubbabel, my motives for sup- 
 pressing it would be obvious, and even universal 
 fame and an enormous fortune may be pur- 
 chased too dearly. But before we investigate 
 its actual nature further, let us examine more 
 closely this gentleman's general contentions. 
 
 That you do get used to a name is certainly 
 true, and the familiar name is as much part of 
 an author's " publicity outfit " as is the trade 
 name of a brand of sardines or stove-polish. 
 A new play by Geo. B. Shaw would take some 
 time fighting its way unless there were elaborate 
 
 [248] 
 
INITIALS 
 
 explanations (which there certainly would be if 
 the change were made) by Mr. Bernard Shaw 
 that this was his new style of address. " G. 
 Keith Chesterton" might stand a chance; the 
 author's surname is long and uncommon. But 
 H. George Wells or Herbert G. Wells would 
 be asking for neglect, and the name of Sir 
 Thos. Caine on a new novel would be greeted 
 by the public with stares of apathetic non- 
 comprehension. But let it be observed that 
 there is almost every sort of variety in the 
 signatures by which these eminent men have 
 already become known. Mr. Shaw customarily 
 writes both his Christian names in full, or 
 begins with an initial and writes the second 
 name at length. Sir Hall Caine suppresses his 
 first name and displays his second. And the 
 other two confine themselves to initials. Yet 
 I do not think it can fairly be said that Mr. 
 Chesterton is obscure behind the " G. K." or 
 that Mr. Wells has hid his light under bushels 
 of "H. Gs." 
 
 I think the truth of it is that initials stick 
 just as well as names, but they take longer to 
 stick. They take longer to stick because they 
 have no intrinsic interest. They have no 
 flavour. There are exceptions. Mr. Chester- 
 ton has tm'ned the series " G. K. C." into a 
 
 [249] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 kind of word, with a tone of its own like any 
 other word; and if an author arose who signed 
 his name " G. K. Chatterton " or " G. K. 
 Chipps," we should have prepossessions about 
 him, expect certain things from him, and re- 
 tain a memory of him if only with the result of 
 confusing him with his initial-sake. Again, 
 there are series of initials which have a wholly 
 accidental individuality which makes them fix 
 themselves at once. If a man's initials are 
 " P. I. G." or " F. O. O. L." we neither forget 
 it nor allow him to forget it; if the name at 
 the head of this article were "A. S. Squire," I 
 think it would get over the footlights all right. 
 Its bray would be ringing in the reader's ears 
 long after he had laid down the paper. But 
 leaving exceptional cases out of account, 
 initials, becoming pseudo-words by familiarity, 
 differ among themselves in value and beauty 
 just as words do. A mass of associations cling 
 around them, and they have sound-sequences 
 which affect us (we unconscious) just as the 
 vowels and consonants in ordinary words do. 
 Without knowing it, we probably dislike inno- 
 cent initials which have been borne by people 
 whom we have detested; without knowing it, 
 we are enchanted with certain initials because 
 they come trailing clouds of glory from the 
 [250] 
 
INITIALS 
 
 past or because they have a pleasant rippling 
 sound. Here we get on to the influence of 
 sounds. It is a difficult matter. All we can 
 say is that other things being equal some words 
 are more beautiful than others : all writers know 
 this. But it is equally true that sound will not 
 go all the way: that good associations may 
 1 make ugly syllables seem beautiful and bad 
 ones may make beautiful open vowels sound 
 ugly. It is hard to detach the word from the 
 p object. We have only to look at the word 
 " Keats " to realise how horrible we should think 
 it had Keats been a vulgar writer; and even the 
 word " moon " would seem ugly if it con- 
 |r noted something red and writhing in the entrails 
 fc of a fish. You may test the truth of this by 
 : experimenting with a word which can be used 
 i in two very different senses. Such a word is 
 " lights." To my ear it is not a pleasant- 
 \ sounding word, merely as a word. But it can 
 seem one thing and the other. Think of it in 
 connection with all the beautiful lights in the 
 world — the stars, candles in a great old cham- 
 ber, the lights of a city seen from a great 
 distance, the lights of cottages in a forest, or 
 of dawn over the sea — and it seems a beautiful, 
 soft, lingering word fit to be rhymed (as it 
 always is) with " nights." Think of it as the 
 
 [251] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 name of those vague atrocities which are 
 hawked in mean streets as " catsmeat," and it 
 becomes a vile spluttering word fit only for that 
 base use. But I wander. 
 
 So let us return whence we started. There 
 was one name that I omitted from that engag- 
 ing list of designations beginning "J." There 
 are no doubt others; but I haven't my old 
 Testament with me. The name I refer to is 
 John. It has been borne by many illustrious 
 men and an innumerable multitude of the ob- 
 scure. It was made glorious by John Milton, 
 John Keats, John Donne, John Ford; and at 
 various times it has renewed its lustre in John 
 Ketch, King John, twenty-two Pope Johns, 
 John Galsworthy, John Masefield, John Peel, 
 John Corlett, John Smith, John Jones, John 
 Robinson, and John Barleycorn. There was 
 also Friar John, Brother John of the Funnels, 
 doughtiest, thirstiest, and, very likely, most 
 learned of all. There is no name like it. 
 Fashions in other names come and go. Thomas 
 and William slump and boom. Geralds, Lu- 
 cians, Marmadukes, Susans, Peggys, jMargarets, 
 Marjories, are the rage of a generation, and 
 then become sickening to the palate. A countess 
 digs up the name Gladys for her daughter; 
 in ten years it covers the countiy; in another 
 [252] 
 
INITIALS 
 
 fifty it sinks into disrepute; and then it goes 
 on flourishing in dark byways until some new 
 explorer produces it once more as a fresh and 
 radiant thing. But John goes on. From the 
 ages when it was spelt Jehan to the present 
 day the proportion of Johns to the total popu- 
 lation has probably never fluctuated beyond one 
 or two per cent. It is as fixed as the English 
 landscape and the procession of the seasons. 
 And, like sun, moon, and stars, roses and oaks, 
 the yearly renewing miracle of the woods and 
 the cornfields, it never becomes wearisome or 
 tarnished. Time does not make stale its infinite 
 sameness; the most fickle slaves in Fashion's 
 retinue cannot contract a positive distaste for 
 it; in its dignity, solidity, greenness and grave 
 mystery, it defies the weakness of those who 
 tire of all things. Nothing affects it; nothing 
 can bring it into contempt; it stands like a 
 rock amid the turbulent waves of human his- 
 tory, as fine and noble a thing now as it was 
 when it first took shape on human lips. It is 
 a name to live up to; but if one w^ho bears it 
 sinks into disrepute it falls not with him, but 
 rather stays in the firmament above him, shin- 
 ing down upon him like a reproachful star. 
 
 But I do not see why I should say what my 
 own name is if I don't want to. 
 
 [253] 
 
RECITATION IN PUBLIC 
 
 The other day there was given in London a 
 public recitation of poetry. Eleven authors 
 delivered passages from their own works to an 
 audience of a hundred and fifty ladies who paid 
 two guineas each, the money going to a charity. 
 Perhaps I had better say nothing about the per- 
 formance. Only this: That one of those gal- 
 lantly endeavouring to get his verses off without 
 referring to his book, got tied up towards the 
 end. He left lines out, put lines in, got lines 
 in the wrong order, and, being resolved not to 
 break down, shamelessly vamped and gagged. 
 Apparently the candour of his demeanour was 
 such that nobody noticed. 
 
 It is highly probable that these recitations 
 will become a permanent institution, analogous 
 to Chamber Concerts. The prevailing notion 
 is that there is something ridiculous about 
 standing up in public and reciting poetry. But 
 all human actions are ridiculous, properly re- 
 garded; and this one is certainly no more 
 ridiculous than acting or playing the flute in 
 [254] 
 
RECITATION IN PUBLIC 
 
 public. Flute-players, in fact, are most ridicu- 
 lous. It is quite evident that verse ought to 
 be spoken aloud. If a man takes pains to 
 make his work musical, it is more than ridicu- 
 lous that it should never be heard save by the 
 " inward ear." In earlier ages nobody ques- 
 tioned this. When, as Mr. Kipling elegantly 
 puts it: " 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre," his 
 lyre was merely the background of his declama- 
 tion, and the finest early English poetry has 
 reached us by oral transmission. When min- 
 strels turned into authors recitation died — or, 
 rather, was left to the unintelligent. In this 
 country, until recently, the general craving to 
 hear verse well spoken has been ministered to 
 only by imbeciles, who, at bazaars and smoking 
 concerts, make audiences shuffle uneasily in 
 their seats while they roar Out with the Life- 
 boat, Kissing Cup's B,ace, or Tennyson's 
 The Bevenge. MiHions at functions in aid of 
 the choir outing or at annual concerts of local 
 literary societies must have heard this last, and 
 felt their flesh creep as the orator leant forward 
 and daintily fluttered his fingers when he came 
 to " a pinnace like a fluttered bird came flying 
 from far away." The poets themselves have 
 abstained from public appearances. But their 
 knowledge that recitation was better than silent 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 reading has usually led them to read aloud in 
 private. Tennyson, " rolling out his hollow oes 
 and aes," was heard by many, and Swinburne, 
 as we now learn, would oblige if asked, and 
 chant his compositions in a shrill voice which, at 
 exciting points, rose into a scream. If, how- 
 ever, good verse gains by being read aloud, it 
 is obviously illogical to restrict such perform- 
 ances to private houses: and in the last few 
 years the recognition of this fact has spread. 
 The revival is mainly due to Mr. Yeats, who 
 thought out and perfected a technique of recita- 
 tion and began giving readings from his own 
 poems. To his inspiration was probably due 
 the action of the proprietors of the Poetry 
 Bookshop in Devonshire Street, who have for 
 some years given recitals at regular and fre- 
 quent intervals, amongst those who have ap- 
 peared being Mr. Yeats, Mr. Hewlett, Mr. 
 Masefield, Mr. Sturge Moore, and Rupert 
 Brooke. The Americans, who have a passion 
 for lectures of all sorts, have taken to arrang- 
 ing tours of English poets ; two or three of them 
 are there now, reading to immense audiences at, 
 I hope, great profit to themselves. The prac- 
 tice is going to grow. And for two reasons. 
 One is that good recitation is artistically inter- 
 esting : the other is that there will be money in it. 
 
 [256] 
 
RECITATION IN PUBLIC 
 
 Now there is, unhappily, no reason to sup- 
 pose that because a man can write a musical 
 thing, he will necessarily be a good reader. For 
 instance, he might be dumb. Faihng that quite 
 disabling infirmity, he may have a bad voice, 
 he may have an imperfect control over his voice, 
 he may have a physical appearance so unim- 
 pressive that no amount of emotional force can 
 counterbalance it, or he may be so reserved that 
 he is quite unable to display his intimate feel- 
 ings in public. It is one thing to wear your 
 heart on your sleeve in print: and quite another 
 to stand face to face with an audience and 
 expose your tenderest emotions and noblest 
 aspirations. If an author himself has the neces- 
 sary histrionic gifts, voice, and audacity, he is 
 the best person to hear, as he should know 
 better than anyone else exactly the flow and 
 stress of his language. But the important thing 
 is not that we should hear the words spoken by 
 the person who wrote them (if it were, recita- 
 tions from dead poets would be impossible), but 
 that they should be spoken by people with suffi- 
 cient intelligence to understand them. Most 
 Shakespearean actors do not understand Shakes- 
 peare's verse, and have no idea whatever 
 about rhythm. They either spout their lines 
 with the mechanical regularity of a metronome, 
 
 [257] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 or gabble and garble them with the avowed 
 object of making them resemble prose as closely 
 as possible. What is wanted is a reciter with 
 all a good poet's critical taste : one who, whether 
 or not a practising artist himself, can give lan- 
 guage and rhythms the values that the composer 
 meant them to have. 
 
 My observations at the recent performance 
 led to several conclusions, which may be worth 
 recording. One is that there is more in the 
 technique of recitation than many good natural 
 readers might suppose. A man may have 
 all the necessary attributes of voice, under- 
 standing, and emotional force; but there is 
 room for study. This is especially so with 
 poets. The line about Tennyson's " oes and 
 aes " is significant. To a poet a musical line 
 has a tendency to present itself as a succession 
 of beautiful vowel sounds. Vowel sounds, in 
 certain sequences, are beautiful. Properly 
 enunciated, with right tonal inflexion, the syl- 
 lables " la, la, la, la," may be delivered so as 
 to produce quite melting effects. Why that is 
 so may be left to Students of Evolution to 
 determine; they will probably establish a con- 
 nexion with the love-song of the megatherium 
 to its mate; or the tuneful warnings addressed 
 to the herd by the chief bull bison when he 
 
 [258] 
 
RECITATION IN PUBLIC 
 
 scented danger. At any rate, people who read 
 musical verse aloud are apt to dwell so lovingly 
 on the vowels that they forget to make the 
 consonants clear: the word " bite " at the end of 
 a line sounds to the audience like " bi." I think, 
 again, that the lighting of the auditorium wants 
 considering. However much in harmony the 
 souls of the audience may be with the reciter, 
 what he sees in a lighted room is not their souls 
 but their hats : which are distracting. The dark- 
 ened auditorium has its drawbacks: it makes 
 one feel rather unnatural; and if it is accom- 
 panied, as it is at the Poetry Bookshop, by 
 lighted candles on the platform, it produces so 
 ecclesiastical an atmosphere that the audience 
 dare not applaud or laugh without a sense of 
 sin or at least solecism. 
 
 But the most important thing is this: that if 
 the Art of Recitation is to have a fair chance, 
 it should be understood that to get much out 
 of a recital you ought — unless the subject mat- 
 ter is very simple — to be fairly familiar before- 
 hand with the works recited. The ordinary 
 concert-goer does not expect to " take in " a 
 new symphony properly the first time he hears 
 it; and he habitually gets most of his pleasure 
 out of hearing again things that he has heard 
 before. You do not follow verses half so well 
 
 [259] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 the first time you hear them as you do 
 the first time you read them: the ear cannot 
 take the sort of instantaneous survey that the 
 eye takes. The simplest poem, if unfamihar, 
 sounds obscure when read aloud. Finally, it 
 is, I think, evident that a programme with sev- 
 eral names on it is better than a programme 
 filled by a single executant. One man's voice — 
 in a public as in a private room — if heard for 
 two consecutive hours, almost inevitably re- 
 duces one to a condition of mental coma if it 
 does not actually send one to sleep. 
 
 These remarks are, I know, fragmentary. 
 But nobody who has heard good recitation 
 could fail to appreciate the unexploited possi- 
 bihties of the craft. And if it develops it will 
 have the incidental advantage of supplying 
 poets with incomes. Homer sang probably in 
 the open air, and got nothing but his keep. But 
 two-guinea seats, or even five-shilling ones, 
 mean something; and even if the authors do 
 not themselves recite and do not even get a 
 percentage on proceeds, there never was so 
 effective a form of advertisement of their books. 
 The greatest trouble with good modern litera- 
 ture has been to make people who would like it 
 aware of its existence. 
 
 [260] 
 
HUMANE EDUCATION 
 
 It is evident that we are in for a prolonged 
 struggle about education. Everybody is 
 agreed — except the dwindling minority who 
 have a sentimental preference for iUiterate and 
 deferential simpletons — that the quality and 
 quantity of our education must be improved 
 after the war. But there is a violent divergence 
 of opinion as to what " improvement " is, what 
 sort of things we are increasingly to teach. 
 Strong sections of industrials who still imagine 
 that men can be mere machines and are at their 
 best as machines if they are mere machines are 
 already menacing what they call " useless " edu- 
 cation. They deride the classics, and they are 
 mildly contemptuous of history, philosophy, and 
 English. They want our educational institu- 
 tions, from the oldest University to the young- 
 est elementary school, to concentrate on busi- 
 ness or the things that are patently useful in 
 business. Technical instruction is to be pro- 
 vided for adolescent artisans; bookkeeping and 
 shorthand for prospective clerks; and the 
 
 [261] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 cleverest we are to set to " business methods," 
 to modern languages (which can be used in cor- 
 respondence with foreign firms), and to science 
 (which can be applied to industry). French 
 and German are the languages, not of Mon- 
 taigne and Goethe, but of Schmidt Brothers, 
 of Elberfeld, and Dupont et Cie., of Lyons. 
 Chemistry and physics are not explorations into 
 the physical constitution of the universe, but 
 sources of new dyes, new electric light fila- 
 ments, new means of making things which 
 can be sold cheap and fast to the Nigerian 
 and the Chinese. For Latin there is a 
 limited field so long as the druggists in- 
 sist on retaining it in their prescriptions. 
 Greek has no apparent use at all, unless it be 
 as a source of syllables for hybrid names of 
 patent medicines and metal polishes. The soul 
 of man, the spiritual basis of civilsation — what 
 gibberish is that? 
 
 It is against blind and ruinous bigotry of 
 that kind that Professor Gilbert Murray has 
 written his Religio Grammatici (Allen & 
 Unwin). Professor Murray is a Professor of 
 Greek, He has spent most of his life studying 
 Greek, and is openly unrepentant. Lest it be 
 supposed that he is merely — a thing frequently 
 suggested of those who support the ancient 
 [262] 
 
HUMANE EDUCATION 
 
 tongues — defending his own vested interests, it 
 may be added that were Greek forbidden by a 
 Defence of the Realm Act regulation produced 
 by some Business Government of the future, 
 he would be equally competent as a Professor 
 of English. At all events, his present plea is 
 not a plea for Greek and Latin exclusively. 
 He argues, with reason, that we are mainly 
 what we are and know most of what we know 
 because the Greeks and Latins, pagan and 
 Christian, lived before us. With them w^e find 
 the origins of our religious and political insti- 
 tutions, of our literature, to a great extent of 
 our language, of our mathematics, mechanics, 
 law, and morals. Whatever the percentage of 
 Jute and Angle blood in us, we are not the 
 children of the Jutes. The Germans them- 
 selves, who have far more Teutonic blood in 
 them, do not draw from Teutonic sources such 
 things as they have in common with civilised 
 Europe, and when the ex-Kaiser exhorted the 
 youths of Germany to be " little Germans, not 
 little Greeks and Romans," he was asking them 
 to cut away the ground they stand on. In 
 Aristophanes and Horace we find (with local 
 differences) ourselves; in Beowulf we find some- 
 thing remote and savage, much more alien from 
 ourselves, thinking and feeling in strange cate- 
 
 [263] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 gories, and talking in language most remarkably 
 strange. 
 
 Professor Murray, however, in urging the 
 retention of the classics as an element in educa- 
 tion, does not make the mistake (made often 
 by their supporters and always by their oppo- 
 nents) of treating them as a separate and 
 peculiar thing. He regards them as part — 
 though a very large part — of our past, as Euro- 
 peans, and of the past of the human race as a 
 whole. As such, they have — and the advan- 
 tages they offer are shared, in varying degree, 
 by all literary and historical studies — great ad- 
 vantages to offer. They offer to the individual 
 what is at lowest a continual source of enjoy- 
 ment and entertainment, and at highest much 
 more. Professor Murray says that pure sci- 
 ence offers " an escape from the world about 
 him, an escape from the noisy present into a 
 region of facts which are as they are, and not 
 as foolish human beings want them to be; an 
 escape from the commonness of daily happen- 
 ings into the remote world of high and severely 
 trained imagination; an escape from mortality 
 in the service of a growing and durable pur- 
 pose, the progressive discovery of " truth." 
 That is the literary man's tribute to a 
 mode of intellectual discovery which is not 
 
 [264] 
 
HUMANE EDUCATION 
 
 his; of the mode which is his he speaks 
 thus: 
 
 " ' The Philistine,' the vulgarian, the Great 
 Sophist, the passer of base coin for true, he 
 is all about us and, worse, he has his outposts 
 inside us, persecuting our peace, spoiling our 
 sight, confusing our values, making a man's 
 self seem greater than the race and the present 
 thing more important than the eternal. From 
 him and his influence we find our escape by 
 means of the Grammata into that cahn world 
 of theirs, where stridency and clamour are for- 
 gotten in the ancient stillness, where the strong 
 iron is long since rusted and the rocks of granite 
 broken into dust, but the great things of the 
 human spirit still shine like stars pointing 
 Man's way onward to the great triumph or the 
 great tragedy, and even the little things, the 
 beloved and tender and funny and familiar 
 things, beckon across gulfs of death and change 
 with a magic poignancy, the old things that our 
 dead leaders and forefathers loved, viva adhuc 
 et desiderio pulcriora (Living still and more 
 beautiful because of our longing) ." 
 
 But let us be more " practical." Literary 
 records being in the main the records of con- 
 
 [265] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 spicuous men and conspicuous races, their study 
 offers the spiritual and intellectual examples 
 which are a perpetual source of new effort. 
 The virtues, without which great new enterprise 
 (even commercial enterprise) cannot be carried 
 through, are not so common all round us that 
 we can spare the contemplation of the great 
 achievements of the dead. As Professor Mur- 
 ray suggests, progress in historical times has 
 consisted, as far as we can tell, in the accumula- 
 tion of knowledge and material objects; we 
 cannot afford to neglect Pericles and St. 
 Francis merely because they never used a tele- 
 phone. Sir Philip Sidney — scarcely the type 
 of the spectacled and ineffective recluse — said 
 that he never heard the old Ballad of Chevy 
 Chase, but his heart was stirred as it were by a 
 trumpet. Take the humblest examples: Bruce 
 and the Spider, which has been set before scores 
 of millions of British children. It had its uses, 
 though it taught the " pedestrian virtue of 
 pertinacity." It may be that the Great Film, 
 or the Man who Saved the Empire, will be 
 deemed in the future adequate substitute for 
 that anecdote; but even that is historical edu- 
 cation, literary education, education which 
 (whatever utility it may have to others) can- 
 not be supposed to increase the ability of those 
 [266] 
 
HUMANE EDUCATION 
 
 who see it to earn their own living save in so 
 far as it gives them not technical, but moral, 
 assistance. And, finally, if you are to think 
 about the future, your " conjectures will not be 
 much good unless you have in some way 
 studied other places and other ages." All liter- 
 ature is, in a sense, social science ; we learn from 
 it what men are, what can be done with them, 
 where they have failed, where and under what 
 conditions they have succeeded. 
 
 All this is trite, and has been said (though 
 not so well as by Professor Murray) ten thou- 
 sand times. Nevertheless, in INIr. Chesterton's 
 old image, the wall will go black if you don't 
 keep on whitewashing it. The world at this 
 moment contains a great many people who 
 think — or, rather, think they think, or, rather, 
 talk as if they thought they thought — that man 
 exists for the two only purposes of producing 
 goods, and more men to eat and wear them; 
 and who talk also as though our little life 
 were not rounded by a sleep, with something 
 beyond it. They will be on the ramp when the 
 world settles down; the dons (who feel very 
 solitary and timid and unsupported) may not 
 realise how much backing they can command if 
 they only begin to fight; and some supporters 
 of the humanities ridiculously and disastrously 
 
 [267] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 argue as if Greek and Latin were the only in- 
 dispensables and the endowment of scientific 
 research somehow incompatible with them. 
 They would be better advised to yield a little as 
 to compulsory classics, and to endeavour to 
 secure that if Greek and Latin be not com- 
 pulsorily studied, then the literature and history 
 of England should be. We should never have 
 had half the uproar about the classics if their 
 more pedantic and conventional champions had 
 not systematically ignored the claims of Eng- 
 lish, which is, after all, even more important for 
 us than Latin and Greek. It is a good thing 
 to know Homer, but it is preposterous for an 
 Englishman to know Homer and never to have 
 opened Chaucer. If the humanities are to be 
 saved, the ground of defence will have to be 
 shifted a little. 
 
 [268] 
 
A SUBJECT 
 
 T Going into the country for a week-end (with- 
 out the least intention of beginning this page 
 bestially with a participle), I found that I had 
 left at home the book which I had intended to 
 review. Had it been a book of argument, that 
 need not have been much of a difficulty; for I 
 could have mentioned the book's name and then 
 argued with and about everybody else who had 
 ever dealt with the matter under consideration. 
 But it was a collection of letters, and you can- 
 not review a collection of letters without quot- 
 ing from them, or, at least, reading them: that 
 is, unless you are cleverer than I am or more 
 impudent than I dare to be. The result was 
 that I found myself with " nothing to write 
 about." 
 
 The situation must be a familiar one to every 
 routine writer; and I conceive that all men meet 
 it in the same way. They wish that they had 
 gone to the Straits Settlements to plant rubber 
 at Kuala Lumpur or some such place; or that 
 they had become doctors or professional sol- 
 
 [269] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 cliers; or that they had gone into the Civil 
 Service, or that they had jumped at that open- 
 ing on the Stock Exchange. They madden 
 those around them with their querulous com- 
 plaints, beneath which there seems to be an 
 implication that it is a monstrous injustice that 
 a subject has not been provided by family, 
 or friends, or rained down from heaven by 
 Providence. They sit down, get up, walk 
 about, pull their hair, pick up papers and look 
 at them, open books and begin to read, though 
 they know time presses, smoke pipes and ciga- 
 rettes alternately, spill ashes, talk jerkily to 
 dogs and cats, wish they were rich, write head- 
 lines in a fair, round hand, draw faces, and put 
 down words like " The," " Everybody " (and 
 "Going"), in the hope that they will start 
 trains of thought — or, at any rate, trains of 
 words, which are the next best thing. The 
 clock ticks on as remorselessly as it did to 
 Faustus; the time of train or post approaches; 
 the game seems up; suicide presents itself as a 
 remedy for life's ills; reason interposes that 
 the worst troubles can be survived; and in the 
 end something happens. As a fact, no editor 
 ever gets letters from regular essayists saying, 
 " Excuse me this week, I have no ideas." The 
 [270] 
 
A SUBJECT 
 
 pressure of necessity forces the door and some- 
 thing rushes in. 
 
 So it was with what I was long ago warned 
 not to call " oneself." I had told myself 
 twenty times that I had nothing to write about ; 
 I had ransacked my memory in vain for frag- 
 ments of some recent intelligent conversation 
 which might have raised some literary problem 
 of interest; I had searched several papers and 
 many shelves for something which might appear 
 capable of exposition or dispute; I had finally 
 sat down in a sulk; and then an Inner Voice re- 
 peated " nothing to write about " in tones of 
 contempt. Justly; for what nonsense it was! 
 To begin with, there is " Nothing " itself, a sub- 
 ject which has not been exhausted, though it 
 has been glorified by a dead poet and a living 
 essayist. And, apart from nothing, there is any- 
 thing and everything else, including (as was 
 long ago observed) a broomstick. A change 
 came over my brain, and I felt suddenly as 
 though I could write, with equal fecundity, on 
 anything in the world. My mind, my body, the 
 room, the landscape, the sky, the universe instan- 
 taneously became crowded with subjects all 
 clamouring to be investigated. 
 
 That is what is known as the awakening of 
 the imagination, a process that may take place 
 
 [271] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 in all sorts of ways : that may be brought about 
 by a word, a sound, a scent, a drink. The world, ' 
 that seemed a collection of lifeless matter, is 
 suddenly invested with wonder ; all things spring 
 to life and are clothed with infinite associations; 
 every object recovers its history and its mystery 
 — which is history undisclosed. Every shape 
 and colour acquires interest, every aspect of 
 every object asks questions. Here, at this mo- 
 ment, I look at my hand, my moving hand. I 
 see it as the slave of will, the prodigious gar- 
 ment of soul; as a concourse of chemicals drawn 
 together by unimaginable forces; as the heir of 
 innumerable ancestors, paws and claws and ten- 
 drils. I pore over the elevations and depres- 
 sions, the nails and the little hairs, the pits 
 whence the little hairs grow, the ribs and wrin- 
 kles of the skin, never the same on any two hu- 
 man hands. I think of chiromancj^ and wonder 
 how began the human belief that a man's fate 
 was written on his hands; who it was named 
 those thin, pink streaks and girdles by the names 
 of Life and Venus and Mars; and why so re- 
 markable a doctrine should have started if there 
 was no truth in it. How interesting it would be 
 to pursue that speculation, to meditate on it and 
 to examine the reflections of other men on it, 
 of the ancients, of Paracelsus perhaps, of mod- 
 [272] 
 
A SUBJECT 
 
 €rn doctors. The mind travels to Bertillon and 
 
 Scotland Yard; to finger-prints on windows and 
 
 woodwork; to greasy and bloody finger-prints; 
 
 P to counter-detective work ; to gloves. At that 
 
 1 word gloves, all the gloves in the world soar 
 
 ■■ into sight : velvet gloves, the gauntlet of the 
 
 King's champion, the glove that the heartless 
 
 j Prench lady flung among the lions for the 
 
 . seigneur to pick up, gloves to which men have 
 
 written songs, gloves of an ancient fashion kept 
 
 in lavender with faded letters. And, returning, 
 
 I think of metaphorical hands, of the hands of 
 
 fate and the hands of destiny; of symbolical 
 
 hands, of clouds no bigger than a man's hand, 
 
 . of finger-posts and pointers; of sculptured 
 
 hands, the giant hand of Rodin; of real hands, 
 
 hands long dust. Queen Mary's, and Alexander's 
 
 that curbed Bucephalus; of Lady Macbeth's 
 
 little hand from which no waters could wash the 
 
 stain, of the white hands of Iseult of Brittany, 
 
 and the pale hands that the ghosts stretched out 
 
 across Acheron. 
 
 How easy it would be to write a large book 
 about hands; how impossible to exhaust their 
 beauties and their strangenesses, their diversity 
 and multitude of their works. But why linger 
 on the hand? There is the pen also. It is a 
 fountain-pen, and has to be dipped continually 
 
 [273] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 in an inkpot; but, though degenerate as an indi- 
 vidual, it is the scion of a wonderful race. Its 
 very name is history in a crystal, and memorises 
 the wing of the goose with strong quills. Steel 
 pens and gold pens, now dominant, are but 
 newcomers; the stylus had a longer and a wider 
 reign; there is also the brush, which the Chinese 
 — whose ink the French call cliinois and we 
 Indian — prefer; there are also fingers, which, 
 used by prisoners and dying travellers for writ- 
 ing messages in their own blood, have estab- 
 lished a peculiarly intimate link between the 
 hand and the pen. Then, the characters of pens, 
 their racial peculiarities and habits; the broad 
 pens, the fine pens, the new pen that refuses to 
 take ink, the old one that is encrusted; the wil- 
 fulness of the pen that crosses; the mania of 
 pens for the collection of hairs ; the difficulties of 
 removing such hairs; smudges; blots; the prob- 
 lem of what size blot really matters, and when. 
 Here, in looking at the operation of writing, 
 we come upon a large area of human life and 
 activity; yet who has explored it and analysed 
 its content? One thinks into it like a man dig- 
 ging in a cave ; the more one discovers the larger 
 the surface exposed to research. 
 
 I come to the ink. How is it made? I don*t 
 know; if I looked it up in the encyclopaedia, I 
 
 [274] 
 
I A SUBJECT 
 
 should find a whole article about that. I fancy 
 that gall and lamp-black come in. What is gall ? 
 What things have been done with ink! How 
 much ink has been shed by journalists in noble 
 causes! How pathetic is the yellowness of old 
 ink ! How true is that observation of the anony- 
 mous Caroline that we should have very little 
 to drink if all the sea were ink. A great vista 
 opens up from ink. 
 
 The pen, the ink, the table-cloth (black and 
 white check) ; paper; a blue bowl full of odd- 
 ments; a window; brick chimneys; bare elms; a 
 mottled sky. Below, a garden and plants in 
 winter sleep; a pond where fat goldfish used to 
 be, and probably still are, waving to and fro 
 with gaping and closing mouths, amid a green 
 growth, hiding under flat leaves, diving out of 
 sight, rising bright to the surface. Fields, farms, 
 churches, trains, towns, London, the sea. Each 
 word is the head of a comet with an infinite tail 
 of coloured light. I am humiliated at the vari- 
 ety and splendour of things and ashamed of my 
 own dullness. Never again, I say, shall I feel 
 that there is nothing to write about. . . . 
 
 But I shall. 
 
 [275] 
 
GOAKS AND HUMOUR 
 
 There are a great many books about Wit and 
 Humour. Hobbes thought one laughed be- 
 cause one felt superior; Bergson thinks that the 
 comic is always the animate imitating the me- 
 chanical ; and Kant thought something else, 1 1 
 forget what. The last treatise I read was by the \ 
 German Professor Freud, who appeared anx- \ 
 ious to prove that wit and humour are a kind of j 
 sexual perversions. But I still do not under- 1 
 stand what they are, and I have something 
 better to do than make my head ache by at- i 
 tempting to invent satisfactory, or even unsat- | 
 isfactory, definitions of them. If it is difficult 
 to define wit and humour, it is equally difficult 
 to discriminate precisely between the humour 
 of one nation and the humour of another. There 
 certainly are differences. But probably there 
 is no special form of joke that can be appre- 
 ciated by every American, and by no English- 
 man, or vice-versa. And there is a great deal 
 of American humorous writing which might 
 have been done by Englishmen. We are accus- 
 
 [276] 
 
GOAKS AND HUMOUR 
 
 ! tomed to think of our humour, at its best, as a 
 quieter and wiser thing, urbane and sympathetic. 
 But Washington Irving and Holmes are (sub- 
 ject matter apart) as English as Lamb, if those 
 are our qualities; and many other Americans, in 
 some ways very Transatlantic (O. Henry and 
 Twain are examples), are masters of the richer 
 and deeper humour as well as of the other sort. 
 Bret Harte's Condensed Novels, again, might 
 have been written by a very restrained Euro- 
 pean parodist. And when Thoreau said that 
 " the profession of doing good is full," and 
 Ambrose Bierce defined a bottle-nose as " A 
 nose fashioned in the image of its Maker," their 
 mots were in the traditional European mould. 
 There are, however, kinds of humour in which 
 the Americans have specialised; the body of 
 American humorous literature is as peculiar as 
 it is extensive. We have had practitioners in 
 dialect and humorous bad spelling; but there is 
 a difference between them and Josh Billings, 
 Artemus Ward, who invented the Goak, and 
 Mr. Dooley. We have had humorous travellers, 
 but they are not like Mark Twain. Where lies 
 the difference? 
 
 American humour, of the distinctively Amer- 
 ican sort, gains something from the peculiar 
 flavour of the American dialect. There was a 
 
 [277] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS j 
 
 man who travelled in a sleeping car on a rail- 
 way. During the night he was annoyed by ver- 
 min, and he wrote to the headquarters of the 
 company to complain. He received back from 
 the administrative head a letter of immense 
 effusiveness. Never before had such a com- 
 plaint been lodged against this scrupulously 
 careful line, and the management would have 
 suffered any loss rather than cause annoyance 
 to so distinguished a citizen as, etc., etc. He 
 was very delighted with this abject apology. 
 But as he was throwing away the envelope there 
 fell out a slip of paper, which had, apparently, 
 been enclosed by mistake. On it was a memo- 
 randum: " Send this guy the bug-letter." One 
 need not explain how this joke gains from the 
 peculiarity of the language. (It has incidentally 
 another feature which is traditionally a charac- 
 teristic of much American humour — namely, 
 iaconicism. All nations have their laconics; but 
 brevity has always been a popular cult in the 
 U. S. A. A typical example both of this and 
 of an equally common habit of allusiveness is 
 the remark of the Yankee at the Zoo, who, for 
 the first time in his life, saw a giraffe. He 
 looked at it long and hard, and then observed: 
 "I don't believe it.") The language does give 
 a tinge to American jests: and, naturally, an 
 
 [278] 
 
GOAKS AND HUMOUR 
 
 . even more important element is the sum of 
 American social conditions and history. The 
 unique circumstances of American life are di- 
 rectly responsible to some of the striking things 
 about American humour. 
 
 A noticeable thing about American humour 
 — one doesn't mean merely the efforts of a few 
 prominent humorists — is the range it covers. 
 Few things are sacred, and few are too serious 
 to be jested about. Cutting loose from Europe 
 and all its traditions (the breach here is rather 
 closing up than widening), and living in a new 
 country, where the normal life was adventurous 
 and changeful, and anything might turn up at 
 any moment, the American developed a curious 
 detachment. With this came a philosophic 
 whimsicality, which treated everything lightly 
 and saw everything on the comic plane. We in 
 Europe have all sorts of taboos. We are seri- 
 ous about many things; and if we are serious 
 about a thing we do not (unless we are excep- 
 tional people) jest about it. The normal Amer- 
 ican humorist jests about everything (however 
 strongly he may feel about it), from his wife 
 downwards. He will even make jests about mil- 
 lionaires, a thing which to most Englishmen 
 seems shocking. If you detach yourself suffi- 
 ciently from things, everything on earth will 
 
 [279] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 appear a little comic, as indeed it is. This habit 
 of standing outside things has been general in 
 America. When Artemus Ward wrote his let- 
 ter to the Prince of Wales: " Friend Wales — 
 You remember me. I saw you in Canady a 
 few years ago. I remember you too. I seldom 
 forgit a person. . . . Of course, now you're 
 married you can eat onions," he was not merely 
 the Republican being familiar with the Royal 
 Prince: he was doing what he would have done 
 to the Head of his own State. Even a Repub- 
 lican Englishman would probably have been 
 slightly shocked by such irreverence. It was an 
 American, again, who discovered that " the cow 
 is an animal with four legs, one at each corner." 
 As a scientific fact this, I need scarcely say, had 
 been long known : but it took a new pair of eyes 
 to see it precisely in this way. 
 
 A European of Mark Twain's abilities and 
 position would scarcely have written his book 
 about the Court of King Arthur. We have too 
 many inhibitions. They are great and small. 
 But the American habit of putting remarks in a 
 whimsical, humorous form, whatever they are, 
 and whatever the occasion, is so widespread that 
 one often finds Americans of the most sober 
 and humorless kind putting things humorously 
 out of sheer force of national habit. An English 
 [280] 
 
GOAKS AND HUMOUR 
 
 employee, giving his employer notice, will either 
 
 say that he cannot stand this place any 
 
 longer or else apologise in an embarrassed way 
 for causing inconvenience. The American is 
 more likely to come up with a normal expression 
 and observe, " Say, Doc, if you know anybody 
 who wants my job, he can have it." Everything 
 is susceptible of humour; and the more extrava- 
 gant the humour, the better. American humour 
 is, strictly speaking, pervasive. The lecturer 
 who announced on his programme that he was 
 " compelled to charge one dollar for reserved 
 seats, because oats, which two years ago cost 30 
 cents per bushel, now cost one dollar; hay is also 
 one dollar 75 cents per cwt., formerly 50 cents," 
 was carrying his systematic high spirits into a 
 place where few British entertainers would have 
 thought of being funny. It all springs from the 
 state of mind which led, some years ago, to the 
 formation of Smile Clubs, institutions that no 
 other people would have dreamed of. Jocosity 
 is the best policy. 
 
 There is an American story about a man who 
 invented a pneumatic life-saving device, to be 
 attached to the body when jumping from a win- 
 dow during a fire. He announced an exhibition 
 test. He sprang from the top of a sky-scraper, 
 and then " he bounced and bounced and bounced 
 
 [281] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 until we had to shoot him to save him from death 
 by starvation." There is another about a dis- 
 pute between two fishermen as to the relative 
 size of fish in their respective waters. Smaller 
 fry having been catalogued, one man said that 
 he once, when after very large tarpon, got a 
 whale : to be met by the blase repartee, " In my 
 State, sir, we bait with whales." And there is 
 another (where it comes from, I forget), about 
 two brothers who went out hunting with two 
 rifles and a single bullet, and brought the bullet 
 home after killing a hundred head of buffalo. 
 Their method was this. They were very crack 
 shots, and they used to stand one on each side 
 of the doomed beast. The bullet was fired by 
 one brother, went through the victim, and was 
 received by the muzzle of the other brother's 
 rifle. An Englishman, hearing these stories, 
 would know where they had come from. We 
 can appreciate them, but we do not as a rule 
 make them. We illustrate the qualities of men 
 and things by telling lies about them, but we 
 do not tell such thumping big ones. Our fishing 
 stories are only slightly over the borders of the 
 credible; a foolish person might be taken in by 
 them: the American ones are such lies that nar- 
 rators have no hope that even the most innocent 
 will believe them. This obvious difference be-* 
 [282] 
 
GOAKS AND HUMOUR 
 
 f tween the usual American and the usual Eng- 
 lish method of treating a thing humorously may- 
 be illustrated by examples. Ten years ago, or 
 so, the London, Chatham and Dover Railway 
 reached its nadir, and all British humorists were 
 
 ^ making jokes about the slowness of the trains. 
 Some of these jokes were, for us, fairly drastic: 
 the summit of achievement was reached, I think, 
 by a report that a cow had met its death by 
 charging an L. C. D. express from behind, and 
 that the directors, at an emergency meeting, 
 had decided to place cow-catchers at the rear 
 end of all trains. But try to imagine what 
 would have been said had the London, Chatham 
 and Dover Railway been in America. The most 
 luxuriant of our conceptions would have been 
 feeble compared with the miracles of metaphor 
 that would have been coined to show the ex- 
 traordinary slowness of those trains. In Ameri- 
 can descriptions they would not have gone at a 
 walking pace, they would not even have crawled 
 at a snail's: at their fastest the snails would 
 have overtaken them, and mostly they would 
 positively have gone backwards so that passen- 
 gers would be compelled, aiming at a certain 
 destination, to board trains ostensibly proceed- 
 ing in the opposite direction. Now I think of 
 it, I do seem to remember something about a 
 
 [283] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 cow boarding a train and biting the passengers. 
 This delight in giving the extra turn of the 
 screw that destroys the last shred of verisimili- 
 tude for the sake of a fantastic effect is to be 
 seen everywhere in American humorous writing, 
 and one may take an illustration from the other 
 side at random. Mr. Stephen Leacock's de- 
 scription of how he tried to borrow a match from 
 a man in the street will do. The account throws 
 light on a common experience, and the various 
 stages of the man's struggle with his pockets 
 and production of toothpicks and other articles 
 from his coat-tails whilst his parcels fall all 
 round, might have been done by an Englishman. 
 But in the end he cannot help rounding it off by 
 a piece of sheer gusto that would scarcely have 
 occurred to anyone but an American. Full of 
 compassion at the would-be match-lender's state 
 of desperation, the author puts an end to his 
 suffering by throwing him under a tram — that 
 is to say, a "trolley-car." Mr. Leacock hap- 
 pens to be a Canadian and not a citizen of the 
 United States. But in this regard they share 
 the same tastes and the same habits. 
 
 In fact, as has been said ten thousand times 
 before, they love Exaggeration. All little Amer- 
 ican communities in the old days had Charac- 
 ters of whom they were proud: and the Char- 
 
 [284] 
 
GOAKS AND HUMOUR 
 
 acter was almost always an abnormal Exaggera- 
 tor or Vituperator — which comes to the same 
 thing. He was a man with a fine flow of the 
 extravagant or the grotesque; in other words, 
 a Champion Liar. The pleasure that such 
 artists take in their work is the pleasure of the 
 fantastic embroiderer or the mediaeval carver of 
 gargoyles. American essays in the Preposter- 
 ous are of various sorts. Continually one gets 
 the monstrously absurd simile, or the mild over- 
 statement of a single fact. All American funny 
 men make a practice of this. It usually becomes 
 a habit with them; they state everything in this 
 form. Mark Twain's ordinary level is typified 
 by " Twins amount to a permanent riot. And 
 there isn't any real difference between triplets 
 and an insurrection " — which is rather tired and 
 mechanical. 
 
 O. Henry, a writer vv^ho is far more than a 
 jester, was very good in this way. One may 
 quote from his account of the Mayor who was 
 lying ill in bed, with what seemed a grave stom- 
 achic complaint: "He was making internal 
 noises that would have had everybody in San 
 Francisco hiking for the parks." I suppose 
 one is forced to explain, for the benefit of the 
 forgetful British reader, that the population of 
 San Francisco lives in dread of earthquakes. 
 
 [28s] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 But the more admirable kind of invention is the 
 impossibility upon a larger scale; the calculated 
 and nicely-worked out mendacity which, in pro- 
 portion to its gross incredibility, is worked out 
 with the highest attainable degree of simplicity 
 and gravity, the frankly absurd story which is 
 told you as the state of the weather or your 
 grandmother's health might be told you. In 
 the perfection of this species we have, I think, 
 the finest achievement of American humour. 
 
 Max Adder's famous account of the poet who 
 was engaged to write In Memoriam verses to 
 go in the obituary column of the local paper 
 and brought the mob of infuriated parents down 
 upon the editor's head is an early approach to 
 this style. It is monstrously impossible: but it 
 is conducted with a considerable amount of re- 
 straint. Later authors have gone further in the 
 self-suppression which eschews the incidental 
 auctorial intervention or flamboyance of phrase, 
 for the sake of the whole story. Mark Twain 
 frequently did this sort of thing with great cir- 
 cumspection. For instance, the dialogue with 
 the Chief of detectives in The Stolen White Ele- 
 phant. The detective wants to know what the 
 missing animal usually eats : 
 
 " * Now, what does this elephant eat, and how 
 much? ' 
 [286] 
 
GOAKS AND HUMOUR 
 
 " ' Well, as to what he eats — he will eat any- 
 thing. He will eat a man, he will eat a Bible — 
 he will eat anything between a man and a Bible.' 
 
 " ' Good — very good indeed, but too general. 
 Details are necessary — details are the only valu- 
 able things in our trade. Very well — as to men. 
 ^ At one meal ! — or, if you prefer, during one 
 day — how many men will he eat, if fresh ? ' 
 
 " ' He would not care whether they were fresh 
 or not; at a single meal he would eat five ordi- 
 nary men.' 
 
 "'Very good; five men; we will put that 
 down. What nationalities would he prefer ? ' 
 
 " ' He is indifferent about nationalities. He 
 prefers acquaintances, but is not prejudiced 
 against strangers.' 
 
 " ' Very good. Now as to Bibles. How many 
 Bibles would he eat at a meal ? ' 
 
 " ' He would eat an entire edition.' 
 
 " ' It is hardly succinct enough. Do you 
 mean the ordinary octavo, or the family illus- 
 trated?' 
 
 " ' I think he would be indifferent to illustra- 
 tions; that is, I think, he would not value illus- 
 trations above simple letter-press.' 
 
 " ' No, you do not get my idea. I refer to 
 bulk. The ordinary octavo Bible weighs about 
 two pounds and a half, while the great quarto 
 
 [287] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 with the illustrations weighs ten or twelve. How 
 many Dore Bibles would he eat at a meal? ' 
 
 " ' If you knew this elephant, you could not 
 ask. He would take what they had.' 
 
 Well, put it in dollars and cents, then. 
 We must get at it somehow. The Dore costs 
 a hundred dollars a copy, Russian leather, bev- 
 elled.' 
 
 " ' He would require about fifty thousand dol- 
 lars' worth — say an edition of five hundred 
 copies.' 
 
 " ' Now that is more exact. I will put that 
 down. Very well; he likes men and Bibles; so 
 far, so good.' ..." 
 
 That is businesslike; that is sober realism. 
 Given the leading idea everything is related with 
 complete propriety. The elaboration of it was 
 clearly a labour of love to its author. 
 
 A more modern instance is Mr. Ellis Parker 
 Butler's Pigs is Pigs, a short storj^ which may 
 or may not have been published in this country. 
 A pair of guinea-pigs are transported from one 
 town to another by an Express Delivery Com- 
 pany. An obstinate official insists in charging 
 thirty cents a head on them, the rate for pigs; 
 an equally obstinate consignee refuses to pay 
 more than the twenty-five cents due on pets. 
 [288] 
 
GOAKS AND HUMOUR 
 
 Pending agreement the guinea-pigs are left in 
 the office. The man-in-charge writes to head- 
 quarters about it, and causes great bewilder- 
 ment by mentioning two animals in his first 
 letter, eight in his second, and 32 in his third. 
 The struggle continues (an enormous bill for 
 cabbage-leaves being run up) until the office 
 is one large range of hutches and the guinea- 
 pigs number very many thousands. The man 
 has only to step (or rather creep, for there is 
 little space) into the street for five minutes, 
 and on his return he finds that there are a hun- 
 dred more. This story is told with perfect 
 composure: there is only one joke in it, and 
 that is the whole story. The effect of this kind 
 of thing is the effect of parody. It is parody of 
 life and close to the humour of Butler's Ere- 
 whon. No one can equal the American humorist 
 at it. The Americans — I use the word in the 
 most complimentary sense — are the greatest 
 liars in Creation. 
 
 Professor Leacock, in his essay upon Ameri- 
 can Humour, says: "Essays upon American 
 Humour after an initial effort towards the dig- 
 nity and serenity of literary criticism, generally 
 resolve themselves into the mere narration of 
 American jokes and stories. The fun of these 
 runs thinly towards its impotent conclusion, till 
 
 [289] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 the disillusioned reader detects behind the mask 
 of the literary theorist the anxious grin of the 
 secondhand story-teller." How untrue that is; 
 and how unfair. 
 
 In order to get back on him for his gratui- 
 tous malice, I shall steal from his Literary 
 Lapses a final example of his great gift of mak- 
 ing an idiot of himself. He sets himself to 
 consider whether or not the bicycle is a nobler 
 animal than the horse. 
 
 " I find that the difference between the horse 
 and the bicycle is greater than I had supposed. 
 
 " The horse is entirely covered with hair ; the 
 bicycle is not entirely covered with hair, ex- 
 cept the '89 model they are usmg in Idaho. 
 
 " In riding a horse the performer finds that 
 the pedals in which he puts his feet will not 
 allow of a good circular stroke. He will ob- 
 serve, however, that there is a saddle in which — 
 especially while the horse is trotting — he is ex- 
 pected to seat himself from time to time. But 
 it is simpler to ride standing up with the feet 
 in the pedals. 
 
 " There are no handles to a horse, but the 
 1910 model has a string to each side of its face 
 for turning its head when there is anything you 
 want it to see. 
 [290] 
 
GOAKS AND HUMOUR 
 
 " Coasting on a good horse is superb, but 
 should be under control." 
 
 I should like to hear Professor Freud's views 
 on the hidden implications of this. 
 
 [291] 
 
A CORNER OF OLD ENGLAND 
 
 It has been maintained that war is indispen- 
 sable because it teaches people geography. I 
 will not discuss the merits or the defects of that 
 doctrine here, and I freely admit that in August, 
 1914, I knew nothing of the situation of Brest- 
 Litovsk or Bourlon Wood. But the illumina- 
 tion of war is only local, and, since I have to 
 mention the Southern Appalachians, I had bet- 
 ter explain what they are. They are a range 
 of mountains, or, rather, an extensive mountain 
 district running from the Pennsylvania border, 
 through the Virginias, Kentucky, the Carolinas, 
 and Tennessee into the northern parts of Geor- 
 gia and Alabama. Here Mrs. O. D. Campbell 
 and Mr. Cecil Sharp (to whom we owe the 
 recovery of many of our old country songs) 
 have been hunting for English Folk Songs. The 
 results of their explorations are published by 
 Messrs. Putnam; the book is a romance. 
 
 The Southern Appalachian region is a large 
 one, larger than Great Britain. Mr. Sharp has, 
 therefore, covered as yet no more than small 
 [292] 
 
A CORNER OF OLD ENGLAND 
 
 portions of it, chiefly in the " Laurel Country " 
 of North Carolina. In that region he had expe- 
 riences which, to an imaginative man, must have 
 been as thrilling as anything that has ever hap- 
 pened to an explorer in Central Africa or Bor- 
 neo. It is mountainous, thickly wooded, and 
 very secluded. There are few roads, except 
 mountain tracks; and scarcely any railroads. 
 " Indeed, so remote and shut off from outside 
 influence were, until quite recently, these se- 
 questered mountain valleys that the inhabitants 
 have for a hundred years or more been com- 
 pletely isolated and cut off from all traflic with 
 the rest of the world." I suppose this is a slight 
 exaggeration: that, for instance, these Arca- 
 dians, however fortunately sequestered, imported 
 doctors, clothes, and tools. But one knows what 
 Mr. Sharp means. Coming into their midst the 
 travellers found themselves in a " pocket " of an 
 old England which has disappeared. They found 
 a strong, spare race; leisurely; easy and unaf- 
 fected in their bearing, and with " the unself- 
 conscious manners of the well-bred." They are 
 mostly illiterate, and each family grows just 
 what is needed to support life; but they are 
 contented, quick-witted, and, in the truest sense, 
 civilised. Their ancestors came, apparently, 
 from the north of England; their religion is 
 
 [293] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Calvinistic. Generations of freedom in America 
 have undoubtedly modified some of their orig- 
 inal characteristics. They drink and smoke very 
 little and " commercial competition and social 
 rivalries are unknown." But though in some 
 regards they have customs peculiar to them- 
 selves, in others they are more faithful transmit- 
 ters of old English tradition than are the Eng- 
 lish to-day: 
 
 " Their speech is English, not American, and, 
 from the number of expressions they use which 
 have long been obsolete elsewhere and the old- 
 fashioned way in which they pronounce many 
 of their words, it is clear that they are talking 
 the language of a past day, though exactly of 
 what period I am not competent to decide." 
 
 In that antique tongue they sing the old songs 
 that their ancestors brought over from England 
 in the time of George III. and perhaps still 
 earlier. Here in England the folk-song col- 
 lector always has to make straight for the Oldest 
 Inhabitant. The young know few of the old 
 songs, being supplied with music-hall songs from 
 London and Berlin and rag-times from New 
 York. In the Appalachians, where cosmopoli- 
 tan music is unknown, the folk-song tradition 
 
 [294] 
 
A CORNER OF OLD ENGLAND 
 
 is as strong in the young as in the aged, and Mr. 
 Sharp has, on occasion, drawn what he wanted 
 from small boys. There, in log-huts and farm- 
 steads, hundreds of miles west of the Atlantic 
 coast, on uplands lying between Philadelphia 
 and St. Louis, he found this people strayed from 
 the eighteenth century using such phrases as 
 " But surely you will tarry with us for the 
 night," and singing, with a total unconscious- 
 ness both of themselves and of their auditors, 
 of woods and bowers, milk white steeds and dap- 
 ple greys, lily-white hands, silver cups, the 
 Northern Sea, London Bridge, and the gallows. 
 He heard from these mountain singers The 
 Golden Vanity, The Cherry Tree Carol, Lord 
 Randal, The Wife of Ushefs Well, Lady Isa- 
 bel and the Elf Knight, and scores of less well 
 known ballads and songs, versions of which the 
 collectors have for years been painfully picking 
 up in Sussex, Somersetshire, Yorkshire, and 
 Cornwall. It is a strange reflection that, had 
 we left it a little later, we might have had to go 
 to America for old folk music which had been 
 totally lost on English soil. 
 
 Mr. Sharp does not make it quite clear which 
 of his songs are hitherto altogether unrecorded; 
 he includes several ballads not in Child's collec- 
 tion, but Child may have deliberately rejected 
 
 [295] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 them and they may have appeared elsewhere. 
 Remarkably, he got no ritual songs, songs asso- 
 ciated with harvest home, morris and sword 
 dances, or the coming of English spring and the 
 primroses. His hundred and twenty -two texts 
 include only one carol and few songs touching 
 on religion. The English rituals were not trans- 
 planted; the festivals died out; the doctrines of 
 the mountaineers deprecated dancing; and the 
 spring of their new country was not the spring 
 of their old. They are strongest in ballads, and 
 in songs (like Shooting of His Dear) with sto- 
 ries in them, which things lose nothing by trans- 
 plantation across a hemisphere; and the songs 
 are still living in the old way, growing and 
 changing with the whims and memories of indi- 
 vidual singers, yet always retaining the essential 
 kernel. Nearly all the tunes are in " gapped 
 scales," scales with only five or six notes to the 
 octave; as always with folk songs they are pre- 
 dominantly melancholy, and many of them are 
 exceedingly beautiful. 
 
 That Mr. Sharp's texts — or indeed those 
 of folk songs as a whole — are in the bulk great 
 poetry I will not maintain. At its least polished 
 the folk song sinks to the level of this (sung by 
 Mrs. Tom Rice, at Big Laurel, West Caro- 
 lina) : 
 
 [296] 
 
A CORNER OF OLD ENGLAND 
 
 They hadn't been laying in bed but one hour 
 When he heard the trumpet sound. 
 She cried out with a thrilling cry: 
 O Lord, O Lord, I'm ruined. 
 
 This, possibly, is a corruption of something 
 originally a little more rounded; a process simi- 
 lar to that which works upon all folk songs 
 and which (in the Appalachian versions of The 
 Golden Vanity) gives the name of that good 
 ship variously as the Weeping Willow Tree and 
 the Golden Willow Tree, and provides a sister 
 ship with the names of Golden Silveree and 
 Turkey Silveree, which might strike even an 
 Appalachian as an odd name for a vessel. We 
 do not know in folk songs, as a rule, what is 
 "original" and what is not; usually there has 
 been so much accretion that there can hardly be 
 said to be an " original " at all. The process is 
 not productive of great verse, comparable with 
 the masterpieces of form produced by poets with 
 surnames, fountain-pens and identifiable tomb- 
 stones, though often there is a poignancy about 
 individual lines and stanzas which makes them 
 very effective even when divorced from their ex- 
 quisite tunes, which are the real triumphs of 
 folk-production. Mr. Sharp's American collec- 
 tion is certainly not, textually, superior to the 
 English collections. But it does contain some 
 
 [297] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 fine things. It must have been queer to listen 
 to The True Lover's Farewell coming from the 
 lips of a woman in the American backwoods : 
 
 O fare you well my own true love. 
 So fare you well for a while, 
 I'm going away, but I'm coming back 
 If I go ten thousand mile. 
 
 If I prove false to you, my love, 
 
 The earth may melt and burn. 
 
 The sea may freeze and the earth may burn 
 
 If I no more return. 
 
 Ten thousand miles, my own true love, 
 Ten thousand miles or more; 
 The rocks may melt and the sea may burn 
 If I never no more return. 
 
 And who will shoe your pretty little feet, 
 Or who will glove your hand. 
 Or who will kiss your red rosy cheek 
 While I'm in the foreign land? 
 
 My father will shoe my pretty little feet, 
 My mother will glove my hand. 
 And you can kiss my red rosy cheek 
 When you return again. 
 
 O don't you see yon little turtle dove, 
 A-skipping from vine to vine 
 A-mourning the loss of its own true love 
 Just as I mourn for mine? 
 
 [298] 
 
A CORNER OF OLD ENGLAND 
 
 Don't you see yon pretty girl 
 A-spinning on yonder wheel ? 
 Ten thousand gay, gold guineas would I give 
 To feel just like she feels. 
 
 The end lets one down with a jerk; but the 
 construction is perfect. 
 
 [299] 
 
A POET'S PEDIGREE 
 
 My eye was caught by a controversy in the 
 Saturday Westminster. A reviewer had " char- 
 acterised " as " a misleading statement " some- 
 body's allegation that the poet Shelley " came 
 of an ancient county family." It is the com- 
 monest of observations that it was the strangest 
 thing in the world that so imaginative, phan- 
 tasmal, revolutionary a being as Shelley should 
 have sprung from " a line of heavy country 
 squires." Commentators always assume that 
 the inheritor from such ancestors should live up 
 to Charles Churchill's description of " some 
 tenth transmitter of a foolish face." There was 
 nothing surprising, therefore, in the fact that 
 an indignant correspondent wrote in to dispute 
 what the reviewer had said and to question his 
 authority. The critic answered by referring his 
 antagonist to John Addington Symonds's book 
 on Shelley. It is there stated that Sir Bysshe 
 Shelley, the poet's grandfather, " was born in 
 North America and began life, as it is said, as 
 a quack doctor." " Began life," is not a very 
 [300] 
 
A POET'S PEDIGREE 
 
 good way of putting it; one is reminded of the 
 frequent merchant prince who has " come into 
 the world without a penny in his pocket." But 
 the meaning is clear, and Symonds goes on to 
 say that Sir Bysshe was an adventurer who 
 " succeeded in winning the hands and fortunes 
 of two English heiresses." So the reviewer, 
 whilst prepared to admit that the American 
 Shelieys were members of the Sussex family, 
 sticks to what is material in his point. 
 
 The ancient and illustrious ancestry of the 
 Sussex Shelieys is not a matter of dispute. A 
 person of their name, or something near enough 
 to it to entitle — or, at least, to encourage — a 
 family claim, came over with that well-attended 
 man the Conqueror and appears on the Roll of 
 Battle Abbey. Another Sir Guyon de Shelley 
 was a Crusader, and a Crusader of the first 
 water. He it was who adopted the family coat. 
 He hung three great conches or shells behind 
 his shield. Each of these had miraculous prop- 
 erties. A blast blown on one scattered foes like 
 chaff; the sound of another would drive away 
 the devil; and the third was reputed to have the 
 power of compelling any woman to succumb to 
 Sir Guyon's charms. How this is known is not 
 clear, for we are told that he was far too up- 
 right a man ever to use it. And it is to be 
 
 [301] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 presumed that he exercised a similar self -con- j 
 trol with regard to the others; or, thus muni-i 
 tioned, he would certainly have gone farther inj 
 the world than he did. If it be contended that 
 there is something mythical about Sir Guy on, 
 who might have been the original of Sir Huon 
 of Bordeaux, no such question can arise about 
 the sixteenth-century Sir R. Shelley, who was 
 Grand Prior of the Knights of Malta. His 
 descendant. Sir John Shelley, of Maresfield, 
 was a baronet of the original 1611 creation. It 
 will be remembered that James I., who wanted 
 money, invited and even compelled men of sub- 
 stance to become baronets for £1000 apiece, 
 thus affording modern practitioners an ancient 
 precedent. This man had two sons — Sir Wil- 
 liam, a judge of Common Pleas, and Edward. 
 From Edward sprang Timothy, who, as Medwin 
 says, " had two sons, and settled — having mar- 
 ried an American lady — at Christ's Church, 
 Newark, in North America; where Bysshe was 
 born, on the 21st June, 1731." This Bysshe 
 was Sir Bysshe, Percy Bysshe Shelley's grand- 
 father. 
 
 We may presume that the pedigree — which 
 
 Mr. Buxton Forman gives — is sound, though 
 
 there is often some doubt about pedigrees which 
 
 have an American break in them. But there is 
 
 [302] 
 
A POET'S PEDIGREE 
 
 no doubt that if it be supposed that a " freak " 
 like Shelley ought to have some unusual ancestor 
 to inherit from Sir Bysshe is quite good enough. 
 There is no need to go to so recent an authority 
 as Symonds; for he and other modern writers 
 go back to the foolish but racy Medwin for their 
 authority. The transatlantic Bysshe, says Med- 
 win, " exercised the profession of a quack doc- 
 tor and married, it is said, the widow of a miller, 
 but for this I cannot vouch." Dowden, who 
 likes to tone down anything derogatory, even 
 about Shelley's grandfather, refers to " rumours 
 of some dim American bride," but says that 
 Bysshe " must have made haste in wooing and 
 wedding and burying his transatlantic wife, if 
 ever she had existence," for he was not more 
 than twenty-one when he married his second 
 wife. But as the poet himself definitely states 
 in a letter of 1812 that his grandfather " acted 
 very ill to three wives," we may reasonably take 
 it that the miller's widow existed, " in some 
 shape or other." 
 
 Before he was twenty-one, Bysshe Shelley 
 had renounced quackery, buried (we must as- 
 sume) his American wife, come to England, 
 and, in Medwin's words, " captivated the great 
 heiress of Horsham, the only daughter and heir- 
 ess of the Rev. Theobald Michell." Her guar- 
 
 [303] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 dian forbade the marriage, so the couple eloped 
 and " were wedded in that convenient asylum 
 for lovers, the Fleet, by the Fleet parson." 
 Having borne him three children (including 
 Timothy, the poet's father), this wife died, 
 within a few years, of smallpox. Medwin's 
 possibly prejudiced account of the sequel be- 
 gins: "After his wife's death, an insatiate for- 
 tune-hunter, he laid siege to a second heiress in 
 an adjoining county. In order to become ac- 
 quainted with her, he took up his abode for some 
 time in a small inn on the verge of the Park at 
 Penshurst." The lady was Miss Sidney Pery, 
 and again there was an elopement; it suggests 
 that he had at least a great superficial fascina- 
 tion and that he had not been a quack doctor 
 for nothing. Late in life, Bysshe Shelley was 
 given a baronetcy in order that his electioneer- 
 ing interest might be secured for the Whigs. 
 He became a great miser, and " his manner " 
 (Medwin again) "of life was most eccentric, 
 for he used to frequent daily the tap-room of 
 one of the low inns at Horsham, and there drank 
 with some of the lowest citizens, a habit he had 
 probably acquired in the New World." His life 
 was very prolonged, and his son is alleged to 
 have obtained daily bulletins of his health, 
 though we may doubt this. Two of his daugh- 
 [304] 
 
A POET'S PEDIGREE 
 
 ters eloped as he had done, and he cut them out 
 of his will. The good Professor Dowden's allu- 
 sions to him are very taking. He calls him " a 
 gentleman of the old school, with a dash " [my 
 italics] " of New World cleverness, push, and 
 mammon-worship." " Stately old Sir Bysshe," 
 proceeds the professor, " impressed the towns- 
 folk as melancholy; perhaps, said they, he was 
 ' crossed in love ' in his youth." Sir Bysshe may 
 have been libelled by Medwin, but it is absurd 
 to be sentimental about him. Dowden, sum- 
 marising his achievements, says that " he achieved 
 greatness by bold and dexterous strokes." Bold 
 and dexterous, indeed! 
 
 This, as Froude said of the Saint, is " all and 
 more than all, that is known " of Shelley's 
 American grandfather. It may fairly be argued 
 by those who attach importance to such mat- 
 ters, that, whatever the ultimate descent in the 
 male line may be, the statement that Shelley 
 sprang from a line of Sussex squires requires 
 qualification, as it were, both in spirit and in 
 matter. For most of us, we are not greatly dis- 
 turbed by such questions. We let the genealo- 
 gists, and the biologists, and the sociologists 
 arouse themselves with them, but we should be 
 quite as prepared to see Shelley springing from 
 a line of greengrocers as from a line of bucca- 
 
 [305] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 neers. What porridge had John Keats? why 
 that lapse into classicism on the part of a livery- 
 stable keeper's son? Where did Blake get his 
 wildness from; where did William Morris get 
 his ; whence came the volcanic turbulence of Mr. 
 Alfred Noyes? Not, as far as I know, from 
 father or grandfather. Genius appears any- 
 where, and we should have no sound reason for 
 surprise had Shelley sprung, as an eminent, but 
 too precise, modern is said to have done, from 
 " a long line of maiden aunts." 
 
 On the other hand, if we must look for un- 
 usual people in an unusual man's pedigree, 
 whose pedigree — and remember both female and 
 male descents count in this matter — is free from 
 them? It is always assumed in such arguments 
 that any kind of " unusualness " will do. Mad- 
 ness and genius are allied; and so, argue the 
 school of Rougon-Macquart, are artistic power, 
 boldness in swindling, excess in vice. Which of 
 us, if he goes back a few generations on both 
 sides, cannot find an ancestor sufficiently eccen- 
 tric or sufficiently degenerate to serve quite ade- 
 quately as an ancestor for Shakespeare himself? 
 
 [306] 
 
RABELAIS 
 
 It is observed by Rabelais himself that those 
 who have read " the pleasant titles of some 
 books of our invention," such as Pease and Ba- 
 con with a Commentary, " are too ready to 
 judge that there is nothing in them but jests, 
 mockeries, lascivious discourse, and recreative 
 lies"; but "the subject thereof is not so foolish 
 as by the title at the first sight it should appear 
 to be." Were one not faced with incitements 
 to speculation about meaning on every page, 
 this would be sufficient excuse for the commen- 
 tators and explorers. But these gentlemen 
 would do well to remember a later remark of 
 the author's about " a certain gulligut friar and 
 true bacon-picker " who tried to get incredible 
 allegories out of Ovid: 
 
 " If you give no credit thereto, why do not 
 you the same in these jovial new chronicles of 
 mine? Albeit when I did dictate them, I 
 thought upon no more than you, who possibly 
 were drinking the whilst as I was. For in the 
 
 [307] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 composing of this lordly book, I never lost nor 
 bestowed any more, nor any other time than 
 what was appointed to serve me for taking of 
 my bodily refection, that is, whilst I was eating 
 and drinking. And indeed, that is the fittest 
 and most proper hour wherein to write these 
 high matters and deep sciences; as Homer knew 
 very well, the paragon of all philologues, and 
 Ennius, the father of the Latin poets, as Hor- 
 ace calls him, although a certain sneaking job- 
 bernol alleged that his verses smelled more of 
 the wine than oil." 
 
 An accusation which Rabelais calls " an honour 
 and a praise." 
 
 Our ancestors tended to regard Rabelais as 
 purely a buffoon. Their imaginary portraits 
 of him were much like their portraits of Fal- 
 staff. Modern research has recovered a good 
 many details of his industrious life, and shown 
 how vast is the learning and how purposeful 
 much of the satire of his great book. It has 
 even been decided that the only portrait with 
 the slightest claim to authenticity is one which 
 gives him weary eyes, sunken cheeks, a wispy 
 beard, and a forehead like a ploughed field. 
 Some of the results of the immense mass of 
 modern French investigation are tabulated in 
 
 [308] 
 
RABELAIS 
 
 Mr. W. F. Smith's Rabelais in His Writings, 
 published by the Cambridge University Press, 
 and Mr. Smith makes a good many conjectures 
 of his own. Among his arguments some are 
 not exactly conclusive. It is not very satisfy- 
 ing to be told that Rabelais was not, as used 
 to be supposed, born in 1483; he was always 
 exact about facts, and we can (we are told) 
 deduce with certainty from his own writings 
 that he was born in 1494, " about 1494 or 1495," 
 or else in 1489. It is not much use to know 
 that his statements of facts were accurate when 
 you don't know which were his statements of 
 facts. But his history has been very much am- 
 plified; we know where he went and when he 
 wrote much better than we did; and the nature 
 of his reading and references is being gradually 
 cleared up. In one regard, at least, the tendency 
 of modern students is significant. When re- 
 search on him began, the inclination was to read 
 great affairs into his every chapter. It is now 
 certain that the war between Grandgousier and 
 Picrochole represents nothing more than a law- 
 suit between Rabelais' father (who is no longer 
 alleged to have been an innkeeper as the robust 
 old tradition had it) and a neighbouring land- 
 lord over riparian rights. But the point to 
 remember (in the light of the introduction to 
 
 [309] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Gargantua, if our own sense doesn't guide us) 
 is that the raw material of Rabelais ceases to be 
 important after he has used it. He may have 
 amused himself as much as he liked by using 
 real characters, incidents, and events in his nar- 
 rative, but the fairy-tale he made out of them is 
 the thing that matters. The war between those 
 two kings was not written merely in order to 
 record this insignificant law-suit; when Friar 
 John of the Funnels, " by his prowess and valour 
 discomfited all those of the army that entered 
 into the close of the abbey, unto the number of 
 thirteen thousand, six hundred, twenty and two, 
 besides the women and little children, which is 
 always to be understood," Rabelais had forgot- 
 ten all about the fishing rights of Rabelais pere 
 and was merely thinking of his own amusement 
 anl perhaps of the grinning faces of his 
 hospital patients, for whose amusement the 
 first two books are alleged to have been 
 written. 
 
 The scholars must not, in fact, begin to make 
 him smell more of the oil than of the wine., 
 They have demonstrated that he was not a 
 drunkard — though anyone with half an eye 
 could see that; but they now tend to suggest 
 rather that he was a teetotaler. They prove 
 that he was an eminent physician, a successful 
 [310] 
 
RABELAIS 
 
 lecturer, a trusted diplomatist, an erudite theo- 
 logian, a great Humanist, a Church reformer, a 
 linguist, a lawyer, a traveller, an expert in 
 architecture and the military art, and Lord 
 knows what else ; and they almost lose sight of 
 the fact that, whatever else he was, he was a 
 jolly old dog. Here, for instance, is Mr. Smith, 
 who has patience, judgment, learning, and who 
 certainly would not be spending his life upon 
 such an author if he did not relish him. Yet 
 his book is completely humourless, lacking in 
 high spirits or even relish, and unilluminated 
 even by the quotations from the text which 
 might give balance to it. One cannot help 
 thinking that if the spirit of Rabelais himself, 
 looking down from the clouds over the lid of a 
 tankard of nectar, should descry these books on 
 the work which he dedicated with a " Ho ! Ye 
 most illustrious drinkers," he would be tempted 
 to add a few more items to that long catalogue 
 of imaginary pedantry with which he filled his 
 Library of St. Victor, and which includes 
 Quaestio suhtilissima, utrum chimaera in vacuo 
 bomhinans possit comedere secundas intentiones, 
 and Marmotretus de baboonis et apis, cum Com- 
 mento Dorbellis. 
 
 In fact, after I had read Mr. Smith's book — 
 closely reasoned, carefully arranged, clearly ex- 
 
 [311] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 pressed, as it is — I had to go back to Rabelais 
 and read a few remembered passages in order 
 to remind myself that neither reform nor auto- 
 biographical history were his prime interest. I 
 read of that storm during which Panurge, as 
 white as chalk, chattered, " Be, be, be, bous, 
 bous, bous." I read the debate on Marrying or 
 not Marrying, and the Discourse of the Drink- 
 ers, the finest reproduction of the chatter of a 
 crowd enjoying themselves which exists any- 
 where in literature. I read the great formal 
 address wherewith Master Janotus de Brag- 
 mardo besought Gargantua to return to the 
 people of Paris the bells of Our Lady's Church 
 which he had carried off on the neck of his 
 mare, and which opens: 
 
 " Hem, hem, gud-day, sire, gud-day. Et vo- 
 bis, my masters. It were but reason that you 
 should restore to us our bells; for we have great 
 need of them. Hem, hem, aihfuhash. We have 
 oftentimes heretofore refused good money for 
 them of those of London in Cahors, yea, and 
 those of Bordeaux in Brie, who would have 
 bought them for the substantific quality of the 
 elementary complexion, which is intronificated 
 on the terrestreity of their quidditative nature, 
 to extraneize the blasting mists and whirlwinds 
 
 [312] 
 
RABELAIS 
 
 upon our vines, indeed not ours, but these round 
 about us." 
 
 And I read that most perfect chapter of all 
 " of the qualities and conditions of Panurge," 
 who " was of a middle stature, not too high nor 
 too low, and had somewhat of an aquiline nose, 
 made like the handle of a razor," who was " nat- 
 urally subject to a kind of disease which at that 
 time they called lack of money," and who " was 
 a wicked, lewd rogue, a cozener, drinker, roister, 
 rover, and a very dissolute and debauched fel- 
 low, if there were any in Paris; otherwise, and 
 in all matters else, the best and most virtuous 
 man in the world." And, having thus read, I 
 felt sure again that although it is interesting to 
 know that the idea of Panurge came out of an 
 Italian macaronic romance, and probably out 
 of fifty-seven other places as well, it really does 
 not greatly matter; any more than that "fair 
 great book " which Panurge wrote, but which 
 " is not printed yet that I know of." 
 
 Still, it is ridiculous not to be thankful for 
 the book one will use. This is especially so when, 
 in England, Rabelaisian literature is so scarce. 
 No English biographer has thought it worth 
 while to write a really big book on him; and 
 beyond Professor Saintsbury (who had a mag- 
 
 [313] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 nificent chapter on him in his recent History of 
 the French Novel) and two industrious Cam- 
 bridge dons, scarcely any living English critic 
 has attempted to do him justice. He is not even 
 widely read; except by schoolboys who get hold 
 of nasty paper-covered editions of him because 
 he was in the habit of plastering his pages with 
 unpleasant, and, in print, unusual words. He 
 cannot be excused — as some have attempted to 
 excuse him — from the charge of a verbal coarse- 
 ness unparalleled in any other great modern 
 writer. But his gigantic humour, his inexhaus- 
 tibly happy language, his knowledge of man- 
 kind, his wisdom, and the generosity of his 
 spirit, have made him the secular Bible of a suc- 
 cession of English writers (amongst whom, a 
 little surprisingly, was Charles Kingsley), and 
 there are many men living who would find him 
 equally companionable if only they would once 
 try him. They need not even bother about read- 
 ing him in the original. For the seventeenth 
 century translation by Sir Thomas Urquhart of 
 Cromartie (concluded, not quite so superbly, by 
 Peter Motteux) is one of the great translations 
 of the world, unequalled by any other transla- 
 tion in our language, a miracle in its constant 
 re-creation of what cannot be literally rendered 
 from the French into our own tongue. 
 
 [314] 
 
FAME AFTER DEATH 
 
 I HAVE been reading an author unduly neg- 
 lected. There are many. Our literature is full 
 of minor classics which from time to time are 
 galvanised into life by new editions, and then 
 relapse into ahnost complete oblivion, a few 
 bookish people cherishing them and no one else 
 mentioning them. These resent the neglect. 
 They feel that injustice is being done if a fa- 
 v^ourite book is omitted from histories of litera- 
 ture or is unknown to people who would appre- 
 ciate it. And there is no doubt that the injus- 
 tice is felt as an injustice to the author person- 
 ally, though he be long dead and unaware of 
 men's speech and their silence. This feeling 
 springs unconsciously, perhaps, from the knowl- 
 edge that if a man writes a good book one of 
 his main motives, almost always, is posthumous 
 fame. He wishes his name and his personality 
 to survive him; posterity must think well of 
 him; it must know that a man lived who was 
 fully up to its own best standards, a man intel- 
 lectually as acute, emotionally as quick, mor- 
 
 [315] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 ally as sound as the latest births of time. " I 
 think," said the dying Keats, " that I shall be 
 among the English poets after I die " ; " Not 
 marble, nor the gilded monuments of princes," 
 wrote Shakespeare, " shall outlast this powerful 
 rhyme." The predictions indicate the prepos- 
 sessions. We still see through their eyes and 
 feel with their hearts, find ourselves in them 
 and them in ourselves. But posthumous fame is 
 not always of this quality; and the neglect we 
 spoke of is not the only kind of neglect. 
 
 For, thinking of those authors whose names 
 are kept but dimly and intermittently alive, of 
 those books (not of the first order) in the sur- 
 vival or revival of which chance seems so nota- 
 bly to operate, I thought of those whose names 
 survive detached from their works, or of whom 
 the names are universally respected whilst the 
 works are generally ignored. There are Anglo- 
 Saxon poets, Caedmon and Cynewulf, whose 
 names come easy to the lips of all literate men; 
 but who reads them save an occasional editor 
 and an infrequent examinee? Langland, of 
 Piers Plowman, is another such. He is uni- 
 versally regarded as our greatest writer before 
 Chaucer, but how many times a year does any- 
 body open his book, and how many of those who 
 would never omit him from any list of the 
 
 [316] 
 
FAME AFTER DEATH 
 
 illustrious dead, are in contact with him or have 
 any first-hand basis for their belief in his great- 
 ness? Writing of Chaucer's successors, the late 
 Churton Collins, a candid if a narrow man, re- 
 marked that " What Voltaire said of Dante is 
 literally true of such poets as Henryson, Doug- 
 las, and Dunbar. We simply take them on 
 trust." And there are a great many others 
 whom most of us take on trust. It would be 
 foolish to suggest that no one ever reads the 
 Faerie Queen through, and we know that from 
 time to time Spenser, the great artist, has pro- 
 foundly affected the art of his successors. But 
 what proportion of those who put him amongst 
 the four greatest of our poets habitually read his 
 masterpiece, or, in fact, have ever read it at all? 
 How many who mechanically do reverence to 
 his name are secretly of opinion that his works 
 are extremely dull? Is he read in England 
 any more than Confucius is? And in some de- 
 gree does not this divorce between fame and 
 familiarity, the existence of established and un- 
 challenged reputation which is also mainly un- 
 tested, affect also such great figures as Ben 
 Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Dryden, 
 and such lesser ones as Richardson and Jeremy 
 Taylor? They are labelled; they have, after 
 whatever early vicissitudes, been put on their 
 
 [317] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 respective shelves, and scholars provide the gen- 
 eral public with the facts about them and the 
 justifications for their position. But Spenser 
 does not live as Shelley lives, nor Dry den as 
 Jane Austen. The range of their personal ac- 
 cess is far narrower than that of their celebrity. 
 In the farthest extremity, there survive from 
 classical times illustrious names to which no 
 works are attached at all; they are spoken of 
 with respect; they must not be missed out on 
 any account; but we know nothing of the men 
 beyond their names. And this, which is an un- 
 common occurrence in the sphere of literature, 
 is in other spheres common; for our dim and 
 inchoate early records have handed down to us 
 the names of thousands of monarchs and war- 
 riors who meant to leave their marks on the 
 world, whose names do reverberate through the 
 ages, and of whom we know nothing more. 
 What was Sennacherib like? What, beyond 
 their names, did Hengist and Horsa leave be- 
 hind them? And, dreaming of that posthumous 
 life which is so usual a human ambition, would 
 they have been satisfied to know that they would 
 survive only in a mere verbal repetition of the 
 names they bore? 
 
 Probably they would have preferred that to 
 nothing. This passion is beyond reason. Rea- 
 
 [318] 
 
FAME AFTER DEATH 
 
 son tells us that time is long and eternity longer, 
 that all civilisations pass, and that in the end all 
 records fade. We cannot, looking ahead, visual- 
 ise millions of years of accumulated reputations. 
 Old fames must die as new fames grow, and 
 accident may wipe them out with more than 
 normal rapidity. " What poets sang in Atlan- 
 tis ? " asks a modern poet. We know what they 
 must have felt, but we do not know who they 
 were; and the tidal wave that suddenly sub- 
 merged that fabled continent is but a violent 
 and abrupt symbol of the decay and oblivion 
 that ultimately must overcome all the works of 
 men. We may be established as we think. We 
 may at last have driven firm piles in that 
 morass into which past civilisations have con- 
 stantly relapsed. The last of the barbarian in- 
 vasions may be over; our scientific fabric may 
 not, within thinkable time, collapse; the ordered 
 progress of the Victorian vision may be ahead 
 and may last through aeons. But even so — and 
 it is a large postulate — the vessel's wake cannot 
 indefinitely be kept in sight. There will be a 
 horizon to each age, beyond which the knowl- 
 edge and interest of details far behind will fade. 
 They will have new Shakespeares and new 
 Spensers; our sonnets will have gone like our 
 marble and the gilded monuments of our princes, 
 
 [319] 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 beyond the range even of archaeologists. And 
 in the end what prospect does reason, working 
 on the supposed facts that are now provided 
 her, offer? A cooling and a disappearance. A 
 void and frozen world circling in space, and a 
 watching moon that has outlasted all mortal 
 fames and seen the ultimate Shakespeare pass 
 and die, leaving no more permanent trace than 
 Hodge at his plough or the slaves that worked 
 on the pyramids. We know all that, yet know- 
 ing it makes no difference. For fame after 
 death, however uncertain and however perish- 
 able, men will work, starve, and bear with cheer- 
 fulness the neglect of their contemporaries; in 
 the last resort they are content that for some 
 term, the limits of which they shrink from con- 
 templating, the mere syllables of their names 
 should be known and spoken, like the names of 
 schoolboys cut on desks or the initials of lovers 
 on trees. Is it strange that the meditative, con- 
 templating so peculiar a phenomenon, should 
 have found in this mania, otherwise so stupid 
 and perverse, the inexplicable reflection of a 
 deep consciousness of immortality? 
 
 THE END 
 
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