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COLLECTED PROSE 
 
 OF 
 
 JAMES ELROY FLECKER 
 
JAMES ELROY FLECKER 
 
 IJST OF FIRST EDITIONS 
 
 The Collected Poems. Edited, with In- 
 troduction, by J. C. Squire. 
 
 Seeker, 1916 
 Bridge of Fire. Poems. 
 
 Elkin Mathews, 1907 
 Golden Journey to Samarkand (and 
 other Poems. 
 
 Max Goschen, 191 3. (Now published 
 
 by Martin Seeker.) 
 
 The Grecians : A Dialogue on Education. 
 
 J. M. Dent and Co., London, 1910 
 
 E. P. Dutton and Co., New York 
 
 The King of Alsander. 
 
 Max Goschen, 1914. (Now published 
 by Messrs. Allen and Unwin, Ltd.) 
 The Old Ships. Poems. 
 
 Poetry Bookshop, 191 5 
 The Scholar's Italian Book. An Intro- 
 duction to the Study of the Latin 
 origins of Italian. David Nutt, 191 1 
 Thirty-Six Poems. Adelphi Press, 1910 
 Forty-Two Poems. Re-issue of above 
 with six new poems added. 
 
 J. M. Dent, 191 1 
 
 The Selected Poems of James Elroy 
 
 Flecker. Seeker, 1918 
 
 Burial in England. Poem. 1915. Only 20 
 copies printed by Clement K. Shorter. 
 
 God Save the King. 191 5. Only 20 
 copies printed by Clement K. Shorter. 
 
Collected Prose 
 
 James Elroy Flecker 
 
 London 
 
 G. Bell and Sons 
 
 Mcmxx 
 
G. BELI, AND SONS, LTD. 
 
 YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET 
 
 LONDON, W.C. 
 

 ^q?^ 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 IN 19 1 6 Mr. Seeker published Flecker's 
 *' Collected Poems." This volume contains 
 all the Prose that he reprinted, or would 
 probably have reprinted, except his novel '' The 
 King of Alsander." There remain to be pub- 
 lished his Plays, of which '' Hassan " is certainly 
 the greatest thing he did. Of the pieces now 
 reprinted *'The Last Generation " was published 
 as a booklet by the New Age Press, and certain 
 others in the '' New Statesman," the " Monthly 
 Review," the "English Review," the ^'Cam- 
 bridge Review," the " Nineteenth Century," the 
 " Saturday Westminster Gazette," to the editors 
 of all of which thanks are due. The first essay 
 on John Davidson was written when he was an 
 undergraduate ; others, too, were very early. 
 
 4e2e3'4 
 
CONTENTS 
 TALES AND SKETCHES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Last Generation i 
 
 Introduction 3 
 
 L At Birmingham Town Hall ... 6 
 
 n< The Proclamation . . . . o 
 
 HL The Mutual Extermination Club . . 12 
 
 IV. The Episode of the Baby . . .15 
 
 V. The Florentine League . . .18 
 
 VI. Outside 24 
 
 VII. The Last Man 31 
 
 N'jAWK 33 
 
 Pentheus 39 
 
 Mansur . .47 
 
 Candilli 57 
 
 The 'Bus in Stamboul 61 
 
 Translations from the Gulistan . . 63 
 
 Forgotten Warfare 69 
 
 Philanthropists . . . . . -79 
 
 THE GRECIANS 
 
 The Grecians: A Dialogue on Education 
 
 Preface 89 
 
 I. The Three Englishmen .... 90 
 
CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 John Davidson: Realist 
 
 John Davidson 
 
 The New Poetry and Mr. Housman's 
 
 " Shropshire Lad " . 
 Two Critics of Poetry .... 
 The Golden Journey to Samarkand: 
 
 Preface to 
 
 The Public as Art Critic . 
 Paul Fort, the Prince of Poets 
 
 PAG] 
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 The Grecians — continued. 
 
 II. The Aim of Education .... 98 
 
 III. Physical Training . . . . .118 
 
 IV. Technical Training 133 
 
 V. The Grecians, or True Education . . 142 
 
 189 
 
 207 
 
 215 
 229 
 
 237 
 243 
 251 
 
I 
 
 TALES AND SKETCHES 
 
THE LAST GENERATION^ 
 A STORY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I HAD been awake for I know not how many 
 hours that summer dawn while the sun came 
 over the hills and coloured the beautiful roses in 
 my mother's garden. As I lay drowsily gazing through 
 the window, I thought I had never known a morning 
 so sultry, and yet so pleasant. Outside not a leaf 
 stirred ; yet the air was fresh, and the madrigal notes 
 of the birds came to me with a peculiar intensity 
 and clearness. I listened Intently to the curious sound 
 of trilling, which drew nearer and nearer, until it 
 seemed to merge into a whirring noise that filled the 
 room and crowded at my ears. At first I could see 
 nothing, and lay in deadly fear of the unknown ; but 
 soon I thought I saw rims and sparks of spectral fire 
 floating through the pane. Then I heard some one say : 
 " I am the Wind." But the voice was so like that of 
 an old friend whom one sees again after many years 
 that my terror departed, and I asked simply why the 
 Wind had come. 
 
 " I have come to you," he replied," because you are 
 
 ^Reprinted by kind permission of Messrs. Cecil Palmer and 
 Hayward. 
 
 3 
 
4 THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 the first man I have discovered who is after my own 
 heart. You whom others call dreamy and capricious, 
 volatile and headstrong, you whom some accuse of 
 weakness, others of unscrupulous abuse of power, you 
 I know to be a true son of ^Eolus, a fit inhabitant for 
 those caves of boisterous song." 
 
 "Are you the North Wind or the East Wind?" 
 said I. " Or do you blow from the Atlantic? Yet if 
 those be your feathers that shine upon the pane like 
 yellow and purple threads, and if it be through your 
 influence that the garden is so hot to-day, I should 
 say you were the lazy South Wind, blowing from the 
 countries that I love." 
 
 " I blow from no quarter of the Earth," replied the 
 voice. " I am not in the compass. I am a little un- 
 known Wind, and I cross not Space but Time. If you 
 will come with me I will take you not over countries 
 but over centuries, not directly, but waywardly, and 
 you may travel where you will. You shall see 
 Napoleon, Caesar, Pericles, if you command. You 
 may be anywhere in the world at any period. I will 
 show you some of my friends, the poets. . . ." 
 
 " And may I drink red wine with Praxiteles, or with 
 Catullus beside his lake?" 
 
 " Certainly, if you know enough Latin and Greek, 
 and can pronounce them intelligently." 
 
 " And may I live with Thais or Rhodope, or some 
 wild Assyrian queen?" 
 
 " Unless they are otherwise employed, certainly." 
 
 " Ah, Wind of Time," I continued with a sigh, " we 
 men of this age are rotten with book-lore, and with a 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 yearning for the past. And wherever I asked to go 
 among those ancient days, I should soon get dis- 
 satisfied, and weary your bright wings. I will be no 
 pillar of salt, a sterile portent in a sterile desert. 
 Carry me forward, Wind of Time. What is there 
 going to be ?" 
 
 The Wind put his hand over my eyes. 
 
AT BIRMINGHAM TOWN HALL 
 
 " This is our first stopping place," said a voice from 
 the points of flame. 
 
 I opened my eyes expecting to see one of those 
 extravagant scenes that imaginative novelists love to 
 depict. I was prepared to find the upper air busy with 
 aeroplanes and the earth beneath given over to un- 
 bridled debauch. Instead, I discovered myself seated 
 on a tall electric standard, watching a crowd assembled 
 before what I took to be Birmingham Town Hall. I 
 was disappointed in this so tame a sight, until it 
 flashed across me that I had never seen an English 
 crowd preserve such an orderly and quiet demeanour; 
 and a more careful inspection assured me that although 
 no man wore a uniform, every man carried a rifle. 
 They were obviously waiting for some one to come 
 and address them from the balcony of the Town Hall, 
 which was festooned with red flags. As the curtains 
 were pulled aside I caught a momentary glimpse of 
 an old person whose face I shall never forget, but 
 apparently it was not for him that the breathless 
 crowd was waiting. The man who finally appeared 
 on the balcony was an individual not more than thirty 
 years old, with a black beard and green eyes. At the 
 sound of acclamation which greeted him he burst 
 
AT BIRMINGHAM TOWN HALL 7 
 
 out into a loud laugh; then with a sudden serious- 
 ness he held up his hand and began to address his 
 followers : 
 
 " I have but few words for you, my army, a few 
 bitter words. Need I encourage men to fight who 
 have staked their existence to gain mastery? We 
 cannot draw back ; never will the cries of the 
 slaughtered thousands we yearned to rescue from a 
 more protracted, more cruel misery than war, make 
 us forget the myriads who still await the supreme 
 mercy of our revenge. 
 
 " For centuries and for centuries we endured the 
 March of that Civilization which now, by the weapons 
 of her own making, we have set forth to destroy. We, 
 men of Birmingham, dwellers in thfs hideous town 
 unvisited by sun or moon, long endured to be told 
 that we were in the van of progress, leading Humanity 
 year by year along her glorious path. And, looking 
 around them, the wise men saw the progress of 
 civilization, and what was it? What did it mean? 
 Less country, fewer savages, deeper miseries, more 
 millionaires, and more museums. So to-day we march 
 on London. 
 
 " Let us commemorate, my friends, at this last hour, 
 a great, if all unwitting benefactor, the protomartyr of 
 our cause. You remember that lank follower of the 
 Newest Art, who lectured to us once within these 
 very walls ? He it was who first expounded to us the 
 beauty of Birmingham, the artistic majesty of tall 
 chimneys, the sombre glory of furnaces, the deep 
 mystery of smoke, the sad picturesqueness of scrap- 
 
8 THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 heaps and of slag. Then we began to hate our lives 
 in earnest ; then we arose and struck. Even now I 
 shudder when I think of that lecturer's fate, and 
 with a feeling of respect I commemorate his words 
 to-day. 
 
 " On, then ! You need not doubt of my victory, nor 
 of my power. Some of you will die, but you know 
 that death is rest. You do not need to fear the sombre 
 fireworks of a mediaeval Hell, nor yet the dreary dis- 
 sipations of a Methodist Heaven. Come, friends, and 
 march on London ! " 
 
 They heard him in deep silence ; there was a gentle 
 stir of preparation ; they faded far below me. 
 
II 
 
 THE PROCLAMATION 
 
 At a point ten years farther along that dusky road 
 the Wind set me down in a prodigious room. I had 
 never before seen so large and splendid a construction, 
 so gracefully embellished, so justly proportioned. The 
 shape was elliptical, and it seemed as if the architect 
 had drawn his inspiration from the Coliseum at Rome. 
 This Hall, however, was much larger, and had the 
 additional distinction of a roof, which, supported by a 
 granite column, was only rendered visible from beneath 
 by means of great bosses of clear gold. Galleries ran 
 round the walls, and there was even a corkscrew 
 balustrade winding up round the central pillar. Every 
 part of the building was crowded with people. There 
 seemed to be no window in the place, so that I could 
 not tell whether or no it was night. The whole 
 assembly was illuminated by a thousand electric discs, 
 and the ventilation was almost perfectly planned on a 
 system to me entirely strange. There was a raised 
 throne at one end of the building, on which sat a King 
 decently dressed in black. I recognized the green- 
 eyed man, and learnt that his name was Harris, 
 Joshua Harris. The entire body of the Hall was filled 
 by soldiers in mud-coloured tunics and waterproof 
 boots. These were the men that had conquered the 
 world. 
 
lo THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 As soon as the populace were well assembled the 
 King made a sign to his Herald, who blew so sudden 
 and terrific a blast with his trumpet that the multi- 
 tude stopped their chattering with a start. The Herald 
 proceeded to bawl a proclamation through his mega- 
 phone. I heard him distinctly, but should never have 
 been able to reproduce his exact words, had not the 
 Wind very kindly handed to me one of the printed 
 copies for free distribution which it had wafted from 
 a chair. The proclamation ran thus: 
 
 '•'' I ^ Joshua Harris^ by right of conquest and in virtue 
 of my intelligence^ Kiiig of Britain^ Emperor of the two 
 Americas^ and Lord High Suzerain of the Worlds to the 
 Fri?tces^ Fresidetits, and Peoples of the said Worlds — 
 Greeting. Ye know that in days past an old man now 
 dead shoived me how man^s dolorous and fe-uitless sojourn 
 on this globe might cease by his own act and wisdom; 
 ho IV pain and death and the black Power that made us 
 might be frustrated of their accustomed prey. Then I 
 swore an oath to fulfil that old man^s schejne^ and I 
 gathered my followers.^ who were the miserable men^ and 
 the hufigry men., and we have cotiquered all there is to 
 conquer by our camion and by our skill. Already last 
 year I gave public notice, in the proclamation of Vienna, 
 in the proclamation of Cairo, in the proclamatio7i of 
 Pekin, and in the proclamation of Rio Janeiro, that all 
 bearing of childt'en must cease, and that all women should 
 be permanently sterilized according to the prescription of 
 Doctor Smith. Therefore to-day, since there is no remote 
 African plain, no island far azvay in the deep South Seas 
 where our forces are not supreme a7td our agents not 
 vigilant, I make my fifial proclamation to you, my army, 
 
THE PROCLAMATION n 
 
 a7id to yoti^ Princes, Presidents, and Peoples of this 
 World, that from this hour forth there be no child horn of 
 any ivoman, or, if born, that it be slain with its father 
 and its mother (a fainting woman had here to be carried 
 out), and to you, my terrestrial forces, I entrust the 
 executioft of my commands. 
 
 ^^ fay then be with you, my people, for the gy^aftaries 
 are full of corn and wine that I have laid up, sufficient 
 for many years to come; joy be ivith you, since you are 
 the last and noblest genej'ation of mankind, a?id si^ice 
 Doctor Smith by his invention, and I by my ivise pre- 
 vision, have enabled you to live not o?ily iv it hout payment 
 and without work (loud cheers from the galleries), but 
 also ivith luxury and splendour, and with all the delights, 
 and none of the dangers, of universal love. ^^ 
 
 I expected this proclamation to be followed by an 
 outburst of applause; but instead, the whole multitude 
 sat calm and motionless. Looking round I was struck 
 by the hideous appearance of mankind. It was 
 especially revolting to look at the ears of the soldiers 
 in front, who had their backs turned to me. These 
 stuck out from the bullet-like heads, and made the 
 men look like two-handled teapots on stands. Yet 
 here and there appeared in the galleries some woman's 
 countenance beautified by the sorrows of our race, or 
 some tall youth whose eyes expressed the darkest de- 
 termination. The silence seemed to gather in folds. 
 I was studying drowsily the Asiatic dresses and the 
 nude people from Melanesia, when I heard a noise 
 which I thought was that of the Wind. But I saw it 
 was the King, who had begun to laugh. It was a very 
 strange noise indeed, and very strange laughter. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE MUTUAL EXTERMINATION CLUB 
 
 " You would perhaps like to stay here some time," 
 said the Wind, "and look around. You will then 
 understand the significance of this generation more 
 clearly, and you may observe some interesting 
 incidents." 
 
 I was standing with one or two other people out- 
 side a pseudo-Chinese erection, which I at first took 
 to be a cricket pavilion, and then saw to be the head- 
 quarters of a rifle club. I apprehended from the 
 placards that I was in Germany, and inquired in the 
 language of the country, which I understand very 
 well, what was the object of this rifle practice, and 
 whether there was any thought of war. 
 
 The man to whom I addressed myself, an adipose 
 person with iron-rimmed spectacles and a kindly, in- 
 telligent face, seemed surprised at my question. 
 
 " You must be a stranger," he said. '* This is our 
 very notable Vertildungsverein''' 
 
 I understood : it was a Club for Mutual Extermina- 
 tion. 
 
 I then noticed that there were no ordinary targets, 
 and that the cadets were pointing their rifles at a 
 bearded man who stood with a covered pipe in his 
 mouth, leaning against a tree some two hundred yards 
 away. 
 
 12 
 
MUTUAL EXTERMINATION CLUB 13 
 
 After the report the bearded man held up both 
 hands. 
 
 " That is to signify that he has been completely 
 missed," said the fat gentleman. " One hand, wounded ; 
 two hands, missed. And that is reasonable {vernunftig), 
 because if he were dead he could not raise either." 
 
 I approved the admirable logic of the rule, and sup- 
 posed that the man would now be allowed to go free. 
 
 " Oh, yes, according to the rules," he answered, 
 *' he certainly is allowed to go free; but I do not think 
 his sense of honour would permit him so to do." 
 
 " Is he then of very noble family?" I inquired. 
 
 "Not at all; he is a scientist. We have a great 
 many scientists in our club. They are all so disap- 
 pointed at the way in which human progress has been 
 impeded, and at the impossibility of a continuous 
 evolution of knowledge-accumulation, that they find 
 no more attraction in life. And he is dead this time," 
 he continued, shading his eyes to look, as soon as a 
 second report had flashed. 
 
 " By the way," I asked, " I suppose you only ex- 
 terminate — er — members of the club?" 
 
 The fellow smiled with a little disdain. " Oh, it would 
 be illegal for us to exterminate outsiders. But of 
 course if you would like to join. . . ." 
 
 " Why, that 's never a woman going over to the 
 tree! " I cried. 
 
 " Oh yes, we have quite a number of intellectual 
 women and upper-class ladies of advanced ideas in the 
 club. But I do not think that lady is an intellectual 
 she is more probably a passion-wreck." 
 
14 THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 She was indeed a very handsome woman in the 
 prime of Hfe, dressed with a little too much ostenta- 
 tion and coquetry in a sleeveless, transparent white 
 blouse and a skirt to match. 
 
 My informant turned round to a skinny young 
 student with hog's-bristle hair, and made some vulgar 
 jest about its " being a pity to waste such a good 
 piece of flesh." He was a super-man, and imagined, 
 falsely I believe, that an air of bluff cynicism, a 
 Teutonic attempt at heartiness, was the true outward 
 sign of inward superiority. The young man fired, and 
 the woman raised the arm that was not shattered by 
 the bullet. He fired again, and she fell on her knees, 
 this time with a scream. 
 
 " I think you had better have a shot," said the 
 sharp-shooter to my man. " I'm rather bad at this." 
 
 Indeed his hand was shaking violently. 
 
 My interlocutor bowed, and went over to take the 
 rifle. The skinny student took his place by my side, 
 and began talking to me as well. " He 's an infallible 
 shot that Muller there," he said, nodding at my former 
 companion. . . . "Didn't I tell you?" 
 
 To my great relief the passion-wrecked lady fell 
 dead. I was getting wildly excited, rent between 
 horror and curiosity. 
 
 "You see that man in the plumed hat?" said the 
 student. " He is coming round to say on whom the 
 lot has fallen. Ah, he is coming this way, and making 
 a sign at me. Good-day, sir," he said, taking off his 
 hat with a deep and jerky bow. " I am afraid we must 
 continue our conversation another time." 
 
IV 
 
 THE EPISODE OF THE BABY 
 
 As soon as I turned away, rather horrified, from the 
 merry proceedings of the Mutual Extermination 
 Club, I seemed to be in England, or perhaps in 
 America. At all events I was walking along a dusty 
 highway in the midst of an inquisitive crowd. In 
 front of me half-a-dozen members of the International 
 Police Force (their tunics and boots gave me to 
 understand their quality) were dragging along a 
 woman who held a baby in her arms. A horror- 
 struck and interested multitude surged behind, and 
 rested only when the woman was taken into a large 
 and disgusting edifice with iron gates. Aided by my 
 distinguished appearance and carriage, I succeeded 
 after some difficulty in persuading the Chief Gaoler 
 to let me visit the cell where the mother was lodged, 
 previous to undergoing an execution which would 
 doubtless be as unpleasant as prolonged. I found a 
 robust, apple- cheeked woman, very clean and neat, 
 despite her forlorn condition and the rough handling 
 the guards had used to her. She confessed to me 
 with tears that she had been in her day a provincial 
 courtesan, and that she had been overcome by desire 
 to have a child, " just to see what it was like." She 
 had therefore employed all imaginable shifts to avoid 
 
 15 
 
i6 THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 being injected with Smithia, and had fled with an old 
 admirer to a lonely cave, where she had brought forth 
 her child. " And a pretty boy too," she added, wring- 
 ing her hands, " and only fourteen months old." 
 
 She was so heart-broken that I did not like to ask 
 her any more questions till she had recovered, for fear 
 her anwers should be unintelligible. Finally, as I de- 
 sired to learn matters that were of common knowledge 
 to the rest of the world, and was not anxious to arouse 
 suspicion, I represented myself as a cultured foreigner 
 who had just been released from a nianicomio^ and 
 was therefore naturally in a state of profound ignor- 
 ance on all that appertained to Modern History. I 
 felt indeed that I would never have a better chance 
 of gathering information than from conversation with 
 this solitary woman. It would be her pleasure, not 
 her duty, to instruct me. 
 
 So I began by asking how the diminishing numbers 
 of the military could keep a sufficient watch, and how 
 it was that every one submitted so meekly to the 
 proclamation. She answered that the police recruited 
 themselves yearly from the more active and noble- 
 minded of the people, that custom had a lot to do 
 with the submissive attitude of mankind, and that 
 apart from that, there was a great resolve abroad to 
 carry out the project of King Harris to fulfilment. 
 She went on to inform me that Smithia was tasteless, 
 and would act even when drunk at meals, and not 
 merely as an injection, that it acted on both sexes, and 
 that it was otherwise innocuous. By now most of the 
 well-springs, reservoirs, and cisterns had been con- 
 
THE EPISODE OF THE BABY 17 
 
 taminated by the fluid, of which large quantities had 
 been prepared at a very cheap price. After gleaning 
 sundry other details, I thanked her heartily and left 
 the cell. 
 
 Outside in the courtyard I discovered a large con- 
 course of people examining the baby, who was natur- 
 ally enough an object of extreme wonder to the whole 
 country-side. The women called it a duck, and used 
 other pet names that were not then in fashion, but 
 most of the men thought it was an ugly little brat at 
 best. The child was seated on a cushion, and despite 
 his mother's absence was crowing vigorously and 
 kicking with puny force. There was some debate as 
 to how it should be killed. Some were for boiling and 
 eating it ; others were for hitting it on the head with 
 a club. However, the official who held the cushion 
 brought the conference to a close by inadvertently 
 dropping the child on to the flags, and thereby break- 
 incf its neck. 
 
V 
 
 THE FLORENTINE LEAGUE 
 
 I FEEL certain on reflection that the scene of the last 
 episode must have been America, for I remember 
 returning to Europe on a French boat which landed 
 me at Havre, and immediately taking the train to 
 Paris. As I passed through Normandy, I saw hardly 
 a soul stirring in the villages, and the small houses 
 were all in a most dilapidated condition. There was 
 no more need for farms, and villagers in their loneli- 
 ness were flocking to the towns. Even the outer 
 suburbs of Paris were mere masses of flaked and de- 
 caying plaster. An unpleasant crash into the buffers 
 of Saint Lazare reminded me that the engine was 
 being driven by an amateur; indeed, we had met the 
 Dieppe train at Rouen, sent a pilot engine ahead to 
 clear the way, and then raced it to Paris on the up- 
 line amid enthusiastic cheers. We won, but were badly 
 shaken. 
 
 We left the train beside the platform, trusting to 
 the Church Missionary Society man to put it away 
 in the engine-shed. These excellent philanthropists 
 were unv/earying in their efforts to prevent needless 
 OSS of life, and such work as was still done in the 
 world was performed almost entirely by them and 
 by members of kindred British Protestant societies. 
 They wore a blue badge to distinguish themselves, 
 
 i8 
 
THE FLORENTINE LEAGUE 19 
 
 and were ordered about by every one. At the call of 
 "Anglais, Anglais!" some side-whiskered man would 
 immediately run up to obey the summons, and you 
 could send him to get food from the Store for you, 
 and he would be only too pleased. They would also 
 cook hot dinners. 
 
 I walked through the Boulevard Montmartre, and 
 at every step I took I became more profoundly miser- 
 able. One had called Paris the pleasant city, the 
 fairest city in the world, in the days before the 
 Proclamation ; for one found it vibrating with beauty 
 and life. And now assuredly it was supremely a city 
 of pleasure, for there was no work to be done at all. 
 So no artist ever took any trouble now, since there 
 was neither payment nor fame attainable; and wonder- 
 ful caricatures of philanthropists scribbled on the pave- 
 ment or elsewhere, or clever ribald songs shrieking 
 out of gramophones were the only reminder of that 
 past and beautiful Paris that I had known. There 
 was a fatuous and brutal expression on most of the 
 faces, and the people seemed to be too lazy to do 
 anything except drink and fondle. Even the lunatics 
 attracted but little attention. There was a flying- 
 machine man who was determined, as he expressed 
 it, " that it should not be said of the human race that 
 it never flew." Even the " Anglais " were tired of 
 helping him with his machine, which he was quietly 
 building on the Place de I'Opera — a mass of intricate 
 wires, bamboos, and paper boxes; and the inventor 
 himself frequently got lost as he climbed cheerily 
 among the rigging. 
 
20 THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 Weary of all this, I slept, alone, in one of the public 
 beds, and early next morning I clambered up the 
 sacred slope of the Butte to see the sunrise. The great 
 silence of early morning was over the town, a deathly 
 and unnatural stillness. As I stood leaning over the 
 parapet, thinking miserably, a young man came up 
 the hill slowly yet gracefully, so that it was a pleasure 
 to look at him. His face was sad and noble, and as I 
 had never thought to see nobility again, I hoped he 
 would be a friend to me. However, he turned himself 
 almost roughly, and said : 
 
 " Why have you come here? " 
 
 "To look at the fallen city I loved long ago," I 
 replied, with careless sorrow. 
 
 " Have you then also read of the old times in 
 books?" he said, looking round at me with large 
 bright eyes. 
 
 "Yes, I have read many books," said I, trying to 
 evade the subject. " But will you forgive me if I ask 
 an impertinent question?" 
 
 " Nothing coming from you, sir, could be im- 
 pertinent." 
 
 " I wanted to ask how old you are, because you seem 
 so young. You seem to be only seventeen." 
 
 " You could tell me nothing more delightful," the 
 young man replied, with a gentle, yet strong and 
 deep intonation. " I am indeed one of the youngest 
 men alive — I am twenty-two years old. And I am 
 looking for the last time on the city of Paris." 
 
 " Do not say that," I cried. " All this may be hor- 
 rible, but it cannot be as dull as Death. Surely there 
 
THE FLORENTINE LEAGUE 21 
 
 must be some place in the world where we could live 
 among beauty; some other folk besides ourselves who 
 are still poets. Why should one die until life becomes 
 hopelessly ugly and deformed? " 
 
 " I am not going to. kill myself, as you seem to 
 think," said the young man. " I am going, and I pray 
 and implore you to come with me, to a place after 
 your heart and mine, that some friends have pre- 
 pared. It is a garden, and we are a League. I have 
 already been there three months, and I have put on 
 these horrible clothes for one day only, in obedience 
 to a rule of our League, that every one should go out 
 once a year to look at the world around. We are 
 thinking of abolishing the rule." 
 
 " How pleasant and beautiful it sounds ! " 
 
 " It is, and will 3^ou come with me there right 
 now? " 
 
 "Shall I be admitted? " 
 
 " My word will admit you at once. Come this way 
 with me. I have a motor at the bottom of the hill." 
 
 During the journey I gathered much information 
 about the League, which was called the Florentine 
 League. It had been formed out of the youngest 
 " years " of the race, and its members had been chosen 
 for their taste and elegance. For although few parents 
 of the day had thought it worth while to teach their 
 children anything more recondite than their letters 
 and tables, yet some of the boys and girls had devel- 
 oped a great desire for knowledge, and an exceeding 
 great delight in Poetry, Art, Music, and all beautiful 
 sights and sounds. 
 
22 THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 " We live," he said, " apart from the world, like that 
 merry company of gentlefolk who, when the plague 
 was raging at Florence, left the city, and retiring to 
 a villa in the hills, told each other those enchanting 
 tales. We enjoy all that Life, Nature, and Art can 
 give us, and Love has not deserted the garden, but 
 still draws his golden bow. It is no crippled and 
 faded Eros of the City that dwells among us, but the 
 golden-thighed God himself. For we do all things 
 with refinement, and not like those outside, seeing to 
 it that in all our acts we keep our souls and bodies 
 both dehcate and pure." 
 
 We came to the door of a long wall, and knocked. 
 White-robed attendants appeared in answer to our 
 summons, and I was stripped, bathed, and anointed 
 by their deft hands. All the while a sound of singing 
 and subdued laughter made me eager to be in the 
 garden. I was then clothed in a very simple white 
 silk garment with a gold clasp ; the open door let 
 sunshine in upon the tiles, and my friend, also clothed 
 in silk, awaited me. We walked out into the garden, 
 which was especially noticeable for those flowers 
 which have always been called old-fashioned — I 
 mean hollyhocks, sweet-william, snap-dragons, and 
 Canterbury bells, which were laid out in regular beds. 
 Everywhere young men and women were together : 
 some were walking about idly in the shade; some 
 played at fives ; some were reading to each other in 
 the arbours. I was shown a Grecian temple in which 
 was a library, and dwelling-places near it. I after- 
 wards asked a girl called Fiore di Fiamma what 
 
THE FLORENTINE LEAGUE 23 
 
 books the Florentines preferred to read, and she told 
 me that they loved the Poets best, not so much the 
 serious and strenuous as those whose vague and fleet- 
 ing fancies wrap the soul in an enchanting sorrow. 
 I asked : " Do you write songs, Fiore di Fiamma ? " 
 " Yes, I have written a few, and music for them." 
 " Do sing me one, and I will play the guitar." 
 So she sang me one of the most mournful songs I 
 had ever heard, a song which had given up all hope 
 of fame, written for the moment's laughter or for the 
 moment's tears. 
 
 " Wind," I said that night, " stay with me many 
 years in the garden." 
 
 But it was not the Wind I kissed. 
 
VI 
 
 OUTSIDE 
 
 I PASSED many years in that sad, enchanted place, 
 dreaming at times of my mother's roses, and of friends 
 that I had known before, and watching our company 
 grow older and fewer. There was a rule that no one 
 should stay there after their thirty-seventh birthday, 
 and some old comrades passed weeping from us to 
 join the World Outside. But most of them chose to 
 take poison and to die quietly in the Garden ; we used 
 to burn their bodies, singing, and set out their urns 
 on the grass. In time I became Prince of the Garden: 
 no one knew my age, and I grew no older ; yet my 
 Flame-Flower knew when I intended to die. Thus 
 we lived on undisturbed, save for some horrible shout 
 that rose from time to time from beyond the walls ; 
 but we were not afraid, as we had cannon mounted 
 at our gates. At last there were twelve of us left in 
 the precinct of delight, and we decided to die all 
 together on the eve of the Queen's birthday. So we 
 made a great feast and held good cheer, and had the 
 poison prepared and cast lots. The first lot fell to 
 Fiore di Fiamma, and the last lot to me ; whereat all 
 applauded. I watched my Queen, who had never 
 seemed to me as noble as then, in her mature and 
 majestic beauty. She kissed me, and drank, and the 
 
 24 
 
OUTSIDE 25 
 
 others drank, became very pale, and fell to earth. 
 Then I, rising with a last paean of exultation, raised 
 the cup to my lips. 
 
 But that moment the trees and flowers bent beneath 
 a furious storm, and the cup was wrenched out of my 
 hand by a terrific blast and sent hurtling to the 
 ground. I saw the rainbow-coloured feathers flash- 
 ing, and for a second I saw the face of the Wind him- 
 self I trembled, and, sinking into my chair, buried 
 my face in my hands. A wave of despair and lone- 
 liness broke over me. I felt like a drowning man. 
 
 " Take me back, Lord of the Wind ! " I cried. 
 " What am I doing among these dead aesthetes? Take 
 me back to the country where I was born, to the 
 house where I am at home, to the things I used to 
 handle, to the friends with whom I talked, before man 
 went mad. I am sick of this generation that cannot 
 strive or fight, these people of one idea, this doleful, 
 ageing world. Take me away ! " 
 
 But the Wind replied in angry tones, not gently as 
 of old : 
 
 " Is it thus you treat me, you whom I singled out 
 from men ? You have forgotten me for fifteen years; 
 you have wandered up and down a garden, oblivious 
 of all things that I had taught you, incurious, idle, 
 listless, effeminate. Now I have saved you from dying 
 a mock death, like a jester in a tragedy ; and in time 
 I will take you back, for that I promised ; but first 
 you shall be punished as .you deserve." So saying, 
 the Wind raised me aloft and set me beyond the 
 wall. 
 
26 THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 I dare not describe — I fear to remember the un- 
 utterable loathing of the three years I spent outside. 
 The unhappy remnant of a middle-aged mankind 
 was gradually exchanging lust for gluttony. Crowds 
 squatted by day and by night round the Houses of 
 Dainty Foods that had been stocked by Harris the 
 King; there was no youthful face to be found among 
 them, and scarcely one that was not repulsively de- 
 formed with the signs of lust, cunning, and debauch. 
 At evening there were incessant fires of crumbling 
 buildings, and fat women made horrible attempts at 
 revelry. There seemed to be no power of thought in 
 these creatures. The civilization of ages had fallen 
 from them like a worthless rag from off their backs. 
 Europeans were as bestial as Hottentots, and the 
 noblest thing they ever did was to fight; for some- 
 times a fierce desire of battle seized them, and then 
 they tore each other passionately with teeth and nails. 
 
 I cannot understand it even now. Surely there 
 should have been some Puritans somewhere, or some 
 Philosophers waiting to die with dignity and honour. 
 Was it that there was no work to do? Or that there 
 were no children to love? Or that there was nothing 
 young in the World? Or that all beautiful souls 
 perished in the garden? 
 
 I think it must have been the terrible thought of 
 approaching extinction that obsessed these distracted 
 men. And perhaps they were not totally depraved. 
 There was a rough fellowship among them, a desire 
 to herd together; and for all that they fought so 
 much, they fought in groups. They never troubled 
 
OUTSIDE 27 
 
 to look after the sick and the wounded, but what could 
 they do? 
 
 One day I began to feel that I too was one of them 
 — I, who had held aloof in secret ways so long, joined 
 the gruesome company in their nightly dance, and 
 sat down to eat and drink their interminable meal. 
 Suddenly a huge, wild, naked man appeared in front 
 of the firelight, a prophet, as it appeared, who pro- 
 phesied not death but life. He flung out his lean arms 
 and shouted at us: "In vain have you schemed and 
 lingered and died, O Last Generation of the Damned. 
 For the cities shall be built again, and the mills shall 
 grind anew, and the church bells shall ring, and the 
 Earth be re-peopled with new miseries in God's own 
 time." 
 
 I could not bear to hear this fellow speak. Here 
 was one of the old sort of men, the men that talked 
 evil, and murmured about God. " Friends," I said, 
 turning to the Feasters, " we will have no skeletons 
 like that at our feast." So saying I seized a piece of 
 flaming wood from the fire, and rushed at the man. 
 He struggled fiercely, but he had no weapon, and I 
 beat him about the head till he fell, and death rattled 
 in his throat — rattled with what seemed to me a most 
 familiar sound. I stood aghast; then wiped the blood 
 from the man's eyes and looked into them. 
 
 "Who are you?" I exclaimed. "I have seen you 
 before; I seem to know the sound of your voice and 
 the colour of your eyes. Can you speak a word and 
 tell us your story, most unhappy prophet, before you 
 die?" 
 
28 THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 " Men of the Last Generation," said the dying man, 
 raising himself on his elbow — " Men of the Last 
 Generation, I am Joshua Harris, your King." 
 
 As brainless frogs who have no thought or sense in 
 them, yet shrink when they are touched, and swim 
 when the accustomed water laves their eager limbs, 
 so did these poor creatures feel a nerve stirring within 
 them, and unconsciously obey the voice which had 
 commanded them of old. As though the mere sound 
 of his tremulous words conveyed an irresistible man- 
 date, the whole group came shuffling nearer. All the 
 while they preserved a silence that made me afraid, so 
 reminiscent was it of that deadly hush that had 
 followed the Proclamation, of the quiet army starting 
 for London, and especially of that mysterious and 
 sultry morning so many years ago when the roses 
 hung their enamelled heads and the leaves were as 
 still as leaves of tin or copper. They sat down in 
 circles round the fire, maintaining an orderly dis- 
 position, like a stray battalion of some defeated army 
 which is weary of fruitless journeys in foreign lands, 
 but still remembers discipline and answers to com- 
 mand. Meanwhile, the dying man was gathering with 
 a noiseless yet visible effort every shred of strength 
 from his massive limbs, and preparing to give them 
 his last message. As he looked round on that frightful 
 crowd great tears, that his own pain and impending 
 doom could never have drawn from him, filled his 
 strange eyes. 
 
 " Forgive me — forgive me," he said at last, clearly 
 enough for all to hear. " If any of you still know what 
 
OUTSIDE 29 
 
 mercy is, or the meaning of forgiveness, say a kind 
 word to me. Loving you, relying on humanity and 
 myself, despising the march of Time and the power 
 of Heaven, I became a false redeemer, and took upon 
 my back the burden of all sin. But how was I to 
 know, my people, I who am only a man, whither my 
 plans for your redemption would lead? Have none of 
 you a word to say? 
 
 " Is there no one here who remembers our fighting 
 days ? Where are the great lieutenants who stood at 
 my side and cheered me with counsel? Where are 
 Robertson, Baldwin, and Andrew Spencer? Are there 
 none of the old set left? " 
 
 He brushed the tears and blood from his eyes and 
 gazed into the crowd. Pointing joyously to an old 
 man who sat not far away he called out : " I know you, 
 Andrew, from that great scar on your forehead. Come 
 here, Andrew, and that quickly." 
 
 The old man seemed neither to hear nor understand 
 him, but sat like all the rest, blinking and unre- 
 sponsive. 
 
 " Andrew," he cried, "you must know me! Think 
 of Brum and South Melton Street. Be an Englishman, 
 Andrew — come and shake hands ! " 
 
 The man looked at him with staring, timid eyes; 
 then shuddered all over, scrambled up from the ground, 
 and ran away. 
 
 " It does not matter," murmured the King of the 
 World. " There are no men left. I have lived in the 
 desert, and I saw there that which I would I had seen 
 long ago — visions that came too late to warn me. For 
 
30 THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 a time my Plan has conquered ; but that greater Plan 
 shall be victorious in the end." 
 
 I was trying to staunch the wounds I had inflicted, 
 and I hoped to comfort him, but he thrust me aside. 
 
 " I know that no man of this generation could have 
 killed me. I have nothing in common with you, bright 
 Spirit. It was not you I loved, not for you I fought 
 and struggled, but for these. I do not want to be 
 reminded, by that light of reason shining in your eyes, 
 of what we were all of us, once. It was a heroic age, 
 when good and evil lived together, and misery bound 
 man to man. Yet I will not regret what I have done. 
 I ask forgiveness not of God, but of Man ; and I claim 
 the gratitude of thousands who are unknown, and un- 
 known shall ever remain. For ages and ages God must 
 reign over an empty kingdom, since I have brought to 
 an end one great cycle of centuries. Tell me. Stranger, 
 was I not great in my day? " 
 
 He fell back, and the Wind that took his Spirit 
 carried me also into space. 
 
VII 
 
 THE LAST MAN 
 
 The Wind bore me onwards more than forty years, 
 and I found seated beside a granary half-a-dozen 
 wrinkled and very aged men, whose faces were set 
 with a determination to go on living to the bitter end. 
 They were delirious, and naked ; they tore their white 
 beards ; they mumbled and could not speak. The 
 greatjfceasts came out of the forest by night softly and 
 gazed at them with their lantern eyes, but never did 
 them harm. All day long they ate and slept or wan- 
 dered a little aimlessly about. During that year four 
 of them died. 
 
 Afterwards I saw the last two men. One of them 
 was lying on the ground gasping passionately for 
 breath, his withered limbs awry with pain. I could see 
 that he had been a magnificent man in his youth. As 
 his old friend died, the Last of the Race remembered 
 his Humanity. He bent down, kissed the livid lips, 
 carefully and tearfully closed the filmed red eyes. He 
 even tried to scratch a grave with his long finger-nails, 
 but soon despaired. He then went away, plodding as 
 fast as he could hobble, weeping silently, afraid of the 
 Dead. In the afternoon he came to a vast city, where 
 many corpses lay ; and about nightfall, when the stars 
 were shining, he came to a massive half-ruined Dome 
 
 31 
 
32 THE LAST GENERATION 
 
 that had been used for the worship of some God. 
 Entering, he tottered towards the altar, which still 
 stood, half-buried in stone-dust and flakes; and reach- 
 ing up to a great bronze Crucifix that stood upon it, 
 with his dying strength he clasped to his arms the 
 Emblem of our Sorrow. 
 
 I saw the vast Halls and Palaces of men falling in 
 slowly, decaying, crumbling, destroyed by nothing but 
 the rains and the touch of Time. And looking again 
 I saw wandering over and above the ruins, moving 
 curiously about, myriads of brown, hairy, repulsive 
 little apes. 
 
 One of them was building a fire with sticks. 
 
N' JAWK 
 
 THE shade of Archdeacon Puxley, rationalist, 
 ideah'st, and divine, was disconcerted at its own 
 existence. As a cleric that Archdeacon had, of 
 course, strictly upheld the doctrine of Immortality as 
 expounded in the Apocalypse. Secretly, we regret to 
 state, Puxley had held different views. This was 
 probably the fault of that pernicious system of edu- 
 cation which disturbs the simple faith of our young 
 men with a course of purely Pagan philosophy. At 
 all events, there can be no doubt that Peter Puxley, 
 undergraduate, after three years' residence in the 
 University of Oxford, believed neither in Inspiration 
 nor in Immortality, nor even in that sweet Idealism 
 which reconciled the philosopher Hegel to the 
 Lutheran Church. Puxley's beliefs might have 
 affected Puxley's conduct, for he had a logical, even 
 a practical, mind ; but his character was steady and 
 firm; nor could the insidious worm of Infidelity eat 
 away that goodly treasure of sound morals, which he 
 had inherited from a long line of ancestors, all 
 Christians, and some in Orders. " There is no reason 
 now," Puxley had said to himself, as he paced his 
 tastefully furnished rooms on the day on which he 
 felt himself forced to abandon even Hegel — " no 
 
 D 
 
34 N' JAWK 
 
 reason, I say, why I should not behave like an abso- 
 lute beast. But I should not enjoy it : that is what 
 is so unfortunate. It is true that I eat rather a lot; 
 but I have no longing whatever to commit arson, 
 rape, murder, or anything else that might entail un- 
 pleasant consequences. I desire a life of studious 
 ease; and where shall I obtain my desire save in the 
 bosom of the Anglican Church? Infidelity is always 
 put down to youth and conceit in this age; whereas 
 the priest is honoured and respected. Of course," he 
 continued, looking at his mirror, " I shall be a high 
 churchman, very high. It is a much better thing 
 socially; besides, I have the High Church face." 
 
 So Peter Puxley, undergraduate, determined to 
 realize himself in all tranquillity, and in due course he 
 became the Rev. P. Puxley, and a fellow of his College. 
 His sermons on the relation between Platonic and 
 Christian Love soon attracted attention, and he was 
 admitted into the fraternity of gaiters. But those 
 whom the gods love die young ; and Puxley was still 
 what might be called a middle-aged man when a 
 violent colic took him from us and blasted that pro- 
 mising career. But that complete annihilation of the 
 Ego, which his infidelity expected and his hypocrisy 
 deserved, did not overtake him after death. He became, 
 to his alarm, a vulgar, anthropomorphic ghost, in fact, 
 a gaseous vertebrate, to use the eloquent term of the 
 admirable Haeckel. But there was worse than this. 
 The soul of our learned friend was being propelled 
 through infinity in a most extraordinary fashion. 
 Mysteriously yet irresistibly impelled, his astral 
 
N' JAWK 35 
 
 body proceeded in a continuous succession of violent 
 jerks, and every seventh jerk produced a complete 
 somersault. 
 
 It was after completing some hundreds of these 
 gyrations, that he discovered himself entangled in the 
 soul of Slimber. Slimber was a poet. He had pub- 
 lished an exquisite volume of verse in the Doreskin 
 Library of modern Masterpieces. The volume, not 
 fifty pages long, but fine in quality, was printed on 
 one side of the page, and was dedicated to a Lady. 
 Intimacies of this sort, mentally so exhausting, had 
 combined with a too sensitive taste in liqueurs to carry 
 him off at an early age. His articles to " Tit Bits " 
 and " Pearson's Weekly," though the real source of 
 his modest revenue, were even less well known than 
 his poems. Yet his unsigned essay on " How to make 
 money by writing " was not only deservedly popular 
 among that wide public to which " Tit Bits " appeals, 
 but had also saved him from death by starvation. 
 
 At present this fanciful and slender shade was 
 simply clad in an undervest. For though we carry 
 nothing into this world, yet it is not so sure that we 
 can carry nothing out: for not only do our good 
 deeds remain after us, but our nightshirts as well, 
 or whatever apparel we may wear at the supreme 
 moment of our Destiny. Hence do so many ghosts 
 wear draperies of white linen ; hence the appearance 
 of Slimber in his undervest; and hence, too, the 
 pyjamas and white woollen bedsocks which adorned 
 the robuster wraith of Archdeacon Puxley. 
 
 This ecclesiastical spectre, at great peril to his indi- 
 
36 N' JAWK 
 
 viduality, extricated himself from the soul of Slimber, 
 and as they went travelling on together in parallel 
 paths remarked to his new-found companion : " This 
 is absurd." 
 
 " Isn't it?" said Slimber. " Delightfully so." 
 
 " I see nothing delightful in it at all," said Puxley, 
 " It is perfectly irrational and extremely undignified." 
 
 "Wash," said Slimber rudely, "what could be more 
 charming than this our progress among the speckled 
 stars, varied as it is by the performance of this 
 exquisitely irrelevant turn." And he gracefully con- 
 voluted. 
 
 " Is this the way we are to realize ourselves?" 
 wailed the philosopher-priest, taking refuge in his long 
 abandoned Idealism. " I was not made for this." And 
 he in his turn convoluted. 
 
 " Insensate Philistine," began Slimber; but at this 
 moment their course was abruptly arrested, and they 
 found themselves hanging head downwards in an 
 Oriental Palace. In front of them, sitting the right 
 way up, was a sort of god. It had one large eye in 
 the middle of its forehead, and an amorphous belly. 
 It was unclothed, and coloured pink and green. It or 
 he was surrounded by guards in uniform and by 
 several naked yet attractive savage ladies of a 
 Burmese type and colour. 
 
 " Turn the fat 'un round," said the God, laconically, 
 but in perfect English, to his guards. " Turn him 
 round, I say. He wobbles so he makes me dizzy." 
 
 The guards seized Puxley and planted him on the 
 ground, leaving poor Slimber still inverted. 
 
N' JAWK 37 
 
 " Now then," said the God to Puxley. "What have 
 you to say for yourself? What have you ever done to 
 honour me?" 
 
 " Sir," said Puxley, " I do not even know your 
 name." 
 
 " My name is N' Jawk," said the God, booming. 
 "What have you ever done for me? Have you 
 garrotted any women in my honour? Have you 
 nicked your ears in my service? Have you even 
 sacrificed one poor little pig in my honour? Why, 
 you don't even know my name!" 
 
 " Sir," said Puxley, " I am confused. I cannot 
 think. If you could show me to an apartment where 
 I could realize myself in private. . . ." 
 
 "Realize yourself, indeed!" said N' Jawk. "You 
 will probably be made into porridge. Answer my 
 questions." 
 
 " But damn it," said Puxley, terrified. " This is per- 
 fectly unreasonable. I have always been a most moral 
 man." 
 
 " Do you imagine that the little bit of reason I gave 
 you to play with has anything to do with the truth?" 
 snorted the Deity. " You bore me. Porridge!" 
 
 And the guards hustled Puxley away. 
 
 " Well, you wreck of a man," said the God, opening 
 his mouth quite round, and turning to Slimber, who 
 still hung by his feet, "what have you got to 
 say?" 
 
 " Sir," said the Poet, with an attempt at an inverted 
 bow, " I think I could talk better the ordinary way 
 up." 
 
38 N' JAWK 
 
 " Sorry. I forgot," said N' Jawk. " Turn him round 
 there. Now then ! " 
 
 The Poet, now on his feet, took a step towards the 
 throne and prostrated himself before N' Jawk. 
 
 " Lord of majesty and might," he began : " Most 
 interesting and shining twi-colour Deity, beyond all 
 expectation, delicate and rare, hear me, I pray, and 
 attend to my supplication. I have worshipped you, O 
 fantastic Spirit, all my days ; and if I have not gar- 
 rotted any women in your honour, I have well nigh 
 strangled them many a time. I have lived as I liked, 
 and followed no strange gods. O, most admirable of 
 grotesques, most fascinating of paradoxes, turn me not 
 into porridge. Let me stay here with these enchanting 
 girls." 
 
 Whereupon one of the fairest of the young ladies 
 took Slimber's hand and said to the God : " Yes, do 
 let him stay and play with us, Papa ; he looks so 
 nice." 
 
 " All right/' said N' Jawk, benevolently. " All right, 
 my dears; he shall stay. But I'm hungry. Bring in 
 that porridge." 
 
PENTHEUS 
 
 ARE there any who do not know Pentheus, that 
 harsh and surly tyrant who laid rude hands 
 upon a God? Well might he wonder who 
 was this long-haired, bright-cheeked stranger with 
 the charms of Aphrodite in his eyes, who was dis- 
 turbing the peace of his kingdom, and leading the 
 girls into profitless and presumably immoral dances 
 on the dappled hills. What would happen to the 
 looms and the Theban cloth industry the while? 
 
 The stranger was the God Dionysus the terrible, he 
 whom once unwitting Aegean pirates treacherously 
 seized, and they would have borne him a slave of 
 price to some odorous and languid city of the South; 
 but he knew their thoughts, and became a Lion, and 
 turned their oars to serpents, so that they leapt into 
 the sea, dolphins and not men, and swim desolately 
 on to this day. And he was the God Dionysus the 
 merciful, who once himself had died, as Osiris, as 
 Attis died, to benefit mankind. Born again, he gave 
 them wine, without which, as the messenger says in 
 the Bacchae, " there is no love nor any other pleasant 
 thing left on earth." But how should Pentheus know 
 this? He was a man who hated all nonsense, and 
 was not given to dancing or to drink. A religious 
 
 39 
 
40 PENTHEUS 
 
 man, no doubt, he was one of those who believe in the 
 moral and social benefits that religion confers, and 
 was not over-interested in miracles and myths. It is 
 hard to persuade a man of sense that you are an angel. 
 The voice of Bromios, the earthquake and the fire that 
 bring his house about his ears, the queer escape of the 
 stranger from his prison in the stall, pain, but do not 
 mystify his practical mind. The fire from Heaven is 
 an unfortunate accident, extinguishable by buckets ; 
 the stranger always was a clever, cunning fellow. 
 
 But when Fentheus hears that his own mother has 
 joined the revellers, that the Maenads have driven 
 the peasants before them, and are nearing the very 
 gates of Thebes, he falls into a panic, honest fellow 
 that he is ; without a moment's hesitation, like one of 
 our intrepid Governors beyond the seas, he appeals 
 to the military, and summons his armed police. 
 
 It is then that a most curious thing happens. The 
 stranger turns his deep love-eyes on Fentheus, with 
 no loving intent, and transforms him. He begins to 
 long for a sight of those doings on Kithairon, if only 
 to spy them out and to make better dispositions for 
 his raid. In this spirit Mr. Stead goes to the theatre, 
 or a Methodist to Monte Carlo. 
 
 Dazzled by the clear glance of the god, Fentheus 
 begins to make himself ridiculous. The tempting, 
 treacherous stranger decks him out as a woman and 
 leads him through the city, the mock of his people. 
 As he draws near Kithairon, he too feels the ecstasy ; 
 but he is always Fentheus. His madness is but a 
 drunken parody of mystical exaltation. He dances 
 
PENTHEUS 41 
 
 clumsily, he sees two suns, two city gates, and the god 
 like a bull before him. He cries out that his faith 
 can remove literal mountains, he loosens his belt, 
 and his gown goes all awry. The cruel god laughs 
 and ties it up for him. " It is a little wrong by the 
 right foot," says Pentheus, with superb fatuity ; "but 
 the other side is perfectly correct." Then suddenly 
 the ludicrous man becomes puffed up with pride at 
 his daring. He will be quite wicked, and see what 
 those naughty girls are doing, dancing in the 
 night. 
 
 Disaster fell swiftly on his head. When they came 
 to the place appointed Dionysus bent down a pine- 
 tree and sat the poor fool on its trunk ; he is shot up 
 into the air, and on that wild eminence of branches 
 becomes conspicuous to all. A voice calls the women, 
 who, led by Agave, his own mother, rush forward and 
 root up the tree with their white arms. Pentheus 
 falls. Death alone makes him tragic. Then he flung 
 off his head-dress, so that Agave should recognize 
 him and not kill him. Touching her cheek, he said : 
 " I am your son Pentheus, mother, whom you bore in 
 Echion's house; pity me, mother, and do not kill 
 your son for his sins." They foamed at the mouth 
 and tore him limb from limb. So he died, suffered 
 such a death as, according to dim legends, Dionysus 
 himself suffered of old. 
 
 This is the account of Euripides ; but we cannot 
 believe that here was an end of Pentheus. Mr. Eraser 
 would doubtless say that he was a corn-spirit, a king 
 who died for his people and was hung upon a tree; 
 
42 PENTHEUS 
 
 and that the fragments of his lacerated corpse were 
 carried round the fields to fertilize them. If so, Pen- 
 theus should be sacrificed anew every Autumn and 
 come to life every Spring. But whether this be true 
 or not, I have discovered that Pentheus is immortal, 
 that he has manifested himself many times since those 
 legendary days of Thebes, and moreover, that he is 
 alive to-day. 
 
 Many years after, in a land south-east of Hellas, 
 there arose a successor to Dionysus, a preacher of joy. 
 He advised men to cease fasting, to neglect the law 
 and to honour above all things, love. He proclaimed 
 a golden age of happiness and peace. 
 
 Pentheus, who was ruling at the time, could not 
 stand this. All his philosophic idealism, all his respect 
 for law and custom, was outraged by what appeared 
 to him a wanton and anarchical subversion of prin- 
 ciples that had stood the test of time. He had his 
 revenge for his old maltreatment. Not he but the 
 God was called the man of sorrows, not Pentheus 
 hung upon the tree. 
 
 " Now," thought he, " I shall have no more of those 
 deep love-eyes." 
 
 But the God rose again, a hundredfold stronger. 
 His servants went forth to mountains and caves, saw 
 visions and sang hymns, rejoicing in the mysteries of 
 their salvation. Cold and heat, stripes and fasting, 
 hurt them no more than they hurt the Maenads on 
 the mountain. 
 
 Then Pentheus, seeing himself badly worsted, made 
 friends with the God, as he had made friends with 
 
PENTHEUS 43 
 
 Dionysus. He stipulated that the dancing should be 
 more private, and that the Maenads and Satyrs 
 should be less eccentrically clothed. He relegated 
 the mystic feasts to the seventh day, and saw that 
 all initiants were taught their duty to Pentheus. 
 The rest of the week he kept them at the bitter 
 loom. 
 
 He thus succeeded (for he was a very powerful 
 king), in turning the religion into a support of his 
 own power; and the worshippers began to neglect 
 their deity. There was little joy to be found in his 
 service now that there were no more dances or visions, 
 nothing but an outward correctitude and inward im- 
 purity — for Pentheus was ever of the tribe of 
 Angelo. 
 
 A little more than a hundred years ago a new God 
 began to disturb the empire of Pentheus, a God of 
 liberty and war, perhaps a new emanation of Mithras 
 the Liberator, who also wore the red Phrygian cap. 
 Pentheus pleaded for his life, for he found the ways 
 of this new disturber short and sharp. " I am a brave 
 man myself," he said ; " I am not at all averse to war; 
 indeed, it is one of my favourite occupations ; and as 
 for liberty, why, a reasonable freedom on a sound legal 
 and moral basis has been my ideal for years." 
 
 The God with the Phrygian cap, however, merely 
 laughed, seven times perhaps, as old magic liturgies 
 say he laughed when the world was made ; his servants 
 rent Pentheus into more parts than he ever knew he 
 possessed, and his blood streamed through all Europe. 
 
 But years had increased his power of resurrection : 
 
44 PENTHEUS 
 
 no one will ever destroy Pentheus now. For he finds 
 a Northern climate highly beneficial to his health, 
 and thrives better on potatoes and beef than on olives 
 and honey. 
 
 To-day a new God calls to him, a God who can 
 find few to come to him from the vast kingdom of 
 Pentheus. He does not taunt the tyrant ; he tries to 
 woo him instead. " Come out and love, Pentheus," he 
 says softly; "leave your ridiculous concerns, your 
 childish politics, your amusingly ugly towns. There 
 are lands where sunlight and harmony are not yet 
 dead ; there are the absurdest poets leading lobsters 
 on strings and charming all sylvan beasts by their 
 pleasant ways. The girls are still dancing out in the 
 fields ; we have even found someone who still knows 
 how to make a garland. Pentheus, come out and 
 live!" 
 
 Then that man answers: "My dear sir, I am 
 entirely with you. You must not imagine that in 
 the midst of my more serious occupations I have 
 neglected or even desired to neglect the Interests of 
 Art. So impetuous you young divinities are, you 
 know," he continues, with a smile, for he has lost his 
 old surliness and become quite an affable and portly 
 old fellow now. " I need only refer to my art galleries, 
 to the royal academies, and to the great efforts I 
 have made to provide all who come to the County 
 Council schools with a sound grounding in English 
 literature, starting with Beowulf, and tracing the 
 gradual development of Idealism down to the death 
 of Tennyson." 
 
PENTHEUS 45 
 
 " Then you might take some interest, Pentheus, in 
 those who are writing at the present day. Most of 
 them have to add up figures or something equally 
 absurd; and the rest are almost starving." 
 
 " Now come, come, there 's the Civil Service pension. 
 You can't expect me to look on these young men 
 with favour. They don't make one feel better like 
 Ruskin did. They have such curious manners, too, 
 and may be addicted, for all I know, to drink, or 
 something. At all events one cannot judge a man's 
 work till he is dead. As for your suggested orgies, I 
 should think you might be satisfied with the Pageants 
 that every summer enliven our rural districts." 
 
 Then the sad Dionysus of to-day gets wroth with 
 Pentheus, and says to him as he said to him of old: 
 
 Thou dost not see : thou dost not know 
 What thou livest, nor who thou art. 
 
 He replies now as then : 
 
 I am Pentheus, the son of Agave and Echion, 
 I am Hobson the son of Mr. and Mrs. Hobson I 
 
 "Alas, poor Pentheus. Happy enough are you 
 feeding on the fat of the land, and oppressing the 
 people so long as the air does not tremble to the faint 
 echo of a madman's song." 
 
 "What is this folly?" says Pentheus. " I am a 
 rational being, I have a cultivated imagination, I am 
 a respectable member of society, my religion is the 
 religion of all good men. Leave me in peace." 
 
 The poor man is right, he is always right. But his 
 
46 PENTHEUS 
 
 well-meaning philanthropy is a grim parody of divine 
 goodness; his paltry cruelty a dim reflection of the 
 divine vengeance that may fall on him yet again; 
 his knock-kneed honour is pale before the blazing 
 glory of our faith. His humdrum days may be 
 pleasant or painful; he has never tasted of our purple 
 grapes of heavy sorrow, our golden grapes of super- 
 human joy. Alas, poor Pentheus! 
 
MANSUR 
 
 THERE was a Sultan of Turkey who was 
 moved to send a fairly expensive present to 
 the Sultan of China, with this thought in 
 his heart: "There is only one God, and he is all- 
 powerful and all-just, and assuredly I will appoint 
 Mansur to be Captain of the Escort, and to go to 
 China with the present. Mansur will be pleased with 
 the honour, and cease tormenting my ears with his 
 uninteresting tales of oppression in the provinces. 
 It is a long way to China. If this high enterprise 
 succeed, glory will accrue to me, and limitless renown, 
 and a present from the King of China. If it fail, the 
 escort will fertilize the desert of Turkestan, and 
 Mansur with them, peace be on his soul." 
 
 Mansur received the command of the Sultan, and 
 prepared to set out from Stamboul with a thousand 
 foot, a hundred horse, and the fairly expensive present. 
 He bade good-bye to Zuleika his wife, and to Ahmad 
 his son, then turned to look for the last time at his 
 books of poetry and prose; and he regretted them 
 with a profound regret. For these books were in 
 Persian, in Arabic, and in Ottoman, and they were 
 written on fine paper of Samarkand by Beber, and 
 Mustafa the son of Qaf and Ashiq of Bagdad; sump- 
 
 47 
 
48 MANSUR 
 
 tuous were the tail-pieces and charming the illustrations. 
 He wandered about the cool library for a full hour, 
 wandering from shelf to shelf; and he wondered which 
 should be a fit companion for this long journey. At 
 last he selected the " Divan of Nesemi," a small volume, 
 written and painted by Mustafa the son of Qaf The 
 story of Nesemi is this: 
 
 He was a lord among the Ottomans, wealthy, 
 powerful, and secure. But he bowed his head to the 
 teaching of Fazl Ullah the heretic, upon whom descend 
 God's wrath, and his punishment here was less than 
 his punishment to come. Thereupon he rejected his 
 dignity and looked askance at power; and when he 
 had transferred all his wealth to his son, he set out to 
 wander and to be a Calender, he and Khandan his 
 brother. One day he slept under the stars, and dreamt, 
 and woke up shouting : " I am the Truth, I am God ! " 
 Whereupon he ran to the next village, stood in the 
 market-place bareheaded to the morning sun, and 
 shouted : " I am the Truth, I am God." Many of the 
 villagers laughed at him, but some changed their hue 
 to yellow for the greatness of their fear, and cried: 
 " A Blasphemer! " Then Khandan came in pursuit of 
 his brother and called to him: " Remember the fate of 
 Fazl Ullah." Nesemi said : " Why do you speak to 
 God?" Khandan smiled, and after a little thought 
 recited this couplet: 
 
 Disclose to none the secret word, 
 Nor feed with sweets the vulgar herd. 
 
 But Nesemi answered at once : 
 
MANSUR 49 
 
 The ocean to its floor is stirred 
 When we pronounce that holy word. 
 The bright beloved dwells on high, 
 And shall the lover tell a lie? 
 
 and he continued to shout " I am God " until the 
 police came and dragged him before the Mufti of 
 Aleppo. His poems were cited as evidence in court, 
 and when the Mufti had heard them as far as the first 
 half of the first Ghazel, he plucked at his beard and 
 cried: " Enough! Flay him at once." So four disgust- 
 ing negroes seized him, stripped him, bound him, and 
 sharpened their knives on his back, and made incisions, 
 and began to flay him downwards from the shoulders 
 with leisurely movements and the extreme of satisfac- 
 tion. The Mufti observed : " A foul death for a foul 
 fellow; he reeks of pollution. If a drop of his blood 
 should fall on to a limb it were well to cut that limb 
 off." At that instant a drop of Nesemi's blood spurted 
 out and alighted on the Mufti's little finger. " Salaam 
 to your little finger," observed Khandan, who was 
 awaiting his turn to be flayed. " In exemplification is 
 no evil," quoted the Mufti: "and this is an example 
 and no case." Nesemi heard and said : 
 
 God will preserve from all untimely knocks 
 The little fingers of the Orthodox. 
 Come, flay the Heretic from top to toe ! 
 He will not weep : he will not make a show. 
 
 Khandan said: "Well turned, my brother!" Nesemi 
 said: "Who talks to God? I am God:" and bowed 
 his head in anguish, and breathed out the vital 
 
 E 
 
50 MANSUR 
 
 spark. But his punishment hereafter is worse. This 
 is the story of Nesemi. 
 
 After putting the Divan of Nesemi into his turban, 
 Mansur set out at the head of his hundred horsemen 
 and thousand foot; and they streamed out of the 
 city like an enchanted river, and the present was with 
 them. They journeyed towards the East two months. 
 However, when they came to the borders of India, the 
 King of India, who was an infidel heathen, sent an 
 army against them. They were defeated, and many 
 died, and others became slaves never to return; and 
 Mansur escaped alone and on foot. They say that 
 the King of India was rather pleased with the fairly 
 expensive present that the Sultan of Turkey had in- 
 tended for the Sultan of China, but our tale is of 
 Mansur. He wandered from well to well among the 
 deserted villages of that hot and warlike land, subsisting 
 on radishes which those who came to wash the radishes 
 had let fall in the well-houses ; and he gathered the 
 fruits of unfamiliar trees. One day he came to an in- 
 habited village, and asked for food by signs. They 
 refused it, but did not harm him; only some officials 
 came and took away his embroidered coat and the 
 Divan of Nesemi, which still lay in his turban ; and 
 they could not read it, but he knew it by heart. 
 Mansur left that village, not knowing which way to 
 turn, and for a moment he wanted to die ; but life is 
 sweet. So he trudged along a dusty path towards the 
 uplands, singing aloud from his lost Divan a song that 
 voyagers love: 
 
MANSUR 51 
 
 Nesemi comprehends not fear, though Drouth and Dark and 
 
 Death be near ; 
 He drank at the primeval feast the mellow draught of Unity. 
 A traveller with staff in hand he wanders through a ghostly 
 
 land, 
 And wonders who is at his side, guiding his footsteps lovingly. 
 The Master's face is Light of Light, his hair is Mystery of 
 
 Night : 
 With Musa I behold the Sight, a Sinai in verity. 
 My body is the holy glass where eighteen thousand aeons 
 
 pass: 
 I talk the language of the stars, I hold the secret of the sea. 
 
 He sang till his throat became too dry for singing, 
 and at the time of blazing noon he came to yet 
 another deserted well. Here he found to his sorrow 
 that the bucket had fallen into the well, so he tied a 
 rag to the dangling rope and sucked the moisture 
 that it gathered — a slender satisfaction. So he took 
 off his shoe, tied it to the rope, and let it down into 
 the well. But the rope broke, and his shoe fell into 
 the water. He tied the other shoe on to the rope, 
 and drew it up safely and drank with eagerness and 
 joy. Then he looked about for some refuse to eat, 
 but since he found none, he sat down, and tried to 
 make two shoes out of one. In the end the work 
 tired him, and he looked up and saw a young man 
 before him, nor could the beauty of the young man 
 be described, for all that he was clothed in rags and 
 seemed a little faint with the heat. The young man 
 said to Mansur: "Salaam to you, and the peace of 
 God," and he said it after the manner and in the 
 speech of the Muslims. Mansur replied quietly: " And 
 to you the Salaam." He was drowsy with weariness 
 
52 MANSUR 
 
 and sunshine, and he disbeheved in this tall young 
 man who spake to him in the sweet language of his 
 faith. " I am a wayfarer and a stranger," said Mansur. 
 "So am I," said the youth, and without another word 
 he tied the can he had with him on to the rope, and 
 let it down into the well and drew water. Mansur 
 looked eagerly at the can, for he was thirsty again. 
 " Have patience," said the lad, opening his wallet, and 
 drawing out of it some fried peas and a little rice. 
 This he shared with Mansur, and gave him water to 
 drink. He then asked Mansur who he was; and 
 Mansur replied: "I am Mansur of Stamboul, the 
 Ottoman; and who are you?" The young man re- 
 plied: "My name is the Joyful Heart: will you be 
 my companion?" "Willingly and obediently," said 
 Mansur, "but tell me whence you come and whither 
 you go." The stranger replied : " I am the Joyful 
 Heart; it is time for us to pursue our way." On this 
 Mansur tried to rise from the ground, but he could 
 not stand; so he sat down and said to the stranger: 
 " I could walk before you came ; now I am unable." 
 "Get on my back and put your arms round my neck," 
 said the stranger. " You are not strong enough for 
 this work," said Mansur. The stranger laughed and 
 said : " God will make the strength of one suffice for 
 two." He stooped and easily lifted Mansur on to his 
 back, and bade him say " God is my Protector, and 
 there is no refuge but in Him." So Mansur kept re- 
 peating these words dreamily, as he travelled along 
 the dusty path on the back of Joyful Heart, till he 
 fell asleep. When he awoke he no more had his arms 
 
MANSUR 53 
 
 round the young man's neck, but was lying against a 
 wall in the street of some great city, as ragged and 
 unnoticed as a beggar. He heard the cries of those 
 who sold their wares and the intimate speech of 
 passers-by, and seemed to understand the tongue, 
 and opened his eyes. Above him rose a great snowy 
 building; shouting with joy and terror he recognized 
 the dome of the Mosque of Suleyman, the glory of 
 Stamboul. 
 
 Mansur returned to his house, and they knew him, 
 and rejoiced to the limit of joy to behold him; and he 
 found his wife faithful and his son despairing for him, 
 and his library swept and dusted. They led him to 
 the bath, and clothed him, and made him a hot 
 supper, and asked him about his tale; and when he 
 told them, they wondered the more, and thanked God 
 for his safety. Immediately he bought another manu- 
 script of the Divan of Nesemi, written on paper of 
 Damascus by Ashiq of Bagdad ; and every night he 
 gave a great dinner to his friends, so that he might 
 make them to know his story. Every night his guests 
 heard about the Joyful Heart and the miraculous 
 journey; and every night after hearing it they ex- 
 claimed : " God be praised for thy safety, and verily 
 this is the most wonderful of all wonderful tales, and 
 is worthy to be written down in golden ink." More- 
 over, they brought news to the Sultan of the strange 
 coming of Mansur, and the Sultan bit the tongue of 
 acquiescence with the tooth of regret, and invited him 
 to the palace, concealing his disappointment, and sat 
 him down at his right hand, and heard the story and 
 
54 MANSUR 
 
 was amazed, so that when it was ended he cried " By 
 
 God!" and gave him a hundred dirhems. 
 
 Thus did Mansur plunge into the river of delights, 
 and ate his fill from the dish of satisfaction. When he 
 tired of telling his adventure to his friends, and of 
 entertaining them, he betook himself to his books. 
 He read the " Khosrev and Shirin " of Sheykhi and 
 the tale of Iskander, which Hamedi wrote in a hundred 
 thousand lines, and he became unhappy, and the road 
 of Life was dark before his eyes. And the poets have 
 said: 
 
 My satisfaction cloys to-day, and brings me bitter pain : 
 Purge me with colocynth, I pray : I tire of sugar-cane. 
 
 But Mansur was longing for the Joyful Heart, and for 
 his companionship. So he departed into the country, 
 and drank wine, and lay down in a meadow, and took 
 out the book of Nesemi, opening it by chance; and 
 he read this quatrain: 
 
 Amazing boy, rise with the dawn, and pour 
 The ruby in the crystal. Would you store 
 These stolen minutes in a mortal home 
 And seek them afterwards, and find no more? 
 
 Now when he read this verse he wept, and the wine 
 lay heavy on his soul, and he prepared to sleep. But 
 even as he bowed his head for slumber there came a 
 gentle voice to him, saying " Salaam ! " Looking up, 
 he saw the Joyful Heart, dressed in rags, and a little 
 tired with the heat. "Will you be my companion?" 
 said Joyful Heart. Then Mansur became like a man 
 
MANSUR 55 
 
 who does not know whether he sleep or wake, for he 
 saw all the flowers of the meadow shining in the eyes 
 of Joyful Heart, and he followed him, and was heard 
 of no more. 
 
CANDILLI 
 
 THAT there are landscapes whose beauty is 
 intrinsically mournful, I admit; there are sum- 
 mer afternoons in England when the clouds lie 
 low on the horizon, and the shadows of the hedges 
 stretch out over the fields whose loveliness we recog- 
 nize as sad. But in other lands than England reign 
 endless sunshine and bright colour, and the scene that 
 has met my eyes all to-day should make the veriest 
 dullard dance to behold its radiant joy. I have been 
 staring for hours out of my window to-day, letting my 
 thoughts and glances wander down the cobbled and 
 precipitous street of Candilli, where dog and man lie 
 sleeping, past the village minaret, out across the Bos- 
 phorus and all the myriad laughter of the tiny waves, 
 to the further shore where rise the chivalrous old 
 towers of Roumeli Hissar, which men called the Castle 
 of Damalis five hundred years ago. If the world holds 
 a fairer prospect, I, who have wandered a little, have 
 not seen it; yet all its brightness and splendour does 
 but fill my mind with sorrow and unrest. I have been 
 watching for three hours the tracts of warm light on 
 those giant-rounded keeps, and the thousand boats 
 that ply the highway of the salt sea-river, sad I know 
 not why. I have waited till evening, idle in my chair, 
 
 57 
 
58 CANDILLI 
 
 till the brown Castle walls turned gold, and the blue 
 sea white and wet, till the sun went down not amid 
 the patches and pageantry of our Northern settings, 
 but gently leaving a sky as softly coloured as the 
 petal of a rose : and the lamps were swung high on to 
 the masts of the great ships steaming out to Russia 
 through the gloom. Sick at heart with so much loveli- 
 ness was I, and then brief twilight came, netting the 
 world in spectral blue, till I cried out for darkness like 
 a cave-beast blinded by the glare. And now darkness 
 is here with her fixed and trailing stars, and the whole 
 European shore is ablaze from Therapia to Stamboul ; 
 the Muezzin has cried from his little minaret, the 
 Ottoman night has begun. 
 
 Is it unmanly orv decadent of me to long for a slag- 
 heap or a gaswork, or any strong, bold, ugly thing to 
 break the spell of this terrible and malignant beauty 
 that saps body and soul? Yet there are few who did 
 not feel what they might call a ''touch of sadness" in 
 sweet popular phrase, when first they saw the bound- 
 less sea, or mountains capped with snow. The miser)- 
 I feel lies deep in the nature of man; such thoughts as 
 I am thinking, millions have thought before. For 
 here, it seems, is the very face of Beauty, here one 
 may gaze into her eyes and watch them change. But 
 who am I to enjoy this high gift of the gods? what 
 can I do with it, how make it my own? Why is it 
 there, part of my foolish daily life: can I treat it as a 
 common thing? To deserve, to enjoy this mag- 
 nificence, a man should have a high work, or at least 
 a noble plan, A poet might sing of it, and find peace; 
 
CANDILLI 59 
 
 or a painter paint it ; glorious would it shine to a man 
 returning from a long journey, if among those count- 
 less lights one light meant home. Even to me these 
 scenes were joyful that day I rode over the Anatolian 
 hills, and the weariness of body banished all sickness 
 from the mind, and my head was void of fancies, and 
 I sd.\v little as we cantered along the sandy tracks 
 save spars of sunlight and flashes of sea. But now, 
 though my limbs are aching to be up and doing, I am 
 fascinated by deadly wonder; and he who sinks be- 
 fore this spell sits in his chair for hours and plays with 
 dreams. He dreams of a mistress as Thais gentle or 
 as Helen fair, and of the palace one might raise upon 
 the hill in marble symmetry and store with curious 
 broideries of the East; and of all that life might be to a 
 man who conquered it, and why Antony was wise. 
 And he dreams vain private hopes of his own of 
 which he is ashamed. And he ponders on the narrow 
 lane of sea, and of all that ancient histories have told 
 him; of Sultans and Emperors; he remembers how 
 the proud flags of Venice once flew splendid in the 
 breeze, and how the relentless Romans before them 
 built vv^alls and ways, and how once the little Argo 
 rounded the point with blue-eyed Jason on her prow, 
 and the merry, toiling crew, bound on the first adven- 
 ture of the world. And a light fever distracts the 
 dreamer's body, and his mind longs for some coercive 
 chain, and he begins to understand why men of the 
 East will sit by a fountain from noon to night, and 
 let the world roll onward. 
 
THE 'BUS IN STAMBOUL 
 
 ACROSS the Galata bridge it plies seething with 
 a babel horde ; beneath the shadow of the great 
 mosques valiantly it rumbles on, till their 
 spacious domes re-echo, and the lily minarets are all 
 a-tremble; right into the secret ways of Stamboul it 
 travels, the bright red motor-'bus. Weary was I of the 
 long streets and the dust, and the endless sun of 
 Constantinople's fierce July, I could not face the jost- 
 ling on the Galata bridge. I took the motor-'bus. 
 
 I sat down next to a very fat Turk, whose face be- 
 trayed an intellectual curiosity alien to his nature. I 
 followed the perplexed glances of his earth-brown 
 eyes. They were turned to an inscription written on 
 the end wall of the 'bus behind the driver, an inscrip- 
 tion he could not understand. I looked and thrilled ; 
 in fair letters, plain for all to see, they stared at me 
 those golden words, those names of places half for- 
 gotten and long desired, Oxford Circus, Marble Arch, 
 Edgware Road, and Cricklewood. 
 
 Thus, like a chime of silver, distant bells, or some 
 sweet poem of a fickle lover who has strung together 
 the names of his mistresses and loves, whispers in my 
 ear this table of fares in the old Vanguard motor-'bus, 
 till I could weep for the bitterness of my exile and 
 my great desire for London Town and English faces; 
 
 6i 
 
62 THE 'BUS IN STAMBOUL 
 
 for the thunder of Charing Cross and the cries of 
 Oxford Circus, for the sweep of Regent Street and the 
 motors of Piccadilly, for the glory of a great Empire 
 and the fellowship of men. 
 
 And you, too, O Cricklewood, lovely Cricklewood 
 of the idle evenings, not so far from Hampstead Heath, 
 Cricklewood, where clerks, returning from toil, eat 
 their suppers and kiss their young wives, and sleep at 
 peace with God and all the world, you are worth all 
 the golden East, obscure and lovely Cricklewood, 
 whatever those literary men say — and forget it not. 
 Within your walls, brave Cricklewood, had you but 
 walls, would be found more enlightenment and know- 
 ledge, more true learning and humanity than in all 
 this bright imperial city, age-worn, battered, be- 
 jewelled, prostitute of East and West, which you now 
 supply, O wealthy Cricklewood, with your superfluous 
 means of transport. 
 
 Robinson, of Cricklewood, incipient banker, citizen 
 of the greatest city the world has ever known, I fear 
 you have forgotten this 'bus, and how it would ever 
 and anon break down in Maida Vale, and leave you 
 impatient and angry on the pavement in the rain. 
 (" Passengers are requested not to put their wet mack- 
 intoshes on the seats," it is still up there over the 
 window. Well, there was a shower here last month 
 now I come to think of it.) Ah well, they travel on, 
 these old Vanguards and Pioneers : they will go 
 farther yet. For they say that two of them were un- 
 shipped at Beirout the other day, to be sent up 
 country, to Bagdad. 
 C/ple, July, 1910. 
 
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE 
 GULISTAN 
 
 I 
 
 ONE of the Kings of Khorassan saw in a dream 
 Sultan Mahmud, who had been dead for a 
 hundred years. Though all the rest of his 
 body had crumbled into dust his eyes still rolled and 
 stared in their bony habitations. The wiseacres were 
 at a loss to interpret this, but a Dervish threw light 
 on the problem, and remarked, " A stranger has 
 usurped his power and state: no wonder that his eyes- 
 are animate." 
 
 Since deep and dark an ancient host unheeded and unknown 
 
 remains, 
 Since earth exerts her uttermost, till not one single bone 
 
 remains, 
 Since of the great Nushirovan the history alone remains, 
 Lead a delightful life, O man, for nothing, when that 's flown, 
 
 remains. 
 
 II 
 
 A king had a Persian slave with him on board ship 
 who had not set eyes on the sea before, and had never 
 experienced the discomforts of navigation. The lad 
 
 63 
 
64 TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GULISTAN 
 
 wept and wailed and began to shake all over; to 
 verbal consolations he would pay no attention, and 
 he entirely damped the king's enjoyment. However, 
 a doctor who was there said: "Your majesty, if you 
 permit, I will set the lad on the road of silence ; " said 
 the monarch, " I should esteem it a favour." On this 
 the doctor ordered the boy to be flung into the sea. 
 He accordingly received a sound ducking; but at 
 length they took hold of his hair and drew him to the 
 side of the ship. The unfortunate slave clung tight to 
 the rudder, scrambled on to the deck and sat down in 
 a corner without a word. The delighted king ex- 
 claimed : " What doctoring is this? " The leech replied, 
 " Formerly the lad had no experience of drowning and 
 its horrors, and undervalued the safety of the ship, 
 but now he rejoices in that safety even as convalescents 
 rejoice in health." 
 
 The epicure rejects the loaf that satisfies the pauper's need. 
 You think the lady ugly, Sir? I think her very nice indeed. 
 Though purgatory seem as foul as Hell itself to angel eyes> 
 I guess the people down below think Purgatory Paradise. 
 
 HI 
 
 They tell the story of an offensive person who hit 
 a dervish on the head with a stone. The holy man, 
 having no opportunity of revenge, put the stone by. 
 Aftera time the kinglet loose the battalions of his wrath 
 against the offensive person, and clapped him into the 
 lowest pit of the dungeon. One day the ciervish came 
 along and flung that stone at his head. " Who are 
 
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GULISTAN 65 
 
 you? " asked the prisoner, " and why did you fling that 
 stone at my head ? " The good man replied ; " I am 
 so and so; this is the very stone that on such and 
 such a date you flung at mine." ** Where have you 
 been all this time ? " inquired the prisoner. The other 
 replied : 
 
 " Fright at your rank has turned into delight at your 
 disaster: and wags have said: 
 
 While evil men were fortunate the wise were not importunate, 
 They had no claws to tear and scratch, they did not want a 
 
 fighting match. 
 Anguish the silver wrist will feel, that grapples with a fist of 
 
 steel. 
 But when your foe is bound in chains, how easy to beat out his 
 
 brains? 
 
 IV 
 Once I breathed and moved in a company of young 
 enthusiasts on the way to Meccah ; we used to hum 
 as we marched along, or intone a spiritual hymn. 
 There was with us a hermit who disapproved of our 
 dervish manners, and made light of our penitence and 
 pain. But when we came to the palm grove of the son 
 of Hulal 
 
 There came a dusky Arab boy who raised a voice so splendid. 
 That all the denizens of air hung in the air suspended. 
 
 Then I remarked that the camel which that surly 
 eremite bestrode began to prance and dance till 
 it flung that holy man and disappeared into the 
 
 F 
 
66 TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GULISTAN 
 
 desert. Said I : " Sir, your camel has run away in an 
 ecstasy : can you remain unmoved ? " 
 
 Before the dawn began to pale, I heard the golden nightingale : 
 "O base and brutish heart!" he cried, "If love is never to 
 
 prevail ! 
 Hearing that sweet Arabian lad your camel rose and danced 
 
 like mad ; 
 If you don't care you ought to wear a snout in front, behind a 
 
 tail." 
 
 V 
 1 saw a pious man sitting by the shore of the sea. 
 He had been wounded by a tiger, and could find no 
 medicine for his case. And yet he never ceased 
 praising glorious Almighty God. They asked him: 
 " Why do you render thanks ? " He replied, " God 
 be praised that I have a pain in my body not a 
 stain on my soul ! " 
 
 If I were doomed to die by that dear Friend, 
 I gladly would comply and face my end ; 
 But if he said " I am not pleased with thee," 
 Then I instead would miserable be. 
 
 VI 
 
 A godly man had a dream in which he saw a king 
 in paradise and a monk in hell. " Now why," said he 
 to himself, " is the king by choirs contented and the 
 monk by fires tormented ? for I expected the con- 
 
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GULISTAN 67 
 
 verse." There came to him a voice, saying : " The 
 king is here because of his affection for monks ; the 
 monk there because of his connection with kings." 
 
 Where is the use of frock and staff and cowl 
 If words be foolish or if deeds be foul? 
 Deal justly, Sir, and lay your hymn-book down, 
 The righteous man keeps righteous in a crown. 
 
 VII 
 
 In an hour of great distress a dervish stole a rug 
 from a friend of his. " Cut off his hand," said the 
 Judge. The owner of the rug himself pleaded for the 
 prisoner whom, he declared, he had entirely forgiven. 
 The Judge said to him: " I cannot abate the rigour of 
 the law at your request." " A just pronouncement," 
 came the answer, "yet we need not punish those 
 who steal from a charity fund ; a dervish am I, too, 
 and all my property is devoted to the poor." The 
 Judge found this reasonable and pardoned the thief, 
 but before letting him go he reprimanded him, 
 saying: "Is the world so narrow that you had to 
 victimize a friend ? " The culprit replied : " My lord, 
 have you not heard the saying : * Sweep the floor of 
 your friend : fly the door of your foe.' " 
 
 When the days of want begin, do not let disaster in : 
 Rob your comrade of his jacket afid your rival of his skin. 
 
68 TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GULISTAN 
 
 VIII 
 One of the Saintly saw a big man wild with passion 
 and foaming at the mouth, and asked what was the 
 matter. Someone replied : " He is suffering from an 
 opprobrious epithet." " Why," rejoined the Saint, " he 
 could carry a ton of bricks; can't he bear a mocking 
 word ? 
 
 Weak of will and intellect 
 Do you think that men who place 
 Fists in their opponent's face 
 Win approval or respect? 
 
 said the Saint, and after a pause he continued : 
 
 Though their arms be adamant 
 Though they scalp an elephant, 
 Men without humanity 
 Seem contemptible to me. 
 
FORGOTTEN WARFARE 
 
 THE first of my trivial tales— and trivial indeed 
 they seem in these mighty days of conflagration 
 —has for scene Beyrout, that Syrian port as 
 well known to the pilgrims in collars who seek 
 Jerusalem as to those without who prefer Mecca. 
 Here, one spring morning, the report of a cannon — a 
 single and extremely noisy shot of warning— roused 
 me from sleep. The dreaded Italians had come. That 
 Roman land had sent two fine cruisers to sink a 
 Turkish gunboat (lately repaired in Genoa) small 
 enough for either of them to have hoisted on deck 
 and used as a launch, and there they were, by Jove, 
 flying their battle-flags just outside my window ! 
 
 Soon after, the fun began. The Italians sent five 
 shells over the town by mistake, and one each through 
 two banks. About a hundred interested spectators on 
 the quay, struck by the bursting shells, paid the 
 penalty of their rashness. As for the Turks, no watch 
 had been kept on the boat ; the officers all slept on 
 shore and only a few reached the ship in time. But 
 they refused to surrender and pluckily mis-directed 
 several shells all round the harbour, till their little 
 biscuit tin was sunk up to its funnels. The attempt 
 made by some gallant Arab boatmen to sink the 
 
 69 
 
70 FORGOTTEN WARFARE 
 
 cruisers by rifle fire failed completely. They had been 
 persuaded, ever since the day of the Camperdown 
 disaster off Tripoli in Syria, that you had only to 
 puncture an ironclad and it would disappear. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the centre of the town, things were, 
 as the French say, "well otherwise serious." At the 
 first shots the Arabs fled howling indoors in senseless 
 panic; recovering, they looted the barracks and at- 
 tempted to murder all Christians, myself included, 
 and the Governor only just succeeded in restoring 
 order at the risk of his life. He placed himself at the 
 head of some twenty soldiers against a violent mob 
 intent on breaking open the prisons and liberating all 
 the vilest riff-raff to help in the looting. As for me, 
 an extremely unpleasant crowd, having just succeeded 
 in looting rifles from the barracks, stopped my car- 
 riage, and, sticking their bayonets uncomfortably near 
 my stomach, swore I was the Italian Consul. I said 
 no, but that I was a splendid Englishman. At that 
 moment the cannon of the cruisers began to roar 
 again, making everyone more excited and dangerous 
 than ever. I cocked my revolver in my pocket de- 
 termined to shoot through my coat at one particularly 
 horrid fat man. But that moment deliverance came 
 from an excellent Turkish soldier, who, leaping on to 
 the step of the carriage, and turning his rifle on the 
 crowd, bade drive on to the hotel, which I reached 
 safely. 
 
 There, on my return, I found a Mahommedan 
 friend of mine — one of those admired Younsr Turks 
 who have read Herbert Spencer, Mallarme, and 
 
FORGOTTEN WARFARE 71 
 
 Sherlock Holmes, and thereby become renowned for 
 their liberal tendencies and Parisian culture. He, not 
 knowing I was somewhat sore upon the point, ex- 
 plained to me in great excitement, and with ancestral 
 fanaticism blazing from his eyes, that a massacre of 
 Christians (or at least of his fellow subjects, the fiative 
 Christians) was now not only inevitable, but a mere 
 measure of obvious justice. 
 
 It was a paltry affair of a few hours, but while it 
 lasted it seemed like the end of the world. Unforget- 
 able the thunder of the guns shaking the golden blue 
 of sky and sea, while not a breath stirred the palm 
 trees, not a cloud moved on the swan-like snows of 
 Lebanon. 
 
 • • » 
 
 This was not the only occasion on which the Italians 
 offered us good sport at Beyrout, and again the in- 
 habitants played up fine. It was summer now, and in 
 summer the happy Beyroutins have the pleasure of 
 sleeping on the cool spurs of Lebanon, and the anguish 
 of being hoisted up and down at a walking pace in 
 the rack-and-pinion railway. The Lebanon, one 
 may remind the reader, is a privileged land with a 
 Christian Governor; while Beyrout is a sort of island 
 of pure Turkey. One morning, very early, warships 
 were descried off the harbour. Is it the foe again, or 
 only the frequently protective French? That is the 
 question debated at Aley station by the anxious 
 crowd waiting to descend to town. An ascending 
 train puts all doubt to rest; fugitives are sitting on 
 the roof; the Italians are here again. The Beyroutins 
 
72 FORGOTTEN WARFARE 
 
 decided to remain on the mountains; we descended 
 almost alone. And here it may be observed that 
 when Levantines (as in this case) act with perfect 
 common sense and prudence the Europeans of the 
 place always call them cowards ; or, when they prefer 
 to look on some dangerous spectacle unperturbed, or 
 to arm to defend their liberties, they instantly call 
 them fools. 
 
 However, there was no trouble. No European town 
 could have behaved better. On the quays a mixed 
 crowd, secretly armed, for certain, in the Oriental way, 
 watched a boat packed with Italian bluejackets and 
 sporting a single brass cannon in the bow, examine 
 the ships in the port, and that testimony to their 
 comrades' valour, the sunken Turkish gunboat, and 
 made no demonstration whatever. 
 
 Thinking my duty done, I took the train back to 
 the mountain. But the East is the father of surprises ! 
 All the Lebanese I saw from the carriage windows 
 were openly armed ; while their women and children 
 who fled Beyrout this morning were rushing down 
 again to face the Arab or Italian peril. On my arrival 
 home I found in front of my cottage a little squadron 
 of Lebanese cavalry prancing before the door. Enter- 
 ing, I discovered two American lady missionaries from 
 the neighbouring village of Abadieh who, having re- 
 ceived a very large bullet in their drawing-room, had 
 taken refuge with my wife. . 
 
 It seemed it was all those wicked Druses again! A 
 much respected old gentleman of their tribe had been 
 grievously wounded by a hand unknown on his way 
 
FORGOTTEN WARFARE 71 
 
 from Brumana; hence the Druses were assembling in 
 their secret places crying for Christian blood ; and 
 hence the Christians of the valley, led by some 
 brawny returned emigrants from America, had had 
 all the church bells rung as a summons to all Christ- 
 ians to gather in force. A good scrap is still con- 
 sidered to be better than litigation in the Lebanon— 
 and, after all, what is Lebanese Justice unless you've 
 got a consul to doctor your case? A woman accused 
 of stealing a hen will fly to Russia or France for pro- 
 tection. A Druse appeals to England, who once pre- 
 served them from richly merited punishment at the 
 hands of the French for their massacring ways. The 
 English public was persuaded by a venal press that a 
 Druse was a kind of Protestant suffering martyrdom 
 at the hands of papistical Maronites. 
 
 But if England protects she must also restrain, and 
 the duty of ending this nonsense obviously fell on the 
 British Consul-General, who accomplished it with all 
 the skill of one accustomed to Oriental incidents. 
 First he persuaded the Christians to remain on the 
 defensive. Then we drove to Abadieh. The moon- 
 light was streaming in the enormous rocky gorge of 
 the Beyrout river; and here and there a Lebanese 
 gendarme set to guard the road started up from some 
 dark corner into the white glow to salute us— his 
 strange costume so fantastic in the moonlight that 
 the whole scene seemed to stiffen into cardboard, and 
 one waited to hear the music of some absurd Oriental 
 opera by Harold or Rossini. There were few enough 
 of these gendarmes, and they would have had a poo 
 
74 FORGOTTEN WARFARE 
 
 show if the Druses had risen in earnest. Vividly the 
 moon shone now on Abadieh, on the Httle fortress- 
 Hke houses, on the runic carvings of an old Druse 
 tomb, mysterious beneath a splendid chestnut tree, 
 and on the worn brown stones and red tiles of the 
 old courtyard where we halted. In Syria you can see 
 colours quite distinctly by the light of a full moon. 
 We were admitted and welcomed at the narrow door; 
 and first of all paid a brief visit to the wounded old 
 gentleman who had caused all the trouble. He lay 
 there very cheerful on pink and green cushions sug- 
 gestive of the Mahommedan Paradise. Then, while 
 the Consul worked hard at conciliation, I talked 
 amiably with the lesser notables. They were still un- 
 decided about that massacre, and they had enjoyed 
 themselves greatly shooting about all day at nothing 
 in particular (hence the little accident to the mission- 
 aries' house); but, as they would never have dreamt 
 of massacring us, conversation on the usual Syrian 
 topics— "What will the Italians do? What will the 
 French do?"— flowed comfortably. The whole affair 
 was soon brilliantly settled by the Consul-General, 
 and, the wildest spirits having been calmed, we drove 
 home by midnight. 
 
 What utter foolery is enough to start a massacre in 
 the East ! But let no injustice be done to the Lebanon. 
 Its security in the last fifty years has, after all, been 
 never seriously troubled. Laugh at its botched-up 
 Government if you will, and then remember that it 
 possesses the only countryside in the Turkish Empire, 
 the southern environs of Constantinople excepted, 
 
FORGOTTEN WARFARE 75 
 
 where you can enjoy a picnic without the presence of 
 an armed guard, and even let the governess take the 
 children for a walk alone. 
 
 Some months after I saw the smoke and heard the 
 distant rumble of the battle of Lemnos— the one 
 effort made by the Turks to secure the mastery of the 
 ^gean. 
 
 A pretty sight it had been that morning to pass the 
 Turkish fleet, cleared for action and lined across the 
 entrance to the Dardanelles, while a little destroyer 
 spluttered up from the west to give them news of the 
 foe. It was one of those indescribable winter days on 
 the ^gean, with a hot sun and a piping breeze : the 
 water was all laced blue and silver, and the windmills 
 of Tenedos whirled fit to break. " Tenedos dives 
 opum," quoted to me the new Armenian Governor of 
 Lebanon, to my great pleasure ; yet how can the 
 place ever have been rich ? I agreed it was strange— 
 that little windy rock looks as if it had never pro- 
 duced anything more planturous than stonecrop since 
 the Creation. 
 
 We were near Mytilene when we heard the guns. 
 Thrilling enough it was to me— fired with the glory 
 that is Greece— this fight against the Unspeakable 
 for that Greek and Christian sea. Not so, however, to 
 the trio of American ladies aboard — for all that they 
 were on their devout way from Athens to Jerusalem. 
 Impossible to make these pious folk understand that 
 Greece and Christianity were no mere phantoms of 
 
76 FORGOTTEN WARFARE 
 
 the past, but were still alive, and, with excellent guns, 
 even kicking. 
 
 At last, in despair of awaking interest, and hoping 
 to horrify, I said to one of them: " But men are kill- 
 ing each other over there, you know ! " 
 
 She put up her eyeglass at me. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " she said, and walked down to lunch. 
 
 We were soon gliding through the beautiful Strait 
 of Mytilene. As we passed the little town buried in 
 olive groves, with its mediaeval castle all on a green 
 lawn, a great Greek flag waved proudly over the 
 scene, its colours blending with the blue and white 
 waves so finely that it was impossible to imagine the 
 Turkish scarlet in its place. As we neared the har- 
 bour we slowed down, and a lot of rough-looking 
 pirates came rowing out and shouted to an old Greek 
 priest on board for news. 
 
 The old Papas replied that he had only heard noise; 
 had only seen smoke. 
 
 " That 's all right ! " said they, " it 's a glorious vic- 
 tory ! " — and bang! bang! bang! went their revolvers 
 into the windy void. 
 
 And, after all, so it was. 
 
 To think that it was with cheerful anecdotes like 
 these that I had hoped, a white-haired elder, to im- 
 press my grand-children ! Now there 's not a peasant 
 from Picardy to Tobolsk but will cap me with tales of 
 real and frightful tragedy. What a race of deep-eyed 
 and thoughtful men we shall have in Europe after the 
 war— now that all those millions have been baptized 
 
FORGOTTEN WARFARE yy 
 
 in fire! But for my little memories I can keep at least 
 this distinction — the unearthly beauty of the East. 
 I mean the adjective. A man may find Naples or 
 Palermo merely pretty; but the deeper violet, the 
 splendour and desolation of the Levant waters is 
 something that drives into the soul. 
 
M 
 
 PHILANTHROPISTS 
 
 Y heart goes black with fury and horror when 
 I read their Wills. The only consolation one 
 has is that there is another of them dead. 
 Ten thousand pounds to the Wigan Home for Cats, 
 five thousand to the Society for the Suppression of 
 Sunday Amusements, a thousand for the Syrian 
 Lunatic Asylum on Mount Lebanon, and fifty pounds 
 a year (altered by a pencil-stroke to twenty-five) for 
 their old and faithful clerk, Mr. Jinks. 
 
 One knows that the philanthropist himself, for all 
 his riches, got nothing out of life but a sense of his 
 own importance. It was he who once prevented Maud 
 Allan dancing in Manchester, and it was he who 
 made Manchester. He never travelled except to 
 Lucerne or Nice. Yet he had enough money to have 
 wandered round the world. He might have stood on 
 the slope of Tanagra, and seen the reflection of the 
 snow-topped mountains of Euboea glide like swans 
 on the still blue waters of the Euripus. He might 
 have floated down the Tigris from Mosul to Bagdad 
 in a raft of skins and been potted by Arabs from the 
 bank. He might have walked beneath heavy Indian 
 skies and understood in a flash, standing in the mon- 
 strous shadow of an ancient god, the secret of all 
 
 79 
 
8o PHILANTHROPISTS 
 
 Empires. He might have smoked opium with dim 
 Chinese and travelled in his dreams right out of the 
 world to starry isles and planetary oceans. Pie did 
 none of these things. 
 
 If he really preferred to stay at home he might have 
 tried to learn something about the noble pleasures of 
 life. He might have discovered why some men still read 
 poetry and some still write it ! He might have helped 
 some poor devil of a struggling author to publish his 
 works, or backed some play a little too good for the 
 British stage. He might have appreciated art or 
 music. But Mendelssohn's "Elijah" was the high 
 water-mark of his artistic comprehension. Blair Leigh- 
 ton was good enough for his walls. Poetry he left to 
 his women-folk, who strewed the works of Ella 
 Wheeler Wilcox and Mr. Alfred Noyes on their draw- 
 ing-room tables, and were thought to be cultured. 
 He did not even build himself a fine house in the 
 country to perpetuate his memory. He did not im- 
 press his personality on a garden or a terrace. He 
 lived in a house with an area and great shutterless 
 windows like blank lifeless eyes. 
 
 " But," say you, " if he was a quiet, decent, stay-at- 
 home sort of man, what does it all matter? If he were 
 a true Christian, if he made those around him happy 
 and contented, small need of art or travel to justify 
 his existence! " Well, he never drank, he never flirted, 
 he never sang, he smoked a little (thank God !), he was 
 just (in a way) to his clerks, rather brutal to his son, 
 rather stupidly indulgent to his daughters, who de- 
 spised his absence of culture. His wife died young. 
 
PHILANTHROPISTS 8i 
 
 As he was rich, men were apt to say he killed her. In 
 any case she was of the South Country. It cannot 
 be said he made anybody strikingly happy while he 
 lived. The worst of it is, he made so very few happy 
 when he died. 
 
 Was it his fault ? He did try in his Will at least to 
 " do some good " and to purchase by large bequests 
 to colourless institutions a sufficient mansion in the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. This thing and that thing 
 seemed worthy of support — seemed to be vaguely 
 beneficial. He had no disinterested person to advise 
 him. He was not a bad fellow at heart — if he had a 
 heart. 
 
 Perhaps some other plutocrat will read this and say: 
 " Tell us now, if you had some money, young man, 
 which you never will have, since money needs character 
 to obtain and still more character to hold, how would 
 you leave it in your Will apart from bequests to your 
 family? We men of business are, I think, more likely 
 than you to know how to spend money for charity 
 as for anything else. We give and bequeath to sound 
 institutions of proved utility and unimpeachable char- 
 acter. How will you better that ? " Let me give him a 
 straight answer. Let me sketch out my last Will and 
 Testament, as it would appear if I were rich. 
 
 Well, first of all, ;^io,ooo would be administered by 
 my friend S. (on whose judgment I can rely) for the 
 publication of jolly or sound poetry : also to be used 
 as a travelling fund to take promising young authors 
 on a holiday to Corfu, where there are no social pro- 
 blems, and everyone is just as perfectly happy and 
 
 G 
 
^2 PHILANTHROPISTS 
 
 poor as this life allows. I would also bequeath ;^5,ooo 
 (would I had it in the world !) to the excellent Society 
 founded by friends of Ruskin, that preserves some of 
 England's scenery from smoke, filth, and modern 
 architecture. There, if you like, is an unimpeachable 
 institution ! A little carved stone might be stuck up 
 to serve as a stile from field to field and to declare 
 " James Flecker saved this little view from the Van- 
 dals." Then I might leave ;^io to some favourite 
 author — say to Mr. Max Beerbohm, " from a total 
 stranger who enjoyed * Zuleika Dobson,' " to buy 
 a case of Port to drink to the immortality of 
 Oxford. 
 
 I don't mean by this and my other bequest that 
 everyone should fill their Wills with bequests to 
 authors. This is my Will, and I'm a reading man, 
 and I do think reading men forget to recognize those 
 who give them pleasure far too completely. 
 
 Leave to your own guild. If you are a consul, 
 don't forget the fellow in your service that went 
 smash ; if a doctor, think of the poor fellow strug- 
 gling in a slum practice even if you don't know him. 
 If you are no one in particular, imitate my last 
 bequest. Thus it runs: 
 
 ";^i,000 each to John Tubbs, greengrocer, Mary 
 Alison, a typewriter girl, Robert Johns, bank clerk, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Curver and Miss Black." 
 
 Who, you ask, are Mr. Tubbs and the rest of them ? 
 No, they none of them saved my life from drowning, 
 nor are they (as far as I know) mute Miltons or un- 
 hung McWhirters. They are just some rather decent 
 
PHILANTHROPISTS 83 
 
 people in what are called "straitened circumstances." 
 I got the names of some of them from the old Vicar. 
 When they hear about their legacies they will be 
 unable to believe their ears. They will be struck all 
 of a heap. Life will suddenly become a fairy tale for 
 them. They will be, I hope, delirious for joy. They 
 won't know what to do with the money. Some will 
 spend it wisely and some foolishly, and some, I hope, 
 will marry on it, and some married already will take 
 their children to the seaside. The Philanthropic 
 Institution did not dance when it got its thousand 
 pounds from the Philanthropist. It was merely " grati- 
 fied to announce the fact." But John Tubbs will dance, 
 perhaps with Mary Alison ! I shall not have left my 
 money to institutions that " may perhaps do some 
 good after all." I shall have certainly made some 
 poor devils happy. And that is what Christ meant by 
 charity. 
 
 For years Englishmen have been puzzled by the 
 difference between Charity and Philanthropy. This 
 War has come to help them. War is a great eye- 
 opener all round. When the public saw figures, well- 
 known for their charitable donations, rushing moun- 
 tains of goods home in their motor cars, they did open 
 their eyes. It 's a wonder they didn't open the cars. 
 Then when still more distinguished Philanthropists 
 gave a thousand pounds to the Prince of Wales' Fund 
 and dismissed one hundred employees to make up their 
 loss and a little over, the man in the street, usually 
 long-suffering as a Neapolitan donkey, did violently, 
 and like a spirited horse, protest. Philanthropy 
 
84 PHILANTHROPISTS 
 
 was found out at last. The average man has 
 now realized that though many philanthropists are 
 honest, well-intentioned, even noble-minded men, 
 philanthropy itself is a rich man's conspiracy and in 
 the long run a total fraud. 
 
 There should be just one philanthropist in a country 
 — and that 's the State itself. I'm not talking socialism. 
 I only mean that when charity, which is a personal 
 thing, is organized on so vast a scale as to lose all 
 personal interest or appeal, it is time the State con- 
 trolled its institutions. Much better the country squire 
 should look after his sick with personal interest and 
 avoid Boards and Committees. But the vast burden 
 of supporting our indispensable London hospitals 
 should be, if not undertaken, at least organized and 
 controlled by the State. Here again the War is 
 making us think. It 's obviously right for the women 
 to knit socks. It 's obviously right for Lord Roberts 
 to ask me to give my saddle if I have one — because I 
 can have the real pleasure of thinking of the gallant 
 soldier who gets it, blessing its excellence after a hard 
 ride in France. (When you come to think of it^ 
 Charity is only of ethical value when it gives pleasure to 
 the giver!) But when one's asked for half sovereigns in 
 aid of some vague distress one gives more reluctantly, 
 and rightly so. One may know the charity 's sound, 
 and one supports it ; but one feels all the time how 
 much jollier it would be to give a tramp a meal or to 
 have a Belgian as one's guest. But the great point we 
 are all beginning to realize is that the State seems to 
 have left to vague charitable organization a lot of work 
 
PHILANTHROPISTS 85 
 
 which it ought to undertake or at least superintend 
 itself. 
 
 This thrilling, this excellent, this tragic War is a 
 great Schoolmaster. May we profit by its lessons. At 
 all events Lesson No. i is over. Philanthropy is 
 dead! 
 
II 
 
 THE GRECIANS 
 
THE GRECIANS^ 
 
 A DIALOGUE ON EDUCATION 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN a technical matter such as education only the 
 experienced seem to me to have a right to speak. 
 For this reason only, I think it worth while men- 
 tioning that I was educated in one public school, and 
 have lived most of my life in another ; that I passed 
 four years at Oxford and two at Cambridge, and that 
 it has been my duty as civil servant to learn some 
 eight or nine modern languages. Literature I have 
 practised and art I have studied, but my chief claim 
 to the kind attention of my readers is, after all, that I 
 myself have been many times and in many places a 
 schoolmaster. 
 
 I have tried to make this dialogue resemble real 
 conversation, and have aimed at abruptness, vigour, 
 and compression rather than at rounded periods and 
 exact arrangement of subjects. And this I mention in 
 case any reader, offended by a merely artistic violence 
 of language, may imagine it expressive of thoughtless- 
 ness or lack of sincerity on the part of the Author. 
 
 The British Consulate, 
 Constantinople, 
 
 September^ 1910. 
 
 ^ Reprinted by kind permission of Messrs. J. M. Dent and 
 Sons, Ltd. 
 
 89 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE THREE ENGLISHMEN 
 
 Outside Bologna, that old and wise city, rises a little 
 hill with a large prospect called San Michele. The 
 bends of the zigzag path which leads to the summit 
 of this so magnificent hill are embellished with delect- 
 able arbours, where fat babies play and their young 
 nurses sleep during the long drowsy evenings of late 
 summer. Such an evening I would have you imagine. 
 Picture to yourself the babies engaged in innocent 
 diversions, the little nurses wandering with princely 
 lovers in the forests of their dreams. 
 
 Suddenly a tremendous trampling startled those 
 gentle souls. A little man with hair and beard of 
 that ferocious orange colour which we call red, with 
 iron-rimmed spectacles bobbing on his nose, and a 
 heavy gold watch-chain swaying against his chest, 
 was thundering up the hill as though it had been the 
 Matterhorn and he an enthusiast for records. A sight 
 to make babies cry and nursemaids laugh was Henry 
 Hofman; and strange were the clothes of Henry 
 Hofman, his black trousers, his Norfolk jacket, and 
 his green tie. " Funny man ! " said the babies in 
 Italian. " Pazzo inglese! " replied the nursemaids, 
 and slept again. Hofman paid no attention ; intent 
 on higher things, he crashed through a row of trees 
 
 90 
 
THE THREE ENGLISHMEN 91 
 
 and attained the top. Then might you have seen him 
 stalk to the parapet, wave his arms round his head 
 with fervour and deh'ght, and slap himself on the chest. 
 " Grand! " he cried. " Magnificent ! " he shouted, and 
 had he been, as his father was, a German, he would 
 have added, " Kolossal ! " Then, arms folded, foot on 
 parapet, absurd and twisted body silhouetted against 
 the eternal sky, he stood, he gazed, he exulted. 
 
 It was only the view over Bologna and the plain 
 that had called forth his admiration. After all, few 
 men are epicures in prospects. All healthy persons 
 will climb to see a view, and it takes little to thrill 
 these aesthetic gluttons, provided the weather be clear 
 and they can see plenty at one time. For no regions 
 of this world are totally unpleasing when viewed from 
 an eminence. Henry Hofman had seen a hundred 
 landscapes finer than this ; yet this was fair enough. 
 A hundred miles of silver plain reflected the fitful 
 shadows of the clouds ; a faint blue haze hid and 
 hinted the Adriatic Sea; and the peculiar quiet fire 
 of sunset deepened to crimson the cheerful red of 
 Bologna's roofs, and shone right through the little 
 windows of the two great towers that dominate the 
 city. Let us leave him gazing at the Torre degli 
 • Asinelli and consider a companion of his who has just 
 arrived, a very bad second. This grizzled, middle- 
 aged man of uncertain aspect presents something of a 
 contrast to Hofman. We note the newcomer's rather 
 fine features, marred by an incessant frown ; we 
 approve the decent obscurity and neutral tint of his 
 clothes. His raiment well brushed, without style or 
 
92 THE GRECIANS 
 
 flair, seems to be like its wearer, to be something to 
 which no one could reasonably object. His method 
 of walking, moreover, is unobtrusive; his voice, as he 
 exclaims, " Here we are, Hofman!" is not annoyingly 
 brusque or strident, but verges on a mellow cheerful- 
 ness. Yet beneath the contrast which these two men 
 present lurks resemblance; and the indefinable, in- 
 eradicable stamp of a great profession marks both 
 those pairs of weary and watchful eyes. 
 
 " Ah, it 's grand! " shouted Hofman, " grand ! Only 
 three days ago I was taking my horrible chemistry 
 class, and now I am on a hill, looking at this!" 
 He swept his arm round parallel to the horizon. 
 " Ah, those boys, indeed," said Edwinson, quietly. 
 "Yes, it is pleasant to be free of them for a little- 
 yet I am fond of them, very fond of them. At my age 
 i couldn't give it up; I couldn't do anything else but 
 teach. It's dull work, our trade of instruction; but 
 there are times when I feel it 's rather a grand work. 
 Now this city, Hofman, is the foster-mother of educa- 
 tion. Bologna has one of the oldest universities of 
 Europe. Teaching in those days must have been much 
 more delightful, when each new book read was a new 
 country explored, and each pupil taught was a new 
 friend won. What a beautiful city it is with all those 
 useless, insolent, aspiring towers— so like Oxford in a 
 way, and so emblematic of that profitless, beautiful 
 training of the mind we try to give." 
 
 "So like the education you mediaevalists try to 
 give," grunted Hofman. " I have to teach facts. But 
 it 's getting late and dark." 
 
THE THREE ENGLISHMEN 93 
 
 "And all the ways are shadowy," broke in Edwinson, 
 quoting the stock translation of Homer. " And I am 
 hungry. Let us go down to the city and eat." 
 
 So saying the unobtrusive Edwinson took his com- 
 panion's arm, a thing he had never done before during 
 their six years of common toil, and arm-in-arm they 
 sauntered down the hill. 
 
 To explain this unusual, almost emotional, impulse 
 on the part of Edwinson, we must remark that it 
 was the first visit of these two men to Italy. Indeed 
 it was their first day in the country if we exclude the 
 inevitable halt in dreary northern Milan. True, they 
 had been twice abroad together before ; they had been 
 for one walking tour in Brittany, and one in the Black 
 Forest. But as a rule Hofman spent his winter holi- 
 days with his people at Gospel Oak and visited a 
 seaside resort — Southsea or Worthing — in summer. 
 With equal regularity Edwinson retired to Hamp- 
 stead, or in the bright season of the year took some 
 of his more brilliant and attractive pupils with him for 
 a reading party in Devonshire. This Italian journey 
 had been a bold venture, meticulously pre-arranged. 
 Expenses, routes, second-class fares had been calcu- 
 lated with nicety and a Baedeker; and there had 
 been much diligent self-teaching in a tongue which 
 Hofman found hard and learnt thoroughly and 
 Edwinson found easy and mastered ill. The whole 
 thing was an Event. Events are rare in the peda- 
 gogic life. 
 
 When they reached the walls of Bologna — Italian 
 cities are still walled — they took a tram which passed 
 
94 THE GRECIANS 
 
 along the endless lovely arcaded streets, and brought 
 them back to the vast central square that has its name 
 from Neptune. They had decided against dining at 
 their hotel, and sauntered vaguely along the Via Ugo 
 Bassi to find a suitable place of refreshment— no easy 
 task when sumptuary expense is to be avoided, and 
 cheap squalor shunned. At last they halted, and 
 boldly pushed open a creaking door; for favourable 
 chance had led them to the Toscana. Here in term- 
 time assemble the students of Bologna; here, when 
 there are no students, the modest traveller is welcomed 
 with cordiality and served with dispatch. 
 
 They seated themselves, and Edwinson suggested 
 timidly that the wine of the country might be both 
 cheap and good. 
 
 "Wine?" said Hofman. " Of course we will drink 
 wine. The water would probably be poisonous." 
 
 Their debate was cut short by the arrival of their 
 wine, unbidden, in a shapely wicker-covered flask. 
 Next, at Hofman's unhesitating command, arrived 
 spaghetti (this dish had a lot of local colour, but they 
 found it dull) and veal cutlets alia Milanese, which 
 strong men eat every night; and they ate this and 
 drank enormously of the wine, conversing and laugh- 
 ing without cease. 
 
 The restaurant was full; the waiters rushed about; 
 the incessant clatter of spoons and forks and knives 
 on plates, dishes, and glasses was most exhilarating ; 
 while expectoration was, for Italy, comparatively 
 rare. 
 
 The two friends were only halfway through their 
 
THE THREE ENGLISHMEN 95 
 
 cutlets, when they were disagreeably interrupted by 
 the arrival of a stranger, who hung up a sort of large 
 felt sombrero in such a way as to obscure Hofman's 
 old but comfortable cap, and prepared to sit down 
 beside them. Hofman was bored and, being an honest 
 man, immediately looked what he felt. Edwinson 
 drummed with his fingers on the table. 
 
 " I hope you will excuse me," said the stranger to 
 them in pleasant English, "but the place is quite 
 full." 
 
 Looking up, they saw before them a young man of 
 elegant figure and handsome appearance, indeed, a 
 remarkably splendid young man. Hofman thought to 
 himself that the new-comer had rather a womanish 
 face. But he ignored the strong chin and resolute thin 
 mouth, and was considering only the complexion. If 
 Hofman had justly realized his own feelings in the 
 matter, he would have found out that he esteemed all 
 beauty a rather womanish thing, unworthy of serious 
 attention. Edwinson, meanwhile, gazed intently on 
 the young man, and since he held the neo-pagan idea 
 of Greece, mentally raved about Apollo. Yet no one 
 could have been more unlike the swarthy, straight- 
 nosed Greeks than this merry-eyed young man, with 
 long, light hair, high cheek bones, and a vivid colour- 
 ing: no one was less like a lay figure for idealists 
 than this youth with his strong torso and his whim- 
 sical and lively countenance. However, Edwinson's 
 admiration of the fascinating stranger even increased 
 when he heard him order special local dishes and 
 wines with an Italian accent so graceful and correct 
 
96 THE GRECIANS 
 
 that it seemed far above anything a mere native could 
 possibly have achieved. 
 
 By the time the young man turned to look at the 
 two schoolmasters their ill-humour had vanished, and 
 their conversation, instigated by Chianti and an 
 audience, had become more brilliant than ever. To 
 Edwinson returned the fire of his Oxford days: for 
 long ago no one more often than he had sent the sun 
 — and the moon too — to bed with talking. Social 
 qualities, said his friends, had spoilt his chances (never 
 too brilliant, it must be confessed) of academical 
 distinction. Hofman was once more the penurious 
 lad who, in the rare hours snatched from the arduous 
 study of science, used to electrify the Gospel Oak 
 Ethical Club with his incisive wit and outrageous 
 opinions. The stranger put in a word here and there, 
 yet hardly entered into the conversation, but main- 
 tained a mysterious though friendly reserve. He 
 vouchsafed nothing about himself, save that his name 
 was Harold Smith, a severe blow to Edwinson, who 
 had imagined him to be of noble parentage. 
 
 When the meal was at an end Hofman was so de- 
 lighted with their new acquaintance that he was 
 preparing to ask him to come and take coffee with 
 them; but he was forestalled by Smith, who leant 
 over towards them, and, in a voice of extreme charm 
 and gentleness, said : " I hope you will do me the 
 favour of coming round to my place: I have a little 
 room of my own in a back street here which we may 
 find a little pleasanter than any cafe." 
 
 They willingly accepted this novel invitation, and 
 
THE THREE ENGLISHMEN 97 
 
 followed their guide through the colonnades of 
 Bologna, whither they knew not. They entered a 
 low and obscure doorway, toiled up a painful stair- 
 case, turned a corner, and found themselves in the 
 sitting-room of Smith. It was a small room, but com- 
 fortable beyond all an Italian's dreams, and beautiful 
 enough to satisfy the most exacting of Cambridge 
 aesthetes. A dim, reddish light suggested tapestried 
 hangings, surprising pictures, and innumerable books ; 
 yet for all the display of furniture and fabrics in a 
 little space, the room was mysteriously cool. Hofman, 
 turning his eyes to the bookshelves, as reading men 
 will, was delighted to find his beloved moderns, Teu- 
 tonic and Scandinavian, bound in pigskin and arranged 
 in order; while Edwinson marked with delight the 
 rows devoted to the classics, for he was a devoted 
 scholar, although so pathetically second class. Smith 
 let them busy themselves with inspection while he 
 prepared an excellent coffee: soon they drank it, not 
 unaccompanied by seductive liqueurs. Then pipes 
 were lighted with English tobacco, glasses filled with 
 Scotch whisky, and there sank into armchairs worthy 
 of the noblest university traditions, two happy middle- 
 aged schoolmasters, clothed in drab and a little beside 
 themselves; and then it was that Harold stood before 
 them with uplifted glass and swore in Italian, German, 
 and English, that they should drink the health of 
 their glorious profession, and drain their glasses to 
 the Education of Youth. 
 
 H 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE AIM OF EDUCATION 
 
 Smith roused no enthusiasm by proposing this toast. 
 Hofman started and groaned, and Edwinson remarked 
 sadly that he wanted to forget that dire, unspeakable 
 thing. 
 
 Smith. Is it possible that you hate your work, and 
 that you are sincere in expressing your unhappiness? 
 One would think there could be nothing more delight- 
 ful than training the young and watching the subtle 
 dawn of intelligence. 
 
 Edwinson. Our work has its compensations, my 
 dear Smith. Yet I cannot conceive of any vocation 
 more disheartening, toilsome, and unpleasant. 
 
 Smith. Yet perhaps you have not really any 
 standard of comparison. What evidence have you that 
 members of other professions are more cheerful than 
 schoolmasters? 
 
 Edwinson. I think I have some evidence. I have 
 often been in the City, and observed narrowly the 
 faces of the business men who pour out of the tube 
 terminus. Anxious those faces often are, pale, feverish, 
 elated with success, dejected with impending ruin; 
 yet none of them were languid, none bored. Now you 
 know, perhaps, that there is a special service held for 
 
 98 
 
THE AIM OF EDUCATION 99 
 
 schoolmasters and members of the Teachers' Union 
 once a year in the chapel of some great public school.^ 
 I once attended such a service. There, in a narrow 
 space, were collected some two hundred head and 
 assistant masters. A more tragic sight I have never 
 seen. It may be that the sermon, preached by a young 
 Anglican of great eminence, had affected me strangely: 
 but I know that when I left the chapel I nearly wept. 
 Thank God one does not often see a congregation of 
 schoolmasters. Those withered trees are usually sur- 
 rounded by the fair and delectable shrubs of youth: 
 they look ill in a forest by themselves. Usually we 
 see the usher's unromantic figure graced by the boys 
 who flock around him ; and to them he is so familiar 
 and trite a thing that they pay no heed to his sagging 
 trousers and rusty coat, to his surly manners and 
 unkempt hair, to his unchanging cravat and rect- 
 angular boots. But when I saw that unearthly con- 
 gregation of men who had failed, whose lips were 
 hard, and their faces drav/n and sallow, when I 
 remarked the imbecile athletes who taught football, 
 the puny scientists who expounded the dark mystery 
 of nature, the blighted and sapless scholars who taught 
 Plato and Catullus by the page and hour, the little 
 wry-bodied men in spectacles who trained their pupils 
 in "King Lear" for the Cambridge Locals, I shud- 
 dered and felt faint; for I remembered that I, too 
 was one of these: I, too, was rusty — I effete — I grow- 
 ing old. 
 
 ^ Here Hofman snorted. 
 
100 THE GRECIANS 
 
 Smith. You are convincing as to the fact, yet you 
 hardly suggest a reason. Why is it, do you think, that 
 teachers are such sad and bitter men? 
 
 Edwinson. It is a Httle difficult to explain. Per- 
 haps it is because we don't know 
 
 HOFMAN. {Interrupting violently?^ That 's it. We 
 do not know. We don't know where we are going to. 
 We have no idea what sort of man we want to make, 
 and while we have no definite aim we are beset by a 
 million irritations from faddists and quacks. " Bring 
 up boys and girls together," say some; "the school 
 will then be a paradise." " Never teach a child what 
 it doesn't want to know," says the benign paidophilist. 
 God, I would like to teach him something he wouldn't 
 like to know. "Science, grand, practical science!" 
 says a crude person from the North ; once I had faith 
 in the crude person, before I taught grand, practical 
 science. " Our old, beautiful traditions," say people 
 like my friend here ; " there is nothing wrong except 
 the spread of scientific knowledge." " Modern tongues, 
 not dead ones; something really useful to help the 
 boys to good business positions." So clamour parents 
 who do not realize that German clerks who know six 
 languages to perfection may be purchased for about 
 £\6q a year. "English history, how splendid, how 
 important!" says the blustering Member of Parlia- 
 ment, in a speech which would shame the school de- 
 bating club, when he comes to give away our prizes. 
 " English literature," cry the dames, " up to the death 
 of Wordsworth, but including Tennyson, not omitting 
 Beowulf if you want to understand Shakespeare." A 
 
THE AIM OF. EbuCAJION,, . , loi 
 
 pox on the fools ; art, 'music; • religion, and wood- 
 carving — all have their votaries: 
 
 Ce monde est plein de fous, et qui n'en veut pas voir 
 Doit se tenir tout seul, ou casser son miroir. ^ 
 
 Edwinson. True, Hofman. Why, if I could get a 
 paragraph into the " Daily Mail " suggesting that it 
 is a disgraceful thing that our great public schools 
 never teach Etruscan, which is not only the true 
 foundation of any really thorough knowledge of 
 Latin, but also a study most likely to foster mental 
 ingenuity and deep thought, I should be styled " one 
 of our most prominent educationalists " on the 
 morrow. But since we are in such a vortex of new 
 and absurd ideas, is there not some sense in keeping 
 to the old lines? You have never understood, 
 Hofman, and perhaps you never will, what is the true 
 value and meaning of a classical education. Every 
 year that this education continues to exist at all, it be- 
 comes more and more indispensable to any one who 
 desires to understand history. We do not merely 
 educate people to understand the world of Thucydides 
 and Tacitus, Aeschylus and Virgil, but we educate 
 them to understand Petrarch and Ariosto, Racine and 
 Montesquieu, Pitt and Johnson and Pope, Milton, 
 Landor, Shelley, Arnold, Browning, Tennyson, and 
 Swinburne — for we have hardly had a great poet who 
 was not a good classical scholar 
 
 Hofman. Except Shakespeare ! 
 
 Edwinson. Even that is doubtful. To know the 
 story of literature, of law, of science, and philosophy, 
 
102 THE GRFXIANS 
 
 you must study the classics-; while a true and just use 
 and knowledge of the subtleties of words may be in- 
 born in a genius, but is the natural outcome of a 
 scholar's training. 
 
 I readily admit that certain changes ought to take 
 place from within. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf has made 
 what I consider to be a quite admirable suggestion. 
 He says in effect that we ought to read all Greek 
 literature, and not confine ourselves to a little cluster 
 of classical writers. He suggests that we should read 
 Greek written as late as the tenth century A.D., and, 
 indeed, the Byzantines are neither so uninteresting 
 nor so incapable as is generally believed. With regard 
 to the Latin tongue, I myself would rejoice to see the 
 more suitable passages of Petronius, Apuleius, and 
 the elegiacs of that dainty poet of the decline, Auso- 
 nius, included in the regular course. For I am a 
 person of liberal ideas, though Hofman will credit me 
 with none. 1 think, too, that one ought to get on much 
 faster with the books one reads, and not spend a 
 whole term droning through a book of Virgil at thirty 
 lines a day. I believe that boys should be allowed to 
 use translations : they are given plenty of Unseens on 
 which to exert their minds, and I consider, though 
 this is rather heresy, that only the most intelligent 
 boys should be worried with Latin and Greek com- 
 position. We may teach our young Swinburnes or 
 Jebbs to write Greek and Latin verses: I am not very 
 much in favour of compelling the ordinary boy to 
 undergo so severe a training. 
 
 You see, the grand old classics are waking up, 
 
THE AIM OF EDUCATION 103 
 
 Hofman. During the last few years the scientific 
 treatment of art and archaeology has made tremend- 
 ous strides; while the study of folk-lore and com- 
 parative mythology is revolutionizing our ideas upon 
 Roman and Greek religion. Our comprehension of 
 the classics has advanced more between the year 1880 
 and the present time, than between the years 1600 
 and 1880. This is literally true. Then we still 
 find and always shall in the calm logic of Latin 
 
 grammar 
 
 Hofman. {Ftiriously?^ O Death! Do you dare to 
 insinuate that any one was ever taught to think about 
 the universe by learning perfects and supines, or those 
 eccentrics in — \n ? Do you really think you are 
 going to ennoble and modernize the classics by skip- 
 ping through half a dozen wretched bastard Greek 
 romances written by a worthless people in a worthless 
 period, or by entertaining the lads with the cheerful 
 heresies of the early Christian Fathers? Do you say 
 keep the old system? Look at the result of your time- 
 honoured plan. One scholar (that is to say, one 
 naturally intelligent person whose intelligence you 
 have perverted to a useless end) to a hundred wastrels 
 (that is to say, a hundred ordinary young men whose 
 brains you have fuddled for ever). And your one 
 scholar, I grant you, may be a fine man — but wherein 
 lies his salvation.'* In being something more than a 
 scholar — in his self-education; in the music, art, or 
 poetry he loves, in his appreciation of the passions 
 and desires that sway the actual world. Can he even 
 be a fine scholar if he comprehends not these things? 
 
104 THE GRECIANS 
 
 Is a man who votes Tory because he is a don fit to 
 understand Tacitus, or a man who has never travelled 
 over the earth fit to enjoy the " Odyssey? " Shall we 
 give Catullus to a passionless pedant, Ovid to a man 
 who has never known Love's kiss? Even I, who have 
 only read the classics in translations, have a better 
 opinion of them than that. 
 
 I don't want to substitute science as being in any 
 way a real or complete training for the young. My 
 humble task is to teach the boys a few facts about 
 the real world which may help them to earn their 
 living, and I hate all rainbow theories of education. 
 Teach a boy, I say, to read and write, and add up 
 sums; then teach him his trade, and if you want a 
 wider and a nobler upbringing for him, turn him loose 
 into a good library for so many hours a day, and let 
 him learn what he likes. 
 
 Edwinson. [Peevishly.'] Scholars can earn 'their 
 living sometimes, and a fact in Latin grammar is as 
 much a fact as a fact in physics. 
 
 Smith. Come, brother Edwinson, I don't think you 
 really mean that. You are arguing in a vicious circle 
 if you maintain that a classical education is a practical 
 one because your pupils may subsequently become 
 classical teachers. You know of the tribe which 
 existed by taking in each other's washing. You are 
 well enough aware that the moment the dead 
 languages cease to be required in State or University 
 examinations which lead to emolument, the whole 
 fabric of classical education instantly disappears; and 
 the scholars who now secure for themselves snug and 
 
THE AIM OF EDUCATION 105 
 
 comfortable berths, would then be wandering up and 
 down the land like disembodied spirits. A few might 
 still be needed for museums and libraries, or to teach 
 the sons of some old-fashioned American millionaire; 
 but the rest would die of hunger or take to breaking 
 stones. 
 
 Now I gather that you are, both of you — even 
 Edwinson — rather disappointed in our English middle- 
 class education. Do you then think that nothing could 
 be done to reform our public schools? 
 
 HOFMAN. I think they are in such a state that 
 reform is impossible, and that they ought to be utterly 
 destroyed for ever. There is better work done in the 
 dirtiest board school or technical training college in a 
 day than we do in a week, and the public school is 
 really such a loathsome place — 
 
 Smith. You seem to be quite bitter about it, 
 Hofman. In what way do you mean that a public 
 school is loathsome? 
 
 Hofman. Why, were you never at one of those 
 great institutions which make England what it is, and 
 have made Balham and Bethnal Green what they are? 
 Have you never witnessed the weary conflict between 
 plodding dull ushers and stolid boys? Are you unaware 
 of our finely organized system of compulsory cricket 
 and compulsory vice? From the first of these evils a 
 boy can only escape by being consumptive, from the 
 second only by becoming a moral prig. Do you not 
 know how the monotonous hours are only varied by 
 epidemics, whether of chicken-pox, religion, silkworm- 
 keeping, or Sandow exercises? Do you not know the 
 
io6 THE GRECIANS 
 
 hell that awaits all boys who think for themselves, 
 who have any moral courage, who dare to look beyond 
 the horizon of the damned routine, who shirk games, 
 or who shirk looking at games? 
 
 Smith. What you say has its truth. But to me it 
 appears still worse that after this public-school life a 
 boy should pass on to Oxford and Cambridge, where 
 instead of entering on a new life he will merely con- 
 tinue in his former ways. If it meant influence to be 
 a good cricketer at school, why so it does in college ; 
 if chapel was compulsory at school, so it is in college; 
 if independence meant unpopularity at school, so it does 
 in most colleges. No new society arises to entertain the 
 mind, no women enable him to understand the pro- 
 portion of things in this world ; no freedom of town 
 life, no rousing interest in art or politics, will ever en- 
 croach on the monotony of a protracted schoolboy 
 existence, wherein smoking, drinking, and cards are 
 only occasionally restrained by authority. 
 
 Edwinson. I am surprised that Hofman should 
 thus depreciate school life, and that you, sir, should be 
 so dissatisfied with the university. Consider how 
 ninety-nine out of a hundred boys love their school, 
 how they revel in school life, how they weep to leave 
 it, and how they love to return and visit their old 
 friends and masters. As for college — my days at 
 Oxford were the only good days of my life, even 
 though I never played cricket and football. 
 
 Smith. Do you not consider what a terrible im- 
 putation it is against a school, if even the hundredth 
 boy (unless he be a confirmed hypochondriac) be not 
 
THE AIM OF EDUCATION 107 
 
 happy? If you feed boys well, let them play with each 
 other, and give them a reasonable amount of liberty, 
 it is very hard to make them miserable. And in the 
 generous days of youth who would not be sentimental 
 about leaving friends and associations? But what 
 Hofman says is that the best boys are the most 
 unhappy — and I believe that, except possibly at Eton 
 and Winchester, this is literally what happens. The 
 new raw athletic mushroom public school is not a very 
 pleasant place. 
 
 Edwinson. But surely the Spartan element in our 
 great schools is very fine. To rough it a little makes a 
 boy independent and manly. A little bumping about — 
 (Here Edwinson stopped, having caught an unpleas- 
 antly hostile expression in the eye of Harold Smith). 
 Of course, all that is a little trite (he added lamely). 
 
 Smith. Yes, Edwinson, that 's just it. A little bump- 
 ing about will soon cure a boy of holding any ideas that 
 displease his fellows, a little ridicule will soon cure Jones 
 minor of reading Gibbon when he ought to be out in the 
 rain watching the house hockey match, a really hard 
 thrashing will soon dispel young Robinson's religious 
 doubts. Oh, yes, we will embitter the seven years of life 
 which should be the happiest, so as to give a boy more 
 grit and pluck in after years. It seems we run a risk, 
 Edwinson, and draw our bow at a venture. Does the 
 nervous, high-strung youth become a thick-skinned 
 Briton at the end of our Spartan training? I have not 
 observed it: heresy of heresies, I do not really desire 
 it. But I do very much fear that a boy of original 
 mind may become permanentlyembittered and peevish 
 
io8 THE GRECIANS 
 
 under our present system and never acquire that 
 strength and cheerfulness which underlies true genius. 
 Our Spartan ideal is productive of minor poets, of 
 most unmanly people who, claiming sanity and reserve, 
 are ashamed instead of proud of what they think or 
 feel or know; and I am so eccentric as not to be 
 entirely pleased with that other notable product of 
 our Lacedaemonian tendencies — the hulking and vain- 
 glorious captain of the school eleven, whom I picture 
 from memory standing crop in hand surrounded by 
 his toadies and parasites, the terror and admiration of 
 the young. Spartan system — why, the fellow has never 
 been kicked since his very first term, when he made 
 such a fine score in the Junior House match. Edwin- 
 son, if the boys in your school are not happy, burn it 
 down. 
 
 But there is a yet further question. Have you done 
 your best for their happiness in the days of manhood, 
 
 pedagogue? For with that you are most intimately 
 concerned. 
 
 HOFMAN. Have you then revealed your secret. 
 Smith? Is that your ideal education which produces 
 the happy man? 
 
 Smith. Negatively, yes. That sounds cryptic; but 
 
 1 mean that whatever else we may strive after we fail 
 if we do not help our pupils to be happy. In an 
 uncertain world I take this as a postulate. But tell 
 me, Hofman, since happiness is after all as difficult a 
 word to explain precisely as goodness, the type of the 
 man that you would desire to produce with the aid of 
 education. 
 
THE AIM OF EDUCATION 109 
 
 HOP^MAN. [ With animation shining through his 
 spectacles.] I think education can do little to produce 
 the type of man I want. I look for a man of power, 
 an Overman, if you are not weary of the word. At 
 any rate a man unflinchingly honest in his thoughts, 
 and in the expression of his thoughts, unswayed by 
 prejudice and convention, natural and strong in his 
 desires and passions. A man who can pierce the riddle 
 of this rather aimless existence and lead mankind to 
 new triumphs and new glory. 
 
 Smith. And you, Edwinson, perhaps do not entirely 
 participate in Hofman's ideal? 
 
 Edwinson. Indeed, no; he has expressed himself 
 innocently enough, but I know he wants to turn all 
 the nicest people into labour leaders. I confess I 
 prefer the gentleman, if he will forgive me using a 
 word he hates. I believe we have a duty to intimate 
 society as well as to the State; and I believe that 
 people with charming manners make life much more 
 tolerable for their friends than unpleasant socialistic 
 people. 
 
 HOFMAN. That is to say, gentlemen please other 
 gentlemen. 
 
 Edwinson. It is more than that. I have known 
 many a boy whose head was perfectly empty, yet 
 who had such a way with him that everybody liked 
 him from the head master to the boot-black. But — be 
 quiet, Hofman !— far be it from me to suggest that it 
 is the business of a school to produce gentlemen. In 
 a school to which gentlemen are sent the aim must be 
 first that the blatancy of vulgarians should be toned 
 
no THE GRECIANS 
 
 down by association with boys of a more refined 
 nature; secondly to produce in those who are gentle- 
 men by birth a refinement, not only of manner and 
 deportment, but also of language, taste, and thought 
 — to produce not mere gentlemen, but that type of 
 great gentleman whom we call a gentleman and a 
 scholar. 
 
 Smith. S^After a pause.] Truth is dull, and I fear 
 all I have to say is that both these ideals are excellent, 
 and that they should and can be easily combined. 
 But forgive me for remarking that they are ideals of 
 admiration and not of thought. Both of you really 
 want to produce men who shall be like yourselves. 
 
 HOFMAN. Or rather like our ideal selves. The men 
 we might have been had we been blessed with oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 Smith. Well, then, you want to produce, perhaps, 
 persons whom you would like to have as friends. But 
 shall we not consider whether it would be possible to 
 establish our discussion on a surer basis, and try to 
 discover, not perhaps what the ideal man is, but at 
 least what our ideal of a man is? We can at all events 
 eliminate the elements which displease one or other of 
 us. And if we do come to some more or less definite 
 agreement on the subject, we shall hope that there 
 may be many other sensible people in the wide world 
 who would concur with our conclusions if they were 
 here with us to-night. 
 
 We have already laid down one postulate, that we 
 do not want to train our people to be miserable. We 
 will lay down another, that we are not going to train 
 
THE AIM OF EDUCATION in 
 
 our boys as candidates for any one of the various 
 official paradises occupied by members of the rival 
 sects. Is then the ideal of happiness enough? For if 
 any one were to object that to train people to be 
 happy would be to train them to be unpleasant, 
 selfish, useless, and ignorant, we should reply that their 
 notions of pleasure are ridiculous and limited. Hap- 
 piness then- 
 
 Edwinson. But surely you admire the noble ideas 
 and fine morality, the devotion to work and duty, 
 which have stamped the best men in the human race? 
 And surely you do not believe that good men have 
 acted merely because they would be happier in doing 
 good? Even if such were really the case, it would be 
 too horrible to believe, even as it is too horrible to 
 believe that death is the end of all things, or that this 
 universe has no aim. 
 
 HOFMAN. As usual, Edwinson, you take up that 
 miserable Peer Gynt attitude : " Let us think of the 
 things that are pleasant, and forget those that hurt " 
 — and you send our pupils, as he sent his mother, 
 headlong through the gate of death with ancient folk- 
 tales and sweet, lying harmonies in their ears. What, 
 do you yearn, O sentimental idealist, to set up the 
 dusty old virtues on their feet again, and to clap on 
 the statue of Truth the shabby rags of dying religions 
 and the enormous fig-leaf of respectability ? Let us 
 make men who can realize themselves ; for I weary 
 of your heroes of the drawing-room and the popular 
 stage ; I am sick of the cant of devotion to one's 
 duty, one's country, and one's only girl. 
 
112 THE GRECIANS 
 
 Smith. But do you think that happiness will come 
 from this self-realization of yours ? 
 
 HOFMAN. What matter? We want men of power. 
 The world is getting sick and rotten. We want some 
 men who are free and brave. Where are the heroes 
 who trampled us down in the gorgeous youth of the 
 world ? 
 
 Smith. Your views do not differ materially from 
 those of Edwinson, you know. 
 
 Hofman had for some moments been pacing the 
 room in his excitement, and he now brought himself 
 up to within a foot of the table on which Smith is 
 sitting, and shouted " What ? " 
 
 Smith. Don't realize your voice like that, Hofman, 
 or I shall fall off the table. My point is this. Both of 
 you approve of virtue. But while Edwinson considers 
 many qualities to be virtues, you only approve of 
 Strength and Truthfulness, and I think your Overman 
 will have to give up many things that mortals enjoy, 
 such as Friendship and Love. 
 
 Hofman. But a man may be realizing himself in 
 friendship and love. 
 
 Smith. Not if self-realization means anything at 
 all. I can understand how a man in pursuit of the 
 ideals of power and self-realization may consider it 
 advisable to understand his fellow-men and converse 
 with them, but it is an obvious truth that friendship, 
 love, and affection are bound to imply a subordina- 
 tion of oneself to others. Moreover, if life in a civil- 
 ized state is to be tolerable, it entails considerable 
 
THE AIM OF EDUCATION 113 
 
 suppression of the natural man. But perhaps you 
 would say that we realize ourselves by fitting ourselves 
 to circumstances. I confess the term '' self-realization" 
 seems to me to be a little vague. 
 
 At all events, neither of you, I fear, seem to take 
 kindly to my notion of educating people so that they 
 may be happy. Now, Edwinson, what people would 
 you consider to be most happy ? 
 
 Edwinson rose slowly and went to the window. 
 Below, on the opposite side of the street, a little crowd 
 was waiting patiently and cheerfully for the doors of 
 a cinematograph show to open. He pointed to the 
 young workmen thronging down there with their 
 wives on their arms and children dangling at their 
 coats, and said : 
 
 Edwinson. Those people, if they have good health 
 and no aspirations, are probably as happy as any one 
 in the world. Prosperous City men verging on middle 
 age are, I expect, quite happy also. It is reserved for 
 the sensitive men, for those whose fibre is weakened 
 by learning and culture, to feel most deeply the misery 
 of the v/orld. It is education that makes a Leopardi 
 bitter or drives a Baudelaire mad. 
 
 Smith. To look at you and hear you speak, Edwin- 
 son, I should hardly believe that you had led a happy 
 life. Yet do you really wish that your lot had been 
 different? Do you yearn for the life of those poor 
 men below ? Would you really be content to plough 
 fields or push barrows ? 
 
 I 
 
114 THE GRECIANS 
 
 Edwinson. No. Although in moments of de- 
 pression I yearn for the happy, thoughtless existence 
 of the ignorant, I would not really abandon my little 
 knowledge; it is too precious to me, and I would not 
 barter it against animal happiness. In knowledge, 
 as in civilization, the further we advance the greater 
 are our joys, the deeper our sorrows ; but we cannot 
 retreat. 
 
 Smith. I am glad to hear you say so. Your words 
 will help me to explain the type I desire to form, and 
 they give me some hope that you will not hopelessly 
 dissent from the views I am now going to ex- 
 press. 
 
 Edwinson. Now let all profane tongues be silent, 
 and let us hear and dispute the description of an ideal 
 man. 
 
 Smith. First, I admit that the term happy man 
 embraces but little of our idea of a good man, of the 
 men whom we would admire and love to own as a 
 friend. Yet happiness (I would remark in passing), 
 even of the lowest type, is something of a social 
 virtue : it is pervasive and infectious, and therefore in 
 a certain sense altruistic. I think we should most of 
 us take more delight in the friendship of Rabelais 
 than in that of Leopardi or Baudelaire — although, by 
 the way, it was not only sensibility and intelligence 
 but also incessant ill-health that made those two 
 great men unhappy. Granted that we want our 
 pupils to be cheerful, we must fit them for their station 
 in life : we must train their physical health with the 
 greatest care, and we must enable them to perform 
 
THE AIM OF EDUCATION 115 
 
 the ordinary social duties of tlieir station and to earn 
 a comfortable livelihood. 
 
 And yet we know well that some of the boys whom 
 we are going to teach will not be contented with this, 
 even while they are young. Man entertains fantastic, 
 inexplicable desires after things profitless — after truth, 
 knowledge, and beauty viewed as ends in themselves. 
 Some even yearn for absolute Chastity or absolute 
 Holiness. These latter two desires are spiritual, not 
 mental; exceptional, not rational; and since it has so 
 often been observed that holy men have an antipathy 
 to the use of human reason, we cannot undertake to 
 train our boys in holiness — for our business is with 
 thought. To my mind a passion for beautiful things 
 is the possession of the wise and thoughtful; or at 
 least is only of value to the intelligent: I cannot now 
 argue this philosophy, I can only appeal to the vivid 
 and trained understanding of those men who have 
 loved the beautiful. Therefore, since our concern is 
 with mental aspirations, and since we must accept it 
 as a fact that men do long to understand the problems 
 of reason, to master the details of science, and to 
 appreciate beautiful things, and that we in fact ad- 
 mire and love the men who hold these strange desires 
 — we will lay down that a fuller education be given 
 in our schools to those who are fitted to receive it. 
 Our scholars who taste of the bitter-sweet fruit of this 
 tree of knowledge will be made both more happy and 
 more miserable. But observe, though we educate 
 them for the sake of that greater happiness to which 
 they will attain, yet we are not deluded into thinking 
 
ii6 THE GRECIANS 
 
 that the young man who is athirst for knowledge is 
 athirst for happiness. Some happiness it may give 
 him, but that is only by the way. Foolish and irritat- 
 ing are those who contend, " This man gives his 
 money to the poor because it is his form of pleasure ; 
 my form of pleasure is to expend it on the race- 
 course: there is no moral difference between us! " If 
 a man prefers to be generous, it is just this preference 
 of his that makes us call him a good man: and we 
 call him good not really in accordance with any fixed 
 moral code, but from the nature of ourselves, which 
 is to admire strong will, strong intellect, and strong 
 love in our fellow-men. 
 
 HOFMAN. But supposing some people, as some 
 do, admire Charles Peace the burglar extremely, and 
 others think him an outrageous scoundrel? 
 
 Smith. The difference here and in all cases is not 
 one of the natural faculties of admiration, but of 
 analysis of the case. One man admires in Peace his 
 strength of will, his intellect, his energy; another de- 
 tests his lack of love. To admire energy and to hate 
 cruelty is universal. But are you now agreed that the 
 formation of some such type as I have described is a 
 worthy aim for education? 
 
 Edwinson. You have made clear to me ideas that 
 I felt for myself, but could not clearly define or ex- 
 press. 
 
 HOFMAN. And I am most marvellously persuaded. 
 
 After this the conversation became much less 
 serious, and I grieve to state that Hofman began to 
 
THE AIM OF EDUCATION 117 
 
 feel a strange inclination to dance and sing. So they 
 wore him out by taking him a very long walk round 
 the city; and then Smith left them, but not without a 
 solemn promise that he would meet them early on 
 the morrow. 
 
Ill 
 
 PHYSICAL TRAINING 
 
 Harold Smith met the two schoolmasters, as ar- 
 raiif^ed, comparatively early the next morning at a 
 cafe. He found them ruefully consuming thin coffee 
 and thick rolls, and pining for the fleshpots and tea- 
 pots of England. He laughed at their dejected coun- 
 tenances and gleefully produced from his pocket a 
 fine pot of jam, which he good-naturedly shared with 
 the forlorn travellers. The little party became most 
 amicable, and as it was a fine fresh morning they 
 resolved to make an expedition into the country. 
 Their plans grew gradually more extensive and 
 ambitious, till finally they decided to quit Bologna 
 with no baggage but knapsacks, and to return thither 
 only after some days of pedestrian exploration be- 
 yond the Apennines. They therefore took the train 
 for a few miles so as to get on the foot of the moun- 
 tains, alighted at an insignificant station on the line 
 to Florence, and walked along the pass as far as 
 Bagni di Poretta, where they took rooms for the 
 night, and dined handsomely. Over coffee and cigars 
 Hofman became expansive, and glowed as ruddy as 
 his beard with delight. " What a day, what a walk! " 
 he cried; "I feel quite young again. Smith, you're 
 making new men of us poor schoolmasters, I wish 
 
 ii8 
 
PHYSICAL TRAINING 119 
 
 you didn't walk at such a pace, though. I should 
 never have thought you were such an athlete to look 
 at you," 
 
 Edwinson. It has been a fine excursion indeed. 
 Enough exercise to make us comfortably tired, not 
 enough to exhaust or take away the appetite. I'm 
 feeling wide awake ; if you people are willing, let 's go 
 on talking about education. 
 
 HOFMAN. I should love to if it doesn't bore Smith, 
 for I want to hear more wisdom from the mouth of 
 that wise young man. It strikes me as odd, you 
 know, Edwinson, that at school we never said a word, 
 either to each other or to any one else, about the 
 general principles and aims of education. We used, 
 of course, to get quite excited about new or peculiar 
 methods of pumping in knowledge, but we never 
 really considered where — well, where 
 
 Smith. Where you were going to drive to when 
 you'd got the tyres tight — if I may adopt your own 
 cheery metaphorical style, Hofman? 
 
 Edwinson. And whither shall we drive to-night, 
 O charioteer? 
 
 Smith. Straight on. In the distance our road may 
 be obscure, but we shall have no immediate difficulty 
 in finding our way. For we are at least certain of to- 
 night's destination. Physical training we must discuss ; 
 and here all sane men are with us in our efforts to dis- 
 cover how to preserve, maintain, and encourage health 
 in our pupils. However, since we are not doctors, we 
 must, I fear, confine ourselves to generalities. 
 
 Now health, I think, should be, as they say, not 
 
120 THE GRECIANS 
 
 merely a harmony after the Platonic style, but positive 
 and exuberant. 
 
 Edwinson. Won't that tend to some rather de- 
 pressing forms of heartiness? I don't like people 
 who slap one on the back and poke one in the 
 ribs. 
 
 Smith. I don't much mind the type, especially 
 among boys. It only means that the intellect of your 
 hearty man is not as well trained as his body, or that 
 the aggressor has not enough natural outlet for the 
 exercise of his vivid animal strength. Or it may be 
 that he has not learnt manners. And the hearty only 
 offend those who are feeling weak and depressed. In 
 this mountain air, my dear Edwinson, you are getting 
 quite hearty yourself, and I confidently expect to see 
 you playing leap-frog with Hofman to-morrow all the 
 way down to Pistoia. 
 
 Hofman. {With an air of raising the tone of the 
 conversation and suggesting a good theory for contentious 
 debate?^ All schools should be on heights. It is curious 
 that altitude should not only invigorate the body but 
 elevate the mind. 
 
 Smith. Height is not very necessary, Hofman, and 
 has become a mania with some people, who seem to 
 imagine that the Spartans exposed their babies on the 
 peak of Taygetus in order to improve their health. 
 Pure air is what a school needs, but this pure air is of 
 little use unless we breathe it all night long. All our 
 boys will sleep in the open air, with just enough 
 shelter to protect them from rain. Colds will be a 
 thing of the past; the "general health" of the school 
 
PHYSICAL TRAINING 121 
 
 will improve beyond belief; and not a school in 
 England has the courage to do it. 
 
 Let us now build our beautiful school on the hills 
 of imagination, and let us build it on the south coast of 
 England. For I have a great faith in sunshine and sea. 
 
 HOFMAN. Down in Hampshire there is a little 
 village beside a great warm bay which I loved best of 
 all places when I was a boy. Eastward a long, wonder- 
 ful spit of hard and shell-strewn sand divides the bay 
 from the all-but-lake of a harbour; westward rise 
 white cliffs through which the tunnelling agents of 
 the world have delved unknown and secret caves, or 
 carved striding hollow rocks such as Turner drew in 
 his Polyphemus, islanded out to sea. On land you 
 have a little level strip near the sea for playing fields 
 and a little shaven down on which to build the school 
 in all its pride; and near by are moors, yellow in 
 spring and red in autumn, to keep our fancies young. 
 
 Smith. I know your unnamed bay and its gentle 
 scenery. Let us build there the school of our dreams^ 
 and one day perhaps we will build on that shaven 
 down a school in substance and reality. For dreams 
 have been realized before now, my friend, even school- 
 masters' dreams. Or have you never heard of La 
 Giocosa and the fair name of that great humanist, 
 Vittorino da Feltre, and how he taught his Mantuans 
 the rhythm of body and mind, and was loved by them 
 as few schoolmasters have been loved before or since 
 those bright Renaissance days? Yet even in our 
 imaginations and schemes let us be honourably fear- 
 less, bold, and practical, and imagine not, like the bad 
 
122 THE GRECIANS 
 
 poet, a golden and misty dream, but like the good 
 poet, a strong and stirring reality. And since we must 
 construct the shape before we infuse the spirit, let us 
 first consider our portals and windows. In what style 
 shall our architect build? 
 
 Edwinson. Shall he build in splendid Gothic, to 
 match our old schools and cathedrals of England? 
 
 Smith. I hope not. Revived Gothic has produced 
 no single good building in England, nor are ill-lighted 
 vaults suitable for a school. We will have nothing to 
 do with renewals of old styles ; we will not build after 
 the Greek fashion, or the Graeco-Roman, or the Full 
 Roman, or Byzantine, or the Moorish, or the Perpen- 
 dicular, or the Jacobean, or the Gothic, or the Ruskin- 
 Gothic. Our style must be as new as our school. We 
 will not oblige ourselves to build in stone because 
 stone is symbolic, nor in brick because brick is so 
 lowly and Hebraic. We shall build for comfort and 
 utility, and obtain our beauty not from the added 
 ornamentation of an antique style, but from the 
 principles of symmetry and design. Indeed, I imagine 
 we shall build our school after the American manner, 
 with iron and reinforced concrete. Of all methods of 
 construction this is the strongest, for the San Francisco 
 earthquake itself could not shake down the tallest and 
 slimmest buildings wrought of this material. There- 
 fore, we shall build our school with straight and 
 simple harmonious lines ; and in so doing we may 
 perhaps be advancing into a new architectural style, 
 some day to be reckoned great and in its turn worthy 
 of imitation. 
 
PHYSICAL TRAINING 123 
 
 Edwinson. I feel it would be very horrible to copy 
 anything American, and the idea of this shed arrange- 
 ment of yours chills me. Won't it look rather like a 
 powder magazine, with its great, bare, white walls? 
 
 Smith. Who said we were going to have bare white 
 walls? The delight and joy of my building will be in 
 fresco and statuary, not in pointed windows, mullions, 
 and leaded panes. On the outside the school shall be 
 a blaze of colours — and if frescoes fade, even in the 
 South of England, so much the better for the artists 
 of future generations, who will have to come and paint 
 us new ones. Why, we will get the greatest pointillist 
 artist alive to do our frescoes, for those sunlight effects 
 of his that can never be seen at a proper distance in 
 galleries will be grand in the open air. But it would 
 be out of place to consider these details now: we must 
 attack the problem of health, and waiving romance, 
 consider our building from the sanitary point of view. 
 That simplicity of construction which we have chosen 
 will surely go far to solve the problems of hygiene. 
 Easy ventilation, no corners for dirt, central heating, 
 mechanical dust extraction, desks arranged so that 
 the light comes over the boys' left shoulders, electric 
 light with shaded globes, no carpets, mouldings, fire- 
 grates, but a few easily beaten mats and running 
 water in every bedroom, these things will be obvious 
 necessities to so modern an architect as ours, and we 
 need say no more about them. We must have also a 
 sanatorium under the direct management of a resident 
 doctor. Strange it is, though, that any school which 
 has the impertinence to ask over a hundred pounds a 
 
124 THE GRECIANS 
 
 year for training and keeping boys as boarders should 
 be destitute of these advantages. 
 
 HOFMAN. But we have not yet entered directly 
 into the subject of physical training. Is there really 
 any necessity to do so.-^ I should have thought 
 that we overdo it, if anything, in our English 
 schools. 
 
 Smith. Our system of games — and, considering all 
 things, what a splendid system it is! — is quite unique. 
 Do not laugh at me, Hofman, I mean something more 
 than a platitude. Nowhere abroad, unless we count 
 America, can it be paralleled. On the whole, it makes 
 for the happiness of boys. Compare the merry and 
 confident aspect of our English youth with the miser- 
 able, pinched, prematurely earnest appearance of 
 continental children. Think of the lives of German 
 schoolboys, embittered by the deadly gymnastics, the 
 huge classes, the incessant cram, the perpetual and 
 ruinous horror of the final examination. Think of 
 the ghastly statistics of child suicide in Prussia. Is it 
 not this appalling system that is making the modern 
 German so different a man from the old — is making 
 him the great brutalizing force of the world? How 
 glorious is England in comparison! Perhaps, indeed, 
 our discussion is futile: did all public schools give 
 such a mental education as the most intelligent boys 
 receive at Winchester and Eton, it would seem rash 
 and Utopian to expect still finer things of English 
 education, for the physical part of it is so invariably 
 excellent. But still, if there be little room for improve- 
 ment, so much the easier to fill up the space. And 
 
PHYSICAL TRAINING 125 
 
 after all, our system of games and sports has become 
 very perverted. 
 
 My great objection is that we have so little variety 
 in our games. Cricket, for instance, is usually the sole 
 diversion of a boy's summer term, except in the case 
 of the three or four schools which practise rowing. 
 There is no better game (we have heard this perhaps 
 a little too often) for encouraging adroitness of hand 
 and quickness of eye ; but it is of no more use in the 
 formation of bodily vigour and beauty than any other 
 outdoor, not sedentary, occupation. Now cricket is a 
 pastime which only the proficient can possibly enjoy, 
 that is to say, it is a game fit for about half the school. 
 What happens to the other boys in the long summer 
 afternoons? Are they allowed to take such exercises 
 as they please, to walk, bicycle, or play tennis? Very 
 rarely. Is there any school in Britain where boys are 
 taught those two superb, manly, and most British 
 exercises — the riding of a horse and the sailing of a 
 ship? Is then the only reasonable alternative enforced? 
 Are the boys who dislike cricket and incompetent at 
 it taught the game with special care, and helped to 
 take their part by diligent individual instruction, like 
 boys who are backward in their work? No, not any- 
 where in the kingdom. What happens in most large 
 schools is that there are special games made up of 
 athletic dullards, who are set three times a week or 
 more to play out amongst each other the weariest, the 
 most melancholy of farces, captained by some un- 
 athletic, ineffectual classical scholar. For five hours 
 the diverting sport continues, interrupted by a roll call, 
 
126 THE GRECIANS 
 
 which ensures that no reprobate shall have shirked 
 this noble duty for a little aimless wandering among 
 woods and hills. Only too well do these incompetent 
 and despicable boys (none of them, I am sure, of the 
 stuff which has made England what she is) know the 
 emptiness of waiting, the interminable dullness of field- 
 ing, the too brief joy of batting. Thus trained to per- 
 ceive the inner charm of cricket, what a welcome 
 change, what an instructive education, to spend from 
 time to time a whole sun-bright afternoon watching, 
 by compulsion, school matches. 
 
 The trouble in England is that we have never 
 taken games seriously enough. We look upon them 
 as a spectacle or show on a level with the music hall 
 and the variety entertainment. How else could we 
 endure the existence of professionals? In true sport 
 no professionalism could ever be admitted; but as the 
 thing is a show, why, the professionals make it a better 
 show. Let us have professionals to instruct our boys 
 and to roll the pitch; for what other reason an intel- 
 ligent English sportsman should desire their existence 
 I cannot tell. 
 
 If we really consider the matter, we have never 
 treated athletics as a vital part of our national 
 physical training. We are always intent upon the 
 show games. We forget that it is infinitely more 
 important that boys should enjoy themselves in some 
 healthy way really suited to their natures, than that 
 they should become adepts in cricket or football. 
 
 HOFMAN. Cricket and similar games do, I suppose, 
 train character, and there is a legend that they train 
 
PHYSICAL TRAINING 127 
 
 boys in unselfishness, although I have not particularly 
 remarked that school athletes are of a sweet, unselfish, 
 retiring disposition. But I must say I do not consider 
 cricket an ideal way of spending the afternoon, even 
 for the proficient cricketers. It is played in the open 
 air, but it is not part of the outdoor life as I under- 
 stand it. 
 
 Smith. What do you mean by the outdoor life? 
 HOFMAN. I suppose I am thinking of my favourite 
 pupils who spend the afternoon with me exploring old 
 quarries in the search of fossils, or grubbing in ditches 
 for rare plants, or tracking birds and beasts with in- 
 finite stealth to their lairs, not to destroy but to 
 observe. I look at them, tired, healthy, happy, and 
 voracious, returning from a long tramp. Would that 
 afternoon have been better spent even in the most 
 brilliant cricket? The fact is, it's so much less trouble 
 to make all boys play one game and stick to one 
 occupation. I rather think it's a neglect of duty on 
 the part of their teachers. 
 
 Smith. You are right as far as you go, Hofman. 
 I think it is clear that we must have more variety in 
 our games and occupations. Even pure athletics, such 
 as running and swimming, are rather neglected; there 
 are a thousand other games little played in schools, 
 yet not contemptible and not unsuitable for boys — 
 fives, golf, tennis, lacrosse. What boy even learns to 
 punt, or is seriously taught to drive a motor? 
 Edwinson will doubtlessly tell us that football and 
 especially cricket are very beautiful, picturesque 
 games, very traditional and fine. But we are con- 
 
128 THE GRECIANS 
 
 cerned with English physique, which is more im- 
 portant than EngHsh cricket, and to improve this 
 physique we must subject our weak or ill-formed 
 boys to special training. Men who play cricket well 
 may be round-shouldered, men who row well may 
 over-develop themselves on one side, and, according 
 to a well-substantiated legend, if they row too well 
 they die young. Gymnasts tend to assimilate to the 
 Eugene Sandow type, to become of dwarfed and 
 monstrous appearance, with exaggerated muscles 
 standing out in knobs all over their bodies. Rather, 
 then, my dear Edwinson, we will revert to the MHAEN 
 AFAN of your beloved Greeks; we will be mindful of 
 the types of Polycleitus. To do this we must give a 
 special, not a general, gymnastic training; we must 
 take our athletics more seriously, and spend more 
 trouble over them. We will not permit boys to stand 
 in platoons and swing bars up and down; we will not 
 be delighted to watch them promiscuously scrambling 
 over the horse and up the ladder; we will not let them 
 grow into short and hideous gymnasts, but we will, 
 with the aid of medical wisdom and specialized 
 gymnastics, cure round shoulders, narrow chests, and 
 spindle arms; and I think we shall be rewarded for 
 our pains. 
 
 HOFMAN. Would you not teach them also some- 
 thing about the laws of health and the structure of 
 the human body? 
 
 Smith. The older boys and those who are going to 
 be doctors or artists may learn all they like. How to 
 bandage a wound, how to save life, what to take for a 
 
PHYSICAL TRAINING 129 
 
 cold every one should know. But we must be very 
 careful, or we may give them that little knowledge 
 which is so dangerous ; they will either not say when 
 they are ill and try to cure themselves, or whenever 
 they have a pain in the back they will come trembling 
 to us and announce that they have Bright's disease. 
 
 HOFMAN. Then about hours of work, holidays 
 and so forth, are you contented with the present-day 
 system? I think it is an important question. 
 
 Smith. There seems little to suggest. There should 
 be far less preparation of work in evenings, far more 
 direct plunging into a new subject in class. There 
 should never be any work before breakfast at all, but 
 boys might get up earlier than they usually do — at 
 about 6.30 in summer, bathe, and have breakfast at 
 once; while in winter they need not rise till about 
 eight o'clock. The youngest boys, however, ought 
 not to get up as early as suggested in summ.er, or 
 their day will be too long. There should be two half- 
 holidays a week in the winter terms with a short and 
 interesting hour's work in the late afternoon, but 
 three full half-holidays a week in summer; and every 
 opportunity should be given to boys for spending 
 their Sundays in excursions over the country-side, 
 for the attendant evils of these excursions — the irate 
 farmer whose horse has been ridden round a field, the 
 boy with the catapult, the boy who goes into a public 
 house to be grand and drinks a mug of beer, and the 
 boy who surreptitiously buys Black Dog cigarettes 
 — are not very terrible after all, and the attendant 
 advantages are too great to be missed. 
 
 K 
 
130 THE GRECIANS 
 
 HOFMAN. We shall not, I hope, maintain discipline 
 with the rod? 
 
 Smith. We shall, Hofman. There is, 1 admit, a 
 certain peril of the flagellant vices. But we must run 
 so inconsiderable a risk for the sake of considerable 
 advantages. At any rate we shall not lend ourselves 
 to the vulgar opinion of those sentimentalists who 
 consider it degrading to endure physical pain, and 
 laying a practically obscene stress on the torments of 
 physical discomfort, pathetically invite us to use moral 
 suasion. Punishment is absolutely necessary in a large 
 school. It must be proportionable to the offence, and 
 the only two possible punishments that are so propor- 
 tionable are detention and caning. In the hours of 
 detention we should insist that a boy be occupied in 
 some form of hard but profitable work; malicious 
 penalties, such as the assignment of " lines," we shall 
 esteem beneath us. Boys would usually themselves 
 prefer to be dealt with quickly and summarily, and it 
 is very possible we shall give them the choice of treat- 
 ment when we can. Most head masters nowadays are 
 extremely careful not to touch particularly delicate 
 and nervous boys, and the days when floggings in 
 school were a real and serious evil ceased with the 
 death of that head master, often called great, who 
 made his school famous as the place " where they 
 flogged the boys so." When we punish boys we shall, 
 I fear, have to lecture them a little ; they must be 
 aware of our displeasure, particularly if the offence is 
 of a mean or underhand kind; they must be clearly 
 shown that they have done the sort of thing the best 
 
PHYSICAL TRAINING 131 
 
 boys do not do. On the other hand, if they are caught 
 smoking, or arraigned for juvenile clamour, we will 
 not weep over the enormity of the offence, but deal 
 with it succinctly. I may be wrong in this; to tell 
 you the truth, I consider the sentimentalist more 
 poisonous than the flagellant. 
 
 Edwinson. We have, perhaps, left the most difficult 
 problem untouched. 
 
 Smith. {Cheerfully?^ Oh, the sex problem : there is 
 no difficulty about that. Or if there is, it lies in the 
 sentimental obtuseness of the public. Wells has 
 settled the matter for ever by suggesting a book on 
 the subject ; and such a book every boy in the school 
 shall possess. It must contain the exact truth with- 
 out exaggerating dangers or threatening hell. It must 
 clearly state that the popular prejudices are against 
 certain things, without agreeing or disagreeing with 
 those prejudices. It will clearly add that, for the 
 school's sake, any immorality discovered will be se- 
 verely and corporally punished. We can avoid in our 
 open-air system as well as in any other those per- 
 nicious partitioned dormitories, which so obviously 
 foster vice. We shall not expel boys ; and we shall 
 not, like the conventional head master, pretend to 
 faint with horror when we discover others acting as 
 we might perhaps with a little temptation have acted 
 ourselves, had we ever been members of so monastic 
 an establishment as a public school. 
 
 Edwinson. The chapel is perhaps a help. 
 
 Smith. Emotional purity in the young is to my 
 mind an insidious form of indecency. It is laying too 
 
132 THE GRECIANS 
 
 much stress on things. The normal boy troubles as 
 little about the matter as possible: and he is perfectly 
 and entirely right. 
 
 So saying, Smith seemed to think he had exhausted 
 the question, for he changed the subject a little 
 abruptly, and began to criticize the poetry of Brown- 
 
IV 
 
 TECHNICAL TRAINING 
 
 The three friends were at Pistoia. 
 
 They had arrived a little after noon, and had spent 
 an hour or two already in observation, and were 
 entranced that this little town should be a treasure- 
 mine of beauty, and contain more fair and noble 
 creations than three English counties. For in it are 
 many large churches of white marble striped with 
 black, fascinating the curious. And there is a pleasant 
 Duomo and a noble baptistery. And a superb pulpit 
 by him of Pisa, who first learnt from unearthed Greek 
 marbles that even stone men may move and be divine. 
 And very old curious reliefs by Gruamons and 
 Adodat, who did not know this. And, above all, there 
 is the finest work of the Delia Robbias, that frieze on 
 the Ospedale, where in bright-coloured relief are 
 sweetly represented the seven Works of Mercy. Thus 
 it was that, possessed by that peace and largeness of 
 the spirit that comes to those who have lovingly con- 
 templated works of beauty and structures of delight, 
 they sat down in the evening in a little cafe in a side 
 street and, just as the last rays of sunset were leaning 
 across the plain to kiss the Apennines, earnestly re- 
 opened their discussion. 
 
 HOFMAN. As far as I can remember what you said 
 133 
 
134 THE GRECIANS 
 
 at Bologna, we must now deal with technical training, 
 that is, with instruction given in order to enable our 
 boys to earn their livings. It seems we must either 
 give a few general ideas or enter into a mass of detail 
 and suggest what is necessary for each profession or 
 trade. 
 
 Edwinson. Trade? I presumed we were reform- 
 ing the ordinary English public school. Are we going 
 to reform board-school education as well ? 
 
 Smith. We cannot talk about a select school while 
 we are considering ideals of education. 
 
 Edwinson. But we cannot under any conceivable 
 circumstances educate together our diplomats and 
 our shoe-blacks. 
 
 Smith. Which would be injured most if we did, I 
 wonder: our diplomats or our shoe-blacks? 
 
 Edwinson. It would only vulgarize our diplomats 
 and make our shoe-blacks discontented. 
 
 Smith. Then you consider that discontent in a 
 shoe-black is not divine, and that the quality of a 
 gentleman is skin deep? Never mind, Edwinson. 
 You believe in aristocracy, and so do I. You hate 
 vulgarity of manners; I dislike it also, but not as 
 much as I dislike vulgarity of mind. If I do not hold 
 your belief in the British aristocracy of to-day it is 
 because I find that most of them, except those few 
 who are actively engaged in State service, are both 
 vacuous and vulgar. You may know them better 
 than I do, but, as far as I can judge, their views on art 
 and life are as vulgar as their taste in amusement and 
 their attitudes in motor cars. Our philosophers and 
 
TECHNICAL TRAINING 135 
 
 artists find little of the encouragement from them 
 which they would have infallibly obtained two hun- 
 dred years ago ; they have been forced to take sides 
 with democracy. Some day, perhaps, our men of 
 sense and wisdom will form a party to themselves 
 and wrest the reins of government from demagogues 
 and quacks. But you know well enough that our 
 best and most venerable public schools contain num- 
 bers of boys whose grandfathers were, shall we say^ 
 shoe-blacks, and that some of these boys are tolerable 
 and some the reverse, because some have minds and 
 some have not. It is education that refines and 
 mental quiescence that degrades. We will have no 
 deformed natures in our school ; but we will teach all 
 who are capable of receiving instruction how to talk 
 pleasant English and to behave prettily. Phonetics 
 will help us. And any poor boy of mean birth who 
 shows himself worthy of the higher education shall 
 receive it. We will make a scheme to help them out 
 of the school funds, partly by giving scholarships, 
 partly by lending them money to be repaid when 
 they are in secure positions, earning a fair income. If 
 a duke's son, on the other hand, shows himself incap- 
 able of learning manners, he shall either learn the 
 trade for which he is fitted or leave us. 
 
 Edwinson. I am afraid the dukes will not s'end 
 their sons to us. 
 
 Smith. Then we will hope to have the sons of 
 north country artisans: the class has begun to think 
 independently and to delight in reading, and they are 
 the best class of men in England. But to return to 
 
136 THE GRECIANS 
 
 our technical training. Not only is it impossible to 
 talk about separate trade details, but also impossible 
 to build the small town which we would require if we 
 were going to teach a number of trades. A boy will 
 have to leave school early if he wants to specialize in 
 book-binding or horse training. So we will talk first 
 of all of those things which will be useful to all boys 
 throughout life, and beginning at the beginning we 
 must consider reading and writing. We must teach 
 them spelling rationally and by derivation. 
 
 Edwinson. But if they know no Latin ? 
 
 Smith. A boy can learn that medius means middle 
 without spending years at Cicero and Horace. You 
 can tell a boy that the word we pronounce fewsha is 
 connected with the German for a fox, even if he 
 hasn't read and could not read the second part of 
 " Faust." And I don't much mind about spelling 
 when all is said and done : it is matter of a special 
 faculty of observation, and a man may be a splendid 
 engineer and write " parallel " with an " 1 " too few. 
 That boys ought to read beautifully is a fact so 
 obvious that it has been universally forgotten: our 
 young men are a tribe of mumblers. But it is about 
 writing that I have very definite suggestions to make. 
 I am convinced of the futility of copy-books, double- 
 lined paper, and all other aids to calligraphy. I am 
 persuaded that it is absurd to worry about the writing 
 of a child of ten : I am also persuaded that it is very 
 important to worry about the writing of a boy of 
 fifteen. To teach beauty of writing is perhaps im- 
 possible; the beauty of a writing lies in its character, 
 
TECHNICAL TRAINING 137 
 
 and nothing is more revolting than a copper-plate 
 fist. But we can teach legibility, and even speed. 
 
 Then we should consider arithmetic. But, Hofman, 
 you know more about that than I do. 
 
 Hofman. I think I can point out to you a serious 
 mistake which modern educationalists make. They 
 want little boys to be so intelligent. They yearn to 
 show them the reason of things. They would like 
 them to work out for themselves the theory of sub- 
 traction, and they revel in a horribly complicated 
 system of shortened division. It is so much easier for 
 a small boy to learn things by rule. Let the problems 
 of numbers come when he has learnt his tables, and 
 can add up money, and has mastered the fair twin 
 systems of fractions. 
 
 Smith. Yes, Hofman, and do you think we need 
 worry them with any but the most important of our 
 horrible weights and measures? Might we not keep 
 hidden from them the mysteries of pecks, scruples, and 
 bushels till they come actually to need them, and 
 abolish discount sums, stock and share sums, com- 
 pound interest sums till the days when they have 
 more than fourpence a week to spend on speculation? 
 Shall we not tire of papering rectangular rooms with 
 square windows? But since we are going to have 
 v/orkshops they will be able to take a practical 
 interest in many of these things. The measuring of 
 the wood and the calculation of its price will not in 
 our school be left to the carpenter, and the misfits of 
 home-made cupboard doors will give them sound 
 lessons in practical geometry. 
 
138 THE GRECIANS 
 
 Edwinson. We have now mentioned reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic. Will our hopelessly stupid 
 people, our bricklayers and boot-blacks, need anything 
 more? 
 
 Smith. In the ideal state, as I conceive it, they 
 would not. The government would ensure that these 
 limited individuals should live in comfort and cleanli- 
 ness, and be paid in proportion to the simplicity of 
 their occupations. In an ideal country, if any of them 
 in after years found his intellect developing, and began 
 to read books in our free libraries, he could at any 
 time take the State examination, and, by passing it, 
 become entitled to a more profitable and less hum- 
 drum occupation. 
 
 HOFMAN. If schools like ours were established all 
 over this ideal England, and if you were to give all 
 boys a real chance, unskilled labour would become 
 very dear. 
 
 Smith. Then we shall have to invent more machines 
 to take the place of unskilled labour, my dear Hofman. 
 But we do not live in an ideal England, but in a 
 country where the stupidest boys may be the heirs 
 to fortunes, for all we know, and where they all will 
 certainly be entitled to votes. Let us then consider 
 what might be done under existing circumstances. I 
 think our plan will be this. We will wait till the boys 
 are fifteen years old, and then we will take those who 
 are deriving no benefit from their more advanced 
 classes which they attend, and put them in a class 
 together, where we must endeavour to teach them, if 
 we can, the elementary rules of argument, and even 
 
TECHNICAL TRAINING 139 
 
 show them that they need not believe a thing because 
 it is printed and published. We shall, perhaps, be able 
 to do this by means of examples of vicious argument 
 and petitiones principii culled from the daily papers. 
 Also they ought to know a little of the inner working 
 of political events during the last twenty years, and 
 we will read to them the best stories of English history 
 to make them proud of their country. Also, if we are 
 cynical, we will teach them the doctrines of Carlyle to 
 make them proud of their work. And if a Plato arises 
 to turn political economy into something at once 
 simple and profound, we will teach them that. We 
 shall fail, perhaps, to make any impression on these 
 unfortunates, but we shall not have been guilty of 
 neglect. 
 
 HOFMAN. But the difficulty is that we cannot 
 really divide our school up into sheep and goats, or wise 
 and foolish, even by examination. We are going to 
 have, in our school, boys of a hundred different grades 
 of intelligence, a hundred different aptitudes. 
 
 Smith. And we shall have to grade our instruction 
 accordingly. Our guardians, our brilliant boys, our 
 ^YAAKES will learn everything they can. But 
 obviously our doctors will have more of the instruc- 
 tion we give to our <I>YAAKE2: than our bakers or 
 butchers. All that is a mere matter of detail. 
 
 HoFMAN. Ah, had you ever been a schoolmaster, 
 Smith, you would not prattle so merrily about matters 
 of detail. We have not yet said a word about the 
 higher education : but look at the mess in which we 
 are already involved. Boys who are going to be 
 
HO THE GRECIANS 
 
 boot-blacks will be attending the bottom class in 
 political economy; boys in the top class of political 
 economy will be attending the lowest class in boot- 
 blacking. It seems your rule is simply this, that we 
 are going to teach everybody everything they can 
 learn. 
 
 Smith. Not such a bad ideal either, Hofman; 
 but the picture you draw is perverse and unjust. 
 However, I think it would be better to put a little 
 order into the apparent chaos in this way. We are 
 going to draw a sharp dividing line in our table of 
 school hours. The morning will be spent entirely in 
 teaching boys things that will help them to earn their 
 money. The morning will be devoted to workshops, 
 bookkeeping, shorthand, all work of any sort that 
 is done with the object of passing examinations, not 
 excluding that specialized training in writing Greek 
 and Latin poetry, which enables a man to gain 
 scholarships and earn his living as a don. Of course 
 it will be hard to arrange, for boys may be going to 
 earn money in a thousand different ways; but we 
 have pointed out that very few of the more specialized 
 sorts of technical training can be given in school. It 
 comes to little more than saying that the ordinary 
 school work done on the scientific or modern side of 
 an up-to-date school day will be compressed into the 
 morning, with the huge advantage that we are neither 
 going to worry our scientist with Greek irregular verbs 
 nor our architects with chemistry from the moment 
 when the boy or his parents or we ourselves, judging 
 from the boy's preferences and character, have decided 
 
TECHNICAL TRAINING 141 
 
 what profession he is to follow. Before the age of 
 fifteen, by which time he ought to have made up his 
 mind, a boy will be given his chance of working at 
 various studies and occupations to test his capacity or 
 preference. 
 
 The afternoon we shall employ in real education — 
 but Florence is the place where we will talk of that, 
 nor could I imagine a better scene for so high a 
 discussion. 
 
 Edwinson. It is a pity we cannot connect Pistoia, 
 too, with our technical training, since Florence will 
 be so suitable, and we connected Bologna with the 
 inaugural discussion, and the mountain heights with 
 physical accomplishments. 
 
 Smith. Well, Pistoia used to be a great manu- 
 facturing town in the old days. It was the birthplace 
 of pistols: hence its name. 
 
 HOFMAN. See " Baedeker " 
 
V 
 
 THE GRECIANS, OR TRUE EDUCATION 
 
 The melodious name of Florence calls up such de- 
 lightful and extravagant memories that many way- 
 farers, who have the love of books and pictures in 
 their souls, have been disappointed with the austere 
 appearance of the city, with her narrow yet straight 
 and gloomy streets, her huge rectangular palaces, her 
 vast and unsatisfying cathedral. But if on a summer 
 afternoon a man should ascend, as our friends as- 
 cended, the hill of Fiesole, he would see from that 
 famous eminence the City of Flowers, wonderfully set 
 among her gardens and villas, and he would appre- 
 ciate that tremendous dome which rises high above 
 the plain of Arno, like some fabled antique omphalos 
 of the world, and he might cry, perverting to himself 
 that gentle ballad of old : 
 
 Where will you bury me? In Saint Mary of the Flowers. 
 Wherewith will you cover me? With violets and roses. 
 
 They sat on the terrace of a little inn gazing at the 
 prospect in the glorious light of afternoon, for they 
 had already stretched forth their hands over the 
 dainties, and eaten and drunk in abundance. It had 
 been arranged that they should not discuss what 
 Smith called true education, but that he should write 
 
 142 
 
THE GRECIANS, OR TRUE EDUCATION 143 
 
 down for them his thoughts on the subject in con- 
 nected form. And this he had done. 
 
 "Do let us hear you read now, Harold," said 
 Edwinson. 
 
 The young man took a sheaf of paper out of his 
 pocket and quietly began. 
 
 " I require that those who listen to my words should 
 hold one faith with me. They must believe with me 
 in the value of human reason ; they must love beauti- 
 ful things and consider them important; they must 
 be enthusiastic for their fellow-men. They must 
 believe that it is possible to learn, and even that it is 
 possible to teach. Otherwise my words will be vain 
 and convey neither meaning nor persuasion. 
 
 " I have to realize that I have little new to say. I, 
 like Plato, desire to create (I>YAAKES. If we really 
 understand that golden book of the ' Republic,' such 
 a type of the classic in its form, so strangely modern 
 in its theory, so simple and so subtle, we shall perhaps 
 think that no more need be said, and that by close 
 following of its precepts we may be able to create 
 ^YAAKES in modern England. We must realize that 
 in attacking poetry as a means of education, Plato is 
 merely attacking, under a decent veil, the popular 
 religion of which Homer was the Bible; we must be 
 perpetually on the watch for Plato's quiet humour : 
 and then the ' Republic ' becomes for us in practical 
 matters a wise and attractive guide. Yet we have to 
 adapt Plato's theories to the modern world, and that 
 is what I shall now attempt. Forgive me, then, if I 
 become dull, prosaic, and detailed in my ardour for 
 
144 THE GRECIANS 
 
 common sense. I have not prepared a surprise for 
 you; I am not going to expound any startling or 
 novel, theory ; I am not going to suggest a short cut 
 to perfection ; but I am going to trace out in detail a 
 course of education which I hope will appeal to the 
 thoughtful as possible, desirable, and sufficient. 
 
 " I must suppose, moreover, for my purposes, that 
 the school which is to rise on that bright English bay 
 of ours will somewhat partake of the nature of a 
 university. I must have at least five years of a boy's 
 intelligent life. For the education. I intend to give to 
 those who are fit to receive it (whom I intend hence- 
 forward to call Grecians, borrowing a delightful term 
 from the traditions of Christ's Hospital), is very uni- 
 versal and very difficult. Keeping clear before me all 
 the danger I run of turning my pupils into dilettanti, 
 I am going to teach them to be as far as possible 
 universal in their comprehension and admiration of 
 the mysteries and beauties of life. Our Grecians, when 
 they leave us, will have seen, as it were from a height 
 suddenly, the whole world of knowledge stretching 
 out in rich plains and untraversed seas. 
 
 " Let me at this point lay down very clearly who 
 these Grecians of mine will be. I intend education to 
 be given, in the complete form which I am going to 
 describe, to those boys in the school who have the best 
 and most refined intelligence. In an ideal state the«e 
 boys would not have to earn their living: they would 
 automatically become rulers of the State, or else be 
 subsidized to live in leisure as artists or critics. In our 
 actual England we can give this complete education 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 145 
 
 only to the sons of the rich, and to those few boys 
 which our school funds enable us to support, not only 
 here, but afterwards. To give a boy this complete 
 education, we must keep him till he is at least twenty- 
 one. In England of the present day he would find 
 himself at that age well prepared to take, after 
 another year's special work, such an examination as 
 that admitting to the Indian Civil Service. I mention 
 tliis, because it may show that some parents might 
 risk leaving their sons with us to receive a useless and 
 fine education, and yet hope that boys so educated 
 might subsequently earn their livings even in the 
 existing state of society. But the whole virtue and 
 beauty of true education must depend on its absolute 
 isolation from the prying influence of the State or 
 University. I do not mean by this that we shall object 
 to examinations as such, but will have nothing to do 
 with examinations which lead us out of our chosen 
 path. Our only examinations will be the school ex- 
 aminations. By examining boys, and by no other 
 method, shall we admit them to our select company; 
 by examining we will assign to them their rank in 
 the school. I have little patience with those who 
 abuse examinations. An examiner may be stupid and 
 set worthless papers; but provided the papers be well 
 set, examination is the sole adequate test of a boy's 
 capacity. For we have no sympathy with Cecil 
 Rhodes, nor with the cheerful, popular, and chiefly 
 ignorant crowds who come to Oxford under his fan- 
 tastic testament: we do not like this democratic selec- 
 tion of the prize favourites: we pin our faith to a 
 
 L 
 
146 THE GRECIANS 
 
 written and evident intellectual superiority. We mis- 
 trust the boy who is said to be ' very good at work 
 really, but no use at exams.' Such a boy is either so 
 morally deficient that he cannot rise to a crisis and 
 concentrate his energy and ideas — and far be it from 
 me to admit such a one to be a Grecian— or else it 
 means that he is incapable of literary composition or 
 self-expression; or else that his thoughts and facts 
 are so confused that he cannot write them down. 
 There is a great deal wrong with boys who fail at 
 examinations. Furthermore, I believe in prizes; I 
 refuse to expect the young, however intelligent they 
 may be, and however delightful they may find their 
 studies, to show that single-hearted devotion to work 
 which we demand of the research scholar or the 
 specialist. 
 
 " How, then, shall we select those boys who are to 
 be given this most full education? Entirely from 
 those who are most proficient in the afternoon work. 
 What I am going to discuss now is the education that 
 the highest form in the school will receive. Boys who 
 arrive at this high standard will be, where possible, 
 exempt from the technical training accorded to others : 
 they will devote morning and afternoon to the culture 
 of the mind. Now all boys in the school will be com- 
 pelled to take part in this afternoon work, be they 
 stupid or clever, old or young. The more intelligent 
 they are, the more their profession will have to suit 
 itself to their education. But we have not thought it 
 worth while to do more than suggest by references 
 here and there, what the afternoon education will 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 147 
 
 mean in early years. And if I have confused the ideal 
 and real at times, I think I may be excused, for it is 
 in reality quite easy to perceive how far my ideal 
 could be followed at the present day. But to make 
 quite clear what I actually intend, I will trace the 
 ordinary careers of Auberon, Arthur, Jack, Montague, 
 Peter, and Tom. 
 
 " Auberon is the son of a rich nobleman who has 
 every faith in a humane education. He does not 
 require his boy to prepare for any examinations, as 
 he can get a diplomatic or other post if the boy 
 demands one. Auberon arrives at school between the 
 ages of ten and twelve, knowing how to read, write, 
 and add. As he is under no necessity of learning a 
 trade, or fitting himself for a professional examination, 
 he spends the morning hours attending lessons in the 
 Latin and French languages, which are being given to 
 those boys who have to take examinations in the 
 subject. He shines in the afternoon classes; he has a 
 passion for reading plays, and is never weary of 
 observing pictures. In after years he soon passes the 
 examination which admits him into our Grecians, and 
 follows their course of education, which will shortly 
 be described, staying with us to the age of twenty- 
 one. 
 
 "Arthur is little less gifted by nature than Auberon, 
 but his father cannot support him in after life, and the 
 school is not yet rich enough to do so. He is allowed 
 to attend all sorts of classes in the morning: at the 
 age of fourteen he finds he prefers science to languages, 
 and determines to become a doctor. At the same time 
 
148 THE GRECIANS 
 
 he is admitted as a Grecian. He must still continue 
 under the old system and work at science in the 
 morning and receive his general education in the 
 afternoon. It is obvious we can only teach him some 
 of the things we teach to Auberon, so we choose for 
 him the lightest and most amusing parts of general 
 education, encourage him to read English and French, 
 and to listen to music, of which he is very fond ; and 
 he accompanies us on those excursions into pure reason 
 the nature of which we will hereafter explain ; but we 
 do not worry him with such difficult subjects as Latin 
 and Greek. We hope he will be no worse a doctor 
 and no less happy a man for having once taken interest 
 in things quite outside his profession. 
 
 "Jack's parents are very poor indeed; as a matter 
 of fact they are grocers in a small way, living at 
 Kensal Rise. Yet Jack also is one of our most charm- 
 ing and intelligent boys. We have given him a scholar- 
 ship at school, but we cannot, unfortunately, support 
 him throughout life. We must assign him a profession, 
 and we choose for him the profession of classical 
 scholarship as being one of those in which a man may 
 continue the pursuit of pure learning. He will obvi- 
 ously profit by the same Latin and Greek classes 
 which Auberon and his fortunate companions attend 
 in the mornings (these classes will be in the mornings, 
 I say, for the sake of the many people like Arthur 
 who are spending the morning in the professional 
 work and have no time to spend on such a difficult 
 subject as classical learning, but are ready to join their 
 fellow Grecians in the afternoon). But Jack will not 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 149 
 
 be with Auberon for more than the morning hour 
 which he devotes to classics. Instead of sharing his 
 lectures on European history and art, he will be work- 
 ing at the writing of Greek and Latin compositions 
 and unravelling the mysteries of classical philology 
 and grammar. We never let him cram for his scholar- 
 ship, yet he obtains it, which is very surprising. 
 
 " Montague is like Auberon, the son of a rich noble- 
 man, but he has inherited from his family an almost 
 ineradicable stupidity. He brightens up a little, how- 
 ever, when we talk to him about railway engines and 
 motor boats. We frankly tell the duke that we cannot 
 give his son a good general education because he is 
 incapable of profiting by it, but that we could turn 
 him into a tolerable engineer. The angry peer takes 
 his son away from us and sends him to Eton to learn 
 the Latin genders after writing an indignant letter 
 to the " Times " about our old English traditions and 
 the value of gentlemen. Montague subsequently enters 
 Parliament and becomes a prominent high church- 
 man. 
 
 " Peter's father is a decayed tradesman ; and as 
 Peter is not a very brilliant boy, and never becomes 
 a Grecian, all he can hope for, unless we help him, is 
 to become a decayed tradesman in his turn. Peter, 
 however, is quite good at mathematics and longs to 
 be a surveyor. If we can, we help him to become one, 
 on the understanding that he will repay us in future 
 days when he is earning a good income. Though we 
 have made no contract with him, contracts with minors 
 being invalid, Peter has old-fashioned notions about 
 
150 THE GRECIANS 
 
 what is honourable, and repays us as soon as he is 
 
 able. 
 
 " Tom's father, never a rich man, dies, leaving no- 
 thing for Tom, who is a hopeless donkey. We do not 
 cut Tom adrift, but procure for him a position on a 
 ranch where his athletic prowess will stand him in 
 good stead. Poor Tom ! 
 
 " Having now suggested by these many examples 
 more clearly, I think, than I could have done by pages 
 of rules and explanations the sort of way in which 
 various boys will be treated in our school, I will now 
 pass on directly to explain that course of education 
 which Auberon will follow, and which will occupy both 
 his mornings and his afternoons as soon as he has 
 (perhaps at the age of fifteen) passed the examination 
 which admits him a Grecian. 
 
 " In doing so I shall refer from time to time to the 
 beginnings of this education — to the sort of study 
 which occupied Auberon's afternoons before he be- 
 came a Grecian ; but on the whole I think 1 may leave 
 the details of his early education in the humanities to 
 common sense. 
 
 "The first point I want to emphasize is that we 
 intend to assign various importance to the various 
 branches of knowledge, of which I hold some to be of 
 far greater value than others. 
 
 " First and above all things our guardians must be 
 philosophers. The world needs men who think clearly, 
 who consider facts in their just proportion to the 
 universe, who are not carried away by winds of doc- 
 trine, who can laugh the laugh of knowledge at epoch- 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 151 
 
 making thoughts from Buda-Pesth or at scientific 
 excursions into Christian apologetics. 
 
 " Yet I do not think it will be necessary to weary- 
 any boy who has not a special love of philosophy with 
 the details of the history of thought, or of the hundred 
 systems of a hundred philosophers. Certain books, in- 
 deed, he must peruse to sharpen his critical faculties. 
 But instead of worrying him with the monads of 
 Leibniz or with the premature and cryptic utterances 
 of Thales and Heraclitus, instead of expecting him to 
 grasp the curious theories of Avicenna, Hutchinson, 
 and Hobbes, we will teach him Plato, Aristotle, Kant, 
 and some modern philosophies, not that he may be- 
 lieve, but that he may ponder; and at evening in the 
 shady garden overlooking the sea the Grecians will 
 assemble round their Socrates for earnest discussion. 
 This will be no neo-pagan revival, but a real continua- 
 tion of the work attempted in the Academy of Athens. 
 Moreover, we will permit all manner of men to come 
 and talk to our boys, since thus only can we prepare 
 them for a life in the course of which they will hear so 
 many conflicting doctrines. Pragmatists shall address 
 them with urgent persuasion on their lips ; parsons 
 shall work on their tender emotions and threaten them 
 with the wrath of God ; veiled mystics of the East shall 
 expound the Sufic ecstasy or the Buddhist Nirvana, 
 or exhibit the results of that antique process, salvation 
 through starvation, to their shuddering gaze. Are not 
 our pupils <I>YAAKES? Are they not Grecians? In 
 the evening we will discuss quietly together the Prag- 
 matist, the Parson, and the Hindu. 
 
152 THE GRECIANS 
 
 " But I am afraid a loud outcry will rise up against 
 us from the virtuous of this world. * What about their 
 morals ? You are sapping their morals, unholy cor- 
 rupters of youth! You deserve the hemlock. Insist on 
 a religion for them, insist at least on the Kantian 
 categorical imperative, unless you desire your boys to 
 re-enact the worst crimes of the house of Borgia.' 
 
 " But having a little moral shame ourselves we do 
 not teach them creeds in which we do not believe in 
 order to save ourselves trouble ; and we refuse in our 
 talks on philosophy to leave the categorical imperative 
 uncriticized. We teach our boys to think about 
 ethical problems, and a person not religiously inclined 
 might even think it w^as more moral to think deeply 
 about morality, and to take some trouble to form an 
 individual code of ethics, than to take the whole 
 matter on trust from parents or priests. And the 
 result of our boldness will perhaps not be so very 
 dreadful. Intelligent young men (as far as my uni- 
 versity experience goes) are seldom bestial or out- 
 rageous in their desires, and, curious to relate, I have 
 known hundreds of delightful people who have lived 
 the most refined, elegant, and humane lives without 
 the aid of religion or even of ethics. 
 
 " But the pure philosopher is not a sufficient ideal. 
 We may find, we often do find, that such a man is 
 wanting in several respects. In resolution, in power 
 of command, in ability to deal with a crisis he may 
 fail; but we must confess that no mental education 
 can form these high qualities. For them we must 
 look to a boy's natural endowments, and perhaps to 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 153 
 
 the physical training he receives ; and to test them we 
 must consider his influence with others. But we may 
 also find a pure philosopher very deficient in his 
 appreciation of the joy of life : and education can do 
 something for him here. For the joy of life is not to 
 be understood by the reading of Norwegian drama, 
 but is the heritage of those who have unlocked the 
 secret door that leads into the garden of the 
 senses. 
 
 " Hateful to me are those ignorant and thoughtless 
 people who say that taste has no rules and that art 
 cannot be taught : never did a more pernicious heresy 
 flourish. It is quite true that we cannot inspire the 
 blind with a passion for Rembrandt, or cause the 
 mentally deranged to read Shakespeare with delight. 
 But- one can always take an intelligent boy (I speak 
 from experience) and teach him first of all the history 
 of art ; and in the next place one can teach him to 
 read, look, or listen with observation and intelligence. 
 During this time, while he is acquiring what we may 
 call artistic experience, he will have become vaguely 
 appreciative. Now and only now is the time to in- 
 struct him in the principles of aesthetic law. For 
 such law exists : it is not a mere matter of individual 
 taste whether Velazquez be a better artist than Marcus 
 Stone or not; or Milton greater than Keble or 
 Vaughan. Velazquez is a better artist than Mr. Stone. 
 The law is a complicated law, of course, but to con- 
 sider its principles will be helpful ; and it is refreshing 
 for those who are bewildered by the disagreement of 
 aesthetic experts to note that the greater knowledge 
 
154 THE GRECIANS 
 
 those experts have, the more striking is their agree^ 
 ment in matters of appreciation. 
 
 " The three great arts I would place in this order 
 of educational importance — literature, representation, 
 music. I know there are some who consider music to 
 be the purest and best of arts, because it requires for 
 its comprehension no external intellectual effort, but 
 makes a direct appeal to the emotions. The justice 
 of this contention depends on our ideal of an art: that 
 music has less educational importance than the two 
 other sister arts becomes obvious if we admit the 
 contention of those who make this lofty claim for 
 music. For the understanding of a picture we require 
 our previous observation of tangible objects, perhaps 
 an appreciation of the value and expression of human 
 emotions, certainly a subtle sympathy with a period 
 of the world's art, life, and manners. But it is litera- 
 ture which appeals especially to educators as being 
 always a criticism of life, however incomplete we may 
 feel that definition to be: through reading literature 
 we enhance our delight in life. 
 
 " We must therefore give our boys the most com- 
 plete literary training possible, not often worrying 
 them by examinations and commentaries, nor ever 
 dreaming to make them acquainted with all the great 
 books of the world before the age of twenty-one. In- 
 stead we shall permit them to read in a pleasant 
 library, and give them advice or organize competitions 
 in special subjects from time to time. I see no reason 
 why Grecians or any other boys should ever be allowed 
 to read perfectly worthless tales of adventure and 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 155 
 
 magazine stuff, except to find therein examples of 
 bad style and stupidity. This I suggest in no puritan 
 spirit, with the idea that tales of pure delight or 
 adventure are in themselves evil, but because England 
 has produced Anthony Hope, Maurice Hewlett, Gil- 
 bert Chesterton among her minor writers of romance, 
 not to mention those truly great narrators of splendid 
 and exciting tales — Stevenson, Kipling, and Conrad. 
 Of poetry also our boys must read the best. We will 
 not give even our youngest boys inferior or so-called 
 patriotic poetry to read, out of the false conception 
 that such despicable stuff is specially suitable to a 
 childish understanding. Yet though we will keep 
 away from them the ' May Queen,' ' Casabianca,' and 
 the * Battle of the Baltic,' we will certainly enliven 
 the interest of the young in verse by giving them to 
 read such good stories as ' Sohrab and Rustum,' ' Enid 
 and Geraint,' or the ' White Ship.' We shall teach 
 them, moreover, that there are other beauties in 
 poetry beyond metrical swing, and neither in reading 
 English nor in reading classical verse shall boys, 
 once the metre is mastered, ever be allowed to read 
 to the obvious tramp of metre in a boarding-school 
 sing-song style. It is so easy to make them read with 
 more application of the refinements of poetic stress. 
 Nor shall we fall into the opposite error and let them 
 imagine, like our great actors, that blank verse should 
 be read like prose. But they shall read with dignity, 
 slowly, with realization of the beauty of each word, 
 and of how in verse each word has its value, not only 
 of sense, but of sound and association: they shall 
 
156 THE GRECIANS 
 
 pause at the end of the lines and mark the metre 
 subtly and not grossly: and all this maybe taught to 
 the wise. 
 
 "We will train our Grecian in the perception of 
 different styles by giving them exercises to write in 
 the varying styles of our EngHsh authors. We expect 
 boys to write mock Cicero and Tacitus; why, in the 
 name of common sense, can they not write mock 
 Gibbon or Carlyle? Nor do I think for a minute 
 that these exercises will hinder any from forming in 
 later years an original style, but rather the reverse 
 should happen, for boys so instructed will very clearly 
 understand before they leave us that style is attained 
 by scrupulous care and individuality of expression. 
 In the same way we shall write English, not Greek or 
 Latin, poetry, and, strange to say, we shall take these 
 compositions more and not less seriously than the 
 classical verse is taken now. We shall not give a 
 prize once a year for some absurd heroics on a set 
 theme, but we shall very diligently teach the art of 
 verse, initiating our boys by setting them to write 
 verse translations from poems in other tongues. Our 
 criticism will be ruthless : we shall point out vulgarity 
 of idea, insufficiency of thought, staleness of metaphor, 
 harshness of sound. We shall not necessarily pro- 
 duce great poets by this training, but we shall cer- 
 tainly produce young men who love poetry and (what 
 is rarer still) who understand it. The artist may have 
 an incomplete understanding of poetry ; but only the 
 artist can have a complete understanding of it. 
 
 "It is here that \vg must consider which dead or 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 157 
 
 livini^ tongues our guardians must know, for we shall 
 consider at present the learning of a language merely 
 as a means of reading a new literature. Latin and 
 Greek are inevitable, both from the intrinsic merit of 
 their literature and from the force of the historical 
 tradition which Edwinson once so fluently pointed 
 out. But our teaching of these languages will be 
 revolutionary except in the case of those boys who 
 are taking them as part of their technical training 
 in order to win university scholarships. There will be 
 no writing, and certainly (if Dr. Rouse will forgive 
 us) no speaking, of Latin and Greek. We shall let 
 such portions of the grammar as are not very im- 
 portant (genders and the parts of Latin verbs) be 
 rather learnt in the course of reading than laboriously 
 committed to memory. We shall read very quickly 
 in class, and confine ourselves to works which are 
 either good in themselves, historically interesting, or 
 influential on subsequent thought. We shall divert 
 the young with Homer, easiest of great poets, with 
 Lucian's ' Vera Historia,' with a few legends of old 
 Rome from Livy, and with fairy tales from Apuleius. 
 We will not weary even Grecians with Thucydides 
 when he talks about dreary expeditions into ^tolia; 
 but all Grecians shall read the fate of the Sicilian 
 expedition, and learn by heart the speech of Pericles. 
 Into Demosthenes we will only dip ; of Sophocles 
 and Euripides we will select the finest plays and read 
 them, as well as the ^schylean trilogy, more than 
 once. Herodotus we shall read through lightly, as is 
 fitting, and we shall take parts in the plays of Aristo- 
 
158 THE GRECIANS 
 
 phaiies in merry congress ; of Plato we shall never 
 weary, for he Is good for the soul. Nor shall we pre- 
 sume to forget Theocritus and the lyric fragments, or 
 those unfading roses of the Anthology which tell how 
 roses fade. And only for the very young shall we 
 Bowdlerize anything, since we are dealing, not with 
 urchins, but with the select and chosen few. 
 
 " In Latin we will trouble no reasonable soul with 
 Plautus and Terence, or with more of Cicero than is 
 needed to grasp the excellent style of that second- 
 rate intellect. Of Ovid, too, who is only interesting 
 when immoral, we shall read, for the style's sake, some 
 of the duller portions. To the claims of those death- 
 less school-books, the ^neid of Virgil, the Odes of 
 Horace, and the Satires of Juvenal, we shall submit, 
 for their fame is deserved ; Lucretius and Catullus are 
 too obvious to mention; TibuUus is a sleepy fellow; 
 and from Propertius we select. Tacitus tells us much 
 history and is pleasant to read, nor are the letters of 
 Pliny the Younger disagreeable; but Caesar I would 
 abandon to the historical specialist, and Livy I would 
 read in haste. Of Apuleius only one book is essenti- 
 ally disagreeable ; the rest is charming, and too long 
 neglected. 
 
 " Now the total bulk of all that 1 have commended 
 as readable in these two languages is not very large, 
 and could easily be stowed away into some twenty 
 well-printed volumes. As soon as the preliminaries 
 are mastered we shall read through the classics for 
 three hours a week for three years. No boy except 
 the specialist shall begin Latin or Greek till he is 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 159 
 
 fifteen years old; this will ensure, I think, that he 
 does not waste about five years in learning grammar, 
 but attacking a not very difficult subject at a riper 
 age, will master it within a quarter of the time it 
 would have taken him had he, after the usual school 
 fashion, begun Latin at the age of nine and Greek at 
 the age of eleven. He should therefore be ready at 
 the age of sixteen for our three years' classical course, 
 and though we shall not spend anything like as much 
 time over the classics as do other schools which are 
 still hampered by the Renaissance and scholastic tra- 
 ditions, and by external examinations, I believe our 
 boys will love the classics more and obtain a fuller 
 understanding of the classical spirit than those to 
 whom Latin and Greek are a ceaseless drudgery and 
 evil. I believe they will learn, no less than others 
 have learnt, from these time-honoured studies, that 
 calm and even fervour of mind, that sane and serene 
 love of beautiful things, that freedom from religious 
 bigotry and extravagance which marks the writings 
 of the Greeks, and that seriousness, decorum, and 
 strength, that sense of arrangement and justice which 
 marks the writings and still more the history of the 
 Romans. 
 
 " We have now to consider in how many modern 
 European tongues we are going to give universal in- 
 struction, not forgetting that our Grecians are going 
 to have so much time to themselves, so many hours 
 when they are simply to go into the library and read, 
 that it will be easy for us to encourage and help any 
 boy of linguistic ability who, discontented with what 
 
i6o THE GRECIANS 
 
 we can teach him, desires to enrich his knowledge of 
 those languages he learns in school, or to attempt 
 some rarer and more exciting tongue— Spanish 
 Swedish, Russian, or even Persian, fired perhaps by 
 the eloquence of some literary specialist, whom we 
 have invited to lecture at the school, and his trans- 
 lated extracts. But I may surprise some if I say at 
 the outset, that I cannot consider that there is any 
 but the slightest educational value in the actual ac- 
 quisition of a modern language, in learning to speak 
 it, read it, or write it, apart from the serious study of 
 the literature, history, and traditions of a foreign 
 people. Any Germ.an clerk, as Hofman remarked 
 when he so briefly dismissed those who suggested 
 that a good modern language education was a fine 
 practical thing, any cosmopolitan or Swiss innkeeper, 
 any half-breed dragoman can gabble six or seven 
 tongues, and sometimes gabble them correctly; and 
 the dreariest lady student from Russia can speak 
 beautiful French and passable German, and yet not 
 have in her head a single Russian, not to speak of a 
 German or French, idea. 
 
 " Nevertheless, very fine is the spirit of the true 
 linguist, which I admit to be a very different thing 
 from the mere spirit of literary curiosity which desires 
 to learn just enough of a language to read some 
 favourite or famous author in the original. The true 
 linguist revels in fantastic grammars where the verbs 
 open out in the middle to make themselves passive 
 or negative, and numerals agree with singular mascu- 
 line nouns in the genitive feminine plural. He delights 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION i6i 
 
 in learning and in reproducing curious scripts whose 
 mysterious systems of dots, segmented circles, or 
 paint-brush strokes have charmed his eye. He revels 
 in making obscure noises foreign to the English ear, 
 and in planning out euphonic changes and philologi- 
 cal laws. If we have a boy filled with this spirit 
 among our Grecians we shall be delighted, we shall 
 provide him with all manner of grammars and diction- 
 aries, and persuade his parents to send him abroad for 
 the summer holidays to perfect himself 
 
 " But we shall not have the time nor the inclina- 
 tion to devote such special attention to the three 
 languages, French, German, and Italian, which we 
 hope to teach regularly to all our Grecians. We shall 
 learn to translate from these languages, and to pro- 
 nounce them fairly correctly when we read them 
 aloud. To attain this pronunciation we shall most 
 certainly not employ the ridiculously complicated 
 script of the International Phonetic Association, real- 
 izing as we do that the only European language for 
 the learning of which the employment of a phonetic 
 script is necessary is English : French, German, and 
 Italian, at all events, are pronounced almost entirely 
 as they are written. What is the use, sense, or wisdom 
 of having a sign like a broken hoop Q to represent 
 the final o of Italian, and therefore forcing the miser- 
 able boys to learn two methods of writing every time 
 they learn a language, when it is so extremely easy 
 to tell him that the final Italian o is often sounded 
 like the English o in not? The refinements of pro- 
 nunciation can be learnt at any time by any one who 
 
 M 
 
i62 THE GRECIANS 
 
 has a good ear, and who already knows the language 
 pretty well, by a few months' stay in a foreign country ; 
 and a boy can go abroad, after all, at any period of 
 his life. I admit that to attain this final perfection a 
 knowledge of phonetic laws and the use of plaster 
 casts of throats and larynxes may be recommended, 
 but these devices are indescribably pernicious when 
 employed in the instruction of beginners. They are 
 the conceited invention of modern science, which, in 
 its desire that we should scorn useless knowledge and 
 become practical, would have us spend six years in 
 acquiring a fine French accent in England, without 
 leaving us time to read a word of Moliere. In the 
 early stages of instruction in French I admit that the 
 use of such an entirely rational and immediately com- 
 prehended script as that invented for the Faculte of 
 Grenoble may be attended with profit, constructed as 
 it is for the French language alone instead of being a 
 complicated scientific universal affair which one can 
 fit on to Czech and Turkish. This script from Grenoble 
 clearly shows how words should be run together in 
 reading French sentences, and how the accent and 
 pause must come after groups of words pronounced 
 without a break; yet it can be learnt in ten minutes. 
 Next I admit that the teacher must be a master of 
 French sound: I do not think it, however, at all advis- 
 able that he should be a Frenchman, although we 
 may at all times call in a native to read to us or talk 
 with us. An Englishman who with toil has acquired 
 a fine French accent, knows the difficulties with which 
 the English boy has to contend so much better; he 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 163 
 
 only will understand English as well as French pho- 
 netics; he will be able to explain that and e are 
 diphthongs in English without getting into a tower- 
 ing rage at the stupidity and perverseness of the 
 English boy, and if he is wise he will appeal to the 
 boys to remember how a Frenchman talks English — 
 an obvious way of getting boys to be interested in the 
 pronunciation of French, yet which seems never to 
 have occurred to any teachers. 
 
 " We shall hardly attempt to teach boys to talk or 
 write these languages, unless they are especially in- 
 terested in so doing; and if they are, we shall only 
 teach them to talk and write French. This may dis- 
 please some, but there are obvious reasons for our 
 decision. Firstly, to learn a language so as to be able 
 to go abroad and ask for a ticket at the station and a 
 drink at the cafe is obviously part of technical train- 
 ing, and not worthy the attention of serious educa- 
 tionalists. Secondly, an intelligent boy, if he wants to 
 talk, must go to France, where in a family he will 
 learn more in a week than we could teach him in a 
 year. The true educational value of talking a lan- 
 guage consists in getting the ear attuned to subtle, 
 new, and delicate sounds, and this we preserve by 
 emphasizing the necessity of reading it aloud. 
 
 " We shall perhaps then spend a little time in 
 French conversation, viewing it not as an end, but as 
 a means towards eradicating that awkward shyness, 
 which some of the most pleasant and intelligent 
 young Englishmen feel at opening their mouths 
 before foreigners. But how much better it would be 
 
i64 THE GRECIANS 
 
 if we could send them abroad for a month a year to 
 talk with French, German, and Italian boys, to view 
 the beauties and delights of foreign towns, foreign 
 institutions, and foreign manners, if we could arrange 
 for them to have some one better than the usual 
 dreary pasteur or pfarrer to talk with, and to hear 
 lectures by the most famous foreign teachers. If we 
 were rich enough or powerful enough to institute this 
 wanderjahr system for our boys, our training in 
 modern languages would then become one of the most 
 important and fascinating parts of their education. 
 
 *' But if we cannot do this, we can initiate them 
 into these three great literatures, and we can teach 
 them to read foreign books, not at the rate of a page 
 an hour, but swiftly and with pleasure. You may 
 perhaps be a little surprised if I tell you on what 
 part of French literature we shall lay greatest stress. 
 For we shall not read very much French lyric poetry : 
 admirable as it is, its educational value is not very 
 large to those who have read classical and English 
 lyric verse. We shall follow consistently our plan of 
 giving boys a pleasant introduction to subjects in 
 which they may specialize afterwards if they will, 
 and we will make no attempt to get them to read 
 through all that is important in French lyrical verse, 
 or, indeed, in any other branch of literature. Perhaps 
 we shall do well if we confine ourselves to the 
 'Oxford Book of French Verse': it is a tolerable 
 anthology, not much superior in anything but length 
 to that admirable sixpenny ' Cent Meilleurs Poemes,' 
 and woefully inferior to that splendid collection, the 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 165 
 
 ' Oxford Book of English Verse.' If we consider 
 further what French lyric author a boy would do well 
 to read through, I can think of none better than 
 Leconte de Lisle: there is no more suitable book for 
 boys in French than his clear and powerful ' Poemes 
 Barbares.' 
 
 " We shall omit Erckmann-Chatrian's ' Waterloo ' 
 and the good but second-rate ' Colomba ' from our 
 course, and no more dream of giving young boys 
 Corneille and Racine than we would dream of 
 trying to interest a Frenchman in English by pre- 
 senting him with * Paradise Lost.' At first we shall 
 read such diverting and interesting books as ' Le 
 Bourgeois Gentilhomme,' ' Les Trois Mousquetaires,' 
 ' Le Crime de Silvestre Bonnard,' and certain selected 
 short stories. But it is the great French novelists who 
 should be most esteemed by those who are training 
 boys over seventeen years of age to face a world far 
 less pleasant than our school. Only Hardy and 
 Meredith among our so delightful English writers can 
 ever impress the awakening mind so deeply with the 
 tragic realities and possibilities of existence as do 
 ' Pere Goriot,' 'Madame Bovary,' 'Une Vie,' and 
 ' Pierre et Jean,' books in which the ugliness of life is 
 faced and the psychology of passion analysed, yet 
 written at the inspiration of an ideal which is the 
 more impressive because it is unconscious and full of 
 the sense that a good deal is worth doing for its own 
 sake, even if it be unromantic and unknown. To be 
 recommended, too, are the quiet, humorous, thoughtful 
 books of Anatole France, that gentleman Socialist, 
 
i66 THE GRECIANS 
 
 whose graceful and bitter laughter reviles a world 
 gone mad, a world which it is our fond dream to 
 better by producing some half dozen young men a 
 year who are fit to face it. 
 
 " We shall not need so much German as French, 
 for the language is far harder, and the literature, the 
 importance of which is only a hundred years old, far 
 less important. I shall be contented if we read in 
 school the first part of * Faust,' the songs of Heine, 
 part of Benzmann's ' Collection of Modern German 
 Lyrics.' In reading German, Jean Paul, Sudermann, 
 and Nietzsche should not be neglected, for Nietzsche 
 has an influence which all thoughtful men should 
 understand, however much they may hate him, and a 
 style second to none in German. Freytag and 
 Grillparzer and other pompous triflers we shall 
 neglect; but we shall remember that Heine wrote 
 prose hardly inferior to his verse. We must attach, 
 however, far more importance to the language of the 
 Germans than their purely literary achievements 
 could warrant. All boys who are interested in science, 
 art, or archaeology will soon find out that they must 
 be able to read the barbarous prose of this most 
 educated and learned people, since in every branch of 
 pure learning the Germans have produced some 
 master work, some ' epoch-making ' treatise. 
 
 " Italian we shall reinvest with the honour and im- 
 portance which it has so unjustly lost since the first 
 half of the nineteenth century. In the days of Peacock 
 no gentleman with any pretension of culture could 
 afford to dispense with a smattering of this delightful 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 167 
 
 tongue, whose literature we now imagine to be repre- 
 sented by Dante, Petrarch, and the ' Promessi Sposi ' 
 of Manzoni. It is sad to think that there are now not 
 a hundred Hving Englishmen who know and enjoy 
 the calm and classic humour of Ariosto, or who care 
 anything for the countless masters of early Italian 
 lyrical verse, which Eugenia Levi has collected in 
 her two fascinating volumes. Yet no classical scholar 
 can be excused for not taking the trouble to learn to 
 read this easiest of languages, when a fortnight's work 
 will enable him to read any average Italian prose with 
 fluency and enjoyment. 
 
 " Our boys shall know a great deal of Dante, a 
 little of Petrarch, the tw^o great collections of Italian 
 verse to which we have referred, besides a little 
 anthology by Carducci, which extends to the nine- 
 teenth century; nor shall they neglect to read the 
 splendid 'Barbarous Odes' of Carducci himself, which, 
 based on the Horatian metres, form so brave a protest 
 against the natural deficiency of a tongue wherein 
 rhymes are too easy and compression too hard. 
 Several of the tales of Boccaccio, even some of Bandello 
 and Masuccio claim consideration, for they do not 
 all consist, as some imagine, of indecent ribaldry, but 
 are full of pathos, humour, and most cunning psycho- 
 logical observation; and why neglect the' Cortigiano'? 
 Our playwrights shall be Goldoni and D'Annunzio: 
 perhaps not the D'Annunzio of the terrible ' Citta 
 Morta,' but certainly the D'Annunzio of ' Francesca 
 da Rimini.' P^or are we not the heirs of the Italian 
 Renaissance, and shall we continue to neglect a 
 
i68 THE GRECIANS 
 
 literature not inferior to the French and far greater 
 than the German, a Hterature which in the present 
 age has produced at least two immortal names? 
 Least of all can we dream of so doing after gazing at 
 the masterpieces of Italian painting. Would it not be 
 well to know what these great men read, thought, and 
 wrote? Have we forgotten that Italy is also the first, 
 and will perhaps be the last, home of the purest and 
 most noble music? To understand the spirit of the 
 greatest artistic country the world has ever known, 
 greater in my opinion than Greece herself by virtue of 
 Leonardo and Michelangelo, not to mention Scarlatti 
 and Pergolese, is surely the direct duty of any one 
 who desires to enjoy all that life can offer, and to 
 assist others to share his delight. 
 
 " We must now consider the arts of representation, 
 instruction in which will be such a peculiar and 
 delightful feature of our school. We must adopt in 
 teaching this subject methods similar to those we 
 adopted for teaching poetry. I mean that we must 
 not begin by laying down aesthetic laws, but by con- 
 sidering art historically. Numerous photographs, re- 
 productions and casts must adorn our buildings or fill 
 our portfolios. We must show magic-lantern slides, 
 and we must take our boys to visit the great galleries 
 at London and Hampton Court; and in this way we 
 must form, as far as residents in England can do so, 
 the basis of artistic experience. We shall have three 
 direct ways of training our boys; they must notice 
 things in pictures, they must regard nature from an 
 artistic point of view, and they must attempt to repre- 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 169 
 
 sent things for themselves. However clumsy their 
 efforts be, every boy must draw and paint for at least 
 three hours a week, not copying absurd patterns, but 
 inventing for himself or imitating nature. Our object 
 in this our practice of art, as in practice of poetry, will 
 not be to train up artists — though who knows whether 
 some young Velazquez will not suddenly discover his 
 powers in this way? — but to enable boys to appreciate 
 art, technically and soundly. Those who would be 
 artists or architects must have special morning train- 
 ing for their professions. At all events we will have no 
 sonneteering about art in the windbag style of John 
 Addington Symonds, no vain talk of the grandeur, 
 sweet loveliness, invincible truth, and tragic terror of 
 pictures. We shall study rather to ensure a minute 
 trained observation into shades of style and variations 
 of detail ; for only in this way can we teach boys not 
 naturally artists to perceive every portion of a picture 
 and not its subject alone. We shall also — and this 
 will be a most important part of our pictorial educa- 
 tion — take bad and popular modern works — Luke 
 Fildes' ' Doctor,' or Dicksee's picture of the knight 
 impressed by the crucifix — as examples of inferior art, 
 and point out in these either the defects of drawing 
 and colour or the complete inanity and vulgarity of 
 idea. 
 
 " The introduction of this artistic education I con- 
 sider the most revolutionary, the most important, of 
 new proposals. It may interest you to know that I 
 was for some time both at Oxford and Cambridge. I 
 must have known some three hundred undergraduates, 
 
170 THE GRECIANS 
 
 most of whom were considered or considered them- 
 selves to be the most intelligent young Englishmen of 
 the day. Yet I do not remember more than four or 
 five of them who could have told a Signorelli from a 
 Titian, or who have ever heard the name of Pisanello. 
 To possess any knowledge of art was considered by 
 my otherwise intelligent friends to be something rather 
 extraordinary and priggish. Perhaps, indeed, the char- 
 acter of an undergraduate art-lover would be bound 
 to suffer in so philistine an atmosphere. Yet there is 
 no happier man than he who loves painted things, for 
 the whole realm of nature becomes exalted in his eyes: 
 he looks at the world, and imagines great pictures in 
 his soul, he looks at great pictures and begins to 
 realize the unspeakable beauty of the world. And 
 what is Greece to those who do not love the sweet 
 spring of her vases and the immortal strength of her 
 statuary ? How can men appreciate the great life of 
 the modern world without knowing something of 
 Manet, Pisarro, Whistler, and all those once obscure 
 heroes who, despite penury and starvation, imprisoned 
 the wonders of bright light on painted canvas? A few 
 Japanese prints, or Persian miniatures, or Indian 
 bronzes— are these not the only things that can suggest 
 to us, who cannot read those literatures or voyage to 
 those lands, the marvels of each racial individuality? 
 Yet in our public schools, where still so much of the 
 true humane education lingers, the artistic life is en- 
 trusted to some ill-paid pedagogue who has drawn a 
 little at the Slade School, and is usually considered to 
 be rather inferior in intellectual ability and social 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 171 
 
 standing to the other members of the staff. It is, 
 perhaps, the worst mistake in English public-school 
 life, for even those boys who learn drawing and excel 
 in it will never get any real encouragement or help. 
 
 " I confess that my enthusiasm for music is not so 
 great as my enthusiasm for the arts of representation. 
 I have known only too many good musicians, especi- 
 ally those who were simply good performers, who 
 outside this one specialized atmosphere were not only 
 stupid, but exhibited the most appalling mental 
 vulgarity. I do not view with favour perpetual toil on 
 iron-frame pianos ; I should like to leave the perform- 
 ance of instrumental music solely to those who show 
 their love and capability — and musical genius is always 
 revealed early in life. But every boy as soon as his 
 voice is set, or before it breaks, might learn to read 
 music and to sing in part ; and one could have, at 
 least once a fortnight, a concert for the hearing of 
 which some boys would have been prepared by giving 
 them the scores to read and explaining the modula- 
 tions and subtleties of the tune. This is never done : 
 the consequence is, intelligent boys who have not ex- 
 ceptional gifts, usually prefer the vilest musical comedy 
 to Mozart. It is not they are deaf to sounds as a rule, 
 but simply that they have no conception of the aim 
 and structure of classical music. 
 
 " We have considered the education we intend to 
 give in philology and fine arts. We must still examine 
 whether we are to teach history, mathematics, and 
 science. 
 
 " We shall have little difficulty in settling the place 
 
172 THE GRECIANS 
 
 of history in our routine. No study seems more 
 specious as a substitute for liberal education in the 
 arts; yet it is dangerous to view it too seriously or 
 give it too much importance. History is a fascinating 
 tale which should be read only in the works of a great 
 prose writer who is capable of doing it justice; but it 
 is a story with so little of moral or of meaning, a story 
 which may well make us discontented sceptics, and 
 cause us to despair of the progress of mankind. For 
 philosophies of history have not succeeded : not even 
 Hegel could thread together the promiscuous events 
 of the world's life into a connected whole. 
 
 " We say this, however, only as a warning to those 
 who are too enthusiastic, or who imagine that the 
 study of the historical method has a supreme value in 
 education. It is obvious that our Grecians must have 
 such acquaintance with history, and especially with 
 modern histor}^, as will enable them to understand the 
 political life of the present and the artistic life of the 
 past. It is obvious that it will be good for them to 
 read, not in class perhaps, but to themselves, such 
 noble books as Gibbon, Mommsen, ' Italy and her In- 
 vaders,' or Fyffe's * History of Modern Europe ' ; ob- 
 vious that since they have to read Herodotus, Thucy- 
 dides, and Tacitus, we shall teach them in reference to 
 these authors some of the latest results of historical 
 research. Yet we need seldom insist on their learning 
 dates and sketching out the plans of battles, nor shall 
 we fatigue them with the history of the dull periods of 
 the world. But in their last year at school those young 
 men of twenty who are likely to be directly interested in 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 1/3 
 
 the government of our country must specialize in 
 modern history, in state theory, and in the science of 
 economics. 
 
 " But we shall find history most useful as a pleasant 
 and instructive afternoon diversion for those not very 
 intelligent boys who are working to enter a trade or 
 profession ; it is perhaps the simplest and most obvious 
 method of inducing an ordinary mind to be interested 
 in an extraneous world, for the very reason that it is 
 too shallow a subject to have a prime importance in 
 the higher education. 
 
 " I would suggest that our Grecians be compelled 
 to learn sufficient mathematics to prevent their being 
 put to shame in the affairs of life, and no more, unless 
 they specially desire it. That a training in pure 
 mathematics has an educational value I readily admit: 
 it is beneficial if a boy be clever enough to apply 
 mathematical principles to argument and discussion. 
 But neither is it necessary to become an abstruse or 
 advanced mathematician in order to be able to apply 
 the elementary mathematical law, nor do boys who 
 are trained in philosophical thought need to acquire 
 the principles of logic by such circuitous means. 
 
 "Of the teaching of elementary arithmetic and 
 geometry to the ordinary or young boy, we have 
 already dealt with Hofman's aid ; and I am thankful 
 to say that there are distinct signs that our educa- 
 tionalists are weary of stocks, discount, and wall- 
 papering. We have suggested that the younger boys 
 will delight in working out the problems of simple 
 geometry for themselves when they measure, buy, and 
 
174 THE GRECIANS 
 
 design their wood constructions in the workshop. We 
 hope that our Grecians will perpetuate a love for 
 manual craft of this kind : that they will long to con- 
 struct ambitious models, to design furniture worthy 
 of their artistic training, to paper their own rooms, 
 and bind their own books. For not even the physical 
 exercise which compels them to measure themselves 
 in that athletic prowess for which a boy always has 
 been and always will be most admired by his fellows 
 will have a more salutary effect than the patient toil 
 of saw and plane in keeping them from priggishness 
 and from any form of dreamy, intellectual superiority. 
 Shall we let those whom we are training to be rulers 
 be so stupid or haughty that they will have to sit still 
 in cushioned seats, while a hired mechanic repairs the 
 incorrigible car? 
 
 " These remarks refer to applied science as much 
 as to applied mathematics. But we must return a 
 moment to the study of pure mathematical theory. 
 We must hope to find a wonderful teacher who will 
 suggest the mystery and charm of numbers to his 
 pupils without, perhaps, directly saying a word about 
 that mystery and charm ; who will recognize that 
 even among Grecians not one boy in a hundred is 
 likely to become a great mathematician, and will 
 therefore make no attempt to weary his class by 
 forcing them to work out innumerable examples, but 
 rather hope to interest them in the delight he himself 
 takes in mathematical problems, by selecting the most 
 fascinating and important examples of mathematical 
 method. 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION i/S 
 
 " Natural science must now be our most difficult 
 consideration. Science is an exacting mistress, and if 
 I decide that we shall not insist on our Grecians 
 penetrating its glorious secrets, let no one think that 
 I say this in a spirit of hostility or contempt, least of 
 all while I sit here in view of Florence and remember 
 that her triumphs of art are triumphs not of a mere 
 vague aesthetic delight, but of inquisitive, patient, 
 universal research into the nature of things and into 
 the hidden laws of the world. By scientific study, 
 Uccello learnt the joys of perspective, Signorelli some — 
 alas, not all! — of the secrets of anatomy, Brunelleschi 
 the architectural principle which enabled him to con- 
 struct that huge and splendid dome that stands so 
 quiet and impressive in the last hours of this far- 
 shadowing afternoon. 
 
 " Yet science brooks no rival in her house ; he who 
 would follow her must abandon other joys and spend 
 long hours with her alone. To suggest to our Grecians 
 the charms and delights of science will be our duty, 
 but those who would set about to perfect themselves 
 therein must do so in after years. But I will, at all 
 events, give no countenance to the foolish and vulgar 
 hostility with which so-called classical men too often 
 treat science and her followers, though one can easily 
 explain to them their foolish error. They see that the 
 youth of England, with its puritan hatred of the use- 
 less and beautiful, strong in its all-pervading and 
 plebeian common sense, has devoted itself to natural 
 science with barbaric vigour. Also they have observed 
 with disgust that even the oldest and firmest estab- 
 
176 THE GRECIANS 
 
 lished homes of classical learning cannot entirely 
 resist the clamour for a more profitable and vital 
 course of instruction, that many of their pupils have 
 abandoned the dissection of Latin periods for the dis- 
 section of flowers and corpses. Therefore it is that so 
 many second-rate and a few first-rate, but narrow 
 classical scholars, have raised this most vulgar outcry 
 against the vulgarity of science, not perceiving that 
 they are confusing science with a section of her fol- 
 lowers. Was Leonardo vulgar? 
 
 " Natural science, unaccompanied by other studies, 
 is a poor training for the mind, though I can conceive 
 it to be a far better one than these arid pedants could 
 possibly give with their syntax and paradigms. Scien- 
 tific men are so often headstrong in their own con- 
 ceit : they are fond of laying down the law on subjects 
 they have not attempted to master; and some of 
 them, like Nordau, have the impertinence to pose as 
 authorities on morality, aesthetics, and religion. The 
 opinions and arguments of scientific men seldom rise 
 above the level of a childish materialism which any 
 serious philosopher could disprove in two minutes: 
 they are utterly incapable of clear thought, yet imagine 
 that philosophers must be muddle-headed because 
 they are not persuaded by their 'common-sense' 
 arguments. Furthermore, they are either neglectful 
 or contemptuous of most artistic life, though they are 
 often fine musicians. A refined man, I admit, will 
 never become vulgarized by science, but it seems very 
 clear that science can never refine the vulgar. 
 
 " I do not think, then, that my Grecians will be 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATIOxN 177 
 
 expected to do more than attend two weekly lectures 
 delivered in non-technical language on scientific laws. 
 The enthusiasts may work as much as they want : we 
 shall provide laboratories, and specially encourage, 
 perhaps, some of the less difficult branches of scientific 
 study. I do not think, moreover, that our school 
 museum will contain such a collection of riff-raff as 
 may usually be found in those primitive establish- 
 ments — bowls from Palestine, a pipe from Russia, 
 specimens of Swiss pottery and Indian shells, a cork 
 model of the Coliseum, twenty ill-stuffed birds under 
 glass, and a photograph of the moon. We will attempt 
 rather to give our museum a real and systematic 
 interest, not crowding it with ethnological specimens 
 unless we can afford a magnificent number, but rather 
 priding ourselves on our neat and systematic collec- 
 tion of local flora and fauna. 
 
 " We have now considered the higher education. 
 A word remains to be said on some few miscellaneous 
 points. 
 
 " We have not mentioned the education of women. 
 I do not think either the advantages or the dangers 
 of co-educational schools are very great. The presence 
 of girls certainly tends to prevent a boy from inclin- 
 ing to certain perversions, but it cannot be doubted 
 that there is a grandeur and beauty about our monastic 
 schools which the presence of women would destroy; 
 and if one observes those who have been brought up 
 in co-educational schools one is very apt to find them 
 over-sentimental or otherwise eccentric. I think the 
 girls reap practically all the benefit. 
 
 N 
 
i;8 THE GRECIANS 
 
 " I would rather women were educated by them- 
 selves, but I fear the inferiority of the female school- 
 mistress, and, indeed, of the female mind, is so great 
 that they will never be educated as our Grecians are. 
 For the ideal education for a woman would be exactly 
 the education we give our Grecians — with a most 
 special and most severe stress laid on philosophy and 
 on free thought, in order to eradicate the sentimental 
 viciousness of the sex ; and women must learn, above 
 all, to read their books unexpurgated without losing 
 the modesty of youth— yet this, it seems, a boy can 
 do often, and a woman never. Have we not seen that 
 greatest of girls' schools in the west of England? 
 Have we not remarked its sumptuous buildings, 
 pseudo-antique, asymmetrical, gaudily tricked out in 
 the most execrable taste? Have we not seen girls 
 who have never heard of Augustus or Velazquez, and 
 could not see through a leading article, plodding 
 through Beowulf, learning by heart their German 
 grammar, acting before admiring friends such master- 
 pieces of English literature as Charles Kingsley's 
 ' Saint's Tragedy,' and amusing themselves with chip 
 carving? Did not that truly great woman who 
 achieved so much in the emancipation of her sex 
 from a tradition which permitted them to study little 
 but singing and deportment, write down that Latin 
 was dangerous for girls to read, and commend the 
 bracing effect of Hebrew and German poetry (Schiller's 
 * Glocke,' forsooth, or the ' Faust ' seduction scene, I 
 wonder)? It is a pity, for where will our Grecians find 
 women fit to be their life companions and friends? 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 179 
 
 "I might" in this place make a brief observation 
 with regard to day schools. There is only one argu- 
 ment that can be adduced in favour of day schools. 
 They do not tend, like our great public schools, to 
 create a monotonous type. Such an education as we 
 should give would destroy the argument. To my mind 
 the great curse of day schools is that boys should live 
 perpetually with their parents. Only one parent in a 
 thousand is fit to manage an intelligent boy. A boy 
 may be bullied in school ; it will be nothing to the way 
 in which he will be bullied at home if he is ever so 
 little exceptional, ever so little inclined to disagree 
 with the parental outlook. Then, again, if he is pun- 
 ished at a day school it is immediately known at 
 home; every little punishment is a punishment twice 
 over. It is a horrible system, this ceaseless double 
 supervision. 
 
 " I speak thus strongly not because I wish to break 
 down family ties, but because I earnestly wish to pre- 
 serve them. The boy who loves his parents rightly 
 will be sad to leave them, rejoiced to find them again 
 after many days. Their influence is deeper, finer, more 
 pathetic when transmitted through loving letters and 
 accepted in loving replies. The individual parent who, 
 being human, must have foibles, is sunk in the ideal 
 parent, the loving watcher over the destiny of his far- 
 off child. Every honest man, recalling his own school 
 days, will agree with me in this. 
 
 "Another point. If you think, as perhaps you do, 
 that our education attempts too much, remember 
 what we have cancelled from the ordinary sixth-form 
 
i8o THE GRECIANS 
 
 routine. Nearly all the preparation which occupies 
 two hours every night is gone. All translation can be 
 done very well unseen. Three hours a week for classics, 
 three for drawing, an evening a week each for a philo- 
 sophical discussion, a lecture in literature, a lecture in 
 science or mathematics. Three hours each for reading 
 the four great modern literatures; and three for the 
 practice of English prose and verse. An hour for 
 history, an hour a day in the library. Twenty-eight 
 hours a week, excluding evenings. There is room to 
 fill up what I have forgotten! 
 
 "We should next briefly consider the position our 
 Grecians will occupy in school affairs. They will all 
 be monitors, and no other boys, however successful 
 athletically,however superior in character, will be given 
 the honour. It is the tribute we shall pay in our school 
 to intellectual pre-eminence, and only those who have 
 been to a school which was ruled by the heroes of its 
 Rugby football team can realize how admirable was 
 the system which Arnold suggested. They will have 
 the power of punishing other boys by giving them 
 detention; the actual punishment will be inflicted in 
 this way under the supervision of the masters: there 
 will be no physical appeal against their authority. In 
 a school of about five hundred boys we may hope for 
 thirty Grecians. They will have a common room, will 
 alone have private studies, will be allowed when they 
 are over seventeen to smoke and drink wine in modera- 
 tion, for it will be our policy to encourage them in 
 self-restraint, not to put temptation out of the way. 
 The rest of the school will not be divided into houses. 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION i8i 
 
 That is a pernicious system by which a boy only sees 
 some thirty of his fellows, and cannot get away from 
 the aggressiveness of those schoolfellows whom he 
 dislikes. We shall send our Grecians to keep order 
 throughout the school and in the dormitories (which 
 are to be open and not partitioned), and we hope in 
 this way to test and prove their powers of government. 
 Few realize or remember that it is much harder for 
 the unpopular boy to manage his fellows than for an 
 unpopular ministry to manage the State: no one is 
 more relentless, ingenious, persistent in hatred, than 
 the schoolboy who dislikes and despises those who 
 are set over him. Our Grecians will be allowed to 
 play games or not as. they please, but we must insist 
 that the captain of games in the school be a Grecian 
 himself. 
 
 " I discussed with some impatience, if you remember, 
 those who desired us to give instruction in morals. 
 But that was not because we do not care about the 
 morals of our Grecians, but because my imaginary 
 objectors desired me to be immoral enough to tell them 
 lies. But not even a TENNAION ^EYAOS will be 
 admitted to defile the education of our Grecians, though 
 I am afraid we may have to talk dogmatically to the 
 rest of the school. The greatest moral influence that 
 the Grecians can possibly receive must be their own 
 tradition and public feeling, and the example of great 
 books and the deep friendship and respect they feel 
 for those high-principled men whom we hope to find 
 to teach them. We will not say to boys who are 
 reading Plato, ' God wrote down in a book that you 
 
i82 THE GRECIANS 
 
 must not lie, therefore you will go to hell if you do 
 so.' We will not say to them that happiness in this 
 earth belongs to the moral. But we will say to them, 
 ' The school, your kind mother and gentle guardian, 
 hates the vulgar and sensual life, and detests that 
 which is mean and false: hoc disce aut discede.' And 
 though we will not be as ruthless as some are to the 
 natural faults of the headstrong, generous, and warm- 
 blooded youth, yet if we consider a Grecian, however 
 intelligent, to be ineradicably coarse, dishonest, or 
 mean, he shall not remain in our society. 
 
 " And the last and most important of our considera- 
 tions is the schoolmaster. Yet, strange as it may seem 
 at first, I do not despair of finding ardent, learned, 
 and admirable young men at our universities who 
 would far rather teach than become dons or Indian 
 magistrates if we gave them a salary worth the name, 
 assured them a pension, and treated them with honour. 
 Too often the modern schoolmaster has to take up 
 his profession because there is nothing better for him 
 to do ; he is consequently, and with some justice, sup- 
 posed to be a man not clever enough to obtain a 
 fellowship or not energetic enough to enter the State 
 service; he is a social outcast or a social failure; he 
 ranks with the curate: he is an ill-dressed, ill-shaved 
 nonentity. Our masters will be at first men carefully 
 chosen for their charm and intelligence, and not merely 
 according to the results of their university work; later, 
 the best of our old boys will rejoice to return to us 
 and help us. Masters in La Giocosa are not treated 
 as subordinates, but as honourable friends of the head 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 183 
 
 master. They live with him, dine with him nightly, 
 and fare with the best. They are men who do not 
 imagine their education is complete; they are a band 
 of older Grecians. They need not be mewed up within 
 school walls for three-quarters of the year, but must 
 have all the society they can find, every chance of 
 visiting London, every opportunity of conversing with 
 specialists who come to lecture, and the wise men and 
 travellers who come to visit. 
 
 " I think, strange to say, we shall find it easy to find 
 those who will adequately teach our earnest and 
 gentle-mannered Grecians. Shall we give less honour 
 to those who do the ceaseless drudgery and rough work 
 of the school, who help the infants to write, and read, 
 and add, or try to drive the foolish through accidence 
 and syntax? Shall we not rather let our chief masters 
 do this difficult, elementary, noble work in turn, and 
 not attempt to maintain a staff of less clever, less 
 refined and serious men for this the hardest portion of 
 the school work? 
 
 " And the choice of masters and the success of the 
 whole school must depend on one man, the grave and 
 learned senior who is to be our head. Alas, that we 
 cannot recall Vittorino from his grave! Yet if we could, 
 what princes would send their sons to La Giocosa in 
 these iron days ? Who appreciates the humanities now 
 apart from the picturesque dignity that hangs about 
 them still? Who cares for any real thought about 
 education? Who dares to make an ideal? Some listen 
 to the conceited, lying scientist who writes pedantic 
 treatises on habit, brain-formation, and memory, and 
 
i84 THE GRECIANS 
 
 veils his tired platitudes in the ugliest of technical 
 terms — and here they fondly imagine lies the secret 
 of success. Some are willing to let our old beautiful 
 schools rot away till they become hotels where the 
 newly-rich may consort with the mattoid nobleman ; 
 in foolish calm they await the time when a relentlessly 
 progressive age will hurl them aside in disgust. Never 
 do they attempt a reform which is to make them 
 liker their true selves; but they cringe to public ex- 
 aminations and public feeling, and make each un- 
 worthy concession either with ill-grace or a puerile 
 flourish of trumpets. 
 
 " But we will re-found La Giocosa, and build it 
 anew in England beside the sea that typifies our race. 
 And if I have made no single direct reference to 
 patriotism, let me say this now. Patriotism is not 
 taught by bad poetry and bad literature, by rifle clubs, 
 or Union Jacks, or essays on Tariff Reform. La 
 Giocosa will give England men of intelligence, fit to 
 govern her, and not private soldiers fit to be shot 
 down for her in some financial war. And in training 
 Grecians La Giocosa has fulfilled her duty to England. 
 Ours shall be no ideal school for the ideal youth, but 
 a place where hard work is done, and where boys are 
 toilfully prepared for the difficulties of a modern 
 world ; yet where, too, we shall train many to under- 
 stand and love the sweet pleasures of the senses. We 
 even hope that a few of our scholars will be among 
 the great. Now, my friends, our long and toilsome 
 journey is over: and it is evening." 
 
OR TRUE EDUCATION 185 
 
 Evening, indeed, had come and the cool hours of 
 the day, but those two who Hstened to the unadorned 
 words of this strange youth heard and understood 
 the earnestness in his voice; and as they gazed at 
 him while he lay there on the grass refolding his 
 sheaf of papers, they thought of his gentle voice and 
 eager words, and he seemed to them to be none other 
 than one of his own Grecians, strayed from some 
 Elysian school where Socrates and Vittorino teach 
 and all the young lords of that shadow-world listen 
 and admire. And whether their journey with him 
 was ended, whether they would return to England to 
 the old and weary toil strengthened by this secret 
 and beautiful ideal, or whether they would not rather 
 join him and rebuild La Giocosa to the sound of 
 music in an Atlantean isle, in that swift minute of 
 wonder they could hardly tell. 
 
Ill 
 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON: REALIST 
 A POINT OF VIEW 
 
 THREE moderns, Ibsen, Nietzsche, and John 
 Davidson, all cry with one voice that as an 
 antidote to our quiet, self-satisfied, ill-founded 
 idealism, we require the great virtues of strength and 
 self-realization. Indeed, they often forget that any 
 other virtues have existence. Thus, Ibsen has por- 
 trayed Peer Gynt with an onion in his hand, peeling 
 off husk after husk as he attempts by analogy to find 
 his true self. Also he has told the tale of Brand, 
 terrible idealist, destroying all that love him by his 
 self-denying devotion to duty. Again, "Whoso loveth 
 his God chastiseth him," this is the sneer of Nietzsche, 
 who evolves the " Overman," whose strength justifies 
 his power. And John Davidson, in a passage which 
 may be considered the crude germ of everything he 
 has done in Ballads, Eclogues, Songs, Plays, Testa- 
 ments, makes Smith say to the woman he loves : 
 
 Think my thought, be impatient as I am, 
 Obey your Nature, not Authority ; 
 
 and describes 
 
 The hydra-headed creeds, the Sciences 
 That deem the thing is known when it is named ; 
 189 
 
190 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 And Literature, Thought's palace-prison fair ; 
 Philosophy, the grand inquisitor 
 That racks ideas and is fooled with lies; 
 Society, the mud wherein we stand. . . . 
 
 Of such extreme importance, then, is Mr. Davidson's 
 outlook, and his criticism of life, that we shall best do 
 him justice if we somewhat neglect the technical 
 merits of his poetry, glancing at them rapidly, and 
 passing on to his matter as soon as possible. 
 
 As a beautiful prelude I quote a lyric from 
 " Scaramouch in Naxos ": 
 
 The boat is chafing at our long delay. 
 
 And we must leave too soon 
 The spicy sea-pinks and the inborne spray. 
 
 The tawny sands, the moon. 
 
 Keep us, O Thetis, on our Western flight, 
 
 Watch from thy pearly throne 
 Our vessel, plunging deeper into night 
 
 To reach a land unknown. 
 
 Even the bare recital of these faultless lines, not to 
 mention those already quoted frpm " Smith," are 
 enough to show that, from the first, Mr. John 
 Davidson was no minor poet. 
 
 The questions a critic must answer, if he would 
 attempt to estimate his Author's rank, are — How lofty 
 is his ambition? and, next, How far does he realize 
 it? It seems to me that Mr. Davidson's ambition 
 rivals that of any Author who ever took up pen to 
 write. In fact, one sometimes has an uncomfortable 
 feeling that he is not great enough to carry out his 
 aims. But he so far succeeds that his imperfections 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON: REALIST 191 
 
 surpass the perfections of other men. So we must 
 deal with him as we would deal, say, with Keats, 
 Shelley, or Tennyson. 
 
 First of all, then, we will acknowledge Mr. David- 
 son's faults. They are quite obvious, being chiefly due 
 to a strained desire for simplicity, and to perpetual 
 over-emphasis of his point. Sometimes he will spoil a 
 ballad with lines too colloquial for the hurrying metre; 
 sometimes he will just mar a fine speech in blank 
 verse by getting it involved, and hard to follow, or by 
 the unnecessary introduction of some abrupt phrase 
 from common parlance. This is naturally more appar- 
 ent in his earlier works: a conspicuous example of 
 both of these faults is the great dying speech of 
 Hallowes in " Smith." Ballads like " An Exodus 
 from Houndsditch," or the " Vengeance of the 
 Duchess," fail because their language is too common- 
 place for their thought; and, generally, Mr, Davidson 
 is liable to lapse into the grotesque. Besides this, he 
 is often led away by some fantastic simile, especially 
 if he can haul in, head and shoulders, a reference to 
 Nature. 
 
 Speaking generally, if one must find a purely 
 technical fault in Mr, Davidson, that fault will be an 
 impetuousness that leads him sometimes to disregard 
 the symmetry and form of his work. He has too little 
 restraint or power of self-criticism in matters purely 
 artistic. Nevertheless, of his blank verse I will say 
 simply that it is the best since that of Milton. Its 
 majesty and grace cannot fail to impress all readers. 
 It is packed and terse, like Marlowe's, varied, yet 
 
192 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 without Tennysonian thinness or the monotony of 
 Shelley. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting point about Mr. 
 Davidson's poetry is his extraordinary objectivity. 
 Mr. Davidson is the first realist that has appeared in 
 English poetry. One is pleasantly surprised at that, 
 as on first realizing that Milton was a Roundhead. 
 Indeed, poetry has no greater foe than a gaudy veil 
 of romance, which easily obscures the import of facts. 
 And let me not forget to notice the extreme origin- 
 ality of the man. One or two of his earliest plays 
 seem more or less influenced by the Elizabethans, but 
 are so fresh and vivid that some of us would wish him 
 to cast aside his purpose, and abandon himself once 
 more to the Venus of pure delight. But there is little 
 enough that resembles his eclogues, ballads, testa- 
 ments, or plays; and we may still hope for a master- 
 piece greater than these; his work has, after all, only 
 just begun. All Mr. Davidson's work is dramatic; the 
 eclogues are so in form ; the testaments are dramatic 
 monologues; even the ballads breathe of drama. His 
 most splendid dramatic achievement, " Self's the Man," 
 is remarkable for extreme restraint and careful writ- 
 ing; it is not, like many plays in verse of to-day, a 
 series of dialogues in decorated English. This " tragi- 
 comedy " is quite stageable, full of incident, masterly 
 in composition and form. The character of Urban, the 
 tyrant-hero, is strongly drawn. In one fine scene, 
 where Urban and his former mistress, Saturnia, meet 
 in peril of their lives, we may experience that strange, 
 almost physical thrill, that sense of the world being in 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON: REALIST 193 
 
 harmony with the verse, which is only to be found 
 here and there throughout literature, and which can- 
 not be explained, save as a recollection of things 
 experienced in a former existence. I have seen the 
 " Cenci," called the best play since Shakespeare. A 
 play in which one perpetually feels that the author is 
 struggling to write lyrics cannot surely be compared 
 with the "Duchess of Malfi." It is as certainly inferior 
 to "Self's the Man." 
 
 The first work in which Mr. Davidson displays his 
 characteristic attitude towards life is " Smith," the 
 tragic farce, written in 1886. This play opens in a 
 public-house. Brown, from Oxford, Jones, and Robin- 
 son are discussing the character of Hallowes, a poet. 
 Brown, the very apostle of compromise, blames the poet 
 for his absurd enthusiasms, and begins abusing Smith, 
 who has a peculiar way of talking literature and phi- 
 losophy with barmaids. Then Jones describes Smith as 
 
 A mere savage, barbarous as a Lapp, 
 A handsome creature, but elliptical. 
 
 In this triumvirate of fools, Brown is cultured and 
 foolish, Jones epigrammatic and foolish, and Robinson, 
 who has " points " to raise, and exclaims " fair, very 
 fair" at intervals in sympathetic inanity, is fatuous 
 and foolish; and they agree well together. Just as 
 Brown has announced the fact that he is to wed his 
 cousin Magdalen in a month, Smith bursts in upon 
 them like a whirlwind. Smith is annoyed with their 
 idle talk about Hallowes, and finally calls them 
 
 The commonest type of biped crawling here. 
 O 
 
194 ■ CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 And at length clears them out with 
 
 You sots, you maggots, shavings, asteroids ! 
 A million of you wouldn't make a man ! 
 Out, or I'll strike you, monkeys, mannikins. 
 
 Hallowes enters and tells how he is going to his 
 new-found retreat of Garth, 
 
 In the North, a hamlet like a cave, 
 Nestling unknown in tawny Merlin's side. 
 
 There, he says, he will write poetry, be it but one 
 line a day. He rejects Smith's advice to " let fame 
 alone"; Fame, says Hallowes, is the "breath of 
 power," and he continues, clearly voicing the ideas of 
 the dramatist himself: 
 
 Give me to dream dreams all would love to dream ; 
 To tell the world's truth ; hear the world tramp time 
 With satin slippers and with hob-nailed shoes 
 To my true singing : fame is worth its cost. 
 Blood-sweats and tears, and haggard, homeless lives. 
 How dare a man, appealing to the world, 
 Content himself with ten ! How dare a man 
 Appeal to ten when all the world should hear ! 
 How dare a man conceive himself as else 
 Than his own fool without the world's hurrah 
 To echo him ! 
 
 Smith. But if the world won't shout 
 Till he be dead? 
 
 Hallowes. Let him address the street : 
 No subtle essences, ethereal tones 
 For senses sick, bed-ridden in the down 
 Of culture and its stifling curtains. 
 
 They decide to go to Garth together, and Smith 
 agrees with Hallowes in the last lines of the act : 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON: REALIST 195 
 
 You are right — one must become 
 
 Fanatic — be a wedge, a thunderbolt 
 
 To smite a passage through the close-grained world. 
 
 The next act introduces Graham, father of Mag- 
 dalen, and Magdalen herself. With Magdalen, Smith 
 falls in love at first sight, and in four pages of remark- 
 able and splendid dialogue, he makes her confess that 
 she is being made to marry Brown against her will, 
 and that she finds in him. Smith, the masterful nature 
 women love. 
 
 The passage contains the lines quoted above 
 
 (p. 189)- 
 
 Think my thought, be impatient as I am. 
 
 The next scene takes place on the top of Mount 
 Merlin where Hallowes is discovered lying with a 
 note-book by his side. He has opened one of his 
 veins, and is dying. After cursing his unhappiness 
 and poverty, he speaks these glorious words, feeling 
 death upon him : 
 
 But I have chosen Death. Death — and the moon 
 
 Hangs low and broad upon the eastern verge 
 
 Above a mist that floods the orient, 
 
 Filling the deep ravines and shallow vales, 
 
 Lake-like and wan, embossed with crested isles 
 
 Of pine and birch. Death — and the drops of day 
 
 Still stain the west a faintest tinge of rose 
 
 The stars cannot o'erwash with innocence. 
 
 Death— and the mountain tops, peak after peak, 
 
 Lie close and dark beneath Orion's sword. 
 
 Death — and the houses nestle at my feet, 
 
 With ruddy human windows here and there 
 
 Piercing the velvet shade— deep in the world, 
 
 Old hedge-rows and sweet by-paths through the corn ! 
 
196 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 The river like a sleepless eye looks up. 
 
 Pale shafts of smoke ascend from homely hearths, 
 
 And fade in middle air like happy sighs. 
 
 Death — and the wind blows chill across my face : 
 
 The thin, long, hoary grass waves at my side 
 
 With muffled tinkling. . . . Not yet ! No ; my life 
 
 Has not ebbed all away. I want to live 
 
 A little while. ... Is the moon gone so soon? 
 
 They've put the shutters to, down there. . . The wind 
 
 Is warm. . . . Death — is it death ? . . . I had no chance . . . 
 
 Perhaps I'll have another where I go. . . . 
 
 Another chance . . . How black ! . . . \^Dtes. 
 
 After this Smith is seen carrying Magdalen up to 
 the summit of the mountain, and the summit of their 
 own " mad happiness." While he is still standing, 
 amazed at the death of Hallowes, Graham and Brown 
 rush up in pursuit. A splendid scene follows. Smith 
 uses force to prevent them from taking Magdalen 
 from him. "Can we not go?" asks Magdalen. " Yes," 
 Smith replies: 
 
 Yes, we can go where none will follow us. 
 
 We two could never love each other more 
 
 Than now we do ; never our souls could mount 
 
 Higher on passion's fire-plumed wings; nor yet 
 
 Could laughter of our children's children pierce 
 
 With keener pangs of happiness our hearts. 
 
 I have a million things to tell my love. 
 
 But I will keep them for eternity. 
 
 Good earth, good mother earth, my mate and me — 
 
 Take us. 
 
 \^He leaps with her over the precipice. Graham 
 rushes forwiwd^ but falls fainting. Enter 
 Villagers, shouting and laughing. 
 
 I think enough has been said, enough extracts 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON: REALIST 197 
 
 given, to show that " Smith " brought something strong 
 and vital into our literature. 
 
 All Mr. Davidson's work carries this same message 
 of deliverance. Take the most powerful and the best 
 written of his ballads, " The Ballad in Blank Verse 
 of the Making of a Poet." It is a story told with in- 
 timate observation, and is perhaps drawn from ex- 
 perience. The scene is a Scottish port. A boy, whose 
 romantic materialism seems to combine the types of 
 Smith and Hallowes, is the source of all his parents' 
 grief, because he refuses to acknowledge himself a 
 Christian. When his parents talked to him of Christ 
 he used to see 
 
 The Cyprian Aphrodite, all one blush 
 And glance of passion, from the violet sea 
 Step inland, fastening as she went her zone. 
 
 His mother dies, heart-broken at his sinfulness. In 
 a moment of weak contrition he takes the eucharist, 
 and suddenly it crosses his mind, 
 
 I eat and drink damnation to myself 
 
 To give my Father's troubled spirit peace. 
 
 Yet there was no peace for the boy himself 
 
 But in the evening by the purple firth 
 
 He walked and saw brown locks upon the brine, 
 
 And pale hands beckon him to come away, 
 
 Where Mermaids, with their harps and golden combs 
 
 Sit throned upon the carven, antique poops 
 
 Of treasure-ships, and soft sea-dirges sing 
 
 Over the green-gilt bones of mariners. 
 
 He wanders on till night, pondering how all creeds 
 
198 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 are one creed — the creed of slavery. Bidding them 
 fly away like evil vultures, he is inspired by the idea 
 that he is, after all, God to himself That every man is 
 his own God, has a right to will as he desires, he feels 
 to be a doctrine of salvation, which he ought to pro- 
 claim to the world : 
 
 At home, where milHons mope, in labyrinths 
 Of hideous streets astray without a clue, 
 Unfed, unsexed, unsoulled, unhelped, I bring 
 Life, with the Gospel — Up, quit you like Gods. 
 
 With this message he breaks in upon his father's 
 new-found happiness, and plunges him in the bitter- 
 ness of despair and sorrow. 
 
 This was the sin of Lucifer 
 To make himself God's equal. 
 
 And his father also dies of grief, crying out to his 
 Saviour, wishing even to be sent to hell, if so he 
 might see his boy again. 
 
 There follows a long passage of stately verse, 
 wherein the boy, after cursing creed and dogma, 
 proclaims the Gospel of "Self's the Man." 
 
 I am a man set by to overhear 
 
 The inner harmony, the very tune 
 
 Of Nature's heart ; to be a thoroughfare 
 
 For all the pageantry of time ; to catch 
 
 The mutterings of the spirit and the hour 
 
 And make them known ; and of the lowliest 
 
 To be the minister, and therefore reign 
 
 Prince of the powers of the air, lord of the world 
 
 And master of the sea. Within my heart 
 
 I'll gather all the universe, and sing 
 
 As sweetly as the spheres ; and I shall be 
 
 The first of men to understand himself. . . . 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON: REALIST 199 
 
 Nor can too high praise be given to the '' Ballad of 
 Heaven." Here a musician " toils at one great work 
 for years." His wife and child die; he cannot feed or 
 maintain them ; he lives but for his music. Yet he is 
 welcomed to Heaven by God himself, and by his wife 
 and child: 
 
 God, smiling, took him by the hand, 
 
 And led him to the brink of heaven : 
 He saw where systems whirling stand, 
 
 Where galaxies like snow are driven. 
 
 Dead silence reigned ; a shudder ran 
 
 Through space : Time furled his wearied wings ; 
 
 A slow adagio then began, 
 
 Sweetly resolving troubled things. 
 
 The dead were heralded along ; 
 
 As if with drums and trumps of flame 
 And flutes and oboes keen and strong 
 
 A brave andante singing came. 
 
 Then, like a python's sumptuous dress 
 
 The frame of things was cast away, 
 And, out of Time's obscure distress 
 
 The conquering scherzo thundered Day. 
 
 He doubted ; but God said, " Even so ; 
 
 Nothing is lost that 's wrought with tears. 
 The music that you made below 
 
 Is now the music of the spheres. 
 
 Of the other ballads, many of them, as also the 
 '' Ordeal," treat of that fine type of woman which 
 Mr. Davidson has created for himself— a woman 
 strong in her loves and hates, fit wife of a strong man 
 —a woman of the force of Agrippina without her 
 malignant cruelty— a woman naturally queen. Be- 
 
200 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 sides these, I will only mention the fine ballad of 
 Tannhauser. Mr. Davidson gives the tale a different 
 ending from what we know best. In it Tannhauser 
 returns to his first mistress in the Venusberg, having 
 been rejected by the Pope, and lives with her in 
 immortal happiness : 
 
 As he lay worshipping his bride 
 While rose-leaves in her bosom fell, 
 
 And dreams came sailing on a tide 
 Of sleep, he heard a matin-bell. 
 
 " Hark, let us leave the magic hill," 
 He said, "and live on earth with men." 
 
 " No ; here," she said, " we stay until 
 The golden age shall come again." 
 
 And so they wait, while empires sprung 
 
 Of hatred thunder past above. 
 Deep in the earth, for ever young, 
 
 Tannhauser, and the Queen of love. 
 
 Mr. Davidson adds an interesting note, as follows : 
 
 The story of Tannhauser is best- known in the sophisticated 
 version of Wagner's great opera. In reverting to a simpler form 
 I have endeavoured to present passion rather than sentiment, 
 and once more to bear a hand in laying the ghost of an un- 
 wholesome idea that still haunts the world — the idea of the 
 inherent impurity of Nature. I beg to submit to those who may 
 be disposed to think with me, and also those who, though other- 
 wise minded, are at liberty to alter their opinions, that " A new 
 Ballad of Tannhauser" is not only the most modern, but the 
 most humane interpretation of the world-legend with which it 
 deals. 
 
 We now come to the " Testaments." The first is 
 the amazing " Testament of a Vivisector," which 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON: REALIST 201 
 
 neither upholds nor reprobates vivisection. The vivi- 
 sector vivisects himself. Mr. Davidson indeed has 
 been praised for condemning vivisection, for is not 
 vivisection " an infamy too gross for the common 
 terms of scorn, contempt, and abhorrence?" but we 
 shall see that we have only to read the author's pre- 
 fatory note to find that any such view is false. 
 
 The " Testament of a Vivisector " is the first of a series of 
 Poems I propose publishing at intervals in this form . . . and 
 the new statement of Materialism it contains is likely to offend 
 both the religious and the irreligious mind. This poem, there- 
 fore, and its successors, my Testaments, are addressed to those 
 who are willing to place all ideas in the crucible, and who are 
 not afraid to fathom what is subconscious in themselves and 
 others. 
 
 " The Testament of a Vivisector " to many will 
 appear repulsive, for the vivisector proclaims and 
 brazens out the fact that he loves vivisection because 
 it fills him with a pleasing sense of mastery, and be- 
 cause it satisfies his lust for inflicting pain. Few 
 things more grimly straightforward have been written. 
 Anyone reading it will appreciate the title, "John 
 Davidson, Realist." In the "Testament of a Man 
 Forbid " we have Smith once more, struggling against 
 an unsympathetic world, exclaiming against the men 
 
 That balance libraries upon their polls. 
 
 The exordium is superb. 
 
 " The Testament of an Empire-Builder " opens 
 humorously after the old fashion of " Scaramouch.' 
 The Empire-Builder has a vision of the beasts, who 
 
202 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 are talking about man. They discuss his infirmities, 
 his selfishness, his power. Nennook the Polar Bear 
 explains to the Mastiff that he is unhappy about his 
 prospects of immortality, and of the endless heavenly 
 feast 
 
 On blubbered seals that slumber on the floes. 
 
 In reply, 
 
 A flea, ensconced behind the Mastift"'s ear, 
 
 Chirruped aloud, " Nennook, my friend, take heart : 
 
 I, for example, must be soundly squelched, 
 
 But the idea of the flea remains ; 
 
 For race continues always : permanence 
 
 Of species is estabhshed theory. 
 
 " Established Nonsense, neighbour ; hold your tongue," 
 Snorted the domineering Elephant, 
 
 who goes on to catalogue extinct species of beasts — 
 the mammoth, the plesiosaur, and so on. A bumptious 
 groundling ape is informed that man would exter- 
 minate him if he had any sense. The hackney and 
 the lion also detail their woes, and the skunk makes 
 occasional interpolations by way of comic relief The 
 nightmare over, the Empire-Builder discovers himself 
 in an English lane, watching Butcher-birds with in- 
 terest and admiration. The rest of the Testament 
 contains quite a novel idea, that is also worked out in 
 the " Prime Minister," namely, that the proud in spirit 
 are quartered in heaven, while the poor in spirit are 
 dismissed to hell. Mr. Davidson's whole doctrine 
 .seems to me to lie in the title of his play — " Self's the 
 Man." He goes even further than Ibsen, as he has 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON: REALIST 203 
 
 himself hinted in the preface to " Godfrida." Ibsen's 
 message was " Break conventions if they hinder true 
 happiness or noble action." He has perhaps blurred 
 the outline of his doctrine by his natural mysticism — 
 strange voices of earth and air that call Brand as he 
 dies amid the avalanche of his broken ideals. Those 
 people who will be apt to say that Mr. Davidson's 
 rationalism is now out of date, and who continue to 
 acquiesce in what they know to be a palpable lie, will 
 probably think that the message " Break convention " 
 is an old one, now obsolete. To such people uncon- 
 ventionality seems to mean little more than wearing 
 a cap on Sunday. It was no freakish foolery that 
 Ibsen commended; his message was as fresh as dawn. 
 He urged the overhauling of all our social machinery; 
 he attacked with terrible precision the shoddy idealism 
 and the prudish self-complacency that still pervades 
 modern life. How can Mr. Davidson go even further 
 than this? It is in this way. He says not only " Break 
 conventions that stand in your way," but " live as if 
 convention, as if Christianity, as if thirty centuries of 
 literature had never existed." He puts a new and far 
 more difficult interpretation on the "Know thyself" 
 of old. To this his doctrine, he assigns as metaphysic 
 not mysticism, but materialism. 
 
 Intimately connected with Mr. Davidson's philo- 
 sophy of life is his passion for the country. He loves 
 Nature for her simplicity and beauty, and writes about 
 it as if it were a new and particular revelation, as if it 
 had never become a hackneyed theme, as if Spring- 
 Poets had never been by-words. We have seen how 
 
204 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 it is sometimes a hindrance. He can never turn his 
 thoughts away from the fields for long. As for the 
 sea, what could be more convincing than these lines 
 from the "Man Forbid"? 
 
 The bosomed plain 
 That strips her green robe to the saffron shore, 
 And steps into the surf, where threads and scales 
 And arabesques of blue and emerald wave 
 Begin to damascene the iron sea. 
 
 I doubt if the most ardent admirer would stand by 
 this Reformer in his utter condemnation of Christianity, 
 convention, and culture, and take refuge in a Material- 
 ism that says the body and soul are one. But more 
 might be inclined to agree with the fascinating theory 
 held unconsciously by the Greeks, and held very con- 
 sciously by this least Greek of poets — the theory of 
 Man's natural sinlessness. If Calvary has a meaning 
 for Mr. Davidson, it means the death of sin. Many 
 again would strenuously deny that culture is evil, 
 claiming perhaps that nothing leads a man to Reality, 
 to the examination of Self and of Conventions, to a 
 broad and catholic view of life, with more inevitable 
 sureness than a liberal education, and the tolerance 
 that only culture can instil. Yet have we not all been 
 at times disgusted by the men that display an apathy 
 proportionate to their learning? Do we not know and 
 hate the type of individual that takes Holy Orders 
 out of a vague desire to improve humanity by his 
 miserable assistance — that is, by preaching a creed 
 which he neither firmly believes nor thoroughly under- 
 stands? Do not the courts of the temple swarm with 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON: REALIST 205 
 
 those who fear to commit themselves to anything in 
 heaven above or earth beneath? I have observed it is 
 with this apathy that Mr. Davidson has had to contend. 
 For twenty years he has been preaching a sermon of 
 great meaning, and he has received nothing but com- 
 ph'ments on his poetical '' cornucopia." No wonder he 
 finds little consolation in culture, as he writes Play, 
 Ballad, Eclogue, and Testament, repeating his tremen- 
 dous tale with magnificent variety. There is a hard 
 lesson for us in the writings of Mr. Davidson. We are 
 convinced by him that if we want to found our idealism 
 on some basis less flimsy than that of sentiment, we 
 must strip off the ideals that now obsess us. If we 
 desire to arrive at a true appreciation of life or litera- 
 ture, we must criticize as if no one had anticipated us 
 in the work. To compensate for nineteen hundred 
 years of error, we must cultivate the neglected virtue 
 of strength. Only thus can we be ourselves, and fully 
 realize our latent power. 
 
 After all, the thesis of Materialism that we find set 
 before us here is not so repellent as it seems. After 
 years of what is little better than Manicheeism we are 
 at last told that Matter is not impure but lovely; that 
 man should begone with the mountains"; that the 
 landscapes of the world are beautiful, not because of 
 a soul residing in them, nor because their creator had 
 aesthetic ideals, but because they are what they are — 
 lovely in themselves. 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON 
 
 I 
 
 I HAVE only had the privilege of talking to one 
 great poet in my life, and that was John Davidson. 
 He was somewhat like one of his own ballads in ap- 
 pearance; fiery, impenitent, yet subdued to convention 
 — the eye-glass seeming to assert a right to aristocracy, 
 the well-trimmed imperial hinting at eccentric ele- 
 gance. He was in all ways a self-confident, ostentatious 
 man. His egoism showed in his handwriting, which 
 sloped upwards to the right across the page at a 
 terrific angle. It shows in almost every line of his 
 poetry, in the very audacity and splendour of his 
 image: 
 
 And out of Time's obscure distress 
 The conquering Scherzo thundered day. 
 
 His poetry, unjustly neglected as it is, does not 
 require very detailed criticism. He was, after all, the 
 greatest poet of his age; but it was not a glorious 
 age. Poetry was dead. Swinburne had written the 
 immortal " Ave Atque Vale," and somehow therewith 
 had sung hail and farewell to his own inspiration and 
 the splendid Victorian Muse. 
 
 The names and traditions of the Victorian epoch 
 should be banished as app^ra — things too holy (or 
 
 207 
 
2o8 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 unholy) to be spoken — from the pages of a journal 
 which encourages young British poets. After forty 
 years those gigantic shadows still oppress us. I must 
 trust entirely to my memory, but I believe that in 
 twenty years' interval were published, " The House 
 of Life," "Omar Khayyam," "The Scholar Gipsy," 
 "Dramatic Lyrics," "The Princess," and " Atalanta 
 in Calydon," any one of which masterpieces, even the 
 " Princess," would have dominated the whole succeed- 
 ing period from their age to ours. In those days 
 William Morris and Christina Rossetti were minor 
 poets. For all the imperishable work done since their 
 time by Housman and by Yeats, by Kipling and by 
 John Davidson himself, for all the progress in artistic 
 taste made by our younger generation, who at least 
 never write such vulgar rubbish as "Locksley Hall," nor 
 such obscure rubbish as " Pachiarotto," we know that 
 English poetry is awaiting another dawn, and that 
 we poets of to-day are but torch-bearers in a twi- 
 light. 
 
 John Davidson realized, I think, for all his mask of 
 aggressive self-confidence, that his poetry, judged by 
 the hard standard of his immediate predecessors, was 
 a failure; and it embittered him. But it is only when 
 measured by that hard standard that his poetry fails. 
 The world will always read those virile and impetuous 
 ballads. They have a cadence of bronze, and their 
 effects are those of a rhetoric which imagination and 
 sometimes insolence has transmuted into poetry. 
 Charming as are his " Fleet Street Eclogues," and 
 also some of his short lyrics, the ballads are his great 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON 209 
 
 achievement. He might have added to them, for they 
 are but few, collected them, pruned them of many 
 harsh or feeble expressions. But he suddenly lost all 
 interest in his lyric work; the peculiar curse of the 
 British author had fallen upon him. He discovered 
 the secret of the Universe, and he felt a call to make 
 the discovery universal. He began to preach, and to 
 preach in blank verse; and he abused the critics who 
 preferred what he now called the tinkle of his rhyme 
 to what he thought was the importai^t splendour of 
 his new metre. 
 
 John Davidson was a man of great genius, but of 
 still greater ambition. His ambition ruined his genius, 
 and his preachings in blank verse, despite their gorge- 
 ous imagery, even despite occasional humour and 
 originality, are failures. They fail owing to the crude- 
 ness of the poetical ideas and the technical inferiority 
 of the verse. 
 
 Tennyson, and in later years Mr. Stephen Phillips 
 in " Marpessa," and Mr. Yeats, have cleverly turned 
 blank verse to purely lyrical uses. Swinburne, with 
 his rows of monosyllables, gave his blank verse a 
 heavy beat, which was a fine device when his inspira- 
 tion soared, and an intolerable trick when it flagged. 
 But the last master of blank verse was Browning. All 
 through the interminable meanderings of " The Ring 
 and the Book," the technical excellence of the blank 
 verse never fails, and at its greatest can be measured 
 with Shakespeare's only. 
 
 To get at the reason of success or failure in blank 
 verse is the hardest task of criticism. Take the fol- 
 
 P 
 
2IO CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 lowing lines from the "Testament of John David- 
 son": 
 
 At sunset on the mountain of my choice 
 
 I stood above the catafalque of day 
 
 And watched the quilted vapours harness heaven 
 
 And chrysolite and ruby of countless hues, 
 
 Unnamed, unknown, unthought of, only guessed 
 
 Upon the moment of vicissitude 
 
 And pulsing cadence ; while the lofty winds' 
 
 Unseen battalions swung their shining glaives 
 
 Against me, and across the hills behind 
 
 With bridle-bells apeal and vibrant tread 
 
 Went down into the gloaming and the night. 
 
 This is all very magnificent, and somehow not worth 
 any three lines of Browning you can set your 
 eyes on : 
 
 Some interchange 
 Of grace, some splendour once the very thought. 
 Some benediction anciently they smile. 
 
 These " chrysolites and rubies," these " unseen bat- 
 talions," could pass off well enough in rhyme. Insert 
 any nonsense: 
 
 The lofty winds were striding through the waves: 
 Unseen battalions swung their shining glaives 
 Against me, and across the hills behind 
 With pulsing cadence a more lofty wind 
 With bridle-bells apeal and vibrant tread 
 Went down into the gloaming and the dead. 
 
 How much happier are the fine phrases with the 
 discipline of rhyme, however foolish, to add to their 
 elegance and excuse their bravado! For rhyme, in its 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON 211 
 
 subtle way, gives them, or at least the final word of 
 them, a reason for existence. 
 
 Blank verse, to repeat old truisms, must be written 
 not only as carefully as rhymed verse, but must aim 
 at a quite different impression. It must be written in 
 paragraphs, and not for the effect of single lines. John 
 Davidson sins, I think, even against these old and 
 obvious rules: yet there is something deeper than 
 their strict observance needed to enable even the sfood 
 poet to make good blank verse. I think of Shake- 
 speare, Webster, Milton, as well as Browning, when I 
 say that it is something like a latent but ever-watchful 
 sense of humour. 
 
 Meanwhile, even as a man's character is laid bare 
 in his cups, so a poet's intellect is betrayed by his 
 blank verse. John Davidson was a well-read, but not 
 a well-educated man. He felt an imperious desire to 
 assert himself, and began to preach in his new blank 
 verse with prose prefaces, a crude egoism and a 
 peculiarly childish materialism. The disaster is, of 
 course, not that he should have believed this or that. 
 A great poet may be a crude Catholic like Crashaw, 
 or a crude Protestant like Milton. The disaster is 
 that John Davidson bores us with his beliefs, having 
 nothing but a lot of rhetoric about " passionate mole- 
 cules and atomic pairs " to cover up its bare and very 
 ugly skeleton. These latter works are no longer of 
 John Davidson the poet, but of John Davidson from 
 Perth in Scotland. 
 
212 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 II 
 
 Almost all the chief poets of the last hundred years 
 have been comparatively rich men, or at least have 
 not been forced to struggle bitterly for a bare exist- 
 ence. Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, 
 Browning, Swinburne, were all men in fairly easy 
 circumstances. When there has been misery and 
 poverty in the lives of poets — of Coleridge and Keats, 
 for example — it has usually had an effect adverse to 
 their genius. This generalization could be tested in 
 other climes and other times, and would, I believe, 
 admit few exceptions; nor can I think of any poets, 
 save Villon and Verlaine, who drew directly inspira- 
 tion from the distress of a vagabond existence. 
 
 Yet the public still excuses itself from its obvious 
 duty towards poets by hypocrisies concerning the bene- 
 ficial effect of the struggle for life. When the struggle 
 for life is almost over, and the poetic inspiration has 
 been worn away by misery, the unfortunate genius is 
 sometimes accorded as an alms, and not as an honour, 
 a pension about equal to a footman's wage. 
 
 One of the meanest tragedies in the history of 
 English literature was the life and death of John 
 Davidson. He bore heroically the most abject 
 poverty. And the pity of it is that one is convinced 
 that, had he been enabled since the days when he 
 published his first plays — so full of life and promise 
 — to lead an ordinary decent life of ease and comfort, 
 perhaps to travel and air his genius in a wider world, 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON 213 
 
 he might have become a far greater poet and might 
 have dominated his age for the advantage of English 
 letters. He would have lost that rude savagery of 
 nature which made him rant materialism like a Hyde 
 Park missionary. 
 
 As it happened, his pension, such as it was, came 
 too late. I think he felt, too, that his muse was dead. 
 He imagined, rightly or wrongly, that his health was 
 undermined. He had been a brave man all his life, 
 and he was brave enough to commit suicide. As his 
 body could not at first be found, the British public 
 heard, for the first time, from their newspapers, that 
 there was a poet called John Davidson. 
 
 And so the world goes on, and millionaires leave 
 their millions to found public libraries to be filled 
 with the books that men wrote, and are writing still, 
 in misery, untended sickness, or at best in hours stolen 
 from uncongenial toil — books, too, which would have 
 been more bravely penned were great writers able 
 now to live, as they lived in Rome or Greece, like 
 gentlemen. When such vast funds are instantly sub- 
 scribed not only by millionaires for libraries, but by 
 the most generous and most thoughtless public in the 
 world, for any specious and delusive charity the daily 
 papers choose to encourage, cannot a few thousands 
 be collected to publish the books, if not to prolong 
 the lives, of those who, like John Davidson, write not 
 for ten thousand to read in ten days, but for ten more 
 wise men to read every 3'ear for ever? 
 
THE NEW POETRY AND MR. HOUS- 
 MAN'S ''SHROPSHIRE LAD" 
 
 THE man who treats poetry as a scholar treats 
 his classics, with loving care and affectionate 
 reverence, the man who loves the muse Euterpe 
 because she is so beautiful, and not because she is 
 the sister of Clio or the handmaid of Urania, will ever 
 continue to judge of poetry line by line and poem 
 by poem, judging by the only true and just standard. 
 He will, perhaps, never realize the attitude of that 
 outer circle of readers, those veritable amateurs who, 
 loving Poetry less intelligently but no less sincerely 
 than himself, yet are not content with vivid fancies, 
 delicate thoughts, and sweet expressions and powerful 
 harmonies, but seek in what they read for a statement 
 of philosophy, or at least a uniform and attractive 
 view of the World, Life and Love. Thus it is so 
 many Englishmen consider that Poetry died with 
 Tennyson or lives only with Swinburne. Modern 
 poetry appears to be in so chaotic a state that it is 
 impossible to trace any definite new movement, or 
 the prevalence of any distinctive new idea. Unable 
 to discover a main tendency, a predominating idea 
 in contemporary verse, many condemn the whole as 
 minor, and complain that Poetry is dead. 
 
 215 
 
2i6 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 While it is intended to show here that there is 
 a main movement, a real tendency in modern 
 poetry, it is merely to revive a flagging interest. 
 Poetry becomes no better by being made a part of a 
 movement. It must, of course, be taken on its merits 
 line by line and poem by poem. But it may become 
 more interesting. It is our object here to show that 
 the significance and trend of modern poetry is the 
 creation of a new poetical language to supersede the 
 Victorian convention. 
 
 Poetry is not dead, but the older generation is right 
 in saying that the Older Poetry is dead. The famous 
 English Poets from Coleridge to Swinburne form a 
 strong, a splendid, a connected dynasty, only once 
 interrupted, and that for only a decade. These men 
 bear a strong resemblance to each other in the vigour 
 of their thought, in the dignity of their style, and, one 
 may add, in the portentous volume of their works. 
 Even Shelley, untimely cut off at the age of thirty, 
 has left more work than a thousand large pages — 
 more than forty thousand lines of verse, more than 
 all we possess of Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, and Pro- 
 pertius. This amazing fertility was undoubtedly a 
 sign of strength and health, of an activity parallel to 
 that of the Elizabethan age, and founded in the same 
 way on a sense of national greatness. But the sense 
 of the dignity of the Muses, of the importance of 
 some more or less vague personal mission, was far 
 more prominent in these men than it had been 
 among the humbler writers of our drama. The great 
 Victorian poets clearly felt their own importance. 
 
THE NEW POETRY, ETC. 217 
 
 Wordsworth and Browning were philosophers, Byron, 
 Shelley, and Swinburne revolutionaries, Rossetti and 
 Morris were the leaders of an enthusiastic brother- 
 hood, Coleridge and Matthew Arnold employed them- 
 selves in criticism. Even Keats worked very con- 
 sciously for his ideal of Beauty, and the official position 
 of Tennyson dignified the pronouncements of " In 
 Memoriam." It was natural, however, that these merits 
 should bring corresponding defects. The moral and 
 philosophic tone of the Victorians sometimes de- 
 stroyed their inspiration; and the enormous bulk of 
 their volumes was bound to contain a rather unneces- 
 sary proportion of " poems with a purely biographical 
 interest." Matthew Arnold, for instance, may seem 
 to some to have obtained by means of his prose 
 writings, and by means of rather tangible and obvious 
 poetic effects, an unmerited popularity for his verses, 
 the melody of which is often harsh and the sentiment 
 civilian. But even he keeps his place by four or five 
 magnificent poems, and in the end we are compelled 
 to admit, not only that all these poets deserve their 
 high reputations, but also that in grandeur of diction 
 no modern or new author has approached the best 
 work of these epic song-writers. 
 
 They are still flattered by imitation, and before 
 coming to what is significant, we may well dismiss 
 what is insignificant in modern poetry. In America 
 especially, a country that still looks upon Macaulay 
 as the typical English prose writer, there has been no 
 attempt to follow the tradition of Whitman and write 
 American instead of English. America approves of 
 
2i8 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 poets who write the now foreign language of the 
 British Isles, and the result is that her most popular 
 versifiers can do nothing but imitate Tennyson; never 
 realizing that there is as much chance of immortality 
 for these experiments in an unknown tongue as there 
 was for the Latin poems written by the learned Italians 
 of the late Renaissance. 
 
 The English living imitators of Victorian style also 
 claim a moment's notice. Of these Mr. Stephen Phillips 
 is the most important. The grave sonority of " Christ 
 in Hades," the pleasant metrical variation of " Mar- 
 pessa " produced a certain impression. That " Mar- 
 pessa " is a tour de force is obvious upon close analysis ; 
 that Mr. Stephen Phillips is a close follower and rather 
 slavish imitator of Tennyson can be proved. And if 
 that vulgar phrase of the journalists, " clever but un- 
 inspired," can be employed justly of anyone, it can be 
 employed of those plays, so successful on the stage, 
 whose rather meretricious wonders impressed the 
 London mob. 
 
 Mr. William Watson, a writer far duller and less 
 skilful than Mr. Phillips, has tried in a most brazen 
 manner to re-write Keats, Tennyson, and even 
 Stevenson — (he begins a poem : " Under the dark and 
 piny steep "). The temporary reputation acquired by 
 Mr. Watson is particularly pernicious to the well- 
 being of Poetry; and it is ridiculous as well as aggra- 
 vating that any notice should be taken of his pompous 
 outcries. 
 
 The poetical language imitated by these writers, 
 that of the nineteenth century, is in obvious distinc- 
 
THE NEW POETRY, ETC. 219 
 
 tion to that of the eighteenth. Blake, the Andre 
 Ch^nier of English Romanticism, drew upon the 
 Elizabethans and the inspiration of divine ecstasy to 
 replenish his idiom. Coleridge turned to the old 
 ballads, and Wordsworth to Nature and the rustics. 
 But there was nothing rustic in the convention that 
 they formed — a convention admirably suited for the 
 expression of the high ideals and fervid thoughts of 
 themselves and their successors. The royal harmonies 
 of Hyperion, the voluptuously falling cadences of 
 Rossetti, the clear rustle of Tennyson's measure, the 
 impetuosity of Shelley and Swinburne, spring from a 
 nearly identical convention, rich and infinitely vari- 
 able, which nevertheless yearly became more distant 
 from the general language of mankind. In all the 
 manners really congenial to them the style, and 
 usually the theme, of Swinburne and Tennyson is 
 classical. 
 
 Meanwhile, concurrent with this lofty literature, a 
 popular style of Poetry never ceased to exist, a 
 poetry where popular idiom was permitted, and popu- 
 lar subjects allowed. The greater poets attempted 
 this frequently, and Rossetti's " Jenny " is a fine 
 example of a style he too seldom employed; but the 
 real masters of this more secular verse were the 
 prose writers, Charles Lamb and Thackeray, and the 
 poets. Hood and Patmore. A word must be said of 
 Browning in this connection. He made a desperate 
 and conscious effort to introduce the language of 
 conversation into his poetry, but he fell into a mistake 
 into which Mr. Kipling sometimes falls— that of using 
 
220 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 slang and more or less vulgar language by prefer- 
 ence. 
 
 Swinburne again, in the "Sisters," has made a weird 
 and disastrous effort to use plain speech. In his other 
 .plays he uses the phraseology of conversation either 
 by contrast or else to obtain weighty monosyllabic 
 lines of blank verse, and thereby to lay a heightened 
 and unnatural stress on the single words. Shelley's 
 " Cenci " is an earlier and perhaps more successful 
 attempt in the same style. But the most signal 
 example of a conscious combination of what may be 
 briefly called "old and new" comes from Tennyson. 
 The exquisite poem to Fitzgerald, beginning 
 
 Old Fitz who from your suburb grange 
 
 is not only simpler and more sincere, but also in a far 
 more natural vein than the bulk of his work, and, 
 more especially still, it contains a pathetic parody of 
 his own usual splendid verbiage. The poem of 
 " Tiresias " found 
 
 With shallow scraps of manuscript 
 And dating many a year ago 
 
 is enclosed between two addresses to Fitzgerald, one 
 
 written to the living, the other to the dead. Quoting 
 
 from the last lines of " Tiresias " right into the second 
 
 poem 
 
 while the golden lyre 
 Is ever sounding in heroic ears 
 Heroic hymns, and every way the vales 
 Wind, clouded with the grateful incense-fume 
 Of those who mix all odour to the gods 
 On one far height in one far-shining fire. 
 
THE NEW POETRY, ETC. 221 
 
 " One height and one far-shining fire," 
 
 And while I fancied that my friend 
 For this brief idyll would require . 
 
 A less diffuse and opulent end 
 
 And would defend his judgment well 
 
 If I should deem it over nice, 
 The tolling of his funeral bell 
 
 Broke on my pagan Paradise. 
 
 For Tennyson in his old age this, and not that of 
 " In Memoriam," was the language of sincerity and 
 sorrow. 
 
 The work of yet another poet can afford a striking 
 contrast of this sort. In the " Sphinx" Oscar Wilde 
 compressed and exaggerated the sumptuous glories 
 of the old style by the aid of a vast vocabulary drawn 
 from the storehouse of French romanticism : 
 
 And did you mark the Cyprian kiss 
 White Adon on his catafalque, 
 And did you follow Amanalk 
 The God of Heliopolis ? 
 And did you talk with Thoth, and did 
 You hear the moon-horned lo weep, 
 And know the painted Kings who sleep 
 Beneath the wedge-shaped pyramid ? 
 
 Withal the "Sphinx" is a vigorous and lively poem. 
 Words are used for the sheer joy of their sonorous 
 eccentricity, and the wild rhetoric gives the effect of 
 a gorgeous nightmare. Two years before, he wrote of 
 a prisoner in his poem, " The Ballad of Reading Gaol " : 
 
 He walked among the trial men 
 In a suit of shabby grey ; 
 
222 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 A cricket cap was on his head 
 
 And his step seemed light and gay, 
 
 But I never saw a man who looked 
 So wistfully at the day. 
 
 Now this is the language of almost all that is best in 
 modern poetry. It was by no means Wilde's inven- 
 tion: " Reading Gaol " is later than John Davidson's 
 ballads, and later than the " Shropshire Lad." It is 
 the language of Bridges, Hardy, and Yeats, and of all 
 the significant writers that are younger still. But of 
 all volumes of modern verse the " Shropshire Lad " is 
 the most complete vindication of this new and simple 
 style, and is therefore a fit example to be given here. 
 Mr. A. E. Housman is famous as a classical scholar. 
 This fact, and the fact that among these loving 
 descriptions of English country life and manners we 
 find a classical manner and view of life, or even a 
 classical theme, make it all the more surprising 
 that he should have so entirely broken away from the 
 tradition that gave us Tennyson's " Ulysses," Swin- 
 burne's " Erechtheus," or Mr. Murray's Swinburnian 
 translations of " Euripides." It is curious and pleasant 
 to find interspersed among these village songs stray 
 memories of the distant past of a distant land : 
 
 A Grecian lad, as I hear tell, 
 
 One that many loved in vain. 
 Looked into a forest well 
 
 And never looked away again. 
 There when the turf in spring-time flowers. 
 
 With downward eye and gazes sad 
 Stands amid the glancing showers 
 
 A jonquil, not a Grecian lad. 
 
THE NEW POETRY, ETC. 223 
 
 This poem is marked by no difference of style from 
 the others; and no one can fail to recognize here as 
 elsewhere a happy exactness, a delight in making the 
 point that, apart from any reference to the subject, 
 mark the scholar. We are reminded of Landor at his 
 briefest and best. Another poem, called " The Merry 
 Guide," describes how a youth with mien to match the 
 morning, a youth with friendly brows, led the poet 
 across glittering pastures, and by hanging woods, and 
 by silver waters to the music of the great gale. The 
 guide is some mysterious stranger, we know not who: 
 the secret, preciously hidden for so long, is in the last 
 verse wonderfully revealed : 
 
 And midst the fluttering legion 
 
 Of all that ever died 
 I follow and before us 
 
 Goes the delightful guide, 
 With lips that brim with laughter 
 
 But never once respond, 
 And feet that fly on feathers, 
 
 And serpent-circled wand. 
 
 We have begun by dwelling on an aspect of this 
 work which, though fascinating, is not of paramount 
 importance. At all events, the extracts serve as an 
 introduction to anything there may be to say on the 
 metres of the " Shropshire Lad." Except by Mr, 
 Davidson in his powerful tales in verse, the simple 
 stanzas of the ballads have not been often successfully 
 used in the nineteenth century. In this book there 
 are no complicated or involved measures, and no blank 
 verse. There is one metre, however, the structure of 
 which calls for especial notice. 
 
224 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 Here of a Sunday morning 
 
 My love and I would lie, 
 And see the coloured counties, 
 
 And hear the lark so high 
 
 About us in the sky. 
 
 It is a charming metre: the scazonic effect of the 
 last line is wistfully harmonious. I would not rashly 
 call it new. Who can lightly glance over all English 
 Poetry with its manifold wealth of form to resolve 
 such a question? But doubtless the author invented it 
 for himself, and it is a fine invention, or, at all events, 
 a fine resuscitation. 
 
 There is also a simple metre rhyming in couplets, 
 which the poet uses to obtain a majestic grace rather 
 foreign to the quiet compassion, or compassionate 
 horror, of the rest of the book : 
 
 The flag of morn in conqueror's state 
 Enters at the English gate ; 
 The vanquished Eve, as night prevails 
 Bleeds upon the road to Wales. 
 
 We may compare with these powerful lines the elabo- 
 rate and sumptuous metaphor in the first verse of 
 " Reveille," which is in the older style: 
 
 Wake : the silver dusk returning 
 Up the beach of darkness brims. 
 
 And the ship of sunrise, burning, 
 Strands upon the Eastern rims. 
 
 Within metres almost as limited and simple as^ those 
 employed with ascetic choice by the author of "Emaux 
 et Camees," Mr. Housman exhibits a great subtlety 
 of workmanship. It would not only be dreadfully 
 
THE NEW POETRY, ETC. 225 
 
 prosaic, but also rather unfair to expose at any length 
 his wizard tricks. The infinite joys that all true lovers 
 of poetry find in the deft manipulation of verbal 
 sounds are almost too sacred for explanation. Let a 
 short poem be quoted almost at random : 
 
 Now hollow fires burn out to black, 
 
 And lights are guttering low. 
 Square your shoulders, lift your pack, 
 
 And leave your friends, and go. 
 
 O never fear, man : nought's to dread, 
 
 Look not left nor right. 
 In all the endless road you tread 
 
 There's nothing but the night. 
 
 The quiet and forcible alliterations of the first and last 
 lines, the surprising vigour of the third, the impressive 
 slowness of the fifth line is remarkable. There is, 
 moreover, an art in the juxtaposition of sounds about 
 which it is rather sacrilegious to talk, not because of 
 any superhuman merit in this particular poem, but 
 because the art of melody is one of suggestion, and 
 not of code. For we must not overpraise Mr. Housman . 
 As an inventive author we neither need nor dare com- 
 pare him with the great names of the past. The verse 
 of Mr. Bridges^ shows only too well by its combination 
 of impeccable technique and extreme dullness and 
 dearth of ideas, that it is all too easy to make lines 
 sound pleasant in English by using simple language 
 and simple metres. Spoken English is so intrinsically 
 beautiful that a phrase like 
 
 Look not left nor right 
 
 ^ In later life Flecker became enthusiastic about Mr. Bridges. 
 
 Q 
 
226 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 goes straight into poetry. Thus the very medium 
 employed saves writers who employ the simpler style 
 from those lapses into weakness or ugliness that beset 
 the Victorians. It is far easier to preserve the virtues 
 of terseness and strength in short and simple lines 
 than in long and involved metres. A quiet style could 
 never perpetrate such a line as that 
 
 Who prop, thou ask'st, in these bad days my mind? 
 
 which Matthew Arnold permitted to remain through 
 edition after edition of his works at the head of a fine 
 sonnet. It is of course true that verse which is techni- 
 cally easy to construct is liable to lapse into careless- 
 ness of substance and idea: and the "Shropshire 
 Lad " is not free from weak and sentimental poems, 
 from poems v/here the military subject is left to itself, 
 as it were, to create an impression of strength, and 
 others that express a mood and a thought so fleeting 
 as to be without value. But, and this could be said of 
 few books of vigorous poetry, there are no cacophonous 
 lines. 
 
 Mr. Housman has achieved this fine result mainly 
 because he has used pure spoken English with hardly 
 any admixture of poetic verbiage. Indeed, some may 
 blame him for putting such pleasant phrases into the 
 mouths of peasants. If Browning was to be blamed 
 for making his nobles talk slang, shall we not blame 
 the poet who makes his peasants talk English? 
 
 While Mr. Housman's real justification for this is 
 the great superiority of artistic effect, it is nevertheless 
 a serious mistake to imagine that all peasants talk a 
 
THE NEW POETRY, ETC. 227 
 
 coarse and corrupt tongue. Certainly in some parts of 
 England a dialect is spoken which is fit only for 
 caricature. But in other parts, such as the Welsh 
 Borderlands, the natives speak in marvellously pure 
 English. Similarly, Mr. Hardy's peasants talk at times 
 the most excellent English, and a similar charge of 
 unreality has been brought against them. Mr. Hardy 
 seems to attempt some defence for this, when, at the 
 beginning of " Tess," he explains the refined speech of 
 his heroine by a reference to the fourth standard of 
 the Board School. It is a prosaic, but probable ex- 
 planation. At all events Mr. Housman can by no 
 means be said always to transcribe the peasant speech. 
 It is his to invent, not to copy, and he makes subtle 
 alterations which affect the poetry without changing 
 the general impression of simplicity. The poem on 
 Bredon Hill, of which a verse has just been quoted 
 above, is put into the mouth of a peasant lover. He 
 might possibly have talked of " coloured counties," or 
 used some very similar phrase. But no lover would 
 have said the lark was " about " him in the sky. He 
 would have said " above " undoubtedly. The change 
 gives strength to the metre, and vigour to the phrase; 
 but it is thoroughly artificial. 
 
 But it is not the subtlety of its language but its 
 unity of subject, and its charm of feeling that has 
 made the " Shropshire Lad " almost a famous book, 
 and enabled it to weather indifference. There is some- 
 thing even Homeric in his treatment of the old themes, 
 Love, War, and Death, in a simple and young com- 
 munity. His lovers affect no higher idealism, no trap- 
 
228 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 pings of middle-class sentiment. The sense of the 
 bloom fading from the rose, of the close following of 
 Death upon Love is the note of the Greek An- 
 thology: 
 
 Lovers lying two and two 
 Ask not whom they sleep beside, 
 
 And the bridegroom all night through 
 Never turns him to the bride. 
 
 Moreover, lest we get any idea of some foolish 
 Arcadia where pine the lovesick swains, there are 
 poems on suicide, murder, and " men that tread on 
 air." For better or for worse fierce sins and a ghastly 
 retribution are features of all English village life: 
 
 And naked to the hangman's noose 
 
 The morning clocks will ring 
 A neck God made for other use 
 
 Than strangling in a string. 
 
 So here I'll watch the night and wait 
 
 To see the morning shine, 
 When he will hear the stroke of eight, 
 
 And not the stroke of nine. 
 
 The whole poem is very terrible: and then in the 
 next we are back again 
 
 [Here this early unpublished essay breaks off.'] 
 
TWO CRITICS OF POETRY 
 
 " History of English Poetry." By VV. J. Courthope. 
 Vol. VI. London: Macmillan and Co. los. net. 
 
 " The Romantic Movement in English Poetry." By 
 Arthur Symons. London: Constable and Co. 
 ys. 6d net. 
 
 DURING the last year two histories of the 
 Byronic period of English poetry have been 
 laid before a public which prefers the 
 criticism of poetry to poetry itself: one of these is 
 by Mr. Courthope, a professor, the other by Mr. 
 Symons, a poet. Both books are notable in their 
 way; but their ways are different. 
 
 For the professor, poetry is one side of the History 
 of England, every poet the mouthpiece of his age. He 
 views all romantic literature as a phase of the party 
 struggle between Whig and Tory, a struggle enlivened 
 by a third element, that passionate adoration of 
 Liberty, that unworldly determination to wreck the 
 social order, and to build the New Jerusalem in the 
 pleasant fields of England. That so wild a temper as 
 this last is repellent to Mr. Courthope his attitude 
 clearly shows, though he strives hard to conceal his 
 repulsion. Yet however foolish politically, this idea 
 
 229 
 
230 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 directly inspired all the great poetry of the age, save 
 that of Crabbe and Keats. 
 
 Mr. Courthope's method of criticism is imperial, 
 almost brutal. He estimates poets by their influence 
 rather than by their merit; this is excusable; but to 
 estimate their merit by their influence, to allow direct 
 literary criticism to be coloured by the contemporary 
 importance or posthumous popularity of the poet, is 
 not excusable. But Mr. Courthope does this. Fascin- 
 ated by the great personality and power of Byron, he 
 bestows exaggerated praise on those lyrical dramas 
 whose bombast, tumidity, and conceit Meredith's curt 
 sonnet has immortally damned. Yet even Mr. Court- 
 hope can find little to say in their defence save that 
 they are good, sound English and tolerable blank 
 verse. Again, we may forgive our author for reviving 
 some names, that of Mason, for instance, for their 
 political rather than their poetical importance. But 
 can we forgive him for writing pages on Hogg without 
 mentioning Kilmenie or the fairies ? Can we forgive 
 him for entirely omitting Darley, Jane and Ann Taylor, 
 and a score of other interesting names in a book which 
 styles itself a History of English Poetry, in a volume 
 full of Southey, Erasmus Darwin, and the Delia Crus- 
 cans? Or for perpetuating that old and vicious sophistry 
 that we cannot estimate the value of poetry till the 
 writers thereof are soundly dead, and there is some 
 trend of a muddy popular opinion for a critic to seize 
 hold of, and for being frightened, in accordance with this 
 fear, of giving us any estimate of those rising young 
 poets of to-day — Tennyson, Browning, and Rossetti? 
 
TWO CRITICS OF POETRY 231 
 
 But, after all, Professor Courthope is an enthusiast. 
 When he finds any verse which he considers patriotic 
 and health}^, such as Campbell's tinsel " Battle of the 
 Baltic" — a rather mean poem for a rather mean occasion 
 — or Scott's boyish, charming, quite unimportant 
 Ballads, he indulges in extravagant applause. When 
 he is writing of Blake and Keats we feel that for him 
 they are simply a pair of conceited asses with a spark 
 of genius; we know that had Mr. Courthope been on 
 the " Edinburgh " at the time he would have had no 
 good to say of such miserable poetasters. Blake — this 
 seems to be the half-conscious trend of professorial 
 thought — Blake had no interest or influence in politics 
 or society : he was a mystic ; mysticism is nonsense, 
 and Blake a conceited ass. Keats, again, was no gentle- 
 man ; his vulgarity occasionally appears in his verse 
 (this, of course, is true, and Mr. Courthope fairly gloats 
 over it) ; he was sensual, not in Byron's flashy patri- 
 cian way, but with all the real viciousness of the lower 
 middle-classes ; his heroes are swooning fellows, not 
 healthy Britons ; a passage in " Lamia " is too disgust- 
 ing for quotation ; Keats had no interest in politics ; 
 Keats was a conceited ass. Most modern poets have 
 followed Keats' devotion to his art and appealed to a 
 circle of cultured admirers. They, too, are conceited 
 asses. 
 
 Mr. Arthur Symons,onthe other hand, prefers poetry 
 to politics; and his book, though neither great 
 criticism nor great literature, is superior to that of 
 Mr. Courthope both in matter and in manner. Mr. 
 Symons is himself something of a poet; it is too often 
 
232 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 forgotten that though artists may be very bad critics, 
 they are the only people really fit to criticize. It must 
 be admitted, however, that the appreciation of an art 
 by a critic who practises himself is apt to be intense, 
 but narrow. So with Mr. Symons. For instance, he 
 starts by defining poetry as everything written in 
 metre. This is the common-sense definition ; it is the 
 only definition : it is amazing that no one seems to 
 have thought of it before. But while Mr. Symons has 
 a fine talent for understanding and judging Romantics 
 and Realists, he takes the bigoted view of Keats with 
 regard to the Augustan Age of English verse. (By 
 the way, Mr. Courthope thinks Keats an exceptionally 
 conceited ass for abusing so distinguished a man as 
 Boileau. He should read Landor on the absurdities of 
 that dismal Frenchman.) In consequence Mr. Symons 
 has no good to say of Pope. If Pope is poetry, he 
 declares, then neither Elizabethan nor Romantic verse 
 is poetry at all. He thus falls into the old error of 
 using poetry in the sense of good, Romantic, or 
 inspired verse; and into the more serious error of 
 failing to see that Pope is great literature in verse, 
 and therefore a great poet, according to his own 
 definition. Mr. Symons does not perhaps see that the 
 devotion to Pope which so many profess nowadays is 
 essentially romantic. If he could feel any sympathy 
 for the elegance and wit of the age of which Pope was 
 so striking a representative, he might begin to feel the 
 force and humanity of his verse. The emotions that 
 poetry should inspire need not surely be all elevated 
 or elemental. Are lyrical and dramatic forms of verse 
 
TWO CRITICS OF POETRY 233 
 
 the only true or noble forms? is Browning, is Juvenal 
 no poet ? 
 
 But, after all, Mr. Symons is the best critic we have 
 had of Romantic, and even of Realistic, verse. He has 
 lost the irritating precocity and patcrism of style 
 which marred his former work ; and his criticisms are 
 usually neat, witty, profound, and sensible. He at 
 times is apt to begin to flutter (there is no better 
 word) about the beauty, majesty, golden sweetness, 
 and so forth, of his poets, in the manner of John Ad- 
 dington Symons: but he only does this when led 
 away by enthusiasm for the great names of Blake and 
 Shelley. His verdicts on the minor poets are remark- 
 ably sound and convincing; he does not perhaps do 
 justice to George Darley, but his estimates of Leigh 
 Hunt, and the Taylors, his amusing but just con- 
 demnations of Southey, Moore, and Scott are admir- 
 able. He is the first modern critic to observe the real 
 metrical force of some of Mrs. Hemans' forgotten 
 rhymes, and he makes us clamour for a cheap and 
 good edition of the " Ettrick Shepherd." 
 
 In writing of Byron, however, our author, like Mr. 
 Courthope, tends to undue admiration. Byron is a 
 poet who is given to surprising the reader by genuine 
 excellence even in the midst of his absurdest romantic 
 tales : and it has become the fashion to pronounce 
 " Don Juan " to be an excellent, and his most excellent, 
 work. We suspect these fashionables of not having 
 read "Don Juan" through. It is, indeed, a brilliant and 
 amusing work, cunningly versified, yet rather too full 
 of contemporary and unimportant allusions, rather too 
 
234 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 long and prolix, to hold the attention of the reader. 
 But when we compare it with other works with which 
 in form or tone it challenges comparison we may well 
 ask what it contains which rivals Ariosto and the 
 voyage of Astolfo to the moon ; and we may remark 
 how both its wit, sense and imagination fail when 
 tested by such a poem as Browning's " Blougram " ? 
 Byron, as Mr. Saintsbury has truly said, is second-rate 
 for all his merits, and as far below Hogg as a Romantic 
 Poet as he was above him in worldly state and influ- 
 ence. But it is hard to escape from the fascination of 
 his character ; and as a satirist he will surely live. 
 
 But, after all, Mr. Symons has made a valiant 
 attempt to judge every poet by the merit of his 
 poetry, and by that alone. He does not write more of 
 their biographies than is inevitable or illuminating: 
 his supreme concern is with their works. With diligent 
 scholarship and an observant, unprejudiced mind he 
 has read through almost every scrap of rhyme written 
 in the forty years of which his book treats. I suppose 
 that in the literature schools of one of our great, or 
 less great, universities, he would obtain, if a candidate, 
 quite a respectable second class. 
 
 Let us, however, in fairness consider what, if any- 
 thing, can be urged in favour of other styles of 
 criticism, in favour of treating poets as politicians, 
 like Courthope, or as characters, like Matthew Arnold. 
 We may say first that to an average mind, Mr. Court- 
 hope's book, and books of its class, are liable to be far 
 more interesting than books like that of Mr. Symons, 
 which have a purely aesthetic aim. Had Mr. Courthope 
 
TWO CRITICS OF POETRY 235 
 
 called his book a " History of Political Influence in 
 English Poetry," had he been content to trace that 
 influence without making unsuitable remarks on the 
 aesthetic value of poetical productions, his book would 
 be one that could well be praised for its research, its 
 clearness, and its interest. Instead, he has supported 
 that ancient and false critic, popular opinion, which 
 is never a real national verdict — and, if it was, would 
 not be of supreme importance — and is usually nothing 
 but a confused and journalistic distortion of the 
 opinion of a few eminent men of the day. Still worse, 
 under that valiant guise — so popular in these days, so 
 surely a sign of decadence — of being a man who, 
 though a scholar, loves virility, blatant patriotism, 
 and common-sense, he has wronged and insulted the 
 memories of the great. The care, discernment, and 
 mental balance of Arthur Symons is in pleasing con- 
 trast to this pompous attitudinizing, and is far more 
 worthy of the high traditions of English literature and 
 of Englishmen. 
 
 Yet we often agree with Mr. Courthope when he is 
 not employed in criticism, and especially when he 
 deplores the absence of political interest in modern 
 poetry. He is rather apt to blame the poets : he should 
 blame history. The dearth of proud and eagle-winged 
 forces in this modern age is a calamity for art. 
 Whether these century-old poets preached an idea as 
 Shelley, Byron, and Wordsworth, ran counter to it, as 
 Crabbe, or neglected it, as Keats, they had the in- 
 estimable advantage of living in a society rent by the 
 enthusiasm and hatreds of the French Revolution. In 
 
CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 those good days Shelley was not an ineffectual angel 
 whose pretty lyrics might be read by simpering girls, 
 but a most effectual Devil, like a socialist of to-day, 
 attacking the very foundations of society. Only 
 during the last year has there arisen in England a 
 political crisis worthy of the pen: and in this revived 
 bitterness of strife lies at least some hope for the 
 future of English poetry. 
 
THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO 
 SAMARKAND 1 
 
 Preface 
 
 FEELING some explanation of my attitude 
 towards the art of poetry might assist critics 
 and interest friends, I hoped to be able to ex- 
 pound in this preface my theory. But I found I had 
 no new theory. All I can do is to praise a very simple 
 theory of poetry which has for me a unique attrac- 
 tion — that of the French " Parnasse." A careful study 
 of this theory, however old-fashioned it may by now 
 have becom.e in France, Vvould, I am convinced, 
 benefit English critics and poets, for both our poetic 
 criticism and our poetry are in chaos. It is a Latin 
 theory, and therefore the more likely to supply the 
 defects of the Saxon genius. It would do English 
 poetry — which is to-day as far beneath the French as 
 it was of old above it — and English literary criticism, 
 which has never been comparable with that of our 
 neighbours, no harm to take, as Dan Chaucer took of 
 old, a lesson from the Continent. 
 
 Good poetry has obviously been written on other 
 theories than the Parnassian. It has been written 
 
 ^ Published by arrangement with Mr. Martin Seeker. 
 237 
 
238 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 with no theory at all. It has been written with very 
 strange theories. Good poetry has been Catholic like 
 Crashaw's, and Protestant like Milton's, and mystic 
 like Blake's, and atheistic like the " De Rerum Natura." 
 Good poetry has been full of high moral sentiments, 
 like Wordsworth's, of highly immoral sentiments, like 
 Byron's, or quite amoral sentiments, like Herrick's. 
 Good poetry has been written in boorish speech, like 
 that of Barnes, or in elegant diction, like that of 
 Pope. 
 
 No worthless writer will be redeemed by the excel- 
 lence of the poetic theory he may chance to hold. 
 
 But that a sound theory can produce sound prac- 
 tice, and exercise a beneficent effect on writers of 
 genius, has been repeatedly proved in the short but 
 glorious history of the " Parnasse." 
 
 The Parnassian School was a classical reaction 
 against the perfervid sentimentality and extravagance 
 of some French Romantics. The Romantics in France, 
 as in England, had done their powerful work, and 
 infinitely widened the scope and enriched the language 
 of poetry. It remained for the Parnassians to raise 
 the technique of their art to a height which should 
 enable them to express the subtlest ideas in powerful 
 and simple verse. But the real meaning of the term 
 Parnassian may be best understood from considering 
 what is definitely not Parnassian. To be didactic, like 
 Wordsworth, to write dull poems of unwieldy length, 
 to bury, like Tennyson or Browning, poetry of exqui- 
 site beauty in monstrous realms of vulgar, feeble, or 
 obscure versifying, to overlay fine work with gross 
 
GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND 239 
 
 and irrelevant egoism, like Victor Hugo, would be 
 abhorrent, and rightly so, to members of this school. 
 On the other hand, the finest work of many great 
 English poets, especially Milton, Keats, Matthew 
 Arnold, and Tennyson, is written in the same tradi- 
 tion as the work of the great French school : and one 
 can but wish that the two latter poets had had some- 
 thing of a definite theory to guide them in self- 
 criticism. Tennyson would never have published 
 " Locksley Hall," and Arnold might have refrained 
 from spoiling his finest sonnets by astonishing 
 cacophonies. 
 
 There are, of course, many splendid forms of pas- 
 sionate or individual poetry which are not Parnassian. 
 The work of Shelley and Browning, of Rossetti, or 
 Villon or Verlaine, however perfect, is too emotional, 
 individual or eccentric, to have any affinity with the 
 Parnassian School. 
 
 The French Parnassian has a tendency to use tradi- 
 tional forms, and even to employ classical subjects. 
 His desire in writing poetry is to create beauty: his 
 inclination is toward a beauty somewhat statuesque. 
 He is apt to be dramatic and objective rather than 
 intimate. The enemies of the Parnassians have accused 
 them of cultivating unemotional frigidity and uphold- 
 ing an austere view of perfection. The unanswerable 
 answers to all criticism are the works of Heredia, 
 Leconte de Lisle, Samain, Henri de Regnier, and 
 Jean Moreas. Compare the early works of the latter 
 poet, written under the influence of the Symbolists, 
 with his " Stances," if you would see what excellence 
 
240 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 of theory can do when it has genius to work on. 
 Read the works of Heredia if you would understand 
 how conscious and perfect artistry, far from stifling 
 inspiration, fashions it into shapes of unimaginable 
 beauty. Heredia wrote one volume of sonnets. They 
 are traditional in form. Their subjects are classical or 
 historical. They are utterly remote from modern life 
 and turmoil. Each one evokes a distinct, complete, 
 and delicate image of the past. And yet there is 
 hardly one of them that is not immortal poetry, and 
 the passion that breathes in the sonnets on Cleopatra 
 is of such fiery intensity that I doubt if in all lyric 
 poetry it would be excelled. 
 
 To have preached a Parnassian doctrine in the age 
 of Pope would have been superfluous: to have 
 attempted to restrain therewith the impetuous tor- 
 rent of Elizabethan or Victorian production would 
 have been impossible. But at the present moment 
 there can be no doubt that English poetry stands in 
 need of some such saving doctrine to redeem it from 
 the formlessness and the didactic tendencies which 
 are now in fashion. As for English criticism, can it 
 not learn from the Parnassian or any tolerable theory 
 of poetic art to examine the beauty and not the 
 " message " of poetry? 
 
 This importunity of the " message," this " old 
 Puritan spirit," has corrupted nearly all our artists, 
 from William Wordsworth down to the latest writers 
 of manly tales in verse. If we have preaching to do, 
 in heaven's name let us call it a sermon and write it 
 in prose. It is not the poet's business to save man's 
 
GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND 241 
 
 soul, but to make it worth saving. It is not his busi- 
 ness to make wise reflections about the social and 
 moral problems of the day, but, whether inspired by a 
 slum window in Camden Town or by an old volume 
 picked up for a soldo in the streets of Florence, to 
 make beautiful the tragedy, and tragic the beauty, of 
 man's life. Many of our great English poets have 
 preached moral theories, or expounded in verse their 
 philosophies of life; but it is to be remembered that 
 what endures of their work is that portion where, 
 despite themselves, they wrote like poets. However 
 few great poets have written with a clear theory of 
 art for art's sake, it is by that theory alone that their 
 work has been, or can be, judged ; and rightly so if 
 we remember that art embraces all life and all 
 humanity, and sees, in the temporary and fleeting 
 doctrines of conservative or revolutionary, only the 
 human grandeur or passion that inspires them. 
 
 To this volume, written with the single intention of 
 creating beauty, now the Moslem East, now Greece 
 and her islands has furnished a setting. Those who 
 are for ever seeking for what they call profundity of 
 inspiration are welcome to burrow in my verse and 
 extract something, if they will, as barren as the few 
 cheap copy-book headings to which they once reduced 
 the genius of Browning; in the attitude to life 
 expressed in these pages, in the Poet's appreciation 
 of this transient world, the flowers and men and 
 mountains that decorate it so superbly, they will 
 probably find but little edification. 
 
 Beyrout, 
 
 Aprils 191 3. 
 
THE PUBLIC AS ART CRITIC 
 
 IT is the fashion among certain amiable writers 
 of the present day to exalt public opinion and 
 appro y/e public taste. True merit, they cry, is 
 crowned at last by the civic laurel : public opinion 
 works slowly but surely, and popular applause is the 
 supreme test of value. Of these amiable writers Mr. 
 Chesterton is by far the most conspicuous and 
 cunning. The form and style, that is to say, the 
 beauties of literature, are nothing to him. He blas- 
 phemes the very name of art. He gushes about 
 Watts as if he were the peer of Leonardo da Vinci. 
 As if he had never read " Endymion " or " Isabella," 
 he remarks that Keats was one of those people who 
 are incapable of writing bad poetry. Keats, the most 
 desperately careless and slovenly of all great poets ; 
 Keats, who wrote " Why in the name of glory were 
 they proud! " But Mr. Chesterton is a democrat, and 
 this is the democratic view of poetry. Shakespeare 
 was in some respects a typical honest middle-class 
 Englishman. What a joyous discovery for Mr. 
 Chesterton! Quick follows the inevitable generaliza- 
 tion. " The first-class artist considers himself the 
 equal of other men, like Shakespeare." And Michael 
 Angelo? And Beethoven? And Goethe? Are they 
 
 243 
 
244 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 all third-class then ? " The third-class artist thinks 
 himself superior to other men, like Whistler." The 
 whole doctrine of Mr. Chesterton is a fraud : his 
 whole argument for democracy in art amounts to 
 this : " Dickens was a good writer and popular : 
 therefore, good writers are popular." 
 
 Let us examine the real facts of the case. We must 
 establish first of all that there is an actual standard in 
 art. If you think William Watson a better poet than 
 William Shakespeare, your opinion is not merely 
 curious, it is wrong. Should you maintain your 
 opinion was correct, and you had every right to hold 
 it, 1 might attempt to prove your error to you by 
 appealing to the laws of art. But I admit the proof 
 would be abominably hard and difficult, not because 
 art has no laws, but because it has such terribly diffi- 
 cult and complex ones, like all great human institu- 
 tions. But that a standard exists, and that criticism is 
 not a mere question of personal taste, can be shown 
 by one conclusive proof. It is this : The more a man 
 studies an art the more he is compelled to agree with 
 those who have made the same study before him, and 
 to admit that the famous names are the great ones. 
 He may perhaps differ from the general view in 
 valuing Matthew Arnold a little less, and Pope a little 
 more: but the striking thing about critics is not that 
 they diverge, but that despite all new brilliant, and 
 impartial treatments of their subject, they agree. 
 
 Well then, you say, if the most famous names are 
 really the greatest, public opinion, which gives men 
 fame, is the infallible critic after all. But it is not 
 
THE PUBLIC AS ART CRITIC 245 
 
 public opinion which bestows fame. The admiration 
 for great names is imposed on the piibh'c by a small 
 band of earnest critics who have a passion for art, 
 who understand its technique, who study its history. 
 It is they who fight the long battle against the Philis- 
 tines; and having a righteous cause at heart, they 
 usually win. For the public is not so foolishly self- 
 complacent as Mr. Chesterton imagines. The public 
 knows it has its own great business to do, and has 
 not the leisure or knowledge to discover artistic 
 secrets: and it wisely follows the lead of the expert 
 whenever it can find one. 
 
 For an expert is needed. Criticism is almost as 
 difficult as creation, and there is no royal road to the 
 comprehension of the beautiful. No one can under- 
 stand music, who knows nothing of the rules of 
 harmony; no one can fully appreciate a picture, who 
 has not some idea how lumps of paint are stuck on 
 canvas. A play or a novel, I admit, has a much 
 wider, more direct and human appeal, and a good 
 unspecialized average intelligence is more likely to 
 succeed in its estimate of literature than in its 
 estimate of painting or music. But even literary 
 criticism is largely a technical affair, and the criticism 
 of poetry is the hardest branch of the science that 
 exists. This critic must have an ear no less subtle 
 than the poet's to mark the apt spacing of the con- 
 sonants and the noble procession of the vowels. 
 Words must call up to him all their sweet associa- 
 tions of sound and sense. The word " road " must 
 mean for him not merely one particular road, but 
 
246 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 all the roads in the world whereon men walk like 
 pilgrims from the grey of dawn to the terror of the 
 sunset. " House " must suggest to him all the habita- 
 tions of clay, brick, stone, or snow, where men have 
 lived, wept, died, or played with their children round 
 the fire. The word "tree" for him as for the poet 
 must signify a thing that was once worshipped, 
 where still maybe hides a nut-brown Dryad, and 
 whose falling leaves symbolize the end of all our 
 dreaming. 
 
 The critic of poetry must know all the minutiae of 
 the technique not so much that he may be able to 
 carp at faults as that he may realize perfection. He 
 must know his art so well that he feels at once and 
 instinctively, not after reflection merely, whether the 
 lines he is reading ring true. Yet he must not be a 
 pedant: he must have deep experience of life, he 
 must be a man of character. In the true sense of the 
 word he must be moral. He must prepare for his task 
 austerely: it is a high one. He must cast aside for an 
 hour his own puritanism and prejudice, his petty, even 
 his noble beliefs about the world, and become re- 
 ceptive of the impressions of others to the extreme 
 limit of human nature. He must not condemn poems 
 because they arc morbid, profane, or deal with what 
 the Manchester Watch Committee (who forbade Maud 
 Allan to dance in their beautiful and virtuous town) 
 would call unpleasant subjects. He will know that 
 art is divided, not into decadent and healthy, classic 
 and romantic, but into the two mighty divisions of 
 Good and Bad, and that these divisions alone hold 
 
THE PUBLIC AS ART CRITIC 247 
 
 true. One great dogma alone he must hold — that 
 human life is passionately interesting in all its phases, 
 that over the filthiest by-ways the sky of night must 
 stretch its flowery mantle of stars. The critic must 
 be of purer mould than the poet himself. He must 
 have a profound love for man, not the vague en- 
 thusiasm of the humanitarian but a vivid delight in all 
 the men in the world, men sinful, men splendid, men 
 coarse, or cowardly, or pathetic. And in all the phe- 
 nomena of nature, sordid or shining, the background to 
 our tragedy, he must adm^ire, if not the beauty, then the 
 force, the law, the cruelty, and the power. And with 
 this enthusiasm in his soul he will bitterly condemn 
 dullness, weakness, bad workmanship, vulgar thought, 
 shoddy sentiment as being slanders on mankind ; and 
 in this sense and this sense only — that it is the glory 
 of man — great art is moral. 
 
 Yet though so few can be good critics of art, I do 
 not mean that art is only for the elect. It is indis- 
 putable that thousands honestly and genuinely enjoy, 
 admire, and love certain works of art which they 
 know to be considered great. How should it be 
 otherwise? A spark of the divine is in us all; some 
 sentiment for the sea, the wind and sunshine, for 
 death and for the ancient story of love. Every life is 
 a poem acted: of our trivial affairs painters construct 
 their canvases, and poets weave their songs. We are 
 whacked as children — Gozzoli has painted us ; our 
 sister has a music lesson — Terborch has drawn her 
 with the light shining on her earnest face: our mother 
 peels potatoes : Chardin has painted her, and the 
 
248 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 potatoes, so that we feel we never knew what a 
 potato was like before. We fall in love and feel that 
 lyrical exaltation we cannot express, but we know 
 our love is that of Paolo for Francesca, though she 
 lives at No. 7 Brixton Gardens. We enact our own 
 tragedy and die, grand as Lear himself, bound on the 
 same path as the heroic kings of old. 
 
 But granted that the people have the emotions from 
 which great artists draw the substance of their work, 
 have avague passionateyearning towards those images 
 of beauty which art has fixed, yet the people never 
 know how fine a fine work is, because they cannot see 
 the vileness of a base one. I once heard a shop-girl 
 say that the two plays she liked best were "The 
 Silver King," and "that one where the black man 
 gets jealous and kills his girl." She meant " Othello." 
 Well, the sun of art may shine so strong that the 
 blindest eyes are dazzled, but only the eagles com- 
 prehend the glory of that disc. The novelist of the 
 people is Marie Corelli, their poet Ella Wheeler 
 Wilcox, their artist Blair Leighton, their musician 
 Paul Rubens. Mr. Chesterton will doubtless say it is 
 because the people are so nice that they admire these 
 marvels: that they honestly think Miss Corelli pro- 
 found, Miss Wilcox passionate, Mr. B. Leighton 
 chivalrous, and Mr. Rubens lyrical and sparkling. 
 The people are pleasant and fascinating, I readily 
 agree, though I dislike those who parade their affec- 
 tion for the populace, and their love of Christmasses, 
 children, and the homely virtues in order to make 
 the said populace think what ripping fellows they 
 
THE PUBLIC AS ART CRITIC 249 
 
 are. But you cannot appreciate both Blair Leighton 
 and Euphronios. If you cannot see that the " Epic of 
 Hades " (it sells by the hundred thousand) is beneath 
 contempt, you are not fit to read " Paradise Lost." 
 If you don't know how bad the bad is you can never 
 tell how good the good is. 
 
 But if the middle classes should exclaim " Our 
 gods are better than these," I should reply that the 
 devotees of Robert Hichens and the thumpers of 
 Rachmaninoff preludes are in a far worse case than 
 the jolly mass of the people who simply want to be 
 amused. Many of the middle class falsely imagine 
 they have taste : they do terrible dis-service to art by 
 buying pretentious and vulgar stuff and setting up a 
 hideous clamour if their sense of propriety is outraged. 
 Say there were ten good pictures in the Neo- Impres- 
 sionist exhibition, were there six in last year's academy.? 
 Yet no one said that that exhibition was an insult to 
 the public, or that those coarse portraits of King 
 Edward were a slur on the dignity of Empire. Or 
 admit that Salome is a faulty opera ; do you shriek 
 and squeal when some tinkling atrocity like the 
 " Cavalleria Rusticana " holds the stage? Where rose 
 your cultured voices when the new Victoria and 
 Albert Museum emerged in unassuming ugliness, with 
 those silly little statues stuck round in a row, indis- 
 tinguishable save by their beards. Is not that building 
 an insult to the taste of the British Public? An insult 
 we shall have to endure some hundred years or 
 longer. 
 
 In the old days when the aristocracy really cared 
 
2SO CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 for art, and pork-butchers cared only for their pork, 
 there was less chatter and more appreciation for 
 true greatness. Art lives on to-day, but in noble re- 
 tirement, too proud to ask for pence. The artist hears 
 all around him infinite rubbish talked about his art, 
 and imagines for the moment that the middle classes 
 are sincere, and will be willing at least to hear his 
 symphony or read his book. You soon undeceive him, 
 you middle classes. You, who have let, are letting, and 
 will let your poets die of hunger, continue to buy your 
 pretty editions of the classics and to frame photo- 
 gravures of the " Sistine Madonna " over your mantel- 
 shelves. You know quite well that vital art bores you 
 and you have never understood it. 
 
PAUL FORT, THE -PRINCE OF 
 POETS "1 
 
 PHILOMEL' 
 
 From the Fre^tch of Paul Fort 
 
 O SING, in heart of silence hiding near, 
 Thou whom the roses bend their heads to hear! 
 In silence down the moonh'ght slides her wing : 
 Will no rose breathe while Philomel doth sing? 
 No breath — and deeper yet the perfume grows : 
 The voice of Philomel can slay a rose : 
 The song of Philomel on nights serene 
 Implores the gods who roam in shades unseen, 
 But never calls the roses, whose perfume 
 Deepens and deepens, as they wait their doom. 
 Is it not silence whose great bosom heaves ? 
 Listen, a rose-tree drops her quiet leaves. 
 
 Now silence flashes lightning like a storm : 
 Now silence is a cloud, and cradled warm 
 By risings and by fallings of the tunc 
 That Philomel doth sing, as shines the moon, 
 
 ' The new anthology of Paul Fort's poems " Choix de Ballades 
 francjaises" (Figuiere, 6 fr,), may be recommended to intending 
 readers whom our poet's prolific output might otherwise bewilder 
 and repel. In it Paul Fort has for the first time properly classi- 
 fied his work. 
 
 " " Philomel" is included in this volume by arrangement with 
 Mr. Martin Seeker. 
 
 251 
 
252 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 — A bird's or some immortal voice from Hell 
 There is no breath to die with, Philomel ! — 
 And yet the world has changed without a breath. 
 The moon lies heavy on the roses' death, 
 And every rosebush droops its leafy crown. 
 A gust of roses has gone sweeping down. 
 The panicked garden drives her leaves about : 
 The moon is masked : it flares and flickers out. 
 O shivering petals on your lawn of fear, 
 Turn down to Earth and hear what you shall hear. 
 A beat, a beat, a beat beneath the ground. 
 And hurrying beats, and one great beat profound. 
 A heart is coming close : I have heard pass 
 The noise of a great Heart upon the grass. 
 The petals reel. Earth opens : from beneath 
 The ashen roses on their lawn of death, 
 Raising her peaceful brow, the grand and pale 
 Demeter listens to the nightingale. 
 
 WHAT a large contribution French literature 
 of the last ten years has made to the splen- 
 did unity achieved by France in face of the 
 great but long foreseen danger of war, how firmly that 
 reaction to heroic ideals of discipline and religion has 
 been led by men like Barres and Maurras, is hardly 
 realized in England at all, where the Press, choked 
 with articles on unimportant and obscure curiosities 
 like Strindberg^ or Tagore, has no time to attend to 
 the one foreign literature worth reading. Indeed, 
 the only modern French writer known in England is 
 Anatole France, imagined a solitary star in a waste of 
 night ! 
 
 ' Mr. E. Gosse, who wrote a charming criticism of Paul Fort 
 some years ago, has lately given a crushing opinion on Strind- 
 berg in the first number of the "New Weekly." [Flecker's note.] 
 
PAUL FORT 253 
 
 It cannot be pretended that Paul Fort has been a 
 direct leader of this renovating movement in France; 
 indeed, it would be vain to expect the Poet to take 
 the didactic lead. A poet should teach discipline by 
 the severity of his verse, courage by the strength of 
 his line, honour by the scrupulous sincerity of his 
 achievement. But that is merely to say a poet should 
 be a good poet. Paul Fort gives us more than this — 
 he gives us the new spirit of P>ance, that brave com- 
 mon-sense that bursts out in gaiety and imagination, 
 and gives the impression that though the world is 
 deadly serious it is still disreputably young. 
 
 The possibility of the creation of poetry like this 
 may be said to mark a revolution in the French men- 
 tality. A few years ago French critics did really and 
 honestly consider that literature and civilization had 
 reached their last stage of cynical corruption. But of 
 late the whole youth of France seem to have been re- 
 captured by the old ideals of the peasant, the soldier, 
 the priest; and though neither militarist nor clerical, 
 Paul Fort yet has all the irrepressible hopefulness of 
 the young generation that drives on the soldiers of 
 PVance in charge after charge against their monstrous 
 enemy. For him a few mechanical inventions or 
 scientific improvements have not spoilt the sunrise ; 
 and accepting the civilization of to-day as Homer 
 accepted that of three thousand years ago, he celebrates 
 simply, but with startling novelty of inspiration, the 
 scenery and actors of that once so pleasant stage — the 
 France he lives in. 
 
 The Prince of Poets is no Futurist, though Marinetti 
 
254 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 has bidden his followers admire him. He writes no 
 odes on aeroplanes or automobiles. He does not lay 
 a particular stress on the mechanical side of modern 
 life, being too fond of his contemporaries to insult them 
 by considering them less interesting than machines. 
 The minor poets of the Futurist School, in their 
 struggle to escape those trammels of the centuries 
 which oppress all timorous minds, adopt any childish 
 eccentricity of metre, language, or subject that comes 
 into their heads. At the same time they impose upon 
 themselves a harder law than any Academy ever yet 
 invented for the suppression of that free play which is 
 so necessary for the expansion of genius. They are 
 not allowed by their leaders to write a line, except in 
 derision, about the past. Paul Fort has described the 
 past as well as the present; but when, as often, he 
 deals with modern life, he has courage enough to 
 envisage it in its proper relation to the past, and genius 
 enough to reveal its fascination without distorting its 
 reality. He is only able to do this because he has dug 
 down to the bed-rock of human nature, because he 
 understands the good old basic things of life — the soil, 
 the sun, the rain; the labour, sorrows, and songs of the 
 people. He can himself actually write Folk Songs — a 
 unique achievement for a great literary artist — folk 
 songs that seem as if they must be traditional, must 
 have been composed hundreds of yeais ago. When 
 one thinks of the evolution of French poetry during 
 the last few generations, with its imposing array of 
 schools — Romantics, Parnassians, Symbolists, Unani- 
 mists, and the rest — one realizes what superb detach- 
 
PAUL FORT 255 
 
 iiient is required (not to mention other and higher 
 qualities) for a Frenchman and a Parisian to write a 
 poem as finely unadorned as this : 
 
 Si toutes les filles du monde voulaient s' donner la main lout 
 autour de la mer elles pourraient faire une ronde. 
 
 Si tous les gars du monde voulaient bien etre marins, ils f 'raient 
 avec leurs barques un joli pont sur I'onde. 
 
 Alors on pourrait faire une ronde autour du monde si tous les 
 gens du monde voulaient s' donner la main. 
 
 It is natural that a poet so much haunted by the 
 peasant should have sought inspiration from mediaeval 
 France. Paul Fort's longest work, " le Roman de 
 Louis XI," is a fantasy half in verse, half in prose, 
 remarkably close in feeling and in style to Rabelais. 
 The hero is presented with humour and sympathy, for 
 the King, who had nothing but a shrewd v/it to save 
 his impoverished kingdom from the menace of the 
 bellicose, parading, pompous Duke of Burgundy, is a 
 man after the author's heart. French critics have 
 quoted as a masterpiece of pathos the little scene in 
 which Louis discovers that his son Joachim is dead. 
 But the most memorable passage in the book is the 
 hilarious description of the siege of Beauvais, with its 
 catalogue of the missiles (beginning with paving 
 stones and ending with complete houses), which the 
 besieged dropped with gorgeously noisy effects on to 
 the heads of the besiegers. It must have been this 
 passage that awoke in Marinetti an admiration for 
 Paul Fort, for granted that realizing in poetry the 
 effect of a tremendous noise be a Futurist ideal, Paul 
 Fort has certainly beaten Marinetti on his own ground. 
 
256 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 The latter's " Battle of Tripoli " is very thin piping 
 compared with the " Siege of Beauvais." 
 
 Yet neither the excellent " Louis XI " nor that 
 ambitious poem sequence, " I'Aventure Eternelle," is 
 the real achievement of Paul Fort. It is by his lyrics 
 that he will be remembered, lyrics so numerous, so 
 brilliant, and so diverse, that even briefly to discuss 
 their leading characteristics is rather a bewildering 
 task. However, of these characteristics, the most 
 obvious and pervading one beyond any doubt is 
 humour — humour of the great lyrical quality, which 
 can remind us at times of Heine, of Cervantes, of 
 Browning, and, as will be hereafter observed, most 
 specially of Shakespeare — yet a humour which com- 
 bines with an impudence almost English a lightness 
 entirely French: 
 
 LES BALEINES 
 
 Du temps qu'on allait encore aux baleines, si loin qu'ga faisait 
 mat'lot, pleurer nos belles, y avait sur chaque route un Jesus en 
 croix, y avait des marquis converts de dentelles, y avait la 
 Sainte-Vierge et y avait le Roi ! 
 
 Du temps qu'on allait encore aux baleines, si loin qu'^a faisait 
 mat'lot, pleurer nos belles, y avait des marins qui avaient la foi, 
 et des grands seigneurs qui crachaient sur elle, y avait la Sainte- 
 Vierge et y avait le Roi ! 
 
 Eh bien, a present tout le monde est content, c'est pas pour 
 dire, mat'lot, mais on est content! . . . y a plus de grands 
 seigneurs ni d' Jesus qui tiennent, y a la republique et y a le 
 president, et y a plus de baleines ! 
 
 A still more extravagant poem, called " The One- 
 Eyed Cat," recalls nothing written in the French 
 
 /"N/' 
 
PAUL FORT ^5; 
 
 language except the " Poemes en prose " of Baude- 
 laire : 
 
 La femme est aux varechs, rhomme est k la Guyane. Et la 
 petite maison est seule tout le jour. 
 
 Seule? Mais a travers les persiennes vertes, on voit luire 
 dans I'ombre comme une goutte de mer. 
 
 Quand le bagne est a rhomme, la mer est k la femme, et la 
 petite maison au chat borgne tout le jour. 
 
 Among scores of poems in this vein the reader may 
 be specially referred to " Le Marchand de Sable," 
 " La Reine a la mer," " Le Paysan et son ane," per- 
 haps the most amusing of all, and to one unaccount- 
 ably excluded from the anthology, " Le petit roi du 
 Nord." Similar in humorous treatment, but more 
 subtle, are some of the poems on Shakespearean 
 characters, to which Englishmen will turn with special 
 interest. " Hamlet" begins thus: 
 
 Hamlet, que la folie des autres importune, a fait le tour du 
 monde mais dans le clair de lune il retrouve Elseneur qu'il 
 n'avait pas quitte. 
 
 Hamlet a fait le tour du monde, comme il fait tout, en pensee. 
 
 Still more exquisitely subtle is Seigneur Fortinbras : 
 
 Moi que Ton attendait, j'entre en disant ma phrase. . . . Je 
 viens clore le drame avec un clairon d'or — tout seul — car mon 
 immense armee ne viendra pas, que voulez-vous ? Je I'ai perdue 
 dans les decors ombreux de la coulisse. Enfin ! Taratata ! 
 
 The genius of all this is near enough to the pathetic, 
 and Paul Fort is as clever as Verlaine or de Banville 
 in catching what may be called the Pierrot mood. 
 
 S 
 
258 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 " The Dead Clown " is rather an obvious subject' 
 charmingly treated ; the " Song of the little Valet who 
 hanged himself" is as delicately mysterious as a lyric 
 by Mr. Yeats. His masterpiece of humorous pathos 
 is the " Complaint of the Little White Horse," who 
 worked so bravely on in a country of black rain where 
 there was never any spring: 
 
 II est mort sans voir le beau temps : qu'il avait done du courage ! 
 
 Paul P'ort has more ambitious flights than these, 
 but his humour seldom deserts him; indeed, it often 
 breaks out in unexpected places with a most startling 
 effect. His " Poemes Marins " and ballads of modern 
 Paris have plenty of laughter in their realism. The 
 " Poemes Marins " need special attention, as being, 
 perhaps, the most powerful volume the poet has pro- 
 duced. They are ballad poems of modern life, some- 
 what in the tradition handed down from Beranger to 
 Richepin and the singers of Montmartre. But Paul 
 Fort's sailors — sentimental, coarse, amusing, passion- 
 ate — put Richepin's tedious " Gueux " out of court. 
 They hate every one who is not washed clean by the 
 sea — farmers, beggars, priests, soldiers, opoponaxed 
 Parisians. And, above all, says one of them, " tu me 
 degoutes, ma garce." It is not gallant, but French 
 mariners are a privileged race and know it. " Je ne 
 suls pas marine, mais il n'y a que les marins," cries a 
 mountain lass in her sailor's arms. Excellent, too, is 
 the young fisherman who complains to his mother 
 that he loves three girls at once, and they wi7l not 
 understand! But there are savage and bitter poems 
 
PAUL FORT 259 
 
 in the book, and the description of the drunkard who 
 kills his wife is terrible enough for a Russian novel : 
 
 Ne gueule pas comme ga, Tciel n'est pas solide. Y tourne 
 comme un fou : le bon Dieu s'est soule. Qui c'est 9a, tais-toi 
 . . . bois ton rhum sale. Eh bien quoi? . . . t'es morte? Tiens, 
 tu n'as plus de rides ! 
 
 Ma petite cherie, ma petite cherie ! T'es morte, moi je suis 
 soul. L'bon Dieu bat la creme. Toutes les etoiles tournent. 
 Y a des loups dans I'eau qu'ont d'l'or plein leur gueule. T'auras 
 pas ma paye ! 
 
 A striking contrast to this realistic work is afforded 
 by the poems which he has in this anthology called 
 " Hymnes " — heroic odes in praise of nature. They 
 are powerful in expression and grand in conception, 
 but one of them, a poem called " Le Dauphin," is so 
 passionately inspired, as to make the magnificence 
 and brilliance of the other " Hymnes " seem almost 
 frozen in comparison. Swinburne himself has no better 
 song on the joy of swimming and the enchantment of 
 the sea. The chase of the dolphins as the swimmer 
 " turns with the wheel of the sun " among the waves, 
 the seaweed, and the flying fish, is not so much de- 
 scribed, as seen and heard in the sparkling, splashing 
 verses, while in the vision of the sea's floor the poem 
 assumes a note of grandeur — one of the rarest notes 
 of Paul Fort's brilliant lyre: 
 
 Je vois ! (la petite mort est entree dans mon cceur) j'ai revu 
 tous ces monts souleves de douleurs. En eux la mer contente 
 sa destinee sauvage. Elle fouille la terre, elle s'accouple aux 
 laves, ensemence leur sein de toute sa vigueur, et mille bouches 
 de feu bavent des coquillages. Volcans, briilez la mer des feux 
 de votre coeur ! Les etincelles vivent : 6 que de poissons nagent ! 
 
26o CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 Les etincelles meurent et c'est la votre ouvrage : vous attirez 
 les morts qui vont en vous reprendre la chaleur et la Vie. O 
 cendres, cendres, cendres ! Etincelles ! . . . et deja, vos rochers 
 sont couverts de coraux, de varechs, d'epais ombrages verts, de 
 crabes fourmillants et de ces belles pieuvres envahissant la mer 
 de leurs bras amoureux ; les hippocampes noirs s'echappent de 
 vos feux ; la bleue holothurie scintille : c'est votre ceuvre ; le 
 bas limon s'etoile a I'exemple des cieux. Qu'un jour tout cela 
 meure, vous attendez les cendres. La mer, buvant la mort, 
 devient phosphorescente. Vous I'aspirez. Vos feux dejk, se 
 renouvellent— et les oiseaux marins volent jusqu'au soleil ! 
 
 The " Hymnes " lead us naturally to the poems 
 dealing with classical subjects, grouped in the new 
 anthology as " Hymnes heroiques," " Eglogues," and 
 " Chants paniques." These lyrics are hardly the most 
 characteristic work of the author, whose sympathies 
 are mediaeval rather than Greek. Paul Fort sings of 
 Jason, of Hercules, of Orpheus simply because he loves 
 all delightful tales, not because he has a special appre- 
 ciation of the classical world. But he is at his best 
 when he deals with Morpheus, with the nymphs and 
 fauns — with all those suggestive whispering little gods 
 who have haunted Christian Europe far more tenaci- 
 ously than the white Olympians. One of these pictures 
 is unforgettable — the old faun clumsily dancing round 
 the frozen lake, trying to reawaken the old magic 
 voices which have abandoned the forest for ever. 
 
 Yet, though we hold these " classical " poems to be 
 a mere side issue of Paul Fort's genius, what great 
 poems they really are— -" le Voyage de Jason," '^ Or- 
 phee," "les Nereides," with what freshness does the 
 poet attack the age-worn themes, with what humour 
 
PAUL FORT 261 
 
 does he charm Olympus! It is surely with these poems, 
 moreover, that we should class the most beautiful lyric 
 Paul Fort has ever written, the haunting " Philomele." ^ 
 English readers who study for themselves the 
 " Poemes Marins " will be bound to remark the extra- 
 ordinary, almost pagan innocence of their author, 
 which seems to enable him to deal with any subject 
 under the sun without prudery and without licentious- 
 ness. Certainly Paul Fort never feels himself obliged, 
 like so many modern English writers, to adopt a tone 
 of fictitious manliness to palliate anything which a 
 very timorous curate might find shocking. And he is 
 no less innocent when he deals with the externals of 
 religion. " Coxcomb," half poem, half story, is a 
 masterpiece of merry humour — blasphemous only as 
 Benozzo Gozzoli blasphemes when he turns the laugh- 
 ing girls and boys of Florence into saints, angels, and 
 virgins. To the truly and deeply religious mind, far 
 more dangerous than this quaint irreverence is the 
 utilizing of the aesthetic beauty of Christianity to 
 decorate poems that are not quite sincere, a moral 
 fault from which our author is not entirely free, and 
 in which our own Pre-Raphaelites revelled.^ 
 
 ^ A verse translation of " Philomele " precedes this article. 
 
 ^ Yet what rings false in these thrilling lines from " Le Plus 
 doLix Chant " ? 
 
 " Mais oh ! le chant que j'aime. ... II me faut I'air calin 
 plus nonchalant et triste dont Marie enchanta I'ouie au petit 
 Christ, et que siffla si doux Joseph le menuisier qu'il fit naitre 
 h. ce chant ' le Reve de I'Enfant." 
 
 " Oh les plus freles sons ! le supreme chant que repetait J^sus 
 au ciel de Bethleem, et que les Syriennes, eveillant les cithares, 
 murmuraient — s'y penchant — aux ciels de leurs fontaines ! " 
 
262 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 To discover the real religion or philosophy of Paul 
 Fort, we must turn to one of his later poems, " Vivre 
 en Dieu," a work more interesting in thought than 
 happy as poetry, in which he has made a direct, but 
 still amusing, attempt to state and arrange his views 
 on God and the world. The divine function, according 
 to the poet, is to dream, for dream or imagination is a 
 creative force. There is no creative dream in stone, 
 but everything that is alive has a certain power of 
 vision and is, therefore, God : " I'herbe est un Dieu hatif 
 doue de reve ayant une ame visionnaire." Trees are 
 gods, men are gods — but there are degrees. The Poet, 
 who above other men possesses the faculty of creative 
 imagination, is the greatest god on earth. All lives 
 dream each other into existence; "no other explana- 
 tion of the universe," adds the writer with his accus- 
 tomed laugh. " Messieurs, levez votre chapeau." 
 
 This conception of the universe is more arresting at 
 least than the admired Wordsworthian pantheism ; but 
 it is neither particularly new nor important, taken 
 purely as philosophy. It possesses, nevertheless, both 
 personal interest and poetical force, being very well 
 adapted to provide a logical background to the in- 
 exhaustible gaiety and lovableness of the poet's dis- 
 position. There is always something religious in Paul 
 Fort's attitude to Nature; his whole work is bathed 
 in spiritual sunshine, and when he is closest to tragedy, 
 the consolation he evokes wears the traditional Chris- 
 tian raiment: 
 
 Do not believe in death. Here are the birds who have flown 
 out of their cages, which were the dark and silent woods. Shed 
 
PAUL FORT 263 
 
 no more vain tears. Heaven is singing like your soul, is dumb 
 no longer — and here is radiant Death. 
 
 And here is luminous and tuneful Death, and here is Life- 
 Here is the pearl of your soul that an angel of that calm world 
 is threading, and here the radiant music of the Archangel's 
 song. 
 
 A vast section of Paul Fort's work is devoted to 
 delightful poems in which the country towns and 
 villages near Paris are described with incomparable 
 charm and sentiment. The poet wanders from Reclose, 
 from Velizy, from Morcerf (whose sweet name re- 
 minds him of fairies dancing round a sleeping Knight), 
 to Nemours: 
 
 Pure Nemours, silver seal on France's noblest page, or great 
 lily of the isle, is not thy destiny, white town, soul of a sky like 
 pearl, to school in elegance the proud world itself.? 
 
 to la Ferte Milon, where seven distinct houses claim to 
 be the birthplace of Racine, like the seven islands 
 which disputed Homer, and to a hundred little towns 
 beside — and we have their history, their legends, the 
 girl at the window, the ducks in the pond, the ghosts 
 in the castle, the auction in the town hall, all set forth 
 in a whirl of humour or sentiment. But there is 
 pathos now in the exquisite poems on Senlis, which 
 recently, as a result of special and atrocious barbarity 
 on the part of the Germans, has been irretrievably 
 destroyed, Notre Dame and all. 
 
 SENLIS MATINALE 
 
 Je sors. La ville a-t-elle disparu ce matin ? Ou s'est-elle en- 
 volee ? Par quel vent dans quelle ile ? Je la retrouve, mais nose 
 
264 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 plus etendre les mains. Senlis est vaporeuse comme ime 
 mousseline. 
 
 Moi, dechirer Senlis? Prenons garde. Ou est-elle ? Toits et 
 murs sont un transparent reseau de brume. Notre-Dame livre 
 a Fair sa gorge de dentelle, son cou si fin, son sein leger couleur 
 de lune. 
 
 Oil bat I'heure irreelle, que seuls comptent les anges, tant 
 I'echo s'en etouffe dans Toreiller du ciel fait des plumes douce- 
 ment etendues de leurs ailes, ou Dieu repose un front qui vers 
 Senlis se penche. 
 
 Alas, Senlis is torn, and the tower of Notre Dame 
 will shine in the morning mist no longer! 
 
 It is for the glory of France that these poems were 
 written — and such passionate patriotism is almost too 
 personal a thing to be discussed by the foreign critic. 
 One would naturally conclude that Paul Fort, con- 
 sidering the great patriotic reaction, would be at least 
 as popular in France, were it on the score of this 
 section of his work alone, as, say, Mr. Masefield in 
 England. One could well imagine such a national, 
 direct, simple, and humorous poet holding a position 
 in his lifetime somewhat similar to that which Carducci 
 used to hold in Italy. Yet Paul Fort — and this would 
 appear to be a very curious fact of literary history — 
 however much he may be the idol of the young literary 
 circles who this year elected him Prince of Poets, 
 however numerous and enthusiastic may be the articles 
 on his work which appear from time to time in the 
 literary reviews, is hardly more known to the general 
 public than was the classicist Moreas or, to take an 
 English example, that fine poet Mr. De la Mare. 
 
 Moreover, the reason for this comparative neglect, 
 
PAUL FORT 26s 
 
 for these second and third editions of work which one 
 would expect to sell by the ten thousand, cannot 
 possibly be that Paul Fort stands in any way apart 
 from his time. Nationalism, regionalism, mediaevalism, 
 the love of country and the soil have been the very 
 breath of the gospel of Maurice Barres, and of a thou- 
 sand lesser pens, and are enormously in fashion. Again, 
 while Paul Fort is perhaps hardly like Barres, a Catholic, 
 yet he has an unshaken belief in the Catholic virtues 
 and a sure insight into Catholic ideals. The antipathy 
 — almost hatred — of the Parisian mind for humour 
 may have something to do with the neglect of Paul 
 Fort. Humour to many Frenchmen is a gross ex- 
 travagance, and they are all a little apt to take poetry 
 too seriously. Yet there is plenty of good work in 
 Paul Fort which is not humorous, and one is driven 
 to the only conclusion possible, queer as it may sound 
 to English readers, that the chief reason of this com- 
 parative neglect is to be found in our poet's metrical 
 peculiarities. As will have been seen by the extracts 
 given in French, Paul Fort has abandoned the general 
 practice of writing out poetry line by line and writes 
 it out verse by verse instead. He also has a habit of 
 letting his poetry " degenerate " either into a prose 
 with internal rhymes, similar to that Oriental prose of 
 which the curious can find a horrible parody in Beacons- 
 field's " Alroy," or (as often in the longer poems) into 
 pure prose. In addition to this our poet frequently 
 disregards the rule that the final e mute counts as a 
 syllable for poetic purposes. This is a licence frequently 
 used in popular poetry and songs, but Paul P'ort does 
 
266 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 not take the trouble to mark the suppression of the 
 sham syllable in the regular way by omitting the 
 e mute and substituting an apostrophe. Indeed the 
 effect if he did so would be very ugly and tiring. 
 These innovations do not seem to an English student 
 very terrible, and indeed about half of Paul Fort's 
 poetry could perfectly well be printed out in lines and 
 be read as popular poetry, and no one would any 
 more dream of cavilling at it as a breach of tradition 
 than at Richepin's : 
 
 II y avait un' fois un pauvre gas 
 Qui aimait cell' qui n' T aimait pas. 
 
 Besides, it might be observed, there is nothing very 
 revolutionary in the printing of verse as prose. It 
 might even be called, on the contrary, a return to the 
 old tradition, for a monkish scribe copying Virgil 
 would go to greater lengths than our author in 
 jumbling up the lines— would, in fact, jumble up the 
 very words. 
 
 This is not to say, however, that Paul Fort's 
 practice in this respect is perfectly reasonable and 
 wise. The greatest enthusiast for his work must 
 admit that in the longer poems it is often very 
 puzzling to know, without careful scrutiny, whether 
 the poet has any rhythmical intentions or not. It is 
 also invariably difficult to discover the words which 
 are intended to rhyme. It is, at least, doubtful 
 whether the " half-way house " and quick transition 
 from verse into prose, at which the author says he 
 aims by his peculiar typography, would not be better 
 
PAUL FORT 267 
 
 served by simply printing verse as verse and prose as 
 prose. The only real advantage about the system, as 
 far as one can see, is that the reader is imperceptibly 
 led to read the lines more rapidly, and that the 
 licences taken, which include, besides those already 
 mentioned, the occasional use of very vague assonance 
 in the place of rhyme,^ look less alarming. Certainly 
 the innovation attracted attention and discussion to 
 the poet's early work, but unfortunately, as years went 
 on, critics continued to discuss the metre instead of the 
 poetry, and the French, with their passion for order 
 and tradition, are still very worried about this com- 
 paratively trifling aspect of a great achievement — so 
 that for many Frenchmen even to-day Paul Fort is 
 *'the poet who writes in prose," and is unjustly con- 
 founded with a thousand maudlin writers of ama- 
 teurish prose poems. I believe that if he were to 
 publish his shorter lyrics, printed in the old-established 
 way, they would be received with immense enthusiasm, 
 not only by a literary clique but by the whole French 
 nation. 
 
 The ranking of poets is a tedious and rather 
 childish pastime, which many critics at once deride 
 and enjoy; yet there is somehow an undoubted 
 pleasure in constructing a hierarchy, in picturing 
 modern French poetry to oneself as being led by two 
 great chiefs, Henri de Regnier and Paul Fort — two 
 men of genius strikingly dissimilar to each other, and 
 
 ^ Assonance is frequently used by Francis Jammes and even 
 by the classical Henri de Regnier. 
 
268 CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 only alike in towering above all possible rivals of the 
 present day. Unfortunately, this is no very high com- 
 pliment, for if we count Verhaeren as a Belgian — and 
 even he seems to write steadily worse year by year — 
 there is very little left in modern French poetry, since 
 the untimely deaths of Samain and Moreas, which 
 calls for more than respect, outside the work of these 
 two men of genius. Exception must be made in 
 favour of the delicate and charming spirit of Francis 
 Jammes. 
 
 But a more interesting and more legitimate part of 
 the critic's task is the study of affinity. In criticizing 
 this author one is apt to make endless comparisons 
 with the great writers, and especially with the great 
 humorists, of the past. But, strangely enough, it is 
 Shakespeare himself who, more than any other writer, 
 living or dead, is recalled by the work of Paul Fort. 
 In this assertion, of course, no comparison of value is 
 implied; the Tragic and the Sublime are not regions 
 into which Paul Fort has entered. It is to the 
 Shakespeare of the " Midsummer Night's Dream," 
 not to the Shakespeare of " Macbeth," that our 
 Frenchman has affinity. But the affinity is very 
 striking, nevertheless; there is something deep in the 
 nature of both poets that positively coincides. Is it, 
 perhaps, their exuberance that makes them kin, their 
 bravado air of looking at the world, their delight in 
 Nature, not as a pantheistic manifestation, but as a 
 delightful and complicated toy? Is it the absence of 
 all bitterness from their godlike laughter, an absence 
 of bitterness not due, as in the work of our modern 
 
PAUL FORT 269 
 
 English cartoonists, to a mawkish desire to hurt 
 nobody's feehngs, but to an innate loftiness of soul? 
 One cannot say exactly, but I think that many 
 English readers of Paul Fort will admit that had 
 Shakespeare been born a Frenchman of to-day he 
 would have written, at least when in comic or lyric 
 mood, work closely resembling this. One might even 
 add that Shakespeare handles his classical subject in 
 "Venus and Adonis" much as Paul Fort has handled 
 " Les Nereides," and, as if to clinch our argument, 
 what insight do the little poems— some of them 
 already quoted— on Hamlet, Ophelia, Lear, show 
 into even the tragic Shakespeare! Few French poets 
 ought to be so profoundly appreciated by English 
 readers. 
 
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