LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 Sl^plir^.^/inp^rtglt |o 
 
 Shelf _;£: T-T 
 
 'lS^.?^ 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
Jiction, lact aub JTaucw Scric0. 
 
 MERRY TALES. 
 
 By Mark Twain. 
 
 THE GERMAN EMPEROR AND HIS EASTERN 
 NEIGHBORS. 
 
 By Poultney Bigelow. 
 
 PADDLES AND POLITICS DOWN THE 
 DANUBE. 
 
 By Poultney Bigelow. 
 
 SELECTED POEMS. 
 
 By Walt Whitman. 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHIA: THE STORY OF A LIFE. 
 By Walt Whitman. 
 
 DON FINIMONDONE: CALABRIAN 
 SKETCHES. 
 
 By Elisabeth Cavazza, 
 
 THE MASTER OF SILENCE: A ROMANCE. 
 By Irving Bacheller. 
 
 WRITINGS OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 
 
 Edited by Paul Leicester Ford. 
 
 ESSAYS IN MINIATURE. 
 
 By Agnes Rei-plier. 
 
 MR. BILLY DOWNS AND HIS LIKES. 
 
 By Richard Malcolm Johnston. 
 
 Bound in Illuminated Cloth, each, 75 Cents. 
 Complete Set, 10 Volumes, in Box, $7.50. 
 
 *** -^<?^ Sdlc by all Booksellers, or sent pos'paid, on re- 
 ceipt 0/ price, bv tlie Publishers, 
 
 OHAS. L WEBSTER & 00., ITEW YOEK. 
 
Miction, fact, an& fanc^ 0cric6 
 
 Edited by Arthur Stedman 
 
 ESSAYS IN MINIATURE 
 
x 
 
 ESSAYS IN MINIATURE 
 
 / 
 
 BY 
 
 AGNES REPPLIER 
 
 qQPYKjci, 
 
 CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO. 
 1892 
 

 ?1^ 
 
 Copyright, 1S92, 
 
 CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO. 
 
 (A// rights reserved. ) 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 Jenkins & McCowan, 
 
 NEW VORK. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Our P'riends, The Books , ii 
 
 Trials of a PasLiSHER 28 
 
 The Oppression of Notes 45 
 
 Conversation in Novels 59 
 
 A Short Defence of Villains 70 
 
 A By-Way in Fiction 87 
 
 Comedy of the Custom House ...... o 104 
 
 Mr. Wilde's Intentions ......... o 121 
 
 Humors of Gastronomy 129 
 
 Children in Fiction 144 
 
 Three Famous Old Maids 157 
 
 The Charm of the Familiar 171 
 
 Old World Pets • 182 
 
 Battle of the Babies 195 
 
 The Novel of Incident 207 
 
ESSAYS IN MINIATURE 
 
 OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 
 
 nr^HERE is a short paragraph in Hazlitt's 
 Conduct of Life that I read very often, 
 and always with fresh delight. He is offering 
 much good counsel to a little lad at school, and 
 when he comes to a matter upon which most 
 counselors are wont to be exceedingly didac- 
 tic and diffuse — the choice of books — he con- 
 denses all he has to say into a few wise and 
 gentle words that are well worth taking to 
 heart : 
 
 *' As to the works you will have to read by 
 choice or for amusement, the best are the com- 
 monest. The names of many of them are al- 
 ready familiar to you. Read them as you grow 
 
 up with all the satisfaction in your power, and 
 
 II 
 
12 OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 
 
 make much of them. It is perhaps the great- 
 est pleasure you will have in life, the one you 
 will think of longest, and repent of least. If 
 my life had been more full of calamity than it 
 has been (much more than yours, I hope, will 
 be) I would live it over again, my poor little 
 boy, to have read the books I did in my 
 youth." 
 
 In all literature there is nothing truer or 
 better than this, and its sad sincerity contrasts 
 strangely with the general tone of the essay, 
 which is somewhat in the manner of Lord Ches- 
 terfield. But here, at least, Hazlitt speaks with 
 the authority of one whose books had ever 
 been his friends; who had sat up all night as a 
 child over Paul and Virginia^ and to whom the 
 mere sight of an odd volume of some good old 
 English author, on a street stall, brought back 
 with keen and sudden rapture the flavor of 
 those early joys which he remembered longest, 
 and repented least. His words ring consoling- 
 ly in these different days, when we have not 
 only ceased reading what is old, but when — a 
 far greater misfortune — we have forgotten how 
 
OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS I3 
 
 to read ''with all the satisfaction in our pow- 
 er," and with a simple surrendering of ourselves 
 to the pleasure which has no peer. There are 
 so many things to be considered now besides 
 pleasure, that we have well-nigh abandoned 
 the effort to be pleased. In the first place, it 
 is necessary to " keep up " with a decent pro- 
 portion of current literature, and this means 
 perpetual labor and speed, whereas idleness 
 and leisure are requisite for the true enjoyment 
 of books. In the second place, few of us are 
 brave enough to withstand the pressure which 
 friends, mentors and critics bring to bear upon 
 us, and which effectually crushes anything like 
 the weak indulgence of our own tastes. The 
 reading they recommend being generally in the 
 nature of a corrective, it is urged upon us with 
 little regard to personal inclination; in fact, the 
 less we like it, the greater our apparent need. 
 There are people in this world who always in- 
 sist upon others remodeling their diet on a 
 purely hygienic basis; who entreat us to avoid 
 sweets or acids, or tea or coffee, or whatever 
 we chance to particularly like; Avho tell us per- 
 
14 OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 
 
 suasively that cress and dandelions will purify 
 our blood; that celery is an excellent febri- 
 fuge; that shaddocks should be eaten for the 
 sake of their quinine, and fish for its phospho- 
 rus; that stcAved fruit is more wholesome than 
 raw; that rice is more nutritious than potatoes; 
 — who deprive us, in a word, of that hearty hu- 
 man happiness which should be ours when din- 
 ing. Like Mr. Woodhouse, they are capable 
 of having the sweetbreads and asparagus car- 
 ried off before our longing eyes, and baked ap- 
 ples provided as a substitute. 
 
 It is in the same benevolent spirit that kind- 
 hearted critics are good enough to warn us 
 against the books we love, and to prescribe for 
 us the books we ought to read. With robust 
 assurance they offer to give our tutelage their 
 own personal supervision, and their disinterest- 
 ed zeal carries them occasionally beyond the 
 limits of discretion. I have been both amazed 
 and gratified by the lack of reserve with which 
 these unknown friends have volunteered to 
 guide my own footsteps through the perilous 
 paths of literature. They are so urgent, too, 
 
OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 15 
 
 not to say severe, in their manner of proffer- 
 ing assistance : " To Miss Repplier we would 
 particularly recommend "—and then follows a 
 list of books of which I dare say I stand in 
 open need; but which I am naturally indis- 
 posed to consider with much kindness, thrust 
 upon me, as they are, like paregoric or a por- 
 ous plaster. If there be people who can take 
 their pleasures medicinally, let them read by 
 prescription and grow fat ! But let me rather 
 keep for my friends those dear and familiar 
 volumes which have given me a large share of 
 my life's happiness. If they are somewhat an- 
 tiquated and out of date, I have no wish to 
 flout their vigorous age. A book, Hazlitt re- 
 minds us, is not, like a woman, the worse for 
 being old. If they are new, I do not scorn 
 them for a fault which is common to all their 
 kind. Paradise Lost was once new, and was 
 regarded as a somewhat questionable novelty. 
 If they come from afar, or are compatriots of 
 my own, they are equally well-beloved. There 
 can be no aliens in the ranks of literature, no 
 national prejudice in an honest enjoyment of 
 
l6 OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 
 
 art. The book, after all, and not the date or 
 birthplace of its author, is of material impor- 
 tance. " It ceems ungracious to refuse to be a 
 tcrrcE filiiis,'' sdiys Mr. Arnold; "but England 
 is not all the world." Neither, for that matter, 
 is America, nor even Russia. The universe is 
 a little wider and a little older than we are 
 pleased to think, and to have lived long and 
 traveled far does not necessarily imply inferi- 
 ority. The volume that has crossed the seas, 
 the volume that has survived its generation, 
 stand side by side with their new-born Amer- 
 ican brother, and there is no lack of harmony 
 in such close companionship. Books of every 
 age and of every nation show a charming 
 adaptability in their daily intercourse; and, if 
 left to themselves, will set off each other's 
 merits in the most amiable and disinterested 
 manr.'r, each one growing better by contact 
 with its excellent neighbor. It is only ^^•hen 
 the patriotic critic comes along, and stirs up 
 disscnsioiis in their midst, that this peaceful 
 atmosphere is rent with sudden discord; that 
 the English book grows disdainful and super- 
 
OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 1/ 
 
 cilious; the American, aggressive and sarcas- 
 tic; the French, malicious and unkind. It is 
 only when we apply to them a test which is 
 neither wise nor worthy that they show all 
 their bad qualities, and afford a wrangling 
 ground for the ill-natured reviewers of two 
 continents. 
 
 There is a story told of the Russian poet, 
 Pushkin, which I like to think true, because it 
 is so pretty. When he was carried home fatal- 
 ly wounded from the duel which cost him his 
 life, his young wife, who had been the inno- 
 cent cause of the tragedy, asked him whether 
 there were no relatives or friends whom he 
 wished to see summoned to his bedside. The 
 dying man lifted his heavy eyes to the shelf 
 where stood his favorite books, and murmured 
 faintly in reply, " Farewell, my friends," 
 When we remember that Pushkin lived efore 
 Russian literature had become a great and dis- 
 piriting power, when we realize that he had 
 never been ordered by critics to read Turgue- 
 neff, never commanded severely to worship 
 Tolstoi' or be an outcast in the land, never 
 
l8 OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 
 
 even reveled in the dreadful gloom of Dos- 
 toievsky, it seems incredible to the well-in- 
 structed that he should have loved his books 
 so much. It is absolutely afflicting to think 
 that many of these same volumes were foreign, 
 were romantic, perhaps even cheerful in their 
 character; that they were not his mentors, his 
 disciplinarians, his guides to a higher and sad- 
 der life, but only his "friends." Why, Hazlitt 
 himself could have used no simpler term of 
 endearment. Charles Lamb might have ut- 
 tered the very words when he closed his pa- 
 tient eyes in the dull little cottage at Edmon- 
 ton. Sir Walter Scott might have murmured 
 them on that still September morn when the 
 clear rippling of the Tweed hushed his tired 
 heart to rest. I think that Shelley bade some 
 swift, unconscious farewell to all the dear de- 
 lights of reading, when he thrust into his pock- 
 et the little volume of Keats, with its cover 
 bent hastily backward, and rose, still dreamy 
 with fairy-land, to face a sudden death. I 
 think that Montaigne bade farewell to the 
 fourscore *'every-day books" that were his 
 
OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS I9 
 
 chosen companions, before turning serenely 
 away from the temperate pleasures of life. 
 
 For all these men loved literature, not con- 
 tentiously, nor austerely, but simply as their 
 friend. All read with that devout sincerity 
 which precludes petulance, or display, or let- 
 tered asceticism, the most dismal self-torment 
 in the world. In that delicious dialogue of 
 Landor's between Montaigne and Scaliger, the 
 scholar intimates to the philosopher that his 
 library is somewhat scantily furnished, and 
 that he and his father between them have writ- 
 ten nearly as many volumes as Montaigne pos- 
 sesses on his shelves. " Ah ! " responds the 
 sage with gentle malice, "to write them is 
 quite another thing ; but one reads books with- 
 out a spur, or even a pat from our Lady 
 Vanity." 
 
 Could anything be more charming, or more 
 untrue than this ? Montaigne, perched tran- 
 quilly on his Guyenne hill-slope, may have 
 escaped the goad ; but we, the victims of our 
 swifter day, know too well how remorselessly 
 Lady Vanity pricks us round the course, Are 
 
20 OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 
 
 we not perpetually showing- our paces at her 
 command, and under the sharp incentive of 
 her heel ? Yet Charles Lamb, in the heart of 
 London, preserved by some fine instinct the 
 same intellectual freedom that Montaigne 
 cherished in sleepy Gascony. He too was 
 fain to read for pleasure, and his unswerving 
 sincerity is no less enviable than the clearness 
 of his literary insight. Indeed, while many of 
 his favorite authors may have no message for 
 our ears, yet every line in which he writes his 
 love is pregnant with enjoyment ; every word 
 expresses subtly a delicious sense of satisfac- 
 tion. The soiled and torn copies of Tom 
 Jones and The Vicar of Wakefield from the 
 circulating library, which speak eloquently 
 to him of the thousand thumbs that have 
 turned over each well-worn page ; the " kind- 
 hearted play-book " which he reaches down 
 from some easy shelf ; the old Tozvn and 
 Country Magazine which he finds in the win- 
 dow-seat of an inn ; the " garrulous, pleasant 
 history" of Burnet ; the " beautiful, bare nar- 
 rative " of Robinson Crusoe ; the antiquated, 
 
OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 21 
 
 time-stained edition of '* that fantastic old 
 great man," Robert Burton ; the Folio Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher — all these and many more 
 are Lamb's tried friends, and he writes of them 
 with lingering affection. He is even able, 
 through some fine choice of words, to convey 
 to us the precise degree and quality of pleasure 
 which they yield him, and which he wins us to 
 share, not by exhortations or reproaches, but 
 gently, with alluring smiles, and hinted prom- 
 ises of reward. How craftily he holds each 
 treasured volume before our eyes ! How apt 
 the brief, caressing sentence in which he sings 
 its praises ! — *' The sweetest names, and which 
 carry a perfume in the mention, are Kit Mar- 
 lowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, 
 and Cowley." '' Milton almost requires a 
 solemn service of music to be played before 
 you enter upon him. Who listens, had need 
 bring docile thoughts, and purged ears." 
 '* Winter evenings — the world shut out — with 
 less of ceremony the gentle Shakespeare en- 
 ters. At such a season, the Tempest, or his 
 own Winter s TaleT 
 
22 OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 
 
 In fact, the knowledge of when to read a 
 book is almost as valuable as the knowledge of 
 what book to read, and Lamb, as became a 
 true lover of literature, realized instinctively 
 that certain hours and certain places seem 
 created expressly for the supreme enjoyment 
 of an author, who yields to these harmonious 
 surroundings his best and rarest gifts. To 
 pick up The Faerie Queene as a stop-gap in the 
 five or six impatient minutes before dinner, to 
 carry Candide into the "serious avenues" of a 
 cathedral, to try and skim over Richardson 
 when in the society of a lively girl — Lamb 
 knew too well that these unholy feats are the 
 accomplishments of an intellectual acrobat, 
 not of a modest and simple-hearted reader. 
 Hazlitt also was keenly alive to the influences 
 of time and place. His greatest delight in por- 
 ing over the books of his youth lay in the 
 many recollections they aroused of scenes and 
 moments rich in vanished joys. He opened a 
 faded, dusty volume, and behold ! the spot 
 where first he read it, the day it was received, 
 the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky, all re- 
 
OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 23 
 
 turned to him with charming distinctness, and 
 with them returned his first rapturous impres- 
 sion of that long-closed, long-neglected ro- 
 mance : " Twenty years are struck off the list, 
 and I am a child again." Mr. Pater lays 
 especial emphasis on the circumstances under 
 which our favorite authors are read. ^' A 
 book," he says, " like a person, has its fortunes 
 with one ; is lucky or unlucky in the precise 
 moment of its falling in our way ; and often, 
 by some happy accident, ranks with us for 
 something more than its independent value." 
 Thus it is that Marius and Fabian, nestled in 
 the ripened corn amid the cool brown shadows, 
 receive from the Golden Ass of Apuleius a 
 strange keen pleasure ; each lad taking from 
 the story that which he is best fitted to absorb ; 
 each lad as unmindful of the other's feelings as 
 of the grosser elements in the tale. For 
 without doubt a book has a separate mes- 
 sage for every reader, and tells him, of good 
 or evil, that which he is able to hear. Plato, 
 indeed, complains of all books that they lack 
 reticence or propriety toward different classes 
 
24 OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 
 
 of persons, and his protest embodies the aver- 
 sion of the flexible Greek mind for the pre- 
 cision of written literature. A poem or an 
 oration which, crystallized into characters, 
 speaks to all alike, and reveals itself indiscrim- 
 inately to everybody, is of less value to the 
 ancient scholar than the poem or oration 
 which lingers in the master's mind, and main- 
 tains a delicate reserve toward the inferior 
 portion of the community. Plato is so far re- 
 moved from the modern spirit which seeks to 
 persuade the multitude to read Shakespeare 
 and Milton, that he practically resents their 
 peering with rude, but pardonable curiosity, 
 into the stately domains of genius. We have 
 now grown so insistently generous in these 
 matters that our unhappy brothers, harassed 
 beyond endurance, may well envy the plebeian 
 Greeks their merciful limitations ; or wish, with 
 the little girl in PimcJi, that they had lived in 
 the time of Charles II., *' for then education 
 was very much neglected." But strive as we 
 may, we cannot coerce great authors into uni- 
 versal complaisance. Plato himself, were he 
 
OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 2$ 
 
 SO unfortunate as to be living now, would rec- 
 ognize and applaud their manifest reserves. 
 Even to the elect they speak with varying 
 voices, and it is sometimes difficult to believe 
 that all have read alike. When Guy Manner- 
 ing was first given to the public, who awaited 
 it with frantic eagerness, Wordsworth thought- 
 fully observed that it was a novel in the style 
 of Mrs. Radcliffe. Murray, from whom one 
 expects more discernment, wrote to Hogg that 
 Meg Merrilies was worthy of Shakespeare ; 
 " but all the rest of the novel might have been 
 written by Scott's brother, or any other body." 
 Blackwood, about the same time, wrote to 
 Murray : '' If Walter Scott be the author of 
 Gity Mannering, he stands far higher in this 
 line than in his former walk." One of these 
 verdicts has been ratified by time, but who 
 could suppose that Julia Mannering and honest 
 Dandy Dinmont would ever have whispered 
 such different messages into listening ears ! 
 
 And it is precisely because of the indepen- 
 dence assumed by books, that we have need to 
 cherish our own independence in return. They 
 
26 OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 
 
 will not all be our friends, and not one of them 
 will give itself freely to us at the dictation of 
 a peremptory critic. Hazlitt says nobly of a 
 few great writers, notably Milton and Burke, 
 that " to have lived in the cultivation of an in- 
 timacy with such works, and to have familiarly 
 relished such names, is not to have lived in 
 vain." This is true, yet if we must seek for 
 companionship in less august circles, there are 
 many milder lights who shine with a steady 
 radiance. It is not the privilege of every one 
 to love so great a prose writer as Burke, so 
 great a poet as Milton. "An appreciation of 
 Paradise Lost,'' says Mr. Mark Pattison, "is 
 the reward of exquisite scholarship; " and the 
 number of exquisite scholars is never very 
 large. To march up to an author as to the 
 cannon's mouth is at best but unprofitable her- 
 oism. To take our pleasures dutifully is the 
 least likely way to enjoy them. The laws of 
 Crete, it is said, were set to music, and sung 
 as alluringly as possible after dinner; but I 
 doubt if they afforded a really popular pastime. 
 The well-fed guests who listened to such dec- 
 
OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS 2/ 
 
 orous chants applauded them probably from 
 the standpoint of citizenship, rather than from 
 any undisguised sentiment of enjoyment, and 
 a few degenerate souls must have sighed occa- 
 sionally over the joys of a rousing^and unseem- 
 ly chorus. We of to-day are so rich in laws, 
 so amply disciplined at every turn, that we 
 have no need to be reminded at dinner of our 
 obligations. A kind-hearted English critic 
 once said that reading was not a duty, and 
 had therefore no business to be made disagree- 
 able; and that no man was under any obliga- 
 tion to read what another man wrote. This is 
 an old-fashioned point of view, which has lost 
 favor of late years, but which is not without 
 compensations of its own. If the office of lit- 
 erature be to make glad our lives, how shall we 
 seek the joy in store for us save by following 
 Hazlitt's simple suggestion, and reading "with 
 all the satisfaction in our power " ? And how 
 shall we insure this satisfaction, save by ignor- 
 ing the restrictions imposed upon us, and cul- 
 tivating, as far as we can, a sincere and pleas- 
 urable intercourse with our friends, the books ? 
 
TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 
 
 T N reading the recently published Memoirs 
 -*- and Correspondence of Jolin JMiirray, a 
 very interesting and valuable piece of biog- 
 raphy — albeit somewhat lengthy for these 
 hurried days — we are forcibly impressed with 
 one surprising truth which we were far from 
 suspecting in our ignorance — namely, that the 
 publisher's life, like the policeman's, is not a 
 happy one, but filled to the brim with vexa- 
 tions peculiarly his own. It was as much the 
 fashion in Murray's time as it is in ours to be- 
 wail the hard fate of down-trodden authors, 
 and to hint that he who prints the book ab- 
 sorbs the praise and profit which belong in 
 justice to him who writes it. In fact, that 
 trenchant and time-honored jest, "Now Barab= 
 bas was a publisher," dates from this halcyon 
 period when Marniion was sold for a thousand 
 guineas, and the third canto of CJiilde Harold 
 
 28 
 
TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 29 
 
 for nearly tAvice that sum. Murray himself 
 possessed such influence in the literary world 
 that the battle with the public was thought to 
 be half won when a book appeared armed with 
 the sanction of his name. He was a man of 
 wealth, too, of social standing, of severe and 
 fastidious tastes; exactly fitted by circum- 
 stances, if not by nature, to play the autocratic 
 role popularly assigned to all his craft, to crush 
 the aspiring poet in the dust, to freeze the bud- 
 ding genius who sought assistance at his hands, 
 to override with haughty arrogance the wan 
 and needy scholar who waited at his door. 
 Instead of this, we see him enduring with 
 lamblike gentleness an amount of provocation 
 which would have hallowed a mediaeval saint, 
 and which seems to our undisciplined spirits 
 as wantonly exasperating and malign. 
 
 In the first place, his Scotch allies. Con- 
 stable and the ever-sanguine James Ballan- 
 tyne, appeared to have looked upon the Eng- 
 lish firm as an inexhaustible mine of wealth, 
 from which they could, when convenient, 
 draw whatever they required. Ballantyne, 
 
30 TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 
 
 especially, required so much, and required that 
 much so often, that Murray was obliged to 
 sever a connection too costly for his purse. 
 Then his partial ownership of Blackivood' s 
 Magazine was for years a thorn in his flesh, 
 and there is something truly pathetic in his 
 miserable attempts to modify the personalities 
 of that utterly irrepressible journal. "In the 
 name of God," he writes vehemently to Wil- 
 liam Blackwood, "why do you seem to think 
 it necessary that each number must give pain 
 to some one t " Even the Qiiarteidy , his own 
 literary offspring, and the pride and glory of 
 his heart, Avas at times but a fractious child, 
 and cost him, after the fashion of children, 
 many sleepless nights. Gifford, the editor, 
 was incurably unbusinesslike in his habits, 
 and never could understand why subscribers 
 should complain and raise a row because the 
 magazine chanced to be a month or six weeks 
 late. It was sure to appear some time, and 
 they had all the pleasure of anticipation. It 
 was a point of honor with him, also, to con- 
 ceal the names of.his contributors, so that 
 
TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 3I 
 
 when offence was given to anybody — which 
 was pretty nearly always — the aggrieved per- 
 son immediately attacked Murray in return. 
 There are hosts of letters in these volumes 
 from indignant authors who express them- 
 selves with true British candor because the 
 Quarterly has assailed their books, or their 
 friends' books, or their friends' friends' books, 
 or their pet politicians, or their most cherished 
 political schemes. There are hosts of other 
 letters which merely record a distinctly un- 
 favorable opinion of the magazine's literary 
 qualities, and which lament with pitiless 
 sincerity that the last number hardly contained 
 a single readable article. 
 
 All these annoyances, however, prickly 
 though they appear, are but trifles in compari- 
 son with the extraordinary demands made 
 upon Murray as a publisher. Impecunious 
 playwrights, like poor Charles Maturin, pelt 
 him with unsalable dramas and heartrending 
 appeals for help. Impecunious essayists, like 
 Charles Marsh, send papers to the Quarterly, 
 and — before they are read — request fifteen 
 
32 TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 
 
 pounds, " as money on manuscript deposited." 
 Impecunious patriots, like Foscolo — that 
 bright particular star of sentimental Liberals 
 — demand loans of a thousand pounds, to be 
 repaid with literary work. Impecunious poets, 
 like James Hogg, borrow fifty pounds with the 
 lofty patronage of sovereigns. It is very amus- 
 ing to note the tone assumed by the Ettrick 
 Shepherd in his intercourse with a man of 
 Murray's influence and position. When he is 
 in a good humor, that is, when he has negotiat- 
 ed a successful loan, he writes in this generous 
 fashion: "Though I have heard some bitter 
 things against you, I never met with any man 
 whatever who, on so slight an acquaintance, 
 has behaved to me so much like a gentleman." 
 Or again, " You may be misled, and you may 
 be mistaken, my dear Murray, but as long as 
 you tell me the simple truth as plainly, you 
 and I will be friends." If things go haltingly, 
 however, and there is a delay in forwarding 
 cheques, this magnificent condescension sharp- 
 ens into angry protest. " What the deuce," 
 he writes vehemently, "have you made of my 
 
TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 33 
 
 excellent poem,^ that you are never publish- 
 ing it, while I am starving for money, and cannot 
 even afford a Christmas goose to my friends?" 
 When a new edition of TJie Queen s Wake was 
 printed in Edinburgh, a very handsome quarto 
 selling for a guinea — which seems a heart- 
 breaking price — Murray with his usual gener- 
 osity subscribed for aventy-five copies; where- 
 upon we find Hogg promptly acknowledging 
 this munificence by begging him to persuade 
 others to do likewise. " You must make a 
 long pull and a strong pull in London for sub- 
 scriptions," he writes, with enviable composure, 
 "as you and Mr. Rogers are the principal 
 men I have to rely on." There is something 
 very tranquillizing in the gentle art of shift- 
 ing one's burdens to other shoulders. Genius 
 flourishes like the mountain oak when it can 
 strike root in the money-boxes of less gifted 
 friends. 
 
 If tact and patience were both required in 
 soothing Hogg's petulant vanity and in pro- 
 viding for his extravagant habits, the task be- 
 
 * " The Pilgrims of the Sun." 
 
34 TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 
 
 came harder and more thankless when Leigh 
 Hunt presented himself in the field. I can 
 imagine few things more delightful than to 
 have liad money transactions with a person of 
 Leigh Huilt's peculiar and highly original 
 methods. He wa:S~.a kind of literary Oliver, 
 crying perpetually for more. When the 
 Story of Rimini was still uncompleted, it was 
 offered by the poet to Murray with this 
 diverting assurance : 
 
 *' Booksellers tell me I ought not to ask less 
 than four hundred and fifty pounds (which is a 
 sum I happen to want just now), and my 
 friends, not in the trade, say I ought not to 
 ask less than five hundred, with such a trifling 
 acknowledgment upon the various editions, 
 after the second and third, as shall enable me 
 to say that I am still profiting by it." 
 
 Murray, evidently disconcerted by the cool- 
 ness of this proposal, writes back with veiled 
 and courteous sarcasm, suggesting that the 
 manuscript be offered upon these terms to 
 other publishers. Should they refuse to ac- 
 cept it, he is willing to print a small edition at 
 
TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 35 
 
 his own expense, and divide the profits with 
 the author, to whom the copyright shall be re- 
 stored. Rather to our amazement, and per- 
 haps to Murray's, Leigh Hunt closes im- 
 mediately with this very moderate offer; and 
 as soon as the book appears he writes again, 
 begging to have part of the money advanced 
 to him. Murray's reply is eminently char- 
 acteristic of the man. The poem, he says, is 
 selling well. Should the entire edition be ex- 
 hausted, which he doubts not will be the case, 
 the poet's share of the profits would amount to 
 exactly forty-eight pounds and ten shillings. 
 He takes pleasure in enclosing a cheque for 
 fifty pounds, and only asks that a receipt may 
 be sent him for the same. The receipt is not 
 sent until ten days are past, when it arrives 
 accompanied by a long letter in which Leigh 
 Hunt enlarges upon his pecuniary troubles — 
 concerning these he is as explicit as Micawber 
 — and proposes that Murray should now pur- 
 chase the copyright oi Rimini for four hundred 
 and fifty pounds, and let him have the money 
 at once. Unhappily, the answer to this admi- 
 
36 TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 
 
 rable piece of negotiation has been lost, but it 
 was evidently too patronizing to please the 
 poet, who was as sensitive as he was insatiable. 
 The next letter we have from him sharply re- 
 minds Murray that he is not seeking for as- 
 sistance, but merely endeavoring to transact a 
 piece of business which would involve no pos- 
 sible risk for any one. Finally the poor har- 
 assed publisher persuades him with soft words 
 to sell the copyright of Rimini to another 
 firm, and there must have been a deep breath 
 of relief drawn in Albemarle Street when the 
 matter was at last adjusted, and the trouble- 
 some correspondence ceased. In fact, there 
 is a letter from Blackwood frankly congratu- 
 lating Murray on his escape. "I dare say you 
 are well rid of Leigh Hunt," writes this ex- 
 perienced ally to his fellow-sufferer; "and I 
 really pity you when I think of the difficulty 
 you must often have in managing with authors, 
 and particularly with the friends of authors 
 whom you wish to oblige." 
 
 One of those whom Murray wished eagerly 
 to oblige, until he found the task too costly for 
 
TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 37 
 
 his purse, was Madame de Stael. For the 
 English and French editions of her work on 
 Germany he paid no less than fifteen hundred 
 pounds, and speedily found himself a loser by 
 the transaction. Gifford, who had scant liking 
 for the celebrated "hurricane in petticoats," 
 writes to him on the occasion with gentle 
 malice, and a too evident amusement at his 
 discomfiture: " I can venture to assure you 
 that the hope of keeping her from the press is 
 quite vain. The family of CEdipus were not 
 more haunted and goaded by the Furies than 
 the Neckers, father, mother, and daughter, 
 have always been by the demon of publication. 
 Madame de Stael will therefore write and print 
 without intermission." Not without being well 
 paid, however ; for three years later we find 
 the Baron de Stael writing to Murray in his 
 mother's laame, and demanding four thousand 
 pounds for her three-volume work, Des Causes 
 et des Effets de la Revolution Fi^an^aise. " My 
 mother insists upon four thousand pounds, 
 besides a credit in books for every new edi- 
 tion," says this imperative gentleman, some- 
 
38 TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 
 
 what in the manner of a footpad ; to whom 
 Murray responds with much tranquillity, 
 thanking him for his " obliging letter," and 
 intimating that he and Longman together are 
 willing to pay one thousand pounds for the 
 first French and English editions, and three 
 hundred and fifty pounds for the second. 
 Madame de Stael indignantly repudiates this 
 offer, declaring that twenty -five hundred 
 pounds is the least she can think of taking, 
 and that the book will be a bargain at such a 
 price. Murray, who knows something about 
 bargains, and who has been rendered more 
 cautious than usual by his experience with 
 LAllemagne, declines such palpable risks, and 
 excuses himself from further negotiations. La 
 Revolution Frangaise did not appear until after 
 Madame de Stael's death, when it was pub- 
 lished by Messrs. Baldwin and Cradock, and 
 proved a lamentable failure, people having 
 begun by that time to grow a trifle weary of 
 such a thrice-told tale. 
 
 The most amusing and at the same time most 
 pathetic bit of correspondence in these two 
 
TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 39 
 
 big volumes relates to a translation of Faust, 
 which Coleridge, so eminently qualified for the 
 task, offers to write for Murray. He unfolds 
 his views in a letter as long as an average 
 essay — or what we call an essay in these de- 
 generate days — evincing on every page a su- 
 perb contempt for the reading public, which 
 was expected to buy the book, a painful re- 
 luctance to '* attempt anything of a literary 
 nature with any motive of pecuniary advan- 
 tage " — which does not prevent him from doing 
 some elaborate bargaining later on — and a 
 tendency to plunge into intellectual abstrac- 
 tions, calculated to chill the heart of the stout- 
 est publisher in Christendom. There is one 
 incomparable paragraph which Coleridge alone 
 could have written, and a portion of which — 
 only a portion — I cannot refrain from quoting : 
 '' Any work in Poetry strikes me with more 
 than common awe, as proposed for realization 
 by myself, because from long habits of medita- 
 tion on language, as the symbolic medium of 
 the connection of Thought with Thought as 
 affected and modified by Passion and Emotion, 
 
40 TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 
 
 I should spend days in avoiding what I deemed 
 faults, though with the full foreknowledge that 
 their admission would not have offended three 
 of all my readers, and might perhaps be deemed 
 beauties by three hundred — if so many there 
 were ; and this not out of any respect for the 
 public {i.e., the persons who might happen to 
 purchase and look over the book) but from a 
 hobby-horsical, superstitious regard to my own 
 feelings and sense of Duty. Language is the 
 sacred Fire in this Temple of Humanity, and 
 the Muses are its especial and vestal priestesses. 
 Though I cannot prevent the vile drugs and 
 counterfeit Frankincense which render its 
 flames at once pitchy, glowing, and unsteady, 
 I would yet be no voluntary accomplice in the 
 Sacrilege. With the commencement of a Pub- 
 lic, commences the degradation of the Good 
 and the Beautiful — both fade and retire be- 
 fore the accidentally Agreeable. OtJicllo be- 
 comes a hollow lip-worship ; and the Castle 
 Spectre, or any more peccant thing of Froth, 
 Noise, and Impermanence, that may have over- 
 billowed it on the restless sea of curiosity, is 
 
TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 4I 
 
 the true Prayer of the Praise and Admira- 
 tion." 
 
 Fancy the feelings of a poor pubHsher as- 
 sailed with this raging torrent of words ! Mur- 
 ray, stemming the tide as best he can, replies 
 in a short, businesslike note, proposing terms 
 — not very liberal ones — for the desired trans- 
 lation. Whereupon Coleridge writes a second 
 letter, actually longer than the first, intimating 
 that a hundred pounds is but scant remu- 
 neration for such a piece of work, "executed 
 as alone I can or dare do it — that is, to the 
 utmost of my power ; for which the intolerable 
 Pain, nay the far greater Toil and Effort of 
 doing otherwise, is a far safer Pledge than any 
 solicitude on my part concerning the approba- 
 tion of the Public." 
 
 Finally, the undertaking was abandoned, 
 and the English-speaking world lost its single 
 chance of having Fatist adequately trans- 
 lated ; lost it, I truly believe, through the re- 
 luctance of even a patient man to stomach any 
 further correspondence. 
 
 Trials of a very different order poured in on 
 
42 TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 
 
 Murray through his connection with Lord 
 Byron, an honor which was not altogether 
 without thorns. People who thought Byron's 
 poetry immoral wrote frankly to Murray to say 
 so. People who did not think Byron's poetry 
 immoral wrote quite as frankly to complain of 
 those who did. His noble lordship himself 
 was at times both petulant and exacting, and 
 there is a ring of true dignity in the following 
 remonstrance offered by the publisher to the 
 peer, by '' Mr. Bookseller Murray," as Napier 
 contemptuously calls him, to the poet whose 
 good qualities he was so quick to understand : 
 "I assure you," he writes, "that I take no 
 umbrage at irritability which will occasionally 
 burst from a mind like yours ; but I sometimes 
 feel a deep regret that in our pretty long inter- 
 course I appear to have failed to show that a 
 man in my situation may possess the feelings 
 and principles of a gentleman. Most certainly 
 do I think that, from personal attachment, I 
 could venture as much in any shape for your 
 service as any of those who have the good for- 
 tune to be ranked amongst your friends." 
 
TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 43 
 
 In fact, the friends of authors were too often, 
 as Blackwood hinted, the sources of Murray's 
 severest trials. Friends are obliging creatures 
 in their way, and always ready to give with 
 lavish hearts their wealth of criticism and opin- 
 ion. There is a delightful letter from the Rev. 
 H. H. Milman, Dean of St. Paul's, offering to 
 Murray his sadly unreadable poem Belshaz- 
 zar, with this timely intimation: ** I give you 
 fair warning that all the friends who have 
 hitherto seen it assure me that I shall not do 
 myself justice unless I demand a very high 
 price for it." Murray, in reply, hints as ur- 
 banely as he can that, as it is he and not Mr. 
 Milman's friends who is to pay the price, he 
 cannot accept their judgment in the matter as 
 final ; he is compelled to take into considera- 
 tion his own chances of profit. Throughout 
 all his correspondence we note this tone of 
 careful self-repression, of patient and courte- 
 ous kindness. Now and then only, particularly 
 trying letters appear to have been left unan- 
 swered, as though the limits of even his endur- 
 ance had been reached. When we remember 
 
44 TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER 
 
 that the Quarterly was the cherished idol of 
 his life, and that his pride and delight in it 
 knew no bounds, we can dimly appreciate his 
 feelings on receiving the following lines from 
 Southey, whose principal income for }'ears had 
 been derived from the magazine's most liberal 
 and open-handed payments. " It is a great 
 price," writes the author of TJialaba, who has 
 just pocketed a comfortable sum, "and it is 
 very convenient for me to receive it. But I 
 will tell vou, Avith that frankness which \o\x 
 have alwa}'s found in my correspondence and 
 conversation, that I must suspect my time 
 might be more profitably emplo}'ed (as I am 
 sure it might be more worthily) than in writing 
 for your journal, even at that price." 
 
 I am not wont to peer too closeh' into the 
 secrets of the human heart, but I would like to 
 know exactlv how ]\Iurrav felt when he read 
 that letter. " Let me at least be eaten by a 
 lion!" sa}'s Epictetus. "Let me at least be 
 insulted by a genius ! " might well have been 
 the publisher's lament. 
 
THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 
 
 '' I ^HAT innocent nondescript, the average 
 -*- reader, is suffering very sorely at the 
 present day from what might be justly called 
 the oppression or tyranny of notes. I hear, 
 indeed, from time to time, bitter complaints of 
 editorial inaccuracy, of the unscholarly treat- 
 ment of quite forgotten masterpieces by the 
 industrious gentlemen who seek to reintroduce 
 them to the public; but such inaccuracy can 
 wound only the limited number who know 
 more than the editor, and who in their secret 
 souls are not sorry to prove him wrong. The 
 average reader, even though he hold himself 
 to be of moderate intelligence, is happily ig- 
 norant of such fine shadings, and only asks 
 that he may enjoy his books in a moderately 
 intelligent manner; that he may be helped 
 over hedges and ditches, and allowed to ram- 
 ble unmolested where the ground seems toler- 
 
 45 
 
4-6 THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 
 
 ably smooth. This is precisely the privilege, 
 however, which a too liberal editor is disin- 
 clined to allow. He will build you a bridge 
 over a raindrop, put ladders up a pebble, and 
 encompass you on every side with ingenious 
 alpenstocks and climbing-irons; yet when, 
 perchance, you stumble and hold out a hand 
 for help, behold, he is never there to grasp it. 
 He merely refers you, with some coldness, to 
 a remote authority who will give you the assist- 
 ance you require when }-ou have reached the 
 end of your journey. ^Ir. Ritchie, for exam- 
 ple, who has recently edited a volume of ^Irs. 
 Carlyle's early letters, expects you patiently 
 to search for the information you want in ]\Ir. 
 Froude's pages, which is always a disheartening 
 thing to be asked to do. Yet when Jeanie 
 Welsh, writing cheerfullv of an inconstant 
 lover, says, "■ jMais nimporte ! It is onl}' one 
 more Spanish castle demolished; another may 
 start up like a mushroom in its place ; "' an ex- 
 planatory note carefully reveals to \'0u that 
 "Spanish castle" really means "chateau en 
 Espagne" — a circumstance which even ^lac- 
 
THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 4/ 
 
 aulay's schoolboy would probably have deci- 
 phered for himself. 
 
 If it be hard on the average reader to be re- 
 ferred chillingly to modern writers who are at 
 least within approachable distance, it is harder 
 still to be requested to look up classical au- 
 thorities. If it be hard to be told occasionally 
 by that prince of good editors, Mr. Alfred 
 Ainger, to please turn elsewhere for the little 
 bits of information which we think he might 
 give us about Charles Lamb, it is harder still 
 to have Mr. Wright refuse to translate for us 
 Edward Fitzgerald's infrequent lapses into 
 Greek. What is the use of saying in a note 
 "v. 9" when Fitzgerald quotes Herodotus.^ If 
 I can read the quotation for myself, I have no 
 need to hunt up v. 9; and if I can't, v, 9 is of 
 no use to me when found. Even " Hor. Od. I. 
 4, 14, 15," is not altogether satisfactory to the 
 indifferent scholar, for whom Fitzgerald him- 
 self had such generous sympathy, and for 
 whom his translations were avowedly under- 
 taken. 
 
 These are merely cases, however, in which 
 
48 THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 
 
 notes refuse to be helpful; they are apt to be- 
 come absolutely oppressive when accompany- 
 ing older writers. A few years ago I bought 
 a little English edition of the Religio Medici, 
 to which are added the Letter to a Friend and 
 Christian Morals. The book is one of Mac- 
 millan's Golden Treasury Series, and is edited 
 by Mr. W. A. Greenhill, who opens with an 
 " Editor's Preface," eighteen pages long, and 
 fairly bristling with knowledge points. After 
 this comea"Chronological Table of Dates, Con- 
 nected with Sir Thomas Browne," two pages 
 long; "Note on the Discovery of the Remains 
 of Sir Thomas Browne in 1840," two pages; 
 '' Brief Notices of Former Editors of the Religio 
 Medici^' four pages; " List of Editions oi Religio 
 Medici,'' thirteen pages; "Collations of Some 
 Old Editions of Religio Medici^' three pages; 
 " List of Editions of Letter to a Friend and 
 Christian Morals,^' five pages; ''Addenda et 
 Corrigenda^' ow^'^d.'g^. Having thus laborious- 
 ly cleared the way, we are at last gladdened by a 
 sight of the Religio Medici itself, which, together 
 with the Letter and Christian Morals, occupies 
 
THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 49 
 
 two hundred and thirty pages. Then, following 
 close, like the mighty luggage of a Persian army, 
 come an array of " Notes Critical and Explana- 
 tory," eighty-eight pages; and an Index just 
 sixty-nine pages long. Thus it will be seen that 
 two hundred and five pages of editorial v/ork 
 are deemed necessary to elucidate two hundred 
 and thirty pages of Sir Thomas Browne, which 
 seems like an intolerable deal of sack for such 
 a quantity of bread. To compress all this into 
 a small volume requires close printing and 
 flimsy paper, and the ungrateful reader thinks 
 in his hardened heart that he would rather a 
 little more space had been given to the author, 
 and a little less to the editor, who is for most 
 of us, after all, a secondary consideration. It 
 is also manifestly impossible, with such a num- 
 ber of notes, even to refer to them at the bot- 
 tom of the page; yet without this guiding finger 
 they are often practically useless. We are not 
 as a rule aware, when we read, what informa- 
 tion we lack, and it becomes a grievous duty 
 to examine every few minutes and see if we 
 ought not to be finding something out. 
 
50 THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 
 
 A glance at the notes themselves is very 
 discouraging: 
 
 ''P. lO, 1. 14, directed, A to E, G; direct, F, 
 H to L. 
 
 "P. 10, 1. 16, rectified, A to I ; rectifie, J, 
 K, L. 
 
 " P. 10, 1. 28, consist, A to J; resist, K, L." 
 
 Reading with such helps as these becomes a 
 literary nightmare: 
 
 "P. 8, 1. 8, distinguished] Chapman (r) and 
 Gardiner (w) read 'being distinguished.' 
 
 **P. 8, 1. 8, distinguished not only] Wilkin 
 (t) read 'not only distinguished.'" 
 
 And this is weirder still : 
 
 "P. 59, 1. 4, antimetathesis, C to M; antana- 
 clasis, A, B; transposition of words, N, O." 
 
 It may easily be surmised that eighty-eight 
 pages of such concentrated and deadly erudi- 
 tion weigh very heavily on the unscholarly 
 soul. We are reminded forcibly of the impa- 
 tience manifested by Mr. E. S. Dallas, in TJie 
 Gay Science, over Person's notes on Euripides, 
 from which he had hoped so much and gleaned 
 so little; which were all about words and less 
 
THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 5 1 
 
 than words — syllables, letters, accents, punc- 
 tuation. 
 
 ''Codex A and Codex B, Codex Cantabrigi- 
 ensis and Codex Cottonianus, were ransacked 
 in turn to show how this noun should be in the 
 dative, not in the accusative; how that verb 
 should have the accent paroxytone, not peris- 
 pomenon; and how, by all the rules of pros- 
 ody, there should be an iambus, not a spon- 
 dee, in this place or that." The lad who has 
 heard all his college life about the wonderful 
 supplement to the Hecuba turns to it with 
 wistful eyes, expecting to find some subtle key 
 to Greek tragedy. "Behold, it is a treatise on 
 certain Greek metres. Its talk is of caesural 
 pauses, penthemimeral and hephthemimeral, 
 of isochronous feet, of enclitics and cretic ter- 
 minations; and the grand doctrine it promul- 
 gates is expressed in the canon regarding the 
 pause which, from the discoverer, has been 
 named the Porsonian — that when the iambic 
 trimeter after a word of more than one syllable 
 has the cretic termination included either in 
 one word or in two, then the fifth foot must be 
 
52 THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 
 
 an iambus. The young student throws down 
 the book thus prefaced and supplemented, and 
 wonders if this be all that giants of Porsonian 
 height can see or care to speak about in Greek 
 literature." 
 
 But then be it remembered that Euripides, as 
 edited by Porson, was intended for the use of 
 scholars, and there exists an impression — per- 
 haps erroneous — that this is the sort of food for 
 which scholars hunger and thirst. Sir Thomas 
 Browne has, happily, not yet passed out of the 
 hands of the general reader, whose appetite for 
 intellectual abstraction and the rigors of precis- 
 ion is distinctly moderate, and in whose behalf 
 I urge my plea to-day. 
 
 After the oppressively erudite notes come 
 those which interpret trifles with painstaking 
 fidelity, and which reveal to us the meaning of 
 quite familiar words. In Ferrier's admirable 
 edition of the Nodes Ambrosiance, for example, 
 we are told with naive gravity that " wiselike " 
 means *' judicious," that "glowering" means 
 " staring," that " parritch " is " porridge," that 
 " guffaw "is a " loud laugh," that " douce " is 
 
THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 53 
 
 " sedate," that " gane " is '' gone," and that '* in 
 a jiffy" means *' immediately." But surely the 
 readers of Christopher North do not require 
 information like this. ''Douce" and " par- 
 ritch" and " guffaw " are not difficult words to 
 understand, and "in a jiffy" would seem to 
 come within the intellectual grasp of many who 
 have not yet made the acquaintance of the al- 
 phabet. 
 
 It may be, however, that there are people 
 who really like to be instructed in this manner, 
 just as there are people who like to go to lec- 
 tures and to organ recitals. It may even be 
 that a taste for notes, like a taste for gin, or opi- 
 um, or Dr. Ibsen's dramas, increases with what 
 it feeds on. In that tiny volume of Selected 
 Poems by Gray which Mr. Gosse has edited for 
 the Clarendon Press, there are forty-two pages 
 of notes to sixty pages of poetry; and while 
 some of them are valuable and interesting, 
 many more seem strangely superfluous. But 
 Mr. Gosse, who has his finger on the literary 
 pulse of his generation, is probably the last 
 man in England to furnish information unless 
 
54 THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 
 
 it is desired. He knows, better than rnost pur- 
 veyors of kno^\ledg-e, what it is that readers 
 want; he is not prone to waste his precious 
 minutes; he has a saving sense of humor; and 
 he does not aspire to be a lettered philanthro- 
 pist fretting to enlighten mankind. If, then, he 
 finds it necessary to elucidate that happ}' trifle, 
 On the Death of a Favorite Cat, with no less 
 than seven notes, which is at the rate of one 
 for every verse, it must be that he is filling an 
 expressed demand; it must be that he is aware 
 that modern students of Gray — every one who 
 reads a poet is a " student" nowadays — like to 
 be told by an editor about Tyrian purple, and 
 about Arion's dolphin, and about the difference 
 between a tortoise-shell and a tabby. As for 
 the seven pages of notes that accompany the 
 Elegy, they carry me back in spirit to the friend 
 of my childhood, Miss Edgeworth's Rosamond, 
 who was expected to understand every word of 
 every poem she studied. What a blessing Mr. 
 Gosse's notes would have been to that poor, 
 dear, misguided little girl, who rashly com- 
 mitted the Elegy to memory because, in hon- 
 
THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 55 
 
 est, childish fashion, she loved its pretty sound ! 
 Who can forget the pathetic scene where she 
 attempts to recite it, and has only finished the 
 first line, 
 
 " The curfew tolls the knell of parting day," 
 
 when Godfrey, whom I always thought, and 
 still think, a very disagreeable boy, interrupts 
 her ruthlessly. 
 
 '' ' What is meant by the " curfew " ? What 
 is meant by ''tolls"? What is a "knell"? 
 What is meant by *' parting day" ? ' 
 
 " * Godfrey, I cannot tell the meaning of ev- 
 ery word, but I know the general meaning. It 
 means that the day is going, that it is evening, 
 that it is growing dark. Now let me go on.' 
 
 '^ ' Go on,' said Godfrey, ' and let us see what 
 you will do when you come to ''the boast of 
 heraldry," to " the long-drawn aisle and fretted 
 vault," to the "village Hampden," to "some 
 mute inglorious Milton," and to "some Crom- 
 well guiltless of his country's blood," you who 
 have not come to Cromwell yet, in the history 
 of England.' " 
 
56 THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 
 
 No wonder poor Rosamond is disheartened 
 and silenced by such an array of difficulties in 
 her path. It is comforting to know that God- 
 frey himself comes to grief, a little later, with 
 The Bard, and that even the wise and irre- 
 proachable Laura confesses to have been baf- 
 fled by the lines, 
 
 "If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song 
 May hope, chaste eve, to soothe thy modest ear." 
 
 " Oaten stop " was a mystery, and ''eve" she 
 thought — and was none the worse for thinking 
 it — meant our first great erring mother. 
 
 No such wholesome blunders — pleasant to re- 
 call in later, weary, well-instructed days — would 
 be possible for Miss Edgeworth's little people 
 if they lived in our age of pitiless enlighten- 
 ment, when even a book framed for their es- 
 pecial joy, like TJie CJiildrcii s Treasiny of 
 English Song, bristles with marginal notes. 
 Here Rosamond would have found an expla- 
 nation of no less than forty-eight words in the 
 Elegy, and would probably have understood it 
 a great deal better, and loved it a great deal 
 
THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 5/ 
 
 less. It is healthy and natural for a child to be 
 forcibly attracted by what she does not wholly 
 comprehend; the music of words appeals very 
 sweetly to childish ears, and their meaning 
 comes later — comes often after the first keen 
 unconscious pleasure is past. I once knew a 
 tiny boy who so delighted in Byron's descrip- 
 tion of the dying gladiator that he made me 
 read it to him over, and over, and over again. 
 He did not know — and I never told him — what 
 a gladiator was. He did not know that it was 
 a statue, and not a real man, described. He 
 had not the faintest notion of what was meant 
 by the Danube, or the " Dacian mother," or *' a 
 Roman holiday." Historically and geograph- 
 ically, the boy's mind was a happy blank. 
 There was nothing intelligent or sagacious in 
 his enjoyment; only a blissful stirring of the 
 heartstrings by reason of strong words, and 
 swinging verse, and his own tangle of groping 
 thoughts. But what child who reads Cowper's 
 pretty remonstrance to his spaniel, and the 
 spaniel's neat reply, wants to be told in a suc- 
 cession of dismal notes that '' allures" means 
 
58 THE OPPRESSION OF NOTES 
 
 " tempts," that "remedy " means *' cure," that 
 "killing time" means "wasting time," that "des- 
 tined " means " meant for," and that " behest " 
 means " command " ? Cowper is one of the sim- 
 plest of writers, and the little boys and girls 
 who cannot be trusted unarmed in his com- 
 pany had better confine their reading to Rob- 
 inson Crusoe in Words of One Syllable ^ or to 
 the veracious pages of Mother Goose. But 
 perhaps the day is not far distant when even 
 Mother Goose will afford food for instruction 
 and a fresh industry for authors, and when the 
 hapless children of the dawning century will 
 be confronted with a dozen highly abbreviated 
 and unintelligible notes referring them to some 
 Icelandic Saga or remote Indian epic for the 
 bloody history of the TJiree Blind Mice. 
 
CONVERSATION IN NOVELS 
 
 A GREAT many years ago, when I was a 
 little girl, I used to know a dear, placid, 
 sunny-tempered old lady who was stone-deaf 
 and an insatiable novel-reader. She always 
 came to our house bearing a black bag which 
 held her jointed ear-trumpet, and she always 
 left it with a borrowed novel under her arm. 
 As she had reached that comfortable period of 
 life when a book is as easily forgotten as read, 
 our slender library supplied all her demands, 
 on the same principle of timely reappearance 
 which makes an imposing stage army out of 
 two dozen elusive supernumeraries. She had 
 a theory of selection all her own, and to which 
 she implicitly trusted. She glanced over a 
 story very rapidly, and if it had too many solid, 
 page-long paragraphs — reflections, descrip- 
 tions, etc. — she put it sadly but steadfastly 
 aside. If, on the contrary, it was well broken 
 
 59 
 
6o CONVERSATION IN NOVELS 
 
 up into conversations, which always impart an 
 air of sprightliness to a book, she said she was 
 sure she would like it, and carried it off in tri- 
 umph. 
 
 Those were not days, be it remembered, 
 when people wrote fiction for the sake of in- 
 troducing discussions. There still lingered in 
 the novelist's mind the time-worn heresy that 
 he had a story to tell, and that his people must 
 act as well as talk. The plot — delightful and 
 obsolete word ! — was then in good repute, and 
 conversation was mainly useful in helping on 
 the tale, in providing copious love scenes, and, 
 with really good novelists, in illustrating and 
 developing character. Thomas Love Peacock's 
 inimitable dialogues had indeed been long 
 given to the world; but quiet people of restrict- 
 ed cultivation knew nothing of them, and w^ould 
 have found it difficult to realize their loss. I 
 can hardly fancy our dear old friend reading 
 and enjoying the delicious war of words in 
 C^'otcJict Castle, and I should be grieved to 
 think of her suddenly confronted with those 
 scraps of sententious wisdom, in which its au- 
 
CONVERSATION IN NOVELS 6l 
 
 thor took a truly impish and reprehensible de- 
 lieht. Such a sentiment as " Men have been 
 found very easily permutable into ites and 
 onians, avians and arians," might have sorely 
 puzzled her benign and tranquil soul. 
 
 Yet no one can accuse Peacock of writing 
 his novels in order to express his own personal 
 convictions. The fact is that, after reading 
 them, we are often very much in the dark as 
 to what his convictions were. We know he 
 loved old things better than new ones, and 
 wine better than water; and that is about as 
 far as we can follow him with security. *' The 
 intimate friends of Mr. Peacock may have un- 
 derstood his political sentiments," says Lord 
 Houghton disconsolately, ''but it is extremely 
 difficult to discover them from his work." His 
 people simply talk in character, sometimes 
 tiresomely, sometimes with unapproachable 
 keenness and humor, and the scope of his sto- 
 ries hardly permits any near approach to the 
 fine gradations, the endless variety, of life. 
 Mr. Chainmail never opens his lips save in 
 praise of feudalism. Mr. Mac Quedy discusses 
 
62 CONVERSATION IN NOVELS 
 
 political economy only. Even the witty Dr. 
 Folliott, " a fellow of infinite jest," seldom gets 
 beyond the dual delights of Greek and dining. 
 It is all vastly piquant and entertaining, but it 
 is leagues away from the casual conversation, 
 the little leisurely, veracious gossip in which 
 Jane Austen reveals to us with merciless dis- 
 tinctness the secret springs that move a human 
 heart. She has scant need to describe her 
 characters, and she seldom takes that trouble. 
 They betray themselves at every word, and 
 stand convicted on their own evidence. We 
 are not warned in advance against Isabella 
 Thorpe. We meet her precisely as Catherine 
 meets her in the Pump-room at Bath, where 
 the young lady speedily opens her lips, and 
 acquaints us in the most vivacious manner with 
 her own callous folly and selfishness. Every 
 syllable uttered by Mrs. Norris is a new and 
 luminous revelation ; we know her just that 
 much better than we did before she spoke. 
 Even Sense and Sensibility, by no means the 
 best of Miss Austen's novels, starts with that 
 admirable discussion between Mr. John Dash- 
 
CONVERSATION IN NOVELS 63 
 
 wood and his wife on the subject of his mother's 
 and sisters' maintenance. It is a short chapter, 
 the second in the book, and at its close we are 
 masters of the whole situation. We have 
 sounded the feeble egotism of Mr. Dashwood, 
 and the adroit meanness of his spouse. We know 
 precisely what degree of assistance Elinor and 
 Marianne are likely to receive from them. We 
 foresee the relation these characters will bear 
 to each other during the progress of the story, 
 and we have been shown with delicious humor 
 how easy and pleasant is the task of self- 
 deception. That a girl of nineteen should have 
 been capable of such keenly artistic work is 
 simply one of the miracles of literature; and 
 the more we think about it, the more mirac- 
 ulous it grows. The best we can do is to bow 
 our heads, and pay unqualified homage at its 
 shrine. 
 
 Some portion of Jane Austen's ability for 
 portraying character in conversation is discern- 
 ible in at least one of her too numerous succes- 
 sors in the craft. The authoress of Mademoi- 
 selle Ixe and of Cecilia de Noel has already 
 
64 CONVERSATION IX NOVELS 
 
 proven to the world how deft and skilful is 
 her manipulation of that difficult medium, 
 drawing-room gossip. It would be unjust and 
 absurd to compare her stories, slight and un- 
 substantial as pencil sketches, with the finished 
 masterpieces of English fiction; but there are 
 touches in these modern tales which convince 
 even a casual reader of splendid possibilities 
 ahead. The setting oi Mademoiselle Ixe is so 
 fine, the lightly drawn English people who sur- 
 round the mysterious governess and her still 
 more mysterious victim are so real, that we 
 cease to ask ourselves obtrusive questions con- 
 cerning the purpose and utility of the crime. 
 Better still are some of the scenes in Cecilia de 
 Noel, where Lady Atherley's serene and imper- 
 turbable good sense tempers the atmosphere, 
 and gives exactly the proper effect to her hus- 
 band's rather long-winded eloquence, to Mrs. 
 Mostyn's amiable and cruel evangelism, and 
 to Mrs. Molyneux's amusing eccentricities. All 
 these characters have individuality of their 
 own, and all reveal themselves through the in- 
 tricacies of conversation, while occasionally 
 
CONVERSATION IN NOVELS 6$ 
 
 there is a felicitous touch worthy of Jane Aus- 
 ten's hand ; as when Lady Atherley Hstens 
 tranquilly to Mrs. Mostyn's tirade against the 
 ritualistic curate, and evolves from it the one 
 judicious conclusion that he is evidently an 
 Austyn of Temple Leigh, and that it would be 
 desirable to ask him to dinner. 
 
 The real drawback to Lanoe Falconer's art 
 is, not the brevity of her work, but the fact that 
 her people cannot develop on purely natural 
 lines, because they are hampered by the ter- 
 rible necessity of illustrating a moral; and 
 even in their most unguarded moments the 
 task assigned them is never wholly laid aside. 
 It is seldom that a good tract is a good story 
 too, and all the novelist's skill is powerless to 
 impart a vivid semblance of truth to characters 
 who have to " talk up" to a given subject, and 
 teach a given lesson. The inartistic treatment 
 of material results, curiously enough, in weak- 
 ening our sense of reality; yet if the authoress 
 of Cecilia de Noel would consent, for a few 
 short years, to abandon social and spiritual 
 problems, to concern herself as little with Ni- 
 
66 CONVERSATION IN NOVELS 
 
 hilism as with eternal punishment, but to be 
 content, as Jane Austen was content, with tell- 
 ing a story, perhaps that story might be no 
 unworthy successor of those matchless tales 
 which are our refuge and solace in these dark 
 days of ethical and unorthodox fiction. 
 
 There is a great deal of charming conversa- 
 tion, which is not as well known as it should 
 be, in the best novels of Anthony Trollope. 
 He gives his characters plenty of time and op- 
 portunity to talk, without forcing them into 
 arbitrary channels; and occasionally, as with 
 Mrs. Proudie and Archdeacon Grantly, and 
 Lady Glencora, he persuades them to let us 
 know exactly what kind of people they are. 
 Above all, there is such an air of veracity about 
 his causeries that the most skeptical reader 
 listens to them without a shadow of doubt. 
 Who can ever forget Bertie Stanhope intimat- 
 ing to Bishop Proudie that he had once thought 
 of being a prelate himself, or Lady Glencora's 
 midnight confidences to Alice, or that crucial 
 contest between Dr. Tempest and Mrs. Proudie ! 
 What pleasant wrangling goes on in Mrs, 
 
CONVERSATION IN NOVELS 6/ 
 
 Dobbs Broughton's room over the memorable 
 picture of Jael, when Dalrymple desires his 
 model to lean forward, throwing her weight 
 on the nail, and Miss Van Siever not unnatu- 
 rally suggests that such an action would prob- 
 ably have awakened Sisera before the murder 
 was done ! It all seems idle enough — this care- 
 less, lively talk — but is by no means purpose- 
 less. Life is built up of such moments, and if 
 we are to live with the people in books, it must 
 be through little confidences on their parts and 
 sympathy on ours; it must be through uncon- 
 scious confidences on their parts and unre- 
 stricted sympathy on ours. 
 
 Now, if a novelist permits his characters to 
 talk at us, the charm of unconsciousness is gone. 
 If we feel for a moment they are uttering his 
 sentiments for our approval or conversion, we 
 cease to sympathize because we cease to be- 
 lieve. There is a clever and suspiciously op- 
 portune conversation in David Grieve between 
 that sorely tried hero and an intelligent work- 
 ingwoman in the Champs Elysees upon the 
 relative merits of TUnion Legale and I'Union 
 
68 CONVERSATION IN NOVELS 
 
 Libre. It is, of course, a highly dispassionate 
 discussion, intended as an appeal to reason 
 and not to conscience; therefore the old-fash- 
 ioned arguments of right and wrong, God and 
 the Church, are carefully omitted. It fits in 
 neatly with David's experiences, and places 
 the whole matter in a singularly lucid light 
 before the reader's eyes. Its one serious draw- 
 back is that we can never persuade ourselves 
 to believe that it ever took place. The French- 
 woman is brought so suddenly up to the mark; 
 she says so plainly that which Mrs. Humphry 
 Ward thinks she ought to say; she is so charm- 
 ingly unprejudiced and convincing, that we 
 lose all faith in her before she has spoken a 
 dozen words. The correctness of her views 
 counts for nothing. " When we leave out what 
 we don't like, we can demonstrate most things," 
 says the late Rector of Lincoln; and it is at 
 least doubtful whether men and women ever 
 live virtuous lives on the strength of an argu- 
 ment. Lady Bertram, of Mansfield Park, re- 
 marking placidly from her sofa, "Do not act 
 anything improper, my dears; Sir Thomas 
 
CONVERSATION IN NOVELS 69 
 
 would not like it," may not exert a powerful 
 influence for good; but who has any shadow 
 of doubt that those are her very words ? They 
 are spoken — as they should be — to her daugh- 
 ters, and not to us. They are spoken — as they 
 should be — by Lady Bertram, and not by Jane 
 Austen. Therefore we listen with content, and 
 take comfort in the thought that, whatever 
 severities may be inflicted on us by the novel- 
 ists of the future, it is not in the power of prog- 
 ress to deprive us of the past. 
 
A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 
 
 A MID the universal grayness that has set- 
 -^^^ tied mistily down upon English fiction, 
 amid the delicate drab-colored shadings and 
 half-lights which require, Ave are told, so fine a 
 skill in handling, the old - fashioned reader 
 misses, now and then, the vivid coloring of his 
 youth. He misses the slow unfolding of quite 
 impossible plots, the thrilling incidents that 
 were wont pleasantly to arouse his apprehen- 
 sion, and, most of all, two characters once 
 deemed essential to every novel — the hero and 
 the villain. The heroine is left us still, and her 
 functions are far more complicated than in the 
 simple days of yore, when little was required of 
 her save to be beautiful as the stars. She faces 
 now the most intricate problems of life; and 
 she faces them with conscious self-importance, 
 a dismal power of analysis, and a robust can- 
 dor in discussing their equivocal aspects that 
 
 70 
 
A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS /I 
 
 would have sent her buried sister blushing to 
 the wall. There was sometimes a lamentable 
 lack of solid virtue in this fair dead sister, a 
 pitiful human weakness that led to her undo- 
 ing; but she never talked so glibly about sin. 
 As for the hero, he owes his banishment to the 
 riotous manner in which his masters handled 
 him. Bulwer strained our endurance and our 
 credulity to the utmost; Disraeli took a step 
 further, and Lothair, the last of his race, per- 
 ished amid the cruel laughter of mankind. 
 
 But the villain ! Remember what we owe to 
 him in the past. Think how dear he has be- 
 come to every rightly constituted mind. And 
 now we are told, soberly and coldly, by the 
 thin-blooded novelists of the day, that his ab- 
 sence is one of the crowning triumphs of mod- 
 ern genius, that we have all grown too discrim- 
 inating to tolerate in fiction a character who 
 we feel does not exist in life. Man, we are re- 
 minded, is complex, subtle, unfathomable, 
 made up of good and evil so dexterously inter- 
 mingled that no one element predominates 
 coarsely over the rest. He is to be studied 
 
72 A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 
 
 warily and with misgivings, not classified with 
 brutal ease into the virtuous and bad. It is 
 useless to explain to these analysts that the 
 pleasure we take in meeting a character in a 
 book does not always depend on our having 
 known him in the family circle, or encountered 
 him in our morning paper ; though, judged 
 even by this stringent law, the villain holds his 
 own. Accept Balzac's rule, and exclude from 
 fiction not only all which might not really 
 happen, but all which has not really happen- 
 ed in truth, and we would still have studies 
 enough in total depravity to darken all the 
 novels in Christendom. 
 
 What murder of romance was ever so wanton, 
 so tragic, and so sombre as that which gave to 
 the Edinburgh highway the name of Gabriel's 
 Road ? There, in the sweet summer afternoon, 
 fresh with the breath of primroses and cow- 
 slips, the young tutor cut the throats of his two 
 little pupils, in a mad, inexplicable revenge 
 for their childish tale-bearing. Taken red- 
 handed in the deed, he met with swift retribu- 
 tion from the furious populace; and the same 
 
A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 73 
 
 hour which witnessed the crime saw his pin- 
 ioned corpse dangling from the nearest tree, 
 with the bloody knife hung in awful mockery 
 around its neck. Thus the murder and its 
 punishment conspired to make the lonely road 
 a haunted path, ghost-ridden, terrible; where 
 women shivered and hurried on, and little 
 boys, creepy with fear, scampered by, breath- 
 less, in the dusk; seeing before them always, 
 on the ragged turf, two small, piteous, blood- 
 smeared bodies, and hearing ever, overhead, 
 the rattle of the rusty knife against the felon's 
 bones. The highway, with its unholy associa- 
 tions discreetly perpetuated in its name, became 
 an education to the good people of Edinburgh, 
 and taught them the value of emotions. They 
 must have indistinctly felt what Mr. Louis Ste- 
 venson has so well described, the subtle har- 
 mony that unites an evil deed to its location. 
 " Some places," he says, '* speak distinctly. 
 Certain dark gardens cry aloud for a murder; 
 certain old houses demand to be haunted; cer- 
 tain coasts are set apart for shipwreck. Other 
 spots, again, seem to abide their destiny, sug- 
 
74 A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 
 
 gestive and impenetrable." And is all this fine 
 and delicate sentiment, all this skillful playing 
 with horror and fear, to be lost to fiction, mere- 
 ly because, as De Quincey reluctantly admits, 
 " the majority of murderers are incorrect char- 
 acters " ? May we not forgive their general 
 incorrectness for the sake of their literary and 
 artistic value ? Shall Charles Lamb's testimony 
 count for nothing, when we remember his com- 
 fortable allusion to *' kind, light-hearted Wain- 
 wright " ? And what shall we think of Edward 
 Fitzgerald, the gentlest and least hurtful of 
 Englishmen, abandoning himself, in the clear 
 and genial weather, to the delights of Tacitus, 
 '' full of pleasant atrocity " ? 
 
 Repentant villains, I must confess, are not 
 greatly to my mind. They sacrifice their ar- 
 tistic to their ethical value, and must be handled 
 with consummate skill to escape a suspicious 
 flavor of Sunday-school romance. The hard- 
 ened criminal, disarmed and converted by the 
 innocent attractions of childhood, is a favorite 
 device of poets and story-writers who cater to 
 the sentiments of maternity; but it is wiser to 
 
A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 75 
 
 lay no stress upon the permanency of such 
 conversions. That swift and sudden yielding 
 to a gentle emotion or a noble aspiration, 
 which is one of the undying traits of humanity, 
 attracts us often by the very force of its eva- 
 nescence, by the limitations which prove its 
 truth. But the slow, stern process of regen- 
 eration is not an emotional matter, and cannot 
 be convincingly portrayed with a few facile 
 touches in the last chapter of a novel. Thack- 
 eray knew better than this, when he showed us 
 Becky Sharp touched and softened by her good 
 little sister-in-law; heartsick now and then of 
 her own troublesome schemes, yet sinking in- 
 evitably lower and lower through the weight 
 of overmastering instincts and desires. She 
 can aspire intermittingly to a cleaner life, but 
 she can never hope to reach it. The simple lit- 
 erature of the past is curiously rich in these pa- 
 thetic transient glimpses into fallen nature's 
 brighter side. Where can we see depicted with 
 more tenderness and truth the fitful relenting 
 of man's brutality, after it has wrought the ruin 
 it devised, than in the fine old ballad of Edom 
 
76 A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 
 
 0' Gordon? The young daughter of the house 
 of Rodes is lowered from the walls of the burn- 
 ing castle, and the cruel Gordon spears trans- 
 fix her as she falls. She lies dead, in her 
 budding girlhood, at the feet of her father's foe, 
 and his heart is strangely stirred and troubled 
 when he looks at her childish face. 
 
 " O bonnie, bonnie was hir mouth, 
 And cherry were hir cheiks, 
 And clear, clear was hir yellow hair, 
 Whereon the reid bluid dreips. 
 
 " Then wi' his spear he turned hir owre, 
 
 gin hir face was wan ! 
 
 He sayd, ' You are the first that eir 
 
 1 wisht alive again.' 
 
 " He turned hir owre and owre again, 
 
 O gin hir skin was whyte ! 
 ' I might hae spared that bonnie face 
 
 To hae been sum man's delyte.' 
 
 It is pleasant to know that the ruthless butcher 
 was promptly pursued and slain for his crime, 
 but it is finer still to realize that brief moment 
 of bitterness and shame. I have sometimes 
 thought that Rossetti's Sister Helen would 
 have gained in artistic beauty if, after those 
 
A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS // 
 
 three days of awful watching were over, af- 
 ter the glowing fragment of wax had melted 
 in the flames, and her lover's soul had passed 
 her, sighing on the wind, there had come to 
 the stricken girl a pang of supreme regret, an 
 impulse of mad desire to undo the horror she 
 had wrought. The conscience of a sinner, to 
 use a striking phrase of Mr. Brownell's, *' is 
 doubtless readjusted rather than repudiated 
 altogether," and there is an absolute truthful- 
 ness in these sudden relapses into grace. 
 
 For this reason, doubtless, I find Mr. Black- 
 more's villains, with all their fascination and 
 power, a shade too heavily, or at least too 
 monotonously darkened. Parson Chowne is a 
 veritable devil, and it is only his occasional 
 humor — manifested grimly in deeds, not words 
 — which enables us to bear the weight of his 
 insupportable wickedness. The introduction 
 of the naked savages as an outrage to village 
 propriety; the summons to church, when he 
 has a mind to fire the ricks of his parishioners, 
 — these are the life-giving touches which mel- 
 low down this overwrought figure, this black 
 
78 A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 
 
 and scowling thunderbolt of humanity. Per- 
 haps, also, Mr. Blackmore, in his laudable de- 
 sire for picturesqueness, lays too much stress 
 on the malignant aspect, the appropriate phys- 
 ical condition of his sinners. From Parson 
 Chowne's "wondrous unfathomable face," 
 which chills every heart with terror, to the 
 " red glare " in Donovan Bulrag's eyes, there 
 is always something exceptional about these 
 worthies, to indicate to all beholders what 
 manner of men they are. One is reminded 
 of Charles II. protesting, not unnaturally, 
 against the perpetual swarthiness of stage vil- 
 lains. " We never see a rogue in a play but 
 w^e clap on him a black periwig," complained 
 the dark-skinned monarch, with a sense of 
 personal grievance in this forced association 
 between complexion and crime. It was the 
 same subtle inspiration which prompted Kean 
 to play Shylock in a red wig that suggested 
 to Wilkie Collins Count Fosco's admirable 
 size. The passion for embroidered waistcoats 
 and fruit tarts, the petted white mice, the s}'m- 
 pathetic gift of pastry to the organ-grinder'5 
 
A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS /Q 
 
 monkey, all the little touches which go to 
 build up this colossal, tender-hearted, remorse- 
 less, irresistible scoundrel are of interest and 
 value to the portrait, but his fat is as essential 
 as his knavery. It is one of those master 
 strokes of genius which breaks away from all 
 accepted traditions to build up a new type, 
 perfect and unapproachable. We can no 
 more imagine a thin Fosco than a melancholy 
 Dick Swiveller, or a light-hearted Ravens- 
 wood, 
 
 Mr. Andrew Lang, who enjoys upon all oc- 
 casions the courage of his convictions, has, in 
 one of those pleasant papers, "At the Sign of 
 the Ship," given utterance to a sentiment so 
 shockingly at variance with the prevalent the- 
 ory of fiction, that the reader is divided be- 
 tween admiration for his boldness and a vague 
 surprise that a man should speak such words 
 and live. There is a cheerfulness, too, about 
 Mr. Lang's heterodoxy, a smiling ignorance of 
 his own transgression, that warms our hearts 
 and weakens our upbraiding. " The old sim- 
 ple scheme," he says, " in which you had a real 
 
80 *A SHORT DEFE^'CE OF VILLAINS 
 
 unmitigated villain, a heroine as pure as snow 
 or flame, and a crowd of good ordinary people, 
 gave us more agreeable reading, and reading 
 not, I think, more remote from truth, than is to 
 be found in Dr. Ibsen's Gliosis or in his Pillars 
 of Society!' Now to support such a statement 
 would be unscrupulous; to condemn it, dispirit- 
 ing; but I wonder if the *' real unmitigated vil- 
 lain " is quite so simple a product as Mr. Lang 
 appears to imagine. I\Iay not his absence from 
 literature be owing as much to the limitations 
 as to the disregard of modern realists } Is he, 
 in truth, so easily drawn as to be unworthy of 
 their subtle and discriminating pens } Is Sir 
 Giles Overreach a mere child's toy in compar- 
 ison with Consul Bernick, and is Brian de Bois- 
 Guilbert unworthy to rank with Johann Tonne- 
 sen and Oswald Alving } A villain must be a 
 thing of power, handled with delicacy and 
 grace. He must be wicked enough to excite 
 our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, 
 human enough to awaken some transient 
 gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his 
 downfall, yet not barbarously nor with con- 
 
A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 8l 
 
 tempt, and the close of his career must be in 
 harmony with all its previous development. 
 Mrs. Pennell has told us the story of some old 
 Venetian witches, who were converted from 
 their dark ways, and taught the charms of 
 peace and godliness; but who would desire or 
 credit the conversion of a witch ? The potency 
 of evil lies within her to the end; and when, 
 by a few muttered words, she can raise a hell 
 storm on the ocean; when her eye's dim fire 
 can wither the strength of her enemy; or 
 when, with a lock of hair and a bit of wax, she 
 can consume him with torturing pain, who 
 will welcome her neighborly advances ? The 
 proper and artistic end of a witch is at the 
 stake — blue flames curling up to heaven, and 
 a handful of gray ashes scattered to the wind; 
 or, by the working of a stronger spell, she 
 may be stiffened into stone, and doomed to 
 stand forever on some desolate moor, where, 
 underneath starless skies, her evil feet have 
 strayed; or perhaps that huge black cat, her 
 sinister attendant, has completed his ninth 
 year of servitude to nine successive witches, 
 
82 A SHORT DEFE^XE OF VILLAINS 
 
 and, by virtue of the power granted him at 
 their expiration, he may whisk her off bodily 
 on St. John's Eve, to offer her a Hving holo- 
 caust to Satan. These are possibilities in strict 
 sympathy with her character and history, if 
 not with her inclinations; the last is in espe- 
 cial accordance- with sound Italian tradition, 
 and all reveal what Heine calls " the melan- 
 choly pleasurable awe, the dark sweet horror, 
 of ]Mediaeval ghost fancies." But a converted 
 witch, walking demurely to vesper service, 
 gossiping with good, garrulous old women on 
 the doorstep, or holding an innocent child 
 within her withered arms — the very thought 
 repels us instinctively, and fires us with a 
 sharp mistrust. Have a care, you foolish 
 young mother, and snatch your baby to your 
 breast; for even now he waxes paler and paler, 
 as those cold, malignant heart-throbs chill his 
 breath, and wear his little life away. 
 
 The final disposition of a mere earthly vil- 
 lain should likewise be a matter of artistic ne- 
 cessity, not a harsh trampling of arrogant vir- 
 tue upon prostrate vice. There is no mistake 
 
A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 83 
 
 SO fatal as that of injustice to the evil element 
 of a novel or a play. We all know how, when 
 Portia pushes her triumphant casuistry a step 
 too far, our sympathies veer obstinately 
 around to Shylock's side, and refuse to be re- 
 adjusted before the curtain falls. Perhaps 
 Shakespeare intended this, — who knows ? — 
 and threw in Gratiano's last jeers to madden, 
 not the usurer, but the audience. Or perhaps 
 in Elizabeth's day, as in King John's, people 
 had not grown so finical about the feelings of 
 a Jew, and it is only the chilly tolerance of 
 our enlightened age which prevents our enjoy- 
 ing as we should the devout prejudices of our 
 ancestors. But when, in a modern novel, 
 guiltless of all this picturesque superstition, 
 we see the sinner treated with a narrow, nag- 
 ging sort of severity, our unregenerate nature 
 rebels stoutly against such a manifest lack of 
 balance. Not long ago, I chanced to read a 
 story which actually dared to have a villain for 
 a hero, and I promised myself much pleasure 
 from so original and venturesome a step. But 
 how did the very popular authoress treat her 
 
84 A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 
 
 own creation ? In the first place, when res- 
 cued from a truly -feminine haze of hints, and 
 dark whispers, and unsubstantiated innuendoes, 
 the hapless man is proven guilty of but three 
 offences: he takes opium, he ejects his tenants, 
 and he tries, not very successfully, to mesmer- 
 ize his wife. Now, opium-eating is a vice, the 
 punishment for which is borne by the offender, 
 and which merits as much pity as contempt; 
 rack-renting is an unpardonable, but not at all 
 a thrilling misdemeanor; and, in these days of 
 psychological research, there are many excel- 
 lent men who would not shrink from making 
 hypnotic experiments on their grandmothers. 
 In consequence, however, of such feeble atroc- 
 ities, the hero-villain is subjected to a species 
 of outlawry at the hands of all the good people 
 in the book. His virtuous cousin makes open 
 and highly honorable love to his virtuous wife^ 
 who responds with hearty alacrity. His virtu- 
 ous cousin's still more virtuous brother comes 
 within an ace of murdering him in cold blood, 
 through motives of the purest philanthropy. 
 Finally, one of these virtuous young men lets 
 
A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 85 
 
 loose on him his family ghost, deliberately un- 
 sealing the spectral abiding-place; and, while 
 the virtuous wife clings around the virtuous 
 cousin's neck, and forbids him tenderly to go 
 to the rescue, the accommodating spirit — who 
 seems to have no sort of loyalty to the con- 
 nection — slays the villain at his own doorstep, 
 and leaves the coast free for a second marriage 
 service. Practically, the device is an admira- 
 ble one, because, when the ghost retires once 
 more to his seclusion, nobody can well be 
 convicted of manslaughter, and a great deal of 
 scandal is saved. But, artistically, there is 
 something repellent in this open and shame- 
 less persecution; in three persons and a hob- 
 goblin conspiring against one poor man. Our 
 sentiment is diverted from its proper channel, 
 our emotions are manifestly incorrect. 
 
 " How are you to get up the sympathies of 
 the audience in a legitimate manner," asks Mr. 
 Vincent Crummies, " if there is n't a little man 
 contending against a big one ? — unless there's 
 at least five to one, and we have n't hands 
 enough for that business in our company." 
 
S6 A SHORT DEFENCE OF VILLAINS 
 
 What would the noble-hearted Mr, Crummies 
 have thought of reversing this natural order of 
 things, and declaring victory for the multitude? 
 How would human nature, in the provinces, 
 have supported so novel and hazardous an in- 
 novation ? Why should human nature, out of 
 the provinces, be assumed to have outgrown 
 its simple, chivalrous instincts ? A good, 
 strong, designing, despicable villain, or even 
 villainess, a fair start, a stout fight, an artistic 
 overthrow, and triumphant Virtue smiling 
 modestly beneath her orange blossoms — shall 
 we ever be too old and world-worn to love 
 these old and world-worn things ? 
 
A BY-WAY IN FICTION 
 
 "IV T OW and then the wearied and worn 
 ^ ^ novel-reader, sick unto death of books 
 about people's beliefs and disbeliefs, their con- 
 scientious scruples and prejudices, their unique 
 aspirations and misgivings, their cumbersome 
 vices and virtues, is recompensed for much suf- 
 fering by an hour of placid but genuine enjoy- 
 ment. He picks up rather dubiously a little, 
 unknown volume, and, behold ! the writer 
 thereof takes him gently by the hand, and leads 
 him straightway into a fair country, where the 
 sun is shining, and men and women smile 
 kindly on him, and nobody talks unorthodox 
 theology, and everybody seems disposed to 
 allow everybody else the privilege of being 
 nappy in his own way. When to these admi- 
 rable qualities are added humor and an atmos- 
 
 87 
 
88 A BY-WAY IN FICTKDN 
 
 phere of appreciative cultivation, the novel- 
 reader feels indeed that his lines have been 
 cast in pleasant places, and he is disposed to 
 linger along in a very contented and uncritical 
 frame of mind. 
 
 There has come to us recentlv a new and 
 beautiful edition of such a little book, pub- 
 lished in America, but born of Italian soil and 
 sunshine. It has for a title The Chevalier of 
 Pensieri- Vani, together witJi Frequent A Ihi- 
 sions to the Prorege of A rcopia, which, is rather 
 an unmerciful string of words to describe so 
 gay and easy-going a narrative. It is the first 
 full-fledged literary venture of its author, Mr. 
 Henry Fuller, also known as Stanton Page, 
 whose New England grandfather was a cousin 
 of Margaret Fuller's. The story, which is not 
 really a story at all, but a series of detached 
 episodes, rambles backward and forward in 
 such a bewildering fashion that the chapters 
 might be all rearranged without materially dis- 
 turbing its slender thread of continuity. It is 
 equally guiltless of plot or purpose, of dramatic 
 incidents or realistic details. The Chevalier may 
 
A BY-WAY IN FICTION 89 
 
 be found now in Pisa, now in Venice, now in 
 Ostia or Ravenna, never driven by the vul- 
 gar spur of necessity, always wandering of his 
 own free and idle will. He is accompanied 
 sometimes by his friend Hors-Concours, an 
 Italianized Frenchman from Savoy, and some- 
 times by the Prorege of Arcopia, the delight- 
 ful Prorege, who gives to the book its best and 
 most distinctive flavor. At once dignified and 
 urbane, conscious of his exalted position, and 
 convinced that he fills it with equal grace and 
 correctness, this superb official moves through 
 the tale in an atmosphere of autocratic reserve, 
 tempered with the most delicate courtesy. 
 Plis ministerial views are as unalterable as the 
 rocks, and as sound ; but he listens to the 
 democratic ravings of his young American 
 protege, Occident, with the good-humored in- 
 dulgence one accords to a beloved and preco- 
 cious child. It must be confessed that Occident 
 fails to make his arguments very convincing, 
 or to impress his own personality with any de- 
 gree of clearness upon the reader's mind. He 
 is at best only a convenient listener to the 
 
90 A BY-WAY IN FICTION 
 
 Prorege's delicious theories ; he is of real value 
 only because the Prorege condescends to talk 
 to him. When he ventures upon a truly 
 American remark about trying *' to find the 
 time" for something, his august friend reminds 
 him, with dignity, that "the only man to be 
 envied was the man whose time was in some 
 degree his own, and the most pitiable object 
 that civilization could offer was the rich man a 
 slave to his chronometer. Too much had been 
 said about the dignity of labor, and not enough 
 about the preciousness of leisure. Civilization 
 in its last outcome was heavily in the debt of 
 leisure, and the success of any society worth 
 considering was to be estimated largely by the 
 use to which its fortiuiati had put their spare 
 moments. He wrung from Occident the con- 
 fession that, in the great land of wdiich Shelby 
 County may be called the centre, activity, con- 
 sidered of itself and quite apart from its objects 
 and its results, was regarded as a very merito- 
 rious thing; and he learned that the bare figure 
 of leisure, when exposed to the public gaze, was 
 expected to be decorously draped in the gar- 
 
A BY-WAY IN FICTION 9I 
 
 ment of strenuous endeavor. People were 
 supposed to appear busy, even if they were 
 not. This gave the Prorege a text for a lit- 
 tle disquisition on the difference between lei- 
 sure and idleness." 
 
 In fact, a beautiul, cultivated, polished, un- 
 marred, well-spent inactivity is the keynote of 
 this serene little book; and to understand its 
 charm and meaning we have but to follow the 
 Chevalier, in the second chapter, to Pisa — to 
 Pisa the restful, where "life is not strongly ac- 
 centuated by positive happenings, where inci- 
 dent is unusual, and drama quite unknown." 
 The Chevalier's windows, we are told, faced the 
 north, and he sat and looked out of them rather 
 more than active persons would deem pleasant 
 or profitable. It even happened that the 
 Prorege remarked this comfortable habit, and 
 demanded of his friend what it was he looked 
 at, inasmuch as there seemed to be no appreci- 
 able change from day to day. To which the 
 Chevalier, in whom " Quietism was pretty suc- 
 cessfully secularized ; who knew how to sit still, 
 and occasionally enjoyed doing so," replied 
 
92 A BY-WAY IN FICTION 
 
 with great acumen that what had gone on was 
 quite as interesting to him as what was going 
 on, and that nothing was more gratifying, from 
 his point of view, than that very absence of 
 change which had taken his Excellency's at- 
 tention — since any change would be a change 
 for the worse. 
 
 He is destined, as it chances, to prove the 
 truth of his own theories, for it is in Pisa, of all 
 places, that he is tempted to throw aside for 
 once his role of contemplative philosopher, and 
 to assume that of an active philanthropist, with 
 very disastrous results. There is an admirable 
 satire in the description of the two friends, 
 Pensieri-Vani and Hors-Concours, gravely 
 plotting to insure the success of an operatic 
 debutante^ to bring her out in the sunshine of 
 their generous patronage, and with the direct 
 approval of the Prorege himself, who kindly 
 consents to sit in the front of a middle box, and 
 to wear a round half-dozen of his most esteem- 
 ed decorations. Unhappily, an Italian audience 
 does not like to have its enthusiasm expressed 
 for it, even by such noble and consummate 
 
A BY-WAY IN FICTION 93 
 
 critics. As each well-arranged device of flow- 
 ers or love-birds in a gilded cage is handed 
 decorously forward, the house grows colder 
 and more quizzical, until the debutante sees 
 herself on the extreme verge of failure, and, 
 putting forth all her powers in one appealing 
 effort, she triumphs by dint of sheer pluck and 
 ability over the fatal kindness of her friends. 
 The poor Chevalier, who has in the meantime 
 left the theatre with many bitter self-commun- 
 ings, receives his lesson in a spirit of touching 
 humility, recognizing at once his manifest lim- 
 itations. '' He perceived that he was less fitted 
 to play the part of special providence than he 
 had previously supposed; and he brought from 
 this experience the immeasurable consolation 
 that comes from knowing that very frequently 
 in this sadly twisted world, things, if only left 
 to their own courses, have a way of coming out 
 right in the end." 
 
 The Pisan episode, the delicious journey of 
 the Prorege and Pensieri-Vani in search of 
 the '' Madonna Incognita," a mysterious and 
 illusive Perugino which turns out, after all, to 
 
94 A BY-WAY IN FICTION 
 
 be a Sodoma, and the memorable excursion to 
 Ostia, are the finest and best-told incidents in 
 the book. The story of the Iron Pot is too 
 broadly farcical, too Pickwickian in its charac- 
 ter, to be in harmony with the rest of the 
 narrative; the Contessa's fete at Tusculum is 
 so lightly sketched as to be absolutely tanta- 
 lizing; and the practical jokes which that lady 
 and the Prorege delight in playing upon one 
 another are hardly as subtle and acute as we 
 would like to find them. Indeed, the Prorege's 
 conduct on board his own yacht is so deeply 
 objectionable that I, for one, positively refuse 
 to believe he was ever guilty of such raw rude- 
 ness. It is not kind or right in Mr. Fuller to 
 Avickedly calumniate this charming and high- 
 bred gentleman whom he has given us for a 
 friend. Neither is the battle of the Aldines as 
 thrilling as might be expected, probably be- 
 cause it is impossible to accept the Duke of 
 Avon and Severn upon any terms whatever. 
 Occident, the American, is misty and ill-defin- 
 ed; but he does not lack proportion, only 
 vitality. The English duke is a mistake 
 
A BY-WAY IN FICTION 95 
 
 throughout, a false note that disturbs the at- 
 mosphere of serene good temper which is the 
 principal attraction of the book; an effort on 
 the author's part to be severe and cynical, just 
 when we were congratulating ourselves that 
 severity and cynicism were things far, far re- 
 mote from his tolerant and kindly spirit. 
 
 The excursion to Ostia, however, is enough 
 to redeem the whole volume from any charge 
 of ill-nature; for if the Contessa does seize this 
 opportunity to play one of her dubious tricks 
 upon the Prorege, it is not until the little group 
 of friends have proved themselves gentle, and 
 sympathetic, and full of fine and generous in- 
 stincts. It is a delicious bit of description 
 throughout. La Nullaniuna has been crowned 
 the day before at her Tusculum fete as " the 
 new Corinne," and naturally feels that her prop- 
 er cue is that of " genius-blasted fragility," 
 overpowered and shattered by her own impas- 
 sioned burst of song. With her is the widov/ed 
 Princess Altissimi, her cherished friend and 
 foil, a sombre beauty of a grave and chastened 
 demeanor, against whose dark background the 
 
96 A BY-WAY IN FICTION 
 
 Contessa, ." who was fully as flighty, and ca- 
 pricious, and tJiedtrale ac a woman of semi- 
 genius usually finds it necessary to be, posed 
 and fidgeted to her heart's content." The Pro- 
 rege, sublimely affable as ever, Pensieri-Vani, 
 and young Occident, eager and radiant, make 
 up the party; and after the little inn has fur- 
 nished them with a noonday meal of unusual 
 profusion and elegance, they visit the adjoining 
 church at the instigation of the Princess Altis- 
 simi, who is anxious to see what this solitary 
 and humble temple is like. All that follows is 
 so exquisite that I must quote it as it stands, 
 in proof of the author's faculty for delicate and 
 sympathetic delineation: 
 
 '*They were met on the threshold by the 
 single priest in charge, a dark and sallow 
 young man of peasant extraction, whose lonely 
 battle with midsummer malaria had left him 
 wholly gaunt and enervate. He saluted them 
 with the deference which the Church some- 
 times shows to the World, though he was too 
 true an Italian to be awed, or even embar- 
 rassed by their rank; and he brightened up 
 
A BY-WAY IN FICTION 9/ 
 
 into something almost like eagerness as he of- 
 ferred to do the honors of his charge. The 
 Prorege indulgently praised the wretched fres- 
 coes which he exhibited so proudly, and the 
 Contessa called up a flickering smile of pleas- 
 ure in his emaciated face as she feigned an en- 
 thusiasm for the paltry fripperies of the high 
 altar. This appreciative interest emboldened 
 him to suggest their ascent to the gallery, 
 where, from his manner, the great treasure of 
 the church was to be revealed. The great 
 treasure was a small cabinet organ, and Occi- 
 dent — triumphing in the ubiquity of the West- 
 ern genius, yet somewhat taken back by this 
 new illustration of the incongruities it some- 
 times precipitated — read upon it a name famil- 
 iar to his earliest years. The priest, who evi- 
 dently conceived it an impossibility for his 
 beloved instrument to be guilty of a discord of 
 any kind whatever, pleaded with a mute but 
 unmistakable pathos that its long silence might 
 now be ended; and the Princess, motioning 
 Pensieri-Vani to the keyboard, sang this poor 
 solitary a churchly little air, with such a noble 
 
98 A BY-WAY IN FICTION 
 
 seriousness and such a gracious simplicity as 
 to move, not only him, but all the others too. 
 Occident, in particular, who kept within him 
 quite unimpaired his full share of that fund of 
 sensibility Avhich is one of the best products of 
 Shelby County, and Avho would have given 
 half his millions just then to have been able to 
 sit down and play the simplest tune, implored 
 Pensieri-Vani in looks, if not in words, to do 
 for him what he himself was so powerless to 
 compass; and the Cavaliere, who, like a good 
 and true musician, preferred support from the 
 lowest quarter to indifference in the highest, 
 kept his place until their poor host, charmed, 
 warmed through and through, attached again 
 to the great body of humanity, could scarcely 
 trust himself to voice his thanks. But the 
 Princess w^hispered in the Cavaliere's ear, as 
 his series of plain and simple little tunes came 
 to an end, that he had not lost since she last 
 heard him." 
 
 There is nothing finer in the story than this, 
 perhaps nothing quite so good, though all of 
 Pensieri-Vani's journeys are fruitful in minute 
 
A BY-WAY IN FICTION 99 
 
 incidents of a pleasant and picturesque quality. 
 It is curious, too, to see how the Chevalier, 
 who, except for that catlike scratching- about 
 the Aldines, is the gentlest and least hurtful 
 of men, manifests at times a positive impatience 
 of his own refined and peaceful civilization, a 
 breathless envy of sterner races and of stormier 
 days. When he discovers the tomb of the old 
 Etrurian warrior, he is abashed and humbled 
 at the thought of that fierce spirit summoned 
 from thirty centuries of darkness to see the 
 light of this invertebrate and sentimental age; 
 requested to forget his deep draughts of blood 
 and iron, and to contentedly " munch the 
 dipped toast of a flabby humanitarianism, and 
 sip the weak tea of brotherly love." When he 
 stands in the dim cathedral of Anagni, and 
 contemplates the tombs of the illustrious Gae- 
 tani family, and the mosaics which blazon forth 
 their former splendors, he shrinks with sudden 
 shame from the contrast between his feeble, 
 forceless will and the rough daring of that 
 mighty clan. ''The stippling technique of his 
 own day seemed immeasurably poor and paltry 
 
100 A BY-WAY IN FICTION 
 
 compared with the broad, free, sketchy touch 
 with which these men dashed off their stirring 
 lives; and he stood confounded before that fi- 
 ery and robust intensity which, so gloriously in- 
 different to the subtilties of the grammarian, 
 the niceties of the manicure, and the torments 
 of the supersensitive self-analyst, could fix its 
 intent upon some definite desire, and move for- 
 ward unswervingly to its attainment. Poor 
 moderns ! he sighed, who with all our wish- 
 ing never reach our end, and with all our think- 
 ing never know what we really think." 
 
 These unprofitable musings of the Chevalier's 
 seem to reflect some recurring discontent, some 
 restless, unchastened yearnings on the part of 
 the author him.self; but they find no echo in the 
 serene breast of the Prorege. He at least is as 
 remote from envying the hostilities of the past 
 as he is innocent of aspiring to the progres- 
 siveness of the future. He is fully alive to the 
 merits of his own thrice-favored land, where 
 the evil devices of a wrong-headed generation 
 have never been suffered to penetrate: " Arco- 
 pia, the gods be praised, was exempt from the 
 
A BY-WAY IN FICTION lOI 
 
 modern curse of bigness. One chimney was 
 not offensive; but a million made a London. 
 One refuse-heap could be tolerated; but accu- 
 mulated thousands produced a New York. A 
 hundred weavers in their own cottages meant 
 peaceful industry and home content; a hundred 
 hundred, massed in one great factory, meant 
 vice and squalor and disorder. Society had 
 never courted failure or bid for misery more ar- 
 dently than when it had accepted an urban in- 
 dustrialism for a basis. . . . Happily the 
 Arcopian population, except a fraction that fol- 
 lowed the arts and another fraction that fol- 
 lowed the sea, was largely agricultural, and ex- 
 hibited in high union the chief virtue and the 
 chief grace of civilized society — order and pic- 
 turesqueness. The disturbing and ungracious 
 catch-word, ' Egalite,' had never crossed the 
 Arcopian sea; if the Prorege had not been tol- 
 erably sure that his mild sway was to be un- 
 disturbed by the clangor of cantankerous boil- 
 er-makers and the bickerings of a bumptious, 
 shopkeeping bourgeoisie^ he would never have 
 undertaken the task at all. He regarded him- 
 
102 A BY-WAY IN FICTION 
 
 selfas a just, humane, and sympathetic ruler, but 
 he believed that every man should have his 
 own proper place and fill it." 
 
 Such are the views smilingly detailed to the 
 puzzled and outraged Occident, who, having 
 been nourished in boyhood on the discourses of 
 rustic theologians, and the forensics of Shelby- 
 ville advocates, finds it difficult to assimilate 
 his own theories of life with a civilization he 
 so imperfectly understands. He doubts his 
 ability to take the European attitude, he doubts 
 the propriety of the attitude when taken, and 
 the struggle ends in the usual manner by his 
 marrying a wife, and going back to Shelby 
 County to be a good citizen for the rest of his 
 days. Hors-Concours, mindful of the duties 
 entailed on the proprietor of a small patrimony 
 and an ancient name, espouses with becoming 
 gravity and deliberation the Princess Altis- 
 simi. The Prorege retires to Arcopia the 
 blessed, whither we would fain follow him if 
 we could; and Pensieri-Vani, left desolate and 
 alone, consoles himself with the reflection that 
 life has many sides, and that Italy has not yet 
 
A BY-WAY IN FICTION IO3 
 
 given up to him all she has to give: " Others 
 might falter; but he was still sufficient unto 
 himself, still master of his own time and his 
 own actions, and enamored only of that de- 
 lightful land whose beauty age cannot wither, 
 and whose infinite variety custom can never 
 stale." 
 
COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 ' I ^HERE is no place in the world where hu- 
 -^ man nature is so thoroughly human or 
 so purely natural as on the New York docks, 
 when a great steamer load of returning travel- 
 ers are being put through the peine forte et 
 dure of the United States custom house. 
 Everybody is striving to play a part, to assume 
 an air of indifference which he does not feel, 
 and of innocence which he knows to be falla- 
 cious ; and, like Mrs. Browning's Masker, 
 everybody betrays too plainly in his "smiling 
 face" and "jesting bold" the anxiety that 
 preys upon his vitals. Packed snugly away in 
 that wilderness of trunks and boxes are hun- 
 dreds, nay, thousands, of pretty trifles, which 
 it is the painful duty of every man, and the 
 proud ambition of every woman, to carry in 
 unscathed and undetected. The frank, shame- 
 less delight which a woman takes in smuggling 
 
 104 
 
COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE IO5 
 
 has long puzzled the male moralist, who, fol- 
 lowing- the intricacies of the feminine con- 
 science, can find no satisfactory explanation 
 of this by-path. He cannot bring her to 
 understand why, Avhen she has purchased and 
 paid for an article, it should not be hers to 
 take where she likes, to deal with as she 
 pleases ; and a dozen discourses on political 
 economy and the laws of nations leave her un- 
 shaken in this simple and primitive conception. 
 As the English are said to argue best in pla- 
 toons, so a woman argues best in action ; and, 
 while her husband or brother is proving to her 
 in the clearest possible fashion that a high pro- 
 tective tarirf is a blessing to the land, she is 
 assiduously storing away embroidered table 
 covers, and silk stockings, and silver spoons, 
 and tortoise-shell combs, and tiny jeweled 
 pins, and bits of frail Venetian glass, wherever 
 her practiced eye tells her they will best escape 
 detection. In the abstract, of course, dear 
 Edwin is right — he always is — but she is far 
 too busy with her task to enter into abstrac- 
 tions just now. Whatever mental subtlety she 
 
I06 COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 possesses is reserved for a much more impor- 
 tant ordeal — that of getting clear, with a clean 
 conscience, from the searching questions of the 
 inspector. "When I am asked if 1 have any 
 presents I always answer no," said a devout, 
 church-going woman to me one day, "be- 
 cause I do not consider them presents until I 
 give them away." 
 
 The grim, perplexed seriousness with which 
 the customs officers play their part makes a 
 delightful foil (for the spectators) to the nim- 
 ble, elusive mental movements of their adver- 
 saries; and it is in the conflict between aggress- 
 or and aggrieved, between invader and invaded, 
 that the humors of our great national institu- 
 tion develop their choicest bloom. The for- 
 tunes of war which recently delayed my own 
 boxes and my hoped-for escape, gave me, by 
 way of compensation, an easy opportunity of 
 observing and enjoying the experiences of 
 other people, and I was encouraged in my di- 
 version by the too evident glee of one of the 
 minor actors in the strife. She was a very 
 pretty girl, this gay young combatant, not 
 
COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 10/ 
 
 more than sixteen years old, and she sat kick- 
 ing her heels on somebody else's trunk, while 
 she watched with enviable composure the over- 
 hauling of her own. I had seen her often dur- 
 ing the homeward voyage, and had spoken to 
 her once or twice as she tripped endlessly up 
 and down the deck in company with every man 
 and boy on board; taking them impartially, 
 one by one, and seeming to be on the same 
 mysterious terms of intimacy with all. She 
 had a traveling companion in the shape of a 
 mother who adored her fretfully, and whom she 
 treated with finely mingled affection and con- 
 tempt. She never spoke of this relative with- 
 out the prefix ''poor." "Poor mother is aw- 
 fully sick to-day," she would say in her shrill, 
 high-pitched voice, with a laugh which showed 
 all her little white teeth, and sounded a trifle 
 unsympathetic in our ears. But five minutes 
 later she was helping "poor mother" to her 
 steamer chair, wrapping her up skilfully in 
 half a dozen rugs and shawls, bullying the deck 
 steward to bring her some hot bouillon, bully- 
 ing her to drink the bouillon when brought, 
 
I08 COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 listening to her manifold complaints with an 
 indulgent smile, and flatly refusing to obey, 
 when entreated to put on a warmer jacket. 
 
 *' Poor mother is always worrying about 
 wraps," was her only acknowledgment of the 
 maternal solicitude; and even this remark was 
 made, not to her prostrate parent, but to the 
 youth who was waiting to bear her away. 
 
 The pair had been traveling alone all sum- 
 mer, but were met on the docks by a person 
 whom they both called " cousin Jim," and who 
 assured them in a hearty, offhand manner that 
 he would have them safe through the custom 
 house in five minutes; a miscalculation, as it 
 turned out, of quite three-quarters of an hour. 
 Malignant fate assigned them an inspector who 
 settled down to his search like an Indian to 
 the war trail, and who seemed possessed with 
 the idea that the wealth of the Indies lay se- 
 creted somewhere in those two shabby, travel- 
 worn boxes. Whether this man was really 
 enamored of his disagreeable task, whether 
 he conscientiously believed that the United 
 States would be impoverished and her indus- 
 
COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE IO9 
 
 tries crippled by the contents of that modest 
 luggage, or whether he had been too pliable 
 on former occasions, and seized this chance to 
 assert his general incorruptibility, it would be 
 hard to determine; but while older and less 
 ardent officials lifted out trays and turned over 
 corners in a purely perfunctory manner, seeing 
 nothing, and seeking to see nothing of what 
 lay beneath, this red-hot zealot went thorough- 
 ly and exhaustively to work upon the limited 
 materials before him. Now the particular irri- 
 tation of the custom house lies, not in the fact 
 of your trunk being searched, but of your neigh- 
 bor's trunk escaping; and the sharpest sting is 
 when you chance to know that your neighbor 
 is carrying in unmolested ten times the value 
 of your dutiable articles. If Miss Maisie, kick- 
 ing her heels and smiling affably, did not real- 
 ize the hardship of her position, Miss Mai- 
 sie's mother — she never had any other name, 
 her sole claim to distinction resting on her 
 daughter — felt it very keenly. She stood, 
 anxious and angry, by the side of the in- 
 spector, protesting fretfully at each new in- 
 
no COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 road, and appealing for sympathy to her com- 
 panions. 
 
 " It's a perfect shame, the way he has rum- 
 pled your dresses, Maisie, and upset that tray 
 you packed so nice and close. You will never 
 be able to get the things back again in the 
 world, and, if you do, one half of them will be 
 broken before we reach home. And there's 
 your new fur cape all out of fold. I told you 
 to wear it, or carry it in on your arm. Xo ! 
 that is not a present; at least I think not, is it, 
 Maisie ? " as a small brown paper parcel, care- 
 fully tied, was held up by the inspector for 
 scrutiny. 
 
 "I can't tell till I open it," said the girl, 
 reaching over, and very deliberately unfasten- 
 ing the string. " You don't remember what 
 this is, do }'ou, mother ? Oh I I see — a piece 
 of camphor. No, it's not a present. We 
 brought it from America. Lasts beautifully, 
 doesn't it ? " returning the parcel with a smile. 
 " Would you mind wrapping it up again ? It's 
 so very hard to tie anything in gloves." 
 
 Apparently the inspector did mind, for he 
 
COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE III 
 
 jerked the lump of camphor unwrapped into 
 the trunk, and made a vicious scoop among 
 the layers of neatly packed clothing. " Is this 
 a present, then ? " he asked, drawing to light a 
 flat oblong white box, and snapping the cord 
 that bound it. Inside, resting on pink cotton 
 wool, was a small silver-backed hand-mirror of 
 fine workmanship. '* Surely this must be a pres- 
 ent ? " he repeated, with the triumphant air of 
 one who has dragged a secret crime to justice. 
 
 Maisie's mother looked nervous, and fidgeted 
 visibly, but Maisie herself was imperturbable. 
 *' You are mistaken; it is not," she said, with- 
 out a tremor. 
 
 The man glanced at her sharply, and 
 shrugged his shoulders. " You keep it very 
 nicely put away for an article in use," he hint- 
 ed, turning over the box once or twice with 
 manifest doubt and reluctance. *' And these — 
 are all these your own, too ? " unearthing from 
 some secret receptacle six little card-cases of 
 blue leather, and spreading them out jeeringly 
 in a row. 
 
 ** I told you not to get so many, Maisie, but 
 
112 COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 you would do it," said her mother, in the hope- 
 less tone of a convicted criminal. 
 
 *' They were such bargains, I couldn't resist 
 them," answered the girl sorrowfully. ** Yes, 
 they are presents; at least five of them are. I 
 guess I will keep one for myself, and save that, 
 any way. Just put one of them back, please. 
 And oh, dear ! do you have to lift out that 
 heavy tray .-^ There are nothing but clothes at 
 the bottom of the trunk." 
 
 " Nothing at all but clothes," interposed her 
 mother peevishly. " I don't see why you have 
 to go through everything in this fashion." 
 
 " Nothing at all but clothes," repeated cous- 
 in Jim, who had hitherto stood staring silently 
 at the confusion before him. *' Can't you take 
 the ladies' word for it, when they assure you 
 there is nothing underneath but clothes ? " 
 
 *' My dear sir," said the inspector, exasper- 
 ated into insolence, " I should be very glad to 
 take any lady's word, but I can't. I've learned 
 a great deal better." 
 
 Maisie's mother colored hotly, with the right- 
 eous indignation of a woman who lies easily. 
 
COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE II3 
 
 and is accused of falsehood; but Maisie, screw- 
 ing her pretty head on one side, winked at 
 me in shameless enjoyment of the situation. 
 ** He'll find I'm right this time," she whispered; 
 "but wasn't it lucky he got it into his stupid 
 brain that the glass must be a present ! If he 
 had said * commission ' now, I should have 
 been caught, and the friend I bought it for 
 would be simply furious if I had to pay duty on 
 it. Poor mother insisted that I should not 
 take a single commission this summer, so I 
 only have very few; just that glass, and some 
 gloves, of course, and a feather collar, and half 
 a dozen pairs of stockings, and a little silk 
 shawl from Rome. One girl did ask me to buy 
 her a dress in Paris, -but I wouldn't do it; and 
 another wanted a pair of blue slippers, but for- 
 tunately I forgot her size; and atiother — " 
 
 " Maisie, dear, do put back your things now," 
 interrupted her unhappy parent, who by this 
 time was on the verge of tears. " The inspec- 
 tor has finished with your trunk, and is going 
 to mine. And please be careful of your cape ! 
 I wish you had worn it instead — " 
 
ri4 COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 '' Instead of my old one ? " said the girl has- 
 tily, smoothing down, as she spoke, a very 
 handsome and palpably new piece of sealskin 
 on her shoulders. ** Poor mother is so blun- 
 dering," she sighed softly in my ear. "I am 
 wearing this cape for Dr. Hunsdale. He is 
 bringing it home to his sister, and of course 
 wouldn't have any shadow of a chance with it 
 himself. Indeed, he intended to declare it, 
 which would have been a dreadful shame. So 
 I just offered to pack mine and wear this one. 
 Lots of girls do, you know. I've got a watch 
 here for another man, too," lightly touching 
 the chatelaine by her side. '' Not a gold one. 
 Only a little silver thing he bought for Jiis sis- 
 ter, who is a child. Poor mother doesn't know 
 about that, or she would be more miserable 
 still; and she is pretty miserable now, isn't 
 she ? " contemplating her perturbed relative 
 with gentle disfavor. ''You see, she worries 
 so, she makes that man believe we have some- 
 thing tremendously valuable somewhere, and 
 he is bent on finding it out. There, he's after 
 our Roman blankets; but those are for our- 
 
COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE II5 
 
 selves, and, what is more," raising her voice,'* we 
 have had them in use for nearly three months." 
 
 ** Three months isn't long enough," returned 
 the official surlily. "You must have had them 
 in use a year, to bring them in free." 
 
 '' A year ! " echoed Maisie, opening her round 
 eyes with innocent amazement. " If you knew 
 much about Roman blankets, you wouldn't ex- 
 pect anybody to use them for a year, and then 
 think them worth bringing home. What a thrif- 
 ty lot the custom-house people must be ! Poor 
 mother ! She never expected to pay for those, 
 and it does seem a little hard on her. But 
 what's that he's got now ? Oh ! do look ! " for 
 the inspector had grabbed something loosely 
 wrapped in white tissue paper, and was hold- 
 ing it aloft with an exultant shake, and an 
 " I've-tracked-you-at-last " expression. Down 
 fell a rubber shoe, of unmistakable American 
 manufacture, but richly crusted with layers of 
 foreign mud. It flopped modestly into the bot- 
 tom of the trunk, and was greeted with a ring- 
 ing laugh of genuine, uncontrolled delight. 
 '* That's a present," sobbed the girl, literally 
 
Il6 COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 choking with mirth, ** and very valuable. We 
 brought it from the South Kensington, and are 
 going to send it to the Metropolitan Museum 
 as soon as we reach home." 
 
 '* Maisie, how can you be so foolish ! " pro- 
 tested her mother, roused by desperation to 
 some faint semblance of authority, and visibly 
 anxious to propitiate the inspector, who looked 
 ominously angry. " If you will wrap such ab- 
 surd things in white tissue paper, naturally 
 people think they are of some value." 
 
 " But we had so iriuch tissue paper in Lon- 
 don, and nothing else to wrap with," was the 
 very reasonable reply. " Fifteen sheets the 
 tailor sent home with my one frock, and I am 
 keeping most of it to use at Christmas time. 
 Poor old shoe ! " lifting it tenderly out of the 
 trunk; *' if mud were a dutiable article — and I 
 only wonder it isn't — you would come very 
 expensive just now. Swiss mud, too, I do be- 
 lieve, never brushed off since that day at Grin- 
 delwald, and quite a relic. Don't you think," 
 turning suddenly to me, " don't you really 
 think all this is fearfully funny ^ " 
 
COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 11/ 
 
 In one sense I did, though the fun was of a 
 strictly esoteric character, not appealing broad- 
 ly to the crowd. But then Mr. Saintsbury as- 
 sures us that real fun seldom does. Poor mo- 
 ther's sense of humor was plainly unequal to 
 the demand made upon it; cousin Jim, who 
 had not spoken since his first repulse, looked 
 more bewildered than amused; and even the 
 inspector did not seem vastly entertained by 
 the situation. The trunks had been examined, 
 and their contents sadly disarranged; the 
 handbags searched, and found to contain only 
 toilet articles and underwear; the steamer rugs, 
 unrolled, revealed nothing more precious than 
 an old magazine and four battered French 
 novels. As a result of over half an hour's in- 
 quisition, the authorities had possessed them- 
 selves of two well-worn Roman blankets, a 
 pretty, inexpensive little fan, painted on brown 
 linen, a beer mug of Munich ware, and those 
 five blue card-cases that had been so cheap in 
 Paris. It hardly seemed as if the spoils were 
 worth the conflict, or as if the three dollars and 
 ninety cents duty charged on them could be a 
 
Il8 COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 serious addition to the revenues of the United 
 States. But the home-coming of one poor 
 woman had been marred, and no salt-tax of 
 ancient France was ever paid with more mani- 
 fest reluctance and ill-will. 
 
 '' It's the burning- injustice of the thing I 
 mind, Maisie," was the vehement protest hurled 
 at the inspector's back. "There were plenty 
 of people all around whose trunks were hardly 
 touched. I watched one man myself, and he 
 never lifted out a single thing — ^just turned the 
 corners a little, and smoothed all down again. 
 He was examining the Hardings's luggage, too, 
 and I know they have five times as much as 
 we have — really costly, beautiful things — and 
 they never paid a cent." 
 
 " But we didn't pay a great deal," returned 
 the girl cheerfully. She was down on her knees 
 now, deftly rearranging the disordered trunks. 
 "Think of all our man might have found, and 
 did n't." 
 
 " Think of the shameful condition he left our 
 clothes in ! " said her angry mother. " It is an 
 outrage. And those blankets ! Everybody 
 
COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE II9 
 
 brings them, and nobody but ourselves has to 
 pay. The Hardings had them, I know, and so 
 did Miss Rebecca Chambers, and Mrs. Starr; 
 and they all came in free." 
 
 ** Yes, but Mr. Maitland was charged four 
 dollars duty on a pair he bought for twenty 
 shillings in London, and he presented them to 
 the custom-house officers rather than give their 
 value over again," said Maisie triumphantly. 
 
 " Did he, really ?" cried her mother, bright- 
 ening up wonderfully under the beneficent in- 
 fluence of other people's misfortunes. "What 
 a shame ! Four dollars duty on twenty-shil- 
 ling blankets ! I never heard of anything so 
 preposterous." 
 
 " Yes, and Dr. Carson gave them a silver 
 watch he had brought over for his little boy, 
 rather than pay the duty on that, it was so 
 high," continued Maisie, who seemed to know 
 the fate and fortunes of every passenger on 
 board. 
 
 Her mother's face relaxed from fretfulness 
 into smiles. '' I wonder he doesn't sue the gov- 
 ernment, or something," she remarked, with 
 
120 COMEDY OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 feminine vagueness. " I am sure I should. It 
 is a good thing, Maisie, we had no watches to 
 bring." 
 
 The girl chuckled softly, and shook the little 
 chatelaine by her side. "Yes, it is a good 
 thing," she said, with an air of simple convic- 
 tion. *' After all, we did get off pretty cheap. 
 And it was almost worth the money to see the 
 delicious flourish with which that muddy old 
 overshoe tumbled on the scene. Don't you 
 think," turning once more appealingly to me, 
 "that three dollars and ninety cents was little 
 enough to pay for such a sight } 
 
 Perhaps I did. A laugh is always worth its 
 price, and in these serious days grows rare at 
 any figure. Besides, when a great republic con- 
 descends to play an active part in even an in- 
 different comedy, it is ill-timed to grumble at 
 the cost. 
 
MR. WILDE'S INTENTIONS 
 
 TT VER since the first printers with mis- 
 -*— ' guided zeal dipped an innocent world 
 in ink, those books have been truly popular 
 which reflected faithfully and enthusiastically 
 the foibles and delusions of the hour. This 
 is what is called '' keeping abreast with the 
 spirit of the times," and we have only to look 
 around us at present to see the principle at 
 work. With an arid and dreary realism chilling 
 us to the heart, and sad-voiced novelists entreat- 
 ing us at every turn to try to cultivate indecorous 
 conduct and religious doubts, fiction has ceased 
 to be a medium of delight. Even nihilism, which 
 is the only form of relief that true earnestness 
 permits, is capable of being overstrained, and 
 some narrowly conservative people are begin- 
 ning to ask themselves already whether this 
 new development of "murder as a fine art" 
 has not been sufficiently encouraged. Out of 
 
 121 
 
122 MR. WILDE'S INTENTIONS 
 
 the midst of the gloom, out of the confusion 
 and depression of conflicting forms of serious- 
 ness, rises from London a voice, clear, languid, 
 musical, shaken with laughter, and speaking 
 in strange, sweet tones of art and beauty, and 
 of that finer criticism which is one with art 
 and beauty, and claims them forever as its 
 own. The voice comes from Mr. Oscar Wilde, 
 and few there are who listen to him, partly 
 because his philosophy is alien to our preva- 
 lent modes of thought, and partly because of 
 the perverse and paradoxical fashion in which 
 he delights to give it utterance. People are 
 more impressed by the way a thing is said 
 than by the thing itself. A grave arrogance 
 of demeanor, a solemn and self-assertive meth- 
 od of reiterating an opinion until it grows 
 weighty with words, are weapons more con- 
 vincing than any subtlety of argument. '' As 
 I have before expressed to the still reverber- 
 ating discontent of two continents " — this is the 
 mode in which the public loves to have a state- 
 ment offered to its ears, that it may gape, and 
 wonder, and acquiesce. 
 
MR. WILDE'S INTENTIONS 1 23 
 
 Nothing can be further from such admirable 
 solidity than Mr. Wilde's flashing sword-play, 
 than the glee with which he makes out a case 
 against himself, and then proceeds valiantly 
 into battle. There are but four essays in the 
 volume, rather vaguely called Intentions, d^ndi of 
 these four only two have real and permanent 
 value. " The Truth of Masks " is a somewhat 
 trivial paper, inserted apparently to help fill up 
 the book, and " Pen, Pencil, and Poison" is vis- 
 ibly lacking in sincerity. The author plays with 
 his subject very much as his subject, "■ kind, 
 light-hearted Wainwright," played with crime, 
 and in both cases there is a subtle and discord- 
 ant element of vulgarity. It is not given to our 
 eminently respectable age to reproduce the 
 sumptuous and horror-laden atmosphere which 
 lends an artistic glamor to the poisonous court 
 of the Medicis. This " study in green " contains, 
 however, some brilliant passages, and at least 
 one sentence — '* The domestic virtues are not 
 the true basis of art, though they may serve as 
 an excellent advertisement for second - rate 
 artists " — that must make Mr. George Moore 
 
124 MR. WILDE'S INTENTIONS 
 
 pale with envy, when he reflects that he n:iissed 
 saying it, where it belongs, in his clever, 
 truthful, ill-natured paper on *' Mummer- Wor- 
 ship." 
 
 The significance and the charm of Mr. 
 Wilde's book are centred in its opening chap- 
 ter, *' The Decay of Lying," reprinted from 
 The Nineteenth Century^ and in the long two- 
 part essay, entitled " The Critic as Artist," 
 which embodies some of his most thoughtful, 
 serious, and scholarly work. My own ineffable 
 content rests with " The Decay of Lying," be- 
 cause, under its transparent mask of cynicism, 
 its wit, its satire, its languid mocking humor, 
 lies clearly outlined a great truth that is slip- 
 ping fast away from us — the absolute inde- 
 pendence of art — art nourished by imagination 
 and revealing beauty. This is the hand that 
 gilds the grayness of the Avorld; this is the 
 voice that sings in flute tones through the si- 
 lence of the ages. To degrade this shining 
 vision into a handmaid of nature, to maintain 
 that she should give us photographic pictures 
 of an unlovely life, is a heresy that arouses in 
 
MR. WILDE'S INTENTIONS 1 25 
 
 Mr. Wilde an amused scorn which takes the 
 place of anger. *' Art," he says, " never ex- 
 presses anything but itself. It has an inde- 
 pendent life, just as Thought has, and develops 
 purely on its own lines. It is not necessarily 
 realistic in an age of realism, nor spiritual in 
 an age of faith. So far from being the creation 
 of its time, it is usually in direct opposition to 
 it, and the only history that it preserves for us 
 is the history of its own progress." That we 
 should understand this, it is necessary to un- 
 derstand also the "beautiful untrue things" 
 which exist only in the world of fancy; the 
 things that are lies, and yet help us to endure 
 the truth. Mr. Wilde repudiates distinctly and 
 almost energetically all lying with an object, 
 all sordid trifling with a graceful gift. The 
 lies of newspapers yield him no pleasure; the 
 lies of politicians are ostentatiously unconvin- 
 cing; the lies of lawyers are " briefed by the 
 prosaic." He reviews the world of fiction with 
 a swift and caustic touch; he lingers among 
 the poets; he muses rapturously over those 
 choice historic masterpieces, from Herodotus 
 
126 MR. WILDE'S INTENTIONS 
 
 to Carlyle, where '' facts are either kept in 
 their proper subordinate position, or else en- 
 tirely excluded on the general ground of dul- 
 ness." He laments with charming frankness 
 the serious virtues of his age. " Many a young 
 man," he says, "starts in life with a natural 
 gift for exaggeration, which, if nurtured in con- 
 genial and sympathetic surroundings, or by 
 the imitation of the best models, might grow 
 into something really great and wonderful. 
 But, as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either 
 falls into careless habits of accuracy, or takes 
 to frequenting the society of the aged and the 
 well-informed. Both things are equally fatal 
 to his imagination, and in a short time he de- 
 velops a morbid and unhealthy faculty of truth- 
 telling, begins to verify all statements made in 
 his presence, has no hesitation in contradicting 
 people who are much younger than himself, 
 and often ends by writing novels that are so 
 like life that no one can possibly believe in 
 their probability." Surely this paragraph has 
 but one peer in the world of letters, and that 
 is the immortal sentence wherein De Ouincey 
 
MR. WILDE'S INTENTIONS 12/ 
 
 traces the murderer's gradual downfall to in- 
 civility and procrastination. 
 
 ''The Critic as Artist" affords Mr. Wilde 
 less scope for his humor and more for his eru- 
 dition, which, perhaps, is somewhat lavishly 
 displayed. Here he pleads for the creative 
 powers of criticism, for its fine restraints, its 
 imposed self-culture, and he couches his plea 
 in words as rich as music. Now and then, it 
 is true, he seems driven by the whips of our 
 modern Furies to the verge of things which are 
 not his to handle — problems, social and spir- 
 itual, to which he holds no key. When this 
 occurs, we can only Vv^ait with drooping heads, 
 and what patience we can muster, until he is 
 pleased to return to his theme; or until he re- 
 members, laughing, how fatal is the habit of 
 imparting opinions, and what a terrible ordeal 
 it is to sit at table with the man who has spent 
 his life in educating others rather than himself 
 " For the development of the race depends on 
 the development of the individual, and where 
 self-culture has ceased to be the ideal, the in- 
 tellectual standard is instantly lowered, and 
 
128 MR. WILDE'S INTENTIONS 
 
 often ultimately lost." I like to fancy the 
 ghost of the late Rector of Lincoln, of him who 
 said that an appreciation of Milton was the re- 
 ward of consummate scholarship, listening- in 
 the Elysian Fields, and nodding his assent to 
 this much-neglected view of a much-disputed 
 question. Everybody is now so busy teaching 
 that nobody has any time to learn. We are 
 growing rich in lectures, but poor in scholars, 
 and the triumph of mediocrity is at hand. Mr. 
 Wilde can hardly hope to become popular by 
 proposing real study to people burning to im- 
 part their ignorance; but the criticism that 
 develops in the mind a more subtle quality of 
 apprehension and discernment is the criticism 
 that creates the intellectual atmosphere of the 
 age. 
 
HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY 
 
 **^ I ""HERE does not, at this blessed moment, 
 ■*- breathe on the earth's surface a human 
 being that willna prefer eating and drinking to 
 all ither pleasures o' body or soul." So speaks 
 the Ettrick Shepherd, in the fulness of his con- 
 tent, contemplating with moist eyes the groan- 
 ing supper-table, laden with a comfortable 
 array of solid viands; after which fair and 
 frank expression of his views we are somewhat 
 pained to hear him denouncing in no measured 
 terms " the awful and fearsome vice o' glut- 
 tony," as evidenced occasionally in women. 
 Jj is companions, too, those magnificent fellow - 
 feeders, have a great many severe things to 
 
 sa y about gudewives who betray a w eakness 
 for roasted pork, or an unfeminine solicitude for 
 gravy; and Mr. Timothy Tickler u nh esitat ing- 
 ly affirm s that such a on e, '' eating for the sake 
 
 of eating, and not for mere nourishment, is, in 
 
 129 
 
130 HUMORS OF GASTROXOMY 
 
 fact, the gro ssest^o f .^enqnalic^l-qj a i!iJ_^JL_erLC^ 
 
 mout hfuj_yirtiiaIl4^-^biieaks all tenx£the com- 
 mandments/^ This is the language of an as- 
 cetic rather than of a bon vivant, but we are in 
 some measure reassured when the same Mr. 
 Tickler confesses, a little later, that, although 
 roast goose always disagrees with him, yet 
 he never refuses it, believing that to purchase 
 pleasure by a certain degree of pain is true 
 philosophy; whereupon the Shepherd, not to 
 be outdone, gives it as his unreserved opinion 
 that, in winter-time at least, " eating for eat- 
 ing's sake, and in oblivion o' its feenal cause, 
 is the most sacred o" household duties." 
 
 From these somewhat inharmonious senti- 
 ments we reluctantly infer that g luttony is a 
 vice — or a virtue — for eman only , andth at wo- 
 maji/£jpa£t_injth e programme is pur^ lvjhat of 
 a ministe ring an gel. Adam was made to eat, 
 and Eve to cook for him, although, even in this 
 humble sphere, she and her daughters have 
 been doomed to rank second in command. 
 Excellent in all things, but supreme in none, 
 they have never yet scaled the dazzling 
 
HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY I3I 
 
 heights of culinary fame. The records of an- 
 tiquity make no mention of their skill; the 
 middle ages grant them neither praise nor 
 honor; and even as late as Dr. Johnson's day 
 they labored hard for scanty recognition. It 
 is very painful to hear the great sage speaking 
 lightly of our grandmother's oracle, Mrs. 
 Glasse, and declaring with robust contempt 
 that women were fit to spin, but not to write a 
 book of cookery. Yet for how many years had 
 they modestly held their peace; profiting, 
 doubtless, in many a roomy kitchen and in 
 many a well-stocked buttery by the words of 
 wisdom which vainglorious men let fall; and 
 only now and then giving help and counsel to 
 one another by means of little private recipe- 
 books, which were circulated among a few 
 noble families, and were considered as their 
 own exclusive property and pride. 
 
 Opulence and a taste for display, upon the 
 one side, and the natural conservatism of the 
 great Saxon stock, upon the other, fought the 
 battle of the table from the days of the Black 
 Prince down to those of Anthony Trollope, 
 
132 HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY 
 
 and will, in all probability, fight it to the end. 
 " A cod's head for fourpence, and nine shil- 
 lings' worth of condiments to serve with it," 
 was the favorite sarcasm which greeted the 
 growing extravagance of the rich middle 
 classes. Those costly "subtleties" imported 
 from French kitchens in the fifteenth century 
 met with a sturdy opposition from British free- 
 men, who, even while they gaped and marvel- 
 ed, resented such bewildering innovations. 
 The pelican sheltering her young, and Saint 
 Catherine, book in hand, disputing with the 
 doctors, which figured among the dishes at 
 the coronation of Henry V. ; the hundred and 
 four "dressed" peacocks, trailing their plumes 
 gorgeously over the table at the consecration 
 
 ^f^Archbishop Neville, affronted more than 
 one beef-eating gentleman, and exasperated 
 more than one porridge-eating churl. From 
 France, too, came certain heresies regarding 
 the fitness of food which Englishmen had for 
 centuries devoured and digested. Queen 
 Elizabeth dined upon whale; Cardinal Wol- 
 sey, who was something of an epicure, and 
 
HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY 1 33 
 
 who first taught us that strawberries and cream 
 were intended by a beneficent nature to set off 
 each other's merits, did not disdain to have a 
 young porpoise served up at one of his ban- 
 quets. Fish soup was a delicacy, and we are 
 even assured by antiquarians that the gram- 
 pus, or sea-wolf, was freely eaten by our 
 strong-stomached ancestors. 
 
 But foreign cooks looked doubtfully upon 
 these national dainties, and, in place of the 
 old-time gravies, which were simply the broths 
 in which meat had been boiled, flavored with 
 a little ginger and sugar, delicate and highly 
 seasoned sauces were devised for the tempting 
 of weary appetites. Italy sent forks — those 
 curious and uncanny implements — which were 
 received with scornful indignation, as calcu- 
 lated to destroy the simplicity and manliness 
 of Great Britain. Spoons and knives were 
 held in slight esteem, for^oqd soup could~be~ 
 swallowed from the bowl, and his sacred Maj- 
 esty, Charles XII. of S\veden, was noFthe^only 
 monarch who bjjt tered his bre ad with his royal 
 — thum5. But forks were contemptible affecta- 
 
134 HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY 
 
 tions. As honest Master Breton observed, he 
 had done no foul work, and handled no un- 
 wholesome thing, and consequently had no 
 need of an instrument with which to make hay 
 of his food and pitch it into his mouth. Sa, 
 too, the timeJio45^f^d--etTstom-_Qf ni^jiajidjoie 
 
 eating out of one trencherw as falling int o 
 rapi^"'dTsuse,""andWalpole tells us that the old 
 DiTke'ajtid Duchess of Hamilton were the last 
 couple in England who retained the fashion of 
 their youth. Meats were growing daintier and 
 dearer all the while. The ordinary or inn 
 dinner, which in Elizabeth's day cost sixpence, 
 had risen to tenpence in the reign of George I., 
 and soon crept up to a shilling. In every 
 generation there were plenty of grumblers to 
 lament over the good old times that had fled, 
 and we catch the echo of this undying cry in 
 the modern protests against unwelcome fash- 
 ions. Thackeray and Trollope railed perpet- 
 ually at that feeble striving after an impossible 
 elegance which had well-nigh destroyed the 
 cheery conviviality of their youth ; and Pea- 
 cock, the prince of good livers, with whom the 
 
HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY 135 
 
 pleasures of the intellect and the appetite 
 walked amicably hand in hand, has recorded 
 his still more vehement denunciation : " I de- 
 test and abominate," says Mr. Macborrowdale, 
 *'the idea of a Siberian dinner, where you just 
 look on fiddle-faddles, while your meal is be- 
 hind a screen, and you are served with rations 
 like a pauper." 
 
 The scorn of the true Briton for alien delica- 
 cies was repaid with interest by the French- 
 man, who regarded his neighbor's groaning 
 table very much as we might regard the doubt- 
 ful provender of a cannibal chief The con- 
 tempt for frog-eating foreigners, on the one 
 hand, was not greater than the contempt for 
 beef-eating islanders, on the other ;^n _fact, all 
 nations, from Egypt down, seem to have cher- 
 
 ished a wholesome dislike and distrust for each 
 
 other's food. The British officer who, at the 
 attack on Cadiz, shouted to his men, ''You 
 Englishmen, who are fed upon beef, don't surely 
 
 mean to be beaten by a d d lot of Spaniards, 
 
 who live on oranges ! " made a stronger appeal 
 to human nature than did Napoleon with his 
 
136 HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY 
 
 famous "forty centuries ;" and the reverse of 
 the medal may be seen in Talleyrand's de- 
 scription of England, as a land where there 
 were twenty-four religions and only one sauce. 
 Twenty-four religions would make but a poor 
 showing in these days, when even a serious 
 novel can beget a new one ; but sauces are not 
 so lightly called into being. Those " slibber 
 sops " which brought " queesiness to the stom- 
 ach and disquiet to the mind " of John Lyly 
 were hard to rout from the field ; and they 
 were still holding their own when Brillat-Sav- 
 arin, the most serene and kindly of epicures, 
 first visited Great Britain. With Savarin, eat- 
 ing was more than a mere vulgar pleasure; 
 it was a solemn and yet exquisite duty which 
 man owed to himself, and to a generous nature 
 that had yielded him up her bounties for this 
 purpose. Mr. Birrell says that Burke's letters 
 on carrots "tremble with emotion," and there 
 is a like earnestness about all of Savarin's rec- 
 ipes ; a pathetic anxiety lest some ingredient 
 should be omitted or ill-used. For fish he 
 entertains a profound respect ; for game, a 
 
HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY I37 
 
 manly affection ; for pastries, a delicate regard ; 
 but truffles are the beloved darlings of his 
 heart. It contents him greatly to sit at table 
 with congenial spirits; to watch "the eager- 
 ness of desire, the ecstasy of enjoyment, and, 
 finally, the perfect repose of bliss on every 
 countenance," when the noble meal is ended. 
 Surely even the Reign of Terror might have 
 dealt tenderly with such a man as this, since 
 patriots are unswerving eaters, and it behooved 
 them to remember that "the discovery of a 
 new dish does more for the happiness of man- 
 kind than the discovery of a new planet." 
 
 All o f^Savarin's apothegms evince the same 
 frank and warm-hearted regard for the wel- 
 fare of others; the same unremitting anxiety 
 to teach them what to eat and how to eat it. 
 He entreats us nev er to forget that, wh en we 
 have invited a man to dine, we have, for a 
 short time atleast ^his happiness in o urTianHsT 
 The dinner table, he reminds us, is the only 
 place where men are not hopelessly bored for 
 the first hour, and during that hour it is our 
 privilege to make them enamored of life. A 
 
138 
 
 HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY 
 
 cook is, in his eyes, a true scientist, with 
 mighty capacities for good and evil. He be- 
 lieves, with Baudelaire, that such a one should 
 have the soul of a poet, and — like the too fas- 
 tidious Parisian, Vv'ho declared that between 
 IVIme. du Deffand's cJief and the ^Marquise de 
 Brinvilliers " there was only the difference of 
 intention'' — Savarin has no words of reproach 
 strong enough for those who debase and shame 
 their noble calling. He is prompt to recognize 
 the exigencies of a slender purse, and unweary- 
 ing in his efforts to provide viemis fitted to its 
 limitations; but his notions of economy are 
 somewhat like those of the little French prin- 
 cess, Avho said that rather than starve she 
 would live on bread and cheese. The famous 
 omelette mi tJion, for instance, with all its air 
 of pastoral simplicity, contains the roes of two 
 carp, a piece of tunny, an eschalot, twelve eggs, 
 and a number of other ingredients which 
 would hardly recommend it to a poor country 
 parsonage. As for the Abbe Chevrier's spin- 
 
 ach, which was warmed up with butter for 
 
 s e ve n~days^belofe^t reac h^ d_ the acme of deli- 
 
HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY I39 
 
 cacy, we can o-aly— AV-oader-at-tlie admirable 
 patience of the Abbe's cook, who would return 
 seven times with unremitting industry to the 
 consideration of a single dish. 
 
 It will be observed, however, how many gas- 
 tronomical triumphs we owe to cje rjcal geni us, _ 
 or to the researches of the true philosopher. 
 Lord Bacon thought it no shame to bend his 
 mighty mind to kitchen problems, and Dr. 
 Nowel, the learned and pious dean of St. Paul's, 
 was rightfully proud of the bottled beer which 
 he first gave to his astonished and grateful 
 country. The earliest list of recipes in Eng- 
 land was the work of an archbishop. The 
 Jesuits in the seventeenth century carried the 
 turkey from its native haunts, and introduced 
 it to the best French society, who received it 
 with the rapture it deserved. The famous 
 mayoimaise is not the only delicacy which 
 Richelieu bequeathed to the world ; Talley- 
 rand devoteH one hour out of every busy day 
 to the exclusive companionship of his cook ; 
 and the Regent Orleans was pleased to give 
 his own name to the bread of his own baking. 
 
140 HCMORS OF GASTRONOMY 
 
 What a kindly spirit of good-fellowship we 
 discern in the frank epicureanism of Sydney 
 Smith ! what generous sympathy for a bon 
 vivant whose lines have led him into desert 
 places ! " Luttrell came over for a day," he 
 writes, " from whence I know not, but I 
 thought not from good quarters ; at least he 
 had not his usual soup and patti look. There 
 was a forced smile upon his countenance which 
 seemed to indicate plain roast and boiled, a 
 sort of apple-pudding depression, as if he had 
 been staving^ with a clero"\-man." How credit- 
 able, too, is his anxiety to please Luttrell, 
 when that amiable s\-barite becomes Jiis s^uest ! 
 "Mrs. S}'dney," he declares, "grows pale with 
 alarm as the rich dishes are uncovered ; " and 
 yet so admirable a housewife might have shared 
 in the superb confidence of Lord Worcester 
 when cautioned by Sir Henry Halford to leave 
 all such indiscreet messes alone. " Side 
 dishes," said the great physician, " are poison." 
 '' Yours may be," retorted Lord Worcester ; 
 " and I should never dream of eating them, 
 but mine are a very different story." So, too, 
 
HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY I4I 
 
 were Sydney Smith's, and the celebrated salad 
 which gained for him nearly as wide a reputa- 
 tion as his wit was only one of many famous 
 recipes, and probably no greater in its way 
 than the mysterious pudding whose secret he 
 imparted as an especial favor to the importu- 
 nate Lady Holland. Those who had the happi- 
 ness of sitting at his table rose from it with 
 tranquil gratitude, " serenely full," and con- 
 scious, let us hope, of his own graceful senti- 
 ment, 
 
 " Fate cannot harm me — I have dined to-day ." 
 
 There is one more subject to consider ; one 
 more aspect of the case, fraught with tender 
 and melancholy associations. Like the lost 
 joys of our youth ; like the taste for apple- 
 dumplings, which Lamb recognized as belong- 
 ing only to those whose innocence was unim- 
 paired ; like the vanishing of gentle thoughts 
 with a growing distaste for asparagus ; .so is 
 the sorrowful blank left in our lives by the 
 recollection of noble dishes tha t have b een, 
 and that are no longer. What of that lost rec- 
 
142 HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY 
 
 ipe of Menander's for fish sauce — an ambrosial 
 
 sauce whose fame has flitted down to us from 
 dim ages, and the eating of which would have 
 filled to the brim Dr. Johnson's cup of happi- 
 ness ? And what of its modern counterpart, 
 now also gone forever, the fajrnous.^reerL-&artrce 
 which La Coste offered to Sir Thomas Dundas 
 at the Duke__of York's table^ whispering to 
 him with unctuous fervor, " Avec cette sauce la, 
 on potirrait manger son graiid-pere " ? What 
 of the bream-pie that disappeared with the 
 good monks, driven from British soil, and the 
 mere recollection of which caused Peacock to 
 bewail in spirit the too rapid dissolution of the 
 monasteries ? And what of sack — Falstaff's 
 sack — that made England the merry Eng- 
 land of yore, and that took flight, like some 
 old-fashioned genius, before the sombre days 
 that were to follow ? Surely if we knew its 
 secret, we should learn how to laugh once 
 more. 
 
 But alas ! this may not be. We have but 
 
 Xl^TeefX^w^hay^JbuJ 
 
 the echoes of departed laughter. In vaiiLwe 
 
HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY I43 
 
 l^iQkL_and_Jiste£U-ibj:Lj;lie^ mirth— tiiaLJiasL_di£jd 
 away. In_v^in_jw;e__seekLJto--^ 
 ghosts of old-time revelers. 
 
 " Still shall this burden their answer bear, 
 What has become of last year's snow.^ " 
 
CHILDREN IN FICTION 
 
 jX/TR. RUDYARD KIPLING has prefaced 
 -^^ ^ his little volume of C/iz/d Stories with 
 a modest intimation that he finds the subject 
 almost beyond his grasp. He says : 
 
 "Only women understand children thoroughly; but 
 if a mere man keeps very quiet, and humbles himself 
 properly, and refrains from talking down to his supe- 
 riors, the children will sometimes be good to him, and 
 let him see what they think about in the world. Yet, 
 even after patient investigation and the condescension 
 of the nursery, it is hard to draw babies." 
 
 This sounds disarming, and at the same time 
 strikes a popular note respecting these fortu- 
 nate little people, who, after having been con- 
 sidered for many years as unworthy of the 
 novelist's regard, have now suddenly grown 
 too complex and subtle for him to hope to un- 
 derstand. Mr. Kipling himself approaches 
 them with great caution, and treats them with 
 
 careful conventionality, except in that pitiful 
 
 144 
 
CHILDREN IN FICTION I45 
 
 bit of realism, " Baa, Baa, Black Sheep," where 
 the misery and swift deterioration of a child 
 are almost too painfully portrayed. Punch, 
 with his dim comprehension of his own un- 
 happiness, and his pathetic attempts to be 
 friendly and ''oblige everybody;" Punch, 
 swaying alternately from clumsy deception to 
 helpless rage, badgered into sullenness, and 
 betrayed by the inherent weakness of his poor, 
 peace-loving little soul, is a picture burdened 
 with bitter truth, drawn with revengeful fidel- 
 ity. Once, I am sure, a half-blind, solitary 
 boy measured those lonely rooms in hand 
 spans: *' fifty down the side, thirty across, and 
 fifty back again — one hundred and eighty-one 
 exactly from the hall door to the top of the 
 first landing." Once, I am sure, he knocked 
 his blundering head against the walls, and up- 
 set the glasses that he tried to grasp, in the 
 gathering gloom of his doubly darkened life. 
 
 But when we turn from the sad sincerity of 
 "Black Sheep "to the brighter atmosphere of 
 the other tales, we find nothing very genuine or 
 convincing about the happier children who figure 
 
146 CHILDREX IX FICTION 
 
 in them. " Drums of the Fore and Aft" is an 
 exceedingly clever story, and Lew and Jakin 
 may be typical British drummer boys, but to 
 the uninitiated reader they seem a trifle over- 
 drawn both for good and evil. They know so 
 much and talk so marvelously; they are so very 
 bad and so very upright; and they insert such a 
 bewildering number of " bloomin's "" into their 
 conversation, that, like the eternal " well " with 
 which Mr. Howells's women begin all their sen- 
 tences, the word loses its vraiseviblaiice through 
 unbearable repetition. ' ' His Majesty the King," 
 even when we forgive him his cumbersome 
 title which destroys all good-fellowship at 
 once, is a child dear to story-writers, and con- 
 secrated to their uses for many years, but so 
 exceedin^lv rare in everv-da\- life that he has 
 to be taken strictly on faith; while ''Wee Wil- 
 lie Winkie "' is even more unveracious in his 
 character. These wonderful babes, with their 
 sense of honor, and chivalry, and manhood, 
 these Bayards in pinafores, these miniature 
 editions of King Arthur and Sir Launcelot 
 rolled into one, are picturesque possibilities 
 
CHILDREN IN FICTION I47 
 
 only when we have forgotten what an earthly 
 little animal a real boy is. Willie Winkie rides 
 into a forbidden and dangerous country to 
 protect and rescue a woman nearly old enough 
 to be his mother. He is keenly and conscien- 
 tiously distressed because, having been told to 
 keep within doors, he has thus " bwoken " his 
 '* awwest ; " but he feels it his paramount duty 
 to pursue and guard from evil the able-bodied 
 betrothed of his father's friend. When Miss 
 Allardyce accommodates herself to circum- 
 stances by promptly wrenching her ankle, and 
 the pair are surrounded by ruffians of the skulk- 
 ing, cowardly Indian type whom Mr. Kipling 
 paints with such generous scorn, we are grave- 
 ly told : " Then rose from the rock Wee Wil- 
 lie Winkie, child of the Dominant Race, aged 
 six and three-quarters, and said briefly and 
 emphatically, 'Jaof' What ''Jao" means is 
 lost to our occidental ignorance, but the effect 
 is magical. The twenty armed men thus con- 
 fronted and defied are awed into milder meas- 
 ures, and finally routed with shame, while the 
 hero of the hour restores the prostrate heroine 
 
148 CHILDREN IN FICTION 
 
 unharmed — save for the wrenched ankle — to 
 her lover's anxious embraces. 
 
 This is very amusing, but a little absurd, 
 and a little vulgar as well. It strikes that jar- 
 ring note of provincialism which Matthew Ar- 
 nold condemns with all the weight of his criti- 
 cal eloquence in Kinglake's " Invasion of the 
 Crimea." ''Wee Willie Winkie, child of the 
 Dominant Race," is on a literary level with 
 the description of Marshal St. Arnaud, cowed 
 by "the majesty of the great Elchi's Canning 
 brow and tight, merciless lips ; " a style of 
 writing bad enough in newspaper correspond- 
 ence, but unpardonable in artistic fiction. How 
 has it happened that Mr. Kipling, who tells us 
 with such irresistible grace and simplicity the 
 " Story of Muhammad Din," should stray into 
 mock heroics when handling the children of 
 his own nation, the jolly well-bred little Eng- 
 lish lads, to whom all picturesque posing is an 
 art unknown. 
 
 Perhaps the trouble lies in the curious- but 
 highly esteemed fallacy that the child of fiction 
 is expected to be always precocious and spright- 
 
CHILDREN IN FICTION I49 
 
 ly, to emit sparks like a cat, and electrify the 
 sluggish atmosphere about him. He does this 
 at the expense alike of his sincerity and of his 
 manners; we cannot accept him as a fact, and we 
 don't approve of him as a theory. A few years 
 ago a critic in the Contemporary Review pro- 
 tested very seriously against such writers as 
 Florence Montgomery, " by whom the bloom 
 of unconsciousness has been wiped from child- 
 hood, and boys and girls have learned to see 
 themselves, not like old-fashioned children, as 
 good and naughty, but as picturesque beings, 
 whose naughtiness has an attractive charm, 
 and whose very imperfections of dialect are 
 worth accurate record." Most of us are only 
 too familiar with this kind of fiction, which for 
 a time enjoyed such great and hurtful populari- 
 ty. The patronizing attitude of children to their 
 parents is sufficiently illustrated by the really 
 nice little boy in " Transformed," who calls his 
 father " Puppy," a most objectionable thing 
 for a nice little boy to do; while what might 
 be termed the corrective attitude of children 
 to their parents is still more sharply defined 
 
150 CHILDREN IX FICTION 
 
 by that unpleasant child, Xina ]\Iiddleton, who 
 sees so clearly, and suffers so intensely from 
 the " careless superficiality " and rigid narrow- 
 ness of the unfortunate couple whose painful 
 privilege it was to have given her birth. 
 
 One of the latest types, however, to seize and 
 hold the hearts of the big, sentimental, child- 
 loving public is ]^Irs. Burnett's Lord Fauntleroy, 
 who maybe best described as the good little boy 
 with the clothes. It is quite impossible to sep- 
 arate him in our minds from his wardrobe, to 
 divest him of his velvet suits and sashes, his 
 ''rich Vandyke lace collar,"' his leggings and 
 neat little Oxford ties. He is always and in all 
 places " a small copy of the fairy prince," pic- 
 turesquely grouped with a dog, or a cat, or a 
 pony, as circumstances direct. We cannot be 
 coarse enough to imagine him with cropped 
 hair, and muddy boots, and a torn jacket, and 
 a hole in his stocking, like so many, many real 
 little boys who daily break their mothers' 
 hearts by their profound neglect of appear- 
 ances. He is so ready in conversation, too, 
 and pays such charming compliments to pretty 
 
CHILDREN IN FICTION 151 
 
 young ladies, instead of hustling into corners 
 and staring owlishly, after the fashion of those 
 awkward little boys I know. And he is so 
 very, very good ! Not consciously and mor- 
 bidly virtuous like that baby prig, Little Saint 
 Elizabeth, who comes from the same hands, 
 but artlessly and inevitably correct. He gives 
 all his money to pay poor Michael's rent, and 
 we rejoice rightly in his generosity, with only 
 one wistful recollection of that vastly different 
 specimen of boyhood, for whose misdeeds Mr. 
 Aldrich is responsible, and who spends his 
 funds gloriously in indigestible treats to his 
 friends. It is very charming in Lord Faun- 
 tleroy to offer his eager plea in behalf of the 
 farmer Higgins, and probably just what any 
 warm-hearted child would have done in his 
 place; but we cannot but contrast his wonder- 
 ful unconsciousness afterward, " not realizing 
 his own importance in the least," with the fa- 
 miliar figure of little Paul Dombey strutting up 
 and down the room at Brighton, full of the 
 new-blown dignity of being a financier, and 
 lending young Gay the money for his uncle. 
 
152 CHILDREN IN FICTION 
 
 It would take the sternest of moralists to ob- 
 ject to Paul's infantile strut; it would take the 
 most trusting of sentimentalists to believe that 
 Cedric is quite as innocently unconscious as he 
 seems. 
 
 There is a remarkably nice little girl in that 
 pleasant English novel, published a few years 
 ago, Sir Charles Danvers — a little girl who 
 can be safely recommended to all child-lovers, 
 who will only wish they could hear a great 
 deal more about her. Molly Danvers is not 
 particularly precocious; she is not at all super- 
 sensitive, and we are not even told that she is 
 pretty. There is absolutely no inventory given 
 of her personal charms; and as to her clothes, 
 " a white frock and two slim black legs" are 
 casually mentioned o.n her first introduction, 
 and we never hear another word about them. 
 "A white frock and two slim black legs!" 
 Could any description be more meagre .'' Imag- 
 ine Little Saint Elizabeth, or Sara Crewe, re- 
 duced ruthlessly to a white frock, and not an- 
 other allusion to their wardrobes in the whole 
 course of their histories. But Molly does n't 
 
CHILDREN IN FICTION . 153 
 
 care. I have a suspicion that her white frocks 
 don't stay white very long, and that her sHm 
 black legs are better distinguished for activity 
 than for grace. She is anything but heroic, 
 and runs fleetly away from danger, leaving both 
 her cousin and her donkey to their fate; but she 
 has a loving little heart, nevertheless, and when 
 her terrier dies, this heart is as nearly broken 
 as a healthy little girl's can be. 
 
 " ' He is dead, Uncle Charles. He was quite well, 
 and eating Albert biscuits with the dolls this morning, 
 and now ' — the rest was too dreadful, and Molly burst 
 into a flood of tears, and burrowed with her head 
 against the faithful waistcoat of Uncle Charles — of 
 Uncle Charles, the friend, the consoler of all the ills 
 that Molly had so far been heir to. 
 
 "'Vic had a very happy life, Molly,' said Charles, 
 pressing the little brown head against his cheek, and 
 vaguely wondering what it would be like to have any 
 one to turn to in time of trouble. 
 
 " * I always kept trouble from him except that time 
 I shut him in the door,' gasped Molly. ' I never took 
 him out in a string, and he only wore his collar — that 
 collar you gave him that made him scratch so— on Sun- 
 days.' 
 
 " ' And he was not ill a long time } He did not suf- 
 fer any pain ? ' 
 
 " ' No, Uncle Charles, not much. But, though he did 
 
154 . CHILDREN IN FICTION 
 
 not say anything, his face looked worse than scream- 
 ing, and he passed away very stiff in his hind-legs. 
 Oh ! ' (with a fresh outburst) ' when cook told me that 
 her sister that was in a decline had gone, I never 
 thought' (sob, sob !) ' poor Vic would be the next.' " 
 
 This is not the less heartrending for being 
 amusing, and that short sentence ''his face 
 looked worse than screaming " is a master- 
 stroke of realistic description. On the whole, 
 for ordinary family purposes, Molly Danvers is 
 one of the nicest little girls I know; and if we 
 seek — as many people rightly seek — for the 
 poetry, the beauty of childhood, subtly trans- 
 ferred to paper, let us turn back a few years, 
 and re-read for the fifth or the fiftieth time, as 
 it chances, those seven delicious chapters of 
 Quatre- Vingt- Treize, which describe a single 
 day in the lives of the three babies, Rene Jean, 
 Gros Alain, and Georgette. How many hours 
 must Victor Hugo have watched patiently and 
 gladly the ways of little children before he 
 could paint them with such minute and charm- 
 ing truth, and what sheer delight is embodied 
 in every line ! They do nothing remarkable. 
 
CHILDREN IN FICTION '155 
 
 these tiny French peasants; they say nothing 
 worth noting; they are clothed in rags; they 
 are alone all day; they are mischievous, healthy, 
 and natural. They hang enchanted, all three, 
 over a wood-louse, their curls touching, their 
 breath suspended, their eyes fixed on the em- 
 barrassed insect: and we watch them with a 
 joy and wonder equal to their own. '* It is a 
 she - creature," announces Rene Jean, and 
 Georgette laughs. Georgette who, at twenty 
 months, has not yet acquired the art of con- 
 versation. She utters a single word from time 
 to time, but sentences lie beyond her scope. 
 She is occupied Avith grave thoughts, and when 
 she breathes a soft monosyllable, her brothers 
 pause encouragingly to listen. A belated bee 
 comes buzzing in the window and departs. 
 
 " ' She is going home,' said Rene Jean. 
 " * It is a beast,' said Gros Alain. ' No,' said Rene 
 Jean, ' it is a fly.' ' A f'y,' said Georgette." 
 
 This is the extent of their conversational 
 powers, and how very limited it seems. They 
 do not talk, these babies; they act. They lay 
 their destructive hands on the rare old folio of 
 
156 CHILDREN IN FICTION 
 
 Saint Bartholomew , and tear out the leaves 
 one by one, solemnly, innocently, conscien- 
 tiously. Georgette, who cannot reach the vol- 
 ume, sits on the floor, and tears each leaf into 
 little pieces with painstaking amiability; and 
 all three are so happy over their self-appointed 
 task. By the side of their absolute uncon- 
 sciousness, the Willie Winkies and Lord Faun- 
 tleroys of romance grow suddenly Utopian and 
 unreal. The chivalry, honor, generosity, loy- 
 alty, picturesqueness, and brilliancy, all the 
 story-book virtues of story-book children, seem 
 less winning and less dear than the birdlike 
 contentment of three silent, sleepy little crea- 
 tures, curled softly together, and painted by a 
 master's hand. 
 
THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 
 
 T T is a curious fact that three of the most 
 ■^ successful and eminent literary women in 
 England — Miss Austen, Miss Edgeworth, and 
 Miss Mitford — should have been typical old 
 maids ; not merely unmarried through stress of 
 intervening circumstances — ill health, early 
 disappointment, or a self-sacrificing devotion 
 to other cares — but women whose lives were 
 rounded and completed without that element 
 which we are taught to believe is the main- 
 spring and prime motor of existence. To un- 
 derstand how thoroughly this was the case, we 
 have but to turn to a later and very different 
 writer, Charlotte Bronte, who married when 
 she was thirty-eight, and died one year after- 
 ward, and whose whole literary life was ac- 
 cordingly passed in spinsterhood. Yet if that 
 very grave and respectable gentleman, the 
 Rev. Mr. Nicholls, had never appeared upon 
 
 157 
 
158 THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 
 
 the scene at all, it would have been impossible 
 to call Miss Bronte a typical old maid. She 
 had the outward signs of one, indeed, the prim 
 demeanor, the methodical habits, the sarcastic 
 attitude toward the male sex ; but burning in 
 every fibre of her being, and evident in every 
 page of her writings, is that fierce unrest, that 
 inarticulate, distressful longing of a woman 
 who craves love. We can easily imagine 
 Elizabeth Bennet, and the very sensible Elinor 
 Dashwood, and even Emma Woodhouse, 
 dearest and brightest of girls, slipping from 
 their lovers' grasp and growing into old maids 
 as charming as was i\Iiss Austen herself; but 
 poor plain Jane Eyre, and that reticent little 
 school-teacher, Lucy Snowe, are shaken and 
 consumed with the passion of their own desires. 
 Such women cannot walk from the cradle to 
 the grave, handling their lives with delicate 
 satisfaction and content ; they must find what 
 they need or die. 
 
 It is amusing to note how the various critics 
 and biographers of IMiss Austen, Miss Edge- 
 worth, and Miss JNlitford have debated and 
 
THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 1 59 
 
 fretted over the painful lack of romance in 
 their careers. Feminine critics, especially, find 
 it difficult to believe that there is no hidden 
 tale to tell, no secret and justifiable cause for 
 this otherwise inexplicable behavior ; and much 
 time and patience have been exhausted in 
 dragging shadowy memories to light. In the 
 case of Miss Mitford, indeed, it seems quite 
 hopeless to search for even the ghost of a love- 
 story, and, although she certainly did devote 
 her life with touching unselfishness to the com- 
 fort and support of a very exacting father, it 
 cannot for a moment be urged that, in so do- 
 ing, she relinquished any distinct desire or 
 prospect of matrimony. Perhaps the exasper- 
 ating qualities of her parent inclined her un- 
 consciously to remain single ; for, with all her 
 unsparing devotion, she must, in the course of 
 sorely tried years, have grown to regard men 
 very much as Dolly Winthrop regarded them, 
 — "in the light of animals whom it had pleased 
 Heaven to make naturally troublesome." Mr. 
 Mitford, a most genial and handsome old gen- 
 tleman of the Turveydrop pattern, managed 
 
l60 THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 
 
 to keep his daughter's hands full of work, and 
 her heart full of love, and left her little chance 
 or disposition for any wandering fancies. All 
 the exuberant affection of her girlhood, all the 
 mature attachment of later years, were concen- 
 trated upon him alone. Her youth waned, her 
 freshness faded, her indomitable courage and 
 cheerfulness quailed a little before the ever- 
 increasing burdens of her life ; but through it 
 all, in joy and sorrow, no shadow of a suitor 
 stands beckoning by her side. Her serene old 
 age was haunted by no dim voices crj'ing 
 out of the past for the joy which had slipped 
 from her grasp. She wrote lo\'e-stories b}'the 
 score, alwa}'s approaching the subject from the 
 outside, and treating it with the easy conven- 
 tionality, the generous yet imperfect sympathy 
 of a warm-hearted woman not prone to ana- 
 lyze motives. They are very pleasant stories 
 for the most part, sensible, healthy, and happy ; 
 but the}' are not convincing. The reader feels 
 that if Poll}' did not marr}' Joe she would be 
 just as well satisfied with \\ illiam, and that if 
 Edwin failed to win Angelina he would soon 
 
THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS l6l 
 
 content himself with Dorothy. This is a com- 
 fortable state of affairs, and doubtless true to 
 life ; but it is not precisely the element which 
 makes a successful love-tale. The fact is, Miss 
 Mitford described things pretty much as she 
 found them, not seeking to dive below the sur- 
 face, and always adding a little sunshine of her 
 own. She was a happy woman, save for some 
 sad years of overwork, and her life was full of 
 pleasant detail, of cherished duties, and of 
 felicitous labor ; but, from first to last, love had 
 no part in it, and, fancy free, she never reckon- 
 ed of her loss. 
 
 Miss Edgeworth, too, seems to have been 
 lifted from the sphere of matrimony by the un- 
 usual strength of her family affections. Her 
 devotion to her father, to her two stepmothers, 
 and to her nineteen brothers and sisters was of 
 such an absorbing nature as to leave her little 
 leisure or inclination for mere matters of senti- 
 ment. She was so busy too, so full of pleas- 
 ant cares, and successful work, and a thousand- 
 and-one delightful interests ; above all, she 
 clung so fondly to her home, and country, and 
 
l62 THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 
 
 the familiar faces she had known from baby- 
 hood, that love had no chance to storm her 
 well-defended walls. When that handsome 
 and earnest young Swede, he of the *' superior 
 understanding and mild manners," came to 
 woo, he found, alas ! that the lady could not 
 tear her heart away from Ireland and her 
 beautiful young stepsisters to give it to his 
 keeping. She acknowledged his merits, both 
 his mildness and his superiority, she liked and 
 admired him in every way ; but marry and go 
 to Sweden ! — that she would not do, either 
 for M. Edelcrantz or any other man. Mrs. 
 Edgeworth, who was distinctly sentimental, 
 and who would have been delighted to see her 
 clever stepdaughter happily wedded, says 
 quite touchingly that Maria w^as mistaken in 
 the strength of her own feelings ; that she 
 really loved M. Edelcrantz, but refused to 
 marry him because her family could not bear 
 to part with her, because "she would not have 
 suited his position at the court of Stockholm," 
 and because she feared her lack of beauty 
 would one day lessen his regard. Shadow of 
 
THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 163 
 
 shadows ! Was there ever a woman who de- 
 clined to marry the man she truly loved for 
 such cloud-built reasoning as this ! Maria was 
 doubtless the darling of her own home circle, 
 and would have been sorely missed had she 
 winged her flight to Sweden ; but there were 
 daughters enough in that overflowing house- 
 hold to admit of one being spared. As for the 
 other obstacles, it is hardly possible that they 
 should have been urged seriously by a woman 
 as free from morbid sentiment as was Miss 
 Edgeworth. There is a sweet humility Avhich 
 is born of love, and which whispers to most 
 women — and, probably, to some men — that 
 they are unw^orthy of the choice which has 
 fallen upon them, of the jewel which has been 
 flung at their feet. But to push this delicate 
 emotion so far as to sacrifice happiness at its 
 bidding is not the impulse of a sound and 
 healthy nature. Miss Edgeworth could never 
 have been pretty, and had spent most of her 
 life in retirement ; but she was by no means 
 unacquainted with the ways of the world, by 
 no means destitute of womanly charms, and, 
 
164 THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 
 
 above all, by no means without the exhilarat- 
 ing consciousness of success. In fact, when we 
 read her biography, we are principally im- 
 pressed by the amount of adulation she re- 
 ceived, by the extraordinary enthusiasm her 
 pleasant tales aroused. The struggling novel- 
 ist is tempted to wish that he also might have 
 lived in those halcyon days, until he remembers 
 that a far greater writer. Miss Austen, had no 
 share in this universal and unbounded ap- 
 plause. Miss Edgeworth was as much the pet 
 of the literary world as of her own household 
 and friends. She had little need to doubt her 
 powers, or to fear neglect and indifference. If 
 she really regretted poor M. Edelcrantz — who 
 went back to Sweden with a sore heart and 
 never married anybody else — she gave no out- 
 ward token of repentance, but lived to be 
 eighty-two, the most cheerful and radiant of 
 old maids, faithful to the last to her family 
 affections, and happy to die in the midst of 
 those who had made the sunshine of her life. 
 
 It is in the case of Miss Austen, however, 
 that truly strenuous efforts have been made to 
 
THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 165 
 
 cultivate a passable romance upon scanty soil. 
 Miss Austen was pretty, she was gay, she 
 possessed an indefinable attraction for men, 
 and she was in turn attracted by them, as a 
 healthy-minded, happy-hearted girl should be. 
 Her letters to Cassandra are full of amusing 
 confidences on the subject — confidences far too 
 amusing, in fact, to give any sign or token of 
 genuine feeling beyond. She writes with 
 buoyant cheerfulness about Mr. Tom Lefroy, 
 for whom she ** does not care sixpence," yet 
 prefers him to all other competitors, who must 
 have ranked pitiably low in the scale. *'I am 
 almost afraid," she confesses, " to tell you how 
 my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to 
 yourself everything most profligate and shock- 
 ing in the way of dancing and sitting down to- 
 gether. I can expose myself, however, only 
 once more, because he leaves the country soon 
 after next Friday, on which day we are to 
 have a dance at Ashe after all. He is a very 
 gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young 
 man, I assure you." 
 
 Not without grave faults, though, it would 
 
l66 THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 
 
 seem, for a little later we hear of a morning 
 coat which is much too light to please Jane's 
 critical eye. She cannot possibly give her 
 maiden affections to a man who would wear 
 such a coat, and so, after a while, he disap- 
 pears from her pages and her life, to go out 
 into the world, and win much legal renown, 
 and be Chief Justice of Ireland, and always to 
 remember with great tenderness the gay 
 young girl at Ashe. Then there appears on 
 the scene that unnamed friend of Mrs. Lefroy's, 
 whose love is so sudden and fervent that Miss 
 Austen feels quite sure it will soon decline into 
 *' sensible indifference," as, no doubt, it does. 
 Then the suitor who has " the recommenda- 
 tion of good character, and a good position in 
 life, of everything in fact except the subtle 
 power of touching my heart " — which seems to 
 have been the real difficulty with them all. 
 Sir Francis Doyle, indeed, tells a very pretty 
 and pathetic tale of Jane iVusten's engagement 
 to a naval officer who, after the peace of 1820, 
 accompanied his fiancee and her family to 
 Switzerland. Here he started off on foot one 
 
THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 167 
 
 fine morning, promising to meet his friends at 
 Chamouni. He never came, and they waited 
 and waited with fast-growing fears, only to 
 learn, when all was over, that the young man 
 had been seized with a sudden fever, and had 
 died, unknown and scantily cared for, in some 
 poor cottage home. It is a sad story, but hap- 
 pily does not rest upon any shadow of founda- 
 tion. Miss Austen never was engaged, and 
 never was in Switzerland; and although Sir 
 Francis had the tale from a friend, who had it 
 from a member of the family, it merely goes 
 to prove that even relatives are not wholly in- 
 capable of weaving romances out of thin air, 
 rather than be, like the knife-grinder, without 
 a tale to tell. 
 
 Mrs. Maiden, Jane Austen's enthusiastic biog- 
 rapher, discredits most unhesitatingly this par- 
 ticular love-legend, while at the same time she 
 manifests a lively desire to give form and color 
 to another, scarcely less intangible. The third 
 chapter in her little volume is enticingly head- 
 ed " Her Life's One Romance," and in it is nar- 
 rated at some length the story of an attractive 
 
l68 THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 
 
 young clergyman whom Jane and Cassandra 
 Austen met one summer at a seaside resort in 
 Devonshire. He openly admired the younger 
 girl, and, when they parted, " impressed 
 strongly on the sisters his intention of meeting 
 them again." He died, however, shortly after, 
 and Jane neither gave any outward token of 
 grief, nor indulged in any confidences on the 
 subject. Nevertheless, Cassandra, \\'hose own 
 youth was shadowed by the blight of a lost 
 love, was wont to say, after her sister's death, 
 that she believed this to have been her one 
 and only romance; and Miss Thackeray, in 
 her sympathetic sketch of Miss Austen, alludes 
 very sweetly and very confidently to the tale. 
 ** Here, too," she says, ** is another sorrow- 
 ful story. The sisters' fate (there is a sad 
 coincidence and similarity in it) was to be 
 undivided; their life, their experience, was the 
 same. Some one without a name takes leave 
 of Jane one day, promising to come back. He 
 never comes back: long afterwards they hear 
 of his death. The story seems even sadder 
 than Cassandra's in its silence and uncertainty. 
 
THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 169 
 
 for silence and uncertainty are death in life to 
 some people." 
 
 But if there is one thing more than another 
 to be avoided and ruthlessly condemned, it is 
 this quiet assumption that a woman has parted 
 with her heart, when she herself has breathed 
 no word to warrant it. The cheerful serenity 
 of Jane Austen's daily life showed no ripple of 
 storm, her lips told no tale; and why are we 
 to assume that a young man whom she met for 
 a few idle weeks and never saw again had 
 broken down the barriers of that self-possessed 
 nature, had overcome the gay indifference 
 which showed no signs of hurt ? As for the 
 popular theory that Anne Elliot's gentle en- 
 during love and poor Fanny Price's hours of 
 bravely borne pain were imaged from the 
 depth of their author's experience, we have but 
 to remember that the same hand gave us Har- 
 riet Smith, with her fluctuating, lightly won 
 affections, and Charlotte Collins, sensible and 
 happy, enjoying her pleasant home, and en- 
 during — or avoiding — her solemn, pompous, 
 servile, stupid husband. As well connect one 
 
I/O THREE FAMOUS OLD MAIDS 
 
 type as another with the genius that revealed 
 them all. 
 
 " Of Jane herself I know no definite love-tale 
 to relate," says her nephew and biographer, 
 Mr. Austen Leigh; and this seems about the 
 conclusion of the matter. " No mail s life 
 could be more entirely free from sentiment," 
 admits, very reluctantly, one of her cleverest 
 critics. *' If love be a woman's chief business, 
 here is a very sweet woman who had no share 
 in it. It is a want, but we have no right to 
 complain, seeing that she did not shape her 
 course to please us." 
 
 This is a generous reflection on the critic's 
 part; but is the want so painfully apparent as 
 he thinks, or may we not be well content with 
 Jane Austen as we have her, the central figure 
 of a little loving family group, the dearest of 
 daughters and sisters, the gayest and bright- 
 est of aunts, the most charming and incom- 
 parable of old maids } 
 
THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR 
 
 '' I ^HOSE persons are happiest in this rest- 
 -*- less and mutable world who are in love 
 with change, who delight in what is new sim- 
 ply because it differs from what is old; who re- 
 joice in every innovation, and find a strange 
 alert pleasure in all that is, and that has never 
 been before. With little things as with big 
 ones, this sentiment is the sentiment of our 
 day. " Unrest," says Schopenhauer, " is the 
 mark of existence," and the many trifling de- 
 tails of ordinary life evince on every side the 
 same keen relish for novelty, the same careless 
 disregard of the familiar. Especially is this 
 the case with women, who feel less wistfully 
 than' men the subtle charm of association, and 
 who have less sympathy than men for the dear, 
 faulty, unlovely, well-loved things of their 
 youth. No woman could have written those 
 pathetic lines of Mr. Lang's on St. Andrews: 
 
 " A little city, worn and gray," 
 171 
 
172 THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR 
 
 the memory of whose rainwashed, desolate 
 streets blots out from his mind all the beauty 
 and the splendor of Oxford. And — to descend 
 from serious to frivolous subjects — no woman 
 can wholly appreciate that pleasant sketch of 
 Mr. Barrie's, called "My Tobacco Pouch," 
 which reveals a mental condition absolutely 
 inexplicable to the most astute feminine appre- 
 hension. It is the instinctive desire of our sex 
 for modernism that keeps rolling the great ball 
 of trade. Manufacturers and shopkeepers would 
 starve in common if they catered only to men, 
 who not infrequently have a marked prefer- 
 ence for the archaic. But women, to use the 
 words of Sir Thomas Browne, are " complex- 
 ionally propense to innovation." With won- 
 derful pliancy and adaptability they fit easily 
 into new surroundings, make homes out of 
 new houses, fill their rooms with new objects, 
 and grasp a fair share of happiness in the en- 
 joyment of novelty in every form, whether of 
 fashion, art, literature, religion or philanthropy. 
 ' But what of the unfortunate few who, 
 through some strange moral twist, are " com- 
 
THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR 1/3 
 
 plexionally prepense" to sameness; who feel a 
 passionate regret for what has been lost, and a 
 passionate reluctance to part with what is fast 
 slipping away; and who, as the great world 
 rolls relentlessly on its appointed course, find 
 themselves "forever broken on the wheel of 
 time " ? The journal of that stout old Tory, 
 Sir Francis Doyle, betrays a strong dislike, 
 not only for political upheavals, which are 
 very uncomfortable and disturbing things, but 
 for innovations of any kind. " Nothing can be 
 so good as what is old," says Mr. Lang; and 
 Mr. Peacock tranquilly declares that all the 
 really valuable opinions have been uttered a 
 thousand years ago. Amid the noisy blare 
 with which the trumpets of progress herald 
 every move, comes thrilling now and then a 
 note of protest from some malcontent who 
 does not part so easily with the past, and for 
 whom familiarity lends to every detail of life a 
 merit and beauty of its own. It almost seems 
 as if two-thirds of mankind were hard at 
 work improving away the happiness of the 
 remaining third, and bidding them at inter- 
 
1/4 THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR 
 
 vals to stop grumbling and appreciate the 
 change. 
 
 When it chances that these familiar details 
 are associated in the mind with pleasures, 
 early pleasures especially, the memory of 
 which lingers with the sweetness of honey, 
 then the pain of parting with them is utterly 
 disproportioned to their worth. I have never 
 been able to understand how people can re- 
 bind an old book, or reframe an old picture, if 
 the book or the picture have been in any way 
 dear to them for years. How strange and un- 
 friendly these objects look in their new dress-! 
 How remote they seem from the recollections 
 hitherto aroused by their presence ! One of 
 the minor grievances of my life is the gradual 
 disappearance from the theatres of all the old 
 drop-curtains I can remember since my child- 
 ish days. Perhaps the new curtains are better 
 than the old ones — I hear persons say as much 
 occasionally — but to me they are simply hid- 
 eous, because their native ugliness is unsoft- 
 ened by any gracious memory of those far-off 
 nights when, feverish with delight, T sat star- 
 
THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR 175 
 
 ing at the stretch of painted canvas, and antic- 
 ipating all the joys that lay behind. There 
 was no moment of transport equal- to that 
 which saw the slow ascent of the mystic veil, 
 revealing- inch by inch the enchanted scenes 
 beyond; and I still believe that if I could be- 
 hold once more those dear, familiar land- 
 scapes, some portion of the old, lost pleasure 
 would return. Three curtains are indelibly 
 associated with these hours of supreme happi- 
 ness; and I recall them all three now as the 
 most beautiful pictures in the world. One — 
 and this, I think, was the first I ever saw — 
 represented an Italian view, with a lively vol- 
 cano in the background, and, in front, a long- 
 legged shepherd lad reclining on the marble 
 steps of a fountain, while his flock loitered 
 lazily around. Another displayed four stout 
 and dropsical nymphs preparing for, or resting 
 from, a hunt; this fact being adroitly intimated 
 by the presence of some very long bows, and 
 some very lean greyhounds. The third was a 
 seaport town, with vessels lying in harbor, 
 and a little terrace running to the water's edge, 
 
176 THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR 
 
 on which terrace I have taken many a stroll in 
 spirit, waiting for the wonders to come. Not 
 that the waits were ever long in those van- 
 ished days. On the contrary, the whole even- 
 ing flew by on wings of fire, and the only 
 thought that marred my perfect felicity was 
 the haunting consciousness that it would too 
 soon be over. And the theatres were never hot, 
 or stuffy, or draughty, when I was a child; 
 and the lights were never glaring, but shone 
 with a gentle radiance; and the chairs wxre 
 softer than down; and the music was noble 
 and inspiring; and the actors were men of 
 genius; and the actresses were ravishingly 
 beautiful; and the scenery Avas sublime; and the 
 plays were wondrously witty; and the paste 
 jewels were dazzling; and ^;^;^?/2' was unknow^i; 
 and I never, never, never ^ wished I had stayed 
 at home. What new drop-curtain hides from 
 me now the rapturous illusions of my youth .-^ 
 
 Another grievance, more palpable because 
 less inevitable than the replacing of Avorn-out 
 theatre properties with fresh ones, is the pas- 
 sion of publishers for altering the covers of 
 
THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR 177 
 
 their magazines. This is the strangest act of 
 vandalism that an unholy zest for novelty 
 ever prompted in the human bosom. Why a 
 magazine cover is selected in the first place, 
 remains, in most cases, an unfathomed mystery. 
 It is seldom a thing of beauty, but, once asso- 
 ciated with the agreeable visitor that every 
 month brings some new tidings to our door, it 
 acquires for us all the subtle charm of familiar- 
 ity. Nothing can well be more stiff and un- 
 graceful than the design of Blackwood; that 
 wilted, conventional border, and that wreath 
 of prickly Scotch thistles, defending rather 
 than decorating the vignette of the founder, 
 
 "With eyes severe and beard of formal cut." 
 
 The whole cover seems to say, "Stand off, 
 rash mortal ! There is nothing here for you ! " 
 Yet to lose it would be to lose an old, surly, 
 faithful and long-tried friend. I sometimes 
 feel that Blackwood is not as readable as it 
 was when I was a girl — it is the privilege of 
 increasing years to think all magazines were 
 better when we were young — but for that very 
 
1/8 THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR 
 
 reason I am glad to greet the ancient thistles 
 that alone remain defiant and unchanged. 
 
 American publishers, however, are as de- 
 lighted to offer their readers a new cover as a 
 new story, and it is occasionally interesting to 
 follow a magazine through all its outer vicissi- 
 tudes. There was a time when Saint NicJiolas 
 behaved like Harlequin in the pantomim.e, 
 slipping into fresh costumes with bewildering 
 alertness and rapidity. The Century has adopt- 
 ed a plan eminently fitted to confuse and dis- 
 tress people who are in love with the familiar, 
 and who have barely time to accustom them- 
 selves to one of the picturesque young women 
 on its cover, before they are confronted with 
 another. The only engaging and comforting 
 thing about these rival damsels is their strong 
 family resemblance. They are like the fair 
 daughters of Doris, with faces " neither the 
 same nor different, but as those of sisters 
 should be." The wanton alterations in Har- 
 per s Magazine are none the less heartbreak- 
 ing for being so trivial. As well rob us of an 
 old friend altogether as tamper with his abso- 
 
THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR 179 
 
 lute integrity. No one can claim for Harper 
 that its time-honored cover has any rare artis- 
 tic quahty, any of that subtle and far-reaching 
 suggestiveness that we prize so wearily to-day. 
 On the contrary, its little boys scattering roses 
 into nowhere, and its preposterous child blow- 
 ing soap bubbles on a globe belong distinctly 
 to the cheerful school of Philistia, and are not 
 burdened Avith meanings of any kind. That 
 makes them so refreshing to our eyes; and be- 
 sides I have always regarded them with sincere 
 affection, because of the pleasure they afforded 
 me in infancy. It was one of the unwritten 
 laws of our nursery that, when a new magazine 
 arrived, the old one passed into our possession. 
 We painted all the pictures with water colors, 
 and we cut out the little figures on the cover 
 for paper dolls. Not the child straddling over 
 the globe ! It was impossible to make any- 
 thing out of him, owing to his uncomfortable 
 position. But the lads in tunics we thought 
 extremely pretty, especially the one in the 
 right-hand corner, whose head was as round as 
 a bullet. The left-hand boy had a slightly 
 
l8o THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR 
 
 flattened skull, which destroyed his perfect 
 symmetry, though we occasionally remedied 
 this defect by leaving him a small portion of his 
 basket, and pretending it was hair. Now, alas ! 
 though the children still mount guard on their 
 flower-wreathed pedestals, and still scatter 
 their roses in the air, some unkind hand has 
 wrought radical changes in their aspect. They 
 have grown bigger, stouter, and their decent 
 little tunics, so nicely drawn up over one shoul- 
 der, have been replaced by those absurd float- 
 ing draperies which form the conventional attire 
 of seraphs and sea nymphs all the world over. 
 Never was there such an unhappy transforma- 
 tion. It is true that on the old cover oi Bentley s 
 Magazine — if we may trust the minute picture 
 of it on the face of Littell — the little figures 
 with baskets were clad, or unclad, in these same 
 airy rags. But this fact does not reconcile me 
 at all. I never knew Bentley s boys, but I have 
 known Harper s children all my life, and I can- 
 not bear to see them shivering month after 
 month in such ridiculous, inadequate sashes. 
 What sort of paper dolls would they have made 
 
THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR l8l 
 
 for well-bred little girls ? And why should 
 they have been deprived of their only garment 
 to gratify a restless taste for change ? 
 
 Well, it is useless to complain, for around us 
 on every side people are fretting, and have 
 fretted for generations over the unloved mo- 
 notony of their surroundings. " It is not given 
 to the world to be contented," says Goethe; 
 and while life can never hurry on fast enough, 
 or assume phases new enough to please the 
 majority of mankind, a few dissatisfied souls 
 will always cling perversely to the things 
 which they have known, and feel more keenly 
 every year that all the vaunted delights of nov- 
 elty and progress are but a poor substitute for 
 the finer charm of the familiar. 
 
OLD WORLD PETS 
 
 "X ^ ZE have grown to be very narrow-minded, 
 ' ^ very exclusive, and hopelessly unim- 
 aginative in our choice of domestic pets. We 
 love and cherish the dog, and we have a senti- 
 ment, less universal but far more disinterested, 
 in favor of the beautiful and cold-hearted cat. 
 We keep canaries in gilded cages — and there 
 the matter practically ends. A few^ rabbits in 
 a hutch — which are never petted — an occasion- 
 al parrot feared by its master and hated by its 
 master's friends; a little song-bird imprisoned 
 now and then, and slowly dying of despair; 
 these are instances, happily too infrequent to 
 count very heavily in the scale. As a fact, 
 many people value the dog and cat for their 
 serviceable qualities alone; exiling the first to 
 the kennel and the second to the kitchen, and 
 liking both, as Miss Mitford confessed she liked 
 children, " in their place "—meaning any place 
 
 where she was not. 
 
 182 
 
OLD WORLD PETS 183 
 
 But when we turn back to the past we find, 
 or think we find, a very different state of affairs; 
 an ahnost endless variety of little wild crea- 
 tures, tamed by luxury and love. The dog 
 still holds his own, and we need look no fur- 
 ther than the Odyssey to see, in the great 
 hound Argus, the splendid sagacity, the un- 
 swerving loyalty, which centuries have not al- 
 tered or impaired. I have always wished that 
 Argus could have had Sir Walter Scott, rather 
 than the crafty Odysseus for a master. There 
 is also a pathetic dialogue in Theocritus be- 
 tween two old fishermen, who are so poor they 
 may not even own a watchdog to guard their 
 scanty spoils: 
 
 " All things, all, to them seemed superfluity, for 
 Poverty was their sentinel. They had no neighbor by 
 them, but ever against their narrow cabin gently float- 
 ed up the sea." 
 
 Cats, too, were valued pets in former days, 
 and probably found such easy domesticity 
 more to their tastes than the burdensome hon- 
 ors of Egypt. In fact, when the Egyptian cat 
 was not living in sanctified seclusion as the 
 
184 OLD \YORLD PETS 
 
 friend and favorite of Pasht, she was apparent- 
 ly earning a laborious livelihood as a retriever, 
 if we may trust a relic of Egyptian art in the 
 British Museum, which shows us a magnificent 
 animal carrying no less than three struggling 
 wild fowls in her mouth and claws. But Vvhen 
 Puss at last entered Greece and Rome, about 
 the time of the Christian era, or perhaps a cen- 
 tury or two earlier, it was simply as a plaything; 
 and ]Mr. Pater in " Marius the Epicurean" de- 
 scribes verv charmins[-lv the snow-white beast 
 brought by one of the guests to a Roman ban- 
 quet, and purring its way among the wine-cups 
 in response to caresses and coaxing words. 
 Mrs. Graham R. Tomson, that most winning 
 chronicler of the cat's vicissitudes and triumphs, 
 has also told us in graceful verse the history of 
 a Greek lover Avho loses his mistress because 
 he dares not bring her from Egypt one of these 
 coveted and mysterious creatures: 
 
 " A Uttle lion, small and dainty sweet, • 
 (For such there be !) 
 With sea-grey eyes and softly stepping feet, 
 She prayed of me. 
 
OLD WORLD PETS 185 
 
 For this, through lands Egyptian far away 
 
 She bade me pass; 
 But, in an evil hour, I said her nay — 
 
 And now, alas ! 
 Far-traveled Nicias hath wooed and won 
 
 Arsinoe 
 With gifts of furry creatures white and dun 
 
 From over-sea." 
 
 In the Museum of Antiquities, at Bordeaux, 
 there is a mutilated tomb of the Gallo-Roman 
 period showing still the indistinct outlines of a 
 young girl and her two pets ; a cat clasped — 
 very uncomfortably — in her arms, and, at her 
 feet, a dignified cock, which appears to be 
 pecking viciously at poor pussy's drooping tail. 
 
 The few allusions we find to the cat in later 
 Greek poetry are hardly of a flattering nature. 
 Theocritus makes the impatient Praxinoe, in 
 his XVth Idyl, say to her handmaid, " Eunoe, 
 bring the water and put it down in the middle 
 of the room, lazy creature that you are ! Cats 
 like always to sleep soft," — quite as if it were 
 disgraceful in them to enjoy their ease. The 
 same passage is interpreted somewhat differ- 
 ently, and in a still more uncharitable spirit by 
 
1 86 OLD WORLD PETS 
 
 Mr. M^itthew Arnold: " Eunoe, pick up your 
 work, and take care, lazy girl, how you leave it 
 lying- about again ! The cats find it just the 
 bed they like." At least we know, by this 
 token, that Puss was an inmate — understood if 
 not honored — of the Alexandrian household. 
 There is also a dog ; for Praxinoe, on going 
 out bids Phrygia. the nurse, " Take the child, 
 and keep him amused ; call in the dog, and 
 shut the street door." 
 
 Perhaps it was the very diversity of pets that 
 so often brought the cat into disgrace. She is 
 not wont to tolerate divided affections, and the 
 old primitive, savage instincts are very strong 
 within her little breast. Consequently, there 
 comes down to us out of the past a bitter wail 
 of lamentation from foolish mortals who seem 
 to have forgotten what a natural and whole- 
 some thing it is for one creature to devour an- 
 other. Agathias, a poet of the sixth century, 
 has left us two mournful epigrams upon a favo- 
 rite partridge ruthlessly done to death by a 
 swift-footed and hungry cat: 
 
 " O my partridge I Poor exile from the rocks and the 
 
OLD WORLD PETS 187 
 
 heath, thy little willow house possesses thee no longer. 
 No more dost thou rustle thy wings in the warmth of 
 the rising sun. A cat has torn off thy head. I seized 
 thy body and rescued it from his cruel jaws. Let the 
 earth lie not too lightly on thee, lest thy enemy discover 
 and drag thee from thy quiet grave." 
 
 The second epigram is quite as disconsolate 
 and more vengeful in its tone : 
 
 "The domestic cat which has eaten my partridge 
 flatters himself that he is still to live under my roof. 
 No, dear bird, I will not leave thee unavenged, but on 
 thy grave will I slay thy murderer. For thy shade, 
 which roams tormented, cannot be quieted until I shall 
 have done that which Pyrrhus did upon the grave of 
 Achilles." 
 
 As if these direful threats were not enough, 
 Damocharis, a disciple of Agathias, follows up 
 the case with a third epigram in which he be- 
 wails the cruelty of the cat, and compares it 
 with burning eloquence to one of Aktaeon's 
 hounds, which devoured its own master. " Here 
 is a pretty pother about a partridge ! " protests 
 M. Champfleury, with the pardonable irritation 
 of one who is wont to deal leniently with the 
 shortcomings of his favorite animal, and who 
 fails to sympathize with this excess of grief. 
 
l88 OLD WORLD PETS 
 
 Pet partridges, indeed, are hardly in accord 
 with modern taste, which is apt to regard them 
 from the same simple point of view as did the 
 cat of Agathias. Neither is the sparrow a 
 popular plaything as in the days when Lesbia 
 wept inconsolably for her dead bird, and Catul- 
 lus sang in silvery strains to soothe her wound- 
 ed heart. With what generous sympathy the 
 lover laments and calls on the Loves and 
 Graces, and on all the fair youths of Rome to 
 lament with him this shocking and irreparable 
 
 loss : 
 
 " Dead my Lesbia's sparrow is, 
 Sparrow that was all her bliss, 
 Than her very eyes more dear. " 
 
 How sombre is the picture he draws of the 
 little petted creature that in life never strayed 
 from the white bosom of its mistress, and that 
 now must tread alone the gloomy pathway 
 whence not even a bird may return. It is 
 really heartrending to listen to his grief: 
 
 " Out upon you and your power 
 Which all fairest things devour, 
 Orcus' gloomy shades! that e'er 
 Ye took my Bird that was so fair. 
 
OLD WORLD PETS 189 
 
 Ah! the pity of it! Thou 
 
 Poor Bird! thy doing 'tis that now 
 
 My Loved One's eyes are swollen and red 
 
 With weeping for her darling dead."* 
 
 Almost as pathetic, and quite as musical as this 
 melancholy dirge, are some of the epigrams to 
 be found in that charming volume of transla- 
 tions from the Greek Anthology, which Lilla 
 Cabot Perry has aptly entitled From the Garden 
 of Hellas. Here we have graceful and tender 
 verses dedicated to the memory of pet beasts 
 and birds and insects, one of them, indeed, be- 
 wailing the hard fate of a locust and a cicada, 
 which, beloved by the same mistress, sleep, 
 equally lamented, side by side : 
 
 " Unto the locust, nightingale of fields, 
 
 And the cicada, who was wont to drowse 
 Through summer heat amid the oaken boughs, 
 This common tomb the maiden Myro builds; 
 And, like a child, weeps that she could not save 
 These twain, her cherished playthings, from the 
 grave." 
 
 What can be prettier than such a requiem sung 
 by Leonidas, and breathing in every line a 
 
 •^Translated by Sir Theodore Martin. 
 
IQO OLD WORLD PETS 
 
 sentiment half natural, half assumed ! We 
 look back into the past, and smile, but with no 
 unfeeling mirth, to see the tiny tomb with its 
 cold and silent inmates whose shrill, amorous 
 music is hushed for evermore. Nor were they 
 alone in their sad distinction, for on everv side 
 other deserving insects were as decorously in- 
 terred, and as tunefully bewailed. The poet 
 who mourned for the " maiden ]\Iyro's " play- 
 things, was fain to sing with the same ready 
 sympathy and the same charming grace the 
 praises of Philsenida's pet locust, loved and lost: 
 
 "What if small, O passer-by, 
 
 Be this stone I 'tis mine )^ou see. 
 What if it you scarce descr}' I 
 Philaenida gave it me. 
 
 " Praise her that she held me dear, 
 Me, her little locust, singing, 
 Whether in the stubble here 
 Or amid the bushes winging. 
 
 * ' Two long years she loved me well. 
 Loved my drowsy lullaby; 
 Me e'en dead did not repel, 
 As these verses testify." 
 
 Another epigram by Mnasalcas bewails a 
 
OLD WORLD PETS I9I 
 
 similar loss, and inclines us slowly to the pain- 
 ful conviction that all Greece must have been 
 in mourning for these short - lived insects, 
 which, like poor Hinda's tantalizing gazelles, 
 appear to have made a point of dying just when 
 they had grovv^n most dear. It is a positive re- 
 lief to find Meleager dedicating his verses to a 
 pet cicada which is still alive and enjoying its 
 master's tender care : 
 
 "Cicada, you who chase away desire, 
 
 Cicada, who beguile our sleepless hours, 
 
 You song-winged muse of meadows and of flowers, 
 
 Who are the natural mimic of the lyre, 
 
 Chirp a familiar melody and sweet, 
 
 My weight of sleepless care to drive away; 
 Your love-beguiling tune to me now play, 
 
 Striking your prattling wings with your dear feet. 
 In early morning I'll bring gifts to you 
 Of garlic ever fresh and drops of dew." 
 
 There is an exquisite description in the first 
 Idyl of Theocritus of a deep bowl of ivy wood, 
 the gift of a goatherd to the singer Thyrsis, on 
 which is carved, among other pastoral scenes, 
 a boy weaving a locust cage while he guards 
 the vineyard from the foxes. Just such a 
 
192 OLD WORLD PETS 
 
 dainty toy he weaves as may well have been 
 the habitation of those luxurious and thrice- 
 favored insects, the petted captives of Myro 
 and fair Philasnida: 
 
 " Now divided but a httle space from the sea-worn 
 old man is a vineyard laden well with fire-red clusters, 
 and on the rough wall a little lad watches the vineyard, 
 sitting there. Round him two she-foxes are skulking, 
 and one goes along the vine rows to devour the ripe 
 grapes, and the other brings all her cunning to bear 
 against the scrip, and vows she will never leave the lad 
 till she strand him bare and breakfastless. But the boy 
 is plaiting a pretty locust cage with stalks of asphodel, 
 and fitting it with reeds; and less care of his scrip has 
 he, or of the vines, than delight in his plaiting." * 
 
 Kids and lambs are pastoral playthings 
 which the rustic lovers of Theocritus delight in 
 offering to their fair ones ; and in the Vth Idyl 
 Comatus complains to Lacon that he has given 
 a bird to Alcippe and won from her no kiss in 
 return. Whereupon Lacon, in the true spirit 
 of amorous boastfulness, protests that he gave 
 but a shepherd's pipe to his maiden, and sweetly 
 she kissed and caressed him. A great hound, 
 
 * Translation of Mr. Andrew Lang. 
 
OLD WORLD PETS 193 
 
 strong enough to strangle wolves, a mixing 
 bowl wrought by the hand of Praxiteles, a ves- 
 sel of cypress wood, a soft fleece from the 
 newly shorn ewe, and a brooding ring-dove 
 are among the presents offered by these shep- 
 herds in generous rivalry at the shrine of love. 
 But by far the most winning pet whose 
 memory has come down to us enshrined in 
 Greek verse is the little wildwood hare, cher- 
 ished by a young girl, and sung by the poet 
 Meleager. Gentler and more affectionate than 
 Cowper's sturdy favorites, it shares with them a 
 modest fame, a quiet corner in the long gallery 
 of prized and honored beasts. To those who 
 have loved Tiney and Puss from childhood, it is 
 a pleasure to see by their side this shrinking 
 stranger, this poor little overfed, much-caressed 
 darling whose race was quickly run : 
 
 " From my mother's teats they tore me, 
 Little long-eared hare, and bore me, 
 The swift-footed, from her breast. 
 Phanium, soft-handed, fed me 
 On spring flowers, and nourished me, 
 Fondlmg in her lap to rest. 
 
194 OLD WORLD PETS 
 
 " No more for my mother sighing, 
 Feasting daintily, then dying; 
 
 I by too much food was slain. 
 And she buried me with weeping 
 Near her house, that she, while sleeping. 
 
 Me in dreams might see again."* 
 
 On what smooth Elysian sward does this little 
 Grecian hare sport with his English cousins ? 
 Fed, perchance, by Persephone's white hand, 
 they gambol for evermore by the deep waters 
 of Oblivion; and the gray ghosts, flitting by, 
 smile with sad eyes upon the nimble creatures 
 who, shadows in shadowland, yet bear in every 
 limb rich memories of woodland glade, and of 
 the dear, life-giving soil of earth. 
 
 * Translation of Lilla Cabot Perry. 
 
BATTLE OF THE BABIES . 
 
 A WARFARE has been raging in our 
 -^^^ midst, the echoes of which have hardly 
 yet died sullenly away upon either side of the 
 Atlantic. It has been a bloodless and un- 
 Homeric strife, not without humorous side-is- 
 sues, as when Pistol and Bardolph and Fluel- 
 len come to cheer our anxious spirits at the 
 siege of Harfleur. Its first guns were heard in 
 New York, where a modest periodical, devot- 
 ed to the training of parents, opened fire upon 
 those time-honored nursery legends which are 
 presumably dear to the hearts of all rightly 
 constituted babies. The leader of this gallant 
 foray protested vehemently against all fairy 
 tales of a mournful or sanguinary cast, and her 
 denunciation necessarily included many stories 
 which have for generations been familiar to 
 every little child. She rejected Red Riding 
 
 Hood^ because her own infancy was haunted 
 
 195 
 
196 BATTLE OF THE BABIES 
 
 and embittered by the evil behavior of the 
 wolf; she would have none of Bhtebeard, be- 
 cause he was a wholesale fiend and murderer; 
 she would not even allow the pretty Babes in 
 the Wood, because they tell a tale of cold- 
 hearted cruelty and of helpless suffering; 
 while all fierce narratives of giants and ogres 
 and magicians were to be banished ruthlessly 
 from our shelves. Verily, reading will be but 
 gentle sport in the virtuous days to come. 
 
 Now it chanced that this serious protest 
 against nursery lore fell into the hands of Mr. 
 Andrew Lang, the most light-hearted and 
 conservative of critics, and partial withal to 
 tales of bloodshed and adventure. How could 
 it be otherwise with one reared on the bleak 
 border land, and familiar from infancy with the 
 wild border legends that Sir Walter knew and 
 loved; with stories of Thomas the Rhymer, 
 and the plundering Hardens, and the black 
 witches of Loch Awe ! It was natural that 
 with the echoes of the old savage strife ringing 
 in his ears, and with the memories of the dour 
 Scottish bogies and warlocks lingering in his 
 
BATTLE OF THE BABIES igj 
 
 heart, Mr. Lang could but indifferently sym- 
 pathize with those anxious parents who think 
 the stories of Bluebeard and Jack the Giant 
 Killer too shocking for infant ears to hear. 
 Our grandmothers, he declared, were not 
 ferocious old ladies, yet they told us these 
 tales, and many more which we were none 
 the worse for hearing. " Not to know them is 
 to be sadly ignorant, and to miss that which 
 all people have relished in all ages." More- 
 over, it is apparent to him, and indeed to most 
 of us, that we cannot take even our earliest 
 steps in the world of literature, or in the shad- 
 ed paths of knowledge, without encountering 
 suffering and sin in some shape; while, as we 
 advance a little further, these grisly forms fly 
 ever on before. '* Cain," remarks Mr. Lang, 
 *' killed Abel. The flood drowned quite a 
 number of persons. David was not a stainless 
 knight, and Henry VIIL was nearly as bad as 
 Bluebeard. Several deserving gentlemen were 
 killed at Marathon. Front de Bceuf came to 
 an end shocking to sensibility, and to Mr. Rus- 
 kin." The Arabian Nig Jit s^ Pilgrims Prog- 
 
198 BATTLE OF THE BABIES 
 
 ress, Pa2tl and Virginia — all the dear old nur- 
 sery favorites must, under the new dispensa- 
 tion, be banished from our midst; and the ris- 
 ing generation of prigs must be nourished ex- 
 clusively on Little Lo7'd Fauiitleroy, and other 
 carefully selected specimens of milk-and-water 
 diet. 
 
 The prospect hardly seems inviting; but as 
 the English guns rattled merrily away in be- 
 half of English tradition, they were promptly 
 met by an answering roar from this side of the 
 water. A Boston paper rushed gallantly to 
 the defense of the New York periodical, and 
 gave Mr. Lang — to use a pet expression of his 
 own — " his kail through the reek." American 
 children, it appears, are too sensitively organ- 
 ized to endure the unredeemed ferocity of the 
 old fairy stories. The British child may sleep 
 soundly in its little cot after hearing about the 
 Babes in the Wood; the American infant is 
 prematurely saddened by such unmerited mis- 
 fortune. " If a consensus of American moth- 
 ers could be taken," says the Boston writer, 
 " our English critic might be infinitely dis- 
 
BATTLE OF THE BABIES I99 
 
 gusted to know in how many nurseries these 
 cruel tales must be changed, or not told at all 
 to the children of less savage generations. No 
 mother nowadays tells them in their unmiti- 
 gated brutality." 
 
 Is this true, I wonder, and are our supersen- 
 itive babies reared perforce on the optimistic 
 version of Red Riding Hood, where the wolf 
 is cut open by the woodman, and the little 
 girl and her grandmother jump out, safe and 
 sound ? Their New England champion speaks 
 of the ''intolerable misery" — a very strong 
 phrase — which he suffered in infancy from hav- 
 ing his nurse tell him of the Babes in the 
 Wood; while the Scriptural stories were appar- 
 ently every whit as unbearable and heart- 
 breaking. "I remember," he says, "two chil- 
 dren, strong, brave man and woman now, who 
 in righteous rage plucked the Slaughter of the 
 Innocents out from the family Bible." This 
 was a radical m.easure, to say the least, and if 
 many little boys and girls started in to expur- 
 gate, the Scriptures in such liberal fashion, the 
 holy book would soon present a sadly mutilat- 
 
200 BATTLE OF THE BABIES 
 
 ed appearance. Moreover, it seems to me 
 that such an anecdote, narrated with admira- 
 ble assurance, reveals very painfully the lack 
 of a fine and delicate spirituality in the re- 
 ligious training of children; of that grace and 
 distinction which are akin to saintship, and are 
 united so charmingly in those to whom truth 
 has been inseparably associated with beauty. 
 There is a painting by Ghirlandaio hanging 
 over the altar in the chapel of the Foundling 
 Asylum In Florence. It represents the Adora- 
 tion of the IMagi, and kneeling by the side of 
 the Wise Men is a little group of the Holy In- 
 nocents, their tiny garments stained with 
 blood, their hands clasped in prayer; while the 
 Divine Child turns from his mother's embraces, 
 and from the kings' rich gifts to greet the little 
 companions who have yielded up their spotless 
 lives for him. Now, surely those lean, brown 
 Florentine orphans, Avho have always before 
 their eyes this beautiful and tender picture, ab- 
 sorb through it alone a religious sentiment un- 
 felt by American children who are familiar 
 only with the ugly and Inane prints of Ameri- 
 
BATTLE OF THE BABIES 201 
 
 can Sunday-schools, in which I have known 
 the Hne, "My soul doth magnify the Lord," to 
 be illustrated by a man with a magnifying- 
 glass in his hand. Possibly our Sunday- 
 school scholars, being more accurately in- 
 structed as to dates, could inform the little 
 Florentines that the Innocents were not 
 slaughtered until after the Magi had returned 
 to the East. But no child who had looked 
 day after day upon Ghirlandaio's lovely pic- 
 ture — more appealing in its pathos than Hol- 
 man Hunt's brilliant and jocund Triumph of 
 the Innocents — could desire to pluck "in 
 righteous rage " that chapter from the Bible. 
 He would have at least some dim and imper- 
 fect conception of the spiritual meaning, the 
 spiritual joy, which underlie the pain and hor- 
 ror of the story. 
 
 This reflection will help us in some measure 
 to come to a decision, when we return to the 
 vexed problem of nursery tales and legends. 
 I believe it is as well to cultivate a child's 
 emotions as to cultivate his manners or his 
 morals, and the first step in such a direction is 
 
202 BATTLE OF THE BABIES 
 
 necessarily taken through the stories told him 
 in infancy. If a consensus of mothers would 
 reject the good old fairy tales "in their unmit- 
 igated brutality," a consensus of men of letters 
 would render a different verdict; and such 
 men, who have been children in their time, 
 and who look back with wistful delight upon 
 the familiar fio^ures who were their earliest 
 friends, are entitled to an opinion in the case. 
 How admirable was the "righteous rage" of 
 Charles Lamb, when he wanted to buy some 
 of these same brutal fairy stories for the little 
 Coleridges, and could find nothing but the 
 correct and commonplace literature which his 
 whole soul abhorred! "Mrs. Barbauld's and 
 Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about," 
 he wrote indignantly to papa Coleridge, "and 
 have banished all the old classics of the nur- 
 sery. Knowledge, insignificant and vapid as 
 Mrs. Barbauld's books convey, must, it seems, 
 come to a child in the shape of knowledge; 
 and his empty noddle must be turned with 
 conceit of his own powers when he has learnt 
 that a horse is an animal, and that Billy is 
 
BATTLE OF THE BABIES 203 
 
 better than a horse, and such like; instead of 
 that beautiful interest in wild tales which made 
 the child a man, while all the time he suspected 
 himself to be no bigger than a child." 
 
 Just such a wild tale, fantastic rather than 
 beautiful, haunted Chateaubriand all his life — 
 the story of Count Combourg's wooden leg, 
 which, three hundred years after its owner's 
 death, was seen at night walking solemnly 
 down the steep turret stairs, attended by a 
 huge black cat. Not at all the kind of story 
 we would select to tell a child nowadays. By 
 no means ! Even the little Chateaubriand 
 heard it from peasant lips. Yet in after years, 
 when he had fought the battle of life, and 
 fought it with success; when he had grown 
 gray, and illustrious, and disillusioned, and 
 melancholy, what should come back to his 
 mind, with its old pleasant flavor of terror 
 and mystery, but the vision of Count Com- 
 bourg's wooden leg taking its midnight consti- 
 tutional, with the black cat stepping softly on 
 before } So he notes it gravely down in his 
 Memoirs, just as Scott notes in his diary the 
 
204 BATTLE OF THE BABIES 
 
 pranks of Whippity Stourie, the Scotch bogie 
 that steals at night into open nursery win- 
 dows; and just as Heine, in gay, sunht Paris, 
 recalls with joy the dark, sweet, sombre tales 
 of the witch and fairy haunted forests of Ger- 
 many. 
 
 These are impressions worth recording, and 
 they are only a few out of many which may be 
 gathered from similar sources. That which is 
 vital in literature or tradition, which has sur- 
 vived the obscurity and wreckage of the past, 
 whether as legend, or ballad, or mere nursery 
 rhyme, has survived in right of some intrinsic 
 merit of its own, and will not be snuffed out of 
 existence by any of our precautionary or hy- 
 eienic measures. We could not banish Blue- 
 beard if we would. He is as immortal as Ham- 
 let, and when hundreds of years shall have 
 passed over this uncomfortably enlightened 
 world, the children of the future — who, thank 
 Heaven, can never, with all our efforts, be 
 born grown up — will still tremble at the blood- 
 stained key, and rejoice when the big brave 
 brothers come galloping up the road. We 
 
BATTLE OF THE BABIES 20$ 
 
 could not even rid ourselves of Mother Goose, 
 though she, too, has her mortal enemies, who 
 protest periodically against her cruelty and 
 grossness. We could not drive Punch and 
 Judy from our midst, though Mr. Punch's der- 
 elictions have been the subject of much serious 
 and adverse criticism. It is not by such bar- 
 barous rhymes or by such brutal spectacles 
 that we teach a child the lessons of integrity 
 and gentleness, explain our nursery moralists, 
 and probably they are correct. Moreover, 
 Bluebeard does not teach a lesson of conjugal 
 felicity, and Cinderella is full of the w^orld's 
 vanities, and Puss in Boots is one long record 
 of triumphant effrontery and deception. An 
 honest and self-respecting lad would have ex- 
 plained to the king that he was not the Mar- 
 quis of Carabas at all; that he had no desire to 
 profit by his cat's ingenious falsehoods, and no 
 weak ambition to connect himself with the 
 aristocracy. Such a hero would be a credit to 
 our modern schoolrooms, and lift a load of 
 care from the shoulders of our modern critics. 
 Only the children would have none of him, 
 
206 BATTLE OF THE BABIE3 
 
 but would turn wistfully back to those brave 
 old tales which are their inheritance from a 
 splendid past, and of which no hand shall 
 rob them. 
 
THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT 
 
 A GREAT deal of generous scorn has been 
 •^ ^ expended of late years upon those old- 
 fashioned novels in which the characters were 
 given plenty to do, and did it with a supreme 
 energy and passion, only possible, perhaps, 
 within the enchanted precincts of fiction. Such 
 stories, we are told,* are false to life, which is 
 monotonous, uneventful, and made up day by 
 day of minute and tedious detail, small pleas- 
 ures which are hardly recognizable as such, 
 and grim, vexations which can never be per- 
 suaded to assume noble or heroic proportions. 
 The truthful representation of life being the 
 only worthy object of a novelist's skill, it fol- 
 lows that his tale should be destitute of any in- 
 cidents save those with which we are all famil- 
 iar in the narrow routine of existence. We 
 
 should be able to verify them by experience — 
 
 207 
 
208 THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT 
 
 to prove them, as children prove their exam- 
 ples at school. 
 
 To meet these current severities of realism, 
 the advocates of a livelier fiction unite in saying 
 a great many sarcastic and amusing things 
 about the deadly dulness of their opponents; 
 about the hero and heroine who, in the course 
 of three volumes, " agree not to become en- 
 gaged," and about the lady's subtle reasons for 
 dropping her handkerchief, or passing a cruet 
 at table. It may be hard work to build up a 
 novel out of nothing, they admit, but we can 
 only echo Dr. Johnson's w^ords, and wish it 
 were impossible. Where is the gain in this 
 perpetual unfolding of the obvious .'' What is 
 the advantage of wasting genuine ability upon 
 a task the difficulties of which constitute its 
 sole claim to distinction ? 
 
 But is the so-called novel of character more 
 difficult to Avrite than the novel of romance ? 
 This question can be answered satisfactorily 
 only by an author who has done both kinds of 
 w^ork sufficiently well to make his opinion val- 
 uable; and, so far, no such versatile genius has 
 
THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT 209 
 
 appeared in the field of letters. If we may 
 judge by results, we should say that artistic la- 
 bor is as rare in one school of fiction as in the 
 other, and apparently as far out of the reach of 
 the ordinary champion in the arena. It is easy 
 enough to be analytic; but it is extremely hard 
 to be luminous, or interpretative, or to know 
 when analysis counts. It is easy to stuff a book 
 full of incidents; but it is hard to make those 
 incidents living pages in literature. After De 
 Foe had led the way with Robinson Crusoe^ a 
 whole army of imitators wrote similar tales of 
 adventure; but Robinson Crusoe is to-day the 
 only shipwrecked mariner whose every action 
 awakens interest and delight. Mr. Stevenson 
 in TJie Black Arroiu, and Mr. Rider Hag- 
 gard in Nada the Lily, have given us stories 
 rich in horrors which do not horrify, and ex- 
 citements which do not excite. Mr. Stevenson's 
 tale is one bewildering succession of murders, 
 plots, hairbreadth escapes, bloody skirmishes, 
 and perils by field and flood; yet a gentle in- 
 difference as to which side wins is the only dis- 
 tinct sentiment with which we follow the wind- 
 
2IO THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT 
 
 ings of his narrative. Sir Daniel is a perjured 
 villain; but it is with no stern sense of just ret- 
 ribution that we see him fall under the fatal 
 arrow. Master Dick is a stout young soldier; 
 but where is the breathless attention with which 
 we pursue every step of another young soldier, 
 equally brave and quick-witted, Quentin Dur- 
 ward of Glen-houlakin ? Even Joan in her 
 doublet and hose — a device dear to the heart 
 of the romanticist — is almost as uninteresting 
 as Joan in her petticoats; though perhaps the 
 most striking scene in the book is that in which 
 Dick endeavors with hearty good Vv'ill to ad- 
 minister a little well-deserved chastisement to 
 the supposed boy, and finds himself withheld 
 by some subtle apprehension of a secret he is 
 far from suspecting. To compare T/ic Black 
 Arrow with IvanJioe or Quentin Diirivard 
 is manifestly unjust. It is no shame to any 
 man to be surpassed by Scott. But when 
 we remember the admirable and satisf}'ing 
 events in Treasiire Island, or the well-sus- 
 tained interest of Kidnapped, it seems in- 
 credible that Mr. Stevenson, of all novelists, 
 
THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT 211 
 
 should have succeeded in telling a lifeless story 
 of adventure. 
 
 As for Nada the Lily, its incidents are too 
 monotonously painful to do more than distress 
 the reader. I am inclined to think that a great- 
 er number of people die in the course of this 
 tale than in all the rest of English fiction, ex- 
 clusive of Mr. Haggard's other novels. They 
 die singly, in pairs, in groups, in armies, in 
 whole tribes. They die in battle, by fire, by 
 torture, by starvation, at the hands of pitiless 
 slaughterers, and under the fangs of ghost 
 wolves. They die for every imaginable cause, 
 and under every conceivable circumstance. To 
 keep the death-rate of such a story would be 
 like keeping the death-rate of the Deluge. 
 There is the same comprehensive and all-em- 
 bracing destruction. This maybe true to Zulu 
 history — in fact, Mr. Haggard tells us as much 
 in his preface to " Nada," and few people are 
 in a position to dispute the point; but it is rad- 
 ically false to art, and impairs the natural vig- 
 or of the tale. While one tragedy may be som- 
 bre and impressive, a dozen are apt to be fa- 
 
212 THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT 
 
 tiguing, and half a hundred border closely on 
 the burlesque. Chaka, " a Xapoleon and Ti- 
 berius in one," reminds the irreverent reader ir- 
 resistibly of the Queen in A /ice hi Wonderland, 
 who is all the time saying," Off with his head ! " 
 and ordering everybody to execution; the only 
 difference beingr that the Oueen's victims turn 
 up blandly in the next chapter, and Chaka's 
 never reappear. He it is who slays Unandi 
 his mother, Baleka his wife, all his children 
 save one, all his enemies, and most of his 
 friends. Then his turn comes — and none too 
 soon — to be murdered, and Dingaan his broth- 
 er, "who had the fierce heart of Chaka without 
 its greatness," sets to work systematically to kill 
 everybody who chances to be left. By the time 
 he, too, is flung over the cliff to die, Mopo and 
 Umslopogaas alone survive; the first because he 
 has to tell the tale — after which he promptly ex- 
 pires — and the second because he has already 
 been slain in battle during the progress of an- 
 other story. The most curious thing about this 
 wholesale devastation is that Mr. Haggard ap- 
 parently deplores it as much as the rest of us. " It 
 
THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT 213 
 
 would have been desirable to introduce some 
 gayer and more happy incidents," he admits in 
 his preface, ' ' biU it has not been possible!' Why 
 has it not been possible, we wonder ? It is the 
 privilege of a novelist to select or discard ma- 
 terial according to his good judgment. He is not 
 writing a history; he is telling a story. He is 
 not chronicling events; he is weaving a romance. 
 He is an artist, not a recorder; and in the 
 choice as well as in the use of material lies the 
 test of unblemished art. 
 
 What, then, is the vital charm which makes 
 the novel of incident true literature — the charm 
 possessed by Dumas, and Fielding, and Sir Wal- 
 ter Scott } Mr. Birrell, who is always in love 
 with plain definitions, says that if a book be 
 full of " inns, atmosphere, and motion," then it 
 is a good book, and he asks no more. Mr. 
 Lang, who shares this hearty sympathy for ac- 
 tion, acknowledges that the best results are of- 
 ten obtained by the simplest machinery. " Du- 
 mas," he declares, " requires no more than a 
 room in an inn, where people meet in riding- 
 cloaks, to move the heart with the last degree 
 
214 THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT 
 
 of pity and terror." Scott handles incident 
 with the matchless skill of a great story-teller. 
 He shows the same instinctive art in his situ- 
 ations that a great painter like Rembrandt 
 shows in his grouping. Every figure falls so 
 inevitably into his right place that it is impos- 
 sible for us to imagine him in any other. Henry 
 Bertram's return to Ellengowan is one of the 
 most artistic and charming scenes in fiction, 
 though it is described with such careless sim- 
 plicity. Perplexed and fascinated by the child- 
 ish memories tugging at his heartstrings, the 
 young laird gazes at his ancestral home, and 
 listens with rapture — which we share — to the 
 fragment of a long-forgotten yet familiar song: 
 
 " Are these the Links of Forth," she said, 
 " Or are they the crooks of Dee, 
 Or the bonnie woods of Warroch-head, 
 That I so fain would see ? " 
 
 There may be people who are in no way 
 moved by this home-coming, and who feel no joy 
 when Queen Mary's boat glides over the dark 
 waters of Lochleven, and no horror at that ill- 
 omened churchyard gossip which ushers in the 
 
THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT 21 5 
 
 dreadful wedding of Lammermoor, I do not 
 envy them their composure; but what of King 
 Louis's visit to the Duke of Burgundy in 
 Qiientin Ditrward, a situation so tense with 
 passion that the least imaginative reader may 
 well tremble at the possibilities of every min- 
 ute ? What of the sacking of Liege, the siege 
 of Front de Boeuf's castle, the trial of Rebecca, 
 the battle of Bothwell Bridge ? He who could 
 carry a chilly indifference through such narra- 
 tives as these would not care if Shylock gained 
 his suit, or King Harry lost the field of Agin- 
 court. I doubt if he would really care whether 
 Hector or Achilles won the fight. 
 
 The casual incidents of life, the trivial possi- 
 bilities of every day, are treated by Dickens 
 with extraordinary humor and skill ; witness 
 David Copperfield's journey to Dover, and 
 Oliver Twist's first introduction to Fagin's den. 
 But his great situations are apt to be theatrical 
 rather than dramatic. It is not often that he 
 reaches the sombre strength and passion of 
 that memorable scene where the convict re- 
 veals to Pip the secret of his m}^sterious wealth. 
 
2l6 THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT 
 
 I do not know whether a great many people 
 read Bulwer's novels nowadays. They belong 
 to a past generation, which perhaps was luckier 
 than the present. But I do know that the res- 
 cue of Glaucus from the arena was an epoch in 
 my childhood, and the cry of joy that rings 
 from Nydia's lips rang in my heart for years. 
 I have an inexpressible tenderness now for 
 The Last Days of Pompeii^ because of the pas- 
 sionate suspense with which I read it when I 
 was a little girl, and the supreme gasp of relief 
 with which I hailed the arrival of Sallust and 
 Calenus, while the lion crouches trembling in 
 his cage. It is not easy to criticise a book 
 linked with such vivid memories, and perhaps 
 it is the association with early pleasures which 
 gilds for many of us the beguiling pages of ro- 
 mance. " We are all homesick, in the dark 
 days and black towns, for the land of blue 
 skies and brave adventures in forests, and in 
 lonely inns, on the battle-field, in the prison, 
 on the desert isle." It is useless, and worse 
 than useless, to dispute over the respective 
 schools of fiction, instead of gladly enjoying 
 
• THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT 21/ 
 
 that which we like best ; and there are different 
 kinds of enjoyment for different kinds of work. 
 For my part, the good novel of character is 
 the novel I can always pick up ; but the good 
 novel of incident is the novel I can never lay 
 down. 
 
 THE END 
 
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 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (Tom Saw- 
 yer's Comrade.) — Br Mark Twaix. Xew cheap 
 edition of the hiiighable adventures of Huck Finn and 
 a runaway slave in a raft journey along the Mississippi. 
 Contains the famous description of a Southern feud. 
 Illustrated by E. W. Kemble. Cloth, 12mo, .$1.00. 
 
 Ivan the Fool, and Other Stories.— By Leo Tolstoi. 
 
 Translated direct from the Russian by Count Xorraikow, 
 T\-ith illustrations bv the celebrated Russian aitist, 
 Gribayedoff. Cloth/ 12mo, fl.OO. 
 
 " The stories in this rolunie are Tivonderfully simple and 
 pure."' — Detroit Free Press. 
 
 "As creations of fancy they take high rank.'' — Boston 
 Transcript. 
 
 " ' Ivan the Foci ' is one of the most interesting and sugges- 
 tive of Tolstoi's fables, and the work of translation is admir- 
 ably performed." — Chicago Standard. 
 
 Life IS "Worth Living, and Other Stories. — By Leo 
 
 Tolstoi. Translated direct from the Russian by Coim' 
 Xorraikow. This work, unlike some of his later writ- 
 ings, shows the great writer at his best. The stories, 
 while entertaining in themselves, are written for a pur- 
 pose, and contain abimdant food for reflection. Illus- 
 trated. Cloth, 13mo, $1.00. 
 
 Merry Tales. — By ]Maiik Twaix. The opening voliraie of 
 the new "Fiction, Fact, and Fancy Series." Contains 
 some of the author's favorite sketches, including his 
 personal reminiscences of the war as given in * ' The 
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 12mo, 75 cents. 
 
 "Very readable and amusing tales they are." — Xew YorTc 
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 " Thousands will welcome in permanent form these delicious 
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 " These tales are now brought together in an attractive and 
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 Orleans States. 
 
Charles L. VVebstei' 6^ Co. 
 
 Poetry. 
 
 Selected Poems by Walt Whitman.— Chosen and 
 
 edited by Arthur Stedman. Shortly before Mr. Whit- 
 man's death, the old poet for the first time consented to 
 the publication of a selection from "Leaves of Grass," 
 embracing- his most popular short poems and representa- 
 tive passages from his longer lyrical efforts. Arranged 
 for home and school use. With a portrait of the au- 
 thor. ("Fiction, Fact, and Fancy Series.") Cloth, 
 12mo, 75 cents. 
 
 " Mr. Stedinan''s choice is skilfully made." — Tlie Nation. 
 
 " The volume represents all that is best in Walt Whitman." 
 — San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 " That in Walt Whitman which is virile and bardic, lyrically 
 fresh and sweet, or epically grand and elemental, will be pre- 
 served to the edification of young men and maidens, as well as 
 of maturer folk." — Hartford Courant. 
 
 " The intention of the editor has been to offer those of Whit- 
 man's poems which are most truly representative of his genius. 
 The selections have been well made, and those who have yet 
 to make acquaintance with this most original of American 
 poets will have reason to thank the publishers for this little 
 volume." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 Flower o' the Vine: Romantic Ballads and Sos- 
 piri di Roma. — By William Sharp, author of "A 
 Fellowe and His Wife" (with Miss Howard), "Life 
 and Letters of Joseph Severn, " etc. With an introduc- 
 tion by Thomas A. Janvier, and a portrait of the author. 
 As one of the most popular of the younger English 
 poets, equal success is anticipated for this first American 
 edition of Mr. Sharp's poems. Its welcome in the 
 American press has been most hearty. Tastefully 
 bound, with appropriate decorative design. Cloth, 
 8vo, $L50. 
 
 "This volume of verse, by Mr. William Sharp, has a music 
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 wings the warm fragrance of Southei-n fields."— T/ie Literary 
 World. 
 
 " These old ballads, whether in Scottish dialect or not, are 
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 the old myths of tiie North, a strange pungent chill, so to 
 speak, as if the breath that gave them voice were blown across 
 leagues of iceberg and glacier." — Chicago Times. 
 
 " When Mr. Sharp leaves the North with its wild stories of 
 love and fighting and death, and carries us away with him in 
 
Popular New Books. 
 
 the ' Sospiri di Roma ' to the warmth and the splendor of the 
 South, he equally shows the creative faculty. He is a true 
 lover of Earth with her soothing- touch and soft caress: he lies 
 in her arms, he hears her whispered secret, and through the 
 real discovers the spiritual." — Philadelphia Record. 
 
 " The poems combine a gracefvilness of rhythm and a subtle 
 sweetness." — Baltimore American. 
 
 Travel, Biography, and Essays. 
 
 The German Emperor and His Eastern Neigh- 
 bors. — By PouLTNEY BiGELOW. Cable despatches slate 
 . that Mr. Bigelow has been expelled from Russia for 
 writing this volume. Interesting personal notes of his 
 old playmate's boyhood and education are given, to- 
 gether with a description of the Emperor's army, his 
 course and policy since accession, and the condition of 
 affairs on the Russian and Roumanian frontiers. With 
 fine portrait of William II. (" Fiction, Fact, and Fancy 
 Series.") Cloth, 12mo, 75 cents. 
 
 "A book to attract immediate and close attention." — 
 Chicago Times. 
 
 " An interesting contribution to evidence concerning Russia." 
 — Springfield Reimhlican. 
 
 " A much-needed correction to the avalanche of abuse 
 heaped upon the German Emperor."— P/ii7adeZp/a'a Inquirer. 
 
 " The book should have a place in the library" of every stu- 
 dent of politics." — Boston Pilot. 
 
 Paddles and Politics Down the Danube. — By 
 
 PouLTNEY Bigelow. Companion volume to "The Ger- 
 man Emperor. " A highly interesting journal of a canoe- 
 voyage down "the Mississippi of Europe" from its 
 source to the Black Sea, with descriptions of the resi- 
 dent nations, and casual discussions of the political 
 situation. Illustrated with numerous offhand sketches 
 made on the spot by Mr. Bigelow. ("Fiction, Fact, 
 and Fancy Series.") Cloth, 12mo, 75 cents. 
 
 Writings of Christopher Columbus. —Edited, with 
 an introduction, by Paul Leicester Ford. Mr. Ford 
 has for the first time collected in one handy volume 
 translations of those letters, etc., of Columbus Avhich 
 describe his experiences in the discovery and occupation 
 of the New World. With frontispiece Portrait. ( ' ' Fic- 
 tion, Fact, and Fancy Series.") Cloth, 12mo, 75 cents. 
 
Charles L. Webster cf Co, 
 
 Under Summer Skies. — By Clinton Scollard. A 
 poet's itinerary. Professor Scollard relates, in his charm- 
 ing literary style, the episodes of a rambling tour 
 through Egypt, Palestine, Italy, and the Alps. The 
 text is interspersed with poetical interludes, suggested 
 by passing events and scenes. Coming nearer home, 
 visits to Arizona and the Bermudas are described in 
 separate chapters. The volume is attractively illus- 
 trated by Margaret Landers Randolph, and is most suit- 
 able as a traveling companion or as a picture of lands 
 beyond the reach of the reader. Cloth, 8vo, $1.00, 
 (In Preparation.) 
 
 Autobiographia. — By YValt Whitman. Edited by 
 Arthur Stedman. The story of Whitman's life, told in 
 his own words. These selected passages from Whit- 
 man's prose works, chosen with his approbation, are so 
 arranged as to give a consecutive account of the old 
 poet's career in his own picturesque language. Uniform 
 with the new edition of Walt AVhitman's "Selected 
 Poems." ("Fiction, Fact, and Fancy Series.") Cloth, 
 12mo, 75 cents. 
 
 Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle. — By Mrs. Alexander 
 Ireland. A remarkable biography of a wonderful 
 woman, written and compiled by one in thorough sym- 
 pathy with her subject, from material made public for 
 the first time. The powerful side-hght it throws upon 
 the life and character of Thomas Carlyle will make the 
 volume indispensable to all who venerate the genius, or 
 are interested in the Dersonality, of the Sage of Chelsea. 
 Vellum, cloth (half bound), 8vo, $1.75. 
 
 Essays in Miniature. — By Agnes Repplier, author 
 of "Points of View," etc. A new volume of this 
 brilliant essayist's writings, in which she discourses 
 wittily and wisely on a number of pertinent topics. No 
 new essayist of recent years has been received with such 
 hearty commendation in this country or England. 
 ("Fiction, Fact, and Fancy Series.") Cloth, 12mo, 75 
 cents. (In Press.) 
 
Popular New Books. Chas. L. Webster c^' Co. 
 
 niscellaneous. 
 
 Tariff Reform: The Paramount Issue. — Speeches 
 
 and -writings on the questions involved in the presiden- 
 tial contest of 1892. By "Williaai M. Sprizs'gee,, Chair- 
 man of the Committee on TVays and Means of the House 
 of Representatives, Fifty-second Congress. With por- 
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 by Hon. Adlai E. Stevenson, Hon. Calvin S. Brice, and 
 Hon. John G-. Carlisle. Unquestionably the paramount 
 issue of the Campaiirn is the Tariff. Cloth, librarv 
 style, $1.50; Paper, $1.00. 
 
 Physical Beauty: How to Obtain and How to 
 
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 read: including chapters on Hygiene, Foods, Sleep. 
 Bodily Expression, the Skiu, the Eyes, the Teeth, the 
 Hair, 'Dress, the Cultivation of Individuality, etc.. etc. 
 Fully illustrated, octavo, 300 pages. TThite Vellum. 
 G-old and Silver Stamps, in Box, |2.00; Blue Vellum, 
 $2.00. 
 
 " Every woman will be a more perfect woman for reading it ; 
 more perfect in soul and hody." —Philadelphia Inquirer. 
 
 "Her arsruments are sane, philosophical, and practical." — 
 yeic York^World. 
 
 " Parents may well place it in the hands of their yoimg 
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 "Earnestly and gracefully written." — Xeic York Sun. 
 
 " The illustrations axe pretty and suggestive."— J7te Critic. 
 
 The Speech of Monkeys. — By R. L. Garner. Mr. 
 Garner's articles, published in the leading periodicals 
 and journals touching upon this subject, have been 
 widely read and favoriTbly commented upon by scientific 
 men both here and abroad. ' ' The Speech of Monkeys " 
 embodies his researches up to the present time. It is 
 divided into two parts, the first being a record of ex- 
 periments with monkeys and other animals, and the 
 second part a treatise on the theory of speech. The 
 work is written so as to bring the subject within reach 
 of the casual reader without impairing its scientific 
 value. Small 8vo, with Frontispiece, Cloth, .$1.00. 
 
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