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 LITERARY ANECDOTES OF THE NINETEENTH 
 CENTURY. By W. Rob.-rtson Nicoll and Thomas 
 J. Wise. 2 Vols. 
 
 LETTERS ON LIFE. By Claudius Clear. Forty-fourth 
 Thousand, is. net. 
 
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 3s. 6d. 
 
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 LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON
 
 A BOOKMAN'S 
 LETTERS 
 
 ,r** BY 
 
 ■AV* 
 
 W. ROBERTSON NIGOLL 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 
 MCMXIII
 
 H^3
 
 TO 
 
 SIR GEORGE RIDDELL
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This volume is, in the main, a selection from 
 some hundreds of similar letters contributed to 
 the British Weekly under the general title ' The 
 Correspondence of Claudius Clear,' and addressed 
 to a large popular audience interested in books 
 and authors. I am deeply indebted to my 
 colleague in the editorship of the Bookman, 
 Mr. A. St. John Adcock, and other friends, for 
 their kindness in helping me to choose from 
 such a mass of material. Some pages are 
 included from contributions to the North 
 American Review, Blackwood 's Magazine, and 
 the Contemporary Review. 
 
 Hampstead, Nov. 1913.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. MEMORIES OF MEREDITH (i) . .1 
 
 II. MEMORIES OF MEREDITH (ii) . . . 9 
 
 - 
 
 III. THE SIX BEST BIOGRAPHIES . . .17 
 
 IV. THE CENTENARY OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1903) 26 
 V. THE SECRET OF EMERSON . . . .43 
 
 51 
 
 59 
 
 68 
 75 
 
 X. LETTERS OF SAMUEL BROWN TO GEORGE GILFILLAN 86 
 
 VI. WAS THACKERAY A CYNIC ? 
 
 VII. ' THEIR LIGHT ON TERESINA ' 
 
 VIII. THE CONVERSATION OF EDMUND BURKE 
 IX. PROFESSOR DAVID MASSON 
 
 XI. THAT THE BEST LETTERS ARE WRITTEN BY THE 
 
 MORTALLY WOUNDED . . . .97 
 
 XII. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SIMCOX . . .105 
 
 XIII. THE TROUBLES OF THE ESSAYIST . . .114 
 
 XIV. LORD ROSEBERY'S LITERARY METHOD . .121 
 XV. THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON . . .131 
 
 b ix
 
 x A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XVI. MEDICATED LITERATURE : JOHN BROWN AND 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES . . . 139 
 
 XVII. SIR WALTER BESANT .... 147 
 
 XVIII. GRAVY . . . . .156 
 
 XIX. JANE AUSTEN . . . .164 
 
 XX. THE ROMANCE OF A STILL LIFE, WITH A NOTE ON 
 
 JANE AUSTEN .... 172 
 
 XXI. EDWARD FITZGERALD AND BERNARD BARTON . 183 
 
 XXII. WHY DID SHAKESPEARE RETIRE TO STRATFORD- 
 ON-AVON ? . . . . . 192 
 
 XXIII. THE LETTERS OF CHARLES LEVER . .199 
 
 XXIV. DR. RICHARD GARNETT . . . 207 
 
 XXV. LEARNING TO READ . . . .216 
 
 XXVI. THE PLEASURES AND ADVANTAGES OF RE- 
 READING ..... 226 
 
 XXVII. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE . . 235 
 
 XXVIII. STRANGER THAN FICTION . . . 255 
 
 XXIX. THE TEXT OF POETS : A CORRECTION CORRECTED 264 
 
 XXX. FREDERICK GREENWOOD . . . 272 
 
 XXXI. ON THE TENDERNESS AND COURAGE OF JOHN 
 
 RUSKIN ..... 281 
 
 XXXII. GEORGE GISSING .... 288 

 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 xxxiii. mr. balfour's plea for cheerful books 
 
 the art of the reviewer — 
 xxxiv. (i) seven ways of reviewing 
 xxxv. (ii) on literary gossip and the eighth way 
 of reviewing 
 
 XXXVI. ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 / 
 
 XXXVIII. A NEW CRITIC — MR. JOHN BAILEY 
 XXXIX. THE NOVELIST'S LIFE . 
 
 XL. AN IDYLL OF OLD DEVONSHIRE 
 
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD — 
 XLI. (i) THE MAN AND HIS BOOKS . 
 XLII. (ii) THE EARLY LIFE OF MARK RUTHERFORD 
 XLIII. (iii) MARK RUTHERFORD AS A POLITICIAN 
 XLIV. (iv) MARK RUTHERFORD AS A CRITIC . 
 XLV. (v) THE SPIRITUAL HISTORY OF MARK RUTHER 
 FORD 
 
 
 
 XLVI. ROBERT BURNS 
 
 XLVII. HOME FROM THE HILL 
 
 XLVIII. THE ACACIAS OF LAUSANNE 
 
 INDEX 
 
 XI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 297 
 
 306 
 
 315 
 
 323 
 
 XXXVII. LAFCADIO HEARN : AN UNCONVENTIONAL LIFE 331 
 
 340 
 348 
 357 
 
 364 
 376 
 
 387 
 398 
 
 405 
 413 
 417 
 419 
 429
 
 MEMORIES OF MEREDITH (i) 
 
 The beginning of my love for Meredith was on this wise : 
 My father was a subscriber to a literary journal, long 
 dead, called the Critic. He had preserved many of the 
 old numbers, and I found them delightful reading. Some 
 of the most eager and generous spirits of the time were 
 contributors, and there was much about new poets and 
 reformers and the coming dawn, all written in the optimist 
 spirit of the early fifties. Mr. W. M. Rossetti reviewed in 
 the Critic Mr. Meredith's first book, the poems of 1851. 
 He had the wisdom to quote ' Love in the Valley,' which he 
 justly called a very charming, rhythmical, and melodious 
 poem. But Mr. Rossetti, if I remember rightly, thought 
 the heroine brainless. Since then a similar objection has 
 been brought against the ' May Queen.' It may frankly 
 be admitted that neither of the girls had been to Girton 
 nor could by any stretch of imagination be described as 
 American. Every boy finds out some lyrics which he takes 
 to his heart, and ' Love in the Valley ' was chosen by me, 
 along with Sydney Dobell's ' In the hall the coffin waits 
 and the idle armourer stands,' Alexander Smith's ' The 
 Garden and the Child,' and some of Tennyson's. Tennyson 
 read the lines in the Critic, and said he could not get 
 them out of his head, such was their magical music and 
 melody. The poem, in fact, has its sure place in the golden
 
 2 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 scriptures of love. It should be reprinted in its original 
 form, with the lines which Meredith added after 
 publication, but never gave to the public. There is a 
 copy of the 1851 book, interleaved with notes and cor- 
 rections and additions by the author, which ought to be 
 published in its completeness. 
 
 The 1851 volume did not miss its mark altogether, but 
 it had no such reception as Alexander Smith's poems 
 were accorded when they were published at the same time 
 in the Critic. In the fifties people bought poetry, but 
 they did not buy Meredith. Alexander Smith, as Lowell 
 said, was ' launched as I have seen boys launch their little 
 vessels, with so strong a push as to run wholly under 
 water.' With characteristic generosity and high-hearted - 
 ness, Meredith swelled the chorus of praise. He did so 
 though he saw his own little craft go down, while his 
 brother poet's were riding prosperously on. There is 
 evidence to show that the 1851 volume was much nearer 
 Meredith's heart than might be imagined. 
 
 From that day I watched every allusion to Meredith, 
 and took such means as were at my command to get hold of 
 his books. The 1851 volume escaped me, but I procured 
 for one and sixpence The Shaving of Shagpat, and also I 
 got Modern Love for two shillings. These books I studied 
 earnestly till I thought I understood them, and I am still 
 of opinion that whoever understands The Shaving of Shag- 
 pat, Modern Love, and Evan Harrington knows a great deal 
 of Meredith's inner mind. The Shaving of Shagpat had one 
 strong admirer at least. It used to be considered the main 
 business of critics to pursue with their little watering-pots 
 the prairie fire of popularity. They may do little, perhaps 
 they may even pour oil on the flame, but the fire burns
 
 MEMORIES OF MEREDITH 3 
 
 out in due time. There was no need for any one to attempt 
 staying the popularity of The Shaving of Shagpat, for it 
 had very little. George Eliot was at that time emerging 
 from the obscurity of a reviewer, and writing her first 
 story, The Sad Fortunes of Amos Barton. She compared 
 Shagpat to Beckford's Vathek, which Byron admired so 
 much, and said she had received more pleasure from The 
 Shaving of Shagpat than from its popular predecessor. 
 She thought George Meredith's book might have been called 
 ' The Thousand and Second Arabian Night.' Not that 
 it was an imitation. It was a worthy following which came 
 from genuine love and mental affinity. But George Eliot 
 acutely remarked that Meredith had no wish to study the 
 popular mood, and she was right, for the first edition of 
 Shagpat was sold as a remainder, and nine years elapsed 
 before a second edition was issued. 
 
 The next book of Meredith's I got hold of was Farina, a 
 book hideous in its outward appearance, and, on the whole, 
 disappointing in its contents. Then came Evan Harrington 
 and Richard Feverel. To say that I quite relished the 
 style of these books would be untrue, but Richard Feverel 
 amazed me. How that marvellous love story, with the 
 shine of the morning on its dewy pages, took no fewer 
 than nineteen years to get into a second edition is almost 
 inexplicable. Swinburne was the first man to write about 
 Meredith as he deserved to be written about. But I should 
 recall that Modern Love was warmly admired by Robert 
 Browning, who had a special care for the verses which gave 
 the book its title. It was slow work, however, to convince 
 the public. Even so late as 1879 that accomplished writer, 
 Miss Arabella Shore, had to say, ' It needs but some great 
 critic to place him even in popular recognition among the
 
 4 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 few great writers of the time.' In Aberdeen I found a 
 fellow admirer in William Minto. We often discussed him 
 and the obstacles to his popularity, and his astonishing 
 genius. We proposed a pilgrimage to Box Hill, and I took 
 my journey there one morning many years ago. I went 
 into a bookseller's shop, and asked if he had a photograph 
 of Meredith. A bright child in the shop turned round and 
 said, ' Why, you are speaking about my father.' By this 
 time Meredith was beginning to get a vogue. There is a 
 story of five men meeting and resolving that Meredith 
 should be boomed. These were Grant Allen, and Saints- 
 bury, and Minto, and Henley, and another unnamed. 
 The result of the gathering was that Meredith was boomed. 
 How nobly George Meredith demeaned himself through 
 all this ! He never whined, he never uttered even a 
 complaint. It is needless to say that he never lowered the 
 pitch of his writings. He did his very best, adding to the 
 permanent stories of literature one noble book after another 
 without for a moment stooping to the spirit of a hireling. 
 In fact, it might almost be said of him that he became so 
 used to standing alone that he moved away as the world 
 crept up to him, and went further into the wilderness. 
 His life was as noble and stainless and simple as his 
 books. No more august and majestic figure has been 
 seen among us. 
 
 We know from the volumes edited by his son the 
 main facts of Meredith's history. He was emphati- 
 cally a Surrey man. He lived at Weybridge, at Esher 
 in a cottage now thrown down, and at Box Hill for 
 many years. It is the scenery of Surrey that colours 
 all his writing. As Mr. Hardy has said, the man seems 
 still alive beside his green hill. He said once, in answer to
 
 MEMORIES OF MEREDITH 5 
 
 a question, that he thought the most beautiful plaee in 
 Surrey was Holmbury St. Mary, and that his favourite 
 flower was the pale iris. He was much in London at one 
 time, and he had occasional journeys abroad. But he liked 
 Surrey as William Blake liked it, and made it his dwelling- 
 place. 
 
 I had one or two chance meetings with George Meredith, 
 but never really saw and heard him till in the summer of 
 1895 he was the guest of the Omar Khayyam Club at the 
 Burford Bridge Hotel, close to his house. It was a very 
 warm July day, but the air had cooled by the time we 
 gathered in the charming garden of the hotel, which is the 
 most Italian scene in England. Many interesting men 
 were present. This was the first time I met Theodore 
 Watts-Dunton. Mr. Edmund Gosse brought Mr. Thomas 
 Hardy. Francis Hindes Groome was there, and had tra- 
 velled from Edinburgh to be present. Mr. E. T. Cook, 
 then editing the Westminster, and Mr. Cust, then editing 
 the Pall Mall Gazette ; Mr. Clement Shorter, then of the 
 Illustrated London News ; Mr. H. W. Massingham, then 
 of the Daily Chronicle ; Mr. Henry Norman, L. F. 
 Austin, and many more were present. I was par- 
 ticularly interested in meeting George Gissing, a man 
 who can never be known from his books, and from the 
 particulars of his life that have been published. Gissing 
 told me that his first book, The Unclassed, was read by 
 Meredith in his capacity of literary adviser to Messrs. 
 Chapman and Hall. Gissing was invited to meet the reader 
 in Chapman and Hall's offices, and talk over the work. 
 Gissing did not know the reader's name, but was amazed 
 at the extraordinary familiarity which he showed with all 
 the details of the story, using no paper. He went over
 
 6 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 these details, suggesting all kinds of alterations, and leav- 
 ing Gissing impressed with the conviction that he knew the 
 story far better than the writer did himself. By and by 
 Meredith came up and accosted Gissing with marked 
 graciousness and interest. We all felt that we were in a 
 noble and illustrious presence. None of the paintings and 
 photographs of Meredith do him justice. He had a finer 
 head than any of them presents to posterity, and the 
 serene and honoured evening of his life brought to his 
 features an expression of peace and geniality not fully 
 found in any likeness. He was even then somewhat 
 infirm, but moved with much stateliness, and spoke in a 
 loud and cordial voice. When we arranged ourselves for 
 dinner, Meredith found his way to the right hand of the 
 President, Mr. Edward Clodd, and it became evident that 
 something was in the wind. I have seldom been more 
 interested than in gazing upon Meredith and Hardy as 
 they sat near each other. Mr. Hardy's features gave the 
 impression of ' many thought -worn eves and morrows ' ; 
 Meredith looked as if he had met and mastered life. Two 
 such students of nature and of human nature have seldom 
 been together, and the conclusions to which they had come 
 as to the meaning of it all were as divergent as possible. 
 Our genial President, who was then, and remained to the 
 end, a most intimate friend of George Meredith, made a 
 singularly graceful and touching speech, the badinage of 
 which did not disguise its real feeling. He spoke of 
 Meredith's many claims to admiration and affection, of the 
 regard and honour in which he was held by his brother men 
 of letters, and of the capacity he had shown to understand 
 the East in his Shaving of Shagpat. This obviously 
 touched the great novelist, Avho said quite audibly, ' I had
 
 MEMORIES OF MEREDITH 7 
 
 forgotten that.' When Mr. Clodd concluded, Mr. Meredith 
 with a very good grace got up and said that this was the 
 first time he had ever made a speech. He spoke of Mr. 
 Clodd as ' the most amiable of hosts and the most dastardly 
 of deceivers,' and was evidently in excellent humour. 
 He went on to express his personal gratitude and goodwill 
 to every one there, and altogether made a perfect little 
 speech, exquisite in form and gracious in feeling. There- 
 after we had the scarcely smaller privilege of a speech from 
 Mr. Hardy. He expressed his gratitude to Mr. Meredith 
 for reading his first book, which he described as 'very 
 strange and wild.' Meredith here interrupted with the 
 word ' promising.' Mr. Hardy went on to say that if it 
 had not been for the encouragement he then received from 
 Mr. Meredith, he would probably never have adopted the 
 literary career. It was profoundly interesting to see these 
 two men, the most representative in the English literature 
 of their time, conversing together with the picturesque 
 window half covered with green for a background. After- 
 wards Meredith, in a few rich, strong words, expressed his 
 exalted estimate of Hardy's work. 
 
 But the most brilliant speech of that wonderful evening 
 was made by the late L. F. Austin. Austin lived the hard 
 life of a daily journalist. He showed many gifts as a 
 writer, but it was as a speaker that he excelled. That 
 evening he spoke of the gallery of women drawn by Mere- 
 dith and Hardy. Meredith saw that the highest charm of 
 woman is her womanhood, not her gifts, nor her beauty, 
 nor her virtues, but her womanhood. Who has given 
 us such a gallery of women as Meredith has ? Some 
 will prefer the wild sweetness of one, the purity as of fire 
 of another. And others of us will take as our heroine
 
 8 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Cecilia, that pure and proud lily with a heart of gold. 
 Austin had a wonderful way of combining with plenty of 
 humour and wit an occasional exaltation of mood, and he 
 held us hushed that night. Mr. Cust and Mr. Cook, who 
 had been talking amicably all the evening, then spoke, and 
 I remember Mr. Cust closed by parodying a verse of poor 
 John Davidson's, closing with something about 
 
 ' Maiden aunt to the North Pole, 
 And mother-in-law to the Equator.' 
 
 We were so entranced that those of us who wanted to get 
 back to London that night had to make a tremendous rush 
 for the railway station.
 
 II 
 
 MEMORIES OF MEREDITH (n) 
 
 On July 19, 1900, the members of the Whitefriars Club, 
 with many of their friends, had the rare pleasure and 
 honour of being the guests of George Meredith at Box Hill. 
 We lunched together in the hotel, and afterwards walked 
 to the little cottage up through the smooth gravel path, 
 and straight through the further garden, where the poet 
 sat waiting for us. Admirable was the easy tact with 
 which he managed to greet all the large and varied com- 
 pany of ladies and gentlemen. His quick eyes immediately 
 singled out any one who was in danger of being left out. I 
 think the visitors were impressed by his lofty and gracious 
 bearing. Equally were we struck by his conversation. 
 Every single sentence was pointed and scintillating and 
 characteristic. There was some little trouble in pro- 
 viding enough cups for all the invading party ; we had 
 been discussing some trouble then brewing in the East, 
 and Mr. Meredith exclaimed, with a bright look : ' I was 
 just telling you there were troubles in China.' I especially 
 admired the deep and courteous interest he took in the 
 different people who were presented to him. He showed 
 that he knew well even the fugitive and journalistic litera- 
 ture of his time. I remember he discussed with the author 
 a poem that had just appeared in one of the weekly papers.
 
 10 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 He seemed quite familiar with names and books which 
 might have seemed not important enough for him to notice. 
 A shy girl, overcome by the honour of actually beholding 
 the author of the wonderful books in their dark blue covers, 
 was beckoned by his imperious hand and told to sit next to 
 him. He graciously gave permission for the party to visit 
 the little summer-house where he wrote so many of his 
 books. The literary pilgrims were made to feel that they 
 were conferring an honour upon him by their presence. 
 The simple dignity of his life amidst some of the most 
 beautiful scenery in England, the magnificent way in which 
 he carried off his infirmity, his bright, glancing talk, and 
 the unwearied keenness of his mind left an ineffaceable 
 impression on all who came near him. Mr. Swinburne at 
 his own table and in his own house was a model of courtesy, 
 but he did not seem to show any special knowledge of his 
 guests. He took them as guests, and therefore entitled 
 to the best that he could give them. Meredith had all 
 Swinburne's courtesy, but he had the graceful and lovable 
 art of making the humblest author feel that he knew him 
 in his works, and was individually interested in him. 
 Swinburne was a great reader of the newspapers, and was 
 aware even of little things in contemporary literature, but 
 I fancy Meredith far surpassed him in this, and he had also 
 the art of recalling his knowledge, and the kindness to 
 use it. 
 
 My opportunities of direct conversation with the 
 illustrious writer were few, and I was indebted for 
 them to the kindness of friends. Mr. H. M. Hyndman 
 has written an account of Meredith which is in some 
 respects the best I have seen. There he says that when 
 Meredith talked with his intimate friends, nothing could
 
 MEMORIES OF MEREDITH 11 
 
 exceed the simplicity, charm, and depth of his conversa- 
 tion. ' It was perfect. Not a monologue, but a giving 
 forth in easy, flowing language of brilliant ideas, and 
 beautiful conceptions in response to those who were talk- 
 ing around him. But let even one man or woman he did 
 not know well come in, and he immediately enwrapped 
 himself in his garb of artificiality, and you heard at once 
 the clank of the machinery in the background. I have 
 known this occur with him time after time.' I have heard 
 that he would sometimes let his bright and glancing wit 
 play round one of his guests in a fashion so dazzling and 
 bewildering as to make that guest feel almost as if he were 
 a butt. The habit and the uniform intention of his life, 
 however, were of extreme courtesy. It seemed as if he talked 
 what might be printed without the alteration of a word. 
 So felicitous was his expression that one, while trying to 
 recollect a phrase, was apt to miss the next sentence. A 
 shorthand writer behind the screen in Meredith's company 
 would have accumulated a treasury of beautiful, wonderful, 
 immortal things. But no memory could have been equal 
 to the task, and therefore it is with much hesitation and 
 with full acknowledgment that only his thought is rendered 
 that I venture to put down a few things. 
 
 Once I heard him talk much about criticism. He laid 
 great stress on the fact that he had never replied to a 
 critic. Of this he seemed to be very proud. He owned 
 that he had felt the temptation strongly on more occasions 
 than one. He spoke of the sick feeling with which he read 
 Hutton's review of Modern Love in the Spectator. There 
 was compensation, however, in Swinburne's noble reply. 
 He was distinctly hurt by some remarks made about One 
 of Our Conquerors, and he defended a much-criticised
 
 12 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 phrase as being the exact expression of the truth — as im- 
 possible to express rightly in any other way. But if I am 
 not much mistaken, he afterwards altered the phrase. 
 Meredith was too great and too generous to resent adverse 
 criticism, provided it was honest. William Watson, the 
 poet, wrote an article in the National Review, in which, 
 from the classical standpoint, he severely criticised the 
 eccentricities of Meredith's style. But Meredith admired 
 Watson's work, and when Grant Allen lived at Dorking and 
 Watson was his guest, he invited the poet to dine with him 
 and showed him special favour. In fact, he often alluded 
 to the excellence of William Watson's poetry. Of course, 
 I need not say that Watson, in criticising Meredith, had 
 written like a gentleman. I fear, however, that there have 
 been some of our great men who have been known to act 
 less nobly in similar circumstances. 
 
 The most important thing I ever heard from him was 
 a panegyric of Tennyson. It was quite long, and full of 
 heart and enthusiasm. Tennyson sought Meredith out 
 after * Love in the Valley ' was printed in the Critic. If 
 I remember well, Meredith was then living at Esher. 
 George Gilfillan had printed in the Critic, under his signa- 
 ture of ' Apollodorus,' an attack on Tennyson which 
 moved the poet greatly. In reply to Meredith's praises, 
 as they trampled the heather together, Tennyson said, 
 time after time, ' But " Apollodorus " says I am not a 
 poet.' This story Meredith was fond of telling, for I have 
 had it given to me by two of his friends, and I heard it in 
 a shorter version myself. 
 
 It will be of interest if I mention the passages which 
 Meredith chose from Tennyson as his favourites. He 
 repeated them in his rich, deep voice with much inten-
 
 MEMORIES OF MEREDITH 13 
 
 sity of feeling. First he placed ' GEnone,' as we now 
 have it : 
 
 ' There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier 
 Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. 
 The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen, 
 Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, 
 And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 
 The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down 
 Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars 
 The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine 
 In cataract after cataract to the sea. 
 Behind the valley topmost Gargarus 
 Stands up and takes the morning ; but in front 
 The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal 
 Troas and Ilion's column 'd citadel. 
 The crown of Troas. 
 * * * * * 
 
 O mother, hear me yet before I die. 
 They came, they cut away my tallest pines, 
 My tall dark pines, that plumed the craggy ledge 
 High over the blue gorge, and all between 
 The snowy peak and snow-white cataract 
 Foster'd the callow eaglet — from beneath 
 Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn 
 The panther's roar came muffled, while I sat 
 Low in the valley. Never, never more 
 Shall lone CEnone see the morning mist 
 Sweep thro' them ; never see them overlaid 
 With narrow moonlit slips of silver cloud, 
 Between the loud stream and the trembling stars.' 
 
 The other passage he quoted was from * In Memoriam,' 
 and I shall never forget the vehement emphasis he laid on 
 the lines which I have italicised : 
 
 ' Be near me when my light is low, 
 
 When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick 
 And tingle ; and the heart is sick, 
 And all the wheels of Being slow.
 
 14 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Be near me when the sensuous frame 
 Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust ; 
 And Time, a maniac scattering dust, 
 
 And Life, a Fury slinging flame. 
 
 Be near me when my faith is dry, 
 And men the flies of latter spring, 
 That lay their eggs, and sting and sing 
 
 And weave their petty cells and die. 
 
 Be near me when I fade away, 
 
 To point the term of human strife, 
 
 And on the low dark verge of life 
 The twilight of eternal day.' 
 
 The last quotation led him to talk about personal 
 immortality. ' You believe in it ? ' he said. ' But for 
 my part I cannot conceive it. Which personality is it 
 which endures ? I was one man in youth and another 
 man in middle age.' He then moved his stick in the ground 
 and said, ' I have been this and this and this. Which is it 
 that is immortal ? ' I ventured to remind him of what 
 John Stuart Mill said about the persistence of the ego. He 
 said, with some vehemence, ' I do not feel it. I have never 
 felt it. I have never felt the unity of personality running 
 through my life. I have been ' — this with a smile — ' I 
 have been six different men : six at least. No,' he said, 
 4 1 cannot conceive personal immortality.' This is the 
 teaching of his writings, though I think there are hints in 
 them of ' a morn beyond mornings,' of something that 
 awaits us better than any of our reasonings — better even 
 than any of our dreams. 
 
 He was led to talk of Swinburne once, and smiled in a 
 deprecating way at some extravagances of denunciation 
 into which the poet had been betrayed. He had told us 
 that Swinburne was not to be judged by such things ; that
 
 MEMORIES OF MEREDITH 15 
 
 his nature was essentially kind and generous, and that he 
 had been misconceived. He spoke a few strong words, 
 which I cannot recall as he gave them, about Swinburne's 
 genius as a poet and his place among the immortals. 
 
 Here there is no harm in mentioning that on one occa- 
 sion, when Swinburne was in an unusually expansive 
 and communicative mood, I heard him speak freely of 
 Meredith. While affectionate and admiring in his refer- 
 ence, he was also critical. He said, ' I defended him in 
 1862, but I would not defend the style of his later books. 
 Browning was born with a stammer, but I fear Meredith 
 has cultivated his stammer.' He went on to say that he 
 had read the first draft of Meredith's Emilia in England, 
 and that it was written in pure, sweet, Thackerayan 
 English. But when it was published it became apparent 
 that Meredith had translated it into his own peculiar 
 language, and this Swinburne emphatically deprecated. 
 He summed up smilingly at length with the words : ' The 
 style is not of God, and it cannot last.' In fact, he spoke 
 precisely to the same effect as Mr. Hyndman has written : 
 ' He deliberately enshrouded himself in such an atmo- 
 sphere of artificiality in his writings that it is difficult even 
 for his admirers to feel the full effect of the powerful, and, 
 at bottom, sympathetic intelligence which lay behind the 
 cloud of enigma. He would not talk plainly to the world 
 at large. His defects in this respect grew with his growth 
 and became stronger with his age. . . . Refusing positively 
 from first to last to write for the public, taking as much 
 pains to cover up his real greatness of mind as most writers 
 do to express clearly all the lesser ability that is in them, he 
 nevertheless succeeded in making a deep mark on his day 
 and generation.' On the general question raised I express
 
 16 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 no opinion, but much might be said of that philosophy of 
 the comical which runs through all Meredith's works, and 
 which is best expressed in his own phrase, 4 thoughtful 
 laughter.' Much also might be said of the vesture of his 
 thoughts, of his extraordinary power of expressing the most 
 subtle and elusive emotions. Mr. Barrie put it in a homely 
 but effective way when he said that Meredith ' turned gas 
 upon everything.' His poetry has been mainly of the joy 
 of earth, and to some of us the most haunting and delicious 
 strain in all his music is ' The Woods of Westermain.' 
 
 It is time to bring these scattered notes to a close. I 
 shall not attempt to reproduce what I have heard Meredith 
 say about politics and politicians, and indeed I am not able 
 to reproduce his expression in almost any respect, though 
 I am sure I have given the substance of his views. I 
 heard him deliver one of his whole-souled eulogies of 
 Charles Dickens. He knew Dickens, and there was some 
 little misunderstanding between them when he contributed 
 Evan Harrington to Once a Week — Once a Week being a 
 rival to Dickens' All the Year Round. But here again no 
 thought of such things interfered with Meredith's admira- 
 tion. It seemed to me that Dickens and Tennyson 
 were his favourites among the Victorian writers. Mr. 
 Massingham, who saw Meredith much oftener than I did, 
 confirms me in the impression that the poet's thoughts in 
 later years and his talk turned very much upon death. 
 He was not afraid, but the problem seemed to be with 
 him. He met it in his gallant way, and when the end 
 came the watchers saw ' dead lips smiling at life as in 
 life they had smiled at death.'
 
 Ill 
 
 THE SIX BEST BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 Biography is my favourite form of reading, and I have 
 beside me in the room where I am writing at least four 
 thousand biographical works. Was it not Keble's father 
 who said, ' All sermons are good ' ? In the same manner 
 I might say all biographies are good. Never yet have I 
 seen a biography which did not contain something. But 
 great biographies are few from the nature of the case. Let 
 us clear the ground by specifying the necessary attributes 
 of a great biography. 
 
 (1) In the first place, the biography must deal with a 
 great man. A great man must be great in character as well 
 as in achievement. It is better — much better — that he 
 should be a good man, but it is not necessary. Napoleon 
 was not a good man, but he was certainly a great man. 
 Turner was a great artist, but in no sense great as a man. 
 He was a poor, sordid creature, and it is quite impossible 
 that under any circumstances a great biography could be 
 written about him. 
 
 (2) For a great biography there must be materials of a 
 special kind and value. It is impossible to write a great 
 biography of Homer or of Shakespeare. We know too 
 little. Materials there must be, in the form of letters or 
 diaries or records or recollections, before the great bio- 
 graphy can be written.
 
 18 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 (3) In the third place, a great biography must be the 
 work of "a man with the biographical faculty. I have 
 carefully abstained from saying that the writer of a great 
 biography must himself be great. It may be doubted 
 whether any really great writer has ever written a great 
 biography. But the biographical talent is special. The 
 true biographer must be able to handle his materials. 
 He must have the power of passing them through his mind 
 and transmuting them into a unity. He must know how 
 to complete the portrait, touch by touch. He must avoid 
 all that is irrelevant, and omit nothing that is relevant. 
 He must have an eye for the critical moments in life. He 
 must know the people who enter into the heart and the 
 thought and the action of his subject, and be able to 
 describe and discriminate their influence. He must also 
 be in possession of a good narrative style, and this means 
 that he must write with zest. The connecting passages 
 must be very carefully and skilfully done, even when the 
 material is of surpassing interest. 
 
 i 
 If these tests are adopted, certain conclusions will 
 follow. A good many years ago that indefatigable and 
 learned reader, Professor Saintsbury, gave a list of the great 
 biographies. He included the following books : 
 
 1. Lockhart's Scott. 
 
 2. Boswell's Johnson. 
 
 3. Moore's Byron. 
 
 4. Carlyle's Sterling. 
 
 5. Sir George Trevelyan's Macaulay. 
 
 I venture to think that two of these must be rejected. 
 Moore's Life of Byron is one. It is undoubtedly an en-
 
 
 THE SIX BEST BIOGRAPHIES 19 
 
 tertaining book, and, when the immense difficulties of the 
 task are considered, it must be admitted that Moore dis- 
 played considerable tact and skill. Dr. Richard Garnett 
 used to maintain that Moore was a great man of letters 
 who had never been sufficiently recognised. Professor 
 Saintsbury is of the same opinion, and it cannot be 
 questioned that Moore was ready and clever. But time 
 has judged him. Most of his verse is forgotten, and his 
 prose, with the exception of the Life of Byron, is dead. 
 Dr. Saintsbury and a few others may know his contribu- 
 tions to the Edinburgh Review, and his Epicurean, his 
 Life of Sheridan, and conceivably his translation (in part) 
 of Sallust. But this knowledge is confined to a few lonely 
 students. I could wish that Moore had written the Life of 
 Sydney Smith, as he meant to do ; but this purpose was 
 frustrated by death. Besides, Byron was not a great 
 man. Macaulay's judgment will never be reversed. He 
 was * a bad fellow, and horribly affected.' No doubt he 
 was an excellent letter-writer, but his letters have never 
 found their way to the general heart. 
 
 Nor should I admit the claims of Carlyle's Life of Sterling. 
 It is a wonderful book, the most pleasing of all Carlyle's 
 works. No praise could be too high for the general 
 management of the memoir, and the felicity of many 
 passages. But it deals with a hopelessly second-rate 
 man. Those who have read Julius Hare's Memoir and 
 the writings which follow it cannot but be amazed at 
 the impression Sterling produced. The banality of his 
 verses can hardly be imagined by those who have not 
 examined them. He was a tolerable critic, and a man of 
 undeniable personal charm. But when we have said 
 this we have said all. Carlyle could take some praising,
 
 20 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 but I think he would have smiled if any one had called 
 his Life of Sterling a great biographical classic. It is, how- 
 ever, infinitely superior to his Life of Schiller, a piece of 
 journeyman's work, and I read with amazement in a recent 
 book by a critic of authority a pronouncement in which 
 Carlyle's Lives of Schiller and Sterling were put on the same 
 level. 
 
 These tests would also exclude some special favourites 
 of mine. One of the most delightful biographies I possess 
 is the Life of George Crabbe, by his son. Artless in appear- 
 ance, it shows real artistry. It is full of that simplicity 
 which, according to Bailey, is ' nature's first step and the 
 last of art.' It was nature's first attempt probably in 
 this instance. Another biography which has never re- 
 ceived justice is Andrew Lang's Life of Lockhart. It 
 ought to be reprinted in an accessible form. Lang under- 
 stood Lockhart, and has written of him worthily and 
 nobly. 
 
 Among religious biographies there is Stanley's Life of 
 Arnold, and I should mention the Life of Principal Cairns, 
 by Professor MacEwen, and the Life of M'Cheyne, by 
 Andrew Bonar. A very high place is due to Dora Green- 
 well's Life of Lacordaire, and to the biography of Cardinal 
 Vaughan by Mr. J. Snead-Cox. The Lives of John Foster, 
 of David Brainerd, and of Henry Martyn are also of an 
 impressive and enduring quality. Many other names 
 might be added, but they are obviously ruled out by the 
 canons. There is, however, one exception at least. Pro- 
 fessor Saintsbury has done noble justice to Robert Southey, 
 and I am with him entirely when he praises the Lives of 
 Nelson, of Wesley, and of Cowper. Southey had all the 
 equipment for writing great biographies, but, fortunately
 
 THE SIX BEST BIOGRAPHIES 21 
 
 or unfortunately, the books are comparatively brief, and 
 for this reason they cannot be placed with the most splendid 
 achievements of the biographical art. Few events in the 
 history of English literature were more unfortunate than 
 Southey's early engrossment with Portugal. If he had 
 written on English subjects he could hardly have failed 
 to achieve an abiding masterpiece. Mrs. Oliphant might 
 have given us an enduring biography if it were not for the 
 intolerable diffuseness of her style. In Mr. P. G. Hamer- 
 ton's Modern Frenchmen, and in Dean Burgon's Twelve 
 Good Men, we have masterpieces in their kind. 
 
 ii 
 It is time I should give my own list, and here it is. I 
 have attempted to place the books in order of merit : 
 
 1. Boswell's Johnson. 
 
 2. Lockhart's Life of Scott. 
 
 3. Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte. 
 
 4. Trevelyan's Macaulay. 
 
 5. Froude's Carlyle. 
 
 6. Morley's Life of Gladstone. 
 
 A few words must be added in explanation of the choice. 
 Professor Saintsbury, almost alone among critics, so far 
 as I know, puts Lockhart above Boswell. ' I do not 
 myself pretend to rank in the most ardent section of 
 Boswellians. Full of delightful matter as the book is, it 
 seems to me a book rather for perpetual dips — dips which 
 should leave no part of it unexplored, but interrupted and 
 comparatively short — than for the long, steady swim which 
 the very greatest literary streams invite, sustain, and make
 
 22 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 delightful.' He thinks that Lockhart is the prince of all 
 biographers, past, present, and to come, and he has read 
 him often on successive evenings from beginning to end. 
 He has never succeeded in reading Boswell through on 
 the same plan. 
 
 There is no doubt something to be said for Dr. Saints- 
 bury's view. It is obvious that Boswell's book lacks 
 proportion. He knew Johnson only for part of his life. 
 For the rest, he collected laboriously and very successfully. 
 But it would be idle to pretend that his collections are of 
 equal value with his recollections. Nevertheless, each 
 man speaks for himself. I have read Boswell through on 
 successive days at least twenty times. I think I must 
 have read Lockhart's Scott in the same way at least half a 
 dozen times. While yielding to none in admiration of 
 Lockhart and of Scott, I have had much more pleasure 
 and more profit from my reading of Boswell's Johnson. 
 The characters of Johnson and Scott are priceless pos- 
 sessions of the human race. They stand out as heroes 
 among men of letters. But there is something — I do not 
 . know how to describe it — in Boswell that is not in Lockhart. 
 Perhaps we come nearest denning it when we say that 
 Boswell has unending gusto. Also, though in this case 
 comparisons are odious, the nature that shines out from 
 Boswell's pages is grander and nobler even than Scott's. 
 Macaulay, in his famous letter to Macvey Napier, and still 
 more Carlyle, in his essay on Scott, have said true words, 
 although I confess I can never read them without irrita- 
 tion. Nor is there in Scott's life the same richness and 
 depth of wisdom as that which abounds in Johnson. When 
 I open Boswell I feel as Aladdin did when he raised the 
 stone without any trouble and laid it by the side of him :
 
 THE SIX BEST BIOGRAPHIES 23 
 
 ' The trees of this garden were all full of the most extra- 
 ordinary fruit. Each tree bore a sort of a different colour. 
 Some were white, others sparkling and transparent, like 
 crystal ; some were red, and of different shades ; others 
 green, blue, violet ; some of a yellowish hue, in short, of 
 almost every colour. The white were pearls ; the spark- 
 ling and transparent were diamonds ; the deep red were 
 rubies, the paler, a particular sort of ruby, called balass ; 
 the green, emeralds ; the blue, turquoises ; the violet, 
 amethysts ; those tinged with yellow, sapphires ; in the 
 same way, all the other coloured fruits were varieties 
 of precious stones ; and the whole of them were of the 
 largest size, and more perfect than were ever seen in the 
 world.' 
 
 But I have no quarrel with anyone who prefers Lockhart 
 to Boswell. When the pathetic origins of Lockhart's 
 book are considered we can never sufficiently honour the 
 nobility of the author. He wrote the biography largely to 
 satisfy the demands of Scott's creditors. His heart must 
 have bled as he wrote down the details of the heroic and 
 tragic story. It is as if Scott had charged him, in the words 
 of the dying Hamlet : 
 
 ' If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, 
 Absent thee from felicity awhile, 
 And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain 
 To tell my story.' 
 
 Lockhart could not refuse, but when his task was 
 accomplished his achievement was practically at an end. 
 
 Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte is in many ways 
 the model for biographers. Only those who have handled 
 her materials — and I have done so — can appreciate the
 
 24 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 exquisite skill of her choice, of her ordering, and the in- 
 sight, deep and true, with which she has interpreted that 
 eventful inner history which made so little outward show. 
 
 Nor is it necessary to vindicate the place of Trevelyan's 
 Macaulay. It may be in parts somewhat stilted, but, 
 as the record of a joyous and shining pilgrimage, we have 
 hardly any book like it. Macaulay always wrote charac- 
 teristically. He was at his best in unstudied and hasty 
 letters to his sister. Every line from his pen ought to be 
 put in print. His affectionate, brilliant, varied, stead- 
 fast, earnest life has found a chronicler who can appreciate 
 its freshness, its exuberance, its picturesque and dramatic 
 forms. The biography will ever be the delight of all true 
 bookmen. They will read it to the end of time, and be 
 ' awed and touched by Macaulay's wonderful devotion to 
 literature.' I have found it a biography that bears a 
 yearly reading. 
 
 The last two books on my list are more doubtful. In the 
 controversy between Froude and Carlyle's representatives 
 my sympathies are entirely with the latter. Carlyle said 
 that it is the duty of every biographer ' to abstain from and 
 leave in oblivion much that is true.' Froude set himself 
 to the discrowning of the old king. ' I for myself,' he 
 wrote, ' conclude, though not till after long hesitation, 
 that there should be no reserve, and therefore I have 
 practised none.' 
 
 ' But thou, O thou that killest, hadst thou known, 
 O thou that stonest, hadst thou understood 
 The things belonging to thy peace and ours ! ' 
 
 But whatever may be said of Froude, Carlyle's own 
 letters remain, and I venture to predict that it is by his
 
 THE SIX BEST BIOGRAPHIES 25 
 
 letters and not by his books that Carlyle will ultimately 
 be remembered. When the letters are read apart from 
 Froude's editing and Interpretations, Carlyle will be more 
 fairly judged, and the true temper of his spirit, his cardinal 
 virtues, his genuine and important notes, will be acknow- 
 ledged. 
 
 Lord Morley's Life of Gladstone I have chosen as a 
 political biography. It is the life of a great man of affairs. 
 It is, so far as I remember, the only good political bio- 
 graphy in the English language. It is almost the only book 
 written about our own times which has any literary im- 
 portance, and we may be allowed to think that, on some 
 points at least, it records the verdict of the historian of the 
 future. Written with gravity, dignity, distinction, and 
 even with solemnity, it must be pronounced a great book.
 
 IV 
 
 THE CENTENARY OF RALPH WALDO 
 EMERSON (1903) 
 
 It is a hundred years since Emerson was born, and more 
 than twenty years since he died ; but, even now, the time 
 has not come for an estimate of his just place among the 
 literary and spiritual forces of the world. What we may 
 say is, that he gave the first distinctively American im- 
 pulse in literature, that he exercised an extraordinary 
 influence in stimulating without maddening, and that the 
 force he exerted has so far proved abiding. When Emerson 
 died about the same time as Darwin, it was recognised 
 everywhere that America and England had lost their most 
 potent intellectual forces and their most shining intellectual 
 glories. Emerson, however, was more than an intellectual 
 leader. He was, and is, the spiritual guide of many 
 thousands. It was recorded lately that the most re- 
 actionary and powerful of Russian statesmen kept always 
 on the table beside him the Essays of Emerson, and re- 
 ferred to them as an oracle. I can testify to the mighty 
 force with which he acted on the minds of young men in 
 Scotland early in the sixties. The absence of a copyright 
 convention between America and Great Britain had some 
 good effects. Many in the old country who could not 
 afford to buy the new books of Carlyle and Tennyson, were 
 able to purchase the innumerable cheap reprints of Lowell, 
 
 26
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 27 
 
 Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe 
 and others. Young men, now in middle life, knew these 
 authors from cover to cover, and lived by them. Very 
 recently, a shilling edition of Emerson's Essays was 
 published in England, and twenty thousand copies were 
 sold at once. It is well worth while to review this great 
 and distinctively American man of letters when the most 
 glowing prophecies of American ascendency in the world 
 are being fulfilled before our eyes. 
 
 i 
 
 There was an extraordinary unity and consistency in 
 Emerson's career. He struck the key-note of all his writ- 
 ing in his essay on ' Nature,' when he said : ' The foregoing 
 generations beheld God and nature face to face ; we, 
 through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an 
 original relation to the universe ? Why should not we 
 have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradi- 
 tion, and a religion by revelation to us and not the history 
 of theirs ? » 
 
 This was Emerson's watchword from the beginning to 
 the end. He did not disparage the past. Much of his 
 work was done in making his people familiar with the great 
 men, thoughts and deeds of other times and lands. His 
 ancestors were not only Puritan but clerical, and he derived 
 much from them. The Reverend Peter Bulkeley, Rector 
 of Odell on the Ouse, in the time of Laud, had Mr. Emerson 
 as his direct descendant. He was driven out of the country 
 by Laud for his Nonconformist practices, and in middle 
 life sold all his property and crossed the seas to New 
 England, and founded the town of Concord. He was
 
 28 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 pious to the very core, and, like Mr. Emerson, he was a 
 scholar. But with all his affection for the past, Emerson 
 was a man of the new time and the New World, and he did 
 what he could to throw an ideal radiance round his own 
 country. He began by recognising gladly the new facts 
 brought to light by investigation. Indeed, like Tennyson, 
 he anticipated them in a manner. His essay on ' Nature ' is 
 prefaced by the significant lines : 
 
 ' A subtle chain of countless rings 
 The next unto the farthest brings ; 
 The eye reads omens where it goes, 
 And speaks all languages the rose ; 
 And, striving to be man, the worm 
 Mounts through all the spires of form.' 
 
 It is true that 1830 was the year of the great debate on 
 fixity of type between Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, 
 but there were only few among poets and philosophers 
 who knew what had happened, though Goethe understood 
 it well. Long after, Kingsley's attitude towards the new 
 science was properly described as ' fearless and helpless.' 
 From the start, Emerson turned a fearless and joyful face 
 to every fresh discovery. Though not a scientific observer 
 himself, he asked why America should not have a poetry 
 and philosophy of nature. This attitude brought him the 
 tribute of men like Professor Tyndall, who wrote in his 
 copy of Nature, * Purchased by inspiration.' 
 
 But Emerson was loyal to all truth without loss of 
 reverence. He never abandoned his faith in the suprem- 
 acy of the divine in the world. This was a faith which 
 could watch without dismay, indeed with eager sympathy, 
 the progress of the intellect. For Emerson gave a mystic 
 baptism to science. Said Tyndall : ' Not only is Emerson's
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 29 
 
 religious sense entirely undaunted by the discoveries of 
 science, but all such discoveries he comprehends and 
 assimilates. By Emerson, scientific conceptions are con- 
 tinually transmuted into the finer forms and warmer hues 
 of an ideal world.' 
 
 It was fundamental with him that truth could be 
 comprehended by intuition. The principles of Tran- 
 scendentalism are to be felt as religious emotions, or grasped 
 by the imagination as a poetic whole. They are not to be 
 proved, neither are they to be set down in proportion as the 
 articles of a creed. The truth comes to us not when we are 
 critical, not when we are working, but when we are re- 
 ceptive and passive. The knowledge thus conveyed does 
 not require to be defined. Its foundation need not be 
 strengthened. If we enter the innermost temple of the 
 Absolute, as Emerson says we can, we shall know that we 
 have been there. To affirm the experience is our business. 
 To affirm it in words that adorn it, was the task to which 
 Emerson triumphantly addressed himself. 
 
 Bearing in mind Emerson's intense dislike of creeds in 
 this age of the world, we may state his ruling intuitions. 
 He affirmed the doctrine of the Over-Soul — that under the 
 changing phenomena and below the jarring strife of atoms 
 and men there lies a single First Cause ; an infinite, eternal 
 and perfect Substance ; a divine noumenon of which 
 earthly phenomena are manifestations. Nature and the 
 soul alike are informed by it, and they are governed by 
 the same laws. These laws are Progress and Righteous- 
 ness. The whole world is an omen of good. If humanity 
 places itself in right relations with God and nature, it must 
 be purified and elevated. The more complete the surrender, 
 the more perfect will be the peace. So long as man remains
 
 30 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 out of harmony with the Over-Soul, all things are hostile 
 and incomprehensible. Emerson declined to affirm the 
 personality of the Divine Substance, but he had no doubt 
 that the nature of things was kind and righteous. Every 
 soul was independent and self-determined, but bound to 
 submit its selfish instincts to the universal law and thus 
 become divine. When the soul opened itself to the Ideal, 
 and admitted the inflowing of the Over-Soul, there was a 
 tide of ecstasy — the human and the divine were merged. 
 Optimism was but the direct inference from these pro- 
 positions. Accepted frankly, they would result in a serene 
 belief in the nature of things and the hopefulness of man's 
 estate, and in a complete refusal to believe in the indiffer- 
 ence and cruelty of the sum of things. 
 
 The doctrine of Transcendentalism bored Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes and many others. It has been said that Holmes's 
 monograph on Emerson is ' The Natural History of the 
 Wood Thrush by a Canary Bird.' But it has been claimed 
 for Transcendentalism that it is no American idiosyncrasy, 
 no novel product of a virgin soil, but one of the oldest and 
 proudest of human philosophies. It has been followed 
 from its earliest records through Grecian speculation, 
 through Neoplatonism, through the despairing nobility of 
 Roman Stoicism, through mediaeval Mysticism, through the 
 mathematical arguments of Spinoza, through the orthodox 
 shapings of Swedenborg, to the extreme philosophies of 
 German Idealism. In Emerson, however, and in his true 
 followers, there are distinctive notes. The most remark- 
 able is the supremacy given to ethics, these ethics being 
 practically the ethics of Christianity. In debates still 
 carried on between ethical thinkers on practical questions, 
 Emerson's vote would have gone always with the
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 31 
 
 Christians. Emersonian, also, is the unfaltering and even 
 exalted optimism in which Emerson lived and died. It 
 will be seen that Transcendentalism has much in common 
 with Christianity, especially on the ethical side. But 
 from the Christianity of the Apostles and the Church it 
 is sharply separated by its denial of the supernatural. 
 The special claim of the Christian Religion is the claim to 
 finality. ' God . . . hath in these last days spoken to us 
 by his Son.' ' Once in the end of the world He appeared.' 
 These days are the last days. Christ is the last word of 
 God. But Emerson denies miracle and denies also the 
 finality of any book or any Redeemer. ' That the ad- 
 ministration of eternity is final, that the God of revelation 
 has seen cause to repent and botch up the ordinances of the 
 God of nature, I hold it not only irreverent but impious in 
 us to assume.' 
 
 To him all religions were alike imperfect and useful, and 
 the wise man keeps his mind open and receptive to every- 
 thing of good that floats by him from whatever source. It 
 is degrading to depend wholly on the past. ' If a man 
 claims to speak and know all God and carries you backward 
 to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another 
 country, in another world, believe him not.' 
 
 The fountain of inspiration was still flowing. The soul 
 that kept itself quiet and expectant would receive light. 
 So, better books than the Bible would be written, higher 
 characters than the Christ would appear. ' We, too, must 
 write bibles to unite the heavenly and the earthly worlds.' 
 There can be no final teacher. ' The man has never lived 
 who can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be en- 
 shrined in a person who shall set any barrier on one side 
 to this unbounded, unboundable empire.'
 
 32 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Christ was one of many gifted spirits with whom the 
 Over-Soul had direct communication. He was to be 
 reverenced, but one day he would be estimated and set 
 aside for another, while whatever was true in his words 
 and acts would continue to live. Nobler prophets than 
 Christ were yet to come in the eternal progress. Emerson 
 speaks with reticence about Christ, but we may gather 
 that he questioned the accuracy of the Gospel history 
 in many parts, not merely the miracles, but also the record 
 of the words. But even if criticism had accomplished its 
 task in separating between the false and the true, Emerson 
 would by no means have admitted that Christ was in- 
 fallible. He looked for another. 
 
 I think some stress ought to be laid on Emerson's 
 expectation of a Messiah. His attitude was almost Jewish. 
 A Messiah was due from God. He would probably be 
 an American Messiah. Americans must not miss him. 
 Where would the Messiah be found ? Emerson's study 
 had convinced him that the Messiah would appear among 
 the ' cranks,' so-called. ' None of the princes of this world 
 knew* So he was amazingly tolerant to men like Bronson 
 Alcott and Thoreau, women like Margaret Fuller and 
 experiments like Brook Farm. He viewed them with 
 an open and hopeful mind. The regeneration of the world, 
 in his judgment, would come from some modern seer. 
 And though he was keenly alive to the occasional 
 absurdities in The Dial and its contributors, he was 
 tolerant and more than tolerant. He would have smiled 
 at the lady who inquired at a lecture, ' Mr. Alcott, does 
 Omnipotence abnegate attribute ? ' It is difficult to 
 believe that he was not amused at the words with which 
 The Dial ended : ' Energise about the Hecatic sphere.'
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 83 
 
 But he was loyal for all that. No one valued Alcott so 
 highly. He would listen to him when the rest had fled. 
 Of Thoreau he said, ' Wherever there is knowledge, wher- 
 ever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty he will find 
 a home.' When Margaret Fuller died, he said, ' My 
 audience is gone.' He made haste to welcome Walt 
 Whitman, though it is said that his admiration of the poet 
 abated. There is nothing more striking in the correspond- 
 ence between Carlyle and Emerson than their respective 
 attitudes to the mild-eyed Buddhas who appeared from 
 time to time. Carlyle had no patience with men like 
 Alcott. Emerson saw all that Carlyle saw, but he saw 
 deeper and farther. There is no correspondence between 
 men of equal intellectual rank which shows so little in- 
 tellectual sympathy. In the end of the day, the difference 
 between Carlyle and Emerson was a difference of first 
 principles. Carlyle was so deeply imbued with a belief 
 in the depravity of the human race, that he ceased to have 
 hope. Emerson never weakened in his optimism, neither 
 was he discouraged by the appearance of many false 
 Messiahs. He looked upon them as the inevitable pre- 
 cursors of the true Christ. 
 
 It follows that he practically disclaimed all finality, save 
 for some foundation principles. There is nothing in his 
 writing of the intense dogmatism on doubtful matters 
 which has sent so many books on philosophy to the shelf. 
 Those who lived through the period when Huxley and 
 Tyndall seemed to dominate the intellectual world in 
 England, will remember the calm assumption that the 
 ways of thinking among scientific men in the latter part 
 of the nineteenth century would endure forever. Emerson 
 was always looking forward to the long future, and he
 
 34 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 knew very well that the centuries would bring innumerable 
 changes. He held fast, however, to the truth of intuition, 
 to the kindness and righteousness of the great First Cause. 
 There was a day when American thinkers became con- 
 cerned at Emerson's reliance on intuition. They com- 
 plained that he set it in the place of thought ; that he 
 imagined that culture could come without work ; that 
 one's own insight could be defended without regard to facts 
 and arguments. While they admitted that under the 
 hands of the master the instrument worked not ill, and 
 recalled Emerson's part in the great struggles of the time, 
 they considered that much of the feeble talk of their own 
 day and much of the lack of thorough, deliberate, careful, 
 exact investigation, was due to the laziness and flimsiness 
 of ill-instructed and slothful disciples. There is now no 
 need to fear for the future of scientific research in America, 
 and it may even seem as if the special work that Emerson 
 did in the enforcement of the spiritual is more needed and 
 more precious than ever before. Emerson warned us not 
 to expect from research what research could never give. 
 The world, he insisted, was too young, by some ages yet, 
 to form a creed. ' Far be from me the impatience which 
 cannot brook the supernatural and the vast. Far be from 
 me the lust of explaining away all that appeals to the 
 imagination and the great presentiments that haunt us. 
 Willingly I, too, say " Hail ! " to the unknown, awful 
 powers which transcend the ken of the understanding.' 
 
 ii 
 From Emerson's thought comes his style ; they cannot 
 be criticised apart. His friend, Bronson Alcott, in a
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 35 
 
 sketch of Emerson which shows true insight, says that his 
 is a poet's, not a logician's, power. ' He states, pictures, 
 and sketches, he does not reason.' His style is Runic, 
 Orphic, mystical, aphoristic. He was himself passionately 
 fond of condensation. Letter-writing he disliked as too 
 plain and familiar. He did not marshal his sentences or 
 order his thoughts to reach the desired end. One critic 
 says that he was a lapidary and not an architect ; another 
 complains that many of his pages are abracadabra. He is 
 severely condemned by Whately in his preface to Bacon's 
 Essays, for his manifold transgression of rules. We may 
 admit all this without the least compunction. He does 
 sometimes ' cast forth his ice-like morsels.' His utterances 
 must stand or fall by themselves ; they cannot be labelled 
 and placed in pigeon-holes. His qualities were excellently 
 denned by Carlyle, as ' brevity, simplicity, softness, homely 
 grace, with such a penetrating meaning, soft enough to 
 be irresistible, going down to the depths and up to the 
 heights, as silent electricity goes.' His phrases are 
 ' rammed with thoughts.' It has been pointed out how 
 he improved Tacitus by translating Praefulgebant eo ipso 
 quod non visebantur, into ' They glared through their 
 absences.' His was the power to turn a book into a page, 
 a page into a phrase, and a phrase into a word. 
 
 His high imagination and his noble thought were enough 
 to make his style peculiarly impressive and arresting, but 
 it owes its special characteristics to the fact that he did 
 not believe in system. He knew that the system-makers 
 die. Who will ever reprint the whole works of Sir William 
 Hamilton or John Stuart Mill ? Are the prose writings of 
 Matthew Arnold really alive ? Emerson had no wish to 
 found a school. He would not even accommodate himself
 
 86 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 to formulas. He would not narrow the play of his sym- 
 pathy and the range of his acitvity. Philosophers who 
 have a living power have won it by something which 
 transcends system and is much more vital than the theories 
 in which it is clothed. The world was too young for 
 system ; further, he was avowedly a pioneer. Though 
 books were pleasant companions to him, they were neither 
 counsellors nor intimates. No author was his master : he 
 relied on his intuitions. Though very original, he would 
 never have claimed originality, or tried to assert priority. 
 His readers come to watch his method with the same keen 
 delight with which his hearers watched it. Alcott tells us 
 how in lecturing he would halt at a new paragraph till he 
 contrived to find a key, unlock the drawer, pull it out and 
 display the treasure. 
 
 in 
 
 This immediately raises the question of his place as a 
 poet. It is one of the few questions on which the best 
 critical opinion is not perfectly unanimous, the others, 
 perhaps, being whether Lord Lytton was a great novelist 
 (' he is not a genius,' said Emerson), and whether Mrs. 
 Browning was a great poetess. Emerson's ambition was 
 to be a poet. He said himself, in 1835 : ' I am born a 
 poet, of a low class, without doubt, yet a poet. It is my 
 nature and my vocation. My singing, to be sure, is very 
 husky and for the most part in prose.' 
 
 There should be little difficulty in deciding that his 
 differentia was poetical, and in addition he aspired to verse, 
 because ' we may speak ideal truth in verse that we may 
 not in prose.' His prose passes often into high poetry and 
 even into poetical form. The fine lines,
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 37 
 
 ' I heard, or seemed to hear, the chiding sea 
 Say, " Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come ?" 
 
 were originally written in prose, without any thought of 
 their rhythmical character. His own view of expression 
 is instructive. * God does not himself speak prose, but 
 communicates with us by hints, omens, inferences, dark 
 resemblances in objects lying around us.' 
 
 He says, again, of poetry that : ' it teaches the enormous 
 force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, 
 checks loquacity. It requires a splendour of expression 
 which carries Avith it the proof of great thoughts. The 
 great poets are judged by the frame of mind they induce, 
 and to them, of all men, the severest criticism is due.' 
 
 Emerson's poetry has been criticised with sufficient 
 harshness. Matthew Arnold said that the whole body 
 of Emerson's verse was not worth Longfellow's little 
 poem ' The Bridge.' This indicated Arnold's limitations. 
 Another critic has ranked his poetry with Carlyle's few 
 rough verses, and has spoken of it as the attempt of a 
 seeress to induce in herself the ecstasy which will not 
 spontaneously visit her. But there is little doubt that 
 Emerson is a great and admirable poet, and that this will 
 be increasingly recognised. To compare his work with 
 that of modern English poets is unprofitable. His affinities, 
 as a poet, were Oriental rather than Western. No doubt 
 his poetry is at variance with the ruling canons, but it 
 remains, and they may not remain. He was a poet of the 
 future, showing in their poetic aspect the great generalisa- 
 tions of science. It must be allowed that he fails in the 
 constant felicity and certainty of expression which mark 
 the highest, but many of his stanzas and short pieces are
 
 38 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 perfect in their form, and no one has had completer inti- 
 macy with nature as the world of beauty and the world of 
 order. His most secret thoughts are expressed under the 
 veil of poetry. 
 
 IV 
 
 Emerson's pre-eminent sanity in the midst of cranks is 
 the main secret of his attraction. Many who cannot follow 
 his mysticism are drawn to him by that. He was, on one 
 side of him, one of the shrewdest and coolest of Americans. 
 From his works a book might easily be compiled on the 
 conduct of life, which hard-headed business men would 
 distribute among their employees. For example, what 
 could be more practical than his handling of every-day 
 difficulties in his essay on Power ? He takes the case of a 
 man hindered by lack of vital force. He tells him that he 
 must concentrate ; he must give mind, soul, heart and body 
 to business. Next, he must have recourse to the power of 
 use and routine. ' Six hours every day at the piano only 
 to give facility of touch, and six hours a day at painting 
 only to give command of the odious materials, oil, ochres 
 and brushes. The masters say that they know a master 
 in music only by seeing the pose of the hands on the keys — 
 — so difficult and vital an act is the command of the 
 instrument.' 
 
 He never praises the superficial success, the vulgar hero. 
 It would be impossible to exaggerate the stress he lays on 
 conduct, his patient appeal to the nobler imagination, his 
 constant setting forth of the eternal beauty of the Platonic 
 Ideal. ' The next age will behold God in the ethical laws. 
 The eternal creative and informing force is itself moral 
 and ideal. The moral life is not something into which we
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 39 
 
 drift. It is that whereto we are sent. The moral life is 
 the centre, the genesis and the commanding fact. Morality 
 then, is the conscious adoption of the Universal as the con- 
 trolling presence of the Universal in the individual.' 
 
 ' But love me then and only, when you know 
 Me for the channel of the rivers of God 
 From deep, ideal, fontal heavens that flow.' 
 
 He saw in the future a new church based on moral science. 
 It would be at first cold and naked — a babe in a manger 
 again. The church of men would come without shawms 
 or psaltery, or sackbut, but it would have heaven and earth 
 for its beams and rafters, science for symbol and illustra- 
 tion, and it would fast enough gather beauty, music, 
 pictures and poetry. When the mind of man was illumin- 
 ated, he would throw himself joyfully into the sublime 
 order and become with knowledge what the stones do by 
 structure. 
 
 Emerson has been highly and justly valued for the 
 singular insight of his literary judgment. Those who care 
 little for his Transcendentalism, and think that his chin is 
 in the air whenever he speaks of the greater religions, 
 recognise his royal and certain perception of character and 
 genius. Many of his sentences ring like oracles, as when he 
 says of Goethe, ' His affections help him like women em- 
 ployed by Cicero to worm out the secrets of conspirators ' ; 
 and when he says in his English Traits, ' The great men of 
 England are singularly ignorant of religion.' He is never 
 rude or scornful or arrogant. A native and inalienable 
 benignity characterises all his judgments, but to the moral 
 idea he is ever faithful. To him genius in man is the God- 
 head in distribution. Genius is religion, and all the great
 
 40 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 ages have been ages of faith. ' In the voice of genius I 
 hear invariably the moral tone, even when it is disowned 
 in words.' Of course he is sometimes in error, as when he 
 says that Shelley is never a poet though he is always 
 poetical in mind ; but his lapses are much less frequent than 
 those of Matthew Arnold. 
 
 I think it must be admitted that Emerson deliberately 
 shunned the darker aspects of life. He did not face the 
 problem of sin. He has little to say of sorrow, and is far 
 poorer in pathos than his friend Carlyle. Christians may 
 still claim that theirs is the only religion that has effectu- 
 ally measured its strength with sin, sorrow and death. 
 Emerson would have replied to this criticism that he was 
 not a system builder, and that he was not called on to deal 
 with every subject. Perhaps something more may be 
 said. The great griefs of his own life were those of bereave- 
 ment. His cries after the loss of wife and child, coming 
 from a nature so controlled and calm, are strangely memor- 
 able. Other troubles he did not seem to fear. Drudgery, 
 calamity and want, he said, were instructors in eloquence 
 and wisdom ; but he never forgot the loss of his little son, 
 and almost his last words were, ' Oh, that beautiful boy ! ' 
 
 In his last days, like Carlyle, he talked of meeting his 
 dear ones where there is no parting. The approximation 
 to Christianity indicated by such hopes is of the closest 
 kind, and is quite inconsistent with much that Emerson 
 and Carlyle steadfastly taught. As for immortality, he 
 refused to speak clearly. In his youth, writing to John 
 Sterling, then on his death-bed, he said : ' Each of us more 
 readily faces the issue alone than on account of his friend. 
 We find something dishonest in learning to live without 
 friends, while death wears a sublime aspect to each of us.'
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 41 
 
 Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, was in- 
 curious. It was so well that it was sure it would be well. 
 It directed no question to the Supreme Power. The teach- 
 ings of the High Spirit were abstemious and in regard to 
 particulars negative. But Emerson knew that the soul 
 might be well employed and yet not well, and that for 
 its deepest wound there is but one cure. 
 
 v 
 
 The man behind the books, in Emerson's case, was as 
 noble as the noblest of his words. There was no discrep- 
 ancy between his teaching and his character. From the 
 beginning to the end there is consistent witness to his 
 gracious spiritual charm, his regal suavity, his magnanim- 
 ity, his patience, his high strain of thought and feeling, 
 his obedience to the heavenly vision. His home life was 
 one of gentle and harmonious peace. ' He was,' said 
 Henry James, Senr., ' a liberal, divine presence in the 
 house.' Harriet Martineau said of him : ' His most 
 transient guests owe to him their experience of what the 
 highest grace of domestic manner may be.' Emerson was 
 nobly faithful to his convictions in the great conflict with 
 slavery. So early as 1844, when the temper of the 
 abolitionists was sufficiently fierce, and they refused even 
 to recognise half converts, they always acknowledged 
 Emerson as their own. In 1864 he wrote : ' I shall always 
 respect the war hereafter. The loss of life, the dreary 
 havoc of comfort and time, are overpaid by the vistas that 
 open to eternal life and eternal law, reconstructing and up- 
 lifting society.' 
 
 The author of Mark Rutherford tells us that, when
 
 42 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Emerson was last in England, he asked him who were his 
 chief friends in America. He replied : ' I find many 
 among the Quakers. I know one simple old lady, in 
 particular, whom I specially honour. She said to me, " I 
 cannot think what you find in me worth notice ! " Ah ! ' 
 continued Mr. Emerson, ' if she had said " yea " and the 
 whole world had thundered " nay " in her ear, she would 
 still have said " yea." ' 
 
 That was why Mr. Emerson honoured her
 
 THE SECRET OF EMERSON 
 
 The attempt to read between the lines is always precarious. 
 The results of such reading ought to be submitted with due 
 modesty, for the secrets of souls are hard to discover. I 
 am convinced, however, that many of our greatest teachers 
 have a doctrine for the initiated which may be called 
 esoteric, and a doctrine for the uninitiated which may be 
 called exoteric. The latter is intended to be understood, 
 and, as a rule, is plainly expressed. The former is for those 
 who understand, and it yields itself only to the most careful 
 and sympathetic study. Sometimes we surprise it when 
 we come upon letters and journals of the dead. Sometimes 
 it is not intended that we should surprise it ; that is, the 
 writer is so esoteric that he is content to be understood only 
 of himself and perhaps one other. For example, I am as 
 sure that Shakespeare shuffled his sonnets as if I had 
 caught him in the act. Who is to arrange them and inter- 
 pret them ? Nobody has done so as yet, but some real 
 progress has been made, and it is quite possible that the 
 key may be found which will yet open this lock. The 
 esoteric teaching of Browning is, I venture to think, not so 
 very hard to understand, and, indeed, certain of his inter- 
 preters have come very near it. But I am concerned here 
 with the esoteric teaching of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 I may be permitted a personal reminiscence. The
 
 44 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 foregoing article on Emerson's centenary was written for 
 the North American Review. In preparing it I thought I 
 could read with tolerable clearness the esoteric teaching 
 of Emerson and the experiences which lay behind it. 
 But, on the whole, it seemed better to lay that part of 
 the subject aside and to wait for corroboration. Such cor- 
 roboration has arrived in the handsome volumes pub- 
 lished by Messrs. Constable, and containing Emerson's 
 Journals, edited by his son, Edward Waldo Emerson, 
 and his grandson, Waldo Emerson Forbes ; and I propose 
 now to say something about Emerson's experience as 
 described by himself and his thinly veiled esoteric 
 teaching. 
 
 i 
 
 Emerson was a transcendentalist, but this does not 
 carry us very far. His accomplished biographer, Mr. 
 Cabot, said to me in Boston that no proper definition of 
 transcendentalism has been given. But there are certain 
 characteristics which cannot be mistaken. The tran- 
 scendentalists desire to call no man master. Emerson 
 said himself : ' The soul is impatient of masters and eager 
 for change. We touch and go and sip the foam of many 
 lives. We cloy of the honey of each peculiar greatness. 
 Every hero becomes a bore at last.' A writer in the New 
 York Nation aptly quotes a parallel in Margaret Fuller. 
 (By the way, a complete collection of Margaret Fuller's 
 writings is much to be desired. They are hard to come by.) 
 Margaret used to say that she could keep up no intimacy 
 with books. She loved a book dearly for a while, but 
 as soon as she began to look out a nice morocco cover for 
 her favourite, she was sure to take a disgust to it, to out-
 
 THE SECRET OF EMERSON 45 
 
 grow it. She had many masters in her time, but even the 
 greatest wearied her. For several years Shakespeare was 
 her very life ; then she gave him up. 
 
 I think it may also be said that the transcendentalists 
 greatly favoured self-controlled morality, which was, 
 generally speaking, of the Puritan type, simplicity in life, 
 the rule of the will over the emotions ; in short, temper- 
 ance and rigour in every form. This was particularly true 
 of Emerson himself, who set the world an example of 
 high thinking and plain living which must endure. But 
 so great was the restraint with which Emerson expressed 
 emotion that, when he came to this country as a young man, 
 many who had passionately admired his books were re- 
 pelled by his apparent coldness and distance. There are 
 still undiscerning readers who believe that he had little 
 or no passion. I observe that Dr. Braun, in his Margaret 
 Fuller and Goethe, says : ' Emerson was pre-eminently a 
 thinker. He places his greatest emphasis upon the in- 
 tellect. . . . His was chiefly a life of thought. . . . All 
 this was true, despite (sic) his intellectuality and dissent 
 from all traditional formal church creeds. He seldom 
 came into genuine heart-to-heart touch with his fellow- 
 beings, or experienced any real glow of the emotional 
 nature. This fact explains the severe criticisms which he 
 now and then hurled against Goethe.' Nothing could be 
 further from the truth than this. Emerson was a man 
 of vehement affections, so vehement that it took every 
 energy of his will to subdue their manifestations. 
 
 ii 
 But there is a certain apparent truth in the criticisms 
 of Dr. Braun and others. The doctrine of Emerson,
 
 46 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 which a careful reader will find in his books, and a reader 
 who is not very careful may easily miss or misinterpret, 
 is that the hazard of passionate love is too great for human 
 life. To risk the whole happiness of existence on a love 
 that may be chilled or withdrawn by death or time is a risk 
 too perilous for a frail and frangible human heart to run. 
 Emerson teaches us that love is great, but that love must 
 not be master. He knows and dreads the devastations 
 wrought by love. He has seen the burnt and bare wilder- 
 nesses which love made once to rejoice and blossom as 
 the rose, and he would whisper to the young and eager 
 heart : ' Love, but do not love too much. Do not bind 
 up your life and happiness with another life. Be controlled 
 in love as in all else. Friendship is safer a great deal than 
 love, and a friendship between those who are wedded is 
 more tranquil, more safe, than the ardour of a mastering 
 affection.' 
 
 I have no space to give more than a very few instances 
 from my proof texts, and for these I go to Emerson's 
 poems, a little book never to be opened without delight. 
 Take, for example, this : 
 
 ' Leave all for love ; 
 Yet, hear me, yet, 
 One word more thy heart behoved, 
 One pulse more of firm endeavour — 
 Keep thee to-day, 
 To-morrow, forever, 
 Free as an Arab 
 Of thy beloved. 
 
 Cling with life to the maid ; 
 But when the surprise, 
 First vague shadow of surmise, 
 Flits across her bosom young.
 
 THE SECRET OF EMERSON 47 
 
 Of a joy apart from thee, 
 
 Free be she, fancy free ; 
 
 Nor thou detain her vesture's hem, 
 
 Nor the palest rose she filing 
 
 From her summer diadem. 
 
 Though thou loved her as thyself, 
 
 As a self of purer clay, 
 
 Though her parting dims the day, 
 
 Stealing grace from all alive ; 
 
 Heartily know, 
 
 When half-gods go, 
 
 The gods arrive. 
 
 Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond, 
 Bound for the just, but not beyond.' 
 
 Take these lines, full of infinite meaning : 
 
 ' Space is ample, east and west, 
 But two cannot go abreast, 
 Cannot travel in it two : ' 
 
 He repeats himself in the lines : 
 
 ' Well and wisely said the Greek, 
 Be thou faithful, but not fond : 
 To the altar's foot thy fellow seek, — 
 The Furies wait beyond.' 
 
 His deeper heart speaks, however, in these lovely 
 stanzas : 
 
 ' If my darling should depart, 
 
 And search the skies for prouder friends, 
 God forbid my angry heart 
 
 In other love should seek amends. 
 
 When the blue horizon's hoop 
 
 Me a little pinches here, 
 Instant to my grave I stoop, 
 
 And go find thee in the sphere.'
 
 48 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Take the strange, almost inhuman, loneliness of this : 
 
 ' I have no brothers and no peers, 
 And the dearest interferes : 
 When I would spend a lonely day, 
 Sun and moon are in my way.' 
 
 I have purposely chosen passages which represent 
 Emerson as he was in his inmost thought and action, and 
 as he was in his desire. He desired to be a stoic and free. 
 He was, when the hour of bereavement came, more desolate 
 even than the rest. 
 
 in 
 We know this in part from his lasting sorrow over the 
 death of his little boy, who is made immortal in the grand 
 and tender ' Threnody.' But the journal shows us how he 
 passed through the death of his first wife, and with all 
 reverence I take leave to extract a few passages. Emerson's 
 wife — ' a bright revelation to me of the best nature of 
 woman ' — died of consumption at the early age of twenty- 
 one. This is the first entry : ' Chardon Street, February 
 13, 1831. Five days are wasted since Ellen went to heaven 
 to see, to know, to worship, to love, to intercede. . . . Re- 
 unite us, O Thou Father of our spirits. There is that which 
 passes away and never returns. This miserable apathy, 
 I know, may wear off. I almost fear when it will. Old 
 duties will present themselves with no more repulsive face. 
 I shall go again among my friends with a tranquil counten- 
 ance. Again I shall be amused. I shall stoop again to 
 little hopes and little fears, and forget the graveyard. 
 But will the dead be restored to me ? Will the eye that 
 was closed on Tuesday ever beam again in the fulness of 
 love on me ? Shall I ever again be able to connect the
 
 THE SECRET OF EMERSON 49 
 
 face of outward nature, the mists of the morn, the star of 
 eve, the flowers, and all poetry with the heart and life of an 
 enchanting friend ? No. There is one birth, and one 
 baptism, and one first love, and the affections cannot keep 
 their youth any more than men. 
 
 ' Her end was blessed, and a fit termination to such a 
 career. She prayed that God would speedily release her 
 from her body, and that she might not make this prayer 
 to be rid of her pains, " but because Thy favour is better 
 than life." " Take me, O God, to Thyself," was frequently 
 on her lips. Never anyone spake with greater simplicity 
 or cheerfulness of dying. She said, " I pray for sincerity, 
 and that I may not talk, but may realise what I say." 
 She did not think she had a wish to get well.' 
 
 Again : ' Boston, April 4. The dead do not return, 
 and sometimes we are negligent of their image. Not of 
 yours, Ellen. I know too well who is gone from me.' 
 
 June 15 : ' After a fortnight's wandering to the Green 
 Mountains and Lake Champlain, yet finding you, dear 
 Ellen, nowhere and yet everywhere, I come again to my 
 own place.' 
 
 July 6 : 
 
 ' And as the delicate snow 
 
 That latest fell, the thieving wind first takes, 
 So thou, dear wife, must go 
 
 As frail, as spotless as those new-fall'n flakes. 
 
 Let me not fear to die, 
 
 But let me live as well 
 As to win this mark of death from on high, 
 
 That I, with God and thee, clear heart, may dwell.' 
 
 July 21 : ' When I think of you, sweet friend, wife, 
 angel Ellen, on whom the spirit of knowledge and the spirit 
 
 D
 
 50 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 of hope were poured ill equal fulness, when I think of you, 
 I am sure we have not said everlasting farewells.' 
 
 Then he begins to take comfort, and there is page after 
 page in which he reasons with himself. But in November, 
 1831, he writes : ' May I not value my griefs, and store 
 them up ? I am imprisoned in the forms and uses of every 
 day, and cannot surrender myself to the sweet bitterness 
 of lamenting my beauty, my glory, the life of my life.' 
 
 Again : ' December 2. The day is sad, the night is 
 careful, the heart is weighed down with leads. What shall 
 he do who would belong to the universe, " and live with 
 living nature a pure, rejoicing thing " ? ' And he writes 
 again towards Christmas of 1831 : ' It will not do to in- 
 dulge myself. Philosopher or Christian, whatever faith 
 you teach, live by it.' And so we pass on through dis- 
 cussions on philosophy and war, on poverty and riches, on 
 the best kind of reading, till we come on the amazing, 
 blinding entry : ' March 29, 1832. I visited Ellen's tomb 
 and opened the coffin.' 
 
 Such was Emerson's stoicism ; such was the innocent 
 secret of his life.
 
 VI 
 
 WAS THACKERAY A CYNIC ? 
 
 Was Thackeray a cynic ? The answer to this question 
 must depend on the definition of the word cynic. Also, 
 the question is twofold. We must look for answer both to 
 his books and his life. It is probable that what an author 
 is in his books he is in his life, but the conclusion is not 
 stringent. 
 
 i 
 With the utmost deference to Lady Ritchie, and with a 
 frank admission of the difficulty in which she was placed 
 by her father's express wish, I still think it unfortunate 
 that the biography of Thackeray was not written by her 
 certain and accomplished hand. It is useless to attempt 
 the shrouding of a great literary figure in darkness and in 
 silence. Even when the man seeks and finds seclusion he 
 must be more or less visible and audible. Those who see 
 and hear him will write their impressions, and these im- 
 pressions may often be misleading. For Lady Ritchie's 
 prefaces we are all deeply grateful, but they are not an 
 entire and perfect substitute for the Memoirs she might 
 have written. However, we know a good deal about 
 Thackeray in one way or another. Lord Rosebery said 
 that in the life of a man of letters his work is the most 
 notable thing, and there is rarely much else to record. 
 
 51
 
 52 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 This may be, but it is impossible to sever completely the 
 work and the life. It is out of the life that the work grows, 
 and often we can interpret a book of genius with far more 
 assurance and rightness when we know what was happen- 
 ing to the author at the period during which he wrote it. 
 We can do so with Scott and Shelley, and Charlotte Bronte 
 — to take the first instances that come to my mind ; we 
 can do so with Charles Dickens, and perhaps we shall yet 
 be able to do it more fully. In the case of Thackeray there 
 is enough material in the way of biographical facts to help 
 us in understanding a view of life which was to the end 
 unaltered. 
 
 ii 
 It is practically certain that hi most instances the bent 
 of life is determined early. I think it is true that men 
 seldom become masters in any department of knowledge 
 unless they have learnt the rudiments of it in their youth. 
 This is the contention of Whit well El win. Taste in litera- 
 ture is acquired before twenty. The superstructure may 
 be carried to any extent in subsequent years, but the 
 foundations must have been laid early. Blomfield, Bishop 
 of London, said to the artist who was a candidate for 
 Orders, and who had not applied himself to the learned lan- 
 guages till he was twenty-five : ' Then your Greek is worth 
 nothing.' Is it not equally true that the earliest and 
 closest intimacies of life determine one's faith or unfaith 
 in God and man and woman ? The first experiences of 
 Thackeray were poignantly unfortunate. He was bom to 
 a good patrimony, and he lost it, and was obliged to adopt 
 literature as a profession. The money was lost partly 
 by gambling, and partly in newspaper speculations of the
 
 WAS THACKERAY A CYNIC ? 53 
 
 most foolish kind. He exchanged money for experience, 
 and the experience was very bitter. I have read that 
 there is nothing to pity in his early misfortunes. It has 
 been said that he had no valid cause for bitterness except 
 against his own folly, and it is true, no doubt, that his lot 
 was not exceptionally hard in his having to light an uphill 
 struggle. Most men have to do that, and are the better for 
 it. But Thackeray's was a nature that felt to the last pang 
 the humiliation of his labour. Trollope was inclined to 
 think that Thackeray's early struggles were good for him, 
 better than a sudden elevation to the height of success. 
 But here I venture to differ. It was not good for Thackeray 
 that he was compelled to write so much task work, and it 
 was not good for him that he should come in such close 
 contact with the baser forms of human character. He was 
 cheated, and he was snubbed, and he was impoverished, 
 and in this way a nature originally proud and sensitive 
 was permanently injured. 
 
 But, undoubtedly the great calamity of his life was the 
 breaking up of his home by the mental illness of his charm- 
 ing and true wife. She went on living after a fashion many 
 years after her husband was dead. It was in January 1894 
 that she passed away at the age of seventy-five. Thackeray 
 died in 1863 at the age of fifty-two. There is a whole 
 world of meaning in all this. 
 
 We are treading delicate ground, but the impression 
 left by what we know of young Thackeray is that he was 
 surrounded with a certain zone of chill. He did not find 
 what he might have found, although doubtless he found 
 much that was loveworthy, and acknowledged it. But 
 did he ever find an angel, or did he ever think he found an 
 angel ? The two questions are one. I do not think he
 
 54 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 did. Dickens, in spite of the sharp distresses of his boy- 
 hood, did not miss the angel. He found her in Mary 
 Hogarth, who died early, and to him she was consecrated 
 for evermore. Dickens in some ways was very hard. 
 When his parents discussed whether they would take him 
 away from the blacking business they were divided, and 
 Dickens records the division in terrible words : ' My father 
 said I should go back no more, and I should go to school. 
 I do not write resentfully or angrily, for I know how all 
 these things have worked together to make me what I 
 am. But I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I 
 never can forget that my mother was warm for my being 
 sent back.' He might have been more pitiful. He might 
 have remembered that his mother had other children who 
 knew the pinch of hunger. But the grand fact remains 
 that Dickens, in one case at least, saw the ideal realised, 
 and thus learned to believe implicitly in the existence of 
 perfect goodness among men and women. It was a belief 
 that brought no difficulties with it. It was a belief 
 that made his sarcasm so hilarious that we cannot help 
 feeling some kindness for its most sharply chastised 
 objects. 
 
 Thackeray, I think, had no experience of this kind to 
 carry him through. There was a lacerating sense of wrong, 
 of cheating, of lying, even of villainy. Nobler qualities 
 he saw in abundance, but to his mind they were always 
 more or less associated with weakness, and mostly with 
 weakness of the intellect. He went through life with these 
 convictions, and they are scored and underscored in his 
 books. 
 
 I believe that this makes all the difference in the 
 world to the mature view of life. To have known one
 
 WAS THACKERAY A CYNIC ? 55 
 
 saint or angel or hero makes the existence of others 
 credible. To have known none is to miss the best and 
 the truest. An old man said once to me : ' I have 
 never known any one better than myself, and I think 
 very little of myself.' Thackeray would not have adopted 
 this confession in its fulness, but it is not very remote 
 from his creed. 
 
 Along with this unfaith went a strange and beautiful 
 melancholy. To many this is the chief attraction of 
 Thackeray — the mild and tranquil sadness which he 
 awakens not by vulgar arts, the manner in which he in- 
 dicates rather than relates his sparing but sufficient choice 
 of particulars. All these infuse the higher and purer parts 
 of his books with an unfailing charm. Many to whom his 
 satire does not appeal are deeply moved by his true 
 and quiet tenderness. ' He understands the sacredness 
 of sorrow, and never rends away the veil from weeping 
 faces.' 
 
 in 
 
 Was he, then, a cynic in his writings ? Certainly not a 
 cynic in any proper sense of that word. The word cynic 
 may be variously defined. Dr. Johnson defines it ' of a 
 dog, currish.' That is not Thackeray. Another authority 
 says : ' When we call a man a cynic we mean that he is ill- 
 conditioned and snarling, that he makes savage response 
 to kind advances, that he refuses to believe good of any- 
 thing or anybody, and that though he is not necessarily 
 malicious if let alone, it is his pleasure and his determina- 
 tion to be let alone.' In that sense assuredly Thackeray 
 was no cynic, either in his books or in himself. He was 
 not a cynic delighting in the evil rather than in the good.
 
 56 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 He was not a cynic as Swift was, or Rochefoucauld, or 
 Lord Chesterfield. But can it well be denied that he was a 
 satirist of a severe type ? Can it well be denied that he 
 saw more clearly the shortcomings than the attainments of 
 the human heart ? 
 
 I cannot think so. Henley, who was not an enthusiastic 
 admirer of human nature, would have resented with much 
 bitterness the charge of being genial. He seems to be right 
 when he says : ' Esmond apart, there is scarce a man or 
 woman in Thackeray whom it is possible to love unre- 
 servedly or thoroughly respect. That gives the measure 
 of the man, and determines the quality of his influence. 
 He was the average clubman plus genius and style. And, 
 if there is any truth in the theorjr that it is the function of 
 art not to degrade, but to ennoble — not to dishearten, but 
 to encourage — not to deal with things ugly and paltry and 
 mean, but with great things, and beautiful and lofty — 
 then, it is argued, his example is one to deprecate and 
 condemn.' He speaks the mind of those who are smarting 
 under disillusion, mortification, defect, disappointment, 
 envy and malice. Vanity Fair we have admitted to be his 
 great book, and it is chiefly great as a satire. Think of 
 Miss Crawley, or Jim or Pitt Crawley, or George Osborne, 
 or Jos Sedley, or Becky, or Lord Steyne. Think of the 
 illustrations. No doubt Thackeray had a certain kindness 
 for Becky, and was proud of her. As he said himself : 
 ' The famous little Becky puppet has been pronounced to 
 be uncommonly flexible in the joints and lively on the wire.' 
 His insight into what is lovable in human nature is no doubt 
 very deep, but his attention is concentrated on its flaws 
 and blots, and though he can dwell on its disinterestedness, 
 its earnestness, its strength, its purity, its nobler and more
 
 WAS THACKERAY A CYNIC ? 57 
 
 spiritual features, it is not these that he lingers on most 
 lovingly. He has a way of cracking the mirror, or showing 
 some vein of silliness or weakness in characters which 
 we are fain to love with our whole hearts, like Colonel 
 Newcome. What did Charlotte Bronte mean when she 
 said, as she looked at Lawrence's portrait : ' And there 
 came up a lion out of Judah ' ? Shall we say with Hutton 
 that she thought of that animal transport of retributive 
 passion which the lion symbolises to the imagination, of a 
 generous nobility, and also a destructive fever, of almost 
 animal spite ? I do not know, but I think that Thackeray 
 is an author whom in moods of weakness and weariness one 
 does not lightly encounter. 
 
 In the passion of her enthusiasm for Vanity Fair — the 
 only work of Thackeray which she regarded with unre- 
 served admiration — Charlotte Bronte praised Thackeray 
 for his purity. She contrasted him with Fielding, and said 
 that Fielding was a vulture, while Thackeray was an eagle. 
 It is true that Thackeray wrote with much restraint. He 
 did not stoop on carrion. But was not Bagehot right when 
 he suggested that Thackeray continually came as near as 
 he dared to the border-line that separates the world which 
 may be described in books from the world which it is pro- 
 hibited so to describe ? ' No one,' says Walter Bagehot, 
 ' knows better than this accomplished artist where that line 
 is, and how curious are its windings and turns. The charge 
 against him is that he knows it but too well ; that with an 
 anxious care and a wistful eye he is ever approximating 
 to its edge, and hinting with subtle art how thoroughly 
 he is familiar with and how interesting he could make the 
 interdicted region on the other side. He never violates a 
 single conventional rule, but at the same time the shadow
 
 .58 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 of the immorality that is not seen is scarcely ever wanting 
 to his delineation of the society that is seen — every one may 
 perceive what is passing in his fancy.' 
 
 IV 
 
 The man himself was very noble. Lord Rosebery says 
 that he was beloved rather than popular, and this may be 
 true. But he was truly loved by many and by many whose 
 love was precious. ' We know of no death in the world 
 of letters,' said Dr. John Brown, ' since Macaulay's which 
 will make so many mourners — for he was a faithful friend.' 
 No one, we believe, will ever know the amount of true kind- 
 ness and help, given often at a time when kindness cost 
 much, to nameless, unheard of suffering. A man of spot- 
 less honour, of the strongest possible home affections, of 
 the most scrupulous truthfulness of observation and of 
 word, we may use of him his own words of his ' faithful 
 
 old pen ' : 
 
 ' Nor pass the words as idle phrases by ; 
 Stranger ! I never writ a flattery, 
 Nor signed the page that registered a lie.' 
 
 And to this I need only add the tribute of Tom Taylor 
 as our last thought of the humane and noble Thackeray : 
 
 ' He was a cynic ! By his life all wrought 
 
 Of generous acts, mild words, and gentle ways ; 
 His heart wide open to all kindly thought, 
 
 His hand so quick to give, his tongue to praise ! 
 He was a cynic ! You might read it writ 
 
 In that broad brow, crowned with its silver hair, 
 In those blue eyes, with childlike candour lit, 
 
 In that sweet smile his lips were wont to wear. 
 He was a cynic ! By the love that clung 
 
 About him from his children, friends, and kin ; 
 By the sharp pain light pen and gossip tongue 
 
 Wrought in him, chafing the soft heart within ! '
 
 VII 
 
 ' THEIR LIGHT ON TERESINA ' 
 
 Years ago, there was a picture shown in London to which 
 the artist gave the name ' Teresina.' It was a reminiscence 
 of a pensive, Tyrolese girl, passing along the narrow paths 
 of the ancient village burial-ground, with the memories of 
 the dead and the crosses over their graves crowding upon 
 her sight on every side. The fragrance of flowers was 
 loading the air in the broad sunlight, 
 
 e And pleasantly, yet mournfully, 
 The slanting sunbeams shed 
 Their light on Teresina 
 
 And the graveyard of the dead.' 
 
 The subject was full of suggestive poetry, which the artist 
 met more than halfway. 
 
 The picture and the verses came into my mind in read- 
 ing The Journal of Emily Shore. This I picked up at a 
 Tunbridge Wells bookshop from the sixpenny box. I 
 had never heard of the volume before, but I am glad 
 to have read it. It is entitled simply Journal of Emily 
 Shore, and it was published in 1891. It is the story of a 
 girl whose whole span of life did not complete twenty years, 
 and that life budded, blossomed, and faded in the close 
 shade of a quiet English country home. Emily Shore 
 kept the journal regularly for eight years of her teens, and 
 it ended only on her death. It closed in 1839, and the 
 
 59
 
 60 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 reader walks throughout in a graveyard not unvisited by 
 the sun, nor unconsoled by the Cross. Said one who 
 examined it : ' She (Emily Shore) will obtain favour with 
 those finer spirits who love what is delicate-textured, ex- 
 quisite, and unique in human shape, as cognoscenti love a 
 fine bronze, whereof the mould, after serving but once, 
 has been destroyed. She belongs to the order of beings of 
 whom Nature makes no replica.' Emily Shore went to no 
 college ; she passed no examination ; she learned from her 
 parents and for herself. Books attracted her much, and 
 nature even more. She was of a singular maturity even in 
 childhood, a keen observer, a catholic thinker, and the 
 mistress of a pure and simple style. Her father was a 
 clergyman who prepared young men for college, and de- 
 clined preferment because he could not subscribe to the 
 Thirty-Nine Articles. His daughter regarded him with a 
 devoted affection, which he seems to have deserved. 
 Emily Shore could draw very skilfully, and she wrote little 
 dramas very ingeniously, but perhaps the best of her is in 
 this journal. She died of consumption, and one thinks 
 often in turning over the record of her innocent and pure 
 life, of the French phrase which describes consumption as 
 ' the death of the elect.' Her nobleness and her tenderness 
 seemed to grow as the fell disease progressed, and the end 
 drew near. All over the book is the shadow. ' Teresina ' 
 is sometimes in the sunshine, but she walks in a church- 
 yard, herself stricken for death. 
 
 I should like to show the accomplishments of a young 
 lady seventy years ago. There might not have been many
 
 ' THEIR LIGHT ON TERES1NA ' 61 
 
 like Emily Shore, but it is quite clear that among her friends 
 there were some. Have we made a great deal of progress ? 
 She writes when she was but seventeen about her studies, 
 October 5, 1837 : ' I began regularly to-day the plan of 
 study I intend to pursue for some time. The books I am 
 reading are, Sketches of Venetian History, India, in the 
 Modem Traveller, and the History of the United States in 
 Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. In the morning, I am up 
 but a short time before breakfast, and am employed in my 
 room in reading the Bible till prayer-time. After break- 
 fast, while my own room is being put to rights, I sit in the 
 drawing-room, employed with the United States. I first 
 draw out (from the book) a short chronological abridg- 
 ment of my preceding day's lesson ; then I read a fresh 
 portion, of course with maps. Then I go and sit in 
 mamma's room, painting one or two maps, by way of 
 relaxing my mind sufficiently. Then I go to my own 
 room, and study chronology. This I do by means of my 
 tables of comparative chronology ; I carefully read through 
 a portion of one, and then learn by heart all the dates I 
 think it necessary to remember. This occupies me for 
 some time. Then I take up the Venetian History, doing 
 the same as with that of the United States. I then take up 
 the India. As yet I have not got further than the geo- 
 graphy, natural history, etc., so I do not yet abridge it. 
 In these readings of history, I make great use both of my 
 chronological tables and of the Society maps, which I take 
 in. All this occupies me till about two or three o'clock ; 
 till tea at eight, I am employed in taking exercise, in de- 
 sultory reading, in lying down, and in accidental occupa- 
 tions. After tea I read, in the Biographie Universelle, the 
 life or lives of one or more distinguished individuals
 
 62 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 mentioned in my English studies of the day, which both 
 keeps up my knowledge of French, and impresses the 
 history more strongly on my memory.' Immediately 
 after, she tells us that her desultory reading included 
 Shakespeare and Massinger and Ford. Then she says : ' I 
 find Herodotus (as I can read it quite easily) so very en- 
 tertaining. It is as easy to me, pretty nearly, as French, 
 only that I have every now and then to look out a word in 
 the dictionary ; and when once I take it up, I find it difficult 
 to lay it down again. Demosthenes is much harder work, 
 and requires close attention.' She found room in her heart 
 for the Bible and for Romeo and Juliet. Yet at the time 
 of all these studies she was writing : ' My cough is gradually 
 returning with the approach of winter, more than it did 
 last year. My short breath and palpitations of the heart 
 on moving or lying down are very annoying ; my heart 
 beats so loud at night that it is like the ticking of a clock. 
 I am subject, too, to pains in the chest and side ; and alto- 
 gether I am very weak and out of health. I feel as if I 
 should never recover the strength of body and unwearied 
 vigour and activity of mind I once possessed. God's 
 will be done, it is meant for the best, though so early in life, 
 when I have but just quitted childhood ; it is a pain- 
 ful prospect, and a severe trial both in endurance and 
 anticipation.' 
 
 This marvellous girl had the keenest critical faculty, as 
 is shown by her remarks on Timon of Athens. ' I am ill 
 qualified, I know, to pass any opinion on the matter, but if 
 I were to give one, I should say that it was not the work 
 of Shakespeare. Not but that I admire it exceedingly, 
 and think it a noble play, but it seems to me that the style 
 and language are not those of the author of Hamlet. The
 
 ' THEIR LIGHT ON TERESINA ' 63 
 
 poetical descriptions, many of which are exceedingly 
 beautiful, seem to me to be written differently ; the choice 
 of words, the construction of the sentences, the cast of 
 ideas, are peculiar; the tone of the dialogues between 
 Timon and Apemantus, in particular, is not like that which 
 pervades most of Shakespeare's scenes. . . .' 
 
 Another proof of the justness of her taste is that she 
 detected the genius of Tennyson from the extracts given 
 in an article in the Quarterly, intended to turn him into 
 ridicule. ' These lines,' she said, quoting the verses, 
 
 • And through clamp holts, new flushed with May, 
 Ring sudden laughters of the jay,' 
 
 1 I am sure are good.' She praised also (though that, too, 
 was laughed at) the image of the river, 
 
 ' Which in the middle of the green salt sea, 
 Keeps its blue waters fresh for many a mile.' 
 
 A writer whom she greatly admired was John Foster. 
 
 ii 
 She had some friends who are still remembered, and she 
 characterised them kindly but acutely. Winthrop Mack- 
 worth Praed, the distinguished poet and politician, was her 
 father's first cousin. She describes him thus : ' He is a 
 very clever and very agreeable man, about thirty-five 
 years old, as thin as a lath, and almost ghastly in counten- 
 ance ; his pallid forehead, haggard features, and the quick 
 glances of his bright blue eyes are all indications, I fear, of 
 fatal disease. He seems, alas ! sinking into a consump- 
 tion, which his Parliamentary exertions are too likely 
 to hurry forward, if, indeed, he be not in one already. The
 
 64 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 profile of Winthrop's face is very like that of Lord Byron, 
 and at times there is a sort of wildness in his look, but the 
 usual expression of his countenance is remarkably sweet.' 
 Praed, I may say, was always delicate. He read classics 
 with Macaulay at Cambridge, and at the Union debates 
 generally took the Radical side in opposition to his teacher. 
 Afterwards, however, he became a Conservative. He died 
 in 1839, two years after Emily Shore met him, leaving 
 poems, which are still in circulation. They show much 
 grace and delicacy, and one of them, at least, ' The Red 
 Fisherman,' shows something more. Emily also met on 
 one occasion the formidable father of Elizabeth Barrett 
 Browning. She writes in 1838, when she was on a voyage 
 to Madeira, where she died : ' Captain Jones soon after 
 walked into the dining-cabin where we were sitting, and 
 said, " Mrs. Shore, here is a gentleman who declares he 
 knows you." With these words he produced Mr. Barrett, 
 who was going as far as Gravesend, and who, as we were 
 before aware, had known, or at least had met, mamma 
 when she was a girl at Casterton. He shook hands with us 
 most cordially, and very much pleased us with his frank, 
 good-natured countenance. He resembles the portrait of 
 Porson ; and we all stared when Captain Jones said, " Now 
 would you believe it, he had the assurance to tell me the 
 other day that he was turned fifty ? ' In fact he looks 
 little more than thirty.' 
 
 in 
 
 There was a little love idyll in Emily Shore's short life. 
 
 The pretty, pathetic incidents of the story are told with 
 
 great reserve. What she had to reveal of actual incident 
 
 she told only to her mother, and of her own feelings she
 
 ' THEIR LIGHT ON TERESINA ' 65 
 
 never spoke even to her, except in a few slight words on 
 her deathbed. What she had to give in return for love, 
 who can say ? 
 
 ' It was scarcely her time to love ; beside 
 Her life had many a hope and aim.' 
 
 And in truth her heart was almost as full as it could 
 hold with her strong love for her parents. However, we 
 read that ' In the evening we met Mr. Henry Warren, who 
 frequently walks over from Torquay. I was very much 
 pleased with what I saw of him ; he is decidedly a great 
 improvement on the race of young men of the present day. 
 He is a handsome young man of three-and-twenty, dark 
 and sunburnt, with curly black hair.' This was a good 
 beginning, and it went on : * Mr. W. and I had a great deal 
 of very interesting conversation, chiefly about poetry and 
 natural scenery.' ' Mr. H. W. spread his handkerchief for 
 me to sit on, and good naturedly held my parasol over me 
 while I sketched. We returned to Torquay. It was a 
 sweet evening, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Mr. W. 
 and I were behind as before, Maria and R. going on much 
 faster. We conversed as before on all sorts of subjects, 
 and I was quite sorry when the journey was at an end.' 
 ' We took up Mr. Henry Warren into the fly at a little 
 distance from Torquay, he having walked on before. I 
 enjoyed conversing with him very much. He talked a 
 great deal about his intended journey to Switzerland, 
 which he means to begin next week. He was continually 
 saying how he longed to have me with him, that we might 
 climb the mountains and enjoy the lovely scenery together. 
 He says that he shall be quite alone, with nobody to talk 
 to who can understand his feelings. He means to corre- 
 
 E
 
 66 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 spond with Richard. " I must not write to you" he said 
 to me, " so I shall write to your brother." He then begged 
 me to write to him just three lines in a postscript to 
 Richard's answers, saying he should value them so much ; 
 but this I am afraid I cannot do.' Then : ' Mr. W. wished 
 me very much to net him a silk purse. I promised to do 
 so if I had time before he went ; but now finding that I 
 shall not, having many other things to do, I purpose making 
 him instead several marks for books, of coloured and gilt 
 paper, which will be useful to him in his studies, and will 
 not take me much time in making.' Then : ' He wishes 
 me to send him information on literary subjects, the names 
 of books which I should wish him to read, and the best 
 course of study for him to adopt. He also begged me to 
 write out for him some of my favourite little poems, which 
 I know by heart, that he may learn them too.' ' I imagine 
 he speaks more confidentially to me than to any one else ; 
 he says he has told no one so much about himself, his feel- 
 ings, views and wishes.' The editor tells us that this idyll 
 was stopped with much suffering to at least one of the 
 parties, and some painful correspondence, by paternal 
 prudence. But the name recurs, though at length the 
 shadow of the nearing end fell upon everything. She went 
 to Madeira, which was then a resort of consumptives, but 
 in vain. The last entries of the journal are May 18 : 
 ' On the 4th of April I broke a blood-vessel, and am now 
 dying of consumption, in great suffering, and may not live 
 many weeks. God be merciful to me a sinner. 
 
 ' God be praised for giving me such excellent parents. 
 They are more than any wishes could desire, or than any 
 words can sufficiently praise. Their presence is like sun- 
 shine to my illness.
 
 'THEIR LIGHT ON TERESINA' 67 
 
 ' I have suffered much with lying long, and have just 
 been put on our hydrostatic bed. Relief wonderful. My 
 portrait has just been taken ; they say excellent. 
 
 ' I linger on in the same way, and do not yet sink. Alas ! 
 I can never see Richard again. 
 
 ' I feel weaker every morning and I suppose I am be- 
 ginning to sink ; still I can at times take up my pen. I 
 have had my long black hair cut off. Dear papa wears a 
 chain made from it. Mamma will have one too.' The 
 portrait was taken by a young artist, and one can see that 
 the sweet, wasted face, which is the frontispiece of the book, 
 was a true likeness. The masses of hair which she had for 
 weeks during her illness persisted in dressing for herself, 
 are cut off, and make her face look like a child's. The 
 eyes are bright and gentle, and the geranium colour is 
 fixed upon the cheek. She was nineteen years old when she 
 died.
 
 VIII 
 
 THE CONVERSATION OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 Judging by the testimony of his contemporaries, Edmund 
 Burke was one of the very few men who should have had a 
 Boswell. When we revel in the rich feast of Boswell's 
 Johnson we are tempted to forget that the book is as much 
 the work of Johnson as it is the work of Boswell. The 
 Boswell method applied in other directions would pro- 
 bably have failed simply because there are few indeed 
 whose stream of conversation is so full and various as to 
 justify a continual record. One may imagine that if 
 Macaulay had had a Boswell the excellent biography of 
 Sir George Trevelyan would have been surpassed. If 
 any one had been capable of writing down the talk of 
 George Meredith there would have been something for 
 posterity to ponder ; the phrasing would have been as 
 striking at least as the thought. Burke unquestionably 
 was a very prince among talkers, and fortunately I am 
 able to give some specimens of his sayings from a book very 
 little known. 
 
 Before doing so I may mention certain references in 
 Boswell. In 1772, when Johnson was sixty-three, he 
 argued that people who disagree on a capital point can 
 live in friendship together by avoiding that point. * Why, 
 
 68
 
 THE CONVERSATION OF EDMUND BURKE 69 
 
 sir, you must shun the subject as to which you disagree. 
 For instance, I can live very well with Burke : I love his 
 knowledge, his genius, his diffusion, and affluence of con- 
 versation ; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham 
 party.' Boswell himself dissented from Johnson's view 
 that Burke had no wit. Johnson allowed him great variety 
 of knowledge, store of imagery, and copiousness of language, 
 but he refused to say that he ever made a good joke. 
 ' What I most envy Burke for, is his constantly being the 
 same. He is never what we call hum-drum ; never un- 
 willing to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off.' Boswell 
 said, ' Yet he can listen.' ' No,' said Johnson, ' I cannot 
 say he is good at that. So desirous is he to talk, that, 
 if one is speaking at this end of the table, he '11 speak to 
 somebody at the other end. Burke, sir, is such a man, 
 that if you met him for the first time in the street where you 
 were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped 
 aside to take shelter but for five minutes, he 'd talk to you 
 in such a manner, that, when you parted, you would say, 
 this is an extraordinary man. Now, you may be long 
 enough with me, without finding anything extraordinary.' 
 Boswell was of opinion that Burke had true wit, and 
 gave certain examples, admitting that they failed to do 
 full justice to Burke's lively and brilliant fancies. He 
 thought that wit was one of the many talents which Burke 
 possessed, talents so various and extraordinary that it 
 was very difficult to ascertain precisely the rank and 
 value of each. 
 
 Again, Johnson said in 1780 that men might be very 
 eminent in a profession without our perceiving any par- 
 ticular power of mind in them in conversation. ' It seems 
 strange that a man should see so far to the right, who sees
 
 70 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 so short a way to the left. Burke is the only man whose 
 common conversation corresponds with the general fame 
 which he has in the world. Take up whatever topic you 
 please, he is ready to meet you.' Sometimes Dr. Johnson 
 was a little grudging. He said of Burke on one occasion 
 that he was not so agreeable as the variety of his know- 
 ledge would otherwise make him, because he talked partly 
 from ostentation. Yet he remarked later on : ' Burke's 
 talk is the ebullition of his mind ; he does not talk from a 
 desire of distinction, but because his mind is full.' 
 
 After all, I have not been able to find many first-rate 
 examples of Burke's talk in Boswell. The best was 
 perhaps his characterisation of Croft's Life of Dr. Young 
 in the Lives of the Poets. This was revised by Dr. Johnson, 
 who thought it too long. Boswell considered that it had 
 no small share of merit, and displayed a pretty successful 
 imitation of Johnson's style. When he mentioned this to 
 Burke he opposed the judgment vehemently, exclaiming : 
 ' No, no, it is not a good imitation of Johnson ; it has all 
 his pomp without his force ; it has all the nodosities of the 
 oak without its strength.' This was an image so happy, 
 that one might have thought he would have been satisfied 
 with it ; but he was not. And setting his mind again to 
 work, he added, with exquisite felicity, ' It has all the con- 
 tortions of the Sibyl, without the inspiration.' 
 
 I like also Goldsmith's saying when Boswell was enlarg- 
 ing about Johnson's wonderful abilities. He exclaimed, 
 ' Is he like Burke, who winds into a subject like a serpent ? ' 
 ' But,' said Boswell, with exquisite fatuity, ' Johnson is the 
 Hercules who strangled serpents in his cradle.'
 
 THE CONVERSATION OF EDMUND BURKE 71 
 
 ii 
 
 To this I may add some illustrations from a little book, 
 Extracts from Mr. Burke's Table Talk at Crewe Hall, written 
 down by Mrs. Crewe, and printed for private circulation in 
 1863. It was a contribution by the late Lord Houghton 
 to the Miscellanies of the Philobiblion Society. Mrs. Crewe 
 was an intimate friend of Burke. She was cultured and 
 appreciative, and she made notes of Burke's talk when he 
 was a visitor at Crewe Hall. Talking of conversation Burke 
 remarked : ' Dull prosers are preferable to dull jokers. 
 The first require only passive acquiescence ; but the last 
 harass the spirits and check their spontaneous action. 
 Common sense should be paid more respect to than un- 
 common sense, which can seldom improve the happiness of 
 human life. Clumsy satire, such as of late has been called 
 quizzing, ought to be discouraged by leaders in fashions, 
 as it tends to produce equality of mind, quite dangerous to 
 the understanding, which should early be taught respect 
 for truth even in trifles, subordination of mind being as 
 necessary as subordination of rank.' He went on : ' Great 
 disgust at the pedantry of the last age in some of the higher 
 classes produced at last an insipid languor in conversation 
 very distressing now to general society, and very apt to 
 check all social intercourse of mind and goodwill amongst 
 young contemporaries.' 
 
 He had a high opinion of anecdotes in conversation, as 
 is shown by the following : ' Mr. Burke, however, was 
 sometimes heard to say that the extreme of rattling (as it 
 was called) often produced much barrenness in discourse, 
 and that the Irish might be said frequently to hold con- 
 versations below the par of their understandings. Vulgar-
 
 72 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 ness and illiberality of mind infinitely more odious than 
 vulgarness in language or style. He wished that more in- 
 dulgence should be bestowed upon story-tellers than is 
 common now. A story to be good, said he, should be a 
 little long sometimes, and it is bad policy to reject the 
 stories of many men, because they may have talent for 
 narration and nothing else ; and, in general, when a man 
 offers you his story, it is the best part of his conversation 
 he has to give you.' 
 
 Speaking of Fox's attachment to France, he said : ' Yes, 
 his attachment has been great and long ; for, like a cat, he 
 has continued faithful to the house after the family has left 
 it.' On its being remarked that no persons held together 
 for any long continuance who called themselves democrats, 
 taking the fact at once for granted, he replied, ' Birds of 
 prey are not gregarious.' He said that Mr. Windham 
 * often reminded him of Eddystone lighthouse dashed at 
 by waves, but continuing steadily to give light to sur- 
 rounding objects.' 
 
 Mrs. Crewe also tells us that Burke was a great admirer 
 of Swift's humour, particularly of his letters to Stella, 
 ' which he praised for their genuine graceful ease ; but on 
 some friends observing that many who had cheerful minds, 
 and much taste for humour, could not relish their playful 
 epistles in early life, but had grown to like them afterwards, 
 he said, Early life had generally a serious turn — that it 
 was in youth the reasoning powers were strongest, though 
 the stock was too small to make any show with. That the 
 imagination became strongest after youth, and that the 
 best poetry which men wrote was when they were advanced 
 in life — that imagination, however ready it was to come 
 forward, could not be exercised without a stock of know-
 
 THE CONVERSATION OF EDMUND BURKE 73 
 
 ledge, and that the active faculties of man were at first 
 employed in selecting and rejecting materials for that 
 stock. Referring to the practice of riding, he thought that 
 lounging rides on horseback had been of late one of the 
 great checks to economy in all families among the gentry. 
 Very few younger brothers, said he, are able to keep two 
 horses, and two horses must be kept when they are in the 
 habit of riding every day ; and if they are neat and elegant 
 in their ideas (as all gentlemen ought to be), this expense 
 incurs that of an additional servant, besides necessary 
 accoutrements, such as saddles, bridles, boots, etc., which 
 create endless bills, and will run a man very fast into debt. 
 Few, besides elder brothers, he said, ever thought of riding 
 in the middle of the day, except on particular occasions, 
 till within the last thirty years. Men, indeed, who pos- 
 sessed parks, farms, or other objects to look after out of 
 doors, kept horses in their stalls also for pleasure ; but men 
 who could have no other object but that of sauntering 
 made more use of their own limbs, and found fitter employ- 
 ment for both their time and money.' 
 
 He was on the side of Gibson in advocating the use of 
 gilding in architecture. ' Mr. Burke objected much to 
 that false refinement (which he called it) of this age, which 
 had banished gilding from the ornamental parts of build- 
 ings, and even sculpture. He said that marbles and other 
 materials of every colour, were blended best by gold ; that 
 gold is the colour of light, and produces in a great degree 
 the same effects as sunshine ; that our very language con- 
 fesses the pleasure we feel from the gilded objects we be- 
 hold ; that many years ago Charles Fox and he together 
 lamented the loss of true taste in England on this point. 
 That gilding was so much to the taste of the ancients, that
 
 74 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 they ornamented their favourite statues with gold, and 
 that there are remains of it to be seen on the Venus of 
 Medicis — that she was sometimes styled Aurea Venus 
 on that account. That the Romans gilded their ceilings 
 and other parts of their fine buildings more than the 
 Greeks, because they had more gold ; but in all former 
 ages gold was used for the purposes of ornament when 
 it could be obtained.' 
 
 He deprecated the overthrow of the Church of Rome, 
 saying : ' How is it possible to suppose that, if the Catholic 
 religion were destroyed, the Protestant religion could alone 
 be able to support Christianity ! The numbers are on the 
 side of Catholics. Jacobins therefore persecute Catholics 
 more than any other sect ; they know that to hew down 
 the trunk out of which the branches shoot is their best 
 policy.' 
 
 I may add that Mrs. Piozzi described Burke as a reck- 
 less, haphazard talker, troubling himself little about the 
 consequences of what he said. Mrs. Horneck, the mother 
 of the Jessamy Bride, hearing Burke praising an island in 
 the West Indies, invested a large part of her slender income 
 in purchasing land there. She lost it. ' How fatal,' said 
 Mrs. Piozzi, ' has your eloquence proved to poor Mrs. 
 Horneck ! ' ' How fatal her folly ! ' replied he. ' Ods ! my 
 life, must one swear to the truth of a song ? '
 
 IX 
 
 PROFESSOR DAVID MASSON 
 
 Dr. David Masson, Historiographer Royal for Scotland, 
 and Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Edinburgh 
 University, died in Edinburgh on October 6, 1907. He 
 had reached his eighty-sixth year. In him we have lost 
 the last great figure of the mid -Victorian literature, a man 
 great in himself, great also in his works. He was an 
 Aberdonian in the best sense, and in more than the best 
 sense. He had from the beginning an extraordinary 
 strength of constitution, a strong intellect, and, above all, 
 the power of labour, and the love of labour. His thorough- 
 ness in everything was marked from his student days. As 
 was natural in an Aberdonian, he had an absorbing interest 
 in history, and biography, and philosophy — indeed, in 
 the whole range of literature. What is not so character- 
 istic of his race was his remarkable and uniform geniality. 
 This was combined with an unmistakable dignity, which 
 made it impossible for the most foolish to take liberties 
 with him. But his good-will and charity were boundless. 
 They displayed themselves in his words and in his actions. 
 He had a singularly tenacious memory, seizing and holding 
 fast whatever interested him. And in conversation he 
 was amazingly rich, never uttering a trivial sentence, and 
 to old age perfectly clear as to facts and dates and impres- 
 sions. Dr. Masson had also a robust clarity of style, and 
 
 76
 
 76 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 no small measure of imagination. His forceful personality 
 thrills through all he wrote. It is not wonderful that such 
 a man should have been successful in everything he under- 
 took. Whatever work fell to his lot was done better than 
 any one else could have done it. As an author, as an editor, 
 and as a professor, he attained easily the foremost rank. 
 But perhaps the most notable thing about him was his 
 grand character. He had a noble love of freedom and of 
 virtue. His zeal for righteousness was a consuming flame, 
 but it never led him into extravagance or folly. It is 
 not wonderful that such a man should have lived and 
 died amid universal love and reverence. None of his con- 
 temporaries has left behind him a more splendid and 
 stainless name. 
 
 Above all, he was eminently charitable. He would speak 
 with as much cynicism as was possible to him of ' those 
 who are so fond of sorting their fellow creatures accurately 
 beforehand into the two divisions of the sheep and the 
 goats, and who it is pretty certain will find themselves 
 mistaken in not a few instances on both sides when the 
 partition comes to be made by the true authority.' This 
 is a very characteristic utterance. 
 
 I shall make no attempt to summarise a literary and 
 public career so long, so diversified, so continually active. 
 David Masson was a man of three cities : Aberdeen his 
 birthplace, Edinburgh, and London. He loved them all, 
 but Edinburgh was the dearest, and it was in Edinburgh 
 that the chief part of his life-work was done. 
 
 Of Aberdeen I shall say little, as he has written the story 
 fully in his Recollections of Three Cities. The men who
 
 PROFESSOR DAVID MASSON 77 
 
 most impressed him in early years were Dr. James Melvin, 
 the famous Latinist, and Dr. Kidd, the Irish preacher. 
 On these he has written chapters as graphic as any that 
 ever came from his pen. Among his college contem- 
 poraries were Alexander Bain, the philosopher, and W. G. 
 Blaikie, who became a minister and professor in the Free 
 Church. Blaikie describes his friend at eighteen : ' He 
 looked even younger ; his cheeks were round and his face 
 smooth and hairless ; he had a most guileless and unassum- 
 ing bearing, and a very affectionate heart, and showed a 
 vigour of intellect that soon asserted itself, and won for 
 him a high place in the esteem of his fellow students and 
 professors, particularly Chalmers.' We are anticipating. 
 Masson, after a remarkably brilliant career in Aberdeen, 
 went to Edinburgh to commence his Divinity course. 
 Both Masson and Bain were in the strongest sympathy 
 with the party who ultimately formed the Free Church, 
 and after Masson finished his Divinity course, he was called 
 to fill the editorial chair of the Aberdeen Banner, a news- 
 paper started in the interests of the non-intrusion party. 
 Blaikie says : ' He was a very young man to fill such a post, 
 but the courage at least of the youth showed itself in his 
 determination that, whatever his paper might be, it should 
 neither be dull nor tame. Cautious Aberdeen was not 
 prepared for the startling and eminently defiant tone in 
 which he dealt with all and sundry that were against him, 
 Aberdeen Herald, Court of Session, and House of Lords 
 included.' With Bain, Masson maintained his association 
 to the last, and he said of him that he was a very true 
 friend.
 
 78 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 ii 
 
 When Masson first went to Edinburgh as a Divinity- 
 student, he came under the most powerful influence of his 
 life, that of Dr. Chalmers. Never was he more eloquent 
 than when he talked of the illustrious divine. Chalmers 
 he thought the greatest Scotsman between Scott and 
 Carlyle. There was such a fire in his nature that one verily 
 believed that when he spoke some physical effluence went 
 out of him. Chalmers's general demeanour was that of a 
 placid humility. He was a most attentive listener, and 
 would say : ' That is a very interesting story.' Dr. 
 Chalmers was not successful in examinations. His idea as 
 a professor was to get his students to study the great books 
 of theology, but he never quite succeeded in this. Of 
 English writers his favourites were Robert Hall, John 
 Foster, and Isaac Taylor. Chalmers was on very friendly 
 terms with Taylor, but he was displeased with the title of 
 one of his books — The Physical Theory of Another Life. 
 Said the Doctor, ' Ugh ! We can know nothing about that, 
 nothing. Where Scripture ends speculation ought to 
 pause.' Mrs. Chalmers was a comely lady, and made 
 her husband a good wife. When Edward Irving went to 
 London he wished to publish a very eulogistic sketch of 
 Chalmers, which he sent to the subject. Mrs. Chalmers 
 read it, and struck out all the grossly exaggerated passages. 
 Mrs. Chalmers seldom appeared at the students' breakfast, 
 but Dr. Masson remembered that once she came, and 
 Chalmers shouted with joy, ' Come away, Mrs. Chalmers, 
 my dear.' Chalmers was apt to be somewhat silent in 
 conversation, but at times he would become vehemently 
 excited, and he never said anything commonplace. Once,
 
 PROFESSOR DAVID MASSON 79 
 
 conversing with Isaac Taylor, he brought his chair nearer 
 and nearer, till Taylor found himself with his back at the 
 wall. 
 
 Another notable friend of these days was De Quincey. 
 Masson met him first at the house of Tommy Thomson, 
 the editor of the supplementary volume of Chambers's 
 Eminent Scotsmen. He has told, in his monograph on 
 De Quincey, some of his recollections. Once Masson was 
 walking with Bain in a favourite lane leading to Craig- 
 crook. They met a little man on the road. Masson 
 nudged Bain and said, ' That 's De Quincey.' They gazed 
 at him, and he hurried past. Then they looked round and 
 found him looking round at them. When he saw them 
 he immediately bolted, thinking perhaps that they were 
 creditors. 
 
 Of the young men who were then studying for the 
 ministry in Edinburgh, the most remarkable, in Masson's 
 opinion, was John Cairns. Cairns was a favourite pupil 
 of Sir William Hamilton. Masson admired Hamilton, call- 
 ing him the greatest of the Scotch philosophers, and the 
 most powerful man of his time in Edinburgh. You could 
 see the grip of his fingers on every strong mind in the city. 
 Caims was associated with Masson in the Diagnostic 
 Society. He spoke with a mighty intellectual grasp on 
 every subject he took up. But he conceived it his duty 
 to devote himself to preaching, and he had no other am- 
 bition. Cairns' s book on Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century 
 showed, in Masson's opinion, a stronger head than Leslie 
 Stephen's. In these days Cairns was very subject to 
 mesmerism. One of his friends at that time was a very 
 clever man — John Nelson, afterwards of Greenock. Nelson 
 had gone to see a mesmerist, and came back much excited,
 
 80 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 showing the company in which Cairns was the passes of 
 the mesmerist, when, to the astonishment of everybody, 
 Cairns came under the influence. They could do anything 
 with him. Once they asked him to throw himself out of 
 the window, and they had difficulty in holding him back. 
 The peculiarity of Cairns was that he remembered on 
 recovering all that had taken place during the mesmeric 
 trance. On one occasion he said : * Do not waken me, 
 I am in a universe of peacocks' feathers.' Masson noted 
 the striking beauty of the passage in Cairns's life, in which 
 he apostrophises Rome after a visit to it, and he had much 
 to say on the picture of Cairns's father's home, revealing 
 depths of poverty more pathetic than those in the early 
 homes of Burns and Carlyle, but a poverty grandly borne. 
 Masson never spoke to Macaulay, but twice heard him 
 speak in Edinburgh, and on both occasions heard him 
 surpassed by speakers who followed. The first time was 
 on the hustings at an Edinburgh election in the High Street, 
 which was full of people. Another speaker was a Chartist, 
 who came forward, but did not go to the poll. Macaulay's 
 speech was quite eclipsed by the Chartist's. Answering 
 the charge that the Chartists were Conservative, the orator 
 said : ' The Chartists Conservative ! The Chartists Con- 
 servative ! Many of the Chartists have not a bed to lie 
 on ; many of the Chartists have no food to eat. The 
 Chartists Conservative ! Merciful God, the Chartists have 
 nothing to conserve ! ' This produced a tremendous im- 
 pression. The next time was at the opening of the Edin- 
 burgh Philosophical Institution. It was a good enough 
 speech. Dr. Guthrie moved the vote of thanks, and hardly 
 uttered six sentences, but they went home as Macaulay's 
 laboured periods did not. Masson had with him Agostino
 
 PROFESSOR DAVID MASSON 81 
 
 Ruffini. Ruffini turned to him and said : ' That man 
 can speak.' Guthrie's oratory was most effective. Speak- 
 ing of Andrew Thomson, he said : ' I have never passed 
 Andrew Thomson's tomb. I know not what inscription is 
 written there, but I know what inscription ought to be 
 written there. It should be the inscription the Cartha- 
 ginians wrote over the grave of Hannibal : " We vehemently 
 desired him in the day of battle." ' 
 
 Masson remembered always the impression that Edin- 
 burgh made upon him when he first came from Aberdeen. 
 The unique beauty of its situation never palled upon him, 
 and he delighted in the larger liberty of the place and the 
 new friends he soon made. The difference in dialect also 
 struck him. Thus in Aberdeen the people said ' fader ' 
 for ' father.' In Edinburgh they said ' fayder.' In 
 Aberdeen they said, ' There it is,' and in Edinburgh, 
 ' There is 't.' There were many other points of the same 
 kind. 
 
 in 
 
 It was, however, in London that he first came to his 
 own. He was a member of a club called the Museum Club, 
 to which T. K. Hervey, then editor of the Athenceum, 
 belonged. Hervey came up to him one day and asked 
 him to do reviewing, and afterwards he was a regular con- 
 tributor. Hervey said to him, ' If I send you a book by 
 my own brother, and you do not like it, you are to say so 
 frankly.' Then he worked for Chambers. Through John 
 Robertson, editor of the Westminster Review, who took his 
 first London lodgings for him, he became acquainted with 
 Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. He became Professor of
 
 82 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 English Literature at University College in succession to 
 Clough, whom he described as ' a man of very shy de- 
 meanour, of largish build about the head and shoulders, 
 with a bland and rather indolent look, and a notable want 
 of alertness in his movements.' At University College he 
 had good fellowship with some of the professors. De Morgan, 
 Sharpey, and he used to meet regularly in the Combination 
 room and discuss everything. De Morgan he considered 
 a most interesting conversationalist with a keen sense of 
 humour, and eminently successful in teaching attentive 
 students. De Morgan had a great respect for his antag- 
 onist, Sir William Hamilton, and gladly received from 
 Masson a portrait of him. Frank Newman was then at the 
 college, a crank, but a thoroughly conscientious crank. 
 Among Masson's students were many who became well 
 known — Lord Herschell, Dr. Clifford, and Dr. Robert 
 Spence Watson. Masson's power of work in these days 
 must have been unique. He edited with signal ability 
 and success MacmillarCs Magazine, and also for a year or 
 two a weekly review similar to the Athenceum, called the 
 Reader. To this paper he contributed a literary leader 
 every week, and it very nearly succeeded. Then his friend- 
 ships were with the best men of the day, Carlyle the first, and 
 the most venerated. Of Carlyle he has written in his most 
 valuable little book published after Froude. He remem- 
 bered the first meeting with the Carlyles. Mrs. Carlyle 
 asked her husband whether the Plymouth Brethren were 
 orthodox. Carlyle very strongly asserted their orthodoxy. 
 Always a vehement lover of liberty, Masson became asso- 
 ciated with Mazzini and Kossuth. Of Mazzini he would 
 say that the word of all others to be applied to him was 
 tenacity. He would discuss questions courteously, but
 
 PROFESSOR DAVID MASSON 83 
 
 never changed his opinion. If you argued about the 
 merits of Meyerbeer and Beethoven he would hear you 
 to the uttermost, and then quietly reassert his view. He 
 had great intellectual ability ; he never could have been 
 a member of a constitutional government ; he was too 
 imperious for that. Kossuth never forgot that he had 
 been director of Hungary. He always carried himself 
 with dignity, and he was, what Mazzini was not, a power- 
 ful speaker. He remembered him once dwelling on the 
 services of the rank and file. He said that the leaders had 
 their reward and their honour, but the rank and file had 
 none. They had only the approval of their own consciences, 
 and still they were faithful. He closed by saying, ' So 
 they lived and so they died, these nameless demigods.' 
 
 But the work by which Masson will mainly be remem- 
 bered is his Life of Milton, which was planned in London. 
 It is a book that can never be superseded. It is based on 
 the most accurate and laborious research. The work was 
 mainly done in the Record Office. He had to go over 
 masses of manuscripts not then arranged. He believed 
 that he went over everything, and missed nothing relevant 
 to the subject. He had also to work among the pamphlets, 
 and at the King's Library in the British Museum. He 
 made immense notebooks often far in advance of the actual 
 volume he was doing, and got on slowly. He gave him- 
 self intervals of rest, and when he was working had so 
 many hours a day, though there was more to show at the 
 end of one day than another. This depended on the 
 handling of the materials. He did not grow weary of his 
 task, but he had a distinct feeling of exhilaration when he 
 finished the last volume. The Life of Milton is the great 
 history of Puritanism, and it will remain so not merely
 
 84 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 on account of the author's profound research, but because 
 of its literary power and splendour, and the vehement 
 passion for religious liberty which inspires it throughout. 
 
 The name of Herbert Spencer ought not to be left out 
 in any list of Masson's friends. He had a profound regard 
 for the great philosopher, and described him as a most 
 lovable man, and the very incarnation of integrity. When 
 Spencer died his old associate was much struck by a phrase 
 in the description of his funeral in the Standard — ' A long 
 spire of white smoke ascended from the crematorium.' 
 
 IV 
 
 Dr. Masson found his true sphere when he became 
 Professor of English Literature in Edinburgh University. 
 To the pages of The British Weekly long ago Sir J. M. 
 Barrie contributed an imperishable sketch of his beloved 
 and revered teacher. Masson was an ideal professor, and 
 thousands of men bore his mark. In Edinburgh he made 
 a splendid contribution to Scottish history in editing afresh 
 his work in connection with the Privy Council Register of 
 Scotland. Fourteen volumes were prepared by him, and 
 those who are qualified to judge place them in the first 
 rank. Dr. Masson loved history. He had an eye for 
 every fact, and could make it live. He was wont to insist 
 that every new dictionary of biography should drop none 
 of the names in previous dictionaries. He suggested that 
 a test for a dictionary of biography would be whether it 
 contained the names of Timothy Tittlebat, who wrote a 
 copy of verses on the occasion of the visit of the Shah of 
 Persia's chief eunuch to Queen Elizabeth's private chaplain, 
 and was supposed to be in connection with Ben Jonson ;
 
 PROFESSOR DAVID MASSON 85 
 
 and Captain Runky Snuggles, who led a company of 
 Roundheads at the siege of Drogheda, and probably went 
 afterwards to America to annoy Jonathan Edwards. 
 ' You don't know how these mere dead frogs hung on the 
 iron railings of the past seem to twitch their limbs as I 
 gaze, and what significance I find in their twitchings.' 
 
 I should have wished to say much about David 
 Masson's critical work. It is not known as it should be 
 to the present generation. He wholly rejected the style 
 of Jeffrey, who applied to book after book the ' alternate 
 beauty and blemish principle.' From great books he read 
 back to the heart behind them, to the real thoughts 
 that were occupying or besetting the writer. He searched 
 and thought and toiled till he could add a deliberate and 
 distinct picture of the portrait gallery of the dead. Because 
 of this, and because of the power and spirit with which he 
 accomplished his task, many of Dr. Masson's essays must 
 live.
 
 X 
 
 LETTERS OF SAMUEL BROWN TO 
 GEORGE GILFILLAN 
 
 Through the great kindness of a friend in Scotland, I have 
 been allowed to read a little packet of letters addressed by 
 Samuel Brown to George Gilfillan between the years 1844 
 and 1850. A few extracts which I am permitted to give 
 will, I am sure, interest many. But it may be well that I 
 should preface them by a brief account of Samuel Brown, 
 who, though a prominent man in his day, has a very small 
 niche in the Dictionary of National Biography, and is 
 quite unknown to the general reader. 
 
 The materials at my disposal include first an admirable 
 essay by Gilfillan himself, written after his friend's death, 
 and published in the Scottish Review for October, 1857 ; 
 Reminiscences by Professor David Masson, in Macmillan , s 
 Magazine for May, 1865 ; and the volumes published after 
 Brown's death in 1858, entitled Lectures on the Atomic 
 Theory and Essays Scientific and Literary, by Samuel Brown. 
 These were edited by his widow. An independent tribute 
 was also written by his cousin, Dr. John Brown, the author 
 of Rab and His Friends. 
 
 From these sources of information we learn that Samuel, 
 a scion of a family already remarkable in the South of 
 Scotland as the Browns of Haddington, entered the 
 University of Edinburgh in the winter of 1832-3 as a 
 
 86
 
 SAMUEL BROWN TO GEORGE GILFILLAN 87 
 
 medical student. He never seems to have contemplated 
 the actual practice of the profession, but to have attached 
 himself to it purely as a student of science. Among the 
 students of the time were some notable men, particularly 
 Edward Forbes, who died a Professor in Edinburgh Uni- 
 versity in his fortieth year. His death disappointed the 
 highest hopes of the scientific world. Brown and Forbes 
 were members of a kind of Rosicrucian fraternity, under 
 the name of the Universal Brotherhood of the Friends of 
 Truth, which was partly festive and partly serious. The 
 members had a certain common property of ideas and 
 speculations. Brown's hobby was chemistry, and from an 
 early date he spent much time over retorts and crucibles, 
 indulging in the boldest speculations. Gilfillan and he 
 became acquainted in 1841. At that time, Gilfillan was a 
 young man of twenty-eight, a Nonconformist minister in 
 Dundee. Both Brown and Gilfillan were attached to the 
 same denomination, and were full of enthusiasm and 
 ambition. Carlyle was then the hero of both. In 1842 
 Brown took up his residence in Portobello, in an eccentric 
 abode. On the outer door was inscribed the mystic word 
 Hades. There were two apartments up a dark and wind- 
 ing stair, one a sleeping-room, library, and larder all in 
 one, the other the laboratory. There Brown pursued his 
 researches, and after the hours of labour were over, gave 
 himself to friendship and fun. In 1843, when he was 
 twenty-six years old, his chemical speculations assumed a 
 definite form in his mind, and he delivered in Edinburgh a 
 course of four lectures on the Atomic Theory. There was 
 a very brilliant audience, including Chalmers, Jeffrey, Sir 
 William Hamilton, George Combe, Ferrier, Simpson, and 
 others. At the close of the lecture Chalmers, with even
 
 88 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 more than his usual glowing earnestness, returned the 
 lecturer, amid acclamations, a vote of thanks, and saluted 
 him as the Coleridge of physicists. In the same year the 
 Chair of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh became 
 vacant, and there was a general desire in the city that 
 Samuel Brown should be appointed. But his speculations 
 were challenged by the highest authorities in the chemical 
 world, and Brown staked his claim to the Chair, not on his 
 general reputation, but upon these. In the end he went to 
 Dublin to have his experiments tested by Dr. Kane. His 
 failure was total, and he came back to resign his pretensions 
 to the Chair. I am not competent to explain the exact 
 nature of his theory. Anyhow, this was the turning-point 
 of his life. As Dr. Masson says, all faith in his experiments 
 vanished from the world of chemistry. 
 
 Brown, however, was undaunted. He came back to 
 Portobello, and wrote articles in the North British Review, 
 the Westminster Review, the Eclectic, and other periodicals, 
 pursuing his studies meantime. He also published a 
 tragedy, Galileo Galilei, and in 1849 he married. It was 
 then that the disease which ultimately carried him off 
 began to appear. Illness and disappointment somewhat 
 dulled his pleasure in life, but he showed great courage. 
 Of his later years we are told that they were years of great 
 pain — of much spiritual and mental anxiety, of fitful 
 literary effort, but years during which he seemed ' drawing 
 nearer and nearer to God.' He passed away on Saturday, 
 September 20, 1856. ' He died prematurely, and he died 
 a defeated man ; although in an attempt so bold that his 
 very failure in it is fame.' 
 
 The first letter I use is dated Haddington, May 3, 1844. 
 Gilfillan had made a beginning in literature by writing his
 
 SAMUEL BROWN TO GEORGE GILFILLAN 89 
 
 * Gallery of Literary Portraits ' in the Dumfries Herald, which 
 was edited by his friend Thomas Aird, the poet. He was 
 naturally anxious to publish these essays in a volume, and 
 had evidently applied to Brown, who had used his influence 
 with Blackwood. The letter runs : 
 
 Dear Gilfillan, — Ferrier and Wilson have now both had 
 your MSS. in hand. They unite in saying, however, that they 
 will be better able to offer such suggestions as may occur to 
 them when it (the work) is in proof, and accordingly they 
 refrain from saying anything at present. They are of opinion 
 that you are imprudently (if not unjustly) harsh to Lockhart. 
 Meanwhile, Wilson has gone to the country for some weeks, 
 and Ferrier seems to expect me to negotiate the publication 
 with the Blackwoods. Accordingly your manuscript will be 
 in Blackwood's hands on Monday, along with a letter from 
 myself setting forth the Professor's wishes and opinion, speak- 
 ing of Aird and Ferrier, and (with your leave) urging it on my 
 own responsibility. I will not let the matter go to sleep, for 
 I will call at Blackwood's the first day I am in town. ... I 
 saw much of Kean and his wife, the celebrated Ellen Tree. 
 One night he sat up with me till half-past two relating the 
 whole story of his life. He was very poor, his mother and he 
 living literally on potatoes once ; but now he is rich, with 
 £50 a night. I wish I were in my gossiping mood, that I might 
 paint him to you. You know a man totally and for ever 
 different from one's self is ' an angel unawares ' to one ; and 
 that is the secret of my deep interest in Faucit and the Keans. 
 Mrs. Kean is full of womanly judgment and sense of propriety, 
 and a most finished actress. 
 
 The next letter is dated Haddington, May 9, 1844, and 
 deals with the same subject : 
 
 My dear Friend, — I have conceived a fear of handing
 
 90 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 your MSS. with a letter from this distance to Mr. Blackwood, 
 and deem it better to wait till I get to town, that I may in 
 person wait on him, appoint a day to call on him again, and 
 so have a definite reply, without the hap of delay. I believe 
 it will save time in the end. I trust you approve of this. My 
 brother arrives to-morrow and leaves on Saturday se'en night. 
 I remain behind (to solace my beloved old mother) till the 
 Monday morning, and will go to Blackwood that day. If 
 then you postpone your visit till the week after next, you will 
 see both Mr. Craig and myself, and at the same time learn 
 Blackwood's decision. You and I will go to him together 
 to make the final arrangements. But no fear, for the high 
 reputation you have now achieved will render the publication 
 of your work no difficulty. 
 
 Well can I understand your delight in Mr. Robertson's un- 
 expected visit, having enjoyed the like myself. He 's a fine 
 fellow. I 've heard nothing of the ' tea and turn-in ' yet, 
 and do not know whether I will be able to join your ' merrie 
 companie.' I hope so, but hardly expect it, great tho' this 
 pleasure would be. 
 
 As for my Nature and Man, it is stopped for the present. I 
 have been urgently requested to be a contributor to the North 
 British Review, and the Domi res angustae compel me to 
 comply. I will have articles in Nos. 2 and 3 both, so that I 
 have work before me. My first article is on The Whole Progress 
 of Chemistry, from the Greek Physicists down to Dalton, £16 
 a sheet. 
 
 Mr. Robertson became well known as Dr. W. B. Robert- 
 son of Irvine. Then comes a gap. Blackwood had 
 evidently declined the book. It is very interesting to note 
 that two of Blackwood's men, Wilson and Ferrier, advised 
 him to accept it. Considering that a Nonconformist 
 minister was so utterly in the other camp in the Scotland
 
 SAMUEL BROWN TO GEORGE GILFILLAN 91 
 
 of these days, it is very significant. Lord Lytton, or as he 
 was then known, Bulwer-Lytton, was anxious at a later 
 date that Gilfillan should be enrolled in the Blackwood 
 list. Brown had gone to William Tait, the publisher of 
 TaWs Magazine, which in these days had a great reputation 
 as the organ of Liberalism. My next letter is dated 
 Portobello, November 7, 1844 : 
 
 My dear Friend, — I send you Tait's two letters, one a 
 reply to my conveyance of your MSS., the other an anticipa- 
 tion of my waiting on him ' in a fortnight.' The latter is the 
 main thing. I think it business-like and just, kind and 
 generous. 
 
 My counsel is, accept his offer. He is evidently in earnest. 
 But do not take to a subscription list if possible. Cannot you 
 get seven friends, or six with yourself, to share each an eighth 
 of the risk of £130 ? Easily. Then the publisher shall find 
 it his interest to urge the sale ; so shall each of your six friends ; 
 and it will go to a second edition, full of profits, such as they 
 can be, depend on 't. The eighth part of £130 is only £16 ; 
 and it is only the risk of £16. If 1000 copies get sold, each 
 shall be free. If 500, each shall lose only £8. But 1000 
 should be sold by dint of recommendation, reviewing, advertis- 
 ing. The idea of lithographs is capital. Many would buy the 
 book for a head of Carlyle. I can give you one. One was 
 done for me last week, of Carlyle, I mean. Jeffrey, I can give 
 you, too. A lithographer I have now in my cohort ; so that 
 everything is propitious. Write to your father-in-law, to 
 James Vallentine, to your London brother, to anybody else you 
 can think of. I am immersed in debt yet, and though my 
 way is clear before me even to wealth, yet there is no surety of 
 immediate enough returns ; else Craig and I would gladly be 
 two of your eight. Write Crombie, inclosing him Tait's 
 letter, and ask him his advice. He is a good judge, profes-
 
 92 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 sionally as well as in the character of your friend. Be speedy. 
 Tait waits your decision. I wait. . . . The abhorrence I have 
 of a subscription list is simply that it is a flag of distress, and 
 enough to damn any book beforehand. This plan I advocate 
 will give an air of confidence and independence. — I am, yours 
 most truly, Samuel Brown. 
 
 P.S. — I spent a delightful evening with Lord Jeffrey on 
 Saturday. What argentine talk ! Not deep, but acute ; 
 not beautiful, but very pretty ; not religious, but exceedingly 
 amiable. 
 
 Tait published the book, and it was successful. His con- 
 ditions, so far as can be judged from Brown's letter, were 
 certainly very severe, but on the whole an impression was 
 made. Brown writes from Haddington, November 7, 
 1845: 
 
 I received your book the other evening. It raised a tumult 
 of pleasure in me. It was as if it had been my own child, and 
 yet I was not to have the responsibility of the rearing, any 
 more than I had had the luxury of begetting it. It is my 
 godchild. I am one of its godfathers. I am reading it with 
 enthusiasm to my keen, grey-eyed, severe old mother and my 
 sisters, one a Calvinist, the other a sceptic ; and they are all 
 delighted. I am commending and recommending it right and 
 left. I have got four copies sold already, I mean five. I 
 have not seen De Quincey's notes yet. You are to be reviewed 
 at great length in Lowe's Edinburgh Magazine. ... It is a 
 friend of mine is to do it, that 's the way I know. The editor 
 has been advised by me to secure your services for the magazine. 
 The rascal is going to publish an anecdote about you he 
 heard me tell of you at the dinner table ! I will force you 
 before a portion of the Glasgow public in the Sentinel and 
 the Citizen.
 
 SAMUEL BROWN TO GEORGE GILFILLAN 93 
 
 And now a word or two about your finale. You promised 
 to omit it. Yet, now it is there, I thank you for its generous 
 enthusiasm. It will do me good with many, and harm with 
 none. It will, at all events, stand there as a monument of 
 our friendship. 
 
 I do not all agree with you about Fcstus. You must read 
 it altogether, and again and again. You must dwell with it, 
 or rather in it, a long summer first. You must come out again 
 and withdraw from the great forest of poetry it contains, 
 before you judge so vast a work. 
 
 Later on, under date February 25, 1846, Brown writes : 
 
 I rejoice in your triumphs. But you will never produce your 
 full swing of effect as a lecturer till you quit your MSS., and 
 plunge manfully into the sea of fiery, billowy, extempore dis- 
 course. Everybody seems to feel that. Scott and many 
 write me so. But it is as the author you must and shall shine. 
 Do be careful with your second edition. Out with many 
 a little vulgarism of expression. They offend many good 
 judges to the soul, and they add nothing to your effects. 
 Jeffrey was irritated every now and then by these stumbling 
 stones. Wipe them all clean out. There are hundreds of 
 them. If I were you I would also put away the mostly ill- 
 founded and unnecessary anecdotes, which you have sprinkled 
 your pages withal so liberally. These, I am sure, are two 
 sound advices, and they are out of the very core of friend- 
 ship. 
 
 I, too, as well as the American Repository, object and 
 except to your Emerson. I never agreed with that piece. I 
 do not yet. But you can let a friend differ. I do not wish 
 to constrain your opinion, you know. . . . 
 
 I am glad you like Scott's portrait. Has Crombie seen it ? 
 Did you see much of him ? Is he well and happy ? I am 
 happy to think that he owes you, Wilson, Cairns, all to me.
 
 94 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 I bless him yet. My mark is upon him for ever. God bless 
 him. . . . 
 
 By the bye, I had a most enthusiastic letter about you as 
 seen in your book, from Mrs. Sandbach, the accomplished 
 granddaughter of Roscoe, the other day. She is a new sworn 
 ally of mine, you know ; young, beautiful, gifted, good, married 
 and childless. 
 
 The advice given in the above letter is indeed excellent, 
 but Gilfillan never could take it, infinitely to his loss. 
 Scott is David Scott, the painter. Wilson is Dr. George 
 Wilson, the brilliant scientific writer. In the next letter, 
 probably 1849, there is a graphic little picture of an 
 Edinburgh citizen not quite forgotten : 
 
 I actually met a scoundrel in a publisher's shop the other 
 day who was o'er-raving the town with an idea on that point 
 [the salvation of infants]. He could and did demonstrate to 
 every unfortunate button-wearer he could seize, that there 
 are more heathens saved than professing Christians. Thus : 
 infants are saved ; a vast majority of infants perish among the 
 heathen ; argal the majority of the heathen are saved ! Well, 
 that monster cherishes that jewel of thought, that spangle of 
 gold-bright theology — and performs his office as a deacon in 
 the Free Church, as well as once edited Lowe's Magazine — 
 Doctor George Bell ! ! ! 
 
 'O" 
 
 The next extract, which is dated June 29, 1850, needs a 
 word of explanation. A Mr. Linwood, long since forgotten, 
 had bought the Eclectic Review from Dr. Price. Brown 
 wrote a paper in the journal on Gilfillan's second Gallery of 
 Literary Portraits. The article was accused of hetero- 
 doxy, and Linwood, who had been formerly connected with 
 Unitarianism, had to give up his bargain.
 
 SAMUEL BROWN TO GEORGE GILFILLAN 95 
 
 Poor Linwood has fairly floored himself. He has been very, 
 very ill ever since the squabble. Buying the Eclectic for £700, 
 he has sold it back to Price for £500. I think he has been 
 fleeced. £700 ought to have been paid for it — £500 down, and 
 the other £200 if at the end of a year the Review should prove 
 not to have been damaged in circulation. The circulation is 
 everything in a question of this sort. It is very bad to lose 
 the £200 for three months of the organ ! I am sorry Price 
 should have had to do with such a transaction. Linwood 
 insists on paying you and me ; but he must have time. I 
 urged him not to pay me, and I said I was sure your feelings 
 would be the same as mine ; but he insists, and desires me to 
 tell you so. 
 
 I print two extracts, giving glimpses of Dickens and De 
 Quincey : 
 
 I went to see Dickens' company of amateurs playing the 
 Merry Wives of Windsor last week. It was very mediocre 
 playing indeed. For amateurs, as the contemptuous saying 
 is, it was creditable ; but I detest amateurs and dilettanti. 
 Forster and Lewes absolutely misrepresented Mr. Ford and 
 Sir Hugh Evans, in my opinion. It was a poor affair altogether. 
 Lewes I find to be what I expected ; vain, confident, shallow, 
 flippant, ungenial, unlearned, and ugly by reason of the 
 expression in his face of these qualities. 
 
 Editors are the Principle of Evil, for Monodevilism has now 
 given place to polydevilism — to believe poor De Quincey 
 (who has been in the Calton jail lately) it has given way to 
 pandevilism ! He thinks ' the devil has at last got fairly the 
 upper hand of The Other ' ! ! ! 
 
 I conclude with an extract from Gilfillan's tribute in the 
 Scottish Review : ' We have in the above remarks more or 
 less fully spoken of Brown as a writer, lecturer, conversa-
 
 96 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 tionist, chemist, and man ; there is just one other aspect 
 in which we would glance a moment at him ere we close 
 — it is as a correspondent. His letters were delightful 
 outcomes of his mind and genius, free, fluent, easy, varied, 
 funny, riotous even at times ; and yet how eloquent in their 
 earnestness, how bold in their speculations, how vivid in 
 their descriptions, how wise in their counsels, and how 
 warm and friendly in their spirit ! They were just his 
 conversation in its happiest vein, transferred to note- 
 paper, and in looking at these letters of his we possess, we 
 seem to see at our feet annals of a heart which is now cold 
 in the sepulchre, and we cannot refrain from moistening 
 them with our tears.' It ought to be said that evidently 
 only a few of Brown's letters have been preserved, and that 
 parts of these are too intimate for publication.
 
 XI 
 
 THAT THE BEST LETTERS ARE WRITTEN 
 BY THE MORTALLY WOUNDED 
 
 i 
 The very best and choicest of English letters, at any rate > 
 have been written by men who were mortally wounded. 
 In affirming this I must be allowed to define my terms. 
 
 We are all of us under sentence of capital punishment, 
 but it is not in this sense that I use the words ' mortally 
 wounded.' 1 Nor has a mortal wound to be interpreted as 
 one which speedily brings the end. What I mean is that 
 certain strokes of fate disable a man for much of the active 
 work of life, and in due season bring about his death. He 
 knows it, and the knowledge casts its colour over all his 
 ways and all his speech. The strokes may fall on the body 
 or on the soul. They leave something, and it may be 
 much, but they take away a very great deal. 
 
 f I see but a narrow thread escape, 
 Through the evening country, silent and safe ; 
 And it suffers no more till it finds the sea.' 
 
 What I am driving at is expressed with infinite felicity 
 by Robert Louis Stevenson, of whom Dr. Dawson remarks 
 that he may live by his letters when nearly all the rest of 
 his work is forgotten. Stevenson, in the volume by Mr. 
 Will H. Low, A Chronicle of Friendship, thus expresses 
 
 G
 
 98 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 himself : ' Low, I wish to live ! Life is better than art ; 
 to do things is better than to imagine them ; yes, or to 
 describe them. And God knows I have not lived all these 
 last years. No one knows, no one can know the tedium of 
 it. I 've supported it as I could — I don't think I am apt 
 to whimper — but to be, even as I am now, is not to live. 
 Yes, that 's what art is good for, for without my work I 
 suppose that I would have given up long ago, without my 
 work and my friends and all those about me — I am not 
 forgetting them ; for, with all the courage I could summon, 
 I would not be here to-day if all their loving care had not 
 added to my courage, and made it my duty to them to 
 fight it out. As long as my father was there I would never 
 think of leaving ; all our old troubles were long ago for- 
 gotten, and these last years we were much to each other ; 
 but when he was laid at rest, I determined to make a new 
 effort to live. Not as we lived at Fontainebleau, for youth 
 was on my side then — remember how you never realised 
 that I was less strong than the other men who were there 
 with us — but to be the rest of my days a decent invalid 
 gentleman. That 's not a very wild ambition, is it ? 
 But it 's a far cry from being bed-ridden. I 'm willing to 
 take care of myself, but to keep on my feet, to move about, 
 to mix with other men, to ride a little, to swim a little, to 
 be wary of my enemy, but to get the better of him, that 's 
 what I call being a decent invalid gentleman, and that, 
 God willing, I mean to be.' 
 
 ' A decent invalid gentleman.' That is the best that 
 stricken men can hope for, and it may be something very 
 good. It is especially favourable to the writing of letters. 
 The greatest English letter-writers, as well as I can re- 
 member, are William Cowper, Charles Lamb, Edward
 
 THE MORTALLY WOUNDED 99 
 
 FitzGerald, Robert Louis Stevenson, and, so far as personal 
 liking is concerned, I should add James Smetham and 
 Thomas Davidson. It does not require much argument to 
 show that all these were in a manner mortally wounded. 
 Cowper certainly was. The tragedies of Lamb's life 
 pierced his heart. Edward FitzGerald might seem to be 
 an exception, but he certainly was not. He lived a 
 hermit's life ; he depended on his favourite authors for 
 society ; at least, he would not make new acquaintances, 
 even in books. He worked at translations and adapta- 
 tions, but he judged them so humbly that he hardly cared 
 whether they were published or not. One of the most 
 characteristic passages in his letters alludes to his condensed 
 version of Crabbe's Tales of the Hall. * I may get my 
 Tales of the Hall printed, and shall one day ask you, and 
 three or four besides, whether it had better be published. 
 I think you and those three or four others will like it, but 
 they may also judge that indifferent readers might not, 
 and that you will, all of you, have to tell me when the thing- 
 is done. I shall not be in the least disappointed if you tell 
 me to keep it among ourselves, so long as the rest are 
 pleased ; for I know well that publication would not carry 
 it much further abroad ; and I am very well content to 
 pay my money for the little work which I have long 
 meditated doing. I shall have done " my little owl." 
 Do you know what that means ? No ? Well, then, ray 
 grandfather had several parrots of different sorts and 
 talents : one of them, Billy, I think, could only huff up 
 his feathers in what my grandfather called an owl fashion ; 
 so when company were praising the more gifted parrots, 
 he would say, " You will hurt poor Billy's feelings— come, 
 do your little owl, my dear." You are to imagine a hand-
 
 100 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 some, hair-powdered gentleman doing this — and his 
 daughter, my mother, telling of it. And so it is I do my 
 little owl.' This was FitzGerald's view of his own work 
 and life, doing his little owl. As for Stevenson, I need say 
 nothing. Smetham's melancholy end is mentioned by his 
 biographer. As for Davidson, he did not live quite thirty- 
 two years, and some four of these he had to pass in the 
 declining stages of consumption. But no one will say that 
 the letters of Cowper, FitzGerald, Stevenson, Smetham, 
 and Davidson would have been what they are if their 
 lives had been granted even the ordinary measure of health 
 and sunshine and activity. 
 
 ii 
 When we begin to search into the reasons, one stands out 
 with eminent distinctness. The stricken man has obtained 
 an honourable release from much. Whatever work he 
 does goes to his credit. He is exempt from the regular 
 periods of labour. Closed to him for ever are many of the 
 strifes and encounters in which men wear out their lives 
 and dull their happiness. The result is a new feeling of 
 kindness for one's fellow mortals, and a new clearness of 
 vision as to the worth or worthlessness of the prizes they 
 struggle for. It is not always easy, even for large and 
 generous natures, to think with uniform justice of a success- 
 ful competitor. There may lurk, even in a noble mind, 
 the feeling that the adjudication has been unfair. But 
 when one is withdrawn from the field of war he is not 
 fretted thus. Furthermore, the fighters have a kindness 
 for the comrade who, through no fault of his own, has been 
 disabled. Now, the great letters come out of kind hearts, 
 and a gentle kindness is, sometimes at least, the chief result
 
 THE MORTALLY WOUNDED 101 
 
 of an irreversible overthrow. I remember Robertson 
 Smith used to say that there was never such a thing on 
 earth as a complete victory. There were drawbacks to 
 every triumph, and there was always the danger of a 
 renewed battle and a lost prize. But he would have 
 admitted that there are such things as complete defeats. 
 No, he would not have admitted it. He would have said, 
 and said rightly, that no defeat is absolute. There remains 
 something very precious that may still be treasured or still 
 be won. In any case, the peace of defeat has often been 
 more secure and more sweet by far than the peace of victory. 
 I find this illustrated with much fulness in Thomas 
 Davidson's beautiful letters. He had a close kinship with 
 Stevenson. When death was only a few months off he 
 wrote to a friend : ' I cannot say that I am doing any 
 literary work. I read books almost all the time I am 
 indoors, and when I go out I can't meditate any in those 
 dull days, except miscellaneously and interruptedly, about 
 anything and everything — about politics, about literature, 
 about plants, about scenery, about my sins, about the 
 Christian religion, about agriculture, about the future, 
 about how I am to open my " oyster," about what it will 
 be like to be dead and buried. I used to think a good deal 
 about that last matter a year ago. We must all die, and we 
 know that pretty well. But the feeling I used to have 
 about it, and which I suppose most people have, was that 
 over the hills and far away, and deep down in a certain 
 " dowie howme," sate that Lean One, playing with his 
 dart ; and that by the time that I reached him I should be 
 so wearied and so jaded going up hill and down dale that I 
 should take the coup de grace at his hands not ungratefully. 
 But all of a sudden, or comparatively of a sudden, this
 
 102 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 idea changed itself into the feeling that he was rising up 
 and coming over the hills swiftly to meet me, and that at 
 the top of the very next ridge or so I should infallibly have 
 my weasand slit and the life let out of me. To speak 
 plainly, during all the earlier part of last winter, I fully 
 expected to be gobbled up quite shortly. Now, this change 
 of feeling (especially if it be a sudden change), about the 
 last incident, is very apt to have a paralysing effect upon 
 some of one's faculties. At any rate, one feels but little 
 inclination to initiate anything — in the writing way, I 
 mean. I therefore procured myself a grammar and 
 dictionary, and sat down to learn the German language, 
 and nothing occurred. I am alive and can read Schiller 
 and Goethe. When the first snowdrop appeared I rose up 
 and made a sonnet to it, to the effect that I was very glad 
 to be still above ground along with it, and then I grew 
 comparatively lyrical.' His very last letter, written a few 
 days before his death, runs thus : * I don't manage this 
 matter of walking well yet. My limbs have been so 
 stiffened by having sat almost all winter, that I find it no 
 easy matter to supple them again. Of course, practice 
 will do it, but practice requires more pith than I am pos- 
 sessor of at present. So I have been making a paction 
 with my father to take his arm for some time every day, 
 and as he is a swift walker, I shall have to compass greater 
 distances with him than I can possibly manage when left 
 to my own devices and those of my hazel stick. It makes 
 me conscious of a certain mingled and mixed feeling, akin 
 to sorrow and akin to shame, to remember that I am 
 thirty-one and my father seventy years old. In the mean- 
 time my mother is improving very fast, or, at least, she is 
 resuming her old busy ways and habits very fast. This I
 
 THE MORTALLY WOUNDED 103 
 
 know principally by her thousand-a-day attentions to 
 myself — nameless little attentions, which are full of com- 
 fort, and so soothing that I sometimes imagine that I 
 must be getting babyish again. But if I don't stop this 
 strain of talking, I shall run the risk of making my whole 
 letter a bulletin of health.' 
 
 in 
 
 Another explanation of our fact is that the disabled can 
 afford to put their whole intellectual force into writing. 
 They have leisure. In some cases their letters are almost 
 more than themselves. They have the glow and essence 
 of the individual. Men like Matthew Arnold, who are 
 consciously influencing thought and championing causes 
 and making permanent contributions to literature, are 
 nothing as letter-writers. They may be, as Arnold was, 
 pleasant and unaffected, and sometimes lively, but that is 
 all. To the stricken mortal the letter is the event of his 
 day when he is kindled by the living contact of mind with 
 mind. Thomas Davidson was a highly gifted man. He 
 was something of a poet. Perhaps it might be said that 
 he was a poet as Stevenson was a poet, though his medium 
 was in prose. He was not successful as a preacher, and 
 nobody thought less of his sermons than he did himself. 
 He was not greatly interested by the speculative questions 
 of his day, but he had humour and courage and high feeling 
 and tenderness, and these all find a natural, serene, har- 
 monious, refined expression in his letters. 
 
 IV 
 
 There is one question which will naturally be put, and 
 to which I can give no full reply. It may be admitted that
 
 104 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 I am right in saying that certain persons who had leisure 
 forced upon them attained eminence as letter writers just 
 for that reason, but it may be urged that Stevenson worked 
 very hard, and that he produced what he had to produce, 
 and wrote his letters in addition. I should reply first that 
 Stevenson, though the most diligent of men, had a kind of 
 leisure which he could never have possessed if he had been 
 in full strength and at work in London. Again, it is 
 impossible to tell under what circumstances a man's 
 literary power is best developed. For example, who will 
 undertake to decide whether FitzGerald would have done 
 more or less if he had lived a different life ? As it was, he 
 did his version of Omar, his letters, his translations, and 
 paraphrases, and his dialogues. Would his delicate genius 
 have survived the tear and wear of life ? He would not 
 have given us what he has given, and on the whole perhaps 
 we should prefer to keep what we have. In Scott's con- 
 ditions Stevenson might have done as great a work as Scott, 
 but it would not have been the work with which he has 
 enriched us for ever. But to understand Stevenson fully 
 one must first spit a little blood. 
 
 Once more, the charm of great letters is that they dwell 
 so much on those familiar and homely themes which con- 
 tinue to interest us so much more than the conflicts which 
 make history.
 
 XII 
 
 GEORGE AUGUSTUS SIMCOX 
 
 In the summer of 1905, George Augustus Simcox, Fellow of 
 Queen's College, Oxford, was mentioned in all the news- 
 papers. He had disappeared from a hotel where he had 
 been staying near Giant's Causeway. He had gone off 
 for a lonely and perilous ramble on the coast, and did not 
 come back. The search for him was continued for weeks, 
 but it yielded nothing. He was seen by an engineer to 
 disappear over the skyline, and that was the last of him so 
 far as human sight went. In due course the Probate 
 Court decided to ' presume his death,' and it thus became 
 permissible to write something about one of the most 
 brilliant, accomplished, and versatile men I ever met. 
 He was one of a distinguished family. There were three 
 — George Augustus, Edith, and William Henry. Edith 
 Simcox was the close friend of George Eliot, a voluminous 
 author, and a very diligent student. William Henry was 
 rector first of Weyhill, near Andover, and then of Harlaxton 
 in Lincolnshire. All three were quite uncommon in their 
 gifts and in their learning, and they were diligent with the 
 pen. But somehow they made little or no impression on 
 the public mind. When Edith Simcox died some years 
 ago, no obituary notice of her appeared save one 
 written by myself. When W. H. Simcox died a good 
 many years before, his brother gave me materials for two 
 
 105
 
 106 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 short articles, published in different periodicals, and beyond 
 these I saw no notice of him. The only attempt at a 
 biography of George Augustus Simcox that has come my 
 way was in the Manchester Guardian. It was written by 
 an old companion at Oxford, and deals with his Oxford 
 days very brightly. But the author knew so little of 
 Simcox's subsequent career that he says : ' It is to be re- 
 gretted that George Augustus has left little or nothing to 
 witness to his remarkable gifts and learning. He quitted 
 Oxford and settled in London, intending to read and use his 
 pen. Yet he wrote little, and it is not of a solid character. 
 ... It is to be feared that Simcox had developed too 
 strongly the old academic habit of perpetual accumulation, 
 frequent schemes of writing, and constant postponement 
 of the pains and perils of authorship. And so his name is 
 only a fading memory.' This is very far from being true. 
 Simcox left behind him a solid body of work. He was ever 
 ready to write whenever he could get the chance. No 
 invitation from an editor was refused, and he would take 
 up almost any subject. He was discouraged by the un- 
 popularity of his books, and publishers were shy of them. 
 If he had been able to find publishers to suggest subjects 
 to him, and to take the risk of issuing what he wrote, I 
 believe he would have been among the most voluminous 
 authors of our time. As it is, he left some things very 
 worthy of remembrance. 
 
 i 
 
 My first introduction to Mr. Simcox was through the 
 
 pages of the Academy. When Dr. Appleton commenced 
 
 that periodical, he meant it to be much more learned, 
 
 scientific, and dry than the Athenamm. Pure literature
 
 GEORGE AUGUSTUS SIMCOX 107 
 
 had only a subordinate place in the plan. Even that had 
 to be handled in an abstruse and superior fashion, and 
 Appleton found no critics better able to carry out his in- 
 tentions than George Augustus Simcox and his sister 
 Edith. Those who will look at the early volumes of the 
 Academy will find many articles signed ' H. Lawrenny.' 
 ' H. Lawrenny ' was Edith Simcox. Her brother wrote 
 under his own name, and between them they had a con- 
 siderable share in the undertaking. William Henry con- 
 tributed a good many theological reviews. He was more 
 lucid than the other members of the family, but quite as 
 lofty in his manner. John Morley was at that time editing 
 the Fortnightly Review. He engaged Edith Simcox to 
 write the short notices at the end, and G. A. Simcox was 
 a frequent contributor. Then I came to know of a volume 
 entitled Poems and Romances, by G. A. Simcox, which 
 Messrs. Strahan published in 1869. Years after, when his 
 brother died, Mr. Simcox gave me a copy of his first book, 
 Prometheus Unbound, a tragedy, published by Smith and 
 Elder in 1867. It bears the inscription, ' W. H. Simcox. 
 With the Author's love.' In addition, Simcox published 
 in 1883 a History of Latin Literature from Ennius to 
 Boethius. This was in two volumes, and was meant to be 
 popular. It was not successful, and it was sold as a re- 
 mainder. Simcox made a serious bid for popularity in this 
 work, and was disappointed with the result. In 1873 he 
 published a very queer volume, Recollections of a Rambler. 
 It was written round certain illustrations. A publisher 
 having the blocks wanted somebody to supply him with 
 letterpress, and such was Simcox's humility and his readi- 
 ness to write at all times, that he turned out this book. 
 He cannot fairly be judged by it, but there are good things
 
 108 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 in it, and a very singular anticipation of the manner of his 
 death. W. H. Simcox published an edition of Tacitus, a 
 book on the Beginnings of the Christian Church, a com- 
 mentary on Revelation, and two little volumes on New 
 Testament Greek. Edith Simcox wrote an elaborate essay 
 on Natural Lazv, a collection of short stories, and a work 
 on Civilisation. In later years G. A. Simcox published 
 less, but he contributed a good many reviews to the 
 Guardian when that paper was edited by Mr. Lathbury, 
 and he also wrote in the Expositor and in the Bookman. 
 To the Bookman he contributed what seemed to me the 
 best of the memorial verses on Tennyson's death. He had 
 another volume of poems ready for the printer, but as 
 nobody seemed to want it, he never published it. I 
 submit that this is not an unworthy tale of literary work. 
 
 ii 
 Having been much interested in Simcox's writings, it 
 was with no ordinary anticipation that I looked forward 
 to meeting him. He was living with his mother, his 
 brother, and his sister, in a small house at Kensington. 
 The mother, who was the widow of a Kidderminster carpet 
 maker, was obviously the queen of the household, and 
 every one deferred to her. She was very able and very 
 sympathetic. William Henry Simcox had lost his wife, 
 and was suffering from the consumptive malady, which 
 very soon proved fatal. Edith Simcox could not be called 
 beautiful, but she was gentle in manner, and very com- 
 municative. George Augustus was a striking figure, with 
 his red tie, his coloured shirt, his blue serge suit, and his 
 heavy boots. He was afflicted with a stammer, and as he 
 always seemed to be attempting epigrams, it was very
 
 GEORGE AUGUSTUS SIMCOX 109 
 
 difficult to understand him. But there was something so 
 plainly sincere about him that the troubles were soon re- 
 moved. Both brothers were devout Christians, while Miss 
 Simcox was a pronounced and almost an aggressive 
 Agnostic. No attempt was made to slur the differences, 
 but everything was discussed in a thoroughly amicable 
 spirit. When the three were fairly started, their talk was 
 most entertaining. They all aimed at paradox — more or 
 less successfully. I took most to G. A. Simcox, and after- 
 wards saw a good deal of him. He went to live at Tring, 
 and we once walked over the Hampden country together. 
 When he was alone with a companion, his stammer would 
 wear off, and he would talk with vivacity and sometimes 
 with enthusiasm on the subject that untied his mind. The 
 family lived for a time at Mayfield, in Sussex, where they 
 had a pretty house, and there also I visited them. Many 
 recollections come into my mind. When we were at 
 Hampden's house, Mr. Simcox spoke much of Puritanism. 
 His sympathies were with the High Church party, though 
 he doubted whether their claims would be upheld by his- 
 torical criticism. Puritanism he frankly disliked, though 
 he admitted the good it had done. He said that the great 
 error of Puritanism was its neglect of our Lord's command- 
 ment : ' Anoint thy head and wash thy face.' He meant 
 that the sternness of the Puritan was akin to hypocrisy and 
 contrary to Christianity. Of his own feelings he said little, 
 but one day he spoke in praise of stoicism as applied to the 
 ordinary troubles and the inevitable disappointments of 
 life. He condemned those writers on the conduct of life 
 who think that if we take up the little difficulties of life 
 and deal with them, the great difficulties will melt away. 
 He maintained that not much in life is modifiable, while
 
 110 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 very much is fixed, and that it is not well to think too 
 much or even at all about many matters on which books 
 are written. On the graver troubles he had something to 
 say. He had a hope that science would lengthen life to the 
 full limit, and argued that if this were so, the chief agony 
 of this mortal sphere, that of bereavement, would be 
 immensely mitigated. As for death, he would not allow 
 that it was to be feared. He wrote : ' On such a subject 
 the authority of Coleridge is as high as Pascal's, and 
 Coleridge, who did not make light of judgment, has left it 
 on record that he did not fear death. True, none who 
 contemplate death, at a distance, with equanimity, can be 
 sure that they will die easily or meekly when their time 
 comes ; yet this does not prove that such peace is false 
 while it lasts. Children are often fractious as bedtime 
 draws near, troublesome to themselves and to others, 
 shrinking from the change they need ; in some difficult 
 or ill-managed nurseries the trouble comes round night 
 after night, but even there it does not overshadow the day ; 
 children learn and play without a thought of the bad half 
 hour which in the worst nurseries does not always come.' 
 Latterly he became very much interested in the Higher 
 Criticism of the Old Testament. He thought at first that 
 it would be possible to answer Wellhausen by the argu- 
 ments of Dillmann, but on this he modified his view, and 
 said characteristically, ' It does not matter, Dillmann's view 
 is as much against orthodoxy as Wellhausen's.' 
 
 in 
 
 But I must pass from this to a word on his writings. The 
 best memorial of him is to be found in Poems and Romances.
 
 GEORGE AUGUSTUS SIMCOX 111 
 
 There he is luminous and musical from first to last. The 
 sweetest, I think, is the ' Song of the Rose,' and I will 
 leave it to speak for itsel f : 
 
 1 At the gates of the City of Peace 
 
 There toiled a poor man night and day, 
 But his season of mirth and release 
 Came round with the roses in Mav. 
 
 He sat and sang by the wine, 
 
 Where the river of fruitfulness flows, 
 
 Till the stars began to shine, 
 
 And he sang the song of the rose. 
 
 And the city was full of the fame 
 Of the marvellous song of his mirth, 
 
 Till even the Khalifah came, 
 
 Who is loi-d over Islam on earth. 
 
 And the lover of roses and spring 
 
 Beheld him and did not arise, 
 Though the princes said, "This is a king, 
 
 And the kings are as dust in his eyes." 
 
 He said, " God hath one blessing to give 
 
 Unto all of his sons and his slaves, 
 That we each may rejoice while we live, 
 
 That we all shall have rest in our graves. 
 
 " We shall both be equal then, 
 
 Now you throw from the Khalifah's towers 
 
 The shadow of God over men, 
 And I throw it over the flowers. 
 
 " Ere the nations lie down with the dead 
 They exult in your fatherly sway, — 
 
 When the bloom of the roses is fled, 
 They are glad that I kissed it away." 
 
 And he asked and the Khalifah gave 
 New wine to his brother in spring, 
 
 As the gift of a slave to a slave, 
 The gift of a king to a king.
 
 112 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 And he sang till his hair was white, 
 
 In the time when the roses blow, 
 All his life he had great delight, 
 
 And they buried him long ago. 
 
 The desert has drifted again 
 
 To the gates of the City of Peace, 
 
 And her citizens labour in vain, 
 Having neither reward nor release. 
 
 Now jackals howl over his head 
 
 Who sang the sweet song of the rose, 
 
 And the joy of his vineyard is fled, 
 And only Azrael knows 
 
 Of the place where his spirit reposes, 
 From the flowery path that it trod, 
 
 If they carried the lover of roses 
 To the rose garden of God.' 
 
 As for his critical writings, I must be content to say that 
 if any one has the patience to study them, they are always 
 rewarding, always entertaining, and not seldom they are 
 very suggestive. But their style was fatal to general 
 acceptance. One specimen will be enough, and I choose it 
 at random. He begins an obituary notice of de Remusat 
 with this sentence : ' If we desired to find a typical re- 
 presentative of the class of Immortal for whom clever men 
 outside the Academy despise it, and for whom sensible men 
 who value the Academy esteem it, we could hardly wish for 
 a better representative than M. de Remusat, who was a 
 distinguished man of letters because he was an estimable 
 man of affairs, just as, if it had so happened that M. Thiers 
 had prevailed over M. Guizot before the downfall of the 
 Monarchy of July, he would have been a distinguished 
 man of affairs because he was an estimable man of letters.' 
 This kind of thing led to unseemly expressions of wrath,
 
 GEORGE AUGUSTUS SIMCOX 113 
 
 but Simcox's obscurity was natural to him. No man took 
 more pains. 
 
 IV 
 
 It remains that I should say something about his 
 triumphs at Oxford. He won everything there that could 
 be won by classical scholarship, and was considered the 
 ablest man of his year. But, as the writer in the Man- 
 chester Guardian says : ' His oddity was unmistakable. 
 He was careless of his appearance, and his mouth frequently 
 relaxed into a curious smile, accompanied by an audible 
 chuckle, such as might have suggested in the case of a less 
 able man a doubt of his sanity.' His temperament did 
 not fit him for the routine work of a tutorship, though the 
 best men enjoyed his teaching. He could be very sarcastic 
 with duller pupils. To one such, in handing him back his 
 copy of prose, he said with his peculiar smile and gurgling 
 chuckle : ' Do you smoke ? ' ' Yes, sir,' replied the youth, 
 expecting to be offered the opportunity. ' Then you can 
 take this to light your cigar,' replied Simcox with further 
 chucklings. He went back to Oxford in the end, and he 
 was, I fear, a very lonely man, though he kept up his 
 interest in evervthing. He wrote me from time to time 
 about things that attracted his notice, and I have quite 
 a bundle of his strange but friendly and interesting epistles. 
 I conclude by adopting the words of the Manchester 
 Guardian writer : 'A purer soul and a sweeter nature I never 
 knew, and I have seldom encountered a more brilliant 
 mind. He Avas a good brother and the best of sons.' 
 
 H
 
 XIII 
 
 THE TROUBLES OF THE ESSAYIST 
 
 Mr. Arthur C. Benson, in his book of essays At Large, 
 acutely reminds one of the essayist's troubles. He tells 
 us about his own vexations. First he wrote essays 
 anonymously, but he was pulled reluctantly out of his 
 burrow. He published, under his own name, a book, 
 Beside Still Waters. Many reviewers received it with 
 considerable disapproval, and even derision. They called 
 it morbid, and indolent, and decadent, and half a hundred 
 ugly adjectives. Then there were some who practically 
 said that the book was simply a collection of amiable 
 platitudes, but that if the people liked to read such stuff 
 they were quite at liberty to do so. Mr. Benson says that 
 he admires these reviewers, partly for their tolerant per- 
 mission to the public to read what they choose, and still 
 more because he likes to think that there are so many in- 
 telligent people in the world who are wearisomely familiar 
 with ideas which have only slowly and gradually dawned 
 upon himself. ' I have no intention of trying to refute or 
 convince my critics, and I beg them with all my heart to 
 say what they think about my books, because only by the 
 frank interchange of ideas can we arrive at the truth."' Mr. 
 Benson has his consolations. The Upton Letters, From a 
 College Window, Beside Still Waters, The Altar Fire, have 
 all achieved wide popularity. And yet there are thorns in 
 
 114
 
 THE TROUBLES OF THE ESSAYIST 115 
 
 his pillow, and I fancy there always will be thorns in the 
 pillow of an essayist if he collects his essays and publishes 
 them in a book. 
 
 They say that this is not the time when the essay is 
 particularly popular. There were the great days of 
 Arthur Helps, the author of Friends in Council, and 
 A. K. H. B., who wrote Recreations of a Country Parson. 
 Neither Helps nor Boyd is much read nowadays, but they 
 had their hour. The Saturday Review, at that time the 
 most superior of journals, published middle articles about 
 Friendship, and Worries, and Small Economies, and many 
 other themes. The Spectator, too, did much good work 
 in that way. I believe these papers were highly appre- 
 ciated, but for some reason or another they gradually 
 disappeared, and I do not know that we have anything 
 precisely similar in the periodical literature of to-day. 
 However, when an essayist like Mr. Benson appears, he 
 finds many readers, and my conviction is that the essayist, 
 if he is readable, and if he has got the manner of his own 
 day, and if he has thought of life both humorously and 
 tragically, will find readers in plenty. But I should not 
 like to guarantee him against mockers and scoffers in the 
 Press. If he is sensitive to such things he Mill soon give 
 up his occupation. Why is it that the critic is the natural 
 enemy of the essayist ? It is so even in the not rare cases 
 where the critic is himself an essayist. 
 
 i 
 
 The difficulty of the essayist is that he can hardly help 
 
 falling constantly into platitude. He may lift the platitude 
 
 a little out of the region of the densest commonplace, but 
 
 that is all. Now it is quite reasonable to answer that all
 
 116 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 life is an education in commonplace, and that every human 
 being who conies into the world has to be taught the mean- 
 ing of commonplaces one by one. We have all to know 
 the meaning of worry ; we have all to ask in our turn 
 what are the best remedies and palliatives for worry. The 
 answers given will be the answers of long ago. Probably 
 if I were to turn to an old book of Sir Arthur Helps I should 
 find that he has practically said all that can be said about 
 worry. The critic feels that he is being bored by repetition, 
 and strikes out angrily at the poor author. All that the 
 essayist can do is to say what has been said with a new 
 accent. He can put something of his own experience into 
 his counsel, and he can also write in the language of his 
 day. He may be able to freshen up the subject by new 
 anecdotes, illustrations and quotations. But there is one 
 thing he must do, no matter how clever he is. He must 
 put in many sentences which, taken out of their context, 
 are the direst and most tedious of platitudes. So I say he 
 is at the mercy of the critic. I venture to say that the 
 critic who chooses to select a certain number of sentences 
 can make any essayist ridiculous — even Emerson, who is 
 one of the most suggestive of essayists. 
 
 Here are some sentences taken from an essayist whose 
 name is by no means forgotten : 
 
 ' The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of 
 those who excel.' 
 
 ' We work little for a thing unless we wish for it.' 
 
 ' Old age has a beauty of its own.' 
 
 ' To moral excellence there are two rewards — one in the 
 conscience, one far out of reach beyond the stars.' 
 
 ' Time wasted can never conduce to money well 
 managed.'
 
 THE TROUBLES OF THE ESSAYIST 117 
 
 * In the drawing-room, as everywhere else, mind in 
 the long run prevails.' 
 
 These I take from Caxtoniana, by Bulwer Lytton. As 
 they stand they look foolish enough, but in the context 
 they are by no means so foolish. Yet one can understand 
 a critic falling upon them and declaring that they are pure 
 rubbish, prose Tupperisms without a spark of originality, 
 or point, or style. This is not quite true. Nobody will 
 know what Tupperisms are till I publish my selections 
 from the Proverbial Philosophy. But they are certainly 
 bad enough as they stand there in their homelessness and 
 in their nakedness. 
 
 We have any number of clever young men with an eye 
 for what is called Tupperisms, though they do not know 
 the august Tupper in the original, but I defy any of them 
 to write an essay, say, on ' Work and Worry ' which shall 
 be readable, intelligent, and helpful, without putting in 
 some sentences as bad in themselves as any of Bulwer 
 Lytton's. 
 
 ii 
 
 Another trouble is that the essayist, as a rule, has to 
 write round his subject. A. K. H. B. used to commence his 
 studies with the word ' Concerning.' This suggested that 
 he meant to walk round the subject rather than to drive 
 straight to the matter in hand. This peripatetic style 
 pleases many readers, but others are irritated, and even 
 enraged, at what they think wearisome, discursive and 
 pointless. But what is the poor essayist to do ? If he 
 treats his subject as a politician or a philosopher would, 
 he ceases to be an essayist, and becomes too difficult for 
 the ordinary public. It is the suggestiveness, the refusal
 
 118 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 to follow out trains of thought to their logical issue, the 
 absence, in short, of precision and too much instructive- 
 ness, that give charm to an essay. Besides, no one can 
 afford, in his own person, to give his heart away. If he 
 does the daws will peck. You can often see in a good 
 essay that a saying commonplace enough in itself has been 
 passed through the fires of thought and experience. 
 Doubtless it would please some better if the writer simply 
 told his own story of love, or grief, or failure. But this is 
 impossible. If anyone ever honestly tried to do it, it was 
 Rousseau, and I read many articles nowadays which pour 
 contempt on Rousseau. What is much more important is 
 that by the acknowledgment of his best students, Rousseau 
 was not able to compass a complete self- revelation. 
 
 Why, even the things that an essayist does tell are apt 
 to trouble him when he sees them in print. He thinks he 
 should not have been so candid. Mr. Benson, in a volume 
 of essays which has all his usual merits, throws off every 
 disguise of fiction and tells a good deal of his own pre- 
 ferences and mortifications and consolations. He describes 
 his homes and his frank pleasure in them : ' The days pass, 
 then, in a delightful monotony ; one reads, writes, sits or 
 paces in the garden, scours the country on still, sunny 
 afternoons. There are many grand churches and houses 
 within a reasonable distance, such as the great churches 
 near Wisbech and Lynn — West Walton, Walpole St. Peter, 
 Tilney, Terrington St. Clement, and a score of others — 
 great cruciform structures, in every conceivable style, with 
 fine woodwork and noble towers, each standing in the centre 
 of a tiny rustic hamlet, built with no idea of prudent pro- 
 portion to the needs of the places they serve, but out of 
 pure joy and pride. . . . And so the quiet hours tick
 
 THE TROUBLES OF THE ESSAYIST 119 
 
 themselves away in an almost monastic calm, while one's 
 book grows insensibly day by day, as the bulrush rises on 
 the edge of the dyke. I do not say that it would be a life 
 to live for the whole of a year, and year by year. There is 
 no stir, no eagerness, no brisk interchange of thought about 
 it. But for one who spends six months in a busy and 
 peopled place full of duties and discussions and conflicting 
 interests, it is like a green pasture and waters of comfort.' 
 I like to hear this. It is always pleasant to meet with a 
 contented man if he is not too anxious to give his reasons 
 for contentment. But what do the reviewers say ? They 
 say ' Yes, you like to live in a flat country, and you give us 
 books as flat as your homeland." 
 
 in 
 The result of all this is that essayists try to veil their 
 identity, either by pen-names, or more commonly, by a 
 slight admixture of fiction. Mr. Benson has done both, 
 as Sir Arthur Helps did before him. Mr. Lucas has also 
 taken to the second plan. Anonymity is no great pro- 
 tection, for any writer nowadays who attracts attention is 
 sure to become known. There is really no secret nowa- 
 days in the world of authorship. But the way of fiction is 
 not so simple as it seems. Older readers at least will 
 remember the characters of Friends in Council. They 
 met together, and an essay was read on which the members 
 of the circle commented in turn. Thus the author was 
 enabled to disclaim full responsibility, and he tried to give 
 a fair representation to various views. Also he had little 
 love affairs going on all the time in the earlier books. 
 These love affairs, however, were apt to end in marriage, 
 and after that they could not be continued successfully.
 
 120 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 It is true that the characters appeared again, but they 
 were all changed. For instance, the sprightly Mildred 
 vanished and rose again in the form of an intelligent, 
 careworn matron, smiling affectionately upon a sickly 
 child. Helps, if I remember rightly, gave it up altogether, 
 and attempted ultimately the regular novel in a book 
 which had no great success, though it was full of his clear 
 sense and gentle wit. The framework of fiction, if it has 
 to be used, must be changed every time, and I am afraid 
 the essayist must in the end choose between the two, and 
 continue as an essayist or commence as a novelist. One 
 cannot help admiring Mr. Benson's easy handling of life 
 and language, the deftness with which he tells stories, and 
 the mingled courage and sympathy with which he surveys 
 the scene of existence. But for some he is too little of a 
 combatant, and too resolutely comfortable. ' I have wan- 
 dered far enough in my thought, it would seem, from the 
 lonely grange in its wide pastures and the calm expanse of 
 fen ; and I should wish once more to bring my reader back 
 home with me to the sheltered garden, and the orchard 
 knee-deep in grass, and the embowering elms.' This is 
 one point of view, but it is not the point of view from which 
 most of us observe the world. 
 
 However, in spite of the critics, the essayist will con- 
 tinue, and even if he is obscured for a time, he will have a 
 revival. If he is commonplace he writes mostly for 
 commonplace people, and it is with the problems of life 
 rather than with literature, or science, or politics that the 
 heart of man is most deeply engaged .
 
 XIV 
 
 LORD ROSEBERY'S LITERARY METHOD 
 
 Lord Rosebery's Chatham : His Early Life and Con- 
 nections, has already been recognised as a work of the first 
 importance by critics with a far better knowledge of 
 political history than I can lay claim to. Lord Roseberv 
 has grounded himself on original material. He has had 
 access to the Holland House papers, and also to Mr. 
 Fortescue's invaluable family collection of papers at 
 Dropmore. With the aid of these he endeavours to 
 illuminate what he calls the early life of Lord Chatham. 
 This period, however, extended over forty-eight years. 
 Lord Rosebery is of opinion that the complete life of 
 Chatham has never been written, and never can be written, 
 because the materials do not exist. On the earlier part 
 of his life the papers at his disposal throw some light, but 
 nothing of any kind exists to reveal the man in his later 
 years. His deliberate scheme of life, adopted partly from 
 policy and partly from considerations of health, was to 
 shroud his inner mind and nature from his contemporaries. 
 The "public life can be treated, and has been treated by 
 many, notably by Macaulay. But the real man is not dis- 
 covered when we know his course as a statesman, his 
 speeches, his achievements. It is not discovered by setting 
 forth the annals of his period, and noticing his contact with 
 events. The private life, which is half or three parts of a
 
 122 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 man, is still a mystery. In the case of Chatham there were 
 no intimates ; his wife and his children said nothing, and 
 posterity has but a stern effigy representing what he desired 
 to be seen. But in the Dropmore papers which Lord 
 Rosebery has been able to use there are certain gleams of 
 light falling on Chatham's youth, and Lord Rosebery's 
 object has been to point out these and their significance. 
 Unfortunately, the biographer holds out no hope of com- 
 pleting the work. The conditions of completion are 
 evidently repugnant to him. ' In a word, after 1756, 
 when this book ends, his public life is conspicuous and 
 familiar. But his inner life after that period will never be 
 known ; and so we must be content with a torso." We are 
 not content, but our discontent is probably vain. 
 
 However this may be, Lord Rosebery has given us a 
 book of singular value. In some respects it is his very best 
 production. So keen a judge of literary style could not be 
 unaware of the almost insuperable difficulties which con- 
 fronted him. Whenever an author has to deal with new 
 material for the biography of a man whose Life has already 
 been written, he may almost despair of achieving a literary 
 success. The ordinary biographer who has to prepare a 
 ' Life and Letters ' finds his task hard enough. The result 
 of his labours is likely to be simply a collection of letters 
 with mere narrative tags between them. The arrangement 
 is apt to be vexatious, even when the narrative paragraphs 
 are as brilliant as may be. But when they are, as they 
 usually are, comparatively dull and poor, the book may be 
 a valuable storehouse of material for essayists and for com- 
 pilers, but it is not in the proper sense a book. Lord 
 Rosebery had an even harder task than that. He had to 
 place new matter of importance along with much already
 
 LORD ROSEBERYS LITERARY METHOD 123 
 
 familiar. In circumstances like these the balance is 
 almost certain to be distorted. The new matter has stress 
 laid upon it simply because it is new. This involves a 
 disproportion which only the highest skill can surmount. 
 It seems to me that Lord Rosebery has been strikingly 
 successful. There is here no dull confusion. We know 
 where we are and with whom we are dealing. Lord 
 Rosebery has much in common with Lord Macaulay, and 
 he has Macaulay's power of setting every man and every 
 place clearly before us. He is capable of very bold and 
 most righteous decisions. Thus he sets aside Pitt's love- 
 letters, classifying them with the terrible correspondence 
 between Burns and Clarinda. I know very few men who 
 would have shown the same courage. The narrative is 
 clear and orderly. We are not shifted about from place to 
 place and from name to name. The biographer stands 
 over his materials, moulds them into form, and guides 
 them to their end. We close the book feeling that what 
 is to be known of the first period of Pitt's life, the period of 
 struggle, is now given us in final form by a man of genius 
 and of heart, who has considered his subject under all 
 lights and with perfect impartiality, who has told us the 
 truth, who has never assumed knowledge where he has 
 been ignorant, or condemned without hearing the defence. 
 But my object in this letter is not to review a book 
 which needs no praise, a book which is already ranked with 
 the very best of its kind, but to make some notes on Lord 
 Rosebery 's literary method. If Lord Rosebery had not 
 been claimed by politics he would undoubtedly have taken 
 a high station among men of letters. Even as it is, he has 
 done so. The comparatively brief and occasional appear- 
 ances which he has made in literature have commanded
 
 124 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 the attention of the world. It seems to me that Lord 
 Rosebery's bent is to estimate great characters, and that 
 he brings to this business a rare combination of qualities. 
 
 i 
 
 Estimates in these days are very much to seek. When 
 a notable man dies his career is accorded some brief atten- 
 tion and study. The newspapers publish obituary notices, 
 often extremely good of their kind. Occasionally in lead- 
 ing articles something more is attempted. Then, in due 
 course, we have the biography, the life, the letters, the 
 tributes put together with more or less skill, and always, of 
 course, written from the family point of view. But some- 
 thing more is wanted. A string of dates and facts about a 
 man is not sufficient. It is well to know when he was 
 born, when he died, what sort of thing he did best, and 
 what public and private fortunes befell him. But we want 
 much more. We want an estimate, a weighing up of the 
 whole man. The man should not be a mere name in a 
 crowd of dates. We need the suggestions which give 
 character, substance, colour, and humanity. Sainte- 
 Beuve did this kind of work supremely well. It used to be 
 done to admiration in the Spectator, and now and then in 
 the Saturday Review. One of the best, if not the best, 
 estimate I ever read was by Sir Charles Bowen on Professor 
 H. J. S. Smith, of Oxford. The old readers of the Spectator 
 remember the beautiful and penetrating article which 
 appeared after Cardinal Newman's death. The original 
 title under which Bagehot's essays were published was 
 Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen. It was a 
 clumsv title, but it described the book. Then we have
 
 LORD ROSEBERY'S LITERARY METHOD 125 
 
 Harriet Martineau's biographical sketches, the result of 
 careful and skilful scrutiny and very brightly written. We 
 have had appreciations and criticisms of various kinds, but 
 now we have very little in this manner which is of the first 
 rank. Our weekly reviews hardly attempt it. It is to 
 Lord Rosebery that the world looks for the right word when 
 a great man comes out of the shadows for a moment and 
 is revalued, or when some one who has played a conspicuous 
 part in life quits the stage. 
 
 ii 
 First among Lord Rosebery's qualifications for estimat- 
 ing character I should place his extraordinary freedom 
 from prejudice. His attitude to politics has to be dis- 
 counted. Of politics he thinks and says exactly what 
 London journalists say about journalism. What they say 
 may be discovered easily in any club near Fleet Street. 
 What Lord Rosebery says we can tell from the newspapers. 
 But when he comes to judge the dead, all prejudice seems 
 to leave him. Harriet Martineau spoiled her essays to a 
 considerable extent by her extreme political bitterness. 
 Her estimate of Macaulay, for example, is glaringly unjust 
 and untrue. She speaks of his ' universal failure,' of his 
 ' shallow and insolent character,' and, in fact, never does 
 herself justice save when she is in general sympathy with 
 the character she describes. Lord Rosebery does not 
 shrink from stern judgments, but he has as little bias in 
 these judgments as is possible to humanity. He is equally 
 free from social prejudice. It is life which interests him, 
 and not the trappings of life. Wherever power is strikingly 
 manifested he is drawn to it, and while its surroundings 
 interest him as they ought to, they in no way influence his
 
 126 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 reckonings. His attitude is extraordinarily unaffected and 
 simple. The humble cottage of Burns, the bookshop of 
 Samuel Johnson's father, the great houses of England, are 
 attractive each in its way, but all are attractive as the 
 birthplaces and the homes of men who lead their race. 
 Lord Rosebery also possesses the excellent quality of ease. 
 The work of analysis must not be ostentatious if it is to be 
 done successfully. The analyst must not brandish the 
 scalpel like a carver of meat among the ancient Romans. 
 He must study and he must think deeply. He must attain 
 balanced and many-sided views of character. He must 
 train himself to see all round with an eye for proportion and 
 for the quantities in Avhich the various elements and 
 > attributes are intermixed. But the labour must be con- 
 cealed. The result must be presented with grace and 
 lightness and mastery. In his book on Chatham even 
 Lord Rosebery sometimes finds it difficult to avoid dull- 
 ness and ponderosity. But on the whole he is eminently 
 successful. 
 
 He has also another qualification rarely found in con- 
 junction with the others. He spares no pains, neglects no 
 source of information, very rarely, if ever, falls into a 
 blunder. It is very dangerous, as I have found, to con- 
 tradict him on a matter of fact. It is not often that Lord 
 Rosebery 's power of swift motion over subjects is combined 
 with the faculty for laborious penetration into the darker 
 and rockier depths of the theme. But whatever subject 
 Lord Rosebery takes up, he is able to meet the experts 
 upon their own ground. He loves to get at the truth, and 
 the labour does not tire him. On subjects which he has 
 not thoroughly mastered he refuses to say anything. 
 
 That Lord Rosebery would gain if he were clothed in the
 
 LORD ROSEBERY'S LITERARY METHOD 127 
 
 defensive armour of a little phlegm seems to me certain. 
 But his moderation, temperance, mercy, reserve of state- 
 ment and argument are generally unflawed. When they 
 are flawed it has to be remembered that the Queen Anne 
 writers, including even Steele, the writers who brought 
 urbanity into criticism and connected literature with life, 
 could be at least as virulent and angry in politics as the 
 hottest of our own contemporaries. 
 
 in 
 
 I have only a little space in which to describe Lord 
 Rosebery's method of study when he conies to a character 
 like Chatham or Cromwell or Burns or Johnson. He 
 begins with heredity, and it is easy to see that he attaches 
 more importance to heredity than most of us do. There 
 is a particular zest in the early chapters on Chatham. 
 Accounts of ancestry are usually very dull and unmeaning, 
 but to Lord Rosebery the facts speak loudly. From Pitt's 
 ancestor the Governor he derived the curse of gout, a 
 nervous, violent temper, and some taint of madness. 
 These account for many things, but when we try to account 
 for genius we are baffled. But, says Lord Rosebery, may 
 it not be the result in character of the conflict of violent 
 strains of heredity which clash like flint and steel, and pro- 
 duce the divine spark ? The meaning of this may be 
 discerned by a careful reading of the facts. He looks 
 next at the early environment, the home, the schools, the 
 schoolmasters. In Pitt's case the interest lies chiefly in 
 his relations to his sister Ann. Nothing is more striking 
 in Pitt's letters than the two in which he describes himself 
 to his sister, who has charged him, as Sir Joshua Reynolds'
 
 128 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 sister charged her brother, with expecting absolute de- 
 ference and blind submission to his will. It is perhaps in 
 youth that we find the friends who mainly influence us, 
 although it is not always so. Pitt does not seem to have 
 made close friends. But most of us are more fortunate. 
 Perhaps the chief interest of the young is in those who are 
 coming to meet them. Dickens had an extraordinary 
 sense of this. ' Which of the vast multitude of travellers 
 under the sun and the stars, climbing the dusty hills and 
 toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and 
 journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet 
 and act and react on one another, which of the host may, 
 with no suspicion of the journey's end, be travelling 
 surely hither ? ' In most lives the supremely important 
 event is marriage. Lord Rosebery handles with great 
 tact and tenderness the marriage of Pitt. When the 
 statesman became engaged to Lady Hester Grenville he 
 was forty-six and she was thirty-three. They had known 
 each other for nineteen years. Why were they so long in 
 understanding one another ? The wise answer is, ' It 
 seems inexplicable, but love affairs are often inexplicable.' 
 What is certain is that no man ever had a nobler or a more 
 devoted wife. ' Her appearances are rare, but full of 
 tenderness ; she watched over her husband with exquisite 
 devotion ; furthering and anticipating his wishes, which 
 were often fanciful and extravagant ; shielding his 
 moments of nervous prostration with the wings of an 
 angel.' She took on all his burdens and absorbed herself 
 in her high but harassing duty. There let the curtain fall. 
 We do not and we should not know everything. But many 
 a man has gone through his feats of strength without even 
 a flush because of a flutter of the heart
 
 LORD ROSEBERY'S LITERARY METHOD 129 
 
 ' When it bounded, not for fame, 
 Not for shouts along the air, 
 But for one soft touch that came 
 For a moment on his hair.' 
 
 Like all deep students of human nature, Lord Rosebery 
 knows that there are revealing moments in life, moments 
 in which we win understanding. As Dickens said : ' None 
 of us clearly knows to whom or to what we are indebted in 
 this wise, until some marked stop in the whirling wheel of 
 life brings the right perception with it. It comes with 
 sickness, it comes with sorrow, it comes with the loss of the 
 dearly beloved, it is one of the most frequent uses of 
 adversity. It came to Clennam in his adversity, strongly 
 and tenderly. " When I first gathered myself together," 
 he thought, " and set something like a purpose before my 
 jaded eyes, whom had I before me, toiling on, for a good 
 object's sake, without encouragement, without notice, 
 against ignoble obstacles that would have turned an army 
 of received heroes and heroines ? One weak girl ! ' 
 
 I need not lay stress on what must after all be the main 
 part of any worthy estimate — the value of the individual's 
 work. The work, however, reveals the character, and the 
 character shapes the work. Lord Rosebery conducts with 
 remarkable spirit and brilliancy the story of Pitt's long duel 
 with Newcastle. It was a fierce and prolonged fight, and 
 the odds were much against Pitt; 'the magpie cunning 
 of that old caitiff paralysed every arm that might have 
 defended him.' If Pitt had wavered, his career was at 
 an end. But he did not waver. There are victories and 
 defeats which do not seem to be final at the time, but are 
 nevertheless inexorably final. The oratory of Pitt natur- 
 ally engages Lord Rosebery, but after a most careful and 
 
 i
 
 ISO A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 penetrating study, he comes to the conclusion that we have 
 no adequate means of judging it. Reports of his speeches 
 do not exist, and even if they did exist, there was that in 
 Pitt, as in every orator, which cannot be transmitted in a 
 report. Is it not true that the orator's secret and mystery 
 are always buried in his grave ?
 
 XV 
 
 THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON 
 
 Mr. James Douglas' book on Mr. Watts-Dunton (1904) is 
 one of extraordinary interest, and so far as it is open to 
 criticism the defect seems to be attributable to the subject 
 and not to the author. There is too little of Mr. Douglas and 
 too little of Mr. Watts-Dunton. If Mr. Douglas had been 
 given his own way we should have had a representative col- 
 lection of Mr. Watts-Dunton's critical essays, and an estimate 
 of his whole work by Mr. Douglas. This would have been 
 an ideal arrangement. As it is, we have some biographical 
 particulars, some extracts from the poet's critical work in 
 the Athenceum, and an admirable, just, penetrating, but 
 scattered review of the whole from a diligent student and a 
 competent judge. That was all Mr. Watts-Dunton would 
 permit for the present, and we are grateful for so much. 
 Mr. Douglas has eminent qualifications for his task. He 
 writes with the full force of conviction, and with an easy 
 familiarity and a firmness of grasp which are the result of 
 assiduous devotion to his author. Mr. Douglas is best 
 known to the public as a master of what may be termed 
 personal criticism — the only criticism which seems likely 
 to be read in the immediate future. But those who can 
 identify his unsigned articles know that he brings to the 
 task of criticism a wealth of erudition and a keenness of 
 
 131
 
 132 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 insight which few contemporaries possess. Mr. Watts- 
 Dunton's reserve is intelligible. After guarding his privacy 
 for many years with something very like ferocity, he has 
 at last found himself on every tongue as a poet and a 
 novelist. He did not know what to make of this fame, for 
 though in one way friendly and approachable, he is in 
 another a detached and separate personality, holding the 
 secret of his inner life, and with his eyes set on some image 
 visible for him alone. I can partly imagine the difficulty 
 with which Mr. Douglas dragged out for the benefit of the 
 public the pleasant and cheerful glimpses of Mr. Watts- 
 Dunton's friendships which are given in his pages. 
 
 If I confine myself to discussing Mr. Watts-Dunton as a 
 critic, the fault is his own. I am trying to take deserved 
 vengeance on my own account and that of the public. 
 Mr. Watts-Dunton depreciates his critical work, and would 
 much prefer that it should remain buried in the files of old 
 journals. He refuses even to look at what he calls his 
 forgotten papers. The irksome labour which he thus 
 imposes on his disciples provokes a natural resentment. 
 Further, I object utterly to the antithesis which Mr. 
 Watts - Dunton seems to draw between criticism and 
 creation. His assumption is apparently that his criticism 
 is but a thing by the way. But a really great critic is quite 
 as rare and as precious as a great poet or a great novelist, 
 and is at least equally secure of immortality. Five minutes 
 of recollection will show that this is true. I am quite 
 willing to discuss Mr. Watts-Dunton as a novelist and as a 
 poet when he hands over the key of his criticisms to the 
 public, but meanwhile I am concerned to show that he is 
 creative in his critical work. Mr. Douglas happily has 
 been allowed to quote enough to establish his contention
 
 THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON 133 
 
 beyond any cavil, and nothing could be more intelligent 
 than the general course of his selection and his comment. 
 
 I read Mr. Watts-Dunton first in the Examiner many 
 years ago. The paper was then edited by my friend Minto. 
 He was kind enough to write me in my lonely Northern 
 manse, giving me details of literary life in London. He also 
 allowed me to write in his paper, and every Monday I 
 anticipated its arrival with the keenest joy. The circula- 
 tion, I fear, was very small. Three years before Minto 
 undertook it, the sale, as we are told in the life of Henry 
 Morley, was reduced to a hundred copies a week. Minto 
 improved on that, but the journal never became successful, 
 and he disliked the work of editing. It had compensations, 
 however. There were three of his reviewers whom he 
 specially valued — Theodore Watts-Dunton, Edmund Gosse, 
 and Richard Garnett. I find in some old letters glowing 
 eulogies of them all. But Theodore Watts soon passed 
 over to the Athenaeum, of which Mr. Norman Maccoll, then 
 a young and unknown man, had been appointed editor. It 
 was a fortunate day for Maccoll at least, if not for Watts- 
 Dunton, when the latter took his shilling. The Athenceum 
 took a great place and prestige under Hepworth Dixon, 
 who was a man of strong personality, and in full command 
 of his team. Nor was the team to be despised. Dr. Doran 
 was a master of anecdote ; John Bruce had a sound know- 
 ledge of eighteenth century literature ; Westland Marston 
 was a poet, and though his reading was limited, he could 
 write with sympathy and sometimes with eloquence, as in 
 his review of Rossetti's poems. De Morgan was the most 
 original and striking of them all. But when Mr. Watts- 
 Dunton came on the scene it was felt by Lowell in 
 America, and by many obscure people over the English-
 
 134 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 speaking world, that a new and great critic had appeared. 
 For many years the articles of Watts-Dunton were trans- 
 cendently the chief attractions of the Athenceum, and it 
 was hard to say whether he was happiest in his reviewing 
 or in his personal portraits or in his verses. 
 
 I shall try to analyse the elements of this powerful and 
 lasting attraction. Serenity, I think, was the chief spell, 
 but the serenity rested on the combination of various 
 qualities. It was the result of all the rest. The critic 
 showed himself to have tranquil and settled convictions, 
 and he was able without effort to impose these on his 
 readers. He began his work young indeed, but after a 
 long preparation. In his silence he had acquired a know- 
 ledge of the literatures of the world, which was at once 
 minute and extensive, and completely at command. He 
 made no claim to significance or importance. He was not 
 dogmatic or pedantic, and he shunned violence. Good 
 manners characterised everything he wrote, though with 
 all his benignity there was an occasional gleam as of sleep- 
 ing lightning which he would not use. His knowledge 
 was always in service to a direct interest in humanity. A 
 certain benignity and calmness went with astonishing 
 maturity to the writing of everything he produced. 
 
 You could not read him long without perceiving that 
 he had a masterly grasp of principles. Gradually a certain 
 system revealed itself to the patient student. The essays 
 were full of thought. They showed that the writer had 
 mastered by anticipation the problems that were later to 
 shake the hearts and minds of reflecting men. Mr. Watts- 
 Dunton seemed equally interested in ideas and in form. 
 He did not merely say that a thing was good or bad. He 
 asked why it was good or bad ; he gave a reason ; he put
 
 THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON 135 
 
 the question about every great writer : What does he wish 
 to say ? He perceived what lay behind the definite ex- 
 pression of views. I think he was always least at home 
 when writing about authors whom he did not regard as 
 really important. When he had to deal with these, he 
 tried to escape to some discussion of a great subject or a 
 great man. I do not wonder that Henley was much irri- 
 tated by a review of his poems in which no unfriendly word 
 could be found. When Mr. Watts-Dunton was dealing 
 with an author that counted, he loved to present his 
 significance, and develop it into a consistent whole. To 
 do this he would study even the most occasional and ap- 
 parently trivial work of his subject. He was above even 
 such critics as Hazlitt and Matthew Arnold in his quiet 
 contempt for distinctions really trivial. I do not remember 
 him discussing, for example, the political position of an 
 author, as Hazlitt would have done, or as Arnold would 
 have done. He knew that party labels are often the result 
 of circumstances, that among professed Liberals there are 
 many fierce Conservatives, and among professed Con- 
 servatives many headlong Radicals. He went to the 
 central question — the difference between a materialistic 
 and a spiritualistic cosmogony. I have ventured to say 
 elsewhere that his own theory of the universe is an opti- 
 mistic confronting of the new cosmogony of growth. Mr. 
 Watts-Dunton saw the gravity of the issue when nearly all 
 the rest were blind, and as year follows year his prescience 
 has been justified. Almost every problem which con- 
 fronts the critic has been faced and answered in one or 
 other of the buried series. Nor do I know better and 
 truer answers. In comparison the work of most critics 
 is thin and superficial.
 
 136 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Another characteristic of these essays was their nobly- 
 catholic temper. It is little, and yet perhaps it is much to 
 say, that the essays were entirely devoid of envy, spite, and 
 malice. There was never any throwing of mud, never any 
 extravagance of blame. The critic never appeared as a 
 petulant Aristarchus dancing and raving on Parnassus. 
 There was no over statement, and there was no timidity. 
 The critic was never presumptuous, but always perfectly 
 fearless, respectful indeed of old and settled judgment, 
 but never a believer in his own infallibility, or in that of 
 any one else. There was no blare of trumpets in his praise, 
 but a sentence meant as much from him as a light caress 
 from Di Vernon. Challenges and contradictions were re- 
 ceived with a quiet courtesy. Mr. Watts-Dunton was never 
 one of those who regard every difference from himself as 
 a sign of deep-seated depravity. He gave attentive ear 
 to writers of all schools, and knew that every school, no 
 matter how despised or unfashionable at the moment, had 
 its own share in universal truth. Indeed, it sometimes 
 seemed as if this impartiality were carried too far. The 
 writer appeared to have neither part nor lot in the literary 
 strife. For himself he made no claim, and seemed to 
 cherish no ambition. He had an unshaken faith in the 
 truth, and in the certainty of its triumph. It was quite 
 enough for him to render that truth as he perceived it, 
 and then leave the matter, heedless whether men followed 
 or not. He came forth as the inhabitant of a larger world, 
 as one who moved familiarly through all the fields of 
 thought, as one to whom the little jealousies of the moment 
 were incredibly trifling. 
 
 The style fitted the thought, and was, indeed, singularly 
 beautiful and poetical. Mr. Watts-Dunton never indulged
 
 THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON 137 
 
 in what is called prose poetry, but the spirit of poetry 
 pervaded his writing. Those who know his prose only by 
 Aylwin know but one side of him. He has there adopted 
 the severely simple form which in his judgment best fits 
 the narrative. But even in his criticism his imagination 
 was nobly bridled and guided. You could never say of him 
 that he was oriental and cloying in his expression. You 
 could not complain of the plague of adjectives in the com- 
 parative and in the superlative degree. There was a fine 
 restraint in the most eloquent passages, but the right words 
 were chosen and used. This is essential to great criticism. 
 There may be sound judgment and accurate information, 
 and even delicacy of insight, without the crowning accom- 
 plishment of style. But for criticism of the highest rank 
 it is essential that the critic should have the power to 
 express the finer and more subtle shades of difference which 
 mark poetical thought and expression. He must be care- 
 fully accurate and precise, and yet have a mastery of the 
 refinements of language. No one can say where Mr. Watts- 
 Dunton found his style. He has lived in close intimacy 
 with men of genius whom he has loved and admired, 
 and they have loved and admired him in return. But I 
 cannot see that he has received anything from them. If 
 Rossetti and Swinburne and Morris had never lived, there 
 would have been no perceptible difference in Mr. Watts- 
 Dunton's work, save that, of course, his subjects would 
 have been so far modified. 
 
 The effect of all this labour has been very great, but now 
 that Mr. Watts-Dunton has ceased to write criticism, 
 there is some danger that the new generation may miss the 
 influence. He may be assured, however, that there will 
 be little peace for him till he acquiesces in the reasonable
 
 138 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 demand that he should put the vast number of his 
 generalisations upon literature, art, philosophy, and the 
 conduct of life into an accessible form. I have only to 
 add that Mr. Douglas is fully justified in the claim that he 
 has connected Mr. Watts-Dunton's critical system with his 
 imaginative work more thoroughly than has been done by 
 any other writer. 
 
 Mr. Douglas says, by the way, that Mr. Watts-Dunton's 
 great treatise on poetry in the Encyclopedia Britannica 
 was written at the request of Professor Baynes. ' He went 
 to London for the purpose of inviting him to do the work 
 and explaining exactly what was wanted.' If I am not 
 much mistaken Professor Robertson Smith had at least 
 as much to do with this business as Baynes had, and I have 
 heard Mr. Watts-Dunton speak with admiration of the 
 suggestions with which Robertson Smith returned the proof, 
 suggestions which were offered with much diffidence, as 
 Robertson Smith did not think himself at home in the 
 field. It was a field, however, which he had by no means 
 neglected.
 
 XVI 
 
 MEDICATED LITERATURE : JOHN BROWN AND 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 The biography of Dr. John Brown by his cousin, John 
 Taylor Brown (1903) is worth reading, but the biographer 
 seems to have been overweighted with his task, and it is im- 
 possible to say that he has performed it satisfactorily. Dr. 
 John Taylor Brown had decided parts. He was a thinker 
 and a student, but there was in him something perverse and 
 cross-grained. His faculty of expression was limited, and 
 frequently his thought struggles through his style. Thus 
 in his preface we read : ' It may supply the groundwork 
 and suggestion of what may be better done by some other 
 pen than that of the present writer can be hoped by him 
 to effect.' What could be more awkward ? But the 
 great disappointment is that the biography is not a bio- 
 graphy. The author tantalises us by referring to letters 
 of John Brown in his possession, but he gives none. There 
 is hardly a fact that is not quite familiar. The most vital 
 pages are those which describe Mrs. John Brown, of whom 
 we have two portraits and a somewhat frank account. 
 Besides her clothes, all that she brought to her husband 
 on her marriage was two or three odd volumes of the 
 Spectator. But she brought herself, and the two were 
 completely happy in each other. She was admired for 
 her beauty and her grace, and without being highly 
 
 139
 
 140 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 educated or brilliant in conversation, she was decidedly 
 intelligent. Mrs. Brown, however, was not a universal 
 favourite. She did not scruple to show her impatience 
 with those whom she disliked, and could speak rather 
 plainly and bluntly. ' And with all her good qualities, 
 she was not quite destitute of what may be called temper, 
 and her husband once allowed to me that even to him there 
 was now and then a little outbreak. But he characteristic- 
 ally added — good, kind, loving soul as he was — that this 
 was rather an addition, because she was sorry afterwards, 
 and so kind and affectionate to make up for it.' The 
 biography breaks off at this point, and there follows a 
 criticism of Dr. John Brown's literary work. For the 
 most part, it is a laborious and unsuccessful paraphrase, 
 but it does not altogether lack acuteness. The concluding 
 essay, having nothing to do with Dr. John Brown, and 
 being in itself somewhat painful reading, should have been 
 omitted. Altogether the book will not bear comparison 
 with Miss Maclaren's exquisite sketch, and one feels that 
 she should have written the blameless, beautiful, sad story 
 of John Brown's pilgrimage through the world. 
 
 It has been said that no man gained a literary reputation 
 so easily as Dr. John Brown did. He wrote no sustained 
 work ; the fragments he collected represent practically 
 all his output. They are of very unequal value. They are 
 full of repetitions and of quotations. If all the quoted 
 matter were struck out, not much would be left. Yet they 
 live, and may very well survive much that is more 
 ambitious. They are all tinged by an exquisite individu- 
 ality. Perhaps their chief characteristic is their benignity, 
 and benignity joined to power is the rarest quality in the 
 world. Let any one try to pick out in a great audience the
 
 MEDICATED LITERATURE 141 
 
 faces that are at once benignant and strong, and he will 
 understand what I mean. Pathos, geniality, keen observa- 
 tion, and an uncommon skill in the selection of picturesque 
 subjects, mark Dr. Brown's writings. No man was ever 
 more happy in his themes. His studies of Scottish char- 
 acter and of Scottish history and romance, his anecdotes — 
 for they are often little more than anecdotes — his intensely 
 affectionate sketches of animals, the records of high friend- 
 ships like those with Thackeray and Leech, win their way 
 irresistibly, and though the touches are few they are never 
 wasted. ' The green silk purse full of gold,' is worthy of 
 Stevenson, and though the materials of Pet Marjorie were 
 supplied, no one could have handled them as Brown did. 
 He remembered Pet Marjorie's own maxim : ' A great 
 many authors have expressed themselves too sentimen- 
 tally.' But when all is said and done, it is the benignity 
 that looked from Dr. Brown's face and looks from his 
 writings which is his passport to immortality. He was 
 ' determined not to execute a large order,' and he did not, 
 but much will perish ere he be forgotten. 
 
 To say that Dr. John Brown writes from the standpoint 
 of a physician, that his works are medicated, is to pay him 
 a very high compliment. There are few medical men who 
 can lay aside the professional manner in addressing the 
 public. John Brown and Oliver Wendell Holmes suc- 
 ceeded in doing this, and yet the wisdom, the experience, 
 and the pity of the physician appear in all they say. Now 
 and then they become strictly professional, as when Dr. 
 John Brown gives an illustration of the bones of the Black 
 Dwarf. For the most part they avoid technicalities, but 
 they never forget the connection of the mind with the body, 
 and the lessons which long nearness to suffering humanity
 
 142 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 teach the merciful and the humble. Literature was more 
 the business of Holmes than of Brown, but both of them 
 were primarily healers. Both were in comparatively 
 mature life when they began to write seriously. John 
 Brown was thirty- six when in reply to a kind request from 
 Hugh Miller, a request reinforced with four five-pound 
 notes, he published some criticisms on art in the Witness. 
 They do not show him at his best, and it was not till he 
 was forty-eight that the first volume of his collected essays, 
 containing Rab and his Friends, was published by Mr. 
 Constable. His last writing appeared about 1866, his 
 period of literary activity thus extending over twenty 
 years. He lived on till 1882. Holmes was nearly fifty 
 when his Autocrat of the Breakfast Table was published. 
 His previous essays in the same kind were nearly worth- 
 less. Thus both of them had minds richly stored when 
 they caught the ear of the public. Holmes's best work 
 in prose was very soon completed. After the Guardian 
 Angel of 1867, he wrote nothing that mattered. They had 
 much in common, but Brown's was the deeper and the 
 sadder nature. Holmes was more pugnacious, and out- 
 wardly much more triumphant. 
 
 Holmes had a doctrine which he preached directly and 
 indirectly through all his prose writings. He was not a 
 materialist, nor did he believe that man was entirely the 
 creature of circumstances. He believed that within a 
 certain range the will was free, and that human beings 
 were responsible to God. But he held that the limits of 
 freedom and responsibility were much more limited than 
 the theologians think, and that in many of their actions 
 human beings are not really free. It is the physiological 
 side of the character that interests him. Thus the traits of
 
 MEDICATED LITERATURE 143 
 
 character which connect the individual with his organisa- 
 tion or with all his ancesors are constantly developed. In 
 Elsie Venner he describes the effect of a physical inoculation 
 on the moral nature. A girl takes in some degree the 
 properties of a rattlesnake. A novelist may be justified 
 in adopting any hypothesis that will provide him with the 
 strongest appeals to the imagination. But Holmes was 
 not a mjere novelist. He was a theological teacher, and he 
 had no right to use as a weapon against the orthodox 
 theology a pseudo-scientific hypothesis. In the Guardian 
 Angel, he describes a heroine in whom no less than eight 
 distinct personalities are said to have tabernacled, and he 
 says that he is building on unimpeachable authority. His 
 thesis is that the body in which we journey in the isthmus 
 between the two oceans is not a private carriage, but an 
 omnibus. While he properly repudiated the charge of 
 materialism, he admitted that he wrote to protest against 
 the tendency to shift the total responsibility of human 
 action from the infinite to the finite. In both his novels, 
 and all the Breakfast Table books, and to some extent in 
 his poetry, he undermines the sense of responsibility. 
 When the facts are brought into the light, it will be seen 
 that Oliver Wendell Holmes had more to do with destroy- 
 ing the sense of sin in the present generation than many 
 novelists whom he would have condemned as utterly 
 immoral. But Holmes had a theology of his own, the 
 theology of the Brothers Cheeryble. He deduced from his 
 theory of limited responsibility an almost unlimited toler- 
 ance for human beings. He seized at everything that 
 would falsify or weaken the sense of guilt. To Darwinism 
 in this aspect he gave an eager welcome, but he held firmly 
 to the view that the soul is immortal, that it will escape
 
 144 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 from its imprisonment, and have a fair opportunity. He 
 was even a universalist, believing firmly that the Sovereign 
 Love would conform at last all characters, however stained 
 and cramped, to His own. In this way, he escaped much 
 of the burden and the mystery of this unintelligible world. 
 Limitation, bondage, darkness, evil, hate were all of the 
 moment. The spirit on its emancipation from death 
 left them behind for ever. With this faith Holmes did 
 fierce battle with the ruling theology, with the ' cabinet 
 keepers of our doctrinal museums.' His One-Hoss Shay 
 is a fierce parable describing the smash of the impregnable 
 logic of Calvinism. 
 
 It should be remembered that, like Brown, Holmes 
 was the son of a sturdy Calvinistic leader. Brown, how- 
 ever, accepted his father's faith. One of the most penetrat- 
 ing passages in Dr. Taylor Brown's biography refers to this. 
 He speaks of the mental conflict and disturbance which 
 took such serious forms in the later years of John Brown's 
 life, and gave a painfully morbid turn to his thoughts. ' It 
 has sometimes occurred to me that his early home educa- 
 tion may have had something to do with this. His father 
 was not a man to be called illiberal in his style of religious 
 thought, but at least in the earlier part of his life it un- 
 questionably went very much on the lines of strict 
 Calvinism, and John having been in his childhood indoc- 
 trinated into the same hard and relentless beliefs, they had 
 sunk so much into the essence of his mind that not being 
 strongly logical or disposed to speculate on such subjects, 
 he never found himself able to do sufficient battle against 
 them, but allowed them to the end to press heavily on his 
 spirit, and perhaps to mar his intelligence. . . . Indiffer- 
 ence or cynical scepticism were both too alien to his nature
 
 MEDICATED LITERATURE 145 
 
 to bring him any relief, and something of abiding dis- 
 quietude was the result.' That Brown was overwhelmed 
 at times is too true, but I doubt whether he could ever have 
 agreed with Holmes. If he detested anybody, he detested 
 Dickens, who held the same creed. His idol was Thackeray, 
 and his comment on Thackeray explains himself. Speak- 
 ing of the ' deep, steady melancholy ' of Thackeray's 
 nature, he says : ' This arose in part from temperament, 
 from a quick sense of the littleness and the wretchedness 
 of mankind. His keen perception of the meanness and 
 vulgarity of the realities around him contrasted with the 
 ideal present to his mind could produce no other effect. . . . 
 In part, too, this melancholy was the result of private 
 calamities. He alludes to these often in his writings, and 
 a knowledge that his sorrows were great is necessary to the 
 perfect appreciation of much of his deepest pathos.' John 
 Brown held that Vanity Fair was Thackeray's greatest 
 novel, and that it was a true picture of life. ' It was this 
 sense of an all-perfect good, of a strict goodness laid upon 
 each one of us as an unescapable law, it was this glimpse 
 into the Paradise not lost of the lovely and the pure which 
 quickened his fell insight into the vileness, the vanity, the 
 shortcomings, the pitifulness of us all, of himself not less 
 than of any son of time.' Whether John Brown held in all 
 respects by his father's creed I do not know, but I am sure 
 that he never would have been won over to any rose-water 
 theology. 
 
 There is another point to be touched lightly. Dr. Taylor 
 Brown, in an interesting note, refers to John Brown's 
 admiration for a novel called Violet ; or, the Danseuse. ' I 
 remember him speaking of it as a book of noticeable 
 power.' This novel, I believe, was written by a 
 
 k
 
 146 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 daughter of Lord Brougham. In an early number of 
 the Saturday Review, dated July 4, 1857, there is a re- 
 markable eulogy of the story, from which I take some 
 sentences : ' The story is manifestly written by a person 
 who has the capacity for loving. This is a very rare gift, 
 and it is probably well for the happiness of mankind that 
 it is not more common. But, however, this may be, it is 
 certainly rare. . . . The intense love of deep passion is 
 only a very casual visitor to mankind, and most happy 
 couples go to their graves without having for a moment 
 experienced it.' I think we may understand why John 
 Brown admired the book, and why his own life was so 
 deeply shadowed. There is abundant room in the world for 
 the Holmeses as well as for the Browns. We cannot help 
 admiring the undaunted cheerfulness with which Holmes 
 met everything to the last. When as a very old man he 
 visited Stonehenge, and one of his companions called out, 
 ' Hark, hark, hear the lark singing,' he listened, but not a 
 sound reached his ear. He felt a momentary pang, a very 
 sweet emotion of self-pity which took the sting out of his 
 painful discovery, ' that the orchestra of my pleasing life 
 entertainment was unstringing its instruments.' He was 
 a gallant soul, a nature full of freshness and courage. But 
 Holmes did not see much further into the abyss than 
 Voltaire did. In cleverness, in fertility, in alertness, in 
 flashing wit, he was John Brown's superior. But John 
 Brown's work, simple and unpretending as it is, will live, 
 because it is truly and firmly based on very vivid memories 
 of past feeling and past sorrows. It is the work of a man 
 who knew better than most what it is to love, and what it is 
 to suffer, and it may be wiser to sink under the weight of 
 great enigmas than to solve them falsely.
 
 XVII 
 
 SIR WALTER BESANT 
 
 For years Sir Walter Besant was my nearest neighbour, 
 and I received many kindnesses at his hands. I knew 
 too well that for a long time before the end he was a great 
 sufferer. There were intervals of release when he recovered 
 his natural brightness, but the enemies were always there. 
 He suffered from asthma for a good many years — in fact 
 it was this that led him to fix his residence in Hampstead, a 
 place otherwise inconvenient to a man who had so many 
 affairs on hand, and who liked London so well. Gout also 
 was a great trouble, and at intervals he was obliged very 
 reluctantly to become a complete invalid with a trained 
 nurse ministering to his wants. Within a few weeks of 
 his death, he was hoping to get away to the country. It 
 was not to be. He had an attack of gastric catarrh which 
 confined him to bed for three weeks, and the end came very 
 suddenly on June 9, 1901. His old friend Dr. Sprigge 
 of the Lancet, who was, if I mistake not, the first secretary 
 of the Society of Authors, attended on him during his 
 last illness. He ultimately died, I believe, from a severe 
 strain on the heart, too severe for him to endure in his 
 condition of depleted vitality. It is needless to say that 
 he fought with great courage against his trouble. His 
 home had been darkened in the latter months by the illness 
 of Lady Besant, and also by the absence of his two sons in 
 
 U7
 
 148 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 South Africa. The abiding comfort will be that he lived a 
 singularly gallant, tender, unselfish and useful life, and 
 that he did not die without seeing many of his dearest 
 purposes fulfilled. 
 
 Those who knew Sir Walter Besant only from his public 
 writings were liable greatly to mistake the man. I doubt 
 whether he appeared to advantage in controversy. He had 
 a most singular reluctance to admit that he had made a mis- 
 take, and that he made many mistakes in fighting the battle 
 of the author against the publisher no unprejudiced person 
 with a knowledge of the facts could possibly deny. But 
 the readers of Sir Walter's books and those who noted 
 his public action cannot fail to see that his was a very warm 
 and generous heart, that he had an intense sympathy with 
 humanity, that he was one of those who longed with passion 
 to better the condition of the struggling and the poor. He 
 broke off from the Liberal party when Mr. Gladstone took 
 up Home Rule, but this did not at all check his interest in 
 social movements, and though I have no right to say so, 
 my impression is that he did not make a very good Con- 
 servative. However this may be, I know that he devoted 
 himself beyond almost any other I have ever met to the 
 cause of those who were in difficulty. He was a very busy 
 man, very systematic in his habits. He lived very quietly, 
 and did not care to be disturbed. He was always ready for 
 a fight and did his best to win, though I suspect he was at 
 bottom a sensitive man and disliked controversy. But 
 when a forlorn creature with no claim upon him sought his 
 aid everything was put aside. He would do anything, he 
 would endure anything, he would forgive anything. No 
 trouble was too great for him to undertake. I have known 
 him after instances of the most melancholy ingratitude
 
 SIR WALTER BESANT 149 
 
 immediately to resume his thankless labour on behalf of 
 those who had forfeited every right to his favour that they 
 ever possessed. No one will ever know all that Sir Walter 
 Besant did as a helper, but if we are to believe Christ he 
 was a Christian indeed, a Christian tried by the most exact- 
 ing of tests, one who had that in him which will place him 
 at the Right Hand when men who profess much more may 
 be missing. This is what I should single out as the great 
 characteristic of Sir Walter Besant, and if earth has any- 
 thing fairer to show I do not know it. 
 
 Another feature in his character which went along with 
 this was his strong public spirit. This virtue, which still 
 exists strongly among the British people and will show 
 itself when called, was very manifest in Sir Walter. He 
 fretted very much at the muddling and mismanagement of 
 the South African War, but his two sons — he had but two — 
 were among the fighters at the front. His name will be 
 prominently associated with the People's Palace. That 
 institution has not accomplished all that its founder hoped, 
 but it has not been useless, and it will in time help in bring- 
 ing about the friendship and reconciliation of the East and 
 the West. For his work in this kind Sir Walter Besant 
 was knighted. I question whether he cared very much 
 for the title so far as he himself was concerned, and I am 
 certain he would have preferred that it should have been 
 given as a literary distinction. But he did not feel free to 
 decline it. He had previously argued that the services 
 of men of letters to their country deserved public acknow- 
 ledgment of this kind quite as much as the services of pro- 
 vincial mayors, and he was impatient to see how little 
 progress this idea made. But Sir Walter was the very last 
 man to push his way into aristocratic circles. There was
 
 1.50 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 about him a great quiet pride. One very prominent 
 nobleman who admired his works asked him to be his 
 guest. Sir Walter replied that he could not pretend to be 
 on an equal footing with the society he would meet with, 
 and that he preferred to remain among his own people. 
 He may very likely have carried this too far, but his pride 
 was an honourable pride. 
 
 Another characteristic closely allied was his extreme 
 generosity to his brother authors. It is not so very 
 difficult to be generous to those beneath you. It is perhaps 
 less easy to be generous to young men who pass one in the 
 race. It was the essence of Sir Walter's nature to be 
 generous. How delightful it was to hear him enlarge 
 about Kipling ! I remember him telling me that he read 
 The Light that Failed on a long railway journey. No 
 sooner had he finished the book than he began it again, and 
 read it all through a second time. His admiration for 
 Kipling was an enthusiasm, but he was ever the most 
 generous in his welcome to the newcomer. Stevenson and 
 Barrie, to mention but two out of many, were the men he 
 was never weary of praising, though he praised them with 
 certain reserves. I never saw the faintest trace of jealousy 
 in that manly heart. I do not believe that it ever existed 
 for a passing moment. If ever he showed impatience at 
 authors, even at some of his personal friends, it was when 
 they wrote ill-natured criticisms or said bitter clever things. 
 One man of letters he was accustomed to talk with every 
 week, and he would say that he could not help enjoying 
 the conversation, but he was sorry to think of it after he 
 got home — so many unkind things had been said. This 
 partly alienated him from one very brilliant and well- 
 known critic. ' I can never trust him,' he would say.
 
 SIR WALTER BESANT 151 
 
 The two things by which he would have wished to be re- 
 membered were probably his discovery of the East End, 
 and his crusade against publishers. I have no intention 
 in a personal tribute like this of entering into any criticism 
 of his works, but it must not be forgotten that All Sorts 
 and Conditions of Men was written after the death of his 
 collaborator, Mr. James Rice. He had a singular affection 
 for London, and I suppose no one knew the great city 
 better. His death interrupted the monumental work on 
 which he had been toiling for many years, that great re- 
 ference book on London which Messrs A. and C. Black 
 have published. But whatever may be said it cannot be 
 denied that he more than any other man fixed the mind of 
 the people on East London, and in that way gave the 
 impulse for what is, if not a regeneration, at least a great 
 reformation. Nor can it be questioned that he did a great 
 deal for authors. The remuneration for literary work has 
 been raised by his endeavours. It was very hard for him 
 to believe that an editor could ever have a good case against 
 a contributor, or a publisher a good case against an author. 
 And though the increase in the payment to authors has been 
 partly justified by the larger sale of books, it has had 
 some serious effects. In business, however, matters tend 
 to right themselves. Sir Walter, as I have hinted, 
 had a great impatience of unfavourable criticism. He 
 abhorred slating. I think if he had been able to have 
 his way there would have been no criticisms that were 
 not favourable. Bad books he would have said should 
 simply be left unnoticed. I do not believe myself that 
 he ever wrote an unkind word of any one's book. I 
 never heard him speak a really unkind word of a book or 
 an author, though one might sometimes infer an un-
 
 152 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 favourable opinion from his silence. He hated the clique 
 system which is still a considerable evil in London literary 
 life, though it seems to me that it is diminishing. Sir 
 Walter Besant did not think it was diminishing, however ; 
 in fact the last time I saw him he said he feared it was in- 
 creasing. ' A sneer proves nothing,' I said. ' A sneer,' he 
 replied, ' proves a great deal.' 
 
 One very noticeable thing in his life was his deep interest 
 in the Palestine Exploration Fund, of which he was 
 secretary for seventeen years. He received a small income, 
 I think £300 a year, for which he did an exorbitant amount 
 of work. But his labour was really done for love, for half 
 the toil spent on fiction would have given him much more. 
 Some years ago there was an ebb in the popularity of his 
 books, but he was cheered before the end by a reaction. 
 His later works had a large circulation, and were cordially 
 praised. Among the most constant of his readers was Mr. 
 Rudyard Kipling. 
 
 Sir Walter in his writings inculcated the necessity of 
 frugality. He thoroughly agreed with the Apostle that 
 the man who did not provide for those of his own house had 
 denied the faith and was worse than an infidel. His large 
 experience had brought home to him the difficulties of 
 penniless women in earning a livelihood, especially after 
 real youth and quasi-youth had gone. It was his firm 
 conviction that every man to whom a daughter was born 
 should begin to save what he could to provide an annuity 
 for her, however small. His own way of living was for 
 many years unostentatious in the extreme, and the pretty 
 home which he built for himself in later years, and in which 
 he died, was ordered in a fashion as simple as it was refined . 
 He would not even abandon his secretaryship of the
 
 SIR WALTER BESANT 153 
 
 Palestine Exploration Fund until he had accumulated 
 enough to make his position sale. He had a great sense of 
 the precariousness of a novelist's popularity, although this 
 might hardly be believed by those who read his contentions 
 as to the sums of money that might be earned by men of 
 letters. But it need hardly be said that Sir Walter was 
 frugal in the noble manner, frugal first in order that he 
 might be just, and then in order that he might be generous. 
 He was also a warm friend — the closest in his circle being 
 Mr. A. P. Watt, the well-known literary agent, whom he 
 appointed his executor. 
 
 Sir Walter Besant once contributed to The British 
 Weekly an article on ' Books Which Have Influenced Me.' 
 In this he said that he began to read voraciously about 
 the year 1848, and he named a mass of books of which he 
 had the run in his childhood. They included familiar 
 authors, but among them was a great collection of plays, 
 every one of which he read, including those of Wycherley 
 and Congreve ; but of all the books the one which most 
 seized his imagination was the immortal Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
 ' It still seems to me the book which has influenced the 
 minds of Englishmen more than any other outside the 
 covers of the Bible. While it survives and is read by our 
 boys and girls, two or three great truths will remain deeply 
 burned into the English soul. The first is the personal 
 responsibility of each man ; the next is that Christianity 
 does not want, and cannot have, a priest. I confess that 
 the discovery, by later reading, that the so-called Christian 
 priest is a personage borrowed from surrounding super- 
 stition, and that the great ecclesiastical structure is entirely 
 built by human hands, rilled me with only a deeper grati- 
 tude to John Bunyan. The next book which struck my
 
 154 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 imagination was Nicholas Nickleby, full of tears and 
 laughter ; and Shakespeare's Tempest, a play which I was 
 never tired of reading. ... I began to read Scott at about 
 eleven, and I suppose that I have not read any of the 
 Waverley Novels since I was sixteen, but I seem to re- 
 member them all. That is a grand test of a really good 
 book, that you should remember it. For instance, I once 
 read Silas Marner at a single sitting ; it is five-and-twenty 
 years ago, yet I remember it.' Sir Walter goes on : 'I 
 cannot understand — that is to say, I cannot thoroughly 
 satisfy my own mind — as to the influences upon the present 
 young man of twenty. In my time we had two or three 
 great prophets, and two or three minor prophets. The 
 great prophets were Tennyson, Carlyle and Maurice — 
 perhaps Dickens should be added. The minor prophets 
 were many, but Charles Kingsley was the foremost among 
 them. When the history of the ideas of the nineteenth 
 century comes to be written it will be recognised that 
 Tennyson contributed to form the national mind far more 
 powerfully than young men can now understand. The 
 influence of Carlyle and Maurice was nothing less than 
 socialistic. Those who at twenty-one pored over Sartor 
 Resartus, Past and Present, and Chartism became distinctly 
 socialists, not such gentry as bawl the gospel of destruction 
 and break club windows, but socialists of the higher type 
 to whom nothing of humanity is common or unclean. 
 Charles Kingsley at his best was filled with this spirit, and 
 I have never read him since my undergraduate days lest I 
 should lose anything of my old love for the man who wrote 
 Hypatia and Alton Locke.' 
 
 I close this imperfect tribute by recalling the fact that 
 Portsmouth was the birthplace of Charles Dickens, of
 
 SIR WALTER BESANT 155 
 
 George Meredith, and of Walter Besant. I remember 
 that in a characteristic speech Besant advised parents 
 who saw that their sons were interested in books and 
 newspapers and fond of scribbling to allow them to 
 take to journalism, a profession which he thought then 
 had a great future before it. I am not certain that 
 he continued to retain that opinion. He himself was an 
 admirable journalist. Some of his best work appeared in 
 the Saturday Review under the Pollock-Saintsbury regime. 
 He was in the full sense a man of letters, and his books on 
 early French poetry and on Rabelais have a distinct value 
 of their own. Nor should I omit to recall his remarkable 
 biography of that strange personality E. H. Palmer. It 
 reads like a romance, and some people judged it to be a 
 romance. Robertson Smith was of the number, and in 
 his article on Palmer in the Encyclopaedia Britannica he 
 does not even refer to Besant's life as an authority. (He 
 reviewed the book in Nature.) However this may be, 
 there is no doubt that Sir Walter wrote in that book as in 
 every other with full and generous conviction. A great 
 English worthy, a true patriot, a firm friend, a man of 
 noble and generous heart, a writer of high and distinctive 
 power, passed from us in Sir Walter Besant.
 
 XVIII 
 
 GRAVY 
 
 The point I wish to make is not so much that the public 
 are tired of gravy — gravy in literature — as that the best 
 of our writers are very tired of it, and give us almost too 
 little. 
 
 For a proper definition of thick gravy we go to a cookery 
 book. 
 
 TO THICKEN GRAVY 
 
 Rub one piece of butter the size of a walnut in a teaspoon of 
 flour, gradually add a cup of boiling water to it, then some 
 gravy, pouring to and fro to prevent its lumping ; boil up 
 with the remainder. The butter and flour depend on the 
 thickness required. 
 
 II 
 
 That our ancestors were very fond of gravy — the real 
 gravy and the metaphorical gravy — requires no proof. 
 In Martin Chuzzlewit we have the tribulations of Mrs. 
 Todgers in her celebrated commercial boarding establish- 
 ment. They were communicated by Mrs. Todgers to the 
 Miss Pecksniffs on the second day of their stay in London. 
 From the particulars of three early disappointments of a 
 tender nature Mrs. Todgers proceeded to a general summary 
 
 156
 
 GRAVY 157 
 
 of the life, conduct, and character of Mr. Todgers, and then 
 to the difficulties of presiding over her establishment : 
 
 ' The gravy alone is enough to add twenty years to one's 
 age, I do assure you.' 
 
 ' Lor ! ' cried the two Miss Pecksniffs. 
 
 ' The anxiety of that one item, my dears,' said Mrs. Todgers, 
 ' keeps the mind continually on the stretch. There is no sueh 
 passion in human nature as the passion for gravy among 
 commercial gentlemen. It 's nothing to say a joint won't 
 yield — a whole animal wouldn't yield — the amount of gravy 
 they expect each day at dinner. And what I have undergone 
 in consequence,' eried Mrs. Todgers, raising her eyes and shaking 
 her head, ' no one would believe ! ' 
 
 ' Just like Mr. Pinch, Merry ! ' cried Charity. ' We have 
 always noticed it in him, you remember ? ' 
 
 * Yes, my dear,' giggled Merry, ' but we have never given it 
 him, you know.' 
 
 Dickens himself supplied the passion for gravy of the 
 thickest and most savoury character in an eminently 
 liberal manner. He was always ready for outbursts of 
 sentiment. The Christmas Carol and some other of his 
 minor productions are nearly all thick gravy. Perhaps the 
 gravy is nowhere thicker than in the account of John 
 Westlock's wooing of Ruth rinch : 
 
 ' A pleasant place indeed,' said little lluth. ' So shady ! ' 
 
 O wicked little Ruth ! 
 
 They came to a stop when John began to praise it. The 
 day was exquisite ; and, stopping at all, it was quite natural — 
 nothing could be more so — that they should glance down 
 Garden Court ; because Garden Court ends in the Garden, 
 and the Garden ends in the River, and that glimpse is very 
 bright and fresh and shining on a summer's day. Then, oh, 
 little Ruth, why not look boldly at it ? Why fit that tiny,
 
 158 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 precious, blessed little foot into the cracked corner of an 
 insensible old flagstone in the pavement, and be so very anxious 
 to adjust it to a nicety ! . . . They talked, of course. They 
 talked of Tom, and all these changes, and the attachment Mr. 
 Chuzzlcvvit had conceived for him, and the bright prospects 
 he had in such a friend, and a great deal more to the same 
 purpose. The more they talked, the more afraid this flutter- 
 ing little Ruth became of any pause ; and sooner than have a 
 pause she would say the same things over again ; and if she 
 hadn't courage or presence of mind enough for that (to say the 
 truth she very seldom had), she was ten thousand times more 
 charming and irresistible than she had been before. . . . She 
 sat down on the little sofa, and untied her bonnet-strings. He 
 sat down by her side, and very near her ; very, very near her. 
 Oh, rapid, swelling, bursting little heart, you knew that it 
 would come to this, and hoped it would. Why beat so wildly, 
 heart ? 
 
 ' Dear Ruth ! Sweet Ruth ! If I had loved you less, I could 
 have told you that I loved you long ago. I have loved you 
 from the first. There never was a creature in the world more 
 truly loved than you, dear Ruth, by me ! ' 
 
 She clasped her little hands before her face. The gushing 
 tears of joy, and pride, and hope, and innocent affection would 
 not be restrained. Fresh from her full young heart they 
 came to answer him. 
 
 ' My dear love ! If this is — I almost dare to hope it is, 
 now — not painful or distressing to you, you make me happier 
 than I can tell, or you imagine. Darling Ruth ! My own good, 
 gentle, winning Ruth ! I hope I know the value of your heart, 
 I hope I know the worth of your angel nature. Let me try 
 and show you that I do ; and you will make me happier, Ruth.' 
 
 ' Not happier,' she sobbed, ' than you make me. No one 
 can be happier, John, than you make me.' 
 
 Fiery face, provide yourself ! The usual wages or the usual
 
 GRAVY 159 
 
 warning. It 's all over, Fiery Face. We needn't trouble you 
 any further. 
 
 The little hands could meet each other now, without a 
 rampant horse to urge them. There was no occasion for 
 lions, bears, or mad bulls. It could all be done, and infinitely 
 better, without their assistance. No burly drayman or big 
 butts of beer were wanted for apologies. No apology at all 
 was wanted. The soft light touch fell coyly, but quite natur- 
 ally, upon the lover's shoulder ; the delicate waist, the drooping 
 head, the blushing cheek, the beautiful eyes, the exquisite 
 mouth itself, were all as natural as possible. If all the horses 
 in Araby had run away at once, they couldn't have improved 
 upon it. 
 
 Then it goes on : 
 
 4 And I will swear it, Ruth, my darling, if you please. Leave 
 Tom ! That would be a strange beginning. Leave Tom, 
 dear ! If Tom and we be not inseparable, and Tom (God bless 
 him) have not all honour and all love in our home, my little 
 wife, may that home never be ! And that 's a strong oath, 
 Ruth.' 
 
 Shall it be recorded how she thanked him ? Yes, it shall. 
 In all simplicity and innocence and purity of heart, yet with 
 a timid, graceful, half-determined hesitation, she set a little 
 rosy seal upon the vow, whose colour was reflected in her face, 
 and flashed up to the braiding of her dark brown hair. 
 
 And so forth, and so forth. Here is richness, quite 
 enough for the gentlemen in Todgers — enough to make 
 the blood run cold. 
 
 The luscious, fruity, and juicy character of Dickens' 
 death-beds need not be spoken of again. It is impossible 
 not to be affected sometimes, even by such glutinous matter, 
 and yet it is an evil thing to nurse and fondle and cultivate
 
 160 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 pathos. The pathos of a strong nature comes without any 
 parade of preparation. Also the clumsy voluptuousness 
 of many love scenes is positively nauseous. Sermons used 
 to contain too much gravy. There were days when this 
 kind of thing was admired. It is from a sermon on the 
 Ascension of Elijah, by the Rev. J. W. Boulding : 
 
 At last, when the darkness began to fall, and the forms 
 of the prophets faded from their view, suddenly the snorting 
 of horses was heard in the distance, and the rumbling of 
 wheels, like the murmur of a storm, and lo ! when they looked, 
 the mountains seemed to burn as in a furnace, and all the 
 sky was red as blood ; for, rising out of the sea, a chariot came, 
 and the breath of its steeds was smokeless flame, and its living 
 wheels were a rolling blaze, and, swift as thought, the whirlwind 
 on which they swept in their pauseless course caught up the 
 prophet into the mantling fire ; while, standing in the midst 
 of the burning car, his own wild heart became the centre of the 
 blaze, fanned by the whirlwind and kindling in the flames, till 
 the lightning's rapture was but the reflection of his own, and, 
 streaming with the trail of a comet through the night, he faded 
 among the stars into the depths of heaven ; while the mantle 
 wearily floating to the earth was the proof that the prophet's 
 recompense was rest, and the whirlwind's history the peace of 
 God. 
 
 Does any one wonder that a generation subjected to this 
 sort of stuff became sick of gravy ? 
 
 in 
 
 But I am prepared to maintain that our young writers 
 in the reaction are not giving us quite enough gravy, for 
 gravy in measure, and not too thick, is a good thing. I 
 turn to three books by three living writers, for each of whom 
 I have the warmest admiration. They are Sallhavcn, by
 
 GRAVY 161 
 
 W. W. Jacobs ; 69 Birnam Road, by W. Pett Ridge ; and 
 Over BemertorCs, by E. V. Lucas. The volumes are all 
 admirable specimens of the authors at their best. Salthaven 
 seems to me to be quite the finest of Mr. Jacobs' novels. 
 It is a book of genius. He tells me that he specially 
 admired ' Q.'s ' short stories in the Speaker, and they may 
 have had a slight influence over him, but it is hardly trace- 
 able. No writer of our time is more original or more de- 
 lightful. Mr. Pett Ridge steadily grows alike in subtlety 
 and in grip, while losing nothing of his old charm. Mr. 
 E. V. Lucas is a connoisseur. No one possesses the genius 
 of selection as he possesses it, just because he is not, as 
 anthologists usually are, a compiler. He is a man of 
 original power, with the faculty of adorning whatever 
 subject he touches. One is safe with these writers. They 
 are never dry and wooden, but they are as far as possible 
 from the unctuous, and the qualities that inspire the horror 
 naturalis. I admire them because they avoid the heated 
 rapture with which even great writers sometimes regard 
 the mysteries of love and death. But it is a question 
 whether they are not too much restrained. Mr. Lucas, in 
 particular, is very fastidious. He tells us in his own 
 charming way how a more than middle-aged hero fell in 
 love with a heroic and unselfish girl, and troubled himself 
 because he was too old for her. The last chapter I in- 
 scribe : 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 BEACHING A POINT WHERE MY HISTORY BEGINS TO BE 
 WORTH RECORDING, I CEASE TO NARRATE IT 
 
 * Naomi,' I said that evening, ' Dear Naomi, shall we go into 
 partnership ? ' 
 
 She gave me her hand. 
 
 L
 
 162 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Mr. Jacobs' heroines are noticeably reserved, but he is a 
 little kinder than Mr. Lucas. 
 
 He leant towards her. ' Do you wish you had drunk it ? ' 
 he asked. 
 
 Joan Hartley raised her eyes and looked at him so gravely 
 that the mischief with which he was trying to disguise his 
 nervousness died out of his face and left it as serious as her 
 own. For a moment her eyes, clear and truthful, met his. 
 ' No,' she said, in a low voice. 
 
 ' It is my firm opinion that we were meant for each other. 
 I cannot imagine marrying anybody else, can you ? ' 
 
 Miss Hartley, still looking down, made no reply. 
 
 ' Silence gives consent,' said Robert, and leaning forward 
 took her hands again. 
 
 Mr. Pett Ridge is a little more generous, but his heroine 
 is not exactly lovable, though she is sometimes winsome. 
 Her letter to her husband, who is abroad for months, has 
 no adipose layer of sentiment, no moral fatness. It begins : 
 ' My dear Husband ' ; it contains hints on etiquette ; it 
 addresses the absent one as ' dear husband of medium 
 height,' and the utmost expression of tenderness is, ' Good- 
 bye, dear, dear Fred. The baby sends you kisses that are 
 rather damp, but very sincere. I want to see you, I want 
 to look at you.' 
 
 IV 
 
 This is how a supreme master has described the supreme 
 moment of a man's life. ' I took out one of my old cards, 
 handed it to her, and said : " Here is a reference which 
 perhaps you may know." She bent over it, turned to 
 me, fixed her eyes intently on mine for one moment, and
 
 GRAVY 1G3 
 
 then I thought she would have fallen. My arm was around 
 her in an instant. Her head was on my shoulder, and my 
 many wanderings were over. It was broad, high, sunny 
 noon, the most solitary hour of the daylight in those 
 fields.'
 
 XIX 
 
 JANE AUSTEN 
 
 A warm welcome is due to the lately published Life of 
 Jane Austen (1913). The full title is Jane Austen, Her Life 
 and Letters : A Family Record, by William Austen-Leigh 
 and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh. One of these gentle- 
 men is the son of J. E. Austen-Leigh, who published the 
 authoritative memoir of Jane Austen, his aunt, in 1870. 
 The other is Mr. J. E. Austen-Leigh's grandson. Since 
 the publication of the standard biography we have had the 
 letters from Jane Austen to Cassandra, her favourite 
 sister, edited by Lord Brabourne with many futile and 
 irritating comments. These letters cover only the few 
 periods when the two sisters were separated, and the most 
 interesting were purposely destroyed by the surviving 
 sister. They are valuable all the same. We have besides 
 the book about Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers, by J. H. 
 Hubback and Edith C. Hubback, and the pleasant and in- 
 forming volume of Miss Constance Hill — Jane Austen : Her 
 Homes and Her Friends. Nor must we forget the extremely 
 careful study by Oscar Fay Adams, and the much less 
 satisfactory monograph of Goldwin Smith. The present 
 biographers do not mention the scraps which may be found 
 in occasional articles and reviews. 
 
 But they have been able to make certain additions to the 
 store of original material, and they have rightly desired 
 
 164
 
 JANE AUSTEN 165 
 
 to lay before the public a more complete chronological 
 account of the novelist's uneventful life. They do full 
 justice to Mr. Austen-Leigh's memoir, with its vivid 
 personal recollection, but they point out that the account 
 given of the aunt by her nephews and nieces was based on 
 personal knowledge only of the last period of her life, and 
 especially the last year of all, when her health was failing. 
 They avoided the emotional and romantic side of her nature, 
 which was a very real one, and they hardly knew how 
 much she had gone into society, or how much, with a 
 certain characteristic aloofness, she had enjoyed it. They 
 admit that Miss Austen's life was quiet, but they argue 
 that it was accompanied by a good deal of stirring incident, 
 and I do not disagree. They have used freely the Letters 
 as edited by Lord Brabourne, though they have not been 
 able to consult the originals except in the case of the letters 
 from Jane to Anne Lefroy. But the kindness of Mr. J. 
 G. Nicholson, of Castlefield House, Sturton-by-Scawby, 
 Lincolnshire, has opened a completely new source of in- 
 formation in the letters which passed between the Austens 
 and their kinsmen of the half blood — Walters of Kent and 
 afterwards of Lincolnshire. They have also been able to 
 draw on certain further manuscripts, and they have been 
 allowed by Admiral Ernest Rice to take a special photo- 
 graph of his Zoffany portrait. They have done their 
 work with great skill and admirable tact, and their book 
 will take a permanent place in English biographical 
 literature. 
 
 At the same time they will be the last to say that their 
 book is final. We still need an estimate of Jane Austen 
 from a master hand. If Macaulay had carried out his in- 
 tention of writing a short biography, we should have had a
 
 166 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 portrait that would have fixed itself on the general mind. 
 It must be owned, however, that the brief specific criticisms 
 which have appeared from his pen are by no means con- 
 vincing. We have the brief comment on her by Sir Walter 
 Scott in the Quarterly Review for 1815, and we have the 
 notice of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, by Archbishop 
 Whately, published in the Quarterly for 1821. Apart from 
 its authorship, neither paper is very remarkable. Two or 
 three essays appeared in the Saturday Review, which 
 showed considerable insight. There are some fine touches 
 in Miss Thackeray's essay in her Book of Sibyls. A very 
 ambitious article appeared in the North British Review 
 about 1870, which I wrongly attributed to Lord Acton. 
 The writings of Mr. W. H. Helm contain remarks of great 
 acuteness. But one looks in vain for a complete estimate 
 which shall set Jane Austen's novels into relation with the 
 age she lived in and the conditions of her work. To such 
 a book the present biography is a very great contribution, 
 and no book does more to show the pitfalls in the way of 
 the bibliographer. But when the bibliographer's work is 
 done so far as it can be done, there is the world of life 
 beyond it, and it needs not only the patience of the student, 
 but the genius of the man of insight to grasp the significance 
 of all the facts and weave them into a living unity. 
 
 For illustration of the difficulties take this. All of us 
 opening the new biography will gaze with delight on the 
 admirable rendering of the Zoffany portrait. This they 
 will say is Jane Austen — our ideal, perfectly and triumph- 
 antly realised. Archness is a terrible quality in most 
 women, but in this portrait we have a charming archness. 
 The brightness of the eye, the laughter and love in the 
 mouth, the dark hair over the brow, the whole tout en-
 
 JANE AUSTEN 167 
 
 semble are captivating. But as we look and as we re- 
 member the appearance of admired poets and novelists 
 known to us, we begin to fear that this is too good to be 
 true. So the first thing I turned to was the index under 
 Zoffany. It seems to be a good index, and it contains very 
 full information on the subject. Both in Dent's edition 
 and in Brabourne's Letters the portrait has already ap- 
 peared. The biographers say : ' The date 1790 or 1791 
 must be assigned to the portrait — believed to be of Jane 
 Austen, and believed to be by Zoffany — which has been 
 chosen as the frontispiece for this book, as it was for Lord 
 Brabourne's edition of the Letters. We are unable for 
 want of evidence to judge of the likeness of the picture to 
 Jane Austen as a girl ; there is, so far as we have heard, no 
 family tradition of her having been painted, and as her 
 subsequent fame could hardly have been predicted, we 
 should not expect that either her great-uncle Frank, or 
 her cousin Francis Motley Austen, would go to the expense 
 of a picture of her by Zoffany. Francis Motley had a 
 daughter of his own, another Jane Austen, who became 
 Mrs. Campion of Danny, and a confusion between the two 
 Janes is a possible explanation.' On the other hand, an 
 old Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, Dr. Newman, a few 
 months before his death, wrote to his friend Dr. Bloxam, 
 sending him a picture as a farewell present, and adding : 
 ' I have another picture that I wish to go to your neighbour, 
 Morland Rice. It is a portrait of Jane Austen, the novelist, 
 by Zoffany. The picture was given to my stepmother by 
 her friend Colonel Austen, of Kippington, Kent, because 
 she was a great admirer of her works.' Our Jane Austen 
 became fifteen on December 16, 1790, and Zoffany returned 
 from India in that year. The date 1790 or 1791 must be
 
 168 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 assigned to the portrait. I am persuaded that the portrait 
 is one of a lady older than fifteen, or for that matter than 
 sixteen. 
 
 It would be impossible to go over all the intricate family 
 history recorded in this book, and in what follows I shall 
 confine myself to the main points of interest. And first 
 of all I note what is said on the romance of Jane Austen's 
 life. She was born on December 16, 1775, and that most 
 untrustworthy and uncharitable writer, Miss Mitford, tells 
 us that her own mother spent her maiden life in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Austens, and knew Jane as ' the prettiest, 
 silliest, most affected husband-hunting butterfly she ever 
 remembers.' As a matter of fact, when Mrs. Mitford 
 married and left her home Jane Austen was barely ten 
 years of age. Much has been said about her early friend- 
 ship with Tom Lefroy, afterwards Chief Justice of Ireland. 
 No doubt there was a flirtation between the two when Jane 
 was twenty, but it came to nothing. A year or two after 
 Lefroy was engaged to the lady whom he married in 
 March 1799. He never forgot Jane Austen till his death 
 at the age of ninety, and when he was an old man he told a 
 young relative that he had been in love with Jane Austen, 
 but it was a boy's love. The opinion of the family was that 
 Jane was slightly disappointed. 
 
 More serious was her one real romance, a romance which 
 probably affected her spirits, and disinclined her for literary 
 composition for some time after its occurrence. One 
 summer when the Austen sisters were by the sea, probably 
 in Devonshire, a gentleman was strongly attracted by Jane 
 Austen, and when they had to part he was urgent to know
 
 JANE AUSTEN 1C9 
 
 where they would be the next summer, implying or saying 
 that he would be there also wherever it might be. The 
 impression left on Cassandra was that he had fallen in love 
 with Jane, and was quite in earnest. Soon afterwards 
 they heard of his death. This is all. 
 
 In November 1802, when the sisters were in Bath, 
 Jane received an offer of marriage, which she accepted. 
 Her lover was a gentleman of good character, con- 
 nections, and position in life, but ere many hours had 
 passed Jane repented deeply of her action, and insisted on 
 cancelling her ' yes ' the next morning. She found that 
 she was miserable after having accepted him. She was 
 nearly twenty-seven at the time, and well aware that when 
 her father died she would be left but poorly off. After that 
 she acquiesced cheerfully in the gradual disappearance of 
 youth. She did not eschew balls, but was indifferent 
 whether she was asked to dance or not. She retained to 
 the end her freshness and humour and her sympathy with 
 the young. But though the wound was healed the scar 
 remained. 
 
 ii 
 
 The most curious chapter in the volume refers to a sister 
 of Jane Austen's mother. James Leigh Perrot, who lived 
 with his wife prosperously, had a place called ' Scarlets ' 
 on the Bath Road, about thirty miles from London. The 
 Perrots were wealthy, prosperous, and devoted to one 
 another. They paid frequent visits to Bath. When Mr. 
 Perrot was sixty-three and his wife fifty-four they had the 
 experience of their lives. Mrs. Perrot went into a milliner's 
 shop in Bath kept by a certain Mrs. Gregory, and a quarter 
 of an hour after was accused of having stolen a piece of
 
 170 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 white lace, which was found in her possession. There was 
 reason to believe that the accusation was the result of a 
 deep-laid plot, and that it was hoped that the Perrots 
 might be blackmailed. Mr. Perrot, however, was resolved 
 to see the matter through, and spent the period before 
 the trial in confinement with his wife. He engaged the 
 best counsel possible, but was prepared for a failure of 
 justice, and arranged that in the case of an adverse verdict, 
 followed by transportation, he would sell his property and 
 accompany his wife across the seas. 
 
 The trial took place at Taunton in the presence of a 
 great crowd, and lasted seven hours. The jury returned 
 a verdict of ' not guilty,' and the Perrots were congratulated 
 by a large circle of friends. They seem to have spent their 
 lives in great peace, and Mrs. Perrot lived over thirty-five 
 years after her agitating experience. The incident seems 
 to have touched Jane Austen very closely. Her life, peace- 
 ful as it was, did not lie beyond the reach of tragic possi- 
 bilities. About the same time happened her love story in 
 the West, the trouble of Mrs. Perrot, and the loss of her old 
 home. 
 
 in 
 
 The biographers have new light to throw on the publica- 
 tion of Northanger Abbey, the earlier of Jane Austen's two 
 posthumous novels. The first version was written when 
 she was about twenty-three, in 1797 and 1798. Jane 
 Austen prepared it for the Press, and sold it in 1803 to 
 Messrs. Crosley and Co., of Stationers' Hall Court, London. 
 It was entitled Susan, and it was bought by Messrs. Crosby 
 for £10. They did not publish it, and in 1809 the patient 
 authoress addressed inquiries to the publishers. They
 
 JANE AUSTEN 171 
 
 offered it back for £10, and said there was no time stipulated 
 for its publication, and no obligation to publish it. We 
 have always been told that Northanger Abbey was sold in 
 1803 to a publisher in Bath for £10, and this statement is 
 in the memoir. But the novel did not come out till 1816, 
 and it then contained the following prefatory note : ' The 
 little work was finished in the year 1803, and intended for 
 immediate publication. It was disposed of to a book- 
 seller, it was even advertised, and why the business pro- 
 ceeded no further, the author has never been able to learn.' 
 That very accurate historian, Mr. Austin Dobson, says in 
 his introduction to Macmillan's edition of Northanger 
 Abbey, that the ' advertisement ' of the first edition of 
 1818 tells us that the MS. was disposed of to a Bath book- 
 seller. It will be seen that this is a mistake. There is a 
 tradition that the Bath bookseller who bought it was Lewis 
 Bull, but this appears to be guess-work. I am not, how- 
 ever, certain that the biographers have here entirely made 
 out their case. There is considerable difficulty in believing 
 that Susan and Northanger Abbey were the same books, but 
 there is probably no likelihood of any assurance on the 
 subject. I will not here enter on the merits of Jane 
 Austen's letters. What I shall say is that with all her charm 
 one finds it possible after reading them to understand the 
 criticism of Madame de Stael on one of Jane Austen's 
 novels. She called it ' vulgaire.'
 
 XX 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A STILL LIFE, WITH A NOTE 
 
 ON JANE AUSTEN 
 
 Leslie Stephen once said that every autobiography is 
 interesting, and Leslie Stephen knew. It sometimes 
 happens that the autobiographies of the most obscure are 
 of special value. There could not be a more unpretending 
 book in any way than The Recollections of a Sussex Parson, 
 by the late Rev. Edward Boys Ellman, 1912. It is the simple 
 story of an old clergyman in Sussex who was born in 1815, 
 who spent all his working life in a little parish with a total 
 population of one hundred and seventy or less, who never 
 in any way attracted public attention or desired to do so. 
 It is written from notes compiled when the author had 
 reached a great age, and the style is as plain as it may be. 
 In spite of all that, the book is one of real worth, and in 
 many points extremely suggestive. 
 
 Edward Ellman was the son of a gentleman farmer, and 
 he was born in the quiet little village of West Firle, four 
 miles from the county town of Lewes. He entered the 
 world three months after the battle of Waterloo, and he 
 lived till 1906. Only a few days before his death, on hear- 
 ing a favourite clock outside his bedroom door strike mid- 
 
 172
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A STILL LIFE 173 
 
 night, he looked up at his daughter with a smile, and re- 
 marked : ' Eighty-seven years ago to-night was the first 
 time I remember hearing midnight strike. I woke up in 
 the old Firle nursery and heard the nursemaid Philly read 
 aloud to the nurse the account of King George iu.'s death, 
 which had taken place that day,' and he continued, c it 
 was not only the same clock that struck midnight, but the 
 nursery fire played upon the brass of that same old chest of 
 drawers that the fire is playing on now.' 
 
 Lewes is, to my mind, one of the pleasantest country 
 towns in England. At the beginning of last century it was 
 quite fashionable. Brighton was then only beginning to 
 come into fashion, while Eastbourne and Hastings were 
 both small. Lewes was a place where each winter the good 
 old families had their town houses. To this day one may 
 see up the steep streets and in out-of-the-way lanes many 
 comfortable family mansions. The Ellman family moved 
 into Southover Manor at Lewes for the education of their 
 children, and Edward was sent to the Grammar School. 
 He was the youngest boy there, and his acquirements were 
 the words of the Catechism and the multiplication table. 
 To these acquisitions he had difficulty in adding. He was 
 conscientious and laborious to a degree, but he had little 
 success. When ten years of age he was generally up till 
 ten or eleven o'clock trying to learn his lessons, and he 
 would frequently begin again by four o'clock. But he 
 had the greatest difficulty in learning by heart ; he could 
 not understand ciphering ; and he was so caned and flogged 
 on hands and arms that his handwriting was never good. 
 He often misunderstood the directions he received, and 
 it was only when he was released from working in class and 
 allowed to go his own pace that he got on. His father, who
 
 174 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 was a clever man and a brilliant scholar, always regarded 
 him as a very dull and stupid boy, and could not under- 
 stand why he was always at the bottom of his class. ' I 
 was never fluent or ready of speech, and though I often 
 possessed the information had not the ready words to 
 express my meaning when suddenly asked a question.' 
 Indeed, the story of his childhood is a miserable one. He 
 was caned almost every day when at school, and his 
 holidays were made wretched by the tasks appointed for 
 him. Children generally manage, however, to find consola- 
 tions, and Edward had some pleasure in the society of 
 Lewes. Characters abounded. There were three Miss 
 Shelleys, one of whom transgressed the code of the family 
 by marrying a Mr. Dalbiac. Her sisters were very in- 
 dignant, and said that ' it was an unheard-of thing that 
 a lady of the Shelley family should marry.' When the 
 census paper was filled up in 1841 by these spinster ladies, 
 the collector noticed that the ages of the ladies and of their 
 three domestics were all stated to be twenty-five years. 
 When the collector ventured to ask a question, Miss Shelley 
 angrily said that she ' had never in her life met with such 
 impudence as to ask the age of a lady. In that house they 
 were all unmarried females, and she could not think of 
 putting each down as more than twenty-five.' Mr. Barrie, 
 I think, fixes the age at twenty-nine. 
 
 Another lady of Lewes, Mrs. Newton, always had a 
 chop at two o'clock, and was waited on by her old butler, 
 who had been in her service upwards of thirty years. One 
 day, as the time approached for the chop being carried in, 
 the old man suddenly dropped down dead. When the 
 other servants were hastily considering how to break the 
 information to their mistress, the bell was violently rung.
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A STILL LIFE 175 
 
 On a servant appearing the old lady asked why the butler 
 did not bring in her chop. On being told of his death she 
 merely said, ' That is no reason why I should be kept wait- 
 ing. Is there not any one else who can bring in my 
 chop ? ' 
 
 The local clergy in these days were extraordinarily care- 
 less. Very few of them were resident in their parishes, 
 and most were mere pluralists. Lewes was spoken of as 
 ' The Rookery,' from the number who rode out of Lewes 
 in black coats to their various duties each Sunday. At 
 the time the new turnpike road from Lewes to Eastbourne 
 was made, along the whole distance the only resident clergy- 
 man was Capper, of Wilmington. Many of the parsons 
 hunted, and they spent much of their time in playing 
 cards. 
 
 Edward Ellman had the chance of seeing at his father's 
 and his grandfather's many notable persons, most of them 
 Tories. Among these were the great Duke of Wellington, 
 George Canning, Lord John Russell, Arthur Young, and 
 nearly all the Royal Dukes. ' William Pitt died before 
 my time ; but the last time I saw my eldest aunt, Mrs. 
 Sankey (I think about 1873), I found her reading the Life 
 of Pitt, and she then told me that as a girl on one occasion 
 she had to entertain Pitt for two or three hours at her home 
 in Betshanger. Her father was out, and her mother ill.' 
 
 ii 
 
 After various experiences at Guernsey and elsewhere, 
 Edward Ellman matriculated at Oxford in February 1834. 
 He had difficulty in getting through, but at last he went 
 into residence at Wadham. He read fourteen hours daily,
 
 176 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 and convinced himself that one hour's reading in the 
 morning when the head is clear is worth two hours' reading 
 at night by artificial light. He slowly found himself, and 
 was fortunate in getting a good mathematical tutor. He 
 worked for honours, and to the evident amazement of 
 every one he took a First Class in Mathematics, and an 
 Honorary Fourth in Classics. When he heard the news, 
 he was so worn out that he did not write to his father. 
 ' Few men,' he says, ' have passed through Oxford seeing 
 as little of Oxford life as I did.' He seems to have made 
 at Oxford only one friend, and yet these were the days 
 of Pusey and Newman, and with him at Wadham was 
 R. W. Church. His father, without previous consultation, 
 purchased the advowson of the little village of Berwick, 
 with the view to his settling there as a clergyman. Poor 
 Edward had been offered work as a mathematical coach and 
 a Fellowship if he would stay on at Wadham. But his 
 own desire and intention had always been to be a Naval 
 Chaplain and Instructor. With his habitual meekness 
 he made no remonstrance, and, after a long time of waiting 
 for the death of a pluralist, he at last settled down at Ber- 
 wick. A neighbouring clergyman immediately visited him, 
 and complained that he could not get his daughters off his 
 hands. This clergyman talked to the Bishop of Chichester, 
 Dr. Gilbert, and complained that of his eight daughters 
 only one was off his hands. The Bishop remarked : ' I 
 also have eight daughters, and not one of them off my 
 hands.' The clergy were frank in these days. Another 
 neighbour, a Mr. Smith, pointed out his wife to Ellman, and 
 said : ' Look at Harriet. Isn't she pretty ? ' The shy 
 young parson, not being struck by the lady's beauty, said 
 nothing. After a pause Mr. Smith observed : ' I married
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A STILL LIFE 177 
 
 my first wife for money — my second for love.' In the 
 middle of one of his sermons this clergyman said : ' It is 
 sad to think that out of the whole congregation here present 
 only six will be saved.' He paused, and then added, ' And 
 I could name them too.' 
 
 At Berwick Ellman was to remain as rector for sixty 
 years, and there was never a more assiduous and faithful 
 pastor. He scarcely ever left his charge. He did not drive 
 his people, but tried to lead them, and he made it his main 
 business to train up the children of his parish in religion. 
 
 And here comes in the romance of this quietest of all 
 lives. When he was but a boy in his 'teens he heard much 
 from a favourite aunt about a London girl, Georgie 
 Plummer, who was tireless in all good works and devoted 
 in nursing her invalid father. ' She would just be the 
 wife for you, Edward,' she once said. Little did she think 
 that the shy lad had fixed on the unknown one as his ideal 
 of womanhood. Many years passed before he saw her. 
 He got to know all her relations ; she knew well all his 
 brothers and sisters. Several times they nearly met, and 
 always just missed. In 1844 he heard that she was in 
 the neighbourhood, and rode over to the house where she 
 was staying. ' Walking in unexpectedly, he found his 
 ideal alone in the drawing-room. For years he had 
 pictured to himself a tall, handsome, commanding-looking 
 woman. For the moment he was taken aback, for what 
 he saw was a tiny, slight figure without the least pre- 
 tension to good looks. But it was, as he said, not her looks 
 that he cared about ; it was the soul within. He returned 
 to Wartling knowing and feeling that she was the one 
 woman in the world for him, and that directly he could 
 afford to marry he would try and win her for his helpmeet.' 
 
 M
 
 178 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 But he could not afford to marry, or thought he could not. 
 He had been instituted Rector of Berwick, and he had 
 built a new rectory on the old site. But before the rectory 
 was finished he was asked to give a home to his eldest 
 sister and her three children. He never said anything 
 about his dreams and purposes, but unselfishly surrendered 
 them for the time, and had no communication with Miss 
 Plummer. He went on quietly working his parish for nine 
 years, and then his sister left him to make a home for 
 herself. She had never known the sacrifice he was making. 
 But his opportunity came at last. He invited his favourite 
 sister to bring her friend over to Berwick. It was a lovely 
 hot August day, and he proposed a walk to show the guest 
 the views. His sister became tired and sat on a stile, 
 whilst the two others walked across a field. In a few quiet 
 words he asked her to be his wife. She was so astonished 
 and startled that she turned off the path and nearly walked 
 into the river. He had waited twenty years for his ideal. 
 It was a perfect marriage. Their minds and tastes were 
 harmonious. Neither of them cared for society ; both 
 were devoted to good works ; and, though they were 
 singularly undemonstrative, their affection was deep and 
 tender. When she died he was almost broken-hearted, 
 and he would sometimes visit her grave two or three times 
 in the day. She seems to have had a stronger and more 
 decided character than his own. He had leant on her, and 
 without her was very lonely, though he always tried to 
 make the best of his loneliness. ' I don't feel loneliness 
 as much as most people would, you know ; I was a bachelor 
 so many years that I am used to being alone. It is not so 
 hard for me.' 
 
 Mr. Ellman was a model pastor. Every house in Berwick
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A STILL LIFE 179 
 
 he visited once a week ; the school two or three times a 
 day. Every child in the parish regularly attended Sunday 
 and day school. If any one was missed at church, the next 
 morning he went to the truant's house, saying, ' I came to 
 see why So-and-so was not in church.' He firmly believed 
 that a house-going parson makes a church-going people, 
 and certainly it was so in his case. Out of a population 
 of one hundred and seventy the morning congregations 
 averaged ninety-five, and the afternoon congregation one 
 hundred and five in the summer six months, and in the 
 winter the attendance was almost as good. He was in the 
 way of recording the numbers attending at each service, 
 week-day as well as Sunday. Lists of parishioners were 
 kept, and lines were marked out, and marks put against 
 each service. Perhaps his father chose wisely for him, 
 for the peaceable, loving, conscientious life was by no 
 means unhappy, and the years increased his love for his 
 home and his people. When he was near the end of his 
 life of ' duty, praise, and prayer,' he talked to his daughter 
 about his parish. Once he said, ' I don't know why, but 
 I can't say that I understand people fearing death. I have 
 never feared it, but I pray to be patient waiting for God's 
 call. I sometimes think I have much to be thankful for 
 in having led this quiet life. I have not had the temp- 
 tations other men have had. Looking back, I can't 
 remember ever having wilfully committed sin. My great 
 desire was always to do my duty. No, I cannot have had 
 the temptations of other men.'
 
 180 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 in 
 
 This account given by Mr. Ellman of the Sussex clergy 
 in his time throws some light on the work of Jane Austen. 
 That great writer was a clergyman's daughter, her father, 
 the Rev. George Austen, being Rector of Steventon, near 
 Basingstoke. Miss Austen published four novels in her 
 lifetime : Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice 
 (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816). She 
 began to write as early as 1796, and she finished Persuasion 
 only in 1816. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were 
 published after her death, in 1818. 
 
 Mr. Ellman, as we have seen, was born in 1815, and he 
 very early took note of the clerical society in which he was 
 living. His recollections remarkably confirm the truth of 
 Jane Austen's clerical portraits. Lord Macaulay once 
 wrote of Jane Austen, ' She has given us a multitude of 
 characters, all in a certain sense commonplace, all such as 
 we meet every day, yet they are all as perfectly discrimin- 
 ated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of 
 human beings. There are, for example, four clergymen, 
 none of whom we should be surprised to find in any parson- 
 age in the kingdom — Mr. Edward Ferrars, Mr. Henry 
 Tilney, Mr. Edmund Bertram, and Mr. Elton.' We should, 
 I think, be surprised to meet any one of them in any 
 parsonage to-day. Jane Austen was not unfriendly to 
 the clergy. Two of her brothers, as well as her father, 
 were parsons. Three of the heroes of her six novels were 
 also parsons. Tilney in Northanger Abbey and Bertram in 
 Mansfield Park were intended to be very favourable 
 specimens of their order ; but we are expressly told that
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A STILL LIFE 181 
 
 neither wore the clerical dress. Tilney was generally non- 
 resident. He had to go on one occasion to his parish on a 
 Monday to attend a parish meeting, but so long as he pro- 
 vided for the Sunday services there was no necessity for 
 his presence. Bertram is meant to be a model, and is 
 almost Miss Austen's favourite among her characters. He 
 has an excellent living, and it is mentioned, highly to his 
 praise, that he intends to reside, not to be a clergyman 
 every seventh day for three or four hours. But of his re- 
 ligious feelings, of the claims of his sacred office, nothing- 
 is said. The night before he leaves his home to be ordained 
 he passes in dancing at a ball. Mr. Edward Ferrars, who 
 is ordained towards the end of the story, is equally unim- 
 pressive. I need not speak particularly about Mr. Collins 
 or Mr. Elton, of Dr. Grant, the Rector of Mansfield, who 
 lost his temper for the whole evening through a disappoint- 
 ment about a green goose, and who found pleasure in 
 exercising hospitality because it gave a good excuse for 
 drinking claret every day. Miss Austen was herself a 
 sincere and humble Christian, but obviously the level 
 of clerical life around her was very low, even at its 
 highest. 
 
 Mr. Ellman mentions, as I have noted, the only resident 
 clergyman between Lewes and Eastbourne in 1819 was 
 Capper, of Wilmington. Capper, though resident, appears 
 to have been no more in earnest than his neighbours. Mr. 
 Ellman tells us that one Sunday after morning service at 
 Wilmington, Mr. Capper made his way to Hurstmonceux 
 Rectory, where four clergymen met to dine together be- 
 tween the services. It turned out to be a wet afternoon, 
 and so the four clergymen, instead of going out to their 
 various services, spent the whole afternoon in card-playing.
 
 182 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 The four were Robert Hare, Vicar of Hurstmonceux ; 
 Edward Raynes, Vicar of Firle, afterwards Archdeacon ; 
 Harry West, Vicar of Wartling ; and Capper, Vicar of 
 Wilmington. It seems to me that we have here an im- 
 portant sidelight on Jane Austen's work.
 
 XXI 
 
 EDWARD FITZGERALD AND BERNARD BARTON 
 
 There is a story of a city gentleman who used to visit 
 the shooting quarters of a friend in Scotland. He was in 
 the way of talking to the men about the place, and especi- 
 ally to the intelligent gardeners. At last he came and 
 missed one of the gardeners. ' Where has your friend 
 gone ? ' he asked of the other. ' He is deid,' was the reply. 
 'Deid? What do you mean?' 'Deid.' ' Oh, dead.' 
 ' Yes.' ' Ah, indeed is he dead ? So he has joined the 
 great majority.' ' Oh, fie, no,' the gardener answered with 
 passion. ' He has not joined the great majority. He 
 was a good man.' We may say the same of Edward 
 FitzGerald. He has not joined the great majority of the 
 forgotten. There is no sign that he is ever going to join 
 them. He was a good man. Almost all that he has 
 written has a certain life of its own, and this is particularly 
 true of his little-known Life of Bernard Barton, one of the 
 earliest of his published writings in book form. My copy 
 is the second edition, dated 1850, and published by Hall, 
 Virtue and Co., 25 Paternoster Row, London. The title 
 is Selections from the Poems and Letters of Bernard Barton, 
 edited by his daughter. But the book contains in addition 
 to the selections a Memoir by FitzGerald, and we may 
 be sure that FitzGerald had much to say in the selection 
 of letters and poems which makes the larger part of the 
 
 133
 
 184 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 book. As is well known, the daughter was Lucy Barton, 
 who afterwards was married unhappily to Edward 
 FitzGerald. When the book was published the two were 
 on the best of terms. Miss Barton says : ' That feeling 
 which has made the editor entirely unequal to write that 
 part of the volume more directly biographical keeps her 
 silent upon it here. She has entrusted it to one who 
 knew her father well, and on whom she can rely for an im- 
 partial relation of his history. It has been more amply 
 detailed than it would have been for the public only, at 
 her request, in order to satisfy many subscribers to whom 
 the account of his life was likely to be especially interest- 
 ing.' The first edition was sold by subscription for the 
 pecuniary benefit of Miss Barton. We learn from Mr. 
 Wright that FitzGerald took an exceedingly active part 
 in promoting the subscription, and the FitzGerald family 
 among them bought some fifty copies. I do not possess the 
 first edition, which contains a subscription list, including 
 the names of nearly all FitzGerald's friends. Among them 
 was James Spedding, who took ten copies. 
 
 Bernard Barton was neither a great letter-writer nor a 
 great poet, but the book is distinctly pleasing throughout. 
 The chief charm of it, however, is that it throws a welcome 
 light on the shy and sweet personality of Edward Fitz- 
 Gerald. A biographer cannot help saying something of 
 himself, of his preferences and his aversions, however much 
 he may try to keep himself in the shade. So I think in the 
 memoir we get a truer idea of FitzGerald's apology for 
 his own life than even in his letters. The little biography 
 is a fine and finished piece of writing. The close is par- 
 ticularly beautiful. FitzGerald is saying what he can say 
 for Bernard Barton's poetry. He writes :
 
 FITZGERALD AND BERNARD BARTON 185 
 
 ' Finally, what Southey said of one of Barton's volumes 
 — " there are many rich passages and frequent felicity of 
 expression " — may modestly be said of these selections 
 from ten. Not only is the fundamental thought of many 
 of them very beautiful — as in the poems " To a Friend in 
 Distress," ''The Deserted Nest," "Thought in a Garden," 
 etc. — but there are many verses whose melody will linger 
 in the ear, and many images that will abide in the memory. 
 Such surely are those of men's hearts brightening up at 
 Christmas " like a fire new stirred " — of the stream that 
 leaps along over the pebbles " like happy hearts by holiday 
 made light " — of the solitary tomb showing from afar like 
 a lamb in the meadow. And in the poem called "A 
 Dream " — a dream the poet really had — how beautiful is 
 that chorus of the friends of her youth who surround the 
 central vision of his departed wife, and who, much as the 
 dreamer wonders they do not see she is a spirit, and silent 
 as she remains to their greetings, still with countenances of 
 " blameless mirth," like some of Correggio's angel attend- 
 ants, press around her without awe or hesitation, repeating 
 " welcome, welcome ! " as to one suddenly returned to them 
 from some earthly absence only, and not from beyond the 
 dead — from heaven.' 
 
 The justification for a reverent study of FitzGerald's 
 mind and life will be found in a passage he himself singled 
 out from one of Bernard Barton's writings : ' Many a time 
 when I have been taking a solitary stroll by the seaside 
 the sight of footsteps left when no one was in sight has set 
 me thinking whose they might be.'
 
 186 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 The memoir is a defence of the Quiet Life. This was the 
 life which FitzGerald led by choice and Barton by necessity. 
 Both of them chafed at times and reached out to the busy 
 world, but on the whole Barton lived and died content, and 
 the preference of FitzGerald for the peaceful ways of 
 Suffolk was deliberate and final. Bernard Barton was 
 clerk in a bank for forty years. His remuneration was 
 certain, if small, and he was without the anxiety of business. 
 He was generally liked, and was a pleasant and welcome 
 guest at the Hall and the Farm. His sphere was limited 
 in the extreme, bounded by Kersgrave one way and 
 Wickham on the other. He was very rarely more than a 
 few miles out of Woodbridge, and during the forty years of 
 his residence there he was absent from it in all only about 
 eight months. There were links with the older world 
 and the newer. Bernard once visited Mattishall, the home 
 of the Donnes, where he talked with old Mrs. Bodham, 
 the ' Rose ' of the poet Cowper — the lady who presented 
 him with his mother's picture. There was an old gentle- 
 man to be seen in the streets of Woodbridge who was justly 
 envied for having seen Dr. Johnson at ' The Mitre ' tavern. 
 In addition, there were little sails on the river where 
 FitzGerald was Barton's companion. FitzGerald recalls 
 the times when ' after a pleasant picnic on the seashore we 
 drifted homeward up the river, while the breeze died away 
 at sunset, and the heron, at last startled by our gliding 
 boat, slowly rose from the ooze over which the tide was 
 momentarily encroaching.' Both men loved Suffolk 
 farmers, Suffolk labourers, Suffolk fields. They greatly
 
 FITZGERALD AND BERNARD BARTON 187 
 
 disliked violent occasions of feeling and manifestations of 
 it, whether in real life or story. 
 
 Then there was the invaluable solace of books, but these 
 also were of the quiet kind. They were authors who dealt 
 in humour, good sense, domestic feeling, and pastoral 
 description — Goldsmith, Cowper, Wordsworth in his lowlier 
 moods, and Crabbe. Boswell's Johnson was particularly 
 favoured, and the good things in it brightened and en- 
 lightened many a country dinner-table. Reading aloud 
 was a favourite occupation, and the novels of Scott were 
 preferred to all other books. But even in Scott the 
 humorous parts were more relished than the pathetic. 
 Bailie Nicol Jarvie's dilemmas at Glennaquoich rather than 
 Fergus Maclvor's trial ; and Oldbuck and his sister Grizel 
 rather than the fisherman's funeral. Domestic tragedy 
 was not liked. They had come to the stage when they had 
 quite enough of tragedy and were glad to laugh when they 
 could. 
 
 The meals in that favoured land were tea and supper. 
 Dinner was regarded with a certain terror. Edward Fitz- 
 Gerald himself abhorred the trouble of dressing for dinner, 
 and liked everything to be informal. Tea was the favourite 
 beverage, though we hear occasionally of the snuff-box, 
 ' and a glass of genial wine.' It was at tea-time that 
 friends met most frequently and easily. We get a glimpse 
 in one of Barton's letters dated 1848 : ' Libby Jones and 
 E. F. G. dropt in about five and took tea with us ; she left 
 us soon after, but Edward stayed till between seven and 
 eight, and then started for a moonlight walk to Boulge.' 
 Supper was a rarer luxury, but very pleasant when it came. 
 First came tea, and afterwards a few chapters from Scott. 
 We read : ' Then was the volume taken down impatiently
 
 188 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 from the shelf and dilatory tea-drinkers chided ; and at 
 last, when the room was clear, candles snuffed and fire 
 stirred, he would read out or listen to these fine stories, 
 anticipating with a glance of the eye or an ejaculation of 
 pleasure the good things he knew were coming — which he 
 liked all the better for knowing they were coming — relish- 
 ing them afresh in the fresh enjoyment of his companion, 
 to whom they were less familiar, until the modest supper 
 coming in closed the book and recalled him to his cheerful 
 hospitality.' 
 
 ii 
 
 Then there was the pleasure of occasional publishing. 
 Bernard Barton was tolerably active in this way. In 
 1812 he published his first volume of poems, with the 
 delicious title, Metrical Effusions. This started a corre- 
 spondence with Southey and with James Hogg. James 
 Hogg entrusted to Bernard Barton a tragedy to get it 
 represented in London. The Quaker referred him to 
 Capel Lofft, another of his correspondents, who promised 
 to do all he could. But having already sent to the London 
 managers various tragedies of transcendent merit which 
 had fallen on barren ground, he dissuaded the shepherd 
 from going further. It will be seen that London managers 
 in these days were as blind and foolish as their successors. 
 Bernard followed this with a quarto volume enticingly 
 entitled Poems by an Amateur, and by a good many more. 
 FitzGerald admits that his friend was not very fastidious 
 and not very careful ; but he maintains that Bernard was 
 free from envy, being quite as anxious that others should 
 publish as himself, and incapable of believing that there 
 could be too much poetry abroad — a doctrine which
 
 FITZGERALD AND BERNARD BARTON 189 
 
 has been partially revived by an eminent Oxford Pro- 
 fessor. However, the diligence of Bernard Barton excites 
 some misgivings in the mind of Edward FitzGerald, and 
 he scatters them by what is his own apology for publishing 
 as well as Barton's : ' But apart from all these motives, the 
 preparation of a book was amusement and excitement to 
 one who had little enough of it in the ordinary course of 
 daily life : treaties with publishers — arrangements of print- 
 ing — correspondence with friends on the subject — and, 
 when the little volume was at last afloat, watching it for a 
 while somewhat as a boy watches a paper boat committed 
 to the sea.' This was FitzGerald's own way. For ex- 
 ample, he published in 1851 Euphranor. He had become 
 convinced that the ordinary student pored too much over 
 his books, and was in favour of athletic instruction. And 
 he hoped to do something against a training system of 
 which he had seen many bad effects. Spedding, Cowell, 
 and Donne tried to bring the book before the public with- 
 out much success. So FitzGerald thought his boat had 
 gone down, and spoke of his work as ' a pretty specimen of 
 chiselled cherry stone.' Happily he was not quite daunted, 
 and he published at his own expense in February 1859 the 
 Rubdiydt. He sent a copy to his friend Cowell, with the 
 words : ' I hardly know why I print any of these things 
 which nobody buys, but when one has done one's best one 
 likes to make an end of the matter by print. I suppose 
 very few people have ever taken such pains in translation 
 as I have.' 
 
 in 
 
 Both Barton and FitzGerald were friendly men, but their 
 friendships were kept up mainly by correspondence.
 
 190 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Barton could not help himself, but FitzGerald was welcome 
 everywhere. Barton was quite remarkable in his per- 
 severance and success as a letter-writer. He seems to 
 have seen Charles Lamb twice at most in London, but 
 Lamb addressed to him some of his very best letters. He 
 only once met Southey, but Southey wrote to him cordially 
 and freely. He knew Dr. Nathan Drake, that excellent 
 bookman of Hadleigh, but seems to have met him very 
 seldom. His closest correspondence was maintained for 
 thirty years with a lady whom he never met. In days 
 when letters were not all curt and businesslike one might 
 easily estimate the unconscious regard which a man had 
 for a correspondent by the quality of the letters he wrote 
 to him. If you like and respect your correspondent you 
 cannot help showing it. You send him your best. The 
 converse is true. Judged by this test Barton comes out 
 very well, for his correspondents sent him decidedly good, 
 frank, confidential letters. They did not write down to 
 him, and they are much beyond the bare limits of 
 civility. 
 
 I have seen FitzGerald blamed for allowing himself to 
 see so little of such friends as Tennyson and Thackeray, 
 but he exchanged letters with them, and is it not likely 
 that a shy recluse like FitzGerald would shrink from meet- 
 ing an old associate after the lapse of years ? He would 
 fear to see the result of the wreckful siege of battering days. 
 He would shrink from seeing how roughly the inexorable 
 hand of time had struck them. He would shrink from 
 going back on stony spaces of the road. In his imagina- 
 tion they would remain fair and young, and perhaps he pre- 
 ferred to cherish them so. At all events he shows in his 
 memoir of Barton that this feature of Barton's friendships
 
 FITZGERALD AND BERNARD BARTON 191 
 
 is one that has struck him very much, and perhaps helped 
 to soothe his conscience. 
 
 Edward FitzGerald lived and moved and had his outer 
 being within narrow limits which he rarely transgressed. 
 But his mind soared and roamed through every field of 
 thought, 
 
 ' North and south and west and east, 
 Winds loved best and winds loved least/ 
 
 and he brought back spoil. The adventurous daring of his 
 speculation is in strange contrast with his timid, domestic, 
 tea-drinking, Waverley-novel-reading life. But for the 
 one the other was no doubt necessary. Edward Fitz- 
 Gerald could never have been a hustler. Dr. Marigold told 
 us long ago that ' you must wake up all the whole family of 
 thoughts you have got and burn their nightcaps, or you 
 won't do in the cheap-jack business.' FitzGerald could do 
 nothing in the cheap-jack business. He could not bum the 
 nightcaps of his thoughts and set them all a-rushing. We 
 have the great letters which place him with Cowper and 
 Lamb in the triad of the masters in this kind. All three 
 wrote out of the peace of defeat. We have the poems. 
 Most of us launch our paper boats on a sea of fire ; his have 
 won the shore.
 
 XXII 
 
 WHY DID SHAKESPEARE RETIRE TO 
 STRATFORD-ON-AVON ? 
 
 A recent visit to Stratford raised again in my mind the 
 old question, Why did Shakespeare in the prime of his life 
 and activity leave London for his native town ? He was 
 born in 1564, and in 1611, when he was only forty-seven, he 
 disposed of his shares in the Globe and Blackfriars theatres. 
 He died in 1616 at the comparatively early age of fifty-two. 
 Mr. Watts-Duntonputs the problem thus : 'Much wonder has 
 been expressed that he — after his great success in London, 
 after having acquired wealth and honour, and enjoyed inter- 
 course with all the genius and all the brilliance of his time ; 
 after being the admiration of all, from princes to apprentice 
 boys — should in the heyday of health and fame have left 
 everything to go down to Stratford (which was further from 
 London than Aberdeen is now) to settle among farmers, 
 wool-staplers, and cattle-dealers, and enjoy no better social 
 intercourse than could be found at the Falcon Inn.' 
 
 I had the opportunity of stating the case to a celebrated 
 resident in the town. She replied without hesitation. 
 First of all, she declared Shakespeare loved the place as 
 distinguished from the people. In the second place he 
 loved his wife. I started the ordinary objection that 
 Shakespeare's wife might, if she had chosen, have been 
 with him in London. The answer I received was that in 
 all probability Mrs. Shakespeare shared the general Puritan 
 
 15)2
 
 WHY DID SHAKESPEARE RETIRE ? 193 
 
 prejudice against the theatre. There may be force in 
 this. Shakespeare, in spite of all that has been alleged 
 to the contrary, does not seem to have been any more in 
 sympathy with Puritanism than Scott was. Sir Sidney 
 Lee tells us that he could hardly have viewed with un- 
 varying composure the steady progress that Puritanism 
 was making among his fellow -townsmen. Dr. Carter 
 should be heard upon the other side. We know that 
 Shakespeare's son-in-law Hall was in avowed sympathy 
 with Puritanism, and we also know that a Puritan preacher 
 was entertained at Shakespeare's residence after delivering 
 a sermon in the spring of 1614. I have no doubt that to- 
 day many in Stratford-on-Avon think as little of ' play- 
 actors ' as Shakespeare's own contemporaries did. Nicholas 
 Rowe says that at Stratford, ' the latter part of Shake- 
 speare's life was spent as all men of good sense will wish 
 theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of 
 his friends.' In his striking little book, Christmas at the 
 Mermaid, Mr. Watts-Dunton faces the problem. He puts 
 into Ben Jonson's mouth the following : 
 
 ' That he, the star of revel, bright-eyed Will, 
 With life at golden summit, fled the town 
 And took from Thames that light to dwindle down 
 O'er Stratford farms, doth make me marvel still.' 
 
 The following beautiful passage in the same poem cannot 
 be curtailed : 
 
 THE EVENING AFTER WILL'S RETURN TO 
 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 ' As down the bank he strolled through evening dew, 
 Pictures (he told me) of remembered eves 
 Mixt with that dream the Avon ever weaves, 
 And all his happy childhood came to view ; 
 
 N
 
 194 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 He saw a child watching the birds that flew 
 Above a willow, through whose musky leaves 
 A green musk-beetle shone with mail and greaves 
 That shifted in the light to bronze and blue. 
 These dreams, said he, were born of fragrance falling 
 From trees he loved, the scent of musk recalling, 
 With power beyond all power of things beholden 
 Or things reheard, those days when elves of dusk 
 Came, veiled the wings of evening feathered golden, 
 And closed him in from all but willow musk. 
 
 And then a child beneath a silver sallow — 
 
 A child who loved the swans, the moorhens' "cheep" — 
 
 Angled for bream where river holes are deep — 
 
 For gudgeon where the water glittered shallow, 
 
 Or ate the "fairy cheeses " of the mallow, 
 
 And wild fruits gathered where the wavelets creep 
 
 Round that loved church whose shadow seems to sleep 
 
 In love upon the stream and bless and hallow ; 
 
 And then a child to whom the water-fairies 
 
 Sent fish to " bite " from Avon's holes and shelves, 
 
 A child to whom, from richest honey-dairies, 
 
 The flower-sprites sent the bees and "sunshine elves'' ; 
 
 Then, in the shifting vision's sweet vagaries, 
 
 He saw two lovers walking by themselves — 
 
 Walking beneath the trees, where drops of rain 
 
 Wove crowns of sunlit opal to decoy 
 
 Young love from home ; and one, the happy boy. 
 
 Knew all the thoughts of birds in every strain — 
 
 Knew why the cushat breaks his fond refrain 
 
 By sudden silence, " lest his plaint should cloy" — 
 
 Knew when the skylark's changing note of joy 
 
 Saith, " Now will I return to earth again " — 
 
 Knew every warning of the blackbird's shriek, 
 
 And every promise of his joyful song — 
 
 Knew what the magpie's chuckle fain would speak ; 
 
 And, when a silent cuckoo flew along, 
 
 Bearing an egg in her felonious beak, 
 
 Knew every nest threatened with grievous wrong.
 
 WHY DID SHAKESPEARE RETIRE ? 195 
 
 lie heard her say, "The birds attest our troth ! 
 
 Hark to the mavis, Will, in yonder may 
 
 Fringing the sward, where many a hawthorn spray 
 
 Round summer's royal field of golden cloth 
 
 Shines o'er the buttercups like snowy froth, 
 
 And that sweet skylark on his azure way, 
 
 And that wise cuckoo, hark to what they say : 
 
 ' We birds of Avon heard and bless you both.' 
 
 And, Will, the sunrise, flushing with its glory 
 
 River and church, grows rosier with our story ! 
 
 This breeze of morn, sweetheart, which moves caressing, 
 
 Hath told the flowers ; they wake to lovelier growth ! 
 
 They breathe — o'er mead and stream they breathe — the 
 
 blessing, 
 ' We flowers of Avon heard and bless you both ! ' 
 
 Perhaps the true answer is complex. Of Shakespeare's 
 relations to his family, and especially to his wife, we know 
 but little. We must remember, however, that provincial 
 life in the wonderful England of that day was by no means 
 dull. The spirit of the nation was too high for that. This 
 was a period when the people lived royally. In a book, 
 Shakspere's England, published many years ago by the 
 New Shakspere Society, we read of the great partiality of 
 the people for beef, and there is a long and appetising list 
 of dishes in use. No fewer than eighty-six kinds of wine 
 were generally drunk. Though we are told that 133,000 
 men constituted the English land forces at the time of the 
 Armada, Harrison informs us that the muster roll of 
 1574-75 showed a number exceeding 1,100,000. Consider- 
 ing the popidation of the country at that time, this was an 
 amazing force. The troops may have been raw, but they 
 were available, and in these days when campaigns were long 
 their chances would not have been hopeless even against 
 the formidable veterans who were led by Parma. There
 
 196 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 is also the observation of Johnson that every man has a 
 lurking wish to appear considerable in his native town. 
 Shakespeare's purchases made him a leading citizen, and 
 proved to the most sceptical that his career had been 
 materially successful. We may take a step further under 
 the guidance of the great critic. Mr. Watts-Dunton says : 
 ' It was a natural thing to do in an age when men felt that 
 except in the exercise of the most sacred of the affections 
 the highest delight of intellectual man lies in meditation, 
 and that it is among the scenes of one's childhood that the 
 scattered threads of one's own life can be gathered up and 
 contemplated as one woof, that true meditation upon the 
 universal life of man can be fostered with most success.' 
 These are profound and weighty comments. There are 
 those who look upon the hills and streams of their childhood 
 as friends rather than in any other aspect and relationship. 
 There are great writers whose genius finds free expression 
 only when they deal with the scenes and the characters that 
 first impress their minds. As life goes on and is enriched 
 by new experiences they come back and see deeper mean- 
 ings in the familiar landscape and people, but they are never 
 in quest of new subjects. They know that the old subjects 
 will last them while life and invention last, and they never 
 work to so much purpose or find their minds so absorbent 
 as when they contemplate them day by day. Shakespeare 
 appears to have written little in the years of his retirement, 
 though he visited London several times. I cannot think 
 that the proof of his literary productiveness in the last 
 years of his life is convincing. It seems as if he meant 
 his retirement to be a genuine retirement. But it may 
 very well be, Mr. Watts-Dunton says, that he found that 
 meditation was easy, fruitful, and delightful, in the place
 
 WHY DID SHAKESPEARE RETIRE ? 197 
 
 where he could gather all the glittering strands of his 
 wonderful days into unity. 
 
 That Shakespeare retired to Stratford-on-Avon for love 
 of his fellow-townsmen and their conversation is very hard 
 to believe. If he did he was certainly disappointed. It 
 was said by Coleridge, ' In older times writers were looked 
 up to as intermediate beings between angels and men ; 
 afterwards they were regarded as venerable and perhaps 
 inspired teachers ; subsequently they descended to the 
 level of learned and instructive friends ; but in modern 
 days they are deemed culprits more than benefactors.' If 
 Shakespeare were in Stratford-on-Avon now, or any other 
 English provincial town, many would ignore him, many 
 more would decry him. The county people would consider 
 anxiously whether or not he should be visited. The 
 comrades of his childhood, many of them at least, would 
 resent his rise in life, and depreciate his family. Friends 
 and worshippers he might find, but they would be a small 
 minority. A watchful and jealous curiosity would be 
 turned like a microscope on all his doings. One of the 
 very few things we know about Shakespeare is that he spent 
 much of his last days in litigation. It was pitiful work, 
 and yet one understands how Shakespeare might have been 
 driven into it against his will. Jealousy, envy, malice 
 may have conspired to make his path difficult. Whether 
 he was disappointed or not we cannot tell, but probably he 
 never repented his choice. A great authority on this 
 subject once said to me that there was such a thing as the 
 love of a man for his mother earth, and he would be happy 
 upon it whoever molested him, and never quite happy 
 away from it. 
 
 In this connection I cannot but remark that the relations
 
 198 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 between Dr. Johnson and Lichfield were in the highest 
 degree honourable to both. The manner in which Johnson 
 found access so early to the best society of the town has 
 never been quite explained. So far as appears, his fellow- 
 citizens were perfectly loyal to him. They were always 
 proud of him, he was always happy among them, and to- 
 day Lichfield stands true to her greatest son. 
 
 Shakespeare died at fifty-two, as Thackeray did. It was 
 counted a greater age then than it would be considered 
 now, but Shakespeare must have looked forward to more 
 and ampler years. How did he think of death ? On 
 this subject Mr. Watts-Dunton's essay on Hamlet may be 
 read with great profit. It should be added that though it 
 is hazardous to draw inferences from Shakespeare's dra- 
 matic utterances, we may be perfectly sure that he had a 
 strong grip of life. The melancholy element is not wanting 
 — how could it be ? — but it is not predominant. He was 
 indignant at the ' deep dishonour of death,' and like 
 William Morris, he poured his wrath upon the ' spoiler of 
 life's feast.' Pessimism was utterly foreign to his healthy 
 nature. However he might cultivate ' sweet melancholy ' 
 as a fine art, we know that his power was not failing. 
 Coleridge very rightly speaks of the Tempest as ' an almost 
 miraculous drama.' How would it have been if Shake- 
 speare had lived to old age ? I am not going to examine 
 this question at the end of an essay, but I cannot but quote 
 the profound and beautiful comment of Coleridge on Lear. 
 In Lear, Coleridge says, ' old age is itself a character ; any 
 addition of individuality would have been unnecessary and 
 painful, for thus Lear becomes the open and ample play- 
 ground of nature's passions. 9
 
 XXIII 
 
 THE LETTERS OF CHARLES LEVER 
 
 Charles Lever: His Life in his Letters, by Edmund 
 Downey, is a very welcome and a very readable book, 
 though it is not, and does not profess to be, an adequate 
 record of the author's life. Such a record we shall never 
 find. The materials have hopelessly vanished ; and yet 
 if ever there was a man who might have written an auto- 
 biography that would endure, that man was Charles Lever. 
 How many middle-aged and elderly people must rejoice 
 in the recollection of their introduction to Lever's early 
 books ! The first I ever read was The Confessions of Harry 
 Lorrequer. I shall never forget the pure delight with 
 which I raced through it, standing at the skylight of my 
 garret window till the last gleam of light had vanished, so 
 loth was I to lay down the fascinating pages. Once when 
 living in the country I knew a young farmer who was 
 certainly not addicted to reading. He formed a library, 
 and procured, among other books, five of Charles Lever's. 
 My friend used to take them out in regular course, be- 
 ginning with Harry Lorrequer, and proceeding to Arthur 
 O'Leary. When I left the place, he was still reading them. 
 Each book lasted him at least a month, and by the time the 
 five were ended, he was ready to start afresh. I have 
 sometimes wondered whether he was still doing the round 
 of Lever. He might be doing worse. 
 
 199
 
 200 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Of Lever's life, the only satisfactory record so far has 
 been the biography published in 1879 by Dr. W. J. Fitz- 
 patrick. Of Fitzpatrick's personality, I know nothing ; 
 but his books are highly valuable. He wrote the lives of 
 Bishop Doyle, Lady Morgan, Lord Cloncurry, and he also 
 wrote an excellent book entitled Irish Wits and Worthies. 
 Somehow the Irish have been strangely careless in bio- 
 graphy. They had in Dublin a band of very brilliant men 
 during Lever's time, but it is most difficult to obtain in- 
 formation about them. The Irish Church never had a 
 more brilliant member than William Archer Butler, but 
 we have nothing about him except the slender biography 
 prefixed to his works. Then of Le Fanu, I know no account 
 that is barely adequate. Long ago, through the kindness 
 of Canon Hayman, of Cork, who knew them both, I 
 obtained some particulars, not in themselves very signi- 
 ficant, but valuable to me. Of Archer Butler's work, 
 much lies buried in the volumes of the Dublin University 
 Magazine, and I can identify a considerable part of it. 
 Fitzpatrick has obvious faults, but he was careful and in- 
 dustrious, and, on the whole, has done more for Irish 
 biography than any one else I know. In his Life of Lever 
 he was hampered by the absence of letters, but no one 
 could have taken more pains than he ; and he succeeded 
 in writing two very racy volumes with many facts interest- 
 ing to the student of life and literature. Turning over these 
 volumes to-night, I came, in the appendix, to a paper on 
 Thackeray and Lever, by Major Dyer. In this, the Major 
 tells us that Thackeray gave him a book of Dumas, of 
 which he had just completed a very sharp critique for the 
 Foreign Quarterly. Also he says that Thackeray asked 
 him to join in writing a severe criticism on Miss Pardoe's
 
 THE LETTERS OF CHARLES LEVER 201 
 
 City of the Magyar for the Foreign Quarterly. I wonder 
 whether these references have come under the eye of Mr. 
 Garnett, who has discovered and published some articles 
 of Thackeray which were buried and forgotten in that 
 periodical ? I mention this as a specimen of the matter 
 to be found in Fitzpatrick. 
 
 Mr. Downey is quite competent to write a sound bio- 
 graphy of Lever, but he has satisfied himself with a few 
 connecting and explanatory notes to the letters. His book 
 then must be viewed, not as a substitute for Fitzpatrick, 
 but as a corrective and a supplement — a very agreeable 
 and instructive supplement. It will be read through with 
 great delight by many whose interest in Lever and in bio- 
 graphy is not keen enough to make them turn back to the 
 older work. I must content myself with a few impressions. 
 
 The most outstanding fact about Lever is that his high 
 spirits ended so soon. He was thirty-four when he began 
 the publication of Harry Lorrequer. Between 1840 and 
 1844 he produced Charles O'Malley, Jack Hinton, Tom 
 Burke, and Arthur O'Lcary. These were his rollicking 
 books. Towards the end of his career, at the instigation 
 of Anthony Trollope, he wrote an imitation of his early 
 style in Paul Goslett. This was when Trollope was engaged 
 in his conscientious, dreary, unsuccessful attempt to edit 
 St. Paul's Magazine. The life and savour of the old books 
 were not to be found in Paul Goslett, and indeed in Arthur 
 O'Leary, published when the author was thirty-eight, they 
 are fast disappearing. Afterwards came a long succession 
 of books. They were all written more or less carelessly, 
 but they are full of ability, and the harvest of a keen wit. 
 Lever was a genuine observer. It is to the Dodd Family 
 Abroad, more than any other book, that one must look for
 
 202 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 a true idea of the way in which English families used to 
 travel on the Continent before the days of railways. No one 
 describes the entrance into a foreign town with anything 
 like the accuracy of Lever. Very valuable also are his 
 descriptions of such places as old Paris and old Rome. I 
 spoke of the ability of Lever. Irishmen are naturally 
 very apt to be deflected by emotion, and so you are never 
 quite sure of their constancy to the same view. Lever 
 wrote besides his novels many excellent essays in Black- 
 wood under the pseudonym Cornelius O'Dowd. In these 
 and in his novels he was always prescribing for the evils 
 of Ireland, but the trouble was that he did not stick to the 
 same prescription. He seems to come in the end to the 
 one conclusion in which all Irishmen of all sects, schools, 
 parties, ages, are agreed, that Englishmen can never under- 
 stand Ireland. The further step remains to be taken. 
 
 But the peculiarity of the later books is that they are 
 careworn. They are not passionately sad, but they are 
 depressed. Everywhere there is the atmosphere of anxiety. 
 Scenes of gaiety are depicted with zest, but the skeleton 
 is at the feast, and trouble is hard at hand. The trouble is 
 hardly ever the grand and purifying sorrows of life, but its 
 mean worries, its insistent daily cares, its petty disappoint- 
 ments, its increasing weariness. Of these last Lever had 
 an extraordinary sense — out of all proportion to the truth. 
 He deliberately thought that life after thirty-five was not 
 worth living, and his books bear impressive witness to 
 the fact that this was no saying born in a mood of temper, 
 but his deliberate conviction, and in a manner his true 
 experience. 
 
 Nevertheless, how pleasant his books are, and how pure ! 
 His is an unsullied mind. On certain aspects of human life,
 
 THE LETTERS OF CHARLES LEVER 203 
 
 Thackeray just glanced in his books, but he did not conceal 
 that he would fain have dealt with them if the English 
 public had allowed him. We know from Dickens' friends 
 that he talked very much about the darker side of city 
 life, and was familiar with its tragedy. But in his books 
 he hardly approaches it, and one can say that he did not 
 think it could be safely approached. With Lever, the im- 
 pression is that of a sound purity that never dived into the 
 black heart of things. He was most fortunate in his 
 marriage, and although the letters show us that he was 
 burdened by the debts of his son, he was happy in his 
 family life. His great trouble was his extravagance. 
 From first to last he was always in debt and difficulty. A 
 writer in Blackwood deals sympathetically with this 
 peculiarity. His income from his writings seems to have 
 been in his best days nearly £3000 a year, and he could 
 generally make about £1200. In addition, he had for a 
 time some £300 a year as Vice-Consul at Spezzia, and 
 latterly twice the amount as Consul at Trieste. But he 
 was always hard up. What wonder ? When he was a 
 young doctor, at Brussels, he wrote : ' I had three Earls 
 and two Ambassadors on Tuesday.' And he gave weekly 
 soirSes to the great guns and Lords and Marquises without 
 number. He boasted that he had a very handsome house, 
 and that the entertaining had been done admirably well. 
 He bought for £50 a new uniform in which to make his bow 
 to the King of the Belgians. When in Rome he spent as 
 much in one day as he usually spent in a week. He was 
 devoted to whist, and frequently lost a good deal more 
 than he could afford. He was constantly victimised by 
 adventurers. On one occasion, he writes that he had been 
 ' walked into by a swindler to the amount of £145.' Thus
 
 204 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 he was always writing for money : 4 For God's sake, send 
 me some gilt ; I am terribly hard up just now.' In one 
 of his essays he wrote that ever and anon heavy losses and 
 increasing expenses led him to try his hand once more at 
 thrift, but it was of no use, and he at last abandoned the 
 effort as vain. ' There are temperaments,' he writes, 
 ' which thrift disagrees with, just as there are constitutions 
 that cannot take opium or digitalis, or a score of other 
 medicaments that others profit by. Myself — I say it in 
 all humility — is one of them. The agent that acts so 
 favourably with others goes wrong with me. Something 
 or other has been omitted in my temperament, or something 
 has been mixed up with it that ought not to have been 
 there ; I cannot tell which. Whatever it be, it renders 
 me incapable of practising that sage and well-regulated 
 economy by which other men secure themselves against 
 difficulties, and show a surplus in their annual balance- 
 sheet.' Like many such men he got through wonderfully. 
 We read that when he was in great difficulties, his daughter 
 became engaged to a man with £7000 a year. He was 
 extremely fortunate in falling in with John Blackwood at a 
 critical period in his life. That excellent man treated him 
 with the greatest wisdom and generosity, and could give 
 him guidance in life as well as in letters. Another thing 
 that told in his favour was that people in these days bought 
 the three-volume novel and the story published in monthly 
 parts. No doubt this increased his income, although if he 
 were living in these days, and had made a businesslike 
 arrangement about the publication of his early books, they 
 would have supplied him with a fair income to the last. 
 Mrs. Oliphant was, strange to say, as unthrifty as Lever 
 himself. She was at the opposite pole from Lever in many
 
 THE LETTERS OF CHARLES LEVER 205 
 
 ways and things. She was a shrewd, cynical Scotswoman, 
 with a bitter tongue, though her heart was kind. Nobody 
 could criticise the folly of her neighbours more severely ; 
 but she herself, with nothing to depend on but her pen, 
 and with many young lives depending upon her, was nearly 
 always a year's income in debt, and did not trouble herself 
 about it. Lever, however, did trouble himself. I am 
 confident that this impecuniosity took the flavour out of his 
 books. He was an expert in depression. Of this many 
 passages are scattered through his novels. One of his 
 observations is that the wretchedness of a depressed man 
 is at its height during the early hours of a cold dawn after 
 a sleepless night. ' Even to the exceptionally healthy 
 there is something unspeakably dreary about the hours 
 immediately preceding sunrise, when they are numbed 
 with cold and sleeplessness ; it is, in very fact, the hour of 
 death, when more souls take their departure from earth 
 than at any other of the twenty-four.' I am afraid that 
 Lever has many followers in these days among literary 
 people, though how it should be so I do not understand. 
 Surely the difficulties and uncertainties of the literary pro- 
 fession are enough, without incurring another addition — 
 the crushing and terrible burden of debt. 
 
 The last part of his letters is mainly addressed to Mr. 
 John Blackwood. Mr. Blackwood published in his 
 magazine, and in book form, an anonymous story by Lever, 
 entitled Tony. Lever thought well of it, and so did 
 Blackwood ; but when it appeared complete the public 
 did not welcome it. It may be worth while to disinter 
 the review that appeared in the Athenceum. That journal 
 described the novel as an unsuccessful attempt to com- 
 bine the Irish novel of Lever with the later romance
 
 206 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 of Lytton : the reader is alternately reminded of Harry 
 Lorrequer and the C actions, but the imitation considered 
 separately did not afford satisfaction, and the combination 
 of the two incongruous styles is an inartistic patchwork. 
 It was suggested that the book was the writer's first 
 attempt in prose fiction. So much for the value of internal 
 evidence. 
 
 Lever got through somehow, and not so very ill. He left 
 in insurances something like £4000. He died in a happy 
 moment, for if he had lived much longer his troubles 
 would have increased. He said : ' I am very weary and 
 footsore, and have no desire to remain here.' He dreaded 
 greatly lest he should have to undergo much physical 
 suffering, and, above all, lest his intellect should fail. 
 He said that the old hulk was so strongly put together that 
 he feared it would take a long time going to pieces. He was 
 laid to rest beside his wife in the British cemetery at Trieste, 
 on the dreary Dalmatian coast, near the last resting-place 
 of Winckelmann, who was murdered at Trieste by an 
 Italian. Whatever his difficulties he had his share of the 
 best things in life ; he did much for the delight and in- 
 struction of readers ; he carried an innocent heart through 
 his recklessness and carelessness, and no stain rests upon 
 his memory.
 
 XXIV 
 
 DR. RICHARD GARNETT 
 
 When I woke on Good Friday morning 1906, the first 
 thought that passed through my mind was, ' I shall see 
 Dr. Gamett and talk to him about J. R. Lowell.' He had 
 written in the current Bookman a short article on Lowell, 
 and it must have been almost the last thing that came 
 from his pen. Shortly after I opened a paper, and read 
 there that Dr. Garnett was dying — in fact, he was dead. 
 After a short and sharp illness he passed away peacefully 
 about five o'clock on that morning of Good Friday. We 
 lost in him the friendliest, gentlest, kindliest, and most 
 accomplished of men. Though I had many dealings with 
 Dr. Garnett, and though these extended over a long period, 
 I never felt that I really knew him. Always accessible 
 and courteous, eager to communicate his knowledge, the 
 readiest of helpers, there was nevertheless about him a 
 singular reserve. He very rarely opened his mind. He 
 did not care to talk about ultimate things, and he shrank 
 from discussing personalities. Even about the dead he 
 was reticent. I find that this is the impression that Dr. 
 Garnett left upon those who saw more of him than I did, 
 though, no doubt, like the rest of us, he had his own circle 
 where he uttered himself without doubt or fear. How- 
 ever, I knew quite enough of him to rank him as one of the 
 
 207
 
 208 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 greatest gentlemen I have ever known — perhaps the 
 greatest. 
 
 Dr. Garnett's life is inseparably associated with the 
 British Museum. Among all the able and diligent men 
 who have worked for that great institution, there could 
 never have been a more faithful and able servant. He 
 went to the Museum as a mere boy. He was only sixteen 
 at the time of his appointment as an assistant in the 
 Printed Books Department. His education was necessarily 
 imperfect, and, such as it was, he received most of it from 
 his father, a clergyman of the Church of England, who 
 preferred the work of the Museum to ministerial duties. 
 It was Panizzi, that hot-tempered and masterful Italian, 
 who put Garnett into the Museum, and a better choice was 
 never made. Dr. Garnett's great friend in the early days 
 was Coventry Patmore, who, like himself, was an assistant. 
 Patmore was then married to his first wife, the famous 
 ' angel in the house,' and lived with her and his growing 
 family at a tiny cottage on Hampstead Heath, which was 
 demolished some years ago. Patmore was not easy to 
 live with ; but through all changes Garnett and he held 
 together, and it was Garnett who edited the beautiful 
 selection from his friend's poems which appeared under the 
 title Florilegium Amantis. For the rest Garnett had the 
 books in which he never ceased to delight, and he educated 
 himself in the course of years as few men have ever been 
 educated. He was a veritable glutton for books, and none 
 came amiss to him. His tenacious memory enabled him 
 to retain his knowledge to such an extent that he became 
 an oracle. He was an ideal servant of the Museum, though
 
 DR. RICHARD GARNETT 209 
 
 his promotion was slow, and it was not until 1875 that he 
 was made Superintendent of the Reading Room. As 
 Superintendent every one knew him, and every one con- 
 sulted him. No labour was too great for him to undertake. 
 You Avould see him helping readers with the catalogue, 
 bending over them at their desks, putting all his treasures 
 at their disposal, and making himself, as has been said, ' the 
 slave of the slaves of literature.' But I think he himself 
 would have described as the chief work of his life the 
 preparation of the printed catalogue. Of this tremendous 
 undertaking he had the chief charge. I never saw Dr. 
 Garnett ruffled by anything unless it was by any charge 
 made against the catalogue. Such charges always roused 
 him, and he was slow to believe that there could be any 
 error or any deficiency. There were errors and deficiencies, 
 as was inevitable ; but the achievement is noble and en- 
 during — one which will put generations of students in 
 Dr. Garnett's debt. He received in 1890 the honourable 
 position of Keeper of the Printed Books, and retired, when 
 his term was finished, to Hampstead. At first he would 
 go to the Museum almost every day ; but by degrees he 
 seemed to grow more contented with his surroundings, 
 and employed himself in literary work. The last thing 
 he laboured at was a memoir of the eminent Unitarian 
 preacher, W. J. Fox. Fox had close relations with litera- 
 ture and politics, and no one was better fitted to do him 
 justice in both respects than was Dr. Garnett. 
 
 However, it is not as a scholar that his friends best 
 remember him. They think of him as the most generous, 
 the most patient, the most self-sacrificing of men. The 
 Duke of Wellington complained that he was much exposed 
 to authors ; but surely no one was ever more exposed to 
 
 o
 
 210 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 authors, and very unreasonable authors too, than was Dr. 
 Garnett. George Gissing and many others have written 
 about the eccentric individuals who are to be found from 
 time to time in the Reading Room of the British Museum. 
 Nobody knew them and their histories as Dr. Garnett did, 
 and he was indeed ' of every friendless name the friend.' 
 Nothing daunted him — no shabbiness, no unreasonable- 
 ness, no grotesqueness. Every one could and did pour his 
 story into Dr. Gamett's ear, and he was indefatigable in 
 his attempts to help and relieve. It was said of him very 
 truly that there were many whose very subsistence often 
 depended on his kindness. ' There are readers now 
 earning a fair living in the room who, if they revealed the 
 secrets of the perilous path that once led them by the edge 
 of the precipice, would confess that it was Dr. Garnett 
 who saved them from ruin.' He would rewrite a piece of 
 doggerel ; he would touch-up and correct a poor essay, and 
 send it with a letter of recommendation to an editor. 
 Above all, he was ceaselessly endeavouring to get work for 
 the unemployed. His editorial friends were sometimes 
 embarrassed by his persistence. Dr. Garnett thought that 
 everybody was good for something, and credited every one 
 with the same kind intentions as his own. The time and 
 the labour he must have spent merely in writing letters, on 
 behalf of those who had no claim upon him but their need, 
 are beyond calculation. 
 
 This is not the whole. Dr. Garnett never allowed him- 
 self to treat contemptuously those who were in difficulty, 
 and no ingratitude wearied him out. On one subject he 
 would never speak — the oddities of the Reading Room. 
 I shall never forget one little experience I had of his be- 
 haviour. One day I happened to be with him in his own
 
 DR. RICHARD GARNETT 211 
 
 room at the Museum. A poor lady came in with a pitiful 
 and embarrassing story. It was almost impossible to 
 avoid a smile at the way in which she told it. Dr. Garnett 
 listened with the utmost courtesy, promised to do what he 
 could, and showed her out. Ninety-nine men out of a 
 hundred would at least have exehanged a friendly smile 
 over the interview. Dr. Garnett carefully looked else- 
 where, and turned the conversation on to something else. 
 She was a woman and she was destitute — it was enough- 
 More than once I tried to get from him his impressions of 
 Grub Street, but on this subject his lips were locked. 
 What all this means very few can understand ; but the 
 better one understands, the more he will admire Dr. 
 Garnett. I had a true reverence for his character. 
 
 He could sometimes betray a humorous impatience. 
 Of one cantankerous old fellow, whom we had both tried 
 to hell) a t some cost and trouble, Dr. Garnett said to me, 
 shrugging his shoulders, ' He is very — very ' — then he 
 found his word — ' He is very difficult,' said he. But this 
 was a rare exception, and the veil which he carefully cast 
 over his countless acts of charity and kindness will never 
 be lifted here. 
 
 Dr. Garnett was himself the most grateful of men (I see 
 I am writing in superlatives, but I do so deliberately). 
 I suppose I must have received from him more than fifty 
 letters thanking me for small matters, allusions in articles, 
 or little reviews. Extremely susceptible to kindness, even 
 from the humblest, he made it his business to acknowledge 
 it, and he never forgot it. He was a keen and able critic, 
 but he held himself aloof from the literary controversies 
 and parties of his time. This was, I think, because of his 
 position in the Museum. He was there as the servant of
 
 212 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 the State to help everybody. Though lie was familiar 
 with nearly every author of the day, I never heard of his 
 having an enemy. This was not because he was blind. 
 Few men had such eyes. I was sitting opposite him at a 
 dinner given in honour of a young author who had achieved 
 a sudden success. The author's head was turned for the 
 time, and he was behaving like an ass. Looking across 
 the table I caught Dr. Garnett's eyes fixed on him with a 
 cynical, mocking expression. In a moment he dropped 
 his eyes and returned to his roast beef. We drove back 
 together that evening, but Dr. Gamett, though he did not 
 conceal his amusement, had no harsh word to say. 
 
 II 
 
 Of Dr. Garnett's literary achievements much might be 
 written, but I specially wish to insist on his grand and 
 noble character. During many years of his time at the 
 Museum he was poorly paid, and he increased his income 
 by anonymous journalism. It would probably be im- 
 possible to discover full particulars of his labour in this 
 kind, but I remember particularly the admirable magazine 
 causerie which he contributed for a long time to the 
 Illustrated London News. It was so pointed, so vivacious, 
 so well informed, that it stood out clearly even in the 
 excellent literary journalism of its period. He also wrote 
 for many years, beginning in the 'sixties, the summary 
 of German literature which was published in the Saturday 
 Review. When William Minto was editor of the Examiner, 
 Garnett was one of the brightest of his contributors. The 
 paper used to publish at that time articles by Theodore 
 Watts-Dunton, Edmund Gosse, W. A. Hunter, and many
 
 DR. RICHARD GARNETT 213 
 
 others, but the criticisms signed ' R. G.' were among the 
 best and the most delicate of all. He was also a consider- 
 able poet, though his best things are not so well known 
 as they should be. The greatest and most characteristic 
 of his works is, no doubt, his Twilight of the Gods, published 
 in 1888. But the most perfect thing he ever did was, I 
 think, his little book on Emerson in the Great Writers' 
 Series. It is written out of such fullness and ripeness of 
 knowledge that those who have studied Emerson longest 
 will be the most enthusiastic in its praise. His works on 
 English literature are well worth reading; but Dr. Garnett's 
 range was too wide to admit of his specialising, and, though 
 he is invariably fresh and interesting, he often needs cor- 
 rection. Still his knowledge was very great. One summer 
 evening he came into my house, and I showed him with 
 pride the volumes of the Westminster Review which were 
 published in George Eliot's time. He took them up, 
 turned them over, and supplied the names of the reviewers 
 almost completely out of his marvellous memory. You 
 could never take him aback. To every question he could 
 give you some reply. His critical judgment may have 
 failed at times — thus he unaccountably disparaged Mrs. 
 Oliphant's admirable History of the House of Blackivood, 
 but on this subject he allowed that he might have gone 
 wrong. He obstinately refused, however, to see the beauty 
 of Miss Rossetti's devotional poems. He thought them 
 morbid all through. 
 
 in 
 
 Dr. Garnett's life was, I think, exceptionally happy. His 
 work was congenial, and he was extremely fortunate in his
 
 214 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 family and his friends. Mrs. Garnett was an original, 
 charming, vivacious, and accomplished Irishwoman, keenly 
 interested in her husband's work. Once in my library she 
 looked at the set of the Dictionary of National Biography. 
 ' My husband,' she said, ' has written in every volume of 
 this Dictionary except one,' and, passing her hand over the 
 volumes till it rested on one — ' This is the volume.' His son, 
 Mr. Edward Garnett, has shown rare critical faculty and 
 imaginative powers. Another son discovered and edited 
 with great skill the essays on Thackeray in the Foreign 
 Quarterly. Dr. Garnett enjoyed to the full the great conso- 
 lation of the London literary man — the many opportunities 
 for friendly and genial intercourse. He never refused an 
 invitation if he could help it, and everywhere he was 
 welcome. A bookman all his life he had none of the pallid 
 and remote air of the bookman. He had a ruddy, weather- 
 beaten countenance, and his personal appearance has been 
 well described by the German adjective riistig. He never 
 had any difficulty in getting on with his neighbour at the 
 dinner-table, however shy and ill-informed that neighbour 
 might be. He made his way to some subject of common 
 interest, and seemed to receive more than he gave. In the 
 young authors and authoresses of the day he was much 
 interested, and would often be found in their company. 
 After his retirement, he liked to visit in an informal way, 
 and though his talk was by preference on books, he was 
 quite ready to talk about anything else. I cannot think 
 that there has been any one in London of the last fifty years 
 who had a knowledge so intimate and thorough of the 
 personal side of literary history. He knew that as Dr. 
 Johnson knew his own period when he sat down, an old 
 man, to write the Lives of the Poets. I once ventured to
 
 DR. RICHARD GARNETT 215 
 
 make this comparison in Dr. Garnett's presence, and he 
 was not displeased. He had none of the roughness of Dr. 
 Johnson, but he had all his tenderness, and many of his 
 tastes. In particular, like all good men, he was a devoted 
 lover of cats.
 
 XXV 
 
 LEARNING TO READ 
 
 i 
 
 In June 1913 I had the honour of addressing the London 
 Branch of the National Book Trade Provident Society in 
 Essex Hall. My subject was ' Learning to Read,' and by 
 request of certain members of the audience I give what 
 I can recollect of my speech. 
 
 There are certain delusions which prevail extensive^ 
 and obstinately. One of them we all share. We all think 
 we have a sense of humour. But when we go outside to the 
 larger world and remember the people we meet there, we 
 are well assured that many of them have no very keen sense 
 of humour, and that some at least have no sense of humour 
 at all. Another mighty delusion is that every one is fond 
 of reading. Almost every one thinks he is. I never heard 
 any one say, ' I do not care for reading ; it bores me and 
 worries me.' But I have heard very many say that they 
 regret extremely that they have never been able to read 
 as much as they would like. They never have had 
 sufficient time. As a matter of fact, no one who really 
 cared for reading was ever deterred from it by want of 
 time ; in fact, I make bold to say that only a small pro- 
 portion of people have learned in the proper sense how to 
 read* Our expensive system of education makes it certain 
 
 316
 
 LEARNING TO READ 217 
 
 that every one can read in a fashion, and a large number 
 have the power of studying for an object. For example, if 
 they are competing for a University scholarship, they will 
 master the books set for the examination, but I am afraid 
 that those persons who have learned to read in the sense 
 that they can discriminate between what is good and bad, 
 and that they read the best with delight and relish, are few, 
 and this is surely a very great misfortune. 
 
 If I may, I should like to utter my own personal testi- 
 mony, and it is this : Reading has been the chief pleasure 
 of my life. It has given me so much pleasure that I feel 
 that I am in danger of falling into extravagance when I 
 speak of it. The pleasure has gone on increasing, and is 
 stronger now than ever. Of many things we grow weary 
 in the course of years, but nowadays I have a greater 
 happiness in reading than ever I had before, and I am 
 thankful that this is so. For reading is not an expensive 
 nor an unreachable pleasure. It is within the power of 
 all to get the joy of reading, and the independence of 
 reading, for it means a great deal of independence and 
 separation from care. Besides, it is an elevating pleasure 
 if the books are rightly chosen, and ought to brighten and 
 elevate and purify the character. It is always more 
 pleasant to meet with one who is a bookman than with one 
 who is not. I always feel safe and comfortable and happy 
 in the presence of any one who is really fond of reading. 
 
 ii 
 
 We are all very much influenced by the circumstances of 
 our childhood. My reading began in this manner. I 
 had a nurse who once read a little, but had forgotten the 
 
 I
 
 218 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 way, and she subscribed to periodicals then very popular 
 — the London Journal and the Family Herald. She gave 
 me a penny a week for reading the stories in these papers 
 to her, and so I became familiar with the early work of 
 Miss Braddon, with the novels of Pierce Egan, and with 
 many others. We had also another journal, called CasselVs 
 Family Paper, and I remember with some pride the rapture 
 with which I read a story which appeared in its pages. No 
 author's name was given, but many a year after I stopped 
 at a barrow in Farringdon Street and saw some extremely 
 dilapidated volumes. On examining them I found that the 
 favourite novel of my childhood was the first novel of 
 R. D. Blackmore, Clara Vaughan, and even now, after 
 knowing Lorna Doone, and the other books, I still think 
 that Blackmore never did better than in some chapters of 
 , his earliest production. 
 
 Another writer who pleased me very much was Captain 
 Mayne Reid. Two stories of his — Oceola, which ap- 
 peared in Chambers's Journal, and The Maroon in 
 CasselVs — first made me conscious of the existence of 
 foreign countries and coloured people. This was a land- 
 mark. Mayne Reid galloped through his books in these 
 days, and his readers rushed breathless after him. A 
 cleaner, more cheerful, and more efficient writer for boys 
 I can hardly imagine. 
 
 Then I remember during a severe illness being allowed 
 to read in bed. There I made certain great discoveries. 
 First I found in an old volume of Taifs Magazine, in a 
 paper by Thomas De Quincey, certain lines of Allan 
 Cunningham which thrilled me with a new and strange 
 gladness. This was my first experience in the appreciation 
 of poetry, my first realised consciousness that there was
 
 LEARNING TO READ 219 
 
 such a thing in the world as poetry. The lines as I re- 
 member them were : 
 
 ' Gane were but the winter can Id, 
 And gane were but the snaw, 
 1 could sleep in the wild woods 
 Where primroses blaw. 
 
 Cauld 's the snaw at my heid, 
 
 And cauld, cauld at my feet ; 
 And the ringer of death \s at my een 
 
 Closin' them to sleep. 
 
 Let nane tell my father 
 
 Or my mither sue dear ; 
 I 11 meet them baith in heaven 
 
 At the spring-time o' th' year.' 
 
 About the same time I met with Tennyson's lines : 
 
 ' I have heard 
 Time flowing in the middle of the night, 
 And all things floating to a day of doom/ 
 
 and recognised that I, too, had heard the rushing of time 
 break the silence of midnight, and that thus far I could 
 understand the poet. 
 
 The second of these experiences came from the reading of 
 Quentin Durward. A passage in that story taught me 
 thaT"~the world was beautiful, and that Nature was a 
 minister of happiness. This is the passage : 
 
 The moon, which had now extricated herself from the clouds 
 through which she was formerly wading, shed a full sea of 
 glorious light upon a landscape equally glorious. They saw 
 the princely Loire rolling his majestic tide through the richest 
 plain in France, and sweeping along between banks ornamented 
 with towers and terraces, and with olives and vineyards. 
 They saw the walls of the city of Tours, the ancient capital
 
 220 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 of Tourainc, raising their portal towers and embattlements 
 white in the moonlight, while, from within their circle, rose the 
 immense Gothic mass which the devotion of the sainted 
 Bishop Perpetuus erected as early as the fifth century, and 
 which the zeal of Charlemagne and his successors had enlarged 
 with such architectural splendour as rendered it the most 
 magnificent church in France. The towers of the church of 
 Saint Gaticn were also visible, and the gloomy strength of the 
 Castle, which was said to have been, in ancient times, the 
 residence of the Emperor Valentinian. 
 
 I had known that there was a moon, but I had not known 
 the enchantment of moonlight. After that I knew it, 
 and have had endless joy in seeing the ' holier day,' as 
 Shelley calls it, on cities and rivers and seas. 
 
 James Payn of happy memory wrote an admirable 
 essay against sham admiration in literature, in which he 
 denounced the classics, the works of Thomas Love Peacock, 
 and other respected performances. We are all entitled 
 to choose our favourite, and to say frankly who these 
 favourites are, no matter how stupid may be our choice. 
 Once on a time people used to fill up albums of confessions. 
 To one question, ' Who is your favourite novelist ? ' I 
 always wrote, with perfect honesty and sincerity, ' The Rev. 
 C. B. Greatrex.' Probably no gentle reader has ever heard 
 of Mr. Greatrex's name. He wrote a novel which went 
 through a magazine called Hogg's Instructor, and it was 
 continued for volume after volume. The title of the tale is 
 Memoranda of a Marine Officer, and that was my favourite 
 story, and, to be perfectly candid, I think it is my favourite 
 story still. But I have introduced it to various persons, 
 eminent and not eminent, and no one ever could see any- 
 thing in it. Years ago I discovered where the author was
 
 LEARNING TO READ 22»1 
 
 living. He was rector of a little parish called Hope, near 
 Ludlow, and I went there, and found him old and bent 
 and feeble. Whoever owes him anything, I owe him much, 
 and hope some day to discharge my debt. 
 
 in 
 
 These preferences are harmless and useful, but we should 
 never be satisfied without coming into intimate relation- 
 ships with the approved chiefs of literature. It is not 
 ignoble to desire an entrance into the best society — I 
 mean the very best society in literature. We may have 
 our individual likings, but we are wrong unless we know at 
 least one lord — one lord of the imagination. It is a great 
 thing to be thoroughly and intimately familiar with even 
 one lord of the imagination. ' How are we to know,' say 
 some people, ' who are the great authors ? ' There are 
 those who cannot read Scott or Dickens ; but there is a 
 way of knowing. Recently I read a paragraph about two ( 
 oil paintings which were sold the other day. The owner 
 valued them at £10,000 each, and they sold for £2. We 
 should not all know the difference between a £10,000 
 picture and a £2 picture, and there may be something 
 about the £2 picture which pleases us. But we are wise 
 to take it for granted that the opinion of the best judges 
 is the right opinion. We must accept the verdict of the 
 experts. Only let us frankly confess that nearly all 
 of us are limited in the power of appreciation. There 
 are certain great writers probably with whom we shall 
 never be on the right terms. I have heard people say, 
 ' I cannot admire Shakespeare.' If they say it in a 
 humble way like a confession of sin, with contrition and 
 
 !
 
 222 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 tears, they are to be pitied, not to be blamed. It would 
 not be right to say such a thing in any other fashion. If 
 we cannot admire the great lords of the imagination, we 
 must be sorry for ourselves, but we may be quite sure 
 that there is at least one whom we have the power of admir- 
 ing and loving if we only gave ourselves the chance. 
 
 May I offer some brief hints about that ? What I should 
 strive for is to make friends with a great writer when he is 
 in his brightest mood — that is, we ought not to begin with 
 the inferior work of a great author, but with the most 
 attractive work. Suppose you wish to become intimate 
 with Sir Walter Scott, what books of his should you read 
 first ? I think, perhaps, The Heart of Midlothian and 
 Ivanhoe. If when you read these books you find you do 
 not care for them, it is but too probable that you are not 
 going to appreciate Scott, and the only thing to do is to 
 say good-bye, deploring your weakness and your evil 
 behaviour. 
 
 How should Charlotte Bronte be approached ? For 
 my part, I began with The Professor, and this gives us the 
 quintessence of her happier mind. But, no doubt, for the 
 great majority the book to begin with is Jane Eyre. If you 
 really dislike Jane Eyre, try Shirley, and if you like neither 
 there is no help for it. 
 
 What is the best book of Dickens to begin with ? Well, 
 certainly, not any book oi the later period. In some 
 respects the books of Dickens's later years are quite equal 
 to and even greater than his earlier books, but they want 
 something of the life and spirit and courage and humour 
 abounding in his first novels. It is best, I think, to 
 begin with the book which is the middle book of Dickens, 
 making the end of one period and the beginning of another,
 
 LEARNING TO READ 223 
 
 the frontier book which he himself avowed to be his 
 favourite among all his books — David Coppcrjield. You 
 will find that most readers of Dickens agree with the author 
 in this choice. Right or wrong, there is no doubt from any 
 point of view ■ that David Coppcrjield contains much of 
 Dickens's best work. In fact, if David Coppcrjield is not 
 relished, I am afraid that no book of Dickens will be 
 relished. 
 
 For Thackeray Vanity Fair is surely the book of initia- 
 tion, that ' most brilliant, most heartless, most hateful of 
 modern fictions,' as it has been called. There are few, I 
 hope, who would really endorse this judgment. All the 
 strength of Thackeray and much of his tenderness is to be 
 found in Vanity Fair, and no book of his is so well organised, 
 so complete, so consummate. The claims of Esmond may 
 be urged, and I am the last to question them, but Esmond 
 is not the book to begin with. 
 
 George Eliot, in spite of the passing fashion of deprecia- 
 tion, is still among the very first of our novelists, and to 
 me her best books are Scenes of Clerical Life and Silas 
 Marner. But, after various experiments, I am persuaded 
 that "the most generally appreciated of all her novels is 
 Adam Bede, and a very noble, fine, and true book it is. 
 
 To those who can appreciate him, there is much happi- 
 ness in the company of Anthony Trollope. It is delight- 
 ful and consoling to remember now and then that there are 
 so many books by Trollope. Some are much inferior to 
 the rest, but every one can be read without difficulty. He 
 would keep most people in good reading for a lifetime. I 
 would have the reader begin with Framley Parsonage, 
 because it is one of the author's very best, and also because 
 it is complete and independent in itself.
 
 224 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 These are a few names, and if you go through the list of 
 books I have prescribed you wili find yourself in love 
 with at least one of its authors. That is, you will want to 
 read another of his works, and then another, till all are 
 finished. Every one is ennobled by an intimate knowledge 
 of the mind of a really great author, and to fall in love with 
 a great author, and to remain in love with him, is one of 
 life's chief blessings. 
 
 ■ -;.-.-" 
 
 
 IV 
 
 You ought to have three kinds of books. There is a 
 verse in one of the Psalms : ' Lover and friend hast thou 
 put far from me, and mine acquaintance into the dark- 
 ness.' Lover, friend, acquaintance. Your individuality 
 is the centre, round it and near it is the little circle of love — 
 those who are your nearest and dearest. Round that is a 
 larger concentric circle of friends, and then round that is 
 a very large circle of acquaintances. All the people you 
 know are lovers, friends, and acquaintances. I say the 
 same thing about books. Certain books you love, and they 
 are the special books, the books you want to read every 
 year, the books you would not be without, the books which 
 you bind in morocco, the books you would keep at all costs. 
 Find the books that you love, and then find your friends 
 among books. By friends I mean excellent books, though 
 not the books that appeal most immediately and sharply. 
 I love Boswell's Life of Johnson ; Lockhart's Life of Scott 
 is my friend. That is not to disparage Lockhart's Life of 
 i Scott. It is simply to say that the one book has certain 
 greater qualities than the other — it is the difference be- 
 tween lover and friend. 
 
 Among the lovers you should have at least one poet. I 
 
 
 DNWMi
 
 LEARNING TO READ 225 
 
 am told that poetry is coming to something very good in 
 these days, and I am glad to hear it. But it is a comfort 
 that much good poetry has been written already, quite 
 enough to go on with. Find the poet that you love. 
 You can only hope to love a few, but you may have many 
 mends. 
 
 Your mental life will be determined by your lovers and 
 your friends ; but, if you have lovers and friends, there is 
 no reason why you should not have a great number of 
 acquaintances. A public man said recently that he had 
 4000 acquaintances, and one may certainly know 4000 
 book's. In the world of books it is essential to have 
 acquaintances, if it were only for this — that the acquaint- 
 anceships help us to appreciate our lovers and our friends. 
 Life, however, is a very poor thing for those who have no 
 lovers and no friends, but only acquaintances. And so the 
 mind is a desert mind that has only acquaintances among 
 books. But when the higher society is made sure it will 
 be very easy and very pleasant to enlarge the circle of our 
 acquaintances even to the end.
 
 XXVI 
 
 THE PLEASURES AND ADVANTAGES OF 
 REREADING 
 
 There are many who love to read ; there are compara- 
 tively few who love to reread. This is one of the reasons 
 why old books are in jeopardy as they stand upon the 
 library shelves. They are viewed with murderous eyes, 
 and unless they can get themselves reprinted in new and 
 attractive guise they are likely to be summarily dis- 
 posed of. But there is a great deal to say for rereading, 
 and much pleasure and advantage to be gained in the 
 process. 
 
 The rereader is very often a person who has a passion 
 for books, and who is greatly restricted in his choice of 
 books. This may seem an unfortunate condition, but it 
 is not. Happy is the child born amid a small collection of 
 really valuable volumes. He is likely to learn without 
 teaching the pleasures of reading and the pleasures of re- 
 reading. 
 
 There are not a few who begin early to devour books, and 
 who learn to prefer reading to all other occupations. Of 
 these was James Payn. He tells us that he was an omni- 
 vorous reader as a boy, with a marked distaste for study 
 and sport. His father kept the Berkshire harriers, and the 
 
 226
 
 ADVANTAGES OF REREADING 227 
 
 boy had to go hunting twice a week. This he abhorred, 
 though he had a nice little bay pony and could ride well 
 enough. The proceedings were too protracted for his 
 taste, and he wanted to be at home to finish the Mysteries 
 of Udolpho by the fire. He disliked fox-hunting even 
 more than hare-hunting, but all his family had sporting 
 proclivities, and he had to go through with it. Sometimes 
 the waiting about and having nothing to read grew 
 absolutely intolerable. There was then nothing for it but 
 to dismount, put clover or something in his hair, smear 
 his shoulder with mould, and ride home, ' having met with 
 rather a nasty tumble.' It would have been better and 
 cheaper to have let him enjoy Captain Cook's Voyages and 
 the Arabian Nights all day without the temptation of 
 practising duplicity. When Payn went afterwards to 
 Woolwich Military Academy, his bitter complaint was that 
 there was no time for reading and writing. There are those 
 to whom the having nothing to read is an intense grievance. 
 They instinctively look round for a book wherever they go, 
 and they are often bitterly disappointed. It is a pre- 
 dicament indeed to be landed on a visit where the house 
 is destitute of books, and where no library is near. I have 
 heard of a reader so insatiable that he tried to get squints 
 into odd volumes even during the penitential process of 
 morning calls. This is a length to which few would go, 
 but I am with the same writer when he says that he would 
 rather read a list of hotels or a week-old advertisement 
 sheet than do without reading at all. 
 
 Supposing that the craving is developed early, and that 
 there are few books to gratify it. The natural result is 
 that these books are read very frequently. Boys will not 
 read theology and philosophy and history except under
 
 228 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 extreme pressure, and it is only a few among them who 
 really care for poetry. It is light reading, or rather fiction, 
 which the boy considers really and genuinely fitted for the 
 intelligent mind. Well, if the fiction is sound, it is not a 
 hard fate to go over the Waverley Novels again and again, 
 not hard to read Bulwer Lytton, from Pelham and Eugene 
 Aram right on to Kenelm Chillingly, still less hard to read 
 all that can be reached of Charles Dickens. 
 
 ii 
 
 It is where the taste for reading is not strong, and the 
 opportunities for gratifying such taste as exists are 
 abundant, that those desirous of keeping up with the times 
 and joining intelligently in conversation never acquire the 
 practice of rereading. Though they might not confess it, 
 they are quite aware of their own deficiencies, and know 
 that the most that they can accomplish is to read such of 
 the new books as are most generally talked of. Be it far 
 from me to condemn the excellent habit of reading new 
 books. The saying, ' When a new book comes out I read 
 an old one,' is sufficiently foolish. A certain rigidity, a 
 certain blindness and hardness of mind are apt to settle 
 on those who in no way keep up with the times. Their 
 minds are fossilised ; they fall out of a living language. 
 They lose touch with the progress of thought ; they miss 
 the meaning of events. There is no reason why any one 
 should become a mere antiquarian or a pure pedant, but 
 there are many reasons why the practice of rereading 
 should be kept up.
 
 ADVANTAGES OF REREADING 229 
 
 in 
 
 The first advantage of rereading is that it gives one the 
 true possession of a book. Most memories are exceedingly 
 treacherous. Even when the memory is strong in certain 
 directions, it is apt to be weak in others. A powerful 
 verbal memory — the memory by which a man recollects 
 a list of names or learns to repeat a string of verses — is 
 not usually associated with the most serviceable memory 
 of all : the memory which makes a man aware of his own 
 knowledge, or at least the sources from which he can at 
 any time draw inspiration. Professor Flinders Petrie once 
 contended that ' we are drunken with writing.' The 
 fetters" of writing, he said, hold us back from the living 
 touch with nature. Distrust in writing has plainly 
 deadened the memory of the senses ; the flagging thought 
 has by the bonds of writing lost all life and become a mere 
 carcase, senseless and corrupt. When art was most 
 vigorous and original, when neither artists nor patrons 
 could read, and the ornaments and luxuries of life were 
 then more completely finished, the finest skill, the finest 
 taste, the keenest insight, were reached without the use of 
 recorded words. To this it was replied at the time that 
 country actors, who changed their parts so often, and bank 
 clerks in London had as good memories as any Egyptian 
 or Brahmin. This may be so, but I fancy that the habit of 
 recording by letters diminishes the strength of the human 
 memory. 
 
 And this is why I am not so sure as to the advantages of 
 copious note-taking. There is much to be said for the 
 practice. It seems as if it ought to impress what one has 
 read upon the mind, and it seems also to provide for us a
 
 230 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 store of gathered thoughts to which we can recur. But is 
 it so sure that the copying out of a passage does fix it in the 
 memory, and is it so certain that the passages we select on 
 a particular occasion will continue to interest us ? And 
 may it not be that the notebooks supersede the living 
 mind ? A man may find himself tongue-tied in conversa- 
 tion for want of a certain fact, being keenly conscious all 
 the while that this fact is recorded and indexed in one of his 
 notebooks at home. However this may be, we want to 
 get as much of the best we read firmly lodged in our minds, 
 and there is nothing that will help us so much as the practice 
 of rereading. Though our powers of memory be very 
 limited, a patient and loving and repeated perusal of a 
 great book will at least win for us something well worth 
 its price. 
 
 There is still another advantage. Many of the best books 
 will not yield their secret at a first reading. They demand 
 to be very slowly and carefully and frequently perused. 
 At a dinner-party the other evening we had a discussion 
 about difficult books. I ventured to say that Darwin's 
 Origin of Species is one of the most difficult books in the 
 English language. Nobody was more qualified than 
 Huxley to understand it, and Huxley expounded it to the 
 English public. But so late as 1888 Huxley writes : ' I 
 have been reading the Origin slowly again for the nth 
 time with the view of picking out the essentials of the argu- 
 ment for the obituary notice. Nothing entertains me more 
 than to hear people call it easy reading.' Another very 
 difficult writer is Bishop Butler. The reason is, that every 
 sentence is a link in an argument, closely welded as with 
 links of iron. If you miss or misunderstand one sentence, 
 you speedily lose the meaning. Browning is undeniably
 
 
 ADVANTAGES OF REREADING 231 
 
 difficult in many parts, and chiefly perhaps in his earliest 
 and latest books. Whether his obscurity is to be counted 
 sin to him or not, I do not need to discuss ; but I question 
 whether some of his later work has as yet found a true in- 
 terpreter — especially Fifine at the Fair, with its accom- 
 paniments. But the mastering of a great writer enriches, 
 fructifies, and expands the mind more than any other 
 discipline. 
 
 IV 
 
 The pleasures of rereading once tested cannot willingly 
 be relinquished. A very good essayist compares reread- 
 ing to a journey through a beautiful and well-known piece 
 of scenery. When we read a book for the first time we 
 are like explorers seeking the charm and excitement of 
 discovery, rushing on with a kind of passion, desiring to 
 mount the hill in front and to see the new landscape spread 
 out at our feet. A hardened explorer is always seeking 
 for fresh woods and pastures new, but to reread is to choose 
 ways known and loved before, and enjoy their beauty 
 afresh. A man goes to the same place autumn by autumn. 
 He takes the same walks, the same drives. In a manner 
 he has seen everything, and he is very glad to see it again. 
 The memory is refreshed by the vision he loves, and the 
 heart is refreshed with it. It is so with rereading. We 
 know the book, but we discover that we do not know it, and 
 that it has fresh felicities and delights disclosing themselves 
 at each perusal. Besides, though the book does not change 
 while it awaits us on the shelf, we keep changing. We bring 
 more experience, more knowledge, more power of apprecia- 
 tion. (I am talking, of course, about the great books.) 
 Suppose a man visits the Alps for the first time, and is
 
 232 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 ignorant of botany. He goes back another time, and 
 during the interval he has learned to botanise. That will 
 make a great difference. To compare Dr. Hort's letters 
 on his Alpine journeys with those of the ordinary traveller 
 is instructive. So it is with books. The pages are held to 
 the fire of experience, and the living letters disclose them- 
 selves. When we know, not merely by reading or by 
 imagining, what a great phase of life may mean either in 
 joy or in sorrow, we discover new messages and new mean- 
 ings in familiar pages. Even a small experience adds to the 
 significance of our reading. The other morning I had read 
 some melancholy news about a coal strike. I happened 
 immediately after to take up Sydney Smith's Rules for a 
 Happy Life, and came on this, ' Keep up blazing fires.' 
 Turning over several books through the day, I came upon 
 references to fires and coals. These would never have been 
 noticed save for the circumstances o:' the day. Once I 
 remember getting some teeth extracted, and after it every 
 book I read seemed to have references to teeth, white teeth, 
 gleaming teeth, strong teeth, bad teeth. 
 
 I admit that there are books which we do not reread 
 with pleasure because we know them too well. They 
 cannot be many, but there are some. I know Pickwick 
 so well that at the end of a page, without turning, I could 
 almost continue the narrative. When that is so it is well 
 to give the book a rest. But, as has been well said, to 
 remember a story is merely to remember the way — to 
 know the walk. You can tell the main turns of the road 
 and of the story, but the intervals between the turns are 
 very pleasant, and all the more pleasant because they are 
 more or less familiar.
 
 ADVANTAGES OF REREADING 233 
 
 How do authors feel when they reread their old books ? 
 How do politicians feel when they read their old speeches ? 
 Wordsworth is said to have possessed about two hundred 
 books, and it is well known that towards the end of life 
 he read nothing but his own poetry. He thought he did 
 this because he wanted to improve it in so far as it could 
 be improved. But who can doubt that he was really happy 
 in his own company ? There is a curious passage in 
 Boswell which bears upon this. Boswell and Johnson 
 started on June 2, 1781, to pay a visit to Southill, in 
 Bedfordshire, at the hospitable mansion of Squire Dilly. 
 Boswell says : ' He talked little to us in the carriage, 
 being chiefly occupied in reading Dr. Watson's second 
 volume of Chemical Essays, which he liked very well, and 
 his own Prince of Abyssinia, on which he seemed to be 
 intensely fixed ; having told us that he had not looked 
 at it since it was first published. I happened to take it 
 out of my pocket this day, and he seized upon it with 
 avidity. He pointed out to me the following remarkable 
 passage : " By what means " (said the prince) " are the 
 Europeans thus powerful ; or why, since they can so 
 easily visit Asia and Africa for trade or conquest, cannot 
 the Asiaticks and Africans invade their coasts, plant 
 colonies in their ports, and give laws to their natural 
 princes ? The same wind that carries them back would 
 bring us thither." " They are more powerful, sir, than 
 we " (answered Imlac), " because they are wiser. Know- 
 ledge will always predominate over ignorance, as man 
 governs the other animals. But why their knowledge is 
 more than ours, I know not what reason can be given, but
 
 234 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 the unsearchable will of the Supreme Being." He said, 
 " This, sir, no man can explain otherwise." ' 
 
 VI 
 
 Apropos of this there is an obscure passage in Boswell on 
 the different meaning between two words commonly used 
 as equivalents. Dr. Johnson said, ' " To remember" and 
 " to recollect " are different things. A man has not the 
 power to recollect what is not in his mind ; but when a 
 thing is in his mind he may remember it.' Dr. Hill says, 
 ' The first of the definitions given by Johnson of " to 
 remember " is " to bear in mind anything ; not to forget." 
 " To recollect " he defines " to recover to memory." ' Dr. 
 Hill also quotes from Horace Walpole, who distinguishes 
 between the two words, on his revisiting his old school, 
 Eton : ' By the way, the clock strikes the old cracked 
 sound — I recollect so much, and remember so little.' In 
 my dictionary ' to remember ' is defined ' to recollect,' and 
 ' to recollect ' is defined as ' to remember.' But is there not 
 a distinction? I remember Pickwick. All is present to 
 me as I read. But I recollect Esmond. That is, when I 
 pass from one page to another, I can seldom tell exactly 
 what is coming, but when I read the second page I recollect 
 that I have read it before.
 
 XXVII 
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 With the tidings of Mr. Swinburne's death came the 
 remembrance of a little poem he published in 1893, which 
 expresses better perhaps than any other the spirit of his 
 later years : 
 
 HAWTHORN DYKE, WIMBLEDON PARK 
 
 ' All the golden air is full of balm and bloom 
 
 Where the hawthorn line the shelving dyke with flowers. 
 Joyous children born of April's happiest hours, 
 
 High and low they laugh and lighten, knowing their doom 
 
 Bright as brief — to bless and cheer they know not whom, 
 
 Heed not how, but washed and warmed with suns and showers 
 Smile, and bid the sweet soft gradual banks and bowers 
 
 Thrill with love of sunlight fire or starry gloom. 
 
 All our moors and lawns all round rejoice ; but here 
 
 All the rapturous resurrection of the year 
 
 Finds the radiant utterance perfect, sees the word 
 
 Spoken, hears the light that speaks it. Far and near, 
 All the world is heaven : and man and flower and bird 
 Here are one at heart with all things seen and heard.' 
 
 In ' the rapturous resurrection of the year ' the great poet 
 has passed away in dignity and in peace. He has com- 
 pleted the round of his years in happiness and in universal 
 honour. He has surmounted all the perils that threatened 
 him, and he never grew to be ' an old man with an old 
 soul.' He was never an old man in any true sense of the 
 
 235
 
 236 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 words. To the last he gave the impression of youthful 
 vitality and enjoyment — of one young with the youth of 
 nature, if not with the youth of young years. He grew 
 lonelier as the years went by, and life behind him was a 
 street of tombs, but the noble and sustaining friendship 
 of his later life did not fail him ; there remain those to 
 whom he was very dear, those to whom he could open up 
 his inmost soul. His intellectual power was as great and 
 his genius as unique as at any time before. No rival rose 
 to dispute his laurels, and for years his ascendancy has 
 been unquestioned. 
 
 Mr. Swinburne's nature broadened and mellowed with 
 the years. There was something childlike about him to 
 the very end. He had a child's joy in simple pleasures. 
 No one could be more courteous and gay than he in the 
 ordinary intercourse of life. He showed his treasures with 
 a child's delight and winsomeness. One of the most 
 sympathetic of his early critics — was it John Morley ? — 
 complained that there was no sign in Mr. Swinburne's 
 writing of that great quality without which genius is worth 
 so little to the world. It was suggested that the salt of 
 genius was the enlarged and humane sympathy with all 
 happiness whether of man, or beast, or bird, or creeping 
 thing, the lofty fervent pity for all the pain of body and 
 pain of soul endured amongst sentient creatures, and above 
 all the strong enthusiasm for all that has been done to add 
 to the stock of happiness, and to take away somewhat 
 from the stock of anguish in the world. This spirit of 
 beneficence, this genial breath of life characterised Victor 
 Hugo, who to Swinburne was from the first the pre-eminent 
 poet of his time. ' The greatest of men are neither mere 
 subtle-minded vivacious elves and sprites, frisking about
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 237 
 
 in the heated places of passion simply for the joy of frisking, 
 nor mere giants, surveying all life indifferently as Epicurean 
 Gods. It would be premature to say that Mr. Swinburne's 
 capacity does not extend thus far, but there is some reason 
 for suspecting that here, in point of beneficence and large 
 human sympathies, there is a weak side.' The criticism 
 may have been justified at the time, but the large and 
 splendid body of work which makes up Mr. Swinburne's 
 achievement contains abundant and unmistakable proof 
 that he was increasingly a man of generous sympathies and 
 tender heart. 
 
 While his reputation rests and will continue to rest on the 
 earlier half of his work, it can never be forgotten that he 
 toiled on to the end an ardent student and worker, giving 
 to the world of his very best. While it may be admitted 
 that both in poetry and in prose he suffered from d if fuse - 
 ness, and that the palate sometimes became cloyed and the 
 ear wearied by his magnificent repetitions, it is also true 
 that no book he ever issued is entirely unworthy of him, and 
 that many amongst his later works show such power and 
 splendour and maturity that they cannot be forgotten. 
 There are few English writers of the first rank who have 
 so completely fulfilled their task, who have left behind 
 them a more adequate monument. It was a great part 
 of Mr. Swinburne's happiness that to the end of life his 
 intellect and imagination were characterised by a splendid 
 vigour. 
 
 Of Mr. Swinburne's early years we have glimpses in 
 various memoirs of the time, notably those of William 
 Bell Scott and John Nichol. Scott's autobiography had
 
 238 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 the most careful and considerate of editors in the late 
 Professor Minto, and in the exercise of his discretion he 
 left out several passages. But what remained jarred on 
 Swinburne, who wrote one of his fiercest and fieriest articles 
 in criticism of the book and its author. It will be remem- 
 bered that Swinburne, more than once, gave expression 
 to his admiration and affection for the old poet-painter in 
 his lifetime. But whatever the rights or wrongs of this 
 quarrel may be, Scott's recollections of Swinburne are very 
 interesting. They go back more than fifty years. Scott 
 was painting at Wallington, in Northumberland, and 
 Swinburne was spending his school recess at Capheaton, 
 his grandfather's house, which was not far away. Scott 
 says : ' Very soon I began to recognise a little fellow who 
 used to pass my post-chaise on the road descending from 
 Cambo to Wallington. He was always riding a little long- 
 tailed pony at a good pace towards the village. He had 
 the appearance of a boy, but for a certain mature expres- 
 sion on his handsome high-bred face, which had bright, 
 coarse yellow hair flowing on his shoulders, and flashing out 
 round his head.' Young Swinburne could acquire without 
 trouble, and had a memory enabling him to recite long 
 poems after once reading. He gained at Eton a prize for 
 French. ' A few days after my first meeting him he 
 appeared with the prize-book, entering the saloon where we 
 were all at work hopping on one foot, his favourite ex- 
 pression of extreme delight. It was a large edition of 
 Notre Dame de Paris gorgeously bound, with illustrations 
 by Tony Johannot ; but the exuberance of his delight 
 was so comical that even Lady Trevelyan could not resist 
 a smile, and Miss Capel-Lofft, a very nervous person, 
 begged him to sit down quietly and show her the prints.
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 239 
 
 For my part, not yet recognising in this unique youth the 
 greatest rhythmical genius of English poetry, I looked on 
 with wonder as at a spoilt child. The whole forenoon that 
 book was never out of his sight. If it lay on the table his 
 eyes were always wandering to it. The fascination of 
 first love was nothing to this fascination ; and when we all 
 adjourned for an interval to the garden, there it was tightly 
 held under his arm, while he ran on before backwards and 
 ran back to us again, and the sharpest of eyes were fixed 
 on him with their amused but maternal expression.' But 
 Scott testifies that Swinburne even then was altogether 
 free from egotism. He loved and admired the excellent 
 qualities of his friends. ' He had the great power of lov- 
 ing his friends and bearing with them. His enthusiasm 
 was measureless.' Later on Scott dedicated a volume of 
 poems to Rossetti, Morris, Swinburne, referring to the last 
 
 as 
 
 ' the youngest, with the rainbow wrought 
 
 About his head, a symbol and a dower.' 
 
 The moment Swinburne had read the lines he took a cab 
 and drove to Scott's house. ' " Tell me now, mon cher, tell 
 me exactly what you alluded to as the rainbow wrought 
 about my head ? " " Well," I said, " you know you are 
 hailing in the new time hopefully ; you are assisting the 
 advent of the brighter day ; you are writing Songs Before 
 Sunrise.'''' " Ah ! is that all ? I was in hopes you meant 
 the glory of my hair, that used to be so splendid, you 
 know ! " ' 
 
 Of his time at Oxford we have glimpses in the 
 biographies of Professor John Nichol, of Glasgow, and 
 Benjamin Jowett. At Oxford Nichol founded an essay 
 reading society called, owing to an accidental joke about
 
 240 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 the ill-health of some of its members, the ' Old Mortality.' 
 Among the members were Swinburne, A. V. Dicey, and 
 T. H. Green. The young men met once a week during 
 term, read essays, and discussed many subjects. Swin- 
 burne, it is recorded, expressed his decided preference 
 among satirists for Dryden. Swinburne studied logic 
 under Nichol, and wrote : ' No one, I suppose, could be 
 long in the more intimate society of Mr. Nichol without 
 appreciating his steady grasp and comprehension of all 
 matters connected with Mental Science, and his very rare 
 power of imparting knowledge simply, clearly, and 
 thoroughly.' Nichol was a somewhat uncomfortable man, 
 dissatisfied with the measure of success he achieved in life, 
 and abnormally sensitive. But the friendship between him 
 and Swinburne was unaffected by differences of opinion, 
 and remained firm to the end. Under date March 29, 1881, 
 Swinburne wrote to Nichol acknowledging a volume of 
 his poems and praising it. The letter closes with the 
 significant sentence : ' I am delighted to see announced a 
 volume of Critical Essays, and proud to see my name 
 among the subjects ; a name like enough, it seems, to be 
 submerged for the present, under a hail of Russo -Radical 
 indignation and spectatorial contempt.' When Nichol 
 died Swinburne said : ' I never met or can meet a more 
 loyal and constant and altogether manlier man. He was 
 the trustiest of friends as we know, and I am certain that 
 none but the meanest of mankind would deny that he was 
 the fairest of fighters and the most gallant of antagonists.' 
 The special importance of Nichol's connection with Swin- 
 burne is that the first things published by the poet were in 
 a serial, Undergraduate Papers, edited in 1858 by Nichol. 
 Only three numbers appeared, but the contributors were
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 241 
 
 paid. The numbers are now exceedingly rare. Mr. 
 Swinburne contributed according to his own account 
 ' four " crudities," certainly no more : a paper on Marlow 
 and Webster ; some awful doggerel on the subject of 
 Tristram and Iseult ; a boyish bit of Burlesque ; and a 
 terrific onslaught on the French Empire and its Clerical 
 supporters — which must, no doubt, have contributed in 
 no inconsiderable degree to bring about its ultimate 
 collapse. . . . The article on the Dramatists, as far as I 
 remember, was the only thing of any sort of value (except 
 as showing a youngster's honest impulses, and sympathies, 
 and antipathies) — and that I think must have shown 
 that before leaving Eton I had plunged as deep as a boy 
 could dive into the line of literature which has always been 
 my favourite. But when I think of the marvellous work 
 that Rossetti (whose acquaintance I made just afterwards) 
 had done at the same age, I am abashed at the recollection 
 of my own rubbish.' 
 
 Swinburne left the University without a degree, but he 
 took with him the warm friendship of Benjamin Jowett, 
 and he acquired what was better still, the scholarly habit. 
 We have had no such scholar among our poets since 
 Milton, though a few may have been even more widely 
 read. In Mr. Swinburne's critical essays the reader is 
 often astonished at the apparent recklessness of the 
 language, but it is only in the rarest cases that he is able 
 to point out any slip in matters of fact. Once or twice 
 Mr. Swinburne slipped even in his favourite subject. 
 Thus in his Study of Shakespeare he errs in saying that 
 Victor Hugo was the first of Shakespearean students to 
 discover and to prove that the great triad of his Roman 
 plays is not a consecutive work of the same epoch. Mr.
 
 242 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 C. Bathurst had anticipated Hugo by several years. Also 
 Swinburne acknowledged an error in his discussion on the 
 date and authorship of ' King Henry vm.,' but it was a 
 comparatively small error. Swinburne knew Greek as 
 Browning did not know it. He was a student rather than 
 a reader of what was great in literature. At the same 
 time he read omnivorously in ephemeral books and articles 
 all the time, and his memory was stored with passages 
 from authors scarcely remembered by any one else. 
 
 ii 
 
 Mr. Swinburne's book, The Queen Mother and Rosamond, 
 was published in 1860, and attracted little attention. 
 In 1864 he reprinted from Once a Week a little prose story 
 of fifteen pages entitled, ' Dead Love.' But ' his dawn 
 came up like thunder ' with the publication of Atalanta in 
 Calydon in 1865, succeeded by Chastelard in the same year. 
 It is not easy to describe the sensation caused by Atalanta 
 among the youngest spirits of the time. It was not in 
 the ordinary sense of the word a popular book. The first 
 edition in quarto ran to a hundred copies. A second edition 
 appeared in the same year, and the third edition was not 
 published till 1875. In 1878 there was a German transla- 
 tion. But as the obituary notices have shown, the younger 
 generation were carried aAvay by the music and the passion 
 of the story. Cautious reviewers had their say about the 
 modernity of the book, about the want of a master idea and 
 a dominant unity of thought. They said justly enough 
 that Swinburne's mind was cast in a mould most unlike the 
 Greek, and that in the fine choral song upon the dealings 
 of the gods with men, the pious and the impious parts alike
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 243 
 
 were such as it was impossible for a Greek to write. But 
 they were moved almost in spite of themselves by the 
 originality and splendour of the whole, and the more 
 discerning perceived that the new poet was greatest in his 
 lyrics. Whatever Swinburne received from others he 
 made his own. Once and again the influence of Shelley 
 is suggested, as in the exclamation of Althaea : 
 
 ' Night, a black hound, follows the white fawn Day.' 
 
 This may have been a reminiscence of Shelley's lines : 
 
 'Once the hungry hours were hounds, 
 Which chased the day like a bleeding deer.' 
 
 Most readers will agree with the judgment of Mr. James 
 Douglas in the Athenaeum. Mr. Douglas says that Atalanta 
 in Calydon remains Swinburne's masterpiece. ' In it his 
 unique genius culminated. Nothing he has written, and 
 nothing any other poet has written, surpasses the lyrical 
 splendour of its choruses, which are worthy to stand beside 
 the choruses of Sophocles. They possess the universal 
 quality of the greatest poetry. They are flawless master- 
 pieces which rival the Greek poet's noblest reflections on 
 the destiny of man. Their artistic symmetry sufficed to 
 establish the young poet's reputation as a master of the 
 pure lyric. It is remarkable that he never surpassed, 
 though he often equalled, the technique which he attained 
 in his youth.' Beside such an achievement the pallid 
 classicism of Merope seemed more tame than ever. 
 
 Chastelard made much less stir, but it has very great 
 qualities, and if it be true that the greater part of it was 
 written when the author was still an undergraduate, it is a 
 wonderful feat. To begin with it is based on a most 
 thorough study of Queen Mary and her period, and it
 
 244 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 announces a view of Mary's character to which Mr. Swin- 
 burne adhered after weighing with the most scrupulous 
 care practically all that has been said on the subject. 
 Those who wish to understand his position will find it 
 stated most fully in his Miscellanies of 1886. There he 
 deals with Mr. Hosack's defence of Mary. I venture to 
 think that in his article in the E?icyclopcedia Britannica 
 Mr. Swinburne lays too little stress on positive testimony, 
 and too much on the probabilities which arise from his 
 conception of her character. In Chastelard, a book full of 
 thought and knowledge as well as of feeling, the character 
 of Mary is unravelled with a master hand. Her bright 
 and cruel nature, her ruthlessness, her remorse, her swift 
 transformations, her passing pities, her keen and de- 
 structive nature, are exhibited with a power that never 
 flags. The book is not known as it should be, and I quote 
 Chastelard's reply to the Queen's question whether ' Love 
 shall live after life in any man.' 
 
 ' Most sweet Queen, 
 They say men dying remember, with sharp joy 
 And rapid reluctation of desire, 
 
 Some old thing, some swift breath of wind, some word, 
 Some sword-stroke or dead lute-strain, some lost sight, 
 Some sea-blossom stripped to the sun and burned 
 At naked ebb — some river-flower that breathes 
 Against the stream like a swooned swimmer's mouth — 
 Some tear or laugh ere lip and eye were man's — 
 Sweet stings that struck the blood in riding — nay, 
 Some garment or sky-colour or spice-smell, 
 And die with heart and face shut fast on it 
 And know not why, and weep not ; it may be 
 Men shall hold love fast always in such wise 
 In new fair lives where all are new things else, 
 And know not why, and weep not.'
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 245 
 
 So far Mr. Swinburne had attracted only the intellectual 
 public. But the time was at hand when he was to shake 
 the nation. Already it was evident to careful readers that 
 he meditated a bolder departure. He had written in a 
 preface to a volume of selections from Byron that neither 
 Byron nor Shelley was content to play with the skirts or 
 battle with the shallows of nature. ' Their passion is 
 perfect, a fierce and blind desire which exalts and impels 
 their verse into the high places of emotion and expression. 
 They feed upon nature with a holy hunger, following her 
 with a divine lust as of gods chasing the daughters of men. 
 Wind and fire, the cadences of thunder and the clamours 
 of the sea, give them no less of sensual pleasure than of 
 spiritual sustenance.' Many who were friendly were not 
 without misgivings. They were ready to admit that there 
 was such a thing as a blithe and pure and liberal enjoyment 
 of the infinitely varied play of human emotion. They 
 acknowledged that a moderating rule and discipline over 
 passion and the main joys of sense was better than their 
 violent extirpation as things pestilent and to be ashamed 
 of. They were willing to admit that on this side human 
 nature had been starved and shrivelled, and that accidental 
 extravagances of the liberalisers should not be too sternly 
 condemned. But they were put to a hard test when in 
 1866 Mr. Swinburne published his Poems and Ballads. 
 
 Several of these had appeared in the Spectator, then just 
 come into the hands of Mr. Hutton and Mr. Townsend. 
 Among these, strange to say, was ' Faustine.' ' Laus 
 Veneris ' had been printed a few months before in a 
 pamphlet, but very few copies were issued. * In fact,' said 
 Mr. Swinburne, ' it was more an experiment to ascertain 
 the public taste — and forbearance ! — than anything else.
 
 246 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Moxon I well remember was terribly nervous in those 
 days, and it was only the wishes of mutual good friends 
 coupled with his own liking for the Ballads that finally 
 induced him to publish the book.' Very soon the storm 
 broke, and Moxon, who some twenty years before had 
 been heavily fined for publishing Shelley's ' Queen Mab,' 
 resigned his commission as Mr. Swinburne's publisher. 
 The sheets passed into the hands of Mr. John Camden 
 Hotten. Mr. Swinburne was attacked fiercely, and re- 
 sponded still more fiercely in a pamphlet entitled Notes 
 on Poems and Reviews. Mr. Hotten was a clever man, 
 who made some money by pirating popular American 
 books. Mr. Swinburne wrote about him : ' The moral 
 character of the worthy Mr. Hotten was — I was about 
 very inaccurately to say — ambiguous. He was a service- 
 able sort of fellow in his day, but decidedly what Dr. 
 Johnson would have called " a shady lot," and Lord 
 Chesterfield " a rum customer." When I heard that he 
 had died of a surfeit of pork chops, I observed that this 
 was a serious argument against my friend Sir Richard 
 Burton's view of cannibalism as a wholesome and natural 
 method of diet.' I believe, however, that Mr. Hotten died 
 of an American author's fury. He had given this gentle- 
 man a cheque which was dishonoured at the bank. The 
 infuriated author forced his way into the room where 
 Hotten was lying very ill, and flourished the cheque in 
 his face with the fiercest invectives. The unfortunate 
 publisher collapsed. 
 
 The controversy on Poems and Ballads is not without its 
 lessons. R. H. Hutton, to whom Swinburne was probably 
 introduced by John Nichol, then a contributor to the 
 Spectator, pronounced a judgment, the soundness of which
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 247 
 
 will now be generally admitted. He did not condemn 
 ' Faustine ' : ' We cannot help thinking that even Mr. 
 Swinburne, whose volume has been so universally and in 
 general so deservedly blamed for atrocious immorality, 
 succeeds in one of his most bitterly blamed poems, 
 " Faustine," in so completely absorbing the mind in the 
 imaginative conception of a thoroughly hateful figure, a 
 Roman Messalina, that no mind capable of entering into the 
 horror of the picture would be sullied for a moment by 
 the delineation.' But he repelled Mr. Swinburne's apology 
 for ' Anactoria.' Swinburne said that it was an attempt 
 to reproduce freely, as he failed to translate with any 
 satisfaction to himself, the thought and verse of Sappho. 
 Hutton admitted that it was important historically and 
 artistically that the true rottenness at the core of the 
 brilliant Athenian society should be understood ; but he 
 affirmed that Swinburne beautified, or tried to beautify, 
 with his own imagination forms of moral deformity which 
 deserve only to be regarded with loathing. And he 
 applied the same criticism to other poems in the volume. 
 Mr. Watts-Dunton, reviewing the subject long after, 
 pointed out that in Poems and Ballads Mr. Swinburne's 
 imaginings were set towards theology and ethics. Sappho 
 forgets Anactoria and begins to challenge the ways of God. 
 ' Dolores ' is but a wail from the bed of vice, a jeremiad 
 on the misery of pleasure. It would have been admitted, 
 I believe, by Swinburne himself that in Poems and Ballads 
 he betook himself into tropical swamps of passion where 
 no free breath could be. He is said to have spoken of his 
 excesses as peches de jeunesse. But his love of forbidden 
 things was intellectual rather than emotional. He lingered 
 for a time dangerously in the poisonous air, but no one
 
 248 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 abhorred obscenity more than he did. When Zola's 
 V Assommoir was published in 1876 in the magazine La 
 RSpublique des Lettres, Swinburne announced that he had 
 ceased to be a contributor, and that to act otherwise would 
 be a gross and hideous outrage on the simplest and deepest 
 instincts of human nature. Repelling the idea that in his 
 protest he was obliquely puffing himself, he wrote char- 
 acteristically : ' I can desire no heavier punishment for 
 any one whose mind could give entrance to such a shameful 
 and insulting thought than that he should act on it, and 
 read L' Assommoir from the first page to the last ; a thing 
 which I confess I most certainly have not done, and most 
 assuredly could not do. If he does not find this perusal a 
 most heavy and most loathsome form of judicial retribu- 
 tion, a chastisement comparable to none in Dante's hell but 
 that inflicted on the damned whose scalps were so densely 
 overlaid with something I cannot here mention (as M. Zola 
 would) by name — to borrow a bold phrase from Mr. 
 Browning, so " immortally immerded " — that Dante could 
 not see whether the crown was shorn or unshorn — if he 
 feels otherwise or less than this, he is not one for whose 
 possible opinion or imputation I ever could greatly care.' 
 
 His reputation reached its height when, in 1871, he 
 published Songs Before Sunrise. Several of these had 
 appeared in the Fortnightly Review, the Morning Star, and 
 elsewhere. But many were printed for the first time, and 
 they were to many young men ' an intoxication, and a 
 passion awakening half-formed desires, hidden longings 
 and impulses, and secret enthusiasms.' Liberty was to 
 Swinburne a religion. He hated tyranny as few have 
 hated it, and his horror and loathing clothed themselves 
 in words at once musical and terrible. It has been said
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 249 
 
 with truth that he was the last writer living who still felt 
 the impulse of the original ardour of the French Revolu- 
 tion, who carried on the torch which he had received from 
 Byron and Shelley and Landor and the young Wordsworth. 
 It seemed to many of his readers that he changed. He 
 became a vehement Unionist and an ardent advocate of the 
 South African War. I imagine, however, that he would 
 still have claimed to be in the van of human progress. He 
 showed interest in Mr. Hale White's suggestive little book 
 on the Alleged Apostasy of Wordsworth, and, mutatis 
 mutandis, some part of Mr. Hale White's defence of Words- 
 worth might be applied to Swinburne. 
 
 in 
 
 The limits of space compel me to leave off. There was 
 no growth in Swinburne's fame after the publication of 
 Songs Before Sunrise, but he continued to do magnificent 
 work in poetry, to develop new powers, to retain much of 
 his magic, and in particular to show his supreme power as 
 a metricist. Not one book which he wrote can be safely 
 neglected, but I may mention ' Bothwell ' as the poem 
 into which he put more labour perhaps than into any 
 other, and with very fine results ; ' Erechtheus,' which 
 alone would have placed him amongst the foremost of 
 poets ; ' Songs of the Springtide,' which expresses his 
 passion for the sea ; ' A Century of Roundels,' which is an 
 unsurpassed feat of metrical skill ; and ' A Midsummer 
 Holiday,' in which he developed the ballade with somewhat 
 doubtful success, but unquestionable dexterity and resource. 
 
 From these later books I select two examples of Swin- 
 burne's metrical feats. In Astrophel there appears the
 
 250 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 ' Palace of Pan,' written in September 1893 in a pine 
 country : 
 
 1 Ridged pillars that redden aloft and aloof, 
 
 With never a branch for a nest, 
 Sustain the sublime indivisible roof, 
 To the storm and the sun in his majesty proof, 
 
 And awful as waters at rest. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 A temple whose transepts are measured by miles, 
 
 Whose chancel has morning for priest, 
 Whose floor-work the foot of no spoiler defiles, 
 Whose musical silence no music beguiles, 
 No festivals limit its feast.' 
 
 These stanzas are written in the metre of a poem whose 
 very name provokes a smile : Monk Lewis's ' Alonzo the 
 Brave and the Fair Imogen.' Swinburne was fond of 
 undertaking a tour de force of this kind, but only a very 
 learned reader will be able to track him to his sources. 
 
 In A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems he takes these 
 words from Psalm xciv : ' Take heed ye unwise among 
 the people : O ye fools, when will ye understand ? ' and 
 he uses them as the basis of a new poetical structure : 
 
 ' " Take heed, ye unwise among the people : 
 
 O ye fools, when will ye understand ? " 
 
 From pulpit or choir beneath the steeple, 
 
 Though the words be fierce, the tones are bland. 
 
 • ••■•• 
 
 Take heed : for the time of tide is risen : 
 
 It is full not yet, though now so high 
 That spirits and hopes long pent in prison 
 Feel round them a sense of freedom nigh. 
 And a savour keen and sweet of brine and billow, 
 
 And a murmur deep and strong of deepening strength. 
 Though the watchman dream, with sloth or pride for pillow, 
 And the night be long, not endless is its length.
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 251 
 
 From the springs of dawn, from clouds that sever, 
 From the equal heavens and the eastward sea, 
 
 The witness comes that endures for ever, 
 Till men be brethren and thralls be free.' 
 
 Perhaps the most wonderful of all his achievements was 
 his success in the lines : 
 
 ' Where beyond the extreme sea-wall and between the remote 
 sea-gates, 
 Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death 
 waits.' 
 
 It cannot be denied that these feats sometimes seemed to 
 impair the sincerity of the poet, and his lyrics have not been 
 taken home to the common heart as those of simpler 
 singers have been. Nor can it be questioned that a good 
 deal of his later work is dulled in its effect by monotony 
 and verbosity. He sometimes gives the impression of 
 being no more than a master of words, but it is a thoroughly 
 false impression. His work, even when most perverse 
 and wayward, is full of thought. The author of Hertha, 
 whatever else he was, was a very subtle thinker, and only 
 those who follow with close attention the course of his 
 dramas can do justice to the deep study given to the 
 characters and the masculine grip with which they are 
 handled. 
 
 No attempt can be made here to estimate Mr. Swin- 
 burne's many prose works. It is obvious at first sight 
 that he had no judicial faculty. He saw red rags every- 
 where, and he never failed to rush at them. In his article 
 on Charles Reade he condemned in a very dignified manner 
 the use of ' sputtering, yelling, and foaming.' But he was 
 always himself ; he was an accurate and careful student ; 
 his insight when it had fair play was often piercing. His
 
 252 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 most important prose work is probably ' A Study of Shake- 
 speare,' and the severest critic cannot deny to that book 
 many pieces of bright, penetrating, and original comment. 
 Unfortunately it appeared at the time when the rhyme 
 theories of Furnivall and F. G. Fleay were the subject of 
 bitter discussion. To Fleay, Swinburne was very unjust. 
 That great but lonely and embittered scholar preceded 
 his old antagonist to the grave by a few weeks. There are 
 those who have grown weary of new books on Shakespeare ; 
 who are content to amuse themselves with Nathan Drake's 
 Shakespeare and His Times. But Swinburne understood 
 the Elizabethan dramatists as few can hope to understand 
 them. His book on Blake has not been superseded by 
 later researches. Though he has written noble panegyrics 
 on Tennyson, his admiration for that poet was by no means 
 unqualified. He detested the Idylls of the King, and in one 
 of his most unjust passages described ' the courteous and 
 loyal Gawain of the old romancers ' as ' the very vilest 
 figure in all that cycle of strumpets and scoundrels, broken 
 by, here and there, an imbecile, which Mr. Tennyson has 
 set revolving round the figure of his central wittol.' It 
 is fair to say that this passage was not published, though 
 it was printed ; but Mr. Swinburne was by no means 
 ashamed of it. For Browning he had an admiration much 
 less qualified, as is shown in the Sonnet Sequence on 
 Browning's death, and especially in his essay on George 
 Chapman. He singled out two lines from ' Sordello ' as the 
 finest in the English language : 
 
 ' As the king-bird with ages on his plumes 
 Travels to die in his ancestral glooms.' 
 
 Browning, we are told, used to say that this criticism of
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 253 
 
 Swinburne afforded him more delight than all the eulogies 
 of his work to which in his later years he became 
 accustomed. The gist of the passage may be found in 
 these sentences : 
 
 If there is any great quality more perceptible than another 
 in Mr. Browning's intellect it is his decisive and incisive 
 faculty of thought, his sureness and intensity of perception, 
 his rapid and trenchant resolution of aim. To charge him 
 with obscurity is about as accurate as to call Lynceus pur- 
 blind, or complain of the sluggish action of the telegraphic 
 wire. He is something too much the reverse of obscure ; he 
 is too brilliant and subtle for the ready reader of a ready 
 writer to follow with any certainty the track of an intelligence 
 which moves with such incessant rapidity, or even to realise 
 with what spider-like swiftness and sagacity his building spirit 
 leaps and lightens to and fro and backward and forward as 
 it lives along the animated line of its labour, springs from 
 thread to thread and darts from centre to circumference of 
 the glittering and quivering web of living thought woven from 
 the inexhaustible stores of his perception and kindled from 
 the inexhaustible fire of his imagination. He never thinks 
 but at full speed ; and the rate of his thought is to that of 
 another man's as the speed of a railway to that of a waggon, 
 or the speed of a telegraph to that of a railway. 
 
 On Swinburne's prose we may say what he himself said 
 about Chapman, that the faults ingrained in the work are 
 probably indivisible from the powers which gave that 
 work its worth. 
 
 It is pleasant to think that this great man grew spiritually 
 as the years passed. Life became to him not the life of 
 furious Titans and beneficent demigods, but the life of 
 man. His heart became wider in his growing love of nature
 
 254 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 and of little children. More and more he looked out upon 
 the world with enjoyment of all its simple good and com- 
 passion for its ill. He expanded in the serenities of friend- 
 ship and affection, and his spirit became steadily more 
 benign, elevated, and calm.
 
 XXVIII 
 
 STRANGER THAN FICTION 
 
 I received the other day two little volumes of autobio- 
 graphy in manuscript from a lunatic asylum in a Western 
 state. The writer sent a letter in which she said, ' Will 
 you please place two books written by me, which will be 
 sent you by mail, in some public institution where they will 
 be preserved ? I ask nothing for them, and I would not 
 ask such a service but I do not know who else to address. 
 I think my books might be accepted in some prison library. 
 They may in some way be thus a solace to some one who 
 needs the message they bring. Will you do as I request 
 as a kindness to another believer and follower of the 
 Christian faith.' Of the books I shall say no more than 
 this, that they bear the following dedications : ' Dedicated 
 
 to the memory of M , only friend of N W , 
 
 who perished of starvation in her home in 1900,' and 
 
 ' Dedicated to M , the dumb friend of N W , 
 
 who perished of starvation at her home in 1900.' 
 
 They set me thinking on the adage that truth is stranger 
 than fiction. Most of us in our monotonous lives feel that 
 this is not so. Little happens that is worthy of record. 
 But perhaps many of us could tell, if we chose, one episode 
 in an otherwise ordinary career which would startle those 
 who listened. Once on a time three men, of whom I was 
 one, were imprisoned by a storm in a London room. We 
 
 !55
 
 256 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 agreed each to relate the most remarkable experience he 
 had ever passed through, and the result was three tales 
 startling enough, but too intimate and bearing too closely 
 on those who are still living for publication. 
 
 Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, because for 
 one thing, in a true story we sometimes get facts without 
 explanations. The novelist is bound to clear things up, 
 and they lose their wonderfulness in the process. For one 
 thing the novelist is bound to make his characters either 
 sane or insane. In ordinary life the line cannot always be 
 drawn sharply. The sanest people sometimes do things 
 that are inexplicable to themselves. It is as if they had 
 for the moment lost their reason. Then besides, there are 
 coincidences so strange that if they were put in fiction they 
 would be dismissed as wildly improbable. A great critic 
 wrote Ions: ago that it was no defence of an incredible 
 episode in a story that it actually happened, for the 
 novelist's business was to give truth as well as fact, and to 
 make his facts appear as truth. But some stories that 
 could not be embodied in fiction are nevertheless true, and 
 I propose to relate a few which have been given on good 
 authority, either in speech or in print. 
 
 James Payn, who was one of the best of story tellers, 
 and even more interesting in conversation than in his 
 books, used to say that the most wonderful stories he ever 
 heard were from the lips of Charles Dickens. Dickens 
 would tell him, in his graphic and dramatic way, amazing 
 things about London, a city of which his knowledge was 
 indeed extensive and peculiar. In return Payn told 
 Dickens the following incident, which interested him very 
 much : ' I was returning home one summer night through 
 a fashionable street out of Piccadilly, when there came on
 
 STRANGER THAN FICTION 257 
 
 a violent thunderstorm. It was very late, not a cab was 
 to be seen, and I stepped under a portico for shelter. 
 There was a ball going on in one of the great houses in the 
 street ; the drawing-room had a huge bow window, which 
 was open, and now and again figures flitted across it, and 
 the dance music made itself heard through the storm. 
 I had been under my shelter some time before I noticed 
 that there was another person in the street also under a 
 portico. He was nearer to the house where the ball was 
 going on than I was, but I could see him quite distinctly. 
 He looked like a beggar, and was dressed in rags. Suddenly 
 he ran across the street in the pouring rain, and stood 
 beneath the open window, at which appeared some lady in 
 a ball dress ; she threw out to him her bouquet, the gilt 
 handle of which I saw glitter in the gaslight. He strove 
 to catch it, but it fell, and I heard it clang upon the pave- 
 ment. He picked it up, nodded twice to the lady at the 
 window, and then ran off at full speed. The whole thing 
 took only a few seconds, but made a picture that I shall 
 never forget. I took it for granted that the man was her 
 lover, and expressed to Dickens my astonishment at the 
 perfection of the man's disguise. " No," he said, as though 
 the facts were all before him, " he was not her lover ; he 
 was merely a messenger waiting for the bouquet to be 
 thrown to him, a signal that had been agreed upon before- 
 hand." This conclusion I believe to have been the correct 
 one ; but I had forgotten, as usual, the precise date of the 
 occurrence, and was therefore unable to discover from the 
 newspapers whether any " incident in high life " took place 
 about the same time.' James Payn's first success as a 
 writer was won by his novel, Lost Sir Massingberd, which 
 appeared in Chambers's Journal. It was a book which had 
 
 it
 
 258 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 some vitality, for many years after Punch gave a fancy 
 portrait of Payn based on it. The letterpress ran : 
 
 The Payn, qui vaut la chandelle to sit up and read him by, 
 represented as the Lost Sir Missingbird preserved by his own 
 ' High Spirits.' When he writes a novel, Payn takes a lot of 
 trouble ; and when novel-readers want some books, they take 
 a lot of Payn's. 
 
 The story turned on a man being lost and starving in 
 the hollow of a tree. The idea was due to Payn's own 
 imagination. He never knew of any such thing happen- 
 ing, but some years after the story was published it was 
 announced in the Philadelphia Ledger that after the hurri- 
 cane in the Miami Valley, which tore down a number of 
 old trees and among them a large oak, there was found in 
 the hollow of the fallen oak a human skeleton with some 
 brass buttons and shreds of clothing and a pocket-book 
 with a number of papers. The man's name was Roger 
 Vanderberg. He was a captain in the Revolutionary 
 Army, and was captured by the Indians. He managed to 
 effect his escape, but found himself hard pressed by his 
 savage foes, and took refuge in the hollow of the oak. 
 Then came a fearful discovery. He had miscalculated the 
 depth of the hollow, and there was no escape. He chose 
 rather to starve than to surrender to the torture of the 
 stake, and in the uncertain light of the snows wrote entries 
 in a diary. Here is one entry : ' November 10. — Five 
 days without food. When I sleep I dream of luscious fruits 
 and flowing streams. The stars laugh at my misery. It 
 is snowing now. I freeze while I starve. God pity me ! ' 
 The entries cover a period of eleven days. The readers of 
 Lost Sir Massingberd will remember the astonishing
 
 STRANGER THAN FICTION 259 
 
 similarity, and yet there is no doubt that Payn came first. 
 In another novel, Murphy's Master, Payn got rid of a 
 number of disagreeable characters on an island in the Indian 
 Seas, by the simple though startling device of submerging 
 the island itself. Two years afterwards an island in the 
 Bay of Bengal with the Kinshra lighthouse upon it, with 
 seven scientific assistants, was submerged in a precisely 
 similar manner. The critics who sneered at the absurdity 
 of Payn's device were answered, and yet perhaps they were 
 not answered. 
 
 A great friend of James Payn's, Robert Chambers, was 
 highly distinguished in his time for the skill with which he 
 told anecdotes. He was particularly interested in country 
 towns and in the associations of the houses, houses that 
 seemed fortresses in a realm of dulness, but in which extra- 
 ordinary events had happened. One house in the centre 
 of a Scottish provincial town was inhabited by a lady who 
 never once crossed the threshold for more than fifty years. 
 She was married when a little over twenty, and her husband 
 expired suddenly on the wedding day, just after they had 
 entered their home. The young girl refused to pass 
 through the door which she had entered as a bride, and 
 never yielded to the importunities of her friends. In the 
 course of the years she survived them all. She made no 
 new acquaintance, she received no visitors. The only 
 place where she was to be seen was in her garden. 
 Chambers saw her in her last days clad in the deepest 
 widow's weeds passing up and down the broad gravel 
 walk. She tenanted the back rooms in the house, and 
 the passenger looking through the front windows could 
 see only two tolerably sized parlours exactly alike, with 
 Turkey carpets in the centre of the floor, high-backed
 
 260 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 chairs all round, and fire-screens papered up on each side 
 of the grate. 
 
 Another house had a still more remarkable tale attached 
 to it. It was tenanted by a widow, the heroine of the 
 story. The husband of this lady was a singular character, 
 and passionately devoted to antiquarian pursuits. He 
 converted the upper part of his house into a museum, and 
 built a special room for himself, lighted and ventilated in 
 a peculiar manner. Among his other curiosities there were 
 two skeletons, which he dusted and brushed himself. The 
 dread of the skeletons was so great that not one of the 
 servants willingly approached the staircase leading to the 
 room in which they were deposited. They all united in 
 declaring that very strange sounds were heard to proceed 
 from the floor. By and by his wife died, and he came into 
 possession of an ample fortune. A great change passed 
 over his appearance. He began to be spruce in his dress, 
 gay and courteous in his manners, and accessible to 
 strangers. By and by he prevailed on a very beautiful 
 young lady, a portionless daughter of a curate, to become 
 his wife. He told her plainly beforehand that if she married 
 him she must submit to some disagreeable restrictions, as 
 he had made up his mind never to leave the town in which 
 he resided ; there would therefore be no bridal tour. The 
 lady agreed, and she was treated with a great deal of kind- 
 ness, and allowed occasionally to leave the home, though 
 her husband never accompanied her in any of her ex- 
 cursions. In about ten years after the marriage the vault 
 in which the remains of the first wife were deposited was 
 opened in consequence of some necessary repairs. It 
 appeared that the undertaker had abstracted the leaden 
 coffin in which the body had been encased, and the wooden 

 
 STRANGER THAN FICTION 261 
 
 one fell to pieces disclosing the corpse. The perfect state 
 of the body attracted attention, a face, ghastly it is true, 
 but still undecayed, appeared beneath the mouldering 
 shroud. On examination the supposed corpse proved to 
 be a wax figure, and an outcry arose that murder had been 
 committed. One of the magistrates of the place pro- 
 ceeded to the antiquarian's abode, and bluntly told him 
 the facts. After a few minutes of strong perturbation the 
 man exclaimed : ' Gentlemen, I have a living witness to 
 prove my innocence of the crime imputed to me.' He led 
 the way to the upper floor, opened several doors, and 
 brought out a person who was no other than his first wife. 
 He had contrived to keep her in close confinement during 
 this long portion of her existence. The agitation pro- 
 duced by the discovery and the dread of consequences, 
 brought on an attack which in a few hours carried off her 
 husband. The second wife quietly removed to the Con- 
 tinent with her children, while the first wife, accustomed to 
 confinement, seemed to have lost all enterprise and energy, 
 and was quite content to occupy the part of the house in 
 which she had endured so tedious an imprisonment. 
 Chambers knew her as a quiet old lady, fond of cards and 
 gossip. ' No one, however, ventures to speak to her of her 
 own story ; she never alludes to it herself, and seems 
 anxious that it should be forgotten. The curiosities have 
 all been removed from the attics ; the skeletons having 
 taken up their quarters at an aspiring surgeon's.' 
 
 A writer in Blackwood many years ago pledged himself 
 to the truth of the following story. Once upon a time a 
 lady sent her servant, a young man about twenty, to the 
 neighbouring town with a valuable ring, which required 
 some alteration. He was to deliver it into the hands of the
 
 262 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 jeweller. The servant was a native of the district, and 
 knew every inch of the road. He went the shortest way 
 across the fields. Coming to a little wooden bridge that 
 crossed a stream, he leaned across the rail and took the ring 
 out of its case to look at it. While he did so it slipped 
 out of his hands and fell into the water. He thought it 
 fell into the hollow of a stump of a tree under the water, 
 but he could not find it. In vain he searched for it till it 
 grew dark. He was afraid to return and tell his story, 
 thinking no one would believe him, and that he would 
 always be suspected of having gamed it away or sold it. 
 So the lad determined never to return. He left wages and 
 clothing, and fairly ran away. For years he was lost to 
 sight, but he went to the West Indies and contrived to 
 accumulate a very fair fortune. At last he resolved to 
 come back to the old home and clear himself with his 
 mistress. Arriving in London he ascertained that she was 
 still alive, and purchased a diamond ring of considerable 
 value, which he determined to present in person. He took 
 
 the coach to the town of and then set out to walk the 
 
 distance of a few miles. He found on alighting a com- 
 panion in a man who resided in the neighbourhood and was 
 bound for the adjacent village. They walked together, 
 and in conversation this former servant, now a gentleman 
 in manners and appearance, communicated the circum- 
 stances that had made him leave the country abruptly 
 years before. As he was telling his story, they came to the 
 very wooden bridge. ' There,' said he, ' it was just here 
 that I dropped the ring, and there is the very bit of old 
 tree into a hole of which it fell — just there.' At the same 
 time he put down the point of his umbrella into a hole 
 in the tree, and drawing it out, there appeared to the
 
 STRANGER THAN FICTION 263 
 
 astonishment of both, the very ring on the ferule of the 
 umbrella. 
 
 Readers are at liberty to believe or disbelieve these 
 stories, but they are well vouched for, and for my part I 
 believe them. Nor do I doubt that if memories were ran- 
 sacked a great addition might very easily be made to their 
 number.
 
 XXIX 
 
 THE TEXT OF POETS : A CORRECTION 
 CORRECTED 
 
 In a very able article on the Complete Poems of Emily 
 Bronte, published on the front page of the Times Literary 
 Supplement, there was a correction of a quotation made by 
 me in the preliminary essay which I was allowed to con- 
 tribute to that volume. My critic said I had misquoted 
 Arnold, ' substituting stirr'd for shook.'' The line in 
 question is from the poem ' Haworth Churchyard,' and as 
 I gave it the quotation is ' Stirr'd, like a clarion blast, 
 my soul.' The Times reviewer says I should have given it 
 ' Shook, like a clarion blast, my soul.' As a matter of fact, 
 however, I am right and my censor is wrong. In the Lyric 
 and Elegiac Poems by Matthew Arnold, published by 
 Macmillan in 1885, the line reads, ' Stirr'd, like a clarion 
 blast, my soul,' p. 186. This represents the final text of 
 the author. 
 
 The poem was originally published in Fraser's Magazine, 
 May 1855. It was not put into book form till 1877, when 
 it was printed with an epilogue added. In Fr user's 
 Magazine the line reads ' Shook, like a clarion blast, my 
 soul.' In the edition of 1877 it reads ' Shook, like a clarion 
 blast, my soul.' In the reprints, Poems of Matthew Arnold, 
 1840-1866, published by J. M. Dent in 1908, and Poems of 
 
 264
 
 TEXT OF POETS : A CORRECTION CORRECTED 265 
 
 Matthew Arnold, edited by Laurie Magnus, published by 
 Routledge in 1906, the reading is ' Stirr'd.' 
 
 I may add that it appears plain from Arnold's Letters that 
 the long delay in the republication of ' Haworth Church- 
 yard ' was due to the tribute it contains to Harriet Martineau. 
 When Arnold wrote that tribute he had not read any of 
 Harriet Martineau's books. When he did read them, and 
 as her life went on, he disapproved of her more and more. 
 
 The matter is trivial, but it opens up some curious 
 questions, and suggests some interesting parallels. We are 
 told in the biography of Tennyson by his son that he 
 specially disliked the raking up of the chips of the work- 
 shop. He belonged to those poets who cannot really revise 
 and complete their work till they see it in type. He usually 
 wished that his best should remain without variorum read- 
 ings. The love of bibliomaniacs for first editions filled him 
 with horror, for the first editions are obviously in many 
 cases the worst editions, and once he said to his biographer : 
 ' Why do they treasure the rubbish I shot from my full 
 finish'd cantos ? ' For him many passages in Wordsworth 
 and other poets were entirely spoiled by the modern habit 
 of giving every various reading along with the text. 
 Besides, in his case, very often what is published as the 
 latest edition had been the original version in his first 
 manuscript, so that there was no possibility of really tracing 
 the history of what might seem to be a new word or a new 
 passage. For instance, he said, in * Maud ' a line in the first 
 edition was ' I will bury myself in my books, and the Devil 
 may pipe to his own,' which was altered afterwards to
 
 266 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 ' I will bury myself in myself,'' etc. This was highly com- 
 mended by the critics as an improvement upon the reading, 
 but it was actually in the first MS. draft of the poem. 
 
 ii 
 
 The question then rises, Are we bound in all instances 
 to quote the author's final text and none other ? It is not 
 easy to reply convincingly. Certainly the author's in- 
 tention deserves all possible honour and respect, but it 
 may very well be that the author's last reading is no im- 
 provement on those that preceded it, and it may even mar 
 the beauty of the line. Examples of this abound. I spent 
 a quiet evening lately in examining the changes made by 
 George Meredith in the last edition of Richard Feverel. It 
 would be admitted, I believe, by most critics that upon 
 the whole, and for my part I should say in the great 
 majority of cases, the changes were for the worse. In this 
 case the first edition is more valuable than the final. There 
 need be no surprise at this. When Meredith was ' slashing 
 away,' to use his own phrase, at Richard Feverel, he was 
 an old man, and felt the influence of the evening hour. 
 When he wrote his most passionate story he was young. 
 Of all the poets who hacked and hewed at their verses 
 George MacDonald was the most merciless, and in nearly 
 every instance his later reading appears to me less pleasing 
 than the earlier. 
 
 Indeed, were it otherwise I should still wish, on the 
 whole, that poets were not permitted to alter their verses. 
 When you have mastered a poem and have grown familiar 
 with its cadences, it is very hard to reject the version which 
 has become part of you for another.
 
 TEXT OF POETS : A CORRECTION CORRECTED 267 
 
 However this may be, I venture to lay it down as a law 
 that no one quoting from a poem shall be corrected and 
 pilloried as a blunderer if he has quoted from any version 
 which the author has published. Within this limit he is 
 free. If I quote George MacDonald from my old editions, 
 or from my magazine cuttings, I am quoting George 
 MacDonald. It is not necessary that I should possess 
 the very latest version which he was pleased to give to the 
 world. But there should be no attempting to meddle with 
 the author's text. It is difficult to apply this principle in 
 the case of hymns. There are instances which will occur to 
 every one where a slight change in certain lines of a great 
 hymn makes it more suitable for congregational use, but 
 in Anthologies for reading, even hymns should be given as 
 they were written by the author. Any other course is pre- 
 sumptuous and unscholarly. There was a bishop who once 
 dared to add a verse to ' Lead, kindly Light ' in the life- 
 time of its author. This was universally perceived to be 
 an outrage, and I rather think the offender came to acknow- 
 ledge this himself. 
 
 in 
 
 Are we to accept Tennyson's view and to abolish 
 variorum readings ? Are the passages which a poet 
 chooses to excise to be lost for ever ? To say this would 
 be very bold, and Tennyson himself allowed it by his 
 practice. From the volume of 1832, says his son, ' he 
 omitted several stanzas of the " Palace of Art," because he 
 thought that the poem was too full. " The artist is known 
 by his self-limitation," was a favourite adage of his. He 
 allowed me, however, to print some of them in my notes, 
 otherwise I should have hesitated to quote without his
 
 268 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 leave lines which he had excised.' My own view is that in 
 the case of really great and classical poetry we should be 
 allowed to have studies of the text. In fact, if this is not 
 permitted we are much the poorer. In the sumptuous 
 volume, a description of the Wordsworth and Coleridge 
 MSS. in possession of Mr. T. Norton Longman, which Mr. 
 Hale White edited some twelve years ago, there is a 
 facsimile of a sheet containing Coleridge's own poem of 
 ' Love.' This version is not the original one. The original 
 one was longer by nine stanzas, and appeared in the 
 Morning Post, December 21, 1799, under the title of 
 ' Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie.' Sir Walter 
 Scott greatly preferred the poem in this early shape, and 
 he reprinted it along with Wordsworth's ' Tintern Abbey ' 
 in the collection entitled English Minstrelsy, published by 
 John Ballantyne and Co. Mr. Dykes Campbell did right 
 when he reprinted this in his edition of Coleridge's Poems, 
 p. 612. 
 
 I suppose there is no poet whose texts have been so 
 minutely studied as Wordsworth's. Opinions must vary, 
 but I doubt whether any critic of repute wholly trusts 
 Wordsworth's judgments in his many corrections, and 
 certainly few will question the value of fragments recovered 
 here and there from manuscripts corrected by Wordsworth. 
 For example, Wordsworth threw aside the following frag- 
 ment, which he had originally designed for Michael : 
 
 ' . . . had you then 
 Discoursed with him . . . 
 Of his own business, and the goings-on 
 Of earth and sky, then truly had you seen 
 That in his thoughts there were obscurities, 
 Wonder, and admiration, things that wrought 
 Not less than a religion in his heart.'
 
 TEXT OF POETS : A CORRECTION CORRECTED 2G9 
 
 On the manner in which Matthew Arnold dealt with his 
 poems I cannot write at present. Many years ago I 
 co-operated with the late Professor Minto in a study of his 
 various editions. The result, to the best of my belief, 
 appeared in a Scottish art magazine, but I am not able to 
 identify it, and it is not mentioned in the excellent Biblio- 
 graphy of Mr. Smart. But it is well known that Arnold 
 was an exceedingly fastidious judge of his own work, and 
 would at times exclude his poems from current publication 
 for years. One example is very well known, and I may 
 quote it. 
 
 In The Strayed Reveller, 1849, he printed ' The New Sirens : 
 a Palinode.' This appeared again in MacmillarCs Magazine 
 for December 1876, with a prefatory note : ' The following 
 poem . . . was published in 1849, in a small volume 
 without my name, was withdrawn along with that volume, 
 and until now has never been reprinted. But the departed 
 poem had the honour of being followed by the regrets of a 
 most distinguished mourner, Mr. Swinburne, who has more 
 than once revived its memory, and asked for its republica- 
 tion. ... To a work of his youth, a work produced in 
 long-past days of ardour and emotion, an author can never 
 be very hard-hearted ; and after a disappearance of more 
 than twenty-five years "The New Sirens" therefore is here 
 reprinted.' 
 
 It appeared in the 1877 edition of his Poems. 
 
 IV 
 
 One very important question remains. Admitting that 
 variorum readings are valuable to real students of poetry, 
 and that they should be given in editions appealing to these,
 
 270 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 how should they be given ? There is something that 
 irritates in variorum readings inserted at the foot of each 
 page. So far one may go with Tennyson. A very learned 
 and industrious critic has said that if we wish to understand 
 the great poets we ought to read them in the successive 
 editions they published when they were alive. He admits 
 that while it is useful to the collector to print useful readings 
 at the foot of the page, it is confusing and disturbs the unity 
 of impression. He thinks that each stage in a poem 
 should be taken by itself, and that in this way we may live 
 with the poet through his poetic life, and mark the textual 
 changes as in some measure a record of his history. ' Un- 
 doubtedly we shall read three or four times many verses 
 which have been altered, and this we admit may be a great 
 hardship to the ordinary reader, who considers himself 
 a monument of endurance if he goes through any author 
 from beginning to end.' The obvious objection is that the 
 plan for most of us is quite impracticable. We cannot 
 afford to buy a complete set of the editions of any poet. 
 As a rule, early editions are rare and costly, but the 
 principle of re-reading is excellent. There is much to say 
 for the keeping of notebooks. Some of our best scholars 
 advise that the student should always read with a pen in 
 his hand. Those of us who have never taken this advice 
 are afflicted with occasional pangs of conscience as we rack 
 our heads to remember where we saw this or that. But 
 all that is needed is to make the best literature part of 
 oneself. The danger of keeping notebooks — at least to 
 excess — is that a man may become detached from his note- 
 books. He may be helpless without them, obliged to con- 
 sult them before he can speak or read to purpose. It is 
 a poor affair to carry an empty head through the town and
 
 TEXT OF POETS : A CORRECTION CORRECTED 271 
 
 to be satisfied because one possesses a series of well-filled 
 notebooks at home. To read a great book again and yet 
 again is perhaps the better way, and I for one have found 
 myself much refreshed in reading favourite books in new 
 editions. They come in that manner with a delightful 
 freshness to the mind, and even what has seemed dead and 
 withered is renewed again. On the whole, the most 
 satisfactory way of giving variorum notes is to put them at 
 the end, where they may be consulted without continual 
 interruption to the pleasure of reading. 
 
 Under this head it is fair to speak a strong word of praise 
 for the admirable and scholarly work done by the Oxford 
 University Press and the Cambridge University Press in 
 printing the best texts of English Classics.
 
 XXX 
 
 FREDERICK GREENWOOD 
 
 Frederick Greenwood died on December 14, 1909, 
 at 6 Border Crescent, Sydenham, in his eightieth year. 
 There appeared a notice of his career in the Times of 
 Friday, December 17th, beginning : ' We regret to record 
 that Mr. Frederick Greenwood, founder and editor succes- 
 sively of the Pall Mall and St. James's Gazettes, died at 
 his house at Sydenham on Tuesday.' 
 
 If some secondary politician had passed away the news 
 would have been telegraphed within an hour to every 
 paper in the kingdom, and to many beyond. But the 
 greatest journalist of our time dies, and no newspaper 
 became aware of the fact till two or three days were 
 passed. Such is one of the penalties attaching to the 
 journalistic life. As a rule, the journalist is little known 
 while he is doing his work, and when he retires from 
 it he is soon forgotten, unless, indeed, he finds other 
 ways of sending out his force. Frederick Greenwood 
 belonged to a very great and famous circle of men, among 
 whom he was by no means the least. Thackeray, Maine, 
 Fitzjames-Stephen, Leslie Stephen, W. R. Greg, and Lord 
 Beaconsfield, were among his intimates. As time went 
 on, he kept an open door for young writers, made them 
 famous, and also made them friends. Of all these he 
 regarded with the greatest love and pride J. M. Barrie. It 
 
 272
 
 FREDERICK GREENWOOD 273 
 
 was on Greenwood's advice that Barrie burnt his boats at 
 Nottingham and ventured on the wider world of London 
 with hardly any assurance of a certain income, and with 
 the determination to work as a free lance. I suppose the 
 last paper which Greenwood superintended was the Anti- 
 Jacobin. It was a weekly, published first at twopence, 
 and then at sixpence, and financed largely by the Baroness 
 Burdett-Coutts. It had no great pecuniary success, and 
 Greenwood was seized with influenza while it was struggling. 
 The double depression was too much for him, and he in- 
 continently got rid of the journal. From that time, 
 although he gave a friendly ear to many plans suggested to 
 him, and contributed a good many articles to periodicals, 
 particularly to the Westminster Gazette and Blackwood's 
 Magazine, he remained comparatively silent, but almost 
 to the end he remained very accessible to his friends and 
 admirers. A few weeks before his death a common friend 
 and I invited Greenwood to lunch with us. He sent a 
 long and masterly letter on another subject, and concluded 
 it with words like these : ' Many thanks for your kind 
 invitation, but no more lunches at the Club for me.' We 
 did not attach any serious importance to this. He was so 
 upstanding and so strenuous that the thought of death 
 hardly came in when his name rose to the surface. But I 
 suppose he must have felt that the day was far spent, as 
 indeed it was. 
 
 Unless Sir James Barrie can be induced to take up 
 his pen, there is small hope that any worthy account of 
 Frederick Greenwood will ever appear. Those who might 
 have written it are nearly all dead. He himself was in 
 some ways the proudest and most reticent of men. I 
 should be very much surprised to find that he had kept
 
 274 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 his letters to any extent, or would allow their publication 
 even if they had been kept. In his day he was deep in 
 great affairs ; but he knew how to be silent, and so he was 
 trusted. Perhaps I may be allowed to say that for years I 
 laboured with him, endeavouring to induce him to write 
 his autobiography. He gave very friendly and very pro- 
 longed consideration to the plan, and at one time it seemed 
 as if it were to take shape. He had a scheme of writing 
 passages of his life to be published in a certain number of 
 monthly parts. One was to be on Thackeray, another on 
 Beaconsfleld, another on the Suez Canal, another on Glad- 
 stone. I think there were to be twelve in all, at half-a- 
 crown each. But though some fragments appeared in 
 Blackwood, he decided at last that he would not carry out 
 his design. The reason he gave was characteristic. He 
 found that in order to make his narrative satisfactory he 
 would be bound to say either too much or too little. He 
 could not say too much ; he could not break lock and 
 seal ; he could not betray the trust ; and at the same time 
 he felt that his narrative stripped of essential particulars 
 might turn out pinched and meagre. Therefore he ab- 
 stained from writing what would have been a most weighty 
 and illuminating book. I speak of what I know, for I 
 heard from his own lips much that would have been part 
 of it. 
 
 Let me try to convey some image of the living man. He 
 was in some ways quite a problem. It is well understood 
 that he was of humble origin, practically self-taught, and 
 with great difficulties to face at first. He began by being 
 a printer's devil, and was afterwards a printer's reader. 
 He found occupation in the fugitive and transient journal- 
 ism of the time. Those who will look at the contents of
 
 FREDERICK GREENWOOD 275 
 
 the short-lived periodicals of the early 'fifties will often see 
 his name. His most permanent engagement at the begin- 
 ning was one on the Illustrated Times. The illustrated 
 papers nowadays consist mainly of illustrations ; but 
 in the 'fifties they were full of clever literary matter. 
 The Illustrated Times, which was founded by Henry 
 Vizetelly, had some very bright contributors — Edmund 
 Yates, W. B. Rands, and Frederick Greenwood. Any one 
 who takes up an old volume will find much to entertain 
 him. From this Greenwood passed rather mysteriously to 
 the employment of the late Mr. George Smith. This came, 
 I think, through his association with Thackeray. Green- 
 wood had the good luck to form early a friendship with 
 that great writer, and one of his cherished plans was to 
 prepare a little book about him. He thought that all 
 the books about Thackeray conveyed more or less a wrong 
 impression. When I came to know Greenwood with a fair 
 degree of intimacy, he had lived through a most eminent 
 career, during which he had mingled freely with the ruling 
 spirits of his time. He had the air and manner of a grand 
 gentleman. In this he closely resembled his friend George 
 Meredith. Both were singularly handsome men in their 
 days of health, very erect and stately, most gracious in 
 their manners, especially to women, but never failing in 
 dignity. Perhaps that type of man belongs essentially to 
 the Regency period. Also, both men were connoisseurs in 
 style. Whatever may be said about Meredith's style, it 
 was certainly elaborated in the highest degree. As for 
 Greenwood, he was in style one of the most severe purists 
 that ever existed. I do not believe that there was any 
 writer on his staff whose work he did not skilfully emend. 
 He belonged to the old school of editors who rewrite the
 
 276 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 work of their authors, and pay no attention to suscepti- 
 bilities. Greenwood used his knife very freely. I have 
 heard some of the victims say ruefully that he often im- 
 proved their work. This is very likely. But that a man 
 of such aristocratic bearing and taste and aspect, a man so 
 devoted to the highest standards of literature, should have 
 emerged from Frederick Greenwood's first twenty-five 
 years is amazing. I suppose the one explanation we can 
 give is that he had it in him to be what he became. 
 
 When I first met Greenwood he was in his last days as 
 editor of the St. James's Gazette, a figure full of dignity and 
 authority. He had lived through more than twenty years' 
 high and gallant journalism. During this long period he 
 had exercised an admitted influence in politics and in 
 literature. But he was one who needed no prestige of 
 history behind him. Wherever you had met him, you 
 would have known him to be a remarkable and powerful 
 man. The Pall Mall Gazette, surely the pluckiest news- 
 paper enterprise that ever was made successful, began 
 about 1865. He liked to talk about the beginnings. As a 
 talker, when he was at his best I never heard any one to 
 compare with him. George Meredith was, of course, more 
 brilliant, but one was always two or three sentences behind 
 the master in agonising efforts to understand and 
 remember. Greenwood spoke as he wrote, in a style full of 
 trenchancy, clear, decided, pictorial, with a fair share and 
 no more of surprises in diction. That day he talked of 
 his friend W. B. Rands, known also as Matthew Browne 
 and Henry Holbeach, who had died some time before. 
 He told how he had engaged Rands at the beginning of the 
 Pall Mall. After some months the circulation amounted 
 to a figure so exceedingly modest that I hardly venture to
 
 FREDERICK GREENWOOD 277 
 
 name it. It was to be counted in hundreds. Rands dis- 
 covered this, and most bitterly upbraided Greenwood for 
 engaging him in work so hopeless. But the work was not 
 hopeless. The strength of Greenwood's staff was such, and 
 his own versatility, courage and initiative so great, that 
 the paper by degrees became a power and actually began 
 to yield profits. The sale could never have been very large, 
 but the influence of the paper was never in proportion to 
 its circulation. Greenwood began as a moderate Liberal, 
 but his distrust for Mr. Gladstone steadily increased, and 
 the paper did as much to overthrow Mr. Gladstone's ascend- 
 ancy in the country as all the rest of the Conservative 
 journals put together. For the strict party man Mr. 
 Greenwood had very little regard. He was above all things 
 independent. Mark Rutherford once remarked that Green- 
 wood's leaders had this peculiarity, that they hardly ever 
 failed to offend both Tories and Liberals. When he 
 published his novel, Margaret DenzWs History, a certain 
 critic said : ' This novel is clever with a sort of cleverness 
 which one sometimes encounters in conversation, which 
 does not bore you, but which you instinctively dislike, 
 talk which leaves an unpleasant taste behind it, in which 
 conclusions have been jumped at apparently beyond 
 contradiction, but which at the same time one knows 
 to be hollow. The book is unpleasant, and apparently 
 designedly so.' 
 
 But there was one politician for whom he cherished a 
 passionate devotion. As long as Lord Beaconsfield lived 
 Greenwood was his devoted follower. The friendship was 
 warmly returned, and it may be doubted whether any one 
 enjoyed a closer friendship with Beaconsfield than Green- 
 wood did. There was no man on whom he talked more
 
 278 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 willingly or more delightfully. He admitted that there was 
 something mysterious about Beaconsfield, although he held 
 that perhaps two or three men were at home in his mind. 
 Beaconsfield, he would say again and again, worked in 
 absolute detachment, and he laid great stress on his foreign 
 air and manner as repelling Englishmen. But words 
 almost failed him when he spoke of Disraeli's deep insight, 
 long foresight, and indomitable courage. 
 
 On one great question in particular Greenwood 
 vehemently and steadfastly supported Disraeli. Years 
 ago, before Japan was much talked of, I was with Green- 
 wood at a hotel in Hastings. After dinner we went into 
 the smoking-room, and Greenwood expounded his views 
 on the inevitable dominance of Russia. I have never heard 
 more eloquent and convincing talk. He argued that 
 Russia must by and by acquire our Indian Empire, and 
 therewith obtain ascendancy in the councils of Europe. 
 Destiny made this inevitable. He suggested possible 
 alternatives and combinations. He took them to pieces 
 one by one. He showed that Russia would be too strong 
 for any of them, and in the not distant future would obtain 
 that for which she was steadily working. The demon- 
 stration seemed as cogent and irresistible as if it were taken 
 out of Euclid. According to Greenwood, there was once 
 a possible chance of escape. If Beaconsfield had been 
 followed the catastrophe might at least have been long 
 postponed. But Beaconsfield had not been followed. 
 Lord Salisbury had walked behind him with faltering steps, 
 and had at last abandoned him. There was now nothing 
 for us but to wait for our subjection to Russia. I well 
 remember the depressed feeling with which, utterly unable 
 to encounter Greenwood's argument, I went to bed. Now,
 
 FREDERICK GREENWOOD 279 
 
 when I look back, I recall that in the whole course of the 
 evening Japan was never mentioned. The lesson is that 
 we should leave political predictions to those who can read 
 the stars. The dark horse turns up, and prophecies are 
 put to shame. 
 
 Latterly he was with neither side. Radicalism and 
 Socialism he hated as much as ever, but in his greatest days 
 he had done battle with Mr. Chamberlain, the Radical, and 
 he liked Chamberlain none the better because he had passed 
 over to the other side. ' Chamberlain,' he said, ' will always 
 be an Anarchist whatever party he professes to belong to.' 
 I cannot quote any of his remarks on Mr. Balfour, but with 
 that statesman also he was in imperfect sympathy. This 
 isolated him, no doubt. 
 
 It is a pleasure to think that his many friends enter- 
 tained him in 1905 to a public dinner. His old antagonist 
 in the Press, John Morley, presided. Lord Morley said 
 that the Pall Mall Gazette had started as a sort of 
 pleasure yacht, but it soon became an armed cruiser, 
 with guns of heavy calibre, and a captain on the bridge 
 possessed of a gallantry and a martial quality that had 
 never been surpassed in the history of English journalism. 
 In his peroration he spoke of Mr. Greenwood's splendid 
 and unstained disinterestedness, his honourable and 
 upright battle, his great probity, his industry, and his 
 strenuousness for the public good. Mr. Greenwood, in his 
 reply, showed a happy gift for public speech, and was 
 deeply moved by the great reception accorded to him. 
 But the speech of the evening was Mr. Barrie's, and it 
 will never be forgotten by those who heard it. 
 
 This was the only public recognition that came to 
 Greenwood. There was a story that he had declined
 
 280 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 a baronetcy from his own party, but I do not know. 
 He received no honorary degree from any of the Uni- 
 versities. Those who wish to know him in future must 
 turn over many files of old newspapers, unless, indeed, 
 the right biographer is found. It is true that he has left 
 some books of no mean quality. As long ago as 1860 he 
 wrote along with his brother James a novel called Under 
 a Cloud. He wrote also some little books which I possess, 
 The Path of Roses being the best. He thought of rewrit- 
 ing Margaret DenziVs History, which appeared in the Corn- 
 hill, and was actually attributed by some sapient persons 
 to Queen Victoria, and I have a letter from him on that 
 subject written no longer than a year before his death. 
 A late book, with the reception of which he was dis- 
 appointed, was The Lover's Lexicon. It is a good book, if 
 not the kind of book we should have expected from him. 
 He also published a little volume on dreams. But the 
 whole strength of his powerful nature was given almost 
 without deduction to the work of journalism, and few 
 men indeed have played a greater or more honourable 
 part in that field. 
 
 For the rest, I shall only say that he was the very soul of 
 kindness. 

 
 XXXI 
 
 ON THE TENDERNESS AND COURAGE OF 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 The splendid Library Edition of John Ruskin, edited by 
 E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, is enriched by two 
 volumes of Ruskin's letters, the first running from 1827 
 to 1869 ; the second from 1870 to 1889. It is quite im- 
 possible to over-praise the editing of these volumes. I 
 have examined with great care the notes in them, and can 
 testify that they give us enough and not more than enough. 
 They are just what they should be. Great taste and 
 discretion were called for, and they have never once been 
 lacking. The rare and beautiful devotion which Mr. 
 Cook has shown to Ruskin is almost without a parallel. 
 Considering the uniform and severe self-control which 
 Mr. Cook has always exercised, often in trying circum- 
 stances, it is wonderful that he should reverence and 
 love so deeply a fiery and turbulent spirit like Ruskin. 
 Perhaps it is not so wonderful as it seems at first sight. 
 
 The general remark to be made on Ruskin's letters is 
 that they are all characteristic. This is the sure mark of 
 a man of genius, though some men of genius have lacked 
 it. The briefest note written by John Ruskin is signed 
 all over. It is with him as it is with Carlyle. Many of 
 Matthew Arnold's letters, let us say, might have been 
 written by anybody, but no one else could have written the 
 
 281
 
 282 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 letters of John Ruskin or of Carlyle. A very eminent 
 politician and man of letters, who has had much to do with 
 perpetuating the memory of Gladstone, said to a friend : 
 ' The fact is that all Carlyle's letters are worth publishing, 
 and none of Mr. Gladstone's letters are worth publishing — 
 I speak as an artist.' It is to be noted also that there 
 is no real repetition in Ruskin or in Carlyle. They are not 
 mere phrase-makers ; their thoughts find a spontaneous 
 and original expression. 
 
 i 
 
 I have a confession to make which will gratify Mr. Cook 
 more than any laudation of his scholarship and care. The 
 perusal of these volumes completely altered my long-held 
 views of Ruskin's character and Ruskin's life. I had 
 thought him to be wanting in tenderness. Without for- 
 getting some passages of special beauty in his works, 
 without at all ignoring his noble indignation, one has 
 imagined that much in his writing was both arrogant and 
 cruel. Also one has fancied that he was too apt to murmur, 
 to rebel, to compassionate himself, to whine over his mis- 
 fortunes, sinning in this respect as Carlyle sinned. When I 
 read his letters, these impressions were quite swept away, 
 and I was most happily made to see that his heart was 
 full of tenderness and full of courage. Then the impres- 
 sion one had of his life was that of prevailing unhappi- 
 ness, of calamity, and even of tragedy. But the careful 
 reader of the letters from first to last will, I think, come 
 to the conclusion that in spite of all its thwartings, its dis- 
 appointments, and its confusions, Ruskin's career had its 
 full share of sunshine and of triumph. The feeling with 
 which one lays down those volumes is best expressed in
 
 TENDERNESS AND COURAGE OF RUSKIN 283 
 
 the words : ' Well done, thou good and faithful servant.' 
 At all events, this is the impression of one reader, who has 
 since been able to turn back to Ruskin's great books and 
 read them with an untroubled heart. I shall try to illus- 
 trate these points from the letters. 
 
 ii 
 
 The tenderness of his heart is beautifully and con- 
 vincingly exhibited in his references to bereavement. 
 Some of these are quite singular in their loveliness. They 
 are proud, swift, broken, great sentences, such as we find 
 only in the very chiefest of writers. They are full of 
 reality. Here is one on the death of his mother, written 
 to George Richmond, R.A., and dated December 6, 1871 : 
 
 My dear Richmond, — I believe Joan has written to you — 
 but I intended to write myself. Your other of the two old 
 friends of that Christmastime in Rome went on her pilgrimage 
 to the Holy Land yesterday. 
 
 She looks very pretty and young. It is just possible you 
 might like to come and see her — please do if you would. In 
 any case I know she had no more faithful friend. So mind 
 you don't come merely for fear I should think you did not 
 care about her — I know perfectly well what you care about. — 
 Ever your affectionate John Ruskin. 
 
 The great grief of Ruskin's life was the death of Rose 
 La Touche. It was one of those griefs which are hardly 
 distinguishable from dying. Miss La Touche died in 
 May 1875, and Ruskin wrote to Carlyle June 4 : 
 
 Dearest Papa, — I have had so little to say of myself pleasing 
 to a papa's ear that I neither wrote nor came when I was last 
 in London. For the rest the Academy work involved much
 
 284 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 weariness. I had just got it done with other worldliness and 
 was away into the meadows to see buttercup and clover and 
 bean blossom, when the news came that the little story of 
 my wild Rose was ended, and the hawthorn blossoms, this 
 year, would fall — over her. 
 
 Then I must quote a letter to George Richmond on the 
 death of Mrs. Richmond : 
 
 Brantwood, 11th January 1881. 
 
 My dear Friend, — I would fain have written before now — 
 but had no words in my tongue, no strength in my heart. I 
 have not myself since my mother's death (except one which 
 was rather death to myself than to another) sustained so 
 intimate and irreparable — may I say to me also domestic 
 loss ? — and my personal sorrow is haggard with terror for the 
 future to you, and a cruel sense of the departure of all things 
 that you loved in tins the Head of them — and I do not know 
 how far you will be able, in the knowledge of your own dear- 
 ness to your children and your friends, to take from them what 
 they may yet be able to give you of twilight gladness and 
 peace in waiting for the day of restoration — of all things — and 
 her. 
 
 Men say the time is near — a day is near at least of such 
 trial of the spirits of all flesh as may well be called one of 
 Judgment. I thank God that I am able still — with you — to 
 be among those that Watch for the Morning — and am still 
 able to be thankful, beside the places of rest of those whom 
 I have loved, to whom Christ has said, ' Arise thou, My fair 
 one — come away.' — Ever your loving John Ruskin. 
 
 hi 
 
 I may as well make a clean breast of it and confess that 
 I had intended to entitle this letter ' Ay De Mi.' I had 
 seen some extracts which misled me. But here is an ex-
 
 TENDERNESS AND COURAGE OF RUSKIN 285 
 
 tract from a letter to C. E. Norton, on the correspondence 
 of Carlyle and Emerson, which Norton had edited. It is 
 worth observing that dearly as Ruskin loved Norton, he 
 took Froude's side in the Carlyle controversy. Here is 
 the extract : 
 
 4 The Emerson letters are infinitely sweet and wise ; 
 here and there, as in p. 30, vol. ii., unintelligible to me. 
 C.'s, like all the words of him published since his death, 
 have vexed me, and partly angered, with their perpetual 
 " me miserum " — never seeming to feel the extreme ill 
 manners of this perpetual whine ; and, to what one dares 
 not call an affected, but a quite unconsciously false extent, 
 hiding the more or less of pleasure which a strong man 
 must have in using his strength, be it but in heaving aside 
 dustheaps. 
 
 ' What in my own personal way I chiefly regret and 
 wonder at in him is, the perception in all nature of nothing 
 between the stars and his stomach — his going, for instance, 
 into North Wales for two months, and noting absolutely no 
 Cambrian thing or event, but only increase of Carlylian bile. 
 
 ' Not that I am with you in thinking Froude wrong about 
 the Reminiscences. They are to me full of his strong in- 
 sight, and in their distress far more pathetic than these 
 howlings of his earlier life about Cromwell and others of 
 his quite best works. But I am vexed for want of a proper 
 epilogue of your own. . . . 
 
 ' How much better right than C. have I to say " Ay de 
 mi ! "' 
 
 IV 
 
 No human judge can pronounce exactly on the happiness 
 or misery of any life ; but most men, I think, would choose
 
 286 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 to be Carlyle rather than to be Ruskin. It is true that 
 Ruskin was always well off, and never knew poverty and 
 the struggle of Carlyle, but there fell upon him some of the 
 hardest blows that fate can deal. Mr. Cook very wisely 
 gives us a summary of the events of each year of Ruskin's 
 life before printing the letters of that year, and we are able 
 thus to read between the lines. 
 
 To outsiders, the heaviest blow that fell upon Ruskin 
 was his alienation from his wife. This was in 1854. Mr. 
 Cook briefly notes : ' Ruskin's wife left him in April 1854, 
 and from May to October he was in Switzerland with his 
 parents. The drawings of Thun and Fribourg were pro- 
 bably made during this tour. On his return, he resumed 
 life with them at Denmark Hill, and among other work 
 took drawing classes at the Working Men's College, which 
 was opened in October of this year. Ruskin writes to 
 Furnivall, April 24, 1854 : ' You cannot contradict re- 
 ports. The world for the present must have its full swing. 
 Do not vex yourself about it as far as you are sorry, lest 
 such powers as I may have should be shortened. Be 
 assured I shall neither be subdued nor materially changed 
 by this matter. The worst of it ibr me has long been past. 
 If you should hear me spoken ill of, ask people to wait a 
 little. If they will not wait, comfort yourself by thinking 
 that time and tide will not wait either.' On May 2 he 
 writes to Rossetti a business letter full of detail. From 
 Switzerland he writes many letters, apparently in excellent 
 spirits, and ready as usual with advice, with correction, 
 and with help for all who come to him. In November he 
 writes : ' I forgot to say that the pleasantest and most 
 useful reading I know on nearly all religious questions 
 whatsoever are Ryle's Tracts. I forget his Christian name,
 
 TENDERNESS AND COURAGE OF RUSK1N 287 
 
 but you will be sure to find them at Edinburgh. They are 
 not professedly doctrinal, but chiefly exhortations. The 
 doctrine, however, comes in incidentally very pure and 
 clear.' 
 
 There can be no question as to the overwhelming weight 
 of sorrow that fell on him when Rose La Touche died in 
 May 1875, but we find him telling on May 31 how he was 
 busy at Oxford with Prince Leopold and his wife, showing 
 them his school and his Turners, and making over some 
 gifts to the University : ' So then we went on all through 
 the room, and at last I had to put the Princess into her little 
 open carriage, and Prince Leopold took the reins, and I 
 think Prince Louis went behind them, and so they said 
 good-bye ; and it was all in the brightest summer day I 
 have ever seen in Oxford — almost in England.' In the 
 letter I have quoted to Carlyle announcing Rose's death, 
 he says : ' Since which piece of news I have not had a day 
 but in more or less active business, in which everybody 
 congratulates and felicitates me, and must be met with 
 civil cheerfulness.' To Dr. John Brown he writes on 
 June 18 : ' The death numbed me for some days so that 
 I could not work, but am none the worse, so far as I know, 
 only there is no blood in my hands or feet.' On June 26 he 
 writes to Mrs. Arthur Severn : ' Am a good deal better these 
 two or three last days somehow. I enjoyed my Turners 
 last night greatly.' 
 
 If I had room I could show how, after the terrible brain 
 fevers of his later years, he refused to be overcome. The 
 moment he recovered, he was at work again as eager as 
 ever. He was invincible.
 
 XXXII 
 
 GEORGE GISSING 
 
 No book of 1912 interested me so profoundly and pain- 
 fully as The Private Life of Henry Maitland : a Record 
 Dictated by J. H.' Revised and Edited by Morley Roberts. 
 It is a book which at once attracts and estranges. Whether 
 it should have been published at all may be gravely 
 doubted. It is repellent in many ways, and yet it has an 
 attraction so strong that I have again and again recurred 
 to it, and have felt myself unable to pass it over without 
 comment. 
 
 My perplexity is excusable, for the book, so far as I know, 
 is not merely extraordinary : it is unique. The veil is 
 so thin that it does not obscure anything. Rather it 
 emphasises the form, and features, and history of the sub- 
 ject. This is a biography of George Gissing by his most 
 intimate friend, Morley Roberts. There was probably 
 never such a career among literary men as that of George 
 Gissing. The life of Richard Savage was tame in com- 
 parison. Mr. Morley Roberts knew everything, and has 
 told everything. He claims, and I believe he is justified 
 in the claim, that Gissing would have desired that his un- 
 fortunate life on earth should be fully chronicled by the man 
 who knew it best. If we once admit the legitimacy of 
 Mr. Morley Roberts' action, we shall have no right to dis- 
 pute the manner in which he has carried it through. I have 
 
 288 

 
 GEORGE GISSING 289 
 
 long admired the literary power of Mr. Roberts, and it 
 must be acknowledged by all fair-minded critics that in this 
 book he shows at his best. The style is thoroughly fitted 
 to the subject. It is grave, condensed, pitiful, and 
 weighty. No words are wasted. The narrator has some- 
 times to assume the judicial attitude, and when he does so, 
 there is no fault in his behaviour. Indeed, in parts the 
 history is beautiful and musical, but the author professes 
 all through to be candid, and that profession is amply 
 redeemed. 
 
 The question remains : Should the story have been 
 told ? It has to be remembered that those most closely 
 associated by nature and by law with George Gissing are 
 still alive. With what feelings will they read a history of 
 apparent failure and shame with which they themselves 
 were firmly linked ? Perhaps Mr. Morley Roberts has 
 seen to this. I hope he has, for the living have their rights. 
 It is said, I believe, that you cannot libel the dead. But 
 any libel of the dead is very likely to be a libel of the living. 
 Mr. Morley Roberts needs no defence against the charge of 
 malice. No intelligent reader will ever dream that he has 
 written his book for any end of his own, with any design 
 of making money, with any desire to wound. He has re- 
 acted violently, and I do not wonder, from the conventional 
 style of biography. He has thought it well to put on 
 record the true history of a contemporary with whom his 
 relations were exceptionally intimate. That history is 
 more of a warning than anything else. I do not say that 
 Mr. Morley Roberts has written with a specific ethical 
 purpose, but the ethical lessons are apparent. George 
 Gissing erred and strayed exceedingly, and he was punished 
 for his wanderings. In the current cant of the day there 
 
 T
 
 290 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 are no penalties, only consequences. But in real life 
 consequences are as hard to bear as penalties, and the 
 change of a word does nothing to soothe the agony. 
 
 On one point of supreme importance I am entirely at 
 issue with Mr. Morley Roberts. Gissing underestimated 
 the work of his friend. Mr. Morley Roberts deplorably 
 underestimates the literary value of Gissing's work. He 
 has Gissing on his side. But I think that most competent 
 critics would agree that Gissing's place as a novelist is far 
 higher than Mr. Morley Roberts would allow. In the 
 same way the position of Mr. Morley Roberts is far higher 
 than Gissing would have assigned it. Excellent as this 
 book is, allowing that it should have been written, it would 
 have been much improved if somewhere the note of admira- 
 tion had been more clearly sounded. Mr. Morley Roberts 
 has a genuine affection for Gissing, and sees in his character, 
 flawed as it was, elements of nobility. But for his main 
 work he has no free and full-hearted praise, acute as are 
 the scattered critical remarks to be found upon the way. 
 
 Here I must pause and bethink myself. The first time 
 I ever heard of Gissing is memorable to me as the first time 
 on which I had the privilege of a long conversation with 
 Thomas Hardy. Mr. Hardy's gentle urbanity encourages 
 the novice to put questions, and, greatly daring, I ventured 
 to ask whether there were any young writers whom he 
 admired. He instantly answered ' George Gissing,' and 
 gave me some account of The Unclassed. I found the 
 book and read it, and afterwards read everything published 
 by Gissing that I could find. Years after I happened — 
 never mind how — to spend some three days in a country 
 place with Gissing. We had much intimate talk, but he 
 made no reference at all to the peculiar circumstances of
 
 GEORGE GISSING 291 
 
 his life, which were then unknown to me. He looked like 
 the very last man to have cultivated an intimacy with the 
 slums. He was well dressed, bland, debonair, and com- 
 municative. We first found a point of union in Sir William 
 Ramsay's book on The Church in the Roman Empire, which 
 he had been reading with the keenest zest. From that we 
 went on to other things. I could see that Gissing was much 
 less disposed to talk about his own books than most authors 
 are. He spoke of them as pot-boilers produced under 
 necessity. But he had ideas which I very imperfectly 
 recollect of the books he might write. This meeting of 
 ours must have taken place at a time when Gissing's 
 domestic circumstances were maddening, but there was 
 nothing to show this. He entered with interest into all 
 that was passing, and smiled and laughed with the rest. 
 Afterwards I met him on various occasions, but never had 
 the chance of another of those dialogues by which alone 
 men become known to one another. 
 
 One of Gissing's capital errors, perhaps singular in its 
 way, was committed at the beginning of his career. He was 
 a student, and a very distinguished classical student, in 
 Owens College, Manchester. Why Mr. Morley Roberts 
 should disparage Professor Wilkins and Professor Green- 
 wood I do not quite know. But Gissing attached himself 
 there to the classical side. He never took any interest in 
 science, and he loathed all forms of speculative thought. 
 But in classics he took every possible prize that was open 
 to him. Sad to say, he formed relations when a boy of less 
 than eighteen with an unfortunate girl. He had to find
 
 292 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 money for her, and did so at first out of his scholarships. 
 But in 1876 the students were much disturbed by a series of 
 thefts in the common room and from a locker room in which 
 they kept their books and papers and overcoats. Books 
 disappeared unaccountably, and so did coats. Money 
 was taken from the pockets of coats left in the room. A 
 detective concealed himself in a small room, and caught 
 Gissing in the act of theft. There was naturally a tre- 
 mendous ferment over the business, and Gissing's academic 
 career was ruined. It was this error more than any other 
 that made Gissing absolutely hopeless. For not a few 
 lapses in other directions men of the world would have 
 accorded him a certain tolerance, but the Christian ethics, 
 or if you like ordinary ethics, have at last asserted their 
 victory in one domain. Men who yield easily to other 
 temptations would never under any circumstances yield 
 to the temptation of theft. Even though they were starv- 
 ing they would not pick pockets for money ; they would not 
 steal overcoats ; they would not steal books. In fact, 
 temptation could not assail them on that side at all. That 
 Gissing gave way on this point is a most calamitous fact. 
 He practically thrust himself outside the pale by these 
 actions, and outside the pale he remained. 
 
 Notwithstanding, there were kind persons in the College 
 who tried to save him. He went out to America, where 
 he was very miserable. He got some writing on the 
 Chicago Tribune and elsewhere, but he made no headway. 
 However, he had made a beginning. He had written fiction 
 which was thenceforth to be the poor support of his life. 
 He came back to London and married the girl for whose 
 sake he had ruined himself. The poor creature had 
 addicted herself to drink and other things. Gissing did
 
 GEORGE GISSING 293 
 
 his best to reclaim her, and they lived together in squalid 
 lodgings somewhere about Mornington Crescent. She 
 was often almost insane with alcohol, and the rooms in 
 which the two lived together were poor, foul, and dirty. 
 This went on for years, and Gissing earned just enough to 
 keep soul and body together by writing. Then he became 
 tutor to Frederic Harrison's sons, where he became ac- 
 quainted with Edward Clodd and others who were kind to 
 him. It was a terrible time, but Gissing was able to talk 
 about the classics, and to cook such stuff as his few weekly 
 shillings could buy. Mr. Morley Roberts and he were both 
 of them at that time in great extremity, sitting with their 
 overcoats on, and doing their best to be cheerful. Gissing 
 was fond of rich and succulent food, and enjoyed it on the 
 occasions when he got a chance. Morley Roberts and 
 Gissing paid a visit to Eastbourne, which proved a failure 
 save for one thing. 
 
 And here I must insert one of the most poignant passages 
 in all literature. ' It was the next night that the great 
 news came. In spite of the dreariest weather we had 
 spent most of the day in the open air. After our dinner, 
 which this time was more of a success, or at any rate less 
 of a tragic failure, we were sitting hugging the fire to keep 
 warm, when a telegram was brought in for him. He read 
 it in silence, and handed it over to me with the very 
 strangest look upon his face that I had ever seen. It was 
 unsigned, and came from London. The message was : 
 " Your wife is dead." There was nothing on earth more 
 desirable for him than that she should die, the poor wretch 
 truly being like a destructive wind, for she had torn his 
 heart, scorched his very soul, and destroyed him in the 
 beginning of his life. All irreparable disasters came from
 
 294 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 her, and through her. Had it not been for her he might 
 then have held, or have begun to hope for, a great position 
 at one of the universities. And now a voice out of the un- 
 known cried that she was dead. 
 
 ' He said to me with a shaking voice and shaking hands, 
 " 1 cannot believe it — I cannot believe it." He was as 
 white as paper ; for it meant so much — not only freedom 
 from the disaster and shame and misery that drained his 
 life-blood, but it would mean a cessation of money pay- 
 ments at a time when every shilling was very hard to win. 
 And yet this was when he was comparatively well known, 
 for it was two years after the publication of The Mob. And 
 still, though his books ran into many editions, for some 
 inexplicable reason, which I yet hope to explain, he sold 
 them one after another for fifty pounds. And I knew how 
 he worked ; how hard, how remorselessly. I knew who 
 the chief character was in Paternoster Row before Pater- 
 noster Row was written. I knew with what inexpressible 
 anguish of soul he laboured, with what dumb rage against 
 destiny. And now here was something like freedom at 
 last, if only it were true.' 
 
 She was really dead, and she died in awful surroundings. 
 It was a relief to her husband, but a terrible relief. When 
 he was sure she was gone, he grieved for her, grieved for 
 what she might have been and for what she was. But he 
 was free. He was strangely quiet even in the first hours of 
 his liberation. He went to the slum in the New Cut where 
 she passed away, and said to Roberts : ' My dear chap, 
 she had kept my photograph, and a very little engraving 
 of the Madonna di San Sisto, all these years of horrible 
 degradation.'
 
 GEORGE GISSING 295 
 
 ii 
 
 One might have imagined that Gissing would have made 
 some wise use of his freedom. It must be remembered 
 that by this time he had a reputation, and was moving 
 among intellectual people. John Morley, then editing the 
 Pall Mall Gazette, offered to use as much matter as he could 
 supply. But Gissing would not do anything practical. 
 He continued to live in the deepest poverty, talking about 
 the classics and about the rottenness of current morality. 
 His work was appreciated by James Payn, then literary 
 adviser to a leading firm, and he found his way on very 
 moderate terms indeed into the Cornhill Magazine. He 
 toiled like a slave, writing three of his best books in seven 
 months. His strange nature found unexpected satisfac- 
 tions. He delighted measurelessly in barrel organs ; he 
 loved all things that were redolent of oil and grease and 
 fatness. He was approached and employed by various 
 editors on more or less liberal terms. He was interested 
 in religion, which he thought a curious form of delusion 
 almost ineradicable from the human mind. Like many of 
 his kind he hated the lower orders with whom he had to 
 live, and in so far as he was a politician he was a violent 
 Tory. But on the whole things were better with him until 
 he took the first steps towards his second marriage. 
 
 in 
 
 That second marriage was even more disastrous than the 
 first. Gissing had been feeling lonely, and he made the 
 acquaintance of a girl in the Marylebone Road. He said 
 to Roberts : ' I could stand it no longer, so I rushed out
 
 296 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 and spoke to the very first woman I came across.' The 
 girl was quite respectable, and Gissing resolved to marry 
 her if she would agree. Roberts pointed out to him that 
 the results would be calamitous, and that he would repent 
 the step most bitterly. His mind recognised the truth of 
 everything, but he meant to have his way. He did not 
 seem to know what love was. There was nothing in 
 common with himself and the bride he had chosen. He 
 might easily have found one who would have been a com- 
 panion intellectually or spiritually. But in spite of all 
 warnings he carried through his purpose and married the 
 young woman 4 who was to be his second wife, to bear his 
 children, to torture him for years, to drive him almost 
 mad, and once more make a financial slave of him.' ' From 
 the very beginning it seemed impossible that she could ever 
 become in any remote degree what he might justifiably 
 have asked for in a wife. Yet she was not wholly dis- 
 agreeable in appearance. She was of medium height, and 
 somewhat dark. She had not, however, the least pretence 
 to such beauty as one might hope to find even in a slave 
 of the kitchen. She possessed neither face nor figure, nor 
 a sweet voice, nor any charm — she was just a female. And 
 this was she that the most fastidious man in many ways 
 that I knew was about to marry. I went away with a sick 
 heart, for it was nothing less than a frightful catastrophe, 
 and I had to stand by and see it happen. He married 
 her on March 20, 1891, and went to live near Exeter.' 
 
 Further I shall not follow the tragical tale. But when 
 all is said and done there was something about Gissing that 
 was not quenched — till it was quenched in death.
 
 XXXIII 
 
 MR. BALFOUR'S PLEA FOR CHEERFUL BOOKS 
 
 ' What I ask from literature mainly,' said Mr. Balfour, 
 speaking at a dinner of the Royal Literary Fund, ' is 
 that in a world which is full of sadness and diffi- 
 culty, in which you go through the day distressed and 
 come back from your work weary, you should find in 
 literature something which represents life indeed, which is 
 true in the highest sense of truth to what is or what is 
 imagined to be, but which does cheer you. Therefore 
 when I ask you, as I now do, to drink the toast of Literature, 
 I shall myself sotto voce as I drink say not literature merely, 
 but that literature in particular which serves the great 
 cause of cheering up.' This is a demand which compels 
 attention, and which, stated as it was stated with due 
 limitations, must be pronounced reasonable. Mr. Balfour 
 did not deny that things sad, sorrowful, tragical, even 
 drab, may be and are susceptible of artistic treatment, and 
 that they have been and are admirably treated by great 
 literary artists. He only avowed his own preference for 
 more cheerful weather. He thought literature less cheerful 
 than it was in the days of his youth. That might be 
 because he was growing old. He did not deny that the 
 great picturesque striking storm is a magnificent subject 
 for artistic treatment, and he would not say that the dreary 
 day of steady rain, perpetual and melancholy, was excluded 
 
 297
 
 298 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 from the artist's compass. So long, indeed, as any subject 
 was treated sincerely and directly the treatment had a 
 value. But this was not what he asked for individually 
 — not what he demanded of literature. 
 
 It was once said that novels should have happy endings 
 because all endings are happy, and to close a book un- 
 happily is to close before the end. If it be true that all 
 journeys end in welcomes to the weary, there is something 
 in that. 
 
 We have to admit, I think, that the world is less cheerful, 
 less sanguine, than it was, say, fifty or sixty years ago. 
 Nobody will forget the famous meeting in Boswell between 
 Dr. Johnson and his old class-fellow, Oliver Edwards. 
 They had been separated for forty years, and met by chance 
 in the street. Edwards was living on a little farm of about 
 sixty acres just by Stevenage, and was happy seeing his 
 grass, his corn, and his trees growing. He addressed his 
 illustrious friend : ' You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. 
 I have tried, too, in my time to be a philosopher ; but, I 
 don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.' 
 Boswell tells us here that Burke, Reynolds, and others 
 to whom he mentioned this thought it an exquisite trait of 
 character. Dr. Birkbeck Hill quotes the story of Hume 
 who, when he began to be known in the world as a philo- 
 sopher, was admonished by Mr. White, a decent rich 
 merchant of London. ' I am surprised, Mr. Hume, that a 
 man of your good sense should think of being a philosopher. 
 Why, I now took it into my head to be a philosopher for 
 some time, but tired of it most confoundedly, and very
 
 A PLEA FOR CHEERFUL BOOKS 299 
 
 soon gave it up.' ' Pray, sir,' said Mr. Hume, ' in what 
 branch of philosophy did you employ your researches ? 
 What books did you read ? ' ' Books ? ' said Mr. White ; 
 * nay, sir, I read no books, but I used to sit whole forenoons 
 a-yawning and poking the fire.' Horace Walpole wrote 
 from Paris in 1766 : ' The generality of the men, and 
 more than the generality, are dull and empty. They have 
 taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy and English, 
 and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural 
 levity and cheerfulness.' 
 
 What it is that sensibly abates the good spirits of the 
 younger generation it is not easy to say. Even young men 
 seem to have a frequent oppression of heart. The middle- 
 aged and the old are, to say the least, grave and anxious. 
 Perhaps it is the obvious instability of many institutions 
 that promised to stand which depresses the minds of not 
 a few. I have been reading the Life of that amiable and 
 excellent philosopher, Henry Sidgwick, and am struck by 
 his gloomy forebodings. Sidgwick had, as things go, a 
 singularly prosperous and happy life. He kept brooding 
 over the signs of the times, and the longer he thought of 
 them the more he feared. In 1886 he saw the movement 
 of modern society towards Socialism, and, though he 
 approved of it on the whole, he saw before the nation great 
 blunders and great disasters. ' In this way I sometimes 
 feel alarmed — even for my own " much goods laid up for 
 many years " — but not, on the whole, seriously. Con- 
 sidering all the chances of misfortune that life offers, the 
 chance of having one's railway shares confiscated is not 
 prominent, though I should not be surprised at being 
 mulcted of a part of my dividends.' He feared also the 
 abolition of representative government, and when he was
 
 300 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 forty-seven he began to have a nervous consciousness that 
 time was short, and that he had hardly sufficient left to do 
 his proper work in. I might take almost any biography 
 ranging over the same period, and give similar quotations. 
 
 ii 
 
 I draw a sharp distinction between those who merely 
 suffer from the weariness and the anxiety that are insepar- 
 able from a diligent life, and those who are for the time 
 being struck down by a heavy blow of fate. For the latter 
 class a cheerful or humorous book has no consolation ; in 
 fact, it is repellent. It is all out of tune with the dominant 
 mood of the soul. The mirth is mockery, the laughter 
 and the music are new assaults on the heart. For such 
 sufferers there are books of consolation (I am not speaking 
 now of religious consolation), but these are to be found 
 rather among the books that take full account of life's 
 tragedy. They should not be wholly concerned with the 
 tragedy. There should at least be chinks of light in the 
 gloom, and, if possible, some sober victory of endurance at 
 the end. I have known one afflicted in this manner who 
 found, when the worst came to the worst, that the only 
 novel he could read was Wilhelm Meister. It seems an odd 
 choice, but it may be understood. Nothing is easier for 
 the Philistine than to pick holes in Wilhelm Meister ; all 
 that Jeffrey said against it, all that De Quincey said against 
 it, is true in a way. But Carlyle understood it, and his 
 mother understood it, and it brought to each a measure of 
 strength and light. 
 
 I have before me a list of novels which are an anodyne
 
 A PLEA FOR CHEERFUL BOOKS 301 
 
 to the mind. But the real injuries to the soul are not cured 
 by these remedies, though the symptoms may to some 
 extent be alleviated. 
 
 There are those who will tell you that in profound de- 
 pression it is best to read profoundly depressing books. 
 There are no more depressing books than those of George 
 Gissing. Their merits are very nearly of the first order, but 
 I should doubt whether anybody had ever read the more 
 characteristic, such as New Grub Street, without finding 
 that his heart sank. Mr. Hardy appears to think that the 
 day will come when soulful and troubled humanity will 
 demand surroundings like itself — the sombre stretch of 
 rounds and hollows rising and meeting the evening gloom 
 in pure sympathy. Mr. Hardy has never surpassed the 
 opening chapter of The Return of the Native, which describes 
 the scenery of Egdon Heath. He speculates on the end 
 of the exclusive reign of orthodox beauty, and the coming 
 of a time when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, 
 or a mountain will be all of nature that is absolutely in 
 keeping with the moods of the more thinking among man- 
 kind. He even fancies a time when the commonest tourist 
 will abandon the vineyards of South Europe for Iceland, 
 and prefer the sand dunes of Scheveningen to Heidelberg 
 and Baden. 
 
 For those who only suffer from the burdens and re- 
 sponsibilities incidental to the ordinary life, the novel in 
 all its forms may be helpful and remedial. I have even 
 fancied that lists of books might be drawn out for special 
 necessities. One writer — I think it is John William Kaye — 
 says that there are only two books really suitable when you 
 have influenza and a temperature. These books are 
 Harriet Martineau's Deerbrook and The Last of the Barons.
 
 802 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 For convalescence, when the temperature is normal, 
 Shirley and Rienzi may be recommended. When I have 
 a temperature I read Rob Roy, and when getting better 
 almost any of the others. Redgauntlet is much to be re- 
 commended, and I know two people at least who always 
 take it with them to the Continent. But there is much 
 to say for Quentin Durward, which R. H. Hutton described 
 as the best sensational story ever written, and for The 
 Fortunes of Nigel, which is a good deal better. For 
 Continental travel I should myself recommend Daniel 
 Deronda. You ought to have a book, and it should be a 
 good book and a long book, and a tolerably dull book. 
 There should be no temptation to turn away from looking 
 at the scenery and resorting to your book, and yet when 
 you wish to turn away there should be something to reward 
 you. There should be no excitement in the narrative 
 to draw you on to the end, but a quiet, steady, easy, un- 
 engrossing progress. There are also novels which are 
 adapted only for reading in railway tunnels, but of these I 
 shall not attempt a list. 
 
 in 
 
 Mr. Balfour did not specify distinctly the novel of 
 humour, for cheerfulness by no means implies humour. 
 But for the humorist and for his works I should be 
 disposed to put in a strong plea. They were never 
 more wanted than in these days of controversy 
 and upheaval. Matthew Arnold spoke of education as 
 the great leveller. That is true only in a very 
 partial sense. There is still a tendency to talk about 
 Eton as the school of the governing classes. I doubt
 
 A PLEA FOR CHEERFUL BOOKS 303 
 
 whether the man who has studied at Eton and Oxford ever 
 gets over a certain contempt for the graduate of London or 
 Manchester. The superciliousness may be veiled, but it 
 is there, and the tendency to give the preference to those 
 who have received the traditional training is one that has 
 to be very severely and resolutely combated. Shelley 
 said very mischievously that the world would never be 
 reformed till laughter was put down, and the idea crops up 
 every now and then in unexpected places. We are con- 
 stantly hearing of the necessity for dispensing with gloves 
 and taking the buttons from the foils. There is a desire 
 for savagery in our political combats. The reformers 
 and the resisters of reform are being perpetually advised 
 by misguided people to dispense with courtesy and good 
 humour, and to go into the fighting each with the de- 
 termination to kill his man. I say that humour is the great 
 leveller, and that a touch of humour makes the whole 
 world kin, and teaches us more in a flash as to the true 
 values and purposes of life than a thousand exhortations. 
 This is no plea for levity. I am all for earnestness, for 
 the issues at stake are great. But I have lived, and with 
 some measure of joy, under Conservative Governments 
 and under Liberal Governments. I look forward to living 
 not without joy under a Labour Government. We must 
 not attach too little importance to the action of the State, 
 and we must not attach too much. There are those who, 
 like Dr. Johnson, think that legislation has only a very 
 small effect upon human happiness. That is not always 
 true. But our happiness is not suspended, or ought not 
 to be suspended, on the issues of political quarrels, and in 
 the height of these quarrels we are never to forget that 
 those opposed to us are our fellow-creatures, and that they
 
 304 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 may be as sincere and unselfish in defending their cause as 
 we are in attacking it. 
 
 By humour I do not mean wit. Wit has in it an element 
 of sarcasm. It is not to be denied that we need the 
 satirist just as we need the common hangman. But when 
 the matter is considered it may be doubted whether the 
 number of great satirists exceeds the number of hangmen, 
 and whether it is desirable that it should. Of humour, 
 the true humour which makes us think more kindly of one 
 another, and calls us back to what is elemental in life, and 
 to the true fellowship which exists in spite of our denials, 
 and the immense orthodoxy which lies under our differ- 
 ences, we can never have too much. 
 
 Of all the great books of humour there is none, to my 
 mind, at all comparable with Pickwick. As Matthew 
 Browne pointed out long ago, the supreme merit of Pick- 
 wick is that it raises our view of human nature. There 
 never was a character more essentially beautiful than the 
 character of Mr. Pickwick. In his book Dickens attained 
 to the great achievement of giving us a hero who is very 
 generally ridiculous and never for one moment contemptible. 
 Under all circumstances Mr. Pickwick is a perfect gentle- 
 man. Even when his plight is most farcically ludicrous, 
 Mr. Pickwick raises our laughter without losing our esteem. 
 In the awful moment when he finds he has made a mistake 
 in choosing his bedroom, when the strings of his nightcap 
 refuse to be untied, when his shoes at the most inopportune 
 moment drop to the ground with an awful crash, Mr. 
 Pickwick commands our esteem for his vehement and 
 reiterated apologies to the legitimate occupier. 
 
 The iron entered Dickens's soul early, and never went out 
 of it. Even in his first work, Sketches by Boz, and Pickwick,
 
 A PLEA FOR CHEERFUL BOOKS 305 
 
 we are brought face to face with human baseness and 
 human suffering. But the presence of Mr. Pickwick, so 
 childlike, so unsuspecting, and so pitiful, alleviates even 
 Dodson and Fogg, Jingle and Job Trotter. There is only 
 one really loathsome figure in Pickwick, and that is Lowten. 
 Happily we see little of him. If we had seen more we 
 should doubtless have had softenings and lightenings and 
 laughing capital made out of this poor creature. In 
 Pickwick there is no cynicism and no malady. We read 
 the book, and we feel that life and humanity are both 
 good, after all. True laughter, as has been said, has 
 at the bottom of it an element of faith, and something 
 also of love. 
 
 Therefore, I say, let us encourage the humorist. Even 
 in this stern time we have writers like Jacobs and George A. 
 Birmingham, and Beith and Clouston. May their kindly 
 race prosper and be increased !
 
 XXXIV 
 
 THE ART OF THE REVIEWER 
 
 I. SEVEN WAYS OF REVIEWING 
 
 There are Seven Ways of Reviewing ; yea, there are 
 Eight. But at present it will be enough to stick to the 
 Seven. 
 
 I. THE OSTENTATIOUS ESSAY 
 
 The reviewer in this kind has little or nothing to say 
 about the book which is supposed to be under notice. He 
 takes occasion to display his own knowledge, and is recalled 
 to the fact that he is expected to write, not an essay, but 
 a review at the eleventh hour, when there is but a corner 
 of his space to be filled. 
 
 Suppose he has to deal with a new edition of the Letters 
 of Obscure Men, edited, and edited carefully, let us say, 
 by Mr. Smith. The Ostentatious Essayist will begin early. 
 He may perhaps trace the first glimmerings of the dawn 
 of the New Learning in Europe, penetrating into the dark- 
 ness of the scholastic philosophy. The dispute between 
 the Nominalists and Realists will next engage him, and 
 William of Occam presents an inviting theme, especially 
 if the reviewer happens to know Principal Lindsay's essay 
 on that subject. Quotations from Cardinal Nicholas von 
 Cusa and Rudolf Agricola look well. 
 
 Next a brief survey of the Italian Renaissance literature 
 
 306
 
 THE ART OF THE REVIEWER .307 
 
 and an estimate of its influence on the Germans may come 
 in. Readers are referred to the works of Geiger, with 
 which the reviewer is apparently on the most intimate 
 terms. A few sagacious though inconclusive observations 
 on the authorship of the letters are now in order, and by 
 this time the critic has wakened up to the fact that 
 two and seven-eighths of the three columns allowed 
 him as a maximum by a grudging editor have now 
 been filled. Suddenly the book before him catches his 
 eye. It occurs to him that he was meant to review it. 
 He will probably feel some compunctions, and end his 
 task with a complimentary sentence, in which that con- 
 venient phrase ' on the whole ' is pretty certain to occur. 
 This is not the worst kind of review. It is a kind detested 
 by authors and disliked by publishers, but if it is well done 
 by a competent person the reader may get some good 
 of it. 
 
 II. THE HYPERCRITICAL REVIEW 
 
 By this I mean the review of the expert who is intent 
 on finding mistakes. The passion for accuracy is admir- 
 able, and in many cases in which books are written with 
 scandalous ignorance and carelessness the expert is doing 
 the public a service when he exposes a fraud. Many 
 shoddy, pseudo-historical books of our time ought to be 
 reviewed much more thoroughly and severely than they 
 are. But the passion for accuracy may mislead a reviewer. 
 It may even carry him unawares into a certain malicious 
 pedantry. 
 
 There is perhaps no such field for the hypercritic as 
 accents. Accents are troublesome in French, in Italian, 
 in Greek, and no doubt in many languages not known to
 
 308 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 me. In an English book where French is freely used the 
 accents are perhaps hardly ever quite rightly given. But 
 I call it hypercriticism when a reviewer writes : l Our 
 author is evidently unaware that the word dejd has two 
 
 accents in French.' Or when he writes : ' Mr. 
 
 fancies that he can read Italian, yet we see him actually 
 putting an acute accent on the word e.' 
 
 Next to accents the great chance for the hypercritic 
 is to be found in dates. Hardly any writer is immaculate 
 in that respect. Some readers may remember James 
 Rowley's attack on J. R. Green's Short History of England, 
 published in Fraser many years ago. Rowley was un- 
 doubtedly right in many of his criticisms, but S. R. Gardiner 
 gave the proper reply when he said that mistakes in dates 
 did not necessarily prove much, if anything, against the 
 real merits of a book. E. A. Freeman was not a fair critic 
 on the whole, and he made a great deal too much of trivial 
 inaccuracies. Since he died historians have risen who 
 have disputed many of his own statements. Still, I say 
 the hypercritic has a chance, especially if he knows the 
 
 difference between Old Style and New Style. ' Dr. 
 
 is under the extraordinary misconception that Calvin 
 died in 1561.' The hypercritic should bear two facts in 
 mind. (1) No historical book was ever written that did 
 not contain some slips. (2) In many cases the slips are 
 due to the printer. It may be said that the author should 
 correct them in proof. So he should, but many authors 
 are bad proof readers. Also it will happen that the printers 
 fail to carry out corrections made in proof. Well, then, 
 I am told, authors should get friends to correct their proofs 
 for them. Do people understand what it means to correct 
 the proofs of a historical book properly ? It means that
 
 THE ART OF THE REVIEWER 309 
 
 you must practically go over the whole ground trodden 
 by the author, and that for no reward. The casual glancing 
 at proofs is a good service to a friend, and may help him 
 to avoid obvious blunders, but to expect any friend to 
 revise proofs as they should be revised is to expect too 
 much. 
 
 The hypercritic therefore ought to show some modesty 
 and consideration. Unless he can show that his author 
 is really untrustworthy he should make allowance for 
 some mistakes, and accept them as misprints if he can. 
 
 Here I may relate a little experience which raises an 
 ethical question. Some years ago I reviewed a little 
 biography by a well-known author, and remarked that 
 the proofs had not been properly read. The author 
 wrote to me saying that he had taken special pains with 
 his proofs, putting them in the hands of some well-known 
 men of letters, whom he named. He asked me to specify 
 the mistakes I had found. I put the letter aside, intending 
 to look up the book again and reply, and unfortunately 
 forgot all about it. Later on in an essay on critics 
 the same writer returned to the charge. He said 
 that generally speaking he had been well treated by re- 
 viewers, but that on one occasion a man (meaning me) 
 had said that his proofs had not been well read, etc., etc. 
 On this I looked up the book in question, and found a 
 certain number of errors in the first few pages. Then 
 irritation calmed down, and I simply could not compel 
 myself to go over the book again. There the matter rests, 
 but I may yet read the book and take up the controversy. - 
 My conduct in forgetting the letter was inexcusable,£but 
 was I bound to read the book a second time and supply 
 the author with a list of corrections ? I think not.
 
 310 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 III. the-man-of-all-work's review 
 
 To almost every journal is attached a reviewer who is 
 a man-of-all-work. It is his business to do the short 
 reviews. He is understood to be able and willing to under- 
 take any parcel of volumes that may be sent to him. His 
 parcel may contain — will contain — all sorts and conditions 
 of books, novels, treatises about Christian Science and 
 Anglo-Israelitism, school-books, editions of the classics, 
 medical books, works on ' The Secret of the Universe,' 
 and minor poems. He has to get notices of these into a 
 column or two. This man-of-all-work is generally an 
 intelligent person. He can see whether an author is 
 obviously incompetent. He knows all about ' and which ' 
 and the ' split infinitive.' He can tell by looking at the 
 authorities quoted what class each volume belongs to. 
 Above all things he knows where the ice is thin. He is 
 exceedingly cautious in committing himself. As he is 
 not usually well paid, he deals in extracts as much as 
 possible. 
 
 This gentleman finds in his parcel one evening a work 
 on that extensive subject, ' The Stellar Universe.' He 
 does not know any astronomy ; he cannot name a single 
 star in the heavens, but he examines the book, beginning 
 with the preface. The preface, if judiciously written, 
 supplies him with a fair portion of the review. Then he 
 turns to the titles of the chapters, and enumerates them 
 more or less fully. He then looks to see whether there is 
 anything about the inhabitants of Mars, and quotes a racy 
 passage, headed in black type, Is Mars Inhabited ? Then 
 comes an appetising little extract, also headed, on the 
 Craters of the Moon. If he is very young, he will probably
 
 THE ART OF THE REVIEWER 311 
 
 assert his individuality by saying that if the moon is 
 inhabited, the fact that so large a space is occupied by only 
 one individual must press hard on the minds of really 
 serious thinkers. This the reviewing editor will be sure to 
 blue pencil. The last sentence will be something like this : 
 ' This volume is well worth consulting by all students of 
 astronomy.' The publishers are moderately satisfied 
 with this review ; the author is not at all satisfied. But 
 the miscellaneous reviewer is not such a fool as people 
 think him. He knows his way about through snares and 
 pitfalls, and generally has travelled it for many a mile. 
 
 IV. THE PUFF 
 
 This kind of review is ancient and lively. We need not 
 go far to find it ; we shall never need to go far. 
 
 Mr. Vaughan Robinson's very latest work of fiction is 
 to be noticed, and the notice runs thus : ' Mr. Vaughan 
 Robinson's enormous and world-wide public will hail with 
 rapturous delight the appearance of this masterpiece of 
 fiction. In our opinion he touches in this book his high- 
 water mark. As compared with his novel which we 
 reviewed three months ago, this book shows an amazing 
 literary development. There is much in these pages which 
 reminds us of Dickens — the rich humour, the bubbling 
 gaiety, the vivid and graphic sketches of character. But 
 in the quiet and deadly irony of some of his passages, 
 Mr. Vaughan Robinson has no rival, save, perhaps, in the 
 immortal pages of Thackeray. In this instance, however, 
 comparisons are idle. Mr. Vaughan Robinson has the 
 gift of condensation. He wastes no space, introduces 
 no irrelevant episodes, and no otiose reflections. In
 
 312 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 100,000 words or fewer he does the work which Thackeray 
 and Dickens barely accomplished in 500,000.' 
 
 This kind of review probably pleases authors, but I 
 doubt whether it does them much good. In one of his 
 stories Ian Maclaren satirises the gushing testimonial 
 written by the Rev. Professor MacDuff MacLeear, D.D., 
 for a probationer. In this the professor describes the 
 Rev. Hiram Clunas as ' a ripe scholar, a profound divine, 
 an eloquent preacher, a faithful pastor, an experienced 
 Christian, with an attractive and popular manner, and 
 general knowledge of a varied and rich character.' The 
 testimonial that is worth while is that from the great 
 scholar, Dr. Zechariah Carphin, who describes his friend 
 as ' fully competent to expound the Hebrew Scriptures 
 after an accurate and spiritual fashion to any body of 
 intelligent people.' 
 
 ' Pardon me, it is my foolishness, but you notice " fully " ; 
 this extremity of language is, I need not say, undeserved, 
 but that Dr. Carphin should have written it is ... a 
 compensation for many little disappointments.' 
 
 V. THE MALIGNANT REVIEW 
 
 I wish I could say that the malignant review was extinct. 
 It is happily not so common as it was. Happily also 
 respectable editors are setting their faces against it. Still 
 you come across it pretty often. It is a review in which 
 a book has been judged before it has been read. The 
 author is criticised not for what he has written, but for 
 his particular views, political or religious. The word goes 
 round that no good thing can come out of that camp, and 
 so work of genuine merit is pooh-poohed. The history of
 
 THE ART OF THE REVIEWER 313 
 
 literary criticism in this country — it is not a very long 
 history — has many dark pages recording these iniquities. 
 Far worse is the case of a reviewer who has a personal 
 quarrel with his author, and tries to avenge himself. This 
 also is not rare. No man of honour will ever allow himself 
 to criticise a book by a man who is a personal antagonist. 
 Let him seek refuge if he must in a Salvation Army shelter ; 
 anything rather than run the risk of indulging personal 
 rancour by an apparently honest and candid criticism. 
 The day will come when this kind of attack will be con- 
 sidered so infamous as to debar its perpetrators from all 
 decent society, and exclude them from all respectable 
 newspapers. 
 
 VI. THE HONESTLY ENTHUSIASTIC REVIEW 
 
 There is no such pleasure in a reviewer's life as when 
 he comes across a book of sterling merit by an author 
 previously unknown to him. Then he legitimately enjoys 
 to the full the noble pleasure of praising. It is not a very 
 common experience by the very nature of the case. To 
 find a sovereign where you expected to find at most six- 
 pence is a surprise. But open and appreciative minds do 
 come on this pleasure sometimes, and it is a pleasure which 
 often leads to much. It is no easy matter for a new writer, 
 however gifted, to make his way. If there is stuff in him 
 he will come to his own by degrees, but he may be spared 
 many a heartache by a strong and cordial word of praise 
 at the right time. The happy reviewer who has a chance 
 of speaking this word may occasionally find that his life has 
 been enriched by a precious friendship.
 
 314 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 VII. THE RIGHT KIND OF REVIEW 
 
 By the right kind of review I mean the honest and 
 careful criticism of a competent judge. Let me suppose 
 that I have written a sound book on Socialism, giving 
 thereto a careful study of many months and of many books 
 in various languages. It will please me if I find my critic 
 saying that the subject has been carefully studied, and 
 that the results are presented in a clear and impartial way. 
 But something more than that should be found here and 
 there. Let me have a critic who knows more than I do, 
 or at least who has read in directions I have not followed 
 out. Let me be able to see that he has read and pondered 
 and understood all I have written. His praise will then 
 be very sweet. His criticisms will be thankfully received 
 and considered, even when they are not accepted. I shall 
 feel to my critic as Charlotte Bronte felt to Sydney Dobell 
 when she read his review of her sister's Wuihering Heights. 
 ' The article in the Palladium is one of those notices over 
 which an author rejoices trembling. He rejoices to find 
 his work finely, fully, fervently appreciated, and trembles 
 under the responsibility such appreciation seems to devolve 
 upon him.' There ought to be at least some periodicals 
 and newspapers in this country in which an author who 
 has done his duty may look for just appraisement.
 
 XXXV 
 
 THE ART OF THE REVIEWER— (Continued) 
 
 II. ON LITERARY GOSSIP AND THE EIGHTH WAY 
 OF REVIEWING 
 
 Literary gossip is now fairly prominent in the newspapers 
 as well as in those organs that are more especially devoted 
 to literature. It was perhaps still more prominent say 
 fifteen years ago. By ' literary gossip ' I mean paragraphs 
 about authors, about forthcoming books, about new 
 books, and new papers. So far as I know this kind of 
 journalism is comparatively recent. It is impossible to 
 speak with any confidence, for we have no book which 
 deserves to be called a history of English journalism, and 
 the field is so wide and difficult that no one is likely to 
 cultivate it. But I believe that the originator of literary 
 gossip in this country was Mr. Francis Espinasse, who 
 died recently at an advanced age, a brother of the Charter- 
 house. 
 
 i 
 
 The Athenaeum had a hard struggle in its early days. 
 It was started as an honest review — that is, a review 
 independent of the publishers. John Sterling and F. D. 
 Maurice were mainly responsible for its early numbers, 
 and their high sense of honour is beyond dispute. The 
 Literary Gazette had sunk very low, and did not deserve 
 
 316
 
 316 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 to be looked upon as impartial or trustworthy. But the 
 Athenceum did not gain ground till it was taken in hand 
 by Dilke, who established it on a firm foundation. Even 
 then it had rivals. The Literary Gazette passed from one 
 editor to another till it died at last in the 'sixties under the 
 editorship of John Morley. A more formidable rival 
 was the Critic, which was started by Mr. Serjeant Cox, 
 the founder of the Queen and the Field. The Queen and 
 the Field won a huge and speedy success, and it looked at 
 one time as if the Critic were also to be a success. This 
 favourable prospect was almost wholly due to Mr. Francis 
 Espinasse. Mr. Espinasse was then a young journalist, 
 with a keen interest in books and authors, and a happy 
 turn of telling what he knew. 
 
 Mr. Espinasse, who was an intimate friend of the 
 Carlyles, and at home in many London literary circles of 
 his time, contributed at least two articles a week to the 
 Critic. One of them was on the sayings and doings of 
 the literary world. The other was on a history of great 
 publishers and great periodicals. One was signed Hero- 
 dotus Smith, and the other Lucian Paul, but they both 
 came from the same pen. They were extraordinarily 
 good. I possess the old volumes which contain them, and 
 I do not think there is anything in journalism now to be 
 compared with them. They redeemed the promise made 
 by the Critic — that its readers in the remotest part of the 
 country should be as well aware of what was going on in 
 London literary circles as the men who belonged to those 
 circles. 
 
 So long as Mr. Espinasse was working for the Critic it 
 flourished, but misunderstandings took place, and he 
 went to Manchester. No one was found to supply his
 
 THE ART OF THE REVIEWER 317 
 
 place, and after an interval of years he was brought back. 
 But it was too late ; the circulation and advertisements 
 of the Critic had diminished so greatly that its death was 
 inevitable. 
 
 The work of the literary gossiper is by no means easy. 
 He must get his facts at first hand. Only from authors, 
 from publishers, and from editors can paragraphs of value 
 be derived. It is of no use to go to any one, however 
 benevolent he may be, and ask him for information. You 
 can only get the information indirectly in the course of 
 friendly conversation. Even then you must be exceed- 
 ingly careful. Much that is told you is not meant for 
 publication. Sometimes you are warned of this, but you 
 need in addition to have a kind of instinct. Any breach 
 of confidence or discretion will be 'punished by the with- 
 drawal of further communications. To close up even 
 one source of communication where there are so few is 
 a serious matter. Sometimes the gossiper who has turned 
 out a poor set of paragraphs bemoans himself because he 
 cannot tell all he knows. If he could tell he would be 
 quoted in every newspaper. But he cannot, and so he 
 must do the best he can. So great is the difficulty that 
 some powerful journals are almost always blank in the 
 matter of literary news, though they are quite willing to 
 pay for it, and occasionally take pains to secure it. 
 
 No doubt the literary newsmonger is tempted to over- 
 estimate the interest of the public in books and in authors. 
 He writes about obscure men, in a friendly or in a satirical 
 way, and the general reader is puzzled. He cannot under- 
 stand those allusions to nonentities. Some editors feel 
 this so strongly that they make little of literary news, and 
 are content to cut out from one paper or another. But
 
 318 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 when all is said and done, I believe there are a good many 
 who are interested in the literary world and like to read 
 about it. One meets very few people who buy books, 
 and yet it is a fact beyond denial that books are bought. 
 Any great bookbinder will tell you that more books are 
 sold every year, and it follows that there are buyers. 
 Those who buy books certainly like to read about them, 
 and so the journalist who has the power to put together 
 a really good literary column is always in request, and 
 likely to remain in request. 
 
 ii 
 
 So I come to the Eighth way of reviewing, which bids 
 fair to become the most popular of all. By this I mean the 
 review that blends gossip with criticism — the personal 
 review. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting form of the personal review 
 is that in which the critic from his own knowledge can 
 say something about the author. ' I take up this book 
 with peculiar feelings. I sat on the same bench with the 
 author at college. We knew him as Jimmy Thompson. 
 He shone especially in the Greek class ; his translations 
 recalled for classical grace and beauty the famous verses 
 of Professor Gilbert Murray. He was always ready, and 
 yet he never seemed to work,' and so on, and so on. 
 
 But this is not always possible, and then you must do 
 the best you can. Here is a new book, let us say, by 
 Mr. Charles Garvice. Begin : ' I shall never forget while 
 memory lasts my first introduction to Mr. Garvice' s work. 
 I was starting for India one dark, wet autumn evening. 
 My friend — the friend of my boyhood and my manhood,
 
 THE ART OF THE REVIEWER 319 
 
 Harry Blyth — insisted on accompanying me to the gloomy 
 station of Waterloo. (I hope it is Waterloo.) He went 
 to the bookstall, and as the train was starting he pressed 
 a volume into my hand. ' There," he said, " is a book 
 that will delight you. You will not know a moment's 
 weariness as long as you are reading it. That is by 
 Charles Garvice." Poor Harry Blyth ! We know not 
 what is before us. I went to India, and lived through 
 torrid and adventurous years in a pestilential climate. 
 He went back to his quiet but not unprofitable task. 
 When I had overpast my dangers and come back to 
 London, I heard that my friend had been struck with 
 apoplexy as he was turning over the pages of his ledger. 
 Such is life.' This is a pretty good beginning, and then 
 may follow some account of the book in hand. 
 
 There is a variety of the personal review which may be 
 worth describing. In it you begin with an incident and 
 close with a continuation of the incident. Thus you are 
 reviewing a book, let us say, by Henry Seton Merriman. 
 You start thus : ' One winter in the discharge of my 
 duties as a special correspondent I was compelled to spend 
 some time in Odessa. Those who know that dreariest 
 of towns (here a fair amount about Odessa, which can be 
 got anywhere, may come in). I lodged with a singular 
 couple. The husband was a gigantic Russian, the most 
 reserved and reticent of men. His wife was a vivacious 
 little Scotswoman. Almost the only book in their little 
 home was The Sowers, by Henry Seton Merriman. My 
 landlady was trying to teach her Russian husband English 
 by means of this book. I had never heard of Merriman 
 before, but to read The Sowers is to remember it for 
 ever.
 
 320 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 ' And now we have another book from the same magic 
 pen.' Then comes the review. Well, then, I should 
 finish up with something like this : ' Does the reader wish 
 to know the further story of that strangely matched 
 couple ? ' The rest can be filled up by any reviewer 
 according to his fancy. I do not mean to mock this kind 
 of criticism. By no means. If it is well done it is more 
 likely to be read and more likely to help a book than any 
 other. And I should not be at all surprised if some 
 popular newspapers that have not yet found the way of 
 making their literary page interesting were to adopt it. 
 
 in 
 
 Are reviews as good as they used to be ? In other 
 words, supposing an author puts toil and brains into his 
 work, is he as sure of receiving fair, adequate, competent 
 criticism as he would have been say thirty years ago ? 
 Many authors and many publishers will answer with an 
 emphatic no. But I venture to differ from them. Some 
 worthy critical tribunals have been scattered. Others 
 have deteriorated, and in some cases most painfully. 
 No one who knows anything about journalism will say 
 that the sixpenny weekly reviews are as good to-day as 
 they were in the sixties or seventies. For that there are 
 many reasons, but in other places things are improving. 
 There is now, I think, a greater desire than ever to recognise 
 a new author, whether his claims be those of genius or 
 those of scholarship. On the whole I see no reason to be 
 discouraged. Will there then be in the journalism of the 
 future any place of importance for the competent reviewer ? 
 Certainly, there will always be a place. So long as books
 
 THE ART OF THE REVIEWER 321 
 
 are bought and read, so long the critic will have his chance. 
 Criticism is not, never has been, and never will be a 
 particularly remunerative occupation, but it has its 
 compensations, real and great. 
 
 IV 
 
 If I might say one thing to the young reviewer it would 
 be this : Leave the bitter word unspoken. As a great 
 man said, it is so easy to be sarcastic. There are occasions 
 which justify stern and severe criticism, but reviewers 
 should stand up to men who can hit back. They should 
 not strike the defenceless. One has to live a long time 
 among authors and know their ways before he under- 
 stands how much their books often mean to them. Here 
 is a little book of minor poetry. The authoress has paid 
 for its publication, and is waiting with tense anxiety for 
 the reviews. It is a poor little book, and there are one or 
 two ridiculous lines in it which if quoted would raise a 
 laugh. The true critic ought to be above that temptation. 
 If he cannot possibly say anything good about the little 
 book, let him leave it alone. When a novelist who in 
 honest ways can attract no attention takes to coarse or 
 obscene subjects, it is a sorry and pitiful business. But 
 to attack these books is, generally speaking, to advertise 
 them. So silence is best. In the case of a new writer it 
 is well to search for any signs of genuine promise, and to 
 dwell on these. The kind of review that I most detest 
 is the attack on old writers who have done good work, 
 and are beginning to fail. There is a peculiar brutality 
 in some of these. It is charitable to suppose that they are 
 written in ignorance. One such review I specially re- 
 
 x
 
 322 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 member. It was a clever and biting criticism of a book 
 by an aged lady, who had done great things in her time, 
 and was then close upon the end. She was dying of 
 cancer, but she had time before she died to read that 
 review.
 
 XXXVI 
 
 ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 Mr. Birrell discussed some time ago the question, Is it 
 possible to distinguish between a good book and a bad 
 book ? He came to the conclusion that it was very diffi- 
 cult to draw the line. Is it possible to distinguish a good 
 man from a bad man ? It is by no means easy. The 
 question is rarely raised by a biographer. As a rule, one 
 lays down a biography feeling that he has learned some- 
 thing, that the man of whom he has been reading has some 
 quality of nobleness or of patience which may well be 
 admired and followed. But the Life of Robert Buchanan 
 written by Miss Harriet Jay in 1902 almost forces a moral 
 judgment on Buchanan. I hope to resist the compulsion, 
 and to content myself with drawing attention to some 
 materials for the solution of the problem. I do not think 
 there will be any difference of opinion as to Buchanan's 
 intellectual gifts and literary achievements. He had an 
 unquestionable touch of genius, and has done some fine 
 things. But by far the larger part of his work is quite 
 dead, and only the merest fragments can survive. 
 
 I hasten to say that Miss Jay has done her work admir- 
 ably, with true affection and lenity, and yet with a frank 
 and serious candour. The great literary power manifested 
 in her early book, The Queen of Connaught, has not failed 
 her. Her style is simple and unambitious, but it has a 
 
 »28
 
 324 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 touch of distinction, and alike in what she says and in what 
 she does not say one cannot but mark her understanding 
 of the issues, and her determination to be at once just 
 and merciful. It weighs heavily on Buchanan's side that 
 he retained through life the warm affection of three such 
 women as his mother, his wife, and his sister-in-law. They 
 were by no means blind to his failings, but they loved him 
 in spite of all. Let that be remembered whenever he 
 comes up for judgment. Buchanan's life was in many 
 respects extraordinary and abnormal. Miss Jay says that 
 he was from first to last a lonely man, that he had few 
 friends and many enemies, and that he received from the 
 world many cruel blows. No man, she says, has been 
 oftener abused, though no man needed kindness so much 
 and received so little. How do the facts bear this out ? 
 Buchanan's parents were prosperous in his childhood. He 
 had comforts and even luxuries, and he had a fair educa- 
 tion at the High School and University of Glasgow. When 
 he was only eighteen he went off to London, and for a short 
 time he had a pretty hard struggle. In 1861, when he was 
 only twenty, he married a lovely girl in her 'teens, and by 
 that time he was doing fairly well. He had been accepted 
 as a contributor to the Athenceum, and he worked also for 
 other periodicals of importance in their day, such as All 
 the Year Round and Temple Bar. He was employed by 
 the Morning Star as a foreign correspondent. He obtained 
 admission to the inner circle of literary people. Among 
 others he was welcomed by George Henry Lewes and 
 George Eliot, by Barry Cornwall, by Miss Mulock, by 
 Thomas Love Peacock, by Edmund Yates, and by Robert 
 Browning. He was also on very intimate terms with 
 Charles Gibbon and William Black. In 1863, when he was
 
 ROBERT BUCHANAN 325 
 
 twenty-two, his first volume of poems, Undertones, 
 appeared, and was followed not long after by Idylls and 
 Legends of Inverburn. He came into connection with the 
 most generous of all publishers, Alexander Strahan. His 
 work for Strahan is not adequately recorded in this bio- 
 graphy. There was a time when Buchanan wrote most of 
 the St. PauVs Magazine. One of his first contributions 
 to a London magazine was a poem in Good Words, which, 
 by the way, was signed Williams Buchanan, and though 
 Miss Jay does not say so, I believe the poet's name was 
 Robert Williams Buchanan. More than that, R. H. 
 Hutton, of the Spectator, took him up with vehement en- 
 thusiasm, as much later he took up William Watson. The 
 result was that, before he was twenty-five, Buchanan was 
 offered £400 for a volume of poems, and was able to take 
 a house near Oban. We are told that he lived there the 
 life of a regulation country gentleman. His tastes were 
 expensive, and he gratified them. He had his shooting 
 and his fishing, while his yacht was riding at anchor 
 in Oban Bay. Now I should like to know what right 
 Buchanan had to complain of the world ? Is there any 
 case of a young author making so prosperous a start ? 
 He had hardly arrived in London as a mere boy when the 
 most exclusive houses and the most jealously guarded 
 periodicals were open to him, when the chief critics of the 
 day — George Henry Lewes and Hutton and Hepworth 
 Dixon — were loudly chanting his praises ; when publishers 
 were competing for his poems as they would compete for 
 hardly any poet nowadays ; and when he was able to live 
 like a country gentleman, with his shooting, his fishing, and 
 his yachting. True, the country life came after a few 
 years, but it is perfectly evident that from the date of his
 
 326 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 marriage Buchanan must have been making an income of 
 very comfortable proportions. So far as I know, and so 
 far as this biography shows, he had no enemies then. 
 He never had to run the gauntlet of criticism. He was 
 accepted from the first, and all things opened fair for him. 
 The truth is, not that Buchanan did not make friends, but 
 that he could not keep friends. I remember well the 
 manner in which he wrote of Hutton towards the end of 
 his life, and it raised the question whether Buchanan 
 knew what gratitude meant. 
 
 Clouds came over the bright opening of his life. Was 
 this because friends played him false ? I do not think 
 so. It was because he played himself false. Miss Jay 
 virtually acknowledges that he had no conscience about 
 his literary work — that is, he did not feel bound to do his 
 best. He was always recklessly extravagant, and we are 
 told in this volume that his wife had no faculty for saving 
 any more than he had. In consequence, he was always 
 impoverished. No matter how much his income was, he 
 always contrived to spend more. Money had to be found, 
 and he got it somehow by writing incessantly. But how 
 badly he could write ! It is melancholy to read the list 
 of his books. After God and the Man, nearly all might be 
 struck out with great advantage to his reputation ; in 
 fact, some volumes which preceded God and the Man, 
 especially Napoleon Fallen and the Fleshly School of Poetry, 
 might very well be spared. I will not raise questions 
 as to the authorship of some books published under 
 Buchanan's name, a subject on which I do not profess to 
 know more than other people. 
 
 But this is a small part of the indictment. The gravest 
 charge against Buchanan is not that he wrote quantities
 
 ROBERT BUCHANAN 327 
 
 of disgraceful rubbish, but that he introduced a truly 
 diabolical spirit of malignity into literary controversy. 
 As to literary controversies, there is a distinction. Many 
 of them are merely theatrical. They give amusement to 
 both sides, and to the public. Even these, perhaps, do 
 harm to literary men. They do not show them in their 
 best light. But there are literary controversies that blight 
 lives and poison minds, and of such were Buchanan's. I 
 do not wish to take up again the excessively disagreeable 
 story of Buchanan's attack on Rossetti. On this, as on 
 almost every point, Miss Jay has written with admirable 
 sense and good feeling. Rossetti was quite open to 
 criticism, and even severe criticism. No less a man than 
 Lowell wrote adversely and severely of his poems in the 
 North American Review. But what cannot be excused to 
 any critic is that he should write to avenge real or fancied 
 insults. Mr. Swinburne, it seems, made a contemptuous 
 allusion to the poems of Buchanan's early friend, David 
 Gray. Buchanan thought that Swinburne was retaliating 
 on himself for his review of Poems and Ballads in the 
 Athenaeum. That article, which lies before me, was 
 offensive in the highest degree, and there is hardly any pro- 
 vocation that could have justified it. Buchanan resolved 
 to strike at Rossetti, and did so. Miss Jay says : ' His 
 motive was, I know, primarily revenge.' It is too well 
 known that the attack, contemptible as it was in form and 
 spirit, grievously injured Rossetti, and was, in fact, the 
 primary cause of his decline and death. Buchanan re- 
 pented and retracted, but the mischief was done. He did 
 not learn wisdom or charity from the quarrel. He went 
 on to denounce other writers, great and small, with equal 
 un scrupulousness, and from the same motive, that of
 
 328 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 revenge. I hope it is not necessary to argue that criticism 
 inspired in this fashion is evil, and that it brands the name 
 of the perpetrator. In conducting his warfare Buchanan 
 stuck at nothing. For example, he wrote afterwards that 
 Tennyson and Browning were with him, and that Tennyson 
 told him that he considered a certain sonnet of Rossetti's 
 the ' filthiest thing he had ever read.' I say that under 
 no circumstances is it justifiable to hold such language. 
 When Buchanan published this statement Tennyson was 
 dead, and unable to contradict it. It rests entirely on 
 Buchanan's word ; and, frankly, I believe that the state- 
 ment was not true, for in the reminiscences contributed by 
 Mr. Palgrave to Lord Tennyson's memoir, there is a 
 eulogium by Tennyson on this very sonnet. Nobody will 
 suppose that Palgrave lied, nor do I say that Buchanan lied. 
 There were innumerable misstatements in the later papers 
 of reminiscences published by him in the Sunday Special 
 and elsewhere. He imagined that he was speaking the 
 truth, no doubt. It is very disagreeable to write in this 
 strain, but it is necessary in the interests of justice. 
 Buchanan is a warning to all critics. If they are unfor- 
 tunate enough to cherish personal animosity towards any 
 author, it is perfectly plain that they have no right under 
 any circumstances to review his books. If they use their 
 power as critics to avenge real or imagined personal wrongs, 
 they are vermin who ought to be, as soon as possible, 
 caught, cracked, and extirpated. It must also be pointed 
 out that there is a peculiar baseness in attacking, not the 
 man who has done you wrong, but another man who has 
 done you no wrong, and is simply the friend of your 
 enemy. Every one concerned for the reputation of 
 literature ought to denounce without mercy all such
 
 ROBERT BUCHANAN 329 
 
 practices. I wish I could think they were quite given 
 over now. 
 
 In the latter part of his life Buchanan took to play- 
 writing, and received very large sums of money. Miss 
 Jay tells us that he squandered them all. Whatever his 
 income was, he always managed to be a little in arrear. 
 ' He could no more help being prodigal with his great 
 gains than the sun can help shining.' In 1894 he was 
 standing in the bankruptcy court a practically ruined man. 
 Mr. Henry Murray tells us that he was a born gambler, 
 and though he was fully fifty years of age before he ever 
 saw a racecourse, he took to the sport of racing with the 
 same youthful ardour which characterised his pursuit of 
 all that attracted his attention. He was a persistent 
 loser, though we are told that he never regretted the money 
 which the turf cost him. Buchanan had a right to be 
 poor. He had a right to spend his income ; but had he 
 the right to become bankrupt ? If he had become 
 bankrupt through an unavoidable misfortune, was it not 
 his duty to strain every nerve in order to repay his 
 creditors ? That was the view taken by Sir Walter Scott, 
 and it is well to read Scott's journal after this biography 
 in order to recover one's faith in human nature. We are 
 told nothing here of the sum for which Buchanan failed, 
 or of the money he provided for his creditors, and it is not 
 my business to give the particulars. There is no doubt 
 that Buchanan could be generous, that he was often very 
 lavish in his gifts. But justice comes before generosity, 
 and it has to be asked whether Buchanan was just. 
 
 Let it be remembered that he was a man of fine gifts, 
 of much humanity, and that by those who knew him best 
 he was most dearly beloved. There is a great deal in this
 
 330 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 book, too much, I think, about Buchanan's notions on 
 Christianity. We are told that when he was preparing an 
 article on the subject, he went down with a friend to the 
 Sandown Races. His friend found him in the middle of 
 the ring serenely unconscious of the carnival, reading his 
 Greek Testament. When the bell rang he slipped the 
 volume into his pocket, marked the place with a tip 
 telegram, and plunged into the fray apparently greatly 
 refreshed by his studies.
 
 XXXVII 
 
 LAFCADIO HEARN : AN UNCONVENTIONAL LIFE 
 
 Messrs. Constable in 1906 issued the English edition of 
 the Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, by Elizabeth 
 Bisland. The work makes two considerable volumes. 
 I may say at once that if anybody expects to find in 
 it a collection of letters to rank with the best — with 
 those of, say, Stevenson or of Edward FitzGerald — he 
 will be disappointed. No such claim can rightly be 
 urged for Hearn. In spite of this, the book is alive with 
 interest. It is indeed one of the most fascinating and 
 holding among recent biographies, and I should be puzzled 
 to think of any one quite its equal in a certain strange 
 impressiveness. 
 
 Many of us in this country knew Hearn as a writer on 
 Japan. His contributions appeared in some of the best 
 of the American magazines, notably the Atlantic Monthly. 
 They were always worth reading, but did not leave behind 
 them any definite impression. To me it seemed as if 
 Hearn were striving in vain to handle the brush of Loti. 
 Loti is of all living writers the most difficult to imitate 
 successfully, and Hearn was not successful. Also there 
 was in Hearn's writing a curious aloofness and imperson- 
 ality. He was apt to comment as if he did not belong to 
 the world of human beings on which he passed his judg- 
 ment — as if he had come from another planet, and had the 
 
 331
 
 332 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 means of return ready. Still he was well above the 
 average, and the paragraphs which appeared from time 
 to time about his experiences stimulated curiosity. When 
 he died, there were some interesting obituary notices, one 
 quite remarkably interesting from the pen of his physician. 
 This, if I remember rightly, appeared in the Fortnightly 
 Review. Then this biography was published in America, 
 and the letters which make the bulk of it were praised in 
 what I must think extravagant terms. What the letters 
 do for us is to show that Lafcadio Hearn was very human 
 indeed, very modest, very sensitive, and full of desire to 
 learn. He would no doubt have made a much greater 
 mark in literature if he had been content to use his own 
 weapons of expression, if he had not been imbued from the 
 first with the desire to handle the swords of others. When 
 every abatement is made, Lafcadio Hearn will remain a 
 striking figure in the firmament of American letters. 
 
 The biographer, Mrs. Wetmore, who uses her maiden 
 name, Elizabeth Bisland, has confined herself to a very 
 brief summary of Lafcadio's life. She uses only about 
 160 pages, and large parts of these are borrowed. Then 
 come the letters, occupying more than 300 pages in the 
 first volume, and the whole of the second. Hearn's life 
 may be summarised very briefly. He was born in the 
 Ionian Isles, the son of an Irish soldier and a beautiful 
 Greek girl. His boyhood was a troubled time, and during 
 the year 1869 Lafcadio Hearn, nineteen years old, penniless, 
 delicate, half blind, and without a friend, found himself in 
 the streets of New York.
 
 LAFCADIO HEARN 333 
 
 His time in New York was one of peculiar misery, but 
 not much is known of it. It was not till he obtained a 
 position in New Orleans in 1881 that he had any happiness 
 or any appreciation. Hearn was about five feet three in 
 height, with broad and powerful shoulders, and an almost 
 feminine grace and lightness in his movements. He made 
 friends in New Orleans, and travelled in the tropics, being 
 particularly attracted by the Island of Martinique. Ulti- 
 mately he went to Japan, and remained there fourteen years 
 as a teacher. During this time he married a Japanese 
 lady, became naturalised, and wrote his principal books. 
 He was never very happy, and he had great anxieties, but 
 he managed somehow to live, and gradually he gained so 
 much reputation that he had a chance of lecturing at 
 London and Oxford. It was not to be. A sudden violent 
 illness, attended by bleeding from the lungs, and induced 
 by strain and anxiety, brought him quite suddenly to 
 the end, and he was buried in an ancient Buddhist grave- 
 yard in the country of his adoption. His students pre- 
 sented a laurel wreath with the inscription, ' In memory 
 of Lafcadio Hearn, whose pen was mightier than the sword 
 of the victorious nation which he loved and lived among, 
 and whose highest honour it is to have given him citizen- 
 ship and, alas, a grave ! ' That was the end of it so far as 
 this world is concerned. How far his contribution to 
 English letters will endure has yet to be seen. 
 
 ii 
 
 To me the most interesting part of the volumes is that 
 associated with New Orleans. There is no more memorable 
 city in the world than New Orleans is, or was, when I saw
 
 384 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 it in 1896. It was so utterly unlike the rest of the American 
 cities. Who can forget that great central road which 
 divided the two parts of the town, the one part embracing 
 the Creoles and the French ? We were assured that many 
 ancient people had never crossed the Broadway, and I 
 could believe it. Who can forget the general moistness 
 and warmth of the atmosphere, the curious suggestion of 
 the tropics, marred only by the indefinable fear of sudden 
 fever ? At that time the drains ran open in the streets. 
 Who can forget all the extraordinary cemeteries — those 
 huge masses of granite slowly sinking in the sand ? The 
 mere sight of the Mississippi was in itself enough to stir 
 the imagination. The city at that time was full of intel- 
 lectual activity. Mr. Cable had made it alive for us, especi- 
 ally by his book Dr. Sevier, the scene of which was laid in 
 the St. Charles Hotel, where we lived. Multitudes of the 
 New Orleans people, and especially the Creoles, vehemently 
 denied the correctness of Mr. Cable's representations ; 
 but who can deny their charm ? Miss Grace King still 
 lives, and is universally honoured for what she has done in 
 her striking fiction and otherwise for New Orleans and 
 Louisiana. At that time the daily papers were con- 
 spicuous for their literary interest and excellence. Were 
 there ever such long streets ? In one case I remember 
 the numbers ran to over two thousand. The fires of the 
 Civil War had by no means died down into grey ashes, as 
 I remember to my cost, having rashly engaged in a dis- 
 cussion with a very brilliant old lady, the widow of a 
 planter. 
 
 Hearn went to New Orleans about 1877, but he remained 
 till 1889, so that I am able to understand many allusions 
 in the narrative. The city at the time was in decadence,
 
 LAFCADIO HEARN 335 
 
 but Hearn delighted in the melancholy grey houses where 
 he lodged — in abandoned, crumbling apartments, and 
 where he was served by timid, unhappy gentlewomen or 
 their ex-servants. All the colourful, polyglot, half-tropical 
 life of the town was a constant appeal to the romantic 
 side of the young man's nature. Happily, in 1881, he 
 came into contact with the newly consolidated Times- 
 Democrat and its editor-in-chief, Page M. Baker, whom I 
 well remember. Of Baker he said : 4 He is a man of 
 immense force — it takes such a one to rule in that com- 
 munity, but as a gentleman I never saw his superior in 
 grace or consideration. I always loved him — but, like all 
 whom I like, never could get quite enough of his company 
 for myself.' Hearn was allowed to contribute to the 
 paper a weekly translation from some French writer — 
 Th6ophile Gautier, Guy de Maupassant, or Pierre Loti, 
 and he was encouraged to add original papers. He 
 made other friends, who had a strong influence over 
 him, and he spent much money upon books. Among the 
 English writers to whom he was specially drawn was 
 Le Fanu. By the way, he refers with strong praise to a 
 gipsy novel in the Cornhill entitled Zelda's Fortune. New 
 Orleans he defined as a Latin city. ' I seldom,' he said, 
 ' hear the English tongue except when I enter the English 
 office for a brief hour. I see beauty here all around me, 
 a strange, tropical, intoxicating beauty.' But he grew 
 weary of everything, and by and by he longed to leave 
 New Orleans. He had by this time made acquaintance 
 with Mr. Cable, who was then working in the town. ' I 
 was a little disappointed, though I was also much delighted 
 with parts of Cable's Grandissimes.' ' He did not follow 
 out his first plan — as he told me he was going to do — viz. ,
 
 336 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 to scatter about fifty Creole songs through the work, with 
 the music in the shape of notes at the end. There are 
 only a few ditties published ; and as the Creole music 
 deals in fractions of tones, Mr. Cable failed to write it 
 properly. He is not enough of a musician, I fancy, for 
 that.' Elsewhere, writing in 1883, he says : ' I am afraid 
 you have read the poorest of Cable's short stories. Jean-ah 
 Poquelin, Belles -Demoiselles are much better than Tite 
 Poulette. There is something very singular to me in 
 Cable's power. It is not a superior style ; it is not a 
 minutely finished description — for it will often endure no 
 close examination at all ; nevertheless, his stories have a 
 puissant charm which is hard to analyse. His serial novel, 
 The Grandissimes, is not equal to the others ; but I think 
 the latter portion of Dr. Sevier will surprise many. He 
 did me the honour to read nearly the whole book to me. 
 Cultivate him, if you get a chance.' A more powerful 
 influence than Cable's was that of Herbert Spencer. To 
 him Hearn completely succumbed. He remained under 
 that dominance to the last day of his life in spite of Japan, 
 and Shintoism, and Buddhism. ' A friend disciplined me 
 to read Herbert Spencer. I suddenly discovered what a 
 waste of time all my Oriental metaphysics have been,' 
 
 in 
 
 But the life of Hearn was his Japanese life, and it is by 
 his connection with Japan that he will be remembered. 
 It is a strange and in many respects a pathetic story. 
 Hearn went to Japan in 1890, and received an appoint- 
 ment as a schoolmaster. In 1891 he married Setsu 
 Koizumi, a lady of high Samurai rank. She and her
 
 LAFCADIO HEARN 337 
 
 family had sunk into poverty. Under ordinary circum- 
 stances a Japanese woman of rank would consider an 
 alliance with a foreigner a disgrace. But whatever may 
 have been the secret feelings of Setsu, it is certain she im- 
 mediately became passionately attached to her husband, 
 and the marriage continued to the end a happy one. In 
 order to make her marriage legal, Hearn had to become a 
 subject of the Mikado, and be adopted into his wife's family. 
 This signified that he had to support a number of her 
 relations. From the beginning he had heavy responsi- 
 bilities, but his wife in her broken English gives us to 
 understand that he loved Japanese ways. At first the 
 couple could not talk. He knew little Japanese, and she 
 knew no English. They had sometimes to refer to the 
 dictionary. In course of time, however, they were able to 
 talk freely. Heam began to perceive the fierceness and 
 sternness of the Japanese character. Much as he wrote 
 about Japan, he himself was the frankest in confessing 
 that he never understood the people, and that the barrier 
 between the East and the West was insuperable. * He 
 grew aware in time that even he, with his amazing capacity 
 for entering into the spirit of other races, must for ever 
 remain alien to the Oriental. He resented what is called 
 the civilisation of Japan, but he never hesitated about the 
 iron core which underlies the silken courtesy of the Japanese 
 character.' Considering Hearn's impracticable temper, he 
 got on fairly well with the Japanese, though towards the 
 end of his life he was most anxious to find work either in 
 America or in England.
 
 338 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 IV 
 
 But it was in Japan that the crowning event of his life 
 happened to him, that event in comparison with which all 
 the rest were as nothing. This was not his marriage ; it 
 was not his rise into a modest literary fame. It was the 
 birth of his eldest son. Hearn had four children, and he 
 seems to have loved them all, but it was the eldest who had 
 an immortal grasp of his spirit. I know few things more 
 touching than the constant references to the little lad. 
 Hearn had himself been anything but a Puritan. He had 
 mocked at much that is obligatory as well as much that is 
 conventional. But as his son grew up, he saw the wisdom 
 of the old rules. He perceived the force of moral law. 
 He could not bear the thought that the boy should go 
 wrong as he had gone wrong. The burden and the joy of 
 life increased for him immeasurably. At first he thought 
 that the little man would become a good little Buddhist 
 and have natural physical freedom, but this did not long 
 content him. He writes to Baker : ' I did not tell you I 
 had a son, who is, of course, dearer than my own life to 
 me. . . . He is going, if he lives, to be a remarkable and 
 powerful man, and I hope a more sensible man than his 
 foolish dad.' Again : ' No man can possibly know what 
 life means, what the world means, what anything means 
 until he has a child and loves it.' The boy must have a 
 scientific education abroad. ' I must get rich for his sake 
 if I have any brains to make money. Should I succeed I 
 can travel everywhere, and Kazuo's education abroad 
 would not be a cause for anxiety.' As the end drew near 
 his care increased. ' He is not very strong, and I must 
 give the rest of my life to looking after him.' When he
 
 LAFCADIO HEARN 339 
 
 wanted to go to America, he said he could not bear to be 
 parted from this boy even for twenty-four hours. The rest 
 he could leave behind for the time. ' I must bring my 
 boy with me : it is chiefly for his sake. Once that he learns 
 to speak English well, the rest of his education will not 
 disturb me. I am his only teacher, and want to continue 
 to teach him for a few years more. South or West I should 
 prefer to East — "where only a swordfish can swim."' 
 He sometimes chides, and recalls himself : ' Every year 
 there are born some millions of boys, cleverer, stronger, 
 handsomer than mine. I may be quite a fool in my 
 estimate of him. I do not find him very clever, quick, or 
 anything of that sort. Perhaps there will prove to be 
 " nothing in him." I cannot tell. All that I am quite 
 sure of is that he naturally likes what is delicate, clean, 
 refined, and kindly, and that he naturally shrinks from 
 whatever is coarse and selfish. So that he might learn 
 easily " the things that are most excellent " — and most 
 useless — in the schooling of civilisation. Anyhow, I must 
 do all I can to feed the tiny light, and give it a chance to 
 prove what it is worth. It is me in another birth — with 
 renewed forces given by a strange and charming blood 
 from the Period of the Gods. I must not risk the blowing 
 out of the little lamp.' Once more : ' Very true what you 
 say — no one can save him but himself, and unfortunately, 
 though he is the eldest, he is my Benjamin. ... I taught 
 him to swim, and made him practise gymnastics every day, 
 but the spirit of him is altogether too gentle a being, 
 entirely innocent of evil. What chance for him in such 
 a world as Japan ? ' To my mind these references, a few 
 out of many, to his little son, are the most human and 
 winning things in the Letters of Lafcadio Hearn.
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 A NEW CRITIC— MR. JOHN BAILEY 
 
 One of the most accomplished of living critics is Mr. John 
 Bailey. In 1911 he published a little book, Poets and 
 Poetry. The contents are articles reprinted from the 
 Literary Supplement of the Times. 
 
 Mr. Bailey's essays have distinguished for some time the 
 front page of the Times Literary Supplement. Few things 
 are more perplexing than the failure of Literature, the in- 
 dependent critical journal brought out by the Times under 
 the editorship of the late H. D. Traill. Traill was the 
 most industrious and one of the most gifted journalists of 
 his time. He had behind him the whole resources of the 
 Times, and he engaged a very competent staff. Literature 
 published a good many articles of worth, but somehow 
 from the first number it was hopeless. On the contrary, 
 the Literary Supplement of the Times was an immediate 
 success, and has continued to be so. It has published much 
 of the finest contemporary criticism, and what is more it has 
 been marked by a certain unity and individuality. The 
 tone of the paper is urbane ; specialism is not wanting, 
 and yet not too prominent. Much of the reviewing is of a 
 really thoughtful kind, and very little is cheap. I have 
 no doubt that one great source of strength is the anonymity 
 
 340
 
 A NEW CRITIC 841 
 
 of the articles. Not that I like anonymous criticisms, but 
 it must be admitted that unity disappears when names are 
 signed, and unity is of high importance. Also the editor 
 of the Times Literary Supplement has not taken all his cabs 
 from the rank. He has made certain discoveries, and 
 has thus freshened his pages. The Times Literary Supple- 
 ment is so good that it would succeed as a separate publica- 
 tion, and this is a great thing to say, for in this country 
 it is very hard to keep a thoroughly literary journal 
 alive. 
 
 The Times has always been a literary power. Those 
 who know the letters of the Victorian period know how 
 anxiously its verdict was looked for and how efficacious 
 its phrases were. Turning over the Letters of Charles Lever 
 the other day I found some touching evidence of this. 
 There were three papers that mattered to authors in the 
 high Victorian noon, and these were the Times, the 
 Aihenceum, and the Saturday Review. Thackeray was one 
 of the Times reviewers, and on occasion specialists were 
 employed. But the three men chiefly responsible for the 
 criticisms in the leading journal were Samuel Phillips, 
 Samuel Lucas, and .ZEneas Dallas. I have two little 
 volumes, Essays from the Times, by Samuel Phillips, 
 published by Mr. Murray in 1851. They were reprinted 
 in 1871. They are very good, but not very profound. 
 Dallas wrote books, The Gay Science and Poetics, which are 
 full of thought, but I do not remember that he ever 
 republished his Times articles. Nor did Lucas, who was 
 probably the busiest of them all. There have been re- 
 prints from Literature, but I think this is the first volume 
 of reprints from the Times Literary Supplement. 
 
 No doubt Mr. Bailey's work suffers from being put into
 
 342 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 book form. The essays were written for a newspaper, 
 and adapted thereto. They are necessarily brief, and as 
 we read them here suggest meagreness. But they are 
 very good essays on the whole, sane, lucid, well-informed, 
 and occasionally penetrating. Mr. Bailey is a critic of 
 rank and authority. He has the intellectual and the 
 ethical qualifications for sound critical work. 
 
 Mr. Bailey's principles of criticism are expounded in a 
 preface full of compressed and considered thought. Mr. 
 Bailey points out that genius is inexhaustible. Every 
 generation reads the works of genius afresh and interprets 
 them afresh, so that the new are necessary to the old. But 
 the new cannot stand alone. Even original and active 
 work must root itself in something already accepted. 
 There are fixed stars in the literary firmament by which we 
 have still to sail. Now and then a new star is discovered, 
 but the old keep their places in the poetic heaven. We, 
 however, may have got round to a new side of the old star, 
 and it is worth while to contemplate the most ancient 
 heavens of literature, and try to see again where they 
 and we stand. 
 
 Later on Mr. Bailey illustrates his meaning. In his 
 essay on Wordsworth's Creed he says that if the philosophy 
 of the ' subliminal self ' and ' suggestion ' and ' possession ' 
 pass beyond the stage of hypothesis, it may well be that 
 new light may be shed on Wordsworth. Mr. Bailey, I 
 suppose, would admit that the capacities and powers of 
 the human mind may be enlarged. If that comes to pass, 
 then much of our criticism will have to be revised. It is in 
 this spirit he has written.
 
 A NEW CRITIC 343 
 
 ii 
 
 Two of the best essays in this book are those on Crabbe 
 and on Wordsworth's Creed, but before discussing them I 
 have a word to say on some smaller points. In the article 
 on Collins and Gray, Mr. Bailey rejects Mr. Swinburne's 
 exaggerated praise of Collins, and takes side with Matthew 
 Arnold. What he says about the defects of Collins is in- 
 controvertible, and Mr. Bailey acknowledges that there is 
 a music in Collins at his best which is never to be found in 
 Gray. But to Gray he assigns, along with less original 
 poetic faculty, the glory of the greater achievement. This 
 is excellent, but is Mr. Bailey right in practically resting the 
 whole of Collins's claims on the ' Ode to Evening ' ? Mr. 
 Bailey gives us a paper called Johnson Without Boswell, 
 and points out that his paper appeared in 1907, and that 
 Sir Walter Raleigh's Johnson Without Boswell was published 
 in 1910. But the title was used long ago. It was used in 
 the Contemporary Review some thirty years ago at least by 
 Mr. William Cyples, one of those clever wayward writers 
 whom Mr. Strahan gathered round about him. I cannot 
 help thinking that Mr. Bailey like so many others misses 
 the mark in handling this theme. The main question is : 
 If we had known Johnson only by his works and the re- 
 miniscences of his contemporaries, would we have judged 
 him as we do now with Boswell in our hands ? The answer 
 is : (1) We should have greatly underrated his intellectual 
 powers. (2) We should have understood very imperfectly 
 the rugged grandeur of his character ; and (3) we should 
 never have known his real opinions on one of the most 
 difficult and urgent of ethical problems, the relation of the 
 sexes. Johnson's views on that as given by Boswell have
 
 344 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 not a word to support them in his own published writings. 
 I know that Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has suggested some want 
 of good faith in Boswell's record at this point, some desire 
 to excuse his own frailties, but I cannot accept this judg- 
 ment. An article on Johnson without Boswell is a failure 
 unless this problem is faced. 
 
 Mr. Bailey, writing on Edward FitzGerald, says that 
 people of the aesthetic-hedonist persuasion have claimed him 
 as a kind of patron saint. ' His name ought to be cleared 
 of all that. No one was ever less of the luxurious hedonist 
 than Edward FitzGerald. Ail his life he lived simply, 
 almost barely, not laborious days certainly, but at any rate 
 days that utterly scorned the delights that are dear to the 
 hedonist. ... If anybody is inclined to confuse the life 
 of leisure with that of luxury, let him read FitzGerald's 
 letters. Let him see a way of living that reduces necessities 
 to the minimum, and gives the time and money gained by 
 their suppression to friendship and affection, to nature and 
 books, to quiet and solitude and meditation.' This is 
 admirable, but Mr. Bailey knows that a man may be a 
 hedonist without living luxuriously. A hedonist is a man 
 who lives for pleasure, and FitzGerald found his pleasure 
 in drinking tea with his Woodbridge friends, in hearing the 
 Waverley novels read aloud, in walking home with a lantern 
 to the little house at Boulge, which of all his dwelling-places 
 seems to me the one which best fitted him. 
 
 in 
 
 The article on Wordsworth's Creed is very sympathetic, 
 but very incomplete. Mr. Bailey claims Wordsworth as a 
 prophet, a mystic, a seer, of whom cleverness can make
 
 A NEW CRITIC 345 
 
 nothing. He agrees with Sir Walter Raleigh that the 
 faith in the mystery of life around us, in the voices that the 
 spirit may hear if it will but listen, is of the essence of 
 Wordsworth. Wordsworth proclaimed that poetry was 
 in possession of but half her kingdom, and that it was good 
 to put her in possession of the whole. He would give her 
 the peasant as well as the hero, the daisy as well as the rose. 
 Mr. Bailey comments on the meek sensitiveness to Nature 
 which enabled Wordsworth to do what was in him. He 
 took up Rousseau's rhetorical gospel of the life according 
 to Nature, and gave it body and truth. He refused to 
 recognise the arbitrary boundary set between Nature and 
 man, and sought for correspondences everywhere. All 
 this is true, but it is not the whole truth. Wordsworth 
 chose, as he tells us himself, to deal with low and rustic 
 life, because in that condition the essential passions of the 
 art are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more 
 emphatic language. It is true, of course, that he chose his 
 themes, ' because in that condition the passions of men are 
 incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of 
 Nature.' But the other side should not be overlooked. 
 From this springs Wordsworth's doctrine of poetic diction, 
 ' that there neither is nor can be any essential difference 
 between the language of prose and metrical composition.' 
 This will stand if Coleridge's masterly addition is admitted, 
 ' The sole difference in style is that poetry demands a 
 severe keeping — it admits nothing that prose may not often 
 admit, but it oftener rejects. In other words, it presup- 
 poses a more continuous state of passion.' What is weak 
 in Wordsworth is that he did not oftener reject, and that 
 in many places he kept on writing when passion had grown 
 cold.
 
 S46 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 The estimate of Crabbe is sound so far as it goes. Mr. 
 Bailey might have mentioned that Jane Austen was his 
 great admirer. From a letter in the Life of Albany 
 Foriblanque it appears that Crabbe was Macaulay's 
 favourite poet, and every one knows that Jane Austen was 
 his favourite novelist. A severe critic of Jeffrey declared 
 that the only true poet ever admired by that critic was 
 Crabbe. Mr. Bailey urges Crabbe's claims to our admira- 
 tion. He was (1) a master of English landscape ; (2) a 
 master of the everlasting human comedy. Truth and 
 poetry are both in Crabbe. He was besides a great 
 novelist in verse, and deserves all the admiration he ever 
 received. 
 
 This is very well, but Mr. Bailey might, I think, have 
 referred to Crabbe's work outside the rhymed couplets 
 which he manufactured so assiduously. ' Sir Eustace 
 Grey ' should have a word. I do not lay stress upon his 
 little-known experiment in blank verse, though that too 
 suggests that an escape from his metre would have bettered 
 Crabbe's position. But it should never be forgotten that 
 one of the greatest of English critics rejected Crabbe's 
 claim to be considered a high poet. Hazlitt agreed in his 
 London Magazine essay (May 1821) that Crabbe had strong 
 elements of greatness, but he objected to Crabbe's almost 
 steady blindness to the higher and nobler elements of life. 
 I am wholly at one with the Nestor of our critics when he 
 says that Crabbe ' has an eye only for the follies, the 
 frailties and vices, the afflictions, the mischances and dis- 
 appointments of the human family.' ' We live by admira- 
 tion, love, and hope,' sings Wordsworth ; ' and it is to the 
 presence and the quickening virtue of these highest con- 
 victions of the soul that his verse owes its vitality and
 
 A NEW CRITIC 347 
 
 savour.' Crabbe was like Wordsworth in his desire to 
 divert men's ways of thinking to the simplicities of life, 
 and to teach them the essential oneness of human nature. 
 When asked, ' Why labour to describe so minutely the ways 
 of the poor ? ' Crabbe replied that he had to show to ' the 
 Great ' their close kinship with ' the Lowest ' in Nature 
 and passions, and, again, to convince the poor that the rich, 
 equally with themselves, are subject to the infirmities of 
 humanitv, and to the vicissitudes of life. But it is Words- 
 worth's view of the peasant and not Crabbe's that makes 
 the highest poetry, and commends itself most to the per- 
 manent sympathy of mankind. It is, I believe, because 
 Hazlitt was essentially right that Crabbe has ceased to be 
 a general favourite.
 
 XXXIX 
 
 THE NOVELIST'S LIFE 
 
 My subject is suggested by a paragraph which I find in an 
 American newspaper. It runs thus : ' The late Marion 
 Crawford's personal estate, according to the New York 
 State appraiser's report, is only 48,000 dollars. This, of 
 course, does not include his handsome old villa at Sorrento, 
 Italy, but it does include all the future rights to his books, 
 which the Macmillan Company published. The total 
 value of these rights is given as 30,934 dollars, the figures 
 being based on the income produced by the books during 
 the last three years before the author's death. The fact 
 that the whole list is expected to create post-mortem earn- 
 ings of only 30,000 dollars is an indication of the ephemeral 
 nature of even the best popular novelist's income.' This 
 raises sharply the problem which every successful novelist 
 must at all times encounter. 
 
 i 
 
 We are not all novelists, but most of us have tried to be. 
 It is a mistake, however, to suppose that everybody can 
 write at least one good novel. In an old-fashioned story 
 there is an anecdote which had long pleased me. It is 
 about a delightful and wealthy young lady who commenced 
 novel-writing, and found very soon that she required the 
 aid of a secretary. There was no fault to find with the 
 
 34S
 
 THE NOVELIST'S LIFE 349 
 
 young authoress. ' Large light blue eyes shone out steadily, 
 fearlessly, from under a white brow and masses of golden, 
 fair hair, which were evidently too much for the skill even 
 of a skilled lady's-maid. The soft, creamy white skin, the 
 peach bloom of the cheek made up a splendid specimen of 
 a Saxon beauty ; and as she leant back in her chair there 
 was an indefinable, haughty, carelesss grace in every 
 attitude and emotion.' This is all right, and it must be 
 said, in addition, that Miss Grantham's demeanour to her 
 secretary was gracious and kind. In fact, Maggie, the 
 secretary, fell in love with her at once. ' Your cheek is 
 so fair and smooth ; your mouth so soft ; your expression 
 so tender — why, you must be quite young, perhaps not 
 older than myself.' Miss Grantham replies : ' You show no 
 mean powers of observation. Come, I see we shall accom- 
 plish a great deal of work together. Intelligence and 
 legible writing — what a treasure ! ' When they commence 
 work, it is in a charming but old-fashioned apartment, 
 adorned with rose brocaded silk panels and chairs in green 
 velvet. ' I must show you,' said Miss Grantham, ' what 
 I have done.' She opens a large portfolio, and takes out 
 numerous loose sheets. ' Here is my novel. I will read 
 you a little, and then tell you the plot.' Miss Grantham 
 leans back in her chair, reading rapidly and somewhat 
 monotonously. ' It was a dreary, rainy morning, and the 
 purlieus of St. Paul's were darker than ever when the head 
 waiter at the Crown and Anchor, in Paternoster Row, 
 coming into the bar, which was lit with gas, said to the 
 blooming young lady who presided over the bottles and 
 preserves, " This is a rum go." What could be more 
 promising ? And yet blind and inexorable publishers would 
 have nothing to do with fiction opening so auspiciously.
 
 350 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 ii 
 
 Even if the novel is got into print by the aid of cheques, 
 things do not always go as they might. Miss Rhoda 
 Broughton, in A Beginner, tells of a young author, Miss 
 Jocelyn, who receives a heavy parcel in brown paper, 
 whips a pair of scissors out of a case, and, with two or 
 three vigorous cuts, releases her imprisoned treasure. It 
 is a treasure indeed. The tale is of the days when novels 
 were published in three volumes. She counts eighteen 
 volumes, amounting to six sets, and gazes at the neat and 
 rather coquettish cover with complete satisfaction. She 
 turns to the title-page and reads : 
 
 ' MlCHING MaLLECHO,' 
 
 By 
 
 A Beginner. 
 
 But the glory fades when her aunt appears and perceives 
 the eighteen volumes. ' What has the man sent ? Has 
 he gone mad ? " Miching Mallecho ! " and again ! and yet 
 again ! My dear child, have you gone mad, and sent for 
 eighteen "Miching Mallechos " ? ' Still more trying is the 
 aunt's inhumanity in at once settling to tackle the work 
 of genius so unexpectedly sprung on her. ' You are not 
 going to have the inhumanity to read it here — now — under 
 my nose ? ' cried the girl in most unvarnished dismay, as 
 the certainty of having at least one reader breaks upon her. 
 ' I undoubtedly am ! ' replies her aunt firmly ; ' you 
 meant it to be read, did not you ? — and you will be able — 
 to begin with — to judge of the effect that the — I believe 
 you had rather I would not repeat the expression — has 
 upon me.'
 
 THE NOVELIST'S LIFE 351 
 
 in 
 
 But enough of these terrors. We have to deal with 
 what is happily, or unhappily, a very common case. A 
 novel is accepted and published. It finds its way into the 
 hands of critics and readers. The first critics and the 
 first readers of a novel have much to do with its fate. 
 Which of the two has most to do is a question I cannot 
 answer. But if a critic is pleased, and says so emphati- 
 cally, it is a help ; and if a few others join with him, it is 
 a great help. Similarly, if a reader is taken with the book 
 and talks about it where books are read, a foundation has 
 been laid for success. It is perhaps after the first two 
 thousand are sold that one can tell whether a book is to 
 be really popular or not. Once five thousand are reached, 
 and the book goes up and up, all is well. What, then, is 
 the author to do ? There are very keen eyes watching 
 the fate of his volume, and he will soon have flattering- 
 letters inviting him to submit his next book to certain 
 publishers, and perhaps offering terms. He will also be 
 urged to write stories for magazines. He may even be 
 invited to sell the serial rights of his next tale. A sudden 
 glory has fallen upon him, and a prospect of large and 
 certain remuneration. 
 
 Now, if his popularity is maintained, these incitements 
 to work will be more and more frequent. 
 
 What is the author to do ? Is he to say yes to every 
 offer, or is he to write only what fully satisfied him ? Is 
 he to take up novel-writing as a profession, and produce 
 with the certainty of a machine two or three novels every 
 year as long as publishers ask for them ? Or is he to say 
 to himself : ' I have seen many and many a promising
 
 352 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 novelist succeed in writing his reputation away. I shall 
 write only when I have something to say. I propose to 
 treat the public with respect and give of my best, and of 
 nothing but my best. I know my resources are limited, 
 and there shall be no twice-told tales when the number of 
 my books is summed up ? ' 
 
 IV 
 
 The answer to this question is not so easy as it looks. 
 In the first place some novelists are much richer in material 
 than others. Those who write mainly from their own ob- 
 servation and experience are necessarily restricted. Even 
 if Charlotte Bronte had lived, I doubt whether she could 
 have written anything on the level of her previous work. 
 If we are to insist on what is called truth to life on the part 
 of a novelist, he cannot cover satisfactorily a great tract 
 of ground, unless indeed his adventures have led him far. 
 
 But if he trusts largely to his imagination, and sets his 
 scenes in regions where anything may happen, he has un- 
 questionably a wider scope. We now place on novelists 
 of our own time a check almost as severe as that 
 exercised on writers of travel. But as Steele said : ' There 
 are no books which I more delight in than travels, especi- 
 ally those that describe remote countries, and give the 
 writer an opportunity of showing his parts without in- 
 curring any danger of being examined and contradicted.' 
 The novelist may, like Charles Lever, take possession of 
 an unknown country. Charles Lever's terra incognita was 
 Galway ; and in his early books at least we never think 
 of subjecting him to any test, but delightedly accept the 
 life painted in Harry Lorrequer, who, in his great difficulty,
 
 THE NOVELIST'S LIFE 353 
 
 meets an old uncle in a picture gallery, who gives him on 
 the spot £7000 a year and a mansion. The hero immedi- 
 ately jumps twenty feet into the garden where his lady love 
 is walking, and makes certain of her affections. In fact, 
 he marries her in the following week. Even Lever, how- 
 ever, uncommonly adroit as he was in the handling of 
 anecdote, became much less happy when he left Galway. 
 I doubt whether his later novels, clever as they are, will 
 continue to be read. They describe excellently the triviali- 
 ties of minor continental society, but the raciness and the 
 zest, the spirit and the fun are gone. It has been computed 
 that no man living can possess more than two hundred 
 anecdotes, and it takes at least eight anecdotes, properly 
 handled, to make a good story. 
 
 The historical romance writer seems to have a better 
 chance. He possesses the art of transmuting the innumer- 
 able pages of history into fiction, and if he is skilful there is 
 no reason why he should ever stop. Bulwer got up his 
 periods with amazing cleverness. I think it was Sir Laur- 
 ence Gomme who edited a school edition of Harold, and 
 pronounced it a piece of true history. But somehow even 
 the historical romancers give out. They cannot, it would 
 seem, write more than a certain number of books effectually. 
 The novelist finds himself obliged to depend upon his 
 books. Supposing he writes two every year for twenty 
 years. He is generally at the end of his popularity, 
 but by no means at the end of his life and his needs. Of 
 course, he can go on writing, but he cannot command the 
 old price. The public have grown weary of his name and 
 his books and his ways. Even the vainest are made to 
 know it by their literary agents, and by the returns of their 
 sales.
 
 354 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant knew very well that she was continually 
 charged with overwriting herself, and I am afraid the 
 prices she could command in the end were small as com- 
 pared with those of her prime. She wrote a most spirited 
 and plausible defence of her fertility. Every literary work- 
 man knows that after a holiday he has difficulty in resum- 
 ing his task. In most cases those who work constantly 
 are those who find work easiest. When working half- 
 time, or when hindered by interruption, one is hampered. 
 The strain of feeling and faculty cannot be turned off and 
 on like the supplies of a water company. The natural and 
 continuous flow of narrative is a current that must not be 
 stopped arbitrarily. Rather it should be followed with 
 the ardour and rapidity of artistic interest and impulse. 
 The workman who is in full tide of work is he who works 
 the best. Therefore, says Mrs. Oliphant, let the man 
 work. Let him go on to fresh woods and pastures new. 
 Let him exercise his gifts, and snatch his stories from the 
 storehouse ever full of active genius and thought. On the 
 other hand, Mrs. Oliphant sternly condemned the practice 
 of collecting volumes of short stories. She thought it a 
 law of honour upon novelists that they should not do this 
 till the tide of force grew fainter, and she denounced R. L. 
 Stevenson for publishing so early in his career The Merry 
 Men. It was, she thought, when the end was nearing that 
 an author might be justified in gathering up his basket of 
 fragments, in picking up what he had dropped by the 
 highways and hedges in the gust of his early career. This 
 is advice which is naturally palatable to the sanguine and 
 flattered and successful novelist, and I am not prepared to
 
 THE NOVELIST'S LIFE 355 
 
 deny that there is sense behind it. It applies to the lower 
 as well as to the higher forms of fiction. Once I found 
 L. F. Austin writing in a club, as was his wont. He held 
 out to me, with an expression of scorn, a book by the 
 author of Mr. Barnes of New York. He was engaged in 
 holding up the book to derision. I said to him, ' The author 
 is a better man than you think.' He would not believe it, 
 but I said, ' Wait and hear me,' and told him this true 
 story. A fussy individual meeting Gunter complained 
 that he wrote so fast. ' Why do you not give time for 
 your genius to settle and brood and shape ? ' 4 And how 
 long,' said Gunter, looking at him sternly, ' will the public 
 continue to buy my muck ? ' 
 
 But, after all, the best course for the novelist is the best 
 course for every workman. He should do his best. So 
 long as he is certain that he is not scamping his work, 
 that he is not writing without vocation, that his craft is 
 not a mere mechanical operation, let him go on as long as 
 the public will have him. The true critic will not ask when 
 a book was written, or how long it took in the composition. 
 He will judge the thing as it stands, and say whether it is 
 good or bad. But there are no faults which will provoke 
 him so much as the manifest carelessness and heedlessness 
 of a man capable of doing good work, but unwilling to give 
 to that work the necessary time and pains. 
 
 I suppose we may say, taking a broad view of the field 
 of literature, that even the highest genius is hardly capable 
 of turning out more than about a dozen works represen- 
 tative of his powers. But the secondary work may have 
 elements of strength and beauty. The very finest work of 
 Dickens was done when he finished David Copperfield, but 
 we should miss much the novels of the later period. When
 
 356 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Sir Walter Scott wrote Woodstock he had said farewell to 
 his great creative time. But how much there is to linger 
 over in the work that followed. Thackeray, I venture to 
 think, was more completely written out when he died than 
 any of our great novelists. There are beauties in the very 
 last unfinished work, but who can say much for Lovel the 
 Widower ? There is weariness in every line of it. Nay, 
 there is the last weariness, the weariness of a hand that 
 has come close on its work's end. 
 
 VI 
 
 We may pity, but we must condemn the writers who, 
 conscious of flagging power and popularity, venture into 
 forbidden fields. I would not limit too narrowly the 
 rights of great novelists and serious thinkers to deal with 
 the mighty and painful problems of life. I would excuse 
 much from young writers, even from lady novelists. But 
 I cannot find a word to say for the mature and the aging 
 when they transgress. Forgive the faults of youth by all 
 means, but let our lady novelists at least strive to merit 
 the cautious commendation on a tombstone in Bath reared 
 in honour of an old lady who died at the age of 112. The 
 tombstone certifies that ' during the later years of her life 
 she was distinguished by both virtue and propriety.'
 
 XL 
 
 AN IDYLL OF OLD DEVONSHIRE 
 
 There are few men whose record is so nearly unblemished 
 as that of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was very great as 
 a painter, and in the opinion of his chief contemporaries 
 he was no less great as a man. Never was there a more 
 felicitous tribute than Goldsmith's epitaph of Reynolds. 
 
 c Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind, 
 He has not left a wiser or better behind ; 
 His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand, 
 His manners were gentle, complying, and bland ; 
 Still born to improve us in every part. 
 His pencil our faces, his manners our heart ; 
 To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering ; 
 When they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing ; 
 When the3 r talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, 
 He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.' 
 
 When Reynolds was dangerously ill, in 1764, Dr. Johnson 
 wrote to him : ' If I should lose you I should lose almost 
 the only man whom I call a friend.' Later on he character- 
 ised Reynolds as ' the most invulnerable man I know, 
 the man with whom if you should quarrel you would find 
 the most difficulty how to abuse.' Angelica Kauffmann 
 confessed that she was dying for Sir Joshua. Burke paid 
 homage to his memory in a masterly estimate. His charm 
 in society was felt by every one, although he suffered so 
 much from deafness that he had to carry an ear-trumpet. 
 
 357
 
 358 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 This deafness he attributed to the cold of the Vatican in the 
 months when he was copying Raphael. 
 
 But there was one dissentient, and that was Reynolds's 
 own sister Frances. Frances Reynolds kept house in 
 London for Sir Joshua during a long period, and was her- 
 self by no means a contemptible painter. She was liked 
 by Reynolds's friends, and especially by Johnson, who 
 thought her ' very near to purity itself.' She wrote a 
 privately printed essay on Taste, of which Johnson said : 
 ' There are in these few pages or remarks such a depth of 
 penetration, such nicety of observation as Locke or Pascal 
 might be proud of.' But unfortunately there came a 
 severance between her and the illustrious brother, whom 
 she survived for fifteen years. It is supposed that they 
 parted about 1778. She left her brother's house, and she 
 never returned. We may have some clue to the misunder- 
 standing in Fanny Burney's remark that Miss Reynolds 
 never knew her own mind about anything, and had a tire- 
 some, fidgety way, which made her very difficult to live 
 with. However this may be, Miss Reynolds's judgment 
 of Sir Joshua's character was in striking contrast to that 
 of the rest. She thought him a gloomy tyrant, and he 
 spoke contemptuously of the copies which she made of her 
 pictures. But there is little doubt that she was a woman 
 of considerable gifts, and when she died unmarried on 
 November 1, 1807, there were not a few to mourn for her. 
 Her brother left her £2500 ; to Edmund Burke he left 
 £2000, besides cancelling a bond to the same amount. 
 
 The bulk of his fortune was left to his niece, Miss Palmer, 
 who inherited in all nearly £100,000, and was married in 
 1792 to the Earl of Inchiquin, afterwards Marquis of 
 Thomond. I take these particulars from the masterly
 
 AN IDYLL OF OLD DEVONSHIRE 359 
 
 biography of Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse in the Dictionary of 
 National Biography. Sir Joshua's eldest sister was Mary, 
 the wife of John Palmer, Attorney of Torrington. There 
 was another sister called Mrs. Johnson. Mrs. Palmer 
 and Mrs. Johnson helped their brother to spend two years 
 in Leghorn, Florence, and Rome ' with measureless content.' 
 Mrs. Palmer had two daughters, one Offy, who lived with 
 him from 1770 till 1781, when she married Robert Lovell 
 Gwatkin. Mary Palmer, Offy's elder sister, lived with 
 her uncle till his death, and, as we have seen, inherited 
 his fortune. 
 
 I have mentioned these particulars in order to introduce 
 a book which I know only by extracts. It is called A Devon- 
 shire Dialogue, in four parts, and it was written by Mrs. 
 Palmer, of Great Torrington, Devon, the sister who has 
 been mentioned. It seems that the book was circulated 
 at first in manuscript, and that Mrs. Palmer declined to 
 permit publication. But after she died an unauthorised 
 and imperfect edition of the diary was published. In 1839 
 one of her daughters — I do not know which — published 
 the whole of the original work, and a glossary of terms 
 was added by a Devonshire clergyman named Phillips. 
 
 From the description and the extracts which I am now 
 going to quote it seems as if this book were particularly 
 worth republishing. It seems to go along with the poetry 
 of William Barnes and the prose idylls of later years. 
 To this I may add that we have here a new proof of the 
 fact that in families where one member is highly distin- 
 guished there is generally more than average talent in 
 the other members. The Newmans, the Trollopes, the
 
 860 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Kingsleys, the Tennysons, the Taylors of Ongar, and 
 the Thackerays are illustrations. Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 denned genius as ' great natural ability turned by accident 
 into a particular direction.' This is not very helpful. 
 ' Great natural ability ' is a vague phrase. As for accident, 
 was it an accident that in the grammar school at Plympton 
 young Reynolds, who was thought an idle and inattentive 
 schoolboy, drew pen and ink sketches, mastered the 
 principles of perspective, drew portraits of his friends and 
 relatives, and studied Jacob Cats ? 
 
 ii 
 
 The plot of the dialogue, so far as it has any plot at all, 
 is of the simplest kind. Five rustic characters play a part 
 in it. The first of these is Farmer Hogg, * a man o' eight 
 an' twenty pounds a year, and every foot his own land.' 
 He is a perfect specimen of the very small freehold farmer 
 still to be found in the remote parts of Devon, purse-proud 
 on the strength of his very small holding, and a hectoring, 
 tippling bully to boot. Dame, the farmer's wife, has been 
 married to him against her instinctive feelings of repulsion, 
 and at the peremptory command of a father who was 
 led captive by the eight-and-twenty freehold. She lives, 
 an ill-used, disappointed, but uncomplaining and hard- 
 working woman. ' Farmer Hogg's wife,' says the Parson, 
 ' is a pattern. Her and her houze be always in order.' 
 But though the house is in order, the poor woman's heart 
 is fast failing her, as Bet, her faithful maid, declares in this 
 charming little passage, which is exactly what Shake- 
 speare might have put into such a speaker's mouth : ' All 
 me 1 Before her married, her was as peart as a bard [bird] 
 and as cherry as a crop o' fresh apple-blooth ; but now,
 
 AN IDYLL OF OLD DEVONSHIRE 861 
 
 poor soul, her 's like a daver'd rose-sweet in the midst o'te.' 
 Bet is a delightful picture of a true-hearted Devon girl, full 
 of imagination, reading books by stealth at night that fill 
 her head with a world of pretty terrors, but a thorough hand 
 at work, and what would be called in her tongue a ' vitty, 
 stewardly body.' She is over head and ears in love with 
 Rab, a thrifty lad of the village, who has long been court- 
 ing her, but who is kept at arm's length, chiefly through 
 Bet's doubts as to the possibility of her mistress weathering 
 ' Hogg's tantrums ' without her help. To Hogg himself 
 she is fearlessly outspoken, though never rude ; and towards 
 Bat, the last character in the piece — a little forlorn orphan 
 apprentice on the farm — she displays a tenderness which 
 must have done much to convince Rab that his heart had 
 chosen rightly. 
 
 The following humorous passage introduces the two 
 lovers conversing, and describes a scene between Bat and 
 his master : 
 
 Bet. — I've made a shurt to larn en his letters, and his 
 prayers ; and wan day a' was kneeling to my knees, zaying 
 arter me, ' Give es this day our daily bread,' a' rearrCd up 
 his neck, way his sweet begging eyes, and zaid, zart in my ear, 
 'Mayn't es ax vor a crume o' butter 'pon't?' I hugg'd en in, 
 and zaid, ' Be a good boy, and you wan't lack butter 'pon 
 your bread.' 
 
 Rab. — Pretty zoul ! a' made rare gammet vor es at the 
 Pigeons, last neart, when a' brought his Measter's great coat. 
 Hogg was then dwalling and palavering away about religion, as 
 a? always dith when a' is half ago : ' Come,' zis a' to Bat, 
 ' stand vore, put your hands behind your back and zay the 
 chief end o' man.' 
 
 Bet. — A pretty time in an alehouse. Good now, a'
 
 362 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 wager'd with Dame, that he'd teach en 'The chief end o' 
 man ' zooner than her shou'd his catechise. 
 
 Rab.— Zo a' went on : ' Who made thee ? ' ' God ' (zaid 
 Bat, and nodded his head). ' What did God make thee vor ? ' 
 The boy was at a stann. ' Speak, mumchance, what dost 
 stand digging the head, and shuckening, as if thee was louzy. 
 Speak, mooncalf. 'Ot did God make thee vor ? ' Bat look'd 
 up zo harmless, and zaid, 'To carry dung to Crowbear.' 
 Bless es, what a hallabaloo was zet up ; es cried a' was right, 
 his Measter look'd brinded, and the poor boy bost out a 
 crying, when Hogg said, ' You dunderheaded stunpole, you 
 drumble drone, I wish I 'de a good smart switch, I'de lerrick- 
 thee, till I made thee twine like an angle-twitch.' 
 
 Rab is, of course, not behindhand in urging Bet to re- 
 member his own sorrows, as well as those of her mistress, 
 and he is at last able to tell her that he has secured ' the 
 prittest houze in the parish, for the bigness o' en',' which 
 was once the home of an old dame, from whom both the 
 lovers received their schooling. This puts Bet on a long 
 and really charming story of the old dame's last days and 
 death, and of how she gave her, as a parting present, her 
 Bible ; ' and when her had deliver'd en' to me, " This," 
 quoth her, " is the most precious thing I own. Take en', 
 as my legacy. In it you '11 vind the title to a glorious 
 estate, and how to make the estate your own." Which 
 made the neighbours whisper, ' Poor zoul, her 's out o' her 
 parts ; her 's telling dwale.' 
 
 These reminiscences at length bring the tears to the good 
 soul's eyes, and oblige Rab to remind her that ' thee mert 
 now be owner of the houze, the garden, the cat, and the 
 great tree, which, es hopes, want be cut down in our time.' 
 To all which Bet answers charmingly :
 
 AN IDYLL OF OLD DEVONSHIRE 363 
 
 Bet. — I hope zo, too, vor I shu'd like to bring out my 
 knitting work, or my spinning turn, and zit there ; and then 
 I mert happen to zee thee, when you be to work. Dear heart ! 
 what strange things come to pass. When I used to think 
 how happy anybody mert live in such a sweet place, I could 
 ne'er ha' thort it wid come to my take, everything zo handy ; 
 a pretty doming oven, big enew to bake a batch o' bread, 
 water at the shet just by, the thorn hedge and garden, and 
 the great tree. Poor zoul, her used to zit there summer 
 yevlings, to zee the volks come fro' market, and take in her 
 arrants, her had a'zent by 'em. Whan I used to rede a story- 
 book of a pritty place, I thort it must be like this.* 
 
 The pair then fall to reckoning up their possessions, and 
 after Rab has told of ' a pritty plat o' taty ground, and 
 household goods enow,' Bet runs over her little store : 
 
 Bet. — My modicum is but forty shillings, coming to me vor 
 wages, two silver 'postle spoons, my mother's amber necklace 
 and toadstone ring. What clothing I ha' es come honestly 
 by. I ha'n't a screed to my back that isn't paid vor. I ne'er 
 go to tick, and 'ot I ha' will sarve for years, way a leet patch- 
 ing. Then Aunt Madge hath a' promis'd me a butt o' bees 
 whan I married, vor house-warming.
 
 XLI 
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 
 
 I. THE MAN AND HIS BOOKS 
 
 ' Mark Rutherford ' (Mr. William Hale White) died 
 in March 1913 at the pretty cottage in Groombridge, near 
 Tunbridge Wells, where he had lived for a good many 
 years. He had attained the advanced age of eighty-two, 
 having been born in 1831. Some years ago he underwent 
 a severe operation, but he had apparently made a good 
 recovery, and a new happiness came into his life during 
 its closing period. 
 
 In 1881 I picked up The Autobiography of Mark Ruther- 
 ford, Dissenting Minister. It was in an Edinburgh book- 
 seller's shop, and I was attracted by the appearance of 
 the volume, which was bound in grey paper with a white 
 label, and published by the then famous firm of Triibner 
 and Co. Tnibner's business was mainly in Oriental 
 books ; but when they did anything in English, it was 
 commonly well worth looking at. On getting into the 
 train, I opened the book, and was immediately fascinated 
 by the preliminary poem, in which the writer anticipates 
 death, and sums up his history thus : 
 
 1 For I was ever commonplace, 
 Of genius never had a trace, 
 My thoughts the world have never fed, 
 Mere echoes of the book last read.' 
 
 364
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 365 
 
 Passing on to the prose, I at once experienced the irresistible 
 charm of the style. If there are any books of this genera- 
 tion better written than those, I do not know them. 
 Mark Rutherford's style had not much colour, and no 
 apparent elaboration ; but his words perfectly fitted his 
 thought. His manner may seem austerely bare and 
 simple, but it is so close to the facts that it is always 
 adequate. The figures are drawn in line, but the pencil 
 never swerves, and the effect is unmistakable. The 
 occasional hints and glints of flame, the result of an intense 
 and simple feeling, strangely light up the pages. I had 
 seen no style quite like this — a style translucent in its 
 simplicity, and yet incapable of any amendment. Nor 
 was the matter less noteworthy. Many have written of 
 Dissent, some foolishly, some ignorantly, some spitefully ; 
 but this writer wrote not only with knowledge, but with 
 insight, and he dealt with life, laying bare its secret places, 
 and especially rendering with consummate skill the miseries 
 of its dark hours. If there is anywhere a more wonderful 
 study of melancholia than the first part of Mark Ruther- 
 ford, I have not seen it. The book attracted a little 
 attention, but not very much, and I found it impossible 
 to get any clue to the authorship. 
 
 By and by the second part of the story, The Deliverance 
 of Mark Rutherford, was published, and though many 
 consider it inferior to its predecessor, I read it with even 
 greater wonder and delight. I still think it the highest 
 achievement of the author. Although it may not be so 
 powerful as its predecessor, it is much rosier and more 
 hopeful, more believing, and it is full of a noble faith in 
 a woman's pure affection as the recompense and solace of 
 a career otherwise sordid and insignificant. The thought
 
 366 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 that runs through it — and indeed through all the author's 
 books — like a thread of fire, is the glory of a woman's love 
 for a man who is of no account as revealing the very heart 
 of God. I wrote many reviews of the book in different 
 periodicals ; other and more powerful critics took it up 
 to some extent, and gradually it made a little headway, 
 though when the second part was published the first had 
 not run through its first thousand. Among its earliest 
 and most admiring readers was Lord Randolph Churchill. 
 By and by I had a clue to the authorship. I came 
 across a translation of Spinoza's Ethic, also published 
 by Messrs. Triibner, with a preface by W. Hale White. 
 Reading this I felt that very certainly W. Hale White 
 was 'Mark Rutherford,' and unexpected corroboration 
 arrived. About this time Mr. W. D. Howells wrote a 
 notice of the books in Harper's Monthly, in which he said 
 that they marked a new era in fiction. 
 
 At this point I have to mention a strange fact. 
 For long I was firmly persuaded that I had been 
 the first to pierce the thin veil which shrouded Mark 
 Rutherford's personality. He was of the same opinion, 
 and was by no means pleased when the announcement 
 was made. But not long ago I had occasion to turn up 
 the Westminster Review for July 1883. The periodical 
 was published by Triibner, and Hale White, in his youth, 
 had some connection with it. In the philosophical 
 reviews published at the end, the authorship of which I 
 do not know, I find the following sentence : ' Not long 
 ago Mr. Hale White published a remarkable little book, 
 which attracted very much less attention than it deserved, 
 The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, Dissenting Minister. 
 He now comes before the public with a translation of
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 367 
 
 Spinoza's Ethic. In Mark Rutherford Mr. White dis- 
 closes not only a power of treatment of a singularly sincere 
 and sympathetic character, but a very good style.' So 
 the mystery almost from the first was no mystery, only 
 there were very few who cared in the least to solve it. 
 
 By 1886 the Mark Rutherford books had a tolerably 
 large circle of warm admirers, and it became possible to 
 get a few facts about the author. This was made easier 
 by the publication of his third book, The Revolution in 
 Tanner's Lane. It is perhaps the closest to his own 
 history of any among the three, and in scattered passages 
 it is the best of all. The fault is that it consists of two 
 parts which are not well put together. It may be described 
 as a study of the sorrows of incompatibility. The author 
 is persuaded that in marriage lies either the glory or the 
 misery of the individual life. He makes out, as perhaps 
 no other writer has ever made out, that misery may come 
 from marriages where there is true affection and strict 
 morality, but where there is no genuine communion of 
 spirit. 
 
 This book gives a convenient opportunity of summarising 
 the author's externally uneventful life. It should be 
 noted, however, that, like all novelists, Mark Rutherford 
 disclaimed the portraiture of individual characters. It 
 is quite credible that he intentionally added or removed 
 characteristics of originals in the renderings he gave to 
 the public, but it is no less true that his early work was 
 very largely autobiographical. 
 
 Mr. Hale White's father was Mr. William White, the
 
 368 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 original of Isaac Allen in The Revolution in Tanner's Lane. 
 He was a printer and bookseller in Bedford, where he 
 commenced business about 1829. He was a man of 
 great ability and force of character ; for many years he 
 was one of the most earnest workers of Bunyan Meeting, 
 then called the Old Meeting ; was a superintendent of the 
 Sunday school, a village preacher, and one of the trustees. 
 Bunyan Meeting was founded by the illustrious author 
 of the Pilgrim's Progress, who was its first pastor, and it 
 was, till lately, ministered to by Dr. John Brown, one of 
 the leaders of English Nonconformity, and the author of 
 the best biography of Bunyan. Tanner's Lane stands 
 for Bunyan Meeting. In political life Mr. White was a 
 great power in the town. He had a strong voice, a ringing 
 oratory, and intense Liberal convictions, and was the 
 bSte noire of all Tories and Protectionists. When an 
 attempt was made by some Churchmen to introduce the 
 Church Catechism into the public schools, and to make 
 them denominational, he carried the question against 
 them. In February 1848 his son, William Hale White, 
 joined the Church at Bunyan Meeting, and in July 1848 
 was unanimously approved as a candidate for the ministry, 
 and recommended to Cheshunt College. On the establish- 
 ment of New College, in 1850, he appears to have migrated 
 thither. New College is still a leading theological seminary 
 in connection with the Congregationalists, and has build- 
 ings situated in St. John's Wood. All seems to have 
 gone well till the close of 1851, when he and two other 
 students fell under the suspicion of the college authorities 
 on account of their views on inspiration. Not much 
 would be thought of these views at this time, but then 
 orthodoxy was very strict and absolutely predominant.
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD SCO 
 
 The pupils were stubborn, and all three were expelled. 
 In the course of the proceedings Mr. White, senior, wished 
 that the minister of Bunyan Meeting, Bedford, the Rev. 
 John Jukes, the original of the Rev. John Broad in 
 Tanner's Lane, and the church should stand by his son, 
 and formally protest against the action of the college 
 authorities. Mr. Jukes, however, belonged to the old 
 school of theologians, and his sympathies were against 
 the lad. From that time, and after that refusal, the Whites 
 cherished a strong feeling of resentment against Mr. Jukes. 
 Mr. Jukes, of course, had a perfect title to his own con- 
 victions, and he was technically within his rights. But 
 a bitter feeling against him is expressed in Tanner's Lane, 
 perhaps too bitter. Mr. Jukes, I have been told, was by 
 no means a strong man intellectually, and his sympathies 
 theologically were far from broad ; but he was a worthy 
 minister, and thoroughly upright. John Broad, by the 
 way, was the name of a dissenting minister in Hitchin, a 
 town not far from Bedford. To this I should add that 
 Mark Rutherford wrote me : ' The type which Broad 
 represents was so common at the time when the events 
 in Tanner's Lane are supposed to have taken place, that 
 half a dozen persons whom my friend knew resembled it 
 more or less, and Mr. Allen, if he ever had a bodily exist- 
 ence, was never in all his life within fifty miles of the 
 Ouse.' 
 
 ii 
 
 After Mr. White's expulsion from New College, the 
 Whites at Bedford broke off all connection with Bunyan 
 Meeting, and ultimately gave up going to any place of 
 worship at all. Mr. White, who had been a printer, 
 
 2 a
 
 370 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 founded a tannery, which did not succeed. Fortunately 
 for him he obtained the position of doorkeeper to the 
 House of Commons, where he remained till he was pen- 
 sioned off, about 1880. He died on February 26, 1882, 
 aged eighty-five. During the time he was doorkeeper 
 to the House he was widely known and much respected 
 by the members. John Bright had a great affection for 
 him, and Mr. Disraeli used often to go to White's private 
 room on the ground floor, and there stand at ease and talk 
 with his back to the fire. White admired Disraeli, but 
 was wont to speak of him as the ' Asian mystery.' For 
 many years Mr. White wrote a weekly paper for the 
 Illustrated Times, entitled, ' The Inner Life of the House 
 of Commons ' — a pungent, trenchant criticism of men and 
 things. A selection from these articles was edited by his 
 old friend, Mr. Justin M'Carthy, and published by Mr. 
 Fisher Unwin, and a very good book it is — fresh, racy, 
 illuminating, and broad-minded, with something of Mark 
 Rutherford's power. 
 
 in 
 
 Not very much is known of the struggle in which the 
 future author of Mark Rutherford engaged after leaving New 
 College ; but after his death the Westminster Gazette pub- 
 lished a little article by Mr. R. M. Theobald, one of the two 
 students expelled along with Hale White. Mr. Theobald 
 says that at the time of his expulsion Hale WTiite was 
 certainly very unorthodox. ' His favourite authors were 
 Carlyle, Emerson, Goethe, and some other German authors. 
 I well remember the sermons which he read in class, the 
 texts being prescribed by the theological professor, Dr. 
 Harris. There was a holy tremor in his voice, which is
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 371 
 
 characteristic of some men of genius ; Frederick Denison 
 Maurice read the Church services with the same kind of 
 tremor.' Mr. Hale White was very reluctant to speak of 
 those years ; but it is known, and Mr. Theobald confirms 
 it, that he continued to preach. In particular, he fre- 
 quently occupied the pulpit of Mr. Chignell, at Portsmouth. 
 It was in this way that he became acquainted with Alex- 
 ander M'Laren, who was then preaching in Southampton. 
 Mark Rutherford sometimes spoke to me about M'Laren, 
 whom he described as one of the handsomest of men, 
 extremely brilliant, and at that time somewhat daring. 
 Dr. M'Laren, when I asked him about this connection, 
 said that of the three — himself, Hale White, and Chignell — 
 Chignell was by far the best man. If I am not mistaken, 
 Mr. Chignell became a Unitarian minister in Exeter, and 
 M'Laren had not seen him or heard of him for many years. 
 At variance as he was with the current orthodoxy, Mark 
 Rutherford's sympathies were always with Christianity 
 and with Nonconformity. 
 
 His struggle was probably not so severe as many have 
 supposed. 
 
 He obtained a post in the Admiralty which was ulti- 
 mately well remunerated, and from it, after his full term 
 of service, he retired with a pension. He increased his 
 income by London Letters to various papers, and he was 
 pretty constant in his attendance in the Parliamentary 
 Gallery. He did not like to be asked any questions as 
 to his journalistic work, and talked of it as of no account. 
 But some things I discovered almost in spite of himself. 
 He was London correspondent for the Norfolk News 
 and the Rochdale Observer. The latter paper on its 
 jubilee published an article by him and some account
 
 372 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 of his work. He was also a contributor to the 
 Birmingham Post. He worked, like so many literary 
 drudges of the time, on that large compilation, the 
 Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography. His most 
 important contribution is a Life of Franklin, which 
 is well done, and with much sympathy. He was also 
 connected with that strange being, John Chapman, the 
 editor of the Westminster Review. If ever Chapman's 
 history is written fully and accurately, it would form a 
 romance of the most extraordinary kind. In these days 
 he knew George Eliot, who boarded for a time in Chapman's 
 house, and assisted him in the Westminster. For George 
 Eliot's personality he had the warmest admiration and 
 affection. He said to me once that he thought he could 
 refute everything that had ever been said against George 
 Eliot from his own knowledge of her. She must have 
 been very kind to the shy youth, and she often played 
 Beethoven to him — a sure passport to his heart. Another 
 warm friend of these days was George Jacob Holyoake. 
 Holyoake, though an Agnostic, had strong sympathies 
 with certain sides of Christianity, and I remember him 
 speaking to me of the attractive mixture of boldness and 
 reverence in the young journalist. The only thing he 
 published separately till Mark Rutherford appeared was 
 a letter to George Jacob Holyoake on Parliamentary 
 Reform. This was a most vigorous and trenchant piece 
 of writing. Besides these things Mark Rutherford wrote 
 much that was unacknowledged. He contributed to the 
 Morning Star, a journal with which John Bright was 
 connected, a series of papers, entitled ' Below the Gangway.' 
 Occasionally letters appeared from him in the Spectator, 
 and to a certain extent he reviewed for the Athenceum.
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 373 
 
 As his position in the Admiralty improved, he was 
 gradually able to leave off journalistic work, which he 
 never seems to have thoroughly liked. 
 
 IV 
 
 I came to know him, though never intimately, and we 
 had occasional personal intercourse and correspondence 
 for some twenty years. He was very reserved and dignified 
 in appearance, but essentially kind and modest. His great 
 interest was in books — books as makers and helpers of 
 life. He was a singularly exact student, mainly of the 
 English classics. I could see in him no trace of literary 
 ambition, though he showed some irritation when Clara 
 Hopgood was characterised as an immoral book. He gave 
 his particular study to Shakespeare and to Wordsworth. 
 In these he might fairly be described as an expert. But he 
 had taught himself many languages, and he studied the 
 best in each. One of his projects was an annotated edition 
 of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, for which he had 
 made not a few discoveries. He was familiar with the 
 commentaries of H. IT. Fumess on Shakespeare. He 
 would talk sometimes of the great men whom he had 
 heard — very much in the strain of his London corre- 
 spondence. John Bright was his supreme favourite among 
 politicians, and I have heard him refer with special admira- 
 tion to the uprightness of John Stuart Mill in his Parlia- 
 mentary career. Gladstone he admired, but with the 
 reserves natural to a Dissenter. He put Spurgeon and 
 Bright among the first of English orators. He was extra- 
 ordinarily fastidious about the correctness of text, and 
 complained bitterly of Professor Knight's edition of
 
 374 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Wordsworth for its inaccuracy in this respect. He kept 
 no rubbish in his library, and all his personal appointments 
 were of characteristic simplicity. On the walls of his 
 study at Ashtead, at Hastings, and, later on, in Groom- 
 bridge, were portraits of his favourite heroes. He tells 
 us in Tanner's Lane about Zechariah's little front room. 
 ' There were portraits on the walls — nothing else but 
 portraits — and the collection at first sight was inconsistent. 
 Major Cartwright was still there ; there were also Byron, 
 Bunyan, Scott, Paine, Burns, Mr. Bradshaw, and 
 Rousseau. It was closely expressive of its owner.' He 
 continued to take a keen interest in Nonconformity, and 
 watched with special attention Mr. Balfour's Education 
 Bill and the litigation in the House of Lords for the United 
 Free Church of Scotland. To the South African War 
 he was bitterly opposed. He wrote many articles in 
 the British Weekly, some of which were not signed. He 
 was also a frequent contributor to the Bookman, and 
 latterly to the Nation, in which his last papers appeared. 
 He was rather noticeably slow in taking up new authors, 
 preferring to read old books over again, as a rule. There 
 were exceptions, of course. 
 
 I do not think myself entitled to repeat private con- 
 versations with this distinguished man, but one story is 
 so characteristic that I may be allowed to tell it. Hale 
 White admired Swinburne very much, and in particular 
 his criticisms of Shakespeare. Swinburne read Hale 
 White's little book on the Alleged Apostasy of Wordsworth, 
 and liked it. On this, my friend, Mr. Watts-Dunton, 
 proposed that I should bring Mark Rutherford to The 
 Pines in order that he and Swinburne might meet. Hale 
 White was willing, and we lunched at the well-known
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 375 
 
 house. Swinburne was not in his best mood, but Mark 
 Rutherford was quite satisfied in serenely contemplating 
 him. At one point, our kind host asked Mark Rutherford 
 if he had read Kipling. ' No,' was the reply. ' I am 
 getting to be an old man now, and I read my Bible.' 
 ' Oh,' said Mr. Watts-Dunton, 'that's what I do.' Swin- 
 burne was brought into the conversation, but he knew 
 Kipling only as the author of music-hall ditties. The 
 ' Recessional ' was mentioned, whereupon Swinburne said 
 very unjustly, ' Yes, very good ; like the " Psalm of Life," 
 but not so good.'
 
 XLII 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD— (Continued) 
 
 II. THE EARLY LIFE OF MARK RUTHERFORD 
 
 Mr. Humphrey Milford has published a little book, 
 The Early Life of Mark Rutherford (W. Hale White), by 
 Himself. This enables me to supplement the previous 
 article. It runs to fewer than 20,000 words, and was 
 written by the author when he was seventy-eight for those 
 members of his family who were too young to remember 
 his beginnings. It was not to be expected that Mark 
 Rutherford should write a full history of his own life. 
 When he was asked to do so, he replied that he had to 
 decide that it was impossible. ' I am not sorry. I am 
 base enough to acknowledge that one reason for my indiffer- 
 ence is that I should get nothing out of it, for, of course, it 
 must be posthumous, and as to the world I am not so vain 
 as to suppose its course would be changed by my self- 
 revelation as a warning or example. It has Moses and the 
 prophets.' But while the record is brief, and contains 
 little that is new, it is marked by the luminous and severe 
 beauty and the perfect precision of diction for which the 
 author was famous. I content myself with a few notes 
 on the additional information it supplies, and these notes 
 I supplement with others gathered from his own contribu- 
 tions to journalism. 
 
 376
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 
 
 i . 
 
 He was born in Bedford High Street on December 22, 
 1831. He had two sisters and a brother. This brother 
 promised to be a painter of distinction, and was valued by 
 Ruskin and Rossetti, but he died young. His grand- 
 mother lived in Queen Street, Colchester, in a house dated 
 1619 over the doorway. He had also an aunt in Colchester, 
 a woman of singular originality, who married a baker, a 
 good kind of man, but tame. It is easy to see that this 
 lady supplied one of the most striking characters in the 
 Autobiography. But young White fell in love with 
 Bedford, and remained in love to the last. He had a 
 peculiar interest in Bunyan, about whom he wrote a book, 
 which, though unsatisfactory, cost him more labour than 
 any other of his works. He wrote in 1881 : ' Mr. Brown, 
 of Bedford, is a man of much ability, who has devoted a 
 great deal of time to the history of Bunyan, and collected 
 a number of most precious facts about Bunyan, all first 
 hand. The minutest details relating to Bunyan are of 
 larger magnitude than most historical events which are 
 signalised with cannon or the largest type in the Daily 
 Telegraph placards.' Froude's treatment of Bunyan exas- 
 perated him. ' Mr. Froude was most unfitted to write 
 the Life of Bunyan. Anybody reading his Bunyan and 
 knowing nothing about the author of the Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress, save what Mr. Froude tells him, would imagine that 
 Bunyan was a spiritually dyspeptic person, overhung all 
 his days with the gloomy shadow of insoluble Calvin- 
 ism. That is what Mr. Froude would have been had he, to 
 use an Irishism, been Bunyan. But Bunyan was really 
 nothing of the kind. He was one of the sunniest of souls.
 
 378 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 He had his conflicts and his troubles, but, as Richter says, 
 the blue sky above him was bigger than all the clouds 
 therein.' 
 
 Mark Rutherford was very fortunate in his early home 
 and associates. Of his father we already know much, and 
 we are told some fresh things about his aunt and her 
 husband Samuel Lovell. Mr. Lovell ' always wore, even 
 in his counting-house and on his wharf, a spotless shirt — 
 seven a week — elaborately frilled in front. He was clean- 
 shaven, and his face was refined and gentle.' He was a 
 man of great benignity, kind to children, and very patient 
 with his creditors. I have some touching evidence of this. 
 Mark Rutherford wrote in 1892 to his cousin : ' I went 
 past your house, the house in which the kindest of aunts 
 and uncles lived : I looked down the yard, so familiar and 
 so changed, and I passed through Shambrook, the village 
 to which I have so often been with uncle when he went out 
 to see his customers.' But it is natural that we should 
 hear most of Mark Rutherford's remarkable and stout- 
 minded father. There is not much that is actually new 
 in this little book, but there is significance in the stress 
 laid on the purity of Mr. White's English. ' He used 
 to say he owed it to Cobbett, whose style he certainly 
 admired, but this is but partly true. It was rather a 
 natural consequence of the clearness of his own mind and 
 of his desire to make himself wholly understood, both 
 demanding the simplest and most forcible expression. 
 If the truth is of serious importance to us we dare not 
 obstruct it by phrase-making : we are compelled to be as 
 direct as our inherited feebleness will permit. The cannon- 
 ball's path is near to a straight line in proportion to its 
 velocity. " My boy," my father once said to me, " if you
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 879 
 
 write anything you consider particularly fine, strike it 
 out." ' This maxim was laid to heart. What was true of 
 the father is still more true of the son. Neither perhaps 
 fully recognised that there are some kinds of truth, in their 
 essence mystical, which cannot be seen clearly or angularly, 
 and cannot be translated into phrases which every reader 
 can understand at once. 
 
 Mr. White, as we know, was a leading Liberal at Bedford, 
 and undoubtedly the best speaker in the town. The 
 political conflicts of the time were fierce, but Mr. White 
 never flinched. I have one anecdote which is not recorded 
 here. Referring about 1875 to Lord Russell, Mark Ruther- 
 ford wrote : 
 
 ' In 1880 he was a candidate for the Borough of Bedford. 
 The poll lasted for eight days, and electors came up from 
 all parts of the country at an enormous cost. One voter, 
 greatly indebted, by the way, to the house of Russell, 
 posted direct from Liverpool, and charged all his expenses 
 to the Whig Committee. In the end his lordship was 
 defeated by a majority of one, and that one vote was given 
 by a Wesleyan minister, who was brought from Yorkshire 
 by the Tories and travelled the whole of Sunday. He 
 arrived at the polling booth just as the clock was striking 
 four. In these days there was an assessor, whose business 
 it was to hear objections against votes, and decide their 
 validity. Objection was immediately taken to the vote 
 of this Wesleyan minister. Bedford was a borough in 
 which household suffrage was law. Even the almshouse 
 people had votes. The minister claimed on the ground 
 that he was an occupier, although he had left the town for 
 some time, and had gone to another circuit. His successor 
 at Bedford was not yet appointed, and upon that ground
 
 380 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 the vote was admitted, though no doubt it was bad. The 
 minister, with a very elastic conscience, swore to the 
 occupancy, and the assessor, who was a rascal, was cursed 
 with an easier conscience. Bedford was a Tory mob, and 
 the father of the writer of this column protected Lord 
 John in his retreat across a farmyard, when the drunken 
 brutes threatened his life.' 
 
 It is mentioned that Mr. White was appointed Assistant 
 Doorkeeper of the House of Commons by Lord Charles 
 Russell, and soon became Doorkeeper, holding office for 
 twenty-one years, and winning in a very marked degree 
 the admiration and friendship of the members. Here I 
 may quote Mark Rutherford's own words about Lord 
 Charles Russell in 1875. ' Lord Charles Russell's retire- 
 ment is much to be regretted. There was a grand style 
 about him combined with perfect simplicity and courteous- 
 ness which we shall miss for a long time to come. He was, 
 in truth, the type of all that is best in an English aristocrat.' 
 Of his own father he wrote : — ' The Doorkeeper of the 
 House of Commons is retiring. For twenty years and 
 more he has had to be at the House from its meeting to 
 its rising on every day of its sitting, and his main duties 
 have been to see that no unauthorised person enters 
 the House. The present Doorkeeper leaves the House 
 regretted, I should say, by every member in it, regardless 
 of party, and as he is the last of a class his departure is an 
 epoch.' 
 
 ii 
 
 As might be expected, the book runs largely on the 
 unhappy theological controversy which engrossed his 
 youth. There is nothing very novel in what he tells
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 381 
 
 us, and there are one or two traces of acerbity which are 
 not characteristic of the man. Speaking of his time at 
 Cheshunt he says : ' I learnt nothing at Cheshunt, and did 
 not make a single friend.' He tells us that at first after 
 abandoning orthodoxy, he thought nothing in the old 
 religion worth retaining, but this temper did not last long. 
 He was for a short time a schoolmaster in Stoke Newington, 
 and ' there fell upon me what was the beginning of a 
 trouble which has lasted all my life.' When he left the 
 school he ' called on several publishers and asked for 
 employment, but could get none till I came to John 
 Chapman, editor and proprietor of the Westminster 
 Review.'' His occupation was to write Chapman's letters, 
 to keep his accounts, and, most disagreeable, to ' sub- 
 scribe ' his publications — that is to say, to call on 
 the booksellers and ask how many copies they would 
 take. He says nothing about his preaching at this time, 
 but we know that he preached — mostly in Unitarian 
 chapels. I believe that he frequently filled the pulpit 
 at the quaint little Unitarian chapel at Billingshurst, 
 in Sussex. The cause was founded in the eighteenth 
 century by two ministers, Mr. Evershed and Mr. Turner. 
 They preached in the tiniest of chapels — I imagine forty 
 people would crowd it. The chapel yard is unusually 
 large, and the tombstones are mostly marked with the 
 names of Evershed and Turner. Their descendants 
 have remained faithful to this day. Mark Rutherford 
 often seemed to do injustice to the essential religious- 
 ness which never left him. Though he had been badly 
 treated by the Dissenters he remained a fervent Dis- 
 senter, and his talk about his early troubles was magnani- 
 mous to a degree. He thought that the older Dissenters
 
 382 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 were of a finer quality than the newer. He was a 
 constant student of the Bible, and came to fear that 
 among Dissenters there was far too little of the Bible and 
 too much of the preacher. He thought the Dissenting 
 laity would be greatly improved if thorough, systematic 
 instruction in the Bible were substituted a little more 
 frequently for nights of oratory dependent upon an isolated 
 text. He had small patience with those who complained 
 about the introduction of politics into preaching. The 
 political dissenters, he would say, were far more political 
 than their descendants and more pious. Many of them 
 were almost Republican. ' An ancestor of the present 
 writer, a godly elder of his church, had his windows 
 smashed because of his ardour in the cause of reform 
 before the Reform Act of 1832 was passed, and his father 
 refused to illuminate for the victories over the French 
 because he considered that we ought to let the French 
 people manage their own affairs, and that if we had not 
 interfered with them they would not have interfered with 
 us. Cromwell and Milton were political, and are supposed 
 to have had a few religious convictions. It is surely 
 impossible now for a man to have imperious and ardent 
 beliefs on religion without having beliefs equally imperious 
 and ardent on a subject so important as politics.' His 
 freedom from acerbity is shown by a reference he made 
 to Samuel Morley, a leading Nonconformist of his time. 
 When Samuel Morley was abused for his opposition to 
 Mr. Bradlaugh, Mark Rutherford came forward to say that 
 Mr. Morley was an apostle of toleration when the world 
 was ignorant of Mr. Bradlaugh' s existence. ' It is thirty 
 years ago and more since a young student, just entering 
 upon the ministry in a dissenting Church, found himself
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 888 
 
 unable any longer to preach by the Trust Deed, and went 
 over to Unitarianism. I know for a fact that, though Mr. 
 Morley totally disapproved of the young man's opinions, 
 he made him a handsome present, enough to support 
 him for a whole year, because he believed him to be 
 honest.' 
 
 Mark Rutherford could do justice to the Church of 
 England, especially in his later years, and when he was a 
 young man he made a pilgrimage to Hursley to hear Mr. 
 Keble preach. The day was never forgotten. ' Every- 
 body was at church who could go, from Mr. Heathcote 
 down to the humblest labourer, and the sermon preached 
 was one that went to everybody's heart. It was harvest 
 time, and the preacher seized the opportunity of enlarging 
 upon the relationship between master and servant, that, 
 of course, being the season of the year when the farmers 
 had to make the greatest demand upon their men. There 
 was no flinching from the truth, no feigning of it through 
 platitudes and generalities. The precise deficiencies both 
 on the side of the masters as well as of the men which had 
 been observed through the week were exposed and de- 
 nounced, and then we were told of a higher Master whose 
 dealings with us were for ever just and merciful. Alto- 
 gether it was noble Christian doctrine such as I have not 
 often heard since.' 
 
 He could not, however, be anything but a Dissenter, 
 and he had small patience with Dissenting ministers who 
 went over to the Church. When Mr. Courtauld, the hero 
 of the Church Rate controversy, died at eighty-six he 
 wrote : ' I just remember the great Braintree case and the 
 rejoicing over it. I can still see the place, the very pool 
 near which I was standing when the news of the decision
 
 384 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 of the House of Lords arrived.' He could wax warm in 
 this debate. ' A person calling herself a Churchwoman 
 writes to one of the Church newspapers protesting against 
 the reception of dissenting ministers into the Church. 
 They are so uncultivated, so intolerable in polite society, 
 and she tells a story of a dissenting minister converted to 
 the Establishment who, when he appeared in a drawing- 
 room one evening, produced a pair of worked slippers and 
 proceeded to change his boots there and then. When the 
 boots were taken off they were stowed under a chair, and 
 the owner resisted attempts on the part of the servant to 
 remove them. All this is perfectly credible. A dissenting 
 minister who is good enough to pervert himself to the 
 Establishment would be likely to take off his boots, and for 
 aught I know his coat or his shirt.' 
 
 in 
 
 He writes once again, and very warmly, about Caleb 
 Morris, through whom the Bible became to him what it 
 was. But there is no reference to another hero of his 
 youth — the late Thomas Binney. Of Binney he wrote : 
 ' His reputation certainly is not upheld, or at any rate 
 has not been created, by books, but there are many reputa- 
 tions, and those, too, of teachers of mankind, which have 
 not been made by books. Mr. Binney was emphatically 
 not a writer but a preacher, and one of the strongest 
 preachers ever possessed by the Independents. He was 
 unequal, and when he felt that perhaps he had gone too 
 far, and endeavoured to retract, he was uninteresting* 
 but when he left himself full liberty, and had a subject 
 such as an Old Testament patriarch or the Apostle Paul,
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 385 
 
 he rose to heights of grandeur. His style of speaking was 
 perfect. I have heard many orators in my time, but I 
 do not think I ever heard oratory which was so attrac- 
 tive to thinking men as Binney's. It was something like 
 Cobden's in its plainness and something like Roebuck's in 
 its incisive, rhetorical force, but had a depth and a pathos 
 in it of which Cobden and Roebuck were not capable. Mr. 
 Carlyle knew and appreciated Mr. Binney. I recollect a 
 kindly note from Chelsea asking Mr. Binney to pay a visit 
 there, and assuring him that he would find a friendly 
 kettle on the hob and a pipe in the corner.' 
 
 It would not be easy to define Mark Rutherford's ulti- 
 mate theological position. He writes here : ' The great 
 doctrines of Puritanism are also much nearer to the facts 
 of actual experience than we suppose.' He was a whole- 
 hearted lover of liberty, but he could not endure anything 
 in the nature of mockery. Once on a time a correspondent 
 wrote to the editor of a religious paper asking whether 
 he believed that Balaam's ass really spoke. The editor 
 replied : ' The Bible says so, and therefore we believe it, 
 and we would say further that if every one who undertakes 
 to throw discredit on the Bible story would, whenever he 
 opened his mouth, speak only half as wisely or half as well 
 as the ass did, we should not have so much nonsense 
 uttered as we have now to listen to.' On this Mark Ruther- 
 ford comments : ' This is a very fair retort and deserves 
 record.' He wrote also, late in life : ' Any fool can buy a 
 Bible and grin at it, and apparently get his folly printed. 
 We cannot put down, and nobody would attempt to put 
 down, Gibbon or a translation of Strauss ; but somehow 
 there is an instinctive desire to call out for a policeman 
 when one sees the guilty daub which is supposed to contra- 
 
 2 b
 
 386 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 diet the Book of Genesis by depicting an old man making 
 a human being out of mud.' 
 
 IV 
 
 He expresses his regret that he did not continue his 
 acquaintance with George Eliot, whose ' tenderness and 
 defiance ' he never tired of praising. He urges the young 
 religiously to grasp their chances of making acquaintance 
 with great persons, and looks upon his single interview 
 with Carlyle as one of the most important events in his 
 life. Strange to say, he does not refer here to his meeting 
 with Emerson, of whom he wrote in 1881 : ' It seems but 
 yesterday since the present writer of this column spent a 
 morning with Emerson in England. I do not know how 
 many years ago, but he was then comparatively young, 
 strong as a boy, and projecting a new edition of his work. 
 Nothing struck me more than his sunny serenity and 
 peace, a serenity and peace resting on convictions which 
 were the chief basis of his character.'
 
 XLIII 
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD— (Continued) 
 
 III. MARK RUTHERFORD AS A POLITICIAN 
 
 Much of Mark Rutherford's time was spent in the House 
 of Commons. His father's position as Doorkeeper made 
 entrance easy, and he contrived as early as 1861, or shortly 
 after, to increase his income by writing London letters 
 for provincial papers. He also contributed to some of 
 the London journals, but it is not easy now to identify his 
 work, and much of it is irretrievably lost. But I have 
 examined five years of his work in the Rochdale Observer, 
 from 1867-1872 ; ten years of his work in the Norfolk 
 News, from 1873-1883 ; and some in other papers like 
 the Nonconformist and the Birmingham Post. He regarded 
 his performances in this way with very little respect, and 
 confessed that he was often sorely perplexed with the 
 difficulty of filling his columns. The work was very poorly 
 remunerated, but it was impossible for him to write 
 without at least occasional touches of his own quality, 
 and many of his character sketches are penetrating and 
 memorable. His standpoint from first to last was that 
 of a Radical Dissenter of the most uncompromising type. 
 Much of his correspondence is taken up with stories about 
 the Ritualists and comments thereon. His own position 
 is sufficiently expressed in the following words. Describing 
 
 3S7
 
 388 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 a debate on Disestablishment, he says : ' Another with 
 much felicity compared the union between Church and 
 State to that which existed between the Siamese twins, 
 Mr. Gladstone being the cruel doctor to cut the bond. 
 A more singularly felicitous description of the connection 
 between Church and State could not well be coined. It 
 is a monstrous union, and fetters both.' 
 
 He was throughout a very impatient listener, and he 
 detested those who committed the crime of loquacity. 
 
 Writing in the early 'seventies, he tells us that he found 
 members in the House of Commons were watching their 
 opportunity as a habitual tippler watches the bottle, or 
 as a cat watches a piece of meat dangling over its head. 
 The thing that struck an outsider was the madness which 
 seemed to possess members to catch the Speaker's eye. 
 It is commonly supposed that animal passions alone 
 are compatible with blindness and ferocity. But Mark 
 Rutherford found that the passion for talk could be as 
 ferocious and furious as that for prey. In one place he 
 describes the speech of a worthy, good-hearted, com- 
 placent bore. ' Nature,' he says, ' deals very kindly 
 with us, and is full of wonderful adaptations and com- 
 pensations. To the creature which needs protection she 
 sends a tough hide. It would be of no use to clothe 
 with self-ignorance, self-complacency, and a pachyder- 
 matous moral tissue the wise men who never need fear 
 contempt. But her weaker children, who, if they were 
 really to understand how they are appraised by the rest, 
 and who would die of disgust if they could feel the arrows 
 of scorn continually let fly at them, these she wraps all 
 over in impenetrable mail, behind which the ego sits 
 serenely, never aware even of the intent of the weapons
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 389 
 
 used against it, or of the force with which they are hurled. 
 Nature has a mind that the foolish shall live as well as 
 the not-foolish, and how could this design of hers be 
 accomplished if the skin of the foolish were not properly 
 thickened ? ' 
 
 MR. BRIGHT 
 
 Mr. Bright, whom he knew well, was his supreme 
 favourite among politicians, for he steadfastly maintained 
 that wonderful as Bright's eloquence was, his political 
 sagacity and statesmanship were far more remarkable. 
 In the House of Commons he seldom or never made a 
 political blunder, and every measure which he advocated 
 became law. ' During the passage of the Irish Land Bill 
 through the House of Commons many of its clauses were 
 called Bright's clauses, and I remember the constant 
 complaints of the Tory squires that they were called to 
 the House mainly to register Mr. Bright's decrees. There 
 is no living statesman who can say that so much of his 
 thought has been transformed into the accepted legislation 
 of the country as Mr. Bright.' He admitted that Bright 
 seldom quoted from first-rate authors, and that his cita- 
 tions from poetry were generally commonplace. But he 
 held him to be a supreme master of eloquence, and delighted 
 in quoting his perfect phrases. 4 " On one occasion," 
 said Mr. Bright, referring to the cause of Louis Philippe's 
 exile, " it was thought to be perilous to hold a certain 
 pinnacle, but because they did not hold it the peril came." 
 The form of that sentence is so perfect that, to use language 
 slightly superphilosophical, it almost becomes part of its 
 essence, or, in other words, the meaning gains so much 
 from the form that we cannot separate the power of the
 
 390 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 one from that of the other.' He pointed out that in 
 Bright's grandest speeches he talked a language almost 
 purely Biblical. Take, for example, this sentence : ' The 
 nation is now in power, and if in wisdom abideth power, 
 the generation to follow may behold the glorious day of 
 which we in our time with our best endeavours can only 
 hope to see the earliest dawn.' 
 
 Mr. Bright, the chief of the democracy, kept alive in 
 England a reverence not merely for Christian morality, 
 but for the very terms and tones of the Scriptures in which 
 that morality is taught. Mark Rutherford was happy 
 and secure when Bright took the helm. ' What a relief 
 was Mr. Bright's open, manly speech ! It seemed to 
 clear the very air. There, at least, was a man who knew 
 his own mind and had always avowed it, who amid 
 universal dissembling had always been straightforward 
 and declared what he meant to do. " Better," says 
 Emerson, "is a little integrity than a career." ' But 
 with all his admiration for Bright he was long enough in 
 the House of Commons to see that by 1883 Bright's 
 great life-work was over. ' Gentle as the light breeze, 
 mellow as wine of an ancient vintage, did the great 
 tribune's words steal on the troubled ear. Mr. Bright is 
 no longer unsatisfied ; the work of his hand is established. 
 Mr. Bright belongs to the masterful past, not to the restless, 
 striving future.' 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE 
 
 While admiring to enthusiasm Mr. Gladstone's pro- 
 digious powers, Mark Rutherford never trusted him 
 entirely. It may be that Lord Morley in his great bio- 
 graphy has laid too little stress on the calamitous effects
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 391 
 
 of Mr. Gladstone's dealings with the Dissenters. They 
 brought about his downfall in 1874, and ensured the 
 failure of his attempts to pass a Home Rule measure. 
 But the truth is that Mr. Gladstone was never in sympathy 
 with Nonconformist principles. His disestablishment of 
 the Irish Church won for him the passionate and united 
 support of Nonconformists. But they expected him to 
 advance in the same path, and this he was most reluctant 
 to do. It was clear to Mark Rutherford, as to some others, 
 that Mr. Gladstone's line on the education question would 
 bring about the downfall of his Government, and the 
 defeat of 1874 came as no surprise. In one of his letters 
 Mark Rutherford speculates on Mr. Gladstone's pro- 
 ceedings. ' What is the cause of this curious failure to 
 recognise his duty ? Why, with the straight road before 
 him which he sees he ought to tread, does he prefer diver- 
 gence into strange bye-paths ? Partly, I believe, it is 
 because of an original defect in his nature. He is keen, 
 sharp, brilliant beyond almost any man I know ; and it 
 is just that very virtue of his mind which leads him wrong. 
 He is so much a lover of reasons — a creator of reasons 
 for everything he does — that he makes mistakes where 
 simpler people, trusting to their instinct, would succeed. 
 . . . Another reason for Mr. Gladstone's failure is his 
 ecclesiastical education. We must never forget what he 
 was thirty years ago, and that he has never passed through 
 that purifying fire which cleansed two or three, at least, 
 of his friends who were with him in the gall of bitterness. 
 He took to politics and not to thinking, and though a good 
 deal of his Puseyite frippery not having been renewed has 
 rotted off in course of time, a good deal still remains. 
 There has been no complete renovation, no conversion of
 
 392 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 the whole man. He may still be haunted by that secret 
 terror which makes even 
 
 " The loftiest fear 
 All that they would disdain to think were true/' 
 
 and he may shrink from a State which does not in some 
 way recognise a Church. One thing at least we know, 
 that what a man has once thoroughly believed when he 
 is young, hangs about him more or less definitely all his 
 life, unless he undergoes spiritual revolution, of which 
 Mr. Gladstone has never shown a trace.' 
 
 He thought that Mr. Gladstone failed in rhetorical 
 passages. ' As soon as he begins rhetoric and " launches 
 in the winds of heaven " members get uneasy. The door 
 begins to swing backwards and forwards, and the power 
 fades out of him as if he were paralysed. He did a good 
 deal of this tempting the heavenly wind on Monday, and 
 it would have been well for him and those of us who 
 listened to him if it had been otherwise. He is often 
 seduced into long perorations and windy eloquence totally 
 unsuitable to him.' But he considered that for debating 
 power Mr. Gladstone never had his equal. All his col- 
 leagues together could not supply his place. Mr. Gladstone 
 was a man of sufficient resource for the most sudden 
 emergencies, and capable of instant reply and compre- 
 hensive summing up. He refers to Gladstone in April 
 1873 making a speech about brewers' licences. ' He 
 wanted no notes and no prompting. He could draw the 
 Giotto's O like a master with one swift motion of his hand 
 with no assistance. All the mysteries of finance were 
 clear enough to him, and his marvellous memory wanted 
 no refreshing. His is an organisation which to me is
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 393 
 
 perfectly miraculous, the existence of which it would be 
 as difficult for me to credit as a story in the Arabian Nights, 
 did I not know that it existed by the testimony of my 
 senses. He understands the whole question of malt 
 better than any farmer, and of brewers' licences better 
 than any brewer, though he also knows more about the 
 Khiva and Central Asia than Lord Granville. Mr. Glad- 
 stone is emphatically a Minister, and a First Minister, 
 making use of all his instruments as tools, and never 
 showing the slightest sign of being overmastered by them. 
 I have been told that he can do the work of everybody in 
 the Treasury from the messengers upward, and I incline 
 to believe it.' 
 
 MR. DISRAELI 
 
 All his life Mark Rutherford was fascinated with the 
 mystery of Disraeli. He had plenty to say in criticism of 
 Disraeli's ambitions and measures, but he thoroughly 
 recognised Disraeli's astonishing powers. He writes on 
 May 18, 1867 : ' He has managed in the face of defection 
 in his Cabinet, and among the rank and file of the House, 
 to do more with a minority of sixty or seventy than any 
 other Minister has yet done with a majority of sixty or 
 seventy, and he will now most probably carry his Bill. 
 His one ambition he has now nearly achieved. The one 
 object of his life has been to make himself a name. His 
 dream may come true, for it may now go down to posterity 
 that the Jew Minister, the man who never went to Eton or 
 Oxford, who had no territorial influence, and was hated by 
 those whom he had to lead, managed to reconstruct the 
 constitution of the country when all efforts had failed, 
 and that he did it too under the greatest disadvantages.'
 
 394 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Disraeli he considered ' a far more stimulating and 
 amusing speaker than his greatest opponent.' When 
 Disraeli left the House of Commons, Mark Rutherford 
 quoted an old Radical as saying : ' " I find myself always 
 looking to the Front Conservative Bench when I enter the 
 House in order that I may see if Dizzy is there. If he is 
 not there, I am disappointed." That expresses precisely 
 what many even of his foes have thought about him, no 
 matter how diverse their politics have been from his. 
 They have never been able to cherish any personal hostility 
 to him, and they have always considered that somehow 
 or other his absence was a loss. Partly this was due to 
 his personal qualifications. He was kind-hearted, his 
 sympathies were generous. His speech, when it was 
 proposed to erect a monument to Lord Byron, touched a 
 chord in the hearts of a good many, and showed that 
 privately he must have had thoughts which he was not 
 in the habit of confessing.' 
 
 But he admitted that Disraeli was a riddle hard to read. 
 His soul had a cave in it into which none was allowed 
 to look. ' Nobody has ever seen him without his wig and 
 gown. He is always counsel for the Tories, and whether 
 he is a Tory himself nobody can tell. Perhaps when he 
 is dead we shall be enlightened, and his biographers may 
 come upon a volume of private meditations upon the 
 squires, their politics, and their religion which will astonish 
 the world.' 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain 
 
 I have before me a volume of the Nonconformist for 
 1872. Edward Miall was editor, Mark Rutherford was 
 the Parliamentary correspondent, and early in the year
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 395 
 
 Mr. Joseph Chamberlain appeared upon the scene. All 
 three were then Nonconformists of the most positive and 
 aggressive type, eager for disestablishment. In reading 
 Mr. Chamberlain's papers and speeches one marks with 
 amazement the tardiness with which his unrivalled powers 
 of clear and forcible expression were recognised. He had 
 to write a letter explaining that he was not a Churchman. 
 On January 31, 1872, there is the following brief epistle 
 to the editor of the Nonconformist : 
 
 1 I see that in your " Summary " of the 24th inst. I 
 am alluded to as a Churchman. 
 
 ' As I am proud of my Nonconformity, and have no 
 desire to be " comprehended " in any established sect, 
 permit me to correct the misstatement, and to say that 
 I am a Unitarian.' 
 
 The Nonconformists and the Liberals in general did not 
 at first recognise the great reinforcement of their cause. 
 Mark Rutherford, however, was not so blind as some 
 others. We find him saying quite early : ' The leader- 
 ship of Mr. Chamberlain or of Sir Charles Dilke, either 
 in Opposition or in power, can only be a matter of time, 
 though at present no journal but Truth dare mention 
 the possibility save under its breath.' A little later he 
 writes : ' It is urged that Chamberlain's speeches never 
 rise much above commonplace, that they are merely the 
 utterance of a shrewd business man, with none of the 
 striking phrases of Lord Beaconsfield, none of the subtle 
 thoughts of Mr. Gladstone. It may be so, but it must 
 be remembered that our last two Premiers have been men 
 of singularly powerful personality. Lord Beaconsfield 
 was not only a statesman, but also a successful novelist. 
 His great rival will probably live in history as the greatest
 
 396 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Prime Minister this country has ever seen. But Mr. 
 Chamberlain compares favourably with the Prime Ministers 
 of the past.' 
 
 He writes later : ' It is useless to abuse or slight Mr. 
 Chamberlain. No statesman can catch the prevailing 
 tone so alertly, and none can give it more forcible 
 expression. His speeches, like Luther's words, are be- 
 coming to sound like half battles. " The House of Lords 
 must clear out of the way," he cries, and when he speaks 
 thus we know that though wind and tide be ever so much 
 against him, that is precisely what he will bring about. 
 Without him politics would sink into a dead jangle of 
 words.' He acknowledges that Mr. Chamberlain is not 
 a favourite in the House, particularly among those whom 
 one might be inclined to consider his own following. 
 4 Some are jealous of his sudden rise to power and influence ; 
 others think that he has compromised his principles on 
 the Egyptian and Irish questions. But m the constitu- 
 encies no Minister is more popular, always excepting 
 Mr. Gladstone.' 
 
 I quote in conclusion a significant paragraph of 
 September 30, 1882, referring to Henry George's book on 
 Progress and Poverty. ' The rights of man are once more 
 to the front, and the basis of one of the ablest books on 
 political economy which has been written for many a day. 
 A man must be blind who does not see that ahead of us 
 are questions which in due time will be put by Mr. Speaker 
 from the chair which will shake these islands to their 
 very centre.' 
 
 Figures long faded float over these pages, and I do 
 not attempt to revive them ; but two or three aphoristic 
 judgments may be set down.
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 397 
 
 ' Independence is usually the vengeance of little minds.' 
 
 ' The most perfect gentleman we ever had in the House 
 of Commons was Mr. Cobden.' 
 
 ' My experience of working men is that a preacher 
 who should seek to enmesh them by an allusion to their 
 " honest, homy hands," would most likely be greeted by 
 the spectacle of an honest, horny finger elevated to the tip 
 of the nose.' 
 
 He writes in 1883 : ' I shall be very much surprised if 
 John Morley does not take a very high place in the next 
 Liberal Government, for he has all the breadth of view, 
 eloquence, and insight of the statesman whose biography 
 he has so ably written — Edmund Burke. Mr. Gladstone 
 has stated privately that he anticipates for him a great 
 political future.'
 
 XLIV 
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD— {Continued) 
 
 IV. MARK RUTHERFORD AS A CRITIC 
 
 Mark Rutherford was long on very intimate terms with 
 Mr. Francis, the publisher of the Athenceum, and his son, 
 my friend Mr. John C. Francis. Through the kindness 
 of the latter I have been able to trace his contributions to 
 the leading literary journal, but first I quote the tribute 
 paid to Mr. Francis on his death in April, 1882 : 
 
 ' I desire to offer my humble testimony to the work of 
 Mr. Francis, publisher of the Athenceum, who was buried 
 this week. The newspapers, which have all of them 
 benefited by his successful attempts to repeal the paper and 
 advertising duties, have recorded his public worth, but 
 many persons in London, myself included, can testify to 
 something much better — to his blameless life, to the faith- 
 fulness of his friendships, and to the generosity of his 
 services on behalf of those who needed them. Many a 
 man has he helped when help was necessary, and his right 
 hand knew not what his left did. His devotion to his 
 master, the Athenceum, was unlimited, and up to a very 
 short time before his death, when he could no longer get 
 out of doors, and scarcely moved from his room, he persisted 
 in doing work for the paper as much as lay within his 
 powers.' 
 
 398
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 399 
 
 To the Athenceum Mark Rutherford contributed a few 
 signed articles, but the only reviews he wrote relate to 
 Wordsworth. They are exceedingly careful and scholarly. 
 He was indeed a scholar, exact, unwearied, and constant 
 in the study of books he loved. But he very seldom com- 
 mitted himself to critical judgments, and about second-rate 
 books he had nothing to say. The Athenceum series is as 
 follows : — Wordsworth, edited by William Knight, May 2, 
 1896, December 26, 1896, September 25, 1897; and 
 Hutchinson's Edition of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, 
 July 16, 1898. The criticism of Professor Knight is by no 
 means favourable. The critic objects to the substitution 
 of a chronological arrangement for Wordsworth's own, and 
 points out many blunders. The notes are characterised as 
 sometimes inaccurate and often superfluous, and he is 
 advised to submit his work to somebody who knows what 
 are the duties and responsibilities of editing. He is 
 severely blamed for omitting to tell the source of his 
 unpublished work. Mark Rutherford refuses to assign a 
 supreme position to the ' Ode : Intimations of Immortality.' 
 ' The " Ode " is popular because it hits the taste of a number 
 of people to whom it is a pleasure to repose in dreams of 
 pre-existence, and to strengthen their faith thereby in a 
 life after death ; but it is desultory, will not stand examina- 
 tion (as Coleridge pointed out) by the reason, and lacks the 
 simplicity of such masterpieces as " The Ruined Cottage," 
 or " Laodamia." " The winds," which " come to me from 
 the fields of sleep" are, according to him, "the morning 
 breeze blowing from the fields that were dark during the
 
 400 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 hours of sleep." ' This Mark Rutherford styles ' a poor, 
 loose explanation.' He points out that the time (line 44) 
 is supposed to be morning, and that Wordsworth meant 
 the west wind, that is to say, the wind blowing from 
 the fields on which the sun had not risen. This seems 
 plausible. 
 
 He lays stress on the obligation of Wordsworth to 
 Coleridge. ' Whatever Coleridge's faults may have been, 
 he never overvalued his merits or his powers, and his 
 influence over Wordsworth, as the elder man himself 
 acknowledged, was redemption. Of Wordsworth's struggle 
 between 1793 and 1798 we have but scanty record. In 
 the Lyrical Ballads he emerges without controversy into 
 peace. . . . We believe,' he says, ' Wordsworth was in a 
 way converted between 1793 and 1797 ; but no coloured 
 map of his life with distinctly dividing lines can be drawn. 
 No temper, no way of looking at the world, which has 
 once been ours, is ever completely abolished. It may be 
 dominated by new tempers and new ways, but will reappear 
 to the end.' 
 
 In a letter to the Athenceum, ' Edward FitzGerald on 
 Carlyle's and Tennyson's Astronomy,' Mark Rutherford, 
 all his life keenly interested in astronomy, makes a note on 
 Tennyson's lines : 
 
 ' Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, 
 Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the west.' 
 
 ' The time, judging from what follows, may be spring. At 
 ten o'clock p.m. at the end of February Orion would be 
 precisely in the position described by Tennyson. He is, I 
 think, never incorrect in his reference to any natural 
 object.'
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 401 
 
 n 
 
 I note some of the references to books and authors in 
 Mark Rutherford's fugitive writings. 
 
 ' In my humble opinion, Mr. Whitman is one of the very 
 greatest of living poets, but he is peculiar, and his peculi- 
 arities are certainly not after the manner of Mr. Newman 
 Hall.' 
 
 ' The Life of Wordsworth by the Bishop of Lincoln is surely 
 the most exquisitely disappointing biography of an eminent 
 man which ever saw the light. It is, moreover, written 
 by an ecclesiastic whose grand object seems to be to make 
 out that Wordsworth was little better than a High Church- 
 man with a gift for poetry. Few people know what a 
 matchless writer of prose WordsAvorth could be when he 
 had a subject congenial to him, such as the poet Burns, for 
 instance.' 
 
 ' I believe,' he wrote in 1882, ' notwithstanding the 
 enormous present popularity of Dickens, that we are only 
 beginning to appreciate him at his proper price, and when 
 half a century has passed, and we find that no repetition 
 has been vouchsafed to us of that inimitable story-telling 
 power, that perfect pathos, that sympathy with unre- 
 cognised forms of human worth, we shall then, and only 
 then, begin to place the master on his proper pedestal.' 
 
 ' Mr. Burton's portrait of George Eliot is not entirely 
 satisfactory. It is good as far as it goes, but it misses, to 
 me at least, the strength of the face. It is a little too soft, 
 a little too made-up for the purpose of pleasing. George 
 Eliot was certainly not handsome, and the artist in de- 
 picting her ought to have seized the moment when her 
 
 2c
 
 402 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 countenance was lighted up by some sudden inspiration, 
 by the stimulus of something said with which she entirely 
 agreed or disagreed.' 
 
 ' My admiration for Paradise Regained rises to the un- 
 speakable point.' 
 
 4 Bonamy Price says that he was once prompted to ask 
 Wordsworth what was the meaning of the famous but 
 mystical line in the " Ode to Immortality " about the " fall- 
 ings from us — vanishings." Wordsworth explained to him 
 with great simplicity, but much earnestness, that " there 
 was a time in my life when I had to push against some- 
 thing which resisted, to be sure that there was anything 
 outside of me. I was sure of my own mind ; everything 
 else fell away and vanished into thought." ' 
 
 He takes a more favourable opinion than most of Owen 
 Meredith's attempt to write the life of his father. 
 
 ' The two volumes of the late Lord Lytton's life that 
 have yet seen the light are packed with interesting matter. 
 The most interesting chapter is on Disraeli. Lord Lytton, 
 whose love of the mysterious was as great as Scott's, drew 
 a wonderful horoscope of his friend, in which by some 
 strange freak of fate nearly every one of the predictions 
 was fulfilled. Their characters, too, were alike. Disraeli's 
 works smelt of hair oil, says Anthony Trollope, and they 
 got much of their savour from Lytton. But then the 
 original compound was at least the very finest Macassar. 
 Lytton's versatility, invention, and ingenuity were pro- 
 digious, and his Memories are full of a simple charm that 
 readers of his works might be inclined to deny him.' 
 
 ' The reader who cares to know Swedenborg in his 
 beauties without his defects will find him in Emerson's 
 essay on him, in Dr. Garth Wilkinson's writings, and also
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 403 
 
 in the charming but thoughtful little series beginning with 
 " The Evening and the Morning." ' 
 
 ' S. R. Gardiner is altogether our most satisfactory 
 historian. One must modify or change many views in 
 reading Mr. Gardiner, but one feels persuaded that here, 
 at least, we have a final judgment. The analysis of 
 authorities is quite unlike any brother historian — so simple, 
 calm, and unprejudiced.' 
 
 ' Lord Beaconsfield, charmed I suppose by the mystery 
 of the line " A fool is bent upon a twig, but wise men dread 
 a bandit," pensioned its author, Mr. Martin Tupper.' 
 
 ' It cannot be wrong to say that Swinburne excels all his 
 contemporaries in spontaneity, a quality which he shares 
 with Shelley and Heine. Like theirs, his work sometimes 
 seems rather the result of magic than of earthly power. 
 He has more force than Tennyson and finer form than 
 Browning, but one is rarely captivated by the thought as 
 in the case of the older poets.' 
 
 ' Miss Blind's Life of George Eliot cannot fail to heighten 
 the enthusiasm, love, and admiration which is already 
 felt for the author of Romola. A comparison of such letters 
 of George Eliot as we already possess with those of Mrs. 
 Carlyle tends to show the difference between the intel- 
 lectual seriousness of a truly great woman and the mere 
 cleverness and Scotch shrewdness of the wife of our 
 humorous moralist.' 
 
 4 The best translations of Faust — Hayward and Bayard 
 Taylor.' 
 
 ' Many many years ago a novel was published called A 
 Lost Love. The authoress never wrote but that one book. 
 Two editions were sold, and it became very scarce. Its 
 merits were remembered by a few, and I recollect that one
 
 404 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 of the greatest of living poets counselled me to read it. I 
 searched all London through for a copy, and at last found 
 one, which I bought eagerly, and never regretted buying. 
 This very week I see in the Athenceum, to my great surprise 
 and delight, that it is to be reprinted.' 
 
 The reference here is to the book A Lost Love, by Ashford 
 Owen. The authoress was Miss Ogle. 

 
 XLV 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD— {Continued) 
 
 V. THE SPIRITUAL HISTORY OF MARK RUTHERFORD 
 
 The fascinating writer and, notwithstanding his retired- 
 ness, the fascinating man whom we have lost was occupied 
 all his life with spiritual problems. Is it possible to trace 
 his spiritual history — the rise and progress of religion in his 
 soul ? I believe I am justified in making the attempt, 
 using only the testimony of his own writings. 
 
 It was by his style, first of all, that Mark Rutherford 
 impressed his readers. That style was full throughout of 
 the simplicity which is the first step of nature and the last 
 of art. The free and graceful movement, like that of an 
 Arab steed, the swift ease and unerring precision of the 
 expression, stirred one to admiration and despair. The 
 impression was deepened by the utter absence of effort, 
 by the apparent carelessness with which the most surpris- 
 ing triumphs of speech were achieved. Robin Hood, 
 splitting the wand with his arrow, could not have been 
 more superbly free from flurry and self-consciousness. But 
 very soon the student was attracted by the manner in 
 which Mark Rutherford handled the deepest problems of 
 life. To the end he returned to them, and he spoke so 
 frankly that we may indicate with some confidence his 
 ultimate attitude to Christianity. We must not indeed 
 
 405
 
 406 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 claim a uniform consistency in his utterances. His teach- 
 ing is conveyed largely in dramatic form, and he was a 
 man of moods. Sometimes he seems to say that the wise 
 will leave all those problems alone, and content themselves 
 with a temperate enjoyment of the earthly life. But this 
 attitude is only occasional. He was to the end a seeker 
 and, in no mean degree, a finder. 
 
 A most revealing light on his spiritual history is given 
 in his paper on the great Welsh preacher, Caleb Morris, 
 published in the British Weekly on March 6, 1902. From 
 this we learn that Hale White attended Caleb Morris's 
 ministry in Fetter Lane Chapel when he first became a 
 student of divinity. He was cast out of college on account 
 of that kind of heresy which is merely the ferment of a 
 young mind stirred by such authors as Carlyle and Emerson. 
 After his expulsion the student continued to be a wor- 
 shipper and a preacher. He attended constantly the ser- 
 vices conducted by Caleb Morris in Eccleston Square 
 Chapel and at his own house in Mecklenburgh Square. 
 From 1850 to 1863, when Caleb Morris left London to spend 
 the remainder of his days in his native land, Morris was 
 his friend and guide. ' Having heard continuously all the 
 most noteworthy speakers of my day — Roebuck, Cobden, 
 Bright, Gladstone, Binney — I affirm unhesitatingly that 
 Caleb Morris was more eloquent than any of them.' He 
 gives quotations from the sermons of his master, and these 
 are very significant to those who know Mark Rutherford's 
 writings. For they make it clear that Caleb Morris was 
 the spiritual father and leader of Mark Rutherford. It is, 
 of course, clear that in many ways he was not in sympathy 
 with the organised Churches of his time. In the notable 
 preface which he contributed to the first edition of his
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 407 
 
 translation of Spinoza's Ethic — a very different thing from 
 the second preface — he deplored (this was in 1883) the 
 decay of ethics and religion. He said : 
 
 ' The decay of religion, amongst other innumerable evils, 
 has also brought upon us this evil, that the purely intel- 
 lectual, with no reference whatever to the ethical, is the 
 sole object of research, and a man devotes all his life to the 
 anatomy of lepidoptera, and never gives an hour to a 
 solution of the problem how he may best bring insurgent 
 and tyrannous desires under subjection or face misfortune. 
 No doubt the anatomy of lepidoptera does contribute 
 ethical results, but ethical science, strictly so-called, is 
 non-existent. No preacher preaches it ; the orthodox 
 churches are given over to a philosophy of rags, and " free " 
 pulpits do nothing but mince and mash up for popular 
 ears commonplaces upon books and passing events.' 
 
 Nevertheless, he held fast by essential Christianity. It 
 is little to say that he never tried to stamp in the dust the 
 Name that is above every name. Of Christ he never speaks 
 save with the sincerest reverence and love. 
 
 Christianity was to him, in the first place, a law. There 
 was nothing he insisted upon with more passion than the 
 vital and eternal difference between right and wrong. 
 From certain of his ethical judgments on his characters 
 one may have occasion to dissent. But on principles he 
 was always firm. He learned from Caleb Morris to put 
 to every book the question, ' Wherein can it help me ? ' 
 In the preface we have referred to he puts the question to 
 Spinoza, ' Wherein can you help me ? ' He thought then
 
 408 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 that Spinoza helped him in insisting on the distinction, 
 vital to the last degree, between right and wrong. He 
 said : 
 
 ' It is frightful to think that at the present moment the 
 
 only ethic known to the great mass of the children of this 
 
 country is a dim and decaying dread left ever by a departed 
 
 religion, while to the children of the aristocracy it is nothing 
 
 more than a blind obligation to be technically honourable. 
 
 " In my class, and it is a large one," said a teacher to me 
 
 the other day, " there is not one girl who would not, on 
 
 the slightest pressure, tell me a lie," and this was in a school, 
 
 not certainly for the rich, but certainly not for the very 
 
 poor. The world is alarmed now at the various portents 
 
 which threaten it. On every side are signs of danger more 
 
 terrible by far than that which impended in 1793. But 
 
 the germinating spot in all the dangers ahead of us is the 
 
 divorce of the intellect from its chief use, so that it spends 
 
 itself upon curiosities, trifles, the fine arts, or in science, 
 
 and never in ethical service. The peril is, of course, the 
 
 more tremendous because the religions, which, with all 
 
 their defects, did at least teach duty and invested it with 
 
 divine authority, are effete.' 
 
 I am not claiming that Mark Rutherford was a true 
 interpreter of Spinoza. Indeed, on this very subject he 
 changed his mind and wrote a very different preface. 
 Though his translation was scholarly, and though he read 
 some fine modern ideas into Spinoza, I do not think 
 he was any more successful than Sir Frederick Pollock 
 when he tried to convince us that Spinoza was a kind of 
 Professor Clifford before his time. But he believed in the 
 law, and he took the law from Jesus. He tells us himself 
 that when in difficulty he summoned up before him the
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 409 
 
 ' pure, calm, heroic image of Jesus.' He said, ' What 
 would Jesus do ? ' and he was not left perplexed. 
 
 ii 
 
 Christianity was for him a gospel of consolation. He 
 said once that ' the help to live that is most wanted is not 
 remedies against great sorrows. The chief obstacle to the 
 enjoyment of life is its dullness and the weariness which in- 
 vades us when there is nothing to be seen or done of any 
 particular value.' Therein he was unjust to himself, for 
 the pages of his books are ' scorched with agony.' No 
 man felt more sharply the greater ills of life. In particular, 
 we see again and again how the phenomenon of death lies 
 freshly before him in all its naked awfulness. There must 
 be immortality. If not, all is pure loss. The glass is 
 shattered and the wine is spilt. Writing of Caleb Morris, 
 he says : ' We must hold to the faith that spirit cannot 
 die.' One of the most beautiful passages in his books 
 describes the death of a poor servant girl. She chose to 
 have read to her neither prophecy, psalm, nor epistle, but 
 the last three chapters of St. Matthew. 
 
 ' She perhaps hardly knew the reason why, but she 
 could not have made a better choice. When we come 
 near death, or near something which may be worse, all 
 exhortation, theory, promise, advice, dogma fail. The 
 one staff which, perhaps, may not break under us, is the 
 victory achieved in the like situation by one who has pre- 
 ceded us ; and the most desperate private experience 
 cannot go beyond the Garden of Gethsemane. . . . 
 Catharine read through the story of the conflict, and 
 when she came to the resurrection, she felt, and Phcebe
 
 410 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 felt, after her fashion, as millions have felt before, that 
 this was the truth of death.' 
 
 One has observed how he lingers on Spinoza's unfathom- 
 able argument on the eternity of the mind. Says one of 
 his characters : ' Anyhow, wherever and whatever my 
 husband and Sophy are I shall be. This at least is beyond 
 dispute.' He realises, as perhaps no other writer has ever 
 realised, the tragedy of the insignificant, the friendless, the 
 unloved, the disappointed, the baffled, and the broken. 
 There are multitudes whose misery is not made up of grey 
 tragedies, but in the monotonous, hopeless endurance of 
 the days that are passing from grey to dark, with never a 
 glint of light. He can put into a very few words seventy 
 years of pain. What could be more piercing than this ? 
 A governess, who heroically renounces an old love, says : 
 
 ' I remained at the Vicarage for three years. The 
 children grew up, and I was obliged to leave ; but I con- 
 tinued to teach in different families till I was about five- 
 and-forty. After five-and-forty I could not obtain another 
 situation, and I have to support myself by letting apart- 
 ments at Brighton. My strength is now failing ; I cannot 
 look after my servant properly nor wait upon my lodgers 
 myself. Those who have to get their living by a lodging- 
 house know what it means, and what the end will be.' 
 
 And who will forget the stories of Drury Lane, with its 
 multitudes sunk beyond ray of sun or stars ? What 
 Gospel could be preached to these ? What Gospel but that 
 the Divine Spirit is a spirit of love, and that there is no 
 human heart so hard that a redeeming spark may not be 
 struck out of it. Here also he preached Jesus : 
 
 ' Every one who has walked in sadness because his des- 
 tiny has not fitted his aspirations ; every one who, having
 
 MEMORIES OF MARK RUTHERFORD 411 
 
 no opportunity to lift himself out of his little narrow town 
 or village circle of acquaintances, has thirsted for some- 
 thing beyond what they could give him ; everybody who, 
 with nothing but a dull daily round of mechanical routine 
 before him, would welcome death if it were martyrdom 
 for a cause ; every humblest creature in the obscurity 
 of great cities or remote hamlets who silently does his or 
 her duty without recognition — all these turn to Jesus and 
 find themselves in Him.' 
 
 He had a constant fear lest the human race should throw 
 away the one medicine for their ills. Doubt was much too 
 confident when it did not doubt itself. 
 
 ' The souls of now two thousand years 
 Have laid up here their toils and fears ; 
 And all the yearnings of their pain 
 Ah, yet consider it again.' 
 
 So he said that every great religion incarnate had certain 
 vital doctrines which it has cost centuries of toil and de- 
 votion properly to appreciate. ' Especially is this true 
 of the Catholic faith, and, if it were worth while, it might 
 be shown how it is nothing less than a divine casket of 
 precious remedies, and if it is to be brutally broken it will 
 take ages to discover and restore them. Of one thing I am 
 certain, that their rediscovery and restoration will be 
 necessary.' I cannot deny that he is often very melan- 
 choly. I have seen him as sad as a pine tree, and yet 
 there is something about his melancholy which is soothing 
 and tonic. It has appealed to men of all schools. The 
 late W. E. Henley found comfort in reading him in the 
 hour of his bitterest sorrow, and I know that he used to send 
 his books to friends in great affliction.
 
 412 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 in 
 
 I must touch very briefly on his faith in conversion and 
 in prayer. Caleb Morris taught him that ' to be born again 
 is to awake to the reality of spirit and the spiritual world.' 
 If this is true Mark Rutherford was indeed born again. 
 Nor will any reader forget the text which was so precious 
 to him : ' From the horns of the wild oxen Thou hast 
 answered me.' w When I was almost pinned to the ground, 
 when help seemed too late, one cry brought succour.' 
 
 I should have liked also to say something about his love 
 for the Bible. I have known no one who loved and studied 
 the Book of books like himself, saving only Dr. Parker. 
 Mark Rutherford found a new revelation in the two early 
 books of Robertson Smith. He said to me that they had 
 opened up a new world for him, and showed the greatest 
 desire to get a satisfactory portrait of Smith. All through 
 his books are little sermons and reflections on texts, which 
 show what a preacher he would have made. 
 
 Is there more than this ? There was more. No one 
 knew better than he the world of forlorn hopes, insatiable 
 desires, and restless yearnings. But there were signs that 
 for him the discords were resolved into harmonies of 
 spiritual beatitude — that he found the path which the 
 vulture's eye hath not seen, and attained to the rest of faith. 
 He writes at times as one who has seen the Everlasting 
 Rose, as one who could say to a hostile world, ' He whose 
 name is Legion is at our doors deceiving our intellects with 
 subtlety, and flattering our hearts with beauty ; and we 
 have no trust but in Thee.'
 
 XLVI 
 ROBERT BURNS 
 
 HOW HIS GHOST WAS COMFORTED 
 
 In the dark and ghostly hour when the moaning of the 
 dead 
 Will not let the living rest, 
 You may hear the poet crying in his mother's sleeping ears, 
 
 While a long sob lifts his breast : 
 ' The life of life is gone, and hope has passed beyond my 
 ken : 
 Time has withered my laurel crown, 
 The morning sun that melts the mists has shone for me in 
 vain, 
 And the star of the dead goes down. 
 
 Through the never halting moments as I sped with tentless 
 heed, 
 
 I was hoping — ever hoping that the ray 
 Of your love and your praise would fall shining on my head, 
 
 Ere the end of the lee-lang day. 
 Half mad, half fed, I had strung my rhymes for you, 
 
 While the tideless-blooded looked their scorn ; 
 Till the heart became as water that once had glowed like 
 flame, 
 
 And I sank before the morn. 
 
 413
 
 414 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 What avails it that you come with your flatteries and 
 smiles 
 When my head lies deep in dust ? 
 What avail the crowding peoples and the rattle of the 
 drums 
 To repair the broken trust ? 
 When ruin's ploughshare keen drove full upon my bloom, 
 
 By the end you coldly stood, 
 With never a starting tear for the warm heart death had 
 stilled, 
 And the fire that burned my blood.' 
 
 ii 
 
 To her bard made Scotland answer, ' Will you not forgive 
 us yet ? 
 Through a hundred lingering years, 
 In the late remorse of love, we have mourned the gift 
 misprized, 
 And atoned in shame and tears. 
 You that sang like a bird, you are singing here to-day, 
 
 And of all in the heavens blue 
 The clearest and the dearest of poet strains are yours, 
 We had never a bard like you. 
 
 When the dew is on the grass, when the rose is on the 
 briar, 
 When the shepherd train is blythe o'er the hill, 
 When the cottage scenes beguile the workers from their 
 toil, 
 All our thoughts are with you still.
 
 ROBERT BURNS 415 
 
 When the mavis and the lintwhite are singing in the 
 shaw, 
 When the upward -mounting lark soars above, 
 When the joy of nature wakens, you are part of all the 
 mirth 
 That you eyed with boundless love. 
 
 The sweetest and most sacred hours of all our days are 
 yours — 
 When our hearts are kind and young, 
 Warm-blushing and keen-shivering when our youthful love 
 awakes, 
 It speaks in the songs you sung. 
 When we gather round the ingle in the stormy winter 
 nights, 
 Joining hearts and bending knees in prayer, 
 The wonder of your word helps our hearts to rise above, 
 And to trust the Sacred Care. 
 
 Strongly waging Honour's war, in the cause of Right 
 engaged, 
 As we marched to meet our foes 
 We knew the dawn was coming, though the midnight still 
 was mirk 
 As your song of the morning rose. 
 When the lads were gathering fast, when the pipes were 
 sounding shrill, 
 We were brave to play our part : 
 We dared the face of death, for our courage was renewed 
 In the tide that swept your heart.
 
 416 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 ii [ 
 
 You will pardon, for I love you, these many sins of mine, 
 
 And wear this now,' she said. 
 There was triumph in the poet's heart and peace upon his 
 brow 
 
 As he raised his laurelled head. 
 And deep into his mother's eyes he gazed and gazed again, 
 
 His mother found and shriven. 
 Then the lingering lips disjoined and the poet fled in light, 
 
 And Scotland was forgiven. 
 
 July 1896.
 
 XLVII 
 
 HOME FROM THE HILL 
 
 1 Home is the sailor, home from the sea, 
 
 And the hunter home from the hill.' — II. L.S. 
 
 Let the weary body lie 
 
 Where he chose its grave, 
 'Neath the wide and starry sky, 
 
 By the Southern wave, 
 While the island holds her trust 
 
 And the hill keeps faith, 
 Through the watches that divide. 
 
 The long night of death. 
 
 But the spirit free from thrall, 
 
 Now goes forth of these 
 To its birthright, and inherits 
 
 Other lands and seas : 
 We shall find him when we seek him 
 
 In an older home, — 
 By the hills and streams of childhood 
 
 'Tis his weird to roam. 
 
 In the fields and woods we hear him 
 Laugh and sing and sigh ; 
 
 Or where by the Northern breakers 
 Sea-birds troop and cry ; 
 2d
 
 418 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Or where over lonely moorlands 
 
 Winter winds fly fleet ; 
 Or by sunny graves he hearkens 
 
 Voices low and sweet. 
 
 We have lost him, we have found him 
 
 Mother, he was fain 
 Nimbly to retrace his footsteps ; 
 
 Take his life again 
 To the breast that first had warmed it, 
 
 To the tried and true, — 
 He has come, our well beloved, 
 
 Scotland, back to you ! 
 
 1895.
 
 XLVIII 
 
 THE ACACIAS OF LAUSANNE 
 
 I have lately spent two days in the vast building allotted 
 to provincial papers by the British Museum at Hendon. 
 There are but few whose business or pleasure takes them 
 to the spot. Perhaps a dozen persons or twenty in a week 
 may pass through its great catacombs. To a journalist the 
 sight is suggestive of many thoughts, and it is of the vanity 
 rather than of the glory of his profession that he is tempted 
 to think. Looking at these huge and innumerable volumes, 
 he cannot but think of the toil and thought that have been 
 spent on them, and about the apparent end of all. Here in 
 the British Museum there exists perhaps the one copy of 
 the paper of which a hundred thousand have been printed — 
 the very last survivor, in all probability, unless the journal 
 continues to exist, and a file is kept in the office. There 
 are thousands amongst these huge books which no one has 
 ever opened, thousands which no one ever will open again. 
 The writings have withered like the grass of the field as 
 soon as the day or week of their allotted existence was 
 over. 
 
 Still more melancholy is the fact that even when the 
 books are opened they tell nothing, or at best very little, 
 about their writers. In old days the anonymous system 
 prevailed so strongly that the authorship of articles was 
 not only concealed, but was even a jealously-guarded 
 
 419
 
 420 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 secret. Some names made their way to the knowledge of 
 a few, perhaps even the great public was aware of the 
 existence of Delane, and in Scotland they certainly knew a 
 few journalists — Russel, of the Scotsman, being the chief. 
 But the vast majority were nameless. Nor is any one likely 
 to put questions now. If he did, he would often find that 
 there was none to answer. One of the greatest and most 
 brilliant journals of the Victorian period had its records 
 burnt some years ago in a fire, and now it is not possible to 
 obtain accurate and authoritative information as to the 
 authorship of its articles. Frequently the journalist will 
 not undertake to identify his own work. All that Goldwin 
 Smith in his old age could recollect about his famous 
 contributions to the Saturday Review was a paper in the 
 first number about Tennyson's ' Maud.' The vast majority 
 of men who were effective and powerful journalists in their 
 day are utterly forgotten. There is not even an obituary 
 notice to be found in the papers they edited. They moved 
 in the spheres of their work seen by their fellow-citizens 
 continually, but wholly unrecognised and unknown. 
 They carried on their controversies with vehemence, 
 and even with ferocity ; but they and their contemporaries 
 stand together on these shelves silent. 
 
 ' Their hatred and their love is lost, 
 Their envy buried in the dust ; 
 They have no share in all that 's done 
 Beneath the circuit of the sun.' 
 
 It may be that they furnish the materials for history, but 
 they become so numerous that by and by no one will 
 be able to read them with anything like completeness. 
 As it is, the journalism of the age of Johnson, small as it
 
 THE ACACIAS OF LAUSANNE 421 
 
 was, has not found a really comprehending and masterly 
 historian. 
 
 To those who have had a share in the writings of these 
 papers their aspect brings back the past. Here is a volume 
 in which we wrote many columns long ago. Shall we take 
 it down and try to recapture the moods of youth ? Better 
 leave it. Better submit with a good grace to our doom of 
 oblivion. Journalists take some pride in their work if 
 they do it conscientiously, but I never yet knew a journalist 
 who kept his own articles. His first contributions to the 
 Poet's Corner may be found in ancient scrap-books, but 
 for the rest it is out of his reach. He has small occasion to 
 triumph when his day's darg is done. He is thankful to 
 have achieved it once again, and that is all. 
 
 It may be said that the speaker has no better fate than 
 the journalist. His words are soon forgotten. Some of 
 them may be reported, and thus he has a second day in his 
 life ; but that is all of it. And yet this is not quite true, 
 for the speaker cannot be dissevered from his speech, and 
 thus something of his personality as well as of his work 
 comes before the public mind. As I walk through the 
 British Museum room I see not a few papers in which 
 I could identify some of the contributors. There is 
 Thackeray, for example. There is Meredith, there is 
 Barrie, there is Frederick Greenwood, there is Charles 
 Cooper, and there is many another who has since won fame 
 in other fields. But none of these would thank any one 
 who disclosed the work of their obscurer years. And, after 
 all, the speaker, too, even the greatest speaker, has but a 
 short life. Will any one ever go over the speeches of Mr. 
 Gladstone ? He was alive when an enterprising publisher 
 proposed an edition of his speeches in twelve volumes,
 
 422 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 and issued but one or two. A great success in politics 
 does not mean a permanent reputation. Many a Cabinet 
 Minister has been excluded from the Dictionary of National 
 Biography for the good reason that no one now takes the 
 smallest interest in his career. Great lawyers, wealthy 
 business men, and others prominent in their hour are swept 
 away into forgetfulness even as is a journalist. 
 
 It is time for me to justify my title. On going home 
 from Hendon I happened to read an essay on Edward 
 Gibbon. It contained reflections on the ever memorable 
 passage which describes his feelings on the completion of 
 The Decline and Fall. ' Between the hours of eleven and 
 twelve at night,' Gibbon says, ' I wrote the last lines of the 
 last page in a small house in my garden. After laying down 
 my pen I took several turns in a berceau or covered walk of 
 acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the 
 lake and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky 
 was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from 
 the waters, and all nature was silent.' He goes on to de- 
 scribe the mingled feelings of joy and pain which he ex- 
 periences — ' the joy on the recovery of my freedom, and 
 perhaps the establishment of my fame, and that whatso- 
 ever might be the fate of my history, the life of the historian 
 must be short and precarious.' Gibbon had no doubt as 
 to the fate of his history, and his highest hopes have been 
 realised. 
 
 But there are few indeed who have walked under the 
 acacias of Lausanne ; I mean, there are few who have 
 planned and lived to finish a great book with the assurance
 
 THE ACACIAS OF LAUSANNE 423 
 
 that they have not failed to win fame foi* the years they are 
 to live, and for many years beyond that period. There are 
 few indeed who can assure themselves that they will not 
 altogether die, that their high effort has not missed the 
 mark, that their best days have not been wasted, and that 
 they have left behind them something that will last. I 
 am by no means sure that the immortals have generally 
 finished their work in Gibbon's spirit. If we think of the 
 books that live, and of the books that will live, we may see 
 much reason to conclude that the authors were often un- 
 aware of their own triumph, of the significance of that 
 which they had accomplished with much toil and pain. 
 Yet it is difficult to suppose that they were altogether 
 without some inward assurance, and even some outward 
 token that they had not lived in vain. 
 
 ii 
 
 The working journalist can never hope to walk under 
 the acacias of Lausanne. It is just conceivable that he 
 might write a book that will live, but if he does so, it will 
 be by a kind of accident, and it will be a work of the 
 imagination. There was never a more wonderful career 
 than that of Daniel Defoe. He has perplexed all his 
 bibliographers. How he wrote so much and did so much 
 is hardly to be explained. For he meddled with every- 
 thing. He wrote so many pamphlets that no one can ever 
 hope to produce a complete list. Some of his papers he 
 both edited and wrote. He was interrupted every now 
 and then by the penalties of the law, and was hardly ever 
 out of peril. No publisher will ever dare to produce a 
 complete edition of his work ; in fact, there are some nine
 
 424 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 large volumes of his, of which a unique set exists in the 
 British Museum, which have never been reprinted, and in 
 all probability never will be reprinted. Yet when he was 
 nearly sixty, while not ceasing to be an assiduous journalist 
 and pamphleteer, he became a novelist, and continued so 
 for the ten or eleven years that remained to him. He wrote 
 one book at the beginning of this period which will never 
 die — Robinson Crusoe. A recent critic has well said that 
 it was he who first discovered the secret of writing such an 
 interesting and well-constructed tale of adventure. ' The 
 form of his story could be imitated, but not its soul. The 
 universal appeal implied in the realistic account of the 
 successful struggle of one man against the pitiless force of 
 nature was something no one else could impart to a book of 
 adventure, something Defoe himself never caught again. 
 It is this that links Robinson Crusoe with the great poems 
 of the world, and makes it perhaps the most indisputable 
 classic of modern times, however little of a poet in a true 
 sense its author may have been.' 
 
 To write a great book of history or research a certain 
 combination of circumstances must occur. In the first 
 place there must be a measure of literary power. The 
 highest literary power is not needful. It is not to be found 
 in Grote, or Hallam, or Thirlwall, or Merivale, and least of 
 all is it to be found in Milman. And yet all of these have 
 walked under the acacias. But it must be sufficient to 
 raise a writer above the level of the literary journeyman. 
 Allibone's Dictionary of English Literature is a useful book 
 in its way, and a malicious critic once described it as 
 the most important contribution to letters ever made by 
 America. But no one would call it a great book. Then 
 there must be a considerable command of time. This
 
 THE ACACIAS OF LAUSANNE 425 
 
 does not mean that the author need be as free as Gibbon 
 from the toils and cares of ordinary existence, but it does 
 mean that his habitual labours, whatever they may 
 be, should not exceed his strength. Gladstone could not 
 write a great book for various reasons, and during the 
 time when Lord Beaconsfield's life was swallowed up in 
 politics, he added nothing to his permanent achievements. 
 There must be leisure, and there must also be access to 
 materials. By this I mean not only the command of books, 
 but the power of using them. It is vain, for example, 
 to attempt history in these days without a knowledge of 
 various languages. Besides a certain power of sustained 
 labour and endurance is essential. The great book is a 
 work of time, and its writer must be content to see many 
 showy popularities arise and disappear while he remains 
 in his obscurity waiting for the day to come. He must be 
 content to take the risks and hazards of mortal men. 
 His labours may be interrupted by death when his work 
 is but a fragment, and a fragment, however brilliant, must 
 fail of the recognition and the life which are assigned to 
 completeness. 
 
 in 
 
 While all this is true, yet I count those happy — even 
 those journalists happy — who for many years have before 
 them the vision of something which shall last in literature, 
 and which shall worthily occupy their thoughts, and the 
 scant margin of their days. The outcome may be nothing. 
 It may extend to little more than a mass of notes intelligible 
 only to the compiler. Yet if it has been a happiness to 
 think of it, if it has made the days short and delivered
 
 
 426 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 from ennui, if it has led the mind along congenial paths, and 
 if it has given life an undertone of hope, it is well that the 
 plan was in the heart, that the dream assisted and consoled 
 to the end. And if a journalist who has written much, 
 and for many years desires to establish some personal 
 relation with a few readers by writing an occasional book, 
 or even by putting together a very few of his contributions 
 to newspapers, let him not be too severely condemned, at 
 least, by his brother journalists. His is a natural and a 
 pardonable ambition. Let it be granted that reprints from 
 periodicals are very rarely of striking and permanent 
 worth. Let it also be granted that they may reveal 
 partially the writer's tastes, and friendships, and ambi- 
 tions, and disappointments. If this be so, they will not 
 altogether miss an audience, and they may even find for 
 a time a large audience. At the very worst a few copies 
 will survive marked with the author's name, and who knows 
 whether some investigator of the future may discover one 
 and hold it up to praise ? It is a very, very faint hope. 
 Nevertheless, it is a hope. 
 
 For the rest, the journalist has his consolations. Un- 
 known as he is, he may plod along under his umbrella with 
 the consciousness that he is doing something to forward 
 beliefs and causes that are dear to him. It is easy to sneer 
 at the glory and pleasure of Mr. Pott of Eatanswill, but 
 without something of Mr. Pott's emotion, a journalist could 
 hardly endure the monotony of his labour. We journalists 
 can never walk under the acacias of Lausanne, but our 
 memory may survive, as Margaret Veley describes its 
 possible survival, though more than that cannot be. 
 
 ' And if, when I am gone, 
 Some words of mine live on,
 
 THE ACACIAS OF LAUSANNE 427 
 
 They shall be only, in the world's great day, 
 Like a brief echo that from far away 
 
 Comes with familiar sound. 
 It wavers to and fro between the hills 
 Above, around. 
 
 The silent air it fills 
 With lonely speech that knows no change, 
 
 But wanders, clear and strange, 
 And has no help of living lips or eyes. 
 A little while the sound may go and come, 
 
 Though he who uttered it be dumb, 
 A little while it lingers ere it dies. 
 
 ' Thus shall it chance to me 
 In ages yet to be, 
 There shall remain no trace on land or sea, 
 Nor in the memory of any friend, 
 But they and it shall surely have an end.'
 
 INDEX 
 
 Aberdeen Banner, 77. 
 
 Aberdeen Herald, 77. 
 
 Academy, 106. 
 
 Acton, Lord, 166. 
 
 Adams, Oscar Fay, 164. 
 
 Aird, Thomas, 89. 
 
 Alcott, Bronson, 32, 33, 34. 
 
 All Sorts and Conditions of Men, 
 
 I5i- 
 
 All the Year Round, 16, 324. 
 
 Alleged Apostasy of Wordsworth, 249. 
 
 Allen, Grant, 4, 12. 
 
 Allibone, 424. 
 
 Altar Fire, 114. 
 
 Alton Locke, 154. 
 
 Anti-Jacobin, The, 273. 
 
 Appleton, Dr., 106. 
 
 Arabian Nights, 227, 393. 
 
 Arnold, Life of Dr., 20. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 35, 37, 40, 103. 
 
 135, 264, 281, 302. 
 Arthur O'Leary, 199, 201. 
 Astrophel, 249. 
 At Large, 114. 
 
 Atalanta in Calydon, 242, 243. 
 Athenceum, 81, 82, 106, 133-4, 2 °5> 
 
 243, 3I5-I6, 324, 327, 341, 372, 
 
 398, 400. 
 Atlantic Monthly, 331. 
 Austen, Colonel, 167. 
 
 F. Motley, 167. 
 
 Rev. George, 180. 
 
 Jane, 164, 180. 
 
 Austen-Leigh, J. E., 164. 
 
 W., 164. 
 
 Austin, L. F., 5, 7, 355. 
 Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, 
 
 364- 
 
 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 142. 
 Aylwin, 137. 
 
 Bagehot, Walter, 57. 
 
 Bailey, John, 340. 
 
 Bain, Alexander, 77, 79. 
 
 Baker, Page M., 335, 338. 
 
 Balfour, A. J., 279, 297, 302. 
 
 Barnes, William, 359. 
 
 Barrett, Mr., 64. 
 
 Barrie, Sir J. M., 16, 84, 174, 272-3, 
 
 279, 421. 
 Barton, Bernard, 183. 
 
 Lucy, 185. 
 
 Bathurst, C, 242. 
 
 Baynes, Professor T. S., 13S. 
 
 Beaconsfield, Lord, 272-3, 277-y, 
 
 37°, 393, 395, 4°2-3, 4 2 5- 
 Beckford, William, 3. 
 Beethoven, 83. 
 Bell, Dr. George, 94. 
 Benson, A. C., 114, 118. 
 Besant, Lady, 147. 
 
 Sir Walter, 147. 
 
 Beside Still Waters, 114. 
 Binney, Rev. Thomas, 384. 
 Birmingham, George A., 305. 
 Birmingham Post, 372, 387. 
 Birrell, Augustine, 323. 
 Bisland, Elizabeth, 331. 
 Black, Messrs. A. and C, 151. 
 
 William, 324. 
 
 Blackmore, R. D., 218. 
 Blackwood, John, 204-5. 
 
 Messrs., 89-90. 
 
 Blackwood, 202-3, 2 °i, 273. 
 Blaikie, Professor W. G., 77. 
 Blake, William, 5, 252. 
 
 429
 
 430 
 
 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Blind, Miss Mathilde, 403. 
 
 Blomfield, Bishop, 52. 
 
 Bloxham, Dr., 167. 
 
 Bodham, Mrs., 186. 
 
 Bonar, Andrew, 20. 
 
 Book of Sibyls, 166. 
 
 Bookman, 108, 207, 374. 
 
 Boswell, James, 18, 21-3, 68-9, 70, 
 
 187, 224, 233, 298, 343. 
 Boulding, Rev. J. W., 160. 
 Bowen, Sir Charles, 124. 
 Boyd, A. K. H., 115, 117. 
 Brabourne, Lord, 164. 
 Braddon, Miss, 218. 
 Bradlaugh, Charles, 382. 
 Brainerd, David, 20. 
 Braun, Dr., 45. 
 
 Bright, John, 370, 372-3, 389. 
 British Weekly, The, 84, 153, 374, 
 
 406. 
 Bronte, Charlotte, 57, 222, 314, 352. 
 
 Emily, 264. 
 
 Bronte, Life of Charlotte, 21, 23, 52. 
 Brougham, Lord, 146. 
 Broughton, Miss Rhoda, 350. 
 Brown, Dr. John, 58, 86, 139, 287. 
 
 Dr. John of Bedford, 368, 
 
 377- 
 
 Dr. John Taylor, 139. 
 
 Mrs. John, 139. 
 
 Samuel, 86. 
 
 Browne, Matthew, 276, 304. 
 
 Browning, Mrs., 36, 64. 
 
 Robert, 3, 43, 230, 242, 248, 
 
 252, 324, 328, 403. 
 Bruce, John, 133. 
 Buchanan, Robert, 323. 
 Bulkeley, Rev. P., 27. 
 Bull, Lewis, 171. 
 Bunyan, John, 153, 36S, 377. 
 Burdett-Coutts, Baroness, 273. 
 Burgon, Dean, 21. 
 Burke, Edmund, 68, 298, 357. 
 Burney, Fanny, 358. 
 Burns, Robert, 80, 126-7, 4 X 3- 
 Butler, Bishop, 230. 
 
 William Arr 
 
 Byron, Life of Lord, 18. 
 Byron, Lord, 19, 64, 245-9, 394. 
 
 Cable, George W., 334-5. 
 
 Cabot, J. E., 44. 
 
 Cairns, John, 79, 80, 93. 
 
 Cairns, Life of Principal, 20. 
 
 Campbell, Dykes, 268. 
 
 Campion, Mrs., 167. 
 
 Capel-Lofft, Miss, 238. 
 
 Capper, Mr., 181. 
 
 Captain Cook's Voyages, 227. 
 
 Carlyle, Mrs., 403. 
 
 Thomas, 18, 19, 21-4, 26, 33, 
 
 35, 4°. 78, 80-2, 87, 91, 154, 281, 
 
 285, 287, 300, 316, 370, 385, 386, 
 
 400. 
 Carter, Dr., 193. 
 Cassell's Family Paper, 218. 
 Cats, Jacob, 360. 
 Caxtoniana, 117. 
 Caxtons, The, 206. 
 Chalmers, Dr. Thomas, 77-8, 87. 
 — — Mrs., 78. 
 
 Chamberlain, Joseph, 279, 394. 
 Chambers, Robert, 259. 
 Chambers' s Journal, 218, 257. 
 Chapman and Hall, Messrs., 5. 
 
 George, 252. 
 
 John, 372, 381. 
 
 Charles O'Malley, 201. 
 
 Chartism, 154. 
 
 Chatham : His Early Life and 
 
 Connections, 121. 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 56. 
 Chignell, Mr., 371. 
 Christmas at the Mermaid, 193. 
 Christmas Carol, The, 157. 
 Chronicle of Friendship, A, 97. 
 Church, R. W., 176. 
 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 366. 
 City of the Magyar, 201. 
 Clara Hopgood, 373. 
 Clara Vaughan, 218. 
 Clifford, Dr., 82. 
 
 Professor, 408. 
 
 Clodd, Mr. Edward, 6, 7, 293.
 
 INDEX 
 
 431 
 
 Cloncurry, Lord, 200. 
 Clouston, J. Storer, 305. 
 Cobbett, William, 378. 
 Cobden, Richard, 385, 397. 
 Coleridge, S. T., no, 197, 268, 345, 
 
 373, 399, 4°°- 
 Combe, George, 87. 
 Congreve, William, 153. 
 Constable, Messrs., 44, 142. 
 Contemporary Review, 343. 
 Cook, Sir E. T., 5, 8, 281. 
 Cooper, Charles, 421. 
 Cornelius O'Dowd, 202. 
 Comhill Magazine, 280, 295, 335. 
 Cornwall, Barry, 324. 
 Courtauld, S., 383. 
 Cowper, 20, 98-100, 186-7, 191. 
 Cox, Mr. Serjeant, 316. 
 Crabbe, George, 99, 187, 343, 346. 
 Crabbe, Life of George, 20. 
 Craig, Mr., 90-1. 
 Crawford, Marion, 348. 
 Crewe, Mrs., 71-2. 
 Critic, The, I, 2, 12, 316. 
 Crombie, Mr., 91, 93. 
 Cromwell, 127, 285, 382. 
 Crosley and Co., Messrs., 170. 
 Cunningham, Allan, 218. 
 Cust, H. J. C, 5, 8. 
 Cuvier, Georges, 28. 
 Cyples, William, 343. 
 
 Daily Chronicle, 5. 
 Daily Telegraph, 377. 
 Dalbiac, Mr., 174. 
 Dallas, .ZEneas, 341. 
 Daniel Deronda, 302. 
 Darwin, Charles, 26, 230. 
 David Coppevfield, 223, 355. 
 Davidson, John, 8. 
 
 Thomas, 99, 100-1, 103. 
 
 Dawson, Dr., 97. 
 
 Deerbrook, 301. 
 
 Defoe, Daniel, 423. 
 
 Delane, J. T., 420. 
 
 De Morgan, Professor, 82, 133. 
 
 Demosthenes, 62. 
 
 De Quincey, 79, 92, 95, 218, 300. 
 
 De Remusat, 112. 
 
 De Stael, Mme., 171. 
 
 Dial, The, 32. 
 
 Dicey, A. V., 240. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 16, 52, 54, 95, 
 128-9, 145, 154-5, 157, 159, 203, 
 221-2,228, 256, 304, 311, 355, 401. 
 
 Dictionary of National Biography, 
 86, 359, 422. 
 
 Dilke, Sir Charles, 316, 395. 
 
 Dillmann, C. F., no. 
 
 Disraeli. See under BeaconsfieH. 
 
 Dixon, Hepworth, 133, 32.5. 
 
 Dobell, Sydney, 1, 314. 
 
 Dobson, Austin, 171. 
 
 Dodd Family Abroad, 201. 
 
 Donne, John, 186, 189. 
 
 Doran, Dr., 133. 
 
 Douglas, James, 131, 243. 
 
 Downey, Edmund, 199. 
 
 Doyle, Bishop, 200. 
 
 Drake, Dr. Nathan, 190, 252. 
 
 Dryden, 240. 
 
 Dublin University Magazine, 200. 
 
 Dumas, 200. 
 
 Dumfries Herald, 89. 
 
 Dyer, Major, 200. 
 
 Eclectic Review, 88, 94. 
 Edinburgh Magazine, 92. 
 Edinburgh Review, 19. 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 85. 
 
 Oliver, 298. 
 
 Eliot, George, 3, 213, 223, 324, 372 
 
 386, 401-3. 
 Ellman, Rev. Edward Boys, 172. 
 Elsie Venner, 143. 
 Elwin, Whitwell, 52. 
 Emerson, R. W., 26, 93, 116, 213, 
 
 285, 370, 386, 390, 402. 
 Emilia in England, 15. 
 Eminent Scotsmen, 79. 
 Emma, 180. 
 Encyclopedia Britannica, 138, 155, 
 
 244. 
 Epicurean, 19.
 
 432 
 
 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Esmond, 223, 234. 
 Espinasse, Francis, 315. 
 Essays Scientific and Literary, 86. 
 Eugene Aram, 228. 
 Evan Harrington, 2, 3, 16. 
 Examiner, The, 133, 212. 
 Expositor, The, 108. 
 Extracts from Mr. Burke's Table 
 Talk at Crewe Hall, 71. 
 
 Family Herald, The, 218. 
 
 Farina, 3. 
 
 Faust, 403. 
 
 Ferrier, J. F., 87, 89, 90. 
 
 Festus, 92. 
 
 Fielding, 57. 
 
 Fifine at the Fair, 231. 
 
 FitzGerald, Edward, 99, 100, 183, 
 
 33i, 344- 4°°- 
 
 Percy, 344. 
 
 Fitzpatrick, Dr. W. J., 200-1. 
 Fleay, F. G., 252. 
 Fleshly School of Poetry, The, 326. 
 Florilegium A mantis, 208. 
 Forbes, Professor Edward, 87. 
 
 Waldo Emerson, 44. 
 
 Ford, John, 62. 
 Foreign Quarterly, 200, 210. 
 Forster, John, 95. 
 Fortnightly Review, 107, 248. 
 Fortunes of Nigel, 302. 
 Foster, John, 20, 78. 
 Fox, Charles, 72-3. 
 
 W. J., 209. 
 
 Francis, John, 398. 
 Fraser's Magazine, 264, 308. 
 Freeman, E. A., 308. 
 Friends in Council, 115, 119. 
 From a College Window, 114. 
 Froude, J. A., 21, 24, 82, 377. 
 Fuller, Margaret, 32, 33, 44. 
 Furaess, H. H., 373. 
 Furnivall, F. J., 252, 286. 
 
 Galileo Galilei, 88. 
 
 Gallery of Literary Portraits, 89. 
 
 Gardiner, S. R., 308, 4°3- 
 
 Garnett, Mr. Edward, 214. 
 
 Dr. Richard, 19, 133, 206. 
 
 Mrs., 213. 
 
 Garvice, Charles, 318. 
 Gaskell, Mrs., 21, 23. 
 George, Henry, 396. 
 Gibbon, Charles, 324. 
 
 Edward, 385, 422, 425. 
 
 Gibson, John, 73. 
 
 Gilbert, Dr., 176. 
 
 Gilfillan, George, 12, 87. 
 
 Gissing, George, 5, 6, 210, 288, 301. 
 
 Gladstone, Life of, 21, 25. 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 148, 274, 277, 373, 
 
 3S8, 390, 395, 397, 421, 425. 
 Glasgow Citizen, 92. 
 God and the Man, 326. 
 Goethe, 39, 102, 370. 
 Goldsmith, 70, 187, 356. 
 Gomme, Sir Laurence, 354. 
 Good Words, 325. 
 Gosse, Edmund, 5, 133, 212. 
 Granville, Lord, 393. 
 Gray, David, 327. 
 Greatrex, Rev. C. B., 220. 
 Green, J. R., 308. 
 
 T. H., 240. 
 
 Greenwell, Dora, 20. 
 Greenwood, Frederick, 272, 421. 
 
 Professor, 291. 
 
 Greg, W. R., 272. 
 Gregory, Mrs., 169. 
 Grenville, Lady Hester, 128. 
 Groome, Francis Hindes, 5. 
 Grote, George, 424. 
 Guardian Angel, The, 142-3. 
 Guardian, The, 108. 
 Guizot, M., 112. 
 Guthrie, Dr., 80, 81. 
 
 Hall, Newman, 401. 
 
 Robert, 78. 
 
 Virtue and Co., Messrs., 183. 
 
 Hallam, Henry, 424. 
 Hamerton, P. G., 21. 
 Hamilton, Sir W., 35, 79, 82, 87. 
 Hamlet, 62, 198. 

 
 INDEX 
 
 433 
 
 Hannibal, 81. 
 
 Hardy, Thomas, 4, 5, 6-7, 290, 301. 
 
 Hare, Julius, 19. 
 
 Robert, 182. 
 
 Harold, 353. 
 
 Harper's Monthly, 366. 
 
 Harris, Dr., 370. 
 
 Harrison, Frederic, 293. 
 
 Harry Lorrequer, 199, 201, 206, 352. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 27. 
 
 Hayman, Canon, 200. 
 
 Hay ward, Abraham, 403. 
 
 Hazlitt, William, 135, 346-7. 
 
 Hearn, Lafcadio, 331. 
 
 Heart of Midlothian, 222. 
 
 Heine, 403. 
 
 Helm, W. H., 166. 
 
 Helps, Sir Arthur, 1 15-16, 119. 
 
 Henley, W. E., 4, 56, 411. 
 
 Herodotus, 62. 
 
 Herschell, Lord, 82. 
 
 Hertha, 251. 
 
 Hervey, T. K., 81. 
 
 Hill, Dr. Birkbeck, 234, 298. 
 
 Miss Constance, 164. 
 
 History of Latin Literature from 
 
 Ennius to Boethins, 107. 
 History of the House of Blackwood, 
 
 213. 
 Hogarth, Mary, 54. 
 Hogg, James, 188. 
 Hogg's Instructor, 220. 
 Holbeach, Henry, 276. 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 30, 139. 
 Holyoake, G. J., 372. 
 Homer, 17. 
 Horneck, Mrs., 74. 
 Hort, Dr., 232. 
 Hosack, John, 244. 
 Hotten, J. Camden, 246. 
 Houghton, Lord, 71. 
 Howells, W. D., 366. 
 Hubback, Edith C, 164. 
 
 J. H., 164. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 236, 241. 
 Hume, David, 298. 
 Hunter, W. A., 212. 
 
 % 
 
 Hutton,R.H.,n,57, 245-7,302, 325. 
 Huxley, T. H., 33, 230. 
 Hyndman, Mr. H. M., io, 15. 
 Hypatia, 154. 
 
 Idylls of the King, 252. 
 Illustrated London News, 5, 212. 
 Illustrated Times, 275, 370. 
 In Memoriam, 13. 
 India, 61. 
 
 Irish Wits and Worthies, -zoo. 
 Irving, Edward, 78. 
 Ivanhoe, 222. 
 
 Jack Hinton, 201. 
 Jacobs, W. W., 161, 305. 
 James, Henry, Senr., 41. 
 Jane Eyre, 222. 
 Jay, Miss Harriet, 323. 
 Jeffrey, 85, 87, 91, 93, 300. 
 Johannot, Tony, 238. 
 Johnson, Life of, 18, 21, 68, 187. 
 Johnson, Samuel, 22, 55, 68-9, 70, 
 126-7, 186, 198, 214, 224, 233, 246, 
 
 298, 303, 343, 357-8- 
 Jonson, Ben, 84. 
 Journal of Emily Shore, The, 59. 
 Jowett, Benjamin, 239, 241. 
 Jukes, Rev. John, 369. 
 
 Kane, Dr., 88. 
 Kauffmann, Angelica, 357. 
 Kaye, John William, 301. 
 Kean, Edmund, 89. 
 Keble, John, 17, 383. 
 Kenelm Chillingly, 228. 
 Kidd, Dr., 77. 
 King, Miss Grace, 334. 
 Kingsley, Charles, 28, 154. 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 150, 152, 375. 
 Knight, Professor, 373, 399. 
 Koizumi, Setsu, 336. 
 Kossuth, 82-3. 
 
 Lacordaire, Life of, 20. 
 Lamb, Charles, 98-9, 190, 191. 
 E
 
 434 
 
 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Lancet, The, 147. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 249. 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 20. 
 
 L' A ssommoir , 248. 
 
 Last of the Barons, The, 301. 
 
 Lathbury, D. C, 108. 
 
 La Touche, Rose, 283, 287. 
 
 Lawrence, Thomas, 57. 
 
 Lawrenny, H., 107. 
 
 Lear, 198. 
 
 Lectures on the Atomic Theory, 86. 
 
 Lee, Sir Sidney, 193. 
 
 Leech, John, 141. 
 
 Le Fanu, J. S., 200, 335. 
 
 Lefroy, Anne, 165. 
 
 Tom, 168. 
 
 Lewes, G. H., 95, 324-5- 
 
 Lewis, Monk, 250. 
 
 Lever, Charles, 199, 352-3. 
 
 Light that Failed, The, 150. 
 
 Linwood, W., 94-5. 
 
 Literature, 340. 
 
 Literary Gazette, 316. 
 
 Lives of the Poets, 70, 214. 
 
 Locke, John, 358. 
 
 Lockhart, J. G., 18, 20-3, 89, 224. 
 
 London Journal, 218. 
 
 Longfellow, 27. 
 
 Longman, T. N., 268. 
 
 Lorna Doone, 218. 
 
 Lost Sir Massingberd, 257-8. 
 
 Loti, Pierre, 331. 
 
 Love in the Valley, 1,12. 
 
 Lovel the Widower, 356. 
 
 Low, Will H., 97-8. 
 
 Lowe, 92. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., 2, 26, 133, 207, 327. 
 
 Lucas, E. V., 119, 161. 
 
 Samuel, 341. 
 
 Lytton, Lord, 36, 91, 117, 206, 228, 
 402. 
 
 M'Carthy, Justin, 370. 
 Macaulay, Life of, 18, 21, 24. 
 Macaulay, T. B., 19, 22, 58, 64, 68, 
 
 80, 123, 125, 165, 180, 346. 
 M'Cheyne, Life of, 20. 
 
 Maccoll, Norman, 133. 
 
 MacDonald, George, 266. 
 
 MacEwen, Professor, 20. 
 
 Maclaren, Alexander, 71. 
 
 Ian, 312. 
 
 Miss, 140. 
 
 Macmillan's Magazine, 82, 86, 269. 
 
 Magnus, Laurie, 265. 
 
 Maine, Sir Henry, 272. 
 
 Maitland, The Private Life of Henry, 
 288. 
 
 Manchester Guardian, 106. 
 
 Mansfield Park, 180. 
 
 Margaret Denzil's History, ■z'j'j. 
 
 Margaret Fuller and Goethe, 45. 
 
 Maroon, The, 218. 
 
 Marryat, Captain, 155. 
 
 Marston, Westland, 133. 
 
 Martin Chuzzlewit, 156. 
 
 Martineau, Harriet, 41, 125, 265, 
 301. 
 
 Martyn, Henry, 20. 
 Massinger, P., 62. 
 Massingham, H. W., 5, 16. 
 Masson, Professor David, 75, 86. 
 Maurice, F. D., 154, 315, 371. 
 May Queen, The, 1. 
 Mazzini, G., 82-3. 
 Melvin, Dr. James, 77. 
 Memoranda of a Marine Officer, 220. 
 Meredith, George, 1, 9, 68, 155, 266, 
 275-6, 421. 
 
 Owen, 402. 
 
 Merivale, J. H., 424. 
 
 Merriman, H. S., 320. 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 95. 
 
 Metrical Effusions, 188. 
 
 Miall, Edward, 394. 
 
 Milford, Humphrey, 376. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 14, 35, 81, 373. 
 
 Miller, Hugh, 142. 
 
 Milman, H. H., 424. 
 
 Milton, John, 241, 382. 
 
 Milton, Life of, 83. 
 
 Minto, Professor William, 4, 133, 
 
 212, 238, 269. 
 Mitford, Miss, 168.
 
 INDEX 
 
 435 
 
 Mr. Barnes of New York, 355. 
 Modern Frenchmen, 21. 
 Modern Love, 2, 3, II. 
 Modem Traveller, The, 61. 
 Monkhouse, Cosmo, 359. 
 Moore, Thomas, 18, 19. 
 Morgan, Lady, 200. 
 Morley, Henry, 133. 
 
 Lord, 21, 25, 107, 236, 279, 
 
 295, 316, 390, 397. 
 Samuel, 382. 
 
 Morning Post, 268. 
 
 Morning Star, 248, 372. 
 
 Morris, Caleb, 384, 406, 409, 412. 
 
 William, 137, 198, 239. 
 
 Moxon, Edward, 246. 
 Mulock, Miss, 324. 
 Murphy's Master, 259. 
 Murray, Professor Gilbert, 318. 
 Henry, 329. 
 
 John, 341. 
 
 Mysteries of Udolpho, 227. 
 
 Napier, Macvey, 22. 
 Napoleon, 17. 
 Nation, 374. 
 Nation, New York, 44. 
 National Review, 12. 
 Nature and Man, 90. 
 Nelson, 20. 
 
 John, 79. 
 
 New Grub Street, 301. 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, 124, 167, 176. 
 
 Frank, 82. 
 
 Newton, Mrs., 174. 
 
 Nichol, Professor John, 237, 239-40, 
 
 246. 
 Nicholas Nickleby, 154. 
 Nicholson, J. G., 165. 
 Nonconformist, 387, 394. 
 Norfolk News, 371, 387. 
 Norman, Sir Henry, 5. 
 North American Review, 44, 327. 
 North British Review, 88, 90, 166. 
 Northanger Abbey, 166, 170-1, 180. 
 Norton, C. E., 285. 
 Notre Dame de Paris, 238. 
 
 Oceola, 218. 
 
 CEnone, 13. 
 
 Ogle, Miss, 404. 
 
 Oliphant, Mrs., 21, 204, 213, 354. 
 
 Once a Week, 16, 242. 
 
 One Hoss Shay, 144. 
 
 One of Our Conquerors, 1 1 . 
 
 Origin of Species, The, 230. 
 
 Over Bemerton's, 161. 
 
 Owen, Ashford, 404. 
 
 Palgrave, F. T., 328. 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette, 5, 272, 276, 279, 
 
 295- 
 Palladium, 314. 
 Palmer, E. H., 155. 
 
 Mrs., 359. 
 
 Panizzi, Sir Anthony, 208. 
 
 Paradise Regained, 402. 
 
 Pardoe, Miss, 200. 
 
 Parker, Dr., 412. 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, no, 358. 
 
 Past and Present, 154. 
 
 Paternoster Roiv, 294. 
 
 Patmore, Coventry, 208. 
 
 Paul Goslett, 201. 
 
 Payn, James, 220, 226, 256, 259, 256. 
 
 Peacock, Thomas Love, 220, 324. 
 
 Pelham, 228. 
 
 Perrot, James Leigh, 169. 
 
 Persuasion, 166, 180. 
 
 Petrie, Professor Flinders, 229. 
 
 Phillips, Samuel, 341. 
 
 Physical Theory of Another Life, 
 
 The, 78. 
 Pickwick, 232, 234, 304. 
 Pilgrim's Progress, The, 153, 368, 
 
 377- 
 Piozzi, Mrs., 74. 
 Pitt, William, 123, 127, 175. 
 Plummer, Miss G., 177. 
 Poems and Ballads, 245-7. 
 Poems and Romances, 107, no. 
 Poems by an Amateur, 188. 
 Pollock, Sir Frederick, 408. 
 Porson, Richard, 64. 
 Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, 63-4.
 
 436 
 
 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Price, Bonamy, 402. 
 
 Dr., 94-5. 
 
 Pride and Prejudice, 180. 
 Professor, The, 222. 
 Progress and Poverty, 396. 
 Prometheus Unbound, 107. 
 Proverbial Philosophy , 117. 
 Punch, 258. 
 Pusey, Dr. E. B., 176. 
 
 Quarterly Review, 1, 63, 166. 
 
 Queen Mab, 246. 
 
 Queen Mother and Rosamond, The, 
 
 242. 
 Quentin Durward, 219, 302. 
 Quiller Couch, Sir A. T., 161. 
 
 Rab and His Friends, 86, 143. 
 
 Rabelais, 155. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 343-5. 
 
 Ramsay, Sir W. M., 291. 
 
 Rands, W. B., 275-6. 
 
 Raynes, Rev. Edward, 182. 
 
 Reade, Charles, 251. 
 
 Reader, The, 82. 
 
 Redgauntlet, 302. 
 
 Recreations of a Country Parson, 
 
 The, 115. 
 Recollections of a Rambler, 107. 
 Recollections of a Sussex Parson, 172. 
 Recollections of Three Cities, 76. 
 Reid, Captain Mayne, 218. 
 Return of the Native, The, 301. 
 Revolution in Tanner's Lane, The, 
 
 3°7- 
 Reynolds, Frances, 358. 
 
 Sir Joshua, 127, 298, 357, 360. 
 
 Rice, Admiral Ernest, 165. 
 
 Mr. James, 151. 
 
 Morland, 167. 
 
 Richard Feverel, 3, 266. 
 Richmond, George, 283-4. 
 
 Mrs., 284. 
 
 Ridge, W. Pett, 161. 
 Rienzi, 302. 
 Ritchie, Lady, 51. 
 Rob Roy, 302. 
 
 Roberts, Morley, 288. 
 Robertson, Dr. W. B., 90. 
 
 John, 81. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe, 424. 
 
 Rochdale Observer, 371, 387. 
 
 Rochefoucauld, 56. 
 
 Roebuck, J. A., 385. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, 62. 
 
 Romola, 403. 
 
 Roscoe, W., 94. 
 
 Rosebery, Lord, 51, 58, 121. 
 
 Rossetti, Christina, 213. 
 
 — W. M., 1, 133, 137, 239, 241, 
 
 327, 377- 
 Pousseau, 118, 345. 
 Rowe, Nicholas, 193. 
 Rowley, James, 308. 
 Rubaiydt of Omar Khayydm, The, 
 
 189. 
 Ruffini, Antonio, 80. 
 Rules for a Happy Life, 232. 
 Ruskin, John, 281, 377. 
 Russel, Alexander, 420. 
 Russell, Lord Charles, 380. 
 
 Lord John, 175, 380. 
 
 Rutherford, Mark. See W. Hale 
 
 White. 
 Ryle, J. C, 286. 
 
 Sad Fortunes of Amos Barton, The, 
 
 3- 
 
 Saint-Hilaire, Geoffrey, 28. 
 
 St. James's Gazette, 272, 276. 
 
 St. Paul's Magazine, 325. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, 124. 
 
 Saintsbury, G. E., 4, 18, 19, 20, 22. 
 
 Salisbury, Lord, 278. 
 
 Salthaven, 160. 
 
 Sandbach, Mrs., 94. 
 
 Sankey, Mrs., 175. 
 
 Sartor Resartus, 154. 
 
 Saturday Review, The, 115, 124, 146, 
 
 155, 166, 212, 341, 420. 
 Savage, Richard, 288. 
 Scenes of Clerical Life, 223. 
 Schiller, 102. 
 Schiller, Life of, 20. 

 
 INDEX 
 
 437 
 
 Scotsman, 420. 
 
 Scott, David, 93-4. 
 
 Scott, Life of, 18, 21, 22, 224. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 52, 78, 166, 187, 
 
 221-2, 238, 268, 329, 356, 402. 
 
 William Bell, 236. 
 
 Scottish Review, 86, 95. 
 
 Sense and Sensibility, 180. 
 
 Sentinel, The, 92. 
 
 Severn, Mrs. Arthur, 287. 
 
 Shakespeare and His Times, 252. 
 
 Shakespeare, Mrs., 192. 
 
 William, 17, 43, 45, 62, 192, 
 
 221, 252, 374. 
 Shakspere's England, 195. 
 Sharpey, Professor, 82. 
 Shaving of Shagpat, The, 2, 6. 
 Shelley, Miss, 174. 
 Percy Bysshe, 40, 52, 220, 
 
 243, 245-6, 249, 403. 
 Sheridan, Life of, 19. 
 Shirley, 222, 302. 
 Shore, Miss Arabella, 3. 
 
 Emily, 59. 
 
 Shorter, Clement, 5. 
 Sidgwick, Henry, 299. 
 Silas Mavner, 154, 223. 
 Simcox, Edith, 105. 
 
 G. A., 105. 
 
 W. H., 105. 
 
 Simpson, Sir J. Y., 87. 
 Sketches by Boz, 304. 
 Sketches of Venetian History, 61. 
 Smetham, James, 99, 100. 
 Smith, Alexander, 1, 2. 
 
 George, 275. 
 
 Goldwin, 164, 420. 
 
 Prof. H. J. S., 124. 
 
 Prof. Robertson, 138, 155, 412. 
 
 Smith, Life of Sydney, 19. 
 
 Smith, Sydney, 232. 
 
 Snead-Cox, J., 20. 
 
 Snuggles, Captain Runky, 85. 
 
 Songs before Sunrise, 239, 248-9. 
 
 Sordello, 252. 
 
 Southey, Robert, 20, 185, 188, 190. 
 
 Speaker, The, 161. 
 
 Spectator, The, 11, 115, 124, 139, 
 
 245-6, 372. 
 Spedding, James, 184, 189. 
 Spencer, Herbert, 84, 336. 
 Spinoza, 366, 407-8, 410. 
 Sprigge, Dr., 147. 
 Spurgeon, C. H., 373. 
 Stanley, A. P., 20. 
 Steele, Sir Richard, 127, 352. 
 Stephen, Fitzjames, 272. 
 
 Leslie, 79, 172, 272. 
 
 Sterling, John, 19, 40, 315. 
 
 Sterling, Life of, 18-20. 
 
 Stevenson, R. L., 97, 99, 100-1, 104, 
 
 33i, 354- 
 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 27. 
 
 Strahan, Messrs., 107, 325, 343. 
 Strauss, 385. 
 
 Sunday Special, The, 328. 
 Susan, 170. 
 Swedenborg, 402. 
 Swift, 56, 72. 
 
 Swinburne, A. C, 10, 14, 137, 235, 
 269, 327, 343, 374, 403- 
 
 Tait, William, 91, 92. 
 Tait's Magazine, 91, 218. 
 Tales of the Hall, 99. 
 Taylor, Bayard, 403. 
 
 Isaac, 78-9. 
 
 Tom, 58. 
 
 Tempest, The, 154, 198. 
 
 Temple Bar, 324. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 12, 16, 26, 28, 63, 
 
 108, 154, 190, 219, 252, 265-7, 270, 
 
 328, 400, 403, 420. 
 Thackeray, W. M., 51, 141, 145. 166, 
 
 190, 198, 200-1, 203, 214, 223, 
 
 272-5,311,356, 421. 
 Theobald, R. M., 370. 
 Thiers, M., 112. 
 Thirlwall, Bishop, 424. 
 Thomson, Andrew, 81. 
 
 Tommy, 79. 
 
 Thoreau, H. D., 32-3. 
 Times, The, 264, 340. 
 Timon of Athens, 62.
 
 438 
 
 A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS 
 
 Tom Burke, 201. 
 Tony, 205. 
 
 Townsend, Meredith, 245. 
 Traill, H. D., 340. 
 Tree, Ellen, 89. 
 Trevelyan, Lady, 238. 
 
 Sir George, 18, 21, 24, 68. 
 
 Trollope, Anthony, 53, 201, 402. 
 Tupper, Martin, 403. 
 Turner, 17, 287. 
 Twelve Good Men, 21. 
 Twilight of the Gods, 213. 
 Tyndall, Professor, 28, 33. 
 
 Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, 
 
 79- 
 Unclassed, The, 5, 290. 
 Undergraduate Papers, 240. 
 Unwin, Fisher, 370. 
 Upton Letters, The, 114. 
 
 Vallentine, James, 91. 
 Vanity Fair, 56-7, 145, 223. 
 Vathek, 3. 
 
 Vaughan, Cardinal, 20. 
 Violet ; or the Danseuse, 145. 
 Vizetelly, Henry, 275. 
 Voltaire, 146. 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 234, 299. 
 Warren, Henry, 65. 
 Watson, Dr. Richard, 233. 
 
 Dr. R. Spence, 82. 
 
 William, 12, 325. 
 
 Watt, A. P., 153. 
 
 Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 5, 131, 
 192-3, 196-8, 212, 247, 374. 
 
 Webster, John, 241. 
 
 Wedderburn, Alexander, 281. 
 
 Wellhausen, no. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, 175, 209. 
 
 Wesley, John, 20. 
 
 West, Rev. Harry, 182. 
 
 Westminster Gazette, The, 5, 273, 
 
 37°- 
 
 Westminster Review, 81, 88, 213, 
 
 366, 372, 381. 
 Wetmore, Mrs., 332. 
 Whateley, Archbishop, 166. 
 White, William, 368. 
 
 W. Hale, 41, 249, 268, 277, 364. 
 
 Whitman, Walt, 33, 401. 
 
 Wilhelm Meister, 300. 
 
 Wilkins, Professor, 291. 
 
 Wilkinson, Dr. Garth, 402. 
 
 Wilson, Dr. George, 89, 90, 93-4. 
 
 Winckelmann, J. J., 206. 
 
 Windham, William, 72. 
 
 Witness, The, 142. 
 
 Woods of Westermain, The, 16. 
 
 Woodstock, 356. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 187, 249, 
 
 265-8, 342-4, 347, 374, 399, 400, 
 
 401-2. 
 Wright, Thomas, 184. 
 Wuthering Heights, 314. 
 Wycherley, William, 153. 
 
 Yates, Edmund, 275, 324. 
 Young, Arthur, 175. 
 Young, Life of Dr., 70. 
 
 Zoffany, John, 166. 
 Zola, Emile, 248. 
 
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