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 Modern Men of Letters 
 
 HONESTLY CRITICISED. 
 
 J. HAIN FRISWELL, 
 
 Author of "Essays on English Writers," 
 &c.r &c. 
 
 Sontion : 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 
 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 MDCCCI.XX.
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS, BUCKLERSBURY, LONDON.
 
 :> 
 
 I05 
 
 tlTo P?ig CFxcellcncj) 
 M. SYLVAIN VAN DE WEYER, 
 
 MINISTRE d'etat, 
 ENVOYB EXTRAORDINAIRE ET MINISTRE PLENIPOTENTIARE, 
 
 IN ADMIRATION OF HIS GENIUS AS A WRITER 
 
 HIS SKILL AND HONESTY AS A DIPLOMATIST 
 
 AND IN GRATITUDE FOR HIS FRIENDSHIP
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 ^3^^J^ 
 
 HE ordinary mode of criticising the results 
 of a scholar's hard and long-continued work 
 is, as we are well aware, to test it here and 
 there by means of the index, and to show off the 
 critic's second-hand learning at the expense of the 
 literary subject which he is dissecting, pointing out 
 a weak point here and an unsound spot there ; but 
 such a mode of treatment would be entirely beside 
 the mark in the present case." 
 
 The above sentence from a review in the A thencEum 
 of May 2ist, will be a sufficient explanation of, and 
 excuse for, the words on the title-page, " honestly 
 criticised." The italics are not those of the journal, 
 but added here to mark the openness of confession, 
 and, at the same time, the curious reservation in 
 favour of Mr. Cox's work on the " Myths of the 
 Aryan Nations," as if in any case so perfunctory 
 and essentially dishonest a method could be excused.
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 But there is even a worse "mode of treatment" with 
 some critics, which is to fall into, or even to commit, 
 blunders and errors, and to attribute them to the 
 more correct author. Those who have suffered from 
 such a treatment, have learnt the value of such 
 criticism, and the causes which make the ordinary 
 book-notice valueless. As a rule, if an author be 
 good and strong, he will succeed, and the more 
 antagonism he meets with, the better. The only 
 thing valuable in this life is Truth, and although 
 at present we may be overborne with a multiplicity 
 and superabundance of error, although we are quite 
 aware that Truth can effectually be stamped down 
 and hidden for years, still the more ardent and con- 
 stant grows our belief in the ultimate triumph of 
 that which is earnest and right. A bad book may 
 have a wide-spread influence and may succeed for 
 a time, but, as a rule, that influence is contemptible 
 and its reign is exceedingly short ; goodness and 
 wisdom win the day, they only are permanent and 
 endure. 
 
 Another great fault in the criticism of the present 
 day is its cliquisni. If the author of a book be 
 unknown, if he veil his name for a time, he may 
 chance to meet with a valuable, because an un-
 
 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 biassed, review of his work. So well is this known, 
 that we could count on our fingers ten of the best 
 authors of the day who have written anonymously 
 for the express purpose of eliciting from the Press 
 a true value of their work; and as these gentlemen — 
 among whom we may count Mr. Disraeli and Lord 
 Lytton — have more than once resorted to this 
 method, we presume that it has been successful. 
 The simple suggestion, often most erroneous, that 
 Mr. A has been very successful, and that his works 
 bring him much money, is sufficient to make the 
 envious and unsuccessful irritated and inimical. 
 Not that critics have no generosity, they have often 
 exhibited much, but that in the poorly-paid and 
 poorly-prized profession to which they belong, the 
 trials of which are so acute, and the nature of those 
 engaged in it so sensitive, some seem to feel the 
 success of a fellow or a contemporary whom they 
 hardly recognised, as a personal insult. There is 
 also a Celtic and Bohemian delight in following the 
 practice of that humorous Irishman who, wanting 
 to fight with somebody, walked out of the tent or 
 booth, and felt outside its canvas for the hardest, 
 roundest, and biggest head of those who leant 
 against its sides, gave it a crack with his shillelah,
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 and then waited for its owner to come and defend 
 himself. Many a peaceful author, thus refreshing 
 himself after his labour, has been cruelly assaulted 
 in this way, and the pain resulting from such a 
 wound is acute — for it is but human nature that a 
 man who has written a wise or clever book should 
 desire the guerdon of praise. That, we know from 
 the purest and best penman who ever lived, " is 
 the last infirmity of noble minds." Let us add, 
 that if the wielder of the shillelah belongs to a 
 clique, he spares the heads of his friends, out of a 
 prophetic feeling that they in their turn will spare 
 his. 
 
 "To-morrow," says Disraeli in "Lothair," "the 
 critics will be upon us. Who are the critics ? they 
 who have been unsuccessful in literature and art ; " 
 to which we would add, not always jn^successful. 
 One of the greatest dangers of an author arises from 
 the successful, the genial, and the friendly critic, 
 who will applaud his mistakes, quote his platitudes 
 for beauties, patronise him in a way as open as it 
 is oily, and who, while he reveals his bias, shows 
 nothing else in three columns of grammatical com- 
 monplace. Such writing as this deprived a certain 
 paper of its selling value. There was a time when
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 a review in would sell an edition of a novel. 
 
 " If you can promise me a review there, '^ said a 
 well-known publisher to a well-known lady writer, 
 "I can raise the copy money by £150 or ^£'200 ! " 
 But he would not do so now. As the Economist 
 wisely notes in other matters, the Press, especially 
 the London Press, is losing its influence ; the cause 
 is, that much of it is losing its truth. A paper 
 known to be skilful and honest is as influential 
 as heretofore. We have no reason surely to regret 
 the loss of an influence which is essentially im- 
 moral ; we may be certain that the Press will regain 
 that influence when it deserves it, and that the 
 really influential portion does, even at present, both 
 hold and deserve it. 
 
 Lastly, criticism which, as is too often the 
 " mode," — to use the word of the Athenceum, — lays 
 on the praise, or the contrary objurgation, in huge 
 layers, simple without being pure, is unworthy of 
 the name. To judge fairly, you must at least be 
 a judge. " It is an easy task to praise or blame, the 
 hard task and the virtue to do both." This sentence 
 has been borne in mind throughout this book, and 
 has never been absent from the writer's mind. 
 Where blame has been freely expressed, reason has
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 been given for it. We are getting weary of false 
 
 friendships and falser animosities in literature ; it 
 
 is time to call a spade a spade. As the great 
 
 Dryden — for the touch is his, though found in Sir 
 
 William Soame's translation from " Boileau," which 
 
 he altered and amended — said : 
 
 " In our scribbling times 
 No fool can want a sot to praise his rhymes: 
 The flattest work has ever in the Court 
 Met with some zealous ass for its support: 
 And in all times a forward scribbling fop 
 Has found some greater fool to cry him up." 
 
 And the present Laureate has left it on record that 
 reviewers are "indolent," and that "raffs are rife 
 in prose and rhj'me." The best way to discourage 
 the terrible waste of paper and print at present 
 going on, is for competent critics to speak out 
 firmly and fully, with an honesty which will secure 
 attention, with a judgment that will carry convic- 
 tion, with a severity which is more kind in reality 
 than ungrudging praise, and with a decision which 
 must arise from all three. How far the writer has 
 been able to follow his own rule, he leaves to the 
 most kind, yet severe, the most unbiassed and most 
 competent of all critics, the Public, to say. 
 
 September, 1870.
 
 A CAVEAT, 
 
 WHICH THE AUTHOR EARNESTLY REQUESTS THE 
 READER TO LOOK OVER, AND NOT TO OVERLOOK, 
 
 " We see that Mr. Friswell has in the press a volume entitled 
 ' Modern Men of Letters honestly Criticised.' We confess we 
 are not a little anxious to see the book. If it be what it 
 professes to be, the author must be a more fearless man than 
 most literary men are. If his criticism be unfavourable — and 
 surely it cannot all be flattering — he will find he had better have 
 put his head into a hornets' nest. Let him beware of the little 
 clique of brethren of the Society for Mutual Admiration. If 
 he refuses them the due to which they fancy they are entitled, 
 it will go hard with him." 
 
 This paragraph, from the Literary World of 
 September 2nd, will prove to the reader that some 
 alteration is needed in the present mode of criticism, 
 if the fears expressed by the honest and able sheet 
 whence I quote it, have any foundation. It is to 
 be sincerely hoped that they have not. Surely the 
 English critics, from whom personally I have re- 
 ceived so much kind consideration, are too manly 
 to be biassed by pique or spite. The paragraph
 
 XU A CAVEAT. 
 
 is cited, however, because it affords the writer an 
 opportunity to explain the nature of his book, and 
 to apologise for its shortcomings. 
 
 The reader will perceive that the sketches are 
 bibliographical and biographical as well as critical ; 
 too many authors are debated to allow of the reviews 
 to be exhaustive, or to be other than they are — an 
 introduction to the study of modern writers. The 
 reader will also please to note that although the 
 writer has the honour to be known to almost all 
 the subjects of these pen-and-ink sketches, the 
 personal notes are such only as could be made 
 from the public appearance, or from the photo- 
 graphic portraits of the authors; and that while 
 earnest opinions are strongly expressed, it is trusted 
 that such expression never oversteps the bounds of 
 good breeding, nay, even of good nature.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 4^ 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 MR. MARK LEMON 
 
 VICTOR HUGO 
 
 CHARLES READE. 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, M.A., D.C.L , ETC 
 
 THE ETHICS OF RUSKIN . 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING . 
 
 MR. ANTHONY TROLLOPE . 
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON . 
 
 MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA 
 
 MR. CHARLES LEVER . 
 
 MR. GEORGE GROTE . 
 
 THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI, P.C, D 
 
 LORD LYTTON . 
 
 MR. HARRISON AINSWORTH 
 
 C.L., 
 
 M.P., 
 
 ETC. 
 
 ETC. 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 49 
 6i 
 
 n 
 
 91 
 
 105 
 
 119 
 
 135 
 
 147 
 
 159 
 171 
 
 183 
 
 195 
 
 243 
 257
 
 xiv 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW . 
 
 MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE 
 
 THE REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY , 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON . 
 
 MR. T. W. ROBERTSON 
 
 M. EDMOND ABOUT 
 
 PAGE 
 285 
 
 333 
 
 346 
 360
 
 CHARLES DICKENS.
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 {he great humorous novelist whose life 
 stands first in our volume is but lately 
 dead. What follows was written while 
 he was alive, but on careful revision the writer 
 finds nothing to alter. He was not one of those 
 who flattered Dickens while living, nor is he one 
 who would alter his opinion when dead. What 
 is written was and is felt, and the late author knew 
 how dangerous and fallible, how hurtful to a living 
 author is criticism which is injudicious in its praise 
 and unthoughtful even in its fault-finding. A French 
 writer, if we believe the newspapers, relates that 
 Dickens said to him that " he had been spoilt by 
 over-much kindness," or words to that effect; "this," 
 said the gentleman, "was not true; but he felt it, and 
 if he felt it, it was true." For a young author looks 
 
 B
 
 2 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 for kindly guidance and a wise supervision. He 
 seldom finds either. The ordinary critic 
 
 " Wonders with a foolish face of praise " 
 
 at his brilliant passages, praises him too often 
 for his faults, checks him when he should be 
 encouraged, and nurses a folly till it becomes a vice. 
 " Don't mind the critics," said Thackeray to me, " I 
 never read what is written of me ; I am tired of 
 seeing my name in print," With these few words 
 written without arriere pens<^e, let us proceed to our 
 subject. The paragraph which follows I quote : — 
 
 " Charles John Hougham Dickens (the two intermediate 
 names being never used by him) was born on the 7th of 
 February, 1812, at Portsmouth, his father being Mr. John 
 Dickens, once a clerk in the Pay Department of the Navy, 
 but who, at the close of the war, retired on his pension, and 
 came to London as a newspaper reporter. After being 
 educated at Chatham, Charles Dickens was articled to a 
 solicitor in Bedford Row, and reminiscences of his office life 
 are to be found in the clerkly doings at Messrs. Dodson and 
 Fogg's, and through the pages of " Copperficld " and " Bleak 
 House." But he did not take kindly to the law, and, having 
 acquired the mysteries of shorthand, soon obtained employment 
 as a reporter. His first engagements were on the T?-7ie Sun 
 and the Mirror of Parliament, but he soon joined the staff of 
 the Morning Chrotiicle. The late Earl of Derby, then Lord 
 Stanley, had on some important occasion made a grand speech 
 in the House of Commons. This speech, of immense length, 
 it was found necessary to compress ; but so admirably had its 
 pith and marrow been given in the Morning Chronicle, that 
 Lord Stanley sent to the office requcsling that the gentleman 
 who had reported it would wait upon him at his residence in
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 3 
 
 Carlton House-terrace, that he might then and there take 
 down the speech in its entirety from his lordship's lips, Lord 
 Stanley being desirous of having a perfect transcript of it. The 
 reporter was Charles Dickens. He attended, took down the 
 speech, and received Lord Stanley's compliments on his work. 
 Many years after, Mr. Dickens, dining for the first time with 
 a friend in Carlton House Terrace, found the aspect of the 
 dining-room strangely familiar to him, and on making inquiries 
 discovered that the house had previously belonged to Lord 
 Derby, and that that was the very room in which he had 
 taken down Lord Stanley's speech. 
 
 " It is a mistake to suppose that Mr. Dickens's earliest 
 writings appeared in the Morning Chronicle under the editor- 
 ship of Mr. Black. Mr. Dickens first became connected with 
 the Morniftg Chronicle as a reporter in the gallery of the House 
 of Commons This was in 1 835-36, but Mr. Dickens had been pre- 
 viously engaged, while in his nineteenth year, as a reporter for a 
 publication entitled the Mirror of Parliament, in which capacity 
 he occupied the very highest rank among the eighty or ninety 
 reporters for the press then in Parliament," 
 
 It was a natural leap from reporting to "sketching," 
 as the term then was, and a Mr. White, in his 
 " Mornings at Bow Street," had made such sketches 
 possible and popular. In 1835 Captain Holland 
 conducted the Old Monthly Magazine, and in these 
 pages sketches of a humorous character, signed 
 " Boz," first appeared. Almost simultaneously with 
 these was written a comic opera, entitled "Village 
 Coquettes," the verses of which survived for some 
 time, being sung at various concerts by Braham, 
 When a gentleman who, writing to a paper, signs 
 himself "J. G.," took the editorship of the Old 
 
 B 2
 
 4 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Monthly, Captain Holland, excellent editor ! had 
 forgotten the name of his contributor, although 
 "J. G." had marked the verve and worth of the 
 " Sketches." With some trouble it was found, and 
 Dickens, when written to, offered to furnish matter at 
 eight guineas a sheet of sixteen pages ; in six months 
 from that date, so rapid was his rise, he could have 
 commanded one hundred guineas. Thus Dickens 
 commenced literary life. How easily he succeeded 
 he has told us in a speech he made at a literary 
 dinner. "I began to tread this life when very 
 young, without money, without influence, without 
 companions, introducer, or adviser," and he adds, 
 " I met with no dragons in the path," to which one 
 may add, "No, but with many friends." 
 
 These "Sketches" were reprinted in 1836 and 1837 
 respectively, and published by Mr. Macrone, of 
 Regent Street, illustrated by George Cruikshank, 
 whose name was relied on to sell them rather than 
 that of the author. The papers and illustrations 
 are worthy of each other; both are exaggerations, 
 rather than caricatures, the exaggeration being but a 
 veil through which the truth was easil}' seen. Each 
 character is drawn ad vivum, and our fathers thought 
 them very vulgar if very funny, but there is now 
 and then a touch of real genius ; the sketch of 
 Monmouth Street is not only fanciful, but at the 
 same time true and pathetic. Their value as true
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 5 
 
 pieces of art may be seen in their present popularity 
 in Mr. Bellew's Readings, and at "Penny Readings." 
 They are not above the calibre of the lower middle- 
 class, and suit persons easily amused by pantomimic 
 action. Some of them are far too free for strait- 
 laced people of the present day, and the " Blooms- 
 bury Christening" has been objected to by more 
 than one clergyman as profane. In a volume of 
 Dickens's life, hastily got up, it is asserted that 
 Dickens formed his style upon Mr. Pierce Egan's 
 "Tom and Jerry; or, Life in London." He did 
 no such thing ; he has named one of his sons Henry 
 Fielding and Smollett, and the influence of those 
 writers on Dickens, no less than on Thackeray, is 
 distinctly traceable on every line of his works. 
 
 The success of Dickens in the good old days when 
 publishers really now and then suggested works to 
 authors, had the effect of inducing Messrs. Chapman 
 and Hall to propose that he should write certain 
 libretti, to plates of a comic character, and of 
 the sporting-life class, furnished by a very clever 
 humorous artist, Mr. Robert Seymour. There is 
 no doubt that all that Dickens was expected to do 
 was to write up to these plates, and the accounts 
 given by himself and Mrs. Seymour, widow of the 
 artist, naturally vary. The idea floating in the 
 mind of the publishers was, that they would put before 
 the public in Dickens's own words, " a monthly
 
 b MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 something to be the vehicle for certain plates to be 
 executed by Mr. Seymour." This is distinct enough, 
 the inferior position was assigned to the literary 
 artist. Here are Dickens's words : — 
 
 " I was a young man of two or three-and-twenty, when 
 Messrs. Chapman and Hall, attracted by some pieces I was at 
 that time writing in the Mortiing Chronicle newspaper, or had 
 just written in the Old Motithly Magazine (of which one series 
 had lately been collected and published in two volumes, illus- 
 trated by Mr. George Cruikshank), waited upon me to propose 
 a something that should be published in shilling numbers — 
 then only known to me, or, I believe, to anybody else, by a dim 
 recollection of certain interminable novels in that form, which 
 used to be carried about the country by pedlars ; and over some 
 of which I remember to have shed innumerable tears before I 
 had served my apprenticeship to life. When I opened my door 
 in Furnival's Inn to the partner who represented the firm. I 
 recognised in him the person from whose hands I had bought, 
 two or three years previously, and whom I had never seen 
 before or since, my first copy of the magazine in which my first 
 effusion — a paper in the ' Sketches,' called ' Mr. Minns and his 
 Cousin' — dropped stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear 
 and trembling, into a dark letter-box, in a dark office, up a dark 
 court in Fleet-street — appeared in all the glory of print ; on 
 which occasion I walked down to Westminster Hall, and turned 
 into it for half an hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with 
 joy and pride, that they could not bear the street, and were not 
 fit to be seen there. I told my visitor of the coincidence, which 
 we both hailed as a good omen, and so fell to business. The 
 idea propounded to me was, that the monthly something should 
 be a vehicle for certain plates to be executed by Mr. Seymour ; 
 and there was a notion, either on the part of that admirable 
 humorous artist, or of my visitor, that a ' Nimrod Club,' the 
 members of which were to go out shooting, fishing, and so forth, 
 and getting themselves into difficulties through their want of 
 dexterity, would be the best means of introducing these. I
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 7 
 
 objected, on consideration, that, although born and partly bred 
 in the country, I was no great sportsman, except in regard of 
 all kinds of locomotion ; that the idea Was not novel, and had 
 been already much used ; that it would be infinitely better for 
 the plates to arise naturally out of the text ; and that I would 
 like to take my own way, with a freer range of English scenes 
 and people, and was afraid I should ultimately do so in any 
 case, whatever course I might prescribe to myself at starting. 
 My views being deferred to, I thought of Mr. Pickwick, and 
 wrote the first number, from the proof-sheets of which Mr. 
 Seymour made his drawing of the club, and his happy portrait 
 of its founder — the latter on Mr. Edward Chapman's descrip- 
 tion of the dress and bearing of a real personage whom he had 
 often seen. I connected Mr. Pickwick with a club, because of 
 the original suggestion, and I put in Mr. Winkle expressly for 
 the use of Mr. Seymour. We started with a number of twc-nty- 
 four pages instead of thirty-two, and four illustrations in lieu of 
 a couple. Mr. Seymour's sudden and lamented death before 
 the second number was published, brought about a quick de- 
 cision upon a point already in agitation ; the number became 
 one of thirty-two pages, with only two illustrations, and re- 
 mained so to the end. ' Boz,' my signature in the Mortiing 
 Chronicle and in the Old Monthly Magazine, appended to the 
 monthly cover of this book, and retained long afterwards, was 
 the nickname of a pet child, a younger brother, whom I had 
 dubbed Moses, in honour of the Vicar of Wakefield, which, being 
 facetiously pronounced through the nose, became Boses, and, being 
 shortened, became Boz. Boz was a very familiar household word 
 to me long before I was an author, and so I came to adopt it." 
 
 This account has been questioned, and Mr. 
 Dickens has told us that " Mr. Seymour never 
 originated an incident, a phrase, nor a word in the 
 book; that Mr. Seymour died when only twenty- 
 four pages of the book were published ; that he 
 (Dickens) only saw Seymour once in his life, the
 
 8 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 night before his death, and that then he offered no 
 suggestion whatever." 
 
 In effect, the artist, overburdened with work, in 
 a fit of derangement, committed suicide ; and, very 
 luckily for Dickens, Mr. Hablot Browne, a young 
 artist who, by a drawing of John Gilpin, had won 
 an academy medal, was called in to do his w^ork. 
 He threw himself with ardour into the task. Mr. 
 Dickens named himself " Boz," H. K. Browne 
 called himself "Phiz;" the character of the work 
 was altered, two illustrations were given instead of 
 four, and thirty-two pages of letter press instead of 
 twenty-four. For some time the work was not very 
 successful, but at last it hit the public, and the 
 success was immense. The publishers presented 
 the author with some silver punch-ladles, which, like 
 apostles' spoons, bore the chief characters in little 
 gilt and modelled figures on the handles, and gave 
 him a very handsome addition to the honorarium ; 
 it is said that the firm made ^^20,000 by the volume ! 
 
 Bymost people " Pickwick" isacceptedas Dickens's 
 Magnum Opus. It certainly is a t3'pical one, but 
 while the whole book is farcical in the extreme, 
 while character degenerates to caricature, and fun 
 to pantomimic romp and " rally," there are now and 
 then touches of very clever shrewd observation, 
 most admirable sketches of character — Sergeant 
 Buzfuz and the trial scene are evidently quite true
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 9 
 
 to nature, and pathos of the genial easy and or- 
 dinary kind in which the author delighted. But as 
 a novel of nature and of plot and character compared 
 to Fielding, " Pickwick " is very small. Who ever 
 met with man, woman, or child, who could sit down 
 by a wdnter fire and tell the " plot " of " Pickwick ? " 
 Had it come out as a whole book, it would have 
 failed to find readers, it would, like Hudibras, have 
 palled on the taste ; it is too full of incident, scene 
 succeeds scene, and adventure, adventure. The 
 novel is crowded with persons, and each person is — 
 how different from real life and Mr. Trollope — not 
 cut to pattern, but a character. There is the fat, 
 bland, benevolent, silly, vulgar tradesman, Mr. 
 Pickwick, a man with a good heart and a soft head, 
 with his unequalled servant, Mr. Sam Weller, who 
 one of the editors of the Spectator says, is superior to 
 Falstaff. There are the volatile Jingle, the cheat, 
 and the rascal, and his servant Job, the canting 
 hypocrite, drawn as pendants to the honest master 
 and man ; old Mr. Weller and the mother-in-law, 
 the man in the Fleet, the lawyers Dodson and Fogg, 
 Stiggins, the dissenting minister, with his proclivity 
 to pine-apple rum; Bob Sawyer and Ben Allen, Mrs. 
 Leo Hunter and her party. Potts and Slurk, the rival 
 newspaper editors of Eatanswill ; Mrs. Potts, the fat 
 boy, and the pretty housemaid ; all these sketches 
 dwell on the memory; the people lived then ; do they
 
 10 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 live now ? do we meet them ? That question truly 
 answered will determine Dickens's value as a true 
 artist, as one who drew from nature. 
 
 When "Pickwick" was finished, the author rested 
 for some months, and then brought out " Nicholas 
 Nickleby." As in '' Pickwick " he had made a violent 
 attack on the Fleet Prison and imprisonment for debt, 
 so in "Nicholas Nickleby" Dickens determined to 
 tilt at some of the social evils w^hich will always beset 
 us. Going down to Yorkshire to study the cheap 
 schools of that county, horrid places at which there 
 was carried on an advanced species of baby-farming* 
 combined with education, and pretending to have 
 the child of a widow to put to school, he met with the 
 original John Browdie, and it is more than suspected 
 with the original Squeers. The first said to him, 
 " Well, misther, we've been very plaisant together, 
 and I'll speak my mind tivvee. Doan't let weedur 
 send ur little boy to yan o'our schoolmeasters, while 
 there's a harse to hoold in a' Lunnun, and a gootther 
 to lie asleep in." Mr. Squeers saia many precious 
 sentences, and sat for his portrait. This picture of 
 Squeers in " Nickleby" was so true and natural that 
 
 * What a terribly grim satire there is in the German word 
 for baby-farming, '' angcl-making." Alas ! what will be the 
 after punishment of those who thus people heaven by the slow 
 martyrdom of those whose " angels " always behold the face of 
 God!
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. II 
 
 many of the schoolmasters identified themselves 
 with it : and one individual who happened to have 
 but one eye, and who, therefore, resembled Squeers 
 physically as well as mentally, threatened the author 
 with an action at law. 
 
 Mr. Crummies and his company show that the 
 author had an intimate acquaintance with provincial 
 theatrical life behind the scenes — there is indeed a 
 legend that he acted at Rochester theatre ; whilst 
 Mrs. Nickleby is as true a picture of a genial, blun- 
 dering, tiresome, affectionate, egotistical, silly, gar- 
 rulous, middle-aged lady, as is Mrs. Primrose in the 
 "Vicar of Wakefield." Mr. Mantalini, with his 
 gross overdoses of affectionate humbug, and continual 
 "demmit," is just what one would expect a good- 
 looking, unprincipled man-milliner to be — but he 
 does not do for too close consideration. Tim 
 Linkinwater, Miss La Creevy, Sir Mulberry Hawk, 
 and Lord Frederick Verisopht ; Mrs. Wititterley, 
 and the Kenwigses, including Mr. Lillyvick, besides 
 many minor characters just sketched in, such as the 
 young proprietor of the hair-dresser's shop, can 
 scarcely be exceeded in their truth to nature. Ralph 
 Nickleby, the uncle, has been objected to as too 
 theatrically scowling and malevolent, and too cal- 
 culatingly wicked. The other usurer, Gride, is a 
 more common-place personage — simply a miser. 
 Bray and his daughter, again, weakly melodramatic,
 
 12 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 but beneath the veil of exaggeration there is some- 
 thing of the reality of life. Newman Noggs is an 
 eccentric creature, one of whom it is just possible to 
 meet in a lifetime, and the like of the Brothers 
 Cheeryble must be rare birds indeed. No sensible 
 critic will accept such straw-stuffed figures, such 
 benevolent theatrical dolls as truth, or anything near 
 it. With an obstinacy which continually manifested 
 itself, Mr. Dickens vehemently asserted that they 
 existed, "and that their liberal charity, their single- 
 ness of heart, their noble nature, and their unbounded 
 benevolence, are no creations of the author's brain." 
 Happy, indeed, must be the poor who come within 
 the orbit of their influence ! Nicholas himself is the 
 portrait of a generous, somewhat common-place, and 
 natural young man ; and Kate is a very pretty girl — 
 a fit sister to such a brother. There is little attempt 
 at high-flown or sensational writing, and the interest 
 is, to use a stereotyped phrase with critics, well 
 kept up. 
 
 In spite of Dickens's assertion that he had no friend 
 or companion to help him when he commenced 
 literature, we must own that his success, his talent, 
 and his genial manner soon brought him many. Mr. 
 John Forster, of the Examiner, and biographer of 
 Oliver Goldsmith, devoted many patient hours to 
 the correction of all his proof-sheets ; Mr. W. H.\\'ills, 
 the sub-editor of All the Year Round, was ready
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. I3 
 
 to aid him as a faithful henchman, and to these were 
 added Mr. Mark Lemon, Sir E. L. Bulwer, and even 
 the trenchant Jeffery, of the Edinburgh Review. 
 Indeed, the lonely and unaided young author seems 
 to have been peculiarly happy in the number and the 
 influential character of his friends, and it is to the 
 mutual honour of these gentlemen that nothing but 
 death has divided them, and that they who were his 
 companions and admirers in his youth, were as ardent 
 and warm as ever till death divided them. 
 
 It began to be whispered about this time that 
 Dickens was well acquainted with low life, as if an 
 author, or as he himself uses the word, an artist 
 could paint only from well-dressed lay figures and 
 did not delight, in the very depths of his artistic 
 nature, in light and shadows. Mr. Dickens next 
 endeavoured the delineation of low life, and in " Oliver 
 Twist," first published in Bentley's Miscellany, of 
 which he became editor, revealed some of the dark- 
 nesses of London life, and instituted a class of 
 literature from which we have never since then been 
 free. This story, illustrated with a vigour and a 
 genius equal to that of the text, by George Cruikshank, 
 is one of the best Dickens has ever written. Never 
 were the precincts of Field Lane, which stood opposite 
 the terminus of the Metropolitan Railway in Victoria 
 Street, and one side of which remains, more benefi- 
 cially explored. Never were workhouses more cleverly
 
 14 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 dealt with; the heaviest blow ever given to "Bum- 
 bledom" — the name dates from the book — was therein 
 dealt. The portraits of Fagin, Charley Bates, and 
 the Artful Dodger, are works of art. Nor are Bill 
 Sykes and Nancy to be forgotten ; the murder of 
 Nancy, the flight and death of Sykes, and the trial 
 of Fagin, are masterpieces of earnest descriptive 
 writing, and show the true intuition of genius. When 
 Dickens read, or rather acted, the murder scene, the 
 intensity of his acting filled his hearers with horror ; 
 the scene itself had evidently been studied for days 
 and nights by the author, who always dwelt on his 
 own creations. One or two characters are mere 
 sketches. Monks is a gloomy scoundrel; and Rose 
 Maylie, a milk-and-water damsel of the real Dickensian 
 ideal: but amidst vice, depravity, cunning, theft, and 
 murder, the author treads firmly and cleanly, and 
 teaches us that best of lessons — to pity the guilty 
 while we hate the guilt, and especially to 
 
 " Look upon the poor with gentle eye, 
 For in their figures often angels desire an alms." 
 
 He had often experienced the force of his writings; 
 he tells us that the Fleet Prison exposed in " Pick- 
 wick" is no more, and that Yorkshire schools are 
 better. Mr. Laing, a coarse magistrate, portrayed 
 in a like manner in this book, felt the power of the 
 novelist, and was glad to resign. 
 
 The conclusion of "Oliver" was better carried out
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. I5 
 
 than that of "Nickleby;" but the latter had been 
 spoiled by a dramatist, now alive, who dramatised 
 the story before it was finished. The author resented 
 this pilfering with one or two hard blows. The 
 dramatist suggested that it was "fame" to an author 
 to be so dramatised. " So," said Dickens, "Richard 
 Turpin, Tom King, and Jerry Abershaw have handed 
 down to fame those upon whom they committed their 
 most impudent robberies." 
 
 At the conclusion of "Oliver Twist" Dickens 
 resigned Bentley to Harrison Ainsworth, with a 
 humorous preface, about the old and new coachman, 
 and, after the plan of Addison's Spectator, commenced 
 a weekly issue, "Master Humphrey's Clock." Of 
 this we will say little; the plan failed, the cor- 
 respondents' letters were given up, and a prose epic 
 of the "Old Curiosity Shop" soon alone remained. 
 Poor old Weller, Sam, and Pickwick, were resus- 
 citated, and were soon again laid in their graves. 
 The comic portion of this book is excellent. Swiveller 
 himself is beyond praise ; so are the Marchioness, 
 Quilp, the old Schoolmaster, and Sampson Brass. 
 But there is a serious side even finer. The poetry 
 of little Nell's life, her beautiful devotion to her 
 grandfather, her childlike wisdom, sharpened to an 
 unnatural extent, are touching in the extreme. The 
 poetry of her death is still finer, and the very prose, 
 if but divided into lines, will, as Mr. Home pointed
 
 l6 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 out in the "New Spirit of the Age," form that kind 
 of gracefully irregular blank verse which Shelley and 
 Southey have used. The following is from the 
 description of little Nell's funeral, without the alter- 
 ation of a word : — 
 
 " When Death strikes down the innocent and young 
 From every fragile form, from which he lets 
 The parting spirit free, 
 A hundred virtues rise, 
 In shape of Mercy, Charity, and Love, 
 To walk the world and bless it. 
 Of every tear 
 That sorrowing nature sheds on such green graves, 
 Some good is born, some gentle nature comes." 
 
 In " Barnaby Rudge," his next tale, Mr. Dickens 
 opened up fresh ground, and commenced an historical 
 tale of the Lord George Gordon Riots. The story 
 is vigorous and full of beauty. The description of 
 the riots far surpasses, in our opinion, the celebrated 
 scenes of the " Porteous " mob, by Sir Walter Scott, 
 to which it has been likened. The characters are 
 replete with truth, with hardly one exception. 
 Barnaby himself — poor mad Barnaby — with his raven, 
 is a finished picture ; the raven comparable to 
 nothing in literature so much as to a certain 
 immortal dog, possessed by one Lance, drawn by 
 Master William Shakespeare. The rough character 
 of Hugh, Mr. Dennis the hangman, old Varden, the 
 charming Dolly, and Emma Haredale — not to
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 17 
 
 mention the wondrously real Miggs, with Mrs. 
 Varden reading her Protestant tracts — form an 
 admirable group. The character of Lord George is 
 faithfully preserved, but another historical personage 
 is hardly treated with justice ; this is Lord Chester- 
 field, who is attempted under the name of Sir Edward 
 Chester; but Dickens's sketch shows no appreciation 
 of Chesterfield's true character. In fact, " Barnaby 
 Rudge " is at the very head of that rare class of 
 fiction — the good " historical novel." 
 
 After the conclusion of " Barnaby," Mr. Dickens 
 set sail to America, now about a quarter of a century 
 ago, and produced from his voyage " American 
 Notes," dedicating his book "to those friends in 
 America who had left his judgment free, and, who, 
 loving their country, can bear the truth when it is 
 told good-humouredly and in a kind spirit." The 
 book was met with a storm of disapprobation. False 
 and exaggerated, were light terms to be applied to it 
 by the Americans, but Dickens stuck to his colours, 
 and, republishing it after eight years, had nothing to 
 alter; "prejudiced," he says, "I have never been, 
 save in favour of the United States." Lord Jeffery 
 wrote a very kind letter about it, said that the 
 account of the prisons was as poetical and powerful 
 as had ever been written, and congratulated him on 
 selling 3,000 copies in one week, and in putting 
 ;;^i,ooo into his pocket. 
 
 c
 
 l8 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 In 1843 the voyage to America was again turned 
 to account, by a new tale, " Martin Chuz^lewit," in 
 some respects his best. The hero, a selfish fellow 
 enough till taught and softened in the tale, is the 
 best drawn of his heroes, and admirably contrasted 
 with Tom Pinch ; Pecksniff's name has become a 
 synonym for falseness and humbug, and Jonas 
 Chuzzlewit, Montague Tigg, Todgers, Bailey, Tapley, 
 and others, are all admirably drawn characters. 
 As in all his works, the great author, whose creative 
 power seems unbounded, had an aim. Hospital 
 nurses were bad enough, and a shrewd death-blow 
 was given to them by the immortal portrait of Mrs. 
 Sairey Gamp, the origin of Mrs. Brown and numbers 
 of fatuous imitations. The scenes in America have 
 been acknowledged by Americans to be as true as 
 those sketches of England with which we are so 
 familiar. Elijah Pogram and his defiance, and his 
 reference to his country, whose "bright home is in 
 the settin' sun," is immortal. We have not space 
 to linger over the book. It was in 1843 that 
 Dickens struck new ground in his Christmas books, 
 of which it is difficult to speak without praiseful 
 exaggeration. And truly, perhaps, the most wholly 
 beautiful production of Dickens' is his " Christmas 
 Carol." If ever any individual story warmed a 
 Christmas hearth, that was the one ; if ever solitary 
 self was converted by a book, and made to be merry
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. IQ 
 
 and childlike at that season "when its blessed 
 Founder was himself a child," he surely was by that. 
 " We are all charmed with your Carol," wrote Lord 
 Jeffery to its author, " chiefly, I think, for the 
 genuine goodness which breathes all through it, and 
 is the true inspiring angel by which its genius has been 
 
 awakened You should be happy yourself, for 
 
 to be sure, you have done more good, and not only 
 fastened more kindly feelings, but prompted more 
 positive acts of benevolence by this little publication, 
 than can be traced to all the pulpits and confessionals 
 since Christmas, 1842." Perhaps not that ; but the 
 story filled many old hearts with the vigorous youth 
 of charity, and thrilled young souls with a sym- 
 pathetic love of man, that drew them nearer to 
 God. 
 
 There are four more Christmas books, " The 
 Chimes" and "The Cricket on the Hearth," almost 
 equal to the Carol ; while " The Battle of Life " and 
 "The Haunted Man" show a certain falling off, 
 although those parts which relate to the Tetterby 
 family were most touchingly written. Let us now 
 pass over " Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and 
 Son," as less satisfactory than most of his works, 
 and proceed at once to " David Copperfield," the 
 most finished and natural of his works ; it is more 
 than good. The boyhood of the hero ; the scene in 
 church; the death of his mother; the story of 
 
 c 2
 
 20 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Peggotty. Poor little Em'ly ; that touching love, 
 so true, so perfect, and so delicate and pure, which 
 the rough old fisherman has for his lost niece, cannot 
 be surpassed. The mellow strength and matured 
 vigour of style, the modest ingenuousness of Copper- 
 field's relation of his progress in literature, supposed 
 truthfully to portray Dickens's own career ; the 
 child-wife, her death, and David's final love for 
 Agnes — all rush upon our memory, and put forward 
 their claims to be admired. The original characters 
 are all good, and the family of Micawber form a 
 group as original as was ever drawn by Mr. Dickens. 
 The dark and weird character of Rosa Dartle, and 
 the revolting one of Uriah Heep, are the only pain- 
 ful ones in the book. But they are full of fine 
 touches of nature, which also illumine the dark 
 drawing of the Murdstones. After this Dickens gave 
 us "Little Dorritt " in 1857, and a most excellent 
 story — an historical novel, well considered, and 
 worked out with abundant force — in 1859, " A Tale 
 of Two Cities " (we have omitted " Hard Times " of 
 1854) 5 ^^^ " Great Expectations," published in 
 three volumes in 1861, a tale admirable in all respects, 
 which had adorned the pages of Mr. Dickens's 
 serial. 
 
 In 1851-3 he had written a "Child's History of 
 England," as in 1846 he had given us " Pictures from 
 Italy," and in i860 had gathered up from Household
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 21 
 
 Words a number of sketches called the " Uncom- 
 mercial Traveller," which are worthy of the author 
 — which, perhaps, is too much to say of the second 
 book mentioned; and lastly, in 1865-6 he issued his 
 most recent work, in numbers, "Our Mutual Friend," 
 a work full of original and eccentric characters, and 
 studded with charming bits of pathos and of des- 
 cription ; but, although the author never had a 
 larger sale, the work did not obtain that hold of the 
 public which his others have. 
 
 In spite of, and in addition to, the immense amount 
 of work above recorded, Dickens, whose literary 
 activity was enormous, and who seems to have been 
 impelled always to make a closer and more familiar 
 acquaintance with his public, established, on the 
 2ist of January, 1846, the Daily News, his name 
 being advertised as "head of the literary department." 
 Young papers have to make readers ; and, as a rule, 
 newspaper buyers do not rate at a high value success- 
 ful novelists. We need not wonder, therefore, that 
 the Daily News, though now existing, and honourably 
 known for its independence, is not so successful as 
 it deserves to be, from the courage and vigour with 
 which it has advocated true Liberal principles.* 
 
 ■'- In 1846 appeared the first number of the Daily News, with 
 Charles Dickens as its editor. His duties were uncongenial to him, 
 and it cannot be denied that his management was unsuccessful. 
 In his " History of Journalism," Mr. Frederick Knight Hunt, who
 
 22 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Mr. Dickens, though aided by Mr. Wills and by 
 John Forster, soon ceased to have any connection 
 with this paper, and in 1850 established a weekly 
 periodical, taking the proud line — for a hero or a 
 periodical — " Familiar in their mouths as household 
 words." Connected with this was a monthly narra- 
 tive, which, as containing news, involved the pro- 
 prietors with heavy expenses as to stamp duty — now 
 happily removed. The judgment was given in favour 
 of Dickens, and the first step towards a free press 
 thus taken. In 1851, Dickens and Lytton brought 
 forth a project, the Guild of Literature and Art, also 
 abortive, although it has had a certain existence, 
 and certain almshouses, which no author will inhabit, 
 are built on Lord Lytton's estate, near Stevenage. 
 Lytton wrote a comedy, " Not so Bad as we Seem;" 
 and Dickens, Jerrold, John Forster, Mark Lemon, 
 Topham the artist, Charles Knight, and others, were 
 the actors. To back up this comedy, Mr. Dickens 
 
 well knew all the circumstances, says, " Mistakes were no doubt 
 made, and large expenses incurred, but the errors were corrected, 
 and the losses gallantly borne." Mr. Dickens soon gave up 
 the editorial chair ; but the " Pictures from Italy" were originally 
 published as letters from his pen in the columns of the Daily 
 News. In the preface to the " Pictures from Italy," he avows 
 that, " Bent on correcting a brief mistake I made not long ago 
 in disturbing the old relations between myself and my readers, 
 and departing for a moment from my old pursuits," he was about 
 joyfully to revert to his former style of serial publications.
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 23 
 
 and Mark Lemon produced a weak farce, called 
 " Mrs. Nightingale's Diary." We have noted that 
 our vivacious author has also written an opera, very 
 prettily and gracefully, and here insert a poem — 
 a graceful and sweet apologue, probably the best 
 verses ever written by him — reminding one of the 
 manner of Hood : 
 
 " A Word in Season. 
 
 " They have a superstition in the East 
 
 That Allah written on a piece of paper 
 Is better unction than can come of priest. 
 
 Of roUing incense, and of lighted taper ; 
 Holding that any scrap which bears that name, 
 
 In any characters, its front imprest on, 
 Shall help the finder through the purging flame, 
 
 And give his toasted feet a place to rest on. 
 
 " Accordingly they make a mighty fuss. 
 
 With every wretched tract and fierce oration, 
 And hoard the leaves ; for they are not, like us, 
 
 A highly-civilised and thinking nation ; 
 And always stooping in the miry ways 
 
 To look for matter of this earthly leaven, 
 They seldom, in their dust-exploring days, 
 
 Have any leisure to look up to Heaven. 
 
 " So I have known a country on the earth, 
 
 Where darkness sat upon the living waters, 
 And brutal ignorance, and toil, and dearth, 
 
 Were the hard portion of its sons and daughters ; 
 And yet, where they who should have ope'd the door 
 
 Of charity and light for all men's finding. 
 Squabbled for words upon the altar floor, 
 
 And rent the Book, in struggles for the binding.
 
 24 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 " The gentlest man among these pious Turks, 
 
 God's hving image ruthlessly defaces ; 
 Their best High Churchman, with no faith in works, 
 
 Bowstrings the virtues in the market-places. 
 The Christian pariah, whom both sects curse, 
 
 (They curse all other men and curse each other). 
 Walks through the world not very much the worse, 
 
 Does all the good he can, and loves his brother." 
 
 Following up our history, we may note that, 
 owing to certain circumstances, having their origin 
 in a domestic estrangement, which Mr. Dickens 
 himself made public in 1858, and to which, nor to 
 his married life, we have here neither space nor 
 inclination further to allude, our author seceded 
 from Household Words, and established, in conjunc- 
 tion with Mr. Wills, All the Year Round — a similar 
 journal, in which he did excellent work, by which 
 he aided many young authors, and through which 
 he for many a Christmas charmed our hearts with 
 tender and rare stories, and with such sweet and 
 quaint creations as few but he could give ; let us 
 instance that touching, wholly good and human 
 Dr. Marigold, who deserves to stand side by side 
 with the best character its gifted author ever drew. 
 
 When Mr. Douglas Jerrold died, it was found 
 advisable for the benefit of his family to raise a 
 fund by subscriptions from the public, and on the 
 evening of Jerrold's funeral, sitting at the Garrick 
 Club, two or three friends, of whom, says our
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 25 
 
 authority, I was one, drew up a programme of a 
 
 series of entertainments which was at once taken 
 
 round to the newspapers. From the success of this 
 
 arose his determination, which it seems to us was 
 
 always very prevalent with him, of coming before 
 
 the public and reading his own works. This he did 
 
 on the 29th of April, 1858, at the New St. Martin's 
 
 Hall, now converted into the Queen's Theatre, and 
 
 the following speech was given by him at the 
 
 opening : — 
 
 "Ladies and Gentlemen — It may perhaps be known to you 
 that, for a few years past, I have been accustomed occasionally 
 to read some of my shorter books to various audiences, in aid 
 of a variety of good objects, and at some charge to myself, both 
 in time and money. It having at length become impossible in 
 any reason to comply with these always-accumulating demands, 
 I have had definitely to choose between now and then reading 
 on my own account, as one of my recognised occupations, or 
 not reading at all. I have had little or no difficulty in deciding 
 on the former course. The reasons that have led me to it — 
 besides the consideration that it necessitates no departure 
 whatever from the chosen pursuits of my life — are threefold : 
 firstly, I have satisfied myself that it can involve no possible 
 compromise of the credit and independence of literature ; 
 secondly, I have long held the opinion, and have long acted 
 on the opinion, that in these times whatever brings a public 
 man and his public, face to face, on terms of mutual confidence 
 and respect, is a good thing ; thirdly, I have had a pretty 
 large experience of the interest my hearers are so generous as 
 to take in these occasions, and of the delight they give to me, 
 as a tried means of strengthening those relations — I may almost 
 say of personal friendship — which it is my great privilege and 
 pride, as it is my great responsibility, to hold with a multitude 
 of persons who will never hear my voice nor see my face.
 
 26 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Thus it is that I come, quite naturally, to be among you at this 
 time ; and thus it is that 1 proceed to read this little book, quite 
 as composedly as I might proceed to write it, or to publish 
 it, in any other way." 
 
 In America and in England Dickens continued 
 
 these readings for twelve years, and the greed of 
 
 enterprising entrepreneurs, who were glad enough 
 
 to take a huge share of the money the great author 
 
 earned, sometimes taxed him beyond his strength. 
 
 He was very glad, however, to be before the public ; 
 
 he had the memory, the ways, the love of public 
 
 life, of an actor, and surely no author in the world 
 
 ever had such a full appreciation of his own works. 
 
 When many authors and artists gave Dickens a 
 
 farewell dinner previously to his second journey to 
 
 America, in answering for literature he spoke only 
 
 of himself, he quoted himself three times, and ended 
 
 with " the words of Tiny Tim, 'God bless you all.' " 
 
 Why those words should be assigned only to Tiny 
 
 Tim, when heaven knows they are too often, too 
 
 lightly, and too easily in all men's mouths, we 
 
 don't know. Another author Dickens quoted was 
 
 Bulwer. He seems to have thought that the " Lady 
 
 of Lyons " was rare poetry, and in the course of 
 
 his published speeches it will be seen that he uses 
 
 three or four times the rhodomontade about — 
 
 "Those twin goalers of the daring heart. 
 Low birth and iron fortune " 
 
 After being advised by his medical men to leave off
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 27 
 
 his readings, he returned to them again, and on 
 the 15th of March, 1870, gave his farewell reading 
 at St. James' Hall, being the "Christmas Carol" 
 and the "Trial from Pickwick." He told the 
 audience, with some emotion, when he ended, that 
 his readings had given him much pleasure ; that in 
 presenting his own cherished ideas for the recog- 
 nition of the public, he had experienced an amount 
 of artistic delight and instruction which was given 
 to few men; that in this task he had been "the 
 faithful servant of the public, always imbued with 
 a sense of duty to them (it), always striving to do 
 his best, and being uniformly cheered by the readiest 
 response, the most generous sympathy, the most 
 stimulating support." He then concluded with an 
 excellent advertisement of his new book — and this 
 was also characteristic of the keen man of business 
 — in the following words : — " Ladies and gentlemen 
 — In but two short weeks from this time I hope that 
 you may enter in your own homes on a new series 
 of readings, at which my assistance will be in- 
 dispensable, but from these garish Hghts I vanish 
 now for evermore, with a heartfelt, grateful, respect- 
 ful, and affectionate farewell." As a speech-maker 
 perhaps no one surpassed Dickens, he always said 
 the right thing in the right place, and said it very 
 happily. Whether at the Academy or Lord Mayor's 
 dinner, at the Newsvendors' or Poor Clerks' Pension
 
 28 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Society, Dickens made the best speech, better than 
 Gladstone or Bright, or any brilliant legal luminary. 
 Perhaps nothing could surpass in its tender happiness 
 the last speech he made at the Royal Academy in 
 reference to his friend Maclise, who had just died. 
 Within a few short months the "effects" of both 
 these men of genius were brought to the hammer, 
 and the relic-hunters gave more for a stuffed bird 
 of Charles Dickens (;^I20 for the raven, and a very 
 ugly specimen, too!) than for a noble picture or 
 sketch by Maclise ! After concluding his readings 
 Dickens commenced " The Mystery of Edwin 
 Drood," not a good title, descriptive of Cliosterham, 
 Rochester, nor did the book promise to be very good. 
 In it he described, of course, something new. He had 
 been taken by Mr. Parkinson to the East End, and 
 he saw some Chinese coolies and other poor wretches 
 # smoking opium ! He describes this from his own 
 point of view, others say it is a very false one. 
 People smoke their opium out of pipes made of 
 penny ink bottles;* enough to kill a company of 
 soldiers! Sir John Bowring remonstrated, and sent 
 him a sketch of a real pipe, its size and capacity ; 
 but Dickens replied, being as characteristically sure 
 that he was right, as ever " Tom Macaulay " was in 
 
 * An opium-pipe made by the Chinese will hold opium about 
 half a pea in size, and of this very little is pure.
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 2g 
 
 Sydney Smith's anecdote, "that he had seen what he 
 painted." So, also, when Mr. Lewes proved that spon- 
 taneous combustion did not exist, Dickens was sure 
 he was right, and did not hesitate to describe a 
 human body disappearing in smoke, and leaving 
 nothing but a little viscous residuum like the smoke 
 of burnt brown paper behind ! 
 
 On June gth, twenty-four hours after an attack of 
 apoplexy, Dickens, who had been working all day at 
 " Edwin Drood," died at his house, Gadshill Place, 
 Higham, by Rochester, of apoplexy, an effusion of 
 blood on the brain. He had not only been hard at 
 work on the day when he fell, but had written three 
 letters, which have been published, to one of which 
 we shall refer. He died through overwork, which in 
 his case was needless, through living always freely, 
 and adding to the labour of his brain often an exces- 
 sive labour of his body in walking and exercise. 
 
 Men of genius always die young, even when they 
 live beyond the usual period of life, as did Fontenelle 
 and Voltaire, Landor and Rogers; or if they die when 
 just past middle age, as did Shakespeare, falling from 
 us when he was but fifty-two, and had but recently 
 written the most freshly creative and the youngest 
 in spirit of his dramas, the " Tempest " — or Charles 
 Dickens, who passed away at fifty-eight. The reason 
 is, that their creations are always fresh and new, and
 
 30 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 linger with us and people our brains, recalling our own 
 loved and cherished youth long after we are old. No 
 one has exercised this power — which is common also 
 to actors, who enjoy for a very long period a kind of 
 factitious youth — more widely than Charles Dickens. 
 What with the immense circulation of his books, the 
 innumerable editions in England, America, Germany, 
 France, Russia, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, and 
 other countries ; what with their cheap and almost 
 universal reproduction — without copyright — in the 
 United States ; the popular readings given by the 
 author, in which he so well embodied his own 
 creations, and their dramatisation by other authors — 
 no man was ever in his lifetime so popular, or entered 
 familiarly into so many houses and spoke to so many 
 hearts. He had a great privilege, a very great pri- 
 vilege indeed, granted him by Almighty God, that of 
 being born of the English-speaking race, — a race 
 which covers and owns three-fifths of the globe, and 
 whose language will in a very short time, perhaps, be 
 the lingua franca, or free tongue, of half the globe. 
 He had the privilege of speaking the tongue which 
 Shakespeare had rendered musical, and which Milton, 
 Bacon, and Locke had made classical and concise. 
 He was, moreover, of that great country which, with 
 all its shortcomings, reverences the Bible more than 
 any other of its gifts, and which, by subscription and 
 otherwise, has, in a few years, circulated upwards of
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 3I 
 
 thirty millions of copies of the Word of God within 
 its own shores, to say nothing of the numbers it has 
 scattered abroad. And it was also the privilege of 
 this great author to be well read in this Book, — so 
 well read, indeed, that in a leading magazine there 
 was lately an article which dealt exclusively with his 
 knowledge of the Bible, and his use of its images. 
 
 Let us add to these gifts of his that great one of a 
 tender heart, coupled with a quick and vivid appre- 
 hension, and a most joyous, lively spirit. We will 
 not here dispute with Shelley the assertion, that 
 
 " Most wretched men 
 Are cradled into poetry by wrong, — 
 They learn in suffering what they teach in song." 
 
 We can instance Fielding, Shakespeare, and Charles 
 Dickens, as essentially poets in tenderness and 
 creative power, — as men who had the truest enjoy- 
 ment of life, and in the midst of all their merriment 
 the tenderest feeling for the woes of others. No man 
 saw a thing so quickly and so comically as Dickens ; 
 and what he saw, he described as faithfully. Such 
 are the innumerable happy touches of habit which 
 give so life-like a character to his creations. Witness 
 Mrs. Gamp, while watching her patients, rubbing 
 her nose along the warm brass bar of the nursery 
 fender, — a trick which he must have seen ; Montagu 
 Tigg, diving behind his stock to pull up his collar in 
 a dignified way, and fetching up a string ; the style
 
 32 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 in which the clerks disport themselves at the Circum- 
 locution Office ; the mysterious ways of the Punch- 
 and-Judy men, Codlin and Short ; and in that clever 
 tale of his, " Barnaby Rudge," the obtuse old inn- 
 keeper, John Willett, who, not being quite able to 
 realise how his son has lost an arm, goes quietly to 
 his top-coat, which is hanging up, and feels along the 
 sleeve, as if he might find it there ! These, and a hun- 
 dred other touches, are as true as the more subtle ren- 
 derings of a photograph, and are such as could never 
 be described unless seen. But not one of them is 
 described ill-naturedly. Dickens was very often ex- 
 aggerative and pantomimic. He saw things in so 
 very comical a light, that we, of soberer brains and 
 less extensive experience, were quite behind him in 
 perceptiveness. But the humour was the humour of 
 a pantomime, full of fun which delights children, 
 and hurts nobody. The man of science whose eye 
 Mr. Sam Weller blackens, and the beadle whom he 
 thrashes so soundly that he declares he has spoilt 
 him, and that the parish must find another, are, we 
 may be sure, not very much hurt, and will come 
 round again. He is never wantonly cruel ; he never 
 is in a rage with any of his characters, except the 
 mean and the base. He visits Fagin and Bill Sykes 
 with extreme punishment, but dismisses Bumble and 
 Noah Claypole to a mean livelihood, and to infinite 
 contempt. He is always honest, always for the
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 33 
 
 rights of labour, — for the good sound workman's 
 having his fair wage, and being happily rewarded. 
 He is never a snob. Dickens, in all his works, never 
 made it a question whether a man should marry on 
 three hundred a-year, or not marry at all, but live, 
 like a grub in a nut, a selfish bachelor. His ideal 
 workman marries on about fifty pounds, or, at most, a 
 hundred pounds a-year, and has a tidy neat little wife, 
 and two or three healthy young children round his knees. 
 And at the same time we must remember that he 
 did not flatter the working-man, but told him of his 
 faults as well as his virtues. "With Dickens, the 
 most industrious of authors, whose too early death 
 there is little doubt was caused by over-exertion, 
 honest industry was the only way for the working- 
 man to be honest and independent ; and with it he 
 became, as he deserved to be, a hero in Dickens's 
 eyes. How many pleasant houses has our departed 
 friend peopled with the humble and lowly, from 
 Trotty Veck's poor dwelling to that of the railway 
 official, who never can get the dust out of his hair, 
 and who does not particularly care for tracts ! And 
 all this he did at some risk, and showed that indeed 
 he followed Massinger's golden rule, "to look upon 
 the poor with gentle eyes," at some trouble to him- 
 self. He arose at a time when the novels of England 
 were both vicious and snobbish, when one set of 
 writers was producing the Satanic school of litera- 
 
 D
 
 34 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 ture, and another, like those poor things whom we 
 name to forget, the Countess of Blessington and Lady 
 Charlotte Bury, was cultivating what was appro- 
 priately called the silver-fork school. An acute 
 reviewer, speaking of the large sums obtained for 
 her novels by the Countess — a very cruel, bad woman, 
 by the way — tells us that " Lady Blessington never 
 took her pen in hand to write a story that she did 
 not immediately proceed to describe, in terms calcu- 
 lated to raise a blush on a modest girl's cheek, 
 intrigues that would shock the morality of a green- 
 room, and the delicacy of a kitchen." This is quite true, 
 and too many lady novelists are doing the same thing 
 now. But when Dickens arose with all his fun — and he 
 was very fond of fun — about babies and monthly nurses, 
 he never wrote an improper word, or penned a sentence 
 that could give rise to an improper thought. His 
 was a manly way of treating things ; a manly, open, 
 sunshiny style ; he made no prurient secrets ; he 
 did not profess to be above or beyond Nature, nor 
 to be feverishly full of heat, nor frigidly full of an un- 
 natural sanctity. He abounded in honest, healthy 
 good tone, like an upright English gentleman ; he de- 
 scribed a sweep with all his soot about him, or a miller 
 with his white jacket and dusty hair, face, and hands ; 
 but these honest workmen brought no contagion with 
 them ; they did not come from the fever court, nor were 
 they reeking with the foul oaths of the casual ward.
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 35 
 
 Another great merit of Charles Dickens is, that he 
 does not look down upon people. The men and 
 women he describes are various, and some of them 
 placed in such degraded positions that one might 
 almost sicken at them. Yet the great author just 
 passed away had an almost Shakesperian faculty of 
 making his readers look upon the bright side of his 
 rogues. Mr. Montagu Tigg is a swindler and a 
 cheat ; Mr. Chevy Slime is all that his name indi- 
 cates ; Mr. Mantalini lives upon the earnings of the 
 woman he robs and cheats ; and yet, while to the 
 initiated in life this baseness is apparent, all that 
 the innocent reader sees is a most amusing character, 
 without any of the " flimsy nastiness," again to quote 
 our reviewer, so apparent in the works of the silver- 
 fork school. Surrounding these persons are others 
 who are common-place good people, — tradesmen, 
 clerks, and shopmen ; and at these, especially at 
 such of them as belong to the middle classes, 
 Theodore Hook, Lady Blessington, and the silver- 
 fork school, who were in the saddle when Dickens 
 was a young man and was forming his style, were in 
 the habit of sneering ; their novels were made up 
 almost entirely of abusive descriptions of the " shopo- 
 cracy," vulgar people who dropped their H's, talked 
 ungrammatically, were always fond of pushing into 
 society superior to themselves, and who, with the 
 bad morals of the aristocracy united the worst taste and 
 
 D 2
 
 36 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 the slipshod and miserable grammar of the tradesman. 
 Charles Dickens never stooped to this. If he laughs 
 in his juvenile sketches at the " Tuggses at Rams- 
 gate," and a few others, it is to be remarked that he 
 often makes his young men of business his heroes, 
 cares nothing about a gentleman, who is a gentleman 
 and nothing else, elevates his merchants into an 
 atmosphere of generosity and benevolence, and finds 
 a dozen better things to laugh at than the old, worn- 
 out conventional, and farcical resort of making a man 
 say, " 'Ow do you do ? 'Ave some happles." All 
 this showed great taste and courage on the part of 
 a young author ; but Dickens had formed himself 
 upon the very best model of manly English a man 
 can have — upon Henry Fielding. Let the reader, as 
 a proof of this, take the first few pages of " Nicholas 
 Nickleby," and then some of those marvellously acute 
 essays at the commencement of each book of "Tom 
 Jones." The first, he will see, is an inspiration from 
 the other. 
 
 But Dickens was distinguished from Fielding by 
 greater invention ; such fertility had he, that no one, 
 except perhaps Lope de Vega with Shakespeare, has 
 equalled or surpassed him in this respect. He has 
 invented or portrayed, all accurately, if more or less 
 in caricature, a thousand persons who people our 
 brain, and of whom we talk familiarly. There are 
 Mrs. Nickleby, Mrs. Gamp, Pickwick, Sam Weller,
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 37 
 
 Mr. Pecksniff, the Chuzzlewits, Inspector Buckle, 
 Old Weller, the Shepherd, Bumble, and a hundred 
 others whom the reader may supply. The French 
 translator of his works has happily hit off this pecu- 
 liarity. He says, " C^est un panorama mouvant de toutes 
 les classes de la Societe A nglaise ; * * une vaste composi- 
 tion ou mille personnages se meuvent et posent devant le 
 lecteur." And in all these crowds there are persons 
 whom we at once recognise, persons drawn and 
 described with wonderful accuracy ; and not only 
 persons, but animals and birds. Now and then he 
 has made a dash at describing a pony, and his 
 carrier's dog elicited the strongest praise from 
 Landseer ; while the raven belonging to Barnaby 
 Rudge is known to everybody. Landscapes, houses, 
 rooms, the very clothes of men, were so portrayed 
 by this master, that we seem to have them before us. 
 Perhaps few authors — and we all receive many 
 letters — were so plagued with correspondence as 
 Dickens. We have spoken of his use of Bible 
 images. He was essentially of a faithful, reverent 
 nature ; but now and then his fun forgot itself, and 
 he made use of an image that men more strict have 
 set aside as holy. Upon any of these occasions a 
 dozen angry letters assailed the writer, and it is 
 pleasant to record the answer to one such. In 
 *' Edwin Drood," chap. x. p. 68, he made a slip of 
 comicality referring to " the highly popular lamb,
 
 38 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 who (instead of which) has so long and unresistingly 
 been led to the slaughter" — the Saviour's image of 
 Himself; and somebody wrote to call his attention 
 to it. The last letter but one that he ever wrote was 
 this, penned on the very day of his seizure : — " It 
 would be quite inconceivable to me — but for your 
 letter — that any reasonable reader could possibly 
 attach a Scriptural reference to a passage in a book 
 of mine reproducing a much-abused social figure of 
 speech, impressed into all sorts of service, on all 
 sorts of inappropriate occasions, without the faintest 
 connection of it with its original source. I am truly 
 shocked to find that any reader can make the mistake. 
 I have always striven in my writings to express vene- 
 ration for the life and lessons of our Saviour; because 
 I feel it, and because I re-wrote that history for my 
 children, — every one of whom knew it from having it 
 repeated to them long before they could read, and 
 almost as soon as they could speak. But I have 
 never made proclamation of this from the house- 
 tops. — Faithfully yours, Charles Dickens," closed 
 the paper. 
 
 The letter is very valuable, as indicative not only 
 of the author's faith, — and this is strongly reiterated 
 in his will, — but also of his peculiar " colour blind- 
 ness," his determination to see things only in one 
 way, and that way the one he wished to use them in; 
 who could use a quotation, including an image
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 39 
 
 essentially a symbol of the Saviour, " without the 
 faintest connection of it with its original source ; " 
 but Dickens had not the scholar's brain amidst all 
 his gifts. Nor had he the gift of drawing any noble 
 gentle woman, — his women are at best but dolls, — or 
 any fine, true-hearted gentleman. A Colonel New- 
 come, for instance, or an Uncle Toby, are miles 
 beyond his reach. As Costard says of his opponent, 
 he may be " a marvellous good man and a very good 
 bowler, but as for Alisander, you see how it is a little 
 o'er-pasted." One of Thackeray's men, or Charles 
 Reade's women, are worthy a cart-load of Dickens's 
 middle-class dolls. His pathos is — pathetic! Don't 
 smile ; he intended it to be so, and it is, but it wants 
 true art so much that you always see the artist ; 
 you swallow the confectionery, but you think of the 
 cook ; otherwise it is very well suited for his readers, 
 and not a very high class of them. As in one of his 
 sensational murders, you watch the clouds gathering 
 before the storm begins, so you see the tenderness 
 and tears vigorously shaken up before they affect the 
 reader in the next page. 
 
 But, after all, Dickens worked well and loyally ; 
 he was a very great author, and he knew it as well 
 as the public, which is always ready to cheer and 
 help a brave man, and which paid back his work 
 not only with money, of which he had enough and 
 to spare, but in a hearty love and appreciation
 
 40 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 which it is given to few men to know. " I am 
 satisfied," he said, "with my countrymen and their 
 approval, but not with the reward of my country." 
 Just before he died Her Majesty went to look at him; 
 but Prevost Paradol, in half of Dickens's literary life, 
 and with a tithe of his genius, was an intimate with 
 his Monarch, and an ambassador to a great power. 
 We desire even less than Dickens desired, — men of 
 letters to be diplomatists ; but certainly we do want 
 a Court that is not quite Eastern, and thoroughly un- 
 English in its reserve, and in its recognition of 
 literature. It is said that Dickens was offered to 
 be made a Baronet, and afterwards a Privy Coun- 
 cillor, and that he refused both honours ; but the 
 evidence that this was true has not yet come out. 
 
 Dickens's public was not that which Milton wished 
 for, " fit, though few;" but it stretched from sea to 
 sea, and upon the sea in out-going and in-coming 
 English ships, — vessels leaving or reaching that home 
 which his pen had made dearer to them. " God 
 bless you, Dickens," wrote Hood, even then near 
 his own death, " God bless you for that sweet story 
 of yours, the ' Christmas Carol.' It will preach 
 a wider and a kindlier lesson than a thousand 
 sermons." This is true, the wider lesson, no doubt, 
 but let us remember that his was the great lesson 
 taught, thank God, in all our pulpits — the lesson of 
 peace and good-will to all mankind.
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 4I 
 
 I will say nothing about Dickens's will, concern- 
 ing which I have heard his friends say bitter things; 
 that is not a literary work within a critic's province. 
 It contained a comical kick at our undertakers, who 
 are not so barbarous after all as such gentry in other 
 countries ; and it declared dogmatically that to wear 
 any outward sign of mourning was a " disgusting 
 barbarism," or something of that sort. It opened 
 up the question of domestic relations best left closed, 
 and Dickens well knew that the will would be 
 publicly and widely read ; but it contained a manly 
 and humble declaration of his faith in Christ, 
 through whose meritorious sacrifice he looked for 
 salvation. That this faith should have survived the 
 loose fast-talkers and shallow-thinkers, with which 
 every public man is surrounded, is a happy fact, 
 especially as we have heard the great author claimed 
 as a Unitarian by one party, as a Freethinker by 
 another. 
 
 They buried him in the Abbey, and the nation 
 was pleased. No man was so widely mourned ; he 
 had been with us from our boyhood, and was so 
 much our own that we all felt that we had lost a 
 dear friend. Foreign nations, even frozen Russia 
 and sunny Italy, mourned with us, and set him 
 before us at his true value. We know now what a 
 kindly genius we have lost. 
 
 So let him rest with that glad hope of pardoning
 
 42 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 love and healing faith. It is a great thought for 
 a widely-read author, and one which must often 
 have occurred to Dickens, that in all the many 
 moments and the flying hours which make up Time, 
 in that portion of Eternity which is allotted to us, 
 and which we little beings call life, that not one 
 moment passes but some, young or old, joyous or 
 sorrowful head is bent down over his books, drinking 
 in his words, loving what he pictures as heroic, 
 hating what he has portrayed as base, and building 
 even its moral tone, although insensibly to itself, 
 and its future life upon his words. It must have 
 been a consoling thought in that sharp agony of the 
 seizure which preceded his death, when the whole 
 wide landscape of his past life was lit up by the 
 lightning flash of conscience, that told him he had 
 not left one line which could corrupt, nor planted 
 with intention one seed which could turn to poison.* 
 
 * The chief portion of this paper appeared in the London 
 Review^ November i6th, 1867.
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 43 
 
 I subjoin two letters, one from an English, another 
 from an American paper, which will exhibit (being 
 each curious in its way) the different estimates placed 
 upon the author. Mr. Dodge's paper is extracted 
 as a specimen of what appeared in the American 
 press. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND DICKENS. 
 
 [To THE Editor of the " Spectator."] 
 
 " Sir, — In your admirable ' Topics of the Day,' in which there 
 is always so much to agree with, I find a note (June 11) which 
 astounds me. In the greatest gift of genius — humour — you place 
 Dickens beyond Shakespeare. ' He is the only English writer 
 of whom it can be truly said that in any one line in which 
 Shakespeare was not 07ily great, but at his greatest, this other 
 was greater than he. But as a humourist we think this is true 
 of Dickens.' You then cite Mrs. Gamp and Juliet's nurse as 
 parallels ; they seem to me to be quite distinct ; one is a mere 
 hireling by the job, the other an adherent of the family, a woman 
 of some position, a duenna of an humble sort. But take Mrs. 
 Quickly, Gossip Quickly, and Mrs. Gamp, and then say which 
 is the greater, broader, more natural character ? Or, take Sam 
 Weller, and compare him with Shakespeare's greatest, Sir John 
 Falstafif ? Why, in fifty years the fun of the one may be past and 
 forgotten, a sealed language, ■z^n argot ^\v\c\i only contemporaries 
 could understand ; while certainly Falstaff will be as alive in 
 fifty centuries as he is now. Shakespeare works ab intra, and 
 paints human nature ; Dickens ab extra, and gives us particulars 
 and classes. Has Dickens any one character to compare in 
 truth, not with Falstaff, but with either Nym, Pistol, Pompey in 
 ' Measure for Measure,' Maria, Sir Toby Belch, — not to fly at 
 more subtle characters and higher game, Touchstone and the
 
 44 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Fools in 'Lear' and ' Twelfth Night ?' And with all reverence 
 for the great author just dead, whom I knew both in books and 
 in the flesh, has he drawn any characters at all superior, or even 
 equal, to Partridge, Parson Adams, Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, 
 Strap, — not to go abroad, and call up Sancho Panza ? 
 
 " Comparisons are perhaps at this time more odious than even 
 in the proverb, but Dickens when alive complained that he had 
 been spoiled by his critics ; and his worst enemy, if he had any, 
 could not injure him more than by a false elevation. — I am, 
 Sir, &c., J. Hain Friswell." 
 
 [Mr. Friswell does not understand our criticism. We do not 
 believe, as we have elsewhere maintained, that Dickens ever 
 drew a real character. Mrs. Gamp is — in a very true sense, — 
 though it sounds paradoxical, but we have explained our meaning 
 elsewhere, his highest idealism. Shakespeare hardly ever 
 created a character that was not real in its whole basis. But 
 as a feat of humoiir, we do seriously hold that Mrs. Gamp 
 stands above Shakespeare's greatest efforts in the same direction, 
 — even, and no doubt that is an enormous ' even,' — even Sir 
 John Falstaff. Whether or not Mrs. Gamp may be unintelligible 
 to posterity seems to us entirely irrelevant. We can understand 
 her, and can also understand Shakespeare's highest feats of 
 humour, and are therefore perfectly competent to compare the 
 relative successes of the two. — Ed. Spectator, i8th June, 1870.] 
 
 "At Gad's Hill Mr. Dickens's habits became more confirmed. 
 He drank more often. His liquors were of the choicest kind. 
 Wines of the rarest vintage were stored in his cellars Highly 
 spiced beverages came to be liked, and he was vain of his skill 
 in compounding them. The 'cider-cup of Gad's Hill' — a drink 
 composed of cider, limes, brandy, pine-apple, toasted-apples, 
 lemon peel, and sugar, — became famous as a speciality of the 
 place. A friend of mine who spent a day and night at Gad's
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 45 
 
 Hill last year, a gentleman to whom Dickens felt under great 
 personal obligations, and for whom he may therefore have 
 emphasised his hospitality, describes the visit as a continued 
 bibulous festivity from noon till midnight. There was the cider- 
 cup on arriving at half-past twelve p.m , sports in the open air 
 till two, when came brandy and water — a long walk through the 
 fields till six, when cura^oa with other liqticurs were served — 
 dress, dinner from seven till ten, with every variety of wines — 
 coffee and cigars, and then pure spirits, or various compounds of 
 spirits, until bedtime. If any one infers from what I have 
 written that Charles Dickens was an intemperate man, in the 
 usual acceptation of the word, whether in this country or in 
 England, he mistakes my meaning. Dickens was never drunk. 
 His intellect was never obfuscated by excess. But he ' enjoyed 
 life.' He hved indeed too fast. This he himself felt, and hence 
 his long walks of from six to ten miles a day, to counteract the 
 effects of indulgence. For the last twelve months of his life he 
 had been increasing in stoutness. He noticed this, and fearing 
 what it portended, increased his hours of exercise. It would 
 have been better had he begun at the other end." 
 
 [Letter from Mr. Dodge, who had been introduced to Dickens 
 at the Exhibition of 185 1, and who appears to have been familiar 
 with him.]
 
 MR. MARK LEMON.
 
 MR. MARK LEMON. 
 
 jN the old and, indeed, in the new order 
 of nobihty, we used to call, and do call, 
 the person whose name was admitted to 
 i\-\Q Libro D'oro by the name of his chief victory. 
 Thus, we have Lord Dudley of Agincourt, Baron 
 (then Viscount) Nelson of the Nile, Lord St. Vincent, 
 not to mention the heroes who fought at Sobraon 
 and relieved Lucknow, and our latest military 
 addition, Lord Napier of Magdala. As for our latest 
 literary addition to the peerage, it was to have been 
 ^if the premier, Mr. Gladstone, could have had his 
 way — Baron Grote of Greece — for surely that history, 
 luminous and full of learning as it is, is worth a 
 victory — or should we call him Viscount Grote of 
 Plato, or of Socrates and his Companions ? Those 
 are true books and worth recording, and, in giving 
 Mr. Mark Lemon his title, it is worth while remem- 
 bering his chief or his life work. He is Mark Lemon 
 of Punch, the kindly editor who has held the whip 
 for more than a quarter of a century; the wise 
 
 E
 
 50 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 manager who has quarrelled with no man, and has 
 put down each of his contributors at his true value ; 
 the friend of Jerrold, Thackeray, and Leech : the 
 agent, as it were, by whom whatever money those 
 gentlemen earned was paid them ; a man of business 
 as well as a man of letters, and equally honourable 
 as both ; a man who was always employed in going 
 about doing good, and of whom the most mordant cad 
 of a litterateur — and we have one or two of the genus 
 cad in our ranks, not more — can say no word, no 
 honest word that reflects anything against him ; nay, 
 this very person is obliged to wind up with, "After 
 all he was a good fellow, jolly old Mark ! " 
 
 A plague upon Time that he takes advantage of 
 us! " There are only two honest men in the world," 
 says Falstaff, " and one of them grows old." More 
 than sixty years, summers and springs mostly, have 
 fallen upon Mr. Mark Lemon's head, and have turned 
 the black hair to an iron grey, have lined and seamed 
 the face, but they have not dimmed the kindly out- 
 look of the eyes, and have but softened and made 
 sweeter the playful smile that hovers round the 
 mouth. And the face is a remarkable one in its way 
 — it has such a look of power and good-nature 
 mingled. You may see it, in company with a very 
 ample form, dashing up Regent Street in the centre 
 of a Hansom cab, which Mark Lemon fills out with 
 an admirable sufficiency ; you may see it surmount-
 
 MR. MARK LEMON. 51 
 
 ing a fancy costume at a reading at St. James's 
 Hall ; or you may see it coming from the Illustrated 
 News Office, or looking from a photograph of a burly 
 farmer-like man in Spooner's shop in the Strand ; 
 but wherever you see it you will find kindliness, 
 force, good humour, concentration, and manliness. 
 And never more of that kindly manliness which has 
 distinguished him was ever seen than when, at the 
 funerals of his two friends Thackeray and Leech, we 
 saw the upturned eyes streaming with tears, great 
 heavy tears that came "napping" down the pale 
 cheeks, and again and again gathered and fell from 
 the saddened eyes. 
 
 Whether Mark Lemon, as we shrewdly suspect, 
 be of that ancient race which gave kings to Judaea 
 and prophets to the world, it boots not to enquire. 
 He was born in the year 1809, near Oxford Street, 
 London, and a pretty boy, with curly hair, some- 
 thing like young Disraeli, used to be seen, nigh sixty 
 years since, in a lady's carriage, when Wimpole 
 Street was the seat of aristocracy, and Cavendish 
 Square in its glory. From carriages and such like 
 our hero must have fallen to evil fortunes and days, 
 for there is a rumour that Mr. Lemon once purveyed 
 other refreshments than those mental kickshaws 
 which he gives us every week. He made his earliest 
 attempts, too, at stage plays, was jolly both off and 
 on the stage, and lived the life of a literary Bohemian 
 
 E 2
 
 52 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 at the time Mr. Gilbert Abbott a'Beckett, a briefless 
 young barrister, wrote for Figaro, and rubbed his 
 stuff gown into holes by waiting in and outside the 
 courts in Westminster Hall in hopes of a brief. 
 
 This Figaro — "Figaro here, Figaro there," and of 
 course " everywhere " — was a rabid Radical pub- 
 lication ; but Radicalism had a cause then, and, 
 heaven knows, the Tories wanted shaving. Robert 
 Seymour was an artist who drew and managed to 
 live ; his sketches were hardly then known ; and 
 John Leech and Kenny Meadows (whom people took 
 for a comic artist ! ) were drawing on the gallery of 
 comicalities in Bell's Life. Mr. Mark Lemon, 
 Mr. Blanchard, Henry Mayhew, Horace Mayhew, 
 Maginn, Albert Smith, E. L. Blanchard, and Douglas 
 Jerrold met one day at the shop of Joseph Last, 
 in Wellington Street, after various preliminary 
 struggles, and did resolve upon imitating a certain 
 French periodical, the Charivari — which, indeed, 
 might itself have been imitated from our Figaro or 
 Black Dwarf. For the Black Dwarf had been put 
 in prison, and Figaro had died. The Englishmen 
 might have been original, but they were not. Look, 
 for instance, at Mr. Alfred Thomson and the Period 
 — that indecent imitation of Le Journal Amusant and 
 Le Petit Journal. Why should the conductors of 
 the Period, with which is combined the Echoes, thus 
 drag the name and fame of English letters in the
 
 MR. MARK LEMON. 53 
 
 dirt, after a French fashion ? If they must prosti- 
 tute themselves to the vice of the age, why not in 
 an original way ? 
 
 Why they were so stupid as to call Punch — 
 perhaps the very best name ever suggested for a 
 comic paper — by the second title of the English 
 Charivari, which it is not, and never was, always 
 puzzled the present writer, even when, as a boy, 
 he bought its first number. Some of its writers 
 had been over to Boulogne, and Thackeray — who 
 was not there at the commencement, and came on 
 afterwards, a swell from Frazer's Magazine, and a 
 college-man — had lived in Paris ; but Messieurs les 
 abonnes who took Punch in, knew about as much 
 about the Charivari as they did about Sanskrit. 
 The Charivari was epigrammatic, caustic, savage, 
 full of wit, often indecent, and strongly political. 
 Punch, too, had its wit, tried to be epigrammatic, 
 was full of sound, honest English humour, not 
 heartily political, but thoroughly social, and was 
 never improper nor indecent, but always cleanly 
 and manly. The very varnish on Punch's nose 
 glistened with a holy dew of cleanliness ; the 
 very second cut which John Leech did was a 
 satire on those unfortunate foreigners, those loungers 
 of Regent Street and the Colonnade of the Quadrant 
 (since taken down), those " Foreign Affairs," which 
 Leech, from the bottom of his entirely English
 
 54 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 heart, most thoroughly despised. Besides this, the 
 Charivari was often in opposition to the reigning 
 powers, and was actually always disloyal. Punch 
 was, has been, and is, always loyal ; loyal in a true, 
 good, and wise sense, as an English gentleman 
 might be. We are not exaggerating the fact when 
 we say that to the wise loyalty of Punch, its writers, 
 and its artists, the reigning Sovereign owes much, 
 very much, of the best and heartiest popularity she 
 has. We believe that Mr. Lemon has never touched 
 one penny of public money, but we are sure that the 
 good he has done, the value of the honest service he 
 has rendered, has been simply incalculable. 
 
 For a nation must laugh, and there is all the 
 difference whether it laughs like a satyr, or like 
 those bitter fish-women did in France at blood and 
 slaughter, or like we have laughed under Punch's 
 auspices for many years. The proprietors of the 
 paper were wise enough to find out that their editor 
 was a good one, and we, who have served under 
 many, and have commanded heavy vessels ourselves, 
 here declare that a good editor is just the one thing 
 needful for the success of a publication. You can 
 get plenty of good writers, if you know where to 
 pick them out ; you can select your artists, and you 
 can contrast your goods so as to show each other 
 off; or you can call fools into a circle and spoil the 
 lot! Pauca pallabris; let the world slide. "Sessa!"
 
 MR. MARK LEMON. 55 
 
 quoth Christopher Sly ; how many publishers have, 
 with the help of editors, poured their money down 
 gutters ! 
 
 Mr. Mark Lemon did not succeed to the editorship 
 of Punch till Henry Mayhew had retired, and Mr. 
 Joseph Last, the publisher, had sold his share, and 
 the shares of the literary gentlemen, too, we believe, 
 to Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, who have since 
 then published our veteran contemporary with such 
 signal prosperity and such success. Not only was our 
 friend editor, calling to his aid Jerrold, Thackeray, 
 Tom Taylor, Percival Leigh, Burnand, and a host of 
 others, and helping artists, poor old Newman, Kenny 
 Meadows, Phiz, Bennett, M'Connell (neither of them 
 learned), as well as Charles Keene and Du Maurier 
 (who are learned in art), — but he was a song and a dra- 
 matic author. He has produced upwards of seventy 
 pieces, farces and else. Where are they now ? One or 
 two of them still keep the stage, but modern dramatic 
 literature — even such great poems as "Formosa" 
 and " Billy Taylor " — soon drop into the grave. 
 Mr. Lemon, as an author pur et simple, is not very 
 great. He has written " largely," as the ordinary 
 writer has it, in Household Words and the Illustrated 
 London News, and what he has done has been done 
 with a workman-like finish and neatness. He has 
 writ' en, and honestly, in the Daily News; has 
 furnished the music-sellers with some capital songs ;
 
 56 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 has given pleasure to our little ones in some fairy- 
 tales of very sufficient workmanship, the ** Enchanted 
 Doll" and "Legends of Number Nip;" and when 
 there was a run upon Christmas books, did not the 
 industrious Mark Lemon come forward with a Christ- 
 mas hamper stuffed full of good things ? He has 
 written also in Cmikshank's Magazine and in A. 
 Beckett's ^/mawac /o^ the Month ; and lately — years 
 fly by rather quickly — he let us have two novels, 
 "Wait for the End" and "Loved at Last." Finally, 
 he did a bold but somewhat careless piece of work 
 in editing " The Jest Book " for Macmillan, This 
 should have been the very best book in the language. 
 It is not so good as we might have expected. 
 
 When Dickens was at Devonshire House — "sur- 
 rounded with rank and beauty," say the liners, and 
 for once within the memory of living man, there was 
 a duke who took notice of pressmen, and saw that 
 literature is a living force, not to be despised and 
 utterly neglected — there were certain plays got up, 
 and admirably acted, by the Punch staff, John 
 Forster, and others ; and amongst these actors, if 
 Dickens was the best, Mark Lemon was the second. 
 He has since turned this schooling to account by 
 giving dress " recitals " of Falstaff with admirable 
 effect. 
 
 Reading this over, and leaving the subject of our 
 sketch alone sole monarch of Punch, we find we have
 
 MR. MARK LEMON. 57 
 
 said nothing against him. Let us save ourselves 
 with a caveat. Therefore cave, caveto ! we have 
 never taken one penny of Mr. Mark Lemon's money, 
 and only know him slightly and by repute, and 
 indeed do charge him with making Punch successful, 
 and, therefore, breeding a crowd of stupid imitators, 
 who have made wit (?) vulgar, detestable, often in- 
 decent and common — in fact, to quote our wisest of 
 witty men, frightfully " corrupting." We find, too, 
 that we have not quoted any of our author's writings. 
 Therefore, oh reader, remembering the sweet and 
 gentle nature of the man, take down any volume of 
 Punch, and selecting, not the long articles, but the 
 admirably fitted in padding (for the last thirty years), 
 pick out the sweetest, neatest, and the most pointed 
 paragraphs and epigrams, and put them down with 
 a clear conscience to its editor, Mark Lemon.* 
 
 * Alas ! since this was written, Mr. Mark Lemon died, June, 
 1870, but we have not found it necessary to alter a word of our 
 judgment, nor the tenses of the verbs.
 
 VICTOR HUGO.
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 § 
 
 1 
 
 HE Kings of the realms of Mind, those un- 
 crowned monarchswho enter into our secret 
 j thoughts, and rule us from their graves, 
 
 are very often opposed to the Kings of the World. 
 
 When the world has accepted a family for many 
 years, and there is a species of loyalty engendered in 
 the poet's mind, he will symbolise the monarch in 
 every virtue. She will be Una; she will be the " Fair 
 virgin throned by the West;" she will make bubble 
 upon the poet's lips honied adulation so sweet, so 
 exaggerated, that we poor moderns stare and gape at 
 the subserviency of a noble mind. But the greatness 
 of a monarch must be identical with that of the coun- 
 try before a Spenser can allegorise, or a Shakespeare 
 can flatter. When the interests of the country and 
 the spirit of patriotism are separated from the King 
 of Men, then the poet, without a moment's hesitation, 
 casts his lot with his country. The Court poets of 
 Charles I. were prett)^ singers, and there are noble 
 verses of Lovelace that deserve to stand side by side
 
 62 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 with those of Milton. But we are speaking of the 
 supreme mind. There was no question, there could 
 be no question, which side Milton would take. 
 
 " There can be made 
 No sacrifice to God more acceptable 
 Than an unjust and wicked king." 
 
 Thus he translates from Seneca; and through life, in 
 evil or good report, he casts his lot in with the Com- 
 monwealth. So there could be no question in this 
 case of Csesarism on which side Victor Hugo, the 
 supreme French mind of this century, would be when 
 a vast shadow grew between Liberty and France, 
 and, absorbing the strength of many mediocrities, and 
 leaning on the fears of the Bureaucracy, Louis 
 Napoleon rolled back the progress of French liberty, 
 and constituted himself the Autocrat of France. Let 
 us add, that to us — although the crime of the 2nd of 
 December cannot and should not be forgotten — Louis 
 Napoleon has falsified many fears, and has made a 
 better and even a nobler ruler than one could have 
 supposed from the crooked ways in which he crept to 
 the throne.* But what an Englishman may forgive, 
 a true Frenchman never can condone. Napoleon has 
 his day — not even now so great as Victor Hugo on 
 his little rocky asylum — and Hugo will have his: one 
 will be Hugo the Great, the other Napoleon the Little. 
 
 * Written before the Franco-German war, and the utter 
 collapse of Personal Government.
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 63 
 
 This great French writer, who is so facile a master 
 of so many subjects of his art that he puzzles us in 
 which to name him greatest, and who is so daring 
 that he dazzles and frightens weak critics into a yesty 
 hatred of his name, was born in a stormy time. His 
 mother, a proscribed Vendean, wandered while yet a 
 girl in the Bocage of La Vendee. Married to a 
 Republican colonel, this sainted and excellent mother 
 followed her husband as a soldier of Napoleon ; and 
 the child Victor, born in the struggles of war, "began," 
 as he said, " to traverse Europe before he began to 
 tread the way of life : " 
 
 "Avec nos camps vainqueurs, dans I'Europe asservie, 
 J'errai, je parcoure la terre avant la vie, 
 Et tout enfant encore, les vieillards recueillis 
 M'ecoutaient racontant d'une bouche ravie 
 Mes jours si peu nombreux et deja si remplis." 
 
 It is curious that an opera, a work of genius, is in 
 some way connected with Hugo before he was born. 
 His father, General Hugo, was ordered by Joseph 
 Buonaparte, King of Naples, to reduce the notorious 
 brigand Fra Diavolo ! Which he, of course, success- 
 fully did. 
 
 Of all nonsense written as biographies, and there 
 is much, perhaps that little one by Eugene de Mire- 
 court on Victor Hugo is the greatest. This gushing 
 gentleman, who assures us in an airy way "that we 
 speak of the mother of Hugo as we do of the mother
 
 64 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 of the Gracchi and the mother of Saint Louis," shall 
 tell us, in his way, of the early years of Victor Hugo; 
 but we will get snatches in bits from him, as too much 
 effusion and French sentiment will not be good for 
 English digestions. When he was sixteen — he was 
 born on the 26th of February, 1802 — Hugo wrote 
 " Bug Jargal," but he does not seem to have published 
 it until after " Hans of Iceland," which, says Mirecourt, 
 " frightened the youth of all of us ; " and he tells us 
 that it was a Blue Beard story carried to the sublime, 
 and a " statue bigger than nature, and carved in 
 granite," which does not convey much to us. Soon 
 after the publication of " Hans of Iceland," which made 
 him, says Mirecourt traditionally, hundreds of enemies, 
 whereas we believe that a good book makes friends, 
 Victor married Mademoiselle Fouchet at the begin- 
 ning of 1823. The poet was twenty, the bride fifteen. 
 " If they were rich," says gushing Mirecourt, " it was 
 in love, in youth, and in hope;" and he quotes two 
 or three beautiful verses addressed by Hugo to his 
 wife, remarkably neat, wonderfully epigrammatic, 
 and especially French ; 
 
 " C'cst toi dont le regard eclaire ma nuit sombre, 
 Toi dont I'image luit sur mon ^ommcil joyeux ! 
 Cest toi qui tiens ma main quand je marche dans I'ombre, 
 Et Ics rayons du cicl me viennent de tes yeux." 
 
 We are afraid that the savour of these verses will 
 escape in a translation :
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 65 
 
 " Mon Dieu ! mettez la paix et la joie aupres d'elle, 
 Ne troublez pas ses jours, ils sont a vous, Seigneur ! 
 Vous devez la benir, car son ame fidele 
 Demande a la vertu le secret du bonheur ! " 
 
 Very pretty ; a young fellow of twenty courageously 
 marrying a girl of fifteen, and writing like that to her, 
 is a spectacle to gods and men in these melted-butter 
 days — especially a spectacle to Miss Becker, Emily 
 Faithful, and the shrieking sisterhood. Poor little 
 Madame Hugo — how they would have patronised and 
 pitied her, riveting her chains of slavery at that early 
 age ! And Hugo, whom Swinburne so loves, marry- 
 ing and become pere de famille when the Grseco- 
 Gallic-Scotch poet was murmuring with satyr-like lips 
 the Hymn to Hermaphroditus; — does not, by the way 
 an unhealthy insubordination of women produce un- 
 healthy and erotic poetry ? All the best women the 
 world has ever heard of, from the blessed Virgin 
 downwards, were only too meekly ready to be sub- 
 ordinated. For of woman truly is the proverb wise, 
 " she stoops to conquer." 
 
 Victor Hugo had, with his father's consent, com- 
 mitted himself to a literary career; and in his studies 
 he had been so successful that his pieces had been 
 crowned, and he would have won more prizes but for 
 his youth. The restoration of the Royal family filled 
 his father with despair, his mother with joy, and thus 
 separated the parents. Loving his mother above all,
 
 66 ' MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 as Frenchmen somehow will do, he rose to distinction 
 as a Royalist poet, and received a pension from 
 Louis XVIII. , and years afterwards a peerage from 
 Louis Philippe. He had, in spite of the love of his 
 father for Napoleon I., depicted France as " Rachel 
 weeping for her children, for they were not," and in 
 half-a-dozen ballads he had proved his loyalty. But 
 at heart he was free and republican. 
 
 Mirecourt, still gushing, tells us that in the midst 
 of poverty the young couple, whose united years only 
 reached to middle age, retired to a "ravishing little 
 house, No. 42, Rue Notre-dame-des-Champs, built 
 like a convent, and hidden like a bird's-nest in 
 trees." " And there there was," says this miserable 
 scribe, striking a pose as if he was making an epi- 
 gram, " there there was a summer dining-room, with 
 a terrace, and a winter dining-room." " On etait 
 regu par Madame Hugo, I'ange du foyer." It would 
 be odd if anyone else but a man's wife should wel- 
 come you, or be " the angel of the hearth," or, to be 
 quite French, of the stove. Suffice it to say that in 
 this little house, to which the profits of " Hans of Ice- 
 land " brought comfort, there came a circle of friends, 
 and that Sainte Beuve formed there a club, of which 
 Hugo was chief. This club consisted of Dumas, Paul 
 Foucher, Hugo, Mery Arnold, Fleury, and Sainte 
 Beuve ; and sometimes met with another club, with 
 Thiers, Mignet, Piesse, Armand Carrel, and others.
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 67 
 
 Then the two clubs combined, upon which our 
 French author bursts into an epigram, " On operait 
 une fusion des deux cenacles. La po^sie accueillait la 
 politique et la traitait en saur I " Is it not sweet ! We 
 do not write like that yet in England. 
 
 In 1826, the "Odes and Ballads" of Victor Hugo 
 betrayed the political change of his spirit. In 1827 
 he published a drama called " Cromwell," in which he, 
 by a preface, demolished Racine and the sticklers 
 for unity, and asserted the freedom of the modern 
 and Christian drama against the rules of Aristotle. 
 Henceforth there was a struggle between these 
 Unity-arians and Victor Hugo, The genius of Hugo 
 was victorious ; and we need not say what an effect 
 this had upon England, where all our plays are taken 
 from the French, more or less en gros ou en dkail. 
 In " Cromwell," in " Ernani," " Marian de Lorme," 
 "LeRoi s'amuse,""Lucrece Borgia," "MarieTudor," 
 "Angelo," "La Esmeralda," " Les Burgraves," and 
 especially in that very great drama, " Ruy Bias," 
 Victor Hugo carried out his principles with triumph. 
 
 Let us now for a moment look at his poems, of 
 which, by the way, some of the most beautiful have 
 been very finely translated by Robert Brough, in the 
 Train ; and it is there that the genius of the man will 
 more especially be found. We here subjoin a few 
 of the verses of " Sara la Bagneuse," translated with 
 exceeding delicacy by Robert Brough : 
 
 F 2
 
 68 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 "Sara la Bagneuse. 
 
 Sara, indolent as fair, 
 
 In the air, 
 Pois'd upon a hammock, swings 
 To and fro above a pool, 
 
 Limpid — cool — 
 Watered by Illysees' springs. 
 
 And the glassy sheet below, 
 
 As they go. 
 Shows them swinging fro and to ; 
 Tiny car and burden fair, 
 
 In the air ! 
 As she leans herself to view. 
 
 She, with timid foot, in play 
 
 Taps the spray ; 
 Ruffling thus the mirror still, 
 Redd'ning quickly, back it shrinks. 
 
 While the minx 
 Shudd'ring, laughs to feel the chill. 
 
 Hidden lay within the bow'r. 
 
 In an hour, 
 You shall see the maiden go 
 From the bath in all her charms. 
 
 With her arms 
 Cross'd upon her breast of snow. 
 
 Pure as a drop of morning's lymph, 
 Shines the nymph. 
 
 Stepping from a crystal brook ; 
 
 Wet, with quiv'ring shoulders bare. 
 In the air. 
 
 Glancing round with anxious look.
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 69 
 
 Watch her ! how her bosom heaves 
 
 Crackhng leaves 
 Sound to her hke knell of doom ; 
 Should a gnat her shoulders brush, 
 
 Mark her blush, 
 Like a ripe pomegranate's bloom. 
 
 All that robe or veil conceals, 
 
 Chance reveals ; 
 Deep within her cloudless eyes 
 Shines her as shines a star, 
 
 From afar, 
 Through the blue of summer skies. 
 
 Water from her rounded hips. 
 
 Raining drips, 
 As from off a poplar tall, 
 Or as if the heedless girl. 
 
 Pearl by pearl, 
 Down had let her necklace fall." 
 
 In every one of his poems there are signs of genius and 
 marks of grace ; there is also a neatness of work- 
 manship which is admirable in contrast with our 
 careless writers. Take, for instance, this little gem, 
 which we have translated line for line : 
 
 "The Flower and the Butterfly. 
 
 The lowly flower to its airy guest 
 
 Whispered, ' Oh, stay ! 
 
 How different are our lots, while here I rest 
 Thou fliest away ! 
 
 Fliest and comest back, and fliest again. 
 To play elsewhere ;
 
 70 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Yet at each morn thou findest me the same, 
 Bedewed with tears. 
 
 Ah, that our love may pass in faithful days. 
 Oh, my heart's king ! 
 
 By me take root ; or, if thou will not stay, 
 Let me take wing !'" 
 
 "Les 'Chants du Crepuscule' sont remplis d'une multi- 
 tude de petits chefs-d'oeuvre," says Mirecourt, and here 
 we agree with him. Everywhere one finds the hand of 
 a master. Les chansons des rues et des hois have, how- 
 ever, an eroticism which pleases the Swinburian fancy ; 
 and " Les Travailleurs de la Mer," says our gusher, is 
 a veritable insult to Providence ; but then Mirecourt 
 does not live at Jersey, and has not seen the struggle 
 of the elements. 
 
 But it is as a prose writer that Hugo is by far the 
 greatest, greater than as a poet or a dramatist. As 
 chief of the romantic drama, he pushed the meaning 
 of the word to something far higher than it had ever 
 covered before. In his wonderful story of " Notre 
 Dame," in the veritable creations of the hunchback 
 Quasimodo, the priest Claud Frollo struggling with 
 his guilty love, the innocent gipsy Esmeralda, the 
 young author had given a proof of his genius; but his 
 greatest strength was reserved for his years of exile, 
 of banishment, of reflection, of the struggle of a giant 
 against his fate. As an exile, a blind Homer, he has 
 sung of man's struggle not only with the'elements, but
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 71 
 
 with education and society, as an ^schylus has pic- 
 tured and sung of the fore-doomed troubles of Orestes. 
 We have said that Hugo was made by the citizen 
 king, Louis PhiHppe, a peer of France. In England 
 we put our men of genius in a melancholy ruin of a 
 Poet's Corner in a huge lump, where the fame of one 
 may neutralise that of the other, and the memories 
 and reflections that arise from the grave of Dickens 
 may effectually be driven away by glancing at the 
 busts of Shakespeare and Thackeray. In France, 
 either in persecution or in reward, they do recognise 
 their genius. Made a peer by Louis Philippe, Hugo 
 was elected by the Republicans first to the Consti- 
 tuent and then to the National Assembly, wherein 
 his eloquence was noted. He wrote certain very war- 
 like " Lettres du Rhin," and with consistent inconsis- 
 tency was president of a Peace Society. The crime of 
 December — when Louis Napoleon's troops shot down 
 some hundreds of the people and some ten of the 
 elected of France, going in their perfect legality to 
 meet in their National Commons House — set Hugo 
 in violent opposition. He flew first to Brussels, 
 then to England, where he wrote a somewhat violent 
 letter to the Queen upon some criminal very properly 
 condemned to death; then he fled to Jersey, and 
 has since resided in a sister island at Hauteville 
 House. Here he lives with his two sons, Charles 
 and Victor, and a daughter, Mdlle. Adele Hugo, with,
 
 J2 MODESN 3££X OF LZTTZSS. 
 
 ci course, tit - : : It H-, ztn'^^siy 
 
 loved as ever. rr;~ hi? : t — : : ^s 
 
 scorching satire "XiT ^ r ^ . : i-i "Lt? Ciis-n- 
 meiit? ■" ^it ~i~e7 ' -. --'- 11" ' " z .'z : reues 
 
 We srt 7-: — isri .1- Tzer "" 1793.'^ wbidi will cc" 
 
 : : zly his great 
 : 5 of charitv. 
 
 his ' : - 1 ~~-~^ zo iy>or 
 
 "~ 7~_T rccr. 'wL: . > -5iiii2.ve 5z~ee so 
 
 -.'- , , 1 5v^-crr:alica- _ ..-,-":::ip. If. as the 
 
 1 _ ^ _ - 52.V. ^ . " ., ; IS uiaA. it is 'witii 3. bene'^-rieTiT 
 
 £iie n _ . . i riiii Hi^o isrightlypossessed- H_, -i 
 
 T-.^v?^- .-*=-ac,^ i-,T TTmtest asainst wron^ and tviannv; 
 
 - - - ^^ <rranf! tntUTe o£ the WTsld. 
 
 W-'e r.s^r . - -it would be 
 ei' . . \^t e m:i5t. there- 
 fore, - " ' i 5£e-7 - z'.. iz-ir^ ?.~' TT
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 73 
 
 taste for old armour, tapestry, painted windows, 
 mediaeval costume, and those admirably beautiful 
 relics of old furniture, which is now so prevalent in 
 Paris and in London. Herein we authors are really 
 of some use to you prosaic upholsterers and archi- 
 tects: you fat and greasy citizens are made to under- 
 stand how nice your countr}--box may be made, 
 through the author, if you please, Mr. Pug^vash. And 
 Mr. Chasuble, to Walter Scott and Hugo you owe 
 some of your chances of bringing back lecterns, 
 singing boys, processions, introits, and other church 
 matters. Yes, here we are of use. In a mediaeval 
 hall in an ancient hotel, garnished with arms and 
 massive furniture, the young poet and his wife, with 
 their children playing before them, looked the true 
 grande dame and seigneur of the old time that their 
 friend Louis Boulanger, portrait painter to the family, 
 has represented them. In their little English house 
 at Hauteville, in the sea-worn island won by the English 
 from the Normans, and still retaining its Norman 
 customs and its singular rights, a vigorous white- 
 headed man of nearly seventy, with an iron grey beard, 
 hair cut short, broad chest and shoulders, face marked 
 with the frequent foot of time, eyes that stare out 
 eagle-like from the bold countenance, is a man, like 
 John Florio of Elizabeth's time, still resolute, still 
 hoping for the federation of the peoples ; still dream- 
 ing those dreams which you and we have forgotten,
 
 74 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 and weaker people never had. By him is an ancient 
 lady, once his bride of fifteen, but now his consoler, 
 his counsellor, and his guide. To them come the 
 haters of kings, the political implacables, the tri- 
 bunes of the people, the exiles from many lands, the 
 poor, the broken-hearted, the hopeless. But Victor 
 Hugo has for each and all some heart-stirring noble 
 words, some deep feeling to appeal to ; and as the 
 silver-haired lady clasps his hands and looks into his 
 face, as he still fulminates against the triple-anarchy 
 (Nature, and Government, and Fate) which bind 
 down aspiring man, she repeats his own noble lines 
 (Le poete en des jours impies), which we have here 
 attempted to translate: 
 
 " The Poet in these days of Wrong 
 
 Moulds and prepares a better time ; 
 Utopian is this man of song, 
 
 Earth-bound his feet, his thought subhme ! 
 He looks above our little heads 
 
 To all time ! Prophet-like he stands, 
 And holds, or scorned or praised or blamed, 
 
 A torch upreared in sacred hands. 
 The light he trims in days of crime 
 
 Will brighten all our Future Time."
 
 CHARLES READE.
 
 CHARLES READE. 
 
 « PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE." 
 
 Such is the title of a story now running through the pages of 
 the Cornhill Magazine. 
 
 That story is about a skilled workman who loves above him, 
 and has a hard battle to rise in the world and win his sweetheart. 
 In this noble struggle he is so unfortunate as to come into col- 
 lision with certain Trades' Unions, in that populous district of 
 England where the Unions prefer crime to defeat. 
 
 Thus the story treats the great question of the day, and handles 
 it pretty fairly. The writer is neither a manufacturer nor a work- 
 man, and has no prejudice in the matter, but sees the virtues and 
 the faults of both, and what he sees he says. 
 
 To save this subject frotn tmworthy treatment on the stage, 
 the author has dramatised his own work, and the drama will 
 shortly be produced in London, and played by an admirable 
 company selected from various first-class theatres to do justice 
 to a theme so important and so real. 
 
 May the 28th. 
 
 "put yourself in his place" 
 
 A drama in four acts, by the author of the drama " It's Never 
 too Late to Mend," will be represented at the Theatre Royal 
 Adelphi. 
 
 May the 23rd.
 
 78 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 " Put Yourself in his Place " by the author of the novel 
 " It's Never too Late to Mend/' will be pubhshed by Messrs. 
 Smith and Elder, complete in three volumes, and can be 
 ordered in advance at any respectable library throughout the 
 kingdom. 
 
 '&'■ 
 
 HE curiosity of literature with which we 
 have commenced this biography is in its 
 I way unique, and it is only by understand- 
 ing it that the reader will fully comprehend the 
 marvellously vigorous novelist who wrote it. It 
 sounds like a puff, but it is not so. It looks like an 
 arrogant piece of self-assertion, of which, by the way, 
 strange as it may seem, Charles Reade would not be 
 guilty — not even in spite of those italics, " to save 
 this subject from unworthy treatment." And as this 
 announcement was stuck upon one of the affiche 
 boards of the Adelphi Theatre, the last paragraph 
 ooked uncommonly like a Moses-like advertisement 
 of a new pair of trousers ; and the suggestion that it 
 could "be ordered in advance at any respectable 
 library in the kingdom " — what book cannot? — seems 
 to be the neatest bit of buncombe advertising that 
 could possibly be indulged in. What Mr. Charles 
 Reade does intend to say— and we hold that he is a 
 man of true genius, and has the modesty of true 
 genius — is, that he has written a very powerful, very 
 earnest, and very honest novel ; that he believes that 
 it treats of the most vital question of the day ; that
 
 CHARLES READE. 79 
 
 while it does so with the interest of a fiction, it also 
 does so with the clearness of a statesman suggesting 
 a remedy for a terrible national disease. He intends, 
 further, to let the public know that having written a 
 good novel, he intends to sell it ; that a man of 
 letters, although a thousand times a more valuable 
 man, and a much rarer production, has the right of 
 making money by his talent, equally with the butter- 
 man, the iron factor, or the speculator in the stocks. 
 That the public believes in tall-talk advertisement 
 and brag, and that it must be hit full in the face 
 before it is awakened. In this age of competition 
 Mr. Reade believes that the silent man has no notice 
 taken of him. It is no use crying fresh herrings in a 
 whisper, and being so proud as to "thank God 
 nobody hears you." You must not be ashamed of 
 your metier. If you write a story of the day, you 
 must make it bear upon the day in the heaviest pos- 
 sible way. You must circulate widely, and hit the 
 public as hard as you can. 
 
 But the author of "Put Yourself in his Place," which 
 golden maxim we have been following as we write, 
 while he enters with full vigour into all we have pre- 
 viously said, really, and with good cause, believes in 
 his own genius, and is bold enough to say so. Take 
 for instance his motto to his last book : " I will 
 frame a work of fiction upon notorious fact, so that 
 anybody shall think he can do the same; shall labour
 
 80 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 and toil attempting to do the same, and fail ; — such 
 is the power of sequence and connection in writing." 
 — Horace: Art of Poetry. 
 
 And very readily and generously does the public 
 accept the writings of this generous, impulsive egotist, 
 which designation must be understood in an entirely 
 good sense. Mr. Reade believes thoroughly in him- 
 self. He has no doubt as to his vocation, and what- 
 ever he finds to do that he does with all his might. 
 The faults that he has are not the faults of this 
 generation. He does not doubt and hesitate ; he is 
 not feminine, except from the surplusage of his 
 manliness ; he does not despise the means by which 
 he makes money ; he is no trimmer ; he believes in 
 goodness, and yet knows what wickedness is ; he is 
 entirely human, and yet in his aspirations far in 
 advance of the ruck and vulgar herd of humanity. 
 He is sui generis ; he has formed a school of his own, 
 in which he has no pupil. His career has not been 
 a very rapid one, nor are his works — which are so 
 very easy to read, and in which one has such a rapid 
 interest — at all easy to write. He does not produce 
 quickly, but what he gives us is so finished and 
 so natural that it looks as if it were done without 
 any trouble. 
 
 Mr., or rather Dr., Reade, for he is D.C.L., is the 
 son of the late John Reade, of Ipsden House, Oxford- 
 shire. He was educated at Magdalen College, and
 
 CHARLES READE. 8l 
 
 graduated B.A. in 1835, having been born in 1814. 
 He studied at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the 
 bar in 1843 ; but literary barristers seldom practice, 
 and, indeed, literature is so jealous a mistress that 
 she will allow of no other service — at least, in most 
 instances. In the year 1852 a little work, half 
 dramatic, and served up afterwards in a dramatic 
 form, was presented to the public, called " Peg Wof- 
 fington," founded on the story of that generous but 
 semi-virtuous actress. This had at once agreat success, 
 and deserved it. In 1853 another novel, also in post- 
 octavo (ids. 6d.), was published by Mr. Bentley, 
 called " Christie Johnstone," and this, too, made a hit. 
 In a short time there followed upon this a very pretty 
 story of a bloomer, called " The Course of True Love 
 Never did Run Smooth;" then "Jack of all Trades" 
 (the autobiography of a thief) ; then, in or about the 
 years '55 and '56, Mr. Reade wrote for the London 
 Journal a capital story called "White Lies," and it says 
 much for the despised readers of that journal that 
 they, most of them, recognised its extreme clever- 
 ness, while, when published by Mr. Triibner in 1857, 
 in three volumes, it did not attract the public of 
 Mudie's and the libraries in an equal degree, nor 
 according to its deserts. 
 
 In the year 1856 Mr. Reade published a work 
 which had a highly moral and politico-social aim — 
 that of calling attention to the condition of our 
 
 G
 
 82 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 prisons, and also to the far more important, because 
 
 eternal truth, that 
 
 " Men may rise on stepping stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things." 
 
 The name of this was, "It's Never too Late to Mend," 
 and it created a sensation indeed. The cruelties 
 practised in gaols were looked into ; a governor of a 
 gaol removed and suspended, and various new brooms 
 were set in work through the vigour of this expose. 
 " It's Never too Late to Mend," may be taken as 
 Charles Reade's typical work. The writing was so 
 strong that it was painfully vivid ; it was as true as 
 lightning, but it hurt your eyes, and it hurt especially 
 those lazy sensitive men who feel for and yet never 
 help the poor, and who try to believe that our 
 humane system is all couleur de rose. This was so 
 much the case that Mr. Reade was bullied and 
 scolded in a most amusing way by the old termagants 
 of the press; they scolded like fish-fags, but the 
 author little recked of their scolding. The fun of 
 this thing — and to a properly satirical person it is very 
 funny — consists in both persons meaning the same 
 thing, and neither being able to convince the other 
 of that not unimportant fact. When, after the lapse 
 of some time, the death of the offending governor of 
 the gaol, and the cleansing to some extent of our pri- 
 son system, " Never too Late to Mend " was produced 
 at the Princess's Theatre, an old critic and dramatist,
 
 CHARLES READE. 83 
 
 Mr. Tomlins, who is since dead, and who never rose 
 to a position of weight or of eminence in literature, 
 arose on the first night and protested, with his back 
 to the terrible scene, against the cruelty and exaggera- 
 tion of the play. There was quite a row in the 
 house, and the author, we believe, attempted to ad- 
 dress the audience from the private boxes. Then in 
 the papers there was, first, Mr. Tomlins' criticism, 
 and Mr. Reade's indignant protest that he spoke the 
 truth ; then came Tomlins' denial, and as both 
 authors were exceedingly impulsive and vivid, they 
 emptied the slang dictionary with immense vigour 
 upon each other's heads, greatly to the amusement 
 of the public and to the beneficial advertisement of 
 the play. Both meant well ; both were for serving 
 truth honestly, but each was so entetd that he scorned 
 to listen to the other. 
 
 The next novels that we had from Mr. Reade were 
 ** Love me Little, Love me Long; " " The Cloister 
 and the Hearth," an ambitious work in four volumes ; 
 " Hard Cash," written for Charles Dickens's weekly 
 magazine, just as the " Cloister and the Hearth " was 
 written for Once a Week under the name of "A Hard 
 Fight." Next to this succeeded ''Griffith Gaunt," 
 written for a magazine under the stupid name of The 
 Argosy ; and then one of the very best of his stories, 
 the plot of which was furnished him by Mr. Boucicault, 
 called "Foul Play," which appeared in Once a Week; 
 
 G 2
 
 84 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 and next and last, this admirable, vivid, and over- 
 head-and-heels work, " Put Yourself in his Place," 
 which has been for some months running through 
 the pages of the Cornhill Magazine, 
 
 Mr. Charles Reade has also written some very 
 successful plays, " Masks and Faces," &c., and has 
 worked in conjunction with Mr. Tom Taylor as a 
 dramatist. Whatsoever he does he does most ear- 
 nestly. He is no half-hearted workman ; and he 
 knows his own ability as a literary artist so well that 
 he always succeeds. 
 
 Charles Reade is, as an author, very well worth 
 studying. He is so thorough in what he does, so de- 
 termined and so intense, that he falls into exaggera- 
 tion, and yet it is doubtful whether he over-paints 
 the truth. It is the languid age that is in fault, and 
 not the vivid author. In his last work he has de- 
 scribed the effects of Unions in the Sheffield trades, 
 and he has not gone one bit out of the record of that 
 terrible Commission which sat and revealed to us 
 exactly how matters stood. So great an artist is this 
 writer, that one feels towards the murderer by deputy, 
 Mr. Grotait, a kind of sympathy, just as Shakespeare 
 makes you feel a human heart beating even in lago 
 or Richard III. Grotait is, of course, drawn from 
 the life; he is none other than our friend Mr, Broad- 
 head, who, somehow, in spite of the Commission, and 
 in spite of forcible articles of the press, and in spite
 
 CHARLES READE. 85 
 
 of Mr. Roebuck, to whose courage Charles Reade 
 bears a generous and well-merited tribute, carries 
 with him the sympathy of hundreds of working men. 
 Added to this effect of exaggeration, heightened by 
 a dramatic mind, this author has an overheat and 
 vigorous fertility in his invention that requires to be 
 moderated, and a determination to paint so exactly 
 what he feels, that people turn away from the sight 
 in terror, fright, or disgust. He has quoted the " Ars 
 Poetica;" let us recall two or three lines which 
 warn an artist not — even in the heat and excess of 
 his admiration for mere art — to show too much to 
 the public. Flaccus says : 
 
 *' Ne pueros coram populo Medea trucidet ; 
 Aut humana palam coquat exta nefarius Atreus, 
 Aut in avem Procne vertatur, Cadmus in aquem. 
 Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi." 
 
 And in those two last words, or rather in the last 
 line, is the secret of the enmity of a great part of the 
 press for Charles Reade. Even critics cannot appre- 
 ciate what they cannot understand. Not only is 
 Charles Reade true, but he is too true. His reality 
 is beyond realism. Compare Charles Dickens and 
 his pantomimic touch with Charles Reade, and you 
 will see how infinitely superior the latter is as an 
 artist. Take, for instance, those two sailors in "Foul 
 Play," which are as true to life as anything drawn by 
 the great masters. Fielding, Smollett, or Sterne, and
 
 86 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 put them side by side with any of the minor cha- 
 racters of Charles Dickens. Those sailors will " stand 
 out " all alive, while Dickens's work will look faint, 
 sketchy, unreal, comical, and yet caricatured and 
 pantomimic. Take, too, as a direct proof of master- 
 dom in art, the creation of female character. Place 
 side by side Charles Reade's women with Charles 
 Dickens's pretty little marionette company of rag 
 dolls beautifully painted to the life. 
 
 Finally, there are two matters to remark. Reade 
 has quarrelled with the press, and has set it at de- 
 fiance ; he does his own plays that they may not be 
 unworthily treated ; he insults and contemns the 
 critics. The result is that, on the whole, he is per- 
 haps better treated than any other writer. At any 
 rate, there is from this, this lesson to be learnt, — 
 either the press is very generous, or it is very power- 
 less. When an author is strong enough to trust 
 himself — and he is strong enough when he thoroughly 
 believes in himself, — he can walk alone without criti- 
 cism. The opinions of a few weaker professional 
 brethren are nothing to him. It is the public who 
 appraises his value. 
 
 Secondly, there is this last observation, which shapes 
 itself into a congratulation both to the author under 
 review and the public. It is a matter of honest ex- 
 ultation to reflect that one, whose impulses are so 
 true and so noble, who loves what is good, thorough,
 
 CHARLES READE. 87 
 
 and laborious, and hates what is effeminate, weak, and 
 mean, is so popular and so well appreciated. We 
 are delighted when Reade begins a new story ; we 
 know it will be angular and singular, but that it will 
 be bold and true. In circumstances of great danger, 
 his latest hero, Henry Little, gives a toast, " Here is 
 quick exposure, sudden death, and sure damnation 
 to all hypocrites, thieves and assassins." It is just 
 what Charles Reade would do before the most blood- 
 thirsty critics. His motto should be, " Quod vult 
 valde vult." May he live long to teach us that what 
 we vehemently desire should be only that which is 
 noble and true.
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, M.A., D.C.L., &c.
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, M.A., D.C.L., &c. 
 
 JHERE is a story told of a gentleman- 
 farmer, not unaccustomed to the outsides 
 of books, that he took down to his farm 
 with Immense gusto, Ruskin " On the Construction 
 of Sheepfolds." It was foreanent the lambing season, 
 and our Bucolic wished to provide. His rage will 
 be imagined by those who love to hug a book to 
 read after dinner, and to debate with an architectural 
 author the proper form of some building. Ruskin's 
 " Sheepfolds " is a pamphlet on the discipline of the 
 Church ! There are a thousand other ridiculous 
 stories told. A person bought "Table Traits" to read 
 as a cookery book; the "Gentle Life" was caught up 
 as a disquisition on fishing, and a hunting man 
 carried away the " Recreations of a Country Parson" 
 as a work which should be full of delightful chapters 
 on pastoral sports, — shooting, fishing, and fox- 
 hunting. What more, bleated the poor deceived one, 
 what other recreations can a country parson have ? 
 But Ruskin's titles will give one an insight into the
 
 92 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 man. Earnest, honest, full of love for his fellow- 
 men, all that he does has some end in view, and this 
 end is to make men better and wiser. We can 
 well believe him when he writes : " In these books 
 of mine, their distinctive character, as essays on art, 
 is their bringing everything to a root in a human 
 passion and a human hope. Arising first not in any 
 desire to explain the principles of art, but in the endea- 
 vour to defend an individual painter from injustice, 
 they have been coloured throughout — nay, continually 
 altered in shape, and even warped and broken, hy 
 digressions respecting social questions, which had for me 
 an interest tenfold greater than the work I had been forced 
 info undertaking. Every principle of painting which I 
 have stated is traced to some spiritual and vital fact." 
 Our readers will now see what Ruskin is, a great 
 social and political writer, who has been turned for a 
 moment, and by a generous impulse, to write upon 
 art. What he wrote he wrote well, from his soul, as 
 so good and great a man must write ; and even when 
 he generously undertook the defence of that mean 
 and selfish old genius Turner, he did not wholly lose 
 himself in his subject. Perhaps no one was more 
 astonished than Turner at the turn things took. Here 
 were the English, who are mostly ignorant of art, buy- 
 ing greasy, sticky, and dark old masters, and worse, 
 wretched copies from old masters — things so black 
 that one could not see. Ruskin, a young graduate,
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 93 
 
 comes and waves his magician's pen in " Modern 
 Painters," and our newspaper critics, more ignorant 
 even then than now, which is saying much, are con- 
 verted, and the reign of modern art comes in. We 
 begin to love dayhght, real drawing, colour, light, 
 cheerfulness ; not fusty old saints, miserable friars, ( 
 and impossible apotheoses of saints that never ex- ) 
 isted. And yet no one loves the old masters more 
 than Ruskin and this writer — when they are masters, 
 look you ! However, the reign of Turner and modern 
 painters was established, and thousands upon thou- 
 sands of pounds were laid out upon English artists 
 who, but for Ruskin, would have starved. As a rule, 
 and we know them well, our more fashionable artists 
 are an ill-read, unthinking, over-paid and over-praised 
 set. Has any one of them ever thought of giving 
 Ruskin a dinner, or subscribing to any testimonial 
 for his gigantic work ? Does Mr. Birket Foster be- 
 lieve that without Ruskin he would get three and four 
 hundred pounds for those little bits of water-colours ? 
 No ; he would still be working on blocks of wood 
 with a H.H.H. pencil. Do the pre-Raphaelites reflect 
 that without him their angular drawings, flat painting, 
 and want of atmosphere, would have become famous ? 
 If they do, they are still conceited muffs. They have 
 forgotten Perugino, Bartolomeo, and the rest of the 
 old Italians, now that they have made their name — 
 thanks to Ruskin. Thanks also to him for having
 
 94 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 improved the whole of our art and art-knowledge. 
 He is a great man ; we hardly know yet how great. 
 
 Look at him at the Royal Institute. Leave the 
 country by an early train, dine in London, and then, 
 favoured by a Fellow, present your ticket to Ruskin's 
 lecture. A long, thin, shambling gentleman, like a 
 country clergyman, with hair red and after the "pound 
 of candles " style in its method of tumbling over his 
 face ; a Scotch face, full of shrewdness ; very ugly if 
 we believe some photographs, very winning, bright, 
 and clever, nay, sweet and charming, if we trust to 
 George Richmond's portrait and to reality. The 
 mouth is small, the nose somewhat retrousse, the 
 forehead small, but so is the whole face ; yet the 
 head is capable, and the fiery soul seems to work 
 upwards and flash out of the windows of those eyes, 
 as the eloquent words, hurried onward in a torrent, 
 flash too, and light up whole tracts of darkness. A 
 word, a hint, a slight reference to some gargoyle or 
 spandrill, some carved work in stone, and you see it 
 all. A dry subject becomes luminous ; the cold dead 
 stones of Venice begin to move and raise themselves 
 to life. After hearing Ruskin you understand how it 
 was that Apollo made the stones dance and form in 
 order to build Troy walls — which you never did be- 
 fore. But Ruskin has tried higher game than art. 
 
 Born in 1S19, Ruskin is the son of a London wine- 
 merchant, who had the good sense to send his son to
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 95 
 
 Oxford, where, at the age of twenty, he took the New- 
 degate Prize for EngHsh Poetry. This is worth while 
 bearing in mind, for Ruskin's style is very flowing 
 and buoyant, and full of poetic imagery of a high 
 order. Then taken with a love of art, the student, 
 after taking his degree, studied under J. D. Harding 
 and Copley Fielding, excellent artists, who have a 
 great love of nature very apparent in their works. 
 Having learnt to paint, to know what a palette is, 
 what scumbling, what the difference between a tube 
 of megilp and a tube of paint, and being indeed prac- 
 tically no fool of an artist, the graduate wrote a book 
 to tell the world — which. Heaven knows, wanted it — 
 something about art. The reception of his book 
 *' Modern Painters," when first issued in 1843, was 
 simply contemptuous. 
 
 Art critics — who have been admirably sketched 
 by Thackeray as Fred Bayham — were ignorant 
 reporters, who did not know a mahl-stick from a 
 walking-cane, and who, in the plenitude of their 
 ignorance, could not see that they were killed 
 outright, run through the body, by Ruskin's 
 rapier. A Turk had a scimitar so sharp that 
 he used to pass it through a man's neck without 
 hurting him. The victim used to grin with de- 
 lighted surprise. "Sneeze," said the Sabreur Turqiic. 
 The executed one did so, and his head rolled on 
 the floor. Most of our stupid art critics are dead ;
 
 g6 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 some have exhibited the crick in their necks ; but a 
 great many of them have not yet sneezed, and go on 
 writing about Parmegiano, Claude, chiaro-oscuro, 
 and the corregiosity of Corregio, with distressing sim- 
 plicity. Quietly and triumphantly "Modern Painters" 
 made its way ; a second edition was called for within 
 a year ; Turner was enthroned (poor mean old man, 
 he had tumbled into decadence, painted pictures full 
 of varied colours like a convalescent black eye, and still 
 quoted his own MS. poem, the " Fallacies of Hope"), 
 and the public's idea of painters and painting was 
 revolutionised. 
 
 The great writer — for the style, and the style is the 
 man ; it is God's gift, as colour is to the painter — 
 was then away to Italy studying. Mark this, not one 
 step does Ruskin take without study. He records, 
 in a simple unaffected way, a striking instance of 
 this. "The winter," he says, "was spent mainly in 
 trying to get at the mind of Titian, — not a light 
 winter's task, — of which the issue, being in many 
 ways very unexpected to me, necessitated my going 
 in the spring to Berlin, to see Titian's portrait of 
 Lavinia there, and to Dresden to see the Tribute 
 Money, the elder Lavinia, and girl in white, with the 
 flag fan. Another portrait, at Dresden, of a lady in 
 a dress of rose and gold, by me unheard of before, and 
 one of an admiral, at Munich, had like to have kept 
 me in Germany all summer." So conscientiously
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 97 
 
 does Mr. Ruskin work. In 1846, another volume of 
 "Modern Painters"followed, andanotherwaspromised. 
 In the interim he had been studying architecture, and 
 we had his " Seven Lamps of Architecture," 1849 ; the 
 " Stones of Venice," 1851 ; and the second and third 
 volumes of the same in 1853. All these were large 
 volumes, editions de luxe, for Mr. Ruskin's fortune is 
 a sufficient if not a very large one. He appears to 
 have thought that only a large price would repay 
 books of that character. Like Rogers's " Italy," 
 published at a heavy price, the works paid capitally. 
 We must now rapidly sketch the work of Ruskin, 
 to show what he has done, and afterwards we will 
 say a few words upon how he has done it. In 185 1, 
 Ruskin wrote in favour of the pre-Raphaelites, a set 
 of ardent and admirable young painters, whose forcible 
 ignorance was needed to bring us back from the 
 schools of Chalon and Collins, and the poor creatures 
 who had given up their mean souls to the aristocracy 
 and the " Book of Beauty." All of the P. R. brethren 
 have recanted practically ; not one paints as he then 
 painted, but infinitely better. In 1853, Ruskin lec- 
 tured in Edinburgh on Pre-Raphaelitism and Gothic 
 Architecture, and in 1854 he gave, in London, three 
 lectures to working men on the Art of Illumination. 
 He then advocated the sublime art of going backwards, 
 so that we might get more forward, reculer pour mieux 
 sauter. He had written for the Quarterly in 1847. 
 
 H
 
 gS MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 In 1851 he issued his pamphlet on Church disciphne — 
 "The Construction of Sheepfolds;" in 1854 he wrote 
 on the openingof the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, anent 
 the protection of Art Antiquities throughout Europe. 
 For the Arundel Society he wrote a notice of Giotto 
 and his works, and, in 1855, he showed the Tunes 
 critic and others how to write, in his " Notes on the 
 Academy Exhibition." We have, besides, the "Two 
 Paths," the " Harbours of England," the "Political 
 Economy of Art," and then the idea of Political 
 Economy became strong upon him. " Unto this Last " 
 were essays in the Cornhill Magazine ; " Sesame and 
 Lilies," " The Ethics of Dust," " Kings' Treasuries 
 and Queens' Gardens," and three lectures on " War, 
 Commerce, and Work," and afterwards " Letters to a 
 Working Man," which were first published in the 
 Manchester Examiner, and which will sink deeper and 
 deeper in men's minds, till they in some measure 
 revolutionise our ideas of property. 
 
 For Ruskin's words are weighty, socialistic. Chris- 
 tian, and yet revolutionary. We who believe in 
 Christ do not stand still ; in word and deed we utter 
 something for the sake of the brethren ; we are on the 
 hill top here in England, but the light shines from 
 other hill tops too. Let us explain ourselves. In 
 " Unto this Last," Ruskin had penetrated the fact that 
 the terrible want and poverty, want of sweetness and 
 light, is only to be remedied by more justice to the
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 99 
 
 workman, by lifting him up and taking his children 
 out of the dust. But how to do this ? Leaving 
 poetry, Ruskin comes here to common-sense, and 
 puts down four axioms with, as he finely says, " a 
 plausible idea at the root." They are (i) " That 
 labour should be considered as elevating. (2) That 
 all reform should be conducted in the spirit of love, 
 (3) That all workmen should be paid as soldiers are, 
 regardless of excellence or greater capacity of produc- 
 tion ; literally, as in the parable, ' unto this last.' / 
 And (4) One of the most important conditions for the 
 establishment of a healthy system of social economy 
 would be the restraint of the properties and incomes of the 
 upper classes beyond fixed limits.'" Study that sentence, 
 because its spirit is now abroad ; if you have a right 
 to divert the incomes of a church, a much greater 
 right have you to meddle with the unearned wages 
 of the rich. In Ruskin you will find the politics of 
 the future. 
 
 For his style, we give but one, a description of 
 Verona, which, for the benefit of his hearers, he con- 
 trasted with Edinburgh when lecturing in that city : 
 
 " I remember a city, more nobly placed even than Edinburgh, 
 which, instead of the valley now filled by lines of railroad, has a 
 broad and rushing river of blue water sweeping through the 
 heart of it ; which, for the dark and sohtary rock that bears 
 your castle, has an amphitheatre of cliffs crested with cypresses 
 and olive ; which, for the two masses of Arthur's Seat and the 
 ravages of the Pentlands, has a chain of blue mountains higher 
 
 H 2
 
 100 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 than the haughtiest peaks of the Highlands ; and which, for the 
 far-away Ben Ledi and Ben More, has the great central chain of 
 the St. Gothard Alps ; and yet, as you go out of the gates, and 
 walk in the suburban streets of that city — I mean \^erona — the 
 eye never seeks to rest on that external scenery, however gor- 
 geous ; it does not look for the gaps between the houses ; it may 
 for a few moments follow the broken lines of the great Alpine 
 battlements ; but it is only where they form a background for 
 other battlements, built by the hand of man. There is no neces- 
 sity felt to dwell on the blue river or the burning hill. The heart 
 and eye have enough to do in the streets of the city itself ; they 
 are contented there ; nay, they sometimes turn from the natural 
 scenery, as if too savage and solitary, to dwell with a deeper 
 interest on the palace walls that cast their shade upon the 
 streets, and the crowd of towers that rise out of that shadow into 
 the depth of the sky. That is a city to be proud of indeed.'' 
 
 In 1870 Mr. Ruskin was appointed Slade- Professor 
 of Art, at Cambridge, and has recently issued his 
 lectures in a volume from which we quote this noble 
 passage : 
 
 •" So far from art being immoral, little else except art is moral ; 
 that life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is 
 brutality : and for the words ' good ' and ' wicked,' used of men, 
 you may almost substitute the words ' Makers ' or ' Destroyers.' 
 For the greater part of the seeming prosperity of the world is, 
 so far as our present knowledge extends, vain ; wholly useless 
 for any kind of good, but having assigned to it a certain in- 
 evitable sequence of destruction and of sorrow. Its stress is 
 only the stress of wandering storm ; its beauty the hectic of 
 plague : and what is called the history of mankind is too often 
 the record of the whirlwind, and the map of the spreading of the 
 leprosy But underneath all that, or in narrow spaces of dominion 
 in the midst of it, the work of every man, ' qui non acccpit in
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. lOT 
 
 vanitatem animam suam,' endures and prospers ; a small rem- 
 nant or green bud of it prevailing at last over evil And though 
 faint with sickness, and encumbered in ruin, the ti-ue workers 
 redeem, inch by inch, the wilderness into garden ground ; by 
 the help of their joined hands the order of all things is surely 
 sustained and vitally expanded, and although with strange 
 vacillation, in the eyes of the watcher, the morning cometh, and 
 also the night, there is no hour of human existence that does 
 not draw on towards the perfect day. 
 
 " And perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men under- 
 stood that the beauty of Holiness must be in labour as well as 
 in rest. Nay ! more, if it may be, in labour ; in our strength, 
 rather than in our w^eakness ; and in the choice of what we shall 
 work for through the six days, and may know to be good at their 
 evening time, than in the choice of what we pray for on the 
 seventh, of reward or repose. With the multitude that keep 
 holiday, we may perhaps sometimes vainly have gone up to the 
 house of the Lord, and vainly there asked for what we fancied 
 would be mercy ; but for the few who labour as their Lord 
 would have them, the mercy needs no seeking, and their wide 
 home no hallowing. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow 
 them, all the days of their life ; and they shall dwell in the house 
 of the Lord — FOR EVER." — Lectures on Art. 
 
 Here is a writer after our own heart ; no dreamer 
 after Arthur and his knights, no searcher after Holy 
 Grails, no petty describer of sensation trials for mur- 
 der or adultery, no mere painter of comic people who 
 never existed, of " character " which boils and bubbles 
 only in his own too humorous brain. For while 
 Ruskin tells us of Function, be sure that he honours 
 the function of the writer, and that is not merely to 
 distract nor to amuse, not to take us now to Thebes, 
 now to Athens, as Horace has it, to make us weep,
 
 102 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 laugh, or creep all over at mere ghosts — no, ten 
 thousand times No ! It is — this noble function of a 
 writer which John Ruskin has nobly discharged — to 
 bind our hearts closer to our brothers, and to lift our 
 souls nearer unto God !
 
 THE ETHICS OF RUSKIN.
 
 THE ETHICS OF RUSKIN. 
 
 |HESE are the times," wrote Thomas Paine, 
 the infidel and agitator, in No. i of The 
 Crisis — " these are the times that try men's 
 souls." That was a forcible sentence, worthy of the 
 title of the paper — The Crisis. But we all live in a 
 " crisis," and all times try men's souls; indeed, each 
 age adapts its trial and its pressure with abundant 
 care, so that each soul finds the burden and the sore 
 weight, nor need complain when others are tried as 
 well. But these are times, we will say, that have 
 peculiar trials. Such is man's conceit. Before the 
 births of conquerors and kings, Nature — fond nurse of 
 these fortunate great ones — had given note that the 
 future has something worth seeing behind her veil. 
 Before great Julius died, as Shakespeare, musically 
 repeating Plutarch, lets us know, old Beldame Earth 
 was in strange taking : hurricanes toppled down 
 towers, in the sky floated ashes and stars of fire, 
 comets flew eccentrically here and there, and the 
 sheeted ghosts did squeak and gibber in the Roman 
 streets ! To what purpose were these warnings, if
 
 I06 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 they ever existed ? A miracle twice repeated becomes 
 no miracle ; nay, we shall have learned men who will 
 just look again into that miracle and prove that it is 
 but a law. So we, of a sceptical age, are rightly 
 sceptical as to these peculiar times. The exordium 
 may do for the ordinary preacher who wishes to wake 
 up his drowsy flock ; but it will not serve us. The 
 present times are fraught with severe lessons, big 
 with the future ; but not more so than others. We 
 have had the most brutal revelations of cold-blooded 
 murders plotted in peaceful. Christian England, by 
 those lamb-like martyrs, the working men. We have 
 had a congress of idle men, sitting like a secret 
 society, a band of assassins, or the Vehme Gerichte, 
 and decreeing that one of their number shall be 
 maimed, wounded, put out of the way, or shot to 
 death, because he dared to try and gain a free and 
 honest living. We have had popular teachers and 
 writers, who yelled like angry madmen at Governor 
 Eyre for saving an English colony by the court- 
 martial trial of a rebellious negro, silent as to the 
 murderer Broadhead, because he was and is a so- 
 called working man, and so-called working men take 
 in their papers. We have had organised bands of 
 roughs who broke down the Park palings, and a 
 member of Parliament who apologised for them. We 
 have had a meeting of Conservative working men 
 mobbed, hooted, hounded, and beaten out of a public
 
 THE ETHICS OF RUSKIN. I07 
 
 hall, in which they had legitimately called a meeting, 
 by Radical Reformers, who, at the-same time, claimed 
 liberty of speech, and shrieked with comic indignation 
 because not allowed to speak in Hyde Park, which 
 never was intended but for recreation. We have had 
 organised desperadoes rob sixty, or seventy, or a 
 hundred people in the open day in London streets ; 
 and a Protestant lecturer stir up a Romanist mob to 
 riotous ruin in Birmingham ; and yet these are not 
 extraordinary times. Our union murders have existed 
 for one hundred years, and we have lived through 
 them. Our workmen have been so ill-advised, so 
 petted by goody books and ignorant editors, that at the 
 Paris Exhibition we were beaten on our own ground. 
 While the workman strikes and starves for fancied 
 wrongs, while our teachers have for twenty-five years 
 been ashamed of Protestant feelings and Bible teach- 
 ings, our newspaper writers have been ere this more 
 ignorant than they are now ; and this is all the com- 
 fort we can give anyone — we have lived through all 
 this, so we are actually not living in strange times. 
 But this is certain, there is a great change coming ; 
 and John Ruskin, one of our greatest modern teachers, 
 has been the first, or one of the first, to warn us of it. 
 As an Art critic, he has done much good. He brought 
 love, truth, honesty, vision, knowledge, to bear on 
 Art. He cut deep into that shameless obstruction, 
 the Royal Academy; he exalted new men. Mr.
 
 I08 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Millais owes much to Mr. Ruskin ; he made the pre- 
 Raphaelites ; indeed, his success made them fooHshly 
 conceited, and spoilt them somewhat; but this he 
 intended not. A singular!}^ quick and fertile thinker, 
 he produced some noble works very rapidly, and in 
 these he scattered such wonderfully eloquent thoughts, 
 such noble vindications of God's works, that no one 
 English writer, save Jeremy Taylor, can be cited, 
 who can show such blood, life, colour, motion, 
 passion, and reality in his sentences. Ruskin's words 
 live ; they are not merely bits of type — there they 
 are, and there they will be. But it is not to these, 
 which will remain great monuments for artists to 
 refer to, that we would point at present. We have 
 other work to do ; for Ruskin, abandoning nowfor some 
 time the province of Art teacher, in which he is first, has 
 taken to a wider school, perhaps the noblest that a mere 
 modern prose writer can take up, that of teacher of Po- 
 litical Economy to a nation which boasts of its econo- 
 mists, and believes itself to be, rightly or wrongly, the 
 foremost nation, as regards that science, in the world. 
 Now, Political Economy has a name to young ladies 
 and vapid young gentlemen which is the most deadly 
 and tiresome, and yet it is the most vital, sweet, and 
 interesting. It resembles that philosophy of which 
 Milton sang that it was charming and divine — 
 
 " Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute."
 
 THE ETHICS OF RUSKIN. lOQ 
 
 The mission" of Moses was economic, for he pro- 
 pounded the Oikonomia, or house-law, whereby every 
 man should go in and possess the land, and every one 
 in the vast tribes of Israel should dwell at peace, and 
 no one should hurt his neighbour ; or if, by mischance, 
 he did so, he should atone for it, if by crime, should 
 suffer ; so that goodness should abound, wisdom 
 should be exalted, peace should ensue ; the ways of 
 the Lord should be known as pleasant ways, and 
 their sons should " grow up as the young plants," and 
 the daughters should be chaste, pure, and beautiful 
 *' as the polished corners of the temple." True 
 economy, then, is the science of life ; it comprehends 
 the best knowledge of the world, it concerns itself 
 with the happiness of man, it makes life sweeter and 
 better ; it restrains the evil, exalts the good, banishes 
 selfishness, makes us understand the luxury of virtue, 
 and undertakes to supply the greatest happiness to 
 the greatest number. It must be founded not on sel- 
 fishness, but on religion ; not on mere political dicta, 
 or the garbled, ill-conceived maxims of the trader; 
 not on the interested notions of either the consumer 
 or the producer, but on certain canons, which, gener- 
 ously conceived and wisely interpreted, in giving 
 good to one, will give it also to all. 
 
 It is not too much to say that Mr. Ruskin's pohtical 
 economy aims at all this. He is a great man and a 
 wise thinker; but we must not suppose that his
 
 no MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 doctrines are therefore received at once by the politi- 
 cal quidnuncs who patch up old ideas of selfishness, 
 which they call Political Economy. Mr. Ruskin's 
 essays are full of forcible, eloquent writing. They 
 were received partly with ridicule, partly with a 
 vacant non-comprehension, partly with indignant 
 denial ; but they have, as he himself says of Political 
 Economy, "a plausible idea at the root." 
 
 Of course numbers 3 and 4 are propositions* which 
 have been received with loud denials and indignant 
 protestations ; and it is but fair to say that Ruskin 
 has hardly developed his theory, since certain letters, 
 published in a Manchester paper, are not yet repub- 
 lished by himself, corrected and annotated ; so that 
 even in these deductions, except in the last, which 
 we quote in his own words, we may be guilty of some 
 error. However, his ethics have made a very great, 
 and very deep and wide sensation. 
 
 A correspondent, writing to us to request our 
 opinion on these things, says : " I send you these 
 letters, but I still retain a few, which are really unfit 
 for perusal, having been well thumbed by ' greasy 
 mechanics ' in a mechanic's greasy workshop during 
 meal and leisure hours, when the hands are rather 
 black, and the reading-desks are massive but dirty 
 castings. Wq believe you to be a leader of thought 
 and opinion in England ; and there are not a few of 
 
 • See page 99.
 
 THE ETHICS OF RUSKIN. Ill 
 
 US here who desire to have your opinion upon these 
 as soon as possible." Now, papers that are read by 
 working men at Ancoats, will be read and pondered 
 over by working men all over the world, and working 
 men now have the position in their own hands. The 
 relations of capital (which we take here to be mere 
 money and possessions, not brain capital, which the 
 labourer also has) and labour are undergoing a re- 
 vision, and it would be mere cowardice to shut our eyes 
 to the fact. Mr, Ruskin earnestly desires to " remove 
 the temptation to use every energy for the possession 
 of wealth," and in that we have long been with him. 
 He desires earnestly to benefit mankind, and he 
 believes that this gentle spoliation of the too rich 
 classes will be gradually brought into force from 
 beneath, without any violent or impatient proceedings. 
 These are weighty words ; and among all our weekly 
 and daily teachers we have not yet found a man able 
 and willing to tackle their author or confute his argu- 
 ments, unfi.nished and inchoate as they yet are. 
 
 To state Mr. Ruskin's case fairly, we must first 
 refer to our definition of true Political Economy as 
 given above, and reiterate that the basis of his teach- 
 ing is generosity or charitable (affectionate) feeling 
 towards man. "You have seen long ago," he wrote 
 to a friend on the 7th of last March, " that the essen- 
 tial difference between the Political Economy I am 
 trying to teach and the popular science, is, that mine
 
 112 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 is based 07i presumably attained honesty in men, and 
 conceivable respect in them for the interests of others, 
 while the popular science founds itself wholly on their 
 own supposed constant regard for their own" (interest). 
 This is perfectly true. To make as much as one 
 could, to govern by dividing others, to buy in the 
 cheapest and to sell in the dearest market, to rise 
 early so that one could anticipate others "in picking 
 up the worm," these were the destructive axioms of 
 Economy, falsely so called. But Mr. Ruskin wisely 
 puts all that aside as an error. " Your way of making 
 money so that you may be the head of a village, the 
 only rich man amongst hundreds of poor," he would 
 say, "is a selfish, vicious way; and, because vicious, 
 it is unwise. You corrupt yourselves, and you render 
 others envious. How dwelleth the love of God in you?" 
 Of course, this teaching of Ruskin, the lifting up of 
 the community, the cultivation of each and singular, 
 is not new. It is merely God's law, the Bible law, 
 and therefore Christian law, for Christianity is the 
 most levelling of all religions ; it lifts the poor man 
 out of the mire to set him among princes, and the 
 great prince it makes low. Few people can quote the 
 Bible, as few people have so well studied it, better 
 than Ruskin : with him it is a force, a weapon — a 
 very two-edged sword. In the letter quoted he puts 
 forward the Bible to prove that song, and dance, and 
 wine, were given to man to make glad his he?rt in
 
 THE ETHICS OF RUSKIN. II3 
 
 religious ceremonies, not to be prostituted to the 
 wretched can-can of the French, nor to the Covent 
 Garden Pantomime with its "forty clever swells," 
 young women half undressed, smoking forty bad cigars, 
 neither to the drunkenness and stupid bowlings of a 
 Swiss harvest home. And then, taking the lowest 
 human estimation of the Bible, he argues upon 
 that ; so that putting aside Divine authority, he proves 
 ** how peculiarly ghastly is our festivity in its utter 
 joylessness, in the paralysis and helplessness of 
 a vice in which there is neither pleasure nor art." 
 And in watching and reporting on certain Parisian 
 dancers who have since appeared in London, he says : 
 " Nothing could be better done in its own evil way, the 
 object of the dance being throughout to express in every 
 gesture the wildest fury of insolence and vicious passions 
 possible in human nature. So that, you see, though for 
 the present we find ourselves utterly incapable of a rap- 
 ture of gladness and thanksgiving, the dance which is 
 presented as characteristic of modern civilisation is still 
 rapturous enough, but it is the rapture of blasphemy." 
 The argument to be drawn from these powerful but 
 somewhat raphsodical letters seems to be, that we are 
 as much gone out of the true way in Political Economy 
 as in dancing. We want recalling to true Art ; and 
 whether we take the Bible as a book of mere wise 
 sentences, or as a book every syllable of which is in- 
 spired, we are equally wrong. And here we may give 
 
 I
 
 114 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's view of the Bible, which he so constantly 
 studies. There are, he says, four ways of regarding 
 it. The ist, "As being dictated by the Supreme 
 Being, and every syllable of it His Word." This 
 theory is, he adds, of course "tenable by no ordinarily 
 well-educated person." The 2nd is, " That though 
 admitting verbal error, the Bible is absolutely true, 
 furnished to man by the Divine Inspiration of the 
 speakers and writers thereof, and that every one who 
 honestly and prayerfully seeks for such truth as is 
 necessary for salvation, will infallibly find it there." 
 " This," he continues, " is the theory held by most of 
 our good and upright clergymen, and the better class 
 of the professedly religious laity ; " among which we 
 may assuredly reckon Mr. Ruskin. The third theory, 
 denying the inspiration, allows the historical accuracy, 
 the record of " true miracles," and of a " true witness 
 to the resurrection and the life to come." This is the 
 theory held by most of the active leaders of modern 
 thought. The fourth and last possible theory places 
 the Bible on a par with the best moral books of the 
 Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, and Indians, and that it 
 is with them to be reverently studied. And so cer- 
 tain is Ruskin of the truth of his Economies, that he 
 addresses this fourth class of thinkers, and appeals to 
 the Book which for some 1,500 years has been the 
 chief guide of Europe, which forbids pride, lascivious- 
 ness, and covetousness — which enjoins truth, temper-
 
 THE ETHICS OF RUSKIN. II5 
 
 ance, equity, and charity. Now, all great thinkers have 
 done the same ; ergo, on that humble basis and premiss 
 Ruskin builds up his theories, and from that small coin 
 of vantage they will assuredly go forth and conquer. 
 His faults are not many, but we may mention them. 
 He preaches a kind of Communism, which, although 
 practised by the Apostles and early Christians, was 
 in no way commanded, and which nowhere, except in 
 Utopian Cloud Land, could exist beneficially. He 
 believes too much in worldly prosperity for the mass, 
 while he rightly tells us how miserably evil it is to 
 almost all individuals. He talks very proudly and 
 cruelly of those who, like us, have " dared to inso- 
 lently preach contentment to a man with thirty 
 shillings a-week ; " and he is hasty in his denuncia- 
 tions of follies which arise from education, from a long 
 peace and prosperity, and from the cowardice of our 
 preachers and our writers for many years, and from 
 the selfishness of the ministries of all parties, who 
 have given all the honours and rewards to rich men, 
 and have therefore made riches the only incentive. 
 But Ruskin has a very noble heart, and one that is 
 very tender, too ; is most nobly eloquent, and will be 
 listened to ; he sympathises with poverty and igno- 
 rance, but is tempestuously moved at vice and folly, 
 forgetting that they are the saddest phases of poverty 
 and ignorance. He raises up a warning voice at a 
 time when change has come upon us, and tells us to 
 
 I 2
 
 Il6 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 go back to the old times of earnestness, of trade guilds, 
 of honour, obedience, reverence ; of industry and 
 work in each man ; " every youth in the State, from 
 the King's son downwards, should learn to do some- 
 thing finely and thoroughly," — not forward to mere 
 wallowing in wealth, and corrupting, selfish ease. 
 And Ruskin must be listened to ; or else, so surely 
 as we allow thousands to starve in ignorance and 
 want, to fester in slothful ease, to plot and plan 
 selfish murders, to die starving and helpless while we 
 are full of meat and wine, to go on in the wretched 
 ignorant way we allow our lowest classes to do, we shall 
 pass away as Persia and Greece and Rome have passed 
 away, with more guilt to ourselves and less excuee. 
 " Take unto yourselves heed," says Joshua, " that 
 ye love the Lord your God ; else if ye do in any wise 
 go back, know for a certainty that the Lord your 
 God will no more drive out any of these nations 
 before you ; but they shall be snares and traps unto 
 you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your 
 eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which 
 the Lord your God hath given you." These, simply, 
 are the ethics of John Ruskin, even the ethics of the 
 Bible. Let us be just, and fear not ; let us follow 
 this great teacher; but alas! how can we be just, 
 when out of one thousand children in Manchester, 
 barely four hundred can read, and the rest are 
 ignorant, and know not good from evil ?
 
 ROBERT BROWNING.
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 |N that marvellous opening of ''Faust "where 
 the Poet, the Manager of the theatre, and 
 Mr. Merryman (der lustige Person) debate 
 as to the proper thing to put before the public, 
 the Poet demands for his art the chief admiration ; 
 the Manager, on the contrary, thinks of the scenery, 
 and Mr. Merryman of fun and frolic. The Poet says 
 of himself, and quite truly, that 
 
 " His voice is fame ; he gives us to inherit 
 Olympus and the loved Elysian field. 
 The soul of man sublimed — man's soaring spirit 
 Lives in the POET gloriously reveal'd." 
 
 Whereto Mr. Merryman makes a very wise and 
 beautiful answer : 
 
 " A poet yet should regulate his fancies ; 
 
 :;< * ;|< -,;< 
 
 For oh the secrets of the poet's art, 
 
 What are they but the dreams of the young heart? 
 
 Oh, 'tis the young enjoy the poet's mood. 
 
 Float with him on imagination's wing,
 
 120 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Think all his thoughts, are his in everything, 
 Are, while they dream not of it, all they see ! " * 
 
 And then Goethe launches out into one of those mar- 
 vellously subtle, daring, and tender expositions which 
 make him what he is. 
 
 We need this reference when speaking of Robert 
 Browning. With him we feel that a poet gives man 
 something to inherit, while at the same time he 
 makes us repeat with Mr. Merryman that sentence 
 about " regulating his fancies." Half the English- 
 speaking world could not understand Browning ; let 
 us say two-thirds, or three-fourths ; or what do you 
 say to nine-tenths ? Take all the people who really 
 can read Shakespeare with pleasure, and comprehend 
 that clear, deep, intense writer; not one-half of these 
 could understand Browning. And yet he is a great 
 poet, deep, intense, but seldom quite clear. He thinks 
 
 * The Poet der Dichier stems also to feel this, and in one of 
 his bursts of intensely beautiful but egoistic poetry says : 
 
 " Gieb ungebiindigt jene Triebe, 
 Das tiefe schmerzenvoUe Gliick 
 Des haffes kraft, die macht der Liebe 
 Gieb meine jugcnd mi zurtick!" 
 
 Thus translated by Dr. Anster : 
 
 " Give me, oh give, youth's passions unconfined, 
 The rush of joy that felt almost like pain, 
 Its hale, its love, its own tumultous mind ; 
 Give mc my youth again ! "
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 121 
 
 too quickly ; and he involves the reader in a crowd 
 of similes and expositions, which come tumbling over 
 one another as "the water comes down at Lodore." 
 He is a fit instance of the "palpable obscure," He 
 affects titles to his books as strange as does Ruskin. 
 Shakespeare gives his works plain, bolt-upright 
 names, — "Julius Caesar," "Macbeth;" or gently- 
 sweet and modest titles cap his works, — " A Winter's 
 Tale," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," or "All's 
 Well that Ends Well." But our cultivators of the 
 palpable obscure — much as we love what is good in 
 them, we hate their folly — launch out into such titles 
 as " Pippa Passes," " Bells and Pomegranates," 
 " Idylls of the King," " Oriana," " Ethics of Dust," 
 " Kings' Treasuries and Queens' Gardens" — and so 
 on. They do this to attract attention, because they 
 are weak, not strong, because they are affected with 
 their weight of poetry ; whereas the true giants bore 
 their burden of genius modestly, and were all the 
 better poets for not exhibiting the modern poetic 
 strut. 
 
 But of modern poets we are, for many reasons, 
 inclined to rank Robert Browning as the first, before 
 Tennyson, Swinburne, or Morris ; and he is one that 
 has played a waiting game, and has never been 
 crowned by elated crowds like Tennyson. Moreover, 
 Browning is a poet with poets ; he grows upon us. 
 There was a time when he said truly, that of his
 
 122 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 books the writer and the reader were one and the 
 same : he himself was all the public that he had. 
 But now he can venture upon the wildest thing that 
 any modern poet ever did ; that is, he can publish 
 a poem in four volumes, at 7s. 6d, each, telling in 
 each volume the same story three times over; and 
 he can command a public for this extraordinary 
 work of art. 
 
 Robert Browning is, as may be seen from his por- 
 traits, a handsome, bold, defiant-looking man, with 
 somewhat of a poet's earnest gaze. He does not 
 possess the super-essential outward mask of a poet, 
 as did Robert Southey, of whom Byron said that he 
 looked more like a bard than anyone he ever met. 
 He has not what is vulgarly called a "poetic" ap- 
 pearance, that is, he wears a well-made coat, and 
 does not muffle himself up in a cloak ; and yet he 
 looks quite sufficiently a poet. He is of mature age, 
 having been born in 1812. He was educated at the 
 London University. In 1836 Browning published 
 his truly poetic first work, "Paracelsus;" in 1837 he 
 produced his tragedy of " Strafford," a subtle but 
 not an acting tragedy ; full of fine lines and subtle 
 thoughts, but which no audience would now sit out. 
 All that Macready could do to "mount" and produce 
 the play was done ; but it was a failure. The " Blot 
 on the 'Scutcheon," produced in 1843, was a very fine 
 acting play, but unsuccessful ; for in those days there
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 123 
 
 were numbers of poetic playwrights, authors of un- 
 acted dramas of merit, who neglected the interests 
 and action of the piece merely to put into the mouths 
 of the actors fine sentiments in blank verse. The 
 "unacted drama " became then a synonym for fine 
 words ; the acted drama was bald, devoid of merit, 
 and depended, as it does now, upon mere situation, 
 sensation, and farce. Since that time Browning has 
 not given us an acting drama, but has confined him- 
 self to dramatic poetry and to dramatic scenes. In 
 1840 he published " Sordello," a mysterious work ; 
 in '46, " Bells and Pomegranates; " in '50, " Christmas 
 Eve and Easter Day; " in 55, " Men and Women." 
 In '62 Messrs. Chapman & Hall published " Selec- 
 tions from the Works of Robert Browning," a charm- 
 ing volume, not to be confounded with another 
 subsequent selection published by another firm, 
 which is comparatively worthless. In '64 the poet 
 issued " Dramatis Personas," and in '69 the four 
 volumes called "The Ring and the Book," a poem, 
 as we have said, told twelve times over by different 
 people. 
 
 Now, what excuse have we to make for Robert 
 Browning's having so pertinaciously troubled the 
 public ? For that is one way to look at it. Accursed 
 be those preachers who have nothing to say, and who 
 fill up the world with vain babblement and the strife 
 of tongues ! Not every one has the divine gift of
 
 124 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 s?r.j; and for some that have, and who have wasted 
 it in mere licentiousness, or in feminine foil}-, better 
 were it had thej' never been bom. As to Browning, 
 there is this to be said, that he felt deeph' what was 
 poetic, and tried \-igorously to express it. He had, 
 too, some real merit about him ; but it was not of an 
 easy, popular kind : and although there was, when 
 he appeared in 1835, ^ great opening for a poet — 
 Shelley, B\Ton, Keats, and Southe}- being dead, and 
 Wordsworth beyond any new and fresh expression — 
 neither Browning nor Alfred Tennyson, who had 
 lately published his volume, filled the vacir.: r'ace. 
 Both volumes were received by the robust public of 
 that day with contempt. Tennj'son had written in 
 puling accents about Adeline " sweeth- smiling," 
 Fatima. Oriana, and a dozen other prett}- names, 
 and over the literaiy horizon there were signs that 
 the disastrous advent of Woman's rule was about to 
 come upon us. Soft and sweet was *'' school-miss 
 Alfred"' — "Low, low, whisper low," '*' Oh swallow, 
 swallow, fl\ing south," &c. ; "Let her %\'ind her 
 milk-white arms about me ; let me die," &c. ; but 
 Montrose wrote a song a thousand times more 
 touching, aye, and one that would please a true 
 woman more, in that sweet " My dear and only love : " 
 " But if thou wilt prove ^thful, then. 
 
 And constant of thy word, 
 111 make thee glorious by ray pen. 
 
 And £amous by my sword."
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. I25 
 
 Still it must be said of Browning that he is essentially 
 manly. " In the region of morals," writes Mr. 
 Austin, " women may have had a beneficent influ- 
 ence in modern times " (not all women ; some of the 
 most immoral novels in sentiment ever published 
 have been written by women), " but in the region 
 of Art their influence has been unmitigatedly mis- 
 chievous. They have ruined the stage." (This is quite 
 true ; there is now no opening, so to speak, for a 
 really good, mature actress; all that is demanded is 
 supplied by pretty, painted young girls in silk tights, 
 and with plenty of false hair.) " They have dwarfed 
 painting till it has become the mere representative of 
 pretty little sentiment — much of it terribly false — 
 and mawkish, common-place domesticities ; and they 
 have helped poetry to become, in the hands of Mr. 
 Tennyson, at least, and his followers, the handmaid 
 of their own limited interests, susceptibilities, and 
 yearnings." " Every-day evidence makes it clear," 
 says Mr. Swinburne, "that our time has room 
 enough only for such as are content to write for 
 children and girls." 
 
 Now, Mr. Browning has not helped on this state of 
 things ; he has not cut down all things to the mere 
 drawing-room standard. His "Paracelsus," a mar- 
 vellously subtle and studious poem, was at least 
 beyond that. Here is the history of it: Paracelsus — 
 Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus de Hohenheim
 
 126 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 — was a half-mad braggart and German physician of 
 the Middle Ages, who discovered the use of opium, 
 and did his best to rescue medicine from the disgrace 
 of being the most ignorant "science" in the world. 
 His history may be read in many a magazine 
 article, for it has a strange charm. This braggart 
 doctor (a great quack by the way, always vaunting 
 himself) Mr. Browning took as his hero. He 
 elevates him into a kind of Faust, without the 
 superhuman machinery, and he contrasts this super- 
 fine braggart with a simpler creation, his friend 
 Aprile, and the motives of the two men are thus 
 contrasted : 
 
 Par. His secret ! — I shall get his secret, fool. I am 
 
 The mortal who aspired to KNOW ; and thou 
 
 Apri. I would LOVE infinitely, and be loved. 
 Par. Poor slave ! I am thy king indeed ! 
 
 In the end, after various adventures and thoughts, 
 poured out thick and slab, often in the most rugged 
 verse that can be conceived — involved, knotted, 
 twisted, and obscure — hard, and yet sometimes 
 beautiful as the striae and stains in malachite or mar- 
 ble — the two ambitions are brought again into con- 
 trast, and Paracelsus, chastened by defeat, and 
 blinded even by the vast expanse of the knowable, 
 beaten down by the infinity of God's work and know- 
 ledge, and the wondrous purpose of life as yet behind 
 the veil, dies, with his friend Festus kneeling by
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. I27 
 
 him. Aprile has died some time before, hoping and 
 trusting in his faith in love ; and Paracelsus, as he 
 dies, reverts to him and to his doctrine, which he 
 admits the wiser. Here are some sweet lines upon 
 lost love : 
 
 " 'Tis only when they spring to Heaven, that angels 
 Reveal themselves to you ; they sit all day 
 Beside you, and lie down at night by you, 
 Who care not for their presence. Muse or sleep, 
 And all at once they leave you, and you know them. 
 We are so fool'd and cheated ! " 
 
 And the dying words of Paracelsus are as beautiful 
 as they are wise. He finds that love should always 
 precede power. With much power should always be 
 more love, or man becomes a tyrant. His own 
 failure was because he did not understand this. He 
 failed— and why ? Because — 
 
 " In my own heart love had not been made wise : 
 To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind ; 
 To know even hate is but a mask of Love's ; 
 To see a good in evil, and a hope 
 In ill success ; to sympathise — be proud 
 Of their half-reasonings, faint aspirings, struggles 
 Dimly for truth, their poorest fallacies. 
 And prejudice and fears, and cares and doubts ; 
 All with a touch of nobleness, for all 
 Their error, all ambitions, upward tending. 
 Like plants in mines, which never saw the sun, 
 But dream of him, and guess where he may be, 
 And do their best to climb and get to him, — 
 All this I knew not, and I fail'd." .
 
 128 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 This is very beautiful, 0, si sic omnia! The critics, 
 who have done much harm, received it not as Hamlet 
 bids us receive strange truth, — " And therefore as a 
 stranger give it welcome," — but served Browning 
 almost as they had served Keats. "We can assure 
 our readers," says the Quarterly Review (of Keats), 
 "that this young man's poems were received with 
 all but a universal shout of laughter ! " Contemplate 
 the Philistines laughing at Sampson ! Critics did 
 not understand Browning; so they abused him. 
 
 One, however, did understand him, and she was 
 Miss Elizabeth Barrett, unquestionably the finest 
 female poet that England has produced. She mar- 
 ried Browning, and lived with him in Italy for many 
 years most happily. She was but of delicate health, 
 a learned poetess, of equal calibre with, some say 
 higher than, her husband. She herself did not think 
 so ; nor do we. There can hardly be conceived a 
 more beautiful or enviable life than that of these two 
 singers, each aspiring for the freedom of Italy, the 
 progress of knowledge, the higher exaltation of the 
 soul. Gradually the public came round to their way 
 of viewing matters. One rich gentleman left them, 
 it is said, a legacy, ^^5,000 each, for their good work; 
 and editions of their poems began actually to be pub- 
 lished without loss ! At last, a few years ago, when 
 the fame of both was established, the health of Mrs. 
 Browning gave way, and she died at Florence on the
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. I29 
 
 29th of June, 1861, leaving her love but a memory, 
 and to her poet husband, as he tells us in these 
 lines, her memory but a prayer for help and 
 strength. Thus he speaks to her spirit in his last 
 poem : 
 
 " O lyric love ! half-angel and half-bird, 
 And all a wonder and a wild desire — 
 Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun. 
 Took sanctuary within the holier blue. 
 And sang a kindred soul out to his face — 
 Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart- 
 When the first summons from the darkling earth 
 Reach'd thee amid thy chambers, blanch'd their blue, 
 And bared them of the glory — to drop down, 
 To toil for man, to suffer, or to die — 
 This is the same voice : can thy soul know change? 
 Hail, then, and hearken from the realms of help ! " 
 
 Beautiful as this is, the reader will find it very ob- 
 scure. No one, for instance, could parse it or render 
 it grammatical. That is a grave fault. Besides 
 " Paracelsus," and other hard thought-out dramatic 
 pieces, Browning has become celebrated for his 
 Lyrics — " How they brought the good news to 
 Ghent," &c., and for a certain ethical, philosophic, 
 and even theologic kind of verse, — " Mr. Sludge, the 
 Medium," " Caliban on Setebos," " Bishop Blou- 
 gram," in which the poet, entering into the soul of 
 his character, a half brute, a Yankee rogue, or a 
 Roman Catholic bishop, makes him think out and 
 reveal in involved speech the nature of his character. 
 
 E
 
 130 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 These poems are simply entrancing to those who 
 love (and we are of them) the studious, reflecting 
 method of the author. To the vast public they are 
 perhaps obscure ; in all probability they are not quite 
 true, not so true as the inner searchings of lago into 
 his own villainy, or of Cassius into his own ambition, 
 but they are very fine. Caliban, in his island, re- 
 flecting on the nature of God, reasons just as an 
 utterly selfish, untaught savage would ; Bishop 
 Blougram as an educated priest, from whose heart 
 all real faith in his calling had disappeared, but who 
 yet thought it necessary to keep up appearances. As 
 poets live chiefly by a reflected fame, and as the 
 sweet small-meaning of Tennyson begins now to 
 pale, there has arisen a party which places Browning 
 at the head of modern poets, and is glad to ob- 
 jurgate its former idol, Tennyson. There are people 
 who believe that eccentricity is genius, and that if 
 they think differently from the crowd, they think 
 better than the crowd. These, of course, joined the 
 new sect ; and, without belonging either to the one 
 group or the other, we confess that we think with 
 them. 
 
 Browning is a much deeper, more manly, and more 
 subtle thinker than Tennyson ; both hold their own 
 office in high esteem ; Tennyson, it seems to some, 
 cherishes an overweening conceit of his own work. 
 The first is analytic ; the poet is with him, to quote
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. I3I 
 
 his own head-lines, " Epoist, dramatist, or, so to 
 call him, analyst, who turns in due course synthesist;" 
 the other is equally proud of his singing robes, and 
 so much worships not only old times, but the nobility 
 of man, that in effect he is a pantheist. But both of 
 them lack the highest status of the poet, of Shake- 
 speare, of Robert Burns, of a dozen other smaller in 
 size, but equal in quality, who sang out of the na- 
 ture of the heart, because music, love, veneration, 
 worship, and wonder were in their souls, and they 
 became poets as larks soaring up to heaven become 
 singing-birds — because God puts the song into their 
 throats, and they can't help rejoicing in the sweet 
 expression, the exosmosis, flowing outwards — to use a 
 chemical term — which they find it impossible to 
 repress. 
 
 Such poets are not laborious and involved. Know- 
 ing their innate strongly natural power, they do not 
 brag about it, nor write laudations of their office, — 
 they best praise it by practising it ; but some of our 
 modern bards, who are not so great either, strut and 
 talk loudly, pretend that they are within an ace of 
 comprehending God and Infinity (as in Tennyson's 
 "Flower in the crannied wall"), and run off from 
 obscurity to obscurity, to produce poetry by art (of 
 which, too, they talk a good deal), forgetting that the 
 Art itself is Nature. 
 
 K 2
 
 MR. ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
 
 MR. ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 
 [JE protest that in the reference to Tennyson 
 we have not been unjust. We love him as 
 well as most young ladies ; perhaps we 
 understand him better. But it is a sign of a weak 
 age when living men of letters are puffed up with a 
 flatulent laudation, and are exalted above the illus- 
 trious dead. Any one knowing English literature 
 will recall the dull time when Alexander Pope was 
 elevated above that poor creature, Shakespeare, who 
 was looked upon as a wildly-luxuriant clownish 
 genius who wanted improving — as he has been im- 
 proved by Tate and Gibber. There still was a galaxy 
 of poets all revolving round one central star — Garth, 
 Tickle, Spratt, King, Eusden, Sheffield ! How 
 dreary read those names now, and yet each man had 
 — egad, each man has — merit. They were very pretty 
 fellows, but flattery in their day slew them. Before 
 you condemn them wholly, read them. They were 
 not entirely without some good ; yet in their days 
 their flatterers made them gods. Now, Tennyson
 
 136 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 is just as far from Shakespeare as ever Tickle, or 
 Garth, or Eusden is from him; — and Mr. Anthony 
 Trollope is about as far from Fielding. 
 
 Yet we all like Trollope much. He writes " as 
 a gentleman for gentlemen," as the phrase of the 
 day has it, as if Homer, the led-blind man as they 
 called the nameless one, wrote only for one class. 
 But in this picked age, you see, we label our works 
 of genius. Every vapid shilling's worth testihiis 
 Tyburnia or The Best Society — you could not go farther 
 from good literature, nor fare worse on the whole — - 
 describes itself as a " first-class " magazine. That 
 is why such are purchased only by third-class pas- 
 sengers, and those flunkeys and housemaids who 
 shoulder us poor Bohemians in the second-class. 
 Every paper is a first-class organ, and essentially in 
 this meaning Mr. Anthony Trollope is a first-class 
 novelist, and yet he is very clever, and has had an 
 effect on this age. " Sir," says a character in Jer- 
 rold's " Housekeeper," " I am a student of human 
 nature." "Yes," retorts his interlocutor, "you 
 study human nature as a housebreaker does a house, 
 to take advantage of itsweakest parts.'" Trollope has done 
 this with our parsons. Of him we may say that he 
 
 " To parsons gave up what was meant for mankind." 
 
 For from the Bishop and his wife in " Barchester 
 Towers " to that good old fellow, the Rev. Mr.
 
 MR. ANTHONY TROLLOPE. I37 
 
 Crawley, who puts the noble ballad of Lord Bateman 
 into Greek verse, preserving the measure and the 
 rhyme, Trollope is never tired of introducing us 
 inside the clerical waistcoat. Do we think anything 
 better of the parsons ? We know parsons well, 
 and, upon the whole — though we find them men like 
 ourselves, sometimes not too elevated, not too self- 
 sacrificial, not too noble — we can only think that the 
 clerics drawn by Trollope are a disgrace, and almost 
 a libel. We do not say that they are not true. 
 They are photographically true, but they are never 
 so from the highest and noblest sight-point. Van- 
 dyke, whose portraits are true to nature, and 
 Lawrence, in a lower way, never painted anything 
 but a gentleman or a lady. So some few of our 
 photographers elevate their photographic sitters. 
 They take them at their best. They look clever, 
 well, at ease, capable. Other artists stand on a 
 lower ground, and give us those sombre, hard- 
 featured, commonplace English men and women who 
 make our photographic albums a horror, and the 
 portraits of our actresses in the shop windows a sin 
 and a disgrace. Mr. Trollope hath dealt somewhat 
 after this fashion with our clergy. He has not done 
 any better with our dukes and men in office ; he has not 
 flattered our pretty commonplace English girls, and 
 as for our equally commonplace young Englishmen, 
 let Johnny Eames bear witness that he pictured them
 
 I3S MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 as very ordinary Philistines and fools. And yet we all 
 read him, and like him. What is the power he has 
 over us ? Simply there is but one answer. It is art — it 
 may be commonplace art, but it is art. Mr. Trollope 
 is a literary workman of a sort ; but a true workman. 
 His outward appearance symbolises, or rather 
 pictures, his inner. When you look at his face, you 
 exclaim, with Addison's Cato, " Plato, thou reasonest 
 well." For, as that great one said, the soul chooses 
 a fit house wherein to dwell, you must own that the 
 soul of Trollope has fitted itself with a proper and sug- 
 gestive tabernacle. His portrait is gaunt, grim, partly 
 grey, and looks taller than he is ; his eyes are notice- 
 able, dark, and brilliant ; two strong lines down each 
 side of his mouth, lost in a tufted American-like 
 beard, give him a look of greater ill-nature than he 
 possesses. He is unquestionably a gentleman, but 
 of the middle-class look, by no means of the haut 
 ecole. He gives one an idea — that is, if one knows 
 life and town pretty well — that he has seen hard 
 service in the drudgery of some government office ; 
 he has a cut-and-dried official look, and seems capa- 
 ble of scolding and otherwise irritating his juniors. 
 He looks his age — about fifty-five — and is a man one 
 would hardly choose to confide in. A Winchester, 
 and afterwards a Harrow boy, he gave little promise 
 of inheriting any of the brilliant caustic genius of his 
 mother, whose most truthful pictures of the United
 
 MR. ANTHONY TROLLOPE. I39 
 
 States made the Americans hate her ; while her im- 
 mortal figure of the widow Barnaby caused her sex 
 never to forgive her. 
 
 His inherited genius is of a different kind, less in- 
 cisive, much less vulgar, as people have it, but, as we 
 think, far inferior. The sons of great ones generally 
 show this. There are living men of letters who 
 inherit the nomen et preterea nihil else of the father, 
 and who yet pick up a decent living on their intangi- 
 ble estate. Neither Anthony, nor his brother Thomas 
 Adolphus, who is five years his senior, owe anything 
 to their mother's style or manner. Both are edu- 
 cated gentlemen, who have been too much and too 
 well taught to be copyists. They both write well ; 
 in his way the historian, T. A. Trollope, perhaps the 
 better of the two, but we repeat there is not even a 
 soup^on of the old flavour of Mrs. Fanny Trollope. 
 
 Anthony has been a most industrious writer. He 
 never made a big hit or a sensation, but he has hit 
 the public continually in the same place, and has 
 succeeded in making an impression. From "Bar- 
 chester Towers," "The Bertrams," "Castle Rich- 
 mond," by far his wittiest story, to "The Small House 
 at Allington," "Rachel Ray," "Can You Forgive 
 Her?" "Phineas Finn," and his "Vicar of Bull- 
 hampton," which was originally bought for Once a 
 Week, and now walks alone on its own hook, there 
 are many novels, but only two distinct grounds, Irish
 
 140 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 and clerical. The " clothes " which Trollope ''occu- 
 pies " are chiefly clerical, a very shabby clerical suit ; 
 and it is hard to say whether his bishops or his 
 bishops' wives are the more distasteful. We don't like 
 either. What students in the lower life think of their 
 pastors and masters in the higher life, so repeated 
 and photographed by Trollope, we forbear to say. 
 They must regard them with infinite disgust. Selfish, 
 very meanly small and narrow, without strength 
 enough to be positively hateful, they amuse us, flatter 
 our vanity skilfully by showing us how much better 
 we are than they; and then they are forgotten. There 
 are not many notes in their music; bloodless, passion- 
 less, highly genteel, they are content to live and to be 
 
 fed and their talk is like them. 
 
 These true pictures of an age very poor and weak 
 in its nature, very much subdued, sceptical, 13'm- 
 phatic, and with an eternal need of "prodding" and 
 " goading " to make it stir; of an age which could 
 believe in Lord Palmerston as a God-guided minister; 
 have found an excellent illustrator in a man who has 
 great merit, but which the age persists in accepting 
 as an illustrative artist — you might as well call him 
 a balloonist — John Everett Millais. He is as well 
 fitted to Trollope as Phiz is to Dickens. When Phiz 
 tried to illustrate our author, as he did in "Can You 
 Forgive Her ? " he failed miserably ; he absolutely 
 put life and humour into some of the figures under
 
 MR. ANTHONY TROLLOPE. I4I 
 
 which Trollope had written such subscriptions as 
 these — dry, empty as old nuts, but singularly descrip- 
 tive of the author and his mind. Here are the titles, 
 taken haphazard: "And you went at him at the 
 station ? " (two backs of young men, a shawl and a 
 bonnet in the distance — Millais). "Won't you take 
 some more wine ? " (old fogies drinking — Millais). 
 "Would you mind shutting the window?" (young 
 doll and withered old doll in petticoats — Phiz). "Bell, 
 here's the inkstand " (female model on a ladder, back 
 view; side view of a ditto, holding ladder — Millais). 
 We will not go on. When you look at these, you 
 will think that the author and artist have conferred a 
 sweet boon upon you, but your blood will not run 
 more rapidly, nor your heart bound with nobler ex- 
 pansion. At least, ours don't. Some of our modern 
 wooden artists, elevds of the great manufactory of 
 Dalziel Bros., are raffolent about these cuts. " Look," 
 they will say, "at the folds of that gown, sir! Ah, 
 Jove ! what a coat sleeve ! " Well, but what about 
 the figure inside ? 
 
 '' I've seen much finer women, ripe and real, 
 Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal," 
 
 said Byron. Of course he had not, but that's neither 
 here nor there. One could not well surpass the Venus, 
 Hercules, or Apollo in flesh and blood ; but if you 
 were to put Millais' gowns and coats into Regent 
 Street, one could match them.
 
 142 MODERN MEN 0? LETTERS. 
 
 The same ma}' be said of the aM:h:r*s personages. 
 They are made to pattern, and to supply a demand. 
 The public wants a commonplace English girl, and it 
 gets Lucy Robarts or Lillj- Dale. The tone is low, 
 quiet; the study solid, repeated!}- painted, and round: 
 the ideas, the manners, the very words of the day are 
 reproduced. Will they live ? No, not twenty 3-ears ! 
 Live ! \Miy should they ? ^^^lo would care to load 
 his shelves with paper and print containing such 
 words as these : '' 'Mamma, dear, give me a postage- 
 stamp." •' There is one, Lill\-. Are 30U going to the 
 post ? ' •' No, I think old John Boston will come 
 this wa}'. He may as well take it.' ' So he may.' 
 said Mrs. Dale, thoughtfully " — and so on for pages. 
 But it is so real ! Now is not the postage-stamp real ? 
 Yes, as real as his women, Lady Glencora Palliser, 
 Mrs. Proudie, Mrs. Crawley, Mrs. Gazebee, and 
 the rest; as real as his men, Mr. Plantagenet Palliser, 
 the Duke of Omnium, Mr. Fothergill, Johnny Eames 
 — we need not particularise. Some of his ^-ulga^ 
 sketches are ven* clever — Mr. Scniby and the man 
 who travels with iron furniture. Captain Bellfield and 
 Mr. Chesacre. The\- are British Philistines proper, 
 and have not an ounce of nobilitj- among the lot, and 
 what Mr. TroUope does not find he certainly does 
 not put in. His stories are drawn from such a 
 realistic standpoint, that the effect of reading his 
 books is as deadening as a photographer's glass door-
 
 MR. ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 143 
 
 case full of ordinary- men and women. Have these 
 people souls ? Do they possess hearts and brains ? 
 Should we be proud of belonging to such a race ? 
 They are the true pictures of the age ; can we re- 
 joice in the times we live in ? They have not good- 
 ness enough in them to be saved. Heaven, unless a 
 heaven of gigs, nice clothes, and five hundred a-year, 
 would be utterly superfluous, they are so much lower 
 than the angels ; neither have they force or strength 
 enough to be damned. An utterly relentless aimihi- 
 lation is all that we can demand for them ; practi- 
 cally, we give them that : we read on and on, and 
 forget. 
 
 Is it worth while being a novelist, however clever, 
 to produce so small an effect ? Are clergsTnen alwaj^s 
 but walking respectabilities in white chokers ? Are 
 our mothers and sisters such quiet, shadowless dum- 
 mies ? Have we no hopes and fears, no tears, laughter, 
 rejoicings, no death, no future hope beyond this earth, 
 no heroic feelings which Uft us beyond this earth's 
 sphere ? Thank God, good people, whose goodness 
 is confined to the fact that they do not swear, com- 
 monplace bishops and \"inegar}- bishop's wives, squires 
 and their educated do-nothing sons, girls who feebly 
 intrigue as they play croquet for a good match, and 
 are utterly regardless of good men, are passing away. 
 If Mr. Trollope paints — and he paints firmly, consis- 
 tently, and \\-ith a quiet obstinate kind of art — all
 
 144 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS, 
 
 that can be found in English societ}', the sooner that 
 society is changed for something of a more decided 
 pattern the better. No one can care for the faint 
 and obscure outHnes, and the colourless sort of wool, 
 with which Mr. Trollope weaves his human and his 
 faded tapestry.
 
 MR. ALFRED TENNYSON.
 
 MR. ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 LFRED TENNYSON, is he not theluckiest 
 man of letters in this very lucky age, this 
 day of small things, this money-seeking, 
 veneer-loving time? " Sir," said a gentleman in the 
 stalls at the Olympic, " I can't understand ' Little 
 Em'ly' at all." "You seldom can comprehend a 
 dramatised novel," said we. "Have you not read 
 'David Copperfield ?' " "Why, no; we young fel- 
 lows " — he was about ten years younger than his col- 
 locutor — "have not time for deep reading; we are 
 engaged in picking tip the sixpences /" 
 
 An age that calls Dickens deep reading, and picks 
 up the sixpences, will appreciate Alfred Tennyson. 
 Look at his photograph. Deep-browed, but not deep- 
 lined ; bald, but not grey ; with a dark disappoint- 
 ment and little hopeful feeling on his face; with hair 
 unkempt, heaped up in the carriage of his shoulders, 
 and with his figure covered with a tragic cloak, the 
 Laureate is pourtrayed, gloomily peering from twoin- 
 eifective and not very lustrous eyes, a man of sixty, 
 
 L 2
 
 148 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 looking more like a worn and a more feeling man of 
 fifty. His skin is sallow, his whole physique not jovial 
 nor red like Shakespeare and Dickens, but lachrymose 
 and saturnine ; lachrymose 1 and yet, as regards 
 fame and reward, what a successful man he has been! 
 At the age at which Shakespeare was holding horses, 
 he was a pensionary of the Court. When he was very 
 young the critics killed a far greater poet, John 
 Keats, so that they might shower down repentant and 
 self-recalcitrant praise on the successor. When he 
 was but young, an old worn-out poet — a true prose 
 man, but a poet still — contended for the Laureateship 
 after years of toil and pen labour, but the young 
 singer was crowned, and received the Laureate's 
 wreath, the Laureate's fame and pension — the glory 
 of which wreath was made purer and higher from that 
 of his predecessor, Wordsworth. 
 
 Tennyson's access to fame was sudden. " Lorsque 
 Tennyson publia ses premiers poemes," says M. 
 Taine, "the critics spoke mockingly of them," and 
 J let us say the critics were right. " He was silent," 
 continues the French author, " and for ten years no 
 one saw his name in a review, nor even in a cata- 
 logue, his books had burrowed their way alone 
 (' avaient fait leur chemin tout seuls etsous terre'), and on 
 the first blow Tennyson passed for the greatest poet 
 of his country and his age." It was because the age 
 had been sinking in verve and true poetic feeling that
 
 MR. ALFRED TENNYSON. I49 
 
 Tennyson, great as he is in some points, at once rose 
 to the level of its highest appreciation. He had one 
 or two things about him, not of him but exterior to 
 him, which pleased the public. He was a gentleman, 
 the son of a Lincolnshire clergyman of good family, 
 and of a melodious and high-sounding name. His 
 uncle, Charles Tennyson, assumed the name of 
 D'Eyncourt, to mark his descent from that ancient 
 Saxon house. He was a 'Varsity man, as the slangy 
 people of to-day call those educated at Oxford or 
 Cambridge ; he was not political nor enthusiastic ; 
 he "was excessively much" of the drawing-room, 
 and smelt of the "Keepsake" and "Friendship's 
 Offering " so strongly that the very names of his 
 heroines seem to come out of gilt leaves, red silk or 
 morocco covers, and their portraits to have been 
 drawn by Boxall or Chalon, and engraved by Heath. 
 Sweetly smiling Adeline, Eleanore, Lilian, " airy 
 fairy LiHan," St. Agnes, Clara, Fatima, Maud, as 
 Taine has it, " toutes les choses sont fines et ex- 
 quises." Even a lady cannot frown without pleasing 
 so well-bred a poet : 
 
 " Frowns perfect-sweet along the brow, 
 Light-glooming over eyes divine. 
 Like little clouds sun-fringed." 
 
 This is pretty, pretty, very pretty. The Quarterly, 
 which had done its best to kill Keats, strode up to 
 Tennyson as did the mad Ajax after slaying the
 
 150 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 sheep, and laughing, strode away, sa3'ing indignant 
 
 things of this puling poet. What an effeminate thing, 
 
 in effect, says the Quarterly, to write thus : 
 
 " Oh ! darlitig room^ my heart's dehght; 
 Dear room, the apple of my sight ; 
 With my two couches, soft and white, 
 There is no room so exquisite ; 
 No httle room so soft and bright 
 "Wherein to read, wherein to write^'' 
 
 Possibly not, as to the room ; but if one wants to get 
 manly poetry, we would rather have it from the worn 
 deal desk of Scott, and from the plough-tail with 
 Burns, and from the rough mountain stone whence 
 Wordsworth communed with Nature. 
 
 It has cost long years for Tennyson to free himself 
 from the drawing-room style of poetry. Indeed the 
 " Keepsake " and " Book of Beauty" haunt him for 
 ever, and have effectually forbidden him to be a great 
 poet. And yet he had something of a chance that 
 way once. There is the divine afflatus perceptible, 
 but he has been educated too much, and is too careful 
 and too timid. They write of him as of one who lies 
 on the sofa all day, and smokes cigars : he has a soft- 
 ness and an effeminacy which is altogether false ; 
 even Bulwer has twitted him about being " a school- 
 miss Alfred " when he was a great bearded rough 
 fellow of forty : 
 
 " Even in a love song man should write for men," 
 said Bulwer, in reference to the Laureate. But from
 
 MR. ALFRED TENNYSON. 15I 
 
 off that mental sofa Alfred Tennyson never has risen. 
 He is a retired recluse and somewhat sulky gentle- 
 man, that is but one kind of man ; a true poet should 
 be of all kinds. His very passion is theatrical, and the 
 great heart of the man who weeps or cries out does 
 not beat sufficiently to rumple the starched shirt 
 which covers his manly chest. 
 
 " O my cousin, shallow-hearted ! O my Amy, mine no more ! 
 O the dreary, dreary moorland ! O the barren, barren shore ! 
 Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung ; 
 Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue !" 
 
 You see that while he curses the false girl, this 
 young gentleman remembers apt alliteration's artful 
 aid. Mark well those f's and the s's. Compare this 
 with the mad rage of Hamlet, when he believes that 
 Ophelia is playing false with him, and with the wild 
 rhapsodies he indulges in at her death. 
 
 Tennyson's popularity, as a poet, grew down from 
 the higher classes. A few young people of high life 
 began to admire him, and Moxon sold his books 
 slowly ; then the next stratum of society under these 
 took the fever, and found in the Laureate's poems 
 easy things to understand; and then again, and again, 
 a wider but a commoner circle took up his songs. 
 
 By his books he made at last much money. His 
 brothers Charles and Septimus, both singers, were at 
 one time rivals, but he soon distanced them and 
 others. It was whispered that the Queen admired
 
 '^ 
 
 152 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 and that Prince Albert read his poems, and then 
 with the loyal English-speaking people his fame 
 was made. Moxon died, and the house paid Tenny- 
 son all that his books brought, save a percentage of 
 fifteen per cent., so that for some years the poet found 
 his lines golden. When Macmillan and the Cornhill 
 magazines were started, their proprietors wanted 
 names to attract, and they paid the Laureate a 
 guinea a line for some weak kickshaws : 
 
 " I stood on a tower, in the wet, 
 
 When the old year and new year met," 
 
 and a weak story about a City clerk, which were 
 hardly worth printing. The magazines did themselves 
 good as regards advertising, but much harm to the 
 Laureate. It is not well to drag a great name about 
 on an advertising van ; yet, in spite of this, the poet 
 step by step grew in popularity, and critics wrote of his 
 great wisdom, and reviews praised the Cambridge prize- 
 man, and spoke with bated breath of his high genius. 
 It will be as well to look to some few dates to see 
 how his fame had culminated. Tennyson was born 
 in tSio ; educated at Cambridge at the same time at 
 which Thackeray was there ; Thackeray never grad- 
 uated, one of Tennyson's poetic themes gained a 
 prize. In 1830 the Laureate published poems, chiefly 
 lyrical, with prose notes full of egotism, which were 
 properly laughed at, and since then, it is said,Tenny-
 
 MR. ALFRED TENNYSON. I53 
 
 son has abandoned prose for ever. In 1832 this little 
 book of poems again appeared, with most of the silly 
 ones cut out, and the others very greatly improved. 
 In 1842, after ten years of polish, appeared a larger 
 and fuller edition, and the very reviews which had 
 laughed at him began to praise him. In 1847 he 
 published the " Princess," which was somehow 
 thought to be connected with Royalty, but was only 
 a pleasant medley, not too strong, and full of femi- 
 nine sweetnesses. The public was delighted with it ; 
 the " Book of Beauty " flavour pervaded it like vanilla : 
 how touchingly superior must a man, a college-man, 
 have felt as he read : 
 
 " Pretty were the sight 
 If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt 
 With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans, 
 And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair. 
 I think they should not wear our rusty gowns." 
 
 In 1850 Tennyson made a great step in advance as 
 a poet, but not as a thinker, by writing — or rather by 
 publishing, for he keeps his works a longtime by him) 
 — " In Memoriam." The friend, celebrated and re- 
 gretted so much in that poem, is Arthur H. Hallam, 
 son of the historian. In 1851 occurred the Great 
 Exhibition, and the Laureate, who had done no 
 Laureate's work, might have greeted it as he did that 
 of '62, but it was left to a volunteer laureate, Mr. 
 Thackeray, who, in the columns of the Times, wrote 
 
 H,^^
 
 y 
 
 154 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 a May-day ode with more true " grit " in it than any- 
 thing Tennyson has done. In 1852 died the Duke of 
 Welhngton, and Tennyson reported his funeral in 
 noble verse, perhaps the noblest he has ever written. 
 In 1855 he published " Maud," which he believes to 
 be, as he has told certain friends, the best thing he 
 has ever written, and which certainly has in it more 
 passion of the kind felt by the Baker Street and West- 
 bourne Grove classes than any other of his pieces. 
 In 1861 came his contribution to a great epic on the 
 theme of King Arthur, " Flos Regum Arturus," and 
 in 1864 " Enoch Arden " and other poems. 
 
 For nearly forty years, then, Alfred Tennyson has 
 been before the public ; for twenty years he has been 
 the Laureate, taking the laurel 
 
 " greener from the brows 
 Of him that uttered nothing base ;" 
 
 for nearly ten years his bust has stood in the vestibule 
 of his college, Trinity, as the somewhat genius of the 
 place ; and for all that time at least he has been 
 accepted as the greatest living poet. Lately two 
 concordances to his works have been published, an 
 honour only yet accorded to the Bible, Shakespeare, 
 and Milton, and only last year an enterprising pub- 
 lishing firm is said to have given the poet ;^4,50o 
 a-year as the calculated profit of publishing his 
 works ! Poetry pays, then, even now ; the Queen 
 salutes the Laureate with respect ; it has been said,
 
 MR. ALFRED TENNYSON. 155 ^ 
 
 and has been denied, that he has been offered and 
 refused a baronetcy. Can grateful England be more 
 profuse to her singer and her son ? 
 
 Yes, Tennyson is a greatly successful, but he is not 
 a great poet. The next age will surely reverse the 
 verdict of this. He is sugar sweet, pretty-pretty, full 
 of womanly talk and feminine stuff. Lilian, Dora, 
 Clara, Emmeline — you can count up thirty such 
 pretty names, but you cannot count any great poem 
 of the Laureate's. Shelley has his Ode to the Sky- 
 lark, Keats his to the Grecian Urn, Coleridge his 
 Genevieve, his weird Ancient Mariner, Wordsworth 
 that touching, yea, aching sublimity on the Intimations 
 of Immortality — where is there one thing of Tenny- i/v 
 son which can approach that ? He has kept himself 
 aloof from men ; he has polished his poems till all are 
 ripe and rotten ; he has no fire and no fault ; he has 
 never lifted one to Heaven nor plunged us to the 
 lower depths. He has no creed, no faith, no depth. 
 When another poet would bare his heart he talks of 
 his pulses : 
 
 " My pulses therefore beat again 
 
 For other friends that once I met ; 
 Nor can it suit me to forget 
 The mighty hopes that make us men." 
 
 What a grand line is that last, and what a feeble 
 beast crawls on its belly before it ! Can we forgive 
 a poet " suiting to forget " Heaven, Hell, Christ and 
 
 t 
 
 "■y
 
 156 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 His Death upon the Cross, His agony and bloody 
 
 sweat ? — Heavens, that a Christian poet should be 
 
 found lisping out that ! 
 
 No, he is no great poet. Mr. Tennyson has been 
 
 very discreet, and a very good Court poet, — for a 
 
 manufactured article really none better; but he is 
 
 Hke the lady who did not want to " look frightful 
 
 when dead," and so put on the paint and the fucus, 
 
 and he will take no deep hold of the world. What 
 
 did sweet Will Shakespeare do ? Did he not say that 
 
 he had 
 
 " gored mine own thoughts ; 
 Sold cheap what is most dear, 
 And made myself a motley to the view.'' 
 
 Did he not give us blood and passion with his poetry ? 
 But what says Tennyson: " Nor can it suit me to 
 forget " that I am admired by all young ladies, and 
 am a Laureate. Further he adds, 
 
 " I count it crime 
 To mourn for any overmuch." 
 
 And posterity will count it folly to place a half- 
 hearted and polished rhymster amongst her shining 
 great ones who were fellows with poverty and dis- 
 respect in this life, and who learnt in suffering that 
 they might teach in song. 
 
 'W 
 
 lh
 
 MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.
 
 MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 
 
 OOKING, with a merry, audacious, bold 
 look, out of your photographic portrait- 
 album, which contains so many vile slan- 
 ders upon yourself, your wife, and your friends, is one 
 whose name stands at the head of the present paper, 
 a Bohemian writer of a bad school, but yet a brave 
 man ; one that has done very little good, and yet one 
 full of capabilities for good ; a writer of sound Eng- 
 lish and a scholar, and yet a driveller of tipsy, high- 
 flown, and high-falutin' nonsense ; a man of under- 
 standing when he likes, and yet of bosh and nonsense 
 as well when he chooses to debase himself; one of keen 
 intellect, high qualities, prodigious memory, great 
 picturesqueness, and a photographic accuracy, and 
 yet so utterly careless of his own reputation, of the 
 dignity of letters, of what is due to himself, that he i/-- 
 can sell his pen to describe a Jew clothier's, an 
 advertising furniture dealer's, a Liverpool draper's, 
 a Manchester hatter's, or a St. Paul's Churchyard 
 bonnet-shop. A man who ought to have taken the
 
 l6o MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 lead on any paper, but one who, clinging to the old 
 traditions of our pen profession, has done but little 
 upon one only. There is an odious Americanism, 
 " reliable," meaning that those to whom it is applied 
 can be trusted, or leant upon. In ninety cases out of 
 the hundred G. A. S. will bring up his copy with the 
 accurate regard to time which newspapers require, 
 but at the last number in every decennial he will 
 have failed. This has gained him respect with the 
 dullards who generally conduct and start papers, who 
 believe that a man of genius cannot but be irregular 
 and eccentric. If the " genius " gets into the hands 
 of the Jews, is often drunken, always in debt, some- 
 times in prison, and is totally disreputable, living a 
 tort et a travers the rules of society, these newspaper 
 proprietors think more and more of him, and go 
 down on their knees and bribe him to write. 
 
 " Great wits to madness sure are near allied, 
 And thin partitions do their bounds divide." 
 
 When the " great wit " writes a novel, draws all the 
 money, gets in a mess with it, and asks somebody 
 else to finish it whom he is unwilling to pay ; or 
 when he starts on his travels, leaving a proprietor of 
 a periodical with a half finished serial on hand, the 
 admiration of Bohemia, printer, and public, is enor- 
 mous. The recalcitrant author is afterwards pardoned, 
 and received with open arms. What a clever fellow 
 he must be for these people to stand this !
 
 MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. l6l 
 
 Like this has been the reasoning with regard to Mr. 
 Sala, of whom we, of course, do not narrate all these -^ 
 little fables. Yet such men exist, and the offences of 
 such are condoned with wonderful ease by the public 
 whom they do not touch, just as a reference by Mr. 
 Charles Matthews to his little escapades with his 
 creditors raises a merry laugh. To the stupid public 
 it is a matter of dubious yet unmeasured admiration, 
 this juncture of social unfitness and fluent verbiage 
 which they take for wisdom. To think that you may 
 see, let us say, Theodore Hook and Dr. Maginn 
 rolling drunk in Fleet Street, and peacefully reposing 
 in the kennel over night, and the next day read those 
 highly-flown articles in the John Bull condemnatory 
 of Queen Caroline, in which it demonstrated that that 
 poor lady had not one rag of virtue left to cover her, 
 and that they (the writers) had a chestful of virtuous 
 blankets and undergarments, besides the superfine, 
 double-milled, thick clothing they stood upright in — 
 to think on this, is it not wonderful indeed ! But 
 reflect, oh, British public — those Pagan Romans did 
 not choose their Censors thus ! 
 
 Mr. Sala, who in the flesh is goguenard, jovial, and 
 externally something like Bardolph, is a very severe 
 censor when he chooses. He is of a mature age — 
 let us say forty-five — and has worked for the press 
 nearly thirty years out of that, for he began early, 
 and it is whispered wrote at one time for the excelling 
 
 M
 
 l62 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Mr. Edward Lloyd, of Salisbury Square, certain 
 romances of the Mrs. Radcliffe school, which our 
 best novelists of to-day have copied, such as "Adah, 
 the Betrayed ; or, the Murder at the Old Smithy," 
 "Julia, the Deserted," and the like. These penny 
 romances were not vicious, though morbidly exciting; 
 one called "Sweeney Todd; or, the String of Pearls," 
 related how a certain barber in Fleet Street cut the 
 throats of his customers, and then sunk them down 
 a trap to a kitchen, where they were made into, and 
 whence they issued, as mutton-pies ! We doubt if 
 our eccentric genius wrote such stories, but certainly 
 he worked hard and honestly at whatever came up, 
 and we wish to heaven that some of the superfine, 
 satin-wove, hot-pressed, gilt-edged, and fashionable 
 novelists worked half as well and had had the same 
 practice. Nothing in the world is there like it for 
 style. Do you think, young author, that those easy 
 incisive sentences, those quiet sly touches, those 
 pretty turns of Sterne, or Fielding, or Thackeray, 
 came by chance ? If you do, you are as big a 
 blunderer as Dogberry, when he declared that reading 
 and writing were the gift of Nature. 
 
 When Dickens established his Household Words, 
 with its unattainable motto, 
 
 " Familiar in their mouths as household words, 
 
 which it certainly was not, a dozen young knights of
 
 MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 163 
 
 the pen rushed to aid the Arthur of the literary Round 
 Table. Our hero was one, and as Mr. Dickens, with 
 singular generosity and blindness, determined that 
 everybody should " gush " as he gushed and write 
 Dickenese as he wrote, the facile pen of Sala was in ^^ 
 great request. Sketch after sketch of real verve and 
 merit, each of which was attributed to the great 
 Dickens, and many of which were republished in his 
 name in New York, proceeded from Sala, notably 
 "Captain Quagg's Conversion," "The Key of the 
 Street," and others of the same sort. They were fresh, 
 sparkling, and fast, written with abounding spirit and 
 that sort of devil-may-care cleverness which is so 
 pleasing to young men. When an author lets you 
 into his confidence, and knows everything, is equally 
 familiar with a sailors' home in Wapping, a thieves' 
 cellar in Liverpool, the Queen's palace at Berlin, the 
 Emperor's cabinet in Paris, the Eleusinian mysteries, 
 and the game of Knur and Spell, you know that you 
 are reading the remarks of an uncommon clever 
 fellow. The implicit confidence which young readers, 
 and old fellows, too, of the middle class, place in the 
 dissertations of the young lions of the Daily Telegraph 
 is founded on the love they have for the bold buc- 
 caneering style in which the latter write. We have 
 it from a certain Camarilla that sits upon the wild 
 lucubrations of some of these famous leaders, that the 
 grammar is very bad indeed, and as to the Latin, we 
 
 M 2
 
 164 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 know that even the lynx-eyed supervisors cannot keep 
 that right. But what then — Que voulez vous mesamis ? 
 You get your lurid leader, all blue fire and glitter, 
 and wonderful of its sort. Well, it is nice to read; 
 but, after all, what does it mean ? You begin a dis- 
 sertation on the Virgin Mary, and you find that, ere 
 you have read three lines, there is a learned essay 
 on the Paphian mysteries and the wondrous rites of 
 Venus. As for policy and study of the constitution 
 of this great country, Heaven only knows whereto the 
 D. T. has led us ! When that fine property was in 
 the market, after the gallant Colonel Sleigh had 
 brought it out and failed, there was a perturbation 
 among the band of Bohemians who wrote its articles. 
 Sala was among them, of course ; does not everyone 
 know his style ? He had gone to Russia for Dickens, 
 and was always talking of the Nevskoi Prospect and 
 eternal snow. He has been here, there, and else- 
 where, and he lets you know it. Happily for the 
 band of penmen, astute gentlemen of an ancient but 
 exiled people bought the Daily ; its sale went up ; 
 advertisements made it pay, and Sala was very wisely 
 made a special correspondent. 
 
 Perhaps, for a cheap paper, there is no man better 
 fitted for this work. He cannot understand politics, 
 but he is well up in art; he cares very little about 
 religion, but he has a photographic eye. He does 
 not write the blatant untruths and braggadocio of
 
 MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 165 
 
 Mr. Dash, the Parisian correspondent ; but he does 
 give you an insight into the manners of the people. 
 Some of his touches are simply admirable. Take the 
 second volume of " From Waterloo to the Peninsula:" 
 the description of the laziness, misery, sunshine, rags, 
 pride, and folly of Spain were never better given. A 
 master of words, he paints a figure at a touch, as that 
 of the beggar, proud and sturdy, whose "rags were 
 flamboyant behind, while his worn plush inexpres- 
 sibles were rayonne in front." Gustave Dore, whose 
 illustrations of Spain in Le Monde Illustrd are in his 
 best style, has no touch like it. 
 
 While doing all this hard work, and, according to 
 his lights, doing it honestly and well, with no high 
 aim, but giving the public what it asked for, and no 
 more — trifle and whipt cream — not teaching the 
 people, nor preaching to them, nor incidentally even 
 reproving them, but amusing and tickling them, Mr. 
 Sala republished many of his sketches, and one or 
 two tales and stories that he had written. His books 
 are not very successful. They have been issued l^ 
 cheaply or at a high price, but when the facile author 
 removes to a higher class of writing or of readers he 
 somewhat fails. Not more than one of his books can 
 be said to have achieved a decided success. Mr. 
 Sala's published works are as follows : — 
 
 "How I Tamed Mrs. Cruiser," 1858; "Journey 
 due North," 1859; "Twice Round the Clock," 1859;
 
 l66 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 " The Baddington Peerage," i860 ; " Gaslight and 
 DayHght," i860; ''Lady Chesterfield's Letters," 
 i860; "Looking at Life," i860; " Make your Game," 
 i860; " Dutch Pictures, with some Sketches in the 
 Flemish Manner," 1861; "Seven Sons of Mammon," 
 1861; "Accepted Addresses," 1862; " Ship Chandler, 
 and other Tales," 1862 ; " Two Prima Donnas," 
 1862; and since that time, at intervals, "After 
 Breakfast;" "My Diary in America in the Midst 
 of War ;" " From Waterloo to the Peninsula," and 
 "A Trip to Barbary by a Round-about Route." 
 
 Of these books his light London sketches are the 
 best and most successful, such as " Twice Round 
 the Clock," published first in the Welcome Guest, and 
 illustrated by a very wooden and angular young 
 artist, since dead, William McConnell. Perhaps it 
 is unfair to call the poor fellow an artist, for most 
 ^ assuredly he understood little art ; he was a wooden 
 wood draughtsman, very hard and full of lines, but 
 he had the merit of drawing the scenes from reality. 
 Next in merit are the travels, which are full of obser- 
 vation and curious reading, for Sala, if a desultory 
 student, is in some sort a scholar. He once talked 
 of some poor woman " in a sleazy (thin and worn) 
 shawl," whereon a pundit in the Saturday Review 
 asked what is " sleazy," and did not know that 
 ancient and perfectly correct but provincial word. 
 He is a curious and out-of-the-way reader, and not
 
 MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 167 
 
 to be sneered at. Next follow his touch-and-go 
 social articles, beautifully calculated for the meri- 
 dian of Cockneydom and the intellects of virtuous 
 publicans, intelligent greengrocers, and the readers 
 of a certain class generally ; and last of all in 
 merit are his novels. Small wits talked of the 
 " Badly-done Peerage " and the " Seven Tons of 
 Gammon," and not without reason were these names 
 given. There are, however, pages of admirable 
 writing in both, but a sustained plot and well pour- 
 trayed characters seem to be beyond the author's 
 painting. His women are dolls, his men the tinselled 
 theatrical figures we are all acquainted with as boys, 
 and that is all. 
 
 And so we part with G. A. S. There has been the 
 making of many a good author in him. As Thackeray 
 once said of him, he is "a horse big enough to pull 
 any shay about," but he is a horse that does not go 
 well in harness. To some his tipsy writing is odious ; 
 to few even his very best work can be of use. His 
 face, as one can see in a coloured photograph, is an 
 index to his style. He is bold, ready, and Bohemian. 
 He is grateful to Dickens, and says, in a touching 
 memorial of that author, " the first five-pound note 
 I ever earned in literature came from his kind hand." 
 His career is a coup manqu^, and if he leave a name 
 to survive till his youngest Bohemian admirer be an 
 old man — for it will survive no longer — it will yet 
 
 /
 
 l68 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 carry with it no affectionate reverence, and will not 
 be conducive to much good. He is a man of 
 potentiality, not of accomplished fact. In the mean- 
 time, reckless writing has produced money, recklessly 
 gotten and, it would seem, as recklessly distributed, 
 and so far the end which the vivacious writer has 
 aimed at in literature is answered. A nobler purpose 
 would have achieved a nobler and far higher result.
 
 MR. CHARLES LEVER.
 
 MR. CHARLES LEVER. 
 
 |HE "Prince of neck-or-nothing novelists," 
 as he is called, Charles James Lever, 
 Esquire, Her Majesty's Consul at Florence, 
 is not a Waterloo officer, nor a Peninsular veteran. 
 It is well to assure the reader of this fact, for Mr. 
 Lever has told so many stories about fighting and 
 fighters, told them, too, with so much art and truth, 
 and has so thrown himself into military life, that 
 when we first read his entrancing books as boys, we 
 always believed " Dr. Lever," as we called him — for 
 we had an inkling of his status — was a surgeon-major 
 to the most dashing and ubiquitous corps in the 
 British army, and had been wounded at Waterloo, 
 and (would have been, if in a foreign army) decorated 
 on the field. 
 
 But you see how fancy plays with us. That some- 
 what 'fair, rotund, farmer-looking gentleman, with 
 round shoulders, broad and massive ; with the good- 
 humoured face, twinkling eyes, thin hair, and capa- 
 cious head, which looks as if it had done nothing else
 
 172 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 but superintend agricultural produce, is a physician, 
 and has never been in the army. He is the son of a 
 builder; was born in August, 1806, at Dublin, and 
 for some time taught at home. But during those 
 eventful years of our lives in which boys learn most, 
 when John Leech and William Makepeace Thackeray, 
 nor must we forget their school-fellows and contem- 
 poraries, Martin Farquhar Tupper and George — we 
 will spare the rest of the names, the prenomina in this 
 case — Reynolds, the penny blood-and-thunder novelist, 
 were at the Charterhouse, Charles Lever was being 
 educated in France. Thackeray has thrown tender 
 recollections about his school. Colonel Newcome, 
 you remember, dies as a poor brother of the Charter- 
 house, as many a good man has died ; but we don't 
 think that Leech, Reynolds, or Tupper has said a 
 word about it. That is a good sign in a boy and 
 a man when he takes to his old school, and lets his 
 imagination play fondly about it. The Charterhouse 
 returned the love. We were present at Thackeray's 
 sale when a huge price was given for an old school 
 dictionary of the dead author's, and that was bought 
 for a relic by his old school. Moreover, the authori- 
 ties have put up two tablets, one to Leech and one 
 to Thackeray. In fifty years John Leech will be for- 
 gotten, but Thackeray's name will be greater than 
 ever. Tupper and Reynolds are still alive — the first 
 a scholar and a gentleman, though no poet, the
 
 MR. CHARLES LEVER. I73 
 
 second a most mischievous writer. We don't think 
 the Charterhouse will ever put up tablets to either. 
 
 After studying and passing, young Lever was sent 
 to the North of Ireland on a medical commission, and 
 distinguished himself as medical officer in the district 
 of Londonderry, Coleraine, and Newtown Limavady, 
 so that, not long afterwards, he received the appoint- 
 ment of physician to the Embassy at Brussels, where 
 Sir George Hamilton Seymour was then envoy to 
 the Belgian Court. Here he met with many military 
 men, and seems to have made that study of the life 
 of a soldier which has stood him in such good stead. 
 
 While at Brussels Mr. Lever made a sudden plunge 
 into literature, and with such success that he "awoke 
 up famous " after a fashion. His first venture, which 
 seems to have been issued by Orr in 1840, was 
 " Harry Lorrequer," a tale of dash and devilry, which 
 may, in some measure, be regarded as an Irish pen- 
 dant to Dickens's " Pickwick." The amount of 
 " spirit" in each of these novels is hardly to be esti- 
 mated in these sober days. Fun, frolic, adventure, 
 doings which by some would be called vicious, and 
 by others who do not object to the vice would be stig- 
 matised as snobbish, are chronicled with tremendous 
 glee. Drunkenness is a virtue, sobriety a folly, love- 
 making an amiable pastime ; and to be surrounded by 
 debt and duns, to set the law at defiance, to duck a 
 sheriff's officer, and to frighten an attorney out of his
 
 174 " MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 wits, is the normal state of the Irish Bayard, who is 
 significantly described as "the man for Galway." 
 This fun came upon our cold English intellects like 
 a pleasant douche bath of warmed and perfumed 
 water — or rather whiskey and water. We were re- 
 freshed while we were slightly intoxicated, and bought 
 eagerly the monthly instalments in pink covers, which 
 were rendered even more couleur de rose by a symbol- 
 ical design by Phiz. You saw Ireland, not as a 
 dejected damsel, but as the prettiest little shepherdess 
 in the world. Donnybrook Fair, then fast dying out, 
 did not represent faction fights, with the hatred of 
 generations fomented rather than healed by the priests, 
 but a few friendly contests with the shillelagh, in 
 which Irish knights, not in steel armour but in long 
 frieze coats, took part, while Biddy as a Queen of 
 Beauty stood ready to crown the gentle, the courteous, 
 and above all the humorous champion. 
 
 It is asserted that all Lever's stories are drawn 
 from the life. If so, what wonder that we Saxons 
 don't understand the Irish ? If not the very safest 
 people — for they are represented as being prodigiously 
 handy with their duelling pistols — to live amongst, 
 they are in Lever's novels certainly the very plea- 
 santest; and if an Englishman will only put up with 
 the good-humoured jest of having day turned into 
 night, and be prepared to jump any amount of stone 
 walls upon an Irish blood horse of prodigious speed
 
 MR. CHARLES LEVER. 175 
 
 and bone, he can live in Paradise in the Green 
 Island. 
 
 It is difficult for us to say what contemporary 
 critics thought of Lever's successes, for the Quarterly 
 does not notice him, and Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson, who 
 has spoken with adulation of forgotten writers, is 
 silent. As for his popularity, it is undoubted. " Harry 
 Lorrequer" paid, and was speedily followed by some 
 charming novels — stories which have poetry, sensa- 
 tion, purity, and extreme interest, not without a dash 
 of history and a certain knowledge of society and high 
 life in them very cunningly mixed. We know of no 
 novels which are at once so interesting and so harm- 
 less. Great skill as a raconteur, vivacity, wit, humour, 
 in a small degree, and broad fun in a very full degree, 
 distinguish them all. And with the knowledge — 
 saddened by events — that Charles Lever possesses of 
 his countrymen, it is astonishing how cleverly he has 
 concealed their many faults and vices, and how promi- 
 nently he has put their virtues before the world, and 
 yet without a suspicion of flattery. He is not an old 
 man, but as full of wisdom and spirit as ever. If his 
 judgment be equal to his insight, we should say that 
 he of all men living is the one to be consulted as to 
 the best way of governing Ireland. For years he has 
 lived at a distance from his country, and is not to be 
 deceived by party glamour and that intoxication by 
 excitement which seems to turn the best brains at
 
 176 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 home. "Papas! Papae!" you cry with the Chelsea 
 philosopher, "wonderful indeed!" What, make a 
 novelist a statesman ! But let us remember that 
 the most prosaic people in the world, the Spartans, 
 made an old, blind, song-making school-master their 
 general, and that he led them on to glorious victory. 
 After "Harry Lorrequer" there followed in quick 
 succession " Charles O'Malley," 1841; "Jack Hinton, 
 the Guardsman," 1843 ; " Arthur O'Leary," 1844 ; 
 "The O'Donoghue," 1845; "Tom Burke of Ours," 
 1846; "The Knight of Gwynne," 1847; "Con 
 Cregan, the Irish Gil Bias," and " Roland Cashel," 
 1849; "The Daltons," 1852; "The Dodd Family 
 Abroad," 1852; "The Fortunes of Glencore," 1857; 
 " The Martins of Cromartin," 1859 ; " Maurice Tier- 
 nay, the Soldier of Fortune," and " One of Them," 
 1861 ; "Tales of the Trains," by Tilbury Tramp, " St. 
 Patrick's Eve," and more lately, in the Cornhill Mag- 
 azine, " That Boy of Norcotts " — a capital story — and 
 in Blackwood's Magazine, the various conversations, 
 notes, epigrammatic turns, and reflections of Cornelius 
 O'Dowd, Esquire. All these have been valuable 
 works — to the booksellers. As to the public, it has 
 been amused and delighted in a very gentle, honest, 
 open way. Mr. Lever is a gentleman, cleanly and 
 honourable ; and, though he has not " eschewed 
 sack," yet he admits no scurrilous lines in his tunes. 
 He has ripened as he has grown older; and got wiser
 
 MR. CHARLES LEVER. I77 
 
 and better as time wears away. He does not write 
 those rattling works now, and even dear old Thackeray, 
 whom we are about to quote, would hardly find any- 
 thing salient enough to sketch. We quote Thackeray, 
 chiefly to give a picture of what Lever can do, for, as 
 that famous hand wrote "George de Barnwell" with 
 greater verve and learning than Bulwer, and sur- 
 passed Disraeli in his mock novel of " Codlingsby," 
 so he threw even Lever into the shade in his burlesque 
 story of " Phil Fogarty." Don't you know " Phil 
 Fogarty " — perhaps the best bit of good honest 
 humorous fooling out ? " Phil " is a genuine brother 
 to *'Tom Burke" and "Harry Lorrequer." We 
 quote Thackeray as the best possible means of con- 
 veying in one minute the method of Lever : 
 
 "The gabion was ours. After two hours' fighting, we were in 
 possession of the first embrasure, and made ourselves as com- 
 fortable as circumstances would admit. Jack Delamere, Tom 
 Delancy, Jerry Blake, the Doctor, and myself, sat under a pon- 
 toon, and our servants laid out a hasty supper on a tumbril. 
 Though Cambaceres had escaped me so provokingly after I cut 
 him down, his spoils were mine ; a cold fowl and a Bologna 
 sausage were found in the Marshal's holster ; and in the 
 haversack of a French private, who lay a corpse on the glacis, we 
 found a loaf of bread, his three davs' ration. Instead of salt 
 we had gunpowder ; and you may be sure, wherever the Doctor 
 was, a flask of good brandy was behind him in his instrument 
 case. We sat down and made a soldier's supper. The Doctor 
 pulled a few of the delicious fruit from the lemon-trees growing 
 near (and round which the Carabiniers and the 24th Leger had 
 made a desperate rally), and punch was brewed in Jack Dela- 
 
 N
 
 178 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 mere's helmet. * Faith, it never had so much wit in it before,' 
 said the Doctor, as he ladled out the drink. We all roared 
 with laughing, except the guardsman, who was as savage as a 
 Turk at a christening." 
 
 Here, too, follows one of the songs in imitation of 
 Lever, who, by the way, writes a capital ditty : 
 
 " You've all heard of Larry O 'Toole, 
 Of the beautiful town of Drumgoole ; 
 
 He had but one eye, 
 
 To ogle ye by — 
 O, murther, but that was a jew'l ! 
 
 A fool 
 He made of de girls, dis O'Toole. 
 
 'Twas he was the boy didn't fail, 
 To tuck down pitaties and mail ; 
 
 He never would shrink 
 
 From any strong dthrink 
 Was it whiskey or Drogheda ale ; 
 
 I'm bail 
 This Larry would swallow a pail. 
 
 O, many a night at the bowl, 
 
 With Larry I've sot cheek by jowl ; 
 He's gone to his rest, 
 Where there's dthrink of the best, 
 
 And so let us give his old soul 
 A howl. 
 
 For 'twas he made the noggin to rowl," 
 
 Mr. Charles Lever has long become a moderate 
 Conservative, and his opinions upon the Irish Church 
 Bill, and his prophetic foreshadowing of the very 
 troubles Ireland now suffers from, are well worth
 
 MR. CHARLES LEVER. I79 
 
 studying. The society he pictured has long passed 
 away. We have now no Mickey Free, any more 
 than we have Pickwick's servant, Sam Weller. 
 Happily, too, for us, Stiggins in the lifetime of his 
 portrayer, has died out ; unhappily, too, the good 
 old Father Tom, the Irish priest who was a gentle- 
 man, educated at St. Omer, and with a smack of 
 Parisian breeding in him, has died out, too. Instead 
 of that, we have priests educated at Maynooth, the 
 sons of co-ttiers and the brothers of the poor peasantry 
 who are so misguided and misled. These, too, with 
 an unerring pen, Mr. Cornelius O'Dowd has por- 
 trayed, but the pen lacks the old fun; we have grown 
 gradually duller in these serious times. 
 
 " Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat ? " 
 
 How many times will that be requoted ? What 
 Horace demanded has been permitted to Lever, who 
 has not only told the truth with a smiling face, but 
 has brought the tears into many eyes, and with all 
 his fun and frolic has never brought a blush to any 
 cheek. He has not attempted to preach ; he has 
 not been either a stoic or a cynic. His philosophy 
 is rather of the garden of Epicurus, and the enjoy- 
 ment he teaches is that of manliness and reason, and 
 for good, clean, wholesome reading, which will leave 
 no headache nor heartache, and no dregs within the 
 mind, commend us to Charles Lever. Messrs. Smith 
 
 N 2
 
 l8o MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 and Son seem to have a monopoly of his novels, and 
 they are to be bought on every railway stall. Reader, 
 instead of the new prurient half-crown's worth, buy 
 "Tom Burke" or "Harry Lorrequer" for two shil- 
 lings — and be happy.
 
 MR. GEORGE GROTE.
 
 MR. GEORGE GROTE. 
 
 1 
 
 m 
 az 
 
 ^iM 
 
 T speaks well for the Republic of Letters 
 that, when Mr. Grote was leading the 
 Oi polloi of Reform and Democracy, and 
 writing in the Edinburgh Review, the Tory Quarterly 
 hailed the writer of the " stirring and stately nar- 
 rative " as "not merely a historian, but the historian 
 of Greece." And this title, it must be remembered, 
 was given while Mitford and Dr. Thirlwall headed 
 the Greek historians, while Miiller and Ranke in- 
 vestigated, while Niebuhr took up ancient stories, 
 and tried to reduce, or did reduce them to mere 
 legends. " The works of these men," says the 
 generous Quarterly, " look thin and blasted beside 
 the full proportions of the long research which 
 unfolds the rise and progress of the Athenian de- 
 mocracy." 
 
 In writing of George Grote, then, we shall have to 
 write of a truly noble man of letters, and it says very 
 little for Toryism, or Conservatism, or whatever a 
 great party may now be termed, that it has never
 
 184 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 honoured Literature as it should be honoured. Of 
 course, in these degenerate days, and in the reigns of 
 the Brunswick, the patronage of the Court is but 
 small. No men have been more wisely loyal than 
 men of letters ; no men have been more scantily 
 recognised. A fourth-rate Academician — by which 
 we mean a painter — showed us, the other day, a 
 picture, four of such as he could well paint in a year, 
 and for which he asked and got a price larger than 
 most first-rate authors get for the work of their life- 
 time. But then a painter furnishes your house, and 
 makes your walls look grand ; an author only fur- 
 nishes your brains — if you have any. We do not 
 complain ; we only urge that the scantiness of pay 
 should be a reason of more honour from the Court. 
 It would be ridiculous to institute a comparison of 
 the value of an author in comparison with a painter, 
 towards the State. In educating, in leavening, and 
 ennobling, or in degrading a people, the author has 
 almost infinite power. Mr. G. W. M. Reynolds, 
 with his "Mysteries of the Court" and his mis- 
 chievous novels, which sell so largely in America, 
 was of more consequence than twenty Landseers and 
 forty Ettys, and did more harm than two hundred 
 such Academicians could do good. Once upon a 
 time, when John Leland wrote a certain novel, which 
 we shall not name, and painted "in glowing colours," 
 as he terms them, a career of vice, the Government
 
 MR. GEORGE GROTE. 185 
 
 paid the too clever rogue a pension not to write again. 
 Wise persons those. Our Court has let the people 
 tumble and trudge on through mud and mire, and 
 infinite chaotic folly and filth, and has neither 
 
 punished nor rewarded. The consequence is 
 
 well, " Formosa ; " the likenesses of courtesans in 
 our most chaste shops, a general corruption, and — 
 girls of the period. 
 
 As for any rewarding of intellect, that has chiefly 
 been done by the Whigs or Liberals. Lord Houghton, 
 or, as they call him, Haut-ton, a good plain poet ; 
 Macaulay, with his cock-sure and subjective style, 
 which will, as soon as we get to be scholars, stink in 
 our nostrils ; even Bulwer helped to his Baronetcy, 
 attest the fact that the Whigs do try to ennoble genius 
 or talent. Here, again, is a rumour, and we believe 
 a perfectly true one, that Mr. Gladstone did offer to 
 make Mr. Grote, once the leader of the " Rads," and 
 the one to whom was entrusted an annual motion on 
 the ballot, a baron ! Would he have been Baron 
 Sedgmoor ; or would he, having overthrown Mitford 
 and Thirlwall, boldly hail from Greece, as does 
 Lesseps from Suez ? 
 
 Here, indeed, is an admirable man of letters ; a 
 true scholar ; a learned, patient, excellent writer of 
 the good old fashion ; a man celebrated, not notorious; 
 too wise to be subjective, like Macaulay and his 
 enemy but imitator Hepworth Dixon ; too truthful
 
 l86 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 to describe scenes of which he only found a hint, 
 with the vivid falsehood of the Daily Telegraph 
 correspondent, who described the resplendent efful- 
 gence of a full moon when she was perfectly hidden in 
 her first quarter. Of such writers we shall shortly 
 have to speak enough. Here we have one who is 
 indeed good ; whom to admire is to prove your taste, 
 and this is the banker-scholar — as Rogers was the 
 banker-poet — George Grote, D.C.L., F.R.S., who 
 was born at Clay Hill, near Beckenham, Kent, in 
 1794. Nearly seventy-six years old ; the white hair 
 very thin and scant, the eyes dimmed with poring 
 over many books, the head bent with study more 
 than by age. Seventy-six years old, say near eighty ! 
 a long time to wait for honour, and it is nearly 
 fifteen years since his Magnum Opus was written. 
 Some time since the Queen drove up to town to visit 
 Dean Stanley — Arthur Penrhyn Stanley — a dean and 
 a courtier. Her Majesty honoured him with her 
 presence at luncheon, and it was arranged that two 
 illustrious men, both old in years and honours, un- 
 titled and unrecognised, however, by any gazette, 
 should be found chatting with Stanley when the 
 illustrious and widowed dame dropped in. One of 
 these men, found in learned ease on this truly regal 
 visit — for Windsor Castle is not so large, of course, 
 as Dean's Yard, Westminster — one of these men was 
 Thomas Carlyle, philosopher of Chelsea; the other
 
 MR. GEORGE GROTE. 187 
 
 George Grote, historian of Greece. Her Majesty no 
 doubt enjoyed the luncheon ! 
 
 When History is written philosophically, as by 
 Mr. Grote, it becomes much less interesting, but it is 
 eminently more true. After a long study of all the 
 best writers of that little peninsula, which at one 
 time contained an army of great men and philo- 
 sophers, and now seems but to hold a segregation of 
 the acutest sharpers of all Europe, Grote set himself 
 to study the meaning of words. " The modern his- 
 torian," he says, " strives in vain to convey the 
 impression which appears in the condensed and 
 burning phrases of Thucydides," and, of course, all 
 that is left him is to expand, to amplify, or to con- 
 dense. We all know how Lord Macaulay and his 
 school used history. They made it a picture book, 
 after the manner of Walter Scott, with or without 
 leave or license, with or without a hint in the bare 
 chronicle which they expanded. We heard how the 
 sea roared (when it was a calm) ; how some hero 
 shouted (when he never said a word) ; how the 
 heroine lifted up her voice and wept (when she was 
 silent in terror, or dumb from contempt). This is 
 history with a vengeance ; nor was the historian 
 content with this untruthful and shameful perversion. 
 What is legitimate with the novelist is contemptible 
 and detestable cheating with the historian. " Why, 
 dear Sir Walter," said an old lady to Scott, " you
 
 l88 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 seem as if you had lived in these times and saw all 
 you describe. Where do you get it all from ? " "I 
 read a great deal," replied the novehst, " and I 
 imagine the rest. I am like the theatrical manager, 
 when I can't snow white I snow brown." Perhaps 
 there never was a more annoyingly untrue and inar- 
 tistic book than Dixon's " Life of Lord Bacon." He 
 introduces people as present who were absent ; he 
 lets us hear them talk when they said nothing ; he 
 attributes motives, sets up and pulls down characters, 
 and moves his puppets about in a most theatrical 
 manner. People who reflect and who know are 
 disgusted, and truly one gentleman has taken the 
 trouble to write a volume to axpose the so-called 
 historian's follies and misrepresentations, but the 
 public is gulled. In the meantime the real actors in 
 history denounce it and laugh at it. " Don't read 
 me history," said the sick Sir Robert Walpole to 
 his son, " for that I know must be false." 
 
 It is the greatest praise of Mr. Grote, that he has 
 kept strictly to the letter of his brief. If he " ex- 
 pands " it is learnedly, and with reason. When 
 Thucydides or a chronicler uses a peculiar phrase, 
 Grote, finding out the meaning, will properly turn 
 his narrative. We do not have the " lurid smiles," 
 " the slow and cautious step " of accord or approach 
 which we have in inferior novelists, but we do have 
 a solid structure, and not a barley-sugar sham.
 
 MR. GEORGE GROTE. 189 
 
 If it were worth while to dwell on trifles in this 
 short sketch, one might applaud or object to Mr. 
 Grote's method of nomenclature. Personally, we 
 think that he is right, but nationally we are bound to 
 think him wrong. He will write Alkibiades, Socrates, 
 Peisistratus, Herakles, Skione, and the like. The 
 Greeks wrote them so. So the Latins talk of Pom- 
 peius Magnus, while we talk of Pompey. But the 
 whole " kit" of classic names will one day have to 
 be rewritten. Nikias does not look so well as Nicias, 
 but it is more like the original, and let us be as near 
 truth as we can. Some day we shall say Kikero and 
 Kaisar, instead of Sisero and Seizer. At present we 
 are bad enough, but the French are worse. Aristides 
 is pronounced AirSsteed, and Tullius Cicero is reduced 
 to Toole (Tulle). Why Grote should talk of the 
 people always as a demus, a soldier as a hoplite, and 
 a founder as an cekist, is not so clear. We want the 
 history of Greece written in English, not in Greek. 
 
 After all, the very best painting, because the truest, 
 is portrait-painting, and the very best history is bio- 
 graphy. This is especially true in Grote's case. His 
 later work on " Plato and the other Companions of 
 Socrates," is the most entertaining of all that he has 
 written. And the subject is worthy of him. The 
 history of no mere man that the world has seen is 
 equal to that of the little stone-mason figure-cutter 
 of Athens who used to ask questions. The noble
 
 190 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 galaxy of great spirits who surrounded him— Plato, 
 Xenophon, Critias, Crito, each a king of men — was 
 only fitted to be crowned by the philosophical 
 monarch, who died as he would have slept, the chief 
 actor in a tragedy without the strut of the tragedian, 
 the victim in a martyrdom without the song and 
 crown of the martyr. We need not recommend Mr. 
 Grote's work, but we will urge our readers to get it. 
 If they want to get rid of contemporary nonsense, 
 and to clear their minds of cant, while they fill them 
 with great and sublime images, they should read of 
 Plato and Socrates in the pages of Grote. 
 
 Mr. Grote has written on the ballot, has contributed 
 to the Edinburgh and Westminster ; has issued a 
 pamphlet on Plato's theory of the Earth, and another 
 on the Republic of Switzerland. A philosophical 
 republican and yet a despiser of demus, an ardent 
 supporter of the ballot because, we fancy, he fears 
 the corruption of the people, a man of learned ease 
 and yet a most laborious scholar, this great historian 
 seems to be a contradiction, and yet is a whole- 
 hearted, honest, wise man. To give a specimen of 
 his great history — a large work, in twelve volumes 
 — would be to bring a brick from Babylon under 
 the notion of picturing the elevation of the houses 
 and plan of the streets. Let the reader dip into it 
 whereever he may, he cannot go wrong, and will be 
 abundantly rewarded. For the scholar there is
 
 MR. GEORGE GROTE. IQT 
 
 an interesting and masterly discussion on the myths 
 and legends of early Greece ; for the student of 
 literature the disquisitions upon Homer, and all the 
 poets, historians, and philosophers, from ^schylus 
 and Herodotus down to Plato and Plutarch ; for the 
 statesman, the remarkable descriptions of the legisla- 
 tion of Lycurgus, the object of ostracism, the working 
 of the Athenian constitution, the influence of the 
 democratic form of government, and the causes of 
 the decline of the once invincible republics of Greece ; 
 and for the "general reader," the narrative of the 
 war against Xerxes, the battles of Marathon and 
 Thermopylae, the retreat of the Ten Thousand, 
 the expedition to Syracuse, and a hundred other 
 episodes, any or all of which he will follow with 
 breathless and sustained interest. Mr. Grote's work 
 has revolutionised our notions of ancient Greece. 
 It is a wonderful story, and is wonderfully told.
 
 THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI, 
 P.C., D.C.L., M.P., &c., &c.
 
 THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI, 
 P.C, D.C.L., M.P., &c., &c. 
 
 s^^^ 
 
 ANKIND, then,' said Vivian Grey, 'is 
 my great game. At this moment how 
 many a powerful noble only wants wit 
 to be a Minister; and what wants Vivian Grey to 
 attain the same end ? That noble's influence. When 
 two people can so materially assist each other, why 
 are they not brought together ? Shall I, because my 
 birth baulks my fancy, pass my life a moping misan- 
 thrope in an old chateau ? Now let me probe myself. 
 Does my cheek blench ? I have the mind for the 
 conception, and I can perform right skilfully upon 
 the most splendid of musical instruments — the human 
 voice — to make others believe those conceptions. 
 There wants but one thing more — courage, pure, 
 perfect courage ; and does Vivian Grey know fear ?' 
 He laughed an answer of the bitterest derision." 
 
 This extract from "Vivian Grey" will show why 
 Mr. Disraeli has been at once feared, distrusted, and 
 hated. When he was Prime Minister two literary 
 
 o 3
 
 igo MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 gentlemen, both partially disagreeing with his poli- 
 tics, desired, for the honour of their class, to give him 
 a dinner, whereat authors of all shades of opinion 
 should join to celebrate the accession to the highest 
 post of this Royal Republic — for England is by far 
 more truly republican in its fairness and openness of 
 career than America — of an author who had written 
 some brilliant novels, who had said some of the best 
 epigrams in political life, who had written leaders for 
 the Times, conducted the Representative, and who at 
 least was never ashamed of his craft. The answers, 
 let us say so far, revealed respect for the motives of 
 the senders, but bitter animosity to Disraeli. People 
 seemed to be unable, if in common fairness only, to 
 separate the man from the minister; and noble 
 authors, politically of his own way of thinking, wrote 
 four sides of note-paper in which they bespattered the 
 very clever politician and author with caustic abuse. 
 The dinner was obliged to be renounced, but a certain 
 number of scholars and gentlemen succeeded in getting 
 him on the committee of a literary dinner, in taking the 
 chair of which, Vivian Grey made a most clever and 
 charming speech, and worked his way with undaunted 
 courage, with singular bonhomie and unflagging pluck. 
 Another cause of his being disliked and mistrusted 
 is his singular cleverness. We know what Byron 
 said about the dull world which loves not those who 
 are too clever for it. " He who surpasses or subdues
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. ig7 
 
 mankind," said the noble author, " must look to 
 garner up a pretty fair share of hatred." He must, 
 indeed, and a reputation for cleverness is as fatal as 
 the thing itself. Now, clever as Mr. Disraeli un- 
 doubtedly is, his reputation for talent exceeds that 
 which he holds. Country members, and the dulness 
 of the House, if we may presume that there are such 
 in that brilliant assembly, look with suspicion upon a 
 man of such reputation, and, like certain banks, Mr. 
 Disraeli's paper currency far exceeds the weighty 
 bullion of real worth that he keeps at home. 
 
 It is because he has written a book, aye, and ten 
 books, all clever, wild, and nonsensical too ; for this, 
 people cannot forgive him ; and the reason they can- 
 not do so is because these books have an air of 
 insincerity. The ordinary Britisher has the feeling 
 of Herr Philister about him, so far as this, he cannot 
 separate mental from moral character. Those who 
 best know Mr. Disraeli, let us say his wife. Lady 
 Beaconsfield, and his late brother, James Disraeli, 
 loved him, and love him with a devotion which does 
 honour to both. The man is a hero to his valet-de- 
 :hambre, but as he has never concealed his hatred of 
 shallowness, his knowledge of the pretence of great 
 courts, his belief, a thousand times proved to be well 
 founded, that " a good cry " will move the English 
 people very much better than a noble cause, people 
 hate him. He has let the world know how clever he
 
 ig8 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 is, and the world has discounted his sincerity. He 
 has touched the right nail on the head very often, and 
 people have cried — What a happy guess ! He has 
 done that dangerous thing about which Lord John's 
 misquotation from Job — " Oh that mine enemy had 
 written a book !" — has passed into a proverb, and 
 people have judged him very severely by those very 
 books. He has never had fair play. He has been 
 looked on by his party as a clever mercenary, a sort 
 of political Bashi-bazouk, useful for skirmishing and 
 for getting killed. He has been treated as the later 
 Roman Emperors used their Saxon and barbarian 
 body-guard, as capital defenders, fighters, flesh for 
 Dacian swords or Persian arrows, but not as of the 
 old Roman stuff. He has been at least as true to 
 England and to his party as Lord John, who often 
 plays the v.'orst of all tricks to England and to Pro- 
 testantism (" Johnny's upset the coach again," said 
 the late Lord Derby), but people believed in that 
 bumptious little statesman, and not in Disraeli. He 
 has had a marvellous amount of unlnck, but he never 
 deserted his leader after once settling down, and was 
 never ashamed of his race or people. But in spite of 
 all difficulties, and an unjust and superabundant 
 hatred, he has been Prime Minister, is leader of the 
 oldest party in Europe, will be honestly and sincerely 
 mourned when he dies — and be buried in Westminster 
 Abbey.
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 199 
 
 After this exordium the reader may perhaps be sur- 
 prised to find that we do not admire his novels, 
 beheve that they are very much overrated, that they 
 will not live twenty years after his death, and that if 
 Messrs. Longmans give ;^io,ooo for his " Lothair," 
 they only w/scalculate on the curiosity of novel- 
 readers and the elasticity of Mr. Mudie's subscription. 
 The rumour is, however, an advertisement — and Mr. 
 Disraeli is not properly a novelist, nor a man of 
 letters pur sang, any more than a firework-maker is 
 an artilleryman. He is actually a free lance in 
 politics, using literature as a sword, revolver, cul- 
 verin, bow and arrow, or any offensive weapon a free 
 lance would carry. Cleverly he has used it ; but it 
 is because his service to letters — great Goddess ! who 
 art so jealous that no half-worshipper gains thy full 
 smile — is insincere that his readers have formed the 
 idea that he is not sincere. Le style c'est Vhomme ! 
 That truth, too, has betrayed him ; a silly, affected, 
 tinselly style, a "damme how clever" method of 
 writing, fine but without eloquence, distressful but 
 without pathos, glittering but without humour or fun 
 — a shaft that strikes but does not remain — this, too, 
 has ruined him, or at least carried away from him 
 the glory which his young ambition desired. 
 
 You can see him near Grosvenor Gate walking in 
 the sunshine, an old man who looks older than he is, 
 bent down, with his hands behind his back, thought-
 
 200 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 ful, sallow, his face lined with care. You can see 
 him, too, after a triumph in the House, youthful 
 almost, very good-natured, genial and wise-looking, 
 with a tender face, and a statesman-like look, a 
 worthy chief to follow, something of the old young 
 Disraeli who used to be found, in black velvet 
 breeches, by the way, at the Countess of Blessing- 
 ton's assemblies, side by side with the present Emperor 
 of the French. Or you can see him walking briskly 
 along, talking to a man whom he wishes to convince, 
 eager, active, and well-looking ; one who was until 
 late in life called young Disraeli, and whom, in spite 
 of his sixty years, it is difficult to think of as old, who 
 has the gift of a renewed youth, as some actors have ; 
 who when seen in the House, always contrasts with 
 the ideal formed of him ; one who has gathered from 
 those with whom he lived an air of haut ton which 
 his brothers never had, and which old Isaac Disraeli 
 never had either, although he had an universal mind 
 in its way, literary, but petty literary ; the mind not 
 of the poet nor of the noble prose-man, but of the 
 book collector and dilettanti. Would, by the way, 
 that we had more such book-men now. 
 
 A short time ago an old gentleman, who still lives 
 not far from the British Museum, related to the 
 author that he was intimate with the grandfather of 
 the present Prime Minister and the father of old 
 Isaac Disraeli, the author of " Curiosities of Litera-
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 201 
 
 ture." This old gentleman — himself of that grand 
 Faith, in which alone Unitarianism is philosophic 
 and epic in its sublime beauty, the faith of Judaism, 
 which peddling critics would call the Jewish persua- 
 sion — is remarkable for having been at one time the 
 successful rival to Rothschild ; for to him and to his 
 house was offered the gigantic loan of 1815 by Russia, 
 on which the greater fortunes of the house were built. 
 He refused it ; Rothschild took it, and went up into 
 the skies like a balloon. This, however, by the way. 
 Our friend knew Disraeli's grandfather, a poor man, 
 who was an Italian descendant of " one of those 
 Hebrew families whom the Inquisition forced to 
 emigrate from the Spanish Peninsula at the end of 
 the fifteenth century. His ancestors had dropped 
 their Gothic surname on their settlement in the 
 Terra Firma ; and grateful to the God of Jacob who 
 had sustained them through unheard-of trials, they 
 assumed the name of Disraeli (a name never borne 
 before nor since by any other family), in order that 
 their race might he for ever recognised y - 
 
 This is a turgid sentence, written when the author 
 was a mature man ; and yet the " race " which is to 
 be "forever recognised," bids fair to be known but 
 for a short time. Benjamin Disraeli had but one 
 brother, James, who died unmarried, while the great 
 leader of the family has no children. His grand- 
 father was named Benjamin, " the son of the right
 
 202 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 hand," and came to England in 1748, resolved to 
 settle in a country where the dynasty seemed esta- 
 blished, and where public opinion seemed definitively 
 " averse to persecution on matters of creed and con- 
 science." One may notice, as we pass them, the 
 strange use of prepositions in these sentences. Mr. 
 Disraeli's ancestors " settle in terra firma," and he 
 talks about persecution " on matters of creed." How- 
 ever, he has reason to be proud of his descent."* His 
 family was of the Sephardim, that is, of those chil- 
 dren of Israel who had never quitted the shores of 
 the Mediterranean, and who looked down upon all 
 other Jews as of an inferior caste. To the claim of 
 ancestry of such a man as this, that of our nobles and 
 ourselves must seem absurd. Ours is but puddle 
 blood compared with that of the noble Jew. Date as 
 we may, as a Stanley, a Percy, or a De Vere, from 
 the successful soldiers who regenerated the cause of 
 the robber William with the baptism of success, what 
 is a descent of eight hundred years compared with 
 that which must have run a thousand years before 
 the time of Christ, and which stretches beyond that 
 at least two thousand years ? Mr. Disraeli has 
 always felt this. Unlike the Laureate, who wrote — 
 
 " Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, 
 
 In yon blue heavens above us bent, 
 The grand old gardener and his wife 
 Smile at the claims of long descent'' —
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI.* 203 
 
 he has put forward the value of race, the " gener- 
 osity " {generosus, of good birth) of long descent, 
 and has urged to the utmost the claim of his 
 own people for hereditary talent. Let us espe- 
 cially note that he has never been at all ashamed 
 of being a Jew in race and blood, and never 
 would join with the silly Hebrews who write to 
 the Pall Mall Gazette to complain that in the 
 police reports a man is often described as "a. 
 Jew." 
 
 A Jew, then, a believer in the old covenant, old 
 Benjamin Disraeli left the falling state of Venice one 
 hundred and twenty years ago, and settled in Eng- 
 land. After a prosperous life, he died at the age of 
 ninety-six, leaving a studious, brown-eyed boy, a lover 
 of books, a connoisseur, a dilettante, and one not at 
 all likely to advance the fortunes of the family. This 
 was Isaac Disraeli, the author of " Curiosities of 
 Literature," an amiable, learned, and excellent 
 man, who aimed at uniting the style of Horace 
 Walpole with the universal book-learning of Peter 
 Bayle, and who has produced a most amusing 
 and valuable work ; shreds of other works, but 
 one which will live. The literature of Isaac Disraeli 
 lifted him into fashionable society. He knew the 
 men of the day, and came westward a short 
 step, moving from Red Lion Square into Blooms- 
 bury Square ; at the south-west corner of which
 
 204 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 his son Benjamin was born on the 21st Decem- 
 ber, 1805.* 
 
 This gentle, admirable old man of letters, certainly 
 never made the family richer. That it was not very 
 well off in the world's goods may be proved by the 
 fact that Benjamin Disraeli, after an education at a 
 suburban academy, was articled to a firm of city 
 attorneys, dwelling most appropriately in the Old 
 Jewry. But this apprenticeship he did not complete. 
 The young mian, ambitious, full of fire, an alien in 
 blood, stamped with much of the peculiar facial 
 qualities of his race, yet learned, fashionable, a 
 marked man, had this problem set him : how to make 
 himself the foremost man of the country he had 
 adopted. Had not Joseph been sold into slavery 
 three thousand years before, and had he not risen to 
 be the Prime Minister of the Pharaohs, and the 
 saviour of his people ? Could not Benjamin, though 
 
 * Some Christians scofif at him as a Jew, with a singular dis- 
 regard of all they owe to the Hebrew race. Now the fact is, 
 that (in plain English) Disraeli is neither an apostate nor a Jew. 
 He was born of Hebrew parents, but his father, thinking fit to 
 quarrel with his synagogue, failed to teach his child Judaism. 
 One day Rogers, the celebrated banker-poet, happening to visit 
 at Isaac Disraeli's house, at Hackney, when Benjamin was five 
 or six years old, and regretting to find so intelligent a youth 
 without religious instruction, took him to Hackney Church. 
 From this event dates his absolute and complete severance from 
 the Jewish communion. He became a Christian, and a great 
 genius was lost to us. — Jewish Chronicle.
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 203 
 
 of a scattered race, do much the same ? His grand- 
 father had, with an admirable foresight, chosen the 
 nation wherein this problem was to be worked out. 
 It was by political daring that he (Benjamin) would 
 rise to political power. 
 
 Some such thoughts must have run through Mr. 
 Disraeli's brain : we say imist, because, although 
 pictorial biography is, in most cases, deplorably false, 
 yet in this one instance it is absolutely true. Mr. 
 Disraeli has written many novels, and in more than 
 one of these he represents himself as an ambitious 
 youth, of foreign extraction or of Eastern birth, who, 
 in answer to such dreams as these, does make cer- 
 tain advances, which bring him to the top of the tree. 
 In the heroes of his own fictions, Mr. Disraeli has 
 prophesied and foreshadowed his own pohtical life ; 
 and, as we read this biography, we may just cast 
 away for ever the foolish assertion that any man is 
 " held down " or oppressed in free England. Given 
 ambition and talents — and these not always of the 
 highest — an attorney's clerk shall rise to be the 
 leader of the Government of the proudest and most 
 ancient monarchy of Europe. The uncertainty of a 
 presidential election in the United States is a mere 
 shadow to the certainty of this. Remember, we do 
 not say that the position is worth the winning to 
 certain pure yet ambitious minds ; but we do assert 
 that the chance is given, and that it may be won.
 
 206 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 The future Prime Minister soon threw off the 
 trammels of the attorney's desk, that dull prelude to 
 so brilliant and so variegated a career, and stripped 
 himself for the encounter. He started, just as he 
 was twenty-one, a kind of Tory-Liberal paper, the 
 Representative* with just as much Toryism in it as a 
 man of ancient blood might want, and just as much 
 Liberalism as the readers might demand. But this 
 soon came to grief. It was in truth very badly writ- 
 ten, bombastic, vociferous — pot-valiant, as it were ; 
 for Mr. Disraeli's style as a writer is, in our opinion, 
 far from good ; whereas his style as a speaker, or a 
 writer of vindicatory and vindictive letters, is excel- 
 lent. Like a French soldier, he is always admirable, 
 and full of fire in his attack. Not at all disheartened 
 by his political failure, our hero then tried his pen, 
 which he had flashed in politics, in romance, and 
 wrote a series of political novels ; each, we may be 
 sure, with a deep meaning. They won for their 
 author a certain renown. They took the town, and 
 were everywhere talked of. They were accepted as 
 very clever, brilliant novels, written more for the 
 purpose of showing the views of a party, and for ex- 
 hibiting the undoubted talent of their author, than 
 
 * Mr. Disraeli, in returning to a writer a biography of himself, 
 made an elision of the passage concerning this paper. Mr. 
 Murray started it, and Mr. Lockhart edited it. It lived five 
 months.
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 20/ 
 
 for anything else. They were " Vivian Grey," the 
 ♦'Young Duke," " Contarini Fleming," " Voyage of 
 Captain Papanilla," "Henrietta Temple," "Venetia," 
 "Coningsby," the ** Wondrous Tale of Alroy," a 
 prose poem, &c. These have been often reprinted, 
 but we doubt whether any of them will long survive. 
 "Coningsby" is the best, and exhibits political life 
 in anything but admirable colours. We may linger 
 awhile over these stories, more to study the character 
 of them and their author than for anything else. 
 Every one of them is written in a bombastic and 
 stilted style, but very pretentious, and certainly 
 "taking," just as any novelty (ritualism, for in- 
 stance) is taking at the time. They are prse- 
 Raphaelite in effect, in rawness and brightness of 
 colour ; that is, in just the faults, and not the vir- 
 tues, of the remarkable young painters ; they are, or 
 rather were, new, just as the turgid " Guy Living- 
 stone " was new ; and they, one and all, bear witness 
 to the intention and ambition of the author. To one 
 of them Mr. Disraeli had prefixed the motto, " Why, 
 then, the world's mine oyster, which with my sword 
 I'll open ; " and with the same courage as that of an 
 adventurous knight in the Middle Ages, it is evident 
 that in the early part of this century the young 
 author intended to go into the great lists and win. We 
 have said the style is bad. It is that of a Byronic 
 and Ossianic prose, not like the sweet simplicity of
 
 208 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 our best writers, and some of it fairly sets our teeth 
 on edge, though we are ready to confess that it may 
 please others. Take, for example, this rhapsody 
 from " Contarini Fleming : " "Oh, inscrutable, in- 
 exorable destiny, which must be fulfilled ! — doom 
 that mortals must endure, and cannot, direct ! Lo, I 
 kneel before thee, and I pray. Let it end ! let it 
 end ! let it end at once ! " [The young gentleman 
 is raving for his sweetheart.] " And shall it not be ? 
 Do I exist ? do I breathe, and think, and dare ? And 
 I a man — and a man of strong passions, and deep 
 thoughts ? And shall I, like a vile beggar upon my 
 knees, crave the rich heritage that is my own by 
 right ? If she be not mine, there is no longer time, 
 — no longer human existence, — no longer a beautiful 
 and an everlasting world. Let it all cease ; let the 
 whole globe crack and shiver; let all nations and all 
 human hopes expire at once; let chaos come again, if 
 this girl he not my bride ! " 
 
 After this, superfine reviews may condemn penny 
 novels if they like ; but we, who endeavour to be 
 fair, must own that many of the cheap novels boast 
 a purer style, and even tear their passions into more 
 effective tatters, when they do tear them, than does 
 the Prime Minister. But it was not all rant that 
 filled these novels. Disraeli claimed for his race the 
 supreme talent and the directing mind of the world ; 
 and, although the claim is by far too wide, there was
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 209 
 
 something in it ; and it was, and is, a noble sight to 
 see a young David of an oppressed race stepping 
 forward so boldly, with only the sling of his genius, 
 and the stone of his bitter tongue, to slay the ugly 
 Goliath of popular ignorance and prejudice. " Hath 
 not a Jew eyes?" "If you prick us do we not 
 bleed ? " says the universal Shakespeare, anxious 
 only to put a Jew on the same footing as ourselves. 
 Is not a Jew the best musician in the world, the best 
 financial minister, the best dancer, theatrical entre- 
 prencuY ? asks Disraeli ; in short, has not the Jew 
 the oldest blood and the finest genius in the world ? 
 "The Jews," says Coningsby, "are essentially 
 Tories;" "Race is the only truth;" "The Jews 
 are of the purest race, — the chosen people ; they are 
 the aristocracy of Nature." You will find all these 
 in " Tancred, or the New Crusade," published in 1847, 
 in which year the author also argued the admission 
 of Jews into Parliament against the views of his own 
 political friends. This was brave, courageous, and 
 to be applauded. Many of his assertions are bom- 
 bastic, and his proofs futile. All the genius of the 
 world does not, as he asserts, lie in the Jew musicians, 
 Mendelssohn and Mozart ; but his generous boldness 
 is to be applauded ; and as great an amount of genius 
 and talent is to be allowed to the Jewish people now 
 existing as to any other people ; but certainly not 
 more. 
 
 P
 
 210 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS, 
 
 To go back to the novels. After the very rapid 
 production of the earlier ones, Mr. Disraeli left Eng- 
 land in 1829, spent the winter in Constantinople, and 
 travelled in the spring through Syria, Egypt, and 
 Nubia. He returned in 1831 with new views, as we 
 have seen, of race, and of the Asian mystery, and 
 found the people very much agitated about Reform. 
 He put up for Wycombe, a nice little borough in 
 Bucks, about five miles from his father's seat at 
 Bradenham, and started with a recommendation from 
 Mr. Hume and from Daniel O'Connell as something 
 between Whig and Tory. All that is certain is, that 
 he went in for triennial Parliaments and vote by 
 ballot. He fought three electioneering battles here, 
 got defeated each time, and then turned up at 
 Taunton as a Conservative of Lord Lyndhurst's 
 type ; that is, as very much the sort of leader he is 
 now. Here it was that he indulged in a sneer, not 
 undeserved, at O'Connell, and brought down upon 
 himself that coarse castigation which has become a 
 familiar quotation. " He calls me traitor," said 
 O'Connell ; " my answer to that is, that he is a liar. 
 He is a liar in action and in words. His life is a 
 living lie." And, as if that was not strong enough, 
 the demagogue went on : " When I speak of Mr. 
 Disraeli as a Jew, I mean not to taunt him on that 
 account. Better ladies and gentlemen than amongst 
 the Jews I have never met. They were once the
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 211 
 
 chosen people of God. There were miscreants among 
 them, however; and it must certainly have been from 
 one of those that Disraeli descended. He possesses 
 just the qualities of the impenitent thief who died 
 upon the cross, whose name must have been Dis- 
 raeli. (Roars of laughter.) For aught I know, the 
 present Disraeli is descended from him ; and with 
 the impression that he is, I now forgive the heir-at- 
 law of the blasphemous thief that died upon the cross."* 
 (Loud cheers, mingled with laughter.) 
 
 This is very Irish, very wrong, and very shocking, 
 and yet all the world laughed at it. Disraeli the 
 Younger, as he was then called, stood against the 
 jeers of the world, answered the agitator with in- 
 vective, and as the latter could not fight, being 
 precluded by a vow, he challenged his son, Morgan 
 O'Connell, to resume " his vicarious duties of yield- 
 ing satisfaction for the insults which his father 
 lavished with impunity on his political opponents ! " 
 The challenge was not accepted. Mr. Disraeli then 
 wrote to O'Connell a wonderfully strong letter, be- 
 fore the brilliant style of which all the writer's novels 
 pale and fade. "Although you," he wrote, "have 
 
 * Mr. Disraeli has been blamed for replying to these hard 
 words, and Professor Goldwin Smith is very angry at being 
 called a " social parasite ; " but did not Goldwin Smith himself 
 just say something quite as hard in intention, something about 
 a lackey in the guise of a statesman ? 
 
 P 2
 
 212 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 long placed yourself out of the pale of civilisation, 
 still I am one that will not be insulted, even by a 
 Yahoo, without chastising it. * * I called upon 
 your son to assume his vicarious office of yielding 
 satisfaction for his shrinking sire. I admire your 
 scurrilous allusions to my origin. I know the tactics 
 of your Church ; it clamours for toleration ; it labours 
 for supremacy.'' Then, in allusion to O'Connell, he 
 compares himself to him. " You say that I was once 
 a Radical, and am now a Tory. My conscience acquits 
 me of ever having deserted a political friend, or of 
 ever having changed a political opinion. I have 
 nothing to appeal to but the good sense of the people. 
 A death's head and cross-bones were not blazoned 
 on my banners." (This in allusion to O'Connell's 
 disturbance in Ireland.) " My pecuniary resources, 
 too, were limited. I was not one of those public 
 beggars that we see swarming with their obtrusive 
 boxes in the chapels of your creed. Nor am I in 
 possession of a princely revenue, arising from a 
 starving race of fanatical slaves. I expect, however, 
 to be a representative of the people before the Repeal 
 of the Union. We shall meet at Philippi." 
 
 The letter closed with a threatened castigation of 
 the "big beggarman," who was then collecting 
 " rint " from the deluded Irish peasantry, for the 
 purpose of obtaining a " repale," which he knew he 
 should never get. Mr. Disraeli sent also a letter to
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 213 
 
 O'Connell's son, in which he said, "I will take every 
 opportunity of holding your father's name up to public 
 contempt ; and I fervently pray that you, or some of 
 your blood, may attempt to avenge the inextinguish- 
 able hatred with which I shall pursue his existence." 
 This is strong language ; but it was forty years ago, 
 when people were somewhat rougher than they are 
 now. Mr. Disraeli, then writing in the Times, utterly 
 extinguished the editor of the Globe, who took up 
 O'Connell's cause. " An anonymous writer," he 
 says, " should at least display power. When Jupiter 
 hurls a thunderbolt, it may be mercy in the god to 
 veil his glory with a cloud ; but we can only view 
 with contemptuous lenity the mischievous varlet 
 who pelts us with mud as we are riding by, and then 
 hides behind a dusthole." Altogether these political 
 attacks, although often unjust, did Mr. Disraeli an 
 immense deal of good ; they brought him out ; they 
 proved him to be a master of fence. " The editor of 
 the Globe,'" he said (it is worthy of remark that the 
 paper now is the staunchest supporter of the 
 Premier), " has recorded in his columns a lively 
 memento of his excited doltishness. What does it 
 signify? His business is to chalk the walls of the 
 nation with praises of his master's blacking. He is 
 worthy of his vocation ; only it is ludicrous to see 
 this poor devil whitewashing the barriers of Bays- 
 water with the selfsame complacency as if he were
 
 214 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 painting the halls of the Vatican." Mr. Disraeli 
 was now a marked man, even as a politician ; and in 
 the next election (1832) he found that the first step 
 of the ladder had been mounted, and that he was a 
 British representative, as member for Maidstone. 
 
 When still a young man, and in the enviable posi- 
 tion of the enjoyment of the fulfilment of his first 
 and young ambition, " I shall be," he wrote to 
 O'Connell, " a representative of the people before 
 the Repeal of the Union." His prophecy had been 
 fulfilled, and, happy in his quiet but " immense self- 
 sufficiency " — to borrow a phrase from M. Louis 
 Blanc — he set forward in his career as a member of 
 Parliament. Now, the House of Commons, like 
 every other large club where men congregate, and 
 where individual weight is felt, is just the place to 
 take the nonsense out of a man. Each member soon 
 falls to his natural level ; and the good nature as 
 well as the good sense of the House is remarkable. 
 The whole House, it has been said, has always more 
 common sense and more genius than any single 
 member, or than any dozen members, even though 
 they were the best ; and it is curious to find how 
 every new man, however great he may promise to be 
 before his election, is absorbed in the House, and 
 becomes, excepting in the rarest instance, a very 
 small portion of it. Look even at the two greatest 
 and most popular men of the Manchester school, Mr.
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 215 
 
 John Stuart Mill and Mr. John Bright. Out of the 
 House, addressing a crowded assembly in the Free 
 Trade Hall, or on the hustings of Westminster, these 
 gentlemen seem intellectual and oratorical giants ; 
 but in the House of Commons they are amongst 
 their peers, and though they have full weight allowed 
 them there, they are not the Kings of Men that they 
 appear to be outside its walls. 
 
 Hence we must not be surprised if the fervid and 
 Eastern eloquence of Mr. Disraeli fell upon dull ears 
 in the House, and that even derisive cheers were 
 heard to greet his maiden speech. " Gentlemen," 
 he is reported to have said, " you will not hear me 
 now; the time will come when you shall hear me." 
 He was at that time a member of the coterie of young 
 aspirants in literature and art who were often to be 
 seen at the evening parties of one of the most bril- 
 liant, notorious, and beautiful women of her time, the 
 Countess of Blessington ; and at her house, Gore 
 House (which has now disappeared to make room for 
 one of the speculations of Prince Albert and Mr. 
 Henry Cole), Mr. Disraeli met some very curious 
 characters : Mr. Duncombe, the " Radical " mem- 
 ber, of the most Conservative notions as regarded 
 himself; the Count D'Orsay, the Beau Brummel of 
 his time ; and a melancholy gentleman, who lived in 
 King Street, St. James's, and had ambitious dreams 
 about fulfilling the destiny of his uncle. This gentle-
 
 2l6 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 man, well known simply as " the Prince," used to 
 walk quietly in to those evening receptions, and 
 would rather listen than talk. He was so quiet, so 
 observant, that some likened him to a gloomy sport- 
 ing man ; and there yet remains a sketch of him, by 
 D'Orsay, leaning against the folding doors of the 
 countess's drawing-room, melancholy and contem- 
 plative, and dressed in the tight black trousers and 
 swallow-tail coat of the period. What was that man 
 revolving in his mind ? Was he then contemplating 
 an invasion of France with a few discontented soldiers 
 and a tame eagle ? Was he dreaming of the time 
 when his word would shake the world and give peace 
 or war ? Count D'Orsay, Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, 
 and last and greatest, the present Emperor of the 
 French, were three of the most extraordinary of 
 those men, great in fashion, literature, and art, that 
 assembled at Gore House ; and between two of 
 them, Mr. Disraeli and Prince Napoleon, there 
 sprang up a great friendship. 
 
 During his enforced silence, if little Benjamin held 
 his tongue, he did not refrain from using his pen. 
 He is more than suspected, although it is said that 
 he does not acknowledge the fact, of having written 
 in the Times the celebrated letters of " Runnymede," 
 addressed to various people and ministers, alternately 
 in a cajoling and an insulting mood. We know how 
 celebrated Mr. Disraeli is for his invective, and we
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 217 
 
 may in these letters trace two things to their head : 
 the first, the source of the Minister's powers ; the 
 second, the source of that intense dishke which is 
 entertained by too many towards him, and which 
 will pursue him to his grave. The letters in the 
 Times were in imitation of those of Junius ; but they 
 did not equal those effusions, either in cause or effect. 
 What the Runnymede letters did was to sell the 
 paper and amuse the Tories, while they afhxed party 
 names on Whig leaders, and did little else. Of Lord 
 John Russell " Runnymede" said that he was "born 
 with a feeble intellect and a strong ambition," 
 " busied with the tattle of valets ; " that he was 
 " a feeble Catiline ; " that he had " a propensity to 
 degrade everything to his own mean level, and to 
 measure everything by his malignant standard ; " 
 that he had written " the feeblest tragedy in the lan- 
 guage," &c. Lord Palmerston was " a great Apollo 
 of aspiring understrappers;" had '"'the smartness 
 of an attorney's clerk, and the intrigues of a Greek 
 of the Lower Empire ; " was " a crimping lordship, 
 with a career as insignificant as his intellect ; " that 
 " he reminded one of a favourite footman on easy 
 terms with his mistress ; " that " he was the Sporus 
 of politics, cajoling France with an airy compliment, 
 and menacing Russia with a perfumed cane." These 
 are happy sentences, but neither politic nor 
 wise. We cannot wonder if the author of them
 
 2l8 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 made enemies. Our present political writers are 
 more polite. 
 
 The election of 1841 placed the power of Govern- 
 ment in a Conservative Ministry, headed by Sir Robert 
 Peel, strengthened by Lord Stanley (the late Earl of 
 Derby), and commanding a huge majority in both 
 Houses. The Ministry had the confidence of the 
 country, and Mr. Disraeli was one of their supporters. 
 But in 1844 the Corn-Law agitation worked wonders. 
 Mr. Cobden and John Bright "stumped" the 
 country, and by their arguments, their brilliant 
 oratory, their common-sense views, brought thou- 
 sands to their way of thinking. The last and most 
 illustrious of these disciples was Sir Robert Peel 
 himself. During the years that this Ministry held 
 sway, from 1S41 to 1846, Mr. Disraeli had been 
 rising in the public estimation. He had published 
 some very clever novels — "Coningsby," "Sybil," 
 and "Tancred," — and was identified with Lord John 
 Manners and others as the leaders of the " Young 
 England" party. The "Young England" people 
 were the ritualists of politics. Everything was to be 
 regenerated by a restoration. Chivalry was good ; 
 therefore we were to dress in armour, and indulge in 
 the Eglinton tournament. The working man was 
 good ; the peasant — the noble peasant — was the 
 tiller of the soil and the man who made all the 
 money ; therefore lord and peasant were to be on the
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 219 
 
 most friendly terms ; the lord taking, as usual, the 
 best share. The middle classes were passed over, 
 or rather regarded as the enemies of both. Trade 
 was condemned. In " England's Trust," a poem 
 written about that time. Lord John Manners has 
 gained an uneasy immortality by a couplet which 
 was said by friends and enemies to embody the creed 
 of the party : 
 
 " Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die ; 
 But leave us still our old Nobility." 
 
 Had he written the cleverest satire in the world, 
 he could not have more thoroughly damaged his 
 friends. But Young England did not perceive it. 
 They thought that an advance was to be made by a 
 retrograde movement. The Queen and Prince Albert 
 gave a fancy dress ball, in which they were dressed as 
 Edward III. and Philippa of Hainault ; and the 
 Earl of Eglinton nearly beggared his estate by a grand ^ 
 tournament, in which Lord Chesterfield and other 
 noblemen, dressed in complete armour, tilted at each 
 other as knights of old, and a Queen of Beauty gave 
 the prize to the most skilful knight and the most 
 gallant horseman. This was pretty, romantic, and 
 foolish. The dead past is dead ; you cannot gal- 
 vanise Queen Anne to life again, much less a 
 monarch who died upwards of three hundred 3^ears 
 previously. It was significant, too, that while all
 
 220 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 were doing it in reality, no young nobleman would 
 play the fool in a fancy dress. But Motley was 
 there, — a clever artist, one of the middle classes. 
 He rode on a donkey, clothed in a patched dress, 
 archseologically correct, cracked mild witticisms of 
 the soi-disant knights, and belaboured his particular 
 ass (he did not dare to touch the others) with a 
 bladder of peas hung at the end of his bauble. 
 
 In the meantime Ebenezer Elliott was writing the 
 Corn-Law Rhymes. People were starving in the 
 North, and carrying a big loaf about the streets, 
 crying for cheap food and the repeal of the Corn 
 Laws. The part}^ of Young England shouted, " No 
 surrender!" and Sir Robert Peel, at the head of a 
 Tory Ministry, made a memorable speech, in which 
 he confessed that the time was come that his duty 
 to the people made him sunder all his old friendships, 
 but that when he was dead he prayed to be remem- 
 bered "as one who had brought a cheap loaf to the 
 cottage of the poor." Poor Sir Robert ! his very 
 pathos was prosaic, but he gained the day : the Corn 
 Laws were abolished ; and henceforward Mr. Disraeli 
 assailed him with the greatest bitterness. Of him 
 he had once said that " whether in or out of office, 
 he had done his best to make the settlement of the 
 new Constitution of England work for the benefit of 
 the present time and of posterity ; " but now he 
 said he " flung down the gauntlet at the feet of the
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 221 
 
 man he had once been proud to follow." He ex- 
 hausted invective in his speeches. Sir Robert, he 
 said, was at the head of an organised hypocrisy, a 
 traitor to his party, " a great Parliamentary middle- 
 man, who bamboozled one party and plundered the 
 other." It is useless to chronicle any more of these 
 brilliant flashes of spiteful wit. " The Tories," said 
 Mr. Disraeli, " had found the Whigs bathing, and 
 had stolen their clothes ; " they had passed a measure 
 advocated by their opponents. The ccmntry was 
 quiet ; and instead of a follower of the great Sir 
 Robert, Mr. Disraeli was at the head of a small but 
 compact party, lecturing to mechanics out of the 
 House, and telling them to "aspire," declaring that 
 English history " was to be re-written," sketching 
 a brilliant future for Young England ; and in the 
 House, making people wonder at his exhaustive in- 
 vective and brilliant sarcasms, and admire his head 
 if they did not love his heart. " Disraeli is up," was 
 the cry from the Strangers' Gallery ; " we are sure 
 to hear something good, and galling to Sir Robert." 
 
 This was soon to cease. Sir Robert, abandoned 
 by his party, left office in 1846 ; and henceforward he 
 attached himself to no party, but tried to strengthen 
 every Administration by his calm advice and his great 
 practical wisdom. " He was," said M. Guizot (who, 
 himself a Prime Minister, can well judge of the diffi- 
 culties which beset a statesman), " a great and
 
 222 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 honest servant of the State, proud with a sort of 
 humihty, and desiring to shine with no brilHancy 
 extrinsic to his natural sphere ; devoted to his 
 country, without any craving for reward. Severing 
 himself from the past without cynical indifference, 
 braving the future without adventurous boldness, 
 solely swayed by the desire to meet the necessities of 
 the present, and to do himself honour by delivering 
 his country from peril and embarrassment ; — he was 
 thus in turn a Conservative and a Reformer, a Tory 
 or Whig, and almost a Radical, more wise than 
 provident, more courageous than firm, but always 
 sincere." What a panegyric for an English states- 
 man ! What glory to England, that by her Consti- 
 tution she called to her councils such a man, the 
 grandson ('tis his greatest glory) of a rich Lancashire 
 cotton spinner ! In 1850, just as it seemed he would 
 again soon be called to power, Sir Robert, thrown 
 from his horse, died, after three days' illness, amidst 
 the regrets of the highest and the lowest, friends and 
 foes, who were alike proud of their English leader. 
 Working men who studied politics, and who loved 
 their country, crowded late in the night round the 
 door of the dying statesman in Whitehall Gardens, 
 as anxious to listen to the last message of the doctor 
 as were the owners of the coroneted carriages, as 
 they waited for the whispered news. 
 
 In 1847 Mr. Disraeli was elected for Bucks, and
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 223 
 
 he took as his leader that gentleman of a stable mind 
 in more senses than one, Lord George Bentinck. In 
 1848 a sudden death deprived us of that honest noble- 
 man, and Mr. Disraeli was left as the recognised 
 leader of his party. In February, 1852, the Mr. 
 Disraeli, whose star had been gradually rising, was 
 for the first time invested with the insignia of office. 
 The Russell Ministry had ceased to exist, and Lord 
 Derby was called upon to form a Ministry, of which 
 the popular novelist was Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer. 
 
 Of course there were a thousand pens pointed 
 against this : the "idea," said the Philistines, "of 
 a novelist being a man of figures ! " People shook 
 their heads in the City ; the wise and the prudent 
 hesitated ; the silly and the forward were loud and 
 open in their sneers ; but on the third of February 
 Mr. Disraeli took the House by storm with a budget 
 clearly and lucidly put, and so dexterously framed, 
 that even his opponents complimented him, and his 
 companions applauded him to the echo. What Mr. 
 Disraeli had more than once said had been " loom- 
 ing in the future " (now an almost forgotten, but 
 once a celebrated phrase), was all made clear ; and 
 in a speech of five hours' duration, the Chancellor, 
 master of the situation, expounded his views. Though 
 the speech was easy to listen to, the items of the 
 budget were not so easy to digest. Mr. Disraeli had
 
 224 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 been faithful to the country party : there was an 
 increase on the house-tax, and a decrease of the 
 malt-tax. " You must alter your budget," said 
 one, "like Mr. Pitt." "I do not aspire to Mr. 
 Pitt's fame," was the humble, though proud reply; 
 " but I will not submit to the degradation of other 
 Chancellors." The Opposition rallied; a want of 
 confidence was plainly exhibited ; and in a few days — 
 in the autumn of the year — -the Duke of Wellington 
 died, and the Tories were thus deprived of his wise 
 councils ; the Derby Ministry was out of office, 
 and Mr. Disraeli sat on the Opposition benches to 
 Lord Aberdeen. Throughout the times that followed, 
 Mr. Disraeli, faithful to his party, adhered to Lord 
 Derby, doing yeoman's service, attacking the Ministry 
 in brilliant speeches, and proving to admiration the 
 use of a censor in a free Government, and especially 
 of that which we should always desire to have, "Her 
 Majesty's Opposition " in strong force. When Lord 
 Derby came in, in 1858-9, our hero was again his 
 Chancellor, and brought in a most ingenious Reform 
 Bill, which, although admirable in many points, was 
 thrown out by the Whigs, principally at the instance 
 and jealousy of Lord John Russell, who no doubt 
 believed that, having passed the great measure thirty 
 years before, he was born to complete and supple- 
 ment it. But the Whigs failed to bring in a sufficient 
 measure of their own ; and in the parliamentary
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 225 
 
 session of 1864 the eloquence of Mr. Disraeli was 
 turned against Lord Palmerston's Government, 
 especially as to his foreign policy, and was outpoured 
 in favour of peace with France, and especially with 
 the Emperor of that great country, his old friend of 
 Gore House. 
 
 In 1865 Earl Russell was called to the head of 
 affairs, having Lord Cranworth as his Lord Chan- 
 cellor, and Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer; and Mr. Disraeli did little else than 
 carefully, and for his party, wisely, act as the leader 
 of the Opposition. Thus he vigorously opposed the 
 Whig Reform Bill, showing how hollow it was. 
 But in defeating the Whigs, the Tories only gave a 
 promissory-note of a wider measure ; and when, in 
 July, 1866, Earl Derby was again called to the head 
 of affairs, with Mr. Disraeli as Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, the latter had the honour of preparing a 
 wide Reform Bill, which it is said by some will 
 revolutionise the country. This is, of course, an 
 exaggerated statement ; to us the future of England 
 is full of promise. When in February, 1868, the ill- 
 health of Earl Derby compelled him to resign, the 
 "literary man" — Vivian Grey — was sent for by the 
 Queen, and Mr. Disraeli's patient striving of many 
 years was crowned with success : he was placed in 
 the highest position that a subject can occupy — that 
 of First Minister of the Crown ; the dispenser of 
 
 Q
 
 226 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 favours, places, and pensions ; the wielder of a far 
 greater sway than the President of the most far- 
 stretching power in the world, the great American 
 Republic — hedged round with striving, alien, and 
 often hated rivals and possible successors — can hope 
 to wield. 
 
 It is not our purpose here to trace Mr. Disraeli's 
 political career. He was, in more senses than one, 
 but a stop-gap ; he held for a short time the reins of 
 power ; introduced a Reform Bill far more sweeping 
 than that offered us by the Radicals ; made some ex- 
 cellent speeches ; presided at a Literary Fund dinner; 
 was beaten by Mr. Gladstone, and went out of office, 
 with the rumour, too, about his ears that the Tories 
 were seeking another leader. 
 
 It was in the spring of 1870 that the literary and 
 political worlds were startled by the announcement 
 that Mr. Disraeli had in the press a new and brilliant 
 novel, to be called " Lothair." 
 
 In due time the book was published, and the 
 rumoured high price given, and numbers of the novel 
 ordered — ;^io,ooo and twenty-five thousand as Si first 
 edition, though, of course, not true — served to awaken 
 the curiosity of the world. 
 
 After the book appeared there was immediate 
 criticism. The poor author, however meritorious, has 
 to wait for years before he meets— if ever in his life 
 he meets — with due recognition; but when a review
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 227 
 
 of a book pays for its insertion by attracting readers, 
 the press is quite wise enough to help the author and 
 itself. 
 
 There was, of course, much acute and much windy 
 and wordy criticism published about "Lothair" — 
 which dazzled people for a time, like a firework — which 
 was of course the cleverest novel of the season — nay, 
 almost of the century. This it is not ; but it is a 
 very clever, and in so far, remarkable production. 
 Mr. Disraeli is like his own French cook, who makes 
 a splendid new dish of the oldest materials, and ex- 
 pects to receive the utmost applause for his clever- 
 ness ; but, unlike his cook, he gets that which is 
 so dear to the soul of the artist. Knowing the love 
 of the English for lords, he doses them with lord 
 after lord, and duke after duke, in his work ; so 
 much of the miscalled aristocratic element do we 
 find, that we, like the Spectator, almost fear to criti- 
 cise it, "without having an impartial duke on our 
 literary staff." "Lothair," adds the reviewer, is apt 
 to give one "duchesses, jewels, and general splen- 
 dours on the brain ; " it does more, it not only sickens 
 one with false images, joyous excitement, excessive 
 flattery of rank and love of riches, but it reveals that 
 which else the author is very careful to hide — his 
 Eastern origin, and his gorgeous and warm Judasan 
 imagination. It is written with the utmost good- 
 nature, and with a youthful exuberance which will be 
 
 Q 2
 
 J 
 
 228 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 found to be very entrancing after the cold scepticism, 
 the nil admirari cynicism, and penny satire of the 
 day. Young ladies are entrancingly beautiful and 
 intensely virtuous ; they sing, in these pages, as well 
 as professionals ; when they open their mouths, 
 "roses seem to drop from them, and sometimes 
 diamonds ! " When they are angry, they have 
 "tumults of the brow;" if they are rich, they have 
 possessions in six or seven counties, and in each of 
 the three kingdoms ; if they are beautiful, they sur- 
 pass angels that ever painter or sculptor dreamt of. 
 The plotting priests, who in this world are very com- 
 mon, coarse, mean people, using the devil's weapons 
 for the devil's end, and truckling to mean passions 
 with mean souls and meaner bribes, are full of intel- 
 lect — acute, subtle, commanding — giving the direc- 
 tions of generals of the Pope's army for the reduction 
 of kingdoms, the reversal of the verdict of ages, the 
 subversion of the purpose of God. His very lawyers 
 and men of business ooze from their pores with won- 
 drous talent, and with a fatty richness which is 
 somewhat sickening. He has fitly described his own 
 style as an " ornate jargon ;" we have been reminded 
 that we must borrow from De Quincey a better ex- 
 pression, though itself disfigured with De Quincey's 
 false symbolism — " a jewelly haemorrhage of words." 
 It is not "jewelly;" the lumps of glittering matter 
 poured out in the dazzling cascade are simply bits
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 229 
 
 of glass or wood covered with tinsel ; they look 
 like the jewelled haunts of the gnome of the 
 diamonds in a pantomime ; go near them, even 
 as close as the orchestra, and you see what they 
 are. 
 
 And let us add that, with unconscious satire, pro- 
 duced, no doubt, by a certain reflex action of his 
 mind, Mr. Disraeli has far surpassed, in " Lothair," 
 the good-natured and most admirable satire on him- 
 self, written by Thackeray in his " Novels by Eminent 
 Hands." Let any reader compare the two works, 
 Thackeray's satire, "Codlingsby," by the Right Hon. 
 B. Shrewsberry, and " Lothair," by the Right Hon. 
 B. Disraeli, and ask whether one is more overloaded 
 than the other. How delicious in its gaudy and in- 
 congruous colour is this extract of Codlingsby's palace 
 in Holywell Street, which, by the way, is at the back 
 of an old clothes'-shop. Did not the spirit of Disraeli, 
 while its author was in a trance, escape from its body 
 to inhabit for a time the brain of the satirist ? 
 
 "They entered a moderate-sized apartment — indeed, Holy- 
 well Street is not above a hundred yards long, and this chamber 
 was not more than half that length — and fitted up with the 
 simple taste of its owner. 
 
 The carpet was of white velvet- -(laid over several webs of 
 Aubusson, Ispahan, and Axminster, so that your foot gave no 
 more sound as it trod upon the yielding plain than the shadow 
 which followed you) — of white velvet painted with flowers, ara- 
 besques, and classic figures by Sir William Ross, J. M. W.
 
 230 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Turner, R.A., Mrs. Mee, and Paul Delaroche.* The edges 
 were wrought with seed pearl, Valenciennes lace and bullion. 
 The walls were hung with cloth of silver, embroidered with gold 
 figures, over which were worked pomegranates, polyanthuses, 
 and passion-flowers, in ruby, amethyst, and smaragd. The 
 drops of dew which the artificers had sprinkled on the flowers, 
 were of diamonds. The hangings were overhung with pictures 
 yet more costly. Giorgione the gorgeous, Titian the golden, 
 Rubens the ruddy and pulpy (the Pan of Painting), some of 
 Murillo's beatified shepherdesses, who smile on you out of dark- 
 ness like a star ; a few score of first-class Leonardos, and fifty 
 of the masterpieces of the patron of Julius and Leo, the imperial 
 genius of Urbino, covered the walls of the little chamber. 
 Divans of carved amber, covered with ermine, went round the 
 room, and in the midst was a fountain pattering and babbling 
 into jets of double-distilled otto of roses. 
 
 'Pipes, Goliath!' Rafael said gaily, to a little negro with a 
 silver collar (he spoke to him in his native tongue of Dongola) ; 
 'and welcome to our snuggery, my Codlingsby.'" 
 
 It is in this snuggery that Rafael Mendoza lends 
 money to the Pope and the Czar, entertains dukes, 
 earls, bishops, and archbishops by the dozens ; brags 
 about the eternity and nobility of his race, and talks 
 with his sister, who is thus described, seated at an 
 ivory pianoforte, on a mother-of-pearl music-stool: 
 
 " Her hair had that deep glowing tinge in it which has been 
 the delight of all painters, and which, therefore, the vulgar sneer 
 at. It was of burning auburn, meandering over her fairest 
 
 * The burlesque is perfect ; the incongruity of painters, the 
 seed pearls, Valeiicienties lace and btillion, the mixture of colours, 
 and the showy display of knowledge, which reveals ignorance, 
 are all in the best style of caricatura.
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 23I 
 
 shoulders in twenty thousand minute ringlets ; it hung to her 
 waist, and below it. A light-blue velvet fillet, clasped with a 
 diamond aigrette (valued at two hundred thousand tomauns, and 
 bought from Lieutenant Vicovich, who had received it from 
 Dost Mahomed), with a simple bird of paradise, formed her 
 head-gear. A sea-green cymar, with short sleeves, displayed 
 her exquisitely-moulded arms to perfection, and was fastened by 
 a girdle of emeralds over a yellow satin frock. Pink gauze 
 trousers, spangled with silver, and slippers of the same colour as 
 the band which clasped her ringlets (but so covered with pearls, 
 that the original hue of the charming papoosh disappeared en- 
 tirely), completed her costume. She had three necklaces on, 
 each of which would have dowered a princess ; her fingers 
 glittered with rings to their rosy tips, and priceless bracelets, 
 bangles, and armlets wound round an arm that was whiter than 
 the ivory grand-piano on which it leaned." 
 
 Here, too, is a touch not to be left out, as it is the 
 chief point and high light of the picture : " ' My 
 lord's pipe is out,' said Miriam, with a smile, 
 remarking the bewilderment of her guest — who, in 
 truth, forgot to smoke ; and taking up a thousand- 
 pound note from a bundle on the piano, she lighted 
 it at the taper, and proceeded to re-illumine the 
 extinguished chibouk of Lord Codlingsby." 
 
 This is line caricature, but really the painting 
 is not much more overlaid than the original novel is 
 in many parts. Disraeli paints, as we have shown, 
 with a full brush ; he overpowers the imagination of 
 the vulgar, and wins or compels admiration by pro- 
 ceeding like a Timbuctoo lover, — first knocking his 
 future bride down. Here, for instance, from
 
 232 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 " Lothair," is a piece of work combining a clever 
 sketch of a Bond Street jeweller, which is marvel- 
 lously like that written by Thackeray : 
 
 " ' Vety interesting,' said Lothair, ' but what I want are pearls. 
 That necklace which you have shown me is like the necklace of 
 a doll. I want pearls, such as you see them in Italian pictures 
 — Titians and Giorgiones — S2ich as a Queen of Cyprus wotdd 
 wear. I want ropes of pearls' — ' Ah !' said Mr. Ruby, ' I know 
 what your lordship means. Lady Bideford had something of 
 that kind. She very much deceived us. — always told us her 
 necklace must be sold at her death, and she had very bad health. 
 We waited, but when she went, poor lady ! it was claimed by the 
 heir, and is in Chancery at this very moment. The J tistiniani' s 
 have ropes of pearls — Madame Justiniani, of Paris, I have been 
 told, gives a rope to every one of her children when they marr^' — 
 but there is no expectation of a Justiniani parting with anything. 
 Pearls are troublesome property, my Lord. They require great 
 care ; they want both air and exercise ; they must be worn fre- 
 quently : you cannot lock them up The Duchess of Havant 
 has the finest pearls in this country, and I told her Grace. 
 *' Wear them whenever you can ; wear them at breakfast." and 
 her Grace follows my advice, — she does wear them at breakfast. 
 I go down to Havant Castle every year to see her Grace's pearls, 
 and I wipe every one of them myself, and let them lie on a sunny 
 bank in the garden, in a westerly wind, for hours and days to- 
 gether. Their complexion would have been ruined had it not 
 been for this treatment. I^earls are like girls, my Lord,they 
 require quite as much attention.' " 
 
 Now and then Disraeli's satire peeps out with a 
 delicate and good-natured flash, as in this descrip- 
 tion of the present slang of society: '" English is 
 an expressive language,' said Mr. Pinto, 'but not 
 difficult to master. It consists, so far as I can
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 233 
 
 observe, of four words — 'nice,' 'jolly,' 'charming," -/' 
 and 'bore' — and some grammarians add * fond.' " 
 
 And the author deserves much credit for the real 
 good nature of that satire, which is never morbid and 
 hopeless. Indeed, some persons think it is hardly 
 bitter enough. In pointing out the enemies of Eng- 
 land — the perverts who would lead her to perdition, 
 the silent, deceptive, and oily-black soldiery of the 
 Jesuits, from whom, as well as from their antagonists, 
 the secret societies, Mr. Disraeli's gay and gilded 
 society, his charming dukes, beauteous duchesses, 
 and divine Corisandes, with stately parks and domains 
 larger than ordinary counties, have so much to fear 
 — the author does not betray any peculiar feeling, or 
 any hatred. He loves England, he must venerate it 
 as the home of civil and religious liberty, but he looks 
 with marvellous good-temper upon those gentlemen 
 who are quietly undermining the walls of that home, 
 and are storing up their gunpowder, barrel after barrel, 
 to blow all such liberty to the sky. This easiness 
 gives an air of lightness and persiflage to his work. 
 The feeling of unreality begotten by the overloaded 
 style is strengthened by the calm easy manner in 
 which Monsignore Catesby and his crew are de- 
 scribed.* And when one has read the book, clever as 
 
 '■' One of the most conspicuous characters in the ecclesiasti- 
 cal intrigue which is the main subject of Mr. Disraeh's new
 
 234 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 it is, it is soon forgotten. It makes no abiding im- 
 pression. We move among a fantastic crowd of 
 conspirators and great priests, wealthy converts and 
 rich men, and we forget that he but paints the reality, 
 and pictures Dr. Manning, and Cardinal Wiseman, 
 and the Marquis of Bute, and other people of our day, 
 because he has drawn reality with so unreal a touch. 
 To the great people with whom he has lived inti- 
 mately for years, Disraeli's conduct, in picturing his 
 intimates in such a "high falutin " style, and in 
 giving, in their own exaggerated language, their own 
 portraits, doings and sayings, has seemed little less 
 than base, or as they say, " exceedingly improper," 
 for one who has been a Prime Minister. To the 
 lower and dangerous classes — to whom such a book, 
 filtered through demagogic papers, will seem but a 
 proof that the stories of G. W. M. Reynolds and the 
 London Journal are actual truths — Mr. Disraeli has 
 
 story, is a certain Monsignore Catesby. The name smacks of 
 treason, conspiracy, and gunpowder. The inquisitive people 
 who profess to see real and Hving persons under the novehst's 
 masks have decided to their own satisfaction that Monsignore 
 Catesby is a respected and accomphshed Enghsh priest, very 
 well known in London, Father Capel. By a strange oversight, 
 Mr. Disraeli has in one instance allowed the name Capcl to be 
 printed instead of Catesby. The error will be found in page 254 
 of the third volume of" Lothair." We will not speculate as to the 
 origin of the blunder, which, whether or not it proceeded from the 
 author's pen, has certainly escaped his eye. But it is curious 
 enough to be worth recording. — Daily News,
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 235 
 
 pointed out the plate-chest. The democrats who meet 
 in Hyde Park, and who vote the instant demohtion of 
 the " lounging classes," the equalisation of property, 
 and the extinction of poverty by making us all alike 
 poor and destitute, must feel, after having read of 
 some of Mr. Disraeli's fabulously rich dukes, like the 
 thievish soldier Marsbal Blucher, who, after walking 
 through Cheapside and seeing the jewellers' shops 
 and riches of the City, and mounting the Monument 
 and beholding equally rich streets stretching on every 
 side, could only ejaculate, "MeinGott, what plunder!" 
 Whether the author will succeed in awakening the 
 Protestants of this sceptical age to their danger, we 
 very much doubt. 
 
 Lastly, the unreality of Disraeli's novels carries 
 away from them any kind of conviction. Their bril- 
 liance tires ; their knowledge puffeth up, but doth not 
 " edify," or, in English — for our Bible there follows 
 the Latin too much — their knowledge puffeth up, but 
 the higher knowledge of the true writer buildeth up. 
 That is an edification which is beyond Disraeli. 
 " But, then," says the reader, " the publishers have 
 given ;£'io,ooo for his new novel, and do you dare to 
 pronounce his work not of the first class ?" Dear 
 reader, listen and perpend. The publisher would 
 give a large sum for a novel by Lady Mordaunt, if it 
 was the greatest bosh in the world, because of the 
 notoriety of her name : people would rush to read it.
 
 2^6 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 What is good the publisher as a rule does not know; 
 what will sell he does know. " One day," said a lady 
 of rank to the author, " I was desperately in want of 
 some money, and I mentioned my want. It was to 
 relieve some poor relation of Lady C. B., a woman of 
 title who wTote, and who had written herself out. 
 She jumped for joy. That's just what I want ; C. or 
 B., the publisher, has been haggling with me about 
 my last novel ; I want three hundred ; they offer 
 me two, because I have written too fast. ' Why,' said 
 I, ' you gave me seven hundred for my first.' ' Yes, 
 my lady,' said the Tonson of the day, ' your name 
 was fresh then ; if you will get us a fresh name with 
 a title, we will give you seven hundred again.' " 
 And they did, too. Lady C. B.'s novel was published 
 
 as by the Countess , edited by the real authoress, 
 
 and the publisher netted a considerable sum from the 
 extra attraction. The story is quite true ; we could 
 mention the book. It will show you why so large an 
 amount is to be given for " Lothair." As a man of 
 letters, then, to us, we must openly confess Disraeli 
 ranks but as a mediocrity ; we admire his pluck, but 
 we cannot wholly admire his novels. 
 
 Let us add two pretty little stories which have been 
 the round of society, and which prove the love and 
 attachment subsisting between the late Premier and 
 his wife. Some one was saying that his face was 
 handsome. " Handsome !" cried Lady Beaconsfield,
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 237 
 
 " it is beautiful ; you should see him while he sleeps !" 
 The illusions and the love of youth had survived even 
 till the autumn of life in the heart that could thus 
 speak ! Again, driving down to the House to hear a 
 great speech from her husband on an important occa- 
 sion, he, full of his subject, and preoccupied as he 
 jumped from the brougham, shut one of her fingers 
 in the door. Agonising as was the pain, she uttered 
 no cry till he was out of sight, and then called 
 her footman to open the door. " My dear," she is 
 reported to have said, to one to whom she told the 
 story, " I would not have cried out for the world; in 
 thinking of my pain he would have been so agitated 
 that he would have forgotten all the chief points in 
 his speech." 
 
 Let us, too, add, that in all his novels there is no 
 incident more chivalric and graceful than that which 
 belongs to history, of a Prime Minister who had 
 made dukes, and added more than one historic name 
 to the peerage, refusing all honour himself, and 
 laying the coronet of a viscountess at the feet of 
 his wife. 
 
 And, apart from his literary fame, it will be as well 
 to consider the lesson of his life. Since the begin- 
 ning of this century there have been, omitting Mr. 
 Gladstone, twenty-three Premiers, and but two — 
 save Disraeli — not of the patrician order. These 
 were Mr. Canning and Sir Robert Peel. Mr. Disraeli
 
 238 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 makes a third ; and his elevation M. Louis Blanc 
 regards as "very natural, yet very singular; very 
 sad, yet very fortunate." He is not at all rich ; 
 in fact, were it not for a recent legacy, he would 
 be a poor man. " What is it, then," asks this 
 able writer, " that has put England — and, to begin 
 with, the English aristocracy — at the feet of this 
 plebeian, this Jew, this cosmopolite, this man of 
 so anti-English a character ? There he stands, at 
 the head of a party he had taken such trouble to 
 educate ! erect on the body he has so dexterously led 
 to commit suicide." His intellect is no ordinary one ; 
 but his is not the triumph of intellect : he has been 
 true to one party, and that is himself. "It is sad, 
 therefore," concludes M. Louis Blanc, " for it is a 
 fatal example of respect for political rectitude having 
 no share in his success. It is fortunate, because it 
 shows that henceforth, in England, power will be no 
 longer the exclusive property of a few patrician fami- 
 lies." This has long been the case, M. Blanc. From 
 Mr. Disraeli's story we take a happier augury. We 
 believe that he has risen because he has read surely 
 and truly the lesson of events, because he had bold- 
 ness, talent, pluck, and honesty on his side, and 
 because he has determined to set aside conventional 
 dulness, and to open the way to the aristocracy of 
 mind. And it is incumbent upon us, in the present 
 crisis of the world's history, to aid such men. In-
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 239 
 
 stead of barring the door with the dull impassible 
 aristocrat, and the land or mill owner, we should 
 rather open it to those who have spirit and geist. 
 Mind assuredly will win the day; they who are dead 
 to it will soon be themselves dead in a dead nation. 
 We must be a foremost nation in Europe ; an active 
 nation, a busy and somewhat meddlesome nation in 
 the politics of the world, or it is clear enough to all 
 that we shall cease to be. With us, apathy means 
 death. Either in the forefront of the race, or else 
 in what Carlyle calls "ocean-abysses," England will 
 arrive. And it is clear that she will achieve her 
 foremost place, not by sneering and undervaluing 
 hand-work and clever brain-work. Nay, to be 
 commonly just, we must own that it is the vulgar 
 mind that attributes to low means and base appli- 
 ances the successes of great men. Shakespeare's 
 dictum is ever to be borne in mind if we wish 
 charitably to judge of others. Corruption wins 
 not more than honesty ; fair dealing and hard work 
 are at the bottom of a larger percentage of the 
 successes of this world than the ill-natured imagine. 
 But more than all, Mr. Disraeli's history is 
 cheering, because it proves the thorough liberty of 
 Englishmen, and that the brightest career is open to 
 the poorest youth. " God," said poor Shelley, " has 
 given man arms long enough to reach heaven, if he 
 will only put them forth," Here, then, is a man who
 
 240 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 has put forth his arms : the grandson of an alien, of 
 a despised race, educated at no public school, with no 
 fortune, and a tongue that made enemies rather than 
 friends, he placed a daring goal to his ambition ; and 
 through the heat and turmoil of a long race, through 
 accident and chance, he distanced by a head his 
 more favourite competitors, reached the winning- 
 post, and governed the country which received his 
 wandering grandsire as its guest. Who shall prophesy 
 the fall, who shall set bounds to the glorious future 
 of a nation, which holds out such a prize to the 
 aspiring youth she nourishes in her bosom ?
 
 LORD LYTTOM.
 
 LORD LYTTON. 
 
 |Y birth Bulwer-Lytton was (is) above the 
 class from which the ranks of the literary 
 profession are filled ; for, though not of 
 a dazzling lineage, he was, on both sides, of gentle 
 origin." It is very easy to copy from the "Peerage." 
 Is it necessary to tell of a certain Bolver, son of 
 Thunder, a Dane who came over with the Con- 
 queror, and was descended from some Danish 
 Viking ? You can read that in Bulwer-Lytton's 
 genealogy in Sir Bernard Burke's " Peerage." The 
 truth is, Bulwer is a gentleman, and he looks it ; 
 a man of good blood and sound breed ; his hands, 
 feet, hair, and air show it. But Mr. Jeaffreson 
 ought to know that our best writers are almost all 
 of " gentle " origin, testibus Milton, Dryden, Addison, 
 Sterne, Waller, Shaftesbury, and Shakespeare. How- 
 ever, let us back to Bulwer. It is a long way from 
 Shakespeare to Bulwer ; let us take the leap ! 
 
 This " gentle " origin, falling upon the offspring 
 of two families, each of which had money, led to 
 
 R 2
 
 244 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 our author's custom of changing names. At one 
 time he was Lytton-Bulwer ; at another he was 
 Bulwer-Lytton. His eldest brother, WilHam Bul- 
 wer, the only one undistinguished out of three, 
 holds the ancestral house at Heydon Hall, Norfolk, 
 as fine a specimen of the architecture of the time 
 of James I. as one can see, and in the village there 
 is to be found one of the neatest of little inns, with 
 the " Bulwer Arms" as a sign. As Bulwer, too, 
 this great author — for he is great, in spite of his 
 shortcomings and his vanity — made himself known ; 
 as Bulwer he won his first fame by novels full of 
 precocious wisdom and a dangerous finesse ; as 
 Bulwer he wrote those famous plays, full of wit, 
 point, cleverness, sparkle, and miserably gilded, or 
 rather lacquered, poetry ; as Bulwer he gave us 
 boys those admirable sentiments from the mouth 
 of Claude Melnotte, which we took for poetry, and 
 spouted till the tears came from our eyes. Do not 
 we all remember them ? 
 
 " Nay, dearest, nay, if thou would'st have me paint 
 The home to which, could love fulfil its prayers, 
 This hand should lead thee — listen ! 
 A palace lifting to eternal summer 
 Its marble walls from out a gloomy bower 
 Of coolest foliage, musical with birds 
 Whose songs should syllable thy tiatne /" 
 
 Well, they were pleasant days when we believed in 
 this very clever writer's poetry. He gave it us raw,
 
 LORD LYTTON. 245 
 
 but it had such a glamour of cleverness over it that 
 we accepted it as something very rare, and did not 
 quite relish the unconscionably loud laughter into 
 which Thackeray threw us when he tore the mask 
 off the " Sea Captain " in Eraser's Magazine. Some 
 tender soul, who has a love for poetic pruriency, 
 and thinks that God-given talent should be used 
 for the corruption of God's creatures, has written 
 to us, shocked at our treatment of Swinburne. We 
 will show him, who has read little and understands 
 less, how Thackeray and Tennyson could handle 
 (critically, of course) Bulwer-Lytton, and how 
 Thackeray could carry the attack on the fair pos- 
 sessions of Tennyson. Remember, we are only on 
 the side of Truth. We allowed all due apprecia- 
 tion for Mr. Swinburne's poetry. We wish that 
 he, in carrying out his fine cookery of Greek and 
 French dishes, had done that which the English 
 gentleman requested the Irish waiter to do — served 
 them in separate plates, and had allowed us to mix 
 them ourselves. But enough. " Strike and spare 
 not" is our motto here, when the blow is deserved. 
 Praise, and praise generously, is but a pendant to it. 
 To our subject. Walking, let us say, lip the hall 
 of the Freemasons' at a Literary Fund dinner, there 
 is a gentleman, rather feeble, doddering, a Cousin 
 Feenix, with tumbled hair, a face rouged, flushed, a 
 noble forehead and high aristocractic nose, a gentle-
 
 246 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 man unmistakably, a gentleman with " the true 
 nobleman look " that you do not find one man in 
 a thousand has, and of which Pope spoke. He is 
 not very strong, this gentleman, and has a scared 
 kind of stare — that, indeed, of a student out in the 
 world. In this living face, and in photographs from 
 it, there is a suspicion that it is "got up" to what 
 its owner thinks its best ; that Pelham would be 
 younger than he is. Vain struggle with Time ; what 
 gentle waggoner can put a " skid " on his wheel 
 when he is going down hill, " or with a finger stay 
 Ixion's wheel," as Keats has it ? Look at the hair 
 brushed forv/ard and manipulated, the eyebrows, 
 whiskers, and hair somewhat darkened, the mous- 
 tache and imperial ! The whole look of the man 
 has just the clever artistry — not insincerity, for 
 Lord Lytton is a true man — which is the little bit of 
 bad taste which has prevented its master from being 
 the very first in his rank. The little reft within the 
 lute, and little rotten speck of garnered fruit — you 
 know the rest. How wonderfully like his books 
 every man is ! Noble Charles Kingsley ; superfine 
 Lord Lytton; rocky Ben Jonson, with the "moun- 
 tain belly and the rocky face ; " gentle Shakespeare ; 
 pure and biblical John Milton ; and " wicked " Lord 
 Byron, as vain as wicked, and as wicked as vain — 
 how you throw your own shadows and lights upon 
 your pages !
 
 LORD LYTTON. 247 
 
 This man, Lord Lytton, who has writen a most 
 
 acute essay on the difference between Genius and 
 
 Talent, has so high a share of the latter that he 
 
 touches on the confines of the first. His industry 
 
 is marvellous — as great as his genius. Let us 
 
 rapidly see what he has done. He was born in 1805. 
 
 His father, General Bulwer, died in 1807. In 1810 
 
 the little precocious fellow wrote verses in the Percy 
 
 ballad style. In 1820, at the mature age of fifteen, 
 
 he sent out " Ismael, an Oriental Tale," with other 
 
 poems, one on Waterloo, in which Corpo ral Shaw , r^ 
 
 the Life Guardsman, figures as a hero : 
 
 " Meantime brave Shaw usurps the martial plain, 
 And spreads the field with Gallic heaps of slain." 
 
 "Ismael" is not bad stuff; many a poet of fifty 
 worries his face into wrinkles because the press will 
 not praise worse verses. The young poet went to 
 Cambridge after a course of private tutorship, and 
 became a swell at Trinity Hall. In 1825 he won 
 the Chancellor's Prize Medal, and, after another 
 volume of verse, gave us, in 1827, his first novel, 
 " Falkland," the hero of which is, of course, Byronic, 
 wicked, Satanic even. So much harm had the -j 
 Byron fever done. To laugh sardonically, to hate 
 men much and women more, to scorn the world, 
 and yet to hunger for it, was then thought fine and 
 strong. His next work was "Mortimer; or, the 
 Adventures of a Gentleman," which the publishers,
 
 248 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 with their usual insight, rejected. However, the 
 word "Mortimer" was altered to " Pelham," and the 
 effect was magical. The publishers issued it, and 
 the public bought and praised it. It is a wonder- 
 fully clever novel for so young a man (published in 
 1828) of the superfine kid-glove and silver-fork 
 school. Bulwer had used his education as well as 
 his observation, and sarcasm and quotations are 
 pretty well mixed in the result. In 1827 Bulwer 
 graduated B.A. In the same year he married Rosina 
 Wheeler, daughter of a gentleman of Limerick, 
 and the marriage has not been a happy one, 
 testibiis Lady Lytton's spiteful novel of "Cheveley; 
 or, the Man of Honour," and others; but from this 
 marriage sprang the Hon. Edward Robert Bulwer 
 (born 1832), a poet of no mean order, known as 
 Owen Meredith. 
 
 In 1828, after " Pelham," came the " Disowned," 
 and then, in quick succession, " Devereux," " Paul 
 Clifford," " Eugene Aram," a drama on the same 
 ghastly subject, the "Siamese Twins," "England 
 and the English," " Last Days of Pompeii," " The 
 Crisis" (politics), "Rienzi," "The Duchess de la 
 Valliere," a drama, "Lady of Lyons," ditto, "Riche- 
 lieu," ditto, "Money," ditto; then "Ernest Mal- 
 travers," down to "My Novel," "The Caxtons," 
 "What will he do with it?" and others. From 
 1828 to i86g, we have thirty-one years, and, count-
 
 LORD LYTTON. 249 
 
 ing pamphlets and plays, more than forty volumes ! 
 Nor must we, in justice, forget his more ambitious 
 works, such as "Athens: its Rise and Fall," (1837); 
 " King Arthur," a poem (Colburn, 1849) ; and " The 
 New Timon," a trenchant satire, written in ad- 
 mirable verse. All these called loud plaudits from 
 the press at the time, and we are not of those who 
 take simply to novelty, and abuse an old and an 
 excellent servant. " The New Timon " had, un- 
 fortunately, a romantic story interv\^oven with its 
 satire ; had it not that, had it been a satire pur et 
 simple, it would have nearly equalled those of Pope, 
 or, let us say, Gifford. In style, it was between 
 the two. 
 
 Some moral obliquity of vision, too, made Bulwer 
 write those thrice damnable highwaymen stories, 
 wherein we have gentlemen highwaymen, scorning 
 society, and philosophic footpads. If his lordship 
 spent alt the money he ever had from all his novels 
 and plays put together in reformatories — and the 
 sum has been a very large one, Routledge paying 
 him for a stereotyped edition £15,000 — he could not 
 undo a tithe of the evil he has done, by giving an 
 impulse, with that much worse writer, Harrison 
 Ainsworth, to the Penny Murder and Robbery 
 Novel, which has filled our gaols with some of the 
 brightest boys of England. " Gentleman Jack " and 
 the " Boy Highwayman " are the true blood des-
 
 250 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 cendants, if illegitimate, indeed, of " Clifford " and 
 "Jack Sheppard." The deductions were as odious 
 as the sentiment was false. Thackeray, who seems 
 to have hated Bulwer's works with an honest scorn, 
 and to have pursued him with the pertinacity of a 
 bloodhound, lashed him as no man has ever been 
 lashed for his " Sea Captain," and in Punch wrote 
 perhaps the wisest, wittiest, and best parody ever 
 seen, on " Aram," in " George de Barnwell." Well 
 might the romantic Bulwer have blushed and 
 writhed ; but, unfortunately, the people who would 
 be corrupted by " Paul Clifford" and "Aram," are 
 just those who have not the wit to read the satire, 
 nor the open daylight knowledge (loving darkness 
 rather than light) to feel that a rogue can never be 
 called a wise, witty, or a truly clever man. This, 
 Bulwer could not see. It is not too much to say 
 that the whole of British society is at present dis- 
 turbed by the result of such teachings, infinitely 
 diffused by the talk and reproduction of inferior 
 minds. 
 
 In 1831 Bulwer was member for St. Ives ; then, 
 in '32, for Lincoln, till '42 ; was rejected till '52, 
 when he became member for Herts ; in '35 he took 
 his M.A. degree ; in '38 was made a baronet. In 
 '44 his mother died, and he took the name of 
 Lytton ; in 1853 he was made honorary D.C.L. 
 of Oxford ; in 1856 Rector of Glasgow University ;
 
 LORD LYTTON. 25I 
 
 in the same year he was offered a seat in Lord 
 Derby's cabinet ; in 1866 he was created Lord 
 Lytton of Knebworth. He won his baronetcy, we 
 believe, from the Whigs, and his barony from the 
 Tories, but his whole weight and popularity from 
 his capital and clever novels, so suited to a rest- 
 less, ambitious youth of readers, so seducing, so 
 dangerous, and yet in many parts so wise. On 
 the whole one cannot deny the highest crown one 
 can bestow upon the next-step-to-genius to Bulwer. 
 He ripens as he goes on, but his art is imitative 
 rather than original. He is too clever by half. 
 His best works are often echoes, melodious echoes, 
 with a different sound in their repercussion, but 
 evidently from the cries of others. The " Caxtons " 
 echoes back the strong shout of "Tristram Shandy;" 
 the historical novels, those of Scott and even James: 
 the history, those of Thirwall ; the dramas, those of 
 Knowles with the poetry of Scott ; the satire has 
 the silver ring of Pope, often his very ccesura in the 
 lines. Thus Bulwer is an imitative genius rather 
 than an original one. He has written because he 
 has had something to say, no doubt, but also 
 because he wished to place himself upon the same 
 high pedestal with the highest names in literature — 
 and for a time he has done it. But posterity has a 
 knack of taking down these plaster casts of great 
 ones before she puts up the alabaster statue which
 
 252 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 shall endure. Nevertheless, fresh plaster-of-Paris 
 looks uncommonly well. 
 
 We have said that Bulwer can hit out with 
 vigour, and that he ripens. His " Horace," lately 
 published, is a most admirable work, full, let us 
 say, of genius in minute touches, of clever work 
 all over. Lastly, as we cannot in our space follow 
 Bulwer's busy life any longer, let us thank him 
 for his honest, hard, and, on the whole, manly work. 
 That he has not been more so, that he has not 
 been conducive to Christian nobleness, that his 
 heroes are often snobs, is not his fault — it is con- 
 genital : and upon this natural wood, so well adapted 
 for the Bulwerian cabinet, education has placed a 
 very fine veneer, and art a splendid French polish. 
 
 Here, too, we add a literary curiosity — Bulwer's 
 
 attack on Tennyson, and Tennyson's reply in 
 
 Punch. The fight was a great deal too well carried 
 
 on to last. Bulwer loq., but anonymously, as the 
 
 " New Timon " was published as a mystery : 
 
 "Not mine, not mine (O Muse forbid !) the boon 
 
 Of borrow'd notes, the mock-bird's modish tune, 
 
 The jingHng medley of purloined conceits. 
 
 Out-babying Wordsworth and out glittering Keats ; 
 
 Where all the airs of patch-work pastoral chime 
 
 To drown the ears in Tennysonian rhyme ! 
 # # * * * 
 
 Let school-miss Alfred vent her chaste delight 
 
 On ' darling little rooms so warm and light ; ' 
 
 Chant ' I'm a-weary ' in infectious strain. 
 
 And catch the ' blue fly singing i the pane ; '
 
 LORD LYTTON. 253 
 
 Tho' praised by critics and adored by Blues, 
 Tho' Peel with pudding plump the puhng muse, 
 Tho' Theban taste the Saxon purse controls, 
 And pensions Tennyson while starves a Knowles" — 
 
 We need not more. Tennyson, who had had ;£'200 
 
 a-year granted him, was touched to the quick, and 
 
 wrote — for once and only once in Punch — as 
 
 follows : 
 
 " The New Timon and the Poet. 
 
 We know him out of Shakespeare's heart 
 And those full curses which he spoke ; 
 
 The old Timon, with his noble art, 
 That strongly loathing, greatly broke. 
 
 So died the Old ; here comes the New. 
 
 Regard him : a familiar face ; 
 I thought we knew him : What, it's you, 
 
 The padded man that wears the stays. 
 
 Who killed the girls and thrilled the boys 
 With dandy pathos when you wrote ; 
 
 O Lion ! you that made a noise 
 And shook a mane en papillotes. 
 
 And once you tried the Muses too, — 
 You failed. Sir ; therefore now you turn ; 
 
 You fall on those who are to you 
 As captain is to subaltern. 
 
 - But men of long-enduring hopes, 
 
 And careless what the hour may bring, 
 Can pardon little would-be Popes 
 And Brummels, when they try to sting. 
 
 An artist, Sir, should rest in Art, 
 
 And waive a little of his claim ; 
 To have a great poetic heart 
 
 Is more than all poetic fame.
 
 254 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS, 
 
 But you, Sir, you are hard to please, 
 
 You never look but half content. 
 Nor like a gentleman at ease. 
 
 With moral breadth of temperament. 
 
 And what with spites and what with fears, 
 
 You cannot let a body be ; 
 It's always ringing in your ears — 
 
 They call this man as great as me. 
 
 What profits now to understand 
 
 The merits of a spotless shirt — 
 A dapper boot — a little hand — 
 
 If half the little soul is dirt ? 
 
 You talk of tinsel ! Why, we see 
 
 Old marks of rouge upon your cheeks. 
 
 You prate of Nature ! Yoii are he 
 That spilt his life upon the cliques. 
 
 A Timon you ! Nay, nay, for shame ; 
 
 It looks too arrogant a jest — 
 The fierce old man to take kis name — 
 
 You bandbox. Off, and let him rest." 
 
 Clever but wrong, as the gentleman said under 
 peculiar circumstances. You see these great souls 
 are disturbed. When one poet calls another a 
 school-girl, and the other retorts with the accusation 
 of his opponent being a rouged bandbox, the time 
 has come to leave off. You can say no more. But 
 we like these old free fights ; the men are both broad 
 enough to forgive and to forget ; their success, 
 immense talents, and the full appreciation that the 
 public has given them, are alike undeniable. May 
 they rest under their laurels!
 
 MR. HARRISON AINSWORTH.
 
 MR. HARRISON AINSWORTH. 
 
 !ET us start with an opinion, fearlessly 
 expressed as it is earnestly felt, that the 
 existence of this writer is an event to be 
 deplored; and the fact that he is able to assume that 
 he is a Man of Letters who has been of service to his 
 country, and that he has received from the hands 
 of a Prime Minister, himself a Man of Letters, the 
 reward of ^^loo a-year pension for literary services, 
 is a disgrace to this bewildered and Philistine nation. 
 Mean as is the sum of ;£'i,200 a-year which is set 
 aside for the reward of those noble soldiers in Litera- 
 ture and Art who lead the van, who write for the 
 people, who instruct the people, and help all they 
 can with fine-hearted thoughts and words of a pure 
 savour, it is made yet smaller by placing upon it 
 persons who absorb a very large portion of it. Thus 
 Lady Phipps, the wife of a Queen's servant, who 
 saved Her Majesty hundreds of thousands, takes 
 away a fourth ; Lady Mayne, the widow of a well- 
 paid police-officer, takes away an eighth ; the widow 
 
 s
 
 258 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 of a highly-paid President of the Royal Academy, her- 
 self earning much money, pockets a fourth ; a writer of 
 highwaymen's romances a twelfth, and so on. If 
 you have speculated and built an exhibition, then 
 your widow may be rewarded by this Literary Civil 
 List. If the Queen has no other way to reward her 
 servants, you will be put upon this list. It is really 
 time that the English people should speak their mind 
 as to their public servants, the authors. They stand in 
 the stead of the prophets of old ; they form the minds 
 of the young ; they set the bias of the mind towards 
 virtue or vice, towards unholy greed, a cold lust of 
 selfish gain, or a generous and manly life of duty, 
 honesty, forbearance, and holiness. 
 
 Now, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth has not done the 
 latter. He is, perhaps, not so much to be blamed, 
 poor man, being a person of small attainments and 
 not a very strong intellect, as the times in which he 
 was born. In that yeasty and lively age, in which the 
 results of a long war, deeds of violence at sea and on 
 land, the press-gang, cheating lawyers, bad laws, a 
 debauched king and court, a "frowsy old Floribel," 
 had produced among the people a taste for such 
 literature as the " Memoirs of Harriet Wilson," 
 accompanied by books less vicious only in degree, 
 not quite as bad in intention, such as " Tom and 
 Jerry," "The Corinthian Club," and the like,— in 
 that very lively age people required a literature
 
 MR. HARRISON AINSWORTH. 259 
 
 that teemed with adventure and had "go" in it. 
 Mr, Coombe, in his " Doctor Syntax," feels this, 
 and leads his hero into innumerable scrapes, and 
 makes him describe each scene from the playhouse 
 to the graveyard. To judge from his lines, matters 
 were not much better then they are now in the 
 former. When he has seen a play Syntax ex- 
 claims : 
 
 " Twas Shakspeare — but in masquerade : 
 I've seen a farce, I scarce know what, 
 'Twas only fit to be forgot. 
 I've seen a critic and I've heard 
 The string of nonsense he preferred. 
 Heaven bless me ! where has Learning fled ? 
 Where has she hid her sacred head ? 
 Oh ! how degraded has she grown. 
 To spawn such boobies on the town ! " 
 
 The booby, John Leland, by the way, was wisely 
 pensioned by the minister, on express condition that 
 he would not write any more corrupting romances. 
 Mr. Ainsworth has apparently received his money 
 under other conditions — 
 
 " Qualis ab incepto processerat 
 Et sibi constet." 
 
 He began by writing highwaymen romances, and 
 he has only just at present (August, 1870) concluded 
 a story of "Claude Duval, aTale of the Days of Charles 
 the Second," in that widely-circulated journal. Bow 
 Bells. Let us add that he writes evidently with 
 
 s 2
 
 260 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 more decency and less open applause of robbery and 
 brutality for one penny, than he did when one paid 
 half-a-crown for his rubbish. His Claude Duval is 
 not the Knight of the Road after all. The highway- 
 man's name is merely taken as a " draw " by the 
 vulgar novelist. He knows that little thieves and 
 incipient burglars will be taken in by the name. 
 He knows that in the purlieus of the New Cut, in the 
 wynds of Glasgow, in the slums of Manchester and 
 Birmingham, the name of Claude Duval is a name 
 of might. He therefore takes it, but he wishes to 
 be virtuous as well ; he is as modest as a lady of a 
 certain fame and occupation is at a christening — a 
 great deal more modest than virtue itself. Claude 
 Duval shot by the Duke of Buckingham ! — (Ha, ha ! 
 w'hat says Dame History to that ?) — in single combat 
 in Windsor Park, is attended in his duello by a 
 female page dressed as a man, "with a wild shriek 
 that betrayed her sex " — oh, you foolish old copyist, 
 are not the discarded w'omen-pages of Sir Philip 
 Sidney and of Shakspeare yet done with ? — but has 
 yet life enough left him to ride and plunge into a 
 morass. Sabine, his she-page, leads him thither. 
 
 "'Not there,' rejoined Duval. ' Your father's spirit pointed 
 towards the lake. Take me thither — to the morass — you under- 
 stand.' 
 
 She divined his terrible purpose, Init did not attempt to oppose 
 it. She led him down the long sweeping glade, along which 
 they flitted like phantoms. She guided him swiftly and un-
 
 MR. HARRISON AINSWORTH. 261 
 
 erringly, through the thick woods encirchng the lake, and 
 brought him to the borders of the morass. 
 
 ' Now leave me. Farewell for ever ! ' he cried. 
 
 And with a last effort he forced his horse into the fatal swamp. 
 Sabine remained looking on in a state of stupefaction. When 
 all was over she prepared to follow. 
 
 ' Leave you ! Never ! ' she exclaimed. ' I am yours in life 
 as in death I ' (sic.) 
 
 And she plunged in after him. The morass willingly (!) 
 offered them a grave in its oozy depths, and kept their secret 
 well. 
 
 A miserable pretender afterwards appeared as Claude Duval. 
 With him we have nothing to do. He was very deservedly 
 hanged." 
 
 Now this is mean in the extreme. Here is this 
 old and accomplished author, who has drawn his 
 brilliant existence, as the sun draws exhalations 
 from a swamp, from the Newgate Calendar; who 
 has sent so many boys to prison that Government 
 has forbidden his plays to be acted with one hand 
 and has pensioned him with the other ; and yet, in 
 his old age, he deserts the highwaymen, and only 
 in the last paragraph but one of his book, lets out the 
 secret that the true Duval is " a miserable pre- 
 tender," and was very deservedly hanged. Mean, 
 very mean : Ainsworth is, in fact, the pretender 
 himself. 
 
 Thirty years ago, a portly, red-faced gentleman 
 might have been seen on the Harrow Road, humming 
 the tune of the most popular song of the day — his 
 own "Jolly Nose." There was a good-natured
 
 262 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 joviality about the gentleman, a genial disposition 
 to feed well, sleep well, and take care of himself. 
 He had been a lucky, and he thought himself a 
 meritorious man — not at all an unusual matter. He 
 was born in 1805, and is therefore of the mature age 
 of Lord Lytton, another author who has illustrated 
 the lives of thieves. His father was a Manchester 
 solicitor ; but his son, who was brought up to the 
 same profession, became, " through the allure- 
 ments of literature," says that "high falutin' " 
 biographer, i\Ir. Cordy Jeaffreson, "a careless 
 student of the law, and ere the conclusion of his 
 twenty-first year he presented the world (!) with 
 his first work of fiction, 'Sir John Chiverton.'" 
 
 Mr. Jeaffreson here makes out a great case for 
 his friend, whom he does not seem to care much 
 about, as he dismisses him in a few lines ; but the 
 statement that he was " intended for the law," 
 and that he was a student, though a careless 
 student, of that blessed institution, stands him in 
 stead. From law to a defence of crime, indeed to 
 looking upon crime as a jovial and necessary (for 
 the lawyers) sort of occupation, is but a step. From 
 " Sir John Chiverton " to " Ovingdean Grange," 
 and this about Claude Duval, Ainsworth has written 
 some twenty-six books or romances, and taking 
 these at three volumes each, is author of nearly 
 one hundred volumes of — rubbish. Early in his
 
 MR. HARRISON AINSWORTH. 263 
 
 life, the success of Dickens gave him a good 
 opening as playing second to that author. When 
 Dickens resigned his management of Bentlcy^s Mis- 
 cellany — having written therein a thieves' story, but 
 very differently treated, by the way, and quite moral 
 in its tenour and its results, its real abhorrence of 
 not admiration for crime — Dickens wrote a preface 
 to the volume containing the comic and dignified 
 similitude of the old and new coachman. It suited 
 literary men to be looked upon as "jarvies," or 
 whips, and to consider Bentley as a coach. The 
 new whip, having mounted the box, drove straight 
 to Newgate. He there took in Jack Sheppard and 
 Cruikshank the artist, and aided by that very vulgar 
 but wonderful draughtsman, he made an efficient 
 story of the burglar's or housebreaker's life. He 
 might have done this and kept to the truth, or have 
 pointed a moral. He did neither. He gave Jack 
 a kind of apotheosis ; he made all his villains on the 
 side of the law, and all his rogues and slatternly 
 strumpets, washings of the kennel and gatherings 
 from the stews, whom he termed fair and charming 
 women, law-breakers, but to be admired by the 
 reader ! 
 
 Bad as this bald piece of writing was, the success 
 of Cruikshank's capital etchings, some of them equal 
 to anything that Callot ever did, except in grace 
 (we allude to the crowds in the space of a thumb-
 
 264 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 nail in the hanging procession), was enormous, and 
 Mr. Ainsworth, who had been a publisher at one 
 part of his busy life, next set up Ainsworth' s Magazine, 
 and in it wrote certain stilted nonsense — "The 
 Tower of London," " Old St. Paul's," "The Miser's 
 Daughter," and so forth. Of these not one could 
 hold the public without its illustrations. Some of 
 Cruikshank's best work went to these rubbishy 
 books, which are now bought at large prices for the 
 engravings. 
 
 Previous to this the poor scribe, whose historical 
 novels were a mere list of the frippery of the ward- 
 robe, had written another thieves' romance out of a 
 penny chapbook, of which he has such a great idea 
 that he has given the public the most touching 
 scene to weep over. It is the death of Dick's mare, 
 " Black Bess." 
 
 " Dick's eyes were blinded as with rain. His triumph, though 
 achieved, was forgotten ; his own safety disregarded. He stood 
 weeping and swearing, like one beside himself. 
 
 ' And art thou gone, Bess ? ' cried he, in a voice of agony, 
 lifting up his courser's head, and kissing her lips, covered with 
 bloodflecked foam. ' Gone, gone ! and I have killed the best 
 steed that I ever crossed ! And for what ? ' added he, beating 
 his brow with his clenched hand — ' for what ? for what ? ' " 
 
 The illustrious author himself has told us how he 
 felt when he wrote that celebrated passage. The 
 feelings of Gibbon at Lausanne, after having written 
 the last line of his magnum opus, were small compared
 
 MR. HARRISON AINSWORTH. 265 
 
 with those of Ainsworth. After informing the public 
 on the important point where he " achieved " this — 
 at the Elms at Kilburn — he continues : 
 
 " Well do I remember the fever into which I was thrown 
 during the time of composition. My pen literally scoured 
 over the pages. So thoroughly did I identify myself with 
 the flying highwayman, that once started I found it im- 
 possible to halt. Animated by kindred enthusiasm, I cleared 
 every object in my path with as much facility as Turpin 
 disposed of the impediments that beset his flight. In his 
 company I mounted the hill-side, dashed through the bust- 
 ling village, swept over the desolate heath, threaded the 
 silent street, plunged into the eddying stream, and kept 
 an onward course — without pause, without hindrance, with- 
 out fatigue. With him / shouted, sang, laughed, exulted, 
 wept; nor did I retire to rest till in imagination I heard 
 the bell of York Minster toll forth the knell of poor Black 
 Bess." 
 
 Knell of poor Black Bess ! that never existed, 
 that was never ridden to York, save in the brain of 
 some half-starved author of a penny chapbook ! And 
 if this author had the common sense to have followed 
 Fielding, he might, if he chose, have falsified history 
 without making vice alluring. But such is the per- 
 verse blindness of such genius as inspires Bulwer 
 and Ainsworth, that they represent the lazy loafer — 
 who took to the road in fear and trembling, when 
 he could no longer live on the wages of sin his poor 
 female companion brought him — as a puissant knight- 
 errant ; and the mercers, travellers, and bagmen as 
 so many cowards, who trembled at the sight of them.
 
 266 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 The truth is, these same "cits" sometimes frightened 
 the highwaymen with a brass candlestick. One old 
 beau stuck a fellow by the head on the spikes of his 
 coach, and dragged the dirty hector into London, 
 and cleared Hounslow Heath, by terror of this deed, 
 for months. Once women took a highwayman 
 prisoner; and the scoundrelly " Knights of the Road" 
 always fled before any men equally well armed. So 
 much for their valour ! 
 
 Nor can we too often refute the foolish old saw of 
 there being honour amongst thieves. King being 
 arrested, and crying out for help, Turpin deliberately 
 shot his friend, so that he could not "peach" (give 
 information against him). " Dick," cried King, 
 thinking that the shot was meant for the officer, 
 " you have killed me." Nevertheless, he lived for a 
 week, and long enough to peach about his friend's 
 hiding-place at Hackney Marsh. Turpin then, to 
 use the expression of this historian, "removed into 
 Yorkshire," where he supported himself by a cunning 
 mixture of horse stealing and horse dealing. Taken 
 at last under his assumed name of John Palmer, 
 found out by a returned letter, of which he had not 
 paid the postage, he was tried, condemned, and 
 executed. Finally, as they dress this hero on the 
 stage, he was so shabbily dressed — no sticking-plaster 
 boots, silver-hilted swords, gold-laced hats, or velvet 
 coats — that he bought "a new pair of pumps and a
 
 MR. HARRISON AINSWORTH. 267 
 
 fustian-frock to wear at the time of his death." He 
 
 left a ring and some other articles to a " married 
 
 woman," not his wife, with whom he had been 
 
 cohabiting. He trembled and turned white when he 
 
 came to the ladder, stamped his foot with some 
 
 bravado, mounted the ladder, and there conversed 
 
 with the executioner for half-an-hour before he threw 
 
 himself off. 
 
 " Now fitted the halter, now traversed the cart, 
 And often took leave, but seemed loath to depart." 
 
 We find we have made the trifling omission of a 
 murder and a round dozen of brutalities in this short 
 sketch, but trifles are of little moment in the life of 
 a hero. " It is needless to add that the story of the 
 ride to York," says a Newgate historian, with some 
 contempt, " and of the wondrous deeds of the high- 
 wayman's steed, Black Bess, are like many other 
 tales of this fellow (!), the fabrication of some poetical 
 brain /" 
 
 When these glittering productions were dramatised, 
 so many young boys imitated the tinsel heroes of the 
 stage, that the authorities wisely forbade their repre- 
 sentation. Mrs. Keeley for some time acted Jack 
 Sheppard, and respectable women were found foolish 
 enough to bedizen themselves in mob caps, and 
 represent the "historical personages" of the trulls 
 and strumpets whom Ainsworth created as the 
 queens of the burglar's seraglio.
 
 268 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Well, after thirty years or so, we have seen the 
 result. The crop of penny highwaymen books is 
 perennial.* Jack Sheppards (spelt a little different 
 for copyright considerations), Blueskins, Turpins, 
 Claude Duvals, rise like foul fungi from the cheap 
 press, and shed their poison, and die down to appear 
 
 -•'■ Further evidence of the pernicious effect on youthful and 
 half-educated minds of what may be called the highwayman 
 and burglar school of literature is furnished by a case which 
 came the other day before the Worship-street magistrate. A 
 boy of fourteen was charged with having stolen two sacks from 
 his employers, and the policeman who had the conduct of the 
 case said, that when he apprehended the prisoner he found on 
 him (besides the stolen property) portions of certain publications 
 called the "Boys of England," and "Tales of Highwaymen, or 
 Life on the Roads," both referring to the achievements of 
 notorious malefactors, which were invested with alluring colours 
 of heroism and magnanimity. The lad was sent to prison for a 
 fortnight, there to perform hard labour on an exhilarating diet 
 of bread and water ; but it is to be feared that, after all the 
 trash he has read, he will regard himself as a victim to the con- 
 ventional rules of society, and will make a bolder stroke for 
 fame when he comes out. Mr. Ellison, the magistrate, called 
 the attention of Inspector Fife to the fact that neither the name 
 nor address of the printer is given on the publications. The 
 publishing office is at 147, Fleet Street, but that is all the infor- 
 mation vouchsafed. Under these circumstances the magistrate 
 desired the inspector to speak to the Commissioners of the City 
 Police, in order that steps may be taken to prosecute the printer, 
 who has clearly violated the law. It were greatly to be wished 
 that something could be done to suppress such publications, 
 which are quite as mischievous in their way as the particular 
 kind of books contemplated by Lord Campbell's Act are in 
 theirs. — From a Londoti Paper, May 22, 1868.
 
 MR. HARRISON AINSWORTH. 269 
 
 again. Copies have been taken in boys' boxes, which 
 in the aggregate amount to thousands ; chaplains of 
 prisons have, in charges innumerable, traced the per- 
 version of these poor boys to thieves' literature. Mr. 
 Ainsv^orth and Lord Lytton have corrupted our boys 
 by the hundred-fold. One has a peerage, the other a 
 pension, for his services ! We are rewarded for 
 buying, they for writing this trash. 
 
 The author of Jack Sheppard may be, and possibly 
 is, a very amiable gentleman, but he has no right to 
 be allowed to escape scot-free from the result of his 
 teachings. It is difficult for the candid mind to 
 comprehend why the popular favour is extended to 
 robbers and burglars, unless it be man envying the 
 rich; — poor people love and admire those who rob and 
 despoil the rich. In all children this love of the 
 lawless seems innate. " My dear boys," said a lady 
 of title, who was wise as well as poor, to her three 
 children, "you will have your way to make in the 
 world; you will have to work to achieve your fortune; 
 now, what would you like to be ? " To these young 
 gentlemen, ranging from nine to twelve years old, 
 and to whom law, war, and diplomacy afterwards 
 opened their arms, but one answer suggested itself; 
 without a pause they cried, " Freebooters, mamma ! " 
 But it is somewhat mean to take advantage of this 
 low feeling ; a great writer might have satirised, he 
 should not have pictured the burglar in roseate hues.
 
 270 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Mr. Ainsworth is, we believe, as Lord Lytton is, 
 we know, a wealthy man through this literature ; 
 but if every farthing each has received from his 
 books, pensions and all, were a hundred-pound note, 
 and employed in building reformatories for boy- 
 thieves, the unhappy man could not undo the evil his 
 perverted taste, vulgar admiration, and his fatal itch 
 of writing to pander to the savage instincts of the 
 thief and robber, has caused, and will yet cause, in 
 years to come.
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE.
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 |HE universal burning-up, as in hell fire, 
 of human shams. There, readers, there 
 is the next milestone for you in the 
 history of mankind." 
 
 Consider well that sentence. At a time when 
 Prince Christian is made a bencher of Lincoln's 
 Inn; when English travellers are murdered in Greece, 
 because we have been soft enough to ruin Corfu and 
 the Ionian Islands by giving them to the Hellenes; 
 when the value of the press, and of everything else, 
 except money, is declining ; when men dress as 
 women, and flaunt in places of public vice for two 
 years, with applause almost from an innocent sitting 
 magistrate, Mr. Flowers, who would " like to 
 liberate them without bail ; " when emigration is 
 acknowledged to be the only panacea for misery of 
 the working-classes in the richest country in the 
 world, which yet refuses state emigration on a 
 proper scale ; when " an old man in the Vatican " is 
 proclaimed by most of his bishops to be Infallible, 
 
 T
 
 274 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 " the third Incarnation of God ; " when — but the 
 reader can add many instances. "The universal 
 burning-up of shams " has not yet commenced, and 
 in this world probably never will. 
 
 And for forty years in London, and some fifteen 
 years more in the country, an earnest Scotsman, 
 Thomas Carlyle, has to the best of his power 
 preached, Cassandra-like, against them ; has added 
 many strange German words to the language about 
 them; has refused to bow, as he says, "before the 
 Baals of the world, the sham captains, solemn 
 human shams, phantasies, supreme quacks, dead 
 sea-apes, and dull and dreary humbugs." His is 
 not an entrancing or lively role to play, but one 
 which is and will be always necessary, and which 
 Carlyle has played honestly and well. He has 
 gained for himself — and it is well for the world that 
 he has — much love and reverence ; probably no man 
 doubts his honesty, or his directness of purpose, 
 how much soever they may question his wisdom. 
 Thomas Carlyle is, to a great extent, a power in this 
 age. He has turned aside many who were frivolous 
 and foolish ; he has made his mark as an earnest, 
 deep-thinking man ; he has been classed in a book, 
 and in innumerable reviews, as one of the three 
 great thinkers of the age. He is one of the men 
 whose words will live. He has fought the good 
 battle, and, if checked and baffled, is not yet con-
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 275 
 
 quered ; he is essentially a Protestant, and he will 
 die protesting. Such a life has in it a something of 
 the beautiful, compared with other lives, nay, with 
 those of the men who have made money and could 
 buy up Carlyle, stock, lock, and barrel — how beau- 
 tiful it is ! 
 
 You can see that fine old face, snowed by the 
 winter of time, rugged and lined with channels of 
 thought, in most photographic shops and in many 
 albums. The earnest eyes still flash beneath the 
 rugged brows. He wears such a beard "as youth 
 gone out has left in ashes ; " there is something 
 scoriae about the face, as if the fires of a volcano 
 had nearly burnt themselves out and yet reserved 
 some force. Age has added to it, not subdued it. 
 Compare it with earlier portraits and you will 
 recognise the truth that, wherever wisdom dwells age 
 steals not, but reveals true beauty. No ruin of a 
 strong tower clothed with ivy is more fine and 
 touching than that head. The portrait, leaning 
 thoughtfully on the hand that has laboured so long 
 and so well with the pen, presents the vera effigies 
 of a true king of men. Here, at least, cries the gazer, 
 is no phantasm, no sham captain, but a man. 
 
 This Man of Letters was born in 1795, of the 
 Saxon race which settled in the Scotch Lowlands, 
 at Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, of a religious, 
 earnest, good father, who educated his son at Annan, 
 
 T 2
 
 276 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 and then passed him on to Edinburgh, where he 
 remained till he was twenty-one, and then, not liking 
 the priesthood of the Church maybe, he taught, for 
 two years, mathematics at a school in Fifeshire, and 
 then devoted himself to the priesthood of literature. 
 This was his own word, and it will at once reveal 
 the character of the man. " Of all priesthoods," he 
 wrote, " aristocracies, governing classes, at present 
 extant in the world, there is no class comparable 
 for importance to that priesthood of the writers of 
 books ; these are the real working effective church 
 of a modern country. The writer of a book, is he 
 not a preacher? — preaching not in this parish or in 
 that, or on this day or on that, but to all men, in all 
 times and places." 
 
 With such thoughts in his head, Carlyle com- 
 menced, in 1823, writing in the Edinhiirgh Encyclo- 
 pcedia on Montesquieu, Montaigne, Nelson, the two 
 Pitts ; he translated Legendre's Geometry, and 
 Goethe's " Wilhelm Meister." Such journey-work 
 he ennobled ; whatever he did he did well ; and 
 truly not in that rugged way, paved with- stony hard 
 words and German phrases, that he now uses, did he 
 travel on his " wander-years ; " but in plain, direct 
 good English, pleasant to read and easy to under- 
 stand. It would have indeed been difficult for one 
 with so remarkable a style as he now has, to obtain 
 admission in those days, and even now, under any
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 277 
 
 omnific editor, whose " valuable journal " delighted 
 and delights the world. Sampson was clean shaven, 
 and had not let his locks grow when he toiled for 
 the Philistines. Carlyle wrote next in the London 
 Magazine a life of Schiller, the magazine being 
 upheld by Lamb, Hazlitt, John Scott, Allan Cunning- 
 ham and others. "Wilhelm Meister"was published 
 anonymously, and the young gentleman who trans- 
 lated it was patted on the back by various reviewers — 
 by some, too, abused. He would be a bold man who 
 would patronise Carlyle, however one might abuse 
 him now ! Goethe admired him and wrote to him ; 
 thought him worthy to have views of his cottage 
 engraved in the German edition of his book. Car- 
 lyle lived then at Cragenputtock, with a good wife, 
 who helped him as no other human being could, and 
 whom he loved tenderly through life. In a letter 
 to Goethe he gives a charming picture of his life. 
 "Here, with no small effort," he says, "have we 
 built and furnished a neat substantial mansion ; 
 here, in the absence of professional or other office, 
 we live to cultivate literature with diligence in our 
 own peculiar way. Two ponies, which carry us every- 
 where, and the mountain air, are the best medicine 
 for weak nerves. This daily exercise, to which I 
 am much devoted, is my only dissipation ; this nook ^ 
 of ours is the loneliest in Britain, six miles removed 
 from anyone who in any case might visit me."
 
 278 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 A good scholar in Greek and Latin, reading any 
 book that he much desired in any modern language, 
 imbued with German thought and philosophy, here 
 the philosopher dwelt in 1825, writing for the 
 Foreign Review and other reviews, large and small, 
 until 1830, when he removed to Chelsea, London, 
 and commenced, " in his piebald style," says a 
 writer, " Sartor Resartus," the tailor re-tailored, in 
 Eraser's Magazine. "Sartor," now perhaps regarded 
 from many points as his very best work, a supreme 
 work in numberless ways, was of course refused by 
 the booksellers and publishers, not without much 
 advice to the " young man," of which advice from 
 the publisher's taster Carlyle has given some dry 
 specimens. Why the middle-class should be called 
 " gigmanry " and " gigmanity," and what was the 
 meaning of a " Baphometic fire-baptism," all- 
 knowing editors could not make out. However, 
 Oliver Yorke, the pseudonym for the editor of Fraser, 
 found it pay, this piebald style, and readers found 
 Herr Teufelsdroch amusing, quaint, and some even 
 deep and wise, above the ordinary level of writing 
 which had no style at all, piebald or otherwise. 
 
 Writing and studying for some years more, and 
 by no means a popular writer — his popularity being 
 always reflected, and his true fame having yet to 
 come — Carlyle, in 1837, produced a really great 
 work, showing us how History ought to be written.
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 279 
 
 This was the " French Revolution," a series of the 
 most brilHant historical pictures that was ever 
 written, given with a vivacity above measure, and 
 a fidelity above all praise. For Carlyle does not give 
 subjective pictures for which he has no authority. 
 He is not a brilliant writer after the Tom Macaulay 
 school. For every word he utters you may swear ^ 
 that he has full authority ; indeed, were Carlyle 
 to note and annotate his works the probability is 
 that we should never get through them ; they would 
 be as huge and as indigestible as the folio edition 
 of Bayle's Dictionary, which we can't read, because 
 the notes utterly overpower the text. From the 
 very words of the chief witnesses of the Revolution, 
 the reader learns what that mad time was. A 
 more powerful picture never was drawn ; we hear 
 the clash of the sabres, the spitting of the Dames de 
 la Halle, the roll of the tumbrils, the song of the 
 Girondins, the shriek of the victims of the egorgeurs 
 (stabbers), the fall of the guillotine, and the thud 
 of the head in the basket of sawdust. But, oh 
 Heavens, that this should be a sham, too ; that 
 the " green one," Robespierre, immaculate and 
 incorruptible, and bathed in blood, should be but 
 the victim of illusion ; that all should be but an 
 ugly dream or terrible plague-sickness, cured only 
 by a bath of blood. Such it was in Carlyle's opinion 
 — " An age of paper ending with a whiff of grape-
 
 28o MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 shot." And yet, look you, of all wondrous peoples, 
 working for ever, and dancing onwards and onwards 
 to victory and slaughter, that French people from 
 1790 to 1815 did show themselves a people — but of 
 a sort. God seems to have sent them a strong 
 delusion, and they believed a lie. They set up the 
 goddess Reason — they produced thereby Marat, 
 Robespierre, Napoleon (First and Third), Talleyrand, 
 and others. The student of history will do well to 
 read Carlyle's book, and to put that living record 
 beside some of the books by Dryasdust and Com- 
 pany; say by Doctor Sir Archibald Alison, and 
 others. 
 
 After this wonderful work, which the critics did 
 not of course understand, Carlyle produced his great 
 monument to Cromwell — merely the man's speeches 
 and letters wdthout annotations, only elucidations. 
 You, therefore, judge Cromwell by himself; you see 
 him with his wife, his family, his servants, his 
 army, and his God. After these letters of Cromwell 
 the history of England by Mr. Philosophic-Deist 
 Hume, and the pretty pictures of Sir Walter Scott, 
 must be swept away like so much rubbish out of the 
 corners of 3'our brain. 
 
 We have not noticed, for reasons palpable enough, 
 " Chartism," " Heroes and Hero- Worship," '' Past 
 and Present " (1843), and his five volumes of essays. 
 He was not — this grim school-master — very compli-
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 281 
 
 mentary to his beloved English country, the land of 
 his adoption and his admiration. He told us that 
 " England was dying of inanition, though full of 
 wealth," and that the " happy haven to which all 
 revolutions were driving us was to that of hero- 
 kings and a world not unheroic." The prophecy 
 becomes plainer and more visibly true every day. 
 In 1850 came out Carlyle's "Latter-Day Pamphlets," 
 and before that the Life of his friend Sterling, a 
 sweet and touching biography, very charmingly 
 written. In 1860-4 he published his "Life of 
 Frederick of Prussia," in which he somewhat too 
 much deiies force ; and in 1867 he contributed to 
 Macmillan's Magazine a rough and somewhat violent 
 diatribe against the times and the world as it goes, 
 called " Shooting Niagara — and After," in which he 
 by no means prophesies smooth things of the future 
 of England. But if we disagree — and we by no 
 means wholly disagree — with the philosopher of 
 Chelsea, we must praise his style — wonderful, acute, 
 strange enough to be attractive, and if well read, 
 plain enough to be understood by a ploughboy, 
 honest enough to be understood by a saint, bold 
 enough to shame all cowards : there it is, sinewy, 
 full of stature, all muscle and bone, without 
 a superfluous word. But we must leave him, 
 yet not without these few words as a specimen of 
 Carlylese :
 
 282 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 " But that a bad man be 'free ' — permitted to unfold himself in 
 h/s particular way, is contrariwise the fatallest curse you could 
 inflict on him ; curse, and nothing else, to him and all his neigh- 
 bours. Him the very Heavens call upon you to persuade, to 
 urge, to induce, compel, into something of well-doing ; if you 
 absolutely cannot, if he will continue in ill-doing — then for him 
 (I cannot assure you, though you will be shocked to hear it), the 
 one ' blessing ' left is the speediest gallows you can lead him to- 
 Speediest, that at least his ill-doing may cease qtiam prhmim.'^ * 
 All the millenniums I ever heard of heretofore were to be pre- 
 ceded by a '■ chaining of the Devil for a thousand years' — laying 
 hhn up, tied neck and heels, and put beyond stirring, as a pre- 
 liminary. You, too, have been taking preliminary steps with 
 more and more ardour for a thirty years back ; but they seem 
 to be all in the other direction ; a cutting asunder of straps and 
 ties wherever you might find them — with great glory and loud 
 shouting from the multitude as strap was cut, glory, glory, 
 another strap is gone — this, I think, has mainly been the sub- 
 lime legislative industry of Parliament since it became Reform 
 Parliament, victoriously successful, and thought sublime and 
 beneficent — by some." 
 
 As things turn out now, — murders by the score, 
 Oxonian reveUing, Roman infaUibihty, and Govern- 
 ment brigandage in Greece, — Carlyle speaks with 
 reason.
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 
 
 ^g^ 
 
 ;HE Americans, who rightly or wrongly re- 
 pudiate Aristocracy — or rather, since that 
 I word is ignorantly profaned and misused, 
 a titled class, which is very different from the Aristoi 
 — have an awkward habit of making their great men 
 either judges, generals, or professors. "Professor" 
 is a word of very modest meaning, warped from its 
 real significance into something somewhat charla- 
 tanic. Professor Browne who cuts hair, Professor 
 Challis who cuts out trousers scientifically, Professor 
 Anderson who pretends to conjure and expose spirit- 
 rapping with the agile awkwardness of a plethoric 
 butcher, rise before one's mind as you say the word. 
 They are humbugs, saltambanques, mere palliasses, 
 with raddled noses and painted faces, who do their 
 jugglery in a miserable way, poor fools ! — but Pro- 
 fessor Longfellow is a learned man, a scholar, a 
 gentleman, and a true poet. 
 
 He does not look much like one as he walks near 
 his home at Cambridge, U.S. He resembles a sub-
 
 286 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 stantial English farmer. He is more English in his 
 look than Tennyson, quite as much so as Browning. 
 He has a cheery red face like a farmer, white hair 
 falling about it in long locks, and black eyebrows. 
 Forcible lines and features adorn that face ; there 
 is more strong thought in it, and much less delicacy 
 and womanliness in it, than one would have thought. 
 And yet he is essentially a woman's poet. 
 
 He is easily understood, for instance, much more 
 easily understood than even Tennyson or Swinburne. 
 Longfellow's meaning lies on the surface. Is this a 
 proof that he is not a poet ? By no means. Brown- 
 ing has ruined himself by his involved no-meaning. 
 We do not want a poet who thinks in knots, and 
 though we love Browning and rate him at a much 
 higher value than Longfellow, we are apart from him 
 by the space of the wide heavens in thinking his 
 serious bewilderment a beauty. You can read Long- 
 fellow softly, gently, and with a calm delight ; he 
 "sweetly creeps," as the Prince of Poets says, "into 
 your study of imagination." You can't understand 
 Browning unless he is wonderfully well read by a poet 
 who can read, and then, with emphasis and proper 
 iniiection, you see the fine depths of the man. Like 
 \\ Rembrant's pictures, his poems want a false and 
 r artificial light thrown on them. When Mr, William 
 Shakespeare was a young man, a scholar, not a 
 master, he affected obscurity — for a purpose, too —
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 287 
 
 in his sonnets, but his sublimities are all daylight. 
 He is no blackly dark mine, no mammoth cave with 
 twenty-inch stalactites, but whole Alps and Hima- 
 layas, a Monte Rosa or Pilatus in the sunshine of 
 true poetry. That poet who, like a cuttle-fish, 
 escapes from being caught by dirtying the water, is 
 of essentially small mind — 
 
 " A man's best things are nearest him — 
 Lie close about his feet." 
 
 And the best poetry is, like our English Prayer-book, 
 "to be understanded of by the common people." Let 
 us point to the admirable quotation just used, from 
 Richard Monkton Milnes Lord Houghton — it is as 
 good and as plain as the best Wordsworth. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is an earnest man 
 and a good worker. If half of his countrymen were 
 as earnest as he, we should have had less " Bunkum " 
 talked, and more sound sense. He was and is well 
 educated, and is no doubt educating himself now. 
 Born in February, 1807, he entered Bowdoin College, 
 New Brunswick, at the age of fourteen, graduated in 
 honours at eighteen, and in 1825 was studying law 
 with his father, but, offered the Professorship of 
 Modern Languages in his college, he left home to 
 prepare himself, by a three and a half years' travel 
 in Europe — in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, 
 England — and this earnest work shows itself in his 
 
 V
 
 288 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 poems. Le moycn d'y parvenir with Henry W. Long- 
 fellow, oh Bohemian friend, who loafs in and out of 
 New York drinking-shops, is hard work — laying his 
 brains to, and achieving what he undertakes. In 
 1829 Longfellow returned home, and entered on his 
 professorship. In 1835, on the death or resignation 
 of Mr. G. Ticknor, Longfellow was offered the same 
 post at Harvard College, Cambridge, and the poet 
 again went abroad to cram, as it were, for his post. 
 He then spent more than a year in Denmark, Sweden, 
 German}^, and Switzerland, and in 1836 returned and 
 settled at Cambridge, where he has since resided, 
 save but for brief intervals of travel for the sake of 
 his health. In 1842 he was again in Europe ; in 
 1861 his wife perished by a dreadful death, that by 
 fire; in 1869 Longfellow spent some time in Europe. 
 This is all the personal history that we shall relate. 
 He has been many years before the public as an 
 author and as a poet. In 1833 he published his 
 translation from the Spanish of the celebrated poem 
 of " Don Jorge Manrique," on the death of his father, 
 together with an introductory essay on Spanish 
 poetry ; in 1835, his " Outre-Mer ; " in 1839, 
 "Hyperion," a romance, and "Voices of the Night," 
 his first collection of poems ; in 1841, " Ballads and 
 other Poems;" in 1842, "Poems on Slavery;" in 
 1843, " The Spanish Student," a play ; in 1845, 
 " The Poets and Poetry of Europe," and " The
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 289 
 
 Belfry of Bruges;" in 1847, " Evangeline ;" in 1848, 
 " Kavanagh," a tale ; and in 1849, " The Sea-side 
 and the Fire-side ; " " The Golden Legend " in 1851 ; 
 and " The Song of Hiawatha " in 1855 ; then came 
 "Miles Standish" in 1858; " Tales of a Wayside 
 Inn," 1863 ; and, some two years ago, a translation 
 from Dante, which was received but coldly. People 
 had been accustomed to look for something peculiar, 
 gentle, and entirely his own, from Longfellow. His 
 " Dante " has not been a success, and yet we want 
 something that will render Dante in the actual 
 terza rima. Our very best translation at present is 
 that by Gary, which is decidedly Miltonic. The 
 Messrs. Gassell have very wisely printed that with 
 the lurid and overrated illustrations of Gustave Dore, 
 which, by the way, are about the best illustrations 
 that he has ever done, excepting the weird pictures 
 to Balzac's " Contes Drolatiques." ^ 
 
 No American author is so well known in England 
 as Longfellow. Many of his verses have become 
 household words, and many of them richly deserve 
 to be so. Thus the last line in this extract is quoted 
 by every young lady. It is from " Evangeline :" 
 
 " Talk not of wasted afifection, affection never was wasted ; 
 If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning 
 Back to their springs, Hke the rain, shall fill them full of 
 
 refreshment ; 
 That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the 
 
 fountain. 
 
 U 
 
 J
 
 290 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Patience, accomplish thy labour ; accomplish thy work of 
 
 affection ! 
 Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike." 
 
 This sweet story is founded on a tale of " British " 
 cruelty, by the way miserably magnified, and will 
 perpetuate a good deal of poetic dislike to the 
 English. Happily it is in a lilting hexameter, a 
 Greek and Latin measure which the learned Southey 
 was, before Longfellow, silly enough to try to bring 
 into use. Admirable, most admirable as it is in 
 Homer, sweet and excellent as it is in Virgil 
 and Lucretius, the hexameter does not suit our 
 tongue in any way. If it could have been na- 
 turalised, Longfellow would have done it. The 
 sweetest English hexameters are those in " Evan- 
 geline " where the devoted girl dies. " Still stands 
 the forest primeval," they commence, and end with 
 the picture of the two lovers lying at rest in the little 
 churchyard in the heart of the city : 
 
 " Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them, 
 Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and 
 
 for ever, 
 Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy. 
 Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from 
 
 their labours, 
 Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their 
 
 journey." 
 
 In the earlier portraits of Longfellow, there is a 
 dull melancholy imprinted on his face, and this is 
 to be found in his poems. It is one cause of their
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 29I 
 
 popularity ; it is the great proof of his own weak- 
 ness. He has little of the strength of a kingly 
 poet, little of that jovial merriment, that buoyant 
 force of old Chapman or Daniel, let alone Shakespeare 
 and Homer. These poets are, to use a vulgar 
 provincialism, " all alive like a ' ; " so is \^^cO., 
 
 Burns, so is Beranger, so is Dante, even in his ■-■' 
 fiery hatred and fierce revenge. Longfellow, on 
 the other hand, is as melancholy as a yellow- 
 and-green sick school-miss. Even in 1840, when 
 he was but a young man, we see this, in his "Voices 
 of the Night," and even in the " Psalm of Life," 
 which is so often quoted and recited, there is a 
 condemnable return of that vile melancholy which 
 destroys all energy : 
 
 " Art is long and Time is fleeting, 
 
 And our hearts, though strong and brave, 
 Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
 Funeral marches to the grave." 
 
 And this pervades the poet. Even in the earlier 
 poems, all written before the age of nineteen, "some 
 of which," says the writer quaintly and naively, 
 " have found their way into schools, and seem to 
 be successful," there are traces of this weak passion, 
 and in almost his last verses we find the same fault, 
 and we may well be angry with a poet for thus 
 dashing his singing robes with tears. We have a 
 great quarrel with him for his last verses in " Tales 
 
 u 2
 
 292 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 of a Wayside Inn " (Weariness), which are yet 
 very beautiful. They commence with : 
 
 " O little feet ! that such long years 
 Must wander on through hopes and fears," 
 
 and they end with this verse : 
 
 " O little souls ! as pure and white 
 And crystalline as rays of light 
 
 Direct from heaven, their source divine ; 
 Refracted through the mist of years, 
 How red my setting sun appears, 
 
 How lurid looks this soul of mine ! " 
 
 This is not Christian doctrine. Pure and white 
 are pretty adjectives, but a father ought to know 
 that there is as much possible wickedness and 
 actual selfishness in a child as ever there is in a 
 true old poet. But this affectation — or possibly a 
 true humilit}' — is also to be found in Hood, a much 
 healthier poet mentally, but one who suffered from 
 ill-health bodily. 
 
 Longfellow's translations are capital. They are 
 from many languages, and they are all quaint and 
 good. Look, for instance, at that capital sonnet 
 from Lope de Vega, " To-morrow: " 
 
 " Lord, what am I, that, with unceasing care, 
 Thou didst seek after me, — that thou didst wait, 
 Wet with unhealthy dews," (Sic, 
 
 which is worthy of all praise. Read also, with 
 much gusto, many of his Danish and Swedish pieces.
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 293 
 
 That he loves the old land, and truly, is proved 
 by many little touches; notably by his writing 
 the very best verses, save Tennyson's, ever written 
 about a man who in years to come will grow into 
 a hero, — the Duke of Wellington. The poem is 
 called, " The Warden of the Cinque Ports," and 
 was published in the Atlantic Monthly shortly after 
 the Great Duke's death. So, also, we might cite 
 those beautiful verses on the poor dying soldier in 
 the hospital at Scutari, kissing the shadow of Santa 
 Filomena (Miss Nightingale) as it fell upon the 
 wall at his bedside. The story is a poem of itself, 
 but Longfellow, raised, as he said, to a " higher 
 level " by the deeds in the Crimea, does not hesitate 
 to prophecy that the light of the deed shall last 
 
 " On England's annals, through the long 
 Hereafter of her speech and song. 
 That light its rays shall cast 
 From portals of the past." 
 
 So also, to be perfectly national — and a good poet 
 must be national — in the midst of the war with the 
 South — when will a poet arise to sing the heroic 
 bravery of that small unaided people ? — Longfellow 
 prophecied the victory of the North. The Northern 
 sloop, the Cumberland, was run down in Hampton 
 Roads by an iron Southern vessel, and the men, 
 'tis said, went down with a cheer, whereon Long- 
 fellow sings out :
 
 294 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 " Ho ! brave hearts that went down in the seas ! 
 Ye are at peace in the troubled stream. 
 Ho ! brave land with hearts like these, 
 Thy flag that was rent in twain, 
 Shall be one again. 
 And without a seam ! " 
 
 The fellow-countrj'men of America, who have not 
 yet produced the national poet, are very proud, and 
 naturally so, of this honest, manly, cleanly writer. 
 "About Longfellow," writes an American critic, in 
 an amusing style, "there is never any mawkish 
 sentimentality, no versified cant, no drivelling, no 
 diabolic gloom. His bold, broad brow catches the 
 sunlight from the four points of heaven and dis- 
 perses it, glittering and fructifying through the home- 
 steads of his readers. Longfellow is the healthiest, 
 the heartiest, and the most harmonious of all the 
 American poets. True to nature, he is truest to 
 himself. The most barren legend is made fruitful 
 by the warmth and fervour of his intellect ; but 
 when, as in this ' Song of Hiawatha,' he adopts 
 a tradition charged with the elements of social 
 progress, his genius, baring its broad pinions to the 
 sky, shows us only the more unmistakably how 
 yearning it leans to man, and to man's happiness." 
 
 We have said nothing about the three best or most 
 ambitious poems of Longfellow, one— a kind of 
 "Faust" — the "Golden Legend," is freely and finely 
 written. The opening is admirable, but yet it is
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 295 
 
 but wine-and-water to Bailey's ** Festus," to say 
 nothing of Goethe's " Faust." The second is 
 " Hiawatha," and the third " Miles Standish." One 
 is to be, it is said, the epic of America, the other 
 of New England. Neither probably will live ex- 
 cept as curiosities. " Hiawatha " is written in 
 smooth iambics, very easily to be imitated, and thus 
 
 they run: 
 
 ***** 
 " As unto the bow the cord is, 
 So unto the man is woman ; 
 Though she bends him she obeys him, 
 Though she draws him, yet she follows. 
 
 Thus the youthful Hiawatha 
 Said within himself and pondered, 
 Much perplexed with various feelings, 
 Listless, longing, hoping, fearing, 
 Dreaming still of Minnehaha, 
 Of the lovely Laughing Water 
 In the land of the Dacotahs." 
 
 This, as Touchstone says, is the " right butter- 
 woman's rank to market." One could rhyme to it 
 a whole summer's day. Epics are not made like 
 that. Besides, the subject of the loves of a red 
 man and his squaw, who can be no ancestors to 
 anybody, who were of the most cruel, brutal, and 
 degraded of races, are hardly hero and heroine for 
 the supreme race Caucasian. " Miles Standish " is 
 very weak, and in hexameters, and that disposes of 
 that being an epic.
 
 296 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 But nothing will dispose of our gratitude to a 
 sweet, good, and learned poet ; one who has 
 honoured his country and honoured his race ; who 
 has never written one word which, dying, he could 
 wish to blot ; whose book, like a circumambient 
 and omnipresent fairy, has entered thousands upon 
 thousands of American and English homes, and 
 has never entered one without bringing with it 
 purity and pleasure.
 
 MR. ALGERNON C SWINBURNE.
 
 MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 
 
 IJT is very possible Mr. Swinburne might 
 object to being called a " man of letters." 
 He said once publicly that he is not a 
 literary man, and he would, rather than otherwise, 
 cast scorn upon living by his pen. Not that such 
 men refuse the honorarium given by publishers. On 
 the contrary, we presume, purely for the good of the 
 poor fellows who write, they demand and receive 
 heavy rates of pay when their name is good in the 
 market. 
 
 Mr. Swinburne, then, is a poet, but by no means 
 pure and simple, taking those words " at the foot o' 
 the letter;" but a poet he is of rare order — forcible, 
 free, salt, and buoyant as the sea ; full of fire, dash, 
 feeling and expression ; a poet who at one leap sat 
 himself at the side of the crowned singers, and who 
 divides Olympus with Tennyson, or disputes empire 
 with Browning. For it is a thing damnable enough 
 with Fame, that the old worn soldier of a hundred 
 fights shall at once give place to a boy-soldier, and
 
 300 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 that the fierce flame of the hero of the day shall 
 eclipse the constant splendours of him who has 
 won and worn the diadem of song for years. This 
 young, and, as we believe, almost utterly spoilt child 
 of fortune, is the latest comer amongst letters, and 
 has already reached to the highest form. 
 
 In appearance, as you see him, let us say at a 
 literary dinner, in answer to some call upon him of 
 which he does not approve, he has a young, unripe, 
 and not very healthy look. He has ancient blood in 
 his veins, but it has not run to form and flesh. 
 There is no doubt as to the quality of his brain, 
 neither is there any doubt as to that of his heart 
 and body ; one is of the finest order ; of the others 
 the less said the better. In height this poet is 
 about five feet six ; in age rising upon twenty-seven 
 (born at Holmwood, Surrey, 1843) ; his hair, which 
 is bushy and plentiful, is of a fiery red ; his face has 
 that pallor which accompanies red hair, a paleness 
 heightened by study, passion, and the fierce rebellious 
 spirit within. Thin, badly dressed — or badly tailored, 
 for the "clothes he occupies," as Artemus Ward 
 has it, seldom seem to become him — the fiery little 
 spirit looks neither a poet nor a gentleman, and yet 
 he is both — by birth. An Eton boy and an Oxford 
 man — he was a Balliol student and a first-rate 
 Grecian — the wide and correct reading of the poet 
 honours both his college and his school. He left
 
 MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 30I 
 
 Oxford without taking a degree, and in 1861 pub- 
 lished his first poems, the ''Queen-Mother" and 
 "Rosamond," both of which fell dead. Four years 
 afterwards he produced " Atalanta in Calydon," a 
 white quarto with a Grecian binding, which at once 
 took the public and the press ; and it was then 
 remembered tnat the young poet was an Etonian, 
 Oxonian, and nephew to a baronet of ancient 
 descent. All these things tell in the scale. Poverty 
 and low birth are matters now-a-days which weigh 
 down many a genius — a pure diamond it may be, 
 but which wants the sun to make it glitter. 
 
 The sun shone on " Atalanta." The larger papers 
 noticed it, and to say truth it deserved all the praise 
 it got. It is pure Greek, as Greek in its feeling as 
 if Keats had written it, or as if Shelley had trans- 
 lated it from CEschylus. Its author must have just 
 risen, when he was fired with the idea, from ' ' Orestes " 
 and the " Eumenides." There are, indeed, distinct 
 traces of the sublime Greek Trilogy in the poem, 
 and the mournful music is worthy the theme. The 
 two passions or devils which possess this little fiery 
 man of genius were kept pretty tightly chained 
 during this translation, but now and then one shows 
 his cloven foot. What are these devils ? Incon- 
 tinence is one — or, if you like Teutonic best, lust — 
 and an arrogant rebellion against God is the other. 
 Mr. Swinburne would admit neither, if we believe
 
 302 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 certain stories current in literary society. He does 
 not admit that there is a revelation for one matter, 
 and he believes that lust is a natural and excellent 
 law. Now, we shall not repeat a tittle of what is 
 well known in literary society, and which will be 
 sure to be known to the world some day. Let 
 gossips read what gossips write, and scavengers 
 collect their heaps, of which they will find enough ; 
 we have only to deal with the books of this really 
 fine poet. If he has a right — which we deny — to 
 publish such stuff, we have a right to criticise it. 
 
 We have said that one little devil showed himself 
 in " Atalanta," and this was rebellion against God. 
 Of course, in the Greek tragedy, veiled like a 
 statue of Satan covered with his wings, it looked 
 beautiful indeed — majestic, sorrowful, and sublime. 
 " Atalanta " strikes the key-note of blasphemy on the 
 very earliest page. The gods give us poisonous 
 drink for wine, and herbs that infect our blood ; but 
 the chorus speaks out even more plainly against 
 ONE God : 
 
 " Seen above other gods of shapes of things, 
 Swift without feet and flying without wings ; 
 Intolerable, not clad with death or Hfe ; 
 
 Insatiable, not known of night or day : 
 The Lord of love and loathing, and of strife, 
 
 Who gives a star and takes a sun away ; 
 Who shapes the soul, and makes her a barren wife 
 
 To the earthly body and grievous growth of clay,
 
 MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 303 
 
 Who turns the large Hmbs to a little flame, 
 
 And binds the great sea with a little sand ; 
 Who makes desire and slays desire with shame ; 
 
 Who shakes the heavens as ashes in His hand ; 
 Who, seeing the light and shadow for the same, 
 
 Bids day waste night as fire devours a brand : 
 Smites without sword, and scourges without rod : 
 
 The Supreme Evil, God." 
 
 There can be little doubt of the spirit which dictated 
 this ; yet the age welcomed it and praised it, and 
 weak young men thought it " plucky," and spouted 
 it at Atheistic meetings — we beg pardon — anti- 
 theistic or anti-theologic is the phrase. Not one 
 paper, that we remember, bore witness against it. 
 The Saturday declared that we " were listening to 
 one of the contemporaries of Euripides, who sought 
 to copy the manner of CEschylus," to a poet full 
 of vivid force and fulness of expression. The Spec- 
 tator, that the work " was a little too ingrained with 
 Greek awe, but still exceeding fine." H'm. One 
 God and Most High are hardly Greek! The Times, 
 that he had a keen eye for natural scenery (that 
 dear old Times! What had that to do with it?) 
 and a copious vocabulary of rich, yet simple English! 
 The A thencBum, that "no one since Keats could touch 
 him" — and it might have said that Shelley could not 
 touch him for blasphemy. And the matronly and 
 chaste Morning Herald introduced the poem with a 
 chuckling, " Assuredly this is the most complete and
 
 304 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 choicest effort v/hich has for a long time announced 
 that a scholar and a poet has come amongst us." 
 
 A scholar ! There's the fault. Mr. Swinburne 
 had prefixed two sets of Greek elegiac verse, of 
 very good quality as college exercises, and dedicated 
 to that exceedingly Greek old man and fine writer 
 of very plain English, Walter Savage Landor, with 
 whom he had sometime dwelt at Florence, and 
 there was little doubt that here was indeed a scholar. 
 But he is not only a scholar in Greek, but in French. 
 Brought up in France, he writes French with as 
 much ease as he does English, and his little Rondels 
 in that language have been very much admired. 
 This cross of French-Greek education, with a dash 
 of Landor-Italian, had been too much for a small 
 but very fine brain. Indeed, that brain must be 
 small which, after reading Job, can take the one- 
 sided view of God or nature, or, if he choose so to 
 call it, the great First Cause, that Mr. Swinburne 
 does. We shall shortly see whither this French- 
 Greek, or modern Priapeian, has brought our poet 
 to. We desire that our readers will think that 
 we have no unkindness in our criticism, but will 
 meditate on what we have pointed out. 
 
 For Mr. Swinburne is, as to this age, a very 
 fine poet; perhaps the finest that our age has pro- 
 duced, save one. But he has begun his fight with 
 the world. His intellect is subversive. He cares
 
 MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 305 
 
 not what creed, nor what system of morals he 
 overthrows. He fights as did our old sea-dogs, 
 yard-arm to yard-arm. "There we lay," says 
 Commodore Trunnion, " sending shot and shell 
 into her, hurling hand-grenades hot as hell, and 
 throwing stink-pots into her hold." Mr. Swinburne 
 had been long dealing out hand-grenades. In the 
 year 1865, the house of Moxon, which used to be, 
 until Tennyson withdrew from it, the reputed pub- 
 lishing house of poets, issued a certain volume of 
 " Poems and Ballads," by A. C. Swinburne, and the 
 press, for a wonder, discovered that a very deadly 
 stink-pot (a fire-weapon, that with a thick fume and 
 choking stench, almost poisoned those it slew) had 
 been hurled into our midst. Thereon the respect- 
 able house of Moxon apologised to the public, by 
 withdrawing the book and refusing to sell it. The 
 placing of a work in an Index Expurgatorius was 
 a good advertisement, and Mr. Swinburne {Punch, 
 we believe, christened him Swine-born, and the 
 epigram was received with acclamation) fitted him- 
 self with an active and enterprising publisher in 
 the person of Mr. Hotten, and the sale went merrily 
 on. The poet defended himself, and urged that he 
 did not write for boys and girls, and that there 
 was a literature far above the bread-and-butter and 
 pinafore school, — which is very true. But, unfor- 
 tunately, these poems are not written for mm, unless 
 
 X
 
 306 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 for those unfortunates who have been on Circe's 
 shore, and are transformed to beasts. 
 
 The vohime is a pretty volume, and contains won- 
 drous poetry. In excellent prose Mr. Swinburne has 
 (for he writes in the Fortnightly) told us of his 
 antagonism to Christ. In this volume he not only 
 proclaims this, but chooses to hint to the world, in 
 most unmistakable terms, that he preferred the wor- 
 ship of Venus. Something yet worse is to be found in 
 this sad book. We do not believe that any pure man 
 or woman can realise the unutterable baseness of 
 some of the verses, nor dare we print our exposi- 
 tion of them ; but we will give a few specimens, and 
 these, we need not say, are not by any means 
 the worst. In this first musical rhapsody, the poet 
 declares his scorn of the Saviour of the world : 
 
 " Thou hast conquered, oh, pale Gahlean ; the world has grown 
 
 grey from thy breath ; 
 We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fulness of 
 
 death. * -■' 
 Oh, lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks 
 
 and rods. 
 Oh, ghastly glories of saints and limbs of gibbeted gods ! 
 Though all men abuse them before you in spirit, and all knees 
 
 bend, 
 / kneel not, neither adore you, but standing look to the end" 
 
 In the next lines this ardent votary of Venus pro- 
 phesies her triumph ; still addressing Christ : 
 
 " Though these tliat were gods are dead, and thou being dead 
 art a god .'
 
 MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 307 
 
 Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen and 
 
 hidden her head. 
 Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down 
 
 to thee dead. 
 Of the maiden, thy mother, men sing as a goddess with grace 
 
 clad around ; 
 Thou art throned where another was king ; where another was 
 
 queen she is crowned. 
 Yea, once we had sight of another, but now she is queen, say 
 
 these, 
 Not as tliine, not as thine, was our mother, a blossom of 
 
 flowering seas, 
 Clothed round with the world's desire, as with raiment and 
 
 fair as the foam. 
 And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess and mother of 
 
 Rome !" 
 
 Reduce this to prose, and the argument is not 
 very strong, consisting only of the fact that Swin- 
 burne prefers the world's desire and Venus-worship 
 to the worship which exacts purity and submission. 
 
 We will not further insult our readers with the 
 parallel of the two queens of Rome — Venus and the 
 Blessed Virgin. The poem is itself a study, ex- 
 ceedingly melodious, and by an oft-repeated trick, 
 apt alliteration, very liquid. Let us now pass from a 
 senseless dislike of faith to a declaration of no faith. 
 The first was in an ancient guise, a " Hymn to Pro- 
 serpine," after the proclamation of the Christian faith 
 in Rome ; the second is a little French song of adieu 
 to a certain Felise. This lady, of whom the lover 
 is apparently very tired, is told mockingly to pray : 
 
 X 2
 
 308 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 " Behold ! there is no grief like this ; 
 The barren blossom of thy prayer, 
 Thou shalt find out how sweet it is. 
 Oh, fools and blind, what seek ye there. 
 High up in the air ? 
 Ye must have gods— the friends of men, 
 
 Merciful gods, compassionate, 
 And these shall answer you again. 
 Will ye beat always at the gate, 
 Ye fools of fate ? 
 Ye fools and blind ; for this is sure, 
 That all ye shall not live but die. 
 Lo ! what thing have ye found endure ? 
 Or what thing have yefoiind 07i high. 
 Past the blind sky ? 
 The ghosts of words and dusty dreams. 
 Old memories, faiths infirm and dead. 
 Ye fools ; for which among you deems 
 His prayer can alter green to red, 
 Or stones to bread ?" 
 
 Clearly, young Mr. Swinburne does not understand 
 the nature of Christian prayer, and fancies that we 
 believe in a Providence which sends down penny- 
 loaves at our asking. But this godless and ignorant 
 young man, who, because he can write Greek and 
 French verse, believes his education finished, has yet 
 something that he prays to ; and, in proving this, we 
 shall touch but lightly upon that French-Priapeian 
 method of his of bruising, and biting, and kissing, 
 and sundry passionate exercitations quite Gallic or 
 Bacchic, or Delian if you like ; but neither English 
 nor manly. Thus hymns he to his goddess :
 
 MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 30^ 
 
 " Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion, 
 And thy limbs are as melodies yet, 
 And move to the music of passion 
 With lithe and lascivious regret. 
 
 What ailed us, oh gods, to desert you 
 For creeds that refuse and restrain; 
 
 Come dow7i and redeem Ksfrom virtue, 
 Our Lady 0/ Pain ! " 
 
 What a line — what a prayer is that ! Shall we go 
 a step further in this passage ; shall we glance 
 at " Hermaphroditus "? But no; to people who 
 comprehend, this is enough. 
 
 When the French Republic of 1870 was proclaimed 
 amidst so sad trials, and a situation of such unspeak- 
 able difficulty for the French nation, without one 
 omen of good import, all .who loved Liberty and 
 advancement of the People looked grave with care, 
 but the Poet Swinburne lashed himself to fury, and 
 wrote an ode "at a sitting." We will quote the 
 criticism of one of the leaders of public opinion, rather 
 than give our own upon this very hasty production. 
 " The wildness, the frenzy, the incoherence of M. 
 Hugo's prose are even surpassed in Mr. Swinburne's 
 verse. It is a strain — in a double sense — of sound 
 and poesy : a poem which surpasses even the Swin- 
 burnian models in the tremendous vehemence of 
 words. We cannot describe it better than in the 
 bard's own phrase, as 
 
 ' The blood of thought which travaileth 
 To bring forth hope with procreant pains.'
 
 -A 
 
 310 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 The blood of thought labours much, but the 
 hope is disappointed. The produce is a deformed 
 thing, a misshapen monster, inspiring more mirth 
 than terror. Strophe and antistrophe echo with 
 portentous rumblings, but it is sound and nothing 
 more. Our ears are racked with groans and thunder, 
 our eyes made red by frequent blood and fire. 
 There is a vast amount of crying, and hissing, and 
 biting, with the usual Swinburnian effects. But the 
 result is something which must be reckoned, even in 
 the artistic part, the worst and weakest of all the 
 productions of Mr. Swinburne's genius." 
 
 Mr. Swinburne is overborne by this age of cold 
 proprieties at the half-life of society. At the 
 passion which exhales in asking for a postage-stamp, 
 in Mr. TroUope's cold-blooded way, he is aghast and 
 weary. He is sick of Philistines, but he hungers 
 not for love in the hearty, manly English fashion. 
 Poor boy ! what a career he has missed. For, with 
 the many glimpses of great talent that he has 
 shown, with all his fine melody, mastery of verse, 
 and even true genius, the books he has produced can 
 never be read by the young — to whom a poet chiefly 
 addresses himself. His chief and most high works 
 are but mocking songs of the atheist that erst might 
 have been sung in Sodom, and lascivious hymns 
 to Adonis that might fitly have been howled in 
 Gomorrah.
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY.
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 (canon KINGSLEY.) 
 
 jT is twenty years ago, or more, that a 
 young man of letters — who, indeed, had 
 not won his spurs, and was rather to be 
 called a boy of letters — after teaching a class of 
 working-men Mathematics and the rudiments of 
 Latin, strolled into the coffee-room belonging to the 
 " Institution," and looked with some interest on its 
 walls. Heaven knows they were bare enough ; 
 Heaven knows that the rough working-men he 
 taught were uncouth and rude, and that they only 
 thanked him by learning quickly, and that the 
 religious and political bookseller who had begged 
 him to join the Institution, and to work for the 
 benefit of the working-classes, was a humbug ; but 
 there was a glamour and an illusion, and the young 
 fellow felt that he was doing something towards 
 improving mankind,, and making the world, in his 
 little way, something better than he found it. This,
 
 314 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 then, was his reward, and as he looked at the white- 
 washed walls, he felt that he was not living quite 
 uselessly. 
 
 The Institution has broken up now, and to Latin 
 and mathematics the working-men have unmistak- 
 ably shown that they prefer the Great Vance's 
 " Walking in the Zoo," " Champagne Charley," and 
 a host of ridiculous songs. But in those days there 
 was much stir among the people ; 1848 had been 
 and passed, but the Charter and the Five Points 
 were still debated. The masses were seething. In 
 France, Lacordaire preached the Gospel, and with 
 it the benefit of the poor. The Abbe Lamennais 
 had made a social tract of some of the words of the 
 Saviour, under the title, we think, of "The Gospel 
 of Freedom ;" and before the spectator, upon the white- 
 washed walls of the Institution, hung two remark- 
 able portraits : one was that of Eugene Sue, then 
 so well-known for his socialist novels ; the other that 
 of Charles Kingsley, M.A., author of "Alton Locke." 
 M. Eugene Sue, who had been in the French 
 Navy, was a man of some forty-five years of age ; 
 unmistakably a Frenchman, although utterly different 
 from the old Frenchman of the haute noblesse, and 
 equally so from the modern production. He had a 
 thick black beard and moustache, a high black satin 
 stock, with a black satin waterfall over his shirt-front, 
 short black hair, dark eyebrows, and glowing bright
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 315 
 
 eyes, looking straight at the spectator, and seeming 
 to say, "How clever I am!" The pendant, the Rev. 
 Charles Kingsley — in the subscription of the picture 
 he had dropped the "reverend" — was as entirely 
 English as Eugene Sue was French. A high noble 
 forehead, large, earnest, deep-set eyes (which the 
 lithograph had made hollow as if with thought and 
 work), a firm, close-shut mouth, and large and 
 powerful jaw; here was a poet as well as a parson, 
 a fighter as well as a writer, a leader as well as a 
 priest. Waving black hair, now thinned by time, 
 adorned the head, and earnest, glowing, lustrous, 
 and true-hearted eyes shone out from beneath the 
 forehead, and seemed to speak openly to whom- 
 soever listened, " Come, let us work together for the 
 good of mankind. Love me, for I love you ; or if I 
 
 can't convince you, then " Such was Charles 
 
 Kingsley, as good and as free-natured a soul as one 
 would care to see. And yet the Devil was about to 
 try him in many ways ; has tried him both with 
 adversity and prosperity, and he is still a noble- 
 hearted man. 
 
 The young fellow turned away from the white- 
 washed wall and solaced himself — not to be above 
 his fustian-coated pupils — with some smoked coffee 
 and very coarse bread and butter, for which the 
 " institooshun," as it was called by the greasy cad 
 of a religious bookseller who tried to make the
 
 3l6 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 thing pay, and to pass off his "goody" Hterature 
 at the same time — for which, as we said, the 
 " institooshun " pocketed a sum that would have 
 afforded good viands. But the method of the 
 majority of those who wanted to help the Working- 
 man in those days, was to get a good round sum 
 out of him, and to make him pay for it too. Hence 
 the Institution fell to the Great Vance, to comic 
 singers and such obscene birds of prey, who served 
 out the working-man as the Harpies did the flesh 
 of the Pater JEntSLS : 
 
 " With hideous cry 
 And clattering winds, the hungry Harpies fly : 
 They snatch the meat, defihng all they find, 
 And parting leave a loathsome stench behind." 
 
 And even at the time these portraits hung in the 
 Institution, it did not pay. The typical working-man, 
 who really wished to learn Latin and mathematics, 
 soon rose to be more than a working-man, and the 
 loafer who cared about nothing, remained a loafer. 
 After all these years this young author has found it 
 convenient for himself to believe that the typical 
 working-man is, like all good and great men, some- 
 what of a rare bird, and to acknowledge — as he 
 grows towards fogey-dom — that the young men of 
 the present day would rather play at croquet with 
 the girl of the period, or even dress in "drag," play 
 at an amateur theatre, burn statues in a college
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 317 
 
 quadrangle, or listen to the Christy Minstrels, than 
 teach the typical working-man mechanics and the 
 rudiments of Latin. 
 
 Mr. Charles Kingsley was at that time very 
 fiercely assailed by Reviews. The critic-creature 
 came out as usual very strong, and fired away blank 
 cartridge with amazing vigour. It did not do any 
 harm, of course, because Kingsley has long been 
 tutor to a prince, a companion of Prince Albert, a 
 friend of the Queen, an University Professor, and a 
 Canon of the Anglican Church. It has even been 
 whispered that he will be a Bishop ! —and oh! 
 please, do you hear what, according to the Reviews, 
 he was. He was an author of revolutionary litera- 
 ture, the inciter to ferocity, railing, and mad one- 
 eyed excitement ; he was guilty of Jacobinism and 
 Jacquerie under the disguise of Christian Socialism ; 
 he was pupil of Albert, Ouvrier, and -Louis Blanc ; 
 he believed in the visionary organisation of Labour. 
 He is by implication in the same article found guilty 
 of doctrines as outrageous as the maddest ravings of 
 furious insanity — as wicked as the most devilish spirit 
 could by possibility have devised. Murder is openly 
 advocated — all property is declared to be robbery, &c. 
 This was from a leading article in the Times, foisted 
 neck and crop into the Quarterly, in which the Rev. 
 F. D. Maurice and the Rev. Charles Kingsley figure 
 as culprits at the bar. Nay, we find by a quotation
 
 3l8 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 that they and (we presume) their fellows are Com- 
 munists to the utmost extent. (Vide Quarterly Review, 
 ^■ol. Ixxxix. p. 523, 1851.) "Community of women 
 follows, as an almost necessary consequence, the 
 community of goods ; " and then follows a quotation, 
 whence taken it does not appear, but from " one of 
 these Teachers of the People." (One of twenty-one 
 books reviewed side by side with Kingsley's and 
 Maurice's.) " We do not require to introduce the 
 community of women ; it has always existed. Your 
 middle-class gentry are not satisfied with having the 
 wives and daughters of their wages-slaves at their 
 disposal — not to mention innumerable public pros- 
 titutes — but they take a particular pleasure in 
 seducing each other's wives. Middle-class marriage 
 is, in reality, a comnmnity of wives ." 
 
 Why do we make these painful extracts ? Simply 
 for the instruction of young authors. Few names are 
 more honoured than Charles Kingsley's ; no man has 
 ever been more chivalrously devoted to his home ; 
 no lady or Queen   of Beauty in the highest tourney 
 that ever existed — aye, even in that cloud-land of 
 King Arthur's Court — was ever more proud or fond 
 of her own true knight than she who bears his name; 
 nor is there wanting that sweet after-glow of married 
 love, sublimed with sorrows, deepened by trials, 
 rooted by the lapse of years, intensified by a know- 
 ledge of general baseness, but a belief in the puiity
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 319 
 
 of one, and a thousand times more beautiful because 
 ten thousand times more rare than ring-dove cooing 
 of the young couples whose love shines brightly in 
 the morning, but perishes long before the noon of 
 life. Few names are more honoured, few men so 
 much, so worthily beloved, and yet hardly one, as we 
 have shown, who has been so bespattered with the 
 corroding gall of critics' ink. 
 
 Charles Kingsley was born, June 12, 1819, at 
 Holme Vicarage, on the borders of Dartmoor, and at 
 fourteen became pupil of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, 
 son of S. T. C. He afterwards studied at King's 
 College, London ; then at Cambridge, where he 
 gained a scholarship, several prizes, and came out a 
 first-class in classics and second in mathematics. 
 His first cure was Eversley, and within a year-and-a- 
 half after that, the rectory becoming vacant, it was 
 presented to him by its patron, Sir John Cope. The 
 Kingsleys, here let us say, are of an ancient Cheshire 
 family, Kingsley of Kingsley. One ancestor raised 
 a troop of horse, and the commission, signed by 
 Ireton and Oliver Cromwell, is preserved still. A 
 younger brother of this Republican captain went 
 with the Pilgrim Fathers to America; and a des- 
 cendant. Dr. Kingsley, was some years ago classical 
 professor at Yale College, U.S. There was fighting 
 blood generally in the family. General Kingsley 
 commanded a brigade at the battle of Minden, so
 
 320 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 well known by Campbell's glorious ode. Several 
 others have served and fought, and Kingsley has 
 himself not only been called the Chartist parson, 
 but the soldier-priest. Now, even when 'tis past 
 meridian with him, he has a tall, lithe form, a broad- 
 shouldered Norman figure, the flat cheek and strong 
 chin of Norman blood ; and he is still a capital rider, 
 an unwearied fisherman, cunning with the angle and 
 fly; and once he was one of the best wrestlers and 
 foot leapers, both at the high and flat leap, known 
 about Dartmoor. But we have to do with feats of 
 mind, not of the body. 
 
 The old Puritan stock of piety grafted on Cole- 
 ridgean philosophy, enlightened by such far-off 
 touches of the great man as his son Derwent, an 
 able pupil, caught, produced a very genuine and 
 singular school of work-a-day Christianity — perhaps 
 the very best known. How it has culminated, 
 whether it has not overgrown even the breadth of 
 Maurice and Stanley, we will not here debate, but 
 when Kingsley began, a more noble-minded young 
 priest seldom if ever preached. He was a devotee of 
 the tenth or fourteenth centuries landed on the nine- 
 teenth. When he was twenty-seven he wrote his 
 "Saint's Tragedy," a magnificent unacted drama, full 
 of the social brotherhood that underlies all Chris- 
 tianity, and to which it has come before now, and will 
 eventually come. And this "Saint's Tragedy," how
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 32I 
 
 pure, how noble it is ! How it made the hearts of us 
 youngsters beat ; and let us thank God that it was 
 better, purer, nobler far than the poetry (?) of the 
 Bal Mabille and the Montagne Rouge, of the Casino 
 and the Alhambra, that our fervent young Mr. Swin- 
 burne gives us now. Compare Kingsley's " Elizabeth 
 of Hungary" with "Faustine!" Take the erotic young 
 Mr. Swinburne, with his biting, bruising kisses and 
 his prayer, 
 
 " Come down and relieve us from virtue, 
 
 Our Lady of Pain," 
 
 and Kingsley's Monks' refrain, 
 
 "A luxu et avaritia 
 A carnis illectamentis 
 
 Domine libera nos;" 
 
 and then, thank God, oh ! younger brothers ; for as 
 our outcome has been dressing "in drag" and the 
 girls of the period, young men with painted faces and 
 henna dyed eyelids, what, by the rule of contrary, 
 will your outcome be ? With this we leave you for 
 the present, giving you to meditate till we finish this 
 article next week upon the aim of Kingsley when he 
 wrote " The Saints' Tragedy," and drew the picture of 
 Elizabeth of Hungary, thus depicted by his friend, 
 the Rev. F. D. Maurice : " To enter into the 
 meaning of Self-Sacrifice — to sympathise with one 
 who aims at it — not to be misled by counterfeits of it 
 — not to be unjust to the truth which may be mixed 
 
 Y
 
 322 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 with those counterfeits, is a difficult task, but a 
 necessary one for any one who takes this work in 
 hand." 
 
 Looking back from this distance of time, we 
 almost wonder that all lovely minds did not gather 
 to the author of the " Saints' Tragedy" after the pub- 
 lication of that remarkable poem. It contained not 
 only poetry of a very high order, but its character 
 and its comedy are equally good. Its intent is also 
 as apparent as the daylight. But all minds, one 
 need scarcely remind the reader, unless in gentlest 
 satire, are by no means lovely. The majority, 
 perhaps, are unlovely and unloveable. A storm of 
 blame, mingled with faint praise, chiefly given to the 
 weaker parts, and laid on where it was not required, 
 followed Kingsley. He little recked it, but seems 
 to have abandoned poetical play-writing, leaving that 
 to R. H. Home, to Richard Bedingfield, John 
 Watkins, Westland Marston, and a host of acted and 
 unacted dramatists. Home had written about that 
 time his "farthing epic," a magnificent poem, pub- 
 lished at the price of one farthing, to show at what 
 price the Philistine Englishmen, in the author's 
 opinion, appraised true poetry. Kingsley therefore left 
 poetry, and took to studying modern matters, chiefly 
 political, although his verse has the true ring and 
 swing in it, and is political not only in a present but 
 in a paulo-post-future sense, as this example will show :
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 323 
 
 " The day of the Lord is at hand, at hand ! 
 Its storms roll up the sky : 
 The nations sleep starving on heaps of gold ; 
 
 All dreamers toss and sigh ; 
 The night is darkest before the morn ; 
 When the pain is sorest the child is born, 
 
 And the day of the Lord is at hand. 
 
 Gather you, gather you, angels of God — 
 
 Freedom, and Mercy, and Truth ; 
 Come ! for the Earth is grown coward and old ; 
 
 Come down and renew us her youth. 
 Wisdom, Self-Sacrifice, Daring, and Love, 
 Haste to the battle-field, stoop from above, 
 To the day of the Lord at hand." 
 
 At that time there was working in many ways a 
 remarkable man, Bohemian pur sang, a litterateur, 
 a newspaper writer, the originator of Punch, a 
 chemist, a discoverer of the way of calcining carbon, 
 until it became pure diamond — only without the 
 lustre which gives the diamond value — an inventor 
 even of patent buttons, a dreamer and a reformer — 
 Henry Mayhew. This gentleman had, in the falling 
 days of the Morning Chronicle, shed some lustre 
 upon its pages by his articles as its commissioner 
 among the working districts of England. Then fol- 
 lowed "London Labour and London Poor," a series 
 of papers gathered from working-men themselves, an 
 undigested heap of curious and frightful matter, 
 showing under what burden the tired-out Titan 
 England was staggering along. The subject was 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 one of immense interest, and awakened many. 
 Charles Kingsley, among the rest, looked upon the 
 business of reclaiming those poor. There were those 
 who would work, those who could not work, and 
 those who would not work, and heart and soul 
 Kingsley plunged into that matter. He and the 
 Rev. F. D. Maurice preached more than once on the 
 condition of the poor, and held that it was wrong for 
 one class to be doomed to ignorance, want, and 
 misery, while another lived like chartered libertines 
 in luxury, ease, and too often in vice. Kingsley had 
 mixed much with the workers, and the result was 
 one of the most powerful novels ever written — 
 "Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet." It is full of 
 character, full of Christian sympathy with, and love 
 for, the strugglers and toilers. Of course they who 
 could only see one side of the matter, at once 
 branded the author as a Chartist Parson. The 
 character of Alton Locke seems to have been based 
 upon that of Thomas Cooper, the author of the 
 " Purgatory of Suicides," a most remarkable poem, 
 the product of two years of imprisonment for defend- 
 ing the rights of the poor, and for being the mouth- 
 piece of much of the want and discontent of the 
 workers of the North. Branded as a Chartist and 
 as an atheist, he was one but not the other. Thomas 
 Cooper, like a great-hearted man that he was, fought 
 nobly with his political doubts and troubles, and has
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 325 
 
 been for some years landed in the safe keeping of 
 Christianity. With the same honest love for his 
 brethren that he always had, this Christian lecturer 
 has atoned for past errors of faith by continually lec- 
 turing and preaching in aid of truth in the very hall 
 in the City Road where he once taught infidelity. 
 
 By the side of Alton Locke, tailor and poet, there 
 move in the novel various life-like characters, one of 
 the best of which is Sandy Mackaye, newspaper 
 editor, lecturer, Chartist spouter, and general exciter, 
 but of a noble nature, and one who wishes well to 
 his fellows. Strong in his conviction, Sandie — who 
 in our opinion has a great touch of Carlyle in him, 
 to whom, indeed, we fancy Kingsley was somewhat 
 indebted, as far as a painter is indebted to a lay- 
 figure — bursts out and tells Alton Locke to " Sing 
 awa' ; get yoursel' in child wi' pretty fancies and 
 gran' words, like the rest o' the poets, and gang to 
 hell for it." ^'Why ?" asks Alton Locke. The old 
 editor lifts up his fine head, and, pointing to a 
 miserable court, tells him that a merely pretty poet 
 is but "a. fiunk-ey and a humbug, wasting God's gifts 
 and kenning it, for the charms o' vanity o' self- 
 indulgence." Then pointing again to the alley, he 
 cries: "Look! there's not a soul in that yard but's 
 either beggar, drunkard, thief, or worse. Write 
 aboot that ! Say how ye saw the mooth o' hell, and 
 twa pillars thereof at the entry — the pawnbroker's-
 
 326 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 shop o' one side and the gin-palace at the other — 
 twa monstrous deevils, eating up men and women 
 and bairns, body an' soul. Look at the jaws o' the 
 monsters." " What jaws, Mr. Mackaye ?" "The 
 faulding doors o' the gin-shop, goose. Are na they 
 a mair damnable man-devouring idol than any red- 
 hot statue 0' Moloch, or wicked God-Magog, wherein 
 they auld Britons burnt their prisoners? Look at 
 thae bare-footed, bare-backed hizzies, with their 
 arms roun' the men's necks, and their mouths full 
 0' vitriol and beastly words ! Look at that Irish 
 woman pourin' gin down the babbie's throat ! Look 
 at that raff o' a boy gaun out o' the pawnshop, where 
 he's been pledging the handkerchief he stole in the 
 morning, into the gin-shop to buy beer poisoned wi' 
 grains o' paradise, coculus indicus, and saut, and a' 
 damnable, maddening, thirst-breeding, lust-breeding 
 drugs ! Look at that girl that went in wi' a shawl 
 on her back and cam' out wi'out ane ! Drunkards 
 frae the breast ! — harlots frae the cradle ! — damned 
 before they are born ! John Calvin had an inkling o' 
 the truth there, I'm a'most driven to think, wi' his 
 reprobation deevil's doctrines." " Well — but — Mr. 
 Mackaye, I know nothing about these poor creatures." 
 "Then ye ought. What do ye ken about the Pacific? 
 W^hich is maist your business ? You a poet !" 
 
 This, the reader will think, is strong language, 
 but it is not a whit too strong. It awakened many a
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 327 
 
 large-hearted man, and the world is the better for 
 its having been written. It is not dead yet. The 
 Quarterly Review had, of course, an immense deal to 
 find fault with in this Chartist Socialist. His temper, 
 it said, was almost ludicrous, as if any one could 
 write in a fine sweet temper, with such want, misery, 
 and wretchedness about him. " Whatsoever of real 
 honesty, charity, good sense, and good feeling the 
 story evolves, is (with almost, if not quite, a single 
 exception) among the rich — all the contrary qualities 
 are among the poor; and every page is full of the 
 merits of the poor, and the follies and crimes of the 
 rich."* Exactly so, Mr. Reviewer, because Kingsley 
 had a purpose to serve, and because, as Sandy 
 Mackaye says, the circumstances of many of the 
 poor make them " damned before they were born." It 
 is precisely against that system that Kingsley wrote. 
 It was not alone with writing that he was con- 
 tented. He established, with the aid of others, a 
 Tailors' Labour Agency, or Working Tailors' Asso- 
 ciation, and other associations in other trades fol- 
 lowed, all having some measure of success. Next 
 came "Yeast," a novel in three volumes, full of the 
 wrongs of the agricultural poor, and containing — for 
 Charles Kingsley is a lyrist of no mean order, and 
 when the fit is on him, writes songs that live — a fine 
 
 * Qiuirterly Review, vol. Ixxxix.
 
 328 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 wild lyric which set the blood in the veins of the 
 Tories, and especially the Editor of the Quarterly, in 
 a ferment. But why bark and shut up the teeth ? 
 Such a song Kingsley had heard, no doubt, but he 
 put order and fire into it. The song is sung by a 
 gipsy boy, "at a revel of discontented labourers." 
 
 "I seed a vire o' Monday night — 
 A vire both great and high ; 
 But I wool not tell you where, my boys, 
 
 Nor I wool not tell you why. 
 The varmer he came screeching out, 
 
 To save un's new brood mare : 
 Says I, you and your stock may roast, 
 For aught us poor chaps care. 
 
 Chorus — Here's a curse on varmer's all 
 That toil and grind ye poor. 
 To reap the fruit of all their work, 
 In for evermore — r — r !" 
 
 This is "direct and offensive," said the reviewers; 
 
 but " we have a more recent, more direct, and more 
 
 offensive adoption and exposition of these detestable 
 
 doctrinations." Mr. Drew, minister of St. John's, 
 
 Fitzroy Square, London, invited Kingsley to take 
 
 part in some evening lectures in June and July, 1851. 
 
 On the 22nd of June, Kingsley preached the sermon, 
 
 and after it was over Mr. Drew stood up in his 
 
 reading-desk, and said to his congregation, that he 
 
 " believed the doctrine of a great part of the 
 
 discourse was untrue." Mr. Drew was perhaps 
 
 right in freeing his soul from what he thought was
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 329 
 
 error ; but Professor Maurice, through whose inter- 
 vention Kingsley had preached, states that Mr. 
 Drew especially invited Mr. Kingsley because he 
 had read and admired his works. And what was it 
 that was so offensive in the sermon ? One sentence, 
 full of "subversive doctrine," the censor of Kingsley's 
 ethics gives us. Prepare yourselves for a dreadful 
 outburst ! " I assert that the business for which 
 God sends a Christian priest in a Christian nation is 
 to preach and practice liberty, equality, and brother- 
 hood, in the fullest, deepest, widest, simplest mean- 
 ing of those three great words." There was much 
 more to the same effect. Kingsley had dared to say 
 that the accumulation of capital out of the needs of 
 the poor was contrary to God's wish ; that He would 
 cry out, " Woe unto you who to make/ew rich make 
 many poor. Woe unto you that oust the masses 
 from the soil their fathers possessed of old ;" and he 
 had even said that " the history of the Church in 
 every age is full of the sins of the clergy against the 
 people." All this is fearfully subversive, but nineteen 
 years have not gone by since, and Montalembert — 
 staunch son of Rome though he was — has borne his 
 dying testimony about one such ; and the Parliament 
 of England has given to the Irish masses an inalien- 
 able right to the soil whereon they live, if only they 
 pay that which God, Nature, and man alike demand 
 — the rent of labour.
 
 330 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Since that time Kingsley's fortune has always 
 marched onwards, if but slowly. He has never been 
 a rich man, but always one held in honour. He has 
 been made a chaplain to the Queen, a tutor to the 
 Prince of Wales, a canon of Chester. In 1859 he 
 was appointed Professor of Modern History in the 
 University of Cambridge. He wrote other works : 
 " Phseton," "Alexandria," " Glaucus," " Hypatia;" 
 a novel, "Westward Ho:" A finer, nobler story 
 for boys does not exist. 
 
 After this came miscellanies, studies, and review 
 articles chiefly ; a fairy story, "The Water Babies," 
 which is praised as a poetic chef d'ceiivre ; "The 
 Celt, the Roman, the Dane," lectures on history; 
 " The Hermits," " Hereward the Wake," and " Letters 
 from the Tropics." But our space has run out. 
 We have not even room to sum up the character of 
 this most excellent writer, who has done so much 
 good in presenting manly and true thoughts, which, 
 although they seem now latent enough in the hearts 
 of the young, will, we know most assuredly, spring 
 up and bear fruit a hundred-fold, when we, and he, 
 and his sons, and sons' sons, are resting and awaiting 
 the Judgment-day.
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
 
 RALPH WALDO. EMERSON. 
 
 MONG the Curiosities of Literature, a 
 profession beset with so many thorns and 
 so much trouble (stones and stumbling- 
 blocks to the weaklings and trials to the strong), 
 there should be preserved a late curt answer from 
 Mr. Carlyle to an inquiring spirit. "Sir," wrote 
 the inquirer, "people say you are a Pantheist; 
 is it true ? " " Sir," answered the philosopher, 
 " I am neither a Pan-theist nor a Pot-theist. — 
 Yours, T. Carlyle." 
 
 It is impossible to write of Emerson without 
 recalling Carlyle ; it is difficult to think critically 
 of his writings without remembering that to him 
 also the grave charge of Pantheism has been laid, 
 and if one were a special pleader it would not be 
 difficult to establish that charge. Indeed, both to 
 Carlyle and Emerson, but to the latter especially, 
 the charge preferred against Socrates might well 
 be laid. They do " corrupt and lead aside the 
 youth of this city." But Emerson does it in a
 
 334 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 much wider and efficient way than Carlyle, because 
 he is a much less man, much less of a Christian, 
 much less in heart, in feeling, and in deep earnest- 
 ness. We pray any one who reads this to believe 
 that not one word is written that is not written in 
 true love and honesty, and without cant. Emerson 
 never pretends to be a Christian in the accepted 
 sense, while his faith in the precepts of the Man 
 Jesus are about as strong as is his belief in 
 Zoroaster or Confucius (Koonfootze). The most 
 ardent admirer of Emerson will find that we 
 appreciate him as much as he does. But we love 
 not that mind which is destructive and critical 
 rather than consoling and edifying. To edify, 
 Mrs. Brownjohn, is to build up. As regards Faith, 
 Emerson has done his best to fill all young men 
 with a vast unutterable longing, an admiration for 
 the great, a windy, wide, and dispersed ambition, 
 a love of nature and a curious pantheistic reverence 
 for something — what it is, it is not known. He is 
 an admirable purveyor for the Papacy and creeds 
 that restrain, for these unutterable longings never 
 get realised, these wide and windy thoughts die 
 out like sudden gusts, these negative faiths leave 
 the heart empty and comfortless, and then the 
 reader becomes the habitans in sicco, and, after 
 wandering about for some time, betakes him to a 
 "concrete creed," a firm footing, and the seven
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 335 
 
 devils of superstition, so that his last state is worse 
 than his first. 
 
 The biography of Emerson will just show us 
 what the man is and how he is. He is an American 
 of the old school, an honour to his country, one 
 of the greatest men of his age. Wide and windy as 
 he is in faith, he appears firm set to the wandering 
 stars of America ; he has plenty of culture, wide 
 reading, scholarship, research, cleverness. He has 
 little tenderness, no pathos, and yet much poetry 
 of a sort — and that a subtle and good sort. Here 
 in petto is what he is and what he has done. 
 
 He is a sharp, thin, thoughful man, aigre, clever- 
 looking, with high but not very ample forehead. 
 He is nearing his seventieth year, having been 
 born in 1803 ; is an ultra-Unitarian — if so much 
 (or so little) in Christian creed. He graduated at 
 Harvard in 1821 ; was ordained minister of the 
 Second Unitarian Church at Boston, a high seat 
 of wide views of Faith, and having after some time 
 embraced peculiar, and we presume even wider, 
 notions, abandoned his pulpit, and settled in the 
 peacefully-named village of Concord, to betake 
 himself to the study of man and of Nature. 
 
 Being an American he soon began to "orate;" had 
 he been a Britisher he would have lectured. In 
 1837 he delivered an oration called " Man Thinking," 
 before the Phi-Beta-Kappa Society of Boston, and
 
 336 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 in 1838 published " Literary Ethics : an Oration." 
 Mr. Emerson took the world by surprise. His 
 talk embraced innumerable subjects; was ambitious, 
 daring, grandiose. It was especially suited to 
 young men and a young country. He said that 
 he did not pretend to argue, he announced ; he 
 did not teach, he exhibited. Similarly, he did 
 not lecture to persuade, he " orated." Bear this 
 in mind, and you have the key to the Emersonian 
 popularity. In 1839 Mr. Emerson published " Nature : 
 an Essay;" in 1840 he commenced The Dial, a 
 magazine of Literature, History, and Philosophy, 
 in which all three were very wild, and utterly 
 unhke anything that would be published in Ger- 
 many, France, or England. The conditions of 
 literature are so different in new America to what 
 they are in old Europe. Here our writers in 
 some degree subordinate themselves to public 
 opinion ; there they subordinate a raw and un- 
 taught public opinion to themselves. They are, 
 therefore, the more free and daring, while European 
 thought is the more solid, compressed, and 
 enduring. 
 
 Emerson now began pouring out his bottles of 
 mental champagne very quickly. In 1841 he gave 
 us " The Method of Nature," " Man the Reformer," 
 three lectures, and the first series of his Essays. 
 In 1844 the second series, "New England Re-
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 337 
 
 formers," " The Young American," and a lecture 
 on the West Indian Emancipation. In 1845-9 he 
 delivered lectures on Swedenborg, Napoleon, and 
 others, afterwards published as '* Representative 
 Men." In 1852, working with Mr. Ellery Channing, 
 he published the " Memoirs of the Countess 
 D'Ossoli " (Margaret Fuller). After a visit to 
 England he published, in 1856, a work called 
 " English Traits," in i860 another, a very little 
 but very sweet book, called "The Conduct of 
 Life," and early in the spring of 1870, " Society 
 and Solitude," his last, and by far the slightest and 
 worst work he has written. 
 
 Now, in all these books there is a certain amount 
 of honest work and thought, if there be also a good 
 deal of gilt gingerbread and flash jewellery. Let us 
 speak of the faults first. Let us take two or three 
 sentences hap-hazard from his last book, which, 
 weak as it is, is very entrancing for a boy or a 
 young man to read. " 'Tis sweet to talk of kings," 
 say the old satirists, and when Emerson familiarly 
 gossips of " Paul, Plato, the Zendavesta, Vishnu, 
 Brahma, Socrates, Jesus, and such teachers of 
 men," we half believe that we know something of 
 such good company. But just sit down after 
 reading an essay by Emerson, and ask, What have 
 I got out of it ? That is the test. Hear him, 
 for instance, on Art : 
 
 z
 
 338 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 " Herein is the explanation of the analogies which exist in all 
 the Arts. They are the reappearance of one mind working in 
 many materials to temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom ; 
 Handel sings it ; Phidias carves it ; Shakespeare writes it ; Wren 
 builds it ; Columbus sails it ;. Luther preaches it ; Washington 
 arms it ; Watt mechanises it. Painting was called ' silent 
 poetry,' and poetry, 'speaking painting.' The laws of each 
 Art are convertible into the laws of every other." 
 
 Now, in addition to this last truism being a lame 
 expansion of Horace, — De Arte Poetica : 
 
 " Pictoribus atque poetis 
 Quidlibet audendi semper fuit cequa potestas " 
 
 we find in the first the simple Pantheism of the last 
 few verses in the Laureate's last volume, and, indeed, 
 he has compressed the whole into those curious 
 rhymes, " Flower in the Crannied Wall," wherein 
 he is so bold as to say " plucking it out of the 
 crannies " that, if he only knew how the flower 
 "growed," as Topsy has it, he (Mr. Tennyson) 
 " would know what God is and man is." In the 
 very much " lower Pantheism," as our sages would 
 call it, of Pope, God not only '' paints and 
 mechanises, arms, sails, and preaches," acting 
 through all things, as indeed He does, but He is 
 in all things worshipped; He is "Jehovah, Jove, our 
 Lord," all in one. Perhaps one of the missions of 
 the Saviour was to beat down that folly, into which 
 those who reject Him are sure to fall. Beyond these 
 two matters, and a glib enumeration of names, there
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 339 
 
 is nothing. Here, again, is a peculiarly Emersonian 
 sentence upon the "Bibles of the World," — one 
 Bible, by the way, to him, as good as another : 
 
 " I mean the Bibles of the world, or the sacred books of each 
 nation, which express for each the supreme result of their ex- 
 perience. After the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, which con- 
 stitute the sacred books of Christendom, there are the Desatir 
 of the Persians and the Zoroastrian Oracles ; the Vedas and 
 Laws of Menu ; the Upanishads ; the Vishnu Purana ; the 
 Bhagvat Geeta of the Hindoos ; the books of the Buddhists; 
 the Chinese Classics, and others of four books, containing the 
 wisdom of Confucius and Mencius. Also such other books as 
 have acquired a semi-canonical authority in the world. Such 
 are the Hermes Trismegistus, pretending to be the Egyptian 
 remains ; the Sentences of Epictetus ; of Marcus Antoninus ; 
 the Vishnu Sarma of the Hindoos ; the Gulistan of Saadi ; the 
 Imitation of Christ of Thomas a Kempis ; and the Thoughts of 
 Pascal." 
 
 This braggadocio sentence cannot fail to remind 
 the reader of the merry old gentleman who takes in 
 the vicar of Wakefield with his flood of learning, 
 comprised in one sentence, which he is always 
 repeating. " The cosmogony or Creation of the 
 World has puzzled philosophers of all ages. What 
 a medley of opinions have they not broached upon the 
 Creation of the World ! Sanconiathon, Manetho, 
 Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus have all attempted 
 it." We are almost, indeed, inclined to interrupt 
 Mr. Emerson, and ask him, "Is not your name 
 Ephraim Jenkinson, with the simple Dr. Prim- 
 rose when awakened from his dream ? " We are 
 
 Z 2
 
 340 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 not learned enough to pronounce on the Chinese 
 Classics, nor on the Desatir of the Persians, but we 
 know enough of the Bhag^•at Geeta, the Talmud, 
 and the philosophy of Confucius (by far the best), 
 to assure the reader that these sacred books are 
 wild and nonsensical fairy tales, dogmatic nonsense, 
 mere Eastern drivel, and clotted follies, entangled 
 with wild fancies and prurient stories, which no 
 sane man dare compare with the clear reason and 
 power of the New Testament. 
 
 Look again at the wordy sentence. The I mitatione 
 Chrisii and the Pensees of Pascal are put last. Why, 
 there are more sound high thoughts, sublime resolves, 
 and God-taught endeavour, in one section of either 
 of these books than in all the far-Eastern nonsense 
 ever raked together ! Epictetus or Marcus Antoninus 
 would beat the lot ! 
 
 But put him on his own ground, not upsetting his 
 mind with windy ideas from big books with which 
 he is not fully acquainted, and Emerson is a first- 
 class writer. No man would do better as an editor 
 of a Quarterly Review, or a contributor thereto. 
 His two most valuable books are " English Traits," 
 a most generous, thoughtful, and valuable estimate 
 of the English people and nation, beyond all praise 
 for its honest truth, its acute perception, its interest- 
 ing and thorough style, its fearless speaking — fearless 
 in blame and in praise; and the "The Conduct of
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 34I 
 
 Life." In the last we meet Mr. Emerson as a poet, 
 wild, novel, suggestive; but he has written other 
 poems besides these heads of chapters. As rhyme 
 and melody are to be distinguished from poetry 
 properly so called, so Emerson, it must be remem- 
 bered, writes poetry with melody or rhyme. His 
 lines are not exactly verse, and yet they are poetry. 
 Generally this poetry is in short verse — as uneasy 
 as a macadamised road new done, and much re- 
 sembling a translation from the Anglo-Saxon, or a 
 passage from Tusser's " Hundred Points of Hus- 
 bandry." Here, however, is a sonnet : 
 
 " R HOD OR A. 
 
 '■ In May, when the sea-winds pierced our sohtudes, 
 I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 
 Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook. 
 To please the desert and the sluggish brook. 
 The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 
 Made the black water with their beauty gay ; 
 Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool. 
 And court the flower that cheapens his array. 
 
 " Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why 
 This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 
 Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
 Then beauty is its own excuse for being : 
 Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose ! 
 I never thought to ask. I never knew ; 
 But in my simple ignorance suppose 
 The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.'" 
 
 In this you find a parallel thought to that of
 
 342 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Tennyson's very insufficient " Flower in the Cran- 
 nied Wall " — but how much truer, greater, and 
 better ! 
 
 We conclude with an astute passage from " English 
 Traits:" 
 
 " England is the best of actual nations. It is no ideal frame- 
 work, — it is an old pile built in different ages, with repairs, ad- 
 ditions, and makeshifts ; but you see the poor best you have got. 
 London is the epitome of our times, and the Rome of to-day. 
 Broad-fronted, broad-bottomed Teutons, they stand in solid 
 phalanx foursquare to the points of the compass : they constitute 
 the modern world, they have earned their vantage-ground, and 
 held it through ages of adverse possession. They are well- 
 marked and differing from other leading races. England is 
 tender-hearted. Rome was not. England is not so public in 
 its bias ; private life is its place of honour. Truth in private 
 life, untruth in public, marks these home-loving men. Their 
 political conduct is not decided by general views, but by in- 
 ternal intrigues and personal and family interest. They cannot 
 readily see beyond England." 
 
 Emerson is not the best of actual essayists ; 
 neither the most tender, nor the most true, the 
 most powerful, nor the wisest. But he looks the 
 wisest and most knowing of all ; he is and will be 
 always a great favourite with the young ; he does not 
 speak to your heart, but he does to your head. The 
 effect of reading his works, until you are quite behind 
 the scenes and know something, is that which a 
 college lecturer has upon a freshman ; and yet, 
 after all, of himself Emerson says little ; and what 
 he does say stimulates, but it does not nourish.
 
 MR. T. W. ROBERTSON
 
 MR. T. W. ROBERTSON. 
 
 .^^ 
 
 ;iGNOR MAZZINI, who, in the years to 
 come, when the mists of contemporary 
 prejudice and falsehood shall have cleared 
 away, will be considered a very great man, writes 
 to his friend Edward Quinet a letter which takes 
 an extremely desponding view of present times. 
 The view is, in a great measure, a true one, but 
 it is one which is natural to all old men, but 
 especially so to one who, like MsLZzini, has seen 
 the cherished hopes of his youth disappointed, who 
 has believed, and nobly believed, in humanity, but 
 has found at last that his faith was but a dream 
 resulting from his own nobleness. Thus Brutus, 
 when dying on the field of battle, found virtue but 
 a shade, and Mazzini wearies of this generation, 
 which he says, truly enough, is " a mere instrument, 
 having no faith, but only opinions ; which abjures 
 God, Immortality, Love, and a belief in an in- 
 telligent and providential law ; receives laws as 
 regulations, forms without substance, means with-
 
 346 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 out an end, while justice is regarded as Utopian, 
 
 and worship is reserved for success ; an age growing 
 
 in intelligence but not in purpose." Upon this 
 
 the Spectator remarks, " His view of this age is too 
 
 desponding, but is confirmed in great part by every 
 
 teacher, religious and secular, around us ; " and it 
 
 is with this in our mind that we would begin an 
 
 essay on, or a review of, Mr. T. W. Robertson and 
 
 his comedies. For dramatic work is like none other 
 
 literature — it reflects the age, or the wishes of the 
 
 age. An author like Bacon, or Milton, or Gibbon, 
 
 or Hobbes of Malmesbury, might and can afford to 
 
 wait, but a man like Shakespeare, or Ben Jonson, 
 
 or Beaumont and Fletcher cannot. In a modified 
 
 sense, also. Dr. Johnson's couplet is quite true : 
 
 " The Drama's laws the Drama's patrons give, 
 And they who live to please, must please to hve." 
 
 There is no approval so delightful as a full house ; 
 no criticism so damning as a beggarly account of 
 empty boxes. Hence the decline of the Drama, 
 and hence the merit of the courageous endeavour 
 of Mr. Robertson to render one English theatre at 
 least worthy of the name, and to present a comedy 
 which reflected the manners of the age, and justly 
 satirised the follies of the day. This, too, at a 
 time when almost all the plays that we have are 
 stolen or taken from the French, without leave 
 often, frequently with the consent of the authors ;
 
 MR. T. W. ROBERTSON. 347 
 
 dramas which cannot possibly picture English 
 manners, which have almost all of them a stain of 
 original sin so deep that it cannot always be washed 
 away by any amount of English cleansing powder, 
 and which if washed away leaves the adaptation 
 weak, colourless, and worthless. 
 
 Mr. Thomas William Robertson is one of those 
 few dramatic authors who have been originally 
 actors. The great name of Shakespeare heads the 
 list ; those of Carrick, Tobin, Colley Gibber, Buck- 
 stone, and a few others have to be included ; but 
 it follows that either the author is a bad actor, or, 
 if a good actor, he is a poor and weak author. The 
 one role must subordinate the other. Colley Gibber 
 succeeded in both if we take his "Gareless Husband" 
 as a specimen, but in general the actor-author is a 
 mistake. Dramatic literature has a despotic Muse 
 who will not be conciliated with a merely partial 
 courtship. Shakespeare taught one actor how to 
 read his Ghost in " Hamlet," and himself made 
 but a lame representative of old Adam in " As 
 You Like it." Mr. Robertson, we believe, never 
 achieved distinction as an actor, and indeed was, 
 we have been told, little better than a second-rate 
 walking gentleman at second-rate theatres. But he 
 gained therefrom an immense knowledge of stage 
 business and effect, and that chief part of knowledge, 
 to know what to say and to say no more. He
 
 348 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 never overloads his parts ; he writes with excessive 
 neatness, and taking the measure of his audience, 
 never treats it — whatever may be its component 
 parts — to any deep reflections, poetical rhapsodies, 
 long lengths of verse or measured prose, or pathos 
 of any depth. What he means is always trans- 
 parent, and hence his jokes never miss fire. He 
 has been seconded by such good actors and actresses 
 that, although by no means acute, they seem to 
 be so, for while his plays really display their own 
 merit more than any other writings that we know 
 of, and in a very clever way too, the)^ have the 
 singular merit of persuading the actors that they 
 are profoundly clever. When a man or a woman 
 has to say for a hundred consecutive nights a piece 
 of flat English to which the situation gives point, 
 and finds that the sympathetic audience always 
 grins, giggles, or applauds the platitude, he or she, 
 insensibly at least, becomes persuaded that the 
 words contain a deep meaning, a recondite wit, 
 which escapes or is above the ordinary perception. 
 Hence the author has a sort of doubly-reflected 
 fame. The merit which was at first denied him is 
 forced upon the actor's mind, and by him, by extra 
 point, upon the audience. 
 
 Born in June, 1839, ^^ Newark-on-Trent, Notting- 
 hamshire, Mr. Robertson came before the footlights 
 by nature, for his father was a theatrical manager
 
 MR. T. W. ROBERTSON. 349 
 
 very well known in what some facetious persons 
 and the theatrical profession generally will call 
 " the Provinces." It is one of the virtues of the 
 " profession " that it will persist in clothing small 
 and miserable matters with large names. Notoriety 
 is called "fame," a struggle for existence "un- 
 bounded success," a sparse audience "a crowded 
 house," and a small English county, not much 
 bigger than a Russian or American farm, one of 
 the " Provinces." By thus carefully disguising the 
 size of matters, these wise people keep up a 
 constant illusion, and live happily though surrounded 
 with squalor, degradation, and misery. Nothing is 
 more deceptive, as indeed it should be so, than the 
 theatre, and so thoroughly powerful is it in this 
 way, that those who have once taken to it never 
 waken from the dream. Did they do so they would 
 be miserable, and like the man in Horace cry out, 
 " O, by Apollo, friends ! 
 
 Me thou hast killed, — not served." 
 
 We maybe sure that Mr. Robertson " took very 
 kindly " to the stage, but of that we have little 
 to say. He lived " more or less from his birth to 
 i860 as an actor," to quote a theatrical authority, 
 but in i860 he abandoned the stage for the career 
 of literature. His first original production was a 
 piece at the Olympic called " A Night's Adventure," 
 in 1851. In 1861 he had written a farce called "The
 
 350 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Cantab," at the Strand; in 1864, " David Garrick," 
 a play, from the French, at the Haymarket ; in 
 1865, " Society," first acted at Liverpool in May, 
 was in November produced at the Prince of Wales's 
 Theatre ; and in the same year he wrote the libretto 
 of an opera, " Constance." In 1866, his comedy 
 of " Ours " was produced at the same London 
 theatre, having been previously tried in Liverpool. 
 In 1867, he wrote " Shadow Tree Shaft " for the 
 Princess's, "A Rapid Thaw" for the St. James's, 
 and " Caste " at the Prince of Wales's, and wrote 
 an entertainment for German Reed, called " A 
 Dream of Venice," and his comedy " For Love " 
 was produced at the Holborn. His succeeding and 
 very successful plays at the Prince of Wales's 
 Theatre were " Play," " School," which ran for 381 
 nights, and his last and least, " M.P." His inter- 
 mediate and unsuccessful pieces were " Dreams " 
 at the Gaiety, the "Nightingale" at the Adelphi, 
 and a translation called a " Breach of Promise " 
 at the Globe. Mr. Robertson has spent some time 
 in Germany, and has married a lady born in that 
 country, and has evidently studied with much ad- 
 vantage the French stage, from which he has 
 adopted more than one incident. "School," his 
 most poetical and successful play, was adapted, 
 rather than translated, from the German play, "The 
 Aschenbrbdel," but so skilfully has it been done that
 
 MR. T. W. ROBERTSON. 35I 
 
 no trace of the original remains. An angry attack 
 upon this unacknowledged adaptation in the Times, 
 from a correspondent, was followed by an acute 
 parallel of the two plays by Mr. John Oxenford ; 
 but Mr. Robertson himself very discreetly kept 
 silence. It must be acknowledged that "School" 
 is so very skilfully adapted that there is no proof 
 of its German origin to be found in the piece itself. 
 With the curious exception of having a male 
 teacher, Mr. Krux, as an instructor of girls, which 
 might be well accounted for if we suppose that the 
 doctor kept a boys' and his wife a ladies' school, 
 there are very few inconsistencies. The examination 
 of a number of school-girls for the delectation of an 
 old beau and two young men, is unnatural and 
 ridiculous in its untruth ; but the play as a whole is 
 so charming that we wisely follow Horace's rule, 
 and forgive all its faults. 
 
 Let us, however, finish the " historical account " 
 of our author. He has not flown at very high game 
 in literature, but it is due to him to say that he 
 very rightly, in one sense, despises the pompous 
 assumption of the larger magazines and reviews. 
 London Society is perhaps the most advanced 
 magazine that he has contributed to ; but previously 
 to his great success as a dramatic writer, he worked 
 very hard as a journalist ; he contributed to Fun; 
 edited, with Mr. Hingston, the lecture of Artemus
 
 352 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Ward; contributed to the " Savage Club Papers," 
 and wrote more than one truthful and pathetic 
 story in the Christmas numbers of various magazines. 
 It is, however, especially as a dramatist that 
 Mr. Robertson must be viewed, and, curiously, as a 
 successful dramatist at one theatre. Never was the 
 policy of getting a good working company, and of 
 keeping it together, more thoroughly proved to be 
 the right one. At the Prince of Wales's Theatre, 
 under the management of Mrs. Bancroft, and with 
 the London company managed by Mr. Frederick 
 Younge, there is absolutely nothing to be desired. 
 So well do the actors and actresses enter into the 
 parts played, that each one seems to have been 
 born for the character. Mrs. Bancroft (Marie 
 Wilton), her husband, and Mr. Hare, act so well 
 that all trace of acting disappears. The style is 
 simply that of the drawing-room ; the theatre is so 
 small and yet so elegant that it looks like a drawing- 
 room ; the actors and actresses like ladies and 
 gentlemen indulging in very pointed conversation. 
 And, wondrous to relate, when we repeat that very 
 pointed conversation the next day, it is dull and 
 pointless ; yet so well is it given by the company, 
 so thoroughly is every cue taken up, that what is 
 actually dull enough to be real conversation, becomes 
 burnished and glows with theatric polish on the 
 sta"-e. And this fact will account for the failure
 
 MR. T. W. ROBERTSON. 353 
 
 of all, or nearly all, of Mr. Robertson's pieces when 
 produced at any other theatre but that in Tottenham 
 Street. Look, for instance, at the fate of "A 
 Rapid Thaw," " Shadow Tree Shaft," " For Love," 
 " Dreams," " A Breach of Promise," and the 
 " Nightingale," produced at other theatres, com- 
 pared with that of "Society," "Ours," "Caste," 
 " Play," " School," and " M.P.," produced by Miss 
 Marie Wilton. The suggestion which carries with 
 it an accusation of dishonesty, namely, that the 
 author keeps all his best pieces for his favourite 
 theatre, is untrue. " Dreams," for instance, played 
 at Marie Wilton's theatre would have run as long 
 as " School." The fact is, that one company in 
 London knows how to appreciate and to play Mr. 
 Robertson's works, and the others do not ; and this 
 is proved by the actual dulness of the dialogue in 
 reading, which on the stage appears so brilliant. 
 
 Happily for his reputation, our playwright has 
 published few plays. We can therefore only quote 
 from " Society" and from " M.P.," the first from a 
 printed copy, the second from our own notes. 
 
 Maud.— To give up all his fortune, to ruin his bright prospects, 
 to keep unsuUied the honour of his brother's name was an act — 
 
 Lady Ptarmigan. —Of a noodle ! And now he hasn't a penny 
 but what he gets by scribbling— a pretty pass for a man of 
 family to come to. You are my niece, and it is my solemn 
 duty to get you married if I can. Don't thwart me, and I will. 
 Leave sentiment to servant wenches who sweetheart policemen, 
 
 A A
 
 354 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 it's unworthy of a lady. I've a man in my eye— I mean a rich 
 one — young Chodd. 
 
 Matid (luith repugnance). —Such a common-place person. 
 
 Lady P. — With a very uncommon-place purse. He will have 
 eighteen thousand a-year. I have desired him to pay you 
 court, and I desire you to receive it. 
 
 Maud. — He is so vulgar. 
 
 Lady P.— He is so rich. When he is your husband, put him 
 in a back study, and don't show him. 
 
 Maud. — But I detest him. 
 
 Lady /■.- What on earth has that to do with it? You 
 wouldn't love a man before you were married to him, would 
 you ? Where are your principles ? Ask my lord how I treated 
 him before our marriage {hitting Lord P. with her fan). 
 Ferdinand ! 
 
 Lord P. (awaking) — My love ! 
 
 Lady P. — Do keep awake. 
 
 Lord /".- 'Pon my word you were making such a noise 1 
 thought I was in the House of Commons. (With fond regret.) 
 I used to be allowed to sleep so comfortably there. 
 
 Lady P.— Are you not of opinion that a match between Mr. 
 Chodd and Maud would be most desirable '.' 
 
 Lord P. (looking at Lady P.)— Am 1 not of opinion— my 
 opinion — what is my opinion ? 
 
 Lady P. (hitting him with her fan)— ^es, of course. 
 
 Comparison between this and the dialogue of Con- 
 greve or of Sheridan, or of Goldsmith, Vanbrugh, or 
 Wycherley, would not hold for a moment, yet as 
 given by Miss Wilton, Mrs. Buckingham White, 
 and Mr. Hare, it bristled with point, and sparkled 
 like cut glass under the lime-light— that is, it looked 
 very much like diamonds. Again, take the following 
 morceaux from " M.P." each of which brought down 
 a torrent of applause on the first night, and ask
 
 MR. T. W. ROBERTSON. 355 
 
 whether the wit is very exhilarating ? Talbot 
 Piers is accepted and also beloved by Cecilia 
 Dunscombe, and urges the force of the marriage- 
 vow of the woman to " honour and obey" the 
 man. "Oh," says Cecilia, archly, "that's a mere 
 form," at which the audience laughed heartily. 
 Chudleigh Dunscombe (a very young fellow) gives 
 vent to the Platonic sentence, " Nature could not 
 put bad thoughts into so beautiful a skin,'' and is 
 rewarded by a round of applause for so transparent 
 an untruth ; and Isaac Skoome, a low-born manu- 
 facturer, who has made money, brags that " he 
 worked hard, and Providence has done its duty," 
 i.e., had enriched him, upon which the house is in 
 ecstacies ! But not more so than when Dunscombe 
 (acted by Mr. Hare) calls him " a ready-made man," 
 instead of " a self-made man," or Chudleigh Duns- 
 combe tells him to " take away his metallic hand." 
 Metallic is a favourite epithet of Robertson, and is 
 used once or twice in " Society " and in " Play." It 
 must again be insisted on that these " points," being 
 well placed and led up to, are very effective — on the 
 stage. 
 
 To conclude, Mr. Robertson is the dramatist of 
 the age, and reflects the artificial manners of society. 
 He has no depth, little pathos, small humour; but 
 he knows his business and his audience, his time, 
 stage, and actors thoroughly. Well mounted, his 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 pieces have a freshness, a cleverness, and a charm 
 which belongs to a line piece of art a la Watteau, 
 or in Dresden or Sevres china. " School " has even 
 more ; it has the effect of the prettiest little idyll on 
 the stage, but we must not compare its idyllic force 
 with that of ''As You Like It," but rather with 
 that of one of those old Enghsh operas, " Love in 
 a Village : or, the Mountain Sylph," now too 
 seldom acted. Robertson has not high art nor 
 high feeling, but he xery successfully assumes a 
 tone of high-breeding and well-bred cynicism. His 
 pieces are not highly moral, but they are not im- 
 moral, and are quite up to the morality of the age. 
 He has been accused of sneering at ever}-thing : 
 this he does not do, he only sneers at what he and 
 society does not believe in. He is exceedingly 
 artificial, but then so are the times ; he appreciates 
 Tennyson, whom he quotes ; he is at any rate on 
 the side of virtue and of manliness so far as that 
 is consistent with kid gloves and an evening dress. 
 He dares to satirise what is weak and foolish in 
 John Stuart Mill, and to give a wholesome opinion 
 of the silly burlesques which are vitiating the taste 
 of society.
 
 M. EDMOXD ABOUT.
 
 M. EDMOND ABOUT. 
 
 ^:j:^^5M 
 
 
 
 
 HERE are two men* whose names are 
 more frequently cited by our chief writers 
 — either in the Spectator, the Saturday, or 
 the Times — than those of any others, and whose 
 views are eagerly looked for, translated, quoted, and 
 put forward, by such conductors of papers — and their 
 
 * For the purpose of compactness, we have treated here the 
 MM. Erckmann-Chatrain as one author, as, in fact, they are 
 as to the effect they have on the pubhc. The following, from a 
 weekly review, will explain the dualism : — " As some curiosity is 
 expressed about the personality of the two inen, who alternately 
 count as one man under two names, and two men under one 
 name, and who bid fair to be accepted as the Siamese Twins of 
 literature, we quote the details given in this paper. According 
 to Herr Julian Schmidt, the partnership of Erckmann-Chatrian 
 consists of M. Emile Erckmann, born at Pfalzburg in 1822, and 
 M. Alexandre Chatrian, born near the same town in 1826. 
 Erckmann came to Paris in 1842 to study law, but made little 
 way with it ; M. Chatrian was first employed in a Belgian glass 
 manufactory, then set up as a teacher at Pfalzburg, and came to 
 Paris in 1852. It was then the two became friends, and engaged 
 jointly in literature, which M. Erckmann had already tried 
 alone, but unsuccessluUy." — Athencvum, Sept. loth, 1870.
 
 360 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 names are not legion — as are sufficiently educated 
 and advanced to have any opinion upon the matter. 
 For, in this war, opinion has curiously varied, and 
 has not always been based upon principle. But of 
 this hereafter. 
 
 These two men are not men of war, but of peace ; 
 not generals, but writers ; and their names are 
 Erckmann-Chatrain, author of " Le Blocus " (" The 
 Blockade ") — who has described the country now 
 desolated by war — and Edmond About, the once 
 chief penman of the Emperor, and the famous 
 correspondent of Le Soir. 
 
 M. About is the more famous of the two. M. Cha- 
 train, it is true, is recalled by the scenes brought so 
 vividly before our eyes by the newspaper histories of 
 each morning, and the grand courage and enduring 
 pluck that he pictures are now again brought into 
 use at Phalsburg and Strasbourg. But Edmond 
 About is a war chronicler and correspondent. He 
 is, or has been, with the armies; was reported dead; 
 and had to fly, with his wife and children, from the 
 comfortable quarters assigned to him. Like the 
 pious ^neas, he has " been a great part of what he 
 has seen ; " has travelled to the forefront of action ; 
 speaks like one having authority ; and is versatile 
 enough to translate and render to our eyes every 
 shade of grief, terror, elation, which moves his 
 excellent but chameleon-like nation. Nor is there
 
 M. EDMOND ABOUT. ^6l 
 
 anything better, or more incisive, or more peculiar 
 and epigrammatic in the whole range of literature 
 than these queer letters of Edmond About. They 
 are just as " spicy" and goguenard in their way as 
 are those of Mr. George Sala — one of the very best 
 English correspondents who ever drew pen in any 
 foreign "row;" but they are more solid, reflective, 
 luminous — have more of the scholar and the gentle- 
 man in them, to use an old phrase. As for M. 
 About's little eccentricities in abusing the Germans, 
 they are not only natural — being shared in by all 
 his countrymen, and therefore to be excused — but 
 they are, from his pen, although more incisive, a 
 thousand times less coarse and vulgar than you 
 see in the French prints every day. Whatever 
 may happen — and it is yet possible for France, 
 by a gigantic effort, to shake off the grip of the 
 armed thousands who hold her down — France has 
 been so deceived and cajoled that she is under 
 the influence of a strong delusion, and believes 
 a lie ! 
 
 " Why did you make war so readily, M. le Due ?" 
 asked a member of the Jockey Club of the Duke of 
 Gramont, the other day. 
 
 " I believed we were ready. I went to the Minister 
 of War, and I asked him, ' Are you ready ? Can we 
 move at once ? ' ' Ready ! ' he answered ; ' pah ! 
 Ttady twice over !' If I had not believed that, I would
 
 362 MODERN xMEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 never have entered on a war which I might have 
 avoided in a dozen ways.'^ 
 
 It is quite lawful, moreover, for those who are 
 beaten to scold. This also should be remembered in 
 About's favour, if two or three harsh words now and 
 then escape him. 
 
 M. Edmond Francois Valentin About is about 
 forty-two years old, having been born at Dieuze on 
 the 14th of February, 1828. His patron saint of the 
 day of his fete is the good Bishop Valentine, and 
 this will account for one of his Christian names. He 
 was educated at the Charlemagne Lyceum, and was 
 early distinguished. When he was twenty he won 
 the prize of honour, and three years afterwards he 
 passed to the French School at Athens. He here 
 made himself thoroughly acquainted with Greece as 
 it is ; knew it to be a nest of rogues and robbers ; 
 knew it, also, to his cost — as during his archaeological 
 studies he had often to fly from some Alkibiades or 
 Peisistratos, who was looking at him over a ruin 
 and assisting his vision by glancing along the barrel 
 of a gun. The result of these studies— political, 
 social, and archaeological— was published in 1855 as 
 " La Grece Contemporaine." Of course, the diplo- 
 matic people of England and France received the 
 work with disdain. About had told the plain truth : 
 therefore he was not believed by diplomatists. He 
 t^ien tried to tell the truth with a laughing face.
 
 M. EDMOND ABOUT. 363 
 
 and imagined that his next work, carried out on that 
 Horatian maxim, would awaken Europe. This 
 wonderfully true and witty work was called " Le 
 Roi des Montagnes," and is simply the history of a 
 Greek brigand, acting in connivance with Greek 
 troops and a Greek minister. M. Hadji-Starros, 
 Mary Anne, Mrs. Simons, with the French, German, 
 and Greek characters, are drawn to the life. And it 
 is not too much to say that this book, published in 
 1857, anticipated — though hardly in its full horrors 
 — the whole of the terrible Greek massacre of English 
 gentlemen and an Italian nobleman in 1870. Had 
 the lessons of that book been attended to, the com- 
 panions of Lord Muncaster would have been alive. 
 M. About — although no English writer has yet 
 pointed out the fact — may claim the honour of being 
 a prophet. In his last chapter — it only consists of a 
 line or so — the author again " resumes his conversa- 
 tion," and says, seriously, " Athenien, mon bel ami, 
 les histoires les plus vraies ne sont pas celles qui 
 sont arrivees." But all that the Greeks replied to 
 that warning was to swear that About was untrue, 
 and that their fine country was slandered. They 
 absolutely persuaded England to give them Corfu 
 and the Ionian Islands ; and proceeded, amidst the 
 lamentations of the inhabitants, to ruin and undo 
 the security and civilisation of years. 
 
 In style, About, in this book, showed himself a
 
 364 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 master. His is simply the best style in the world — 
 that is, of the French. It is based upon that clear, 
 clean method of Voltaire, in the " Candide" and his 
 other romances. We are not talking, if you please, 
 of the morality of Voltaire, but of his marvellous 
 style. Full, without overflowing ; clear, without 
 being bare; deep, without obscurity, it unites the 
 incisiveness of Swift — and marvellous prose is his — 
 the grace of Addison, and the wit of Congreve. 
 
 Such a writer, living in Paris and not in London 
 — where Philistine publishers never originate a work, 
 and chiefly live on ideas furnished by the neglected 
 and hack author — such a writer in Paris was at once 
 sought for, and had plenty to do. In 1855 he pub- 
 lished, in the Revue des deux Mondes, a curious but 
 very beautiful work, "ToUa;" in 1856, " Les 
 Manages de Paris," which was a great success ; and 
 in 1857, " Germaine," a very beautiful, miserably 
 sad story of a manage de Paris — that is, of the 
 legitimate and honourable sale of the heroine by 
 way of marriage. 
 
 About is a moralist in a high sense; and his books 
 are as moral as the scalpel which removes proud 
 flesh is beneficial. It was about this time that our 
 author seems to have entered into some sort of pact 
 with Louis Napoleon to assist him with his pen. It 
 would be well if monarchs would, like Frederick, 
 condescend to put themselves on an equality with
 
 M. EDMOND ABOUT. 365 
 
 the Voltaire of the day. The result of this "pact" 
 — which we by no means affirm, but which has been 
 often hinted at— was that M. About seems to have 
 given a grace to several French State papers ; and 
 that in 1859 ^^ published " La Question Romaine," 
 which laid bare the rottenness of that capital in a 
 manner that must have made Archbishop Manning, 
 and Sir George Bowyer, and other ultramontanes, 
 mad. " Pardon me," he says in his preface, "certain 
 vivacities of style, which I had not time to correct ; 
 and plunge boldly into the heart of the book. You 
 will find something there. I fight fairly, and in good 
 faith. I do not pretend to have judged the foes of 
 Italy without passion ; but I have calumniated none 
 of them. If I have sought a publisher in Brussels, 
 while I had an excellent one in Paris, it is not 
 because I feel any alarm on the score of the regu- 
 lations of our press or the severity of our tribunals. 
 But as the Pope has a long arm, which might reach 
 me in France, I have gone a little out of the way 
 to tell him the plain truths contained in these 
 pages." 
 
 In commencing this work he referred to a case 
 then occupying the public mind — the abduction of a 
 Jewish child against the wishes of its parents. One 
 cannot help being at once struck with the extra- 
 ordinary force of the following antitheses, even when 
 translated : —
 
 366 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 " The Roman Catholic Church, which I sincerely respect, 
 consists of one hundred and thirty-nine millions of individuals 
 - — without counting little Mortar a I 
 
 It is governed by seventy cardinals, princes of the Roman 
 Church — /;/ fueniory of twelve poor Apostles / 
 
 The Cardinal Bishop of Rome, who is also called Vicar of 
 Jesus Christ, Holy, Most Holy Father, or Pope, is invested with 
 boundless authority over the minds of these hundred and thirty- 
 nine millions." 
 
 The author then traces, with a stinging satire and 
 crushing effect, the history of the Popes. 
 
 With the exception of one or two sHght works, 
 Edmond About has been silent until the opening of 
 this war; when, with Thiers, Jules Favre, and 
 others, he raised his voice energetically against it. 
 M. Thiers has since explained that he did so because 
 France was unprepared, not because the war was 
 unjust. And certainly About may have done the 
 same ; for, after warning France, he seems to have 
 been borne away with the enthusiastic shouts of 
 "/I Berlin!'" and, perhaps against his better judg- 
 ment, accepted the post — said to be accredited by 
 the Government — of correspondent of Lc Soir. To 
 one who, if he be not an academician, has the style 
 and more than merit of one, such an appointment 
 seemed infra dignitatem ; but the public rejoiced tbat 
 he had accepted the post, and learned from About 
 the follies of the campaign, the unreadiness, the 
 ignorance of the officers, the folly of the leaders, the 
 brag and emptiness of the whole.
 
 M. EDMOND ABOUT. 367 
 
 After Saarbriick, About's style changed, and he 
 attacked the Emperor violently. He mourned, like 
 a true Frenchman, over the slaughter of his friends, 
 and of that army of which he was so proud ; and, 
 even while making the best of it, his pen wept tears 
 of good French ink as he described the rout of the 
 army of the Rhine. After Weissembourg he was 
 lost for more than a week ; his wife and children 
 fled to Paris ; and he, sick and weary of slaughter, 
 was silent ; and not only Paris, but all Europe 
 feared that he was among the killed — as, indeed, 
 more than one patriotic correspondent had fallen in 
 the melee. But it was not so. After being for some 
 time lost, About made his way to Paris, and began a 
 series of most brilliant, most sarcastic, and bitter 
 attacks on the empire, the Government, England, 
 and all neutral powers, and on the French people. 
 We can pardon his anger against us for the grief 
 these bitter truths must cost him : 
 
 " The report of yesterday's sitting, and that storm in the 
 Chamber, carried me back 417 years. I asked myself whether 
 we had not become, to some extent, Byzantines. In 1453, while 
 Mahomet II. was besieging Constantinople, the Greeks of the 
 Lower Empire were divided upon questions of theology, just as 
 the Parisians of the present day are divided upon political 
 questions. They quarrelled among themselves with such bitter- 
 ness, that they forgot the presence of the enemy, and allowed 
 him to take the city. The Turk entered, and reconciled them 
 all by means of the stick. The same fortune might fall to our 
 lot if the nation did not show itself possessed of more good
 
 368 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 sense and more enlightened patriotism than the two parties in 
 the Chamber. The Right and the Left are incessantly accusing 
 each other of having caused these public disasters. The 
 Government party insists that Alsace and Lorraine would not 
 have been invaded if the Opposition had not haggled about 
 subsidies and annual contingents : ' You have so railed against 
 standing armies, that you have disarmed the country.' The 
 Opposition retorts the incapacity of courtier generals ; the 
 squandering of the funds intended for supplying war material ; 
 the mistrust on the part of personal government, which would 
 never allow the people to be armed, and which still refuses them 
 muskets even when the enemy is at our gates. ' You are afraid 
 of the nation. You would rather sacrifice France than lose 
 yciir own power.' How sad is all this ! Each of these stormy 
 sittings is worth 50,000 men to the Prussians who are marching 
 upon us. Cannot these quarrels be deferred until the country 
 has been delivered.'' France should wash her dirty linen at the 
 proper time and place, but she should wait until we are again 
 cnfaniille.'' 
 
 Then, again, he glances back to what the Empire 
 
 has been — how it has spoiled and humiliated La belle 
 
 France — and he extracts this bitter consolation : 
 
 " Well, all is perhaps for the best. If the supporters of the 
 personal power had been acquainted with the first elements of 
 the military art ; if Marshal Leboeuf had had a plan ; if we had 
 been ready ; if we had had 500,000 effective troops instead of 
 200,000 ; if the millions destined for armament had not for 
 years been wasted or turned to other uses, we should beat the 
 Prussians, and free the Rhine Provinces. We should take 
 Saarbriick and Sarrelouis, Mayence, and Coblentz ; we should 
 light tapers in the cathedrals of Treves and of Cologne ; the 
 Prince Imperial might collect enough spent balls to foi-7n a 
 chapletfor his godfather, the gentle Pius IX. — and after V 
 
 And, after having soundly abused England, he 
 thus makes the amende honorable in these words :
 
 M. EDMOND ABOUT. 369 
 
 " Our neighbours on the other side of the Channel shower me 
 with reproaches, and I ought to thank them. Nothing is more 
 sweet to the heart of a true Frenchman than this English revolt 
 against an unfounded accusation. More than a hundred letters, 
 in less than a week, have repeated to me, in every form of ex- 
 pression — ' You deceive yourself. You are unjust The citi- 
 zens of Great Britain have only sympathy for the French nation. 
 The officers of the fleet and of the army never forget that they 
 found friends as well as comrades in your sailors and soldiers. 
 The intellectual classes consider your country as the fortress of 
 European civilisation. We should never be consoled if we saw 
 France destroyed, or even seriously weakened. We suffer and 
 hope with you.' Such is the substance of the letters which are 
 addressed to me from all parts of England and Scotland. The 
 kindly communications which I have received are signed by 
 honourable, by aristocratic names, as well as by ladies. There 
 are poems, there are articles which the writers wish me to pub- 
 lish, and which I would gladly print if the limits of my space 
 permitted. I can only thank these innumerable correspondents, 
 and say to them, ' Vivent la France et I'Angleterre, united for 
 the peace and prosperity of the world. You have rendered me 
 quite happy in showing me my error !'" 
 
 We have not extracted in this article any of the 
 epigrams, surprises, points, and brilliant sayings of 
 the author, save a few from "La Question Romaine," 
 because the war itself absorbs all our interest ; but 
 we hope we have fairly introduced one of the most 
 honest and brilliant writers of the day — one who is 
 a true patriot, and shares with the same eagerness 
 the sorrows as well as the glory of his great nation. 
 To some of us it may seem that the Government of 
 France has been deservedly punished ; to some, that 
 French vain-glory has received a proper and a 
 
 B B
 
 370 MODERN MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 wholesome check. Yet they who think thus may 
 sympathise with a brave people in its misfortune ; 
 and pray that sounder counsels and wiser governors 
 may raise La belle France out of her distress, and 
 place her on that true pinnacle of greatness, wherein 
 her glory, arising from herself and her children, will 
 not be sought by the humiliation or subordination of 
 another. And, indeed, M. About is typical of France. 
 He has done so much that is good, that he need not, 
 even in the agony of suspense and the humiliation of 
 defeat, drive his excellent style into hysterics to 
 attract attention. 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS, 24, BUCKLERSBURY, LONDON.
 
 a Selection of Woxk^ 
 
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