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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES
I
UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA
AT
LOSANGELBSI ^
LIBRARY
MODERN ESSAYS
SELECTED AND EDITED
BY
JOHN MILTOX BEEDAN, Ph.D.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN YALE COLLEGE
JOHN RICHIE SCHULTZ, M.A.
INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN YALE COLLEGE
AND
HEWETTE ELWELL JOYCE, B.A.
ASSISTANT INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN YALE COLLEGE
I »
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. i3H!t JT!
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
All rights reserved
COPTEIGHT, 1915,
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1915. Reprinted
January, August, 1916.
I IK
C * *
Norfaooli ?3re2B
J. 8. Cushiug Co. — lierwirk & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
4 710
ivl
V
PREFACE
In the difficult problem of teaching the principles of
exposition, the need of a volume of illustrations to accom-
pany the rhetoric has been increasingly felt. These illus-
trations, moreover, if the student is to write an essay,
rather than a bundle of paragraphs, should themselves be
complete essays. And if the student is to learn to write
naturally, it seems logical that the essays should be
chosen from the writers of his own time. For, no mat-
ter how perfect theoretically may be the " style " of the
Spectator, the fact remains that, as Addison lived in the
$1 early eighteenth century, such a paper to-day would be
an anachronism. This is not a statement of preference ;
it is a statement of fact. In the following pages, there-
^ fore, the essays selected are taken from contemporarj''
authors, the great majority of whom are still alive. Still
more, they are among the most able writers of the age.
" To enable both teacher and pupil to estimate the relative
•^ reputation of each, short biographical accounts are ap-
pended in the index. Each author here, then, has some-
thing worth while to tell his age. The question is not of
the truth or the validity of his statements. The com-
pilers of this volume assume no responsibility for the
opinions expressed. The essays were chosen because in
their opinion the author succeeded in saying forcibly what
he wished to say ; the emphasis is on the form, not on
vi PREFACE
the facts ; on the method, not the content. The student,
by analyzing these methods, will be enabled to express
his own ideas.
In the following pages, also, will be found a wide range
both in treatment and in subject matter. None of these
essays is recommended as a perfect model, nor have the
editors the hallucination that they have selected the
" best " essays in the English language. Each has been
selected, ho\yever, because in their opinion it offered a
suggestive treatment for its particular subject and its
particular audience. And each, of course, has the defects
of its qualities. Although the epigrammatic brilliance of
Whistler is as far removed as the poles from the closely
coordinated reasoning of Professor Sumner, yet each suc-
ceeded in the particular object for which it was designed.
The value, therefore, of a sympathetic study of such a
collection is for the student to perceive clearly exactly
what in each case is gained and what is lost, in order that
he may profit in his own work. In the hope that he may
be aided to this end, brief notes are prefixed to each
essay, suggesting the scope and limitations of the type.
And to the whole a general theoretical introduction has
been prefixed, to explain the point of view.
The editors take pleasure in acknowledging their in-
debtedness to the various authors who have so generously
given permission for the use of their essays and who, by
many helpful suggestions, have aided greatly in making
the selection. Their thanks arc due also to the following
publishers, who have very kindly permitted the use of
valuable copyrighted material : D. Appleton and Com-
pany, The Century Company, Dodd, Mead and Com-
pany, George H. Doran Company, Harper and Brothers,
John Lane Company, Longmans, Green, and Company,
PREFACE vii
The Macmillan Company, G. P. Putnam's Sons, Charles
Scribner's Sons, Frederick A. Stokes Company, The New
York Sun, The Yale University Press ; to the editors of
The Yale Review and of The Yale Alumni Weekly, for
permission to reprint; and to Miss Clara B. Underwood
and Mr. Hamilton J. Smith, for assistance in reading
proof.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGK
Introduction 1
"Ten O'clock" f 11
James McNeill Whistler
Tact 29
Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury
^Book-buying 41
Augustine Birrell
^Alexander Hamilton 47
Frederic Harrison
/
'^Salad '52
' Charles Sears Baldwin
y Words that Laugh and Cry 55
Charles Anderson Dana
National Characteristics as Moulding Public Opinion 59
James Bryce
-J^American Manners 75
y Wu Tingfang
Franklin 88
Henry Cabot Lodge
The Serious Pepys 101
Wilbur Cortez Abbott
ix
X TABLE OF CONTENTS
FAOX
What the Ten-year Sergeant of Police Tells • . 131
Henry Hastings Curran
The Powers of the President 152
William Hoioard Tuft
John Greenleaf Whittier 173
George Edward Woodberry
Thackeray's Centenary 187
Henry Augustine Beers
Tennyson SOI
Paul Elmer More
Realism and Reality in Fiction 229
William Lyon Phelps
Teaching English 241
Henry Seidel Canby
Edward Gibbon 257
James Ford Rhodes
The Mildness of the Yellow Press .... 292
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
\
A What is Education? 303
Charles Macomb Flandrau '*
Why a Classic is a Classic 312^
Arnold Bennett
Homer and the Study of Greek 318
Andrew Lang
Homer and Humbug, An Academic Discussion . <£_^i!^
Stephen Leacock
TABLE OF CONTENTS xi
PAGE
^On the Case of a Certain Man Who is Neveu
Thought of 341
William Graham Sumner
The Training of Intellect 349
Woodrow Wilson
The Responsibility of Authors 359
Sir Oliver Lodge
Filial Relations 369
Jane Addams
-^The Irony of Nature 387'*
Richard Burton
^ On Seeing Ten Bad Plays 392
Frank Moore Colby
A Stepdaughter of the Prairie 399
Margaret Lynn
Yosemite 4Ll
Arthur Colton
\s
The Bowery and Bohemia c^ 422
Henry Cuyler Bunner
Evolution 437
John Galsworthy
BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX .443
INTRODUCTION
To a teacher of rhetoric, or written composition, there
are two factors in relation to the subject that seem of par-
amount interest. The first is the great popularity that it
at present enjoys in educational institutions. Books deal-
ing with it in whole or part — rhetorics, manuals, guides —
pour daily from the press. No publisher seems really
respectable without at least one upon his list, and large
firms carry several. The demand for this sort of book
seems inexhaustible. But just here comes the second fac-
tor, that among trained writers there exists a definite hostil-
ity toward the subject. Nor is this hostility merely nega-
tive. It is quite conceivable that to the advanced writer,
who has forgotten his own youth, the elementary stages
might seem a waste of time. But this is not the attitude.
In an editorial in a great modern periodical, the impression
was conveyed that certain work had " a deftness and power
such as college instruction can never give." A subsequent
editorial, in which this statement was emphasized, adds the
limitation that "there are some men strong enough to sur-
vive even the ' composition course' of our modern colleges."
This is not merely negative, this is positive. In the opin-
ion of the editors of that periodical the composition course
in a modern college is not only a waste of time, it is actually
hurtful. Nor is that particular editor alone in his belief.
And to a teacher of the subject it is scarcely a bracing
thought that those that feel thus about his work are apt
to be themselves very able writers !
2 MODERN ESSAYS
What is the explanation of this apparent paradox ? It
seems to me that the reason Hes in the type of teaching
done in the name of rhetoric. An author, or a teacher,
devises certain rules that he gives to the students both as
guides to composition and as criteria for judgment. One
may feel that the "split infinitive" is the mark of a lost
soul ; another may see all salvation in the placing of com-
mas; the third may feel that the proper use of "only"
differentiates the sheep from the goats. The value of such
tests is that they are easy of application. This explains
the irritation of the professional writer when dealing with a
cub fresh from the class room. He finds his brilliant work
condemned because of imaginary improprieties, and he feels
that the college has debauched the lad by teaching him to
lay major stress upon minor detail. The story is told of
Leonardo, that when his pupils were called in to see the
completed picture of the Last Supper, they fell in ecstasies
over the tracery on the border of the tablecloth. Whereat
the angry artist, with a sweep of his brush, annihilated
the beautiful tracery, exclaiming, "Fools! look at the
Master's face!" Is it not possible that our pupils also
have been trained to see only the tracery ? Has not much
of our criticism been destructive, rather than constructive,
our teaching what to avoid, rather than how to do ?
In the country at large, however, there seem to be rather
hazy notions concerning even the aim of such a course.
When the pupil is asked why he has elected this subject,
the almost invariable reply is that he wishes to learn how
to express himself. But this is scarcely accurate. Mere
self-expression is vocal. When one unexpectedly hits his
thumb with a hammer, the first impluse is not to seize pen
and paper, — it is to say something ! The act of writing,
then, presupposes more than the simple desire for self-ex-
INTRODUCTION 3
pression ; it assumes a desire to transmit the writer's
thoughts and emotions to another. The sentence is a
medium of communication between two individuals as
surely as is a telephone wire. And the self-expression
theory fails to account for the person at the other end.
Thus the fact that a given piece is written posits for that
piece two parties, the author and the reader. Even the
most private diary is composed to be read, although by
the writer, yet by the writer changed by a lapse of time.
If this be true in so purely personal a matter, much more
so is it true in any writing intended to be published.
Obviously there the reader must be considered.
But with the introduction of the reader-element into
the theory, a number of new deductions must be made.
And the first of these is that in judging any work it is the
opinion of the reader, not that of the author, that counts.
In fact, the author is apt to be the worst judge of his own
work. He knows what he has wished to say, and in the
thrill of creation feels that he has said it. He is neces-
sarily partial. But the measure of his success or failure is
seen only in its effect upon the reader. In spite of the
numerous canons of criticism, devised to enable an author
to write perfectly, the reader remains the master of the
situation, and works written by rule are deemed splendidly
null and thrown on the scrap heap. Here, then, is an
axiom in the teaching of composition. Stress positives
rather than negatives. One do is worth ten donts. Ex-
plain to the pupil how to get his effect ; avoid making him
memorize faults. And, if possible, enable him to see the
effect of his work upon a class of his own contemporaries.
Composition so taught ceases to be an abstract terror, and
becomes both vital and practical.
But if the study of composition is to be vital, each partic-
4 MODERN ESSAYS
ular theme must be alive, that is, it must be interesting.
The unpardonable sin in writing is dullness. But since, to
make a subject interesting to others, you must first be
interested in it yourself, it is better to allow pupils to
choose the subjects for their own themes. Each pupil is
then confronted with a definite problem. And the teacher
has a real basis for criticism, because of the very fact that
supposedly the writer was himself interested. By this
means, also, the pupil learns to discriminate between the
encyclopedic collection of unrelated facts and an article
where all material is subordinated to a predetermined end,
by watching the efl^ect of both on the members of the class.
He realizes that an "easy" subject is not the one on which
he can pour forth an undigested mass of irrelevant mate-
rial, but rather the one with which he can make a definite
appeal. He learns practically the truth of the proverb
that easy writing makes hard reading. And he begins
his long apprenticeship in the art of composition.
Thus not the least for the pupil to learn is that interest
is more apt to lie in the treatment than in the choice of the
subject. Although certainly some topics are inherently
more interesting than are others, there are very few that
cannot be ruined by clumsy handling. And of those few
rarely are any in the possession of the college undergrad-
uate ! If he is to hold the attention of the class, he will
realize that he must do that not by what he writes, but by
the manner in which he writes. Thus there is no one way to
write. Every piece of written work represents an equation
with three unknown quantities, the personality of the au-
thor, the peculiarity of the subject, and th6 presumed point
of view of the imagined reader. The first is only the old
philosophical maxim. Know thyself. He must learn the
excellences and the limitations of his own mind, what he
INTRODUCTION 5
can do and what he had better let alone. And this can
be learned only through long and painful practice. The
second and the third are obviously more variable. The
interest in a subject like "The Making of Bricks," for
example, is narrowly circumscribed, and appeals only to a
limited public. Theoretically such a subject can be best
treated with perfect clarity. Yet here the question of the
public must be considered. It is quite comprehensible
that to an association of brick makers, the subject might
be one of intense interest. But equally for such an asso-
ciation the treatment should be technical. This same
reason applies equally to every possible composition. An
editorial, if it be a successful editorial, should differ radi-
cally in tone from that of an essay on the same subject
in a magazine, because the attention of the readers of the
newspaper is distracted and fragmentary, whereas the
magazine can assume comparative leisure and quiet. An
academic address is rightfully different in the nature of
its appeal from a popular essay. What is right for the
one would be wrong for the other.
In general, the prime object of all expository writing
may be said to be clarity, that the reader after he has
finished may know exactly what the author intended. The
simplest form, therefore, resembles a catalogue, wherein
the author says I think so-and-so because of (a), (b), (c),
etc. It is definite and clear, but it also lacks interest.
That must be sought by the individual treatment of each
factor, and the value of the whole depends upon the com-
prehensiveness of the list. Emphasis may to a measure
be attained by a careful gradation of the various factors,
the most important reserved to the last. At the worst,
this type of essay separates into a number of disjointed
paragraphs, or even sentences, bound together merely by
6 MODERN ESSAYS
the fact that they all treat of a common subject. Thus
the reason why much of Emerson is such hard reading is
not that his thought is so profound, but that the sequence
of his thought is not expressed, and sometimes is non-
existent. Consequently, the effect of the essay as a whole
is lost. On the other hand, the value of this method of
composition lies in the suggestiveness of the individual
sentence, or the individual paragraph. And as the student
presumably has neither the brilliance of Whistler, the
profundity of Emerson, or the analytic power of Bryce,
therein lies the danger. Yet it is the normal form.
Surer of its effect than the catalogue form, and yet more
difficult to write, is that type of essay wherein the thought
either starts with a generalization in the first paragraph
and narrows to a particular in the last, or, on the contrary,
starts with a particular in the first paragraph and expands
in the last to a generalization. Either of these forms as-
sumes that the whole essay has been conceived as a unit,
that before the first word is written the last is clearly in
mind, — in short, in Walter Pater's words, "that archi-
tectural conception of work, which foresees the end in the
beginning and never loses sight of it, and in every part is
conscious of all the rest, till the last sentence does but,
with undiminished vigour, unfold and justify the first."
This quality of "mind in style" is obviously powerful, as
Mr. Pater himself has shown. It is an ideal to be held
before the young writer. The difficulty here is, however,
that it presupposes not only a trained mind in the writer,
but also a trained mind in the reader. Both, to appre-
ciate the bearing of the last sentence, must be conscious
of all preceding sentences back to the first. There must
be no trifling by the way. And unless the reader is willing
to surrender himself completely, there is the unhappy
INTRODUCTION 7
possibility that he will never arrive at the last unfolding
sentence ! Yet for the chosen reader, compared to this
all other forms seem futile.
But not only is the question of the form in which the
thought is to be cast to be considered, there is also the
problem of the development of the thought within the
form. Here the student must watch the value of the con-
crete versus the abstract, the utility of the illustration,
and the necessity for its restraint. And as these prin-
ciples hold equally whether the composition be written or
merely verbal, this is particularly valuable for those con-
sidering the profession of teaching. Thus as the concrete
is interesting and may always be safely relied on to attract
the attention of the class, to what extent may it be used
without destroying the emphasis of the whole ? In a lec-
ture on the catholicity of Lamb's friendships, for example,
how much space may be given to his acquaintance with
Wainwright who combined the professions of author and
poisoner.^ There is no doubt that with but little skill
the class or the reader will be interested in Wainwright's
performances, — only the nominal subject. Lamb, tends
to be obscured in the process. Yet surely within limits
such an appeal is justifiable. What are the limits ?
A somewhat analogous problem is the use of the first
person. There is a freshness and a vitality in the treat-
ment of a subject where the first person appears. As I
write this, I am aware of a sympathetic connection with
you that read it. Not to make use of this obvious advan-
tage seems absurd, and yet it was with pride that a friend
of mine, on giving me his book, assured me that the pro-
noun "I" did not appear once. As the thought in the
book was his thought, there was no reason why he should
not have said so. The danger, however, of the wearisome
8 MODERN ESSAYS
repetition of that objectionable pronoun is that the effect
will be one of disgusting egotism. The student that
continually writes in the first person often trips on his own
shadow. In the same way, the narrative of course may
be used for expository content, but the writer must beware
lest the result be a hybrid, neither a story nor an essay,
but an amorphous creation possessing the disadvantages of
both and the advantages of neither. And the only way
he can learn to handle it is by study and practice.
It was with the aim of furnishing examples to illustrate
such problems as these that the present book was com-
piled. There is no desire here to supersede the study of
formal rhetoric, rather to supplement it. Within the
last few years the revival of an interest in essays haS
carried the practice far beyond the bounds of the old reg-
ulation type of exposition, represented by "How to make
a boat." In life, and it should be in college, there is little
demand for the biographical essay where the industry of
the author is in inverse proportion to the quantity of his
facts. And when payment for an article is based upon
the number of words, omission becomes elevated to a high
art. Too long has our college teaching debauched our
students into believing that a mere flux of words is in it-
self meritorious. The question that the students should
ask is, not how long must it be, but how long may it be,
and, provided always that the desired aim is accomplished,
brevity should be considered a cardinal virtue. This
means that the student should take the shortest route
to his desired end, — namely, to transmit his thought and
his emotions to his reader. And since in a free country
there is no method of compelling the reader, the question
of interest becomes paramount.
MODERN ESSAYS
"TEN O'CLOCK"!
BY
James McNeill Whistler
\
James McNeill Whistler, an American, one of the most eminent and
most original of contemporary artists, was asked by the University of Ox-
ford to deliver the following address explaining his theory of art. Here
the sentence is the unit of structure. As such, it is rightfully paragraphed
by itself. But in so doing, the author, by making a series of aphorisms
upon art, has lost any collective effect. Thus the reader puts it down
with a confused impression of a number of brilliant statements, but with
no one definite single impression. Like a diamond emitting light from
each of its facets, each sentence in turn holds the attention, not only in
itself, but also regardless of what either precedes or follows. And the
sequence of the sentences is largely a matter of indifference. The infer-
ence to be drawn from such a form is that it is at all cost to be avoided,
since notwithstanding, or really because of, the brilliance of the sentence,
the total effect is lost.
Ladies and Gentlemen :
It is with great hesitation and much misgiving that I
appear before you, in the character of The Preacher.
If timidity be at all allied to the virtue modesty, and
can find favour in your eyes, I pray you, for the sake of
that virtue, accord me your utmost indulgence.
I would plead for my want of habit, did it not seem
preposterous, judging from precedent, that aught save the
most efficient effrontery could be ever expected in con-
nection with my subject — for I will not conceal from
1 From " The Gentle Art for Making Enemies," by permission of the
publishers, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London.
11
12 MODERN ESSAYS
you that I mean to talk about Art. Yes, Art — that has
of late become, as far as much discussion and writing can
make it, a sort of common topic for the tea-table.
Art is upon the Town ! — to be chucked under the chin
by the passing gallant — to be enticed within the gates
of the householder — to be coaxed into company, as a
proof of culture and refinement.
If familiarity can breed contempt, certainly Art — or
what is currently taken for it — has been brought to its
lowest stage of intimacy.
The people have been harassed with Art in every guise,
and vexed with many methods as to its endurance. They
have been told how they shall love Art, and live with it.
Their homes have been invaded, their walls covered with
paper, their very dress taken to task — until, roused at
last, bewildered and filled with the doubts and discomforts
of senseless suggestion, they resent such intrusion, and cast
forth the false prophets, who have brought the very name
of the beautiful into disrepute, and derision upon them-
selves.
Alas ! ladies and gentlemen, Art has been maligned.
She has naught in common with such practices. She is
a goddess of dainty thought — reticent of habit, abjuring
all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others.
She is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own perfection
only — having no desire to teach — seeking and finding the
beautiful in all conditions and in all times, as did her high
priest Rembrandt, when he saw picturesque grandeur
and noble dignity in the Jews' quarter of xA.msterdani, and
lamented not that its inhabitants were not Greeks.
As did Tintoret and Paul Veronese, among the Vene-
tians, while not halting to change the brocaded silks for
the classic draperies of Athens.
"TEN OCLOCK" 13
As did, at the Court of Philip, Velasquez, whose Infantas,
clad in insesthetic hoops, are, as works of Art, of the same
quality as the Elgin marbles.
No reformers were these great men — no improvers of
the way of others ! Their productions alone were their
occupation, and, filled with the poetry of their science,
they required not to alter their surroundings — for, as
the laws of their Art were revealed to them they saw, in
the development of their work, that real beauty which,
to them, was as much a matter of certainty and triumph
as is to the astronomer the verification of the result, fore-
seen with the light given to him alone. In all this, their
world was completely severed from that of their fellow-
creatures with whom sentiment is mistaken for poetry ;
and for whom there is no perfect work that shall not be
explained by the benefit conferred upon themselves.
Humanity takes the place of Art, and God's creations
are excused by their usefulness. Beauty is confounded
with virtue, and, before a work of Art, it is asked : "What
good shall it do?"
Hence it is that nobility of action, in this life, is hope-
lessly linked with the merit of the work that portrays it ;
and thus the people have acquired the habit of looking, as
who should say, not at a picture, but through it, at some
human fact, that shall, or shall not, from a social point
of view, better their mental or moral state. So we have
come to hear of the painting that elevates, and of the
duty of the painter — of the picture that is full of thought,
and of the panel that merely decorates.
A favourite faith, dear to those who teach, is that certain
periods were especially artistic, and that nations, readily
named, were notably lovers of Art.
14 MODERN ESSAYS
So we are told that the Greeks were, as a people, wor-
shippers of the beautiful, and that in the fifteenth century
Art was engrained in the multitude.
That the great masters lived in common understanding
with their patrons — that the early Italians were artists —
all — and that the demand for the lovely thing produced it.
That we, of to-day, in gross contrast to this Arcadian
purity, call for the ungainly, and obtain the ugly.
That, could we but change our habits and climate —
were we willing to wander in groves — could we be roasted
out of broadcloth — were we to do without haste, and
journey without speed, we should again require the spoon
of Queen Anne, and pick at our peas with the fork of two
prongs. And so, for the flock, little hamlets grow near
Hammersmith, and the steam horse is scorned.
Useless ! quite hopeless and false is the effort ! — built
upon fable, and all because "a wise man has uttered a
vain thing and filled his belly with the East wind."
Listen ! There never was an artistic period.
There never was an Art-loving nation.
In the beginning, man went forth each day — some to
do battle, some to the chase ; others, again, to dig and to
delve in the field — all that they might gain and live, or
lose and die. Until there was found among them one,
differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not,
and so he stayed by the tents with the women, and traced
strange devices with a bvirnt stick upon a gourd.
This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren —
who cared not for conquest, and fretted in the field — this
designer of quaint patterns — this deviser of the beauti-
ful — who perceived in Nature about him curious curv-
ings, as faces are seen in the fire — this dreamer apart,
was the first artist.
"TEN O'CLOCK" 15
And when, from the field and from afar, there came
back the people, they took the gourd — and drank from
out of it.
And presently there came to this man another — and,
in time, others — of like nature, chosen by the Gods —
and so they worked together ; and soon they fashioned,
from the moistened earth, forms resembling the gourd.
And with the power of creation, the heirloom of the artist,
presently they went beyond the slovenly suggestion of
Nature, and the first vase was born, in beautiful propor-
tion.
And the toilers tilled, and were athirst ; and the heroes
returned from fresh victories, to rejoice and to feast ; and
all drank alike from the artists' goblets, fashioned cun-
ningly, taking no note the while of the craftsman's pride,
and understanding not his glory in his work ; drinking at
the cup, not from choice, not from a consciousness that
it was beautiful, but because, forsooth, there was none
other !
And time, with more state, brought more capacity for
luxury, and it became well that men should dwell in large
houses, and rest upon couches, and eat at tables ; where-
upon the artist, with his artificers, built palaces, and filled
them with furniture, beautiful in proportion and lovely to
look upon.
And the people lived in marvels of art — and ate and
drank out of masterpieces — for there was nothing else to
eat and to drink out of, and no bad building to live in ; no
article of daily life, of luxury, or of necessity, that had not
been handed down from the design of the master, and
made by his workmen.
And the people questioned not, and had nothing to say in
the matter.
16 MODERN ESSAYS
So Greece was in its splendour, and Art reigned su-
preme — by force of fact, not bj^ election — and there
was no meddling from the outsider. The mighty warrior
would no more have ventured to offer a design for the
temple of Pallas Athene than would the sacred poet have
proffered a plan for constructing the catapult.
And the Amateur was unknown — and the Dilettante
undreamed of !
And history wrote on, and conquest accompanied civili-
sation, and Art spread, or rather its products were carried
by the victors among the vanquished from one country to
another. And the customs of cultivation covered the face
of the earth, so that all peoples continued to use what the
artist alone produced.
And centuries passed in this using, and the world was
flooded with all that was beautiful, until there arose a
new class, who discovered the cheap, and foresaw fortune
in the facture of the sham.
Then sprang into existence the tawdry, the common,
the gewgaw.
The taste of the tradesman supplanted the science of
the artist, and what was born of the million went back to
them, and charmed them, for it was after their own heart ;
and the great and the small, the statesman and the slave,
took to themselves the abomination that was tendered,
and preferred it — and have lived with it ever since !
And the artist's occupation was gone, and the manu-
facturer and the huckster took his place.
And now the heroes filled from the jugs and drank from
the bowls — with understanding — noting the glare of
their new bravery, and taking pride in its worth.
And the people — this time — had mucli to say in the
matter — and all were satisfied. And Birmingham and
"TEN O'CLOCK" 17
Manchester arose in their might — and Art was relegated
to the curiosity shop.
Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all
pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music.
But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group
with science, these elements, that the result may be beau-
tiful — as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his .
chords, until he bring forth from chaos glorious harmony^r
To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as she
is, is to say to the player, that he may sit on the piano.
That Nature is always right, is an assertion, artistically,
as untrue, as it is one whose truth is universally taken for
granted. Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent
even, that it might almost be said that Nature is usually
wrong : that is to say, the condition of things that shall
bring about the perfection of harmony worthy a picture
is rare, and not common at all.
This would seem, to even the most intelligent, a doc-
trine almost blasphemous. So incorporated with our
education has the supposed aphorism become, that its
belief is held to be part of our moral being, and the words
themselves have, in our ear, the ring of religion. Still,
seldom does Nature succeed in producing a picture.
The sun blares, the wind blows from the east, the sky is
bereft of cloud, and without, all is of iron. The windows
of the Crystal Palace are seen from all points of London.
The holiday-maker rejoices in the glorious day, and the
painter turns aside to shut his eyes.
How little this is understood, and how dutifully the
casual in Nature is accepted as sublime, may be gathered
from the unlimited admiration daily produced by a very
foolish sunset.
IS MODERN ESSAYS
The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in dis-
tinctness, but the joy of the tourist is to recognise the
traveller on the top. The desire to see, for the sake of
seeing, is, with the mass, alone the one to be gratified,
hence the delight in detail.
And when the evening mist clothes the riverside with
poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose them-
selves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become cam-
panili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and
the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairy-land is
before us — then the wayfarer hastens home ; the working
man and the cultured one, the wise man and the one of
pleasure, cease to understand, as they have ceased to see,
and Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings her
exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and her mas-
ter — her son in that he loves her, her master in that he
knows her.
To him her secrets are unfolded, to him her lessons have
become gradually clear. He looks at her flower, not with
the enlarging lens, that he may gather facts for the bota-
nist, but with the light of the one who sees in her choice
selection of brilliant tones and delicate tints, suggestions
of future harmonies.
He does not confine himself to purposeless copying,
without thought, each blade of grass, as commended by
the inconsequent, but, in the long curve of the narrow
leaf, corrected by the straight tall stem, he learns how
grace is wedded to dignity, how strength enhances sweet-
ness, that elegance shall be the result.
In the citron wing of the pale butterfly, with its dainty
spots of orange, he sees before him the stately halls of fair
gold, with their slender saffron pillars, and is taught how
the delicate drawing high upon the walls shall be traced in
"TEN O'CLOCK" 19
tender tones of orpiment, and repeated by the base in notes
of graver hue.
In all that is dainty and lovable he finds hints for his
own combinations, and thus is Nature ever his resource
and always at his service, and to him is naught re-
fused.
Through his brain, as through the last alembic, is dis-
tilled the refined essence of that thought which began with
the Gods, and which they left him to carry out.
Set apart by them to complete their works, he produces
that wondrous thing called the masterpiece, which sur-
passes in perfection all that they have contrived in what is
called Nature ; and the Gods stand by and marvel, and
perceive how far away more beautiful is the Venus of
Melos than was their own Eve.
For some time past, the unattached writer has become
the middleman in this matter of Art, and his influence,
while it has widened the gulf between the people and the
painter, has brought about the most complete misunder-
standing as to the aim of the picture.
For him a picture is more or less a hieroglyph or symbol
of story. Apart from a few technical terms, for the dis-
play of which he finds an occasion, the work is considered
absolutely from a literary point of view ; indeed, from what
other can he consider it ? And in his essays he deals with
it as with a novel — a history — or an anecdote. He
fails entirely and most naturally to see its excellences, or
demerits — artistic — and so degrades Art, by supposing
it a method of bringing about a literary climax.
It thus, in his hands, becomes merely a means of perpe-
trating something further, and its mission is made a
secondary one, even as a means is second to an end.
20 MODERN ESSAYS
The thoughts emphasised, noble or other, are inevitably
attached to the incident, and become more or less noble,
according to the eloquence or mental quality of the writer,
who looks the while, with disdain, upon what he holds as
"mere execution" — a matter belonging, he believes, to
the training of the schools, and the reward of assiduity.
So that, as he goes on with his translation from canvas
to paper, the work becomes his own. He finds poetry
where he would feel it were he himself transcribing
the event, invention in the intricacy of the mise en seme,
and noble philosophy in some detail of philanthropy,
courage, modesty, or virtue, suggested to him by the
occurrence.
All this might be brought before him, and his imagina-
tion be appealed to, by a very poor picture — indeed, I
might safely say that it generally is.
Meanwhile, the painters poetry is quite lost to him —
the amazing invention that shall have j)ut form and colour
into such perfect harmony, that exquisiteness is the result,
he is without understanding — the nobility of thought,
that shall have given the artist's dignity to the whole, says
to him absolutely nothing.
So that his praises are published, for virtues we would
blush to possess — while the great qualities, that distin-
guish the one work from the thousand, that make of the
masterpiece the thing of beauty that it is — have never
been seen at all.
That this is so, we can make sure of, by looking back at
old reviews upon past exhibitions, and reading the flat-
teries lavished upon men who have since been forgotten
altogether — but, upon whose works, the language has
been exhausted, in rhapsodies — that left nothing for the
National Gallery.
"TEN O'CLOCK" 21
A curious matter, in its effect upon the judgment of
these gentlemen, is the accepted vocabulary of poetic
symbolism, that helps them, by habit, in dealing with
Nature: a mountain, to them, is synonymous with
height — a lake, with depth — the ocean, with vastness
— the sun, with glory.
So that a picture with a mountain, a lake, and an
ocean — however poor in paint — is inevitably "lofty,"
"vast," "infinite," and "glorious" — on paper.
There are those also, sombre of mien, and wise with the
wisdom of books, who frequent museums and burrow in
crypts ; collecting — comparing — compiling — classify-
ing — contradicting.
Experts these — for whom a date is an accomplish-
ment — a hall-mark, success !
Careful in scrutiny are they, and conscientious of judg-
ment — establishing, with due weight, unimportant rep-
utations — discovering the picture, by the stain on the
back — testing the torso, by the leg that is missing —
filling folios with doubts on the way of that limb — dis-
putatious and dictatorial, concerning the birthplace of
inferior persons — speculating, in much writing, upon the
great worth of bad work.
True clerks of the collection, they mix memoranda with
ambition, and, reducing Art to statistics, they "file" the
fifteenth century, and "pigeon-hole" the antique!
Then the Preacher "appointed"!
He stands in high places — harangues and holds forth.
Sage of the Universities — learned in many matters,
and of much experience in all, save his subject.
Exhorting — denouncing — directing.
22 MODERN ESSAYS
Filled with wrath and earnestness.
Bringing powers of persuasion, and polish of language,
to prove — nothing.
Torn with much teaching — having naught to impart.
Impressive — important — shallow.
Defiant — distressed — desperate.
Crying out, and cutting himself — while the gods hear
not.
Gentle priest of the Philistine withal, again he ambles
pleasantly from all point, and through many volumes,
escaping scientific assertion — "babbles of green fields."
So Art has become foolishly confounded with educa-
tion — that all should be equally qualified.
Whereas, while polish, refinement, culture, and breed-
ing, are in no way arguments for artistic result, it is also
no reproach to the most finished scholar or greatest gentle-
man in the land that he be absolutely without eye for
painting or ear for music — that in his heart he prefers
the popular print to the scratch of Rembrandt's needle,
or the songs of the hall to Beethoven's "C minor Sym-
phony."
Let him have but the wit to say so, and not feel the ad-
mission a proof of inferiority.
Art happens — no hovel is safe from it, no Prince may
depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it
about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in quaint
comedy, and coarse farce.
This is as it should be — and all attempts to make it
otherwise are due to the eloquence of the ignorant, the
zeal of the conceited.
The boundary-line is clear. Far from me to propose to
bridge it over — that the pestered people be pushed across.
"TEN O'CLOCK" 23
No ! I would save them from further fatigue. I would
come to their relief, and would lift from their shoulders
this incubus of Art.
Why, after centuries of freedom from it, and indiffer-
ence to it, should it now be thrust upon them by the blind
— until wearied and puzzled, they know no longer how
they shall eat or drink — how they shall sit or stand
— or wherewithal they shall clothe themselves — with-
out afflicting Art.
But, lo ! there is much talk without !
Triumphantly they cry, "Beware! This matter does
indeed concern us. We also have our part in all true
Art ! — for, remember the ' one touch of Nature ' that
'makes the whole world kin.'"
True, indeed. But let not the unwary jauntily suppose
that Shakespeare herewith hands him his passport to Para-
dise, and thus permits him speech among the chosen.
Rather, learn that, in this very sentence, he is condemned
to remain without — to continue with the common.
This one chord that vibrates with all — this "one touch
of Nature" that calls aloud to the response of each — that
explains the popularity of the "Bull" of Paul Potter —
that excuses the price of Murillo's "Conception" — this
one unspoken sympathy that pervades humanity, is —
Vulgarity !
Vulgarity- — under whose fascinating influence "the
many" have elbowed "the few," and the gentle circle of
Art swarms with the intoxicated mob of mediocrity, whose
leaders prate and counsel, and call aloud, where the Gods
once spoke in whisper !
And now from their midst the Dilettante stalks abroad.
24 MODERN ESSAYS
The amateur is loosed. The voice of the aesthete is heard
in the land, and catastrophe is upon us.
The meddler beckons the vengeance of the Gods, and
ridicule threatens the fair daughters of the land.
And there are curious converts to a weird culte, in which
all instinct for attractiveness — all freshness and sparkle
— all woman's winsomeness — is to give way to a strange
vocation for the unlovely — and this desecration in the
name of the Graces !
Shall this gaunt, ill-at-ease, distressed, abashed mixture
of mauvaise honte and desperate assertion call itself artistic,
and claim cousinship with the artist — who delights in
the dainty, the sharp, bright gaiety of beauty ?
No ! — a thousand times no ! Here are no connections
of ours.
We will have nothing to do with them.
Forced to seriousness, that emptiness may be hidden,
they dare not smile —
While the artist, in fulness of heart and head, is glad,
and laughs aloud, and is happy in his strength, and is
merry at the pompous pretension — the solemn silliness
that surrounds him.
For Art and Joy go together, with bold openness, and
high head, and ready hand — fearing naught, and dread-
ing no exposure.
Know, then, all beautiful women, that we are with you.
Pay no heed, we pray you, to this outcry of the unbecom-
ing — this last plea for the plain.
It concerns you not.
Your own instinct is near the truth — your own wit far
surer guide than the untaught ventures of thick-heeled
Apollos.
What ! will you up and follow the first piper that leads
"TEN O'CLOCK" 25
you down Petticoat Lane, there, on a Sabbath, to gather,
for the week, from the dull rags of ages wherewith to be-
deck yourselves ? that, beneath your travestied awkward-
ness, we have trouble to find your own dainty selves ?
Oh, fie ! Is the world, then, exhausted ? and must we go
back because the thumb of the mountebank jerks the
other way ?
Costume is not dress.
And the wearers of wardrobes may not be doctors of
taste !
For by what authority shall these be pretty masters ?
Look well, and nothing have they invented — nothing put
together for comeliness' sake.
Haphazard from their shoulders hang the garments of
the hawker — combining in their person the motley of
many manners with the medley of the mummers' closet.
Set up as a warning, and a finger-post of danger, they
point to the disastrous effect of Art upon the middle classes.
Why this lifting of the brow in deprecation of the pres-
ent — this pathos in reference to the past ?
If Art be rare to-day, it was seldom heretofore.
It is false, this teaching of decay.
The master stands in no relation to the moment at which
he occurs — a monument of isolation — hinting at sad-
ness — having no part in the progress of his fellow-men.
He is also no more the product of civilisation than is the
scientific truth asserted dependent upon the wisdom of a
period. The assertion itself requires the man to make it.
The truth was from the beginning.
So Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there can-
not progress.
A silent indication of its wayward independence from
26 MODERN ESSAYS
all extraneous advance, is in the absolutely unchanged
condition and form of implement since the beginning of
things.
The painter has but the same pencil — the sculptor the
chisel of centuries.
Colours are not more since the heavy hangings of night
were first drawn aside, and the loveliness of light revealed.
Neither chemist or engineer can offer new elements of
the masterpiece.
False again, the fabled link between the grandeur of
Art and the glories and virtues of the State, for Art feeds
not upon nations, and peoples may be wiped from the
face of the earth, but Art is.
It is indeed high time that we cast aside the weary
weight of responsibility and co-partnership, and know that,
in no way, do our virtues minister to its worth, in no way
do our vices impede its triumph !
How irksome ! how hopeless ! how superhuman the
self-imposed task of the nation ! How sublimely vain
the belief that it shall live nobly or art perish.
Let us reassure ourselves, at our own option is our vir-
tue. Art we in no way affect.
A whimsical goddess, and a capricious, her strong sense
of joy tolerates no dulness, and, live we never so spotlessly,
still may she turn her back upon us.
As, from time immemorial, she has done upon the Swiss
in their mountains.
What more worthy people ! Whose every Alpine gap
yawns with tradition, and is stocked with noble story ;
yet, the perverse and scornful one will none of it, and the
sons of patriots are left with the clock that turns the mill,
and the sudden cuckoo, with difficulty restrained in its box !
"TEN O'CLOCK" 27
For this was Tell a hero ! For this did Gessler die !
Art, the cruel jade, cares not, and hardens her heart,
and hies her off to the East, to find, among the opium-
eaters of Nankin, a favourite with whom she lingers
fondly — caressing his blue porcelain, and painting his
coy maidens, and marking his plates with her six marks of
choice — indifferent in her companionship with him, to
all save the virtue of his refinement !
He it is who calls her — - he who holds her !
And again to the West, that her next lover may bring
together the Gallery at Madrid, and show to the world
how the Master towers above all ; and in their intimacy
they revel, he and she, in this knowledge; and he knows
the happiness untasted by other mortal.
She is proud of her comrade, and promises that in after-
years, others shall pass that way, and understand.
So in all time does this superb one cast about for the
man worthy her love — and Art seeks the Artist alone.
Where he is, there she appears, and remains with him —
loving and fruitful — turning never aside in moments of
hope deferred — of insult — and of ribald misunderstand-
ing ; and when he dies she sadly takes her flight, though
loitering yet in the land, from fond association, but refus-
ing to be consoled.^
With the man, then, and not with the multitude, are
her intimacies ; and in the book of her life the names in-
scribed are few — scant, indeed, the list of those who have
helped to write her story of love and beauty.
From the sunny morning, when, with her glorious Greek
relenting, she yielded up the secret of repeated line, as,
1 And so have we the ephemeral influence of the Master's memory —
the afterglow, in which are warmed, for a while, the worker and
disciple.
28 MODERN ESSAYS
with his hand in hers, together they marked in marble,
the measured rhyme of lovely limb and draperies flowing
in unison, to the day when she dipped the Spaniard's
brush in light and air, and made his people live within
their frames, and stand upon their legs, that all nobility
and sweetness, and tenderness, and magnificence should be
theirs by right, ages had gone by, and few had been her
choice.
Countless, indeed, the horde of pretenders ! But she
knew them not.
A teeming, seething, busy mass, whose virtue was in-
dustry, and whose industry was vice !
Their names go to fill the catalogue of the collection at
home, of the gallery abroad, for the delectation of the
bagman and the critic.
Therefore have we cause to be merry ! — and to cast
away all care — resolved that all is well — as it ever
was — and that it is not meet that we should be cried at,
and urged to take measures !
Enough have we endured of dulness ! Surely are we
weary of weeping, and our tears have been cozened from
us falsely, for they have called out woe ! when there was
no grief — and, alas ! where all is fair !
We have then but to wait — until, with the mark of
the Gods upon him — there come among us again the
chosen — who shall continue what has gone before. Sat-
isfied that, even were he never to appear, the story of the
beautiful is already complete — hewn in the marbles of
the Parthenon - — and broidered, with the birds, upon the
fan of Hokusai — at the foot of Fusiyama.
TACTi
BY
Sir John Lubbock
In Lord Avebury's essay, as in the Whistler, there is no one dominating
thought. It consists of a series of paragraphs united only by the fact
that they deal with a common subject. But whereas in Whistler it was
the sentence that was the unit, here it is the paragraph. The order
of the paragraphs, however, is of no apparent importance. Thus there
is no obvious reason why the paragraph "Have the courage of your
opinions" should precede rather than follow that beginning "Be frank,
and yet be reserved." Consequently this is not really one essay, but
a series of little essays, and the value of the whole is the sum of the values
of the component parts. But as no paragraph receives any support
from its fellows, one must be very sure of the value of the separate
thoughts before he dare risk so loose a structure. On the other hand,
it has this advantage that each thought can be considered without
relation to the rest. Consequently, while in the hands of a suggestive
thinker, it is a perfectly possible form, for the beginner it is very difficult.
And yet it is precisely this form that the beginner is moved to attempt !
For success in life tact is more important than talent,
but it is not easily acquired by those to whom it does not
come naturally. Still something can be done by consid-
ering what others would probably wish.
Never lose a chance of giving pleasure. Be courteous
to all. "Civility," said Lady Montague, "costs nothing
and buys everything." It buys much, indeed, which no
money will purchase. Try then to win every one you
1 From "The Use of Life, " by permission of The Macmillan Co.
29
30 MODERN ESSAYS
meet. "Win their hearts," said Burleigh to Queen Eliza-
beth, "and you have all men's hearts and purses."
Tact often succeeds where force fails. Lilly quotes the
old fable of the Sun and the Wind: "It is pretily noted
of a contention betweene the Winde and the Sunne, who
should have the victorye. A Gentleman walking abroad,
the Winde thought to blowe off his cloake, which with
great blastes and blusterings striuing to vnloose it, made
it to stick faster to his backe, for the more the Winde
encreased the closer his cloake clapt to his body : then
the Sunne, shining with his hot beams, began to warm
this gentleman, who waxing somewhat faint in this faire
weather, did not only put off his cloake but his coate, which
the Wynde perceiuing, yeelded the conquest to the Sunne."
Always remember that men are more easily led than
driven, and that in any case it is better to guide than to
coerce.
"What thou wilt
Thou rather shall enforce it with thy smile.
Than hew to't with thy sword." ^
It is a good rule in politics, "pas trop gouverner."
Try to win, and still more to deserve, the confidence of
those with whom you are brought in contact. Many a
man has owed his influence far more to character than to
ability. Sydney Smith used to say of Francis Horner,
who, without holding any high office, exercised a remark-
able personal influence in the Councils of the Nation,
that he had the Ten Commandments stamped upon his
countenance.
Try to meet the wishes of others as far as you rightly
and wisely can ; but do not be afraid to say "No."
1 Shakespeare.
TACT 31
Anybody can say "Yes," though it is not every one
who can say "Yes" pleasantly ; but it is far more difficult
to say "No." Many a man has been ruined because he
could not do so. Plutarch tells us that the inhabitants of
Asia Minor came to be vassals only for not having been
able to pronounce one syllable, which is "No." And if
in the Conduct of Life it is essential to say "No," it is
scarcely less necessary to be able to say it pleasantly. We
ought always to endeavour that everybody with whom we
have any transactions should feel that it is a pleasure to do
business with us and should wish to come again. Business
is a matter of sentiment and feeling far more than many
suppose ; every one likes being treated with kindness and
courtesy, and a frank pleasant manner will often clench
a bargain more effectually than a half per cent.
Almost any one may make himself pleasant if he wishes.
"The desire of pleasing is at least half the art of doing
it : " ^ and, on the other hand, no one will please others who
does not desire to do so. If you do not acquire this great
gift while you are young, you will find it much more diffi-
cult afterwards. Many a man has owed his outward suc-
cess in life far more to good manners than to any solid merit ;
while, on the other hand, many a worthy man, with a good
heart and kind intentions, makes enemies merely by the
roughness of his manner. To be able to please is, more-
over, itself a great pleasure. Try it, and you will not be
disappointed.
Be wary and keep cool. A cool head is as necessary as
a warm heart. In any negotiations, steadiness and cool-
ness are invaluable; while they will often carry you in
safety through times of danger and difficulty.
If you come across others less clever than you are, you
1 Chesterfield's " Letters."
32 MODERN ESSAYS
have no right to look down on them. There is nothing
more to be proud of in inheriting great ability, than a great
estate. The only credit in either case is if they are used
well. /Moreover, many a man is much cleverer than he
seems. It is far more easy to read books than men. In
this the eyes are a great guide. "When the eyes say one
thing and the tongue another, a practised man relies on
the language of the first." ^
Do not trust too much to professions of extreme good-
will. Men do not fall in love with men, nor women with
women, at first sight. If a comparative stranger protests
and promises too much, do not place implicit confidence
in what he says. If not insincere, he probably says more
than he means, and perhaps wants something himself from
you. Do not therefore believe that every one is a friend,
w^ merely because he professes to be so ; nor assume too
lightly that any one is an enemy.
We flatter ourselves by claiming to be rational and in-
tellectual beings, but it would be a great mistake to sup-
• pose that men are always guided by reason. We are
strange inconsistent creatures, and we act quite as often,
perhaps oftener, from prejudice or passion. The result
is that you are more likely to carry men with you by en-
listing their feelings, than by convincing their reason.
This applies, moreover, to companies of men even more
than to individuals.
Argument is always a little dangerous. It often leads
to coolness and misunderstandings. You may gain your
argument and lose your friend, which is probably a bad
bargain. If you must argue, admit all you can, but try
and show that some point has been overlooked. Very
few people know when they have had the worst of an
^ Emerson.
TACT 33
argument, and if they do, they do not like it. Moreover,
if they know they are beaten, it does not follow that they
are convinced. Indeed it is perhaps hardly going too far
to say that it is very little use trying to convince any one
by argument. State your case as clearly and concisely as
possible, and if you shake his confidence in his own opinion
it is as much as you can expect. It is the first step gained.
Conversation is an art in itself, and it is by no means
those who have most to tell who are the best talkers ;
though it is certainly going too far to say with Lord
Chesterfield that "there are very few Captains of Foot
who are not much better company than ever were Des-
cartes or Sir Isaac Newton."
I will not say that it is as difficult to be a good listener
as a good talker, but it is certainly by no means easy, and
very nearly as important. You must not receive every-
thing that is said as a critic or a judge, but suspend your
judgment, and try to enter into the feelings of the speaker.
If you are kind and sympathetic your advice will be often
sought, and you will have the satisfaction of feeling that
you have been a help and comfort to many in distress and
trouble.
Do not expect too much attention when you are young.
Sit, listen, and look on. Bystanders proverbially see most
of the game ; and you can notice what is going on just as
well, if not better, when you are not noticed yourself. It
is almost as if you possessed a cap of invisibility.
To save themselves the trouble of thinking, which is to
most people very irksome, men will often take you at your
own valuation. "On ne vaut dans ce monde," says La
Bruyere, "que ce que Ton veut valoir."
Do not make enemies for yourself; you can make
nothing worse.
D
34 MODERN ESSAYS
"Answer not ti fool acconling to liis folly.
Lest thou also be like unto him." '
Remember that "a soft answer turneth away wrath;"
but even an angry answer is less fooHsh than a sneer : nine
men out of ten would rather be abused, or even injured,
than laughed at. They will forget almost anything sooner
than being made ridiculous.
"It is pleasanter to be deceived than to be undeceived."
Trasilaus, an Athenian, went mad, and thought that all
the ships in the Piraeus belonged to him, but having been
cured by Crito, he complained bitterly that he had been
robbed. It is folly, says Lord Chesterfield, "to lose a
friend for a jest : but, in my mind, it is not a much less
degree of folly, to make an enemy of an indifferent and
neutral person for the sake of a bon-mot."
Do not be too ready to suspect a slight, or think you
are being laughed at — to say with Scrub in the Stratagem,
"I am sure they talked of me, for they laughed consum-
edly." On the other hand, if you are laughed at, try to
rise above it. If you can join in heartily, you will turn
the tables and gain rather than lose. Every one likes a
man who can enjoy a laugh at his own expense — and
justly so, for it shows good-humour and good-sense. If
you laugh at yourself, other people will not laugh at
you.
Have the courage of your opinions. You must expect
to be laughed at sometimes, and it will do you no harm.
There is nothing ridiculous in seeming to be what you
really are, but a good deal in affecting to be what you
are not. People often distress themselves, get angry, and
drift into a coolness with others, for some quite imaginary
grievance.
1 Proverbs.
TACT 35
Be frank, and yet reserved. Do not talk much about
yourself; neither of yourself, for yourself, nor against
yourself : but let other people talk about themselves, as
much as they will. If they do so it is because they like
it, and they will think all the better of you for listening to
them. At any rate do not show a man, unless it is your
duty, that you think he is a fool or a blockhead. If you
do, he has good reason to complain. You may be wrong
in your judgment; he will, and with some justice, form
the same opinion of you.
Burke once said that he could not draw an indictment
against a nation, and it is very unwise as well as unjust
to attack any class or profession. Individuals often forget
and forgive, but Societies never do. Moreover, even in-
dividuals will forgive an injury much more readily than
an insult. Nothing rankles so much as being made ridic-
ulous. You will never gain your object by putting people
out of humour, or making them look ridiculous.
Goethe in his " Conversations with Eckermann" com-
mended our countrymen. Their entrance and bearing in
Society, he said, were so confident and quiet that one
would think they were everywhere the masters, and the
whole world belonged to them. Eckermann replied that
surely young Englishmen were no cleverer, better edu-
cated, or better hearted than young Germans. "That is
not the point," said Goethe; " their superiority does not
lie in such things, neither does it lie in their birth and for-
tune : it lies precisely in their having the courage to be
what nature made them. There is no halfness about
them. They are complete men. Sometimes complete
fools also, that I heartily admit ; but even that is some-
thing, and has its weight."
In any business or negotiations, be patient. Many a
36 MODERN ESSAYS
man would rather you heard his story than granted his
request : many an opponent has been tired out.
Above all, never lose your temper, and if you do, at
any rate hold your tongue, and try not to show it.
"Cease from anger, and forsake wrath :
Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil." ^
For
"A soft answer turneth away wrath :
But grievous words stir up anger." ^
Never intrude where you are not wanted. There is
plenty of room elsewhere. "Have I not three king-
doms?" said King James to the Fly, "and yet thou must
needs fly in my eye."^
Some people seem to have a knack of saying the wrong
thing, of alluding to any subject which revives sad mem-
ories, or rouses differences of opinion.
No branch of Science is more useful than the knowl-
edge of Men. It is of the utmost importance to be able
to decide wisely, not only to know whom you can trust,
and whom you cannot, but how far, and in what, you can
trust them. This is by no means easy. It is most im-
portant to choose well those who are to work with you, and
under you ; to put the square man in the square hole, and
the round man in the round hole.
"If you suspect a man, do not employ him: if you
employ him, do not suspect him." ^
Those who trust are oftener right than those who
mistrust.
Confidence should be complete, but not bhnd. Merlin
lost his life, wise as he was, for imprudently yielding to
Vivien's appeal to trust her "all in all or not at all."
* Psalms. * Proverbs.
» Selden's " Table Talk." * Confucius.
TACT 37
Be always discreet. Keep your own counsel. If you
do not keep it for yourself, you cannot expect others to
keep it for you. "The mouth of a wise man is in his
heart ; the heart of a fool is in his mouth, for what he
knoweth or thinketh he uttereth."
Use your head. Consult your reason. It is not in-
fallible, but you will be less likely to err if you do so.
Speech is, or ought to be silvern, but silence is golden.
Many people talk, not because they have anything
to say, but for the mere love of talking. Talking should
be an exercise of the brain, rather than of the tongue.
Talkativeness, the love of talking for talking's sake, is
almost fatal to success. Men are "plainly hurried on,
in the heat of their talk, to say quite different things
from what they first intended, and which they after-
wards wish unsaid : or improper things, which they had
no other end in saying, but only to find employment to
their tongue.
And this unrestrained volubility and wantonness in speech
is the occasion of numberless evils and vexations in life.
It begets resentment in him who is the subject of it ; sows
the seed of strife and dissension amongst others; and
inflames little disgusts and offences^ which, if let alone,
would wear away of themselves." ^
"C'est une grande misere," says La Bruyere, "que de
n'avoir pas assez d'esprit pour bien parler, ni assez de
jugement pour se taire." Plutarch tells a story of Dem-
aratus, that being asked in a certain assembly whether
he held his tongue because he was a fool, or for want of
1 Dr. Butler's " Sermons."
x o
38 MODERN ESSAYS
words, he replied, "A fool cannot hold his tongue."
"Seest thou," said Solomon,
"Seest thou a man that is hasty in his words ?
There is more hope of a fool than of him." ^
Never try to show your own superiority : few things
annoy people more than being made to feel small.
Do not be too positive in your statements. You may
be wrong, however sure you feel. Memory plays us
curious tricks, and both ears and eyes are sometimes
deceived. Our prejudices, even the most cherished, may
have no secure foundation. Moreover, even if you are
right, you will lose nothing by disclaiming too great
certainty.
In action, again, never make too sure, and never throw
away a chance. "There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and
the lip."
It has been said that everything comes to those who
know how to wait ; and when the opportunity does come,
seize it.
"He that wills not, when he may;
When he will, he shall have nay."
If you once let your opportunity go, you may never
have another.
"There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune :
* Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat :
And we must take the current when it serves.
Or lose our venture." ^
1 Proverbs xxix. 20. ^ Shakespeare.
TACT 39
Be cautious, but not over-cautious ; do not be too much
afraid of making a mistake; "a man who never makes a
mistake, will make nothing."
Always dress neatly : we must dress, therefore we should
do it well, though not too well ; not extravagantly, either \--
in time or money, but taking care to have good materials.
It is astonishing how much people judge by dress. Of
those you come across, many go mainly by appearances
in any case, and many more have in your case nothing
but appearances to go by. The eyes and ears open the
heart, and a hundred people will see, for one who will
know you. Moreover, if you are careless and untidy
about yourself, it is a fair, though not absolute, conclusion
that you will be careless about other things also.
When you are in Society study those who have the best
and pleasantest manners. "Manner," says the old prov-
erb with much truth, if with some exaggeration, " maketh
Man," and "a pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of
recommendation." ^ "Merit and knowledge will not gain
hearts, though they will secure them when gained. En- . .
gage the eyes by your address, air, and motions ; soothe
the ears by the elegance and harmony of your diction;
and the heart will certainly (I should rather say probably)
follow." 2 Every one has eyes and ears, but few have a
sound judgment. The world is a stage. We are all
players, and every one knows how much the success of a
piece depends upon the way it is acted.
Lord Chesterfield, speaking of his son, says, "They tell
me he is loved wherever he is known, and I am very glad
of it ; but I would have him be liked before he is known,
and loved afterwards. . . . You know very little of the
nature of mankind, if you take those things to be of little
^ Bacon. ^ Lord Chesterfield.
40 MODERN ESSAYS
consequence ; one cannot be too attentive to them ; it is
they that always engage the heart, of which the under-
standing is commonly the bubble,"
The Graces help a man in life almost as much as the
Muses. We all know that "one man may steal a horse,
while another may not look over a hedge;" and why?
because the one will do it pleasantly, the other disagree-
ably. Horace tells us that even Youth and Mercury, the
God of Eloquence and of the Arts, were powerless without
the Graces.
BOOK-BUYING i
BY
Augustine Birrell
As the student is taught in any rhetoric, an essay to have unity must
have one dominating idea, in order that, when the reader finishes, he
may summarize the thought in a single sentence. Theoretically each
paragraph has a definite bearing on that one sentence. Yet in such
an essay as this of Mr. Birrell such a summary is impossible. The
paragraphs are associational, rather than logical. The thought may be
roughly expressed in the following sequence : although the older genera-
tion feel that book-buying has gone out of fashion, actually, as is proved
by the prices in the catalogues, it is still done ; private libraries are grow-
ing up on all sides ; provided that they are not inherited, each library
expresses the owner; and yet the owner's possession is merely tem-
poral. Between these thoughts there is no logical sequence. The
author is trying to give the effect of fireside conversation where the
second idea arises from the first but is not caused by it. Consequently
there is no one dominating thought, and equally the relation of the
paragraphs is merely chronological. It is not a series of sentences, like
the Whistler, nor a series of paragraphs like Lord Avebury's " Tact " ; it
has a unity, but that unity is one of emotion, rather than one of thought.
Consequently, however charming may be this particular essay, it is a
dangerous model.
The most distinguished of living Englishmen, who,
great as he is in many directions, is perhaps inherently
more a man of letters than anything else, has been over-
heard mournfully to declare that there were more book-
1 From " Obiter Dicta," Second Series, by permission of the publishers,
Charles Scribner's Sons.
41
42 MODERN ESSAYS
sellers' shops in his native town sixty years ago, when he
was a boy in it, than are to-day to be found within its
boundaries. And yet the place 'all unabashed' now
boasts its bookless self a city !
Mr. Gladstone was, of course, referring to second-hand
bookshops. Neither he nor any other sensible man puts
himself out about new books. When a new book is
published, read an old one, was the advice of a sound
though surly critic. It is one of the boasts of letters to
have glorified the term 'second-hand,' which other crafts
have " soiled to all ignoble use." But why it has been
able to do this is obvious. All the best books are neces-
sarily second-hand. The writers of to-day need not grum-
ble. Let them 'bide a wee.' If their books are worth
anything, they, too, one day will be second-hand. If
their books are not worth anything there are ancient trades
still in full operation amongst us — the pastrycooks and
the trunkmakers — who must have paper.
But is there any substance in the plaint that nobody
now buys books, meaning thereby second-hand books.?
The late Mark Pattison, who had 16,000 volumes, and
whose lightest word has therefore weight, once stated that
he had been informed, and verily believed, that there were
men of his own University of Oxford who, being in uncon-
trolled possession of annual incomes of not less than £500,
thought they were doing the thing handsomely if they ex-
pended £50 a year upon their libraries. But we are not
bound to believe this unless we like. There was a touch
of morosity about the late Rector of Lincoln which led him
to take gloomy views of men, particularly Oxford men.
No doubt arguments a priori may readily be found to
support the contention that the habit of book-buying is
on the decline. I confess to knowing one or two men,
BOOK-BUYING 43
not Oxford men either, but Cambridge men (and the pas-
sion of Cambridge for Hterature is a by-word), who, on
the plea of being pressed with business, or because they
were going to a funeral, have passed a bookshop in a
strange town without so much as stepping inside " just to
see whether the fellow had anything." But painful as
facts of this sort necessarily are, any damaging inference
we might feel disposed to draw from them is dispelled by
a comparison of price-lists. Compare a bookseller's cata-
logue of 1862 with one of the present year, and your
pessimism is washed away by the tears which unrestrain-
edly flow as you see what bonnes fortunes you have lost.
A young book-buyer might well turn out upon Primrose
Hill and bemoan his youth, after comparing old catalogues
with new.
Nothing but American competition, grumble some old
stagers.
Well ! why not ? This new battle for the books is a
free fight, not a private one, and Columbia has 'joined
in.' Lower prices are not to be looked for. The book-
buyer of 1900 will be glad to buy at to-day's prices. I
take pleasure in thinking he will not be able to do so.
Good finds grow scarcer and scarcer. True it is that but
a few short weeks ago I picked up (such is the happy
phrase, most apt to describe what was indeed a 'street
casualty') a copy of the orginial edition of Endymion
(Keats's poem — O subscriber to Mudie's ! — not Lord
Beaconsfield's novel) for the easy equivalent of half-a-
crown — but then that was one of my lucky days. The
enormous increase of booksellers' catalogues and their wide
circulation amongst the trade has already produced a
hateful uniformity of prices. Go where you will it is all
the same to the odd sixpence. Time was when you could
44 MODERN ESSAYS
map out the country for yourself with some hopefulness
of plunder. There were districts where the Elizabethan
dramatists were but slenderly protected. A raid into the
'bonnie North Countrie' sent you home again cheered
with chap-books and weighted with old pamphlets of curi-
ous interests ; whilst the West of England seldom failed
to yield a crop of novels. I remember getting a complete
set of the Bronte books in the original issues at Torquay,
I may say, for nothing. Those days are over. Your
country bookseller is, in fact, more likely, such tales does
he hear of London auctions, and such catalogues does he
receive by every post, to exaggerate the value of his wares
than to part with them pleasantly, and as a country
bookseller should, "just to clear my shelves, you know,
and give me a bit of room." The only compensation for
this is the catalogues themselves. You get them, at least,
for nothing, and it cannot be denied that they make
mighty pretty reading.
These high prices tell their own tale, and force upon us
the conviction that there never were so many private
libraries in course of growth as there are to-day.
Libraries are not made ; they grow. Your first two thou-
sand volumes present no difficulty, and cost astonishingly
little money. Given £400 and five years, and an ordinary
man can in the ordinary course, without undue haste or
putting any pressure upon his taste, surround himself with
this number of books, all in his own language, and thence-
forward have at least one place in the world in which it
is possible to be happy. But pride is still out of the
question. To be proud of having two thousand books
would be absurd. You might as well be proud of having
two top-coats. After your first two thousand difficulty
begins, but until you have ten thousand volumes the less
BOOK-BUYING . 45
you say about your library the better. Then you may
begin to speak.
It is no doubt a pleasant thing to have a library left you.
The present writer will disclaim no such legacy, but hereby
undertakes to accept it, however dusty. But good as it
is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one. Each
volume then, however lightly a stranger's eye may roam
from shelf to shelf, has its own individuality, a history of
its own. You remember where you got it, and how much
you gave for it ; and your word may safely be taken for
the first of these facts, but not for the second.
The man who has a library of his own collection is able
to contemplate himself objectively, and is justified in be-
lieving in his own existence. No other man but he would
have made precisely such a combination as his. Had he
been in any single respect different from what he is, his
library, as it exists, never would have existed. Therefore,
surely he may exclaim, as in the gloaming he contemplates
the backs of his loved ones, " They are mine, and I am
theirs."
But the eternal note of sadness will find its way even
through the keyhole of a library. You turn some familiar
page, of Shakespeare it may be, and his ' infinite variety,'
his 'multitudinous mind,' suggests some new thought,
and as you are wondering over it you think of Lycidas,
your friend, and promise yourself the pleasure of having his
opinion of your discovery the very next time when by the
fire you two " help waste a sullen day." Or it is, perhaps,
some quainter, tenderer fancy that engages your soli-
tary attention, something in Sir Philip Sydney or Henry
Vaughan, and then you turn to look for Phyllis, ever the best
interpreter of love, human or divine. Alas ! the printed
page grows hazy beneath a filmy eye as you suddenly re-
46 . MODERN ESSAYS
member that Lycidas is dead — " dead ere his prime " —
and that the pale cheek of PhylHs will never again be re-
lumined by the white light of her pure enthusiasm. And
then you fall to thinking of the inevitable, and perhaps,
in your present mood, not unwelcome hour, when the
'ancient peace' of your old friends will be disturbed, when
rude hands will dislodge them from their accustomed nooks
and break up their goodly company.
" Death bursts amongst them like a shell.
And strews them over half the town."
They will form new combinations, lighten other men's
toil, and soothe another's sorrow. Fool that I was to
call anything mine!
ALEXANDER HAMILTON ^
BY
Frederic Harrison
In the problem presented in reviewing a book, likewise, it is unity
of impression that is sought, rather than a definite logical unity of the
thought. The reviewer aims rather to record his impression than to
prove a case. To us Americans, Mr. Harrison's review of Mr. Oliver's
study of Hamilton is interesting as enabling us to see a national figure
through foreign eyes. For his English readers, Mr. Harrison starts witl^'
discussion of the need for such a work. Then a paragraph dealing
with previous writers" on Hamilton. Two paragraphs follow criticizing
the method of presentation chosen by Mr. Oliver One paragraph
summarizes Hamilton's renown. And the final paragraph denies the
application of one of his principles to the British Empire. The English
reader must have finished the review with the impression that Mr. Oliver's
book was an adequate and suggestive treatment of a character well worth
the knowing. And that is the impression that Mr. Harrison wished to
convey. _ — . '
An English study of Alexander Hamilton; in the domain
of thought the main Founder pf the. United States as a
cohesive Commonwealth, was urgently .needed. His
was one of the finest minds of the eighteenth century.
For more than a century the great State.ne did' so much to
create has been broadening in the lines ^'hich he traced
for it, and to the ends which 'his genius foresaw more
truly than all his colleagues. His hurried political pam-
phlets, which brought order out of chaos at the close of
1 From "Memories and Thoughts," by permission of The Macmillan
Co.
47 •
48 MODERN ESSAYS
the War of Independence, have taken their place amongst
the permanent classics of political science. And yet few
Englishmen have ever opened the Federalist; and many
well-read students of history, who know all about his
personal scandals and his tragic end, have no very definite
convictions as to the share in forming the United States,
due to Washington, to Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and
to Hamilton. As philosopher, as publicist, as creative
genius, Hamilton was far the most important. And it
was indeed time that English readers should have the
story told them from the English point of view. His own
son. Senator Cabot Lodge, and other American writers have
amply done him justice. But one fears that standard
American works are not assiduously studied in England.
Mr. Oliver's work, which is not a biography, but "an
essay on American Union," adequately supplies a real
want in political history.
Sir Henry Maine, in his work on Popular Government,
1885, devoted the fourth essay to the Constitution of
the United States, which he truly called "much the most
important political instrument of modern times." And
throughout this fourth essay Sir Henry does ample justice
to the sagacity and foresight of Hamilton. He quotes
Chancellor Kent, who compares the Federalist (mainly
written by Hamilton) with Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavel,
Montesquieu, Milton, Locke, and Burke ; and Maine
declares that such praise is not too high. Talleyrand, a
diplomatist and a cynic, spoke of Hamilton with en-
thusiasm, and Guizot praised his political writings as of
consummate wisdom and practical sagacity. Mr. Bryce,
in his great work on The American Commonwealth, does
full justice to Hamilton. Sir George Trevelyan, in his
American Revolution, calls Hamilton "the most brilliant
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 49
and most tragic figure in all the historical gallery of
American statesmen." In the new Cambridge Modern
History, vol. vii., Professor Bigelow truly describes
Hamilton as "the master spirit of the Convention which
framed the Constitution of the United States." "A
nation was to be created and established, created of jarring
commonwealths and established on the highest level of
right." The accomplishment of this stupendous task by
the dominant character of George Washington and the
piercing genius of Alexander Hamilton places both amongst
the great creative statesmen of the world.
Mr. Oliver's book does not profess to be a history or a
biography, but "merely an essay on the character and
achievements of a man who was the chief figure in a series
of striking events." This is perhaps rather too modest a
claim. For the years from 1780 to 1796 — the years
when Hamilton first contributed to the task of practical
statesmanship down to his drafting Washington's "Fare-
well Address" — the history of the War and of the Settle-
ment during the two Presidencies of Washington is quite
adequately sketched. And as to a biography of Hamilton,
a living portrait of the man himself is vigorously drawn
in the midst of the historical and political chapters. It
is quite true that Hamilton and the circumstances of his
career are by no means the exclusive subject. Washing-
ton, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, Burr, and other
prominent politicians have sections of the book to them-
selves. And the aims and principles of the various
parties — Federalists, Democrats, State Rights, Republi-
cans, Patriots, Neutralists — so obscure to us at home,
are made clear as the story moves.
This is no doubt the true, perhaps the necessary way of
recounting the life-work of Hamilton. He was so closely
E
50 MODERN ESSAYS
associated with every phase of the American movement
for the twenty years after the virtual close of the war at
Yorktown, in 1781, that the life of Hamilton is hardly
intelligible unless we read it as part of the history of his
country. And his relations with his colleagues in govern-
ment, and with his opponents, rivals, and enemies in con-
troversy and intrigue, are so close and so complex that no
true portrait of Hamilton is complete till we have sketches
of his contemporaries. On the whole, Mr. Oliver has set
Alexander Hamilton in his true place, as next to Washing-
ton, the leading founder of the United States — the in-
tellectual creator of the great Commonwealth of which
George Washington was the typical father and the moral
hero.
"* Hamilton is the American Burke in his union of literary
power with political science. ^ If he falls short of Burke
in the majesty of speech and the splendour of many-
sided gifts, he was never hurried into the frantic passions
and fatal blunders which finally ruined Burke's influence
over his age. Hamilton at times exaggerated the dangers
he foresaw, was too pessimist and even unjust to the fail-
ings he condemned. But on the whole he made no great
mistake, and all those ideas for which he struggled with
such tenacity and earnestness have in the course of ages
come to a triumphant issue. Hamilton, too, reminds us
of Burke in the sadness of his personal history, in the
poignant disappointments of his career, and in the want
of full recognition of his supreme greatness in his lifetime.
Colleagues whom we now see to have been his inferiors,
both morally and intellectually, men representing lower
ideals, came to the first place in the State he had created,
a seat to which it was quite impossible that he could have
been chosen. Even in America Hamilton has hardly
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 51
been judged with full honour. He was too conservative,
too anti-democratic, of too philosophic a temperament,
too much the idealist, and too little the demagogue ever
to attain the popularity which wins the votes of a vast
majority.
The book has a moral — somewhat startling, and at the
present moment charged with lively interest. The con-
cluding book is occupied with general reflections upon
Nationality, Empire, Union, and Sovereignty ; and the
problem of welding the thirteen American States into a
single Commonwealth is applied to the present-day
problem of reconciling the British Constitution with
our transmarine Empire. Mr. Oliver, if I understand him
aright, seems afraid that the British Empire is held together
by bonds too loose and undefined, and would urge on it
the Hamiltonian doctrine of central Sovereignty and res-
olute Union. He quotes Washington's maxim: "In-
fluence is not government." He says the tie of affec-
tion or kinship is not union. He seems, like Hobbes and
Austin, to ask for force as the basis of true union and
government. Why, the self-governing Colonies would
fly into fifty bits at the mere sound of such a thing. The
American Civil War of 1863 would be a flea-bite compared
to this. For my part, I quite agree with Washington
that "influence is not government," and with Mr. Oliver
that sentimental ties are not Union. But the casual con-
glomeration called the British Empire has nothing else
to rest on, and the least attempt to bind it with closer
ties would mean immediate and final disruption.
SALAD 1
BY
Charles Sears Baldwin
Such an essay as the following by Professor Baldwin differs from the
preceding by Mr. Birrell in that, although not overtly expressed, there is
one dominating thought implied, namely that salad is excellent. On
the face of it, this thought is neither profound, nor capable of elaborate
proof. Naturally it is a question of the individual taste. Therefore
Professor Baldwin is artistically correct in not stressing any logical
connection between his paragraphs. Notice, however, how very careful
is the author to preserve the apparent sequence of thought, by closing
his paragraphs with his strongest sentence. He then in the first sentence
of the succeeding paragraph repeats the final idea of the preceding.
By this device — one to be recommended to all young writers — his
thought apparently moves to a definite conclusion. And as the essay
by its nature is a much-ado-about-nothing, in the very forms of his
sentences is an intentionally pedantic cast to give a half humorous
effect. The more this essay is studied, the greater will be the appre-
ciation of the author's literary art.
A SOUP garden is a phrase of the French, too nice for
America. Our gardens are indiscriminate ; enough distinc-
tion merely to have a garden. And indeed, for an Ameri-
can moved to express a further distinction, to assert him-
self against provincialism, better than a soup garden
would be a salad garden. To soup, though it be accepted
in too narrow a sense, America is largely converted. Even
mountain taverns dispense a diluted tomato sauce that
^ From "Essays out of Hours," by permission of the publishers,
Longmans, Green, & Co.
52
SALAD 53
often has merit of heat. But salad is not even known
except to the unrepresentative few.
That salad is gone but a little way, and is still a singu-
larity, appears when American women that read book
reviews are found to know it only as involving fowl or
lobster, and to buy dressing even for these, as for their
boots, by the bottle. She shall not learn the rudiments
of this craft who will not forget the grosser mayonnaise.
And since, under pressure of convention, as for what is
by barbarism called a tea, she will hanker back after the
fleshpots, it is oftener he that learns. In matters of food,
what moves through man alone stems a tide of distrust
slowly.
Nor is this without its worth in supporting the head of
the table ; but let the head keep a manly humility. Let
that man alone turn to mayonnaise who has labored
seven years without mustard, and used eggs as they were
golden. It is a woman's dressing, at best offering satiety,
like the sugarings of the sex ; at less than best belying
the name of salad by making what it touches less savory.
The elements of all salads are oil and vinegar, with salt
and pepper. Until these are his familiars, let no man try
beyond. That the oil be French or Italian marks the
fixing of personality. The vinegar may well add tarragon,
the pepper be from Nepaul. But none of these is vital ;
the proportion of each to the material is all, and the
happy hand.
The material is every green herb for the service of man.
Fruit salads, though they open many inventions, are but
toys to a serious return to nature. First, let him explore
all the greens of a large market, and combine boldly
among the vegetables carried cold from yesterday's table.
Lettuce, though alone among herbs it has vogue, is but
54 MODERN ESSAYS
ancillary. To use no other is like knowing wine only as
champagne. In fact, among herbs lettuce has least
character. Therefore, after the delicacy of its first fresh-
ness, its use is in conjunction. But water cress and celery
should be either very thick in the bowl or very sparse;
for they pungently put down other savors. Beyond this
frontier is a world without rule, where each man may be a
discoverer and a benefactor, if he cast away prejudice.
Prejudice cannot consist with salad. They that abjure
cabbage are proud stomachs, and they that fear onion
have given their souls to their neighbors. Salad without
onion is like blank verse ; it needs the master hand to
prevail without the rhyme. Unprejudiced, he that finds
not a salad for every day, or fails of happy solutions,
is either improvident or dull.
More practical minds will see thrift as well as variety in
the dispossession of flesh meat. Food without fire,
pleasant ministry to digestion in despite of the cook, may
yet win the mistress. Meantime our hope is for the
master. By a knack at the bowl, be it but to use an old
savory spoon, or to slice his radishes, or to insinuate
garlic or cheese, he keeps his state. His digestion is not
arrested by fear ; his conversation is secure. Unless he
be morose, he may reign at his table.
WORDS THAT LAUGH AND CRYi
BY
Charles Anderson Dana
During the period after the Civil War the New York Sun became one
of the most influential newspapers of the country and it was certainly
one of the best written. This was due largely to the power of its great
editor, Charles A. Dana. Although himself a college man, a man of wide
cultivation and of much reading, he realized the necessity of precision
and conciseness in journalistic editorials. His style is celebrated for
its simplicity and for its effect. There is never any doubt as to the mean-
ing. In the following editorial, March 16, 1890, he states vividly the
secret of good writing, namely, feel what you write. The first paragraph
states concretely the fact that combinations of written words can convey
feeling. Two phases of this thought are expanded in two short paragraphs.
The fourth, and final, paragraph emphasizes the thought that the feeling
must first be in the writer, returning in the last sentence to the thought
of the first paragraph. There is no proof, nor any reasoned develop-
ment of the thought. Nor is any necessary. It is a model for the sim-
plest form of exposition.
. ' 'Did it ever strike you that there was anything queer
about the capacity of written words to absorb and convey
feehngs ! Taken separately they are mere symbols with
no more feeling to them than so many bricks, but string
them along in a row under certain mysterious conditions
and you find yourself laughing or crying as your eye runs
over them. That words should convey mere ideas is not
1 From "Casual Essays of the Sun," by permission of the New York
Sun.
55
56 MODERN ESSAYS
so remarkable. "The boy is fat," " the cat has nine tails,"
are statements that seem obviously enough within the
power of written language. But it is different with feel-
ings. They are no more visible in the symbols that hold
them than electricity is visible on the wire ; and yet there
they are, always ready to respond when the right test
jsapplied by the right person. That spoken words,
charged with human tones and lighted by human eyes,
should carry feelings, is not so astonishing. The magnetic
sympathy of the orator one understands ; he might affect
his audience, possibly, if he spoke in a language they did
not know. But written words : How can they d o itj j
Suppose, for example, that you possess remarkable
facility in grouping language, and that you have strong
feelings upon some subject, which finally you determine
to commit to paper. Your pen runs along, the words
present themselves, or are dragged out, and fall into
their places. You are a gpod deal moved ; here you
chuckle to yourself, and half a dozen of lines further down
a lump comes into your throat, and perhaps you have to
wipe your eyes. You finish, and the copy goes to the
printer. When it gets into print a reader sees it. His
eye runs along the lines and down the page until it comes
to the place where you chuckled as you wrote ; then he
smiles, and six lines below he has to swallow several times
and snufiie and wink to restrain an exhibition of weakness.
And then some one else comes along who is not so good a
word juggler as you are, or who has no feelings, and
swaps the words about a little, and twists the sentences ;
and behold the spell is gone, and you have left a parcel
of written language duly charged with facts, but without
"^ single feeling.
y'l No one can juggle with words with any degree of success
WORDS THAT LAUGH AND CRY 57
without getting a vast respect for their independent
abiHty. They will catch the best idea a man ever had as
it flashes through his brain, and hold on to it, to surprise
him with it long after, and make him wonder that he was
ever man enough to have such an idea^ And often.they
will catch an idea on its way from tlie braijattS the pen
point, turn, twist, and improve on it as the eye winks,
and in an instant there they are, strung hand in hand
across the page and grinning back at the writer : "This is
our 'd^a, old man; not yours !"
. , for poetry, every word that expects to earn its salt
111 poetry should have a head and a pair of legs of its own,
to go and find its place, carrying another word, if neces-
sary, on its back. The most that should be expected of
any competent poet in regular practice is to serve a general
summons and notice of action on the language. If the
words won't do the rest for him it indicates that he is
/ ""(^uLpf sympathy with his tool
[ jOfE^.Tyou don't find feelings in written words unless
^-^here were feelings in the man who used them/ With all
their apparent independence they seem to be little vessels
that hold in some puzzling fashion exactly what is put
into them. You can put tears into them, as though they
were so many little buckets ; and you can hang smiles
along them, like Monday's clothes on the line, or you can
starch them with facts and stand them up like a picket
fence ; but you won't get the tears out unless you first
put them in. Art won't put them ther^ It is like the
faculty of getting the quality of interest into pictures. If
the quality exists in the artist's mind he is likely to find
means to get it into his pictures, but if it isn't in the man
no technical skill will supply it./|So, if the feelings are
in the writer and he knows his business, they will get
58 MODERN ESSAYS
into the words; but they must be in him firs^ "It isn't
the way the words are strung together that makes Lin-
coln's Gettysburg speech immortal, but the feelings that
were in the ma,^4(jBut how do such little, plain words
manage to keep their grip on such feelings? That is
the miracle^ '
die
NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AS MOULDING
PUBLIC OPINION 1
BY
James Bryce
" The noticeable feature in the following essay by Ambassador Bryce
is that each paragraph is an independent little essay by itself. The
thought of the paragraph normally is expressed in the first sentence;
for example, "All the world knows that they are a humorous people."
This thought, then, is repeated, expanded, and illustrated in the following
sentences. Consequently the total thought of the essay may be gained
by summarising the first sentences of all the paragraphs ; the Americans
are (a) good-natured, (b) humorous, (c) hopeful, (d) democratic, etc.
Obviously, the value of such an extreme form of the catalogue structure
depends upon the completeness of the catalogue. The interest consists
first in the personal element, what such a man as Ambassador Bryce,
one of the most acute thinkers of living Englishmen, predicates of us
Americans ; secondly, in the interest of the individual paragraphs, in
the illustrations, and in the anecdotes. It is, therefore, both an easy
and dangerous form for the beginner to attempt. For, although he can
without difficulty construct his essay, yet, having neither the analytic
power nor the background of Ambassador Bryce, he will fail to interest
the reader.
As the public opinion of a people is even more directly
than its political institutions the reflection and expression
of its character, we may begin the analysis of opinion in
America by noting soine of those general features of
national character which give tone and colour to the
1 Chapter 80 of "The American Commonwealth," 1911. Reprinted
by permission of The Macmillan Co.
59
60 MODERN ESSAYS
people's thoughts and feelings on politics. There are, of
course, varieties proper to different classes, and to different
parts of the vast territory of the Union ; but it is well to
consider first such characteristics as belong to the nation
as a whole, and afterwards to examine the various classes
and districts of the country. And when I speak of the
nation, I mean the native Americans. What follows is
not applicable to the recent immigrants from Europe, and,
of course, even less applicable to the Southern negroes.
The Americans are a good-natured people, l^indly,
helpful to one another, disposed to take a charitable view
even of wrongdoers. Their ajiger sometimes flames up,
but the fire is soon extinct. Nowhere is cruelty more
abhorred. Even a mob lynching a horse thief in the West
has consideration for the criminal, and will give him a good
drink of whisky before he is strung up. Cruelty to slaves
was unusual while slavery lasted, the best proof of which
is the quietness of the slaves during the war when all the
men and many of the boys of the South were serving in
the Confederate armies. As everybody knows, juries
are more lenient to offences of all kinds but one, offences
against women, than they are anywhere in Europe. The
Southern "rebels" were soon forgiven; and though civil
wars are proverbially bitter, there have been few struggles
in which the combatants did so many little friendly acts
for one another, few in which even the vanquished have
so quickly buried their resentments. It is true that
newspapers and public speakers say hard things of their
oy)ponents ; but this is a part of the game, and is besides
a way of relieving their feelings : the bark is sometimes
the louder in order that a bite may not follow. Vindictive-
ness shown by a public man excites general disapproval,
and the maxim of letting bygones be bygones is pushed so
)^^R:
NATION^ UHARACTERISTICS 61
far that an offender's misdeeds are often forgotten when
they ought to be remembered against him.
All the world knows that they are a humorous people.
They are as conspicuously the purveyors of humour to
the nineteenth century as the French were the purveyors
of wit to the eighteenth. Nor is this sense of the ludicrous
side of things confined to a few brilliant writers. It is
diffused among the whole people ; it colours their ordinary
life, and gives to their talk that distinctively new flavour
which a European palate enjoys. Their capacity for en-
joying a joke against themselves was oddly illustrated at
the outset of the Civil War, a time of stern excitement,
by the merriment which arose over the hasty retreat of
the Federal troops at the battle of Bull Run. When
William M. Tweed was ruling and robbing New York,
and had set on the bench men who were openly prostitut-
ing justice, the citizens found the situation so amusing
that they almost forgot to be angry. Much of President
Lincoln's popularity, and much also of the gift he showed
for restoring confidence to the North at the darkest
moments of the war, was due to the humorous way he
used to turn things, conveying the impression of not being
himself uneasy, even when he was most so.
That indulgent view of mankind which I have already
mentioned, a view odd in a people whose ancestors were
penetrated with the belief in original sin, is strengthened
by this wish to get amusement out of everything. The
want of seriousness which it produces may be more ap-
parent than real. Yet it has its significance; for people
become affected by the language they use, as we see men
grow into cynics when they have acquired the habit of
talking cynicism for the sake of effect.
They are a hopeful people. Whether or no they are
62 MODERN ESSAYS
right in calling themselves a new people, they certainly
seem to feel in their veins the bounding pulse of youth.
They see a long vista of years stretching out before them,
in which they will have time enough to cure all their
faults, to overcome all the obstacles that block their
path. They look at their enormous territory with its
still only half-explored sources of wealth, they reckon up
the growth of their population and their products, they
contrast the comfort and intelligence of their labouring
classes with the condition of the masses in the Old World.
They remember the dangers that so long threatened the
Union from the slave power, and the rebellion it raised, and
see peace and harmony now restored, the South more
prosperous and contented than at any previous epoch,
perfect good feeling between all sections of the country.
It is natural for them to believe in their star. And this
sanguine temper makes them tolerant of evils which they
regard as transitory, removable as soon as time can be
found to root them up.
They have unbounded faith in what they call the People
and in a democratic system of government. The great
States of the European continent are distracted by the
contests of Republicans and Monarchists, and of rich and
poor, — contests which go down to the foundations of
government, and in France are further embittered by
religious passions. Even in England the ancient Consti-
tution is always under repair, and while some think it
is being ruined by changes, others hold that further
changes are needed to make it tolerable. No such ques-
tions trouble native American minds, for nearly everybody
believes, and everybody declares, that the frame of govern-
ment is in its main lines so excellent that such reforms as
seem called for need not touch those lines, but are required
NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 63
only to protect the Constitution from being perverted
by the parties. Hence a further confidence that the people
are sure to decide right in the long run, a confidence in-
evitable and essential in a government which refers every
question to the arbitrament of numbers. There have,
of course, been instances where the once insignificant
minority proved to have been wiser than the majority
of the moment. Such was eminently the case in the
great slavery struggle. But here the minority pre-
vailed by growing into a majority as events developed the
real issues, so that this also has been deemed a ground for
holding that all minorities which have right on their side
will bring round their antagonists, and in the long run
win by voting power. If you ask an intelligent citizen
why he so holds, he will answer that truth and justice
are sure to make their way into the minds and consciences
of the majority. This is deemed an axiom, and the more
readily so deemed because truth is identified with com-
mon sense, the quality which the average citizen is most
confidently proud of possessing,-
This feeling shades off into another, externally like it,
but at bottom distinct — the feeling not only that the
majority, be it right or wrong, will and must prevail, but
that its being the majority proves it to be right. This
idea, which appears in the guise sometimes of piety and
sometimes of fatalism, seems to be no contemptible factor
in the present character of the people. It will be more
fully dealt with in a later chapter.
The native Americans are an educated people, compared
with the whole mass of the population in any European
country except Switzerland, parts of Germany, Norway,
Iceland, and Scotland ; that is to say, the average of knowl-
edge is higher, the habit of reading and thinking more
64 MODERN ESSAYS
generally diffused, than in any other country. They know
the Constitution of their own country, they follow public
affairs, they join in local government and learn from it
how government must be carried on, and in particular
how discussion must be conducted in meetings, and its
results tested at elections. The Town Meeting was
for New England the most perfect school of self-
government in any modern country. In villages, men
used to exercise their minds on theological questions,
debating points of Christian doctrine with no small acute-
ness. Women in particular, pick up at the public schools
and from the popular magazines far more miscellaneous
information than the women of any European country
possess, and this naturally tells on the intelligence of
the men. Almost everywhere one finds women's clubs in
which literary, artistic, and social questions are discussed,
and to which men of mark are brought to deliver lectures.
That the education of the masses is nevertheless a
superficial education goes without saying. It is sufficient
to enable them to think they know something about the
great problems of politics : insufficient to show them how
little they know. The public elementary school gives
everybody the key to knowledge in making reading and
writing familiar, but it has not time to teach him how to
use the key, whose use is in fact, by the pressure of daily
work, almost confined to the newspaper and the magazine.
So we may say that if the political education of the average
American voter be compared with that of the average
voter in Europe, it stands high ; but if it be compared with
the functions which the theory of the American govern-
ment lays on him, which its spirit implies, which the
methods of its party organization assume, its inadequacy
is manifest. This observation, however, is not so much a
NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 65
reproach to the schools, which generally do what English
schools omit — instruct the child in the principles of the
Constitution — as a tribute to the height of the ideal
which the American conception of popular rule sets up.
For the functions of the citizen are not, as has hitherto
been the case in Europe, confined to the choosing of legis-
lators, who are then left to settle issues of policy and select
executive rulers. The American citizen is one of the
governors of the Republic. Issues are decided and rulers
selected by the direct popular vote. Elections are so
frequent that to do his duty at them a citizen ought to
be constantly watching public affairs with a full compre-
hension of the principles involved in them, and a judgment
of the candidates derived from a criticism of their argu-
ments as well as a recollection of their past careers. The
instruction received in the common schools and from the
newspapers, and supposed to be developed by the practice
of primaries and conventions, while it makes the voter
deem himself capable of governing, does not fit him to
weigl^ the real merits of statesmen, to discern the true
grouiids on which questions ought to be decided, to note
the /drift of events and discover the direction in which
parties are behig carried. He is like a sailor who knows
the spars and ropes of the ship and is expert in working
her, but is ignorant of geography and navigation ; who can
perceive that some of the officers are smart and others dull,
but cannot judge which of them is qualified to use the
sextant or will best keep his head during a hurricane.
They are a moral and well-conducted people. Setting
aside the colluvies gentium, which one finds in Western
mining camps, now largely filled by recent immigrants,
and which popular literature has presented to Europeans
as far larger than it really is, setting aside also the rabble
66 MODERN ESSAYS
of a few great cities and the negroes of the South, the
average of temperance, chastity, truthfuhiess, and general -
probity is somewhat higher than in any of the great
nations of Europe. The instincts of the native farmer
or artisan are almost invariably kindly and charitable.
He respects the law ; he is deferential to women and
indulgent to children ; he attaches an almost excessive
value to the possession of a genial manner and the observ-
ance of domestic duties.
They are also — and here again I mean the people of
native American stock, especially in the Eastern and
Middle States — on the whole, a religious people. It is not
merely that they respect religion and its ministers, for
that one might say of Russians or Sicilians, not merely
that they are assiduous church-goers and Sunday-school
teachers, but that they have an intelligent interest in the
form of faith they profess, are pious without supersti-
tion, and zealous without bigotry. The importance which
some still, though all much less than formerly, attach
to dogmatic propositions, does not prevent them from
feeling the moral side of their theology. Christianity
influences conduct, not indeed half as much as in theory
it ought, but probably more than it does in any other
modern country, and far more than it did in the so-
called ages of faith.
Nor do their moral and religious impulses remain in the
soft haze of self-complacent sentiment. The desire to
expunge or cure the visible evils of the world is strong.
Nowhere are so many philanthropic and reformatory
agencies at work. Zeal outruns discretion, outruns the
possibilities of the case, in not a few of the efforts made,
as well by legislation as by voluntary action, to suppress
vice, to prevent intemperance, to purify popular literature.
NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 67
Religion apart, they are an unreverential people. I
do not mean irreverent, — far from it ; nor do I mean
that they have not a great capacity for hero-worship,
as they have many a time shown. I mean that they are
little disposed, especially in public questions — political,
economical, or social — to defer to the opinions of those
who are wiser or better instructed than themselves.
Everything tends to make the individual independent
and self-reliant. He goes early into the world ; he is left
to make his way alone ; he tries one occupation after
another, if the first or second venture does not prosper;
he gets to think that each man is his own best helper and
adviser. Thus he is led, I will not say to form his own
opinions, for few are those who do that, but to fancy
that he has formed them, and to feel little need of aid
from others towards correcting them. There is, there-
fore, less disposition than in Europe to expect light
and leading on public affairs from speakers or writers.
Oratory is not directed towards instruction, but towards
stimulation. Special knowledge, which commands def-
erence in applied science or in finance, does not command
it in politics, because that is not deemed a special subject,
but one within the comprehension of every practical
man. Politics is, to be sure, a profession, and so far might
seem to need professional aptitudes. But the professional
politician is not the man who has studied statesmanship,
but the man who has practised the art of running conven-
tions, and winning elections.
Even that strong point of America, the completeness
and highly popular character of local government, con-
tributes to lower the standard of attainment expected in
a public man, because the citizens judge of all politics
by the politics they see first and know best, — those of
68 MODERN ESSAYS
their township or city, — and fancy that he who is fit
to be selectman, or county commissioner, or alderman, is
fit to sit in the great council of the nation. Like the
shepherd in Virgil, they think the only difference between
their town and Rome is in its size, and believe that what
does for Lafayetteville will do well enough for Washing-
ton. Hence when a man of statesmanlike gifts appears,
he has little encouragement to take a high and statesman-
like tone, for his words do not necessarily receive weight
from his position. He fears to be instructive or hortatory,
lest such an attitude should expose him to ridicule ; and
in America ridicule is a terrible power. Nothing escapes
it. Few have the courage to face it. In the indulgence
of it even this humane race can be unfeeling.
They are a busy people. I have already observed that
the leisured class is relatively small, is in fact confined
to a few Eastern cities. The citizen has little time to
think about political problems. Engrossing all the
working hours, his avocation leaves him only stray
moments for this fundamental duty. It is true that he
admits his responsibilities, considers himself a member
of a party, takes some interest in current events. But
although he would reject the idea that his thinking should
be done for him, he has not leisure to do it for himself,
and must practically lean upon and follow his party.
It astonished me in 1870 and 1881 to find how small
a part politics played in conversation among the best
educated classes and generally in the cities. Since 1896
there has been a livelier and more constant interest in
public affairs ; yet even now business matters so occupy
the mind of the financial and commercial classes, and
athletic competitions the minds of the uneducated classes
and of the younger sort in all classes, that political ques-
NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 69
tions are apt, except at critical moments, to fall into the
background.^ In a presidential year, and especially during
the months of a presidential campaign, there is, of course,
abundance of private talk, as well as of public speaking,
but even then the issues raised are largely personal rather
than political in the European sense. But at other times
the visitor is apt to feel — more, I think, than he feels
anywhere in Britain — that his host has been heavily
pressed by his own business concerns during the day, and
that when the hour of relaxation arrives he gladly turns
to lighter and more agreeable topics than the state of the
nation. This remark is less applicable to the dwellers
in villages. There is plenty of political chat round the
store at the cross roads, ahd though it is rather in the
nature of gossip than of debate, it seems, along with the
practice of local government, to sustain the interest of
ordinary folk in public affairs.^
The want of serious and sustained thinking is not con-
fined to politics. One feels it even more as regards
economical and social questions. To it must be ascribed
the vitality of certain prejudices and fallacies which
could scarcely survive the continuous application of such
^ The increased space given to athletics and games of all sorts in the
newspapers marks a change in public taste no less striking here than
it is in Britain, As it is equally striking in the British Colonies, one
may take it as a feature common to the modern English-speaking world,
and to that world only, for it is scarcely discernible in Continental
Europe.
^ The European country where the common people best understand
politics is Switzerland. That where they talk most about politics is,
I think, Greece. I remember, for instance, in crossing the channel
which divides Cephalonia from Ithaca, to have heard the boatmen dis-
cuss a recent ministerial crisis at Athens, during the whole voyage, with
the liveliest interest and apparently some knowledge.
70 MODERN ESSAYS
vigorous minds as one finds among the Americans. Their
quick perceptions serve them so well in business and in
the ordinary affairs of private life that they do not feel
the need for minute investigation and patient reflection
on the underlying principles of things. They are apt to
ignore difficulties, and when they can no longer ignore
them, they will evade them rather than lay siege to them
according to the rules of art. The sense that there is no
time to spare haunts an American^even when he might
find the time, and would do best for himself by finding it.
Some one will say that an aversion to steady thinking
belongs to the average man everywhere. True. But
less is expected from the average man in other countries
than from a people who have carried the doctrine of pop-
ular sovereignty further than it has ever been carried be-
fore. They are tried by the standard which the theory
of their government assumes. In other countries states-
men or philosophers do, and are expected to do, the solid
thinking for the bulk of the people. Here the people are
supposed to do it for themselves. To say that they do it
imperfectly is not to deny them the credit of doing it better
than a European philosopher might have predicted.
They are a commercial people, whose point of view is
primarily that of persons accustomed to reckon profit
and loss. Their impulse is to apply a direct practical test
to men and measures, to assume that the men who have
got on fastest are the smartest men, and that a scheme
which seems to pay well deserves to be supported. Ab-
stract reasonings they dislike, subtle reasonings they
suspect ; they accept nothing as practical which is not
plain, downright, apprehensible by an ordinary under-
standing. Although open-minded, so far as willingness
to listen goes, they are hard to convince, because they
NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 71
have really made up their minds on most subjects, having
adopted the prevailing notions of their locality or party
as truths due to their own reflection.
It may seem a contradiction to remark that with this
shrewdness and the sort of h^ardness it produces, they
are nevertheless an impressionable people. Yet this is
true. It is not their intellect, however, that is impression-
able, but their imagination and emotions, which respond
in unexpected ways to appeals made on behalf of a cause
which seems to have about it something noble or pathetic.
They are capable of an ideality surpassing that of English-
men or Frenchmen.
They are an unsettled people. In no State of the Union
is tlie-hulk of the population so fixed in its residence as
everywhere in Europe ; in some it is almost nomadic.
Except in the more stagnant parts of the South,
nobody feels rooted to the soil. Here to-day and gone
to-morrow, he cannot readily contract habits of trustful
dependence on his neighbours. Community of interest,
or of belief in such a cause as temperance, or protection
for native industry, unites him for a time with others
similarly minded, but congenial spirits seldom live long
enough together to form a school or type of local opinion
which develops strength and becomes a proselytizing force.
Perhaps this tends to prevent the growth of variety in
opinion. When a man arises with some power of original
thought in politics, he is feeble if isolated, and is depressed
by his insignificance, whereas if he grows up in favourable
soil with sympathetic minds around him, whom he can
in prolonged intercourse permeate with his ideas, he learns
to speak with confidence and soars on the wings of his
disciples. One who considers the variety of conditions
under which men live in America may certainly find
72 MODERN ESSAYS
ground for surprise that there should be so few independent
schools of opinion.
But even while an unsettled, they are nevertheless an
associative, because a sympathetic people. Although
the atoms are in constant motion, they have a strong
attraction for one another. Each man catches his neigh-
bour's sentiment more quickly and easily than happens
with the English. That sort of reserve and isolation, that
tendency rather to repel than to invite confidence, which
foreigners attribute to the Englishman, though it belongs
rather to the upper and middle class than to the nation
generally, is, though not absent, yet less marked in
America.^ It seems to be one of the notes of difference
between the two branches of the race. In the United
States, since each man likes to feel that his ideas raise
in other minds the same emotions as in his own, a senti-
ment or impulse is rapidly propagated and quickly con-
scious of its strength. Add to this the aptitude for or-
ganization which their history and institutions have
educed, and one sees how the tendency to form and the
talent to work combinations for a political or any other
object has become one of the great features of the country.
Hence, too, the immense strength of party. It rests not
only on interest and habit and the sense of its value as a
means of working the government, but also on the sym-
pathetic element and instinct of combination ingrained
in the national character.
' I do not mean that Americans are more apt to unbosom themselves
to strangers, but that they have rather more adaptiveness than the Eng-
lish, and are less disposed to stand alone and care nothing for the opinion
of others. It is worth noticing that Americans travelling abroad seem
to get more easily into touch with the inhabitants of the country than
the English do ; nor have they the English habit of calling those inhab-
itants — Frenchmen, foi instance, or Germans — "the natives."
NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 73
They are a changeful people. Not fickle, for they
are if anything too tenacious of ideas once adopted, too
fast bound by party tics, too willing to pardon the errors
of a cherished leader. But they have what chemists call
low specific heat ; they grow warm suddenly and cool as
suddenly ; they are liable to swift and vehement outbursts
of feeling which rush like wildfire across the country,
gaining glow, like the wheel of a railway car, by the
accelerated motion. The very similarity of ideas and
equality of conditions which makes them hard to convince
at first makes a conviction once implanted run its course
the more triumphantly. They seem all to take flame
at once, because wdiat has told upon one, has told in the
same way upon all the rest, and the obstructing and
separating barriers which exist in Europe scarcely exist
here. Nowhere is the saying so appKcable that nothing
succeeds like success. The n&,tive American or so-called
Know-nothing party had in two years from its foundation
become a tremendous force, running, and seeming for a
time likely to carry, its own presidential candidate. In
three years more it was dead without hope of revival.
Now and then, as for instance in the elections of 1874-75,
and again in those of 1890, there comes a rush of feeling
so sudden and tremendous, that the name of Tidal Wave
has been invented to describe it.
After this it may seem a paradox to add that the Ameri-
cans are a conservative people. Yet any one who ob- a
serves the power of habit among them, the tenacity with "
which old institutions and usages, legal and theological
formulas, have been clung to, will admit the fact.
Moreover, prosperity helps to make them conservative.
They are satisfied with the world they live in, for they
have found it a good world, in which th^ have grown rich
74 MODERN ESSAYS
and can sit under their own vine and fig tree, none making
them afraid. They are proud of their history and of
their Constitution, which has come out of the furnace of
civil war with scarcely the smell of fire upon it. It is
little to say that they do not seek change for the sake
of change, because the nations that do this exist only in
the fancy of alarmist philosophers. There are nations,
however, whose impatience of existing evils, or whose
proneness to be allured by visions of a brighter future,
makes them under-estimate the risk of change, nations that
will pull up the plant to see whether it has begun to strike
root. This is not the way of the Americans. They are
no doubt ready to listen to suggestions from any quarter.
They do not consider that an institution is justified by
its existence, but admit everything to be matter for
criticism. Their keenly competitive spirit and pride in
their own ingenuity have made them quicker than any
other people to adopt and adapt inventions : telephones
were in use in every little town over the West, while in
the city of London men were just beginning to wonder
whether they could be made to pay. The Americans
have doubtless of late years become, especially in the
West, an experimental people, so far as politics and social
legislation are concerned. Yet there is also a sense in
which they are at bottom a conservative people, in virtue
both of the deep instincts of their race and of that
practical shrewdness which recognizes the value of
permanence and solidity in institutions. They are con-
servative in their fundamental beliefs, in the structure
of their governments, in their social and domestic usages.
They are like a tree whose pendulous shoots quiver and
rustle with the lightest breeze, while its roots enfold the
rock with a grasp which storms cannot loosen.
AMERICAN MANNERS!
BY
Wu TiNGFANG
The following essay should be compared with the preceding one by
Lord Bryce, because of its similar structure, and the fact that the problem
is the same in each case — a sympathetic study of certain American
characteristics by a distinguished foreigner. In the first paragraph the
statement is made that Americans have been accused of bad manners ;
in the second, that Chinese manners have also been adversely criticized,
but for directly opposite reasons. This gives the key to the plan of
the whole essay, which in nearly every paragraph brings out some par-
ticular characteristic of American manners by contrast with the Chinese.
This contrast is shown by illustration and personal experience. Ameri-
can manners, the author concludes, are the result of two predominant
characteristics, a love of independence and equality, and an abhorrence
of waste of time. This is stated about the middle of the essay, and after
further elaboration, again at the close. Thus the form of the essay is a
catalogue, tied in the middle and at the end with the one unifying thought
which is deduced from the material given.
Much has been written and more said about American
manners, or rather the American lack of manners. Ameri-
cans have frequently been criticized for their bad breeding,
and many sarcastic references to American deportment
have been made in my presence. I have even been told,
I do not know how true it is, that European diplomats
1 From "America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat,"
by permission of the publishers, Frederick A. Stokes Co. and Mr.
William Morrow, literary representative of Dr. Wu Tingfang.
75
76 MODERN ESSAYS
dislike being stationed in America, because of their aver-
sion to the American way of doing things.
Much too has been written and said about Chinese
manners, not only by foreigners but also by Chinese.
One of the classics, which our youth have to know by
heart, is practically devoted entirely to manners. There
has also been much adverse criticism of our manners or
our excess of manners, though I have never heard that
any diplomats have, on this account, objected to being
sent to China. We Chinese are therefore in the same
boat as the Americans. In regard to manners neither of
us find much favor with foreigners, though for diametri-
cally opposite reasons : the Americans are accused of
observing too few formalities, and we of being too formal.
The Americans are direct and straightforward. They
will tell you to your face that they like you, and occasion-
ally they also have very little hesitation in telling you
that they do not like you. They say frankly just what
they think. It is immaterial to them that their remarks
are personal, complimentary or otherwise. I have had
members of my own family complimented on their good
looks as if they were children. In this respect Americans
differ greatly from the English. The English adhere with
meticulous care to the rule of avoiding everything personal.
They are very much afraid of rudeness on the one hand,
and of insincerity or flattery on the other Even in the
matter of such a harmless affair as a compliment to a
foreigner on his knowledge of English, they will precede
it with a request for pardon and speak in a half-apologetic
manner, as if complimenting were something personal.
The English and the Americans are closely related, they
have much in common, but they also differ widely, and
in nothing is the difference more conspicuous than in
AMERICAN MANNERS 77
their conduct. I have noticed curiously enough that
EngHsh Colonials, especially in such particulars as speech
and manners, follow their quondam sister colony, rather
than the mother country. And this, not only in Canada,
where the phenomenon might be explained by climatic,
geographic, and historic reasons, but also in such antipo-
dean places as Australia and South Africa, which are
so far away as to apparently have very little in common
either with America or with each other. Nevertheless,
whatever the reason, the transplanted Englishman,
whether in the arctics or the tropics, whether the Northern
or the Southern Hemisphere, seems to develop a type
quite different from the original stock, yet always resem-
bling his fellow emigrants.
The directness of Americans is seen not only in what
they say but in the way they say it. They come directly
to the point, without much preface or introduction,
much less is there any circumlocution or "beating about
the bush." When they come to see you they say their
say and then take their departure, moreover they say it
in the most terse, concise and unambiguous manner.
In this respect what a contrast they are to us ! We
always approach each other with preliminary greetings.
Then we talk of the weather, of politics or friends, of
anything, in fact, which is as far as possible from the
object of the visit. Only after this introduction do we
broach the subject uppermost in our minds, and through-
out the conversation polite courtesies are exchanged when-
ever the opportunity arises. These elaborate preludes and
interludes, may, to the strenuous ever-in-a-hurry American,
seem useless and superfluous, but they serve a good pur-
pose. Like the common courtesies and civilities of life
they pave the way for the speakers, especially if they
78 MODERN ESSAYS
are strangers ; they improve their tempers, and place
them generally on terms of mutual understanding. It is
said that some years ago a Foreign Consul in China,
having a serious complaint to make on behalf of his
national, called on the Taotai, the highest local authority
in the port. He found the Chinese official so genial and
polite that after half an hour's conversation, he advised
the complainant to settle the matter amicably without
troubling the Chinese officials about the matter. A
good deal may be said in behalf of both systems. The
American practice has at least the merit of saving time,
an all important object with the American people. When
we recall that this remarkable nation will spend millions of
dollars to build a tunnel under a river, or to shorten a
curve in a railroad, merely that they may save two or
three minutes, we are not surprised at the abruptness
of their speech. I, as a matter of fact, when thinking of
their time-saving and abrupt manner of address, have
been somewhat puzzled to account for that peculiar drawl
of theirs. Very slowly and deliberately they enunciate
each word and syllable with long-drawn emphasis, punc-
tuating their sentences with pauses, some short and some
long. It is almost an effort to follow a story of any
length — the beginning often becomes cold before the
end is reached. It seems to me that if Americans would
speed up their speech after the fashion of their English
cousins, who speak two or three times as quickly, they
would save many minutes every day, and would find the
habit not only more efficacious, but much more economical
than many of their time-saving machines and tunnels. I
offer this suggestion to the great American nation for what
it is worth, and I know they will receive it in the spirit in
which it is made, for they have the saving sense of humor.
AMERICAN MANNERS 79
Some people are ridiculously sensitive. Some years ago,
at a certain place, a big dinner was given in honor of a
notable who was passing through the district. A Chinese,
prominent in local affairs, who had received an invitation,
discovered that though he would sit among the honored
guests he would be placed below one or two whom he
thought he ought to be above, and who, he therefore con-
sidered, would be usurping his rightful position. In
disgust he refused to attend the dinner, which, excepting
for what he imagined was a breach of manners, he would
have been very pleased to have attended. Americans
are much more sensible. They are not a bit sensitive,
especially in small matters. Either they are broad-
minded enough to rise above unworthy trifles, or else
their good Americanism prevents their squabbling over
questions of precedence, at the dinner table or elsewhere.
Americans act up to their Declaration of Independence,
especially the principle it enunciates concerning the
equality of man. They lay so much importance on
this that they do not confine its application to legal rights,
buf extend it even to social intercourse. In fact, I think
this doctrine is the basis of the so-called American manners.
All men are deemed socially equal, whether as friend and
friend, as President and citizen, as employer and em-
ployee, as master and servant, or as parent and child.
Their relationship may be such that one is entitled to
demand, and the other to render, certain acts of obedience,
and a certain amount of respect, but outside that they are
on the same level. This is doubtless a rebellion against
all the social ideas and prejudices of the old world, but it is
perhaps only what might be looked for in a new country,
full of robust and ambitious manhood, disdainful of all
traditions which in the least savor of monarchy or hier-
80 MODERN ESSAYS
archy, and eager to blaze as new a path for itself in the
social as it has succeeded in accomplishing in the political
world. Combined with this is the American characteristic
of saving time. Time is precious to all of us, but to
Americans it is particularly so. We all wish to save time,
but the Americans care much more about it than the rest
of us. Then there are different notions about this ques-
tion of saving time, different notions of what wastes
time and what does not, and much which the old world
regards as politeness and good manners Americans con-
sider as sheer waste of time. Time is, they think, far
too precious to be occupied with ceremonies which appear
empty and meaningless. It can, they say, be much more
profitably filled with other and more useful occupations.
In any discussion of American manners it would be unfair
to leave out of consideration their indifference to ceremony
and their highly developed sense of the value of time, but
in saying this I do not forget that many Americans are
devout ritualists, and that these find both comfort and
pleasure in ceremony, which suggests that after all there
is something to be said for the Chinese who have raised
correct deportment almost to the rank of a religion.
The youth of America have not unnaturally caught the
spirit of their elders, so that even children consider them-
selves as almost on a par with their parents, as almost on
the same plane of equality ; but the parents, on the other
hand, also treat them as if they were equals, and allow
them the utmost freedom. While a Chinese child renders
unquestioning obedience to his parents' orders, such
obedience as a soldier yields to his superior officer, the
American child must have the whys and the wherefores
duly explained to him, and the reason for his obedience
made clear. It is not his parent that he obeys, but
AMERICAN MANNERS 81
expediency and the dictates of reason. Here we see the
clear-headed, sound, common-sense business man in the
making. The early training of the boy has laid the foun-
dation for the future man. The child too has no compunc-
tion in correcting a parent even before strangers, and
what is stranger still the parent accepts the correction
in good part, and sometimes even with thanks. A
parent is often interrupted in the course of a narrative,
or discussion, by a small piping voice, setting right, or
what it believes to be right, some date, place, or fact,
and the parent, after a word of encouragement or thanks,
proceeds. How different is our rule that a child is not
to speak until spoken to ! In Chinese official life under
the old regime it was not etiquette for one official to con-
tradict another, especially when they were unequal in
rank. When a high official expressed views which his
subordinates did not endorse, they could not candidly give
their opinion, but had to remain silent. I remember
that some years ago some of my colleagues and I had an
audience with a very high official, and when I expressed
my dissent from some of the views of that high function-
ary, he rebuked me severely. Afterward he called me
to him privately, and spoke to me somewhat as follows :
" What you said just now was quite correct. I was wrong,
and I will adopt your views, but you must not contradict
me in the presence of other people. Do not do it again."
There is of course much to be said for and against each
system, and perhaps a blend of the two would give good
results. Anyhow, we can trace in American customs that
spirit of equality which pervades the whole of American
society, and observe the germs of self-reliance and inde-
pendence so characteristic of Americans, whether men,
women, or children.
G
82 MODERN ESSAYS
Even the domestic servant does not lose this precious
American heritage of equality. I have nothing to say
against that worthy individual, the American servant
(if one can be found) ; on the contrary, none is more
faithful or more efficient. But in some respects he is
unique among the servants of the world. He does not
see that there is any inequality between him and his
master. His master, or should I say, his employer,
pays him certain wages to do certain work, and he does it,
but outside the bounds of this contract, they are still
man and man, citizen and citizen. It is all beautifully,
delightfully legal. The washerwoman is the "wash-
lady," and is just as much a lady as her mistress. The
word "servant" is not applied to domestics, "help" is
used instead, very much in the same way that Canada
and Australia are no longer English "colonies," but
"self-governing dominions."
We of the old world are accustomed to regard domestic
service as a profession in which the members work for
advancement, without much thought of ever changing
their position. A few clever persons may ultimately adopt
another profession, and, according to our antiquated
conservative ways of thinking, rise higher in the social
scale, but, for the large majority, the dignity of a butler,
or a housekeeper is the height of ambition, the crowning
point in their career. Not so the American servant.
Strictly speaking there are no servants in America.' The
man, or the woman as the case may be, who happens
for the moment to be your servant, is only servant for
the time being. He has no intention of making domes-
tic service his profession, of being a servant for the whole
of his life. To have to be subject to the will of others,
even to the small extent to which American servants
AiVIERiCAN If^NT^^S 83
are subordinate, is offensive to an American's pride of
citizenship, it is contrary to his conception of American
equahty. He is a servant only for the time, and until
he finds something better to do. He accepts a menial
position only as a stepping stone to some more independent
employment. Is it to be wondered at that American
servants have different manners from their brethren in
other countries ? When foreigners find that American
servants are not like servants in their own country, they
should not resent their behavior : it does not denote
disrespect, it is only the outcrop of their natural inde-
pendence and aspirations.
All titles of nobility are by the Constitution expressly
forbidden. Even titles of honor or courtesy are but rarely
used. "Honorable" is used to designate members of
Congress ; and for a few Americans, such as the President
and the Ambassadors, the title "Excellency" is permitted.
Yet, whether it is because the persons entitled to be so
addressed do not think that even these mild titles are con-
sistent with American democracy, or because the American
public feels awkward in employing such stilted terms of
address, they are not often used. I remember that on
one occasion a much respected Chief Executive, on my
proposing, in accordance with diplomatic usage and
precedent, to address him as "Your Excellency," begged
me to substitute instead "Mr. President." The plain
democratic "Mr." suits the democratic American taste
much better than any other title, and is applied equally
to the President of the Republic and to his coachman.
Indeed, the plain name John Smith, without even "Mr.,"
not only gives no offense, where some higher title might
be employed, but fits just as well, and is in fact often
used. Even prominent and distinguished men do not
84 MODERN ESSAYS
resent nicknames ; for example, the celebrated person
whose name is so intimately connected with that delight
of American children and grown-ups — the "Teddy Bear."
This characteristic, like so many other American charac-
teristics, is due not only to the love of equality and in-
dependence, but also to the dislike of any waste of time,
j In countries where there are elaborate rules of etiquette
concerning titles and forms of address, none but a Master of
Ceremonies can hope to be thoroughly familiar with
them, or to be able to address the distinguished people
without withholding from them their due share of high-
sounding titles and epithets ; and, be it whispered, these
same distinguished people, however broad-minded and
magnanimous they may be in other respects, are some-
times extremely sensitive in this respect. And even
after one has mastered all the rules and forms, and can
appreciate and distinguish the various nice shades which
exist between "His Serene Highness," "His Highness,"
"His Royal Highness," and "His Imperial Highness," or
between "Rt. Rev." and "Most Rev.," one has yet to
learn what titles a particidar person has, and with what
particular form of address he should be approached,
an impossible task even for a Master of Ceremonies, unless
he always has in his pocket a Burke's Peerage to tell him
who's who. What a waste of time, what an inconvenience,
and what an unnecessary amount of irritation and annoy-
ance all this causes. How much better to be able to
address any person you meet simply as Mr. So-and-So,
without unwittingly treading on somebody's sensitive
corns ! Americans have shown their common sense in
doing away with titles altogether, an example which the
sister Republic of China is following. An illustrious name
loses nothing for having to stand by itself without pre-
AMERICAN MANNERS 85
fixes and sufiixes, handles and tails. Mr. Gladstone was
no less himself for not prefixing his name with Earl, and
the other titles to which it would have entitled him, as
he could have done had he not declined the so-called
honor. Indeed, like the "Great Commoner," he, if
that were possible, endeared himself the more to his
countrymen because of his refusal. A name, which is
great without resorting to the borrowed light of titles
and honors, is greater than any possible suffix or affix
which could be appended to it.
i'*^ In conclusion, American manners are but an instance
or result of the two predominant American characteristics
to which I have already referred, and which reappear in
so many other things American. A love of independence
and of equality, early inculcated, and a keen abhorrence
of waste of time, engendered by the conditions and cir-
cumstances of a new country, serve to explain practically
all the manners and mannerisms of Americans. Even
the familiar spectacle of men walking with their hands
deep in their trousers' pockets, or sitting with their legs
crossed needs no other explanation, and to suggest that,
because Americans have some habits which are peculiarly
their own, they are either inferior or unmanly, would be
to do them a grave injustice.
Few people are more warm-hearted, genial, and sociable
than the Americans. I do not dwell on this, because it is
quite unnecessary. The fact is perfectly familiar to all
who have the slightest knowledge of them. Their kind-
ness and warmth to strangers are particularly pleasant,
and are much appreciated by their visitors. In some other
countries, the people, though not unsociable, surround
themselves with so much reserve that strangers are at
first chilled and repulsed, although there are no pleasanter
86 MODERN ESSAYS
or more hospitable persons anywhere to be found when
once you have broken the ice, and learned to know them ;
but it is the stranger who must make the first advances,
for they themselves will make no effort to become ac-
quainted, and their manner is such as to discourage any
efforts on the part of the visitor. You may travel with
them for hours in the same car, sit opposite to them,
and all the while they will shelter themselves behind a
newspaper, the broad sheets of which effectively prohibit
any attempts at closer acquaintance. The following
instance, culled from a personal experience, is an illustra-
tion. I was a law student at Lincoln's Inn, London,
where there is a splendid law library for the use of the
students and members of the Inn. I used to go there
almost every day to pursue my legal studies, and generally
sat in the same quiet corner. The seat on the opposite
side of the table was usually occupied by another law
student. For months we sat opposite each other without
exchanging a word. I thought I was too formal and re-
served, so I endeavored to improve matters by occasionally
looking up at him as if about to address him, but every
time I did so he looked down as though he did not wish
to see me. Finally I gave up the attempt. This is the
general habit with English gentlemen. They will not
speak to a stranger without a proper introduction ; but in
the case I have mentioned surely the rule would have
been more honored by a breach than by the observance.
Seeing that we were fellow students, it might have been
presumed that we were gentlemen and on an equal foot-
ing. How different are the manners of the American !
You can hardly take a walk, or go for any distance in a
train, without being addressed by a stranger, and not in-
frequently making a friend. In some countries the fact
AMERICAN MANNERS 87
that you are a foreigner only thickens the ice, in America
it thaws it. This dehghtful trait in the American character
is also traceable to the same cause as that which has helped
us to explain the other peculiarities which have been
mentioned. To good Americans, not only are the citizens
of America born equal, but the citizens of the world are
also born equal.
FRANKLIN '
>*. BY
Henry Cabot Lodge
The catalogue form may be used also as a convenient summary for a
man's achievements. On the two hundredth anniversary of Franklin's
birth Henry Cabot Lodge, the brilliant Senator from Massachusetts,
was asked to contribute an appreciation. Evidently there were eight
features in Franklin's life and character that he felt significant : (a)
Franklin's temperament, (6) his character, (c) the breadth of his in-
terest, etc. This, the real essay, is introduced by two paragraphs
of general appreciation, and three paragraphs in which the background
is indicated. The same general scheme is followed also within the
paragraph development. The first sentence usually summarizes the
preceding thought, and the second introduces the main thought of
the paragraph. Then this is expanded and explained.
Many years ago, when in London for the first time, I
remember being filled with the indignant astonishment of
which youth alone is capable at seeing upon the pedestal
of a statue placed in a public square the single word
"Franklin." A Boston boy, born within a stone's throw
almost of the birthplace of "Poor Richard," I had never
deemed it possible that any Franklin but one could be
referred to by that name alone without further definition
or qualification. I knew, of course, who the subject of
the British statue was, a brave naval ofiicer and bold ex-
plorer, who had lost his life in a futile effort to achieve an
almost equally futile object. But I had a vague impres-
1 From "A Frontier Town and Other Essays," by permission of the
publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons.
88
FRANKLIN 89
sion that "heroic sailor souls" had very fortunately been
not uncommon among English-speaking people, whereas
I had supposed that men like Benjamin Franklin had
been rather rare among the people of any race. I have
passed the British statue many times since then. My
youthful and indignant astonishment has long since
vanished, and the humor of the inscription has become
very apparent to me. I know now that the inscription
merely represents a solid British habit of claiming every-
thing, ignoring the rest of mankind, and enlarging to the
utmost their own achievements, both great and small,
upon the entirely sound principle that a constant and fear-
less assertion of one's own virtues will lead a considerable
proportion of a very busy and somewhat indifferent world
to take one at one's own valuation. The highly humorous
side of describing Sir John as the only Franklin, and
relegating to obscurity a man who achieved greatness in
literature, in science, in politics, and in diplomacy, and
who was one of the most brilliant figures in a brilliant
century, has come in the lapse of time to give me no little
real pleasure.
I have also learned that my early estimate of the man
commonly referred to outside of England as "Franklin"
was not only vague, but, although, right in direction, was
still far short of the truth, which a better knowledge enables
me to substitute for an ill-defined belief. Two hundred
years have elapsed since his birth in the little house on
Milk Street in Boston, and as the anniversary of that
event is now being celebrated, it is well worth while to
pause for a moment and consider him. Few men, be
it said, better deserve consideration, for he not only
played a great part in shaping events and influencing
human thought, but he represents his time more com-
90 MODERN ESSAYS
pletely, perhaps, than any other actor in it, something
which is always in and of itself a memorable feat.
Franklin's time was the eighteenth century, which his
long life nearly covered. When he was born Anne was
Queen, and England, agitated by dynastic struggles, was
with difficulty making head against the world-wide power
of Louis XIV. When Franklin died France had been
driven from North America, the British Empire had been
divided, his own being one of the master hands in the
division, the United States of America had started on
their career as a nation, and the dawning light of the
French Revolution was beginning to redden the skies.
Marvellous changes these to be enclosed within the span
of one brief human life, and yet they were only part of
the story. The truth is that the eighteenth century was
a very remarkable period. Not so very long ago this
statement would have been regarded as a rather silly
paradox, and in a little while it will be looked upon as a
commonplace. But as yet we are not wholly free from
the beliefs of our fathers in this respect. The nineteenth
century, in its lusty youth and robust middle age, adopted
as part of its creed the belief that its predecessor upon the
roll of time, from whose loins it sprang, deserved only
the contempt and hatred of mankind. Incited thereto
by the piercing invectives of the Romantic school, brim-
ming over with genius, and just then in possession of the
earth, and by the clamors of Thomas Carlyle, the nine-
teenth century held that the eighteenth was a period of
shams and conventions, of indifference and immorality,
of unspeakable oppressions and of foul miseries hidden
behind a gay and glittering exterior, the heyday of a
society which in a word deserved the fate of the
cities of the plain.
FRANKLIN 91
This view was true enough, so far as it went ; but it was
by no means the whole story. It had the fascination of
simphcity and of convenience which half-truths nearly
always possess ; but as Mr. Speaker Reed once said,
"half-truths are simple, but the whole truth is the most
complicated thing on earth." The time has now come
when we may begin to approximate the whole truth.
Indeed, before the nineteenth century had closed it had
begun to modify its opinions and to be less sure about the
total depravity of its progenitor. Under the skilful
manipulations of bric-a-brac dealers the art and furniture
of the eighteenth century have become and are now the
fashion. It is a pretty trivial art at best, very inferior
to that which the nineteenth century, in France at least,
has produced ; but it is always pleasant to observe the
whirligig of time bring in its revenges, and it must be
admitted that the eighteenth-century furniture is an in-
describable improvement over the dreadful taste known
as Victorian, but which really came forth like the Goths
and Vandals of old time from the heart of Germany, to
submerge and ruin a careless and unsuspecting world.
Still, whatever their merits may be, the eighteenth century
in pictures and chairs and tables is again in high fashion,
and perhaps we can now begin to see also that it had its
great side as well as its bad one, and that it was in reality
a very wonderful time.
It is usually said as beyond dispute that it had no poetry
in the nobler and more imaginative sense ; and if by poetry
is meant the immortal work of the Elizabethans on the
one hand, and of the Romantic school on the other, we
may be sure that, speaking broadly, the eighteenth cen-
tury, like Audrey, was not poetical. Yet none the less
this unpoetical, unimaginative century produced Gray and
92 MODERN ESSAYS
Burns in Great Britain, Chenier and Gilbert in France, the
first part of "Faust" — enough glory in itself for many
centuries — and the "Wallenstein Trilogy" in Germany.
It was, too, the century of Bach and Handel and Haydn ;
it gave birth to Mozart and Beethoven, — something of a
record for an unimaginative century in the most imagina-
tive of arts. Even those who decry it most admit its great-
ness in prose, where it developed a style which culminated
in Gibbon and Burke. In pure intellect it can hardly be
surpassed by any of its fellows, for it was the century of
Immanuel Kant. It was likewise the century of Louis
XV, perhaps the meanest thing that accident ever cast
upon a throne, but it was also the century of Frederick
the Great. It was illustrated in its youth by the Regent
Orleans, and illuminated at its close by George Washing-
ton. It was the century of Casanova, most typical and
amusing of rascals, and it was equally the century of John
Wesley. It was a time when men persecuted for a religion
in which they had no faith, and sneered at the doctrines
of the church to which they conformed. The classes
revelled in luxury, and the masses were sunk in poverty.
Corruption ran riot in the public service, and the oppres-
sion of the people was without limit on the Continent, where
the lettre de cachet of the French king flung men into prison,
and wretched German princelings sold their subjects to
die in foreign wars that they might build ugly palaces and
maintain still more ugly mistresses. Yet in those evil
days more was done to set free human thought and strike
off the shackles of priestly rule than in any century which
history records. More was then done to give men political
liberty and build up constitutional government than in all
the previous centuries, for it was the century of Montes-
quieu and Rousseau and the Federalist, of the revolt of
FRANKLIN 93
the American Colonies and of the French Revolution. It
was the century of kings and nobles, yet it gave birth to
modern democracy. The spirit of revolt went side by
side with the spirit of reaction and convention. There
were indeed two voices in the eighteenth century. We
know which one truly foretold the coming days. But
which was the true voice of the time ? Was it Voltaire,
pleading the cause of the Galas family, or that of Foulon,
declaring that the people might eat grass .f* Which was
the true leader, George Washington at Valley Forge, or
George III hiring Indians and Hessians to carry out his
mother's injunction, "George, be a king".'* It was veri-
tably a wonderful century, full of meaning, rich in intel-
lect, abounding in contradictions.
It produced, too, many great men, but none more fully
representative than Benjamin Franklin of all that made it
memorable. He reflected at once its greatness and its
contradictions, although not its evil side, because in those
years of change and ferment he was ranged with the
children of light, and was ever reaching out for new and
better things. Of pure English stock, born in a commu-
nity where Puritanism was still dominant, where religion
was rigid and morality austere, he was an adventurer in
his youth, a liberal always, a free-thinker in religion, the
moralist of common-sense, and pre-eminently the man
of the world, at home in all societies and beneath every
sky. He had the gift of success, and he went on and up
from the narrow fortunes of a poor, hard-working family
until he stood in the presence of kings and shaped the
destinies of nations.
The Puritanism to which he was born fell away from
him at the start, and in his qualities and his career it
seems as if he reproduced the type of the men of Eliza-
94 MODERN ESSAYS
beth's time who founded Virginia and New England ; for
he had all the versatility, the spirit of adventure, the
enormous vitality and splendid confidence in life and in
the future which characterized that great epoch. Yet he
had also the calmness, the self-control, the apparent ab-
sence of enthusiasm which were the note of his own time.
The restlessness of mind which marked the Elizabethans
was his in a high degree, but it was masked by a cool and
calculating temperament rarely found in the days of the
great Queen.
Franklin was born not only a Puritan Englishman, but
a colonist ; yet never was there a man with less of the
colonist or the provincial about him. A condition of
political dependence seems for some mysterious reason to
have a depressing effect upon those who remain continu-
ously in that condition. The soil of a dependency appears
to be unfavorable to the production of ability of a high
type in any direction until the generation arrives which
is ready to set itself free. Franklin was a colonial subject
until he was seventy, and yet no more independent man
than he lived in that age of independent thought. He rose
to the highest distinction in four great fields of activity,
any one of which would have sufficed for a life's ambition ;
he moved easily in the society of France and England, he
appeared at the most brilliant court in Europe, and no
one ever thought of calling him provincial. The atmos-
phere of a dependency never clung to him, nor in the
heyday of aristocracy was his humble origin ever remem-
bered. The large-mindedness, the complete independence,
the entire simplicity of the man dispersed the one and
destroyed the memory of the other.
Modern history contains very few examples of a man
who, with such meagre opportunities and confined for
FRANKLIN 95
many years to a province far distant from the centres of
civilization, achieved so much and showed so much abihty
in so many different ways as FrankHn. With only the
education of the common school and forced to earn his
living while still a boy, he became a man of wide learning,
pre-eminent in science, and a writer, in the words of one
of the first of English critics,^ "of supreme literary skill."
His autobiography is one of the half-dozen great autobiog-
raphies which are a perennial joy. His letters are charm-
ing, and his almanacs (was there ever a more unlikely
vehicle for good literature?) were translated into many
languages, delighted with their homely wisdom and easy
humor thousands who thought of America only as the
abode of wolves and Indians, and made the name of
"Poor Richard" familiar to the civilized world. Yet
literature, where he attained such a success, winning a
high place in the literary history not only of his own
country, but of his age and his language, was but his
pastime. The intellectual ambition of his life was found
in science, and he went so far in that field that the history
of one of the great natural forces, which in its development
has changed the world, cannot be written without giving
one of the first places of pioneer and discoverer to the
printer of Boston and Philadelphia.
Yet neither literature nor science, either of which is
quite enough to fill most lives, sufficed for Franklin. He
began almost at the very beginning to take a share in
public affairs. His earliest writings when a printer at
the case dealt with political questions. He then entered
the politics of the city, thence he passed to the larger
concerns of the great Province of Pennsylvania, and at
every step he showed a capacity for organization, an
^ Mr. Augustine Birrell, in his essay on "Old Booksellers."
96 MODERN ESSAYS
ability for managing men and a power of persuasive speech
rarely equalled. He had a way of carrying measures and
securing practical and substantive results which excites
profound admiration, since nothing is more difficult than
such achievements in the whole range of public service.
This is especially true where the man who seeks results
is confronted by active opposition or by that even more
serious obstacle, the inertness or indifference of the com-
munity. Yet nothing pleased Franklin more than such a
situation as arose when in time of war he overcame the
Quaker opposition to putting the province in a state of
defence. His method was not as a rule that of direct
attack. He preferred to outw^it his opponents, an opera-
tion which gratified his sense of humor; and a favorite
device of his was to defeat opposition by putting forward
anonymously arguments apparently in its behalf, which,
by their irony and extravagance, utterly discredited the
cause they professed to support. To his success in the
field of public discussion he added that of administration
when he became Postmaster-General for the colonies and
organized the service, and then again when he represented
Pennsylvania and later other provinces as their agent in
London. It was there in England that he defended the
cause of the colonies before both Parliament and Ministers
when resistance to taxation began. He came home an
old man, verging on seventy, to take his place as one of
the chief leaders in the Revolution. These leaders of
revolution were, as a rule and as is usual at such periods,
young men, and yet there was not one among them all
with greater flexibility of mind or more perfect readiness
to bring on the great change than Franklin. He returned
again to Europe to seek aid for his country in the war, and
it was chiefly due to him that the French alliance, which
FRANKLIN 97
turned the scale, was formed. When the war drew to a
close it was he who began alone the task of making peace.
He had nearly completed the work when his colleagues
appeared in Paris and by incautious words broke the web
so carefully spun. Patient and undisturbed, Franklin be-
gan again. Again he played one English faction against the
other. Again he managed France, turning to good advan-
tage the vigorous abilities of Adams and the caution of
Jay. Finally, boldly disregarding the instructions of
Congress, he emerged from all complications with a
triumphant peace.
Even then his work was not done. He came back to
America to govern in Pennsylvania and to share in making
the Constitution of the United States, thus exhibiting
the power to build up as well as to pull down, something
most uncommon, for the man of revolution is rarely a
constructive statesman. He closed his great career by
setting his hand to the Constitution of the United States,
as he had already done to the Declaration of Independence.
Yet after his achievements and services have all been
recounted we still come back to that which was most
remarkable, — the manner in which he at once influenced
and reflected his time. The eighteenth century has for
long been held up to scorn as destitute of enthusiasm,
lacking in faith and ideals, indifferent and utterly worldly.
Franklin was certainly devoid of enthusiasm, and yet one
unbroken 'purpose ran strongly through his life and was
pursued by him with a steadiness and force which are
frequently wanting in enthusiasts. He sought unceasingly
the improvement of man's condition here on earth.
Whether it was the invention of a stove, the paving of
Philadelphia, the founding of a library, the movement
of storms, the control of electric currents, or the defence
98 MODERN ESSAYS
of American liberty, lie was always seeking to instruct
and help his fellow-men and to make their lot a better
and happier one. The morals he preached were indeed
worldly ; there never was a bit of morality more purely
of the account-book kind than the familiar aphorism
about honesty, and yet it may be doubted whether all the
pulpits in America did more to make men honest and
thrifty, and to develop good and sober citizens than the
uninspired preachings of "Poor Richard." He was a
sceptic, as were nearly all the great men of the century,
but his honest doubt helped to free the human mind and
dispel the darkness which had stayed the march of intel-
lect. He never scoffed at religion ; he did not hesitate to
appeal to it at a great crisis to sway the minds of his
fellows, but he suffered no dogmas to stand in the way of
that opening of the mind which he believed would advance
the race and soften by its discoveries the hard fate of
humanity. He was conservative by nature in accordance
with the habit of the time, but that which was new had
no terrors for him, and he entered upon the path of revolu-
tion with entire calmness when he felt that revolution had
become necessary to the welfare and happiness of his
people.
There was nothing inevitable about the American Rev-
olution at the particular time at which it came. It
would have failed indeed on the field of battle had it
not been for George Washington. But when the British
Government, among their many blunders, insulted Frank-
lin and rejected his counsel they cast aside the one man
whose wisdom might have saved the situation, and, so
far as they could, made the revolt of the colonies unavoid-
able. It was an indifferent, cold-blooded century, and
both epithets have been applied to Franklin, no doubt
FRANKLIN 99
with some justice. But it is never fair to judge one cen-
tury or its people by the standards of another. FrankUn
was a man of extraordinary self-control combined with a
sense of humor which never deserted him and which is
easily mistaken for cold-blooded indifference. He signed
the Declaration of Independence, it is said, with a jest ;
yet no man measured its meaning or felt its gravity more
than he. He stood silent in the Cock-Pit while the coarse
invective of Wedderburne beat about his head, and made
no reply. The only revenge he took, the only answer he
ever made, if tradition may be believed, was to wear when
he signed the treaty acknowledging American indepen-
dence the same coat of Manchester velvet which he wore
when the pitiless abuse of England's Attorney-General
was poured out upon him. He was not a man who dis-
played emotion — it was not the fashion of his time. He
was a philosopher and a stoic. Perhaps, as Mr. Birrell
says, he was neither loving nor tender-hearted, yet he
manged both in his life and in the disposition of his prop-
erty to do many kindnesses and much good to those to
whom the battle of life was hardest. His sympathies
were keen for mankind rather than for the individual,
but that again was the fashion of his time — a fashion
which shattered many oppressions gray with the age of
centuries and redressed many wrongs.
Franklin was very human, far from perfect in more
than one direction. It is easy enough to point out blem-
ishes in his character. But as a public man he sought no
private ends, and his great and versatile intellect was one
of the powerful influences which in the eighteenth century
wrought not only for political liberty, but for freedom of
thought, and in so doing rendered services to humanity
which are a blessing to mankind to-day. We accept the
100 MODERN ESSAYS
blessings and forget too often to wliose labors in a receding
past they are due. We owe a vast debt to the great men
of the eighteenth century who brought out of the shams
and conventions and oppressions of that time the revolu-
tions in politics, in society, and in thought the fruits of
which we of to-day now enjoy. To no one of these men
is the world's debt larger than to Franklin.
THE SERIOUS PEPYS i
BY
Wilbur Cortez Abbott
Much the same problem as that solved by Senator Lodge confronted
Professor Abbott. There is, however, in the latter case a large amount
of popular misunderstanding first to be cleared away. Naturally his
essay falls into three well-defined divisions. First, he states briefly
the known facts of Pepys's life. Secondly, he considers very fully the
effect upon Pepys's reputation due to the discovery of the famous " Diary."
By this means, — and he has already used half the space of the total
essay, — he has gained the reader's confidence by showing that he is
quite familiar with the usual interpretation of Pepys's character. Then
follow eloquent paragraphs in which this conception is overthrown.
Point by point a new Pepys is built up. Little by little this new figure
emerges until from the ruins of the reader's previous picture of the dis-
solute rake rises the conception of the great public servant.
"Whoever," says Montaigne, "will justly consider
and with due proportion, of what kind of men and of
what sort of actions the glory sustains itself in the records
of history, will find that there are very few actions and
very few persons of our times who can there pretend any
right." "Of so many thousands of valiant men who have
died within these fifteen hundred years in France with
their swords in their hands," he goes on, "not a hundred
have come to our knowledge. The memory not of the
commanders only, but of battles and victories is buried
1 From The Yale Revieiv, for April, 1914, by permission of the
author and of the editor of The Yale Review.
101
102 MODERN ESSAYS
and gone ; the fortunes of above half the world for want
of a record stir not from their place and vanish without
duration ; ... it must be some very eminent greatness
or some consequence of great importance that fortune has
added to it that signalizes" an action to make it, and the
actor, remembered.
But there is no recipe for immortality, even for the
greatest ; and if fame's vagaries thus affect captains and
kings, what chance have men in lesser stations ; if con-
querors are so frequently forgotten, what of the men of
peace — which has its oblivion far more profound than
war ! Above all, perhaps, what hope has one who devotes
himself not to the destruction or manipulation of his
fellow men but to their service, in particular as that bul-
wark of organized society, an honest and able civil ser-
vant ? Little enough, indeed. The worst of demagogues,
the most incompetent of commanders, the harshest of
tyrants, the most depraved of rakes, has far better chance
for an undying, if an undesirable, fame under present his-
torical conditions than even the best of those "sons of
Martha." Save when preserved by other means, some
share in politics, some gift to literature, their fame is
mingled with the air. Only among the unwritten tradi-
tions of their service and its unread documents their repu-
tations lie, safe from the praise or blame of those they
served. Of this great class, paradoxical as it may seem,
there is no better representative than the well-known
subject of this essay.
On the twenty-sixth of May, 1703, while England girded
herself for that far-spreading conflict which in a twelve-
month was to bring to her Gibraltar and the great Marl-
borough's "famous victory" of Blenheim, there died at
Clapham, near London, one Samuel Pepys, sometime a
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 103
notable figure in the world he left. Member of Parlia-
ment, Treasurer of Tangier, Surveyor General of the
Victualling Office, Clerk of the Acts, and Secretary of
the Admiralty, he had played no trifling part in the event-
ful years of the last Stuart kings. Aside from his official
life, Pepys had been scarcely less well known in widely
different fields. Master of Trinity House and of the
Clothworkers' Company, Governor of Christ's Hospital,
twice President of the Royal Society ; a patron and critic
of the arts, music, the drama, literature ; an indefatigable
collector of manuscripts and books, broadsides, ballads,
music-scores, and curios ; he had been no less at home in
gatherings of scientists and virtuosos, in Covent Garden
and in Drury Lane, or the booksellers' shops about old
St. Paul's, than in the Navy Office and dockyards. He
had arranged, even composed, some music, and he was no
mean amateur performer on certainly one instrument ; he
had contributed to the Royal Society ; not a few books
had been dedicated to him ; and he himself had published
at least one. His portrait had been painted three times
by Kneller, once by Lely, and again by artists of less note.
Among his friends were statesmen and scientists, authors,
officials, musicians, royalties : Hans Sloane, Christopher
Wren, Isaac Newton, John Evelyn, John Dryden, and
that "admirable Lord High Admiral but less than admi-
rable king," James the Second, now long an exile at the
court of France. Surely, if a man's achievements are to
count for anything, here was a candidate for at least a
moderate immortality.
" In the judgment I make of another man's life," says the
old French moralist-philosopher, "I always observe how
he carried himself at his death ; . . . this is the day that
must be the judge of all the foregoing years." This
104 MODERN ESSAYS
supreme test the Secretary met bravely. "Last night,"
wrote the nonjuring clergyman, George Hickes, who was
with him at the end, "I did the last offices for Samuel
Pepys. . . . The greatness of his behaviour in his long
and sharp tryall before his death was in every respect
answerable to his great life, and in accordance with his
motto, Mens cujusque is est quisque,'" — as a man's mind
is, so is he. "This day," wrote old John Evelyn, "died
Mr. Sam. Pepys, a very worthy, industrious, and curious
person, none in England exceeding him in knowledge of
the Navy, in which he had passed thro' all the most consid-
erable offices ... all which he performed with great in-
tegrity. . . . He was universally beloved, hospitable,
generous, learned in many things, skilled in music, a very
greate cherisher of learned men of whom he had the
conversation ; . . . for neere 40 yeares . . . my particu-
lar friend." Such was the esteem of his contemporaries
for one who had been called successively the right hand,
the Nestor, and the father of the English navy ; reckoned
the ablest civil servant of his time, a shrewd, strict, serious
man of business, a faithful friend, a generous patron, an
accomplished gentleman, and an honest man. May none
of us have a worse epitaph.
His will bore out the character of his life and death.
The wide distribution of mourning and rings, according
to the custom of the time, witnessed his many and eminent
friendships ; his numerous bequests to his acquaintances
and servants further testified to an agreeable side of his
nature. The bestowal of his fortvme on his nephew ; and
the devising of his library to Magdalene College, Cam-
bridge, after that nephew's death ; the gift of his ship-
models to his partner and friend, William Hewer, with
recommendation "to consider how these, also together
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 105
with his own, may be preserved for pubhck benefit," —
gave evidence of a strong family, college, and public
spirit ; which, again, often contributes somewhat to post-
humous reputation.
This, for the son of a tailor, who owed small thanks to
birth or fortune, some to circumstance, most to himself,
for all the blessings he enjoyed in life, and in such unusual
and such long unsuspected degree passed on to posterity,
was no small achievement as a bid for fame. To his suc-
cess his schooling at Huntingdon and St. Paul's, then at
Magdalene College, contributed somewhat ; but the de-
termining factor in his career had been his connection
with his father's cousin and his own patron, Sir Edward
Montagu, the friend and relative and follower of Cromwell.
When, after a brief excursion in diplomacy, the youthful
Pepys entered the service of this capable commander,
whom the Protector had summoned from his place in the
New Model to a seat in the Council of State with charge
of naval operations against Spain, Dunkirk, and the
Northern powers ; and, in particular, when, after a period
of retirement, the Convention Parliament commissioned
Montagu to bring back the exiled Charles to England and
the throne, the fortune of his secretary, Pepys, was settled
with his own. Clerk of the Acts and of the Admiralty
Board ; then, by successive stages of advance, wresting
increasing reputation and authority from the catastrophes
of fire, plague, and war, Pepys had outgrown the need of
a patron long before he became the Secretary of the
Admiralty. Through twenty busy years, save for the in-
terruption of the Popish Plot, the history of naval admin-
istration more and more became the story of his life, as he
refashioned his office on the lines it held for more than a
century. Not without color and incident, verging more
106 MODERN ESSAYS
than once on tragedy as he became involved in the vicissi-
tudes of politics, but in the main absorbed in the reform
and conduct of naval affairs, until the Revolution drove
him and his master James the Second from their posts,
his life was one in which increasing purpose ran with vigor
and success.
Such was the Pepys of the seventeenth century, the
greatest Secretary of what is, in one view, England's
greatest service ; thus he lived and died. Thus was he
not remembered ; it is, indeed, amazing to find how soon
he was forgotten and how completely. A dozen years
after his death, his name found place in "The Continua-
tion of Mr. Collier's Supplement to his Great Dictionary" ;
a dozen more, and Burnet noted his connection with the
Popish Plot ; while, thanks chiefly to the fact that Kneller
painted and White engraved his portrait, Grainger gave
him a page in his extraordinary "Biographical History of
England." Another fifty years, and Hume observed that
naval tradition still recalled Pepys's administration as "a
model of order and economy." The rest was all but
silence; among the innumerable "characters" which en-
tertained the readers of the "Annual Register," his found
no place; the long files of the "Gentleman's Magazine,"
save for a brief note on his library, knew him not ; in its
three editions in the eighteenth century not even the
"Encyclopaedia Britannica" recorded his name. Mem-
bers or visitors of Magdalene College still observed, as now,
the building which contained his books, and some even
found their way inside ; at least two recorded something
of the treasures they discovered there ; and part of the
material for Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry"
was drawn from that source. Frequenters of St. Olave's
Church may have taken notice of the Secretary's tomb;
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 107
members of corporations or societies to which he once
belonged might now and then recall him by his gifts ;
lovers of art noted his portraits as examples of the painter's
skill. Family pride, the industry of genealogist or anti-
quarian, might have found in parish registers the entry
of his birth, marriage, and death ; or in the college books,
besides the record of his entrance and exit, that he was
once reproved for being drunk. An occasional reader may
have looked in his "Memoirs of the Royal Navy"; a
scholar or an archivist here and there have noted the
unread masses of his memoranda in the Public Records
Office or the libraries. This was the sum of Pepys's im-
pression on the world a century after he left it — a handful
of mementos and a fast fading memory.
Of these, only his papers and his books still stood be-
tween him and oblivion. The books, indeed, had been
not seldom used ; the papers were still all but unexplored.
Sometime during that eighteenth century, which con-
cerned itself so mightily with very many things much less
worth while, a now unknown enthusiast began a catalogue
of the Pepysian collections in the Magdalene library. He
was soon, far too soon, discouraged. There lay "a vast
collection from our antient records . . . relating to our
naval affairs and those of other countries. Books of
musick, mathematicks and several other subjects all excel-
lent in their kind." Among them were two hundred and
fifty volumes chiefly of naval manuscripts, gathered,
doubtless, as a basis for a projected history. There lay
the Lethington Collection of Scottish poetry ; masses of
tracts and pamphlets ; with the largest body of broadside
ballads in existence. Above all, in the mind of at least
one bibliophile, was what "he hath collected with respect
to the City of London, for the illustration of that famous
108 MODERN ESSAYS
city," besides "a vast collection of heads both domestic
and foreign, beyond expression, copy-books of all the
masters of Europe," and "a large book of title-pages,
frontispieces . . . not to be paralleled," the whole crowned
with an "admirable catalogue." Besides these, fifty vol-
umes more of Pepys's manuscripts had found their way
into the hands of the great collector, Rawlinson, and so to
the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Besides these, still, his
documents in public and in private hands, had they been
even catalogued in print, would have reared a monument
whose very size might have compelled attention and re-
vised the eighteenth century's knowledge of the past and
of Pepys.
But the exploiting of this material was reserved for later
generations, when its fulfillment became a romance of
literature and scholarship alike. It is a well-known story
how, among the masses of historical material which found
their way to print in the first quarter of the nineteenth
century, the Diary of John Evelyn, with its mention of
the Secretary, inspired the Master of Magdalene College
to put in Lord Grenville's hands six volumes of cipher
manuscript from Pepys's collections which had long puz-
zled curious visitors ; how that accomplished nobleman,
having transcribed some pages, found them of such in-
terest that an undergraduate, John Smith, was entrusted
with the completion of the work ; and how after three
years of labor on his part there presently appeared, under
Lord Braybrooke's editorship, the "Memoirs of Samuel
Pepys, Esq. F. R. S., Secretary to the Admiralty . . .
comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669 , . . with a
selection from his private Correspondence." It is, per-
haps, scarcely so well appreciated how, with that event,
ensued a revolution in posthumous fame unparalleled in
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 109
literary history. From the obscurity of a century emerged
no mere man of affairs but a Personality. What a hfe-
time of great endeavor could not do, a book accomplished
almost in a day. By the transcriber's magic the forgotten
Secretary of the Admiralty was transformed into a Prince
of Diarists and set among the immortals. So complete
was the triumph over oblivion that, within twenty years,
even Macaulay, who had drawn largely on the Secretary's
books for his History, allowed himself to write of "Samuel
Pepys whose library and diary have kept his name fresh
to our time" ; so vivid was the book that even the great
historian seems to have felt, like many since, that its
author had always been well known.
It is not surprising that he was misled, nor that the first
transcriber often spent fourteen hours a day upon his task,
when one considers how amazingly alive the book is still,
how every hour promises a fresh surprise. Read but the
opening lines with their directness, reminiscent of Defoe,
and you feel the charm impelling you to go on :
Blessed be God, at the end of last year I was in very good health. . . .
I lived in Axe Yard, having my wife and servant Jane and no more in
family than us three. . . . The condition of the State was thus, . . .
the Rump after being disturbed by my Lord Lambert was lately returned
to sit again. The officers of the Army all forced to yield. Lawson lies
still in the river and Monk with his army in Scotland. . . . The new
Common Council of the City do speak very high. . . . My own private
condition very handsome and esteemed rich, but indeed very poor, besides
my goods of my house and my office. . . . This morning ... I
rose, put on my suit with great skirts, . . . went to Mr. Gunning's
Chapel at Exeter House. . . . Dined at home . . . where my wife
dressed the remains of a turkey, . . . supt at my father's where in
came Mrs. The. Turner and Madam Morrice. ... In the morning
. . . Old East brought me a dozen bottles of sack. ... I went . . .
to speak with Mr. Calthropp about the £60 due my Lord. . . [and]
heard that Lambert was coming up to London.
110 MODERN ESSAYS
There you have, in little, Pepys and his Diary ; his house,
his clothes, his wife, his food, his health, his office, his
acquaintances, his amusements, his relatives, his intimate
gossip of affairs. You have, indeed, much more : at once
an incredibly lifelike picture of the times, and a true ro-
mance, surpassing all fiction, of the life and strange, sur-
prising adventures of one Samuel Pepys, who lived, far
from alone, for seventy years in the island of Great Britain,
and whose activities are here set down with the detail that
has charmed generations since in the exploits of his
antithesis, Robinson Crusoe, with all the added zest of
brilliant environment.
There is, indeed, some curious kinship between these
two wholly unlike productions. There is the same fas-
cination in watching Pepys rescue from the catastrophe
of the Cromwellian rule the means to make his fortune as
in seeing Crusoe rescue from the shipwreck the means of
sustaining life ; the same interest in observing the one
build his career and the other build his house, the same
suspense over the crises in the affairs of each ; the same
pleasure in their triumphs over adversity as they struggle
with nature or with the world of men ; the same satisfac-
tion over their ultimate victory ; there is even something
curiously alike in the accumulation of minute and often
apparently trivial detail by which, in truth or fancy, both
authors produce their lifelike effects.
Pepys has, indeed, had full reward for all his pains. Since
the appearance of his Diary in the first abbreviated form
which printed scarcely half of its contents, much learned
and loving labor has been spent on its elucidation. The
ingenuity and industry of successive editors has enlarged
our knowledge and understanding of the work ; the two
original volumes, what with inclusion of the parts at first
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 111
suppressed and a great bulk of comment, have increased to
ten. One editor has re-transcribed the manuscript, an-
other has compiled a book on Pepys and the world he
lived in ; the family genealogy has been unearthed and a
study made of one of its members as "a later Pepys" ; so
far has the reflected glory shone. The diarist's early life
has been laid bare ; his letters published, with his will ;
his portraits reproduced ; a whole book on Pepys as a
lover of music has appeared ; an essay on the sermons
that he heard ; even the medical aspects of his married
life have been explained by a physician-author. Essayists
and bookmakers still find in him an ever-fertile subject
for their pens ; no biographical dictionary or encyclopaedia
is without a full account of the great diarist ; and, rising
finally to the full stature of a real biography, few names
to-day in English literature are better known, few classics
more widely read or more enjoyed.
If the effect on Pepys has been so great, the influence of
the Diary on seventeenth-century history has been no
less. The formal even tragic dignity which for a hundred
years enveloped that great revolutionary period was de-
stroyed almost beyond repair of the dullest historian. " It
was as though in a musty library, slumbrous with solemn
volumes, a window had suddenly been opened, and the
spectator looked out upon the London of the mid-seven-
teenth century, full of color and movement, still breathing
the Elizabethan enchantment, . . . vehemently returned
to the lust of the eye and the pride of the flesh after the
restraints and severities of the Puritan dominion." Be-
fore the Diary appeared, the England of Charles the
Second was the England of Clarendon, Eachard, Rapin,
Hume, a dull, tangled interlude between two revolutions ;
since his book it has been, for the most of us, the England
112 MODERN ESSAYS
of Pepys, amusing, intimate, incredibly alive. Its obscura-
tion has not yet been wholly cleared away, the history of
the Restoration still remains to be written ; but when it is,
secretary-diarist will have no less a share in writing its
memoirs than he had in managing its affairs. Already
from his book have been evolved more than one history
of seventeenth-century manners, music, drama, literature ;
even political historians have used it to advantage. It
has been supplemented by other works, but to it we owe
in greater measure than to any single book the picture of
a period which, even now, makes Pepys's time nearer to
us than any other decade of English history.
When one considers what the Secretary was and did,
and how his reputation stood before the Diary appeared,
this result seems all the more extraordinary. Eminent
as he was in admiralty circles, as a patron of the arts,
collector, and philanthropist ; useful as his life had been
and notable for honorable success in public service, it
gave small promise of eminence in literature. His success,
indeed, lies far outside that realm. However great the
quaint attraction of his phrase ; however bright the light
upon his time, the Diary owes its wide appeal and deepest
charm to the infusion of a wholly different quality. It is
not merely trite to say that its fascination lies in its frank-
ness ; — that is a superficial, obvious, half-truth. To his
Diary, Pepys confided every thought, sensation, motive,
action, and desire, — good, bad, high, low, important,
trivial, absurd, — with a freedom beyond mere frankness.
The result is unique, not merely in literature, but almost,
if not quite, in life itself. It seldom happens among
myriads of human relationships that anyone knows any
of his fellows, however near and dear, as well as all of us
know Pepys ; most of us scarcely know ourselves as well ;
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 113
few of us, or none, would dare admit, even to ourselves,
much less commit to paper, in whatever decent obscurity
of cipher, all that the diarist records. His work is not
mere frankness ; it is self-revelation at its highest
power — there is nothing more to tell. It is more than
mere literature, it is life itself. Most of such so-called
revelations are far from what they profess to be. Some
are mere prurience ; some, morbid psychology ; some,
simple vanity ; some, conscious or unconscious pose ; the
most, mere formal record of an outer life, or merely litera-
ture. Pepys's work is the delineation of a very human
being, a "natural man," stripped of the convenances of
society, who would have been at once the terror and the
pride of eighteenth-century prophets who invoked such
phantoms constantly and as constantly produced imagina-
tive figments in their place. To such vainer sophistica-
tions Pepys's Diary bears the same relation as that of
frank, unashamed, and proper savage nakedness to the
salacious half-revelations of a decadent stage. One has
but to compare it with such outpourings from those of
Rousseau to those of Marie Bashkirtseff to realize the
great gulf fixed between healthy appreciation of a man's
triumph over circumstances and the futile conflict with
shadows.
Being Pepys, nothing human, — and very few other
things which came under his observation, — were alien
either to him or to his pen. First, his appearance ; one
reads to-day with wonder not unmixed with awe of "a
velvet cloak, two new cloth suits, ... a new shagg gowne
trimmed with gold buttons and twist, with a new hat and
silk tops for my legs," — all, as it were, in one mouthful.
It is no wonder that his clothes cost some five times those
of his wife, but it leads to serious refiection in these days.
114 MODERN ESSAYS
Yet it was no less policy than vanity which prompted this
display. "I hope I shall, with more comfort," he says,
"labor to get more and with better successe than when
for want of clothes I was forced to sneake like a beggar."
That he got more his accounts reveal. When he went
with Montagu to bring back the King, he had scarcely a
penny to his name. He came back with near a hundred
pounds. After seven years of office he reckoned himself
worth some seven thousand pounds ; prepared to set up a
coach ; gave his sister, Paulina, six hundred pounds as a
marriage portion ; and lent his cousin, Roger, five hun-
dred ; — for all of which he blessed God fervently in his
Diary. When he died, the Crown owed him twenty-eight
thousand pounds ; yet he left a comfortable fortune. And
he was neither dishonest nor niggardly. During at least
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, few fields of
human endeavor yielded such rich returns as public office ;
and if Pepys took his fees, like other men, unlike too many
of them, he gave good service in return. Nor was he
ungenerous in spending money. Books, pictures, music,
objects of art, furniture, plate, hangings, he purchased
with almost lavish hand. Preeminently a Londoner, he
was insensible to those charms of country-seat and garden
which so engrossed his friend John Evelyn ; a man of
weighty affairs, gambling of all kinds appealed to him even
less ; cautious and thrifty as became his class, no charge of
penuriousness will hold against him, in the large.
His tastes, indeed, save two, were such as helped the
world along. Devoted to the theatre and a good-fellow-
ship which led him sometimes to excess, he made his
frequent "vowes against wine and plays" only to break
them, as men have done since. The wine at least made
no inroads upon his business ; the plays make his Diary
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 115
the best of all guides to seventeenth-century London
theatres. But at the theatre, still more in church, at
home, abroad, one of his chief interests was what the
eighteenth century knew as "female charms." One of
his crosses was the lack of such loveliness in his own church,
St. Olave's ; "not one handsome face in all of them, as if,
indeed, there was a curse, as Bishop Fuller heretofore said,
upon our parish." What he lacked there he made up fully
elsewhere. He kissed Nell Gwyn, besides uncounted
others, including the face of the exhumed body of Catherine
of Valois, who had been dead more than two centuries,
that he might be said to have kissed a queen ! His friend-
ship with the actresses, especially Mrs. Knipp ; the trials
which arose when she winked at him and he had trouble to
make his eyes behave as they should in his wife's pres-
ence, — are not such things and many more of like sort writ
large throughout the Diary.'' These and the less credit-
able story of his relations with his wife's servant. Deb,
witness something to those qualities which led the penni-
less youth, but two years out of college, to espouse the
pretty daughter of a poverty-stricken Huguenot refugee
addicted to invention and living chiefly upon charity.
All this and even more, in infinite variety of phrase, men
have laid stress on since his book appeared. Largely, and
no doubt naturally, this side of Pepys's nature and his
Diary chiefly appealed to a world concerned for the most
part with the trivial, or worse ; and it might be supposed
that frankness such as his would win for him a place in
the esteem of those who read his book, comparable to that
he occupied in his contemporaries' minds. In some de-
gree, especially at first, thanks to the bowdlerizing of his
too cautious editor, this was the case. That incomparable
antiquarian, Walter Scott, hastened to welcome this "man
116 MODERN ESSAYS
of business, ... of information if not learning, taste and
whim as well as pleasure, statesman, virtuoso, bel esprit,"
to the world of literature, and many followed in the novel-
ist's train. Yet, gradually, as each succeeding issue of
the Diary included more and more of intimate, less de-
corous detail, omitted by the early editors, Pepys's reputa-
tion sank. Like Lucilius, "having dared portray himself
as he found himself to be," he proved that "no man writes
of himself save to his hurt." Generations smiled, frowned,
shrugged, moralized, felt superior. Critics, who fre-
quently knew nothing of him save his own revelations
and the comments of his editors, often sneered. Coleridge
observed he was "a pollard man," without a top, ^ to
which Pepys might well have replied that the critic was
all top. Lowell, with condescension almost worthy of a
foreigner, wrote of "the unconscious blabbings of the Puri-
tan tailor's son." Another, admitting his honesty and
even a certain cleverness, laughed at his "cockney revels,"
and his pleasure when Lord Clarendon patted his head ;
others still, noted only "the strength and coarseness of
the common mind," the " decomposed Puritan mind," of
this "typical bourgeois, kindred to Kneller in vulgarity."
A no less tolerant soul than Stevenson, following, as often,
earlier lead, adduces Pepys's very appearance against him ;
says his face shows "no aspiration," only "an animal joy
in all that comes," though he admits that " in a corrupt
and idle period he played the man, toiled hard, and kept
his honor bright." His severest critic elaborates at length
the manifold inconsistencies of his character, forgetting
the dictum expressed by Lord Rosebery that "if we accept
the common and erroneous opinion that human nature is
consistent with itself we find it utterly impossible to ex-
plain the character of George the Third " — to say nothing
of that of other men.
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 117
Such, in general, was the judgment of the nineteenth
century, hard to persuade to take the diarist seriously.
Secure in its superior virtue and manners ; relieved from
the gay plumage of the seventeenth-century male ; re-
pressing the earlier liberties of English speech ; and at
least the open license of its morals ; the Victorian age
read, loved, despised, what seemed to it a garrulous,
amusing man. It scorned the confession of his little weak-
nesses perhaps even more than the weaknesses them-
selves — his love of company, theatre, dress, diversion,
deference ; looked down upon his simple vanity ; above
all resented what he told of his dealings with women.
Some even wrote of him in terms appropriate to Sedley
or Rochester — the comparison is Pepys's best defense —
forgetting to read the Diary and Gramont's "Memoirs,"
or the Restoration drama, side by side. Viewed thus, one
may well wonder whether, after all, the Secretary would
not have preferred by far the honorable obscurity of a
dead lion which he enjoyed during the eighteenth century
to this contemptuously affectionate regard for a living ass,
which the nineteenth century has bestowed on him.
The difficulty of comprehending Pepys has arisen from
two circumstances : the fact that the critics have known
little or nothing of him beyond what they found in his
own pages or the comment of his editors ; and the fact
that, most unfortunately for himself and for us, Pepys
ceased to be a diarist before he became a secretary. From
the eighteenth-century historians, even had the men of
literature read their books, — which there is no reason to
believe they did, — little could have been gleaned, and
the earlier editors, at least, were not much better. In
what spirit they began let Lord Braybrooke's own words de-
clare. As Pepys "was in the habit of recording the most
118 MODERN ESSAYS
trifling occurrences," he wrote, "it became absolutely
necessary to curtail the manuscript materially,'" — and so
he omitted an entertaining half. Bright, daring greatly,
printed some four-fifths ; Wheatley, all but about thirty
pages. It was, then, nearly seventy years before the world
saw anywhere near the whole Diary. Even so, had the
critics paid more attention to the serious element and dwelt
less on those frivolities — and worse — for whose insertion
they condemned — and read — the diarist, they might
have approximated the truth more nearly.
But, as the old philosopher has said, "The pencil of the
Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions
of Job than the felicities of Solomon," and we ought, per-
haps, to expect no more of the men of letters. Yet when
even the latest, and in some ways the best-informed of
them falls in error what can we expect ? He denounces
Lowell's description of Pepys as a Philistine; he reviles
the historians of English literature for the "amazing
fallacy" that Pepys lacked enthusiasm; he blames those
who have made literary capital out of the diarist for the
small pains they have taken to correct their "childish
impressions" by the results of recent studies. And, with
all this, he permits himself to say that "the diary was the
one long deliberate effort of Pepys's life" ! So hard it is
for men to realize the fundamental fact that Samuel Pepys
was not a diarist who happened to be connected with the
Navy Office, but was the greatest of all Secretaries of the
Admiralty who happened, in his earlier years, to write a
diary.
Fortunately the Diary has not been the end of the Secre-
tary's striving against oblivion ; what literature and the
literary historians have failed so signally to do for him thus
far, historical scholarship seems likely to accomplish.
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 119
When, nearly forty years ago, the English government
began to print calendars of the state papers of the Restora-
tion period, it soon became apparent that the famous dia-
rist had played a greater part in public affairs than had
previously been recognized. The development of naval
history, in particular, has gradually re-created the Secre-
tary, and the service to which he gave his life seems likely
to be the final means of securing for him an appropriate
immortality. His "Memoirs of the Royal Navy" has
been reprinted ; the naval historians have chronicled his
achievements ; studies have been made of his activities in
many public posts ; and, within a decade, the Navy Rec-
ords Society has begun the publication of a catalogue of
his papers preserved in Magdalene College which has
already reached the proportions of three stout volumes.
Hereafter we shall have even more of such material, since
we are promised the "Navalia" memoranda, further mem-
oirs and calendars, filling out the record of his manifold
activities. In view of all this publication, it is not too
much to say that, had Pepys's Diary never seen the light,
we should in time have had adequate knowledge of the
Secretary's work, however little we should have known of
the man.
The result of all this is that we have another and a better
Pepys than the amusing figure which did duty for him
throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century.
Though even to-day few readers of the Diary will be likely
to delve into this mass of calendars, inaccessible to a
previous generation, and any alteration in opinion will,
therefore, probably be slow, it is high time to begin to
realize what the true Pepys was like, to do him the justice
which he has, in a sense, denied himself.
For we are too apt to forget that to his own generation
1^0 MODERN ESSAYS
there was no such person as the diarist. Amid the silks
and paduasoy of the Diary, its days of cheer and its nights
at the play, its family secrets and its personal details, men
have lost sight of the more serious side of him who found
comfort in pouring out those things which he concealed
from all the world beside into the safe cipher of his only
confidant. As we go through the mass of correspondence ;
as we read the endless list of orders and memoranda,
catalogues of ships, reports, recommendations, statements
of accounts, and observe the operation and results of his
administration, we perceive the petty, childish, simple
figure, evoked by literary critics from the Diary, trans-
formed into the truer character of the historian — a man
shrewd, cautious, able, conscientious, honest, brave,
wholly devoted to his service and his government.
The story of naval administration and reform between
the revolutions whence emerged the modern system of
the admiralty is, indeed, no glittering chronicle. The
"building of our ships more burdensome"; construction
by the state rather than contractors ; reform in victualling
and sailors' pay ; the manning and the officering of the
fleet and the re-rating of its vessels ; the reorganization of
the ordnance ; long experiment in sailing and in fighting
qualities ; elaborate calculations of speed, strength, and
sea- worthiness ; investigations in the source and quality
of all supplies ; accounting, storage ; — this infinite variety
of detail, much now of but an antiquarian interest even
to the most technical of experts, is not easy reading and
provides little enough material for epigram. But it does
give us what is far more to the purpose, and that is a correct
view of Samuel Pepys.
Here is the civil servant at his best. " J^quiponderous,"
to his colleagues, "in moral, and much superior in philo-
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 121
sopliical knowledge of the oeconomy of the navy," as he
appeared to the men of his own day, his latest critics
declare that the principles of his naval statesmanship may
even now be lessons to a "sea economy as valid as they
were two centuries ago." It is, indeed, almost incredible
how acute and diligent he was. The single holiday of a
busy life he spent in looking over Dutch and French naval
establishments. Upon his first and only visit to Tangier,
he found out in an hour's walk about the town what
twenty years of costly statesmanship and military occu-
pation had scarcely learned, — that it was no fit place for
English occupation. It would be too long even to enumer-
ate here all the changes which he made in admiralty ad-
ministration ; it is perhaps enough to say that a century
and a quarter after he left office, in the midst of England's
struggle with Napoleon, a naval commission found in
his system scarcely a thing to change or blame. Nor was
he, through all of this, a man of "sweet, uncritical mind,"
much less the time-server he has often been pictured.
Under the transparent guise of a report to his chief, the
Duke of York, which set the wheels of reform in motion,
he criticised with frank courage Comptroller, Treasurer,
Surveyor, Navy Board, colleagues, courtiers, contractors,
every powerful interest of his service, whose alienation
might well have meant ruin to him. He was, in Marvel's
phrase, one of that "handful of salt, a sparkle of soul that
. . . preserved this gross body from putrification, . , . con-
stant, invariable, indeed. Englishmen." It is with high
appropriateness that, in the two-hundredth year after his
death, the editor of the "Catalogue of Pepysian Manu-
scripts" dedicates his work "To the memory of Samuel
Pepys, a great public servant." After so long an interval,
and through such great vicissitudes, the Secretary of the
122 MODERN ESSAYS
seventeenth century takes on his proper guise in the be-
ginning of the twentieth, and appears again in something
hke the form he doubtless would have chosen for himself.
We must then, in this view, re-read the Diary and revise
our estimate of Pepys. As long presented, he has unques-
tionably antagonized many persons of highly moral minds
or highly cultivated taste ; — and even more of those in-
clined merely to prudishness. The spectacle of a man
who dared to set down the acts and thoughts common
to many men, is so unusual in human affairs, so contrary
to all those instincts of pride and shame which drive us
to conceal or to condone our weaknesses not only from
our fellows but from ourselves, that it has done Pepys's
reputation great damage. One who so far out-Boswelled
Boswell as to paint not his friend's portrait but his own,
has suffered accordingly. That he was garrulous the very
Diary, on which the accusation rests, disproves. The
confidence reposed in him by men of every rank ; his rapid
rise to high responsibilities ; his reputation as a safe man
of affairs ; the fact that only once, and then by accident,
did he reveal the secret of his book, — bear out his charac-
ter as one not given to betrayal of his trust. That, with
all his dallyings and philanderings, he was as licentious
as most men of his own day, no one familiar with the
period will assert. That Pepys was dishonest no one
believes, or if he does, let him read the editor's informing
paragraph prefacing his papers which declares : "There is
no trace of anything of the kind in the official corre-
spondence," and "even official letters, when they are
numbered by thousands may be witnesses to character,
for by an infinite number of delicate strokes they at length
produce a portrait of the writer." Tested by this there is
"no evidence of corruption."
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 123
In Pepys's case it certainly has not been true that
actions speak louder than words. Bacon's saying more
nearly hits the mark, that "Fame is like a river which
bears up things light and swollen, but drowns things
heavy and solid." Of all the charges brought against the
Secretary, one of the worst is that he was not brave.
Let the great crises of his life attest. A young man, new
in office and affairs, dependent on the favor of Montagu,
he yet ventured to remonstrate with his powerful patron
for improprieties unworthy of his station and himself,
in a reproof which is a model of its kind. "I judge it,"
he writes, "very unbecoming the duty which every bit of
bread I eat tells me I owe your Lordship to expose your
honor to the uncertainty of my return . . . but, sir,
your Lordship's honor being such as I ought to value it
to be, and finding both in city and court that discourses
pass to your prejudice, ... I shall, my Lord, without
the least greatening or lessening the matter, do my duty
in laying it shortly before you." When the Plague fell
on London and all who could had fled — Court and
Society, as usual, the first, — among the few bold spirits
who remained to carry on the business of the state -^ the
brave, bigoted Bishop of London, Sheldon; the "best
justice of the peace in England," Godfrey ; the grim Duke
of Albemarle, old General Monk, — amid this courageous
company of picked men, the Clerk of the Acts stuck to his
post in daily peril of his life. Read his letter to Coventry
if you would have a measure of the man. "The sickness
in general thickens round us," thus he writes, "particu-
larly upon our neighborhood. You, sir, took your turn
of the sword ; I must not, therefore, grudge to take mine
of the pestilence." When, following the Plague, the
Great Fire of London threatened to consume the entire
124 MODERN ESSAYS
city, he hastened to have workmen brought from the dock-
yards, to suggest destroying houses in the path of the
conflagration, and planned, worked, commanded, till
the Navy Offices were saved. When the Dutch fleet
sailed up the Medway and the Thames, burning and sink-
ing helpless, laid-up English men-of-war, and threatening
the capital itself; while Monk rallied forces to resist,
threw up entrenchments, mounted guns, and sank vessels
to oppose further advance ; — Pepys labored no less
manfully to meet the clamorous demands for adequate
supplies by day and night, "alone at the office . . . yet
doing the king good service." When a hostile House,
hungry for vengeance, seeking a scapegoat for a mis-
managed war, fell on the Navy; when "the whole world
was at work blaming one another," and even the Duke
advised his friends to save themselves, Pepys, unused to
public speech, alone before the Commons, defended his
service, his colleagues, and himself with such conspicuous
ability and success "as gave great satisfaction to every
one." Amid the revelations of corruption and malad-
ministration which followed the war, he dared to beard
even Prince Rupert before the Navy Board — and to
prove his point. Ten years thereafter he was accused, by
no less dangerous an enemy than Shaftesbury, of being a
Catholic and possibly involved in Popish plots. He lost
his office and his liberty, he stood to lose his life ; but he
did not lose his courage or resource, and, in the Tower,
prepared defense so ample as to make the absurd charge
fall of its own weight.
Through all he was, he tells us, horribly afraid — but
he was never too frightened to do his duty ; incredible as
it seems in view of the conception of the man with which
we have been instilled, his conscience was continually
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 125
too much for him. Over and over again he resolves to
follow the dictates of prudence and not involve himself
in Montagu's affairs — but finally he does. " I was
fearful of going to any house," he writes in the Plague
year — but he went. "I do see everybody is on his own
defense and spare not to blame another, and the same
course I shall take" — but he did not. "I was afraid,"
he writes at another crisis in affairs, "but I did not shew
it." Amid the difficulties which confronted him in the
naval investigation he even found time to advise a per-
secuted colleague, "poor weak brother," in his defense.
Proud as he was of his success in life, his house, his clothes,
his coach, his dignities, his place, — not all his vanity
nor all his fears prevented his risking them for what he
thought was right. If this be cowardice, then make the
most of it.
If, finally, you would have a fairer measure of the man,
compare Pepys with Gibbon, the historian, who most
nearly occupies an eminence in one department of histori-
cal literature commensurate with that of the Secretary
in another. Not merely does each owe his present repu-
tation to his literary skill in that field, but the outlines of
their lives show certain similarities. Both were of middle
class ; both rose through their abilities from relative ob-
scurity to distinction ; both were members of Parliament ;
both held public office ; and the private life of the historian
has been approved by sober folk almost as much as that of
the diarist has been condemned. Gibbon, accustomed to
inherited means, refrained from marriage with one of the
most attractive women on the Continent from prudent
fear of his father's displeasure, "sighed as a lover but
obeyed as a son"; the penniless Pepys, with a rash un-
worldliness the more remarkable in a man conspicuous
126 MODERN ESSAYS
above his fellows for his sound judgment, married in
defiance of every prudent consideration. The one,
financially independent of his place, gave silent votes
against his conscience for a poHcy which led to England's
quarrel with America ; the other, owing his living to his
place, dared oppose the Commons' anger and his superiors'
ill will wherever he believed his cause was right. One
slumbered with his colleagues of the Board of Trade over
the duties of a pleasant sinecure, while the imperial policy
went down to ruin ; the other spent his days and, not in-
frequently, his nights in furthering the interests of his
government. "I have entered Parliament," wrote the
historian, "without patriotism and without ambition;
... all my views are bounded by the comfortable and
modest position of a Lord of Trade." " My great design,"
wrote Pepys, "is to get myself to be a Parliament man . . .
both for the King's and Service's sake and for the Duke
of York's." Reverse Gibbon, and you get Pepys.
Neither could have succeeded in the other's field :
Pepys failed as much at history as Gibbon in affairs.
From the desert of family and official life which the his-
torian created and called peace, there rose, indeed, a
splendid history : from the varied and fertile plain of
everyday affairs the Secretary brought a no less immortal
Diary. Like character, like book ; the style was in each
case the man himself. "The manner of the 'Decline and
Fall,'" says Bagehot, "is not a style in which you can tell
the truth. . . . Truth is of various kinds ; grave,
solemn, dignified, — petty, low, ordinary : and a historian
who has to tell the truth must be able to tell what is little
as well as what is amazing. Gibbon is at fault here :
he cannot mention Asia Minor. The petty order of sub-
lunary matters, the common existence of ordinary people.
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 127
the necessary littlenesses of necessary life are little suited
to his sublime narrative." One may not venture to declare
what the ideal style of diaries should be ; but, by whatever
chance, all men agree that Pepys has hit upon it ; and,
whatever charges may be brought against him, none
can say he was not competent to tell the truth in whatever
form it showed itself to him, that he failed to find an apt
expression for every emotion or experience he had, or that
his book does not conform to the "necessary littlenesses
of necessary life." One cannot imagine writing of Pepys
that "the way to reverence him is not to read him at all,
but look at him from the outside . . . and think how much
there is within." Rather his book is "actually read, a
man is glad to take it up and slow to lay it down ; . . .
once having had it in his library he would miss it from its
shelves," the more so that it was not the product of "a
life-time of horrid industry." Least of all did the diarist,
with the peculiar vanity of the historian, identify himself
with the world's greatness. Gibbon, it has been said,
confused himself with the Roman Empire ; describing his
pilgrimages from Buriton to London and London to Buri-
ton in the same majestic periods that record the fall of
states and empires ; his amateur experiences with the
English yeomanry in phrases that recall the tramp of
Roman legions ; his voiceless and insignificant presence
in the House of Commons in a manner suited to an account
of the deliberations of the Roman senators. Whatever
form the diarist's egotism took, he realized his place within
the universe. Nor can we well believe that the great
work of the historian would have suffered from some
infusion of the Secretary's qualities.
Comparisons, however invidious, are in this case at
least illuminating ; for to many minds the smug, impec-
128 MODERN ESSAYS
cable career of the historian has seemed far to surpass
the garrulous, inconsequent, vain pursuits of the gossipy
diarist in all those enviable qualities which make for
virtue and true success ; in particular it has seemed to
stand for the accomplishment of a great purpose nobly
planned, idealistic, admirable, as opposed to Pepys's
selfish strivings after the pleasures and profits of a worldly
existence. Nothing could be much farther from the
truth. If the one made a success of intellect, the other
made a success of life ; if the historian did much for the
past and the future, the Secretary did no less for his own
day and for posterity. We would not willingly give up
the work of either; but, if one should fail, we could
more easily replace the work of Gibbon than the work
of Pepys ; if we should have to choose between selfish
ascetic and hard-working hedonist — let each man make
his choice.
That one shall ask more of life than life can give, that is
the great tragedy. From it, save in perhaps a single
particular, Pepys was spared. But that a man may
reasonably expect of posterity an honorable remembrance
for eminent service well performed, and receive instead
a familiar, half-contemptuous regard as a light-minded,
evil-mannered, amusing babbler, that height of fame's
tragi-comic irony has been his fate too long. In the
records of his service, and in the Diary read by their
light, there resides the quality which the critics have
found wanting and blamed him for lacking — devotion
to high purpose and ideals, and a sense of duty which
served at once as lofty patriotism or sustaining belief
in a great cause might have to another type of mind.
This does not mean that he was a perfect character, only
a very human man, eminent in more than one field of
THE SERIOUS PEPYS 129
human endeavor and of great service to his fellow men.
To the appreciation of this world's goods and pleasures,
to intellectual and philanthropic tastes, to the. doctrines
of Franklin and Polonius, he added a sense of public
duty and an unremitting industry, with talents which
lift him far above the level of his present reputation, as
they raised him above the generality of his own times.
He was, in short, an admirable representative of a class
not uncommon during the Restoration yet not typical of
it, the left-over Puritans, bred in the sterner, more efficient
school of the Protectorate ; on whom, amid the corrup-
tion and extravagance of shifty politicians and dissolute
courtiers, rested the burden of the state. What he said
of another applies no less to himself: "It is pretty to see
that they are fain to find out an old-fashioned man of
Cromwell's time to do their business for them." "If
it comes to fighting," observed one of his acquaintances
when dangers thickened about Charles the Second's
path, "the King must rely on the old party"; and this
proved, throughout, scarcely less true of administration.
With all its faults, the Cromwellian regime had one
virtue which was clearly revealed under its successor —
it bred strong men. They were not seldom far from
immaculate, and the most made of their failings was by
their royalist rivals ; but in morals they were, at worst,
below the level of their generation, and in efficiency they
rose far above it. Among these worthies Pepys holds high
place. Admitting all the frailties, and the inconsistencies
of this Puritan in Restoration garb, his manners and his
morals not untouched with something of the weakness
of his day, there yet remains a man whom it is next to
impossible to dislike, and whom it would be wholly im-
possible, in the light of adequate knowledge of his career,
130 MODERN ESSAYS
not to respect. His motto, which in the half-light of his
Diary has long seemed so appropriate Mens cujusque is
est quisque — "as a man's mind is, so is he," — may,
in this view, well be replaced by one far more appro-
priate to his life, "Seest thou a man diligent in his business,
he shall stand before kings."
\
WHAT THE TEN- YEAR SERGEANT OF POLICE
TELLS 1
BY
Henry Hastings Curran
Mr. Curran has some very real suggestions to make regarding the
conditions of the police force of New York City. The difficulty in regard
to the police there is that (a) criminals enter the police force, (6) that
the policeman is untrained, (c) that he is inadequately paid, (d) that
promotion may be bought, etc. Similar criticisms individually and
collectively have been made so often that the public has lost interest.
Therefore logically he introduces his main essay by a narrative section
in which he tells about the dramatic murder of the gambler Rosenthal
and how the subject came to have a particular appropriateness at present.
Having by this means gained both the reader's interest and his con-
fidence, he proceeds to enumerate his proposed criticisms.
In his yearning for other lands and other days, Kipling's
Tommy Atkins laments that he is "learnin' 'ere in London
what the ten -year soldier tells." New Yorkers have
been learning through the last winter something of what
the ten-year sergeant of police tells. Their equanimity is
not increased by the fact that this veteran's recital holds
true of many another American city.
The school was set in motion by the latest accident in
government by investigation. One Herman Rosenthal,
a professional gambler, who had fallen out with his police
^ From The Yale Review, for July, 1913, by permission of the author
and of the editor of The Yale Review.
131
132 MODERN ESSAYS
protector, had agreed to call on the District Attorney
on a July morning and tell what he knew. The appoint-
ment was not kept. Rosenthal stepped out of the Hotel
Metropole at two o'clock that morning in response to a
message that a friend wished to see him, and was shot to
death the moment he set foot upon the sidewalk. The
murderers made their escape from this brilliantly lighted
spot in the Tenderloin with ridiculous ease. If a bystander
had not caught the number of the fleeing automobile,
the efforts of the District Attorney to call these gunmen
to account might well have failed. As events turned out,
not only were the four gunmen caught, tried, and con-
victed, but the police lieutenant involved was convicted
of complicity in the affair, and all five are in Sing Sing
Prison, sentenced to death.
Meanwhile, the horrified amazement of the people of
the city had turned into fiery indignation as the revela-
tions following the shots became more and more sinister
in their indications of police complicity in the murder
itself. The idea that a lieutenant of police could turn to
organized murder to protect his "graft" from exposure
was enough to shake the complacency of the blindest. In
less than a week from that early morning's work, a move-
ment was on foot in the Board of Aldermen to investigate
the police department.
When the investigating committee began its work
there was many a wiseacre to predict that "a little graft
would be dug up — enough to satisfy the public — then
it would all blow over, and the game would go on as
before." Others scented a political move and speculated
upon the chance of elevating a moral spasm into a "moral
issue." And still others, while greedy of the sensations to
come, fell back upon the folly of attempting to improve
WHAT TEN-YEAR POLICE SERGEANT TELLS 133
conditions without changing the substantive law on
gambling, excise, and prostitution. "The people want
to gamble," argued these last doubters, "and laws against
gambling cannot be enforced ; the people want the saloons
open on Sunday, and you cannot keep them shut by law ;
and no law for the prohibition of prostitution has been
possible of enforcement since the beginning of time.
These are State-made laws, and the legislators from the
rural districts, who are still in the majority at Albany,
have imposed their own more rigorous ideas of morality
upon a liberty-loving metropolis that systematically
sets the imposition at naught. Until the law represents
the will of the people of this city, policemen will profit by
its non-enforcement ; and all the investigations in the
world will not cut out the cancer." With a vigorous
plea for home rule for the city in these matters, this school
of critics usually dismissed the subject as exhausted and
settled, on that basis.
The language of the city's charter with respect to alder-
manic investigations is simple indeed :
The Board of Aldermen shall have power and it shall be its duty to see
to the faithful execution of the laws and ordinances of the city ; and it
may appoint from time to time a special committee to inquire whether
the laws and ordinances of the city relating to any subject or to any de-
partment of the city government are being faithfully observed, and the
duties of the officers of such department are being faithfully dis-
charged. . . .
The charter framers took it for granted that law is made
to be enforced. They decreed further that it be the
"duty," as well as the power, of the Board of Aldermen
"to see to the faithful execution of the laws ... of the
city " ; and nowhere do the fathers countenance such
deceitful sacrifices to a distorted conception of personal
134 MODERN ESSAYS
liberty as "partial" or "proportionate" or "reasonable"
enforcement of law. There is no hint in the books of a
twilight zone between what is and is not crime, save as
the law prescribes.
The committee therefore, in obedience to its charter
mandate, held aloof from that engaging field of "when is a
crime not a crime," and went in straight pursuit of an
answer to the question, "Is the law enforced and are the
officers of the police department faithfully discharging
their duties?" In other words, New York for the first
time studied its police department as a problem of adminis-
tration. Committees have come and gone, startling the
city with the depth of their revelations and revolting
their audiences to the point of satiety. They operated,
but they took no steps to heal the disease uncovered ;
the surgeon dropped his work with his knife, and, after
calling his clinic to witness what the gash revealed, left
the patient to recover as he might. This committee had
a different conception of its task.
The police problem is one of character, and the key
to a policeman's character is the kind of administration
under which he lives. A police career should be as
honorable as an army career, with its incentive to ambition
and its reward for merit. Is it aided, then, or hindered,
by the way in which the department is managed.'* Is
the policeman fortified by his environment and handling
to resist temptation, or is the fortitude he brings into the
department with him sapped and buffeted to exhaustion
by bad management ? Let the ten-year sergeant — one
of the honest majority — give a few glimpses of his ex-
perience, as seen through the lens of this latest investi-
gation, and perhaps even this fragmentary kaleidoscope
will reveal something of the intense directness of the pres-
WHAT TEN- YEAR POLICE SERGEANT TELLS 135
sure which administration brings to bear upon the charac-
ter of the "cop."
When a square- jawed, well-framed young fellow leaves
his truck or workshop and " makes the cops " in New York,
he does so by way of a civil service examination, mental
and physical. He may be of very ordinary mental calibre,
but must be physically without a flaw. In his application
he must give his previous history and employment,
and answer under oath whether he has been arrested,
indicted, or convicted, giving the circumstances. Then
he is looked up. New York recruits its police force
at the rate of thirty men a month, and the Civil Service
Commission confesses to having to look up the char-
acter of this human stream with the aid of just two
investigators. Prior to the present police administra-
tion, an effective character investigation bureau was
maintained at police headquarters, under the capable
direction of Lieutenant John Stanton, to supplement the
absurdly inadequate staff of the Civil Service Commission.
This bureau delved into such refinements as the detection,
by watermarks, of bogus Irish county birth-certificates,
whereby many an intending "copper" was caught swearing
falsely as to his age and promptly prevented from begin-
ning a police career with a successful lie upon his lips. But
this bureau was abolished by the present administration,
and the ten-year sergeant has seen thirty-eight men
appointed by the present commissioner who were known
by him to have sworn falsely that they had never been
arrested. How many more of this ilk have come in since,
the public will never know, for the machinery of detection
has been thrown into the scrap heap. One of these men
had been acquitted of murder (shooting), and of felonious
assault (stabbing), after arrest, in addition to having
136 MODERN ESSAYS
been sued by his wife for non-support and brutal treatment.
Letters against his character were on file in the depart-
ment, and the boy he had stabbed, in his barber shop in
Brooklyn, had protested both to the Mayor and the com-
missioner against making the man a policeman. When
the boy told his story before the committee, the deep
red of the scar he bore from the stabbing, running from
the ear to the point of the jaw, was visible across the whole
space of the aldermanic chamber. A present deputy
commissioner accounted, on the witness stand, for the
assailant's appointment as follows :
Q. Then if anybody can escape going to jail, he is a good enough
policeman for you — is that right ?
A. Yes, sir ; he is a good enough policeman for me.
And the commissioner thus explained :
I am stating that, in my opinion, when a man has been tried for a
crime and has been acquitted, it is not incumbent upon any public official
to condemn him or conduct any further prosecution of him. . . . Any
man who, after indictment, has been acquitted, is good enough for me.
The commissioner did not seem to perceive that it was
not a question of prosecuting or condemning a man, but
of clothing him in blue, giving him a gun and a club,
and making him a guardian of the peace and the State's
witness for twenty-five years to come. Another applicant-
perjurer had been arrested for seduction, discharged upon
agreeing to marry, had then cruelly beaten his wife and
abandoned her, and, finally, had struck a bargain with his
mother-in-law to pay her five dollars a month if she would
keep those incidents from the knowledge of the depart-
ment. They came to the present commissioner's knowl-
edge and he promptly made the man a policeman. Still
another man, appointed a few years ago and escaping
WHAT TEN- YEAR FOLfCE SERGEANT TELLS IST
even the vigilanee of the department's character investiga-
tion, had served a year" in the King's County Penitentiary
for burglary. Thus the ten^^y^a)?' sergeant, standing at
the gate of the citadel of police headcfuarter's^ has seen
this band of liars enter and made welcome in the places
where truth should be the first quality ; and many a
truth-telling young fellow he has seen left standing
without, because the liars spelled or punctuated a little
better. He has also seen the dismissal from the force of
that Lieutenant Stanton who testified to the committee,
under subpoena, of his character investigation work,
before the present commissioner did away with it. Follow-
ing his testimony, came a charge of attempted extortion,
suddenly remembered after three years by the com-
missioner's former policeman-chauffeur ; then Stanton's
trial and dismissal, though his record in the department
was clean for seventeen years back. This extraordinary
charge was, immediately after the police trial, thoroughly
sifted and exploded before the aldermanic committee,
but Stanton remains the sacrifice of the investigation.
When the new policeman has run the preliminary gaunt-
let and is finally appointed to be one of "the finest," he
is corralled for thirty days in the school of recruits to be
*' halter-broken." Here he receives competent instruction
in pistol practice, drilling, and humane handling of
prisoners, with many a sharp fall from the wrestling teacher
who shows the different grips. In the old days, there was
also fruitf id schooling in the law of crime, gathering of evi-
dence, and presentation of the State's case in court, with an
active moot court in session to demonstrate indelibly this
vital part of a policeman's work. The mental training,
however, has fallen into decay, and its old vigor is now
replaced by hours of monologue from a captain to a score
138 MODERN ESSAYS
of perspiring truckmen who neither ask nor are asked
questions. With no running stimulus to independent
tliinking, there is also no test at the end, in which respect
the police probationer may wake a chord of envy in the
collegiate heart. London schools its police neophytes
for six weeks, and Diisseldorf, supplying schooled recruits
to the Rhine provinces, for eleven weeks, while a German
policeman must first have been a "non-com" in the
German Army, with at least six years of army experience.
That New York, without the extra safeguards of the British
and the Germans, should turn its policemen out on
the street equipped with thirty days of mental malnutri-
tion, serves to show another of the honest policeman's
initial handicaps.
A more serious instance of starting a man on his race
with a hobble about his knees is encountered in the rate of
pay of the first and second year patrolmen, and this is a
matter that the ten-year sergeant has been through
himself. The $800 of the first year becomes $900 in the
second, and then ranges upward by degrees until it reaches
the patrolman's maximum of $1400 at the end of the
fifth year. The $800 is quite fictitious. It is in fact
only $556.64, as the city takes back the balance by com-
pelling the new patrolman to buy his entire equipment
out of his own pocket. Summer and winter uniforms,
raincoat, boots, billet, locust night-stick, whistle, nippers,
revolver and cartridges, rawhide straps, cap-devices —
these and a thousand and one other expenses must be
footed by the patrolman. He must even pay for his bed-
ding at the station-house, where he is required to be when
asleep on reserve ; and his pension and benevolent associa-
tion dues complete the rebate that he thus furnishes the
city. The wives of 175 patrolmen picked at random
WHAT TEN-YEAR POLICE SERGEANT TELLS 139
have told the committee their experience, with figures
of household budgets. They pass muster in thrift and
frugality, but their little savings cannot bridge the gap
between a salary of $556.64 and an average budget for
family purposes of $848.71. It is only debt that finds
room in this gap, with the tradesman and the doctor vying
for the monthly pay cheque, and the loan shark ever at
the door. One of these parasites finally collected $60
from a patrolman for a loan of $30. It needs only a slight
dereliction of duty to bring down a fine upon the patrol-
man's head, and then it is the wife and babies who are
punished. Fines are deducted from the offender's pay,
and there has been much thoughtful condemnation of this
instrument of discipline. The New York policeman thus
begins his career in debt, and if he yields before some of the
graft that is thrust at him, must the condemnation be
blind to all causes.^ One has little patience with those
sympathetic souls who would excuse a policeman from
wrong-doing because he is peculiarly tempted ; the town
is thoroughly sated with this maudlin fashion of talk.
But has the city done its part when it fastens the shield
with the city's seal on the breast of the new "cop" with
one hand, and with a niggardly clutch of the other pulls
him aside into unavoidable debt ?
The old saying, "You must take 'em young," applies to
the policeman. Let him "get away" with a fraud at his
entrance, and he will try another before he has long been
in. The next step is promotion, and on this point a
police captain, of years gone by, has testified to the follow-
ing miniature of high finance :
A. I was not three months on the police before somebody came to me
and wanted $300 to have me detailed to the Harbor Squad.
Q. Did you pay it ?
UO MODERN ESSAYS
A. No, sir.
Q. Were you detailed ?
A. No, sir. Five or six months after that my grandmother died,
and she left a little money to my mother, and the scouts heard about
that, and they came around and wanted to make me a roundsman for
$600.
This captain was under examination concerning a story
that he had done some negotiating for the payment of
$10,000 to a politician for his promotion to his captaincy.
The colloquy over this reveals a refreshing degree of
frankness.
Q. Would you be willing to pay $10,000 for your promotion ?
A. If somebody else paid it for me. I would not have paid it.
Q. You would have consented to have had it paid ?
A. Most assuredly I would. I wanted to get promoted.
Q. How would you get the $10,000 back ?
A. I do not know (lavyhtcr). There is a legacy coming to me, and
I would be able to pay it back some day.
Q. How would you get the $10,000 back that you had to put up for a
captaincy ?
A. Why the job was worth it (laughter).
Q. How ?
A. For the simple reason that you do not have to work nights. You
can sleep all night (laughter).
If ever a department of city government should have its
drawbridge up and gates bolted against politicians, how-
ever well-intentioned, the police department is that one.
The insidious plague that has suddenly destroyed the
chestnut trees of a continent is no more potent in its
blight than is the devastation of discipline that political
access can work in a police department. The police
commissioners who have come and gone are a unit on
this point. Is anj^one yet so simple as to think that a
policeman who benefits in his calling by political favor
WHAT TEN-YEAR POLICE SERGEANT TELLS 141
will not some day have to repay that favor by winking
at an infraction of the law? And that is quite apart
from many a cash payment made in bygone days, if rumor
be true.
Ten years ago, Captain Miles O'Reilly, who bears the
distinctive appellation of "Honest Miles O'Reilly," was in
command of the Oak Street precinct and on the look-out
for malingerers. So, when at three o'clock one morning,
four of his men were discovered "shooting craps" in the
back room of a saloon when they were supposed to be on
duty, there was trouble ahead. O'Reilly was a good deal
of a disciplinarian in his day, and the particular "crap-
shooter" who figures in this drama was promptly dismissed
from the force. With an ambition to return to the fold,
the dismissed patrolman went to court ; he was rejected
with equal promptness by two courts, the second being
the court of last resort of the State. He then accom-
plished the passage, by the legislature of the State of New
York, of a special Act reinstating him as a policeman,
which was vetoed by Mayor McClellan. Then came a
general Act, with a retroactive clause to admit the "crap-
shooter," but General Bingham, then commissioner,
used the discretion given him by turning this bad penny
down again. The fifth attempt, made upon the present
commissioner, succeeded, and "Honest Miles O'Reilly's"
tarrier is back again after nine years of lobbying, with a
new uniform and a service stripe, as lively as a cricket,
while the passing decade has seen the honorable retire-
ment of his old commander. The slang phrase that "they
never come back" boasts two notable exceptions in
Rip Van Winkle and this peripatetic patrolman. The
ten-year sergeant knows this as "a reinstatement," and
he has seen more than one man justly dismissed by the
142 MODERN ESSAYS
last administration but cheerfully reinstated under the
present regime, with rank still equal to that of his comrade
who had escaped this vacation by steadily doing his duty.
When the aldermanic investigation began, the ten-year
sergeant had not only seen a dismissed patrolman come
back after nine years of lobbying, but he had also seen
eight police commissioners come and go in eleven years.
Birds of passage, a former deputy commissioner has testi-
fied that " the force gets a glimpse of them flying over and
hardly has time to determine their species." Commis-
sioners come and go, but the policeman goes on forever.
And with this tradition, has come about a sort of police
peerage, a group of powerful barons in the department
who, holding the higher offices, can make and unmake
a commissioner. If the barons become disaffected, the
commissioner's days are numbered. Judge McAdoo, a
former commissioner, has testified that in November,
1905, standing odds of two to one were posted in
every gambling house in town that "McAdoo would not
last beyond the year." There were no takers, and
McAdoo went when the clock struck twelve on New
Year's Eve. The police barons manufacture "crime
waves," bring pressure upon a mayor vested with power
to remove the commissioner, stir up political sorties by
the "outs" against the "ins" of police officialdom, and
never yet have they failed to get the head of the ruler.
That these Igorrotes administer the lair of such "crooks"
as the department harbors, might well be believed, even
in the absence of the recent conviction of four inspectors
now in stripes on Blackwell's Island. The young police-
man is under the command of these higher officers, and
he has his own existence to look to, with always the chance
of a "frame-up" if he displeases the barons by unwelcome
WHAT TEN- YEAR POLICE SERGEANT TELLS 143
zeal in protected fields of law-breaking. This is the
"system." The presence of a number of higher officers
of sterling uprightness only emphasizes the "gait" of
the others. With these men so difficult to dislodge that
some have, uncannily enough, been honorably retired on
pension just to get them out of the department, the barons
command respect in the ranks when the commissioner
cannot. General Bingham has testified that when the
peerage carried its power into the legislature, he was
compelled, to his military amazement, to take the defen-
sive before the legislative committee and, in trying to
defeat their legislation, to face a volley of questions from
spokesmen of his own subordinates. In other words,
the head of the house was called sharply to account for
opposing a bill emanating from his own entourage ! That
each of these commissioners who succeeded each other so
rapidly has different ideas from those of his predecessor,
which he invariably puts into effect, only increases the
confusion of the policeman who must do his work in such
a remarkable household.
There are few young policemen who do not cherish an
ambition to serve in the detective bureau. The plain
clothes of the "bull" are a magnet of envy that n^er
fails to draw. With a sense of romance and responsibility
begotten of boyhood, the chance of a high esprit de corps
here would seem second to none. That opportunity is
now in abeyance. Maladministration has emptied head-
quarters of detectives and scattered them to the precincts,
with the inevitable disappearance of cohesion, team work,
and conference. The "Italian Squad," a famous set of
men who under the valiant Petrosino proved the first
effective check to bomb-throwing, kidnapping, and the
"Black Hand," has been abolished. The pickpocket
144 MODERN ESSAYS
squad, specialists in capturing these disciples of Fagin,
is gone. Captain Carey's homicide squad has been
scattered, and his human bloodhounds are more likely
now to be found on the trail of Saturday-night street
brawls than of murder. In short, specialization, the main
support of detective efficiency, has received its death
blow. Abolished also is the "morning hne-up," the
daily array of crooks at headquarters for inspection and
identification by detectives under mask. Worst of all,
8,400 pictures in the "Rogues' Gallery" have been burned
up in the furnace at headquarters, by official order, to-
gether with the accompanying Bertillon records, and this
invaluable aid to criminal justice in all parts of the country
is a thing of the past. The number of arrested persons
now "mugged" is so paltry as to be negligible — O
personal liberty, "what crimes are committed in thy
name!" With the temple thus pulled down over the
departmental head, and the detectives searching for tools
to work with, the rotation of members of the bureau has
proceeded so fast that in fifteen months 254 men went in
and 290 went out and back to patrol duty, out of an
average complement of 500 in the bureau. The prophet
has not yet appeared who will essay to prove that detec-
tives may thus be made overnight.
The ten-year sergeant found the detective's climax
capped when he heard of the ostrich feather exploit of a
June night last year. The detective bureau, with a
laudable ambition to put three known "loft burglars"
behind the bars, engaged the services of a "stool-pigeon,"
that is to say, another "crook," who cheerfully agreed
to lead his comrades into a police trap for the price.
Twenty-five dollars of the city's money was spent for
a kit of burglar tools, and further funds for wining and
WHAT TEN-YEAR POLICE SERGEANT TELLS 145
dinmg the three "crooks," the vouchers for all of which
now lie in state in the comptroller's office. The plan was
prettily set for a midnight melodrama opposite old Grace
Church on Broadway, and the appointed time and place
found the three burglars and their obliging "stool-pigeon"
friend busily blowing a hole into the loft building which
contained the goal of their hopes, the dynamite being
also a municipal investment. The trio being engaged in
the loft, their automobile and chauffeur accomplice waiting
in Union Square, a few blocks away, for the signal, and the
department's detectives planted in adjacent doorways, the
little drama came to its climax upon the collision of these
three expeditions. The burglars were on the sidewalk
with bags stuffed with several thousand dollars' worth of
ostrich feathers, the automobile speeding to the rescue
had slowed up at the curb to take aboard the thieves and
their loot, when at the proper moment a swarm of de-
tectives swept down upon the adventurers and captured
the entire outfit, without a shot or a struggle. This con-
stitutes the official burglary, but the unofficial burglary
came to light the next morning when the merchant who
had unwittingly provided the scenery for the drama
counted up his losses and then, in the station-house of
the precinct, whither the feathers had been taken, made
an inventory of the capture. As the value of the feathers
in the hands of the police was $1,500 less than that of the
feathers taken from the loft, and a hard-hearted burglar
insurance company had felt certain enough of the loss to
pay over the $1,500 to the merchant, the disappearing
difference in the feathers survived as the greater mystery.
Although no one but the detectives and the crooks had
been on the spot, and the detectives had captured the
crooks, they vouchsafed no answer to the mystery of who
146 MODERN ESSAYS
had captured tlie missing feathers. The play became
still more a burlesque when the lieutenant of detectives
a few days later demanded and received from the merchant
$175 as a reward for personal bravery.
Mary Goode's testimony marked the beginning of the
committee's inquiry into the department's methods of
handling vice. Self-confessed proprietress of a disorderly
house, she passed across the stage with a modesty of de-
meanor and modulated gentility of speech that well-nigh
gave the lie to her vocation. When attacked by a hostile
member of the committee, her discerning retort, complete
in its answer, was delivered so quietly and with such
evident sincerity that her story has never since been
questioned. Her tale is worn threadbare in private
knowledge but seldom told in public under oath. The
shifting of zones of prostitution, the dreariness of the
trade, the cupidity of police officials, and the incessant
payment of "protection" money to their collectors were
only a few of the familiar incidents related. The ten-year
sergeant knows this story by heart. It concerns more
than him. He could not, however, know her estimate
of the number of prostitutes, showing a total of 35,000
fallen women in New York City. One need not stand
aghast when he compares this figure with that of the 10,000
similarly unfortunate women that an aldermanic com-
mittee found domiciled in the town seventy years ago.
There were some 500,000 people in the present city area
in 1843, where there are now 5,250,000. So the old propor-
tion was one prostitute to every fifty of population, where
now it is only one to every one hundred and fifty. Hope
may lie there.
George A. Sipp, who had kept a "hotel" in Harlem, fol-
lowed the Goode story within a week, and his unadorned
WHAT TEN- YEAR POLICE SERGEANT TELLS 147
tale of consistent pajanent for police protection was equally
convincing. He served the additionally useful purpose of
introducing the committee to the "friendly collar," a
species of arrest that is visited from time to time upon
protected law breakers, to keep the precinct record
straight. The difference between an ordinary "collar"
and a "friendly collar" is that the arresting officers suffer a
lapse of memory when they appear in court against the
victim of the latter, so that the case fails and is "turned
out"; but the record of arrests shows a fine degree of
activity, pro bono publico, on the part of the profiting
police protectors.
The ten-year sergeant knows Sipp's story as well as he
knows Mary Goode's, for the police barons rule more by
fear than by secrecy. But he knows more. He is aware
that citizens constantly write to the commissioner accusing
police officers of "grafting" from gambling and dis-
orderly houses, and has learned to his amazement that the
practice of the present commissioner is to refer all such
complaints to the officers accused for investigation. In a
test period of fourteen months, in the present adminis-
tration, out of 301 such complaints, 270 are found to have
been politely forwarded to the accused policemen, or their
immediate superiors involved by inference in the accusa-
tion, with a request to investigate themselves. As many
as 190 were referred to the officers in question merely
for their "information." When these Spartan police-
men investigated, they invariably found themselves not
guilty and solemnly so reported to the commissioner,
who must have been immensely relieved to find his offi-
cers so sure of themselves. One letter, addressed to
the Mayor and forwarded to the commissioner, ran as
follows :
148 MODERN ESSAYS
March 27, 1912.
Hon. W. J. Gaynor :
I would like to have you investigate quietly Lieut. Becker. He is
now collecting more money than Devery, and it is well known to every-
one at Police Headquarters. Please do this and you will be surprised
at the result.
Yours,
Henhy Williams.
This was "respectfully referred to Lieutenant Becker for
investigation and report," and the Lieutenant himself, in
this case, respectfully suggested in his report that someone
else might better do the investigating. The Lieutenant is
now in prison for the murder of Rosenthal. A complaint
that one of Inspector Sweeney's "wardmen" was "graft-
ing" was referred to the Inspector for investigation and
report, and the latter promptly absolved himself. He is
now confined in the penitentiary for conspiracy. With
no system of informing himself of conditions, to check
the reassurances of his lying subordinates, the present
commissioner has coupled an honest effort to enforce
the gambling law with a studied indifference to Sunday
liquor-selling and to the heyday of disorderly house ac-
tivity that has reigned ; and his idea of "auto-investiga-
tion" by accused policemen has led straight into the Rosen-
thal murder. The ten-year sergeant wonders that the
explosion did not come before.
When the agitation for this investigation was begun, the
sensation-loving portion of the public found its food in the
committee's struggle for permission to exist. With high
city officials of every persuasion offering obstacle after
obstacle to a police inquiry of any kind, there was presented
a steeplechase of such stiffness and variety that all New
York took a sporting interest in the running. The jumps
all taken and the course to the arena run, there followed
WHAT TEN-YEAR POLICE SERGEANT TELLS 149
the period of "great expectations." The audience
clamored for blood. "Show us the graft! Give us the
'man higher up.' Produce or get off !" Thus the cry of
the crowd, the yearning for a human sacrifice, with its
opportunity for the turning down of tliumbs. Meanwhile
the committee had been going about its business seeking
the answer to the question, "Is the law of the city faith-
fully observed and are the duties of its officers faithfully
discharged .f* " The administration of the department
was and is the problem, and the driest details received
their due notice in the sclieme. In December the inquiry
was pointing up, in its logical course, to the department's
method of handling gambling and prostitution, and its
machinery was working smoothly, and fruitfully, with
every promise of the beneficial results that must accrue
from careful study as distinguished from sensation seeking.
From the point of view of the sensation lovers, however,
the affair was quite in the doldrums, and was becoming
generally labelled as a humdrum, sewing-machine matter,
soon to die and best forgotten. Most serious of all,
the modest appropriation was nearly exhausted, and those
hostile to the inquiry could prevent the granting of another
dollar unless there were a public demand that would not
brook denial. That a great number of thinking people
wanted the inquiry completed along its proper lines did
not lessen the opportunity of the hostile.
At this point of peril, Mary Goode's story came to the
rescue with the spectacular suddenness of lightning. Back
came the special writers of the newspapers who had
"featured" the inquiry in the beginning but had long since
fled to more exciting fields. Back came the audience,
which had dwindled to a dozen when Mary Goode took
the stand, but now thronged the chamber at every hearing.
150 MODERN ESSAYS
Back came public interest, with three-column headlines
in the papers and animated discussion wherever in the
town one man might meet with another. The chasm was
crossed, the extra appropriation granted with eulogies
from friend and foe alike, and the street-corner comment
changed to, "Now you're doing something — keep it up !"
Sipp's story a week later settled all uncertainty, and his-
tory records the punitive aftermath of that revelation of
revenge : A score of policemen indicted, two patrolmen
convicted and in Sing Sing, a captain and another patrol-
man who have confessed, awaiting sentence. And, finally,
for the first time in its history. New York has witnessed
the spectacle of four inspectors of police — the highest
rank in the uniformed force — in stripes, with heads
shaved, making brooms and mending shoes within the
gray walls of a penitentiary. That the story of one man
before an aldermanic committee should give the District
Attorney an opportunity to carry his masterly pursuit of
crooked policemen to the point already reached, was a
chance by-product of an administrative investigation
that looms larger and larger in its educational benefit to
the police and the community. Having set the Sipp
saturnalia in motion, the committee returned to its
patient, closed its ears to the clamor of the clinic, and
quietly finished its work.
Will the analysis be followed by synthesis? Will the
public remember long enough to see that punitive de-
struction is followed by administrative construction?
Preventive hygiene will be required to follow convales-
cence. If the call is not heeded, the consequences will
come in the shape of another police explosion and another
police investigation. The ten-year sergeant knows this.
He will well know, too, whether the events of 1913 have
WHAT TEN- YEAR POLICE SERGEANT TELLS 151
helped to give the police the administrative backbone of a
"career." If they have not, the adage that "the police-
man's lot is not a happy one," will still apply to him, for
he is of the honest and preponderant portion of an army
that New York honors to a man for its courage, and wants
to honor to a man for its uprightness. But if they have,
the ten-year sergeant may translate Tommy Atkins for a
new toast to the spirit of the corps :
When you've 'eard your city caliin',
W'y you won't 'eed nothin' else.
THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT ^
BY
William Howard Taft
To every American the exact extent and the exact limitation of the
powers of the President of the United States is of necessity interesting.
Still more interesting does it become when the subject is treated by one
who himself has been President. He rightfully speaks with authority.
Consequently the first paragraph simply states the question, but states
is in a very personal way. There are six Is in that first paragraph.
The succeeding paragraphs treat each function, defining and limiting
it. Then the final paragraph returns to the comparison between the
king of England and the President with which the essay opened. There-
fore as a whole the structure is severely simple. The development
within the paragraph, the precision of phrase, the accuracy of definition,
and the clarity of exposition, make it a model of legal acuteness.
It has been said that the President of the United States
has more real power than most monarchs of Europe. I
do not know that I am able to institute an intelligent com-
parison, because to do that one ought to be quite familiar
with the extent of the royal or imperial power to be
measured with that of our President ; and I have not suffi-
cient knowledge on the subject. I know something with
respect to the real governing power of the King of England,
and, except in an indirect way, the President's power far
exceeds that of King George ; and I think it is very consid-
erably more than that of the President of France. When,
^ From The Yale Review, for October, 1914, by permission of the
author and of the editor of The Vale Review.
152
THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT 153
however, one examines the imperial power in governments
like Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain, the question is
much more difficult ; and I presume no one would say
that the President's power was equal to that of the Czar
of Russia.
With us, a President is elected for four years, and nothing
can get him out of office except his death, or his resigna-
tion — which never comes, — or his impeachment. The
certainty of his tenure for four years makes our executive
administration a little more rigid and less subject to quick
changes of public opinion than in the parliamentary coun-
tries. I am inclined to think that our system is a good
thing for our country, however much parliamentary
government may suit the countries where it is in use.
Of course, it has this disadvantage. In a parliamentary
government there is a union between the executive and
the legislative branches, and they, therefore, work to-
gether, because those who constitute the executive lead
and direct the legislation ; whereas in the separation of
the great branches of the government with us, the Presi-
dent represents the executive. Congress the legislative,
and the courts the judicial branch ; and the plan of the
men who framed the Constitution was to preserve these
branches separate. The President is able to recommend
legislation to Congress, and he may go in person to argue
the wisdom of it if he chooses. Mr. Wilson has restored an
old custom of that sort, which was abandoned by President
Jefferson, and I think he was right in doing so. It em-
phasizes his recommendations and focusses the eyes of
the people on that which he regards as important to the
public welfare, and it puts a greater responsibility on
Congress to give attention to his suggestions.
The British constitution gives the power of veto to the
154 MODERN ESSAYS
King ; but it has not been exercised for more than two
centuries, and were it attempted, it would shake the
throne. The exercise of the President's veto always rouses
eloquence on the part of those who are much disappointed
at the defeat of the measure, and the walls of Congress
not infrequently resound with denunciation of his tyranni-
cal exercise of a kingly prerogative. But the fact is it has
come to be a more frequent characteristic of a republic
than of a modern monarchy. For a king or an emperor
to interpose a veto to an Act of the popular legislature is
really to obstruct the people's will, because he was not
chosen by their votes but inherited his royal power. He
must, indeed, be careful in exercising a veto lest he
incur a protest and arouse a feeling dangerous to his
dynasty. The case of the President is very different.
The Constitution established by the people requires the
President to withhold his signature from a bill if he dis-
approve it, and return it with his objections to the
House in which it originated. For the President is quite
as much the representative of the people as are the mem-
bers of the two Houses. Indeed, the whole people of the
United States is his constituency, and he therefore speaks
and acts for them quite as certainly as the members elected
from congressional districts or the Senators from the
States. He is not exercising a kingly power in a veto.
He is acting in a representative capacity for the whole
people, and is preventing a law that he thinks would
work to the detriment of the whole country. On this
account, the roar of the young lions of Congress against a
veto never frightens the occupant of the White House.
He is not obstructing popular will ; he is only seeking to
express it in his veto, as he has the duty and power to
do. It is much more to the point for those who hurl
THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT 155
their burning words into the Congressional Record to
gather votes enough to pass the bill over the veto. If they
fail in this, they are not likely to disturb anybody's equa-
nimity by trying to establish an analogy between the royal
prerogative and a power given the President by the people
for their own protection.
Again, the President is, by the Constitution, the com-
mander-in-chief of the army and navy. That gives him
the constitutional right to issue orders to the army and
navy to do what he wishes them to do within the law and
the restrictions of the Constitution. He can send them
to any place in the country, can change their stations,
can mass them where he will, and he can call upon them
to help him in the execution of the laws. Ordinarily,
of course, the law is enforced, so far as the United States is
concerned, by the civil executive officers, like United
States marshals, post-office employees, collectors of in-
ternal revenue and of customs, public land ofiicers, and
forestry agents. But wherever the United States law is
resisted by violence, wherever the decrees of a United
States court are so resisted, and the court calls upon the
President to enforce its decree, it is the business of the
President to see that this is done ; and if his United States
marshals are unable to do it, he may call upon the army
to do so. In the Debs strike, or "rebellion," as it w^as
called, when an association, known as the "American
Railway Union," sought to boycott all the railways, to
prevent by violence their operation, and to stop the
mail cars in transportation of the United States mail,
the federal courts issued injunctions against the leaders ;
but the enforcement of these was forcibly resisted. Then
President Cleveland called out the army, and the law was
enforced. In a subsequent case, involving the validity
156 MODERN ESSAYS
of Mr. Cleveland's action, the Supreme Court of the United
States fully sustained him.
There was a time when under the Constitution the
Republican party sought to make possible the legitimate
negro vote in the South, and elaborate laws were passed,
called "force laws," to subject congressional elections to
the supervision of United States election officers, and the
army was used to protect them in the discharge of their
duty. The Democratic party came into power with a
Republican President, Mr. Hayes, and insisted upon
imposing a rider upon the army appropriation bill, for-
bidding the use of the army to help in the enforcement of
the election laws. Mr. Hayes vetoed the army appro-
priation bill because it contained such a rider, and the
army went without money for one year. Subsequently,
however, it was passed. The question never arose as to
whether such a restriction upon the executive power was
valid. I think it was not. It is a constitutional duty on
the part of the President to execute the laws ; and as long
as he has an army, and the Constitution contemplates his
having an army under his command, he cannot be deprived
of the power to use that army to execute all the laws.
But the President's constitutional function as com-
mander-in-chief of the army and navy gives him a very
great scope in the exercise of much wider power than
merely issuing military orders to generals for the use of
troops. The President was, of course, commander-in-
chief in the Spanish War, and as such, under the declara-
tion of war that Congress made, he sent troops to Cuba,
and subsequently to the Philippines. After the war was
over, we continued in occupation of Cuba, Porto Rico, and
the Philippines ; and until Congress intervened by legis-
lation, President McKinley carried on the military govern-
h
THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT 157
ment in these three important dependencies. There were
a million people in Porto Rico. There were two and one-
half million people in Cuba, and there were upwards of
eight millions in the Philippines ; and he exercised not only
executive power but legislative power over those twelve
millions of people. His executive orders were law. There
were some restrictions upon the character of laws he could
make, where the question involved the customs laws of
the United States ; but all laws that had force in the
dependencies themselves, he was able to make and enforce.
The protocol which stopped hostilities in the Spanish War
was signed in xVugust of 1898, and the Treaty of Paris that
ended the war and transferred to us Porto Rico, the
Philippines, and the control of Cuba, was signed late in
the same year. From that time on, the President created
courts, enacted criminal and civil laws, collected taxes,
and administered the government through his power as
commander-in-chief of the army and the navy, and he did
not need to use military agents to accomplish this purpose.
In 1900 he sent to the Philippines a Commission of five
men to institute a government in the islands. It was
called civil government, and it was in fact civil govern-
ment, and yet it was established under his military power.
At first he retained in the Philippines a military governor,
and a major-general of the army was the executive, while
the Commission enacted such civil legislation as was
needed there and established such municipal and pro-
vincial governments as the condition of the country
permitted. The President, through the Secretary of War,
who acted for him, appointed in July, 1901, a civil governor
in the Philippines, under his military power. That civil
governor assumed office on the fourth of July, 1901, and
it was not until June, 1902, nearly four years after we
158 MODERN ESSAYS
acquired possession of the Philippines, that Congress
took a hand at all. It was a very wise arrangement,
because through the ease with which the President and the
Secretary of War could mould the government to suit
the conditions, the character of the people, and the exi-
gencies of the campaign to tranquillize the islands, by
executive orders and Acts of the Commission, a govern-
ment was created that fitted the country as a suit would be
fitted to a man by a tailor. And then after it was all
done, after the work was seen to be good, Congress took
up the matter and confirmed what had been done, and
established the present government there, on the exact
lines of the government that the President had built up
under his power as commander-in-chief. The same thing
is more or less true of Cuba and Porto Rico, though we
did not retain Cuba but turned the island over to the
Cubans, in accordance with our promise made when we
began the war, and although the government of Porto
Rico was not fitted to the necessities of Porto Rico, by
experimental administration, as fully and as successfully
as in the case of the Philippines. The second interven-
tion in Cuba in 1906 was by order of the President, with-
out special congressional action or authority. He acted
under his power to see that the laws are executed, and by
virtue of his power as commander-in-chief of the army
and navy.
The President has no right to declare war. That rests
by the Constitution with Congress. While he cannot
declare war, he can direct the action of the army and the
navy, and so he could direct an invasion of a foreign
country, but that would be an act of war which would
necessarily bring on war. There have been cases where the
President has used the marine force and landed men to
THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT 159
protect American property, but such landing is not to be
regarded as an invasion. Certainly a President would
violate his duty if he directed such an invasion without
the consent of the constituted authority in a foreign
country, and thus brought on war. But in the case of
Cuba and the intervention to which I have referred, Cuba
had consented in the treaty which she made with the
United States, and had provided in her own constitution
that the United States might intervene at its discretion
for the purpose of maintaining law and order. So far
as the President was concerned, this put Cuba within the
jurisdiction of the United States to that extent, and so it
became the President's duty to see that the laws were
executed in Cuba, without receiving special congressional
authority. And he did it with the army and the navy,
because he was their commander-in-chief.
Another instance. The Canal Zone on the Isthmus of
Panama is a territory belonging to the United States,
in which we exercise authority equal to absolute dominion.
Congress passed a law authorizing the President to es-
tablish a government there, and to appoint officers to
exercise governmental authority ; but the law, by its
own terms, expired within a year after its enactment.
Meantime we were on the Isthmus building the canal .
Congress had given the President authority to build the
canal, indeed had made it his duty to do so, but there was
absolutely no authority expressly given to him to continue
a government after the expiration of the law to which I
have referred. But the President went right on exercising
the same authority that he had been exercising ; and he
did so, under his constitutional authority to see that the
laws of the United States are executed. In the absence
of congressional action, when there is a piece of United
160 MODERN ESSAYS
States territory without a government, he has to take
charge of it, and govern it as best he can. Congress
knows the conditions and does not act, and so the President
is compelled to do so. Judges may be appointed, hiws
administered, men imprisoned and executed for crime, and
all by direction of the executive power.
Another power of the President, and one of his greatest
powers, is expressed in a very innocent and simple sen-
tence : "He shall receive all Ambassadors and public
Ministers." He can make treaties, but he cannot do that
without the ratification, or, as it is called in the Constitu-
tion, without "the advice and consent of the Senate," by a
vote of two-thirds of those present. He cannot declare
war, because that is a power that Congress exercises under
the Constitution. Except for these specific limitations,
he controls entirely our international relations. In the
first place, no treaty can be made unless he initiates it.
The Senate may pass a resolution suggesting his making a
treaty, and so might the House, and so might Congress,
but he is not obliged to follow their recommendation.
All our intercourse, except the formal making of treaties
with foreign countries, is carried on by the President
through the State Department. Now that involves the
presentation of claims and complaints by our citizens
against foreign countries, and the presentation by us of
petitions for all sorts of action by foreign governments.
It involves a correspondence as to the complaints by
foreign citizens or subjects against our government. It
involves a constant reference to treaties made and their
construction by our government, which construction after
a while practically fixes our attitude. The President
recognizes foreign governments. Thus we see in Mexico,
which fell into a state of revolution and almost anarchy,
THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT 161
President Wilson declined to recognize Huerta as provi-
sional president. He had the right to do so. He had
the right to recognize him if he chose ; and the resulting
crisis made it evident what a very important and re-
sponsible power that is.
Take the case of the fur seals. Congress passed a law,
punishing anyone who resorted to pelagic sealing in the
Bering Sea. The government owned the Pribilof Islands,
upon which was a herd of seals. The destruction of the
female seals out at sea was very injurious to the herd.
That was the occasion for the enactment of the congres-
sional law to which I referred. Now under the construc-
tion that international law would ordinarily put upon such
a statute, it could only apply to sealing within three miles
of United States land, or else in some way or other we
would have to establish ownership in the seals themselves.
Mr. Blaine, who was then Secretary of State, took the
position that the grant of Alaska to the United States in
18G7 carried with it dominion over the Bering Sea for
the purpose of preserving these seals, and he went back
into the records to show that Russia had claimed such
dominion and attempted to prove that it had been ac-
quiesced in by the Powers. Following that view, the
United States Court of Alaska sustained the seizure of
certain Canadian fishing vessels that had been caught in
pelagic sealing by one of our revenue cutters, forfeited
them under the congressional Act and sold them. The
British government, through Canadian agents, brought a
suit in the Supreme Court of the United States to secure a
writ of prohibition against the Alaska court to prevent that
court from carrying out its decree, on the ground that there
was no jurisdiction over the Bering Sea which Congress
could assert or which the President could maintain. The
M
162 MODERN ESSAYS
Supreme Court dismissed the application, on the main
ground that the question of the dominion of the United
States was a poHtical question, to be determined by the
President or Congress ; and because the President had
asserted the claim through the Secretary of State that we
had dominion over the Alaskan waters beyond the three-
mile limit, the court would be bound by it. Then we
had an international arbitration in which the court con-
sidered the question and held that the Secretary of State
was wrong. For the purposes of my present discussion,
it is a good illustration of the very great power that the
President can exercise in his control over foreign relations.
By the Constitution, the President has the right to
appoint all ambassadors, ministers, consuls, and judges
of the Supreme Court, subject to confirmation by the
Senate of the United States. Congress may place the
appointment of all other officers, with the consent of the
Senate, in the President alone, or in the heads of depart-
ments, or in the courts. Practically, the general power of
appointment of all officers, except very inferior and unim-
portant officers, is in the President, and generally confir-
mation is required by the Senate. This, of course, is a
great power. It is a power, so far as the great offices
are concerned, that the President must have in order that
he may have his policies carried out. That is, he must
appoint his Cabinet, because, as the Supreme Court has
said, they are the fingers of his hand, and they must do
his will and exercise his discretion. Therefore, if there
is to be uniformity, if there is to be consistency, if there
is to be solidarity of movement and force in the executive
branches of the government, the President must appoint
the men who act at the heads of departments and form his
Cabinet.
THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT 163
In respect to all the other executive offices, however, a
different rule should obtain. With the exception of the
judges of the courts, of the ambassadors and ministers, of
the members of his Cabinet, and the appointment of the
general officers of the army, I think that the action of the
President ought practically to be nothing more than a
formal acquiescence in a system which prevails in other
well-governed countries, by which the selection and pro-
motion of all officers is by examination, and their tenure
is for life. The President should not be bothered, as he
is now, with having to exercise an arbitrary discretion
enabling him, if he choose, to use the offices for political
purposes, and involving him in controversies that interfere
with his effectiveness as the chief executive officer of the
nation and do not help the public weal. It is entirely
possible to put all these offices, except the ones I have
named, under the system called the classified civil service.
If popular government is to be a success, the success will
be measured by the ability of the government to use the
services of experts in carrying it on. The selection of
other than the highest officers on political grounds will
not result in the use of experts to carry on the various
functions that the government performs.
We are acquiescing now, all of us, in the view that the
government can accomplish and ought to accomplish much
more benefit for the people than Mr. Jefferson and his
school of political thinkers admitted. Mr. Jefferson
contended that the least government was the best govern-
ment ; that the function of government should be confined,
as nearly as possible, to the administration of justice
through the courts, and the maintenance of law and order
through the police. But we now take a different view,
and hold that there are many things the government can
164 MODERN ESSAYS
do well and better than private contractors. For instance,
we have always run the post office, and now we run the
parcels post. We have built the Panama Canal ; and the
state governments are discharging many functions that it
was formerly thought would be better performed by pri-
vate agency. But such functions for their successful per-
formance require the highest experts. If we are to change
such officers every four years with the political complexion
of the administration, then we lose the benefit of experi-
ence, we lose the benefit of the disinterested devotion to
the public service that a life-tenure brings about, and we
take away from the public service its attractiveness for
the many whose service would be valuable, but who because
of the uncertainty of tenure in the government service
decline to accept positions of responsibility in it. I speak
whereof I know when I say it injures the dignity and the
usefulness of a President to be bothered about the preference
to be given to candidates for post offices, for collectors of
customs, collectors of internal revenue all over this country.
Under the present law, the Senate is required to confirm
them. That necessity gives to the Senators an oppor-
tunity to use duress, for that is what it amounts to, upon
the President to establish a custom by which he shall
consult their political views as to who shall be appointed
to those local offices.
The office of President is one of the greatest responsi-
bility. No one knows the burden he has to carry in the
Presidency until he has laid it down and realizes the ex-
haustion of his mental and nervous energy which un-
consciously was going on while he attempted to discharge
his duties. One of the most aggravating features of
his present duties is this constant attention that he has
to pay to the visits of Congressmen and Senators in regard
THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT 165
to the local patronage. He ought not to have to do with
such offices at all. Thus far the Senate has not been
willing to give up its power in this regard. While I was
in the White House I recommended it every year. I
believe it is coming. We have made great progress in
this matter. We have now a civil service law that covers
many of the inferior offices, but what we ought to have
is a permanent machinery of the government reaching up
to include the assistant secretaries in the various depart-
ments. It will make for efficiency ; it w^ill make for
economy ; it will make for saving of the time and energy
of the President and Senators and Congressmen. It will
take away opportunities for political machines ; it will
tend towards purity in politics and effectiveness of govern-
ment ; and, therefore, it will make for the weal of the
people of the United States ; and it can all be accomplished
by an Act of Congress, and a President who will approve
the Act and carry out its spirit. It is coming. The
Lord is on that side, but sometimes He moves more
slowly than we impatient mortals think necessary.
The other great power which the President has, in
addition to being commander-in-chief of the army and
navy, conducting the foreign relations of the government,
making treaties and declaring war, and the power of
appointment and the power to see the law executed, is in
the granting of reprieves and pardons to those suffering
punishment for violating laws of the United States. This
is a very wide power. The President may exercise it
after a crime is committed and before any trial begins;
may exercise it before the man is arrested ; may issue an
amnesty — that is, a pardon of a number of people by
a class description. The power of pardon in States
has been greatly abused by some governors, but I
166 MODERN ESSAYS
never heard that any President had called down on
himself just criticism for his use of this great and merci-
ful instrument. In the exercise of the pardoning power,
there is no certain line to guide the executive to a safe
conclusion. He has to balance in his mind the considera-
tions for which punishment is provided. The aim of
punishment of a criminal is, first, to furnish an example
to induce others who are about to commit similar crimes
to avoid them ; second, to reform the criminal, if possible,
that is, to chasten him and then treat him in such a way
as to bring him back into the law-abiding classes of the
community. If one takes up an individual case there are
always circumstances that suggest, and appeal for, mercy
because it happens so frequently that the imprisonment
of the criminal inflicts a heavier punishment on those who
are related to him by blood or kinship, than upon himself,
and the pardoning power is deeply moved to save them
from undeserved suffering. But the interests of society
require that such a consideration should be rejected in
order that the example of punishment may be effective
and persuasive. It is a most dangerous power to entrust
to the executive with a big heart and a little head, or a man
with a big heart and very little power over his feelings.
By such governors, criminals will be let loose on society
and the whole effort of those who are conducting the
machinery of assistance will be paralyzed. One never
knows until he has been in the Presidency the amount of
pressure that is brought in one way and another to stay
the prosecutions and to pardon criminals. I had two
cases once before me, in which it was represented to me
that both the convicts were near death, and I instituted
an investigation to find out the truth through the Army
Medical Corps. Examinations were made, watches were
THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT 167
established over the sick men, and it was reported to me
that they were both in the last stages of a fatal disease.
One of them died soon after he was released from the peni-
tentiary. The other is apparently in excellent health
and seeking to reestablish himself in the field in which
he committed a penitentiary offense. This shakes one's
faith in expert examinations. Then there are many appli-
cations in advance of prosecutions to prevent indictments
and prevent trials. The influences brought are insidious,
and usually the very fact of seeking such influences is an
indication that the person charged is guilty.
I have referred to the duty and the power of the Presi-
dent to see that the laws are executed. This is stated in
the Constitution, but it involves considerably more than
seeing that the letter of the law is carried out. It involves
the construction of the law by the President and his sub-
ordinates, because he cannot execute it until he finds out
what it means, and frequently laws are very blind and the
interpretation of the law covers so much that it involves
the exercise of an important function. Of course, courts
in litigated cases are called upon to consider laws, but there
are many laws of the national government that can never
be brought before courts of law — acts of appropriation,
for instance, as to what the appropriation includes and
how to be expended. These questions are settled by the
Attorney-General, by the Comptroller of the Currency,
appointees of the President, and sometimes by the Presi-
dent himself. Then there are a great many projects to
be carried out by the government, and Congress naturally
vests the control of them in the President. That is
what it did in the case of the Panama Canal. The Spooner
Act in 1902 directed the President to construct the
canal. It required him to do it through a commission,
168 MODERN ESSAYS
but the commission was subject to his appointment and
removal.
However, "money makes the mare go." You cannot
have a government unless you have a treasury full of
funds with which to run it, and all these executive func-
tions of the President are to be performed by agents who
must be paid in order that they shall serve. In other
words, while these powers that I have pointed out are
very broad, Congress retains very great restraining power
in that clause of the Constitution which provides that no
money shall be paid out of the Treasury except upon
appropriation of Congress ; and if the President is left
without money, he is well-nigh helpless. By refusal
to vote supply bills, the Commons of England brought the
Stuarts and kings before them to a realization of the
power of the people, and this same power still exists in
our Congress to restrain any executive who may seek to
exceed his constitutional limitations.
Of course, I am speaking now of the legal powers of the
President. I am not speaking of those powers that natur-
ally come to him through our political system, and because
he is the head of the party. He can thus actually exercise
very considerable influence, sometimes a controlling in-
fluence, in the securing of legislation by his personal inter-
vention with the members of his party who are in control
in each House. I think he ought to have very great in-
fluence, because he is made responsible to the people for
what the party does ; and if the party is wise, it will bend
to his leadership as long as it is tolerable, and especially
where it is in performance of promises that the party has
made in its platform and on the faith of which it must be
assumed to have obtained its power. But such power as
he exercises in this way is not within the letter of the law
THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT 169
and probably does not come within the legitimate bounds
of such an article as this.
The functions of the President which I have enumerated
seem very broad ; but when many speak of the enormous
power of a President, they have in mind that what the
President does goes like kissing, by favor. Now the
Presidency offers but few opportunities for discretion of
that sort. The responsibility of the office is so heavy,
the earnest desire of every man who fills the place to de-
serve the approval of his countrymen by doing the thing
that is best for the country so strong, and the fear of just
popular criticism so controlling, that it is difiicult for one
who has been brought through four years of it to remember
any personal favor that he was able to confer. There are
certain political obligations that the custom of a party
requires the President to discharge on the recommenda-
tion of Senators and Congressmen, and of the men who have
had the conduct of the political campaign in which he
was successful. I think, as I have already said, that this
kind of obligation should be reduced to its lowest terms by
a change of the law, and that the custom which has been
maintained since the beginning of government, and which
has not been in the interest of good government, ought
to be minimized to a point where it will cease to be harm-
ful. But I refer now to that kind of power that imagina-
tion clothes the President and all rulers with, to gratify
one man and humiliate another and punish a third, in order
to satisfy the whim or the vengeance of the man in power.
That does not exist, and the truth is that great as these
powers are, when a President comes to exercise them, he
is much more concerned with the limitations upon them
to see that he does not exceed them, than he is affected
by personal gratification over the big things he can do.
170 MODERN ESSAYS
The President is given $25,000 a year for travelling
expenses ; and this enables him to travel in a private car,
and it is wise that it should be so. Were he to travel in a
Pullman car, where the public could approach him, the
ordinarily commendable curiosity of the American people
to see their President close at hand would subject to such
annoyances both him and the travelling public with whom
he might happen to be that both he and they would be
made most uncomfortable. There is an impression that
the President cannot leave the country and that the law
forbids. This is not true. The only provision of law
which bears on the subject at all is that which provides
that the Vice-President shall take his place when the
President is disabled from performing his duties. Now if
he is out of the country at a point where he cannot dis-
charge the necessary functions that are imposed on him,
such disability might arise ; but the communication by
telegraph, wireless, and telephone are now so good that
it would be difficult for a President to go anywhere and
not be able to keep his subordinates in constant informa-
tion as to his whereabouts and his wishes. As a matter
of fact. Presidents do not leave the country very often.
Occasionally it seems in the public interest that they
should. President Roosevelt visited the Canal Zone for
the purpose of seeing what work was being done on the
canal and giving zest to that work by personal contact
with those who were engaged in it. I did the same thing
later on, travelling, as he did, on the deck of a government
vessel which is technically the soil of the United States.
The Zone is the soil of the United States. He was not
out of the jurisdiction of the United States except for a
few hours. He went into the city of Panama, as I did,
and dined with the President of the Panamanian Republic.
THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT 171
So, too, I dined with President Diaz at Juarez, in Mexico,
just across the border from El Paso, but nobody was
heard to say that in any of these visits we had disabled
ourselves from performing our constitutional and statutory
functions.
The assassination of three Presidents has led Congress
to provide that the chief of the Secret Service shall furnish
protection to the President as he moves about, either in
Washington or in the country at large. I presume that
experience shows this to be necessary. While President, I
never was conscious of any personal anxiety while in large
crowds, and I have been in many of them. Yet the record
of assaults upon Presidents is such that Congress would
be quite derelict if it disregarded it. The necessary pre-
cautions are a great burden on the President. He never
can go anywhere that he does not have to inflict upon
those whom he wishes to see the burden of the presence of
a body guard, and it is a little difficult to get away from
the feeling that one is under surveillance himself rather
than being protected from somebody else. The Civil
Service men are level-headed, experienced, and of good
manners, and they are wise in their methods and most
expert in detecting those from whom danger is most
to be expected. I mean the partially demented and
"cranks." If a person is determined to kill a President
and is willing to give up his life for it, no such protection
will save his victim. But such persons are very rare.
The worst danger is from those who have lost part or all
of their reason, and whom the presence of a President
in the community excites. I may be mistaken, but it
seems to me that with the experts that we now have and
the system that is now pursued, the assassination of Presi-
dent McKinley at Buffalo might j^ossibly have been
172 MODERN ESSAYS
avoided. The presence of the assassin with a revolver
under his handkerchief would now be detected long
before he could get within range of the object of his per-
verted purpose.
The President is in office for only four years or at most
eight, and the social influence that he and his family
can exercise is quite limited. It is sufficient for our
democratic purposes ; but it does not compare with the
social influence that is exercised by the head of the state
in a country like Great Britain. The truth is that the
chief and almost the only power that the King of Britain
has, except in an advisory way, is as the social head of the
kingdom. The moral influence that he exercises over his
court may thus be made strong. It always permeates to
those who do not come directly within the court circles.
There is, too, a political influence that the King and the
royal family can exert in this way, not affirmative and
direct, but conserving, softening, and conciliatory, alle-
viating party bitterness and moderating extreme views.
The ancient and still living respect for royalty is strong
in itself to discourage violent methods, to compel good
manners. In this respect, of course, because the King is
permanent during his life and the members of the royal
family likewise, this social rule is vastly stronger than
that of the President. But in every other respect as be-
tween the King of England and the President of the United
States, the President really rules within the limit of the
functions entrusted to him by the Constitution, while the
King has lost much of his former power in the progress of
democracy to complete control in Great Britain, and
merely reigns as the titular and social head of the state.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER ^
BY
George Edward Woodberry
The death of Whittier in 1889 furnished the occasion for Professor
Woodberry's essay. It opens logically with two paragraphs giving the
immediate reason for writing ; although Whittier was local to New Eng-
land, he is really national so far as the spirit of New England has passed
into the nation at large ; and, the New England of Whittier has become
historical. The next paragraph defines the subject, that Whittier will
be treated as a poet. The following paragraphs, therefore, take up in
succession various phases and characteristics of his poetic activity.
The whole is bound together by the concluding thought, that among the
honored names of the New England past his place is secure. There is
no biographical introduction, and there is little more than an occasional
trenchant sentence of biographical detail. The assumption is made that
the reader is both familiar with the subject and already sufficiently in-
terested in it to desire a succinct presentation of literary judgment
free from the introduction of irrelevant detail. Thus this is a good
example of a clean-cut critical essay. On the other hand, there is no
appeal to the casual reader.
The time has come to pay tribute of farewell upon the
occasion of the death of Whittier. The popular instinct
which long ago adopted him as the poet of New England
is one of those sure arbiters, superior to all academic
judgments upon the literary works of a man, which con-
fer a rightful fame in life, and justify the expectation
of a long remembrance. Whittier was distinctly a local
'From "Makers of Literature," by permission of The Macmillan
Co.
173
174 MODERN ESSAYS
poet, a New Englander ; but to acknowledge this does not
diminish his honor, nor is he thereby set in a secondary
place. His locality, if one may use the expression, was a
country by itself ; its inhabitants were a peculiar people,
with a strongly marked social and moral character, with a
landscape and an atmosphere, with historical traditions,
legends often romantic, and with strong vitalizing ideas.
There was something more than a literary fancy in the
naturalness with which Whittier sought a kind of fellow-
ship with Burns ; there was a true resemblance in their
situation as the poets of their own kin and soil, in their
reliance upon the strength of the people of whom they were
born, and in their cherished attachment to the places and
scenes where they grew. New England, moreover, had
this advantage, that it was destined to set the stamp of its
character upon the larger nation in which it was an ele-
ment ; so that if Whittier be regarded, as he sometimes is,
as a representative American poet, it is not without justice.
He is really national so far as the spirit of New England
has passed into the nation at large ; and that vast body of
Western settlers who bore New England to the frontier,
and yet look back to the old homestead, find in him the
sentiment of their past. There can be little question,
too, that he is representative of a far larger portion of the
American people than any other of the elder poets. His
lack of the culture of the schools has here been in his
favor, and has brought him closer to the common life ;
he is more democratic than he otherwise might have been ;
and the people, recognizing in him their own strain, have
accepted him with a judgment as valid as that with which
cultivated critics accept the work of the man of genius
who is also an artist. One calls him a local poet rather
to define his qualities than to characterize his range.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 175
The New England which Whittier represents has now
become historical. The length of his life carried him
beyond his times. It is plainer now than it was at an
earlier day that his poems are one of the living records
of a past which will be of perennial interest and ever
held in honor. That his early poetic career fell in with
the anti-slavery movement was not a misfortune for his
Muse ; the man fed upon it, and drew therefrom an iron
strength for the moral nature which was the better half
of his endowment. He was, too, one who was destined
to develop, to reach his powers, more by exercising than by
cultivating his poetic gift ; and in the events of the agita-
tion for the abolition of slavery he had subjects that drew
out his moral emotions with most eloquent heat, and
exalted his spirit to its utmost of sympathy, indignation,
and heroic trust. The anti-slavery movement was his
education, — in a true sense, the gymnastic of his genius ;
but in the whole body of his work it was no more than
an incident, although the most stirring and most noble,
in his literary career, just as it was no more in the career
of New England.
The great events with which a man deals, and part of
which he is, obscure the other portions of his life ; but it
should not be forgotten that Whittier began as a poet, and
not as a reformer, and it may be added that the poet in
him was, in the long run, more than the reformer. He did
not resort to verse as an expedient in propagandism ;
rather, wearing the laurel, — to use the good old phrase, —
he descended into the field just as he was. He had begun
with those old Indian legends in lines which still echoed
with Byron's tales, and he had with them much the same
success that attended other aboriginal poetry. It seems,
as one reads the hundred weary epics, from which Whit-
176 MODERN ESSAYS
tier's are hardly to be distinguished, that the curse of ex-
tinction resting on the doomed race clung also to the Muse
that so vainly attempted to recompense it with immortality
in the white man's verse. These were Whittier's juvenile
trials. lie came early, nevertheless, to his mature form
in the ballad and the occasional piece ; his versification
was fixed, his manner determined, and thenceforth there
was no radical change.
This is less remarkable inasmuch as it is a commonplace
to say that he owed nothing to art ; the strength of his
native genius was all his secret, and when he had freed
a way for its expression the task of his novitiate was done.
He had now a mould in which to run his metal, and it satis-
fied him because he was not exacting of perfect form or
high finish ; probably he had no sense for them. Tliis in-
difference to the artistic workmanship, which a later day
prizes so much as to require it, allowed him to indulge
his natural facility, and the very simplicity of his metres
was in itself a temptation to difluseness. The conse-
quence w'as that he wrote much, and not always well,
unevenness being usually characteristic of poets who rely
on the energy of their genius for the excellence of their
work. To the artist his art serves often as a conscience,
and forces him to a standard below which he is not content
to fall. Whittier, however, experienced the compensa-
tions which are everywhere to be found in life, and gained
in fullness, perhaps, more than he lost in other ways.
The free flow of his thought, tlie simplicity of his structure,
the willingness not to select with too nice a sense, but to
tell the whole, all helped to that frankness of the man
which is the great charm of his w^orks, taken together,
and assisted him in making his expression of old New
England life complete. No man could have w'ritten
JOHN GREENLEAF WIIITTIER 177
Snow-Bound who remembered Theocritus. In Whittier,
Nature reminds us, as she is wont to do from time to time,
that the die which she casts exceeds the diploma of the
schooL Art may lift an inferior talent to higher estima-
tion, but genius makes a very little art go a long way.
This was Whittier's case. The poetic spark was inborn in
him, living in his life ; and when academic criticism has
said its last word, he remains a poet, removed by a broad
and not doubtful line from all stringers of couplets and
filers of verses.
Whittier had, in addition to this clear native genius,
character ; his subject, too. New England, had character ;
and the worth of the man blending with the worth of the
life he portrayed, independent of all considerations of art,
has won for him the admiration and affection of the com-
mon people, who know the substance of virtue, and always
see it shining with its own light. They felt that Whittier
wrote as they would have written, had they been gifted
with the miraculous tongues ; and this feeling is a true
criterion to discover whether a poet has expressed the
people rather than himself. They might choose to write
like the great artists of letters ; they know they never
could do so ; but Whittier is one of themselves.
The secret of his vogue with the plain people is his own
plainness. He appeals directly to the heart, as much in
his lesser poems as in those which touch the sense of right
and wrong in men with stinging keenness, or in those which
warm faith to its ardor. He has the popular love of a story,
and tells it more nearly in the way of the old ballad-makers.
He does not require a tragedy, or a plot, or any unusual
action. An incident, if it only have some glamour of
fancy, or a touch of pathos, or the likeness of old romance,
is enough for him ; he will take it and sing it merely as
N
178 MODERN ESSAYS
something that happened. He was famihar with the
legendary lore and historical anecdote of his own county
of Essex, and he enjoyed these traditions less as history
than as poetry ; he came to them on their picturesque
and human side, and cared for them because of the emo-
tions they could still awake. It is to be acknowledged,
too, that the material for these romances was just such as
delights the popular imagination. The tales of the witches,
notwithstanding the melancholy of the delusion, have
something of the eeriness that is inseparable from the
thought of the supernatural, and stir the dormant sense
of some evil fascination ; and the legends of spectral shapes
that haunted every seacoast in old times, and of which
New England had its share, have a similar quality.
Whether they are told by credulous Mather or the make-
believing poet, they have the same power to cast a spell.
When to this sort of interest Whittier adds, as he often
does, the sights of religious persecution, or some Lochinvar
love-making, or the expression of his faith in heaven,
his success as a story-teller is assured. In reality, he has
managed the ballad form with more skill than other
measures ; but it is because he loves a story and tells it
for its own sake, with the ease of one who sits by the fire-
side, and with a childish confidence that it will interest,
that he succeeds so well in pleasing. In his sea-stories,
and generally in what he writes about the ocean, it is ob-
servable that he shows himself to be an inland-dweller,
whose acquaintance with the waves is by distant glimpses
and vacation days. He is not a poet of the sea, but this
does not invalidate the human truth of his tales of voyag-
ing, which is the element he cared for. Perhaps the
poetic quality of his genius is most clear in these ballads ;
there is a freer fancy ; there are often verses about woman's
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 179
eyes and hair and cheeks, all with similes from sky and
gold and roses, in the old fashion, but not with less natural-
ness on that account ; there is a more absorbing appeal to
the imagination both in the characters and the incidents.
If these cannot be called his most vigorous work, they are
at least most attractive to the purely poetic taste.
In the ballads, nevertheless, one feels the strong under-
tow of the moral sense dragging the mind back to serious
realities. It is probably true of all the English stock,
as it certainly is of New England people, that they do not
object to a moral, in a poem or anywhere else. Whittier's
moral hold upon his readers is doubtless greater than his
poetic hold. He appeals habitually to that capacity for
moral feeling which is the genius of New England in its
public life, and the explanation of its extraordinary in-
fluence. No one ever appeals to it in vain ; and with such
a cause as Whittier took up to champion, he could ring
out a challenge that was sure to rank the conscience of
his people upon his side. His Quaker blood, of which he
was proud, pleaded strongly in his own veins. He was the
inlieritor of suffering for conscience' sake ; he was bred
in the faith of equality, of the right of every man to private
judgment, and the duty of every man to follow it in
public action ; and he was well grounded in the doctrines
of political liberty which are the foundation of the common-
wealth. It is more likely, however, that his enthusiasm
for the slave did not proceed from that love of freedom
which is the breath of New England. It arose from his
humanity, in the broad sense ; from his belief, sincerely
held and practiced, in the brotherhood of men ; from the
strong conviction that slavery was wrong. It was a
matter of conscience more than of reason, of compassion
and sympathy more than of theoretical ideas. These
180 MODERN ESSAYS
were the sources of his moral feeHng ; his attitude was the
same whether he was deahng with Quaker outrages in
the past or with negro wrongs in the present. In expressing
liimself upon the great topic of his time, he was thus able
to make the same direct appeal to the heart that was
natural to his temperament. The people either felt as
he did, or were so circumstanced that they would respond
from the same springs which had been touched in him,
if a way could be found to them. Outside of the reserves of
political expediency, the movement for abolition was
harmonious with the moral nature of New England. Yet
Whittier's occasional verses upon this theme made him
only the poet of his party. In themselves they have
great vigor of feeling, and frequently force of language ;
they have necessarily the defects, judged from the artistic
standpoint, of poems upon a painful subject, in which it
was desirable not to soften, but to bring out the tragedy
most harshly. The pain, however, is entirely in the
facts presented; the poetry lies in the indignation, the
eloquence, the fine appeal. These verses, indeed, are
nearer to a prose level than the rest of his work, in the
sense of partaking of the character of eloquence rather
than of poetry. Their method is less through the imagina-
tion than by rhetoric. They are declamatory. But
rhetoric of the balanced and concise kind natural to short
metrical stanzas is especially well adapted to arrest
popular attention and to hold it. Just as he told a
story in the ballad with a true popular feeling, so he
pleaded the cause of the abolitionists in a rhetoric most
effective with the popular taste. In the war time, he rose,
under the stress of the great struggle, to finer poetic work ;
the softer feelings of pity, together with a solemn religious
trust, made the verses of those battle-summers different
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 181
in quality from those of the literary conflict of the earlier
years. He never surpassed, on the lower level of rhetoric,
the lines which bade farewell to Webster's greatness, nor
did he ever equal in intensity those rallying-cries of de-
fiance to the South, in which the free spirit of the North
seemed to speak before its time. In these he is urging
on to the conflict, — a moral and peaceful one, he thought,
but not less real and hard ; in the war pieces, he seems
rather to be waiting for the decision of Providence, while
the fight has rolled on far in the van of where he stands.
The power of all these poems, their reality to those times,
is undeniable. Their fitness for declamation perhaps
spread his reputation. Longfellow is distinctly the
children's poet ; but Whittier had a part of their suffrages,
and it was by such stirring occasional verses that he gained
them. In those years of patriotism he was to many of
them, as he was to me, tjie first poet whom they knew.
At that time his reputation in ways like these became
established. If he had not then done his best work, he
had at times reached the highest level he was to attain,
and he had already given full expression to his nature.
His place as the poet of the anti-slavery movement was
fixed. It is observable that he did not champion other
causes after that of abolition was won, and in this he dif-
fered from most of his companions. The only other cause
that roused him to the point of poetic expression was that
of the Italian patriots. Some of his most indignant
and sharpest invective was directed against Pope Pius IX.,
who stood to Whittier as the very type of that Christian
obstructiveness to the work of Christ which in a lesser
degree he had seen in his own country, and had seen
always only to express the heartfelt scorn which descended
to him with his Quaker birthright.
182 MODERN ESSAYS
It would be unfitting to leave this part of the subject
without reference to the numerous personal tributes,
often full of grace, of tender feeling, and of true honor
paid to the humble, which he was accustomed to lay as
his votive wreath on the graves of his companions. One
is struck once more by the reflection how large a part
those who are now forgotten had in advancing the cause,
how many modest but earnest lives entered into the work,
and what a feeling of comradery there was among those
engaged in philanthropic service in all lands. The verses
to Garrison and Sumner naturally stand first in fervor
and range as well as in interest, but nearly all these
mementos of the dead have some touch of nobility.
The victory of the Northern ideas left to Whittier a
freer field for the later exercise of his talent. It was
natural that he should have been among the first to speak
words of conciliation to the defeated South, and to offer
to forget. He was a man of peace, of pardons, of all kinds
of catholic inclusions ; and in this temperament with
regard to the future of the whole country, fortunately,
the people agreed with him. With the coming of the
years of reconciliation his reputation steadily gained.
His representative quality as a New Englander was recog-
nized. It was seen that from the beginning the real
spirit of New England had been truly with him, and, the
cause being now won and the past a great one, his country-
men were proud of him for having been a part of it. At
this happy moment he produced a work free from any
entanglement with things disputed, remarkable for its
truth to life, and exemplifying the character of New Eng-
land at its fireside in the way which comes home to all
men. It is not without perfect justice that Snow-Bound
takes rank with The Cotter's Saturday Night and The
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 183
Deserted Village ; it belongs in this group as a faithful
picture of humble life. It is perfect in its conception and
complete in its execution ; it is the New England home,
entire, with its characteristic scene, its incidents of house-
hold life, its Christian virtues. Perhaps many of us look
back to it as Horace did to the Sabine farm ; but there are
more who can still remember it as a reality, and to them
this winter idyl is the poetry of their own lives. It is, in
a peculiar sense, the one poem of New England, — so
completely indigenous that the soil has fairly created it,
so genuine as to be better than history. It is by virtue
of this poem that Whittier must be most highly rated, be-
cause he is here most impersonal, and has succeeded in
expressing the common life with most directness. All
his affection for the soil on which he was born went into
it ; and no one ever felt more deeply that attachment to
the region of his birth which is the great spring of patriot-
ism. In his other poems he had told the legends of the
country, and winnowed its history for what was most
heroic or romantic ; he had often dwelt, with a reiteration
which emphasized his fondness, upon its scenery in every
season, by all its mountains and capes and lakes and
rivers, as if fearful lest he should offend by omission some
local divinity of the field or flood ; he had shared in the
great moral passion of his people in peace and war, and
had become its voice and been adopted as one of its memo-
rable leaders ; but here he came to the heart of the matter,
and by describing the homestead, which was the unit and
centre of New England life, he set the seal upon his work,
and entered into all New England homes as a perpetual
guest.
There remains one part of his work, and that, in some
respects, the loftiest, which is in no sense local. The
184 MODERN ESSAYS
Christian faith which he expressed is not to be limited as
distinctly characteristic of New England. No one would
make the claim. It was descended from the Quaker faith
only as Emerson's was derived from that of the Puritan.
Whittier belongs with those few who arise in all parts of
the Christian world and out of the bosom of all sects,
who are lovers of the spirit. They illustrate the purest
teachings of Christ, they express the simplest aspirations
of man ; and this is their religious life. They do not
trouble themselves except to do good, to be sincere, to
walk in the sight of the higher powers with humbleness,
and if not without doubt, yet with undiminished trust.
The oj)timism of Whittier is one with theirs. It is in-
dissolubly connected with his humanity to men. In his
religious as in his moral nature there was the same sim-
plicity, the same entire coherency. His expression of the
religious feeling is always noble and impressive. He is
one of the very few whose poems, under the fervor of
religious emotion, have taken a higher range and become
true hymns. Several of these are already adopted into
the books of praise. But independently of these few most
complete expressions of trust and worship, wherever
Whittier touches upon the problems of the spiritual life
he evinces the qualities of a great and liberal nature ;
indeed, the traits which are most deeply impressed upon
us, in his character, are those which are seen most clearly
in his religious verse. It is impossible to think of him and
forget that he is a Christian. It is not rash to say that it
is probable that his religious poems have reached many
more hearts than his anti-slavery pieces, and have had a
profounder influence to quiet, to console, and to refine.
Yet he was not distinctly a poet of religion, as Herbert
was. He was a man in whom religion was vital, just as
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 185
affection for his home and indignation at wrongdoing were
vital. He gave expression to his manhood, and conse-
quently to the religious life he led. There are in these
revelations of his nature the same frankness and the same
reality as in his most heated polemics with the oppressors
of the weak ; one cannot avoid feeling that it is less the
poet than the man who is speaking, and that in his words
he is giving himself to his fellow-men. This sense that
Whittier belongs to that class of writers in whom the man
is larger than his work is a just one. Over and above his
natural genius was his character. At every step of the
analysis, it is not with art, but with matter, not with the
literature of taste, but with that of life, not with a poet's
skill, but with a man's soul, that we find ourselves dealing ;
in a word, it is with character almost solely : and it is this
which has made him the poet of his people, as the highest
art might have failed to do, because he has put his New
England birth and breeding, the common inheritance of
her freedom-loving, humane, and religious people which
he shared, into plain living, yet on such a level of distinc-
tion that his virtues have honored the land.
The simplicity and dignity of Whittier's later years,
and his fine modesty in respect to his literary work, have
fitly closed his career. He has received in the fullest
measure from the younger generation the rewards of honor
which belong to such a life. In his retirement these un-
sought tributes of an almost affectionate veneration have
followed him ; and in the struggle about us for other
prizes than those he aimed at, in the crush for wealth and
notoriety, men have been pleased to remember him, the
plain citizen, uncheapened by riches and unsolicitous for
fame, ending his life with the same habits with which he
began it, in the same spirit in which he led it, without any
/ MODERN ESSAYS
compromise with the world. The Quaker aloofness which
has always seemed to characterize him, his difference
from other men, has never been sufficient to break the
bonds which unite him with the people, but it has helped
to secure for him the feeling with which the poet is always
regarded as a man apart ; the religious element in his
nature has had the same effect to win for him a peculiar
regard akin to that which was felt in old times for the
sacred office ; to the imagination he has been, especially
in the years of his age, a man of peace and of God. No one
of his contemporaries has been more silently beloved and
more sincerely honored. If it be true that in him the man
was more than the poet, it is happily not true, as in such
cases it too often is, that the life was less than it should
have been. The life of Whittier affects us rather as sin-
gularly fortunate in the completeness with which he was
able to do his wdiole duty, to possess his soul, and to keep
himself unspotted from the world. He was fortunate in
his humble birth and the virtues which were about his
cradle ; he was fortunate in the great cause for which he
suffered and labored in his prime, exactly fitted as it was
to develop his nature to its highest moral reach, and lift
him to real greatness of soul ; he was fortunate in his old
age, in the mellowness of his humanity, the repose of his
faith, the fame which, more truly than can usually be
said, was "love disguised." Lovers of New England will
cherish his memory as that of a man in whom the virtues
of this soil, both for public and for private life, shine most
purely. On the roll of American poets we know not how
he may be ranked hereafter, but among the honored
names of the New England past his place is secure.
THACKERAY'S CENTENARY i
BY
Henry Augustine Beers
In this very delightful and acutely critical essay by Professor Beers
the use of the catalogue should be noted, — and equally how that use b
concealed. The first paragraph frankly states the two objects of the
paper : first, to enquire what changes, in our way of looking at him,
have come about in the half century since Thackeray's death ; secondly,
to give Professor Beers' own personal experience as a reader of Thackeray.
But the first question is dismissed in two short paragraphs. The rest
of the essay discusses the critical aspect of Thackeray's work in the
guise of personal reminiscence. Thackeray is a satirist, is imperfectly
realistic, detested sham heroics, has a mixture of humor and pensiveness,
etc. But, by means of the device of the personal experience, this
criticism is kept from disagreeable dogmatic assertion. And the whole
is unified by the charm of a single personality.
After all that has been written about Thackeray, it
would be flat for me to present here another estimate of
his work, or try to settle the relative value of his books.
In this paper I shall endeavor only two things : First to
enquire what changes, in our way of looking at him, have
come about in the half century since his death. Secondly
to give my own personal experience as a reader of
Thackeray, in the hope that it may represent, in some
degree, the experience of others.
What is left of Thackeray in this hundredth year since
his birth ; and how much of him has been eaten away by
destructive criticism ; or rather by time, that far more
1 From The Yale Review for October, 1911, by permission of the author
and of the editor of The Vale Review.
187
188 MODERN ESSAYS
corrosive acid, whose silent operation criticism does but
record? As the nineteenth century recedes, four names
in the EngUsh fiction of that century stand out ever more
clearly, as the great names : Scott, Dickens, Thackeray,
and George Eliot. I know what may be said — what has
been said — for others : Jane Austen and the Bronte
sisters, Charles Reade, Trollope, Meredith, Stevenson,
Hardy. I believe that these will endure, but will endure
as writers of a secondary importance. Others are already
fading, Bulwer is all gone, and Kingsley is going fast.
The order in which I have named the four great novelists
is usually, I think, the order in which the reader comes to
them. It is also the order of their publication. For
although Thackeray was a year older than Dickens, his
first novels were later in date, and he was much later in
securing his public. But the chronological reason is not
the real reason why we read them in that order. It is
because of their different appeal. Scott was a romancer,
Dickens a humorist, Thackeray a satirist, and George Eliot
a moralist. Each was much more than that ; but that was
what they were, reduced to the lowest term. Romance,
humor, satire, and moral philosophy respectively were their
starting point, their strongest impelling force, and their be-
setting sin. Whenever they fell below themselves, Walter
Scott lapsed into sheer romantic unreality, Dickens into
extravagant caricature, Thackeray into burlesque, George
Eliot into psychology and ethical reflection.
I wonder whether your experience here is the same as
mine. By the time that I was fourteen, as nearly as I
can remember, I had read all the Waverley novels. Then
I got hold of Dickens, and for two or three years I lived
in Dickens's world, though perhaps he and Scott some-
what overlapped at the edge — I cannot quite remember-
THACKERAY'S CENTENARY 189
I was sixteen when Thackeray died, and I heard my elders
mourning over the loss. "Dear old Thackeray is gone,"
they told each other, and proceeded to re-read all his books,
with infinite laughter. So I picked up "Vanity Fair"
and tried to enjoy it. But fresh from Scott's picturesque
page and Dickens's sympathetic extravagances, how dull,
insipid, repellent, disgusting were George Osborne, and
fat Joseph Sedley, and Amelia and Becky ! What sillies
they were and how trivial their doings ! " It's just about
a lot of old girls," I said to my uncle, who laughed in a
provokingly superior manner and replied, "My boy, those
old girls are life." I will confess that even to this day,
something of that shock of disillusion, that first cold plunge
into "Vanity Fair," hangs about the book. I understand
what Mr. Howells means when he calls it "the poorest
of Thackeray's novels — crude, heavy-handed, cari-
catured." I ought to have begun, as he did, with "Pen-
dennis," of which he writes : "I am still not sure but it is
the author's greatest book." I don't know about that,
but I know that it is the novel of Thackeray's that I have
read most often and like the best, better than "Henry
Esmond" or "Vanity Fair"; just as I prefer "The Mill
on the Floss" to "Adam Bede," and "The House of the
Seven Gables" to "The Scarlet Letter" (as Hawthorne
did himself, by the way) ; or as I agree with Dickens that
"Bleak House" was his best novel, though the public
never thought so. We may concede to the critics that,
objectively considered, and by all the rules of judgment,
this or that work is its author's masterpiece and we ought
to like it best — only we don't. We have our private
preferences which we cannot explain and do not seek to
defend. As for "Esmond," my comparative indifference
to it is only, I suppose, a part of my dislike of the genre.
190 MODERN ESSAYS
I know the grounds on which the historical novel is recom-
mended, and I know how intimately Thackeray's imagina-
tion was at home in the eighteenth century. Historically
that is what he stands for : he was a Queen Anne man —
like Austin Dobson : he passed over the great romantic
generation altogether and joined on to Fielding and Gold-
smith and their predecessors. Still no man knows the past
as he does the present. I will take Thackeray's report
of the London of his day ; but I do not care very much
about his reproduction of the London of 1745. Let me
whisper to you that since early youth I have not been able
to take much pleasure in the Waverley novels, except those
parts of them in which the author presents Scotch life and
character as he knew them.
I think it was not till I was seventeen or eighteen, and a
Freshman in College, that I really got hold of Thackeray ;
but when once I had done so, the result was to drive
Dickens out of my mind, as one nail drives out another. I
never could go back to him after that. His sentiment
seemed tawdry, his humor, buffoonery. Hung side by
side, the one picture killed the other. "Dickens knows,"
said Thackeray, "that my books are a protest against
him : that, if the one set are true, the other must be false."
There is a species of ingratitude, of disloyalty, in thus
turning one's back upon an old favorite who has furnished
one so intense a pleasure and has had so large a share in
one's education. But it is the cruel condition of all
growth,
"The heavens that now draw him with sweetness untold.
Once found, for new heavens he spurneth the old."
But when I advanced to George Eliot, as I did a year or
two later, I did not find that her fiction and Thackeray's
destroyed each other. I have continued to re-read them
THACKERAY'S CENTENARY 191
both ever since and with undiminished satisfaction. And
yet it was, in some sense, an advance. I would not say
that George Ehot was a greater novelist than Thackeray,
nor even so great. But her message is more gravely
intellectual : the psychology of her characters more deeply
studied : the problems of life and mind more thoughtfully
confronted. Thought, indeed, thought in itself and apart
from the story, which is only a chosen illustration of a
thesis, seems her principal concern. Thackeray is always
concrete, never speculative or abstract. The mimetic
instinct was strong in him, but weak in his great contem-
porary, to the damage and the final ruin of her art. His
method was observation, hers analysis. Mr. Brownell says
that Thackeray's characters are "delineated rather than
dissected." There is little analysis, indeed hardly any liter-
ary criticism in his "English Humorists" : only personal
impressions. He deals with the men, not with the books.
The same is true of his art criticisms. He is concerned
with the sentiment of the picture, seldom with its tech-
nique, or even with its imaginative or expressional power.
In saying that Dickens was essentially a humorist and
Thackeray a satirist, I do not mean, of course, that the
terms are mutually exclusive. Thackeray was a great
humorist as well as a satirist, but Dickens was hardly a
satirist at all. I know that Mr. Chesterton says he was,
but I cannot believe it. He cites "Martin Chuzzlewit."
Is "Martin Chuzzlewit" a satire on the Americans .f* It
is a caricature — a very gross caricature — a piece of
bouffe. But it lacks the true likeness which is the sting
of satire. Dickens and Thackeray had, in common, a
quick sense of the ridiculous, but they employed it dif-
ferently. Dickens was a humorist almost in the Ben
Jonsouian sense : his field was the odd, the eccentric,
192 MODERN ESSAYS
the grotesque — sometimes the monstrous ; his books,
and especially his later books, are full of queer people,
frequently as incredible as Jonson's dramatis personcB.
In other words, he was a caricaturist. Mr. Howells says
that Thackeray was a caricaturist, but I do not think he
was so except incidentally ; while Dickens was constantly
so. When satire identifies itself with its object, it takes
the form of parody. Thackeray was a parodist, a travesty
writer, an artist in burlesque. What is the difference
between caricature and parody ? I take it to be this, that
caricature is the ludicrous exaggeration of character for
purely comic effect, while parody is its ludicrous hnitation
for the purpose of mockery. Now there is plenty of in-
vention in Dickens, but little imitation. He began with
broad /aceftop — " Sketches by Boz" and the "Pickwick
Papers" ; while Thackeray began with travesty and kept
up the habit more or less all his life. At the Charterhouse
he spent his time in drawing burlesque representations
of Shakespeare, and composing parodies on L. E. L. and
other lady poets. At Cambridge he wrote a mock heroic
"Timbuctoo," the subject for the prize poem of the year —
a prize which Tennyson captured. Later he wrote those
capital travesties, "Rebecca and Rowena" and "Novels by
Eminent Hands." In " Fitzboodle's Confessions" he
wrote a sentimental ballad, "The Willow Tree," and
straightway a parody of the same. You remember Lady
Jane Sheepshanks who composed those lines comparing
her youth to
"A violet shrinking meanly
Where blow the March winds ' keenly —
A timid fawn on wildwood lawn
Where oak-boughs rustle greenly."
* Unquestionably Lady Jane pronounced it winds.
THACKERAY'S CENTENARY 193
I cannot describe the gleeful astonishment with which I
discovered that Thackeray was even aware of our own
excellent Mrs. Sigourney, whose house in Hartford I once
inhabited (et nos in Arcadia). The passage is in "Blue-
Beard's Ghost."
"As Mrs. Sigourney sweetly sings,
O the heart is a soft and delicate thing,
O the heart is a lute with a thrilling string,
A spirit that floats on a gossamer's wing.
Such was Fatima's heart."
Do not try to find these lines in Mrs. Sigourney 's complete
poems : they are not there. Thackeray's humor always
had this satirical edge to it. Look at any engraving of the
bust by Deville (the replica of which is in the National
Portrait Gallery) which was taken when its subject was
fourteen years old. There is a quizzical look about the
mouth, prophetic and unmistakable. That boy is a tease :
I would not like to be his little sister. And this boyish
sense of fun never deserted the mature Thackeray. I
like to turn sometimes from his big novels, to those de-
lightful "Roundabout Papers" and the like where he
gives a free rein to his frolic : "Memorials of Gormandiz-
ing," the "Ballads of Policeman X," "Mrs. Perkins' Ball,"
where the Mulligan of Ballymulligan, disdaining the waltz
step of the Saxon, whoops around the room with his
terrified partner in one of the dances of his own green land.
Or that paper which describes how the author took the
children to the zoological gardens, and how
"First he saw the white bear, then he saw the black.
Then he saw the camel with a hump upon his back.
Chorus of Ch ildren :
Then he saw the camel with the HUMP upon his back."
o
194 MODERN ESSAYS
Of course in all comic art there is a touch of caricature, i.e.,
of exaggeration. The Rev. Charles Honeyman in "The
Newcomes," e.g., has been denounced as a caricature.
But compare him with any of Dickens's clerical characters,
such as Stiggins or Chadband, and say which is the fine
art and which the coarse. And this brings me to the first of
those particulars in which we do not view Thackeray
quite as his contemporaries viewed him. In his own time
he was regarded as the greatest of English realists. "I
have no head above my eyes," he said. "I describe what
I see." It is thus that Anthony Trollope regarded him,
whose life of Thackeray was published in 1879. And of
his dialogue, in special, Trollope writes : "The ear is never
wounded by a tone that is false." It is not quite the same
to-day. Zola and the roman naturaliste of the French
and Russian novelists have accustomed us to forms of
realism so much more drastic, that Thackeray's realism
seems, by comparison, reticent and partial. Not that he
tells falsehoods, but that he does not and will not tell the
whole truth. He was quite conscious, himself, of the limits
which convention and propriety imposed upon him and
he submitted to them willingly. "Since the author of
'Tom Jones' was buried," he wrote, "no writer of fiction
has been permitted to depict, to his utmost power, a Man."
Thackeray's latest biographer, Mr. Whibley, notes in
him certain early Victorian prejudices. He wanted to
hang a curtain over Etty's nudities. Goethe's "Wahlver-
wandtschaf ten " scandalized him. He found the drama
of Victor Hugo and Dumas "profoundly immoral and
absurd"; and had no use for Balzac, his own closest
parallel in French fiction. Mr. G. B. Shaw, the blas-
phemer of Shakespeare, speaks of Thackeray's "enslaved
mind," yet admits that he tells the truth in spite of him-
THACKERAY'S CENTENARY 195
self. "He exhausts all his feeble pathos in trying to make
you sorry for the death of Col. Newcome, imploring
you to regard him as a noble-hearted gentleman, instead of
an insufferable old fool . . . but he gives you the facts
about him faithfully." But the denial of Thackeray's
realism goes farther than this and attacks in some in-
stances the truthfulness of his character portrayal. Thus
Mr. Whibley, who acknowledges, in general, that Thack-
eray was "a true naturalist," finds that the personages in
several of his novels are "drawn in varying planes."
Charles Honeyman and Fred Bay ham, e.g., are frank
caricatures ; Helen and Laura Pendennis, and "Stunning"
Warrington are somewhat unreal ; Col. Newcome is
overdrawn — "the travesty of a man" ; and even Beatrix
Esmond, whom Mr. Brownell pronounces her creator's
masterpiece, is a "picturesque apparition rather than a
real woman." And finally comes Mr. Howells and affirms
that Thackeray is no realist but a caricaturist : Jane
Austen and TroUope are the true realists.
Well, let it be granted that Thackeray is imperfectly
realistic. I am not concerned to defend him. Nor shall
I enter into this wearisome discussion of what realism is
or is not, further than to say that I don't believe the thing
exists ; that is, I don't believe that photographic fiction —
the " mirror up to nature " fiction — exists or can exist. A
mirror reflects, a photograph reproduces its object without
selection or rejection. Does any artist do this? Try to
write the history of one day : everything — literally
everything — that you have done, said, thought : and
everything that you have seen, done, or heard said during
twenty -four hours. That would be realism, but, suppose it
possible, what kind of reading would it make ? The artist
must select, reject, combine, and he does it differently
196 MODERN ESSAYS
from every other artist : he mixes his personality with his
art, colors his art with it. The point of view from which
he works is personal to himself : satire is a point of view,
humor is a point of view, so is religion, so is morality, so is
optimism or pessimism, or any philosophy, temper, or
mood. In speaking of the great Russians Mr. Howells
praises their "transparency of style, unclouded by any
mist of the personality which we mistakenly value in
style, and which ought no more to be there than the
artist's personality should be in a portrait." This seems
to me true ; though it was said long ago, the style is the
man. Yet if this transparency, this impersonality is
measurably attainable in the style, it is not so in the sub-
stance of the novel. If an impersonal report of life is the
ideal of naturalistic or realistic fiction — and I don't
say it is — then it is an impossible ideal. People are say-
ing now that Zola is a romantic writer. Why .'' Because,
however well documented, his facts are selected to make
a particular impression. I suppose the reason why
Thackeray's work seemed so much more realistic to his
generation than it does to ours was that his particular
point of view was that of the satirist, and his satire was
largely directed to the exposure of cant, humbug, affectation
and other forms of unreality. Disillusion was his trade.
He had no heroes, and he saw all things in their unheroic
and unromantic aspect. You all know his famous carica-
ture of Ludovicus Rex inside and outside of his court
clothes : a most majestic, bewigged and beruffled grand
monarque: and then a spindle-shanked, potbellied, bald
little man — a good illustration for a chapter in "Sartor
Resartus." The ship in which Thackeray was sent
home from India, a boy of six, touched at St. Helena
and he saw Napoleon. He always remembered him as
THACKERAY'S CENTENARY 197
a little fat man in a suit of white duck and a palm leaf
hat.
Thackeray detested pose and strut and sham heroics.
He called Byron *'a big sulky dandy." "Lord Byron,"
he said, "wrote more cant . . . than any poet I know of.
Think of the 'peasant girls with dark blue eyes' of the
Rhine — the brown-faced, flat-nosed, thick-lipped, dirty
wenches ! Think of ' filling high a cup of Samian wine ' :
. . . Byron himself always drank gin." The captain in
"The White Squall" does not pace the deck like a dark-
browed Corsair, but calls "George, some brandy and
water!"
And this reminds me of Thackeray's poetry. Of course
one who held this attitude toward the romantic and the
heroic could not be a poet in the usual sense. Poetry
holds the quintessential truth, but, as Bacon says, it
"subdues the shows of things to the desires of the mind" ;
while realism clings to the shows of things, and satire
disenchants, ravels the magic web which the imagination
weaves. Heine was both satirist and poet, but he was
each by turns, and he had the touch of ideality which
Thackeray lacked. Yet Thackeray wrote poetry and
good poetry of a sort. But it has beauty purely of senti-
ment, never of the imagination that transcends the fact.
Take the famous lines with which this same "White
Squall" closes :
"And when, its force expended.
The harmless storm was ended.
And as the sunrise splendid
Came blushing o'er the sea;
I thought, as day was breaking.
My little girls were waking
And smiling and making
A prayer at home for me."
198 MODERN ESSAYS
And such is the quality of all his best things in verse —
"The Mahogany Tree," "The Ballad of Bouillebaisse,"
"The End of the Play " ; a mixture of humor and pensive-
ness, homely fact and sincere feeling.
Another modern criticism of Thackeray is that he is
always interrupting his story with reflections. This fault,
if it is a fault, is at its worst in "The Newcomes," from
which a whole volume of essays might be gathered. The
art of fiction is a progressive art and we have learned a
great deal from the objective method of masters like
Turgenev, Flaubert, and Maupassant. I am free to con-
fess, that, while I still enjoy many of the passages in which
the novelist appears as chorus and showman, I do find
myself more impatient of them than I used to be. I find
myself skipping a good deal. I wonder if this is also your
experience. I am not sure, however, but there are signs
of a reaction against the slender, episodic, short-story
kind of fiction, and a return to the old-fashioned, bio-
graphical novel. Mr. Brownell discusses this point and
says that "when Thackeray is reproached with 'bad art'
for intruding upon his scene, the reproach is chiefly the
recommendation of a different technique. And each
man's technique is his own." The question, he acutely
observes, is whether Thackeray's subjectivity destroys
illusion or deepens it. He thinks that the latter is true.
I will not argue the point further than to say that, whether
clumsy or not, Thackeray's method is a thoroughly English
method and has its roots in the history of English fiction.
He is not alone in it. George Eliot, Hawthorne, and
Trollope and many others practice it ; and he learned it
from his master. Fielding.
Fifty years ago it was quite common to describe
Thackeray as a cynic, a charge from which Shirley
THACKERAY'S CENTENARY 199
Brooks defended him in the well known verses contributed
to "Punch" after the great novelist's death. Strange
that such a mistake should ever have been made about
one whose kindness is as manifest in his books as in his
life : "a big, fierce, weeping man," as Carlyle grotesquely
describes him : a writer in whom we find to-day even an
excess of sentiment and a persistent geniality which some-
times irritates. But the source of the misapprehension is
not far to seek. His satiric and disenchanting eye saw,
with merciless clairvoyance, the disfigurements of human
nature, and dwelt upon them perhaps unduly. He saw
"How very weak the very wise.
How very small the very great are."
Moreover, as with many other humorists, with Thomas
Hood and Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln (who is
one of the foremost American humorists), a deep melan-
choly underlay his fun. Vanitas Vanitatum is the last
word of his philosophy. Evil seemed to him stronger than
good and death better than life. But he was never bitter :
his pen was driven by love, not hate. Swift was the true
cynic, the true misanthrope ; and Thackeray's dislike
of him has led him into some injustice in his chapter on
Swift in "The English Humorists." And therefore I
have never been able to enjoy "The Luck of Barry Lyn-
don" which has the almost unanimous praises of the
critics. The hard, artificial irony of the book ; main-
tained, of course, with superb consistency ; seems to me
uncharacteristic of its author. It repels and wearies me,
as does its model, "Jonathan Wild." Swift's irony
I enjoy because it is the natural expression of his character.
With Thackeray it is a mask.
Lastly I come to a point often urged against Thackeray.
200 MODERN ESSAYS
The favorite target of his satire was the snob. His lash
was always being laid across flunkeyism, tuft hunting, the
"mean admiration of mean things," such as wealth, rank,
fashion, title, birth. Now, it is said, his constant ob-
session with this subject, his acute consciousness of
social distinctions, prove that he is himself one of the class
that he is ridiculing. "Letters four do form his name,"
to use a phrase of Dr. Holmes, who is accused of the same
weakness, and, I think, with more reason. Well,
Thackeray owned that he was a snob, and said that we
are all of us snobs in a greater or less degree. Snobbery
is the fat weed of a complex civilization, where grades are
unfixed, where some families are going down and others
rising in the world, with the consequent jealousies, heart
burnings, and social struggles. In India, I take it, where
a rigid caste system prevails, there are no snobs. A
Brahmin may refuse to eat with a lower caste man, whose
touch is contamination, but he does not despise him as
the gentleman despises the cad, as the man who eats with
a fork despises the man who eats with a knife, or as the
educated Englishman despises the Cockney who drops
his h's, or the Boston Brahmin the Yankee provincial
who says hdow, the woman who collates, and the gent
who wears pants. In feudal ages the lord might treat
the serf like a beast of the field. The modern swell does
not oppress his social inferior : he only calls him a bounder.
In primitive states of society differences in riches, station,
power are accepted quite simply : they do not form ground
for envy or contempt. I used to be puzzled by the con-
ventional epithet applied by Homer to Eumaeus — " the
godlike swineherd" — which is much as though one should
say, nowadays, the godlike garbage collector. But when
Pope writes
"Honor and fame from no condition rise"
THACKERAY'S CENTENARY 201
he writes a lying platitude. In the eighteenth century, and
in the twentieth, honor and fame do rise from conditions.
Now in the presence of the supreme tragic emotions, of
death, of suffering, all men are equal. But this social
inequality is the region of the comedy of manners, and
that is the region in which Thackeray's comedy moves —
the comedie mondaine, if not the full comedie humaine. It
is a world of convention, and he is at home in it, in the
world and a citizen of the world. Of course it is not
primitively human. Manners are a convention : but so
are morals, laws, society, the state, the church. I sup-
pose it is because Thackeray dwelt contentedly in these
conventions and rather liked them although he laughed
at them, that Shaw calls him an enslaved mind. At any
rate, this is what Mr. Howells means when he writes :
"When he made a mock of snobbishness, I did not know
but snobbishness was something that might be reached
and cured by ridicule. Now I know that so long as we
have social inequality we shall have snobs : we shall have
men who bully and truckle, and women who snub and
crawl. I know that it is futile to spurn them, or lash
them for trying to get on in the world, and that the world
is what it must be from the selfish motives which underlie
our economic life. . . . This is the toxic property of all
Thackeray's writing. . . . He rails at the order of things,
but he imagines nothing different." In other words,
Thackeray was not a socialist, as Mr. Shaw is, and Mr.
Howells, and as we are all coming measurably to be.
Meanwhile, however, equality is a dream.
All his biographers are agreed that Thackeray was hon-
estly fond of mundane advantages. He liked the conver-
sation of clever, well mannered gentlemen, and the society
of agreeable, handsome, well dressed women. He liked
202 MODERN ESSAYS
to go to fine houses : liked his club, and was gratified when
asked to dine with Sir Robert Peel or the Duke of Devon-
shire. Speaking of the South and of slavery, he confessed
that he found it impossible to think ill of people who gave
you such good claret.
This explains his love of Horace. Venables reports that
he would not study his Latin at school. But he certainly
brought away with him from the Charterhouse, or from
Trinity, a knowledge of Horace. You recall what delight-
ful, punning use he makes of the lyric Roman at every
turn. It is solvuntur rupes when Col. Newcome's Indian
fortune melts away ; and Rosa sera moratur when little
Rose is slow to go off in the matrimonial market. Now
Horace was eminently a man of the world, a man about
town, a club man, a gentle satirist, with a cheerful, mun-
dane philosophy of life, just touched with sadness and
regret. He was the poet of an Augustan age, like that
English Augustan age which was Thackeray's favorite;
social, gregarious, urban.
I never saw Thackeray. I was a boy of eight when he
made his second visit to America, in the winter of 1855-56,
But Arthur HoUister, who graduated at Yale in 1858, told
me that he once saw Thackeray walking up Chapel Street,
a colossal figure, six feet four inches in height, peering
through his big glasses with that expression which is famil-
iar to you in his portraits and in his charming caricatures
of his own face. This seemed to bring him rather near.
But I think the nearest that I ever felt to his bodily pres-
ence was once when Mr. Evarts showed me a copy of
Horace, with inserted engravings, which Thackeray had
given to Sam Ward and Ward had given to Evarts. It was
a copy which Thackeray had used and which has his
autograph on the fly leaf.
THACKERAY'S CENTENARY 203
And this mention of his Latin scholarship induces me to
close with an anecdote that I find in Melville's "Life."
He says himself that it is almost too good to be true, but
it illustrates so delightfully certain academic attitudes,
that I must give it, authentic or not. The novelist was
to lecture at Oxford and had to obtain the license of the
Vice-Chancellor. He called on him for the necessary
permission and this was the dialogue that ensued :
V. C. Pray, sir, what can I do for you ?
T. My name is Thackeray.
V. C. So I see by this card.
T. I seek permission to lecture within your precincts.
V. C. Ah ! You are a lecturer : what subjects do you undertake,
religious or political ?
T. Neither. I am a literary man.
V. C. Have you written anything ?
T. Yes, I am the author of "Vanity Fair."
V. C. I presume, a dissenter — has that anything to do with Jno.
Bunyan's book ?
T. Not exactly : I have also written "Pendennis."
V. C. Never heard of these works, but no doubt they are proper
books.
T. I have also contributed to "Punch."
V. C. "Punch." I have heard of that. Is it not a ribald publica-
tion?
1
TENNYSON!
BY
Paul Elmer More
In the treatment of an author such as Tennyson, the first assumption
is that every reader already knows and has thought about the subject.
There is, then, none of the attraction of novelty. Logically, therefore,
as Mr. More conceived the solution, the appeal should be made, not by a
number of observations, but by a few carefully expanded. His thought
/Jivides into the main positions: (a) Tennyson represented his age,
'' (6) he was the poet of compromise, and (c) he was the poet of insight.
Each of these in turn is very carefully and elaborately defined and ex-
plained. For example, to bring out the first, Tennyson is shown in his
relation to the men of the time. This is done by anecdote, by quotation
from the poet himself, by quotation from the work of others, by citations
from diaries, etc. The result is that not only is the essay delightful
reading itself, but one lays it aside with a feeling of conviction. By
this very elaboration, the writer shows himself impartial, sensitive both
to Tennyson's faults as well as his virtues. By his abundant citations
from other poets he both explains his own conceptions and gives the
reader a standard of judgment. Consequently one feels implicit con-
fidence in his final decision.
Whatever changes may occur in the fame of Tennyson
— and undoubtedly at the present hour it is passing into a
kind of obscuration — he can never be deprived of the
honour of representing, more almost than any other single
poet of England, unless it be Dryden, a whole period of
national life. Tennyson is the Victorian age. His Poems,
iProm "The Shelburne E.ssays" (seventh series), by permission of
the author and of the publishers, G. P. Putnam's Sons.
204
TENNYSON 205
Chiefly Lyrical had been published only seven years when
the Queen came to the throne in 1837; he succeeded
Wordsworth as poet-laureate in 1850 ; and from that time
to his death in 1892 he was the official voice of the Court
and the acknowledged spokesman of those who were lead-
ing the people through that long period of transition.
There was something typical of the heart of England in
his birth and childhood. For what better nursery can
be imagined for such a poet than one of those village
rectories where the ancient traditions of the land are pre-
served with religious reverence and tlie pride of station is
unaccompanied by the vanity of wealth? And what
scenery could be more appropriate than the country of
Lincolnshire, rolling up from the salt marshes of the sea
and from the low dunes, "where the long breakers fall
with a heavy clap and spread in a curdling blanket of
seething foam over the level sands"? Tennyson never
forgot those sights and sounds of his childhood; their
shadows and echoes are in all his later verse.
And the surroundings of his early manhood were equally
characteristic. In 1828 he went to Cambridge and was
matriculated at Trinity College, leaving in 1831 without a
degree. Those were years when the spirit stirred in many
lands. In France the romantic movement, with Victor
Hugo as prophet and Sainte-Beuve as interpreter, was be-
ginning its career of high-handed victory. In England it
was a time of reform, felt at the two universities as power-
fully as in Parliament. At Oxford, Newman and Keble and
Ilurrell Fronde were preparing the great reintegration of
religion and the imagination which runs througli the cen-
tury parallel and hostile to the main current of ideas. In
Tennyson's university a group of young men were brood-
ing over strange and lofty liberties, and were dreaming
206 MODERN ESSAYS
vaguely of a new guide born of the union of idealism and
science. A few of these more ardent minds had banded
together as the Apostles, a secret debating society which
afterwards became famous from the achievement of its
members. Among the strongest of the brotherhood was
Arthur Henry Hallam, whose sudden death at Vienna
caused grief to many friends, and to Tennyson the long
sorrow which, with the vexatious problems of human
mortality, winds in and out through the cantos of In
Memoriam. The meaning of this loss cannot be measured
by the scanty remains of Hallam's own writings. He
stands with John Sterling and Hurrell Fronde among the
inheritors of unfulfilled renown — young men, whose con-
fidence in life was, in those aspiring days, accounted as
achievement, and whose early death, before the inevitable
sordor of wordly concession touched their faces, crowned
them with imperishable glory. So the memory of his
friend became to Tennyson in a few years a symbol of
hopes for him and for the world frustrate. He revisits
college and goes to see the rooms where Hallam dwelt ;
but, hearing only the clapping of hands and the crashing
of glass, thinks of the days when he and his circle held de-
bate, and would listen to Hallam's master words :
. . . Who, but hung to hear
The rapt oration flowing free
From point to point, with power and grace
And music in the bounds of haw,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him hght his face.
And seem to Hf t the form, and glow
In azure orbits heavenly wise;
And over those ethereal eyes
The bar of Michael Angelo.
TENNYSON 207
Those who at college have felt the power of such a guiding
friendship will tell you it is the fairest and most enduring
part of education. I myself know.
To Tennyson that high comradeship of youth and those
generous ideals lasted as one of the forces that made him
the typical poet of the age. You may read through the
memoirs of the period, and almost always you will meet
him somewhere moving among other men with the mark
of the Muses upon him, as a bard in the old daj^s stood
amid lords and warriors with the visible insignia of his
calling in his hands and on his brow — sacra ferens.
Wliether in his free-footed and wandering earlier years,
or as the prosperous householder in his beautiful homes
at Farringford on the Isle of Wight and at Aldworth on
Blackdown, Surrey, "overlooking the vast expanses of
light and shadow, golden cornfields, blue distances" —
wherever you see him, he is the same bearer of conscious
inspiration. Now we have a glimpse of him with Fitz-
Gerald, visiting James Spedding in his home in the Lake
country — Spedding who devoted a lifetime to the white-
washing of Chancellor Bacon, he of the "venerable fore-
head"; "No wonder," said his waggish friend, "that no
hair can grow at such an altitude ; no wonder his view
of Bacon's virtue is so rarefied that the common consciences
of men cannot endure it. " The three young men, we know,
discoursed endlessly and enthusiastically about the canons
of poetry, while the elder Spedding, a staunch squire of
the land who "had seen enough of the trade of poets not
to like them" — Shelley and Coleridge and Southey and
Wordsworth — listened with ill-concealed impatience. It
was at this time, probably, that Tennyson and FitzGerald
held a contest as to which could produce the worst W^ords-
worthian line, with the terrible example claimed by both
208 MODERN ESSAYS
of them: "A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman." Again
Tennyson is seen with the same friends in London, "very
droll, and very awkward ; and much sitting up of nights
till two or three in the morning with pipes in our mouths :
at which good hour we would get Alfred to give us some
of his magic music, which he does between growling and
smoking; and so to bed." Or he is at Carlyle's house at
Chelsea, with "Jack and a friend named Darwin, both
admirers of Alfred's," still talking and interminably smok-
ing — "one of the powerfullest smokers I have ever worked
along with in that department," writes the experienced
host. Or in the Isle of Wight, he is wandering one stormy
night with Moncure Daniel Conway, while "his deep bass
voice came through the congenial darkness like mirthful
thunder."
With another guest, perhaps, we go up-stairs to the
poet's den on the top-story at Farringford, where in safe
seclusion he can pour out his stores of deep questioning
and Rabelaisian anecdote ; or climb still higher, up a lad-
der to the leads, where he was wont to go to contemplate
the heavens, and whence one night, like Plato's luckless
philosopher, he fell down the hatch ; whereat a brother
bard quoted to him: "A certain star shot madly from
his sphere." Such stories could be multiplied endlessly.
The best of all pictures of him is that written down
in the diary of the Rev. R. S. Hawker, the strange
vicar of Morwenstow, near Tintagel, the birthplace of
the legendary Arthur, whither Tennyson had come in
1848 to make himself familiar with the country of the
Idylls.
It is observable in all these accounts that the great per-
sonality of Tennyson, with his contempt for little conven-
tions, impressed those who lived with him as if he possessed
TENNYSON 209
some extraordinary daemonic power not granted to lesser
men. And his conversation was like his figure. It is
agreeable, when we consider certain finical over-nice quali-
ties of his verse, to know that his talk was racy with
strong, downright Saxon words ; that, like our Lincoln,
he could give and take deep draughts of Pantagruelian
mirth. I confess that it does not displease me to touch
this vein of earthy coarseness in the man. But I like also
to hear that his mind rose more habitually from the soil
to the finer regions of poetry and religion. In a hundred
recorded conversations you will find him at close grips
with the great giants of doubt and materialism, which
then, as in the caverns and fastnesses of old fable, were
breeding in every scientific workshop and stalking thence
over the land. How often you will find him, when these
questions are discussed, facing them calmly, and then
ending all with an expression of unalterable faith in the
spirit-forces that blow like one of his mystic winds about
the solid earth ; speaking words which sound common-
place enough in print but which, with his manner and
voice, seem to have affected his hearers as if they had been
surprised by a tongue of revelation.
Still oftener his talk was of the poets and their work.
Sometimes it was long discourse and rich comparison.
Other times it was a flashing comment on the proper
emphasis or cadence of a line, as on that day when he
visited Lyme Regis with William Allingham, and, sitting
on the wall of the Cobb, listened to the passage out of
Persuasion where Louisa Mulgrave hurts her ankle. And
then, continues Allingham, we
. . . take a field-path that brings us to Devonshire Hedge and past
that boundry into Devon. Lovely fields, an underclifiF with tumbled
heaps of verdure, honeysuckle, hawthorns, and higher trees. Rocks
P
210 MODERN ESSAYS
peeping through the sward, in which I peculiarly delight, reminding me
of the West of Ireland. I quote — -
"Bowery hollows crowned with summer sea."
T. (as usual), " You don't say it properly " — and repeats it in his own
sonorous manner, lingering with solemn sweetness on every vowel
sound, — a peculiar incomplete cadence at the end.
It is but one example among a thousand of Tennyson's supreme care
for the sound of a word and for the true melody of a verse. " When
Tennyson finds anything in poetry that touches him," says Coventry
Patmore, "not pathos, but a happy line or epithet — the tears come
into his eyes."
But it was as reciter of his own poems that he main-
tained in our modern prosaic society the conscious office
of bard. He read on all occasions and to all sorts of
people, frankly and seriously, rolling out his verses with
the rhythm and magnificent emphasis that poets love to
bestow on their own works. Nor can I recall a single
instance in which the listener was troubled by our tedious
sense of humour — not even when, on the celebrated voyage
to Copenhagen with Gladstone and a party of royalties,
Tennyson patted time to one of his poems on the shoulder
of an unknown lady, whom he afterwards discovered to
be the Empress of all the Russias. Best of all these
accounts is that of Mrs. J. H. Shorthouse, who, with
her husband, the novelist, visited the poet at Farringford :
Then the moon rose, and through the great cedar on the lawn we saw
its light approach and fill the room, and when the gentlemen came in.
and Lady Tennyson returned to her sofa, we had the great pleasure of
hearing Lord Tennyson read three of his favourite poems — the Ode to
the Duke of Wellington, Blow, Bugle, Blow, and Maud. Only the candles
by his side lit up the book of poems from which he read ; the rest of the
room was flooded by moonlight. . . . Many of Lord Tennyson's visitors
have described his reading of poetry, varying of course, with their own
TENNYSON 211
tastes and sympathies. To me, as we sat in the moonlight listening to
the words we loved, I seemed to nnxiise the scenes of very olden days
when the bards improvised their own lays in great baronial halls to en-
raptured listeners.
Nothing could better characterise the position of Tenny-
son as the official voice of the land, turning its hard affairs
and shrewd debates into the glamour of music before
flattered eyes and ears. He was beloved of the Queen
and the Prince Consort. Men of science like Huxley were
" impressed with the Doric beauty" of his dialect poems ;
or, like Herschel, Owen, and Tyndall, admired him "for
the eagerness with which he welcomed all the latest scien-
tific discoveries, and for his trust in truth." Serious
judges cited him on the bench, as did Lord Bowen when,
being compelled to preside over an admiralty case, he
ended an apology to counsel for his inexperience with the
punning quotation :
And may there be no moaning at the Bar,
When I put out to sea.
In all this chorus of acceptance there is a single strangely
significant discord. Edward FitzGerald, as we have seen,
was one of Tennyson's warmest friends ; of all the great men
of his acquaintance, and he knew the greatest, Tennyson
alone overawed him. " I must, however, say further,"
he once writes, after visiting with Tennyson, " that I felt
what Charles Lamb describes, a sense of depression at times
from the overshadowing of a so much more lofty intellect
than my own : this (though it may seem vain to say so) I
never experienced before, though I have often been with
much greater intellects : but I could not be mistaken in the
universality of his mind." FitzGerald was one of those
who first recognized Tennyson's poetic genius ; but after
212 MODERN ESSAYS
a while there comes a change in the tone of his comment.
In Memoriam, which he read in manuscript before it was
puhlishod, he cannot away with; it has to him the "air
of being evolved by a Poetical Machine of the highest
order " ; and from that time his letters contain frequent
hints of dissatisfaction. It was not that Tennyson's later
works were inferior to his earlier, but that somehow he
seems to have felt, as we to-day are likely to feel, a dis-
parity between the imposing genius of the man himself
and these rather nerveless elegies and rather vapid tales
like The Princess. He cries out once upon "the cursed
inactivity " of the nineteenth century for spoiling his
poet, coming close to, but not quite touching, the real
reason of his discontent. That determined recluse of
Little Grange, who, in the silent night hours, loved to
walk about the flat Suffolk lanes, among the shadows of
the windmills that reminded him of his beloved Don
Quixote ; who, as the years passed, could scarcely be
got to visit his friends at all, but wrote to them letters
of quaint and wistful tenderness — he alone among the
busy, anxious Victorians, so far as I know them, stood
entirely aloof from the currents of the hour, judging
men and things from the larger circles of time ; he alone
was completely emancipated from the illusions of the
present, and this is the secret of the grave, pathetic
wisdom that so fascinates us in his correspondence. And
so the very fact that Tennyson was the mouthpiece of
his generation, with the limitations that such a charac-
ter implies, cooled the praise of our disillusioned philoso-
pher, just as it warmed the enthusiasm of more engaged
minds.
One is impressed by this quality of Tennyson's talent
as one goes through his works anew in the Eversley
TENNYSON 213
edition^ that has just been published, with notes by the
poet and by the poet's son. It is useless to deny that to a
later taste much of this writing seems an insubstantial
fabric ; that it has many of the qualities that stamp the
distinctly Victorian creations as provincial and ephemeral.
There is upon it, first of all, the mark of prettiness, that
prettiness which has been, and still is, the bane of British
art. Look through collections of the work of Landseer
and Birket Foster and Sir John Everett Millais, and
others of that group, and observe its quality of "guileless
beauty," as Holman Hunt calls it, or innocuous senti-
mentality as it seems to us. These scenes of meek love-
making, of tender home-partings and reconciliations, of
children floating down a stream in their cradle with perhaps
a kitten peering into the water — it is not their morality
that offends us, far from that, but their deliberate blinking
of what makes life real and, in the higher sense of the word,
beautiful. You will find this same prettiness in many of
Tennyson's early productions, such as The May Queen and
Dora and The Miller's Daughter. Or take a more preten-
tious poem, such as Enoch Arden, and compare it with a
similar tale from Crabbe ; set Tennyson's picture of the
three children, "Annie Lee, the prettiest little damsel in
the port," etc., beside one of the coast scenes of the earlier
poet's Aldworth, and you will be struck by the difference
between the beribboned daintiness of the one and the
naked strength, as of a Dutch genre painting, of the other.
Or go still higher, and consider some of the scenes of the
Idylls. In its own kind Launcelot and Elaine is certainly
a noble work, yet somehow to all its charm there still
^ The Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson. In six volumes. The Eversley
Edition. Annotated by Alfred Lord Tennyson, edited by Hallam Lord
Tennyson. New York : The Macmillan Company, 1908.
214 MODERN ESSAYS
clings that taint of prettiness, which is a different thing
altogether. I read the words of Gawain to the lily maid
of Astolat :
"Nay, by mine head," said he,
"I lose it, as we lose the lark in heaven,
O, damsel, in the light of your blue eyes."
' Tis a sweet compliment, but I remember the same meta-
phor in an old play :
Once a young lark
Sat on thy hand, and gazing on thine eyes
Mounted and sung, thinking them moving skies, —
and by comparison I seem again to note in Tennyson's lines
the something false we designate as Victorian. There is in
the same poem another scene, one of the most picturesque
in all the Idylls, where Launcelot and Elaine's brother
ride away from the ancient castle and the lily maid to
join the tournament :
She stay'd a minute.
Then made a sudden step to the gate, and there —
Her bright hair blown about the serious face
Yet rosy-kindled with her brother's kiss —
Paused by the gateway, standing near the shield
In silence, while she watch'd their arms far-oEF
Sparkle, until they dipt below the downs.
One sees it all — the sentimental maiden at the arch,
gazing with shaded eyes after the two departing knights,
while some flowering vine of an English summer droops
from the stones about her slender form ; one sees it, but
again it is a painting on the walls of the Burlington House
rather than the reality of a more virile art.
There is not a little of this effeminate grace in the long
TENNYSON 215
elegy In Memoriam, which above any other single poem,
I think, seemed to the men of the Victorian age to express
the melancholy and the beauty of life. I find a trace of
it even in the more exquisite sections, in the nineteenth
for instance :
The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken'd heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore.
And in the hearing of the wave.
There twice a day the Severn fills ;
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
The imagery of grief's home could not be more melodi-
ously uttered, and it is close to the facts. "From the
Graveyard," writes the editor of the EversJey edition,
"you can hear the music of the tide as it washes against
the low cliffs not a hundred yards away " ; and the poet
himself adds in the note : "Taken from my own observa-
tion — the rapids of the Wye are stilled by the incoming
sea." The application is like the image :
The Wye is hush'd nor moved along.
And hush'd my deepest grief of all.
When fiird with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.
The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls;
My deeper anguish also falls.
And I can speak a little then.
Such was the music that Tennyson learned from the Wye
at Tintern Abbey, where, as the editor tells us, the verses
216 MODERN ESSAYS
were actually composed. Exquisitely refined and curious,
no doubt ; but the editor's note sets us involuntarily to
thinking of other Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tin-
tern Abbey, where Wordsworth heard "These waters, roll-
ing from their inland springs, with a sweet inland mur-
mur," and from that sound conjectured "the still, sad
music of humanity." It is not a question here of phi-
losophy but of art, and no one can fail to note the thinness
of Tennyson's style compared with the larger harmonies
of Wordsworth.
But however much the prettiness of In Memoriam
caught the ears of the sentimental, it was another quality
which won the applause of the greater Victorians. There
is an interesting letter given among the editor's notes,
showing how the men who were leading English thought
in those days felt toward the new poem, and in particular
toward one of its religious sections :
If e'er when faith had faU'n asleep,
I heard a voice " beUeve no more "
And heard an ever-breaking shore
And tumbled in the Godless deep ;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part.
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer' d "I have felt."
No, like a child in doubt and fear :
But that blind clamour made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries.
But, crying, knows his father near.
"These lines," writes Prof. Henry Sidgwuck in the letter
referred to — "these Hues I can never read without tears.
I fool in them the indestructible and inahenable minimum
of faith which humanity cannot give up because it is
TENNYSON 217
necessary for life ; and which I know that I, at least so
far as the man in me is deeper than the methodical thinker,
cannot give up." Now Sidgwick was no ordinary man.
He was in fact one of the keenest and hardest-headed
thinkers of those days, one of the leaders in the philosophi-
cal and economical revolution then taking place ; and these
tears of his were no cheap contribution of sentiment, but
rose from the deepest wells of trouble. Many men still
living can remember the dismay and the sense of home-
lessness that fell upon the trusting mind of England when
it became aware of a growing hostility between the new
school of science and the established creed. When Arthur
Hallam died in 1833, Darwin was making his memorable
voyage of investigation on the Beagle, and while Tennyson
was elaborating his grief in long-linked sweetness, Darwin
was writing that "first note-book of Transmutation of
Species" which was developed into the Origin of Species of
1859. The alarm of the Church over this assimilation of
man and monkey, the bitter fight between Huxley and Wil-
berforce and between Huxley and Gladstone — all this is
well known, though the tumult of the fray begins to sound
in younger ears as distant as the battles about Troy.
Meanwhile within the Church itself the scientific criticism
of sources was working a havoc no less dreaded than the
attacks from without. This breach within the walls,
though long a-making, first became generally visible by
the publication of the famous Essays and Reviews in 1860,
which, harmless as the book now seems, kept two of its
principal contributors, Jowett and Mark Pattison, for
years from university promotion.
To these currents of thought Tennyson was quickly
responsive. Without hesitation he accepted the new
point of view for his In Memoriam, and those who were
218 MODERN ESSAYS
leading the revolution felt this and welcomed enthusiasti-
cally a recruit from the writers of the imagination who
were commonly against them. "Wordsworth's Attitude
towards Nature," says Professor Sidgwick, in the same
letter to Tennyson's son, "was one that, so to say, left
Science unregarded : the Nature for which Wordsworth
stirred our feeUngs was Nature as known by simple obser-
vation and interpreted by religious and sympathetic in-
tuition. But for your father the physical w^orld is always
the world as known to us through physical science ; the
scientific view^ of it dominates his thoughts about it."
And Professor Sidgwick is perfectly right. It is unneces-
sary to point out the many passages of In Memoriam in
which the law of evolution, the survival of the fittest, and
man's kinship to the ape, were clearly hinted before Darwin
had definitely formulated them in his epoch-making book.
What more impressed men like Sidgwick was the fact that
Tennyson felt with them the terrifying doubts awakened by
this conception of man as part of a vast, unfeeling, blind
mechanism, but still clung to "the indestructible and in-
alienable minimum of faith which humanity cannot give up
because it is necessary for life." And Tennyson, and this is
the view to be emphasised, found this minimum of faith, not
outside of the new science but at its very heart. He does,
indeed, cry out at times against the harsher hypothesis,
declaring that we are not "magnetic mockeries" —
Not only cunning casts in clay :
Let Science prove we are, and then
What matters Science unto men,
At least to me ? I would not stay.
Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape.
But I was horn to other things.
TENNYSON 219
That note is heard in In Memoriam, but the gist of
Tennyson's faith, and what made him the spokesman of
the age, was in a bold completion of evolution by the
theory of indefinite progress and by a vision of some
magnificent consummation wherein the sacrifices and the
waste and the pain of the present were to be compensated
somehow, somewhere, somewhen — who shall say ?
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will.
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ;
That nothing walks with aimless feet ;
That not one life shall be destroy'd.
Or cast as rubbish to the void.
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain ;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire.
Or but subserves another's gain.
And the end of the poem is the climax of this comfortable
belief :
That God, which ever lives and loves.
One God, one law, one element.
And one far-off divine event.
To which the whole creation moves.
That reconcilation of faith and science, this discovery
of a father near at hand within the inexorable law of
evolution, this vision of an eternal state to be reached in
the progress of time — all this is what we call the Vic-
torian compromise. The prettiness which we found so
characteristic of Victorian painting and of Tennyson's
non-religious verse was indeed only another phase of
the same compromise. The imperious sense of beauty,
which has led the great visionaries out of the world and
220 MODERN ESSAYS
which Tennyson portrayed trembh'ngly in his Palace of
Art, was felt by the Victorians to be dangerous to the
British sentiment of the home, and motherhood, and
girlish innocence, and so they rested in the middle ground
of prettiness where beauty and innocent sentiment might
meet. Here also they held to that "indestructible and
inalienable minimum of faith which humanity" — British
humanity at least in those years — could not give up.
And men like Professor Sidgwick were stirred to the heart
by this compromise, and wept.
Undoubtedly the fame of Tennyson in his own day was
due largely to his expression of what may be called the
official philosophy, but it is a question whether this very
trait has not weakened his hold upon a later generation ;
whether, for instance, the stoic resolve and self-determina-
tion of Matthew Arnold, whom Professor Sidgwick in one
of the most scathing essays of the century denounced as a
trifling "prophet of culture," have not really expressed the
higher meaning of that age — though not the highest mean-
ing of all — better than any official and comfortable com-
promise ; whether the profounder significance of that time
of doubt was not rather in Matthew Arnold's brave disease :
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight.
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
I am confirmed in this view by one of the present editor's
observations. I read the stanza of In Memoriam which
describes the reception of the poet's dead friend into the
heavenly host :
The great Intelligences fair
That range above our mortal state.
In circle round the blessed gate,
Received and gave him welcome there ; —
TENNYSON 221
and then in the editor's note I read the lines of Milton's
Lycidas which Tennyson imitated :
There entertain him all the Saints above
In solemn troops, and sweet societies.
That sing, and singing, in their glory move.
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Why is it that Tennyson here leaves us so cold, whereas
at the sound of Milton's words the heart still leaps as at
a bugle call ? Why are these fair Intelligences so meaning-
less and so frigid? Is not the cause just the spirit of
compromise between religion and science that has entered
into Tennyson's image, leaving it neither the simple objec-
tive faith of Milton nor the honest questioning of Matthew
Arnold ?
It may seem that I have dwelt over-much on this weaker
side of an admired writer who has so much noble work to
his credit, but it was these compromises that gave him his
historic position, and, also, it is only by bringing out
clearly this aspect of his work that we are enabled to dis-
cern the full force of another and contrasted phase, which
was not of the age but was the unfettered voice of the poet
himself. As we hear of the impression made by the man
Tennyson upon his contemporaries, and then consider the
sleeker qualities of his verse, we find it difficult to associate
the two together ; there was no prettiness or convention in
his character, but a certain elusive wildness of beauty and
a noble, almost defiant, independence. To distinguish be-
tween the two poets in the one writer is the only way
rightly to understand and wisely to enjoy him. Now if
we examine the spirit of compromise, which made the
official poet in Tennyson, we shall see that it rests finally
on a denial of religious dualism, on a denial, that is, of the
222 MODERN ESSAYS
consciousness, which no reasoning of philosophy and no
noise of the world can ever quite obliterate, of two opposite
principles within us, one bespeaking unity and peace and
infinite life, the other calling us to endless change and
division and discord. Just this cleft within our nature
the Victorians attempted to gloss over. Because they
could not discover the rational bond between the world
of time and evolution and the idea of eternity and change-
lessness, they would deny that these two can exist side by
side as totally distinct spheres, and by raising the former
and lowering the latter would seek the truth in some
middle ground of compromise. Thus instead of saying,
as Michael Angelo said, "Happy the soul where time no
longer courses," they placed the faith of religion in some
far-off event of time, as if eternity were a kind of enchant-
ment lent by distance.
Such was the official message of Tennyson. But by
the side of this there comes up here and there through
his works an utterly different vein of mysticism, which is
scarcely English and certainly not Victorian. It was a
sense of estrangement from time and personality which
took possession of him at intervals from youth to age.
In a well-known passage he tries to analyse this state :
A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood,
when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me thro' re-
peating my own name two or three times to myself silently, till all at
once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality,
the individuality itself seemed to dissolve away into boundless being, and
this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the
surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death
was almost a laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were)
seeming no extinction but the only true life.
This was not a reading into youth of a later knowledge
gained from Oriental sources. In the notes to the Evers-
TENNYSON 223
ley volumes, the editor gives an unpublished juvenile
j)oem, The Mystic, in which the same feeling is expressed,
if not so clearly, at least with a self-knowledge every way
remarkable for a boy :
Ye could not read the marvel in his eye.
The still serene abstraction ; he hath felt
The vanities of after and before.
He often lying broad awake, and yet
Remaining from the body, and apart
In intellect and power and will, hath heard
Time flowing in the middle of the night,
And all things creeping to a day of doom.
The point to note is how Tennyson in such passages feels
himself an entity set apart from the flowing of time,
whereas in the official compromise of In Memoriam he —
not only he, but God Himself — is one with the sum of
things in their vague temporal progress. In that differ-
ence, if rightly understood, lies, I think, the distinction
between faith and naturalism.
This sense of himself as a being set apart from change
strengthened, if anything, as he grew old. Its most philo-
sophic expression is in The Ancient Sage, which was first
published in 1885 and was regarded by him as one of his
best later poems ; it is rebellious in Vastness, lyrical in
Break, Break, Break, purely melodic in Far — Far —
Away, dramatic in Ulysses, autobiographical in The Gleam.
Always it is the man himself speaking his own innermost
religious experience, and no mere "minimum of faith"
needed for the preservation of society.
For the fullest and most artistic utterance of this faith
we must go to the Idylls of the King. I will confess to
224 MODERN ESSAYS
being no unreserved lover of that mangled epic as a whole ;
it seems to me that in most of its parts the Victorian
prettiness is made doubly, and at times offensively, con-
spicuous by the contrast between Tennyson's lim]jid sen-
timentality and the sturdier fibre of Malory's Morte
Darlhur from which he drew his themes. But it is true
that here and there, in a line or a musically haunting
passage, he has in the Idylls spoken from the depth of
his heart, as he has spoken nowhere else, and that one of
them. The Holy Grail, has an insight into things spiritual
and a precision it would be hard to match in any other
English poem. The mystic cup, which had been brought
to England by Joseph of Arimathea and had vanished
away for the sinfulness of the people, was first seen in
vision by a holy sister of Sir Percivale, and by her Galahad
was incited to go on the sacred quest. Meanwhile, one
day, when the knights were gathered at the Round Table
in the absence of the King, Galahad sits in Merlin's magic
seat, which, as Tennyson explains, is a symbol of the
spiritual imagination, the siege perilous, wherein "no man
could sit but he should lose himself":
And all at once, as there we sat, we heard
A crackling and a riving of the roofs.
And rending, and a blast, and overhead
Thunder, and in the thunder was a cry.
And in the blast there smote along the hall
A beam of light seven times more clear than day :
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail
All over covcr'd with a luminous cloud.
And none might see who bare it, and it past.
But every knight beheld his fellow's face
As in a glory, and all the knights arose.
And staring each at other like dumb men
Stood, till I found a voice and sware a vow.
TENNYSON 225
The vision, in other words, is nothing else but a sudden
and bUnding sense of that duaHsm of the world and of
the human soul beneath which the solid-seeming earth
reels and dissolves away, overwhelming with terror and
uncomprehended impulses all but those purely spiritual
to whom the earth is already an unreal thing. Then
enters the King and perceives the perturbation among
his knights. It is characteristic of England and of the
age, although it has, too, its universal signijBcance, that
Tennyson's Arthur should deplore the search for the Grail
as a wild aberration, which is to bring impossible hopes
and desolate disappointments to those whose business was
to do battle among very material forces. "Go," he
says —
Go, since your vows are sacred, being made :
Yet — for ye know the cries of all my realm
Pass thro' this hall — how often, O my knights,
Your places being vacant at my side.
This chance of noble deeds will come and go
Unchallenged, while ye follow wandering fires
Lost in the quagmire !
Only Sir Galahad, in whom is no taint of sin or selfishness,
and who was bold to find himself by losing himself, had
beheld clearly the vision of the cup as it smote across the
hall. I do not know how it may be with others, but to
me the answer of Galahad to the King has a mystical
throb and exultation almost beyond any other words of
English :
But I, Sir Arthur, saw the Holy Grail,
I saw the Holy Grail and heard a cry —
"O Galahad," and "O Galahad, follow me."
That is the cry and the voice, now poetry and philosophy,
which Tennyson had in mind when he wrote of hearing
226 MODERN ESSAYS
"the word that is the symbol of myself." He who has
once heard it and heard the responding echo within his
own breast, can never again close his ears to its sound.
To Galahad it meant the vanishing of the world alto-
gether, and there is nothing more magnificent in Tennyson,
scarcely in English verse, I think, than Sir Percivale's
sight of Galahad fleeing over the bridges out into the far
horizon, and disappearing into the splendours of the sky,
while —
. . . thrice above him all the heavens
Open'd and blazed with thunder such as seem'd
Shoutings of all the sons of God : and first
At once I saw him far on the great Sea,
In silver-shining armour starry -clear;
And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung
Clothed in white samite or a luminous cloud.
There, in the inspiration from Tennyson's own visionary
faith and from no secular compromise, we find the lift and
the joy and the assurance that Milton knew and sang in
Lycidas and that was so sadly missed in the "great
Intelligences fair" of In Memoriam.
But to Sir Percivale himself the vision brought no such
divine transfiguration. He is the one who sees, indeed,
and understands, yet cannot lose himself. Because the
Holy Grail signifies a dualism which sets the eternal world
not at the end of the temporal, but utterly apart from it,
he who knows the higher while lacking the courage to
renounce the lower, wanders comfortless with neither the
ecstatic joy of the one nor the homely satisfactions of the
other. So the world and all that it contains turn into
dust at his touch, leaving him alone and wearying, in a
land of sand and thorns. Another, Sir Bors, the simple,
trustful gentleman, who goes out on the word of others,
TENNYSON 227
following duty only and trusting in the honour or the act
as it comes to him, sees in adversity the Holy Cup shining
through a rift in his prison, and abides content that the
will of God should reserve these high things as a reward
for whomsoever it chooses. Still another, Sir Gawain,
finding the vision is not for him, and having turned his
eyes from the simple rule of duty, sinks into sensual
pleasures, and declares his twelvemonth and a day a
merry jaunt. Most fatal of all is the experience of Laun-
celot, he, the greatest of all, who brought the sin into the
court, who cannot disentangle the warring impulses of
good and evil within himself. He, too, rides out of Came-
lot on the Quest, and then :
My madness came upon me as of old
And whipt me into waste fields far away.
it: ^! * * * *
But such a blast, my King, began to blow.
So loud a blast along the shore and sea.
Ye could not hear the waters for the blast,
Tho' heapt in mounds and ridges all the sea
Drove like a cataract, and all the sand
Swept like a river, and the clouded heavens
Were shaken with the motion and the sound.
This is an application to the smaller field of wind and
earth and water of that dizzy tempestuous motion which
in Tennyson's earlier poem of Lucretius surged through
the Epicurean's atomic universe. To the eye of the
spirit, Tennyson would seem to say, the material world is
a flux and endless, purposeless mutation — leaving the
self-possessed soul to its own inviolable peace, or, upon
one that perceives yet is still enmeshed in evil desires,
thronging in visions and terrors of madness. One need
not be a confessed mystic to feel the power of these pas-
228 MODERN ESSAYS
sages, any more than one need be a Puritan (standing,
that is, at the opposite pole of religion from mystic) to
appreciate Milton. To the genuine conviction of these
poets our human nature responds as it can never respond
to the insincerity of the world's "minimum of faith."
With Tennyson, unfortunately, the task is always to
separate the poet of insight from the poet of compromise.
I
REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION ^
BY
William Lyon Phelps
Discussion of literary theory is difficult because of lack of definition.
In his paper, read before the American Academy, Professor Phelps
brings out his thought' by means of concrete illustration. He opens
with an anecdote in which the two ideas. Realism and Reality, are
brought sharply into contrast. Then follow three paragraphs of gen-
eral discussion in which the difference is fully explained. Then seven
paragraphs in catalogue form of the predicates of Reality. Each of
these paragraphs by illustration, anecdote, dialogue, is made very clear,
— so clear that the author feels no need for a summary at the end.
And by this omission, the reader is scarcely conscious of the catalogue
nature of the essay as a whole.
During those early years of his youth at Paris, which
the melancholy but unrepentant George Moore insists he
spent in riotous living, he was on one memorable occasion
making a night of it at a ball in Montmartre. In the
midst of the revelry a grey giant came placidly striding
across the crowded room, looking, I suppose, something
like Gulliver in Lilliput. It was the Russian novelist
Turgenev. For a moment the young Irishman forgot
the girls, and plunged into eager talk with the man from
the North. Emile Zola had just astonished Paris with
UAssommoir. In response to a leading question, Tur-
genev shook his head gravely and said : "What difference
1 From "Essays on Books," by permission of the author and of The
Macmillan Co.
229
230 MODERN ESSAYS
does it make whether a woman sweats in the middle of
her back or under her arms? I want to know how she
thinks, not how she feels."
In this statement the great master of diagnosis indicated
the true distinction between realism and reality. A work
of art may be conscientiously realistic, — few men have
had a more importunate conscience than Zola, — and yet
be untrue to life, or, at all events, untrue to life as a whole.
Realism may degenerate into emphasis on sensational but
relatively unimportant detail : reality deals with that
mystery of mysteries, the human heart. Realism may
degenerate into a creed ; and a formal creed in art is as
unsatisfactory as a formal creed in religion, for it is aiji
attempt to confine what by its very nature is boundless
and infinite into a narrow and prescribed space. Your
microscope may be accurate and powerful, but its strong
regard is turned on only one thing at a time ; and no mat-
ter how enormously this thing may be enlarged, it remains
only one thing out of the infinite variety of God's universe.
To describe one part of life by means of a perfectly accu-
rate microscope is not to describe life any more than one
can measure the Atlantic Ocean by means of a perfectly
accurate yardstick. Zola was an artist of extraordinary
energy, sincerity, and honesty; but, after all, when he
gazed upon a dunghill, he saw and described a dunghill.
Rostand looked steadfastly at the same object, and beheld
the vision of Chanticler.
Suppose some foreign champion of realism should arrive
in New York at dusk, spend the whole night visiting the
various circles of our metropolitan hell, and depart for
Europe in the dawn. Suppose that he should make a
strictly accurate narrative of all that he had seen. Well
and good; it would be realistic, it would be true. But
REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION 231
suppose he should call his narrative America. Then we
should assuredly protest.
"You have not described America. Your picture lacks
the most essential features."
He would reply :
"But isn't what I have said all true? I defy you to
deny its truth. I defy you to point out errors or exaggera-
tions. Everything that I described I saw with my own
eyes."
All this we admit, but we refuse to accept it as a picture
of America. Here is the cardinal error of realism. It
selects one aspect of life, — usually a physical aspect, for it
is easy to arouse strained attention by physical detail, —
and then insists that it has made a picture of life. The mod-
ern Parisian society drama, for example, cannot possibly be
a true representation of French family and social life. Life
is not only better than that ; it is surely less monotonous,
more complex. You cannot play a great symphony on
one instrument, least of all on the triangle. The plays of
Bernstein, Bataille, Hervieu, Donnay, Capus, Guinon, and
others, brilliant in technical execution as they often are,
really follow a monotonous convention of theatrical art
rather than life itself. As an English critic has said, "The
Parisian dramatists are living in an atmosphere of half-
truths and shams, grubbing in the divorce courts and living
upon the maintenance of social intrigue just as comfort-
ably as any bully upon the earnings of a prostitute." An
admirable French critic, M. Henry Bordeaux, says of his
contemporary playwrights, that they have ceased to rep-
resent men and women as they really are. This is not
realism, he declares ; it is a new style of false romanticism,
where men and women are represented as though they pos-
sessed no moral sense — a romanticism sensual, worldly,
232 MODERN ESSAYS
and savage. Life is pictured as though there were no
such things as daily tasks and daily duties.
Shakespeare was an incorrigible romantic ; yet there is
more reality in his compositions than in all the realism of
his great contemporary, Ben Jonson. Confidently and
defiantly, Jonson set forth his play Every Man in His
Humour as a model of what other plays should be ; for,
said he, it contains deeds and language such as men do use.
So it does : but it falls far short of the reality reached by
Shakespeare in that impossible tissue of absurd events
which he carelessly called As You Like It. In his
erudite and praiseworthy attempt to bring back the days
of ancient Rome on the Elizabethan stage Jonson achieved
a resurrection of the dead : Shakespeare, unembarrassed
by learning and unhampered by a creed, achieved a resur-
rection of the living. Catiline and Sejanus talk like an
old text; Brutus and Cassius talk like living men. For
the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
The form, the style, the setting, and the scenery of a
work of art may determine w^hether it belongs to realism
or romanticism ; for realism and romanticism are affairs
of time and space. Reality, however, by its very essence,
is spiritual, and may be accompanied by a background
that is contemporary, ancient, or purely mythical. An
opera of the Italian school, where, after a tragic scene,
the tenor and soprano hold hands, trip together to the
footlights, and produce fluent roulades, may be set in a
drawing-room, with contemporary, realistic furniture.
Compare La Traviata with the first act of Die Walkure,
and see the difference between realism and reality.
In the wildly romantic and mythical setting, the passion
of love is intensely real; and as the storm ceases, the
portal swings open, and the soft air of the moonUt spring
REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION 233
night enters the room, the eternal reality of love makes
its eternal appeal in a scene of almost intolerable beauty.
Even so carefullj'^ realistic an opera as Louise does not
seem for the moment any more real than these lovers in
the spring moonlight, deep in the heart of the whispering
forest.
A fixed creed, whether it be a creed of optimism, pes-
simism, realism, or romanticism, is a positive nuisance to
an artist. Joseph Conrad, all of whose novels have the
unmistakable air of reality, declares tliat the novelist
should have no programme of any kind and no set rules.
In a memorable phrase he cries, "Liberty of the imagina-
tion should be the most precious possession of a novelist."
Optimism may be an insult to the sufferings of humanity,
but, says Mr. Conrad, pessimism is intellectual arrogance.
He will have it that while the ultimate meaning of life —
if there be one — is hidden from us, at all events this is a
spectacular universe ; and a man who has doubled the
Horn and sailed through a typhoon on what was uninten-
tionally a submarine vessel may be pardoned for insisting
on this point of view. It is indeed a spectacular universe,
which has resisted all the attempts of realistic novelists to
make it dull. However sad or gay life may be, it affords
an interesting spectacle. Perhaps this is one reason why
all works of art that possess reality never fail to draw and
hold attention.
Every critic ought to have a hospitable mind. His atti-
tude toward art in general should be like that of an old-
fashioned host at the door of a country inn, ready to wel-
come all guests except criminals. It is impossible to judge
with any fairness a new poem, a new opera, a new picture,
a new novel, if the critic have preconceived opinions as to
what poetry, music, painting, and fiction should be. We
234 MODERN ESSAYS
are all such creatures of convention that the first impres-
sion made by reality in any form of art is sometimes a
distinct shock, and we close the windows of our intelligence
and draw the blinds that the fresh air and the new light
may not enter in. Just as no form of art is so strange as
life, so it may be the strangeness of reality in books, in
pictures, and in music that makes our attitude one of
resistance rather than of welcome.
Shortly after the appearance of Wordsworth's Resolu-
tion and Independence,
"There was a roaring in the wind all night.
The rain came heavily and fell in floods,"
some one read aloud the poem to an intelligent woman.
She burst into tears, but, recovering herself, said shame-
facedly, "After all, it isn't poetry." When Pushkin,
striking off the shackles of eighteenth-century conven-
tions, published his first work, a Russian critic exclaimed,
"For God's sake don't call this thing a poem!" These
two poems seemed strange because they were so natural, so
real, so true, just as a sincere person who speaks his mind
in social intercourse is regarded as an eccentric. We
follow conventions and not life. In operas the lover
must be a tenor, as though the love of a man for a woman
were something soft, something delicate, something emas-
culate, instead of being what it really is, the very essence
of masculine virility. I suppose that on the operatic stage
a lover with a bass voice would shock a good many people
in the auditorium, but I should like to see the experiment
tried. In Haydn's Creation, our first parents sing a bass
and soprano duet very sweetly. But Verdi gave that
seasoned old soldier Otello a tenor role, and even the fear-
less Wagner made his leading lovers all sing tenor except
REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION 235
the Flying Dutchman, who can hardly be called human.
In society dramas we have become so accustomed to con-
ventional inflections, conventional gestures, conventional
grimaces, that when an actor speaks and behaves exactly
as he would were the situation real, instead of assumed,
the effect is startling. Virgin snow often looks blue, but
it took courage to paint it blue, because people judge not
by eyesight, but by convention, and snow conventionally
is assuredly white. In reading works of fiction we have
become so accustomed to conventions that we hardly
notice how often they contradict reality. In many novels I
have read I have been introduced to respectable women with
scarlet lips, whereas in life I never saw a really good woman
with such labial curiosities. Conversations are conven-
tionally unnatural. A trivial illustration will suffice.
Some one in a group makes an attractive proposition.
"Agreed!" cried they all. Did you ever hear any one
say "Agreed".'^
I suppose that all novels, no matter how ostensibly
objective, must really be subjective. Out of the abun-
dance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Every artist feels
the imperative need of self-expression. Milton used to
sit in his arm-chair, waiting impatiently for his amanuen-
sis, and cry, "I want to be milked." Even so dignified,
so reticent, and so sober-minded a novelist as Joseph
Conrad says, "The novelist does not describe the world:
he simply describes his own world." Sidney's advice,
"Look in thy heart, and write," is as applicable to the
realistic novelist as it is to the lyric poet. We know now
that the greatest novelist of our time, Tolstoi, wrote his
autobiography in every one of his so-called works of fiction.
The astonishing air of reality that they possess is owing
largely to the fact not merely that they are true to life,
236 MODERN ESSAYS
but that they are the living truth. When an artist suc-
ceeds in getting the secrets of his inmost heart on the
printed page, the book hves. Tliis accounts for the ex-
traordinary power of Dostoevski, who simply turned him-
self inside out every time he wrote a novel.
The only reality that we can consistently demand of a
novel is that its characters and scenes shall make a per-
manent impression on our imagination. The object of all
forms of art is to produce an illusion, and the illusion can-
not be successful with experienced readers unless it have
the air of realit3^ The longer we live, the more diflScult
it is to deceive us : we smile at the scenes that used to
draw our tears, we are left cold by the declamation that
we once thought was passion, and we have supped so full
with horrors that we are not easily frightened. We are
simply bored as we see the novelist get out his little bag
of tricks. But we never weary of the great figures in
Fielding, in Jane Austen, in Dickens, in Thackeray, in
Balzac, in Turgenev, for they have become an actual
part of our mental life. And it is interesting to remem-
ber that while the ingenious situations and boisterous
swashbucklers of most romances fade like the flowers
of the field. Cooper and Dumas are read by genera-
tion after generation. Their heroes cannot die, because
they have what Mrs. Browning called the "principle of
life."
The truly great novelist is not only in harmony with
life; his characters seem to move with the stars in their
courses. "To be," said the philosopher Lotze, "is to be
in relations." The moment a work of art ceases to be in
relation with life, it ceases to be. All the great novelists
are what I like to call sidereal novelists. They belong to
the earth, like the procession of the seasons ; they are
REALISM AND REALITY EST FICTION 237
universal, like the stars. A commonplace producer of
novels for the market describes a group of people that
remains nothing but a group of people ; they interest us
perhaps momentarily, like an item in a newspaper; but
they do not interest us deeply, any more than we are
really interested at this moment in what Brown and Jones
are doing in Rochester or Louisville. They may be in-
teresting to their author, for children are always interest-
ing to their parents ; but to the ordinary reader they be-
gin and end their fictional life as an isolated group. On
the contrary, when we read a story like The Return of
the Native, the book seems as inevitable as the approach
of winter, as the setting of the sun. All its characters
seem to share in the diurnal revolution of the earth, to
have a fixed place in the order of the universe. We are
considering only the fortunes of a little group of people
living in a little corner of England, but they seem to be
in intimate and necessary relation with the movement of
the forces of the universe.
The recent revival of the historical romance, which shot
up in the nineties, flourished mightily at the end of the
century, and has already faded, was a protest not against
reality, but against realism. Realism in the eighties had
become a doctrine, and we know how its fetters cramped
Stevenson. He joyously and resolutely burst them, and
gave us romance after romance, all of which except the
Black Arrow showed a reality superior to realism. The
year of his death, 1894, ushered in the romantic revival.
Romanticism suddenly became a fashion that forced many
new writers and some experts to mould their work in its
form. A few specific illustrations must be given to prove
this statement. Mr. Stanley Weyman really wanted to
write a realistic novel, and actually wrote one, but the
238 MODERN ESSAYS
public would none of it : he therefore fed the mob with
The House of the Wolf, with A Gentleman from France,
with Under the Red Robe. Enormously successful
were these stirring tales. The air became full of ob-
solete oaths and the clash of steel — "God's bodikins !
man, I will spit you like a lark!" To use a scholar's
phrase, we began to revel in the glamour of a bogus antiq-
uity. For want of a better term, I call all these romances
the "Gramercy" books. Mr. Winston Churchill, now a
popular discij)le of the novel of manners, gained his
reputation by Richard Carvel with a picture of a duel
facing the title-page. Perhaps the extent of the romantic
craze is shown most clearly in the success attained by the
thoroughly sophisticated Anthony Hope with The Pris-
oner of Zenda, by the author of Peter Sterling with
Janice Meredith, and most of all by the strange Ad-
ventures of Captain Horn, a bloody story of buried treas-
ure, actually written by our beloved humorist, Frank
Stockton. Mr. Stockton had the temperament most fatal
to romance, the bright gift of humorous burlesque ; the
real Frank Stockton is seen in that original and joyful
work. The Casting Away of Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Ale-
shine. Yet the fact that he felt the necessity of writing
Captain Horn, is good evidence of the tide. This
romantic wave engulfed Europe as well as America, but
so far as I can discover, the only work after the death of
Stevenson that seems destined to remain, appeared in the
epical historical romances of the Pole Sienkiewicz. Hun-
dreds of the romances that the world was eagerly reading
in 1900 are now forgotten like last year's almanac ; but
they served a good purpose apart from temporary amuse-
ment to invalids, overtired business men, and the young.
There was the sound of a mighty wind, and the close
REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION 239
chambers of modern realism were cleansed by the fresh
air.
A new kind of realism, more closely related to reality,
has taken the place of the receding romance. We now
behold the "life" novel, the success of which is a curious
demonstration of the falseness of recent prophets. We
were told a short time ago that the long novel was extinct.
The three-volume novel seemed very dead indeed, and the
fickle public would read nothing but a short novel, and
would not read that unless some one was swindled, se-
duced, or stabbed on the first page. Then suddenly
appeared Joseph Vance, which its author called an ill-
written autobiography, and it contained 280,000 words.
It was devoured by a vast army of readers, who clamoured
for more. Mr. Arnold Bennett, who had made a number
of short flights without attracting much attention, pro-
duced The Old Wives' Tale, giving the complete life-
history of two sisters. Emboldened by the great and
well-deserved success of this history, he launched a trilogy,
of which two huge sections are already in the hands of a
wide public. No details are omitted in these vast struc-
tures ; even a cold in the head is elaborately described.
But thousands and thousands of people seem to have the
time and the patience to read these volumes. Why.?
Because the story is in intimate relation with life. A
gifted Frenchman appears on the scene with a novel in
ten volumes, Jean Christophe, dealing with the life
of this hero from the cradle to the grave. This is being
translated into all the languages of Europe, so intense is
the curiosity of the world regarding a particular book of
life. Some may ask. Why should the world be burdened
with this enormous mass of trivial detail in rather unevent-
ful lives ? The answer may be found in Era Lippo Lippi's
240 MODERN ESSAYS
sj)irited defence of his art, which differed from the art of
Fra AngeHco in sticking close to reaUty :
"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."
I find in the contemporary "Ufe" novel a sincere,
dignified, and successful effort to substitute reality for
the former rather narrow realism ; for it is an attempt to
represent life as a whole.
TEACHING ENGLISH!
BY
Henry Seidel Canby
To arouse the interest of the ordinary reader in what is after all a
technical problem, Professor Canby begins his essay with a careful
statement of the difficulty. He then propounds his solution, that the
aim of the teacher of English literature should be to teach the pupils to
read literature. As this is the main position, he explains and illustrates
it through the body of the essay. This is followed by a brief catalogue of
the four possible types of teachers, each in its own paragraph. The essay,
then, returns to emphasize the main thought in the paragraph, "I have
already answered the question according to my own beliefs." Try
the effect of omitting the catalogue altogether, of omitting the paragraphs
beginning " Thus the effects of English teaching are sometimes hidden"
to the paragraph beginning "What is teaching literature?" The
continuity of the thought remains unbroken. Exactly what is gained
by the insertion of those intervening paragraphs ?
The so-called new professions have been given abundant
space of late in the Sunday newspaper ; but among them
I do not find numbered the teaching of English. Never-
theless, with such exceptions as advertising, social service,
and efiiciency-engineering, it is one of the newest as well
as one of the largest. I do not mean the teaching of
English writing. Directly or indirectly that has been
taught since the heavenly grace instructed Csedmon in liis
1 From The Yale Reviciv for October, 1914, by permission of the
author and of the editor of The Yale Review.
E 241
242 MODERN ESSAYS
stable. I mean English literature, which has been made a
subject of formal instruction in our schools and colleges
only since the mid-nineteenth century. Yet already the
colleges complain that the popularity of this comparatively
recent addition to the curriculum is so great that harder,
colder, more disciplinary subjects are pushed to the wall
(and this in practical America !) ; and in the schools only
the so-called vocational courses are as much talked about
and argued over by the educational powers. An army of
men and women are teaching or trying to teach us English
— which includes American — literature.
The results of this new profession — as even those who
earn their bread thereby are willing to confess — are some-
times humorous. The comicality of scholarship — as
when the sweaty hack work of some hanger-on of the great
Elizabethans is subjected to elaborate study and published
in two volumes — belongs rather to the satire of research
than to teaching. But there are many ludicrous sequels
to the compulsory study of literature. Poor Hawthorne,
shyest and rarest of spirit among our men of letters, be-
comes a text-book for the million. Dick Steele, who
dashed off his cheerful trifles between sprees, is raised to
a dreary immortality of comparison with the style and
humor of Addison ; their reputations — like a new torture
in the Inferno — seesawing with the changing opinions
of critics who edit "The Spectator" for the schools. And
Shakespeare, who shares the weaknesses of all mortal
workmen, is made a literary god (since this new profession
must have its divinity), before whom all tastes bow down.
Then in our classes we proceed to paraphrase, to annotate,
to question, and cross-question the books these great men
have left behind them, until their tortured spirits must
envy the current unpopularity of Latin and Greek. As
TEACHING ENGLISH 243
one of my undergraduates wrote at the end of an ex-
amination :
Shakespeare, this prosy paper makes me blush.
Your finest fancies we have turned to — mush !
Nevertheless, it is the dillettante, the connoisseur, and
the aesthete who sneer at the results of teaching English.
The practical man will not usually be scornful, even when
he is unsympathetic ; and the wise many, who know that
power over good books is better than a legacy, are too
thankful for benefits received to judge a profession by its
failures. In truth, the finer minds, the richer lives which
must be made possible if our democracy is not to become
a welter of vulgar commercialism, are best composted by
literature. And therefore the teacher of English, provided
he can really teach, has a just claim upon the attention
of every American parent. But what is teaching litera-
ture ?
There is a function borrowed from Germany for our
graduate schools, in which a group of professors have at
their mercy for an hour of oral examination a much-to-be-
pitied candidate for the degree of doctor of philosophy.
They may ask him any question in their field which ap-
pears on previous reflection to be sufficiently difficult ;
and as the more one knows the more difficulty a given sub-
ject presents, and they are specialists, the ordeal is infernal.
If I were brought before a like tribunal, composed of
parents of our undergraduates, and asked to justify this
new profession, I should probably begin by asserting that
the purpose of teaching English is to give light for the mind
and solace for the heart.
The function of the teacher of English as a shedder of
light is perhaps more familiar to himself than to the world ;
J44 MODERN ESSAYS
Ji ii>>t
?iire<ilT evi>ts. and has even been forced upon him.
The teac-ho" of pure science utterly repudiates the notion
^ • " ' ^ is to shed h^ht upon the meaning of life. His
_ „. -aS is to teach the observed processes of nature, and
he is too busy exploding old theories of ho"w she works,
and creating new ones, to concern himself with the spiritual
welfare of this generation. Perhaps it is just as well.
As for the philosophers, in spite of the efforts of William
James, they have not yet consented to elucidate their
subjects for the benefit of the democracy ; — with this
result, that the average undergraduate learns the little
r "■-"..-. p}iy that is taught him, in his class in English
re. Indeed, as if by a conspiracy in a practical
world anxious to save time for the study of facts, not only
the attributes of culture, but even ethics, morality, and
the implications of science are left to the English depart-
ment.
The burden is heavy. The temptation to throw it off, or
to mate use of the opportunity for a course in things-in-
general and an easy reputation, is great. And yet all the
world of thought does form a part of a course in English,
for all that has matured in human experience finds its way
into literature. And since good books are the emanations
of radiant minds, the teacher of English must in the long
run teach light.
But even if Hterature did not mean light for the mind, it
would still be worth while to try to teach it, if only to pre-
pare that solace for the weary soul in reading which the
most active must some day crave. The undergraduate
puts on a solemn face when told that he may need the
stimulus of books as an incentive to life, or the relaxation
of books as a rehef from it : but he remains inwardly un-
impressed. And yet one does not have to be a philosopher
TEACHING ENGLISH 245
to know that in this age of hurry and strain and sudden
depressions, the power to fall back on other minds and
other times is above price. Therefore we teach literature
in the hope that to the poets and the essayists, the play-
wrights and the novelists, men may be helped to bring
slack or weary minds for cure.
All essays upon literature discourse upon the light and
sweetness which flow from it. But this is not an essay
upon literature ; and that is why I have dismissed these
hoped-for results so summarily, although profoundly
believing that they are the ultimate purpose, indeed the
raison d'etre of teaching English. My business is rather
with the immediate aim of these English courses to which
you are sending your sons and daughters by the tens of
thousands. I wish to discuss frankly, not so much the
why, as the how, of teaching English. Fine words cannot
accomplish it. When I first began to teach, I met my
Freshman classes with rich and glowing words, — which I
have repeated with more sobriety in the preceding para-
graphs. Literature, I said, is the criticism of life ; it is the
spur of the noble mind, and the comfort of the depressed.
My ardent descrii^tions fell flat. They were too true;
the Freshmen had heard them before. Now I begin
bluntly with the assertion that the average young Ameri-
can does not know how to read ; and proceed to prove it.
To read out the meaning of a book ; to interpret literature
as it in turn interprets life, — whatever may be our ulti-
mate purpose, that I take to be the most immediate aim
of teaching English.
I do not intend to slight the knowledge to be gained.
Facts are well worth picking up on the way, but unless
they are used they remain just facts — and usually for-
gotten ones. Where are your college note-books, crammed
246 MODERN ESSAYS
with the facts of English lectures ? How much does the
graduate remember of dates of editions, of "tendencies,"
and "sources"? What can he say (as the examination
paper has it) of Vaughan, of Cynewulf, of the Gothic
novel, and Pantisocracy ? Something, somewhere, I
hope, for if the onward sweep of English literature is not
familiar to him, if the great writers have no local habitation
and a name, and Milton must be read in terms of twentieth-
century England, and Poe as if he wrote for a Sunday
newspaper syndicate, his English courses were dismally
unsuccessful. And yet to have heard of Beowulf and Tess
of the D'Urbervilles and Fair Rosamond, is not to know
English literature.
The undergraduate (and his parent) must be able to
read literature in order to know it, and to read he must
have the power of interpretation. It is easy to read the
story in the Sunday supplement, where thoughts of one
syllable are clothed in obvious symbols supposed to repre-
sent life. It is harder to read contemporary writing that
contains real thought and real observation, for the mind
and the imagination have to be stretched a little to take
in the text. It is still more difficult to enjoy with due com-
prehension the vast treasure of our inherited literature,
which must always outweigh in value our current gains.
There the boy you send us to teach will be perplexed by
the peculiarities of language, set astray by his lack of back-
ground, and confused by the operations of a time-spirit
radically different from his own. A few trivialities of
diction or reference may hide from him the life which some
great genius has kept burning in the printed page. And
even if the unfamiliar and the unexplained do not dis-
courage him, even if he reads Shakespeare, or Milton, or
Gray with his ardor unchilled, nevertheless, if he does not
TEACHING ENGLISH 247
interpret, he gets but half. Here is the chief need for
teaching EngHsh.
Hotspur, for example, in the first part of Shakespeare's
"Henry IV," bursts into enthusiastic speech :
By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap.
To pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon.
Or dive into the bottom of the deep.
Where fathom line could never touch the ground.
And pluck up drowned honor by the locks.
Can the Freshman read it ? Not unless he knows what
"honor" meant for Hotspur and for Shakespeare. Not
unless he comprehends the ardent exuberance of the
Renaissance that inspires the extravagance of the verse.
Or Milton's famous portrait of Satan :
Darkened so, yet shone
Above them all the Archangel : but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
Waiting revenge.
Do you see him ? Not unless, like Milton, you remember
Jove and his lightnings, not unless the austere imagery of
the Old Testament is present in your imagination, not
unless "considerate" means more to you than an accent
in the verse. In truth, the undergraduate cannot read
Stevenson's "Markheim," Tennyson's "Lotos-Eaters,"
Kipling's "Recessional," or an essay by Emerson — to
gather scattered instances — without background, without
an interpretative insight, and without an exact understand-
ing of the thought behind the words. Without them, he
must be content, at best, with a fifty-per-cent efficiency of
comprehension. And fifty per cent is below the margin of
enjoyment, and below the point where real profit begins.
248 MODERN ESSAYS
Tint even fifty per cent is a higher figure than some
undergraduates attain at the beginning of their college
careers. Old Justice Shallow, for instance, pompous,
boastful, tedious, Justice Shallow with his ridiculous at-
tempts to prove himself as wicked as Falstaff, and his
empty sententiousness is certainly as well-defined a comic
character as Shakespeare presents, and yet it is astonishing
how much of him is missed by the reader who cannot yet
interpret.
"Justice Shallow," writes a Freshman, "seems to be a
jolly old man who loves company, and who would do
anything to please his guests." "Justice Shallow," says
another, "was an easy-going man; that is, he did not
allow things to worry him. At times he was very
mean." "Justice Shallow," a third proposes, "is kind-
hearted. ... He means well, but things do not come
out as he had planned them."
Shallow jolly! Shallow kind-hearted! Perhaps occa-
sionally, — for the benefit of gentlemen from the court.
But to describe him thus is as if one should define an ele-
phant as an animal with four legs and a fondness for hay.
They missed the flavor of Shallow, these boys, not because
it was elusive, but because they had not learned to read.
All good books, whether new or old, present such diffi-
culties of interpretation, — difficulties often small in them-
selves but great when they prevent that instant flush of
appreciation which literature demands. And therefore,
if one cannot read lightly, easily, intelligently, — why the
storehouse is locked; the golden books may be purchased
and perused, but they will be little better than so much
paper and print. Two-thirds of an English course must
be learning to search out the meaning of the written word ;
must be just learning how to read.
TEACHING ENGLISH 249
This is the Enghsh teacher's programme. Does he carry
it out? In truth, it is depressing to sit in a recitation
room, estimating, while someone recites, and your voice
is resting, the volume and the flow of the streams of literary
instruction washing over the undergraduates ; — and then
to see them bob up to the surface at the end of the hour,
seemingly as impervious as when their heads went under.
We teachers of English propose, as I have said above, to
ennoble the mind by showing it how to feed upon the
thoughts of the great, to save the state by sweetness and
light ; while our students sell their Miltons and Tennysons
to the second-hand bookstore, and buy the machine-made,
please-the-million magazines ! The pessimist will assert
that there is a screw out somewhere in our intellectual
platform.
Not out, but loose. My picture of the undergraduate,
like Hamlet's picture of Claudius, is a likeness but not a
faithful portrait. The college English course certainly
carries with it no guarantee of solid literary taste, no cer-
tainty that the average bachelor of arts will take a stand
against the current cheapening of literature. He may have
a row of leather-bound pocket Shakespeares in the living-
room book-case, but that is sometimes the only outward
evidence of his baptism into the kingdom of English books.
Further than that you cannot be sure of what teaching
English has done for him. But neither can you be certain
that this is all it has done for him. The evidence of his
parents is not always to be trusted, for the undergraduate
feels that grown-up America does not approve of bookish-
ness, and so, if he has any literary culture, keeps it to
himself. Men of letters, editorial writers, and other
professional critics of our intellectual accomplishments
are not good judges, for they are inclined to apply to a
250 MODERN ESSAYS
recent graduate the standards of an elegant and allusive
brand of culture which is certainly not American, though
in its way admirable enough. I am doubtful myself,
but this much my experience has taught me, that, dis-
appointing as the apparent results of teaching English
may be, the actual results are far more considerable than
pessimists suppose — as great perhaps as we can expect.
The mind of the undergraduate is like a slab of coarse-
grained wood, upon which the cabinet-maker lavishes his
stain. Its empty pores soak in the polishing mixture, no
matter how richly it may be applied, and in many instances
we fail to get the expected gloss. Much English teaching,
in fact, is (to change the figure) subterranean in its effects.
You may remember no Tennyson, and yet have gained a
sensitiveness to moral beauty, and an ear for the glory of
words. Your Shakespeare may have gathered dust for a
decade, and yet still be quickening your sympathy with
human nature. That glow in the presence of a soaring
pine or towering mountain ; that warmth of the im-
agination as some modern struggle recalls an ancient
protagonist ; the feeling that life is always interesting some-
how, somewhere, — how much of this is due to Words-
worth, Shelley, Stevenson, Browning, or Keats, dim in the
memory perhaps, but potent in the sub-consciousness,
no one can ever determine. The psychologist will answer,
much. The layman must consider the spring, the re-
cuperative power, the quantity and quality of happiness
among the well-read in comparison with the unread, for
his reply. The results of my own observation enable
me to view even the debris of lectures and study in a
"flunker's" examination paper with dejection to be sure,
but not with despair. The undergraduate, I admit sorrow-
fully, is usually superficial in his reading, and sometimes
TEACHING ENGLISH 251
merely barbarous in the use he makes of it ; but there is
more gained from his training in literature than meets
the sight.
Thus the effects of English teaching are sometimes
hidden. But English teachers are so common nowadays
that of them everyone may form his own opinion. And,
indeed, the rain of criticism falls upon just and unjust
alike.
The undergraduate, if he takes the trouble to classify his
teachers of English otherwise than as "hard" or "easy,"
would probably divide the species into two types : the
highly polished variety with somewhat erratic clothes and
an artistic temperament ; and the cold scholar who moves
in a world of sources, editions, and dates. I would be
content with this classification, superficial as it is, were it
not that the parent of the undergraduate, who is footing
the bills, has made no classification at all, and deserves, if he
wants it, a more accurate description of the profession he is
patronizing. English teachers, I may say to him, are of at
least four different kinds. For convenience, I shall name
them the gossips, the inspirationists, the scientists, and the
middle-of-the-road men whose ambition it is to teach
neither anecdote, nor things in general, nor mere facts,
but literature.
The literary gossip is the most engaging, and not the least
useful of them all. As the horse's hoofs beat "proputty,
proputty, proputty" for Tennyson's greedy farmer, so
"personality" rings forever in his brain, and constantly
mingles in his speech. "The man behind the book," is
his worthy motto ; and his lectures are stuffed with
biographical anecdote until the good stories spill over.
No humorous weakness of the Olympians is left without
its jest, and the student learns more of Carlyle's indiges-
252 MODERN ESSAYS
tion, Coleridge's abserit-niincledncss, or the deformity of
Pope, than of their immortal works.
The literary gossip is an artist. He can raise dead
authors to life, and give students of little imagination an
interest in the books of the past which they never would
have gained from mere printed texts. But he has the
faults of the artistic temperament. He will sacrifice
everything in order to impress his, hearers. Hence he is
never dull ; and when he combines his skill in anecdote.
with real literary criticism, he becomes a teaclier of such
power that college presidents compete for his services.
But when his talents do not rise above the ordinary, his
courses are better designated vaaitliiville than the teaching
of English. As the old song has it, when he is good he is
very, very good, for he ploughs up the unresponsive mind
so that appreciation may grow there. But when he is
bad, he is horrid.
The inspirationists held the whole field of English teach-
ing until the scientists attacked them in the rear, found
their ammunition wagons lacking in facts, and put them
upon their defense. The inspirationist was — no is, —
for he has been sobered but not routed by the onslaughts
of German methodologies, — a fighter in the cause of
"uplift" in America. In 1814 he would have been a
minister of the gospel, or an apostle of political freedom.
In 1914 he uses Shakespeare, Milton, the novelists, the
essayists, indifferently to preach ideas — moral, political,
aesthetic, philosophical, scientific — to his undergraduates.
At the club table after hours, he orates at imaginary
Freshmen. "Make 'em think !" he shouts. "Make 'em
feel ! Give them ideas — and their literary training will
take care of itself ! " And the course he offers is like those
famous mediaeval ones, where the whole duty of man, here
TEACHING ENGLISH 253
and hereafter, was to be obtained from a single professor.
Indeed, since the field of teaching began to be recruited
from predestined pastors who found the pulpit too narrow
for their activities, it is simply astonishing how much
ethics, spirituality, and inspiration generally has been
freed in the classroom. Ask the undergraduates.
I mean no flippancy. I thoroughly believe that it is
far more important to teach literature than the facts
about literature. And all these things are among the in-
gredients of literature. I am merely pointing out the
extremes of extra-literary endeavor into which the re-
moteness of the philosophers, the slackening of religious
training in the home, and the absence of aesthetic influences
in American life, have driven some among us. A friend
of mine begins his course in Carlyle with a lecture on the
unreality of matter. Browning with a discussion of the
immortality of the soul, and Ruskin with an exhibition of
pictures. He is responding to the needs of the age. Like
most of the inspirationists, he does not fail to teach some-
thing ; like many of them, he has little time left for
literature.
The day does not differ from the night more sharply
than the scientist in teaching English from the inspira-
tionist. The literary scientist sprang into being when the
scientific activity of the nineteenth century reached
aesthetics and began to lay bare our inaccuracies and our
ignorance. Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Defoe — we knew
all too little about their lives, and of what we knew a
disgraceful part was wrong. Our knowledge of the writers
of the Anglo-Saxon period, and of the thirteenth and
fifteenth centuries, of the minor Elizabethan dramatists
and the lyricists of the seventeenth century, consisted
chiefly of ill-assorted facts or unproved generahzations.
254 MODERN ESSAYS
Our catalogue of errors was a long one. The response to
this crying need for scholarship, for science, was slow, —
but when it came, it came with a rush. Nowadays, the
great majority of university teachers of English are
specialists in some form of literary research.
As far as the teacher is concerned, the result has doubt-
less been good. There have been broader backgrounds,
more accuracy in statement, less "bluffing" — in a word,
more thoroughness ; and the out-and-out scientists have
set a pace in this respect which other teachers of English
have had to follow. But curiously enough, while the
teacher of English, and especially the professed scientist,
has become more thorough, the students are said to be
less so. How to account for so distressing a phenomenon !
The truth seems to be that science in English literature
has become so minute in its investigation of details, so
scrupulous in the accuracy of even the most trivial state-
ment, that the teacher who specializes in this direction
despairs of dragging his classes after him. Scholarship for
this scientist has become esoteric. Neither the big world
outside, nor his little world of the classroom, can compre-
hend his passion for date, and source, and text ; and, like
the Mormon who keeps his wives at home, he has come to
practice his faith without imposing it upon others. The
situation is not entirely unfortunate. Until scientific
scholarship has ended its mad scurryings for the un-
considered trifles still left uninvestigated, and begun upon
the broader problems of criticism and of teaching which
will remain when all the dates are gathered and all the
sources hunted home, it is questionable whether it has any-
thing but facts to contribute to the elementary teaching
of English.
At present, the scientist's best position is in the upper
TEACHING ENGLISH 255
branches of a college education. There he is doing good
work, — except when an emotional, sensitive Junior or
Senior, eager to be thrilled by literature, and to understand
it, is provided with nothing but "scientific" courses. For
studying about literature — and this is the scientist's pro-
gramme — can in no possible sense be regarded as a satis-
factory alternative to studying the thing itself, no matter
how great may be its auxiliary value. And many a recent
graduate of many a college who reads these lines, will
recognize his own plight in that of the youth who, finding
only gossips who amused him, inspirationists who sermoned
him, and scientists who reduced glowing poetry to a skele-
ton of fact, decided that in spite of the catalogue, literature
itself was not taught in his university.
What is teaching literature.'^ But I have already an-
swered that question according to my own beliefs, in the
earlier part of this paper. It must be — at least for the
undergraduate — instruction in the interpretation of
literature ; it must be teaching how to read. For if the
boy is once taught how to turn the key, only such forces of
heredity and environment as no teaching will utterly over-
come, can prevent him from entering the door. It is this
that all wise teachers of English realize ; it is this that the
middle-of-the-road men try to put in practice. I give
them this title because they do keep to the middle of the
literary road, — because they understand that the teacher
of English should avoid the extremes I have depicted in
the preceding paragraphs, without despising them. He
should master his facts as the scientist does, because it is
too late in the day to impose unverified facts or shaky
generalizations even upon hearers as uncritical as the
usual run of undergraduates. He should try to inspire his
classes with the ideas and emotions of the text, for to
256 MODERN ESSAYS
teach the form of a book and neglect its contents, is as if
your grocer should send you an empty barrel. He should
not neglect the life and color which literary biography
brings into his field. And yet the aim of the right kind
of instructor is no one of these things. He uses them
all, but merely as steps in the attempt to teach his stu-
dents how to read.
This it is to follow the golden mean and make it actually
golden in our profession. And indeed, when one considers
that throughout America there are hundreds of thousands
calling themselves educated who cannot read Shakespeare,
or the Bible, or even a good magazine, with justice to the
text ; when one considers the treasures of literature, new as
well as old, waiting to be used for the increase of happiness,
intelligence, and power, what else can be called teaching
English ?
EDWARD GIBBON 1
BY
James Ford Rhodes
Gibbon is a man of one book, but that book is a masterpiece. In
1776, the birth-year of our country, he began writing his "Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire,"' — and to-day at any bookstore, you can
find copies in endless editions. How wonderful that is ! That a drama
or romance should persist through centuries is easily explainable, since the
subject matter of them is human nature, and human nature has changed
but slightly. But why a history, written much too long after the events
it describes to have contemporaneous value, should survive all more
recent studies based on modern research and archeological investiga-
tion, — that is the question. And it is this question that our greatest
living historian here attempts to answer. The problem is presented in
two paragraphs. The answer is then sought in his life, in his intellectual
training, in his attitude of mind, and in his own point of view regarding
his work. Notice the care with which each phase of the subject is proved
by citations, quotations, and references. The aim then is to make the
reader intellectually comprehend the writer of the book. And as the
essay was first delivered as a lecture at Harvard University, for such an
audience Dr. Rhodes rightfully emphasizes the intellectual nature of
the appeal.
No English or American lover of history visits Rome
without bending reverent footsteps to the Church of Santa
Maria in Ara Coeli. Two visits are necessary, as on the
first you are at once seized by the sacristan, who can con-
1 Lecture read at Harvard University, April 6, 1908, and printed in
Scribner's Magazine, June, 1909. Reprinted from " Historical Essays,"
by permission of the author and of The Macmillan Co.
s 257
258 IMODERN ESSAYS
ceiv'e of no other motive for entering this church on the
Capitol Hill than to see the miraculous Bambino — the
painted doll swaddled in gold and silver tissue and "crusted
over with magnificent diamonds, emeralds, and rubies."
When you have heard the tale of what has been called " the
oldest medical practitioner in Rome," of his miraculous
cures, of these votive offerings, the imaginary picture you
had conjured up is effaced ; and it is better to go away and
come a second time when the sacristan will recognize
you and leave you to yourself. Then you may open your
Gibbon's Autobiography and read that it was the subtle
influence of Italy and Rome that determined the choice,
from amongst many contemplated subjects of historical
writing, of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
"In my Journal," wrote Gibbon, "the place and moment
of conception are recorded; the 15th of October, 1764,
in the close of the evening, as I sat musing in the Church
of the Franciscan friars while they were singing vespers
in the Temple of Jupiter on the ruins of the Capitol." ^
Gibbon was twenty-seven when he made this fruitful
visit of eighteen weeks to Rome, and his first impression,
though often quoted, never loses interest, showing, as it
does, the enthusiasm of an unemotional man. "At the
distance of twenty-five years," he wrote, "I can neither
forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated
my mind as I first approached and entered the Eternal City.
After a sleepless night, I trod with a lofty step the ruins
of the Forum ; each memorable spot where Romulus
stood or Cicero spoke or Caesar fell was at once present
to my eye."
The admirer of Gibbon as he travels northward will stop
at Lausanne and visit the hotel which bears the historian's
^ Autobiography, 270.
EDWARD GIBBON 259
name. Twice have I taken luncheon in the garden where
he wrote the last words of his history; and on a third
visit, after lunching at another inn, I could not fail to
admire the penetration of the Swiss concierge. As I
alighted, he seemed to divine at once the object of my
visit, and before I had half the words of explanation out
of my mouth, he said, " Oh, yes. It is this way. But
I cannot show you anything but a spot." I have quoted
from Gibbon's Autobiography the expression of his in-
spiration of twenty-seven ; a fitting companion-piece is
the reflection of the man of fifty. "I have presumed to
mark the moment of conception," he wrote ; "I shall now
commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was
on the day, or rather the night, of the 27th of June, 1787,
between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the
last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden.
... I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy
on the recovery of my freedom and perhaps the establish-
ment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and
a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea
that I had taken my everlasting leave of an old and agree-
able companion." ^
Although the idea was conceived when Gibbon was
twenty-seven, he was thirty-one before he set himself
seriously at work to study his material. At thirty-six
he began the composition, and he was thirty-nine, when,
in February, 1776, the first quarto volume was published.
The history had an immediate success. "My book,"
he wrote, "was on every table and almost on every
toilette ; the historian was crowned by the taste or fashion
of the day." ^ The first edition was exhausted in a few
days, a second was printed in 1776, and next year a third.
1 Autobiography, 333. "^ Ibid., 311.
260 MODERN ESSAYS
The second and third vohimes, which ended the history
of the Western empire, were pubhshed in 1781, and seven
years later the three volumes devoted to the Eastern
empire saw the light. The last sentence of the work,
written in the summer-house at Lausanne, is, "It was
among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the
idea of a work which has amused and exercised near
twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate
to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and
candor of the public."
This is a brief account of one of the greatest historical
works, if indeed it is not the greatest, ever written. Let
us imagine an assemblage of English, German, and
American historical scholars called upon to answer the
question. Who is the greatest modern historian? No
doubt can exist that Gibbon would have a large majority
of the voices ; and I think a like meeting of French and
Italian scholars would indorse the verdict. "Gibbon's
work will never be excelled," declared Niebuhr.^ "That
great master of us all," said Freeman, "whose immortal
tale none of us can hope to displace." ^ Bury, the latest
editor of Gibbon, who has acutely criticised and carefully
weighed "The Decline and Fall," concludes "that Gibbon
is behind date in many details. But in the main things he
is still our master, above and beyond date." ^ His work
wins plaudits from those who believe that history in its
highest form should be literature and from those who hold
that it should be nothing more than a scientific narrative.
The disciples of Maoaulay and Carlyle, of Stubbs and
Gardiner, would be found voting in unison in my imaginary
1 Lectures, 763.
2 Chief Periods European Hist., 75.
3 Introduction, Ixvii.
EDWARD GIBBON 261
Congress. Gibbon, writes Bury, is "the historian and
the man of letters," thus ranking with Thucydides and
Tacitus. These three are put in the highest class, exem-
plifying that "brilliance of style and accuracy of statement
are perfectly compatible in an historian." ^ Accepting
this authoritative classification it is well worth while to
point out the salient differences between the ancient
historians and the modern. From Thucydides we have
twenty-four years of contemporary history of his own
country. If the whole of the Annals and History of
Tacitus had come down to us, we should have had eighty-
three years ; as it is, we actually have forty-one of nearly
contemporary history of the Roman Empire. Gibbon's
tale covers 1240 years. He went far beyond his own
country for his subject, and the date of his termination
is three centuries before he was born. Milman spoke of
"the amplitude, the magnificence, and the harmony of
Gibbon's design,"^ and Bury writes, "If we take into
account the vast range of his work, his accuracy is amaz-
ing." ^ Men have wondered and will long wonder at the
brain with such a grasp and with the power to execute
skillfully so mighty a conception. "The public is seldom
wrong" in their judgment of a book, wrote Gibbon in his
Autobiography,^ and, if that be true at the time of actual
publication to which Gibbon intended to apply the remark,
how much truer it is in the long run of years. "The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" has had a life of
over one hundred and thirty years, and there is no indi-
cation that it will not endure as long as any interest
is taken in the study of history. "I have never presumed
to accept a place in the triumvirate of British historians,"
1 Introduction, xxxi. ^ Introduction, xli.
2 Preface, ix. « p 324.
262 MODERN ESSAYS
said Gibbon, referring to Hume and Robertson. But in
our day Hume and Robertson gather dust on the shelf,
while Gibbon is continually studied by students and read
by serious men.
A work covering Gibbon's vast range of time would
have been impossible for Thucydides or Tacitus. Histori-
cal skepticism had not been fully enough developed.
There had not been a sufficient sifting and criticism of
historical materials for a master's work of synthesis.
And it is probable that Thucydides lacked a model.
Tacitus could indeed have drawn inspiration from the
Greek, while Gibbon had lessons from both, showing a
profound study of Tacitus and a thorough acquaintance
with Thucydides.
If circumstances then made it impossible for the Greek
or the Roman to attempt history on the grand scale of Gib-
bon, could Gibbon have written contemporary history with
accuracy and impartiality equal to his great predecessors ?
This is one of those delightful questions that may be ever
discussed and never resolved. When twenty-three years
old, arguing against the desire of his father that he should
go into Parliament, Gibbon assigned, as one of the reasons,
that he lacked "necessary prejudices of party and of
nation" ; ^ and when in middle life he embraced the for-
tunate opportunity of becoming a member of the House
of Commons, he thus summed up his experience, "The
eight sessions that I sat in Parliament were a school of
civil prudence, the first and most essential virtue of an
historian." ^ At the end of this political career. Gibbon,
in a private letter to an intimate Swiss friend, gave the
reason why he had embraced it. "I entered Parliament,"
he said, "without patriotism, and without ambition, and
1 Letters, I, 23. " Autobiography, 310.
EDWARD GIBBON 263
I had no other aim than to secure the comfortable and
honest place of a Lord of Trade. I obtained this place at
last. I held it for three years, from 1779 to 1782, and the
net annual product of it, being £750 sterling, increased my
revenue to the level of my wants and desires." ^ His
retirement from Parliament was followed by ten years'
residence at Lausanne, in the first four of which he com-
pleted his history. A year and a half after his removal
to Lausanne, he referred, in a letter to his closest friend,
Lord Sheffield, to the "abyss of your cursed politics," and
added: "I never was a very warm patriot and I grow
every day a citizen of the world. The scramble for power
and profit at Westminster or St. James's, and the names of
Pitt and Fox become less interesting to me than those of
Caesar and Pompey." ^
These expressions would seem to indicate that Gib-
bon might have written contemporary history well
and that the candor displayed in "The Decline and Fall"
might not have been lacking had he written of England
in his own time. But that subject he never contemplated.
When twenty-four years old he had however considered
a number of English periods and finally fixed upon Sir
Walter Raleigh for his hero ; but a year later, he wrote
in his journal: "I shrink with terror from the modern
history of England, where every character is a problem,
and every reader a friend or an enemy ; where a writer is
supposed to hoist a flag of party and is devoted to damna-
tion by the adverse faction. ... I must embrace a safer
and more extensive theme." ^
How well Gibbon knew himself ! Despite his coolness
and candor, war and revolution revealed his strong Tory
prejudices, which he undoubtedly feared might color any
1 Letters, II, 36. 2 Ibid., 127. ^ Autobiography, 196.
064 MODERN ESSAYS
history of England that he might undertake. "I took
my seat," in the House of Commons, he wrote, "at the
beginning of the memorable contest between Great Britain
and America; and supported with many a sincere and
silent vote the rights though perhaps not the interests
of the mother country." ^ In 1782 he recorded the con-
clusion : "The American war had once been the favorite
of the country, the pride of England was irritated by the
resistance of her colonies, and the executive power was
driven by national clamor into the most vigorous and
coercive measures." But it was a fruitless contest.
Armies were lost ; the debt and taxes were increased ; the
hostile confederacy of France, Spain and Holland was dis-
quieting. As a result the war became unpopular and Lord
North's ministry fell. Dr. Johnson thought that no nation
not absolutely conquered had declined so much in so
short a time. "We seem to be sinking," he said. "I am
afraid of a civil war." Dr. Franklin, according to Horace
Walpole, said "he would furnish Mr. Gibbon with ma-
terials for writing the History of the Decline of the British
Empire." With his country tottering, the self-centered
but truthful Gibbon could not avoid mention of his
personal loss, due to the fall of his patron. Lord North.
" I was stripped of a convenient salary," he said, "after
having enjoyed it about three years." ^
The outbreak of the French Revolution intensified his
conservatism. He was then at Lausanne, the tranquillity
of which was broken up by the dissolution of the neighbor-
ing kingdom. Many Lausanne families were terrified by
the menace of bankruptcy. "This town and country,"
1 Autobiography, 310. "I am more and more convinced that we have
both the right and power on our side." Letters, I, 248.
2 Hill's ed. Gibbon Autobiography, 212, 213, 314.
EDWARD GIBBON 265
Gibbon wrote, "are crowded with noble exiles, and we
sometimes count in an assembly a dozen princesses and
duchesses." ^ Bitter disputes between them and the
triumphant Democrats disturbed the harmony of social
circles. Gibbon espoused the cause of the royalists. "I
beg leave to subscribe my assent to Mr. Burke's creed on
the Revolution of France," he wrote. "I admire his
eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his chivalry,
and I can almost excuse his reverence for Church establish-
ments." ^ Thirteen days after the massacre of the Swiss
guard in the attack on the Tuileries in August, 1792,
Gibbon wrote to Lord Sheffield, "The last revolution of
Paris appears to have convinced almost everybody of the
fatal consequences of Democratical principles which lead
by a path of flowers into the abyss of hell." ^ Gibbon,
who was astonished by so few things in history, wrote
Sainte-Beuve, was amazed by the French Revolution.*
Nothing could be more natural. The historian in his study
may consider the fall of dynasties, social upheavals, violent
revolutions, and the destruction of order without a tremor.
The things have passed away. The events furnish food
for his reflections and subjects for his pen, while sanguine
uprisings at home or in a neighboring country in his own
time inspire him with terror lest the oft-prophesied dis-
solution of society is at hand. It is the difl^erence between
the earthquake in your own city and the one 3000 miles
away. As Gibbon's pocket-nerve was sensitive, it may be
he was also thinking of the £1300 he had invested in 1784
in the new loan of the King of France, deeming the French
funds as solid as the English.^
It is well now to repeat our dictum that Gibbon is the
1 Letters, II, 249. 2 Autobiography, 342. ^ Letters, II, 310.
* Causeries du Lundi, viii, 469. ^ Letters, II, 98.
266 MODEIIN ESSAYS
greatest modern historian, but, in reasserting this, it is no
more than fair to cite the oi)inions of two dissentients —
tlie great hterary historians of the nineteenth century,
Macaulay and Carlyle. "The truth is," wrote Macaulay
in his diary, "that I admire no historians much except
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus. . . . There is
merit no doubt in Hume, Robertson, Voltaire, and Gibbon.
Yet it is not the thing. I have a conception of history more
just, I am confident, than theirs." ^ "Gibbon," said
Carlyle in a public lecture, is "a greater historian than
Robertson but not so great as Hume. With all his
swagger and bombast no man ever gave a more futile
account of human things than he has done of the decline
and fall of the Roman Empire; assigning no profound
cause for these phenomena, nothing but diseased nerves,
and all sorts of miserable motives, to the actors in them." ^
Carlyle's statement shows envious criticism as well as a
prejudice in favor of his brother Scotchman. It was made
in 1838, since when opinion has raised Gibbon to the top,
for he actually lives while Hume is read perfunctorily, if
at all. Moreover among the three — Gibbon, Macaulay,
and Carlyle — whose works are literature as well as his-
tory, modern criticism has no hesitation in awarding the
palm to Gibbon.
Before finally deciding upon his subject Gibbon thought
of "The History of the Liberty of the Swiss" and "The
History of the Republic of Florence under the House
of Medicis," ^ but in the end, as we have seen, he settled
on the later history of the Roman Empire, showing, as
Lowell said of Parkman, his genius in the choice of his
1 Trevelyan, II, 232.
2 Lectures on the Hist, of Literature, 185.
' Autobiograi)liy, 19G.
EDWARD GIBBON 267
subject. His history really begins with the death of Mar-
cus Aurelius, 180 a.d., but the main narrative is preceded
by three excellent introductory chapters, covering in
Bury's edition eighty-two pages. After the completion
of his work, he regretted that he had not begun it at an
earlier period. On the first page of his own printed copy
of his book where he announces his design, he has entered
this marginal note : "Should I not have given the history
of that fortunate period which was interposed between
two iron ages ? Should I not have deduced the decline of
the Empire from the Civil Wars that ensued after the Fall
of Nero or even from the tyranny which succeeded the
reign of Augustus ? Alas ! I should ; but of what avail
is this tardy knowledge .-^ " ^ We may echo Gibbon's
regret that he had not commenced his history with the
reign of Tiberius, as, in his necessary use of Tacitus, we
should have had the running comment of one great
historian on another, of which we have a significant
example in Gibbon's famous sixteenth chapter wherein he
discusses Tacitus's account of the persecution of the
Christians by Nero. With his power of historic divina-
tion, he would have so absorbed Tacitus and his time
that the history would almost have seemed a collaboration
between two great and sympathetic minds. "Tacitus,"
he wrote, "very frequently trusts to the curiosity or
reflection of his readers to supply those intermediate
circumstances and ideas, which, in his extreme concise-
ness, he has thought proper to suppress." ^ How Gibbon
would have filled those gaps ! Though he was seldom
swayed by enthusiasm, his admiration of the Roman
historian fell little short of idolatry. His references in
"The Decline and Fall" are many, and some of them
1 Bury's ed., xxxv. ^ Decline and Fall, Smith's ed., 236.
2C8 MODERN ESSAYS
are here worth recalling to mind. "In their primitive
state of simplicity and independence," he wrote, "the
Germans were surveyed by the discerning eye and de-
lineated by the masterly pencil of Tacitus, the first of
historians who applied the science of philosophy to the
study of facts." ^ Again he speaks of him as "the philo-
sophic historian whose writings will instruct the last
generation of mankind." - And in Chapter XVI he
devoted five pages to citation from, and comment on,
Tacitus, and paid him one of the most splendid tributes
one historian ever paid another. "To collect, to dispose,
and to adorn a series of fourscore years in an immortal
work, every sentence of which is pregnant with the deepest
observations and the most lively images, was an under-
taking sufficient to exercise the genius of Tacitus himself
during the greatest part of his life." ^ So much for
admiration. That, nevertheless, Gi})bon could wield the
critical pen at the expense of the historian he rated so
highly, is shown by a marginal note in his own printed
copy of "The Decline and Fall." It will be remembered
that Tacitus published his History and wrote his Annals
during the reign of Trajan, whom he undoubtedly re-
spected and admired. He referred to the reigns of Nerva
and Trajan in suggested contrast to that of Domitian
as "times when men were blessed with the rare privilege
of thinking with freedom, and uttering what they
thought." ■* It fell to both Tacitus and Gibbon to speak
of the testament of Augustus which, after his death, was
read in the Senate : and Tacitus wrote, Augustus "added
a recommendation to keep the empire within fixed limits,"
on which he thus commented, "but whether from appre-
1 Decline and Fall, Smith's ed., I, 349. 2 jfj^^i^ jj 35,
3 II, 235. « History, I, 1.
EDWARD GIBBON 269
hension for its safety, or jealousy of future rivals, is un-
certain." ^ Gibbon thus criticised this comment: "Why
must rational advice be imputed to a base or foolish
motive? To what cause, error, malevolence, or flattery,
shall I ascribe the unworthy alternative ? Was the his-
torian dazzled by Trajan's conquests?" ^
The intellectual training of the greatest modern his-
torian is a matter of great interest. "From my early
youth," wrote Gibbon in his Autobiography, "I aspired
to the character of an historian."^ He had "an early
and invincible love of reading" which he said he "would
not exchange for the treasures of India" and which led
him to a "vague and multifarious" perusal of books.
Before he reached the age of fifteen he matriculated at
Magdalen College, giving this account of his preparation.
"I arrived at Oxford," he said, "with a stock of erudition
that might have puzzled a Doctor and a degree of ignorance
of which a schoolboy would have been ashamed." ^ He
did not adapt himself to the life or the method of Oxford,
and from them apparently derived no benefit. "I spent
fourteen months at Magdalen College," he wrote ; "they
proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable
of my whole life." ^ He became a Roman Catholic. It
was quite characteristic of this bookish man that his con-
version was effected, not by the emotional influence of
some proselytizer, but by the reading of books. English
translations of two famous works of Bossuet fell into his
hands. "I read," he said, "I applauded, I believed . . .
and I surely fell by a noble hand." Before a priest in
London, on June 8, 1753, he privately "abjured the errors
of heresy" and was admitted into the "pale of the church."
'Annals, I, 11. ^ Bury's introduction, xxxv.
3 Autobiography, 193. * Ibid., 48, 59. ^ 7^/^?., 67.
270 MODERN ESSAYS
But at that time this was a serious business for both priest
and proselyte. For the rule laid down by Blackstone
was this, "Where a person is reconciled to the see of Rome,
or procures others to be reconciled, the offence amounts
to High-Treason." This severe rule was not enforced,
but there were milder laws under which a priest might
suffer perpetual imprisonment and the proselyte's estate
be transferred to his nearest relations. Under such laws
prosecutions were had and convictions obtained. Little
wonder was it when Gibbon apprised his father in an
"elaborate controversial epistle" of the serious step which
he had taken, that the elder Gibbon should be astonished
and indignant. In his passion he divulged the secret
which effectually closed the gates of Magdalen College to
his son,^ who was packed off to Lausanne and "settled
under the roof and tuition" of a Calvinist minister .^
Edward Gibbon passed nearly five years at Lausanne,
from the age of sixteen to that of twenty-one, and they
were fruitful years for his education. It was almost
entirely an affair of self -training, as his tutor soon perceived
that the student had gone beyond the teacher and allowed
him to pursue his own special bent. After his history
was published and his fame won, he recorded this opinion :
" In the life of every man of letters there is an sera, from a
level, from whence he soars with his own wings to his proper
height, and the most important part of his education is
that which he bestows on himself." ^ This was certainly
true in Gibbon's case. On his arrival at Lausanne he
hardly knew any French, but before he returned to Eng-
land he thought spontaneously in French and under-
stood, spoke, and wrote it better than he did his mother
1 Autobiography, 86 et seq.; Hill's ed., 69, 291.
'/6i<i., 131. Uhid.,\^l.
EDWARD GIBBON 271
tongue.^ He read Montesquieu frequently and was
struck with his "energy of style and boldness of hypothe-
sis." Among the books which "may have remotely con-
tributed to form the historian of the Roman Empire"
were the Provincial Letters of Pascal, which he read "with
a new pleasure" almost every year. From them he said,
"I learned to manage the weapon of grave and temperate
irony, even on subjects of ecclesiastical solemnity." As
one thinks of his chapters in "The Decline and Fall"
on Julian, one is interested to know that during this
period he was introduced to the life and times of this
Roman emperor by a book written by a French abbe. He
read Locke, Grotius, and Puffendorf, but unquestionably
his greatest knowledge, mental discipline, and peculiar
mastery of his own tongue came from his diligent and
systematic study of the Latin classics. He read nearly
all of the historians, poets, orators, and philosophers,
going over for a second or even a third time Terence, Virgil,
Horace, and Tacitus. He mastered Cicero's Orations
and Letters so that they became ingrained in his mental
fiber, and he termed these and his other w^orks, "a library
of eloquence and reason." "As I read Cicero," he wrote,
"I applauded the observation of Quintilian, that every
student may judge of his own proficiency by the satis-
faction which he receives from the Roman orator." And
again, "Cicero's epistles may in particular afford the
models of every form of correspondence from the careless
effusions of tenderness and friendship to the well-guarded
declaration of discreet and dignified resentment." ^
Gibbon never mastered Greek as he did Latin ; and Dr.
Smith, one of his editors, points out where he has fallen
into three errors from the use of the French or Latin
1 Ibid., 13-1. - 2 Ibid., 139-142.
272 MODERN ESSAYS
translation of Procopius instead of consulting the original.^
Indeed he himself has disclosed one defect of self-training.
Referring to his youthful residence at Lausanne, he wrote :
"I worked my way through about half the Iliad, and after-
wards interpreted alone a large portion of Xenophon and
Herodotus. But my ardor, destitute of aid and emulation,
was gradually cooled and, from the barren task of searching
words in a lexicon, I withdrew to the free and familiar
conversation of Virgil and Tacitus." ^
All things considered, however, it was an excellent train-
ing for a historian of the Roman Empire. But all except
the living knowledge of French he might have had in his
"elegant apartment in Magdalen College" just as well as
in his "ill-contrived and ill-furnished small chamber"
in "an old inconvenient house," situated in a "narrow
gloomy street, the most unfrequented of an unhandsome
town" ; 3 and in Oxford he would have had the "aid and
emulation" of which at Lausanne he sadly felt the lack.
The Calvinist minister, his tutor, was a more useful
guide for Gibbon in the matter of religion than in his in-
tellectual training. Through his efforts and Gibbon's
"private reflections," Christmas Day, 1754, one year
and a half after his arrival at Lausanne, was witness to
his reconversion, as he then received the sacrament in
the Calvinistic Church. "The articles of the Romish
creed," he said, had "disappeared Hke a dream"; and
he wrote home to his aunt, "I am now a good Protestant
and am extremely glad of it." *
An intellectual and social experience of value was his
meeting with Voltaire, who had set up a theater in the
neighborhood of Lausanne for the performance mainly
1 Smith's ed., V, 108, 130, 231. s Ibid, 132.
2 Autobiography, 141. ^ ujipg ^j^ gg^ ggg
EDWARD GIBBON 273
of his own plays. Gibbon seldom failed to procure a
ticket to these representations. Voltaire played the parts
suited to his years ; his declamation. Gibbon thought,
was old-fashioned, and "he expressed the enthusiasm of
poetry rather than the feelings of nature." "The parts
of the young and fair," he said, "were distorted by Vol-
taire's fat and ugly niece." Despite this criticism, these
performances fostered a taste for the French theater, to the
abatement of his idolatry for Shakespeare, which seemed
to him to be "inculcated from our infancy as the first
duty of an Englishman." ^ Personally, Voltaire and
Gibbon did not get on well together. Dr. Hill suggests
that Voltaire may have slighted the " English youth," and
if this is correct, Gibbon was somewhat spiteful to carry
the feeling more than thirty years. Besides the criticism
of the acting, he called Voltaire "the envious bard"
because it was only with much reluctance and ill-humor
that he permitted the performance of Iphigenie of Racine.
Nevertheless, Gibbon is impressed with the social influence
of the great Frenchman. "The wit and philosophy of
Voltaire, his table and theatre," he wrote, "refined in a
visible degree the manners of Lausanne, and however
addicted to study, I enjoyed my share of the amusements
of society. After the theatrical representations, I some-
times supped with the actors : I was now familiar in some,
and acquainted in many, houses ; and my evenings were
generally devoted to cards and conversation, either in
private parties or numerous assemblies." ^
Gibbon was twenty-one when he returned to England.
Dividing his time between London and the country, he
continued his self-culture. He read English, French,
and Latin, and took up the study of Greek. " Every day,
^Autobiography, 149. ^ Ibid., 149.
T
274 MODERN ESSAYS
every hour," he wrote, "was agreeably filled"; and "I
was never less alone than when by myself." ^ He read
repeatedly Robertson and Hume, and has in the words of
Sainte-Beuve left a testimony so spirited and so delicately
expressed as could have come only from a man of taste
who appreciated Xenophon.^ "The perfect composi-
tion, the nervous language," wrote Gibbon, "the well-
turned periods of Dr. Robertson inflamed me to the ambi-
tious hope that I might one day tread in his footsteps ;
the calm philosophy, the careless inimitable beauties of
his friend and rival, often forced me to close the volume
with a mixed sensation of delight and despair." ^ He
made little progress in London society and his solitary
evenings were passed with his books, but he consoled him-
self by thinking that he lost nothing by a withdrawal from
a "noisy and expensive scene of crowds without company,
and dissipation without pleasure." At twenty-four he
published his "Essay on the Study of Literature," begun
at Lausanne and written entirely in French. This pos-
sesses no interest for the historical student except to know
the bare fact of the writing and publication as a step in
the intellectual development of the historian. Sainte-
Beuve in his two essays on Gibbon devoted three pages to
an abstract and criticism of it, perhaps because it had a
greater .success in France than in England ; and his opinion
of Gibbon's language is interesting. "The French,"
Sainte-Beuve wrote, "is that of one who has read Mon-
tesquieu much and imitates him ; it is correct, but artificial
French." *
Then followed two and a half years' service in the Hamp-
shire militia. But he did not neglect his reading. He
1 Autobiography, 161. ^ Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 445.
3 Autobiography, 167. * Ibid., 446.
EDWARD GIBBON 275
mastered Homer, whom he termed "the Bible of the an-
cients," and in the militia he acquired "a just and indelible
knowledge" of what he called "the first of languages."
And his love for Latin abided also : "On every march, in
every journey, Horace was always in my pocket and often
in my hand." ^ Practical knowledge he absorbed almost
insensibly. "The daily occupations of the militia," he
wrote, "introduced me to the science of Tactics" and led
to the study of "the precepts of Polybius and Csesar."
In this connection occurs the remark which admirers of
Gibbon will never tire of citing : "A familiar view of the
discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a
clearer notion of the Phalanx and the Legion ; and the
Captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers (the reader may
smile) has not been useless to the historian of the decline
and fall of the Roman Empire." ^ The grand tour followed
his militia service. Three and a half months in Paris,
and a revisit to Lausanne preceded the year tliat he passed
in Italy. Of the conception of the History of the Decline
and Fall, during his stay in Rome, I have already spoken.
On his return to England, contemplating "the decline
and fall of Rome at an awful distance," he began, in col-
laboration with the Swiss Deyverdun, his bosom friend, a
history of Switzerland written in French. During the
winter of 1767, the first book of it was submitted to a
literary society of foreigners in London. As the author
was unknown the strictures were free and the verdict
unfavorable. Gibbon was present at the meeting and
related that "the momentary sensation was painful," but,
on cooler reflection, he agreed with his judges and intended
to consign his manuscript to the flames. But this, as Lord
Shefiield, his literary executor and first editor, shows con-
1 Autobiography, Hill's ed., 142. 2 75^,^ 258.
276 MODERN ESSAYS
clusively, he neglected to do.^ This essay of Gibbon's
possesses interest for us, inasmuch as David Hume read
it, and wrote to Gibbon a friendly letter, in which he said :
"I have perused your manuscript with great pleasure and
satisfaction. I have only one objection, derived from the
language in which it is written. Why do you compose
in French, and carry faggots into the wood, as Horace
says with regard to Romans who wrote in Greek?" ^
This critical query of Hume must have profoundly in-
fluenced Gibbon. Next year he began to work seriously
on "The Decline and Fall" and five years later began the
composition of it in English. It does not appear that he
had any idea of writing his magnum opus in French.
In this rambling discourse, in which I have purposely
avoided relating the life of Gibbon in anything like a
chronological order, we return again and again to the great
History. And it could not well be otherwise. For if
Edward Gibbon could not have proudly said, I am the
author of "six volumes in quartos" ^ he would have had
no interest for us. Dr. Hill writes, "For one reader who
has read his 'Decline and Fall,' there are at least a score
who have read his Autobiography, and who know him,
not as the great historian, but as a man of a most original
and interesting nature." * But these twenty people would
never have looked into the Autobiography had it not been
the life of a great historian; indeed the Autobiography
would never have been written except to give an account
of a great life work. " The Decline and Fall," therefore, is
the thing about which all the other incidents of his life
revolve. The longer this history is read and studied,
the greater is the appreciation of it. Dean Milman fol-
lowed Gibbon's track through many portions of his work,
1 Autobiography, 277. ^ /j^^/, 3 Letters, 11, 279. ^ Preface, x.
EDWARD GIBBON 277
and read his authorities, ending with a deliberate judgment
in favor of his "general accuracy." " Many of his seeming
errors," he wrote, "are almost inevitable from the close
condensation of his matter." ^ Guizot had three different
opinions based on three various readings. After the first
rapid perusal, the dominant feeling was one of interest
in a narrative, always animated in spite of its extent,
always clear and limpid in spite of the variety of objects.
During the second reading, when he examined particularly
certain points, he was somewhat disappointed ; he en-
countered some errors either in the citations or in the facts
and especially shades and strokes of partiality which led
him to a comparatively rigorous judgment. In the ensuing
complete third reading, the first impression, doubtless
corrected by the second, but not destroyed, survived
and was maintained ; and with some restrictions and
reservations, Guizot declared that, concerning that vast
and able work, there remained with him an appreciation of
the immensity of research, the variety of knowledge, the
sagacious breadth and especially that truly philosophical
rectitude of a mind which judges the past as it would judge
the present.2 Mommsen said in 1894: "Amid all the
changes that have come over the study of the history of the
Roman Empire, in spite of all the rush of the new evidence
that has poured in upon us and almost overwhelmed
us, in spite of changes which must be made, in spite of
alterations of view, or alterations even in the aspect of
great characters, no one would in the future be able to
read the history of the Roman Empire unless he read,
possibly with a fuller knowledge, but with the broad views,
the clear insight, the strong grasp of Edward Gibbon." ^
1 Smith's ed., I, xi. ^ Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 453.
^ London Times, November 16, 1894.
278 MODERN ESSAYS
It is difficult for an admirer of Gibbon to refrain from
quoting some of his favorite passages. The opinion of a
great historian on history always possesses interest. His-
tory, wrote Gibbon, is "little more than the register of
the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." Again,
"Wars and the administration of public affairs are the
principal subjects of history." And the following cannot
fail to recall a similar thought in Tacitus, " History under-
takes to record the transactions of the past for the instruc-
tion of future ages." ^ Two references to religion under
the Pagan empire are always worth repeating. "The
various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman
world," he wrote, "were all considered by the people as
equally true ; by the philosopher as equally false ; and by
the magistrate as equally useful." "The fashion of in-
credulity was communicated from the philosopher to
the man of pleasure or business, from the noble to the
plebeian, and from the master to the menial slave who
waited at his table and who equally listened to the freedom
of his conversation." - Gibbon's idea of the happiest
period of mankind is interesting and characteristic. " If,"
he wrote, " a man were called to fix the period in the history
of the world during which the condition of the human
race v/as most happy and prosperous, he would, without
hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of
Domitian to the accession of Commodus." ^ This period
was from a.d. 96 to 180, covering the reigns of Nerva,
Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.
Professor Carter, in a lecture in Rome in 1907, drew, by a
modern comparison, a characterization of the first three
named. When we were studying in Germany, he said,
1 Smith's ed., I, 215, 371 ; II, 230.
2 Ibid., I, 165 ; II, 205. 3 /jj^.^ j^ 2I6.
EDWARD GIBBON 279
we were accustomed to sum up the three emperors,
WilHam I, Frederick III, and WiUiam II, as der greise
Kaiser, der weise Kaiser, und der reise Kaiser. The
characterizations will fit well Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian.
Gibbon speaks of the " restless activity " of Hadrian, whose
life "was almost a perpetual journey," and who during
his reign visited every province of his empire.^
A casual remark of Gibbon's, "Corruption [is] the most
infallible symptom of constitutional liberty," - shows the
sentiment of the eighteenth century. The generality of
the history becomes specific in a letter to his father, who
has given him hopes of a seat in Parliament. " This seat,"
so Edward Gibbon wrote, " according to the custom of our
venal country was to be bought, and fifteen hundred
pounds were mentioned as the price of purchase." ^
Gibbon anticipated Captain Mahan. In speaking of a
naval battle between the fleet of Justinian and that of the
Goths in which the galleys of the Eastern empire gained a
signal victory, he wrote, "The Goths affected to depreciate
an element in which they were unskilled ; but their own
experience confirmed the truth of a maxim, that the master
of the sea will always acquire the dominion of the land." ^
But Gibbon's anticipation was one of the frequent cases
where the same idea has occurred to a number of men of
genius, as doubtless Captain Mahan was not aware of this
sentence any more than he was of Bacon's and Raleigh's
epitomes of the theme which he has so originally and bril-
liantly treated.^
No modern historian has been the subject of so much
critical comment as Gibbon. I do not know how it will
1 Smith's ed., I, 144. ' Letters. I, 23.
2 Ibid., Ill, 78. * Smith's ed., V, 230.
6 See Mahan's From Sail to Steam, 276.
280 MODERN ESSAYS
compare in volume with either of the similar examina-
tions of Thucydides and Tacitus ; but the criticism is of
a different sort. The only guarantee of the honesty of
Tacitus, wrote Sainte-Beuve, is Tacitus himself ; ^ and a
like remark will apply to Thucydides. But a fierce light
beats on Gibbon. His voluminous notes furnish the
critics the materials on which he built his history, which,
in the case of the ancient historians, must be largely a
matter of conjecture. With all the searching examina-
tion of "The Decline and Fall," it is surprising how few
errors have been found and, of the errors which have been
noted, how few are really important. Guizot, Milman,
Dr. Smith, Cotter Morison, Bury, and a number of lesser
lights have raked his text and his notes with few momen-
tous results. We have, writes Bury, improved methods
over Gibbon and "much new material of various kinds,"
but " Gibbon's historical sense kept him constantly right
in deahng with his sources" ; and "in the main things he
is still our master." - The man is generally reflected in
his book. That Gibbon has been weighed and not found
wanting is because he was as honest and truthful as any
man who ever wrote history. The autobiographies and
letters exhibit to us a transparent man, which indeed
some of the personal allusions in the history might have
foreshadowed. "I have often fluctuated and shall tamely
follow the Colbert Ms.," he wrote, where the authenticity
of a book was in question.'^ In another case "the scarcity
of facts and the uncertainty of dates" opposed his attempt
to describe the first invasion of Italy by Alaric.^ In the
beginning of the famous Chapter XLIV which is "admired
by jurists as a brief and brilliant exposition of the principles
' Causeries du Lundi, I, 153. ^ Smith's ed.. Ill, 14.
^Introduction, xlv, 1, Ixvii. * Ibid., IV, 31.
EDWARD GIBBON 281
of Roman law," ^ Gibbon wrote, "Attached to no party,
interested only for the truth and candor of history, and
directed by the most temperate and skillful guides, I enter
with just diffidence on the subject of civil law." ^ In
speaking of the state of Britain between 409 and 449, he
said, "I owe it to myself and to historic truth to declare
that some circumstances in this paragraph are founded
only on conjecture and analogy." ^ Throughout his whole
work the scarcity of materials forces Gibbon to the fre-
quent use of conjecture, but I believe that for the most part
his conjectures seem reasonable to the critics. Impressed
with the correctness of his account of the Eastern empire
a student of the subject once told me that Gibbon certainly
possessed the power of wise divination.
Gibbon's striving after precision and accuracy is shown
in some marginal corrections he made in his own printed
copy of "The Decline and Fall." On the .first page in his
first printed edition and as it now stands, he said, "To
deduce the most important circumstances of its decline
and fall : a revolution which will ever be remembered and
is still felt by the nations of the earth." For this the
following is substituted : " To prosecute the decline and
fall of the empire of Rome : of whose language, religions
and laws the impression will be long preserved in our own
and the neighboring countries of Europe." He thus
explains the change : "Mr. Hume told me that, in correct-
ing his history, he always labored to reduce superlatives
and soften positives. Have Asia and Africa, from Japan
to Morocco, any feeling or memory of the Roman Em-
pire r
On page 6, Bury's edition, the text is, "The praises of
Alexander, transmitted by a succession of poets and his-
1 Bury, Hi. ^ g^itii's ej., V, 258. ^ Ibid., lY, 132 n.
282 MODERN ESSAYS
torians, had kindled a dangerous emulation in the mind of
Trajan." We can imagine that Gibbon reflected, What
e\'idence have I that Trajan had read these poets and
historians? Therefore he made this change: "Late
generations and far distant climates may impute their
calamities to the immortal author of the Iliad. The
spirit of Alexander was inflamed by the praises of Achilles ;
and succeeding heroes have been ambitious to tread in
the footsteps of Alexander. Like him, the Emperor
Trajan aspired to the conquest of the East." ^
The "advertisement" to the first octavo edition pub-
lished in 1783 is an instance of Gibbon's truthfulness. He
wrote, "Some alterations and improvements had pre-
sented themselves to my mind, but I was unwilling to in-
jure or ofl^end the purchasers of the preceding editions."
Then he seems to reflect that this is not quite the whole
truth, and adds, "Perhaps I may stand excused if, amidst
the avocations of a busy winter, I have preferred the
pleasures of composition and study to the minute diligence
of revising a former publication." ^
The severest criticism that Gibbon has received is on
his famous chapters XV and XVI which conclude his
first volume in the original quarto edition of 1776. We
may disregard the flood of contemporary criticism from
certain people who were excited by what they deemed an
attack on the Christian religion. Dean Milman, who
objected seriously to much in these chapters, consulted
these various answers to Gibbon on the first appearance of
his work with, according to his own confession, little profit.'
"Against his celebrated fifteenth and sixteenth chapters,"
wrote Buckle, "all the devices of controversy have been
1 Bury's ed., xxxv, xxxvi. 2 Smith's ed., I, xxi.
^ Ibid., I, xvii.
EDWARD GIBBON 283
exhausted ; but the only result has been, that while the
fame of the historian is untarnished, the attacks of his
enemies are falling into complete oblivion. The work of
Gibbon remains ; but who is there who feels any interest
in what was written against liim?"^ During the last
generation, however, criticism has taken another form
and scientific men now do not exactly share Buckle's
gleeful opinion. Both Bury and Cotter Morison state or
imply that well-grounded exceptions may be taken to
Gibbon's treatment of the early Christian church. He
ignored some facts ; his combination of others, his in-
ferences, his opinions are not fair and unprejudiced. A
further grave objection may be made to the tone of these
two chapters : sarcasm pervades them and the Gibbon
sneer has become an apt characterization.
Francis Parkman admitted that he was a reverent ag-
nostic, and if Gibbon had been a reverent free-thinker,
these two chapters would have been far different in tone.
Lecky regarded the Christian church as a great institu-
tion worthy of reverence and respect although he stated
the central thesis of Gibbon with emphasis just as great.
Of the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity,
Lecky wrote, "it may be boldly asserted that the assump-
tion of a moral or intellectual miracle is utterly gratuitous.
Never before was a religious transformation so manifestly
inevitable." ^ Gibbon's sneering tone was a characteristic
of his time. There existed during the latter part of the
eighteenth century, wrote Sir James Mackintosh, "an
unphilosophical and indeed fanatical animosity against
Christianity." But Gibbon's private defense is entitled
to consideration as placing him in a better light. "The
primitive church, which I have treated with some free-
1 History of Civilization, II, 308 n. ^ Morals, I, 419.
284 MODERN ESSAYS
dom," he wrote to Lord Sheffield in 1791, "was itself at
that time an innovation, and I was attached to the old
Pagan establishment." ^ "Had I believed," he said in his
Autobiography, "that the majority of English readers
were so fondly attached to the name and shadow of Chris-
tianity, had I foreseen that the pious, the timid, and the
prudent would feel, or affect to feel, with such exquisite
sensibility, I might perhaps have softened the two in-
vidious chapters." -
On the other hand Gibbon's treatment of Julian the
Apostate is in accordance with the best modern standard.
It might have been supposed that a quasi-Pagan, as he
avowed himself, would have emphasized Julian's virtues
and ignored his weaknesses as did Voltaire, who invested
him with all the good qualities of Trajan, Cato, and
Julius Cffisar, without their defects.^ Robertson indeed
feared that he might fail in this part of the history ; "* but
Gibbon weighed Julian in the balance, duly estimating
his strength and his weakness, with the result that he has
given a clear and just account in his best and most dignified
style.^
Gibbon's treatment of Theodora, the wife of Justinian,
is certainly open to objection. Without proper sifting
and a reasonable skepticism, he has incorporated into his
narrative the questionable account with all its salacious
details which Procopius gives in his Secret History,
Gibbon's love of a scandalous tale getting the better of his
historical criticism. He has not neglected to urge a
defense. "I am justified," he wrote, "in painting the
manners of the times; the vices of Theodora form an
essential feature in the reign and character of Justinian.
1 Letters, II, 237. 2 Autobiography, 31G. ^ Cotter Morison, 118.
* Saiutc-Beuve, 458. » Cotter Morison, 120.
EDWARD GIBBON 285
. . . My English text is chaste, and all liceatious pas-
sages are left in the obscurity of a learned language." ^
This explanation satisfies neither Cotter Morison nor Bury,
nor would it hold for a moment as a justification of a his-
torian of our own day. Gibbon is really so scientific,
so much like a late nineteenth-century man, that we do
right to subject him to our present-day rigid tests.
There has been much discussion about Gibbon's style,
which we all know is pompous and Latinized. On a
long reading his rounded and sonorous periods become
wearisome, and one wishes that occasionally a sentence
would terminate with a small word, even a preposition.
One feels as did Dickens after walking for an hour or two
about the handsome but " distractingly regular" city of
Philadelphia. "I felt," he wrote, "that I would have
given the world for a crooked street." - Despite the pom-
posity, Gibbon's style is correct, and the exact use of words
is a marvel. It is rare, I think, that any substitution or
change of words will improve upon the precision of the
text. His compression and selection of salient points
are remarkable. Amid some commonplace philosophy he
frequently rises to a generalization as brilliant as it is
truthful. Then, too, one is impressed with the dignity of
history ; one feels that Gibbon looked upon his work as
very serious, and thought with Thucydides, "My history
is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition
which is heard and forgotten."
To a writer of history few things are more interesting
than a great historian's autobiographical remarks which
relate to the composition of his work. "Had I been more
indigent or more wealthy," wrote Gibbon in his Auto-
biography, "I should not have possessed the leisure or
1 Autobiography, 337 n. ^ American Notes, Chap. VII.
28G MODERN ESSAYS
the perseverance to prepare and execute my voluminous
history." ' "Notwithstanding the hurry of business and
pleasure," he wrote from London in 1778, "I steal some
moments for the Roman Emi>ire." ^ Between the writing
of tlie first tliree and the last three volumes, he took a
rest of "near a twelvemonth" and gave expression to a
thought which may be echoed Ijy every studious writer,
"Yet in the luxury of freedom, I Ijcgau to wish for the
daily task, the active pursuit \\ lii<li gave a value to every
book and an c)ljjcct to every iiKjuiry." '' Every one
who has written a historical book will sympathize with
the following expression of personal experience as he ap-
proached the completion of "The Decline and Fall":
"Let nf) man wlio bnilds a house or writes a book presume
to say wlu^n he will have hnished. When he imagines
that he is drawing near to his journey's end, Alps rise on
Alps, and he (•(julinually finds something to add and some-
thing trj correct." ''
I'hiin tnithl'ul tales are Gibbon's autobiographies. The
.style is thai of the history, and he writes of himself as
frankly as he does of any of his historical characters. His
failings — what he has somewhere termed "the amiable
weaknesses f)f Imm.'in natnn;" — are disclosed with the
openness (A a ]''rcnchman. All but one of the ten years
between 178.'} anfl 171)3, })etwcen the ages of 40 and 56, he
passed ;it L;iiis;uiri(;. There he (•ornplcted "The Decline
and Fall," ;iii<l of lh;it [H'riod he spent froiri August, 1787,
to .July, 178H, in luigl.'ind to look aflcr I he piil)lication
of th(; last thnre volumes. Ilis life in Lausanne was one of
study, writing, and agreeable society, of whicli his corre-
s[)oridenc(; with his ICnglish fri<'nds gives an animated ac-
' p. l.l.'i. ■' Aiil<»l>i<)Krai)liy, .'525.
« LoUcrs, I, :y.'A. " LfU(;iH, II, Hii.
EDWARD CilBBOX '■ZS7
count. Tlio two lliinuN one is inosl liiiprossocl wifli ;iro
his \o\'c for hooks ;iiul his lo\e t'or Madeira. "Thouuli a
lovor of society." ho wrol(\ "my hhrary is the room to
wliieh I am most attachoch" ' While ijettim;' settUnl at
Luusatuie. he t'lunphiius that his boxes of boiW-cs "loiter
oil the road." - .Viul then he harjis on another strint;'.
"Good INLuleira." he writes, "is now heeome essential
to my health and repiilatiim ;" •' yet a^ain, "If I do not
reeei\e a snpply of Madeira in the I'ourse of the summer,
I shall he in ureal shame and distrivss." ' His ginnl
friend in I'-nj^laiul. Iah-cI Shellield. regarded his prayer
and sent him a houshead of "best old Madeira" and a
tiereo, ei)ntaininj;' six do/,(Mi bottles of "finest Malmsey,"
and at the same time wrote: "Von will remember that a
hogshead is on his traxels through tiie torrid zone for
yi»n. . . . Ni> wine is meliorated to a greater degree by
keeping than iNladeira, anil yon latterly ajjpeared so
rax'enons for it, that 1 nnist ecnu'iMVt^ yon wish to have
a sUx'k." ■• Ciibbon's dt^dtion to Madeira bore its penalty.
At the ago of forty-eight he siMit this aeeount to his sli^p-
mother: "I was in hopt^s that my t>ld b^.nemy the (uMit
had given over tlu^ altai-k, but the N'illain. with his ally
the winter, eonvint'ed luc oi my (M-ror, and abi)ut the latter
cud of March 1 l\)und mysi>lf a prisoner in my library and
my groat chair. I attempted twice to rise, he* twice
knocked me down again and ki>i)t poss(\ssion of both my
feet and knees long«M' (I nnisl eon fivss) than \\c e\'er had done
before." "' I\ager to finish his history, he lauuMited that his
"Umg gout " losi him " I linHMUoiilhs in I he s[)ring." Thus
JUS you go through his eorri\spondcnce, you find that orders
for Mad<Mra and attacks of gimt alliMMiate with regularity,
' l.otlors. II. 1:50. - //././., 11. S!). •' //-(•,/,. II. 'ill.
* Ibid., II, ill. " lhi,l., 11, 'i:ii. « //)/(/., II, HI).
288 MODERN ESSAYS
Gibl)on apparently did not connect the two as cause and
effect, as in his autobiography he charged his malady to his
service in the Hampshire militia, when "the daily practice
of hard and even excessive drinking" had sown in his
constitution "the seeds of the gout." ^
Gibbon has never been a favorite with women, owing
largely to his account of his early love affair. While at
Lausanne, he had heard much of "the wit and beauty
and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod" and when he
first met her, he had reached the age of twenty. " I saw
and loved," he wrote. "I found her learned without
pedantry, Uvely in conversation, pure in sentiment, and
elegant in manners. . . . She Hstened to the voice of
truth and passion. ... At Lausanne I indulged my
dream of felicity"; and indeed he appeared to be an
ardent lover. "He was seen," said a contemporary,
"stopping country people near Lausanne and demanding
at the point of a naked dagger whether a more adorable
creature existed than Suzanne Curchod." ^ On his return
to England, however, he soon discovered that his father
would not hear of this alliance, and he thus related the
sequence : "After a painful struggle, I yielded to my fate.
... I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son." ^ From
England he wrote to Mademoiselle Curchod breaking off
the engagement. Perhaps it is because of feminine criti-
cism that Cotter Morison indulges in an elaborate defense
of Gibbon, which indeed hardly seems necessary. Rous-
seau, who was privy to the love affair, said that " Gibbon
was too cold-blooded a young man for his taste or
for Mademoiselle Curchod's happiness." ^ Mademoiselle
Curchod a few years later married Necker, a rich Paris
1 Letters, II, 189. ^ ibij., I, 40.
3 Autobiography, pp. 151, 239. ^ Letters, I, 41.
EDWARD GIBBON 289
banker, who under Louis XVI held the office of director-
general of the finances. She was the mother of Madame
de Stael, was a leader of the literary society in Paris and,
despite the troublous times, must have led a happy life.
One delightful aspect of the story is the warm friendship
that existed between Madame Necker and Edward Gib-
bon. This began less than a year after her marriage.
"The Curchod (Madame Necker) I saw at Paris," he
wrote to his friend Holroyd. "She was very fond of me
and the husband particularly civil. Could they insult
me more cruelly? Ask me every evening to supper;
go to bed, and leave me alone with his wife — what an
impertinent security !" ^
If women read the Correspondence as they do the Auto-
biography, I think that their aversion to the great historian
would be increased by these confiding words to his step-
mother, written when he was forty-nine : " The habits of
female conversation have sometimes tempted me to ac-
quire the piece of furniture, a wife, and could I unite in a
single Woman the virtues and accomplishments of half a
dozen of my acquaintance, I would instantly pay my ad-
dresses to the Constellation." ^
I have always been impressed with Gibbon's pride at
being the author of "six volumes in quartos"; but as
nearly all histories now are published in octavo, I had not
a distinct idea of the appearance of a quarto volume until
the preparation of this essay led me to look at different
1 Ibid., I, 81. In 1790 Madame de Stael, then at Coppet, wrote:
"Nous possedons dans ce chateau M. Gibbon, I'ancien amoreux de ma
mere, celui qui voulait TepGUser. Quand je le vois, je me demande si
je serais nee de son union avee ma mere : je me reponds que non et qu'il
suffisait de mon pere seul pour que je vinsse au monde." — Hill's ed.,
107, n. 2.
2 Letters, II, 143.
u
290 MODERN ESSAYS
editions of Gibbon in the Boston Athenaeum. There I
found the quartos, the first volume of which is the third
edition, pubhshed in 1777 [it will be remembered that the
original publication of the first volume was in February,
177G]. The volume is 11| inches long by 9 inches wide
and is much heavier than our very heavy octavo volumes.
With this volume in my hand I could appreciate the re-
mark of the Duke of Gloucester when Gibbon brought
him the second volume of the " Decline and Fall." Laying
the quarto on the table he said, "Another d — d thick
square book ! Always scribble, scribble, scribble ! Eh !
Mr. Gibbon .5 "1
During my researches at the Athenaeum, I found an
octavo edition, the first volume of which was published
in 1791, and on the cover was written, "Given to the
Athenaeum by Charles Cabot. Received December 10,
1807." This was the year of the foundation of the
Athenaeum. On the c^uarto of 1777 there was no indica-
tion, but the scholarly cataloguer informed me that it was
probably also received in 1807. Three later editions
than these two are in this library, the last of which is
Bury's of 1900 to which I have constantly referred. Medi-
tating in the quiet alcove, with the two early editions of
Gibbon before me, I found an answer to the comment of
H. G. Wells in his book "The Future in America" which I
confess had somewhat irritated me. Thus wrote Wells :
"Frankly I grieve over Boston as a great waste of leisure
and energy, as a frittering away of moral and intellectual
possibilities. We give too much to the past. . . . We
are obsessed by the scholastic prestige of mere knowledge
and genteel remoteness." ^ Pondering this iconoclastic
utterance, how delightful it is to light upon evidence in
1 Birkbeck Hill's ed., 127. 2 p. 235.
EDWARD GIBBON 291
the way of well-worn volumes that, since 1807, men and
women here have been carefully reading Gibbon, who, as
Dean Milman said, "has bridged the abyss between
ancient and modern times and connected together the
two worlds of history." ^ A knowledge of "The Decline
and Fall" is a basis for the study of all other history;
it is a mental discipline, and a training for the problems
of modern life. These Athenaeum readers did not waste
their leisure, did not give too much to the past. They
were supremely right to take account of the scholastic
prestige of Gibbon, and to endeavor to make part of
their mental fiber this greatest history of modern times.
I will close with a quotation from the Autobiography
which in its sincerity and absolute freedom from literary
cant will be cherished by all whose desire is to behold "the
bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of
delightful studies." "I have drawn a high prize in the
lottery of life," wrote Gibbon. "I am disgusted with the
affectation of men of letters, who complain that they have
renounced a substance for a shadow and that their fame
affords a poor compensation for envy, censure, and per-
secution. My own experience at least has taught me a
very different lesson : twenty happy years have been ani-
mated by the labor of my history; and its success has
given me a name, a rank, a character in the world, to which
I should not otherwise have been entitled. . . . D'Alem-
bert relates that as he was walking in the gardens of Sans-
souci with the King of Prussia, Frederick said to him,
' Do you see that old woman, a poor weeder, asleep on that
sunny bank ? She is probably a more happy Being than
either of us.' " Now the comment of Gibbon : "The King
and the Philosopher may speak for themselves ; for my
part I do not envy the old woman." ^
1 Smith's ed., I, vii. ^ Autobiography, 343, 346.
THE MILDNESS OF THE YELLOW PRESS ^
BY
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Obviously the danger in the catalogue form lies in the even distribution
of emphasis. Since the reader may at any moment lay the essay aside
with the thought complete up to that point, it often happens that he
does so before finishing the essay. Therefore an author is apt to try to
conceal the catalogue. This is done most successfully by Mr. Chesterton
in his attack upon the "yellow" type of journalism. He wishes to tell
us that in his opinion "yellow" journalism is mediocre, timid, infantile,
and unrepresentative. To attract attention, however, he begins with
the paradox that such journalism is not sufficiently sensational. This
thought, when developed, leads naturally to a discussion of other weak-
nesses. The whole is flooded by concrete illustration. As such illustra-
tion is chosen with a desire to make the object of the attack ridiculous,
and as it serves as almost the only support for statements made au-
thoritatively, the essay is clever rather than profound. Yet it is so
clever that the reader, without thinking, tends to accept his conclusion.
There is a great deal of protest made from one quarter
or another nowadays against the influence of that new
journalism which is associated with the names of Sir
Alfred Harmsworth and Mr. Pearson. But almost every-
body who attacks it attacks on the ground that it is very
sensational, very violent and vulgar and startling. I am
speaking in no affected contrariety, but in the simplicity
of a genuine personal impression, when I say that this
journalism offends as being not sensational or violent
' From "Heretics," by permission of the publishers, John Lane Co.
292
THE MILDNESS OF THE YELLOW PRESS 293
enough. The real vice is not that it is starthng, but that
it is quite insupportably tame. The whole object is to
keep carefully along a certain level of the expected and the
commonplace ; it may be low, but it must take care also
to be flat. Never by any chance in it is there any of that
real plebeian pungency wliich can be heard from the or-
dinary cabman in the ordinary street. We have heard of
a certain standard of decorum which demands that things
should be funny without being vulgar, but the standard of
this decorum demands that if things are vulgar they shall
be vulgar without being funny. This journalism does not
merely fail to exaggerate life — it positively underrates
it ; and it has to do so because it is intended for the faint
and languid recreation of men whom the fierceness of
modern life has fatigued. This press is not the yellow
press at all ; it is the drab press. Sir Alfred Harmsworth
must not address to the tired clerk any observation more
witty than the tired clerk might be able to address to Sir
Alfred Harmsworth. It must not expose anybody (any-
body who is powerful, that is), it must not offend anybody,
it must not even please anybody, too much. A general
vague idea that in spite of all this, our yellow press is
sensational, arises from such external accidents as large
type or lurid headlines. It is quite true that these editors
print everything they possibly can in large capital letters.
But they do this, not because it is startling, but because
it is soothing. To people wholly weary or partly drunk in
a dimly lighted train, it is a simplification and a comfort
to have things presented in this vast and obvious manner.
The editors use this gigantic alphabet in dealing with their
readers, for exactly the same reason that parents and gov-
ernesses use a similar gigantic alphabet in teaching children
to spell. The nursery authorities do not use an A as big as
294 MODERN ESSxVYS
a horseshoe in order to make the child jump ; on the con-
trary, they use it to put the child at his ease, to make
things smoother and more evident. Of the same character
is the dim and quiet dame school which Sir Alfred Harms-
worth and Mr. Pearson keep. All their sentiments are
spelling-book sentiments — that is to say, they are senti-
ments with which the pupil is already respectfully familiar.
All their wildest posters are leaves torn from a copy-book.
Of real sensational journalism, as it exists in France, in
Ireland, and in America, we have no trace in this country.
When a journalist in Ireland wishes to create a thrill, he
creates a thrill worth talking about. He denounces a
leading Irish member for corruption, or he charges the
whole police system with a wicked and definite conspiracy.
When a French journalist desires a frisson there is a fris-
son; he discovers, let us say, that the President of the
Republic has murdered three wives. Our yellow jour-
nalists invent quite as unscrupulously as this ; their moral
condition is, as regards careful veracity, about the same.
But it is their mental calibre which happens to be such
that they can only invent calm and even reassuring things.
The fictitious version of the massacre of the envoys of
Pekin was mendacious, but it was not interesting, except
to those who had private reasons for terror or sorrow. It
was not connected with any bold and suggestive view of
the Chinese situation. It revealed only a vague idea that
nothing could be impressive except a great deal of blood.
Real sensationalism, of which I happen to be very fond,
may be either moral or immoral. But even when it is
most immoral, it requires moral courage. For it is one
of the most dangerous things on earth genuinely to sur-
prise anybody. If you make any sentient creature jump,
you render it by no means improbable that it will jump on
THE MILDNESS OF THE YELLOW PRESS 295
you. But the leaders of this movement have no moral
courage or immoral courage ; their whole method con-
sists in saying, with large and elaborate emphasis, the
things which everybody else says casually, and without
remembering what they have said. When they brace
themselves up to attack anything, they never reach the
point of attacking anything which is large and real, and
would resound with the shock. They do not attack the
army as men do in France, or the judges as men do in
Ireland, or the democracy itself as men did in England a
hundred years ago. They attack something like the War
Office — something, that is, which everybody attacks and
nobody bothers to defend, something which is an old joke
in fourth-rate comic papers. Just as a man shows he has
a weak voice by straining it to shout, so they show the
hopelessly unsensational nature of their minds when they
really try to be sensational. With the whole world full
of big and dubious institutions, with the whole wickedness
of civilization staring them in the face, their idea of being
bold and bright is to attack the War Office. They might
as well start a campaign against the weather, or form a
secret society in order to make jokes about mothers-in-law.
Nor is it only from the point of view of particular amateurs
of the sensational such as myself, that it is permissible to
say, in the words of Cowper's Alexander Selkirk, that
"their tameness is shocking to me." The whole modern
world is pining for a genuinely sensational journalism.
This has been discovered by that very able and honest
journalist, Mr. Blatchford, who started his campaign
against Christianity, warned on all sides, I believe, that
it would ruin his paper, but who continued from an hon-
ourable sense of intellectual responsibility. He dis-
covered, however, that while he had undoubtedly shocked
296 MODERN ESSAYS
his readers, he had also greatly advanced his newspaper.
It was bought — first, by all the people who agreed with
hira and wanted to read it ; and secondly, by all the people
who disagreed with him, and wanted to write him letters.
Those letters were voluminous (I helped, I am glad to say,
to swell their volume), and they were generally inserted with
a generous fulness. Thus was accidentally discovered (like
the steam engine) the great journalistic maxim — that if
an editor can only make people angry enough, they will
write half his newspaper for him for nothing.
Some hold that such papers as these are scarcely the
proper objects of so serious a consideration ; but that
can scarcely be maintained from a political or ethical
point of view. In this problem of the mildness and tame-
ness of the Harmsworth mind there is mirrored the out-
lines of a much larger problem which is akin to it.
The Harmsworthian journalist begins with a worship of
success and violence, and ends in sheer timidity and
mediocrity. But he is not alone in this, nor does he come
by this fate merely because he happens personally to be
stupid. Every man, however brave, who begins by wor-
shipping violence, must end in mere timidity. Every
man, however wise, who begins by worshipping success,
must end in mere mediocrity. This strange and para-
doxical fate is involved, not in the individual, but in the
philosophy, in the point of view. It is not the folly of
the man which brings about this necessary fall ; it is his
wisdom. The worship of success is the only one out of
all possible worships of which this is true, that its followers
are foredoomed to become slaves and cowards. A man
may be a hero for the sake of Mrs. Gallup 's ciphers or for
the sake of human sacrifice, but not for the sake of success.
For obviously a man may choose to fail because he loves
THE MILDNESS OF THE YELLOW PRESS 297
Mrs. Gallup or human sacrifice ; but he cannot choose to
fail because he loves success. When the test of triumph
is men's test of everything, they never endure long enough
to triumph at all. As long as matters are really hopeful,
hope is a mere flattery or platitude ; it is only when every-
thing is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all.
Like all the Christian virtues, it is as unreasonable as it
is indispensable.
It was through this fatal paradox in the nature of things
that all these modern adventurers come at last to a sort
of tedium and acquiescence. They desired strength ; and
to them to desire strength was to admire strength ; to
admire strength was simply to admire the statu quo.
They thought that he who wished to be strong ought to
respect the strong. They did not realize the obvious
verity that he who wishes to be strong must despise the
strong. They sought to be everything, to have the whole
force of the cosmos behind them, to have an energy that
would drive the stars. But they did not realize the two
great facts — first, that in the attempt to be everything
the first and most difficult step is to be something ; second,
that the moment a man is something, he is essentially
defying everything. The lower animals, say the men of
science, fought their way up with a blind selfishness. If
this be so, the only real moral of it is that our unselfish-
ness, if it is to triumph, must be equally blind. The
mammoth did not put his head on one side and wonder
whether mammoths were a little out of date. Mammoths
were at least as much up to date as that individual mam-
moth could make them. The greal elk did not say,
"Cloven hoofs are very much worn now." He polished
his own weapons for his own use. But in the reasoning
animal there has arisen a more horrible danger, that he
298 MODERN ESSAYS
may fail through perceiving his own failure. When mod-
ern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating one's
self to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend
of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will
not accommodate themselves to anything. At its worst it
consists of many millions of frightened creatures all ac-
commodating themselves to a trend that is not there. And
that is becoming more and more the situation of modern
England. Every man speaks of public opinion, and means
by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.
Every man makes his contribution negative under the
erroneous impression that the next man's contribution is
positive. Every man surrenders his fancy to a general
tone which is itself a surrender. And over all the heart-
less and fatuous unity spreads this new and wearisome and
platitudinous press, incapable of invention, incapable of
audacity, capable only of a servility all the more contemp-
tible because it is not even a servility to the strong. But
all who begin with force and conquest will end in this.
The chief characteristic of the "New Journalism" is
simply that it is bad journalism. It is beyond all com-
parison the most shapeless, careless, and colourless work
done in our day.
I read yesterday a sentence which should be written in
letters of gold and adamant ; it is the very motto of the
new philosophy of Empire. I found it (as the reader has
already eagerly guessed) in Pearson s Magazine, while I
was communing (soul to soul) with Mr. C. Arthur Pearson,
whose first and suppressed name I am afraid is Chilperic.
It occurred in an article on the American Presidential
Election. This is the sentence, and every one should
read it carefully, and roll it on the tongue, till all the
honey be tasted.
THE MILDNESS OF THE YELLOW PRESS 299
"A little sound common sense often goes further with an audience of
American working-men than much high-flown argument. A speaker
who, as he brought forward his points, hammered nails into a board,
won hundreds of votes for his side at the last Presidential Election."
I do not wish to soil this perfect thing with comment ;
the words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.
But just think for a moment of the mind, the strange
inscrutable mind, of the man who wrote that, of the editor
who approved it, of the people who are probably impressed
by it, of the incredible American working-man, of whom,
for all I know, it may be true. Think what their notion
of "common sense" must be! It is delightful to realize
that you and I are now able to win thousands of votes
should we ever be engaged in a Presidential Election, by
doing something of this kind. For I suppose the nails
and the board are not essential to the exhibition of "com-
mon sense"; there may be variations. We may read —
"A little common sense impresses American working-men more
than high-flown argument. A speaker who, as he made his points,
pulled buttons off his waistcoat, won thousands of votes for his side."
Or,
"Sound common sense tells better in America than high-flown argu-
ment. Thus Senator Budge, who threw his false teeth in the air every
time he made an epigram, won the solid approval of American working-
men."
Or again,
"The sound common sense of a gentleman from Earlswood, who
stuck straws in his hair during the progress of his speech, assured the
victory of Mr. Roosevelt."
There are many other elements in this article on which
I should love to linger. But the matter which I wish to
point out is that in that sentence is perfectly revealed the
300 MODERN ESSAYS
whole truth of what our Chamberlainites, hustlers, bus-
tlers, Empire builders, and strong, silent men, really mean
by "common sense." They mean knocking, with deafen-
ing noise and dramatic effect, meaningless bits of iron into
a useless bit of wood.
A man who goes on to an American platform and
behaves like a mountebank fool with a board and a ham-
mer ; well, I do not blame him ; I might even admire
him. He may be a dashing and quite decent strategist.
He may be a fine romantic actor, like Burke flinging the
dagger on the floor. He may even (for all I know) be a
sublime mystic, profoundly impressed with the ancient
meaning of the divine trade of the Carpenter, and offering
to the people a parable in the form of a ceremony. All I
wish to indicate is the abyss of mental confusion in which
such wild ritualism can be called "sound common sense."
And it is in that abyss of mental confusion, and in that
alone, that the new Imperialism lives and moves and has
its being. The whole glory and greatness of Mr. Cham-
berlain consists in this : that if a man hits the right nail
on the head nobody cares where he hits it to or what it
does. They care about the noise of the hammer, not
about the silent grip of the nail. Before and throughout
the African war, Mr. Chamberlain was always knocking
in nails, with ringing decisiveness. But when we ask,
"But what have these nails held together .^^ Where is
your carpentry ? Where are your contented Outlanders ?
Where is your free South Africa? Where is your British
prestige? What have your nails done?" then what
answer is there ? We must go back (with an affectionate
sigh) to our Pearson for the answer to the question of
what the nails have done : "The speaker who hammered
nails into a board won thousands of votes."
THE MILDNESS OF THE YELLOW PRESS 301
Now the whole of this passage is admirably characteris-
tic of the new journaHsm which Mr. Pearson represents,
the new journaHsm which has just purchased the 8tmidard.
To take one instance out of hundreds, the incomparable
man with the board and nails is described in the Pearson's
article as calling out (as he smote the symbolic nail), "Lie
number one. Nailed to the Mast ! Nailed to the Mast ! "
In the whole office there was apparently no compositor or
office-boy to point out that we speak of lies being nailed
to the counter, and not to the mast. Nobody in the office
knew that Pearson s Magazine was falling into a stale
Irish bull, which must be as old as St. Patrick. This is
the real and essential tragedy of the sale of the Standard.
It is not merely that journalism is victorious over good
literature. It is that bad journalism is victorious over
good journalism.
It is not that one article which we consider costly and
beautiful is being ousted by another kind of article which
we consider common or unclean. It is that of the same
article a worse quality is preferred to a l)etter. If you
like popular journalism (as I do), you will know that
Pearsons Magazine is poor and weak popular journalism.
You will know it as certainly as you know bad butter.
You will know as certainly that it is poor popular journal-
ism as you know that the Strand, in the great days of
Sherlock Holmes, was good popular journalism. Mr.
Pearson has been a monument of this enormous banality.
About everything he says and does there is something
infinitely weak-minded. He clamours for home trades
and employs foreign ones to print his paper. When this
glaring fact is pointed out, he does not say that the thing
was an oversight, like a sane man. He cuts it off with
scissors, like a child of three. His very cunning is in-
302 MODERN ESSAYS
fantile. And like a child of three, he does not cut it quite
off. In all human records I doubt if there is such an
example of a profound simplicity in deception. This is
the sort of intelligence which now sits in the seat of the
sane and honourable old Tory journalism. If it w^ere
really the triumph of the tropical exuberance of the Yankee
press, it w^ould be vulgar, but still tropical. But it is not.
We are delivered over to the bramble, and from the mean-
est of the shrubs comes the fire upon the cedars of Lebanon.
The only question now is how much longer the fiction
will endure that journalists of this order represent public
opinion. It may be doubted whether any honest and
serious Tariff Reformer would for a moment maintain
that there was any majority for Tariff Reform in the
country comparable to the ludicrous preponderance which
money has given it among the great dailies. The only
inference is that for purposes of real public opinion the
press is now a mere plutocratic oligarchy. Doubtless the
public buys the wares of these men, for one reason or an-
other. But there is no more reason to suppose that the
public admires their politics than that the public admires
the delicate philosophy of Mr. Crosse or the darker and
sterner creed of Mr. Black well. If these men are merely
tradesmen, there is nothing to say except that there are
plenty like them in the Battersea Park Road, and many
much better. But if they make any sort of attempt to be
politicians, we can only point out to them that they are
not as yet even good journalists.
WHAT IS EDUCATION ?i
BY
Charles Macomb Flandkau
A curious, and clever, modification of the catalogue appears in Mr.
Flandrau's essay. By a series of eliminations he shows what education
is not, tying it all together with the negative that knowledge is not wisdom.
This he does by a continued use of the interrogation. And the answers
to his questions show no thoroughfare. Notice also the extreme use of
the device of the writer speaking in the first person. This enables him
to illustrate his points by his personal experiences. The result is that he
has written a sparklingly delightful essay upon one of the most dreary
subjects in the world, — and incidentally charged a number of educa-
tional windmills.
Books, the titles of which are interrogatory, always
have a fascination for me. " What is Ibsenism .? " "Can
You Forgive Her?" "What Shall We Do With Our
Girls?" for instance. Of course, they are invariably un-
satisfactory and, sometimes, exasperating. They never
really answer the questions they propound, and they
leave one somewhat more muddled than one was before.
Tolstoi's "What is Art?" is a most bigoted and tedious
performance. In it one of the greatest artists of modern
times elaborately tells one nothing whatever about art,
and leaves one with the impression that his claim on im-
mortality is something of which he has become very
much ashamed. But, crafty old person though I be, I
succumb to them all, and read them because I can't resist
a title in the form of a question.
^ From "Prejudices," by permission of D. Appleton & Co.
303
304 MODERN ESSAYS
At present, I am longing for someone to write a book
and call it "What is Education?" What, as a matter of
fact, is education ? Every few days someone, in endeav-
oring to describe and sum up someone else, ends with
the clinching statement : "And the strange part of it was
that he was a man, or she was a woman, of education."
This is supposed to settle the matter — to arouse in one's
mind a definite image. "He was a man of education,"
apparently means something, but what? To me it has
come to mean nothing at all. A short time ago I read in
the morning paper of a dead body that had been found in
the river and taken to the county morgue. "All means
of identification had been removed," wrote the reporter,
in commenting on the incident, "but," he added, "the
body was evidently that of a man of education." And,
to me, the remarkable part of this was that the reporter,
without doubt, had a hazy idea of what he was trying
to express. In the poor, dead, unidentified thing he had
discovered and recognized something that, to him, im-
plied "education," but how he did it, and what it was,
I don't know, because he did not explain.
There are in this connection all sorts of questions I
hope the author of the book, to which I look forward,
will answer. Is, for instance, "a man of education" the
same as "an educated man"? Or is one, perhaps, some-
what more — well, more educated than the other ? At
times both these phrases sound to me as if they meant
precisely the same thing, and then again they suddenly,
through no wish of mine, develop subtle but important
differences that cause first the one and then the other to
seem expressive of a higher, a more comprehensive, form
of education. Then, too, is there any particular point at
which education leaves off and "cultivation" begins?
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 305
And can a person be " cultivated " without being educated ?
The words education and cultivation are constantly upon
the American tongue, but what do they mean? Or, do
they mean something entirely different to everyone who
employs them ? Every American girl who flirts her way
through the high school is "educated," and it would be
indeed a brave man who dared to suggest that she wasn't.
But is she? (Heaven forbid that / should suggest any-
thing ; I merely crave information.) And here let me
hasten to add that a friend of mine has always maintained,
quite seriously, that he likes me in spite of the fact that
I am, as he expresses it, "one of the most illiterate per-
sons" of his acquaintance. His acquaintance, it is some
slight comfort to remember, is not large, and he is a
doctor of philosophy who lectures at one of the great
English universities. Not only has he read and studied
much, his memory is appalling ; he has never forgotten
anything. From his point of view I am not "an educated
person." But then, in the opinion of Macaulay, Addison
was sadly lacking in cultivation ! "He does not appear to
have attained more than an ordinary acquaintance with
the political and moral writers of Rome ; nor was his own
Latin prose by any means equal to his Latin verse,"
Macaulay complains in the Edinburgh Review in 1843.
And while Macaulay admits that "Great praise is due to
the notes which Addison appended to his version of the
second and third books of the Metamorphoses," and con-
fesses them to be "rich in apposite references to Virgil,
Statins and Claudian," he cannot understand anyone's
failing to allude to Euripides and Theocritus, waxes in-
dignant over the fact that Addison quoted more from
Ausonius and Manilius than from Cicero, and feels posi-
tively hurt at his having cited "the languid hexameters
\
306 MODERN ESSAYS
of Silius Italicus," rather than the "authentic narrative
of Polybius." In Rome and Florence — Macaulay con-
tinues, more in sorrow than in anger — Addison saw all
the best ancient works of art, "without recalling one
single verse of Pindar, of Callimachus, or of the Attic
dramatists."
Of course all this is very sad and leaves us quite cross
with Addison for having deluded us into believing him to
be a person of considerable erudition. How could any-
body in the presence of a statue be so absent-minded as
not to recall a single verse of Pindar or Callimachus?
And how hopelessly superficial must be the mind that
actually prefers the languid hexameters of Silius Italicus
to the authentic narrative of Polybius ! Yet, on the other
hand, if we casually referred to Polybius while conversing
with most of our educated and even so-called cultivated
acquaintances, how many of them, I wonder, would know
whether we were talking about a Greek historian or a
patent medicine. Macaulay would have considered them
hopeless ; we (and they) are in the habit (perhaps it is a
very bad habit — I don't know) of regarding them as
educated.
Another question that my suppositious author must
devote a chapter to, is the difference between just an
education and a "liberal" education. We used to hear
much more about a "liberal" education than we do now,
although Prexy Eliot has of late endeavored to restore the
phrase as well as the thing itself. When does an educa-
tion leave off being penurious, so to speak, and become
liberal? According to Mr. Eliot, Milton's "Areopagit-
ica" helps a lot. I once read Milton's "Areopagitica"
("but not for love") with great care, and when I had
finished it I had to procure at much trouble and expense
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 307
another book (written some hundreds of years later)
that told me what it was all about. The next day I
passed an examination in the subject — and to-day I
couldn't, if my life were at stake, recall the nature or the
purpose of the work in question or even explain the mean-
ing of the title. It is possible, of course, that this is more
my fault than Milton's, but whoever is to blame, I can
truthfully say that never before or since have I read any-
thing so completely uninteresting or that contributed so
little to the liberality of my education. In Mr. Eliot's
opinion, however, and no one more firmly believes in the
soundness of Mr. Eliot's opinions than I do, this ghastly,
unintelligible, jaw-breaking relic of the seventeenth cen-
tury is, if not absolutely essential to a liberal education,
at least highly conducive to one. What on earth does it
all signify ?
Some persons pin their entire faith to a correct use of,
the pronouns I and me. They cheerfully commit every
other form of linguistic violence, but as long as they can
preserve sufficient presence of mind boldly to say once in
so often something like, "He left James and me behind,"
instead of resorting to the cowardly "James and myself."
or the elegantly ungrammatical "James and I," they feel
that their educational integrity has been preserved.
Others believe that education and true refinement begin
and end with always saying, "You would better," instead
of "You had better," while Mr. Eliot, in musing on the
career of Mr. Roosevelt, no doubt remarks to himself,
"An estimable, even an interesting man, but is he, after
all, conversant with the ' Areopagitica' .f^ " (I hate to
admit it, but I think it highly probable that he is.) And
Macaulay, in the book review from which I have quoted,
disposes once and for all of a certain scholar named
308 MODERN ESSAYS
Blackniore — rips open his intellectual back, in fact, by
stating with dignified disgust: "Of Blackniore 's attain-
ments in the ancient tongues, it may be sufficient to say
that, in his prose, he has confounded an aphorism with an
apothegm." Isn't it all wonderful ? And doesn't it make
you wish that someone would write a work called, " What
is Education?" so you could find out whether you were
educated or not?
Of late I have begun to have an ineradicable conviction
that I am not — and this, not because I have a perverse
fondness for the "languid" vocabulary of Silius Italicus (of
whom, of course, I never had heard) but because I appar-
ently know so little about the idiom that, by inheritance
and environment, I am privileged to call my own. Not
long ago, in reading a passage of excellent English prose,
I came across a word that suddenly, as words have a
devilish way of doing, stood out from the page and chal-
lenged me. The word was "nadir." "At this period he
was at the nadir of his fortunes," was, I think, the sentence
in which it occurred, and from the context I was able to
divine not the exact meaning of the term, but the general
idea it expressed. It meant, I could see, that the person
in question had experienced a run of bad luck, that his
affairs, for the time being, were in anything but a pros-
perous condition. But this was very far from knowing
the specific meaning of the word "nadir." It was obvi-
ously a noun, and a simple-looking little creature at that,
yet I neither knew how to pronounce it nor what it meant.
So I made a note of it, intending, later, to inform myself.
Further on, I came to the word "apogee," a familiar
combination of letters that suddenl}^ appeared to be per-
fectly absurd. The gentlemen referred to was now no
longer at the nadir of his fortunes — he was at the "apo-
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 309
gee" of them, and, of course, I was able to guess that
something agreeable had happened to him of late. But
what, after all, was an apogee? I had often read the
word before, and I feel sure that it may be found here and
there among my "complete works," employed with an
air of authority. But, upon my soul, I didn't know what
it meant, and, therefore, virtuously made another little
note.
Once started upon this mad career of disillusionment,
there seemed to be absolutely no end to it, and I read on
and on, no longer for the pleasure of reading, but more
because the book had become like one of those electric
machines with metal handles, where, after turning on the
current with a cent, you hang on in interesting agony
because you can't let go. "Not one jot nor tittle!" I
groaned as I wrote it down. "Jot" as a verb, conveyed
something to me, but what was it when it became a noun ?
And what sort of a thing, for heaven's sake, was a "tittle" ?
It sounded more like a kitchen utensil than anything else.
(Polly, put the tittle on — No, that wouldn't do.) And
why, also, were jots and tittles such inseparable com-
panions.? In all my life I had never met a solitary
tittle — a tittle walking about alone, so to speak, un-
accompanied by a devoted jot. Why was it that when
I did meet them, hand in hand, as usual, I didn't know
what they were?
By this time I was beginning to be verbally groggy.
What, I wondered, was — or, rather, wasn't — "a scin-
tilla of evidence"? (For, oddly enough, one is never
informed that there is a scintilla of evidence, but merely
that there isn't.) And just how did it happen, in the
first place, that a lack of evidence should have been called
a "scintilla," whereas a certain kind of expensive gray
310 MODERN ESSAYS
fur was called a "chinchilla." Scintilla chinchilla, scin-
tilla chinchilla — the jury was unable to find a chin-
chilla of evidence, although Mrs. Vasterbolt was present
at the trial in a handsome coat of the costliest scintilla.
Why not ? But as madness seemed to be lurking in that
direction, I hastened feverishly on to "adamant." Oh,
yes, I know it's something very hard and unyielding and,
in the kind of novels that no one reads any more, someone
is, at a critical moment, always "as" it — never "like"
it. But what is it ? It might be some sort of a mytho-
logical cliff against which people were supposed ineffect-
ually to have hurled themselves ; it might be a kind of
metal, or a particularly durable precious stone, or a satis-
factory species of paving material. It might be any old
thing ; I don't know. What in the dickens does it mean
to "dree your own weird" .'* For, as I almost tore off a
page in my anxiety to turn it, my eyes caught sight of :
" ' Everyone must dree his own weird,' she answered, senten-
tiously." Early in life it had dawned on me that to be
told you must "dree your own weird" was merely a more
obscure and delicate fashion of telling you that you must
"skin your own skunk"; and yet I very much doubt if
the verb "to dree" means to skin, or if "weird," used as
a noun, has much connection with the fragrant little
denizen of our forests whom we all, I trust, are accustomed
to refer to as the mephitis Americana.
On and on I toiled for another hour, at the end of which
time I had a formidable list of ordinary words belonging
to my own language, as to whose real meaning I was
completely in the dark. To-day I intended to look them
all up and write a charming little paper on them, primarily
designed, of course, to make dear reader gasp at the scope
and thoroughness of my education. But the day is
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 311
indescribably hot, and, as I have been away, my diction-
ary, unfortunately, is gritty with dust. To get up and
slap at the corpulent thing with a damp towel would be
most repulsive. I shan't do it. Instead I shall recall
that the most intellectual nation in the world has a saying
to the effect that, "On peut etre fort instruit sans avoir
d' education."
WHY A CLASSIC IS A CLASSIC ^
BY
Arnold Bennett
In one section of his handbook on Literary Taste, Mr. Arnold
Bennett wishes his readers to realize that the first essential to literary
taste is an enjoyment of literature. That conception is his objective
point. Therefore as in an argument, he starts with the generalization
that the majority of people are indifferent to literature. This he assumes.
But if this be true, the reputation of a great author must depend not upon
the majority but upon the passionate minority. This is the case also
with the posthumous reputation. But the minority are thus passionate
because of the intensity of their enjoyment. Therefore, the first essential
to literary taste is an enjoyment of literature. From this very brief
analysis it is clear that the essay is conceived as a whole, and that each
paragraph is a step to a predetermined end. Contrast this method
with that used in the essay on Tact by Lord Avebury. Here, having
granted the first premise, the reader is carried irresistibly to the final
conclusion. Clearly this type of essay is more difficult to write and
requires careful thought before composition is begun, but it is equally
clear that it is more convincing.
The large majority of our fellow-citizens care as much
about literature as they care about aeroplanes or the
programme of the Legislature. They do not ignore it ;
they are not quite indifferent to it. But their interest in
it is faint and perfunctory; or, if their interest happens
to be violent, it is spasmodic. Ask the two hundred
thousand persons whose enthusiasm made the vogue of
^ From "Literary Taste; How to Form It," by permission of
George H. Doran Co.
312
WHY A CLASSIC IS A CLASSIC 313
a popular novel ten years ago what they think of that
novel now, and you will gather that they have utterly
forgotten it, and that they would no more dream of read-
ing it again than of reading Bishop Stubbs's Select Char-
ters. Probably if they did read it again they would not
enjoy it — not because the said novel is a whit worse now
than it was ten years ago ; not because their taste has
improved — but because they have not had sufficient
practice to be able to rely on their taste as a means of
permanent pleasure. They simply don't know from one
day to the next what will please them.
In the face of this one may ask : Why does the great
and universal fame of classical authors continue.'* The
answer is that the fame of classical authors is entirely
independent of the majority. Do you suppose that if
the fame of Shakespeare depended on the man in the
street it would survive a fortnight? The fame of classi-
cal autjiors is orginally made, and it is maintained, by a
passionate few. Even when a first-class author has en-
joyed immense success during his lifetime, the majority
have never appreciated him so sincerely as they have
appreciated second-rate men. He has always been reen-
forced by the ardour of the passionate few. And in the
case of an author who has emerged into glory after his
death the happy sequel has been due solely to the obsti-
nate perseverance of the few. They could not leave him
alone ; they would not. They kept on savouring him,
and talking about him, and buying him, and they gener-
ally behaved with such eager zeal, and they were so authori-
tative and sure of themselves, that at last the majority
grew accustomed to the sound of his name and placidly
314 MODERN ESSAYS
agreed to the proposition that he was a genius; the ma-
jority really did not care very much either way.
4c 4c iN * * 4: 4e
And it is by the passionate few that the renown of
genius is kept alive from one generation to another.
These few are always at work. They are always redis-
covering genius. Their curiosity and enthusiasm are
exhaustless, so that there is little chance of genius being
ignored. And, moreover, they are always working either
for or against the verdicts of the majority. The majority
can make a reputation, but it is too careless to maintain
it. If, by accident, the passionate few agree with the
majority in a particular instance, they will frequently remind
the majority that such and such a reputation has been made,
and the majority will idly concur : "Ah, yes. By the way,
we must not forget that such and such a reputation exists."
Without that persistent memory-jogging the reputation
would quickly fall into the oblivion which is death. The
passionate few only have their way by reason of the fact
that they are genuinely interested in literature, that litera-
ture matters to them. They conquer by their obstinacy
alone, by their eternal repetition of the same statements.
Do you suppose they could prove to the man in the street
that Shakespeare was a great artist ^ The said man would
not even understand the terms they employed. But when
he is told ten thousand times, and generation after genera-
tion, that Shakespeare was a great artist, the said man be-
lieves — not by reason, but by faith. And he too repeats
that Shakespeare was a great artist, and he buys the com-
plete works of Shakespeare and puts them on his shelves,
and he goes to see the marvellous stage-effects which
accompany King Lear or Hamlet, and comes back
WHY A CLASSIC IS A CLASSIC 315
religiously convinced that Shakespeare was a great artist.
All because the passionate few could not keep their ad-
miration of Shakespeare to themselves. This is not cyni-
cism ; but truth. And it is important that those who
wish to form their literary taste should grasp it.
What causes the passionate few to make such a fuss about
literature.^ There can be only one reply. They find a
keen and lasting pleasure in literature. They enjoy litera-
ture as some men enjoy beer. The recurrence of this
pleasure naturally keeps their interest in literature very
much alive. They are for ever making new researches,
for ever practising on themselves. They learn to under-
stand themselves. They learn to know what they want.
Their taste becomes surer and surer as their experience
lengthens. They do not enjoy to-day what will seem tedi-
ous to them to-morrow. When they find a book tedious, no
amount of popular clatter will persuade them that it is
pleasurable ; and when they find it pleasurable no chill si-
lence of the street-crowds will affect their conviction that
the book is good and permanent. They have faith in
themselves. What are the qualities in a book which give
keen and lasting pleasure to the passionate few "^ This is
a question so difficult that it has never yet been completely
answered. You may talk lightly about truth, insight,
knowledge, wisdom, humour, and beauty. But these
comfortable words do not really carry you very far, for
each of them has to be defined, especially the first and
last. It is all very well for Keats in his airy manner
to assert that beauty is truth, truth beauty, and that
that is all he knows or needs to know. I, for one, need
to know a lot more. And I never shall know. Nobody,
316 MODERN ESSAYS
not even Hazlitt nor Sainte-Beuve, has ever finally ex-
plained why he thought a book beautiful. I take the
first fine lines that come to hand —
The woods of Arcady are dead.
And over is their antique joy —
and I say that those lines are beautiful because they give
me pleasure. But why ? No answer ! I only know that
the passionate few will, broadly, agree with me in deriving
this mysterious pleasure from those lines. I am only con-
vinced that the liveliness of our pleasure in those and many
other lines by the same author will ultimately cause the
majority to believe, by faith, that W. B. Yeats is a genius.
The one reassuring aspect of the literary affair is that the
passionate few are passionate about the same things. A
continuance of interest does, in actual practice, lead ulti-
mately to the same judgments. There is only the differ-
ence in width of interest. Some of the passionate few
lack catholicity, or, rather, the whole of their interest is
confined to one narrow channel; they have none left
over. These men help specially to vitalise the reputa-
tions of the narrower geniuses : such as Crashaw. But
their active predilections never contradict the general
verdict of the passionate few ; rather they reinforce it.
A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority
which is intensely and permanently interested in literature.
It lives on because the minority, eager to renew the sensa-
tion of pleasure, is eternally curious and is therefore engaged
in an eternal process of rediscovery. A classic does not
survive for any ethical reason. It does not survive be-
cause it conforms to certain canons, or because neglect
WHY A CLASSIC IS A CLASSIC 317
would not kill it. It survives because it is a source of
pleasure, and because the passionate few can no more
neglect it than a bee can neglect a flower. The passionate
few do not read "the right things" because they are right.
That is to put the cart before the horse. "The right
things " are the right things solely because the passionate
few like reading them. Hence — and I now arrive at my
point — the one primary essential to literary taste is a hot
interest in literature. If you have that, all the rest will
come. It matters nothing that at present you fail to find
pleasure in certain classics. The driving impulse of your
interest will force you to acquire experience, and experience
will teach you the use of the means of pleasure. You do
not know the secret ways of yourself : that is all. A con-
tinuance of interest must inevitably bring you to the
keenest joys. But, of course, experience may be acquired
judiciously or injudiciously, just as Putney may be reached
via Walham Green or via St. Petersburg.
HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK ^
BY
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang wishes to argue in defense of the study of Greek. In
brief, the argument may be stated : although the study of Greek has fallen
into disfavor, some boys will profit greatly from the study; they will
profit from it, because they will read Homer ; and Homer must be read
in the original because the poems are not capable of translation. As the
essay is avowedly written for those that do not believe in the study of
Greek, he takes two paragraphs to an exposition of that side. But
granting that for the many perhaps it is a waste of time, he argues for
the few. Here he frankly drops into autobiography. He gives his personal
testimony. This leads easily to his appreciation of Homer. Then to
illustrate the untranslatable nature of Homer, he gives parodies of
translations by various types of authors. On one hand, in so far as the
parodies are clever, he gains by concrete illustration. On the other,
since the verses are for the most part his imitations of what the authors
might have written, does not this leave a suspicion of unfairness ?
Actually from the reading of these imaginary translations, would the stu-
dent be impelled to study Greek ? Moreover, is there not an element
of pedantry in his references to the various authors ? Surely the reader
familiar with the difference in style between the translations of Chapman
and Cowper would have already decided for himself the question at
issue.
The Greek language is being ousted from education,
here, in France, and in America. The speech of the
earhest democracies is not democratic enough for modern
anarchy. There is nothing to be gained, it is said, by a
^ From "Essays in Little," by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.
318
HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK 319
knowledge of Greek. We have not to fight the battle of
life with Hellenic waiters ; and, even if we had, Romaic,
or modern Greek, is much more easily learned than the
old classical tongue. The reason of this comparative ease
will be plain to any one who, retaining a vague memory of
his Greek grammar, takes up a modern Greek newspaper.
He will find that the idioms of the modern newspaper are the
idioms of all newspapers, that the grammar is the grammar
of modern languages, that the opinions are expressed in
barbarous translations of barbarous French and English
journalistic cliches or commonplaces. This ugly and un-
dignified mixture of the ancient Greek characters, and of
ancient Greek words with modern grammar and idioms,
and stereotyped phrases, is extremely distasteful to the
scholar. Modern Greek, as it is at present printed, is
not the natural spoken language of the peasants. You
can read a Greek leading article, though you can hardly
make sense of a Greek rural ballad. The peasant speech
is a thing of slow development ; there is a basis of ancient
Greek in it, with large elements of Slavonic, Turkish,
Italian, and other imposed or imported languages. Mod-
ern literary Greek is a hybrid of revived classical words,
blended with the idioms of the speeches which have arisen
since the fall of the Roman Empire. Thus, thanks to the
modern and familiar element in it, modern Greek "as
she is writ" is nmch more easily learned than ancient
Greek. Consequently, if any one has need for the speech
in business or travel, he can acquire as much of it as most of
us have of French, with considerable ease. People there-
fore argue that ancient Greek is particularly superfluous
in schools. Why waste time on it, they ask, which could
be expended on science, on modern languages, or any other
branch of education ? There is a great deal of justice in
320 MODERN ESSAYS
this position. The generation of men who are now middle-
aged bestowed much time and labour on Greek ; and in
what, it may be asked, are they better for it ? Very few
of them "keep up their Greek." Say, for example, that
one was in a form of fifty boys who began the study, it is
odds against five of the survivors still reading Greek books.
The worldly advantages of the study are slight : it may
lead three of the fifty to a good degree, and one to a
fellowship ; but good degrees may be taken in other sub-
jects, and fellowships may be abolished, or "nationalised,"
with all other forms of property.
Then, why maintain Greek in schools.^ Only a very
minute percentage of the boys who are tormented with it
really learn it. Only a still smaller percentage can read
it after they are thirty. Only one or two gain any material
advantage by it. In very truth, most minds are not
framed by nature to excel and to delight in literature,
and only to such minds and to schoolmasters is Greek
valuable.
This is the case against Greek put as powerfully as one
can state it. On the other side, we may say, though the
remark may seem absurd at first sight, that to have
mastered Greek, even if you forget it, is not to have
wasted time. It really is an educational and mental dis-
cipline. The study is so severe that it needs the earnest
application of the mind. The study is averse to indolent
intellectual ways; it will not put up with a "there or
thereabouts," any more than mathematical ideas admit
of being made to seem "extremely plausible." He who
writes, and who may venture to offer himself as an ex-
ample, is naturally of a most slovenly and slatternly men-
tal habit. It is his constant temptation to "scamp"
every kind of work, and to say "it will do well enough."
HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK 321
He hates taking trouble and verifying references. And
he can honestly confess that nothing in his experience has
so helped, in a certain degree, to counteract those tenden-
cies — as the labour of thoroughly learning certain Greek
texts — the dramatists, Thucydides, some of the books
of Aristotle. Experience has satisfied him that Greek is
of real educational value, and, apart from the acknowl-
edged and unsurpassed merit of its literature, is a severe
and logical training of the mind. The mental constitu-
tion is strengthened and braced by the labour, even if
the language is forgotten in later life.
It is manifest, however, that this part of education is
not for everybody. The real educational problem is to
discover what boys Greek w ill be good for, and what boys
will only waste time and dawdle over it. Certainly to
men of a literary turn (a very minute percentage), Greek
is of an inestimable value. Great poets, even, may be
ignorant of it, as Shakespeare probably was, as Keats and
Scott certainly were, as Alexandre Dumas was. But
Dumas regretted his ignorance ; Scott regretted it. We
know not how much Scott's admitted laxity of style and
hurried careless habit might have been modified by a
knowledge of Greek; how much of grace, permanence,
and generally of art, his genius might have gained from
the language and literature of Hellas. The most Homeric
of modern men could not read Homer. As for Keats, he
was born a Greek, it has been said ; but had he been born
with a knowledge of Greek, he never, probably, would
have been guilty of his chief literary faults. This is not
certain, for some modern men of letters deeply read in
Greek, have all the qualities of fustian and effusiveness
which Longinus most despised. Greek will not make a
luxuriously Asiatic mind Hellenic, it is certain ; but it may,
322 MODERN ESSAYS
at least, help to restrain effusive and rhetorical gabble.
Our Asiatic rhetoricians might perhaps be even more
barbarous than they are if Greek were a sealed book to
them. However this may be, it is, at least, well to find
out in a school what boys are worth instructing in the
Greek language. Now, of their worthiness, of their
chances of success in the study, Homer seems the best
touchstone ; and he is certainly the most attractive guide
to the study.
At present boys are introduced to the language of the
Muses by pedantically written grammars, full of the
queerest and most arid metaphysical and philological
verbiage. The very English in which these deplorable
books are composed may be scientific, may be compre-
hensible by and useful to philologists, but is utterly heart-
breaking to boys.
Philology might be made fascinating; the history of a
word, and of the processes by which its different forms,
in different senses, were developed, might be made as
interesting as any other story of events. But grammar
is not taught thus : boys are introduced to a jargon about
matters meaningless, and they are naturally as much
enchanted as if they were listening to a chimoera bombinans
in vacuo. The grammar, to them, is a mere buzz in a
chaos of nonsense. They have to learn the buzz by
rote ; and a pleasant process that is — a seductive initia-
tion into the mysteries. When they struggle so far as to
be allowed to try to read a piece of Greek prose, they are
only like the Marchioness in her experience of beer : she
once had a sip of it. Ten lines of Xenophon, narrating
how he marched so many parasangs and took breakfast,
do not amount to more than a very unrefreshing sip of
Greek. Nobody even tells the boys who Xenophon was,
HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK 323
what he did there, and what it was all about. Nobody
gives a brief and interesting sketch of the great march,
of its history and objects. The boys straggle along with
Xenophon, knowing not whence or whither:
"They stray through a desolate region.
And often are faint on the march."
One by one they fall out of the ranks ; they mutiny against
Xenophon ; they murmur against that commander ; they
desert his flag. They determine that anything is better
than Greek, that nothing can be worse than Greek, and
they move the tender hearts of their parents. They are
put to learn German ; which they do not learn, unluckily,
but which they find it comparatively easy to shirk. In
brief, they leave school without having learned anything
whatever.
Up to a certain age my experiences at school were pre-
cisely those which I have described. Our grammar was
not so philological, abstruse and arid as the instruments
of torture employed at present. But I hated Greek with
a deadly and sickening hatred ; I hated it like a bully and
a thief of time. The verbs in /xl completed my intellect-
ual discomfiture, and Xenophon routed me with horrible
carnage. I could have run away to sea, but for a strong
impression that a life on the ocean wave "did not set my
genius," as Alan Breck says. Then we began to read
Homer ; and from the very first words, in which the Muse
is asked to sing the wrath of Achilles, Peleus' son, my mind
was altered, and I was the devoted friend of Greek. Here
was something worth reading about ; here one knew where
one was ; here was the music of words, here were poetry,
pleasure, and life. We fortunately had a teacher (Dr.
Hodson) who was not wildly enthusiastic about grammar.
324 MODERN ESSAYS
He would set us long pieces of the Iliad or Odyssey to
learn, and, when the day's task was done, would make us
read on, adventuring ourselves in "the unseen," and con-
struing as gallantly as we might, without grammar or
dictionary. On the following day we surveyed more care-
fully the ground we had pioneered or skirmished over,
and then advanced again. Thus, to change the metaphor,
we took Homer in large draughts, not in sips : in sips no
epic can be enjoyed. We now revelled in Homer like
Keats in Spenser, like young horses let loose in a pasture.
The result was not the making of many accurate scholars,
though a few were made ; others got nothing better than
enjoyment in their work, and the firm belief, opposed to
that of most schoolboys, that the ancients did not write
nonsense. To love Homer, as Steele said about loving a
fair lady of quality, "is a liberal education."
Judging from this example, I venture verj^ humbly to
think that any one who, ev^en at the age of Cato, wants to
learn Greek, should begin where Greek literature, where
all profane literature begins — with Homer himself. It
was thus, not with grammars in vacuo, that the great
scholars of the Renaissance began. It was thus that
Ascham and Rabelais began, by jumping into Greek and
splashing about till they learned to swim. First, of
course, a person must learn the Greek characters. Then
his or her tutor may make him read a dozen lines of
Homer, marking the cadence, the surge and thunder of the
hexameters — a music which, like that of the Sirens, few
can hear without being lured to the seas and isles of song.
Then the tutor might translate a passage of moving in-
terest, like Priam's appeal to Achilles; first, of course,
explaining the situation. Then the teacher might go
over some lines, minutely pointing out how the Greek
HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK 325
words are etymologically connected with many words in
English. Next, he might take a substantive and a verb,
showing roughly how their inflections arose and were
developed, and how they retain forms in Homer which
do not occur in later Greek. There is no reason why
even this part of the lesson should be uninteresting. By
this time a pupil would know, more or less, where he was,
what Greek is, and what the Homeric poems are like. He
might thus believe from the first that there are good reasons
for knowing Greek ; that it is the key to many worlds of
life, of action, of beauty, of contemplation, of knowledge.
Then, after a few more exercises in Homer, the grammar
being judiciously worked in along with the literature of
the epic, a teacher might discern whether it was worth
while for his pupils to continue in the study of Greek.
Homer would be their guide into the "realms of gold."
It is clear enough that Homer is the best guide. His is
the oldest extant Greek, his matter is the most various
and delightful, and most appeals to the young, who are
wearied by scraps of Xenophon, and who cannot be
expected to understand the Tragedians. But Homer is a
poet for all ages, all races, and all moods. To the Greeks
the epics were not only the best of romances, the richest
of poetry ; not only their oldest documents about their
own history, — they were also their Bible, their treasury
of religious traditions and moral teaching. With the Bible
and Shakespeare, the Homeric poems are the best training
for life. There is no good quality that they lack : manli-
ness, courage, reverence for old age and for the hospitable
hearth ; justice, piety, pity, a brave attitude towards life
and death, are all conspicuous in Homer. He has to write
of battles ; and he delights in the joy of battle, and in all
the movement of war. Yet he delights not less, but more,
326 MODERN ESSAYS
in peace : in prosperous cities, hearths secure, in the tender
beauty of children, in the love of wedded wives, in the
frank nobility of maidens, in the beauty of earth and sky
and sea, and seaward murmuring river, in sun and snow,
frost and mist and rain, in the whispered talk of boy and
girl beneath oak and pine tree.
Living in an age where every man was a warrior, where
every city might know the worst of sack and fire, where
the noblest ladies might be led away for slaves, to light
the fire and make the bed of a foreign master, Homer
inevitably regards life as a battle. To each man on earth
comes "the wicked day of destiny," as Malory uncon-
sciously translates it, and each man must face it as hardily
as he may.
Homer encourages them by all the maxims of chivalry
and honour. His heart is with the brave of either side —
with Glaucus and Sarpedon of Lycia no less than with
Achilles and Patroclus. "Ah, friend," cries Sarpedon,
"if once escaped from this battle we were for ever to be
ageless and immortal, neither would I myself fight now in
the foremost ranks, neither would I urge thee into the wars
that give renown ; but now — for assuredly ten thousand
fates of death on every side beset us, and these may no
man shun, nor none avoid — forward now let us go,
whether we are to give glory or to win it !" And forth
they go, to give and take renown and death, all the shields
and helms of Lycia shining behind them, through the dust
of battle, the singing of the arrows, the hurtling of spears,
the rain of stones from the Locrian slings. And shields are
smitten, and chariot horses run wild with no man to drive
them, and Sarpedon drags down a portion of the Achaean
battlement, and Aias leaps into the trench with his
deadly spear, and the whole battle shifts and shines be-
HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK 327
neath the sun. Yet he who sings of the war, and sees it
with his sightless eyes, sees also the Trojan women work-
ing at the loom, cheating their anxious hearts with broidery
work of gold and scarlet, or raising the song to Athene, or
heating the bath for Hector, who never again may pass
within the gates of Troy. He sees the poor weaving
woman, weighing the wool, that she may not defraud her
employers, and yet may win bread for her children. He
sees the children, the golden head of Astyanax, his shrink-
ing from the splendour of the hero's helm. He sees the
child Odysseus, going with his father through the orchard,
and choosing out some apple trees "for his very own." It
is in the mouth of the ruthless Achilles, the fatal, the fated,
the swift-footed hero with the hands of death, that Homer
places the tenderest of his similes. "Wherefore weepest
thou, Patroclus, like a fond little maid, that runs by her
mother's side, praying her mother to take her up, snatch-
ing at her gown, and hindering her as she walks, and tear-
fully looking at her till her mother takes her up ? — like
her, Patroclus, dost thou softly weep."
This is what Chesterfield calls " the porter-like language
of Homer's heroes." Such are the moods of Homer, so
full of love of life and all things living, so rich in all human
sympathies, so readily moved when the great hound Argus
welcomes his master, whom none knew after twenty years,
but the hound knew him, and died in that welcome. With
all this love of the real, which makes him dwell so fondly
on every detail of armour, of implement, of art ; on the
divers-coloured gold-work of the shield, on the making
of tires for chariot- wheels, on the forging of iron, on the
rose-tinted ivory of the Sidonians, on cooking and eating
and sacrificing, on pet dogs, on wasps and their ways,
on fishing, on the boar hunt, on scenes in baths where fair
328 MODERN ESSAYS
maidens lave water over the heroes, on undiscovered
isles with good harbours and rich land, on ploughing,
mowing, and sowing, on the furniture of houses, on the
golden vases wherein the white dust of the dead is laid, —
with all this delight in the real, Homer is the most romantic
of poets. He walks with the surest foot in the darkling
realm of dread Persephone, beneath the poplars on the
solemn last beach of Ocean. He has heard the Siren's
music, and the song of Circe, chanting as she walks to
and fro, casting the golden shuttle through the loom of
gold. He enters the cave of the Man Eater; he knows
the unsunned land of the Cimmerians ; in the summer of
the North he has looked, from the fiord of the Lsestrygons,
on the Midnight Sun. He has dwelt on the floating isle of
yEolus, with its wall of bronze unbroken, and has sailed
on those Phseacian barks that need no help of helm or
oar, that fear no stress either of wind or tide, that come
and go and return obedient to a thought and silent as a
dream. He has seen the four maidens of Circe, daughters
of wells and woods, and of sacred streams. He is the
second-sighted man, and beholds the shroud that wraps
the living who are doomed, and the mystic dripping from
the walls of blood yet unshed. He has walked in the garden
closes of Phseacia, and looked on the face of gods who fare
thither, and watch flie weaving of the dance. He has
eaten the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, and from the
hand of Helen he brings us that Egyptian nepenthe which
puts all sorrow out of mind. His real world is as real
as that in Henry V., his enchanted isles are charmed
with the magic of the Tempest. His young wooers
are as insolent as Claudio, as flushed with youth ; his
beggar-men are brethren of Edie Ochiltree ; his Nausicaa is
sister to Rosalind, with a different charm of stately purity
HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK 329
in love. His enchantresses hold us yet with their sor-
ceries ; his Helen is very Beauty : she has all the sweetness
of ideal womanhood, and her repentance is without re-
morse. His Achilles is youth itself, glorious, cruel,
pitiful, splendid, and sad, ardent and loving, and con-
scious of its doom. Homer, in truth, is to be matched
only with Shakespeare, and of Shakespeare he has not the
occasional wilfulness, freakishness, and modish obscurity.
He is a poet all of gold, universal as humanity, simple
as childhood, musical now as the flow of liis own rivers,
now as the heavy plunging wave of his own Ocean.
Such, then, as far as weak words can speak of him, is
the first and greatest of poets. This is he whom English
boys are to be ignorant of, if Greek be ousted from our
schools, or are to know only in the distorting mirror of a
versified, or in the pale shadow of a prose translation.
Translations are good only as teachers to bring men to
Homer. English verse has no measure which even re-
motely suggests the various flow of the hexameter. Trans-
lators who employ verse give us a feeble Homer, dashed
with their own conceits, and moulded to their own style.
Translators who employ prose "tell the story without the
song," but, at least, they add no twopenny "beauties"
and cheap conceits of their own.
I venture to offer a few examples of original translation,
in which the mannerisms of poets who have, or have not,
translated Homer, are parodied, and, of course (except
in the case of Pope), exaggerated. The passage is the
speech of the Second-sighted Man, before the slaying of
the wooers in the hall : —
"Ah ! wretched men, what ill is this ye suffer ? In night are swathed
your heads, your faces, your knees ; and the voice of wailing is kindled,
and cheeks are wet with tears, and with blood drip the walls, and the
330 MODERN ESSAYS
fair main beams of the roof, and the porch is full of shadows, and full is
the courtyard, of ghosts that hasten hellward below the darkness, and
the sun has perished out of heaven, and an evil mist sweeps up over all."
So much for Homer. The first attempt at metrical
translation here given is meant to be in the manner of
Pope :
"Caitiffs!" he cried, "what heaven-directed blight
Involves each countenance with clouds of night !
What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews !
Why do the walls with gouts ensanguined ooze ?
The court is thronged with ghosts that 'neath the gloom
Seek Pluto's realm, and Dis's awful doom ;
In ebon curtains Phoebus hides his head.
And sable mist creeps upward from the dead."
This appears pretty bad, and nearly as un-Homeric as a
translation could possibly be. But Pope, aided by Broome
and Fenton, managed to be much less Homeric, much
more absurd, and infinitely more "classical" in the sense
in which Pope is classical :
"O race to death devote ! with Stygian shade
Each destined peer impending fates invade;
With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned ;
With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round :
Thick swarms the spacious hall with howling ghosts,
, To people Orcus and the burning coasts !
Nor gives the sun his golden orb to roll.
But universal night usurps the pole."
Who could have conjectured that even Pope would
wander away so far from his matchless original?
"Wretches!" cried Theoclymenus, the seer; and that
becomes, "O race to death devote!" "Your heads are
swathed in night," turns into "With Stygian shade each
destined peer" (peer is good !) "impending fates invade,"
where Homer says nothing about Styx nor peers. The
HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK 331
Latin Orcus takes the place of Erebus, and "the burning
coasts" are derived from modern popular theology.
The very grammar detains or defies the reader; is it
the sun that does not give his golden orb to roll, or who,
or what?
The only place where the latter-day Broome or Fenton
can flatter himself that he rivals Pope at his own game
is —
"What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews !"
This is, if possible, more classical than Pope's own —
"With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned."
But Pope nobly revindicates his unparalleled power of
translating funnily, when, in place of "the walls drip with
blood," he writes —
"With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round."
Homer does not appear to have been acquainted with
rubies ; but what of that ? And how noble, how eminently
worthy of Pope it is to add that the ghosts "howl" ! I
tried to make them gibber, but ghosts do gibber in Homer
(thought not in this passage), so Pope, Fenton, Broome,
and Co., make them howl.
No, Pope is not lightly to be rivalled by a modern trans-
lator. The following example, a far-off following of a
noted contemporary poet, may be left unsigned —
"Wretches, the bane hath befallen, the night and the blight of your sin
Sweeps like a shroud o'er the faces and limbs that were gladsome therein ;
And the dirge of the dead breaketh forth, and the faces of all men are
wet.
And the walls are besprinkled with blood, and the ghosts in the gateway
are met,
Ghosts in the court and the gateway are gathered. Hell opens her lips.
And the sun in his splendour is shrouded, and sickens in spasm of eclipse."
332 MODERN ESSAYS
The next is longer and slower : the poet has a difficulty
in telling his story :
"Wretches," he cried, "what doom is this? what night
CHngs like a face-cloth to the face of each, —
Sweeps like a shroud o'er knees and head ? for lo !
The windy wail of death is up, and tears
On every cheek are wet ; each shining wall
And beauteous interspace of beam and beam
Weeps tears of blood, and shadows in the door
Flicker, and fill the portals and the court —
Shadows of men that hellwards yearn — and now
The sun himself hath perished out of heaven.
And all the land is darkened with a mist."
That could never be mistaken for a version by the Lau-
reate, as perhaps any contemporary hack's works might
have been taken for Pope's. The difficulty, perhaps, lies
here : any one knows where to have Pope, any one knows
that he will evade the mot propre, though the precise
evasion he may select is hard to guess. But the Laureate
would keep close to his text, and yet would write like
himself, very beautifully, but not with an Homeric swift-
ness and strength. Who is to imitate him? As to Mr.
William Morris, he might be fabled to render 'A SeiAot
"niddering wights," but beyond that, conjecture is
baffled.^ Or is this the kind of thing ? —
"Niddering wights, wliat a bane do ye bear, for your knees in the night.
And your heads and your faces, are shrouded, and clamour that knows
not delight
Rings, and your cheeks are begrutten, and blood is besprent on the
walls.
Blood on the tapestry fair woven, and barrow-wights walk in the halls.
Fetches and wraiths of the chosen of the Norns, and the sun from the lift
Shudders, and over the midgarth and swan's bath the cloud-shadows
drift."
' Conjecture may cease, as Mr. Morris has translated the Odyssey.
HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK 333
It may be argued that, though this is perhaps a transla-
tion, it is not English, never was, and never will be. But
it is quite as like Homer as the performance of Pope.
Such as these, or not so very much better than these
as might be wished, are our efforts to translate Homer.
From Chapman to Avia, or Mr. William Morris, they are
all eminently conscientious, and erroneous, and futile.
Chapman makes Homer a fanciful, euphuistic, obscure,
and garrulous Elizabethan, but Chapman has fire. Pope
makes him a wit, spirited, occasionally noble, full of
points, and epigrams, and queer rococo conventionalisms.
Cowper makes him slow, lumbering, a Milton without the
music. Maginn makes him pipe an Irish jig : —
"Scarcely had she begun to wash
When she was aware of the grisly gash !"
Lord Derby makes him respectable and ponderous.
Lord Tennyson makes him not less, but certainly not
more, than Tennysonian. Homer, in the Laureate's few
fragments of experiment, is still a poet, but he is not
Homer. Mr. Morris, and Avia, make him Icelandic,
and archaistic, and hard to scan, though vigorous in his
fetters for all that. Bohn makes him a crib ; and of other
translators in prose it has been said with a humour which
one of them appreciates, that they render Homer into a
likeness of the Book of Mormon.
Homer is untranslatable. None of us can bend the
bow of Eurytus, and make the bow-string "ring sweetly
at the touch, like the swallow's song." The adventure
is never to be achieved ; and, if Greek is to be dismissed
from education, not the least of the sorrows that will
ensue is English ignorance of Homer,
HOMER AND HUMBUG ^
An Academic Discussion
BY
Stephen Leacock
Curiously similar in treatment, is Mr. Leacock's essay, as compared
with Lang's, but utterly different in content and in style. His thought
is as follows : although he has had the advantage of a classical training, he
regards it as useless ; to illustrate this uselessness, he writes two burlesque
translations ; his conclusion is that the classics are only primitive litera-
ture. Not only do both essayists use parodies as illustrations, they also
illustrate from their own individual experience. But whereas Lang is
serious and a trifle heavy, Mr. Leacock is humorous and consciously
popular. If Lang limits his audience by his pedantry, does not Mr.
Leacock limit his by his obviousness ? Is Mr. Leacock's attack stronger
than Lang's defense ?
The following discussion is of course only of interest to
scholars. But, as the public schools returns show that in
the United States there are now over a million coloured
scholars alone, the appeal is wide enough.
I do not mind confessing that for a long time past I have
been very sceptical about the classics. I was myself
trained as a classical scholar. It seemed the only thing
to do with me. I acquired such a singular facility in
handling Latin and Greek that I could take a page of
either of them, distinguish which it was by merely glancing
at it, and, with the help of a dictionary and a pair of com-
passes, whip off a translation of it in less than three hours.
1 From "Behind the Beyond," by permission of John Lane Co.
334
in\f .
HOMER AND HUMBUG 335
But I never got any pleasure from it. I lied about it.
At first, perhaps, I lied through vanity. Any coloured
scholar will understand the feeling. Later on I lied
through habit ; later still because, after all, the classics
were all that I had and so I valued them. I have seen
thus a deceived dog value a puj) with a broken leg, and a
pauper child nurse a dead doll with the sawdust out of it.
So I nursed my dead Homer and my broken Demosthenes
though I knew in my heart that there was more sawdust
in the stomach of one modern author than in the whole
lot of them. Observe, I am not saying which it is that
has it full of it.
So, as I say, I began to lie about the classics. I said
to people who knew no Greek that there was a sublimity,
a majesty about Homer which they could never hope to
grasp. I said it was like the sound of the sea beating
against the granite cliffs of the Ionian Esophagus : or
words to that effect. As for the truth of it, I might as
well have said that it was like the sound of a rum dis-
tillery running a night shift on half time. AX any rate
this is what I said about Homer, and when I spoke of
Pindar, — the dainty grace of his strophes, — and Aris-
tophanes, the delicious sallies of his wit, sally after sally,
each sally explained in a note calling it a sally — I managed
to suffuse my face with an animation which made it al- ^
most beautiful. X^'^s^
I admitted of course that Virgil in spite of his genius had
a hardness and a cold glitter which resembled rather the
brilliance of a cut diamond than the soft grace of a flower.
Certainly I admitted this : the mere admission of it
would knock the breath out of anyone who was arguing.
From such talks my friends went away sad. The con-
clusion was too cruel. It had all the cold logic of a
336 MODERN ESSAYS
syllogism (like that almost brutal form of argument so
ruucli admired in the Paraphernalia of Socrates). For
if: —
Virgil and Homer and Pindar had all this grace, and pith and these
sallies, —
And if I read Virgil and Homer and Pindar,
And if they only read Mrs. Wharton and Mrs. Humphrey Ward
Then where were they ?
So continued lying brought its own reward in the sense
of superiority and I lied more.
When I reflect that I have openly expressed regret, as a
personal matter, even in the presence of women, for the
missing books of Tacitus, and the entire loss of the Abaca-
dabra of Polyphemus of Syracuse, I can find no words in
which to beg for pardon. In reality I was just as
much worried over the loss of the ichthyosaurus. More,
indeed : I'd like to have seen it : but if the books Tacitus
lost were like those he didn't, I wouldn't.
I believe all scholars lie like this. An ancient friend
of mine, a clergyman, tells me that in Hesiod he finds a
peculiar grace that he doesn't find elsewhere. He's a
liar. That's all. Another man, in politics and in the
legislature, tells me that every night before going to bed
he reads over a page or two of Thucydides to keep his
mind fresh. Either he never goes to bed or he's a liar.
Doubly so : no one could read Greek at that frantic rate :
and anyway his mind isn't fresh. How could it be, he's
in the legislature. I don't object to this man talking
freely of the classics, but he ought to keep it for the voters.
My own opinion is that before he goes to bed he takes
whiskey : why call it Thucydides ?
I know there are solid arguments advanced in favour of
the classics. I often hear them from my colleagues. My
HOMER AND HUMBUG 337
friend the professor of Greek tells me that he truly be-
lieves the classics have made him what he is. This is a
very grave statement, if well founded. Indeed I have
heard the same argument from a great many Latin and
Greek scholars. They all claim, with some heat, that Latin
and Greek have practically made them what they are.
This damaging charge against the classics should not be
too readily accepted. In my opinion some of these men
would have been what they are, no matter what they were.
Be this as it may, I for my part bitterly regret the lies
I have told about my appreciation of Latin and Greek
literature. I am anxious to do what I can to set things
right. I am therefore engaged on, indeed have nearly
completed, a work which will enable all readers to judge
the matter for themselves. What I have done is a trans-
lation of all the great classics, not in the usual literal way
but- on a design that brings them into harmony with
modern life. I will explain what I mean in a minute.
The translation is intended to be within reach of every-
body. It is so designed that the entire set of volumes can
go on a shelf twenty-seven feet long, or even longer. The
first edition will be an edition de luxe bound in vellum,
or perhaps in buckskin, and sold at five hundred dollars.
It will be limited to five hundred copies and, of course,
sold only to the feeble minded. The next edition will be
the Literary Edition, sold to artists, authors, actors, and
contractors. After that will come the Boarding House
Edition, bound in board and paid for in the same way.
My plan is to so transpose the classical writers as to
give, not the literal translation word for word, but what is
really the modern equivalent. Let me give an odd sample
or two to show what I mean. Take the passage in the
First Book of Homer that describes Ajax the Greek dashing
z
338 MODERN ESSAYS
into the battle in front of Troy. Here is the way it runs
(as nearly as I remember), in the usual word for word
translation of the classroom, as done by the very best
j)rofessor, his spectacles glittering with the literary rapture
of it.
"Then he too Ajax on the one hand leaped (or possibly jumped)
into the fight wearing on the other hand, yes certainly a steel corselet
(or possibly a bronze under tunic) and on his head of course, yes without
doubt he had a helmet with a tossing plume taken from the mane (or
perhaps extracted from the tail) of some horse which once fed along the
banks of the Scamander (and it sees the herd and raises its head and
paws the ground) and in his hand a shield worth a hundred oxen and on
his knees too especially in particular greaves made by some cunning
artificer (or perhaps blacksmith) and he blows the fire and it is hot.
Thus Ajax leapt (or, better, was propelled from behind), into the fight."
Now that's grand stuff. There is no doubt of it.
There's a wonderful movement and force to it. You
can almost see it move, it goes so fast. But the modern
reader can't get it. It won't mean to him what it meant
to the early Greek. The setting, the costume, the scene
has all got to be changed in order to let the reader have a
real equivalent to judge just how good the Greek verse is.
In my translation I alter it just a little, not much but just
enough to give the passage a form that reproduces the
proper literary value of the verses, without losing anything
of the majesty. It describes, I may say, the Directors of
the American Industrial Stocks rushing into the Balkan
War Cloud. —
Then there came rushing to the shock of war
Mr. McNicoll of the C. P. R.
He wore suspenders and about his throat
High rose the collar of a sealskin coat.
He had on gaiters and he wore a tie,
He had his trousers buttoned good and high ;
HOMER AND HUMBUG 339
About his waist a woollen undervest
Bought from a sad-eyed farmer of the West.
(And every time he clips a sheep he sees
Some bloated plutocrat who ought to freeze).
Thus in the Stock Exchange he burst to view,
Leaped to the post, and shouted, "Ninety-two!"
There ! That's Homer, the real thing ! Just as it sounded
to the rude crowd of Greek peasants who sat in a ring
and guffawed at the rhymes and watched the minstrel
stamp it out into "feet" as he recited it !
Or let me take another example from the so-called Cata-
logue of the Ships that fills up nearly an entire book of
Homer. This famous passage names all the ships, one by
one, and names the chiefs who sailed on them, and names
the particular town or hill or valley that they came from.
It has been much admired. It has that same majesty of
style that has been brought to an even loftier pitch in
the New York Business Directory and the Cfty Telephone
Book. It runs along, as I recall it, something like this, —
"And first, indeed, oh yes, was the ship of Homistogetes the Spartan,
long and swift, having both its masts covered with cowhide and two"
rows of oars. And he, Homistogetes, was born of Hermogenes and
Ophthalmia and was at home in Syncope beside the fast flowing Paresis.
And after him came the ship of Preposterus the Eurasian, son of Oasis
and Hysteria," . . .
and so on endlessly.
Instead of this I substitute, with the permission of the
New York Central Railway, the official catalogue of their
locomotives taken almost word for word from the list
compiled by their superintendent of works. I admit that
he wrote in hot weather. Part of it runs : —
Out in the yard and steaming in the sun
Stands locomotive engine number forty-one ;
Seated beside the windows of the cab
G
340 MODERN ESSAYS
Are Pat McGaw and Peter James McNab.
Pat comes from Troy and Peter from Cohoes,
And when they pull the throttle off she goes ;
And as she vanishes there comes to view
Steam locomotive engine number forty-two.
Observe her mighty wheels, her easy roll.
With William J. Macarthy in control.
They say her engineer some time ago
Lived on a farm outside of Buffalo
Whereas his fireman, Henry Edward Foy,
Attended School in Springfield, Illinois.
Thus does the race of man decay or rot —
Some men can hold their jobs and some can not.
Please observe that if Homer had actually written that
last line it would have been quoted for a thousand years
as one of the deepest sayings ever said. Orators would
have rounded out their speeches with the majestic phrase,
quoted in sonorous and unintelligible Greek verse, "some
men can hold their jobs and some can not": essayists
would have begun their most scholarly dissertations with
the words, — "It has been finely said by Homer that (in
Greek) 'some men can hold their jobs'" : and the clergy
in mid-pathos of a funeral sermon would have raised their
eyes aloft and echoed "Some men can not" !
This is what I should like to do. I'd like to take a large
stone and write on it in very plain writing, —
"The classics are only primitive literature. They
belong in the same class as primitive machinery and primi-
tive music and primitive medicine," — and then throw
it through the windows of a University and hide behind
a fence to see the professors buzz ! !
ON THE CASE OF A CERTAIN MAN WHO IS
NEVER THOUGHT OF^
BY
William Graham Sumner
This brilliant essay by Professor Sumner illustrates the effective use
of the deductive structure. In two paragraphs defining who is the For-
gotten Man, the general principle is stated so fully that the reader un-
consciously accepts it. But once the reader has accepted this principle,
it is applied to the consideration of trades unions and temperance
legislation, with startling results. The essay, then, consists in the
statement of a general principle, followed by two illustrations. Just
as the form resolves itself into a simple arrangement, so the style is
simple. There is no attempt at rhetorical exaggeration, no appeal to
the emotions. It does read, and it is intended to read, as an ordinary
exercise of the logical faculty. This mathematical effect is gained by
the device of using the A and B that are associated in the mind with
school problems. And the brilliance of the essay lies in the apparent
inevitability with which the author reaches conclusions widely differing
from conventional views. Since the importance of the essay lies exactly
in these applications, actually the structure approaches the deductive
type.
The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy
or humanitarianism is this : A and B put their heads
together to decide what C shall be made to do for D,
The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological
point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter,
1 From "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other." Copyright, 1883,
by Harper and Brothers. Copyright, 1911, by Jeannie W. Sumner.
Also by permission of the Sumner Estate and of The Yale University Press.
341
342 MODERN ESSAYS
and his position, character, and interests, as well as the
ultimate effects on society through C's interests, are
entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man. For
once let us look him up and consider his case, for the
characteristic of all social doctors is, that they fix their
minds on some man or group of men whose case appeals
to the sympathies and the imagination, and they plan
remedies addressed to the particular trouble ; they do not
understand that all the parts of society hold together, and
that forces which are set in action act and react throughout
the whole organism, until an equilibrium is produced by a
re-adjustment of all interests and rights. They therefore
ignore entirely the source from which they must draw all
the energy which they employ in their remedies, and they
ignore all the effects on other members of society than the
ones they have in view. They are always under the
dominion of the superstition of government, and, for-
getting that a government produces nothing at all, they
leave out of sight the first fact to be remembered in all
social discussion — that the State cannot get a cent for
any man without taking it from some other man, and
this latter must be a man who has produced and saved it.
This latter is the Forgotten Man.
The friends of humanity start out with certain benevo-
lent feelings toward "the poor," "the weak," "the
laborers," and others of whom they make pets. They
generalize these classes, and render them impersonal, and
so constitute the classes into social pets. They turn to
other classes and appeal to sympathy and generosity,
and to all the other noble sentiments of the human heart.
Action in the line proposed consists in a transfer of capi-
tal from the better off to the worse off. Capital, how-
ever, as we have seen, is the force by which civilization
THE CASE OF A CERTAIN MAN 343
is maintained and carried on. The same piece of capital
cannot be used in two ways. Every bit of capital, there-
fore, which is given to a shiftless and inefficient member
of society, who makes no return for it, is diverted from a
reproductive use ; but if it was put to reproductive use, it
would have to be granted in wages to an efficient and
productive laborer. Hence the real sufferer by that kind
of benevolence which consists in an expenditure of capital
to protect the good-for-nothing is the industrious laborer.
The latter, however, is never thought of in this connection.
It is assumed that he is provided for and out of the account.
Such a notion only shows how little true notions of political
economy have as yet become popularized. There is an
almost invincible prejudice that a man who gives a dollar
to a beggar is generous and kind-hearted, but that a
man who refuses the beggar and puts the dollar in a
savings bank is stingy and mean. The former is putting
capital where it is very sure to be wasted, and where it
will be a kind of seed for a long succession of future dollars,
which must be wasted to ward off a greater strain on the
sympathies than would have been occasioned by a refusal
in the first place. Inasmuch as the dollar might have
been turned into capital and given to a laborer who, while
earning it, would have reproduced it, it must be regarded
as taken from the latter. When a millionnaire gives a
dollar to a beggar the gain of utility to the beggar is enor-
mous, and the loss of utility to the millionnaire is insig-
nificant. Generally the discussion is allowed to rest there.
But if the millionnaire makes capital of the dollar, it
must go upon the labor market, as a demand for pro-
ductive services. Hence there is another party in in-
terest — the person who supplies productive services.
There always are two parties. The second one is always
344 MODERN ESSAYS
the Forgotten Man, and any one who wants to truly
understand the matter in question must go and search
for the Forgotten Man. He will be found to be worthy,
industrious, independent, and self-supporting. He is not,
technically, "poor" or "weak"; he minds his own busi-
ness, and makes no complaint. Consequently the philan-
thropists never think of him, and trample on him.
We hear a great deal of schemes for "improving the
condition of the working-man." In the United States
the farther down we go in the grade of labor, the greater
is the advantage which the laborer has over the higher
classes. A hod-carrier or digger here can, by one day's
labor, command many times more days' labor of a car-
penter, surveyor, book-keeper, or doctor than an unskilled
laborer in Europe could command by one day's labor.
The same is true, in a less degree, of the carpenter, as
compared with the book-keeper, surveyor, and doctor.
This is why the United States is the great country for
the unskilled laborer. The economic conditions all favor
that class. There is a great continent to be subdued, and
there is a fertile soil available to labor, with scarcely any
need of capital. Hence the people who have the strong
arms have what is most needed, and, if it were not for
social consideration, higher education would not pay.
Such being the case, the working-man needs no improve-
ment in his condition except to be freed from the parasites
who are living on him. All schemes for patronizing "the
working classes" savor of condescension. They are
impertinent and out of place in this free democracy.
There is not, in fact, any such state of things or any such
relation as would make projects of this kind appropriate.
Such projects demoralize both parties, flattering the vanity
of one and undermining the self-respect of the other.
THE CASE OF A CERTAIN MAN 345
For our present purpose it is most important to notice
that if we lift any man up we must have a fulcrum, or
point of reaction. In society that means that to lift
one man up we push another down. The schemes for
improving the condition of the working classes interfere
in the competition of workmen with each other. The
beneficiaries are selected by favoritism, and are apt to be
those who have recommended themselves to the friends of
humanity by language or conduct which does not betoken
independence and energy. Those who suffer a corre-
sponding depression by the interference are the independent
and self-reliant, who once more are forgotten or passed
over ; and the friends of humanity once more appear, in
their zeal to help somebody, to be trampling on those who
are trying to help themselves.
Trades-unions adopt various devices for raising wages,
and those who give their time to philanthropy are in-
terested in these devices, and wish them success. They
fix their minds entirely on the workmen for the time being
in the trade, and do not take note of any other workmen
as interested in the matter. It is supposed that the fight
is between the workmen and their employers, and it is
believed that one can give sympathy in that contest to
the workmen without feeling responsibility for anything
farther. It is soon seen, however, that the employer adds
the trades-union and strike risk to the other risks of
his business, and settles down to it philosophically. If,
now, we go farther, we see that he takes it philosophically
because he has passed the loss along on the public. It
then appears that the public wealth has been diminished,
and that the danger of a trade war, like the danger of
a revolution, is a constant reduction of the well-being of
all. So far, however, we have seen only things which
346 MODERN ESSAYS
could lorcer wages — nothing which could raise them. The
employer is worried, but that does not raise wages. The
public loses, but the loss goes to cover extra risk, and that
does not raise wages.
A trades-union raises wages (aside from the legitimate
and economic means noticed in Chapter VI) by restricting
the number of apprentices who may be taken into the
trade. This device acts directly on the supply of laborers,
and that produces effects on wages. If, however, the
number of apprentices is limited, some are kept out who
want to get in. Those who are in have, therefore, made a
monopoly, and constituted themselves a privileged class
on a basis exactly analogous to that of the old privileged
aristocracies. But whatever is gained by this arrangement
for those who are in is won at a greater loss to those who
are kept out. Hence it is not upon the masters nor upon
the public that trades-unions exert the pressure by which
they raise wages ; it is upon other persons of the labor
class who want to get into the trades, but, not being able
to do so, are pushed down into the unskilled labor class.
These persons, however, are passed by entirely without
notice in all the discussions about trades-unions. They
are the Forgotten Men. But, since they want to get into
the trade and win their living in it, it is fair to suppose
that they are fit for it, would succeed at it, would do well
for themselves and society in it ; that is to say, that, of all
persons interested or concerned, they most deserve our
sympathy and attention.
The cases already mentioned involve no legislation.
Society, however, maintains police, sheriffs, and various
institutions, the object of which is to protect people
against themselves — that is, against their own vices.
Almost all legislative effort to prevent vice is really pro-
THE CASE OF A CERTAIN MAN 347
tective of vice, because all such legislation saves the
vicious man from the penalty of his vice. Nature's
remedies against vice are terrible. She removes the vic-
tims without pity. A drunkard in the gutter is just where
he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of
things. Nature has set up on him the process of decline
and dissolution by which she removes things which have
survived their usefulness. Gambling and other less
mentionable vices carry their own penalties with them.
Now, we never can annihilate a penalty. We can only
divert it from the head of the man who has incurred it
to the heads of others who have not incurred it. A vast
amount of "social reform" consists in just this operation.
The consequence is that those who have gone astray,
being relieved from Nature's fierce discipline, go on
to worse, and that there is a constantly heavier burden
for the others to bear. Who are the others .-^ When
we see a drunkard in the gutter we pity him.
If a policeman picks him up, we say that society
has interfered to save him from perishing. "Society"
is a fine word, and it saves us the trouble of thinking.
The industrious and sober workman, who is mulcted of a
percentage of his day's wages to pay the policeman, is
the one who bears the penalty. But he is the Forgotten
Man. He passes by and is never noticed, because he has
behaved himself, fulfilled his contracts, and asked for
nothing.
The fallacy of all prohibitory, sumptuary, and moral
legislation is the same. A and B determine to be tee-
totalers, which is often a wise determination, and some-
times a necessary one. If A and B are moved by con-
siderations which seem to them good, that is enough.
But A and B put their heads together to get a law passed
348 MODERN ESSAYS
which shall force C to be a teetotaler for the sake of D,
who is in danger of drinking too much. There is no pres-
sure on A and B. They are having their own way, and
they like it. There is rarely any pressure on D. He
does not like it, and evades it. The pressure all conies on
C. The question then arises, Who is C ? He is the man
who wants alcoholic liquors for any honest purpose what-
soever, who would use his liberty without abusing it,
who would occasion no public question, and trouble
nobody at all. He is the Forgotten Man again, and as
soon as he is drawn from his obscurity we see that he is just
what each one of us ought to be.
THE TRAINING OF INTELLECT ^
BY
WooDROw Wilson
(From a Stenographic Report)
In any work it is the thought that is important. The attention of the
student should be directed to the ordering of that thought. That this is
true, not only of the written essay, but also of the spoken word, is illus-
trated by the following speech made by President Wilson, then President
of Princeton University, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Yale.
As the speech is taken avowedly from stenographic reports, the para-
graphing, as pertaining to the stenographer rather than to President
Wilson, may be disregarded. He opens, then, with a section purely
introductory, conforming to the accepted type of after-dinner speech.
Then follows the statement of the general principle that the function
of a university is to train the intellect. This is expanded and fully illus-
trated until the audience accepts it. Then, as in case of Professor
Sumner, the principle is applied in a number of cases, almost illustra-
tions. In which there is the greatest room for dissension. He closes
with an assertion of the principle. In form, therefore, it is very similar
to the preceding essay by Professor Sumner. As such it shows the range
and vividness of appeal of such a type.
Mr. Toastmaster, Mr. President, and Gentlemen :
— I certainly considered it a compliment to myself when
Mr. Phelps made the comparison he made a few moments
ago, but it was hardly a compliment to Princeton.
I do not feel that in coming to Yale I am coming among
strangers. I believe that a man who is accustomed to
' From The Yale Alumni Weekly for March 25, 1908, by permis-
sion of the editor.
349
350 MODERN ESSAYS
living among college men finds everywhere the same spirit,
the same atmosphere. I feel toward you as a friend of
mine felt toward an acquaintance who slapped him on the
back familiarly. He looked at the fellow coldly and said,
"I do not know your name, but your manners are very
familiar." And so I feel with regard to every college
gathering that their manners are familiar, but I also feel
that there is a quickness of mutual comprehension that is
very reassuring to a speaker. And then I feel particularly
at ease in appearing before a strange audience because
they have not heard my stories, and, moreover, because it
is not so difficult to maintain a boast of dignity where
you are not known as it is where you are known. When
I appear before a Princeton crowd and try to live up
to an introduction, I feel like the old woman who went
into the side show at the circus and saw a man reading a
newspaper through a two-inch board. "Let me out of
this place," she exclaimed, "this is no place for me to be
with these thin things on." I have an uncomfortable
feeling in such circumstances that the disguise is trans-
parent, but perhaps I can maintain a disguise for a little
while among you.
I must confess to you that I came here with very serious
thoughts this evening, because I have been laboring
under the conviction for a long time that the object of a
university is to educate, and I have not seen the universi-
ties of this country achieving any remarkable or disturb-
ing success in that direction. I have found everywhere
the note which I must say I have heard sounded once or
twice to-night — that apology for the intellectual side of
the university. You hear it at all universities. Learning
is on the defensive, is actually on the defensive, among
college men, and they are being asked by way of indulgence
THE TRAINING OF INTELLECT 351
to bring that also into the circle of their interests. Is it
not time we stopped asking indulgence for learning and
proclaimed its sovereignty? Is it not time we reminded
the college men of this country that they have no right
to any distinctive place in any community, unless they
can show it by intellectual achievement ? that if a
university is a place for distinction at all it must be dis-
tinguished by the conquests of the mind ? I for my part
tell you plainly that that is my motto, that I have
entered the field to fight for that thesis, and that for that
thesis only do I care to fight.
The toastmaster of the evening said, and said truly, that
this is the season when, for me, it was most difiicult to
break away from regular engagements in which I am in-
volved at this time of the year. But when I was invited to
the Phi Beta Kappa banquet it had an unusual sound,
and I felt that that was the particular kind of invitation
which it was my duty and privilege to accept, v One of
the problems of the American university now is how,
among a great many other competing interests, to give
places of distinction to men who want places of distinction
in the classroom. Why don't we give you men the Y
here and the P at Princeton, because after all you have
done the particular thing which distinguishes Yale?
Not that these other things are not worth doing, but they
may be done anywhere. They may be done in athletic
clubs where there is no study, but this thing can be done
only here. This is the distinctive mark of the place.
A good many years ago, just two weeks before the mid-
year examinations, the Faculty of Princeton was foolish
enough to permit a very unwise evangelist to come to the
place and to upset the town. And while an assisting
undergraduate was going from room to room one under-
^
352 MODERN ESSAYS
graduate secured his door and put this notice out, "I am a
Christian and am studying for examinations." Now I
want to say that that is exactly what a Christian under-
graduate would be doing at that time of the year. He
would not be attending religious meetings no matter
how beneficial it would be to him. He would be studying
for examinations not merely for the purpose of passing
them, but from his sense of duty.
We get a good many men at Princeton from certain
secondary schools who say a great deal about their earnest
desire to cultivate character among our students, and I
hear a great deal about character being the object of edu-
cation. I take leave to believe that a man who cultivates
his character consciously will cultivate nothing except
what will make him intolerable to his fellow men. If
your object in life is to make a fine fellow of yourself,
you will not succeed, and you will not be acceptable to
really fine fellows. Character, gentlemen, is a by-product.
It comes, whether you will or not, as a consequence of a
life devoted to the nearest duty, and the place in which
character would be cultivated, if it be a place of study, is a
place where study is the object and character the results.
Not long ago a gentleman approached me in great
excitement just after the entrance examinations. He said
we had made a great mistake in not taking so and so from
a certain school which he named. "But," I said, "he did
not pass the entrance examinations." And he went over
the boy's moral excellencies again. "Pardon me," I
said, "you do not understand. He did not pass the en-
trance examinations. Now," I said, "I want you to
understand that if the Angel Gabriel applied for admission
to Princeton University and could not pass the entrance
examinations, he would not be admitted. He would be
THE TRAINING OF INTELLECT 353
wasting his time." It seemed a new idea to liim. This
boy had come from a school which cultivated character,
and he was a nice, lovable fellow with a presentable
character. Therefore, he ought to be admitted to any
university. I fail to see it from this point of view, for a
university is an institution of purpose. We have in some
previous years had pity for young gentlemen who were
not sufficiently acquainted with the elements of a pre-
paratory course. They have been dropped at the examina-
tions, and I have always felt that we have been guilty of
an offense, and have made their parents spend money to no
avail and the youngsters spend their time to no avail.
And so I think that all university men ought to rouse them-
selves now and understand what is the object of a univer-
sity. The object of a university is intellect ; as a univer-
sity its only object is intellect. As a body of young men
there ought to be other things, there ought to be diversions
to release them from the constant strain of effort, there
ought to be things that gladden the heart and moments
of leisure, but as a university the only object is intellect.
The reason why I chose the subject that I am permitted
to speak upon to-night — the function of scholarship —
was that I wanted to point out the function of scholarship
not merely in the university but in the nation. In a
country constituted as ours is the relation in which educa-
tion stands is a very important one. Our whole theory has
been based upon an enlightened citizenship and therefore
the function of scholarship must be for the nation as well
as for the university itself. I mean the function of
such scholarship as undergraduates get. That is not
a violent amount in any case. You cannot make a
scholar of a man except by some largeness of Providence
in his makeup, by the time he is twenty-one or twenty-
2a
354 MODERN ESSAYS
two years of age. There have been gentlemen who have
made a reputation by twenty-one or twenty -two, but it is
generally in some little province of knowledge, so small that
a small effort can conquer it. You do not make scholars
by that time, you do not often make scholars by seventy
that are worth boasting of. The process of scholarship,
so far as the real scholar is concerned, is an unending
process, and knowledge is pushed forward only a very
little by his best efforts. And it is evident, of course, that
the most you can contribute to a man in his undergraduate
years is not equipment in the exact knowledge which is
characteristic of the scholar, but an inspiration of the
spirit of scholarship. The most that you can give a
youngster is the spirit of the scholar.
Now the spirit of the scholar in a country like ours
must be a spirit related to the national life. It cannot,
therefore, be a spirit of pedantry. I suppose that this
is a sufficient working conception of pedantry to say that
it is knowledge divorced from life. It is knowledge so
closeted, so desecrated, so stripped of the significances of
life itself, that it is a thing apart and not connected with
the vital processes in the world about us.
/^ There is a great place in every nation for the spirit of
/ scholarship, and it seems to me that there never was a
time when the spirit of scholarship w^as more needed in
afTairs than it is in this country at this time.
We are thinking just now with our emotions and not with
our minds, we are moved by impulse and not by judgment.
We are drawing away from things with blind antipathy.
The spirit of knowledge is that you must base your con-
clusions on adequate grounds. Make sure that you are
going to the real sources of knowledge, discovering what the
real facts are before you move forward to the next process,
THE TRAINING OF INTELLECT 355
which is the process of clear thinking. By clear thinking I
do not mean logical thinking. I do not mean that life
is based upon any logical system whatever. Life is essen-
tially illogical. The world is governed now by a tumultuous
sea of commonalities made up of passions, and we should
pray God that the good passions should out-vote the bad
passions. But the movement of impulse, of motive, is
the stuff of passion, and therefore clear thinking about life
is not logical, symmetrical thinking, but it is interpretative
thinking, thinking that sees the secret motive of things,
thinking that penetrates deepest places where are the
pulses of life.
Now scholarship ought to lay these impulses bare just
as the physician can lay bare the seat of life in our bodies.
That is not scholarship which goes to work upon the mere
formal pedantry of logical reasoning, but that is scholarship
which searches for the heart of man. The spirit of scholar-
ship gives us catholicity of thinking, the readiness to under-
stand that there will constantly swing into our ken new
items not dreamed of in our systems of philosophy, not
simply to draw our conclusions from the data that we have
had, but that all this is under constant mutation, and that
therefore new phases of life will come upon us and a new
adjustment of our conclusions will be necessary. Our
thinking must be detached and disinterested thinking.
The particular objection that I have to the under-
^graduate forming his course of study on his future profes-
sion is this — that from start to finish, from the time
1 he enters the university until he finishes his career, his
thought will be centered upon particular interests. He will
be immersed in the things that touch his profit and loss,
and a man is not free to think inside that territory. If
his bread and butter is going to be affected, if he is always
356 MODERN ESSAYS
thinking in the terms of his own profession, he is not think-
ing for the nation. He is thinking for himself, and whether
he be conscious of it or not, he can never throw these
_^trammels off. He will only think as a doctor, or a lawyer,
or a banker. He will not be free in the world of knowledge
and in the circle of interests which make up the great
citizenship of the country. It is necessary that the spirit
of scholarship should be a detached, disinterested spirit,
not immersed in a particular interest. That is the func-
tion of scholarship in a country like ours, to supply, not
heat, but_Jight, to suffuse things with the calm radiance
of reason, to see to it that men do not act hastily, but that
they act considerately, that they obey the truth whether
they know it or not. The fault of our age is the fault
of hasty action, of premature judgments, of a preference
for ill-considered action over no action at all. Men who
insist upon standing still and doing a little thinking be-
fore they do any acting are called reactionaries. They
want actually to react to a state in which they can be
allowed to think. They want for a little while to with-
draw from the turmoil of party controversy and see where
they stand before they commit themselves and their country
to action from which it may not be possible to withdraw.
The whole fault of the modern age is that it applies to
everything a false standard of efficiency. Efficiency with
us is accomplishment, whether the accomplishment be by
just and well-considered means or not ; and this standard
of achievement it is that is debasing the morals of our age,
the intellectual morals of our age. We do not stop to
do things thoroughly ; we do not stop to know why we do
things. We see an error and we hastily correct it by a
greater error ; and then go on to cry that the age is
corrupt.
THE TRAINING OF INTELLECT 357
And so it is, gentlemen, that I try to join the function
of the university with the great function of the national
life. The life of this country is going to be revolutionized
and purified only when the universities of this country
wake up to the fact that their only reason for existing is
intellect, that the objects that I have set forth, so far
as undergraduate life is concerned, are the only legiti-
mate objects. And every man should crave for his uni-
versity primacy in these things, primacy in other things
also if they may be brought in without enmity to it,
but the sacrifice of everything that stands in the way
of that.
For my part, I do not believe that it is athleticism which
stands in the way. Athletics have been associated with
the achievements of the mind in many a successful civiliza-
tion. There is no difficulty in uniting vigor of body with
achievement of mind, but there is a good deal of difficulty
in uniting the achievement of the mind with a thousand
distracting social influences, which take up all our ambi-
tions, which absorb all our thoughts, which lead to all
our arrangements of life, and then leave the university
authorities the residuum of our attention, after we are
through with the things that we are interested in. We
absolutely changed the whole course of study at Princeton
and revolutionized the methods of instruction without
rousing a ripple on the surface of the alumni. They
said those things are intellectual, they were our business.
But just as soon as we thought to touch the social part of
the university, there was not only a ripple, but the whole
body was torn to its depths. We had touched the real
things. These lay in triumphal competition with the
province of the mind, and men's attention was so ab-
solutely absorbed in these things that it was impossible
358 MODERN ESSAYS
for us to get their interest enlisted on the real undertakings
of the university itself.
Now that is true of every university that I know any-
thing about in this country, and if the Faculties in this
country want to recapture the ground that they have
lost, they must begin pretty soon, and they must go into
the battle with their bridges burned behind them so that
it will be of no avail to retreat. If I had a voice to which
the university men of this country might listen, that is
the endeavor to which my ambition would lead me to
call.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF AUTHORS ^
BY
Sir Oliver Lodge
The utility of the deductive form may be illustrated also by this essay
of Sir Oliver Lodge. As the footnote states, the question to be discussed
was in regard to the value of a censorship over books. Against this,
the author wishes to make a definite convincing protest. His last sen-
tence gives the important conclusion that he wishes his readers to adopt.
Every paragraph and every sentence in the essay is chosen with this last
dominating sentence in mind. He begins, however, with a generaliza-
tion that is so accepted that it is a platitude. "A work of literature is a
real work of creation"; there is nothing here that can be objected to
by any one. But if the reader grants this, by careful deduction he shows
step by step that the final thought that censorship is undesirable, is
the inevitable conclusion. The process by which he passes from the first
to the second is therefore worthy of careful study.
A WORK of literature is a real work of creation. Authors
must often have felt that their characters had a will of
their own, that they would not always do what was ex-
pected of them, that they took the bit between their
, teeth sometimes, that they were not puppets. Persons
in a book or drama ought not to be puppets, and should
not be "put back in the box" ; nor must they be forcibly
^ An address to the Society of Authors in 1909 in special connection
with a proposed Library censorship, whereby, if any three Librarians
agreed that a book in course of publication was undesirable, it would
be forbidden at all circulating libraries.
Reprinted from "Modern Problems," by permission of George H.
Doran Co.
359
360 MODERN ESSAYS
coerced by their creator to a predestined end independ-
ent of their character and conduct. If they have been
properly created they have a real existence of their own,
an existence for which the author is responsible, and a
certain amount of free will and independence of action.
Coercion to a predestined end is bad art. If that state-
ment is true it is important. It affects the doctrine of
predestination. A good work of art throws light on many
problems of existence. For instance, the old and funda-
mental question, "Why is there any pain and sorrow in
the world?" can be answered from this point of view.
For it is a familiar fact that pain and sorrow are not kept
out of a work of art designed and created by man. Why
not? Why make trouble and pain artificially, over and
above what inevitably exists ? Because they are felt to
be necessary, because they serve a useful end ; they
rescue existence from insipidity, they furnish scope for
the exercise of human functions, — - their endurance is
justified, and felt to be "worth while."
King Lear, for instance, is a work of pain and sorrow
and beauty. To achieve the beauty the pain was neces-
sary, and its creator thought it worth while. He would
not have it otherwise, nor would we. So it is in real life.
Creation is "good," even "very good," but not perfect.
We are still living amid imperfections ; there is always
room for improvement. Why is there any imperfection?
Because without it evolution and progress, of the high kind
which we are privileged to take part in, could not go on.
Creation of free and responsible beings, who go right not
by compulsion but because they choose, who move for-
ward not because they must but because they will, cannot
be an easy task — may we not venture to say that it
must be a strenuous task ? — even to Omnipotence,
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF AUTHORS 3G1
Every worthy achievement demands certain conditions ;
and one of those conditions is toil and effort. The effort
of Creation is surely a real effort. Difficulty is a necessary
sequel to the gift of Freedom.
The construction of the physical universe, the inter-
locking of atoms and ether that we study in the material
sciences, is beautiful and wonderful in the extreme ;
but it is all a kind of intricate, and high-grade machinery
— perfectly obedient, strictly under control, never re-
bellious. So, though vastly beyond and above mecha-
nism arranged by man, it is not hopelessly and unthink-
ably of a different kind, — saving always for the unthink-
able problem of existence itself. But with the in-
troduction of life and mind and will, difficulties of a
superlatively higher order begin. The possibility of
things going wrong, not through oversight but through
active mutiny and rebellion, the possibility of real vice,
can no longer be ignored. Compulsion might be easy, but
the introduction of compulsion would be a breaking of
the rules — an abandonment of the problem. The state
of the world is surely as good as it has been possible
to make it — given the conditions, — and exliibits in-
finitely more promise for the future than any mechanically
perfect system could sustain ; else it were blasphemy to
say that there was ever imperfection, else the struggle for
existence were a fiction and a sham.
There is undoubtedly a struggle, but there is also much
joy, — the joy of achievement sometimes, the joy of
preparation always. The joy of achieved existence mani-
fests itself in beauty. Life is pressing forward amid
troubles and trials, pressing forward to realize itself, to
blossom and bud like a briar among ruins, even amid hard-
ship and decay, — because — because existence is worth
362 MODERN ESSAYS
its price. Seen in this light the present pain and sorrow
lend themselves to Optimism. How splendid must the
future of the race be, if all this trouble and all the millions
of years of preparation that science tells us of, were needed
as its prelude ! Each step is presumably essential, as it is
in a good work of art. Nothing is there wasted — each
word, each scene, each act, tells. So I assume it to be
with real existence; each step, however painful it may
be, is an essential part of the whole.
So an extraordinary responsibility belongs to the artists
of the pen. They represent the truth of the present age to
itself and to the future : and not only do they represent it,
they also prepare the way and to some extent determine
what the future shall be. The influence exerted on the
living generation by those writers who have its ear, and
to whom it listens, must be incalculable. No wonder that
an effort is made from time to time to check and control
the distribution of the works produced. People of very
different ages exist in the world, and not everything is
wholesome at every age. Vicious people also exist, and
it behoves parents and guardians to exercise some super-
vision — as much as they may think wise.
Nevertheless, freedom is essential to literature and the
other arts ; and their essential freedom must not be jeop-
ardized because of some slatternly and opprobrious stuff
which presumes to masquerade under a sacred title.
Everything on earth can be misused, and the divinest gift
can be prostituted ; parents and guardians may properly
feel responsibility, but they must not attempt to shift it
to the shoulders of others. The danger may easily be
exaggerated ; ^nd, whatever the danger, it gives no justi-
fication for a hasty trade-sifting process applied to works
issued by reputable publishing houses and to the writings
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF AUTHORS 363
of sane andsresponsible authors. Coddling of that kind,
even if practicable, would defeat its own end. Youth
cannot be isolated and kept sound and sweet by means
such as these. A robust is better than an anaemic virtue ;
and, from the Garden of Eden downwards, though a
warning is issued against forbidden fruit, the tree on which
it grows is not the tree which by decree of Providence is
made impossible of access.
The gentlemen who own circulating libraries have
realized what they think is their responsibility in this
matter, and they very properly decline to circulate any-
thing they think vicious — they desire to issue only good
literature ; but unfortunately the outcome of this whole-
some desire has taken the impracticable form of a scheme for
hasty amateur censorship of literary production generally.
Such a scheme must be futile. A censorship of the Press
by the State — if an attempt were made to reintroduce
that — might indeed be a serious thing , against which it
would be necessary to invoke the shade of Milton and to
quote the Areopagitica. Indeed, the utterances of that
mighty artist, who must be credited with a sympathetic
attitude to all that is reasonable in the Puritan position —
are so germane to the supposed need for censorship gener-
ally, that I shall not refrain from a few extracts : —
"For though licensers should happen to be judicious more than
ordinary, which will be a great jeopardy of the next succession, yet
their very office . . . enjoins them to let pass nothing but what is vul-
garly received already. . . .
"If there be found in his book one sentence of a venturous edge,
uttered in the height of zeal (and who knows whether it might not be the
dictate of a divine spirit ?), yet, not suiting with every low decrepit
humour of their own, though it were Knox himself, the reformer of a
kingdom, that spake it, they will not pardon him their dash ; the sense
of that great man shall to all posterity be lost, for the fearfulness, or the
presumptuous rashness of a perfunctory licenser. . . .
364 MODERN ESSAYS
"... Wisdom we cannot call it, because it stops but one breach
of license — nor that neither : whenas those corruptions which it seeks to
prevent, break in faster at other doors, which cannot be shut. ... It
cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue. . . .
"We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against
the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man,
preserved and stored up in books ; since we see a kind of homicide may
be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the
whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not
in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth
essence, the breath of reason itself ; slays an immortality rather than a
life."
Censorship of the Press was not slain by Milton's attack ;
it survived and presumably flourished during the pro-
ductive era of the Restoration ; but, its impotence having
become manifest, it perished some fifty years after Milton's
death.
Censorship of the drama, oddly enough, we are living
under now ; and though comic in its manner and execution,
it is yet serious in its effect and outcome. It has prevailed
to stop some good work ; it does not avail to stop the
foolish and the bad, but it stops some of the good — that is
what censorship always does — and a censorship by a
combination of circulating librarians cannot hope to
achieve anything better. It can perturb the freedom of
production in the literature of to-day ; but over the
literature of yesterday no one imagines that it has^any
control. The writers of the past have the freedom which
it is proposed to deny to the writers of the present. Thus
some good work has anyhow escaped destruction. There
may be tares among the wheat — quite true — no doubt
there are ; but we have been warned against the danger
of prematurely uprooting tares, lest we uproot the wheat
also. It is safer to let both grow together. Fortunately
the good has a longer life than the bad, and will survive
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF AUTHORS 365
and be full of influence long after the rubbish has re-
treated to its proper obscurity.
" But of the harm that may result hence . . . first is feared the infec-
tion that may spread ; but then all human learning and controversy in
religious points must remove out of the world, yea, the Bible itself."
If some now universally recognized works of literature —
let us say if the classic novels of Henry Fielding — were
to be brought out to-day, they would surely under the
proposed arrangement be banned. As it is, they can be
bought anywhere for a trifling sum. There was some
outcry, I remember, about Kingsley's Hypatia — amazing
as the fact sounds now. Yes, and Adam Bede, too, was
objected to by some. In my youth Jane Eyre was a book
half forbidden.
Here is part of a letter from Kingsley to Bishop Wilber-
force on the subject of Hypatia so late as 1873 : —
"Your letter, I say, touched me deeply, and all the more, because it
came from one who had been a sailor. But your kind words about
Hypatia touched me more than those about Westward Ho ! ; for the former
book was written with my heart's blood, and was received, as I expected,
with curses from many of the very Churchmen whom I was trying to
warn and save. Yet I think the book did good. I know that it has not
hurt me, save, perhaps, in that ecclesiastical career to which I have never
aspired."
At a time much earlier, in 1851, when Yeast appeared,
it was received with a torrent of hostile criticism, which
though partly clerical and political, was damaging not
only to a clergyman but to any reputable citizen. Here, for
instance, is an extract from The Guardian of that date: — '
"A man in the position of the author of Alton LocJce (if he be the writer)
commits a grave offence when he publishes such a book as this. Pro-
fessing to aim at religious earnestness and high morality, its tendencies
are really to the destruction of both. ... It is the countenance the
366 MODERN ESSAYS
writer gives to the worst tendencies of the day, and the manner in which
he conceals loose morality in a dress of high-sounding and philosophical
phraseology, which calls for plain and decided condemnation. . . . Doc-
trines, however consecrated by the faith of ages, practices, however
recommended by the lives of saints, or the authority of wise and good
men, are to be despised if they interfere with what he thinks the full de-
velopment of our nature, tend to check the wildest speculations of the
intellect, or even to restrain (if we understand the teaching of his char-
acter) the most entire indulgence of the passions."
And so on, with sentences in which the phrases "youthful
profligacy," "selfish gratification," "impure philosophy,"
sufficiently exhibit the charges made.
Indeed, such was the agitation about Kingsley's con-
scientious utterances at that time that he was actually
forbidden by the Bishop of London to preach in London,
until the Bishop had had an opportunity of looking into
the matter.
A poem of Clough's, too, seems to have been attacked ;
for we find Kingsley writing to a friend in the following
strongly worded style in 1848 : —
"As for Clough's poem. I am game to 'go in' fiercely against all
Manicheans, Hermann-and-Dorothea-formalists, and other unclean
beasts, to prove that Clough knows best what he wants to say, and how ;
and that taking the poem inductively, and not a priori (as the world, the
flesh, and the devil take works of art), there is a true honest harmony,
and a genial life in it, as of a man who, seeing things as they were, and
believing that God and not 'taste' or the devil settles things, was not
ashamed to describe what he saw."
It is plain, then, that contemporary criticism may be
mistaken, and that a hasty censorship may commit much
injustice.
" But that a book, in worse condition than a peccant soul, should be to
stand before a jury ere it be born to the world, and undergo yet in darkness
the judgment of Radamanth and his colleagues, ere it can pass the ferry
backward into light, was never heard before."
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF AUTHORS 367
As to the accusation of "blasphemy," we can comfort
ourselves with the thought that the holiest saints in the
past did not escape that. "The Christian faith — for
that was once a schism!" The real adjective to apply-
in these cases is "unconventional" — contrary to accepted
convention — if that is what is meant ; then we should
know where we were. But this adjective is not suffi-
ciently strong and damaging to be injurious. It has even
been regarded as semi-complimentary ; consequently,
when Mr. Bernard Shaw magnanimously wished to
assist critics in applying opprobrious epithets to his own
plays, he suggested the use of the word "immoral" instead.
But such an application of this word would be merely
misleading and most unwise. The significance of the
term "unconventional" should be strengthened, till it
conveyed what was intended. The conventions of society
are quite useful things, the result of ages of experience,
and any conduct or writing that runs counter to them
must be prepared to stand the test of criticism and to
justify itself thoroughly ; but it should not be condemned
unheard.
The importance and responsibility of free criticism, too,
should be fully recognized ; and the social ostracism which
it can be the means of inflicting is the appropriate and
legitimate penalty for needlessly or prematurely infringing
the conventions of society. All good customs have their
day, and in due time will cease to be. Premature attacks,
like premature attacks in chess, are bound to fail. But,
every now and then, attacks upon conventions must be
made, and when the time is ripe will succeed. An open
and above-board attack is far better than one that skulks
in holes and corners, and it is best to permit things to be
said when they are seriously thought. That is why free-
368 MODERN ESSAYS
dom of the Press is so necessary and valuable, not only
as a reforming agency, but also as an outlet for malicious
humours, which else might accumulate in the body politic
and are better purged.
A writer or publisher who infringes the criminal law is
rightly liable to severe penalties, and thereafter to re-
striction ; but occasional abuses of this kind give no ade-
quate ground for curtailment of legitimate freedom.
Freedom is the noble and dangerous gift that has been
bestowed upon the human race — the power of choice
and full responsibility therefor. This responsibility al-
ready rests heavily on the shoulders of every artist, every
writer. Upon him has been bestowed the gift of insight
into life above his fellows. He can see what they see,
but he can see it more clearly ; he can see more and further
than they can. He cannot only see, he can say ; he has
the gift of utterance, and he is bound to utter what he
seriously feels to be his message. There were times when
he was threatened with the rack or the stake if he did not
hold his tongue. The early scientific discoverers were
suppressed in every possible manner. But the more they
were suppressed, the more a great deal they published it ; and
through their labors we have attained to our present large
and beneficent freedom. With a great price our ancestors
attained this freedom, but we were free-born. We are
not going at the beginning of the twentieth century to
lose this birthright, at the dictate of any three persons,
however estimable, however well-meaning, however able
they may be.
FILIAL RELATIONS 1
BY
Jane Addams
One of the great modern problems is that of the position of woman,
and concerning it there is no more careful thinker than Miss Addams,
who herself embodies her conception. The following essay was one
of a series of lectures delivered before academic audiences. Since an
audience imposes its characteristics upon the lecture, the following
essay is abstract and very carefully reasoned. It begins with the
point of view of the audience, namely an exposition of the position of
the conservative element. Then by slow degrees the dominating prin-
ciple of the demands of Society upon the daughter is elaborated. From
this follows the deduction that much of the misery of the modern house-
hold lies in the imperfect recognition of the conflicting claims of the
Family and the State. It is interesting to notice how very slowly Miss
Addams develops her thought. Each position is stated very fully before
the new step is taken. Also notice how- academic are her illustrations.
They are drawn from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, from Switzerland,
and finally and elaborately from the drama of King Lear. In each case
it is clear that she is addressing not only an audience that thinks, but
one that reads. Consider what would result to her argument if the
reader were not familiar with Lear I To what extent does an essay like
this gain and lose in the limitation of its appeal ?
There are many people in every community who have
not felt the "social compunction," who do not share the
effort toward a higher social morality, who are even unable
to sympathetically interpret it. Some of these have been
shielded from the inevitable and salutary failures which the
1 From "Democracy and Social Ethics," by permission of The Mac-
millan Co.
2 b 369
370 MODERN ESSAYS
trial of new powers involve, because they are content to
attain standards of virtue demanded by an easy public
opinion, and others of them have exhausted their moral
energy in attaining to the current standard of individual
and family righteousness.
Such people, who form the bulk of contented society,
demand that the radical, the reformer, shall be without
stain or question in his personal and family relations, and
judge most harshly any deviation from the established
standards. There is a certain justice in this : it expresses
the inherent conservatism of the mass of men, that none
of the established virtues which have been so slowly and
hardly acquired shall be sacrificed for the sake of making
problematic advance ; that the individual, in his attempt
to develop and use the new and exalted virtue, shall not
fall into the easy temptation of letting the ordinary ones
slip through his fingers.
This instinct to conserve the old standards, combined
with a distrust of the new standard, is a constant difficulty
in the way of those experiments and advances depending
upon the initiative of women, both because women are
the more sensitive to the individual and family claims,
and because their training has tended to make them con-
tent with the response to these claims alone.
There is no doubt that, in the effort to sustain the moral
energy necessary to work out a more satisfactory social
relation, the individual often sacrifices the energy which
should legitimately go into the fulfilment of personal and
family claims, to what he considers the higher claim.
In considering the changes which our increasing de-
mocracy is constantly making upon various relationships,
it is impossible to ignore the filial relation. This chapter
deals with the relation between parents and their grown-up
FILIAL RELATIONS 371
daughters, as affording an explicit illustration of the
perplexity and mal-adjustment brought about by the
various attempts of young women to secure a more active
share in the community life. We constantly see parents
very much disconcerted and perplexed in regard to their
daughters when these daughters undertake work lying
quite outside of traditional and family interests. These
parents insist that the girl is carried away by a foolish
enthusiasm, that she is in search of a career, that she is
restless and does not know what she wants. They will give
any reason, almost, rather than the recognition of a genuine
and dignified claim. Possibly all this is due to the fact that
for so many hundreds of years women have had no larger
interests, no participation in the affairs lying quite outside
personal and family claims. Any attempt that the indi-
vidual woman formerly made to subordinate or renounce
the family claim was inevitably construed to mean that she
was setting up her own will against that of her family's
for selfish ends. It was concluded that she could have
no motive larger than a desire to serve her family, and
her attempt to break away must therefore be wilful and
self-indulgent.
The family logically consented to give her up at her
marriage, when she was enlarging the family tie by
founding another family. It was easy to understand that
they permitted and even promoted her going to college,
travelling in Europe, or any other means of self-improve-
ment, because these merely meant the development and
cultivation of one of its own members. When, however,
she responded to her impulse to fulfil the social or demo-
cratic claim, she violated every tradition.
The mind of each one of us reaches back to our first
struggles as we emerged from self-willed childhood into
37!2 MODERN ESSAYS
a recognition of family obligations. We have all gradu-
ally learned to respond to them, and yet most of us have
had at least fleeting glimpses of what it might be to
disregard them and the elemental claim they make upon
us. We have yielded at times to the temptation of ig-
noring them for selfish aims, of considering the individual
and not the family convenience, and we remember with
shame the self-pity which inevitably followed. But just
as we have learned to adjust the personal and family
claims, and to find an orderly development impossible
without recognition of both, so perhaps we are called upon
now to make a second adjustment between the family
and the social claim, in which neither shall lose and both be
ennobled.
The attempt to bring about a healing compromise in
which the two shall be adjusted in proper relation is not
an easy one. It is difficult to distinguish between the
outward act of him who in following one legitimate claim
has been led into the temporary violation of another,
and the outward act of him who deliberately renounces a
just claim and throws aside all obligation for the sake of
his own selfish and individual development. The man,
for instance, who deserts his family that he may cultivate
an artistic sensibility, or acquire what he considers more
fulness of life for himself, must always arouse our contempt.
Breaking the marriage tie as Ibsen's "Nora" did, to obtain
a larger self -development, or holding to it as George Eliot's
"Romola" did, because of the larger claim of the state
and society, must always remain two distinct paths. The
collision of interests, each of which has a real moral basis
and a right to its own place in life, is bound to be more or
less tragic. It is the struggle between two claims, the
destruction of either of which would bring ruin to the
FILIAL EELATIONS 373
ethical life. Curiously enough, it is almost exactly this
contradiction which is the tragedy set forth by the Greek
dramatist, who asserted that the gods who watch over the
sanctity of the family bond must yield to the higher claims
of the gods of the state. The failure to recognize the social
claim as legitimate causes the trouble ; the suspicion
constantly remains that woman's public efforts are merely
selfish and captious, and are not directed to the general
good. This suspicion will never be dissipated until
parents, as well as daughters, feel the democratic impulse
and recognize the social claim.
Our democracy is making inroads upon the family,
the oldest of human institutions, and a claim is being
advanced which in a certain sense is larger than the
family claim. The claim of the state in time of war has
long been ' recognized, so that in its name the family
has given up sons and husbands and even the fathers of
little children. If we can once see the claims of society
in any such light, if its misery and need can be made clear
and urged as an explicit claim, as the state urges its claims
in the time of danger, then for the first time the daughter
who desires to minister to that need will be recognized
as acting conscientiously. This recognition may easily
come first through the emotions, and may be admitted
as a response to pity and mercy long before it is formu-
lated and perceived by the intellect.
The family as well as the state we are all called upon
to maintain as the highest institutions which the race has
evolved for its safeguard and protection. But merely to
preserve these institutions is not enough. There come
periods of reconstruction, during which the task is laid
upon a passing generation, to enlarge the function and
carry forward the ideal of a long-established institution.
374 MODERN ESSAYS
There is no doubt that many women, consciously and
unconsciously, are struggling with this task. The family,
like every other element of human life, is susceptible of
progress, and from epoch to epoch its tendencies and as-
pirations are enlarged, although its duties can never be
abrogated and its obligations can never be cancelled.
It is impossible to bring about the higher development by
any self-assertion or breaking away of the individual will.
The new growth in the plant swelling against the sheath,
which at the same time imprisons and protects it, must still
be the truest type of progress. The family in its entirety
must be carried out into the larger life. Its various
members together must recognize and acknowledge the
validity of the social obligation. When this does not occur
we have a most flagrant example of the ill-adjustment
and misery arising when an ethical code is applied too
rigorously and too conscientiously to conditions which
are no longer the same as when the code was instituted,
and for which it was never designed. We have all seen
parental control and the family claim assert their authority
in fields of effort which belong to the adult judgment of
the child and pertain to activity quite outside the family
life. Probably the distinctively family tragedy of which
we all catch glimpses now and then, is the assertion of this
authority through all the entanglements of wounded
affection and misunderstanding. We see parents and
children acting from conscientious motives and with the
tenderest affection, yet bringing about a misery which
can scarcely be hidden.
Such glimpses remind us of that tragedy enacted
centuries ago in Assisi, when the eager young noble cast
his very clothing at his father's feet, dramatically renounc-
ing his filial allegiance, and formally subjecting the narrow
FILIAL RELATIONS 375
family claim to the wider and more universal duty.
All the conflict of tragedy ensued which might have been
averted, had the father recognized the higher claim, and
had he been willing to subordinate and adjust his own
claim to it. The father considered his son disrespectful
and hard-hearted, yet we know St. Francis to have
been the most tender and loving of men, responsive to
all possible ties, even to those of inanimate nature. We
know that by his affections he freed the frozen life of his
time. The elements of tragedy lay in the narrowness of
the father's mind ; in his lack of comprehension and his
lack of sympathy with the power which was moving
his son, and which was but part of the religious revival
which swept Europe from end to end in the early part of
the thirteenth century; the same power which built
the cathedrals of the North, and produced the saints and
sages of the South. But the father's situation was never-
theless genuine ; he felt his heart sore and angry, and his
dignity covered with disrespect. He could not, indeed,
have felt otherwise, unless he had been touched by the
fire of the same revival, and lifted out of and away from
the contemplation of himself and his narrower claim.
It is another proof that the notion of a larger obligation
can only come through the response to an enlarged inter-
est in life and in the social movements around us.
The grown-up son has so long been considered a citizen
with well-defined duties and a need of "making his way
in the world," that the family claim is urged much less
strenuously in his case, and as a matter of authority, it
ceases gradually to be made at all. In the case of the
grown-up daughter, however, who is under no necessity
of earning a living, and who has no strong artistic bent,
taking her to Paris to study painting or to Germany to
376 MODERN ESSAYS
study music, the years immediately following her gradua-
tion from college are too often filled with a restlessness
and unhappiness which might be avoided by a little clear
thinking, and by an adaptation of our code of family
ethics to modern conditions.
It is always difficult for the family to regard the daughter
otherwise than as a family possession. From her baby-
hood she has been the charm and grace of the household,
and it is hard to think of her as an integral part of the
social order, hard to believe that she has duties outside
of the family, to the state and to society in the larger sense.
This assumption that the daughter is solely an inspiration
and refinement to the family itself and its own immediate
circle, that her delicacy and polish are but outward symbols
of her father's protection and prosperity, worked very
smoothly for the most part so long as her education was in
line with it. When there was absolutely no recognition
of the entity of woman's life beyond the family, when the
outside claims upon her were still wholly unrecognized,
the situation was simple, and the finishing school harmoni-
ously and elegantly answered all requirements. She was
fitted to grace the fireside and to add lustre to that social
circle which her parents selected for her. But this family
assumption has been notably broken into, and educational
ideas no longer fit it. Modern education recognizes
woman quite apart from family or society claims, and gives
her the training which for many years has been deemed
successful for highly developing a man's individuality
and freeing his powers for independent action. Perplexi-
ties often occur when the daughter returns from college
and finds that this recognition has been but partially
accomplished. When she attempts to act upon the as-
sumption of its accomplishment, she finds herself jarring
FILIAL RELATIONS 377
upon ideals which are so entwined with filial piety, so
rooted in the tenderest affections of which the human
heart is capable, that both daughter and parents are
shocked and startled when they disco ver what is happening,
and they scarcely venture to analyze the situation. The
ideal for the education of woman has changed under the
pressure of a new claim. The family has responded to
the extent of granting the education, but they are jeal-
ous of the new claim and assert the family claim as over
against it.
The modern woman finds herself educated to recognize a
stress of social obligation which her family did not in the
least anticipate when they sent her to college. She finds
herself, in addition, under an impulse to act her part as a
citizen of the world. She accepts her family inheritance
with loyalty and affection, but she has entered into a wider
inheritance as well, which, for lack of a better phrase, we
call the social claim. This claim has been recognized
for four years in her training, but after her return from
college the family claim is again exclusively and strenu-
ously asserted. The situation has all the discomfort of
transition and compromise. The daughter finds a con-
stant and totally unnecessary conflict between the social
and the family claims. In most cases the former is re-
pressed and gives way to the family claim, because the
latter is concrete and definitely asserted, while the social
demand is vague and unformulated. In such instances
the girl quietly submits, but she feels wronged whenever
she allows her mind to dwell upon the situation. She
either hides her hurt, and splendid reserves of enthusiasm
and capacity go to waste, or her zeal and emotions are
turned inward, and the result is an unhappy woman,
whose heart is consumed by vain regrets and desires.
378 MODERN ESSAYS
If the college woman is not thus quietly reabsorbed, she
is even reproached for her discontent. She is told to be
devoted to her family, inspiring and responsive to her
social circle, and to give the rest of her time to further
self-improvement and enjoyment. She expects to do this,
and responds to these claims to the best of her ability,
even heroically sometimes. But where is the larger life of
which she has dreamed so long? That life which sur-
rounds and completes the individual and family life.'*
She has been taught that it is her duty to share this life,
and her highest privilege to extend it. This divergence
between her self-centred existence and her best convic-
tions becomes constantly more apparent. But the situa-
tion is not even so simple as a conflict between her affec-
tions and her intellectual convictions, although even that
is tumultuous enough, also the emotional nature is divided
against itself. The social claim is a demand upon the
emotions as well as upon the intellect, and in ignoring
it she represses not only her convictions but lowers her
springs of vitality. Her life is full of contradictions. She
looks out into the world, longing that some demand be
made upon her powers, for they are too untrained to
furnish an initiative. When her health gives way under
this strain, as it often does, her physician invariably ad-
vises a rest. But to be put to bed and fed on milk is not
what she requires. What she needs is simple, health-
giving activity, which, involving the use of all her faculties,
shall be a response to all the claims which she so keenly
feels.
It is quite true that the family often resents her first
attempts to be part of a life quite outside their own,
because the college woman frequently makes these first
attempts most awkwardly; her faculties have not been
FILIAL RELATIONS 379
trained in the line of action. She lacks the abihty to
apply her knowledge and theories to life itself and to its
complicated situations. This is largely the fault of her
training and of the one-sidedness of educational methods.
The colleges have long been full of the best ethical teach-
ing, insisting that the good of the whole must ultimately
be the measure of effort, and that the individual can only
secure his own rights as he labors to secure those of others.
But while the teaching has included an ever-broadening
range of obligation and has insisted upon the recognition
of the claims of human brotherhood, the training has been
singularly individualistic ; it has fostered ambitions for
personal distinction, and has trained the faculties almost
exclusively in the direction of intellectual accumulation.
Doubtless, woman's education is at fault, in that it has
failed to recognize certain needs, and has failed to cultivate
and guide the larger desires of which all generous young
hearts are full.
During the most formative years of life, it gives the
young girl no contact with the feebleness of childhood,
the pathos of suffering, or the needs of old age. It gathers
together crude youth in contact only with each other and
with mature men and women who are there for the purpose
of their mental direction. The tenderest promptings are
bidden to bide their time. This could only be justifiable
if a definite outlet were provided when they leave college.
Doubtless the need does not differ widely in men and
women, but women not absorbed in professional or busi-
ness life, in the years immediately following college, are
baldly brought face to face with the deficiencies of their
training. Apparently every obstacle is removed, and
the college woman is at last free to begin the active life,
for which, during so many years, she has been preparing.
380 MODERN ESSAYS
But during this so-called preparation, her faculties have
been trained solely for accumulation, and she has learned
to utterly distrust the finer impulses of her nature, which
would naturally have connected her with human interests
outside of her family and her own immediate social circle.
All through school and college the young soul dreamed of
self-sacrifice, of succor to the helpless and of tenderness to
the unfortunate. We persistently distrust these desires,
and, unless they follow well-defined lines, we repress them
with every device of convention and caution.
One summer the writer went from a two weeks' residence
in East London, where she had become sick and be-
wildered by the sights and sounds encountered there,
directly to Switzerland. She found the beaten routes of
travel filled with young English men and women who could
walk many miles a day, and who could climb peaks so
inaccessible that the feats received honorable mention in
Alpine journals, — a result which filled their families with
joy and pride. These young people knew to a nicety the
proper diet and clothing which would best contribute
toward endurance. Everything was very fine about them
save their motive power. The writer does not refer to
the hard-worked men and women who were taking a vaca-
tion, but to the leisured young people, to whom this period
was the most serious of the year, and filled with the most
strenuous exertion. They did not, of course, thoroughly
enjoy it, for we are too complicated to be content with
mere exercise. Civilization has bound us too closely with
our brethren for any one of us to be long happy in the culti-
vation of mere individual force or in the accumulation of
mere muscular energy.
With Whitechapel constantly in mind, it was difficult
not to advise these young people to use some of this muscu-
FILIAL RELATIONS 381
lar energy of which they were so proud, in cleaning neg-
lected alleys and paving soggy streets. Their stores of
enthusiasm might stir to energy the listless men and women
of East London and utilize latent social forces. The
exercise would be quite as good, the need of endurance as
great, the care for proper dress and food as important ;
but the motives for action would be turned from selfish
ones into social ones. Such an appeal would doubtless
be met with a certain response from the young people,
but would never be countenanced by their families for an
instant.
Fortunately a beginning has been made in another
direction, and a few parents have already begun to consider
even their little children in relation to society as well as
to the family. The young mothers who attend "Child
Study" classes have a larger notion of parenthood and
expect given characteristics from their children, at certain
ages and under certain conditions. They quite calmly
watch the various attempts of a child to assert his individ-
uality, which so often takes the form of opposition to
the wishes of the family and to the rule of the house-
hold. They recognize as acting under the same law of
development the little child of three who persistently runs
away and pretends not to hear his mother's voice, the boy
of ten who violently, although temporarily, resents control
of any sort, and the grown-up son who, by an individual-
ized and trained personality, is drawn into pursuits and
interests quite alien to those of his family.
This attempt to take the parental relation somewhat
away from mere personal experience, as well as the in-
creasing tendency of parents to share their children's
pursuits and interests, will doubtless finally result in a
better understanding of the social obligation. The under-
382 MODERN ESSAYS
standing, which results from identity of interests, would
seem to confirm the conviction that in the complicated life
of to-day there is no education so admirable as that educa-
tion which comes from participation in the constant trend
of events. There is no doubt that most of the misunder-
standings of life are due to partial intelligence, because our
experiences have been so unlike that we cannot compre-
hend each other. The old difficulties incident to the clash
of two codes of morals must drop away, as the experiences
of various members of the family become larger and more
identical.
At the present moment, however, many of those difficul-
ties still exist and may be seen all about us. In order to
illustrate the situation baldly, and at the same time to put
it dramatically, it may be well to take an instance con-
cerning which we have no personal feeling. The tragedy
of King Lear has been selected, although we have been
accustomed so long to give him our sympathy as the
victim of the ingratitude of his two older daughters, and of
the apparent coldness of Cordelia, that we have not
sufficiently considered the weakness of his fatherhood,
revealed by the fact that he should get himself into so en-
tangled and unhappy a relation to all of his children. In
our pity for Lear, we fail to analyze his character. The
King on his throne exhibits utter lack of self-control. The
King in the storm gives way to the same emotion, in repin-
ing over the wickedness of his children, which he formerly
exhibited in his indulgent treatment of them.
It might be illuminating to discover wherein he had
failed, and why his old age found him roofless in spite of
the fact that he strenuously urged the family claim with
his whole conscience. At the opening of the drama he
sat upon his throne, ready for the enjoyment which an
FILIAL RELATIONS 383
indulgent parent expects when he has given gifts to his
children. From the two elder, the responses for the
division of his lands were graceful and fitting, but he longed
to hear what Cordelia, his youngest and best beloved
child, would say. He looked toward her expectantly, but
instead of delight and gratitude there was the first dawn
of character. Cordelia made the awkward attempt of
an untrained soul to be honest and scrupulously to ex-
press her inmost feeling. The king was baffled and dis-
tressed by this attempt at self-expression. It was new to
him that his daughter should be moved by a principle
obtained outside himself, which even his imagination
could not follow ; that she had caught the notion of an
existence in which her relation as a daughter played but a
part. She was transformed by a dignity which recast her
speech and made it self-contained. She found herself
in the sweep of a feeling so large that the immediate loss of
a kingdom seemed of little consequence to her. Even an
act which might be construed as disrespect to her father
was justified in her eyes, because she was vainly striving
to fill out this larger conception of duty. The test which
comes sooner or later to many parents had come to Lear, to
maintain the tenderness of the relation between father and
child, after that relation had become one between adults,
to be content with the responses made by the adult child
to the family claim, while at the same time she responded
to the claims of the rest of life. The mind of Lear was
not big enough for this test ; he failed to see anything but
the personal slight involved, and the ingratitude alone
reached him. It was impossible for him to calmly watch
his child developing beyond the stretch of his own mind and
sympathy.
That a man should be so absorbed in his own indignation
384 MODERN ESSAYS
as to fail to apprehend his child's thought, that he should,
lose his affection in his anger, simply reveals the fact
that his own emotions are dearer to him than his sense of
paternal obligation. Lear apparently also ignored the
common ancestry of Cordelia and himself, and forgot her
royal inheritance of magnanimity. He had thought of
himself so long as a noble and indulgent father that he
had lost the faculty by which he might perceive himself
in the wrong. Even in the midst of the storm he declared
himself more sinned against than sinning. He could
believe any amount of kindness and goodness of himself,
but could imagine no fidelity on the part of Cordelia unless
she gave him the sign he demanded.
At length he suffered many hardships ; his spirit was
buffeted and broken ; he lost his reason as well as his
kingdom ; but for the first time his experience was identi-
cal with the experience of the men around him, and he
came to a larger conception of life. He put himself in
the place of "the poor naked wretches," and unexpectedly
found healing and comfort. He took poor Tim in his arms
from a sheer desire for human contact and animal warmth,
a primitive and genuine need, through which he suddenly
had a view of the world which he had never had from his
throne, and from this moment his heart began to turn
toward Cordelia.
In reading the tragedy of King Lear, Cordelia receives a
full share of our censure. Her first words are cold, and we
are shocked by her lack of tenderness. Why should she
ignore her father's need for indulgence, and be unwilling
to give him what he so obviously craved ? We see in the
old king "the over-mastering desire of being beloved,
selfish, and yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving
and kindly nature alone." His eagerness produces in us a
FILIAL RELATIONS 385
strange pity for him, and we are impatient that his young-
est and best-beloved child cannot feel this, even in the
midst of her search for truth and her newly acquired
sense of a higher duty. It seems to us a narrow concep-
tion that would break thus abruptly with the past and
would assume that her father had no part in the new life.
We want to remind her "that pity, memory, and faithful-
ness are natural ties," and surely as much to be prized as is
the development of her own soul. We do not admire the
Cordelia who through her self-absorption deserts her
father, as we later admire the same woman who comes
back from France that she may include her father in her
happiness and freer life. The first had selfishly taken
her salvation for herself alone, and it was not until her
conscience had developed in her new life that she was
driven back to her father, where she perished, drawn into
the cruelty and wrath which had now become objective
and tragic.
Historically considered, the relation of Lear to his children
was archaic and barbaric, indicating merely the beginning
of a family life since developed. His paternal expression
was one of domination and indulgence, without the per-
ception of the needs of his children, without any antici-
pation of their entrance into a wider life, or any belief that
they could have a worthy life apart from him. If that
rudimentary conception of family life ended in such
violent disaster, the fact that we have learned to be more
decorous in our conduct does not demonstrate that by
following the same line of theory we may not reach a like
misery.
Wounded affection there is sure to be, but this could be
reduced to a modicum if we could preserve a sense of the
relation of the individual to the family, and of the latter
2c
386 MODERN ESSAYS
to society, and if we had been given a code of ethics dealing
with these larger relationships, instead of a code designed
to apply so exclusively to relationships obtaining only
between individuals.
Doubtless the clashes and jars which we all feel most
keenly are those which occur when two standards of morals,
both honestly held and believed in, are brought sharply
together. The awkwardness and constraint we experi-
ence when two standards of conventions and manners
clash but feebly prefigure this deeper difference.
THE mONY OF NATURE ^
BY
Richard Burton
In the delightful Foreword to his " Little Essays in Literature and
Life," the volume from which the following essay is taken, Professor Burton
tells us that the ambition of the familiar essayist is "to speak wisdom
albeit debonairly, to be thought-provoking without heaviness, and help-
ful without didacticism." Here he wishes to have the reader feel that
there is a communion with nature so sweet and strong and sustaining
that it is counted among our most precious experiences. That is his
objective point. In the deductive type of essay that sentence would be
placed very early, illustrated and explained, and the attention would
be focussed finally upon one typical phase. Notice that here exactly
the contrary method is followed. The essay begins with an anecdote,
illustrating the irony of character. Then follows a statement of the
irony of nature. She crushes not individuals only, but whole cities.
The pessimism induced by such a calamity is staggering. But it may be
due to a false valuation. And there is a communion with nature. In
proportion, the last paragraph occupies over one quarter of the space.
The value of this method lies in the fact that the reader, beginning
easily, is carried to a broad conception. The author, as it were, forces
the reader to make his own generalization. Consequently, though more
difficult, it is more effective than the other forms.
In his delightful reminiscences, "Thirty Years of
Paris," Alphonse Daudet tells of his companionship with
Turgenev in those memorable evenings when he, Goncourt,
Zola, and the mighty Russian ate supper together and
talked of literature and life. He recalls how Turgenev
gave him every evidence of friendship and affection;
1 From "Little Essays in Literature and Life," by permission of
The Century Co.
387
388 MODERN ESSAYS
but long after his death, Daudet read certain words of
his friend, wherein the author of "Fathers and Sons"
sneers at his French confrere as "the lowest of my kind."
And Daudet, with that wonderful Gallic lightness of touch
which hides yet reveals the deep things of the heart,
sighs over the disillusionment, and exclaims : " I can see
him in my house, at my table, gentle, affectionate, kissing
my children. I have in my possession many exquisite,
warm-hearted letters from him. And this was what lay
concealed beneath that kindly smile. Good heavens !
How strange life is, and how true that charming word of
the Greek language, eironeia T'
Yet this is the irony of character and circumstance.
There is in life one deeper yet and more terrible : the
irony of Nature. You feel that the Daudet episode might
possibly be straightened out, that "the faith between
friends " may haply be restored. But the other is different,
hopeless. Hawthorne's "The Ambitious Guest" narrates
how a family of cheerful folk sit talking with a guest for
the night, in their house far up in the White Mountains,
and discourse of human fate and their particular desires.
Of a sudden they are interrupted by a sound of awful
omen; there is a landslide, and when they realize that
destruction is upon them they rush forth from the house
to seek a place of safety, only to be buried under the
avalanche, one and all. But the house in which they
sat escapes scot free. Had they remained about the fire
and continued their friendly converse, they would not have
perished. Acting for what seemed to be the best, they
were ruthlessly exterminated, since the processes of Nature,
represented in this case by the landslide, pay no heed to
that petty creature, man, and move on their mysterious
ways, as if in mockery of his ineptness and ignorance of
THE IRONY OF NATURE 389
the fall of events. At such a juncture, a Plato, a Caesar or
a Shakspere is as helpless as the commonest of the earth.
Here is that irony which, sooner or later, confronts every
thoughtful mind and no doubt often shakes the very
foundations of faith. And surely it is far sadder than the
irony which inheres in character, because it is, or seems,
irremediable. Millions of human beings in the world's
history have taken steps to the best of their judgment
and actuated by the highest motives, only to be precipi-
tated into calamity and to lose their lives in a manner so
disastrous as to make the looker-on shudder with horror.
Nature, magnificently indifferent to the animalcule who
for a brief term of time struts and prates upon the earth,
conducts her business according to great general laws,
utterly refusing to consider the convenience, comfort, or
welfare of such an unimportant item in the teeming
universe. Often the ironic scene is on a scale of epic
grandeur. Not men as individuals, but whole cities go
down to death : Pompeii lies buried beneath the lava, San
Francisco goes up in smoke, Messina is shaken into ruins.
At first, the spectacle of this cruel unconcern of Nature
is of staggering effect ; that sometimes it breeds pessimism
can well be understood. How, in truth, can this seemingly
heartless procedure on the part of Nature — meaning by
the word a personification of the laws and processes opera-
tive in the physical universe as observed by man — be
explained, so that we may return to the soothing thought
that not a sparrow falls unnoted, and that, in the forever
lovely words of Coleridge,
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small ;
For the dear God who loveth us.
He made and loveth all.
390 MODERN ESSAYS
Of course, all such inquiry can be dismissed on the
ground that man is not intended to understand, that his
limitations make mystery inevitable, and that faith is
thus exercised as it faces the vast and curious antinomies
of human life and the course of Nature. If we could
comprehend all, there were no proper place for that
spirit of trust — yea, even though it slay us ! — which is
the vety basis of religion.
Perhaps another thought helps a little when one's mood
is darkened by the apparent irony, whether of man or
Nature. Why may it not be that all such catastrophic
occurrences are but a reminder to us worldlings of the false
valuations which are set upon life ? Since it is natural for
all to die, the manner of going is secondary ; and so-called
catastrophes are, as a rule, horrible to the observer rather
than to the victim, who most often is painlessly and in-
stantly removed from consciousness. But even if we con-
ceded the suffering, it still remains true in a high and
holy sense that nothing evil can happen to a good man, —
worldly e\'il, yes, in plenty, but not that evil which is the
only true tragedy to the philosopher : spiritual failure.
HVhat we call our tragedies are, speaking by and large,
merely violent and unexpected interruptions of pleasure.)
And it is certainly salutary to be reminded, although in a
way that is repellent, that one whom physical disaster
overcomes can yet sleep with that smile upon his face
which is a sign of triumph, and the certificate of a rest
well won. The solemn saying of the Greek, "call no man
happy until he is dead," was not uttered in cheap cynicism,
but had in mind the fact that each day until the end is a
chance for the spiritual success or defeat ; and that, there-
fore, we may not claim the victory until all the days be
numbered. It may well be, therefore, that what is known
THE IRONY OF NATURE 391
as the "pathetic fallacy" in literature, the mood of loving
trust which makes Wordsworth see beneficent intention
in "earth's diurnal course," and sing in his own winsome
way,
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man.
Of moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can,
— expresses a truth, a spiritual fact, deeper than any
process of logic, and more trustworthy than all self-
conscious reasoning. Explain it as we will, and whatever
be the testimony of the brain, there is, as countless stricken
souls are aware, a communion with Nature so sweet and
strong and sustaining that it is counted among our most
precious experiences, and, once over, laid away in the
lavender of memory forever. And when we no longer see
through a glass darkly, but face to face, it may then
become plain that behind the grim look and the chastise-
ment was th6 benign countenance of the friend, and the
unspeakable yearning of the mother heart. Irony, in
the last analysis, may resolve itself into a masked good-
will.
ON SEEING TEN BAD PLAYS ^
BY
Frank Moore Colby
Mr. Colby wishes the reader to make the generalization that the
crude state of the drama is due to the crudity of J:he Americsin public.
Like Professor Burton, he starts with the particular fact that he has
just seen ten bad plays. A long paragraph is devoted to an analysis
of the audiences. A long paragraph, including the succeeding one of
illustration, is devoted to the drama. The obvious induction is that
these are correlative. Consequently there must be poor plays, since the
American public is crude. In contrast with Professor Burton's subtle
and allusive style, Mr. Colby hits with sledge-hammer blows. His
witty phrases are not subtle, but they are most effective. He holds the
attention, not as does Professor Burton with an aroma of lavender,
but with humorous over-statement. You laugh — but you also remember
the conclusion.
Had I an artist's soul I should be somewhat soured by
what I have gone through. As it is, I have fought down
all bitterness of heart by the aid of a little philosophy.
A man needs philosophy more for the commonplaces
of this world than he does for its miseries, ennui being
a steadier foe than pain. I therefore offer my philosophy
of the commonplace in the American drama and literature.
It is not deep, but it is at least bland, and it may help to
allay irritation in certain moods. There is enough of
polished sarcasm, and of cynicism there is already too
' From "Imaginary Obligations." Copyright, 1904, by Dodd, Mead
& Co. By permission of the author and publishers.
392
ON SEEING TEN BAD PLAYS 393
much. What we need is something that will aid us in
matters of routine.
In the first place I swear by all that is holiest in democ-
racy — by the boiled onions of the plain people, by their
even plainer wives, by the firesides of Tom, Dick and
Harry, by the sanctity of the bigger figure, by the sacred
whoops of the majority — that the usual man is not to
blame for wanting the usual thing. Hallcainery has its
place in the world. Indeed, I believe it altogether healthy,
hopeful, and respectable, and if I thought otherwise I
should lose all faith in representative institutions. There
are a few who never weary of saying spiteful things about
literary mediocrity. They have no patience with develop-
ment or kindliness for beginnings ; they would condemn
every tadpole as a sort of apostate frog. Why are they so
petulant with majorities.? Humanity would pine away
on masterpieces ; yet many would have you think that the
journey from savagery to high art must be made in total
silence, with nothing to read on the way. Our plays are
relatively good, being no further below the drama than
they are above tomtoms and human sacrifice. Blessed
is vulgar "reading-matter," for without it people might
eat one another. No race ever sinks from Hallcainery
into barbarism; it rises from barbarism to Hallcainery,
whence in time it may emerge.
And who shall say that our plays are not as good as our
politics, or our writers as our Senators ? Do we expect
brilliancy in our statesmen ? We are thankful enough in
this country for a good candidate, let who will be clever.
If a large city can, after intense intellectual efforts, choose
for its mayor a man who merely will not steal from it,
we consider it a triumph of the suffrage. So moderate
are our expectations in this field that if ordinary intelli-
394 MODERN ESSAYS
gence be superadded, it seems a piece of luck. We are
overjoyed at any sign that the nation's choice is up to
the nation's average ; and time and again you hear a thing
called statesmanlike, which in private life would be just on
the safe side of sanity. Mr. McKinley's refusal of a third
term was regarded as a masterstroke of wisdom, and we
have all read praises of Mr. Roosevelt's achievements
which are deserved as well by anybody we ever knew.
Nobody praises us when we come home sober of an eve-
ning, or speak a good average sentence, or draw a good
average breath ; and sturdy virtues that keep us out of
the police court for weeks at a time are not even men-
tioned by the family. But by these negative signs you
can often tell a statesman, for politics is a place of humble
hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are
good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not
ridiculously otherwise. Any one who is used to the acci-
dents of majorities should acquire this habit of mind. But
the literary and artistic people persist in the most exorbi-
tant demands at a point where the least should be logically
expected, that is, the tastes of a crowd. And if the
majority is against them, they scold it and the thing it
chooses, and having lost their tempers and tired their
friends, and troubled a number of honest creatures who
have not the least idea what it is all about, they feel that
they have been doing wonders for what they call artistic
standards. Right enough views, but the wrong occasion.
We expect only peace in a cable car ; for ecstasies we must
look somewhere else.
If high art deserves its ecstasies, low art deserves its
consolations; and if there is any way of making better
terms with humdrum and escaping the spasms of reform,
it is our plain business to find it. St. Paul said, keep the
ON SEEING TEN BAD PLAYS 395
body under. I say unto you, keep the mind under on
seeing American plays. Be "contentit wi' little and canty
wi' mair" ; smile though the smile looks sometimes like a
rictus ; get the point of view of the original erect ape-man
{pithecanthropus eredus) ; and if at any time you are
afflicted by a play that is particularly bad and popular,
consider the growth of our manufactures and sing "My
Country, 'Tis of Thee." To express one's own tastes is
reasonable, but to worry too much over other people's
leads to a useless violence. Some wish to murder Hall
Caine. I believe it would be inexpedient to do so, and
possibly wrong. I believe Mr. Clyde Fitch as truly rep-
resents New York as Senator Peffer did Kansas or Mr.
Bryan the West ; and the more I see of audiences the surer
I am that to massacre is the only way to reform.
Unwilling to be dependent longer on the bounty of her
rich guardian the high-spirited ingenue in light blue leaves
her luxurious home to teach school in a distant village.
Being very much of a lady she is obliged to walk as
if the stage floor were red hot, and to speak in a high
trilling voice with a foreign accent — a course that in-
stantly wins for her the love of every one she meets. But
the guardian comes to urge her to return to what, as a
gentleman of wealth and refinement, he is obliged to call
"me home." They are talking alone, but as soon. as she
begins to explain that self-respect will not permit her to
remain with him, now that she knows the fortune is not
really hers, the violins play softly and from every door and
alley the villagers come pouring in. A sentimental con-
versation between people they barely know will draw
villagers to the spot for miles around. So when the heroine
and her guardian are at their saddest everybody is punctu-
ally in place. It is all very exasperating, and the superior
396 MODERN ESSAYS
person, who has no business to be there, will ask you if it is
Art. It is not Art, but the stout lady in the seat behind
you is nearly bursting with sobs, and a large number of
pocket handkerchiefs are fluttering in the aisles. With
this particular audience Art could do nothing at all.
Then comes humor in its more awful forms. Thrice-
explained humor, with long waits for the effects ; humor
accompanied by the hilarious roars of the man who made
it. And for half an hour there is as genuine enjoyment
as you ever saw, and at the very heaviest of horse-plays
the stout lady behind you says, "Isn't that rich?" Ele-
vate the stage? Perhaps you can, but it will be a good
many generations before those people will be ready for it.
A quarter of an inch elevation would spoil the whole
thing for them.
There is plenty of room for a good theatre, but there is
no use in hoping that it will draw away the crowds from
the class of plays that are now successful. These plays
will continue, or others just as bad. They are wonder-
fully adapted to the people who go to see them, and as
time goes on this element of the population is bound to in-
crease. There are more below than above them. It is
absurd for the superior person to ask them if it is Art.
He would not take on like that about a ball game or a
merry-go-round. And at a country fair or sociable or
"sugar eat" he would not be so savage about bad taste.
But a simple, hearty New York audience abandoning itself
to the innocent, if rude, pleasures of the average play has no
mercy from him for the amazing reason that it is not Art.
As if simplicity required a background of hen roosts and
apple orchards and all primitive men tucked their trousers
in their boots. He is a child of nature, the New York
playgoer, even if he is not picturesque, and he has an
ON SEEING TEN BAD PLAYS 397
honest and wholesome regard for whatever is atrocious
in art. Put him on the diet of the superior person and
he would soon starve.
There must be bad plays. You cannot civilize the whole
crowd of us at once, and those hideous early stages of
artistic appreciation cannot be skipped. There is much
cheerless writing on a subject that from certain points
of view is almost cheerful. Compare the worst successful
New York play with a war dance or with certain Zulu
sports. Things have greatly improved. How did the
same class use to amuse themselves "^ As to moral lessons,
the poorest of successful plays is remarkably vigorous
and insistent. No sign of decay there. In fact, the worse
the art the more blatant the moral. No New York
playgoer is likely to forget for one moment that virtue
is an admirable thing. Is it not cheerful to think of the
big audiences going night after night to have the same
elementary moral lessons pounded in ? You want your
moral lesson served artistically or you will not take it
at all. Perhaps you would as lief see the wicked triumph
for a change. But these people are content with virtue
in the raw. They are not after new ideas, but want
some one to say a good word for those they have already.
On no account must you meddle with their minds.
The moral of all this is that one ought to try and see the
bright side of the situation, if such a thing is to be found,
and suppress those murderous feelings toward what after
all is a worthy class of citizens and good building material
for the state. In spite of artistic merit and intelligence
good plays may succeed, and some day the experiment
will be tried on a large scale ; but in the meanwhile all the
philosophy that you can summon and patience with those
who like the plays they have. The undiscriminating
398 MODERN ESSAYS
benignity of audiences almost drives you mad. Why
do they not rise from their places and burn and slay?
How easy to lynch the manager, if they only knew. But
they are having a good time for all your splutter about Art,
and if you can see any signs of demoralization in their
pleasant moon faces you are a cynic at heart. For what-
ever our stage is, it supplies the unseasoned food that is
relished in the lusty infancy of Art.
A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE ^
BY
Margaret Lynn
Quite another type of essay from those preceding is that in which the
thought is subordinated to the emotion. In such an essay the writer tries
to reproduce the impression or series of impressions caused upon him by
scenes or incidents. Naturally, therefore, there can be no logical rela-
tion between paragraphs; what relation there is must be emotional.
Thus Miss Lynn's " Stepdaughter of the Prairie " is a record of certain
soul experiences, vague imaginings of childish dreams. The effort to
transform the prairie into the landscape of Tennyson is quaintly pa-
thetic, — to find there alien beauty and, in the attempt, to overlook the
wonder that was no wonder because it was always there ! And the
trees on her horizon spelled 1-i-f-e.
Far away on the almost bare line of the prairie horizon a
group of trees used to show. There was a tall one, and a
short one, and then a tallish crooked one and another short
one. And to my childish eyes they spelled 1-i-f-e, as
plainly as any word in my reader was spelled. They were
the point that most fascinated me as I knelt at the upstairs
window, with my elbows on the sill and my chin on my
folded arms. I don't know when I first noticed them,
for they had been there always, so far as I could remember,
a scanty little bit of fringe on a horizon that was generally
clear and bare. There were tips of other woods farther to
the south, woods that were slightly known to me; but
^ From "A Stepdaughter of the Prairie," by permission of the
author and of The Macmillan Co.
399
400 MODERN ESSAYS
this group of trees at the very limit of seeing appeared to
lie beyond the knowledge of anyone. Even on the after-
noons when I was allowed to go with my father on some
long ride, and we drove and drove and drove, we never
came in sight of it. Yet, when I next went upstairs and
looked from the window, there it stood against the sky.
I had no sense of making an allegory out of it. At that
age to the fairy-tale-fed child, the line between allegory
and reality is scarcely perceptible, anyway. The Word
on the horizon was only a matter of course to me. An
older person, had it occurred to me to mention the matter,
would perhaps have seen something significant, even
worthy of sentimental remark, in the child's spelling out
life on her far horizon. But to me, mystery as it was,
it was also a matter of fact ; there it stood, and that was
all. Yet it was also a romance, a sort of unformulated
promise. It was related to the far distant, to the remote
in time, to the thing that was some day to be known.
So I rested my chin on my little arms and watched.
I suppose the fact that the trees were evidently big and
old — ours were still young and small — and perhaps a
part of some woods, was their greatest interest to me.
For no one can picture what the woods mean to the prairie
child. They are a glimpse of dream-things, an illustra-
tion of poems read, a mystery of undefined possibilities.
To pass through our scant bits of woods, even, was an
excursion into a strange world. From places on the road
to town we could see pieces of timber. And on some
blessed occasions when a muddy hollow was impassable
or when the Howell Bridge, the impermanent structure of
a prairie country, was out, we went around through the
Crossley woods. That was an experience ! The depth of
greenness — the prairie had nothing like it. I think
A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 401
that my eyes were born tired of the prairie, ungrateful
little soul that I was.
And the summer shadows in the woods were marvelous.
The shadow of the prairie was that of a passing cloud, or
the square shade of some building, deepest at noonday.
But the green depth of the woods' shadows, the softly
moving light and shade, were a wonderful thing. To me
these trips put all probability on a new basis. Out on
the bare prairie, under the shining sun, stories were stories,
even the dearest of them inventions. But in these shady
depths, where my eyes were led on from green space
through green space to a final remote dimness, anything
might be true. Fiction and tradition took on a reality
that the glaring openness would not allow. Things that
were different might happen in a wood. I could not help
expecting a new experience. But it never came; we
passed out of the timber to the prairie again.
But at least expectation had been stirred. The possi-
bility that something might happen seemed nearer. For
Romance was always just around the corner, or just a little
way ahead. But out on the prairie how could one over-
take it.f* Where could the unknown lurk in that great
open ? The woods seemed to put me nearer to the world
on whose borders I always hovered, the world of stories and
poems, the world of books in general. The whole business
of life in those first reading years was to discover in the
world of actual events enough that was bookish to rec-
oncile me to being a real child and not one in a story.
For the most part, aside from play, which was a thing in
itself and had a sane importance of its own, the realities
of life were those that had their counterpart in books.
Whatever I found in reading, especially in poetry, I
craved for my own experience.
2d
402 MODERN ESSAYS
There is no bookislmcss like that of a childish reader,
and there is no romanticism like that of a child. For good
or ill, I was steeped in both. But the two things, books
and the visible world that the sun shone in and the prairie
spread out in, were far apart and, according to my lights,
incompatible. I always had a suspicion of a distinct line
between literature and life, at least life as I knew it, far
out in the Missouri valley. Who had ever heard of the
Missouri in a novel or a poem ? No essays on Literature
, and Life had then enlightened me as to their relation ;
I didn't know that they had any. I wished that life could
be translated into terms of literature, but so far as I
could see I had to do it myself if it was to be done.
One must admit that it was little less than tragic to
read of things that one could not know, and to live among
things that had never been thought worth putting into a
book. What did it avail to read of forests and crags and
waterfalls and castles and blue seas, when I could know
only barbed-wire fences and frame buildings and prairie
grass ?
Of course there were some elements of our living in which
I discovered resemblances to what I had found in my
reading, and I was always alert to these things, however
small. I admired my pretty young-lady sister, for in-
stance, but I admired her most when she put on the gar-
ments of romance ; when she wore a filmy white muslin
with blue ribbons, a costume stamped with the novelist's
approval from the earliest times ; or, better still, a velvet
hat with a long plume sweeping down over her hair. For
some reason I cannot explain — possibly because I knew
him then better than I do now — I associated her appear-
ance then with that of some of Scott's heroines. She rose
in my estimation — as did anyone else — whenever she
A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 403
managed, however unconsciously, to link herself with
romance. When I found after a time, as I grew sophisti-
cated, that she was capable of exciting those feelings in
the masculine breast that are depicted with some care in
novels, especially in those which were forbidden and
which I was obliged to read by snatches and in incon-
venient places, I gave her my unqualified approval for
all time.
As I have said, there is no bookishness like that of a
small bookworm. In my own little self I did try to make
a point of contact between what I read and what I saw.
I wished that I dared to use the language of books, I
did occasionally indulge in the joy of borrowing a literary
phrase. To the grown-ups who heard it, it was doubtless
a bit of precocious pedantry or an effort to show off. I
sometimes saw visitors smile at one another, and with
sudden amused interest try to draw me out ; and in
stammering prosaic embarrassment I shrank away, no
literary fluency left. In reality I was not showing off. I
could not resist the shy delicious pleasure of making my
own a phrase from one of our yellow-leaved books of
poetry. It linked reality with romance. In some way it
seemed to make me free of the world of folk in books,
whose company I craved. The elders never guessed
the tremor with which I ventured on my phrase from
Tennyson or Lowell, though I might have been rolling it
under my tongue for half an hour. But it would not do,
I saw, to use the sacred language lightly before unproved
hearers, so I generally reserved it for my little talkings to
myself. I had my small code of phrases for my private
purposes, and a list of expletives rich but amazing. They
were gleaned all the way from Shakespeare to Scott;
modern writers are pitifully meager in expletives.
404 MODERN ESSAYS
But that was after all a thin delight. And to live in one
kind of country and feed on the literature of another
kind of country is to put one all awry. Why was there no
literature of the prairie ? Whatever there was did not come
to my hands, and I went on trying to translate the phe-
nomena of the Missouri valley into terms of other-land
poetry. But even such things as we had, appeared in
unrecognizable guise. We had wild flowers in abundance,
but unnamed. And what are botanical names to a child
who wants to find foxglove and heather and bluebells and
Wordsworth's daffodils and Burns 's daisy ? W^e — I was
not alone in this quest — wanted names that might have
come out of a book. So we traced imagined resemblances,
and with slight encouragement from our elders -— - they
came from back east where well-established flowers grow —
named plants where we could.
There was a ruffly yellow flower with a vague pretty
odor, which we forced the name primrose upon. For the
primrose was yellow, in Wordsworth at least, and some
agreeable visitor had said that this might be a primrose,
We invented spurious pseudo-poetic names, trying to
pretend that they were as good as the names we read.
There was a pink flower of good intentions but no faith-
fulness, which retired at the approach of the sun, and
which we christened "morning beauty." We had other
attempts at ready-made folk names, crude and imitative,
but I have forgotten them. What a pity the prairie did
not last long enough to fix itself and the things that be-
longed to it in a sort of folk phrases ! At least we ought to
have had enough flower lore at our command to give us the
sweet real names that may have belonged to its blossoms or
their relatives in other lands. When we did learn such a
name for some half-despised flower, how the plant leaped
A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 405
to honor and took on a halo of merit ! Some elder occa-
sionally went with us to the woods, some teacher, perhaps,
hungry for her own far-away trees, and we found that
we really had a genuine sweet-william and dog-tooth
violet and Jack-in-the-pulpit and May apple, and even
a rare diffident yellow violet. They were no more beauti-
ful than our gay, nameless flowers of the open, but they
grew in the woods and they had names with an atmosphere
to them. In our eternal quest for names, some learned
visitor — for we had many a visitor of every kind — would
give us crisp, scientific terms loaded with consonants. But
how could one love a flower by a botanical name ?
As days went by, however, even before it was time for
me to be taken from the little country school and sent
east to learn other things, some conditions had changed.
Chance seeds of different flowers and grasses came floating
west. In a neighbor's field were real daisies — we did not
know then that they were not Burns 's — brought in the
seed with which the field was sown, most unwelcome to
the farmer, but worshipped by us. Our own groves,
planted before we children were born, were growing up
and already served for the hundred purposes to which
children can put trees. But the ones most generous in
their growth and kindest in their service to us we regarded
with ungrateful contempt. Who had ever heard of a
a cotton- wood in a book ? The box-elder was distinctly
unliterary. The fact that these trees had been quickest
and most gracious in redeeming new homes from bareness
was nothing to us. Even the maple was less valuable when
we learned that it was not the sugar-maple, and that no
matter how long we waited we could never have a sugar-
ing-off. The trees we were most eager for came on
slowly. It seemed as if the oaks would never have acorns.
406 MODERN ESSAYS
They did come at last, and we were able to satisfy our-
selves that they were not edible, either green or ripe,
and to fit our pinky fingers into the velvety little thimbles
of them, the softest, warmest little cups in the world.
Our grove was an experimental one, as a grove in a new
country must be, and held all sorts of things, which we
made our own one by one. There were slender white
birches, to become beautiful trees in time, from which we
stripped bits of young bark. It was quite useless, of
course, a flimsy, papery stuff, but we pretended to find
use for it, as we had read of others doing. There were
handsome young chestnut trees, bravely trying to adapt
themselves to their land of exile. The leaves were fine for
making dresses and hats, and we spent long July afternoons
bedizened like young dryads. There were so many
things to do and to investigate in the earlier months that
it was midsummer before we reached this amusement.
But we watched year by year for the fruit of the tree.
And at last, when the first ones came, we carried them
proudly to school to exhibit them for the wonderment of
the other pupils, and to apply them surreptitiously to
the natural uses of a chestnut burr.
One spring day, in the dimmest part of the maple grove,
we found a tiny fern-head coming up from a scanty bed of
moss. We watched it for days, consulting at intervals
the pictures of ferns in the encyclopedia, and at last, when
hope trembled on the brink of certainty, we solemnly
led our mother out to identify it. Was it really a fern or
only a weed that looked like a fern ? No sacred oak was
ever approached with more careful reverence. Our
mother, an exile from her own forest country, talked of
bracken shoulder-high and rich moss on old gray stones
or broad tree stumps. We used to draw in our breath at
A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 407
the wanton riches of fallen trees and stumps. Big trees,
to cut down ! We viewed our mother enviously. But
our little frond was something. It drew as great ecstasy
from our little hearts as a bracken-covered hillside has
ever done. We saw the bracken in epitome, and dreamed
of conventicles and royal fugitives.
How I hoarded my little borrowings from the actual
to enrich the ideal ! A neighbor had a stake-and-rider
fence. No doubt he was a poor footless sort of farmer
or he would never, in that country, have had one — where
all good farmers had barbed-wire, or, at best, rail fences.
My father had some hedges, and I was proud of them.
They were not hawthorn, but one must be thankful for
what gifts fate brings, and I felt some distinction in their
smooth, genteel lines. But that Virginia rail fence — I
coveted its irregular convolutions and deep angles, where
the plough never went and where almost anything might
grow. Whether it was an older place than ours or a worse-
cared-for one, I don't know. But, if the cause were bad
farming, it had a reward out of proportion, in my estima-
tion ; for the deep fence corners held a tangle wonderful
to investigate, of wild grape and pokeberry and elderberry
and an ivy the leaves of which must be counted to see if it
were poison. They either should or should not be the
same as the number of my fingers ; but I never could
remember which it was and had to leave its pink tips of
tender new leaves unplucked. There were new little
maples and box-elders, where the rails had stopped the
flight of the winged seeds from the small grove about the
house. There were tiny elms with their exquisite little
leaves. No beauty of form I have ever found has given
me more complete satisfaction than did the perfect lines
and notches of those baby leaves. There were other plants
408 MODERN ESSAYS
that I never learned to know. How much better it
would have been had all fields had a border like this,
ornamental and satisfying, instead of the baldness of a
wire fence. The possession of it gave the O'Brion children
an eminence that, while I knew it was factitious, I could
not help recognizing.
On our part we had a stream, such as it was. The
muddy little creek — we called it crick — was to me a
brook, secretly. Poor little creek ! It did to wade in and
to get muddy in, but that was all. It had no trout, no
ripples over stones, no grassy banks. It ran through a
cornfield and a bit of scanty pasture where its banks were
trodden by the feet of cattle ; and it did not babble as it
flowed. Try as I might, I could not connect it with
Tennyson or Jean Ingelow. But I could at least call it a
brook to myself. I had other names of secret applica-
tion. In the spring the dull little stream used to overflow
its banks. Then the word brought to the house by one
of the men would be, "The crick's out." But to myself I
said freshet, and I suppose I was the only one in the whole
section to use the old word.
There was an odd little hollow on the hillside above the
brook. It was an unromantic spot enough, treeless, dis-
tinguished only by its dimple-like contour. But I called
it a dell, or in intenser moments a dingle or, when I was
thinking largely, a glen, and used to make a point to cross
it. This was partly l)ecause I sometimes found bits of
pebbles in the cup of the hollow, and any stone indigenous
to the country was a treasure trove. I called the little
level place below the hollow a glade, and the hillside a
brae, and the open hill-top a moor or heath. Had I used
the dictionary more freely I might have applied more
terms, but I did not know what a wold or a tarn or a down
A STEPDAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 409
was, and, lazily, kept them in reserve, fine as they sounded.
My private vocabulary, as can be seen, was largely Tenny-
sonian, and I loved an archaism, as something remote
from the practical. Whatever excursions I made into
other poets, Tennyson was, first and last, my dear delight.
My feet were turned over and oft, by the guardians of
my reading, into the easy paths of American poetry. I
found due pleasure in them, but it was always tempered
by a sort of resentment that, though American, their
country was not my country. For New England was
farther away than Old England, and I always went back
to Tennyson. I used to sit in the dingle in bald sunlight
and listen to such unpretentious noise as the creek made,
and chant to myself, "How sweet it were, hearing the
downward stream !"
The beauty of the prairie is not of the sort that a child
perceives. The bigness of it, for instance, I had been used
to all my life, and I can't remember that in those earlier
days it conveyed any sense of expansiveness to me. In
our long drives over it — interminably long they seemed
once ! — my chief recollection is of greenness and tired-
ness, a long succession of rolling hills and hollows, and a
little girl so weary of sitting up on a seat and watching the
horses go on and on. I thought the prairie was just green
grass in summer and dry grass in winter. Children are
not usually awake to shadings and modifications of color.
The coral pink at the roots of the dried prairie grass, the
opal tints of the summer mists in the early morning, I did
not discover until I had reached a stage of greater alertness.
And the prairie was not suggestive to me at this early
time. Looking back now, I guess that it was because it
did not hint at the unknown. It should have, of course,
but it did not. It did not carry me away and away to
410 MODERN ESSAYS
new possibilities. I knew that beyond these grass-covered
hills there lay others and then others — and that was all
there was to it. When I saw it face to face I seemed to
know it all — and who wants to know all about anything ?
This was not only because I was a book-stuffed little prig,
as I suppose I was. I had imagination of a sort, as it
seems to me now, when I recall my pleasure in certain
things : in the dim, hovering suggestiveness of twilight
and the unanalyzable reverie it put me into ; in the half-
heard sounds of mid-afternoon in the orchard ; in the bend
of the young trees in a storm at night, when I slipped
from bed to watch them in the flashes of lightning. There
was a white pine near my window, "an exile in a stoneless
land," that responded to the rush of the western wind with
a beautiful bend and swing. But when in the broad day-
light I looked out on the green hills I, in those earlier days,
saw no changing colors, none of the exquisite variety of
view that must have been there. I saw only green hills.
But had the prairie had a literature — if I could only
have been sure that it was worthy to put in a book ! If
Lowell and Whittier and Tennyson — most of all, Tenny-
son — had written of slough-grass and ground squirrels
and barbed-wire fences, those despised elements would
have taken on new aspects. I was a wistful peri longing
for a literary paradise.
But the Word on the horizon was something. It was
far away, but it was real. I did not try to analyze its
promise, but it was there.
YOSEMITE 1
BY
Arthur Colton
As Miss Lynn's object was to give the impression of the prairie on the
mind of a child, so Mr. Colton's desire is to interpret the effect of the
Yosemite upon himself. There is very little of formal description, and
none of the guide-book variety. He assumes on the part of the reader
a knowledge, if not first-hand, at least second-hand, of this famous
valley, and even of the details. He feels it unnecessary to describe or
locate the "Bridal Veil Falls," the "Half Dome," or "El Capitan."
There is no attempt to send the reader away with a picture of the Yosem-
ite in his mind. His endeavor is to interpret the effect upon himself
so that the reader will be in a mood analogous to that which he would
experience were he in the Yosemite. To do this, Mr. Colton gives us
the fanciful, suggestive, picturesque, and imaginative reflections that the
Valley caused in him. In other words, to interpret the Valley to another,
he records the ideas that flowed through his mind under this stimulus,
exactly as a musician, to interpret a symphony, may record his reactions
under that stimulus. Since from the nature of the case there can be
no dominating thought, an essay of this type is good in proportion as
the sensitive mind responds to the appeal.
The traveler into Yosemite still goes by stage, or by his
own conveyance of horse or foot. He is expected, pres-
ently, to enter by trolley up the Merced River, and this
is thought by many to be a lamentable thing.
But Yosemite is already shorn of freedom and solitude.
Shops and cottages are there, a hotel, permanent camps,
regulations, and even the parasite called "graft," that
^ From the author's manuscript, by permission.
411
412 MODERN ESSAYS
final seal of a fledged society. The trolley will make it a
convenient outfitting station to the High Sierras and their
better solitudes.
A didactic poetess once wrote :
"Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep and you weep alone";
and bestowed a familiar quotation on many who have per-
haps no further acquaintance with the didactic poetess.
She appeared to intend not only the statement of two
facts in nature, but also to advise that you avoid sorrow be-
cause it is lonely, and cultivate cheerfulness because it
attracts company. The two facts seem to be, in tendency,
as stated, but the advice is open to qualification ; first, be-
cause sorrow has some other results than solitude, and laugh-
ter than companionship ; second, because solitude has its
own values, and company its own drawbacks. Why
should company, if gathered by your cheerfulness, be
advisable, and company, if gathered by your trolley car,
be lamentable ?
But the knowledge of the survival of the fittest as a
working law, makes for that calming philosophy which
leans to a faith in the rightness of things that survive,
and the power of time to prove it. Certain it is that no
one but time can prove it ; no one else has a rhetoric that
applies to the case ; no one else can so cause the works of
man and nature to lie down together like a lion and a
lamb at the millennium, and reconcile them as English
villages and the hill towns of Tuscany are reconciled to
their places. One foresees a generation to which the
hotel shall seem at rest in Yosemite, the trolley car and
the Merced River harmonious in their commotions ; when
the tourist shall quote poetry at Half Dome, Half Dome
YOSEMITE 413
urbanely criticize the quotation, and shops and cottages be
on easy terms with the dignitaries of the Sierran hierarchy.
Nature, brought into Hterature, was once hailed as the
bringing in of a new sincerity. We have heard it ring
false enough. Literature has been introduced to nature
still oftener insincerely. Yet, if one honestly sets the
poets and the plunging waters of Yosemite face to face,
there is candor between them. Cataracts are no bad
critics. They have their opinion of Coleridge's
"Your strength, your speed, your fury and your joy.
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam";
of Wordsworth's
"Stationary blasts of waterfalls,"
and his
"The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep";
of Longfellow's
"Rivulets rejoicing run and leap
And wave their fluttering signals from the steep " ;
of Tennyson's
"Pause and fall, and pause and fall,"
his
"Thousand streams of dangling water smoke
That like a broken purpose waste in air,"
and his
"Some like a downward smoke.
Slow dropping veils of thinnest lawns, did go
And some through wavering lights and shadows broke.
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below."
In the "Valley" it is noticeable that Yosemite Falls
prefers the Coleridge passage, that the Bridal Veil and
414 MODERN ESSAYS
Vernal Falls approve of the third Tennyson, and several
high wind-blown streams of the second Tennyson. Tenny-
son they all commend as the most observant and accurate,
though lacking Coleridge's enthusiasm and Wordsworth's
imaginative leaps and metaphors that go up with a rush.
"Your Longfellow," they say, "can hardly be a Sierran
poet ; rather, on the whole, of some country where nature
does not perform on a large scale, but closer to human
proportions, a land where you Lilliputians can feel at
home without over-expanding your minds. His 'flutter-
ing signal ' is a diminutive. Now, your Tennyson belongs,
does he not, to a fixed society, somewhat heavy with
customs, refinements, luxuries, morals and leisures.'*"
"Dangling water smoke," wasted like "a broken purpose,"
Yosemite Falls once remarked in my hearing, "is more
accurate than imaginative, and more promptly moralized
than I care for." And it added, "Have any of your poets
noticed my white rockets?"
I think not. Yet every long tumultuous waterfall
shoots downward through its mists those round-headed
missiles, half water and half foam, ghostly comets with a
trailing splurge. Or noticed either, for that matter, the
metallic clang of waterfalls if heard at some distance, the
crash like the first attack of thunder shorn of its following
roll ; or noticed either, at the base of a waterfall, the
heavy monotony of its voice, not a sound of "fury" or of
"joy," but of fatality and despair; or taken to heart the
gray breath of waterfalls, the pallor and chill of the blown
spray, where it is ill for humanity to linger long in the sense
of cold encircling mystery and its own delusion, of driving
power and its own helplessness.
It is better to go down to the green Merced River and the
meadows. The god of things as they should be meant
YOSEMITE 415
that his worshippers — whose lives are spent in the pur-
suit of a lost chord, a missing harmony between ourselves
and things not themselves — should contemplate Yosemite
from the standpoint of its meadows. The spirit of Yosem-
ite is defined, human, sufficient, sheltered from high,
desolate and Sierran ambitions. The spirit of the Canon
of the Colorado is compact of color and immensity ; the
essence of Yosemite is not immensity but proportion and
charm — white water falling in the distance, green water
gliding in the shadow, still water reflecting blue groves
and many colored flowers in level fields, and the right
relation of all these to the smooth gray domes and those
framing walls, whose height is not for terror but to make
the pines that feather their keen edges look delicate as
ferns.
Admitting that there is an element of freakishness
about Yosemite, yet the sense of it soon dies away and
leaves the charm. The cliffs shoot up from a fiat valley,
through whose green fields and woods goes a swift green
river. The contrast is startling, and so far merely sensa-
tional, but time brings out their rightness in relation.
The climbers to the hanging rock and sheer abyss of
Glacier Point are seekers after sensation rather than beauty.
The sensationalist is the same in the wilderness as in
literature and at the theater. He feels no values but
emphasis. Grass and sliding water are not emphatic.
Grass is the standing example of things gracious by their
indistinction, by their numbers and community, the
swarming proletariat of the meadows. The orders and
ranks of flowery aristocracy over it, gold, blue, red
and white, are ornate persons given over to pomp and
heraldry.
Some one has remarked on the prevalence of blue flowers
416 MODERN ESSAYS
over red, and set it down to the facts that flowers are
propagated through the agency of their banqueting
visitors : that bees are more attracted by blue, and hum-
ming-birds by red ; and that bees are many, while hum-
ming-birds are few.
Are flowers more frequently blue than red ? Do bees
prefer the blue, and if so, how did they come by the pref-
erence ? The matter seems disputable throughout. The
colors of flowers are doubtless derivative. They represent
solutions of the advertising problem. The bill-board that
disfigures the countryside and the flower that decorates it
owe their characteristics to the same law and condition —
the condition that in order to live they must be noticed.
They are competitors for business, and every flower color
represents success. It has some established relation to
the taste of some visiting insect. But what the first ele-
ments of this taste may be is probably an unanswerable
question.
Putting aside the composition and physics of color, if
one looks about for the large insistent aspects of the world
— those phenomena in respect to color whose constant
presence to generations innumerable and forgotten has
made us what we are, to see and feel as we do about color —
the following seem to be the principal phenomena — so all
generations have looked about them, and this is what they
have seen.
The great blue was the sky, and its darkened reflection
in water. Green appeared as the chief color of living
growth, for, as a rule, whatever the earth brought forth
in the vegetable kingdom, in field or forest or sea, was
mainly green. Yellow was the color of the sand of shore
and desert, and of most of those. forms which, after a
green life, had perished by drouth or cold ; so it might
YOSEMITE 417
have seemed the color of death and barrenness, but it was
also the sun's color — an eminent contradiction — as well
as that of the moon and stars. Brown was the color of
the soil. White appeared mainly in water out of its
normal condition, as in cloud, snow and foam. Black,
they probably connected with night, or the closing of the
eyes. Gray was the commonest rock color and tree-trunk
color, but a larger fact than those was the gray of the
shadowed cloud, and of the rain and mist. Red was not
seen in the same masses and proportions as the others ;
no single immense aspect of nature was red ; it was the
color of blood from a wound, of the weather-beaten or
flushed face; it was momentary in sunrises and sunsets,
subsidiary in dead forest leaves ; in part it was the color
of fire, that mystery, which, leaping out of wood and
stubble, destroyed them and vanished, leaving a red
ember.
The preferences, if any, of bees and humming-birds and
the tangled web of feeling, by which and to which the
painter makes his human appeal, must somehow in the
main hark back to these, the largest, oldest and most
constant phenomena of color. One cannot see all the
connections, but it is a pretty speculation in Yosemite,
a useful speculation ; lest we forget that out of wild nature
we are come, that our instincts are great and our wisdoms
little, that the main current of the will runs deep like the
green Merced River and our reasoned choices are like the
flutter of foam on its surface, that we became citizens but
yesterday and were bred in the wilderness.
There have been four significant books put out within
the last generation on the subject of the desert ; of which
Mr. Van Dyke's "Desert" is the Salton Basin in Southern
California, Mrs. Austen's "Land of Little Rain" is the
2b
418 MODERN ESSAYS
Mojave, Mr. Hudson's "Idle Days in Patagonia" has
the desert not so much for its subject as for its principal
interest, and Mr. Hichens' "Garden of Allah" is a novel
in which the Sahara is more vivid than the plot. They are
significant for this reason :
The desert was a more dominant aspect of nature to the
earlier than to the later civilization from which we derive,
because of the place where the earlier happened to occur,
southwestern Asia and northwestern Africa. It was an
aspect almost wholly hostile. The center of events moving
away into rainier Europe, the desert dropped out of prom-
inence in recording literatures. But the new and for-
ested wilderness was also a foe, the mountain a difficulty,
the desert half forgotten or bitterly remembered. Our
histories of culture have pointed out, with some exceptions
and qualifications, that the great movement toward a
conscious friendship and intimate communication with
nature, as far as the possibility of a Wordsworth, is only
some four or five generations old.
None of the four books above mentioned is simple
description of the desert. Like Wordsworth's mountains
and Thoreau's woods, something passed from the desert
into the spirit of each writer and became expressive there.
They are significant, because they announce that the desert
too has been assimilated, brought within the sweep of
the movement and put on confidential terms with hu-
manity. After long absence it has returned to recognition
and record. We have taken one more step in an acquaint-
ance with the earth, toward making ourselves at home in
our domicile, toward the exi)loration of its attics and
cellars. Once we lived mainly in the kitchen. After
all, the earth is a palatial dwelling, with art galleries, music
rooms and interesting rat holes.
YOSEMITE 419
"I'm but a stranger here.
Heaven is my home," —
is the astonishing statement we sometimes sing to a tune
none too thrilling, but we know better. Even in a heaven
of our own ideals we would be but embarrassed aliens.
It were odd to have so long occupied the earth, and be
strangers there, with an offish and distant demeanor to-
ward most of the household. The intimacy with nature
attained by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, to whom
"The million forests of the earth
Come trooping in to tea,
The great Niagara waterfall
Is never shy with me :
" I am the tiger's confidant
And never mention names,
The lion drops the formal 'Sir'
And lets me call him 'James,'"
looks like an intimacy on the point of becoming oppres-
sive, and yet the satirist uses for the purposes of satire a
manner of speech much the same as Emerson used in order
to present the profoundest facts that he knew •
"River and rose and crag and bird.
Forest and sun and oldest night,
To me their aid preferred.
To me their comfort plight.
Courage ! We are thine allies.
And with this hint be wise."
The thing is somehow true in spite of the satirist. More
and more in these latter times we turn to the wilderness for
consolation, for happiness. Strangely enough we find it.
It appears that there are few methods of pursuing happi-
ness so successful. The moral of the old apologue was
that happiness was not to be found by pursuit at all, and
420 MODERN ESSAYS
of most methods of pursuit it seems to be an observable
fact. But the seekers of the wilderness have come upon
certain odd habits of this furtive divinity, this happiness,
whose shy, here-and-gone ways are Hke those of a wilder-
ness animal, and have learned among her whims and
usages how apt she is, at the end of the hard day, to glide
like a shadow out of the forest, to sit silently beside the
camp fire ; or at noon on the mountain top, while one
fancies he has no company but solitude, suddenly there
are three on the mountain top, a weary body, a wide out-
look and a world well reconciled.
It appears then that the solitude of the wilderness
somehow makes for happiness, that happiness gathers
company, whose happiness demands a trolley line into
Yosemite and the banishment of solitude to the higher
Sierras. And it appears that the god of things as they
should be meant Yosemite to uplift the many rather than
to transport the few, to popularize beauty rather than to
discover it. For as regards this intimacy and mutual
understanding between man and nature, there appear
to be two kinds ; one of which arises when their labors
stand reconciled by time, as the hill towns with the hills
in Tuscany, and this relation is like that of man and wife
who have grown by long communion to resemble each
other in spirit and even in feature ; and the other arises
when we come, weary of artifice, into the wilderness, and
is like the meeting of man and maid, who look into each
other's eyes and see eternity. And if, as appears, Yosem-
ite is destined for the friendship of comforting usage
rather than of superb recognitions, in the first place it is
always well to be reasonable with destiny, and in the
second, one's impression is that destiny had this idea in
mind when Yosemite was first conceived and given its
YOSEMITE 421
proportion and its restful charm. If, then, destiny comes
in a trolley car to take possession, it is likely that time will
follow with the title deeds, that the flowers will not be
made self-conscious by spectators, and that Half Dome will
attend to its own dignity.
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA ^
BY
H. C. BUNNER
Clearly with this type of essay, without the unifying presence of a
dominating thought, there is a tendency to disintegration. Both Miss
Lynn and Mr. Colton held the essay together by confining the impressions
to those of a single mind. Their work is subjective. Bunner, on the
contrary, is objective. The rambling tour of lower New York, called
Bowery and Bohemia, is made for the purpose of giving different vivid
impressions. The essay opens with an anecdotal account of the old Bo-
hemian circle, passes to a discussion of Bohemianism in general, and by
the route of Mulberry Bend arrives at the Bowery, with which, from all
that may be deduced from the essay, the Bohemians had little to do.
Nor is there any very clear connection between Fitz-James O'Brien
and the Polish Jew who hides chickens in his back yard. Thus the very
title. Bowery and Bohemia, suggests a peddler's pack in which there is a
little of everything. Theoretically the attempt is impossible ; practi-
cally the essay is charming, with the flavor of a fine personality, in full
control of his artistic medium. And the reader lays the book down with
the feeling that New York is greater than he thought and with the
wish to study it more deeply.
One day a good many years ago an old gentleman from
Rondout-on-the-Hudson — then plain Rondout — was
walking up Broadway seeing the sights. He had not been
in New York in ten or twelve years, and although he was
an old gentleman who always had a cask of good ale in
his cellar in the winter-time, yet he never tasted the
strange German beverage called lager-beer, which he had
* From " Jersey Street and Jersey Lane," by permission of Charles
Scribner's Sons.
422
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 423
heard and read about. So when he saw its name on a
sign he went in and drank a mug, sipping it slowly and
thoughtfully, as he would have sipped his old ale. He
found it refreshing — peculiar — and, well, on the whole,
very refreshing indeed, as he considerately told the pro-
prietor.
But what interested him more than the beer was the
sight of a group of young men seated around a table
drinking beer, reading — and — yes, actually writing
verses, and bandying very lively jests among themselves.
The old gentleman could not help hearing their conversa-
tion, and when he went out into the street he shook his
head thoughtfully.
"I wonder what my father would have said to that?"
he reflected. "Young gentlemen sitting in a pot-house at
high noon and turning verses like so many ballad-mongers !
Well, well, well, if those are the ways of lager-beer drinkers,
I'll stick to my good old ale ! "
And greatly surprised would that honest old gentleman
have been to know that the presence of that little group of
poets and humorists attracted as much custom to good
Mr. Pfafl's beer-saloon as did his fresh, cool lager; and
that young men, and, for the matter of that, men not so
young, stole in there to listen to their contests of wit, and
to wish and yearn and aspire to be of their goodly company.
For the old gentleman little dreamed, as he went on his
course up Broadway, that he had seen the first Bohemians
of New York, and that these young men would be written
about and talked about and versified about for genera-
tions to come. Unconscious of this honor he went on to
Fourteenth Street to see the new square they were laying
out there.
Perhaps nothing better marks the place where the
424 MODERN ESSAYS
city of New York got clean and clear out of provincial
pettiness into metropolitan tolerance than the advent
of the Bohemians. Twenty-five years earlier they would
have been a scandal and a reproach to the town. Not
for their literature, or for their wit, or for their hard
drinking, or even for their poverty ; but for their brother-
hood, and for their calm indifference to all the rest of
the world whom they did not care to receive into their
kingdom of Bohemia. There is human nature in this;
more human nature than there is in most provincialism.
Take a community of one hundred people and let any ten
of its members join themselves together and dictate the
terms on which an eleventh may be admitted to their band.
The whole remaining eighty-nine will quarrel for the
twelfth place. But take a community of a thousand, and
let ten such internal groups be formed, and every group
will have to canvass more or less hard to increase its num-
ber. For the other nine hundred people, being able to
pick and choose, are likely to feel a deep indifference to
the question of joining any segregation at all. If group
No. 2 says, "Come into my crowd, I understand they
don't want you in No. 1," the individual replies : "What
the deuce do I care about No. 1 or you either.? Here are
Nos. 4, 5, 6, and 7 all begging for me. If you and No. 1
keep on in your conceit you'll find yourselves left out in
the cold."
And as it frequently happens to turn out that way, the
dweller in a great city soon learns, in the first place, that
he is less important than he thought he was ; in the second
place, that he is less unimportant than some people would
like to have him think himself. All of which goes to show
that when New Yorkers looked with easy tolerance, and
some of them with open admiration, upon the Bohemians
TPIE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 425
at Pfaff's saloon, they had come to be citizens of no mean
city, and were making metropolitan growth.
A Bohemian may be defined as the only kind of gentle-
man permanently in temporary difficulties who is neither a
sponge nor a cheat. He is a type that has existed in all
ages and always will exist. He is a man who lacks certain
elements necessary to success in this world, and who
manages to keep fairly even with the world, by dint of
ingenious shift and expedient ; never fully succeeding,
never wholly failing. He is a man, in fact, who can't
swim, but can tread water. But he never, never, never
calls himself a Bohemian — at least, in a somewhat wide
experience, I have known only two that ever did, and one
of these was a baronet. As a rule, if you overhear a
man approach his acquaintance with the formula, "As one
Bohemian to another," you may make up your mind that
that man means an assault upon the other man's pocket-
book, and that if the assault is successful the damages will
never be repaired. That man is not a Bohemian ; he
is a beat. Your true Bohemian always calls himself by
some euphemistic name. He is always a gentleman at odds
with fortune, who rolled in wealth yesterday and will
to-morrow, but who at present is willing to do any work
that he is sure will make him immortal, and that he thinks
may get him the price of a supper. And very often he
lends more largely than he borrows.
Now the crowd which the old gentleman saw in the
saloon — and he saw George Arnold, Fitz-James O'Brien,
and perhaps N. P. Shepard — was a crowd of Bohemians
rather by its own christening than by any ordinary appli-
cation of the word. They were all young men of ability,
recognized in their profession. Of those who have died,
two at least have honor and literary consideration to-day ;
426 MODERN ESSAYS
of those who lived, some have obtained celebrity, and all
a reasonable measure of success. Miirger's Bohemians
would have called them Philistines. But they have
started a tradition that will survive from generation unto
generation ; a tradition of delusion so long as the glamour
of poetry, romance, and adventure hang around the mys-
teriously attractive personality of a Bohemian. Ever
since then New York has had, and always will have, the
posing Bohemian and his worshippers.
Ten or fifteen years ago the "French Quarter" got its
literary introduction to New York, and the fact was re-
vealed that it was the resort of real Bohemians — young
men who actually lived by their wit and their wits, and who
talked brilliantly over fifty-cent table-d'h6te dinners.
This was the signal for the would-be Bohemian to emerge
from his dainty flat or his oak-panelled studio in Washing-
ton Square, hasten down to Bleecker or Houston Street,
there to eat chicken badly braise, fried chuck-steak, and
soggy spaghetti, and to drink thin blue wine and chicory-
coffee that he might listen to the feast of witticism and
flow of soul that he expected to find at the next table. If
he found it at all, he lost it at once. If he made the ac-
quaintance of the young men at the next table, he found
them to be young men of his own sort — agreeable young
boys just from Columbia and Harvard, who were painting
impressionless pictures for the love of Art for Art's sake,
and living very comfortably on their paternal allowances.
Any one of the crowd would think the world was coming
to pieces if he woke up in the morning to wonder where he
could get his breakfast on credit, and wonder where he
could earn enough money to buy his dinner. Yet these
innocent youngsters continue to pervade "The Quarter,"
as they call it ; and as time goes on, by much drinking of
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 427
ponies of brandy and smoking of cigarettes, they get to
fancy that they themselves are Bohemians. And when
they get tired of it all and want something good to eat,
they go up to Delmonico's and get it.
And their Bohemian predecessors, who sought the
French fifty-cent restaurants as their highest attainable
luxury — what has become of them ? They have fled be-
fore that incursion as a flock of birds before a whirlwind.
They leave behind them, perhaps, a few of the more mean-
spirited among them, who are willing to degenerate into
fawners on the rich, and habitual borrowers of trifling
sums. But the true Bohemians, the men who have the
real blood in their veins, they must seek some other meet-
ing-place where they can pitch their never-abiding tents,
and sit at their humble feasts to recount to each other,
amid appreciative laughter, the tricks and devices and
pitiful petty schemes for the gaining of daily bread that
make up for them the game and comedy of life. Tell me
not that Ishmael does not enjoy the wilderness. The
Lord made him for it, and he would not be happy anywhere
else.
There was one such child of fortune once, who brought
his blue eyes over from Ireland. His harmless and gentle
life closed after too many years in direst misfortune.
But as long as he wandered in the depths of poverty
there was one strange and mysterious thing about him.
His clothes, always well brushed and well carried on a gal-
lant form, often showed cruel signs of wear, especially
when he went for a winter without an overcoat. But
shabby as his garments might grow, empty as his pockets
might be, his linen was always spotless, stiff, and fresh.
Now everybody who has ever had occasion to consider
the matter knows that by the aid of a pair of scissors the
428 MODERN ESSAYS
life of a collar or of a pair of cuffs can be prolonged almost
indefinitely — apparent miracles had been performed in
this way. But no pair of scissors will pay a laundry bill ;
and finally a committee of the curious waited upon this
student of economics and asked him to say how he did it.
He was proud and delighted to tell them.
"I — I — I'll tell ye, boys," he said, in his pleasant Dub-
lin brogue, " but 'twas I that thought it out. I wash them,
of course, in the basin — that's easy enough ; but you'd
think I'd be put to it to iron them, wouldn't ye, now?
Well, I've invinted a substischoot for ironing — it's me
big books. Through all me vicissichoods, boys, I kept me
Bible and me dictionary, and I lay the collars and cuffs in
the undher one and get the leg of the bureau on top of
them both — and you'd be surprised at the artistic effect."
There is no class in society where the sponge, the toady,
the man who is willing to receive socially without giving
in return, is more quickly found out or more heartily dis-
owned than among the genuine Bohemians. He is to
them a traitor, he is one who plays the game unfairly,
one who is willing to fill his belly by means to which they
will not resort, lax and fantastic as is their social code.
Do you know, for instance, what "Jackaling" is in New
York.'^ A Jackal is a man generally of good address,
and capable of a display of good fellowship combined
with much knowledge of literature and art, and a vast
and intimate acquaintance with writers, musicians, and
managers. He makes it his business to haunt hotels,
theatrical agencies, and managers' offices, and to know
whenever, in his language, "a new jay comes to town."
The jay he is after is some man generally from the smaller
provincial cities, who has artistic or theatrical aspirations
and a pocketful of money. It is the Jackal's mission to
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 429
turn this jay into an "angel." Has the gentleman from
Lockport come with the score of a comic opera under his
arm, and two thousand dollars in his pocket ? Two
thousand dollars will not go far toward the production of a
comic opera in these days, and the jay finds that out later ;
but not until after the Jackal has made him intimately
acquainted with a very gentlemanly and experienced
manager who thinks that it can be done for that price with
strict economy. Has the young man of pronounced
theatrical talent arrived from Keokuk with gold and a
thirst for fame ? The Jackal knows just the dramatist who
will write him the play that he ought to star in. Does
the wealthy and important person from Podunk desire
to back something absolutely safe and sure in the line of
theatrical speculation? The Jackal has the very thing
for which he is looking. And in all these, and in all similar
contingencies, it is a poor Jackal who does not get his
commission at both ends.
The Jackal may do all these things, but he may not,
if he is treated, fail to treat in return. I do not mean to
say at all that Jackaling is a business highly esteemed,
even in darkest Bohemia, but it is considered legitimate,
and I hope that no gentleman doing business in Wall
Street, or on the Consolidated Exchange, will feel too
deeply grieved when he learns the fact.
But where have the real Bohemians fled to from the
presence of the too-well-disposed and too-wealthy children
of the Benedick and the Holbein? Not where they are
likely to find him, you may be sure. The true Bohemian
does not carry his true address on his card. In fact, he is
delicate to the point of sensitiveness about allowing any
publicity to attach to his address. He communicates it
confidentially to those with whom he has business dealings,
430 MODERN ESSAYS
but he carefully conceals it from the prying world. As
soon as the world knows it he moves. I once asked a
chief of the Bohemian tribe whose residence was the world,
but whose temporary address was sometimes Paris, why he
had moved from the Quartier Latin to a place in Mont-
martre.
"Had to, my dear fellow," he answered, with dignity;
"why if you live over on that side of the river they'll
call you a Bohemian!''
In Paris the home of wit in poverty has been moved
across the Seine to the south side of the hill up which
people climb to make pilgrimages to the Moulin Rouge
and the church of St. Pierre de Montmartre. In New
York it has been moved not only across that river of
human intercourse that we call Broadway — a river with
a tidal ebb and flow of travel and traffic — but across a
wilder, stranger, and more turbulent flood called the
Bowery, to a region of which the well-fed and prosperous
New Yorker knows very, very little.
As more foreigners walk on the Bowery than walk
on any other street in New Y ork ; and as more different
nationalities are represented there than are represented in
any other street in New York ; and as the foreigners all
say that the Bowery is the most marvellous thoroughfare
in the world, I think we are justified in assuming that
there is little reason to doubt that the foreigners are
entirely right in the matter, especially as their opinion
coincides with that of every American who has ever made
even a casual attempt to size up the Bowery.
No one man can thoroughly know a great city. People
say that Dickens knew London, but lam sure that Dickens
would never have said it. He knew enough of London to
know that no one human mind, no one mortal life can take
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 431
in the complex intensity of a metropolis. Try to count a
million, and then try to form a conception of the im-
possibility of learning all the ins and outs of the domicile
of a million men, women, and children. I have met men
who thought they knew New York, but I have never met a
man — except a man from a remote rural district — who
thought he knew the Bowery. There are agriculturists,
however, all over this broad land who have entertained
that supposition and acted on it — but never twice.
The sense of humor is the saving grace of the American
people.
I first made acquaintance with the Bowery as a boy
through some lithographic prints. I was interested in
them, for I was looking forward to learning to shoot, and
my father had told me that there used to be pretty good
shooting at the upper end of the Bowery, though, of course,
not so good as there was farther up near the Block House,
or in the wood beyond. Besides, the pictures showed a
very pretty country road with big trees on both sides of it,
and comfortable farmhouses, and, I suppose, an inn with
a swinging sign. I was disappointed at first, when I heard
it had been all built up, but I was consoled when the glories
of the real Bowery were unfolded to my youthful mind,
and I heard of the butcher-boy and his red sleigh ; of the
Bowery Theatre and peanut gallery, and the gods, and Mr.
Eddy, and the war-cry they made of his name — and a
glorious old war-cry it is, better than any college cries ever
invented : " Hi, Eddy-eddy -eddy-eddy-eddy -eddy-eddy-
eddy-eddy!" of Mose and his silk locks, of the fire-en-
gine fights, and Big Six, and " Wash-her-down ! " of the
pump at Houston Street ; of what happened to Mr.
Thackeray when he talked to the tough ; of many other
delightful things that made the Bowery, to my young
432 MODERN ESSAYS
imagination, one long avenue of romance, mystery, and
thrilling adventure. And the first time I went in the
flesh to the Bowery was to go with an elderly lady to an
optician's shop.
"And is this — Yarrow ? — This the stream
Of which my fancy cherished,
So faithfully, a waking dream ?
An image that hath perished !
O that some minstrel's harp were near.
To utter notes of gladness.
And chase this silence from the air.
That fills my heart with sadness ! "
But the study of the Bowery that I began that day has
gone on with interruption for a good many years, and I
think now that I am arriving at the point where I have
some faint glimmerings of the littleness of my knowledge
of it as compared with what there is to be known. I do
not mean to say that I can begin to size the disproportion
up with any accuracy, but I think I have accomplished a
good deal in getting as far as I have.
The Bowery is not a large place, for I think that,
properly speaking, it is a place rather than a street or
avenue. It is an irregularly shaped ellipse, of notable
width in its widest part. It begins at Chatham Square,
which lies on the parallel of the sixth Broadway block
above City Hall, and loses its identity at the Cooper
Union where Third and Fourth Avenues begin, so that it
is a scant mile in all. But it is the alivest mile on the face
of the earth. And it either bounds or bisects that square
mile that the statisticians say is the most densely populated
square mile on the face of the globe. This is the heart of the
New York tenement district. As the Bowery is the Broad-
way of the East Side, the street of its pleasures, it would
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 433
be interesting enough if it opened up only this one densely-
populated district. But there is much more to contribute
to its infinite variety. It serves the same purpose for
the Chinese colony in Mott, Pell, and Doyers Streets,
and for the Italian swarms in Mulberry Bend, the most
picturesque and interesting slum I have ever seen, and I
am an ardent collector of slums. I have missed art
galleries and palaces and theatres and cathedrals (cathe-
drals particularly) in various and sundry cities, but I
don't think I ever missed a slum. Mulberry Bend is
a narrow bend in Mulberry Street, a tortuous ravine of
tall tenement houses, and it is so full of people that the
throngs going and coming spread off the sidewalk nearly
to the middle of the street. There they leave a little
lane for the babies to play in. No, they never get run
over. There is a perfect understanding between the
babies and the peddlers who drive their wagons in Mul-
berry Bend. The crowds are in the street partly because
much of the sidewalk and all of the gutter is taken up
with venders' stands, which give its characteristic
feature to Mulberry Bend. There are displayed more
and stranger wares than uptown people ever heard of.
Probably the edibles are in the majority, certainly they
are the queerest part of the show. There are trays and
bins there in the Bend, containing dozens and dozens of
things that you would never guess were meant to eat if
you didn't happen to see a ham or a string of sausages or
some other familiar object among them. But the color
of the Bend — and its color is its strong point — comes
from its display of wearing apparel and candy. A lady
can go out in Mulberry Bend and purchase every article
of apparel, external or private and personal, that she
ever heard of, and some that she never heard of, and she
2p
434 MODERN ESSAYS
can get them of any shade or hue. If she likes what
they call "Liberty" colors — soft, neutral tones — she
can get them from the second-hand dealers whose goods
have all the softest of shades that age and exposure can give
them. But if she likes, as I do, bright, cheerful colors,
she can get tints in Mulberry Bend that you could warm
your hands on. Red, greens, and yellows preponderate,
and Nature herself would own that the Italians could give
her points on inventing green and not exert themselves
to do it. The pure arsenical tones are preferred in the
Bend, and, by the bye, anybody who remembers the days
when ladies wore magenta and solferino, and wants to
have those dear old colors set his teeth on edge again,
can go to the Bend and find them there. The same dye-
stuffs that are popular in the dress-goods are equally
popular in the candy, and candy is a chief product of
Mulberry Bend. It is piled up in reckless profusion on
scores of stands, here, there, and everywhere, and to call
the general effect festal, would be to speak slightingly of
it. The stranger who enters Mulberry Bend and sees the
dress-goods and the candies is sure to think that the place
has been decorated to receive him. No, nobody will
hurt you if you go down there and are polite, and mind
your own business, and do not step on the babies. But
if you stare about and make comments, I think those
people will be justified in suspecting that the people up-
town don't always know how to behave themselves like
ladies and gentlemen, so do not bring disgrace on your
neighborhood, and do not go in a cab. You will not
bother the babies, but you will find it trying to your own
nerves.
There is a good deal of money in Mulberry Street, and
some of it overflows into the Bowery. From this street
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 435
also the Baxter Street variety of Jews find their way into
the Bowery. These are the Jew toughs, and there is no
other type of Jew at all like them in all New York's assort-
ment of Hebrew types, which cannot be called meagre.
Of the Jewish types New York has, as the printers say, " a
full case."
But it is on the other side of the Bowery that there lies
a world to which the world north of Fourteenth Street is a
select family party. I could not give even a partial list
of its elements. Here dwell the Polish Jews with their
back-yards full of chickens. The police raid those back-
yards with ready assiduity, but the yards are always
promptly replenished. It is the police against a religion,
and the odds are against the police. The Jew will die
for it, if needs be, but his chickens must be killed kosher
way and not Christian way, but that is only the way of the
Jews : the Hungarians, the Bohemians, the Anarchist
Russians, the Scandinavians of all sorts who come up
from the wharfs, the Irish, who are there, as everywhere,
the Portuguese Jews, and all the rest of them who help to
form that city within a city — have they not, all of them,
ways of their own "^ I speak of this Babylon only to say
that here and there on its borders, and, once in a way, in
its very heart, are rows or blocks of plain brick houses,
homely, decent, respectable relics of the days when the
sturdy, steady tradesfolk of New York built here the homes
that they hoped to leave to their children. They are
boarding- and lodging-houses now, poor enough, but proud
in their respectability of the past, although the tide of
ignorance, poverty, vice, filth, and misery is surging to
their doors and their back-yard fences. And here, in
hall bedrooms, in third-story backs and fronts, and in
half-story attics, live the Bohemians of to-day, and with
436 MODERN ESSAYS
them those other strugglers of poverty who are destined
to become "successful men" in various branches of art,
hterature, science, trade, or finance. Of these latter our
children will speak with hushed respect, as men who rose
from small beginnings ; and they will go into the school-
readers of our grandchildren along with Benjamin Franklin
and that contemptible wretch who got to be a great
banker because he picked up a pin, as examples of what
perseverance and industry can accomplish. From what
I remember I foresee that those children will hate them.
I am not going to give you the addresses of the cheap
restaurants where these poor, cheerful children of adversity
are now eating goulasch and Kartoffelsalad instead of the
spaghetti and tripe a la mode de Caen of their old haunts.
I do not know them, and if I did, I should not hand them
over to the mercies of the intrusive young men from the
studios and the bachelors' chambers. I wish them good
digestion of their goulasch : for those that are to climb,
I wish that they may keep the generous and faithful
spirit of friendly poverty ; for those that are to go on to
the end in fruitless struggle and in futile hope, I wish
for them that that end may come in some gentle and
happier region lying to the westward of that black tide
that ebbs and flows by night and day along the Bowery
Way.
EVOLUTION 1
BY
John Galsworthy
In these last essays, the line of demarcation between exposition,
description, and narration has become very thin — as it often does
outside of rhetorics. Bunner's essay suggests description, and suggests
narrative. It is a story without a plot. As the characters and the
scenes are there, the reader at any moment half expects it to blossom
into a short story. Still more is this true of Mr. Galsworthy's Evolution.
Is it a story or is it an essay ? For the first, it consists of a single dramatic
episode with definite characters. For the second, however, the pathos of
the situation is not individual but belongs to a class. (The thought is
that while evolution is necessary and desirable for those that survive,
the struggle is hard for those that do not survived This might be illus-
trated by the strikes in England with the introduction of machinery
into the cotton mills, when thousands were thrown out of employment.
It might be illustrated by the Venetian gondolier who finds his work
taken from him by the motor-boat. Actually'the particular illustration
chosen is that of a cab-driver. This is presented with consummate art,
detailed and definite. And the essay is omitted. But it is implicit.
The tragedy presented is not that of an individual, but that of a class, t
And in this way Mr Galsworthy forces the reader to be himself the
author. This type, then, represents the extreme limit of the expository
form.
Coming out of the theatre, we found it utterly impossible
to get a taxicab ; and, though it was raining slightly,
walked through Leicester Square in the hope of picking
one up as it returned down Piccadilly. Numbers of han-
' From "The Inn of Tranquillity." Copyright, 1912, by Charles
Scribner's Sons. By permission of the author and of the publishers.
437
438 MODERN ESSAYS
soms and four-wheelers passed, or stood by the curb, haihng
us feebly, or not even attempting to attract our atten-
tion, but every taxi seemed to have its load. At Piccadilly
Circus, losing patience, we beckoned to a four-wheeler
and resigned ourselves to a long, slow journey. A sou'-
westerly air blew through the open windows, and there was
in it the scent of change, that wet scent which visits even
the hearts of towns and inspires the watcher of their myriad
activities with thought of the restless Force that forever
cries: "On, on!" But gradually the steady patter of
the horse's hoofs, the rattling of the windows, the slow
thudding of the wheels, pressed on us so drowsily that
when, at last, we reached home we were more than half
asleep. The fare was two shillings, and, standing in the
lamplight to make sure the coin was a half-crown before
handing it to the driver, we happened to look up. This
cabman appeared to be a man of about sixty, with a long,
thin face, whose chin and drooping grey moustaches
seemed in permanent repose on the up-turned collar of
his old blue overcoat. But the remarkable features of
his face were the two furrows down his cheeks, so deep and
hollow that it seemed as though that face were a collection
of bones without coherent flesh, among which the eyes
were sunk back so far that they had lost their lustre. He
sat quite motionless, gazing at the tail of his horse. And,
almost unconsciously, one added the rest of one's silver to
that half-crown. He took the coins without speaking;
but, as we were turning into the garden gate, we heard
him say :
"Thank you ; you've saved my life."
Not knowing, either of us, what to reply to such a
curious speech, we closed the gate again and came back
to the cab.
EVOLUTION 439
"Are things so very bad?"
"They are," replied the cabman. "It's done with — is
this job. We're not wanted now." And, taking up his
whip, he prepared to drive away.
"How long have they been as bad as this?"
The cabman dropped his hand again, as though glad to
rest it, and answered incoherently :
"Thirty -five year I've been drivin' a cab."
And, sunk again in contemplation of his horse's tail, he
could only be roused by many questions to express himself,
having, as it seemed, no knowledge of the habit.
"I don't blame the taxis, I don't blame nobody. It's
come on us, that's what it has. I left the wife this morning
with nothing in the house. She was saying to me only
yesterday : ' What have you brought home the last four
months?' 'Put it at six shillings a week,' I said. 'No,'
she said, 'seven.' Well, that's right — she enters it all
down in her book."
" You are really going short of food ? "
The cabman smiled ; and that smile between those two
deep hollows was surely as strange as ever shone on a
human face.
"You may say that," he said. "Well, what does it
amount to ? Before I picked you up, I had one eighteen-
penny fare to-day ; and yesterday I took five shillings.
And I've got seven bob a day to pay for the cab, and that's
low, too. There's many and many a proprietor that's
broke and gone — every bit as bad as us. They let us
down as easy as ever they can ; you can't get blood from a
stone, can you?" Once again he smiled. "I'm sorry
for them, too, and I'm sorry for the horses, though they
come out best of the three of us, I do believe."
One of us muttered something about the Public.
440 MODERN ESSAYS
The cabman turned his face and stared down through
the darkness.
"The PubHc?" he said, and his voice had in it a faint
surprise. "Well, they all want the taxis. It's natural.
They get about faster in them, and time's money. I was
seven hours before I picked you up. And then you was
lookin' for a taxi. Them as take us because they can't
get better, they're not in a good temper, as a rule. And
there's a few old ladies that's frightened of the motors, but
old ladies aren't never very free with their money — can't
afford to be, the most of them, I expect."
"Everybody's sorry for you; one would have thought
that — "
He interrupted quietly : "Sorrow don't buy bread. . . .
I never had nobody ask me about things before." And,
slowly moving his long face from side to side, he added :
"Besides, what could people do ? They can't be expected
to support you ; and if they started askin' you questions
they'd feel it very awkward. They know that, I suspect.
Of course, there's such a lot of us : the hansoms are pretty
nigh as bad off as we are. Well, we're gettin' fewer
every day, that's one thing."
Not knowing whether or no to manifest sympathy with
this extinction, we approached the horse. It was a horse
that "stood over" a good deal at the knee, and in the
darkness seemed to have innumerable ribs. And suddenly
one of us said : " Many people want to see nothing but
taxis on the streets, if only for the sake of the horses."
The cabman nodded.
"This old fellow," he said, "never carried a deal of
flesh. His grub don't put spirit into him nowadays ;
it's not up to much in quality, but he gets enough of it."
"And you don't.?"
EVOLUTION 441
The cabman again took up his whip.
"I don't suppose," he said without emotion, "any one
could ever find another job for me now. I've been at
this too long. It'll be the workhouse, if it's not the other
thing."
And hearing us mutter that it seemed cruel, he smiled
for the third time.
"Yes," he said slowly, "it's a bit 'ard on us, because
we've done nothing to deserve it. But things are like that,
so far as I can see. One thing comes pushin' out another,
and so you go on. I've thought about it — you get to
thinkin' and worryin' about the rights o' things, sittin' up
here all day. No, I don't see anything for it. It'll soon
be the end of us now — can't last much longer. And I
don't know that I'll be sorry to have done with it. It's
pretty well broke my spirit."
"There was a fund got up."
"Yes, it helped a few of us to learn the motor-drivin ' ;
but what's the good of that to me, at my time of life?
Sixty, that's my age ; I'm not the only one — there's
hundreds like me. We're not fit for it, that's the fact ;
we haven't got the nerve now. It'd want a mint of money
to help us. And what you say's the truth — people
want to see the end of us. They want the taxis — our
day's over. I'm not complaining ; you asked me about it
yourself."
And for the third time he raised his whip.
"Tell me what you would have done if you had been
given your fare and just sixpence over.?"
The cabman stared downward, as though puzzled by
that question.
"Done.'* Why, nothing. What could I have done.?"
"But you said that it had saved your life."
442 MODERN ESSAYS
"Yes, I said that," he answered slowly; "I was feelin'
a bit low. You can't help it sometimes ; it's the thing
comin' on you, and no way out of it — that's what gets
over you. We try not to think about it, as a rule."
And this time, with a "Thank you, kindly !" he touched
his horse's flank with the whip. Like a thing aroused
from sleep the forgotten creature started and began to
draw the cabman away from us. Very slowly they
travelled down the road among the shadows of the trees
broken by lamplight. Above us, white ships of cloud
were sailing rapidly across the dark river of sky on the
wind which smelled of change. And, after the cab was
lost to sight, that wind still brought to us the dying sound
of the slow wheels.
BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Abbott, Wilbur Cortez. Born 1869, Kokomo, Ind. B. A., Wabash
College, 1892; B. Litt., Oxford, 1897. Formerly instructor in history in
University of Michigan, Dartmouth, and the University of Kansas.
Professor of History in the Sheffield Scientific School since 1908. Con-
tributor to English and American historical reviews. The Nation, Yale
Review, etc.
Addams, Jane. Born 1860, Cedarville, 111. B.A., Rockford College,
1881. Two years in Europe. LL.D., University of Wisconsin, 1904,
Smith, 1910. One of the founders of Hull House, Chicago, 1889. Head
Resident, Hull House since founding. Writer and lecturer on political
and social reforms. Author of : Democracy and Social Ethics, Newer
Ideals of Peace, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, Twenty
Years at Hull House, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, etc.
AvEBURY, John Lubbock (first Baron). Born 1834, London. Died
1913. Banker, politician, naturalist, and author. Much of his work
was popularizing natural history. Author of : The Origin and Metamor-
phoses of Insects, British Wild Flowers, The Pleasures of Life, The
Beauties of Nature, The Use of Life, etc.
Baldwin, Charles Sears. Born 1867, New York City. B.A.,
Columbia, 1888, Ph. D., 1894. Formerly Professor of English at Yale.
Professor of Rhetoric at Columbia. Author of books on compositioiX-
and English literature ; also of essays and reviews.
Beers, Henry Augustine. Born 1847, Buffalo, N. Y. B.A., Yale,
1869, M.A., 1887. Professor of English in Yale College. Author of :
The Thankless Muse, A Suburban Pastoral, The Ways of Yale, Points
at Issue, A History of English Romanticism (eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries), and other poems, stories, essays, and works on English and
American Literature.
Bennett, Enoch Arnold. Born 1867, North Staffordshire, England.
Began his career as a journalist. Author of many novels, among which
are The Old Wives' Tale, Anna of the Five Towns, Clayhanger, etc.,
and plays, such as What the Public Wants, Milestones (with Edward
Knoblauch), and The Great Adventure.
Birbell,'Augustine. Born 1850, near Liverpool. B.A., Cambridge,
443
444 MODERN ESSAYS
1872; LL.D., St. Andrews. Lawyer and professor of law. Author
of numerous volumes of critical and general essays, among them : Obiter
Dicta ; Res Judicatae ; Men, Women, and Books ; In the Name of the
Bodleian, etc.
Bryce, James (Viscount). Born 1838, Belfast. B.A., Trinity
College, Oxford, 1862, D.C.L., 1870; LL.D. from various British and
American universities. Formerly Regius Professor of Civil Law at
Oxford. Active in English politics ; member of Parliament. Am-
bassador to the United States, 1907-1912. Fellow of the Royal Society.
Author of historical and governmental works, among them : The Holy
Roman Empire, The American Commonwealth, The Hindrances to Good
Citizenship, University and Historical Addresses, etc.
BuNNEB, Henry Cuylee. Born 1855, Oswego, N.Y. Died 1896.
Journalist and editor. Best work done as editor of Puck. Author of :
Airs from Arcady, and other volumes of poetry; Short Sixes, Made in
France, Jersey Street and Jersey Lane, and other short stories and
sketches.
Burton, Richard Eugene. Born 1859, Hartford, Conn. B.A.,
Trinity, 1883; Ph.D., Johns Hopkins, 1888. Literary editor of the
Hartford Courant, 1890-1897. Associate editor of Warner's Library of
the World's Best Literature. Now head of the English Department of
the University of Minnesota. Author of : Lyrics of Brotherhood, Rahab,
From the Book of Life, Forces in Fiction, Literary Likings, Little
Essays in Literature and Life, and other volumes of poetry, essays,
and critical works.
Canby, Henry Seidel. Born 1878, Wilmington, Del. Ph. B., Yale,
1899, Ph.D., 1905. Assistant Professor of English in the Sheffield
Scientific School. Assistant editor of The Yale Review. Author of:
The Short Story in English, English Composition in Theory and
Practice, etc. Contributor of short stories and essays to the magazines.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. Born 1874, Campden Hill, Kensington,
England. Began literary work by reviewing art books for the Bookman.
Has written for various magazines as contributor and editor. Author
of poems, novels, and essays, among which are The Man WTio Was
Thursday, The Flying Inn, Heretics, Orthodoxy, etc.
Colby, Frank Moore. Born 1865, Washington, D.C. B.A.,
Columbia, 1888, M.A., 1889. Instructor in History and Economics
at Amherst, Columbia, and New York University. Author of : Outlines
of General History, Imaginary Obligations, Constrained Attitudes, and
other historical works and general essays.
BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 445
CoLTON, Arthur Willis. Born 1868, Washington, Conn. B.A.,
Yale, 1890, Ph.D., 1893. Author of: The Delectable Mountains, The
Debatable Land, The Cruise of the Violetta, Harps Hung Up in Babylon,
and other novels and volumes of poetry ; contributor to Atlantic Monthly,
Harpers, Scribners, and other magazines.
CxniRAN, Henry Hastings. Born 1877, New York City. B.A., Yale.
1898; LL.B., New York Law School, 1900. For a number of years
newspaper reporter and editor in New York. Member of the New York
Board of Aldermen since 1911. Was Chairman of the Board of Alder-
men's Committee which investigated the Police Department in 1912-1913.
At present Chairman of the Board's Committee on Finance, and Majority
Leader in the Board of Aldermen.
Dana, Charles Anderson. Born 1819, Hinsdale, N. H. Died 1897.
Educated at Harvard. Member of Brook Farm. Was on the staff of
the New York Tribune as correspondent, and later as managing editor.
Special agent of the War Department under Secretary Stanton. Editor
and part owner of the New York Sun from 1868 till his death. Author
of : The Art of Newspaper Making, Reminiscences of the Civil War, and
other works ; but best known for his articles and editorials in The Sun.
Flandrau, Charles Macomb. Born 1871, St. Paul, Minn. B.A.,
Harvard, 1895. Author of: Harvard Episodes, a volume of college
short stories; The Diary of a Freshman, Viva Mexico, Prejudices,
and of other stories and essays.
Galsworthy, John. Born 1867, Coombe, Surrey, England. Edu-
cated at Harrow, and at New College, Oxford. Was called to the bar
in 1890, but soon turned to literature as a profession. Author of : Jocelyn,
Fraternity, The Patrician, The Dark Flower, and other novels ; also poems
and essays, among them Songs and Doggerels, and The Inn of Tranquil-
lity. Much of his later work has been in the form of plays — The Silver
Box, Strife, The Fugitive, and others.
Harrison, Frederic. Born 1831, London. Honorary D.C.L.,
Oxford; Litt. D., Cambridge; LL.D., Aberdeen. Author and editor.
Among his publications are: The Meaning of History, Order and
Progress, Victorian Literature, American Addresses, Memories and
Thoughts, The Philosophy of Common Sense, and other historical and
general works.
Lang, Andrew. Born 1844, Selkirk, Scotland. Died 1912. Edu-
cated at St. Andrews University, and at Balliol College, Oxford. Poet,
journalist, critic, historian, and Homeric scholar. Among his publica-
tions are : Ballades in Blue China, Grass of Parnassus, Collected Rhymes,
446 MODERN ESSAYS
Homer and the Epic, The Homeric Hymns, Homer and His Age. He
was also the author of works on folk-lore, primitive religions, and English
and Scotch history.
Leacock, Stephen. Born 1869, in England. Educated in Canada
and the United States. Head of the Department of Political Science at
McGill University. Author of : Sunshine Sketches, Nonsense Novels,
Behind the Beyond, etc., also of works on political economy.
Lodge, Henry Cabot. Born 1850, Boston, Mass. B.A., Harvard,
1871, LL.B., 1874. Has held various public positions in his state and
in the nation. Senator from Massachusetts since 1893. Author and
editor of works on American history and politics, such as The Life of
Washington, History of Boston, Story of the Revolution, A Frontier
Town and Other Essays, etc.
Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph. Born 1851, Penkhull, Staffordshire,
England. D.Sc, London; D.Sc. (Hon.) Oxford, Cambridge, Victoria,
and Liverpool; LL.D., St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. Fellow
of the Royal Society. Principal of the University of Birmingham since
1900. Scientist, and author of works on Physics and related subjects.
Author of : Modern Views of Electricity, Mathematics for Parents and
Teachers, The Substance of Faith, Man and the Universe, Parent and
Child, Modern Problems, etc.
Lubbock, Sir John (see Avebury).
Lynn, Margaret. Born and reared in northern Missouri. B.S.,
Tarkio College, 1889 ; M.A., University of Nebraska, 1900. Taught at
the University of Nebraska, and at the University of Kansas, since
1901. Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of
Kansas. Author of A Stepdaughter of the Prairie, and other western
sketches, and contributor to the magazines.
More, Paul Elmer. Born 1864, St. Louis, Mo. BA., Washington
University, 1887, M.A., 1892; M.A., Harvard, 1893; LL.D., Washing-
ton University, 1913. Formerly instructor at Harvard and Bryn Mawr,
and literary editor of the Independent. Editor of the New York Evening
Post since 1903, and of the Nation from 1909 to 1914. Member of the
National Institute of Arts and Letters. Author of poems and transla-
tions. Has published eight volumes of critical and general essays under
.the title The Shelburne Essays.
Phelps, William Lyon. Born 1865, New Haven, Conn. B.A.,
Yale, 1887; M.A., Harvard, 1891; Ph.D., Yale, 1891. Professor of
English Literature in Yale College. Member of the National Institute
of Arts and Letters, contributor to the magazines on literary topics.
BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 447
and public lecturer on literature. Editor of numerous English classics ;
author of : The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement, Essays
on Modern Novelists, Teaching in School and College, Essays on Russian
Novelists, Essays on Books, etc.
Rhodes, James Ford. Born 1848, Cleveland, Ohio. Educated
at New York University, and University of Chicago. LL.D., Har-
vard, Yale, and Princeton ; Litt.D., Oxford. Lecturer at Oxford on
the American Civil War, 1913. Author of History of the United States
from the Compromise of 1850, also of Historical Essays. President of
the American Historical Association, 1899. Corresponding Fellow of
the British Academy. Member of the American Academy of Arts
and Letters, and of other societies.
Sumner, William Graham. Born 1840, Paterson, N.J. Died
1910. B.A., Yale, 1863, LL.D., 1909. Professor of Political Economy
and of Sociology at Yale. Author of : History of American Currency,
Lectures on the History of Protection in the United States, What Social
Classes Owe to Each Other, Protectionism, Folkways, etc. ; also of :
War and Other Essays, Earth Hunger and Other Essays, The Challenge
of Facts and Other Essays, volumes published since his death.
Taft, William Howard. Born 1857, Cincinnati, Ohio. B.A., Yale,
1878; LL.B., University of Cincinnati, 1880. Jurist and statesman;
twenty-seventh President of the United States. Professor of Constitu-
tional Law in Yale University since 1913. Author of: Political Issues
and Outlooks, Present Day Problems, The United States and Peace, and
other essays and addresses on politics and government.
TiNGFANG, Wu. Eminent Chinese statesman and diplomat. For-
merly Minister to Peru, Spain, and later to the United States. More
recently Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Minister of Justice for the
Provincial Government of the Republic of China. Lecturer and essayist.
Whistler, James Abbott McNeill. Born 1834, Lowell, Mass.
Died 1903. Artist and lecturer on art. His etchings first brought him
to notice while he was an art student in Paris. Did similar work in
England. His work very distinctive and original. The portraits of
his mother and of Carlyle, and his Nocturnes are among his best-known
paintings. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies is the book in which he
explains his theory of art, and replies to some of his critics, notably
John Ruskin.
Wilson, Woodrow. Born 1856, Staunton, Va. B.A., Princeton,
1879; LL.B., University of Virginia, 1881; Ph.D., Johns Hopkins,
1886. Formerly Professor of Political Economy and Jurisprudence and
448 MODERN ESSAYS
later president of Princeton University. Governor of New Jersey;
twenty-eighth President of the United States. Author of : Constitutional
Government in the United States, A History of the American People,
Division and Reunion, Mere Literature, and other volumes of history
and essays.
WooDBERRY, George Edward. Bom 1855, Beverly, Mass. B.A.,
Harvard, 1877. Various honorary degrees. Professor of English at
the University of Nebraska, and of Comparative Literature at Columbia.
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. Editor of English classics ;
biographer of Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson, and others ; author of poems,
essays, and critical works.
Printed in the United States of America.
y43i.
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