LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Ex Libris ISAAC FOOT vX V\ STUDIES IN FRANKNESS BY THE SAME AUTHOR Crown 8vo, buckram, 7s. 6d. A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS The Academy.—" This is a not- able book, and while its style and piquancy of contrast should please the cultivated, the interest of its subject should please everybody." LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN J fV,rhtc at? Gakinq, rvertfa t&(Mnd W. S. (j/crtuc laming, re? STUDIES IN FRANKNESS BY CHARLES WHIBLEY LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN MDCCCXCVIII All rights reserved La franchise absolue, moyen d ' originalit'e Baudelaire / desire to thank the Editors and Proprietors of " The Nineteenth Century," " Jhe Tudor Translations" and " The New Review ," as well as Messrs. Methuen and Messrs. Lawrence £ff Bullen, Ltd., for their courteous permission to reprint the chapters of this book which have appeared under their auspices. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction .... I Petronius . . . . 27 Heliodorus .... 49 Laurence Sterne . . . 79 Apuleius . . . . 115 Herondas . . . . . 143 Edgar Allan Poe . . . 161 Lucian — I . . . . .187 lucian ii . . . .205 Sir Thomas Urquhart . . . 227 INTRODUCTION WHEN Adam and Eve were chased from a blameless Paradise, they were forced to cover that which it had never been a dishonour to reveal. It was not until the devil murmured in the branches that a knee became more guilty than an eyebrow, and the prophets of concealment would be wise to remember that the reticence which they account the chief of virtues was the first penalty paid by guilty man to an enraged deity. Thus, in expia- tion of the primaeval disobedience, we are still cursed or blessed with a shamefaced diffidence ; we are com- pelled to the public denial of many truths which we acknowledge in secret ; from our cradles to our graves we hide behind a mask of prudent discretion, or minc- ing chicanery ; and we still share with the Puritan the punishment imposed upon the world by Eve's complacency. The Puritan, in truth, forgetting the cause of his modesty, makes righteousness of necessity, and believes that in prolonging a garment or blinking an eye he is doing a reputable service to the cause of virtue. But he is only bowing his neck beneath the A 2 STUDIES IN FKANKNESS inevitable yoke ; he is only bearing his part in the universal condemnation. Though reticence was our first and heaviest punish- ment, it did not come upon us without compensations. The mere command that man should clothe his naked- ness was sufficient to create the love of adornment and its attendant vanity. So the manifold arts of dandyism and coquetry came into being ; and man, by giving a separate colour to his life, distinguished himself from the beasts who know neither ornament nor shame. Then, also, was born sin ; then lawlessness, which hitherto had recognised vice as little as virtue, became law, and parcelled out all the possible actions of mankind into right and wrong, involving the pristine simplicity in unnumbered complications. Modesty was in- vented to keep pace with restraint ; licence dogged the footsteps of obedience ; and the presence of death gave man his first lesson in the value of life. And with sin was born humour, which could not breathe in a perfect Paradise — humour which sweetens misery with a laugh, and sets our heaviest misfortunes in a just relation. But, that the new-made sinners might not too loudly exult, prudery was appointed the watch- dog of humour, and it is from the tangled combat of these opposites that wit and adventure, joyousness and romance, come forth victorious. Life, then, whether we will or no, preserves its privacies and restraints, which have grown stronger by tradition, and whose imperious sway no lover of curiosity will resent. Thus, there are ordained for us INTRODUCTION 3 a thousand intricate rules, in obedience to which we play the game or fight the battle of existence. Nor are they irksome, these infringements upon our liberty, since life is made interesting by prohibition, and since it is to them that we owe our morals, our manners, the very elegancies of human conduct. To dream or licence with equanimity is impossible. The most ardent worshipper of the red-cap would find no pleasure if once he realised his vain scheme of freedom, and happily the force of tradition is still strong enough to thwart his worst intention. But the Puritan has applied the laws of life, and others ten times sterner, to the art of literature, so that words are detected in flagrant criminality, and poetry has become a liveried convict. The confusion of literature with its material pos- sesses, like many another vice, the dignity of age. Yet its inveteracy is no palliation, and never had the vice less excuse than to-day, when the last subtlety of the art should be understood. Life, in its many- coloured relations, and in all its restless vicissitudes, is the proper field of literature. But while life is governed by the laws of habit and the empire, litera- ture bows only to its own dictates. Knowing this single restraint, it is otherwise untrammelled as free- dom itself; and he who would throw a needless chain upon it might as well attempt to stem the torrent or fetter the whirlwind. But the hopelessness of an enterprise seldom deters the foolish, and from the very beginning of time literature, poor innocent litera- 4 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS ture, has suffered a twofold misunderstanding. In the first place, its motive has been tried by the inexorable law of life ; its every incident has been scrutinised by the cross-eye of moral censure ; and each reckless Aristar- chus has asked not how the parts perfect the whole, not how the episodes combine to a proper climax, but whether such adventures as decorate the narrative might enter into his own experience without a pro- test. In the second place, the creator has been pil- loried for the sins of his ' own creatures. " Who drives fat oxen must himself be fat," and he who draws the character of a tall man must himself overtop six feet. The manifold and contradictory virtues and vices which give life and variety to a book are visited for punishment upon one devoted head. Heedless of logic or common sense, forgetting that a work of art — the result of a personality — is still impersonal, the censorious are wont to endow the inventor with all the attributes of all his characters. Thus Fielding in one aspect is as brave a spark as Tom' Jones himself, in another blameless as the fair Sophia ; and you shudder at the folly which would make Balzac one with the heroic world of passion and intrigue, of love and terror, of spendthrift extravagance and hard economy, which he has called into being. But the end of impertinence is not yet reached. The Methodist who is convinced that nothing has a right to exist which does not exercise a beneficial influence upon conduct, has framed the converse axiom that none save a good man may write a INTRODUCTION 5 good book. And more than this : the man should be good with the Methodist's own particular good- ness. He must be prepared to wave aloft the flame-coloured banner of the conventicle, and his life will bear instant testimony to his genius. So the Methodist averting his eyes from poem or romance, turns criticism into a kind of indiscreet biography. The printed page need say nothing to him ; he is content to rake in the dust-heap of the. past ; and should he discover the compromising evidence of one sin, he proceeds to a judgment, proud in the conviction that he is not only displaying his own intelligence, but is conferring a distinguished favour upon morality. Naught else remains than to frame definitions, to fit the craft of letters with fantastic titles, or to condemn it for ever as an Exponent of the Ethical Life. The ethics, uncovered by this method of criticism, are as, simple as the field is narrow; but the zealot consoles himself by making scandal a check upon his judgment, and by proving the dramas of Shakespeare masterpieces because the writer was a "kind man." The pursuit, indeed, has a charm for all such as love statistics, but even the statistician may feel a pang of regret when an acci- dental document compels him to revise a lifelong opinion of Shelley's art or morals. And how shall he esteem a work to which tradition has attached no name ? To him, alas ! the Satiricon must be a perpetual puzzle, since no ingenuity can disclose the dossier of its unknown author. But this perversity 6 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS of judgment, which involves literature in inex- tricable confusion, is not permitted to interrupt the pursuit of humbler trades. Not even the wildest enthusiast would condemn a boot because it was cut from the hide of a vicious animal, or because the shoemaker devoted his leisure to whisky and sedition. However, when once the censor has laid a heavy hand upon literature, he is not induced by reason to relinquish his grasp. But his pertinacity is never aroused to understanding. If only he could analyse his displeasure, he might discover that it is genius not impropriety that repels him. His reprobation proceeds less from morality than from lack of imagination. Incapable of disengaging life from its presentation, he forms an instant picture of the written word, which he straightway charges with the infamy of his own distorted vision. And first with an energy of con- demnation he would exclude from the privilege of type all such words and phrases as are not heard at his own fireside. Nor could he pronounce a less apposite judgment ; since between the written lan- guage and the spoken there is a complete divorce. It is by an accident that speech and literature employ the same symbols, and a formal expression instantly changes the value of the common currency. To conversation and oratory are appointed their own rules, while literature retains a special freedom. The tongue, in brief, is an enemy to literary expression, and Cicero showed himself keenly sensitive to his art, when, having composed the denunciation of Catiline INTRODUCTION 7 in his study, he refrained from its delivery. Thus it is that the word for word report has killed the possibility of lasting eloquence. Time was when the orator translated his speech from the language of the voice to the language of ink and paper, before the eye of man might look upon it ; to produce in silence the effect of sound and gesture, another phrase, another style are necessary ; but the trick of shorthand has baffled his art, and henceforth there will be speaking in unrestrained volubility, but no persuasive oratory that will live in the closet. So a thousand dishevelled words, which the primaeval ban forbids us to use in familiar intercourse, may be proper matter for literature. These libertines of speech have a value which does not depend upon the ideas which they connote. They are, so to say, strong notes of colour upon the printed page, and their use is controlled not by morals but by taste. Yet it is not given to every scribbler to open the door to an indiscriminate rabble. Frankness is the privilege of genius alone. Where tone and style permit, and where courage comes to the aid of invention, there are few things that may not be said with dignity and distinction. But writers there are, to whom no freedom is per- mitted, in whose books a single word, innocuous elsewhere, gives you a shudder of disgust. Rabelais, on the other hand, is sovereign of himself. With a heartwhole laugh of wisdom he purged the last grossness of offence. Since he knew all things, and with a perfect humour set them in their proper places, 8 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS no door was closed to his intrusion, no corner secluded from his prying eye. He might thrust his rake into the worst rubbish-heap and withdraw it unspotted from the contact. Nor are you surprised that he spent his life in reflective taciturnity, and was known to his contemporaries for a dreamer. But the Puritan is not content with sentencing to outlawry these words, for which his starveling soul has no employ. A grumble is still heard when he has replaced outspokenness by a clumsy artifice of cere- monious delicacy. He would also sit in judgment upon the visions which literature evokes, upon the fanciful characters she portrays. He finds the poet wandering in a paradise of license, and straightway he would drive him out, bidding him cover his beautiful images with the clout of shamefacedness. This in- tolerance has never fallen short of its opportunity, and the Puritan, whose censure is but the expression of a private dislike, pretends that he is fighting the cause of the people. But genius does not "address its pen or style unto the people whom books do not redress," and, in warning the illiterate against such works as they are doomed to misunderstand, the Puritan does but stimulate an unrighteous pruriency. For the illiterate have no concern with such masterpieces, as might un- cover to their eyes the hidden places of the earth. Content to feed their fancy on the vulgar novel, they should run no risk from the contamination of genius. Yet it is this anxiety for the people which, ever since Plato, has been the worst enemy of literature. INTRODUCTION 9 As the savage round the camp fire sings his song of bravery that he may feed the warlike spirit of his tribe, so Plato saw in poetry naught but a means of fashioning good citizens. Strange it is to find the acute philo- sopher ranged on the side of the " poor Indian." But Plato's business was with politics rather than with literature, and (for the moment) he would rather have banished all poetry from the perfect city of his imagina- tion than have endangered the morals of a single leather- seller. Moreover, the poetry of Greece, though the highest form of art, was still intimately related to the worship of the gods, and, save in the poet's own esteem, it did not yet exist as an end unto itself. But this is less a question of art than of history, and presently Aristotle came to the aid of literature, declaring that pleasure was its aim, and that no poet need refrain from the presentation in words of such things as in life are painful or abhorrent. Literature, then, is unconcerned with the im- provement of the citizen, or the welfare of the state. A thing of beauty, it knows no law save the law of its own embellishment. It sings in the ear, it laughs in the brain. It has the touch of Midas and transmutes, with happier effect, whatever is common into gold. The ugly in life instantly changes to loveliness at its potent wizardry. The pain and misery of Philoctetes are informed with a noble majesty when once they have passed into the verse of Sophocles. "The Dean," said Stella, " could write finely about a broom- stick," and thus, unconsciously maybe, put the case of io STUDIES IN FRANKNESS artistic freedom in an epigram. To the artist, indeed, nothing comes amiss if only his treatment justify his choice. The unnoticed corners of reality, the distant provinces of devilry and magic — he is free of them all. His world, which embraces yet transcends the narrow world of life, knows not the limits which are set upon the hardiest traveller. And if he will he may envelop his puppets in an unknown atmosphere. He may lift them to a table-land where all things have a different meaning, where the literal is dead, where flagrancy is humour, where only the inartistic is ugly. Or he may imagine a country where the ten commandments do not run, he may deftly transpose vice and virtue, and he may do it with so invincible a joyousness that his fantasy is pure of offence. But into this gay kingdom the censor with his prying eye may never penetrate ; for he will detect in its flowers the iridescence of a stagnant pool, and carry away a legend of horrors that he has never seen. He will turn the fairy tale of Petronius into a shameful reality, and cavil at the shadow-land of Poe because he finds it a patent outrage upon nature. He will recoil from whatever is frank and outspoken because his own withered tongue can only frame the catchwords of the newspaper, because his discoloured eye perverts merriment and sincerity into evilness of speech and thought. But his persecution, dangerous though it be, dies with his death, and is remembered only in the contemptuous indignation of his victim. So romance, poetry, satire, have fought the double INTRODUCTION n battle with the difficulties of their art, and with those enemies who would limit the field of their enterprise. Nor have their enemies been constant in severity save at one point. Now they will condemn the super- natural as the enemy of faith, now they will pro- nounce the legends of brigandage a direct incentive to crime, but never will they swerve one inch from their denunciation of " passion " in whatever terms it be expressed. For them, at least, the unknown is not magnificent, and in a fury of hatred they resent a reference to the sentiment which can never be theirs. With as clear a reason might they cry out upon a heroine with blue eyes or red hair because a dark-eyed beauty is nearer to their heart. But they have always fought in defiance of reason, and while they have changed their weapons they have displayed a fierce persistence in the combat. Aristophanes, who tuned his lyre to satire, melody, or wit, and who hid the patriot behind a mask of laughter, was fiercely attacked in his own lifetime, and still appeared coarse and obscene to no less a critic than Plutarch. But it was Catullus, hapless lover and impeccable poet, who first found the perfect answer to his assailants. With an energy of rage he destroyed Aurelius and Furius who dared to assume his character from his works, and who, judging his verses molliculos, would denounce the writer as parum pudicum. His triumphant answer has been echoed by a hundred poets at bay. " Nam castum esse," he wrote, with superb dignity, 12 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS " Nam castum esse decet pium poetam ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est." And neither Ovid nor Martial* could wish a better defence, while our own Herrick would have placed at his book's end a translation which long since became classic : "Jocund his muse was, but his life was chaste." Thus should the cavillers be silenced, though the chastity of a poet's life does but little concern them. Thus might they learn to avoid a uni- versal stumbling block were they not beyond guidance. Nor were the poets alone in the public displeasure. Romance fell early under the curse ; the Milesian stories, those masterpieces of gaiety, which, destroyed by popularity, have floated down to us on the stream of memory and imitation, were esteemed disgrace- ful even by the Parthians ; and there is no more entertaining criticism in ancient literature than the anecdote of Surena's hypocrisy, as related by Plutarch. It is thus the story is told in North's version : f " Surena having called the Senate of * "Vita verecunda est, musa jocosa mihi " : thus Ovid, and Martial does but give the same sentiment another turn: " Las- civa est nobis pagina, vita proba." Pascal, who is not a tainted witness, finds another, and a more liberal comment for the poet of the Epigrams: " L'homme aime la malignite," he writes: " mais ce n'est pas contre les borgnes, ni contre les malheureux, mais contre les heureux superbes ; on se trompe autrement. Car la concupiscence est la source de tous nos mouvements, et l'humanite." An unexpected judgment, truly, and a strange conjunction. t The Life of Crassus. INTRODUCTION l 3 Seleucia together layed before them Aristides book of ribaldrie, intituled The Milesians , which was no fable, for they were found in a Romanes fardell or trusse, called Rustius. This gave Surena great cause to scorne and despise the behaviour of the Romanes, which was so far out of order, that even in the warres they could not refraine from doing evill, and from the reading of such vile books." There is a touch of comedy in the barbarian's lofty indignation against the levity of his enemies, who beguiled a tedious campaign with the best of light-hearted literature. But still more amusing is Plutarch's comment. "I will not deny," he writes with a cunning respectability, " but Rustius deserved blame : but yet withall, I say, that the Parthians were shamelesse to reprove these bdokes of the vanities of the Milesians, considering that many of their kinges, and of the royal blood of the Arsacides, were borne of the Ionian and Milesian curtisans." Was there ever such a jumble of hypo- crisies ? The Romans were infamous to relieve the serious pursuit of war with a jest-book. So far Surena and Plutarch agree. But Surena, says Plu- tarch, was debarred from objection by the pedigree of his kings, which he at least could not control, and which might have turned the royal house to grave reflection. Here is no word in defence of Aristides and his fables ; no scorn of the Parthian's folly ; only a jumbled reprobation of accuser and accused. Nor was the censure of Rustius universal. For those there were who believed that Surena had himself put The i 4 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS Milesians at the sack's mouth, thus repeating the trick played upon the innocence of Benjamin. And Surena's imposture is easily credible, since many a worse artifice has been contrived in the name of an acrimonious morality. Thus at all times austerity has resented the pastime of the sage. Was not Heliodorus, whose worthy intention should have atoned for more than his innocent freedom, chased from his bishopric ? Had Chaucer's splendid sincerity any better chance of escape than Boccaccio's delicate devices ? Has not Shakespeare been judged as coarse as the Classics ? Yet none ever so conclusively proved that " to the pure all things are impure" as Jeremy Collier. This notorious nonjuror, indeed, resumed in his single talent the prejudice of all the ages. He undertook a crusade against the theatre, and he possessed every qualifica- tion which the task demanded. He was stupid, ignorant, and energetic. Like the clown at a country fair, he belaboured all the talents with a bladder tied to a string, and so long as his blows were sounding he cared not for their effect. Gifted, moreover, with the trick of advertisement, he made himself a far greater place in the world than his merit warranted. He was, in fact, a pestilent fellow that every one knew, and the pillory aiding, he won a large share of that notoriety which appears to some more gratifying and which oftentimes is no less lasting than legitimate fame. His moral arrogance was prodigious ; never had a INTRODUCTION 15 corrupt universe known so splendid a castigation ; and the esteem of his contemporaries fell but little short of his own pride. Congreve paid him the extravagant compliment of a reply, and Dryden (from indolence, let us hope) was driven to submission. Yet beyond an occasional vigour of phrase and an immense peevish- ness the man possessed no quality of taste or intelli- gence. So deeply was he absorbed in fault-finding, where no fault was, that reason and justice were out of his reach. A casual familiarity with the Classics merely led him still further astray, and he is prepared to applaud the blaspheming of Euripides, for instance, because that poet directed his assault against paganism, and never struck a blow at the orthodoxy of a non- juror ! " When Pegasus is jaded," he wrote at the beginning of his tract, " and would stand still, he is apt like other Tits to run into every puddle." And truly Jeremy Collier's own was a jaded Tit, for she is never out of the mire. Armed with a false definition, he easily demolishes the whole fabric of modern literature. " The business of plays," says he, " is to recommend virtue and discountenance vice ; " and whenever he finds the drama of his age falling short of this ideal, he is transported with rage. Wit and humour, gaiety of invention, the necessity of amusement — these are nothing to him. He will confuse the playhouse with the pulpit, and attack all the poets with equal folly and brutality. They are obscene, says he ; they are blasphemous ; therefore away with them all from 16 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS Shakespeare to Tom D'Urfey. Hamlet's author, indeed, comes off badly from the trial. " He is too guilty," writes the censorious Collier, " to make an evidence ; but I think he gains not much by his misbehaviour." Assuredly he profits not at all from the pulpit's point of view. And again : " Phedra keeps her modesty even after she had lost her wits. Had Shakespeare secured this Point for his young Virgin Ophelia, the play had been better contrived." Did ever lack of humour drive a man into greater folly ? Ophelia spotless ! Why not Hamlet sane ? But Collier is unable to distinguish between his own world and the stage, that kingdom of paste-board and plank, where language assumes a separate meaning, and where the sea coast of Bohemia is authentic as London Bridge. So having laid it down most properly that to swear before women is not only a breach of good behaviour but a most unchristian practice, he is ready to abolish all plays, within the limits of whose five acts a single oath is heard. " A well-bred man," he declares with evident truth, "will no more swear than fight in the Company of Ladies," and if he were logical, he would perforce have condemned the alarums and excursions of Shakespeare as so many outrages upon good manners. But it is blasphemy which tempts him to his highest flights. "Sometimes," he exclaims in the very climax of his denunciation, " sometimes they don't stop short at blasphemy." The offence is scarce credible, and the instances which this nonjuror is able to INTRODUCTION 17 quote are warranted to send a thrill of horror through the most hardened atheist. Think of the naked levity of Lady Froth, who calls Jehu a hackney coachman ! And the monstrous profanation of the author who dared to give his Sir Sampson Legend the name of that hero who triumphed over the Philistines ! In spite of the p a covert attack upon the Christian faith is evident, and one shudders to think what had become of England without the timely intervention of Jeremy Collier. But the worst is not yet told. Vain- love, in The Old Bachelour^ asks Belmour if he could be content to go to heaven. To Vainlove only one answer was possible. But did he give it ? Oh, dear no ! With the shameful flippancy of the stage he replied: " Hum, not immediately in my conscience, not heartily." And nowhere does Collier prove his moder- ation more nobly than in his comment upon this monstrous wickedness. Here indeed was an oppor- tunity for pious wrath, but with a perfect reserve he stays the tide of reproach. "This is playing, I take it, with edged tools." These are his very words, and yet one would have thought that the impious Belmour had forfeited all his fingers ! Such is the man who presumed to detect the seven deadly sins and seventy-seven others in the works of Congreve ! He might as easily have sought crime in a lace-frilled shirt or a satin coat. The cold, intellectual presentation of life which we get in the incomparable Way of the World possesses wit, alert- ness, repartee, all the graces of spirited converse, but it B 18 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS possesses nothing else. The world, whose way Con- greve pictures, is a world which Jeremy Collier never could have penetrated. For its gates are shut against the dullard and the pedant. Its inhabitants are not controlled by the laws which run outside the chartered domain. It is, in truth, an Abbaye deTheleme where the sole restriction is " what you will ; " and no man can understand its merriment who does not first put ofF the superstitions of an interested piety. The actions, performed within its borders, are judged neither by their motive nor their result, but rather by the method and style of their performance. In brief, the Artificial Comedy has no contact with actuality. You may pass it by in dislike if you will, but you may not set it in the dock prepared for the criminal's reception. Charles Lamb, the most inven- tive critic of our stage, pierced the mystery with a flash, and his luminous paradox is no paradox at all. Given the proper atmosphere, and Joseph Surface is a hero, if only he bear himself with a magnificent levity. As for Jeremy Collier, he made no attack upon Congreve, because he understood not one line of that master's composition. He thought he knew one lan- guage; his victim wrote another. And the fact that Congreve deemed it a gentleman's duty to reply to such a tangle of impertinence is a sad comment upon the England that was governed by William of Orange. But the insult to Congreve was not Collier's last offence. So hopeless was the confusion of this befogged Puritan, that he condemned Juvenal for all the sins lashed in his INTRODUCTION 19 satire. "He writes more like a pimp than a poet," said he with accustomed elegance " Such nau- seous stuff is almost enough to debauch the alphabet, and make the language scandalous." Why did he not go one step further, and saddle the intrepid Jeremy with all the vices of obscenity and profanation which he ascribed without thought or reason to his betters ? But Jeremy Collier not only enjoyed the admiration of his age ; he is still regarded as a literary Her- cules who cleansed the dramatic stable of its filth. And never since have zealots been lacking to carry on his work of obfuscation and stupidity. The appear- ance of a masterpiece is sufficient to render the blood- hounds restless in their leash. No sooner was Madame Bovary printed in the pages of a review than imperial France shuddered for her virtue. The author was thrust with his publisher in the dock, and the argu- ments paraded against them are but an iteration of Jeremy Collier's fallacies. " Gentlemen," said the prosecuting counsel, doubtless with a majestic wave of his honest hand, " Gentlemen, did Madame Bovary love her husband, or did she even try to love him ? " Thus the game of cross-questions and crooked answers was played, as it will be played another thousand times ; thus literature was clipped again to the petty standard of the hour. On either side the discussion was in- apposite. The attack pronounced the book a glorifica- tion of adultery ; the defence, unyielding in folly, discovered in its pages a treatise upon education. And Flaubert — where was he in this genial interchange of 20 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS absurdities ? He had written a great book : wherefore he was disgraced, and his escape from justice was a miraculous accident. Baudelaire fared worse ; he was tried, and he was condemned. Accused of all the crimes suggested by his poetry, he would have been for ever silenced had the rage of the crowd prevailed against him. But never once, to use his own phrase, did he " confuse ink with virtue ; " never once did he accept the foolish verdict of the rabble. When the trial was finished a friend asked him if he had expected acquittal. " Acquitte ! " he replied; " j'attendais qu'on me ferait reparation d'honneur." Yet he knew no reparation, save the esteem of poets, and the ultimate restoration of his criminal works. Nevertheless he recoiled not from the popular verdict. He saw clearly the bedevilment of his enemies, and was content. " Chaste as paper," he wrote, " sober as water, eager for devotion as a com- municant, inoffensive as a martyr, I am not displeased to masquerade as a monster of debauchery, a drunkard, a blasphemer and an assassin." And in this noble pride of spirit he forgot the wanton insult to his genius, and by this the world is forgetting it also. So the magistrate would usurp the world of intelligence, and cramp genius to fit his own Pro- crustean code, believing that a supremacy in the courts endows him with the control of imagination. But the triumph of to-day becomes the disgrace of to- morrow, and prays for oblivion. On the one side are arrayed " the dissembling and counterfeit saints, INTRODUCTION 21 demure lookers, hypocrites, pretended zealots, rough friars, buskin monks, and other such sects of men who disguise themselves like maskers to deceive the world." On the other side fight the honest fellows, lovers of merriment and all good things, the frank, the free, the courageous, who esteem beauty above prejudice, and who know that there are a thousand kingdoms whereof the magistrate does not dream. And if for a while the magistrate has his way, they win who deserve the victory. For frankness at the last con- quers its opponents, and though its champions fall by the way the cause knows not the ignominy of ultimate failure. In truth it is frankness not " immorality," which the people fear — frankness in whatever guise it presents itself. Now, it is the frankness of revela- tion that is condemned, that spirit of curiosity which would uncover all things to the lantern of art ; now, it is the frankness of intelligence which is thrust into prison, that frankness which would tell the truth even in the face of the ballot-box. So it was that Edgar Poe fell upon misfortune. Not con- tent with picturing new worlds of fancy and humour, not content with winning the realm of mystery for literature, he did not shrink from speaking out to a country submerged in commerce, and miserably he paid the penalty of his misdeeds. Had he not been a critic, to whom prevarication was a cardinal sin, America in her pride might have called him blessed, and rewarded him with her opulent approval. But a habit of can- dour persuaded him to tell his countrymen the truth, 22 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS and he fell a victim to the common hatred which might in another hemisphere have ruined Congreve and Baudelaire. But license, also, must obey the laws of its being, the more stringent, because an infraction leads to the greater infamy. And thus we contemplate the other side of the question. The lighthearted and sincere remain beyond reproach, so long as they find their justification in literature, so long as they are enveloped in the strange atmosphere and live in the false world of romance. But once they reveal their purpose, once they smile self-consciously at their own bravery, they are detestable. If the obscene be sentimental, if it address itself to any other than the artistic sense, it is instantly condemned. There is no essential differ- ence between the Marquis de Sade and the leader of a revival meeting. Each attempts to arouse a false sentiment by illicit means ; each would hit its victim below the belt of reason. In either case no appeal is made to the intelligence. The maniac, whether he be pornagraphist or preacher, is anxious to do some- thing, good or bad ; and this very anxiety to "do something " renders him suspect. But it is not the magistrate who may play the critic ; it is the critic who should play the magistrate. For the right and wrong of literature must be decided by the law, not of the land but of taste. Rabelais, if he have the mind, is free of the world's vocabulary j Dunbar, when he would flyte an enemy, may decorate his speech with what exotic flowers he can find in his INTRODUCTION 23 fancy's hedgerow. But when the realist, with no better excuse than to satisfy his pedantry, collects a heap of dull irrelevancies, then he pleads guilty to impropriety. For he offends not against morality, but against the law of his art. Accuracy is but a poor defence for the scrupulous ugliness of his choice. " Not to know that a hind has no horns," said Aristotle, "is a less serious matter than to paint it inartistically." And the realist who defends himself from attack on the plea of truth, advances an argu- ment which does not concern his offence. For his is not a sin of outspokenness ; he errs in the resolu- tion to unveil secresies, which are merely shocking because they are foreign to the purpose of his romance. Briefly he is no worse than tiresome ; yet he owes his notoriety to the general advertisement that he is as daring as Rabelais, as unfettered in his fancy as Petronius himself. And what of the crooked man, who always detects the immorality of his brother ? For him, indeed, shall no excuse be found. His purpose is more in- famous than the worst sentimentality, and none has rightly appreciated him save Rabelais, his secular enemy. " Fly from these men," said Alcofribas ; " abhor and hate them as much as I do, and upon my faith you will find yourselves the better for it." Furius and Aurelius are their companions ; Jeremy Collier and the persecutors of Baudelaire fight dis- loyally by their side. And to-day, their heirs stand at every street-corner, scratching an advertisement from 24 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS the revelation of somebody else's " impurity." How well you know them, and their trick of cunning abnegation ! If they do give their time to the reading of books, it is not to enjoy them, but rather to hurt the author by some mischievous contrivance. Their sin- cerity is as doubtful as their wisdom ; at the best they can only attract the attention of the prurient to that which he would never have found without guidance ; and as they are wont to strip their enemy of his wit before they crucify him, they alone may achieve the harm whereof they would convict others. In truth, to quote the inspired aphorism of Pascal, " Few men can speak of chastity chastely." And in these words is condemned not only the censorious guardian of his brother, but that unhappy novelist who would cover his freedom with a purpose. There is not, and there can never be, any legitimate purpose in print save pleasure and delight, so that he who would hide his art behind the broken wall of moral ex- cellence is instantly suspected of foul play. When once another intention be admitted than the awakening of sense or intelligence, "moral" or "immoral" matters not a jot. Guilt is confessed in the " purpose," and thereafter the smallest latitude is an outrage upon taste. And so powerful is this cant of shameful latitude condoned by irrelevant aspiration, that the future will not easily escape its tyrannical restriction. But the past at any rate holds a treasury of masterpieces, open and unashamed, which need no concealment for their dignity or their courage. So we may still enjoy a INTRODUCTION 25 library which arouses the fury and defies the censure of the Puritan. Nor is there any need to close it against the scrutiny of peeping eyes. For genius has locked it, and only intelligence may turn the releasing key. PETRONIUS PETRONIUS THE twin enemies of wit — Prudery and Pedantry — have for centuries obscured the proper under- standing of Petronius. A chance passage in Tacitus, with the superfluous confusion of a name, long since convinced the scholar that the Satiricon was a pamph- let designed for the castigation of Nero, and, when resemblance was lacking, a twisted ingenuity caught glimpses of the dashing Emperor in a common ruffler, a grizzled poet, in the obscene extravagant Trimalchio himself. And while the Pedant was busy torturing a masterpiece out of shape, the Prude averted his eyes in horror lest a spark of brilliant impurity should dazzle him into blindness. But the fear of the Prude is as groundless as the conjecture of the Pedant. The Satiricon takes note neither of history nor of morals ; it is as remote from ethics as from familiarity. It bids avaunt both the hungry persons, whose inappeasable maw is always avid of moral sustenance, and the sorry scholars, who would leave no jest without its commentary. Petronius, in brief, speaks only to the sincere and the well-disposed ; he says no word to 30 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS those miscreants who would overwhelm wit and gaiety with an infamous suspicion. The Satiricon has one restraining motive : enter- tainment within the bounds of art. To other fetters it is as resentful as the winds or sea. Not even the learned Teuton, who discovered its controlling subject to be the wrath of Priapus, was justified of his wit. Ingenious as is the fancy, it still lays too heavy a chain upon this wayward, irresponsible Odyssey. No more can be said than that the work of Petronius is a prose epic, the epic (if you will) of the beggar student. Though we know it only in fragments we are confi- dent that its end was as gay a hazard as its beginning : it opened as its author chose, it closed in obedience to the same imaginative will. The bland childhood of the world thrilled at the epic as Homer knew it : the austere nobility of men who were half gods, and of gods who were wholly men, delighted the temper of those too simple to take other than a large view. Even Virgil, with a more conscious art, captured an audience of worshippers, but with him died the love of grandiose types and giant machinery. An age which was curious and introspective demanded an observation which was more precise, more personal ; and Petronius, choosing prose for his medium, a prose which was lightened by incomparable interludes of verse, threw a gossamer bridge from the old world to the new. Call it what you will — epic or romance — set over it whatever deity satisfies your whim — Fortuna or Priapus — the Satiricon is the gayest, the PETRONIUS 31 most light-hearted invention which ever revolutionised the taste and the aspiration of an epoch. Its heroes are beggars all, beggars draggle-tailed and out-at-elbows. No worse ruffians than the immortal trio — Encolpios, Ascyltos, and Giton — ever took to the highway. They knew neither finery nor self- respect ; to-morrow's goal was as far from them as a life's ambition. They wandered under the sun, or sought the discreet encouragement of the stars with that easy conscience which comes of undetected villainy. Home was as strange to them as a change of linen; they journeyed from inn to inn; and they were lucky if, after an evening's debauch, they found their resting-place, or escaped a brawl and a beating. When Encolpios lost himself in the market-place of some nameless city, he provoked a beldame to laughter with the polite question : " Do you know where I have found a lodging for the night ? " And after the memorable feast at the house of their patron, Trimal- chio, fuddled with wine and luxury, they would have lost their unaccustomed way had not the cunning Giton blazed the posts which should lead to their retreat. Oftentimes, too, when they crawled back from some masterpiece of wickedness, they knew no rest but fisticuffs. "Are you drunk or runaways ? " asked the landlord on a celebrated occasion, and there followed a frantic duel between an earthen jar and a wooden candlestick. No trick of gain, no weapon of offence came amiss to the miscreants ; and thus they robbed arid fought through the breadth and length of 32 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS Southern Italy. When they had money they sewed it into the seams of a threadbare tunic, and when they had none they made not the smallest scruple of theft. Nowhere did they encounter a luckier adventure than at the nocturnal market. They had had the ill- luck to lose their whole fortune in a wood, that fortune which was stitched into an ancient garment. But, in revenge, they had stolen, these beggar students, an elegant and valuable mantle. No sooner had they entered the forum, under the safeguard of night, than they met a ruffian with their lost tunic on his back, and, creeping behind the thief, they presently dis- covered that their little hoard lurked safe within the seams. Encolpios, himself red-handed, was for having the law of the offender ; but Ascyltos, who more prudently trembled at the sight of a policeman, gave his vote for strategy. " Let us buy back the treasure," said he, " rather than embroil ourselves in a trouble- some suit." But unhappily two small pieces alone were left in the locker, and these were destined for the purchase of pulse, that hunger might be deferred another day. So there was naught for it but the sale of the stolen mantle. Straightway they displayed their treasure to the admiration of the crowd : but it was instantly recognised, and the ominous shout of " Thieves ! thieves ! " was raised. The brazen adventurers flung down their prize, and avowed them- selves willing to take in exchange the battered tunic. Thereupon a brace of hungry lawyers intervened, PETRONIUS 33 urging the sequestration of tunic and mantle, but a scoundrel who hung about the courts clung to the more splendid garment, and our adventurers managed to smuggle the ragged tunic to their lodging. Thus they wander the world up and down, blatant and unashamed. There is no disaster but falls upon their back; yet they make light of all things with an imperturbable serenity, and leap lightly from crime to crime. They account no dishonour too heavy to be borne ; they are flogged and outraged at every turn ; but the chance of a meal or of a full pocket heartens them at once, and they are quick indeed to forget an insult. Careless as they are, indifferent as they pro- fess themselves to the misery of the morrow, ill luck pursues them with a persistent and tireless devotion. When to escape from a present evil they go on ship- board, it is not surprising that they find themselves face to face with Lichas and Tryphaena, the prime authors of their misfortune. No disguise is effectual against their enemies. They shave their heads and eyebrows, onl) to disturb the superstition of a seasick passenger, who denounces them for the unlawful act of clipping their hair, when the winds and waves are at variance. Instantly Lichas recognises them by their voices, and heaven knows what would have been the embroilment, had not shipwreck interrupted a thousand threats of suicide, reconciliation, and revenge. And who are they, these marvellous beggars, whom Petronius bade to tramp from Cumae to Naples, and then transported over sea to the hapless c 34 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS Crotona ? Blackguards and scholars all. First there is Encolpios, upon whose tongue the narrative is hung, a scoundrel apt for any cheat, for any effrontery. He is the cleverest and pluckiest of a craven crew. His villainy is checked by no scruple of conscience or tradition. His virtue — if he ever knew it — is torn, like his coat, into ribbons. His life has been passed in many a dishonest shift ; once he was a gladiator (so says his friend), but he escaped from the arena, and thereafter murdered hi3 host, who had shown him naught save kindness. What wonder is it, then, that he finds himself a fugitive and an outlaw in a far city of Magna Graecia ? What wonder is it that his chosen companions are the victims of nameless vice and unutterable crime ? Once, in his sordid career, this pillager of temples, this breaker of friendly houses, sits and deplores his fate in an access of genuine remorse. But it is not his wickedness that irks him : upon that he would smile and smile and be content. He regrets only that he is deserted by the execrable Giton, and presently, buckling his sword at his side, he rushes into the street intent upon vengeance. No sooner, however, is he abroad than a soldier confronts him, demanding the name of his legion and his centurion. And the ready lie that leaps to Encolpios' lips might have saved him had he not been shod like a Greek. " Do the soldiers wear shoes in your army ? " asks the guardian of the peace, bidding the ragamuffin lay down his arms. And Encolpios, who dares as much as any man this side PETRONIUS 35 cowardice, sorrowfully obeys. For even under the happiest circumstances he is a miracle of poltroonery. When Habinnas, the freedman, enters Trimalchio's banqueting hall, Encolpios takes him for a praetor, and shudders, in his cups, at the imagined majesty of law. At sight of the infamous Ouartilla he turns colder than a winter in Gaul, and there is no adventure from which he emerges without a beating. In fact he is flogged as soundly and as often as the fool in a comedy, nor dare he ever resent the perpetual dusting of his threadbare jacket. It was not his to complain. "Ego vapulo tantum" is doubtless his amiable comment upon each fresh outrage, since there is no emergency which he does not fit with a classical allusion. For this scoundrel Ascyltos is a fit companion. A runaway slave, he, too, has stained his hands with countless crimes, and seeks a discreet oblivion in a wandering life. A bully, as well as a coward, he shares the fears, and the vices, of his friend ; he, too, trembles at the approach of authority ; nor is he ever so happy as when he may sponge a dinner. In evil-doing he knows neither scruple nor hesitation so long as he can pit strategy against force, and when he takes the road with Encolpios he recks as little of his villainy as of his rags. These rapscallions, then, with the infamous Giton, are the real heroes of the Satiricon^ and thus the beggar-students make their first entrance upon the stage of literature. They would steal in the morning, that at night they might prate the more fluently of poetry and eloquence. No mischief makes 36 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS them unmindful of their erudition. " We are men of culture," says Encolpios with pride, forgetting for an instant his ragged tunic. They pack their discourse with quip and quotation ; tags from Virgil are ever at their tongue-tip ; and when Encolpios straps the miscreant Giton beneath his bed, he is reminded per- force of Ulysses under the belly of the Cyclops' ram. As they loaf in the market-place of some strange city, or wander in search of plunder along the highway, they will join company with the first-comer, if only he vaunt his learning or profess a pretty taste in poetry. Thus it is they encounter Agamemnon, the type of the cunning and voluble rhetorician. At the out- set he dazzles them with a trite harangue upon the decay of forensic eloquence, and concludes with a foolish copy of verses in the Lucilian manner. But if his knowledge is skin-deep, his villainy reaches his very marrow. In rascality he is a match for his com- panions, in subtlety he is easily superior ; above all, is he an adept in the art of dining at the rich man's table. He it is, in effect, who brings his ragged companions to the banquet of Trimalchio, and he follows with complete success the twin trades of toady and of bore. Far more amusing and even less reputable is Eumolpos, the ancient poet, whom Encolpios surprises in a picture gallery. His rags proclaim him no friend of the rich, but he has a settled confidence in his own genius, and in season or out he will still recite his intolerable and interminable PETRONIUS 37 verses. Poverty and the weight of years have neither broken his spirit nor impaired his gaiety. Not even the fear of death avails to check his volubility, he composes amid the rattle of the storm, and no sooner do they take the road after shipwreck, than he begins to declaim his celebrated epic The Civil War. But no man may live by poetry alone, and at Crotona, Eumolpos discovers a brilliant industry in the decep- tion of the legacy-hunters. Now, in that remote city both learning and honesty were held in the lightest esteem. For it was peopled only by the rich who had money to leave, and by the greedy poor who would prey upon inheritances. By a humorous fancy none but the childless were permitted to enter the theatre or to assume a public office. In this realm of comic opera nobody was more at home than Eumolpos. Posing for the carcase, he clamorously invited the attentions of the crows, and for a while the carcase got the better of the bargain. But though his stratagem gave him a welcome taste of magnificence, misfortune and death overwhelmed him at last, and none would have been readier to declare his discomfiture the proper fortune of war than this braggart poetaster. With such characters, how should the romance satisfy the sensibility of the Prude ? You might as reasonably demand that Encolpios should masquerade in a tie-wig and buckle-shoes as expect the manners of South Kensington in this dissipated Odyssey. A French critic in an admirable phrase once praised the " serene unmorality " of Petronius, and the most 38 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS scrupulous can do no more than confess that the author of the Satiricon did not twist his creatures to suit the standard of the law. Why should he, when the policeman was their hourly dread ? No, he bade them wander through a distant colony, rags on their back and a jest on their tongue, troubled only by the fear of hunger and the gaol. Villon is of their company : gladly would they have cracked a quart with him, gladly would they have replied to his verses with ballades of their own. The heroes of picaresque romance — Gil Bias and Guzman and Lazarillo — are their sworn brethren, and so enduring is the type of the beggar-student that you may meet Encolpios to-day without surprise or misunder- standing. He haunts the bars of the Strand, or hides him in the dismal alleys of Gray's Inn Road. One there was (one of how many!) who, after a brilliant career at the University, found the highway his natural home, and forthwith deserted the groves of learning for the common hedgerow of adventure. The race- course knew him, and the pavement of London ; blacklegs and touts were his chosen companions ; now and again he would appear among his old associates, and enjoy a taste of Trimalchio's banquet, complaining the while that the money spent on his appetite might have been better employed in the backing of horses. Though long since he forgot he was a gentleman, he always remembered that he was a scholar, and, despite his drunken blackguardism, PETRONIUS 39 he still took refuge in Horace from the grime and squalor of his favourite career. Not long since he was discovered in a cellar, hungry and dishevelled ; a tallow candle crammed into a beer-bottle was his only light ; yet so reckless was his irresponsibility that he forgot his pinched belly and his ragged coat, and sat on the stone floor, reciting Virgil to another of his profession. Thus, if you doubt the essential truth of Petronius, you may see his grim comedy enacted every day, and the reflection is forced upon you that Encolpios will roam the streets so long as poetry keeps her devotees, and scholarship throws a glamour over idle penury. Petronius, then, who has been accused of satirising Nero, says no word of Courts or of the great world. He writes as though politics were an extinct science, as though he deemed the earth the ruffler's proper inheritance. Yet in revenge, his most brilliant episode is a parody of magnificence. The Banquet ofTrimal- chio is, to be sure, the reverse of the medal, but nowhere in literature has vulgar display been treated with so genial a humour. So long as print and paper can confer immortality, so long Trimalchio will remain the supreme type of the Beggar on Horseback. The machinery is admirable : the wooden hen sitting upon paste eggs, each of which contains a stuffed ortolan ; the Signs of the Zodiac, with their proper dishes ; the huge boar, out of which flies a flock of birds — these are inventions in futile extra- vagance, which correspond completely to the freed- 4 o STUDIES IN FRANKNESS man's pompous views of luxury. But far better even than the machinery are the host and hostess. To have drawn two such characters in an age preoccupied with the abstract and the impersonal was a triumph of art, and Petronius has no cause to haggle for his sovereignty. The very entrance of Trimalchio is a masterpiece : no sooner are you presented with the sketch of the bald man playing tennis and the mob of long-haired boys than you are convinced of the author's quick wit and vivid imagination. Trimalchio's, indeed, is the heroism of wealth : he would as soon pick up a ball which had fallen to the ground as use a silver dish which the clumsiness of a slave has permitted to touch the dust. No wonder he has a timepiece in his hall, and a trumpeter to remind him of the flight of time. His wine is superb. Does not a contemporary label remind the connoisseur that it is Opimian Falernian bottled a hundred years ago ? The beggar students could not have found a house better suited to their extravagant taste ; their greed renders them easily obsequious ; and at the recital of Trimalchio's grandeur their hungry mouths gape wider and wider. He owns as much land as a kite can fly over ; he buys nothing, since everything is grown at home j he recks neither of expense nor distance ; he sends to Attica that he may improve his bees, and the seeds from which his mushrooms are grown were fetched from the Indies. As he cannot recognise one-tenth of his slaves, so he knows neither PETRONIUS 41 the boundaries nor the names of his vast possessions, and he is consumed with anger when a slave announces a newly-acquired and unadvertised estate. His arrogance is as boundless as his wealth, and he treats his guests with a fine mixture of patronage and effrontery. " Be merry," says he complacently ; " once I was no better off" than you, but by my own industry I am what I am." He reserves the place of honour for himself, tells the poor devils who gorge at his table that, though they are less distinguished than yesterday's party, they are drinking better wine, and only permits the conversation to grow friendly or casual when it suits his royal fancy. Of wit he has not a touch, but he lightens the gloom with flashes of boorish humour, and his table-talk is a perfect epitome of slavish intelligence. Above all, he delights in verbal puns, and it is his most brilliant sally to call his carver " Carpe," that one word may be both summons and command. The Signs of the Zodiac provoke him to a profound dissertation, and not without a sense of fun he declares that under the Archer are born the cross-eyed scoundrels who stare at the cabbage and steal the bacon. Of the arts he has but a poor opinion, confessing that he cares for nothing but acrobats and trumpeters, and he further avows that, though he did once buy a company of comedians, he only allowed them to play Punch and Judy. At the same time he would be a patron of literature, and he brags for his friends' benefit that he has two libraries, the one of Greek books, the 42 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS other of Latin. He has even studied declamation, and pertinently asks Agamemnon the subject of the day's controversy. " A poor man and a rich were once at enmity," begins Agamemnon, whereupon Trimalchio, rising to the very summit of his colossal impudence, asks : " What is a poor man ? " His taste for poetry has persuaded him to confuse history and legend. He places Hannibal at the siege of Troy, and with the splendid ignorance of a self-neglected man he confuses Medea with Cassandra, and never dreams for a moment that the ruffians, whose momentary admiration he purchases with a meal, are laughing in their sleeves. Not content with these experiments, he recites some verses of his own composition, compares Cicero and Publius in a lucid criticism, and presently, at a convenient pause, discusses which, after literature, are the most difficult professions. These he pronounces with a pompous security to be medicine and money- changing — medicine, because the doctor can look inside us, and money-changing, because the professor can see bronze through the silver. As the wine goes round, the monumental arrogance of Trimalchio receives its last embellishment. Believing himself almost divine, the freedman has his will read, and even recites his own epitaph, wherein he is described as one who never listened to a philosopher. Happily Habinnas, the maker of tombstones, is present, and he can take for the thousandth time the last dying commands of his patron. But the scene of aggrandisement is dis- PETRONIUS 43 turbed by a quarrel which breaks out suddenly between Trimalchio and his consort, who throws the last words of abuse in her lord's face, and receives by way of guerdon a cup flung at her head and the very lees of obloquy. Finally, Trimalchio devises the supreme punishment, which shall be commensurate with her offence. " Habinnas," he says, " do not put this woman's statue upon my tomb." And, as though this misery were insufficient, "Take care," he adds, " that she be not permitted to kiss my corpse ! " Nor even here shall you find the climax of mon- strous stupidity. No sooner is the proper vengeance designed Fortunata than Trimalchio contrives another masterpiece of vanity. He rehearses with a perfect realism his own funeral. Lying in state, he bids the trumpeters blow, and exacts from his friends a tribute of interested praise. But the trumpeters blow to such purpose, that the watchmen burst into the house, fearing a fire, and in the confusion the drunken beggars make their escape, to pursue with a gay heart and a tempered magnificence their ancient professions of vagabondage and thievery. The portrait of Trimalchio is a triumph of realism. Yet none the less, it is of heroical proportions. Its grandeur and loftiness are, at least, as remarkable as its pitiless veracity. Here, in fact, is a new element in literature : truth cast in a large and epic mould. You laugh at the freedman's extravagance, but your laughter lags behind your admiration, and you feel that you are confronted by the inverse of some vast 44 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS deity. Fortunata, on the other hand, is more inti- mate and more modern. She is burnt into the page with a grotesque certainty that suggests an etching by Goya, and being less heroically designed, she is more personal, more living than Trimalchio himself. He is the luck of the household, she the brain. She counts her money by the bushel, and nothing escapes her that concerns her lord or his possessions. Obscure as she is, and ill-born, she rules him with a word, and if she says it is dark at noonday, he lights the lamp. But his faith puts no check on her loyalty, and no drop of water moistens her lips until the household is at peace. She counts the silver, she divides the broken meats among the slaves, and then, and not till then, will she sit down to dinner, or believe herself the equal of her husband. Yet, in her hours of ease, she is not without accomplishments ; she will dance the cordax^ that marvel of impropriety, against the whole world, and she has a perfect talent for scurrility. When Habinnas and his horrible wife Scintilla arrive at Trimalchio's feast from a funeral, Fortunata is nowhere to be seen. Forthwith the slaves are bidden to call her, and four times her name is shouted. She enters in all her squalid finery, wiping her hands on the handkerchief round her neck ; her slippers are laced with gold, and corded buskins show beneath her gown, which is cherry-coloured and girdled with green. Forthwith she mumbles affectionately to Scintilla, and the good-humoured ladies brag to each other of their vulgar finery. PETRONIUS 45 Fortunata, indeed, is etched by a master, and at the banquet none of the guests fall far below the quality of their hosts. In the absence of Trimalchio they exchange the stock phrases of an impoverished intelli- gence with a genius of persistence that cannot be matched outside the Polite Conversation, They send across the table an endless fire of proverbs and catch- words. They pack their discourse full of the gags of the tavern, as though they were actors preparing for the Saturnalia or a Christmas pantomime. They anticipate Sam Weller with a " better luck next time, as the vokel said when he lost his speckled pig." They slip in a quip or a quirk, alive from the street, at the briefest interruption of wit. They are magni- ficent, worthless, obscene ; but they are never dull, and an evening spent in the blackguard society of these beggar-students passes in a flash of merriment. You meet them with pleasure, you leave them with regret, and onlv when the author of their being tempts you to curiosity about himself. For Petronius is as secret as Shakespeare, as im- personal as Flaubert. If he has crammed his book with the fruits of a liberal experience, he has reso- lutely suppressed himself. Whether or no he be the Petronius of the Annals is uncertain and indifferent. Most assuredly the author of the Satiricon would have hated the brutality of Tigellinus and despised the taste of Nero, that Imperial Amateur. But history is silent, and conjecture is a mule. Wherefore we know him only as the writer of an incomparable romance, 46 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS which has no other motive than amusement, and no better virtues than gaiety and lightheartedness. The masterpiece, as we have it to-day, is but a collection of fragments, but its composition is not impaired by incompleteness, and there is scarce a fragment which is not perfect in itself. For Petronius had the true genius of the story-teller : his openings are as direct as if silhouetted in black upon a white sheet. Before all the ancients, he had a sense of background ; he knew precisely what space his figures would occupy ; and he never permitted a wanton exaggeration or a pur- poseless perversion. The material of his romance was the squalid life of his age, by land and by sea, by day and by night, in the close town and under the large air of heaven. He was a very prince of intelligence ; he understood as acutely as he observed, and nothing escaped either mind o^ eye. His courage, moreover, was equal to his understanding : he never shrank from laying violent hands upon truth ; he turned life inside out with a very passion of fearlessness. The first among the ancients to cultivate the gift of curious characterisation, he invented a set of personages, who are not only types but living men. He handled the sorcery and superstition of his age with a skill which not even Apuleius might excel, and for all his levity he knew how to strike the reader with horror. Moreover, he was an adept at the Milesian Fable, a haunting form of literature which eludes the most diligent research ; and the Story of the Ephesian Widow^ which even Jeremy PETRONIUS 47 Taylor does not disdain to quote, is the very model of its kind, and withal the perfection of ironic humour. Nor does this complete the tale of his perfections : he was as accomplished a critic as antiquity can show. His parody of Lucan is a dissertation upon the art of poetry j the reflections which precede it are a miracle of insight ; and what praise need you bestow upon the man who first discovered in Horace a " curiosa felicitas " ? Who was he ? What was he ? Whence came he ? These questions must remain for ever without an answer. One thing only is certain, he was a gentleman, and incomparably aristocratic. He stood a creator, high above the puppets of his creation, and in nothing does he show his greatness so admirably as in the serene aloofness of his temperament. One Petronius, surnamed Arbiter Elegantiarum^ broke two Murrhine vases envied by an Emperor, and when, driven to suicide, he opened a vein, he stopped the blood, so long as the converse of his friends was an entertainment. The author of the Satiricon was capable of both these actions, and an age is rich indeed that produced two such heroes. But no more may be said save that he revealed himself a classic and the friend of tradition. In the very act to invent a new literature, he quoted Virgil and Horace with an admirable devotion ; he wrote a prose so pure and simple that even the flashes of slang and popular speech wherewith it is illuminated do not interrupt its high tranquillity. We may yet discover another fragment 4 8 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS of his priceless work : we are never likely to pierce the mystery of his being. But we are content to look upon him as a great gentleman, and to acknowledge that under his auspices we would rather dine with Trimalchio and his rapscallions than with Lucullus himself. HELIODORUS HELIODORUS* HELIODORUS, Bishop of Tricca, bidden to choose between the prelacy and his Mthiopica^ rather suffered the deprivation of his title than " lose the glory of so excellent piece." Such is the one poor legend which serves Heliodorus for a biography. Nor may it claim the honour of antiquity, since, though in modern times it has never lacked appreciative itera- tion, its invention is no older than Nicephorus Callistus and the fourteenth century. Translated into all modern tongues, this unsupported testimony has aroused an admiration for Heliodorus in the breasts of thousands for whom the Mthiopica is merely Greek, and who have scarce heard, even at second hand, of the loves of Theagenes and Chariclia. From Montaigne f the fable * An ^Ethiopian Historie, written in Greeke by Heliodorus, no lesse wittie than pleasaunt. Englished by T. Underdowne, and newly corrected and augmented with divers and sundrie new additions by the said Authour. Imprinted by F. Coldocke. London. 1587. f " Heliodorus, ce bon evesque de Tricca," thus runs the passage, "ayma mieulx perdre la dignite, le profit, la devotion, d'une prelature si venerable, que de perdre sa fille, fille qui dure encore bien gentille, mais, a l'aventure pourtant un peu trop curieusement et mollement goderonnee, pour fille ecclesiastique et sacerdotale, et de trop amoureuse fa^on. " 52 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS crept into Burton's Anatomy, and thence into every treasury of the commonplace, until, industriously re- peated, it has become more true than truth itself. And yet, like truth itself, it is manifestly difficult of belief. For, in Montaigne's despite, the JEthiopica is- a work of which the most exalted bishop might be proud. In one aspect it is nothing less than a pane- gyric of chastity — a Joseph Andrews stripped of its satire. And should not the bishop rather enjoy pro- motion for so conspicuous a service than witness the destruction of his solitary child ? Nor does Helio- dorus stand in need of any false dignity, since his style and description, devised, as an epilogue, by him- self, are far more honourable than the title bestowed of Nicephorus : " Thus endeth the ^Ethiopian historie of Theagenes and Chariclia," you read on the last page, " the authour whereof is Heliodorus of Emesos, a citie in Phoenicia, sonne of Theodosius, which fetched his petigree from the Sunne." * Who would not rather boast a descent direct from the Sun, than sit in far-ofF Thessaly upon the throne of Tricca ? But Nice- phorus Callistus had thus much support for his in- genious fiction, that Socrates, an ecclesiastical writer of the fifth century, gave the see of Tricca to one Heliodorus. Nevertheless, similarity of name is poor evidence, and until you desert the author for his work you may believe whatever legend you will. * roiovSe irepas &rxe rb crvi>rayp.a rwv irepl Qeayivtjp Kal X.apiK\eia.v 'AWioiriKuv 6