OBITER 
 DICTA
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN
 
 OBITER DICTA.
 
 OBITER DICTA. 
 
 ' An obiter dictum, in the language of the 
 law, is a gratuitous opinion, an individual im- 
 pertinence, which, whether it be wise or foolish, 
 right or wrong, bindeth none not even the lips 
 that utter it.' 
 
 OLD JUDGE. 
 
 CHEAP EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 1896.
 
 Stack 
 
 Annex 
 
 HUb 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 CARI.YLB - - - - 1 
 
 ON THE ALLEGED OBSCURITY OF MR. 
 
 BROWNING'S POETRY - - 55 
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING - -96 
 
 ACTORS - 124 
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS - 154 
 
 THE VIA MEDIA - - '7^ 
 
 FALSTAFF .' 2OO
 
 CARLYLE. 
 
 THE accomplishments of our race 
 have of late become so varied, that 
 it is often no easy task to assign him 
 #hom we would judge to his proper 
 station among men ; and yet, until 
 this has been done, the guns of our 
 criticism cannot be accurately levelled, 
 and as a consequence the greater 
 part of our fire must remain futile. 
 He, for example, who would essay to 
 take account of Mr. Gladstone, must 
 read much else besides Hansard ; he 
 must brush up his Homer, and set 
 himself to acquire some theology. 
 The place of Greece in the provi- 
 dential order of the world, and of 
 laymen in the Church of England, 
 
 T
 
 2 CARLYLE. 
 
 must be considered, together with a 
 host of other subjects of much appa- 
 rent irrelevance to a statesman's life. 
 So too in the case of his distinguished 
 rival, whose death eclipsed the gaiety 
 jf politics and banished epigram from 
 Parliament: keen must be the critical 
 faculty which can nicely discern where 
 the novelist ended and the statesman 
 began in Benjamin Disraeli. 
 
 Happily, no such difficulty is now 
 before us. Thomas Carlyle was a 
 writer of books, and he was nothing 
 else. Beneath this judgment he 
 would have winced, but have re- 
 mained silent, for the facts are so. 
 
 Little men sometimes, though not 
 perhaps so often as is taken for 
 granted, complain of their destiny, 
 and think they have been hardly 
 treated, in that they have been 
 allowed to remain so undeniably 
 small ; but great men, with hardly 
 an exception, nauseate their great
 
 CARL YLE. 3 
 
 ness, for not being of the particu- 
 lar sort they most fancy. The poet 
 Gray was passionately fond, so his 
 biographers tell us, of military his- 
 tory; but he took no Quebec. Gene- 
 ral Wolfe took Quebec, and whilst 
 he was taking it, recorded the fact 
 that he would sooner have written 
 Gray's ' Elegy'; and so Carlyle who 
 panted for action, who hated elo- 
 quence, whose heroes were Crom- 
 well and Wellington, Arkwright and 
 the ' rugged Brindley,' who beheld 
 with pride and no ignoble envy the 
 bridge at Auldgarth his mason-father 
 had helped to build half a century 
 before, and then exclaimed, * A noble 
 craft, that of a mason ; a good build- 
 ing will last longer than most books 
 than one book in a million ' ; who 
 despised men of letters, and abhorred 
 the ' reading public ' ; whose gospel 
 was Silence and Action spent his 
 life in talking and writing ; and his 
 
 i 2
 
 4 CARLYLE. 
 
 Jegacy to the world is thirty-four 
 volumes octavo. 
 
 There is a familiar melancholy in 
 this; but the critic has no need tr 
 grow sentimental. We must have 
 men of thought as well as men ol 
 action : poets as much as generals ; 
 authors no less than artizans ; 
 libraries at least as much as militia ; 
 and therefore we may accept and 
 proceed critically to examine Car- 
 lyle's thirty-four volumes, remaining 
 somewhat indifferent to the fact 
 that had he had the fashioning of 
 his own destiny, we should have 
 had at his hands blows instead of 
 books. 
 
 Taking him, then, as he was a 
 man of letters perhaps the best 
 type of such since Dr. Johnson died 
 in Fleet Street, what are we to say 
 of his thirty-four volumes ? 
 
 In them are to be found criticism, 
 oiography, history, politics, poetry,
 
 CARLYLE. 5 
 
 and religion. I mention this variety 
 because of a foolish notion, at one 
 time often found suitably lodged in 
 heads otherwise empty, that Carlyle 
 was a passionate old man, dominated 
 by two or three extravagant ideas, to 
 which he was for ever giving utterance 
 in language of equal extravagance. 
 The thirty-fourvolumes octavo render 
 this opinion untenable by those who 
 can read. Carlyle cannot be killed 
 by an epigram, nor can the many in- 
 fluences that moulded him be referred 
 to any single source. The rich ban- 
 quet his genius has spread for us is 
 of many courses. The fire and fury 
 of the Latter-Day pamphlets may be 
 disregarded by the peaceful soul, and 
 the preference given to the ' Past ' of 
 4 Past and Present,' which, with its 
 intense and sympathetic mediaeval- 
 ism, might have been written by a 
 Tractarian. The ' Life of Sterling ' 
 is the favourite book of many who
 
 6 CARL YLE. 
 
 would sooner pick oakum than read 
 ' Frederick the Great ' all through ; 
 whilst the mere student of belles lettres 
 may attach importance to the essays 
 on Johnson, Burns, and Scott, on Vol- 
 taire and Diderot, on Goethe and 
 Novalis, and yet remain blankly in- 
 different to * Sartor Resartus ' and 
 the ' French Revolution.' 
 
 But true as this is, it is none the 
 less true that, excepting possibly the 
 ' Life of Schiller,' Carlyle wrote 
 nothing not clearly recognisable as 
 his. All his books are his very own 
 bone of his bone, and flesh of his 
 flesh. They are not stolen goods, 
 nor elegant exhibitions of recently 
 and hastily acquired wares. 
 
 This being so, it may be as well if, 
 before proceeding any further, I at- 
 tempt, with a scrupulous regard to 
 brevity, to state what I take to be 
 the invariable indications of Mr. Car- 
 lyle's literary handiwork the tokens
 
 CARLYLE. 7 
 
 of his presence ' Thomas Carlyle, 
 his mark.' 
 
 First of all, it may be stated, with- 
 out a shadow of a doubt, that he is 
 one of those who would sooner be 
 wrong with Plato than right with 
 Aristotle ; in one word, he is a mys- 
 tic. What he says of Novalis may 
 with equal truth be said of him- 
 self: 'He belongs to that class of 
 persons who do not recognise the 
 syllogistic method as the chief organ 
 for investigating truth, or feel them- 
 selves bound at all times to stop 
 short where its light fails them. 
 Many of his opinions he would de- 
 spair of proving in the most patient 
 court of law, and would remain well 
 content that they should be disbe- 
 lieved there.' In philosophy we shall 
 not be very far wrong if we rank 
 Carlyle as a follower of Bishop 
 Berkeley; for an idealist he undoubt- 
 edly was. ' Matter.' says he, * exists
 
 8 LARLYLE. 
 
 only spiritually, and to represent 
 some idea, and body it forth. Heaven 
 and Earth are but the time-vesture 
 of the Eternal. The Universe is but 
 one vast symbol of God; nay, if 
 thou wilt have it, what is man him- 
 self but a symbol of God ? Is not 
 all that he does symbolical, a revela- 
 tion to sense of the mystic God- 
 given force that is in him ? a gospel 
 of Freedom, which he, the " Messias 
 of Nature," preaches as he can by 
 act and word.' 'Yes, Friends,' he 
 elsewhere observes, * not our logical 
 mensurative faculty, but our imagina- 
 tive one, is King over us, I might say 
 Priest and Prophet, to lead us heaven- 
 ward, or magician and wizard to 
 lead us hellward. The understand- 
 ing is indeed thy window too cleai 
 thou canst not make it; but phantasj 
 is thy eye, with its colour-giving 
 retina, healthy or diseased.' It would 
 be easy to multiply instances of this,
 
 CARL VLB. 9 
 
 the most obvious and interesting 
 trait of Mr. Carlyle's writing ; but I 
 must bring my remarks upon it to 
 a close by reminding you of his two 
 favourite quotations, which have 
 both significance. One from Shake- 
 speare's Tempest: 
 
 ' We are such stuff 
 
 As dreams are made of, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep ;' 
 
 the other, the exclamation of the 
 Earth-spirit, in Goethe's Faust: 
 
 ' 'Tis thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply, 
 And weave for God the garment thou seest Him 
 by.' 
 
 But this is but one side of Carlyle. 
 There is another as strongly marked, 
 which is his second note ; and that 
 is what he somewhere calls 'his 
 stubborn realism.' The combination 
 of the two is as charming as it is 
 rare. No one at all acquainted with 
 his writings can fail to remember 
 his almost excessive love of detail ;
 
 io CARL YLE. 
 
 his lively taste for facts, simply as 
 facts. Imaginary joys and sorrows 
 may extort from him nothing but 
 grunts and snorts ; but let him only 
 worry out for himself, from that great 
 dust-heap called ' history,' some un- 
 doubted fact of human and tender 
 interest, and, however small it may 
 be, relating possibly to some one 
 hardly known, and playing but a 
 small part in the events he is record- 
 ing, and he will wax amazingly senti- 
 mental, and perhaps shed as many 
 real tears as Sterne or Dickens do 
 sham ones over their figments. This 
 realism of Carlyle's gives a great 
 charm to his histories and biogra- 
 phies. The amount he tells you is 
 something astonishing no plati- 
 tudes, no rigmarole, no common- 
 form, articles which are the staple 
 of most biography, but, instead of 
 them, all the facts and features 
 of the case pedigree, birth, father
 
 CARLYLE. 11 
 
 and mother, brothers and sisters, 
 education, physiognomy, personal 
 habits, dress, mode of speech ; no- 
 thing escapes him. It was a charac- 
 teristic criticism of his, on one of 
 Miss Martineau's American books, 
 that the story of the way Daniel 
 Webster used to stand before the 
 fire with his hands in his pockets 
 was worth all the politics, philo- 
 sophy, political economy, and socio- 
 logy to be found in other portions of 
 the good lady's writings. Carlyle's 
 eye was indeed a terrible organ : he 
 saw everything. Emerson, writing 
 to him, says : ' I think you see as 
 pictures every street, church, Parlia- 
 ment-house, barracks, baker's shop, 
 mutton-stall, forge, wharf, and ship, 
 and whatever stands, creeps, rolls, 
 or swims thereabout, and make all 
 your own.' He crosses over, one 
 rough day, to Dublin ; and he jots 
 down in his diary the personal
 
 12 CARLYLE. 
 
 appearance of some unhappy crea- 
 tures he never saw before or expected 
 to see again ; how men laughed, cried, 
 swore, were all of huge interest to 
 Carlyle. Give him a fact, he loaded 
 you with thanks ; propound a theory, 
 you were rewarded with the most 
 vivid abuse. 
 
 This intense love for, and faculty 
 of perceiving, what one may call the 
 ' concrete picturesque,' accounts for 
 his many hard sayings about fiction 
 and poetry. He could not under- 
 stand people being at the trouble of 
 inventing characters and situations 
 when history was full of men and 
 women ; when streets were crowded 
 and continents were being peopled 
 under their very noses. Emerson's 
 sphynx-like utterances irritated him 
 at times, as they well might ; his 
 orations and the like. ' I long,' he 
 says, ' to see some concrete thing, 
 some Event Man's Life, American
 
 CARLVLE. 13 
 
 Forest, or piece of Creation which 
 this Emerson loves and wonders at, 
 well Emersonized, depicted by Emer- 
 son filled with the life of Emerson, 
 and cast forth from him then to live 
 by itself.'* But Carlyle forgot the 
 sluggishness of the ordinary imagina- 
 tion, and, for the moment, the stu- 
 pendous dulness of the ordinary 
 historian. It cannot be matter for 
 surprise that people prefer Smollett's 
 ' Humphrey Clinker ' to his ' History 
 of England.' 
 
 * One need scarcely add, nothing of the sort 
 ever proceeded from Emerson. How should it? 
 Where was it to come from ? When, to employ 
 language of Mr. Arnold's own, ' any poor child of 
 nature' overhears the author of 'Essays in Criti- 
 cism' telling two worlds that Emerson's 'Essays' 
 are the most valuable prose contributions to the 
 literature of the century, his soul is indeed filled 
 'with an unutterable sense of lamentation and 
 mourning and woe.' Mr. Arnold's silence was 
 once felt to be provoking. Wordsworth's lines 
 kept occurring to one's mind 
 
 ' Poor Matthew, all his frolics o'er, 
 Is silent as a standing pool.' 
 
 But it was better so.
 
 14 CARLYLE. 
 
 The third and last mark to which 
 I call attention is his humoui. 
 Nowhere, surely, in the whole field 
 of English literature, Shakespeare 
 excepted, do you come upon a more 
 abundant vein of humour than 
 Carlyle's, though I admit that the 
 quality of the ore is not of the finest. 
 His every production is bathed in 
 humour. This must never be, though 
 it often has been, forgotten. He is 
 not to be taken literally. He is 
 always a humourist, not unfrequently 
 a writer of burlesque, and occasion- 
 ally a buffoon. 
 
 Although the spectacle of Mr 
 Swinburne taking Mr. Carlyle to 
 task, as he recently did, for in- 
 delicacy, has an oddity all its own, 
 so far as I am concerned I cannot 
 but concur with this critic in think- 
 ing that Carlyle has laid himself 
 open, particularly in his ' Frederick 
 the Great,' to the charge one usually
 
 CARLYLE. 15 
 
 associates with the great and terrible 
 name of Dean Swift ; but it is the 
 Dean with a difference, and the dif- 
 ference is all in Carlyle's favour. 
 The former deliberately pelts you 
 with dirt, as did in old days gentle- 
 men electors their parliamentary can- 
 didates ; the latter only occasionally 
 splashes you, as does a public vehicle 
 pursuing on a wet day its uproarious 
 course. 
 
 These, then, I take to be Carlyle's 
 three principal marks or notes : mys- 
 ticism in thought, realism in descrip- 
 tion, and humour in both. 
 
 To proceed now to his actual 
 literary work. 
 
 First, then, I would record the 
 fact that he was a great critic, and 
 this at a time when our literary 
 criticism was a scandal. He more 
 than any other has purged our vision 
 and widened our horizons in this 
 great matter. He taught us there
 
 16 CARI.YLE. 
 
 was no sort of finality, but only non 
 sense, in that kind of criticism which 
 was content with laying down some 
 foreign masterpiece with the ob- 
 servation that it was not suited for 
 the English taste. He was, if not 
 the first, almost the first critic, who 
 pursued in his criticism the historical 
 method, and sought to make us 
 understand what we were required 
 to judge. It has been said that 
 Carlyle's criticisms are not final, and 
 that he has not said the last word 
 about Voltaire, Diderot, Richter, and 
 Goethe. I can well believe it. But 
 reserving ' last words ' for the use of 
 the last man (to whom they would 
 appear to belong), it is surely some- 
 thing to have said the first sensible 
 words uttered in English on these 
 important subjects. We ought not 
 to forget the early days of the 
 Foreign and Quarterly Review. We 
 have critics now, quieter, more re-
 
 CARLYLE. 17 
 
 poseful souls, taking their ease on 
 Zion, who have entered upon a world 
 j-sady to welcome them, whose keen 
 rapiers may cut velvet better than 
 did the two-handed broadsword of 
 Carlyle, and whose later date may 
 enable them to discern what their 
 forerunner failed to perceive ; but 
 when the critics of this century come 
 to be criticized by the critics of 
 the next, an honourable, if not the 
 highest place will be awarded to 
 Carlyle. 
 
 Turn we now to the historian and 
 biographer. History and biography 
 much resemble one another in the 
 pages of Carlyle, and occupy more 
 than half his thirty-four volumes ; 
 nor is this to be wondered at, since 
 they afford him fullest scope for his 
 three strong points his love of the 
 wonderful ; his love of telling a story, 
 as the children say, ' from the very 
 beginning ;' and his humour. His 
 
 2
 
 i8 CARLYLE. 
 
 view of history is sufficiently lofty. 
 History, says he, is the true epic 
 poem, a universal divine scripture 
 whose plenary inspiration no one out 
 of Bedlam shall bring into question. 
 Nor is he quite at one with the 
 ordinary historian as to the true his- 
 torical method. 'The time seems 
 coming when he who sees no world 
 but that of courts and camps, and 
 writes only how soldiers were drilled 
 and shot, and how this ministerial 
 conjurer out-conjured that other, 
 and then guided, or at least held, 
 something which he called the 
 rudder of Government, but which 
 was rather the spigot of Taxation, 
 wherewith in place of steering he 
 could tax, will pass for a more or less 
 instructive Gazetteer, but will no 
 longer be called an Historian.' 
 
 Nor does the philosophical method 
 of writing history please him any 
 better:
 
 CARLYLE. ig 
 
 Truly if History is Philosophy 
 teaching by examples, the writer 
 fitted to compose history is hitherto 
 an unknown man. Better were it 
 that mere earthly historians should 
 lower such pretensions, more suitable 
 for omniscience than for human 
 science, and aiming only at some 
 picture of the things acted, which 
 picture itself will be a poor approxi- 
 mation, leave the inscrutable purport 
 of them an acknowledged secret or 
 at most, in reverent faith, pause over 
 the mysterious vestiges of Him whose 
 path is in the great deep of Time, 
 whom History indeed reveals, but 
 only all History and in Eternity will 
 clearly reveal.' 
 
 This same transcendental way of 
 looking at things is very noticeable 
 in the following view of Biography : 
 ' For, as the highest gospel was a 
 Biography, so is the life of every good 
 man still an indubitable gospel, and 
 
 2
 
 20 CARLVLE. 
 
 preaches to the eye and heart and 
 whole man, so that devils even must 
 believe and tremble, these gladdest 
 tidings. Man is heaven-born not 
 the thrall of circumstances, of neces- 
 sity, but the victorious subduer 
 thereof.' These, then, being his views, 
 what are we to say of his works ? 
 His three principal historical works 
 are, as everyone knows, ' Cromwel^ 
 The French Revolution,' and ' Fre- 
 derick the Great,' though there is a 
 very considerable amount of other 
 historical writing scattered up and 
 down his works. But what are we 
 to say of these three ? Is he, by 
 virtue of them, entitled to the rank 
 and influence of a great historian ? 
 What have we a right to demand of 
 an historian ? First, surely, stern 
 veracity, which implies not merely 
 knowledge but honesty. An histo- 
 rian stands in a fiduciary position 
 towards his reader?, and if he with-
 
 CARLYLE, 21 
 
 holds from them important facts 
 likely to influence their judgment, 
 he is guilty of fraud, and, when jus- 
 tice is done in this world, will be 
 condemned to refund all moneys he 
 has made by his false professions, 
 with compound interest. This sort 
 of fraud is unknown to the law, but 
 to nobody else. * Let me know the 
 facts !' may well be the agonized cry 
 of the student who finds himseli 
 floating down what Arnold has called 
 ' the vast Mississippi of falsehood, 
 History.' Secondly comes a catholic 
 temper and way of looking at things. 
 The historian should be a gentleman 
 and possess a moral breadth of tem- 
 perament. There should be no bitter 
 protesting spirit about him. He 
 should remember the world he has 
 taken upon himself to write about is 
 a large place, and that nobody set 
 him up over us. Thirdly, he must 
 be a born story-teller. If he is not
 
 22 CARLYLE. 
 
 this, he has mistaken his vocation 
 He may be a great philosopher, j 
 useful editor, a profound scholar, and 
 anything else his friends like to call 
 him, except a great historian. How 
 does Carlyle meet these require- 
 ments ? His veracity, that is, his 
 laborious accuracy, is admitted by 
 the only persons competent to form 
 an opinion, namely, independent in- 
 vestigators who have followed in his 
 track ; but what may be called the 
 internal evidence of the case also 
 supplies a strong proof of it. Carlyle 
 was, as everyone knows, a hero- 
 worshipper. It is part of his mys- 
 ticism. With him man, as well as 
 God, is a spirit, either of good or 
 evil, and as such should be either 
 worshipped or reviled. He is never 
 himself till he has discovered or in- 
 vented a hero ; and, when he has got 
 him, he tosses and dandles him as a 
 mother her babe. This is a terrible
 
 CARLYLE. 23 
 
 temptation to put in the way of an 
 historian, and few there be who are 
 found able to resist it. How easy to 
 keep back an ugly fact, sure to be a 
 stumbling-block in the way of weak 
 brethren ! Carlyle is above suspicion 
 in this respect. He knows no reti- 
 cence. Nothing restrains him ; not 
 even the so-called proprieties of 
 history. He may, after his bois- 
 terous fashion, pour scorn upon you 
 for looking grave, as you read in his 
 vivid pages of the reckless manner in 
 which too many of his heroes drove 
 coaches-and-six through the Ten 
 Commandments. As likely as not 
 he will call you a blockhead, and tell 
 you to close your wide mouth and 
 cease shrieking. But, dear me! hard 
 words break no bones, and it is an 
 amazing comfort to know the facts. 
 Is he writing of Cromwell ? down 
 goes everything letters, speeches, 
 as they were written, as they were
 
 24 CARLYLE. 
 
 delivered. Few great men are edited 
 after this fashion. Were they to be 
 so Luther, for example many eyes 
 would be opened very wide. Nor 
 does Carlyle fail in comment. If 
 the Protector makes a somewhat dis- 
 tant allusion to the Barbadoes, Car- 
 lyle is at your elbow to tell you it 
 means his selling people to work as 
 slaves in the West Indies. As for 
 Mirabeau, 'our wild Gabriel Honore,' 
 well ! we are told all about him ; nor 
 is Frederick let off a single absurdity 
 or atrocity. But when we have ad- 
 mitted the veracity, what are we to 
 say of the catholic temper, the 
 breadth of temperament, the wide 
 Shakespearian tolerance ? Carlyle 
 ought to have them all. By nature 
 he was tolerant enough; so true a 
 humourist could never be a bigot. 
 When his war-paint is not on, a 
 child might lead him. His judg- 
 ments are gracious, chivalrous, tinged
 
 CARLYLE. 25 
 
 with a kindly melancholy and divine 
 pity. But this mood is never for 
 long. Some gadfly stings him : he 
 seizes his tomahawk and is off on 
 the trail. It must sorrowfully be ad- 
 mitted that a long life of opposition 
 and indigestion, of fierce warfare with 
 cooks and Philistines, spoilt his tem- 
 per, never of the best, and made him 
 too often contemptuous, savage, un- 
 just. His language then becomes 
 unreasonable, unbearable, bad. Liter- 
 ature takes care of herself. You 
 disobey her rules : well and good, 
 she shuts her door in your face; 
 you plead your genius : she replies, 
 ' Your temper,' and bolts it. Car- 
 lyle has deliberately destroyed, by his 
 own wilfulness, the value of a great 
 deal he has written. It can never 
 become classical. Alas ! that this 
 should be true of too many eminent 
 Englishmen of our time. Language 
 such as was, at one time, almost
 
 26 CARLYLE. 
 
 habitual with Mr. Ruskin, is a na- 
 tional humiliation, giving point to 
 the Frenchman's sneer as to our 
 distinguishing literary characteristic 
 being ' la bmtdite.' In Carlyle's case 
 much must be allowed for his rhetoric 
 and humour. In slang phrase, he 
 always 'piles it on.' Does a book- 
 seller misdirect a parcel, he exclaims, 
 ' My malison on all Blockheadisms 
 and Torpid Infidelities of which this 
 world is full.' Still, all allowances 
 made, it is a thousand pities; and 
 one's thoughts turn away from this 
 stormy old man and take refuge in 
 the quiet haven of the Oratory at 
 Birmingham, with his great Pro- 
 tagonist, who, throughout an equally 
 long life spent in painful controversy, 
 and wielding weapons as terrible as 
 Carlyle's own, has rarely forgotten to 
 be urbane, and whose every sentence 
 is a * thing of beauty.' It must, then, 
 be owned that too many of Carlyle's
 
 CARLYLE. 27 
 
 literary achievements 'lack a gracious 
 somewhat.' By force of his genius he 
 ' smites the rock and spreads the 
 water ;' but then, like Moses, ' he 
 desecrates, belike, the deed in doing/ 
 
 Our third requirement was, it may 
 be remembered, the gift of the story- 
 teller. Here one is on firm ground. 
 Where is the equal of the man who 
 has told us the story of ' The Dia- 
 mond Necklace ' ? 
 
 It is the vogue, nowadays, to sneer 
 at picturesque writing. Professor 
 Seeley, for reasons of his own, ap- 
 pears to think that whilst politics, 
 and, I presume religion, may be 
 made as interesting as you please, 
 history should be as dull as possible. 
 This, surely, is a jaundiced view. 
 If there is one thing it is legitimata 
 to make more interesting than 
 another, it is the varied record of 
 man's life upon earth. So long as 
 we have human hearts and await
 
 28 CARLYLE 
 
 human destinies, so long as we are 
 alive to the pathos, the dignity, the 
 comedy of human life, so long shal] 
 we continue to rank above the phi- 
 losopher, higher than the politician, 
 the great artist, be he called drama- 
 tist or historian, who makes us con- 
 scious of the divine movement of 
 events, and of our fathers who were 
 before us. Of course we assume 
 accuracy and labour in our animated 
 historian ; though, for that matter/ 
 other things being equal, I prefer a 
 lively liar to a dull one. 
 
 Carlyle is sometimes as irresistible 
 as * The Campbells are Coming,' or 
 'Auld Lang Syne.' He has de- 
 scribed some men and some events 
 once and for all, and so takes his 
 place with Thucydides, Tacitus and 
 Gibbon. Pedants may try hard tc 
 forget this, and may in their laboured 
 nothings seek to ignore the authoi 
 of 'Cromwell' and the 'French Re-
 
 CARLYLE. 29 
 
 volution ' ; but as well might the 
 pedestrian in Cumberland or Inver- 
 ness seek to ignore Helvellyn or Ben 
 Nevis. Carlyle is there, and will 
 remain there, when the pedant oft 
 to-day has been superseded by the 
 pedant of to-morrow. 
 
 Remembering all this, we are apt 
 to forget his faults, his eccentricities, 
 and vagaries, his buffooneries, his 
 too-outrageous cynicisms and his too- 
 intrusive egotisms, and to ask our- 
 selves if it be not this man, who is 
 it then to be ? Macaulay, answer 
 some ; and Macaulay's claims are not 
 of the sort to go unrecognised in a 
 world which loves clearness of expres 
 sion and of view only too well. Ma- 
 caulay's position never admitted of 
 doubt. We know what to expect, 
 and we always get it. It is like the 
 old days of W. G. Grace's cricket. 
 We went to see the leviathan slog 
 for six, and we saw it. We expected
 
 30 CAKLYLE. 
 
 him to do it, and he did it. So with 
 Macaulay the good Whig, as he 
 takes up the History, settles himself 
 down in his chair, and knows it is 
 going to be a bad time for the Tories. 
 Macaulay's style his much-praised 
 style is ineffectual for the purpose 
 of telling the truth about anything. 
 It is splendid, but splendide mendax, 
 and in Macaulay's case the style was 
 the man. He had enormous know- 
 ledge, and a noble spirit ; his know- 
 ledge enriched his style and his 
 spirit consecrated it to the service of 
 Liberty. We do well to be proud of 
 Macaulay; but we must add that, 
 great as was his knowledge, great 
 also was his ignorance, which was 
 none the less ignorance because it 
 was wilful ; noble as was his spirit, 
 the range of subject over which it 
 energized was painfully restricted. 
 He looked out upon the world, but, 
 behold, only the Whigs were good,
 
 CARLYLE. 31 
 
 Luther and Loyola, Cromwell and 
 Claverhouse, Carlyle and Newman 
 they moved him not ; their enthusi- 
 asms were delusions, and their poli- 
 tics demonstrable errors. Whereas, 
 of Lord Somers and Charles first 
 Earl Grey it is impossible to speak 
 without emotion. But the world 
 does not belong to the Whigs; and 
 a great historian must be capable of 
 sympathizing both with delusions and 
 demonstrable errors. Mr. Gladstone 
 has commented with force upon what 
 he calls Macaulay's invincible igno- 
 rance, and further says that to cer- 
 tain aspects of a case (particularly 
 those aspects most pleasing to Mr. 
 Gladstone) Macaulay's mind was 
 hermetically sealed. It is difficult 
 to resist these conclusions ; and it 
 would appear no rash inference from 
 them, that a man in a state of in- 
 vincible ignorance and with a mind 
 hermetically sealed, whatever else he
 
 32 CARLYLE. 
 
 may be orator, advocate, statesman, 
 journalist, man of letters can never 
 be a great historian. But, indeed, 
 when one remembers Macaulay's 
 limited range of ideas : the common- 
 placeness of his morality, and of his 
 descriptions ; his absence of humour, 
 and of pathos for though Miss Mar- 
 tineau says she found one pathetic 
 passage in the History, I have often 
 searched for it in vain ; and then 
 turns to Carlyle to his almost be- 
 wildering affluence of thought, fancy, 
 feeling, humour, pathos his biting 
 pen, his scorching criticism, hit 
 world-wide sympathy (save in certain 
 moods) with everything but the smug 
 commonplace to prefer Macaulay 
 to him, is like giving the preference 
 to Birket Foster over Salvator Rosa 
 But if it is not Macaulay, who is it 
 to be ? Mr. Hepworth Dixon or Mr. 
 Froude? Of Bishop Stubbs and 
 Professor Freeman it behoves every
 
 CARL YLE. 33 
 
 ignoramus to speak with respect. 
 Horny-handed sons of toil, they are 
 worthy of their wage. Carlyle has 
 somewhere struck a distinction be- 
 tween the historical artist and the 
 historical artizan. The bishop and 
 the professor are historical artizans ; 
 artists they are not and the great 
 historian is a great artist. 
 
 England boasts two such artists. 
 Edward Gibbon and Thomas Carlyle. 
 The elder historian may be compared 
 to one of the great Alpine roadways- 
 sublime in its conception, heroic in 
 its execution, superb in its magni- 
 ficent uniformity of good workman- 
 ship. The younger resembles one 
 of his native streams, pent in at 
 times between huge rocks, and tor- 
 mented into foam, and then effect- 
 ing its escape down some precipice, 
 and spreading into cool expanses 
 below ; but however varied may be 
 its fortunes however startling its 
 
 3
 
 34 CARLYLR. 
 
 changes always in motion, always 
 in harmony with the scene around. 
 Is it gloomy ? It is with the gloom 
 of the thunder-cloud. Is it bright \ 
 It is with the radiance of the sun. 
 
 It is with some consternation that 
 I approach the subject of Carlyle's 
 politics. One handles them as does 
 an inspector of police a parcel re- 
 ported to contain dynamite. The 
 Latter Day Pamphlets might not 
 unfitly be labelled ' Dangerous Ex- 
 plosives/ 
 
 In this matter of politics there 
 were two Carlyles; and, as generally 
 happens in such cases, his last state 
 was worse than his first. Up to 
 1843, he not unfairly might be called 
 a Liberal of uncertain vote it may 
 be a man difficult to work with, and 
 impatient of discipline, but still aglow 
 with generous heat ; full of large- 
 hearted sympathy with the poor and 
 oppressed, and of intense hatred of
 
 CARLYLE. 35 
 
 the cruel and shallow sophistries that 
 then passed for maxims, almost for 
 axioms, of government. In the year 
 1819, when the yeomanry round 
 Glasgow was called out to keep 
 down some dreadful monsters called 
 ' Radicals,' Carlyle describes how he 
 met an advocate of his acquaintance 
 hurrying along, musket in hand, to 
 his drill on the Links. ' You should 
 have the like of this,' said he, cheerily 
 patting his gun. ' Yes,' was the reply, 
 'but I haven't yet quite settled on 
 which side.' And when he did make 
 his choice, on the whole he chose 
 rightly. The author of that noble 
 pamphlet ' Chartism,' published in 
 1840, was at least once a Liberal. Let 
 me quote a passage that has stirred 
 to effort many a generous heart now 
 cold in death : ' Who would suppose 
 ' that Education were a thing which 
 'had to be advocated on the ground 
 ' of local expediency, or indeed on any 
 
 32
 
 36 CARLYLE 
 
 ' ground ? As if it stood not on the 
 ' basis of an everlasting duty, as a 
 ' prime necessity of man ! It is a 
 
 * thing that should need no advocat- 
 ' ing ; much as it does actually need. 
 ' To impart the gift of thinking to 
 ' those who cannot think, and yet who 
 ' could in that case think : this, one 
 ' would imagine, was the first function 
 ' a government had to set about dis- 
 ' charging. Were it not a cruel thing 
 ' to see, in any province of an empire, 
 ' the inhabitants living all mutilated 
 'in their limbs, each strong man 
 ' with his right arm lamed ? How 
 ' much crueller to find the strong soul 
 ' with its eyes still sealed its eyes 
 ' extinct, so that it sees not ! Light 
 
 * has come into the world ; but to this 
 ' poor peasant it has come in vain. 
 
 For six thousand years the sons of 
 1 Adam, in sleepless effort, have been 
 'devising, doing, discovering; in mys- 
 
 * terious, infinite, indissoluble com-
 
 CAKLYLE. 37 
 
 munion, warring, a little band of 
 ' brothers, against the black empire 
 ' of necessity and night ; they have 
 ' accomplished such a conquest and 
 ' conquests ; and to this man it is all 
 ' as if it had not been. The four- 
 and-twenty letters of the alphabet 
 are still runic enigmas to him. He 
 ' passes by on the other side ; and 
 ' that great spiritual kingdom, the toil- 
 ' won conquest of his own brothers, all 
 ' that his brothers have conquered, 
 ' is a thing not extant for him. An 
 * invisible empire ; he knows it not 
 ' suspects it not. And is not this his 
 ' withal ; the conquest of his own 
 ' brothers, the lawfully acquired pos- 
 ' session of all men ? Baleful enchant - 
 ' ment lies over him, from generation 
 1 to generation ; he knows not that 
 1 such an empire is his that such an 
 'empire is his at all ... Heavier 
 ' wrong is not done under the sun. It 
 ' lasts from year to year, from century
 
 38 CARLYLE. 
 
 ' to century ; the blinded sire slaves 
 ' himself out, and leaves a blinded son ; 
 ' and men, made in the image of God. 
 1 continue as two-legged beasts oi 
 'labour: and in the largest empire 
 ' of the world it is a debate whether 
 ' a small fraction of the revenue of 
 'one day shall, after thirteen cen- 
 * turies, be laid out on it, or not laid 
 ' out on it. Have we governors ? 
 ' Have we teachers ? Have we had 
 a Church these thirteen hundred 
 ' years ? What is an overseer of souls, 
 ' an archoverseer, archiepiscopus? Is 
 ' he something ? If so, let him lay 
 ' his hand on his heart and say what 
 ' thing !' 
 
 Nor was the man who in 1843 
 wrote as follows altogether at sea in 
 politics : 
 
 ' Of Time Bill, Factory Bill, and 
 ' other such Bills, the present editor 
 ' has no authority to speak. He 
 ' knows not, it is for others than he
 
 LA XL YL&. 39 
 
 ' to know, in what specific ways it 
 ' may be feasible to interfere with 
 ' legislation between the workers and 
 ' the master-workers knows only 
 ' and sees that legislative interference, 
 ' and interferences not a few, are in- 
 ' dispensable. Nay, interference has 
 ' begun ; there are already factory in- 
 ' spectors. Perhaps there might be 
 ' mine inspectors too. Might there 
 ' not be furrow-field inspectors withal, 
 ' to ascertain how, on 75. 6d. a week, 
 ' a human family does live ? Again, 
 ' are not sanitary regulations possible 
 ' for a legislature ? Baths, free air, 
 ' a wholesome temperature, ceilings 
 ' twenty feet high, might be ordained 
 ' by Act of Parliament in all establish- 
 ' ments licensed as mills. There are 
 ' such mills already extant honour 
 ' to the builders of them. The legis- 
 ' lature can say to others, " Go you 
 '"and do likewise better if you 
 ' " can." '
 
 40 CARL YLE. 
 
 By no means a bad programme 
 for 1843 ; and a good part of it has 
 been carried out, but with next to no 
 aid from Carlyle. 
 
 The Radical party has struggled 
 on as best it might, without the 
 author of ' Chartism ' and ' The 
 French Revolution ' 
 
 ' They have marched prospering, not through his 
 presence ; 
 
 and it is no party spirit that leads 
 one to regret the change of mind 
 which prevented the later public 
 life of this great man, and now 
 the memory of it, from being en- 
 riched with something better than 
 a five-pound note for Governor 
 Eyre. 
 
 But it could not be helped. What 
 brought about the rupture was his 
 losing faith in the ultimate destiny 
 of man upon earth. No more terrible 
 loss can be sustained. It is of both
 
 CARLYLE. 4 
 
 heart and hope. He fell back upon 
 heated visions of heaven-sent heroes, 
 devoting their early days for the mosl 
 part to hoodwinking the people, and 
 their latter ones, more heroically, to 
 shooting them. 
 
 But it is foolish to quarrel with 
 results, and we may learn something 
 even from the later Carlyle. We lay 
 down John Bright's Reform Speeches, 
 and take up Carlyle and light upon 
 a passage like this : ' Inexpressibly 
 delirious seems to me the puddle 
 of Parliament and public upon what 
 it calls the Reform Measure, that is 
 to say, the calling in of new supplies 
 of blockheadism, gullibility, briba- 
 bility, amenability to beer and 
 balderdash, by way of amending the 
 woes we have had from previous 
 supplies of that bad article.' This 
 view must be accounted for as well 
 as Mr. Bright's. We shall do well 
 to remember, with Carlyle, that the
 
 42 CARLYLE. 
 
 best of all Reform Bills is that which 
 each citizen passes in his own breast, 
 where it is pretty sure to meet with 
 strenuous opposition. The reform 
 of ourselves is no doubt an heroic 
 measure never to be overlooked, and, 
 in the face of accusations of gulli- 
 bility, bribability, amenability to 
 beer and balderdash, our poor 
 humanity can only stand abashed, 
 and feebly demur to the bad English 
 in which the charges are conveyed. 
 But we can't all lose hope. We re- 
 member Sir David Ramsay's reply to 
 Lord Rea, once quoted by Carlyle 
 himself. Then said his lordship: 
 ' Well, God mend all.' ' Nay, by God, 
 Donald, we must help Him to mend 
 it !' It is idle to stand gaping at the 
 heavens, waiting to feel the thong 
 of some hero of questionable morals 
 and robust conscience ; and there- 
 fore, unless Reform Bills can be 
 shown to have checked purity of elec-
 
 CARLYLE 43 
 
 tion, to have increased the stupidity 
 of electors, and generally to have 
 promoted corruption which notori- 
 ously they have not we may allow 
 Carlyle to make his exit ' swearing,' 
 and regard their presence in the 
 Statute Book, if not with rapture, 
 at least with equanimity. 
 
 But it must not be forgotten that 
 the battle is still raging the issue 
 is still uncertain. Mr. Froude is 
 still free to assert that the 'post- 
 mortem ' will prove Carlyle was right. 
 His political sagacity no reader of 
 ' Frederick ' can deny ; his insight 
 into hidden causes and far-away 
 effects was keen beyond precedent 
 nothing he ever said deserves con- 
 tempt, though it may merit anger. 
 If we would escape his conclusion, 
 we must not altogether disregard his 
 premises. Bankruptcy and death 
 are the final heirs of imposture and 
 make-believes. The old faiths and
 
 44 CARLYT.E. 
 
 forms are worn too threadbare by a 
 thousand disputations to bear the 
 burden of the new democracy, which, 
 if it is not merely to win the battle 
 but to hold the country, must be 
 ready with new faiths and forms of 
 her own. They are within her reach 
 if she but knew it ; they lie to her 
 hand : surely they will not escape 
 her grasp ! If they do not, then, in 
 the glad day when worship is once 
 more restored to man, he will with 
 becoming generosity forget much 
 that Carlyle has written, and remem- 
 bering more, rank him amongst the 
 prophets of humanity. 
 
 Carlyle's poetry can only be exhi- 
 bited in long extracts, which would 
 be here out of place, and might ex- 
 cite controversy as to the meaning 
 of words, and draw down upon me 
 the measureless malice of the metri- 
 cists. There are, however, passages 
 in ' Sartor Resartus' and the 'French
 
 CARLYLE. 45 
 
 Revolution' which have long ap- 
 peared to me to be the sublimest 
 poetry of the century; and it was 
 therefore with great pleasure that I 
 found Mr. Justice Stephen, in his 
 book on ' Liberty, Equality, and 
 Fraternity,' introducing a quotation 
 from the 8th chapter of the 3rd 
 book of ' Sartor Resartus,' with the 
 remark that ' it is perhaps the most 
 memorable utterance of the greatest 
 poet of the age.' 
 
 As for Carlyle's religion, it may 
 be said he had none, inasmuch as 
 he expounded no creed and put his 
 name to no confession. This is the 
 pedantry of the schools. He taught 
 us religion, as cold water and fresh 
 air teach us health, by rendering 
 the conditions of disease well nigh 
 impossible. For more than half a 
 century, with superhuman energy, 
 he struggled to establish the basis 
 of all religions, ' reverence and godly
 
 46 CARLYLE. 
 
 fear.' ' Love not pleasure, love God ; 
 this is the everlasting Yea.' 
 
 One's remarks might here naturally 
 come to an end, with a word or two 
 of hearty praise of the brave course 
 of life led by the man who awhile 
 back stood the acknowledged head 
 of English letters. But the present 
 time is not the happiest for a pane- 
 gyric on Carlyle. It would be in 
 vain to deny that the brightness of 
 his reputation underwent an eclipse, 
 visible everywhere, by the publica- 
 tion of his ' Reminiscences.' They 
 surprised most of us, pained not a 
 few, and hugely delighted that ghastly 
 crew, the wreckers of humanity, who 
 are never so happy as when employed 
 in pulling down great reputations to 
 their own miserable levels. When 
 these ' baleful creatures,' as Carlyle 
 would have called them, have lit 
 upon any passage indicative of con- 
 ceit or jealousy or spite, they have
 
 CARL YLE. 47 
 
 fastened upon it and screamed over 
 it, with a pleasure but ill-concealed 
 and with a horror but ill-feigned. 
 ' Behold,' they exclaim, ' your hero 
 robbed of the nimbus his inflated 
 style cast around him this preacher 
 and fault-finder reduced to his 
 principal parts : and lo ! the main 
 ingredient is most unmistakably 
 "bile!"' 
 
 The critic, however, has nought 
 to do either with the sighs of the 
 sorrowful, ' mourning when a hero 
 falls,' or with the scorn of the mali- 
 cious, rejoicing, as did Bunyan's 
 Juryman, Mr. Live-loose, when 
 Faithful was condemned to die : ' I 
 could never endure him, for he 
 would always be condemning my 
 way.' 
 
 The critic's task is to consider the 
 book itself, i.e., the nature of its 
 contents, and how it came to be 
 written at all.
 
 48 CARLYLE, 
 
 When this has been done, there 
 will not be found much demanding 
 moral censure ; whilst the reader 
 will note with delight, applied to the 
 trifling concerns of life, those extra- 
 ordinary gifts of observation and 
 apprehension which have so often 
 charmed him in the pages of history 
 and biography. 
 
 These peccant volumes contain 
 but four sketches : one of his father, 
 written in 1832 ; the other three, 
 of Edward Irving, Lord Jeffrey, 
 and Mrs. Carlyle, all written after 
 the death of the last-named, in 
 1866. 
 
 The only fault that has been found 
 with the first sketch is, that in it 
 Carlyle hazards the assertion that 
 Scotland does not now contain his 
 father's like. It ought surely to be 
 possible to dispute this opinion with- 
 out exhibiting emotion. To think 
 well of their forbears is one of the
 
 CARL YLE. 49 
 
 few weaknesses of Scotchmen. This 
 sketch, as a whole, must be carried 
 to Carlyle's credit, and is a perma- 
 nent addition to literature. It is 
 pious, after the high Roman fashion. 
 It satisfies our finest sense of the fit 
 and proper. Just exactly so should 
 a literate son write of an illiterate 
 peasant father. How immeasurable 
 seems the distance between the man 
 from whom proceeded the thirty-four 
 volumes we have been writing about 
 and the Calvinistic mason who didn't 
 even know his Burns ! and yet here 
 we find the whole distance spann id 
 by filial love. 
 
 The sketch of Lord Jeffrey is in- 
 imitable. One was getting tired of 
 Jeffrey, and prepared to give him the 
 go-by, when Carlyle creates hirr. 
 afresh, and, for the first time, we see 
 the bright little man bewitching us 
 by what he is, disappointing us by 
 what he is not. The spiteful remarks 
 
 4
 
 50 CARLYLE. 
 
 the sketch contains may be con- 
 sidered, along with those of the 
 same nature to be found only too 
 plentifully in the remaining two 
 papers. 
 
 After careful consideration of the 
 worst of these remarks, Mrs. 
 Oliphant's explanation seems the 
 true one ; they are most of them 
 sparkling bits of Mrs. Carlyle's con- 
 versation. She, happily for herself, 
 had a lively wit, and, perhaps not so 
 happily, a biting tongue, and was, as 
 Carlyle tells us, accustomed to make 
 him laugh, as they drove home 
 together from London crushes, by 
 far from genial observations on 
 her fellow-creatures, little recking 
 how should she ? that what was so 
 lightly uttered was being engraven 
 on the tablets of the most marvellous 
 of memories, and was destined long 
 afterwards to be written down in 
 grim earnest by a half-frenzied old
 
 CARLYLE. 51 
 
 man, and printed, in cold blood, by 
 an English gentleman. 
 
 The horrible description of Mrs. 
 Irving's personal appearance, and 
 the other stories of the same connec- 
 tion, are recognised by Mrs. Oliphant 
 as in substance Mrs. Carlyle's; whilst 
 the malicious account of Mrs. Basil 
 Montague's head-dress is attributed 
 by Carlyle himself to his wife. Still, 
 after dividing the total, there is a 
 good helping for each, and blame 
 would justly be Carlyle's due if we 
 did not remember, as we are bound 
 to do, that, interesting as these three 
 sketches are, their interest is patho- 
 logical, and ought never to have been 
 given us. Mr. Froude should have 
 read them in tears, and burnt them 
 in fire. There is nothing surprising 
 in the state of mind which produced 
 them. They are easily accounted 
 for by our sorrow-laden experience. 
 It is a familiar feeling which prompts 
 
 42
 
 52 CARLYLE. 
 
 a man, suddenly bereft of one whom 
 he alone really knew and loved, to 
 turn in his fierce indignation upon 
 the world, and deride its idols whom 
 all are praising, and which yet to him 
 seem ugly by the side of one of whom 
 no one speaks. To be angry with 
 such a sentence as ' scribbling Sands 
 and Eliots, not fit to compare with 
 my incomparable Jeannie,' is at 
 once inhuman and ridiculous. This 
 is the language of the heart, not of 
 the head. It is no more criticism 
 than is the trumpeting of a wounded 
 elephant zoology. 
 
 Happy is the man who at such a 
 time holds both peace and pen ; but 
 unhappiest of all is he who, having 
 dipped his sorrow into ink, entrusts 
 the manuscript to a romantic histo- 
 rian. 
 
 The two volumes of the 'Life,' and 
 the three volumes of Mrs. Carlyle's 
 ' Correspondence,' unfortunately did
 
 CARLYLE. 53 
 
 not pour oil upon the troubled waters. 
 The partisanship they evoked was 
 positively indecent. Mrs. Carlyle 
 had her troubles and her sorrows, as 
 have most women who live under the 
 same roof with a man of creative 
 genius ; but of one thing we may be 
 quite sure, that she would have been 
 the first, to use her own expressive 
 language, to require God ' particu- 
 larly to damn ' her impertinent sym- 
 pathizers. As for Mr. Froude, he 
 may yet discover his Nemesis in the 
 spirit of an angry woman whose 
 privacy he has invaded, and whose 
 diary he has most wantonly pub- 
 lished. 
 
 These dark clouds are ephemeral. 
 They will roll away, and we shall 
 once more gladly recognise the linea- 
 ments of an essentially lofty charac- 
 ter, of one who, though a man of 
 genius and of letters, neither out- 
 raged society nor stooped to it ; was
 
 54 CARLYLB. 
 
 neither a rebel nor a slave ; who ic 
 poverty scorned wealth ; who never 
 mistook popularity for fame ; but 
 from the first assumed, and through- 
 out maintained, the proud attitude of 
 one whose duty it was to teach and 
 not to tickle mankind. 
 
 Brother-dunces, lend me your ears ! 
 not to crop, but that I may whisper 
 into their furry depths : ' Do not 
 quarrel with genius. We have none 
 ourselves, and yet are so constituted 
 that we cannot live without it/
 
 ON THE ALLEGED OBSCU- 
 RITY OF MR. BROWNING'S 
 POETRY. 
 
 ' THE sanity of true genius ' was a 
 happy phrase of Charles Lamb's. 
 Our greatest poets were our sanest 
 men. Chaucer, Spenser, Shake- 
 speare, Milton, and Wordsworth 
 might have defied even a mad 
 doctor to prove his worst. 
 
 To extol sanity ought to be unne- 
 cessary in an age which boasts its 
 realism ; but yet it may be doubted 
 whether, if the author of the phrase 
 just quoted were to be allowed once 
 more to visit the world he loved so 
 well and left so reluctantly, and could 
 be induced to forswear his Eliza- 
 bethans and devote himself to the
 
 ,6 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 
 
 literature of the day, he would find 
 many books which his fine critical 
 faculty would allow him to pronounce 
 ( healthy,' as he once pronounced 
 'John Buncle ' to be in the presence 
 of a Scotchman, who could not foi 
 the life of him understand how a 
 book could properly be said to enjoy 
 either good or bad health. 
 
 But, however this may be, this 
 much is certain, that lucidity is one 
 of the chief characteristics of sanity. 
 A sane man ought not to be unin- 
 telligible. Lucidity is good every- 
 where, for all time and in all things, 
 in a letter, in a speech, in a book, in 
 a poem. Lucidity is not simplicity. 
 A lucid poem is not necessarily an 
 easy one. A great poet may tax our 
 brains, but he ought not to puzzle 
 our wits. We may often have to ask 
 in Humility, What does he mean ? but 
 not in despair, What can he mean ? 
 
 Dreamy and inconclusive the poet
 
 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 57 
 
 sometimes, nay, often, cannot help 
 being, for dreaminess and inconclu- 
 siveness are conditions of thought 
 when dwelling on the very subjects 
 that most demand poetical treat- 
 ment. 
 
 Misty, therefore, the poet has our 
 kind permission sometimes to be ; 
 but muddy, never ! A great poet, 
 like a great peak, must sometimes be 
 allowed to have his head in the 
 clouds, and to disappoint us of the 
 wide prospect we had hoped to gain ; 
 but the clouds which envelop him 
 must be attracted to, and not made 
 by him. 
 
 In a sentence, though the poet may 
 give expression to what Wordsworth 
 has called ' the heavy and the weary 
 weight of all this unintelligible world,' 
 we, the much-enduring public wha 
 have to read his poems, are entitled 
 to demand that the unintelligibility 
 of which we are made to feel the
 
 $8 MR. BRO WNINffS POETR Y. 
 
 weight, should be all of it the 
 world's, and none of it merely the 
 poet's. 
 
 We should not have ventured to 
 introduce our subject with such very 
 general and undeniable observations, 
 had not experience taught us that 
 the best way of introducing any sub- 
 ject is by a string of platitudes, de- 
 livered after an oracular fashion. 
 They arouse attention, without ex- 
 hausting it, and afford the pleasant 
 sensation of thinking, without any of 
 the trouble of thought. But, the 
 subject once introduced, it becomes 
 necessary to proceed with it. 
 
 In considering whether a poet is 
 intelligible and lucid, we ought not to 
 grope and grub about his work in 
 search of obscurities and oddities, 
 but should, in the first instance at 
 all events, attempt to regard his 
 whole scope and range ; to form some 
 estimate, if we can, of his general
 
 MR. BROWNING'S POET1&. 59 
 
 purport and effect, asking ourselves, 
 for this purpose, such questions as 
 these : How are we the better for 
 him ? Has he quickened any pas- 
 sion, lightened any burden, purified 
 any taste? Does he play any real 
 part in our lives ? When we are in 
 love, do we whisper him in our lady's 
 ear ? When we sorrow, does he ease 
 our pain ? Can he calm the strife of 
 mental conflict ? Has he had any- 
 thing to say, which wasn't twaddle, 
 on those subjects which, elude analysis 
 as they may, and defy demonstration 
 as they do, are yet alone of perennial 
 interest 
 
 ' On man, on nature, and on human life,' 
 
 on the pathos of our situation, look- 
 ing back on to the irrevocable and 
 forward to the unknown ? If a poet 
 has said, or done, or been any of these 
 things to an appreciable extent, to 
 charge him with obscurity is both 
 folly and ingratitude.
 
 60 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 
 
 But the subject may be pursued 
 further, and one may be called upon 
 to investigate this charge with refe- 
 rence to particular books or poems. 
 In Browning's case this fairly may be 
 done ; and then another crop of ques- 
 tions arises, such as : What is the 
 book about, i.e., with what subject 
 does it deal, and what method of 
 dealing does it employ? Is it di- 
 dactical, analytical, or purely narra- 
 tive? Is it content to describe, or 
 does it aspire to explain ? In com- 
 mon fairness these questions must be 
 asked and answered, before we heave 
 our critical half-bricks at strange 
 poets. One task is of necessity more 
 difficult than another. Students of 
 geometry, who have pushed their re- 
 searches into that fascinating science 
 so far as the fifth proposition of the 
 first book, commonly called the Pons 
 Asinorum (though now that so many 
 ladies read Euclid, it ought, in com-
 
 MR. BRO WNINGS POE TRY. 61 
 
 mon justice to them, to be at least 
 sometimes called the Pons Asinamm), 
 will agree that though it may be more 
 difficult to prove that the angles at 
 the base of an isosceles triangle are 
 equal, and that if the equal sides be 
 produced, the angles on the other 
 side of the base shall be equal, than 
 it was to describe an equilateral 
 triangle on a given finite straight 
 line; yet no one but an ass would say 
 that the fifth proposition was one 
 whit less intelligible than the first. 
 When we consider Mr. Browning in 
 his later writings, it will be useful to 
 bear this distinction in mind. 
 
 Our first duty, then, is to consider 
 Mr. Browning in his whole scope and 
 range, or, in a word, generally. This 
 is a task of such dimensions and 
 difficulty as, in the language of joint- 
 stock prospectuses, 'to transcend indi- 
 vidual enterprise,' and consequently, 
 is we all know, a company has been
 
 62 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 
 
 recently floated, or a society esta- 
 blished, having Mr. Browning for its 
 principal object. It has a president, 
 two secretaries, male and female, and 
 a treasurer. You pay a guinea, and 
 you become a member. A suitable 
 reduction is, I believe, made in the un- 
 likely event of all the members of one 
 family flocking to be enrolled. The 
 existence of this society is a great 
 relief, for it enables us to deal with our 
 unwieldy theme in a light-hearted 
 manner, and to refer those who 
 have a passion for solid information 
 and profound philosophy to the 
 printed transactions of this learned 
 society, which, lest we should forget 
 all about it, we at once do. 
 
 When you are viewing a poet gene- 
 rally, as is our present plight, the first 
 question is : When was he born ? 
 The second, When did he (to use a 
 favourite phrase of the last century, 
 now in disuse) When did he com-
 
 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 63 
 
 \^ence author ? The third, How long 
 did he keep at it ? The fourth, How 
 much has he written ? And the fifth 
 may perhaps be best expressed in the 
 words of Southey's little Peterkin : 
 
 4 "What good came of it all at last ?" 
 Quoth little Peterkin.' 
 
 Mr. Browning was born in 1812 ; 
 he commenced author with the frag- 
 ment called ' Pauline,' published in 
 1833. He is still writing, and his 
 works, as they stand upon my shelves 
 for editions vary number twenty- 
 three volumes. Little Peterkin's 
 question is not so easily answered ; 
 but, postponing it for a moment, the 
 answers to the other four show that 
 *VQ have to deal with a poet, more 
 than seventy years old, who has been 
 writing for half a century, and who 
 has filled twenty-three volumes. The 
 Browning Society at all events has 
 assets. The way I propose to deal 
 with this literary mass is to divide it
 
 64 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 
 
 in two, taking the year 1864 as the 
 line of cleavage. In that year the 
 volume called ' Dramatis Personas 
 was published, and then nothing hap- 
 pened till the year 1868, when our 
 poet presented the astonished English 
 language with the four volumes and 
 the 21,116 lines called 'The Ring 
 and the Book,' a poem which it may 
 be stated, for the benefit of that large, 
 increasing, and highly interesting 
 class of persons who prefer statistics 
 to poetry, is longer than Pope's 
 ' Homer's Iliad ' by exactly 2,171 
 lines. We thus begin with ' Pauline ' 
 in 1833, and end with ' Dramatis 
 Personae ' in 1864. We then begin 
 again with the 'Ring and the Book,' 
 in 1868 ; but when or where we shall 
 end cannot be stated. ' Sordello,' 
 published in 1840, is better treated 
 apart, and is therefore excepted from 
 the first period, to which chrono- 
 logically it belongs.
 
 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 65 
 
 Looking then at the first periodj 
 we find in its front eight plays : 
 
 1. ' Strafford,' written in 1836, 
 when its author was twenty-four 
 years old, and put upon the boards 
 of Covent Garden Theatre on the 
 ist of May, 1837, Macready playing 
 Strafford, and Miss Helen Faucit 
 Lady Carlisle. It was received by all 
 who saw it with enthusiasm ; but the 
 Company, for reasons unconnected 
 with the play, was rebellious ; and 
 after running five nights, the man 
 who played Pym threw up his part, 
 and the theatre was closed. 
 
 2. ' Pippa Passes.' 
 
 3. ' King Victor and King Charles. 
 
 4. ' The Return of the Druses.' 
 
 5. ' A Blot in the 'Scutcheon.' 
 
 This beautiful and pathetic play 
 was put on the stage of Drury Lane 
 on the nth of February, 1843, with 
 Phelps as Lord Tresham, Miss Helen 
 
 5
 
 66 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 
 
 Faucit as Mildred Tresham, and 
 Mrs. Stirling, still known to us all, 
 js Guendolen. It was a brilliant 
 success. Mr. Browning was in the 
 stage-box ; and if it is any satisfaction 
 for a poet to hear a crowded house 
 cry 'Author, author !' that satisfac- 
 tion has belonged to Mr. Browning. 
 The play ran at Drury Lane til) 
 the 3rd of June 1843, and was 
 subsequently revived by Mr. Phelps, 
 during his 'memorable management' 
 of Sadlers' Wells. 
 
 6. ' Colombe's Birthday.' Miss 
 Helen Faucit put this upon the 
 stage in 1852, when it was reckoned 
 a success. 
 
 7. ' Luria.' 
 
 8. ' A Soul's Tragedy.' 
 
 To call any of these plays unintel- 
 ligible is ridiculous; and nobody who 
 has ever read them ever did, and why 
 people who have not read them should
 
 MR. BRO WNING 'S FOE TR Y. 67 
 
 abuse them is hard to see. Were 
 society put upon its oath, we should 
 be surprised to find how many people 
 in high places have not read ' All's 
 Well that Ends Well,' or ' Timon of 
 Athens;' but they don't go about 
 saying these plays are unintelligible. 
 Like wise folk, they pretend to have 
 read them, and say nothing. In 
 Browning's case they are spared the 
 hypocrisy. No one need pretend to 
 have read ' A Soul's Tragedy ;' and 
 it seems, therefore, inexcusable for 
 anyone to assert that one of the 
 plainest, most pointed, and piquant 
 bits of writing in the language is 
 unintelligible. But surely something 
 more may be truthfully said of these 
 plays than that they are comprehen- 
 sible. First of all, they are plays, 
 and not works like the dropsical 
 dramas of Sir Henry Taylor and Mr. 
 Swinburne. Some of them have 
 stood the ordeal of actual represen- 
 
 52
 
 68 MR. BRO WNINO '*> POE TR Y. 
 
 tation ; and though it would be ab- 
 surd to pretend that they met with 
 that overwhelming measure of suc- 
 cess our critical age has reserved for 
 such dramatists as the late Lord 
 Lytton, the author of ' Money,' the 
 late Tom Taylor, the author of ' The 
 Overland Route,' the late Mr. Robert- 
 son, the author of 'Caste,' Mr. H. 
 Byron, the author of ' Our Boys,' 
 Mr. Wills, the author of ' Charles I.,' 
 Mr. Burnand, the author of 'The 
 Colonel,' and Mr. Gilbert, the author 
 of so much that is great and glori- 
 ous in our national drama ; at all 
 events they proved themselves able 
 to arrest and retain the attention of 
 very ordinary audiences. But who 
 can deny dignity and even grandeur 
 to ' Luria,' or withhold the meed 
 of a melodious tear from ' Mildred 
 Tresham'? What action of what 
 play is more happily conceived or 
 better rendered than that of ' Pippa
 
 MR. BRO WN1NG 'S POE TR Y. 69 
 
 Passes ' ? where innocence and its 
 reverse, tender love and violent pas- 
 sion, are presented with emphasis, 
 and yet blended into a dramatic 
 unity and a poetic perfection, en- 
 titling the author to the very first 
 place amongst those dramatists of 
 the century who have laboured under 
 the enormous disadvantage of being 
 poets to start with. 
 
 Passing from the plays, we are 
 next attracted by a number of splen- 
 did poems, on whose base the struc- 
 ture of Mr. Browning's fame perhaps 
 rests most surely his dramatic 
 pieces poems which give utterance 
 to the thoughts and feelings of per- 
 sons other than himself, or, as he 
 puts it, when dedicating a number 
 of them to his wife : 
 
 ' Love, you saw me gather men and women, 
 Live or dead, or fashioned by my fancy, 
 Enter each and all, and use their service, 
 Speak from every mouth the speech a poem j"
 
 70 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 
 
 or, again, in 'Sordello' : 
 
 ' By making speak, myself kept out of view 
 The very man, as he was wont to do.' 
 
 At a rough calculation, there must 
 be at least sixty of these pieces. 
 Let me run over the names of a very 
 few of them. ' Saul,' a poem be- 
 loved by all true women ; ' Caliban,' 
 which the men, not unnaturally 
 perhaps, often prefer. The 'Two 
 Bishops'; the sixteenth century one 
 ordering his tomb of jasper and 
 basalt in St. Praxed's Church, and 
 his nineteenth century successor 
 rolling out his post-prandial Apo- 
 logia. ' My Last Duchess,' the ' Soli- 
 loquy in a Spanish Cloister,' 'An- 
 drea del Sarto,' ' Fra Lippo Lippi,' 
 'Rabbi Ben Ezra,' ' Cleon,' 'A 
 Death in the Desert,' 'The Italian 
 in England,' and ' The Englishman 
 in Italy.' 
 
 It is plain truth to say that no 
 other English poet, living or dead,
 
 MR. BRO WNING 'S POE TRY. 71 
 
 Shakespeare excepted, has so heaped 
 up human interest for his readers as 
 has Robert Browning. 
 
 Fancy stepping into a room and 
 finding it full of Shakespeare's prin- 
 cipal characters ! What a babel of 
 tongues ! What a jostling of wits ! 
 How eagerly one's eye would go in 
 search of Hamlet and Sir John Fal- 
 staff, but droop shudderingly at the 
 thought of encountering the dis- 
 traught gaze of Lady Macbeth ! We 
 should have no difficulty in recognis- 
 ing Beatrice in the central figure of 
 that lively group of laughing courtiers; 
 whilst did we seek Juliet, it would, of 
 course, be by appointment on the 
 balcony. To fancy yourself in such 
 company is pleasant matter for a 
 midsummer's night's dream. No 
 poet has such a gallery as Shake- 
 speare, but of our modern poets 
 Browning comes nearest him. 
 
 Against these dramatic pieces the
 
 72 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 
 
 charge of unintelligibility fails as 
 completely as it does against the 
 plays. They are all perfectly intelli- 
 gible ; but and here is the rub 
 they are not easy reading, like the 
 estimable writings of the late Mrs. 
 Hemans. They require the same 
 honest attention as it is the fashion 
 to give to a lecture of Professor 
 Huxley's or a sermon of Canon 
 Liddon's : and this is just what toe 
 many persons will not give to poetry. 
 They 
 
 ' Love to bear 
 
 A soft pulsation in their easy ear ; 
 To turn the page, and let their senses drink 
 A lay that shall not trouble them to think.' 
 
 It is no great wonder it should be 
 so. After dinner, when disposed to 
 sleep, but afraid of spoiling our night's 
 rest, behold the witching hour re- 
 served by the nineteenth century for 
 the study of poetry ! This treatment 
 of the muse deserves to be held up to 
 everlasting scorn and infamy in a
 
 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 73 
 
 passage of Miltonic strength and 
 splendour. We, alas ! must be con- 
 tent with the observation, that such 
 an opinion of the true place of poetry 
 in the life of a man excites, in the 
 breasts of the rightminded, feelings 
 akin to those which Charles Lamb 
 ascribes to the immortal Sarah Battle, 
 when a young gentleman of a literary 
 turn, on taking a hand in her favourite 
 game of whist, declared that he saw 
 no harm in unbending the mind, now 
 and then, after serious studies, in re- 
 creations of that kind. She could 
 not bear, so Elia proceeds, ' to have 
 her noble occupation, to which she 
 wound up her faculties, considered in 
 that light. It was her business, her 
 duty the thing she came into the 
 world to do and she did it : she 
 unbent her mind, afterwards, over a 
 book !' And so the lover of poetry 
 and Browning, after winding-up his 
 faculties over * Comus ' or ' Para-
 
 74 MR. BRO WN1NG 'S POE TR V. 
 
 celsus,' over ' Julius Csesar ' or ' Straf- 
 ford,' may afterwards, if he is so 
 minded, unbend himself over the 
 ' Origin of Species,' or that still more 
 fascinating record which tells us how 
 little curly worms, only give them 
 time enough, will cover with earth 
 even the larger kind of stones. 
 
 Next to these dramatic pieces 
 come what we may be content to 
 call simply poems : some lyrical, 
 some narrative. The latter are 
 straightforward enough, and, as a 
 rule, full of spirit and humour; but 
 this is more than can always be said 
 of the lyrical pieces. Now, for the 
 first time, in dealing with this first 
 period, excluding ' Sordello,' we strike 
 difficulty. The Chinese puzzle comes 
 in. We wonder whether it all turns 
 on the punctuation. And the awkward 
 thing for Mr. Browning's reputation 
 is this, that these bewildering poems 
 are, for the most part, very short.
 
 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 75 
 
 We say awkward, for it is not more 
 certain that Sarah Gamp liked her 
 beer drawn mild, than it is that your 
 Englishman likes his poetry cut short; 
 and so, accordingly, it often happens 
 that some estimable paterfamilias 
 takes up an odd volume of Brown- 
 ing his volatile son or moonstruck 
 daughter has left lying about, pishes 
 and pshaws ! and then, with an air 
 of much condescension and amazing 
 candour, remarks that he will give 
 the fellow another chance, and not 
 condemn him unread. So saying, he 
 opens the book, and carefully selects 
 the very shortest poem he can find ; 
 and in a moment, without sign or 
 signal, note or warning, the unhappy 
 man is floundering up to his neck in 
 lines like these, which are the third 
 and final stanza of a poem called 
 ' Another Way of Love ' : 
 
 ' And after, for pastime 
 If June be refulgent
 
 76 MR. BRO WNING 'S POE TR Y. 
 
 "With flowers in completeness, 
 
 All petals, no prickles, 
 
 Delicious as trickles 
 
 Of wine poured at mass-time, 
 
 And choose One indulgent 
 
 To redness and sweetness ; 
 Or if with experience of man and of spider, 
 She use my June lightning, the strong insect-ridder 
 To stop the fresh spinning, why June will con- 
 sider.' 
 
 He comes up gasping, and more 
 than ever persuaded that Browning's 
 poetry is a mass of inconglomerate 
 nonsense, which nobody understands 
 least of all members of the Brown- 
 ing Society. 
 
 We need be at no pains to find a 
 meaning for everything Mr. Brown- 
 ing has written. But when all is 
 said and done when these few freaks 
 of a crowded brain are thrown over- 
 board to the sharks of verbal criticism 
 who feed on such things Mr. Brown- 
 ing and his great poetical achieve 
 ment remain behind to be dealt with 
 and accounted for. We do not get 
 rid of the Laureate by quoting :
 
 MR. BRO WNING '3 POE TR Y. 7? 
 
 ' O darling room, my heart's delight 
 Dear room, the apple of my sight, 
 With thy two couches soft and white 
 There is no room so exquisite 
 No little room so warm and bright 
 Wherein to read, wherein to write ; 
 
 or of Wordsworth by quoting : 
 
 ' At this, my boy hung down his head : 
 He blushed with shame, nor made reply, 
 And five times to the child I said, 
 " Why, Edward ? tell me why?" ' 
 
 or of Keats by remembering that he 
 once addressed a young lady as 
 follows : 
 
 ' O come, Georgiana ! the rose is full blown, 
 The riches of Flora are lavishly strown : 
 The air is all softness and crystal the streams, 
 The west is resplendently clothed in beams." 
 
 The strength of a rope may be but 
 the strength of its weakest part ; but 
 poets are to be judged in their hap- 
 piest hours, and in their greatest works, 
 
 Taking, then, this first period oi 
 Mr. Browning's poetry as a whole, 
 ana asking ourselves if we are the 
 richer for it, how can there be any 
 doubt as to the reply ? What points 
 of human interest, has he left un-
 
 78 MR, BRO WATING 'S POETR Y. 
 
 touched ? With what phase of life, 
 character, or study does he fail to 
 sympathize ? So far from being the 
 rough-hewn block * dull fools ' have 
 supposed him, he is the most dilet- 
 tante of great poets. Do you dabble 
 in art and perambulate picture-gal- 
 feries ? Browning must be your 
 favourite poet : he is art's historian. 
 Are you devoted to music ? So is 
 he : and alone of our poets has sought 
 to fathom in verse the deep mysteries 
 of sound. Do you find it impossible 
 to keep off theology ? Browning has 
 more theology than most bishops 
 could puzzle Gamaliel and delight 
 Aquinas. Are you in love ? Read 
 
 A Last Ride Together,' ' Youth and 
 Art,' * A Portrait,' ' Christine,' ' In a 
 Gondola,' ' By the Fireside,' ' Love 
 amongst the Ruins,' 'Time's Re- 
 venges,' 'The Worst of It,' and a 
 
 lost of others, being careful always 
 to end with ' A Madhouse Cell ' ; and 
 we are much mistaken if you do not
 
 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 79 
 
 put Browning at the very head and 
 front of the interpreters of passion. 
 The many moods of sorrow are re- 
 flected in his verse, whilst mirth, 
 movement, and a rollicking humour 
 abound everywhere. 
 
 I will venture upon but three quota- 
 tions, for it is late in the day to be 
 quoting Browning. The first shall 
 be a well-known bit of blank verst 
 about art from * Fra Lippo Lippi ' : 
 
 ' For, don't you mark, we're made so that we love 
 First when we see them painted, things we have 
 
 passed 
 
 Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see : 
 And so they are better painted better to us, 
 Which is the same thing. Art was given for 
 
 that 
 
 God uses us to help each other so, 
 Lending our minds out. Have you noticed now 
 Your cullion's hanging face ? A bit of chalk, 
 And, trust me, but you should though. Ho' 
 
 much more 
 
 If I drew higher things with the same truth ! 
 That were to take the prior's pulpit-place 
 Interpret God to all of you ! Oh, oh ! 
 It makes me mad to see what men shall do, 
 And we in our graves ! This world's no blot fo 
 
 us, 
 
 Nor blank : it means intensely, and means good, 
 To find its meaning is my meat and drink.'
 
 8o MR. BROWNING'S POETRY, 
 
 The second is some rhymed rhetoric 
 from ' Holy Cross Day ' the testi- 
 mony of the dying Jew in Rome : 
 
 1 This world has been harsh and strange, 
 Something is wrong : there needeth a change. 
 But what or where ? at the last or first ? 
 In one point only we sinned at worst. 
 
 ' The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet, 
 And again in his border see Israel set. 
 When Judah beholds Jerusalem, 
 The stranger seed shall be joined to them : 
 To Jacob's house shall the Gentiles cleave : 
 So the prophet saith, and his sons believe. 
 
 ' Ay, the children of the chosen race 
 Shall carry and bring them to their place ; 
 In the land of the Lord shall lead the same, 
 Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame 
 When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o'ei 
 The oppressor triumph for evermore ? 
 
 ' God spoke, and gave us the word to keep : 
 Bade never fold the hands, nor sleep 
 'Mid a faithless world, at watch and ward, 
 Till the Christ at the end relieve our guard. 
 By His servant Moses the watch was set : 
 Though near upon cockcrow, we keep it yet. 
 
 Thou ! if Thou wast He, who at mid-watch came, 
 By the starlight naming a dubious Name ; 
 And if we were too heavy with sleep, too rash 
 With fear O Thou, if that martyr-gash 
 Fell on Thee, coming to take Thine own, 
 And we gave the Cross, when we owed the 
 throne ;
 
 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 81 
 
 ' Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus. 
 But, the Judgment over, join sides with us ! 
 Thine, too, is the cause ! and not more Thine 
 Than ours is the work of these dogs and swine, 
 Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed, 
 Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee iu 
 deed. 
 
 ' We withstood Christ then ? Be mindful how 
 At least we withstand Barabbas now ! 
 Was our outrage sore ? But the worst we spared 
 To have called these Christians had we dared 
 Let defiance to them pay mistrust of Thee, 
 And Rome make amends for Calvary ! 
 
 By the torture, prolonged from age to age ; 
 By the infamy, Israel's heritage ; 
 By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace, 
 By the badge of shame, by the felon's place, 
 By the branding-tool, the bloody whip, 
 And the summons to Christian fellowship, 
 
 We boast our proof, that at least the Jew 
 Would wrest Christ's name from the devil's crew. 
 
 The last quotation shall be from 
 the veritable Browning of one of 
 those poetical audacities none ever 
 dared but the Danton of modern 
 poetry. Audacious in its familiar 
 realism, in its total disregard of 
 poetical environment, in its rugged 
 abruptness: but supremely success- 
 ful, and alive with emotion : 
 
 fi
 
 62 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 
 
 ' What is he buzzing in my ears ? 
 
 Now that I come to die, 
 Do I view the world as a vale of tears ? 
 Ah, reverend sir, not I. 
 
 ' What I viewed there once, what I view again. 
 
 Where the physic bottles stand 
 On the table's edge, is a suburb lane, 
 With a wall to my bedside hand. 
 
 1 That lane sloped, much as the bottles do, 
 
 From a house you could descry 
 O'er the garden-wall. Is the curtain blue 
 Or green to a healthy eye ? 
 
 To mine, it serves for the old June weather, 
 
 Blue above lane and wall ; 
 And that farthest bottle, labelled "Ether," 
 
 Is the house o'ertopping all. 
 
 At a terrace somewhat near its stopper, 
 There watched for me, one June, 
 
 A girl I know, sir, it's improper : 
 My poor mind's out of tune. 
 
 ' Only there was a way you crept 
 
 Close by the side, to dodge 
 Eyes in the house two eyes except. 
 They styled their house " The Lodge." 
 
 ' What right had a lounger up their lane ? 
 
 But by creeping very close, 
 With the good wall's help their eyes might strair. 
 And stretch themselves to oes, 
 
 Yet never catch her and me together, 
 
 As she left the attic there, 
 By the rim of the bottle labelled " Ether " 
 
 And stole from stair to stair,
 
 MR, BRO WNINGS POE TR K 83 
 
 ' And stood by the rose- wreathed gate. Alas ! 
 
 We loved, sir ; used to meet. 
 
 How sad and bad and mad it was I 
 
 But then, how it was sweet !' 
 
 The second period of Mr. Brown- 
 ing's poetry demands a different line 
 of argument ; for it is, in my judg- 
 ment, folly to deny that he has of 
 late years written a great deal which 
 makes very difficult reading indeed. 
 No doubt you may meet people who 
 tell you that they read the ' Ring 
 and the Book' for the first time 
 without much mental effort ; but you 
 will do well not to believe them. 
 These poems are difficult they can- 
 not help being so. What is the 
 ' Ring and the Book ' ? A huge novel 
 in 20,000 lines told after the method 
 not of Scott but of Balzac ; it tears 
 the hearts out of a dozen characters ; 
 it tells the same story from ten dif- 
 ferent points of view. It is loaded 
 with detail of every kind and descrip- 
 tion: you are let off nothing. As 
 
 62
 
 i>4 MR. BROWNING 'A POETRY. 
 
 with a schoolboy's life at a large 
 school, if he is to enjoy it at all, he 
 must fling himself into it, and care 
 intensely about everything so the 
 reader of the ' Ring and the Book ' 
 must be interested in everybody and 
 everything, down to the fact that the 
 eldest daughter of the counsel for the 
 prosecution of Guido is eight years 
 old on the very day he is writing 
 his speech, and that he is going to 
 have fried liver and parsley for his 
 supper. 
 
 If you are prepared for this, you 
 will have your reward ; for the style, 
 though rugged and involved, is 
 throughout, with the exception of 
 the speeches of counsel, eloquent, 
 and at times superb ; and as for 
 the matter, if your interest in human 
 nature is keen, curious, almost pro- 
 fessional if nothing man, woman, 
 or child has been, done, or suffered, 
 or conceivably can be, do, or suffer,
 
 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 85 
 
 is without interest for you ; if you 
 are fond of analysis, and do not 
 shrink from dissection you will 
 prize the ' Ring and the Book ' as 
 the surgeon prizes the last great con- 
 tribution to comparative anatomy or 
 pathology. 
 
 But this sort of work tells upon 
 style. Browning has, I think, fared 
 better than some writer^. To me, at 
 all events, the step from ' A Blot in 
 the 'Scutcheon ' to the ' Ring and 
 the Book ' is not so marked as is 
 the mauvais pas that lies between 
 * Amos Barton ' and ' Daniel De- 
 ronda.' But difficulty is not ob- 
 scurity. One task is more difficult 
 than another. The angles at the 
 base of the isosceles triangles are apt 
 to get mixed, and to confuse us all 
 man and woman alike. ' Prince 
 Hohenstiel ' something or another is 
 a very difficult poem, not only to 
 pronounce but to read ; but if a poet
 
 86 MR. BRO WN1NG 'S POE TR Y. 
 
 chooses as his subject Napoleon III. 
 in whom the cad, the coward, the 
 idealist, and the sensualist were in- 
 extricably mixed and purports to 
 make him unbosom himself over a 
 bottle of Gladstone claret in a tavern 
 in Leicester Square, you cannot ex- 
 pect that the product should belong 
 to the same class of poetry as Mr. 
 Coventry Patmore's admirable 'Angel 
 in the House.' 
 
 It is the method that is difficult. 
 Take the husband in the * Ring and 
 the Book.' Mr. Browning remorse- 
 lessly hunts him down, tracks him to 
 the last recesses of his mind, and 
 there bids him stand and deliver. 
 He describes love, not only broken 
 but breaking ; hate in its germ ; 
 doubt at its birth. These are diffi- 
 cult things to do either in poetry or 
 prose, and people with easy, flowing 
 Addisonian or Tennysonian styles 
 cannot Jo them.
 
 MR. BRO WN1NG 'S POE TR Y. 87 
 
 I seem to overhear a stili, small 
 voice asking, But are they worth 
 doing ? or at all events is it the pro- 
 vince of art to do them ? The ques- 
 tion ought not to be asked. It is 
 heretical, being contrary to the whole 
 direction of the latter half of this 
 century. The chains binding us to 
 the rocks of realism are faster riveted 
 every day ; and the Perseus who is 
 destined to cut them is, I expect, 
 some mischievous little boy at a 
 Board-school. But as the question 
 has been asked, I will own that some- 
 times, even when deepest in works o! 
 this, the now orthodox school, I have 
 been harassed by distressing doubts 
 whether, after all, this enormous 
 labour is not in vain ; and, wearied 
 3y the effort, overloaded by the detail, 
 bewildered by the argument, and 
 sickened by the pitiless dissection of 
 character and motive, have been 
 tempted to cry aloud, quoting or
 
 88 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 
 
 rather, in the agony of the moment, 
 misquoting Coleridge : 
 
 ' Simplicity 
 Thou better name than all the family of Fame.' 
 
 But this ebullition of feeling is 
 childish and even sinful. We must 
 take our poets as we do our meals 
 as they are served up to us. Indeed, 
 you may, if full of courage, give a 
 cook notice, but not the time-spirit 
 who makes our poets. We may be 
 sure to appropriate an idea of the late 
 Sir James Stephen that if Robert 
 Browning had lived in the sixteenth 
 century, he would not have written a 
 poem like the ' Ring and the Book ' ; 
 and if Edmund Spenser had lived in 
 the nineteenth century he would not 
 have written a poem like the ' Faerie 
 Queen.' 
 
 It is therefore idle to arraign Mr. 
 Browning's later method and style 
 for possessing difficulties and intri- 
 cacies which are inherent to it. The
 
 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 89 
 
 method, at all events, has an interest 
 of its own, a strength of its own, a 
 grandeur of its own. If you do not 
 hke it, you must leave it alone. You 
 are fond, you say, of romantic poetry; 
 well, then, take down your Spenser 
 and qualify yourself to join ' the small 
 transfigured band ' of those who are 
 able to take their Bible-oaths they 
 have read their ' Faerie Queen ' all 
 through. The company, though small 
 is delightful, and you will have plenty 
 to talk about without abusing Brown- 
 ing, who probably knows his Spenser 
 better than you do. Realism will 
 not for ever dominate the world of 
 letters and art the fashion of all 
 things passeth away but it has al- 
 ready earned a great place : it has 
 written books, composed poems, 
 painted pictures, all stamped with 
 that ' greatness ' which, despite fluc- 
 tuations, nay, even reversals of taste 
 and opinion- means immortality.
 
 90 MR. BRO WN1NG 'S POETR Y. 
 
 But against Mr. Browning's later 
 poems it is sometimes alleged that 
 their meaning is obscure because 
 their grammar is bad. A cynic was 
 once heard to observe with reference 
 to that noble poem 'The Gram- 
 marian's Funeral,' that it was a pity 
 the talented author had ever since 
 allowed himself to remain under the 
 delusion that he had not only buried 
 the grammarian, but his grammar 
 also. It is doubtless true that Mr. 
 Browning has some provoking ways, 
 and is something too much of a 
 verbal acrobat. Also, as his witty 
 parodist, the pet poet of six genera- 
 tions of Cambridge undergraduates, 
 reminds us : 
 
 ' He loves to dock the smaller parts of speech, 
 As we curtail the already curtailed cur. 
 
 It is perhaps permissible to weary a 
 little of his i's and o's, but we believe 
 we cannot be corrected when we say 
 that Browning is a poet whose
 
 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 91 
 
 grammar will bear scholastic investi- 
 gation better than that of most of 
 Apollo's children. 
 
 A word about ' Sordello.' One hall 
 of * Sordello,' and that, with Mr. 
 Browning's usual ill-luck, the first 
 half, is undoubtedly obscure. It is 
 as difficult to read as ' End} mion ' 
 or the ' Revolt of Islam,' and for the 
 same reason the author's lack of 
 experience in the art of composition. 
 We have all heard of the young 
 architect who forgot to put a stair- 
 case in his house, which contained 
 fine rooms, but no way of getting 
 into them. ' Sordello ' is a poem 
 without a staircase. The author, still 
 in his twenties, essayed a high thing. 
 For his subject 
 
 ' He singled out 
 
 Sordello compassed murkily about 
 With ravage of six long sad hundred years.' 
 
 He partially failed ; and the British 
 public, with its accustomed gene-
 
 92 MR. BRO WNING 'S POE TR Y. 
 
 rosity, and in order, I suppose, to 
 encourage the others, has never 
 ceased girding at him, because forty- 
 two years ago he published, at his 
 own charges, a little book of two 
 hundred and fifty pages, which even 
 such of them as were then able to 
 read could not understand. 
 
 Poetry should be vital either 
 stirring our blood by its divine move- 
 ment, or snatching our breath by its 
 divine perfection. To do both is 
 supreme glory ; to do either is en- 
 during fame. 
 
 There is a great deal of beautiful 
 poetical writing to be had nowa- 
 days from the booksellers. It is 
 interesting reading, but as one reads 
 one trembles. It smells of mortality. 
 It would seem as if, at the very birth 
 of most of our modern poems, 
 
 ' The conscious Parcas threw 
 Upon their roseate lips a Stygian hue.' 
 
 That their lives may be prolonged is
 
 MR.BRO WN1NG 'S POE TR Y. 93 
 
 my pious prayer. In these bad days, 
 when it is thought more education- 
 ally useful to know the principle of 
 the common pump than Keats'* 
 ' Ode on a Grecian Urn,' one canno 
 afford to let any good poetry die. 
 
 But when we take down Browning, 
 we cannot think of him and the 
 1 wormy bed ' together. He is so un- 
 mistakably and deliciously alive. 
 Die, indeed ! when one recalls the 
 ideal characters he has invested with 
 reality ; how he has described love 
 and joy, pain and sorrow, art and 
 music ; as poems like 'Ch'ilde Roland, 
 ' Abt Vogler,' ' Evelyn Hope,' ' The 
 Worst of It,' ' Pictor Ignotus,' ' The 
 Lost Leader,' ' Home Thoughts from 
 Abroad,' ' Old Pictures in Florence,' 
 ' Herve Kiel,' 'A Householder,' 'Fears 
 and Scruples,' come tumbling into 
 one's memory, one over another we 
 are tempted to employ the language 
 of hyperbole, and to answer the
 
 94 MR. BROWNING'S POETRY. 
 
 question ' Will Browning die ?' by ex- 
 claiming, 'Yes ; when Niagara stops. 
 In him indeed we can 
 
 ' Discern 
 
 Infinite passion and the pain 
 Of finite hearts that yearn.' 
 
 But love of Mr. Browning's poetry 
 is no exclusive cult. 
 
 Of Lord Tennyson it is needless 
 to speak. Even forty years of pop- 
 ularity and mimicry cannot rob his 
 verse of distinction. 
 
 Mr. Arnold may have a limited 
 poetical range and a restricted style, 
 but within that range and in that 
 style, surely we must exclaim : 
 
 ' Whence that completed form of all completeness ? 
 Whence came that high perfection of all sweet- 
 ness ?' 
 
 Rossetti's luscious lines seldom fail 
 O cast a spell by which 
 
 ' In sundry moods 'tis pastime to be bound." 
 
 William Morris has a sunny slope 
 of Parnassus all to himself, and Mr. 
 Swinburne has written some verses
 
 MR. BRO WNlNffS FOE TR Y. 95 
 
 over which the world will long love 
 to linger. 
 
 Dull must he be of soul who can 
 take up Cardinal Newman's * Verses 
 on Various Occasions,' or Miss Chris- 
 tina Rossetti's poems, and lay them 
 down without recognising their di- 
 verse charm. 
 
 Let us be Catholics in this great 
 matter, and burn our candles at 
 many shrines. In the pleasant realms 
 of poesy, no liveries are worn, no 
 paths prescribed ; you may wander 
 where you will, stop where you like, 
 and worship whom you love. No- 
 thing is demanded of you, save this, 
 that in all your wanderings and 
 worships, you keep two objects 
 steadily in view two, and two only, 
 truth and beauty.
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 IT is common knowledge that the 
 distinguishing characteristic of the 
 day is the zeal displayed by us all in 
 hunting after Truth. A really not 
 inconsiderable portion of whatever 
 time we are able to spare from mak- 
 ing or losing money or reputation, is 
 devoted to this sport, whilst both 
 reading and conversation are largely 
 impressed into the same service. 
 
 Nor are there wanting those who 
 avow themselves anxious to see this, 
 their favourite pursuit, raised to the 
 dignity of a national institution. 
 They would have Truth-hunting es- 
 tablished and endowed. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle has somewhere de-
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. 97 
 
 scribed with great humour the 
 ' dreadfully painful ' manner in which 
 Kepler made his celebrated calcula- 
 tions and discoveries ; but our young 
 men of talent fail to see the joke, 
 and take no pleasure in such anec- 
 dotes. Truth, they feel, is not to be 
 had from them on any such terras. 
 And why should it be? Is it not 
 notorious that all who are lucky 
 enough to supply wants grow rapidly 
 and enormously rich ; and is noc 
 Truth a now recognised want in ten 
 thousand homes wherever, indeed, 
 persons are to be found wealthy 
 enough to pay Mr. Mudie a guinea 
 and so far literate as to be able to 
 read? What, save the modesty, is 
 there surprising in the demand now 
 made on behalf of some young 
 people, whose means are incommen- 
 surate with their talents, that they 
 should be allowed, as a reward for 
 doling out monthly or quarterly por- 
 
 7
 
 98 TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 tions of truth, to live in houses rent- 
 free, have their meals for nothing, 
 and a trifle of money besides ? 
 Would Bass consent to supply us 
 with beer in return for board and 
 lodging, we of course defraying the 
 actual cost of his brewery, and 
 allowing him some 300 a year for 
 himself? Who, as he read about 
 ' Sun-spots,' or ' Fresh Facts for 
 Darwin,' or the 'True History of 
 Modesty or Veracity,' showing how 
 it came about that these high- 
 sounding virtues are held in their 
 present somewhat general esteem, 
 would find it in his heart to grudge 
 the admirable authors their freedom 
 from petty cares ? 
 
 But, whether Truth - hunting be 
 ever established or not, no one can 
 doubt that it is a most fashionable 
 pastime, and one which is being pur- 
 sued with great vigour. 
 
 All hunting is so far alike as to
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. 99 
 
 lead one to believe that there must 
 sometimes occur in Truth-hunting, 
 just as much as in fox-hunting, long 
 pauses, whilst the covers are being 
 drawn in search of the game, and 
 when thoughts are free to range at 
 will in pursuit of far other objects 
 than those giving their name to the 
 sport. If it should chance to any 
 Truth-hunter, during some 'lull in 
 his hot chase,' whilst, for example, 
 he is waiting for the second volume 
 of an 'Analysis of Religion,' or for 
 the last thing out on the Fourth 
 Gospel, to take up this book, and 
 open it at this page, we should like 
 to press him for an answer to the 
 following question : ' Are you sure 
 that it is a good thing for you to 
 spend so much time in speculating 
 about matters outside your daily life 
 and walk ?' 
 
 Curiosity is no doubt an excellent 
 quality. In a critic it is especially 
 
 72
 
 loo TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 excellent. To want to know all 
 about a thing, and not merely one 
 man's account or version of it ; to 
 see all round it, or, at any rate, as 
 far round as is possible ; not to be 
 lazy or indifferent, or easily put off, 
 or scared away all this is really 
 veryexcellent. Sir Fitzjames Stephen 
 professes great regret that we have 
 not got Pilate's account of the events 
 immediately preceding the Cruci- 
 fixion. He thinks it would throw 
 great light upon the subject ; and 
 no doubt, if it had occurred to the 
 Evangelists to adopt in their narra- 
 tives the method which long after- 
 wards recommended itself to the 
 author of ' The Ring and the Book,' 
 we should now be in possession of a 
 mass of very curious information. 
 But, excellent as all this is in the 
 realm of criticism, the question re- 
 mains, How does a restless habit of 
 mind tell upon conduct ?
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. 101 
 
 John Mill was not one from whose 
 lips the advice ' Stare super antiquas 
 vias' was often heard to proceed, 
 and he was by profession a specu- 
 lator, yet in that significant book, 
 the 'Autobiography,' he describes 
 this age of Truth-hunters as one ' of 
 weak convictions, paralyzed intel- 
 lects, and growing laxity of opinions.' 
 
 Is Truth-hunting one of those 
 active mental habits which, as 
 Bishop Butler tells us, intensify their 
 effects by constant use ; and are weak 
 convictions, paralyzed intellects, and 
 laxity of opinions amongst the effects 
 of Truth-hunting on the majority of 
 minds ? These are not unimportant 
 questions. 
 
 Let us consider briefly the pro- 
 bable effects of speculative habits on 
 conduct. 
 
 The discussion of a question of 
 conduct has the great charm of jus- 
 tifying, if indeed not requiring, per-
 
 ,'02 TRUTH -HUNTING. 
 
 5onal illustration ; and this particu- 
 lar question is well illustrated by in- 
 stituting a comparison between the 
 life and character of Charles Lamb 
 and those of some of his distin- 
 guished friends. 
 
 Personal illustration, especially 
 when it proceeds by way of com- 
 parison, is always dangerous, and 
 the dangers are doubled when the 
 subjects illustrated and compared 
 are favourite authors. It behoves 
 us to proceed warily in this matter. 
 A dispute as to the respective merits 
 of Gray and Collins has been known 
 to result in a visit to an attorney 
 and the revocation of a will. An 
 avowed inability to see anything in 
 Miss Austen's novels is reported to 
 have proved destructive of an other- 
 wise good chance of an Indian judge- 
 ship. I believe, however, I run no 
 great risk in asserting that, of ail 
 English authors, Charles Lamb is
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. 103 
 
 the one loved most warmly and emo- 
 tionally by his admirers, amongst 
 whom I reckon only those who are 
 as familiar with the four volumes 
 of his ' Life and Letters ' as with 
 ' Elia.' 
 
 But how does he illustrate the 
 particular question now engaging 
 our attention ? 
 
 Speaking of his sister Mary, who, 
 as everyone knows, throughout 
 ' Elia ' is called his Cousin Bridget, 
 he says : 
 
 ' It has been the lot of my cousin, 
 ' oftener, perhaps, than I could have 
 ' wished, to have had for her asso- 
 ' ciates and mine freethinkers, leaders 
 and disciples of novel philosophies 
 ' and systems, but she neither 
 ' wrangles with nor accepts their 
 ' opinions.' 
 
 Nor did her brother. He lived 
 his life cracking his little jokes and 
 reading his great folios, neither
 
 104 TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 wrangling with nor accepting the 
 opinions of the friends he loved to 
 see around him. To a contemporary 
 stranger it might well have appeared 
 as if his life were a frivolous and 
 useless one as compared with those 
 of these philosophers and thinkers. 
 They discussed their great schemes 
 and affected to probe deep mysteries, 
 and were constantly asking, 'What 
 is Truth ?' He sipped his glass, 
 shuffled his cards, and was content 
 with the humbler inquiry, ' What are 
 Trumps ?' But to us, looking back 
 upon that little group, and knowing 
 what we now do about each member 
 of it, no such mistake is possible. 
 To us it is plain beyond all question 
 that, judged by whatever standard 
 of excellence it is possible for any 
 reasonable human being to take, 
 Lamb stands head and shoulders a 
 better man than any of them. No 
 need to stop to compare him with
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. 105 
 
 Godwin, or Hazlitt, or Lloyd ; let us 
 boldly put him in the scales with one 
 whose fame is in all the churches 
 with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
 ' logician, metaphysician, bard.' 
 
 There are some men whom to 
 abuse is pleasant. Coleridge is not 
 one of them. How gladly we would 
 love the author of * Christabel ' if we 
 could ! But the thing is flatly im 
 possible. His was an unlovely cha- 
 racter. The sentence passed upon 
 him by Mr. Matthew Arnold (paren- 
 thetically, in one of the ' Essays in 
 Criticism ') ' Coleridge had no 
 morals ' is no less just than pitiless. 
 As we gather information about him 
 from numerous quarters, we find it 
 impossible to resist the conclusion 
 that he was a man neglectful of re- 
 straint, irresponsive to the claims of 
 those who had every claim upon hinv 
 willing to receive, slow to give. 
 
 (n early manhood Coleridge planned
 
 io6 TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 a Pantisocracy where all the virtues 
 were to thrive. Lamb did some* 
 thing far more difficult : he played 
 cribbage every night with his imbe- 
 cile father, whose constant stream of 
 querulous talk and fault-finding might 
 well have goaded a far stronger man 
 into practising and justifying neg- 
 lect. 
 
 That Lamb, with all his admira- 
 tion for Coleridge, was well aware of 
 dangerous tendencies in his character, 
 is made apparent by many letters, 
 notably by one written in 1796, in 
 which he says : 
 
 ' O my friend, cultivate the filial 
 ' feelings ! and let no man think him- 
 
 * self released from the kind charities 
 ' of relationship : these shall give him 
 ' peace at the last ; these are the best 
 
 * foundation for every species of bene- 
 ' volence. I rejoice to hear that you 
 ' are reconciled with all your rela- 
 ' tions.'
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. 107 
 
 This surely is as valuable an ' aid 
 to reflection ' as any supplied by the 
 Highgate seer. 
 
 Lamb gave but little thought to 
 the wonderful difference between the 
 ' reason ' and the ' understanding.' 
 He preferred old plays an odd diet, 
 some may think, on which to feed 
 the virtues ; but, however that may 
 be, the noble fact remains, that he, 
 poor, frail boy ! (for he was no more, 
 when trouble first assailed him) 
 stooped down and, without sigh or 
 sign, took upon his own shoulders 
 the whole burden of a life -long 
 sorrow. 
 
 Coleridge married. Lamb, at the 
 bidding of duty, remained single, 
 wedding himself to the sad fortunes 
 of his father and sister. Shall we 
 pity him ? No ; he had his reward 
 the surpassing reward that if.'. 
 only within the power of literature 
 to bestow. It was Lamb, and not
 
 108 TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 Coleridge, who wrote ' Dream-Child- 
 ren : a Reverie ': 
 
 ' Then I told how for seven long 
 ' years, in hope sometimes, some- 
 ' times in despair, yet persisting ever, 
 
 ' I courted the fair Alice W n ; 
 
 ' and as much as children could under- 
 ' stand, I explained to them what 
 ' coyness and difficulty and denial 
 ' meant in maidens when, suddenly 
 
 * turning to Alice, the soul of the first 
 ' Alice looked out at her eyes with 
 
 * such a reality of representment that 
 ' I became in doubt which of them 
 
 * stood before me, or whose that 
 ' bright hair was ; and while I stood 
 ' gazing, both the children gradually 
 ' grew fainter to my view, receding 
 ' and still receding, till nothing at 
 ' last but two mournful features were 
 ' seen in the uttermost distance, which, 
 ' without speech, strangely impressed 
 ' upon me the effects of speech. " We 
 ' are not of Alice nor of thee, nor are
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. 109 
 
 ' we children at all. The children of 
 ' Alice call Bartrum father. We are 
 ' nothing, less than nothing, and 
 ' dreams. We are only what might 
 ' have been." ' 
 
 Godwin ! Hazlitt ! Coleridge ! 
 Where now are their ' novel philo- 
 sophies and systems ' ? Bottled 
 moonshine, which does not improve 
 by keeping. 
 
 1 Only the actions of the just 
 Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.' 
 
 Were we disposed to admit that 
 Lamb would in all probability have 
 been as good a man as everyone 
 agrees he was as kind to his father, 
 as full of self-sacrifice for the sake of 
 his sister, as loving and ready a friend 
 even though he had paid more 
 heed to current speculations, it is 
 yet not without use in a time like 
 this, when so much stress is laid 
 upon anxious inquiry into the mys 
 teries of soul and body, to point out
 
 no TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 how this man attained to a moral 
 excellence denied to his speculative 
 contemporaries ; performed duties 
 from which they, good men as they 
 were, would one and all have shrunk ; 
 how, in short, he contrived to achieve 
 what no one of his friends, not 
 even the immaculate Wordsworth or 
 the precise Southey, achieved the 
 living of a life, the records of which 
 are inspiriting to read, and are in- 
 deed 'the presence of a good dif- 
 fused ;' and managed to do it all 
 without either ' wrangling with or 
 accepting ' the opinions that ' hurtled 
 in the air ' about him. 
 
 But was there no relation between 
 his unspeculative habit of mind and 
 his honest, unwavering service of 
 duty, whose voice he ever obeyed as 
 the ship the rudder ? It would be 
 difficult to name anyone more unlike 
 Lamb, in many aspects of character, 
 than Dr. Johnson, for whom he had
 
 TR UTH-HUNTING. \ 1 i 
 
 (mistakenly) no warm regard ; but 
 they closely resemble one another in 
 their indifference to mere speculation 
 about things if things they can be 
 called outside our human walk ; in 
 their hearty love of honest earthly 
 life, in their devotion to their friends, 
 their kindness to dependents, and 
 m their obedience to duty. What 
 caused each of them the most pain 
 was the recollection of a past un- 
 kindness. The poignancy of Dr. 
 Johnson's grief on one such recol- 
 . lection is historical ; and amongst 
 Lamb's letters are to be found seve- 
 ral in which, with vast depths of 
 feeling, he bitterly upbraids himself 
 for neglect of old friends. 
 
 Nothing so much tends to blur 
 moral distinctions, a.nd to obliterate 
 plain duties, as the free indulgence 
 of speculative habits. We must all 
 know many a sorry scrub who has 
 fairly talked himself into the belief
 
 US TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 that nothing but his intellectual diffi- 
 culties prevents him from being an- 
 other St. Francis. We think we 
 could suggest a fe*U score of other 
 obstacles. 
 
 Would it not be better for most 
 people, if, instead of stuffing their 
 heads with controversy, they were 
 to devote their scanty leisure to 
 reading books, such as, to name 
 one only, Kaye's ' History of the 
 Sepoy War,' which are crammed 
 full of activities and heroisms, and 
 which force upon the reader's mind 
 the healthy conviction that, after 
 all, whatever mysteries may ap- 
 pertain to mind and matter, and 
 notwithstanding grave doubts as 
 to the authenticity of the Fourth 
 Gospel, it is bravery, truth and 
 honour, loyalty and hard work, each 
 man at his post, which make this 
 planet inhabitable ? 
 
 In these days of champagne and
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. \\l 
 
 shoddy, of display of teacups and 
 rotten foundations especially, too, 
 now that the ' nexus ' of ' cash pay- 
 ment,' which was to bind man to man 
 in the bonds of a common pecuniary 
 interest, is hopelessly broken it be- 
 comes plain that the real wants ot 
 the age are not analyses of religious 
 belief, nor discussions as to whether 
 ' Person ' or * Stream of Tendency ' 
 are the apter words to describe God 
 by ; but a steady supply of honest, 
 plain-sailing men who can be safely 
 trusted with small sums, and to do 
 what in them lies to maintain the 
 honour of the various professions, 
 and to restore the credit of English 
 workmanship. We want Lambs, 
 not Coleridges. The verdict to be 
 striven for is not * Well guessed,' 
 but ' Well done.' 
 
 All our remarks are confined to 
 the realm of opinion. Faith may 
 be well left alone, for she is, to give 
 
 8
 
 H4 TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 her her due, our largest manufacturer 
 of good works, and whenever her 
 furnaces are blown out, morality 
 suffers. 
 
 But speculation has nothing to do 
 with faith. The region of specula- 
 tion is the region of opinion, and 
 a hazy, lazy, delightful region it 
 is ; good to talk in, good to smoke 
 in, peopled with pleasant fancies and 
 charming ideas, strange analogies 
 and killing jests. How quickly the 
 time passes there ! how well it seems 
 spent ! The Philistines are all out- 
 side ; everyone is reasonable and 
 tolerant, and good-tempered ; you 
 think and scheme and talk, and look 
 at everything in a hundred ways and 
 from all possible points of view ; and 
 it is not till the company breaks up 
 and the lights are blown out, and 
 you are left alone with silence, that 
 the doubt occurs to you, What is the 
 good of it all ?
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. II* 
 
 Where is the actuary who can 
 appraise the value of a man's opi- 
 nions ? ' When we speak of a man's 
 ' opinions,' says Dr. Newman, ' what 
 ' do we mean but the collection of 
 1 notions he happens to have ?' Hap- 
 pens to have ! How did he come by 
 them? It is the knowledge we all 
 possess of the sorts of ways in which 
 men get their opinions that makes 
 us so little affected in our own minds 
 by those of men for whose characters 
 and intellects we may have great ad- 
 miration. A sturdy Nonconformist 
 minister, who thinks Mr. Gladstone 
 the ablest and most honest man, as 
 well as the ripest scholar within the 
 three kingdoms, is no whit shaken 
 in his Nonconformity by knowing 
 that his idol has written in defence 
 of the Apostolical Succession, and 
 believes in special sacramental graces. 
 Mr. Gladstone may have been a 
 great student of Church history / 
 
 82
 
 n6 TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 whilst Nonconformist reading under 
 that head usually begins with 
 Luther's Theses but what of that ? 
 Is it not all explained by the fact 
 that Mr. Gladstone was at Oxford 
 in 1831 ? So at least the Noncon- 
 formist minister will think. 
 
 The admission frankly made, that 
 these remarks are confined to the 
 realms of opinion, prevents me from 
 urging on everyone my prescription, 
 but, with the two exceptions to be 
 immediately named, I believe it 
 would be found generally useful. It 
 may be made up thus : ' As much 
 ' reticence as is consistent with good- 
 ' breeding upon, and a wisely tem- 
 pered indifference to, the various 
 ' speculative questions now agitated 
 ' in our midst.' 
 
 This prescription would be found 
 to liberate the mind from all kinds 
 of cloudy vapours which obscure the 
 mental vision and conceal from men
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. \ 1 7 
 
 their real position, and would also 
 set free a great deal of time which 
 might be profitably spent in quite 
 other directions. 
 
 The first of the two exceptions I 
 have alluded to is of those who 
 possess whether honestly come by 
 or not we cannot stop to inquire 
 strong convictions upon these very 
 questions. These convictions they 
 must be allowed to iterate and re- 
 iterate, and to proclaim that in them 
 is to be found the secret of all this 
 (otherwise) unintelligible world. 
 
 The second exception is of those 
 who pursue Truth as by a divine 
 compulsion, and who can be likened 
 only to the nympholepts of old ; 
 those unfortunates who, whilst care- 
 lessly strolling amidst sylvan shades, 
 caught a hasty glimpse of the flow- 
 ing robes or even of the gracious 
 countenance of some spiritual inmate 
 of the woods, in whose pursuit their
 
 n8 TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 whole lives were ever afterwardb 
 fruitlessly spent. 
 
 The nympholepts of Truth are 
 profoundly interesting figures in the 
 world's history, but their lives are 
 melancholy reading, and seldom fail 
 to raise a crop of gloomy thoughts. 
 Their finely touched spirits are not 
 indeed liable to succumb to the ordi- 
 nary temptations of life, and they 
 thus escape the evils which usually 
 follow in the wake of speculation ; but 
 what is their labour's reward ? 
 
 Readers of Dr. Newman will re- 
 member, and will thank me for re- 
 calling it to mind, an exquisite pas- 
 sage, too long to be quoted, in which, 
 speaking as a Catholic to his late 
 Anglican associates, he reminds then 7 
 how he once participated in their 
 pleasures and shared their hopes, and 
 thus concludes : 
 
 ' When, too, shall I not feel the 
 ' soothing recollection of those dear
 
 TR UTH-HUNTING. 1 19 
 
 ' years which I spent in retirement, 
 ' in preparation for my deliverance 
 ' from Egypt, asking for light, and 
 ' by degrees getting it, with less of 
 * temptation in my heart and sin on 
 ' my conscience than ever before ?' 
 
 But the passage is sad as well 
 as exquisite, showing to us, as it 
 does, one who from his earliest 
 days has rejoiced in a faith in 
 God, intense, unwavering, constant ; 
 harassed by distressing doubts, he 
 carries them all, in the devotion of 
 his faith, the warmth of his heart, 
 and the purity of his life, to the 
 throne where Truth sits in state; 
 living, he tells us, in retirement, 
 and spending great portions of every 
 day on his knees ; and yet we ask 
 the question with all reverence what 
 did Dr. Newman get in exchange for 
 his prayers ? 
 
 ' I think it impossible to withstand 
 'the evidence which is brought for
 
 120 TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 ' the liquefaction of the blood of St. 
 ' Januarius at Naples, or for the mo- 
 ' tion of the eyes of the pictures of 
 ' the Madonna in the Roman States. 
 ' I see no reason to doubt the ma- 
 'terial of the Lombard Cross at 
 
 * Monza, and I do not see why the 
 ' Holy Coat at Treves may not have 
 
 * been what it professes to be. I 
 ' firmly believe that portions of the 
 
 * True Cross are at Rome and else- 
 
 * where, that the Crib of Bethlehem 
 ' is at Rome, and the bodies of St. 
 ' Peter and St. Paul ; also I firmly 
 ' believe that the relics of the Saints 
 ' are doing innumerable miracles and 
 
 * graces daily. I firmly believe that 
 ' before now Saints have raised the 
 
 * dead to life, crossed the seas with- 
 
 * out vessels, multiplied grain aii' J 
 
 * bread, cured incurable diseases, ant 
 ' stopped the operations of the laws 
 ' of the universe in a multitude of 
 4 ways.'
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. 121 
 
 So writes Dr. Newman, with that 
 candour, that passion for putting the 
 case most strongly against himself, 
 which is only one of the lovely cha- 
 racteristics of the man whose long 
 life has been a miracle of beauty 
 and grace, and who has contrived 
 to instil into his very controversies 
 more of the spirit of Christ than 
 most men can find room for in their 
 prayers. But the dilemma is an 
 awkward one. Does the Madonna 
 wink, or is Heaven deaf? 
 
 Oh, Spirit of Truth, where wert 
 thou, when the remorseless deep of 
 superstition closed over the head of 
 John Henry Newman, who surely 
 deserved to be thy best-loved son ? 
 
 But this is a digression. With the 
 nympholepts oi Truth we have nought 
 to do. They must be allowed to 
 pursue their lonely and devious 
 paths, and though the records of 
 their wanderings, their conflicting
 
 122 TRUTH-HUNTING. 
 
 conclusions, and their widely-parted 
 resting-places may fill us with de- 
 spair, still they are witnesses whose 
 testimony we could ill afford to lose. 
 
 But there are not many nympho- 
 lepts. The symptoms of the great 
 majority of our modern Truth- 
 hunters are very different, as they 
 will, with their frank candour, be the 
 first to adoKt. They are free 'to 
 drop their swords and daggers ' 
 whenever so commanded, and it is 
 high time they did. 
 
 With these two exceptions I think 
 my prescription will be found of 
 general utility, and likely to promote 
 a healthy flow of good works. 
 
 I had intended to say something 
 as to the effect of speculative habits 
 upon the intellect, but cannot now 
 do so. The following shrewd remark 
 of Mr. Latham's in his interesting 
 book on the ' Action of Examin- 
 ations ' may, however, be quoted ;
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING. S23 
 
 its bearing will be at once seen, and 
 its truth recognised by many : 
 
 'A man who has been thus pro- 
 vided with views and acute obser- 
 ' vations may have destroyed in him- 
 ' self the germs of that power which 
 ' he simulates. He might have had 
 ' a thought or two now and then if 
 ' he had been let alone, but if he is 
 ' made first to aim at a standard of 
 ' thought above his years, and then 
 ' finds he can get the sort of thoughts 
 * he wants without thinking, be is in 
 : a fair way to be spoiled.
 
 ACTORS. 
 
 MOST people, I suppose, at one time 
 or another in their lives, have felt the 
 charm of an actor's life, as they were 
 free to fancy it, well-nigh irresistible. 
 What is it to be a great actor ? I 
 say a great actor, because (I am sure) 
 no amateur ever fancied himself a 
 small one. Is it not always to have 
 the best parts in the best plays ; to 
 be the central figure of every group ; 
 to feel that attention is arrested the 
 moment you come on the stage ; and 
 (more exquisite satisfaction still) to 
 be aware that it is relaxed when you 
 go off; to have silence secured for 
 your smallest utterances ; to know 
 that the highest dramatic talent has
 
 ACTORS. 125 
 
 been exercised to invent situations 
 for the very purpose of giving effect 
 to your words and dignity to your 
 actions ; to quell all opposition by 
 the majesty of your bearing or the 
 brilliancy of your wit ; and finally, 
 either to triumph over disaster, or if 
 you be cast in tragedy, happier still, 
 to die upon the stage, supremely 
 pitied and honestly mourned for 
 at least a minute? And then, 
 from first to last, applause loud 
 and long not postponed, not even 
 delayed, but following immediately 
 after. For a piece of diseased 
 egotism that is, for a man what 
 a lot is this ! 
 
 How pointed, how poignant the 
 contrast between a hero on the 
 boards and a hero in the streets ! 
 In the world's theatre the man who 
 is really playing the leading part 
 did we but know it is too often, in 
 the general estimate, accounted but
 
 125 ACTORS. 
 
 one of the supernumeraries, a figure 
 In dingy attire, who might well be 
 spared, and who may consider him- 
 self well paid with a pound a week. 
 His utterances procure no silence. 
 He has to pronounce them as best 
 he may, whilst the gallery sucks its 
 orange, the pit pares its nails, the 
 boxes babble, and the stalls yawn. 
 Amidst these pleasant distractions 
 he is lucky if he is heard at all ; and 
 perhaps the best thing that can befall 
 him is for somebody to think him 
 worth the trouble of a hiss. As for 
 applause, it may chance with such 
 men, if they live long enough, as it 
 has to the great ones who have pre- 
 ceded them, in their old age, 
 
 ' When they are frozen up within, and quite 
 
 The phantom of themselves, 
 To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost 
 Which blamed the living man. 1 
 
 The great actor may sink to sleep, 
 soothed by the memory of the tears
 
 ACTORS. 127 
 
 or laughter he has evoked, and wake 
 to find the day far advanced, whose 
 close is to witness the repetition of 
 his triumph ; but the great man will 
 lie tossing and turning as he reflects 
 on the seemingly unequal war he is 
 waging with stupidity and prejudice, 
 and be tempted to exclaim, as Milton 
 tells us he was, with the sad prophet 
 Jeremy : ' Woe is me, my mother, 
 that thou hast borne me, a man of 
 strife and contention!' 
 
 The upshot of all this is, that it is 
 a pleasanter thing to represent great- 
 ness than to be great. 
 
 But the actor's calling is not only 
 pleasant in itself it gives pleasure to 
 others. In this respect, how favour- 
 ably it contrasts with the three learned 
 professions ! 
 
 Few pleasures are greater than to 
 witness some favourite character, 
 which hitherto has been but vaguely 
 bodied forth by our -sluggish imagina-
 
 128 ACTORS, 
 
 tions, invested with all the graces 
 of living man or woman. A dis- 
 tinguished man of letters, who years 
 ago was wisely selfish enough to rob 
 the stage of a jewel and set it in his 
 own crown, has addressed to his wife 
 some radiant lines which are often 
 on my lips : 
 
 1 Beloved, whose life is with mine own entwined, 
 In whom, whilst yet thou wert my dream, I 
 
 viewed, 
 
 Warm with the life of breathing womanhood, 
 What Shakespeare's visionary eye divined 
 Pure Imogen ; high-hearted Rosalind, 
 Kindling with sunshine all the dusk greenwood ; 
 Or changing with the poet's changing mood, 
 Juliet, or Constance of the queenly mind.' 
 
 But a truce to these compliments. 
 
 ' I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.' 
 
 It is idle to shirk disagreeable 
 questions, and the one I have to ask 
 is this, ' Has the world been wrong 
 in regarding with disfavour and lack 
 of esteem the great profession of the 
 stage ? 
 
 That the world, ancient and 
 modern, has despised the actor's
 
 ACTORS. 129 
 
 profession cannot be denied. An 
 affecting story I read many years 
 ago in that elegant and entertaining 
 work, Lempriere's ' Classical Dic- 
 tionary ' well illustrates the feeling 
 of the Roman world. Julius Deci- 
 mus Laberius was a Roman knight 
 and dramatic author, famous for his 
 mimes, who had the misfortune to 
 irritate a greater Julius, the author 
 of the ' Commentaries,' when the 
 latter was at the height of his power. 
 Caesar, casting about how best he 
 might humble his adversary, could 
 think of nothing better than to con- 
 demn him to take a leading part in 
 one of his own plays. Laberius en- 
 treated in vain. Caesar was obdu 
 rate, and had his way. Laberius 
 played his part how, Lempriere 
 sayeth not ; but he also took his 
 revenge, after the most effectual of 
 all fashions, the literary. He com- 
 posed and delivered a prologue of 
 
 Q
 
 130 ACTORS. 
 
 considerable power, in which he re- 
 cords the act of spiteful tyranny, and 
 which, oddly enough, is the only 
 specimen of his dramatic art that 
 has come -down to us. It contains 
 lines which, though they do not 
 seem to have made Caesar, who sat 
 smirking in the stalls, blush for him- 
 self, make us, 1,900 years afterwards, 
 blush for Csesar. The only lines, 
 however, now relevant are, being in- 
 terpreted, as follow : 
 
 'After having lived sixty years 
 ' with honour, I left my home this 
 ' morning a Roman knight, but I 
 ' shall return to it this evening an 
 ' infamous stage-player. Alas ! I 
 * have lived a day too long.' 
 
 Turning to the modern world, 
 and to England, we find it here the 
 popular belief that actors are by 
 statute rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy 
 beggars. This, it is true, is founded 
 <m a misapprehension of the effect
 
 ACTORS. 131 
 
 of 39 Eliz. chap. 4, which only pro- 
 vides that common players wandering 
 abroad without authority to play, 
 shall be taken to be ' rogues and 
 vagabonds ;' a distinction which one 
 would have thought was capable of 
 being perceived even by the blunted 
 faculties of the lay mind.* 
 
 But the fact that the popular be- 
 lief rests upon a misreading of an 
 Act of Parliament three hundred 
 years old does not affect the belief, 
 but only makes it exquisitely Eng- 
 lish, and as a consequence entirely 
 irrational. 
 
 Is there anything to be said in sup- 
 port of this once popular prejudice ? 
 
 It may, I think, be supported by 
 two kinds of argument. One de- 
 rived from the nature of the case, 
 the other from the testimony of 
 actors themselves. 
 
 A serious objection to an actor's 
 
 * See note at end of Essay. 
 
 Q2
 
 132 ACTVXS. 
 
 calling is that from its nature it 
 admits of no other test of failure or 
 success than the contemporary opin- 
 ion of the town. This in itself 
 must go far to rob life of dignity. 
 A Milton may remain majestically 
 indifferent to the ' barbarous noise ' 
 of ' owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, 
 and dogs,' but the actor can steel 
 himself to no such fortitude. He 
 can lodge no appeal to posterity. 
 The owls must hoot, the cuckoos 
 cry, the apes yell, and the dogs 
 bark on his side, or he is undone. 
 This is of course inevitable, but it 
 is an unfortunate condition of an 
 artist's life. 
 
 Again, no record of his art sur- 
 vives to tell his tale or account for 
 his fame. When old gentlemen wax 
 garrulous over actors dead and gone, 
 young gentlemen grow somnolent. 
 Chippendale the cabinet-maker is 
 more potent than Garrick the actor.
 
 ACTORS. 133 
 
 The vivacity of the latter no longer 
 charms (save in Boswell) ; the chairs 
 of the former still render rest impos- 
 fible in a hundred homes. 
 
 This, perhaps, is why no man of 
 lofty genius or character has ever 
 condescended to remain an actor. 
 His lot pressed heavily even on so 
 mercurial a trifler as David Garrick, 
 who has given utterance to the feel- 
 ing in lines as good perhaps as any 
 ever written by a successful player : 
 
 ' The painter's dead, yet still he charms the eye, 
 While England lives his fame shall never die ; 
 But he who struts his hour upon the stage 
 Can scarce protract his fame thro' half an age ; 
 Nor pen nor pencil can the actor save 
 Both art and artist have one common grave.' 
 
 But the case must be carried 
 farther than this, for the mere fact 
 that a particular pursuit does not 
 hold out any peculiar attractions for 
 soaring spirits will not justify us in 
 calling that pursuit bad names. I 
 therefore proceed to say that the
 
 134 ACTORS. 
 
 very act of acting, i.e., the art of 
 mimicry, or the representation of 
 feigned emotions called up by sham 
 situations, is, in itself, an occupation 
 an educated man should be slow to 
 adopt as the profession of a life. 
 
 I believe for we should give the 
 world as well as the devil its due 
 that it is to a feeling, a settled per- 
 suasion of this sort, lying deeper 
 than the surface brutalities and 
 snobbishnesses visible to all, that 
 we must attribute the contempt, 
 seemingly so cruel and so ungrateful, 
 the world has visited upon actors. 
 
 I am no great admirer of beards, 
 be they never so luxuriant or glossy 
 yet I own I cannot regard off the 
 stage the closely shaven face of an 
 actor without a feeling of pity, not 
 akin to love. Here, so I cannot 
 help saying to myself, is a man whc 
 has adopted a profession whose very 
 first demand upon him is that he
 
 ACTORS. 135 
 
 should destroy his own identity. It 
 <s not what you are, or what by 
 study you may become, but how few 
 obstacles you present to the getting 
 of yourself up as somebody else, 
 that settles the question of your fit- 
 ness for the stage. Smoothness of 
 face, mobility of feature, compass of 
 voice these things, but the toys of 
 other trades, are the tools of this one. 
 Boswellians will remember the 
 name of Tom Davies as one of 
 frequent occurrence in the great 
 biography. Tom was an actor of 
 some repute, and (so it was said) 
 read * Paradise Lost ' better than 
 any man in England. One evening, 
 when Johnson was lounging behind 
 the scenes at Drury (it was, I hope 
 before his pious resolution to go 
 there no more), Davies made his 
 appearance on his way to the stage 
 in all the majesty and millinery of 
 his part. The situation is pic-
 
 136 ACTORS. 
 
 turesque. The great and dingv 
 Reality of the eighteenth century, 
 the Immortal, and the bedizened 
 little player. ' Well, Tom,' said the 
 great man (and this is the whole 
 story), ' well, Tom, and what art 
 thou to-night?' 'What art thou 
 to-night ?' It may sound rather like 
 a tract, but it will, I think, be found 
 difficult to find an answer to the 
 question consistent with any true 
 view of human dignity. 
 
 Our last argument derived from 
 the nature of the case is, that deli 
 berately to set yourself as the occu- 
 pation of your life to amuse the 
 adult and to astonish, or even to 
 terrify, the infant population of your 
 native land, is to degrade yourself. 
 
 Three-fourths of the acted drama 
 is, and always must be, comedy, 
 farce, and burlesque. We are bored 
 to death by the huge inanities of 
 life. We observe with horror that
 
 AC TOPS. 137 
 
 our interest in our dinner becomes 
 languid. We consult our doctor, 
 who simulates an interest in our 
 stale symptoms, and after a little 
 talk about Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and 
 Dr. Merriman, prescribes Toole. If 
 we are very innocent we may in- 
 quire what night we are to go, but 
 if we do we are at once told that it 
 doesn't in the least matter when we 
 go, for it is always equally funny. 
 Poor Toole ! to be made up every 
 night as a safe prescription for the 
 blues ! To make people laugh is not 
 necessarily a crime, but to adopt as 
 your trade the making people laugh 
 by delivering for a hundred nights 
 together another man's jokes, in a 
 costume the author of the jokes 
 would blush to be seen in, seems to 
 me a somewhat unworthy proceed- 
 ing on the part of a man of character 
 and talent. 
 
 To amuse the British public is a
 
 138 ACTORS. 
 
 task of herculean difficulty and 
 danger, for the blatant monster is, 
 at times, as whimsical arid coy as a 
 maiden, and if it once makes up its 
 mind not to be amused, nothing will 
 shake it. The labour is enormous, 
 the sacrifice beyond what is de- 
 manded of saints. And if you suc- 
 ceed, what is your reward ? Read 
 the lives of comedians, and closing 
 them, you will see what good reason 
 an actor has for exclaiming with the 
 old-world poet : 
 
 ' Odi profanum vulgus !' 
 
 We now turn to the testimony of 
 actors themselves. 
 
 Shakespeare is, of course, my first 
 witness. There is surely significance 
 in this. ' Others abide our question,' 
 begins Arnold's fine sonnet on Shake- 
 speare ' others abide our question ; 
 thou art free.' The little we know 
 about our greatest poet has become 
 a commonplace It is a striking
 
 ACTORS. 139 
 
 tribute to the endless loquacity of man, 
 and a proof how that great creature 
 is not to be deprived of his talk, that 
 he has managed to write quite as much 
 about there being nothing to write 
 about as he could have written about 
 Shakespeare, if the author of ' Hamlet ' 
 had been as great an egoist as Rous- 
 seau. The fact, however, remains that 
 he who has told us most about our- 
 selves, whose genius has made the 
 whole civilized world kin, has told 
 us nothing about himself, except 
 that he hated and despised the stage. 
 To say that he has told us this is 
 not, I think, any exaggeration. I 
 have, of course, in mind the often 
 quoted lines to be found in that 
 sweet treasury of melodious verse 
 and deep feeling, the ' Sonnets of 
 Shakespeare.' The i loth begins thus ; 
 
 1 Alas ! 'tis true I have gone here and there, 
 And made myself a motley to the view, 
 Gor'd my own thoughts, sold cheap what is most 
 
 dear, 
 Made old offences of affections new.'
 
 140 ACTORS. 
 
 And the inth:' 
 
 ' O for my sake do thou with Fortune chide, 
 The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
 That did not better for my life provide 
 Than public means, which public manners breeds. 
 Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To what it works on, like the dyer's hand. 
 Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed.' 
 
 It is not much short of three cen- 
 turies since those lines were written, 
 but they seem still to bubble with a 
 scorn which may indeed be called 
 immortal. 
 
 * Sold cheap what is most dear.' 
 
 There, compressed in half a line, is 
 the whole case against an actor's 
 calling. 
 
 But it may be said Shakespeare 
 was but a poor actor. He could 
 write Hamlet and As You Like It; 
 but when it came to casting the 
 parts, the Ghost in the one and 
 old Adam in the other were the best 
 he could aspire to. Verbose bio- 
 graphers of Shakespeare, in their
 
 ACTORS. 141 
 
 dire extremity, and naturally desirous 
 of writing a big book about a big 
 man, have remarked at length that 
 it was highly creditable to Shake- 
 speare that he was not, or at all 
 events that it does not appear that 
 he was, jealous, after the true thea- 
 trical tradition, of his more success- 
 ful brethren of the buskin. 
 
 It surely might have occurred, 
 even to a verbose biographer in his 
 direst need, that to have had the wit 
 to write and actually to have written 
 the soliloquies in Hamlet, might con- 
 sole a man under heavier afflictions 
 than the knowledge that in the popular 
 estimate somebody else spouted those 
 soliloquies better than he did him- 
 self. I can as easily fancy Milton 
 jealous of Tom Davies as Shakespeare 
 cf Richard Burbage. But good, 
 bad, or indifferent Shakespeare was 
 an actor, and as such I tender his 
 testimony
 
 142 ACTORS. 
 
 I now for really this matter must 
 be cut short summon pell-mell all 
 the actors and actresses who have 
 ever strutted their little hour on the 
 stage, and put to them the following 
 comprehensive question : Is there in 
 your midst one who had an honest, 
 hearty, downright pride and pleasure 
 in your calling, or do not you all 
 (tell the truth) mournfully echo the 
 lines of your great master (whom 
 nevertheless you never really cared 
 for), and with him 
 
 ' Your fortunes chide, 
 That did not better for your lives provide 
 Than public means, which public manners breeds.' 
 
 They all assent : with wonderful una- 
 nimity. 
 
 But, seriously, I know of no 
 recorded exception, unless it be 
 Thomas Betterton, who held the 
 stage for half a century from 1661 
 to 1708 and who still lives, as much 
 as an actor can, in the pages oi
 
 ACTORS. 143 
 
 Colley Gibber's Apology. He was a 
 man apparently of simple character, 
 for he had only one benefit-night all 
 his life. 
 
 Who else is there? Read Mac- 
 ready's ' Memoirs ' the King Arthur 
 of the stage. You will find there, I 
 am sorry to say, all the actor's faults 
 if faults they can be called which 
 seem rather hard necessities, the dis- 
 colouring of the dyer's hand ; greedy 
 hungering after applause, endless 
 egotism, grudging praise all are 
 there ; not perhaps in the tropical 
 luxuriance they have attained else- 
 where, but plain enough. But do we 
 not also find, deeply engrained and 
 constant, a sense of degradation, a 
 longing to escape from the stage for 
 ever ? 
 
 He did not like his children tc 
 come and see him act, and was 
 always regretting heaven help him ! 
 that he wasn't a barrister-at-law
 
 144 ACTORS. 
 
 Look upon this picture and on that 
 Here we have Macbeth, that mighty 
 thane ; Hamlet, the intellectual 
 symbol of the whole world of modern 
 thought ; Strafford, in Robert Brown- 
 ing's fine play; splendid dresses, 
 crowded theatres, beautiful women, 
 royal audiences ; and on the other 
 side, a rusty gown, a musty wig, a 
 fusty court, a deaf judge, an indif- 
 ferent jury, a dispute about a bill of 
 lading, and ten guineas on your 
 brief which you have not been paid, 
 and which you can't recover why, 
 ' 'tis Hyperion to a satyr !' 
 
 Again, we find Mrs. Siddons 
 writing of her sister's marriage : 
 
 ' I have lost one of the sweetest 
 ' companions in the world. She has 
 ' married a respectable man, though 
 ' of small fortune. I thank God she 
 ' is off the stage.' What is this but 
 to say, ' Better the most humdrun \ 
 ' of existences with the most *' rer
 
 ACTORS. 145 
 
 spectable of men,' than to be upon 
 ' the stage ' ? 
 
 The volunteered testimony of actors 
 is both large in bulk and valuable in 
 quality, and it is all on my side. 
 
 Their involuntary testimony I pass 
 over lightly. Far be from me the 
 disgusting and ungenerous task of 
 raking up a heap of the weaknesses, 
 vanities, and miserablenesses of actors 
 and actresses dead and gone. After 
 life's fitful fever they sleep (I trust) 
 well ; and in common candour, it 
 ought never to be forgotten that 
 whilst it has always been the fashion 
 until one memorable day Mr. 
 Froude ran amuck of it for bio- 
 graphers to shroud their biographees 
 (the American Minister must bear 
 the brunt of this word on his broad 
 shoulders) in a crape veil of respecta- 
 bility, the records of the stage have 
 been written in another spirit. We 
 always know the worst of an actor, 
 
 10
 
 146 ACTORS. 
 
 seldom his best. David Garrick was 
 a better man than Lord Eldon, and 
 Macready was at least as good as 
 Dickens. 
 
 There is however, one portion of 
 this body of involuntary testimony 
 on which I must be allowed to rely, 
 for it may be referred to without 
 offence. 
 
 Our dramatic literature is our 
 greatest literature. It is the best 
 thing we have done. Dante may 
 over-top Milton, but Shakespeare 
 surpasses both. He is our finest 
 achievement; his plays our noblest 
 possession ; the things in the world 
 most worth thinking about. To live 
 daily in his company, to study his 
 works with minute and loving care 
 in no spirit of pedantry searching 
 for double endings, but in order to 
 discover their secret, and to make 
 the spoken word tell upon the hearts 
 of man and woman this might have
 
 AC1OR3. 147 
 
 been expected to produce great intel- 
 lectual if not moral results. 
 
 The most magnificent compliment 
 ever paid by man to woman is un- 
 doubtedly Steele's to the Lady Eliza- 
 beth Hastings. ' To love her,' wrote 
 he, ' is a liberal education.' As 
 much might surely be said of Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 But what are the facts the ugly, 
 hateful facts? Despite this great 
 advantage this close familiarity with 
 the noblest and best in our litera- 
 ture the taste of actors, their criti- 
 cal judgment, always has been and 
 still is, if not beneath contempt, at 
 all events far below the average in- 
 telligence of their day. By taste, I 
 do not mean taste in flounces and in 
 furbelows, tunics and stockings ; but 
 in the weightier matters of the truly 
 sublime and the essentially ridiculous. 
 Salvini's Macbeth is undoubtedly a 
 fine performance ; and yet that great 
 
 IO 2
 
 148 ACTORS. 
 
 actor, as the result of his study, has 
 placed it on record that he thinks 
 the sleep-walking scene ought to be 
 assigned to Macbeth instead of to 
 his wife. Shades of Shakespeare 
 and Siddons, what think you of 
 that? 
 
 It is a strange fatality, but a proof 
 of the inherent pettiness of the actor's 
 art, that though it places its votary 
 in the very midst of literary and 
 artistic influences, and of necessity 
 'nforms him of the best and worthiest, 
 he is yet, so far as his own culture is 
 concerned, left out in the cold art's 
 slave, not her child. 
 
 What have the devotees of the 
 drama taught us ? Nothing ! it is 
 we who have taught them. We go 
 first, and they come lumbering after. 
 It was not from the stage the voicf 
 arose bidding us recognise the su- 
 premacy of Shakespeare's genius ? 
 Actors first ignored him, then hide-
 
 ACTORS. *49 
 
 ously mutilated him ; and though noC 
 occasionally compelled, out of defer- 
 ence to the taste of the day, to forego 
 their green-room traditions, to for- 
 swear their Tate and Brady emen- 
 dations, in their heart of hearts they 
 love him not ; and it is with a light 
 step and a smiling face that our 
 great living tragedian flings aside 
 Hamlet's tunic or Shylock's gaber- 
 dine to revel in the melodramatic 
 glories of The Bells and The Corsican 
 Brothers. 
 
 Our gratitude is due in this great 
 matter to men of letters, not to 
 actors. If it be asked, ' What have 
 actors to do with literature and 
 criticism?' I answer, ' Nothing;' and 
 j.dd, ' That is my case.' 
 
 But the notorious bad taste of 
 actors is not entirely due to their 
 living outside Literature, with its 
 words for ever upon their lips, but 
 none of its truths engraven on their
 
 ISO ACTORS. 
 
 hearts. It may partly be accounted 
 for by the fact that for the purposes 
 of an ambitious actor bad plays are 
 the best. 
 
 In reading actors' lives, nothing 
 strikes you more than their delight 
 in making a hit in some part nobody 
 ever thought anything of before. 
 Garrick was proud past all endurance 
 of his Beverley in the Gamester, and 
 one can easily see why. Until people 
 saw Garrick's Beverley, they didn't 
 think there was anything in the 
 Gamester ; nor was there, except what 
 Garrick put there.* This is called 
 creating a part, and he is the greatest 
 actor who creates most parts. 
 
 * This illustration is not a very happy one, for 
 as an accomplished critic has pointed out in the 
 St. James's Gazette, Moore's play was written espe- 
 cially for Mr. Garrick, and was first made known 
 to the public by Mr. Garrick. The play was, how- 
 ever, subsequently printed, and to be had of all 
 booksellers ; and the observations in the text woule* 
 therefore hold good of anyone who put off seeing 
 the play until he had read it. But whether there 
 was any person so ill-advised I cannot say.
 
 ACTORS. 151 
 
 But genius in the author of the 
 play is a terrible obstacle in the way 
 of an actor who aspires to identify 
 himself once and for all with the 
 ''eading part in it. Mr. Irving may 
 act Hamlet well or ill and, for my 
 part, I think he acts it exceedingly 
 well but behind Mr. Irving's Ham- 
 let, as behind everybody else's Ham- 
 let, there looms a greater Hamlet 
 than them all Shakespeare's Hamlet, 
 the real Hamlet. 
 
 But Mr. Irving's Mathias is quite 
 another kettle of fish, all of Mr. 
 Irving's own catching. Who ever, 
 on leaving the Lyceum, after seeing 
 The Bells, was heard to exclaim, ' It 
 is all mighty fine ; but that is not my 
 idea of Mathias ' ? Do not we all 
 feel that without Mr. Irving there 
 could be no Mathias ? 
 
 We best like doing what we do 
 best : and an actor is not to be 
 blamed for preferring the task of
 
 152 ACTORS. 
 
 making much of a very little to that 
 of making little of a great deal. 
 
 As for actresses, it surely would be 
 the height of ungenerosity to blame a 
 woman for following the only regular 
 profession commanding fame and 
 fortune the kind consideration of 
 man has left open to her. For two 
 centuries women have been free to 
 follow this profession, onerous and 
 exacting though it be, and by doing 
 so have won the rapturous applause 
 of generations of men, who are all 
 ready enough to believe that where 
 their pleasure is involved, no risks 
 of life or honour are too great for a 
 woman to run. It is only when the 
 latter, tired of the shams of life, 
 would pursue the realities, that we 
 become alive to the fact hitherto, I 
 suppose, studiously concealed from us 
 how frail and feeble a creature she is. 
 
 Lastly, it must not be forgotten 
 that we are discussing a question of
 
 ACTORS. 15 3 
 
 casuistry, one which is * stuff o' the 
 conscience,' and where consequently 
 words are all important. 
 
 Is an actor's calling an eminently 
 worthy one? that is the question. 
 It may be lawful, useful, delightful, 
 but is it worthy ? 
 
 An actor's life is an artist's life. 
 No artist, however eminent, has more 
 than one life, or does anything worth 
 doing in that life, unless he is pre- 
 pared to spend it royally in the ser- 
 vice of his art, caring for nought 
 else. Is an actor's art worth the 
 price ? I answer, No 1
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 
 
 ONE is often tempted of the devil to 
 forswear the study of history alto- 
 gether as the pursuit of the Unknow- 
 able. ' How is it possible,' he 
 whispers in our ear, as we stand 
 gloomily regarding the portly calf- 
 bound volumes without which no 
 gentleman's library is complete, ' how 
 'is it possible to suppose that you 
 'have there, on your shelves 
 ' the actual facts of history a true 
 ' record of what men, dead long ago, 
 ' felt and thought ?' Yet, if we have 
 not, I for one, though of a literary 
 turn, would sooner spent my leisure 
 playing skittles with boors than in
 
 A ROGUE'S MEATOIRS. 155 
 
 reading sonorous lies in stout 
 volumes. 
 
 ' It is not so much,' wilily insinuates 
 the Tempter, ' that these renowned 
 ' authors lack knowledge. Their 
 ' habit of giving an occasional refer- 
 'ence (though the verification of 
 'these is usually left to the malig- 
 ' nancy of a rival and less popular 
 4 historian) argues at least some read- 
 ' ing. No ; what is wanting is igno- 
 ' ranee, carefully acquired and studi- 
 ' ously maintained. This is no pars- 
 ' dox. To carry the truisms, theories, 
 ' laws, language of to-day, along with 
 ' you in your historical pursuits, is to 
 'turn the muse of history upside 
 'down a most disrespectful pro- 
 ' ceeding and yet to ignore them 
 ' to forget all about them to 
 ' hang them up with your hat and 
 coat in the hall, to remain there 
 
 * whilst you sit in the library compos- 
 
 * ing your immortal work, which is so
 
 156 A KOGU&S MEMOIKS. 
 
 ' happily to combine all that is best 
 1 in Gibbon and Macaulay a sneep- 
 
 less Gibbon and an impartial Ma- 
 ' caulay is a task which, if it be not 
 * impossible is, at all events, of huge 
 
 difficulty. 
 
 * Another blemish in English his- 
 ' torical work has been noticed by the 
 ' Rev. Charles Kingsley, and may 
 ' therefore be referred to by me with- 
 ' out offence. Your standard histo- 
 ' rians, having no unnatural regard for 
 ' their most indefatigable readers, the 
 'wives and daughters of England, 
 ' feel it incumbent upon them to pass 
 ' over, as unfit for dainty ears and 
 
 dulcet tones, facts, and rumours of 
 
 facts, which none the less often de- 
 c termined events by stirring the 
 'strong feelings of your ancestors, 
 ' whose conduct, unless explained by 
 ' this light, must remain enigmatical 
 ' When, to these anachronisms of 
 
 thought and omissions of fact, you
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 1 S7 
 
 ' have added the dishonesty of the 
 ' partisan historian and the false 
 'glamour of the picturesque one, you 
 ' will be so good as to proceed to find 
 ' the present value of history !' 
 Thus far the Enemy of Mankind : 
 An admirable lady orator is re- 
 ported lately to have 'brought down' 
 Exeter Hall by observing, ' in a low 
 but penetrating voice,' that the devil 
 was a very stupid person. It is true 
 that Ben Jonson is on the side of 
 the lady, but I am far too orthodox 
 to entertain any such opinion ; and 
 though I have, in this instance of 
 history, so far resisted him as to have 
 refrained from sending my standard 
 historians to the auction mart where, 
 indeed, with the almost single excep- 
 tion of Mr. Crete's History of Greece 
 (the octavo edition in twelve volumes), 
 prices rule so low as to make cartage 
 a consideration I have still of late 
 found myself turning off the turnpike
 
 158 A ROGUES MEMOIRS. 
 
 of history to loiter down the primrose 
 paths of men's memoirs of themselves 
 and their times. 
 
 Here at least, so we argue, we are 
 comparatively safe. Anachronisms 
 of thought are impossible ; omissions 
 out of regard for female posterity un- 
 likely, and as for party spirit, if found, 
 it forms part of what lawyers call the 
 res gestcz, and has therefore a value of 
 its own. Against the perils of the 
 picturesque, who will insure us ? 
 
 But when we have said all this, 
 and, sick of prosing, would begin read- 
 ing, the number of really readable 
 memoirs is soon found to be but few. 
 This is, indeed, unfortunate ; for it 
 launches us off on another prose- 
 journey by provoking the question, 
 What makes memoirs interesting ? 
 
 Is it necessary that they should be 
 the record of a noble character? 
 Certainly not. We remember Pepys, 
 who well, never mind what he does.
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 159 
 
 We call to mind Cellini ; he runs be- 
 hind a fellow-creature, and with ' ad- 
 mirable address' sticks a dagger in 
 the nape of his neck, and long after- 
 wards records the fact, almost with 
 reverence, in his life's story. Can 
 anything be more revolting than some 
 portions of the revelation Benjamin 
 Franklin was pleased to make ol 
 himself in writing ? And what about 
 Rousseau ? Yet, when we have 
 pleaded guilty for these men, a 
 modern Savonarola, who had per- 
 suaded us to make a bonfire of their 
 works, would do well to keep a sharp 
 look-out, lest at the last moment we 
 should be found substituting ' Pearson 
 on the Creed ' for Pepys, Coleridge's 
 ' Friend ' for Cellini, John Foster's 
 Essays for Franklin, and Roget's 
 Bridgewater Treatise for Rousseau. 
 
 Neither will it do to suppose that 
 the interest of a memoir depends on 
 its writer havingr been concerned in
 
 160 A ROGUES MEMOIRS. 
 
 great affairs, or lived in stirring times 
 The dullest memoirs written even in 
 English, and not excepting those 
 maimed records of life known as 'reli- 
 gious biography,' are the work of men 
 of the ' attache ' order, who, having 
 been mixed up in events which the 
 newspapers of the day chronicled as 
 ' Important Intelligence,' were not 
 unnaturally led to cherish the belief 
 that people would like to have from 
 their pens full, true and particular 
 accounts of all that then happened, 
 or, as they, if moderns, would pro- 
 bably prefer to say, transpired. But 
 the World, whatever an over-bold 
 Exeter Hall may say of her old asso- 
 ciate the Devil, is not a stupid person, 
 and declines to be taken in twice; and 
 turning a deaf ear to the most pains- 
 taking and trustworthy accounts of de- 
 ceased Cabinets and silenced Confer- 
 ences, goes journeyingalongher broad 
 way, chuckling over some old joke in
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 161 
 
 Boswell, and reading with fresh de- 
 light the all-about-nothing letters of 
 Cowper and Lamb. 
 
 How then does a man be he good 
 or bad big or little a philosopher 
 or a fribble St. Paul or Horace 
 Walpole make his memoirs interest- 
 ing ? 
 
 To say that the one thing needful 
 is individuality, is not quite enough. 
 To be an individual is the inevitable, 
 ind in most cases the unenviable, lot 
 of every child of Adam. Each one 
 of us has, like a tin soldier, a stand 
 of his own. To have an individuality 
 is no sort of distinction, but to be 
 able to make it felt in writing is not 
 only distinction but under favouring 
 circumstances immortality. 
 
 Have we not all some correspon- 
 dents, though probably but few, from 
 whom we never receive a letter with- 
 out feeling sure that we shall find in- 
 side the envelope something written 
 
 ii
 
 162 A ROGU&S MEMOIRS. 
 
 that will make us either glow with 
 the warmth or shiver with the cold 
 of our correspondent's life ? But 
 how many other people are to be 
 found, good, honest people too, who 
 no sooner take pen in hand than they 
 stamp unreality on every word they 
 write. It is a hard fate, but they can- 
 not escape it. They may be as 
 literal as the late Earl Stanhope, as 
 painstaking as Bishop Stubbs, as 
 much in earnest as Mr. Gladstone 
 their lives may be noble, their aims 
 high, but no sooner do they seek to 
 narrate to us their story, than we find 
 it is not to be. To hearken to them 
 is past praying for. We turn from 
 them as from a guest who has out- 
 stayed his welcome. Their writing 
 wearies, irritates, disgusts. 
 
 Here then, at last, we have the 
 two classes of memoir writers those 
 who manage to make themselves felt, 
 and those who do not. Of the latter,
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 163 
 
 a very little is a great deal too much 
 of the former we can never have 
 enough. 
 
 What a liar was Benvenuto Cellini ! 
 who can believe a word he says ? 
 To hang a dog on his oath would be 
 a judicial murder. Yet when we 
 lay down his memoirs and let our 
 thoughts travel back to those far-off 
 days he tells us of, there we see 
 him standing, in bold relief, against 
 the black sky of the past, the very 
 man he was. Not more surely did 
 he, with that rare skill of his, stamp 
 the image of Clement VII. on the 
 papal currency than he did the im- 
 press of his own singular personality 
 upon every word he spoke and every 
 sentence he wrote. 
 
 We ought, of course, to hate him, 
 but do we ? A murderer he has 
 written himself down. A liar he 
 stands self-convicted of being. Were 
 anyone in the nether world bold
 
 164 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 
 
 enough to call him thief, it may 
 be doubted whether Rhadamanthus 
 would award him the damages for 
 which we may be certain he would 
 Joudly clamour. Why do we not 
 hate him ? Listen to him : 
 
 * Upon my uttering these words, 
 
 ' there was a general outcry, the 
 
 ' noblemen affirming that I promised 
 
 ' too much. But one of them, who 
 
 was a great philosopher, said in 
 
 * my favour, " From the admirable 
 
 * symmetry of shape and happy 
 ' physiognomy of this young man, I 
 ' venture to engage that he will per- 
 ' form all he promises, and more." 
 ' The Pope replied, " I am of the 
 ' same opinion ;" then calling Trajano, 
 ' his gentleman of the bed-chamber, 
 
 he ordered him to fetch me five 
 ' hundred ducats.' 
 
 And so it always ended ; suspicions, 
 aroused most reasonably, allayed 
 most unreasonably, and then ducats.
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 16$ 
 
 He deserved hanging, but he died in 
 his bed. He wrote his own memoirs 
 ifter a fashion that ought to have 
 Drought posthumous justice upon him, 
 and made them a literary gibbet, on 
 which he should swing, a creaking 
 horror, for all time ; but nothing of 
 the sort has happened. The rascal 
 is so symmetrical, and his phy- 
 siognomy, as it gleams upon us 
 through the centuries, so happy, that 
 we cannot withhold our ducats, 
 though we may accompany the gift 
 with a shower of abuse. 
 
 This only proves the profundity of 
 an observation made by Mr. Bagehot 
 a man who carried away into the 
 next world more originality of thought 
 than is now to be found in the Three 
 Estates of the Realm. Whilst re- 
 marking upon the extraordinary 
 reputation of the late Francis Horner 
 and the trifling cost he was put to in 
 supporting it, Mr. Bagehot said that
 
 166 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 
 
 it proved the advantage of ' keeping 
 an atmosphere.' 
 
 The common air of heaven 
 sharpens men's judgments. Poor 
 Horner, but for that kept atmosphere 
 of his, always surrounding him, would 
 have been bluntly asked, ' What he 
 'had done since he was breeched,' 
 and in reply he could only have 
 muttered something about the cur- 
 rency. As for our especial rogue 
 Cellini, the question would probably 
 have assumed this shape : ' Rascal, 
 ' name the crime you have not com- 
 ' mitted, and account for the omis- 
 * sion.' 
 
 But these awkward questions are 
 not put to the lucky people who keep 
 their own atmospheres. The critics, 
 before they can get at them, have to 
 step out of the everyday air, where 
 only achievements count and the 
 Decalogue still goes for something, 
 into the kept atmosphere, which they
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 167 
 
 have no sooner breathed than they 
 begin to see things differently, and 
 to measure the object thus sur- 
 rounded with a tape of its own 
 manufacture. Horner poor, ugly, 
 a man neither of words nor deeds 
 becomes one of our great men; 
 a nation mourns his loss and 
 erects his statue in the Abbey. Mr. 
 Bagehot gives several instances of 
 the same kind, but he does not men- 
 tion Cellini, who is, however, in his 
 own way, an admirable example. 
 
 You open his book a Pharisee of 
 the Pharisees. Lying indeed ! Why, 
 you hate prevarication. As for 
 murder, your friends know you too 
 well to mention the subject in your 
 hearing, except in immediate con- 
 nection with capital punishment. 
 You are, of course, willing to make 
 some allowance for Cellini's time 
 and place the first half of the 
 sixteenth century and Italy. ' Yes,
 
 168 A ROGUE** MEMOIRS. 
 
 you remark, ' Cellini shall have strict 
 'justice at my hands.' So you say as 
 you settle yourself in your chair and 
 begin to read. We seem to hear the 
 rascal laughing in his grave. His 
 spirit breathes upon you from his 
 book peeps at you roguishly as you 
 turn the pages. His atmosphere sur- 
 rounds you ; you smile when you 
 ought to frown, chuckle when you 
 should groan, and O final triumph 
 laugh aloud when, if you had a rag 
 of principle left, you would fling the 
 book into the fire. Your poor moral 
 sense turns away with a sigh, and 
 patiently awaits the conclusion of 
 the second volume. 
 
 How cautiously does he begin, 
 how gently does he win your ear by 
 his seductive piety ! I quote from 
 Mr. Roscoe's translation : 
 
 ' It is a duty incumbent on upright 
 ' and credible men of all ranks, whc 
 '' have performed anything noble or
 
 A ROGUES MEMOIRS. 169 
 
 ' praiseworthy, to record, in their own 
 ' writing, the events of their lives ; 
 ' yet they should not commence this 
 ' honourable task before they have 
 ' passed their fortieth year. Such, 
 ' at least, is my opinion, now that I 
 ' have completed my fifty-eighth year, 
 
 * and am settled in Florence, where, 
 ' considering the numerous ills that 
 ' constantly attend human life, I per- 
 ' ceive that I have never before been 
 ' so free from vexations and cala- 
 
 * mities, or possessed of so great a 
 ' share of content and health as at 
 
 * this period. Looking back on some 
 ' delightful and happy events of my 
 ' life, and on many misfortunes so 
 ' truly overwhelming that the appal 
 
 * ling retrospect makes me wonder 
 ' how I have reached this age in 
 
 * vigour and prosperity, through 
 ' God's goodness I have resolved to 
 ' publish an account of my life ; and 
 "' . . . .1 must, in commencing
 
 170 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 
 
 ' my narrative, satisfy the public on 
 ' some few points to which its curio- 
 ' sity is usually directed ; the first of 
 ' which is to ascertain whether a man 
 ' is descended from a virtuous and 
 ' ancient family .... I shall 
 ' therefore now proceed to inform 
 ' the reader how it pleased God that 
 ' I should come into the world.' 
 
 So you read on page I ; what you 
 read on page 191 is this : 
 
 'Just after sunset, about eight 
 ' o'clock, as this musqueteer stood 
 ' at his door with his sword in his 
 ' hand, when he had done supper, I 
 ' with great address came close up 
 ' to him with a long dagger, and gave 
 ' him a violent back-handed stroke, 
 ' which I aimed at his neck. He 
 ' instantly turned round, and the 
 ' blow, falling directly upon his left 
 ' shoulder, broke the whole bone of 
 ' it ; upon which he dropped his 
 ' sword, quite overcome by the pain,
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. ijl 
 
 * and took to his heels. I pursued, 
 ' and in four steps came up with him, 
 ' when, raising the dagger over his 
 ' head, which he lowered down, I hit 
 ' him exactly upon the nape of the 
 ' neck. The weapon penetrated so 
 ' deep that, though I made a great 
 
 * effort to recover it again, I found 
 4 it impossible.' 
 
 So much for murder. Now for 
 manslaughter, or rather Cellini's 
 notion of manslaughter. 
 
 ' Pompeo entered an apothecary's 
 ' shop at the corner of the Chiavica, 
 ' about some business, and stayed 
 
 * there for some time. I was told 
 ' he had boasted of having bullied 
 
 * me, but it turned out a fatal ad- 
 ' venture to him. Just as I arrived 
 
 * at that quarter he was coming out 
 ' of the shop, and his bravoes, having 
 ' made an opening, formed a circle 
 
 * round him. I thereupon clapped 
 my hand to a sharp dagger, and
 
 172 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 
 
 * having forced my way through the 
 ' file of ruffians, laid hold of him by 
 ' the throat, so quickly and with such 
 ' presence of mind, that there was 
 ' not one of his friends could defend 
 ' him. I pulled him towards me to 
 ' give him a blow in front, but he 
 ' turned his face about through excess 
 ' of terror, so that I wounded him 
 ' exactly under the ear ; and upon 
 ' repeating my blow, he fell down 
 ' dead. It had never been my inten- 
 ' tion to kill him, but blows are not 
 ' always under command.' 
 
 We must all feel that it would never 
 have done to have begun with these 
 passages, but long before the igist 
 page has been reached Cellini has 
 retreated into his own atmosphere, 
 and the scales of justice have been 
 hopelessly tampered with. 
 
 That such a man as this encoun- 
 tered suffering in the course of his 
 life, should be matter for satisfaction
 
 A KOGUE'S MEMOIRS. 173 
 
 to every well-regulated mind ; but, 
 somehow or another, you find your- 
 self pitying the fellow as he narrates 
 tfie hardships he endured in the 
 Castle of S. Angelo. He is so sym- 
 metrical a rascal ! Just hear him ! 
 listen to what he says well on in the 
 second volume, after the little inci- 
 dents already quoted : 
 
 ' Having at length recovered my 
 ' strength and vigour, after I had 
 
 * composed myself and resumed my 
 ' cheerfulness of mind, I continued 
 ' to read my Bible, and so accus- 
 ' tomed my eyes to that darkness, 
 ' that though I was at first able to 
 ' read only an hour and a half; 1 
 ' could at length read three hours. 1 
 
 * then reflected on the wonderful 
 'power of the Almighty upon the 
 
 * hearts of simple men, who had 
 
 * carried their enthusiasm so far as to 
 ' believe firmly that God would in- 
 ' dulge them in all they wished for ;
 
 174 A XUGVE'S MEMOIRS. 
 
 ' and I promised myself the assist- 
 'ance of the Most High, as well 
 ' through His mercy as on account 
 
 * of my innocence. Thus turning 
 ' constantly to the Supreme Being, 
 ' sometimes in prayer, sometimes in 
 ' silent meditation on the divine 
 'goodness, I was totally engrossed 
 ' by these heavenly reflections, and 
 ' came to take such delight in pious 
 
 meditations that I no longer thought 
 of past misfortunes. On the con- 
 
 * trary, I was all day long singing 
 psalms and many other composi- 
 
 ' tions of mine, in which I celebrated 
 
 * and praised the Deity.' 
 
 Thus torn from their context, these 
 passages may seem to supply the 
 best possible falsification of the pre- 
 vious statement that Cellini told the 
 truth about himself. Judged by these 
 passages alone, he may appear a 
 hypocrite of an unusually odious de- 
 scription. But it is only necessary
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 173 
 
 to read his book to dispel that notion. 
 He tells lies about other people ; he 
 repeats long conversations, sounding 
 his own praises, during which, as his 
 own narrative shows, he was not 
 present ; he exaggerates his own 
 exploits, his sufferings even, it may 
 be, his crimes ; but when we lay 
 down his book, we feel we are say- 
 ing good-bye to a man whom we 
 know. 
 
 He has introduced himself to us, 
 and though doubtless we prefer saints 
 to sinners, we may be forgiven for 
 liking the company of a live rogue 
 better than that of the lay-figures 
 and empty clock-cases labelled with 
 distinguished names, who are to be 
 found doing duty for men in the 
 works of our standard historians. 
 What would we not give to know 
 Julius Caesar one half as well as we 
 know this outrageous rascal ? The 
 saints of the earth, too, how shadowy
 
 176 A ROGUES MEMOIRS. 
 
 they are ! Which of them do we 
 really know ? Excepting one or two 
 ancient and modern Quietists, there 
 is hardly one amongst the whole 
 number who being dead yet speaketh. 
 Their memoirs far too often only 
 reveal to us a hazy something, cer- 
 tainly not recognisable as a man. 
 This is generally the fault of their 
 editors, who, though men themselves, 
 confine their editorial duties to going 
 up and down the diaries and papers 
 of the departed saint, and oblitera- 
 ting all human touches. This they 
 do for the * better prevention of 
 scandals ;' and one cannot deny that 
 they attain their end, though they 
 pay dearly for it. 
 
 I shall never forget the start I 
 gave when, on reading some old book 
 about India, I came across an after- 
 dinner jest of Henry Martyn's. The 
 thought of Henry Martyn laughing 
 over the walnuts and the wine was
 
 A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS. 177- 
 
 almost, as Robert Browning's un- 
 known painter says, ' too wildly 
 dear ;' and to this day I cannot help 
 thinking that there must be a mistake 
 somewhere. 
 
 To return to Cellini, and to con- 
 clude. On laying down his ' Memoirs,' 
 let us be careful to recall our banished 
 moral sense, and make peace with 
 her, by passing a final judgment on 
 this desperate sinner, which perhaps, 
 after all, we cannot do better than 
 by employing language of his own 
 concerning a monk, a fellow-prisoner 
 of his, who never, so far as appears, 
 murdered anybody, but of whom 
 Cellini none the less felt himself en- 
 titled to say : 
 
 ' I admired his shining qualities, 
 ' but his odious vices I freely cen- 
 ' sured and held in abhorrence.' 
 
 12
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 
 
 THE world is governed by logic. 
 Truth as well as Providence is always 
 on the side of the strongest battal- 
 ions. An illogical opinion only re- 
 quires rope enough to hang itself. 
 
 Middle men may often seem to be 
 earning for themselves a place in 
 Universal Biography, and middle 
 positions frequently seem to afford 
 the final solution of vexed questions ; 
 but this double delusion seldom out- 
 lives a generation. The world wearies 
 of the men, for, attractive as their 
 characters may be, they are for ever 
 telling us, generally at great length, 
 how it comes about that they stand
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 179 
 
 just where they do, and we soon tire 
 of explanations and forget apologists 
 The positions, too, once hailed with 
 such acclaim, so eagerly recognized 
 as the true refuges for poor mortals 
 anxious to avoid being run over by 
 fast-driving logicians, how untenable 
 do they soon appear ! how quickly 
 do they grow antiquated ! how com- 
 pletely they are forgotten ! 
 
 The Via Media, alluring as is its 
 direction, imposing as are its portals, 
 is, after all, only what Londoners call 
 a blind alley, leading nowhere. 
 
 'Ratiocination, 'says one of the most 
 eloquent and yet exact of modern 
 writers,* ' is the great principle of 
 ' order in thinking : it reduces a chaos 
 ' into harmony, it catalogues the 
 ' accumulations of knowledge ; it 
 1 maps out for us the relations of 
 ' its separate departments. It en- 
 ' ables the independent intellects of 
 
 * Dr. Newman in the ' Grammar uf Assent.'
 
 ISO THE VIA MEDIA. 
 
 ' many acting and re-acting on each 
 ' other to bring their collective force 
 ' to bear upon the same subject- 
 ' matter. If language is an in- 
 1 estimable gift to man, the logical 
 'faculty prepares it for our use. 
 ' Though it does not go so far as to 
 ' ascertain truth ; still, it teaches us 
 ' the direction in which truth lies, and 
 ' how propositions lie towards each other. 
 'Nor is it a slight benefit to know 
 ' what is needed for the proof of a 
 ' point, what is wanting in a theory, 
 ' how a theory hangs together, and 
 ' what will follow if it be admitted.'' 
 
 This great principle of order in 
 thinking is what we are too apt to 
 forget. ' Give us,' cry many, ' safety 
 ' in our opinions, and let who will be 
 ' logical. An Englishman's creed is 
 ' compromise. His bete noire extrava- 
 ' gance. We are not saved by syl- 
 ' logism.' Possibly not ; but yet there 
 can be no safety in an illogical posi-
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 181 
 
 tion, and one's chances of snug 
 quarters in eternity cannot surely be 
 bettered by our believing at one and 
 the same moment of time self-con- 
 tradictory propositions. 
 
 But, talk as we may, for the bulk 
 of mankind it will doubtless always 
 remain true that a truth does not ex- 
 clude its contradictory. Darwin and 
 Moses are both right. Between the 
 Gospel according to Matthew and 
 the Gospel according to Matthew 
 Arnold there is no difference. 
 
 If the too apparent absurdity of 
 this is pressed home, the baffled 
 illogician, persecuted in one position, 
 flees into another, and may be heard 
 assuring his tormentor that in a period 
 like the present, which is so notoriously 
 transitional, a logician is as much out 
 of place as a bull in a china shop, 
 jtnd that unless he is quiet, and keeps 
 his tail well wrapped round his legs, 
 the mischief he will do to his neigh-
 
 182 THE VIA MEDIA, 
 
 hours' china creeds and delicate porce 
 lain opinions is shocking to contem- 
 plate. But this excuse is no longer ad- 
 missible. The age has remained tran- 
 sitional so unconscionably long, that 
 we cannot consent to forego the use 
 of logic any longer. For a decade or 
 two it was all well enough, but when 
 it comes to four-score years, one's 
 patience gets exhausted. Carlyle's 
 celebrated Essay, ' Characteristics,' 
 in which this transitional period is 
 diagnosed with unrivalled acumen, is 
 half a century old. Men have been 
 born in it have grown old in it 
 have died in it. It has outlived the 
 old Court of Chancery. It is high 
 time the spurs of logic were applied 
 to its broken-winded sides. 
 
 Notwithstanding the obstinate pre- 
 ference the ' bulk of mankind ' always 
 show for demonstrable errors over 
 undeniable truths, the number of 
 persons is daily increasing who have
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 183 
 
 begun to put a value upon mental 
 coherency and to appreciate the 
 charm of a logical position. 
 
 It was common talb -it onetime to 
 express astonishment at the extend- 
 ing influence of the Church of Rome, 
 and to wonder how people who went 
 about unaccompanied by keepers 
 could submit their reason to the 
 Papacy, with her open rupture with 
 science and her evil historical reputa- 
 tion. From astonishment to con- 
 tempt is but a step. We first opei? 
 wide our eyes and then our mouths. 
 
 ' Lord So-and-so, his coat bedropt with wax, 
 All Peter's chains about his waist, his back 
 Brave with the needlework of Noodledom, 
 Believes, who wonders and who cares?* 
 
 It used to be thought a sufficient 
 explanation to say either that the 
 man was an ass or that it was all 
 those Ritualists. But gradually it 
 became apparent that the pervert was 
 not always an ass, and that the
 
 f4 THE VIA MEDIA. 
 
 Ritualists had nothing whatever to 
 do with it. If a man's tastes run in 
 the direction of Gothic Architecture, 
 free seats, daily services, frequent 
 communions, lighted candles and 
 Church millinery, they can all bc 
 gratified, not to say glutted, in the 
 Church of his baptism. 
 
 It is not the Roman ritual, how- 
 ever splendid, nor her ceremonial, 
 however spiritually significant, nor 
 her system of doctrine, as well 
 arranged as Roman law and as subtle 
 as Greek philosophy, that makes 
 Romanists nowadays. 
 
 It is when a person of religious 
 spirit and strong convictions as to the 
 truth and importance of certain 
 dogmas few in number it may be ; 
 perhaps only one, the Being of God 
 first becomes fully alive to the 
 tendency and direction of the most 
 active opinions of the day; when, his 
 alarm quickening his insight, he reads
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 185 
 
 as it were between the lines of books, 
 magazines, and newspapers ; when, 
 struck with a sudden trepidation, he 
 asks, ' Where is this to stop ? how 
 'can I, to the extent of a poor 
 ' ability, help to stem this tide of 
 ' opinion which daily increases its 
 ' volume and floods new territory ?' 
 then it is that the Church of Rome 
 stretches out her arms and seems to 
 say, ' Quarrel not with your destiny, 
 'which is to become a Catholic. 
 'You may see difficulties and you 
 ' may have doubts. They abound 
 ' everywhere. You will never get rid 
 ' of them. But I, and I alone, have 
 ' never coquetted with the spirit of the 
 ' age. I, and I alone, have never 
 'submitted my creeds to be over- 
 ' hauled by infidels. Join me, ac- 
 ' knowledge my authority, and you 
 ' need dread no side attack and fear 
 ' no charge of inconsistency. Succeed 
 finally I must, but even were I to
 
 186 THE VIA MEDIA. 
 
 fail, yours would be the satisfaction 
 ' of knowing that you had never held 
 ' an opinion, used an argument, or 
 ' said a word, that could fairly have 
 ' served the purpose of your trium- 
 ' phant enemy.' 
 
 At such a crisis as this in a man's 
 life, he does not ask himself, How 
 little can I believe ? With how few 
 miracles can I get off ? he demands 
 sound armour, sharp weapons, and, 
 above all, firm ground to stand on 
 a good footing for his faith and 
 these he is apt to fancy he can get 
 from Rome alone. 
 
 No doubt he has to pay for them, 
 but the charm of the Church of 
 Rome is this: when you have paid 
 her price you get your goods a neat 
 assortment of coherent, inter-depen- 
 dent, logical opinions. 
 
 It is not much use, under such 
 circumstances, to call the convert a 
 coward, and facetiously to inquire of
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 187 
 
 him what he really thinks about St. 
 fanuarius. Nobody ever began with 
 Januarius. I have no doubt a good 
 many Romanists would be glad to 
 be quit of him. He is part of the 
 price they have to pay in order that 
 their title to the possession of other 
 miracles may be quieted. If you can 
 convince the convert that he can dis- 
 believe Januarius of Naples without 
 losing his grip of Paul of Tarsus, you 
 will be well employed ; but if you 
 begin with merry gibes, and end 
 with contemptuously demanding that 
 he should have done with such non- 
 sense and fling the rubbish overboard, 
 he will draw in his horns and perhaps, 
 if he knows his Browning, murmur 
 to himself: 
 
 ' To such a process, I discern no end. 
 Cutting off one excrescence to see two ; 
 There is ever a next in size, now grown as big, 
 That meets the knife. I cut and cut again ; 
 First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last 
 But Fichte's clever cut at God Himself?'
 
 1 88 THE VIA MEDIA. 
 
 To suppose that no person is 
 logically entitled to fear God and to 
 ridicule Januarius at the same time, 
 is doubtless extravagant, but to do 
 so requires care. There is an 'order 
 ' in thinking. We must consider 
 ' how propositions lie towards each 
 ' other how a theory hangs together, 
 ' and what will follow if it be ad- 
 ' mitted.' 
 
 It is eminently desirable that we 
 should consider the logical termini of 
 our opinions. Travelling up to town 
 last month from the West, a gentle- 
 man got into my carriage at Swindon 
 who, as we moved off and began to 
 rush through the country, became 
 unable to restrain his delight at our 
 speed. His face shone with pride, as 
 if he were pulling us himself. ' What 
 ' a charming train !' he exclaimed. 
 ' This is the pace I like to travel at.' 
 I indicated assent. Shortly after- 
 wards, when our windows rattled as
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 189 
 
 we rushed through Reading, he let 
 one of them down in a hurry, arid 
 cried out in consternation, ' Why, I 
 'want to get out here.' 'Charming 
 'train,' I observed. 'Just the pace 
 ' I like to travel at ; but it is awkward 
 ' if you want to go anywhere except 
 ' Paddington.' My companion made 
 no reply; his face ceased to shine, and 
 as he sat whizzing past his dinner, 
 I mentally compared his recent exul- 
 tation with that of those who in 
 the present day extol much of its 
 spirit, use many of its arguments, and 
 partake in most of its triumphs, in 
 utter ignorance as to whitherwards 
 it is all tending as surely as the Great 
 Western rails run into Paddington. 
 ' Poor victims !' said a distinguished 
 Divine, addressing the Evangelicals, 
 then rejoicing over their one legal 
 victory, the ' Gorham Case' ; ' do 
 ' you dream that the spirit of the age 
 ' is working for you, or are you
 
 '90 THE VIA MEDIA. 
 
 secretly prepared to go further than 
 you avow ?' 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold's friends, the 
 Nonconformists, are, as a rule, now- 
 adays, bad logicians. What Dr. 
 Newman has said of the Tractarians 
 is (with but a verbal alteration) also 
 true of a great many Nonconformists: 
 ' Moreover, there are those among 
 ' them who have very little grasp of 
 ' principle, even from the natural 
 ' temper of their minds. They see 
 ' this thing is beautiful, and that is 
 ' in the Fathers, and a third is ex- 
 ' pedient, and a fourth pious ; but of 
 ' their connection one with another, 
 ' their hidden essence and their life, 
 ' and the bearing of external matters 
 ' upon each and upon all, they have 
 ' no perception or even suspicion. 
 ' They do not look at things as part 
 ' of a whole, and often will sacrifice 
 ' the most important and precious 
 ' portions of their creed, or make
 
 THE VIA MEDIA 191 
 
 ' irremediable concessions in word 
 ' or in deed, from mere simplicity and 
 ' want of apprehension.' 
 
 We have heard of grown-up 
 Baptists asked to become, and 
 actually becoming, godfathers and 
 godmothers to Episcopalian babies ! 
 What terrible confusion is here ! A 
 point is thought to be of sufficient 
 importance to justify separation on 
 account of it from the whole Christian 
 Church, and yet not to be of import- 
 ance enough to debar the separatist 
 from taking part in a ceremony whose 
 sole significance is that it gives the 
 lie direct to the point of separation. 
 
 But we all of us Churchmen and 
 Dissenters alike select our opinions 
 far too much in the same fashion as 
 ladies are reported, I dare say quite 
 falsely, to do their afternoon's shop- 
 ping this thing because it is so 
 pretty, and that thing because it is 
 so cheap. We pick and choose, take
 
 192 THE VIA MEDIA. 
 
 and leave, approbate and reprobate 
 in a breath. A familiar anecdote is 
 never out of place : An English 
 captain, anxious to conciliate a savage 
 king, sent him on shore, for his own 
 royal wear, an entire dress suit. His 
 majesty was graciously pleased to 
 accept the gift, and as it never oc- 
 curred to the royal mind that he 
 could, by any possibility, wear all the 
 things himself, with kingly generosity 
 he distributed what he did not want 
 amongst his Court. This done, he 
 sent for the donor to thank him in 
 person. As the captain walked up 
 the beach, his majesty advanced to 
 meet him, looking every inch a king 
 in the sober dignity of a dress-coat. 
 The waistcoat imparted an air of 
 pensive melancholy that mightily 
 became the Prime Minister, whilst 
 the Lord Chamberlain, as he skipped 
 to and fro in his white gloves, looked 
 a courtier indeed. The trousers had
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 193 
 
 become the subject of an unfortunate 
 dispute, in the course of which they 
 had sustained such injuries as to be 
 hardly recognisable. The captain 
 was convulsed with laughter. 
 
 But, in truth, the mental toilet of 
 most of us is as defective and almosi 
 as risible as was that of this savage 
 Court. We take on our opinions 
 without paying heed to conclusions, 
 and the result is absurd. Better be 
 without any opinions at all. A naked 
 savage is not necessarily an un- 
 dignified object; but a savage in a 
 dress-coat and nothing else is, and 
 must ever remain, a mockery and a 
 show. There is a great relativity 
 about a dress-suit. In the language 
 of the logicians, the name of each 
 article not only denotes that par- 
 ticular, but connotes all the rest. 
 Hence it came about that that which, 
 when worn in its entirety, is so dull 
 and decorous, became so provocative 
 
 13
 
 194 THE VIA MEDIA. 
 
 of Homeric laughter when distributed 
 amongst several wearers. 
 
 No person with the least tincture 
 of taste can ever weary of Dr. New- 
 man, and no apology is therefore 
 offered for another quotation from 
 his pages. In his story, * Loss and 
 Gain/ he makes one of his characters, 
 who has just become a Catholic, thus 
 refer to the stock Anglican Divines, 
 a class of writers who are, at all 
 events, immensely superior to the 
 Ellicotts and Farrars of these latter 
 days : * I am embracing that creed 
 
 * which upholds the divinity of tradi- 
 ' tion with Laud, consent of Fathers 
 ' with Beveridge, a visible Church 
 
 * with Bramhall, dogma with Bull, 
 ' the authority of the Pope with 
 ' Thorndyke, penance with Taylor, 
 ' prayers for the dead with Ussher, 
 ' celibacy, asceticism, ecclesiastical 
 ' discipline with Bingham.' What is 
 this to say but that, according to the
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. I9S 
 
 Cardinal, our great English dhines 
 have divided the Roman dress-suit 
 amongst themselves ? 
 
 This particular charge may per- 
 haps be untrue, but with that I am 
 not concerned. If it is not true of 
 them, it is true of somebody else 
 ' That is satisfactory so far as Mr. 
 Lydgate is concerned, 'says Mrs. Fare- 
 brother in ' Middlemarch,' with an 
 air of precision ; ' but as to Bulstrode, 
 the report may be true of some other 
 son.' 
 
 We must all be acquainted with 
 the reckless way in which people 
 pluck opinions like flowers a bud 
 here, and a leaf there. The bouquet 
 is pretty to-day, but you must look 
 for it to-morrow in the oven. 
 
 There is a sense in which it is 
 quite true, what our other Cardinal 
 has said about Ultramontanes, An- 
 glicans, and Orthodox Dissenters all 
 being in the same boat. They all of
 
 '96 THE VIA MEDIA. 
 
 them enthrone Opinion, holding it to 
 be, when encased in certain dogmas, 
 Truth Absolute. Consequently they 
 have all their martyrologies the 
 bright roll-call of those who have 
 defied Caesar even unto death, or at 
 all events gaol. They all, therefore, 
 put something above the State, and 
 apply tests other than those recog- 
 nised in our law courts. 
 
 The precise way by which they 
 come at their opinions is only detail. 
 Be it an infallible Church, an in- 
 fallible Book, or an inward spiritual 
 grace, the outcome is the same. The 
 Romanist, of course, has to bear the 
 first brunt, and is the most obnoxious 
 to the State ; but he must be slow of 
 comprehension and void of imagina- 
 tion who cannot conceive of circum- 
 stances arising in this country when 
 the State should assert it to be its 
 duty to violate what even Protestants 
 believe to be the moral law of God.
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 197 
 
 Therefore, in opposing Ultramon- 
 tanism, as it surely ought to be op- 
 posed, care ought to be taken by 
 chose who are not prepared to go all 
 lengths with Caesar, to select their 
 weapons of attack, not from his 
 armoury, but from their own. 
 
 How ridiculous it is to see some 
 estimable man who subscribes to the 
 Bible Society, and takes what he 
 calls * a warm interest ' in the heathen, 
 chuckling over some scoffing article 
 in a newspaper say about a Church 
 Congress and never perceiving, so 
 unaccustomed is he to examine direc- 
 tions, that he is all the time laughing 
 at his own folly! Aunt Nesbit, in 
 ' Dred,' considered Gibbon a very 
 pious writer. ' I am sure,' says she, 
 ' he makes the most religious reflec- 
 * tions all along. I liked him particu 
 larly on that account.' This poor 
 lady had some excuse. A vein of irony 
 like Gibbon's is not struck upon every
 
 I9S THE VIA MEDIA. 
 
 day ; but readers of newspapers, when 
 they laugh, ought to be able to per- 
 ceive what it is they are laughing 
 at. 
 
 Logic is the prime necessity of the 
 hour. Decomposition and trans- 
 formation is going on all around us, 
 but far too slowly. Some opinions, 
 bold and erect as they may still 
 stand, are in reality but empty shells. 
 One shove would be fatal. "Why is 
 it not given ? 
 
 The world is full of doleful crea- 
 tures, who move about demanding 
 our sympathy. I have nothing to 
 offer them but doses of logic, and 
 stern commands to move on or fall 
 back. Catholics in distress about 
 Infallibility ; Protestants devoting 
 themselves to the dismal task of 
 paring down the dimensions of this 
 miracle, and reducing the credibility 
 of that one as if any appreciable 
 relief from the burden of faith could
 
 THE VIA MEDIA. 199 
 
 be so obtained ; sentimental sceptics, 
 who, after labouring to demolish 
 what they call the chimera of super- 
 stition, fall to weeping as they re- 
 member they have now no lies to 
 teach their children ; democrats 
 who are frightened at the rough 
 voice of the people and aristocrats 
 flirting with democracy. Logic, if it 
 cannot cure, might at least silence 
 these gentry.
 
 FALSTAFF.* 
 
 THERE is more material for a life ol 
 Falstaff than for a life of Shakespeare, 
 though for both there is a lamentable 
 dearth. The difficulties of the bio- 
 grapher are, however, different in the 
 two cases. There is nothing, or next 
 to nothing, in Shakespeare's works 
 which throws light on his own story ; 
 and such evidence as we have is of 
 the kind called circumstantial. But 
 Falstaff constantly gives us remi- 
 niscences or allusions to his earlier 
 life, and his companions also tell us 
 stories which ought to help us in a 
 biography. The evidence, such as it 
 is, is direct ; and the only inference 
 
 * This Essay is by 'another hand.'
 
 fALSTAFF. 201 
 
 we have to draw is that from the state- 
 ment to the truth of the statement. 
 
 It has been justly remarked by Sir 
 James Stephen, that this very in- 
 ference is perhaps the most difficult 
 one of all to draw correctly. The 
 inference from so-called circum- 
 stantial evidence, if you have enough 
 of it, is much surer ; for whilst facts 
 cannot lie, witnesses can, and fre- 
 quently do. The witnesses on whom 
 we have to rely for the facts are 
 Falstaff and his companions espe- 
 cially Falstaff. 
 
 When an old man tries to tell you 
 the story of his youth, he sees the 
 facts through a distorting subjective 
 medium, and gives an impression of 
 his history and exploits more or less 
 at variance with the bare facts as 
 seen by a contemporary outsider. 
 The scientific Goethe, though truth- 
 ful enough in the main, certainly fails 
 in his reminiscences to tell a plain 
 unvarnished tale. And Falstaff was
 
 202 FALSTAFF. 
 
 not habitually truthful. Indeed, that 
 Western American, who wrote affec- 
 tionately on the tomb of a comrade, 
 'As a truth-crusher he was un- 
 rivalled,' had probably not given suf- 
 ficient attention to Falstaff's claims 
 in this matter. Then Falstaff's com- 
 panions are not witnesses above sus- 
 picion. Generally speaking, they lie 
 open to the charge made by P. P. 
 against the wags of his parish, that 
 they were men delighting more in 
 their own conceits than in the truth. 
 These are some of our difficulties, 
 and we ask the reader's indulgence 
 in our endeavours to overcome them. 
 We will tell the story from our hero's 
 birth, and will not begin longer before 
 that event than is usual with bio- 
 graphers. 
 
 The question, Where was Falstaff 
 born ? has given us some trouble. We 
 confess to having once entertained a 
 strong opinion that he was a Devon-
 
 FALSTAFF. 203 
 
 shire man. This opinion was based 
 simply on the flow and fertility of his 
 wit as shown in his conversation, 
 and the rapid and fantastic play of 
 his imagination. But we sought in 
 vain for any verbal provincialisms in 
 support of this theory, and there was 
 something in the character of the 
 man that rather went against it. 
 Still, we clung to the opinion, till we 
 found that philology was against us, 
 and that the Falstaffs unquestionably 
 came from Norfolk. 
 
 The name is of Scandinavian origin; 
 and we find in ' Domesday ' that a 
 certain Falstaff held freely from the 
 king a church at Stamford. These 
 facts are of great importance. The 
 thirst for which Falstaff was always 
 conspicuous was no doubt inherited 
 was, in fact, a Scandinavian thirst. 
 The pirates of early English times 
 drank as well as they fought, and 
 their descendants who invade Eng-
 
 204 fALSTAFF. 
 
 land now that the war of commerce 
 has superseded the war of conquest 
 still bring the old thirst with them, 
 as anyone can testify who has en- 
 joyed the hospitality of the London 
 Scandinavian Club. Then this church 
 was no doubt a familiar landmark in 
 the family ; and when Falstaff stated, 
 late in life, that if he hadn't forgotten 
 what the inside of a church was like, 
 he was a peppercorn and a brewer'^ 
 horse, he was thinking with some 
 remorse of the family temple. 
 
 Of the family between the Con- 
 quest and Falstaff's birth we know 
 nothing, except that, according to 
 Falstaff's statement, he had a grand- 
 father who left him a seal-ring worth 
 forty marks. From this statement 
 we might infer that the ring was an 
 heirloom, and consequently that Fal- 
 staff was an eldest son, and the head 
 of his family. But we must be care- 
 ful in drawing our inferences, foj
 
 FALSTAFF. 205 
 
 Prince Henry frequently told Falstaff 
 that the ring was copper; and on 
 one occasion, when Falstaff alleged 
 that his pocket had been picked at 
 the Boar's Head, and this seal-ring 
 and three or four bonds of forty 
 pounds apiece abstracted, the Prince 
 assessed the total loss at eight- 
 pence. 
 
 After giving careful attention to 
 the evidence, and particularly to the 
 conduct of Falstaff on the occasion 
 of the alleged robbery, we come to 
 the conclusion that the ring was 
 copper, and was not an heirloom. 
 This leaves us without any informa- 
 tion about Falstaff 's family prior to 
 his birth. He was born (as he him- 
 self informs the Lord Chief Justice) 
 about three o'clock in the afternoon, 
 with a white head and something a 
 round belly. Falstaff s corpulence, 
 therefore, as well as his thirst, was 
 congenital. Let those who are not
 
 206 FALSTAFF. 
 
 born with his comfortable figure sigh 
 in vain to attain his stately propor- 
 tions. This is a thing which Nature 
 gives us at our birth as much as the 
 Scandinavian thirst or the shaping 
 spirit of imagination. 
 
 Born somewhere in Norfolk, Fal- 
 staff's early months and years were 
 no doubt rich with the promise of 
 his after greatness. We have no 
 record of his infancy, and are tempted 
 to supply the gap with Rabelais' 
 chapters on Gargantua's babyhood. 
 But regard for the truth compels us 
 to add nothing that cannot fairly be 
 deduced from the evidence. We 
 leave the strapping boy in his 
 swaddling-clothes to answer the 
 question when he was born. Now, 
 it is to be regretted that Falstaff, 
 who was so precise about the hour 
 of his birth, should not have men- 
 tioned the year. On this point we 
 are again left to inference from con-
 
 FALSTAFF. 
 
 207 
 
 flicting statements. We have this 
 jlistinct point to start from, that Fal- 
 staff, in or about the year 1401, gives 
 his age as some fifty or by'r Lady in- 
 clining to three-score. It is true 
 that in other places he represents 
 himself as old, and again in another 
 states that he and his accomplices in 
 the Gadshill robbery are in the 
 vaward of their youth. The Chief 
 Justice reproves him for this affecta- 
 tion of youth, and puts a question 
 (which, it is true, elicits no admission 
 from Falstaff) as to whether every 
 part of him is not blasted with an- 
 tiquity. 
 
 We are inclined to think that Fal- 
 staff rather understated his age when 
 he described himself as by'r Lady in- 
 clining to three-score, and that we 
 shall not be far wrong if we set down 
 1340 as the year of his birth. We 
 cannot be certain to a year or two. 
 There is a similar uncertainty about
 
 208 FALS7AFF. 
 
 the year of Sir Richard Whittington's 
 birth. But both these great men, 
 whose careers afford in some respects 
 striking contrasts, were born within 
 a few years of the middle of the four- 
 teenth century. 
 
 Falstaff ' s childhood was no doubt 
 spent in Norfolk ; and we learn from 
 his own lips that he plucked geese, 
 played truant, and whipped top, and 
 chat he did not escape beating. That 
 he had brothers and sisters we know ; 
 for he tells us that he is John with 
 them and Sir John with all Europe. 
 We do not kaow the dame or pedant 
 who taught his young idea how to 
 shoot and formed his manners ; but 
 Falstaff says that if his manners be- 
 came him not, he was a fool that 
 taught them him. This does not 
 throw much light on his early educa- 
 tion : for it is not clear that the re- 
 mark applies to that period, and in 
 any case it is purely hypothetical.
 
 FALSTAFF. 209 
 
 ButFalstaff, like so many boys since 
 his time, left his home in the country 
 and came to London. His brothers 
 and sisters he left behind him, and 
 we hear no more of them. Probably 
 none of them ever attained eminence, 
 as there is no record of FalstafT's 
 having attempted to borrow money 
 of them. We know Falstaff so well 
 as a tun of man, a horse-back- 
 breaker, and so forth, that it is not 
 easy to form an idea of what he was 
 in his youth. But if we trace back 
 the sack-stained current of his life 
 to the day when, full of wonder and 
 hope, he first rode into London, we 
 shall find him as different from 
 Shakespeare's picture of him as the 
 Thames at Iffley is from the Thames 
 at London Bridge. His figure was 
 shapely ; he had no difficulty then in 
 seeing his own knee, and if he was not 
 able, as he afterwards asserted,to creep 
 through an alderman's ring, neverthe- 
 
 14
 
 2io FALSTAFF. 
 
 less he had all the grace and activity 
 of youth. He was just such a lad (tc 
 take a description almost contempo- 
 rary) as the Squier who rode with thf 
 Canterbury Pilgrims : 
 
 ' A lover and a lusty bacheler, 
 With lockes crull as they were laid in presse, 
 Of twenty yere of age he was, I gesse. 
 Of his stature he was of even lengthe, 
 And wonderly deliver, and grete of strength e. 
 ****** 
 
 Embrouded was he, as it were a mede, 
 All ful of freshe floures, white and rede; 
 Singing he was, or floyting alle the day, 
 He was as freshe as is the moneth of May. 
 Short was his goune, with sieves long and wide, 
 Wei coude he sitte on hors, and fayre ride, 
 He coude songes make, and wel endite, 
 Juste and eke dance, and wel pourtraie and write. 
 So hot he loved that by nightertale, 
 He slep no more than doth the nightingale.' 
 
 Such was Falstaff at the age of 
 twenty, or something earlier, when he 
 entered at Clement's Inn, where were 
 many other young men reading law, 
 and preparing for their call to the 
 Bar. How much law he read it is 
 impossible now to ascertain. That
 
 FALSTAPF. 2l1 
 
 he had, in later life, a considerable 
 knowledge of the subject is clear, but 
 this may have been acquired like Mr. 
 Micawber's, by experience, as de- 
 fendant on civil process. We are 
 inclined to think he read but little. 
 Amicifures temporis: and he had many 
 friends at Clement's Inn who were 
 not smugs, nor, indeed, reading men 
 in any sense. There was John Doit 
 of Staffordshire, and Black George 
 Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and 
 Will Squele, a Cotswold man, and 
 Robert Shallow from Gloucestershire. 
 Four of these were such swinge- 
 bucklers as were not to be found 
 again in all the Inns o' Court, and 
 we have it on the authority of Justice 
 Shallow that Falstaff was a good 
 backswordsman, and that before hfr 
 had done growing he broke the hea& 
 of Skogan at the Court gate. This 
 Skogan appears to have been Court- 
 jester to Edward III. No doubt the
 
 212 FALSTAFF. 
 
 natural rivalry between the amateur 
 and the professional caused the 
 quarrel, and Skogan must have been 
 a good man if he escaped with a 
 broken head only, and without damage 
 to his reputation as a professional 
 wit. The same day that Falstaff did 
 this deed of daring the only one of 
 the kind recorded of him Shallow 
 fought with Sampson Stockfish, a 
 fruiterer, behind Gray's Inn. Shallow 
 was a gay dog in his youth, accord- 
 ing to his own account : he was called 
 Mad Shallow, Lusty Shallow indeed, 
 he was called anything. He played 
 Sir Dagonet in Arthur's show at 
 Mile End Green ; and no doubt 
 Falstaff and the rest of the set were 
 cast for other parts in the same 
 pageant. These tall fellows of 
 Clement's Inn kept well together, for 
 they liked each other's company, and 
 they needed each other's help in a 
 row in Turnbull Street or elsewhere.
 
 213 
 
 Their watchword was ' Hem, boys !' 
 and they made the old Strand ring 
 with their songs as they strolled home 
 to their chambers of an evening. 
 They heard the chimes at midnight 
 which, it must be confessed, does 
 not seem to us a desperately dissi- 
 pated entertainment. But midnight 
 was a late hour in those days. The 
 paralytic masher of the present day, 
 who is most alive at midnight, rises 
 at noon. Then the day began earlier 
 with a long morning, followed by a 
 pleasant period called the forenoon. 
 Under modern conditions we spend 
 the morning in bed, and to palliate 
 our sloth call the forenoon and most 
 of the rest of the day, the morning. 
 These young men of Clement's Inn 
 were a lively, not to say a rowdy, set. 
 They would do anything that led to 
 mirth or mischief. What passed 
 when they lay all night in the wind- 
 mill in St. George's Field we do not
 
 2H FALSTAFF. 
 
 quite know ; but we are safe in 
 assuming that they did not go there 
 to pursue their legal duties, or to 
 grind corn. Anyhow, forty years 
 after, that night raised pleasant 
 memories. 
 
 John Falstaff was the life and 
 centre of this set, as Robert Shallow 
 was the butt of it. The latter had 
 few personal attractions. According 
 to Falstaff's portrait of him, he looked 
 like a man made after supper of a 
 cheese-paring. When he was naked 
 he was for all the world like a forked 
 radish, with a head fantastically 
 carved upon it with a knife : he was 
 so forlorn that his dimensions to any 
 thick sight were invincible: he was 
 the very genius of famine ; and a 
 certain section of his friends called 
 him mandrake : he came ever in the 
 rearward of the fashion, and sung 
 those tunes to the over-scutched 
 huswives that he heard the carmen
 
 FALSTAFf: 215 
 
 whistle, and sware they were his 
 fancies or his good-nights. Then he 
 bad the honour of having his head 
 burst by John o' Gaunt, for crowding 
 among the Marshal's men in the 
 Tilt-yard, and this was matter for 
 continual gibe from Falstaff and the 
 other boys. Falstaff was in the 
 van of the fashion, was witty him- 
 self without being at that time the 
 cause that wit was in others. No 
 one could come within range of his 
 wit without being attracted and over- 
 powered. Late in life Falstaff de- 
 plores nothing so much in the 
 character of Prince John of Lancaster 
 as this, that a man cannot make 
 him laugh. He felt this defect in 
 the Prince's character keenly, for 
 laughter was Falstaff's familiar spirit, 
 which never failed to come at his 
 call. It was by laughter that young 
 Falstaff fascinated his friends and 
 ruled over them. There are only left
 
 216 FALSTAF*. 
 
 to us a few scraps of his conversation, 
 and these have been, and will be, to 
 all time the delight of all good men. 
 The Clement's Inn boys who enjoyed 
 the feast, of which we have but the 
 crumbs left to us, were happy almost 
 beyond the lot of man. For there is 
 more in laughter than is allowed by 
 the austere, or generally recognised 
 by the jovial. By laughter man is 
 distinguished from the beasts, but 
 the cares and sorrows of life have all 
 but deprived man of this distinguish- 
 ing grace, and degraded him to a 
 brutal solemnity. Then comes (alas, 
 how rarely!) a genius such as Fal- 
 staffs, which restores the power of 
 laughter and transforms the stolid 
 brute into man. This genius ap- 
 proaches nearly to the divine power of 
 creation, and we may truly say, 'Some 
 for less were deified.' It is no marvel 
 that young Falstaff's friends assidu- 
 ously served the deity who gave them
 
 FALSTAFF. 21? 
 
 this good gift. At first he was satis- 
 fied with the mere exercise of his 
 genial power, but he afterwards made 
 it serviceable to him. It was but just 
 that he should receive tribute from 
 those who were beholden to him, for a 
 pleasure which no other could confer. 
 It was now that Falstaff began to 
 recognise what a precious gift was 
 his congenital Scandinavian thirst, 
 und to lose no opportunity of gratify- 
 ing it. We have his mature views 
 on education, and we may take them 
 as an example of the general truth 
 that old men habitually advise a 
 young one to shape the conduct of 
 his life after their own. Rightly to 
 apprehend the virtues of sherris-sack 
 is the first qualification in an in- 
 structor of youth. 'If I had a 
 'thousand sons,' says he, 'the first 
 ' humane principles I would teach 
 'them should be to forswear thin 
 ' potations, and to addict themselves
 
 21 8 FALSTAFF. 
 
 ' to sack ' ; and further : ' There's 
 ' never none of these demure boys 
 ' come to any proof; for their drink 
 'doth so over-cool their blood, and 
 ' making many fish-meals, that they 
 ' fall into a kind of male green sick- 
 ' ness ; and then when they marry 
 ' they get wenches : they are generally 
 ' fools and cowards, which some of 
 ' us should be too but for inflamma- 
 ' tion.' There can be no doubt that 
 Falstaff did not in early life over-cooj 
 his blood, but addicted himself to 
 sack, and gave the subject a great 
 part of his attention for all the re- 
 mainder of his days. 
 
 It may be that he found the sub- 
 ject too absorbing to allow of his 
 giving much attention to old Father 
 Antic the Law. At any rate, he was 
 never called to the Bar, and posterity 
 cannot be too thankful that his great 
 mind was not lost in ' the abyss of 
 ' legal eminence ' which has receive J
 
 FALSTAFF. 219 
 
 so many men who might have adorned 
 their country. That he was fitted 
 for a brilliant legal career can admit 
 of no doubt. His power of detecting 
 analogies incases apparently different, 
 his triumphant handling of cases 
 apparently hopeless, his wonderful 
 readiness in reply, and his dramatic 
 instinct, would have made him a 
 powerful advocate. It may have 
 been owing to difficulties with the 
 Benchers of the period over questions 
 of discipline, or it may have been a 
 distaste for the profession itself, which 
 induced him to throw up the law and 
 adopt the profession of arms. 
 
 We know that while he was still at 
 Clement's Inn he was page to Lord 
 Thomas Mowbray, who was after- 
 wards created Earl of Nottingham 
 and Duke of Norfolk. It must be 
 admitted that here (as elsewhere in 
 Shakespeare) there is some little 
 chronological difficulty. We will not
 
 220 FALSTAFF. 
 
 inquire too curiously, but simply 
 accept the testimony of Justice 
 Shallow on the point. Mowbray 
 was an able and ambitious lord, and 
 Falstaff, as page to him, began his 
 military career with every advantage. 
 The French wars of the later years 
 of Edward III. gave frequent and 
 abundant opportunity for distinction. 
 Mowbray distinguished himself in 
 Court and in camp, and we should 
 like to believe that Falstaff was in 
 the sea-fight when Mowbray defeated 
 the French fleet and captured vast 
 quantities of sack from the enemy. 
 Unfortunately, there is no record 
 whatever of Falstaff' s early military 
 career, and beyond his own ejacula- 
 tion, * Would to God that my name 
 ' was not so terrible to the enemy as 
 1 it is !' and the (possible) inference 
 from it that he must have made his 
 name terrible in some way, we have 
 no evidence that he was ever in the
 
 FALSTAFF. 221 
 
 field before the battle of Shrewsbury. 
 Indeed, the absence of evidence on 
 this matter goes strongly to prove the 
 negative. Falstaff boasts of hi? 
 valour, his alacrity, and other qualities 
 which were not apparent to the casual 
 observer, but he never boasts of his 
 services in battle. If there had been 
 anything of the kind to which he 
 could refer with complacency, there 
 is no moral doubt that he would have 
 mentioned it freely, adding such em- 
 bellishments and circumstances as 
 he well knew how. 
 
 In the absence of evidence as to 
 the course of his life, we are left to 
 conjecture how he spent the forty 
 years, more or less, between the time 
 of his studies at Clement's Inn and 
 the day when Shakespeare introduces 
 him to us. We have no doubt that 
 he spent all, or nearly all, this time 
 in London. His habits were such 
 as are formed by life in a great city:'
 
 222 FALSTAFF. 
 
 his conversation betrays a man who 
 has lived, as it were, in a crowd, and 
 the busy haunts of men were the ap- 
 propriate scene for the display of his 
 great qualities. London, even then, 
 was a great city, and the study of it 
 might well absorb a lifetime. Falstaff 
 knew it well, from the Court, with 
 which he always preserved a connec- 
 tion, to the numerous taverns where 
 he met his friends and eluded his 
 creditors. The Boar's Head in East- 
 cheap was his headquarters, and, 
 like Barnabee's, two centuries later, 
 his journeys were from tavern to 
 tavern ; and, like Barnabee, he might 
 say ' Multum bibi, nunquain pransi.' 
 To begin with, no doubt the dinner 
 bore a fair proportion to the fluid 
 which accompanied it, but by degrees 
 the liquor encroached on and super- 
 seded the viands, until his tavern 
 bills took the shape of the one pur- 
 loined by Prince Henry, in which
 
 FALSTAFF. 223 
 
 there was but one halfpenny-worth 
 of bread to an intolerable deal of 
 sack. It was this inordinate con- 
 sumption of sack (and not sighing 
 and grief, as he suggests) which blew 
 him up like a bladder, A life of 
 leisure in London always had, and 
 still has, its temptations. FalstafF s 
 means were described by the Chief 
 Justice of Henry IV. as very slender, 
 but this was after they had been 
 wasted for years. Originally they 
 were more ample, and gave him the 
 opportunity of living at ease with his 
 friends. No domestic cares disturbed 
 the even tenor of his life. Bardolph 
 says he was better accommodated 
 than with a wife. Like many another 
 man about town, he thought about 
 settling down when he was getting 
 up in years. He weekly swore, so he 
 tells us, to marry old Mistress Ursula, 
 but this was only after he saw the 
 first white hair on his chin. But he
 
 24 FALSTAFF. 
 
 never led Mistress Ursula to the altar. 
 The only other women for whom he 
 formed an early attachment were 
 Mistress Quickly, the hostess of the 
 Boar's Head, and Doll Tearsheet, 
 who is described by the page as a 
 proper gentlewoman, and a kins- 
 woman of his master's. There is 
 no denying that Falstaff was on terms 
 of intimacy with Mistress Quickly, 
 but he never admitted that he made 
 her an offer of marriage. She, how- 
 ever, asserted it in the strongest 
 terms, and with a wealth of circum- 
 stance. 
 
 We must transcribe her story : 
 * Thou didst swear to me upon a 
 ' parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my 
 ' Dolphin-chamber, at the round 
 ' table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wed- 
 ' nesday in Whitsun-week, when the 
 ' Prince broke thy head for liking his 
 ' father to a singing-man of Windsor; 
 ' thou didst swear to me then, as I
 
 FALSTAFF. 225 
 
 ' was washing thy wound, to marry 
 ' me, and make me my lady thy 
 ' wife. Canst thou deny it ? Did 
 'not goodwife Keech, the butcher's 
 ' vife, come in then, and call me 
 ' Gossip Quickly ? coming in to 
 ' borrow a mess of vinegar ; telling us 
 
 * she had a good dish of prawns ; 
 
 * whereby thou didst desire to eat 
 ' some ; whereby I told thee they 
 
 * were ill for a green wound ? And 
 
 * didst thou not, when she was gone 
 ' downstairs, desire me to be no more 
 ' familiarity with such poor people ; 
 ' saying ere long they should call 
 ' me madam ? And didst thou not 
 'kiss me, and bid me fetch thee 
 ' thirty shillings ? I put thee now 
 ' to thy book-oath ; deny it if thou 
 ' canst !' 
 
 We feel no doubt that if Mistress 
 Quickly had given this evidence in 
 action for breach of promise of 
 marriage, and goodwife Keech corro-
 
 226 FALSTAFF, 
 
 borated it, the jury would have found 
 a verdict for the plaintiff, unless in- 
 deed they brought in a special verdict 
 to the effect that Falstaff made the 
 promise, but never intended to keep 
 it. But Mistress Quickly contented 
 herself with upbraiding Falstaff, and 
 he cajoled her with his usual skill, 
 and borrowed more money of her. 
 
 Falstaff's attachment for Doll Tear- 
 sheet lasted many years, but did not 
 lead to matrimony. From the Cle- 
 ment's Inn days till he was three- 
 score he lived in London celibate, 
 and his habits and amusements were 
 much like those of other single gen- 
 tlemen about town of his time, or, 
 for that matter, of ours. He had 
 only himself to care for, and he cared 
 for himself well. Like his page, he 
 had a good angel about him, but the 
 devil outbid him. He was as virtu- 
 ously given as other folk, but perhaps 
 'Ihe devil had a handle for tempta-
 
 FALSTAF*. 227 
 
 tion in that congenital thirst of his. 
 He was a social spirit too, and he. 
 tells us that company, villainous com- 
 pany, was the spoil of him. He was 
 less than thirty when he took the 
 faithful Bardolph into his service, 
 and only just past that age when he 
 made the acquaintance of the nimble 
 Poins. Before he was forty he be- 
 came the constant guest of Mistress 
 Quickly. Pistol and Nym were later 
 acquisitions, and the Prince did not 
 come upon the scene till Falstaff was 
 an old man and knighted. 
 
 There is some doubt as to when he 
 obtained this honour. Richard II. 
 bestowed titles in so lavish a manner 
 as to cause discontent among many 
 who didn't receive them. In 1377, 
 immediately on his accession, the 
 earldom of Nottingham was given to 
 Thomas Mowbray, and on the same 
 day three other eari's and nine knights 
 were created. We have not been
 
 228 FALSTAPF. 
 
 able to discover the names of these 
 knights, but we confidently expect to 
 unearth them some day, and to find 
 the name of Sir John Falstaff among 
 them. We have already stated that 
 Falstaff had done no service in the 
 field at this time, so he could not have 
 earned his title in that manner. No 
 doubt he got it through the influence 
 of Mowbray, who was in a position to 
 get good things for his friends as well 
 as for himself. It was but a poor 
 acknowledgment for the inestimable 
 benefit of occasionally talking with 
 Falstaff over a quart of sack. 
 
 We will not pursue Falstaff s life 
 further than this. It can from this 
 point be easily collected. It is a 
 thankless task to paraphrase a great 
 and familiar text. To attempt to tell 
 the story in better words th an Shake- 
 speare would occur to no one but 
 Miss Braddon, who has epitomised 
 Sir Walter, or to Canon Farrar,
 
 FALSTAft. 229 
 
 who has elongated the Gospels. But 
 we feel bound to add a few words 
 as to character. There are, we 
 fear, a number of people who regard 
 Falstaff as a worthless fellow, and 
 who would refrain (if they could) 
 from laughing at his jests. These 
 people do not understand his claim 
 to grateful and affectionate regard. 
 He did more to produce that mental 
 condition of which laughter is the 
 expression than any man who ever 
 lived. But for the cheering presence 
 of him, and men like him, this vale 
 of tears would be a more terrible 
 dwelling-place than it is. In short, 
 Falstaff has done an immense deal 
 to alleviate misery and promote posi- 
 tive happiness. What more can be 
 said of your heroes and philan- 
 thropists ? 
 
 It is, perhaps, characteristic of this 
 commercial age that benevolence 
 should be always associated, if not
 
 230 FALSTAFF. 
 
 considered synonymous, with the 
 giving of money. But this is clearly 
 mistaken, for we have to consider 
 what effect the money given produces 
 on the minds and bodies of human 
 beings. Sir Richard Whittington 
 was an eminently benevolent man, 
 and spent his money freely for the 
 good of his fellow-citizens. (We sin- 
 cerely hope, by the way, that he lent 
 some of it to Falstaff without secu- 
 rity.) He endowed hospitals and 
 other charities. Hundreds were re- 
 lieved by his gifts, and thousands 
 (perhaps) are now in receipt of his 
 alms. This is well. Let the sick 
 and the poor, who enjoy his hospi- 
 tality and receive his doles, bless his 
 memory. But how much wider and 
 further-reaching is the influence of 
 Falstaff! Those who enjoy his good 
 things are not only the poor and the 
 sick, but all who speak the English 
 language. Nay, more ; translation
 
 FALSTAFF. 231 
 
 has made him the inheritance of the 
 world, and the benefactor of the 
 entire human race. 
 
 It may be, however, that some 
 other nations fail fully to understand 
 and appreciate the mirth and the 
 character of the man. A Dr. G. G. 
 Gervinus, of Heidelberg, has written, 
 in the German language, a heavy 
 work on Shakespeare, in which ha 
 attacks Falstaff in a very solemn and 
 determined manner, and particularly 
 charges him with selfishness and want 
 of conscience. We are inclined to 
 set down this malignant attack to 
 envy. Falstaff is the author and 
 cause of universal laughter. Dr. Ger- 
 vinus will never be the cause of any- 
 thing universal ; but, so far as his 
 influence extends, he produces head- 
 aches. It is probably a painful sense 
 of this contrast that goads on the 
 author of headaches to attack the 
 author of laughter.
 
 232 FALSTAFF. 
 
 But is there anything in the charge ? 
 We do not claim anything like per- 
 fection, or even saintliness, for Fal- 
 staff. But we may say of him, as 
 Byron says of Venice, that his very 
 vices are of the gentler sort. And as 
 for this charge of selfishness and want 
 of conscience, we think that the words 
 of Bardolph on his master's death 
 are an overwhelming answer to it. 
 Bardolph said, on hearing the news : 
 ' I would I were with him whereso- 
 ever he is : whether he be in heaven 
 or hell.' Bardolph was a mere 
 serving-man, not of the highest 
 sensibility, and he for thirty years 
 knew his master as his valet knows 
 the hero. Surely the man who could 
 draw such an expression of feeling 
 from his rough servant is not the 
 man to be lightly charged with self- 
 ishness ! Which of us can hope for 
 such an epitaph, not from a hireling, 
 but from our nearest and dearest ?
 
 FALSTAFF. 233 
 
 Does Dr. Gervinus know anyone 
 who will make such a reply to a 
 posthumous charge against him of 
 dulness and lack of humour ? 
 
 Elliot Stack. Paternoster Row, London.
 
 000143668 2