-T ■> 
 
 <S57 
 68 
 
PJRICf: ON^JB SHIX^r^INTG. 
 
 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL: 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE 
 Right Hon. HENRY MATTHEWS, Q.C., Home Secretary, 
 
 CONCERNING THE 
 
 PROPOSED SUPPRESSION OF LITERATURE. 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBEET . BUCHANAN. 
 
 LONDON ; 
 GEORGE RED WAY, 15, YORK STREET, 
 COVEN T GARDEN. 
 
 1889. 
 
WOIJKS EY EGBERT BUCHANAN. 
 
 ' The dunih, wistful yearning in man to something higher — 
 Yearning such as tlie animal creation showed in the Greek 
 period towards the human — has not as yet found any interpreter 
 equal to Buchanan.' — The Spectator. 
 
 ' In the great power of appealing to universal Humanity lies 
 Buchanan's security. The liglit of Nature has been his guide, 
 and the human heart his study. He must unquestionably attain 
 an exalted rank among the poets of this century, and produce 
 works which cannot fail to be accepted as incontestably great, 
 and worthy of the woi'ld's preservation.' — Contemporaru Review. 
 
 POETIIY. 
 COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT 
 
 BUCHANAN. With a Steel-plate Portrait engraved by Abmi- 
 TAGE. One vol. Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 SELECTED POEMS. With Frontispiece by Thomas 
 
 Dalzibl. 6s. 
 
 BALLADS OF LIFE, LOVE, AND HUMOUR. With 
 
 Frontispiece by Arthur Hughes. 6s, 
 
 THE EARTHQUAKE; OR, SIX DAYS AND A 
 
 SABBATH. 6s. 
 
 PROSE FICTION. 
 
 Crpwn 8vo. cloth extra, 3s. 6d. each ; post 8vo. illuminated 
 
 boards, 2s. each. 
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD. 
 
 A CHILD OF NATURE. With a Frontispiece. 
 GOD AND THE MAN. With Illustrations by F. 
 Barnard. 
 
 THE MARTYRDOM OF MADELINE. With a Frontis- 
 
 piece. 
 
 THE NEW ABELARD. 
 
 ANNAN WATER. 
 
 FOXGLOVE MANOR. 
 
 LOVE ME FOR EVER. With a Frontispiece by P. 
 
 Macnab. 
 MATT : A STORY OF A CARAVAN. 
 THE MASTER OF THE MINE. With a Frontispiece 
 
 by W. H. OVEREND. 
 
 DRAMA. 
 POETICAL PLAYS. With a Note on the Modern 
 
 Stage. In the Press. 
 
 LONDON : CHATIO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL: 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE 
 Right Hon. HENRY MATTHEWS, Q.C., Home Secretary, 
 
 CONCERNING 
 
 THE PROPOSED SUPPRESSION OF LITERATURE. 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBEET BUCHANAN. 
 
 ♦ J, « - o 
 
 « JO*.. 01 
 
 LONDON ; 
 GEORGE REDWAY, 15, YORK STREET, 
 COVE NT GARDEN. 
 
 1889. 
 
z.^^7 
 ■^^ 
 
 " Tell me, where is the place that men call Hell 1 
 Meph. — Under the heavens. 
 
 Faust. — Aye, so are all things else ; but whereabouts 1 
 Meph, — "Within the bowels of these Elements 
 
 Where we are tortured arid remain for ever. 
 
 Hell has no limits, nor is circumscribed 
 
 In one self place : but where we are is Hell ; 
 
 And where Hell is, there must we ever be ; 
 
 And, to be short, when all the world dissolves, 
 
 And every creature shall be purified, 
 
 All places shall be Hell that are not Heaven. 
 Faust. — I think Hell is a fable. 
 
 Meph. — All ! think so still, till experience change thy mind." 
 
 Marlowe's " Faustus." 
 
 • ) * - • 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL; 
 
 To the Eight Hon. Henry Matthews, 
 Home Secretary. 
 
 Right Hon. Sir, 
 
 You .are, I understand, a Roman Catholic ; 
 I am a catholic plus an eclectic. I have the highest 
 respect for the creed in which you believe, since it is 
 perhaps the most logically constructed of all human 
 creeds ; but while I admire the logic, I do not admit 
 all the premises, and cannot consequently follow you to 
 all its conclusions. Is it too much to hope, however, 
 that even Roman Catholicism has shared the fate of 
 other beliefs, and been shorn of many of its imperfec- 
 tions ? Its history represents it as at once the friend 
 of literature, and literature's mortal enemy; it has 
 preserved for us much that is precious, together with 
 many husks of uncleanliness which might have been 
 more wisely destroyed, and it has formulated the Index 
 before which, from generation to generation. Free 
 Thought has trembled. It washed the sin-stained robes 
 of St. Augustine with one hand, and it burned Giordano 
 Bruno with the other. All that is over, and just now, 
 in the 89th year of this century, Roman Catholicism 
 
 M116807 ^ 2 
 
'/ ' ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 
 
 stands face to face with its old enemies, Free Thought 
 and Science, with whom less than a miracle might 
 even yet effect a reconciliation. For the creed of 
 Persecution is also the creed of spiritual Insight ; the 
 carnal wolfs clothing, perhaps, still hides the Lamb of 
 God. If in its supreme moment of eclipse, th^ suffering 
 Church were to admit its sins and reform its terminology, 
 Humanity might almost accept its blessing — forget 
 Torquemada, and remember Bishop Myriel. 
 
 An opportunity occurs now in England. A new 
 Inquisition, with which the Roman Church has 
 fortunately nothing to do, proposes to shut all carnal 
 books, and to punish all men who write, read, and sell 
 them. For issuing to the public the writings of an 
 able Advocate on the Devil's side, an unfortunate 
 Publisher of Books lies now in prison. The flourishing 
 Puritan, apt pupil of old Home in persecution, has 
 decided that Free Thought is to be silenced, and the 
 Arbor Scientise cut down and burned. It is the story 
 of Castillo over again, and John Calvin survives in the 
 spirit, to make a martyr's bonfire, Now, then, I believe 
 is the time for the Church Catholic, the Church per- 
 secuted and purified, to confess her sm, and cast in her 
 lot with the Humanity she once hated, saying, " Even 
 as my Saints and Monks preserved for men the banal 
 humanities of Greece and Home, even as (while stifling 
 the literature of speculation) they saved for the world 
 the literature of the flesh, letting my children nouiish 
 themselves on the bread thereof and cast the leaven 
 away, so will I now proclaim that even the Literature 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 5 
 
 of Hell shall not be hidden quite below the depths of 
 
 argument." If the Church escapes this opportunity, it 
 
 will be her own misfortune; if she takes it boldly, she 
 
 will gain at least one day's triumph. More than any 
 
 Church still surviving, she believes that her arguments 
 
 are overpowering. Ki^ince she has found it quite useless 
 
 to suppress her enemies by force, why not suffer them 
 
 to have their say in open daylight, before the world ? 
 
 By her instrument, a E/Oman Catholic Home Secretary, 
 
 she may do this, and she will be wise to do it. Let 
 
 her by your means, Sir, open the prison of one of whom 
 
 those who love her not have foolishly made a Martyr. 
 
 Let her proclaim from the housetops, *' Men, speak out 
 
 your utmost, lay bare Nature to its depths ; your 
 
 liberation will be my justification, for even if you 
 
 descend into Hell, you will only be following my 
 
 Master, who left his Cross, a flaming symbol, even there J^ 
 
 May I; as briefly as possible, review the case to 
 
 which I solicit your earnest attention ? 
 
 A certain 
 
 M. Emile Zola, 
 
 whom superficial criticism persists in classing among 
 the votaries of pleasure, is a dreary and dismal 
 gentleman whose mind is solely exercised on questions 
 of moral drainage and social sewerage. He goes so 
 far as to assert that Modern Society is full of 
 disease germs scattered through the air from the 
 social deposits ; and to prove his case, he takes us, 
 when we are willing to be improved, right down 
 into the sewers and the catacombs. T went there 
 
6 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 
 
 lately with him ; and held my nose. The very 
 raiment of my guide, when we emerged into the day- 
 light, was redolent of offal ; it looked and smelt unclean, 
 and I got away from it as soon as possible, not before 
 I had recognised, however, that the man was right in 
 some measure, and that the drains loere bad. Now, it 
 never occurred to me for one moment that poor Zola 
 ought to be given into custody, but a crowd of very 
 clean persons loudly clamoured around us, and messages 
 were sent for the nearest policeman. Before the stern 
 myrmidon of the law could be found, Zola had dis- 
 appeared, but an unfortunate and innocent deputy, told 
 off to conduct the public in the absence of his principal, 
 was incontinently laid hold of by one Dogberry, haled 
 off before Justice Shallow, and then and there con- 
 demned as a public nuisance. Moral : Leave the 
 drains alone, let the world wag, even it* typhoid fever 
 should flourish. Moral number two, very acceptable 
 to the average insular intelligence : conceal from all 
 clean people, especially young people, the fact that 
 there is such a thing as sewerage at all. 
 
 I have never held (and I do not hold now) the 
 opinion that drainage is a fit subject for Art, that men 
 grow any better by the contemplation of what is 
 bestial and unpleasant ; indeed, I have always been 
 puritan enough to think pornography a nuisance. 
 It is one thing, however, to dislike the obtrusion of 
 things unsavoury and abominable, and quite another 
 to regard any allusion to them as positively criminal. 
 A description even of pigsties, moreover, may some- 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 7 
 
 times be made tolerable by the cunning of a great 
 artist, and this same M. Zola, though a dullard rMufond, 
 for the simple reason that he regards pigsties as the 
 only foreground for his lurid moral landscapes, appears 
 to be so much better and nobler than myself, in so 
 much as he loves Truth more and fears consequences 
 less, that I have again and again taken off my hat to 
 him in open day. His zeal may be mistaken, but it is 
 self-evident ; his information may be horrible, but it is 
 certainly given in all good faith ; and an honest man 
 being the rarest of phenomena in all literature, this 
 man has my sympathy, — though my instinct is to get 
 as far away from him as possible. 
 
 In trying on more than oue occasion to do justice 
 to his sincerity, while seriously finding fault with his 
 method, I have had to be constantly reminded that he is 
 a Frenchman ; and a Frenchman, from our insular point 
 of view, is synonymous with everything that is unclean 
 and detestable. * Despite the fact that we have derived 
 for hundreds of years all our " ideas," such as they are, 
 from France, despite the fact that Frenchmen have 
 been the pioneers of Freedom and Free Thought all over 
 the world, we still preserve the old superstition that a 
 Frenchman is born a *' light " person, whose sole con- 
 ception of life is derived from his experiences as a 
 houlevardier. The English race has no " ideas " what- 
 ever; indeed, it abominates "ideas," and is thoroughly 
 practical and pragmatical in its views, of social subjects 
 especially. True, when once convinced of a great 
 principle, it can hold to it, as our Puritans did when 
 
8 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 
 
 they got the lambent torch of Protestantism from 
 Geneva, as our philosophers did when they caught the 
 reflex of the Fiery Cross of Free Thought in Paris ; but 
 we work by tenacity, like the bull-dog, while French- 
 men, like the greyhound, work by sight. We have had 
 to get even our Byrons and our She! leys second-hand 
 from the Revolution. We have fought inch by inch 
 against the obtrusion of every new *' idea ; " then at 
 last, accepting it, we have held to it like grim Death. 
 Thus, in religion and even in philosophy, we have been 
 practically converted, but on one point, that of social 
 statics and their expression in literature, we are invul- 
 nerable. We won't be reformed in our morality. We 
 decline to listen to anyone, especially a priest or a 
 Frenchman, who affirms that human nature is not vir- 
 tuous by instinct and by predisposition. We repudiate 
 all "ideas" connected with the existence of moral Hell. 
 We still our consciences, approve our Social Evil, and 
 refuse to inspect our drains. While doing the best to 
 give one half of the community a foretaste of Hell 
 upon earth, we affirm that this is the best of all pos- 
 sible worlds, and that English civilisation is the only 
 possible civilisation consistent with the welfare of a 
 troubled planet. 
 
 In this spirit of disingenuous optimism, we have 
 
 organised 
 
 Our Latter Inquisition ; 
 
 a curious conclave, composed of all phases of 
 character and opinion ; with Justice Shallow as 
 chief Inquisitor, and Messrs. Dogberry and Verges 
 as watchmen in ordinary. Decree number one : let 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 9 
 
 all " deformed " individuals, and especially all French- 
 men, be "run in'' and '* charged." Decree number 
 two : books being the Devil's engines, all books are to 
 be inspected, and if found guilty of any " ideas," sum- 
 marily burnt or expurgated. Decree number three : 
 any publisher of a book calculated to destroy our 
 cardinal principle, that this is the best of all possible 
 worlds, is to be seized, fined and imprisoned. Decree 
 number four : that public virtue is impossible without 
 the sanction of the police, and (as a corollary) that public 
 taste is a thing strictly within the determination of the 
 watchmen and custodians of our virtue. Decree num- 
 ber five : that our system of sewerage is to remain in 
 the region of Supernatural Mystery, and that any litera- 
 ture touching upon it is to be condignly abolished. 
 Imprimantur, the revised New Testament, the Lamp- 
 lighter, and the tracts of Christian knowledge. Con- 
 demnantur, all poems, all fictions, which expose the 
 (jehenna underground, or attack the moralities which 
 shine above it. Expurgantur, Shakspere, Dryden, 
 and Byron (the last delicately, for he was a lord). 
 Signed, Shallow, Grand Inquisitor ; . Countersigned, 
 Dogberry, Chief Constable in Ordinary. In the inter- 
 vals of our pleasant Inquisition, we listen blandly to a 
 droning Military Person who beguiles our leisure with 
 prospects of a general Conscription, and who holds up 
 the German system of providential and governmental 
 superintendence in all departments of life and thought, 
 as the beacon of modern civilisation.* 
 
 * See Lord Wolseley's utterances, passim. 
 
10 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 
 
 A few words concerning the character of 
 
 Mr. Vizetelly, 
 
 the imprisoned publisher, may assist you to take an im- 
 partial view of the situation. His entire life has been 
 spent in the service of art, journalism and Hterature. 
 Bound over as an apprentice to his father, James Henry 
 Vizetelly, who had one of the largest printing businesses 
 in the City of London, he acquired his own freedom by 
 servitude, though members of the family had been 
 freemen of the City for several generations. Sub- 
 sequently Mr. Henry Yizetelly was apprenticed to 
 Orrin Smith, the well-known wood engraver, and proved 
 his best pupil ; the works containing wood engravings 
 signed " H. Vizetelly " are nowadays sought after by 
 connoisseurs. Mr. Vizetelly 's connection with 
 journalism dates from the foundation of the Illustrated 
 London News. The first ''idea" of that publication 
 germinated in the brain of Mr. Herbert Ingram, who 
 thought of establishing a kind of Illustrated Police 
 Gazette. Mr. Vizetelly prevailed upon him, however, 
 to make the publication more comprehensive in its 
 scope, wrote the prospectus, and largely contributed 
 towards launching the first number. This was the 
 foundation of illustrated journalism. Soon afterwards 
 Mr. Vizetelly, having somewhat abruptly severed 
 his connection with the Illustrated London News, 
 went into publishing. He was the first to introduce 
 Uncle Tonis Cabin and the poems of Edgar Allan 
 Poe to the English public. He also did a great deal 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL, U 
 
 to popularize the immaculate Mr. Longfellow in 
 England. The " Evangeline,'' illustrated by Sir John 
 Gilbert, was due mainly to his endeavours ; also the 
 ''Hyperion" illustrated by Birket Foster. For the 
 latter he visited all the localities mentioned in the 
 work (accompanied by Foster), and sketches were made 
 on the spot to serve as illustrations. This ''Hyperion'' 
 is very rare nowadays, and fetches a high price. About 
 the time of the Crimean War, Mr. Vizetelly started 
 the Illustrated Times, and gathered round him a 
 number of clever writers — then mostly unknown to 
 fame, but many of whom have since made their way in 
 the world — Thackeray, the Brothers Brough, the 
 Brothers Mayhew, Sala, Edmund Yates, Sutherland 
 Edwards, Frederick Greenwood, and many others. 
 Among the artists were John Gilbert, Birket Foster, 
 Julian Portch, and Gustave Dore (then first introduced 
 to the English public). Whilst starting and editing 
 this new publication, Mr. Vizetelly devoted considerable 
 time and energy to furthering the general interests of 
 his profession. He acted as Honorary Secretary to the 
 Association formed for the Bepeal of the Paper Duty, 
 and in regard to the abolition of the Newspaper Stamp 
 he took decisive action by issuing several numbers 
 of the Illustrated Times without the stamp. The 
 Board of Revenue prosecuted him, claiming a fine of 
 several thousand pounds. This was never enforced, 
 however. The question was taken up by public men, 
 and soon afterwards the Stamp impost was abolished. 
 In 1865 he became Paris correspondent of the Illus- 
 
12 ON DESCENDING INTO HEIL. 
 
 trated London News — went through the siege of Paris 
 and Commune for that journal — organised a service of 
 sketches by balloon post, so that the paper was able to 
 supply a more complete pictorial record of the siege 
 than appeared in any other journal. He afterwards 
 represented the IllusWated London News at Berlin and 
 Vienna — acted as British Wine Juror at Vienna, 1873, 
 and Paris, 1878 — wrote a number of text books upon 
 European wines, after visiting all the wine producing 
 districts on the continent, Madeira, Canary Isles, &c. 
 These books are standard works of reference. 
 
 As an author, Mr. Vizetelly has also written on 
 Berlin and Paris. His St07y of the Diamond Neck- 
 lace completely unravelled what was long considered 
 a historical puzzle — supplementing and correcting 
 Carlyle's well-known essay in many important par- 
 ticulars. He has also contributed numerous articles to 
 Household Words under Charles Dickens, and was on 
 various occasions a correspondent of the Times, Daily 
 News and Pall Mall Gazette. He started his present 
 publishing business in 1880, and thereby, as I shall 
 show, did much yeoman's service for first-class 
 literature. 
 
 That, Bight Hon. Sir, is the record of the man whom 
 the Vigilance Committee, trading on the prudery of 
 the English community, casts into prison. His crime 
 is that he has not presumed the business of publishing 
 to include the prerogatives of a censor morum ; that he 
 has published in the English lapguage what nearly every 
 educated person reads in the French ; that, in a word, 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 13 
 
 he has introduced to the uninitiated the works of Emile 
 Zola and one or two writers of doubtful morality. 
 Even if we admit his error in this last particular, do 
 not his long services far outweigh his indiscretions 1 
 Has he not been a brave sergeant in the army of 
 English journalism ? But I decline to admit his 
 error. T affirm that Emile Zola was bound to be 
 printed, translated, read. Little as I sympathise with 
 his views of life, greatly as I loathe his pictures of human 
 vice and depravity, I have learned much from him, and 
 others may learn much; and had I been unable to read 
 French, these translations would have been to me an 
 intellectual help and boon. I like to have the Devil's 
 case thoroughly stated, because I know it refutes itself. 
 As an artist, Zola is unjustifiable; as a moralist, he is 
 answerable ; but as a free man, a man of letters, he can 
 decline to accept the fiat of a criminal tribunal. 
 
 The details of an interview with Mr. Coote, Secretary 
 of the Vigilance Committee, compel me to add a few 
 words touching the conduct of 
 
 The Person for the Prosecution; 
 
 and to begin with, I take leave to say that Mr. Coote s 
 assertions were simply infamous. " I think it served 
 Vizetelly right," said this Secretary of the Vigilance 
 Committee; "look over his catalogue, and form your 
 own opinion." May I ask, Sir, if you have looked over 
 his catalogue ? / have done so, and with the following 
 result. Besides the works of Zola, Flaubert, and 
 Daudet, many of them admirable in every sense of the 
 
14 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 
 
 word, Mr. Vizetelly lias issued to the English public 
 the works of Count Tolstoi and of Fedor DostoiefFsky ; 
 an admirably edited series of the Old Dramatists; Mr. 
 Sala's America Revisited, Under the Sun, Dutch 
 Pictures, and Paris Herself Again ; the immaculate 
 M. Ohnet's Ironmaster ; Mr. Greenwood's Li Strange 
 Compa7iy ; M. (Joppee's Passer-hy (Le Passant); the 
 stories of Gaboriau and Du Boisgobey ; a whole library of 
 brilliant, social romances, including tales by Cherbuliez, 
 Theuriet, About, Feval, and Merim6e ; and to crown 
 all, his (Mr. Vizetelly 's) own excellent works on 
 The Diamond Necklace and Wines of the World. 
 These, among other publications equally worthy and 
 inoffensive, form the hulk of the catalogue for which 
 the Secretary of the Vigilance Committee would keep 
 an honourable man in prison. Does Mr. Coote ever 
 read anything outside the literature of the Lam^)- 
 lighter and the Old Helmet ? Does he see no differ- 
 ence between even La Ciiree or Madame Bovary 
 and the sealed-up books sold sometimes in Holywell 
 Street ? It seems to me that it would be as rational 
 to consult the first area-haunting policeman on 
 the ethical quality of literature, as to accept the 
 evidence of a censor who is either a mischief-maker or 
 an ignoramus. 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say that the whole ex- 
 istence of the so-called Vigilance Committee is an 
 infamy, and that the treatment of Mr. Vizetelly is 
 merely a specimen of Dogberry's evidence and Shallow's 
 justice. The misfortune is that Mr. Vizetelly, instead 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 15 
 
 of taking his stand like a man on his total work as 
 publisher, pleaded in the first instance '' guilty." 
 Possibly he knew British judges and British juries better 
 than I do ; but the result is lamentable, and I repeat 
 my question, where is the persecution to stop? Does 
 any sane man imagine that it is really corrupt books 
 that destroy society, and that any suppression of liter- 
 ature will make society any better ? No ; these books, 
 where they are corrupt, merely represent corruption 
 already existing, — are merely signs and symbols 
 of social disease. The argument that they bring 
 " blushes to the cheek of a young person " is irrelevant. 
 They are not written for the young person ; and if they 
 are, the young person will get at them, now and 
 for ever, in spite of the policeman. Criticise them, 
 attack them, point out their deformities and absurdi- 
 ties as much as you please and as much as I my- 
 self have done ; but do not imagine that you will 
 purify the air by suppressing literature, or that you 
 can make people virtuous by penal clauses and Acts of 
 Parliament. 
 
 And the harmless Ohnet,and the stainless Coppee, and 
 the good Theuriet, and the great Tolstoi, and the sub- 
 lime Dostoieffsky, not to speak of the full-blooded Old 
 Dramatists and the genial Mr. George j^.ugustus Sala, 
 are all practically condemned to Limbo in the lump, 
 under the shadow of Mr. Vizetelly's awful "Catalogue" ! 
 This precious Dogberry of a Vigilance Committee is left 
 to straddle with his watchman's Lanthorn, and shriek 
 "Deformed! Deformed!" over the mutilated remains of 
 
16 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL 
 
 Art and Literature. To-morrow, perchance, he will 
 toddle up to Burlington House, and insist on either seiz- 
 ing or clothing all the ''improper" pictures of nude 
 ladies, and we shall soon have the President of the E-oyal 
 Academy committed to prison for daring to paint a 
 Venus without a bathing costume or an Ariadne with- 
 out a petticoat. 
 
 For my own part, I hold the matter so serious 
 that I am appealing to you, on the highest grounds 
 of all, religious grounds, for Mr. Vizetelly's im- 
 mediate release. If there is any manhood among 
 English writers, they will see that the matter 
 is one involving their own liberties, now and in the 
 near future.* If there is any consistency among 
 English publishers, they also will contend for freedom 
 and immunity from constabulary supervision. Special 
 Providence, as embodied in the form of an amateur 
 moralist-detective, is on their track. We shall see 
 our beloved ''Ouida" run in to Bow Street, and 
 "Ouidas" publishers whimpering by her in the 
 dock. Every publisher of the atrocious works of 
 Shakspere will stand in the pillory. As for Mr. 
 Vize telly, he may indeed have cause to cry peccavi 
 if neither authors nor publishers come to his aid. He 
 is 70 years of age, he is a litterateur as well as a 
 publisher, and according to the latest accounts, he is 
 suffering greatly. If it were only for his introduction 
 to the public of one great and perhaps unequalled book, 
 
 ■* That there may be no doubt on this head, the A^igilance Committee, 
 in a letter just pubhshed (June 25), warns English authors to '' look 
 out," and not to go too far, or they, too, may get into trouble ! 
 
O.V DESCENDING INTO HELL 17 
 
 Crime and Punishment, I should regard him, not as 
 a criiiiinal, but as a martyr and a pubhc benefactor. 
 Here is a good chance, Right Hon. Sir, to show that 
 the mantle of Beaconsfield has fallen on a Tory Home 
 Secretary ! Benjamin Disraeli might have had a 
 thousand faults, but he never forgot his literary 
 inheritance, and in a case like the present, he would 
 have defended the freedom of letters against a whole 
 army of canting busybodies^ and prurient " Vigilance 
 Committee-men/' 
 
 For all this civil interference with spiritual prero- 
 gative, Bight Hon. Sir, must be very distaste- 
 ful to the Church of which you are a distinguished 
 representative. In matters spiritual, which to a great 
 extent are matters literary, that Church has always 
 upheld her own tests as final, and often, while she has 
 burned a religious heretic, she has afforded sanctuary to 
 a carnal offender. She trembled, it is true, before 
 Galileo and other rectangular dogmatists of scientific 
 discovery, but she never feared pornography, or thought 
 that it could overthrow the higher standards of human 
 nature. One of her most logical postulates, indeed, has 
 been that Man is evil by inheritance and by predisposi- 
 tion, and that only by Faith, or Spiritual Knowledge, can 
 he be saved. Hence her gentleness to the literature of 
 Heathendom, her complacency in dealing with purely 
 human Art and Letters. While preserving the Christian 
 documents she was quite content to leave Humanity 
 its Sappho, its Lucretius, its Juvenal, its Catullus, 
 even its Aristophanes. For though she was persuaded 
 
18 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 
 
 to make short work of schismatics, who after all have 
 little knowledge of life, she was ever kindly to the poets, 
 the most incontinent of whom knew life thoroughly. She 
 went with Dante into Hell, and she ascended with 
 Calderon up to Heaven ; but loving also her cakes and 
 ale, she preserved the gaiidriole, for the amusement of 
 her monks. She has, in short, been a friend to les belles 
 lettres, even the most pornographic. In these respects, as 
 in many others, I sympathise with her. Far less human 
 and sympathetic has been her gloomy half-sister, Protes- 
 tantism. If Protestantism had its way, we should have 
 no books except One, which is excellent, no doubt, but 
 not always amusing. In a word, this is a quite tenable 
 proposition : that Literature has more to fear from the 
 Church which canonizes and exalts one Book, than from 
 the Church which asserts that Human Nature shall not 
 be at the mercy of any Book whatsoever. 
 
 The days are long past when even the Church, Roman 
 and Catholic, had any real cause to be afraid of human 
 flights of fancy, or any anxiety to suppress them : more 
 than one of her monks have chuckled over Pantagruel, 
 and I know that certain of her priests have followed with 
 feverish anxiety the temiDtations of a certain Abb^ 
 Mouret. Putting certain little fanciful dogmas aside, the 
 Eoman Church is far more tolerant to human necessities 
 and human weaknesses than any of her offshoots — nay, 
 than even her grim Arch Enemy, the Church of Science; 
 and than this last Church she is in one respect infinitely 
 wiser, that her last word is one of pity and comfort for 
 hunian backsliding. 
 
ox DESCENDING INTO HELL. 19 
 
 The pity of Science is the pity of Despair ; the pity 
 of the Church is the pity of Faith and Hope, and of 
 regeneration. 
 
 True, you say as of old, ''Unless a man believes 
 in my confession of faith, he shall surely perish — 
 but if he believes he shall be saved," an assumption 
 which scientists amuse themselves with, to their own 
 final consternation. For translated into the language 
 of common sense, your dogma means that foul- 
 ness, sin, physical disease, hereditary taint, have no 
 power to touch the Soul, — that he who believes in the 
 Supreme Love and Pity shall, despite them all, save his 
 Soul alive; whereas that other Church of Science teaches 
 what I contend to be a foolish heresy, that the Soul can 
 be saved only by the Body in which it dwells, that by 
 the law of heredity the Body may destroy and 
 eliminate even Man's immortal part. 
 
 As I write, an illustration comes to my hand. A 
 certain Scandinavian writer, who is to M. Zola what 
 the dustman, of a suburb is to the scavenger of a city, 
 has written a play called Gegangere — that is, in French, 
 Fevenants, and in EagUsh, Ghosts. To get his material, 
 he had literally, like others before him, to enter Hell, 
 nor do I blame him, though I doubt his moral. Picturing 
 an individual whose nature is poisoned through and 
 through by hereditary taint, who is morally and physi- 
 cally diseased because he inherits from an unclean 
 paternity, he leaves this individual in the corruption of 
 hopeless idiocy, gibbering at the Sun. No one ray of 
 Hope brightens the tableau, but the cruel consuming 
 
 B 2 
 
20 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 
 
 Sun drinks up this wasted life like a drop of dew. A 
 solemn and an awful truth, says Science. But apart 
 from the question (never yet fully reasoned out by 
 physiologists) of how far the spark of life eludes the 
 taints cast upon it, of how far, for example, even the 
 loathsome sores of syphilis may be crystallised after a 
 generation into cells of prismatic thought (as is possibly 
 true in certain examples of meningitis), the lesson we 
 are taught in this doleful drama leaves moral questions 
 entirely within the domain of physiology. Now, I, 
 personally, refuse to exist in that most melancholy 
 domain; and here, again, human evidence is with me. 
 One miserable infant, almost a foetus in size and develop- 
 ment, became the Arouet whose voice rang round the 
 world and liberated Galas. The strumous Keats faced 
 the Sun, and cast it glaring on his canvas as Hyperion. 
 Unhealthy men, tainted men, weakly men, have 
 dominated the world of art and literature, where 
 Michael Angelos and Benvenuto Cellinis have been the 
 exceptions. I have known a man reduced by the fault 
 of his progenitors to a state bordering on intellectual 
 imbecility, and yet that man was sane and wise, a 
 beautiful soul, happy, and a peacemaker. I decline, 
 then, to believe that Original Sin and Hereditary Taint, 
 though they exist loosely in your dogma and tenaciously 
 in that of Science, can cast me down into nothingness. 
 I know the Soul eludes the Body at every stage of our 
 development. I find every day that perfectly balanced 
 structure, the mens sana in corpore sa.no, utterly deaf 
 to the music tainted and unbalanced structures hear. 
 
O.Y DESCENDING INTO HELL. 21 
 
 A perfectly healthy man is .frequently a monster, 
 generally a mere machine; and not till that boasted 
 body of his is twisted and tortured, carbonadoed and 
 shaken to pieces, does he become humanised. 
 
 Now, why should the Church, which goes as far as 
 this with me, and declines to accept any text but that 
 which is spiritual, fear 
 
 The Devil's Evidence, 
 
 the argument for the Body, the special plea of cheap 
 Science ? If the Church does not fear it, the new 
 Inquisition does. A Vigilance Committee casts Mr. 
 Yizetelly, the publisher, into prison, for simply per- 
 mitting a scientific scavenger to produce his frightful 
 documents; while a no less vigilant Lord Chamberlain 
 refuses under any circumstances to let Gegangere be 
 performed in English u|)on the English stage. No ; 
 these things must be veiled, the argument on the other 
 side must not be stated, the descent into Hell must 
 never be alluded to, except by those who are supposed 
 to keep the Keys. Surely there is no truth which 
 Science or Art can bring to light, which Infallibility 
 should fear? Surely Satan should be permitted to' 
 argue out his case ? " No,'' says the Vigilance Com- 
 mittee and the Lord Chamberlain, '' no, a thousand 
 times ; since sewerage is a Mystery, and children and 
 young persons might overhear the argument and be 
 contaminated — that is to say, converted." A foolish 
 fear ! a feeble superstition ! The argument will out 
 somehow, in spite of all Inquisitions. Human nature 
 
22 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 
 
 will not sufter its own salvation or damnation to be 
 discussed in camerd. The matter must be fought in 
 open day. 
 
 Sometimes, Right Hon. Sir, your Church has 
 feared the truth, and on every occasion when she has 
 done so, the result to herself has been lamentable. Yet 
 it is to the Truth, the Eternal Verity, that she makes her 
 appeal, pledging herself to its infallibility. Now, I 
 could go through her dogmas one by one, and show 
 that they are constructed impregnably on the instincts 
 of human nature ; only she herself, unfortunately, has 
 misunderstood them, and hence the hideous historical 
 record which constitutes the popular indictment against 
 her. Yet, amid all follies, all contradictions, all cruelty, 
 all schism, she has kept one particular glory — her 
 patience with physical deterioration, her Faith that no 
 carnal sin or carnal knoirledge can really ivreck the 
 Soul. She has often been afraid of phantoms of her 
 own conjuring, never of flesh and blood; " ideas" have 
 terrified her, but men and women have always been 
 her sympathetic study. 
 
 In that masterpiece of English eloquence, the Areopa- 
 giticay the trumpet note of which is now faintly heard 
 in literature, our great Epic Poet has marshalled every 
 argument, produced every proof, in favour of the Liberty 
 of Unlicensed Printing. Nobler words never flowed 
 from the lips of man. Wise on this as on all other 
 vital questions, Milton, a Greek god in the thin robes 
 of a Puritan, through which his roseate nakedness shone 
 in celestial beauty, spoke more than one word for the 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 23 
 
 poor Devil. HCy at least, knew that there is weakness 
 in Humanity as well as strength, and that the primitive 
 instincts are perennial ; for had he not painted Eden 
 on Adam's marriage day, when 
 
 " To the nuptial bower 
 He led her blushing like the morn," 
 
 and had he not pictured to us the amatory exploits of 
 Zephyr and other kindred spirits ? True, he appears 
 to reserve to his friends of the Parliament the right of 
 destroying such books as are wholly prejudicial to 
 decency and harmful to the State ; ** and yet on the 
 other hand," he adds, " as good almost kill a good man 
 as kill a good book : who kills a man kills a reasonable 
 creature, God's image, but he who destroys a good book 
 kills reason itself, kills the image of God as it were in 
 the eye." Even as the holy Chrysostom nightly studied 
 Aristophanes, so did the blameless Milton nourish his 
 mind on the still more scurrilous pages of our own 
 comedians. " I cannot," he contends, " praise a fugitive 
 or cloistered virtue ; assuredly we bring not innocence 
 into the world, but impurity much rather : that which 
 purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary." 
 *' Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the 
 severest discipline that can be exercised in any 
 hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste that came not 
 thither so." 
 
 Who is to decide for us what is good, if our own 
 nature and inspiration are powerless to help us I Is it 
 to be the Pope of Rome, or any deputy Cardinal, or 
 
e4 OxY DESCENDING INTO HELL 
 
 any Scottisli Elder of the Kiik; or some member of a 
 newly created City Council, or, finally, Mr. Justice 
 Shallow of the law courts? There are zealots who 
 would burn the works of Shakspere, as there were 
 zealots who cursed and anathemized the works of 
 Burns. To a certain order of intelligence, all literature 
 is profane, dangerous, inexpedient. Large portions of 
 the community believe any stage play whatsoever is an 
 abomination ; large portions warn us that the reading 
 of any work of fiction or fairy tale is sinful and perni- 
 cious. Whither then might we turn for guidance, if 
 not to the Supreme Church which, after burning her 
 own efiete Index, may afiirm the perfect 
 
 Lawfulness of all Human Evidence, 
 
 knowing that she can, by the strength of her adaman- 
 tine logic, refute every carntil lie ? 
 
 I can assure you, Right Hon. Sir, that it is in no 
 spirit of levity that I, who liave little love for Roman 
 Catholicism, suggest a way in which the Church 
 Infallible may yet be saved. That way is, as I have 
 suggested, to perform a latter miracle, and cast in 
 her lot with the Church of Free Thought and 
 Free Speech. For I regard this j^^'oposed Sup- 
 pression of Literature as an encroachment of 
 Puritanism (which has always hated literature) on 
 the one hand, and of Pragmatic Science upon the other. 
 Puritanism afiSrms with gloomy pertinacity that we are 
 lost if we are not strictly moral, i.e., moral from the 
 puritan point of view ; Science avers with vehemence 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 25 
 
 that its raw and half- verified discoveries are to regulate 
 the conduct of our lives, and promises, if things are so 
 ordered, that Humauity will in due course, after an 
 era or two, arrive at the perfectly balanced Mind in the 
 perfectly balanced Body, — a Teutonic condition to be 
 found even 7iow in the Fatherland! Neither Puritanism 
 nor Science, however, affect the Church's prerogative by 
 one hair. The one takes too much care of our conduct, 
 the other is too anxious about our health. The Church 
 alone, at this sujDreme crisis, when an innocent man is 
 cast into prison, when the suppression of literature is 
 threatened, and when neither Puritan nor Scientist 
 cares to utter one word of public protestation, — the 
 Church alone, I say, can command the situation, and 
 deny the right of synods or vestries to silence any 
 voices, even those from Hell. Her spiritual terminology 
 is, after all, far nearer to the pantheism of Servetus, 
 than to the dismal anthropomorphism of John Calvin. 
 " I have no doubt," said the Spaniard, '' that this bench, 
 this table, and all you can point to around us is of the 
 substance of God ; " adding, when it was objected that 
 on his showing the Devil must be of God's substance 
 too, " I do not doubt it ; all things whatever are part 
 of God, and Nature is his substantial manifestation." 
 For which and other pestilent heresies, Servetus, to the 
 huge joy of John Calvin, was burned alive, roasting 
 first for two hours in the flames of a slow fire, and 
 begging piteously that they would put on more wood, 
 or do something to end his torture. 
 
 Now, all such cruelties and abominations, together 
 
26 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 
 
 with all the schisms and heresies of the Churches, have 
 arisen (1) from the human anxiety to be too rectangular, 
 too scie7itijic, and (2) from the disposition of novices in 
 discovery to force their opinions upon their neighbours. 
 Just as little as Metaphysics could tell the Church of 
 the real nature of God, while tempting its hearers to 
 tear the human images of God asunder, can Physical 
 Science tell us of the real nature and destiny of Man. 
 Humanity, at the present issue, pines to free itself from 
 all sacerdotal assumptions ; it yearns for the liberty to 
 enquire, in its own way ; and it is out of lay books, to 
 no little extent, that its knowledge must be derived. 
 Das mehr LicJit liereinhomme ! it cries with Goethe, the 
 Pagan. Just as certainly as the light which leads 
 astray may (as Burns protested) be " light from 
 Heaven,'' so may the light which guides and saves be 
 light from Hell. To drape one half of the human figure 
 is not to prove the whole structure to be celestial ; to 
 ignore the existence of Evil is not to ensure the triumph 
 of Good. The literature of Hell is God's literature too. 
 How well has suppression worked in other countries 1 
 Take Italy, for example, a country of which both 
 Providence and Priesthood have taken such particular 
 care ; the chosen home of the Index and the winking 
 Vii'gin ; the region of Pompeii and of oggetti oscenij into 
 which neither women or children are suffered to enter ? 
 There, obscene things are carefully hidden, literature is 
 wistfully burked, — with such stupendous good to the 
 community that dirt and disease and libertinage flourish 
 up to the very gates of the Vatican. Then take 
 
Oy DESCENDING INTO HELL. 27 
 
 France, with which Providence has always been in 
 more or less of a temper, where literary freedom has run 
 to licence, and where Art is synonymous with indepen- 
 dence, not to say looseness, of morality. In France, the 
 domestic affections flourish to wonderment, and the 
 idea of family relationship is strangely sacred; insomuch 
 that even in polluted Paris, on the stage, the one senti- 
 ment which " brings down the house" is the sentiment 
 of parental or filial love. Then take Germany, stran- 
 gled by the governmental Providence, and reaching to 
 its apex of licensed infamy in Berlin : a free nation 
 without a free thought, smothered by its own strength 
 of Nationality, straddled over by a Martinet of pipes 
 and beer ; the Fatherland which every German adores, 
 and escapes from at the first opportunity. Then take 
 England, still free, in spite of the god Jingo ; still 
 merry, in spite of the Rev. Mr. Grundy and his wife ; 
 yet the chosen home of the ^' young person," the land 
 where literature is under the protecting wing of Mr. 
 Mudie and where the moribund drama gasps and 
 struggles Desdemona-like under the smothering pillow 
 of the blindly jealous Lord Chamberlain. It is with 
 England, of course, that the present inquiry is most 
 concerned. With a Hterature unequalled for breadth 
 and power, with Shakspere throned and crowned, 
 and Milton uttering the trumpet notes of freedom, 
 England still languishes without ideals or ideas. She 
 has had her Jonathan Swift and her Henry Fielding, 
 but she has never had her Rousseau, — never possessed 
 one man since Milton to stand fearlessly between the 
 
28 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL, 
 
 two opposing forces of Superstition and Freedom, and 
 to utter the gospel of reconciliation ; to denounce the 
 Priestcraft of Tleligion with one breath, and the Priest- 
 craft of Science with the next ; to go down into Hell's 
 most sulphurous depths, and to learn that the only 
 light even there is Light reflected from Heaven. 
 
 For nothing in your religion, right hon. sir, is so 
 beyond contention as the dogma that Hell is ; a belief 
 which you share with your gloomy Sister. It remained 
 for a great thinker, Emmanuel Swedenborg, to estab- 
 lish the fact that Hell is not merely a locality, but also an 
 omnipresent " condition." I know scarcely one great 
 English classic, from Othello to Tom Jones, from Tom 
 Jones to Burns' Address to the Deil, which has not 
 illustrated the theory that 
 
 Hell Exists, 
 and that the Devil, who is often very humorous 
 and entertaining, should have a hearing. Since 
 we have adopted Satan's original suggestion, 
 and eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of 
 Good and Evil, I do not think Ave can alter our food 
 now, and get back to the ambrosia of Eden. The fact 
 that, ashamed of our nakedness, we have made ourselves 
 an apron, does not justify us in covering all our flesh 
 with old-fashioned steel armour. The knowledgfe we 
 have secured, at the cost of our innocence, is not to be 
 ignored. The freedom we have gained, at the price of 
 our moral peace, is not to be abandoned In other 
 words, we cannot save ourselves noiv by ignorance, nor 
 can we be saved by providential suppression. Every 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL 29 
 
 man who would be strong for the world's light must 
 visit Hell, and become acquainted with its literature ; 
 when he is certain to discover, if my own experience is 
 any guide, that the angels there are real, though fallen. 
 Even this same Zola is a prophet after your own liking, 
 if you will only bear with his banalities. He prophesies 
 Death and Doom, if purity and self-sacrifice do not arise 
 again to save the world. His text is older even than 
 your Church, — " the wages of Sin is Death." He takes 
 us from deathbed to deathbed : some vile and loathsome, 
 like that of poor Nana, some divinely beautiful, like 
 that of little Jeanne. There is a saint and a martyr 
 even in that hotbed of pornography, Pot Bouille ; and 
 when I think of the poor blind bourgeois father, copying 
 folios for a few pence that his wife and daughter may 
 wear finery, and then dying broken-hearted when he 
 finds all his life is founded on corruption, I weep at 
 another Crucifixion. To state this, is merely to contend 
 that fine things may be found even in an Inferno : that 
 Proserpine's flowers did not all fall on the ground from 
 Dis's waggon, but that some were borne with her right 
 down into Hades. Surely Zola should content those 
 who believe in corruption and deterioration. The Gospel 
 according the Sewers is your Gospel of Original Sin. The 
 scientific dogma of hereditary taint is your dogma of the 
 Fall. True, in many particulars, your creed is the nobler, 
 and will last the longer. You tell us that we may be 
 -saved by Faith, redeemed by obedience to the primal 
 Law, — and so, indeed, we may. But we shall never be 
 redeemed by closing up all books, by pretending (in the 
 
30 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL 
 
 face of our knowledge to the contrary) that there is no 
 such thing as Sin at all. 
 
 The point for which I have always contended is that 
 ^both cynical pessimism and coarse realism are alike in- 
 finitely absurd. A thoroughly unclean book is almost 
 invariably a thoroughly foolish one. Zola, for example, 
 is, at his coarsest, merely a subject for laughter ; 
 the dirt sticks to him who writes, not to him 
 who reads, and makes the writer look ridiculous. 
 The sense of the absurd, in fact, is the granum salts 
 which keeps literature wholesome. Even Justine 
 becomes innocuous, even Petronius becomes harm- 
 less, when so disinfected. Yet when I look at Rabelais 
 in his easy chair, I need no grain of salt, for I 
 am thinking only of the broad humanity of the 
 man. Even Sterne's dirty snigger is forgotten in 
 his quaint humanities. Nihil liumani a me alienum 
 puto) nothing in literary humanities injures me 
 one hair. My eyes are yonder on Mount Pisgah, and 
 though I yearn for the region of stainless snow, I know 
 my way lies through this mud. 
 
 In all these respects, and in others, I follow the 
 Koman Catholic Church. There is only one difference 
 between us, that while she fears one form of Rationalism, 
 that which deals with certain dogmas and symbols for 
 which she has an insane though natural affection, I, adding 
 eclecticism to Catholicism, fear no doctrine, no book, and 
 no man. I shall say my say for or against the Devil, as 
 any free man has a right to do, but I shall never contend 
 that he has no existence. 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL 31 
 
 In this our England, we have numerous priesthoods 
 or deputy Providences, without counting the sad and 
 cloistered priesthood of old Rome. We have, for ex- 
 ample, the priesthoods of Episcopacy, of Dissent, of 
 Good Society, of Art and Letters (or Dilletanteism), of 
 cheap Science, and, most potent, yet least responsible 
 of all, the priesthood of the Stump, or Politics. 
 Now, there is not one of all these bodies which is not 
 thoroughly convinced that its own view of the Universe 
 is right, which does not, when occasion offers, persecute 
 and torture unbelievers, which would not, if suflfered to 
 do so, summon the executioner or the constable; and if 
 these same priesthoods were to be called together in 
 full synod, and asked to decide the fate of Literature, 
 the general verdict would possibly be one of Strangu- 
 lation or Mutilation. The clergy of all denominations 
 hate each other, the Good Society people suppress each 
 other, the Dilletantes detest all curtain-lifters who are 
 not Dilletantes, and the Stump Orators are the terror 
 and the scourge of every original thinker under the sun. 
 All, however, are agreed on one point — that, in this most 
 respectable country, there must be no descending into 
 Hell, that Literature especially must be kept clean and 
 wholesome, fit for family perusal. Hence we have been 
 blest for many years with an expurgated literature, in 
 the category of which, I rejoice to say, may be found such 
 books as bring Heaven down to Earth and glorify 
 human nature. Let it be granted, indeed, that a book 
 founded on heavenly intuitions, such a book as the 
 Poems of Tennyson, as the Cloister and the Hearth of 
 
32 ON DESCENDING INTO HELD 
 
 Charles Keade, as the Esmond of Thackeray, as the 
 David Copperjield of Dickens, as the Westivard Ho of 
 Kingsley, as the Lornci Doone of Blackmore, as the 
 Woodlanders of Thomas Hardy, as the Greene Feme 
 Farm of Ricliard Jeffries, as the Angel in the House of 
 Coventry Patmore, — such a book, with the sunshine 
 and fresh air upon its leaves, — is worth a thousand 
 times all the Devil's documents put' together. We 
 thank God for it, and it has God's blessing. But there 
 are moments when even the best of us crave more, — 
 crave the bitterness of knowledge, the sight of the 
 charnel-house, the glimmer of the deep, dim lights of 
 Hell. For, as I have said, Hell is, and we must know 
 it, and to know it is, in the end, to abominate and to 
 avoid it. We are not celestial beings, yet. We are 
 earthly and human enough to fancy that the diet of 
 celestial beings is very often insipid. We want tbe 
 records of human sin and pain. We crave for the 
 elemental passions. We tire even of plum pudding, 
 and thirst to eat husks with the swine. We miss the 
 tasty leaven, in super-celestial food. And so, when we 
 are sick of a surfeit of holiness, we turn to Farquhar 
 for gay rascality, to Swift for brute-banality, to Byron 
 for lightsome devilry, to Goethe for intellectual con- 
 cupiscence, to Heine for the persiflage which scorns all 
 sanctities and laughs at all the gods, and to Zola for 
 gruesome testimony against sunlight and human 
 nature. When this is done, after we have seen the 
 Satyr romp and heard the hiccup of Silenus, after we 
 have seen Rabelais charging the monks on his ass 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL 33 
 
 Pauurge, and loft Whitman loafing naked on the sea 
 shore, do we turn again with less appetite, with less 
 eager insight, towards the shining documents of 
 Heaven ? 
 
 Of all the great writers who have been canonized by- 
 Humanity, there is scarcely one who, under the proposed 
 Inquisition of Messrs. Shallow and Dogberry, would 
 not have been "run in," pilloried, fined, or imprisoned. 
 The author of Pericles would do his six months as a 
 first-class misdemeanant, in company with the author 
 of CEdipus and other foreigners of reputation. Sappho, 
 for one little set of verses, would be tied to the cart's-tail, 
 in company with Nanon and Mrs. Behn. In one long 
 chain, the dramatists of the Elizabethan age would go 
 to the moral galleys, followed by the dirtier dramatists 
 of the Restoration. Fielding and Smollett would find 
 no mercy, Richardson himself would only escape with 
 a warning not to offend any more. To come down to 
 contemporaries, I think Mr. Browning might be 
 adjudged an offender against the law of modest 
 reticence, and Mr. George Meredith a revolutionary in 
 the region of sensuous passion. Not all his odes to 
 infancy, not all his apotheosis of the coral and the 
 lollipop, would save Mr. Swinburne. But the authors 
 of the Heir of Redcliffe and A Knight Errant would 
 rise up to the stainless shrines of literature, and Mr. 
 Sli]3pery Sweetsong might become the laureate of the 
 new age of Moral Drapery a nd Foipuls^r Maiivaise Honte, 
 How good tlien would Humanity become, bereft of 
 Shakspere's feudal glory, denied even a glimpse of 
 
 c 
 
34 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL 
 
 frisky blue stockings imder the ballet skirts of Ouida . 
 Morality would be saved, possibly. All would be 
 innocence, a moral constabulary, and good society. We 
 sliould have choked up with tracts and pretty poems 
 and proper novelettes the mouth of a sleeping volcano ; 
 but when ^tna, or Sheol, or Hell, had its periodical . 
 eruption, what would happen then '^ 
 
 I shall not attempt in the space of a brief letter to 
 penetrate into the philoaopky of this great question ; 
 but it will occur to you that Milton's famous protest 
 against the suppression of books was echoed indirectly, 
 centuries later, by Mill's notable plea for Liberty, in 
 which it was contended (1) that the opinion we wish 
 to suppress may be true ; (2) that it may, at any rate, 
 contain a portion of truth ; (3) that vigorous argument 
 concerning opinions really and ^vholly true is the only 
 way of saving these opinions from becoming conven- 
 tional and prejudicial to intellectual activity ; and (4) 
 that without such argument, even good moral doctrine 
 would cease to have any vital effect on character or 
 conduct. I rather fear, remembering a certain es- 
 trangement which resulted from a quasi-Eabelaisan 
 joke of Carlyle at Mill's expense, that the author of 
 the Essay on Liberty would have drawn the line of 
 indulgence at naughty books, — just as Locke did, much 
 earlier. But these are brave words of Locke : "It is 
 only light and evidence that can work a change in 
 men's opinions, and light cannot proceed from corporal 
 sufferings or any out tvard penalties \ " furthermore, '' the 
 power of the civil magistrate consists only in outward 
 
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL, 35 
 
 force, while true and saving religion consists in the 
 inward persuasion of the mind, without which, 
 nothing can be acceptable to God." Mill's main 
 contention is that it is w^lLjJr_n]^jwith^ji^^ in 
 
 proportion as they re spect trutlj ^. The main contention 
 of suppressionist philosophers is that if the majority can 
 crush out vice by law, it is vicious not to do it, even if 
 a little truth has to be sacrificed too. But how shall 
 we decide what is vicious ? Shall not the history of 
 persecution warn us to be careful how we judge ? And 
 in so far as books are concerned, is not the record of 
 every generation filled with the names of books labelled 
 vicious by the contemporary majority, and afterwards 
 pronounced soul-helping by the verdict of posterity ? 
 'J'he suppressed books form in themselves a Bible of 
 Humanity. If it were only for the sake of one or two 
 little chapters, say the Epistle of Shelley to the Muggle- 
 tonians or the Song of Songs (not of Solomon but) of 
 Heine, I should regard that Bible of Humanity wdth 
 devout affection. 
 
 Personally, I claim the right of free deliverance, free 
 speech, free thought, and what I claim for myself I 
 claim for every human being. I claim the right to 
 attack and to defend. I claim the right to justify the 
 Devil, if I want to. I can be suppressed by wiser 
 argument, by deeper insight, by greater knowledge, 
 but not by the magistrate, civil or literary. I 
 would stand even by Judas Iscariot in the dock, if his 
 Judge denied him a free hearing, a fair trial. The 
 Truth, if she is great as we assume her to be, must pre- 
 
 c 2 
 
30 (lv descending into hell 
 
 vail. The evidence of the Devil is necessary to secure 
 the triumph of God ; if it were otherwise, the Devil, 
 not his Judge, would be Omnipotent. And the 
 evidence which proves vice and proves virtue must be 
 from ivitliin, ivoiw the Spirit which you cannot cast into 
 prison, but which chooses not unfrequently to chain 
 and shackle itself Meantime, it is Mr. Coote and the 
 Vigilance Committee, not Mr. Yizetelly, who lie in 
 ignoble chains. We want more Light, not more 
 Darkness; more knowledge, not more ignorance; not 
 more government, but more freedom of speech, more 
 production of documents, more verification. Let your 
 Church, Piight Hon. Sir, turn round upon herself and 
 say this, and we shall witness the conversion of another 
 Saul. Help her to say it. Justify literature, justify 
 free thought, by releasing Mr. Vizetelly from a bondage 
 which is an insult to literature. You have only to lift 
 your hand. You have only to say : " God is, and He 
 fears nothing, good or evil, that He has created." This 
 would be the last and crowning proof of one man's 
 wisdom ; of the Church's infallibility, w^hich is insight; 
 of her function, which is the reconciliation and inter- 
 penetration of good and evil; and of her prerogative, 
 which is the right of Spiritual Judgment independent 
 of the dim and doubtful lights of the Civil La^v. The 
 police magistrate cannot save us from Evil, which is 
 in ourselves, but, even now, Religion can. 
 
 In this country, I believe, only two classes are 
 specially pornographic ; those who never read at all, 
 because they cannot or will not, and those who are suffi- 
 
(AY DESCENDING INTO HELL, - 37 
 
 ciently wealthy to buy and read editions de luxe. Mr. 
 Yize telly's publications cannot affect the former classes, 
 and their existence is a matter of indifference to the 
 latter, who finger their Casanova at leisure, and pay 
 readily for costly works like Burton's translation of the 
 Arabian Nights. The point of the persecution, there- 
 fore, appears to be that Mr. Yizetelly's books are 
 sufficiently attractive and cheap to reach those classes 
 who are pornographic in neither their habits nor their 
 tastes : young clerks, frisky milliners, et hoc genus omne. 
 Now, these people are precisely those who are robust^ 
 and healthy-minded enough, familiar with the world 
 enough, to discriminate for themselves. Whatever they 
 ^choose to read will make them neither better nor worse. 
 The milliner will frisk without the aid of a Zola, and 
 the young clerk will follow the milliner, even within 
 the protective shadow of a Youog Man's Christian 
 Association. 'Wholesale corruption never yet came 
 from corrupt literature : which is the effect, not the 
 cause, of social libertinage. Do we find morality so 
 plentiful amongst the godly farmers and drovers of 
 Annandale, or among the " unco' gude" of Ayrshire or 
 Dumfriesshire — thumbers of the Bible, sheep of the 
 Kirk 1 Stands Scotland anywhere but where it did, 
 though it has not yet acquired an aesthetic taste for 
 the Abominable, but merely realizes occasionally the 
 primitive instincts of La Terre f Dwells perfect purity 
 in Brittany and in Normandy, despite the fact that 
 Zola there is an unknown quantity, and Paris itself a 
 thing of dream \ [ Bestialism, animalism, sensualism. 
 
38 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 
 
 realism, call it by what name you will, is antecedent to 
 and triumphant over all books whatsoever. Books may 
 reflect it, that is all ; and I fail to see why they should 
 not, since it exists. I love my Burns and like my 
 Byron, though neither was a virtuous or even a 
 "decent" person. ^\Jy Juvenal, my Lucretius, my 
 Catullus, and even my j^orcus porcorum Petronius, are 
 well read. My Decamero^i, with all its incidence of 
 amativeness, • is a breeding nest of poets. Age 
 cannot wither, nor custom stale. La Fontaine's infinite 
 variety. But I take such books as these, as I take 
 all such mental food, cum grano salis, a pinch of 
 which keeps each from corruption. Even the fly- 
 blown Gautier looks well, cold and inedible, 
 on a sideboard, garnished with Style's fresh parsley. 
 But I have never found that what my teeth 
 nibble at has any power to pollute my immortal 
 part. I must stand on the earth, with Montaigne and 
 Eabelais, but does that prevent me from flying 
 heavenward with Jean Paul, or walking the mountain- 
 tops with the Shepherd of Rydal ? Lispection of 
 the dung-heaps and slaughter-houses with Jonathan 
 Swift and Zola only makes me more anxious to get 
 away, with Rousseau, to the peaceful height where the 
 Savoyard Vicar prays ? By Evil only, shall ye dis- 
 tinguish Good, says the Master ; yea, and by the husks 
 shall ye know the grain. 
 
 The man who says that a Book has power to pollute 
 his Soul ranks his Soul below a Book. I rank mine 
 
 infinitely higher. 
 
 ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
 
Note. — Since the above letter was written, I have heard that Messrs. 
 Vizetelly have "suppressed" their translation of Murger's Vie de 
 Boheme, a book as good and wholesome, to my mind, as life itself ; 
 and that Messrs. Chatto and Windus have burned their *' stocks" 
 of Eabelais and Boccaccio. tempora ! mores ! soedum 
 insipiens et injicetumf What next? — and next? and next? And 
 simultaneously comes the legislation which confines the ragged street- 
 child to the slums, and denies it one glimpse of happiness in the 
 wicked Theatre ! Only those who really know the facts, who have 
 been familiar with the blessing a single Drury Lane Pantomime used 
 to bring to a thousand homes, can understand the cruelty and futility 
 of this last example of providential legislation. 
 
 R. B. 
 
Mr. Buchanan's Ifew Epic Poem. 
 
 Second Edition, Price Gs., with Two Illustrations 
 
 by Macnab. 
 
 THE CITY OF DEE AM, 
 
 BY ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
 
 Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, the Historian^ said, in 
 responding for Literature at the Royal Academy 
 Banquet, 1888: " If it be said that this great 
 master of picturesque Enghsh (Kinglake) was 
 reared in the traditions of a more artistic age, I 
 would venture to point to a poem which has only 
 been a few weeks before the world, but which is 
 destined to take a prominent place in the litera- 
 ture of its time. . . I refer to the City of 
 Dream, by Robert Buchanan. . . While such 
 works are produced in England, it cannot, I think, 
 be said that the artistic spirit in English literature 
 has very seriously decayed." 
 
 The Daily News said : " A poet by instinct, 
 by inspiration ; by gift of utterance and expression. 
 His present work is one which, were it signed by 
 an unknown hand, would have made a reputation. 
 . . . Rare descriptive power, fine imagery, 
 profound pathetic sympathy. . . A succession 
 of chords v^hich resolve themselves into a majestic 
 harmony at the close/' 
 
 LONDON : CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 
 
V 
 
 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 RENEWALS ONLY— TEL. NO. 642-3405 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are sub jea to immediatp MnU. 
 
 gfElC^^ *-^ WW 
 
 KA/ 1^ " "^ 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 T r»oi A «n«, ft 'aa General Library 
 
U C BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 CDS7^bfl7SD 
 
 M116807 
 
 (6 
 
 n 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY