ID 
 
 /s \SSWX\ 
 
 ^ UNIVERSITY OF CAUTOfOiU 
 
 RIVERSIOI
 
 SOME PROSE WRITINGS
 
 SOME 
 PROSE WRITINGS 
 
 'Vl^ BY 
 
 W.' CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 LONDON 
 REEVES £5f TURNER, CHARING CROSS ROAD 
 
 1906
 
 PK4777 
 
 c . 2- 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson b' Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press
 
 A FOREWORD 
 
 Theee of the papers, " Robin Hood," " Whittington," 
 and " Faust," here reproduced with material altera- 
 tions, were originally contributed to a volume entitled 
 " National Tales and Legends," 1892, and are included 
 in the present volume with the obliging permission of 
 Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. In connection with 
 the paper entitled " Babyology," I contributed some 
 remarks on the history of Tom Thumb a year or two 
 since to the Burlington Magazine. 
 
 W. C. H. 
 
 Barnes Common, 
 
 April 1906.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 Odysseus 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 11. 
 
 Robin Hood 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 III. 
 
 Whittington 
 
 
 
 26 
 
 IV. 
 
 Faust or Faustus 
 
 
 
 30 
 
 V. 
 
 Anne Boleyn . 
 
 
 
 40 
 
 VI. 
 
 BUNYAN 
 
 
 
 52 
 
 VII. 
 
 Dr. Johnson 
 
 
 
 59 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Coleridge 
 
 
 
 68 
 
 IX. 
 
 Tennyson 
 
 
 
 86 
 
 X. 
 
 Mister Joseph Miller 
 
 
 lOI 
 
 XI. 
 
 Italy and England Formerly 
 
 107 
 
 XII. 
 
 Some Deeper Uses of Popular Literature . 
 
 . 114 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Fame ...... 
 
 127 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The Subject Continued 
 
 143 
 
 XV. 
 
 On Persons who have Done only One Thing 
 
 . 161 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Form ...... 
 
 ■ 179 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Writing and Painting 
 
 195 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Babyology ..... 
 
 209 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Errata ...... 
 
 . 217 
 
 XX. 
 
 Ben Trovato ..... 
 
 230 
 
 XXI. 
 
 RoYALiSM OR Socialism 
 
 254 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The Thought of Others 
 
 276 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Some Late and Living Authors 
 
 290 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Not Uncommon People 
 
 306 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Nemo 
 
 . 
 
 . • . 
 
 • 329
 
 COLLECTED PROSE WRITINGS 
 
 ODYSSEUS 
 
 The contribution by Mr. Stillman several years since to the 
 columns of the Century Magazine of the fruit of his personal 
 researches into the topography of the " Odyssey " prompted me to 
 form a few speculations on the authorship of that and the com- 
 panion epic and their relation to the putative creator. 
 
 The " Iliad " and the " Odyssey " stand on a different footing 
 in regard ahke to their respective character and the condition in 
 which they have come down to us. Of the " Iliad " it is truly diffi- 
 cult to determine how much or how httle is actually original. 
 Smith's Dictionary warns us that we are to use caution in studying 
 the work, but does not afford any specific indications of the por- 
 tions or passages probably introduced at a far later period. The 
 " Odyssey," while it may have well undergone recension and other 
 editorial processes, presents the appearance in a far higher degree 
 of homogeneity, and is apt to prove in the eyes of many the more 
 attractive production, from its personal and melodramatic cast. 
 
 If the Greeks in the Homeric epoch — the ninth century B.C. 
 — were a people ignorant of geography and of the art of writing, 
 as it is generally supposed that they were, the natural question 
 arises whether Homer, granting him to have been an individual, 
 could have really left behind him in any shape the works 
 with which his name is commonly associated ; and it becomes 
 an allowable ground for discussion whether the poems are not 
 of later date, collected by men, including Homer, in whose time 
 the old oral conditions were in full vigour and completeness, and 
 identified as Homeric, and Homeric only, through the mersion 
 of all the ingatherers of the scattered legends in a person and a 
 name to some imperfect extent in the same manner as so much 
 of the ancient Gaehc saga is designated Ossianic. 
 
 A
 
 2 ODYSSEUS 
 
 It is at once obvious that the Homeric narrative plunges in 
 medias res, and that we are dependent on the account which 
 Odysseus gives to Alcinous, almost at the conclusion of his trials, 
 for the shght knowledge which we possess of what happened to 
 him after his departure from Troy. 
 
 The duration of the return journey is, no doubt, as fabulous 
 as that of the siege of the city, and is to be accepted in the same 
 sense as almost all other ancient chronological estimates ; and it 
 should be noted, in corroboration of this view, that the periods 
 occupied in the transit from point to point, are, on the contrary, 
 computed by days. The ten years' subsequent pilgrimage was 
 a meet complement to the ten years' investment of Troy. Such 
 measurements of time are in harmony with the lax and vague 
 calculations which are familiar to us in the pages of the Old 
 Testament and throughout the hterature of the East. 
 
 Farthermore, in the account of the meeting between Odysseus 
 and his father in the field, we get a clear indication that the former 
 was a ruler or chief of a subordinate type. The Ithacan regulus 
 or Tvpavvo?, who probably conducted to Troy a very small body 
 of followers, lands on his native island alone. All of those who 
 had been his companions in the earher stages of his voyage fell 
 victims to shipwreck or other casualties ; but the number, as 
 I have ventured to think, was at no time considerable ; nor am 
 I a partisan of the old idea that the slaughter of the Greeks by 
 the mythical Lsestrygonians, and the destruction of their vessels, 
 were as extensive as Homer avers. 
 
 When it is borne in mind that of the suitors of Penelope as 
 many as four-and-twenty were contributed by Cephalonia, and 
 that the circumstances connected mth Odysseus must have been 
 perfectly well known there, it seems natural to wonder why, in 
 a place so close at hand as the so-named Phaeacia, the returned 
 warrior was not generally recognised until a local bard suspected 
 his identity, and led him to unveil himself, according to Homer, 
 by narrating the tale of Troy in heroic strains. Of course this 
 may be taken to vindicate the ordinary opinion as to the great 
 lapse of years since the departure from Ithaca ; but, on the 
 other hand, the want of ready means of communication was apt 
 to assist forgetfulness. Nor is it much, if anytliing, to the purpose 
 that Telemachus did not know his father, since he must have 
 been a child when the king left home.
 
 ODYSSEUS 3 
 
 In Homeric days the minstrel's ditty may have comprehended 
 past as well as current events ; but if it existed at all in the 
 pre-Homeric era, in so highly developed a shape as to embrace 
 a large piece of history, it probably confined itself to what had 
 more or less recently taken place ; it appears still more reason- 
 able to conclude that in this case Homer has transferred to a 
 prior age the manners of his own, when there was sufficient culture 
 to lay before the men of Greece, through the medium of song, 
 the achievements and transactions of bygone epochs. 
 
 The tale of Troy, whereat Odysseus is seen to weep, his con- 
 sequent discovery, and the recital by him of his exploits and 
 mischances, have the air of a tangled thread of fact and invention, 
 in which the latter appreciably preponderates. If, on the one 
 hand, the absence of the king had been so protracted as to be 
 matter of history, the elaborate account which he furnished to 
 a neighbour could have barely been necessary ; and if, on the 
 other, the chronology is incorrect and exaggerated, a prince 
 whose territory was almost adjacent could not very well have 
 failed to identify a contemporary so eminent and famous as the 
 husband of Penelope. My own impression, arguing from analogy 
 and the ostensible circumstances, is that the time covered by 
 the Trojan War and the arrival of the King of Ithaca home has 
 been greatly overstated. 
 
 The episode of Irus is somewhat provocative of criticism, 
 inasmuch as in a primitive society of very limited population 
 the presence of a professed beggar seems unhkely and suspicious. 
 In such a pohtical system as that of Ithaca under Odysseus one 
 would suppose wealth to be comparative and mendicity almost 
 unknown. 
 
 I begin to doubt whether the participation of the lonians in 
 the movement against Troy was at all general. Even Odysseus 
 required a good deal of persuasion before he was induced to join 
 the expedition. But if Ionia did not supply many fighters, it 
 supphed one man who was of enormous value as a sagacious and 
 intrepid commander, and (long after) a second, who committed 
 to imperishable verse the whole engaging story. 
 
 The Ionian origin of Homer is strikingly and weightily attested 
 by his palpable conversance with the country round about Ithaca 
 and with the little island itself. When we have crossed with 
 him by the homes of Calypso and Circe, of the Cyclopes and the
 
 4 ODYSSEUS 
 
 man-eating Lsestrygonians, even into what is called Phseacia, 
 we cannot lielp feeling that we have passed from an atmosphere 
 of fable and hearsay into one of actual observation. You must 
 remark that he refrains from anything approaching exact 
 geographical detail or local coloming, until he has brought his 
 hero to ground which he was able to describe from more or less 
 intimate acquaintance. The interview with Eumseus, the meet- 
 ings of father and son and of husband and wife, the banqueting 
 scene, the episode of Irus (recalHng an earher feat by Odysseus 
 of a similar kind), with the way of life of Penelope and her female 
 attendants, are realistic enough, and contrast rather powerfully 
 with the anecdotes which the author puts into the mouth of his 
 principal figure, where the latter sums up in retrospect. I even 
 beheve that I have come to something resembling history when 
 the Ithacan reaches Phasacia, and the princess is introduced to 
 us with her maidens washing their clothes in the stream. It is 
 a glimpse of primaeval manners and of patriarchal government. 
 
 Inasmuch as Homer elected to devote to Odysseus — a single 
 dramatis persona in the war, and by no means the most conspicuous 
 — an entire epic, and, again, as the poet makes the exile, weary, 
 one might imagine, of delay, recount his homeward-bound ex- 
 periences at Phseacia, and spend some time at a point so near to 
 his final destination, I ask myself whether the author was a 
 Phaeacian famihar with Ithaca or vice versa ; and, balancing one 
 consideration against another, it is really difficult to decide wliich 
 of these two views, if either, is more hkely to have been the 
 true one. 
 
 Ionia appears to have been the cradle of several of the old 
 Makars. 
 
 That part of the picture which represents the phalanx of 
 aspirants to the queen's hand revelhng indefinitely at her cost 
 in all the plenitude of savage hospitality, exhibits a remarkable 
 illustration of antique palatial hfe. A large proportion of the 
 candidates, if such a place as Cephalonia sent four-and-twenty, 
 must have been men mth whom it is not strange to find Penelope 
 temporising. All this portion of the narrative is singularly vivid 
 and graphic. 
 
 It will be perceived that in the " Odyssey " the form Kefhallenes 
 occurs instead of Kephallenia. But it was the ordinary rule, 
 if not in Homeric days, at all events in those which succeeded,
 
 ODYSSEUS 5 
 
 to merge the locality, as it were, in the population ; and hence, 
 by way of example, for Bruttium and Leontium we get Bruttii 
 and Leontini. 
 
 But Homer was a debtor to his imagination or to the fertile 
 brains of his informants, when he portrayed the one-eyed anthropo- 
 phagous Polyphemus and all the other marvels which fill the earlier 
 cantos of the epic. Doubtless his illustrious traveller met with 
 many romantic incidents, and also with many a fair admirer to 
 whom his homage was something more than platonic. In the 
 enchanted abode of Circe the stratum of folk-lore superincumbent 
 on fact is sufficiently transparent to permit us to judge for our- 
 selves with what land of fiction we are confronted in the reputed 
 transformation of men into swine. The Greeks could scarcely 
 have encountered on their route from Troy any cannibals, unless 
 it was when they were driven far from their course, and landed 
 involuntarily among the savages on the African coast, denominated 
 in the poem Laestrygonians. But Homer took his knowledge of 
 Polyphemus at second-hand. To me he appears nothing more 
 than a member, possibly the chief, of some pastoral cave-dwelling 
 tribe on the Sicihan seaboard. 
 
 Portions of the subject-matter of this metrical romance are 
 very probably much older than its composition ; such legends 
 as it presents to our consideration were doubtless famihar long 
 before Homer's time ; and the primitive Ufe and thought of which 
 scenes are described, seem to belong to the first period of Hellenic 
 development. But it was to the favourable reception of the "Iliad" 
 that the appearance of the sequel was owing. The latter was a 
 curious miisaic of superstitions, oral tradition, and broad histori- 
 cal reahty, a tolerably faithful picture of what the author knew, 
 pieced to a sublime embodiment of current Ionian notions under 
 a popular name. 
 
 It is to be supposed that it is, in the case of the " Odyssey," the 
 immense distance of time wliich leads us to overlook at first the 
 comparative nearness of place. The scene of those parts of the 
 great poem, wliich are historically and humanly the most important, 
 hes among those same islands which were not long since under 
 British rule, and where, within the compass of a summer vacation, 
 any intelhgent explorer may still discover numerous vestiges of 
 an age coeval with Homer and not very far removed from Odysseus. 
 Yet long before our time Ithaca itself — the modern Thiald — ^had
 
 6 ODYSSEUS 
 
 become a desert, and all traces of its Odyssean importance and 
 interest seem to have disappeared. 
 
 I have made these remarks at the hazard of finding myself 
 forestalled by Homeric speciahsts, with whose views and dis- 
 coveries I may be unfortmiate enough not to be acquainted ; but 
 a perusal of Mr. Stillman's interesting papers suggested the few 
 paragraphs of commentary which are here set do^vn. 
 
 I shall, however, entertain the hope that I may have proved 
 as congruous and pertinent as the late Mr. Gladstone, who 
 expended much vain ingenuity in estabhshing a link between the 
 Homeric traditions and the Mosaic ; which seems to me a more 
 romantic hypothesis or speculation than that of the descent of 
 the dead language of Cornwall from the speech of ancient Judaea.
 
 II 
 
 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 1. In dealing with this ancient and favourite tradition, the editor 
 has for the first time made use of such material only as appeared 
 to him authentic, and has discarded all the more recent theatrical. 
 May-day, and ballad-mongering superstructures on the original 
 group and sequence of incidents. Ritson, and after him Gutch 
 in an even larger measure, have swollen the bulk of their respective 
 pubhcations by the indiscriminate admission of every scrap, good, 
 bad, and indifferent, bearing the name of the outlaw, where there 
 was frequently no actual relationship to his personal history, and 
 have consequently assisted in imparting an erroneous conception 
 of the few known facts to the Enghsh reader. Ritson was by far 
 the better critic of the two ; but the information at his disposal 
 was still more imperfect than ours, and he laboured under the 
 initial mistake of placing the hero of Barnsdale too early, and of 
 attributing to him associates and exploits mth whom and which 
 he could have had nothing to do. 
 
 The researches of the Rev. Joseph Hunter, and the critical 
 labours of Thomas Wright and others, have contributed very 
 importantly to rectify our view and estimate of this fine and 
 imperishable episode ; and it is difficult to understand how any 
 real service is done by persistence in exhibiting the few genuine 
 remains, in this case, encumbered and disfigured by discordant 
 literary interpolations and after-growths. 
 
 The true foundation for a narrative of the transmitted incidents 
 in the career of Robin is the " Little Gest of Robin Hood," a piece 
 too well known to require farther description ; and there are certain 
 auxihary hghts, which permit us to amphfy the somewhat scanty 
 record suppUed by that precious relic, in the shape of a handful 
 of separate ballads preserved in MS. and print. Such are the 
 " Tale of Robin Hood " from the Cambridge MS., " Robin Hood 
 and Guy of Gisborne," and " Robin Hood and the Potter." Even
 
 8 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 tMs selected matter has required a great amount of rearrange- 
 ment. In the original versions the sequence of events is often 
 evidently erroneous and confused ; and, for instance, the epic 
 of the " Knight," which forms the introductory scene in the 
 " Little Gest," is improperly placed before those ballads which 
 describe the earUest meeting between Robin and his two associates, 
 Little John and the Curtal Friar. The editor of the " Gest " seems 
 to have had no eye to chronological or critical propriety, nor was 
 it to be expected that he should. 
 
 The first portion of the ballad of the " Potter " is doubtless 
 ancient and genuine ; but the central feature in the latter half 
 is common to the anterior story of " Here ward the Saxon." The 
 notion is borrowed by Peele, in his play of " Edward I." (1593) ; 
 and in his case it was evidently a recollection of a ballad now no 
 longer known in print, and by the merest accident transmitted 
 to us in an unique MS. 
 
 Of " Guy of Gisborne " also it is difficult to doubt that there 
 was, at one period, a printed text of very early date, since it is 
 more hkely that Dunbar, who died about 15 15, was indebted for 
 his knowledge to a record in type rather than to a tradition or 
 a MS. At present we merely know Guy from a single circumstance 
 in his apparent employment by the sheriff of Yorkshire to capture 
 Robin. But, according to Dunbar, he was himself a person of 
 similar stamp, and possibly it was a case of setting a thief to catch 
 a- thief, just as the king, when he pardons Adam Bel, makes him 
 his bow-bearer or forest-keeper. Gisburn or Giseburn is on the 
 Ribble in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a few miles from Skipton, 
 and was the seat of a Priory before the Dissolution. Its name 
 and that of Guy seem to be connected. 
 
 A point which may be worth notice, by the way, although it 
 is perhaps tolerably obvious, is that in the course of the present 
 story, not only the sheriff of Nottinghamshire, but of Yorkshire, 
 plays a part. In the ballad of " Guy of Gisborne," which hes in 
 Barnsdale, Guy is in fact a scout, employed by the sheriff to track 
 Robin, and obtain a clew to liis whereabouts ; and of course the 
 functionary for one county would have no jurisdiction in another. 
 
 In the interlude of the " Four Elements " (15 19), and again in 
 Udall's translation of the Apophthegms of Erasmus (1542), is 
 cited a piece entitled or commencing, " As Robin Hood in Barns- 
 dale stood " ; this is not at present known as a separate broad-
 
 ROBIN HOOD 9 
 
 sheet. But it may well be identical with the tale of " Robin Hood 
 and the Knight," with which the " Little Gest " opens, but which 
 all the evidence conduces to refer to a later stage in the life of 
 Robin, and which has a certain parallelism with the traditional 
 legend of the Lee Stone. No doubt, many pieces belonging to this 
 epic have perished altogether, or survive in a degraded form. The 
 virtuous folks of other days exhorted their contemporaries to 
 disregard such instruction, and to study theological lore, as when 
 Walter Lynne, in a dedication of Roy's " True Behef in Christ and 
 His Sacraments" (1550) to the Duchess of Somerset, assures her 
 that it is a work of a very godly character, suitable for universal 
 reading, unlike the tales of " Robin Hood," " Clim of the 
 Clough," &c. His true period was soon a matter of doubt or 
 indifference. In the earlier hterature of England and Scotland 
 he became associated with men, who lived centuries afterward — 
 with Wallace, Adam Bel, and the Pinner of Wakefield. But 
 whenever and wherever he had lived, he remained the people's 
 hero, and survived on both sides of the Border in ditty, ballad, 
 and play, and in May game. In the fabliau of " How the Plow- 
 man lerned liis Paternoster," printed by Wynkyn de Worde, we 
 get the impressive hne : 
 
 " They songe goynge home warde a Gest of Robyn Hode." 
 
 In Wager's play, " The longer thou livest the more fool thou art," 
 there is the snatch — the salvage of something more lost — • 
 " Robin, lend me thy bow." Barclay alludes to him in his 
 "Ship of Fools" (1509); in the sixteenth century songs about 
 him were recited to the accompaniment of the harp ; and about 
 the same period Bishop Latimer lets us understand that the common 
 people held Robin Hood's day in greater respect than any dis- 
 course from him. 
 
 In 1469, one hundred and twenty-five years after his death, 
 the leader of the Rising in the North took the name of Robin of 
 Ridesdale, and sixteen years later the Earl of Northumberland 
 and his followers are described in the Plumpton Correspondence 
 as meeting King Henry VII. " by the way in Barnsdale, a httle 
 beyond Robin Hood's Stone." 
 
 As regards the pieces aflfiliated on the legend, such as the 
 "Noble Fisherman," the "Tinker," the "Shepherd," the 
 " Forester," and others, while there appears to be no authority
 
 10 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 for associating them with Robin, they represent the ever-varying 
 succession of adventures and incidents to which the career of an 
 outlaw was open ; and we have in these stories circumstances 
 which, if they did not happen to him or liis comrades, may have 
 befallen others similarly situated, Avith whose names it would have 
 been less profitable to connect them. At the same time some 
 apparently genuine productions, like " Robin Hood and the 
 Potter " and " Robin Hood and Allen-a-Dale," are hable to the 
 suspicion of being partly indebted to existing traditions of earher 
 adventurers ; and I apprehend the second part of the " Potter " 
 — a Barnsdale story — in Gutch, to be as unauthentic as it is totally 
 improbable, while " Robin Hood's Golden Prize," though perhaps 
 genuine, is, so far as I can see, merely an altered text of the " Two 
 Black Monks " in the " Gest." 
 
 Hunter was the earliest to fix with a greater air of probability 
 the period to which Robin Hood belonged. Our older antiquaries 
 had been content, as a rule, to accept the ballad-mongers' vague 
 notion that he hved in the daya of the Crusades and Richard of 
 the Lion Heart, and this loose theory responded to the popular 
 conceit that he was as real a personage as Robin Goodfellow, and 
 sufficed the catchpenny presenter on the stage down to the present 
 time. He was thought, again, by many to be an abstraction or 
 type, around which the professional caterers for the pubhc enter- 
 tainment had collected a body of minstrelsy ; and even his very 
 name, which we now know to have been usual enough, was regarded 
 as open to doubt and conjecture. Yet with all this scepticism 
 there was a certain circumstantiality, which went so far as to 
 confer on liim a title, to provide him with a noble wife, and to 
 bestow on his resting-place a dated epitaph. 
 
 In rejecting those portions of the Robin Hood ballads which 
 I judge to be destitute of authority, and to be no more than Hterary 
 compilations of a later period written for the stalls, I follow the 
 example of the restorer, who removes the modern plaster from old 
 cathedral walls, or him who, beneath a worthless mediaeval text, 
 brings to hght a lost or rare classic. Even those pieces to which 
 I have had recourse, such as the " Little Gest " and " Robin Hood 
 and the Potter," while they are substantially of the highest 
 curiosity and importance, were clearly the work of illiterate 
 scribes ; and this is more predicable of the MSS. even than of 
 the printed matter.
 
 ROBIN HOOD II 
 
 Mr. Hunter arrives at the conclusion that Robin Hood was in 
 the service of one of the dependents of the Earl of Lancaster — 
 probably an archer — at the Battle of Boroughbridge (about twenty 
 miles from York), fought on the Tuesday and Wednesday after 
 the Feast of St. Gregory, 15 Edward II. ; the name does not 
 of course occur on the extant contemporary Roll, which Umits 
 itself to the Knights and Bachelors present ; and the same gentle- 
 man thinks that subsequently to that disastrous event he with 
 others sought refuge in the extensive woods in the neighbourhood 
 of Wakefield, where persons of his name then lived, and to which 
 he doubtless himself belonged. He was a man tolerably advanced 
 in hfe at this time, and was married to one Matilda — not the Lord 
 Fitzwalter's daughter, but an individual whose name occurs in a 
 coeval document. The Hoods, prior to the loss of the Lancastrian 
 cause at Boroughbridge, appear to have been persons belonging 
 to the yeoman class, and to have been well connected, especially 
 if it be the case that they claimed near consanguinity with the 
 De Stayntons, who were tenants under the Crown in capite of 
 the small Honours of Pontefract and Tickliill, and of whom a 
 female member, Elizabeth de Staynton, was prioress of Kirklees. 
 
 The prevailing idea about Robin Hood is that he spent the 
 whole of his adult hfe under the greenwood tree, and only retired 
 to a nunnery when he needed in his last moments medical assist- 
 ance and the services of a nurse. But such a view seems to be 
 wholly inconsistent with the truth. Robin passed his youth and 
 early manhood at or near Wakefield in peaceful obscurity with his 
 family or his wife, and was already a middle-aged person when he 
 sought the new home, where his worst enemy was " winter and 
 rough weather." Nor is it to be supposed that he remained 
 steadfast to one place during the period of his retirement from 
 society. He shifted his quarters, as we know, from Barnsdale 
 (near Wakefield) to Plumpton in the same county and to Sherwood 
 in Nottinghamshire, either from the love of change or for greater 
 security and concealment. For to his original dehnquency as an 
 adherent of the Earl of Lancaster or as the perpetrator of some 
 such act of violence as drove young Gamelyn and Adam Spencer 
 to the wood in Chaucer's tale, he by his new course of hfe added 
 that of a poacher and freebooter, and (above both) a despoiler 
 of the hierarchy ; and with the assistance of a small band of faithful 
 confederates, which from time to time increased in number, he
 
 12 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 succeeded for a season not only in eluding pursuit, but in maintain- 
 ing himself and his followers in comparative ease, and in relieving 
 the needy. 
 
 The space occupied by the epic in its pure state and by the 
 forest hfe of Robin is narrowed by Mr. Hunter to about twenty 
 months. I am disposed to incur the risk of questioning such a 
 view, inasmuch as the earhest ghmpse gained of the hero finds 
 him in possession of a limited retinue, it is true, but of a full 
 treasury and of every evidence of power and prosperity, and the 
 " Gest " expressly states that he led a hfe in the woods " two and 
 twenty years " ; nor is it for a moment to be taken for granted 
 that the existing hterary records are complete or consecutive. 
 My impression is that the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1323 occurred 
 long subsequently to the adoption by Robin of a secluded and 
 lawless existence, and that that event merely contributed to 
 strengthen his resolution and to swell the ranks of his adherents. 
 It goes without saying that Barnsdale, which I clearly apprehend 
 to have been the first and for some time sole field of his activity, 
 was under any supposition the haunt of dangerous characters 
 before his day, and we can produce testimony to estabhsh that 
 in the last year of Edward I. that part of the road from Scotland 
 to the north was notoriously and specially insecure. 
 
 It may not be altogether a futile speculation to inquire whether 
 the exceptional precautions adopted to protect hfe and property 
 in 1307 were directed against Robin Hood or against anterior 
 and independent enemies to the king's peace, when taking back 
 twenty-two years from 1325, the reputed date of his decease, 
 brings us to 1303. But we owe, above that, a very respectful 
 consideration for that well-known passage in the " Vision of 
 Wilham concerning Piers Ploughman," written by Wilham 
 Langland (who might have seen Robin) among the Malvern Hills 
 about 1350, where the author makes Sloth, one of his characters, 
 say:— 
 
 " I cannot perfectly my paternoster, as the priest it saith, 
 But I can rhymes of Robin Hood and Randal Earl of Chester." 
 
 And with these two lines before him I invite the reader to ask 
 himself whether the allusion in the same breath, as it were, to 
 an historical personage hke the Earl of Chester and to the York- 
 shire yeoman does not import something more than the transient
 
 ROBIN HOOD 13 
 
 experience of the forest and outlawry signified by Mr. Hunter's 
 delimitation. Such a wide popular repute could scarcely have 
 been acquired in those days of difficult communication in so brief 
 a time as a year and a half or so in such a sphere of adventure. 
 But it is worthy of particular remark that at a distance of only a 
 quarter of a century from the date of his death he was already 
 a hero of song ; tliis helps to establish the authority of some of 
 the traditional accounts and remains. 
 
 Not merely in the primd facie evidence furnished by the " Little 
 Gest," where it speaks of the reception of the knight in the first 
 fit or section, but in the precepts which the outlaw delivers to 
 his subordinates for their guidance, we discern traces of lengthened 
 standing and of former footprints in Nottinghamshire, with em- 
 bittering recollections of its sheriff ; and I can hardly avoid the 
 conclusion altogether that Mr. Hunter has improperly curtailed 
 the duration of the story, and that the mention in " Piers Plough- 
 man " is due to achievements spread over a much longer period. 
 
 Under any circumstances whatever, Robin Hood has accom- 
 plished the most signal triumph wliich has ever fallen to the lot of 
 an Enghshman. By virtue of unique attributes and under very 
 extraordinary conditions he has earned an imperishable name, 
 one which is part of our history and our birthright. 
 
 Two centuries and a half after the composition of " Piers 
 Ploughman," a verse- writer of the reign of James I. — Drayton 
 in his " Polyolbion " — sings : — 
 
 " In this our spacious isle I think there is not one 
 But he hath heard sonae talk of him and Little John ; 
 And to the end of time the tales shall ne'er be done 
 Of Scarlock, George a Green, and Mi;ch the miller's son ; 
 Of Tuck the merry friar, which many a sermon made 
 In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws and their trade." 
 
 And here we are, at a distance of 560 years from the epoch, with 
 the ballad-hero constantly in our thoughts and on our Ups. He 
 went to liis grave toward the close of Edward of Carnarvon's reign 
 without a suspicion that his country would care for his reputation 
 as dearly as for the memory of Magna Charta, of which he was a 
 practical exponent and supporter. For in an age 
 
 " When those may take who have the power. 
 And those may keep who can/'
 
 14 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 lie upheld the poor man against the tyrannical or usurious 
 oppressor. He was a political heretic, and in a sense a reUgious 
 one, since he did not allow his pious sentiments to bhnd him to 
 the abuses of the yet unreformed Church and the overbearing 
 insolence of the higher ecclesiastics. But his extraordinary fame 
 came to him unsought, for had it not been for the ruin and pro- 
 scription of his family and friends, he might have continued to 
 the last a Wakefield yeoman, and have been buried with his 
 fathers. The force of circumstances led him to retahate for his 
 outlawry by becoming a maker of history, and by inducing succes- 
 sive generations to exhaust their ingenuity in settling his personahty 
 and his period. 
 
 The nearness of many of the adventures of Robin Hood and 
 his comrades to the Scotish border might account for the early 
 popularity of the ballads in North Britain, and for the " Little 
 Gest " being among the first productions of the parent Edinburgh 
 press in 1508, apart from the sympathy of the countrymen of 
 Wallace with the poUtical principles held by Robin ; for he was 
 not so much an opponent of the Church as of the hierarchy, not 
 so much of monarchical government as of feudal oppression and 
 rapacity. 
 
 As it is, the edition of the " Little Gest " pubhshed in Scotland 
 may or may not be anterior to that by Wynkyn de Worde. But 
 it is quite possible that the latter printer executed one before his 
 removal from Westminster to Fleet Street in 1502. So many of 
 these more ancient typographical monuments have perished or 
 at least so far failed to come to hght, just as the Scotish edition 
 of " Sir Eglamour of Artois " in 1508 at present takes precedence 
 of the EngUsh-printed texts, and yet most probably was taken 
 from one. 
 
 If in liis political sentiments and principles Robin leaned in 
 the direction of sociahsm, it must be remembered that it was a very 
 different state of parties, of which he was a witness and con- 
 temporary, from that wliich at present has to reckon with the 
 sociahst as a problem and a danger. The Barnsdale outlaw saw 
 before his eyes only two main orders or ranks of hfe, the patricians 
 and plebeians. The great Middle Class, which has made England 
 what it is, and which can alone maintain us in our position as a 
 State, could be hardly yet said to exist as an active pohtical factor ; 
 and Robin laid down for himself the rule and maxim, not that
 
 ROBIN HOOD 15 
 
 all were equally entitled to share the national lands and wealth, 
 but that the circumstances justified him in holding the balance 
 between those who were too rich and those who were too poor. 
 He was an unparliamentary redistributer. 
 
 The impotence of the civil authority in Robin's days is strongly 
 exemplified by the impunity which our hero enjoyed during his 
 term of sojourn in Barnsdale and elsewhere, and by the advantages 
 which he gained in his occasional encounters with the municipal 
 and even royal powers. The vast, uninclosed areas of woodland, 
 the absence of an organised pohce, and the popular sympathy, 
 had much to do with the success of the outlaw in evading detection 
 and baffling pursuit. 
 
 I have spoken of the sophistication of the story by the later 
 writers for the popular taste, where a perpetual demand for 
 novelties created the necessity for changing the venue, and enlarging 
 the true scope of the story. It is even easy to see how characters 
 Hke the Pinner of Wakefield and Adam Bel were introduced into 
 the idylUc drama as contemporaries and coadjutors of Robin ; 
 they were both of the same neighbourhood and the same rehgion, 
 and even an educated man such as the author of the " Polyolbion " 
 unsuspectingly (unless it was by poetical hcense) makes them 
 members of the band. 
 
 It is not very surprising, however, to find in the literature of 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such a lax and un- 
 critical treatment of the subject, when we carmot peruse with 
 care the compositions so much nearer the events described with- 
 out detecting inconsistencies and oversights. The " Little Gest " 
 itself, produced in the reign of Henry VII., asks re-editing, before 
 it is capable of being used as part of a fairly chronological and 
 authentic narrative. 
 
 The Robin Hood cycle of ballads presents the aspect of having 
 furnished the parent-stock, whence the authors of all the other 
 effusions of the kind, and primarily " Adam Bel," derived their 
 inspiration and material. For several of these pieces outside the 
 actual Barnsdale or Sherwood series possess a similarity of texture 
 and treatment, and, although other parts of the country were 
 densely wooded at that remote epoch, and afforded equal scope 
 for the illustration of forest-life and scenery, it is noticeable that 
 (with one or two exceptions) the whole of this family of legends 
 is associated with the north of England and with Scotland. If
 
 i6 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 we may compare small things with great, we are perhaps entitled 
 to presume that out of the few incidents which the really ancient 
 ballads in print or MS. embrace, the extensive collection in our 
 hands gradually developed itself, just as the " lUad " or the 
 " Odyssey " may have grown to what we see them from slender 
 'prima stamina or germs. Two other legends with which Robin is 
 not personally identified, such as the " King and the Hermit," 
 recently re-edited by Albert Kurz of Nlirnberg (1904), and " King 
 Edward and the Shepherd," undoubtedly belong to the same group 
 and the same region. They all tell a similar story. 
 
 The normal Robin Hood ballad, written for the meridian of 
 the stalls, conveys the impression of having proceeded, if not from 
 the same pen, from the same type of composer. It is couched in 
 a trite and monotonous phraseology, neither in keeping with the 
 topic nor with the period, and in some instances one is manifestly 
 an evolution from another, with variations for the nonce. 
 
 Among the pieces inserted in their collections by Ritson and 
 Gutch as possibly connected with this series, I confess that I 
 discern nothing to the purpose. The story of " Robin and 
 Gandelyn " is merely some passage in the careers of two foresters, 
 who, hke Robin Hood, were poachers of the king's deer ; and the 
 name of one of the individuals has been wrongly given as Robin 
 Lyth, because the stanzas commence with the words " Robin Lyth 
 in greenwood bounden," the second word being not a proper noun, 
 but a common verb, i.e. " heth." 
 
 When we hear in the ballads of his removals from one place to 
 another at a considerable distance, we must take into account the 
 very restricted facihties for travelUng in the fourteenth century, 
 and the aggravated difficulty which would present itself in the 
 case of a man who was outside the pale of the law, and on whose 
 head a price was not unfrequently set. Migrations from York- 
 shire southward could only be accompUshed by night or in disguise, 
 and it was impracticable for the outlaws to transfer themselves 
 to points many days' journey apart without great caution, and 
 even then at serious risk, as they would be necessarily divided and 
 Uable to detection at halting-stages. We may, in fact, take it for 
 granted that an exodus from Barnsdale or Sherwood was not 
 undertaken before one of those retreats had grown untenable for 
 the time. 
 
 It may strike some as one of those tasks which are better
 
 ROBIN HOOD 17 
 
 let alone, that of proving almost beyond doubt who Robin Hood 
 was, when he flourished, and how prosaically his fortunes ended ; 
 it may be treated as a piece of indiscreet supererogation to tell 
 how such a man, toward the close, failing in health and strength, 
 accepted service under the Crown, and how, after a few months, 
 he was compelled to seek medical or surgical aid in the priory, 
 of which a relative was lady superior, and where he died from 
 over-bleeding through the treachery, it is alleged, of Sir Roger 
 of Doncaster, a priest, may-be, who had been one of his involuntary 
 guests in Barnsdale formerly. 
 
 The history of this " Little Gest " seems to be that it was 
 formed into a connected narrative out of a certain number of 
 separate legends in MS. or in oral recollection by a north-country- 
 man, who was conversant with the haunts of the outlaw on the 
 outskirts of Wakefield and in the vicinage of the WatHng Street, 
 and who asserted his editorial pretensions by inserting here and 
 there a few introductory or connecting stanzas. The narrative 
 at the very outset represents the hero as harbouring a deadly 
 resentment against the sheriff of Nottingham, so that at the point 
 where the tale opens we are bound to infer that much has happened 
 without leaving any vestige behind, and that the " Little Gest " 
 is a garland, beginning abruptly, and plmiging us in medias res. 
 But the starting-point of the adventures must surely have been 
 in Barnsdale, not in Sherwood ; and although Robin is usually 
 considered a Nottinghamshire celebrity, whatever glory apper- 
 tains to him is more properly a Yorkshire inheritance ; for it 
 was thence he sprang, and there, at Wakefield or in Barnsdale 
 and Plumpton, that he spent the greater part of a not very 
 prolonged life. 
 
 The special interest and value of the " Little Gest " are mani- 
 fold. It supplies us with items of information or portions of 
 the epic nowhere else preserved, and not only shews the popular 
 view of the subject, so far as it goes (for it is not exhaustive), 
 nearly four hundred years ago, when oral tradition was capable 
 of supplying a writer with a fairly genuine conception and re- 
 port, but preserves, so far as the exigencies of metre and space 
 allowed, the language of MS. versions of still older date, to 
 which the editor of the " Gest " had recourse, and of which 
 fragmentary remains only at present survive. We also per- 
 ceive that at the end of the fifteenth century the outlaw was 
 
 B
 
 i8 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 associated with Nottingham, rather than with Barnsdale or 
 Plumpton. 
 
 The editor of the " Gest " not unnaturally and not injudiciously 
 (from his immediate point of view) placed the incident of the 
 " Knight " in the foreground ; but I see reason to differ from 
 that arrangement, as the adventure was clearly one belonging to 
 a more advanced epoch in our hero's career as an outlaw. 
 
 The " Gest " is the sole attempt, which we are at present aware 
 of possessing, at a consecutive relation ; but it is, as may be readily 
 perceived, imperfect in many respects. " A Tale of Robin Hood," 
 printed by Gutch from the unique, but incomplete, Cambridge MS., 
 is simply the Nottingham episode, embracing the capture of Robin 
 and his heroic rescue by John. It obviously appertains to the later 
 period of the epic, when Robin was a famihar figure at Nottingham 
 as well as at Wakefield, and when his renown, moreover, had so 
 strongly impressed the king, that his uppermost thought, when 
 he heard of his detention in the hands of the sheriff, was, not his 
 punishment, but a supreme desire to see so famous a character, 
 who had so long set at defiance his bow-bearers and keepers and 
 the bodyguards of his subjects, as well as his executive officers 
 in more than one shire. 
 
 Robin's career appears to have commenced, as it closed, in 
 Yorkshire. The middle portion is chiefly occupied by scenes 
 laid at Nottingham or in Sherwood. There the closer proximity 
 to an active executive jurisdiction in the person of the sheriff of 
 Nottingham brought the outlaw most frequently in peril of his 
 Hberty and Hfe ; and from the stress which he is traditionally 
 alleged to have laid on unrelaxed hostihty to the sheriff, we are 
 probably justified in concluding that there was some early grudge 
 in that quarter which Robin never forgave. 
 
 If we accept the view of Mr. Hunter in regard to the chronology 
 and habitat of Robin Hood as broadly correct, we find ourselves 
 in a position, after the lapse of all the years between the first 
 quarters of the fourteenth and twentieth centuries, to fix with 
 remarkable exactitude the area and radius of his movements, so 
 far as the theatre of his earhest exploits is concerned — Barnsdale 
 and its environs. He lay, in fact, within an easy distance of that 
 portion of the Wathng Street which ran through Barnsdale, and 
 he rehed for plunder on the travelhng parties which made this 
 highway their route from Lincolnshire to Yorkshire ; and the deep
 
 ROBIN HOOD 19 
 
 forest on all sides furnished to men familiar with every yard of 
 ground a secure ambush and concealment. The compiler of the 
 " Little Gest," or the author of the ballad of the " Knight," even 
 lets us understand that the point on the WatUng Street nearest 
 to the outlaw's rude home in the forest was once known as the 
 " Sayles," although no such place is at present distinguishable. 
 The independent evidence of the narrator imparts a strange reahty 
 to the incident in the " Gest " where Little John and two others 
 are despatched by their master to look out for a victim, who proves 
 to be the distressed knight, and to whom the outlaw, instead of 
 robbing him, lends a large sum of money to save his property 
 from forfeiture. 
 
 I must proceed to submit a conjecture, which strikes me as 
 of sufficient force to justify adoption, that the meeting with the 
 two monks and that with the knight have been transposed, as 
 the possession of so large a sum as even four hundred gold crowns 
 was unlikely, in the absence of some unusual piece of good fortune 
 immediately precedent ; and this may also help to explain the 
 profusion of \dands set before Sir Richard. The outlaws had had 
 a good time. They can even afford to make their more recent 
 visitor a handsome return for his thoughtful present of bows and 
 arrows. 
 
 I discern in Sir Richard at the Lee (or At-Lee) a man of honour- 
 able character and unusually hberal sympathies, whose secular 
 leaning was naturally more pronounced after his bitter experience 
 of the cupidity and uncharitableness of the abbot of St. Mary's. 
 He played a hazardous part in those days of clerical ascendency 
 and despotism, and we are far from being perfectly acquainted with 
 the duration and extent of his relations with Robin Hood, while of 
 his ultimate fate we seem to be so far ignorant. 
 
 Mr. Hunter seems to create an unnecessary difficulty, in treating 
 the episode of the " Knight," by concluding or presuming that 
 his residence was in Yorkshire, Avhere Robin and he first met. 
 But he was then merely on his way to York to negotiate an 
 extension of grace from the abbot of St. Mary's. After the repulse 
 and pursuit of the outlaws at Nottingham on the occasion of the 
 second archery meeting, Robin and his men take shelter in the 
 castle of a knight, who is expressly said in the ballad-poem to 
 be the same whom Robin had laid under such weighty obhgations, 
 and who evidently had a seat near Nottingham. The writer of
 
 20 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 the ballad calls it Utersclale, which may have been the name of 
 the house or the locahty. But Mr. Hunter thinks the ballad 
 wrong, because a person of equestrian rank was not likely to possess 
 two mansions in different counties. The fact is, that we do not 
 know that he did ; and the evidence is in favour of his abode 
 being near Nottingham. 
 
 It is improbable that the yeomen had such familiar relations 
 with two personages of the same rank. The " Little Gest," drawn 
 up from still earlier records, pronounces the owner of the place near 
 Nottingham to be identical with the recipient of Robin Hood's 
 bounty. The king waits till he reaches that town, or at least that 
 county, before he declares Sir Richard's estates under attainder. 
 After his evacuation of his castle, the knight retires into Sher- 
 wood, and is there pardoned by Edward. The whole venue, 
 except the casual meeting in Barnsdale, is within a radius of 
 Nottingham. 
 
 There is another point dependent on this precise locaHsation 
 of a part of the tale. As early as 1307 Barnsdale already enjoyed, 
 we perceive, the repute of being a dangerous stage in the journey 
 to the south ; for we are told that when three dignitaries of the 
 Scotish Church were on their way to Winchester under a royal 
 escort, that escort differed from time to time according to circum- 
 stances, but when they arrived at Pontefract, on the confines of 
 Barnsdale, it was raised to the maximum of twenty archers. The 
 co-eval record says that this was " propter Barnsdale." But if a 
 score of bowmen was accounted an adequate protection for such 
 an exalted party, we naturally turn our thoughts to the force 
 which Robin Hood is averred in ballad-lore to have had constantly 
 at his command, and which could have readily overwhelmed the 
 guard at its fullest strength. There is no difficulty in believing 
 that the outlaws fluctuated in number according to circumstances 
 or requirements ; in the commencing sections of the " Little 
 Gest " not more than four appear. To calculate by the score was 
 a common kind of hyperbole ; and I must confess myself incredulous, 
 as to the existence of a body of one hundred and twenty or even 
 one hundred and forty armed and desperate men, where their 
 cardinal object and policy were to avoid notice, and to supply 
 their deficiency in force by their tact, fidelity, and intimacy with 
 the ground ; nor should it be overlooked that they were princi- 
 pally persons of a rank superior to the common soldier. Never-
 
 ROBIN HOOD 21 
 
 theless, on special occasions, it is quite possible that Robin Hood 
 could rally together all the stout fellows within reach, and verify 
 the five or seven score of song. As a rule, such a following might 
 have proved a source of actual weakness, from its proneness to 
 favour treason as well as publicity ; and it is worth noting that 
 throughout the story there is no hint of betrayal or disloyalty 
 beyond one or two little brushes between Robin and his rather 
 irascible lieutenant. The point deserves emphasis, because it illus- 
 trates and proves the moral ascendency of Robin over a body of 
 men, some of whom at least were his superiors in physical prowess. 
 
 One word more. The entry above quoted belongs to 1307, an 
 early stage in the development of the machinery by which Robin 
 set himself against the law ; and we find that, later on, when the 
 high cellarer of St. Mary's passed through Barnsdale, his escort 
 was raised to fifty-two, and even that number was totally in- 
 adequate to protect him. 
 
 My conclusion, upon the whole, is that the normal following of 
 Robin limited itself to Little John and half-a-dozen others, and 
 that when, upon information received, any remarkable emergency 
 was expected, additional forces were collected by an understood 
 and accepted principle of summons — not by bugle (for that was 
 merely a rallying call varied agreeably to circumstances) but by 
 message. It is against probability, as it would have been against 
 policy and prudence, that a large body of men, not amenable to 
 the law, should have been constantly mustered in one spot or 
 centre. Robin seems to have sounded the bugle once only for 
 Little John ; three notes were understood as a signal to the whole 
 band, and probably two carried some intermediate significance. 
 The Lincoln green, which they w^ore, perhaps, only in full dress, was 
 obtained without much difficulty from the pedlars or itinerant 
 traders either on Yorkshire or on Nottinghamshire ground, and 
 these men might traverse the forest without risk, as the outlaws 
 were enjoined by their leader to leave such persons unmolested. 
 
 The situation of the outlaw in the woodland in those early days 
 was of necessity less isolated than we may sometimes be apt to 
 suppose. For his clothing, a portion of his diet, his tools and 
 weapons, medical and surgical assistance, he was brought into 
 periodical contact with the bordering towns and villages, of whose 
 inhabitants he not seldom enjoyed the private sympathy ; we 
 see how in the '' King and the Hermit " the holy man bartered
 
 22 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 bread and ale for venison with his nearest neighbours ; the present 
 of bows and arrows from Sir Richard at the Lee was merely an 
 exceptional windfall ; and we see that Robin himself and John, 
 if not others, ventured into Nottingham, and occasionally also into 
 Wakefield, on urgent or special occasions. Robin had a wife, and 
 possibly children, and some of his comrades may have been 
 similarly placed ; and in one instance we see that he proceeded 
 to the county town to pay his devotions in the church of Our 
 Lady there. As a Catholic, he naturally missed the services pre- 
 scribed by his ritual ; and the celebration of prayers or graces 
 before meals by Friar Tuck or otherwise, if it was a reality, as 
 affirmed in the " Gest," made indifferent amends for the privation. 
 
 We hear little, indeed, of the friar beyond the mention of his 
 first encounter with Robin and accession to the party ; and it 
 is only by implication that I assign to him the function of priest- 
 chaplain. He makes a more prominent figure in the plays and 
 " Polyolbion " ; he does not occur by name in the " Gest " ; and 
 it is possible that he did not long survive, or that he seceded. 
 
 The " Gest " makes Robin build a chapel in Barnsdale, which 
 is not so unlikely ; it may have been an inexpensive wooden 
 structure, similar in appearance to many still visible in primitive 
 localities ; and the officiating priest, if not Tuck, was perhaps 
 some not too fastidious priest at a modest stipend or a character 
 of the type pourtrayed in the " King and the Hermit." 
 
 In more or less immediate connection with this portion of the 
 subject, it may be worth while to refer to a sermon of the fourteenth 
 century, that is to say, just about the Robin Hood era, preached 
 by a parson who has been robbed on the highway, and who makes 
 his discourse an elogium on brigandage. He receives his property 
 back, and a gold noble for his fee. The adventure may, of course, 
 have no relationship ; but the period accords, and the particulars 
 are characteristic. 
 
 There is one aspect of the forest hfe of a proscribed character 
 such as Robin Hood, which has never perhaps been much con- 
 sidered, and which directly bears nevertheless on his day-by-day 
 existence. What, in short, was the nature of the shelter which 
 the woods could be made to afford, and, while it was sufficient 
 to protect from the weather, could be without serious trouble 
 replaced at different points ? The hut or cabin of the keeper 
 might be a permanent structure, however humble and limited ;
 
 ROBIN HOOD 23 
 
 but the outlaw was not entitled to look for lengthened sufferance, 
 and was at any moment liable to the seizure of his effects and 
 the demoUtion of his retreat, even if he succeeded in eluding 
 personally the officers of the sheriff or the soldiers of the king. 
 The ideal picture of Robin and his merry comrades under the 
 greenwood shade, regaUng on venison and wine, and entertaining 
 monarch and prelate, has often made me speculate on the scene 
 in winter, in the drenching rain, in the deep snow, amid the wild 
 hurricane — in the hour of sickness, and in the peril of death. 
 
 From a casual allusion or so I collect that the outlaws kept 
 their venison, -wine, ale, and other provision, if not their habiU- 
 ments, in caves, only known perhaps to themselves, and not im- 
 probably of prehistoric antiquity, although that discovered in 
 Whittlebury Forest, Northamptonshire, about 167 1, was of 
 more recent construction ; after the accession of the sheriff of 
 Nottingham's cook, they enjoyed the opportunity of having their 
 food properly dressed ; and for fresh water they resorted to the 
 forest streams, or perchance (when they were in Barnsdale) to 
 the well which still bears the outlaw's name, and is singled out 
 by Mr. Hunter as probably a genuine Unk with Robin and his 
 men. 
 
 We arrive at no defmite authoritative clew on this point, since 
 even in the early part of the " Little Gest," where Robin receives 
 a guest at " the lodge door," the expression is merely that of the 
 editor of the poem. But the incidence of the case bespeaks frequent 
 removals and transfers, and consequently a temporary and in- 
 expensive description of refuge from the weather, and storehouse 
 for provisions and effects. The stores of all kinds always on hand, 
 including changes of dress, disguises, and weapons, demanded 
 receptacles at once spacious and secure ; and it was now and then 
 the case, that a considerable amount in specie, the fruit of some 
 lucky adventure, called for special safeguard. We have only to 
 throw ourselves five or six centuries back to realise in our mind's 
 vision tens of thousands of uninclosed acres, where small structures 
 could be placed, if they did not already exist, out of the common 
 track, and practically invisible to the uninitiated. 
 
 Nor is even that process requisite, since at the present moment, 
 in the New Forest and elsewhere, men conversant with all the 
 intricacies of the denser portions continue to reside years together 
 in huts or cabins constructed of timber and thatch ; and such
 
 24 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 persons become hardened to the weather, and enamoured of the 
 freedom, till they are intolerant of an ordinary roof. 
 
 The densely afforested condition of England and Scotland, 
 both during and long after the mediaeval epoch, made possible 
 a defiance of the law which would now be scarcely maintainable 
 for a day or a week (as the case may be) ; and the strict and 
 jealous preservation of game, with the limited knowledge of planta- 
 tion, rendered silvan life, again, more secure from the reluctance 
 of the officers of the Crown to destroy cover. The forest folk-lore 
 or romance, which we possess, was, like everything else of the 
 kind, the product of favouring circumstances, which can never 
 recur. 
 
 The men who ranged themselves round Robin, and shared his 
 privations, enjoyments, and triumphs, were such as the Ridings 
 of Yorkshire, and the north of England generally, are still capable 
 of producing : long-backed, broad-shouldered, tall fellows, who 
 were a match for all comers in muscle and pluck ; and even " little " 
 Much the Miller's son was not improbably, if deficient in stature 
 compared to the rest, of the Rob Roy build. The men are yet on 
 the ground ; but the spirit and conditions have disappeared. 
 
 In the fourteenth century it was a practice to confer names 
 referrible to a physical peculiarity, both here and abroad. Little 
 John himself might have been so called from a personal charac- 
 teristic, just as we find Long Will and Long Jack ; but the form 
 at all events became usual both as Littlejohn and Micklejohn. 
 Again, another of the band, Gilbert of the " White Hand," sug- 
 gests the remark that this distinction may have been alhed to the 
 French " Blancmains." 
 
 As regards Plumpton Park — ^when the " Gest " was written 
 and printed, the residence and property of a family of the same 
 name — it was in the Plantagenet time an open woodland and 
 a royal chace, and doubtless originally formed part of the great 
 forest of Knaresborough or Kennardsbury, of which the sole 
 remaining trace is, I believe, the Stray at Harrogate, i.e. the 
 Harrow Gate, or way, of that domain. The editor of the " Gest " 
 terms it a park, because he knew it as such. 
 
 After his brief service at court, perhaps about the end of 1323 
 or the beginning of 1324, it was to Barnsdale, not to Sherwood, 
 that Robin retired to end his days. There was his true patria, 
 his native place and air.
 
 ROBIN HOOD 25 
 
 The peculiar wildness and seclusion of this district in the 
 fourteenth century, even in comparison with Sherwood, is ex- 
 emplified by the apparent freedom from molestation which the 
 outlaws there enjoyed. We do not hear of any incursions into 
 it by the sheriff of the county, nor of any of those narrow escapes 
 which Robin and his followers experienced in the Sherwood 
 country. 
 
 Of the cause of his death, probably in the spring of 1325, we 
 get a meagre account ; but it is nowhere stated that, looking at 
 the not very lengthened interval between the reported failure 
 of his health and that desperate enterprise for saving the life of 
 Sir Richard at the Lee, the over-exertion was sufficient to impair 
 the system of a man doubtless advanced beyond the prime of life. 
 
 Of Simon Hood, presumably a relative, and a participator 
 in the royal grace of 1323-4, our cognisance is Hmited to the 
 mention of his name as a recipient of pay as a valet or groom of the 
 chamber. If he, which is almost certain, shared Robin's fortune 
 in the woods, his name nowhere occurs in the ballads.
 
 Ill 
 
 WHITTINGTON 
 
 (1350-1424) 
 
 This tale is one of the series which every hterature creates and 
 possesses, with the twofold object of supplying the immediate 
 demand for novelties, and of providing historical personages of 
 more or less remote date and antecedents with a biography. The 
 most familiar example of this mode of treatment is the romantic 
 particulars which used to pass current for incidents in the life 
 of Shakespear, even after critics had abandoned in despair the 
 attempt to throw much real hght on his career. We cannot 
 wonder therefore that, in the case of a man who died in the first 
 half of the fifteenth century, and whose transactions were chiefly 
 recorded in unpublished civic muniments, we encounter a puzzling 
 miisaic of myth and truth, which on analysis is shewn to contain 
 a very small residuum of trustworthy matter. 
 
 We may take it as established that Sir Richard Whittington 
 was the son of Sir William Whittington, member of an ancient 
 family in Gloucestershire, and dame Joan his wife, and that he 
 was born in London in or about 1350. He married Alice, daughter 
 of Hugh Fitzwarren. In 1379 ^® ^^^ ^^^ contributing to a City 
 loan, and ten years later giving surety to the chamberlain for 
 £10 toward a fund for the defence of London. He was successively 
 common-councilman for Coleman Street, and alderman for Broad 
 Street, Ward. 
 
 In 1393, being then on the court of aldermen, he was chosen 
 to be one of the sheriffs of London ; and at nearly the same time 
 he became a member of the Mercers' Company, incorporated by 
 Richard II. in the year just named, not improbably through his 
 or his father's agency. By letters patent of June 8th, 1397, on 
 the death of Adam Bamme in office, he was appointed by the 
 
 king Lord Mayor of London ad interim, and at the ensuing Michael- 
 
 26
 
 WHITTINGTON 
 
 27 
 
 mas was formally elected by the City for the next year. In 1406 
 and 141 9 he again served the office, proceeding on the last occasion 
 to Westminster to be approved and admitted by the Barons of 
 the Exchequer. In 1415 he formed one of the civic procession 
 which went on foot to Westminster to return thanks for the 
 victory at Agincourt. 
 
 In 1393 Whittington was probably already a wealthy and 
 influential man, and we have it on undoubted authority that he 
 was patronised both by Richard II. (deposed in 1399) and his uncle 
 Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, Lord High Constable 
 of England (murdered in 1397). It was toward the close of his 
 long and useful life that he formed the design of perpetuating 
 his name by certain monumental works. In 11 Henry IV. 
 (1409-10) we find him receiving the royal leave for the foundation 
 in St. Michael's Paternoster in the Reole or Royal, of his hospital 
 or Domus Dei for thirteen poor men, who were to pray for his 
 good estate and that of his family and friends, which was in ancient 
 days a customary provision, and continued to be in vogue down 
 to the sixteenth century ; and in the following year the corpora- 
 tion gave him the ground for his College. Stow, in one place, 
 states that he began to build the library of the Greyfriars in 1421 
 at a cost of £400 ; but it seems to be doubtful whether he lived 
 to complete all his grand projects of improvement and goodness. 
 For he died in the beginning of the year 1423, his will being proved 
 in March, and his four executors appear to have at all events finished 
 the College, and to have paid for the repairs of St. Bartholomew's 
 Hospital and Guildhall. It was in his last mayoralty that he 
 reopened Ludgate as a debtors' prison, in compassionate regard 
 for reputable citizens, whose health was endangered by the noisome 
 state of Newgate ; and where the old historian of , London speaks 
 of him having built Newgate, we are surely to understand its 
 restoration or reconstruction on an improved model. 
 
 Whittington was buried in the church of St. John the Baptist, 
 or St. John upon Walbrook, and his remains were twice disturbed : 
 first, for the sake of ascertaining whether some great treasure 
 was not originally deposited in his tomb ; and, secondly, to encase 
 the bones in a more secure and becoming manner. 
 
 The professional occupation of Whittington as a mercer, perhaps 
 in succession to his father, was almost unquestionably the source 
 of his manifest opulence ; and it has been suggested that the cat
 
 28 WHITTINGTON 
 
 story, which was in existence before his time, arose from an im- 
 perfect apprehension of the import of the word achat or acat, the 
 term then commonly employed in French for the sale of merchandise 
 or mercantile transactions. The mere circumstance that Whit- 
 tington's father was a knight bespeaks him a person of some 
 consideration and standing, and the reference to Richard II. and 
 the Duke of Gloucester in connection with the younger Whittington's 
 benefactions may shew that the family rendered financial assist- 
 ance to the Crown, and obtained some equivalent. 
 
 But it must strike any one, who reflects for an instant, as a 
 strange caprice of fortune that in the commonly accepted accounts 
 of Whittington we hear of many things which he never did, with 
 an altogether false conception of his origin, and, granted the 
 premises that he rose from a very low station to power and riches, 
 are left very imperfectly informed of his philanthropic munificence 
 and exemplary nobility of character. In him the Gild of Mercers 
 had and have their most illustrious member and one of the most 
 important contributors to their aggrandisement. 
 
 The earUest allusion to Whittington in our hterature appears 
 to be a story of a dream which he had after the foundation of his 
 college, and which is preserved in a jest-book of 1526. It is not 
 worth repeating, and down to the reign of Elizabeth, when Stow 
 pubhshed his Survey and Annals, nothing beyond a vague legendary 
 impression of the man prevailed. Stow expUcitly refers to the 
 conditions attendant on admission into the alms-houses, and 
 Hey wood the dramatist, about the same time, in the " First Part 
 of Queen Elizabeth's Troubles (1605)," repeats Stow's account 
 almost in so many words. Yet in the face of this evidence a play 
 was produced, in which the anonymous author founded his plot 
 on Whittington's low birth and great fortune, and down to the 
 present instant the favourite notion is that which is fostered by 
 the chap-book and the pantomime. The striking antithesis was 
 not to be hghtly surrendered. 
 
 Let us see that Whittington constitutes a rare type of legend. 
 We can understand the superstructure or incrustation of fable 
 on the genuine histories, such as they may be, of the gods and 
 heroes of antiquity, of prehistoric kings, of great warriors in the 
 age of chivalry, of early navigators and explorers, of students of 
 literature and science in illiterate and unscientific times, and of 
 enemies of the Church in various ways ; but here we are confronted
 
 WHITTINGTON 29 
 
 with a sober London merchant of the Plantagenet period, for 
 the leading events of whose beneficent life we have fairly reliable 
 data, and whose memory is preserved in the popular mind by a 
 nursery tale, barely entitled to serious discussion. It was the 
 usual incidence of Eastern romance to accomplish results by a 
 cowp de main ; it suited the dreamy, despotic, and inert Oriental 
 temperament. The Arabian inventor would not have succeeded 
 so well if he had depicted fortunes acquired by life-long industry ; 
 and even we in the West cherish this sort of imaginative illusion, 
 when it is brought home to us, when it is affiliated on a veritable 
 alderman and mayor of London, on some actual and breathing 
 merchant-prince, a practical man of business, a benefactor of 
 his species. He must owe all that he had and was to wedges of 
 Barbary gold, earned for him by a cat, in a region where that 
 animal, so far from requiring importation, was already abundant. 
 
 The chap-book to which I have above referred, adopts the 
 view of the hero already laid before the public in a play no longer 
 known, although the writer quotes Fabian, Harding, and Stow, 
 and, in fact, pads his little book freely with matter not directly 
 relevant to Whittington from the annalists of London. At the 
 same time Hey wood, in a drama printed in 1605, and acted earlier, 
 repudiates the fiction as to Whittington's origin, and follows Stow. 
 
 Every family must have a beginning. There is a possibility 
 that we have to go a generation back in quest of the poor boy 
 who attained riches and spurs by his commercial enterprise, and 
 that it was really Sir William Whittington whose birth was humble, 
 while it does not follow that the cat legend might appertain to 
 him any more than to his son, the Whittington of history. The 
 confusion between him and his father is rendered more plausible 
 by the absence of the name of the latter in any list of civic officers 
 and proceedings. He may have been merely a prosperous, self- 
 raised merchant.
 
 IV 
 
 FAUST OR FAUSTUS 
 
 The material for judging the true ciiaracter and attributes of this 
 
 remarkable individual is chiefly preserved in a German prose 
 
 book of 1587, when about half a century had elapsed since the 
 
 death of Faustus. Beyond this source of knowledge we have 
 
 one or two accidental pieces of testimony on the part of persons 
 
 who either saw our hero or had heard of him in his lifetime ; and 
 
 on this information we have to found our estimate of the alleged 
 
 magician, for, as I shall explain, the dramatic creations of Marlowe 
 
 and others, no less than the popular theory, are, one and all, more 
 
 or less unfaithful to reality. If Faustus could revisit the earth, 
 
 he would be more astonished than flattered by the injustice which 
 
 literary and theatrical restaurateurs have done him. 
 
 A second pseudo-biography, which purports to be the work 
 
 of an EngHsh student at Wittenberg some fifty years after the 
 
 time, takes serious exception to its predecessor ; but it appears 
 
 to be, on the whole, an inferior production, and to have been very 
 
 loosely and clumsily compiled. It is neither a supplement to the 
 
 earlier text nor a revision of it, but a wholly distinct assemblage 
 
 of stories and adventures, arranged without any ostensible regard 
 
 to propriety or sequence. Beyond these two empirical attempts 
 
 to satisfy public curiosity, and anterior to them both, however, 
 
 was a strange account of a young girl at Nimmwegen in Holland, 
 
 who was a sort of female counterpart to the German hero, and 
 
 whose history forms a small chap-book printed at Antwerp in 
 
 15 14, and of which an Enghsh version appeared there about the 
 
 same time. Mary of Nimmwegen is represented as having been 
 
 the Devil's paramour during seven years, and so far, except that 
 
 the Evil One was a conspicuous figure in the story, we have here 
 
 the converse of the German legend, where he employs others as 
 
 his instruments, and is personally superior to temptation. 
 
 The partiality and veneration for the supernatural and weird 
 
 30
 
 FAUST OR FAUSTUS 31 
 
 which have constantly manifested themselves in the professors 
 of demonology and witchcraft, as well as in those who have gained 
 an indirect knowledge of such studies by hearsay and guesswork, 
 readily explain the estimate which his contemporaries formed 
 of Faust or Faustus, and the discrepancy with our present 
 conclusions as to the nature of his employments, his power, and 
 his fate. 
 
 It was not till Faustus had been nearly half a century under- 
 ground that the idea occurred to a German romancist of utiHsing 
 all the current popular m}i:hs relating to him, and others of the 
 same stamp, for hterary purposes ; and there appeared at Berlin 
 in 1587 a volume professing to recount with fideUty the transac- 
 tions of that rather brief and still more obscure and uneventful 
 career. The book was calculated to tickle the palates of readers 
 to whom the very name of a retired student of a former genera- 
 tion would be in many instances new, and of whose character 
 and achievements the author might confidently propagate the 
 mldest fictions and extravagances with impunity and profit. 
 During the lapse of fifty years all those who were acquainted with 
 the truth had died, and there was no school of analytical criticism 
 to dissect and estimate a plausible tissue of chimerical or mis- 
 chievous inventions, vamped up jests, and affihated matter of 
 all kinds. 
 
 Under the name of Faustus we find five impersonations : (i) the 
 Faustus of real Ufe, so far as we can make him out, the son of poor 
 parents, studying at first for holy orders, then digressing into the 
 occult sciences, and questioning cardinal points of theological 
 doctrine ; a shy, secluded scholar, of whose pursuits and opinions 
 few had any correct knowledge : living almost in solitude, and 
 dying under conditions which favoured the report that he had 
 been strangled by the devil. (2) The Faustus of German prose 
 fiction, in whom the natural course of things concentrated all the 
 marvels and prodigies current in oral tradition from want of better 
 information, and to lend an air of freshness to a string of fables 
 and jests in circulation about Eustace the Monk and other earlier 
 men of similar tastes and endowments. (3) The Faustus of 
 Marlowe, substantially founded on the prose story available in 
 EngHsh in or before 1592. (4) The sentimental Faustus and 
 Margaret of Goethe. (5) The caricature Faustus of operas. A 
 notion of the view entertained, at least in England, in regard to
 
 32 FAUST OR FAUSTUS 
 
 the aspect of such a personage as Mephistopheles (and the general 
 conception of that of the Devil himself was not dissimilar) is to 
 be gleaned from the rough woodcut on the title-page of Marlowe's 
 drama in the old editions. 
 
 In order to be in a position to understand the actual facts, 
 which are few enough, we have to try to forget that Faustus ever 
 became a hero and central figure of romance, a puppet, which 
 each succeeding age and school of fiction felt at liberty to turn 
 without scruple to its own account. I am dealing with a biography, 
 which seems to have extended from 1491 to 1538. Faustus died 
 comparatively young ; he is made in the story to lament his pre- 
 mature fate. He was born at Kniitlingen in Silesia, and breathed 
 his last at a village near Wittenberg. He could have barely reached 
 his forty-eighth year. 
 
 The circumstances attending the birth and education of this 
 distinguished and enlightened man are narrated with tolerable 
 fulness in the history of his career. His relations were evidently 
 anxious that he should go into the Church, and his youthful studies 
 were originally directed to such an object. But the learning which 
 he acquired in this manner operated in inspiring him at once with 
 a distaste for the calling and a misgiving as to many points of 
 religious belief. The influences, which led to the Reformation 
 in Germany, had begun to operate, and to spread scepticism and 
 unrest. In 1509, when Faustus was a lad of eighteen, Luther, 
 eight years his senior, was delivering lectures at the newly founded 
 University of Wittenberg, and may have numbered Faustus among 
 his hearers. The freer discussion of religious questions developed 
 a variety of effects. It had diverted Luther himself from the 
 study of the law. It diverted Faustus from entering the Church. 
 He rehnquished the project of joining the clerical body, and pro- 
 ceeded to devote himself to the study of medicine, with which 
 at that period astrology and alchemy were commonly associated. 
 
 Of his real progress in his new profession we know next to 
 nothing ; but it is said that he, like many other physicians, became 
 at one time a compiler of almanacks and prognostications ; and 
 a considerable portion of one epoch of his life was spent in foreign 
 travel. He visited, besides various parts of Germany, France, 
 Italy and the Levant ; but the extent of his observations and 
 experiences are, I suspect, overstated in books, the product of 
 hearsay or reading on the part of the early biographer. But it
 
 FAUST OR FAUSTUS 33 
 
 is very notable that the observation which the narrative of 
 1587 makes Faustus offer upon Venice, Coryat in 161 1 almost 
 reiterates, as if he had seen the translation of the German volume, 
 and had unconsciously carried the notion in his mind. 
 
 He was fond of j)leasure ; his temperament was voluptuous, 
 and his imagination lively and warm ; and he met with many 
 strange adventures, even casting aside the apocryphal incidents 
 which are vulgarly coupled with his name. 
 
 We have to exercise a good deal of moral self-restraint, if we 
 desire to realize this man to ourselves as he probably was. The 
 first hint of anything approaching to sohd ground occurs in a 
 conversation of Melanchthon respecting him, reported by a third 
 party in a volume printed two years after the reformer's death. 
 Melanchthon was born at a village not far from Kniitlingen, and 
 was the junior of Faust or Faustus by several years. He is made 
 to refer to his studies in magic, to which he had been led by attend- 
 ance at public lectures delivered on that science, and he speaks 
 of his attempt at Venice to fly, and of the devil accompanying him 
 in the likeness of a dog ; but he does not even glance at the varied 
 and elaborate exploits which he performed, or at the compact 
 with Mephistopheles. 
 
 Melanchthon, as a Churchman, merely cherished, perhaps, a 
 loose persuasion that his contemporary was a freethinker, and so 
 quahfied himself for becoming a liegeman of the devil hereafter, 
 and even a correspondent with him during life. Much of this 
 entered then, as now, into common parlance. 
 
 The testimony of Melanchthon is valid, at any rate, to the 
 extent of establishing the existence of Faustus and his veritable 
 place of nativity. But he was also personally known to Paracelsus, 
 Cornehus Agrippa, and Konrad Gessner, three men of congenial 
 pursuits, though not sharing his strong passions and manifest 
 proneness to sensual indulgence. The alchemists of Germany, in 
 whom Faustus must have taken a powerful interest, if he did 
 not participate in their researches, were of course men far in 
 advance of their time, and were, in fact, the founders of the modern 
 European school of chemistry. 
 
 The ignorance of physical laws, the want of communication 
 and of the means of diffusing accurate intelhgence of events, 
 contributed to accredit to the devil any incident which passed 
 the common comprehension. His majesty was heir-general or 
 
 o
 
 34 FAUST OR FAUSTUS 
 
 remainder-man to all occurrences for which no key was forth- 
 coming. Our early literature is replete from the first with pro- 
 digious accounts of his intercourse with us and his hvely interest 
 in our affairs. In 1641, a Coventry musician of parsimonious 
 disposition was said to have made with him such another bargain 
 as Faustus, and to have come to a similar end, " to the terror 
 and amazement of the inhabitants." He made his presence 
 sensible in a diversified form to innumerable persons, chiefly in 
 humble hfe, whose account of the conference or vision was faith- 
 fully reported in type, and you were referred to eye-witnesses 
 of undoubted credibihty, if you wished to inquire farther. 
 Other cases are those of Francesco Spira of Cittadella, which 
 I shall mention again, of Lewis Gaufredi, published in 1 6 1 2 , and 
 of Giles Fenderhn, mentioned in the Trial of Mrs. Joan Peterson, 
 1652. 
 
 The singular revelations, which Faustus was invested with the 
 faculty of conjuring up and making subservient to his desires, 
 may have owed their origin to a vivid and unbridled fancy, in 
 the same way as the imaginative vagaries which we see in the 
 pages of Dante, Poliphilo, and our own Blake, all having their 
 prototypes in Virgil and Homer, as these had again in the Hebrew 
 and Chaldsean visionaries. The descriptions of heaven and hell, 
 in the picture before us, are evidently elaborated dreams 01 
 reveries. 
 
 A habit of sohtude, whether in fact or in sympathy, is apt 
 to throw a man on his own internal resources, and to favour the 
 realization of spectral and other illusions ; the supposititious 
 objects which he embodies by intellectual incubation supply the 
 place of ordinary companionship ; and where the mental fabric 
 is not sound, or where the process of solitary contemplation is too 
 continuous, insanity often accrues. 
 
 The seers and prophets of antiquity were men of the same 
 cast as Faustus, but with a less keen relish for life and a narrower 
 insight and reach. They were as imperfectly understood by their 
 contemporaries, perhaps, as he Avas by his. During the middle 
 ages there was a strong and not unnatural tendency toward un- 
 healthy rumination, in large measure owing to secluded habits 
 of life ; and it survived till the Renascence or even later, as it 
 is easy to see, not only in the case of wild, morbid enthusiasts, 
 hke Bunyan, but in that of such a practical intellect as Cellini
 
 FAUST OR FAUSTUS 35 
 
 the artist, who narrates in his autobiography an experience 
 not unhke those in the present narrative. The legend is not 
 merely an embodiment of the current faith in necromancy, 
 but an adaptation of it in its more familiar forms to dramatic 
 exigencies. 
 
 Looldng at the channels through which intelligence of Faustus 
 and his doings might have reached posterity, we naturally turn 
 to his servant Wagner, to whom he left his books, and who must 
 have enjoyed a better opportunity of knowing the extent of his 
 commerce with magic and the black art than any one else. But 
 it is tolerably plain that (with one exception) no use was made 
 of this source and material in framing the account, which was the 
 superficial popular idea of the man, coloured by prejudice and 
 distorted by time ; and if we needed a farther illustration of the 
 unscrupulous application of folk-lore to biography and history, I 
 might cite the absurd attempt to palm on the public, about 1712, 
 a German compilation, pretending to describe the life and actions 
 of Wagner, who plays the same part in the Faustus story-book 
 as Miles does in " Friar Bacon." 
 
 At the same time, we have always to recollect that the school 
 of biography to which the old account of Faustus appertains con- 
 sidered it a legitimate, or at least a safe and advantageous, feature 
 in their work to heighten the colour or shadow of the portraiture 
 which they presented to view by a free use of borrowed acces- 
 sories ; and some of the achievements of the Kniitlingen wizard 
 are mere reproductions of thirteenth and fourteenth century 
 German folk-lore. 
 
 The conception of the grandeur of Lucifer and his original rank 
 in heaven, as second only to God in power and glory, is worth 
 remarking, as one of those hints which may have assisted to form 
 in the mind of Milton an idea of the devil at variance with the 
 popular theory. 
 
 When the comic business and horse-tricks were inserted by 
 way of attraction in the earliest surviving record, they had already 
 become matter of tradition ; yet, notwithstanding, we are entitled 
 to believe that Faustus permitted occasional trespassers on his 
 privacy and, both at home and in his foreign travels, mixed with 
 all sorts of personages, from crowned heads to good creatures 
 wishful to convert him, and he gratified some of these with an 
 exhibition of his skill in legerdemain, palmistry, and astrology.
 
 36 FAUST OR FAUSTUS 
 
 He was even willing to be interviewed by individuals who sought 
 enlightenment on some point of ordinary science, and he rarely 
 sent them away without a solution. But he did not, it is presum- 
 able, admit any participator in his enjoyment of the beauty of 
 Helen of Troy and other famous heroines : these were phantoms 
 of his own seething brain, creatures of his dreams ; and it is more 
 than possible that we are indebted for them to wilfully ex- 
 aggerated entries in manuscript diaries, which may have existed 
 in 1587, when the first pseudo-biography came from the press at 
 Berlin. 
 
 The accounts of the circumstances attending his death, which 
 are somewhat conflicting, and which bear the strong impress of 
 clerical bias and manipulation, represent him as having been found 
 with his neck twisted, or with his brains dashed out and his body 
 mangled. The probabihty seems to be that he committed suicide 
 in a fit of despondency, and possibly, as his remains are described 
 in one place as lying in the court-yard, he threw himself out of 
 an upper window. We see that Christian burial is mentioned as 
 a concession. 
 
 Curiously enough, in 1581, a drama called " The Conflict of 
 Conscience " had been founded on the somewhat analogous case 
 of Francesco Spira, an Italian convert from Protestantism ; 
 and in 1587 a ballad was published on the same subject. When 
 the play appeared, Spira had already been dead about three and 
 thirty years, having perished by his own hand, and it is said under 
 the influence of despair. Violent deaths were not uncommonly 
 imputed to the devil, especially, as in the case of two great ladies 
 of the Court of France in 1599, where the persons or features 
 underwent rapid disfigurement. This idea was of course before 
 the romancist of 1587. 
 
 When Marlowe engaged in the dramatization of the story, 
 not only the English version of the German book of 1587 was 
 before him, having been published in 1592, but a ballad on the 
 same theme, licensed in 1589, and the anterior Spira performance, 
 insomuch that the theatregoer in London had been familiarized 
 with the class of topic, and was predisposed to receive with atten- 
 tion a production of a far more lofty and noble cast. 
 
 There is no legitimate room for astonishment that the mysterious 
 labours and tastes of Faustus should have awakened in the minds 
 of his Saxon neighbours and German countrymen generally a
 
 FAUST OR FAUSTUS 37 
 
 sentiment of dread and awe, when we consider how prevalent to 
 this day in most parts of the world superstitious ignorance remains. 
 The demonological portion of the narrative is of course a pure 
 invention, partly based on contemporary gossip, and partly evolved 
 from thefertile brain of the compiler of the German account in 1587. 
 Half a century constituted a sufficient interval for the stealthy 
 gro\vth of myth round his name and his career. The very nature 
 of his researches compelled secrecy and stratagem in such an age ; 
 and the inability to comprehend the true character of his occupa- 
 tions and objects tended to encourage fabulous reports. 
 
 We have only to remember that four and twenty years taken 
 back from the received date of his decease (1538) brings us to 15 14, 
 when he was four and twenty years of age, a wholly improbable 
 period of life for the conception of such a treaty as he is alleged 
 to have contracted with Lucifer ; and in our present state of in- 
 formation and opinion, even if we in England are somewhat behind 
 Germany in philosophical analysis, it is almost superfluous to 
 pursue the investigation farther, where the corner-stone of the 
 indictment against Faustus is so transparently compounded of 
 idle and foolish fables, concocted by the Church or under clerical 
 auspices to throw discredit on a reader and thinker whose bias 
 was adverse to ecclesiasticism, but who discerned the necessity 
 of extreme caution in ventilating heterodox views, even in the 
 relatively tolerant Fatherland. 
 
 This may explain the presence of the jocular episodes in the 
 history, and even the miracle of the grapes. Faustus himself 
 never probably claimed authority over superhuman powers ; it 
 was a method adopted by others of accounting for phenomena 
 which they were unable to comprehend ; and the attribute of a 
 famihar was nothing more than a loan from the East, when, with 
 an almost equal measure of inconsistency, the attendant genius 
 executes commands involving an universal jurisdiction. 
 
 It is not very hard, after all, to divine and imderstand the 
 relationsliip between Faustus and his contemporaries. If this 
 celebrated man had had to reckon only with the ilhterate majority 
 immediately around him, his taste for inquiry and scientific research 
 would have probably ehcited from the neighbourhood a passing 
 expression and sentiment of wonder and curiosity, and he would 
 have been regarded by posterity as httle more than Dr. Dee or 
 Lilly the astrologer. But Faustus entertained and proclaimed
 
 38 FAUST OR FAUSTUS 
 
 heretical theories on rehgious subjects ; he placed himself in 
 antagonism to the clergy. At a period when the Church was 
 beginning to suffer from doctrinal ruptares and a questioning 
 spirit, such a personage was bound to become a marked object 
 of ecclesiastical jealousy and resentment, and in the description 
 which has been dehvered to us of the KniitHngen scholar, who 
 feared neither God nor devil, and accomphshed a variety of sur- 
 prising feats by supernatural expedients, we easily recognise the 
 famihar stratagem by which the clerical party has always 
 retahated on its secular adversaries. At all times, but more 
 particularly in an age of prevailing illiteracy, the Church has been 
 the maker of popular opinion. Faustus, as he is pourtrayed by 
 the novehst and playwright, is not the Faustus of real hfe, but 
 a masquerading caricature like Guy Fawkes or Marino Faliero ; 
 and we are indebted for such a serious distortion of the truth to 
 the reports which were circulated about him by those whose 
 interest lay in discrediting his pecuhar opinions. 
 
 The treatment in the opera so-called is even yet more remote 
 from the truth, and the scene opens with a representation of the 
 hero as an aged person, whose return to youth during a specified 
 term is supposed to be purchased at a fearful price — that of his 
 soul, whereas the real Faustus demanded no such grace, as at 
 the date of his alleged contract he was apparently not more than 
 four and twenty. 
 
 The theatrical conception of Mephistopheles may be affirmed 
 to be as false to Art as that of Faustus is to fact. He is a man 
 in outward aspect only ; but he is drawn as sharing our human 
 passions and foibles. This is of a piece with the rest of the vulgar 
 and silly melodramatic spectacle. From a contemporary satirist 
 (Rowlands) we learn that, when Edward Alleyn played the chief 
 part in Marlowe's piece, he wore a surplice with a cross upon his 
 hreast, may-be as a specious talisman against the approaches of 
 Mephistopheles, It is merely a bibhographical anecdote that 
 the Bodleian copy of the earhest known impression of the drama 
 was in all probability once the property of Alleyn. 
 
 Shakespear in the " Tempest " has borrowed the name, not the 
 character, as liis Prospero is a magician of an altogether different 
 
 type- 
 
 Faustus, in fact, was a philosopher, whose precise views will 
 probably never be accurately known, as there is a certain amount
 
 FAUST OR FAUSTUS 39 
 
 of contradiction in the account of him, on which we have almost 
 exclusively to rely for our acquaintance with his intellectual 
 training and range. It is tolerably manifest, however, that he 
 was an unusually keen and attentive observer, under grave 
 educational disadvantages, of the laws and processes of nature, 
 and that he deduced therefrom a tissue of theory and speculation 
 alike in conflict vnth the orthodox sentiment of his day.
 
 ANNE BOLEYN 
 
 The ordinary histories of England are almost, perhaps quite, 
 unanimous in signaHzing the advent of the second Tudor to the 
 throne of England as an event of the most auspicious character, 
 carrying with it the agreeable promise of happier times. They 
 refer to the parsimony of his father, his own frank and chivalrous 
 disposition, and the prospect of a more generous and popular 
 reign. Henry was quite a youth when he succeeded his father 
 in 1509, and married his brother Arthur's widow, Catharine of 
 Airagon. He soon betrayed some points at least of his true char- 
 acter, notably liis passion for ostentatious display, hand in hand 
 with a touch of the paternal avarice. Our national annahsts do 
 not enter into certain details belonging to the opening years of 
 this reign which demonstrate the not unusual co-existence of a 
 taste for extravagant expenditure on objects of self-glorification 
 and an unprincely and undignified thrift in ordinary matters of 
 business. He had not been on the throne more than a twelve- 
 month, and was scarcely twenty years of age, when we find him 
 playing the part of a moneylender toward the countrymen of 
 Shylock, who, however, dechned His Grace's offer, the terms being 
 unacceptable. The savings of his predecessor were burning his 
 pocket, and he was not averse from lending a portion on adequate 
 security ; and it is remarkable that the young King stipulated 
 that the latter, in the form of jewels, should be deposited before 
 the cash was handed over. It was just at the juncture when the 
 Venetians were meeting with all possible fortitude and sacrifices 
 the acute crisis arising out of the League of Cambrai, and were 
 patriotically lifting themselves for the moment above ordinary 
 commercial calculations, that Henry certainly did all in his power 
 to assist the RepubHc, so far as moral influence and diplomatic 
 intervention went ; but when it came to money the case was 
 
 different. The intended victim of the famous European coaHtion 
 
 40
 
 ANNE BOLEYN 41 
 
 of 1509 experienced the same sort of practical goodwill from 
 James IV. of Scotland and others. They were prepared to help, 
 but the conditions had to be arranged. From no quarter, how- 
 ever, came a proposal so thoroughly bespeaking the pawnbroker as 
 from the gay and gallant youth who had so lately succeeded to a 
 provident rather than mean parent's brimming coffers. It trans- 
 pires that His Grace was in a position to lend, if necessary, two 
 million ducats, an amount equivalent to ten milHon sterling of 
 our present currency at the least. He was permitted to keep his 
 money — and waste it. But a circumstance quite as significant as 
 this, and for our immediate purpose far more serviceable, is the 
 curious glimpse which we almost seem to gain here — ^in 15 10 — of 
 the constitutional propensity which became in later life a govern- 
 ing and tyrannical passion— a passion which proved itself more 
 despotic than any despot. For, in a conversation with the Venetian 
 envoy, Henry, when it was still uncertain whether the RepubHc 
 would accept his noble offer, and it had been suggested that the 
 envoy's wife should bring over the desired pledges, expressed a 
 \vish that the Signora should permanently reside in England. 
 Perhaps his Excellency had communicated to the King a favour- 
 able impression of her personal attractions ; and we know that 
 the earliest development or germ of that unique uxorious prodi- 
 gahty took a different form, and limited itself to promiscuous 
 amours of which our knowledge is naturally casual and imperfect. 
 There is amply sufficient evidence to satisfy us that the Court of 
 Henry included among its female members some who were far 
 from being inexorable, and who had their counterparts in those 
 of Mary and Ehzabeth ; and in the words commonly ascribed to 
 Wolsey on his death-bed, after almost twenty years' experience of 
 the autocrat, we recognise the key to the atrocious and disgraceful 
 transactions with which his royal master's career is so deplorably 
 replete. The fallen favourite is related to have said : " I do 
 assure you that I have often kneeled before him, sometimes three 
 hours together, to persuade him from his will and appetite, but 
 could not prevail ; " and this sentence precisely collates with the 
 epigram that Henry spared no man in his anger and no woman in 
 his lust. It is undoubtedly a most peculiar incidence of the later 
 relations of Henry VIII. with the other sex that, whereas he might 
 have restricted them without difficulty and peril to transient 
 liaisons, he manifested and exercised a preference for more per-
 
 42 ANNE BOLEYN 
 
 manent and regular ties, and conducted to the altar the woman 
 whom he did not scruple, if another presented herself and struck 
 his fancy, to dismiss or to decapitate, according to the exigencies 
 of the case. One instance, however, appears to stand out con- 
 spicuously from the rest, and it is that with which we are just now 
 concerned — the story of Anne Boleyn. It is a passage of English 
 history melodramatic enough, sombre enough, which may in some 
 measure be treated as a sequel to the death of Wolsey in 1530, 
 and the subsequent rise to distinction of the Boleyns and their 
 connections, the Duke of Norfolk inclusive. Their temporary 
 ascendency was, of course, wholly due to an unpolitical and 
 indirect cause. 
 
 Among the brilliant throng which composed or attended the 
 Court in those days were the two daughters of Sir Thomas Boleyn, 
 Mary and Anne. The former, of whom we have not so much to 
 say, became successively the wife of Henry Carey and of Sir 
 William Stafford. One of her sons by her first marriage was the 
 celebrated Lord Hunsdon, cousin to Queen Elizabeth. The scanty 
 and faint records of the early unmarried lives of these two ladies 
 have to be considered for as much as they are worth, in order to 
 aid us in estimating the conduct of Henry toward them, especially 
 toward the younger one. As regards Mary Boleyn, who was left 
 a young ^vidow by the premature death of Carey in 1528, there is 
 some reason to apprehend that her prenuptial career was by no 
 means exemplary, and that before the King conceived his passion 
 for her sister his relations with her were more or less equivocal. 
 That he corresponded with her, and in terms as familiar as with 
 her sister, extant letters shew. To detract from a reputation 
 incapable of self-defence is a proceeding never to be lightly under- 
 taken ; but if there were no direct testimony to the effect, the 
 view would be only in agreement with what we gather from docu- 
 mentary vouchers to have been the disposition or temperament of 
 the member of the Boleyn family best known to history. Her 
 cousin, Catharine Howard, resembled her in her volatility of char- 
 acter, if it were nothing more grave. 
 
 Fairly copious as may be the information transmitted to us 
 touching that part of the life of Anne Boleyn from 1527 to her 
 death, her girlhood is enveloped in obscurity, which it is difiicult 
 to explain in the presence of the survival of so many who must 
 have been acquainted with her and her family while it was possible
 
 ANNE BOLEYN 43 
 
 to commit more minute particulars to paper. According to a 
 familiar tradition, she alluded, at a later date, to the happy days 
 which she had formerly passed at Erwarton, in Suffolk, a place 
 with which she was connected by family ties through the Cal- 
 thorpes and the Parkers ; it was in Erwarton Church that she 
 desired her heart to rest, and it was at Erwarton Hall that she 
 very probably spent more or less of her girlhood. The knowledge 
 of the sisters by the King clearly dated from a time when they were 
 very young, and he must have been in the habit of seeing them 
 about the date (1514) when Anne went to France in the train of 
 the Princess Mary, preparatorily to the union of the latter with 
 Louis XII. The Princess herself remained abroad some time after 
 the death of Louis, and was privately remarried at Paris to Charles 
 Brandon, Duke of Suffolk ; but her attendant did not return per- 
 manently home till 1525, although she seems to have paid a visit 
 to England in 1522. In 1525 she is described as being eighteen. 
 She had resided on French ground sufficiently long to improve her 
 already existing knowledge of the language, for there is a letter 
 written by her from Hever Castle to her father when she was about 
 eight, in French, suggestive of imperfect tuition. It is subscribed, 
 " Vre treshumble et tresobiessante fille Anna de Boullan." 
 
 If any such intimacy as has been alleged took place between 
 Mary Boleyn and her Sovereign, it is probably attributable to a 
 period anterior to her first nuptials, when she was a mere girl. 
 
 In 1527, two years after the settlement of Anne in her own 
 country, Henry had evidently begun to turn his thoughts in earnest 
 toward her, and had preluded by thwarting her projected match 
 with Lord Henry Percy ; and it is approximately to the same point 
 of time in this ill-dated tradition that we are asked to assign the 
 first disclosure of the feelings of the King, and the scene where 
 the lady casts herself on her knees and proclaims herself at once 
 too good and not good enough, according to the tale. When the 
 alliance with the house of Percy was set aside, Anne is supposed to 
 have spent a certain time in retirement at her father's residence 
 in Kent, but there are two letters, one from the King to her, the 
 other from her to him, equally without note of the year. They are 
 supposed to belong to 1527 ; they are at all events closely inter- 
 connected. In the former the King sends his portrait set in a 
 bracelet as the best available substitute for himself, and in the 
 other Anne refers to gifts received far beyond her deserts, and to
 
 44 ANNE BOLEYN 
 
 the royal warrant appointing her a maid of honour to the Queen. 
 These exchanged communications aUke found her away from 
 London, presumably at Hever Castle ; and she was there or else- 
 where, yet not in or near the Metropolis or the Court, during the 
 interval represented or covered by the series of letters addressed 
 to her by Henry, of which we have several, and by those written 
 to him, of which we apparently hold none. The royal epistles, 
 which are uniformly undated, belong to the years while the divorce 
 was being negotiated, and they gradually breathe and reflect 
 increased impatience and ardour. We are to bear in mind that 
 1 527 marked the point of time when Wolsey had fallen, and Crom- 
 well, the Howards, and their kinsfolk the Boleyns, had come to 
 the front. 
 
 The letters to Anne Boleyn just mentioned are easily accessible 
 in print, although there is, so far, we believe, no complete and un- 
 expurgated edition of them, that published at Paris by Crapelet 
 being faulty and unfaithful. But our immediate object is a glance 
 at the substance rather than a criticism of the text. The originals, 
 both of those addressed to Anne and to her sister, are (with one 
 or two exceptions) in the Vatican ; but under what circumstances 
 they were kept after perusal is unknown, as well as the channel 
 through wliich they found their way to Rome. They were there 
 in 1670, when Richard Lassels, travelling tutor to Lord Lumley 
 and other English noblemen, describes them as " the letters of 
 Henry VIII. of England to Anne Bolen, his mistriss then, in his 
 own hand, written, some in English, some in French, but all 
 amatory." Lassels adds that the writing corresponds with that 
 in the presentation copy to Leo X. of the King's book against 
 Luther — the Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, 1521. 
 
 No. IV. of the series, as printed, brings us to a stage when the 
 writer deems himself at liberty to propose that Anne shall become 
 his mistress, all other mistresses being discarded ; and he sohcits 
 a reply to his request or demand, if not by letter, verbally, an 
 assignation being arranged for the purpose. There is a tolerably 
 good understanding, for the writer wishes himself in her arms, 
 " that he might a little dispel her unreasonable thoughts." The 
 next finds His Grace anxious to dedicate his body as well as his 
 heart to his beloved, and is subscribed, " H. Rex." 
 
 The tenor of those which succeed grows progressively familiar, 
 confidential, and fervid, and leaves no room to question that the
 
 ANNE BOLEYN 45 
 
 matrimonial scheme is only awaiting for its fulfilment the decision 
 of the ecclesiastical authorities. The sixth contains the following 
 passage : " The Legate, which we most desire, arrived at Paris on 
 Sunday or Monday last past, so that I trust by the next Monday 
 to hear of his arrival at Calais ; and then I trust within a while 
 after to enjoy that which I have so long longed for, to God's 
 pleasure and our both comforts. No more to you at this present, 
 mine own darling, for lack of time, but that I would you were in 
 mine arms, or I in yours, for I think it long since I kissed you." 
 At the conclusion of No. VIII. there is matter in cipher, something 
 too delicate to express in words, or the reverse ; and its immediate 
 successor (No. IX.) is yet more explicit and unreserved, the King 
 making a jeu de mots on the double sense of heart (or hart) relative 
 to a present of a hart forwarded to Anne with the letter. He, 
 perhaps, knew to whom he addressed himself ; but his Unes did 
 not receive a prompt acknowledgment, as we learn from No. X., 
 when he sends a second offering of the same kind, which he had 
 slain the evening before at a late hour, with the hope that, when 
 she partook of it, she would think of the hunter. In No. XL the 
 prospect of happiness is drawing nearer, and enjoins her to request 
 her father to accelerate the arrangements for the wedding ; but 
 Nos. XII. and XIII. reveal a seizure of Anne by some indisposition, 
 the despatch of a physician to her residence, an attack of certain 
 persons belonging to the household with the plague, and details 
 as to the impracticability of appointing the lady's nominee to a 
 conventual vacancy, owing to her candidate's unfavourable repute. 
 Anne begins, one perceives, to have a finger in affairs of State, and 
 her lover is flattered on his part by being consulted as to her con- 
 tinuance at Hever, availing himself of the occasion to remind her 
 that it is not a question which is likely to trouble either of them 
 long under contingent circumstances. No. XIV. is more cheerful 
 and sanguine ; the illness and plague disappear ; the preparations 
 go on ; Anne is shortly to come to London. In No. XV. her visit 
 to London is closer at hand ; it has been kept a profound secret, 
 yet it is a subject of common report and conversation, and His 
 Grace can hardly tell how it has transpired. The XVI.th letter 
 establishes that the recipient has come to town and has returned 
 again, and it expresses the distress at the loss of her society, 
 apprises her that he is engaged in composing his book ("A Glass 
 of the Truth," 1530), and that he has nearly got rid of his head-
 
 46 ANNE BOLEYN 
 
 ache — a lover's rather, perhaps, than an author's enthusiasm. 
 The concluding paragraph is appended in the old orthography ; 
 it assuredly points a moral : " Wysching myself e (specially an 
 evenynge) in my swete hart harmys, whose prety dukkys I trust 
 shortly to cusse," which passage may have a bearing on the 
 scandalous gossip about the future Queen's physical malformation. 
 There is a final letter of the same texture, and two from Anne 
 to Wolsey, seeking to ingratiate herself with my Lord Cardinal ; 
 but those which were indubitably sent to the King in response to 
 his have not come down to us, or, at least, have not been recovered. 
 There is no difficulty in penetrating the drift of all this succession 
 of communications and tender sentiments. The disparity of age, 
 as well as of rank, and the irresistible fascination of such prodigious 
 advancement, lent an overwhelming preponderance to the suit of 
 the royal libertine, so shocked, forsooth, by the naughtiness of 
 the Prioress of Wilton, whom Anne had unwittingly recommended 
 in one of the latest of her notes to His Grace ; and shght doubt 
 could be entertained as to the ultimate outcome of the business. 
 Nevertheless, the problem involved in the divorce was not solved, 
 in spite of all the diplomatic efforts of the King and his friends, 
 till fully two years had passed, and then the solution was found at 
 home. Henry cut the Gordian knot, and in 1533 he and Anne 
 were privately married, leaving the position of Catharine of 
 Arragon still subject to adjustment. As some indemnity for the 
 provoking delay, the King had in the previous autumn created his 
 mistress Marchioness of Pembroke in her own right, with special 
 precedence over all other Marchionesses. Honours had of late 
 flowed in fast enough — almost too fast to promise durabihty in 
 such days. The Coronation of Anne took place at Westminster 
 Abbey on June 2, 1533, and was carried out with the utmost mag- 
 nificence. The King did not pubhcly manifest himself, curiously 
 enough, but viewed the ceremony from a private box, to which he 
 had invited the Ambassadors of France and Venice to accompany 
 him. It was almost precisely what his father had done at the 
 Coronation of Ehzabeth of York in 1487. They are the only 
 diplomatic personages specified in a contemporary narrative as 
 having attended the procession from the Tower to Westminster, 
 and they followed the two Archbishops. But all the great officers 
 of State were present in response to a royal proclamation. The 
 Lord Mayor of London performed his hereditary function as Butler
 
 ANNE BOLEYN 47 
 
 to the Queen, and the Barons of the Cinque Ports held the canopy 
 over her. In the uniface leaden impression of the Coronation 
 medal the new Queen wears the dress which is mentioned in the 
 contemporary account. Shakespear, in his " Henry VIII. ," 
 makes her wear her hair hanging down with a jewelled coif. 
 
 In 1527, when the King, so far as we are aware, made his first 
 serious approach to his second wife, he was six- and- thirty, she 
 twenty. Both the sisters may be taken to have possessed their 
 full share of levity of character, bordering on giddiness. The 
 elder, whose career was almost as checkered as that of Anne, was 
 certainly at one juncture on a more than friendly footing with 
 Henry, but retrieved any youthful indiscretions, and became on 
 remarriage the devoted wife of an estimable but poor man, to whom 
 she had united herself just before the Boleyns rose so unexpectedly 
 to distinction, and to whom she continued to be as warmly attached 
 as he was to her. We repeat that in 1527 Anne was about twenty. 
 If a letter from her to the King, attributed to that year, but only 
 known to us in a transcript, be authentic, its language leaves little 
 to be desired in the way of surrender at the first summons. We 
 have here, it appears, a sequel to a conversation between the two, 
 which had been followed by a handsome gift and the warrant 
 above mentioned, which would ostensibly have the ef?ect of placing 
 the new object of attachment within easy reach of her admirer, 
 and of rendering her presence at the Court explainable without 
 scandal. As a matter of fact, however, the maid of honour, 
 advisedly or otherwise, kept aloof from London, or paid merely 
 occasional and short visits to town, corresponding with Henry, as 
 we partly perceive, by letter ; and, if we are to form any conclusion 
 from such imperfect epistolary remains as we hold, displaying no 
 backwardness in meeting His Grace half-way, and we feel dis- 
 posed to challenge the line taken by a dramatist of the later Stuart 
 era, John Banks, in his play of " Virtue Betrayed," 1682. 
 
 Her part in the drama was, from the outset, we have to admit, 
 by no means free either from difficulty or from peril. It was a 
 courtship extending over six years or so (1527-1533). She was 
 very young and inexperienced. The man whose humour it was 
 to pay his addresses to her was a heartless and brutal sensualist 
 of unlimited power, who, had she yielded to him too soon, would 
 have deserted her, if he had not even taken her life ; and she was 
 surrounded by those who were hostile to her individually or to
 
 48 ANNE BOLEYN 
 
 her family on various grounds. Under such circumstances her 
 conduct, probably under the confidential guidance of Thomas 
 Cromwell to a larger extent than we actually hear, strikes us as 
 remarkably judicious and discreet ; and it is observable that she 
 succeeded not only in keeping Henry so long at bay, so to speak, 
 but espoused with warmth the cause of his reformed Church, and 
 at the same time did her best to keep Wolsey on her side. Her 
 conscientious or politic bias toward the principles of the Reforma- 
 tion survived her accession to the summit of her hopes and aims ; 
 and the copy of Tyndale's New Testament, 1534, formerly her 
 property, with " Anna Regina Anglie " in red letters on the gilded 
 edges of the leaves, is still preserved among the Cracherode books 
 in the British Museum. There are fairly clear indications, indeed, 
 that prior to her Coronation she befriended the quasi-Protestant 
 cause to an almost indiscreet extent, and even drew on it the 
 King's displeasure. A second volume which was almost un- 
 doubtedly in the Queen's possession, but which does not seem to 
 have survived, or to have been recovered, was an English primer, 
 published in 1535, with the royal arms crowned on the title, and 
 in the upper angles " H. A." A copy on vellum was formerly in 
 the Ashburnham Library. In the same year a translation from 
 the Latin, entitled " The Defence of Peace," and, it is observable, 
 published by the same William Marshall who issued the primer, 
 has a prayer for the Queen, who must assuredly have received a 
 copy from Marshall. In the British Museum is a small volume 
 bound in gold, containing a portrait of Henry VIII. and a metrical 
 version of some of the Psalms by Jolui Croke, Clerk in Chancery. 
 This is traditionally said to have been given by Anne Boleyn at 
 the block to one of her maids of honour. 
 
 The historiette in which the Boleyn sisters — ^but, of course, 
 more particularly she who became the mother of Queen Elizabeth 
 — are the prominent figures may be said to offer to our considera- 
 tion a prevailing feature of tragic sadness, and to exist as one of 
 the numberless homilies for all time on the vanity and instability 
 of human ambition. Those — and they are a majority — ^who 
 lightly regard the story as a romance and a pageant were not the 
 actors in the drama, nor with such books of reference as this 
 country possesses are they placed in a position to realize the 
 dangerous, prolonged, and anxious struggle which it cost the 
 daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn to attain a fleeting enjoyment of
 
 ANNE BOLEYN 49 
 
 dignity and power in the shadow of a block. Did she not find 
 herself supplanted in those inconstant affections by one who had 
 been to her what she herself once was to Catharine of Arragon ? 
 Some, no doubt, saw here a just retribution, as others busied them- 
 selves with circulating calumnies about her character and her 
 person, of which the most outrageous was the allegation, counte- 
 nanced by Dr. Baily in his " Life of Bishop Fisher," that Henry 
 himself was her father. 
 
 The whole span of that impressive career was no more than 
 seven-and-twenty years. Mr. Green, in his " History of the English 
 People,'' suggests that Queen Elizabeth inherited from her mother 
 that occasional levity of deportment which formed such a contrast 
 to her attitude and tone in serious affairs. But Henry VIII. 
 equally exhibited a strange mixture of callous resolution and even 
 exuberant bonhomie. 
 
 In the third window of the Great Hall at Hampton Court occur 
 the arms, badges, and initials of the unhappy Queen, accompanied 
 by a legend of her descent from Edward I. and his second wife, 
 Margaret of France. In the chimneypiece of the old presence- 
 chamber at St. James's Palace her initial, with that of the King 
 (H. A.), are preserved ; and there are gold and silver pieces struck 
 during the brief reign with H. and A. as part of the type. In 
 the picture at Hampton Court, representing Henry VIII. and his 
 family, the princess Elizabeth wears a jewel, in which appears 
 the initial letter of her mother's Christian name. 
 
 The particulars of the trial, which was conducted with all the 
 usual formalities in public, under the Presidency of the Duke of 
 Norfolk, as High Steward of England, are now well known. It is 
 remarkable that Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, the Queen's 
 former lover, was present, but left the Hall before sentence was 
 pronounced. Sir Thomas Boleyn witnessed the trials of the other 
 prisoners, but withdrew before those of the Queen and her brother 
 commenced. The Duke of Norfolk, when he dehvered judgment 
 on the Queen, burst into tears. The Queen entertained to the 
 last a hope of pardon, and said one day at dinner that she should 
 go to Antwerp. This was on May 16, three days before she 
 suffered. Archbishop Cranmer interceded in vain on her behalf. 
 In a letter addressed to Secretary Cromwell by a Frenchman, it is 
 alleged that on the day before the execution the tapers romid the 
 tomb of Catharine of Arragon kindled of their o^vn accord and, 
 
 D
 
 50 ANNE BOLEYN 
 
 that after matins, at Deo Gratias, the said tapers expired in the 
 same way. 
 
 It has been thought that the Queen would have desired to rest 
 at Erwarton, in Sufiolk, or at Salle, in Norfolk, but she was buried 
 in the chancel before the altar of the Chapel of St. Peter Ad 
 Vincula in the Tower, by the side of her brother, Lord Rochford. 
 In 1 876 the remains were discovered, and are described as those 
 of " a female of between twenty-five and thirty years of age, of a 
 delicate frame of body, and who had been of slender and proper 
 proportions." There was still a vestige of her " httle neck." The 
 skull was well formed, with an intellectual forehead, an oval face, 
 and large eyes. The feet and hands were delicate and well shaped, 
 the former narrow, and the fingers of the hands tapering. On one 
 of the fingers was a second rudimentary nail. 
 
 The person employed to carry out the sentence was brought 
 over from Calais, and severed the head from the body with a single 
 stroke of his sword. It has been said that the eyes and hps moved 
 after the decapitation. One of her French attendants took up the 
 head, and others raised the body, covering it with a sheet, and 
 laid the whole remains in an arrow-chest, which they bore into 
 the chapel. 
 
 The King wore white mourning for his late Consort, who had 
 taken yellow for her colour at the death of Catharine of Arragon. 
 In the attribution to Anne of the song beginning, " Death, rock 
 me asleep," there seems to be no probability. A Portuguese 
 gentleman who was present at the execution states that it was 
 the first instance in which a sword in lieu of an axe was employed 
 in England ; he terms this the manner and custom of Paris, and, 
 in fact, it had been in vogue there and elsewhere on the Continent 
 during centuries. Had Queen Elizabeth left male issue, it is more 
 than possible that the direct descendant of her mother would at 
 present be seated on the British throne. 
 
 It seems strange that of a personage so eminently conspicuous 
 and romantically interesting there should be so few likenesses 
 entitled to credit. The Print Room at the British Museum pos- 
 sesses nothing worthy of mention, and the Holbein drawing at 
 Hampton Court is certainly not very prepossessing. On the 
 whole, perhaps, the portrait accompanying the letters from Henry 
 VIII. in Crapelet's volume appears to be the most pleasing. 
 
 It has not been the simplest of tasks to gather together the
 
 ANNE BOLEYN 51 
 
 particulars which constitute the present essay, and which are in 
 the main outside the category of the State Papers deposited in our 
 own pubhc institutions. It is scarcely ever the case that a modern 
 writer finds it possible to make the past revive, and enable his own 
 age to realize the sequence of incidents as they unfolded them- 
 selves, much less to reanimate the dramatis personce and the scenes 
 in which they moved : the ever-changing impulses and looks, the 
 audible notes of emotion, the conflict of motives, the private gossip, 
 the actual splendour of festivities and ceremonies, the echo of the 
 voices of the crowd, the clatter of the horses' hoofs, the dead 
 silence at the descent of the executioner's sword. Beyond the 
 series of letters to the Queen from Henry, which do not, in all 
 probability, represent all that were sent, the epistolary documents 
 elucidating Anne Boleyn's pubhc career appear to be limited to 
 those pubhshed by Elhs and Mrs. Green, and to two or three among 
 the Cottonian MSS. in the British Museum ; and even of these 
 some belong to what may be termed her prehistoric days. Such 
 few as they are, they spread themselves over the period between 
 early girlhood and accession to the throne ; but one — that of a lay 
 brother of the Observants at Greenwich — stands by itself in being 
 addressed, not by Anne, but to her, and during the very brief 
 interval when she enjoyed the title of Marchioness of Pembroke.
 
 VI 
 
 BUNYAN 
 
 To the class of writing wliich is termed allegory recourse was had 
 at a very early period. Many of the mediaeval romances partake 
 of the character. " The History of Reynard the Fox," for instance, 
 is principally known at the present day as a chap-book or a nursery 
 tale ; but in its original design it was nothing more nor less than 
 a satirical allegory or an allegorical satire. This system of teaching 
 or expounding by apologue, of clothing the meaning in an obscure 
 form, was by no means uncommon among our early writers, even 
 down to the time of Charles I. It may have owed its rise to the 
 restraints which were placed on the Hberty of the tongue and of 
 the pen prior to the Reformation. Thus we have pohtical allegory 
 and spiritual allegory : and it is under the second denomina- 
 tion that we must place a book of enduring fame, a world's 
 book, as it might be called — " The Pilgrim's Progress " of John 
 Bunyan. 
 
 Bunyan unquestionably possessed the imaginative faculty in a 
 very high degree. He was a man also of strong, earnest feeling, 
 and of a contrite heart. His temperament was singularly excitable 
 and more than wholesomely sensitive. From having been in 
 earlier life a somewhat loose and irregular member of society, he 
 became the most rigid of disciphnarians and the most bitter and 
 severe of self-accusers. He forsook the bottle, and the oath was 
 heard no more on his hps ; he read his Bible, and began to qualify 
 himself for a preacher of the Word. In the meantime, his spirit 
 was oppressed by the gloomiest forebodings. He looked on himself 
 as the " chief of sinners," — as one whose transgressions were of 
 too black a dye to permit him to indulge the most distant hope 
 of the Water of Life. These and similar expressions should not, 
 of course, be interpreted too literally. We must not accept the 
 testimony of Bunyan against himself without some reserve. We 
 must make allowance for the circumstances under which he wrote, 
 
 i
 
 BUNYAN 53 
 
 the age in which he hved, and the sect that he was of. Bunyan 
 had in his youth mixed with blackguards, and he had been 
 Uttle better perhaps than his companions. But, after awhile, 
 his eyes had been opened, and he began to leave the ways 
 of darkness. Still, however, he did not cease to doubt utterly 
 of his own perfectibihty ; and it is certain that his sense of 
 his moral infirmity remained through hfe morbidly acute. He 
 even gravely doubted whether God would ever pardon him for 
 playing at tip-cat. 
 
 Few are found bold enough to dispute that " The Pilgrim's 
 Progress " is a work of the liighest order of excellence in its kind. 
 Yet I almost doubt if the exact nature of that excellence be so 
 fully or generally understood. The fact is, that so far from being 
 the first, or even among the first, who attempted that class of 
 composition, the author of " The Pilgrim's Progress " was the 
 last contributor of any note to allegorical literature. The name 
 of Bunyan closes and crowns a somewhat long hst of writers, both 
 in our own and other languages, whose common aim it has been 
 to picture hfe as a pilgrimage, and to describe the manifold perils 
 which beset the traveller on the " Great Highway." In " The 
 Pilgrim's Progress," then, we must not look for the embodiment 
 of a new conception, nor even a famihar one clothed in a new form ; 
 but in that remarkable work we may recognize a novel realization 
 of an idea which had germinated in the Hterary mind of Europe 
 during the Middle Ages. Whatever differences of opinion may 
 exist as to the literary value of the book and of the other works from 
 the same pen, no one can question its and their potential and 
 lasting human significance, and the fame and rank of Bunyan 
 may be said greatly to rely on his religious nonconformity and 
 his morbid enthusiasm of temperament. No churchman, no 
 thoroughly sane person, could have written such a volume, could 
 have left posterity such an inheritance. 
 
 The hterary labours of Bunyan are among the richest and 
 least perishable trophies of religious dissent ; but he was, after 
 all, only one of many, such as Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Walton, 
 Evelyn, in their several ways, whose lot it was to cross over from 
 a puritanical age to an age of dissolute gaiety, and to produce 
 books superficially out of concord with the times, yet, in truth, 
 natural products of them. He committed to the press those 
 writings, by which he is best known, in years when his country
 
 54 BUNYAN 
 
 was torn from end to end by political intrigue and religious schism, 
 when England was at as low an ebb as it had been since the Wars 
 of the Roses, in regard to power and prestige, or had ever been 
 in regard to morality. The Church was divided against itself ; 
 the Protestant EstabHshment was infected with Romanism ; and 
 Episcopacy was face to face with two hostile influences : the Popish 
 leaning of the Court and the steady ascendency and multiphcation 
 of the Nonconformists. 
 
 As Dunlop remarks, the existence of works of a kindred char- 
 acter antecedent in point of time to " The Pilgrim's Progress " 
 " can detract little from the praise of originality." The discovery 
 of such prototypes, even if it were at all probable that the English 
 writer had seen them, can only have the one effect of shewing the 
 vast superiority of Bunyan to those who went before him. But 
 we know how scanty the early reading of the great allegorist had 
 been, and one is apt to suspect that for the production of the 
 masterpiece which he has left behind him Bunyan was all but 
 exclusively indebted to his own weird imagination and deep know- 
 ledge of his own human heart. 
 
 If, however, we grant that Bunyan founded his work more 
 or less on earlier models, the question arises, from what quarter 
 he chiefly drew his materials. Now there are no fewer than six 
 works from which he may, with greater or less probabihty, be 
 supposed to have been a borrower. These are : — " The Pilgrimage 
 of Man " and " The Pilgrimage of the Soul," by Guillaume de 
 Guileville, of the former of which there are translations both 
 by Lydgate and Skelton ; " The Pilgrimage of Perfection," by 
 W. Bonde ; " Le Voyage du Chevalier Errant," by Jean Cartigny, 
 a Carmelite, 1572, translated by W. Goodyeare ; "The Table 
 of Cebes the Theban," translated by John Healey, 1 6 1 6 ; " The 
 Isle of Man," an allegory, by Richard Bernard, 1627. In the 
 prologue to his work Bonde says that the book " sheweth how 
 the life of every Christian is as a pilgrimage, which we do and 
 promise in our baptism, taldng on us the journey to the Heavenly 
 Jerusalem.''^ 
 
 The " Pelerinage de I'Homme " is supposed to have been written 
 when our Chaucer was a child. It opens by informing the reader 
 that in the year 1330, being then a monk in the monastery of Chalis, 
 he had a dream, in which he saw afar off, as if reflected in a mirror, 
 the celestial city of Jerusalem. He dwells on the wondrous beauty
 
 BUNYAN 55 
 
 of its construction, on the elegance of its mansions and so forth, 
 and particularly points out the little wicket-gate. After introducing 
 his Pilgrim, De Guile ville proceeds thus : — 
 
 " Ainsi comment querant aloye 
 
 Et en jyl&urant me gicermentoye 
 Oil ce bourdon peiisse trouuer 
 Et celle escarpe pour porter 
 Une dame de grant beaiilte 
 Et de tresgrant nobilite 
 Je recontray droit en ma voye." 
 
 This " dame de grant beaulte," Gracedieu by name, is, of course, 
 the Evangelist of "The Pilgrim's Progress." "I looked then," 
 says Bunyan, " and saw a man named Evangehst coming to 
 him, who asked, ' Wherefore dost thou cry ? ' ' Because T fear,' 
 rephes Christian, ' that tliis burden that is upon my back will sink 
 me lower than the grave, and I shall fall into Tophet.' " So in 
 De Guile ville : — 
 
 " Ainsi comme ung cinge acroche 
 A ung bloqiieaii et atache 
 Lequel en hault ne pent monter 
 Que tost ne faille reualer 
 Ainsi mest ung hloquel fesant 
 Le corps et ung retenail grant 
 II me rabat quant vueil voler 
 Et retire quant vueil monter." 
 
 The next point of resemblance is where Gracedieu presents 
 her Pilgrim with the serif or scarf : — 
 
 " Voy cy lescliarpe et le bourdon 
 Que promis tay ie ten foiz don 
 Mestier tauront en ce voyage 
 Garde les si feras que saige 
 Lescliarpe si est foy nominee 
 Sans laquelle nulle ioiirnee 
 Tu ne feras ia que rien vaille." 
 
 This allocution of Gracedieu corresponds with the exhortation 
 of Evangehst to Christian and Faithful before they reach the town 
 of Vanity. Just as in Bunyan we find Faithful and Hopeful made 
 the companions of Christian, so, in the prototype, Gracedieu pre- 
 sents her Pilgrim with the scrip of Faith and with the staff, whose
 
 56 BUNYAN 
 
 name is Hope, In De Guileville, the pilgrim is recommended to 
 arm himself with the same kind of weapons as are seen by Christian 
 in the House Beautiful. There is, moreover, a similarity between 
 the Envoys of Bunyan and De Guileville : — 
 
 BuNYAN. De Guileville. 
 
 Go now, my little Book, to every place Doncques songe tii ten yras 
 Where my first Pilgrim lias but shewn Par tout les lieux ou este as 
 
 his face. A tous tes -prouuains ie tenuoie 
 
 Pource (|ue bien y scez la voye 
 De par moy va les tous tailler. 
 
 Again, both writers complain of piracy : — 
 
 Bunyan. De Guileville. 
 
 'Tis true, some have of late, to Car sans mon sceu et volunte 
 counterfeit Tout mon escript me fut oste 
 
 My Pilgrim, to their own, my Title set. Par tout diuulrje. 
 
 It may be observed that both the works to which we are re- 
 ferring are presented to us under the similitude of a dream. In 
 both cases the scene of this dream is laid in a wood. Bunyan 
 had his reason for adopting the allegorical form of writing. He 
 says, in his pecuhar doggerel — 
 
 " I also know a dark similitude 
 Will on the fancy more itself intrude, 
 And will stick faster in the heart and head, 
 Than things from similes not borrowed." 
 
 '»■- 
 
 Bunyan, as well as his prototype, exhibited in his composition 
 the result of a mixed study of Sacred Writ and of the mediaeval 
 romances. The parallel hardly extends much farther. It may 
 be true that the characters of " The Pilgrimage of Man " and the 
 heroes of " The Pilgrim's Progress " have something in common 
 — the kind of likeness wliicli might almost naturally be expected 
 in two productions so identical in subject and design ; but it is 
 impossible, I should think, not to see at a glance the superiority 
 of the Bedford preacher to the monk of Chalis in the vividness 
 of his portraiture and the accuracy of his delineations. " It is 
 the charm of common sense and reality," writes Dr. Cheever, 
 " that constitutes in a great measure the charm of Bunyan's book." 
 In the earher work, which is, on the contrarv, cold, abstract, and
 
 BUNYAN 57 
 
 colourless, mucli of the charm is lost. Bunyan's understanding 
 was of ampler grasp and scope than that of his prototype ; he 
 was a man of larger sympathy and of greater enthusiasm. He 
 had mixed more with the world than De Guileville, and his pages 
 display accordingly a nicer perception of character and a wider 
 knowledge of human nature. 
 
 As regards De Guileville's other work, his " Pilgrimage of the 
 Soul," it pictures the vicissitudes of the soul of man subsequently 
 to its enfranchisement from its human incarnation, in the same 
 manner that its predecessor represented, under the same alle- 
 gorical form, the progress of the spiritual essence and the tempta- 
 tions and dangers to which it is exposed during its presence in 
 the flesh. The First Pilgrimage of our author exhibited man in 
 his state of probation and trial, exposed to all the snares and toils 
 of the world. In such a composition it was perhaps natural to 
 expect those parallehsms and features of identity which actually 
 exist between it and " The Pilgrim's Progress." But in the Second 
 Pilgrimage, the narrative opens at that point when the divorce 
 of the body from the soul and the transmigration of the latter 
 are just talcing place. We here see the better part shake of? the 
 bondage of the flesh ; we behold it conducted to the judgment- 
 seat ; we hear the award of the judge, St. Michael the Archangel, 
 and we obtain more than a ghmpse of the atonement in purgatory, 
 and of the final attainment of blessedness, with the ascent of the 
 soul to heaven under the escort of the guardian angel. In treating 
 that branch of his subject which embraces the intermediate state, 
 De Guileville has been left without a rival, if not without a disciple. 
 The purgatorial expiation formed a theme on which Bunyan was 
 advisedly silent. In the words of a modern editor, '' Bunyan 
 wisely, perhaps, stopped short at the death of his Pilgrims ; telhng, 
 indeed, how they were led by the Shining Ones, who received 
 them beyond the river, to the gate of heaven, but passing over 
 in silence the intermediate state. De Guileville, however, hving 
 at an earher period and in the Romish communion, is restrained 
 by no such scruples. He does not hesitate to answer that question, 
 which must have occurred to many. What is the Soul doing between 
 the moment of its departure from the Body and the Final Judgment ? 
 Or again. Is there any previous Judgment ? " In a word, the paths 
 of the Puritan and Romish writers become from the opening of 
 the Second Pilgrimage widely divergent.
 
 58 BUNYAN 
 
 In the fifth and concluding book, which relates " how the soul, 
 after purgatory, is led by its guardian angel to heaven," there is 
 no inconsiderable degree of merit and beauty. The conception 
 and treatment of the subject, however, are on the whole rather 
 gross and materiahstic. In the judgment scene, in the first book, 
 all the forms of legal procedure, such as they existed perhaps in 
 the French law courts of the fourteenth century, are closely 
 observed.
 
 VII 
 DR. JOHNSON 
 
 " Dr. Johnson's fame now rests principally uiMn Boswell. It is impossible 
 not to be amused with such a book. But his bow-wow manner must have had 
 a good deal to do with the effect produced."— Coleridge. 
 
 An eminent philologist and lexicographer of our day obhged 
 the world with a new and improved edition of Dr. Samuel 
 Johnson's " Dictionary of the Enghsh Language," and was 
 censured by one of his reviewers for the arrogant terms in which 
 he had thought proper to couch his introductory remarks. It 
 was the critic, however, who had found a mare's nest, not the 
 editor who was to blame ; for the preface was neither more nor 
 less than the Doctor's own prolegomena affixed to the original 
 — two volumes foho — impression of the book, and, of course, 
 Johnsonian to the backbone. 
 
 The mistake was droll and vexatious enough, but, for my own 
 part, I could not help feehng that the incident occurred rather 
 opportunely to help me out with something I had on my mind 
 about Dr. Johnson — a matter or two of fact or guess which, if I 
 can make anything of it, may seem to have a kind of newness to 
 recommend it. 
 
 When, some time ago, I had occasion to inquire in the vicinity 
 of Bolt Court, Fleet Street, in the city of London, a locahty not 
 specially dedicated or dear to the nine maiden-sisters, whether 
 anything was known of a certain poet who had hved and died 
 thereabout, some of the oldest inhabitants pointed to a house 
 and a tree which, they said, were his house and his tree, in which 
 he had hved, beneath which he had stood. 
 
 My search had struck me at first as Quixotic ; for my poet, 
 of whom I desired some substantial vestige, some human trace, 
 had died two hundred years ago. Then, the sooth to say, I had 
 a sneaking trust in the transmission of knowledge through few 
 hnks, in the faculty of tradition to give a seeming hfe to the im- 
 palpable and distant ; and here, surely enough, was something 
 
 59
 
 6o DR. JOHNSON 
 
 bearing likeness to a tangible footprint of the man, at whom I 
 wanted to get nearer somehow than was to be done in extant books. 
 
 But fortune turned out unkind after all ; for the house and 
 the tree had not been his, but another's. Enshrined in the 
 memory of the Bolt-Courters was — not the cavaUer-poet Richard 
 Lovelace, for whose Ufe I was at the time I write of on the keen 
 look-out for all waifs and strays, the salvage of time, — but another 
 son of Apollo, a different worshipper at Helicon, a bard of Troia- 
 Nova as well — to wit, Samuel Johnson, Doctor of Laws. 
 
 How many will ask, And was this our Dr. Johnson ? Did 
 he not write the Dictionary ? And was he, indeed, a poet too ? 
 
 Lord Chesterfield once said of Swift's works, " Whoever in 
 the three kingdoms has any books at all, has Swift," and one 
 of Dr. Johnson's editors, Alexander Chalmers, thought that for 
 " Swift " one might read " Johnson " just as properly. Three 
 collected editions of Johnson had been exhausted in twenty years, 
 and a fourth was on the eve of completion, and was " loudly called 
 for," says Mr. Chalmers ; so it looks as if there might have been 
 something in it — as if the wind was really in that quarter at the 
 time. But then the time was seventy or eighty years ago, and 
 popular memory is fugacious. How many authors have lived in 
 half a century — and died, works and all? Lexicographers, poets, 
 essayists, letter-writers, wits, men who were the idols of the 
 society in which they moved, who were thought hkely to echpse 
 all who had gone before them ! 
 
 It is not a great lexicographical performance alone which can 
 make a man live — five, that is to say, as a person, not a mere 
 abstraction or nominis umbra ; witness Richardson, who is already 
 lost sight of, and who died, as it were, yesterday ! Nor a poem, 
 which made its mark, and gave its author a kind of renown : look 
 at Bloomfield ! Does the public read the " Farmer's Boy " ? Is 
 it not as dead, in a popular sense, as last year's leaves, and was 
 not there a time when that was " loudly called for," as well as the 
 twelve full-sized octavos of Johnson ? 
 
 But then in Johnson's case there was this important difference, 
 that he was a type standing by himself, with powerful individual 
 characteristics, and a man at his elbow half his life — the better 
 half — who was brought into the world ostensibly for no other 
 purpose than to become his biographer. If we had had more 
 Boswells, there is a distant possibihty that we might have had
 
 DR. JOHNSON 6 1 
 
 more Johnsons. As the matter stands, we have only one ; and 
 that one was a person, who providentially always kept within 
 view his unique function as a remembrancer or an amanuensis. 
 He did just what Johnson could not have done for himself, and 
 what a better man than Boswell could not have done for him. 
 Nor is the obhgation a one-sided one. For, while had it not been 
 for Johnson we should never have heard of Boswell, on the other 
 hand, had it not been for his biographer how much less we must 
 have knoA\ai of Johnson ! and, again, the influence for good exerted 
 by Boswell was not inconsiderable, if we look at the enlargement 
 of experience and dissipation of prejudice due to that Tour to the 
 Hebrides, undertaken after a good deal of importunity under the 
 biographer's influential auspices. It has always struck me as a 
 convincing proof of Johnson's intrinsic eminence, that George III., 
 then quite young, should have sought that interview with a man 
 who was neither a politician nor a -courtier, but whose portrait 
 had been painted by Reynolds, and whose personality was being 
 already famiUarized by Boswell ; and it is an eminence which has 
 proved not temporary, which has stamped itself like an impression 
 from a die on the national mind. 
 
 It appears to us very strange that so many people should have 
 turned to Dr. Johnson's works with a view to forming from them 
 a just idea of Dr. Johnson. No wonder that they have come away 
 disappointed, and not a little surprised, that he should have been 
 made and thought so much of by the most distinguished characters 
 of the age to which he belonged. 
 
 An ordinary author, if he be immortaHsed at all, is immortahsed 
 by his works. The converse, as we take it, is true of Johnson ; 
 it is his works which have been made immortal by liim. They 
 live because he Kves. His fame is independent of them ; he would 
 be just what he is if they had not been written. No intelhgent 
 critic would send a man whom he desired to form a favourable 
 estimate of Johnson to " Rasselas " or the " Adventurer," or 
 even the " Lives of the Poets," nowadays. But he would put into 
 his hands the Life and Letters, where he might judge of him all 
 in all, and balancing this against that, come perhaps to the con- 
 clusion that nobody has yet done him full justice, or made him 
 quite distinctly understandable. Boswell wrote down, not what he 
 thought, but what he heard and what he saw. 
 
 A test, which is by no means always or even usually trustworthy,
 
 62 DE. JOHNSON 
 
 is perhaps so in the present case, and the reason may be that, 
 intellectually and morally speaking, less has been lost of Johnson 
 than of any man who ever lived. All save his physical frame 
 and his speaking accents are yet with us. Boswell has laid 
 his quahties, good, bad, and indifferent, before us, hke a second 
 Montaigne, and we see that in the face of stupendous disadvantages 
 more than sufficient to have crushed an ordinary person, Johnson 
 succeeded in making his way to the front, and in winning homage 
 and regard from men and women of the most various positions 
 and opinions. The friends of his school-days and his youth were 
 among those of his last years. He owed his pension to his 
 Dictionary, and he owed his independence to his pension. There 
 was the secret. He spoke as he thought, and he spoke with- 
 out fear and without bitterness. It is as ridiculous to denv his 
 greatness as it is to assert that he is among our great authors. 
 We turn again and again to the " Life and Letters " from youth 
 to old age, not as we do to the Diary of Pepys, for the gossip 
 about others, but to renew our personal acquaintance with one 
 of the most original minds which has ever appeared in this or any 
 other country, and one of the earliest to revolt against the servihty 
 paid to the great. 
 
 Macaulay has joined pretty cordially in the universal horse- 
 laugh at Boswell's expense ; but we may be sure that Boswell 
 will outlive his more illustrious successor. The truth is, that 
 Macaulay's " Memoir of Dr. Johnson " is not exactly what it ought 
 to have been, but is almost exactly what we might have expected 
 to get from such a source. It is, in many essential features, grossly 
 unfair, superficial, and melodramatic ; as to its omissions, they 
 are of inferior consequence ; and, indeed, if they had been more 
 numerous in some places, it would have been a gain, rather than 
 a loss, we inchne to consider. The writer has used a caricaturist's 
 hcense, and by dint of broad fines and plenty of colour has left 
 for our benefit a very agreeable cartoon, nearly half as good as 
 Hogarth's, but more, no doubt, now we think of it, in the manner 
 of John Doyle. 
 
 With all his prodigious reading, remarkable sagacity, and 
 considerable faculty of criticism, Macaulay never shook himself 
 loose from the mischievous habit of jumping at conclusions, and 
 arguing from tangents. He was, above all, the epigrammatist, 
 even where he posed as a historian or a reviewer. He is more
 
 DR. JOHNSON 63 
 
 prejudiced than Johnson, whose prejudices he derides ; he is 
 more unjust than Johnson, whose injustice he exposes. In his 
 " Life of Goldsmith " he unconsciously portrays himself, where he 
 speaks of the author of the " Vicar of Wakefield " as inaccurate, 
 but entertaining. Macaulay was a brilliant prose epigrammatist, 
 ever ready to sacrifice truth to theatrical or rhetorical effect. 
 
 If any one were to enter upon a hfe of Johnson, as it should 
 and very well might be written, it would be hardly time misspent 
 to ascertain fully beforehand, as a work of preparation, the state 
 of contemporary opim'on on many points of conduct and etiquette 
 (so to speak), where, we cannot be quite sure how truly, offensive 
 singularity has been imputed to Johnson. Perhaps, besides, there 
 may have been a certain aptness to forget that, since Johnson died, 
 three generations have passed away, and a fourth is fast disappear- 
 ing ; for even our grandfathers were too young to have conversed 
 with the friend of Reynolds and Burke, with the man whose society 
 was more cultivated, whose judgment was more prized, and whose 
 memory was more respected, than most men of his own or any 
 other time ; and who represents the prototype of manly inde- 
 pendence in English hterature. 
 
 To take what may be treated as a very unimportant illustration, 
 yet which has been repeatedly singled out as if it had been some- 
 thing more, how many have held up Johnson as an oddity, because 
 he began his sentences, oraclewise, with " Sir, this," or " Sir, the 
 other," without being aware that he merely followed here a prevail- 
 ing custom, which has not even yet been completely discontinued 
 
 In the extremely pohshed and refined age with which we have 
 the honour to be connected, the manners even of our immediate 
 ancestors would, we dare say, in some few particulars appear 
 scarcely genteel enough to suit the general taste. We fancy, if 
 we were to be called upon, we could pick out a few Hving men's 
 grandfathers who slouched in their gait, and slobbered over their 
 meals ; who wore rusty black, though on good terms with their 
 tailors, and forgot to tie their shoe-strings ; yet who were people 
 of moderate mark and hkehhood, and breathe on, handed down 
 to their children and to us by the pencil of Lawrence or the chisel 
 of Nollekens. For to eat fast and dress shabbily, and move 
 clumsily, are of all time, and must not be appropriated as Johnsonian 
 traits by writers of Macaulay' s school. 
 
 There is one very curious passage, in a letter of May 10, 1775,
 
 64 DR. JOHNSON 
 
 where Boswell seems to apprehend that the Doctor entertained 
 a jealousy of hterary rivalry, for he observes to Temple, " Between 
 ourselves, he [Johnson] is not apt to encourage one to share 
 reputation with himself ! " This was allusive to the pubhcation 
 of a supplement to the " Tour in the Hebrides." 
 
 It may read hke a paradoxical assertion to say that Johnson 
 modelled his 'poetical style on Pope's and Dryden's severer com- 
 positions. He imitated those great masters of the more modern 
 English school of versification — longissimo intervallo. He suc- 
 ceeded in copying their manner, and shared their vigour of ex- 
 pression. The majestic even flow of Pope's numbers and Dryden's 
 " mighty hne " were precisely what we might expect that Johnson 
 would admire and endeavour to emulate. He caricatured both. 
 
 The attempt was not very happily attended, as we know, nor 
 was it very hkely that a man of Johnson's intellectual mettle should 
 make a good figure in poetry. In Pope it was spontaneous inspira- 
 tion. Johnson's maxim seems to have been that if a man resolved 
 to do a thing, he could do it, and he acted upon this doctrine both 
 in prose and verse. The force which is admired in " The Essay 
 on Man," and in " Absalom and Achitophel," is as distinct from 
 that which is so conspicuous an element in the " Vanity of Human 
 Wishes," as the force of a river's tide is distinct from that of a 
 blacksmith's hammer. 
 
 Johnson's verse is as stilted, laboured, and artificial, as Gibbon's 
 prose. The latter continues to be reprinted, because, we suppose, 
 it appeals to two classes of buyers, people who do not read at all, 
 and people who think Shakespear would have succeeded better 
 if he had been an University man. We do not know, after all, 
 but that, if Johnson had taken in hand a translation of the " Dechne 
 and Fall " into hexameter couplets, he would have made a tolerable 
 thing of it. He must have appreciated the stately periods and 
 imposing verbosity of the philosopher of Lausanne, and he would 
 have done ample justice to the " original copy." 
 
 The sceptical passages, we doubt not, he would have silently 
 suppressed ; for he and Gibbon were on different sides of the 
 question there, Johnson, though not a regular church-goer, 
 was accustomed to resort to private prayer and meditation with 
 an ardour worthy of the ancient beadsmen, upon occasions the 
 most various and opposite. He prayed when he lost his wife. 
 He prayed when he was of two minds, whether he ought to under-
 
 DR. JOHNSON 65 
 
 take the " Rambler," and whether the " Rambler " was a good 
 title. He prayed, and in Latin, when he bad farewell to Thrale 
 Place. He prayed, when he was dubious, if he should at last 
 imdertake the edition of Shakespear, for which he had spent the 
 subscriptions years ago. We find Hearne the antiquary, when he 
 was debating whether he should go as a missionary to Maryland, 
 and when he fell in vntli three old MSS., doing the same thing. 
 How, in all this deplorable fanaticism we are reminded of the 
 late Mr. Gladstone, who, before he made a speech in Parliament, 
 invoked Divine sympathy and sanction ! 
 
 Here, if we mistake not, we come upon a singular and touching 
 feature in Johnson's character. He seems to have inherited that 
 rehgious fervour, which in him was so conspicuous", from his 
 mother, who was of the Warwickshire Fords, and a member of that 
 old quietist sect, almost extinct. It is hardly perhaps surprising 
 that he should have proclaimed Law's " Serious Call " to be the 
 finest piece of hortatory theology in any language. 
 
 Johnson's idiosyncrasy (so to describe it) was a remnant of the 
 antique English superstition, wliich we find, looking back, to have 
 prevailed universally heretofore among those who had rehance 
 on private intercession as a means of grace and fight. We can 
 conceive that Johnson, if he had lived when augury by tokens 
 was in vogue, would have been a steadfast befiever in the flight 
 of crows ; and that, if his lot had been cast in an astrological age, 
 he would have consulted lus horoscope before going a journey, 
 or embarking in an enterprise. It was for men of Johnson's 
 rehgious bent, without his large intellect, that works like the 
 " Spiritual Almanack " were compiled, " wherein every man and 
 woman," as the title-page reads, " may see what they ought daily 
 to do." Johnson was probably the last person of letters who thus 
 united with a noble understanding a childfike creduhty, redolent 
 of the old time ; he was of those, who credited the Cock Lane 
 Ghost hoax, and actually visited the spot in the expectation of 
 communicating with the spirit. Yet, mthal, we repeatedly meet in 
 Boswell's Hebridean Journal with instances of his great friend's 
 superiority to common reports, and even derision of some popular 
 superstitions ; and we are also apt to be struck by the modern- 
 ness of Johnson's mind in some respects. 
 
 We feel that if one tenth part of the very laudable industry 
 which has been bestowed on the magnificent writings of Shakespear 
 
 E
 
 66 DR. JOHNSON 
 
 had been laid out in elucidating for us the character of Johnson, 
 a man of very inferior genius, but for all that equally eminent 
 in a way, we should not see him as we do, in a sort of chiaroscuro 
 light. Malone annotated Boswell's Life, but not as he annotated 
 Shakespear's Dramas. 
 
 Nor was it to be expected that he should. Johnson was too 
 modern then. As much as he cared to learn about him, Malone 
 could get from personal friends of both — and more, perchance. 
 The crust of antiquity had not collected upon him yet. The sound 
 of his voice and his footstep had hardly died away. Malone and 
 his contemporaries would as soon have dreamed of collecting 
 materials illustrative of Johnson and his times, as Milton might 
 have thought of gathering " Cromwelliana," or Edward Philips of 
 writing documentary memoirs of the author of " Paradise Lost." 
 When we consider how much time Johnson consumed in social 
 intercourse, and how much in reading books — even such as we 
 scarcely regard as books — it astonishes us that he accomplished 
 so much in a literary direction. 
 
 A man is not history till he has been dead reasonable years, 
 and is not thought proper game for biography, unless a certain 
 time has counted itself out over his tombstone. What, if it had 
 not been so, and Stow had left behind him a life of Spenser, or 
 Milton had put upon record all that he could have learned about 
 Shakespear and about Bacon ? 
 
 So it has been, to a certain extent, with him of whom we are 
 speaking, in spite of Boswell, and Malone upon Boswell, and Croker 
 on Malone. For, copious and minute as Boswell and his followers 
 or helpers are, there are points in Johnson's early career about 
 which we are not, and probably never shall be, altogether clear. 
 Over a few the utmost obscurity hangs. We remember seeing 
 it noted that at one of Charles Lamb's Wednesday evenings the 
 question was raised as to what Dr. Johnson was doing in the year 
 1745, and no satisfactory reply was forthcoming ; but it was 
 vaguely surmised that he might have been in the Highlands with 
 the Young Pretender. Of course, that notion is incompatible 
 with probability, but Boswell says that all that he could trace 
 to his pen under 1745 was the " Observations on Shakespear's 
 Macbeth." The younger Dodsley, however, reports a conversa- 
 tion between Johnson and his father in that year in Pall Mall, 
 and the very circumstances of the " Tour to the Hebrides " ought to 
 have been sufficient to disprove an anterior visit in that direction.
 
 DR. JOHNSON 67 
 
 Something more might have come of the discussion, if Lamb 
 had not discouraged it by the remark that he thought we knew 
 as much as was worth knowing on the subject, and that he had 
 no curiosity about Johnson. Perhaps he shared Coleridge's 
 opinion, which was more than indifference to the author of 
 " Rasselas " — positive disHke. 
 
 Many of Lamb's pecuHar notions we can understand, and with 
 some of them we can sympathise ; but we must confess that if 
 hereafter accident should give to us any papers throwing new light 
 on some portions of the early life of Samuel Johnson, especially 
 his participation (if any) in the fortunes of Charles Edward, the 
 value we should set upon such a discovery would be a high one. 
 
 Hazlitt once scandalised his audience by repeating the story 
 about Johnson and the unhappy castaway whom he carried home 
 on his shoulders to save her from perishing of hunger and cold. 
 There was a general murmur of surprise and disapprobation in 
 the room at this contretemps, as it was thought to be ; but the 
 lecturer dexterously added, " And this realises our notion of the 
 good Samaritan ! " upon which his bearers turned round and 
 applauded what, a moment before, they had been ready to con- 
 demn and decry as an unconventional illustration of character. 
 
 There was no Mimminy-pimininess about Johnson. Unhke 
 the late Mr. Frederic Locker Lampson, he was masculine, robust, 
 broad. He was a moralist of the most active and thorough-going 
 stamp. If he did not always think what he felt, he always said 
 what he thought. He was not a church-goer, as we have men- 
 tioned, either from bringing up or indolence ; but his piety was 
 perhaps none the less sincere. There are no finer essays on 
 practical reUgion than the literary history of " Rasselas " and 
 that most pathetic episode in Lichfield market-place, which makes 
 us think of the manners of ancient Hellas, and of the obsequious 
 deference of the great Achilles to his father Peleus. 
 
 The " Lives of the Poets " are rather biographical theses than 
 biographies. They are scanty and imperfect, yet so thoroughly idio- 
 syncratic, that it is better to leave them as they were written, than to 
 put them into the hands of an editor, who would emasculate them. 
 
 In a literary sense Johnson is best remembered to-day by his 
 Dictionary, the forerunner of Richardson. You are cordially 
 advised by the book-sellers to secure the first impression, because 
 it contains errors not in any other ! Such is by no means the 
 case, however ; it has not even this poor virtue.
 
 VIII 
 
 COLERIDGE 
 
 Reviewing the sources to which we have to go for the Hfe of 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, we find that we have' no cause, for the 
 most part, to complain of them being scanty or being few. Some 
 are rich in records of his earliest days ; others, in those of his 
 later years, when his powers were matured, and his opinions were 
 most valuable to us. Scarcely any, however, of those who have 
 written upon him, or about him, are qualified to be our companions 
 from the beginning to the end, to assist us to so much as glimpses 
 of that great muser through the whole of his earthly sojourn. 
 
 To us Coleridge is essentially the thinker, the philosopher, 
 the tutor of many minds, one of the noblest and most capacious 
 intellects of his own or anv other time. Let us think of him merelv 
 as the author of the " Biographia Literaria," the " Aids to Re- 
 flexion," and other fine bequests to all posterity, as the expositor 
 of some of the subtlest principles of philosophy, as one who 
 dalHed with the seven sciences as an eagle with the wind, and 
 had treasured up in the " book and volume " of his brain more 
 learning and knowledge than all the Sages of Greece. A sort 
 of new Myrtilus, who is commemorated by Athenseus as having 
 discoursed on every subject, as if he had studied that alone. Or 
 another Universal Doctor, like that Alanus ab Insuhs formerly : 
 a modern Era Paolo — an intelligentia fer cuncta permeans — although 
 in a different way, a more metaphysical and analytical one. It 
 used to be said of Brougham that he thought one ought to know 
 something of everything and of everything something. Macqueen 
 mentioned, in speaking of Dr. Johnson, when he met him in the 
 Hebrides, that he talked on the subject of coining, till he thought 
 that he (Johnson) had been bred in the Mint, but then he passed 
 to brewing, and discoursed on that, as if he had been brought up 
 in a brewery. The latter knowledge came of his intimacy with 
 Thrale, no doubt. Let us tliink of Coleridge in this sort of light 
 rather than as a poet or even as a man. 
 
 68
 
 COLERIDGE 69 
 
 But such catholicity was a legacy from ancient times ; it 
 was the cue of many of our greatest ones — of men as different as 
 Aristotle, Philip of Macedon, Caesar, Cicero, Napoleon ; the in- 
 formation and sympathy of these and a few more were incapable 
 of becoming too wide, too varied. 
 
 Coleridge's physical constitution, never perhaps very robust, 
 was gradually impoverished and enfeebled by constant mental 
 tension, until the whole nature of the man became subhmated 
 or volatihsed, and his body seemed the fragile tenement of some 
 " dehghted " spirit. 
 
 For Coleridge's earhest years we are usually referred to the 
 Recollections of Cottle and the Letters of Lamb. These, with 
 Southey, were his oldest friends, and they were liis friends to the 
 last — ^more or less. Coleridge's own affection for the Lambs con- 
 tinued unabated till the hour of his death — but he did not see them 
 so often latterly, and Lamb was accustomed to say that he did not 
 Hke visiting a man at another man's house — in plainer Enghsh, 
 Coleridge at Oilman's. We do not hke to disturb the settled 
 state of pubhc opinion so far as to pronounce a slowly-formed 
 and dehberate impression that the gentle Eha did not act quite 
 rightly and kindly by the friend of his friendless youth ; but that 
 is an impression we have, and by it we propose to abide. 
 
 The comparative coolness of their relations explains the fewness 
 of letters, as years went on, and the consequent necessity there 
 is for looking elsewhere for traces of Coleridge. The service which 
 Cottle and the Lamb correspondence perform down to a certain 
 point, in fact, is accepted, as it were, by Alsop, Oilman, and Green, 
 who thought themselves honoured in being trustees for after- 
 comers of his thoughts or conceptions, oral and written. That 
 much of Goleridge has been lost or misinterpreted, we must not 
 complain ; we must rather be grateful for what we have received. 
 
 It may sound hke a truism to some, and hke a paradox to others, 
 to assert that the hfe of this illustrious Enghshman is reserved 
 for a future pen ; and what I felt and feel is that it may be of some 
 trifling use, as an help towards so arduous and responsible a labour, 
 if, from a variety of scattered sources, I attempt to make less 
 obscure two episodes in his hfe, to which he is known to have 
 attached somewhat pecuhar importance. 
 
 Most are well acquainted with the fact, that at two successive 
 periods of the earher part of his life, not very remote from each
 
 70 COLERIDGE 
 
 other, Coleridge visited the Continent. Altogether he was out of 
 England as much as four years. His ramble in Germany, which 
 was his first essay in foreign travel, occupied the better part of 
 two years (1798-99), and his tour in Italy and Sicily, with his stay 
 at Malta, extended from the spring of 1804 to that of 1807. 
 
 We are so much in the way of regarding him from a purely 
 sit-at-home point of view, as a peculiarly inactive and sedentary 
 person, indisposed to stir, without powerful provocation or in- 
 ducement, from the place where he happened to have domesti- 
 cated himself, that there must be some interest incidental to a 
 more copious and connected narrative than at present exists of 
 Coleridge's Continental experiences and impressions. 
 
 It was in the month immediately succeeding the original forma- 
 tion of the acquaintance between him and Hazlitt, in the January 
 of 1798, that Coleridge resolved to offer his services, as we learn 
 from a letter to Joseph Cottle of February 18, in the capacity 
 of assistant minister without salary to the Congregationalists at 
 Bridgwater ; but nothing came of this scheme ; and some time 
 after he left for Germany, greatly to the regret of that small circle 
 of friends which included the Wordsworths, the Southeys, and 
 the Lambs — brother and sister. Mary Lamb vied with Charles 
 in love and admiration of Coleridge ; the manner in which she 
 invariably speaks of him in her confidential correspondence is a 
 delightful thing ; and with the affection there is always a little 
 awe mixed up. 
 
 On the i6th September 1798, Coleridge, who had then recently 
 accepted the liberal offer of the Wedgwoods of Etruria to allow 
 him a small annuity, left Yarmouth in the packet for Hamburg, 
 accompanied (according to Mr. Barron Field's statement in his 
 Life) by Wordsworth himself. His departure made an unusually 
 and strangely powerful impression on his mind ; for, to use his 
 own words, " I, for the first time in my life, beheld my native 
 land retiring from me." He slept part of that night on deck, 
 as the smell of the cabin was " at open war with his olfactories," 
 he tells us, but about one in the morning was aroused from slumber 
 by a shower of rain, and driven under shelter. 
 
 At four A.M. on Tuesday, land was sighted. At a place called 
 Cuxhaven some of the passengers were dropped, and Coleridge, 
 it seems, was indebted to the liberality of a fellow-passenger, a 
 rich Dane, for the means of proceeding on to Hamburg, the captain
 
 COLERIDGE 71 
 
 having demanded ten guineas a head for the additional distance. 
 They were a good deal impeded by the fog, but at length they 
 reached their destination on the following day, the 19th, at four 
 o'clock. 
 
 After standing for a short time on the stairs near the Boom 
 House, Hamburg, Coleridge and a Frenchman, whose acquaintance 
 he had formed on board, went, the former to present his letters of 
 recommendation, and the latter to look for an hotel. Coleridge's 
 letters took him to a locahty called the Young Ladies' Walk ; his 
 companion and he put up at an inn which went under the de- 
 nomination of " The Wild Man." The very day after his arrival, 
 he was introduced to a brother of Klopstock the poet, and to 
 Professor Ebehng. At Klopstock's, he saw a portrait of Lessing, 
 whom he thought, about the eyes, not unhke himself. 
 
 On the 23rd September, Coleridge, finding Hamburg disagree 
 with him, went on to Ratzeburg by the stage coach. He describes 
 the vehicle as bearing the same proportion to an English one which 
 an elephant's ear does to a man's. He lodged and boarded with 
 the pastor, and there he spent the Christmas of 1798. 
 
 It was a hard winter, that of 1798-99, and Coleridge's picture 
 of the great lake of Ratzeburg, frozen over, is interesting : — " It 
 is a mass," he says, " of thick transparent ice — a spotless mirror 
 of nine miles in extent ! The lowness of the hills, which rise from 
 the shores of the lake, precludes the awful subhmity of Alpine 
 scenery, yet compensates for the want of it by beauties of which 
 this very lowness is a necessary condition. Yesterday morning I 
 saw the lesser lake completely hidden by mist ; but the moment 
 the sun peeped over the hill, the mist broke in the middle, and in 
 a few seconds stood divided, leaving a broad road all across the 
 lake, and between these two walls the sunlight burst upon the 
 ice, forming a road of golden fire, intolerably bright." 
 
 In the course of a few days he paid a visit to Klopstock — the 
 poet himself, and was disappointed ; for his expression did not 
 strike Coleridge as at all intellectual ; he was low in stature, had 
 swollen legs, and no upper teeth. He could speak very little 
 English, and that Httle was made half-unintelhgible by the defect 
 in his pronunciation. Coleridge's host, the pastor, told him that 
 Klopstock was a German Milton. " A very German Milton 
 indeed ! ! ! " whites C. to a friend. 
 
 Coleridge's impressions of Germany and the Germans are
 
 72 COLERIDGE 
 
 nowhere, we think, very minutely set down. He attended Blumen- 
 bach's Lectures on Physiology and Natural History at Gottingen ; 
 he also took lessons in Ulphilus from Professor Tyschen ; and 
 indeed now it was that he acquired that extensive knowledge of 
 miscellaneous German literature by which his conversations are 
 so distinguished and enriched. His study of the German meta- 
 physicians, however, was only accomphshed in part at this time ; 
 but he carried home with him a passion for a profounder intimacy 
 with these abstruse writings, which was not long ungratified. 
 
 In the " Friend " Coleridge has printed at length the pathetic 
 story of Maria Eleonora Schoning, to illustrate the oppressive and 
 pernicious form of government which prevailed in his time at 
 Niirnberg— a selfish and tyrannical ohgarchy. His remark under 
 this head is : — " The Imperial free towns of Germany are, with 
 only two or three exceptions, enviably distinguished by the virtuous 
 and primitive manners of the citizens, and by the parental char- 
 acter of their several governments." He may be presumed to 
 have spoken (or written) here from personal observation, to a 
 certain extent. The other place he instanced was Aix-la-ChapeUe, 
 which he described as spoiled by contact with the French. 
 
 Luther had always been a favourite with him, and when he 
 went to the country which had given that great man birth, he 
 did not forget the Warteburg : — " Whoever has sojourned in 
 Eisenach will assuredly have visited the Warteburg, interesting 
 by so many historical associations, which stands on a high rock, 
 about two miles to the south of the city gate. To this Castle 
 Luther was taken on his return from the Imperial Diet, where 
 Charles V. had pronounced the ban upon him. . . ." 
 
 Was the professor mentioned in the following passage from one 
 of his books the gentleman under whom he studied Ulphilus, in 
 order to gain, if possible, a critical intimacy with the language ? 
 " A celebrated professor in a German University showed me a 
 very pleasing print, entitled ' Toleration.' A Catholic priest, a 
 Lutheran divine, a Calvinist minister, a Quaker, a Jew, and a 
 philosopher, were represented, sitting round the same table, over 
 which a winged figure hovered in the attitude of protection. ' For 
 this harmless print,' said my friend, ' the artist was imprisoned, 
 and having attempted an escape, was sentenced to draw the boats 
 on the Danube with robbers and murderers ' " 
 
 One evening at Lamb's (it was one of the Wednesdays in the
 
 COLERIDGE 73 
 
 Temple), Holcroft and Coleridge were arguing rather warmly- 
 together on transcendental topics, and the latter was riding the 
 high German horse, as an eye-witness expresses it. Holcroft, it 
 seems, had read Kant's " Critique of Pure Reason " in the original, 
 and considered himself, on the strength of this, a ripe German 
 scholar and metaphysician. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Holcroft," said Coleridge, " you really put me 
 in mind of a sweet pretty German girl, about fifteen, that I met 
 with in the Hartz Forest in Germany, and who, one day, as I was 
 reading the ' Limits of the Knowable and the Unknowable,' 
 the profoundest of all his (Kant's) works, with great attention, 
 came behind my chair, and leaning over, said, ' What, you read 
 Kant ? Why, I, that am a German born, don't understand him ! ' " 
 
 It is not generally known, we think, that Coleridge's visit to 
 the Hartz Forest took place under rather agreeable circumstances. 
 His companions were three Englishmen, whose acquaintance he 
 had formed at Gottingen : Dr. Parry, of Bath, Dr. Carlyon, of 
 Truro, and Captain Parry, the navigator. A fifth individual 
 completed the party, and that fifth was no other than the same 
 John Chester, of whom there is an interesting account in Hazhtt's 
 paper, " My first Acquaintance with Poets." 
 
 Passive and inert as Coleridge may have been when he was 
 at home, or in later hfe, when his health failed him in so deplorable 
 a measure, he decidedly appears to have lost no opportunities 
 which were within his reach, while he was abroad in his young 
 days. It was the same when he was in Italy and Sicily in 
 1804 and later ; and, if we are not mistaken, these wanderings 
 were beneficial to his health, bodily and mental. Lamb is said 
 to have resorted to physical exercise, of which he took a prodigious 
 amount, as a sort of distraction from brooding thoughts, more 
 than from a sheer love of the thing, and to Coleridge, with his 
 unceasing intellectual incubation, added to his tendency to corpu- 
 lence, it was doubly and trebly necessary — it was vital. Un- 
 fortunately Coleridge was a martyr to asthma. 
 
 At the commencement of 1803, his health was, as it had been 
 for some time past, very indifferent indeed. He suffered from 
 lumbago and rheumatism, as well as from difficulty of respiration. 
 In the autumn of the year, Southey, writing to his friend John 
 May, says : — " Coleridge is with me (at Bristol), and I believe going 
 abroad for his health, which suffers dreadfully from this climate."
 
 74 COLERIDGE 
 
 Matters were not at all better in November, as may be sup- 
 posed. The following occurs in a letter from Soutbey to John 
 King, of November 19th, 1803 \ Southey is writing now from 
 Keswick : — " Coleridge is now in bed with the lumbago. Never 
 was poor fellow so tormented with such pantomimic complaints ; 
 his disorders are perpetually shifting, and he is never a week 
 together without some one or other. He is arranging materials 
 for what, if it be made, will be a most valuable work, under the 
 title of ' Consolations and Comforts,' which will be the very essential 
 oil of metaphysics, fragrant as otto of roses, and useful as wheat, 
 rice, port Avine, or any other necessary of human hfe." 
 
 At length, in the beginning of 1804, came the determination 
 to try the effect of a change of climate and scene, and the invalid 
 made up his mind to take advantage of a standing invitation from 
 his friend. Dr. Stoddart, who was practising at that time with 
 some success as an advocate at Malta. " He will set out by the 
 first ship," writes his friend to Miss Barker. 
 
 Southey knew probably that it was the best, if not the only 
 thing to be done, but he sorely grieved at the prospect of parting. 
 In a letter to the lady just mentioned, he observes : — " Coleridge 
 and I are the best companions possible, in almost all moods of 
 mind, in all kinds of wisdom, and all kinds of nonsense, to the 
 very heights and depths thereof ; " but in a letter to C. himself, 
 of March 14th, 1804, his feelings find a freer outlet : — " Your de- 
 parture hangs upon me Avith something the same effect that the 
 heavy atmosphere presses upon you — an unpleasant thought, that 
 works like yeast, and makes me feel the animal functions going 
 on. As for the manner of your going, you will be better off than 
 in a king's sliip. Now you are your own master ; there you would 
 have been a guest." 
 
 Coleridge, in fact, had moved up to town, and was making 
 preparations to go. In a copy of Sir Thomas Browne's " Vulgar 
 Errors," which Lamb bought for Coleridge on the loth March, is 
 this double memorandum, admitting us a httle behind the curtain. 
 It was just a few days before Coleridge started : — " C. Lamb, 9th 
 March, 1804. Bought for S. T. Coleridge." " N.B.—lt was on 
 the loth, on which day I dined and punched at Lamb's, and 
 exulted in the having procured this ' Hydriotaphia,' and all the 
 rest lucra apposita. S. T. C." Cottle, in his " Reminiscences," 
 1847, gives us some useful information about this episode.
 
 COLERIDGE 75 
 
 Lamb saw Coleridge off, and the latter took with him among 
 his letters one for Miss Stoddart from Miss Lamb, from which 
 the subjoined is extracted : — " I mil just write a few hasty hnes 
 to say Coleridge is setting off sooner than he expected, and I every 
 moment expect him to call in one of his great hurrys for this. 
 Charles intended to write by him, but has not ; most likely he 
 will send a letter after him to Portsmouth. ... I envy your 
 brother the pleasure of seeing Coleridge drop in unexpectedly 
 upon him. . . . Coleridge is very ill ; I dread the thoughts of 
 his long voyage — write as soon as he arrives, whether he does or 
 not, and tell me how he is. . . . He has got letters of recommenda- 
 tion to Governor Ball and God knows who, and he will talk and 
 talk, and be wondrously admired. But I wish to write for him 
 a letter of recommendation to Mrs. Stoddart, and to yourself, to 
 take upon ye on his first arrival to be to him kind, affectionate 
 nurses ; and mind now that you perform this duty faithfully, and 
 write me a good account of yourself. Behave to him as you would 
 to me or to Charles, if we came sick and unhappy to you. I have 
 no news to send you, Coleridge will tell you how we are going on." 
 
 Lamb, in a postscript, says, " How do ? how do ? No time 
 to write, S. T. C. going off in a great hurry. Ch. Lamb." 
 
 The precise date of Coleridge's departure is not apparently 
 known ; but it was late in March 1804. On the 3rd April, Southey 
 writes to Miss Barker : — " Coleridge is gone for Malta, and his de- 
 parture affects me more than I let be seen. ... It is now almost 
 ten years since he and I met in my rooms at Oxford, which meeting 
 decided the destiny of both ; and now when, after so many ups 
 and downs, I am for a time settled under his roof, he is driven 
 abroad in search of health." And in a letter to Coleridge himself, 
 the same old friend says : — " Your going abroad had appeared 
 to me so doubtful, or indeed improbable, an event, that the 
 certainty comes to me like a surprise, and I feel at once what 
 a separation the sea makes. ... I shall often think, Coleridge, 
 quanto minus cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse. God send 
 you a speedy passage, a speedy recovery, and a speedy return ! " 
 
 Coleridge arrived at his destination on the i8th April, 1804, 
 and on the following day, which was Saturday, he walked out 
 with Mr. and Mrs. Stoddart. He was very ill when he left England ; 
 but perhaps the journey had restored his energies somewhat. He 
 soon made the acquaintance of the Governor, Sir Alexander Ball,
 
 76 COLERIDGE 
 
 to whom he became strongly attached, and of whom he has left that 
 beautiful and eloquent eulogium in the " Friend." Sir Alexander 
 called on him on the 2ist, and invited him to dinner. Coleridge 
 had other letters of introduction, and one of them was to General 
 Valeth, whom he waited upon, he says, on the 23rd, notwithstand- 
 ing his debiHty and the difficulty of breathing, which since his arrival 
 he had begun to experience intermittently in a painful degree. 
 
 Miss Stoddart, the Doctor's sister (then out with him on a 
 visit), wrote to Miss Lamb immediately on Coleridge's arrival. 
 Her letter is lost, but from Miss Lamb's reply to it, one extract 
 may be acceptable : — " Your letter, which contained the news of 
 Coleridge's arrival, was a most welcome one, for we had begun 
 to entertain very unpleasant apprehensions for his safety, and 
 your kind reception of the forlorn wanderer gave me the greatest 
 pleasure ; and I thank you for it in my own and my brother's 
 names. I shall depend upon you for hearing of his welfare ; for 
 he does not write himself, but as long as we know he's safe, and 
 in such kind friends' hands, we do not mind. Your letters, my 
 dear Sarah, are to me very very precious ones, they are the kindest, 
 best, most natural ones I ever received. The one containing the 
 account of the arrival of Coleridge [is] perhaps, the best I ever saw, 
 and your old friend Charles is of my opinion. We sent it of! to 
 Mrs. Coleridge and the Words worths, as well, because we thought 
 it our duty to give them the first notice we had of our dear friend's 
 safety, as that we were proud of showing our Sarah's pretty letter." 
 
 Coleridge, for some time, remained with the Stoddarts ; but 
 an accidental circumstance led to an entire change in his plans 
 and movements. Mr. Macauley, public Secretary, died very 
 suddenly, and until his place could be supplied, Sir Alexander 
 Ball asked Coleridge to discharge the duties of the vacant post. 
 Coleridge, if he had had proper regard to his state of health, would 
 have excused himself, but he accepted the proposal, perhaps with- 
 out an adequate idea of what his acceptance involved. 
 
 He appears to have given some practical attention to business 
 during his provisional occupation of the Secretaryship : wliich 
 is a point of view in which we are not accustomed to consider 
 him ; for he tells us that it was in the course of examining the 
 treasury accounts in the spring of 1805, that he discovered that 
 the ;£iooo awarded to Sir Alexander Ball some years before had 
 never been claimed. " I observed the circumstance," he says,
 
 COLERIDGE 
 
 n 
 
 " and noticed it to the Governor, who had suffered it to escape 
 altogether from his memory, for the latter years at least." 
 
 " For months past," he lets us know after he was thoroughly 
 settled, " [I have been] incessantly employed in official tasks, 
 subscribing, examining, administering oaths, auditing, &c.," and 
 this continuous and irksome occupation, which came miexpectedly 
 upon him, neutrahsed the benefit which the change might other- 
 wise have wrought in his constitution. Under date of April 22, 
 1804, indeed a very few days after his original landing, he says : — 
 " I was reading when I was taken ill, and felt an oppression of 
 my breathing, and convulsive snatching in my stomach and hmbs," 
 and throughout his absence abroad on this occasion there is no 
 reason to question that these visitations were both frequent and 
 sudden. His devotion to business must have aggravated them. 
 
 Yet in a letter from Mr. (afterwards Sir Humphry) Davy to 
 Coleridge's friend, Mr. Poole, of Nether-Stowey, which Cottle 
 quotes under the date of 1804, Coleridge is mentioned as being 
 in the enjoyment of good spirits. At least, he had described 
 himself as being so, when he last wrote to Mr. D. from Malta. 
 " I have received a letter," Mr. Davy writes to Mr. Poole, " from 
 Coleridge within the last three weeks. He writes from Malta 
 in good spirits, and, as usual, from the depth of his being. God 
 bless him ! He was intended for a great man. I hope and trust 
 he will, at some period, appear such." 
 
 His intimacy with Ball, which appears to have produced a 
 coolness between the Stoddarts and himself, led him to form 
 a very iiigh estimate of that gentleman's accomphshments and 
 intellectual capacity. He says : — "It was the Governor's custom 
 to visit every casal throughout the island once, if not twice, in 
 the com"se of each summer ; and dm-ing my residence there, I had 
 the honour of being his constant, and most often his only com- 
 panion in these rides, to which I owe some of the happiest and 
 most instructive hours of my life." 
 
 This is very exphcit and emphatic : surely these lines deserve 
 at our hands a larger share of attention than has yet been paid 
 to them. And then he gives (at his own expense) an instance of 
 Sir Alexander's acuteness. He says : — " Having observed in some 
 casual conversation that, though there were doubtless masses 
 of matter unorganised, I saw no ground for asserting a mass of 
 unorganised matter. Sir A. B. paused, and then said to me with
 
 yd> COLERIDGE 
 
 that frankness of manner which made his very rebuke gratifying, 
 ' The distinction is just, and, now I understand you, abundantly 
 obvious, but hardly worth the trouble of your inventing a puzzle 
 of words to make it appear otherwise.' I trust the rebuke was 
 not lost on me." 
 
 Two anecdotes, related by Coleridge elsewhere, appear to 
 belong to this part of the subject : — "I well remember, when in 
 Valetta in 1S05, asking a boy who waited on me, what a certain 
 procession, then passing, was, and his answering, with great quiet- 
 ness, that it w"as Jesus Christ, who lives here {sta di casa qui), and 
 when he comes out, it is in the shape of a w^afer. But ' Eccelenza,' 
 said he, smiling and correcting himself, ' non e Cristiano.' " 
 
 " A marquis of ancient family applied to Sir Alexander Ball 
 to be his valet. ' My valet ! ' said Ball, ' what can you mean, 
 sir ? ' The marquis said he hoped he should then have the honour 
 of presenting petitions to his Excellency. ' Oh, that's it, is it ? ' 
 said Sir Alexander : ' my valet, sir, brashes my clothes and brings 
 them to me. If he dared to meddle with matters of public business, 
 I should kick him downstairs.' " 
 
 The sixth essay of the second volume of the " Friend " in the 
 edition of 1837 was chiefly ^vritten at Malta, at the request of Sir 
 Alexander Ball, as is stated in so many words in a foot-note by 
 Coleridge or his editor. It is, we believe, the only thing, for the 
 composition of which during his stay in the island there is direct 
 and positive evidence. 
 
 The public library was no resource to Coleridge, for it contained 
 very little that he wanted. He says of it : — "Even in respect to works 
 of military science, it is contemptible — as the sole public library 
 of so numerous and splendid an order, most contemptible — and 
 in all other departments of literature it is below contempt." But 
 his friends the Governor and Dr. Stoddart had books of their 
 own, probably, to which he could resort ; and some (as we shall 
 see presently) he had taken out with him. 
 
 Miss Stoddart was her brother's guest during nearly the whole 
 term of Coleridge's stay at Malta, and although the Stoddarts saw 
 less of Coleridge after his withdrawal from their roof, they still met 
 with tolerable regularity, and Miss Stoddart continued to transmit 
 to Miss Lamb intelhgence of S. T. C.'s goings-on and eccentricities. 
 
 Miss L., in one of her answers, has this passage : — " All I can 
 gather from yom* clear, and I have no doubt faithful history of
 
 COLERIDGE 
 
 79 
 
 Maltese politics, is that the good doctor, though a firm friend, an 
 excellent fancier of Brooches, a good husband, an upright advocate, 
 and in short all that they say upon tomb-stones, for I do not 
 recollect that they celebrate any fraternal virtues there, yet is he 
 but a moody brother — that your sister-in-law is pretty much like 
 what all sisters-in-law have been since the first happy invention 
 of the happy marriage state — that friend Coleridge has undergone 
 no alteration by crossing the Atlantic, for his friendliness to you 
 as well as all the oddities you mention are just what one ought to 
 look for from him. ... I heartily msh for the arrival of Coleridge. 
 A few such evenings as we have sometimes passed with him would 
 wind us up and set us agoing again." 
 
 Coleridge left Malta on the 27th September 1805, upon the 
 arrival of the individual nominated by the Home Government to 
 the Secretaryship. He passed over to Sicily. 
 
 Cottle, in his " Early Recollections of Coleridge," says : — " Mr. 
 Coleridge sustained one serious loss, at quitting Malta, which he 
 greatly deplored. He had packed in a large case all his books 
 and MSS., with all the letters received by him while on the 
 island. His directions were, to be forwarded to England by the 
 first ship : with Bristol as its ultimate destination. It was never 
 received, nor could he ever learn what became of it." 
 
 Miss Lamb's letters to Miss Stoddart do not cease speaking of 
 Coleridge after Miss Stoddart's return to England. In one. Miss L. 
 pertinently asks for fuller intelHgence concerning the state of 
 relations between S. T. C. and the Doctor latterly : — " Was 
 Coleridge with you ? " she inquires, " or did your brother and 
 Coleridge argue long arguments, till between the two great arguers 
 there grew a little coolness, or perchance the mighty friendship 
 between Coleridge and your sovereign governor Sir Alexander Ball 
 might create a kind of jealousy ; for we fancy sometliing of a cool- 
 ness did exist from the little mention ever made of C. in your 
 brother's letters." " I have heard [from the Dawes]," Miss Lamb 
 says in a letter of later date, " that Coleridge was lately going 
 through Sicily to Rome with a party, but that, being unwell, he 
 returned back to Naples. We think there is some mistake in his 
 accounts, and that his intended journey was in his former jaunt 
 to Naples. ... I have written to Mrs. Coleridge to tell her her 
 husband is at Naples. Your brother slightly named his being 
 there."
 
 8o COLERIDGE 
 
 The Lambs and his other friends in London by no means stood 
 alone in this state of incertitude and anxiety, for Coleridge was 
 very sparing of his correspondence both before and after leaving 
 Malta, and liis own family and the Southeys became most uneasy 
 and uncomfortable about him, seeing the perturbed condition of 
 the Continent. 
 
 Southey writes to Mr. Danvers, February 3, 1806 : — " Still no 
 tidings of Coleridge : it is some consolation to know that no letters 
 have been received for many weeks from that part of the Austrian 
 dominion, which is occupied by the French. It is not unlikely 
 that he has returned, either to Naples or Malta, and may be waiting 
 there for a ship." On the 15th, there was still no intelhgence. 
 " We are seriously uneasy about him," Southey says to his son ; 
 "it is above two months since he ought to have been here ; our 
 hope is, that finding the Continent overrun by the French, he may 
 have returned to Malta." 
 
 Three months elapsed, and no one had heard where he was, 
 or what was his fate. Southey writes to his friend Danvers on the 
 13th May : — " No letters from Coleridge of a later date than August. 
 We hear of him by several quarters ; he was at Rome in the 
 beginning of February, much noticed there, and going to spend 
 a few weeks in the country on a visit. This is the news from 
 Englishmen who saw him there. It is not to be supposed that 
 letters should arrive regularly from other persons, and all his be 
 lost. Wordsworth thinks he has delayed writing, till he finds it 
 painful to think of it. Meantime we daily expect to hear of his 
 return." 
 
 May passed, and June, and stiU they were without news. It 
 was growing positively alarming. But all this time the wanderer 
 was safe enough, and the fears for him perfectly groundless. He 
 had, as it has been stated, sailed from Malta to Sicily, and between 
 September 1805 and the present time, our invalid, having taken 
 out a new lease of health, had made the tour of that island, and 
 visited Naples, Florence, and Rome. He proceeded to Leghorn, 
 where he embarked on an American vessel bound for England. 
 On the homeward route this ship was chased by a Frenchman, and 
 Coleridge's captain obliged him, for fear of consequences, to throw 
 all his MSS. overboard. He had the honour of being identified at 
 Rome as the author of the anti-Buonapartist articles in the Morning 
 Post, and narrowly escaped arrest. He was put on his guard, and
 
 COLERIDGE 8i 
 
 quitted the city precipitately with a Papal passport. Such is the 
 account usually credited. Now let us be allowed to offer Cole- 
 ridge's own narrative, scanty as it is, which we have to do by 
 grouping together in one view certain scattered passages in his 
 writings. What would not his family have given to have been in 
 possession of a quarter of the information which the reader has 
 here before him ! 
 
 "It is interesting to pass from Malta to Sicily — from the 
 highest specimen of an inferior race, the Saracenic, to the most 
 degraded class of a superior race, the European. I found every- 
 thing in and about Sicily had been exaggerated by travellers, except 
 two things — the folly of the Government and the wretchedness 
 of the people. They did not admit of exaggeration. The most 
 cowardly of the European nations, the Neapolitans and Sicilians, 
 those among whom the fear of death exercises the most tyrannous 
 influence relatively to their own persons, are the very men who 
 least fear to take away the life of a fellow-citizen by poison or 
 assassination." 
 
 " As I was descending from Mount Etna with a very lively 
 talkative guide, we passed through a village (I think called) 
 Nicolozzi, when the host happened to be passing through the 
 street. Every one was prostrate ; my guide became so, and, not 
 to be singular, I went down also. After resuming our journey, 
 I observed in my guide an unusual seriousness and long silence 
 which, after many hums and hahs, was soon interrupted by a low 
 bow, and leave requested to ask a question. This was of course 
 granted, and the ensuing dialogue took place. Guide. Signor, are 
 you then a Christian ? — Coleridge. I hope so. — Guide. What, are 
 all EngUshmen Christians ? — Coleridge. I hope and trust they are. 
 — Guide. What, are you not Turks ? Are you not damned 
 eternally ? — Coleridge. I trust not, through Christ. — Guide. What, 
 you believe in Christ then ? — Coleridge. Certainly, 
 
 " This answer produced another long silence. At length, my 
 guide again spoke, still doubting the great point of my Christianity : 
 — Guide. I am thinking, Signor, what is the difference between you 
 and us, that you are to be certainly damned. — Coleridge. Nothing 
 very material, nothing that can prevent our going to heaven, I 
 hope. We believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. 
 — Guide (interrupting me). Oh ! those damned priests ! what hars 
 they are ! But (pausing) we can't do without them i we can't
 
 82 COLERIDGE 
 
 go to heaven without them. But tell me, Signor, what are the 
 differences ? — Coleridge. Why, for instance, we do not worship 
 the Virgin. — Guide. And why not, Signor ? — Coleridge. Because, 
 though holy and pure, we think her still a woman, and therefore 
 do not pay her the honour due to God ? — Guide. But do you not 
 worship Jesus, who sits on the right hand of God ? — Coleridge. We 
 do. — Guide. Then why not worship the Virgin, who sits on the 
 left ? — Coleridge. I did not know she did. If you can show it me 
 in the Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship her. ' Oh ! ' 
 said my man, with uncommon triumph, and cracking his fingers, 
 ' Securo, Signor ! securo, Signor ! ' " 
 
 Coleridge, however, seems to have imbibed in Germany a senti- 
 ment at least of tolerance for the school of free thought and liberal 
 inquiry which had some time since set in, and which has, as we 
 know, received such enormous development. For in a letter after 
 his return home to his wife he refers to the German arguments 
 against the authenticity of the Book of Esther, and speaks of 
 reading passages to his son Hartley, pointing out the " startling 
 gross improbabihties " therein contained. 
 
 " Baron Von Humboldt, brother of the great traveller, paid 
 me the follomng compliment at Rome : — ' I confess, Mr. Coleridge, 
 I had my suspicions that you were here in a political capacity of 
 some sort or other ; but upon reflection, I acquit you. For in 
 Germany, and, I believe, elsewhere on the Continent, it is generally 
 understood that the Enghsh Government, in order to divert the 
 envy and jealousy of the world as to the wealth, power, and 
 ingenuity of your nation, makes a point, as a ruse de guerre, of 
 sending out fools of gentlemanly birth and connections as 
 diplomatists to the courts abroad. An exception is perhaps some- 
 times made for a clever fellow, if sufficiently hbertine and un- 
 principled.' 
 
 " I was not indeed silly enough to take as anything more than 
 a violent hyperbole of party debate, Mr. Fox's assertion that the 
 late war . . . was a war produced by the Morning Post. ... As 
 httle do I regard the circumstance that I was a specified object of 
 Buonaparte's resentment during my residence in Italy in conse- 
 quence of those essays in the Morning Post during the Peace of 
 Amiens. Of this I was warned, directly, by Baron Von Humboldt, 
 the Prussian Plenipotentiary, who at that time was the Minister of 
 the Prussian Court at Rome, and indirectly, through his secretary,
 
 COLERIDGE 83 
 
 by Cardinal Fescli himself. Nor do I lay any greater weight on 
 the confirming fact, that an order for my arrest was sent from 
 Paris, from which danger I was rescued by the kindness of a noble 
 Benedictine and the gracious connivance of that good old man the 
 present Pope." 
 
 " At Florence there is an unfuiished bust of Brutus by Michael 
 Angelo, under which a cardinal wrote the following distich : — 
 
 " ' Dum Bruti effigiem sculptor de marmore finxit 
 In mentem sceleris venit, et abstinuit.' 
 
 "... An English nobleman, indignant at this distich, wrote 
 immediately under it the following : — 
 
 " ' Brutum effinxisset sculj)tor, sed mente reciirsat 
 Malta vii i virtus ; sistit et obstupuit.' " 
 
 " Now which," asks Coleridge, " is the nobler or more moral 
 sentiment, the Italian cardinal's or the English nobleman's ? " 
 
 The traveller, long lost and looked for, and at last recovered 
 to his country, friends, and domestic hearth, reached England 
 somewhere about the end of November 1806, for in a letter to 
 Manning of December 5 that year Lamb expressly announces his 
 return, as well as his intention of lecturing at the Royal Institution. 
 On the loth April, 1807, Southey writes to Miss Barker, " Mrs. 
 Coleridge has gone to her husband's relations in Devonshire, and 
 he meets her somewhere on the road." As for Southey, he does 
 not seem to have seen anything of him for a full twelvemonth 
 after that ; for the earliest tidings we get of Coleridge's presence 
 in Southey's part of the country occurs in a letter from Southey 
 to Lieutenant S., September 9, 1808 : — " Coleridge is arrived at 
 last, about half as big as the house. He came over with Words- 
 worth on Monday, and returned with him on Wednesday." 
 
 Coleridge brought back with him to England the warmest 
 sentiments of esteem and admiration for the virtues and talents 
 of Ball ; and Ball's death touched him deeply. He says, in the 
 " Friend" : — "Ah! how could I be otherwise than affected by what- 
 ever reminded me of that daily and familiar intercourse with him, 
 which made the fifteen months, from May 1804 to October 1805, 
 in many respects the most memorable and instructive period of 
 my life ! Ah ! how could I be otherwise than most deeply affected,
 
 84 COLERIDGE 
 
 when there was still lying on my table the paper which, the day 
 before, had conveyed to me the unexpected and most awful tidings 
 of this man's death ! " 
 
 Elsewhere, he speaks of Ball as " a truly great man, the best 
 and greatest public character that I had ever the opportunity of 
 making myself acquainted with. I shall cling to the hope that 
 I may yet be enabled to record his good deeds more fully and 
 regularly ; that then, with a sense of comfort, not without a sub- 
 dued exultation, I may raise heavenward from his honoured tomb 
 the ghstening eye of a humble but ever grateful friend." 
 
 His voyage and change of air and scene had brought very 
 sHght benefit to his health. There is a most desponding letter to 
 Cottle, written soon after his arrival in England, in answer to 
 an invitation to visit Bristol. " On my return to Bristol (when- 
 ever that may be) I will certainly give you the right hand of old 
 fellowship ; but alas ! you will find me the wretched wreck of 
 what you knew me, rolling rudderless. My health is extremely 
 bad," — and so the letter goes on. One finds him writing in a 
 borrowed copy of Beaumont and Fletcher, April 17, 1807 • — " ^^d 
 bless you, dear Charles Lamb. I am dying ; I feel I have not many 
 weeks left." He uses the same tone in one to Lamb, February 
 1808—" Charles, I am very, very ill. Vixi." Even in 181 1, the 
 sombre persuasion that his end was near, seems to have been still 
 strong, for in returning an old copy of Donne's Poems to Lamb 
 in that year, he says, " I shall die soon, my dear Charles Lamb, 
 and then you will not be vexed that I have bescribbled your book." 
 
 So constant were these forebodings that in a letter of 182 1 tO' 
 Gilman, Lamb copied out as a postscript the entry of fourteen years 
 before in the Beaumont and Fletcher, and semi- jocularly alluded 
 to his dear old friend — moribund in 1807, yet pretty well in health 
 so long after, and able to take part in entertaining company at 
 Highgate. 
 
 Yet he survived, as we know, till the July of 183-j, and, which 
 is more, in the summer of 1828 he made a tour through parts of 
 Holland and Belgium, proceeding up the Rhine as far as Bergen. 
 
 To those who are interested in the character and likenesses of 
 this great man, the subjoined extract from a letter addressed by 
 Southey to a fiiend, from Keswick, July 2, 1808, may prove of 
 interest : — 
 
 "... I thank you hkewise for your intentions with respect
 
 COLERIDGE 85 
 
 to Coleridge. You would have found him the most wonderful 
 man hving in conversation, but the most impracticable one for a 
 painter ... his countenance is the most variable I have ever 
 seen." With regard to his features, he says : — " Look at them 
 separately you would hardly think it possible that they could 
 belong to one head."
 
 IX 
 
 TENNYSON 
 
 It has been, and still remains, a common phrase in criticizing the 
 labours of Shakespear, to say that the great poet was unequal in 
 his performances, and it was Ben Jonson's observation that it 
 would have been well, if he had blotted far more of what he trans- 
 mitted to us than he did. No doubt it would be easy to select from 
 his writings many passages and expressions, which we could desire 
 to see altered, and not a few, perhaps, without which, to say the 
 least, his reputation would rest unimpaired. 
 
 It is because it has often struck me that what is true of 
 Shakespear is almost equally so of our late laureate, that I am 
 tempted to put upon paper certain conceptions or impressions, 
 which an occasional perusal of Tennyson's masterly productions 
 left behind it. It is because I considered that there has been 
 scarcely a verse-writer in this country at any period, whose works 
 have been altogether so distinguished by beauties and excellencies, 
 that I embarked on such a hazardous enterprise. I am fully 
 sensible that from the present point of view a comparison between 
 Tennyson and the poet of Stratford is not one to be pressed too 
 far, in as much as any imperfections in the text of Shakespear 
 (and we all know that they are barely numerable) are to be. ascribed 
 in the largest measure to that mysterious indifference to his literary 
 fame, which led him to leave his plays and poems alike to the 
 mercy of the printer. The blemishes in the writings of his modern 
 successor are attributable to a diametrically opposite cause, as I 
 shall try to establish. The latter experienced in his earher career 
 undeserved ridicule and abase, and in his middle period — perhaps 
 during the remainder of his life — more than merited applause and 
 homage. Surely the time has arrived for something like dis- 
 criminative criticism, and I hope I shall not be thought to make a 
 rash beginning by an exposition of my personal view, that among 
 his writings there are finer things than in all the ancient poets or — 
 except Mr. Swinburne at his best — the later. 
 
 86
 
 TENNYSON 87 
 
 The wide range occupied by Tennyson's works seems naturally 
 to imply the possession by the author of a corresponding versatihty 
 of power, and it is, I think, beyond question that, to a great extent, 
 a careful study of the Poems as a whole must result in a favourable 
 and flattering verdict. We are able to discern almost throughout 
 the depth and truth of the inner sense ; the powerful, fresh, and 
 picturesque imagery ; the lucid and noble language ; and the 
 vigour, grace, tenderness and pathos masterfully blended and 
 balanced, so agreeably contrasting with the thinness and labouring 
 obscurity of conception and impression even in the more favourite 
 verse- writers of our day. I can only think of him as I think of 
 Byron and Swinburne, and both of those, especially of course 
 Byron, how different they are ! 
 
 Some of Tennyson's pieces are almost above praise indeed ; in 
 others the task of selecting passages and descriptions of supreme 
 merit is easy enough. In the exordium to " A Dream of Fair 
 Women," the poet modestly cites the performance by Chaucer as 
 that which suggested his own composition ; and perchance one 
 could scarcely lay one's finger on an item in the whole collection 
 which so triumphantly proves the masterly faculty of keeping a 
 nominal prototype within its due limits, and creating a new treasure 
 of fancy for us on the broader and deeper basis of contemporary 
 thought ; and it may not be an overstatement, that had Tennyson 
 not admitted us into his confidence, we might have remained 
 strangers to the source of his inspiration. 
 
 We find, side by side, the noblest grasp, the most soaring 
 flights, and the most exquisite delicacy of finish ; and to say that 
 this writer displayed an extraordinary and unprecedented faculty 
 is only tantamount to saying that the sea is green and the firma- 
 ment is azure. But this equally grand and inevitable admission 
 renders it only the more to be lamented that an author, who so 
 wealthily contributed to our pure intellectual enjoyment, and 
 whose works will undoubtedly form no unimportant part of the 
 literary heirlooms bequeathed to the coming ages, did not exercise 
 a wiser and more generous discretion, when he had, more than 
 once, the opportunity of reconsideration and revision afforded to 
 him ; and the misfortune is so much the graver in this case, that 
 no lapse of time can well undo the mischief. Editorial acumen 
 and posthumous intervention have been of mutual benefit to 
 Shakespear and the world ; but there can be no vahd pretence for
 
 88 TENNYSON 
 
 stepping in between Tennyson and his poetical compositions, as 
 he left them to us. 
 
 Might not advantage have very properly and very happily 
 been taken of the collected edition of 1878, at all events, for such a 
 purpose as T am suggesting ? — to correct oversights, to set right 
 places where the metre was faulty, or there were phraseological 
 solecisms ? Shoald not this have been done ? It was not. A 
 few additions are here and there observable, but they are invariably 
 additions for the worse. Our poet himself admonishes us that it 
 
 is an error 
 
 " To add and alter many times, 
 Till all is ripe and rotten." 
 
 But here we are encountered by the opposite extreme, and in the 
 presence of an evident habit of taking occasion to turn over the 
 leaves of his books, and of inserting lines and stanzas, not so much 
 where they were wanted as where they could be squeezed in or 
 tacked on. The deprecatory sentence which I have just quoted, 
 Tennyson, as I say, did not altogether in his own case respect, 
 as a survival of " trial " copies and sheets now under my eyes with 
 an abundant crop of literal and other corrections testifies, and yet 
 there remained, after all, an ample residue of blemishes unre vised, 
 because, I infer, unperceived. The " Lover's Tale " was forty-six 
 years under correction, before it took its final shape in 1879. At 
 least there was no want of a sense of the possibility of improvement. 
 
 I must now begin to illustrate my meaning. In the dedication 
 to her late Majesty, dated 185 1, before the collected impression, 
 the sense and tone are good ; but the construction is awkward, 
 especially in the third and fourth stanzas. But at any rate the 
 lines are superior by a long way to those on the death of the Prince 
 Consort. They belong in reality to a small group of four pieces 
 dealing with a common theme, and written in a similar mood. 
 
 In " Edward Gray," a very charming little poem, we are all 
 offended on the threshold by this : — 
 
 " Sweet Emma Moreland of yonder town 
 Met me walking on yonder way." 
 
 Why was this clumsy and glaring tautology retained from edition 
 to edition ? And, again, at the very close there is this conspicuous 
 discordance • —
 
 TENNYSON 89 
 
 "There lies the body of Helen Adair, 
 And there the heart of Edward Gray." 
 
 Coleridge in his " Table Talk " declares that he could not quite 
 understand Tennyson's metric system. Now, in the little song 
 near the beginning of the " Princess " the line — 
 
 "We fell out, my wife and I — " 
 
 halts uncomfortably on a short foot ; but an infinitely more serious 
 fault is latent in the phrase " thro' the land," conveying an idea of 
 distance and perspective, which is foreign to the sense and highly 
 injurious to the beauty of the notion. One may, no doubt, see on 
 a moment's reflection what is intended ; but that is not sufficient 
 — not even for poetical purposes. Obscurity of style may exist 
 without obscurity of meaning. A poem ought not to partake of 
 the nature of a conundrum, but should be susceptible of an 
 instantaneous translation into form and substance in the mind's 
 eye. In the song under consideration the first line suggests one 
 train of thought, and the second suggests something totally 
 different. " Ah ! " one is apt to mutter, " by land he means 
 corn-land, i.e. a field of corn. Why could he not have said as 
 much ? In the edition of 1878 before me this touching lyric has 
 a supplementary stanza, which would ruin it, if that were possible. 
 The lines, as they were originally written, represented a natural 
 sentiment effectively expressed. The writer, instead of removing 
 existing defects, added to them. 
 
 The " Princess " is indeed a Medley, but in a somewhat different 
 sense, I apprehend, from that which the author contemplated. 
 It is a medley of old romantic names and circumstances and of 
 modern philosophy and advanced ideas. Tennyson was some- 
 what addicted to the personal and conversational style in his com- 
 positions, as we perceive in " Audley Court," the fine fragment of 
 " Morte d' Arthur," and elsewhere. He was fond of interweaving 
 his individuality — his Ego — with the less direct and definite 
 enunciations of mere sentiment. The ancient bards were less 
 self- asserting ; but at least from the Augustan age it became 
 fashionable for the author, more especially the poet, to drop the 
 mask, and speak propria persona. 
 
 " Queen Mary, A Drama," was, I believe, Tennyson's earliest 
 effort in this particular way ; and he entered on the province of
 
 90 TENNYSON 
 
 the playwright with as Uttle aptitude for it as a great Hving author 
 equally incapable of comprehending his true bent and strength. 
 The subject was not Mary, Queen of Scots, about whom a cartload 
 of verse and prose had been already written from time to time, 
 but poor " bloody Queen Mary," who ever since a Catholic priest 
 penned in her honour " a Ballad of the Marigold," had been sadly 
 neglected by the poets. Here was therefore nearly virgin soil for 
 a dramatist, notwithstanding the old tragedy of " Sir Thomas 
 Wyatt " by Webster and Decker. 
 
 So the laureate borrowed a Holinshed, as I have the best of 
 reasons to know, and set to work ; and this was the fruit. I well 
 recollect the uplifted hands and eyebrows of the cognoscenti, the 
 first mysterious paragraph in the papers, shadowing out the 
 prospect of happiness in store for us, then a second intimation that 
 the boon was nearer at hand, and at last the joyous announce- 
 ment that the work was in the press ! What was it ? What 
 signified these hushed voices, this buzz, these awe-stricken gestures, 
 succeeded by newspaper jubilations ? Something to cast into the 
 shade all that everybody else had written about the royal lady ? 
 Something to eclipse all that he himself had heretofore done ? 
 Not quite so, I fear. Eather the mons farturiens. 
 
 Among his dramatic essays it is somewhat difficult to decide 
 which was the least happy ; but perhaps that distinction is claim- 
 able by his Locksley — a name equivocally reminiscent of earlier 
 and better days. The treatment of the epic of Robin Hood and 
 its presentation on the stage, where the real story so readily lent 
 itself to a capable artist, and where so many valuable points might 
 have been made by an even servile loyalty to authenticated facts, 
 seems to exhibit the result of ignorant or wilful distortion of the 
 truth. Our poet took the pretty nursery tale, which he had studied 
 in his youth, like the rest of us ; but this was so far not the worst 
 part of the matter, for out of poor material Shakespear knew how 
 to evolve a fine creation of his own. Then he was a dramatist, 
 was he not ? The weakness of the dramatic gift in Tennyson 
 extends to some of his undramatic productions. For instance, 
 in " Locksley Hall " the scene opens with the principal persona 
 coming on the ground, accompanied by an escort, one of whom 
 at least carries a bugle-horn. He invites his friends to leave him, 
 and if they require his presence, to blow on the horn Robin-Hood- 
 wise. We lose sight of the escort, and have to listen to the delirium
 
 TENNYSON 91 
 
 about the faithless lady-cousin, whom we are entitled for some 
 time to treat as still open to persuasion, till without any pre- 
 paratory notice she is revealed and denounced as the wife of 
 another and less worthy suitor. There is no distinct thread of 
 story ; the whole is a piece of incoherent extravagance. The 
 poet, after raving about my cousin Amy for some time, suddenly 
 recollects " his merry comrades," as his ear catches the note of 
 the horn ! Merry indeed ! Left shivering and whistling through 
 their fingers in the early morning. No wonder that he is afraid, 
 lest his foohsh passion may be " a target for their scorn." They 
 must have all left their beds at something like daybreak with 
 empty stomachs. The following lines might assist in rendering 
 the conclusion less abrupt. I make a present of them to a future 
 editor : — 
 
 ''■ Bugle-bearer. 
 
 comrade, why so long ? Since our supper yester-night 
 We have not had among us all a crust of bread to bite. 
 
 1 sounded twice, I sounded thrice, upon the bugle-horn : 
 
 Ah ! I wish you had not brought us out so early in the morn ! 
 You are dying for your breakfast, just as we are ; come along ; 
 When you've put some victuals into you, let's hear about your wrong. 
 We, too, have known our troubles. Now, old fellow, don't give way ; 
 Lord ! sir, there's plenty of 'em : if one won't, another may. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Nay, we will not hear a word. You are paler than a ghost. 
 You can tell us all about it o'er the ham and buttered toast. 
 
 [Exeunt omnes." 
 
 But the whole performance, embellished as it is by passages and 
 phrases of enchanting merit and strength, presents the same de- 
 formities as " Maud " and other of the longer compositions of the 
 same class — that wild, vague, obscure vein of declamation, which 
 oppresses, sates, and repels. No chord of sympathy is touched. 
 The poet raves at those behind the scenes, of whom we are sup- 
 posed to know nothing definite. The secret of the baseness of 
 Maud, of that of the heroine of " Locksley Hall," and of one or 
 two more (unless they are all identical) has died with their 
 reproachful and relentless lover, but certainly the provocation 
 and the wrong should have been severe to justify such a revanche, 
 such a frantic outbm'st of opprobrious and diversified invective.
 
 92 TENNYSON 
 
 The resemblance between those pieces belonging to the auto- 
 biographical series holds good, too, in the tone of general 
 misanthropy, which might have better become the sorrows and 
 sufferings of a Byron, and here suggest unrealism and a struggle 
 for melodramatic effect. It would demand a very slight disturb- 
 ance of the metrical arrangement to interchange parts of " Maud " 
 and " Locksley Hall " ; they could be dovetailed into either 
 rhapsody with equal fitness. Forsooth, to use an expression of 
 Mrs. Procter in writing to Mrs. Jameson in 1851, where she 
 refers to Tennyson's new book, there is too much that is " so 
 really bad." 
 
 The verses entitled " Buonaparte " I take to be trash, nor are 
 the " Goose " and the " Grandmother " much better, and they 
 are not classed with the juvenilia. Tennyson had a very subdued 
 sense of fun. The first is a composition worthy of the Tory organs 
 in Anti- Jacobin times. It is such a matter as GifEord or the author 
 of " Noctes Ambrosianse " might have thrown off in a moment of 
 fanatical impulse. On the contrary, for an author so weak in 
 humour, " Will Waterproof's Monologue " is as good a thing of 
 the kind as we have, and by far the best achievement of Tennyson 
 in the way of lighter sentiment. It outshines all the earlier efforts 
 of Goldsmith and others ; and nothing so excellent has been 
 written since. The beeswing glimmers through it. It is a retro- 
 spect through not too long and crowded a vista at a period of life, 
 when many of the finest lyrics had been made public, and is 
 intentionally and properly free from metaphysical and psychical 
 subtleties. The scene is laid at an enviable moment, when he did 
 not foresee how much he was to write, which would have been 
 better — for him and us — left unwritten. Better, too, had it been, 
 if he had not made Ganymede to rhyme with breed ! Would he 
 have treated Aphrodite as an anapaest ? 
 
 The provincialisms in the " Northern Farmer " were of the 
 same stamp and value as the slang in Bulwer's " Pelham " — not 
 exactly, however, as in the latter case, at second-hand, from a 
 dictionary, but from an imperfect syllabic grasp of what the poet 
 had actually heard. There is a copy of the production with the 
 language revised throughout, probably on some hint from a friend, 
 who knew better, although Tennyson was by no means open to 
 conviction under such circumstances. 
 
 The Arthur series seems to have no claim to a station in
 
 TENNYSON 93 
 
 literature (if we except the splendid fragment in the Miscellaneous 
 Poems), superior to that enjoyed by the old metrical romances, 
 which Tennyson (consciously or otherwise) assimilated, with this 
 disadvantage on the laureate's side, that his compositions want 
 altogether the quasi-historical interest, the philological value, and 
 the rich contemporary colouring, to which age has lent a character 
 and worth of their own. It can hardly be said that any of these 
 features gain in a modern paraphrase, however elegant and faithful. 
 What, I ask, would the newspapers have said to these eii'orts of 
 the modern muse, if they had appeared with a different name or 
 with no name at all ? The Arthur group was of course facihtated 
 by the presence of a readily utilizable nucleus or foundation. The 
 first idea of a wheel would have been more difficult than it perhaps 
 proved, had it not been suggested by the horizontal section of a 
 felled tree. These poems are planned on too large a scale, and 
 are scarcely more poetical or original than Macaulay's " History 
 of England." They constitute an indifferent version of the old 
 copies with a sad amount at once of dilution and dilation. Some of 
 the mythological works of William Morris, which are merely polished 
 narrations in the metrical form, were prompted by the prior labours 
 of Tennyson. But in both instances there is a prosaic and prolix 
 amplification of an already mythical and anachronistic account. 
 The prototypes of Tennyson and Morris transferred to the primitive 
 and barbarous period of their dramatis personce the manners and 
 appointments of their own ; so that the nineteenth century super- 
 structure on the fourteenth or fifteenth century fiction may be 
 pronounced fairly unauthentic and signally hybrid. 
 
 In the " Brook," rich enough in beauties and not deficient in 
 blemishes, the very opening lines seem to manifest the force of 
 antithesis, in the friend's contempt for cash-^the auri sacra fames 
 so strongly present in the poet ; and I might, taking them out of 
 their setting, apply to Tennyson the lines meant to apply to 
 another : — 
 
 "For lucky rliymes to him Avere scrip and share, 
 And mellow metres more than cent for cent." 
 
 We come across the same possibly insensible emanation or 
 reflection from the writer's own very worldl}^ nature in '' Maud " 
 more than once — that composition which, like " In Memoriam," 
 betrays in many places its casual compilation and not always too
 
 94 TENNYSON 
 
 careful or skilful reduction into form and sequence. The numbered 
 divisions of the poem are almost superfluous ; it is a string of 
 rambling, inconsequent, and sometimes almost hysterical rhap- 
 sodies eidogistic and denunciatory by turn, and descending to the 
 most level commonplace on one page, rising to true poetical 
 sublimity in the next. A piece of strange, irritating patchwork. 
 Much of the versification is deplorable — mere sing-song. 0, that 
 it had been infinitely briefer ! 
 
 Some of the allusions of a bitter and abusive character mav 
 be referrible to incidents in the author's youthful career. This 
 singular production resembles " Locksley Hall " in its mixture of 
 beautiful suggestion, insincere sestheticism, and trite convention- 
 ality. It was probably fortunate for their families that the authors 
 of " Maud " and of " Love is Enough " were practical men of 
 business ; but the discovery prejudices the illusion. Shakespear, 
 it is true, had an eye to the commercial side ; but such of his 
 lyrical productions as are of a sentimental or passionate cast belong 
 to the period of his youth. A man of letters or an artist may make 
 money by his works, as Mr. Buskin and Mr. Swinburne have, 
 without being a Tennyson or a Morris. Mr. Ruskin represented 
 the chivalry of literature ; he was a better Arthur than a hundred 
 Arthur Hallams. Tennyson and Morris betrayed a cold and 
 calculating pharisaism veneered with a specious and stately 
 phraseology. The latter was a free agent in religious matters and 
 allusions ; and Byron shook himself loose from all social and con- 
 ventional restraints. In Tennyson one observes in his attitude 
 toward theology a timid or cowardly compliance, and one meets 
 with lines as near to absolute nonsense as could be desired. The 
 vein of thought in " Maud " reappears in the " Talking Oak," in 
 the Hues beginning — 
 
 "All niglit have the roses heard" — 
 
 and it is a phase of the notion one naturally gets, but does not 
 always, is seldom able, to put into verse, more especially such 
 verse, when one is in a forest, and beholds veterans, which might 
 have had some Druid to their planter, or on which the eyes of 
 King Alfred might have fallen. 
 
 We perceive a curious illustration of the artifices of hterary 
 workmanship in the poem entitled " Godiva," where a sort of pro- 
 logue might lead the too confiding or ingenuous reader to suppose
 
 TENNYSON 95 
 
 that the whole piece was the product of a reverie on Coventry 
 bridge. The meaning and the fact must be understood, of course, 
 to be that the idea of composing a version of the legend occurred 
 to the great -writer under the circumstances described, and that 
 he subsequently shaped and completed the work at home — a work, 
 such as it is, interspersed with rich imagery, but not free from 
 deplorable shortcomings, which, had a friendly eye detected, ought 
 to have been removed. It breathes the air of a youthful effort. 
 What author of hke rank would have committed the error in 
 taste of repeating in two successive places, " clothed on with 
 chastity," and apart from a few characteristic touches of style, 
 the whole is less poetical than many a passage in Holinshed and 
 Fox, where the text merely renders historical episodes with hteral 
 simplicity, and rehes for efiect on the inherent interest or beauty 
 of the narrative. 
 
 The " Godiva " piece surely exemplifies one of the writer's 
 less happy methods, in importing, as he did also in the " Morte 
 d' Arthur " fragment, into serious poetical theses the lax, almost 
 impertinent, familiarity tolerable only in vers de sociM. Its pre- 
 tence to spontaneous inspiration may be read side by side ^^dth 
 the story of the line in some poem, which cost seventeen pipes. 
 And let me ask, what sort of a place did Tennyson imagine 
 Mercian Coventry to be ? 
 
 A great intellectual artist, carrying to exceptional perfection 
 certain gifts, Tennyson was a close and affectionate student of 
 Nature, and a happy realizer of her beauties on paper. He has 
 depicted for us with laborious minuteness and in language generally 
 correct and generally melodious the wonders of mountain and 
 valley, of the brook and the waterfall, of the combe and the 
 meadow, and, as in the processes of ordinary thought, has spell- 
 bound us with the profundity and delicacy of his insight. Many 
 others have as perfectly comprehended these mysteries. Many 
 others before him excelled the poet in their famiharity with 
 botanical and other kindred sciences ; but no one ever in an equal 
 measure united with the knowledge of the country and its char- 
 acteristics the power of clothing his conception in a diction so 
 graceful, so obviously appropriate, so chaste and so fresh. At 
 the same time, we are not long enabled, in reading this author,' 
 to forget that he neither claims nor bears comparison with our 
 common rural singers ; his lordship strikes one as a condescending
 
 96 TENNYSON 
 
 observer of Nature rather than as a worshipper ; and it is difficult 
 to turn over a page without discovering or being reminded that, 
 if we are not in communion with a peer of the realm, we are so at 
 least with a gentleman of position and fortune. Even when he 
 penned the " Lord of Burleigh," a poor sort of performance, and 
 perhaps the very poorest version of the story we have, he made 
 the landscape-painter a foil to the great and rich aristocrat ; he 
 might as well have feigned him a strolling bard and musician ; 
 his painter was surely a designer of tavern-signs, in whom the 
 village maiden saw only her equal. 
 
 Tennyson did not constitute any exception to the general rule 
 that sequels are unfortunate. Look at " Locksley Hall " and its 
 didactic tag, and at the " May Queen " and the sorry appendix to 
 it ! — two masterpieces spoiled by being thus overweighted. But 
 " Locksley Hall " more emphatically falls within the category of 
 a piece unskilfully dilated beyond the demand of the subject and 
 the patience of the reader, and abounds with false sentimentahty, 
 as it does (in the earlier portion) with beauties peculiarly Tenny- 
 sonian. At the same time, in the second couplet, the sense is to 
 my unassisted apprehension absolutely unintelligible. Perhaps, if 
 Tennyson had been begged to explain, he would have said, as 
 Browning said under similar circumstances, that he knew what 
 he meant when he wrote the lines, but had forgotten. 
 
 The " airy fairy Lilian " of the Poems is said to have been 
 Tennyson's earliest flame. She married a clergyman, and the 
 future peer visited at the house. He (the husband) had a 
 laboratory or workshop in the garden, and they tell us that her 
 old lover sat there with her, and that there he composed parts of 
 " In Memoriam." This tale is not very credible, at least in the 
 latter part, although, as the poem was \vritten in detached portions 
 at intervals, the rough draft of a stanza or a section might have 
 been set down anywhere ; and it is not difficult for a person con- 
 versant with the art of hterary composition to detect vestiges of 
 this piecemeal structure in occasional failures of sequence and 
 occasional tendencies to repetition. 
 
 The rather mysterious, bitter, and tiresome copy of verses on 
 " Lady Clara Vere de Vere " have a curious light cast on them by 
 a letter written to Colquhoun from Cheltenham in 1S48, in wdiich 
 the poet informs him that he had been spending three months 
 under the roof of Sir Vere de Vere. Did Sir Vere's guest meet
 
 TENNYSON 97 
 
 with a rebuff at the hands of a daughter of the house, that he 
 fulminated this mediocre diatribe on the lady ? The improprieties 
 of diction and the bathos in sentiment are not absent. The last 
 lines of the first and penultimate stanzas are only two examples. 
 The descendant of " a hundred earls " (was there ever such a 
 person ?) should not be made to behave Hke country Madge ; but 
 she was apparently what a prose author would have described as 
 the daughter of Sir Vere de Vere. 
 
 Tennyson was unquestionably a man of real and exalted genius, 
 ■with almost unsurpassed subtlety of thought and metaphysical 
 perception. The superb ideas and images interspersed, more 
 particularly in the lyrics of the middle period, inspire a generous, 
 but vain desire of emulation. One admires and despairs. But he 
 seems to have been almost maternally sensitive and jealous in the 
 preservation of the litera scripta, and he has accordingly left behind 
 him a flower-garden choked with weeds and tares, a " Hesperides " 
 as miscellaneous and unequal as that of Herrick — ^happily a httle 
 more chaste. The world would have conferred as high a rank 
 upon him, had he Hmited or reduced himself to what would have 
 fallen witliin the compass of a single volume. Early success and 
 applause spoiled him, and he refused to profit by the dissentient 
 voice of a wise and kind minority, calHng attention in no measured 
 terms to his faults and foibles. He was not in the unhappy and 
 mitrue position of those men, some of them still our contemporaries, 
 whom the adulation of friends and the support of the press have 
 combined to ruin. Not a syllable was to be parted with ; every 
 scrap must be crowded in. Even fines originally written to com- 
 memorate the New Year 1862-63 were made to do duty in the next 
 edition of " In Memoriam " as a supplementary tribute to the 
 very much over-assessed modern Arthur — the lay-figure, who served 
 Tennyson much as Edward King had served Milton, except that 
 the author of " Lycidas " did not detain his sitter so long. The 
 heroes of elegiac verse are ever beaux ideals. Milton made a 
 stalking horse of a young man, who had accompfished nothing but 
 a copy or two of indifferent academical verses, and Tennyson 
 elevated in a similar manner into a demigod a gentleman whose 
 best title to remembrance seems to be that he was the son of Henry 
 Hallam. The poet probably had under his eyes an anonymous 
 volume of Elegiac Poems privately printed seven years before, 
 and offering truly remarkable points of similarity. 
 
 G
 
 98 TENNYSON 
 
 In Keats Shelley was so far more fortunate ; but his poem, 
 again, offends against the law of proportion and propriety laid 
 down by Horace, who was not guiltless, by the way, of setting 
 aside his own precepts. For Shelley's superstructure is far too 
 weighty for his base, or in other words the object of his panegyric 
 and lament is overwhelmed and lost under an avalanche of 
 laboured and fantastic adulation. Milton has a few excellent 
 lines in liis production, but the whole is fatally affected by the 
 lame and undramatic conclusion, which amounts to a ludicrous 
 antichmax. 
 
 The two dedicatory inscriptions to the Queen and the Prince 
 Consort almost enter into the present category. The first is fit, 
 eloquent, graceful. The second is forced, fulsome, unbecoming, 
 ridiculous. But, then, the former is open to the probable objection 
 of plagiarism, as the germ is in a poem of 1842, printed in TaWs 
 Magazine. 
 
 What I presume to disapprove in Tennyson are want of 
 proportion, judgment, and self-restraint. He is just the opposite 
 to Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespear, who do not per- 
 petually thrust their personality before us, and who therefore 
 have augmented it. It is a strange and a disappointing, almost 
 saddening, spectacle to view such prodigal opulence of language, 
 such musical cadence, such rare insight, such felicity of phrase, 
 on the one hand : and on the other, not merely passages disfigured 
 by all sorts of crudities, but entire poems unworthy of a writer 
 even of moderate pretensions. The bold, broad touches of a 
 master are allowable both in poetry and painting ; but here we 
 have to recognize a cynical indifference to opinion or a parent's 
 blindness to the deformities of his offspring. Who but such an 
 one — such a ruined child of the Muses and the public could have 
 written such rubbish as is quoted by Phihp Smith as a motto to 
 his " Ancient History " — 
 
 " Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
 And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns I ! ! " 
 
 I apprehend that Messrs. Bavins and Maevius would have found it 
 difl&cult to surpass this egregious couplet. It is pitiable, one may 
 be allowed to repeat, that the poet should not have passed his 
 pen in 1878, while it could be done, through hundreds of such.
 
 TENNYSON 99 
 
 passages. It is evident that, if friends, as we have heard, 
 recommended a com'se of this kind, they too often did so 
 unsuccessfully. 
 
 Nevertheless, after all deductions that can be made — allowing 
 for much that is at second-hand and much that is not far from 
 worthless — ^what a treasure we have here, how much to captivate 
 the imagination and engage the heart ! Open where one will the 
 volume which one holds in one's hands, one may almost with 
 certainty count on being brought face to face with some thought, 
 pictiu-e, or image which has delighted us a hundred times, and 
 which will dehght us, one hopes, as many times again. It is a 
 surfeiting banquet of dainties, at which the whole world is a guest. 
 The author has converted the coinage of his brain into an inde- 
 structible freehold, a perpetual fief. What was once his alone is 
 not more his than ours. The bees we rob of their honey : his he 
 brings to us and casts it into our lap. 
 
 To the majority of the public Tennyson, unhke those who dis- 
 tinguish themselves above their contemporaries in Parhament, on 
 the sea, on the battlefield, nay, even in the press and in the lecture- 
 room, was Httle more than an intellectual abstraction and a name, 
 just as his survivor, Mr. Swinburne, is to-day. The latter is con- 
 ventionally incognito. But he possesses in a higher degree the 
 true property of the votes in a less keen eye to the financial side — 
 to the practical aspect of his divine calhng. Tennyson, on the 
 contrary, was a man of business and of the world — something of 
 his own Northern Farmer — a duahty, as we find that Shakespear 
 was. The shrewd hunger for gold held him firmly ; his brain was 
 a mint of drachmas ; and therein lay for the noble poet much of 
 its value. He was no believer in the disinterestedness of genius. 
 Tennyson in his personal character reminds us of Bulwer-Lytton. 
 We remark in both the incongruity between the man and the 
 writer. The poetical flights in the late laureate were artificial, 
 not spontaneous emanations from his nature. They were the 
 fruits of laborious and rich mental incubation and development, 
 and contradicted the author's individuality, which was com- 
 paratively insignificant, though not so completely so as Bulwer 
 Lytton's. 
 
 To generations to come, less acquainted with his mixed per- 
 sonahty and the distance in some ways between the Man and the 
 Poet, Tennyson may and will be a more unqualified hero. Even
 
 100 TENNYSON 
 
 to ourselves, who stood at his side, he was, as a painter of natural 
 beauties and objects, hardly surpassable ; but we were too close 
 to him, we saw too much of his daily life and speech, to put faith 
 in him as an exponent of heroic and sublime emotions. It 
 seemed or seems to us mere theatrical declamation, not the direct 
 echo of a chivalrous mind.
 
 MISTER JOSEPH MILLER 
 
 The name wliich stands at the head of the present short paper 
 recalls an honest, grave, respectable, taciturn English comedian, 
 in hat and wig of the period : a performer who trod the boards 
 of Drury heavily, in Colley Gibber's day, with a proper sense of 
 the sobrieties and gravities of broad comic hfe. 
 
 The want of family papers is one to be lamented in the conduct 
 of many biographical inquiries of the highest moment, and perhaps 
 no more striking instance could be found of the loss posterity 
 has suffered under this head than the case of the late Mr. Joseph 
 Miller. The materials for his biography are so distressingly shght, 
 that Miller hves for us only in a few stragghng and insulated 
 facts. We know nearly as little of him as Mr. Steevens knew of 
 Wilham Shakespear, of Stratford-on-Avon. We have plays by 
 Mr. Shakespear, while by Mr. Miller we have but playbills. There 
 are men notorious for never having made a joke themselves, nor 
 seen the point of another man's joke, in their Hves. Mr. Miller's 
 celebrity sprang from this cause. A man of social habits, fond 
 of company, of tobacco, and of good cheer, nevertheless he seldom 
 spoke, and never laughed. His hterary abiUties pointed to zero ; 
 for he could neither read nor write, and he learned the parts with 
 which he adorned the stage orally, liis wife proving herself the 
 better half by reading them to him. Yet he held a good place 
 among such sterhng theatrical geniuses of the pre-Garrick school 
 as Barton Booth, Wilkes, Dogget, Gibber, Norris, Penkethman, 
 Spiller, and others, immortaUsed in the Tatler and Spectator, and 
 while Sir Richard Steele was one of the royal patentees. He 
 filled with applause the parts of Glodpole in the " Amorous Widow," 
 and Ben in " Love for Love." In the " King and the Miller of 
 Mansfield," the miller was appropriately performed by Mr. Miller. 
 But his supreme effort was Trim in Steele's " Funeeal ; or. Grief 
 a la Mode." 
 
 In the year 1738, and in the month of August, Mr. Miller died,
 
 102 MISTER JOSEPH MILLER 
 
 leaving a widow. The question was, what was to become of her ? 
 Such questions will arise when tangible estate dies with the owner. 
 But one should have added, that Miller, plus the widow, died 
 seised of something else, something, as it happily turned out, more 
 negociable, to wit — a name. 
 
 This was an epoch when the public had a sweet tooth for dead 
 players' jokes. Consequently, dead players' jokes were the only 
 articles of this special description worth paper and print ; singular 
 as it may appear, no man, unless perchance he was a dead player, 
 joked in those days. If we might take certain title-pages upon 
 trust, these dead players were a marvellously mercurial race, 
 making, during their whole lives' time, hoards of the primest fun, 
 and not letting a soul have the faintest inkhng of it until they 
 were fairly under ground. Of these jest-books none was so popular 
 as " Spiller's Jests," and " Penkethman's Jests." 
 
 What was mortal of Mr. Miller had been placed under a stone 
 in St. Clement's Churchyard, Portugal Street. I proceed with 
 the story of his less perishable part — ^his Name. 
 
 There was then estabUshed in Dogwell Court, Whitefriars, 
 a bookseller and stationer, named Read ; a person of a shrewd 
 and speculative turn of mind. Mr. Read was a pushing man, 
 most valuable to literary gentlefolks-errant who were in want of 
 occasional jobs, or in possession, by some rare piece of good fortune, 
 of an idea calculated to put small sums of money into their own 
 pockets, and large sums into Mr. Read's. 
 
 Whether Mr. Read himself originated the notion that there 
 was a good deal in Mr. Miller's name quasi Dead Player, and spake 
 on the subject to a gentleman whom he believed able to assist 
 him ; or whether it was the gentleman who took the bold initiative, 
 is not now ascertainable. At any rate, enter Mr. Mottley. Mr. 
 Mottley had seen better days, and was just then seeing very bad 
 ones. It had lately gone worse and worse with him. 
 
 Mr. John Mottley — this was no nom de flume — ^was only son 
 and heir of John Mottley, lieutenant-colonel in the service of His 
 Sacred Majesty King James II., and afterward commandant of 
 a regiment in that of the Most Christian monarch, Louis XIV., 
 recommended for the post by His Sacred Majesty King James, 
 who had retired from business to St. Germains, and referred persons 
 applying for situations elsewhere. The colonel was unlucky 
 enough to be killed in 1706 at the battle of Turin. He had known
 
 MISTER JOSEPH MILLER 103 
 
 many masters, and among them the Czar Peter of Russia, of 
 whom, as well as of Catherine I., we have a biography from the 
 pen of his son. 
 
 Young Mottley does not seem, at any period of his life, to have 
 lain under particularly weighty obligations to his father, the 
 favourite of at least two kings. His mother was no Jacobite, 
 and from the mother's friends, the Guises and Lord Howe, he 
 derived whatever means of support he ever had, independently 
 of literature. His father was a spendthrift, and he did not very 
 much care whether it was his own money he squandered, or some- 
 body else's. His mother, a Guise by birth, had a fortune of her 
 own, and her father at his death left her son, Mr. Read's casual 
 acquaintance, a second. The colonel all but dissipated the one, 
 and Mrs. Mottley' s debts swallowed up the other. Still young 
 John had friends, who kept him aUve and tolerably well for several 
 years on two splendid promises and one small place in the Excise. 
 
 In 1720, Mr. Mottley had resigned his emoluments in the 
 Excise, on being appointed by Sir Robert Walpole an officer in 
 the Exchequer. He thought he had found smooth water at last. 
 But even when Mr. Mottley had become entitled to draw no more 
 than three days' pay, came the Right Honourable Sir Robert 
 Walpole' s comphments to him, and was exceedingly sorry he 
 should only just have recollected that the place was bespoken 
 for Mr. Somebody Else ! It did not occur to the right honour- 
 able gentleman that his honour was in any way concerned in 
 providing other employment for Mottley. Do not some of us 
 recollect how a later right honourable comedian — Lord Palmerston — 
 played a somewhat similar trick on the poet Close ? 
 
 We so far await the means of writing the biography in our 
 hands between 1720 and 1729 ; similar lacunce occur in the records 
 of other men's careers ; but it is to be divined that Mottley found 
 some moyen de parvenir, and that he on reflection forgave Walpole, 
 for in 1729 he figures as the writer of a copy of verses addressed 
 to that statesman on the appointment of a Regency. From 1734 
 to 1744 he earned more or less from casual literary commissions, 
 including a " Survey of London and Westminster," which he thought 
 fit, or was advised, to put forward as the work of Robert Sey- 
 mour ; and he wrote plays, which were not unsuccessful. Of four 
 or so he was the unassisted author, and he was concerned in others. 
 He sold his talents to the booksellers trade-price ; much that he
 
 104 MISTER JOSEPH MILLER 
 
 did is as the lost labours of Menander or Chrysippus. He became 
 acquainted with strange associates. His was soon among the 
 famihar faces at the cofiee-houses and other places of entertain- 
 ment resorted to by the wits and the literati of all grades. 
 
 It seemed as if he was to be haunted by that bad genius of 
 his, ill-luck, to his life's end. He had no sooner got into a fair 
 connection with the theatres, than the gout took the use of his 
 right hand away, and thenceforth he was a confirmed valetudinarian. 
 He was in this predicament, crippled and half bedridden, when 
 one day, in 1739, quite early, Mr. Read, of Dogwell Court, called 
 on him touching a little hterary business. It was thought that 
 it would be a profitable test to gather together all the good things 
 about town, put them into a shilling book, and make the late 
 Joe Miller — the old London Magazine signalized him as " Mr. 
 Joseph Miller, a celebrated comedian " — its foster-father. Mottley 
 would have been a name of names for the title-page, one would 
 have fancied ; but Mr. Read held differently. Mottley was not 
 a dead player, and Miller was, and the generous editor even sank 
 his own personality, as we are going to see, that there might be 
 no mistake. People, who knew anything, knew that the late 
 Mr. Miller was one of the dullest dogs that ever sipped ale out 
 of a black-jack ; and when they saw with their own bodily eyes 
 " Joe Miller's Jests " on every stall, what a merry sensation there 
 would be in all the old actor's old haunts about Drury Lane, 
 and what a stir among the mighty butchers of Clare Market, who 
 would spare a shilling, every butcher of them, to see what it 
 could all mean. 
 
 Anyhow, it was, under the truly exceptional circumstances, 
 a bouncing shilling's worth, albeit the excellent typographer had 
 known what it was to give a good deal more for the money — nay, 
 about half as much for a penny — and that the " Tragedy of the 
 Lady Jane Grey," too. But let this pass. Mr. Read, no doubt, 
 cleared a very handsome profit out of his solid, uncircumcised 
 twelvepence — and let us hope that he did not forget the widow. 
 Let us draw the curtain : — 
 
 " Joe Miller's Jests ; or, The Wit's Vade-Mecum. Being a 
 Collection of the Most Brilliant Jests ; the Politest Repartees ; 
 the most Elegant Bon-Mots, and most pleasant short Stories in 
 the English Language. First carefully collected in the Company, 
 and many of them transcribed from the Mouth of the Facetious
 
 MISTER JOSEPH MILLER 105 
 
 Gentleman whose Name they bear ; and now set forth and 
 pubHshed by his lamentable friend and former companion, Elijah 
 Jenkins, Esq. Most Humbly Inscribed to those Choice Spirits 
 of the Age, Captain Bodens, Mr. Alexander Pope, Mr. Professor 
 Lacy, Mr. Orator Henley, and Job Baker, the Kettle-Drummer. 
 London : Printed and Sold by T. Read, in Dogwell Court, White 
 Fryars, Fleet Street, mdccxxxix. (Price One Shilling.) " 
 
 So there was laughter all round in the Jubilee Year 1739, 
 when " Joe Miller's Jests " came from Mr. T. Read's Printing 
 and Publishing Office. The pubhc laughed, as those laugh who 
 love good jokes, brimming measure ; and Mr. T. Read laughed, 
 as those laugh who win. For, in the soberest seriousness, I take 
 it that he went shares with Mottley and the widow much in the 
 same manner as the Hon in the fable goes shares with the ass. 
 
 The jokes about town in that immediate period embraced 
 an extraordinarily wide range, and the pseudo-Jenkins collection 
 abounds in illustrations of those minuter traits of character, which 
 lend us, coming afterward, such an insight into the men and the 
 time. Here we are presented with the choicest memorabilia 
 possible concerning King Charles II., of ever- worshipful remem- 
 brance ; Mr. Gun Jones ; Sir Richard Steele ; the Duchess of 
 
 Portsmouth ; a Country Clergyman ; Mrs. C m ; Sir Wilham 
 
 Davenant ; Ben Jonson ; two Free-thinking Authors ; A Very 
 Modest Young Gentleman of the County of Tipperary ; Lord R. ; 
 Tom Burnet ; Henry IV. of France ; the Emperor Tiberius, and 
 others too numerous to rehearse. 
 
 But — and this has been hitherto a secret among these gems 
 of wit and humour — there crept in, unawares, two items which 
 breathe an abnormally Christian and reflective spirit, and which 
 we learn, from sources inaccessible to the editor of 1739, were 
 Mr. MiUer's own composition. We must go to the works of some 
 men, if we wish to understand their true dispositions and tempera- 
 ments. Let us, for this purpose, go to the works of Mr. Miller 
 — luminous, though not voluminous. 
 
 " Joe Miller, sitting one day in the window of the Sun Tavern, 
 in Clare Street, a fishwoman and her maid passing by, the woman 
 said, ' Buy my soles, buy my maids ! ' ' Ah, you wicked old 
 creature ! ' said honest Joe. ' What ! Are you not content to 
 sell your own soul, but you would sell your maid's too ? ' " 
 
 This concludes the Moral Works of Mr. Miller. The philo-
 
 io6 MISTER JOSEPH MILLER 
 
 sophical works now commence, and into these the sentimental 
 element has manifestly been infused. 
 
 " It is certainly the most transcendent pleasm'e to be agree- 
 ably surprised with the confession of love from an adored mistress. 
 A young gentleman, after a very great misfortune, came to his 
 mistress, and told her he was reduced even to the want of five 
 guineas. To which she replied, ' I am glad of it, with all my 
 heart.' ' Are you so, madam ? ' adds he, suspecting her constancy ; 
 ' pray, why so ? ' ' Because,' said she, ' I can furnish you with 
 five thousand ! ' " 
 
 This ends the Pliilosophical and Sentimental Works of Mr. 
 Miller, heretofore (in common with the former) undiscerningly 
 printed with all the editions of the book vulgarly denominated 
 " Joe Miller's Jests." 
 
 As to Mr. Mottley, the reduced gentleman and disappointed 
 candidate for Government patronage, the gout let him live long 
 enough to see many and many an impression of " Joe Miller's 
 Jests " pass from the bookseller's counter to the always-rightly- 
 appreciating public. He kept alive (principally between blankets) 
 till the year of " Joe Miller's Jests " — of the Millerian Hegira — 
 eleven. In 1750, death compassionately beckoned him away. 
 The hand of the harvestman was quickly cold, and almost as 
 quickly his name sank out of recollection. Even the generation 
 of which he was one forgot him perhaps, notwithstanding the 
 place accorded to him in some of the dictionaries of the time, 
 and among the memoirs which supplement Winchope's tragedy of 
 " Scanderbeg " ; and his present and future claim to notice rests 
 upon liis intimate identification with one of the most permanently 
 popular Names in the English language.
 
 XI 
 
 ITALY AND ENGLAND FORMERLY 
 
 It is a curious, though by no means an isolated, example of 
 Shakespear's disregard of the unities that, in " Richard II.," he 
 makes the sentiments which prevailed in his own day respecting 
 Italy and the Italians, applicable to the reign and times of Richard. 
 This transplantation of the manners and tone of one age to another 
 age demands a master's hand ; but the truth is that Shakespear 
 and his fellows used no art to disguise an impropriety which they 
 did not appreciate. 
 
 It strikes us as a grave anachronism, when we see a dramatist 
 give a library, including Ehzabethan literature, to a " person of 
 the play," who died fifty years before the invention of printing ; 
 and this is done in 1600 in " The Life and Death of Sir John Old- 
 castle," and Shakespear himself similarly sins, where he makes 
 Jack Cade charge Lord Say in " Henry VI." with the introduction 
 of typography and a paper-mill. In an analogous way, Tintoretto, 
 in his " Marriage at Cana," and Tiepolo, in the fresco of " Antony 
 and Cleopatra at the Banquet," introduce the Venetian archi- 
 tecture and other accessories of their own age. These incon- 
 gruities are numberless, simply because they were unrecognised. 
 In a second and earlier fresco by Paolo Veronese, which seems 
 to be known as " Apollo and Venus," there is no refinement or 
 dehcacy proper to the subject. You see merely a naked Venetian 
 fisherman or gondolier, his wife and their child, posed for the 
 occasion. It is much the same with his " Olympus." In most 
 of the " Books of Hours " and other illustrated rituals we are 
 often left to judge the date of the MS. from the costume given 
 to the figures, which is invariably that of the period of composi- 
 tion. I have before me one, for instance, in which Gohah is repre- 
 sented in the chain armour of the thirteenth century, and a second, 
 where a queen of France has lent her features to impersonate the 
 Virgin. The writers on costume know what a rich source of profit 
 
 in this direction this treatment has been. Every gallery in Europe 
 
 107
 
 io8 ITALY AND ENGLAND FORMERLY 
 
 exhibits illustrations of its rise, growth, and popularity. The 
 greatest artists employed without scruple of offence local types, 
 costume, and scenery in the manipulation of ideal studies ; and 
 the early dramatist of the Oldcastle story pm'sued a similar course. 
 
 It was the same with numismatic monuments. In a gold 
 Savoyard coin of the seventeenth century the queen on one side 
 and the Virgin on the other wear the same head-gear. 
 
 Our Elizabethan ancestors were vehemently upbraided for 
 their servile and even afish cultivation of Italian fashions and 
 foreign effeminacies. Italy was our great forestaller. 
 
 The most ancient intercourse between these Islands and the 
 Italian peninsula, which is largely elucidated by the vast assem- 
 blage of original documents (the prodigious Sanuto Diaries in- 
 clusive) at the Frari, was not of a mutually gratifying description. 
 The strangers, who were Romans in those days, besides speaking 
 a language which our British forefathers did not understand, 
 and consequently did not value very highly, brought with them 
 some special ideas, of which the advantage seemed to be mostly 
 on one side. 
 
 From the time at which the Roman conquerors left Britain 
 for good, to the next ghmpse of history which we obtain, it is 
 a wide jump ; and many changes (for the better necessarily) had 
 taken place on our side of the Channel meanwhile. But not till 
 the Saxon power was waxing faint, and the Normans were on 
 the eve of descending upon our shores, do we discern a trace of 
 Italy in England. Florence laid, to the best of our knowledge, 
 the first stone of what was to become, and to remain for centuries, 
 a strong and flourishing edifice. 
 
 The Gherardini of Florence, who yet hold their place among 
 the Italian aristocracy, supplied, so far back as the reign of the 
 Confessor, the creator of the noble and long line of Fitzgerald. 
 Otto Degli Gherardini, or " Dominus Otto," came over to this 
 country in or about 1057, and acquired for transmission to his 
 heir thirty-four lordships in eight Enghsh counties. In 1078, 
 Walter Fitz Otto, his son, was Castellan of Windsor and Warden 
 of all the forest land adjacent. He seems to have added to the 
 wealth and influence enjoyed by Dominus Otto, and he took to 
 wife a Welsh lady, Gladws, whose name sounds more musical to 
 modern ears than the Prince her father's. 
 
 The deahngs between Italy and ourselves in ancient times
 
 ITALY AND ENGLAND FORMERLY 109 
 
 were cliiefly, as may be supposed, maritime and commercial. But 
 nearer to us than the ItaUans lay the French ; and France, though 
 not so essentially a mercantile country as Italy, had opened up 
 a regular trade with England, long before the Lombards began 
 to frequent our harbours and seaports. The Venetians, if not 
 the Genoese, had estabhshed emporia in parts of France as early 
 as the tenth century, and the probability seems to be that, until 
 their relations with us became systematic and immediate, France 
 was the source from which we received what the Italian traders 
 had to offer us in the way of produce and manufacture. 
 
 We learn that Enghsh travellers to Italy, even so late as the 
 reign of Henry VII. (1485-1509), proceeded by Boulogne, St. Denis, 
 and Paris : thence to Lyons by stages, and so into Italy, and 
 through the dukedom, of Milan to Rome, if Rome happened to 
 be the destination. 
 
 The Genoese transports and galleys were largely employed 
 by our Plantagenet kings as vehicles of conveyance from point 
 to point within their dominions, and in the accounts of royal 
 expenditure the items under this head are of freqaent occurrence 
 and serious amount. The Genoese, Florentines, and Venetians 
 found us excellent customers for every species of commodity. 
 
 There is a warrant, for instance, by Henry VI., in the 26th 
 year of his reign, for the payment of various moneys, value received ; 
 and this is an average specimen : " Also we will and charge you 
 [the treasurer of the Exchequer] that of the above sums of money, 
 ye do pay unto Perceval Merchezano, merchant of Genoa, £12 13s. 4d. 
 for 19 yards of purple damask, price the yard 13s. 4d., on our 
 behalf, bought of him by the reverend father in God our right 
 trusty and well-beloved, Adam, Bishop of Chichester." A curious 
 illustration of manners for the year of grace 1447 ! But indeed 
 every class of persons seems to have made it their business to bring 
 acceptable articles under the notice of royal and noble individuals. 
 In the Privy Purse expenses of Ehzabeth of York, under 1502, 
 there is an entry of forty-five shilUngs as paid to Friar Hercules 
 for a pound and a half of Venice gold at thirty shillings per pound. 
 
 During the reigns of Henry V. and Henry VI., the Italians 
 enjoyed great favour ; but we must not forget that they were 
 called upon to pay a pretty exorbitant price for the advantages 
 which they asked and had. The Enghsh Government probably 
 considered that there was no such great harm in levying toll upon
 
 no ITALY AND ENGLAND FORMERLY 
 
 these foreigners, since they came to our shores for the sole purpose 
 of making what they could out of us, by buying and bartering, 
 fetching and carrying, and being witliin easy call, whenever a 
 Uttle money happened to be needed in a hurry. Sometimes, 
 notwithstanding, these fellows pxoved useful in other ways, and 
 could turn their hand to a real bit of hard and ticklish work. The 
 Duke of Bedford was helped in 141 6 by the Genoese to blockade 
 Harfleur. 
 
 Long before that, however, the French and Scotish wars of 
 Edward IIL had been mainly supported by the Italians resident 
 in London who, from time to time, advanced the King the sums 
 which he required for liis extraordinary disbursements, and for 
 which he was reluctant to apply to Parliament. This money 
 was, of course, lent on the security of royal letters, guaranteeing 
 its restitution ; but scarcely any of it found its way back to the 
 coffers of the deluded and impoverished foreigners. To the 
 Florentine Company alone Edward became a debtor to the extent 
 of upward of £50,000, and after many fruitless efforts to obtain 
 redress the association was reduced to bankruptcy and the verge 
 of pauperism. The English kings from Edward I. also obliged 
 with their attentions the merchants of Lucca and Sienna. These 
 financial transactions were naturally productive of trouble and 
 friction, as new loans could not be negociated at least without 
 payments on account of the former advances, and the Crown 
 was consequently laid under the necessity of approaching Parlia- 
 ment for aids, or taxing the people on its own initiative as a means 
 of defraying the cost of those foohsh wars. 
 
 A sufficiently remarkable document was drawn up by a country- 
 man of our own, whose name does not transpire, in 1449, having 
 for its more- immediate object the demonstration of the best 
 method of preserving and securing the Enghsh possessions in 
 Normandy and France. I must extract one paragraph from this 
 paper, where the anonymous writer alludes to the Italians, and 
 institutes what almost reads like a disparaging comparison between 
 his own country and the Italian States : — 
 
 " Likewise," he observes, as a sequel to what has preceded, 
 " we must not be weary of emulating other nations in good arts. 
 We know well enough what outlay the Venetians, the Genoese, 
 the Milanese, and other peoples not comparable to the kingdom 
 of England, support year by year, in order that they may be iiL
 
 ITALY AND ENGLAND FORMERLY iii 
 
 a position to protect themselves by force of arms, and may not 
 retrograde through their luxurious indulgences." 
 
 In the first year of Richard III. (1483), an Act passed directing 
 " in what sort Italian merchants may sell merchandizes," and 
 comprehending in its provisions " several restraints of aliens." 
 The substance of this statute was that these aliens brought cloth 
 and other articles to this country, and sold them not only in gross, 
 as wholesale dealers, but in retail also, and so excluded and injured 
 native merchants ; and again, that their mode of business was 
 not " good for trade " (in our phrase), seeing that they did not 
 lay out the money they made in the country, but took it away 
 with them, " all to their great profit," as the Act rehearses. They 
 had contrived various other ways of playing into each others' 
 hands, and made altogether too good a thing of it, perhaps, to 
 be pleasant to the law-givers and shopkeepers of four hundred 
 years ago. 
 
 The queen of Henry VII. had a Genoese physician attendant 
 upon her, on the strength of a belief, no doubt, in his superior 
 skill and experience, as even so late as Ehzabeth's time the 
 standard of medical knowledge in England was exceedingly low. 
 The Portuguese ambassador to England, in 150 1, writing to his 
 sovereign, repeats what he had heard from an apothecary, whose 
 informant was this same " fisico Genoes," to the effect that Her 
 Majesty was supposed (erroneously) to be in an interesting situa- 
 tion. This was rather a roundabout mode of learning the fact, 
 if it had been one. 
 
 An Itahan of wealth and rank paid a visit to this country in 
 the reign of Henry VII., and wrote down his impressions of England 
 and the Enghsh, as they were in the year 1500. He saw London 
 itself and several of the principal county towns, including Oxford, 
 and he also found his way over the border, and has told us what 
 he thought of the Scots. 
 
 I cannot follow the narrator through his not uninteresting 
 account of what he observed, and his conclusions upon various 
 matters ; nor can I subscribe quite implicitly to all his opinions 
 and statements, as, for example, where he advances the rather 
 too unquahfied assertion that Wales had recovered her indepen- 
 dence in consequence of Henry VII. being a Welshman. 
 
 An educated and intelhgent Spaniard, who visited Scotland 
 in the last years of the fifteenth century, speaking of the accom-
 
 112 ITALY AND ENGLAND FORMERLY 
 
 plishments of James IV. as a linguist, observes : — " The King 
 speaks besides the language of the savages, who live in some parts 
 of Scotland and on the Islands. It is as different from Scotish 
 as Biscayan is from CastiUan." These savages spoke the Celtic. 
 We call them the Highlanders and Islanders. 
 
 The gentleman of whom we spoke before hkewise wishes us 
 to believe that ladies of distinction {dame di onure) were in the 
 habit of going to the tavern, and drinking pubhcly, when " they 
 meant to drink a good deal," and that " there is no small inn- 
 keeper, however poor and humble he may be, who does not serve 
 his table with silver dishes and drinking cups." But we cordially 
 go with liim, when he speaks of the antipathy of the English to 
 foreigners. He makes, as may be very well supposed, strange 
 havoc of our customs, institutions, and names ; but he was very 
 powerfully and on the whole favourably impressed by the aspect 
 of the country and government. Nor does he forget to repeat 
 what he had heard from some one about the " unicorns' horns 
 of unusual size," which they kept in some of the monasteries ! 
 
 But it was not in commerce and war only, that we and Italians 
 trafficked together in olden time. There was a third and a higher 
 relationsliip, in which the obhgation was more one-sided. Italy, 
 the cradle of learning, and nursery of the pohte and hberal arts, 
 attracted to it, from the earliest period of which we possess any 
 trustworthy record, the most refined and cultivated spirits from 
 every corner of Europe. England cannot perhaps be said to have 
 been in a very great hurry to reap the beneficial fruits which the 
 regeneration of letters and of the ancient philosophy promised 
 to yield to the world ; but here was a vast social revolution im- 
 pending, of which the seeds had been sown by the Gothic invaders 
 and occupiers of Europe in an era of universal darkness ; and 
 its onward progress defied human control ; and it was to be, 
 whether Englishmen chose or not, that, from the age of Chaucer 
 to the age of Shakespear, this civiUzing and elevating influence, 
 of which the foundations were Gothic, should communicate itself 
 to our hterature, our language, our manners, and our tastes. 
 
 Englishmen in Italy were, till a comparatively recent date, 
 infinitely rarer than Itahans in England. We used not to be 
 so exclusively and emphatically a commercial people as we have 
 since become, and we had not the same temptations or induce- 
 ments that we have now to visit the Continent. Probably, even
 
 ITALY AND ENGLAND FORMERLY 113 
 
 in the days of Horace Walpole, no Englishman thought of setting 
 out for Rome or Venice, in the absence of some practical motive, 
 or unless he was a person of distinction and wealth. At the same 
 time the present writer has elsewhere plentifully shown, to what 
 large and constant an extent that grand Adriatic centre received 
 in the course of centuries men and women of British nationality, 
 and became the occasional scene of some dark and sad episode. 
 
 It is an honourable trait in the character of John Tiptoft, 
 the accomplished Earl of Worcester, who was the first to present 
 to his countrymen the " Commentaries " of Caesar and the " De 
 Amicitia " of Cicero in Enghsh clothing, that for some time he 
 occupied a professor's chair in the university of Padua. It was 
 long after his time that an Earl of Arundel and Surrey went to 
 reside in Italy for the sake of educating his two sons at that 
 famous and favourite seminary of learning, and that his wife 
 became involved by accident in the Spanish conspiracy of 1618. 
 
 The biographers of Chaucer appear to have agreed that that 
 great man, when he went to Italy in 1372 " on business," sought 
 out " the learned clerk, Francis Petrarch," from whose own lips 
 he had the tale of " Griselda." Now, Petrarch and the author 
 of the " Decameron " were constantly visiting each other, and 
 on most intimate terms ; and suppose that Giovanni Boccaccio 
 happened to have come over to Arqua just at that very time ! 
 What a meeting ! 
 
 It is a pity that the episode was not recommended to the 
 author of " Dialogues of the Dead " or to Mr. Landor. Some- 
 thing might have been made of it ; but for my own part I confess 
 that I would rather, if possible, have been present in person, to 
 judge for myself how the interview went off, and what kind of 
 talk passed. 
 
 Is it not singular, that Petrarch and Chaucer, two names now 
 almost exclusively associated with letters, should in their own 
 day have been so with public transactions ? And in the case of 
 Dante it was almost the same. Nay, do we not know, that, what- 
 ever else Diirer, Titian, and Rubens may have been, they were 
 at least excellent men of business, and were equally prepared to 
 go on an errand for some prince, or to execute commissions for 
 ,some friend ? 
 
 H
 
 XII 
 
 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 
 
 Bishop Percy was one of the first who sought to instil an appetite 
 and taste for something higher and better than the ephemeral 
 and fugitive growths of the immediate time, for something, at 
 any rate, beyond, if not above, the books damp and warm from 
 the press ; and his is a memory, therefore, which deserves to be 
 respected apart from any exception which may be taken to the 
 man as a literary worker. 
 
 If there is a fault in our present literary tastes it is that they 
 are too current. We are too grossly addicted to the books of the 
 hour. We keep railway time in our reading. If we shut a little 
 steam off occasionally, and allow ourselves to pause at a great 
 author, we hurry on so much the faster afterward to make up 
 for lost minutes. Writers have to make it part of their business 
 to study the digestive question. They find it to be of no use to 
 send in encyclopaedias, metaphysics in quarto, or any other heavy 
 goods on approbation, for these are incapable of being swallowed 
 whole. There is no chance for the good old solid ware our dear 
 ancestors so loved, raw and uncoloured. In our existing state of 
 mind we would rather take medicine, of the two, than read about 
 it. If any gentleman has a work on the subject he cannot do 
 better than make it up into light effervescing draughts, and call 
 it Doctor Dewdrop's Table Talk. Science is a worse bore still ; 
 but it may be taken in a state of gossipy solution. History is a 
 new name for Bogy. We have not stomachs strong enough to 
 keep it. Englishmen's constitutions were formerly different, no 
 doubt. History was all very well for three-bottle men. Light 
 nourishment agrees with us best now. We disHke the feeUng of 
 oppression. Children of all growths among us know the doctors 
 that are kind to us and the doctors that are cross. We hate Dr. 
 Hume and Dr. Robertson and Dr. Lingard, who want to make us 
 ill with their big draughts and heavy food ; but we love Dr. John 
 
 Timbs, and Dr. Harrison Ainsworth, and Dr. James Grant, and 
 
 114
 
 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 115 
 
 Dr. Walter Scott, and Dr. Fenimore Cooper, and the author of 
 " Elegant Extracts," who tell us all that we want to learn about 
 everybody so nicely and so good-naturedly 
 
 Still there are a few persons who hanker after the old thing, 
 who like to see Dryden and Swift presenting themselves for 
 admission at least in gentlemanly octavo, and who give the go-by 
 to this modern spoon-meat for the brain, this mental puf?-paste, 
 these cheap selections from voluminous and obscure authors, 
 with no little scorn. They turn the tables upon us, and can see 
 nothing in what is new, unless it should chance to be some antiquity 
 renascent, which gets, perhaps, after all but a grudged welcome. 
 To a true-blue archaeologist a Caxton in modern black is not half 
 so like the original as Mr. Kean's " Richard Crookback " or Madame 
 Tussaud's " Richelieu." Your modern antiques are neither fish, 
 flesh, nor fowl. 
 
 At least, let us look behind us at moderate intervals, and not 
 forget too easily or too Hghtly the ground which we have passed, 
 the scenes which our fathers' fathers and their fathers knew by 
 heart like an every-day lesson, and which, that we might know 
 them, they have left painted immortally, not on canvas, but in 
 books, which to them were what our books are to us — living 
 literature. Let us think that there is more than the England 
 we live in to-day to be held dear ; an England spread out before 
 us, darkly, yet hopefully, and an England lying behind us, farther 
 than eye can scan ; and let us look back upon ourselves — more 
 especially we who may be loving too well the learning which grows 
 to our hands. Travellers do not see every object on the road. 
 One sees one thing and another another. In the England which 
 lies behind us there is work for many gleaners. There is much 
 corn yet among the stubble. The honey remains in some forgotten 
 combs. 
 
 The workers that we have in the midst of us, not leaving out 
 those whose memory dates from yesterday, have been lax, it may 
 be, in gathering for their fellows the volume of lessons which the 
 past would so abundantly yield. Have we not crossed over into 
 the twentieth century, and are we not told that the history of 
 the country has in main part to be written ? The history, not 
 of its kings' reigns only, its triumphs, its glories, its material pro- 
 gress, but the history of its arts and hterature, its learning and 
 refinement, its luxuries and recreations, all reflecting one another,
 
 ii6 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 
 
 and all helped on by one another : these latter a hundred-fold 
 more important than all the kings who have ever sat upon thrones, 
 and all the governments, which have taken their turns in mis- 
 managing our afEairs. 
 
 The author of a new History of England constructed upon 
 new principles out of fresh material would have a literally Titanic 
 labour to perform. His chronicle of the march of events from year 
 to year, and from decade to decade, would not be the most onerous 
 or perplexing portion of it. To accomplish his task satisfactorily 
 and completely he would have to undergo immense and thankless 
 drudgery. He would of necessity be required to join in spirit 
 and feeling the era, which he was immediately describing, and 
 to mix in its society, with all the adventitious aids of progres- 
 sive culture and information. He should be a contemporary with 
 all the added strength of an aftercomer. He would have to 
 illustrate the civilisation of this great country in all its depart- 
 ments. He would have to exercise in the discharge of that duty 
 rare delicacy of insight and rare soundness of judging. For one 
 grain of true stuff which was worth accepting and laying by against 
 the time for its use, he would meet with a vast deal that was mere 
 husk. It would fall within his province to describe with fidelity, 
 yet with picturesqueness, the condition of English society at 
 successive epochs, the changes which that society has suffered, 
 and the agencies by which such changes have been Avrought. Unless 
 he happened, by an exceedingly uncommon piece of good fortune, to 
 combine a degree of judicial impartiality and precision and some- 
 what of the touch and spirit of an artist with more than ordinary 
 scholarship and more than ordinary acumen, he would probably 
 leave much undone and much imperfectly done. Neither our own 
 generation, perhaps, nor that which is to follow will behold this man, 
 in whose mind we should want to see united such rare qualifications. 
 
 There is certainly one rich source of illustration and light, 
 which this great artificer could not neglect without the most serious 
 disadvantage. I am referring to the old vernacular poetry of 
 England, and it shall be my aim to endeavour to shew what sort 
 of clues this poetry affords, and the amount of gain which an 
 investigator of our social progress may expect to derive from 
 researches in so vast and wealthy a field. A few inches below 
 the surface it is virgin earth. 
 
 The principle that history does not consist wholly, or even
 
 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 117 
 
 chiefly, in meagre diplomatic and international details, in other 
 words, that an historian is a good deal over and above an annalist, 
 has by this time met with pretty cordial recognition. We should 
 expect to find in any book aspiring to rank as a classic a full and 
 vivid description of the manner in which the Enghshmen of former 
 times dressed, and dined, and travelled, and slept ; how they 
 cooked their food, and laid out their gardens ; how they dressed 
 and what they gave for their clothes ; but we should not be pleased 
 to see the artist lose sight of the historian, and truth sacrificed 
 to portrait-painting. Considering the vital bearing such particulars 
 and insights have on the subject, a real history of the English 
 people ought to deal with the views our progenitors entertained 
 on the education and moral training of their sons and daughters, 
 and should admit us to a farther knowledge of their domestic habits, 
 even, if at a slight sacrifice of conventional decorum the author 
 should write a homily on Sir John Harington's " Metamorphosis 
 of Ajax," of their marriage customs, of their evening amusements, 
 of their proficiency in the sports of the field, and of the culture 
 of music and other humanising accomplishments among men 
 not less than among women. All such information is obtainable, 
 no doubt, by the antiquary ; we should desire it so brought 
 together, so focussed, as to meet the needs of those who are not 
 antiquaries. But if our available records were far more complete, 
 and might be far more completely reduced to literary form, there 
 are things, which we should still miss, and which can never be 
 recovered, save in faint hints upon paper ; the speaking tones of 
 our illustrious or our beloved, their inflexions of voice, their ex- 
 pression, their gesture, even their grimace ; and does not such 
 a circumstance, such a misfortune, render it the more important, 
 wherever a historian may, for him to set down, not his own words, 
 but those of the men and women, whom he happens to be describing 
 or mentioning, and to stand aside while they relate, so far as they 
 can, the case. 
 
 The homely and unpolished rhymes of the minstrels of old 
 days are apt, we conceive, to improve on more intimate acquaint- 
 ance. They have rugged charms of their own. There is a subtle 
 fascination in their simphcity and very rudeness. The uncouth 
 diction in which many of them are clothed may be conquered almost 
 as easily as the half-defaced inscriptions on ancient tombstones 
 which often tell a poorer story. A ballad poem or a romantic lay
 
 ii8 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 
 
 of the Plantagenet time ought to be as dear to us as a suit of 
 armour worn at Cre9y, or a canopy penny of Wilham the Conqueror. 
 On the other hand, the historian of the future must not neglect to 
 estimate the influence on our moral and intellectual progress of 
 mediaeval learning and fiction, and, as far as the latter is concerned, 
 ahke of the Arthur and Robin Hood, and of the Gesta Romanorum, 
 type ; nor should he omit to take into account the mixed bearing 
 on national thought of prolonged ecclesiastical prestige. 
 
 I must be understood in a strict sense, of course, when I observe 
 that the stock of national poetry is less considerable in reahty 
 than it may at first sight appear. The translations from the 
 French are excessively numerous, and all these, in a greater or 
 less degree, embody French manners and French habits of thought 
 — not what we are seeking. For the latter we can only look in 
 the writings of the men who lived in the heart of the old EngHsh 
 life, and earned their bread by song. 
 
 I may pass to a few indications of the claims which this section 
 of the vernacular literature of England has upon the attention 
 of forthcoming illustrators of our annals. To begin, what a 
 delightful glimpse we seem to catch of an old road-side scene in 
 that poem of the " King and the Tanner of Tamworth " — not 
 in the piece, as we get it in Bishop Percy's book, but in its more 
 antique form, where for Tamworth we have Daventry. The 
 theatre of the adventure was at the first laid, no doubt, in War- 
 wickshire. In Percy's " Reliques " the tale is associated with an 
 incident in the reign of Edward IV., but it existed before Edward's 
 day. It may be half a century older, and the language shews 
 that the minstrel who composed it originally was some tuneful 
 character belonging to the provinces. The last Lord Basset of 
 Drayton died in 1390. Edward IV. was at Daventry in 1471, 
 and attended divine service there. The story, as we possess it, 
 breathes the air of being a fifteenth-century rifacimento of a 
 more ancient fabliau. 
 
 There are sundry other pieces extant in our tongue, and appear- 
 ing to be of home growth, in which a king of the country was a 
 " person of the play." They are all characteristic in their way : 
 " The King and the Hermit," a story of Edward II.'s time, " King 
 Henry II. and the Miller of Mansfield," and so on. Those who 
 read " The King and the Hermit " will remember something which 
 they have read before ; it will bring back to them a bit of
 
 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 119 
 
 " Ivanhoe." Royalty has seldom omitted opportunities of evincing 
 its condescension and affability. Ordinary people stretch them- 
 selves when they feel cramped ; and royalty must unbend, too, 
 sometimes in right royal fashion, and run the risk of being bearded 
 by creatures in its own likeness. These romantic anecdotes of 
 the interviews of men with their rulers are part of feudal and semi- 
 mythical history, when, if the subject got his rights, it was as 
 often as not in this sort of casual, capricious way. The honest folks 
 of those times could not see the other side of the picture — that 
 if they were the king's servants, he was fari ratione theirs — that 
 they were equally parties to a treaty. Adventures of this descrip- 
 tion have been favourite topics with romancists and compilers 
 of anecdotes from the days of Alfred the Great to our own. It 
 did not signify much, perhaps, while our political institutions 
 were more or less on the old feudal basis, if a royal personage 
 chose to go incognito in this way as an occasional diversion or 
 otherwise ; and one may remark that even the disguises employed 
 were such as answered to the age, when the person and appearance 
 of the ruler were unfamiliar to a large proportion of his subjects ; 
 but it is a delicate experiment at present for crowned heads to 
 appear too freely in public out of court dress and with the regalia 
 and other theatrical accessories laid aside. The illusion is apt 
 to be broken. The divine grace is wanting. Even the gods of 
 antiquity lost prestige by mingling with mortals. A man may 
 be a man for a' that ; but a prince ought to beware how he too 
 lightly divests himself of his stage properties. The crown and 
 the nimbus are made in one piece. 
 
 Several little metrical manuals of instruction were compiled 
 by the authors ostensibly for the benefit of their children, or of 
 the children of the whole land. They are usually addressed 
 to one pupil in particular, as, for example, the small treatises 
 in verse, " How the wise man taught his son," and " How the 
 good wife taught her daughter." 
 
 The history of the first piece, shortly told, is this : An English- 
 man of the fifteenth century is supposed to deliver a series of 
 maxims to his son, a boy of fifteen, for his guidance through Hfe. 
 He must not be a tell-tale. He must not seek any occupation to 
 his neighbours' annoyance or injury. He must settle in one place, 
 and not be always shifting about. He must not frequent the 
 tavern, or gamble. He must not laugh much. He must keep
 
 120 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 
 
 out of debt. He must take his supper early, and go to bed betimes, 
 to preserve his complexion from surfeit. He had better have 
 nothing to do with juries. When he marries, he must not take 
 a wife for her money ; and he must be kind to his wife, but he 
 must not believe all her tales about the servants : — 
 
 " If thy wife come to complain 
 Of thy servants on any side, 
 Be not too hasty them to chide, 
 Nor anger not, ere thou know the truth ; 
 For women in wrath cannot abide, 
 But soon they raise a smoky roof." 
 
 He says a httle farther on very aptly : — 
 
 " Though she be servant in degree, 
 In some degree she felloio is." 
 
 He must treat his wife justly, and use fair words to her, for he 
 points out to him : — 
 
 " When thou thy own wife wilt defame, 
 Well may another man do so ; 
 By soft and fair men make tame 
 Hart and buck, and wild roe." 
 
 There is plenty more behind, and the language and spirit 
 throughout are as fresh as if the writer had set all this down for 
 one who was still among us. We seem to know all that he says 
 pretty well by heart, and there is not a hne perhaps that may 
 not offend nice critics by reason of its triteness ; but we are not 
 nice critics, and to us it is dehghtfully edifying, and moreover 
 it is to be said that, if we were never to read what we had read 
 before, it would be bhnd man's hohday for three quarters of every 
 moon. 
 
 Even more apposite, and richer in illustrations and hints, is 
 the second production, " How the good wife taught her daughter." 
 Its proverbial philosophy is quite loveable. In this pleasing Uttle 
 didactic composition of three hundred and odd years ago, we 
 stumble upon our every-day doctrine that, if you help yourself, 
 your friends will bless you. 
 
 " Thy thrift is thy friends' mirth, my dear child," 
 
 says a good wife who, toward the end of her catechism, declares — 
 
 *' Better were a child unborn than untaught,"
 
 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 121 
 
 which is a truth that might even now be much more widely- 
 recognised and worshipped than it happens to be. 
 
 The principal offences against good taste and modesty to be 
 avoided, are swearing, haunting the tavern, wagging her head, 
 and swinging with her shoulders, when she is out for a walk, or 
 on her way to market, speaking uncivilly to persons who accost 
 her properly and with no bad motives, and over-dressing, " as 
 if her husband was a king." The good wife makes one of her 
 proverbs fit well here : 
 
 " Over-done pride maketh naked side, my dear child." 
 
 John Skelton and his disciples — if those writers who imitated 
 with more or less success his manner and rhythm may be called 
 so, have thrown enormous light on the period about the Reforma- 
 tion. Skelton's writings are better known than they used to 
 be ; but the works of his followers, which are less familiar, are 
 also brimming over with instruction. Take Roy's satire against 
 Wolsey, " Vox PopuK Vox Dei," " A Poor Help," and " Doctor 
 Double Ale " ; and this is a small selection. As we read these 
 almost forgotten diatribes, either against rehgious conservatism 
 or against the Reformers, we appear to reahse in part the life of 
 the time, to gain a kind of torchlight view of the ecclesiastical 
 temperature, and of clerical morality in England under Henry VII. 
 and his son. 
 
 In all periods of our history, satire, with every allowance for 
 over-drawing and over-colouring, which must ever be parcel of 
 the craft, has done good service, and we owe much to song- writers. 
 Both of these have let us, without intending it, into many secrets, 
 which otherwise time must have buried. A casual phrase in 
 an old ballad or an old lampoon has untied many hard knots. 
 For these fellows have made their trade out of those very things 
 their lordships the chroniclers were pleased to consider beneath 
 the dignity of their subject. Not even Mr. Green, in his so-called 
 " History of the English People," has gone with sufficient detail 
 into these collateral questions — if collateral they are. That gentle- 
 man does not tell us anything about our agriculture, our indus- 
 tries and arts, our gardens, our cookery, our domestic utensils. 
 Veritably the title is a sorrowful misnomer. 
 
 There were satirists always, and so there are still. They have 
 decUned from the ancient standard, in having to pay court to
 
 122 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 
 
 decency. The minstrels died out long ago, and we have the 
 song-writers instead of them. Not that these are all that the 
 minstrels were, but they are perhaps sufficient. There are, to be 
 sure, a few blind harpers yet to be seen in certain latitudes by 
 us, with our partial indistinctness of comprehension why not being 
 able to see should be the main point. There must have been 
 a little in it, nevertheless, for " Blind Harper " passed centuries 
 ago into a proverb. Of the ancient minstrelsy of Scotland, the 
 sole remaining trace, I beheve, is a daily performer on the bagpipe, 
 the liegeman of a duke. 
 
 So long as the domestic and social annals of England continue 
 to be unwritten, there can be no impertinence or idleness in insist- 
 ing on the unemployed wealth of material for the purpose, which 
 exists in various directions ; the stores of illustration and informa- 
 tion range in date from the era of Magna Charta downward. There 
 is comparatively little before the Plantagenet period, for Beowulf 
 is out of the question. The author of that does not depict EngHsh 
 scenes or English homes. 
 
 The blackguards and scoundrels, the rogues and vagabonds, 
 the thieves and beggars, of passed times are history — ^inasmuch 
 as history would not be its true self without a pretty good account 
 of them, and yet the late Mr. Green is as silent on the point in 
 his curiously imperfect Account of the English People as he is 
 on our Gardening and our Cookery. There is a kind of satisfaction 
 in being sure that these characters were as great a nuisance to 
 our ancestors as they are to us. The " Highway to the Spital 
 House," by Robert Copland, who, like the more illustrious Caxton, 
 united the vocations of printer and author, professes to afford 
 some light here. Copland hved under King Henry VIII. ; he 
 is supposed to have written this metrical picture of the state of 
 the Hospital of St. Bartholomew, as he knew it, about the year 
 1520. The poem (so to speak) has slender pretensions to elegance 
 — or, alas ! to originality ; for worshipful Master Robert Copland, 
 who was an industrious translator from the French, was indebted 
 to a piece in that language, at all events for the broad idea and 
 plan, called Le Cliemin de V Hospital, printed in 1505, when he 
 was a very little boy indeed. 
 
 The rascality of an old kingdom like ours has certainly its 
 interesting aspects. The future historian of England will do well 
 to study the " Highway to the Spital House " side by side with
 
 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 123 
 
 other cognate works in prose and verse, not forgetting the statutes 
 in such matters provided. He may be surprised to learn, if he 
 should not be already aware of it, what a life these characters 
 have had of it, battening like parasites upon the rest of the world, 
 and how some of the queer old names have stuck to their owners 
 with very shght change. 
 
 The mihtary impostor and the sham Jack-tar, to the recital 
 of whose exploits by land and sea the nine worthies could not 
 have listened without a deep sense of inferiority, had come into 
 full leaf, when Copland wrote ; and they are still in our streets, 
 pouring into our ears the same witching tale. The expedient of 
 knocking on the head had also been discovered at this period or 
 before, and had been found effective, when the " noble gentleman " 
 was too long in seeing the point, or nobody was by. Moorfields 
 seems to have been selected by these heroes as being an airy and 
 agreeable locality, where they could watch for prey, and seek 
 pubUc sympathy for their wrongs, when there was none. 
 
 The London poor appears to have consisted, ages before the 
 Brothers Mayhew started in business, of three classes : Those who 
 could not work, those who would not work, and those who had 
 no work to do. Having these three eligible divisions of society 
 to deal with, the authorities at St. Bartholomew's and other Hke 
 institutions had a fairly busy part to play. 
 
 Copland, for the readier execution of his plan, feigns a dialogue 
 between himself and the porter of St. Bartholomew's, under the 
 portico of the house, where he seeks shelter from a shower one 
 day, about a fortnight after Hallowmas ; in this conversation he 
 elicits from his casual acquaintance all that he desires to know 
 of the working of the poor law, as to the class of persons who are 
 taken in, and upon many other points connected with mendicity, 
 roguery, and sham. It is rough writing, for Copland was no poet ; 
 but the rarity of his subject pleads for him ; the " Highway to 
 the Spital House " is the earliest picture which remains to us of 
 the low classes in London — both of the low in pocket and the 
 low in morals. 
 
 The uses of early Enghsh poetry as an handmaid, so to speak, 
 to history are manifold. They are not confined to particular 
 phases of society and manners, but embrace all. Early poetry 
 sheds a strange and true light upon the vices and virtues, the 
 thoughts and feehngs, the tastes and differing characteristics.
 
 124 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 
 
 of the English race in every time, commencing with the pre-historic 
 ages, and dating down to the present. 
 
 The romantic compositions in this language are almost number- 
 less ; but few of them are strictly original. They have come 
 to us for the most part from the French ; but, hke the Copland 
 piece, they are often very loose paraphrases or adaptations, and 
 keep in view httle beyond the general outline, the translator 
 re-setting the picture, and working in a new background and 
 accessories. 
 
 But such old poetical remains of native, unmixed growth as 
 we have, are to be regarded with peculiar reverence and tender- 
 ness, for they are invaluable monuments, which should not move 
 us to ridicule, because they are extravagant, or excite contempt 
 from their deficiency of refinement. 
 
 Our appreciation of Nature and of the Arts is more cathoHc 
 than our appreciation of literature. The black masters are more 
 in vogue than the black letter. A piece of Roman pavement is 
 more thought of than the first edition of Livy. The majority of 
 people would feel a keener curiosity to see the stylus with which 
 Cicero wrote, or to meet with a Roman copper coin of the Emperor 
 Otho, than to recover all the lost works of the Greek poets. Relic- 
 hoarders and rehc-worshippers are common types enough, but 
 too many of these value what they have not as art, but vertu. 
 The virtuoso is a hunter of dead game ; higher aims and higher 
 fruits are in the thoughts of the true Antiquary. The spoils which 
 we have snatched, trophy-like, from time and generations gone 
 by make up for liim a volume finely and nobly illuminated, out 
 of which he reads to us chapter after chapter of the unwritten 
 history of England and Enghshmen. A vocation and a purpose 
 not to be scornfully regarded ! 
 
 Foremost among the tales of fiction (all more or less grounded 
 on actual incidents), which appear to be purely native, are the 
 metrical legends of Arthur and his Table, a certain proportion 
 of the Robin Hood poetry, and such pieces as the " Squire of Low 
 Degree," and " Adam Bel, Clem of the Clough, and WilHam of 
 Cloudesly." 
 
 Of the Robin Hood ballad literature, to which an antecedent 
 paper is devoted, it must be predicated that the scenes which it 
 discloses to us are principally laid under the greenwood shade 
 or at the forest side ; and it would not yield so good an harvest
 
 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 125 
 
 to an historian as those other two species of writing would, the 
 domestic legend and the lay of knight-errantry. The former 
 admits us to a knowledge of contemporary town and village hfe, 
 and helps our imagination to people, as it were, the old English 
 interiors with men and women in the old English costume, speaking 
 a language archaic only to us, and following their daily labour 
 as we do, but in ways to us grown strange. 
 
 The essentially English romances of chivalry have a worth 
 and charm of their own. Their valuable allusions, their idiomatic 
 diction, their strange conceits, and their picturesque figurativeness, 
 rivet the attention, even where the literary merit cannot be called 
 commanding. There is a freshness, a vivid colouring, and a share 
 of poetical beauty, in the " Morte d' Arthur," which have recom- 
 mended it to the notice and imitation of a modern illustrious writer. 
 The old minstrel-poet, who composed for the amusement of his 
 audience the sweet legend of " Adam Bel," contrived to awaken 
 an interest, not dead yet, in his story of fair AHce, and " English 
 Wood," and " Merry Carhsle." 
 
 Philologically considered, very few old texts are without their 
 importance. It is when we come to study them in their social 
 and moral aspects, that the line has to be drawn between what is 
 radically EngUsh, and what is English only in outward semblance. 
 
 The establishment of a severe critical standard is peremptorily 
 necessary, and the necessity is one to be much regretted, seeing 
 that it forces us to exclude from consideration many pieces of 
 rare beauty and supreme interest. If it robbed us only of the 
 " Nutbrown Maid," one of the chastest and most elegant pro- 
 ductions in our language, a perfect hterary marvel, which we 
 see that the Scotish schoolmaster Henryson happily imitated 
 in his " Robene and Makyne," and Prior spoiled in his " Henry 
 and Emma," we should have motive enough for feeUng sorry ; 
 and sorry we feel, too, that we were not at Oxford in 1520, when 
 a bookseller had it in stock at one penny — a silver one to be sure. 
 But this inexorable principle involves the surrender of many other . 
 treasures, which we would fain keep, if we could. I think that 
 the less said about the Merry Jests of " Dan Hugh Monk of 
 Leicester " and the " Miller of Abingdon " the better. Misgivings 
 as to the indigenous quality of the fascinating Thumb myth might 
 prove to have a warrant. We must not be too sure that we have 
 any right to take credit for the " Friar and the Boy." It is tolerably
 
 126 SOME DEEPER USES OF POPULAR LITERATURE 
 
 certain that the interesting romance of " Arthur of Little Britain," 
 translated by Lord Berners, is purely French. It is one of the 
 later compilations, and not improbably it owed its existence to 
 the real or supposed adventures of Arthur of Bretagne, on which 
 it may be a fanciful superstructure. 
 
 But let Italy, France, Germany, and the East have their due, 
 and England would still retain a fair surplus, which she might 
 hold against all comers. Here would be plenty of unworked and 
 fruitful ground, where ore might be had for the seeking. 
 
 Romantic literature of all kinds, when we arrive at maturer 
 years, is apt to pall, where it is cast in times lying within the 
 historical limit, and much more so, where it deals with scenes 
 and characters, and manners, of the day. But we never grow 
 too old to relish fictions transmitted to us by distant ages, and 
 even, when they were composed, belonging to a remote past. 
 We become less tolerant of the modern novehsts, who introduce 
 to us personages and incidents, which we feel at all events that 
 it is in our power and right to challenge ; but to the last we give 
 the benefit of the doubt to such of our youthful acquaintances as 
 Don Quixote and Gil Bias, Roderick Random and Humphrey 
 CHnker, who lived so long before railways, newspapers, and the 
 penny post.
 
 XIII 
 FAME 
 
 " One must dream only of living with oneself and with one's friends, and 
 not of establishing a second and a very chimerical existence in the minds 
 of other men. Happiness or unhappiness is real, and reputation is only a 
 dream." — Voltaire, 1733. 
 
 " Mr. Murphy said that he remembered when there were several people alive 
 in London, who enjoyed a considerable reputation merely from having written 
 a paper in the Spectator" — Boswell. 
 
 " Post obitum duplici foenore reddit Honos." 
 
 It is a favourable and even flattering evidence of the solidity of 
 some reputations, that the owners of them seem to remain to our 
 apprehensions, through all time, stouter reahties than three-fourths 
 of the rank and file of the world, breathing and moving round us. 
 
 We cannot feel that there was any paltry egotism or empty 
 self-congratulation in those hues, where Horace foreshadows 
 the immortality which we know to be his. It was merely what 
 Epicurus and Ovid pronounced of themselves in a different form 
 of words, and we may be sure that the same impression passed 
 through the mind of Tacitus, when he penned that fine envoy 
 to the life of Agricola : Agricola, posteritati narratus et traditus, 
 superstes erit. Handed down to us by his biographer, Agricola 
 survives, while many, who occupied in their time as prominent 
 a position, and had virtues they could call their own, have not 
 happened to be recollected, because they had no Tacitus to dehver 
 over their graves an immortal panegyric. 
 
 Death and time rob us too often of our adventitious environ- 
 ments, ere our footstep and voice have di^d away on the ear ; 
 and some, who parted from us only a generation or so since, we 
 have to be contented with discerning through a dim cliiaroscuro 
 medium, and with appreciating their merits or qualifications in 
 perspective. Where we stand the tlirong is dense, the struggle 
 for place and praise internecine. But the centuries beliind us 
 
 are thinly peopled with the slender minority, wliich has survived 
 
 127
 
 128 FAME 
 
 in recollection and fancy all ordeals. Here with us living ones 
 the battle rages, there it has been fought and won, and the 
 victors hold the field. As to authors more especially, such gentle- 
 men as fill their cases with books recommended to them by the 
 trade have a vague idea of this or that kind of value or excellence ; 
 but the general public regards the most celebrated personages 
 of passed ages as mere abstractions, as names enveloped in a 
 mysterious radiance. A few decades hence the average man 
 or woman will know — let me take for example — Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge merely as a sublime theorist, a sort of modern Socrates, 
 at whose feet disciples gathered and of whom there are Hterary 
 remains illegible or unattractive to most. 
 
 There are two classes of posthumous repute, either of which 
 we may be pardoned for coveting in the way of speculative 
 contemplation. To have surpassed our contemporaries in some 
 particular path or direction, if not in more than one, is a title- 
 deed to a conspicuous ear-mark on the roll of departed worthies. 
 But there is a yet higher and yet purer glory, that the inex- 
 tinguishable, inalienable property of a relative handful of men, 
 who in life towered above their fellows in intellectual force and 
 achievement, and to whose knowledge or suggestion we have little 
 or nothing to add after centuries or tens of centuries. Think 
 what a life everlasting, what a true eternity, we see to be the 
 lot of Socrates and Aristotle, Csesar, Cicero, all the great ones 
 of modern Europe, our own Alfred, the two Bacons, Shakespear, 
 for instance ! No grave could hold them. They were their 
 own monument. They dwell with us, walk with us, converse 
 with us, to-day still ; they move and have their being among 
 millions of those, who breathe, yet have never hved — who belong 
 to that large human family so dear to the late Mr. Carlyle. 
 
 Men of rank, as Sir Joshua Reynolds put it, help men of 
 genius to live, and men of genius requite the obligation after their 
 own fashion. It is the ancient treaty of alliance between wealth 
 and intellect, which we may expect to see growing more and more 
 out of use, as our institutions are more and more sociahsed. But 
 so it is that Maecenas lives in the verses of Virgil, and Bohngbroke, 
 " all-accomplished St. John," in the verses of Pope. How many 
 a name, high and puissant enough upon a time, has been saved 
 from swelhng the long catalogue of Illustrious Obscure, because 
 the holder of it is inseparably linked in our minds and memories
 
 FAME 129 
 
 with another of deathless renown ! Would Southampton be in 
 our thoughts and on our lips at the present hour, if Shakespear 
 had not conferred upon him the distinction of dedicating to his 
 good Lordship the " first heir of his invention " ? In this case, 
 and in a few more, the " favourer of learning and ingenuity " has 
 no right to complain that it has come at last to be the Author's 
 lot to take a front seat. It is but Quid pro Quo. It is the turn 
 of the Patron to be contented with second-rate honours, while 
 the man of letters, perpetuated in countless impressions of his 
 works, goes down from age to age, unconscious of antiquity, 
 and the contemporary of all the succeeding generations that are 
 to be. For what do we recollect Isabella D'Este, Marchioness 
 of Mantua, if it be not that she befriended Aldus Manutius, and 
 sat to Titian ? The great lady survives, as it were, by refraction. 
 
 If it sometimes becomes curious to consider the diversity of 
 means by which people achieve credit and fortune, it surely is 
 not less so to look at the various sorts of reputation there are, 
 and have been, in the world. Holy Writ teaches, that the Angels 
 of God and the stars of the firmament are of differing glory ; 
 and so it is with human celebrity. It is the freehold of some 
 among us to hve after our deaths by report. The substance is 
 lost ; but the name and memory abide. Only the grosser 
 elements dissolve. This is posthumous fame, a deferred settle- 
 ment of dues, a man's value tested and stamped current, a draft 
 upon posterity at a longer or shorter date. 
 
 Montaigne thought that Cicero, notwithstanding all his 
 published works and all his political achievements, was mainly, 
 if not solely, to be remembered as an orator ; and is it not so 
 with the late Mr. Gladstone ? Is it not indeed so in a far greater 
 measure ? For, apart from his eloquence, has Mr. Gladstone 
 left any monument equal to certain hterary treatises of his Roman 
 predecessor, such as those on the " Nature of the Gods," " Friend- 
 ship," and " Old Age " ? and assuredly as a public man he will 
 never hold so high a rank. The voluminous estate of the Roman 
 may be said to go against him, regarded as an author and pliilo- 
 sopher ; and it might have been better had he seen such matters 
 with our eyes, and left a more portable legacy, like Montaigne 
 himself. But Cicero was one of those universal intellects, which 
 could not refrain from grasping all subjects of human concern- 
 ment. In secular literature he resembled Bacon and Coleridge, 
 
 I
 
 130 FAME 
 
 and surpassed them both, if we take into account the times and 
 the circumstances. As the ashes are to the hving body, so is 
 the residual fame to the gross bulk of production ; and while 
 Cicero has undergone all the shrinkage and alchemical refine- 
 ment of well-nigh two thousand years, and is present to us all 
 at this hour in such noble proportions, there is slender hope for 
 such an one as Gladstone that two thousand years hence as much 
 as a hundredth part of him will have survived. Each age is a 
 step-ladder to the next. The nett sum of the most fruitful life 
 is as the gold to the quartz. If all that Socrates, all that Cicero, 
 all that our more modern great ones, added to the volume of our 
 clear, drossless knowledge, may be reducible into a pamphlet, 
 what is to be said of the benefaction of littler men of every 
 century ? What they have done for us would occupy a smaller 
 area than a homoeopathic pill. But human efforts are of different 
 gravities and densities, like the stars, and some from their inherent 
 solidity and freedom from vapour emerge from the crucible less 
 attenuated than others. What a reflexion it is, when one has 
 been putting together some sort of bookish simulacra all one's 
 days, that the absolute credit to the world's balance of real know- 
 ledge may be " bounded in a nutshell ! " — and how much more 
 is it so with the pure and simple Rechauffeur ? 
 
 We all had a singular experience the other day in the enormous 
 demand for Mr. Morley's Biography of Mr. Gladstone. It had 
 been well-aired beforehand ; the compiler was understood to be 
 more behind the scenes than any one else ; and her late Majesty 
 had expressed her interest in the undertaking. Now, where 
 did the interest precisely he ? As a statesman Mr. Gladstone 
 was a failure and a fallacy of the most pronounced and disastrous 
 stamp. As a hterary man his rank is dechning from day to day. 
 What remains ? The orator, the rhetorical juggler, the in- 
 exhaustible utterer of brilhant and well-balanced periods, with 
 which he dazzled and hoodwinked his audiences on the platform 
 and in Parhament. As a speaker it was, then, that he was so 
 superlative, so irresistible. Yet that his gifts in this direction 
 would unseconded have emptied the pubhshers' shelves of Mr. 
 Morley's volumes so rapidly, seems to me as doubtful as that the 
 name of Mr. Morley would have achieved such a success. But 
 it was a work which was so timed as to allow feehngs of pohtical 
 antagonism to soften or subside, and the pubhc was prepared
 
 FAME 131 
 
 to judge it and the man, of whom it related the story, without 
 party bias. Thousands upon thousands of readers were found 
 to compete impatiently, breathlessly, for the means of ascertain- 
 ing, almost without the loss of a post, what account the biographer 
 had been able to give of Gladstone and what account Gladstone 
 had been permitted to give of himself. The Pandora's box was 
 set open ; every one became in a position to scan the whole 
 narrative of the extraordinary career of an extraordinary indi- 
 vidual ; and in a few weeks the ferment died away. Not so the 
 memory of Gladstone. Making the fullest deduction for all his 
 faults and errors as a public servant, as a thinker, and as an author, 
 we must recognize that he was altogether one of the most dis- 
 tinguished personalities of his century — as Mr. Balfour said of 
 Sir John Tenniel, " a great gentleman." As in the case of 
 DisraeU, his command of an independent fortune favoured the 
 development of his faculty as an orator and of his rise as a politician, 
 and Disraeli and himself had that in common, that both were 
 men of letters. But Gladstone, side by side with his splendid 
 parliamentary triumphs, built up a name as a polemical con- 
 troversialist, as a classical student, as an authority on Homer, 
 as a connoisseur, and his wife potently co-operated with him. 
 He was versatile, it is true, rather than profound — an amateur 
 in everything save his debating power. Had he been, however, 
 nothing more than an orator, he would not have left behind him 
 the distinct and tangible individuality which we feel to be his. 
 If he had been nothing more than a scholar, a theologian, or a 
 virtuoso, his name would not have been found in the foremost 
 rank among the followers of any of those professions. We have 
 had his equals as speakers, and greater scholars, greater theological 
 disputants, greater judges and collectors of antiquities, greater 
 woodmen. In him in a conspicuous and impressive degree met 
 certain qualifications and characteristics, which, joined with his 
 social standing, render him the commanding and fascinating 
 figure, which we behold in our mind's eye — shall behold to our 
 life's end. V Union fait la force. 
 
 There are many of us, undoubtedly, to whom it may be an 
 agreeable feehng, that we shall have a sort of locus standi here- 
 after ; but it must be as part of a world with which we can 
 have no sensible contact ; a world to which we shall stand in 
 some such relation as Arthur and his Knights do to us, or the
 
 132 FAME 
 
 fairies, or Robin Hood. All the value of the sensation is personal 
 and present. Are not Shakespear and Spenser for ever with 
 us ? yet we have succeeded not to their inventions only, but 
 also to the enjoyment of their permanent fame. Their estate 
 in the dehghtful consciousness of leaving behind them works more 
 durable than flesh and blood has passed to us, yet we are apt to 
 regard at our good leisure the immortahty of this or of that author, 
 without being aware how long his interest in the matter has 
 expired, or how much the name which we idohse is our own property, 
 nay, in some sort, an emanation from ourselves. 
 
 I think I may answer for the world at large, and say that it 
 holds rather cheaply this sort of repute, regarding with a half- 
 suspicious eye these tumular and shadowy rites. It is certainly 
 debatable ground. For myself I own that I go with the public 
 a httle in this. I doubt if the noble and accomphshed Surrey 
 would have surrendered an atom of the applause of his con- 
 temporaries, of the admiration of a splendid court, of the fickle 
 favours of a prince, for the proud and lasting rank he holds among 
 us. It is a question whether Shakespear would have parted 
 with any of the good opinion of his fellows, in consideration of 
 our ceaseless homage, or if the consciousness of transmitting im- 
 perishable works was capable of consoling the great poet for his. 
 own early end. I am seriously mistaken if Bacon would not 
 have consented, had he had the free option, to discount the appre- 
 ciation of all succeeding times, to have been more perfectly com- 
 prehended by his own, and to have preserved the favour of his 
 sovereign unbroken. He would have been scarcely so ready 
 to commend, as he did, to an unl^nown posterity his ethical and 
 philosophical discoveries. 
 
 It is Samuel Daniel who exclaims : — 
 
 " Perhaps the words thou scornest now 
 May live, the speaking picture of the Mind, 
 The extract of the Soul, that labour'st how 
 To leave the image of herself behind ; 
 Wherein Posterity, that love to know, 
 The just jjroportiou of our spirits may find." 
 
 But Daniel was a disappointed man, who retired to his native 
 county to spend his declining years, full of chagrin at the limited 
 popularity of works composed in a hard and cramped style. The 
 value which such a writer would set on the ultimate verdict of the
 
 FAME 133 
 
 public is scarcely, in consequence, an infallible criterion. He 
 might have been less ready to place himself in our hands, if his 
 original readers had formed and expressed a more favourable 
 estimate of him as a Poet. 
 
 Shakespear's first experience of a dramatic career was, from 
 all accounts, as a performer, not as a producer, of plays. Of his 
 merits as an actor there are scanty records ; as a dramatist his 
 abilities were conspicuous by general acknowledgment. But 
 among all those who hved in or about his own time, Davenant, 
 Milton, and Dryden apparently stood alone in forming some- 
 thing like a just conception of this man's superlative genius. His 
 contemporaries, and the age which succeeded them, had a film 
 over their eyes, which made it next to impossible for them to see 
 the difference which (without any special credit to us) we see 
 at this day between Shakespear and such inferior intellects as 
 those of Sidney and Spenser, Jonson and Fletcher. But even 
 the author of " Paradise Lost " was barely qualified, perhaps, 
 to take true measurement of the colossal mind which had passed 
 away (early, yet its work done) while he was still a child, or to 
 conjecture the distance which we, coming after, should place 
 between the works of Shakespear and all other works. 
 
 Shakespear therefore by no means enters into the class of 
 writers who, having enjoyed their full share of celebrity in their 
 lifetime, may seem to have exhausted their title to the public 
 favour. On the contrary, it is only just now (to speak com- 
 paratively) that the rank which was his due has been accurately 
 defined and settled. His fame has come late to him. In his 
 Sonnets written at a comparatively early period of life, he 
 had used the Sonneteer's licence in proudly alluding to the 
 powerful rhyme which was to make the object of his verse live 
 in perpetuity ; but whatever he may have thought, we do not 
 find him giving expression to this sentiment in his maturer work. 
 That he was exceptionally unfortunate in one sense is indisputable, 
 for he had not only to wait so long for his due, but, as if it had 
 not been enough, that his works were mangled by the printers 
 of the time, some of the dullest creatures in the universe have 
 set themselves in more recent days the task of illustrating his 
 career and restoring his text. 
 
 The Earl of Surrey is, to a certain degree, another instance of 
 the same kind. The hero and cynosure of an era of chivalrous
 
 t34 FAME 
 
 fervour and barbaric gallantry, he now inhabits our imaginations, 
 a gentle ghost. We admire upon demand the graces of his person, 
 of his character, of his style, as much as though they were all 
 things of to-day, and sympatliise with his premature fate as warmly 
 as if he had been a man hving within our remembrance, one of 
 ourselves. This is the force of genius, the ascendancy and pre- 
 dominance of Spirit over Matter — the ultimate triumph of the 
 scion of the Howards over all the rest, just as we inquire for Boyle 
 the chemist and Boyle the astronomer more frequently than for 
 their ducal descendants — more frequently for Richard Boyle, the 
 great Earl of Cork, than for all the Dulces of Devonshire. 
 
 Sir Phihp Sidney was held to be one of the completest gentle- 
 men of his time, and he seems, as I understand the matter, to 
 owe the rank he occupies at present in the sight of the world to 
 the undying lustre cast by unsurpassed rectitude of mind and 
 purity of reputation upon an insipid romance and a collection 
 of mediocre sonnets. It is the lofty prominence attained by 
 Sidney as a mihtary hero and as a young English aristocrat, with 
 popular and endearing attributes, which has given the " Arcadia " 
 (the Arcadia of the poets, not of geography) its place among our 
 classics, and tempted us to look for beauties in the " Astrophel 
 and Stella." The common rule is reversed. It is much the 
 same as in the case of Dr. Johnson. We admire Sidney's works, 
 because we admire him. The Man and the Book pass under one 
 voucher. So it is with Izaak Walton. Let us all grant the work 
 a pleasant one and the writer an amiable character ; but do not 
 let us be dupes of the grown-up child's fetish, which the excellent 
 bookseller has set up for our worship and his profit. Let us 
 not, for God's sake, be parties to the degradation of a favourite 
 author into a vulgar commercial stalking-horse. 
 
 How few have read the " Arcadia " ? How few, if we put 
 the inquiry, would not pronounce it to be dehcious ? Alas ! it 
 is dull to satiety. And how few have the courage to own, as I 
 hereby do, that they have laid down their copies of such celebrated 
 writers as Lovelace, Suckling, Carew, Waller, and dozens more, 
 both lyrists and dramatists, with disappointment at the result 
 and surprise at the prevailing opinion. On the contrary, Randolph 
 gains much on reperusal and Herrick something, albeit in the 
 pages of the latter is a surfeit of poor ribaldry offensive alike to 
 the mind and the taste.
 
 FAME 135 
 
 He affords an example of the force of character in the personal 
 history of a man who, whatever he may have owed to being a 
 Sidney of Penshurst, and to having perished on a famous battle- 
 field in his prime, owed a great deal more to the nobihty of his 
 intellect and heart. His works of themselves would assuredly 
 not have kept his fame green ; nor was it quite in the fitness of 
 things that they should. 
 
 Look, on the other hand, at Montaigne. His own age viewed 
 him as a distinguished, if somewhat eccentric, country gentle- 
 man, an efficient and loyal pubUc functionary. There is scarcely 
 any authority for the presumption, that the essayist harboured 
 an idea that his book would acquire the lofty and enduring rank, 
 which we know that it holds in the hterature of Europe and the 
 world. The quahties which won for him the confidence and 
 regard of his sovereign and countrymen have been thrown into the 
 background by those, which it demanded more than a century 
 to enable critics and readers to discern. He presented a double 
 personality : that in which he was visible to those about him 
 and that in which it is our higher privilege to see him. For it 
 is to be carefully remembered that, although the generations 
 immediately succeeding him respected and valued liis book, they 
 were insensible to the immense distance which we have learned 
 to place between it and every other book of the kind, not only 
 in the French language, but in any. If it is not flattering Sir 
 WilHam Cornwalhs too much to term him a brother essayist, 
 I may just notice that the latter in a very dull volume printed 
 in 1600 does actually refer to Montaigne's work as one suitable 
 for " profitable recreation " — the critic was only enabled to judge 
 from portions which he had seen translated by Florio, and which 
 still remained unprinted ; but, on the whole, one of the great master- 
 pieces of intellect had to wait long after that date to receive the 
 homage its due. 
 
 The " Travels " in their way are as curious and idiosyncratic 
 as the essays ; but the latter have stood between them and the 
 pubhc ; and a bookseller, whom Montaigne's biographer, St. John, 
 once asked about them, stated that they were not worth reprinting, 
 as they were of very little value — that is, the worthy did not think 
 they would sell. 
 
 So far as it is possible to form an opinion, Chaucer achieved, 
 while Hving, a more than average share of social consideration
 
 136 FAME 
 
 and eminence. He married well, was a man of business and of 
 the world, and had a keen enjoyment of existence. But let us 
 not put ourselves in the situation of his contemporaries, and 
 suppose that he was held by them in anything drawing near to 
 the esteem in which we hold him, as the father of our poetry. 
 They regarded him as a personage of gentle blood, of observant 
 mind, of pleasant conversation, of fine endowments. But in 
 his bodily presence they were very far (as was natural) from hail- 
 ing the advent among them of a star of the first magnitude, a 
 son of the morning ushering in a new epoch, a writer of the highest 
 order of genius. That they left to us. He is ours in fee simple. 
 
 How glorious, in our present way of thinking, to have met 
 such an one, and to have held him by the hand ! yet, after all, 
 who would not prefer the refreshing sensibility, which is among 
 the numerous privileges we enjoy not the least, of reading the — 
 alas ! fragmentary — " Canterbiuy Tales " with opened eyes to the 
 deadness of those former times, which judged him such another 
 only as Gower, or Occleve, or Lydgate ? 
 
 Look, again, at Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio ! Did their 
 contemporaries see them with our eyes ? Why, well-nigh five 
 centuries came and went, ere any of us caught the true focus, 
 ere the world grew wiser than the men and women, by whom 
 that grand human triad was surrounded and elbowed. 
 
 What manner of thing, then, however, is fame, of what worth 
 is genius, if four hundred years must elapse, before the world 
 gives its verdict out upon a man who was the common friend 
 of humanity and the common benefactor of Hterature ? The 
 time is not so far distant, when we were unable to distinguish 
 the difference between Congreve and Shakespear, or, if we did, 
 awarded the palm to the more modern and legible poet. It 
 was after Congreve's day that people set to thinking what authors 
 Hved before Pope, and whether the " Canterbury Tales " were 
 worth perusing in any English but Dryden's. It is not so much 
 to boast of that Chaucer's fame stands at last built on inde- 
 structible foundations, and that we have learned to dispense with 
 the services of his candle-holder ! 
 
 Spenser, from all that we can learn, was a man of the world 
 as well as a man of letters. His poems were composed in the 
 intervals of business, Hke the Essays of Sir Arthur Helps. He 
 officiated at one time as secretary to a bishop of Rochester, whom
 
 FAME 137 
 
 he had known at Cambridge, without any of his biographers being 
 aware of it, till it was pointed out by myself ; but he was far 
 excellence the agriculturist and historian, and if his farming opera- 
 tions at Kilcolman had been successful, he might have thought 
 it less worth his while to communicate to us what he did, and 
 might have dimly survived as a country gentleman — such another 
 as Mr. Hastings of Dorsetshire, the son, brother, and uncle of 
 an earl. I scarcely possess the courage to say exactly what I feel 
 about the " Faery Queen " and his other poetical works, although 
 I am fairly sure that in my opinion I do not stand alone. The 
 contemporary estimation of Spenser seems to have been higher 
 and warmer than that of Shakespear, and to have been more 
 uninterrupted. I also fear that he has, like Milton, been taken 
 more upon trust. 
 
 Those writings of Chaucer, by which he is best known, were 
 pictures of the life in which he mixed and of the men whom he 
 met. His leaning to the matter-of-fact side as a politician and 
 diplomatist does not shock our prejudices and preconceived notions 
 in the same way as if he had been a great romantic bard. Neither 
 he nor Spenser made as good a thing out of literature as the author 
 of the " Northern Farmer." It is, no doubt, judicious to let 
 out one's genius on the handsomest possible terms ; yet it dissi- 
 pates, as it were, some of the divine halo, when we find that one 
 whose song breathes a sublime and moving indifference to mun- 
 dane affairs, is a Jew in private life and a dead shot at a bargain. 
 It strikes me that Mr. Browning will be a gainer by-and-by in 
 this respect. His fortune was as modest as a poet's should be. 
 His reputation did not smack unpleasantly of the Share-Hst 
 and the Stock Exchange. 
 
 Nor was Shakespear' s case so different as it may at the first 
 glance appear. His " Venus and Adonis," his " Lucrece," and 
 his " Sonnets " were the exercises of his youth, and have all 
 the beauty and all the blemishes of early work. But to the 
 successful structure of the plays, on which his fame stands, as 
 accurate and practical a knowledge of life and mankind as Chaucer 
 possessed was positively essential. Chaucer is the poet of Nature 
 rather than of sentiment. He was one of the earliest laymen 
 (Langland of Malvern had gone before him), who familiarized 
 and fascinated Enghsh readers with a broad and masculine style 
 and a rich and caustic humour, powerfully contrasting with the
 
 138 FAME 
 
 dull and pedantic monkish school of poetry and thought. Neither 
 could afford to shut their eyes and ears, like the late Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer, to the scenes passing around them — to the common 
 talk of the time. Both as regards the lyrical and dramatic pro- 
 ductions of Shakespear, when certain contemporary applause 
 extended to him only in common with many other writers, whose 
 rank has not been maintained or recovered, had died away, two 
 centuries and a half were destined to elapse, before a true idea 
 Avas formed of his claim to our admiration and gratitude, and 
 cartloads of his early printed work fed the ovens and Idtchen fires 
 of his native country. 
 
 We admire all these great writers without invariably consider- 
 ing how different were and are the source and degree of their 
 greatness. We allow high rank to Dryden and Pope, as we do 
 to Shakespear, and we do not discriminate between the sublime 
 intellectual inspiration of the Stratford poet and the mere culture 
 of form and style, between creative and plastic literary art. 
 Waller, Dr5^den, and Pope refined our language and versification, 
 but they added Httle to our national riches in insight and thought. 
 Spenser in the old time, and Tennyson in ours, overlaid the 
 ancient romantic literature with new diction and imagery ; but 
 the essence was already there. We do not fully reaHze the 
 merit and services of Shakespear, till we see how much in 
 actual virgin ore we owe to liim, in spite of his disadvantages 
 and inequalities ; the egregious critic, who once described him 
 as an irregular genius, was not far perhaps from the truth ; in 
 his irregularity lay his unique power no less than his pecuharly 
 original temper and touch. 
 
 Whether in the time that lies before us anything truly great 
 will be done, is a question worth turning over in our minds. For 
 my own part, I am afraid that the world is growing old, and that 
 its subHme youth has fled, never to return. 
 
 The grand masterpieces of former times were produced under 
 conditions which no longer prevail, and which are unrecallable. 
 Our hberal institutions, favourable as they may be to the asser- 
 tion and establishment of individual right, contain within them 
 the germs of intellectual decadence ; our increasing population, 
 educated in democratic ideas of political freedom, brings with it 
 a struggle for life and bread, fatal to the existence of genius of 
 the first rank. We gravitate to mediocrity, and the longer we
 
 FAME 139 
 
 live, and the more numerous we become, the smaller will be the 
 proportion of new chefs (Toeuvre in all the branches of art. We 
 shall be forced to admire what it will be out of our power to 
 emulate. Nobody in the generations to come of social brother- 
 hood and internecine competition will consent to endure poverty 
 and toil in order to enable him to place before the world some 
 monument as durable as itself. We are busy manufacturers, 
 but our creations go a very httle way indeed to swell the store 
 in hand. Kaphael, Correggio, and Titian could hardly do more 
 in their several ways ; for if they infused into their portraits or 
 figures more expression than they found there, it was an expres- 
 sion reflected from themselves ; nor can the daring and apparently 
 fantastic combinations of Turner be called untrue to Nature, when 
 we see that the latter is apt to indulge in the wildest vagaries 
 of cloud, wave, and other form, involving, according to local 
 conditions, endless varieties of hght and shade effects. A work 
 of art is a selection of circumstances poetically treated ; and if 
 we entertain a doubt as to Turner's fidelity, he must have the 
 benefit of it. 
 
 Contrasting literature with art, and even one branch of 
 art with another, I affirm that for one person who executes a 
 first-rate poem in prose or verse, especially doubtless the latter, 
 fifty — ^nay, five hundred will turn out a picture, which shall 
 be unexceptionably good, and prove a source of embarrassment 
 to the Hanging Committee at Burlington House. This is because 
 in painting a combination of technical artifices comes to the 
 aid of the worker, who is more usually a student of new effects, 
 like the modiste, than of new ideas ; while the poet is destitute of 
 such an auxiliary agency, and if he even resorts to eccentricity 
 of phraseology or rhythm, is in danger of making himself and 
 his work ridiculous. The sculptor, again, is largely dependent on 
 his own skill, as shade, perspective and colour assist the illusion 
 only in a very modified degree ; and, besides, our manners and 
 prejudices are a barrier against originahty of design in this direc- 
 tion. In fact, in all departments, genius becomes at a loss for 
 fresh types, and even Mr. Orchardson has returned to the pre- 
 Raphaehte style, and in despair of finding anything new, copies 
 what he sees before him, and copies it very well ! 
 
 We have grown into a way of re-casting old thought in modern 
 moulds ; it is rarely indeed that any one breaks the charmed fine,
 
 140 FAME 
 
 and enlarges the radius of speculation and inquiry ; whatever 
 we do, even if we do not know it, or own it to ourselves, is a 
 paraphrase from some earlier author on paper or on canvas. A 
 few minds, as the ages proceed, supply original material, which 
 the rest of us translate in ways as various as the changes in music. 
 The greatest triumphs of ancient skill and power were accomphshed 
 in an epoch of general vassalage, dominated by a few sovereign 
 minds. 
 
 Some prose epigrammatist, with whom I cannot agree, said 
 that a man who has two languages has no country. But the 
 converse may be true of men of genius. A great poet need not 
 trouble himself much about his pedigree. He is born of a muse, 
 without a father. Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So, senior, were probably 
 rather uninteresting. Why should we be asked to buy an early 
 London Directory, because it contains the name and address of 
 Mr. Pope the Elder ? These are genealogical ineptitudes. 
 
 Now, there is Warton's " History of English Poetry " — ^an 
 unfinished torso as it were, often obsolete, often inaccurate, yet 
 it has already survived many later, nay, better attempts in the 
 same direction, and it will survive many more. It is like a broken 
 column erected to a man's memory. I think of it as it was 
 composed, of the spirit in which it was done, of the environments 
 of the writer, and it seems almost sacrilegious to have revised it. 
 
 Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy " has been rescued from 
 oblivion by the successive offices of Johnson and Lamb. It is a 
 curious storehouse of extracts and quaint suggestions, false ethics, 
 morality and philosophy. But for all that it is a book, for it is 
 a genuine transfer to paper of the thoughts and reflections of a 
 man of an original, if not a very high, cast of intellect. 
 
 "We think of Keats, not as the son of a butcher, but as the 
 author of the " Ode to a Nightingale " and " Endymion." How 
 many men attain the age at which he died, ignorant of the 
 alphabet of composition — not butchers' sons, but Enghsh gentle- 
 men, who have been through the whole costly curriculum of a 
 fashionable education ! 
 
 In official hfe, which embraces so wide a range of employment 
 and so large a proportion of our educated intelhgence, the most 
 eminent characters are scions of the Nemo gens. My good old 
 acquaintance, Mr. Hemy Pyne, mentioned an individual whom 
 he recollected — " one of the ablest men in England," — he was
 
 FAME 141 
 
 some Ecclesiastical Commissioner. But his celebrity was as 
 enduring as that of an agricultural labourer. He went down to 
 the bottom, and there is not a ripple left to shew where he sank. 
 I have forgotten even his once familiar name ; and the world 
 is with me there. Yet some of these Government automatons 
 are fine creatures in their way, and are caressed by society faute 
 de mieux. 
 
 Pubhc officials of all grades, the Executive inclusive, constitute 
 an indispensable apparatus of a quahty to involve in certain ruin 
 any private firm, however wealthy, and which has to be inces- 
 santly recruited from the incalculable numbers of those who make 
 such pursuits their career, and have no capacity for things of 
 higher reach ; and we go down, as we go on. Decrescimus eundo. 
 
 Even a Minister of the Crown generally finds it sufficient to 
 deHver long speeches, in the cross-meshes of which he has to 
 beware of entanghng and losing himself : to draw a heavy salary : 
 to be of the most honourable privy council : if he succeeds in his 
 plans, to look as if he expected success ; if he fails, to shrug his 
 shoulders and express his unnegociable sorrow. How few of 
 those public men whom one has known are remembered with 
 pleasure and satisfaction ? Their popularity is cheap and current. 
 Their attainments are shallow and artificial. If their faults and 
 tricks are not discovered in their Hfetimes, they are dragged into 
 dayhght by a too accurate and conscientious biographer, who 
 leaves them, before he concludes, bare standing room in the 
 gallery of fame. 
 
 A vice-chancellor or an under-secretary of State, who is not 
 also a man of culture (I was going to say genius) is a grand sort 
 of fellow for the time being from a bureaucratic considering point ; 
 bat two yards of earth, placarded "svith a few fines of elegiac 
 romance, are the usual area and boundary of his posthumous 
 experience. 
 
 At Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, is the monument of Edwards 
 of Hafifax, the bookseller, who was also a fancier and collector 
 of literary rarities, and reached the acme of his ambition when he 
 became the owner of the Bedford Missal. He is represented with 
 the book under his arm. What pastoral simplicity could exceed 
 this ? This man desired nothing more than to go down to future 
 ages as the successful competitor for an unique MS. ! We may 
 not know who painted the missal for the Regent Bedford ; but
 
 142 FAME 
 
 at least we know who bought the volume once at an auction ! 
 Is this fame, or a burlesque upon it ? Edwards was not a 
 connoisseur ; he was merely the acquirer of a book which con- 
 noisseurs had appraised for his benefit ; yet he was a degree 
 or so more respectable than the illiterate and swaggering 
 American of the day, for whom the connoisseur and the expert 
 so successfully lay their bait. Forsooth, however, there are lower 
 depths, even down to the honest parochial folks who have their 
 names handed down on the walls of a water-closet as those of 
 the patriots who erected it.
 
 XIV 
 
 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 
 
 We are in possession of riches fineless, the spoils of time, the 
 trophies of ages. The past is an open volume, of which we can 
 turn over the leaves at our leisure, compare notes with the ancients, 
 and (if we choose) plume ourselves on our superiority to them. 
 The men who lived before us were destitute of this obvious and 
 striking advantage, and were obliged to manage without pro- 
 totypes and precedents. They passed their days, and died un- 
 conscious of the honours which would attend upon their ashes, 
 like the poor villager Correggio. They had not the complacency 
 of some modern authors ; for, if it had been so, they would have 
 done as httle perhaps. 
 
 Archimedes was ignorant of many matters which a modern 
 engineer treats as the rudiments of his profession. Many persons 
 are apt to look on Owen the palaeontologist as a man of original 
 genius, which he was, and also as the creator of the science, which 
 he was not. For Buffon and Cuvier were before him and they 
 merely followed in the steps of the Italian philosophers and 
 anatomists, who had been the true pioneers in these momentous 
 discoveries, and why do we turn again and again to the accounts 
 of Watt and of George Stephenson, and even Brassey, " the 
 engine man," if it be not on a similar ground ? — because they 
 gained the battle of which their humbler successors have ever 
 since enjoyed the inexhaustible spoils. Mr. Babbage or Mr. Mill 
 viewed as child's-play problems which to Bacon and Hobbes 
 formed sources of long and anxious thought. But I do not know 
 whether this is more than some one sagaciously observed, that 
 mankind is the real discoverer ; and the author of " Le Vieux- 
 Neuf " has amply shown that in a majority of cases men of the first 
 rank in the mechanical and physical sciences are entitled to no 
 higher credit than that attachable to restitution or development. 
 
 The late poet-laureate wrote more than sufficient to earn him a 
 
 wider and brighter fame than Homer — if he had not happened to 
 
 live two thousand years or so later than Homer ; and even the 
 
 143
 
 144 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 
 
 art of Shakespear for a similar reason yields precedence to the art 
 of Sophocles. There are plenty of people who persuade themselves 
 that Thomas Moore is as good a poet as Anacreon — and better, 
 that " Hohenhnden " is finer than all the odes of Pindar, and 
 that we should have thought as highly of the author of the 
 " Hunchback " as we do of our national poet, if he had flourished 
 as long ago. 
 
 Human nature and genius may be always the same in their 
 essence ; but even a man of genius has been governed at all 
 times by circumstance and by the relation of his work to his 
 own experience. Sentiment, pathos and fancy are dangerous play- 
 things ; and our greatest writers in every age have not usually 
 been the pets of society and the drawing-room. 
 
 It is an entertaining illustration of the incongruous and vague 
 ideas which even fairly-educated persons form on the subject of 
 Hterary repute, that some one objected the other day to Pepys, 
 that he was not a very high-class writer. If he had been so 
 from an University man's or schoolmaster's point of view, he 
 might have produced works of a correspondingly instructive and 
 elevating character, but he would not have written the most 
 dm'ably interesting Diary in the Enghsh language. He is what 
 he is ; vulgar, ridiculous, dehghtful. The judicious creature ta 
 whom I have referred dehvered his censure when a friend had 
 read to him certain portions of the Diary in the original MS. 
 It does not appear whether they were the suppressed passages, 
 where Pepys describes his adventure with the pretty Dutch lady, 
 or where he secretes something in the chimney ; nor does it 
 signify. It would have been the same, if the late Mr. Registrar 
 Pepys (good soul !) had had submitted to the test of his intellectual 
 acumen extracts from " Tom Jones " or the " Sentimental Journey," 
 or, still worse, the " Life of Mr. Richard Turpin of Hampstead." 
 None of these productions, permanent and valuable as they 
 may be in the eyes of some, would have reached, perhaps, the 
 desired standard of gentlemanly excellence. An Enghsh hbrary 
 of first-rate authors in prose and verse, formed under the auspices- 
 of such an adjudicator, would exclude certain names of which 
 the ear has grown enamoured. Nevertheless, Mr. Registrar, 
 the Diarist, to whom you seemed shy of claiming consanguinity, 
 was Samuel Pepys, Esquire, F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty 
 and to the Trinity House, the cousin of an Earl and the trusted
 
 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 145 
 
 adviser of two kings, and last, not least, a generous patron of 
 literature ; and who were you, sir ? 
 
 It has often struck me that the fame of Butler rests on a basis 
 which is very generally misunderstood. He was born, and lived, 
 in an atmosphere of serio-comic humour ; lists might be easily 
 furnished of men who had written quite as clever things — even 
 cleverer — on a small scale as his on a large one. But then, even 
 if " Hudibras " shared the liability of all extensive undertakings 
 to unequal performance, it was a great and impressive work, 
 appealing on its first appearance to a pubhc which had seen plenty 
 of such attempts, yet never before in so systematic and epic a 
 form — on so broad a canvas ; and then Butler was fortunate in 
 meeting with an early editor in Dr. Grey and an early translator 
 in Mr. Towneley. 
 
 Perchance we are a little in the dark still about the true 
 history, station, and gettings of the old Troubadours ; but the 
 general impression we form from available information is that 
 they were rather handsomely used people, who ate, and drank, 
 and made merry, at others' expense, and sowed their wild oats 
 remarkably late. They catered pretty successfully, as times 
 went, to the commencing taste for music of a somewhat less com- 
 plex and artistic description than would suit critical audiences 
 now. These minstrels present themselves to our view corporately ; 
 we think of them as a body of men, who conferred a lasting benefit 
 on letters ; we know next to nothing of them as individuals ; we 
 shrug our shoulders, and shake our head, at the attempt made 
 sometimes to give us a systematic account of their hves and 
 characters. It will not do ; we merely get a romantic middle- 
 age mythology as impalpable as the pagan pantheon. 
 
 But Blondel may be an exception. Him an anecdote (most 
 probably an apocryphal one) makes stand out from the rest. He, 
 for one, is a -person. There were plenty as good as he was, but he 
 has had the great fortune to come down to us in a pleasant, pretty 
 story, one of the favourites of everybody's childhood. Much in 
 the same way we are to understand that in the days of Ovid, 
 Horace, and Virgil, there were poets to spare, who wanted very 
 Httle to be Ovids, Horaces, and Virgils, but who have never been 
 heard of much since. Viaxre fortes ante Agamemnone multi. 
 There may have been many a Blondel ; but the Blondel who 
 sang beneath Richard Cordelion's prison- window the old familiar 
 
 K
 
 146 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 
 
 lay, is the only one posterity recognises. . Time has kept in- 
 different count, it may be. Nay, the relentless antiquary will 
 tell you, that the gallant monarch had left his cell before any one 
 arrived to identify or redeem him. So, again, although there 
 are many Coleridges, future ages will deem only one worth 
 recollecting or discussing. 
 
 A similar sort of fortune has befallen the prehistoric Orpheus, 
 who has become the central figure round which it is usual to group 
 a series of feats in poetry and music. Of his individuahty we 
 really know nothing. He is as completely a hero of romance as 
 Hercules or Arthur. The Hymns which pass under his name 
 are doubtless as apocrjrphal as his journey to Hades, yet withal, 
 putting aside the mythological superstructure, one seems to arrive 
 at the discernment of an actual personage who was the first 
 perhaps to introduce among the primitive Thracians the superior 
 culture of northern India. 
 
 The late Mr. George Lewes was a man of acknowledged capacity 
 and learning, and doubtless had at his fingers' ends many abstract 
 problems which it cost Socrates a lifetime to investigate and 
 solve ; but does that alter our comparative estimate of Socrates 
 and Mr. Lewes any more than the famiharity of a modern engineer 
 with many points which it cost George Stephenson years of 
 patient labour and thought to discover, places him on a level 
 with Stephenson ? Their experiments are his truisms. We may 
 predicate the same sort of thing of Cavendish and Lavoisier in 
 relation to many a modern chemist, who can never hope, never- 
 theless, to enjoy their rank or celebrity. 
 
 It is extremely probable, again, that Count Moltke considered 
 the tactics of the great Napoleon obsolete and useless ; but who- 
 ever should on that account assert the German chamber- strategist 
 to be a person of superior genius to the French Emperor, would 
 assert an obvious platitude. What editorial whipper-snapper 
 does not know as much about ballad poetry as Bishop Percy ? 
 Yet in the bishop's day the taste for such literature, as well as 
 the conversance with it, was so hmited, that a man could acquire 
 a great and lasting name by associating himself with a publication, 
 which may now be regarded as superannuated. 
 
 This train of thought draws me very naturally into the 
 reflexion, that in all first attempts in important hterary researck 
 there resides an enduring interest and an agreeable atmosphere,.
 
 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 147 
 
 apart from the question of accuracy and completeness. Surely 
 the man who lays the foundation, if it is a sound one, deserves 
 as large a mead of praise as he who comes after and builds upon 
 him. It must be a poor author indeed who does not advance 
 beyond his predecessor. Dr. Head's " Historia Numorum," 
 whatever may be its defects, is superior to any other work on 
 the subject in English, and so it ought to be. Dr. Head had the 
 labours of all former numismatists before him, and has at his 
 command the national collections and the national time. 
 
 I for my own part often turn over with a sort of satisfaction, 
 not quite easy to define or to vindicate, the writings of Thomas 
 Pennant of Downing. He was a gentleman of fortune, taste, and 
 culture, and I appreciate him, I apprehend, as if he were my 
 contemporary, or I his rather, and I prefer his no doubt often 
 imperfect statements and conclusions because, when he set them 
 down, they represented the knowledge of the day, possibly out- 
 stripped it. I have an agreeable sensation, when one of his books 
 is in my hand, that he and I are fellow-travellers, and that he 
 will shew me all that is worth seeing. I keep at my elbow a set 
 of the Penny Magazine — ^I, who am a stickler for the latest in- 
 formation on every subject — and I dehght in glancing now and 
 again at its pages, because they and I sprang into existence just 
 about the same time, and they, and a few such others, are my 
 earhest literary associations and my tenderest. Once more I 
 can understand how it was that Dr. Johnson turned in his old 
 age to a httle old obsolete book on London by Burton or Crouch, 
 which had charmed him in his youth. It was not the literary 
 composition or instruction ; it was the hnk and remembrancer. 
 
 Charles Knight and the brothers Chambers are none the less 
 commendable as pioneers of cheap and wholesome literature, 
 because their publications are at present of insignificant value. 
 Their reputation will survive that of the men who have improved 
 on them. Looking back over the elapsed years, there is a feehng, 
 which one can neither discard nor justify, about certain publica- 
 tions current in one's youth, in one's apprenticeship to study : 
 in my case it was the works which bore the imprint of Knight 
 — ^his " History of England," his dainty httle shilhng volumes, 
 his edition of Goldsmith's " Animated Nature," about all of which 
 the writer entertains sentiments and recollections, such as, perhaps, 
 no other hterary productions are capable of awakening. They
 
 148 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 
 
 present themselves to his mind's eye as they looked and felt 
 fifty or sixty years ago on his first introduction to them. They 
 are untrustworthy and obsolete ; we possess fuller sources of 
 knowledge and superior methods of illustration. What of that ? 
 These are no longer booksellers' ware ; they are rarefied and 
 refined, like attar of roses. The copies which I held in my boyish 
 hands exist in substance no more ; they are freeholders of my 
 brain, prisoners of my imagination, to all beside invisible, 
 incomprehensible. 
 
 Posthumous repute, so far as the individual himself is con- 
 cerned, is (as 1 have said) a thing of the present, not of the 
 future. It is the gratification of which we may be sensible, 
 while we live, that we shall be remembered in a world to which 
 we no longer belong, and by generations with which we have no 
 more to do than the Pharaohs, while we, on our part, are rever- 
 sioners in fee of our ancestors' achievements no less than of 
 their titles and fortunes, and take credit to ourselves for what 
 they did — ^perhaps more than they took — or deserved. How 
 many of our ancient and noble houses have inherited their names 
 and fame in the same manner as their personal chattels ! Charles 
 Lamb, in a fit of spleen, once said : " Damn the age ! I will write 
 for antiquity " — reversing the sentiment of the character in 
 Schiller, who would be a citizen of the future ; but to him the 
 pleasure began and ended in the sense of superiority to the venomous 
 and vituperative Tory critics of that day. What is it to him 
 that his works are reprinted in octavo for the use of the simpler 
 sort of gentlemen forming Hbraries, and that his autograph letters 
 are prized by the virtuoso ? What, again, does it signify to 
 Pepys that his Diary hes at last before the world in its full 
 amphtude and nudity, and is a favourite commonplace book 
 of the book-maker ? 
 
 Is it an indemnity to the sublimest of enthusiasts, the most 
 inspired of seers, William Blake, that his grand inventions — 
 some worthy of Michael Angelo, some Dantesque in their splendid 
 boldness — which awakened no response in the men and women 
 of his time, but which were luminous transfers from the most 
 opulent of imaginations, at present command the inexhaustible 
 dollars of the omnipotent sweepers of the universe, not because 
 they are fine, but because they are dear ? His supernatural 
 possession, his intellectual fecundity and rapture, the very in-
 
 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 149 
 
 sensibility of the world to his unique genius, these, down to the 
 instant when at his last human breath he beheld the heavens 
 opening as if to receive him, these were far beyond current fame, 
 inexpressibly above a buyer's money. How late in the day 
 the world discovered that a man, who shunned pubhcity and 
 distinction — Herbert Spencer — was the greatest intellectual 
 ornament of the Victorian era — not till he lay in his shroud 
 at Brighton ! for even Haeckel has hved to see the shameful 
 abuse showered on him by the Church and its tools discredited 
 and condemned. To any such among us as have crossed the 
 silent, irrepassable river what does it signify if the voice of de- 
 traction be hushed, if the verdict of the worshipful critics be 
 unanimously reversed ? 
 
 It is, in short, with us men and women as it is with wine or 
 a bronze or a canvas, the tone and the atmosphere, which go so 
 far to render us appreciable at our real worth, if not beyond it ; 
 both demand a force and a charm, nay, an illusion, which time 
 only can render. One may be as witty as Voltaire, as profound 
 as Bacon or Shakespear, as entertaining as Sterne, or as learned 
 as Bentley ; but the jury which is to dehver that verdict is not 
 to be empanelled till we are well beyond hearing. It may be of 
 personages, who stood at our side, but hesitated to offer us honour 
 — ^nay, hope, or it may be of such as we never beheld, and as will 
 flatter us by the regret, that they are Hmited to a posthumous 
 rite, just with a bonus perhaps for deferred satisfaction. 
 
 On the whole, it is scarcely surprising, that the literary men 
 of our own time do not, as a rule, covet this sort of reputation, 
 and prefer to bask in the sunshine of contemporary favour. They 
 may echo the motto on the covers of some of GroUer's books : 
 Portio mea, Domine, sit in Terra Viventium. 
 
 There are few persons belonging to ancient English life and 
 history, as to whom there has been a greater amount of contro- 
 versy and doubt than the ballad-hero Robin Hood. Some affirm 
 that he flourished under one reign, some under another. Some 
 regard him as a type or a myth ; others incline to the opinion 
 that, as all the writings of an Homeric cast have been affiliated on 
 a single individual, so Robin Hood has had all the glory of achieve- 
 ments belonging to a certain class and a certain cycle. He is 
 a generic outlaw and archer. But as it is with Homer, so with 
 him. He is an individual to us ; he is as palpable, as much flesh
 
 150 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 
 
 and blood, as William the Conqueror or Cedric the Saxon, as 
 William Wallace or William Tell. He is as much a part of our 
 passed annals as the Battle of Bannockburn, or even as the Massacre 
 of Glencoe. He will be fresh in our memories and our hterature 
 a thousand years hence. He is as standard as Magna Charta 
 or the Habeas Corpus Act. He is to-day a living fact in the 
 world. The reputations of the vast majority of us are by com- 
 parison annuals. 
 
 A great many men have been forgotten who helped to con- 
 stitute classes, which will never be forgotten ; as benefits remain, 
 the doers lost sight of. The converse, however, would appear 
 to hold good in the case of one whom I have just mentioned, 
 who was not only a minstrel, but the greatest of minstrels — 
 Homer. For, according to the received opinion, there were 
 several hands in the " lUad," not reckoning the Renaissance 
 embelhshments and interpolations which, like the " Shield of 
 Achilles " in Book i8, speak for themselves ; it was not the work 
 of a single pen or a single period, there is internal evidence of 
 posterior interpolations, for the most part themselves of ancient 
 date, as the " Shield of Achilles " with all its elaborate artistic 
 details is mentioned by Euripides ; but conventionally or at 
 least popularly the great epic is treated as the production of one 
 mind, as much as " Gulliver " or " Robinson Crusoe " is. If its 
 plural composition be anything more than a mere theory, there- 
 fore, several men are permanently and irrecoverably merged in 
 that one whom we call Homer. If the view is to be abandoned, 
 and Homer was a person, just as Virgil and Pope were, then it 
 has to be said, that his fame is of the truest and highest kind : 
 hving with the language in which his writings are preserved ; as 
 immortal as he fabled the gods of his country and country people, 
 and, like them, never to grow old ! Yet, whatever may be the 
 real liistory of the "Iliad," the "Odyssey" impresses me with 
 a far greater feehng of homogeneity, and strikes me as more 
 human, less local, and less temporary. It narrates incidents 
 which occurred thousands of years ago hundreds of miles away ; 
 but there are passages in the epic, which draw tears, whenever 
 I read them. I am helpless as a child. It is, hke " Robinson 
 Crusoe," without note of time and place. I read about Circe, 
 about Calypso, about the Sirens, about the Lotophagi, and almost 
 wonder if they are there still, should one take ship in search of
 
 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 151 
 
 them, following the saiUng card of the great Ionian. Such books 
 put one out of humour with the narrow precision of historians and 
 all their documentary pedantry. I have already said something 
 about the individuality or pluraUsm of Homer ; yet one cannot 
 resist a suggestion that if the epic had been the product of several 
 hands, or had even been submitted to the assimilation of a general 
 editor, traces of the original process of development must have 
 somehow been detected by experts. 
 
 Again, in estimating Homer, it is not unusual to class him 
 with Virgil ; but than such a collocation nothing can be more un- 
 just and improper. Virgil was a secondary genius who based his 
 epic on the Homeric model, and his " Bucolics" and " Georgics" 
 on the writings of Theocritus and Varro. The other was the 
 veritable Poeta. 
 
 We have perhaps a second example of the same sort of thing 
 in the writings of Walter Mapes, with whose name tradition has 
 chosen to identify a variety of those strange old gohard verses, 
 notwithstanding the circumstance that there is no actual proof 
 even of his share in their authorship. Mapes is the Homer of 
 mediaeval satire. He is the god-parent of all the poetical foundhngs 
 in a certain school, which were floating up and down the world of 
 letters, fatherless, in or about his time. He is known for what 
 he in all probabihty did not write, while his own undoubted pro- 
 ductions have scarcely been heard of ! 
 
 Contemporaries seldom, if ever, get the correct focus in look- 
 ing at such works and such men. They are too close to them. 
 Both require to be \dewed at a distance ; they want the aid of 
 perspective, a mellowed hght and atmospheric transparency, 
 which come only with time. On the other hand, it is to be feared 
 that, in forming our estimate of the literary celebrities of other 
 days, sight is not always or fully gained of the true viewing and 
 judging points, and if we enjoy the advantage of studying the 
 works of men so different as Spenser, Shakespear, and Bacon, 
 without prejudice and bias, we are naturally apt to forget or 
 undervalue the prepossessions and disabihties which influenced 
 their minds and coloured their work. 
 
 It becomes less surprising that a thousand years or so should 
 have to elapse before a man of genius, born in a rude age, finds 
 his proper level in the scale of pubhc opinion, and is seen in his 
 just proportions, when we reflect that full homage was not paid
 
 152 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 
 
 to the matcliless gifts of Shakespear till two centuries after his 
 death, and when we consider that there are living with us men 
 and women of the highest intellectual pretensions, whose names, 
 after they are gone, will be probationers, like candidates for 
 certain clubs, many and many a year, before they pass over into 
 neutral ground. 
 
 Very rich men, who are not, as a rule, persons of genius in 
 a high sense of the term, have their own methods of rendering 
 themselves immortal. If they cannot write like Shakespear, 
 paint hke Titian or even Turner ; if they fail to shine in the battle- 
 field or in the forum, they can offer up to the gods their surplus 
 currency, and hnk their names for ever with some colossal scheme 
 of benevolence and philanthropy. Granted that they have no 
 literary, artistic, or other lofty gifts, they have it well in their 
 power to barter for cash the products of such as have. It 
 naturally does not enter into their plans to relieve others clan- 
 destinely. Your Astors, your Pierpont Morgans, your Passmore- 
 Edwards's, your Guinness's, your Carnegies and other twentieth 
 century financial saurians, leave private applicants, however 
 meritorious and however modest, unsatisfied, nay, unanswered ; 
 for it is not their game "to do good by stealth " ; they must do 
 it in the market-place to the sound of trumpets, amid the upraised 
 voice and hands of the multitude. 
 
 In the common affairs of every-day hfe, we settle small claims, 
 and take time from our larger creditors as of right. The public 
 pays its clever fellows out of hand, so much in ready money, and 
 so much in pats or scratches on the back, and they have their 
 reward ; but where such a matter as immortality is in the question, 
 it seems to feel that there is no such haste. A thousand years 
 hence the rememberable dead will not have so enormously 
 multiphed. 
 
 Of men who, in our own time or at least in our own memory, 
 have discoimted in the way just suggested their claim upon 
 posterity, the two Disraelis are notable examples. The younger 
 one was, on the Darwinian principle, a capricious, but not wholly 
 unintelligible, evolution from the elder. The author of the 
 " Curiosities of Literature " and other equally notorious pubhca- 
 tions, whose father was a door-keeper at the Stock Exchange, 
 was probably the most successful literary charlatan of his day, 
 as his son was the most successful political one of ours. The
 
 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 153 
 
 author of the " Kevolutionary Epic," and " Star Chamber," and 
 of the famous mot, " Sedition is my jorte" was the chief of a party, 
 whose contempt for him was as thorough and just as his for it. 
 Rien ne reussit aussi bien que le succes. 
 
 Interim vivendum est, is a maxim which the world clearly does 
 not believe to be applicable to men of genius, or did not, at any 
 rate, formerly. It used to be, if it is not still, of opinion that it 
 is high time to think of a person's merits, when his name has 
 acquired a classical bouquet, when liis memory has reached the 
 odour of sanctity. We may have among us at the present moment 
 men who have written essays as fine as Elia's and poems as fine 
 as Pope's. But there is not sufficient distance and perspective 
 to assist the illusion yet. How can one, from whom we had a 
 letter yesterday, be equal to Lamb ? How can an author, with 
 whom we are in the habit of brushing coat-sleeves in Bond Street, 
 make out pretensions to stand on a footing with Alexander Pope 
 or even with Alexander Dyce ? He may be as good, nay, better ; 
 but he has not acquired the necessary atmosphere. He lacks 
 the tone, which age alone gives, like the crust on old wine. They 
 may become our grandchildren's classics, may be heroes to 
 generations unborn. Nobis non nostra. Besides, it would never 
 answer to acknowledge that one, with whom we are in immediate 
 contact, is all that we even hold him to be in our hearts. For his 
 pretensions would become too excessive to bear. 
 
 As a rule, the poet who writes for his ow^n age too often writes 
 for no other. He is "a man of the time." His humanity is narrow 
 and current, like an almanac calculated for a certain meridian 
 and a term, of years. His works of themselves have no circum- 
 stance or context — are little more than passages of fashionable 
 hfe neatly versified. To us they may be Hterature, but to our 
 successors and to future epochs they will be mere printed paper. 
 Their author is a fraction, not a whole quantity. Yet his social 
 standing or his prestige as a good fellow lends the reviewers their 
 cue, and the world has, as usual, to discover the truth at its 
 leisure — and to its cost. 
 
 It is a question which seems rather naturally to present 
 itself to one, in turning over the pages of such pubhcations as 
 the Biographia Britannica, the Annual Register, the Biografhie 
 Universelle, and the Penny Cyclopcedia, who the men were 
 that made these books what we see them ! To whom do we
 
 154 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 
 
 owe the English edition of Peter Bayle, the Philosophical 
 Dictionary of Voltaire, as well as half the ephemerides, with 
 which the shelves of the British Museum groan, of which the mere 
 catalogue is a sort of library ? Nobody knows, except, perhaps, 
 a few inquirers, who have taken a leaf out of Captain Cuttle's 
 book ; and is not this the fate of all journalists, cyclopsedists, 
 and lexicographers, unless, like Johnson and Goldsmith, they 
 rise to something better ? Surely they should work only on 
 the most paying conditions possible ! It is the same thing, when 
 we turn over the leaves of the " Literary Anecdotes " of Nichols. 
 Here we are confronted on every page with encomiastic memorials 
 of personages respecting whom the writers and posterity appear 
 to take opposite sides. 
 
 Even those who contributed to the too much lauded " Dictionary 
 of National Biography," of which a carefully revised edition would 
 be really valuable, would have been clearly unwise to estimate 
 their services too low ; for their wages are the measure of their 
 reward. The conditions of hire are inclusive. One beats the 
 bush, and another catches the hare. Many do the work, but 
 one wears the garland. As it was with Kippis, Chalmers, and 
 Rose, so it is going to be with the conductors of this newer 
 enterprise. 
 
 The Key which has been made to anonymous authors is a 
 project about which I freely own I was never particularly sanguine. 
 It looks to me like exhuming a corpse in order to restore anima- 
 tion. A man who does not choose to reveal himself to his con- 
 temporaries is not likely to make a figure afterward. Fame 
 does not grant post-obits of that kind. We have even a feeling 
 that if the authorship of the " Letters of Junius " was to be 
 settled, it would be fatal to the interest there is at present in the 
 question. If the writer turned out to be some celebrated person, 
 the public might become of opinion that these productions were 
 inferior to some others he had put his name to, and so were not 
 of any farther curiosity ; while, on the other hand, if they could 
 be proved to have come from an obscure pen, the world would 
 be apt to suspect a hoax. It would have him either way ! A 
 man cannot dispose of his reputation by will, as if it were a chattel, 
 or regulate it by a private Act of Parliament. He cannot direct 
 that his fame shall date from the day of his death, and flourish 
 in perpetuity.
 
 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 155 
 
 Cowper was as perfect a contrast as could be found to two 
 men of our own time — ^Bulwer and Dickens, both immeasurably 
 his superiors in genius and power ; but — 
 
 "What is the atdhor, if the man be nought?" 
 
 The very sound of Cowper's name awakens a stealthy tender- 
 ness. I should hardly have regarded his works with an interest 
 so great if he had been less good and less unhappy. There is 
 something perhaps, even to a commonplace mind, in feehng that 
 both genius and the want of it have their compensations ! 
 
 Some writers we seem to like from the accounts of their hves 
 which come to our hands ; and we turn to their works to see if 
 we can find an}i;hing to corroborate the favourable impression 
 or estimate. Take Surrey, Cowley, Bohngbroke, Cowper, Johnson. 
 Others we regard with varying feehngs. I should have taken ofi 
 my hat to Evelyn ; I should have held out my hand to Pepys. 
 
 How few of us can agree to go an5rthing approaching the whole 
 distance with the sanguine compilers of bygone " Analecta " in 
 their estimates of brand-new authors — of the literary constella- 
 tions, which were to echpse all or most that preceded them ! Not 
 even at a lady's bidding can we fall into an ecstasy over the poetical 
 genius of Crabbe or of Cowper ; much less can we respond to the 
 enthusiasm for excavating older names and writings from their 
 burial-places, because it is the humour of some one to pose as 
 a discoverer or a champion. Such works as Miss Seward's 
 " Anecdotes " largely serve to transmit to us social and human 
 traits of characters, to which we are ever ready to turn and 
 turn again, if it be merely to speculate what were the grounds 
 for such general and extravagant approbation. 
 
 The critic who thinks Cowper a great poet is well-nigh capable 
 of thinking anything ; yet the author of the " Task " is, curiously 
 enough, not the less dear to us, because his writings are not of 
 a high cast. If we cannot pay very lavish homage to his genius, 
 there is an affectionate association with his memory, partly arising 
 from the relation in which he stood to the men who formed the 
 earher literary taste of the nineteenth century. But his fame 
 is not robust enough to stand long alone. If he had followed, 
 instead of preceding, the Lake school, it is more than a question 
 whether his rank in letters would have been high, and in estimating 
 his power the fairest mode of judging is by a comparison, not
 
 156 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 
 
 between him and his successors, but between liim and those whose 
 style and spirit he so much assisted in superseding. " John 
 Gilpin," like Gray's " Elegy," is a poor performance enough, when 
 we consider it apart from the circumstances and the age which 
 produced it. Both these poems demand, in order to ensure our 
 unreserved appreciation, the atmosphere in which they first saw 
 the hght, just as some books are preferable in the original sheep 
 binding. 
 
 The strange reputation of Crabbe, his intelHgible dechne, 
 and his stranger recall to life, suggest that there must be a sort 
 of feehng about him cognate to that which some of us entertain 
 toward the author of the " Task." To be a respectable divine 
 is, I conclude, an asset. As poets one is assuredly as indifferent 
 as the other ; but of the two I should hke to be excused for 
 honouring the recommendation to possess the complete works 
 of the writer of the " Parish Register," out of which the reverend 
 bard ingeniously constructed a bizarre portrait-gallery, where 
 antiquaries and scholars had recognised only archaeological data. 
 
 I never look at " Tristram Shandy " without recollecting 
 my ancestor's letter about the author. Sterne is said to have 
 been a hypocritical and heartless sentimentahst. In this respect 
 I imagine that Thackeray's reputation as a writer is likely to be 
 benefited ; at all events, if he had wild oats, he sowed them early. 
 I never read any of his works except " Vanity Fair " and the 
 " Ballads " ; but the production which most signally took me 
 captive was that thorough Httle idyll, that self-contained 
 miniature : — 
 
 " what fun ! 
 Nice plum bun : 
 How I wis' it never was done ! " 
 
 How we feel ourselves transported back to a period of life, when 
 our desires were as limited as they were innocent ! But a man 
 must have Uved a long while ago, or be a Shakespear, to induce 
 us to regard him from a purely intellectual standpoint, without 
 concerning ourselves with his domestic affairs. 
 
 With what a different feeling we view Coleridge and Lamb 
 on this account. Any superiority on the part of the former in 
 mental reach and scholarly attainments seems to be far more 
 than outweighed by the at once amiable and heroic disposition
 
 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 157 
 
 of the India House clerk. In the case of two men so dissimilar 
 as Johnson and Scott, do we not already perceive that the 
 published records of their careers are likely to prove of more 
 permanent interest than their literary remains. And in good 
 truth it is so with Goldsmith again, whose pleasant unsophisticated 
 personality invests his works with a mysterious and peculiar 
 interest apart from their independent merit and himself with 
 a rank mainly due to that sort of moral prestige. 
 
 I might draw up a catalogue of others belonging to different 
 epochs, whose works are secondary to themselves : Sidney, 
 Fulke Greville, Izaak Walton, Charles Cotton, Sir Thomas Browne, 
 Evelyn, Walpole ; and I might add even Gray. All these, and 
 many more, are perpetual freeholders of the public regard under 
 a special statute of exemptions. Byron and Shelley, on the 
 contrary, hke Bulwer and Dickens, since we have been admitted 
 behind the scenes to a disillusionising knowledge of the authors 
 as individuals, seem to lose some of their fascination ; their 
 poetry impresses one as artificial and insincere, as sublimated 
 phraseology. Bona fides goes for something even in the labours 
 of the Muses. 
 
 With a foreign author, the writer of " Telemachus," is it not 
 much the same ? Fenelon used to say that he was more a 
 Frenchman than a Fenelon, and more a man than a Frenchman ; 
 and we love and admire him, and forget his nationality, not for 
 the sake of what he wrote, but for the sake of what he was, as 
 we do Cowper, and as we do a far greater writer than either, Pope, 
 who, after all, seems to have shone more as a talker and a man 
 than as a poet — the exact inverse, I take it, of Tennyson. 
 
 But I would be disposed to go even farther in respect to the 
 former schools of English poetry. For if one surveys the entire 
 body of writers in some general Anthology — say from Chaucer 
 to the late poet laureate — ^without any unfair prepossession, how 
 httle, out of the vast mass of written matter, recommends itself 
 to approbation ? One forms conclusions unfavourable to many 
 a great name, to many an accepted classic, in some cases as a 
 whole, in others in partial measure. But these authors have 
 received their passports, have crossed over to a region where 
 critical fiats are inoperative, where public opinion is barred by 
 an unwritten statute. 
 
 We look in vain through the pages of the " Epistolse Obscurorum
 
 158 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 
 
 Virorum " for the source of the ungovernable merriment of 
 Erasmus on a first perusal of the work when it appeared. But 
 it has fared with this as with many other books, which owed much 
 of their original success to extrinsic or auxiUary circumstances. 
 Take even the " Utopia " of More and the " Moriae Encomium " 
 of Erasmus himself, the " Dunciad " or the " Rosciad." The 
 lens through which they were read and judged is broken, and they 
 are the only survival of the sequence and group of incidents which 
 aUke created and elucidated them. 
 
 The literary middle-man is a personage by no means to be 
 underrated — not him of to-day, but the older and more respect- 
 able character — more respectable, perhaps, because older. He is 
 the channel through which our circle of agreeable and improving 
 acquaintance has been extended, to whom it is exclusively due, 
 that we know something — a few anecdotes — a fragment or so 
 — of quite a host of ancient authors, whose works have vanished. 
 Aulus Gelhus, Photius, Athengeus, are in this way and sense our 
 benefactors, and have surrendered a share of their own personality 
 in the act of handing down to us a taste of other writers, wha 
 pleased them in the course of their reading. Possibly the 
 specimens which they have selected are above the average, yet 
 does not one long for what one is perhaps never to behold — for 
 what, if one had it under one's eyes, might prejudice the author 
 in one's opinion ? We are prone to speculate on the exact nature 
 of the lost Books of Livy, of Book V. of the " Enchiridion " of 
 Epictetus, and of a hundred other lost gems. Are not all these 
 better as they are in common with thousands of early British 
 publications, of which we have only the names or the title- 
 pages ? 
 
 We possess a rich inheritance from our ancestors (irrespective 
 of nationality) ; but the thought, how far richer it might have 
 been, qualifies our satisfaction. We have numerous plays by 
 Euripides and even certain letters, yet we lament the lost drama 
 of " Andromeda " of which Suidas has handed down a Hne. We 
 have the Commentaries of Csesar, and we call in vain for his 
 Poems. We wonder whether Athenseus has afforded us any 
 sort of idea of the 750 lost books of Chrysippus. Coming down 
 nearer to our own time, there is the book which the Knight of the 
 Tower made for the use of his daughters, and a strange enough 
 book it is ; but, alas ! that which he wrote for his sons has.
 
 THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 159 
 
 perished ! It is not, in short, the blessings which we enjoy, but 
 those which have been snatched from us, that we covet and 
 lament. 
 
 Those whom we now term and think great, were not always 
 termed, if they were thought, so, while they hved. Those who 
 were called great in their lifetime were as a rule called so only 
 by themselves and their backers. Time is the greatest critic, 
 the most inexorable judge of appeals. I lately noted a volume 
 entitled " A Forgotten Past." It was one of a thousand or so 
 of genealogical and heraldic works relative to famihes and 
 individuals who have preceded us ; and scarcely a single house 
 could boast more than one hving name — ^usually that of the 
 founder. Our Peerages and Baronetages are not what they 
 might seem, Rolls of Fame, but httle more than annotated 
 Vocabularies or Directories exhibiting the ascent, the descent, 
 and the evanescence (from a public point of view) of generations 
 of men, and demonstrating how in a long ancestral line the actual 
 notabihties resemble plums in a school pudding. The illustrious 
 names of famihes are in reality those of individuals. We have 
 to reckon by units. In nine cases out of ten a man can point 
 to a single forerunner, whose mantle more or less ill becomes 
 him, and this consideration makes us turn our thoughts to the 
 disadvantages of hereditary succession. The bulk of the hneage 
 are but simulacra — family tokens. 
 
 Fame is not one, but manifold. The author and the painter, 
 as well as the follower of other hberal pursuits, may be apt to 
 prize the favourable opinion of the world on their efforts, and 
 to speculate on the verdict of judges unborn. The orator and 
 the advocate, albeit much of the context is so soon lost, are bound 
 to look back at achievements in the Senate and the Forum, which 
 were once on a time honoured in turn by hushed breath and 
 rapturous applause. The auctioneer piques himself on the volume 
 of property of which he disposes in the course of seasons or of 
 a career, and the bilhard player glories in the points which he 
 can give to adversaries \vithout hazard. Colonel Cody and Mr. 
 Booth enjoy, each in his way, a prominence which is not vouch- 
 safed to many of their superiors in intellectual accomphshments ; 
 they are dramatis personcs, who tread the boards ; but the sound 
 of their footsteps and their voices soon dies away — away for ever. 
 They are of the current and perishable types. They are entitled
 
 i6o THE SUBJECT CONTINUED 
 
 to make their own terms, like the fellow who is to be hanged as 
 soon as he has finished his breakfast. 
 
 But, after all, are we not all too prone to contemplate life 
 from the direction which has been perhaps accidentally given 
 to our own careers ? The soldier, the sailor, the diplomatist, 
 the merchant, the civil servant, the lawyer, does not each at least 
 make his own the centrifugal point round which all other employ- 
 ments revolve ; and no two classes of people probably look with 
 greater scepticism, if not disdain, at their fellow-workers than 
 the author and the artist. Yet mihtary and naval experts may 
 consider that skill and courage in the battlefield or on the sea 
 are still entitled to take that precedence over more peaceful and 
 less showy quahfications, which they naturally did, and do, in 
 imperfectly civilised countries. The modern school of biography 
 instructs us, however, where we may find heroes who never wore 
 a sword, and, on the other hand, never used a pen or a brush. 
 
 Actors, perhaps, fall under a different category from their 
 literary brethren. They are merely vehicles for the expres- 
 sion of other people's feehngs and opinions ; but authors are 
 supposed, as a rule, to be the mouthpieces of their own genuine 
 views. Members of the theatrical profession, at the same time 
 and for this very reason, are better let alone. It is a mistake 
 to follow them home. Our acquaintance should end where it 
 begins — before the curtain.
 
 XV 
 
 ON PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 
 
 Mi^LTUM, non Multa, is a maxim which was in force before the 
 fathers began to write in folio. It is one of those good old pre- 
 cepts which come down to us from classical times — a piece of 
 ancient Roman philosophy, as hard and concrete as their cement. 
 
 Upon the revival of letters among us, quantity seems to have 
 been more regarded than quality. Our monastic and pre-Lutheran 
 commentators on the Bible and upon the profane writers, hke 
 the later German schohasts, invoiced their time and labour more 
 cheaply than we can manage to do, because they loved learning 
 for its own sake, and literature was to them something better than 
 printer's copy. When men consumed their existence in glossing the 
 Pentateuch or the Psalms of David, the " Iliad" or the " yEneid," 
 and went to their graves without seeing their names on a title-page, 
 or having their fame spread beyond the walls of some priory, what 
 true sublimity of mind they must have had, what a noble thirst, 
 untainted by the shallow vanity of authorship, it must have been, 
 which sprang up in their hearts, and " grew with what it fed on." 
 Then, again, what a prodigious and bewildering monument of 
 the application and perseverance of our ancestors exists for us 
 in those huge, ponderous, unalluring folios, which (when by acci- 
 dent name of scribe or author appears to them) are the only stones 
 marking, as it were, the tomb of some unwearying Dominican or 
 Franciscan, who laboured upon them to his hfe's thread, and to 
 his knowledge's farthest stretch, with an honest intent. Nay, 
 outside the cloister and beyond our own shores, among the 
 ancients and moderns alike, those who bestowed their whole time 
 and thought on apparent trifles — on the nightingale, on lemon- 
 peel, on the bumble-bee, or on salt, held themselves enough 
 rewarded. 
 
 I fear that we have grown less robust of late days. Our 
 insular situation has exposed us to corrupting influences. We 
 .are tainted by the effeminacy of our neighbours, if we do not grow 
 
 ^^^ L
 
 i62 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 
 
 effeminate of our own accord. Modes de Paris might be written 
 up in booksellers' shops as well as in millinery establishments 
 and the theatres. The French reprint Bayle's Dictionary and 
 the Glossary of Ducange in more convenient forms. Over here 
 the Scriptures are sold in pocket editions and diamond type, to 
 meet the prevailing taste for what is handy and genteel. 
 
 It is an unhappy circumstance that the passion for writing 
 gathers strength as it goes. How far more fortunate, even more 
 famous sometimes, we should be, if we could resolve to occupy 
 our whole life, or the best part of it, in composing some volume 
 or work to be our mediator with all ages to come ! What a mistake 
 it seems to encumber ourselves, our names, and our fellows for 
 ever with an unconscionable mountain of printed paper ! But 
 there is the lues, as irresistible and everlasting as the impulse 
 which prompts us to multiply our species ; and there is no 
 remedy at law against the perpetual reproduction of an author's 
 exuberant confidences to his epoch. 
 
 Diogenes the Cynic left no literary legacy to his country and 
 to posterity, I believe ; but the ideas which governed him were 
 inherited or imitated by two very different men at different 
 times : Etienne de la Boetie, the bosom-friend of Montaigne, and 
 Thoreau of Jersey, the author of " Walden." Both the latter 
 committed to writing their views on the sacrifice of personal 
 independence to artificial laws ; and both owe our actual recol- 
 lection of them, the Frenchman exclusively so, to one circum- 
 stance — the identification of their names with a principle, which 
 was not even a new one, and with a book, which embodied that 
 principle. De la Boetie could scarcely have found his way to 
 us even as the expositor of a single theorem, had it not been for 
 the almost peremptory mandate of Montaigne that all succeeding 
 times were to feel toward his protege as he himself did, and of 
 Thoreau it may be said that, had he only written the " Walden," 
 we should quite as highly esteem him, not because we go with 
 him the whole way any more than we do with Diogenes or with 
 De la Boetie, but because he has enriched the world for ever with 
 a sincere and manly book. 
 
 Those modern antiques, middle-age Enghshmen, had, never- 
 theless, before them the example of two or three Greek and Roman 
 authors, to say the least, who had left a single treatise or work 
 behind, which was their passport to immortality. One of the-
 
 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 163 
 
 old school-men produced more in a lunar month than Hesiod wrote 
 in the whole course of his hfe. The entire remains of the Greek 
 poets, collected together, would go into a far narrower compass 
 than the writings of Thomas Aquinas. What has reached us of 
 Sappho or of Erinna, of Anacreon or of Moschus, does not amount 
 in bulk to a fortieth part of many a forgotten commentary on 
 Horace or Virgil. Tibullus and Catullus survive for us in books 
 scarcely bigger than Moore's " Twopenny Post Bag." Whether 
 Quintihan wrote more than his elaborate disquisition " De In- 
 stitutione Oratoria," I do not know, and must confess I hardly 
 care ; for that will always make him remembered, and he is not 
 remembered for anything else. I question if there would be so 
 tender a halo round the name of the Lesbian Alceus, if we should 
 entertain the like mystic reverence for the Athenian Menander, 
 whom Plutarch, by the way, tantalises us by preferring to 
 Aristophanes, — if Sappho would have been the same that she is 
 to us, after more than two thousand years, if these writers had 
 been as prolific as Lope de Vega or as Robert Southey, or Time 
 the highwayman had spared as much of them. 
 
 It may strike some as a paradox, when I class Horace among 
 those who belong to the present category. It is true enough, 
 that he has left behind him numerous poems, yet they go only 
 to make a single book, in its way as unique as it is un- 
 translateable. 
 
 Perhaps, to be sure, we do not always know aright who our 
 gods are, nor the reason of our faith in them. If a new chapter 
 has to be written upon the history of Hero-Worship, it should 
 take in the worship of names and shadows — Umhra-latnj : 
 
 " Are they shadows that we see ? 
 And can shadows pleasure give ? — 
 Pleasures only shadows be, 
 Cast by bodies we conceive." 
 
 A vast proportion of the great names in History and Letters 
 are handed down hke any other heirlooms from one generation 
 to another, and no questions are asked. Certain illustrious char- 
 acters are tenants by prescription and usage. They may demand 
 our admiration or respect, as it were, at common law. 
 
 We may be sure that among the Essenes there were other ethic 
 teachers besides Jesus Christ. Yet he stands out in highest re- 
 lief and unapproached. He can but have borrowed the doctrines
 
 i64 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 
 
 wkich he enunciated from the older members of the sect, to which 
 he is held to have belonged ; and the utmost that he did was to 
 develop them, and to become, like Mahomet, the immediate vehicle 
 for transmitting them to us, associated with his own individuality. 
 
 But a man must live some hundreds of years, before his pre- 
 tensions can be taken for granted. How few authors last so 
 long ! I cannot think of as many as half-a-dozen new names 
 at the moment, to which I can promise such duration, even in 
 a single volume octavo. 
 
 It does not necessarily follow that people who have only done 
 one thing, are people with only one idea, though the converse may 
 hold good. They have, it may be, indeed done much besides, 
 and done that much well too ; but perhaps it was nothing after all 
 that an ordinary man could not have accomplished with tolerable 
 ease, and acquitted himself of with equal credit. 
 
 It is not difficult to write letters as good as Gray's, or to 
 compose Greek and Latin odes that would bear comparison with 
 his ; but then there is nobody at either of our great Universities 
 who is capable of producing another " Elegy written in a Country 
 Churchyard." The stanzas resemble a set of cameos arranged 
 in the metrical form, and polished with fastidious and almost 
 epicurean daintiness, a little recalling the author's handwriting. 
 It would be painful to see what an ordinary Oxford or Cambridge 
 graduate would make of such a theme, if indeed the original 
 poem were not an inseverable part of the age, which produced 
 it — a piece of its literary costume. 
 
 It was of this Elegy, that the old Monthly Review spoke as 
 a piece of humble pretensions, yet not without its elegance 
 and merit, which might be true enough of Torell's Itahan trans- 
 lation. Certainly it was not thought so highly of in the hfetime 
 of its author as Hammond's " Love Elegies " and Hayley's 
 " Triumphs of Temper." But these two (with many more) have 
 gone to the trunkmaker's, and the Elegy survives. It stands out 
 as clear as noon from all the accumulated dulness and common- 
 place in Dodsley's collection, like " The Night Watch " and " The 
 Burgomaster," by Rembrandt, in the Galleries at Amsterdam 
 and at Antwerp. 
 
 Gray lived upon his reputation as a scholar and a connoisseur, 
 and estimated most highly in his own mind what few have ever 
 heard of, his Criticisms on Art and his Correspondence with
 
 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 165 
 
 Walpole. At present, for one who has read his Letters, or conned 
 over his Odes, five hundred have mastered his Elegy, among whom 
 are many enough ignorant of his having left anything else behind 
 him. My own idea is, that if Gray had had an eye to his 
 posthumous fame, had cast a sidelong glance at the approbation 
 of posterity, he would have failed in producing a work of lasting 
 texture hke this. 
 
 There is Izaak Walton. He left behind him certain biographies, 
 which in their totality few have read ; but his " Complete Angler " 
 has proved the safety belt which has borne him down the stream 
 of ages to this one. Its history and value are human and literary 
 rather than technical. No one would probably resort to it for 
 advice or for guidance ; many a schoolboy might point out where 
 it is capable of revision ; yet it is a volume which has outstripped 
 all the works of reference on the subject a thousandfold, and for 
 the very reason that it is not a work of reference. 
 
 How singular an instance of the caprice of the world we find 
 afforded to us by the fate of Bunyan. His " Pilgrim's Progress " 
 has had thousands upon thousands of readers ; it is perhaps the 
 most popular human work which was ever composed ; and yet 
 his " Holy War," which is nearly as fine, is scarcely known. The 
 latter just falls short by a little of what was necessary to make 
 it immortal, or perhaps, by some subtle dispensation, it was not 
 to be, that one brain should give birth to two books, which would 
 have brought upon the world a never-ending controversy as to 
 their relative excellence. There are two mountains in Switzer- 
 land, of which one is Mont Blanc, and the other is Monte Rosa. 
 Both, within a hundred feet or so, are equally lofty ; but every- 
 body has heard of Mont Blanc, while scarcely any one has heard 
 of its rival. The Temple of Solomon is universally famous ; how 
 few of us have a notion that the Cambodian Ang-kor is infinitely 
 finer ! How many people are aware that the ostrich dips its head 
 into the sand, and fancies itself concealed from view, and how 
 few know that the marsh- crocodile buries its snout in the mud 
 with an identical conviction ! In the same way there are painters 
 of nearly every school who in some of their productions have 
 fallen httle short of those masters whom the world so idolizes, 
 and whose best works perhaps even excel some left to us by first- 
 rate artists. Bunyan's " Holy War," which Macaulay ranked as 
 the second allegory in the language (the " Pilgrim's Progress "
 
 i66 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 
 
 being the first) illustrates it curiously enough. It is something 
 surely to have been, in one walk of literature, best and second 
 best. The readers of the " Arabian Nights " have heard of the 
 Caliph Aaron the Righteous, and is he not the subject of a little 
 poem by our late Laureate ? But few are aware that he was 
 succeeded by a son more enhghtened than himself, and who lost 
 his chance of living for ever because the most popular of Oriental 
 story-books took his father for its hero instead of Al-Mamoun. 
 An English translator was found m 1629 for a volume of ethics 
 by one Leonard Marrande, and he expressed a hope that Marrande 
 may prove a second Montaigne. But he has not. Proximity at 
 a distance is not uncommon. Genius appears to be spasmodic 
 and casual, rather than progressive, and is so, because you 
 cannot by any possibility have a hneal succession of persons 
 of supreme ability and endowments. Professionally speaking, 
 all great men and women are childless. Alexander, Csesar, 
 Napoleon, Shakespear, Bacon, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Gains- 
 borough, left no heirs. Is not the storm of 1703 the greatest 
 which ever raged in the world, because a distinguished writer 
 chose to make himself its historian ? On the same principle, 
 because the abominations of Sodom and Gomorrha are signahzed in 
 Scripture, the ordinary reader and worshipper, with the vaguest 
 possible idea on the subject, concludes that this was some isolated 
 atrocity, whereas the same story might be narrated of hundreds 
 of ancient places situated on a rich and fruitful soil in a soft and 
 voluptuous climate as is current about those two submerged, not 
 burnt, cities of the plain. Nor is it usually made apparent that 
 they were only two of five, which through the agency of some 
 volcanic disturbance were buried under the brine. 
 
 Hargreaves invented the spinning -jenny, and did nothing else : 
 
 yet he was a greater man than , who has written a round 
 
 score of romances, and whose works have a shelf to themselves 
 in every gentleman's library. 
 
 Harvey, Jenner, Arkwright, Newton, all these achieved one 
 magnificent success, and stopped there. It was best that it should 
 be so, that their fame might not be vulgarised. Bacon's name 
 stands all the higher, perhaps, in popular estimation, because, 
 with a very sparing knowledge of his miscellaneous works, ordinary 
 readers vaguely associate it with some Magnum Opus, of which 
 they have not read a line, and would not make out, if they did.
 
 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 167 
 
 Does not the case stand very much the same (to speak candidly) 
 with men such as Hobbes, Berkeley, Jeremy Taylor, and most 
 of the great philosophers, great divines, great masters of state- 
 craft, who form the Show Gallery of British Worthies, and whose 
 merits the majority take very amiably on trust ? 
 
 Harvey's opinions on anatomy have been superseded by Hunter's; 
 but Hunter does not enjoy the immense advantage of having 
 been the supposed discoverer of the circulation of the blood, or 
 rather perhaps forsooth of acquiring the credit of having done 
 so. Jenner would probably make a poor figure by the side of 
 some of our living practitioners ; but he will be remembered when 
 they have been forgotten. Such is the difference between genius 
 and experience ; so much higher is the distinction of having done 
 what nobody else could do, than that of doing what most people 
 could do if they tried. Perchance one of the gravest cases of 
 deferred recognition is that of Hobbes, a pupil of Bacon, yet a 
 great and original writer, whose intellectual services have been 
 appropriated by Locke. 
 
 It would be curious to ascertain how many, out of the vast 
 numbers who have read " Gil Bias " with eager dehght, could 
 furnish on demand the name of the author ; but certainly there 
 are very few among the general body of the public, who are aware 
 that a selection from the Works of Le Sage occupies fifteen octavo 
 volumes. Perhaps it may be thought a little irregular and in- 
 correct to quote Le Sage as a writer who has only done one thing, 
 upon which the world has set the broad arrow of its approval ; 
 for look, it may be said, at his " Devil upon Two Sticks." Is not 
 that reprinted and relished still ? Why, yes, it steals into type 
 every now and then, to be sure, and makes a sort of pretence to 
 popularity. But the thing will not do ; the world does not know 
 anything about Monsieur Le Sage, and if there is any point in his 
 " Diable Boiteux," it cannot see it. It has dwindled into a saying. 
 
 Le Sage appears to be essentially one of those who, after build- 
 ing up a literary reputation by other performances of no mean 
 order of merit, crowned the edifice with a single grand triumph 
 of art and skill which has distanced all that went before, and shut 
 them out from the view of succeeding times. If he had not left 
 that masterpiece to us, he must have been content with the rank 
 of a voluminous French author above mediocrity. There is a 
 feeling, which one has in reading " Gil Bias " and such works, or
 
 i68 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 
 
 (which is sometimes even better) in thinking about them ; it is 
 that one loses sight of the language in which the author wrote, 
 and forgets, till one reflects, what countryman he was. Inferior 
 writers are deficient in this catholicising faculty, and do not trans- 
 fuse themselves so readily into everybody's idiom. 
 
 Le Sage was at one time a French envoy to Madrid, and it 
 has been alleged that he found in Spain the manuscript of the 
 story of " Gil Bias " and destroyed it, when he had made what 
 use he pleased of it. For the Spanish critics point out that the 
 colouring and scenery are too locally exact to have proceeded 
 from a French source. But this is, in the first place, a mere 
 hypothesis, and, besides, rather an unhappy and illogical one. 
 " Gil Bias " presents no trace of a Spanish germ, and there is 
 nothing in it which a man of genius, who was acquainted with 
 the country, might not very well have produced. The detractors 
 of Le Sage have unconsciously added to his laurels. They have 
 paid him a splendid comphment by instituting against him a 
 charge of plagiarism of which the world still awaits the evidence, 
 and in the absence of proof to the contrary, I think that it must 
 be acknowledged that the Spaniards have so far been excelled 
 by a gifted foreigner in painting the former manners and life of 
 Spain. Le Sage has left us an admirably entertaining work, of 
 which a fastidious judge can allege in disparagement only, that 
 it is somewhat deficient in absolute variety of incident ; it belongs 
 to the same school as the " Contes d'Eutrapel," the Novels of 
 Quevedo, the " Enghsh Rogue," and a score of other ingenious, 
 but rather tiresome and monotonous compilations, except that 
 it is provided with a real hero. The conception is as French as 
 the treatment and the tone. Bystanders, it is said, see most of 
 the game. Perhaps Cervantes might have made as good a thing 
 of a story of personal adventure in Normandy, as the author of 
 " Gil Bias " has of his in the Peninsula. We see almost more of 
 those among whom we travel than of those among whom we live. 
 
 But surely Scarron suppHes a second example from the same 
 soil and era. Who reads anything but the " Roman Comique " ? 
 yet the author was an indefatigable scribbler of humorous ribaldry. 
 All these social fictions represent a reaction from the romances 
 of chivalry and the Platonic school, of which the former had been 
 ridiculed in England before they were ridiculed in Spain. 
 
 Richardson basked in the sunshine of contemporary favour,
 
 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 169 
 
 and could show letters from fair and fashionable correspondents, 
 who thought him a finer writer than Fielding ; but he is less 
 recollected at this time of day, and if I were asked the reason, 
 I should say it was because he has identified himself with nothing 
 of sufficiently palpable and self-evident excellence to secure the 
 coy and dull appreciation of the public. It asks more than a few 
 pretty artifices of situation, to make up a world's book. Perhaps 
 readers of Mr. Smiles will become of opinion that Richardson 
 was almost greater as a man than as a writer. There was some- 
 thing really chivalrous in his ambition to be independent of all 
 patronage, except that which he loved — the adoration of admiring 
 ladies ; and his kindness to Johnson in early days, how much 
 does it not redeem ? His personality overshadows his literary 
 renown. 
 
 Cervantes and Boccaccio are both instances to the present 
 point. What I mean by Cervantes and Boccaccio is " Don 
 Quixote " and the " Decameron " ; and the dilemma of English 
 readers is, that neither is truly accessible in our language ; 
 the nearest approach to the former is perhaps the edition by 
 Jarvis in quarto with those realistic illustrations. The " Persiles 
 and Sigismunda," the " Galatea," the plays of the one, and the 
 " Ameto," the " Philocopo," the " Fiammetta " of the other, are (in 
 spite of the modern translations and Mr. Duffield's encomium) sealed 
 literature to the mass of us. Each of these writers is known by a 
 single book ; and we no more think of the former as a soldier who 
 fought at Lepanto, than we do of iEschylus as one, w^ho gained dis- 
 tinction at Marathon ; but we allow him to pass as the pioneer in 
 forcing out of public favour a stale type of romance, although he 
 had been forestalled by the " Heroical Adventures of the Knight 
 of the Sea," pubhshed in England some years before. That is a 
 dead secret, however. We subscribe to the reputation of Leonardo 
 da Vinci as a painter, not as a die-sinker or an engineer, and of 
 Montaigne as an essayist rather than as a soldier and man of 
 business. We might take Ariosto, and apply the same argument 
 to him. His own name and the title of his great poem are almost 
 convertible terms. It was a saying of Lamb's that by Locke 
 was meant the " Essay on Human Understanding " (the author 
 being imperso7ial, as it were) : so, by Ariosto the only impression 
 conveyed to nine minds out of ten is the " Orlando Furioso." 
 His portrait is not to be met with in print-sellers' windows, and
 
 170 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 
 
 if it were, it is so unlike our preconceived notion of the original, 
 that hardly anybody would be found to accept it. It is only the 
 other day that the painting by Titian was brought within reach, 
 and hung in Trafalgar Square, to enable us to compare the man 
 with his book, that is to say, if Ariosto it be. 
 
 Going still farther back, it is, sad to say, the case that many 
 of the patristic and scholastic scribes have no standing-room 
 to-day for more than their glorified nicknames. Those Irrefragable, 
 Seraphical, Universal Doctors, what are they to us but shadowy, 
 semi-mythical ideals ? 
 
 Sterne, whose writings are allowed upon all sides to be excellent, 
 but who appears himself to have been a cold-hearted egotist, 
 and perhaps a little of the coxcomb into the bargain, is, as I 
 take it, a S3monym for " Tristram Shandy." Nobody thinks 
 of looking into his Sermons ; and his Letters are assuredly not 
 popular reading. The " Sentimental Journey " has one good 
 scene, that which the engraving has rendered so familiar. But 
 it is, on the whole, a weak and fragmentary performance, and 
 appears to owe its literary rank to the anxiety of the readers of 
 " Tristram Shandy " to discover something like equal merit in 
 other productions from the same hand. 
 
 But why should he have endeavoured to surpass himself — 
 to be his own successful rival, like Bunyan ? As it is, " Tristram 
 Shandy " stands alone, and the author is made a perpetual freed- 
 man of the Temple of Fame by virtue of it. If we were to have 
 the faculty bestowed upon us of summoning the spirits of the 
 departed, and holding parley with them, we should expect him 
 to appear supported on either side by Corporal Trim and my 
 Uncle Toby. Perhaps, in the background, a dress might seem 
 to rustle, and a fair vision might flit indistinctly to and fro ; it 
 would be his and our Maria ! 
 
 It is singular, when we consider it, how few have left more 
 than one, or at the most two, productions, in which the world 
 has consented to recognise a master's touch. It was of Goldsmith 
 that it used to be rather too indulgently said : Nullum {scribendi 
 genus) tetigit quod non ornavit ; did he not improve Voltaire's 
 Homme a quarante 4cus into the parson rich on forty pounds a 
 year ? and yet of all that Goldsmith did, his " Vicar of Wakefield," 
 in spite of its constructive faults, is the only book which keeps 
 its original verdure. We treat with comparative neglect even
 
 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 171 
 
 that admirable thing of his, " The Citizen of the World," as if we 
 shared the original publisher's distrust of it in declining to take 
 the risk of bringing it out ; for it may have appeared to be only 
 an imitation of the numerous publications of the same class already 
 in type — ^particularly the " Chinese Spy," and his poems (if they 
 are poems) are applauded on demand. But the judicial redistribu- 
 tion of the poets and versifiers of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 centuries is a task to be undertaken. 
 
 There is Andrew Marvell, formerly M.P. for Hull. He was a 
 fine political character by all accounts, and if we are to believe the 
 story of the Lord Treasurer seeking him in his own lodgings and 
 trying without success to gain him over to the Court, we must 
 give him credit for unusual integrity, although this anecdote, 
 of all the unhkely things of the kind, seems almost to bear the 
 palm. But, true or not, it is the pVce de resistance. Nine persons 
 out of ten will tell you if you ask them who Marvell was, that 
 he was this prodigiously upright individual, and will repeat the 
 tale, believing it blacksmith-hke. They probably will not be in 
 possession of the fact that their hero was a poet, too ; that his 
 doings in that line were thought worth printing in his own day 
 with somebody else's portrait, and {mirahilius dictu) republishing 
 in ours. As a pamphleteer he did his measure of good, and his 
 metrical doggerel is sometimes found of use to explain an obsolete 
 allusion. But, in a public and general sense, his name is solely 
 associated, and will be so for ever, with an incident which, if it 
 really occurred, has an exceedingly apocryphal complexion. 
 
 Bishop Percy published a collection of Runic verses, trans- 
 lated Mallet's " Northern Antiquities," and was an extensive 
 and accomplished letter- writer ; all which might have gone for 
 nothing, if he had not happened to present to the world a book 
 which was the pioneer of all other books of the kind. He has 
 left a work which lives and makes him live. He has merged his 
 individuality in it. He and the " Reliques of Ancient English 
 Poetry " are one and indivisible. So it will be before long, I 
 predict, with Savage Landor, if it be not already the case, and 
 I think I could give a reason or two if required, why the fusion 
 of this author's personal identity with the " Imaginary Con- 
 versations " would hardly be a disadvantge to his fame. 
 
 It was not so much what Percy actually achieved, for he was, 
 in sober truth, a careless and poorly-informed editor, as what his
 
 172 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 
 
 example stimulated other and better men to do. He was tlie 
 primum mobile, a very Daedalus of ballad-lore. 
 
 Fielding's " Tom Jones," which Gibbon pronounced a more 
 enduring glory to the name of the writer than an imperial descent 
 and an Earl's coronet, was a type once, whatever may be thought 
 at the present day of that interesting hero of romance. We are 
 afraid that his popularity has declined since he has become a 
 " double-column " author. He is a writer whom I would rather 
 not have complete. Quod nan opus est, asse carum. His are not 
 works to be taken " one with another," like wares in gross. His 
 novels, bound in one volume, as well as his theatrical compositions, 
 are nought to the generality, who only heard of " Tom Jones " 
 before, and cannot put up with questionable language and morality 
 in new acquaintances, not viseed by fame and common report, 
 just as we tolerate Boccaccio, and virtuously draw the line at the 
 " Novellino " and the " Pecorone." Extracts from " Tom Jones " 
 may be met with in specimens of English Prose-Writers, and 
 favourite passages of it are quotable second-hand. " Tom Jones " 
 is, in short, the book with which, and with which alone, the name 
 and reputation of Fielding are popularly and familiarly associated. 
 Whatever agencies combined may have built up that renown as 
 we see it, " Tom Jones " holds the edifice together, and binds it ; 
 and it is a curious circumstance that the very name of the work 
 was an afterthought. It had been intended, it seems, to call it 
 " The History of a Foundling." 
 
 A reprint once in a century of the entire Works of Jonathan 
 Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, is found to satisfy the demands of the 
 curious and of literary inquiry ; and yet there is one of these which 
 is being multiplied incessantly in numberless copies. There is 
 no need to force conclusions, where they come spontaneously. 
 The truth in this case does not lurk at the bottom of a well. 
 Swift succeeded, in one instance, in lifting himself and his pen 
 above the hampering restraints of party feeling and contemporary 
 sentiment, and produced a work, as a consequence, with which 
 the public has been charmed ever since. One such triumph was 
 sufficient. It was better for him and for us that there should 
 not be two Gullivers ; for if there had been, people might have 
 been puzzled which to prefer, and have ended by going some- 
 where else for an idol ! The Dean's Poems are not adapted for 
 family reading ; nor would it have been thought a safe experi-
 
 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 173 
 
 ment to annex " The Tale of a Tub " and the " Directions for 
 Servants " to the modern edition of GulHver on imperial paper 
 in crisp, new type ! As far as the " Tale of a Tub " is concerned 
 — by the way, it contains the germ of Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus," 
 and was not itself original — ^there is one feature, which precluded 
 it, from the first, from becoming really popular. It is an allegory, 
 but not an allegory like Bunyan's. Its drift is pohtical, and a 
 powerful piece of writing as it unquestionably is, I fail to see 
 in it anything which would be calculated to attract the unintel- 
 lectual public. Swift's production is a piece of genuine literature, 
 and Bunyan's is scarcely perhaps that. But the ordinary reader 
 does not care a jot for literature. He only cares for what he can 
 understand, which is little enough. Dr. Johnson, without know- 
 ing Swift's obligation, thought the " Tale of a Tub " too good 
 for him. It, and the " Directions for Servants," and the " Gulliver " 
 — alas ! all were undisguised plagiarisms from satirical fictions in 
 favour, before the good honest Dean was born. 
 
 Swift's admirers, if they are wise, will be content with the 
 national reputation he enjoys on a single account, and if there 
 is a faint notion in the popular mind that he did other things, 
 let it rest there undisturbed ! What mental torture, what agony 
 of spirit, what posthumous obloquy, he might have been spared, 
 if he could have lived and died an obscure country clergyman, 
 of whom all that could be known was that he left to mankind 
 a volume proof against death ! 
 
 It may seem strange (with a spice of flippancy) to speak of 
 identifying a man who wrote in his lifetime a cartload of books, 
 with one particular book which, of all his productions, was per- 
 haps not that most highly valued by himself and his contemporaries. 
 But, nevertheless, if this is not pretty much as the case stands, 
 at the present moment, with no less a person than Daniel Defoe, 
 I gravely err. 
 
 The plain fact is, that out of all this wilderness of printed 
 matter, " Robinson Crusoe " alone has not been hustled out of 
 popular recollection by more modern names and more novel sub- 
 ject-matter. In his " Captain Carleton," his " Roxana," his 
 " History of the Plague," and other pieces, which have sunk into 
 neglect, there was, we are at liberty to infer, something, however 
 little it might be, wanting to make the truth to Nature complete, 
 something to render the illusion (so to speak) perfect, something
 
 174 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 
 
 to constitute an homogeneous whole, which should fix the atten- 
 tion in perpetuity. 
 
 " Robinson Crusoe " breathes the air of general humanity, 
 and it is immeasurably superior to Swift's " Gulliver " — the atmos- 
 phere is so much more pleasant and more generally rehshable — 
 almost sheds in fancy the scales of time. Yet a person whom Sir 
 Richard Burton once met, asked him if he had ever in his travels 
 come across Captain Gulliver. I try to read the " Waverley 
 Novels," or at least some of them ; but the effort is vain ; the 
 self -illusion is irrevocable ; the magical stai! is broken. How is it 
 that I find the continuity of interest and beauty in " Crusoe " 
 intact ? Its scenes and characters are the things and persons 
 themselves pJwtosculptured, rather than bas-relief descriptions of 
 them upon paper. It is a specimen of painting with pen and 
 ink ad vivum. It is not a mere literary composition. The boy 
 takes it up again when he has become a man, and enjoys it as 
 he did at first. A great, though tacit tribute to its excellence 
 hes in the fact that, of the milhons who have devoured it with 
 avidity, nobody probably ever dreamt of asking whether Crusoe's 
 island was to be found in the map, and whether the author was 
 right in his geography. Homer, just in the same way, depicted 
 men, incidents, and places, so that it never suggests itself to us 
 to ask how long ago they lived, or when they appeared, or how 
 far ofT they are. Not one in a thousand could tell off-hand which 
 hved first. Homer or Virgil ; but everybody has an impression 
 that they both lived a long while ago. Place Charles Lamb's 
 version of the " Odyssey " before a schoolboy or a young lady 
 at a boarding estabhshment, or even an ordinary reader, and 
 they would not guess it older than Shakespear, or so old as 
 Spenser. 
 
 Most of the books which Defoe wrote, any clever man with 
 a fair share of knowledge and invention and hterary power, could 
 have written as well ; but to model and work out Crusoe, it de- 
 manded the hand of genius, as well as a freedom from convention 
 and from petty self-complacency. 
 
 I apprehend that Herbert Spencer is at present identified in 
 the pubhc mind, so far as he is known at all, mth a new or 
 revised system of Biology and with nothing else except, which 
 is more familiar perhaps, his painful sensitiveness to disturbing 
 or distracting somids and conventional talk. He so far comes-
 
 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 175 
 
 into my category, that he is a sort of personification of Biology, 
 as the god Mars was of War. He has not the versatility or 
 flexibility of Socrates or ^Eschylus, of Cervantes or Montaigne, 
 and of others whom I have cited, and will the ethical studies of 
 an irritable valetudinarian, as unfamiliar to his contemporaries as 
 if he had taken up his abode in Laputa, serve him as a buoy ? 
 
 Versatility is a quality which the moderns, at least, are rather 
 apt to resent, since so few of them excel even in a single direction ; 
 and it taxes the memory to have for ever to bear in mind that 
 certain persons shone in more than one way. Must ^schylus 
 and Tyrtseus, Camoens and Calderon, claim our homage as 
 military heroes as well as for their literary triumphs ? Are we 
 to pay tribute to Dante and to Petrarch in their diplomatic 
 capacity ? Will not Cervantes permit us to forget that he was 
 a pohtical critic, and lost an arm at Lepanto ? There is the 
 reverse of the medal, for the truly great survive in their greatness 
 alone. Who dwells on the physical deficiencies of Agesilaus and 
 Hannibal ? Who weighs in the scales the foibles of Csesar and 
 Cicero ? Who does not condone the faults of Alexander and 
 Napoleon ? Who would judge Sappho or Corinna as they would 
 judge ordinary women ? Time casts into its crucible the gross 
 ore, and commits to oblivion the slender carnal residuum. Our 
 terrestrial divinities are constellated abstractions. 
 
 We take our favourite classics, as we take our wives, for better, 
 for worse. The authors are no longer at hand to execute the 
 corrigenda of the reviewer. There is much among the remains 
 of the ancient writers which might, no doubt, have been a good 
 deal better, and there is many and many a passage and many 
 and many a phrase for which a schoolboy would now be deemed 
 entitled to a flogging, had not their labours long since entered the 
 sacred and charmed pale of prescription. 
 
 Nevertheless it is doubtful, perhaps, whether all the erudition 
 lavished by all the verbal and textual critics on our old poets 
 and playwrights has sensibly augmented our enjoyment and 
 admiration of their writings, and whether the endless recensions 
 of the authors of the " Canterbury Tales," the " Faery Queen," 
 and other masterpieces of genius are not disagreeably tinctured 
 with academical pedantry and impertinence. I am thinking, 
 not of the restoration of the sense, for which we cannot be too 
 thankful, but of the amendment of the language. The great literary
 
 176 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 
 
 luminaries of our country were already appreciated to as full an 
 extent as now, I apprehend, speaking relatively, before their 
 works fell under the scrutiny of the modern school of editor, and 
 suffered the ordeal of the Notce Variorum. The early English 
 classics clearly owe the extension of their popularity to the men 
 who first taught us to perceive and to love their intrinsic beauties, 
 rather than to those, who substituted improved readings, and 
 reformed the rhythm and punctuation. Our real benefactors in 
 this way are not so much Steevens, Capell, Collier, Dyce, Morris, and 
 the Reverend Professor Skeat, as Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, Tieck, 
 and Schlegel. Between the two classes of teachers and guides 
 there is almost as great a difference as between a painter and 
 a picture-frame maker. 
 
 The majority of us of the literary sort, at any rate, could be 
 hereafter accommodated in a smaller compass, if we would agree 
 to cast overboard some of our superfluous baggage ; and how 
 much our bookshelves would gain by relief from the voluminous 
 performances of authors, whose writings are libraries in themselves. 
 If Shakespear had left us half his plays and none of his poems, 
 if Milton had done no more than compose " Comus " and one or 
 two of his lyrics, if Defoe had stopped short at " Robinson Crusoe " 
 and Dumas at " Monte Cristo " and " The Three Musketeers " ; 
 if, in short, three-fourths of our men of genius had been so self- 
 denying as to sample their quality, the profit would have been 
 mutual. Are not the " Canterbury Tales " sufficiently excellent 
 to have secured to Chaucer the fame which he enjoys without 
 the help of the rest ? We may grasp Caesar and Horace, Aulus 
 Gellius and Athenseus, in their different ways ; but we are apt 
 to be bewildered by the voluminous bequest of Cicero. Before 
 the invention of typography a man, when he set about winding 
 up his affairs, might make a bonfire of as many of his MSS. as 
 he pleased ; but the printed book is beyond recall. It is an asset 
 as imperishable as Matter. 
 
 The ultimate identification of anybody with a single achieve- 
 ment stands on quite different ground from specialism, conscious 
 or otherwise. As a fowler has been said to be the wickeder the 
 more dexterous he proves himself, so a specialist the truer he is 
 to his pretensions, grows the narrower and for himself the less 
 profitable. We are apt to rejoice in our delightfully ex parte fashion 
 in those, who study for our benefit a particular subject, or who
 
 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 177 
 
 exhaust a particular branch of inquiry ; but to the individual 
 this intellectual exercise necessarily and seriously cramps the 
 life, which we have to live. The world admires the man or the 
 woman who devotes a long career to the mastery of a few new 
 points in science, ethics, or political economy ; but it does not go 
 so far as to regard the matter from the worker's own standing- 
 point, who has usually sacrificed everything else to the accom- 
 plishment of one ruling object and ambition. Persons at once 
 of wide and accurate culture are rare in the highest degree, and 
 are more valuable to society even perhaps than the pure specialist ; 
 but the possessor of general information is a commoner type and 
 a larger contributor to his own and his immediate friends' 
 happiness. 
 
 It would be possible to point to many masterpieces in art and 
 even in letters, which were more or less the result of personal 
 incubation or intuition, and where the painter or artist lacked the 
 fertihzing fruit of social contact and varied experience. But, on 
 the contrary, living to oneself conduces to individuahty and purity 
 of type, and if as the consequence one leaves behind one products 
 open to the charge of idiosyncrasy, they are, at least, one's own. 
 The enlargement of intellectual vision can, after all, only be useful 
 to ourselves and the world if it is eclectic, if the notions, which 
 we gain here or there, pass through the crucible, become ours 
 by collation and refinement. Otherwise the study and treatment 
 of a topic by an exhaustive digest of all that has been written 
 upon it lays us open to the danger of offering to the world a 
 mingle-mangle, of turning oneself into a limited company. 
 
 The method of Shakespear — and an excellent one it was — 
 was to note passages in a book, which struck him as worth use 
 or storage, and then cast it aside. He found, perhaps, that the 
 bulk of the literature, which fell in his way, was little more than 
 an assortment of extracts or sentences in a framework of print. 
 
 In history, how many names there are, which seem to be 
 indissolubly associated w4th a single circumstance ? Think of 
 Harold, the last of the Anglo-Danish kings ! With what is he 
 identified in our thoughts but with the loss of a great battle ? 
 We forget that his defeat in Sussex had been immediately pre- 
 ceded by as decisive a victory over the Danes in Yorkshire, and 
 that he had barely had time to concentrate his forces on a new 
 and remote point, when he found himself confronted with the 
 
 M
 
 178 PERSONS WHO HAVE DONE ONLY ONE THING 
 
 Normans. Even as it was, if Godwin's heir had been as prudent 
 as he was brave, WilUam the Conqueror might have died a Norman 
 duke. 
 
 When we speculate on the great of bygone days, how httle 
 or how rarely we are accustomed to consider that such prominent 
 and enduring historical characters as Alexander, Cleopatra, Han- 
 nibal, Jesus, bore names which were common in their age and 
 country, but which have ceased to convey any meaning to us 
 out of connection \vith a certain individual and a certain set of 
 ideas, just as we seem to be acquainted with one Olympus alone 
 out of six or seven, and with one Montaigne out of many, his very 
 contemporaries. There have been many Hannibals in the world ; 
 it was a patronymic as famihar (comparatively) at Carthage as 
 the most familiar patronymic among us ; but in the world, as 
 we know it, there is only one surviving. Our Cleopatra and our 
 Alexander, again, were the third in order of descent and suc- 
 cession ; but posterity does not inquire for Alexander I, or 
 Alexander II., or for the first and second of the Cleopatras.
 
 XVI 
 
 FORM 
 
 " And God saw everything that He bad made, and, behold, it was very good." 
 
 The Beautiful, the Good, and the Fit are in Nature synonymous. 
 In Art they are to a certain extent. Hogarth held that beauty 
 was variety ; and he was very near to the truth. Beauty is utility 
 and variety combined. The human form is of all forms the most 
 beautiful, because it is at once the most useful and the most 
 varied. In an abstract sense, there is no such independent 
 quality as beauty ; yet a conception of the beautiful is part of 
 every man's moral construction, is an instinct as strong and subtle 
 as the instinct which brings a duckling to the water. 
 
 The intimate association of proportion with fitness in all the 
 natural objects surrounding us, which answer to our postulates 
 of beauty, is exemplified by the choice of conditions under which 
 creatures and things fulfil our technical and trained requirements. 
 But although the whole may infinitely differ, its parts must be 
 homogeneous and proper to the circumstances, as in normal 
 poetical composition in prose or metre. 
 
 The external accessories of Nature are the gradual product 
 of climate, diet, and habits, and we hardly know, perhaps, how 
 far Art has educated the eye or how far Use is responsible for 
 our opinions and doctrines in this direction. Local experience 
 and convenience go very far indeed in the appreciation of Nature, 
 in the evolutions of Art, and in the formation of what we call 
 Taste ; the practical element has its aesthetic side, and I am 
 brought back to my starting-point, where I defined Beauty to be 
 Utility combined with Variety. 
 
 The necessities of the case and the propriety of the entire 
 costume have to be attentively studied. Any one, who is toler- 
 ably familiar with the precepts in Horace's " Art of Poetry," 
 has graduated as a thinker on the broader subject before us. For 
 the Poetry of Form in verse of the highest class is, as the Roman 
 
 179
 
 i8o FORM 
 
 bard maintains, analogous to that in Painting, and he might have 
 added, in Architecture and nearly all other sciences, just as we 
 recognize it throughout the economy of the universe. When one 
 puts to oneself that such or such a matter pleases, it is another 
 mode of saying that it comphes with the obligations or exigencies 
 of its place in Nature or even in artificial life. A race-horse and a 
 cart-horse are equally beautiful, because they are severally adapted 
 to the work which they have to do ; the former is valueless if it 
 is placed in a brewer's dray, just as the latter would be on Epsom 
 downs ; and it is much the same with a greyhound and a bull- 
 dog. In these and similar instances it is the sense of utility and 
 the effect of custom which produce the feeling which we have 
 about them. There are many who would recognize in the bull- 
 dog attractions superior to any in the other species. I once knew 
 a lady who christened hers Venus, and allowed it to sleep on her 
 bed. Society has applied them both, however, to certain pur- 
 poses, and the more exactly they discharge their appointed func- 
 tions, the fairer they seem— the fairer, because the fitter. We 
 notice, on the one hand, the relatively enormous spread of wing 
 in a condor and a gull, because they have to traverse wide ex- 
 panses of water devoid of resting-places, and on the other the 
 two genera of apteryx, which have lost those lateral appliances 
 through desuetude. Look, again, at a Skye terrier or a long-furred 
 cat ; they are alike indigenous to cold regions, and we Britons, 
 as inhabitants of a somewhat bleak climate, sympathize with 
 these features, and characterize them as beauties, where the natives 
 of a torrid country might take an opposite view. 
 
 An analogous law and principle govern our ideas respecting 
 Painting and Arcliitecture. The arch of a bridge, the spire of 
 a church, the keel of a boat — they all awaken in us a sense of 
 the Useful and the Appropriate, and secondarily of the Beautiful. 
 Every church symbolizes in its body or nave the Ship of Safeguard 
 and Salvation, in its tower the seat or basement of strength, and 
 in its steeple the heavenward up-look ; transpose or change any of 
 these, and the meaning is lost. If we regard a suspension bridge, 
 one leaning on pillars, or one composed of tubes, we miss some- 
 thing ; yet it is an useful structure, and well adapted to the im- 
 mediate object. But, geometrically and theoretically considered, 
 it is a failure ; instead of horizontal lines, we have curved ones. 
 The former may be convenient ; but they do not satisfy the eye.
 
 FORM i8i 
 
 It is merely a rude apparatus for crossing a river or a valley ; it 
 is a nondescript, an abortion. A line of planks resting on tubs, 
 if they were strong enough, would be equally beautiful. 
 
 Beauty does not abstractly consist in regularity or in irregu- 
 larity of outline, which are purely relative and subsidiary terms, 
 as we have only to turn our thought to a bank of clouds, a group 
 of rocks, the sinuosities of a stream, to perceive and allow ; and 
 the other side of the argument is illustrated by the absence of 
 poetry in numberless common objects, which answer the descrip- 
 tion of utility without exhibiting the other needed characteristic. 
 It is only to take a survey of our environments to convince us 
 that this is so. Take for example a carpenter's rule, a rectangular 
 grass-plot, a railway signal, or the intellect of an average human 
 individual ; there is no scope or leverage for the imaginative 
 faculty, no linear play agreeable to trained or educated impres- 
 sions ; these are mechanical appliances or vehicles — monochords. 
 A pollard tree and a bush distorted into some fantastic and bizarre 
 shape are outcasts from Nature and heresies in Art ; they appear 
 to disobey the laws of utility, convenience, and variety in almost 
 equal degrees. 
 
 There are some things which appear to be falsely comprised 
 within the Poetry of Form, or at least not properly to belong to 
 it. The flourishes in a copy-book possess no beauty ; they are 
 nothing more than lines on a plane. There is no beauty, techni- 
 cally speaking, in a peacock's tail ; it is merely a very excellent 
 machinery for the display of colour. Beauty considerably de- 
 pends on what is commonly called the language of expression, 
 on a species of intellectual telegraphy, which may be felt and 
 comprehended, but is neither visible nor palpable ; and mathe- 
 matical science is merely the outward expression of our inborn 
 sense of aptitude and propriety. There is a mathematical germ 
 in the brains alike of us and other animals. Human apphances 
 for mensuration are modern conveniences. Our brains with their 
 infinite diversity of character and power subsist on our physical 
 systems, and govern their sources of supply and support. We 
 owe to them our faculties of sight, hearing, smell, for which our 
 eyes, ears, and noses are merely subsidiary media. The eye is a 
 mechanical apparatus for the measurement of distances and pro- 
 portions, and secondarily an object of beauty, provided that it is 
 perfect in all its parts, and from its peculiar organism a vehicle
 
 i82 FORM 
 
 of language for the brain. It is in its dualism the external con- 
 centrating agency for intellectual expression. 
 
 The nose seems concurrently to assist in fixing thought, and 
 regulating and balancing the visual focus, and offers a signal 
 refinement of the corresponding organ in animals. The human 
 nose, subject to numerous variations of detail, is capable of be- 
 coming a contributor to personal character and beauty, and it 
 is hard to conceive what could take its place on the score of 
 utility and crowning fitness. We have often heard that Napoleon 
 laid stress on the nasal conformation of his lieutenants, recognising 
 there a symptom and guarantee of capacity. This element in 
 form may or may not have grown indispensable from immemorial 
 habit and familiarity. We can hardly tell whether it would be 
 welcomed, were it introducible as a structural innovation, or what 
 is the precise history of its reduction to its finite type in man. 
 
 It is as difficult to define by what rules beauty is to be ascer- 
 tained, as it is to say with absolute precision what beauty is. Yet 
 beauty, if, on the one hand, it is not a matter of rule, is, on the 
 other, scarcely a matter of opinion — farther, at any rate, than 
 inasmuch as opinion itself, to be good for anything, must be built 
 on premises. 
 
 Man is the most beautiful work of the Creator, for there is 
 nothing essential in any other being of cognate species which is not 
 (with improvements) in us, and which does not furnish an example 
 of typical elevation under favourable conditions. 
 
 The pure and undegraded human form supplies us with a 
 satisfactory solution of the problem of accomphshing with the 
 smallest means the largest results ; of embracing within the com- 
 pass of as few lines as possible the whole vocabulary of expression. 
 The brain itself, pure and simple, is a sphere, for instance ; the 
 shape which, above all others, is capable of containing in pro- 
 portion the greatest quantity of matter. The addition of the 
 face and other accessories reduces it to a spheroid. 
 
 The sinews of a man are the leverage of his whole frame. If 
 the man has bones too large and weighty for his frame, the power 
 of leverage becomes inadequate. It is a common mistake to 
 suppose that largeness of bone implies strength ; it only does so 
 where the osseous formation is in exact proportion to the mus- 
 cular formation. Where a man's bones are of unusual dimensions, 
 unless it happens that the muscular development strictly accords,
 
 FORM 183 
 
 the man is too big for the earth he lives in. It might not be so 
 if the powerful gravitation in the latter did not exist, or did not 
 exist in an equal degree. 
 
 Many have questioned the utility of the presence of a nipple 
 in man, and consequently its beauty and its goodness ; whereas, 
 in point of fact, all these features are in it as admirably conspicuous 
 and as marvellously combined as in any other part of our structure. 
 The nipple is the keystone of our physical well-being. In either 
 sex (with a difference) it centralizes and localizes our affections, 
 as the marvellous sexual organism and energy more immediately 
 serving our renewal and succession punctuates our instinctive 
 desires. 
 
 It has been said that of all forms the human is the most 
 beautiful, because it exhibits the greatest variety and the largest 
 share of usefulness. Take a snake for instance. A snake is a 
 most remarkable illustration of Nature's endowments ; but in a 
 snake there is not a thousandth part of the variety which exists 
 in the body of a man. In the latter no two inches resemble one 
 another exactly ; the variations and the differences in the veins, 
 the muscles, the curves and Hues, are numberless, though often 
 infinitesimally minute. A serpent, on the contrary, is a simple 
 curve ; its physical structure is neither elaborate nor complex. 
 
 A racing horse is constructed so as to move in his own plane. 
 He has no lateral power. His hoofs are almost flush to the 
 ground. The greyhound moves similarly in his plane ; and so 
 long as he chases a hare in a straight line, it is all very well ; but 
 directly Puss doubles, the greyhound is at fault. He has to rein 
 up, and recommence. This comes of the want of lateral power. 
 So it is in the rhinoceros and the elephant ; but in them, again, 
 from a slightly different cause, the superabundance of dead weight, 
 the apparently undue preponderance of hide and bone. By a sort 
 of natural provision those large and ponderous quadrupeds enjoy 
 an abnormal swiftness of motion under restrictions which form 
 a safeguard to others. 
 
 The racer is all sinew, and that sinew as hard as iron. He 
 has no dead weight. He is formed by Nature to describe a 
 straight line, that is to say, to go from point to point, covering 
 the narrowest possible extent of ground on the way ; he is 
 calculated for speed rather than for strength, yet the famous 
 Eclipse is reported to have been of a coarse and large frame,
 
 i84 FORM 
 
 similar to what one conceives the Bucephalus of Alexander to 
 have been. A greyhound, when at full speed, almost runs. So 
 does a hare. A stag can only bound. The elephant and rhinoceros 
 trot only. These have their immense dead weight to carry, and 
 no lateral powxr with it ; and perhaps, after all, the velocity of a 
 rhinoceros is one of the wonders of natural history. 
 
 We see a striking illustration of the wise thrift of Nature in 
 one of the least interesting and least progressive of human bipeds 
 — the Government clerk. He makes it, as a rule, the sole function 
 of his body to carry his head to office every morning, and to 
 carry it back home in the evening. He gradually finds that 
 he is incapable of any larger exertion. Nature withdraws her 
 gifts, when she finds that they are misused or unemployed, as 
 we find in the case of the blind cave-fish of Kentucky, in the lost 
 toes of the horse, and in the feet of the primaeval whale. So, 
 too, as Boswell tells us, even Rorie More's immediate descendants 
 could not bend his bow, nor wield his claymore, because habits 
 of life in the Highlands had changed for better or worse. Official 
 crassitude is the true Illimitable : the fathomless ocean is less 
 fathomless. 
 
 Sinuosity in itself may very well be absolutely prosaic. The 
 windings of a river do not independently please or rivet the eye ; 
 it is the surrounding landscape, of which the river is only a com- 
 ponent feature. What can be meaner or less imaginative than 
 a modern street, tortuous or zigzag, with its geometrical perspec- 
 tive of stereotyped pagan buildings ? But, on the contrary, the 
 broken, rugged outlines which present themselves in the thorough- 
 fares of an ancient city, take the fancy captive. Their irregularity 
 is awake with feeling and beauty, for it is not the irregularity 
 of a corkscrew or a scimitar. It comes nearer to the unequal 
 extensions and angles which we are accustomed to see and love 
 in cloud and wave forms. No cloud is exactly the dupHcate of 
 another. Although there is an orderly sequence in the gradation 
 of volume and force, no wave exactly resembles that which preceded 
 it or that which follows it. 
 
 The beauties of leaf and flower form are inexhaustible, and 
 we turn to them again and again with pleasure and profit, more 
 especially, perhaps, after casting a doubtful eye over our own 
 attempts to reproduce them. It was usual enough formerly to 
 see objects on canvas, of which the counterparts were hardly to
 
 FORM 185 
 
 be found in Nature ; but the realistic school of drawing came in, 
 and changed all that. This new departure in Art, suggested by 
 the Dutch or Flemish school perhaps, and hand in hand with 
 the Crabbe school of poetry, was founded on a mistaken theory. 
 It discarded the vital principle of selection, and portrayed men 
 and things as they are in actual life. Phidias copied Nature, 
 but copied selected types or a selection of types, just as Zeuxis 
 dehneated Helen of Troy from five of the fairest virgins of Crotona. 
 It is impossible to deny that such pictures as those in the Wierx 
 Museum at Brussels — the mother wth her burned child, the 
 Suicide, and so forth, are vividly true and faultlessly exact, yet 
 by the same token they are gross reahstic transfers, not evolu- 
 tionary studies. So it is with the hackneys, who do nothing all 
 their lives but copy pictures on commission. There used in my 
 time to be a man without arms in the Brussels Gallery, who 
 painted with his feet ! These rephcas are often absolute facsimiles, 
 yet they are as far from resembling the original as a shilling is 
 from resembling a sovereign. A person so engaged may even 
 understand anatomy and the mechanical laws of painting, and 
 yet fail in producing a picture, because he is incapable of bestowing 
 on it colour, light, and tone — attributes in which the artist him- 
 self entered into partnership with Nature and Time ; and, even 
 from a merely technical point of view, how can the producer at 
 second hand catch the original sight ? One of the earliest com- 
 positions of the so-termed Pre-Raphaelite school was a picture of 
 an omnibus with thirteen passengers inside. It was an indifferently 
 good copy of the original ; but it was not Art, and might just as 
 well have been let alone. One might with equal propriety and 
 success make an unsophisticated representation of a hoarding 
 with advertisements, a hansom cab, or a table dliote. A casual 
 or mechanical aggregation of flowers and trees is not a garden 
 which, before it can deserve such a name, has to comply with 
 certain postulates of contour and colour. In domestic architecture 
 we often encounter houses of elegant construction and of what 
 is called gentlemanly character. Nothing is to be objected to 
 them — to their style, elevation, or embellishment, yet there is 
 something deficient — the force of thoughtful sentiment, the charm 
 of symmetry, the genius of a controlling mind. The colossal 
 style forms still another way, in which Art possesses the power 
 of tyrannising over Nature. The ancients, however, as a rule.
 
 i86 FORM 
 
 contented themselves with erecting gigantic memorials to divinities 
 and equally fabulous heroes, whose moral and physical qualities 
 they thus placed on a par. There was so far no indecorum in 
 raising statues fifty feet in height to Pallas Athenai or Jupiter 
 Capitolinus. But it was reserved for modern taste to personify 
 the Duke of Wellington as Ajax. Yet the monument in Hyde 
 Park is not impossibly as good a resemblance of one hero as the 
 other. 
 
 The colossal style and treatment in sculpture and statuary 
 may be allowed to fall within the present range, insomuch as they 
 symbolize and deify our quahties and virtues. Those grand 
 Babylonian and Assyrian monuments in our museums, executed 
 on a scale, which violated natural propriety, were figurative 
 extensions of actual or supposed realities ; and the winged bulls, 
 lions, and boars, and Mercuries and Cupids, typified human 
 attributes under animistic shapes. Objects of commanding pro- 
 portions appealed to ages destitute of culture and letters. The 
 incised slabs and other remains, which have reached us from those 
 nations, which were the cradle of art and invention, were Intel - 
 hgible to millions, who lived and died without beholding a book 
 or acquiring the alphabet of learning, just as, at an infinitely later 
 epoch, a Venetian, who could not spell his own name, was keenly 
 and proudly conscious of the significance of the winged lion of 
 St. Mark. A transition from the pagan to the Christian mytho- 
 logy procured admission for the winged angels and archangels 
 of the new system, who superseded some of the winged divinities 
 of the older creed ; and, apart from theological considerations, 
 we must allow a certain fitness in the idea, if we draw a fine at 
 the winged crucifix of the Romanist. But a similar concession 
 cannot be made in the case of that stupendous abortion in one 
 of our public parks, where a distinguished English soldier of 
 diminutive proportions assumes the stature and costume of an 
 ancient Greek warrior. The Assyrians and other ancient peoples 
 may well be excused for having regarded with reverential awe 
 the impressive representations of their gods or their heroes, and 
 for having beheved that they were accurate portraits. But even 
 persons of moderate intelhgence had in 1822 arrived at the know- 
 ledge that no two individuals were ever more dissimilar than Ajax 
 or Achilles and Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington. women 
 of England ! why did you do it ? The statue is not indecent
 
 FORM 187 
 
 because it is nude, but because it is an anachronism and a 
 falsehood. 
 
 A leading office of Art is to preserve for future reference types 
 which are valuable and not enduring. 
 
 Even a cursory study of the schools of painting in oar own 
 national collection suggests a pervading deficiency amounting 
 to a violence to poetry in all such works, or nearly so, as are 
 made up of many component parts, which severally demand the 
 eye and hand of a specialist. If one investigates the details, one 
 distinguishes the point or points in which the painter excelled, 
 and readily observes that the remainder is of a quahty, which, 
 taking the most favourable view of it, throws the central feature 
 into disproportionate rehef, or perhaps we have a colourist, whose 
 fine tints and shadows distract our attention from his faulty 
 drawing or perspective. Nor is the co-operative plan in painting 
 more successful than in literature — the plan, where one man 
 selects the share of the canvas, which is his peculiar strength, 
 and his coadjutor or coadjutors do the same. The homogeneity 
 of manner and treatment is bound to suffer ; but the alternative 
 is as unfortunate as it is frequent. It is a common experience to 
 hear a picture described as a fine bit of colour, or as presenting 
 a remarkably well-executed figure of a person or an animal ; and 
 this is because an ensemble of uniform power and truth is so diffi- 
 cult and so rare. As a rule, the subsidiary features are less 
 masterfully filled in, hke the background to a portrait or a miniature, 
 or again, as in a play, written for one actor, where the rest of the 
 cast are supernumerary foils. The exceptions are, where the 
 effect has to be taken as a whole, and you have to view the object 
 at a distance regulated by the conditions of size and treatment. 
 
 Literature has its form as well as Art. Of this Horace was 
 perhaps the first to make us aware in his Epistle to the Pisos. 
 The work of a man on paper must exhibit justness of proportion, 
 no less than his work on canvas or in marble. He has to graduate 
 his treatment and adjust his touch to the subject before him. 
 An essay may have its fights and shadows, its tone and colour, 
 as a painting has — even its relief, hke a piece of sculpture. In 
 criticism the author has to study with especial care the finer fines 
 equally with the artist. 
 
 A fiterary performance may be considered in the same light 
 as any other work of art ; but few books reafize the demands
 
 i88 FORM 
 
 necessary to constitute them such ; and an influential cause, if 
 not on the whole the most influential, is the prevaihng poverty 
 of form, or, as we more usually say, style. Form in writing, like 
 taste in judging, is perhaps a matter of instinct and genius rather 
 than of training or education. The majority of us discern this 
 valuable quality, when we have the opportunity, yet how few 
 can tell whence it proceeds or to what it is due, and how far fewer 
 are capable of even distantly imitating what they thus have under 
 their eyes ! Books are seldom artistic, because, in order that 
 they may be so, they have to satisfy the twofold postulate of 
 excellence of matter and manner, as a painting is not a master- 
 piece, because it presents one or two fine features, but because 
 it is perfect in all its parts. 
 
 In regard to the principle of selection, its essential value is 
 not uniform from the point of view of an artist, because the same 
 rules do not govern portrait and landscape. In representing 
 an individual, whether it be a human being or an animal, it is 
 necessary to secure an average or happy expression and pose ; 
 but in reproducing Nature, so far as it is reproducible at all, there 
 may be said to be at all times a ready-made selection, and the 
 fit material for a canvas. Men and women, and the inferior 
 creatures, are more difficult to realize, because the expression 
 and attitude are prone to artificial and wilful change ; but in 
 Nature there is no grimace, and the main problem is to catch a 
 piece of scenery before it undergoes normal modification. 
 
 There is an exhaustive monograph dealing with Napoleon 
 from the point of view of that great man's personal aspect under 
 all known or possible circumstances, and even in the shape of 
 caricature. It is detestable — the farthest imaginable thing from 
 a select typical representation of the Emperor at different ages 
 and in scenes consecrated by time and opinion. Two or three 
 likenesses, of which I can think, are worth a whole lumber-room 
 in book-form like this egregious pubhcation, which so signally 
 violates the ancient principle, recognised by the Persians and 
 the Greeks, of discarding what is exaggerated and grotesque. 
 The caricatures of Napoleon I should commit to the clemency 
 of the common hangman with their authors. Such distortions of 
 history and fact are solely endurable, when, as in ancient examples, 
 they casually illustrate something of which all other record has 
 disappeared.
 
 FOEM 189 
 
 The late Mr. Ruskin was a grave offender against the true 
 principles of selection and survival. He not only suffered some 
 one to reprint his juvenile verses, which in their original shape 
 might have been viewed as a curiosity, but in the new editions 
 of his more important labours he actually committed the mis- 
 demeanour of preserving passages condemned by his own judg- 
 ment, apparently because he was reluctant to surrender the 
 admittedly worthless matter, and because, again, the course en- 
 abled him to bespatter himself with a measure of abuse, which 
 his critics would have hesitated to inflict. He must keep the 
 old sentence in type ; but he guards against the supposition that 
 he did not know better, when he grew older, by adding parentheti- 
 cally, " What a fool I was to say that ! " The worse folly strikes 
 one as lying in the morbid and miserable egotism of perpetuating 
 ignorances and errors. 
 
 That the believers in phrenology are not so numerous as they 
 used to be, we ought scarcely to feel either surprise or regret. 
 The craniologists are to be answered with their own answers, to be 
 fought on their own field, to be confuted on their own premises. 
 They tell you that such an one has the bump of perseverance, 
 as if perseverance were an abstract virtue. They confound the 
 effect with the cause. A man is an orator, because he has a full, 
 strong, keen eye. He has not such an eye, because he happens 
 to be an orator. 
 
 I have thought that the eye has often much to do with a 
 man's success as a speaker, because I have argued with myself 
 that on the contrary a man with weak sight has the most serious 
 difficulty to overcome, before he achieves success in this direction, 
 if he achieves it at all. 
 
 It may be cited as one of the cases in which physics contradict 
 phrenology that, whereas the latter places the bump of courage 
 behind the ear, the truth is, that the exhibition of unusual de- 
 velopment in that locality simply signifies the presence of extra- 
 ordinary leverage. Here again the cause is mistaken for the 
 effect. 
 
 The laws of perspective have been rather too sparingly studied 
 by many of our artists down to comparatively recent times. 
 What is known as binocular perspective affects the perpendicular 
 lines, and not the horizontal. Those, who have most appreciated 
 the genius of Turner as a painter of landscapes, do not seem to
 
 190 FORM 
 
 have explained the real source of his artistic triumphs, or to have 
 perfectly understood the character of his powers. He did not 
 owe his celebrity and progress in his profession to his mastery 
 of drawing ; for his knowledge of drawing was very imperfect. 
 The secret of his success was his perception and perfect command 
 of binocular effect and stereoscopic perspective. Subsequently to 
 his complete surrender to the principles of binocular effect, he 
 may be almost said not to have drawn a line which was true to 
 Art. At the same time, the subjects which Turner delighted to 
 represent, were especially such as are trying to the skill and re- 
 putation of an artist. The aspect of a storm at sea, the sunshine 
 on a snow-capped peak, the morning-mist on a lofty mountain 
 range, are changing from moment to moment. Look at the 
 difference between a fine building and the noblest attempt to 
 delineate it, between a defile of the Alps and a picture of it by 
 Turner or any one else ? The student of form and light knows 
 perfectly well that they are to be sought in their own homes, and 
 there we have to leave them behind us till we can return again 
 some day to refresh our recollection. 
 
 The changes in atmospheric or aerial appearances, again, are 
 so rapid, so wonderful, and so various, that no combination can 
 well be treated as impossible ; and one feels glad, that Ruskin 
 accorded to so careful an observer as Turner the credit of having 
 been true to Nature, even when his sky effects in some landscape 
 were, in the view of the critic, barely probable. 
 
 Claude Lorraine, with all the eye of Turner for perspective, 
 was more careful in treatment and in details. What Turner 
 accomplished by dashes of the brush, Claude accomphshed by 
 thin lines. Claude's aerial and rectilinear perspective is superior 
 to his foreshortenings and horizontal perspective. In a picture, 
 where the elbow is lifted higher than the shoulder, so as to leave 
 only the deltoid visible, the foreshortening process peculiarly tests 
 an artist's capability ; and its faultiness is as frequent as it is 
 serious. As some indication how imperfectly perspective and 
 foreshortening were understood by some of our greatest masters, 
 we may refer to the colossal equestrian portrait of Charles I., by 
 Vandyke, in the National Gallery ; the horse has been worse 
 treated than its rider ; but the art of animal-painting among 
 modern nations came late ; it asked centuries to enable us to 
 produce the figure of any quadruped worthy of being placed
 
 FORM 191 
 
 side by side with an example of ancient Greek sculpture or 
 engraving. 
 
 The three following positions strike me as being defensible, 
 (i) Every picture has a vanishing point within its own plane. 
 (2) A picture must be false from every point except the point from 
 which it was painted. (3) The first principles of painting, of which 
 an intimate acquaintance with the physiology of the eye forms 
 perhaps the most important, are not uncommonly those which 
 artists acquire last. 
 
 The advantages which the old masters had in the study of 
 the nude figure were incomparably greater than those which have 
 been enjoyed by modern painters and sculptors. It would be a 
 grave error to suppose that the present system of working from 
 hired models is a full equivalent or substitute for the habitual 
 famiharity of the eye with the body in its natural state. The 
 men and women who attend at our academies are as different 
 from those who passed daily under the notice of Phidias and 
 Lysippus as a tiger in its native jungle is from a tiger in a travel- 
 ling circus. The classical treatment of subjects is apt to be im- 
 perfect and unsatisfactory, for the simple reason that the sculptor 
 or painter has no longer the opportunities which the ancients 
 possessed in unstinted abundance. The athletic games, the 
 sports, and the public spectacles, throughout Italy, Greece, and 
 other parts of the world, were the schools in which Praxiteles 
 and Zeuxis acquired that outline and form, which have never been 
 surpassed, and which we are probably never to see approached 
 again. 
 
 In Athens, Sparta, and Rome, the exposure of the naked 
 figure was not viewed in the light in which we view it. The 
 manners of those States permitted any one, who had chosen paint- 
 ing or sculpture as his profession, to take without impediment 
 or offence, as the subjects of his brush or his chisel, the finest 
 examples of beauty, both male and female, from among the 
 gladiators and the slaves ; and to this cause the heathen m}i;ho- 
 logy may owe some of its grandeur in its fine personifications 
 of the Virtues and Vices. But, at the same time, mythology 
 had its pure and its depraved types, which seem scarcely to have 
 been distinguished with sufficient care by the writers on the 
 subject. For the appreciation of the Nude is dependent on the 
 whole surrounding costume and intellectual bias. There is a
 
 192 FORM 
 
 possibility of comprehending social conditions, under which it 
 might be held indecorous to be clothed. 
 
 Even in the painting by Rubens, called " The Judgment of 
 Paris," at the National Gallery, it is easy to perceive, in place of 
 the ideal elevation of tone, for which we might have looked in 
 two, at least, of the figures, a certain sensual blowsiness which is 
 apt to disappoint and offend the taste. Rubens, instead of re- 
 producing, by a sort of inductive process, three selected types 
 of natural womanhood, beckoned three bonny damsels out of 
 the market-place, and made them serve his turn. He succeeded 
 better than Reynolds did in similar attempts ; but he arrived 
 at his result by a very different method from that pursued by 
 Zeuxis. Hence we get a purely conventional and hteral treatment 
 of a purely mythological subject. It may be a triumph of art ; 
 but the art, as you can see, has been hampered and alloyed by 
 the conditions of modern society. 
 
 Still, whatever its shortcomings as a classical performance may 
 be, this picture, with its voluptuous outlines and its enamouring 
 flesh-tints, no doubt is a vivid facsimile of three Antwerp belles 
 of the day in perfectly classical deshabille. 
 
 The difference between the old masters and Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds and his school was that they painted men and women, and 
 Reynolds and the moderns, ladies and gentlemen. That Reynolds 
 himself was a man of genius, everybody knows ; but he was very 
 far indeed from being a man of first-class powers. He was 
 emphatically a portrait-painter, and his portraits are delightful 
 examples of ease and finish. At the same time, they are portraits 
 and nothing else. Take his " Three Graces " — they are merely 
 three hkenesses of fine ladies of the day on one canvas, with all 
 the airs and simpers of high hfe imported into the scene. Put 
 the work between the " Judgment of Paris " by Rubens (faulty 
 as it may be) and Domenichino's " Venus attired by the Graces," 
 not for the sake of instituting a severely critical comparison, which 
 would be out of the question, but only to shew, for a moment, 
 the different handhng of a great subject ! The mistake which 
 Reynolds made was that he entered on a branch of the art for 
 which he had no feehng, and in which he had no chance of attain- 
 ing even so much as mediocrity. Say that the name was ill- 
 chosen ? It signifies nothing. Let us suppose that it had been 
 catalogued as " Three Court Beauties " or " Three Ladies in
 
 FORM 193 
 
 Waiting " ; we should still be able to demonstrate that Reynolds 
 knew as little of the poetry of form as Turner knew of the elements 
 of drawing. His three goddesses, or whatever we are to call them, 
 are Uke the figures in a fafier-mdch^ landscape or on a Chinese 
 screen. 
 
 Lamb, in his paper entitled " The Reynolds Gallery," illustrates 
 this position very powerfully. Lamb perceived the result. But 
 he does not name the cause. 
 
 This element in our appreciation of writers goes back as far 
 as literature itself goes. There have always been two classes of 
 authors, of which one conspicuously shines from its homage to 
 style concurrently with its observance of matter. Among the 
 more familiar illustrations of this truth are the noble periods of 
 Cicero, the delicate and skilful touches of Horace, the impressive 
 terseness in different ways (as was to be looked for) of Sallust 
 and Quintihan, the exquisite diction of Tacitus in his " Life of 
 Agricola." All these, and many other, masterpieces are merely 
 in a chronological sense ancient ; substantially they are contem- 
 porary. And in another way, in contemplating the writers of 
 antiquity, I fear that we are too prone to overlook the immense 
 debt, which we owe to them for our actual wealth of language, 
 how weighty our obligation is to pagan myth and custom for the 
 extension of our thought and the refinement of our diction. 
 
 In poetry itself, where metre is employed, beauty of form is 
 almost hmited to grace and propriety of versification and rhythm. 
 But beauty may reside in poetry unaccompanied by these two 
 adjuncts. The musa pedestris has accomplished greater results 
 through some of our prose -writers in the way of true poetical art 
 and symmetry than a sensible proportion of our versifiers. 
 
 Insufficient distinction has perhaps been drawn between poetry 
 and poetical form, and we are apt to think of Pope and Gold- 
 smith as poets, as we do of Chaucer and Spenser, Tennyson and 
 Swinburne. But, at any rate, the graceful or stately structure, 
 the speciously majestic period, may exist without the deep and 
 subtle inner sense, even though it resembles a fine and fair woman 
 deficient in corresponding mental accomplishments. There are 
 cases, where the metric cast of a work seems neither here nor 
 there. Might not much of Wordsworth and BrowTiing, Coleridge 
 and Southey, be just as well printed as prose — and fairly com- 
 monplace prose some of it would be, too. 
 
 n"
 
 194 FORM 
 
 There are such universally acknowledged masterpieces in 
 their several ways as the " Arabian Nights," the " Decameron," 
 and the " Canterbury Tales," three splendid pieces of invention, 
 of which the origin is commonly supposed to be that which the 
 excellent authors allege. Yet can anything be more unUkely ? 
 Imagine to yourselves an Oriental despot patiently listening for 
 two or three years without interruption to a series of stories, of 
 which the sole proximate object is to thwart him in his despotism ! 
 Boccaccio, the merchant and man of business, who found time 
 to follow an innate literary bent, and to give his friends and the 
 world in reversion many books, of which the reversioners, for the 
 most part, know only one, feigned that ten gentlemen and ladies 
 under circumstances of acute distress and anxiety narrated during 
 ten days a story a-piece — ten stories a day — to divert their minds 
 from the horrors of the Black Death, which was at that time 
 desolating Italy. Then, again, the author of the " Canterbury 
 Tales," also primarily associated in his own day with the manage- 
 ment of affairs and the life of Courts, desires us to believe that 
 a series of not very brief stories was recounted in succession by 
 a party of pilgrims as they rode to Canterbury on horseback. In 
 all three instances we perceive that the premises are not less 
 fictitious than the rest ; but they are, moreover, almost, as one 
 is apt to imagine, unnecessarily and tiresomely improbable, and 
 offer violence to the principle of fitness. As the matter stands, 
 it does not so greatly signify, for we take these glorious and 
 immortal gifts as we find them, and dispense with their letters 
 of introduction.
 
 XVII 
 WRITING AND PAINTING 
 
 " The two portraits which Sir Joshua Reynolds has lately painted of Mr. 
 William Windham, of Norfolk, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, ai-e so like the 
 originals that they seem almost alive, and ready to speak to you." — Maloniana. 
 
 Men with the pen-and-ink faculty truly developed in them, and 
 yielding visible fruit, have been of incalculable service to us. 
 We owe these artists in a certain branch of limning very cordial 
 thanks indeed for what they are accomplishing, and for what they 
 have already accomplished. Our obligations are certainly very 
 great, and we are incessantly recognising them. We do not allow 
 these gentlemen, if they would, to lie in ignorance of our sense, 
 that they are among our most essential well-doers, even although 
 we may be aware that the entire fabric of literature is a sequel 
 and monument to the fallen state of Man. Like the honey out 
 of the lion's carcase, out of our sins and out of our deformity have 
 come all that seems to our corrupt nature most excellent in books 
 and most beautiful, nay, most chaste, in art. 
 
 It is a faculty which is pretty widely disseminated by this 
 time. It has reached even those who are ignorant of the higher 
 uses of the goose and the cuttlefish, to whom the fame of paper 
 has not yet travelled. 
 
 The benighted Homo-Hottentot strains his lean wits to con- 
 trive a method of passing on to the next age those thoughts which, 
 in his rude conceit, deserve to live after him. He carves them 
 with uncouth implements on the hides of beasts. The irresistible 
 itch of authorship seizes him. It is as if it were some occult titil- 
 lation which attacks the very blackest and savagest blood — blood 
 of Crow-Indian, of Esquimaux, of dweller in distant Fiji. 
 
 The man who invented writing was more important to us 
 just in one degree than the man who invented types. The latter 
 was palpably a discoverer of the second magnitude ; for he had 
 his cue, his starting-point, given him. A poem may be scratched 
 
 on a scrap of dried elephant's trunk or on a dragon's intestine. 
 
 195
 
 196 WRITING AND PAINTING 
 
 A letter, traced by a Hindoo rice-eater on a palm-leaf with a 
 paint-brush, has an eloquence for those who are in the secret. 
 Writing was one of those matters, I apprehend, which engaged 
 the most anxious attention of curious minds at the most remote 
 date, when palaeography was not yet in the stage even of hierogly- 
 phical symbols on slabs or cyhnders of clay. There must have 
 been a fair number of Jews after the Exodus who could write 
 some kind of a hand and make themselves useful as scribes to 
 great men ; the latter probably resembled our great men in 
 former days, who wrote rather worse than bellows-menders and 
 bricklayers do now, but who were none the less great for that 
 circumstance. The pen-and-ink faculty has sometimes been 
 strongly present with persons, whom unfriendly chance has 
 temporarily debarred from pen and ink. Men and women in 
 captivity have told in elder days their sorrows, and even left be- 
 hind them their testamentary instructions, for lack of better 
 tools to work with, and of merrier work to do, on window-pane 
 and prison-wall with diamond or with nail — even, like Casanova, 
 with mulberry juice and the little finger as a pen. 
 
 This literature, printed and written, may, at a rough guess, 
 already amount to a few million cart-loads altogether. No human 
 intellect is equal to a calculation of the precise quantity. A 
 plummet let scientifically down might be expected to bottom in 
 about ten thousand fathom books. What a deluge of dry goods ! 
 What a flood, incapable of being drained off, incurable by sewage ! 
 It will fill the land and the waters. It will reach higher up than 
 Pehon piled on Ossa by-and-by. For it goes on multiplying 
 without cessation. We see these books grow day by day, and 
 England contains a certain number of square acres, and no more. 
 It is a large problem, with which the nation will find itself 
 having to deal. It may come on for settlement before many, 
 who peruse these lines, are old men and women. It will eclipse 
 all other problems in importance and interest. 
 
 It can be made to appear to everybody's satisfaction that 
 Chaucer wrote a book called " Canterbury Tales " without the 
 least assistance from canvas or oils, yet not so bad a picture of 
 the Enghsh life and manners of the era, Avhen it was done. Item, 
 that the same composed sundry other treatises, in all of which 
 there is wealth of colouring and vividness of portraiture, yet 
 never a pencil nor a brush used. Here was a master-draughts-
 
 WRITING AND PAINTING 197 
 
 man, then, with no utensil save his quill, and a magnificent bene- 
 factor to native letters ; with a name and fame high enough to 
 redeem from combustion, decoction, or other exterminating pro- 
 cess, a whole bed of minnows. A representative man, and in his 
 faculty a giant ; a type, of which there was scarce more than one 
 example, himself alone ; a chieftain among authors, if not pre- 
 cisely, as he has so often been termed, " a well of Enghsh undefiled," 
 an unlucky phrase first used by the author of the " Faery Queen " 
 in a rather lame passage, as it might have been thought to be, 
 had a meaner man penned it. 
 
 Spenser, inventor of the " Shepherd's Calendar " and the 
 " Faery Queen," came after him with more pohshed measures 
 and stateher themes — Spenser, a limner and a colourist also by 
 dint of penmanship — "per meram plumam — ^more voluptuous in 
 his pen-and-ink pictures, more gorgeously and sensuously de- 
 scriptive, a more modern mind and mind's eye ; but still in 
 genius far indeed from being the other's peer. 
 
 Then Shakespear left behind him an everlasting and exuberant 
 Horn of Plenty, in which we go shares with all men. This great 
 trinity falls under my subject in a twofold sort of way, because 
 they were all three at once authors and painters — their own 
 illustrators, on whom no one else can improve, whom many 
 enough have done their best to disfigure, if not affront, by 
 graphic accessions jarring against our sense of harmony at 
 every step. 
 
 Milton was a little child when Shakespear died, not an old 
 man. A grand and pure mind, a superb and chastened intellect, 
 a hoher Muse. He invoked not the classic sisterhood, but the 
 
 heavenly maid 
 
 " That on the secret top 
 Of Oreb, or of Sinai, did'st inspire 
 That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed. 
 In the beginning, how the heavens and earth 
 Rose out of cliaos " — 
 
 and who loved, perhaps, though the poet wist not, to wander 
 " on Sion's hill, or by Siloa's brook " 
 
 " That fiow'd 
 Fast by the oracle of God." 
 
 But in Milton English hfe was not painted in anything coming 
 near to the extent and degree that it had been in Chaucer, in
 
 igS WRITING AND PAINTING 
 
 Spenser, and in Shakespear. His subject was too large to bear 
 well a colouring and tone so local. 
 
 The creator of " Paradise Lost " was midway (or about) be- 
 tween Chaucer and Wordsworth ; but between Milton and Words- 
 worth were Dryden and Pope. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespear, 
 Milton, Dryden, Pope, Byron, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Swinburne, 
 these have been the stepping-stones from age on to age — a hnked 
 chain carrying down and preserving for ever the sovereignty of 
 intellect in the domain of the Muses. 
 
 Our literature, as all literatures must be, is divided unequally 
 between the writers of verse and the writers of prose. There 
 have been few who excelled in both, or who, excellent in one, 
 were more than brilhant in the other. Chaucer wrote some 
 prose pieces, but had he not given us those immortal Tales, had 
 he not been above all the Bard, he would have been for us some- 
 thing of an Umhra, no better than another Occleve, or second 
 only, perhaps, to Gower. 
 
 Who has read Spenser's " History of Ireland " ? It would be 
 new to the majority that there was a " History of Britain " ex- 
 tant from the pen of Milton ; and all that we see in " Lycidas " — 
 even in that, are a few lines : the peroration is a fatal blemish. 
 Dryden' s prose works are neglected. How few have made ac- 
 quaintance with his noble character of Shakespear ? 
 
 On the other side. Bacon's verses are (not undeservedly) for- 
 gotten, while his " Novum Organon," his " Essays," and his 
 " Advancement of Learning," are incapable of dying. People 
 now-a-days remember Sidney's " Arcadia," but not Sidney's 
 " Sonnets," much less those things which he " did into EngHsh." 
 The " Leviathan " of Hobbes lives in a sort of dim way ; but 
 his translation of the " Ihad," though commended by Coleridge 
 as a faithful one, is waste-paper. Cowley holds a rank as a prose- 
 writer, which as a poet he cannot sustain. 
 
 But the rareness of the pen-and-ink faculty in these and others 
 does not interfere with the general argument, firstly of usefulness, 
 and secondly of obhgation. They have been good servants to us, 
 if not in one branch of polite letters, in the other. They have 
 written, sung, painted in verse or prose the hfe of their days, the 
 thoughts and ideas of them, the men and women of them. 
 
 The prose-writers have done their part : Portescue, More, 
 Latimer, Ascham, Raleigh, Camden, Howell, Burton (" Anatomy "
 
 WKITING AND PAINTING 199 
 
 Burton), the character-writers, and a host more : infusing hght 
 into dark bodies, giving back to the dead a " warm and sensible 
 motion," letting us, through their perspective pages, behold with 
 naked eye our ancestors as they were, and the very heart and 
 soul of the Younger England. 
 
 What wonders of imagination, wit, and thought have flowed, 
 and will to all time, from goose's quill directed by some brain in 
 the noon of its strength and luminosity ! How, by such means, 
 we have brought vividly before our eyes life-size pictures, or 
 sketches displaying the finest and subtlest touches of beauty 
 and passion, with an exquisite dehcacy present in the handhng, 
 or else quiet, homely scenes, depicting the contented lot and the 
 spirit of peace. 
 
 A Titian or a Holbein is not less itself from being in a rude 
 wooden frame or from being painted on hard board, or on canvas 
 coarser than smack or lugger sailcloth. The best workmen have 
 not always been daintiest in the selection of their materials. 
 Hazlitt wrote his " Essays " on soiled foolscap fitter to wrap 
 groceries in, while Elia was wont to scribble away his admirable 
 " Letters " on sheets devised out of wastrel of old-world Leadenhall. 
 
 The possessors of the happy and prizable power of painting 
 in pen-and-ink have achieved what they could : bringing us to 
 the past so near that we can sometimes fancy we feel its warm 
 breath upon our cheek, and lending to the unsubstantial an out- 
 line and a body. 
 
 But their capabilities are finite. There is a boundary-line, 
 beyond which their art halts. It is not every thought which 
 will let itself find expression in words without numbers, neither 
 is it within the scope and compass of that pen-and-ink painting, 
 which we call literature, to tell us all we would know, to put us 
 in perfect communion with the remote in time and place, to re- 
 people the prior English centuries with beings like ourselves (with 
 a difference !), and to shew to us the persons and scenes of anti- 
 quity in their true physiognomy and in their absolute naturalness, 
 as through a sorcerer's beryl. It is not in the power of Uterature, 
 though it should exhaust reams in the endeavour, to inform empty 
 monumental names with a sanguine corporeal motion. The 
 description of a man in a book may be clever, may be witty ; it 
 may be faithful and exact ; it may abound in excellent points 
 thickly clustered, and from it you may draw in your mind's eye
 
 200 WRITING AND PAINTING 
 
 a portrait. You may picture to yourself the manner of man that 
 he is or was, imagine him in his moods, gather a conception of his 
 speaking tones, and mould features, as the words of the author 
 give you warrant. 
 
 But the man mil still not be face to face with you. It will 
 be a painting without inspiration. Its perspective will be a 
 prismatic illusion. It will be self-coloured from top to bottom. 
 It will be a lay-figure ; the flesh, like a signboard, without bloom, 
 tone, or poetry of shadow and light ; the eyes, lapidary, statuesque, 
 and the mouth dumb. It will be a lithograph. 
 
 There is not the same individuality essential, or at least it 
 is scarcely essential in so high a degree, in landscape. In the 
 dehneation of less broadly and palpably articulate nature the 
 fancy may be left to range without such great harm or offence, 
 and to fulfil its forgetive office. But in a letterpress essay on the 
 beauties of scenery there will be always lack of depth and colour ; 
 depth which is a pictorial subtlety, and colour richly yet wisely 
 mingled. What, in pen-and-ink workmanship, have we to shew, 
 that could be put side by side with a Cuyp or a Gainsborough, 
 with a Rembrandt or a Murillo ? Who could adequately describe 
 " Jacob's Dream " — ^that miracle of colour and Hght and shade, 
 where the figures are secondary ? How many millions of stewards 
 and cooks have vanished without a sign, and how many have 
 been described for us on paper, and yet we know them incom- 
 parably less well than the steward and cook of St. Alban's Abbey, 
 whose effigies have been handed down to us. Once again, a painting 
 can only be a likeness of an individual or a representation of an 
 individual scene or subject. An epic or descriptive poem may 
 embrace within its limits and covers a diorama of one or the other, 
 or a medley of both. There are few works of art which go very 
 far, hke the Bayeux tapestry, or Hogarth's " Marriage a la mode " 
 and " Rake's Progress," or, again, hke Family and Corporation 
 pictures, in this direction, and then, when all points considered, 
 we look at the portrait gallery on paper of the Canterbury 
 Pilgrims, how much has the muse of painting to throw into the 
 scale to adjust the balance ! 
 
 Of genuine resemblances of persons there is, after all deductions, 
 a very large and precious residuum ; Holbeins in plenty, Vandykes 
 which carry the master's hand in each fine, absolute Lelys, more 
 than enough of themselves to deify the art which they so superbly
 
 WRITING AND PAINTING 201 
 
 illustrate. But we have to enter on the present ground with a 
 forewarning that, after all efforts to appropriate hkenesses to 
 their true originals and their true authors, much remains un- 
 resolved. 
 
 Holbein's " Sir Thomas More " leaves very Httle that I can 
 think of to be desired. It appears to me to be hterally magnificent. 
 No human pen could make us such splendid amends for not having 
 seen this great man. We know him better at a glance, than if 
 we had read volumes upon him. How hke in vivid survival, 
 though so different in handhng, is the wonderful portrait of an 
 old burgomaster by Rembrandt in the Museum at Antwerp ! 
 The town bought it from a gentleman at Aix-la-Chapelle, as I 
 was shortly afterward informed. It is of all Rembrandts I 
 have seen the most Titianesque ; I recollect, when I entered the 
 room, where it had just been hang, that I could see nothing else. 
 Holbein's "Princess Ehzabeth," at St. James's Palace, is not 
 nearly so fine an example of colouring as the More ; but it is the 
 most graceful hkeness of the future Queen which has fallen under 
 our notice. Elizabeth was surely never handsome ; but this 
 picture, taken of her when she was a girl of sixteen, makes the 
 best of a plain face, and is free from that stiffness and hardness 
 which strike one in so many of the so-called Holbeins. Holbein's 
 More is bolder in the conception and drawing, less cramped and 
 mannered, more Titianesque, but yet careful in treatment. 
 
 Of a few other conspicuous personahties I say just this, that 
 we profit by the ownership of resemblances of those executed in 
 an unstudied, unpreconcerted style without previous consultation 
 with the artist or with friends on the choice of drapery or pose ; 
 and such are the portraits in Lacroix of Froissart, Commines, 
 Ariosto, and Margaret of Navarre, which pleasantly suggest 
 sittings given on the spur of the moment rather than with 
 " mahce prepense." One seems to recognize those four historical 
 characters, as they appeared to their contemporaries and acquaint- 
 ances, without any of the subtle artifices of the studio. Then 
 again, the Princess Sibylla of Savoy and an old Dutch goldsmith 
 of Groningen, within the same covers, how to the very life they 
 are left behind for our afiectionate appreciation, and are only 
 not veritable flesh and blood, yet as no human pen could so de- 
 lightfully reahze. You see that that Low Country worthy is listen- 
 ing to a good story, or entertaining an affair of business on which
 
 202 WRITING AND PAINTING 
 
 he will not indifferently score. What prodigy of literary art 
 could have so splendidly indemnified us for not personally be- 
 holding these, and more innumerable, in their living aspects, if 
 not even in their speaking tones ? 
 
 There is a portrait of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, painted 
 in the dechne of hfe, by an anonymous hand. That it is anony- 
 mous is to be regretted, for it is a fine thing. The old man fives 
 to greet successive ages. 
 
 There are some important respects in which painted history 
 seems to correct written history. We often derive very different 
 impressions from books about people and from pictures of them. 
 No portrait which I have seen of the illustrious Surrey, the 
 poet, hero, and martyr, justifies our preconceived notion of the 
 lover of Geraldine ; and then think, too, of those which we have 
 of Petrarch ! The same must be said of Sir Thomas Wyatt, at 
 least Surrey's equal as a poet, and yet, too, his appears to have 
 been a noble head ; nor is the Holbein drawing of Anne Boleyn 
 at Hampton Court, or the engraved portrait of her in Lodge's 
 collection, a key to her ascendency over Henry VIII. The medal 
 representing her in her coronation robes is even less elucidatory, 
 and it must have been, one fears, a less spiritual attraction which 
 brought the king to her feet. Lady Jane Grey's virtues, her 
 gentleness, her scholarship, her nearness to the throne, all made 
 her beloved in her own day, and have endeared her memory to 
 us ; but I confess that her portraits — all such as have any claim 
 to be considered coeval — are disappointing. The question whether 
 her painters have done her injustice, is one which can never be 
 answered. There is a pretty hkeness in oils of Elizabeth of 
 Bohemia, when a child, and the portrait of her by Crispin de Pas 
 in earher womanhood strikes one as very far from unprepossessing ; 
 she must have exerted a powerful impression in earher life on 
 those about her ; her admirers called her the " Queen of Hearts," 
 and her kinsman, the Duke of Brunswick, always wore her glove 
 in his helmet. It is well known that in maturer years she became 
 painfully corpulent. She was an amiable and ill-fated princess, 
 and some of the authors of the day have treated her physical dis- 
 figurement with compassionate tenderness. We should collect 
 from their writings, if there was no other species of testimony, a 
 very erroneous idea of the unhappy Bohemian queen. What an 
 absurd misconception would have been formed by posterity of
 
 WRITING AND PAINTING 203 
 
 the physiognomy of Charles II., if we had had nothing but the 
 printed narratives to guide us ! if the Merry Monarch had not 
 been fortunately transmitted, executed flatteringly, no doubt, if 
 anything, in oils by the Court painters ! 
 
 Was he such a lady-killer ? Nell Gwynne, Moll Davis, Lucy 
 Waters, the Frenchwoman Querouaille or Carwell, and the rest 
 of them, did they all see their advantage in not being too hard ? 
 He must have had a way with him. To do him justice, he did 
 not think himself an Adonis, but he had pleasant and popular 
 manners, which in his case covered a multitude of sins, as they 
 do in that of a successor. 
 
 These British kings and queens do not shew to much advan- 
 tage, as a rule, in their portraits. Charles I. is nearly the most 
 personable of the first category ; but take " Sylva " Evelyn, the 
 Honourable Robert Boyle, or the great Selden, and one has quite 
 as fine a gentleman — ^with what a different mind ! Cromwell 
 puts them all to shame. The portrait of the Nurse to the Medici 
 at Florence is nearly quite as regal as that of Claude de France, 
 daughter of Louis XII., by Clouet. Perhaps the genius of the 
 Itahan artist has done something for his sitter. 
 
 There are several other likenesses of eminent figurers in 
 Enghsh history, as to which there is apt to be a feehng of dis- 
 satisfaction and even distrust. Take, for example, those of 
 Bradshaw the regicide and Montrose. There may have been 
 infidehty or infelicity in the limning of these notable personages ; 
 but their surviving portraits are not exactly pieces justificatives. 
 Possibly these representations are as unreal as the current en- 
 graving of Marvell. A curious chapter might be written on prints 
 which have done multifarious duty, and served almost equally 
 well for a succession of celebrities. This is the dark side of the 
 present subject. 
 
 How unsatisfactory, again, is the picture at Windsor of Thomas 
 Carew and Thomas Kilhgrew by Vandyke ! We seem to have 
 before us two insipid courtiers, and little besides. The pictures 
 lack individuality of character and vigour of thought. The 
 colouring is dehghtful ; there Vandyke is at home and himself ; 
 but still they are ordinary portraits. By-the-by, I can hardly 
 comprehend why Killigrew is called the Jester, any more than 
 I can the application of the phrase to the Augustinian Canon, 
 who founded St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Both said some witty
 
 204 WRITING AND PAINTING 
 
 things ; but are all men, who say witty things, called jesters ? 
 I have seen a copy of the " Baronage of England," by Dugdale, 
 with the autograph of Killigrew. It is not a very funny book. 
 
 The greatness of Vandyke lay in drapery and hair ; and he 
 is usually happy in his attitudes, but not here. Both the figures 
 are clumsily and unnaturally posed. Luckily we are not without 
 better resemblances of these distinguished men. The means 
 have been handed down to us elsewhere of judging of them more 
 as they appeared in their everyday life. I abhor masquerade 
 and melodramatic airs and graces, nor do I set much by holiday- 
 clothes ; but what an old poet terms very beautifully " the 
 music " of the face I cannot surrender on any terms. 
 
 The Stanleys, Earls of Derby, in their portraits, look like 
 captains of horse with royal commissions from His Majesty King 
 Charles I. or II. Robert Bertie, first Earl of Lindsey, has the 
 air of a Puritan chieftain. Campbell, Earl of Argyll, might be a 
 Puritan preacher. Elizabeth, Duchess of Hamilton, Brandon, 
 and Argyll, has a sweetly feminine and graceful, rather perhaps 
 than a dignified, look, and I do not like to say how much her 
 Grace owes to that coquettish headdress, in which the painter 
 has represented her. 
 
 Nobody requires to be told that Kerr, Earl of Lothian, was a 
 leader of the Covenanters. His portrait, which has been engraved, 
 like most of those I am mentioning, plainly tells us so much. 
 There is George Gordon, Marquis of Huntly ; he is included in 
 Lodge's Collection. If one was told that he was a filibuster, a 
 Scotish borderer, or a marquis in a play, if one was shown a proof 
 of him before letters — one would not be incredulous. Robert 
 Dormer, Earl of Carnarvon, might, for aught his vera effigies 
 appears to instruct to the contrary, be a " minion of the moon," 
 a Claude Duval — only less the gentleman ! Looking at the re- 
 ceived likeness of Robert Burton, who wrote the " Anatomy of 
 Melancholy," one gets the impression of a crazy sectarian divine. 
 One does not feel as if this was a man who could pen a book good 
 enough and sane enough to bring Dr. Johnson out of bed uncom- 
 fortably betimes. Did it ? 
 
 We have yet to see a portrait of Drayton which we could, 
 without an apparent unfitness, and some violence to a foregone 
 conclusion, place before his " Sonnets," or bind up with his " Nym- 
 phidia." There is about the common, famihar print of him, with
 
 WRITING AND PAINTING 205 
 
 liis brows laureated, a melancholy, discontented, atrabilious cast 
 of expression, which shocks our ideal conception of him who, in 
 the name of Rowland, sacrificed to the Muses. The lugubrious, 
 unspiritual likeness of Milton by Marshall, of which his sitter so 
 reasonably complained, is excellently suited to go with it ; yet 
 it represents the poet at thirty-seven. 
 
 There is a large humanity manifest in the portrait of Fielding. 
 We hardly know what is to be said about Smollett. He, too, 
 was a man of the world, with abundant shrewdness of observation, 
 and a keen rehsh for Ufe and its gaieties in his younger days. He 
 looks, in his picture, as if he remembered without regret the associa- 
 tions of his youth, and had still a sneaking fondness for good 
 fellowship. He went about, when he had nothing else or better 
 to do, and studied men ; and to this we owe his imperishable 
 romances. 
 
 Turn to some of the portraits which exist of the artists them- 
 selves. In Holbein, how httle the outer man seems to mirror the 
 inner ! He might be somebody following a gross handicraft, or 
 a Flemish burgomaster, a sensuaUst at home in his cups. 
 
 Then Hilhard has the bearing of a nobleman, has it more than 
 any of the Percys, whom Vandyke painted. Vandyke has a 
 good deal of the coxcomb about him. He desires you to notice 
 his white hands, and the gem which ghtters there. Peter Oliver 
 reminds us of a leader of Venturi, who took up the brush as 
 an amusement. Both Rubens and Rembrandt are super-ioysil. 
 Robert White might be a divine, who painted, as Sir Arthur Helps 
 wrote, in his intervals of leisure. 
 
 There are others which are above all praise. Dobson, Flatman 
 (poet and painter), Laniere, Verrio, Vansomer, and Sir Godfrey — 
 these have the true artist look, and yet possess the carriage of 
 gentlemen to the manner born. 
 
 Among French writers, Corneille, if we may trust the engraved 
 portrait, had a head worthy of Shakespear ; a Frenchman might 
 put this contrariwise ! The accepted hkenesses of Rabelais and 
 La Fontaine do not precisely convey to the mind one's idea of 
 the originals. The author of " Gargantua " has the appearance 
 of a pleasant and contented old gentleman, who filled some pro- 
 fessorial chair at an ancient university. You would not divine 
 him to be the producer of the filthiest book, considering all the 
 circumstances, in the filthiest hterature in Europe. The obscenity
 
 2o6 WRITING AND PAINTING 
 
 of Rabelais is more unpardonable than that of Boccaccio or 
 Marguerite de Valois ; for it does not inspire even that sort of 
 sensuous rapture which one is apt to have in perusing the 
 " Decameron " or the " Heptameron," that sort of feehng that 
 one is in genteel, if not in very moral, company. The old French 
 fabhaux are indecent enough, and so is La Fontaine ; but the 
 former simply exhibit to us with ingenuous candour the early 
 social depravities of the French — precursors of Zola — ^while La 
 Fontaine redeems the hcentiousness of his paraphrases from older 
 writers with a thousand French charms. His Tales were such as 
 his contemporaries of both sexes were not ashamed to read and 
 to quote. You cannot quote Rabelais ; he is a suppressed author ; 
 and why ? because forsooth he has, according to the highest 
 authorities, overlaid his hidden beauties with a superficies of im- 
 purity as with a pahmpsest to safeguard himself from the gibbet 
 or the stake in a time of prevailing darkness and bigotry. It 
 is certainly rather trying to read him, as it is, though for a totally 
 different reason, some of the works of Zola. Yet at the same 
 time a broad and perspicacious paper on the author of " Panta- 
 gruel " as a leader of thought, might make him emerge a heavy 
 creditor to many, who followed him in point of time, and were, 
 if less original, more decorous. What is not garbage in him, is 
 not wit. Clothe him in the daintiest and richest binding ; see 
 that the paper and the print are irreproachable ; and you cannot 
 do away with the sense of proximity to ordure. Yet we hve, we 
 Enghsh, in a sort of glass-house of our own ; for down to the time 
 of the second George what coarseness, what obscenity ! Parts 
 of Swift are not much purer than the author of " Pantagruel." 
 The Dean of St. Patrick's was as unclean as he was mahgnant. 
 Then, again, are there scholars ready to tell you that Rabelais 
 was a borrower, a copyist of the ancient Greek dramatic cari- 
 cature ; but indeed he had no occasion to go so far back, for 
 the popular literature of his own country was perfectly capable 
 of supplying models ready-made to his hand. There were 
 Rabelaisians before Rabelais. I have said that he is a sup- 
 pressed author. But, hke a volume of imprisoned, pent-up air, 
 he has burst his confines, and speaks ore rotundo to all nations. 
 You must be content to tell your less studious and more 
 squeamish friends, when they inquire, that he was a very 
 humorous old rascal, who wrote allegorically from a fear of the
 
 WRITING AND PAINTING 207 
 
 Church, and put broad things into his book to hold up the vices 
 of the age to ridicule. But, seriously, no man was ever any 
 better from reading Rabelais, or ever much worse from reading 
 La Fontaine. It is perhaps a pity that Rabelais did not carry 
 his dread of the Inquisition farther, and write, hke Brusonius 
 or the pseudo-Meursius, in Latin. I am certainly sorry that La 
 Fontaine, so far as his " Contes et Nouvelles " are concerned, was 
 allowed by his good genius to fall into the clutches of illustrators, 
 who have exaggerated his worst defects. 
 
 That painting fails in so many cases to reahze expectations 
 or to justify foregone ideas, does not detract from the merit and 
 worth of the art, but, on the contrary, estabhshes them both on 
 a firmer footing. Laboured and flattered resemblances on canvas 
 are even more mischievous than such resemblances on paper. 
 You are brought closer up to the person represented in a picture 
 than in a book. There may be many links, several hands between 
 a writer and his hero ; but in the other case the artist is the only 
 middle-man. He paints flesh and blood from flesh and blood. 
 We ought to know his employer nearly as well as he knew him. 
 If the artist did honestly by him and by us, we are but one remove 
 from personal intimacy. The painter is our common friend. 
 
 A man's written thoughts about another, even about another 
 with whom he hved, and whom he could shake by the hand, are 
 not often direct from nature. They have passed through the 
 churn. 
 
 Formerly portrait was mainly restricted to personages, who 
 could pay artists, and to men and women of mark. Now every 
 individual, be he or she what they may, enjoys the means of 
 perpetuating himself or herself within certain hues, while the 
 pubhc has the opportunity of comparing notes. Modern methods 
 assist us in bridging over the distance between the classes. Look- 
 ing at the resemblances of some nobleman and of some bourgeois, 
 we sometimes perceive that the latter has more of the patrician 
 in his appearance, if not in his character. Photography is a demo- 
 crat, an appreciable factor in levelHng old distinctions. We are 
 going too far in that direction. 
 
 A photograph, however, even an instantaneous one, is apt 
 to be a point of view rather than a picture, which should be 
 eclectic, a collation of several seizures of expression, a thoughtful 
 reproduction on a principle of average. A group of photographs,
 
 2o8 WRITING AND PAINTING 
 
 taken with the utmost care and skill at brief intervals, might 
 serve a painter even to a larger extent than ordinary sketches 
 made for a landscape. For the majority the photograph, pure 
 and simple, is, however, more than good enough — more than 
 durable enough.
 
 XVIII 
 BABYOLOGY 
 
 " PauUo majora canemus." 
 " Vita Janua Mortis." 
 "Mr, Wordsworth being asked why he admired the sleep of infancy, said 
 he thought there was a grandeur in it." — Hazlitt's " Plain Speaker." 
 
 Not the least important enterprise of the present reign in the 
 direction of geographical discovery is just completed ; and we 
 have the pleasure of putting down the results on paper. It is 
 the exploration of the Terra Incognita of Babyland by a writer 
 who ought i2')so facto to be elected by acclamation President of 
 the Eoyal Geographical Society. 
 
 It is due to the author to mention that the undertaking 
 was not inaugurated by the Society in any manner, and it 
 may be safely said to surpass in popular interest anything 
 of the kind which has been accomplished, not excepting even 
 perhaps the publication by the late Lemuel Gulliver of his 
 extraordinary researches in Lilliput, Brobdingnag, and Yahoo. 
 
 The superficial extent of Babyland (we must be careful not 
 to write down Baby-/c»7i) was most imperfectly known and 
 appreciated till to-day. It is now satisfactorily ascertained to 
 be a large and densely-populated region, of which the natives 
 exhibit certain rather peculiar characteristics. They have so 
 much in common with the inhabitants of Mr. Gulliver's Lilliput, 
 that their stature is almost their least recommendation. The 
 costume of Lilliputia has not been described for us, unfortu- 
 nately, with that minuteness which is so largely essential in 
 books of foreign travel, but we believe that it was entirely 
 different from the long dresses, white hoods, and woollen shoes, 
 in use among the people of Babyland. The most accurate in- 
 formation again has descended to us respecting the wardrobe of 
 Tom Thumb, and it does not correspond in any particular. The 
 Babylanders are a distinct race. In fact, what countryman Tom 
 was, is one of those historical points which remains to be settled 
 to the satisfaction of the world. Tom was no Babylander, 
 believe me. 
 
 209
 
 2 10 BABYOLOGY 
 
 IsTor do I think that Jack the Giant-killer could claim cousin- 
 hood with Tom, judging from the account of his life and actions 
 which I have the good fortune to possess. It is a biography 
 deficient in notes of time ; nor are his cap, shoes, and sword 
 known with absolute certainty to be extant. I take him to have 
 been an artful and precocious young fellow, who did good in 
 his way, but was sometimes guilty of unknightly stratagems, to 
 which Tom, from the circle in which he moved, would not have 
 dreamed of stooping. 
 
 Mr. Gulliver, though doubtless a gentleman of curious ob- 
 servation, does not appear to have interested himself in religious 
 questions, and has not mentioned what opinions, if any, are 
 current in Lilliput on the subject of a future state. The belief 
 in such a thing ought, on grounds which may be apparent, to 
 be a primary article of faith in Babyland. But the people there 
 are, unhappily or otherwise, destitute of any settled religion, are 
 prone to pleasurable emotions, and let their intellects have a 
 fallow time of it — in short, are egotists, sceptics, sweet-tooths, 
 sensualists — born votaries of Morpheus, and worshippers of 
 heathenish images in the likeness of Pap-Boats. 
 
 Idle fancies and speculations these ; but they are part of us, 
 the better part; for the realities too often carry pretensions 
 which we cannot recognize, or are unable to satisfy. 
 
 Formerly were written and published certain tracts, en- 
 titled, " Small Books on Great Subjects," the learned and modest 
 authors unknown ; and lo ! here I present to view a " Great 
 Essay on a Small Subject," fittest to be traced on paper with a 
 gosling's quill. 
 
 Babyland is no geographical expression, it has become time to 
 explain, not even as much as the two Utopias of Euhemerus and 
 Sir Thomas More are, but a distinction in human natural history, 
 in animal natural history, yes, and in vegetable, too. Where- 
 soever babies are, is Babyland — the very Babyland I write of. 
 In a large-hearted sense I use the phrase. I desire to com- 
 prehend within it all kinds, denominations, varieties, genera, of 
 that truly fascinating race, each in its own way articulate and 
 speech-gifted, to range over the whole infancy of Nature, bountiful 
 mother, goddess without spleen or partizanship. 
 
 How true it is, though so worn a saying, that we all return 
 often in thought to our childhood, when life was like some
 
 BABYOLOGY 2 i i 
 
 unexplored region mapped before us, unenacted and darkly 
 future, and sigh for the opportunity to recover the starting-point 
 and traverse the once-trodden ground anew, with later lights 
 to guide us. But life is a drama, of which the text cannot be 
 blotted out, like the text of a book, and written over. Our seniors 
 lament their youth forepassed, turning, while time quenches 
 apace the fire of their blood, and viewing in mind's eye that, 
 which they once half-believed not to be perishable and transitory ; 
 and then again men in their middle years are apt to bestow a 
 wistful look on the last of the seven ages. But the future has, 
 on the whole, few regarders. Childhood lives to itself, and age 
 looks behind. The thoughts of the old will turn away from the 
 end of life and the unfathomable destiny of the soul to pleasanter 
 dwelling-places for reflection, the dawn and the prime of their 
 days. There the mind can rest, and fancy make the past seem 
 all but near enough to be touched ; and of the knowledge that 
 we so laboured to acquire, how much of it should we not like 
 to barter for the state of thought, when we were all the richer 
 from knowing less ? how much, if we could, we should be content 
 to throw behind us ? 
 
 There is much in common between humanity and the dumb 
 creation up to a certain point, when the two may be said to 
 diverge. There is a subtle link and a hidden likeness between 
 human babies and animal babies : the same comicality, material- 
 ism, and cupboard love. The life of very little children and very 
 little pigs has the same delightful egotism and the same honest 
 partiality for those three primitive, pre-Sata7iic, pre-tree-of- 
 knowledge, divisions of existence : eating, drinking, and sleeping. 
 The severance of the identity appears to come at the hardening 
 of the brain in the very little child, the human baby, and the 
 casting off the slough of its babyhood to go to school, while the 
 very little pig, the animal baby, " blows out into the maturity 
 of rank bacon." 
 
 I am no Malthusian, and after all deductions which I am 
 capable of making, there seem to me few more delightful studies 
 than Baby life ; infancy biped, quadruped, and centiped ; the 
 nonage of the world, the Frincipia of all created nature. Only 
 earliest youth escapes sophistication, and has no offending angles. 
 It is exempt from prejudice. It judges people from a matter- 
 of-fact point of view, and cannot be brought to perceive
 
 2 1 2 BABYOLOGY 
 
 blemishes against its direct convictions. It takes us as it 
 finds us. It is as guileless as Eden, where these chubby 
 innocences, according to the author of Moses, never had locus 
 standi, but where the first settlers sprang into instantaneous 
 maturity, mutually unconscious of youth, as, a good while ago 
 now, from the brain of her imperial and royal papa sprang 
 the Lady Pallas Athenai. What an enchanting experience for 
 many a school-boy it would be to begin thus in the middle, 
 Adam-wise, to burst upon the world in full panoply of whisker, 
 to escape that figurative ordeal of Moloch, to have no sombre 
 memories of Dr. Birch ! 
 
 Life is like some journey drawn out. At the close of it, 
 or near the close, we turn back, and see such and such things 
 that we might have done better, and such and such that had 
 as well been let alone ; friendships formed to be regretted, 
 and others missed or spurned, the loss or neglect of which 
 we have to mourn at our leisure : a history, made to seem 
 little by retrospect, of ill choice of paths and misspending of 
 years. Too many of us do not outgrow our childhood, save 
 in a seniority of folly and vice. But Babyhood is without a 
 past to moralize upon, knows only the short shadows of first 
 morning, soft and sunny. It has no dallying hopes or sway- 
 ing fears. It has a keen sense of its individual being. Of 
 the boundless future which lies beyond it it is felicitously 
 unconscious. Its mind's eye is fixed upon what is present 
 and grossly palpable. Out of sight is out of mind. Baby- 
 hood turns the tables upon morality clearly in one way ; there 
 are vices which it makes not only tolerable, but fascinating. 
 In grown-up people egotism becomes repulsive, but the egotism 
 of the little, both man and beast, wins our affection and respect. 
 A baby is your sole endurable Narcissus. 
 
 Bruin, again — does he not cease to be presentable, when 
 he has passed the unlicked stage ? Lumpishness is all very 
 well in the cub ; there is even something about it, which 
 passes for drollery. A little later on, we call it by a less 
 indulgent name. Our quondam acquaintance no longer strikes 
 us as a humorist; he has entered on the era of Louthood. The 
 kid, whose frolics have moved many a smile, makes a clumsy 
 figure in after life. Every day robs the kitten of some beauty 
 of infancy. The pig ripens into an unravishing elder.
 
 BABYOLOGY 2 1 3 
 
 Years warp and spoil. The little boy, whom we remember 
 holding on our knee, becomes, perhaps, the editor of a magazine, 
 and abuses our productions — lampoons his father's friends. The 
 sweet and simple school-girl, whose fairy steps have echoed to 
 ours in many a ramble among the lanes and on the shore, 
 marries some rich inarticulate clown, and dwindles into a 
 fashionable lady. My daughter, when she was not yet a 
 hundred moons of age, thought me as great a hero as the author 
 of the " Princess " or the conductor of the Edinburgh Revieiv : 
 she is now old enough to be of a different opinion. My son 
 used to fancy I knew everything ; some of my worshipful critics 
 believe that I know nothing. It is to be hoped that the truth 
 lies somewhere between these two extremes. When I left a 
 great school, I was master of x. I at present feel that I am 
 lamentably ignorant of many things which I ought to have 
 learned — more so, than I care to own. I am only wiser than 
 others in knowing how numerous are my desiderata. 
 
 It is a just and salutary ordinance of nature, that the sweet 
 illusions of infancy are not long cherished ; but, while it lasts, 
 it is (right or wrong) the most innocent of idolatries, the most 
 delightful fetish — a little child's guileless worship ! Nor are 
 there many things more weirdly touching. But I suppose 
 that it is a wise and meet provision that, as the dainty 
 suckling waxes in limb and girth, the spell is insensibly re- 
 laxed, and the chit, whom we conceited in our good hearts 
 too fragile to trust even to avuncular caresses, proceeds the 
 horny-handed colonist, and carries his birth-year written in 
 his copious beard. 
 
 It was excellently put by Cicero in his treatise Dc Senedute, 
 that the old have that advantage over the young, that the old 
 have lived long, while the young can only hope to do so. But 
 it may seem not impertinent or out of place to add that the 
 young, in their turn, are removed a lifetime farther than their 
 seniors from the point which separates the finite from the 
 infinite. They hold a throw more ! Death, it is to be presumed 
 from the very little that we are enabled to know of it, puts 
 an end to hope, doubt, and speculation. There can be no 
 religious casuistry beyond the grave. This, however, seems 
 predicable of the view of Cicero, where he speaks of Man as 
 successively looking up to the next stage of his career, that
 
 2 14 BABYOLOGY 
 
 the earlier steps forward are usually restricted to physical 
 development, and do not embrace intellectual rivalry. 
 
 It was perhaps a natural and excusable fallacy on the part of 
 the Scotish poet, Drummond of Hawthornden, that a lengthened 
 term of life is superfluous, since one can exhaust the beauties 
 of Nature in a very brief space of time — in a year, nay, in a 
 day. Drummond posed as a secluded scholar ; as a man of 
 fortune his career was exceptionally tranquil and undiversified ; 
 but such a criticism is, as a rule, of the narrowest application, 
 and can hold good only in the case of such as never emerge 
 from their natal soil, from the hamlet which gave them birth. 
 Nature may be the same everywhere ; but it is with a difterence, 
 because Nature is universal, not parochial ; and beyond the en- 
 joyment of Nature some of us at least aspire to efforts and 
 results, which are to be our monuments for ever, and which 
 the most protracted life often leaves incompletely executed. 
 
 What we understand by Babyhood is first childhood, Prima 
 jMtas — youth not yet most faintly conscious of the reasoning 
 gift, or of the line of separation between a little child and a little 
 kitten. Babyhood has not yet entered into the region of ex- 
 pectation ; but old age has traversed it, and can look back upon 
 those who are climbing the ascent. In youth we stand, so to 
 speak, in the antechamber of life, and have gained an imperfect 
 glimpse of the society in which it will be our business to stir 
 presently, each according to his call ; but in Babyhood we are 
 on the threshold of existence. We are at the happier extremity 
 of humanity. We are in the world, and not of it yet. We are 
 but as bulbs which have just pushed their heads above ground. 
 We are the materials held in readiness, which will form in 
 the ripeness of time a generation of men richer in science than 
 the generations gone before. 
 
 We have eyes to see, and do not see, and ears to hear, and 
 do not hear. Our senses are wrapped in a delicious spell. We 
 go on in one long unbroken voluptuous day-dream. The world 
 is no more to us than some raree show, some holiday pageant. 
 To-day is very much like yesterday. The tide of life (if this 
 be life, and not rather a kind of prelude to it) flows on in soft 
 murmuring ripples. 
 
 Our wants are few, but what we have are peremptory, and 
 must by no means be gainsaid. We would be understood to have
 
 BABYOLOGY 2 1 5 
 
 an imperiousness just in that point, but of course of a very 
 charming description, and not to be reasonably quarrelled with. 
 As if we had the faculty given us to foresee how much of it we 
 shall have to contend against when the real drama of life com- 
 mences, we can brook no contradiction at the present stage. 
 As a slight set-off to our infantile loveliness, we have a little 
 disposition to be fractious, and we have no mean opinion of 
 Number One in ordinarv. We love ourselves best, and are not 
 hypocrites enough to disguise it. 
 
 This is the age of sheer irresponsibility. Babies are account- 
 able for their actions to no man. They set the laws of England 
 at defiance. To read the Mutiny Act to them is waste of time. 
 They are amenable to no jurisdiction whatever, for they have yet 
 to attain the status of ijersoiis. They are not integers, but 
 fractions. They rule the roost by a certain vis inertice. Babies 
 carry it with a high hand over their familiars, as of right. 
 Their superiority over the rest of creation is a prescription. It 
 is a vested privilege beyond the memory of man, which it would 
 be a high misdemeanour, a species of lese majesty, to infringe or 
 demur to by word or deed. 
 
 An Athenian statesman once shewed how his little boy ruled 
 the world. He set about proving this by a syllogism as satis- 
 factory and ingenious as most syllogisms are. Here, to be 
 sure, was an extreme case, which demanded some such piece of 
 sophistry to help it out. But even in a general way these pre- 
 tended weaklings have a world of their own, in which they 
 move, and own a lordship paramount, as the excellent author 
 of "Herr Baby" lets us understand. 
 
 The earliest impressions we form will be probably upon 
 points immediately connected with our own self-importance. 
 We quickly become aware of our individuality. It does not 
 take long to convince us that our personal identity is a dis- 
 tinct and indisputable fact. No baby, whose opinion is worth 
 a straw, would change places with another baby, if he knew 
 it. This egotism, proneness to blue rages, strong gastronomical 
 leanings, gross predilection for the delights of the berceaunette, 
 and other frailties, are redeemed, however, by half-twice as 
 many virtues. 
 
 There is an earthiness (in its best sense) about very little 
 children, a fragrance as delightful as the fragrance of mignonette.
 
 2i6 BABYOLOGY 
 
 They have a roundness and wealth of flesh scarcely consonant 
 with the abstract idea one forms of cherubim. They want the 
 incorporeal airiness and sublimer grace of these. As we get 
 on in years, though we may not sensibly progress in goodness, 
 there is a gain in ether and transparency of substance. The 
 spiritual part of us shews more light through. The poetry of 
 mind supersedes the poetry of matter, the beauty of mere ex- 
 ternal form. But for ever we lose the innocence and the un- 
 acquaintance with deceit, which are the belongings of babyhood. 
 They leave us, not to return, after a stay as short as a mid- 
 summer night. Even the child, just emergent from infancy, 
 begins to acquire those unangelic instincts, which seem to come 
 to most of us as surely as our teeth, from a touch, however 
 slight and guarded, with not too pure a world.
 
 XIX 
 
 ERRATA 
 
 " Habent sua fata libelli."— Terentianus Maueus, Be SyllaUs. 
 
 Men who are always in quest of out-of-the-way knowledge can 
 hardly fail to come across a good deal which should interest 
 even those who are not themselves archasologists, and who are 
 perhaps sometimes a little too apt, on the principle illustrated 
 by the elderly fable of the Fox and the Grapes, to underrate 
 the labourers in such fields of research. The majority, of course, 
 do not care a jot about literary antiquities, and of those who 
 profess to do so a sensible proportion considers that it has paid 
 sufficient homage to the study by purchasing Xichols' " Anecdotes 
 and Illustrations " (chiefly of his friends and himself), and a few 
 other deplorably dull books which purport to let one behind 
 the scenes, in uniform illegible sets by the most eminent binders. 
 Facts about persons very familiar by name and repute to the 
 general public may be brought to light from sources of which 
 the general public is complacently ignorant, A new circum- 
 stance about Bacon or Shakespear, about Rubens or Vandyke, 
 arrests the attention of thousands, who would positively object 
 to be regarded as antiquaries, and would not step a yard out 
 of their way to make the discovery on their own account. 
 Among the themes which are associated with this kind of 
 knowledge is the erroneous attribution of books at various 
 times to authors and others, under mdre or less valuable 
 inducements. 
 
 Certainly, more than once the parties themselves were 
 accessories before the fact, were clearly chargeable with mis- 
 prision of deceit. Just in one case or so, perhaps, the honours 
 of a title-page were conferred on a literary gentleman deceased, 
 and therefore presumably without consulting his wishes. Mr. 
 Moloch of Paternoster Row, at whose shrine writers of either 
 sex are immolated in the broadest daylight without any attempt 
 
 at concealment, made free, maybe, with somebody's name and 
 
 217
 
 2 1 8 ERRATA 
 
 fame for purposes of lucre and aggrandizement. Some of these 
 were pretty innocents whose fate solicits the sympathy of the 
 benevolent. But it has been observed that our taskmasters 
 prefer, if they can get them, scribes in the full heyday of flesh 
 and blood for this sort of service to any such in buckram. 
 
 Thomas Campbell is reported to have cared for very little 
 beyond his poetical reputation ; and I think that we can under- 
 stand his feeling. He was sensitive there because it was his 
 vulnerable part. He set store by what the world thought and 
 said of the " Pleasures of Hope " and " Hohenlinden " ; for these 
 had cost him something, had cost him brain-work. "Where 
 his treasure was, there was his heart also." But people might 
 entertain what opinions they chose about the editorship of the 
 New Monthly Magazine, or about his prose works ; for these 
 cost him only his name. 
 
 A man, unless he is preternaturally lucky, is a long time in 
 building up a name, with which he can step into the market, 
 and (as if it were the title-deeds of an estate or the family plate) 
 raise a handsome figure in cash. It is a tiresome corner to 
 turn : but it is marvellous what a man may do vs^hen he has 
 turned it. What Campbell succeeded in accomplishing was 
 not so very inconsiderable. 
 
 His prose works have just been mentioned. There is " The 
 Life of Mrs. Siddons, by Thomas Campbell, Esq.," in two volumes 
 octavo. There is, secondly, " The Life of Sir Thomas Lawrence, 
 Pi. A., by Thomas Campbell, Esq.," in two volumes octavo. There 
 is, thirdly, " The Life of Petrarch, by Thomas Campbell, Esq.," 
 in two volumes octavo. Xow, the matter appears to stand in 
 this way : that this imposing array of publications owed their 
 existence and any merit they may possess to a gentleman who 
 had a facile pen and a knack of putting things cleverly together. 
 Campbell visited at the house, was intimate with him and his 
 family, and threw these small deer in his way, charging a 
 commission, it is barely possible, for getting the order and 
 lending the negociable medium. 
 
 Does it not seem a little hard at first sight, that those pieces 
 of biography, such as they were or ought to have been, should 
 have been laid before the public with one not perfectly bond 
 fide feature about them ? It was almost as bad as an utter- 
 ance of counterfeit coin. But the world unfortunately possesses
 
 ERRATA 219 
 
 an abundance of books which, if not put forward exactly under 
 false features, do not carry on their front their true paternity. 
 The volume of Heraldry which goes under the name of Guillim 
 the Pursuivant-of-Arms is generally understood to have been 
 prepared by a vicar of Barking in Essex, who was shy of iden- 
 tifying himself in print with secular researches. The unrecog- 
 nized oblisrations of Dugrdale in his " Monasticon " to the MSS. of 
 Dodsworth, and of Smollett in his " Don Quixote " to his predecessor 
 Jarvis, the friend of Pope, are tolerably well known. But in 
 another case, Halstead's " Succinct Genealogies," no injustice seems 
 to have been done to any one, if it be taken that Halstead is 
 a mere nom de plume ; and the same observation is equally true 
 of the " Memoirs of Secret Service," by the first Earl of Peter- 
 borough, who employs the pseudonym of Matthew Smith, Esquire. 
 Smollett, who was not a Spanish scholar, went to the earlier 
 version of Jarvis, who was ; and there are such as prefer the 
 former, which can only mean that the author of " Peregrine Pickle " 
 knew how to steal without spoiling what he stole, — nay, how 
 to lend another man's property an enhanced value. After all, 
 even in Jarvis we lean to the notion that the curious old en- 
 gravings in the quarto edition are the best part of the bargain, 
 and they are copies from the French. Jarvis was an educated 
 man, a painter, and a linguist ; but he was a pedant and with- 
 out much literary tact ; and one regrets to see that Mr. Duffield, 
 in his new rendering of the old Spanish author, permitted to 
 himself the use of an archaic diction, of which he was not quite 
 a master. It is always hazardous to play with edged tools. 
 It is possible that our most vivid translation of Cervantes, 
 next to that of Jarvis with its sympathetic illustrations, is the 
 engraved one which we owe to the late Gustave Dore ; it is at 
 any rate as good as the one by John Philips, Milton's nephew, 
 in which he professed to adapt the text to " the humour of our 
 modern language." The fact is that those, who desire to read 
 " Don Quixote," must graduate by learning the language in which 
 that intractable romance was composed. The Anglicized version 
 invariably proves to be a mule, like the fabulous progeny of 
 the eagle and the lion. 
 
 Translations, I take it, have an inherent liability to turn 
 out unsatisfactory. The burden of proof lies on the trans- 
 lator. I speak from a painfully intimate experience, when I
 
 2 20 ERRATA 
 
 say that we have yet to meet with a version of any classical 
 or foreign author, which reproduces the original. And if such 
 be the case with Homer, Herodotus, and Athenaeus among the 
 Greeks, and Horace, Virgil, and Cicero among the Romans, to 
 go no farther, what is to be expected from an attempt to trans- 
 plant to another soil such especially idiomatic writers in their 
 centuries, as Butler, Bunyan, Sterne, and Dickens ? You may 
 be a perfect master of both languages, and you may give through- 
 out, as nearly as may be, the corresponding wit, phrase, or argot ; 
 but it will be a sorry affair at the best. Voltaire expresses 
 warm admiration for "Hudibras"; but he was probably in a 
 position to dispense with an interpreter. 
 
 The mention of the great Frenchman makes me think, that 
 he is a candidate for admission here. The seventy volumes, 
 which form his Works, are sought by faddists, who must have 
 them on large paper in old morocco with all the foolish plates 
 to the " Henriade " and the " Pucelle." But what I mean by Vol- 
 taire is his own vast, wide, and enduring personality and that 
 sort of handbook of his private opinions, the " Philosophical 
 Dictionary." Those who buy his works, have an imperfect hearsay 
 idea of what he was ; those who know what he was are well 
 aware that his works will not stand them in great stead. 
 
 The author of the " Pilgrim's Progress " might appear singu- 
 larly invulnerable against an assault by a renderer into another 
 tongue, yet that famous, though stubborn, piece of vernacular 
 was not five years of age, before it met with two Dutch admirers 
 in the persons of a translator and an illustrator of the trans- 
 lation. 
 
 A remarkable fatality has overtaken Cervantes. His English 
 translators, in none of whom he can be said to have been par- 
 ticularly happy, seem to have combined to mislead the general 
 reader, even as to the true titles of the original books. The 
 sorry countenance of Don Quixote becomes sorrowful, and the 
 Ingenuous Knight becomes the Ingenious one. The Novelas 
 Exemplares become the " Exemplary Novels." The " Trials of 
 Persiles and Sigismunda" become their "Travels," just as the 
 Travels of Ulysses in a set of French engravings of the seven- 
 teenth century are conversely described as his Travaux, and 
 as Edward the Redeless or Thriftless has passed almost down to 
 to-day as Edward the Unready. But how can these trifles affect
 
 ERRATA 22 1 
 
 the indestructible reputation of an author, who lives from age 
 to age by virtue of a production which very few Englishmen 
 have read, even in a translation. We read "Gil Bias." We 
 get a notion of " Don Quixote " from elegant extracts and hear- 
 say, — nay, also from the admirable engravings in Jarvis's quarto 
 edition or the French set on a similarly large scale. 
 
 I do not know what is to be thought or said about 
 some of the modern hybrids, where author and translator are 
 sometimes found in a strange sort of relationship, and you do 
 not get a version of a book produced in a foreign or dead 
 language, but one gentleman comes forward, and introduces you 
 to another, telling you as much as he pleases about him, and 
 a good deal more about himself. The original writer becomes a 
 lay figure, on which his excellent redeemer from oblivion can 
 ingeniously dispose the drapery, so as to leave the real subject 
 of the Essay in a sort of chiaroscuro. 
 
 Again, there is the second edition of the " Somers Tracts," 
 " Revised, augmented, and arranged " by Sir Walter Scott ; the 
 " Aldine Poets," with Memoirs by the Rev. John Mitford ; the 
 " History of Amadis of Gaul," translated from the original Por- 
 tuguese by Robert Southey. There is a "Life of Titian," by 
 James Northcote, R.A. ; and " Select Poets of Great Britain," 
 by William Hazlitt. 
 
 Scott put his name on a title-page of the " Somers Tracts," and 
 did little besides. The wretched old translation of " Amadis," 
 corrected here and there in Southey's own hand, still exists ; it 
 is the one which the printer probably employed for the edition 
 from the original Portuguese; and yet it is commended by 
 Dunlop as a scholarly version by the more modern writer. All 
 that Mr. Mitford did for the Poets was to preface each with 
 a biography in very indifferent English and a passable sonnet. 
 Northcote had as much concern in the "Life of Titian," and Hazlitt 
 in the " Select Poets," as Scott had in the " Somers Tracts," or 
 Campbell in the lives of Siddons, Lawrence, and Petrarch. The 
 booksellers and the public paid for the names, and got them, but 
 scarcely anything beyond. These literary celebrities had built up, 
 at more or less outlay, a marketable reputation, a sort of liquid 
 asset, with which very little will go a long way, and without 
 which you will be bowed out by every firm in London. A man, 
 who is at last discovered by the critics to be a neglected genius,
 
 222 ERRATA 
 
 has a terrible weapon put into his hands. He may talk a vast 
 deal of nonsense with impunity and even with approbation — 
 and sometimes (as we know) he does ! It is his revanche, the 
 vendetta of the Too-late recognised ; he laughs in his sleeve, 
 feelins; abundantlv sure that he is neither better nor worse than 
 he was twenty years ago, when every one passed him in the 
 street, and the sagacious reviewers saw nothing in him. But 
 the day of reckoning frequently arrives only with the advent of 
 a collected edition of the gentleman's writings, when he is found 
 to have left behind him performances of unequal execution. 
 
 When I look through the writings of Browning, I seem to 
 identify the man, who was spoiled by success and adulation. He 
 began by writing in ordinary characters, and by degrees thought 
 it sufficient for a person of such exalted genius to use a cypher or 
 shorthand. Some of the earlier compositions of this writer in 
 the vernacular procured him the celebrity, which tempted him to 
 play tricks with the public, and offer to his readers, not poetry, 
 but insoluble conundrums in metrical form of which even the 
 excellent Society, expressly established to expound them, does 
 not appear to have been able to make much. And his humour 
 partakes of the same cryptogramic character. It might have 
 been of service to be provided with a glossary to the new 
 collected edition; but even the bard himself was unable to 
 explain on demand some passages in his works. He was 
 betrayed by too obsequious admirers into neglect of form, 
 poverty and vulgarity of style, and wilful slovenliness of rhythm. 
 His later work resembled that which he describes with such 
 contemptuous unction in the opening stanza of " Sibrandus 
 Schaf naburgensis. ' ' 
 
 The retaliation of Mr. Carlyle for much unfavourable criti- 
 cism on his early labours was exhibited in that grotesque 
 vocabulary, which he employed in his historical works, and in 
 the reduction of his characters to his own preconceived stan- 
 dard. His accounts of the French Revolution, of Cromwell, of 
 Frederic of Prussia, await a translator with revising power. 
 The fantastic mannerism overlays the page like a semi-opaque 
 varnish. 
 
 This reminds one, again, of the impregnable stronghold which 
 many of our great classics enjoy in their unchallenged renown. 
 Doubtless, their rank in our eyes is the nett product of the
 
 ERRATA 223 
 
 deliberate judgment of ages, and is barred against common 
 criticism by an unwritten statute of limitations ; yet what would 
 some of our learned and ex cathedra friends say if in a book of 
 the day sent in for review anything half so vapid and half so 
 silly as may be easily pointed out in nine-tenths of the early 
 literature were to present itself ? Aliquando dormitat is only 
 admissible of those whose dust centuries have consecrated. 
 
 One of the most serious blows to our modern prepossessions 
 is the latter-day German import of analytical investigation 
 applied to our older dramatic literature, which, unless we choose 
 to bury our heads in the sand, has turned, and is yet turning, 
 what many of us guilelessly thought to be homogeneous works 
 by this or that playwright, into shreds and patches more or less 
 artfully knit together, by some syndicate or by a succession of 
 persons, of whom Shakespear is, or may be, one. I do not feel 
 that I can read with the same wealth of confidence and enjoy- 
 ment such miisaics. I cannot tell, I cannot, where Shakespear 
 begins or ends. I must have an edition in parti-coloured inks : 
 here words, there lines, here passages, in blue or red, arranged 
 under the lynx eye of Mr. Pleay ; and it may turn out, that 
 Shakespear has been turned into a Limited Company. 
 
 There are many productions in every literature which, being 
 translations, pass for original works. But a singular instance of 
 the converse of this presents itself in the " Tales of the Genii," 
 actually written by James Ridley, and professing to have been 
 translated from the Persian by Sir Charles Morell. This leads 
 me to think of the " Arabian Nights," of which one has heard so 
 much of late years through the admirable labours of Burton and 
 Payne, and of which a French scholar has more recently pre- 
 sented us with an independent unexpurgated version. But it 
 is nowhere stated with sufficient clearness or candour that no 
 means have so far been discovered of arriving at a correct idea 
 of what the original text was, as it survives only in patchwork 
 transcripts and garbled copies, of which the best translation in 
 the world is bound to be more or less fallacious. 
 
 About half the printed paper we have is either anonymous 
 or pseudonymous, a voluminous heritage, which we are entitled 
 under the circumstances to include in a general return of thanks. 
 The misascription of works goes back at least to the days of 
 Moses. That Solomon and David had any concern in the literary
 
 2 24 ERRATA 
 
 labours which pass under their names, there is no proof and 
 equal likelihood ; and it is a rather singular coincidence or 
 parallel that our British Solomon (son of David the Fiddler) 
 published a version of the Psalms in English as his own, though 
 much of the volume actually proceeded from other pens. The 
 conflicting accounts which Diogenes Laertius gives of the genesis 
 of books as well as sayings shews what uncertainty prevailed at 
 that early time on these subjects. To this day we are equally 
 doubtful about the men, who libelled Cardinal Mazarin and the 
 Caliph Haroon El Eeschid. Nor have we yet identified Maitre 
 Guillaume who so pleasantly and so ably wrote about public 
 affairs in France under Henry of Navarre. In our modern 
 catalogues we have not yet done with the tiresome practice of 
 marshalling the compositions of several writers under one head, 
 and apportioning the labours of one man among many, because 
 the orthography of proper names was formerly irregular. 
 
 We cannot be satisfied that we have identified all that 
 Johnson did for Cave or all that Goldsmith did for Newbery. 
 Let us almost hope that we never shall. It might prove to be 
 not treasure- trove, but something different. Sensible writers 
 keep back the not very brilliant doings of their youth. Their 
 days of drudgery in booksellers' back-parlours were to the men 
 of the last century their prehistoric era. Charles Lamb com- 
 mitted to the press more than all that he thought worthy of 
 preservation; but it would not have occupied the long row of 
 volumes which compose, in publishers' jargon, the library edition 
 of his works, and still less the area of the ponderous and nearly 
 laughable Edition cle Luxe superintended by the late Master of the 
 Temple. I am persuaded that Lamb and his sister would have de- 
 clined to sanction the reappearance in a permanent shape of "Mrs. 
 Leicester's School,"" Album Verses," " Poetry for Children," and the 
 (save " John Woodvil ") " Plays." I own that about the " Adven- 
 tures of Ulysses " I feel differently ; for I do not think that the 
 author emptied Chapman of his divinity (to use Lamb's own expres- 
 sion) half so much as Dr. Maginn succeeded in missing the spirit of 
 the Greek poet in his whimsical series of " Homeric Ballads." The 
 " Poetry for Children " may be neither better nor much worse than 
 other nursery verse-books ; but it ought no more to have been 
 bound up with the literary remains of an English classic than such 
 trash as " Prince Dorus " and " Beauty and the Beast." " Mr. H."
 
 ERRATA 225 
 
 may be a diverting trifle ; but it has neither poetical nor dramatic 
 value. " John Woodvil " at any rate has passages. As for " Prince 
 Dorus," the " Queen of Hearts," and one or two more supposed-to- 
 be happy Recoveries, alas ! they are something like the poorest of 
 pot-fuel. So it has been again with the late Walter Pater, whose 
 posthumous papers might have with such wonderful advantage 
 been let alone. These are not cases of a table of Errata to a 
 book ; the books themselves are Errata, as men and women may 
 be — men and women misborn or misplaced. Look at the literary 
 phenomenon offered to our consideration in the issue by Ruskin 
 of his metrical productions, commencing with those which came 
 from his pen as a youth of nine. These last are of course of 
 infinitesimal worth, and it was unwise to include them in the 
 collection, or even to let the collection appear, as it cannot add 
 much to the fame of the author. The original impression of the 
 " Juvenilia " might have been cherished by a few as a curiosity. 
 Yet thousands of persons probably read these compositions with 
 avidity, and endeavoured to discern in them subtle and occult 
 excellences. It is, in short, a book which no one, whose friends 
 possessed a healthy influence over him, or who, on the other 
 hand, had not lifted himself above normal criticism by labours 
 of a very different calibre, would have dared to lay before the 
 public. Ruskin believed himself to be invulnerable, and shrewdly 
 surmised that whatever he printed the reviewers would treat 
 tenderly, and the wide circle of his admirers would buy and 
 applaud. It was perhaps intended to be his parting gift to our 
 poor world, before he joined the gods. 
 
 Dickens, in our own day, was surely not very backward in 
 giving publicity to every scrap which he judged deserving of 
 paper and print, yet an editor has been found for sundry waifs 
 and strays which it would have been far kinder to have left 
 where they were. This is running into an unwise and unhealthy 
 extreme. For I am unable to think of an author whose repu- 
 tation would be proof against an exhaustive collection of his 
 literary labours. I shudder at the mere possibility of some 
 enthusiastic printing club undertaking to present to us the 
 lately-discovered MSS. of Sir Isaac Newton in a modest barrow- 
 load of volumes. Rather let a future generation, which has 
 lost the clues, put all nameless trifles into a New Foundling 
 Hospital for Wit. Or is it to be taken for granted that we 
 
 P
 
 226 ERRATA 
 
 understand an author's interests and opinions better than him- 
 self ? What would Shelley have thought of the late eight-volume 
 edition of his works in prose and verse ? Even an exhaustive one 
 of Keats might have been suffered to pass without his letters to 
 Miss Brawn, which are not so interesting even as the letters of 
 Burns to Clarinda, for those possess the importance of having 
 been, in cataloguer's parlance, rigidly suppressed, and therefore 
 partake of the nature of stolen sweets, although forsooth they are 
 decent and dull enough. 
 
 A chapter might be set forth upon books which have been 
 constructed by cunning literary artificers out of rough notes 
 handed to them by persons of genius, whose talent lay somewhere 
 at a distance from committing their great thoughts or discoveries 
 to paper with a judicious and becoming regard to sequence and 
 orthography. A worthy old soul died the other day whose 
 speciality it was to serve up books for gentlemen whose learning 
 did not embrace spelling and stops. But the present is a branch 
 of the subject in which a jarring chord might easily be. struck. 
 For I could, an' I would, divulge the name of more than one 
 volume of honest repute, which came to this chymical laboratory 
 a chrysalis, and left it a butterfly. 
 
 There are few topics on which it is more perilous to enter, in 
 the way of criticism, than Ballad Literature. All my literary 
 friends, to a man, love and admire these fine old things, and 
 many stand toward collections in a sort of fatherly relationship. 
 Adverse remarks are consequently not to be made without 
 excessive caution, nor even then without formidable risk. I 
 have by no means in my mind the Political Ballad, which is 
 distinct in its character and origin, nor such pieces as appear to 
 have proceeded from an educated pen, like " Sir Patrick Spens " 
 and " Hardycanute." I refer to the works of the merry minstrel, 
 who was his own author, to the flexible legendary tale which, 
 masterfully differenced, was dressed by Homers of other days to 
 suit the circumstances of sundry families or individuals. 
 
 I have to confess that I have perused in my time passing 
 much of this lore, and that I have laid down each successive 
 volume with a sense of increasing despondency and astonishment. 
 It may be predicated, according to my view, of these productions, 
 as a rule, that they are as fabulous as the old romances without 
 their wealth of costume and incident, as dull as the monkish
 
 ERRATA 227 
 
 poetry without its antiquity or philological value, and as licen- 
 tious as Chaucer or Boccaccio without their diction, humour, 
 and plot. I am positively bewildered, as one advances more and 
 more deeply into this labyrinth of edited material, at the varioe 
 lectiones obtained by some splendid good fortune (as it seems to 
 have been thought) from oral recitation, the most treacherous of 
 all sorts and sources of material ; and the same not very remark- 
 able story is related of a dozen different people with a few 
 changes for the nonce. The compositions which, on some account 
 or other, possess real importance, might surely fall within the 
 compass of a moderate volume ; yet I apprehend that a railway 
 waggon would scarcely accommodate all that we have, scattered 
 up and down, in this fascinating department of polite letters. 
 
 From the slips of the press and the sins of authors we are 
 apt to turn to apparent heresies and solecisms on the part 
 of the printer in his professional capacity. The publisher of 
 the present day laments the decline in the public call for his 
 commodities, unless he can weigh them out by the pound or the 
 hundredweight, and he has sought a remedy and an escape in 
 the production of new wares of a painfully worthless and 
 ephemeral caste, or of the old ones in diabolically fantastic 
 accoutrements. The plea of the manufacturer or draper may be 
 that, if his customers will not buy a book, he must provide him 
 with a toy or a gewgaw in book-form, and a modern Procrustes, 
 who was excellent enough as a paper-hanger and as a writer of 
 smooth soulless verse, served up to his obsequious clientele a 
 series of typographical and artistic abortions with a lordly in- 
 difference to propriety of circumstance and costume. Whatever 
 honour may be legitimately due to such as at successive periods 
 elucidated the lives and works of literary celebrities, the editor- 
 ship of early writings is not uniformly or unexceptionally 
 essential to their substantial appreciation. That mere archives 
 should be presented with the minutest accuracy is not to be 
 questioned; but the sense and spirit of our great authors were 
 grasped, I take it, before the laborious scholiast and dull verbal 
 critic interposed to elevate their fame by purifying their texts 
 from the errors of transcribers and typographers. In the former 
 centuries men discerned the merits of poets and prose writers 
 without those scholarly aids, which, in spite of their enriching 
 side, somewhat tend to overlay the original groundwork.
 
 228 ERRATA 
 
 In the department of book-collecting we are confronted with 
 two schools of personages, who distinguish themselves by a taste 
 for the literary or bibliographical monuments of the past ; that 
 which seeks to encourage a study of authors or subjects, which 
 have been improperly and even injuriously neglected, and that 
 which makes it a speciality to concentrate in its own hands 
 certain productions, of which time has grudged us more than a 
 copy or two. If we scan the splendid catalogues of the principal 
 private libraries of recent centuries in Great Britain, on the 
 Continent, in the United States, we find the same aim and 
 the same result : an imposing accumulation of matter in book- 
 form interspersed with a more or less slender literary and 
 intellectual seasoning, if not quite so barren as that prodigious 
 mountain of Oxford and Cambridge verses on public occasions 
 uniquely redeemed by Milton's " Lycidas " ; and we are apt to 
 turn away from the spectacle, magnificent as it may be, with a 
 feeling that those libraries, which were formed on the principle 
 of selecting, not what others wanted, but what the owners 
 desired apart from rarity and rivalry, are the pleasantest 
 to contemplate. But beyond and above both in their title to 
 general gratitude and respect stand those, who have winnowed 
 out from the entire surviving mass of type and manuscript the 
 modest proportion likely to prove interesting or serviceable for 
 all time, and who thus put letters to their highest uses, namely, 
 the transmission and diffusion of knowledtre. The fork is to 
 
 O 
 
 be preferred to the rake. The normal wealthy virtuoso is no 
 Heber, no scholarly judge and valuer of his possessions, but 
 a misguided individual, who barters for his dollars all the 
 treasures which he sees commemorated in catalogues as having 
 perished, with a solitary exception or so, because, when they 
 were plentiful, no one coveted them. The caveat has to be 
 entered, however, that of matter committed to writing or to the 
 press, it is an absolute minimum, which public institutions 
 may not usefully preserve for reference or comparison. Private 
 libraries too often savour of personal foibles. Our museums are 
 neutral ground. 
 
 Art is not altogether exempt from attack on this side. There 
 are, as experts well know, keen and interminable disputes as to 
 the real authorship of pictures of the older schools. Whom are 
 we to appoint to adjudicate on the respective works of Luini and
 
 ERRATA 229 
 
 Da Vinci, between which it has been pronounced that it is 
 almost hopeless to discriminate ? Raphael and Correggio are 
 usually viewed as strictly original masters, yet the saying goes 
 that they were under the deepest obligations to Giotto. 
 
 We know how warmly and justly the masters of the Dutch 
 school are admired, alike in portrait, landscape, and domestic 
 life. Yet I could draw up long lists of works of undoubted 
 realistic merit, which I have seen in the Netherlands, and which 
 would be wholly destitute of context, if they should be trans- 
 planted to any other soil. The galleries of Holland abound to 
 satiety with those imposing Corporation paintings, presenting 
 groups of individuals, who are of as much permanent interest as 
 the gentlemen seated round the municipal tables of Guildhall or 
 Spring Gardens, yet of whose absolute correspondence with the 
 living originals no one need entertain a doubt. These composi- 
 tions are uniformly excellent, and you carry away from visits 
 to their restiug-places a hope, that the artist was handsomely 
 remunerated for executing them. The question arises, whether 
 this class of transfer in oils did not forestal the pre-Raphaelites 
 in England. Of the two it is nature rather than art, which 
 demands more than a crude facsimile. 
 
 It seemed almost superfluous for Mr. Sant, R.A., to evolve from 
 his imagination a likeness of Napoleon as he looked at St. Helena, 
 when we already had that in the straw-hat, which, despite the 
 bizarre head-dress, strikes me as far to be preferred.
 
 XX 
 
 BEN TEOVATO 
 
 Lies are the powerful unguent which lubricates the wheels of 
 Society ; without which Society would not be what it is ; in 
 the absence of which it is a great question, if Society would 
 not find itself very soon coming to a deadlock of the most 
 serious kind. The truth is very well perhaps, so far as it goes ; 
 but the mischief is, that it is tame, commonplace, prosaic, 
 plumbous, while ladies and gentlemen are brimful of romance, 
 passion for ornament, love of laughter, affection for that quasi- 
 Eobin-Hoodish merry-making with the Long Bow. The world 
 mainly subsists on fiction, and is only won round to the reality 
 of a question under the strongest protest. You have immense 
 difficulty in prevailing on it to go with you in discrediting the 
 claim of Cervantes to be the pioneer in ridiculing the roman- 
 cists, and of Bunyan to be the earliest writer of allegory in 
 English. 
 
 That (as we learn at the last moment) very sadly maligned 
 Signer Pinto, Herr Munchausen, Sir John Mandeville (great 
 master of the imaginative school of prose), Mr. Barnum, Prophet 
 Smith, Spurgeon the Apostle, were the authors who really 
 understood to the greatest perfection the principles of com- 
 position, who knew best the string which pulls the hearts of 
 nations, and who possessed the valuable faculty of selecting 
 from any given number of straws the particular straw most 
 calculated to tickle that impressionable being Mankind. The 
 respective writers of the " Arabian Nights Entertainment," 
 "Tom Thumb," " Howleglass," "Mother Goose," "Jack the 
 Giant-killer," " Lazarillo de Tormes," were literary gentlemen 
 of precisely the same stamp. Their genius was cognate. They 
 were not like young Sparta, who had no objection to the sort 
 of thing (rather having a preference that way, in fact), but not 
 liking to be found out, as discovery was scandalous by statute. 
 
 These others lied for the common good, not to let the world 
 
 330
 
 BEN TROVATO 231 
 
 mope. Lying may be signalized as the most ancient, the most 
 widely diffused, and most imperishable of all Arts. But I must 
 impose one proviso : your liar, to be exempt from legal process, 
 should not be a dull rogue. To be at once unveracious and 
 unamusing is an aggravated offence. I prefer a Gascon or even 
 an American yarn to a Welsh pedigree. 
 
 At a stall in a Turkish or Egyptian bazaar a man parts to 
 you with an article at precisely double its intrinsic worth, and 
 lets you know that you have gone halves with him in robbing 
 his father — a figurative personage in most Oriental bargains, 
 who, like the carriage-and-pair in our genteel comedy, is always 
 judiciously kept in the background. But here is a disciple of 
 the vulgar school of falsehood, a mendacious egotist, a liar for 
 his own paltry ends, a pusillanimous desecrator of matter-of-fact 
 with none but the most selfish objects in view. 
 
 One of the old philosophical Greeks made it a maxim never 
 to depart from the truth so much as in jest. He refused to 
 tell a fib to his dearest friend for the joke of the thing, as 
 persons who have credit for the most upright intentions now 
 occasionally do. But that was hardly an average case, I take 
 it ; the fib had germinated even then ; individuals of inventive 
 genius were to be found in many departments of inquiry ; Sparta 
 was not the only school, where the fancy was cultivated ; nor 
 was Scylax a solitary type. That gentleman's sensibility, I 
 suspect, was peculiar, personal. These delicate scruples were, 
 if anything, rather the exception. Are they not so now ? 
 
 There is something which makes me of opinion that the 
 hero of Foote's comedy is a rascal of the baser species. He is 
 a fellow with a mad lying vein, who strings his inventions one 
 upon the other, till he makes a rope of them to hang himself; 
 but it runs in his blood, was sucked into the man's constitution. 
 He is a pleasant harebrained creature who, not unlike the 
 younger Matthews in the " Liar," never looks before him 
 or behind him, and gets out of one scrape by getting into 
 another. He is constantly guilty of the most outrageous fabri- 
 cations in order to serve some personal and usually rather 
 undignified object. He wants the magnanimity and philan- 
 thropy of a true hero of romance. He lies to benefit himself, 
 or because he cannot help it, and either way my sympathy with 
 him is not large. Lying, doubtless, is a humour not to be
 
 232 BEN TROVATO 
 
 treated with encouragement, unless it has the somewhat rare 
 fortune to be associated with something like generosity of senti- 
 ment, handsomeness of intention, or grandeur of design. Take, 
 for example, our ancient and long-lived acquaintance, him of 
 La Mancha, if the wittiest, assuredly one of the least veracious, 
 as he is one of the least translatable of knights-errant. No 
 man, who has laughed to tears over the adventures and exploits 
 of Don Quixote, was ever probably made worse by the flams 
 with which the book is so bountifully spiced. There we get lies 
 thick and threefold ; but then it is all for mirth's, not mischief's, 
 sake. Nobody is deceived, because nobody believes a word of 
 it ; nor for that matter do we of the Scandinavian popular lore, 
 which finds its lowest level in the rather over-valued German 
 stories of the Brothers Grimm. 
 
 The brilliant and dream-like legends of the East — the " Seven 
 Sleepers," the " Seven Wise Masters," Ali Baba, Aladdin, Haroon- 
 el-Reschid, and the rest, so far as we are enabled to study them 
 in corrupt texts and imperfect translations: the myths handed 
 down to us by Herodotus, Pliny, and Aulus Gellius : the fables 
 of paganism, Circe, Calypso, Arcadia and its enchantments, the 
 Islands of the Blessed, Charon, Cerberus : all the strange tales 
 which are interwoven with the " Odyssey " and the " ^neid " ; 
 the splendid and miraculous exploits of the heroes of Norse 
 and Teutonic mythology ; our own romantic literature, Arthur, 
 Lancelot, Tristan, Isaie the Sad, Huon of Bordeaux, Bevis of 
 Hampton, Palmerin, Amadis, Guy of Warwick, Torrent of 
 Portugal (a kind of Jack the Giant-killer for grown-up persons), 
 and the Seven Champions : Peridur, Owain, Geraint, and 
 all the heroes of the Welsh Triads — all these are purely 
 delightful, and make our old friend Munchausen seem pretty 
 sober reading, especially when we come, in the "Arthur," to 
 the monarch who proposed to fur his mantle with the beards 
 of the kings his cousins, whom he slew in battle. Of Aaron the 
 Eighteous it is perhaps better not to know too much, lest we 
 should be disillusionized. The fame of the book, of which he 
 forms the central figure, was built up, before men began to be 
 too clear about his personality and his period, or to be generally 
 aware that he struck coins and corresponded with Charlemagne, 
 Nor do I know that I should object to see a reprint of the 
 Contes Devots, which have matured with age into a farrago
 
 BEN TROVATO 233 
 
 of humorous absurdity, whatever may have been the original 
 aim and effect, and where, by the way, we meet with the exact 
 counterpart, Mr. Barham, of your " Jackdaw of Ptheims." 
 
 There are very few of the fictions, which arrest our attention 
 and awaken our curiosity in the writers of the medieeval era 
 and the Eenascence, which are not readily traceable to ancient 
 sources. Sir John Mandeville was little more than a middle-man. 
 But, on the contrary, the " Arabian Nights " strike me as 
 pictures of Oriental wealth and splendour, and local costume, 
 from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. Who agrees with 
 Carlyle in pronouncing them unwholesome literature ? They 
 long wanted an expositor, and they at last found two in Burton 
 and Payne. Carlyle well-nigh needs the same aid. Is he worth 
 it ? Yet even in the land of their birth during a vast length of 
 time the " Nights " were viewed, not as unwholesome, but as 
 futile, matter. 
 
 They appear to me the very reverse of a geographical expres- 
 sion, all these fanciful embodiments of a simple popular belief ; 
 the divine Olympian gathering, and all the other legendary 
 superstitions of the antique world, with those of our own Britain 
 added to swell the catalogue out to bigger proportions. The 
 universal imagination is peopled with them, and in our mind's 
 eye we study to shape out what their form and feature should 
 by right be. They are as unknown as the algebraic x, yet go 
 hither and thither, like the Fairy, whom Master Puck, some- 
 time servant to King Oberon, once met in an Athenian wood. 
 The old faith (not yet extinct) in preternatural agencies and 
 superhuman attributes fostered these Arthurian myths, these 
 stories of elves, 
 
 " That dance in circles all the summer night ; " 
 
 these old wives' fables with the shallowest substratum of truth 
 in them, yet, as truth is, undying ; and so it is with the whole 
 stock of our national folk-lore. Perennis et fragrans. It runs 
 over with lies, like a witch's seething-pot : all the better for 
 that ! The day may not be far distant, when the modern 
 school of scientific investigation will rinse out from our romantic 
 and mythical literature all that is pleasant, and all that seems 
 noble, and reduce it to a dead level. So, meanwhile, let us be 
 merry with all the familiar phantoms !
 
 234 BEN TROVATO 
 
 As matters are now drifting, one can hardly feel assured that 
 those were not better off, who never outgrew their boyish belief 
 in knights, giants, and hobgoblins, and to whom Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth stood in as excellent stead as Mr. Keightley or Mr. 
 Freeman. But honest Geofi'rey has not quite lost caste yet 
 among the bookish sort ; for I not so long since saw him com- 
 mended for " the skilfulness of his delineations and the vener- 
 ableness of his authorities." What has the world gained, prythee, 
 by discovering that there was no Arthur, no pixies, that the 
 "Arabian Nights" were not composed under the circumstances 
 stated, or that the J^sopian Fables were no more written by ^sop 
 than the Psalms and Song of Solomon by their reputed authors ? 
 — that Haroon-el-Eeschid was as sober a reality as Queen 
 Victoria? Our former faiths have been rooted up, and nothing 
 half so a^eeable given to us in exchange. Was it not a relief 
 to find the other day, on the authority of " The Chronicles of 
 Newgate," that if Dick Turpin did not ride to York on Black 
 Bess, at any rate somebody else did on another ? We cannot 
 stand quietly by, and see all our idols broken : 
 
 Sanctum et venerabih est vetus omne poiima, 
 
 and there Poema is in its largest sense. The poetry of every- 
 thing save one is the primary element ; the single exception is 
 history. The poetry of history is only an euphemism for history 
 falsified. Between history and poetry there is so little in 
 common, that I confess I should like to see a broad line drawn 
 between the two. Fletcher of Saltoun thought that he would 
 rather make the ballads of a nation than its laws, but he mistook, 
 if I err not, cause for effect. A people's ballads are not its 
 history, but the consequences of its history. There are no ballads 
 in any language contemporary with the occurrences which they 
 describe. That mischievous invention, the historical romance, 
 ought by good right to have been committed at its birth to 
 the clemency of the common hangman ; the influence of this 
 fascinating medley of legend and fact (always with a balance in 
 favour of the former) on historical studies and inquiry has been 
 most pernicious. It is helping oneself to history with a silver 
 fork ; it is viewing the grand events, which have brought us to 
 what we are, through kaleidoscopic spectacles : it is (quite seriously) 
 the Life of the World in burlesque to get a hearing or a laugh.
 
 BEN TROVATO 235 
 
 The historical romance in prose as well as in verse has existed 
 from all time. But it was Scott to whom it owed its actual form 
 and place in our literature. His responsibility is a very severe 
 one. Of the two, the metrical tale is for obvious reasons less 
 to be reprehended ; and " Marmion " and " The Lady of the 
 Lake," nay, " Harold the Dauntless," are as good reading as many 
 of the Waverley series. But the characters in a novel should be 
 myths or types. The introduction of bogus historical personages 
 into print, or, which is worse, into our poor degraded theatre, 
 is silly and objectionable. How far preferable are Tennyson's 
 versions of the Arthur Poems to his " Queen Mary," and the latter 
 in the closet is a good deal better than on the stage. But both, 
 I fear, are rather flattered portraits. The dramatist was pardon- 
 ably anxious to do his best for a lady who, as one now under- 
 stands, was a sort of distant connection. Tennyson was no more 
 the originator of the Arthurian group of ballad or epic poetry 
 than he was their improver. The Round Table series we seem to 
 owe to men who in the thirteenth or even fourteenth century 
 composed versions of these oral legends in metre or prose agree- 
 ably, not to the period to which the narratives, but to which the 
 narrators, belonged. So we get the events of one period reclothed 
 in the costume of another. I see no utility at the present day 
 in the claim of a Breton duke to be a British prince, for the 
 Arthurian cycle of Tales dates no farther back than the twelfth 
 or thirteenth century, when Brittany and Cornwall were long 
 under one feudal chieftain. 
 
 Enough has been said in disparagement of what the authors 
 of this time call contemptuously the " dry bones " of history. 
 But, instead of being too plentiful, it may be a question if these 
 said bones have not been a little too scarce, and it remains to 
 be seen whether the passion for ornament has not existed in all 
 ages under one form or another to such an extent as to place it 
 beyond the power of our own generation and any others to come 
 to separate the dry loiies from the alto-relievo laid unstintingly 
 upon them, for harmony of effect, in satisfaction of the require- 
 ments of art, or from want of knowledge. Instances numerous 
 enough can be given of the present entangled condition of 
 historical literature, and of the strange, not to say prodigious, 
 degree in which the most momentous episodes have been painted 
 over, in technical phraseology, to meet the prevalent fondness for
 
 236 BEN TROVATO 
 
 dramatic propriety, and allay the popular hunger for coups de 
 tMdtre. 
 
 One great source of error has been, and is, the propensity 
 which authors of every kind have to write epigrams in prose as 
 well as in verse, to make points and round periods, so as more 
 surely to hold an audience. They feel, no doubt, that tame 
 realities do not answer very well, and that there must be salience, 
 sparkle, glitter : pomp of circumstance : an ornamental back- 
 ground or bordering. The author is but a kind of market-man. 
 The bookmaker has to know the bookbuyer. The playwright 
 from the outset found it necessary to study theatrical effect, as 
 Aristophanes in his "Clouds" introduced, not the true Socrates, 
 but a shallow caricature. 
 
 No one more perfectly understood this than Macaulay, whose 
 instinct, if not training as a special pleader and a rhetorician, 
 domineered over his sense of duty as a reviewer and an annalist. 
 Yet what could be expected from one, who pronounced the 
 criticisms of Johnson, even when " grossly and provokingly 
 unjust," excellent and deserving of study, provided, says 
 Macaulay, that you take care to separate "a portion of valuable 
 truth " from the alloy. What a process ! and in the case of 
 the more recent writer is it not equally imperative, particu- 
 larly where he invites us to view through his kaleidoscope the 
 evenings at Holland House and the noble host and hostess. 
 Naturally enough we are told, I own, nothing of the orange or 
 "Tom, stir the fire." 
 
 Virgil did as he listed with Dido, and Macaulay with Penn 
 and Impey. If the accounts are not true, so much the worse 
 for the truth ! Such authors play at ninepins with public 
 characters. But Dido was safer game than the other two, 
 inasmuch as justifying documents are not within reach. 
 But perhaps the most signal example of Macaulay 's insolent 
 nonchalance, and only not the gravest, because it was ^^rma 
 facie ridiculous and contemptible, was his ignorant view of 
 the character and labours of the illustrious and unfortunate 
 Marquis of Worcester, a judgment worthy of such a flimsy 
 and flippant virtuoso as Horace Walpole. 
 
 A Spanish poet long since entered upon a vindication of 
 Queen Dido from the charges which Virgil has made against 
 her moral character. But this gentleman does not seem to
 
 BEN TROVATO 237 
 
 have found much sympathy, or indeed perhaps (out of his 
 own country) many who have so much as heard of his 
 endeavours, and the Punic princess must wait, I apprehend, 
 till some virtuous washerman with Xotes from the Archives 
 of Carthage comes forward to tell us that the Maronian song 
 has wronged the royal lady. Nothing short of a veritable 
 State paper will do the feat — hardly that. I have to confess 
 that for myself I should regret the reduction of the legend 
 to narrow conventional lines from the broad quasi-Homeric 
 standard of morals. Much of the interest in these remote 
 traditions depends on the chiaroscuro light, through which we 
 contemplate them. To be sure, we know too little about many 
 personages, yet let us have a care, lest we should learn too 
 much. 
 
 His " Lays " and his " History " are the best things of 
 Macaulay that we have of the kind, and also the most parlous : 
 
 Aleator, quo in arte est rnelior, eo nequior. 
 
 It was perhaps a pleasant exaggeration on the part of the 
 gentleman who avouched that he had verified all the references 
 in the footnotes to the " History," and that not a single one 
 warranted the statement in the text ; the critic might have 
 gone a step farther in a different direction, however, and 
 found the famous New Zealander forestalled in a well-known 
 Venetian tradition of the Middle Ages. But even such poor 
 stuff" as Lockhart's " Spanish Ballads " and Aytoun's " Lays 
 of the Cavaliers " does more harm than good. As poetry it 
 is assuredly as bald, as void of inner sense, as a good deal of 
 Mr. Browning's metric prose ; nor is it half so poetical as the 
 "Italian Journeys" and "Venetian Life" of Mr. Howells ; and 
 if the authors had been so well advised as to shake themselves 
 loose from rhyme, we have to consider the distressing likeli- 
 hood that their prose would have been on a par with their 
 verse, and their narratives as faithless as Macaulay's without 
 being so picturesque. To write reasonably well in verse is no 
 easy task, as any one can see, for instance, who glances at the 
 indifferent versions of Horace, with which Sir Theodore Martin 
 has done so much to spoil his excellent monograph of the poet. 
 
 I beg, for my own part, to be excused from crediting a 
 syllable of what we have read about Cadmus and his little
 
 238 BEN TROVATO 
 
 army cheaply organized out of a serpent's teeth (though, to be 
 sure, Mr. Keightley explains the matter satisfactorily and pro- 
 saically enough), or about Sappho killing herself for love, or 
 about that very disagreeable and eccentric person Diogenes the 
 cynic and his tub (which was, after all, only what we call a box), 
 or about Hannibal and his successful experiment in vinegar. 
 Omar did not burn the Alexandrian Library, for the good reason 
 that in his time there was no library to burn ; perhaps this 
 collection has been as absurdly exaggerated as Petrarch's 
 basketful of volumes given to Venice partly under the advice 
 of his friend Boccaccio ; for the poet, if he gave all that he had, 
 is scarcely likely to have possessed so many paying guests as an 
 English mechanic can now buy for a sovereign. For your Book 
 rightly chosen and at convenience multiplied, is an asset soon 
 returning prime cost, and yielding perpetual interest which it 
 is beyond the power of any one to redeem or reduce. There is 
 no other hospitality like this. 
 
 The allusion to Petrarch and Boccaccio prompts me to notice 
 the almost unbroken link between the ancient Roman writers 
 and those, who succeeded them, who pressed the same ground, who 
 breathed the same atmosphere. We are accustomed to except to 
 the licence of the earlier Italian novelists and playwrights, and 
 we forget that they inherited the warm and passionate blood 
 of those, whom we designate the classics, blended with that 
 Celtic element, which lent additional grossness to sentiment and 
 language, and which we find in its rankest luxuriance in the 
 literature of France. 
 
 During a century or so English folk were satisfied with read- 
 ing Goldsmith's " History of Rome." But all at once sprang up 
 Niebuhr, who was adopted even by Keightley as a new light and 
 leader ; and Goldsmith was discarded. Then followed Mommsen, 
 who threw discredit on Niebuhr, and finally Sir George Corne- 
 wall Lewis dissented from both ; and to this very moment no 
 one can say more than that Goldsmith's book is waste-paper, 
 and that the question is a very difficult one, so far as the earliest 
 annals of the city are concerned. 
 
 We all know what a vexed question the first introduction of 
 typography has been and even remains, how it has been claimed 
 by Germany, Italy, and Holland. But in any case the art of 
 printing, as we have inherited it, is less an invention than a
 
 BEN TROVATO 239 
 
 development of that of writing and of the formation of letters 
 and alphabets, and the real question seems to be, in what region 
 the initiative of block-books was taken, and where the principle 
 was extended by the substitution of movable or detached for 
 immovable types. The conception of the latter goes back to 
 the Chinese, and was familiar to the Romans. But to neither 
 did it occur to carry the process farther. 
 
 It seems that, if the truth is to go for anything, ^sop and 
 Richard III. must part with their poetical humpbacks, and the 
 former even with his " Fables," Belisarius with his beggar's cloak 
 and staff, and Galileo with his grievances. 
 
 The common engravings of Cromwell dictating to Milton the 
 letter about the Albigenses, of Columbus and the egg, of Canute 
 rebuking his courtiers, and of Boadicea in her war-chariot, are 
 pictorial aids to history of more than dubious worth. The 
 rhetorical passage, where Macaulay makes Cromwell threaten 
 the Holy See, that, if more mercy were not shown to the chosen 
 people of God, the English guns should be heard in the Castle 
 of St. Angelo, seems to lack documentary support. 
 
 The notion has long prevailed among scholars, that the 
 nursery tale of " Jack the Giant-killer " was in its inception an 
 apologue exposing the tyranny and rapacity of feudal landlords, 
 and the present writer has glanced in his " Studies in Jocular 
 Literature " at the reasons, which tended to localize the habitat 
 of that fascinating and persevering tradition. But as seigniorial 
 oppression was ubiquitous, we must not be surprized to find that 
 there are, at all events, two distinct versions of the adventures of 
 the " Giant-killer," and that in the one, which is not, so familiar 
 to the young, the scene is laid, not in Cornwall, but in the North 
 of England — a circumstance which offers this collateral point of 
 interest and importance, that it links the history of Jack to a 
 certain extent with that of a famous outlaw and the cause 
 which he professedly espoused. At the same time, there is the 
 peculiar difficulty attendant on ascertaining the time and chrono- 
 logy of this little romance, that no early texts of it are known 
 to exist, and while an edition of 171 1, published at Newcastle, 
 contains the north-country version, and enjoys the honour of 
 priority, there is no testimony in favour of it being the oldest 
 beyond our present state of information and not least the signi- 
 ficant absence of any mention of the work in the " Stationers'
 
 240 BEN TROVATO 
 
 Register." It probably shared the fortune of many other stories 
 of social origin, and remained an oral record down to a com- 
 paratively recent date. It dealt with an evil of great antiquity 
 and long duration — the hardships suffered by the commonalty, 
 including the class, from which Robin Hood came, from the 
 owners of the soil and its appurtenances. 
 
 When we hear of Ptolemy the geographer, it is to admire 
 the eminence which is claimed for him as such, and to note 
 the high prices which are asked for first editions of his book. 
 Yet his views were based on a fundamentally erroneous idea, 
 since he put the earth in the room of the sun as the great motive 
 agent of the universe, of which, of course, the writer knew little. 
 
 A very slight acquaintance with the topography of the spot 
 ought to be sufHcient to extinguish the glories of Thermopylye; 
 and it is much the same thing with the Arcadia of the poets, alike 
 ancient and modern. One of the coldest parts of Greece was not 
 very happily chosen as the theatre of al fresco pastoral life ; nor 
 were the early romancists, who laid the scene of delightful ad- 
 ventures in Persia, very correctly acquainted with that region — 
 not, at least, with the Persia which we know, unless it might be 
 a few favoured spots. 
 
 Much of the extravagant outcry and invective against the 
 ancient Venetian government has been found, at the eleventh 
 hour, to have arisen from an iniquitous forgery and hoax. But 
 what, you will ask, about those Invisible Three, those of whom 
 Mr. Rogers sings ? Why, they were pleasant persons enough, 
 and were prepared to receive everybody who had business with 
 them, and if they were not to be seen, it was only when it was 
 out of office-hours. I hardly know which of the two is the 
 more delightfully melodramatic, the French history of the re- 
 public by the late M. Daru, or the " Bravo of Venice " by the 
 author of the "Monk," the latter an inconsiderate transfer to 
 Italian soil of the "Aballino" of Vulpius ; but assuredly both 
 are superior to the vulgar and disgraceful trash from the pen 
 of Sir Conan Doyle. 
 
 I think it is high time that the "Ana," as they are called, 
 should be set down at their true worth. They have always 
 seemed to me to be assemblages of fictitious and silly anecdotes, 
 the principal fruit of which is to mislead inquirers. The self- 
 same story is applied to a dozen different persons in as many
 
 BEN TROVATO 241 
 
 of these foolish collections. " Contcmptor sucemet vitce dominus 
 alienee " is alleged by the biographers of Henry IV. of France to 
 have been an axiom delivered by that prince ; but unfortunately 
 Seneca had anticipated him. Was it an original saying even in 
 the latter case ? is the question. The Dog of Montargis is an 
 incident in the history of France a century and a half older than 
 the reign of Charles V., to which it is commonly attributed, or 
 rather it was a well-known story before that monarch had arrived 
 at the honourable stage of " un licmt ct puissant prince, age cVun 
 jour!'' Lyly's "Euphues" has been taken to be a type; but he 
 borrowed the notion from Ascham, who might have found it in 
 Plato, who heard it in conversation with Socrates. It is true 
 that Lyly expanded an abstract principle into a literary mode. 
 
 There are cases, no doubt, where the same idea occurred to two 
 persons at or about the same time without any communication 
 or direct indebtedness. The father of Montaigne suggested, in 
 1533, a Barter and Exchange, a scheme not carried out down 
 to quite modern days, and in the same century Bartholome 
 Laffemas desired that the French government would establish in 
 every centre a general bureau and agency for public convenience. 
 Perhaps the Montaignesque project was less comprehensive, and 
 did not go beyond the accommodation of persons prepared to 
 exchange one article or species of property for another. It was 
 perhaps never communicated beyond the family, till the Essayist 
 mentioned it in his book. Patient investigation has done some-' 
 thing already, and will do a great deal more, as time goes on, to 
 throw new lights on history. 
 
 What havoc has been made of Whittington's story by play, 
 chap-book, and ballad ! He must have possessed a truly marvellous 
 acoustic faculty to have distinguished the music of Bow Bells 
 on Highgate Hill, must he not ? 
 
 It is wonderful that the Anglo-Gallic wars of Edward III. 
 and his successors have never been set at their proper value. 
 When the disunited and poverty-stricken condition of France 
 in the fourteenth century is considered, how much glory are 
 we entitled to claim for such victories as Cregy, Poitiers, and 
 Agincourt ? and those who can see below the surface will not 
 be inclined to estimate Henry V. much more highly in his 
 capacity as a king than in his capacity as the boon-companion 
 of Falstaff. When are we to have a " History of England " 
 
 Q
 
 242 BEN TROVATO 
 
 drawn up from the best materials and of reasonably modest com- 
 pass ? And, again, in studying the struggle between the French 
 and the Burgundians in the fifteenth century, we are not ac- 
 customed to weigh the extent to which the military and physical 
 superiority of Charles the Bold balanced the arts of Louis XI. 
 and the territorial preponderance of France. At the same time, 
 it is ever the quality and province of genius to detect the weak 
 point or part in an adversary, just as an archer of old would 
 make his arrow or bolt find the more vulnerable places in the 
 coat-of-mail or the jointed armour. It has been successively said 
 of Frederic of Prussia and Napoleon I., that they owed their 
 triumphs to the imperfect organization of their opponents ; yet 
 was not their own equally so, and did not the illustrious Corsican 
 achieve some of his grandest exploits with troops, who were 
 poorly clothed, poorly fed, and poorly armed ? Let us rest 
 assured, that in whatever age either had lived, the distance 
 between him and his contemporaries would have been much 
 the same. 
 
 Alas ! how little will perhaps be left to leaven the dull 
 monotony of modern existence ! Is it wise to look too nicely into 
 matters — into associations, which form part of our inheritance ? 
 Is not truth what we imagine to be true ? At least it were 
 not good to depopulate our Walhallah. We must look to it, 
 or we shall discover ground for thinking not half so well of 
 the Chevalier Bayard, the brave Orlando, our own Richard 
 Oordelion, and many more, whose figures occupy the foreground 
 in our thoughts, and keep the impersonal world, when we will, 
 at mid-distance. There is that affecting scene, where Philip 
 Augustus, on the morning of the battle of Bouvignes, removes 
 the crown from his royal brow, and placing it on the altar, 
 exclaims, if among those gentlemen present there should be one 
 worthier than he, let him take it up and wear it ! But Guillaume 
 le Breton the historian, who was behind His Majesty on this 
 memorable occasion (as it would have been), does not appear 
 to have heard anything of the kind fall from the king, and 
 it appears that if any one there thought himself worthier, he 
 refrained from making his opinion known. 
 
 What evolution mentioned by Darwin is more singular than 
 that of the modern Freemason ? The genuine reality was a 
 freeman of one of those great masonic gilds, which arose in the
 
 BEN TROVATO 243 
 
 Middle Ages, and in gradual stages of development lent its earliest 
 forms of artistic accuracy and beauty to architecture. The cathe- 
 dral and castle builders of the medigeval period might have found 
 the germ of much of their work in those sepulchral structures of 
 the Celtic or Saxon era, which they had the opportunity of 
 beholding in their original perfection and proportions, and which 
 we can see only in ruins, or are too late to see at all — except 
 in the way of miniature survivals in stone-yielding regions, where 
 the so-called Cyclopean masonry is reproduced on a dwarf scale. 
 
 Perhaps, of all heroines, the most unceremoniously used 
 has been Joan of Arc. For some hundreds of years the world, 
 however reluctantly, entertained a deliberate belief, that this 
 gallant lady ended her days on a hurdle in the market-place 
 at Rouen ; and most of us recollect how, when we visited the 
 locality in former days, we were fond of re-peopling the old- 
 fashioned square, and fancying how it might have looked on 
 the day when the Maid of Orleans perished at the stake. But 
 then all at once up started Somebody declaring that it was no 
 such thing ; that the heroic girl was not burned as supposed ; 
 that she lived to be old, and died a natural death. People 
 hardly knew what to make of this insipid and rather distressing 
 anti-climax ; it was generally thought that the matter would 
 have been better left as it was, for there was a kind of feeling 
 that it was not quite the thing somehow — -less dramatic, perhaps ; 
 but the gentleman produced the burial certificate ! 
 
 The curtain, however, falls at this point, only to rise for 
 a third act. It turned out, in the long run, that the gentleman 
 who was wanting to prove everybody else in the wrong had 
 confounded the true Joan, excusably enough so far, with a 
 counterfeit Joan, a make-believe virago who, some time after 
 the event, finding that the public, or such portion of it at any 
 rate as suited her purpose, was troubled with a very short 
 memory, gave out that she was ipsa eadem, the very same about 
 whom an incorrect report had gone abroad. The select audience 
 to which she appealed swallowed the tale like so many black- 
 smiths, and the Maiden-Warrior, unexpectedly recovered from 
 the flames, lived and died in peace, and would have never been 
 heard of again, if the accidental disinterment of her burial 
 certificate had not assisted the gentleman already referred to 
 to the discovery of his famous mare's nest.
 
 244 BEN TROVATO 
 
 So we get back at last, after a good deal of trouble, to the 
 original starting-point, and must leave poor Joan just as we 
 found her, the ill-fated victim of superstition and prejudice, 
 burned Heaven knows why, and buried Heaven knows where. 
 
 There is a case somewhat parallel to that of Joan of Arc 
 in the history of the production of the "Imitation of Christ"; 
 and I am encouraged to touch on the question a little by a 
 quite recent authoritative declaration, that who is the author 
 of this book is obscurer than ever after three centuries of 
 the keenest controversy. It used to be rather a matter of 
 notoriety among scholars that the real writer of the " Imitation " 
 had been robbed of his due by a man who was no more than 
 a copyist. A class of error, to be sure, which is not yet perfectly 
 obsolete ; but it was commoner once, because copyists, of course 
 with no intention to misguide, were in the habit of putting their 
 names to MSS. which they had transcribed for use. Jean de 
 Gerson, Chancellor of Paris, who was alleged to have been the 
 actual author of the " Imitation," was a native of Rheims, and 
 took his name from the village where he was born in 1363. He 
 was engaged, for the most part of his not very long life, in 
 polemical disputations and theological studies. He helped to 
 keep the paper-manufacturers busy for many years in more 
 senses than one; for, as the correspondent of an archgeological 
 publication points out, there were several editions of his works, 
 including one in five volumes folio. This excellent gentleman, 
 however, let it be known, objected to the idea that the paper- 
 makers were heavily in Gerson's debt, for the very reason that 
 there were so many editions of the same Gerson. A noble no)i 
 sequitur. Rather cousin-german to the case, where some one 
 explained that the six days of the creation were not days really, 
 but long periods, yet omitted to state whether this chronological 
 elucidation was applicable to the seventh. The expounder of 
 Scripture had proved too much or too little. The only labour 
 of Gerson's pen, however, which lived was the treatise De 
 Iniitatione Christi, which was long undiscerningly ascribed to 
 somebody else. His sole chance of immortality was nearly 
 snatched from him by an early admirer — Thomas a Kempis. 
 This was a settled thing, then; and one was tolerably sure to 
 find in all erudite catalogues and dictionaries the intimation that 
 Thomas a Kempis was nothing more than an honest translator.
 
 BEN TROVATO 245 
 
 and possibly not so honest neither. The world crossed out the 
 name of a Kempis and wrote over it that of the long-lost original 
 genius, to whose inspiration it owed the masterpiece, and every 
 one was pleased that Gerson had got his due except Gerson, to 
 whom it no longer signified. But anon the learned German, 
 who has become as much a part of our literary constitution as 
 Macaulay's schoolboy, steps in, when the whole question was 
 set at rest, and no rational creature cared a feather how the 
 matter really stood, and proves to us that Gerson was all that we 
 had thought a Kempis to be, and possibly rather worse, and that 
 all catalogues and dictionaries must be at once reprinted, lest the 
 public should continue in the dark too long about a theological 
 treatise, of which the principal interest now-a-days appears to 
 be its uncertain authorship. Its life is sustained, like the 
 "Letters of Junius," by a mystery; for there are more learned 
 Germans, God knows, than one, and the next who comes on the 
 scene may be a Gersonian. Yet perhaps the book, dull as it 
 undeniably is, may be thought to have one saving clause — that 
 really fine and acute thought, that we can hardly aspire to shape 
 other men's lives as we would, when we cannot shape our own. 
 
 By the way, I once asked an acquaintance, who had bought 
 a recent English version of the Imitatio, what his motive might 
 be, to which he ingenuously replied, that he had heard a great 
 deal of the beauty of the style. I hardly liked to hazard a remark, 
 that the charm had been thought to reside in the original 
 Latinity. 
 
 The case of Jean le Houx of Vire in Normandy, author 
 of the famous drinking songs, which we know as the Vmix de 
 Vire, is not so hard as it may at first sight appear. Le Houx, 
 a professional man, to whom literature was a mere occasional 
 recreation, seems to have lived to a ripe age among the men 
 whom he loved and among the scenes which inspired his muse ; 
 and to have died a true son of the Church, and doubtless, as 
 he suggests in his own epitaph, a lamented patron of the 
 taverners of his native town. During his sojourn on earth 
 his verses chiefly circulated in MS. among his intimates ; his 
 name gradually dropped out of notice ; and even his individuality 
 was merged in that of Olivier Basselin, a fuller of Vire, and 
 another Bacchanalian composer. During a century and a half 
 or so the anacreontics of Le Houx passed muster as the
 
 246 BEN TROVATO 
 
 work of Basselin. But modern research has restored him 
 to his full honours, and he has become of the immortals. He 
 led an aoreeable existence, and won the esteem of the Church 
 by his bounty, and that of his fellows by his jocund and sociable 
 nature; and the temporary neglect which he suffered after his 
 death was the loss of others. There is no living thing in 
 Vire but his celebrity, of which the modern Virois is profoundly 
 unaware. The precise converse is predicable of Walter Mapes, 
 whose festive and goliard verses are to a large extent of very 
 doubtful authenticity, simply for the reason that it has been 
 the fashion to attiliate upon him all, or almost all, the remains 
 of that class of composition which have descended to us. This 
 sort of literary consolidation may be convenient, but it is un- 
 satisfactory and unjust, not because it robs others of whom 
 we know nothing, but because it tends to convey an exaggerated 
 impression of Mapes himself, and if we allow that it is not an 
 honour for an individual to be resolved into a generic term, a 
 disparaging one ; for among these supposititious works there 
 may well be some, which he would have deemed unworthy of 
 his pen. 
 
 " A Dissertation on Eoast Pig," by Charles Lamb, is described 
 by him as borrowed from a Chinese MS. lent to him by his 
 friend Manning. The statement was long credited fcmte de 
 ■tnieux, and then it was not only proclaimed that the germ 
 was to be found in an Italian poem by Bistonio, but that in 
 the Bihliotheca Eliana there was actually a copy of it. This 
 double discovery put back the Chinese MS. on the shelf; but 
 there is a third scene. For it appears that, ages before Bistonio, 
 an Arabian romancist had accounted for the first knowledge 
 of the virtues of fire in matters culinary in a thriftier way, 
 when he produced the earliest example of fried fish by casting 
 a piece into a flame caused by the casual friction of certain 
 reeds. We are consequently remanded to the East, and have 
 merely to strike out China and put Arabia in. 
 
 The licentiousness and extravagance of Charles VII. of France 
 passed into a proverb. So much for proverbs! seeing that this 
 luckless prince was, in point of fact, particularly serious and 
 temperate, and as to prodigality, heigho, where was the money ? 
 A popular song of the time even insinuates that His Majesty 
 was at one period of his reign so poor, that the royal dtausscur
 
 BEN TROVATO 247 
 
 declined to leave without the money a pair of boots he had had 
 the honour of fashioning for His Majesty's royal feet. 
 
 Louis XL, with whom English readers ought to enjoy a 
 more than usual degree of familiarity, has had terrible injustice 
 done to him. He is misrepresented in history, play, and novel. 
 Scott painted him for us as he thought he was. The late 
 Mr. Kean portrayed him as he thought he might have been by 
 possibility — if he had been Mr. Kean. We do not know but 
 that a new edition of " Quentin Durward " would gain something 
 in interest by having as a frontispiece a likeness of Mr. Kean as 
 Louis, and beneath, in the lower centre of the plate, the ferocious 
 ogre, Tristan I'Hermite, brandishing an axe in one hand, and 
 supporting the other on the iron cage invented by his royal 
 master for a cardinal of his acquaintance 1 That his royal 
 master did not invent it; that Tristan, so far from being this 
 Hercules alter, was a poor, infirm old man, incapable of lifting an 
 axe; that Kean's Louis XL was a piece of gross melodramatic 
 extravagance, and that Sir Walter's Louis XI. is merely a new 
 edition, of course with additions, of the common printed 'painting 
 of this exceedingly ill-used king, would be quite immaterial. 
 " J'ai fait moii sidge," as the French abbe said — we beg pardon 
 most humbly, is said to have said. Louis XIV.'s "J'ai failli 
 attendre" was either a nonsensical invention, or a little bit of 
 slack-baked royal fun. Mon Dicu ! I've nearly had to wait ! 
 What is more improbable ? when His Majesty is known to have 
 been (considering everything) a model of meekness and forbear- 
 ance in private life, and to have been in a passion only twice — 
 once, when he seized the tongs to strike Louvois, on hearing that 
 he had given orders for the sack of Treves, and the other time, 
 when he boxed a lackey's (some authors say, a scullion's) ears 
 for stealing a biscuit. 
 
 It almost seems desirable, while so much is being done to 
 dissipate old illusions and to rectify venerable misstatements, 
 that an effort should be made by those who have best facilities, 
 to ascertain the precise truth about Louis the Well-Beloved and 
 his Pare aux cerfs. There are those who will have it, that the 
 real circumstances were not so flagrant as they have been repre- 
 sented. Let some one therefore let us know what those circum- 
 stances were. A pity that so sweet a prince should lie under a 
 false imputation ! But, alas ! the abominations and brutalities
 
 248 BEN TROVATO 
 
 had not their inception, but much rather their crowning point 
 in him. It was a heavy hand which the Valois and the Bourbons 
 laid on poor unhappy France. The odour even of Henri le Grand 
 does not wax sweeter the more we learn about him. He, too, did 
 his part toward the crisis— the deluge. 
 
 The annals of the French Ptevolution and Empire abound 
 with similar examples of plausible fabrications handed down to 
 us as genuine anecdote or narrative. Much that goer; under the 
 names of such men as Mirabeau, Sieyes, and Talleyrand, not to 
 mention Napoleon himself, is absolutely fictitious, and any new 
 writer on this subject will, if he does his duty, sift all these idle 
 mots, which can only tend to falsify characters and events. 
 What Desaix said at Marengo, and Lannes at Essling, may be 
 securely omitted in the next history of France under Napoleon 
 Premier, whom it is edifying to see the modern press describing 
 as the " Great," no longer the " Corsican Ogre," just as Paul Jones 
 has only just been recognized as the Father of the American 
 Navy ; and we have the authority of M. His, contemporary editor 
 of the Republicain Frangois, for passing our pen through the Abbe 
 Edgeworth's '' Fils dc Saint Louis, montez cm del!'' How hard 
 a man, and a good man too, will lie for Ptcasons of State, or 
 on Patriotic grounds, we all know supremely well from living 
 examples, without any testification from dumb Passed Grand 
 Masters. These sins against matter-of-fact are not to be debited 
 to the private account of the Right Honourable This or That, but 
 are, as it were, On His Majesty's Service, and all correspondence 
 respecting the same should be sent to his official address. 
 
 " Summer has set in with its usual severity," once said Horace 
 Walpole. Others had virtually said it before him ; it is a re- 
 mark apt to originate in a climate like ours. Byron is credited 
 with having first made the joke, however, which is perhaps not 
 so odd as that in one of his Letters Charles Lamb claims it for 
 Coleridge, who has also set down to him the similitude, found at 
 all events in Diogenes Laertius, of a pure mind, surrounded by 
 corrupting influences without contamination, to the moon shining 
 on a dunghill unpolluted. 
 
 I am afraid that the process of expurgation will have to 
 be extended to the history and biography of every European 
 country, including our own. There is one point, to which I 
 solicit respectfully the careful attention of the author of the
 
 BEN TROVATO 249 
 
 voluminous " Life of Milton " or (if he is no more) his assigns. 
 Nothing of the kind is probably better known than the common 
 engraving, in which the blind poet is represented dictating 
 "Paradise Lost" to his daughters. Could those gentlewomen 
 write ? The sole survival of a MS. of the epic is a transcript 
 by an ordinary copyist of the First Book. It has no appearance 
 of having been written by a lady. 
 
 " Paradise Lost " and " Paradise Ptegained " occupy in our 
 middle literature a rather peculiar position. If one were to ask 
 the majority of educated men and women of the present day 
 what they thought of them, their reply would be that they were 
 very grand poems. If one were to proceed to inquire whether 
 this majority had read them, the reply would be that they had 
 not. A few might have looked into them, or seen extracts. 
 Milton is less read than Spenser or Chaucer, nor is he so 
 readable. In writing these two epics, he made the Scriptures 
 serve as an outline or lay-figure, and filled up the details from 
 his scholarship and his imagination. The two parts of the 
 "Paradise" are, of course, as pure works of fiction as "Eobinson 
 Crusoe " or " Gulliver," but unfortunately they are neither so 
 entertaining nor so instructive. They bear to Holy Writ the 
 same sort of relation that the historical novel bears to ordinary 
 history. They may be described as noble examples of literary 
 skill and ingenuity, with an abundance of passages which we 
 shall never be tired of quoting or seeing quoted ; but their 
 legibility will go on decreasing in an exact ratio with the rise 
 of modern opinions. 
 
 They were never calculated for popularity. At the time of 
 their appearance, they were very probably viewed by strict 
 churchmen as daring innovations ; we have learned to think 
 differently. So far as mere fame goes, the author has no right 
 to complain, after all ; but to secure in the long run a large body 
 of sincere admirers he should have either produced a paraphrase 
 of portions of Scripture in the manner of Dr. Watts, or have 
 extended his striking conception of Satan, which he seems to 
 have throughout borrowed from the New Testament, to the entire 
 undertaking. If it were not for the Devil, whom the poet 
 borrowed from the popular prose story of " Paustus," " Paradise 
 Lost" would be duller even than it is. It is dull enough, not 
 so much from a want of mastery on the writer's part, as from
 
 250 BEN TROVATO 
 
 the unsound and unmanageable nature of his theme, and from 
 the recent admission of theology to a place among the pro- 
 gressive sciences. 
 
 But let us bear in mind one point. The Miltonic conception 
 of Satan corresponds pretty well with the idea, which we form 
 of him from the Scriptural episode of the Temptation. In both 
 places he presents himself as a noble and grand character, a 
 splendid dramatic embodiment of the spirit of evil. On the 
 other hand, however, it is obviously improper to regard him 
 as anything worse than a defeated and fallen minister, whose 
 power had grown dangerously equal to that of the Almighty, 
 and whose ruin was solely due to his overweening ambition. 
 So far the two portraits agree. All the modern sordid and 
 vulgar wickedness is an aftergrowth fostered by ignorance and 
 prejudice. 
 
 The two "Paradises" were anachronisms in sentiment and 
 intelligence when they first saw the light, and how unspeakably 
 more so are they at present ! It was a widely different matter, 
 when the Cilician Aratus wrote his " Phtenomena " three cen- 
 turies before Christ, and made Jupiter the source of all. His 
 view coincided with the general opinion. 
 
 I have said that the reputation of Milton will probably 
 decline on literary or critical grounds. William Winstanley, 
 his contemporary, thought that it would do so, because he had 
 seceded from the Stuarts. For my own part, I honestly wish 
 that this writer had come down to us merely as the author 
 of his "Juvenilia," which are his masterpieces: "Comus" and 
 "Lycidas" (both written before he was thirty), the creditable 
 "Elegy on Shakespear," a yet earlier work, where we recognize, 
 as in other cases, the fruit of Elizabethan studies, or in other 
 words an unacknowledged loan from somebody else, and the 
 noble Sonnet to Lawrence. But had he done so merely as the 
 author of the two " Paradises," he would have passed only in 
 my judgment as a sublimer Watts. 
 
 In his " Lycidas " the writer has shown the tyrannical force 
 of genius, like Tennyson in "In Memoriam," in compelling us, 
 whether we will or no, to believe that his hero was much such 
 another as himself, and not, as we know full well, a very normal 
 university graduate. 
 
 There is Pope. His Pastorals are neat and pretty imitations
 
 BEN TROVATO 251 
 
 of Virgil, and his Epistles are interesting and manly enough. 
 But one is referred to his " Essay on Man " as his great achieve- 
 ment. It strikes me as an anachronism, even for the time, when 
 it appeared, like '" Paradise Lost " ; it breathes the air of a 
 provincial parsonage; its thought was the thought of one, who 
 possessed the faculty or trick of putting into metrical shape the 
 notions prevalent among the least informed or the most pre- 
 judiced people of the age; it ran counter in its sentiment and 
 spirit to the views of the most distinguished and enlightened of 
 the poet's contemporaries, Bolingbroke included ; and it must 
 share by degrees the fate of the Miltonic epics. A great writer, 
 who aspires to be permanent, must leave his own age behind him, 
 and rely for sympathy and appreciation on such few at his side, 
 who do the same. He should dedicate his work Amicis et 
 posteris, and write off the printer's bill as a bad debt. 
 
 Burns appears to supply a case, where a fine manly character 
 — if a trifle too prone to toddy — has been elevated into a 
 national hero faute de niieux. The Scots do not read him ; but 
 they celebrate his memory just in the way most congenial to the 
 poet's own views and tastes ; wherever his excellent compatriots 
 foregather, he is a Toast and a watchword, to which the Southron 
 can offer nothing exactly comparable. In the United States he 
 is collected — that is to say, rich Americans outstrip each other in 
 paying childish sums for the Kilmarnock edition ; and the more 
 he gives, the greater he ! Many of his pieces are exceedingly gross, 
 quite sufticiently so to satisfy the frequenters of a night-cellar, 
 while one or two are delightfully picturesque — as good as some 
 written this side the dividing stream, of which the Englishman 
 does not find it necessary to make so much. 
 
 I am pleased to see that attention is being gradually drawn 
 to the subject-matter of the present essay. In our own history, 
 there is hardly an enfant tei'rihle who will not meet at last with 
 his champion and whitewasher. Was it not in the London 
 Magazine about 1820, that a certain author set the ball rolling 
 by re-editing the case of Guido Eawkes, and enrolling him among 
 our intending, but frustrated, benefactors ? 
 
 Our late sovereign lord Henry VIII. has found a friend in Mr. 
 Eroude, and Bishop Bonner in Mr. Green, who paints the bloody 
 persecutor of our schooldays as an amiable humourist. Under 
 the hand of a third author King John emerges in entirely new
 
 252 BEN TROVATO 
 
 colours, and we lay down the account of the monarch's life and 
 reign with a feeling of regret that it is too late to offer him 
 an apology in person. John, who is so indissolubly associated 
 with Magna Charta, is supposed to have given offence to the 
 monks, who retaliated in monastic fashion. One of the old 
 Dukes of Normandy, the father of our Conqueror, was distin- 
 guished as "Robert the Devil," for no better reason probably', 
 as the same honorary title, a century or two later, when he and 
 all about him had been securely forgotten, was conferred on a 
 certain King of Sicily and Jerusalem, whose name unluckily 
 happened to suit the exigencies of the case. But the Norman 
 at all events, is depicted as having forsaken his ungodly 
 ways, and made his peace betimes with Mother Church ; and 
 so he had not so long to wait for an advocate as his English 
 descendant. 
 
 Not all of us are aware how unjust we have been to that 
 Corinthian Periander, who till yesterday (so to speak) was a 
 man, with his dark side so turned to us by unfriendly judges, 
 that scarce any one believed how immensely his faults had been 
 exaggerated and his merits ignored. 
 
 The reputation, which any great author, artist, or soldier has 
 secured, resembles a case in Court, which has been proven beyond 
 appeal, and is not assailable without immense labour of fore- 
 thought and risk of censure. Yet there are those, who persist 
 in re-opening the evidence and seek to vary the verdict ; who 
 in the face of established traditions, perhaps based on a too 
 obsequious acquiescence, are disposed to run the hazard of sub- 
 mittins; new views, even where the ground seemed too firm and 
 too sacred to be broken. Should Columbus be robbed of his 
 hard- won renown, because he owed his first inspiration to the 
 papers of his father-in-law ? 
 
 Is it not much under the same circumstances, that Julian has 
 come down to us as the Apostate (not the Apostle, as Lord Kenyon 
 once had it) and Constantino as the Great? The Protestants 
 talk about bloody Queen Mary and the Papists about bloody 
 Queen Elizabeth. The Romanists conferred on the latter the 
 sobriquet of Jezebel ; Knox paid the same equivocal compliment to 
 Mary. Nor is the work of rehabilitation confined to imperial and 
 royal personages. Every year seems to bring some shock to our 
 historical convictions, to the Gospel of thought in which we have
 
 BEN TROVATO 253 
 
 been brought up. This is in the long run as it should be of 
 course. Careful restorers have scraped off the black paint laid 
 by Macaulay on the characters of Penn and Impey. But the 
 old material has not been thrown away. It has been pressed 
 into service for new purposes ; it has assisted Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson 
 in his more autotypical likenesses of Byron and Shelley.
 
 XXI 
 
 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 
 
 " And kings are only officers in trust." — Dryden. 
 
 " Cela etait autrefois ainsi, mais nous avons change tout cela."— MoLiiiEE. 
 
 " Les grands ne nous paroissent grands, que parce que nous sommes li genoux. 
 Levons nous." — Prudhomme. 
 
 " The age is grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near 
 the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." — " Hamlet." 
 
 Philippe de Commines, the intimate friend of Louis XL of France, 
 startles us a little at the outset of his " Memoirs " by saying : 
 " En luy et en tons autres princes, que j'ai connu ou servy, j'ai 
 connu du bien et du mal, car Us sont homines comme nous." These 
 words were penned about four hundred years since ; but we have 
 to recollect that the writer, in looking at mankind, probably re- 
 garded only such as himself, and left out of account the great 
 majority. On the other hand, who so thorough a democrat at 
 heart as Shakespear; yet he was careful to put his own senti- 
 ments into the mouth of some character, since plain speech 
 pro2J7nd 2^cTSond was not then, nor till long after, diplomatic. 
 
 An English nobleman has a house in Stable Yard, St. James's, 
 and to the door is attached a brass plate bearing the words " Earl 
 of Warwick " upon it. Over and over again, as I have passed by, 
 it has struck me that here was a powerful illustration (if one 
 happened to be wanted) of the decay and disappearance of the 
 Feudal system among us. 
 
 The times are changed. The old Neviles would as soon have 
 
 dreamed of riding on an omnibus, or articling their children to 
 
 attorneys, as of setting up outside their gates a brief of their 
 
 name, style, and quality. Down at Warwick, where they know 
 
 him, his lordship does not find it necessary to employ this 
 
 advertising medium; but in London, so it is, that a lord, unless 
 
 he is something better, must wear some public token of his 
 
 dignity, or take the consequences. All Londoners are equal on 
 
 the pavement and the road. The privileges of the Upper House 
 
 254
 
 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 255 
 
 do not protect a man from being jammed between two carts in 
 Cheapside, or from being mobbed on Primrose Hill. He will not 
 save his hat by producing his patent ; he can only call a police- 
 man, which is just what anybody else can do. 
 
 The actual root or germ of the trouble, from which we were 
 destined so long to suffer, is traceable to a period, when we were 
 a younger people, centuries before such a thing as the House of 
 Hanover existed. The majority of us were complacently satisfied 
 with our environments, or, if they were not, they lacked the skill 
 or the courage to change them, where change meant toil, anxiety, 
 sacrifices, perhaps impoverishment, perhaps death. There were 
 such as were happier without Magna Charta, without a glorious 
 look-back, without the refinements of life, than we are with all 
 these. There were such as could, and did, pass from cradle to 
 grave in absolute content, destitute of the blessings of personal 
 freedom and security, ignorant of all outside the strait orbit in 
 which they moved, indifferent to their own nature and their own 
 rights. It is the handful of hot, restless spirits, who have stood 
 forward, and made us what we are from age to age, and " from 
 precedent to precedent," who have borne every imaginable 
 penalty and privation to enfranchise and advance this nation, 
 and to whom we owe, that at the present moment we are not 
 under the fatherly care of the Georges, nay, of the Stuarts. 
 
 When we had the happiness to be governed by the Georges, 
 a princess of that house tried to shut up Richmond Park. John 
 Lewis, the Richmond brewer, of whom there is a portrait in 
 Crisp's account of the place, brought an action against Her 
 Royal Highness, and won it. Here was Use majeste and rank 
 high treason ! The public kept possession of the park, but the 
 poor fellow was ruined. In those days one was expected to pay 
 for the honour of going to law with royalty. 
 
 It had formerly fared a good deal worse with assertors of 
 rights and even of opinions. In the relatively free period of the 
 so-called Merry Monarch, a London goldsmith was carried to 
 Tyburn and barbarously executed for speaking disrespectfully of 
 that prince. 
 
 Perhaps Mr. Lewis was considered rather fortunate in being 
 let off so easily under the circumstances. I dare say that that 
 precocious young lady, the Princess Amelia of Hanover (the 
 Mealy of her intimates) would have preferred the matter not
 
 256 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 
 
 resting there, but at all events there it did rest. This was a 
 sort of beginning of the end. It was applying the shears rather 
 rudely to the high hedge which separated the cattle from their 
 drovers. It was a bold essay at levelling distinctions. The 
 nation had put out a claw, and had drawn blood. Since those 
 days we have made a new translation of the phrases " Our 
 Prince " and " Our People/' which are no longer understood to 
 mean what they did. Burdett, Home Tooke, Peter Pindar, 
 Paine, Cobbett, Hone, the Hunts, and an ancestor of mine, have 
 left us the fruit of their careers. But existing personages, 
 whose names will easily occur to every one, want only the 
 power to act over again the parts of the eminent creatures, who 
 flourished under the Georges. Their talons would soon reappear. 
 Let us keep the bit in their mouths. Going back and looking at 
 these old landmarks is at times a curious study enough. 
 
 A late Lord Townshend was a very fair representative peer, 
 not in a parliamentary, but in a social sense. He did not carry 
 his rank written upon his features. He had nothing feudal about 
 him. He was not "every inch a lord," but might pass for a 
 gentleman anywhere, and was a person of the best intentions. 
 He spent his time between the streets and police courts, play- 
 ing a kind of Dogberry part, and apprehending "vagrom men." 
 Had his lordship lived three hundred years ago, when the duties 
 of stipendiary magistrates were not so well understood, he would 
 have gone a different way to work with these sturdy beggars and 
 strong rogues, I will take the odds ; he would have strung them 
 up first, and tried them afterward : 
 
 "First hanf,' and draw, 
 Then hear the cause by Lydford law ! " 
 
 He would have played the part of a Malatesta, whose doings 
 make, in the hands of M. Yriate, a "Story of Pdmini" which 
 materially varies from that of Mr. Leigh Hunt. 
 
 But unluckily this will answer no longer. We are more 
 anxious than in those good old days to know the reason why. 
 Throwing eggs at a chimney-sweep, or kicking a butcher's boy, 
 is finable under Acts in these cases provided, to say nothing of 
 graver matters ; and there is no Statute of Exceptions in favour of 
 persons " haul en naisscmce, en vaiUance, en amour" whose names 
 are printed in capitals in the peerage and baronetage. Those
 
 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 257 
 
 gentlemen who are prone to such diversions must pay the assess- 
 ment. It is not so long since the brother of an earl was fined ten 
 shillings and costs, and told that he might go to prison for a fort- 
 night if he did not find the money, for driving too hard, and this 
 was before the magistrates of his own county ! It read to us like 
 a codicil to Magna Charta ! But have we not seen many such 
 codicils executed from time to time ? After all, these ancient 
 feudal dignitaries, this Old Nobility, about which we have heard 
 so much that is discouraging and unsavoury, promptly grew toler- 
 ably keen chapmen, and bargained excellently well for the lands, 
 which the Crown gave them — being hardly the Crown's to give, 
 as we have begun to fancy ; and moreover the grants involved 
 equivalents, which have expired. There is not even a specious 
 Quid pro Quo. 
 
 At present we are face to face with a different social pheno- 
 menon, a sort of new aristocracy lifted up from the middle class 
 in judicious profusion, to strengthen the hands of the tottering 
 and superannuated Upper Chamber, and to check the dangerous 
 ascendency of the hourgeoisie. The Society organs and those 
 devoted to Sport keep us fairly well informed of the character, 
 development, and personality of this diplomatic movement ; and 
 we see how the supplementary members of the House of Lords 
 and the recipients of subordinate dignities, down to a humble 
 C.B., are selected with a view to win over to the monarchy 
 persons of fortune or parts in a wide variety of callings : military 
 and naval officers, heads of administrative departments, merchants, 
 bankers, manufacturers, and others — even, here and there, an 
 author or a newspaper proprietor — any one, in short, who, if he 
 was not secured, might throw his weight into the scale against 
 the Royalists. Those Society papers form an advertising medium 
 for the Illustrious Obscure of both sexes ; but unluckily my lords 
 and my ladies admit to the pictorial columns their pets — the 
 occupants of their stables and kennels, and the owners generally 
 halt some way behind. Indeed, the latter are between a trying 
 double fire ; for the artist goes occasionally to town, and sketches 
 a literary or theatrical celebrity, who offers a potent intellectual 
 contrast to Lord Augustus or Lady Violet. The golden age for 
 noble lords and ladies of high degree was when there was no 
 cheap press to familiarize the community with their lineaments 
 and morals ; for what does the copy-book say ? 
 
 K
 
 258 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 
 
 I can hardly understand what the gentlemen of the shires 
 were about when the general penny post was introduced. Why, 
 they should have fought against it tooth and nail ; for, from their 
 point of view, it was certainly an inopportune and unfortunate 
 measure. It broke down one barrier more between the people 
 and their betters. It extinguished franks. It was one of the 
 things which taught the poor man to believe that he had no 
 betters — a most dangerous doctrine. That a duke's autograph 
 in the corner of a letter should come not to be worth as much 
 as a penny likeness of the reigning prince, was really too bad. 
 It was making persons of quality too cheap in the eyes of the 
 Helots. 
 
 A late Earl of Derby — not the last — would have made a very 
 creditable fiuure at the court of Charles I., and would have carried 
 with him through life (he did, as it was, so far) a very vivid sense 
 of the classification of society and of the gradations of the human 
 species. But he should not have lived to witness the set-in of 
 the Long Parliament, or to have received the invitation from 
 Cromwell to take a place in his Upper House by the side of 
 Lord Hewson or Lord Fleetwood ! He would have withdrawn 
 himself into the country, have despaired of the age, and have 
 spent the close of his life in writing the history of his sovereign. 
 His lot fell, as it happened, on quieter times, and he translated 
 the " Iliad " instead, where there are only, as is proper, two sorts 
 of people — the Chiefs and Oi IloWoi. 
 
 He was not always what we knew him. He began the 
 world with a different kind of lay-religion altogether. There 
 was no doctrine too advanced to please him once. He was an 
 ardent Liberal. There is a story that, at some political club 
 during the agitation of the Reform question more than seventy 
 years ago, he jumped upon the table, and proposed a refusal 
 to pay taxes as the only and best way of settling the difficulty ! 
 This was in 1831 or before, when the blood of the Stanleys 
 danced and tingled in his veins none the worse for the marriage 
 of one of the family with Miss Farren the actress. He after- 
 ward sang that old Illc ego qui quondam. The wind blew ere long 
 from a different point of the compass. But, unless his lordship 
 had a very short memory, the episode must have come across 
 his mind now and then, when he was in a mood to muse, and 
 must have jarred tiresomely with his maturer political opinions.
 
 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 259 
 
 He must have recalled the time when he and the late writer of 
 the " Revolutionary Epic " were volunteers in the same service, 
 soldiers in the same corps, both armed to the teeth, as they 
 gave out, to fight the people's battle for them ! Years came 
 and cramped him, body and soul. His joints and his politics 
 grew stiff together. He flang away his early love, and reunited 
 himself with the author of " Vivian Grey," who, by-the-bye, 
 republished his " Epic " just toward the last in order, if we did 
 not misunderstand him, to demonstrate that the first edition 
 was printed from an incorrect copy. He was so anxious indeed 
 to suppress it, that he put into his pocket the copy, which 
 belonged to a certain Club. 
 
 In the latter part of his life, the late Lord Derby's impetu- 
 osity did not entirely forsake him ; and he occasionally broke 
 from restraint in a way rather perplexing to the great party 
 with which he had the honour to be connected. At a most 
 provokingly inconvenient juncture, he told the Catholics plainly 
 what he thought about the emancipation question. It was 
 letting the cat out of the bag at the wrong moment. It was 
 the eve of a general election. But the old spirit of the Rupert 
 of debate, or something like it, was rampant, and I suspect that 
 he would hardly, to save half-a-dozen pensions, and twice as 
 many votes, have kept his views to himself about that or any- 
 thing else. I could name some of his colleagues, who would 
 not have been so nice. It was midsummer madness, from a 
 business standpoint. 
 
 Lord Derby was a staunch Tory and an indifferent tactician ; 
 and these two circumstances satisfactorily explain why he never 
 succeeded in politics. His nativity was mistimed. He was much 
 too good for his own party, and was unfitted by temper and 
 associations to act in harmony with any other. He would have 
 been a creditable disciple to Strafford, and hand and glove with 
 Laud, if he had been their contemporary. He would have 
 sentenced Prynne, and have sat to Vandyke. He would have 
 saved Charles I.'s head, and James II. 's crown — if he could. He 
 would have set up his back against Dutch William and against 
 the Hanoverians, and have exchanged letters with the Old and 
 Young Pretenders, as long as it was safe, if not a little longer. 
 Had he lived later, he would have spoken in abhorrence of the 
 Trench Revolution and in favour of Marie Antoinette almost
 
 26o ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 
 
 as well as Mr. Burke, and he might have tried to shew that 
 the downfall of the Bourbons was a misfortune to France and 
 a check to civilization. 
 
 Two of the most democratic publications of our day were 
 Carlyle's " French Revolution " and Thackeray's " Four Georges." 
 The former was a fine dissection and exposure of the old aristo- 
 cratic regime, of which we had already heard in " Past and 
 Present." Thackeray laid bare, with the help of Hervey and 
 Walpole, the laughable illusion about the illustrious descent of 
 the House of Hanover. Such writers are ugly customers, whom 
 it is usual for Governments to buy up. In fact, the author of 
 " Sartor Resartus " had a baronetcy offered to him, and to his 
 eternal honour declined the handsome proposal. He was a 
 Conservative in the best sense. The same worthless tribute was 
 actually accepted by the late Poet Laureate. The latter pre- 
 sumably had the title in consideration of what he had said on 
 behalf of King Arthur and his modern representative ; it was 
 to be given to Carlyle from fear, peradventure, of what might 
 happen, if he took up the later English history in the same spirit 
 in which he had taken up the " Life of Cromwell " and the 
 " French Revolution." I do love him, as I love Dickens and 
 Thackeray, as glorious apostles of Anti-Flunkeyism. I devoutly 
 wish that I had years and power to write a real history of the 
 villainous Stuarts — Mary of that ilk included. 
 
 The heau monde does not make much of a figure in his writings, 
 or in those of Dickens and Thackeray, and if exalted personages 
 are introduced it is only in a quizzical or disparaging way not 
 formerly licensed by superiors. But what gall and wormwood 
 Cobbett's "Weekly Register,'' Hone's "Tracts," and Peter 
 Pindar's squibs, must have been to Pitt, Liverpool, Sidmouth, 
 Fox, and the rest of them ! Those, who read accounts of these 
 men in ordinary biographies, read only half the story. There 
 might be, at all events, cross-references. How little of the deserts 
 of such persons as Castlereagh, EUenborough, North, do we hear 
 in the "Dictionary of National Biography"! How much of the 
 heaven-born Pitt, the witty George Rose, the genial Charles Fox, 
 the gay Sheridan — next to nothing of their ignorance, their 
 rascality, their greed! 
 
 To obtain the whole truth about all the grand coalitions of 
 Windbags and Moneybags, which have afflicted and cursed this-
 
 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 261 
 
 poor country, you have to go to other, and no doubt vulgarer, 
 books. There you will perceive to your singular satisfaction how 
 Great Britain has been pillaged and dishonoured by that triplicity 
 of foul abomination : statesman, lawyer, parson ; and how thank- 
 ful we should be to those, who at such sacrifice of their own wel- 
 fare and fortune, swept away the wicked system, and founded 
 a school of thought, which renders its return an impossibility. 
 We have among us, and shall continue to have so long as the 
 present parliamentary principle lasts, both fools and knaves (our 
 political Scylla and Oharybdis) ; but we have bidden an eternal 
 farewell to those of the old type. Think what a really great 
 people we must have been to have survived such misgovernment, 
 and what a patient people, to bear even the amount of it which 
 remains ! 
 
 Any man is entitled to be a fool, especially if he be a lord ; 
 but his friends must not foist him on us as a public officer, as 
 a responsible councillor of the Crown, for then he becomes a 
 scandal and a danger to the State, and should be regarded as 
 a person to be kept under control. 
 
 Cobbett may be disposed to speak too unkindly of Pitt, who 
 stands out in favourable relief from his colleagues, since he seems, 
 if a fool, to have been at any rate, like his sovereign, an honest 
 one, although, as we look back, we cannot help regarding both 
 as national calamities. Yet his criticisms on paper serve 
 as excellent letterpi-ess for the " Caricature History of the 
 Georges." 
 
 The maidenly bashfulness of Tennyson was conquered, 
 whisper it not in Faery or at the Cock Tavern ! His lordship 
 ordered a patent and robes. He should have worn his old laurel- 
 wreath over the coronet, to remind his colleagues — and himself — 
 that, although he was a peer, he was also something a good deal 
 higher and better than the latter-day nondescript patrician, who 
 is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. He came like the Sun among 
 the vapoury meteors, like a Light into a dark warehouse. The 
 atmosphere might, had he breathed it long enough, have asphyxi- 
 ated him, transformed him into the similitude of his fellows. 
 and made him lust to " drown his book," as the companions of 
 Ulysses, amid the bewitchments of Lady Circe's court, forgot 
 their former life. But that we should have lived to witness this 
 grotesque anti-climax, this comical transfiguration !
 
 262 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 
 
 " 'Tis ridiculous for a lord," says Selden, " to print verses ; " 
 as Byron puts it : 
 
 " 'Tis some praise in peers to write at all," 
 
 and it could hardly be much less so for a man, whose whole rank 
 and value depend upon verse-making, to take a peerage, unless 
 he is summoned by virtue of his noble blood, his poetry not- 
 withstanding, like Lord Houghton, whose humble offerings to 
 the Muses, of which the Westminste7' Review expressed at the 
 time so indulgent an opinion. Tennyson's position as president 
 of the republic of letters seemed perhaps to the descendant of 
 kings out of keeping, after fifty years' reflection. 
 
 Here was a case, if there ever was one, in which the refusal 
 should have been as much a matter of course as the offer. Did 
 not every one know perfectly well beforehand that Tennyson had 
 only to hold up his finger, and the paragraph would go to the 
 Gazette ? The Minister's letter might have been inserted in 
 the papers to convince the incredulous. Walpole's " Royal and 
 Noble Authors " needed nothing more to crown the edifice. 
 The century had already produced a Byron and a Milnes. 
 
 A lordship or the badge of some fantastic inarticulate order 
 is perhaps a meet increment to the dignity of an ordinary official, 
 who has rendered the public fair service in his particular sphere ; 
 but it is sheer wardrobe stuff or stage property to a man whose 
 fame and station are regulated, not by the sovereign, but by the 
 nation and the world. 
 
 One of the best points about Gladstone was his abstention 
 from such futile and lowering distinctions, and it may to a 
 certain extent be said of him, as it was once of an immeasur- 
 ably greater man : 
 
 " II faisait des rois, et n'en voulait etre.'' 
 
 Mr. Carlyle, what would you have thought, if you could have 
 been here, to have beheld your former fellow-commoner intro- 
 duced to the Upper House between two other noble lords, one 
 whispering precepts of self-possession, the other assisting to hold 
 the umbrella over his head ? What a House it has become, even 
 since 1832, when Lord Tenterden declared that if the Reform 
 Bill passed, it would be the shadow of its former greatness. One 
 has lost one's old feeling about it, like the countryman who
 
 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 263 
 
 declined to kneel to an image of St. Nicholas made out of his 
 own plum-tree. It has come to this, that every peer must be 
 content to stand on his own merits ; he will be taken for what 
 he is worth ; the world will perhaps hardly care to ask or to 
 know who his ancestors were. The descendants of those who 
 fought at Hastings should really begin to seek better credentials. 
 Had Tennyson lived, a second " In Memoriam " might have been 
 " An Elegy on the House of Lords, by a Member." 
 
 Would Queen Elizabeth have knighted Spenser or created 
 Shakespear Lord Stratford ? Would their royal or noble kindred 
 have dreamed of offering Chaucer a dukedom or Gower a seat 
 at the council-board ? No. Does it shew that her late Majesty 
 estimated literary merit more highly than her predecessors that 
 she made authors barons, where the others would not have 
 given them spurs ? Not an iota. 
 
 The whole proceeding lacked proportion and consistency. If 
 the works of Tennyson are what his intelligent contemporaries 
 judge them to be, he was too good for the present House of Lords. 
 If they are not — if (for argument's sake) he was such another 
 as Milnes or Lytton, the present House of Lords was no place 
 for him. For they were lords of acres, and could shout single- 
 handed, " Property, Property, Property," louder than him and his 
 Northern Farmer together. But reconstruct the Assembly on 
 the model of the French Senate, and ostracize two-thirds of the 
 existing members, and it may be another matter. We have 
 already copied some French fashions which we might have done 
 better to leave alone ; let us have a French Senate and a French 
 Academy. Mr. Eound has shattered some genealogical cobwebs ; 
 other experts have laid bare the slenderness of the pretensions of 
 many, or most, of the old titled houses to be the actual represen- 
 tatives of the name and blood ; and the compiler of " Our Old 
 Nobility " has exposed the excellent methods by which these 
 personages acquired their wealth and power. Not the cleanest 
 of records ! 
 
 In the case of Tennyson, the laws of propriety and common 
 sense were absolutely and ludicrously violated. I would liever 
 have heard that our poet had been made Perpetual President of 
 the Cocked Hats, or had accepted the honorary diploma of the 
 College of Preceptors. There, at all events, a certain plea of 
 consanguinity or kinship might have been maintainable.
 
 264 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 
 
 The craze or hues for titular or personal decoration is bred 
 in the bone. It is common to the white man and the tattooed 
 aborigo. His brilliant war-pigment, his plumes, and the archi- 
 tecturally waved lines which are traced along his countenance 
 are as dear to the Mosquito Indian as a designation or ornament, 
 infinitely less fruitful in meaning, even a button, is to an English- 
 man of to-day. But the passion is of immemorial standing, 
 although there was always a school of dissent, an undercurrent 
 of derision. Certain it is that the thoughtless multiplication of 
 honours brings about similarly a reductio ad ahsurdum. "Abun- 
 dance maketh poor," saith the proverb. A giant among giants 
 is but one. It has come to this with us at last, that a French 
 Academician is almost bound to be a more eminent person than 
 an English peer, who is also a Knight of the Garter, but who is 
 possibly nothing more besides than the son of his father or " the 
 tenth transmitter of a foolish face." In conferring orders of 
 merit, Elizabeth was wisely parsimonious ; with the profligate 
 and venal Stuarts set in the condition of things which we at 
 present see in its rank luxuriance, and long before the issue of 
 the first Red Book, a Jacobean satirist proposed the publication 
 of " A Help for Weak Memories " to assist those desiring parti- 
 culars of new peers. If the Register of Distinguished Personages 
 grows much bulkier, it will swell into a sort of " Encyclopeedia 
 Britannica." It used to be the proud Aristocracy. Now forsooth 
 is it not growing to be so, that the true pride has deserted its old 
 friends at Court, and found a new home ? Even James I. would 
 have winced at the proposal to ennoble some of those who now 
 sit in the Upper Chamber by special favour of his present 
 Majesty ; and James made it a direct source of income. We have 
 grown so commercial, that in titles as in other goods the demand 
 is allowed to regulate the supply. Spurs and blue ribbons have 
 become commodities and mediums of barter. The Minister of 
 the day need even now scarcely scruple to send down to West- 
 minster a portmanteau of patents to carry or wreck a measure 
 before the Houses, as Brougham threatened to do in the days of 
 our grandsires. 
 
 The growth of democratic thought and feeling in England is 
 unmistakable. It is no longer as in good King Arthur's days, 
 "Moult de couronnes, lolus de vertus." But we have been 
 accustomed to make our political arrangements piecemeal and
 
 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 265 
 
 step by step ; and let us all hope that we may do so still. This 
 is one of the things which they don't manage so well in France, 
 where in the famous '89 it seemed to be one step from Le 
 Eoi tres-chr4tien to plain Louis Capet. By timely and judicious 
 concessions an acute crisis may be averted. But progressive 
 administrative incapacity, commercial depression, financial em- 
 barrassment, and dearness of food may at any moment accelerate 
 the movement, and give it an irresistible impetus. It may come 
 like a whirlwind or a rush of waters. For our big places are 
 growing very populous with men, women, and children, who 
 are poorer than they think they ought to be ; and it is only for 
 these to find leaders, who can explain to them that the classes 
 above them are rich at their expense. Then we may have our 
 own 1789. Let us wisely and generously meet the danger half- 
 way. Even his most excellent Majesty, most commendable as 
 he has proved himself, has more money than he wants, more 
 palaces than he can occupy, more horses than he can use — all 
 at the national cost. He is from us, not we from him. His and 
 our truest friends are Education, Sobriety, Thrift — all plants of 
 slow growth. 
 
 Meanwhile, we can at any rate afford to be magnanimous in 
 the case of our fallen friends the Tudors, Stuarts, and Georges. 
 Let us not call them hard names, because we can do so with 
 impunity. Whatever may be thought of George III. as a 
 ruler, he was a gentleman — the first of his family. 
 
 " A king," says Selden, " is a thing men have made for their 
 own sakes, for quietness' sake. Just as in a family one man is 
 appointed to buy the meat." It is not so, as later investigation 
 shews and proves ; but at any rate it is doubtless a choice of 
 evils with us here, and the result of more than one experiment. 
 When we set up a man taken from one of the great English 
 families, we know what happened. When we tried a man of 
 the people as it were, Oliver Cromwell, it did not answer. We 
 were sick to death of the imperious Tudors and the imperious 
 and paltry Stuarts. We called in, by way of compromise, a 
 Dutchman, who had married a Stuart. Then we went in for 
 a German, who was descended from that charming and inevitable 
 family. A foreign dynasty has in some ways worked better 
 than the old native houses, and perhaps we have no right to 
 complain. The Hanoverians did not come till we invited them.
 
 266 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 
 
 and, as Selden puts it, " a man who keeps a monkey must pay 
 for the glasses it breaks ! " The cruel and trying part comes 
 where the monkey puts on a nimhus, like your lion on a Venetian 
 coin, and chatters about Divine Origin and Hereditary Title. 
 The occasional assassination of a sovereign is thought by some 
 to be an excellent method of keeping the rest on their best 
 behaviour. It is a species of political phlebotomy. The ancient 
 Athenians once distinguished two tyrannicides by erecting 
 statues in their honour, and forbidding any citizen thence- 
 forward to bear names so revered. 
 
 What a sorry time our grandfathers had of it under those 
 Georges, and the fanatical satellites who did their bidding, and 
 the swarm of costly fry, which the third of the line graciously 
 billeted upon them ! You may read to your content and more 
 about the four of them in Thackeray and others. What con- 
 solation or indemnity can it be to Lawrence, whose Lectures on 
 Physiology and Zoology, only so far back as 1819, were proscribed 
 and suppressed as immoral and unchristian, that their teaching 
 is at present accepted not merely as a matter of course, but as 
 actually behind the times ? What, again, does it profit Shelley, 
 that his memory is now respected by that same university 
 which expelled him, or that, as a tardy reparation for contem- 
 porary neglect, his works are now ridiculously extolled ? Just 
 about the same time it was that Jeremy Bentham's " Church 
 of Englandism " was interdicted by the Attorney-General, and 
 that the proprietors of the Sxaminer were prosecuted for an 
 alleged affront to the Prince Regent, who, in a letter written 
 by a Frenchman in 1S15, figures, not as Adonis, but as Silenus. 
 But since then leading organs of the press have used even 
 stronger language without a message from the authorities. 
 In England, as everywhere else, the Government lags behind 
 the educators of the people in intelligence and information ; it 
 obeys, instead of guiding, public opinion. Less than a century 
 ago, Darwin would have been put in the pillory for writing 
 the " Origin of Species," and the common hangman would 
 probably have disposed of the writings of Huxley and Tyndall. 
 Nearly everything, which surpassed the comprehension of 
 those in power or in possession, and threatened to shake their 
 seats or to meddle with their vested interests, was met by 
 stringent severity or with scorn. The Official and Professional
 
 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 267 
 
 Minds are prone to ignore such matters as have not been 
 stamped current in the proper quarter ; and so it has been 
 right away from distant times under successive dynasties. If 
 certain ilhistrious names in Hterature, science, and art were 
 not part of the national property — the best part — the Annals 
 of England down to the passage of the first Reform Bill might 
 be rewritten as the record of a savage people and their savage 
 oppressors and spoilers. Nay, there is no lack of men still, 
 who would vastly relish a relapse to this old political Adam, 
 to the Golgotha which lies happily behind us ; and there are 
 members of both Houses of Parliament, and more especially 
 of both Houses of Convocation, who would joyfully help them 
 — if they dared, as we full well know from the dastardly and 
 barbarous behaviour of a late Lord Chief Justice of England 
 in that infamous case exposed in no measured terms by Buckle 
 the historian. The discoveries of science and the diffusion of 
 knowledge are inimical to the Church and the Monarchy, yet 
 inimical to them only so long and so far as they fail to keep 
 pace with human Thought and Experience. 
 
 What a revolution in public feeling had taken place be- 
 tween the appearance of Sir Walter Scott's " Waverley" and the 
 scenes amid which that romance is laid ! and the development 
 of opinion down to the present time has made at least equal 
 progress. It is less than eighty years since Ellis inscribed his 
 " Original Letters," and Thoms his '• Early Prose Romances," to 
 George IV., Leigh Hunt's "Adonis of fifty," in terms of adulation 
 worthy of the worst days of the worst Stuarts. To approach the 
 sovereign for the time being with a due measure of homage ought 
 to be the desire and aim of every properly constituted mind ; but 
 we are not likely to forget what these Hanoverians were before 
 we took them as a last resource into our service ; but I presume 
 that I do not err in asserting that no author with an average 
 share of self-respect would condescend at present to attach to his 
 book the fulsome and mendacious epistles which introduced to 
 the world of letters the names of Ellis and Thoms. These Q-entle- 
 men played their cards more shrewdly than Cobbett and Paine, 
 the Hones and the Hunts, but they played a simpler and less 
 ambitious game. They merely played for berths : — 
 
 Princi'pibus flacuissc viris non ultima laus est.
 
 268 KOYALISM OR SOCIALISM 
 
 That Ellis was ignorant of the Jewish bargain by which the 
 Royal Library, formed by George III., passed into the hands of 
 the nation, it is impossible to suppose ; yet he has the enviable 
 courage to tell His Most Sacred Majesty that "the larger portion 
 of them (the Letters) came from that repository which Your 
 Majesty has been graciously pleased to enlarge and enrich with 
 the donation of the Library collected by Your Majesty's Revered 
 Father : " — but this is not all ; for he adds that it is " a Gift 
 greater than any which has been bestowed by any Sovereign 
 upon any nation since the Library of the Ptolemies was founded 
 at Alexandria." It was probably the earliest intimation afforded 
 to the world that the Ptolemies did bestow their library upon 
 their subjects, but, of course, this part of the business was a mere 
 non seqidtur ; and with regard to the Alexandrian Library or 
 Libraries, while it is unquestionably the fact that the present 
 state of information upon the subject is of quite recent growth, it 
 is odd that Ellis should have compared the alleged gift of George 
 IV. with a gift which was still more supposititious, and the value 
 of which he was as incapable of determining as we are. For if 
 there is any point less doubtful than the others concerning this 
 matter, it surely is that a grossly exaggerated estimate has been 
 formed of the extent and importance of the collections of books 
 made at Alexandria at different periods. 
 
 The editor of the " Early Prose Romances " is little more than 
 an echo of Ellis ; he, too, was a courtier and in a small way a 
 successful one ; but his dedication has the merit of beins some- 
 what briefer. By a curious infelicity he succeeded in embodying 
 in a few words the exact reverse of the truth, as we judge now, 
 and as all honest men judged then. Mr. Thoms, let us recollect, 
 however, was very young, when he expressed his belief in the 
 interest taken by George IV. in the history and literature of the 
 nation, " which Your Majesty so happily governs." 
 
 Doubtless, an ample assortment of similar curiosities might be 
 discovered. These works happened, however, to fall in the way ; 
 and they served well enough to illustrate the tuft-hunting side of 
 the literary character some two generations ago. 
 
 Formerly nations were what their rulers and masters (with 
 the aid of the Church) made them ; now in Great Britain, at 
 least, the ruler for the time being is what the nation makes 
 him or her. The old order is reversed. It is Nos et Rex Noster.
 
 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 269 
 
 The spirit of revolt against monarchies and oligarchies had 
 its rise, I do not know how many centuries since. There was in 
 the old world a constant recurrence of crusades against tyranny 
 of various complexions ; and the tenor of the teaching of Christ 
 in the New Dispensation is in the direction of communism. 
 But in comparatively modern history one of the earliest docu- 
 ments, so to speak, in favour of the popular side in life and 
 government was the "Dance of Death," which reduces all ranks 
 to a stern equality in the closing scene. 
 
 The majority of kings betray their consanguinity to the rest 
 of us when they ascend the steps of the throne ; in having wild 
 oats to sow, old associates to discard, new leaves to turn over. 
 You cannot expect Homo Rex to be nothing more than a pulse- 
 less form with a crown and a glory, a jack 0' lanthorn reflecting 
 the light of those who put him where he finds himself. He is 
 the father of a family — perhaps of more than one, as well as of 
 his people, and who has so many friends ? He is human, and 
 never so happy as when for a few moments he can doff his uniform, 
 as good Bishop Corbet did his gown and his hood. We are not 
 merely obliged to have members of our own species to preside 
 over us, to hold, as it were, the balance ; but owing to consti- 
 tutional exigencies we are often precluded from selecting the 
 best, and we have been known not to refuse even an indifferent 
 Dei Gratid, unless he was very bad indeed, just as we tolerate a 
 feeble Ministry from dread of a worse one. A foolish king has, 
 after all, something to recommend him, for he is apt to leave the 
 serious business of the State to his betters ; but we cannot long 
 bear the strain of a weak ruler and a weak executive. 
 
 Lovers of ease, like myself, rejoice in an inexhaustible succes- 
 sion of personages who are prepared for a consideration to officiate 
 as kings or administrators of some sort or other, down to the 
 herald and the court lacquey — those fowls in dazzling plumage — 
 and we do not too nicely scrutinize their motives. 
 
 Suppose that an index typographically graduated by the 
 permanent value to the world of its rulers in successive ages 
 were to be compiled, diamond would suffice for the majority of 
 imperial and royal individuals, who have trodden the stage for 
 their hour, and fulfilled their parts in misgoverning, plundering, 
 and keeping high festival at the cost of their fellows. A king 
 or an emperor, or an emperor-king, is such another as any one
 
 270 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 
 
 else, save in so much as he is made higher and greater by his 
 people — and his costumier. Unless, which is gravely improbable, 
 he is a distinct Unit, the wonder of centuries — an Alexander, a 
 Cffisar, or a Napoleon — he shines with borrowed or reflected light, 
 like a shadow on a curtain. He lacks official individuality. He 
 belongs, like his majesty of clubs or spades, to a set, which is 
 not complete without him, and without which he is not so ; which 
 performs its revolutions round him, like so many satellites, and 
 has mysterious and bizarre canons of nomenclature, precedence, and 
 toilette on a principle cousin-german to the splendid imposture 
 of Freemasonry. What a droll homily on all this pompous 
 extravaganza, this sublime flummery, is the passage in Payne 
 Collier's " Diary," where he speaks of going into a room at 
 Windsor with the Duke of Devonshire, and seeing William 
 IV.'s shirt airing before the fire ! The human affinities of your 
 Magnitudes and Altitudes set one considering. Their working 
 suits resemble our gala clothes, and when the theatrical pro- 
 perties are laid aside. Homo waxes distinctly visible to the 
 naked eye. 
 
 What Shakespear says of Shylock, or rather what he makes 
 Shy lock ask, might prove immediately applicable with a little 
 change : a sovereign has eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, 
 affections, passions. He is fed with the same food, hurt with the 
 same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same 
 means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as the 
 rest of humanity. If any one should desire farther elucidation on 
 this particular point, I refer him to a passage in Montaigne, which 
 is almost too uncivil to quote, or to that royal leveller. Lord 
 Hamlet, who pictures the ignoble uses to which the dust of an 
 Alexander might be put, and leads us to understand, that the 
 carcase of a tanner is more lasting than that of a king. Dei 
 Gratid is sadly too like ourselves — not by any means the best of 
 ourselves — to enable us to put faith in the nimbus, the spiritu- 
 ality, especially since these divine delegates have been so much 
 in the habit of laying their stage dresses aside, and mixing with 
 mortals, as if they were of them. 
 
 There is, forsooth, but one clay and one kiln for all, and 
 sovereign princes are as they are made. If all those in Europe 
 were cut off at one blow, a new crop would spring up in their 
 places, neither better nor worse than those who went before —
 
 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 271 
 
 just as good as their Employers chose to fashion them, or just as 
 indifferent as they durst shew themselves. The Intellect and 
 Labour of the world are the lawful lords paramount of it, and it 
 is their function and right to choose the superintendents of their 
 affairs, by whatever designation they may distinguish them : 
 their blame if they choose them ill. The King and the Kaiser 
 of the more modern type have evolved from the old Biix and 
 Impemtor ; and the military commander has exchanged his laurel 
 crown for a gold one, and his sword for a sceptre. His subjects 
 and he have taken each other's places. It is his turn to be on 
 his best behaviour, forsooth, is it not ? Yet pray forget not that 
 the claw still lurks beneath the velvet ; the Tudor eye is still 
 upon us; let us thank our stars that the Tudor grip has been 
 withdrawn. 
 
 We are in mid-stream between two constitutional systems, 
 and before the new, and possibly final, one is settled and con- 
 solidated, many fluctuations may be expected. 
 
 The last seventy or eighty years have witnessed immense 
 improvements in our political and social institutions, and many 
 foul wrongs and abuses have disappeared, or have undergone 
 modification, under various circumstances — usually under popular 
 pressure. The sorry condition of affairs disclosed in " Our Old 
 Nobility " has at any rate been amended. Certain malodorous 
 houses retain their ill-gotten belongings ; but they are not likely 
 to add to them, or to recover them, where they have been lost, 
 and must be content to furnish material for a new edition of 
 the " Vicissitudes of Families." 
 
 The historical precedent set by Richard II., when he threw 
 himself into a novel situation, and volunteered to lead his people, 
 in order to avert a crisis, has had its echo in the sedulous and 
 tell-tale eagerness, with which august personages have within 
 living memory sought to identify themselves with every popular 
 movement, and have proved more than gracious to those whom 
 their not remote predecessors would have spurned like dogs. 
 The Crown and the Court have grown wondrous kind. The 
 Levee and the Drawing-room have become — well, a little hackney. 
 The Crown is surrounding itself with the foremost and most 
 influential members of all callings, not merely for the sake of 
 strengthening its own hands, but of proportionately weakening 
 the aggressive and belligerent force of Socialism. It is a
 
 272 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 
 
 sagacious movement, and neither inopportune nor premature. 
 Will it save the Monarchy ? Or does not that depend rather 
 on the preservation by the Middle Class of its brain-power and 
 its capability of holding the financial capital of the country ? 
 So long as it does, the British Empire may continue to prosper ; 
 when it ceases to do so, that Empire will perish. The Crown and 
 the Aristocracy, and the operative classes, are under the pro- 
 tection of those, whom they may regard severally as their in- 
 feriors or their equals. The British Empire and the Middle 
 Class are convertible terms. 
 
 A king or a queen, as a constitutional head-gear, with his 
 or her responsible councillors, of whom bad enough are the best, 
 are necessary evils and burdens. We live — most of us— only 
 to earn wherewithal to buy food, clothes, shelter, and protection 
 from each other ; and this protection is designated Government, 
 which is by one man or by a body of men, taking their fees 
 for doing what we cannot individually do for ourselves. This 
 king or queen to-day is no longer a maker of men, but is a 
 creature of human fabric, adapted to suit his or her place 
 in a system. If we might have some ado to dispense with 
 them, how much more would they have to dispense with us, 
 in whose absence and without whose sanction they are nought 
 — less than a door-handle is to a door ? Yet on our side we have 
 ampler duties and needs growing out of this ampler freedom ; 
 and let us pray that our country may some day wake to find 
 itself in the glorious possession of an adequate Executive Faculty 
 and Force. It is no true and safe Government, which is not 
 recallable by the Governed. He is no latter-day king, who 
 may not, on reasonable ground shown, have his seat declared 
 vacant, and his crown taken from his head. 
 
 A constitutional sovereign is absolutely nothing more than 
 the acting manager of a nation, and in him is vested and per- 
 sonified the national majesty, but minus the Dei Gratid, since 
 the donor cannot give what he has not got. The principal cannot 
 transfer to his agent what he does not possess, and in the present 
 case the agent can shew or prove no independent grant. A crown 
 in rudimentary political life was a military symbol ; at present 
 it is a general one ; but only a single individual, chosen out 
 of the community, can wear it. The majesty of a particular 
 man or woman is a conventional phrase and figment. There is
 
 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 273 
 
 no such matter — not even such a special nativity as was 
 anciently ascribed to the king-bee. The one, v^hom we recognize, 
 becomes ipso facto Majestic, whether the wearer of a crown or 
 a straw hat. Oitrs is the Majesty, Ours the Empire and every- 
 thing that is in or of it. Kings and queens have merely what 
 we have given to them in trust or ex officio ; and what we have 
 given we may take away — we have ere this taken away. 
 
 There is an inherent proneness to licence and abuse at either 
 extremity. The mean is difficult to preserve, especially since 
 Parliament (as it is constituted) has begun to lose its prestige 
 and balancing weight, and the crown is left more free to manage 
 the public by tactful and taking methods. But at the same 
 time that very circumstance and necessity demonstrate the 
 widely changed relations between a ruler and his compatriots, 
 who have become his subjects, only so long as terms of mutual 
 accommodation endure. At his trial in 1649 Charles I. was 
 sharply reminded that when he took the oath in 1625, he made 
 a bargain with the nation. His Majesty had forgotten this. 
 
 If the Royal Family reads the History of England in the 
 eighteenth century in any work worthy of the subject, they 
 ought to feel gratitude toward those, who have so laboriously 
 and successfully educated them in better ways, and on the lines 
 solely capable of rescuing them from destruction. Yet consider 
 the reverse of the medal. During ages we, as some of our species 
 still are, were at the mercy of savage tyrants, and it is not a 
 proverb of very hoar antiquity, that " kings who are good are 
 called gods." A king, however, is the creature of his subjects, 
 before he is their master and oppressor. If our ancestors have 
 smarted under the lash, it was one of their own construction, 
 A ruler is what his subjects make him, or allow him to be. 
 The happiest state is where they are each other's servants and 
 friends. Kings have to be carefully trained, if they are expected 
 to answer their true purpose. Some of them are beginning to 
 emerge really fine characters from the modern factory. 
 
 It cannot be too distinctly understood or too carefully 
 weighed by the middle class, that the very cry for the increase 
 of means of popular enjoyment is a political trap to keep the 
 poor poor, or even make them poorer. Even our existing rulers 
 and law-givers, modified as they may be by reacting circum- 
 stances, and comparatively circumscribed as they may be in 
 
 s
 
 274 ROYALISM OR SOCIALISM 
 
 their power for mischief and oppression, discern the immense 
 gain to them and their friends through the inflated expenditure 
 of wage-earners and the narrow margin of surplus after all paid, 
 if there be any at all — if there be not a balance on the wrong 
 side. On the contrary, a frugal and thoughtful commonalty 
 would soon prove a formidable element in the Constitution ; 
 but the two conditions must co-exist and be mutually helpful. 
 Gracious condescension and affability are extremely winning 
 and impressive in the eyes of many ; they are at all events a 
 homage to the claim of the nation, which pays for all, to a 
 share of regard and consideration. But the price at which we 
 buy these amenities must not be lost to sight, nor the source 
 of all this overflowing bonhomie ; there are those, who will 
 see the day, when a good deal more will be thought hardly 
 unreasonable. The twentieth century will accomplish some 
 surprising problems, and will mark a new era in the history 
 of the Blue Book and the Red Book. 
 
 The disciples of pseudo-socialism commence by ignoring the 
 fundamental interdependence of all human societies, particu- 
 larly of those constituted on modern principles, and perceive 
 that their fellows, their superiors and sovereign inclusive, are 
 living at their expense, without taking into account that they 
 themselves are doing in a proportionate degree precisely the 
 same thing. When the balance is occasionally readjusted in 
 regard to power and emoluments, it is readjusted agreeably to 
 this indefeasible law of systematized civil life and economy. 
 
 It is extremely difficult to settle under what category such 
 a personage as Count Tolstoi ought to be ranked. He is a rich 
 man, who says to poorer ones, " Come to me, and share with me 
 my super-abundance," and he practically gives away nearly all 
 his ample revenues. In other words, he makes it possible for a 
 large number of people to live without working for themselves. 
 This is hardly Socialism, nor is it a form of benevolence which is 
 apt to prove permanently beneficial. The diminution of im- 
 mediate distress may be good ; but, reduced to a system and 
 a creed, it involves the diminution of self-help and individual 
 freedom. 
 
 Federalism or a Federation of English-speaking States, not 
 on the Swiss model exactly, will be the ultimate issue. What 
 is called Imperialism is an electoral phrase and cry. Throughout
 
 KOYALTSM OR SOCIALISM 275 
 
 Europe a new order of things, more consonant with real human 
 happiness and dignity, may overtake Royalism, before it has done 
 much more harm, and put an end to the ridiculous and expensive 
 masquerade. We have slowly drilled the Crown into something 
 more becoming and more tolerable; but a good deal remains 
 to be done.
 
 XXII 
 THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 
 
 "... And you, who seek to give and merit fame, 
 And justly bear a critic's noble name, 
 Be sure yourself and your own reach to know, 
 How far your genius, taste, and learning go ; 
 Launch not beyond your depth." 
 
 —Pope. 
 
 " The truth is, that the conduct of a journal, the two great objects of which 
 are to create a great sensation, and to assail the existing order of things at all 
 points, is no task for a very good-natured man or a sturdy moralist." — Lord 
 Dudley's Letters to the Bishop of Llandaf, 1841. 
 
 I CONCLUDE that criticism must be coeval with the world ; but 
 what description of thing it may have been at the very first setting 
 out is as yet problematical ; a mighty riddle, which has its key, 
 perhaps, in some parchment palimpsest, or marble, or writing, 
 dormant all these ages in a buried city to be made visible by- 
 and-by. • 
 
 The ancients had their antiquity, which we may suppose to 
 have been regarded by them with a share of the same curiosity 
 and reverential affection which we cherish toward all the prior 
 generations which we see accumulated behind us. They respected 
 their ancestors, even worshipped them ; but they did not examine 
 them and their works through telescopes or magnifying glasses, 
 or lay down exact bases of comparison. 
 
 As for ourselves, we have grown somewhat more discriminating 
 in our judgment of past times. We cast a more scrutinizing 
 eye over remote persons and events. It has become a question 
 whether the ancients were not after all very much the same as 
 we are. By help of bas-reliefs and other microscopic media, we 
 have succeeded in dwarfing antecedent eras, till we begin to wonder 
 at those who looked up with admiration and awe to the classic 
 epoch. Latter-day researches into Old World history have been 
 a gain in an obvious direction ; but they have rooted up the early 
 
 superstitious worship of the unknown. The Ciceronian maxim : 
 
 276
 
 THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 277 
 
 Priscis credendum, has parted, I fear, with some of its virtue and 
 force. 
 
 Of criticism, in our sense, there was a great deal more, if I am 
 not much mistaken, among the Greeks and Romans, than there 
 had ever been before. But their taste was more a contemporary 
 and current taste than ours. They were fond of reviewing passing 
 men and afTairs, and of discussions upon the literature and arts 
 of their own time ; but they had not the interest which we feel 
 in the older monarchies of the world. They relished the broad 
 realistic and coarse reflections of every-day life, as they were put 
 on the stage from season to season, by dramatists, who sacrificed 
 all higher considerations, like most of their latter-day followers, 
 to immediate effect and success. The Assyrians, the Persians, and 
 the Arabs had not the same measure of value in their eyes that 
 they have in ours. It did not occur to them to investigate the 
 sculptures of Nineveh, or the mystic symbols found upon the 
 monuments of the Rameses. An Assyrian inscription or an 
 Egyptian hieroglyph awakens a keener curiosity in the breast of 
 a Londoner of the twentieth century than it would have awakened 
 in the breast of the most cultivated Roman or Athenian, and if he 
 is only even a person of average information, he is better acquainted 
 with Egyptian archaeology than the subjects of the Ptolemies. The 
 objects v/hich he may have before his eyes lay under their feet. We 
 feel at least as near to the occurrences narrated in the Old Testa- 
 ment story as Rome and Athens were. The customs, manners, 
 sentiments, and opinions of those remote and extinct nations are 
 more familiar to us than they were to the countrymen of Demos- 
 thenes and Cicero. We could tell Herodotus much about the 
 ancient state of Asia of which he was ignorant, just as we could 
 add to Strabo's information on the condition and aspect of Italy 
 before the Romans, or find something about Vesuvius and Etruria 
 that would be new to the younger Pliny ; and the same may be 
 predicated of the ancient Jews, who seem to have known or cared 
 less than we do about the peoples, whose civihzation was im- 
 measurably older than their own, and who occupied a region com- 
 paratively of easy access from Jerusalem. We know more about 
 the Greek and Roman poets than many of those among whom 
 they lived. For we enjoy the advantage of an always lengthening 
 perspective, and of holding literary evidences, on which their eyes 
 never rested.
 
 278 THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 
 
 But, on the contrary, to the compiler or compilers of the " IHad " 
 we seem to lie under obHgations of a different and far weightier 
 character. From whatever sources he or they derived the material 
 for the epic, the latter remains at the present hour what it was 
 in the eyes of the scholars of Greece and Rome — a stupendous 
 hterary monument, of which we know little, to which we have 
 nothing to add, while every day we learn to place more implicit 
 faith in the writings of the historian of Halicarnassus, and to be 
 sensible of his claim to our apology, in common with Marco Polo, 
 Pinto, and Bruce for having impugned what he had — M^hat they had 
 such superior means to our own of knowing. After all, it seems 
 that writers and workers of high rank have less relationship to the 
 age in which they happen to move than to ages, whose estimation 
 of them may be loftier and truer, yet must be more or less hypo- 
 thetical and speculative. 
 
 The fable of Tereus and Progne was a piece of antiquity in 
 the time of Anacreon, and that agreeable writer probably accepted 
 such tales with the same sort of good faith with which Plutarch 
 accepted the traditional accounts of Romulus and Theseus, or 
 our own Ehzabethan ancestors those of Arthur and his Knights. 
 The old school of biographers and annalists were made of much 
 the same stuf? as Livy and Diogenes Laertius. Their pages are 
 crowded with myth and hearsay. We miss altogether as a rule 
 the personal knowledge which proved so interesting and valuable 
 in the case of two men so different as Plato and Gaesar, and the 
 critical insight which yielded so rich a harvest in the case of 
 Mommsen — a coat of romance, which long remained impervious, 
 overlaid the sterling substance. Now at last after all these cen- 
 turies we begin to view through a clearer focus the ancient Roman 
 story — nay, and the Greek, too, in spite of many intervals of im- 
 perfect light and information ; and how much of the old romance 
 fades, how much utterly vanishes ! We find a selfish sort of rehef 
 in the discovery, that the ancients possessed, Hke us, a far larger 
 number of capable adventurers than of heroes and patriots, and 
 some of us have to demolish our idols, and become disciples of 
 the New Learning, to revise our estimates of Marius and the 
 Gracchi, even if we decline to accept the notion of the elder Cato 
 about Socrates, whom the worthy Roman evidently treated as a 
 flippant and troublesome doctrinaire. 
 
 What Livy was to his contemporaries, the monkish historians
 
 THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 279 
 
 became to the times wliicli succeeded. Xenophon, Thucydides, 
 and Sallust were umisually fortunate in selecting subjects for 
 treatment of which, they Hved within view or within a measurable 
 distance, and the historian of the Peloponnesian War offers to our 
 consideration and sympathy a case, where a man, very slightly 
 the junior of Herodotus, brought to his work a novel principle of 
 critical selection. How ready we should be to barter away for a 
 few facts a whole world of hypothesis and conjecture ! The roughest 
 sketch of the every-day doings of Petrarch by his intimate friend 
 Boccaccio would be worth Mr. Campbell's Biography an hundred- 
 fold ; an actual ghmpse of the man Homer would surpass in 
 interest to us all that has been written upon him, for his original 
 editors and commentators, not to mention his renderers into EngHsh, 
 altogether failed to discriminate between the true text, as the 
 author left it, and that which was assuredly engrafted upon it from 
 time to time by unrecorded successors ; much as a Diary kept by 
 a Warwickshire neighbour, who knew and valued the poet and his 
 surroundings, would be cheap at the cost of all other SJiakespeareana. 
 The early litterateur contented himself for the most part with 
 meagre and mechanical descriptions of political events. There 
 were exceptions, as we know very well from such performances 
 as Eginard's " Life of Charlemagne," the " Memoirs " of Commines, 
 and certain of the Biographies collected by Muratori. But even 
 where the inner or private life of an epoch or an individual happened 
 to find a painter, his colours were too often faint, and his handling 
 niggard or feeble. Still, where premises are given to us, we have 
 at any rate the privilege of drawing the conclusions. But in 
 justice to the great authors of antiquity, and even those nearer 
 in time to ourselves, it must be considered that a man wrote 
 formerly perniissu superiorum. If we do not possess much ancient 
 literature of a strictly critical character, it is not perhaps that 
 the critical faculty was wanting, but that the day of its develop- 
 ment had not broken. Virgil was at liberty to exercise his pen 
 as freely as he chose on bee-culture and the succession of crops, 
 on the wars of Troy and the exploits of iEneas ; but he took care 
 to clothe in apologue the social distempers of the age and his 
 individual sufferings. What the spirit of an era demands or 
 sanctions, its men learn to produce, and this seems, after a per- 
 usal of the " Stones of Venice," to be the germ of Mr. Ruskin's 
 architectural teaching. Yet, after all, we have to go a step
 
 28o THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 
 
 farther in search of those who create the spirit, and have their 
 sole reward, as a rule, at the hands of a generation which 
 sanctifies their dust. 
 
 It should seem, then, that Archaeology, as we understand and 
 appreciate it, is a modern science, and that the pursuit and study 
 of antiquities have been reserved for these elder ages. The philo- 
 sophers and orators of classic times interested themselves rather 
 in what had happened in or about their own period than in what 
 had taken place a thousand years before. The Romans, indeed, 
 ignored the elapsed centuries by setting up a new chronological 
 principle of their own, an Italian Hegira, much as the Greeks long 
 entertained without more particular inquiry the notion, that within 
 their country lay the centre of the world, round which all the rest 
 revolved. It was now here, now there, but always on Greek soil. 
 Geographical science was scarcely beyond its alphabet. 
 
 Yet both Greeks and Romans had probably as much con- 
 temporary criticism among them as we have in proportion ; there 
 were plenty of persons, then as now, who thought themselves 
 qualified to sit in judgment on every species of public trans- 
 action, from the policy of a great war to the meaning of an 
 obscure word. Aulus Gellius lets us a little into the secret of 
 what occupied the attention of literary folks at the Eternal City 
 when he was there to make notes. 
 
 Nor can we say that their writers were wanting in those senti- 
 ments which lead men to hold up their ancestors as an example 
 and precedent to succeeding epochs ; but then among the Romans, 
 at least, an appeal of this sort was not apt to go farther back than 
 Romulus and Remus. They might proclaim the virtues of such 
 as lived in the early days urhis conditce, and trace the growth-up 
 and development of arts and learning from the first commence- 
 ment of the republic ; but they did not care greatly to inform 
 themselves of the state of civilisation and knowledge among those 
 peoples who had been flourishing and powerful, while shepherd- 
 boys were still piping to their flocks upon the Quirinal Hill. How 
 poorly off we should be for historical types and examples if we had 
 only to go to oiir great-grandfather Brutus, to Hengist and Horsa, 
 Alfred the Cake-Burner and Norman William ! 
 
 The school of retrospective inquiry, as we now see it, can 
 hardly be allowed to ascend beyond the later half of the sixteenth 
 century in point of date. It has become firmly rooted long since,
 
 THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 281 
 
 and has thrown out branches and feelers into every region of the 
 globe, and into all departments of human science. 
 
 The mediaeval rulers of Europe, and even those who more or 
 less immediately followed them, seldom enough displaced the soil 
 beneath their feet in search of those mineral riches more precious 
 than gold and silver, than diamonds and rubies — those buried 
 and forgotten remains, which have made history so modern a 
 science, that even authorities within our own or our father's 
 memory are laid on the shelf as obsolete and useless. We ask a 
 good deal more from our teachers nowadays than a fertile fancy 
 and a facile pen. They must bring with them their credentials 
 as geologists, astronomers, chemists ; they must have investigated 
 monuments, barrows, weapons, tools, ornamental objects, coins, 
 and household utensils of ancient races ; they must not let a 
 theory or a hobby run away with them : they must not hope to 
 escape detection very long, if they do no worse than piece out 
 a respectable body of facts with a modicum of fable to complete 
 a link or establish a case. 
 
 Fairly educated and informed persons in the past, where they 
 dealt with questions of a more or less abstruse character, were 
 apt to betray an absence of perspicacity, which was more pardon- 
 able when modern science and archa)ology were non-existent. In 
 a Protestant pamphlet secretly printed in the time of Henry VIII. 
 the waiter ingenuously inquires : " When the Potter hath made 
 the Pot, can the Pot turn again and make the Potter ? " He, 
 of course, points at transubstantiation and Romish idolatry ; but 
 he did not perceive that we have been doing nothing else since 
 the world started — making the God Who made us. 
 
 The rarer and more intermittent the production of works of 
 unusual excellence remained, the apter was the judgment on them 
 to be indulgent. Where to age upon age only a single masterpiece 
 was given, and where the circle of reviewers was narrower almost 
 than we can conceive, a great author, even if he had faults, met 
 with tender treatment and more than respectful homage ; for 
 literary constellations long partook of the nature of epochs in a 
 people's history. The learned world was a small one, and it could 
 not afford to be too dainty or too nice. 
 
 I do not know that I am far wrong in asserting that here in 
 England the first decided stimulus imparted to the spirit of anti- 
 quarian and historical research was the formation by Edward
 
 282 THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 
 
 Banister of Idworth in Hampshire of a rich and ample collection 
 of marbles, pictures, and other valuable antiquities in the reign 
 of EHzabeth ; years upon years prior to the time of that Earl of 
 Arundel, to whom what are still known as the Arundelian Marbles 
 were sold. They were perhaps part of the Banister property ; nor 
 should it be concealed that Lord Arundel felt a very subdued 
 interest in the matter, and had long permitted his acquisitions to 
 He neglected in a garden, when he allowed Evelyn to arrange their 
 removal to Oxfoid. 
 
 Englishmen formerly, in common, I suppose, with the rest of 
 the world, had their questioning humours and occasional fits of 
 scepticism ; but it was their habit, very far more than it is ours, 
 to accept unexamined what was set before them by persons of 
 weight and credit. Daring assertions went without confutation, 
 simply because, as a rule, there was nobody to confute them ; 
 and credulity was always at hand to give the benefit of the doubt, 
 in any cases where the marvellous or romantic chanced to be a 
 conspicuous ingredient in a story. 
 
 The cases were quite exceptional in England and elsewhere 
 even after the Revival of Learning in the sixteenth century, where 
 any nicety of discrimination existed in judging the relative merits 
 of authors, and Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, one of our earliest 
 critics, as well as satirists, stands alone in ridiculing and censuring 
 such as — 
 
 " Praised Sir Topas for a noble tale, 
 And scorn'd the story which the Knight told." 
 
 But the imperfect conversance of even educated and cultured men 
 in our country with existing literary models, long after the days 
 of Wyatt, is illustrated by the absurd pretension of Bishop Hall 
 in 1597 to rank as the first writer of satire in England. Selecting 
 two prominent samples, not only Shakespear in England, but 
 Montaigne in France, waited long enough for permission from the 
 critics to take their true places in general appreciation. Enough 
 has been said of the former ; but, as regards the great Frenchman, 
 he was regarded by his contemporaries as primarily, if not almost 
 exclusively, the man of action, the magistrate and soldier, and by 
 the writers of the eighteenth century as an author, who dealt in 
 interesting speculations and audacious paradoxes. We at this 
 moment have no longer at least any warrant for being ignorant 
 that he was as much a practical pohtician and patriot as he was
 
 THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 283 
 
 a scholar, a thinker, and a Hterary master. Let the world spare 
 its tardy apology. It has been with him as with so many, many 
 others. He retired from the world, not dissatisfied with its im- 
 pression and treatment of him, for he strangely undervalued his 
 intellectual fame and rank. The sound of his voice has been lost, 
 and the echo of his footstep ; yet do I not know more of him 
 than of millions who have perished, body and soul, within my 
 own time, and do I not hold more of him ? — the part, w^hich he 
 could not take away, which he intentionally left behind him, to 
 preserve his name, as he thought, some fifty years longer. Had 
 he and Shakespear had the advantage of heralds to announce 
 at their entrance on the scene their merits and their claims, they 
 might ere now have been forgotten. 
 
 Our own earlier or old-fashioned critical literature was not 
 critical at all in a high sense. Authors belaboured each other on 
 paper with good English vigour and a good honest relish. The 
 detection of a little crop of blunders in a man's book, instead of 
 bespeaking for him a more or less temperate and impartial censure, 
 secured the early march into print of some foul-phrased or coarsely- 
 spiced tract, in which he got brimming measure of hard knocks. 
 How infinitely preferable it would have been from the beginning, 
 had reviewers contented themselves, in the absence of personal 
 knowledge, with an outhne of the author's plan and a reservation 
 of their own views ! 
 
 In ancient days people were satisfied with ephemeral disquisi- 
 tions, with superficial, temporary niigcB. It was a school of stupid 
 invective and furious detraction, which shews symptoms of dying 
 out, which, if the judicial counsel of Pope had been followed, 
 would be absolutely a thing of the past. But if a reviewer can 
 be nothing better than a pupil of the old school, I am sorry for him. 
 
 The elder critics of our own and other countries, with much 
 affectation of profundity and point, seldom went more than skin- 
 deep into their author. Notwithstanding the dit of Macaulay, that 
 criticism in this country was extinct in his time, there is at need 
 or on occasion, more real, sound analysis, and illustrative acumen, 
 now than there ever was ; more substantial service has been con- 
 ferred, in the way of making straight what was crooked, disen- 
 tangling what was confused, elucidating what was dark, as regards 
 the literature of all ages within the last century than was ever 
 done before, since Aristotle taught the world to think.
 
 284 THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 
 
 Even in the eighteenth century the clumsiest fabrications not 
 only passed undetected by the public, but found apologists among 
 men who assumed to be scholars ; and at present the world, to make 
 amends perhaps for having gaped too widely and having been 
 heretofore too omnivorous, has fallen into the vice of putting down 
 many standard beliefs and of discountenancing all professing dis- 
 coverers. Formerly we pinned our faith to most things that we 
 were told ; but a fit of coyness and mistrust has settled upon us. 
 Our grandfathers accepted without question the forgeries of 
 Ireland, which were the most transparent imposture, those of 
 Chatterton, which even Walpole discredited and exposed, and 
 those of I do not recollect whom, which passed for a time under 
 noble auspices as English versions of the Poems of Camoens. 
 To guard ourselves against a repetition of such folly we have 
 crossed over to the other side of the platform ; and under the 
 influence of this reaction it was that a literary committee was 
 invited to sit upon the " Paston Letters," and that certain people 
 set down the correspondence of Boswell with the Rev. Mr. Temple 
 as a hoax and a fraud. It was a jump from the absurdest credulity 
 to the absurdest scepticism. Much in the same way people began 
 by believing all that they found in Jeffrey of Monmouth, and, 
 when a doubt was cast on the veracity of that writer, threw away 
 his book as waste paper. Now we have at least learned to take 
 it for what it is worth. Poor Jeffrey had sinned no worse than 
 many a better man before and since. He had padded a little 
 matter-of-fact with a great deal of matter-of-fancy. 
 
 It became the case long before our time, that a man, who had 
 new light to throw on a subject, employed his own vehicle, brought 
 out his volume or his pamphlet, which was perhaps the first of a 
 shelf of such ephemerides, each more incisive without being more 
 convincing than its precursor, and it may still even now and then 
 happen that an able person communicates to a journal or a review 
 his ripe judgment on a pubhcation of the day. But matters of 
 this kind, so far as the press is concerned, have fallen almost com- 
 pletely into the hands of paragraph-writers currents calanio and 
 cyclopsedic loan-contractors. It is easier to exaggerate than to 
 define, to copy than to think. The power of analysis is less common 
 than the command of phraseology. 
 
 What has become of those Essays, which adorned the columns 
 of the Times fifty or sixty years since : scholarly, ripe, luminous,
 
 THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 285 
 
 temperate, delightful ? What have we in their *room ? Abraham 
 Hayward and Sydney Godolphin Osborne have died without issue. 
 What have we to take the place even of the papers in the Retro- 
 spective Review, naturally soberer, naturally and perhaps fitly less 
 brilliant, but full of informing matter exempt from passion and 
 personality ? These are types of criticism, where the account by 
 one man of another man's book is often more instructive and 
 agreeable than the book itself. 
 
 Swift, in his " Tale of a Tub " (the ovimi of " Sartor Resartus "), 
 has not failed to introduce some caustic remarks on the craft and 
 brotherhood of which I am speaking. " A true critic," says he, 
 " hath one quality in common with a harlot and an alderman, 
 never to change his title or his nature." But even Swift did not 
 foresee the evolutionary process, by which criticism and author- 
 ship were made interchangeable, and by which, like Bacchus 
 crowning himself on the ancient Greek coins, a critic (hardly a 
 true one) might eulogize or appreciate his own work in friendly 
 columns. He may have grasped the unquestionable fact, that to 
 a large extent the interest of an author is in a topic only so far 
 as it is capable of reflecting distinction on himself where he takes 
 it up, while the interest of an ordinary reviewer centres rather in 
 the writer than in the matter written. An indifferent performance 
 by a friend presents the twofold advantage of serving as a foil, 
 and of offering a peg, on which the critic may hang some of his 
 own casual learning. A good book by a stranger or an enemy 
 can expect only one of two fortunes — to be abused or ignored. 
 
 Had Swift lived nearer to our day, his estimate of criticism 
 might have been yet more unfavourable. As it was, he offered 
 certain remarks suggestive of his perusal of a small book called 
 De Charlatanarid Eruditorum. The younger Disraeli defined 
 critics to be those who had failed in literature — an observation 
 already made by Shelley. But the graver point is, that so many 
 of them equally fail in the art which they have espoused as an 
 alternative. 
 
 Swift took the liberty of presuming that the ass, who is fabled 
 to have first introduced mankind to a knowledge of the properties 
 of the vine by browsing on the tendrils with much apparent gusto, 
 was in fact a critic. But were a critic no worse than that, it were 
 well. Frequently when he works incognito, he does his best to 
 damn your book in order to air his own knowledge, to gratify some
 
 286 THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 
 
 pique, or to assist a friend, who has a rival undertaking on the 
 stocks or up his sleeve. Sometimes he notes a trifling oversight 
 by way of shewing that he is acquainted with all that you are 
 and one thing more. According to Apuleius the ancients pos- 
 sessed ointments capable of transforming a man into an owl or 
 an ass, and then he had to eat rose-leaves in order to regain his 
 original shape ; but he does not tell us whether the reviewers of 
 his time found it necessary to resort to these specifics. The druggist 
 of ours does not keep them in stock. 
 
 No one has probably at any period expressed himself on the 
 subject of contemporary criticism so unreservedly and so causti- 
 cally as Dickens in some of his letters. He does not mince or 
 qualify ; and if he were now living, he would scarcely see reason 
 to retract an}i;hing ; and there is before me a letter from Mrs. 
 Jameson to Mrs. Procter in a similar strain. A journahst too often 
 proceeds a master in his vocation without having served his articles. 
 He enters on his career as on something demanding no prepara- 
 tion, just as a retired comedian or military man becomes at sight 
 an improvisatore in wine or coals. As Pope says : — 
 
 " All fools have still an itching to deride, 
 And fain would be upon the laughing side. 
 If Meevius scribble in Apollo's spite, 
 There are who judge still worse than he can write." 
 
 Whatever one may do, one should beware of getting into a 
 hornet's nest by excepting to the writings of some reviewer's pet, 
 or of some one, who has the command of the press — even of him 
 or of her, of whom there are Eulogies or Appreciations extant. 
 Their friends may be sensible of their faults ; but these are in- 
 stantly forgotten, when an unHcensed third party assails them, 
 and they become ijjso facto brilhant and masterly. It is hke 
 stepping in between a man and his wife ; they join in abusing 
 you. The novehsts on the press are not as other noveUsts are ; 
 they fib ex cathedra — ore rotundo ; they resemble the street urchins, 
 who, if you chastise them for robbing your garden, break your 
 windows or your fence. Find fault with them, and your next book 
 is born damned. Yet you may take comfort ; for, if you are in 
 the right and hold your peace, the world will come round to 
 you, unless peradventure meanwhile itur ad astra. 
 
 I do not know whether the existing system will gradually
 
 THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 287 
 
 work its own cure. Lay-folks begin to read between the lines of a 
 review or of a statement in a paper ; I hear, wherever I go, one 
 sentiment — gromng increduhty touching newspaper intelligence — 
 and something more. A writer w^ho has been attacked on in- 
 sufficient grounds by a periodical is met by his non-literary 
 acquaintance, not with sympathy, as formerly, but with a smile 
 and a quiet remark, that you do not seem to be on friendly terms 
 with this or that Editor. It is a question, not of merit or the want 
 of it, but of good fellowship. But the artificial estimation of 
 literary work, where it leans to the favourable side, carries its 
 own drawbacks and punishment. The machinery, which lifts a 
 gentleman into a false station and maintains him there for a 
 season, is not constructed of very durable material. One's con- 
 freres cannot be expected to prop one up for ever. I have known 
 one lucky fellow or so (as it was thought), who had not long to 
 live before he met with an unkind awakening, and found himself 
 in the plight of the tinker in the interlude, who was no duke after 
 all, but a mender of pots and pans. Troja fuit, fuit — 
 
 It may be in the long run preferable to creep up than to be 
 hoisted up, for, unless one holds one's ground, the fall is the severer. 
 But then we all hanker after some kind of praise, and we even 
 hke it to come before we have passed out of hearing. The ready- 
 money principle has its recommendations, no doubt ; but for cash 
 there must ever be discount. When one takes in one's hand a 
 gallery of distinguished modern authors in a publisher's illus- 
 trated advertisement, one asks oneself the questions : " To how 
 much does the aggregate product of all these celebrities amount ? " 
 " What have they collectively added to knowledge and thought ? " 
 " What proportion do their loans bear to their gifts ? " 
 
 There is even a sort of men, once more, who aim at the attain- 
 ment of glory at second-hand by resuscitating defunct reputations, 
 no matter how slender the claim of their candidates may be. One 
 gentleman alone of my time loaded our shelves with a very Alps 
 of re-awakened worthies, but they are already as dead as they 
 were before ; it was a vain attempt to reanimate corpses ; and 
 then the Rev. George Crabbe has just now found an Editor and a 
 Biographer more indulgent to him than the authors of the " Re- 
 jected Addresses." Each successive age seems to be circumscribed 
 by its own intellectual meridian, as one standing on Primrose HiU 
 cannot see St. Peter's at Rome or the coast of Australasia. Apart
 
 288 THE THOUCxHT OF OTHERS 
 
 from a literary performance itself, there is the optical medium, 
 the consonant atmosphere ; and even the greatest human names, 
 if they are to be charmed into a new and enduring hfe, demand 
 something more than the good offices of an interpreter — of a corps 
 of them. 
 
 One periodically stumbles on gushing enthusiasts, who indi- 
 vidually, or as members of a learned association, profess a quite 
 cataractic zeal for some subject or some author. There is an 
 instinctive pleasure in feehng that a neglected topic or individual 
 is at length to receive long-deferred homage at the hands of dis- 
 interested admirers, and one awaits with curiosity, even with 
 solicitude, the development of the heroic undertaking. What is 
 the upshot ? One discovers that a gentleman or a body of gentle- 
 men have chosen a departed worthy — even such an one as him 
 of Stratford- on- Avon — or a more miworked line of study as a 
 fulcrum for advertising their own erudition and personality ; and 
 if I or any one else venture to announce that we have penned 
 something on the same topic in the same spirit long ago, or even 
 that we have preoccupied much of the ground, without a syllable 
 of acknowledgment from anybod}', we run the risk of being decried 
 as disagreeable and conceited fellows. 
 
 Not one but several schemes, interestingly variant, have been 
 carried out of recent years by my eminent contemporaries for the 
 benefit of those who might desire to become book-buyers, and who 
 lacked either the inclination or the leisure to choose for themselves. 
 By these means one found oneself the owner of a library at one 
 bound ; one leapt into the saddle in full armour. There were 
 those who ministered to your needs by supplying you wdth the 
 books themselves, the best — not in your opinion, for you were 
 not supposed to have any, but in theirs — and others, who read and 
 even who picked on your behalf, and made into a parcel the nett 
 product of their labour — the best of the best according to them, 
 again — elegant volumes in elegant bindings in elegant cases for 
 a mere bagatelle, payable almost at your own pleasure. These 
 marvellous boons, these absolute literary sugar-plums, it is strange 
 and sad to relate, were not accepted with the greedy avidity which 
 their promoters anticipated ; and modest as the tariff was at which 
 they might be had from the workshop, yet modester in booksellers' 
 lists anon became their valuation. The public does not deserve 
 to have such noble and splendid benefactors as or
 
 THE THOUGHT OF OTHERS 289 
 
 or . noblemen and gentlemen, you were born too early. 
 
 The world has to grow worthy of you. 
 
 Then if, as some appear to think, books are growing into 
 disfavour, and we are all to be moulded and governed by the 
 press, consider to what an universal anaemia we should surely 
 descend, if generation after generation of us were to be brought up 
 on such mental spoon-meat, on newspaper pap and whipped froth. 
 So far as real information goes, the press is hardly of that value, 
 which is usually claimed for it — by itself ; too much of the matter 
 supplied has been executed at sight or second-hand, on the impulse 
 of the moment or under some temporary bias. Take a notorious 
 case. Russell's " Indian Diary " conclusively establishes that the 
 First Indian Mutiny was attributable partly to official incom- 
 petence and partly to journalistic misrepresentations. Perhaps 
 we shall not hear of a second till it has broken out, and it will 
 be worse than the first. What, if we were to start Paperless, 
 Magazineless to-morrow ! 
 
 " O fortunatos nimium ! sua si bona noriiit." 
 
 It is one of those not few things, in which French ingenuity 
 and sang-froid have outstripped us, to form and distribute gratis 
 albums of a sumptuous description dedicated to the achievements 
 of a commercial house, with the portraits and autographs of its 
 clients. Let some of our own good folks in too modest Britain 
 see whether they cannot extend their fame by taking as a model 
 the " Album Mariane." True enough, it is a trade circular ; but 
 the methods of my worshipful countrymen and countrywomen are 
 not dissimilar, merely less advanced, less concentric, not in quite 
 so striking a focus. That is all. 
 
 Audi alteram partem. There is not much to be pleaded for it ; 
 but there is something. In the first place one benefit, which society 
 and hterature derive from criticism of the higher class or even of 
 a fair character, is the sensible presence of a jurisdiction, which is 
 apt to act as a curb and a balance. The existence of a critical 
 tribunal must be a healthy force in some respects or directions, not- 
 withstanding its inherent proneness to personal and party feehng. 
 Secondly, it might be the source of general advantage, if reviewers 
 should constitute themselves, at all events, in the case of certain 
 books and the necessary scholarship presumed, a co-operative agency 
 in the improvement of texts and the extension of knowledge.
 
 XXIII 
 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 
 
 " Tempus edax Auctorum." 
 
 " Soles occidere et redire possunt. — Catullus. 
 
 " De mon temps, je suis trompe, si les pires escrits ne sont ceux qui ont 
 gaign^ le dessus du vent populaire." — Montaigne. 
 
 " II n' point de plus courte vie que celle d'un mauvais livre." — Vaugelas. 
 
 " Vincenzo da Filicaja, a native of Florence, who was born in 1642 and died 
 in 1707, was a poet whom the universal esteem of his contemporaries, and 
 the echoes of their admiration, during the first half century that succeeded 
 his death, raised to such distinguished reputation, that he has become famous 
 throughout Europe, and is idolized in his own countrj' as an absolute prodigy 
 of genius." — Retrospective Review, 1824, x. 314. 
 
 " In literature, as in the playthings of schoolboys and the fribbery of women, 
 there are the ins and outs of fashion." — Southey. 
 
 SouTHEY has a remark in one of his letters upon temporary and 
 
 permanent reputation, which, if not of striking novelty, is at all 
 
 events excellently put, and ought to have its consoling influence 
 
 on those authors whose works are not cried up " in the top of the 
 
 compass," till the vital pulse has done throbbing at booksellers' 
 
 commissions and critical decrees. 
 
 What Southey says we all know well enough to be a truism — 
 
 that the very elements of popularity are, as a rule, fatal to its 
 
 endurance, that the characteristics, which a man's own age thinks 
 
 fit to stamp as beauties, the next calls by a dilTerent name. Southey, 
 
 without being aware of it, most conspicuously illustrated the 
 
 maxim in his own person. Where are the poems by Mrs. Opie ? 
 
 where is Amos Cottle's Guinea Epic, published in the dog-days ? 
 
 where are the long hundred of novels by Mrs. Trollope, and all the 
 
 lucubrations which were considered in some circles the gems of 
 
 the annuals half a century or so ago ? Is it the world that has 
 
 altered its mind, and does the fate of so many so much commended 
 
 and admired productions foreshadow that of similarly specious 
 
 290
 
 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 291 
 
 ephemerides accumulating day by day and arousing our jealousy 
 almost to jaundice point by the reception accorded to them ? 
 
 Speaking of the poems of the Rev. John Pomfret a leading 
 bibliographical guide remarks : " During the eighteenth century no 
 other volume of poems was so often reprinted, or held in such 
 popular estimation." In the " Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft " the 
 dramatist, there is the following : " ' Anna St. Ives,' a novel in 
 7 volumes, appeared in 1792. It was much read at the time, 
 and excited considerable attention, both from the force with which 
 it is written, and from the singularity of the characters and senti- 
 ments," and we find Charles Lloyd, whom his friend Lamb guile- 
 lessly described (and doubtless regarded) as " one of the first 
 geniuses of our age," in 1795 Recommending it to his brother 
 Robert. 
 
 What strikes one here is the complete death which has befallen 
 this highly lauded and widely read publication. It probably ceased 
 to be much asked for after '93. It was as transient as a vaudeville, 
 or as Moore's " Loves of the Angels," of which the author lets us 
 know that 6000 copies were sold in the first month, and which 
 is at present deader than a stone, and has never since been re- 
 printed. The " singularity of the characters and sentiments " 
 must have strangled it ; for how can we tell, not having seen the 
 work (and who has ?), that " singularity " was not at the time a 
 charitable euphemism, an indulgent paraphrase ? Besides, Holcroft's 
 books appeared more than a century since, and are not the works 
 of fiction of men far more recent and contemporary already 
 shelved ? Do the circulating libraries lend out so freely the novels 
 of James Payn, a man with many friends, " a sunny nature," as 
 somebody said ? But to return for a moment to Moore. Is it 
 possible, let me ask, that the virtuous and orthodox British public 
 discovered that the imma stamina of the " Loves of the Angels " 
 were to be traced to the " Book of Enoch," and declined to have 
 anything more to do with the work ? Moore was extremely suc- 
 cessful at one time in satisfying the booksellers, and was hand 
 and glove with the great. For " Lalla Rookli " a firm gave him 
 £3000 ; as Byron waggishly puts it : — 
 
 " Lalla Rookh, 
 A naughty book 
 By Tommy Moore 
 Who's written four " —
 
 292 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 
 
 The " Loves of the Angels " was one of this hcentious quadri- 
 lateral. Well outside it were the " Irish Melodies " : graceful, 
 sonorous, and effervescent, agreeable reading for the boudoir, and 
 not ill-suited to an accompaniment on the piano or the harp, yet 
 wanting in the patriotic fire calculated to stir the heart of a 
 people, and we have to remember with gratitude the " Twopenny 
 Post-Bag," a courageous venture for its day. 
 
 The " Melodies " are melodious, but they are not Pindaric — are 
 they not a little sing-song, forsooth, like Poe's " Raven " ? Nor 
 can the unworthy Saxon accept all the exuberant patriotism of the 
 author, and he must even be indulged if he views with scepticism 
 the phantasmagoria about the ancient splendour of Ireland under 
 its native princes — 
 
 " When Malaclii wore the collar of gold, 
 Which he won from her prond invader." 
 
 That a man should write books seven-volume strong, that 
 those books should have utterly vanished from the sight of the 
 world, should be more unusual than Caxtons, and that the author 
 should scarcely be recollected, while children of his yet live, by 
 anything but one play and one anecdote, shews, if nothing else 
 does, that Time the Avenger may give us what odds he chooses, 
 and beat us still by a very long head ! There was Hannah More's 
 " Coelebs," which, as Lamb says in a letter of 1809 to Coleridge, 
 saw eight editions in as many weeks — " one of the very poorest 
 sort of common novels, with the drawback of dull religion in it." 
 It has faded from view. There was Hayley, whose " Triumphs of 
 Temper " saw edition upon edition as surely as the years followed 
 one another, just in the same manner as Mr. Tupper's " Philosophy " 
 once did ; he is now less read and more unreadable than if he 
 had lived a thousand years ago. He, and many and many like 
 him, discounted at an usurious rate their property of permanence. 
 Of all those persons who make up the bulk and volume of Johnson's 
 " Lives " or even the " English Cyclopaedia," how large a pro- 
 portion has, long before this time, suffered a metamorphosis more 
 complete than any which Ovid sings ! How small a compass, 
 according to the existing standard of taste, would the poetical 
 literature of the eighteenth century occupy ? Perhaps it may 
 happen that, by and by, a writer will rise up and pass a like 
 judgment on the male and female raffs (the expression is Will
 
 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 293 
 
 Waterproof's) of our day ! It was about Johnson's time that 
 a vokime appeared, giving an account of 500 celebrated authors. 
 This was in 1788. I grope for them in vain. In turning over a 
 vohime of " New Elegant Extracts " from Chaucer nearly to our 
 own time there grows up in the mind a twofold regret : that much 
 was not written in prose, and that much was not left unwritten ; 
 and yet these are the choice flowers of British poetry — the care- 
 fully selected Heliconian travail of 500 years. In how narrow a 
 compass might all that is permanently valuable be housed ! How 
 many of our old idols we shall one day be found throwing down, 
 if it is only to make room for some which we did not at first recog- 
 nize ! And so it is mth all these matters. The mountainous 
 accumulation of European literature has to pass through the sieve, 
 and the slender residue might be churned a second time, if we 
 desired only the pure essence. A consolation seems to be, that the 
 whole illustrates the flux and reflux of human thought, and serves 
 to place in bolder rehef the relatively few masterpieces in letters 
 and art. There might be an edifying catalogue of literary per- 
 sonages in two alphabets : the first an exhaustive list of those 
 who have produced books during the last fifty years ; the second, 
 a briefer one, of such as are generally recollected to-day. 
 
 There are wTiters among us now whose reputation froths and 
 bubbles on the surface of literature like that of Dumas p^re, and 
 whose names will sink into oblivion when they are dead — ^if indeed 
 they are not so unfortunate as to live long enough to be forgotten 
 before, as it happened the other day with the author of the 
 " Imaginary Conversations." Nobody can surely pretend that Mr. 
 Landor did not survive his fame as he survived his friends. He 
 was ultimus Romanorum, the last of the literary generation which 
 fought duels and wrote Latin verse. The prevailing taste of the 
 day for what are styled library editions is reflected in the book- 
 sellers' windows and hsts, where, jostled and elbowed by a literary 
 compost suitable for half-educated dilettanti, one distinguishes only 
 here and there an entry or an article of a different tenor and 
 endurance. 
 
 The proverb instructs us that " he hath not lived, who liveth 
 not after he is dead," and accordingly it is usual to find authors, 
 as they see themselves drawing nigh to the " narrow house," 
 making their fame fast to some magnum opus, some splendid creation 
 of the brain, as to an anchorage. Southey complains somewhere
 
 294 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 
 
 that his " History of Brazil " did not bring him in much more 
 than the Preface he supphed to a reprint of the " Morte d' Arthur " ; 
 but then it was the rock on which his name was built, the water- 
 tight bark, in which his renown would sail as securely down the 
 stream of time as an Indian's canoe stems Canadian torrents. 
 Unless I am very much mistaken, Southey was wise when he 
 calculated his future station in reckoning for nothing his contri- 
 butions to the Quarterly, for which his excellent friend Murray so 
 handsomely paid him ; but I am afraid that he formed in his own 
 mind a somewhat fallacious estimate of his future rank among the 
 verse-writers of Great Britain. I think I am right when I say 
 that " Madoc," " Thalaba," " Kehama," and the rest of his poems, 
 have long abdicated the place in moderii English literature which 
 their author anticipated that they would and even must hold for 
 ever. Nor is it by any means clear to me, that a history of Brazil, 
 written on modern hnes, will not consign Southey's volumes to 
 the same shelf as his metrical lucubrations. They were all alike 
 time-worh. 
 
 His rapidity of composition has retaliated on him in the long 
 run. He tells us that he once wrote twelve hundred verses in a 
 single week, but that, later on, he was not equal to such a feat ; 
 and in a letter to a friend in i8oi he speaks of the facihty with 
 which he can earn £ioo by making rhymes. Rhymes indeed ! It 
 has been said that easy writing is hard reading. It is curious to 
 observe the difference between a writer like Hobbes and a writer 
 like Southey ; it is the difference between the abstract and the 
 concrete. While the author of " Leviathan "• occupied himself in 
 working out a theory or analysing an argument, the author of 
 " The Doctor " could write 3650 pages of letterpress by the clock. 
 It is one thing to build a house with bricks, and another to be 
 able to tell how a brick is made. 
 
 On the title-pages of some of the old editions of his collected 
 works, Chaucer is designated the Ancient and Learned Poet ; it 
 was the point of view not only of his contemporaries, but of 
 succeeding generations, but to us he does not seem much more 
 out of date than the author of " The Doctor," and on his erudition 
 we have not been taught to lay so much stress as on his higher 
 qualifications. He passed for a scholar perhaps among his circle, 
 as Southey passed for a poet. I apprehend that he is at present 
 remembered rather as a poet and his modern successor rather as
 
 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 295 
 
 a scholar — of a sort. Yet by an almost amusing obliquity of 
 understanding the latter, in comparing himself with Scott, spoke 
 of him as the mere favourite of the day, and of his own labours 
 as destined to grow in national estimation — to delight remote ages. 
 Such a fortune is probably reserved for neither. But so it is that 
 in each consecutive era there have been minor writers who deemed 
 themselves, and were proclaimed by their backers, as good as not 
 a few who stood at their side, but who have succeeded in standing 
 hkewise at ours. In some cases it is an injustice to an author to 
 be seen and judged through contemporary eyes ; it is an injustice 
 to posterity in others. We therefore have to hold periodical 
 Courts of Cassation or of Review, and the black ball is more in 
 request than the white. 
 
 Southey's name and his writings, nevertheless, will live for a 
 very long time to come for several reasons. He is (to say nothing 
 more) the Model Man of Letters of the last century, and there 
 is that delightful correspondence of his, second only to Lamb's, 
 and on the whole less unequal. Elsewhere I venture a remark 
 on the influential force of personal character in preserving a re- 
 putation from oblivion ; and this, so far as the man is concerned, 
 is as true of Southey as it is in other ways of Wordsworth 
 and Thackeray. 
 
 There is another reputation, that of the author of the " Decline 
 and Fall of the Roman Empire," which may be said to stand on 
 its own ground, unapproached and unshaken, like a relic of the 
 brick architecture of that great people. The pages of Gibbon 
 present blemishes and errors, which an advanced boy at a public 
 school might be able to point out and to rectify. His opinions 
 were heterodox. His style has become obsolete. But, like Hame, 
 he was no bookmaker. He did not reckon how many folios he 
 CO aid cover in an hour. He was a scholar and a gentleman. His 
 publisher came to him, with his hat in one hand and a draft in 
 the other. It was not that he was a rich man in the ordinary 
 sense ; but he had wheremthal to safeguard his freedom from 
 the most degrading of all tyranny — ^that of the bookseller. His 
 volumes are a piece of literature, not because they have been 
 revised by Milman (which tells against them), but because their 
 author and they are indissolubly associated in our minds with 
 a certain train of circumstances, which are more powerfully interest- 
 ing to the world than the mere historical narrative itself Other
 
 296 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 
 
 books may perish in spite of their merits ; this will hve in spite of 
 its faults. 
 
 Authors are not, perhaps, the best judges of their own pre- 
 tensions and weight in the scale, and certainly they have not been 
 very happy, as a rule, in selecting the particular work by which 
 they would choose to stand. But the latter circumstance may be 
 owing to the general incredulity of the literary profession as to 
 the fact that few of them are remembered by more than one thing 
 of their doing. 
 
 Smollett, no doubt, thought that " Peregrine Pickle " and 
 " Roderick Random " were " not so bad," but that the " History 
 of England " was his masterpiece and the keystone. The pubUc 
 at present thinks not, however, and Mr. Mudie has no inquiries 
 after Hume's Continuator. It is as much as the booksellers 
 care to do to reprint the work from the old plates once in a dozen 
 years for the benefit of admirable gentlemen forming what are by 
 courtesy denominated libraries. 
 
 With the inimitable comic humour of the late George Cruik- 
 shank a majority of us are at* accord ; but that artist conceived 
 that his true excellence and strength lay elsewhere — in serious 
 history ; and the younger Matthews, who had been a pupil of 
 Nash, looked back regretfully at his abandoned profession of an 
 architect. How strange are the illusions of genius ! I know that 
 Tennyson did not propose to live by his humorous efforts, and I 
 hope that the late Mr. Frederick Locker did not so by his verses 
 to his grandmamma ! What Elton says of Ausonius may be thought 
 equally true of Locker. He must be considered as a verse-maker 
 rather than as a poet. His genius was minute and trifling, and he 
 has a flimsy and affected taste. He is a writer of bon-bons for the 
 fashionable salon. Even the catalogues of the respective libraries 
 left by him and Henry Huth afford a fair index to the difference 
 between the two men — a comparison so far advantageous to Locker, 
 that both had a share of the virtuoso. But if one were to place 
 side by side the collection of the author of " London Lyrics " and 
 that of a scholar or a man of letters, the contrast would be im- 
 measurably more teUing. 
 
 Thackeray, as a draughtsman, shewed what a man of genius 
 can do who possesses the taste and judgment of an amateur and 
 the experience of an advanced pupil, without any real aptitude 
 for the vocation of an artist, or appreciable genius for depicting
 
 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 297 
 
 his notions of people and things with any implement other than 
 his pen. Yet he laid, no doubt, great stress on his graphic capa- 
 bilities ; and his friends, or at least his publishers, commit the 
 singular absurdity of reproducing these grotesques in the latest 
 impressions of his works. The world had Cruikshank, Doyle, Leech, 
 and Hablot Browne ; and Thackeray's essays, in a field not his 
 own, and apparently modelled on the rather stiff and mechanical 
 style of Doyle, might have well remained incognito, — they would 
 have become the gems of his friends' portfolios, or, as some of them 
 did, of his housekeeper's, or as some of Aubrey Beardsley's graver 
 miscarriages do, it is understood, of his late publisher's. But upon 
 me they produce a disagreeable impression, and even make me 
 throw away the volume in which they occur, as do the prospectuses 
 posted to me by certain publishing houses with the latest wonderful 
 w^onders of their literary prodigies proclaimed by sound of trumpet 
 in broadside tj^Q with portraits of the gifted beings. Thackeray 
 was a man of prolific literary faculty and a cynical humorist ; but 
 the plain truth is that his writings, from his narrow culture and 
 observation, are scarcely less warped than his artistic work. In 
 his more playful vein — in his Ballads and his Imitations of others 
 — ^he is happiest. The novelist, who portrays certain of his char- 
 acters at second-hand or by guess-work, resembles the makers of 
 old maps where fancy served them in delineating unknown regions. 
 Scenes in high life delineated by those, who in former days had 
 no access to it, cannot be expected to be faithful or authoritative, 
 while such from the pens of those within the pale are apt, if they 
 are undertaken, to be deficient in literary workmanship ; and even 
 the latitude, which may be excused on the stage in the representa- 
 tion of persons of rank, is not permissible in the realistic story 
 or sketch, where too great a violence to truth offends and 
 estranges. 
 
 Gray used to devour with avidity the romances of the Due de 
 Rochefoucauld and the Due de Nemours. The generation which 
 went before had run mad upon Calprenede, Mdlle. de Scudery, and 
 Honore Diirfe, and does not the old York printer, Thomas Gent, 
 tell us how his dear niece, Anne Standish, had " Cassandra " by 
 heart ? It was the same with Johnson and his contemporaries. 
 Hazlitt, who died in 1830, by no means an old man, was an 
 enthusiastic admirer of Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Barbauld — the 
 two hold women. Both he and Lamb speak eulogistically of
 
 298 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 
 
 " Nature and Art " by the first, and few nowadays know whether 
 it was a novel or an illustrated magazine. 
 
 Miss Burney's " Evelina " was once in everybody's mouth. It 
 is now where " Dennis Donne," " Eleanor's Victory," et hoc genus 
 omne, will be before they are half so old. The public taste is more 
 ephemeral than the most ephemeral publication it patronises, and 
 then abandons ; for almost the same may be said of Hook and 
 Jerrold. Do the booksellers find " Gilbert Gurney " and " Sayings 
 and Doings " worth reprinting ? Jerrold seems to have died but 
 yesterday, and his works are as little asked for at the libraries as 
 " Vathek " and the " Castle of Otranto." Does the book trade 
 experience as eager a call for the writings of Fenimore Cooper 
 and Anthony Trollope ? Nay, sadder still, Sydney Smith, as a 
 humorist superior to Lamb, and as a man even more so, is barely 
 recollected. 
 
 Much of the romantic and sentimental extravagance on which 
 our ancestors complacently and contentedly browsed was im- 
 ported from Germany, where, side by side with some of the best 
 writers and thinkers of that country during the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth centuries, a succession of fluent scribblers flooded the 
 market with popular and saleable garbage. The Germans enjoy 
 the reputation of being an excessively learned and imaginative 
 people ; but they have given to the world fully their fair share of 
 perishable commonplace. 
 
 People, by which we intend people in Mr. Mudie's or Mr. Hook- 
 ham's sense, judge of the antiquity of books and of the antiquity, 
 say of furniture, rather differently. A book which is as old as our 
 dining-table is an old book. Chaucer is but ancient. For all 
 practical purposes. Miss Burney's novels are as out of date as the 
 " Faery Queen," and o'f the two I do not know whether Spenser 
 is not the less neglected ! 
 
 There may be some living who recollect well when Mr. Plumer 
 Ward was ranked with Dickens, and Bulwer, and Scott. I have 
 heard the sum mentioned, which Mr. Colburn gave him for 
 " Tremaine " ; it was about eight times as much as " Vanity Fair " 
 brought to Michael Angelo Titmarsh. 
 
 happy age ! satisfied with its own offspring, with its par- 
 ticular pets, with what Thoreau calls its tit-men ! Once upon a 
 time it was the Moores and the Campbells, the Lockharts and the 
 Aytouns, the Inchbalds and the Barbaulds, and how many more ?
 
 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 299 
 
 — and have we reason to be prouder or gladder ? The late Mr. 
 Pater can hold all the darlings of the press in the hollow of his hand, 
 and he had no chaperon, nor had Mr. Jef!eries or Mr. Meredith. 
 Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson had a few too many. His friends 
 have well-nigh undone him. They have made more of him than 
 perhaps he either foresaw or desired. His self-evident solecism, 
 that Taste is the feminine of Genius, they advertised as a prodigy 
 of critical acumen. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott's obligations to the anonymous appearance 
 of " Waverley " have not been generally appreciated, I take it. 
 The booksellers would have had a very different story to tell if 
 the Waverley Novels had only been Scott's Novels. Never was 
 such a case known before (or since) of books standing by each 
 other. WTiy, if we admire " Ivanhoe," which is natural, we must 
 admire " Redgauntlet," or at least buy it, for that seems to say 
 '" I, too, am a Waverley Novel ! " " The Heart of Midlothian " is 
 not perfect without " The Black Dwarf " for the same reason ; 
 and " Quentin Durward " pairs off with " Castle Dangerous." It 
 is not so with most authors. Because one buys " Tristram 
 Shandy," one need not buy the " Sentimental Journey," which is 
 quite another matter. 
 
 It is a fiction to assert that each Novel is sold separately, and 
 is complete in itself. It is no such thing. They are a serried 
 phalanx, locking their shields together, clan-like. If you have one. 
 you must have all, or you break a set. You might as well buy ' 
 an odd lot of the " Percy Anecdotes," or Volume XIX. of the 
 " Encyclopaedia Britannica." Any one who desires to possess the 
 Waverley Novels must order his bookseller to send the complete 
 set to him with the backs lettered. He must not pick and choose. 
 Sir Walter's mistake, after all, was that he ever wrote anything 
 but novels — Waverley Novels. If he had been wise, he would 
 have ended as he began, and then every gentleman's bookcase 
 would have had to groan under something like an hundredw^eight 
 of Scott's prose. As it is, we get out of buying " Marmion " and 
 the " Lady of the Lake," and I know not how much more besides, 
 if we like, and still do not spoil our series. The question arises, 
 Why have we not the Pickwick Novels and the Knebworth 
 Novels ? 
 
 It may be said, however, that the Waverley Novels, or the 
 best of them, are almost the only things of the sort that are worth
 
 j' 
 
 00 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 
 
 reading. They are always fresh, because nature is always so. They 
 are free from the twaddle and bombast which usually taint this 
 class of writing. They carry us back far enough, but not too 
 far. They are old enough, but not too old. I suppose that they 
 cannot help being too Scotish ; even the author of the " Unspeak- 
 able Scot " may allow them points. In Scott's verses there is 
 a masculine vigour, a warmth, and a swing, which used to com- 
 mend them to me in days gone by. 
 
 " Ivanhoe," " The Talisman," and one or two more, with what 
 a masterly hand they are done, not repelling us by their remote- 
 ness, scarcely letting us suspect, till we have laid the volume down, 
 and can think about it more at leisure, that we have been following 
 our romancist into what are, popularly speaking, prehistoric times. 
 As to Scott's Notes it is different. I have not looked at them 
 these thirty years or more. But he was an indifferent antiquary, 
 and his archseological elucidations are poor stuff. 
 
 It is a ticklish matter for an author to cast his story too far 
 back in antiquity. The only tale w^hich belongs to the classical 
 age, and which is not insipid or ridiculous, is " The Last Days of 
 Pompeii," albeit it is as a matter of fact not much more to be 
 trusted than the same author's " Pelham " in a different way. 
 Some one claimed for Bulwer the credit of having been the first 
 (in his " Richelieu ") to say that the Pen had conquered the Sword. 
 But did not Leigh Hunt forestal him ? 
 
 Other books there are that have been wrought of late days, 
 which the world has a mind and a will to cherish. It will always 
 keep " Adam Bede " with it, and the weaver of Raveloe. It will 
 not part with " Eugene Aram," nor with " Paul Clifford." " David 
 Copperfield " and Colonel Newcome will not be forgotten, or fall 
 out of their places. Tom Jones and My Uncle Toby will continue 
 to the end to fill their old corners in our libraries and in our 
 recollections. 
 
 Of Dickens it may be said that for thorough permanence, for 
 lasting rank as an English classic, he not only dealt too largely, 
 as Benjamin Jonson had done long before, in local colouring and 
 temporary sentiment, but even caricatured what was already little 
 short of that. The same cause, which wall probably prove fatal 
 to Cruikshank as an artist, may prove fatal to the other as a 
 writer. Matter, which is entertaining in conversation, in a news- 
 paper, nay, in a serial, is apt to be deficient in fibre and catholicity.
 
 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 301 
 
 Dickens was a contemporary author, and if his types are grotesques, 
 the illustrations to the text are too often still more so. The truth 
 always suffices ; it is bad enough, good enough ; serious enough, 
 comical enough. Exaggeration palls and kills. Already of those 
 who ask for Dickens a substantial quota want the plates, and are 
 satisfied with something short of earliest proofs, or buy sixpenny 
 selections for the entertainment of their children. 
 
 The author of the " Earthly Paradise," " Love is Enough," and 
 many a romantic story of the older time, impressed one with a 
 feehng of the unreality of his pretensions as a poet. A poet he 
 was in the sense of robust executive power ; but you could 
 not help seeing in the background the prosperous man of business 
 and the sociaHst ; and if you succeeded in summing up this rather 
 perplexing and distasteful triunity, it was to conclude that the 
 late Mr. Morris, was, hke his predecessor Michael Angelo, practical 
 above all things, and also resembled him in the versatility of his 
 acquirements, employing his pen in the intervals of leisure in the 
 service of the Muses and (which the greater Italian could not 
 have done) in mounting the tribune to advocate an equal division 
 of property — that is, of all save his own. 
 
 As for Fielding and that school, I have a fancy for reading 
 them in the old editions, as Lamb had for Sir Thomas Browne in 
 folio, though, lackaday ! what would he have said to the Kelmscott 
 Chaucer ? The stif? crackhng paper, the elderly-faced type, the 
 short paragraphs, and the well-thumbed old calf bindings, seem 
 proper to the subject and to the author, if not part of them both. 
 The contrast is more intelligible, because, as you read, you are 
 incessantly reminded of the period, to which the author belonged, 
 by the whole force and temperature of the printed medium. In a 
 modern edition of an old writer there is apt, unless he is a Shakespear 
 or a Chaucer, who are never old, to be a lack of concord. " Tom 
 Jones " has been pubhshed in one foolscap book at a couple of 
 shilhngs. I would rather not see it. It is in my eyes a desecration. 
 It is enough to imagine the thin damp paper, the closely-packed 
 page, the blurred cramped printing, the cropped edges, and the 
 act-drop cover ! I cannot think this is my Parson Adams. My 
 " Tom Jones " is too good to be reprinted at a steam-press, and 
 sold at railway-stations. Of all books Gilbert White's " History 
 of Selborne " was the one which should have been left unviolated 
 by the pagan republisher. It is essentially a personal work
 
 302 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 
 
 appurtenant to an individual and an epoch, and should have been 
 protected from editorial sacrilege. 
 
 Day, I venture to say, had no idea that his " Sandford and 
 Merton " would never die. If he had intended it to be immortal, 
 it would not have been ! A book of a similar stamp, only not so 
 enduring, I should fancy, by one-half, has been produced in our 
 own time. " Tom Brown's School-days " will live to be old, 
 because its matter and manner are not temporary. But why did 
 Mr. Hughes insist on following it up by " Tom Brown at Oxford " ? 
 It reminds one of the evanescent imitations of the " Arabian 
 Nights " and the Second and Third Parts of the " Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress." How quite as happy and quite as rich the world would 
 have been if Robinson Crusoe had not favoured it with his after- 
 thoughts ; but it laid itself at the feet of the triumphant author. 
 How your literary idol knows how to twist you round his little 
 finger ! Book-buyers were amply satisfied ; but the option was 
 not theirs. Why should Tennyson have committed such a solecism 
 as to spoil the " May Queen " by two last appearances, and 
 " Locksley Hall " by a string of dull commonplaces, worthy of 
 Tupper or Satan Montgomery ? The author of " Sing a Song of 
 Sixpence," or his injudicious editor, fell into a similar error. Because 
 we have a " Dance of Death," must we have a " Dance of Life " ? 
 There is the delightful sketch of Horace by Sir Theodore Martin, 
 but alas ! it is spoiled by his attempt to render the original poems 
 into English. The late Richard JefEeries went outside the domain, 
 where he was so thoroughly at home, to vex us Avith weak novels 
 and political rant. Another instance occurs to me, which is more 
 regrettable than surprising, that of Grant Allen : by feeling and 
 culture a naturalist, by necessity a manufacturer of excruciating 
 romances. how the paper-mills fatten on us ! for an age 
 of Single Book Authors ! One Man One Book. Would I could 
 be of them ! 
 
 I should be grateful to anybody who could explain satisfactorily 
 the enthusiastic reception of such books as Lockhart's " Ancient 
 Spanish Ballads " and Aytoun's " Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers." 
 They can only be popular where a strange ignorance prevails of 
 what they ought to have been. There are no two works which I 
 have ever taken up with a more sanguine expectation of being 
 entertained, and thrown down again with a keener sense of dis- 
 appointment. Lockhart was an amiable man, and son-in-law to
 
 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 303 
 
 Scott ; but he was not qualified for tlie task which he undertook. 
 Neither he nor Aytoun was a poet ; but the latter succeeded 
 tolerably well, at all events, in producing correct versification. 
 Lockhart's production seems to me totally to fail in conveying 
 the spirit and grand simplicity of his originals ; the metre is faulty ; 
 and the diction, where it is not feeble, is inappropriate. I turn 
 from it to Percy's imitations of our own old minstrelsy, which 
 awakened the ire of Ritson, and begin to think that, after all, 
 they have a certain smack of Tyrtseus. There were men of the 
 last generation, who were not poets at all in the sense in which 
 Tennyson or Swinburne is a poet, yet who had an ear for rhythm. 
 What would have become of Scott's " Marmion " or of Campbell's 
 " Hohenhnden " if the writers had been as neghgent of metrical 
 laws as Lockhart, and as destitute of the true inspiration as Aytoun ? 
 
 But when we talk of Scotish poets and poetry, what do we mean ? 
 All that has been ever written of any permanent and considerable 
 worth, would go into a single volume. The Scots celebrate their 
 Burns in dinners and toasts, but they do not read him ; they will 
 sell the editio princeps, if they have it, to the highest American 
 bidder. Sir Walter wrote some fine energetic smoothly running 
 verse — no poetry. The noblest productions of the Northern Muse 
 are perhaps a few of the pieces by authors of the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries ; and there are a few capital songs, the melodies 
 of which, by the way, struck Dean Ramsay as best calculated to 
 preserve them. 
 
 Jack'Hinton and Tom Burke are floating down with the tide, 
 and Davenport Dunn, " The Man of our Day," will be ready to 
 follow at the next flow, taking with him, perhaps, " Luttrell of 
 Arran," who may offer his arm to Aurora Floyd and Lady Audley. 
 They have enjoyed the full sunshine of public favour ; they have 
 taken out all their fame in hard cash ; and now they have nothing 
 more to look for. But in the case of this author it does not so 
 greatly signify : for he has the art of perpetuating his types ; 
 his characters are all " utility " people : — 
 
 " And many a Jack of Dover hast tliou sold. 
 That has been twice hot and twice cold." 
 
 The "Tower of London" and "Old St. Paul's" are pretty 
 taking things, which many of us read with delight in our youth.
 
 304 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 
 
 and might not venture to take up again for fear of the conse- 
 quences ; but then Ainsworth should not have given us " White- 
 friars " and the " Constable de Bourbon." He set about the last, 
 it appears, at the suggestion of a friend. This must have been 
 a friend's malice ! Alsatia was delicate ground to tread upon, 
 when a master had pre-occupied it, and made it his own ; and 
 " Whitefriars " follows lamely in the trail of the " Fortunes of 
 Nigel," as Mr. Caine's " Christian " does in that of his " Manxman." 
 Johnson himself sounds the keynote of this part of my argument 
 in the concluding paragraph of his account of David Mallet. But 
 what a bombshell among the authors and booksellers would be a 
 volume by an impartial and courageous and withal authoritative 
 pen on the entire cor pics of our writers in verse and prose ! Would 
 not such an undertaking tear to shreds many and many a fair 
 reputation ? 
 
 A serviceable and edifying enterprise, if it were done in such 
 a manner as to command acceptance, would be a Register of Books 
 which are de facto such, as distinguished from those, which suggest 
 water poured out of one saucepan into another. It is Montaigne, 
 who tells us that he, who takes his material from others, is not a 
 maker, but a borrower, of books. Most of us have little enough 
 to say worth hearing or reading, and even that slender minority 
 is not long in growing monotonous. 
 
 The processes of ingress and egress continue with a rapidity 
 proportionate to the constant and unfailing advent of newcomers. 
 The air is perpetually resonant with the praises of the latest 
 favourite. Now it is tliis, now that, writer, who is having a good 
 time, who is the talk of the town, the press, and the drawing- 
 rooms. One stands by and holds one's peace. One feels sure that 
 common sense will have its turn, that lucubrations calculated for 
 the meridian of the mess-room, the public house, the kitchen, or 
 the kitchen-fire, will not always be cried up as national treasures, 
 that coxcombical, daintily upholstered frippery in prose or 
 verse will not for ever pass current as a book, and that 
 such as put on the market nauseous compounds of silliness, 
 indecency, and blasphemy, will regain their true level after 
 a passing homage at the hands of readers more foolish than 
 themselves. 
 
 Even the healthier popular authors of the day or the season 
 suffer, like the rose crushed by its gatherer from very excess of
 
 SOME LATE AND LIVING AUTHORS 305 
 
 affection, by too impulsive and superficial applause. The reception 
 and standing accorded to many who are yet among us cannot 
 endure very long, because they are due, not to deliberate con- 
 viction, but to unwholesome agencies and methods, which favour 
 precocious ripeness and premature decay. 
 
 u
 
 XXIV 
 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 
 
 " 01 TrXeTsTOi /ca/coi."— BlAS OF PeIENE. 
 " lUachrymabiles ignotique longa nocte urgentur." — HOR 
 
 Everybody must have known many, whose sole recommendation 
 was that they were not common people, and others, again, whose 
 sole defect might be said to be that they were. I personally 
 miderstand as coming within the category individuals with trite, 
 mechanical notions, and low-bred ways of judging, such as you 
 may find among common-council men, schoolmasters, beadles, 
 shopkeepers, and Government understrappers. A person may be 
 as ignorant as a member of Convocation, and yet he may make 
 a fair figure in society, nay, he may not impossibly be a gentleman. 
 So far as mere ignorance is concerned, until it is classed among 
 the Cardinal Vices, or is treated as an Eighth Deadly Sin, it will 
 continue to be a prevaihng characteristic of this and every other 
 nation. There are two sections in the community always, con- 
 sciously or otherwise, doing their best to impede the advance and 
 diffusion of true knowledge : the Learners who will not learn, and 
 the Teachers who cannot teach. Alas ! is it not so, that when 
 a man, who has unusually lofty aspirations, has absorbed all that 
 schools and universities can afford or communicate, he has to start 
 on a new career, one of self-instruction ; and he quickly discovers 
 that his hfe's work is before him, and that he has carried away 
 from his teachers barely more than the ABC, like a fellow who 
 begins the world with fourpence halfpenny. 
 
 There was K., with the heart of a gentleman, who could 
 point to belted ancestors, and the look of a haberdasher : with 
 feelings nearly too good for a lord : and the pronunciation of a 
 mechanic. The soul, like Achitophel's, misfitted the body. There 
 was unceasing bad accord between the mind and its grosser tene- 
 ment. His appearance did not satisfy the conventional standard 
 
 of gentility ; and then he hrnped, which alone requires a thousand 
 
 ^06
 
 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 307 
 
 atoning graces. People consented to overlook BjTon's short leg 
 at the time, because he was a peer of the realm and the author 
 of " Childe Harold " ; and it was also a kind of makeweight. 
 Pope was of a delicate and wizen frame of body. But he had not 
 the plebeian air, and he was thought worthy to be the intimate 
 companion of men of the first distinction among his contemporaries. 
 There was nothing in his way of talking or his general address to 
 shock their prejudices, and his stunted growth, on the same prin- 
 ciple as Byron's infirmity, served as a foil to his superior intellectual 
 faculties. 
 
 The conversation of K. was never brilliant ; but it bore 
 evidence of a certain homage to culture acquired by contact with 
 authors and artists. He had a tincture of literature, and was at 
 home in some of the old poets. He admired Spenser and Goldsmith; 
 his family read the author of " In Memoriam " ; he had friends 
 who could give an opinion about Shelley or Keats. In generosity 
 of disposition nobody exceeded him. He kept a hospitable table. 
 He was at all times ready to perform the rites of friendship in 
 their most substantial shape. He had the most delicate way 
 of conferring an obligation of any one I ever knew. 
 
 But he was a common sort of person notwithstanding, and in 
 his literary aspirations he never, that I am aware, got beyond the 
 formation round him of a small coterie of third-rate authors, who 
 fraternized ■with a Manchester warehouseman for a consideration. 
 
 He did not live to see culture become more general, and his 
 own daughter a writer on the Fine Arts. Emulation does much 
 in these matters. In an Homeric atmosphere even a Lord Mayor 
 has ere now quoted the author of the " Iliad," nay, and Horace 
 into the bargain, in an after-dinner speech, putting us in mind of 
 Butler's Pig and Blackbird. K. would have been content with 
 a line from Wordsworth or a couplet from Longfellow. These are 
 ticklish experiments ; and they prove that his lordship understood 
 Homer and Horace just as much as Boydell's Shakespear proves 
 that the excellent alderman understood the writings of the Enghsh 
 poet. The truth is that, for my immediate purpose, they prove 
 something else. For Greek and Latin scholars now-a-days have 
 A\-isely, as I think, grown rather more chary of making use of 
 joreign quotations. Ends of Greek and Latin are reserved for the 
 Mansion-House. Mr. Gladstone became satisfied with citing his 
 favourite epic in the version of Pope. The classics have migrated
 
 3o8 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 
 
 from Whitehall to Guildhall. A corporate body is the literary 
 heir of Maecenas. 
 
 Then there was , one of the most good-natured fellows in 
 
 the world, a tall, burly, awkward, shambling figure, half crippled 
 by rheumatism, with square, massive features and a florid com- 
 plexion. He was a man of the most extensive and varied informa- 
 tion. He was a person of shrewd insight into matters, and his 
 knowledge of common and general topics was positively very 
 considerable. His opinion on any question of home policy was sure 
 to be worth something, more or less ; it would be nearly as good, 
 probably, as a Cabinet Minister's, and better than an M.P.'s ; 
 for there would be more common sense and no party spleen. His 
 acquaintance with localities and their products and speciahties, 
 again, was surprising. There was no part of England where he 
 had not been, and of which he did not know more than you did, 
 if it was worth knowing. He had the state of the markets and 
 exchanges, and the prices current, at his fingei's' ends. He could 
 tell you what you had given for the coat on your back, or at least 
 what he should have given for such another. You could not be 
 long in his company mthout having an uncomfortable sensation 
 that you had been appraised and scheduled. He had a born gift 
 for valuation. He possessed unique and mysterious facihties for 
 obtaining articles of domestic consumption at exceptional rates 
 from parties whose address he was not exactly at liberty to divulge. 
 This was his idiosyncrasy for specialism. He had a practical eye 
 to the money-value of things — and of persons. He carried in his 
 head every variety of useful knowledge, from the commercial 
 anatomy of a dust-bin to a conversance with the trade of the port 
 and city of London. He was a peripatetic museum, methodically 
 classified, of the best and latest facts — best because latest. He 
 was an encyclopaedia of current intelligence. The ins and outs 
 of most trades and crafts were spread like an open volume before 
 him. But in the metaphysics of a matter he was at fault. He 
 would have rolled his big head from side to side, and laughed 
 right up from his stomach, if you had propounded the view of a 
 question from an aesthetic point. If you had noted that a par- 
 ticular passage in a book — that, for instance, where Robinson 
 Crusoe just saves himself from falUng into the clutches of the 
 savages by drawing up the ladder, and you tell him that you can 
 never read it without being on pins and needles, your heart in
 
 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 309 
 
 your mouth, till Crusoe is out of danger, he smiles, and informs you 
 that he has a very fine copy in morocco of the most valuable 
 edition of the work. I do not know what to say about his logic ; 
 at any rate, he would not have proceeded from visionary premises 
 to rickety conclusions. He never beat about the bush : a para- 
 phrast or word-painter would have appeared to him too fine a 
 gentleman. 
 
 His was essentially a vulgar mind. He saw everything in a 
 matter-of-fact light. He reduced all things to a matter-of-fact 
 standard. He was no colourist. He wanted the imaginative 
 faculty, and could not allow for the wind. For example, he could 
 never be brought to comprehend a proverb. Why should people 
 speak of the " early bird getting the worm," as if there was only 
 one worm to be got, when the fact was that there were millions ? 
 Or again, of " rolling stones gathering no moss " — where was the 
 advantage, if they should ? This was the dry hard tone of his 
 understanding. His learning was as multifarious as a wardrobe 
 shop. In the course of his very wide range of inquiry and experi- 
 ence, he occasionally embraced certain uncommercial items of 
 news, which he had picked up by accident, and had not happened 
 to let go, as was usually the case with commodities not in busy 
 demand. I remember that he entertained to the last a loose 
 persuasion that Sir Philip Sidney was beheaded for high treason 
 in the reign of King Charles II., and that " Lalla Rookh " was the 
 poem by which Sir Thomas More hoped to transmit his name 
 to posterity. 
 
 This man, big and tall as he was, sank down at last into the 
 vastest depth of all without leaving a trace behind him. The 
 secret was, that he was a very common sort of person. A stranger, 
 who did not know who he was (how few did !), and who had a 
 writ or two out, would have crossed over to the other side of 
 the way. 
 
 Mrs. was a painfully ordinary woman. The single idea, 
 
 of which she was mistress, was subdivided and attenuated, till it 
 became, like the ancient Greek dwarf, so small that you could not 
 see it. She was a sort of imperfectly educated enthusiast : like 
 Madame d'Albret, bonne ame et sot esprit, who patronized Madame 
 de Maintenon in her widowhood and poverty. She was a theologian 
 of a Sunday-school type, a distributor of pious tracts, of which 
 the text was even thinner than the paper ; a Mission-monger, who
 
 310 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 
 
 let her domestic duties wait upon her correspondence with the 
 Hawaiian group ; a female Quixote with her eyes bandaged : a 
 humble, unwitting bondwoman of other people's notions. 
 
 Her earthly habitation was whilom here ; but her heart and 
 treasure were in Polynesia. She considered it a more acceptable 
 sacrifice to make clothes for the immature Hindoos than to be an 
 handmaid to her husband and a light to his house. Like Mrs. 
 Jellyby of yore, she united with her more honest than erudite 
 acquaintance in providing stout European fabrics for the human 
 fauna of the tropical zone, while thousands at home remained 
 hungry and barefoot. This was angelique hetise. She reminded 
 one of the shoemaker and his wife in Grimm — with a difference. 
 my dear friends, if you ever admit ladies to Parliament — I 
 hope you never will — do not vote for Mrs. Jellyby. 
 
 Religious persuasion, if it is to be effectual, should either be 
 very strong or very sweet. A clergyman always thrives better, 
 if he is a handsome fellow, provided he is not a dunce or a mauvais 
 sujet. But our poor lady friend possessed no attractions of face 
 or figure. She was not even a Madame d'Albret. She had no 
 grace of manner or air. She wanted fhysique. Her most capital 
 reasons for the faith which was in her were odds and ends of 
 hackneyed truisms, the broken crumbs of wisdom fallen from 
 other mouths. She talked by the book, and argued by rote. She 
 had laid down no new lines of thought for herself. Her ideas, 
 such as they were, ran in time-worn grooves. She could give no 
 better account of her opinions than that they were her mother's 
 and her grandmother's, and her adherence to them was serenely 
 and stolidly imperturbable. They were as much heirlooms as the 
 family teapot. They were not the processes of individual thought 
 which, according to a learned author, distinguish us from the gods 
 above us and the beasts beneath, but transmitted chattels like a 
 house or a field ; and not improbably she might have held it, as 
 an American author puts the matter, little less than blasphemy 
 to know more than those who went before her. Her belief in 
 Sunday best, in the authentic unrevised version of the Bible, and 
 in a pew in the parish church, was not to be shaken by all the 
 men of genius in the universe. 
 
 Her family were commonplace people. A little foppishness 
 would have set them off to advantage, and have been no such 
 damnable offence. It would have been justifiable coxcombry. It
 
 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 311 
 
 would have been a species of dandyism, which no reasonable being 
 could have found it in his heart to condemn. The subject of the 
 present notice has long since composed her head. But she left 
 brothers and sisters a plentiful brood. She was not spared to 
 witness the Great Wave of Salvationism, nor would her muscular 
 energies have qualified her for a spiritual Bacchante. 
 
 I used to know a family in the North, whose connections were 
 even more than respectable. They had a standing in the county, 
 and enjoyed an easy fortune. They employed the most fashionable 
 London milUners, attended the subscription balls, were scrupulous 
 church-goers, and first-class contributors to the nearest book-stall. 
 Nay, they possessed a library of reference, which included two 
 copies of Tupper's " Proverbial Philosophy." But their under- 
 standings were on the narrow gauge. Their knowledge was second- 
 hand. Their piety was of the false conventional stamp. They 
 wanted jorm and flexibihty. Of soHd culture they had scarcely 
 more than an agricultural labourer. Their ignorance and assump- 
 tion resembled the sides of an isosceles triangle. Tropes and 
 figures were not in their chart. The higher flights of the imagination 
 formed a terra incognita, of which they had not a favourable opinion. 
 The writer of works a little out of the beaten track was almost 
 as much a lusus naturce as the ornithorhynchus or the dodo. They 
 exhibited the nett result of characters moulded by a normal 
 boarding-school, a rustic chque, and a circulating library. Their 
 grasp of a question was remarkably tenacious, but it was only 
 one side of it — their own. Cause and effect were almost conver- 
 tible terms. Of the literary world they had a special abhorrence 
 and distrust. An author at large in the house, when other visitors 
 were announced, was a highly disconcerting circumstance. They 
 did not know, to begin with, where he came in the order of 
 precedence, and hesitated to introduce him to the neighbouring 
 villagers from fear of some embarrassing contretemps. A ferocious 
 dog, at the worst, could only inoculate their acquaintance with 
 hydrophobia ; but a man of letters, whose opinions and informa- 
 tion were beyond their plummet, was a far more dangerous, and 
 at the same time an inferior, animal. They reversed the famihar 
 maxim, omne ignotum fro magnifico. What they did not com- 
 prehend they scorned. In the view of these richly furnished minds 
 a literary man, no matter how eminent he might be, was " a 
 person who wrote " in the same way that a tinker is one who
 
 312 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 
 
 mends saucepans. They measured him by their own bucolic 
 standard, and on finding that he did not answer to it, discarded 
 him as a dubious character. It was not with them as it is fast 
 growing in towns, where the local clergyman is tolerated only, 
 where he is a good kind of fellow ; they looked upon him with a 
 sort of awe ; he was appointed to take the lady of the house into 
 dinner, and the humble layfolk sorted themselves as they listed. 
 The male representatives of this interesting type are usually grooms, 
 jockeys, and gamekeepers disguised in broadcloth. 
 
 This intellectual crassitude one may call Provincialism. It is 
 the darker side of the Rural Character and Life, but it extends 
 to such places as Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, which 
 are little better than overgrown country towns. London is the 
 unique metropolis ; and the rest of Great Britain is suburb and 
 outskirt. The old-fashioned schoolbooks divide history into Sacred 
 and Profane. But humanity may be similarly classified. These 
 folks belonged to the Profane section ; and their wealth and 
 position merely made their absence of culture and of homage to 
 it in others so much the more conspicuous. It was to such that 
 Jesus Christ referred, when He said, " Let the dead bury their 
 dead." 
 
 Here was a clear instance in which a little Podgerism would 
 have been no enormity whatever. What grace, if they had but 
 known it, would have been added to them by a degree of dotage 
 upon things lifted above the vulgar level ? A certain worship of 
 the heroic, let it have been even somewhat uncritical, would have 
 gone some way at least to round the circle of their perfections. 
 
 One may have an indifferent opinion of an author ; but one 
 is not, perhaps, to be decried as a blockhead on this account. A 
 Quarterly Reviewer saw nothing in the writings of Mill, and his 
 friends may have thought none the worse of him for it. A certain 
 organ once issued its fiat, that the late author of the "Angel in the 
 House " was one of the greatest of living poets ; but it is presumed 
 that those who differ from the oracle are not ipso facto individuals 
 of inferior insight. Mr. cannot see the advantage of re- 
 publishing the literature of our ancestors ; but he must not send 
 me to Coventry if I confess an inability to agree with him. Another 
 gentleman has favoured the world by disclosing certain undis- 
 covered beauties in Crabbe ; yet, sad to relate, I discern nothing 
 but his dull prosaic realism and tiresome anatomical portraiture.
 
 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 313 
 
 He did not select his personages on the plan of Mr. Lodge. He went 
 to the parish register. The workhouse, or the lunatic asylum, 
 or a broker's shop, would have been equally useful as material 
 for an inventory. Gray portrayed in verse the departed dwellers 
 in a hamlet — but it was with the feeling of a poet — in a series of 
 vignettes. A good deal of this is mere spleen or prejudice possibly, 
 or it may be predicated of all literary merit that it is more or less, 
 after all, a matter of taste. 
 
 I can easily imagine a man to be a common person, who never- 
 theless reads the " Waverley Novels " once a year and owns a 
 copy of Hume's " Essays," to which he does not so often turn. 
 
 There is , who carries the " Odes of Anacreon " about with him 
 
 in his pocket wherever he goes, and rents a shooting-box. But this 
 does not establish his superiority. On the contrary, the excep- 
 tion seems to prove the rule here. With Anacreon he begins and 
 ends. His stock of ideas is exhausted. He has put all his eggs 
 into one basket. If you were to attempt to discuss with him the 
 merits of Tasso, or invite his attention to the beauties of Parnell, 
 he would suspect there was some irony at the bottom of it, or at 
 the best he would not know in what language Tasso wrote, or 
 where Parnell came in the order of time. If you took him upon 
 philosophy or metaphysics, it would be the same thing. You 
 would get nothing for your pains. He would be as incapable of 
 response as the Seven Sleepers, or as the spectre which Rip Van 
 Winkle met upon the mountain. He would have said his say, 
 " Anacreon was a great poet " — which everybody knows that he 
 was not. I once knew a justice of peace for Surrey, who thought 
 Shakespear " a clever man," and an old French governess who 
 pronounced Montaigne a " nice " one. The mind in both cases 
 was a measuring apparatus, which beyond a given point did not 
 register. They could not define their terms. 
 
 Ilhteracy is two-handed. In current parlance our greatest 
 names are names, and little more. We hear Chaucer and Shakes- 
 pear linked with Dryden and Pope : Bacon with Hobbes and 
 Hobbes with Locke ; and in the eyes of the average man and 
 woman they are all members of one brooherhood with paper- 
 makers, printers, and binders. Among the doleful inarticulate 
 beings, who constitute Society, culture enjoys no solid standing 
 or welcome. The characters and reputations most cherished and 
 revered by real judges merely form items in a vocabulary of
 
 314 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 
 
 fashionable patter and argot which the He and She " Don't- You- 
 Knows " carry about with them, as travellers in foreign countries 
 take conversational manuals. It is almost as if persons of literary 
 or artistic refinement should hold no other portfolio, and as if 
 intellectual accomplishments were such another craft as the 
 commerce in daily necessities. 
 
 But take a man who was not half so genteel as an attache, 
 and who avoided broadcloth and French boots from inclination 
 or need, but who could relish Rousseau and Madame de Stael, 
 Jacob Behmen and Erasmus of Rotterdam, Browning's Poems 
 and Home's " Farthing Epic," Ruskin's " Stones of Venice " and 
 Herbert Spencer's " Sociology " or Darwin's " Descent of Man," and 
 it might be safely pronounced of such an one, that he was no 
 ordinary person, if indeed he was not a more distinguished char- 
 acter than an M.P., or a Secretary's Secretary, whose only authors 
 are Hansard and Dod. 
 
 It is very seldom that eminent men of culture unite, like Charles 
 Darwin, a richly-stored mind and a royal intellect with a gentle- 
 manly deportment and a private fortune. But the w^orld even 
 there was not to be robbed of its discount. Darwin was also a 
 freethinker. How much better, quoth Mrs. Grundy, to own sound 
 theological opinions, than to be a mere man of genius ! And how 
 much easier. Madam ! The majority of scholars and scientists 
 are deficient in Darwin's personal advantages. They have not the 
 gentleman look. They have not country seats and fair estates. 
 I have met with men of unprepossessing exteriors, who have risen 
 from nothing, and yet who are in their way what Darwin was in 
 his — prodigies of accomplishments and cyclopaedias of information. 
 Qu' importe ? They do not go to church. They entertain cynical 
 views of society. They do not know how to enter a room. They 
 are not the sort of people whom you could introduce to your 
 friends. They may be very clever ; but truly cleverness is not 
 everything. So between two stools the man of parts, Avho is not 
 also a good-looking fellow, a man of fortune, and an orthodox 
 Christian, falls to the ground ; and he has it demonstrated to 
 him, moreover, by his acquaintances, that it would have been 
 more fortunate if he had been as destitute of pretensions as them- 
 selves. Farther the delicacy of unkindness cannot well go. 
 
 A late Duke of Leeds and the second Duke of Wellington come 
 within the category which I am describing. The first used to go
 
 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 315 
 
 about in a tweed jacket, smoking a short pipe ; and the last 
 dressed in shabby black, wore a silver watch and chain in the 
 streets, and (to clench the matter) had, like Lord John Russell, 
 weak eyes. Neither was of sufficient independent calibre to 
 atone for these eccentricities. The valet of the Right Honourable 
 Thomas Grenville, who died many years ago at a patriarchal age, 
 and whom I recollect coming on messages to my father's house, 
 was beyond comparison the finest gentleman of the three. He 
 held himself superbly, like his employer, and had the patrician 
 look. 
 
 Two of the most prominent connoisseurs of the last century 
 were remarkable for the meanness of their personal appearance. 
 They had the instinct and eye of a curiosity-dealer for objects of 
 art. But no one would have divined them to be what they were. 
 They were as insignificant as Pope the poet ; but they possessed 
 neither his literary pretensions nor his finished ease of manner. Their 
 gait and speech were ec^ually plebeian. It was said of Wilkes, 
 that he had ugly features, and squinted, but that his fascinating 
 address made ample amends for these physical deficiencies. It 
 was not so here ; nor was it that our contemporaries were wanting 
 in urbanity or honJiomie, for they had a fair share of both these 
 desirable qualities. But, in short, their intellectual bent, if it 
 deserved that name, only threw their vulgarity into higher relief, 
 hke coloured figures on a dark gold ground in some miisaic. What 
 demon cursed them in their cradle with an appetite for vertu and 
 morocco leather ? One has a feeling that they w^ould have been 
 more comfortable in their original obscurity. Bene qui latuit, bene 
 vixit. 
 
 It is a matter of notoriety that few men of intellect or genius 
 have been known to turn collectors, and that where they have, it 
 has been in a half-hearted, indecisive way, as if they were not 
 perfectly satisfied that it was the right thing. Genuine collectors 
 are, in fact, a distinct order of mammalia, with some special phre- 
 nological development awaiting scientific definition. The true 
 antiquary, as a rule, repudiates the notion that he is of the 
 fraternity. Perhaps he is not rich enough ; at any rate, he has 
 higher game in view. He gathers after the manner of the bee, 
 not of the jackdaw. He does not care to enter into the pursuit 
 of knacks and gewgaws ; to form a library of lifeless leather- 
 bound paper and three-halfpenny ware to the impoverishment of
 
 3i6 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 
 
 the mill and the cook, or to accumulate miraculous wreckage and 
 debris. 
 
 The upgro^^i3h of an unhealthy spirit of emulation among 
 persons, whose minds have been imperfectly cultivated or trained, 
 keeps the market for all classes of antiquities, meanwhile, sufficiently 
 brisk. Probably the least satisfactory reason for amassing curio- 
 sities is that which is also the commonest, because some one else 
 does. Why should you buy rat-tailed spoons because some excellent 
 friend buys them ? This is nearly the least wise form which 
 flattery can assume. The game of Follow my Leader or CornicJion 
 va devant is apt soon to become a dull affair. My word may 
 be securely taken for it, that the auction mart and the dealer 
 wax plump on such unsteadfast enthusiasm, which imparts to all 
 descriptions of property a peripatetic character, and makes them 
 wanderers up and down the market during their entire existence. 
 The fickle and not very experienced amateur importantly contri- 
 butes to save the hric-a-hrac merchant and the hammer-wielder 
 from putting up their shutters. 
 
 There is a curious propensity among those, who are ostensibly 
 persons of no special position to engage in genealogical researches 
 by way of proving their own descent or their wives' from some 
 eminent individual. It seems a vulgar fallacy, for whether one 
 is less eminent or more so than certain predecessors, the gain is 
 ahke dubious. Apart from technical considerations, if a man 
 shews a supeiiority to his foregoers, the merit and satisfaction 
 are his own, and if he derogates from tbem, his are the misfortune 
 and reproach. 
 
 Vulgarity appears often to consist in the difficulty which many 
 find of comprehending the most manifest incongruities of circum- 
 stance and place, and in a natural indifference to the feelings of 
 others. They are perpetually committing the most flagrant im- 
 proprieties without being conscious of them. They constantly 
 ofiend those in whose company they happen to be without the 
 least mahce prepense, and violate the rules of decorum at every 
 
 turn in complete good faith. R read the Bible aloud to his 
 
 family with a glass of brandy-and- water at his elbow, and he did 
 not perceive the want of keeping. To have pointed it out to 
 him would have been useless. He would have set your strictm-e 
 down to contracted views, or have resented it as an obhque sneer 
 at his religious principles. The American lady detected no im-
 
 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 317 
 
 propriety in describing herself 8.nd her neighbours as " Hell-bent 
 on Heaven." 
 
 When her Majesty the Queen died the other day, some of the 
 worthies who had sent out cards of invitation to their friends 
 for dinners or balls, cancelled the arrangement because — I regret 
 that I do not know exactly how to complete the sentence. The 
 step was meant to demonstrate their loyalty. What did it demon- 
 strate ? " What was Hecuba to them or theij to Hecuba ? " 
 
 An honest American, who was not pleased (from modesty, it 
 is thought) to give his name, once attempted a kind of supplement 
 to Gray's " Elegy," where his critical vision detected what appeared 
 to be, on the part of the original writer, an insufficient admission 
 of a future state. These proposed intercalary stanzas, however, 
 have not been so far amalgamated by the editors of the Bard of 
 Stoke Pogis, and the poem still goes at large in the very form 
 which it wore when it alarmed the transatlantic gentleman's 
 theological sensibilities. Had he met with greater encouragement, 
 this pious inquirer might have discovered and supplied similar 
 imperfections in the writings of Shakespear and Chaucer, and with 
 as much felicity as Croxall in his additional cantos to the " Faery 
 Queen." But there are certain things which one prefers to take 
 as one finds them. It is better to put up with a broken statue 
 by Lysippus than to have it completed by a stonemason. 
 
 The author of the " House that Jack Built " was an honest 
 man, and by no means a common sort of person. He was to the 
 full as genteel as Southey or Lamb, and would have passed for 
 a doctor of divinity or a Bencher of the Temple as soon as either 
 of them. But he kept at one time a coffee-shop in Gracechurch 
 Street, which was a failure (an additional circumstance against 
 him) ; and he wrote " The Queen's Matrimonial Ladder " and 
 other works equally flavoured with a mixed spice of facetiousness 
 and high treason. The fashionable world sent him to Coventry 
 as a low-bred fellow, and would not shake him even by the finger- 
 tips gingerly to save themselves from being in the next squib. He 
 was not thought, perhaps, the sort of man to be readily won, or 
 they might have whispered him, " Good even, good Robin Hood ! " 
 Hone used a quill plucked from a porcupine's armoury. Gare a 
 qui le touchait ! He was as pungent as Cobbett and as fearless. 
 I imagine that, on the whole, he was more popular, and more 
 influential in helping forward the bloodless Revolution of 1832.
 
 3i8 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 
 
 Dr. Wolcot, better known as Peter Pindar, is usually described, 
 not altogether without justice, as a vulgar and coarse writer. 
 But, apart from him having been also a most courageous and 
 influential one, there was a side to his character, which was and 
 is very little known ; for he could be serious and pathetic, when 
 he chose, and was no mean artist. One of the most touching 
 traits about this eminent m^an was the pleasure, which it gave 
 him, when he was bhnd, to sit in the room, surrounded by the 
 pictures, on which he had loved to gaze in earlier days, still survey- 
 ing them in his mind's eye, and soothed by the companionship. 
 
 I have heard a member of ParHamenfc and a wholesale dealer 
 seriously declare that he would be ready to jump over the table, 
 if he could only find out who his grandfather was ! This leaves 
 it readily inferable that his origin was obscure ; but it does not 
 so much shew that as that his antecedents were the least vulgar 
 part about him. Unlike a late noble lord, he wished that he 
 could make out a pedigree, and perhaps he might not have been 
 displeased to have the means of passing for what he was not. He 
 was ashamed of being a self-raised and self-helped man. This is 
 a very ridiculous sort of vanity ; but it is pleasant to think that 
 it is not so very common an one as might be suspected — in the 
 first generation of noiiveaux riches. Architects of their own fortunes 
 do not choose, as a rule, to blot out their youth for the benefit of 
 their successors, and pretend that they were never young and 
 poor. A man is not necessarily common, because he is a draper 
 or a tailor, but because his hereditary instincts or his personal 
 associations straiten his vision and his judgment. Unusual mental 
 gifts so seldom accompany the founder of a wealthy house that 
 famihes often relapse into obscurity at an early stage, and the pace 
 of declension is apt to be accelerated by environments. At each 
 step downward the drifting descendant of some worthier predecessor 
 takes the cue more and more from those, not above, but beneath, 
 him. He learns to adapt himself to the ways of the great majority, 
 into which he will be ultimately absorbed. 
 
 Our habits of thought, if not the texture of our minds, are 
 largely influenced by early training. The boy who goes from a 
 pubhc school to one of our universities, and thence to some church 
 preferment, or the principalship of a great seminary like Christ's 
 Hospital or Merchant Taylors, is (except by a sheer miracle) 
 crippled for life. His mind becomes awry and at an obhque angle.
 
 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 319 
 
 He is colour-blind. He lias power to see objects and arguments 
 from one point of view only and in one light, as a builder would 
 regard the Alps with interest solely in relation to the clearance 
 of the site for houses and shops. His ideas, like one of the old 
 prognostications, are strictly regulated for one meridian. He is as 
 a fixed star moving on its own axis \vithin its own narrow orbit. 
 His microcosm is composed of men who were educated on the 
 same principle, and who have, like him, been unfortunate enough 
 not to divorce themselves from the cramping and stunting agencies 
 of early days. His dii majores are not the great men of his era, 
 but the dons of his college. The Dean of Christchurch or the 
 Master of Baliol is a more important personage in his eyes than 
 Gladstone or Tennyson. The flimsy theological speculations of an 
 Archdeacon of Middlesex shut out from his sight the records on 
 paper of Darwin and Huxley, Lyell and Herbert Spencer, which 
 might have helped to make a man of him. He has heard of Mr. 
 Browning and Mr. Ruskin by report or in reviews ; but the head 
 master of St. Paul's or the preacher at the Chapel Royal is a hero 
 after his own honest heart. 
 
 He recognizes, when you mention them, the names of Mr. 
 Dobell and Mr. Locker, and he is acquainted with the writings of 
 the late Lord Houghton, who was not a mere author, hke Shake- 
 spear, but a peer and a virtuoso, and, by the way, had an academical 
 education, which Shakespear had not. Our good friend does not 
 scent the air of the Upper Sixth in his lordship's " Lay of the 
 Humble," or any deficiency in perspective or shadow, but agrees 
 with a Westminster Reviewer in considering it rather fine. Pos- 
 sibly, if Tupper had been called to the Upper House, the critics 
 would have brought to light certain hidden beauties in the " Pro- 
 verbial Philosophy." That great work was honoured by the appro- 
 bation of her late Majesty, and the author might have received 
 at all events the laureateship, if not a peerage, had he not taken 
 premature refuge in Abraham's expansive bosom. 
 
 At a public entertainment, where such one-sided persons as 
 I have attempted to describe preponderate, an ordinary man of 
 letters sits below the salt, or he is placed between a gold rnedallist 
 and a senior optime, who takes an oar in the Oxford eight, and 
 so unites physical with intellectual distinction ; and it goes for 
 nothing that his works are favourably known, wherever English- 
 speaking men live. A member of the Royal Society would strike
 
 320 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 
 
 such an assemblage as a less appropriate toast than a member 
 of the Couit of the Grocers' Company, who is a drysalter in the 
 daytime. If a man, who has shaken off his scholastic swaddling 
 clothes, and turned author, dedicates his volume to his olim in- 
 structor, the latter contents himself with observing that, in the 
 lines of inscription, his degree at Oxford has been omitted ; or, 
 if the same worthy receives a copy of verses, he points out the 
 absence of a comma or an accent. This arises from his mental 
 gravitation. This is the Alpha and Omega of his insight. It is 
 precisely the same thing if you offer your book to a typographical 
 expert : he reads it for the errata, while a friend on the turf throws 
 it down as worthless, because you disagree from him regarding 
 the action of a race-horse. 
 
 I have never dined at my Inn of Court, nor, although I am a 
 life-member, have I been invited to a social gathering or a grand 
 evening. That is a compliment reserved for royal or noble out- 
 siders and for the leading ornaments of one of the least literate 
 of all professions. Possibly we might not understand each other, 
 and it is better as it is. 
 
 Even genius is by no means so fortunate as to be without its 
 less happy aspects. When Carlyle confessed in the hearing of 
 Thackeray his inability to understand why people thought so 
 highly of Titian, and the other quietly demanded whose fault 
 that was, what observation could be silher, what reproof more 
 appropriate ? We are told that Cruikshank ascribed the success 
 of Dickens to his employment of that writer as a compiler of letter- 
 press to accompany his own artistic productions, while Dickens 
 spoke of the latter as a sort of redundancy ; and the doubt hence 
 arises, whether great wits are not alhed to childishness as well 
 as insanity ? We do not like to hear of a poet in need : but it is 
 at least equally unsatisfactory, not to him perhaps, but to us, 
 to be told that a master of the romantic and ideal school of com- 
 position has his own stockbroker, and is heavily aflfhcted with 
 social monotheism, the auri sacra fames. It shews too large an 
 admixture of method with the madness, too much adulteration of 
 the holy frenzy proper to bards with connoisseurship in securities. 
 It begins to look as though this superhuman afflatus were not what 
 one had deemed it to be, but some Semitic theatrical property 
 of which the owner can divest himself, like the College gown, while 
 he steps into the City, or sits down to balance his cash-book.
 
 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 321 
 
 Among strange and monstrous births may be comprised one 
 which occurred in the accomphshed Burney family. One of them 
 was a schoolmaster. He kept an establishment for young gentle- 
 men at Greenwich. The director of the Burneian Academy was 
 an original character in his way ; there is a portrait of him among 
 the illustrations to Madame D'Ai'blay's Diary, as well as some 
 particulars of his career. The father of the present writer recol- 
 lected that a standard charge in the half-yearly account was a 
 debit for birches purchased and applied. This was a novel method 
 of making the parent pay for his son's sorrow ; it was beating the 
 boy with his own rod ; it was extracting from the birch, with true 
 financial instinct, not only the famihar ointment, but a respectably 
 weighty crop of half-crowns. Charles Burney possibly missed his 
 vocation. He should have become Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 and would no doubt have forestalled Mr. Lowe in his great fiscal 
 experiment on lucifer matches. 
 
 The schoolmaster, the more one looks at him, the more he 
 seems to be certainly a species standing by himself, and intel- 
 lectually bounded by certain impassable limits of latitude and 
 longitude. The ordinary mental mechanism provided for the rest 
 of mankind is by some dispensation exchanged for one especially 
 adapted to his professional requirements, much as is the case 
 with an auctioneer ; and one specimen of either is as like another 
 as two examples of a patented brand in commerce. In both the 
 brain is a map or chart in w^hich, by a subtle economy, merely such 
 details are filled in as their functions demand. The schoolmaster 
 graduates, but does not develop. You have your schoolmaster 
 simple, your schoolmaster parson, your schoolmaster archdeacon, 
 your schoolmaster archbishop. The old lines are extended, without 
 being widened, like the metals of a permanent way. The main 
 difference between an ordinary pedagogue and an archiepiscopal one 
 is the augmented power for mischief. Our great public schools are 
 the forcing-pits from which these freaks of human nature emerge. 
 They have been the same probably from the time when Dionysius 
 kept school at Corinth. The die has not been lost. Goldsmith's 
 Dr. Primrose owes all the worship which he has received to 
 the handling of the author. We have before us Goldsmith's 
 heau ideal of a country clergyman and teacher of the eighteenth 
 century. The writer of the " Vicar of Wakefield " was a school 
 usher himself once, not by choice, but (as it were) formd 'pauperis, 
 
 X
 
 322 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 
 
 and probably an indifferent one ; and he perhaps evolved from 
 his inner consciousness and direct observation that portraiture 
 which we find so pleasing. Yet, pleasing as it may be, it is easy 
 to divine the class of school and understanding, with which we 
 are brought for the time into contact. 
 
 No amount of erudition would have altered Dr. Primrose for 
 the better ; it would have brought with it little else than bigotry, 
 intolerance, and assumption, and would have made him a far less 
 agreeable friend to his contemporaries and to us. The man of 
 learning and the man of genius are like two straight lines which 
 never meet. It has been pronounced by no mean authority, that 
 a mere scholar is a mere ass. 
 
 But the monotone and technist in many departments is apt 
 to resemble a pivot, round which in his own conceit the world 
 centrifugally revolves, as where you try to discuss with a normal 
 lawyer the 'principia of his business, he can only cite cases and 
 judgments from the last volume of Reports, or if you ask an 
 auctioneer his opinion of an author, he will answer that the last 
 copy of his book fetched such or sach a sum under the hammer — 
 his hammer — for he recognizes no other. 
 
 A late Bishop of Chester aptly observed that " genius is all 
 very well in its way," and seemed rather to feel, that it would be 
 a national misfortune, if it were to become too common. The 
 apprehension is baseless. It will certainly never embarrass the 
 Episcopal Bench, or endanger its stability. In a couple of centuries 
 at such a place as the Blue Coat School one cannot point to more 
 than four names ; and is it not much the same in all our great 
 seminaries ? A pity, too, were it otherwise : a pity both for 
 genius and its opposite. 
 
 An exception to the prevailing rule as to the illiteracy and 
 narrow sympathies of the clerical profession, more particularly 
 that section of it which unluckily makes tuition its province, was 
 Nicholas I Mall, Master of Eton College ; and we lay down his 
 " Ralph Roister Doister " with a regret that our knowledge of 
 the writer has not been confined to his production of one of the 
 most admirable dramatic pieces in our language. To discover that 
 he was a pedagogue and a martmet is an un felicitous redundancy. 
 In such a case the labours of the biographer are positive surplusage. 
 
 Literary men of no family, who have made a name and a 
 position for themselves in society, are not, generally speaking,
 
 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 323 
 
 unduly pretentious. The profession to which they owe their rise 
 has made them, for the most part, superior to these paltry airs 
 and graces. But there have been, nay, are royalists in this re- 
 public who cannot say that their fathers were Prime Ministers, 
 as Walpole could, or trace back their lineage as far as Scott, but 
 who aspire to be honorary associates in the aristocracy of letters : 
 blas(^, languid Exquisites, who profess to be scarcely acquainted 
 with their humbler brethren even by name or sight, and who are 
 under the embarrassing necessity of buying the largest size of waste- 
 paper basket to accommodate the propitiatory gift-copies laid upon 
 their altars. 
 
 They make a rather sorry figure, and occupy a neutral position, 
 of which it is difficult to give a very agreeable account. They 
 are somewhere midway between earth and air, and belong to 
 neither. If they are unable to create an Abbotsford or a Straw- 
 berry Hill, they do the next best thing : they build a detached 
 house in a fashionable suburb, use gilt-edged paper, and perhaps 
 take a decayed literary gentleman into pay as private secretary 
 and librarian, the last by way of illustrating what a poor creature 
 a mere author is. 
 
 All specialism is narrowing and debasing. Thought and sym- 
 pathy are not one, but manifold. Folklore, for instance, may be 
 a good thing in its way, yet are we to live by it alone ? Shall 
 those gentlemen, who advocate and promote it, be suffered to lay 
 the rest of us on a bed of Procrustes ? A theory, hke a jest, may 
 be carried too far, pressed too much home. Is the Folklore Society 
 to serve with a Quo Warranto any one who writes on that parti- 
 cular theme without having previously paid his subscription ? 
 
 There is another class which I hardly know how to describe 
 to my satisfaction. Perhaps they may be set down as second- 
 hand persons. The second-hand man and the second-hand lady 
 are well-known varieties of our species. We come across them in 
 all the paths of life, perhaps in some cases without being aware 
 
 of it. There is : see how he greets you with a perfectly 
 
 fraternal grasp of the hand, and features bathed in sunshine ! But 
 come to the point with him ; broach a matter of business ; touch 
 him a httle on some rather vulnerable spot, and lo ! the charming 
 prospect changes like a transformation scene, the genial smile has 
 gone, the veneer has come away, like the coating on a gilt half- 
 penny, and all that there is left stands before you " when unadorned
 
 324 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 
 
 adorned the least," — a saying which (in its original form) Athenaeus 
 ascribes to Charmos of Syracuse, a writer who lived before Sheridan. 
 These might almost be described as plated persons — persons formed 
 of base metal washed with silver. 
 
 Thackeray, in his " Book of Snobs," did not necessarily enter 
 so much or so deeply into the present subject as might at first 
 sight be supposed ; for a man may be a snob and not a common 
 person, just as the converse may be true. The genus pervades 
 every class of society, from the Order of Ancient Foresters to the 
 Order of the Garter. It has crossed the Atlantic, and exhibits a 
 fungous growth among rich American and Australasian adventurers, 
 whose cue it is to gather up, not what they want or appreciate, 
 but what they think that their betters do. 
 
 It used to be the general opinion in the dark ages, that royal 
 personages were the light and salt of the world. But people of 
 genius have pushed them out of their place, have robbed them of 
 their ancient supremacy. Men and women of genius are to the 
 community at large what the ether is to the grosser elements, and 
 what the leaven is to the dough. But they are a small and 
 shrinking minority. The population ostensibly increases, but the 
 intellectual atmosphere grows more and more j)hii^bous and 
 opaque, more and more a mart for buyers and sellers. 
 
 A speculation was once hazarded as to the ultimate destiny 
 of a given million of babies. Probably of this number 975,000 
 or more are apt to be wholly immaterial to the planet, to which 
 they eventually add a slender stratum, except as manual factors 
 in the labour market. Their function in life is to eat, drink, 
 work, sleep ; and they fondly conceive, that they understand and 
 appreciate what intelHgent existence is. 
 
 A separate paper might perhaps be instructively devoted to 
 modern suburban social types ; but it should be founded on close 
 personal study, and the result might be doubtful. Our suburbs 
 are not so pleasant as they were through the encroachments of 
 the builder, yet they might be better than they are, were it not 
 for their inhabitants ; just as country houses are so often found 
 with one drawback — the owners. One should visit a locality 
 incognito, and quit it, notebook in pocket, without leaving a clue 
 to one's whereabouts. But for a man to paint ad vivum on the 
 spot the parson of his own parish, the surveyor, the solicitor, the 
 merchant, the half-pay officer, the retired tradesman, the mysteri-
 
 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 325 
 
 ous litterateur (of course Editor of the Times), the Principal 
 Librarian of the British Museum (there is one in nearly every 
 district of pretensions), and the millionaire monopolist : then the 
 other sex, the Lady Bountiful, the Lady Patroness, the Lady 
 Canvasser, the Lady Secretary, the Sportswoman — all with their 
 most loveable coteries — would form a task too hazardous by half : 
 a bear among overturned honeycombs would by comparison be 
 enviable. 
 
 In the eighteenth century, in the hfetime of Dr. Johnson, and 
 even in the earlier part of the succeeding one, the citizen of London 
 gathered round him in his own house with satisfaction and pride 
 men and women of education, culture, and fair repute ; it was 
 a case of Giving and Taking, not exactly in a commercial sense, 
 yet in a mutually agreeable and profitable one. Now the corres- 
 ponding class surrounds himself with his affluent acquaintances, 
 who buy with him or sell \vith him, and renews at his own table 
 or his own fireside the suspended or incomplete conversation in 
 Capel Court, the Coal Exchange, or the Baltic, on topics of 
 common concern — the coinage of drachmai out of some elastic and 
 vulgar commodity. His main dependence, apart from his estab- 
 lishment, his table, and the family toilette, is the hour at which 
 he dines. Balbus dines at his grandsire's supper hour. He follows 
 the mode of the Court — at a distance. 
 
 In all the more fashionable centres outside the city and the 
 town, you meet to satiety with gentlemen and ladies, to whose 
 residences and other domestic and personal appurtenances you 
 cannot in any way object. But these individuals have not merely 
 nothing to communicate to you beyond the gossip of the day, 
 but let you see that they mil go so far as to resent the intrusion 
 of facts or subjects, which for them are void of significance. The 
 late Mr. Carlyle defined such phenomena as Clotheshorses ; a 
 greater than him, in the '' Merchant of Venice," refers to them 
 as " proper folks' pictures." Frequently these quasi- Arcadians 
 canvas among themselves certain commercial mysteries, to which 
 the key is in tbeir own pockets, or if they overstep the boundary 
 of current commonplace, they offer a sentiment, which appears 
 to be an heirloom from an antecedent era. A too level equilibrium 
 of vision and thought is characteristic of the more ordinary sort 
 of people ; they have an actual surfeit of the mens sana in corforc 
 sano. There is a curious fallacy on the part of many, who have
 
 326 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 
 
 accumulated splendid fortunes, perhaps without the opportunity 
 of gaining culture or mixing with those who have ; and it is the 
 dream of settling in the autumn of life in some rural neighbour- 
 hood, in a fine house, surrounded by a handsome acreage. Provision 
 is made for everything — with a single momentous exception. A. 
 man must have an atmosphere, a background, a setting. He must 
 not be all front, like a shop in a pantomime ; there must be the 
 power of retrospection, some link of union with the past, the succour 
 of ancestry in eking out his own deficiencies. One should not be 
 able to make an inventory of him by a coup cVoeil, or to take a 
 sounding of his mind at sight. It should not be possible to beat 
 his intellectual bounds, like those of a parish, or to peg down the 
 lines, beyond which his vision is objectless and colour-blind. It 
 is a sad disappointment to fix yourself in a locality, where there 
 are only two classes of people : those whom you do not want 
 to know, and those who do not want to know you. Common 
 persons resemble a building one room deep or the perspective 
 illusion of a drop-scene. They remind you of the painted card- 
 board figures in the toyshops. No two are precisely similar, yet 
 no two dif!er very greatly, like a couple of impressions of the same 
 print with varieties in minor particulars. 
 
 Self-contained folks constitute a section of the present family, 
 with which it is well nigh desperate to succeed. They draw a 
 certain line round them with a piece of invisible chalk, within 
 which they stagnate, and beyond which they will not go, or let 
 you advance. They are enchanted with themselves. They treat 
 the rest of the world as flattering foils. They feel that they possess 
 all necessary and eligible qualifications. In your views there must 
 be something strangely wrong, because they do not accord with 
 their own, which they acquired at the entrance on their careers 
 with their other chattels, and which are equally to serve them 
 all their days. They take their ideas, as they do their wives, for 
 better, for worse ; and that these grow like remainder biscuit on 
 other long voyages is not to them to be rendered apparent. 
 
 The self-contained man or even woman must perforce be 
 gregarious and sociable in matters of business. It is in mental 
 culture and points of intellectual inquiry that the feeling operates. 
 The city gentleman frequents his club and his Masonic Lodge, and 
 occasionally asks a select circle to dinner on commercial grounds ; 
 but he does not incur the risk of disturbing his aptitude for his
 
 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 327 
 
 vocation by going outside bis set. His wife and daughters pay 
 their calls ; his sons, if they have left school, have what they 
 term their pleasures ; but he, as a general rule, returns home in 
 the evening, and declines to quit the premises or the chimney- 
 corner without due notice in writing. The sole kind of inter- 
 course, which yields mutual improvement, is found by him or his 
 surroundings to be impracticable. Correspondence with other 
 minds, the fellowship of thinkers, a communion through books 
 with the life, experience, and wisdom of all the antecedent ages, 
 may strike some as advantageous, if not delightful ; but to the 
 normal middle-class Englishman the pressure and strain of his 
 pecuniary af?airs, and his poor, sordid artificial existence, seem 
 to be insuperable barriers to a lucrative exchange of views and 
 opinions between threshold and threshold. For him those, whom 
 we miscall the ancients, amount to no more than a general expres- 
 sion. Their human attributes, their cognate properties, their 
 specific personalities, are to him a Pandora's box, which he is 
 content to leave unopened. He dimly retains the vague and 
 shallow notions of the classics, which he imbibed at school from 
 preceptors not much more advanced than himself. If his hopes 
 and wants are apt to expand with successive disclosures of the 
 horizon, they exclusively conduce to a common end — the augmenta- 
 tion of material resources. The golden mean is an adage, which 
 he recommends to others, but which he only accepts in principle. 
 This mischief and malady are due to cramped and false social 
 conditions, from which the classes above and below are more 
 exempt. 
 
 You not unfrequently find some of these phenomena distin- 
 guished by an intense individuality. Your acquaintance is the 
 central orbit, round which in his conceit everybody and everything 
 else turn. He does not desire the opinion of others, nor any 
 discussion of their value ; if you are discreet, you will not traverse 
 his eulogy of his own theories and other belongings by adducing 
 extraneous anecdotes. Mention that you possess some precious 
 volume, his criticism will be, that a copy of a book which he 
 bought forty years ago for sixpence would fetch a devilish large 
 price at an auction. Describe an unique example of old porcelain 
 or plate, he will immediately recall to memory something of the 
 kind which he picked up for a song in former days at a broker's 
 shop in the Midlands. Bring out of your pocket a superb
 
 328 NOT UNCOMMON PEOPLE 
 
 numismatic gem of the best period of art, for which a hundred 
 collectors would part with their little fingers, and he informs you, 
 after glancing at it for a moment, that he has, laid aside in trust, 
 a marv^ellous httle lot in mint state of coins of George IV. or 
 WilHam IV. He is, in short, no hand at cross purposes ; he does 
 not perceive the utility of mixing issues ; cuique suum ; it is his 
 role and cue exclusively to pose as the caretaker and advertiser 
 of his own property with the auctioneer's hammer making sweet 
 music in his ear. Your lots are flocci, nihili, fili, unless, by 
 the way, he can take them over at his figure, your memoranda 
 inclusive. 
 
 A type of not uncommon people, which, according to the 
 humour of the critic, irritates or diverts, is the decadent gentle- 
 man or gentlewoman, who at this present moment pursues some 
 tolerably humble calling, but who can tell you about forerunners, 
 whose deeds and fame make one blush for one's own obscurity. 
 These excellent folks are naturally of too lofty an extraction to 
 recognize modern text-books on heraldry and family history ; their 
 house was in existence before printing, almost before writing, was 
 known. But they have a pedigree by heart and dates at their 
 fingers' ends. Stern fate compels them to reside in unpretentious 
 quarters, and their belongings are in keeping. Did they not come 
 over, however, with that inevitable Norman ? Were they not at 
 Agincourt with Henry V. ? Has not Charles II. been said to have 
 dined with them at their ancestral mansion in the West ? 
 
 From such a portrait-gallery as we have been visiting together 
 it is a long step to a different atmosphere and subject-matter. 
 An Essay " On the Look of a Gentleman " has been formerly written 
 by one, in whose footsteps the present wTiter is unworthy to tread. 
 Certain accomphshments are indispensable to that character, yet 
 their possession is far indeed from constituting it ; and a larger 
 number of persons of moderate intellectual endowments have been 
 recognized as gentlemen than of those of an infinitely higher order 
 of understanding, deficient in the training and fine instincts which 
 we associate with the idea.
 
 XXV 
 
 NEMO 
 
 " Nobody is my name, 
 That beareth Everybody's blame." 
 
 — " Nobody," a Poem, hy Nobody. 
 
 Mr. — I crave His Honour's pardon — Sir Nicholas Nemo is a 
 personage for whom I may say that we all feel the most unbounded 
 respect. He is a gentleman, nay, a knight, who for lineage and 
 blood is second to none, and who is of infinitely greater conse- 
 quence than his junior contemporary Mister Everybody. I address 
 myself with superlative satisfaction to the task of demonstrating 
 the importance of His Honour, and the inevitable interest which 
 must attach to an essay of which His Honour is the keystone. 
 His Honour is endowed with rather peculiar and rare powers. His 
 Honour can accomplish with a facility which is highly enviable what 
 Mister Everybody cannot. Hence springs the celebrity of His 
 Honour, and hence His place here as the Hero of the Situation. 
 Nemo is my theme, and Nemo my song. 
 
 For none save Nemo can tell truly what the morrow shall 
 bring. None can count with naked eye the stars in the firmament 
 but this Nemo. Upon those broad shoulders rest responsibilities 
 which it would turn any other brain even to contemplate at a 
 distance. In meditating on Nemo, as it is my daily use to do, 
 the thoughts mechanically wander in the direction of the Phoenix, 
 when I look at that extraordinary gift which resides in Him of 
 achieving without visible effort matters beyond the reach, scope, 
 and faculty of other mortals — if indeed there should not happen 
 to be something removed above our weak temporary state, some- 
 thing superior to this friable humanity, a subtle link with a yet 
 inedited order of creation, in Nemo. Is one at liberty, then, to 
 figure Nemo to oneself as an Abstraction, a Shadow, an Incorporeal 
 Nonentity, a Jack o' Lanthorn, a Will-o' -the- Wisp, an ignis fatuus, 
 a Robin Goodfellow, a Brownie ? Nay, Sir Nemo is a knight of 
 
 ancient fame. It is His proud and somewhat special position to 
 
 329
 
 330 NEMO 
 
 have lived before Eden. He recalls the plantation of it most 
 vividly, and can guide you, if you have curiosity on the subject, 
 to the exact spot where the apple-tree stood. He knew it a 
 sapling. More glibly than Lyell or Darwin can He discourse to 
 you of earlier worlds. He can make out the plural theory without 
 the aid of the planets. He is their ancestor. It seems to him 
 but yesterday that the moon had no Man. 
 
 His contemporary Adam originally laid to His charge the eating 
 of the apple, but Nemo is in a position to depose from ocular 
 testimony that Adam picked the fruit, and with true pohteness 
 handed it to his lady, who had the first bite and let him have 
 the rest, as it was not ripe. Cain insinuated that Nemo had 
 killed Abel, and, before He had quite recovered from this annoy- 
 ance, Noah did what was a little wrong, and set it down to Nemo. 
 These were very great trials. Nemo remembers them well. Yet 
 he was considerably older than Methuselah, when the latter de- 
 parted prematurely — prematurely, at least, looking at Nemo, who 
 is still among us in unbroken health and spirits. Why should 
 we be so inconsiderate and incredulous as to doubt the existence 
 of the Wandering Jew, whom^ Nemo has frequently seen, and with 
 whom he more than once dined, as you and I might do ? He 
 cherishes among his more modern recollections the first departure 
 of that noted celebrity on his travels and the farewell shake of 
 the hand. Nemo has shot in Robin Hood's bow, and has crossed 
 quarterstaves with Little John. He saw Tell draw the arrow, and 
 Columbus break the egg. Later men have thoughtlessly wronged 
 him by feigning themselves the discoverers of crackling and the 
 Philosopher's Stone, 
 
 Such is, was, and ever shall remain the prestige of Nemo, that 
 people have sometimes advanced their own interests by passing 
 off as Him, and have even travelled under that Incognito, like 
 Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus. 
 
 It is a great point in one's favour to have existed always. The 
 gain is at once obvious and vast. The plans of ordinary persons 
 are perpetually thwarted through such a cause ; but it is not so 
 with Nemo. The hundred generations of men that have passed 
 away were His intimates. Countless generations to come will be 
 the same. They will find Him here, not gone. So far from the 
 Impossible coming amiss to Him, He is rather partial to it. Nemo 
 tenetur ad impossibile. It is His custom to begin just where others
 
 NEMO 331 
 
 leave off. He has completed most valuable undertakings which 
 His modesty restrains him from making public. Nemo, in point 
 of fact, anticipated all our social benefactors. He is the Great 
 Forestaller. 
 
 I fear that I shall scarcely be credited if 1 mention a few of the 
 remarkable capabilities of this Phoenix-ian Nemo, if I furnish a 
 mere specimen of His surprising wealth of resource, prodigious 
 fertility of understanding, and indestructible elasticity of tempera- 
 ment. Unlike Homer Nemo never naps. Nemo solus satis sapit. 
 Nemo est ah omni parte heatus. Nemo sud sorte contentus. What 
 is most marvellous, Nemo dat quod nan hahet. 
 
 When Sir Nicholas is in England, He is popularly known as 
 Mister Nobody ; for He has naturally disdained to mix with the 
 common throng of titled ephemerides. His position is one of those 
 few things on which Society has thoroughly made up its mind, 
 and, which is even more unusual, to the complete satisfaction 
 of the person concerned. The virtues of Mister Nobody are fully 
 recognized. All the world is in love with Him. He succeeds in 
 , all His enterprises. He can see through a keyhole perfectly, when 
 the key is there. He takes snufE while He is asleep. He rides on 
 the whirlwind habitually and from choice. 
 
 There are, at the same time, it must be confessed, some 
 accounts, on which Mister Nobody's shoes are rather dangerous to 
 walk in. Listen to what Mister Nobody's enemies have got to 
 say. He let the Greeks into Troy. We cry shame upon Him ! 
 He has lost many a battle, and has committed murders out of 
 number. He invented Red Tape. He told fibs about certain very 
 sensible and conscientious gentlemen in office, whom He privately 
 called Jacks. 
 
 But it is to be said He has not always met with fair play. Now. 
 Mister Somebody broke the cat's saucer, and pretended that it was 
 Mister Nobody. The former Mister sold Government records to 
 a butterman, and the latter Mister had to bear the brunt. Mister 
 Somebody called a certain City a hotbed of roguery and rottenness, 
 and when they threatened to expose him, he referred them to 
 Mister Nobody. Somebody mismanaged affairs in the Crimea 
 years and years ago, and when he was challenged, pointed to 
 Mister Nobody, and Mister Somebody was had before a Royal 
 Commission, just for form's sake, but poor Mister Nobody was 
 punished.
 
 332 NEMO 
 
 With all his faults and misfortanes, however, Mister Nobody 
 lords it in this country quite as He likes. It is thought that we 
 shall end in being governed by this great commoner. Long live 
 King Nobody the First ! Nemo est hceres viventis. For unless 
 King Somebody and his friends, Mister Somebody Else and 
 Mister Somebody Else Besides, take good heed, Mister Nobody 
 will carry it by universal acclamation, and be the founder of a 
 line of kings. 
 
 His Majesty will have a very large circle of political supporters, 
 who will have a handsome provision made for them out of what 
 remains of the National Property when King Somebody (the 
 Last) has completed certain arrangements against a rainy day. 
 There will be Baron Nemo, Viscount Nemo, Earl Nemo, Marquis 
 Nemo, Duke Nemo, H.R.H. Nemo, H.R. and G.I.H. Nemo, all 
 of whom, as it is superfluous to mention, are personages of the 
 utmost consequence and (all preliminaries waived) illustrious, and 
 are not, on any pretence, to be mixed up with the Uncalendared. 
 
 The court of Nemo I. will be the most splendid which creation 
 has ever seen. For that Great Mogul (of the future) understands 
 the value of Ceremonial Observances and Regal Pageantry. This 
 predestined Prince of Men, this Rex Futurus — not Arthur, but 
 Nemo — is a Conservative in the largest and most generous sense : 
 He is an advocate for keeping all the best things, whether apper- 
 taining to Himself or to other people. But He will go farther. 
 For He already speaks to those about Him of uniting in the hands 
 of one statesman the at present independent dignities of Prime 
 Minister, Master of the Ceremonies, Lord Chamberlain, and Lord 
 Warden of Our Royal and Imperial Short-Horns. He holds that 
 it will be an excellent, yet not unpopular stroke to commute the 
 fees and perquisites of Our Court Poet for a Patent of Nobility ; 
 and under the new Nemo regime it will devolve on another great 
 Officer of State, Our Court Historian, to edit an August Periodical 
 Publication of an entirely novel description, to be called Our Court 
 Sayings a.nd Doings, by Ourselves, of which the piquancy is 
 calculated to prove so irresistible, that its sale will be highly 
 remunerative to Us. For as this Bretwalda of yet unfolded years 
 truly remarks (of course to those in His confidence merely), the 
 praiseworthy hunger for penetrating the Eleusinian veil, which 
 shrouds the Inner Life of Royalty, clearly enters into the Incidence 
 of Taxation.
 
 NEMO 333 
 
 This Born Ruler of His Species {de VAvenir) perceives no deroga- 
 tion from His Sublimity in the exercise of the strictest economy, 
 and in an attention to points of commercial detail, of which prior 
 Rulers of their Species, at present perceptible, if at all, in a less 
 awful form, unwisely neglected cognisance. How proud and how 
 trusting ought the Humble and Obhged Ratepayer to be whose 
 destinies are to be controlled by such a Financier and His friends. 
 For His faithful and loving subjects may be sure beforehand, that 
 the Coming will entertain the same paternal solicitude for their 
 property that He does for His own. Let them fold their vassal 
 hands accordingly, and be thankful. Let them not lift their 
 plebeian voices, if He — Nemo Imperator et Rex — keeps His august 
 grip on the lands for which He has honoured them by taking 
 their unworthy money. It is His unique privilege to eat the 
 pudding, and have it too. 
 
 His Majesty in posse has hinted to a private friend (but this, 
 again, is strictly confidential), that He shall regard it as His duty, 
 as the Father of His People, to rescind all raw legislative attempts 
 of the nature of Reform Bills and Acts of Settlement, with Habeas 
 Corpus and Trial by Jury. He is said to entertain rather sorrowful 
 misgivings about the utility (to Him) of Magna Charta. He 
 considers His Prasum, ut prosim an excellent motto. But He will 
 take into His exalted consideration the continuance of leave to 
 His subjects to participate in inhaling His royal and imperial 
 oxygen during His royal and imperial pleasure. 
 
 His Sacred and Gracious Majesty (to anticipate a little) is in 
 feeUng an Utilitarian, and while he advocates the removal (as 
 aforesaid) of certain hampering and vexatious restrictions on His 
 Royal and Imperial Prerogative, He is a Liberal in politics. His 
 thoroughly practical temperament is happily illustrated by His 
 anxiety for the expansion of the Revenue by the development 
 of supplementary fiscal charges. He sees how the Licensing 
 System might be extended with the most salutary results to all 
 individuals who, for their own selfish amusement, pursue sterile 
 callings and fantastic inquiries, to the obvious prejudice of their 
 fellow-creatures. In His financial programme a heavy duty on 
 unsuccessful books, payable by the authors, is an item which 
 will meet with universal approbation, and may be expected to 
 increase from year to year. There, too, it is laid down that no 
 man shall write poetry without a permit, unless he be of the degree
 
 334 NEMO 
 
 of a Baron, or unless he can explain to the satisfaction of the Excise 
 the meaning of what he has written. Out of these and sundry 
 other equally novel and intelligent fountains of income it will be 
 a positive gratification to all properly disposed persons to see 
 certain offshoots of the Nemo Gens comfortably pensioned ; an 
 exquisite cargo (if the expression be allowable) of Serene (yet a 
 trifle or so supercilious) Cousins of both genders, whose revenues 
 do not at present (to the shame of all true-hearted men be it 
 spoken) correspond with the greatness of their birth, the antiquity 
 of their lineage, and the value of their services. 
 
 Nothing is the tried dependent of Nobody. They are warmly 
 attached to each other. They are, in reality, near relations. When 
 Mister Nobody is crowned under the title of Nemo I., very large 
 estates will come to Nothing ; and in anticipation of so grand a 
 climax as the accession of the Nemoidse, people have long culti- 
 vated with assiduity the acquaintance of Nothing, and have paid 
 him extraordinary court. His praises have been repeatedly cele- 
 brated in print. Persons have composed volumes in his special 
 honour, have written treatises, of which he was the exclusive 
 subject-matter, have given to the world poems, of which he was 
 the only hero, the unique Contents. 
 
 /, et henedicito, de NiJdlo Tractatulus, fecundior Nilo I 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, HANSON & Co. 
 Edinburgh & London
 
 JUST PUBLISHED. Demy ^vo, 2>92> PP- Price 6$. 
 
 MAN 
 
 CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO 
 
 GOD AND A CHURCH 
 
 By W. CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 OF THE INNER TEMPLE 
 
 This book aims at dealing in a critical and methodical manner with 
 the most vital question which the human species can possibly have to 
 consider and resolve. It is also one which has lately been discussed 
 with freedom and candour in several of the daily and other papers, 
 but not in a manner or on lines calculated to lead to a satisfactory 
 conclusion and settlement, 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt has made this subject a life-study from every conceiv- 
 able point of view, and has profited by all the latest scientific discoveries, 
 which he has collated for his purpose. He treats a topic, which is 
 indisputably superior in importance and interest to all others in the 
 world, with judicial impartiality. He has no professional or other 
 bias. His sole object is to attain the truth. 
 
 The present volume in no way or sense attacks Religion or a Faith 
 in God. But it involves a very severe attainder of the Church and of 
 the Society, for which the Church is largely responsible. In these 
 pages not merely the members of what is termed the Establishment, 
 but the Dissenter and the Romanist, will meet with plenty of niatter 
 deserving their thoughtful study, and the keynote of the book is the 
 education of men and women to acquire valid independent opinions, 
 and to renounce the fatal habit of relying on the views and statements 
 of others, the clergy inclusive — nay, even above the rest. It is the 
 dear wish and hope of the Author to live to witness the day when men 
 and women will begin to form truer estimates of their nature and des- 
 tiny, and a fuller appreciation of the world to which they immediately 
 and temporarily belong, and some idea of its relationship to other 
 worlds^, all members of a vast Universe. His Monograph, therefore, 
 comprises within its covers what amounts to a series of Essays on all 
 branches and aspects of the matter, and is written as simply and 
 plainly as possible in order to appeal to the general reader. 
 
 Press Reviews. 
 
 " A work of undeniable power." — Weekly Disftatch. 
 
 " The book is dangerously clever, with a merciless thoroughness and a captivating style 
 which are e.xceedingly taking." — Light. 
 
 " We have Mr. Hazlitt's assurance that he has no bias towards infidelity, and does not 
 pose as a sceptic. He is, however, a relentless foe of the Churches and of their dogma. . . . 
 What Mr. Hazlitt demands is 'a gospel of life and truth in place of that of falsehood, 
 deception, and finance.'" — Newcastle Daily Clironicle. 
 
 " This author belongs to the Inner Middle Temple, and there he naturally finds time to 
 dream much, and that sometimes well to the point. . . . _ He is a keen satirist, and especially 
 turns his scathing pen on ecclesiastics who live as a civil service of the how-not-to-d_o-it 
 sort. ... He hopes nobly for the liberation of minds and souls by processes of education, 
 reading, study, for which his twenty-seventh chapter gives good suggestions. His aim is 
 certainly high and noble." — Yorkshire Daily Observer. 
 
 " Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt is, I believe, a grandson of William Hazlitt, the well-known liter- 
 ary critic of the earlier half of the last century, who broke with the tradition of the Jeffrey 
 school, and was among the first to recognise the genius of Wordsworth and the Lakists. His 
 
 I
 
 ' Man Considered in Relation to God and a Church ' is a thoughtful plea for the abandon- 
 ment of the 'superstitious and hybrid theological system under which so many of us live 
 and die ' . . . forceful and interesting." — Clarion. 
 
 "Early English literature and Shakespearian research have been Mr. Carew Hazlitt's 
 favourite fields; and now, at the age of seventy-one (as he tells us himself in one of his 
 many personal asides), he ventures into the Freethought sphere, and gives us thirty-three 
 chapters on the Church, Bible, Evolution, Soul, Heaven, Hell, and Science." — IVaiis' 
 Literary Gtdiic. 
 
 ' ' Mr. Hazlitt believes that the only chance of shaking ofT the ignorance in which spiritual 
 pastors help to keep the nation, is to be found in the absolute secularisation of education." — 
 Daily Telegraph. 
 
 "This neat little volume discusses very ably and fairly several important questions." — 
 Neivcastle Daily Chroiicle. 
 
 " This is a well-written attack on a few of the irrational doctrines, folly, and trumpery, 
 that go by the name of religion." — Christian Life. 
 
 " Mr. Hazlitt sees that to overthrow the superstition which selects and endows incom- 
 petence, there must be a general lift in the quality and efficiency of education all round ; 
 and he sketches a plan or curriculum which does credit to his breadth of view." — National 
 Reformer. 
 
 " Mr. Hazlitt is an original thinker. On the whole, he expresses himself moderately, 
 temperately, and without needless offence. Those whose views Mr. Hazlitt voices are a grow- 
 ing number, and will read his little book with sympathy." — Birmingham Daily Post. 
 
 " This appears to be a work to which the author has devoted many years of thought. 
 It deals with the present unsatisfactory state of Society and the inability or unwillingness of 
 the Church to ameliorate affairs. Mr. Hazlitt analyses the Bible and New Testament, and 
 develops new theories into the origin of Man and o/iuoman ; he dwells on the vital impor- 
 tance of the Blood, and has separate sections on the Soul, the Brain, Heaven and Hell, &c. 
 There is a strong suggestion that a subtle affinity exists between God, the Sun, and our 
 Blood. He considers that our entire social and religious system must be reconstructed, and 
 a new basis of thought and action gradually esi<ib\\s\ied."^Qiiaritch's Catalogue. 
 
 " I feel constrained to write a little note of thanks to you for your book. It is just balm 
 to see put so clearly what one has been groping around about for years. It is brave, too. 
 ... I have several women friends, to whom your book will also come as balm. If one is 
 helped on the way, one ought at least to thank you." — Letter frojn a Lady., Nov. 2, 1905. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. CHAP. 
 
 I. The Purpose and the \ XVI. 
 
 Scope. XVII. 
 
 II. Society in Town and i XVIII. 
 
 Country. ; XIX. 
 
 III. The World and the XX. 
 
 Church. \ XXI. 
 
 IV. Some of the Difficulties. XXII. 
 V. The Four Toll-Bars. XXIII. 
 
 VI. Revelation. Prayer. ' XXIV. 
 Faith. Fasting. Re- XXV. 
 vivalism. 
 VII. Clerical Auxiliary Insti- 
 tutions. I XXVI. 
 VIII. The Medicine -Man and ! XXVII. 
 Dei Gratia. XXVIII. 
 IX. Monasticism and Later 
 
 Teachers — What Chris- XXIX. 
 tianity is. 
 
 X. The Bible, or History XXX. 
 
 OF THE Israelites. 
 
 XI. The Bible, or History of XXXI. 
 
 THE Israelites {cont.). 
 
 XII. The New Testament. XXXII. 
 
 XIII. The New Testament {cont.). 
 
 XIV. Autonomy OF the Universe. XXXIII. 
 XV. Free Will and Predesti- 
 nation. 
 
 Natural History. 
 
 A Future State. 
 
 A Future State {cont.). 
 
 Origin of Man. 
 
 Evolution. 
 
 The Blood. 
 
 The Brain. 
 
 The Soul. 
 
 Heaven and Hell. 
 
 Etern.al Punishment. 
 
 Purgatory. The 
 
 Devil. 
 Know-Nothingness. 
 Liberation. 
 The Astrono.mer and 
 
 Geologist. 
 The Astronomer and 
 
 Geologist {cont.). 
 Other Lessons of 
 
 Science. 
 Chemistry. Geography. 
 
 Chronology. 
 The Whole Subject 
 
 Surveyed. 
 Conclusion. 
 INDEX. 
 
 REEVES c^ TURNER, 83 CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON. 
 And may be had or ordered of all Booksellers.
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK : A STUDY FROM NEW POINTS OF VIEW. 
 
 Noiu Ready. In one vol. Demy 2>vo, pp. xxxii and 288. 
 With Seventeen Facsimiles. Cloth. 
 
 Price I OS. 6d. 
 
 SHAKESPEAR 
 
 By W. CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 Second Edition, Revised. With Important Additions. 
 
 The present volume is probably entitled, whatever its individual 
 merits and value maybe considered to be, to the credit of being wholly 
 on new and independent lines ; and after all the researches and con- 
 clusions of the editors and critics, it aims at placing in a fresh and 
 very different light many of the most important features in the biog- 
 raphy and literary history of the Poet. The book is the result of 
 a considerable amount of labour and thought, and owes a share of its 
 claim to attention to the wide and varied reading and studies of the 
 author, and to his lengthened bibliographical experience. It deals 
 with all the difficult and perplexing problems which have arisen, and 
 exist, in connection with the life and productions of Shakespear, the 
 first knowledge of London, the history of the Sonnets., the relations 
 between Shakespear and Bacon, those between the former and his 
 family, the deer-stealing affair, and the final removal to London ; and 
 it unavoidably conflicts at several points with the statements and 
 opinions of other workers in this field. The new Essay seeks to place 
 the private and professional career of our national Poet on a new 
 footing, in considerable measure by the collation of scattered facts and 
 allusions, and the presentment of many circumstances in fresh points 
 of view. 
 
 The keen and enduring interest in all that concerns Shakespear, 
 even to the most trivial and indirect particulars, throughout the world, 
 ought to secure for the present publication an indulgent, if not a 
 favourable, acceptance. 
 
 In a recent catalogue issued by Messrs. Sotheran & Co., under a 
 volume entitled Tlie Lawes Resolution of Women'' s Rights, 1632, it is 
 observed in a note : — 
 
 This scarce volume has lately received special attention from the manner in which it has 
 been brought forward as an important illustration of the Early Life of Shakespear in Mr. 
 W. C. Hazlitt's new study of the Poet, 1903, where the author shows the state of early legal 
 and public feeling on the subject of Secret Betrothal, as connected with the connubial 
 relations between Shakespear and Ann Hathaway. 
 
 BERNARD QUARITCH, 15 PICCADILLY, LONDON. 
 
 3 Y
 
 Royal Svo. iv, 448 //. Cloth. 
 
 W. CAREW HAZLITT'S 
 
 Bibliographical Collections 
 
 AND NOTES ON 
 
 Early English Literature 
 
 FOURTH SERIES— \Z^i-\^oi 
 Price £1, 1 6s. net 
 
 It is now more than eight years since I published the last instalment 
 of Mr. Hazlitt's well-known contribution to British Bibliography, and 
 although it might be very desirable to reproduce the whole of the 
 already printed matter in a consolidated shape with additions brought 
 down to date, the demand for this class of work, however important 
 and interesting it may be to specialists,, is scarcely large enough to 
 encourage at present the necessarily very heavy expenditure. Mr. 
 Hazlitt has therefore committed to me the publication of a volume, 
 which represents the gatherings of the last eight or nine years, not 
 only from the sale-rooms, where so many remarkable libraries have 
 in this interval been dispersed, but from further labours at the 
 British Museum and at the numerous collections deposited at Oxford 
 and Cambridge. The result of all these manifold researches has 
 been to bring together some thousands of titles, among which are 
 numerous items of the first rarity and others derived from fragments 
 of works hitherto and otherwise unknown. 
 
 The impression of this new addition to the Hazlitt Series is strictly 
 limited to one hundred and fifty copies, all of which, it is estimated, 
 will be required for public institutions, so that any private buyer, 
 desirous of possessing the volume, should forward his name and 
 address to me as soon as possible. 
 
 BERNARD QUARITCH, 15 PICCADILLY, LONDON. 
 
 4
 
 THE ESSAYS AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 MONTAIGNE 
 
 The Text formed from a Collation of the best French 
 Editions, with a Biographical Sketch and Illustrative Notes. 
 4 vols., 8vo. Portraits, Illustrations, and Facsimiles. 
 
 This Edition contains more Letters than the latest French Edition by 
 MM. COURBET and RoYET, 1872-1900. 
 
 A MANUAL 
 
 FOR THE COLLECTOR AND AMATEUR 
 
 OF 
 
 OLD ENGLISH PLAYS 
 
 EDITED 
 
 from the material formed by kirkman, langbaine, 
 
 downes, oldys, and halliwell-phillipps, with 
 
 extensive additions and corrections 
 
 By W. CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 Quarto, half- vellum. Only 250 copies printed for England 
 and America. Price 21s. net. 
 
 FAITHS AND FOLKLORE 
 
 THE POPULAR ANTIQUITIES OF GREAT BRITAIN 
 
 Three vols., 8vo, 1870, re-arranged in alphabetical form, 
 with careful revision and extensive additions. In 2 vols., Svo, 
 price 2 IS. 
 
 REEVES & TURNER, 83 CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON. 
 
 5
 
 IN THE PRESS 
 
 ENGLISH PROVERBS 
 
 AND 
 
 PROVERBIAL PHRASES 
 
 Collected from the most Authentic Sources^ Alphabetically 
 Arranged and Annotated 
 
 By W. CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 THIRD EDITION, WITH EXTENSIVE ADDITIONS 
 In I Volume, Crown 8vo. Price 6s. 
 
 REEVES & TURNER, 83 CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 PROSE WRITINGS 
 
 OF 
 
 W. CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 Odysseus. 
 Robin Hood. 
 Whittington. 
 Faust or Faustus. 
 Anne Boleyn. 
 
 BUNYAN. 
 
 Dr. Johnson. 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 Mister Joseph Miller. 
 
 Italy and England Formerly. 
 
 Some Deeper Uses of Popular 
 
 Literature. 
 Fame. 
 
 The Subject Continued. 
 
 On Persons who have Done 
 
 only One Thing. 
 Form. 
 
 Writing and Painting. 
 Babyology. 
 Errata. 
 Ben Trovato. 
 Royalism or Socialism ? 
 The Thought of Others. 
 Some Late and Living Authors. 
 Not Uncommon People. 
 Nemo. 
 
 In I Volume, Crown 8vo. Price 6s. 
 
 REEVES & TURNER, 83 CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON. 
 
 6
 
 Other Publications by the same Writer^ all 
 
 accompanied by Critical and Illustrative 
 
 Introductions and Notes. 
 
 A SUCCINCT RECORD OF A BUSY LIFE (1859-1905). 
 
 HAZLITT (WILLIAM). 
 
 Memoirs of William Hazlitt. 1867. 2 vols. Portraits. 
 Four Generations of a Literary Family. 1897. 2 vols. Portraits 
 and Facsimiles. 
 
 Hazlitt's Works, edited by W. C. H. 1869-73. 8 vols. Not com- 
 pleted. 
 
 LAMB (CHARLES). 
 
 Charles and Mary Lamb. 1874. i2mo. Facsimiles. 
 Letters of Charles Lamb. 1886. 2 vols. i2mo. 
 The Lambs. 1897. i2mo. 
 Lamb and Hazlitt. 1900. i2mo. 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt has also contributed papers on Lamb to Macmillan's Magazine, 
 StTand Magazine, Atlantic Montidy,^ and Har^et^s Magazine, as well as to Messrs. 
 Dent & Co.'s and Methuen & Co.'s editions of the Letters. 
 
 THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC: Its Rise, its Growth, and its Fall, 
 421-1797. 2 vols. 1900. 8vo. Maps. (A. & C. Black.) 
 
 *\* Third Edition rewritten and greatly enlarged. 
 
 MONTAIGNE, ESSAYS AND LETTERS. 1902. 4 vols. 8vo. 
 Illustrations. Second and Revised Edition. 
 
 SCHOOLS, SCHOOL BOOKS, AND SCHOOLMASTERS. A 
 
 Contribution to the History of Educational Development in Great 
 Britain. 1888. i2mo. 
 
 SHAKESPEAR. 
 
 Shakespear : The Man and his Work. Second Edition Enlarged. 
 
 1903. 8vo. Facsimiles. 
 
 Shakespear's Library. A Revised and Enlarged Edition. 1875. 
 
 6 vols. l2mo. 
 
 Fairy Tales, Legends, and Romances, illustrating Shakespear. 
 
 1875. i2mo. 
 
 DRAMA. 
 
 English Drama and Stage under the Tudor and Stuart Princes, 
 
 1543-1664. 1869. 4to. Facsimiles. 
 
 Dodsley's Collection of Old English Plays. Rearranged, Revised, 
 
 and Enlarged. 1874-6. 15 vols. 8vo. 
 
 A Manual of Old English Plays. Founded on Langbaine, Halli- 
 
 well. &c. With Extensive Additions. 1892. 4to. 
 
 FOLKLORE. 
 
 Faiths and Folklore. 1905. 2 vols. 8vo. Illustrations. 
 
 *»* A greatly improved and enlarged edition of Popular- Antiquities of Great 
 Britain, 1870. 
 
 Tales and Legends of National Origin or Widely Current in 
 England from Early Times. 1S92. 8vo. 
 
 7
 
 LAND TENURE : Blount (Thomas), Tenures of Land and Customs 
 of Manors. Originally published in 1679 in a small i2mo volume. 
 Greatly enlarged by the Beckwiths. 1784-1S15. A New Edition, with 
 farther extensive additions, and the matter more conveniently arranged. 
 1874. Svo. 
 
 COOKERY: Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine. 1S86. i2mo. 
 GARDENING : Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 1887. l2mo. 
 
 POETRY. 
 
 Constable (Henry), Sonnets and other Poems, now first collected. 
 1S59. 8vo. 
 
 Lovelace (Richard), Poems, now first collected. With Memoir and 
 Notes. 1864. i2mo. 
 
 Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England. 1864-6. 4 
 vols. i2mo. 
 
 Early Popular Poetry of Scotland and the Northern Border. 
 1895. i2mo. 
 
 %* Dr. David Laing's Select Remains ^ iS:;2, and his Early Metrical Tales, 
 1826, republished with additions and corrections. 
 
 Browne (William), Poems. 2 vols. 1868-9. 4to- 
 
 Gascoigne (George), Complete Poems and Dramas. 1S69-70. 410. 
 
 2 vols. 
 
 Carew (Thomas), Poems and Masque. 1S70. 410. 
 
 Randolph (Thomas), Poems and Plays. 1875. i2mo. 
 
 Herrick (Robert), Poems and Letters. 1890. 2 vols. i2mo. 
 
 .Second Edition. 
 
 Suckling (Sir John), Poems, Plays, and Letters. 1892. 2 vols. 
 i2mo. Second Edition. 
 
 Warton (Thomas), History of English Poetry, from the 12th to 
 the Close of the i6th Century. An entirely New Edition, with Notes 
 and Corrections by Sir Frederic Madden, Thomas Wright, W. 
 Aldis Wright, W. Walter Skeat, Richard Morris, F. J. Furni- 
 VALi,, Henry Sweet, &c., and the Editor. 1S71. 4 vols. Large 8vo. 
 
 NUMISMATICS. 
 
 Coinage of the European Continent. 1893. Supplement to same. 
 
 1897. 2 vols. Svo. 250 Ilhistrations. 
 
 The Coin-Collector. Second Edition, Revised. 1905. 8vo. Numerous 
 Illustrations. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Handbook of Early English Literature (1474-1660). 1867. Large 8vo. 
 
 Bibliographical Collections and Notes. Series I.-IV. With two 
 Appendices. 1 876-1903. Svo. 6 vols. 
 
 General Index to Mr. Hazlitt's Bibliography. By J. G. Gray. 
 1S93. Large Svo. pp. S41. 
 
 Catalogue of the Huth Library (the English portion). 1880. 4 vols. 
 Large Svo. 
 
 Confessions of a Collector. 1S97. Small Svo. 
 
 The Book-Collector. A General Survey of the Pursuit. 1904. Svo.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY— conimued. 
 
 A Great Roll of Honour. An Alphabetical Catalogue of about 10,000 
 Men and Women who, throughout the British Isles and in our Early 
 Colonies, have collected MSS. and printed books from the 14th to the 
 19th century. With occasional Notes, and Indexes of Localities and 
 Ranks or Occupations, i vol. Small 4to. Uniform with the Biblio- 
 g}'aphical Society's Traitsactions. \_Ready for the Press. 
 
 JEST-BOOKS. 
 
 Old English Jest- Books (including A C. Mery Talys and Mery Tales 
 and Quicke Answcres, both used by Shakespear). 1S63-4. 3 vols. 
 l2mo. 
 
 A C. Mery Talys, reproduced in photography from the unique Gottin- 
 gen copy of 1526. 18S7. Folio. With an Introduction, Glossary, and 
 
 Notes. 
 
 The New London Jest-Book. 1871. 4to. 
 
 Studies in Jocular Literature. A Popular Subject more closely con- 
 sidered. 1890. i2mo. 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED WORKS. 
 
 Narrative of the Journey of an Irish Gentleman through England 
 in 1752. 8vo. 1S69. 
 
 Inedited Poetical Miscellanies, 1584-1700. 8vo. 1870. 
 
 Prefaces, Dedications, and Epistles, from Early English Books, 
 1540-1701. 8vo. 1874. 
 
 Fugitive Tracts, written in Verse, 1493-1700. 2 vols. 4to. 1875. 
 
 Facsimiles. 
 
 *** Of this series, of which my friend the late Mr. Henry Huth paid the expenses, 
 fifty copies only were printed. 
 
 Paris and Vienna, a Romance. Reprinted from the unique copy by 
 Caxton, 1485. 4to. 186S. Facsimile. 
 
 Inedited Tracts : Illustrating the Manners, Opinions, and Occu- 
 pations of Englishmen during the i6th and 17th centuries (1579- 
 1618). 4to. 1S68. Facsimiles. 
 
 An Address to the Electors of Mid-Surrey among whom I live, 
 in rejoinder to Mr. Gladstone's Manifesto. 1886. 8vo. 
 
 Baron's Daughter (The). A Poem. 1877. 4to. 75 copies printed. 
 
 Poems. 1877. i2mo. Second Edition. 1897. i2mo. 
 
 Montagu & Co. A Comedy in Four Acts. 1897. i2mo. 25 copies 
 printed.
 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 j 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTED IN U.S.A.
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FAGLITY 
 
 AA 000 611 442 5 
 
 NIVERSITY OF CA, RIVERSIDI 
 
 I 
 
 tARY 
 
 3 1210 01245 2494
 
 >L>'L!i*'i^i'*I>I