u 
 
 ^ERSiry Of CALIFORNIA 
 RiyERSlDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 ISAAC FOOT i 
 
 ■
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 AND OTHER 
 
 ESSAYS ON LITERARY SUBJECTS 
 
 A\, 
 
 H. D. TRAILL 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 THE NEW LUCIAN,' ' THE LIFE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN,' 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 HURST AND BLACK ETT, LIMITED 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET 
 
 1897 
 A II rights reserved
 
 PA/5// 
 T73
 
 CONTEITTS 
 
 y 
 
 The New Fiction . 
 The Political Novel 
 The Politics of Literature 
 Matthew Arnold . 
 Samuel Richardson 
 The Novel of Manners 
 Newspapers and English 
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 The Revolution in Grub Street 
 The Provincial Letters 
 The Future of Hu^iour 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 
 
 27 
 
 7G 
 104 
 137 
 170 
 190 
 220 
 249 
 283
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 Not to be ' new ' is, in these clays, to be nothiDg, 
 and in seeking as impartial and as imcommittiug a 
 title as possible for the work of the latest recruits 
 to the army of successful novelists, I have not 
 thought myself justified in withholding the indis- 
 pensable certificate of novelty. They object, or at 
 least the ablest and most popular of them has objected, 
 it appears, to being described as a ' realist ;' so I am 
 no longer permitted to label his art as the ' New 
 Kealism.' But I am not at all sure that I shall be 
 anymore fortunate in my emendation. For it would 
 not surprise me if the vniter to whom I have referred 
 were to protest against my describing his books even 
 as ' fiction ;' so insistent is he, I understand, on their 
 literal and historical accuracy, so earnest is he in as- 
 suring us that every character whom he pourtrays 
 lias had a real existence, and every incident he 
 relates, an actual occurrence, so artless, in short, is his 
 confidence in a justification which has no sort of 
 relevancy to the defence of a work of art. Still, in
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 the hope that ho will pass the word ' fiction ' as ia- 
 dicating the product of an inventor, and not insist 
 upon some other description of it which shall denote 
 the historian, I will let it stand at the head of this 
 paper in order to avoid giving a controversial, or at 
 any rate a controverted, title to the whole volume. 
 But for convenience sake I shall still crave leave to 
 discuss the narrative and descriptive method with 
 which these pages deal under the name bestowed 
 upon it b}' its more ardent admirers : that namely 
 of the New Realism. 
 
 If that description is disclaimed by both, as it has 
 been by one. of the two novelists whose novels I am 
 about to consider, we can yet understand what it 
 means in the mouths of those who use it. It would 
 naturally come pat to their lips. Nothing, indeed, 
 should surprise us less than that in a day when the 
 spurious is everywhere supposed to be successfully 
 disguised and sufficiently recommended to the public 
 by merely being described as new, we should find 
 our attention solicited by a New Realism, of which 
 the two most obvious things to be said are that it is 
 unreal with the falsity of the half truth, and as old as 
 the habit of exaggeration. One of the latest pro- 
 fessors of this doubtful form of art is the very young 
 American writer, Mr. Stephen Crane, who first at- 
 tracted notice in this country by a novel entitled The 
 Red Badge of Courage. Whether this work was or 
 
 2
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 was not described by its admirers as an achievement 
 in realism, I am not aware. As a matter of fact, and 
 as the antecedents, and indeed the age, of the writer 
 showed, it was not a record of actual observation. 
 Mr. Crane had evidently been an industrious investi- 
 gator and collator of the emotional experiences of 
 soldiers, and had evolved from them a picture of the 
 mental state of a recruit going into action. It was 
 artistically done and obtained a not undeserved suc- 
 cess; but no method, of course, could be less realistic 
 in the sense on which the professors of the New 
 Reahsm insist, than the process which resulted in this 
 elaborate study of the emotious of the battlefield from 
 the pen of a young man who has never himself smelt 
 powder. 
 
 Since then, however, Mr. Crane has given us two 
 small volumes, which are presumably realistic or 
 nothing. If circumstances have prevented the 
 author from writing about soldiers in action ' with his 
 eye on the object,' there are no such obstacles to his 
 studying the Bowery and ' Bowery boys ' from the 
 life. We may take it, therefore, that Maggie and 
 George's Mother are the products of such study. Ac- 
 cording to Mr. Howells's effusive 'Appreciation,' 
 which prefaces it, Maggie is a remarkable story, having 
 'that quality of fatal necessity Avhich dominates 
 Greek tragedy.' Let us see then what this Sopho- 
 clean work is like. 
 
 B 2
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 The story of Maggie opens with a fight between 
 
 the boys of Rum Alley and those of Devil's Row. 
 
 Jimmie, the heroine's brother, is a boy of Rum Alley, 
 
 aged nine, and when the curtain draws up he is tho 
 
 centre of a circle of urchins who are pelting him with 
 
 stones. 
 
 ' Howls of wrath went up from them. On their small con- 
 vulsed faces shone the grins of true assassins. As they charged, 
 they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus . . . Jimmie's 
 coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and his hat was gone. 
 He had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and blood was drip- 
 ping from a cut in his head. His wan features looked like those 
 of a tiny insane demon . . . The little boys ran to and fro hurl- 
 ing stones and swearing in barbaric trebles ... A stone had 
 smashed in Jimmie's mouth. Blood was bubbling over his chin 
 and down upon his ragged shirt. Tears made furrows on his 
 dirt-stained checks. His thin legs had begun to tremble and 
 tarn vv^eak, causing his small body to reel. His roaring curses of 
 the first part of the fight had changed to a blasphemous chatter. 
 In the yells of the whirling mob of Devil's Row children there 
 were notes of joy like songs of triumphant savagery. The little 
 boys seemed to leer gloatingly at the blood on the other child's 
 face.' 
 
 A lad of sixteen, afterwards destined to play an 
 important part in the story, then approaches. He 
 smites one of the Devil's Row children on the back of 
 the head, and the little boy falls to the ground and 
 gives a tremendous howl. A reinforcement of the 
 Rum Alley children then arrives, and there is a 
 momentary pause in the fight, during which Jimmie 
 becomes involved in a quarrel with Blue Billie, one 
 of his own side. 
 
 4
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 ' They struck at each other, clinched, and rolled over on the 
 cobble-stones. 
 
 '" Smash 'im, Jimmie, kick d' face off 'im," yelled Pete, iu 
 tones of delight. 
 
 'The small combatants pounded and kicked, scratched and 
 tore. They began to weep, and their curses struggled iu their 
 throats with sobs. The other little boys clasped their hands and 
 wriggled their legs in excitement. They formed a bobbing circle 
 round the pair.' 
 
 At this juncture Jimmie's father arrives on the 
 scene, and endeavours to separate the combatants 
 with a view of 'belting' his son. To this end he 
 begins to kick into the chaotic mass on the ground. 
 * The boy Billie felt a heavy boot strike his head. 
 He made a furious effort and disentangled himself 
 from Jimmie. He tottered away. Jimmie arose pain- 
 fully from the ground and confronting his father be- 
 gan to curse him.' His parent kicked him. ' Come 
 home, now,' he cried, ' an' stop yer jawin', or I'll lam 
 the everlasting head off yer.' Upon this they go 
 home, the boy swearing ' luridly,' for ' he felt that it 
 was a degradation for one who aimed to be some 
 vague kind of a soldier or a man of blood, with a 
 sort of sublime licence, to be taken home by a father.' 
 
 This is the first chapter much condensed. In the 
 original there are eight pages of it. Is it art ? If so, 
 is the making of mud-pies an artistic occupation, and 
 are the neglected brats who are to be found rolling 
 in the gutters of every great city unconscious artists ? 
 In the next chapter Jimmie pummels his little sister 
 
 5
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 and bis mother quarrels with and rates her husband 
 till she drives him to the public-house, remaining 
 at home to get drunk herself. In the third chapter, 
 .limmie, who has stopped out to avoid an outbreak 
 of her intoxicated fury, steals home again late at 
 night, listens outside the door to a fight going on 
 Avithin between his father and mother, and at last 
 creeps in with his little sister to find both parents 
 prostrate on the floor in a drunken stupor, and to 
 huddle in a corner until daybreak, cowering with 
 terror lest they should awaken. For when you are 
 a ' realist's ' little boy, you have to be very handy 
 and adaptable, and do exactly what that realist re- 
 quires of you : so that, though you may have been 
 defying and cursing your father at one moment, like 
 the daring little imp you have been described as be- 
 ing, you may at the next moment, and for the purpose 
 of another sort of painful picture, have to behave 
 like a cowed and broken-spirited child of a totally 
 different type. 
 
 These opening scenes take up about one-fifth of 
 the short book, and those that follow are like unto 
 them. There is a little less fighting, but a good deal 
 more drinking. Jimmie becomes a truck driver, and 
 fights constantly with other drivers, but the fights 
 are not described at length. His father dies, pro- 
 bably of drink, and his mother takes to drinking 
 harder than ever. Maggie is seduced and deserted 
 
 6
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 by Pete, the youth who appeared on the scene during 
 the opening fight and hit one of the infant fighters 
 on the back of the head. Jimmie resents the pro- 
 ceedings of the Bowery Lovelace as a breach of 
 good manners, and, going with a friend to the tavern 
 where Pete acts as ' bar-tender,' the two set upon 
 him, and there ensues a fight, in the course of 
 which the lips of the combatants ' curl back and 
 stretch tightly over the gums in ghoul-like grins.' 
 It lasts for four pages, and is brought to a close 
 by the intervention of the police, and the escape 
 of Jimmie ' with his face drenched in blood.' How 
 this story continues, how Maggie falls lower and 
 lower and finally dies, and how after hex death her 
 giu-sodden mother is passionately entreated to forgive 
 her, and at last graciously consents to do so — all 
 this may be read in Mr. Crane's pages, and shall not 
 here be summarised from them. Is it necessary to 
 do so ? Or to give a precis of the companion volume, 
 Georges Mother, the story of a ' little^old woman ' 
 actually of sober and industrious habits, and of her 
 actually not vicious though weak son, of whose back- 
 slidiugs she dies ? Need I give specimen extracts 
 from \i% I hope not — I think not. The extracts 
 which have been already given are perfectly ftiir sam- 
 ples of Mr. Crane's work. I can honestly affirm that 
 anyone who is willing to accept my assurance that 
 to road these two books through would be to wade 
 
 7
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 throiigli some three hundred and thirty pages of sub- 
 stantially the same stuff as the above extracts, will 
 do Mr. Crane no injustice. So I will pass from him 
 to a novelist of considerably larger calibre. 
 
 For Jilr. Arthur Morrison, author of Tales of Mean 
 Streets and A Child of the Jago, undoubtedly carries 
 heavier guns that Mr. Crane. To begin with, he can 
 tell a story, while Mr. Crane can only string together 
 a series of loosely cohering incidents. Many of his 
 characters are vividly and vigorously drawn, while 
 the American writer puts us off for the most part with 
 sketches and shadowy outlines. Mr. ^Morrison's ruffians 
 and their ruffianism are better discriminated, and 
 though there is plenty of fighting and drinking and 
 general brutality in his last and strongest work — one 
 of the faction fights in which, indeed, is related at 
 quite inordinate length — he understands that the 
 description of these things alone will not suffice to 
 make a satisfactory story even about blackguards. 
 He has outgrown that touching naivetS displayed 
 in the younger writer's obvious belief in the per- 
 petual freshness and charm of mere squalor. He 
 perceives that merely to follow his characters, as Mr. 
 Crane does his, from the drinking-bar to the low 
 music-hall and thence home again, day after day, 
 with interludes of brawling and ' bashing,' and other 
 like recreations, becomes, after a hundred pages or 
 so, a little monotonous, and that the fife of the
 
 TEE NEW FICTION 
 
 criminal in his constant struggle with the law, and in 
 perpetual danger from its officers, possesses at least 
 the element of ' sport,' and presents features of 
 variety and interest which that of the mere sot and 
 tavern-brawler cannot possibly offer. Above all, J\Ir. 
 Morrison wields a certain command of pathos, a pov/er 
 in which Mr. Crane is not only deficient, but of which 
 he does not even appear to know the meaning ; and 
 were it not for a certain strange and, in truth, para- 
 doxical defect, of which more hereafter, in his method 
 of employing it, he would at times be capable of 
 moving his readers very powerfully indeed. In a 
 word, the English writer differs from the American by 
 all the difference v/hich divides the trained craftsman 
 from the crude amateur, and he deserves to that ex- 
 tent more serious and detailed criticism. 
 
 What, however, has most astonished one of Mr. 
 Morrison's critics fresh from a perusal of A Child of 
 the Jago, is the impression of extraordinary unreality 
 which, taken as a whole, it leaves behind it. To a 
 critic opposed to the theories and methods of so-called 
 reahsm, this is naturally rather disconcerting. He 
 has probably been girding up his critical loins for the 
 task of showing that the realist has lost sight of art 
 in the perusal and capture of naked Truth, when lo ! 
 he finds that even Truth herself appears to have al- 
 together escaped her pursuer. He was preparing 
 himself to detect and expose the aesthetic and artistic 
 
 9
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 defects of a supposed product of literary photography, 
 Avhen to his amazement he discovers that the photo- 
 graph, though it seems distinct enough to the gaze 
 which concentrates itself successively on the various 
 parts of the picture, yet fades, when the attempt is 
 made to view it in its entirety, into a mere blur. He 
 comes ont from the Jago with the feelings, not, as he 
 had expected, of a man who has just paid a visit to 
 the actual district under the protection of the pohce, 
 but of one who has just awakened from the dream of 
 a prolonged sojourn in some fairyland of horror. This, 
 to be sure, may be the effect which Mr. Morrison de- 
 sired to produce : it is certainly not difficult, I think, 
 to show that his methods are distinctly calculated to 
 produce it ; but then those methods cannot be exact- 
 ly the methods which the realist professes to employ, 
 nor that effect the effect at which he is commonly 
 supposed to aim. 
 
 What is the Jago ? The Jago is a name of Mr. 
 Morrison's own invention, and applied by him to a 
 district which he carefully localises by giving it two 
 real East-End thoroughfares, High Street, Shoreditch, 
 and Bethnal Green Road, as boundaries on two of 
 its sides. He estimates its area as that of ' a square 
 of two hundred and fifty yards or less,' and describes 
 its population as ' swarming in thousands.' Yet with 
 the exception of the hero's mother, and a single family 
 besides, it appears to contain no one adult person 
 
 10
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 among all these thousands who is not actually or 
 potentially either a thief, or a prostitute, or a 'fence,' 
 or a professional .mendicant, or the female decoy of 
 drunken libertines for the purpose of robbery with 
 murderous violence. In the opening chapter of the 
 book, the wife of Billy Leary brings in a victim to 
 the ' cosh,' — an iron rod with a knob at the end. 
 which the craftsman carried in his coat-sleeve, 'wait- 
 ing about dark staircase corners till his wife (married 
 or not) brought in a well-drunken stranger, when 
 with a sudden blow behind the head the stranger 
 was happily coshed, and whatever was found on him 
 as he lay insensible was the profit of the transaction.' 
 And we are told that ' there were legends of surpris- 
 ing ingatherings achieved by wives of especial dih- 
 gence : one of a woman who had brought to the cosh 
 some six-and-twenty on a night of public rejoicing.' 
 Mrs. Leary 's stranger was 'happily coshed,' and 
 afterwards thrown out into the street. As thus : — 
 
 ' lu a little wbile soraetLing large and dark was puslied forth 
 from the door opening near Jago Row, which Billy Leary's spouse 
 had entered. The thing rolled over and lay tumbled on the pave- 
 ment for a time unmoved. It might have been yet another would- 
 be sleeper, but for its stillness. Just such a thing it seemed be- 
 like to two that lifted their heads and peered from a few yards off 
 till they rose on hands and knees and crept to where it lay : Jago 
 rats both. A man it was, with a thick smear across his face and 
 about his head, the source of the dark trickle that sought the 
 gutter dreamily over the broken flags. The drab stuff of his 
 pockets peeped out here and there in a crumpled bunch, and his 
 
 11
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 •waistcoat gaped whore the v.-atch-guarcl had been. Clearly here 
 was an uncommonly remunerative cosh — a cosh so good that the 
 boots had been neglected and remained on the man's feet. These 
 the kneeling _two unlaced deftly, and rising, prize in hand, van- 
 ished in the deeper shadow of Jago How.' 
 
 This, be it observed, is not a crime of rare occur- 
 rence, and the work of a limited class of criminals. 
 You are invited to believe that it is a regular industry 
 of the Jago practised semper, uhiqiie, et ah omnibus, 
 throughout the whole district, at all times, and by 
 every one who has the means of practising it with 
 success. Lack of such means is the only limit to it. 
 ' S'elp me !' says one of the characters, referring to 
 Mrs. Leary, ' I'd carry the cosh meself if I'd a woman 
 like 'er.' 
 
 After this one ought not, perhaps, to be surprised 
 at the fight between the Ranns and the Learys, re- 
 lated with £dl the circumstantiality of the scrimmage 
 between Molly Seagrim and her enemies in the 
 churchyard, though in a grim, smileless fashion, con- 
 trasting comically enough with Fielding's most 
 humorous burlesque of a Homeric battlepiece. But 
 it lasts for twenty mortal pages, until indeed we get 
 a little tired of the prowess of Sally Green in biting 
 her female adversaries, and tearing out their hair, 
 and are almost glad when Nora Walsh brings the 
 fight to a close by breaking a bottle on the kerb, 
 and stabbing Sally about the face with the jagged 
 points. The two clans subsequently fraternize, and, 
 
 12
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 at a later stage of this agreeable romauce, one fac- 
 tion invites the other to a ' sing-song ' at Mother 
 Gapps's, when the floor unfortunately falls in, and the 
 guests, suspecting a piege, attack their hosts with ex- 
 ceeding savagery in the cellar. When the burglar- 
 father of little Dicky Perrott, the hero of the book, is 
 not ' burgling,' an occupation which, by affording him 
 facilities for the murder of a treacherous fence, con- 
 duets him ultimately to the gallows, the reader is 
 entertained principally with fights ; but the story of 
 Dicky himself is interesting, though with odd touches 
 of old-fashioned melodrama about it, and would be 
 much more so if not buried as it is beneath the mass 
 of squalid irrelevances which encumbers the book. 
 
 No wonder that many who know the East-End of 
 London well have protested against this picture/ 
 The houses in that area of ' two hundred and fifty 
 yards square ' have been cleared of its former oc- 
 cupants and their dens, and the original of the Jago 
 has, it is admitted, ceased to exist. But I will make 
 bold to say that as described by Mr. Morrison — 
 described, that is to say as a place of which, with the 
 half-dozen exceptions above mentioned, every single 
 inhabitant out of 'swarming thousands' is either a 
 thief, or a harlot, or a ' cosher ' or a decoy, or a ' fence,' 
 or a professional mendicant — it never did and never 
 could exist. Mr. Morrison has simply taken all the vari- 
 » See note at end of this essay. 
 
 13
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 oiis types of London misery, foulness, and rascality and 
 'dumped them down' on the area aforesaid. He has 
 taken the brutal pugnacity of one of the courts of an 
 Irish quarter, mixed it with the knavery of a thieves' 
 kitchen in some other district, made ' the gruel thick 
 and slab ' in his infernal cauldron with a highly con- 
 centrated dose of the foul scum which is found float- 
 ing, though in a much diluted form, on the surface of 
 the vast sea of poverty in all great cities ; and, pour- 
 ing the precious compost into a comparatively small 
 vessel, he invites the world to inspect it as a sort of 
 essence or extract of metropolitan degradation. If 
 it is not what you would have actually found in ex- 
 ploring the Jago, it is no doubt what you might 
 have found if all London had happened to pour its 
 manifold streams of corruption into that particular 
 sentina. I have nothing to say for the moment 
 against art of this kind, except that it is certainly not 
 realism. It is the idealising method, and its result is 
 as essentially ideal as the Venus of Milo. That it is the 
 idealisation of ughness, instead of beauty, is a mere 
 detail. 
 
 80 much for the book as a whole. As an imagin- 
 ative picture of life at the East-End — that is to say 
 as a picture formed out of a multitude of sordid and 
 shocking actualities, many or most of them dis- 
 sociated from each other in real life, but here 
 imaginatively combined for the purpose of a work of 
 
 li
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 fiction — it Diay pass ; but, unless words are to part 
 with all their distinctions of meaning, it can no more 
 be a realistic history of any community of human 
 beings that ever existed on the earth, than is the 
 Voyage to the Houyhilinms. 
 
 Nevertheless, though the total effect of the story is 
 unreal and phantasmagoric, yet, considered as a 
 series of distinct scenes, or as a gallery of repulsive 
 portraits, may it not, it may be asked, be a triumph 
 of accurate description and life-like portraiture'? 
 Grant that the collocation of so many hideous figures 
 and the concatenation of such an uninterrupted suc- 
 cession of revolting incidents, is misdescribed as 
 'realism,' yet the drawing of those figures and the 
 narratives of those incidents may be masterpieces of 
 realistic art. Well, is that so ? As for the incidents, 
 no doubt you are made to ' see them ' plainly enough ; 
 but, speaking for myself personally, I see them not a 
 whit more plainly for the crudities of the description. 
 There is a fight, half prize-fight, half quarrel-fight, in 
 A Child of the Jago, a sort of incident which interests 
 if not delights all of us, and probably will continue 
 to do so until the human race is ready for elevation 
 to some loftier, but less lively, plane of being. It is 
 most conscientiously described — with all the con- 
 scientiousness indeed of the gentleman mentioned 
 by Sheridan, who described the Pha:nix 'like a 
 poulterer,' not 'letting us off a single feather.' Every 
 
 15
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 pimch •with its effect on the punched part is faith- 
 tuWy dehneated in black and bhie, picked out with 
 crimson ; but the blood and bruises with which Mr. 
 Morrison so lavishly adorns his pages do not make tis 
 realise the battle one whit more vividly than, for ia- 
 etance, we realise the prize-fight in Rodney Stone, an 
 incident nevertheless in which Mr. Conan Doyle can- 
 not be accused of shirking any necessary detail. 
 And so with the faction fight, and the scrimmage after 
 the 'sing-song,' and the murder which brings the plot 
 to its climax. They are vigorous pieces of descrip- 
 tion, but any intelligent reader who compares them 
 with other examples, by writers of other schools, will 
 find that their vigour is not really enhanced by the 
 violences of colouring, and that their reality does 
 not in the least depend upon their so-called realism. 
 
 As to the character-drawing, I willingly admit its 
 occasionally high merit. Josh Perrott, the burglar 
 father of Dicky, is a convincing portrait, and strikes 
 one as consistent and unexaggerated. The man has 
 the virtues, or rather, the one virtue, which goes with 
 the vices of the lowest type of Englishman — that 
 dogged stoicism in the face of death, which is the 
 nobler, as the brute ferocity is the baser, side of his 
 bulldog nature. But what is one to say of Aaron 
 Weech, of Father Sturt — nay, of Dicky Perrott him- 
 self? Have the transactions of Weech with Dicky, 
 and the relations of Dicky to Weech, been actually 
 
 16
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 studied from East-Eud criminal life, or are they uot 
 rather exercises in the more stagy and artificial man- 
 ner of the despised sentimentalist Dickens 1 And, if 
 so, what a falling off is here for the New Realism ! 
 To observe that Aaron Weech is simply a revival of 
 our old friend Mr. Fagin is a too obvious criticism, 
 and is a not sufficiently serious objection — for 'comic 
 relief ' is needed sorely enough in Mr. Morrison's pages, 
 Heaven knows, and to borrow it from Dickens is at 
 least, in a phrase of that humourist's own, to ' go to the 
 right shop ' for it. But it is a little too much to make 
 an amalgam of Artful Dodger and Oliver Twist, which 
 really is what Mr. Morrison has done with Dicky 
 Perrott. For what else can be said of a boy v/ho is 
 precocious enough to steal a nickel clock from a 
 neighbour's mantelpiece, yet green enough to allow 
 a fence to have it in liquidation of a debt of two- 
 pence ? The child-thief is not quite so common, 
 I hope, even in a thieves' quarter, as we should 
 gather from Mr. Morrison's writings ; but there can 
 be very few East-End children, honest or dishonest, 
 who do not know more about the price of articles than 
 that. They acquire that knowledge in only too hard 
 a school, and begin at only too tender an age. The 
 theft, again, of the cheap toy musical-box by way of 
 remorseful compensation of the robbed Ropers with 
 ' a thing worth any fifty clocks,' in Dicky's estima- 
 tion — surely that is not realistically imagined ; 
 
 C
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 surely that is not a natural touch of childish char- 
 acter in a child of the Jago. It is only the well- 
 nurtured and well-cared-for child who sees no reason 
 why ' grown-ups ' should not value toys, as he does 
 himself, more highly than articles of domestic use. 
 A child of the Jago would have known very well 
 that if his mother were bound for the pawnbroker's 
 she would be more likely to take a flat-iron with her 
 than a tin soldier. But that Dicky's character should 
 abouud with these incongruous sentimental touches 
 is not surprising ; for Sentimentalism is in truth the 
 Nemesis that dogs the New Realism and its profes- 
 sors. In their pose of cynical self-repression, in 
 their determination to make their realism ' unflinch- 
 ing,' ' relentless,' ' terrible,' and all the rest of it, 
 they so sternly shut their eyes to the real pathos of 
 the scenes and lives which they describe, that at 
 last they seem to lose the power of discriminating 
 between the real article and its counterfeits, and, 
 when they need the pathetic for the purposes of a 
 foil, they are compelled to fall back upon shams of 
 their own invention. 
 
 Even when they quit the hideous and revolting for 
 the merely dreary and depressing, the same note of 
 exaggeration almost everywhere asserts itself. In 
 Tales of Mean Streets, Jlr. Morrison has strung to- 
 gether fifteen short stories, some of them repulsive, 
 after the fashion of his long story above discussed, 
 
 18
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 others simply gloomy and miserable. Dealing, as he 
 does, only with two or three characters, in most of 
 these stories his realism produces a less unreal im- 
 pression — for, of course, the obvious reason that it is 
 easier to believe in the existence of one or two brutes 
 and savages than of a whole London district, peopled 
 by such inhabitants ' in swarming thousands/ and by 
 no one else. I need not, however, discuss either the 
 hideous or the merely dreary stories in this volume. 
 Not the former, because it would be going over the 
 ground already traversed; and not the latter, be- 
 cause Mr. Morrison has so admirably defined his own 
 standpoint with regard to them in the Introduction 
 that it will simply suffice me to examine that. 
 
 In this Introduction Mr. Morrison describes, and 
 powerfully describes, a mean East-End street, and 
 the lives of its inhabitants. It is not a thieves' street 
 like any of the courts and alleys of the Jago ; it is 
 the abode of fairly respectable working-men, with 
 habits of regular industry. Indeed, it is this regu- 
 larity, with the deadly tedium created by it, which 
 Mr. Morrison mainly relies on for his effect. He tells 
 us how the inhabitants of this street are knocked up 
 every morning at half-past five by the policeman or 
 the night watchman, and rise and go to their day's 
 labour at the docks, the gas-works, and the ship- 
 yards ; how a little later comes the ' trotting of 
 sorrow-laden little feet along the grim street to the 
 
 c 2
 
 THE KEW FICTION 
 
 grim Board School, three grim streets off ; then 
 ' silence, save for a subdued sound of scrubbing here 
 and there, and the puny squall of croupy infants ' : 
 then, still later ou, ' a new trotting of little feet to 
 docks, gas-works, and ship-yards with father's dinner 
 in a bason and a red handkerchief,' and so to the 
 board-school again ; then ' more muffled scrubbing 
 and more squalling'; the return of the children from 
 school, the return of sooty artisans from work; a 
 ' smell of bloater up and down' ; nightfall; the fight- 
 ing of boys in the street, perhaps of men at the 
 corner near the beershop ; sleep. 
 
 And this is the record of a day in this street ; and 
 every day is hopelessly the same except Sunday, 
 when, however, ' one monotony ' is only ' broken by 
 another.' And the day is only symbolical of the life, 
 which has its dawn of birth, its school-time, 'its mid- 
 day play-hour, when love peeps even into this 
 street'; then more trotting of little feet, this time 
 new and strange little feet; the scrubbing and squall- 
 ing, the end of the sooty day's work, the last home- 
 coming, nightfall, sleep. Where in the East-End, 
 asks Mr. Morrison in conclusion, lies this street 1 And 
 he answers, ' Everywhere.' 
 
 ' The hundred and fifty yards is only a link in a long and a 
 mightily tangled chain— is only a turn in a tortuous maze. This 
 street of the square holes is hundreds of miles long. That it is 
 planned in short lengths is true, but there is no other way in the 
 
 20
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 world that can more properly be called a single street because of 
 its dismal lack of accent, its sordid uniformity, its utter remote- 
 ness from delight.' 
 
 Ye.?, it is a picture of infinite melanclioly, but 
 •whence does its melanclioly arise? From the mean- 
 ness of the mean street and the exceptionally dull 
 and narrow lives of its inhabitants ? That the 
 author intends to convey that impression is obvi- 
 ous; but the impression is nine-tenths of it false. 
 Why, if I had Mr. Morrison's fine descriptive gift, I 
 would select a street quite other than mean, a street 
 consisting, not of poverty-stricken little houses, but 
 of ' eligible ' suburban villas, a street inhabited, not 
 by hard-pressed artisans, but by comfortable, even 
 by * warm ' City men ; and I would undertake to de- 
 scribe it and the daily lives of its inhabitants — the 
 daily journey of the men to their business ; the daily 
 resumption by the women of their burden of house- 
 hold duties and household worries ; their Sundays; 
 tlie growth and departures of their children ; their 
 old age; their death — I say that had I the pen of 
 Mr. Morrison I would undertake so to describe these 
 things, that the heart of the reader should sink and 
 shrink within him at the thought of man^s lot upon 
 earth, and, perhaps, burn with anger at the spiritless 
 patience in which man endures it, with the ' quietus ' 
 of the ' bare bodkin ' always within his reach. The 
 power of suggesting these emotions is not a property 
 
 21
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 \ of mean streets ; it is a property of all streets, a pro- 
 j perty of life itself, with its unresting but aimless 
 j flow. If Mr. Morrison has not yet felt that himself, 
 he will feel it before he passes middle life, and he 
 will know then, if he does not already know, the 
 true composition of the bitter draught that he has 
 here brewed and presented to us. He will admit 
 that he has been trying to pass off upon us a mixture 
 of Weltschmerz and tedium vifce as genuine ' Essence 
 of Mean Street.' 
 
 Measured out in minim glasses and copiously diluted, 
 it is not an unpleasant potion, though it is enervating 
 if too often indulged in, and positively deadly in large 
 doses ; but always, and in any case, it is a subjective 
 product, a way of looking at things, not a quality of 
 things seen. The people who thus depress you with 
 the intense monotony of their lives, do not, except 
 by moments, feel it themselves any more than, except 
 by moments, you feel the monotony of your own. 
 Writers who bear this in mind are safeguarded from 
 exaggeration ; but Mr. Morrison is not of them. For 
 see how he proceeds with the account of the mean 
 street. 'Nobody laughs here,' says he, 'life is too 
 serious a thing I Nobody sings.' Is that true of any 
 street in London or elsewhere? nay, is it true of any 
 assemblage of human beings, numbering children 
 among them *? Again, ' Nobody from this street goes 
 to the theatre. That would mean too long a journey, 
 
 22
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 and would cost money, which might buy bread and 
 cheese and boots'?' Indeed? It is from the daughters 
 of these families that domestic service (when they 
 will condescend to it) is largely recruited further 
 west. If Mr. Morrison will ask the next housemaid 
 he meets if she ever went to the theatre, I can promise 
 him that elle lid dlra des nouvelles. True, they ought 
 not to be nouvelles to one who professes to have made 
 a special study of the working class : though when he 
 adds that for those workmen 'who wear black Sun- 
 day suits ' theatre-going * would be sinful,' it is diffi- 
 cult not to suspect him of a confusion between this 
 class and the j;eiife hourgeoisle. And what in the 
 name of all the maid-servants in London are we to 
 make of this % ' Now and again a penny novel 
 has been found among the private treasures of a 
 growing daughter, and been wrathfully confiscated.' 
 Do the grown-up daughters then only begin to acquire 
 their taste for this class of literature, and to collect their 
 ample libraries of it, after accepting their situations? 
 If so, the growth, both of the taste and the library, is 
 astonishingly rapid. 
 
 But if this is how the New Realism deals with the 
 merely pathetic side of humble life ; if these are its 
 caricatures of the truth, where the truth is matter of 
 pretty general knowledge, how are we to trust its 
 dealings with those hideous and revolting aspects of 
 the truth, which are matters of special inquiry and 
 
 23
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 expert information'^ We hardly need the counter 
 testimony of experts to feel assured that, in the latter 
 case also, the picture, as a whole, is overdrawn. It 
 is not only that the note of exaggeration runs through 
 its details, but that when they are substantially true 
 they have been so selected as to render the total 
 impression false. For the impulse to that selection 
 has not been artistically sincere. A public avid of 
 sensation and critics wanting in the sense of measure 
 have corrupted it, until the desire of each writer to 
 strike and shock more violently than his competitors, 
 to be more ' relentless ' and ' unflinching,' to write a 
 'stronger,' even if only in the sense of a more pun- 
 gently malodorous, book than they, has first driven 
 them to load their literary palettes with only ' lurid ' 
 colours, and is now rapidly demoralising, if, with 
 some of them, it has not already demoralised their 
 artistic sense to the extent of blinding it to all other 
 hues. That this fate should befall its appropriate 
 victims is hardly, perhaps, a matter worth any sensible 
 man's regret ; but Mr. Morrison does not belong by 
 nature to this class of writers. He has given proof of 
 the power of better things. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 I am unwilling to encumber these pages with controver- 
 sial matter, but Mr. Morrison has so strenuously challenged 
 this statement on page 13, and so confidently defied me to 
 produce any evidence of the protest to which I referred, that 
 
 24
 
 THE NEW FICTION 
 
 I tliink I owe it to tlie dissentients themselves to place on 
 record their rebuttals of Mr. Morrison's main propositions. 
 
 Mr. Woodland Erlebach, formerly a manager of the 
 Nichol Street Board School, who speaks from a thirty years' 
 acquaintance with the district, (Mr. Morrison's Jago,) and 
 who throughout that period has visited it for at least foi'ty 
 Sunday and thirty Wednesday nights as well as on ma.ny 
 other occasions in each year, addressed a letter on the 
 subject of this novel to the editor of a literary journal 
 from which I take the following extract : 
 
 'Mr. Morrison, according to his own statement, (pub- 
 lished in the Daily Keivs, December 12th, 189G,) only 
 became acquainted with the Nichol Street district at the time 
 when the London County Council were about to clear it of 
 houses — say 1890 or '91 — and Rev. 0. Jaj', who introduced 
 him to it, only began work there in 1886. Therefore those 
 — and they arc many — who, like myself, have known and 
 worked m this ncighbou.rhood for over thirty years may 
 claim to know at least as much about its inhabitants and 
 condition as these more recent explorers. And I boldly say 
 that the district, though bad enough, was not even thirty 
 years ago so hopelessly bad and vile as this book paints it. 
 The characters pourtrayed may have had then* originals, but 
 they were the exception, and not the rule. Many poor, but 
 honest and hard-working people have lived in these mean 
 streets, and I can introduce you to several respectable men 
 holding responsible positions whose early days were passed 
 there, and who found their way out of the Jago that is 
 represented as impossible to the hero (or rather victim) of 
 this book.' 
 
 I have also seen letters of protest from the following 
 v/orkers in the district : 
 
 Mr. Henry Spiccr, 14, Aberdeen Park, Highbury, at one 
 
 25
 
 THE KEW FICTION 
 
 time fellow mnnagcr with Mr. Eiiebach of the Nichol Street 
 Boartl School, member of the third London School Board, 
 and formerly M.P. for South Islington. 
 
 Mr. J. T. Henderson, 22, Aberdeen Park, Highbury, 
 Secretary of the N ichol Street Ragged Schools, avIio has been 
 constantly visiting tlic neighbourhood for over thirty years. 
 
 Mr. J. F. Barnard, 3G, Hamilton Koad, Highbury, who 
 has been manager of the Nichol Street Penny Bank from 
 1874 to the present day, and has regularly during that time 
 carried his bag of money to and fro through the very heart 
 of this desperate district. 
 
 Mr. William Anderson, 22, Amherst Road, Hackney, 
 Poor Law guardian of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, who was 
 born in Old Nichol Street, and lived there twenty years. 
 
 Mr. W. Weekes, 17, Fidler Street, Bethnal Green, ca 
 resident in New Nichol Street for over fifty years — indeed, 
 until its destruction. 
 
 Mr. R. Allinson, of 96, Albert Road, Dalston, who has 
 been for fourteen years specially detailed to the district by 
 the London City Mission. 
 
 Miss Matthewman and Miss Newman, 99, Grosvenor 
 Road, Canonbury, who for over thirty years have conducted 
 a mothers' meeting among women, mostly from the Nichol 
 Street district. 
 
 I am further informed that the Jago actually contained 
 ■within its borders a large silk manufactory, the valuable 
 wares of which, to say nothing of its honest working people, 
 must have run grave risk in passing periodically through 
 this colony of brigands. But I am not concerned to carry 
 the dispute any further on my own account. The above, 
 I think, is a sufficient response to Mr. Morrison's appeal 
 to me to ' trot out my experts.' 
 
 2G
 
 THE POLITICAL KOVEL 
 
 Critics of authority assure us, and we all repeat after 
 them, that the nineteenth century has found its most 
 distinctive and characteristic medium of expression 
 in the novel. Politicians tell us — therein perhaps a 
 little magnifying their office, but still with substantial 
 truth — that, next to Sport, the subject which enlists 
 the greatest interest of the greatest number of 
 Englishmen is that of Politics. Yet of all forms of 
 nineteenth century fiction, the political novel is the 
 most rarely attempted, and very much the most rarely 
 attempted with success. It would almost seem as if 
 this peculiar literary genre — popular and attractive 
 to the literary artist as, for the reasons above set 
 forth, we should have supposed it to be — bad perish- 
 ed with its inventor. More than fifty years have 
 passed since the young Benjamin Disraeli startled, 
 half scandalized, and wholly delighted his then con- 
 temporary world of letters and politics with the first 
 
 27
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 of three novels, which a qiifirtev of century later he 
 described as 'forming a real trilogy,' having for their 
 motive the exhibition of (1), 'the origin and 
 character of our political parties;' (2), 'their in- 
 fluence on the moral and pliysical condition of the 
 people ;' and (3), ' the means by which that condition 
 could be elevated and improved.' The first member of 
 this trilogy was Coningshy ; the second, Sylil ; the 
 third, Tancred. All three, but the first two in par- 
 ticular, were brilliantly successful with at any rate 
 the educated and informed public of their time ; they 
 were recognised, consciously or unconsciously, as 
 new and happy experiments; they are admired, 
 quoted, and even read to this da}^ Yet, though 
 half a century has elapsed since their appearance, 
 they still occupy a place by themselves in literature. 
 They are not only the first in their class, but they are 
 almost alone in it. Ncc viget quicquam simile aut 
 secundum. Even the claimants for a place in that 
 class during the fifty years' interval may be counted 
 on the fingers of one hand. 
 
 Of course, no formidable rival of Disraeli was to be 
 reasonably expected. The peculiar combination of 
 gifts and advantages to which his extraordinary suc- 
 cess was due will possibly never repeat itself; as- 
 suredl}'- it is not likely to recur except at coraetary 
 intervals. We may get again — perhaps unknown to 
 ourselves we have already had again among us — that 
 
 28
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 happy compound of youth, wit, audacity, and im- 
 pertinence which gives to his poHtical novels their 
 complex charm. But we can no more restore the 
 political and social conditions under wliich he wrote 
 than we could re-create his personality, and surround 
 it with the peculiar environment amid which it 
 developed. One of the v.diolly irreproducible con- 
 ditions of the Thirties and Forties Avas that political, 
 like fashionable, ' society,' — and indeed the two terms 
 were to a large extent convertible, — was a numerically 
 small body, with characteristics, like those of all ex- 
 clusive coteries, proportionately well marked : and 
 that Disraeli had, for him, the great good fortune of 
 not having been born into that society, and yet ob- 
 taining such early opportunities of observing it from 
 within — if from only just within — its portals, as to 
 enable his quick satiric observation to master its 
 typeSj its language, and its ideas by the time, or more 
 probably much before the time, when his brilhantl^^ 
 efiective literary faculty had fully matured. His own 
 account of those experiences, given with that mixture 
 of pomp and ncdveU which has so delightful a relish 
 when you have once acquired the taste for it, is to be 
 found in a well known paper in the Introduction to 
 the ' Hughenden ' edition of his novels, published in 
 1870. ' Born in a hbrary,' he wrote, ' and trained 
 from early childhood by learned men who did not 
 share the passions and prejudices of our political and 
 
 29
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 social life, I had imbibed on some subjects cou- 
 clusions different from those which generally prevail, 
 and especially with reference to the history of our 
 own country.' This, if 1 may be allowed to quote 
 certain previously published remarks of my own on 
 the same subject, ' was no common advantage in a 
 day when strait was the gate and narrow the way 
 that led through public school and university to 
 political distinction, but when those who took that 
 route found that the walls which on either hand pro- 
 tected them from competitors proportionately obstruct- 
 ed their view of the world in which they lived. It was 
 from the heart of this outer world that the young 
 Disraeli made a way for himself into the sacred 
 avenue by dint of an inborn power which would not 
 be denied recognition, and a native audacity which 
 did not know the meaning of rebuff. Once there, he 
 was able to survey the scene of petty strife and ig- 
 noble ambition around him with a critical detachment 
 which was impossible to his rivals, and with " larger, 
 other eyes " than theirs.' 
 
 These advantages, however, of origin and training 
 and exceptional mode of eutraoce into public life, 
 were not the only valuable superadditious to the 
 ' dasmonic ' element in Disraeli's nature. There was 
 another of hardly less importance and of his own 
 acquisition. For if, from 1837, the date of his first 
 i-eturn to ParHament, to 1814, when he published
 
 THE POLITICx\L NOVEL 
 
 Coningshy^ be bad studied politics ' from tbe inside,* 
 he bad also during tbe same period taken every op- 
 portunity of mixing witb tbat world of fasbiou wbich 
 plays at politics and fancies itself serious : be bad 
 indulged bis satirical appetite to tbe full upon tbe 
 fussy and impotent intrigues of great ladies, tbe agita- 
 tions of bungry office-seekers, tbe manoeuvres of cyni- 
 cal wirepullers, tbe disappointments of pompous 
 grandees. After a few years of tbis experience be 
 must bave been fully equipped, even on tbe Hgbter 
 and more trivial side of bis art, for immediate suc- 
 cess. Had be been witbout a political idea in bis 
 bead, be would bave been tborougbly qualified to 
 produce wbat is now-a-daj^s our almost only substi- 
 tute for tbe political novel — tbat is to say, a roman a 
 clef^ in wbicb prominent public men are episodically 
 sketcbed under more or less easily penetrable dis- 
 guises. But baving, in fact, a bead as full of political 
 ideas as it could bold, it only needed tbat be sbould 
 interweave satirical sketcb witb political speculation, 
 and ' mount ' the composite fabric on a background 
 of ortbodox love romance, in order to produce tbe 
 inimitable Disraelian political novel tbat bas become 
 a permanent addition to tbe literature of Englisb 
 fiction. 
 
 So remarkable a concourse of rare conditions was, 
 of course, most unlikely to repeat itself. Fortune 
 migbt be prodigal in her production of brilliant 
 
 31
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 yonng men, of potential Disraelis, yet never agaia 
 place any one of them in the peculiar position of tho 
 author of Coningshy and Syhil. Let us admit, too, 
 in justice to our brilliant young men and women, 
 that history, for all its alleged trick of repeating 
 itself, shows no disposition to ' reconstitute the facts.' 
 Let us admit that the material with which the coil- 
 temporary political novelist would have to deal is 
 less attractive, less readily lends itself to the novel- 
 ist's use, than the material of the early Victorian 
 days. Not that it is less fertile in occasions for the 
 satirist ; that, Heaven knows, is far from being the 
 case. There is still a world of fashion which plan's 
 with politics and fancies itself serious ; fussy and im- 
 potent intrigue is not unknown among ladies ' great,' 
 or so fancying themselves ; and if the wire-puller 
 conducts his manoeuvres a little more decently than 
 of old, and the disappointed grandee conceals his 
 wounds with more Spartan fortitude, it must be ad- 
 mitted that the minor office-seeker has never dis- 
 played his hopes and fears with a more artless 
 indecency at every change of Government than he 
 does to-day. All these types still exist, and the part 
 v/hich they play in the inner history of politics is 
 still, no doubt, considerably greater than the inno- 
 cent provincial delegate to ' Federations here,' and 
 'Federations there,' for a moment suspects. But it 
 is from the very lack of that suspicion that a follower 
 
 32
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 of Disraeli iu these days avouIcI suflfer. If the cou- 
 temporaiy pubhc beheve, as the vast majority of 
 them do, that the pohtioal types and individuals of 
 the Disraelian era have been swept into the back- 
 ground by the stately advancing march of Demo- 
 cracy, that the Lady Firebraces and St. Julians, the 
 Tadpoles and Tapers of our own time, have ceased 
 to count, it would be idle for a political novelist of 
 to-day to give them prominent places in his work. 
 He must treat them, if he introduces them at all, as 
 secondary figures, almost perhaps as eccentric sur- 
 vivals from a past age, and must seek models for his 
 principal characters among the new types of poli- 
 tician to whom the democratic period has given 
 birth. And it must be obvious — even to themselves, 
 I should think — that these worthy persons yield in- 
 finitely less artistic material than the unworthy 
 persons whom they have, in the popular eye, at any 
 rate, displaced. The New Politician may be respect- 
 able, but he is not picturesque. He may have — he 
 has — an ample supply of foibles ready to the stu- 
 dent's hand, but they are of the kind that depress 
 rather than amuse. 
 
 Not that the essayers of the political novel who 
 have appeared iu the course of the intervening half- 
 century have been much more fortunate in their era. 
 The most notable among them was undoubtedly Mr. 
 Anthony Trollope ; but Fhincas Finn is a truly disas- 
 
 D
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 trons attempt. As one looks back upon the period 
 of that novel, and recalls the class of politicians who 
 at that time filled the stage, and among whom the 
 'jaunty Viscount' was a mere picturesque survival, 
 one feels it only just to admit that Mr. Trollope M^as 
 not fortunate in the particular political life which he 
 had undertaken to depict, or in the models from 
 which he drew. Still the time of the second Reform 
 movement was distinctly a stirring time. Its dra- 
 matic quality was keenly felt by those who were of 
 sufficiently mature age to be interested in politics 
 without having yet become acutely critical of poli- 
 ticians ; and one might have thought that a practised 
 story-teller would have succeeded in getting some of 
 the stir and passion of the time into his pages. But 
 Mr. Trollope, though a practised and indeed a highly 
 popular story-teller, was not one of that kind. He 
 was so little of a politician that he seems not even to 
 have felt the excitement of a struggle which agitated 
 many in those days who paid scant attention to the 
 ordinary political controversies of the period. PMneas 
 Finn, though pubHshed in 1869, but two years after 
 the ' shooting of Niagara,' shows no traces of any- 
 thing of the kind. There is not even Wordsworth's 
 doubtful basis of the poetic, ' Emotion recollected in 
 Tranquillity ' ; while, on the other hand, the author's 
 perfect frigidity of temper has not added to the 
 penetration of his glance. The hero, otherwise a 
 
 34
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 poor creature enough, is interesting as a ' document ' 
 — a specimen of the Irish member of the pre-Par- 
 ueUite day ; but the pohtical magnates of the novel, 
 from Mr. Mildmay downwards, are painfully wooden, 
 and its whole pohtical ' business ' is quite pathetically 
 dull. 
 
 By far the most serious attempt at a political novel 
 which has been adventured since Disraeli's time, is 
 that which has just been made by the accomplished 
 author of Robert Elsmere. Perhaps the word ' seri- 
 ous ' may not seem a very apt adjective to apply to 
 the spirited enterprise which has borne fruit in Sir 
 George 2\essachj ; but the truth is that it is only too 
 appropriate. Sir George Tressachj is a serious — a 
 very serious — effort in a department of fiction in 
 which to be too serious — or, at any rate, to be no- 
 thing besides serious — is inevitably to miss complete 
 success ; and the first and most potent cause of Mrs. 
 Ward's comparative failure as a political novelist is 
 to be found in her lack of humour. She takes all 
 her characters — her hero and heroine, (above all, her 
 heroine,) her Ministers, her Opposition leaders, her 
 Parliamentary orators, her ' labour members,' — as 
 seriously as she has always (quite justifiably) taken 
 herself and her art ; and the result, to those of her 
 readers who have had a near vision of the politics, 
 and seen most of the leading political actors off the 
 stage, is to give an ideahzed air to scenes and por- 
 
 d2
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 traits -which are nothing if not reahstic, and which 
 were obviously meant for examples of the most con- 
 scientious realism. The disappointment is all the 
 greater because Mrs. Ward undoubtedly describes and 
 recounts as one who knows. She has herself, doubt- 
 less, had some such near view of politics, and sight 
 of the leading political actor with his ' paint and 
 spangles off,' as might have enabled many a writer of 
 less ability to add those satiric touches to their por- 
 traits which would have made them human. Quite 
 possibly she may know as well as her critics where 
 these touches should have come in ; she is quite ob- 
 server enough to know ; but if so, it is to be supposed 
 that she could not find it in her heart to put them in. 
 Such is the deadly earnestness of her 'views,' that 
 she must find mouthpieces for them — and, of course, 
 for the opposite views too — who will do them justice ; 
 and if appropriate spokesmen and spokeswomen are 
 not to be found in characters realistically sketched 
 from life, so much the worse for life and realism. The 
 characters must be idealized, that is all : and ideahzed 
 they have been with a vengeance in Sh' George 
 Tressachj. 
 
 It may be pleaded, perhaps, that the date of the 
 novel is avowedly fixed some indefinite number of 
 years ahead of us. ' Temp. Victoria ' it may be — we 
 all hope it will be ; but it is unmistakably Twentieth 
 Century. This is how the period is described : — 
 
 36
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 ' The general situation v.-as a curious one. Some two years be- 
 fore this time a strong and long-lived Tory Governmeut had come 
 to an end. Since then all had been confusion in English politics. 
 A weak Liberal Government, undermined by Socialist rebellion, 
 had lasted a short time, to be followed by an equally precarious 
 Tory Ministry, in which Lord Maxwell — after an absence of four 
 years or so — returned to his party only to break it up. For he 
 succeeded in imposing upon them a measure in which his own 
 deepest convictions and feelings were concerned, and which had 
 behind it the support of all the most important trade unions. 
 Upon that measure the Ministry fell ; but during their short ad- 
 ministration Maxwell had made so great an impression upon his 
 owTi side that when they returned, as they did return with an en- 
 larged majority, the Maxwell Bill retained one of the foremost 
 places in their programme, and might be said, indeed, at the pres- 
 ent moment to hold the centre of the political field.' 
 
 This, of course, is a description of a political 
 era which has not yet dawued. Still, it need uot 
 be imagined by the reader, and, perhaps, was not 
 in fact imagined by the writer, as very far ahead of 
 us. We are living now under a Tory, or quasi-Tory 
 Government, which is undoubtedly 'strong,' and 
 which is expected to be ' long-lived.' Suppose it to 
 have lived out the natural life of Parliament, or that 
 term as limited by usage ; and allow for the lapse of 
 two more years to cover the careers of the ' weak 
 Liberal Government,' the ' precarious Tory Ministry ' 
 which succeeded it, and the Dissolution and General 
 Election which were followed by the return of the last 
 Administration with an 'enlarged majority,' and we 
 get 1903 or 1904 as the date at which the novel opens. 
 And since, though one might not care to prophesy as
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 much, it is, at least, au only too plausible forecast of 
 the then state of political groups, that the old Liberal 
 party should by that time have been ' almost swept 
 away' (is there much of it left even in 1897?) and 
 that ' a large Independent Labour and Socialist party ' 
 should fill ' the empty benches of the Liberals,' we are 
 entitled to expect complete ' actuality ' in treatment. 
 Sir George Tressadi/ is not one of those fantasies of 
 the future in which the author may give as much 
 scope to imagination as he pleases. It is nothing if 
 not a realistic account of the sayings and doings of 
 men and women — of Ministers and Ministers' wives, 
 of philanthropists, male and female, of politicians great 
 and small, of lady-wirepullers and lady-slummers, of 
 Sociahstio agitators, and Trade Union ' bosses,' and 
 private secretaries, and Parliamentary hangers-on — 
 exactly or substantially as these types exist among 
 us at the present day. They are all, or nearly all of 
 them to be found in the novel ; and of course, there- 
 fore, we expect, in spite of the slight difference of 
 period, to find them all in their ' habit as they lived,' 
 and playing such parts as they might be expected to 
 play at the present day. And the ' habit is all right 
 enough, but — the parts they play ! Mrs. Ward sketches 
 them so spiritedly, and costumes them so accurately, 
 that it irritates one to find them set to perform in a 
 — what are we to call it? — piece of political /t'ej'iV, the 
 
 38
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 extravaganza of ' The Marvellous Marcella,' or ' lYie 
 Lovely Lady and the Prostrate Politician.'' 
 
 The incongruity is made the more glaring by the 
 faithfulness with which present-day actuality is, up 
 to a certain point, adhered to. Mrs. Ward evidently 
 does not contemplate any revolutionary change of 
 social conditions, as the result or accompaniment of 
 the political developments to which she introduces 
 us. The volcanic upheaval of Socialism is to bring 
 no nouvelle couches sociales to the surface. The poli- 
 tical machine is still to be 'run,' as now, by the aris- 
 tocracy: an 'earnest/ passionate aristocracy, it is 
 true, but more aristocratic than ever, and certainly, 
 in the Disraelian phrase, no less remarkable than of 
 old for the 'sustained and stately splendour of their 
 lives.' As the hero enters Marcella's house in St. 
 James's Square — Marcella, who had the night before 
 driven home in a hansom to save her only pair of 
 horses — ' one mute and splendid person relieved him 
 of his coat, and another, equally mute and equally 
 unsurpassable, waited for him on the stairs, while 
 across a passage beyond the hall he saw two red- 
 liveried footmen carrying tea.' Whereat he remarks 
 to himself, not unnaturally, as he mounts the stair- 
 case, ' When one is a friend of the people, is one 
 limited in horses but not in flunkies ? These things 
 are obscure.' The butler lifted a A'elvet curtain and 
 
 39
 
 THE rOLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 pronounced tbe visitor's name with a tone and em- 
 phasis as perfectly trained as the rest of him. It is 
 a ' pretty, disorderly place,' the room into which he 
 is ushered ; a room which ' made a friend of you as 
 you entered.' The house generally is charming. So 
 is Maxwell Court, their countr}^ house. Sir George's 
 is ugly, but it commands a line prospect, and he is 
 himself, as we know, a baronet. Few of the char- 
 acters, and none of the leading or influential ones, 
 are anything so low as commoners. Marcella's hus- 
 band is Lord Maxwell ; the leader of the Opposition 
 has a com-tesy title as the eldest son of a peer. The 
 bold bad man with whom the heroine flirts to make 
 the hero jealous is a peer. The lively lady who sup- 
 plies, though with no very exhilarating results, that 
 doubtful ingredient of levity known to serious 
 dramatists as ' comic relief,' is a baronet's wife ; while 
 the only important female character in the story who 
 is plain Mrs., is the mother of a young man who had 
 succeeded to an earldom since his father's unfortunate 
 death as a commoner, and, if the youngest, is, on the 
 other hand, as one gathers, the richest and most 
 largely rent-rolled noble of them all. 
 
 All this is enough to show that that continuity of the 
 aristocratic tradition in English politics which was so 
 steadily maintained from the Thirties to the Sixties, 
 from the era of Lord Marney and Lord Milford, and 
 Lady Deloraiue and Lady St. Julians and Lady Fire- 
 
 40
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 brace, to the era of the Duke of St. Bungay and 
 Lord Brentford, and Lady Laura Kennedy, and Lady 
 Glencora Palliser, will, according to Mrs. Ward's fore- 
 cast, be still flourishing vigorously in the Twentieth 
 century. To those who have studied the ethos of 
 the modern Radical, it seems eminently probable 
 that it will ; and we may assume that at the sup- 
 posed date of Sir George Tressadi/, which, as has been 
 pointed out, is evidently not very far advanced in the 
 coming century, the actual representatives of that 
 tradition will be very much like what they are to-day. 
 Hence its imaginary representatives in Mrs. Ward's 
 novel may fairly enough be treated as though the}'' 
 were sketches from contemporary life, and both in 
 externals and internals, as regards speech, idea, and 
 action, be judged accordingly. 
 
 Externally speaking, then, it may be admitted that 
 not a few of these portraits are successful. Lord 
 Fontenoy, who is a sort of mixture of Lord Randolph 
 Churchill and Lord George Bentinck, is distinctly 
 good ; and Lord Maxwell, though a little shadowy, is 
 not amiss. Mr. Bennett, the labour member, is also 
 well observed, and touched in, slight sketch as he is, 
 with a truthful and not unkindly hand. Many, too, 
 of the minor political personages — the private secre- 
 tary ; the 'society' youth wlio collaborates with 
 Fontenoy in the literary defence of the ' fourth party ' 
 views, and the attack on the Maxwell pohcyj the 
 
 •il
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 imwilling yoimg couutiy squire, Sir Frank Levan, 
 spirited up to politics by his restless wife, are vital if 
 not very vivacious figures ; and the scenes of private 
 life in which they figure are certainly far superior to 
 those mechanical dialogues among lifeless puppets 
 which cover so many pages of Phineas Finn. If the 
 reader is not always passionately interested in the 
 subject of their conversation, they do, at least, talk 
 as though they were interested in it themselves, 
 which is more than can be said of ]\Ir. Trollope's 
 languid interlocutors; though it is no doubt only fair 
 to remember that current political talk in England 
 was never more bookish, priggish, and deadly dull 
 than during the smug Whig ascendancy of the Sixties, 
 and that a description of a Liberal 'symposium' in 
 those days would have been romantically and, indeed, 
 sensationally over-coloured, if it had represented the 
 symposiasts as having blood instead of ink in their 
 veins. 
 
 What may be called, then, the mise-en-scene of this 
 latest of poKtical novels is always well and often 
 excellently managed. The ' earnestness ' of the con- 
 versation is apt to be a little oppressive ; but this is 
 true enough to that life of to-day which concerns 
 itself actively with politics, and for aught we know 
 may be truer still to the life of 1903. If the photo- 
 graphic portrait of a ' group,' were quite the same 
 thing as a complete work of art, Sir George Tressady 
 
 42
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 would stand very high indeed ; and, as photographic 
 portraits of this kind should be of much service to 
 the historian, its historic value may prove consider- 
 able. It is especially interesting and amusing to 
 compare the light-minded drawing-room politics of 
 Disraeli's time, its ' mainly-about-people ' tone, and 
 its rare and slightly contemptuous references to tlie 
 people, with the solemn salon-chatter of this novel, 
 where everyone, down to the most irresponsible 
 young party 'item,' e\ddently talks with his con- 
 stituents and his caucus always in his eye, and the 
 first duty of ' keeping in touch with the Democracy ' 
 for ever in his mind. No doubt this profound and 
 important contrast has been quite correctly displayed 
 by Mrs. Ward, and solemn as is the chatter with 
 which the political ladies and their disciples amuse or 
 rather edify themselves and each other in her pages, 
 its solemnity has not been materially overdrawn. 
 But the greater art, which would have shown these 
 well-meaning but fussy and pretentious personages 
 (as most of them at bottom really are) in their true 
 relation to the great eternal forces of human nature 
 which they play at directing — this greater art is to 
 seek in Mrs. Ward's novel. And the reason why it 
 is absent is not to seek at all. It is due to the lack 
 of that power of self-detachment which is never 
 found apart from — which perhaps is — the sense of 
 humour. Mrs. Ward can survey her minor charac- 
 
 43
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 ters from the outside. In some of their aspects or 
 attitudes she can contemplate even the central figures 
 of her story in the same way. But where they are 
 giving utterance to her own long-pondered thoughts, 
 "where they are personifying her own passionately 
 cherished ideals, where, in other words, they are 
 speaking, feeling, or acting as she would have men 
 ppeak, feel, and act, she is wholly unable to detach 
 herself from them, and view them as the painter 
 viev.'s his unfinished picture, or the sculptor his half- 
 modelled clay. They are herself, and the ability to 
 detach herself from them would imply just that power 
 of self-detachment which her writings so abundantly 
 show that she does not possess. And thus it is that 
 31rs. Ward, while comparatively faihng where Dis- 
 raeli so memorably succeeded, succeeds no better 
 than Disraeli where Disraeli failed. Her presentment 
 of the lighter side of English political life is accu- 
 rate, and in its way interesting and historically valu- 
 able, but it is wholly wanting in that brilliant satiric 
 touch which has made Disraeli's novels live as liter- 
 ature when their political significance has utterly 
 passed away. On the other hand, her attempt to 
 interweave serious romance-interest with the realities 
 of serious contemporary politics, has as completely 
 missed the mark as his. The loves of Egremont and 
 Sybil do not more thoroughly deserve to be described 
 as ' a fairy-tale of the Young England Movement,' 
 
 U
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 than does the capture of Sir George Tressadj by 
 Marcella Maxwell deserve to be described as a 
 ' fairy-tale of the New Socialism.' 
 
 And from the exigencies of this conte fantastique 
 the realistic, or what are meant to be the realistic, 
 scenes and incidents of the story are continually 
 suffering. Its v^ery climacteric situation is disas- 
 trously affected by them. The varying fortunes of 
 the Maxwell Bill, and their culmination in the great 
 debate in which the hero deserts his party, are 
 handled throughout by Mrs. Ward in a manner which 
 has been justly praised. Critics, who perhaps know 
 more about novels than about the proceedings of the 
 House of Commons, or the agitations of its lobby, 
 have been much moved by the pages in which these 
 things are described. Some of them, apparently, 
 have been made to realise, with a wholly unfamiliar 
 intensity, the excitement of a great political struggle 
 as it is felt by the combatants themselves ; and I do 
 not for a moment deny that the history of these 
 events is related by this vigorous writer with no 
 little dramatic power. Nor to the description of the 
 critical night's debate itself — a class of descriptive 
 effort in which Trollop e so signally and spiritlessly 
 failed — is there any exception to be taken, save one. 
 But that one is almost as important as the exception 
 to the general excellence of the lady whose ' only 
 fault,' according to Talleyrand, was that she was 
 
 45
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 'intolerable.' Its central incident is^ incredible — 
 materially and formally incredible. It is possible to 
 conceive a politician changing his opinion as to a 
 Bill in the com-se of its passage through the House, 
 and both speaking and voting against his party on a 
 vital clause in its provisions. But it is not possible 
 to imagine him keeping this change in his opinions a 
 dead secret from his leader and his colleagues till he 
 announced it in his place in the House ; and it is a 
 thousand times impossible — unless he deliberately 
 intended to play the game of a traitorous wrecker of 
 his party, and Sir George Tressady is represented as 
 a man of scrupulous honour — that he should delay 
 the announcement until the very eve of the division, 
 and then spring it upon his party in the manner best 
 calculated, not merely to insure their defeat, but to 
 hurry them into utter rout and collapse. It is pass- 
 ing strange that Mrs. Ward, who shows so intimate 
 an acquaintance with the English political code of 
 conduct, should have made her hero commit an act 
 so fatal, not only to his credit as a politician, but to 
 his honour as a gentleman. 
 
 So much for the material incredibility of Sir 
 George's gmu rifiuto ; its formal incredibility — the 
 monstrosity of the means by Avhich the incredible act 
 is brought to pass — is more flagrant still. Tressady 
 is not described as the victim of one of those sudden 
 and violent attacks of love-madness which shatter 
 
 46
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 men's characters and paralyze their wills. It is true 
 be has a certain artistic appreciation of Marcella's 
 physical beauty; but his feeling for her consists far 
 more largely of respect for her intellectual powers, 
 admiration of her nobility of character, and sym- 
 pathy with her social ideals. These motives, least 
 of all the last, which seems ultimately to have de- 
 termined his action, are none of them potent enough 
 to make an honourable man break loose from all the 
 restraints of honour. Nor is he even represented as 
 having been intellectually converted to the lady's 
 opinions. At best, she has only made him uneasily 
 distrustful of his own ; and indeed at the very last he 
 avows to himself that his real reason for throwing over 
 his party and bringing about the defeat of their policy 
 is that he may make Marcella a present of 'her 
 heart's desire !' In other words, because a beautiful, 
 accomplished, and nobly altruistic lady ardently de- 
 sires the success of certain legislation which he had 
 always regarded as injuriously affecting the rights 
 and liberties of his countrymen, he feels himself 
 compelled to give her what she wants ! The motive 
 is so glaringly inadequate to account for Sir George 
 Tressady's action, that there is only one way of ex- 
 plaining the appearance of adequacy which it must 
 have presented to Mrs. Ward. She is a good deal 
 more in love with Marcella than is her hero himself. 
 It is, in fact, the idealisation of Marcella which has 
 
 47
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 converted what might have been a powerful novel 
 into a ' fahy tale of the New Socialism.' Lady Max- 
 well, with her surpassing beauty and sweetness, her 
 passionate sympathy with suffering, her passionate 
 de'S'otion to her husband, her irresistible power over 
 all sorts and conditions of men and, what is much 
 more wonderful, women, including even the woman 
 in whom she has unwittingly, though not unnaturally, 
 aroused the passion of jealousy to a furious pitch — 
 and let it here be parenthetically said, that the im- 
 possible scene in which Marcella subdues Letty re- 
 dounds immensely to the credit of Mrs, Ward's 
 artistic dexterity in being made as plausible as it is 
 — is undeniably a fascinating figure ; but its fascina- 
 tion is elaborated to a point at which it ceases to be 
 of this world. Her charms, both of aspect and 
 nature, are insisted on till she impresses one merely 
 as a radiant angel with a house in St. James's 
 Square ; nor do those foibles of generous imprudence, 
 which Mrs. Ward imputes to her with the praise- 
 worthy intention of giving a touch of the human to 
 her angelic perfections, avail to humanize her. For, 
 after all, they are precisely the sort of foibles which 
 a radiant angel, 'dumped down' in the midst of Lon- 
 don society, might be expected to display. 
 
 The same deflection of the artistic needle by the 
 disturbance of vehement political or politico-social 
 aspirations, is visible indeed throughout the whole 
 
 48
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 etory. The legislative crisis which Mrs. Ward has 
 imagined, and npou Avhich she has built the plot of 
 her novel, is no doubt a serious one ; but even this, 
 in a certain sense, she takes a little too seriously. 
 She writes as though the country may expect to find 
 itself, within another decade, in the throes of a semi- 
 Socialistic revolution. That forecast may possibly, 
 of course, prove accurate ; but if Mrs. Ward had 
 read her Syhil as carefully and with as much re- 
 flection as it deserves, she would have seen how easy 
 it is for speculations of this sort to take a prematurely 
 alarmist shape. A comparison between the social 
 conditions described in the second story of the 
 Disraelian trilogy, and those which are presented to 
 us in Sir George Tressadi/, displays the futility alike 
 of human hopes and human fears with the bitterest 
 and saddest irony in which the Fates have ever in- 
 dulged. Tliere is hardly a moan of suffering from 
 the victims of our industrial system, hardly a sigh of 
 sympathy with the sufferers, hardly a cry of passion- 
 ate indignation against the iron law whereby they 
 suffer, which is not equally audible in the utterances 
 of these two writers divided from each other by an 
 interval of more than fifty years. Nor, to all appear- 
 ance, is the earlier writer less profoundly convinced 
 than the later that English society is treading the 
 edge of a volcano. To him, as to her, it seems as if 
 the State must solve the problem of poverty, must 
 
 E
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 compose the everlasting quarrel between the Haves 
 aucl the Have-nots finally and forthwith, or perish. 
 Before the eyes of both of them these great and painful 
 issues loom so large as to occupy the whole field of 
 politics, and to exclude all other political objects and 
 questions from the view. To both it seems that now 
 is the appointed time, now is the day of salvation, or 
 of perdition, as the case may be. The same note is 
 heard all through the Past and Present of Carlyle. To 
 the thinkers of half a century ago it seemed no less 
 certain than it seems to the thinker of to-day, that 
 the mighty riddle was being propounded for the last 
 time of asking, and that the propounder would brook 
 no delay. Yet the half-century has run its course, 
 and the Sphinx and Oedipus still stand confronting 
 each other in the same expectant attitude. Qi]dipus 
 has neither answered the riddle nor given it up ; the 
 Sphinx has neither dashed herself against the rock 
 nor claimed her prey. 
 
 I admit that the irony of this protracted situation 
 is much too grim for laughter ; but it must be per- 
 ceived and felt, if that situation is to be handled in 
 the spirit and with the detachment of the artist. 
 And it is because, among other reasons noted above, 
 Mrs. Ward is wanting, unlike Disraeli, in the power 
 of detachment ; it is because she feels the ' pity of it ' 
 too much and the irony of it too little ; because, with 
 all the passion of the social reformer, she flings her- 
 
 50
 
 THE POLITICAL NOVEL 
 
 self, and her characters with herself, into the thick of 
 a struggle which she should survey from with- 
 out — that Sir George Tressady has failed, with all its 
 brilliancy and power, to attain that rank as a political 
 novel to which the genius of its author might other- 
 wise have raised it. 
 
 E 2
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 A DIALOGUE 
 
 Broohs. Middleway, I am afraid we are boring you. 
 
 Middlcway. Not in the least, my dear fellow. Dis- 
 putes like yours are most refreshing to me : thejseem 
 to provide such a complete answer to all complaints 
 of the excessive preoccupation of the age. Every- 
 thing is to be hoped for a community in which men 
 find time and taste for such serious frivolities as this 
 discussion of yours, 
 
 Carlton. Frivolity or not, you must allow that it 
 is an interesting subject of speculation. 
 
 M. Interesting? It possesses every quality 
 which lends charm to controversy. You start upon 
 it without either data or definitions, thereby saving a 
 tedious preliminary wrangle about the meaning of 
 terms ; and the dispute itself can leave no bad blood 
 behind it, because it is impossible, in the nature of 
 things, for either of you to obtain the slightest 
 advantage over the other. 
 
 52
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 B. There I don't at all agree with yon. 
 
 C. Nor I. 
 
 M. I dare say not. But yon wonld have a better 
 chance of persuading me that one of yon is getting 
 the better of the other if yon could satisfy me that 
 you have ever come to blows at all. 
 
 C. How do yon mean ? 
 
 M. Well, I may be mistaken ; but your con- 
 troversy certainly reminds me of the proverbial battle 
 between the dog and the fish. Yon, Carlton, keep 
 barking out statistics, while Brooks is lashing his tail 
 nobly in a stream of generalities. 
 
 C. I don't see it. Brooks maintains that Liberal- 
 ism is the natural politics of a man of letters ; and as 
 the best way of overthrowing the assertion, I enu- 
 merate a long list 
 
 B. A long list, you call it ? 
 
 C. Yes ; I say a long list of distinguished literary 
 men whose way of thinking is profoundly Con- 
 servative. 
 
 M. Yes ; and then Brooks sets up the overthrown 
 assertion on its legs again, and da capo. For, of 
 course, some half-dozen distinguished literary men 
 can no more prove the natural tendency of literature 
 towards Conservatism than Brooks's intuitive con- 
 clusions prove its affinity with his own pohtical 
 creed. 
 
 B. What is your own opinion on the point '? 
 
 53
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 M. On which point ? I have already told you 
 that you seem to me to be debating two. You, 
 Carlton, would like me to agree with you, that the 
 most eminent men of letters of the day — a body num- 
 bering, let us say, about a dozen all told — happen at 
 the moment to lean to Conservative opinions. Brooks, 
 on the other hand, wants me to say that the literary 
 occupation, and the habit of mind which it presup- 
 poses, or begets and strengthens, tend to make 
 Liberals of those who follow the one and share the 
 other. I see nothing to prevent my agreeing with 
 both of you ; but to do so, though gratifying to my 
 feelings, would be of no great assistance to the settle- 
 ment of your dispute. 
 
 C. Very well then. I will waive my own con- 
 tention, and join issue with Brooks on his own terms. 
 I deny that the natural tendency of literature is to- 
 wards Liberalism, and I affirm that the contrary is 
 the truth. Now what do you say ? 
 
 M. I say, first, that I should hke to know what 
 you mean by literature. How do you define a 
 literary man ? 
 
 C. Well, it will be sufficient for my purpose to 
 define him as a man whose sole, or at any rate chief, 
 occupation is that of writing. 
 
 M. Observe the inexactitude of the Conservative 
 mind. Why, that would serve for the definition of a 
 secretary, of a clerk, of a shorthand reporter, of a 
 
 54
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 transcriber in a Government office. A little more 
 precision, please. Writing what ? 
 
 C. What ? Oh, anything which involves inde- 
 pendent thought and original composition. Novels, 
 poems, essays, biographies. 
 
 M. Political 'leaders'? Do you inclnde journalists'? 
 
 C. Oh, no. 
 
 B. Certainly not. 
 
 M. Wonderful unanimity I But not very compli- 
 mentary, perhaps, to the rejected of both parties. 
 You don't thinkj then, that the journalist has any 
 • natural ' politics "? 
 
 B. Why, of course not, ray dear Middleway. Or, 
 if he has, he cures himself of them, as he does of other 
 unprofessional habits. You might as well talk of the 
 ' natural ' view of a barrister on a question of law. 
 The business of the journalist is advocacy. 
 
 M. I like your frankness. His political teuden 
 cies, you mean, are those of his clients, and his clients 
 are the proprietors of newspapers ? 
 
 B. I don't quite say that. 
 
 M. No ; you are too polite to say it. But you are 
 too intelligent not to mean it. Let us pass the jour- 
 nalists. Is a historian a man of letters ? 
 
 B. In one sense, of course, he is — in the highest 
 sense, perhaps : but for the purposes of this discussion 
 I think he ought to be excluded. 
 
 Al. In the name of wonder, why ? 
 
 55
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 B. Because he is a student of political phenomena 
 first, and a literary man afterwards. The view which 
 he takes of contemporary politics will be determined 
 by the political philosophy which he has constructed 
 from his researches into, and his reflections upon, the 
 politics of the past. 
 
 J/. But what of that ? 
 
 B. Well, in that case, his political prepossessions, 
 whatever they are, will have a political, and not a 
 literary origin. If he is a Liberal or a Conservative 
 in contemporary politics, it wall be simply because he 
 is a Liberal or a Conservative historian. 
 
 C. Always supposing, you mean, that the process 
 has not been reversed, and that he is not merely a 
 politician who has taken to styling his political 
 pamphlets 
 
 M. The ' history of his own times ' ? Yes ; 
 Brooks, I am sure, will be magnanimous enough to 
 exclude that variety of Liberal historian also. 
 
 B. I am willing to exclude all varieties. If the 
 historian Le<jan as a party politician, the case, of 
 course, is simple. But even if ho only ends as a party 
 politician, his opinions, 1 say, will have had a poli- 
 tical, and not a literary on'gin. He wall be a Liberal 
 or a Conservative simply because inquiry and thought, 
 as appHed to bygone events, have convinced him 
 that Liberahsm or Conservatism furnishes, on the 
 whole, the safer standpoint from which to judge the 
 
 5Q
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITEEATURE 
 
 events and movements of the time. And a political 
 creed of that sort has no connection whatever with 
 the literary ' ethos ' as such. 
 
 M. Oh, then ^^oiir conception of literature excludes 
 the ideas of thought and inquiry 1 
 
 B. That is good enough as ' chaff,' but, of course, 
 you know very well what 1 mean. I will put it this 
 way. The politics of a historian have no more to do 
 with his being a man of letters than have the politics 
 of a professional politician who may happen to be a 
 man of letters also. You would not say, for instance, 
 that Burke's Whiggery, or his Old AVhiggery either, 
 was a result of the literary habit. 
 
 M. Indeed I should. Your illustration is most 
 unfortunate. Burke I consider a typical example of 
 the politician whose politics are formed in the study. 
 But never mind. Let us pass the historian too. We 
 have now dismissed one set of literary men as having 
 no natural bias in politics, and another set as having 
 uo bias derived from the literary profession. Let us 
 go a little further. Scientific men, I suppose, you 
 would certainly exclude ? 
 
 B. H'm, yes ; though it would be to my interest 
 to include them. 
 
 C. Eh? 
 
 B. What? You dispute that? 
 
 C. Dispute it ! You surely haven't the effrontery 
 to maintain that Science is Liberal ? 
 
 57
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 B. AYhy, how could she possibly ally herself with 
 the party of theological bigotry ? 
 
 C. That is not confined to either party. 
 
 B. Perhaps not ; but I think I remember a certain 
 famous discussion in which your side had the best of 
 it, both in votes and prejudices. 
 
 C. You are hugely mistaken, if you imagine that 
 Science ever troubled her head about that dispute. 
 Science, in these times, is eminently respectable, and 
 Mr. Bradlaugh's cause was eminently the reverse. 
 Scientific men don't want to run a-muck against 
 religion, Tom Paine fashion, nowadays. They are 
 quite content to keep to their laboratories and lecture- 
 rooms, and leave you alone, if you will only let them 
 alone. But that is exactly what you Liberals won't 
 consent to do. You arc perpetually worrying them, 
 and they detest you in consequence. 
 
 B. What ! merely because we object to give them 
 the absolute rights which they claim over the lower 
 animals, and indeed — if we may couple mental anguish 
 with physical torture — over the whole sentient world ? 
 If they detest those who would simply 
 
 M. Forgive me, my dear Brooks, for recalling you 
 to the point. The question is not whether men of 
 science ought to be disgusted with contemporary 
 Liberalism, but whether they are. And on that point 
 I confess I think Carlton is in the right. The estrange- 
 ment between you appears to me complete. 
 
 58
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 B. Ob, impossible ! You have been both of yon 
 misled by a few sallies of petulant savauts, or a few 
 ineptitudes of the scientific prig. As the common 
 friends of progress, Science and Liheralism must be in 
 accord. 
 
 M. Oh, of course. Two friends of a word are 
 bound to love each other — especially when it is a word 
 •which each interprets differently. It reminds me of 
 those sudden and mistaken salutations of social life : 
 ' I think you know Mr. So-aud-So.' ' To be sure. 
 Delighted to have met you.' You shake hands 
 warmly, and half an hour afterwards you find that 
 the friend of your new-made acquaintance is not 
 your own friend, but a highly objectionable namesake 
 of his. 
 
 B. Nonsense! That is not at all the case here. Our 
 Conservative critics may make their miads perfectly 
 easyion that score. Liberalism and Science thoroughly 
 understand each other, and, whatever transitory and 
 superficial difference may divide them, you may take 
 my word for it that they are the best of friends. 
 
 M. Theoretically, perhaps ; but practically ? Lib- 
 eralism in the abstract is devoted to the cause of 
 science ; but unfortunately there seems to be always 
 something which the concrete Liberal prefers to her 
 interests. Now it is a rabbit ; now a baby sickening 
 for the small-pox in a crowded district ; now the Doll 
 Tearsheet of a garrison town. What value do you 
 
 59
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 suppose a man of science can attach to the friendship 
 of men who are continually sacrificing the fruits of his 
 labours and the blessings of his discoveries to 
 crotchets of their own? 
 
 B. The divergence of paths is only temporary. 
 The man of science has gone astray, as the mere 
 student will. Absorbed in his own ideals, he has lost 
 touch of considerations to which the man of action 
 and affairs is naturally alive. We shall recall him in 
 time to a juster appreciation of those rights of 
 others which he is now disposed to ignore. 
 
 C. And you think that that is the only note of 
 discord between Liberalism and Science ? You think 
 that if what Middleway calls the ' rabbit ' difficulty 
 could be settled, together with the other two which 
 he mentioned, there would be nothing to hinder 
 Science and Liberalism from falling into each other's 
 arms ? 
 
 B. I don't thiuk it — I am sure of it. 
 
 C. Sacred simplicity ! What do you say, Middle- 
 way? 
 
 M. Nothing. I am waiting to hear what Brooks 
 says. 
 
 B. And 1 need not wait to hear what Carlton says, 
 because 1 already guess what he means. He has 
 picked up from some pseudo-philosophic anti-Radical 
 the argument that modern science, being simply the 
 evangelist of evolution, must necessarily take the 
 
 60
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATUEE 
 
 colour of her politics from a biological theory which 
 is ' not democratic, but aristocratic through and 
 through.' I think that is the way our instructors are 
 accustomed to put it; and confess now, Carlton, 
 wasn't that the thunder you were going to pass off 
 as your own ? 
 
 C. I was not conscious of the intention of ' pass- 
 ing off' anything as my own ; but I had always sup- 
 posed that good arguments were common property, 
 and I certainly did propose to make use of the one 
 you have cited. What have you to say to it ? 
 
 B. Simply that it is an ingenuity of the study ; 
 that it is, on the face of it, an excogitation of the 
 man of books, and not a reflection which has sug- 
 gested itself to the man of action from his observation 
 of practical affairs. 
 
 C That is merely your way of putting it ; but, 
 supposing you are right, I can't see the force of your 
 reply. 
 
 B. Can't you? I should have thought it was 
 obvious ; but 1 will put it in the concrete form. Some 
 ingenious Conservative essayist or other, casting 
 about for new arguments against the principles of 
 Liberalism, suddenly bethinks himself of the fact 
 which I suppose has been a commonplace for years 
 to anybody who has ever thought about the matter 
 — that, according to accepted scientific doctrine, the 
 development of life on the globe has not been man- 
 
 61
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 aged by Nature on democratic principles, but on 
 principles very much their reverse. Elated with 
 this brilliant apergii, he immediately proceeds to argue 
 that what is true of life in general must be true of 
 the human race in particular ; and that scientific men 
 must thereby be vehemently opposed to the Liberal 
 theory of the progress and prospects of humanity. 
 Isn't that the history of the argument ? 
 
 C. No doubt it is. 
 
 B. Well, what is it worth, then '? Why, in the 
 first place, nothing can be more absurd than to call 
 it au argument against any one political creed. It 
 is an argument against civilisation itself. There was 
 a time when the human species did develop itself by 
 the same law of evolution as governs the lower forms 
 of life to-day; but the then state of our race is de- 
 scribed — by Conservatives I had imagined no less 
 than by Liberals ; but correct me if I am wrong — as 
 barbarism. The ' aristocratic ' doctrines of Nature 
 no doubt prevailed then among us to their full ex- 
 tent ; but the first effective protest against them was 
 not Liberalism, but society. The social union of 
 man was, in fact, the birth of the principle of demo- 
 cratic co-operation, and the death of the aristocracy 
 of individual strength. Man parted company with 
 the politics of Nature from that hour, and your in- 
 genious Conservative essayist should raise his voice, 
 not against us poor Liberals, but against the human 
 
 62
 
 THE POLITICS or LITERATURE 
 
 race itself. He should look a little further back than 
 the first Reform Bill, and attempt to conjure up the 
 golden age of the flint. He should idealise a more 
 genuine pre-Adamite than even Sir Charles Wethe- 
 rell, and while his mind lingers fondly upon Tory 
 ' Dragons of the prime. That tear each other in the 
 slime,' he should deplore the fatal error which was 
 committed when man first took to walled cities and 
 invented morality and laws. 
 
 M. Bravo, Brooks! That's really a colourable 
 imitation of eloquence. At least 1 have heard after- 
 dinner speakers cheered for a less coherent and even 
 for a less grammatical string of sentences. 
 
 B. You're very good. 
 
 M. Not at all. I feel that it is only fair to do 
 justice to the form of your remarks, as 1 shall again 
 have to comment on the irrelevance of their matter. 
 Nothing I know is so disagreeable as sticking to the 
 point when you are conscious of having some excel- 
 lent thing to say which has nothing to do with it. 
 But, disagreeable as it is, there is no other way of 
 advancing the progress of a controvers}'', and I must 
 really point out to you that you have not answered 
 Carlton's argument at all. 
 
 B. Indeed ? I thought I had proved that 
 
 31. You have quite sufficiently proved that no 
 man, whether savant or Conservative essayist, or 
 what not, can reasonably make Liberalism responsi- 
 
 63
 
 TUE rOLITICS OF LITERATUEE 
 
 "ble for principles of which the very existeuce of 
 society is itself the expression. But Carlton is not 
 concerned to dispute that. His argument, as I 
 understand it, may be stated thus: The principles 
 upon which Nature works, when exempt from the 
 artificial interference of man, are essentially aristo- 
 cratic principles. The doctrine of the survival of 
 the fittest is an essentially aristocratic doctrine. The 
 law of evolution is a law of privilege. ' The weakest 
 goes to tlie wall,' supplies a good rhyme to, but an 
 ill paraphrase of, ' equahty for all.' The one, in fact, 
 is the exact antipodes of the other; and since Science 
 is engaged in the continual contemplation of the 
 aristocratic doctrine, while Liberalism is specially 
 devoted to the illustration and development of the 
 democratic theory, the question is whether this does 
 not tend to encourage — rationally or irrationally, 
 matters not — an antagonism of tendencies between 
 the two in their way of regarding political phenomena. 
 
 C. That's exactly the form in which I wish my 
 argument to be stated. Thank you, Middleway. 
 
 M. Withhold your thanks a little while. I am 
 afraid you will find I don't deserve them. But first, 
 Avhat do you say, Brooks, to the argument as I have 
 just stated it ? 
 
 B. Well, as I gather from your last hint that you 
 are about to fall foul of my adversary, I withdraw 
 my opposition. I will admit provisionally that there 
 
 64
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATUKE 
 
 is, in the way you put it, a natural antagonism of 
 political tendency between Liberalism and Science. 
 And now let us see you ' go for' Carlton. 
 
 C. I don't quite see how you can count upon 
 that pleasure. Your surrender is my victory. 
 
 B. Is it? AYe shall see. I can guess the very 
 manner of your discomfiture. If Liberal theories 
 offend the prepossessions of science, what sort of 
 response does Conservatism make to them ? That 
 is the question you are going to ask, I suppose, 
 Middleway ? 
 
 M. Yes; unless Carlton anticipates it with the 
 answer, which he doesn't seem disposed to do. He 
 has very rightly insisted that the man of science is 
 likely to be prejudiced against democratic ideas by 
 continual study of a principle so aristocratic as that 
 on which Nature is accustomed to work. But now 
 I want to hear from him why he thinks, or assumes, 
 that the man of science is likely to be drawn towards 
 his own party on that account ? 
 
 C. Well, he would be drawn towards us, I think, 
 in virtue of the very opposition of our principles to 
 democratic ideas. 
 
 M. He would be attracted to you as to the repre- 
 sentatives of the aristocratic principle, you mean ? 
 
 C. Yes ; if you like to put it so. 
 
 M. And you consider, then, that Nature and the 
 Conservative party interpret and apply this principle 
 
 F
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 iu the same way ? That we have called it in each 
 case by the common name ' aristocratic ' seems enough 
 for you. How much has language to answer for when 
 it can betray a man of intelligence into such an ab- 
 surdity as that ! 
 
 C. Do you mean to say, theu, that there is no 
 analogy between the ' supremacy of the best ' as it 
 appears in Nature and as it has been illustrated in 
 political institutions ? 
 
 M. Do you mean to say that what a Conservative 
 would call ' the best ' is what Nature would call ' the 
 fittest'? 
 
 C. Why not? 
 
 B. Why not ? You had better ask the House of 
 Lords. You had better consider the patronage sys- 
 tem in the matter of appointments. Why, the mon- 
 archical principle itself — but, however, I need not 
 shock your courtliness by going into that. I will 
 merely ask you whether you think an hereditary- 
 peerage represents the principle of the ' supremacy 
 of the fittest ' ? 
 
 M. I have seen it argued that it does — the in- 
 genious disputant appealing iu support of his argu- 
 ment to the titles conferred occasionally upon the 
 successful soldier or civil administrator, and periodi- 
 cally upon a certain number of able lawyers. 
 
 B. To which you replied ? 
 
 M. To which I replied that the analogy was most
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 exact and happy — for a single generation ; but that, 
 unfortunately for its further application, Nature was 
 in the habit of conferring life peerages alone. 
 B. Good. What did he say to that ? 
 M. I did not give him time to say anything. I 
 went on to add that I would admit the force of his 
 argument when he could show me a short-necked 
 giraffe supported in ease and comfort by Nature in 
 consideration of the distinguished cervical develop- 
 ment of its ancestors. Nature, I said, appears to me 
 to have a thorough appreciation of personal fitness, 
 but of the hereditary variety, so familiar to politicians, 
 she seems to have no comprehension at all. Obvious- 
 ly she cannot grasp the idea of an inherited aptitude 
 for browsing the leaves of trees which your neck is 
 too short to reach. 
 
 C. This seems to me very poor jesting. 
 M. I don't wonder you find it so ; but you have 
 always the resource of treating it as serious argument 
 and attempting to answer it. Come, my dear Carlton, 
 you cannot possibly claim the sympathy of science 
 for Conservatism on the ground that your party 
 represents the principle of the supremacy of the fittest. 
 The paradox is too audacious. Conservatism and 
 accidental privilege have been too long associated in 
 popular language to allow you any hope of severing 
 them. 
 B. Quite so ; and that just brings us to the point 
 
 f2
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITEEATURE 
 
 at which, as I contend, the sympathy of Liberahsm 
 and science begins. It is Liberahsm after all, and 
 Liberalism alone, which has unshackled and given 
 scope to the energies of the human race — thereby 
 rendering possible the vast material progress which 
 the race has made, and even contributing in a gTcat 
 measure to the splendid victories which science her- 
 self has won. She would be guilty of the worst in- 
 gratitude if she were really capable of looking coldly 
 on her benefactor. 
 
 C. Ah ! that's all very well ; but, understanding 
 gratitude as a sense of favours to come, 1 should like 
 to know from which of the two parties science is most 
 likely to receive them. 
 
 B. From ours ! Not a doubt of it. There cannot 
 be any permanent antagonism between the man who 
 labours for the human race, and the man who be- 
 lieves in the human race ; nor can there ever be more 
 than a transitory alliance between him whose life is 
 devoted to the interests of the many, and him who 
 has to uphold the privileges of the few. Liberalism 
 and science have, at any rate, a common ideal — the 
 advancement of mankind — an ideal which Conserv- 
 atism either does not believe in, or does not care for. 
 The Liberal politician may thwart the man of science 
 in such matters as vivisection and the repression of 
 disease, and the two may quarrel angrily enough 
 about it ; but each knows at the bottom of his heart 
 
 G8
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 that his temporary opponent is equally with himself 
 a labourer in the cause of man. They differ as to 
 the relative importance of moral and physical factors 
 in the sum of man's well-being, that is all. But in 
 any difference between science and Conservatism this 
 can never be so. 
 
 C. What a magnificent specimen of Liberal arro- 
 gance ! Your party has^ of course, a monopoly of 
 interest in human welfare. 
 
 B. I have never said so ; and it would be as ab- 
 surd as to say that Haroun Al-Raschid took no interest 
 in the welfare of his people. AVhat I meant was that 
 the Conservative — I mean the really thoughtful and 
 logical Conservative as distinguished from the po- 
 litical speculators on, or perhaps I ought to say ' in,' 
 the adventure of ' Tory Democracy ' — does not 
 believe in the self -directing, self-suflSciug quality of 
 the mass of mankind, or believes in it only as a pos- 
 sibility of some so remote future as to warrant him 
 in treating it for immediate practical purposes as 
 non-existent. And I say that, while the Conservative 
 rejects this belief, both the Liberal and the man of 
 science are fundamentally agreed in holding it. 
 
 M. What a charm there is in the discursiveness 
 of an argument! Now, Avho Avould imagine that all 
 this animated dispute about the tendencies of science 
 is really episodical to the main issue ? But it is, 
 though. 
 
 69
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 C. Surely not. 
 
 M. Indeed it is. You undertook to discuss the 
 politics of literature, or, in other words, the political 
 tendencies of the literary habit, and you have branch- 
 ed off into a debate upon the politics of scientific 
 men, whom Brooks at the outset declined, for the 
 purposes of the discussion, to include in the literary 
 class at all. 
 
 C. Well, we have disposed of most varieties of 
 the men who employ pen, ink, and paper for the ex- 
 pression of their thoughts. Journalists, historians, 
 savants have been successively brought up for 
 examination as to their politics. 
 
 31. Yes ; and since the studies of mental and 
 moral philosophy are now treated as branches of 
 physical science, there remains only the novelists, 
 poets, essayists, &c., whom you first enumerated. 
 We are reduced, in fact — if the word ' reduced ' is 
 not impertinent — to the belles lettres, which I suspect 
 are, in popular language, pretty nearly equivalent to 
 the word ' literature.' 
 
 B. No doubt they are ; and people are probably 
 thinking exclusively of the poet, the novelist, the 
 essayist, the critic, and so forth, when they talk of 
 the politics of literary men. 
 
 C. Well, and what do you think theh- natural 
 politics are ? 
 
 B. Ah, there, at least, I can confidently meet 
 70
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 you. For what are the qualities which in the de- 
 partment of Hterature are supreme ? Are they not 
 imagination, sympathy, sensibiUty ? 
 
 J/. You leave out sense, I see. But surely the 
 critic should have that, even if tlie poet and the 
 novelist can dispense with it. 
 
 C. Yes, and how about taste and culture, which 
 you have also omitted "? 
 
 B. Thank you for multiplying my allies. Add 
 taste and culture by all means. I am not afraid of 
 them. They are on the side of our greater ideals, if 
 they look coldly on some of our minor political 
 claims. 
 
 M, Which, being interpreted, means that Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold was an enthusiast for social equality, 
 if he had no sympathy with the deceased wife's 
 sister. 
 
 B. Exactly so. 
 
 M. Recollect, however, what an eclectic Mr. 
 Arnold was. 
 
 C. Ay, and remember how much larger a share in 
 the life of a political party is filled by these ' minor 
 claims,' as you call them, compared with the ' greater 
 ideals/ or, in other words, the vague abstractions 
 which men may accept like the theological dogma 
 which has no influence on their lives. In what as- 
 pect, after all, must the modern Liberal politician 
 present himself to the man of taste and culture ? 
 
 71
 
 THE POLITICS or LITERATURE 
 
 Surely not in the radiant if delusive semblance worn 
 by the pioneers of the French Revolution to the 
 English poets of the eighteenth century? Surely 
 not as a builder of a new heaven and new earth, but 
 rather as the mechanically-chosen exponent of the 
 narrowest ideals of the English bourgeoisie. 
 
 B. But suppose that these ideals 
 
 C. One moment ; I am not saying that this view 
 of English Liberalism is reasonable, but I do say that 
 that is the aspect which it must naturally present to 
 the eye of taste and culture. 
 
 B. I see you admire that variety of refinement 
 which, if you will pardon the criticism, the most close- 
 ly borders on vulgarity. You are the devotee of a 
 form of ' taste ' which is to the real article what the 
 ' genteel person ' is to the gentleman. Well, let us 
 drop taste and culture. Imagination and sympathy 
 surely do not tend to encourage that gross and 
 swinish temperament which contentedly acquiesces 
 in a world of remediable misery for a bribe of meat 
 and drink. Imagination and sympathy in their 
 higher developments must surely tend to make 
 men 
 
 C. Revolutionaries? yes; Liberals, no. I can 
 quite understand your poetic Nihilist. What I can- 
 not see is the romance of the Caucus. 
 
 M. I am entirely with you there, Carlton. A 
 poet who likes to join hands with the Marxes and 
 
 72
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 Krapotkins of the era may indulge bis imagination 
 to any extent. A socialist democracy contains 
 possibilities; its coming might be catastrophic or 
 beneficent ; but it would, at any rate, give promise of 
 something less prosaic than the present. Now the 
 promise of orthodox Liberalism is precisely the re- 
 verse, and, however unsatisfying the present may 
 seem to imaginative and poetic minds, I cannot con- 
 ceive it save as turning with disgust from, a future in 
 which democracy, with its vices sedulously fostered 
 and its virtues repressed as inconvenient, is to be 
 ' worked,' ' managed,' ' caucused,' by pushing mem- 
 bers of the commercial capitalist class. 
 
 C. Quite so ; and since imagination and feeling, 
 since taste and culture, can find nothing to satisfy 
 them, but rather everything to disgust them in the 
 future foreshadowed to them by the so-called man of 
 progress, they are naturally drawn towards that body 
 who represent for them the beauty, the sanctity, the 
 poetry of the past. 
 
 M. You mean, no doubt, the Society of 
 Antiquaries. 
 
 B. Ila ! ha ! 
 
 C. Nonsense ; I mean the Conservative party. 
 M. Oh, impossible ! What on earth have the 
 
 Conservative party to do with the past ? It is true 
 they have a sort of bowing acquaintance with it 
 through the House of Peers, most of whom, however, 
 
 73
 
 THE rOLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 are ignorant of their own pedigrees, and some of the 
 greatest of whom are tnruiug their historic heirlooms, 
 as fast as may be, into current coin of the realm ; but 
 the party, as a party, is avowedly, even ostentatious- 
 ly, parvenu. Lord Beaconsfield, they are always 
 telKng us, was their pohtical father ; they have, con- 
 sequently, no pohtical grandfather, and they are 
 proud of it. That may bo a capital way of com- 
 mending themselves to the democracy; I don't say it 
 is not; but you must take it with its consequences, 
 and one of these is that modern Consers'atism has no 
 more appeal to romance, is not one whit less prosaic to 
 the tips of its fingers, than modern Liberalism. 
 
 B. I thoroughly agree with you. That is, of 
 course, I mean I agree with you that nothiug can be 
 more prosaic than modern Conservatism. 
 
 C. Well, what / should like to know is, what you 
 really do think on the point under discussion ? For 
 hitherto you seem to me to have done nothiug but 
 amuse yourself by knocking onr heads together, 
 which is not difBcult when two men are wrestling. 
 
 M. I should think, then, that an attitude of such 
 strict, if scarcely benevolent, neutrality might ex- 
 plain itself. Your dispute, my good friends, is, to the 
 best of my judgment, idle. The literary man, as 
 such, can have no tendency either to Liberalism or 
 Conservatism as represented by the two political 
 parties. Neither party has anything to attract him, 
 
 74
 
 THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE 
 
 or rather, each has so much to repel him, that he 
 must become an eclectic whether he will or no. 
 
 B. But never mind the parties. Surely his bias 
 must be — every man's is — towards the creed of one 
 party or towards that of the other ? 
 
 M. Well, of course it must be ; but that has no 
 more to do with the practice of his calling than with 
 the colour of his hair. It goes down to that great 
 fundamental distinction of temperament which makes 
 every man among us an optimist or a pessiaiist. 
 
 C. And which are you ? 
 
 M. My dear Carlton, what an indiscreet question ! 
 To avow oneself an optimist is practically to imder- 
 take to fight all comers at all times of the day or 
 night ; to declare for pessimism is to get oneself 
 turned out of the arena altogether and disqualified as 
 * unpractical.' The one creed threatens me with too 
 much work, and the other would allow me too little. 
 So please to understand that I am so far an optimist 
 as to entitle no one to order me home to my study ; 
 while, if I ever talk the language of the pessimist, it 
 is, as I have done to-day, in the strictest confidence 
 of privacy. 
 
 75
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 It is just upon a hundred years since Wordsworth, 
 in an unlucky moment for himself, excogitated and 
 published an entirely new, original, and unsound 
 theory of the poetic art. He was, however, fortunate 
 in a power of performance far excelling the value of 
 his precepts, and perhaps still more so in a public who 
 remained absolutely indifferent to both until the lat- 
 ter had had time to be forgotten. With Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold the case is very different. His poetic theories 
 attracted as much attention as his poetry, if not more, 
 and made warm partisans and vehement opponents 
 throughout the world of English letters. Hence a 
 certain difficulty in fixing Mr. Arnold's own place in 
 literature. It is impossible in considering the poet to 
 forget the critic with whom we more or less 
 enthusiastically agree or disagree ; and the influence 
 of one's own ' personal equation ' is proportionally 
 hard to exclude. His work, both in prose and 
 poetry, but in the former especially, was distinguish- 
 ed by characteristics of the strongest individuality ; 
 
 76
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 it displayed qualities which are as much over-rated 
 by some minds as they are depreciated by others ; it 
 enforced doctrines — the prose by precept, the poetry 
 by example — on the soundness of which men have 
 differed since the dawn of literature, and will pro- 
 bably continue to differ until literature is extinguish- 
 ed by Volapuk. To have reasoned opinions on 
 literature at all is to hold strong convictions, or at 
 any rate to feel strongly, on the questions which 
 Matthew Arnold's genius and teaching raised as with 
 a standing challenge, and the critic who undertakes 
 to review his literary work can hardly but be con- 
 scious of doing so from the standpoint, either of a 
 convinced believer in his doctrines and method, or of 
 a heretic hardened in their rejection. Such a one 
 ought, perhaps, to be aware, therefore, that, in 
 endeavouring to appraise the work of the departed 
 poet and essayist, he runs a risk of supplying his 
 readers with little else than an edifying disclosure of 
 his own orthodoxy from the Arnoldian point of view 
 on the theories in question. It says much for the 
 artless simplicity of the critical guild that this appre- 
 hension seems to weigh so little on their minds. 
 Those who have adopted, equally with those who 
 dissent from, Mr. Arnold's canons of art have in 
 many instances assigned him his place in English 
 literature with a noble unconsciousness of the fact 
 that they have been merely sitting in judgment 
 
 77
 
 }iIATTHKW ARNOLD 
 
 upon, and with judicial gravity deciding in favour of, 
 their own prepossessions. 
 
 Mutely submitting to the obvious retort that I am 
 about to afford an example of the precise foible in my 
 own person, I propose at the outset to examine the 
 comparative estimate of Mr. Arnold's poetic and 
 prose work which has been formed and enunciated 
 by the majority of his posthumous critics. 
 
 Now, the first reflection which suggests itself on 
 this point might well be one of a somewhat painful 
 character. It is only my intimate personal conviction 
 that no such thing as a literary counterpart of Mrs. 
 Candour is, or ever was, to be found among us — it is 
 only this, I say, which assures me of the good faith 
 and good nature of many of the familiar eulogies 
 of Mr. Arnold. ' It is as a poet rather than as a 
 prose-essayist,' runs the 'common form' of most 
 of them, ' that Mr. Arnold will be remembered;' and 
 then the eulogist goes on to say — not ' in the same 
 breath ;' he usually respires for two or three sentences 
 before adding it — that ' to the great body of his 
 countrymen Mr. Arnold as a poet is almost unknown.' 
 He will be remembered, it seems, for those achieve- 
 ments which have failed to attract the attention of 
 the public which is to remember him. Sometimes, it 
 is true, the formula has been varied a little, to the 
 advantage of logic ; and we have been told that the 
 works which failed to make ISlr. Arnold known to the 
 
 78
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 mass of his contemporaries will constitute his 
 principal ' claim ' to the ' remembrance of posterity/ 
 The critics who prefer this phrase are careful not to 
 commit themselves to the assertion that posterity 
 •will honour a draft which an earlier generation had 
 returned on the hands of the drawer marked with the 
 fatal superscription ' no effects.' 
 
 I am not so rash as to dispute the proposition that 
 the poet was unknown to all but a very small fraction 
 of those who were familiar enough with the name of 
 the literary critic, the essayist on politics and man- 
 ners, and, above all, perhaps, the amateur theologian. 
 Indeed, the facts and dates of the matter speak for 
 themselves. It is now upwards of forty years since 
 Mr. Arnold gave to the world his first two volumes of 
 poems — volumes which contain some of his best work. 
 Some ten or twelve more years had to pass before his 
 Essays in Criticism made their appearance, and it is 
 safe to say that at that time very few, even of those 
 who were sufficiently struck with the contents of his 
 book to take the trouble to get its title correctly, (the 
 varia lectio ' on ' has not yet disappeared even from 
 library catalogues,) had made as much as a bowing 
 acquaintance with Mr. Arnold's earlier muse, or had 
 ever read a line of the New Poems which had seen 
 the light a year or so before. It was undoubtedly 
 the ' Essays ' that established his fame with that 
 gi'eat world which can be persuaded by the 'persistent 
 
 79
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 bammenng,' which Mr. Graut Alien has recommended, 
 to read and to admh-e the excellent in prose, but not, 
 or very, very rarely, the exquisite in verse. This 
 great world was brought to perceive, or to take for 
 granted, in default of perceptive power, that here was 
 a critic, not only of rare technical ability, but one 
 possessed of original and fertilizing conceptions on 
 the subject of the critic's art, and the master, above 
 all, of a style which, whatever fault might be found 
 with it on other grounds, had become in his hands 
 an instrument of marvellous delicacy and power. 
 Then the great world condescended to see what this 
 remarkable essayist and critic had written in rhyme 
 and metre. And in the course of time they had got 
 by heart the last eighteen lines of Sohrah and Bus- 
 tiun, and the handsome comphment to Sophocles at 
 the end of the sonnet To a Friend, and the de- 
 scription of our Titan of empire, laden with ' the too 
 A'ast orb of his fate,' and a few otlier elegant extracts 
 of an equally convenient and portable kind. 
 
 But the great world never got further than that. 
 They still continued, and they still continue, to pre- 
 fer their 'favourites' — the two or three poets who 
 have won their way to or beyond the place occupied 
 for so many years in lonely majesty, like the broken 
 column of Ozymandias, by the author of Proverhial 
 Fhilosophi/. They still prized, and prize above all 
 others, the three bards whom they have respectively 
 
 80
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 learned to love, been persuaded to adaiire, and taken 
 af once and spontaneously to their hearts — Lord 
 Tennyson, Mr. Browning, and Sir Lewis Morris. And 
 since Mr. Arnold as a poet and Mr. Arnold's poems 
 were and are in this position in the mind of the gen- 
 eral public at the time of and since his lamented 
 death, it follows that, to declare, as has been declared 
 in so much recent criticism, that his future fame will 
 depend upon his poetry, must mean one of two 
 things : either it is a polite way of saying that Mr. 
 Arnold is not destined to any future life at all in the 
 popular recollection, or it amounts to a prediction 
 that, sooner or later, the appreciation, now confined 
 to a few, of his high excellence as a poet, will, as in 
 the case of his master, Wordsworth, dawn gradually 
 iipon the perceptions of the great body of his 
 countrymen. It is possible that Mr. Arnold himself 
 entertained some expectation of the kind, and that 
 his avowed belief in the continuing growth of 
 Wordsworth's fame and influence was associated with 
 a personal hope which would certainly not be un- 
 justifiable on the part of one so deeply imbued with 
 the Wordsworthian spirit as himself. 
 
 It is ill dogmatizing on a question so obviously 
 incapable of more than a conjectural answer as this. 
 No man's opinion as to what the public taste of ten, 
 twenty, fifty, a hundred years hence will be in the 
 matter of poetry can be worth much more than that 
 
 G
 
 JklATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 of his ueighboiirs ; and, for all we knoAv, the world 
 may be reading Matthew Arnold with eager delight 
 a century hence, while Sir Lewis Morris may have 
 long sunk into neglect. The utmost one can say is 
 that it is difficult to detect at present any forerunning 
 sign whatever of either development of the public 
 taste. I see no reason to doubt that poets who dis- 
 play Sir Lewis Morris's triumphant address in 
 adapting themselves to the poetical likings of so vast 
 a multitude of their fellow-countrymen will always 
 find innumerable admirers worthy of them. I do not 
 believe that the singer will either get ahead of the 
 listener or tlie listener of the singer, but that the two 
 will be kept abreast of each other by the link of a 
 quality which Horace, though with a slight difference 
 of application, has described as 'golden.' 
 
 On the other hand, I do not find any very convinc- 
 ing ground for the belief that the taste of any great 
 multitudes of men in this or any other country 
 will ever be powerfully attracted by poetry like 
 that of Mr. Arnold. Even if the influence of Words- 
 worth should increase, instead of, as is at least as 
 probable, diminishing, it does not follow that Mr. 
 Arnold's would obtain additional acceptance on that 
 account: for Wordsworth's appeal to the common 
 mind is largely dependent upon a quality in his 
 poetry which Mr. Arnold's is altogether without. 
 Wordsworth lays firm hold of the religious instinct 
 
 fi2
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 in man. His poetry, for all the mystical nature- 
 worship that pervades it, was allied to a strongly 
 and even almost narrowly personal Theistic creed. 
 There is nothing in the poetry of his disciple to 
 supply the place of this element, except that highly 
 attenuated conception of the ' Something not our- 
 selves which makes for righteousness,' so familiar to 
 every student of the amateur theologian into which 
 the poet and critic imfortunately declined. It will 
 be a long time before the mass of mankind are 
 willing to accept the ' stream of tendency ' as a sub- 
 stitute for their no doubt crude and self-contradic- 
 tory conceptions of a personal Creator ; and when, 
 if ever, they do, they will probably have ceased to 
 care for poetry of the Wordsworthian and Arnoldian 
 type at all. Science relieved by sensuousness ap- 
 pears to be the ideal to which not only poetry, but 
 art of all kinds, is tending at the present day, and if 
 the movement is a real and persistent, and not a 
 merely apparent or merely temporary one, the ulti- 
 mate effect of that movement must be to crowd out 
 all poetry set mainly in the contemplative key, to 
 whatever tenderness of feeling and truth of sesthetic 
 vision it may be allied. For, so long as this key is 
 maintained by a poet, he will probably never be 
 able to compete for the favour of the average man 
 with those rivals who proceed upon the sound as- 
 sumption that the average man wants, as Goethe 
 
 g2
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 said, not to be made to think, but merely to be made 
 to feel. 
 
 In other words, it seems to me ahnost self-evident 
 that poetry in order to be popular — and I do not 
 intend the word in any disparaging sense; I merely 
 mean that poetry, in order to be the poetry of the 
 many and not of the few — must have something 
 more than the power of delighting the imaginative 
 part of man : it must deeply move his emotional part. 
 The emotions stirred by it may be at any moral level 
 you please, however high, or however low ; but the 
 stir, the exaltation, must be there. Moreover, it 
 must be a genuine troubling of the waters of the 
 spirit, and not merely an excitement of the assrhetic 
 sensibilities discharging itself along the channels of 
 emotion. What makes Byron's popularity so in- 
 structive is that we are so often in a position to say 
 with absolute certainty that the exaltation produced 
 by his poetry is wholly due to the former of these 
 causes, and not in the least to the latter. For the 
 form of the poetic utterance is sometimes so intoler- 
 ably bad that we may be quite sure that the power 
 of the passage lies exclusively in the thing uttered, 
 and in our sympathy with the mood of the utterer. 
 Lines which lash Mr. Swinburne into fury will 
 powerfully impress a reader of a less exacting ear and 
 a less fastidious taste. Mr. Arnold, so far as the 
 faculty of expression goes, may be said to stand in 
 
 84
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 polar opposition to the author of Chilcle Harold^ and, 
 just as a critical admirer of the latter can almost 
 always be sure that the pleasure given him by a 
 passage of Byron is of its essence and not of its 
 form, so he can nearly as often and with as complete 
 confidence say that the pleasure given by a poem of 
 Mr. Arnold is ultimately traceable to form rather 
 than to essence. It is true that the pleasure is so 
 intense and exquisite as to pass readily with those 
 who are keenly susceptible to such pleasure into 
 emotional exaltation. No critic, no one with any 
 strong feehng for style, could find it in his heart to 
 speak of Mr. Arnold's poetry as ' cold.-* To such a 
 reader it is not and never can be that; but it must 
 be admitted, 1 think, that the glow which it takes in 
 the mind of such a reader is largely, if not wholly, 
 self-generated. The flawless perfection of Mr. 
 Arnold's poetic work in its best specimens, the ab- 
 solute sureness of his art when the artist is at liis 
 best, do much more than charm and satisfy. They 
 kindle enthusiasm ; they elate and excite all who are 
 capable of being elated by mere beauty of form and 
 mastery of workmanship ; and it is easy for those 
 upon whom this effect is produced to fancy for the 
 moment that their elation and excitement are in some 
 way associated with the matter rather than with the 
 form of his poetry, and, in fact, that their emotions 
 have taken fire from his imagination. 
 
 85
 
 LIATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 My own impression — and I may perhaps trust it 
 the more for feeliuj^ the incomparable literary charm 
 of Mr. Arnold's best work as intensely as I do — ni}' 
 own impression is that the idea in question is a pure 
 illusion ; and that it is because it is an illusion that 
 Matthew Arnold will never be more than ' the poet 
 of a few.' It may sound paradoxical to say of one 
 who was a genuine poet, and, on any intelligent 
 estimate of him, a poet of no mean order, that he 
 wrote without the genuine poetic impulse ; but there 
 is a sense, I believe, in which every competent critic 
 will understand what 1 mean. It would be difficult, 
 1 think, to point to any poem of Mr. Arnold's in 
 which he is thoroughly possessed by, instead of 
 merely possessing, his subject — any poem in which 
 feeling and expression are so interfused that the 
 critical and uncritical readers are brought abreast of 
 each other in an equality, though not in an identity, 
 of delighted emotion. Mr. Arnold's poetic imagina- 
 tion was vigorous, subtle, elevated — what you please ; 
 but I question whether it ever reached a temperature 
 at which this fusion of form and matter can take 
 place. 
 
 It is true, no doubt, that an exceptionally large 
 proportion of Mr. Arnold's work was of such a char- 
 acter as to render the correctness of this judgment 
 difficult to test. His lyrical poems were usually the 
 expression of subdued emotional moods, and in his 
 
 8G
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 dramatic, or semi-dramatic, pieces, such as Merope, 
 and, in a less degree, Empedocles in Etna, he 
 aimed dehberately at that reserve and repression 
 which is the secret of the Greek tragedians, and 
 ■which he was too much and too dogmatically in- 
 clined to impose upon all poetry whatsoever. Some 
 small portion of his work, however, was of a differ- 
 ent character, and my point, perhaps, will appear 
 with sufficient clearness in those poems in which the 
 nature of the subject demands a more sustained 
 ardour of imagination on the part of the poet than 
 Mr. Arnold's subjects usually exacted from him. 
 The Forsahu Merman is a piece which I know to be 
 admired by at least one critic for whose judgment I 
 entertain a high respect; and, like everything else 
 that camo from the hand of its author, it contains 
 beautiful passages. But surely, considered as an 
 attempt to give poetic expression to the feelings of 
 the deserted ' King of the Sea,' and to move the reader's 
 sympathies therewith, it is not only a failure, but a 
 failure which trembles throughout upon the verge of 
 the comic. Mr. Arnold had far too keen a sense of 
 the ridiculous to be insensible to the peculiar dangers 
 of his subject, and must have been perfectly well 
 aware of the essential conditions of success in dealing 
 with it. He must have known that the idea of the 
 merman hovering, with his fishy offspring, about the 
 little watering-place wliere the faithless wife and 
 
 87
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 mother had taken up her abode, was one which, 
 while it might be kept clear of the positively ludi- 
 crous by consummate tact and propriety of poetic 
 treatment, would require much more than this to 
 make it interesting and sympathetic. Art might 
 avail to avoid the provocation of the smile of levity, 
 but art alone would hardly avail in such a matter to 
 convince incredulity. It was essential that the poet 
 should believe most profoundly in, and should feel 
 most intensely with, his own merman, to have any 
 chance of producing a corresponding state of belief 
 and feeling in the minds of his readers. But Mr. 
 Arnold does not really believe in his forsaken mer- 
 man a bit. He merely uses his subject as a canvas 
 on which to paint a few such exquisite little marine 
 pictures as that of the — 
 
 ' Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, 
 Vv here the winds are all asleep, 
 Where the spent lights quiver and gleam. 
 Where tlie salt weed sways in the stream, 
 Where the sea-beasts ranged all round 
 Feed on the ooze of their pasture ground. 
 Where the sea-snakes coil and twine, 
 Dry their mail and bask in the brine : 
 Where great v/hales come sailing by, 
 Sail and sail, with unshut eye, 
 Round the world for ever and aye.' 
 
 Or he interprets the plaints of the forsaken merman 
 in language which would be appropriate and touch- 
 ing enough in the mouth of Enoch Arden, but which 
 
 88
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 leave us quite cold as the utterances of an amphibi- 
 ous being in whom we find that the author has no 
 more genuine behef than we have ourselves. I can 
 understand people admiring the poem, as the critical 
 friend to whom I have referred appears to admire it — 
 for its ' purple patches ;' but I cannot understand any- 
 one admiring it as a whole, or failing to recognize it 
 as a work of which the initial poetic impulse was 
 not energetic enough to secure the adequate accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 And I venture to maintain that, with the few and 
 partial exceptions above referred to, Mr. Arnold's 
 poetry will be found full of positive or negative in- 
 stances to the same effect throughout. It is not cold to 
 the cultivated taste any more than the marbles of 
 Phidias are cold, but to the natural man, to the man 
 who has to be reached, if at all, through the emotions, 
 rather than the aesthetic sensibilities, it is cold. The 
 Horatian Si vis me flere^ &c., may or may not be a 
 true maxim for the dramatic art, but it is assuredly 
 true to this extent of the art poetic, that in all poetry 
 which moves the common kind of humanity a certain 
 thrill of agitation, a certain pulse of passion, is always 
 to be felt. It would be absurd, of course, to deny 
 that there are some short poems, and not a few pas- 
 sages perhaps here and there in longer poems, of Mr. 
 Arnold's in which this throb and pulsation may be 
 felt. But they are composed in his rarer — nay, in 
 
 89
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Lis very rare — moods. He does not feel and write 
 at this temperature for long. Such pieces as Philomela 
 and The Strayed Reveller are specimens of a very 
 limited class. In much the larger majority of his 
 poems, and in all the longer ones, the key is distinct- 
 ly lower, and yet it is in these that his mere technique 
 is far and away at its best. Take, for instance, that 
 most perfect of all his poems — more perfect, it seems 
 to me, (though I suppose the opposite preference is 
 more common,) than the Thyrsis itself — The Scholar 
 Gipsy ; and from this take the exquisite picture given 
 in the following stanzas : — 
 
 ' For most I know thoii lov'st retired ground ! 
 Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe, 
 
 Returning home on summer nights, have met 
 Crossing the strij^ling Tliames at Bablock-hithe, 
 Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, 
 As the punfs rope chops round ; 
 And leaning backward in a pensive dream, 
 And fostering on thy lap a heap of flowers. 
 Plucked in shy fields and distant "Wychwood bowers, 
 And thine eye resting on the moonlit stream. 
 
 ' And then they land, and thou art seen no more ! — 
 INIaidens, who from the distant hamlets come, 
 
 To dance around the Fyfield elm in May, 
 Oft through the darkening fields liave seen thee roam, 
 Or cross a stile into the public way. 
 Oft thou hast given them store 
 Of flowers— the frail-leafed white anemone, 
 Dark bluebells drenched with dews of summer eves, 
 And purple orchises with s^jotted leaves — 
 But none hath words she can report of thee. 
 
 90
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 * And, above Godstow Bridge, ■when haytime's here 
 In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames, 
 
 ]\Ien -who through those ^vide fields of breezy grass, 
 Where black-winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames 
 To bathe in the abandoned lasher pass, 
 Have often passed thee near, 
 Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown ; 
 Marked thy outlandish garb, thy figure spare, 
 Thy dark vague eyes and soft abstracted air — 
 
 But when they came from bathing thou wert gone ! 
 
 ' At some lone homestead on the Cumnor hills, 
 Where at her open door the housewife darns, 
 Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate 
 To watch the threshers in the mossy barns. 
 
 Children who early range these slopes and late, 
 For cresses from the rills. 
 Have known thee eying, all an April daj'. 
 The springing pastures and the feeding kiue ; 
 And marked thee, when the stars come out and shine, 
 Through the long dewy grass move slow away.' 
 
 That is pure essence of Arnold — a thorougbly 
 typical example at once of his most characteristic 
 manner and his most characteristic mood. No music 
 could be sweeter; but how low, how plaintively 
 minor is the key ! Nothing could be more true 
 and tender, nothing more deeply and sincerely felt 
 than the mood which inspires it; but how alien, 
 how incomprehensible to the mass of men ? The 
 very 'scholar-gipsy' himself, the aimless wanderer 
 whom the poet meets in imagination at so many 
 of the spots most familiar in the rural rambles of 
 generations of Oxford students — what sort of a 
 
 91
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 figure does lie present to this age of ours? What 
 chance is there of his seizing on the imagination of 
 our * strenuous time ' (Heaven help it !) and of the 
 multitude %vho have made it Avhat it is? To that 
 multitude this exquisite poem can be nothing more 
 than a fantastic, and indeed reprehensible, glorifica- 
 tion of ' mooning.' If it shows, as no one surely 
 will dispute that it does show, Mr. Arnold, not only at 
 his best but at his most characteristic best, 1 might 
 venture, I think, to risk the case for my contention 
 on this one poem alone. No other example of his 
 work is needed, as no better could be found, to show 
 that we have here a poet who has as little chance of 
 finding his way to the hearts of the restless and 
 emotion-seeking Many as he is assured of a perpetual 
 place in those of the quiet and contemplative Few. 
 
 If the foregoing view of Mr. Matthew Arnold's 
 genius and place as a poet be correct, we shall be 
 justified, it seems to me, in regarding the early re- 
 lapse of his muse into silence without either surprise 
 or regret. We shall not wonder that an impulse 
 which was never strictly poetic in its character to the 
 writing of poetry should have been soon exhausted, 
 and we shall not deplore the reserve which he im- 
 posed upon himself from the moment when he be- 
 came conscious that that impulse was spent. It is, 
 in my opinion, an error of classification to include 
 Mr. Arnold in the list of those poets with whom the 
 
 92
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 critical faculty, strengthening with advancing years, 
 has overgrown and killed the creative faculty. I am 
 inclined to believe that the instinct of the critic — or, 
 at any rate, of the thinker, the philosopher, the 
 theorist and moralist on life — was of earlier develop- 
 ment in him than that of the poet. I do not say they 
 begot the poet, for 1 cannot believe them capable in 
 themselves of begetting anything higher than a 
 verse-maker. But I strongly suspect that, before his 
 poetic instinct began to respond to the impressions 
 made upon it by the world without, the bent of re- 
 flective habit had so far fixed itself as seriously to 
 limit his freedom of selection for poetic purposes from 
 the impressions thus presenting themselves. It is 
 not good for a poet that he should start with a ready- 
 made philosophy of life. It is better that he should 
 evolve it for himself — if indeed it is necessary for 
 him to have one — at a later stage of his career. The 
 ascent of Parnassus can be much more hopefully at- 
 tempted without any such impedimentum in the knap- 
 sack of the mountaineer, and the article, moreover, 
 can always be procured on the summit. 
 
 It was in this sense that I spoke of Mr. Arnold's 
 impulse to poetry as not being in strictness of lan- 
 guage a poetic impulse. I w^as far from intending to 
 imply that he belonged to that unhappy class of self- 
 deceivers who cut up their philosophy of life into 
 lines of equal or ostensibly equal syllabic length, and 
 
 93
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 occasiouaily, though not always, jingle the ends of 
 them against each other. He was didactic only in 
 the sense that his already formed philosophy of life 
 too rigidly prescribed the channels in which his 
 poetic sensibilities were to flow, and forbade their 
 replenishment from any new freshets of inspiration 
 when at last they ran dry. It was to this that I at 
 least am disposed to attribute that theory of his with 
 respect to the functions of the poet which has pro- 
 voked so much just opposition. His pronouncement 
 upon poetry, that it should be ' a criticism of life,' is 
 the eminently natural deliverance of a man who, 
 though he was born both poet and critic, seems to 
 have almost reached maturity in the latter char- 
 acter before he even began to essay his powers in the 
 former. His own poetry from first to last had been 
 far too much of a criticism of life^ — too much so at 
 least for its popularity and for the vigour and per- 
 manence of its inspiration ; and the dictum 1 have 
 cited partook largely of the character of one of those 
 after-thoughts by which the ' human nature in man ' 
 is apt to persuade him that any shortcomings of 
 which he is conscious have followed inevitably from 
 the nature of things. There is, of course, a sense in 
 which it is true that poetry is and must be a criticism 
 of life, but interpreted in that sense it becomes so 
 absolutely uuinforming and unfruitful that it would 
 be unjust to suspect JMr. Arnold of having dwelt with 
 
 9-1
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 such insistence on a proposition of such futility. 
 Poetry is only a criticism of Hfe in the indirect 
 fashion in which every human art, or for that matter 
 every human science, is and must be so ; and it would 
 be just about as instructive and important to say that 
 the execution of a song by Madame Patti is an illus- 
 tration of the physical and physiological laws of 
 vocalization. The poet must describe life — either 
 the life within him or the life without — in order to 
 poetize, just as the singer must breathe to sing ; but a 
 poem is no more a critical deliverance on life than a 
 song is a lecture on the respiratory functions. To 
 attempt to impress any such character expressly and 
 designedly on the poem is likely to be ahnost as fatal 
 as it would be to intersperse the song with spoken 
 observations on the structure and action of the ' vocal 
 chords.' 
 
 This * criticism of life ' crotchet was, however, only 
 one of a few critical perversities with which Mr. 
 Arnold alternately amused and irritated his readers ; 
 and on these it is not necessary to hnger. It is more 
 pleasant to dwell, as one can do, with admiration al- 
 most unqualified, on his general work as a critic of 
 literature. Much has been said since his death of the 
 Essays in Criticisin as an ' epoch-making book,' and, 
 with a little care in defining the precise nature of the 
 epoch which it did make, the phrase may be defend- 
 ed. It would be too much to say that the principles 
 
 95
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 of criticism for ■svliicli Mr. Arnold contended were 
 new and original — or rather it would be the reverse 
 of a compliment to say so, since it is literally certain 
 that any fundamentally novel discovery on this 
 ancient subject would turn out another Invention of 
 of the Mare's-nest. There is no critical canon in the 
 Essays which has not been observed in, and might 
 not be illustrated from, the practice of some critic for 
 long before the Essays appeared. But it is quite 
 true that these principles were at that time under- 
 going what from time to time in our literary history 
 they have frequently undergone, a phase of neglect . 
 and it is equally true that Mr. Arnold's lucid exposi- 
 tion of these principles, and the singularly fascinating 
 style of the series of papers in which he illustrated 
 them, gave a healthy stimulus and a true direction to 
 English literary criticism, which during the thirty 
 years now completed since the publication of the 
 Essays it has on the whole preserved. And to credit 
 any writer with such an achievement as this is un- 
 doubtedly to concede his claim to a permanent place 
 in the history of English letters. 
 
 It may be that Mr. Arnold would not have made 
 that place higher or more assured by steadily pursu- 
 ing his studies as a literary critic ; but the virtual 
 abandonment of these studies, so far at least as 
 publication is concerned, during his later years, must 
 always remain a matter of keen regret to all lovers of 
 
 9G
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 literature. There were so many subjects which he 
 had touched so admirably and yet had only touched ; 
 so many on which he had said his word, but not his 
 last word. To take only one instance of our loss : 
 it is now more than forty years since, in the preface to 
 the first collected edition of his poems, he instituted 
 his subtle and penetrating comparison between the 
 dramatic methods of Shakespeare and of the Greek 
 tragedians. Nothing could be more striking and 
 suggestive, nothing more excellently put than that 
 criticism. Yet so far from exhausting the subject, 
 which indeed is probably inexhaustible, it seemed 
 merely to open the way into a wide and fruitful field 
 of critical inquiry, which no one could have explored 
 with so sure a foot as he. Yet from this exploration , 
 as from so much other work for which he was unique- 
 ly fitted, Mr. Arnold, for the last ten years of his life, 
 turned almost wholly away. And he turned away 
 from it to devote himself, save for occasional and for 
 the most part singularly inefi*ectual excursions into 
 the domain of contemporary politics, to a hopelessly 
 unpractical and almost visionary attempt to put the 
 old wine of dogmatic Christianity into the new 
 bottles of modern scientific thought! 
 
 Some years ago, on the occasion of the issue of a 
 cheap reprint of Literature and Dogma, I endeavoured 
 to investigate the validity of Mr. ArnokVs theories of 
 Scriptural interpretation, and to estimate the amount 
 
 H
 
 IMATTIIEW ARNOLD 
 
 of acceptance ^vbich they were likely to obtain from 
 those whom it was his avowed desire, and whom he so 
 straut^ely conceived it to be his special mission, to in- 
 struct. On the former of these too questions I find 
 nothing' now to add to the observations which 1 then 
 made. I thought then, and I still think, and, wliat is 
 more, I believe it to be the well-nigh universal 
 opinion, that the critical canons by which Mr. Arnold 
 sought to refine away what he regarded as the 
 materialistic accretions on the creed of Christianity, 
 (but what are reall^^ of its essence as a definite system 
 of doctrines deriving from a supernatural origin and 
 possessing a supernatural sanction,) were valueless 
 for any practical purpose. I thought, and still think, 
 that the whole of his teachings on this subject were 
 in part futile and in part superfluous : superfluous, 
 because unueeded by those who have accepted with 
 him the conclusions of modern science, and who, if 
 they retain their belief in Christianity at all, are quite 
 competent to devise their own ' accommodations ' for 
 themselves ; and futile, because assured of rejection 
 by those who, through ignorance of or repugnance to 
 the scientific conclusions which are tending to destroy 
 its supernatural element, still cling to their religion, 
 ' superstitions ' and all. The assumption that there 
 anywhere exists any considerable class of Christians 
 in so curiously ' mixed ' a mental condition as to be 
 at once anxious to reconcile the dogmas of their 
 
 98
 
 jMATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 faith with the informations of their reason, unable to 
 do it for themselves, and willing to allow others to 
 attempt it for them, was in itself an assumption of a 
 highly doubtful kind ; but the idea that if there were 
 such persons they would find anything speciall}'' 
 persuasive in Mr. Arnold's method of reasoning with 
 them, or even in his manner of approaching them, 
 appears to me to have been a positively monumental 
 instance of self-deception. 
 
 Our spiritual physician reversed the Scriptural pre- 
 cept, and addressed himself not to the sick, but to 
 the whole. The style, the argument, and, above all, 
 the illustrations of a treatise avowedly addressed to 
 persons still in the bonds of servitude to a narrow and 
 superstitious literalism, appeared, nevertheless, to 
 presuppose the completest ' emancipation ' on the 
 part of its readers. The babes and sucldings who 
 were to be weaned from their superstition were fed 
 with the strongest of strong meats by their instructor, 
 and that too, apparently, in perfect good faith and 
 with no sign of any suspicion of the weakness of 
 their stomachs. An amusing illustration of this un- 
 consciousness is to be found in the preface to the 
 new edition of Literature and Dogma, in connection 
 with its author's astounding figure of ' the three 
 Lord Shaftesburys.' 'Many of those,' observes Mr. 
 Arnold, ' who have most ardently protested against 
 the illustration, resent it, no doubt, because it directs 
 
 h2
 
 MATTHEW AENOLD 
 
 attention to that extreme licence of affirmation about 
 God which prevails in our popular reh'gion, and one 
 is not the easier forgiven for directing attention 
 to error because one marks it as an object for 
 indulgence. To protesters of this sort 1 owe no 
 deference, and make no concessions. But the 
 illustration has given pain, I am told, in a quarter 
 where only deference, and the deference of all who 
 can appreciate one of the purest careers and noblest 
 characters of our time, is indeed due ; and, finding 
 that in that quarter pain has been given by the 
 illustration, I do not hesitate to expunge it.' In 
 other Avords, Mr. Arnold^ finding that he has given 
 offence by comparing the Trinity to ' three Lord 
 Shaftesburys,' apologizes — to Lord Shaftesbury. To 
 the ' protesters,' who were certainly not thinking of 
 Lord Shaftesbury when they resented the com- 
 parison, he thinks he ' owes no deference,' and will 
 therefore ' make no concessions.' One is left wonder- 
 ing whether Mr. Arnold was really unaware of the 
 susceptibilities and the persons he had wounded, or 
 whether he purposely treated them with contempt. 
 And in either case one wonders still more vehement- 
 ly whether he was aware that the persons to whom 
 he owed no deference and would make no concessions 
 were, in fact, the very persons whom, if his teachings 
 were to bear any fruit at all, he was bound, before all 
 others, to conciliate. But either of the two ex- 
 
 100
 
 MATTHEW AENOLD 
 
 planations will equally entitle lis to say that Mr. 
 Arnold could have formed no adequate estimate of 
 the fundamental conditions of success in the task 
 which he proposed to himself. 
 
 As a critic of our social life and institutions, J\lr. 
 Arnold was doubtless more successful. No one can 
 say that his delightful raillery was altogether thrown 
 away upon its objects. Our ' Barbarians ' are pro- 
 bably a little less barbarous, our * Philistines ' a little 
 more enlightened, for his pleasant satire. And those 
 who could appreciate the temper of his literary 
 weapon, and his matchless skill in using it, were able 
 to watch the periodical performances for many years 
 with almost undiminished pleasure. But it must be 
 admitted, I think, that even as a social instructor he 
 flomewhat outstayed his welcome, and that even his 
 most ardent admirers occasionally found their patience 
 a little tried by him. His incessant iteration of his 
 favourite phrases was, no doubt, a tactical expedient 
 deliberately adopted for controversial purposes at the 
 perceived expense of artistic effect. Mr. Arnold was 
 well aware that to provoke, to irritate, is better for a 
 disputant than to fail to impress, and he had no 
 doubt persuaded himself that to get our social 
 defects "acknowledged and the proper remedies ap- 
 plied, it was necessary to be as importunate as the 
 widow suitor of the unjust judge. It is true he does 
 not tell us, in the admirable linos on Goethe which 
 
 101
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 adoru the memorial verses to Wordsworth, that that 
 ♦physician of the iron age' was always 'striking his 
 finger on the place,' and saying, ' Thon ailest here and 
 here ;' but Mr. Arnokl had abandoned the methods 
 aud the vehicle of the poet — who speaks once for all 
 with a voice whose echoes are undying — before he 
 started in business as a reformer of his countrymen's 
 manners and modes of thought. As a prose physician, 
 so to speak, he may have thought that his pre- 
 scriptions needed to be dinned into the ears of the 
 patient until he actually consented to try them. But 
 a recognition of that fact only sets us inquiring what 
 the value of the prescription is ; and when we find 
 ourselves assured that all the defects of the various 
 classes of our society are to be corrected, and that all 
 the unsatisfied 'claims' upon them — the 'claim of 
 beauty,' the ' claim of manners,' and all the rest of it 
 — are to obtain their due satisfaction through a re- 
 form of our system of secondary education, Ave recall 
 the writer's official position and duties, and are irre- 
 sistibly reminded of a certain homely apologue the 
 point of which is contained in its concluding words, 
 ' There's nothing like leather.' In this as in other 
 matters we see how Mr. Arnold's persistent deter- 
 mination to play the constructive reformer — a part 
 for which he had no natural aptitude — enticed him 
 beyond the limits of that critical function in which 
 his true strength lay. 
 
 102
 
 MA.TTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 But much as v:e ma}^ regret the perversity, if that 
 be not too harsh a word, which diverted so large a 
 portion of Mr. Arnold's intellectual energies in later 
 years away from the natural bent of his genius, it 
 would be ungracious not to acknowledge the indirect 
 benefit which arose from this very dispersion of the 
 rays of that penetrating intelligence. He could not 
 touch any subject without throwing some light upon 
 it. Everything that he wrote was suggestive, if too 
 little of it was satisfying ; and though his determina- 
 tion to avoid the commonplace view of every subject 
 was undoubtedly a snare — since the commonplace, 
 and even what he would have called the Philistine 
 view, is more often the true view than he was at all 
 prepared to admit — it was also, and as undoubtedly, 
 in many instances a source of strength. A deliver- 
 ance of ]\lr. Arnold's on any question — social, moral, 
 or political, as Avell as literary — was always the most 
 admirable touchstone of received opinions. None of 
 us could be quite sure of our reason for the faith that 
 is in us on any matter till it had stood the test of his 
 refined and searching criticism. More of us have 
 been compelled by him than by any other writer of 
 our age and country to review and revise our judg- 
 ments upon most subjects of human interest ; and not 
 only the world of literature, but the infinitely larger 
 world of unexpressed thought and feeling and unem- 
 bodied imagination, is sensibly the poorer for his loss. 
 
 103
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 Among all the emblems of change and reminders of 
 mortality with which the world is full, there are few 
 perhaps more pathetic than the faded flowers of 
 romance literature. The picture which has ceased 
 to please seems still to preserve a certain life of its 
 own ; and the death of an ' acting ' play is, after all, 
 only like the disappearance of the companion of a 
 few amusing or exciting hours. But the popular 
 novel — and more especially the popular novel of 
 emotion and sentiment — has been the close, the con- 
 stant, the confidential friend of so many readers ; it 
 has awakened so many imaginations, engrossed so 
 many minds, and perhaps, if a work of real genius, 
 entered into and affected so many intellectual lives, 
 that there is something pecuharly strange and sad 
 about its literary death. I suppose that there are 
 few real lovers of literature who cannot, after 
 Jaques's fashion, ' suck melancholy ' of this sort out 
 of a survey of the shelves of any well-found library ; 
 and assuredly there is no shelf more likely to yield 
 
 104
 
 SAMUEL KICHARDSON 
 
 it than that which bears — very likely along its whole 
 length — the serried line of Samuel Richardson's 
 works. Nineteen volumes — nineteen ' mortal ' vol- 
 umes, as the observer of to-day is but too likely to 
 put it— contain, in one of the best of the older edi- 
 tions, the three romances which complete the sum 
 of this author's literary performances; and not a 
 volume, he Avill notice, is out of its place. Not a 
 soldier in that regiment is missing, or for years past 
 has been missing from morning parade, though a 
 century or more ago there would have been deserters 
 to be found in half the rooms in the house — above 
 stairs, and even surreptitiously perhaps below. No 
 one in the lifetime of the oldest inmate has imitated 
 Pamela's wicked master by disturbing her repose. 
 Sir Charles Grandison is no more called upon to dis- 
 play his courtly graces in any new ceremonies of 
 introduction. There is dust on the edges of Clarissa 
 Harlowe^ instead of tears upon her page. 
 
 To not a few careless critics the neglect of Rich- 
 ardson seems sufficiently accounted for by a gibe at 
 his inordinate length. Yet we must learn to dis- 
 tinguish between des longueurs in one sense and des 
 longueurs in another. There is a prolixity which is 
 compatible with art, and is even an essential condi- 
 tion of a pure artistic form ; and there is a prolixity 
 which is of itself a fault in art, and as such always 
 and everywhere to bo condemned. To say that tho 
 
 105
 
 SAMUEL EICHARDSON 
 
 geni^e enniiyeux is of its own nature anathema is, from 
 the historic point of view, to beg the question. If a 
 man's contemporaries find him tiresome, there is an 
 end of the matter, so far as contemporary criticism 
 goes ; but, if lie is only found tiresome by posterity, 
 the question of course arises Avhether it be he or 
 posterity that is to blame. We all know that the 
 genre enmiyeux of one age is often very far from 
 having been the genre ennui/eiuv of another; and, it 
 being once ascertained that an author was read with 
 untiring interest by the public of his clay, the fact 
 that he is a weariness to the flesh of a later genera- 
 tion becomes almost irrelevant to the question of his 
 real merit. The word ' almost ' is, no doubt, a 
 necessary quahficatiou, because the fact last men- 
 tioned is to this extent relevant that it does unques- 
 tionably exclude such a Avriter from that small band 
 of the immortals who have delighted all ages and 
 bored none. But no romancist's manes — at least, no 
 reasonable manes of any such departed writer — need 
 chafe at his exclusion from so very select a circle. 
 The question as to the number of ' classics ' who 
 neither bore nor ought to bore the reader of to-day, 
 is one upon which I share many of Mr. James Payn's 
 suspicions without sharing his intrepidity in specify- 
 ing them. But as to the mere number of great ones 
 of the earth who, whether rightly or not, are as a 
 matter of fact found tedious when taken in large 
 
 106
 
 SAJIUEL KICHARDSON 
 
 doses, one can speak with more freedom perhaps ; 
 and nothing, therefore, need hinder me from saying 
 that Richardson in the Shades must have improved 
 upon the quite sufficient complacency of Richardson 
 among the Hving if he regards himself as too good 
 for his company. After all, he only adds another to 
 a group which, if at one end it is typified by the 
 authors of The Grave and The Course of Time, in- 
 cludes at the other end the poets of The Excursion 
 and Paradise Lost. 
 
 The yawns of posterity prove no more than this. 
 They remit Richardson to the class who by reason of 
 their matter or their manner, or both, have failed to 
 sustain their appeal to the unflagging attention of 
 mankind. But, from the point of view of retrospec- 
 tive criticism, this of course is immaterial.' Except 
 for the ambitious purpose of fixing a departed writer's 
 place in the literature of all time, his unbounded 
 and unabated vogue in his own day is the only fact 
 needed in order ' to found,' as the lawyers put it, ' the 
 jurisdiction ' of the critic. This alone is enough to 
 make any author a phenomenon to be explained and 
 if possible analyzed by the literary student of a later 
 day. Fleeting and capricious successes in the past 
 may no doubt be passed by : there have been Master 
 Bettys in literature as well as on the stage. But if 
 an author's contemporaries, critical and uncritical, 
 consent in admiration of his writings, if the public of 
 107
 
 SA:\IUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 his day continue to admire these writings after their 
 novelty has entirely disappeared, and indeed through- 
 out his lifetime and after his death, the maxim 
 securus judicat orbis terrarum may be taken to apply. 
 We may confidently expect to find in such a writer's 
 works an imperishable something, some breath of an 
 immortal spirit, surviving the death and decay of its 
 embodying forms. Whether and in what way this 
 element reveals itself to us in Richardson is a question 
 which for the moment I propose to defer. 
 
 A matter of more immediate interest is the exam- 
 ination of the dead and decayed form in which this 
 imperishable something was contained. And here a 
 question of much cuiiosity, though not very easy 
 perhaps to determine, confronts us at the outset. 
 How much of the form was essential to the life of 
 these books, in the days when they possessed what 
 may be called a corporeal, instead of, as at present, 
 only a spiritual existence — in the days when Clarissa 
 Harlowo was to thousands of Englishmen what 
 Waverley was to the novel-reader of the early nine- 
 teenth century, or Adam Bede to the novel-reader of 
 thirty years ago ? How much of the form, on the 
 other hand, was mere dead weight and surplusage — 
 ]iot helping but hindering — a thing in spite, and not 
 in right, of which these books were impatiently 
 awaited and eagerly read ? For the hasty opinion 
 which treats everything distasteful to the modern 
 
 108
 
 SAMUEL EICHARDSON 
 
 reader ia their form as something which the cou- 
 temporaiy reader prized, is of course a more or less 
 gratuitous assumption. AYe ourselves tolerate many- 
 things in our favourite authors which we wish away. 
 Many of us would like Dickens better Avithout his 
 often forced and artificial sentiment. Still more of 
 us would be well content — in her later books, at any 
 rate — with less of the waterlogging ballast of George 
 Eliot's physiologico-psychology. Our posterity, there- 
 fore, will have no right to argue from Dickens's fame 
 that his sentiment was as generally valued as his 
 humour, or from George Eliot's fame that her con- 
 temporaries thought as highly of her scientific ac- 
 quirements as they did of her satiric insight into 
 character, and her original gift of creative imagina- 
 tion. And we ourselves have equally no right to as- 
 sume that what may have been deductions from the 
 sum of Richardson's claim upon his readers were 
 actually additions thereto. All we know for certain 
 on the matter is, that our great-grandfathers read 
 and dehghted in certain desperately prolix novels ; 
 it is too much to assume that they delighted in the 
 prolixity for its own sake. We are often reminded, 
 it is true, that our great-grandfathers lived in a 
 leisurely age ; but this is an explanation tvhich ac- 
 counts rather for their capacities as readers than for 
 their tastes. It may well be that inordinately long- 
 winded books could only be tolerable in a leisurely 
 
 109
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 age. This, however, is equally true of long dinnerR, 
 long whist, and other forms of indulgence or recrea- 
 tion ; and it explains merely the possibility, and not 
 the popularit}^, of one particular form of slow-moving 
 amusement. Again, the more leisurely the age the 
 greater, we should imagine, the tendency to sleep. 
 Yet, if there is a well-authenticated fact connected 
 with Clarissa IJarlowe, it is that the novel put to 
 flight, instead of provoking, slumber. ' Right reason,' 
 in short, and ' the instinct of self-preservation in 
 mankind,' as Mr. Matthew Arnold would say, revolt 
 from the hypothesis that any race of men can have 
 preferred to have a story in which they were deeply 
 interested related to them at excessive length. For 
 it is to be specially remembered that the most popular 
 of Richardson's romances was popular in respect of 
 its story. It was not, or not mainly, by its moral 
 lessons, by its pictures of manners, or by its analysis 
 of character that Clarissa Ilarlowe held the public 
 spell-bound : it was by its plot. The ' town ' was in a 
 fever — a slow fever, of course^ but still a fever — of 
 excitement to know whether the infamous Lovelace 
 would succeed in his plot, and what would be the 
 end of the unfortunate Clarissa ; and it is not to be 
 believed that mere difFuseness of narrative, mere ex- 
 penditure of many words in relating events which 
 might have been told in a few words, would have 
 been found endurable, or would, in fact, have been 
 
 110
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 endured. The delay innst have been in some sense 
 or other artistic ; the prolixity must have been felt 
 to contribute something to the artistic result, in order 
 not to have wholly destroyed the popularity of the 
 story. The sense in which it Vv-as artistic may, to our 
 present conceptions of art, be well-nigh unintelligible ; 
 the something which it contributed to the result may 
 to us be nothing, or worse than nothing. But it is 
 surely irrational to suppose that the exterior form of 
 Richardson's novel — iu which I include not only the 
 mere length of the book from cover to cover, but its 
 epistolar}'' structure and whatever other drawbacks 
 that structure to our present ways of thinking in- 
 volves — could have seemed to its own pubhc what it 
 seems to us : viz., simply so much handicapping of 
 the tale. There must have been some reason other 
 than the mere amount of his spare time which com- 
 pelled the eighteenth-century reader to listen so 
 patiently to a story of which he M'as so devouringly 
 anxious to hear the end ; there must have been some 
 reason why he did not resent the author's unusual, 
 fidgetting, and in many, though not in all, respects 
 undramatic method of telling his story in the form 
 of correspondence. Such is the conclusion which 
 ought to suggest itself, on a j^^iori grounds of 
 probability, to all who have ever considered the mat- 
 ter with any degree of care ; and it is, I may add, a 
 conclusion which subsequent inquiry abuudantl}'' con- 
 
 111
 
 SARIUEL RICHARDSON: 
 
 firms. There is a reason and a good one for Ricliard- 
 son's prolixity; it was in many respects the very 
 secret of bis power. But, unfortunately, it is a secret 
 to the discovery of which there is no royal road ; for 
 it would be uncandid to give so attractive a title to 
 the only method of ascertaining it with which I am 
 acquainted — that, namely, of reading the romances 
 straight through from beginning to end. 
 
 Richardson was not the first, as he will not be the 
 last, man to discover his literary powers in the use of 
 them. When Sterne began Tristram Shandy he had 
 assuredly but little idea of the artistic lengths to 
 which his work was destined to carry him ; and 
 though the germ of Clarissa mvij have been, and of 
 course in a certain sense must have been, latent in 
 Pamela, it was, for all that appears, as completely 
 hidden from the author of the two works as from 
 any of his readers. No one, it may safely be said, 
 could have seen in the earlier book the promise of 
 the later. When Rivington and Osborne, the book- 
 sellers, asked him ' to write a volume of letters to 
 suit the taste of country readers ;' it was in the spirit 
 of the moralist, and not at all in that of the artist, that 
 he responded to the invitation. Halfway through the 
 second volume of Pamela, he takes advantage of the 
 disappearance of the heroine's father and mother from 
 the scene — at least as the sole correspondents of 
 their daughter — to reviewhis work and its objects; and 
 112
 
 SAMUEL EICHAEDSON 
 
 we then see what are the quahtiesia it upon which he 
 congratulates himself. It contains, he proudly assures 
 US, morality, and excellent morality, for all. The fash- 
 ionable libertine ' may learn from it to prefer vice to 
 virtue ;' the proud and high-born may see ' the deformity 
 of unreasonable passion ;' ' good clergymen ' will per- 
 ceive from it that if they do their duty in despite of 
 their ' proud patrons,' Providence will at last reward 
 their piety ; the poor will learn that ' Providence 
 never fails to reward their honesty and integrity ;' 
 while the virtues inculcated by the example of the 
 heroine herself require for their examination a com- 
 plete inventory divided into separate paragraphs. 
 There is an encouraging moral for the ' poor deluded 
 female ' who has the strength of mind to ' stop at 
 her first fault,' and a warning moral for her who pur- 
 sues ' the wicked courses into which she was at first 
 inadvertently drawn.' There are even lessons for 
 ' the upper servants of great families ' in the be- 
 haviour of three of the characters, and for the ' lower 
 servants' of the same families in that of a fourth. In 
 short, we are as good as told that the merit of the 
 book is to be measured by the closeness of its re- 
 semblance to the didactics of the nursery. Nobody 
 who reads it, says Richardson in effect, can after- 
 wards plead ignorance of what happened to 'Don't 
 Care.' If he remains incorrigible in his naughtiness, 
 and comes to a bad end in consequence, he will have 
 
 I
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 himself alone to blame for it ; the author of Pamela 
 has at least done his best to reclaim him. He has 
 said to him in many volumes, ' Be good, for the good 
 are always rewarded in this life ; do not be wicked, 
 for the wicked are always punished here as Avell as 
 hereafter.' What more could he do ? 
 
 That the facts of life decline to confirm this com- 
 fortable gospel was apparently no more an objection 
 from Richardson's point of view than it is from that 
 of the nurse ; but to say this is, of course, enough to 
 dispose of the artistic claims of the book. The 
 good so:-etimes prosper of course in this life ; but 
 you cannot write a story in which they are always, 
 and all of them, to prosper, without constantly ofiend- 
 ing against truth and probability. Add to this, that 
 the continual effort to find illustrations of morality 
 everywhere, and to make the fortunes of all the 
 characters in a novel subserve a didactic end is pretty 
 sure to end in throwing some of those characters 
 into violent contradiction with themselves. This is 
 notably exemplified in the case of Pamela's master, 
 whose sudden conversion from a most uncompromis- 
 ing profligate into a consistent paragon of propriety — 
 for we need not attach serious importance to the 
 Platonic flirtation Avith the countess in his later mar- 
 ried Hfe — is hardly attempted to be made credible. 
 These, however, though the most obvious, are far 
 from being the only artistic faults of Pamela. It is 
 
 114
 
 SAMUEL RICHAKDSON 
 
 hardly too much to say that it scarcely rises, in the 
 working out of its plot any more than iu its main 
 conception, above the level of the nursery story. A 
 romance of greater posthumous popularity has in- 
 directly preserved the name of Pamela Andrews from 
 oblivion, and few perhaps, even of those who have 
 never opened a volume of Richardson, will need to 
 be told that Pamela is a virtuous maid-servant (as 
 her brother Joseph was a virtuous footman), who 
 successfully resists a series of the most determined, 
 and at last even violent, attempts upon her virtue on 
 the part of her master, and who, at last, so impresses 
 him by her courage and constancy that he marries 
 her, and, with the exception of one passing cloud of 
 jealousy, 'they live happily ever afterwards.' In 
 such a story, with such a conclusion, there is nothing 
 essentially ludicrous ; it was reserved for Fielding to 
 perceive by the instantaneous light of humour that 
 it might be made exquisitely ludicrous by merely 
 transposing the sexes of the tempter and the tempted. 
 Why this should be so is a point in the psychology of 
 ethics which does not immediately yield up its ex- 
 planation; but the fact is unquestionable, as the 
 reader may satisfy himself by comparing the famous 
 scene between Joseph Andrews and Lady Booby 
 with any of the scenes between Pamela and Mr. B. 
 To speak the honest truth, however, it would have 
 been difficult for Fielding to outdo Richardson in 
 
 I 2
 
 SAMUEL RICHAEDSON 
 
 absurdity; and Joseph Andrews, as we all know, 
 though commenced as a caricature of Pamela, de- 
 parted very soon, and very widely, from the lines of 
 its model. 
 
 But, while the story of Pamela suffers as a story 
 from the slowness of movement which, in a less de- 
 gree (though the slowness is even greater), injures 
 that of Clarissa, the former heroine, unlike the latter, 
 is herself as severe a sufferer as a heroine from the 
 delay. Her figure, to begin with, is one which will 
 not stand much de-romanticizing. Mrs. Pamela's 
 virtue, though no doubt quite sincere and genuine, 
 is (as of course it should be) of a very soubrettish 
 type, exceedingly, not to say pharisaically, self-con- 
 scious, not refined or elevated by the slightest 
 admixture of delicacy, and obviously associated with 
 a very shrewd eye to the main chance. All this, of 
 course, is true enough to Nature ; but truth to Nature 
 becomes useless unless it falls into the impartial 
 hands of Art. 
 
 These human touches in Pamela's character would 
 have been invaluable to Richardson if he had cared 
 to treat his heroine like an artist ; but he wanted to 
 treat her exclusively as a moralist. Her affinities 
 with the waiting-maid of real life make her a more 
 real and, therefore, a more interesting, if less heroic, 
 figure ; but Richardson, in order to make his moral 
 lesson as impressive as possible, was in pursuit not 
 
 116
 
 SAMUEL PJCHARDSON 
 
 of the interesting so much as the heroic. He wanted 
 an ideal waiting-maid, and not a real one, for his 
 purpose ; and these marks of very commonplace, and 
 even rather vulgar, realism only serve tlierefore to 
 make the ideal figure, on its lofty moral pedestal, a 
 little ridiculous. Above all, they combine with the 
 inartistic slowness of movement in the story, and its 
 weak invention of incident, to destroy a great part 
 of the reader's sympathy with the heroine, and even 
 to suggest the suspicion, which Kichardsou undoubt- 
 edly never intended to arouse, that she is a person of 
 rather a designing disposition. 
 
 ' How is this T the reader feels tempted to ask. 
 ' Here is a young woman who is evidently perfectly 
 well able to take care of herself, and who remains, 
 under circumstances of the most dangerous character 
 for her chastity, exposed to the constant soHcitations 
 and even assaults of her master. Of course we are 
 given to understand that she is under physical 
 duress; but as a matter of fact the restraint is very 
 often of the feeblest and most inefficient kind. On 
 one occasion Pamela, by her own admission, might 
 have walked straight out of the house and away, and 
 was only restrained from doing so by the fact that 
 there was a bull (who had injured the cook-maid 
 under circumstances unstated) in a paddock which 
 she would have to cross to make her escape. On 
 another occasion there is absolutely no impediment 
 
 117
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 to her flight, and though she is indeed followed and 
 seized in the act of getting over a stile which alone 
 divides her from liberty, the unexplained deliberation 
 of her movements is solely accountable for her cap- 
 ture.' In short, upon a careful review of the whole 
 circumstances, the reader finds it hard to avoid the 
 suspicion that it is calculation, and not timidity, 
 which keeps Pamela a prisoner ; that she sees a 
 chance of inducing the infatuated Mr. B. to marry 
 her, and that gambling for a stake so high she is 
 prepared to make some very dangerous ventures 
 indeed. 
 
 This idea was of course very far from Richardson's 
 intention to suggest, and it is a fault in his charac- 
 terization and story-telling that the reader feels 
 persuaded that it is just the idea which would pos- 
 sess all but the exceptionally charitable spectators of 
 Pamela's trials in actual life. But there is also little 
 merit in the delineation of the other characters in 
 the story. LadyDanvers, with whom most care has 
 apparently been taken, is a coarsely and crudely exe- 
 cuted portrait ; and there is a want of reality about 
 both the good Mrs. Jervis and the infamous Mrs. 
 Jewkes. Mr. B.'s return to virtue, again, is cele- 
 brated with an exaggeration Avhich was due in part 
 to Richardson's hourgeois reverence for ' the quality,' 
 a characteristic which sometimes amusingly, and 
 sometimes irritatingly, deranges both the balance of 
 
 118
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 his ethical judgment and his sense of artistic pro- 
 priety. In the case of Mr. B. it is most comically 
 displayed. It is quite obviously felt by all the char- 
 acters in the story, and by the author himself, that 
 repentance is very condescending on the part of a 
 ' gentleman of good estate ' ; and that with a ' place ' 
 in two counties, the ambition to secure a third in 
 heaven is highly creditable to an English squire. ]\Ir. 
 B. is greatly praised for having abandoned a course 
 of profligacy which most other men of equal rank 
 and fortune, we are given to understand, would have 
 pursued consistently throughout life ; and those who 
 surround him are unwearied in their laudations of his 
 new-found virtue. No doubt the accumulation of all 
 these honours on the repentant libertine's head is due 
 not wholly to social servility, but in part to moral 
 purpose ; but for the merits of the romance from this 
 point of view there is not much to be said. Coleridge, 
 who speaks on such a point with even more than his 
 wonted critical authority, has expressed his opinion 
 on a comparison between Joseph Andreics Rud Pa7nela 
 that the former is the more moral work of the two. 
 It would be diflicult, I think, for any candid modern 
 reader of the two romances to contest this judgment. 
 Excellent as Hichardson's intentions were both to- 
 wards servant-maids and country squires in composing 
 the story, it seems to me c^uite certain that a care- 
 ful and sympathetic study of it would, in the vast 
 
 119
 
 SAMUEL RiCHAEDSON 
 
 majority of cases, prove most unedifying to either. 
 Clarissa Harlowe has more pretensions to plot, in. 
 the sense of invented incident and situation, than 
 Pamela ; but its central motive is of a no less simple 
 kind. It is, in fact, the story of Pamela reversed. 
 Pamelas alternative title is Virtue Rewarded, and vir- 
 tue in Clarissa Harlowe is not, except in the spiritual 
 sense, rewarded, but defeated, outAvitted, betrayed. 
 The virtuous heroine is not permitted, as in the 
 earlier romance, to escape the wiles of the seducer, 
 and reap the moral reward of her firmness in his con- 
 version to the paths of virtue, and its material re- 
 compense in a splendid establishment and a coach- 
 and-six. On the contrary, she is condemned to fall 
 a victim to his vile machinations, and, proudly reject- 
 ing all his offers of atonement, to sink broken-hearted 
 into an early grave. The superior dramatic possi- 
 bilities of this story compared with that of Pamela 
 are evident, and Richardson owed much to their 
 stimulus. They brought out his powers as an artist 
 by compelling him in a great measure to drop the 
 role of the moralist. He w^as as anxious to preach as 
 ever ; but the exigencies of his narrative do not per- 
 mit him to ascend the pulpit so often, or to remain 
 there so long. ' Be virtuous and you will be happy,' 
 is in a certain sense the preacher's text in both cases ; 
 but in Clarissa the virtuous have to wear their hap- 
 piness ' with a difference ' which it is difficult to 
 
 120
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 explain Vv'ithoiit frequently descending the pulpit- 
 stairs. Happiness in Clarissa has to do v/ithout its 
 coach-and-six and its splendid establishment ; nay, 
 it has to part company, one by one, with all the 
 external conditions of human well-being — home, 
 parents, family, friends, material comforts, reputation, 
 and, finally, life itself; and yet, in the strength of a 
 pure heart and a quiet conscience, to maintain itself 
 uncouquered to the end. This demands a far more 
 difficult and subtle exposition of the be-virtuous-aud- 
 you-will-be-happy text than it receives ,or ueeds in 
 Pamela; and it is one which the moralist requires the 
 artist's assistance to enforce. Anybody can see 'why 
 Pamela should be happy ; her contentment is as 
 comprehensible to the simplest reader as v/as virtue 
 upon five thousand pounds a-year to Becky Sharp. 
 But Clarissa's happiness under her misfortunes is not 
 to be taken on trust from the pulpit, or to be made 
 credible to the congregation by even the most earnest 
 thumping of the velvet cushion. It Hes deeper than 
 the superficial blessedness of Pamela, and the preacher 
 must go deeper to find it for us and to show it to us. 
 It is an inward peace of the heart, and to exhibit it 
 the heart must be laid bare. In other words, the 
 romancist must here cease to preach, and begin to 
 dissect. He must desist from mere reiteration in 
 various forms of pulpit rhetoric that virtue alone is 
 true happiness, and attempt to convince us of tho 
 
 121
 
 SAMUEL EICHARDSON 
 
 fact by furuisbiug us with the explanation. He must 
 endeavour, by minute analysis of his hapless-happy 
 heroine's emotions, to show us that they are the 
 natural outcome of causes whose presence and po- 
 tency iu the minds of human beings our own moral 
 consciousness will attest. 
 
 It would, of course, be far too much to say that 
 Richardson is uniformly successful in the endeavour. 
 Neither his genius nor his method were fitted for the 
 achievement of such uniform success. Being before 
 all things a preacher of morals, he cannot refrain from 
 making his characters preach to us in their own per- 
 sons, when they should be simply revealing to us 
 their own thoughts and feeliugs, and leaving us to 
 draw the moral for ourselves. And while the bent 
 of Richardson's genius thus militates against his com- 
 plete artistic success, the peculiar vices of his method 
 exercise an even more injurious effect upon his work. 
 His letter-writers are so terribly long-winded, so 
 mercilessly prolix, that they cannot be expected to 
 confine themselves solely to their proper work of self- 
 disclosure and self-portraiture. Like garrulous wit- 
 nesses, they favour their jury of readers with a vast 
 amount of matter which is in no sense evidence. 
 ^Yheu Clarissa, for example, should be telling us 
 minutely what she feels, and speclficaUy why she feels 
 it, she is continually lapsing into mere general alle- 
 gations that her mind is at peace, with the addition 
 
 122
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 of the pulpit platitude that the minds of the virtiions 
 always are. The thing is so, she tells us, because it 
 must be so. But in any well-conducted trial of the 
 issue, Does virtue insure happiness, ay or no ? Miss 
 Harlowe would have found herself being perpetually 
 ' stopped by the Court.' She may say, ' I feel happy,' 
 and that is evidence as far as it goes, though it does 
 not go far. She may add : ' I feel proud of my forti- 
 tude and of my superiority to my betrayer, — conscious 
 that the outrage inflicted upon my body has left my 
 soul unsullied — awed and impressed by perceiving 
 that the victor is more abashed and perturbed by his 
 triumph than I, the vanquished, by my defeat ; and it 
 is in the sum of these emotions (which obviously only 
 the virtuous could feel) that my happiness consists.' 
 All that is evidence, too, and of a very important 
 kind. But when the witness persists in repeating the 
 formula, ' I am happy because I am virtuous,' the pre- 
 siding judge would be bound to check her with the 
 polite but firm correction, ' That, madam, is for the 
 jury. It is for them to decide whether your happi- 
 ness is the result of virtue, or of conceit, callousness, 
 insanity, I know not what.' But, though Clarissa is 
 undoubtedly too apt to encroach in this manner on the 
 jurisdiction of the reader, it must be admitted that 
 she makes out her case at last to his complete satis- 
 faction. We end by believing as thoroughly in her 
 happiness as in her virtue, and by feeling that it fully 
 
 123
 
 SAMUEL KICHAEDSON 
 
 responds to our own conceptions of the natural and 
 the true. 
 
 She starts, however, with considerable personal 
 advantages over Pamela. She is altogether a more 
 sympathetic and attractive figure, to begin with, 
 simpler and more refined, of a higher dignity and 
 delicacy, of a far more unconscious purity — a ' lady ' 
 by nature, in fact, which ' Mrs. Pamela ' neither is 
 nor of course was intended to be, nor could, without 
 injury to the story, have been made. And Clarissa 
 also is morally of a far more sincere and genuine 
 stuff than her predecessor in fiction. Both, to be 
 sure, are prigs : they have to be made so, in order 
 that they may deliver Richardson's moral reflections 
 in Richardson's language. But Clarissa, far more 
 often than Pamela, takes the pen from Richardson's 
 hand, and writes, not what the preacher would have 
 her utter, but what it is given her to utter out of the 
 deepest depths of a human heart. We get to recog- 
 nize in her case, as we never do in that of the self- 
 conscious waiting-maid, that she is seldom, if ever, a 
 prig on her own account. We learn to regard her in 
 a double aspect, and mentally to dissociate the living, 
 breathing, suffering woman from the mere mouth- 
 piece of moral commonplaces. But, as the story 
 draws towards its tragic close, the need of any such 
 mental act of dissociation less frequently occurs. 
 We have more and more of the natural woman and 
 
 124
 
 SAMUEL EICHAEDSO^' 
 
 less aud less of the sermonizing automaton, more and 
 more of Clarissa Hariowe and less and less of Clarissa 
 Kichardsou. The presence of her creator's hand is 
 still, indeed, too plainly perceived ; the faults of his 
 method still too intrusively assert themselves. The 
 ' linked sweetness ' of the tale of woe is decidedly too 
 ' long drawn out ;' the sorrows of the death-stricken 
 heroine are dwelt upon and elaborated beyond all 
 measure, and their portrayal is marred in one in- 
 stance — that of her preparation of her coffin — by an 
 artistic blunder of a truly lamentable kind. But by 
 many a touch of authentic human pathos, of true 
 ■womanly gentleness and heroism, the figure of the 
 slowdy dying maiden — 7rap6ivo<; aivupOevo^ — wins its 
 way to our hearts ; and though time and change may 
 have decreed that it shall never again so deeply stir 
 the emotions of mankind as it once was wont to stir 
 them, yet we shall, I think, even the coldest of us, 
 find sufficient excuse for the freelj^ flowing tears of a 
 past generation in the moistened eyes of our own. 
 
 Still it would be scarcely true to say that the 
 power of the romance over our sympathies is wholly 
 or perhaps even mainly due to the isolated reahsation 
 of the heroine. It is largely by force of contrast that 
 the individuality and the career of Clarissa are made 
 impressive. She owes much, very much, to her foil 
 in the person of Lovelace. He is her making in the 
 novel, as in life he was her undoing ; and even if the 
 
 125
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 ■victim were a far less winning and sympathetic 
 figure than she is, she would derive a sufficiency 
 of reflected interest from her association with a 
 character which has been set before us with such 
 masterly vigour of portraiture as Richardson has 
 bestowed upon the lineaments of her betrayer. But 
 before entering upon the analysis of this, so immeasur- 
 ably the highest, achievement of the author's genius, 
 it is necessary to give a brief outline of the plot of 
 this once famous story. 
 
 Clarissa Harlowe is the daughter of an English 
 country gentleman of good fortune and repute, but 
 of a cold, hard, despotic temperament, a man not al- 
 together destitute, perhaps, of paternal affection, but 
 possessed with the most extravagant notions — ex- 
 travagant, surely, even for those clays — of the rights 
 of paternal authority. His wife is a kind-hearted and 
 affectionate, but contemptibly weak and submissive, 
 woman, too fond of her daughter to join without re- 
 morse in oppressing her, and too much afraid of her 
 husband to make any effective protest against it. 
 The couple, in short, form a pretty exact ' replica ' of 
 the father and mother of the heroine of xXylmers 
 Field. Add to these a surly, ill-conditioned brother, 
 and an envious and spiteful sister, the willing ac- 
 complices of the parental design against Clarissa's 
 peace, together with two uncles, the indifferent 
 spectators of its execution, and the domestic circle 
 
 126
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 is complete. Circumstances combine with the 
 characters of Clarissa's family to prepare her nuhappy 
 fate. Her grandfather has earned for her the ill-will 
 of her kindred by passing over them in his will, and 
 constituting her the heiress of a small property which 
 would have made her independent of them, but of 
 which, from exaggerated notions of filial respect, she 
 declines to take possession except with the willing 
 assent of her parents. Her sister, Arabella, bears a 
 special grudge against her as the involuntarily suc- 
 cessful rival, to whom Lovelace, for a time the pre- 
 tended suitor of Arabella, had always meant to 
 transfer, and at the beginning of the story does in 
 fact transfer, his addresses. These conditions given, 
 we manifestly need nothing more than the appear- 
 ance on the scene of a suitor whom Clarissa detests, 
 and whom her father is resolved to force upon her, in 
 order to establish the groundwork of the domestic 
 tragedy which is to follow. Profound as is Clarissa's 
 filial piety, it is unequal to the sacrifice which her 
 parents demand of her. She persists in her rejection 
 of the odious De Solraes, although the harshest mea- 
 sures are resorted to by her father to compel her 
 submission. She is degraded from her position as 
 housekeeper to the family ; her keys are taken away 
 from her ; she is confined to her room a close pri- 
 soner ; and a tender-hearted maid-servant, who had 
 assisted her mistress to maintain a clandestine corre- 
 
 127
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 ppoiideuce u-itli the only female friend she possesses, 
 having been detected and dismissed, she is for a time 
 cut off from all communication with the outer world, 
 Lovelace, however, finds means of reopening a cor- 
 respondence vv'ith her; and, as her persecutions verge 
 upon the intolerable, his solicitations naturally ap- 
 proach the irresistible. Driven at last to desperation 
 by the near approach of the day fixed for the de- 
 tested marriage, Clarissa agrees to accept Lovelace's 
 pretended offer of escort to the house of one of his 
 female relatives, who he had declared would give 
 her refuge. ^Yith this one false step begins that 
 series of misfortunes and indignities to which the 
 unhappy girl at last succumbs. Lovelace's promise 
 ■was, of course, a mere trick to get Clarissa into his 
 power. Instead of taking her to her supposed desti- 
 nation, he conveys her to the house of a certain in- 
 famous Mrs. Sinclair, Avhere she remains at first 
 willingly and in ignorance of the character of the 
 place, afterwards under duress. She once makes 
 her escape, but only to be followed and recaptured ; 
 and at last the crime which her villainous lover has 
 striven with such merciless determination to commit 
 is, by force, accomplished. His triumph, however, is 
 fatal alike to his victim and to himself. Smitten 
 ■with remorse, or with as near an approach to that 
 emotion as his nature is capable of feeling, Clarissa's 
 betrayer entreats her to forgive him and become his 
 
 128
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 wife ; but it is then too late. She too deeply ' des- 
 pises the wretch who could rob himself of his wife's 
 virtue,' and as soon as she is freed from her captivity 
 she secludes herself altogether from the world. But 
 her sufferings have broken her heart, and she pines 
 slowly away and dies, unreconciled to her family, 
 and attended in her last moments only by a repent- 
 ant friend of Lovelace's, John Belford, and her 
 cousin. Colonel Mordeo, by whose hand her be- 
 trayer ultimately faljs. 
 
 The imperfections of this story are plain enough 
 upon its face, and they are made yet more conspicu- 
 ous by the manner of its telling. To begin with, 
 the plot is exposed to the capital objection that, 
 while it professes to be thoroughly realistic, it is 
 from the point of view of real life preposterous. It 
 is not so much an improbable as an impossible one ; 
 the sufferings of Clarissa are as those of an imprisoned 
 princess in a fairy-tale ; the cruelty and power of 
 Lovelace is as that of the giant or ogre of the same 
 order of fable. Young 'bloods' may have been 
 very masterful and daring in mid-eighteenth cen- 
 tury ; wrongful acts may have been less easily and 
 quickly brought to light in those days than in these 
 of the penny press ; wealth and wickedness may have 
 been less hopelessly overmatched in a contest with 
 the law than they are now. But, after all, the 
 liberty of the subject could not have been quite so 
 
 K
 
 SAMUEL RICHAEDSON 
 
 iiiuch at the mercy even of an equally determined 
 and far more ingenious plotter than Lovelace, as was 
 Clarissa's. Even for women of humbler rank, the 
 law was not of a presence so inaccessible as it seems 
 to be in this romance : even fcr them there were 
 courts and attorneys, and a Habeas Corpus Act ; but 
 that Miss Harlowe, a ' person of condition,' a young 
 lady well known in the county society among which 
 she lived, with at least one fast friend in Miss Howe, 
 and through her a male ally in Mr. Hickman, should 
 have remained so long a helpless captive, is simply 
 incredible. Her gaoler, it is to be observed, takes 
 no pains to conceal himself from the world. He 
 moves freely enough in society during the progress 
 of his vile conspiracy ; and Richardson even invents 
 the monstrous incident of his meeting and convers- 
 ing (in no very amiable spirit, it is true,) with the 
 very family of his victim at the house of a common 
 friend. The notion of his going about for weeks 
 and months in this way unmolested, is surely too 
 gross an excess of a realistic romancer's privi- 
 leges of invention. It is perfectly certain that in 
 real life a piece of paper would have been very 
 promptly handed to this all-subduing gentleman, 
 on which he would have found ' Robert Love- 
 lace' commanded by George 11. to 'have in our 
 Court before us at Westminster immediately on 
 receipt of this our writ, the body of Clarissa Harlowe 
 
 130
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 being detained under your custody, with the day 
 and cause of her being taken and detained/ This, 
 however, is of course the least of the consequences 
 with which Clarissa's persecutor would have been 
 threatened. Lovelace, as Mr. Leslie Stephen has 
 pointed out, 'has every conceivable motive, including 
 the desire to avoid hanging,' for wishing to obtain his 
 victim's forgiveness. He had, in fact, been guilty of 
 a capital crime, and, what is more, against no ob- 
 scure and powerless person. Indeed, it is more than 
 probable that in actual life both ' Captain ' Lovelace 
 and his lieutenants, Mowbray, De Tourville, and the 
 other scoundrels would have swung together on 
 Tyburn tree. 
 
 There is another improbability, however, in the 
 story, besides that of plot ; there is in the reahstic 
 sense of the word an improbability of character also 
 in the person of Lovelace. Considered as a serious 
 picture of the fashionable libertine, the thoroughly 
 abandoned ' fine gentleman ' of his day, the character 
 is, of course, a monstrosity. The truth is that 
 Richardson had as little actual knowledge of the 
 class whom he thus caricatured, as the modern lady 
 novchst has of the dear, dehghtful, wicked Guards- 
 man, whose prowess in the fields of love and war 
 she similarly exaggerates. Men are of course aware 
 that no flesh-and-blood officer of the Household 
 Brigade is at once so profligate, so strong, so hand- 
 
 k2
 
 SAMUEL EICHAEDSON 
 
 some, so daring a rider to hounds, so masterly a 
 ■whist-player, and the wearer of such costly dressing- 
 gowns, as are the irresistible heroes of the lady's 
 novel; and many of Richardson's contemporaries 
 must doubtless have felt the same about Lovelace. 
 The quiet little bookseller evidently took a sort of 
 trembling, delicious pleasure in the elaboration and 
 contemplation of the superhuman wickedness of his 
 fine gentleman. His heartlessuess, his cynicism, his 
 brutality and audacity, are individually worked up to 
 an almost incredible pitch, and are quite incredible 
 in combination. We may be perfectly assured, and 
 may congratulate human nature on the assurance, 
 that no such man as Lovelace ever existed. But this 
 is no objection to the story from the imaginative 
 point of view. It is not less certain, I should think, 
 that no sQch man as lago ever existed ; considered 
 from the point of view of actuality, we cannot ac- 
 cept him as a faithful picture of an ' ancient ' in the 
 Venetian army. But lago, though beyond the range 
 of the actual, is a masterpiece of imaginative truth, 
 and so, and in a scarcely less degree, is Lovelace. The 
 reason why the ' monster,' ' faultless ' or the reverse, 
 of the inferior artist offends us is, not because his 
 vices and virtues are idealized to excess, but because 
 they do not seem to be the vices and virtues of 
 humanity at all. It is not that they shock us in 
 degree, but that we do not recognize them in hind. It 
 
 132
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
 
 is far otherwise, however, with Richardson's Lovelace. 
 Villain as he is, we see how he has become so, and 
 we perceive that it has been through the morbid 
 hypertrophy of very common, and in most men very 
 venial, foibles. Hardly an act of treachery, however 
 black, or of cruelty, however brutal, is wrought by 
 him ; hardly a sally of diabolical cynicism, or a cry 
 of heartless triumph escapes him, which cannot be 
 traced to the simple passion of egotism, in one or 
 other of its two forms of selfishness and vanity. His 
 attractive and repulsive quahties are all of a piece, 
 and are all woven of the stuff of his self-love. His 
 good-humour, his gaiety, his savoir /aire, his fascina- 
 tion even for the people who dislike him, are all 
 born of his desire to gratify himself; while, on the 
 other hand, we see that his egotism is doubly the 
 parent of his crimes, in prompting him to their com- 
 mission, and in partially blinding him, cynic though 
 he is, to their full enormity. There is an admirable 
 subtlety in the way in which Richardson shows the 
 secret v/orkings of Lovelace's ever-active selfishness 
 and his unsleeping vanity^even in his momentary out- 
 bursts of remorse. His letters are full of touches of 
 perfectly natural, yet perfectly unconscious, self-dis- 
 closure ; and from end to end, in fact, his imaginative 
 reality, to use a phrase which is only apparently 
 self-contradictory, is consistently and most skilfully 
 sustained. 
 
 133
 
 SAMUEL EICHAKDSON 
 
 It would be allowing too much, however, to the 
 third of Richardson's romances, Sir Charles Grandison, 
 to say that it reaches the same level of ideal por- 
 traiture as Clarissa Harlowe. In delineating, at the 
 request of his friends, as he tells us, ' the man of 
 true honour,' in the person of this irreproachable 
 baronet, Richardson had no such dramatic contrast 
 to inspire him as in his second and greatest romance. 
 Sir Hargrave Pollexfen is but a commonplace and 
 vulgar foil to the virtues of the hero, and there is no 
 thread of pathos or of tragedy running through the 
 story, or indeed appearing in it, except episodically, 
 to give play to the author's strongest powers. Sir 
 Charles Grandison shows himself a man of true 
 honour, in eight volumes ; and that is about all that 
 can be Aaid of the romance. Unlike Clarissa, its nar- 
 rative cannot be said to hang fire through the 
 dififuseness of the narrator's method ; for in strictness 
 of language it contains no narrative at all. ' Why, 
 sir,' once exclaimed Dr. Johnson, ' if you were to read 
 Richardson for the story, you would hang yourself ;' 
 and Sir Charles Grandison, far more avowedly than 
 its predecessors, dispenses with plot and relies upon 
 the analysis and exhibition of character alone. But 
 it illustrates, though in a less degree than Clarissa 
 Harlowe, the points insisted upon at the outset of 
 these remarks. The dihgent reader of either, and 
 especially of Clarissa, can hardly fail to be enhght- 
 
 134
 
 SAMUEL EICHARDSON 
 
 ened as to the true import and value of Richardson's 
 relentless prolixity. He will no longer suppose it to 
 be a mere accident of the author's literary manner 
 or mental constitution. His public may have only 
 tolerated it out of regard for certain other qualities 
 of Richardson's which were not to be enjoyed ex- 
 cept in its company ; but unconsciously they profited 
 by it. The faithful but exhausted reader, as he closes 
 one of these long-drawn romances, and reflects upon 
 it, will undoubtedly be forced to acknowledge that 
 their length is of their essence ; that, extraordinarily 
 diflfuse as they are, they contain comparatively little 
 matter which could be fairly rejected as surplusage, 
 and that Richardson and his art being what they 
 were, his romances would not have been the better, 
 but the worse, for any abridgment of their length. 
 This is not to say, of course, that the art is of the 
 highest kind. Undoubtedly there would be higher 
 creative genius and greater delineative skill in 
 achieving, .by half a dozen masterly touches, what 
 Richardson only contrives to accomplish by the 
 patient multiplications of thousands of minute strokes. 
 But to only a few of the great creators and great 
 literary craftsmen of the world has it been given to 
 produce great work by the former method; and it 
 would be irrational to complain of any lesser artist 
 that he possesses it not. It is only when a Diderot's 
 extravagance forces us to the comparison that we 
 
 135
 
 SAMUEL EICHARDSON 
 
 need remind ourselves or others that Richardson is 
 not Shakespeare. At other times it should be enough 
 for us that he uses his own literary instruments to 
 the best advantage, and gets the utmost out of his 
 method that it will yield ; and no one, I think, who 
 steadily and manfully submits himself to a course of 
 Richardson will question that he does. He has no 
 ' moments,' as the slang of dramatic criticism has it ; 
 there are no flashes of inspiration in his work ; no 
 sudden and happy strokes of descriptive genius 
 ■which seem to do the work of a chapter in a line. 
 There is hardly any sensible exertion of power, and 
 at any given instant no visible growth of result. 
 But by dint of sheer iteration, he succeeds in pro- 
 ducing the effect he desires. 
 
 ' Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed sfepe cadendo.' 
 
 And though the drip-drip of that interminable cor- 
 respondence is to some men soporific, to others 
 maddening and tedious, it must be admitted, to all 
 the reader will nevertheless find, when the drops 
 have at last ceased to fall, that they have channelled 
 sharp and deep impressions on the tablet of the 
 mind. 
 
 136
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 In Olio of the most curious discussions which ever 
 escaped being brought to an untimely close by a 
 request for definitions, Dr. Johnson in his usual 
 oracular fashion observed : ' Sir, there is all the dif- 
 ference in the world between characters of nature 
 and characters of manners, and there is the difference 
 between the characters of Richardson and those of 
 Fielding. Characters of manners are very entertain- 
 ing, but they are to be understood by a more super- 
 ficial observer than characters of nature, where a 
 man must dive into the recesses of the human heart.' 
 By way of further illustrating his meaning the doctor 
 went on to remark that there was us great a differ- 
 ence between these tv/o writers as between ' a man 
 who knew how a Avatch was made and a man who 
 could tell the hour by looking on a dial-plate.' The 
 analogy, though not at all expressive of the real 
 distinction between the two great masters, and 
 though it seems at first sight even unfair to the iu- 
 
 137
 
 THE NOVEL OF .AIANNERS 
 
 fei'ior of the two forms of art thus compared with 
 each other, will be seen on a closer view to be 
 marked by Johnsou's customary felicity of compari- 
 son. Undoubtedly there is a way of studying men 
 and women which exactly resembles a reading of the 
 hour on the- dial-plate of a watch, and another way 
 of studying them which bears as exact a resemblance 
 to an examination of its works. 
 
 But Boswell, in remarking by way of reply that 
 ' the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed 
 as the large clocks of Richardson,' and that ' his 
 dial-plates are brighter,' was talking more than 
 usually off the matter. His true answer to his ' ven- 
 erable friend ' would have been first to have disputed 
 the soundness of the distinction between Richardson's 
 and Fielding's characters as 'characters of nature' 
 and ' characters of manners ' ; secondly, to have de- 
 nied that the two forms of characterisation need be, 
 or in the highest art could be, mutually exclusive ; 
 and, thirdly, to point out that the question for the 
 critic is not how much a novelist knows about human 
 nature, but how much of it, and with what accom- 
 paniments of artistic charm and intellectual interest, 
 he succeeds in exhibiting to his readers. A charac- 
 ter of manners which is not also a character of nature 
 becomes a study of superficial eccentricities ; a char- 
 acter of nature which is not also, at least to some 
 extent, a character of manners, becomes a piece of 
 
 138
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 bare psychological analysis. The one is not high 
 art; the other is not art at all, but science, or qnasi- 
 science. 
 
 Of course the aim both of Richardson and Field- 
 ing — and, whenever they are at their best, their 
 attained aim — is the exhibition of human nature ; 
 and the latter no more forgets this aim in his 
 descriptions of manners than the former attempts 
 to dispense entirely with descriptions of man- 
 ners in his constant effort towards that aim. As 
 to ' diving into the recesses of the human heart,' 
 both of the two men have done that, as every man 
 must before he can tell other people what is to be 
 found there. The difference between them is a mere 
 question of method. Richardson will not, or cannot, 
 give you much information as to v^^hat is to be found 
 in the human heart without compelling you to join 
 him yourself in the diving process ; Fielding allows 
 you to remain on the surface while directing your 
 imagination unerringly to what lies beneath. Which 
 of the two methods implies tlie more artistic skill, 
 and gives the more artistic pleasure, is a question 
 which I should think is hardly open to doubt. 
 
 In the matter of truth of portraiture and vividness 
 of representation, the two methods, no doubt, occupy 
 more equal ground ; but, even here, the analytic has 
 certainly no advantage over the dramatic method. 
 Nothing, surely, but Johnson's invincible prejudice 
 
 139
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 against Fielding could have persuaded bim that 
 Lovelace is a more real and living character to us, a 
 more thoroughly comprehended and appreciated in- 
 dividuality, than Tom Jones, or Clarissa Harlo we than 
 Amelia Booth, or Sir Charles Grandison than Squire 
 Western. The two last-mentioned characters stand 
 at the two opposite poles in the matter of manners; 
 and considering how strongly marked, in their own 
 way, are the manners of each of them, their creators 
 might alike have left them to tell their own story to 
 the reader. True to his method, however, Richard- 
 son is perpetually ' diving into the recesses ' of Sir 
 Charles's heart. Hundreds of pages are filled with 
 minute accounts of v/hat other people think of him, 
 and a good many score with indications, direct or in- 
 direct, of what he thinks of himself. But compare 
 the effect of all these laborious efforts to complete 
 and define our conception of the baronet with the 
 enlightenment of a single dramatic stroke of self-dis- 
 closure on the part of the squire. ' I don't know how 
 'tis, but, Allworthy, you always make me do just as 
 you please ; and yet I have as good an estate as you, 
 and am in the commission of the peace just as your- 
 self.' What is the illuminating power of all Richard- 
 son's thousands of carefully arranged candles to that 
 of this one penetrating electric flash? But it is hard- 
 ly fair, perhaps, to take such an example. Humour is 
 the only generator of this sort of electricity ; and 
 
 140
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 Fielding was as consummately skilled in the pro- 
 duction and storage of that force as Richardson was 
 utterly incapable not merely of directing its action 
 but even of comprehending its properties. 
 
 The essential unsoundness of Johnson's distinction 
 is, however, too obvious to us in these days to need 
 insisting on ; nor, by consequence, is there any 
 necessity for asserting the essential unity, as regards 
 aim and criterion, of all fictive art under whatever 
 forms. What was unperceived by this robust and 
 well-equipped critic of a hundred years ago has be- 
 come a commonplace in these days to men who do 
 not aspire to be called critics at all. The effort of 
 every novelist, and the demand of all but indiscrimi- 
 nately voracious novel readers, is for as true and 
 complete a representation of human nature as the in- 
 sight and skill of the novelist enable him to compass. 
 Whether his characters be ' characters of manners ' or 
 not, he endeavours to make them and his public re- 
 sent the failure if he fails to make them ' characters 
 of nature ' also. So thoroughly, indeed, is this taken 
 for granted, that no novelist for whom his admirers 
 claim a place in the first rank would for a moment be 
 admitted by them to be only a portrayer, however 
 faithful and humorous, of mere 'manners' in John- 
 son's sense of the word — that is to say, if merely the 
 more strongly marked, superficial characteristics, 
 moral and intellectual, of men and women — of their 
 
 141
 
 THH NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 ' humours,' as they were called by an earlier Jonsoa 
 and his contemporaries. 
 
 To take an example. Just as there were Pelagians 
 and semi-Pelagians, so there are Dickensians and semi- 
 Uickensians, who, while thoroughly united in their 
 admiration of that master's portraiture of ' manners,' 
 part company altogether in their estimate of its relation 
 to natiu-e. But the true Dickensian regards this last 
 point as ' the root of the matter.' He would think his 
 own creed not worth holding if he made any con- 
 cession to the theory that Dickens was only a divine 
 caricaturist, whose personages, or the more success- 
 ful among them, are simply insulated oddities or 
 personified foibles. A belief in their correspondence 
 to some objective reality in nature is his signwn 
 stantis aut cadentis ecclesice : and this, indeed, is the 
 criterion which is iiowadays universally applied — at 
 any rate to every novel whose writers and readers 
 claim for it any place of importance as a work of art. 
 The demand, in fact, for strict fidelity to nature has 
 become so imperious that it is at last producing some- 
 thing like a revolt against the dramatic method of 
 Fielding, so long predominant in English literature, 
 and a reaction in favour of the analytic method of 
 Richardson. 
 
 We have nowadays an increasing school of 
 novelists, who are so afraid of being suspected of con- 
 fining themselves to the delineation of tlie mere ex- 
 
 142
 
 TEE NOVEL OF MANNEKS 
 
 ternals of cbaracter, that they will hardly give us any 
 externals of character at all. Their men and women 
 are almost disembodied emotions, -which the reader is 
 invited to study, not as they objectify themselves in 
 incident or action — for of incident and action there is 
 almost none — but subjectively and from the inside. 
 The heroes and heroines of Mr. Howells and Mv. 
 Henry James do not indeed, like those of Richardson, 
 describe or have described for them, in interminable 
 letters, their subtlest shades of feeling ; but their 
 creators do it for them, and with a minute delicacy 
 ■which Richardson himself has not surpassed. Decid- 
 edly we have, under the guidance of the American 
 school of novelist, travelled far enough from Field- 
 ing's conception of the novel, as a stage on which 
 character might be left to enfold itself in action and 
 dialogue, with as little assistance as possible from 
 the soliloquies of the chorus. In our modern novel 
 of analysis Chorus is more often on the stage, and 
 for longer periods together than any of the actors. 
 
 This reaction, however, is of very modern origin. 
 For a full century after Johnson delivered the above- 
 quoted criticism the method of Fielding enjoyed so 
 complete a triumph over the rival method of Rich- 
 ardson — the objective and synthetic school succeeded 
 in beating the subjective and analytic school so 
 utterly out of the field, that even the distinction so 
 dogmatically propounded by Johnson to Boswell 
 
 143
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 would, to the ovdiuaiy moderu reader, be unintelli- 
 gible. To-day it requires reflection and study of its 
 context to ascertain its meaning. What Johnson 
 meant by ' manners ' is to the modern reader so in- 
 dispensable an incident of ' character,' and eo com- 
 mon an index to nature, that he does not readily 
 apprehend what is meant by opposing « characters of 
 nature' to ' characters of manners.' Every portrayal 
 of human nature in fiction must be, it seems to him, 
 a portrayal of manners, in Johnson's wide sense of 
 the word — that is to say, a delineation of those indi- 
 vidual pecuharities of conduct, speech, and action 
 whereby the inner nature of a man is revealed to his 
 fellows. Long familiarity with this method of por- 
 traiture, and a blessed ignorance of its opposite, has 
 persuaded the ordinary modern reader that it is the 
 only one possible in the nature of things. He has 
 never pored hour by hour over Richardson's labori- 
 ous engravery, and watched that great but exasper- 
 ating artist portraying ' nature ' after his relentless 
 fashion; with almost no assistance from the exhibi- 
 tion of anything which can in the loosest acceptation 
 of the word be called ' manners,' but simply working 
 away with his amazing complacency at 'how he 
 felt,' ' how she felt,' « what he thought,' ' what she 
 thought,' until, little stroke by stroke, he has traced 
 out for us a human soul. 
 
 The ordinary modern novel-reader knows nothing, 
 144
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 I say, of all this ; and though I yield to no one iu 
 admiration of Richardson — though I would say ditto, 
 in fact, to almost any praise of him which keeps 
 short of the extravagance of Diderot's — I could not, 
 in common humanity, recommend the ordinary 
 modern novel-reader to exchange an ignorance 
 which, if not bliss, is contentment, for a wisdom 
 which, if not folly, is fatigue. Knowing nothing, 
 however, by painful experience, of Johnson's novel 
 of 'nature,' he so confidently regards Johnson's novel 
 of ' manners' as the only possible novel that he has 
 virtually dropped, and forgotten the ancient meaning 
 of the qualifying suffix ; and, if anj'one should now 
 speak to him of the novel of manners, he would 
 understand the phrase in the later and more limited 
 sense in which it is employed at the head of this 
 article. He would take it, no doubt, as equivalent 
 to the ' novel of society,' at least as that last word 
 was understood before it underwent that process of 
 fashionable vulgarisation which has made it a fellow- 
 sufferer with the word ' gentleman.' 
 
 The novel of society, or the novel of manners, he 
 would say, is the novel which professes to present 
 only a picture of life as it appears to the student of 
 a more or less restricted circle of men and women, 
 and to portray human nature only as it displays itself 
 under those limiting conditions. Now no such limit- 
 ations were imposed, it is obvious to remark, either 
 
 L
 
 THE NOVEL OY MANNERS 
 
 by Fielding or by Ricbardsou on their respective 
 exercise of their art. Jones and Andrews move 
 freely among all sorts of company, and Fielding de- 
 lineates nature as he conceives it on every level of 
 the social scale. The unhappy Clarissa is brought 
 into contact with many other sorts of people than 
 fine gentlemen and ladies ; the virtuous Pamela has 
 to do with housekeepers and lackeys as well as with 
 amorous squires, ^society as such, the ways and 
 characteristics, the virtues, vices, and humours of a 
 M'orld of actual or nominal equals, bound together 
 by certain more or less elastic, but still perfectly 
 definite and well-understood, conventions, may be 
 regarded as still untrodden ground to the novelist 
 after Fielding and Richardson had ceased to write. 
 
 By the comic dramatists of the Restoration, indeed, 
 and by one inimitable poetic satirist of the age of 
 Anne, ' society ' had been brilliantly depicted, and 
 between 1775 and 1780 the comedies of the Rivals 
 and the School for Scandal had signalised the rise of 
 a kindlier Congreve and a more masterly stage- 
 limner than Vanbrugh. But no novelist had as yet 
 held up the mirror to nature as she appeared at the 
 drum and the rout, amid the fops and coquettes, the 
 dowagers and debutantes of the polite world. Or 
 rather, since universal propositions are dangerous, 
 let us say that down to the last quarter of the 
 eighteenth century no mirror held up by the hand of 
 
 146
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 any novelist had as yet presented a reflection suffi- 
 ciently clear and truthful to arrest the public gaze. 
 The fame of that achievement was reserved for a 
 London music-master's daughter, who, in the year 
 1778 and at the age of six-and-twenty, set all Lon- 
 don in a buzz of curiosity and admiration by the 
 production of the novel of Evelina. 
 
 There are two things which a critic of to-day 
 would be glad to know about this young lady : the 
 first, what had been the nature of her early reading ; 
 and the second, what was the quality of her previous 
 and unpublished attempts at fiction. Macaulay dwells 
 mnch upon the advantages which she derived from 
 the curiously mixed society which surrounded her in 
 Dr. Buruey's house ; and no doubt these advantages 
 count for something. But in the presence of so pal- 
 pable an imitation of Smollett as is the character of 
 Captain Mervau, one may be slow to believe that all 
 the other portraits in this singular gallery were 
 studied from the life. And it is perhaps as permissible 
 to doubt, upon internal evidences of style and 
 structure, whether Evelina was not the result of a 
 good many antecedent efforts at composition. The 
 novel, as we know, was reported, before its author's 
 name was known, to be the work of a girl of seven- 
 teen, and perhaps some part of its extraordinary 
 vogue may have been due to this flattering mistake. 
 But the main element in its success must surely, I 
 
 l2
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 should thiuk, be sought iu the fact that it was the 
 first 'novel of mauuers/ iu the later seuse of the 
 word, that had ever been offered to the public. It 
 was a picture of life in London, life at Bath, life at 
 the Bristol Hot Wells, in the later eighteenth century 
 — principally, indeed, of modish life, but with just so 
 much of a side glance at the gaieties and affectations 
 of the middle class as would give it additional 
 piquancy to the taste of the superiors whom they 
 strove to imitate. The delights of Ranelagh and the 
 watering-place assembly rooms are varied by those 
 of the suburban subscription ball. The amusements, 
 the interests, the conversations are all those of the 
 pohte, or of the would-be polite, world. The course 
 of true love is hindered by the machinations of an 
 unscrupulous baronet ; the heroine marries a virtuous 
 peer. Society was unused to finding itself made an 
 object of such direct and minute presentation, un- 
 used to studying the history of fictitious personages 
 whose circle of occupations, hopes, fears, desires, am- 
 bitions was so exactly identical with its own. And 
 while society read the book eagerly, and as eagerly 
 sought out and lionized the author, so the literary 
 coteries, or rather the one literary coterie of the day, 
 partly following the fashion, partly led by its own 
 autocratic leader, gathered round her also. Dr. John- 
 son was the warm friend of her father, and had an 
 almost fatherly affection for Fanny herself. Macaulay's 
 
 148
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 assertion that ' Bnvke, Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, 
 Sheridan were amongst her most ardent enlogists,' 
 requires probably as many grains of salt as the 
 statement just before it, that the ' timid and obscure 
 girl found herself on the highest pinnacle of fame.' 
 But no doubt she was the rage of fashionable London, 
 and had secured the high though clearly not the un- 
 prejudiced commendation of the first critical authority 
 of the day. Others, or others at least who were men 
 of critical capacity themselves, must simply have 
 praised the book in that half-conscious, half-uncon- 
 scious excess into which praise is so likely to pass in 
 the case of a literary production which is at once new, 
 popular, and the work of a young woman. 
 
 For no tenderness towards this subject of a hun- 
 dred-years-old nine-days' wonder ought to induce a 
 candid critic of to-day to conceal his conviction that 
 Evelina is a ver^'- crude performance. Macaulay, 
 whose professed admiration for it was perhaps arti- 
 ficially heightened by his antipathy to Croker — who 
 thought meanly of it — excludes it, we may observe, 
 from his detached criticisms of its author's gifts and 
 manner, and draws all his illustrations from Cecilia. 
 The only circumstantial reference to the earlier novel 
 in his well-known essay on Madame D'Arblay's Diarj'- 
 and Letters is as follows : — 
 
 ' One favourite story in particular haunted her imagination. It 
 ■was about a certain Caroline Evelyn, a beautiful damsel, v/ho 
 
 149
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 made an uufortunate love matcb, and died, leaving an infant 
 daughter. Frances began to image to herself the various scenes, 
 tragic and comic, through which the poor motherless girl, highly 
 connected on one side, meanly connected on the other, might have 
 to pass. A crowd of unreal beings, good and bad, grave and 
 hideous, surrounded the pretty, timid young orphan — a coarse sea- 
 captain ; an ugly, insolent fojt, blaziug in a superb court dress ; 
 another fop, as ugly and as insolent a one, lodged on Snow Hill, 
 and tricked out in second-hand finery for the Hampstead ball ; an 
 old woman, all wrinkles and rouge, flirting her fan with the air 
 of a miss of seventeen, and screaming in a dialect made up of vul- 
 gar French and vulgar English ; a poet, lean and ragged, with a 
 broad Scotch accent. By degrees these shadows acquired stronger 
 and stronger consistence, the impulse which urged Frances to 
 write became irresistible, and the result was the History of 
 Evelina.' 
 
 Unfortunately the shadovrs, in ficquiiing consist- 
 ence, have too often become the crudest caricatures. 
 The coarse sea-captain is as coarse as any of Smol- 
 lett's ' salts/ and with less humour to redeem his 
 brutality ; the fops, less extravagantly treated, have 
 no flavour of original study and first-hand drawing ; 
 the rouged and wrinkled old woman is sometimes a 
 mere tedious infliction, at others a violent impossi- 
 bility. The scenes of horse-play, in which she figures 
 with her tormentor the captain, and in one of which 
 she is actually made to spit in his face, cannot pos- 
 sibly have corresponded to anything within Miss 
 Burney's personal experiences. They can only be 
 the result of a purely imaginative attempt to describe 
 what seemed to her the probable consequences of 
 turning a 'sea-dog' loose in a drawing-room. It is 
 
 150
 
 THE :XOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 not necessary to have lived in the h\st quarter of the 
 eighteenth centurv to feel certain that they desper- 
 ately ofifend probability ; for they plainly exceed 
 what the author's own account of the conventions of 
 the society she is describing shows to be the limits 
 of the possible. The humours of Captain Mervan 
 and Madame Duval are no doubt the worst blots on 
 the book to the taste of a modern reader; hut JSvelina 
 is a gallery of very coarsely-handled portraits, diver- 
 sified by a few feebly executed sketches, from end to 
 end. The hero, Lord Orville, is a lay figure; Sir 
 Clement Willoughby has but intermitteut life ; the 
 Branghtons, though they are drawn with more spirit, 
 and certainly seem to be sketches from nature, are 
 but moderately successful. It is only in the char- 
 acters of Lady Louisa and her indiffereut Jiance thett 
 we seem to come upon traces of anything but the 
 most superficial observation, and the most rudimen- 
 tary art. Nothing, in a word, appears to me to ex- 
 plain the extraordinary popularity attained by Evelina 
 except its mere novelty of genre, aided, it may be, 
 by the purely accidental cause which has been sug- 
 gested above. 
 
 At the same time it would be too much to say that 
 the book shows neither ability nor promise. It 
 shows something of the one, and more of the other; 
 and Cecilia is undoubtedly an incomparably better 
 novel than Evelina. Most of the conversations and 
 
 151
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNEKS 
 
 incidents are at least possible ; the colours of charac- 
 terisation are less glaring ; the heroine is a more 
 clearly defined individuality ; the story of the novel 
 possesses far more variety and interest than that of 
 its predecessor. It is admittedly Miss Burney's best 
 work : it was certainly her most popular one (for 
 Camilla, published fourteen years afterwards, gained 
 nothing like the reception of her two earlier novels), 
 and it would be unjust to deny it the merit of a 
 certain liveliness of dialogue and animation of narra- 
 tive. But the language in which Macaulay speaks 
 of it — even when he professes to be recording and 
 not expressing opinion — cannot be read, I think, by 
 anyone who compares the book, not only with earlier 
 but with later models, with other feelings than those 
 of blank amazement. As a novel of manners we 
 may concede it a right to a certain artificiality of 
 style and tone : as a novel of ' humours,' to adopt 
 Macaulay's classification of it, we might make allow- 
 ance for a certain considerable latitude in the way 
 of caricature. But really, that any critic of such 
 copiously informed, if somewhat unequal judgment 
 as Macaulay should seriously and without protest 
 write of it that ' those who saw Cecilia in manuscript 
 pronounced it the best novel of the age,' that ' Cecilia 
 was placed by general acclamation among the 
 classical novels of England,' and that the critic who 
 wrote thus should be capable of proving in the same 
 
 152
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 essay that he was able to appreciate the genius of 
 Jane Austen — this must surely be attributed rather 
 to some persistent influence of early traditions than 
 to any independent and deliberate exertion of the 
 critical faculty. He says with obvious truth that 
 ' humours,' meaning individual eccentricities, ' ruling- 
 passions,' hobbies, do exist, and are therefore proper 
 subjects for the imitations of art; and he adds as 
 truly, that though ' the imitation of such humours, 
 however skilful and amusing, is not an achievement 
 of the highest order,' though ' they are rare in real 
 life, and ought to be sparingly introduced into works 
 which profess to be pictures of real life,' a writer 
 ^ may nevertheless show so much genius in the ex- 
 hibition of these humours as to be fairly entitled to 
 a permanent and distinguished rank among classics.' 
 Sterne's is a casein point. He is essentially a por- 
 irayer of humours, but his genius for that order of 
 portraiture has justly earned him a permanent and 
 distinguished place among English classics. But 
 can a claim to genius even under these limitations 
 be seriously put forward on behalf of Fanny Bur- 
 ney '? If it is admitted that we must not look in her 
 pages for Fielding's vigorous truth to nature, or 
 Goldsmith's delicacy and subtlety of delineation, can 
 we look there without disappointment, 1 will not say 
 for Sterne's mastery of the grotesque, but for any 
 signs of a cognate power ? To reduce the question 
 
 153
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 to the yimplest of all possible tests, are Miss Bnmey's 
 caricatiu'es funny even as caricatures ? Speaking as 
 one who may claim to have served a fairly long ap- 
 prenticeship as a taster of the humorous, in every 
 variety of age and body, I own that I can detect 
 very little flavour in any of the Buruey brands, and 
 I have some difficulty in believing that it ever really 
 outlived the year of their vintage. Is Mr. Briggs 
 humorous? Is Mr. Hobson"? Will any reader la}- 
 his hand on his heart and declare that the ' skipping 
 ofHcious impertinence ' of Mr. ]\Iorrice diverts instead 
 of boring him ? Or if he does find some drollery in 
 these characters, will he contend that the 'genius 
 shown in the exhibition of these humours' is suffi- 
 cient to compensate for the monstrous outrages on 
 probability which are committed whenever Mr. 
 Albany appears on the scene ? Miss Burne}^ laid 
 claim to wit as well as humour, but has she suc- 
 ceeded any better in her endeavours after this much 
 commoner kind of excellence? Let the sarcasms of 
 Mrs. Selwyn in Evelina, and those of Mr. Gosport in 
 Cecilia — sarcasms almost comparable with the rude 
 and flippant sallies which pass for e23igram in the 
 second-rate comedietta of the present day — supply 
 the answer. 
 
 The fame of Miss Burney declined pretty rapidlj' 
 after the publication of her third novel. This did 
 not ajppear till fourteen years after Cecilia — namely, 
 
 154
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 iu 1796. But her publishers, from whom she is said 
 to have received a large sum of money for Camilla, 
 on the strength, it is to be supposed, of her previous 
 reputation, must have burnt their fingers by the 
 venture. It failed to hit the public taste — failed as 
 completely as Miss Buruey's subsequent memoirs of 
 her father, and, indeed, as everything else tlmt she 
 subsequently wrote. She seems, in fact, to have 
 been the ^ Miss Betty' of the literary world; and it 
 is as difficult to understand in these days that she 
 could ever have been the admiration of a lettered 
 coterie, as it must have been for the friends of the 
 ' Young Roscius's ' later years to realise in the person 
 of that stout, middle-aged, respectable gentleman the 
 juvenile prodigy for whom the playgoiug public had 
 for the time deserted all the great actors of their 
 day. Yet the tradition of her high merit as a writer, 
 or rather of the high merit of her two principal 
 novels, must have survived well into the present cen- 
 tury, since it has so strongly influenced the mind of 
 a man like Macaulay, who could hardly have spoken 
 — consistently at least with his appreciation of far 
 better art — in the terms in which he does speak of 
 Fanny Burney, unless some of the purely imitative 
 predilections of boyhood had been allowed by him 
 to mingle untested with the judgments of his maturer 
 years. The comparison which he institutes between 
 the authors of Evelina and the author of Emma — the 
 
 155
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 former highly skilled iu ' the exhibition of humours,' 
 but unable to set before us, as the latter does, an en- 
 tire character — is perfectly sound, but at the same 
 time so comically inadequate as to provoke a smile. 
 It is as though one should gravely point out that Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds is a greater master than an ale-house 
 sign-painter, because the faces of Sir Joshua's portraits 
 display great potentialities of varied emotion, where- 
 as the worthy sign-painter is content with having ex- 
 hibited the single quality of rampancy in a blue 
 lion. We admit the justice of the remark, but cannot 
 feel that it is the last word of discrimination between 
 the tvv'o pictorial styles. And without, of course, 
 going so far as to say that the great novelist of man- 
 ners of the early nineteenth century is raised so far 
 above her immediate predecessor of the eighteenth as 
 Sir Joshua excels the limner of the blue lion, one can 
 and must say that the points of distinction between 
 the two writers (points from Avhich Macaulay has, for 
 the purpose of his argument, selected one alone) are 
 at least as numerous and as salient as those which 
 can be traced between the two painters. 
 
 It must be admitted, however, at the outset, that 
 the common subject-matter of the two writers had 
 undergone an extraordinary transformation, to the 
 advantage of the latter, between the dates of their 
 respective writings. The French Revolution occurred 
 within ten years of the pubhcation of Cecilia, and be- 
 
 156
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 fore Jaue Austen had reached her twentieth year. 
 The chief works of the younger novelist are divided 
 by less than a generation from the most successful pro- 
 duction of the elder; but as pictures of society, what 
 a gulf divides them ! In truth, if we wish to gain an 
 adequate idea of the social, moral, and intellectual 
 changes wrought in Europe by the portent of 1789-93, 
 we should look for them not in English poetry but 
 in English fiction. The spirit, manner, and poetic 
 canons of the school of Wordsworth do not differ so 
 widely from those of the school of Pope as do the 
 social tone and language, the social usages and ideas 
 which pervade the pages of Miss Austen from those 
 which WQ meet with in the pages of Miss Buruey. 
 Allowance made for the purely superficial distinctions 
 of costume and outward behaviour, a greater cere- 
 moniousness of demeanour, and a few, a very few, 
 occasional archaisms of language, the men and 
 women of Pride and Prejudice or of Northanger Ahhcy 
 are the men and women of the Victorian age. With 
 a few similar allowances, the men and women of 
 Evelina and Cecilia would pass for men and women of 
 the age of Anne. It would seem as if the broader 
 and deeper characteristics of English society had re- 
 mained unchanged for nearly ninety years, and then 
 had been suddenly transformed into a shape Avhich 
 they were to retain for eighty or ninety more. 
 
 The change, however, was one eminently suited, 
 157
 
 THE ^'OVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 by its tendency to a greater simplicity, to promote 
 the artistic development of the novel of manners. 
 And accordingly, the highest point to which it has 
 ever been, or to which perhaps it ever can be, 
 brought, it has reached in the hands of Jliss Austen. 
 No other writer of fiction has ever achieved such 
 great results by such insignificant means ; none other 
 has, upon material so severely limited, expended such 
 beauty, ingenuity, and precision of workmanship. Her 
 novels, indeed, are novels of manners in a sense in 
 which certainly not those of Miss Burney — since not 
 even those of Thackeray — can be said to deserve that 
 iiame. For }.Ii.ss Burney continually, and Thackeray 
 in no inconsiderable measure — even in novels of the 
 Vanity Fair and Pendennis type — seek attractions for 
 the reader in much else than the simple portrayal of 
 character. Sentiment, not to say sentimentalism, 
 plays a large part in the work of the former; plot and 
 incident, though not abundant, are by no means 
 wanting to that of the latter. The author of Evelina 
 and Cecilia is liberal of her moral reflections ; the 
 author of Tlie Newcomes and Barrij Lyndon is mainly 
 prized by many of his admirers for a caustic criticism 
 of life. But all these devices of the art of the story- 
 teller — partly, no doubt, through limitations of 
 personal experience, but also, 1 imagine, and in 
 much greater measure, by her own deliberate choice 
 as an artist acutely sensible of where her real power 
 
 158
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 lay — Jane Austeu entirely denied herself. The plots 
 of her stories, though excellently conceived for her 
 purposes, are usually of the simplest and most 
 obvious description ; her characters are, so far as their 
 positions and circumstances go, just such as might fall 
 in the way of any young woman of the upper middle 
 class, resident for the most part in the country, but 
 varying her life by occasional visits to Bath or Lon- 
 don ; her incidents are just what might find daily 
 entry in such a young woman's diary. The parson 
 and the squire, the young military or naval officer, 
 the Oxford or Cambridge undergraduate, the retired 
 professional man with his wife and daughters, and 
 occasionally the titled Lady Bountiful of a rural 
 parish — these are the commonplace personages who 
 fill her pages, and in our presence live their common- 
 place lives. 
 
 It has often been observed that Miss Austen never 
 brings before us, except in the briefest possible 
 fashion, any man, woman, or child of the poorer 
 classes ; and when she does, as in Pride and Prejudice, 
 it is perhaps with something less than her usually un- 
 erring felicity of touch. She confined herself all but 
 wholly to the class in which she was born and bred, 
 and which she had studied ; neither, as has been said, 
 did she invent interesting situations for her person- 
 ages of this class, but V\'as content to take them as 
 merely performing the every-day acts and undergo- 
 
 1.59
 
 THE NOVEL OF LIANNERS 
 
 ing- the uuroniantic experiences of the society aroimd 
 her. Never was drama so uusensatioual enacted ou 
 a stage so sternly denuded of scenic accessories of 
 any sort ; yet never was drama enacted from first to 
 last in so resohitely dramatic a spirit. Passion, the 
 •word and the thing, is absolutely unknown to any 
 hero or heroine of Miss Austen's ; the mere excitement 
 and exhilaration of rapid action she deliberately fore- 
 goes ; but yet, while surrendering all these facihties, 
 and resisting all these temptations of the dramatic 
 form, she never deviates from that form, never needs 
 relief from it herself, nor, with the sublime presump- 
 tion characteristic of genius, ever allows herself to 
 suppose that her hearers can need such relief them- 
 selves. Neither does she turn aside, or imagine that 
 you will care to turn aside^ from the exquisite life- 
 studies which she is executing before you, to gaze, 
 even for the briefest interval, at external nature. 
 That perpetual diversorium at which the novelist of 
 to-day is perpetually ' putting up ' is not for her. It 
 may be supposed that, if she had no high cesthetio 
 sensibihties in that regard, she possessed at any rate 
 that appreciation of the simple rural beauty of Eng- 
 land which no country-bred Englishwoman of refined 
 life and thoughtful disposition is likely to be without. 
 Yet it would be difficult to find two consecutive 
 pages, if even two consecutive paragraphs, of land- 
 scape painting in the whole of Miss Austen's works. 
 
 160
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 Nor does she take refuge from her labours of minute 
 portraiture in that other common solace of later 
 novelists — the impersonation of Chorus. No one 
 soliloquizes so rarely as she. Her characters hold a 
 score of conversations with each other for one that 
 she holds v/ith the reader. Nothing can differ more 
 than her manner in this respect from that of the in- 
 ferior artist who doth so abound among us at this 
 day — that keeper of the marionettes whose puppets 
 explain so little of their characters in the course of 
 their rare and ineffective dialogues with each other 
 that the voice of their manipulator can never afford 
 to be long silent at the wings. Miss Austen compels 
 character to unfold itself in dialogue and action, un- 
 aided, or almost unaided, by comment and criticism 
 of the writer's own. Only those who have attempted 
 this feat for themselves can be fully sensible of its 
 difficulty; but others may form some rough estimate 
 of it by observing the regularity with which it is 
 shirked by nineteen novelists out of twenty. 
 
 It is one of the great merits of Scott's vivid and 
 faithful draughtsmanship that he makes this so con- 
 stant an aim of his endeavours ; but no one more 
 generously admitted that difference of conditions 
 which made it a so much easier achievement for him 
 than for her. An often-quoted passage from the 
 diary in Lockhart's Life contains the fullest recog- 
 nition of this. * Read again, and for the third time at
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 least, Miss Austen's finely written novel of Pride and 
 Prejudice. That young lady had a talent for de- 
 scribing the involvements, and feelings, and char- 
 acters of ordinary life which is to me the most 
 wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain 
 I can do myself like any now going ; but the ex- 
 quisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace 
 things and characters interesting from the truth of 
 the description and the sentiment is denied to me. 
 What a pity such a gifted creature died so early !' 
 But much more, of course, than ' truth of sentiment 
 and description 'goes to the creation of Jane Austen's 
 power and charm. A profound insight into the 
 workings of the calmer and commoner human feel- 
 ings and motives — this and a marvellously subtle 
 humour were the two gifts which she was the first to 
 bring in anything like such profusion to the ' novel 
 of manners.' And the purest novels of manners, in 
 the sense in which I have endeavoured to define the 
 phrase, her stories are. They give, and they confine 
 themselves strictly to giving, a picture of human 
 life as it presents itself under the most rigid rules of 
 social convention, v^ith only such actions described, 
 such characters and feelings depicted, as these rules 
 permit of being displayed. 
 
 The problem which she proposes to herself is, in 
 fact, this : Given just so many and no more inches of 
 upturned mould on the surface of human nature, to 
 
 1G2
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 determine the character and constituents of the sub- 
 soil to as great a depth as possible. That, of course, 
 is the problem which every novelist of manners must 
 propose to himself who wishes to rise above the level 
 of a moral and mental modiste, merely doing for the 
 manners of society what the fashion-boolis do for its 
 costumes ; but one may safely say that the marvellous 
 success with which that problem might be attacked 
 was never revealed nor could ever have been realised 
 until the creator of the Bennets and the Dashwoods 
 first took it in hand. Then for the first time a wo- 
 man showed the world that human nature trimmed 
 and parterred by the hand of the gardener, Society, 
 into accordance with the primmest Dutch taste is 
 human nature still, and that it was within the power 
 of the botanical expert to trace the affinities of its 
 most highly cultivated specimens with the wild 
 growths, and sometimes even with the noxious weeds 
 that flourish beyond the garden wall. The saving- 
 qualities which redeem this operation from both the 
 dulness and the repulsiveuess of science are, of course, 
 the qualities of sympathy and humour — qualities the 
 utter absence and the apparently unsuspected need 
 of which form together the amply sufficient explan- 
 ation of much of that dismal writing of the ' ana- 
 lytical ' order which nowadays imagines itself to be 
 art. The quickness and the breadth of Miss Austen's 
 sympathy with moods and temperaments the most 
 
 M 2
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 various may be traced on almost every page of her 
 writings ; and that subtly humorous aroma which 
 impregnates nearly every sentence would require a 
 whole essay to do it justice. But what is still more 
 striking about her, and, indeed, what probably is 
 alike the secret of her extraordinary insight into 
 character, and of her admirable finesse in delineating 
 it, is the unusually perfect balance which humour 
 and sympathy seem to have always maintained in her 
 mind. 
 
 It is sympathy which saves the novelist from over- 
 drawing human foibles, humour which prevents him 
 from over-estimating human virtues. To be reason- 
 ably just to his characters the novelist must possess 
 at least a more than average share of both qualities. 
 When both, as in Miss Austen's case, are equally 
 balanced, and when, above all, the more wayward 
 of the two instincts is held in check by an imperious 
 artistic conscience, the result is perfect truth. But 
 the artistic conscience — the power of self-restraint, 
 the ability to hold the hand and to refrain from that 
 last touch to which the undisciplined instinct of 
 comedy so alluringly persuades us — this, after all, is 
 the great thing to possess, and the difficult thing to 
 obey. To those who are at all capable of measuring 
 the humorous possibilities of a situation or of a 
 character, there is something no less surprising, and 
 to some, perhaps, no less disappointing, than admir- 
 
 164
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 able in Miss Austen's masterly reserve. Among all 
 her delightful pieces of comic portraiture 1 know of 
 but one instance in which her sense of humour has 
 overcome her fidelity to nature, and strict artistic 
 truth has been sacrificed to the desire of heightening 
 the absurdity of one of the most exquisitely absurd 
 of moral grotesques. I refer to the character of 
 Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice. Here it seems to 
 me that, for the first and last time, she found the 
 humours of one of her own creations irresistible, and 
 allowed herself to be betrayed into a caricature of 
 which, however, even the sternest of critics would be 
 loth to part with a single ridiculous trait. It is this 
 severe reserve of Miss Austen's which makes her seem 
 to some readers tame and colourless. To such we 
 can have nothing to offer but a recommendation of 
 patience, and the assurance that, if ever they acquire 
 the taste for this simplest and yet most delicate of 
 literary diets, they will grow to wonder that their 
 palates could ever have relished any coarser food. 
 
 What, the question of course arises — what, in this 
 day of universal novel- writing, is the present position 
 of the novel of manners ? During the second quarter 
 of the century it found, as everyone knows, its most 
 brilliant representative in the person of Thackeray. 
 It would bo preposterous to rank Miss Austen with 
 Thackeray in respect of intellectual grasp, and both 
 idle and invidious to attempt any comparative esti- 
 
 165
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 mate of their respective styles of workmanship. In 
 breadth, both of stroke and canvas, they differ vastly 
 from each other, and Thackeray is yet further dis- 
 tinguished from Miss Austen in having travelled, and 
 with signal success, beyond the region of the novel 
 of manners into that of historic romance and imagin- 
 ative study. Miss Austen not only never attempted 
 anything like Esmond or Barry Li/)idon, but she never 
 finds occasion even for the accidental display of these 
 peculiar qualities which make an Esmond or a Barry 
 Lyndon possible. Yet in his other books, and those 
 perhaps on which his fame most securely rests — in 
 Pendennis^ in Vanity Fair, in The Newcomes — one may 
 describe him, subject to the reservation made a few 
 pages back, as hardly less emphatically a novelist of 
 manners than Miss Austen herself. His range of 
 characters is of course larger than hers, but their 
 caste, their order is the same ; or, rather, it is the 
 same, with an addition in Thackeray's case which is 
 practically no addition — that of the class of domestic 
 servants : the butlers, footmen, valets, lady's-maids, 
 housekeepers whom he has sketched so admirably, 
 but who really mix with, belong to, and must be 
 studied as adjuncts of those upper classes to whom, 
 in other respects, his study was entirely confined. 
 Thackeray, in short, lives, and will live, in our history 
 as essentially the great novelist of manners of the 
 period during which ho flourished — a period, bo it 
 
 166
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 remembered, which, among writers in the same order 
 of fictioD, included DisraeK (considered from the non- 
 political side of him) and (when he was not in the 
 big bow-wow vein) the first Lord Lyttou. 
 
 The third quarter of the nineteenth century has 
 been the flourishing time of perhaps the most popular 
 novelist of manners who ever lived — the late Mr. 
 Trollope : to whom no one can deny the merit of 
 careful observation, and who, if he could have 
 brought himself to recognise that a man may become 
 a machine, that machines do not think, and that 
 thought is as necessary as observation to intelligent 
 portraiture, might have well deserved all the popu- 
 larity which he achieved. Since Mr. TroUope's death 
 it would be hard to name any living representative 
 of the school. Indeed, there is some reason to sus- 
 pect that the school, as a school, has perished. In 
 one sense almost every novelist we have is a novelist 
 of manners ; in another sense, none of them are. That 
 is to say, there is not an inventor of sunsets and love- 
 scenes, not a chronicler of ' runs ' and steeple-chases, 
 not a delineator of theatrical life and character, not 
 a feminine diaritr't of the doings of the wicked guards- 
 man, who would not be seriously offended at the 
 imputation that he or she fails in the accurate por- 
 traiture of contemporary manners; but, on the other 
 hand, all of them — 'spooning' novelists, sporting 
 novelists, theatrical novelists — arc concerned with 
 
 167
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 scenery, passion, incident first, and Tvith manners 
 afterwards. They all make grandly nonchalant pre- 
 tences of knowingness in the Vvays of the world in 
 general, and of modern society in particular ; but 
 where the novel of manners has not degenerated in 
 their hands into that very different article, the 
 'fashionable novel,' — where it does not recall the 
 vulgarity without recalling the unquestionable clever- 
 ness of the once famous Mrs. Gore, it is hardly to be 
 recognised for what it professes to be. The novel 
 of modern life and society, in so far as it does not 
 rely for its attractions on mere sensational incident, 
 is generally a study of male and female character — 
 mostly, indeed, of one male and one female character 
 — with a few elaborate sketches of scenery for a 
 background, and a clumsy caricature of some two or 
 three well-known contemporary personages thrown in 
 to give it an air of actuality. The close objective 
 study of social types — not of their superficial 
 peculiarities only, but of their inner being — appears 
 to be becoming a lost art. Where, indeed, are we to 
 look for the observation, the humour, to say nothing 
 of the icisdom, which was brought to bear upon this 
 branch of the art of fiction by its great masters in the 
 past? We have but one living novelist with the 
 adequate intellectual equipment ; but Mr. George 
 Meredith is poet, philosopher, and politician, as well 
 as novelist, and we must be satisfied, I suppose, that 
 
 168
 
 THE NOVEL OF MANNERS 
 
 brilliaut studies of manners form an element, and an 
 element only, in his varied and stimulating work. 
 For the rest, we have ' pretty ' writers in abundance, 
 and a few of genuine power in the creation of in- 
 dividual character. But the generalising eye, the 
 penetrative humour, and the genial breadth of 
 sympathy, which is needed to portray the social 
 pageant as a whole, appear to be gifts which are be- 
 coming rarer and rarer among us every day. 
 
 1G9
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 A DIALOGUE 
 
 Minutius. What, Scriptorius ! corrupting your 
 style by studying a newspaper f Didn't I under- 
 stand you to say that you were composing a paper to 
 be read this evening before the Eclectic Society ? 
 
 Scriptorius. How do you know I am not studying 
 one of my own leaders? 
 
 Min. How do you know that that is not exactly 
 ■what I am assuming ? 
 
 Scrip. Oh ! then you believe that a man whose 
 style would not otherwise be vicious, may demoralise 
 it by reading his own writings? 
 
 Min. Many a man could have no worse model. 
 But you know very well what I mean. What you 
 are reading in that newspaper is not your own writ- 
 ing, in the sense of being your own thoughts express- 
 ed in your own language. It is the thoughts of your 
 political party expressed in the language of — well, in 
 the language of your guild. I can't describe it 
 
 170
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 otherwise. It is essentially a language of itself: 
 English, of course, or at any rate for the most part, in 
 its vocabulary; English, too, in its accidence and 
 syntax, and differing, therefore, in the first of these 
 two respects from a ' patter,' and in the second from 
 a patois — from the cant or argot of a class on the 
 one hand, and from the dialect of a tribe on the 
 other. And in both respects — but perhaps I offend 
 you by my freedom. 
 
 Scrip. Not at all. I am admiring the accuracy of 
 your philological criticism. The peculiar diction of 
 journalism has never, I think, been better described. 
 I recognise at once the elements both of its weakness 
 and its strength, the sources alike of its power and its 
 limitations. All I fail to perceive is its corrujDtlug in- 
 fluence. If it is neither ai^got nor patois, where is the 
 mischief of using it ? 
 
 Min. Where ! Why, my dear fellow, in the very 
 fact on which you seem to rely. No one is the worse 
 for possessing a knowledge of slang, or acquiring the 
 mastery of a dialect ; for neither pretends to be more 
 than an accretion upon, or a corruption of, the 
 language to which it belongs. It is not the medal or 
 the token that debases a currenc}*, it is the spurious 
 coin — and the more mischievously in proportion to 
 the closeness of the imitation. If the journalistic 
 'lingo' has cither a little more of the metal, or a 
 little less of the semblance of genuine English, its 
 
 171
 
 NEWSPAPERS A:^D ENGLISH 
 
 enormously wide circulation in these days would no 
 doubt do comparatively little harm. 
 
 Scrip. Whereas ? 
 
 Min. Eh ? what ? Oh, come, Scriptorius, these 
 dialectical thrustings of a naturally polite man into 
 the corner of incivility are really in bad taste. Well, 
 then, if you will have it — whereas its circulation pro- 
 duces, as it is, an effect which I could not correctly 
 describe without comparing a most excellent man, 
 and my very good friend, to a professional manufac- 
 turer of bad half-crowns. 
 
 Scrip. Good. And now let me express my ex- 
 treme surprise, Minutius, that a man of your in- 
 dependent judgment and force of character should 
 have permitted yourself to become the mouth-piece 
 of so false and silly a cry as that which 1 have now 
 for the first time heard you echo. Have you ever 
 really examined the grounds of the charge which 
 you are making against the newspapers? 
 
 Min. Well, of course I have not scrutinised it as 
 jealously as though it were a tribute to their merits. 
 You are alwiiys demanding some impossibilities of 
 self-mortifying rigour. 
 
 Scrip. If you have not examined it, let me do so 
 for you. 
 
 Min. Do ; and put the results of your inquiries 
 into a ' social ' leader, as I understand you and your 
 fellow-craftsmen describe every disquisition you give 
 
 172
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 US on any subject at all broader or of more permanent 
 interest than last night's Parliamentary debate, 
 whether it be an excursion into the Philosophy of the 
 Unconscious, or a thoughtful essay on the true 
 method of disposing of the metropolitan sewage. 
 
 Scnp. Well, I conceive that both are subjects with 
 which society is more or less concerned. 
 
 Mill. Undoubtedly — more or less ; but so, after all, 
 it is supposed to be with politics. To divide all sub- 
 jects of human interest into political and social, and 
 to lump together as ' social ' all that infinite variety 
 of matters which lie outside the range, as I say, of 
 last night's Parliamentary debate, does strike one as 
 a somewhat rough and ready method of classification. 
 But perhaps you do not go so far as to maintain that 
 journalism actually tends to promote philosophic ac- 
 curacy in the use of language. 
 
 Scrip. I don't know what I may find myself con- 
 tending for when we once get fairly in dispute : it is 
 that, I think, which constitutes one of the most pleas- 
 ing features of familiar controversy, and 
 
 Min. Stop I I beg your pardon I One moment 
 just to take down the phrase you have last let fall. 
 All right, go on 1 
 
 Scrip. I see what is preparing for me, and I defy 
 you. But to finish what I was saying, I do not 
 propose to maintain, at least for the present, that 
 journalism ' tends ' — 1 had better repeat your exact 
 
 173
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 words — ' to promote philosophic accuracy in the use 
 of language.' When an unfortunate gentleman is 
 brought up on a charge of coining, the jBrst thing for 
 him to do is to rebut the accusation. It will be time 
 enough for him to attempt to show that he is a pub- 
 lic benefactor Avhen he has satisfied his judge that he 
 is not a public malefactor. So here. I shall be quite 
 content, at any rate for the present, with acquitting 
 myself and my fellows of the charge of debasing or 
 defacing the verbal coinage of my country without 
 claiming to have purified or brightened it. Enough 
 if we do not clip or alloy the money of the English 
 tongue ; it is too much to expect of us, or for us to 
 claim for ourselves, that the coins come out of our 
 hands with more gold in them to the ounce, and with 
 a sharper and cleaner cut device and legend upon 
 their face. The second position I cannot hope to 
 establish ; the first I can and will. 
 
 Mill. ' To't ' then ! as our friend the Danish grave- 
 digger says. ' To't.' 
 
 Scrip. I am quite ready ! What is the charge ? 
 
 Mill. Eh ? the charge t Well, upon my word I 
 ihought I had expressed it with great precision. 
 
 Scrip. What, by a metaphor ! A pretty situation 
 f a man's life is to depend upon his accuser's pos- 
 sessing a just appreciation of analogy and a nice 
 discrimination in the employment of rhetorical 
 £gures. 
 
 174
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 Mill. 'Ation ! 'ation ! 'ation ! I shall have some- 
 thing to say about that presently. 
 
 Scrip. With all my heart ; and in the meantime I 
 will meet your accusation in the form it took at the 
 very opening of this colloquy. You made, or you 
 implied, the charge against neAvspaper writers of 
 corrupting the English prose style. That is a little 
 different, of course, from the charge of debasing the 
 EngHsh language, and as, being much the more 
 vague, it is the easier to sustain and the harder to 
 refute, I daresay you will prefer that form of the 
 accusation to the other. 
 
 Min. 1 think, if you don't mind, I should like to 
 avail myself of both, though not, of course, at the 
 same time. 
 
 Scrip. I am obliged to you for that last conces- 
 sion, at any rate. It is by no means a common form 
 of forbearance, I assure you. 
 
 Min. Well, then, as to debasing the language — 
 Scrip. Yes, as to debasing the language. I shall 
 be happy to save you as much trouble as possible in 
 establishing that part of your case. Allow me to 
 read you a list of admissions which I have at varioas 
 times committed to paper with a view to the discus- 
 sion of this particular subject. I admit that when 
 facts ' transpire,' in correct English it docs not mean 
 that they occur, and it does mean that having oc- 
 curred they get abroad ; whereas, by transpiring in 
 
 175
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 newspaper English, they do not get abroad, but only 
 happen. I admit that when we call a man ' reliable,' 
 w^e neither strengthen nor adorn the Englisli lan- 
 guage, and I may here add that I have tried not to 
 smile w^hen 1 have heard, as I actually have, a purist 
 object to the word on the ground that as long as 
 'trustworthy' was available to express the idea, 're- 
 liable ' could not be indispensable. In other words, 1 
 recognise a mysterious guilt in burking the preposi- 
 tion ' on ' which does not attach to the suppression 
 of the particles 'of and 'with.' I admit further 
 that the words 
 
 Jlin. There, that will do. You need not give us 
 the T.-hole string of pearls. I know it is a long one. 
 But since you admit the solecisms 
 
 Scrip. Ah! Unfortunate people of Soli! Do 
 you believe they really spoke worse Greek than 
 their neighbours — that they were really sinners 
 against grammar above all men that dwelt in 
 Cilicia? Soli! Siloam ! It is the way of the 
 world, however. Those unlucky colonists, and we 
 unlucky journalists, are simply the ' eighteen upon 
 whom the tower fell.' 
 
 Min. Oh, nonsense ! You are evading the gist of 
 the charge. The accusation against you is not that 
 you use worse English than other people 
 
 Scrip. Members of Parliament, for instance. Why, 
 they owe the only grammar they can boast of to 
 
 176
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 those who have least of it to spare among ourselves. 
 Our most indigent class contrives to give of its super- 
 fluity to the destitute senator ; and out of the scanty 
 grammatical wardrobe of the reporter is his naked- 
 ness clothed. Nay, the figure is not strong enough. 
 The debt of the parliamentary orator to the parha- 
 mentary reporter is not for clothing alone, but for 
 surgery — for the splints upon the fractures of his 
 sentences, and for the sutures of their gaping 
 wounds. 
 
 3Iin. My dear Scriptorius, you give yourself a 
 vast amount of unnecessary trouble. No one has 
 ventured upon anything so audacious as to compare 
 the grammar of debate, or even of completed legis- 
 lation, with that of the newspaper. 
 
 Scrip. The Bar, then ? or the pulpit 'l Even in 
 the ablest of those forensic speeches which decide 
 the issue of a lawsuit, how many nominatives remain 
 'pending!' Hovv' often will the changes of heart 
 among a congregation compare either in suddenness 
 or completeness with the changes of construction in 
 their preacher's sentences 'I 
 
 Mill. You seem to forget that grammatical errors 
 are somewhat more pardonable in spoken than in 
 written discourse : but 1 repeat that the charge 
 against you is not that newspapers use worse English 
 — and please to observe that it is you who are now 
 mixing up questions of syntax with those of vocabu- 
 
 N
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 lary — than other people, but that owing to the enor- 
 mous audiences whom they address daily they infect 
 the largest possible number of people with, their own 
 habits of inaccuracy. 
 
 Scrip. And I have really lived to hear that parrot 
 cry from lips so accustomed to utter sense as yours.. 
 What man capable of being so ' infected,' as you call 
 it, can have any health in him ? Take the score or 
 so of solecisms — if there be so many — for which the 
 newspapers have obtained currency. By Avhom, 
 pray, among their readers are they picked up and 
 made use of? By those who have otherwise any 
 purity of speech to be contaminated ? or by those — 
 the uneducated — who learn more genuine words of 
 their mother-tongue from the newspaper than from 
 any other printed matter, and who daily commit ten 
 times as many sins against the language and its 
 grammar than the newspaper is guilty of in a year? 
 
 Min. The more ignorant the reader, the easier, of 
 course, to corrupt him ; but I am far from admitting 
 that newspapers have not taught tricks of incorrect 
 speech to people whom education might otherwise 
 have enabled to avoid them. 
 
 Scrip. Then enumerate these tricks, I beg of you, 
 and let us see how many they amount to. Do not 
 trust to your ' transpire ' and your ' reliable,' and the 
 one or two other stale examples of inaccuracies which 
 the journalist was either not the first to commit, or 
 
 178
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 has done more than anyone else to expose and ridi- 
 cule. Let us hear the whole list. 1 shall be much 
 surprised if the number of such offences which can 
 fairly be brought home to the nev^spaper-writer are 
 found to exceed a dozen. 
 
 Min. Be it so, my dear Scriptorius, be it so. 
 Moreover, the charge of corrupting our vocabulary 
 is not one on which I am personally much disposed 
 to rely. The number of questionable additions which 
 the language has received from the newspapers must 
 necessarily be small : for, if we except the lendiugs of 
 recognised slang, the total number of such additions 
 which have been made from any source during the 
 present age is itself not considerable. 
 
 Scrip. Now that last is a proposition which I 
 should have been inclined to dispute. But proceed : 
 I daresay I shall have an opportunity of disputing it 
 later on. 
 
 Min. 1 have known you go so far as to create one. 
 I don't know, however, that I had much more to say 
 when you interposed, except this : that the much 
 more plausible charge against you and your fellow- 
 penmen is that of depraving English style. I should 
 like to hear you on that point, I confess. 
 
 Scrip. Would you ? Then you must give me 
 something to answer. What is to ' deprave ' a 
 style ? What is English style 1 Nay, what is style 
 itself? 
 
 n2
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 Mill. Why stop there, my dear fellow ? Pray go 
 on. By all meaDS let us thresh the whole matter 
 thoroughly out. What is the origin of language? 
 What are the casual relations and what the order of 
 succession in time between the class -name and the 
 concept ? By what process 
 
 Scrip. You are wasting your satire upon me, my 
 friend. My question was a simple one enough from 
 the experimental side, and not requiring any pro- 
 found researches into the metaphysics of philology iu 
 order to answer it. One need not know the chem- 
 istry of either pure or muddy water to be able to say 
 when one has been contaminated by the other. The 
 eye will tell you that the liquid has become turbid. 
 But I think that when you are asserting, not the fact 
 of contamination, but the process, you are bound to 
 give some intelligible account of the pure water, and 
 some rational description of the mud. 
 
 Mill. \Vell, there is no great difSculty in that, if 
 you will allow me to confine myself to it. But, do 
 you know, I have for some unaccountable reason 
 
 Scrip. ISome ' uuaccountable-for ' reason you would 
 say, if you were a reliable-on grammarian. 
 
 Min. Conceived a strong desire to attempt the 
 task you offer to excuse me from. I should like to 
 define ' style ' in language. 
 
 Scrip. Meaning, I suppose, the correct, the ' best 
 style ' ? 
 
 180
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 Min. Exactly. 
 
 Scrip. Then you believe there is only one to 
 which that description applies ? 
 
 Min. You shall see. Style, then, as 1 should de- 
 fine it, consists in such a choice and collocation of 
 words, combined with such individual structure and 
 collective arrangement of sentences, as may, while 
 giving the clearest, briefest, and most forcible ex- 
 pression to the thought, assist at the same time the 
 most powerfully to maintain in the reader the state 
 of feeling most appropriate to the subject-matter. 
 
 Scrip. Allow me, my dear Minutius, to congratu- 
 late you. 
 
 Min. On my definition? 
 
 Scrip. On your wind. If I remember rightly you 
 won the mile race in our school athletics ; but I had 
 no idea you still kept yourself in such excellent train- 
 ing in middle age. 
 
 Min. Your ironical compliment, if you onl}' knew 
 it, is genuinely flattering. Length of wind is most 
 valuable to those who have a long distance to travel, 
 and I maintain that my definition is not to be short- 
 ened by a single stage. Choice of words and order 
 of words we all admit to be points of first importance 
 to style ; nor less so, the arrangement of sentences. 
 Nor will you deny that clearness, brevity, and force 
 in the expression of thought are three qualities of 
 equivalent necessity to whosoever lays claim to the 
 
 181
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 mastery of a good style. The first suffices only for 
 the equipment of a Parliamentary draftsman. Acts 
 of Parliament convey their meaning clearly. 
 
 Scrip. Do they ? 
 
 Mill. The ideal Act of Parliament does. All legal 
 documents express, or are supposed to express, the 
 meaning embodied in them with clearness, and some 
 few do so with brevity — that is without superabund- 
 ance of words, but none of them study to do so with 
 force. Of two words equally unambiguous, of two 
 constructions equally apt, of two sentences equally 
 short, the lawyer and the Parliamentary draftsman 
 do not of design select that word which is the most 
 telling, that construction or sentence which drives 
 most smartly home the nail of meaning with the 
 hammer of emphasis. And lastly, having neither of 
 them any particular state oi feeling in their readers — 
 nothing but a purely intellectual condition — to take 
 account of, neither of them are, of course, in the least 
 degree solicitous about the existence of any corre- 
 sponding quality in their work. It is only where to 
 clearness, brevity, and force of expression a writer 
 adds that tact and sensibihty which keeps the tone 
 of his diction in harmony with the feelings suggested 
 by his thought that he becomes master, in my judg- 
 ment at least, of the gift of style. 
 
 Scrip. You say nothing of simplicity. 
 
 Min. Why should I? How can the clearest 
 182
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 and briefest expression be other than the simplest ? 
 
 Scrip. Nor of grace. 
 
 Min. Fulfil the commandment I have given you, 
 and grace shall be added unto you. Grace is only 
 symmetry, and symmetry only the perfect balance 
 and mutual adaptation of component parts. Let 
 thought but wed itself to expression, as my canon, I 
 believe, unites them, and grace will be born. 
 
 Scrip. H'm : the parentage seems a little common- 
 place, but highly respectable. Much, however, that 
 passes for grace in literature is not, I fear, the off- 
 spring of any lawful uuiou whatever. However, I 
 am extremely obliged to you for permitting me to 
 hear your views on the subject. And now shall we 
 resume our discussion "? 
 
 Min. By all means: but I am not without hopes 
 of exhibiting a certain remote connection between 
 what I have been saying and the matter in hand. 
 
 Scrip. What ! All that highly abstract and to my 
 inteUigence, if you will excuse its weakness, that 
 decidedly hazy stuff about adapting the tone of the 
 writer to the feeling of the reader — stuff which if it 
 has, as of course it has, meaning 
 
 Min. Thank you ! Your faith is touching. 
 
 Scrip, Can only mean that there is no such thing 
 as style in the singular number, but as many different 
 styles as there are differences of subject-matter. 
 
 Min. And suppose that is what I mean to main- 
 183
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 tain ? What if style should be, in the ultimate an- 
 alysis, not an objective quality of language, but a 
 certain subjective relation between the mode of the 
 writer as affected by his theme and an objective 
 
 Scrip. Exactly ! What if it should be '? 
 
 Mill. Scoff not, professional scoffer ! Even the 
 words ' objective ' and ' subjective ' may conceal a 
 definite meaning. Perhaps I shall put it in words 
 less open to the jests of the irreverent if I say con- 
 cretely that the writer who possesses style must 
 possess in more or less near approach to perfection 
 the power of fitting all varieties of matter to corre- 
 sponding varieties of manner, and that the writers 
 who do not display that power, great as many of them, 
 immortal as some of them are, are nothing other — I 
 shrink, in speaking of men so illustrious, from saying 
 nothing more — than magnificent mannerists. What 
 else "was Gibbon ? What else was Macaulay ? 
 What else Carlyle "? If fitness is a condition of ex- 
 cellence, what can be less excellent in their ridiculous 
 disparity with their subject-matter than some of 
 Gibbon's stately periods when the historian of the 
 Roman Empire is engaged upon a mean or common- 
 place portion of his subject. Or M^hat, by the same 
 test, can be less excellent than Macaulay's jerky sen- 
 tences in a passage of pure narrative ; or than Car- 
 lyle's violently elliptical manner where he has a ' case 
 to state ' ? Give Gibbon a great event to describe, 
 
 184
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 or even a ' solemn creed to sap,' and his constant 
 solemnity is well enough. Give Macanlay an inter- 
 esting individuality — a Tory statesman's for choice 
 — to analyse, and his crisp antithetic maimer is the 
 perfection of style, whatever historic trnth may have 
 to say to it, in relation to that particular subject- 
 matter. Give Carlyle a dramatic incident to relate, 
 or a picturesque figure to sketch, and his triumphs in 
 the qualities of vividness and beauty will make us 
 forget everything else in his writings that has ever 
 repelled us, and pronounce him, here, at any rate, the 
 greatest stylist that ever lived. But except in those 
 kinds of writing wherein each excels does style exist 
 for any one of the three ? 
 
 Scrip. Perhaps not. Yon are victoriously achiev- 
 ing the victory which your definitions have prepared 
 for you. tStyle, then, is nothing but the natural out- 
 come of a plastic intelligence quickly responsive to 
 every change of mood. 
 
 3Jin. Well ! Is that so very unworthy an account 
 of it? 
 
 Scrip. No, indeed. But I am forced to admit that 
 it is beyond the reacli of the humble writer in the 
 newspapers. Circumstances are not so kind as to 
 provide him with many of those changes of mood 
 whereby alone he could test the elasticity and adapt- 
 ability of his style. He is usually obhgcd to take the 
 moods the gods provide. 
 
 185
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 Mill. Let us go back, then, by all means to a 
 simpler matter. Let us begin with the element of 
 simplicity itself. Will you say that your beloved 
 newspapers 
 
 Scrip. Ml/ beloved newspapers ! 
 
 Min. Yes, confectioner, I repeat the word. Your 
 beloved tarts ! Come ! the earlier nausea of surfeit is 
 not perpetual, and for the materials of his trade the 
 honest man contracts aa affection above the vulgarity 
 of relish. Will you say that your newspapers have 
 not done much to destroy, at any rate, the simplicity 
 of English written speech '? 
 
 Scrip. Will you say that they have ? 
 
 Mi7i. 1 will: I do. With the proviso, of course, 
 that I do not guarantee the soundness of every 
 separate count in the indictment. I will take the 
 gravest first. You are accused of neglecting and 
 despising the Saxon element in our language, and of 
 displaying an undue and pedantic preference for 
 Latin forms. 
 
 Scrip. What, tliat old friend ! 1 know now why 
 you said you would not guarantee the soundness of 
 every separate count in the indictment. It was, in- 
 deed, a prudent precaution. I don't expect to find 
 ?/or{ pronouncing an educated approval of that vulgar 
 and ignorant charge. 
 
 Min. Since when has the advocate been bound 
 to back up his professional with his private opinion ? 
 
 186
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 You are called npou to plead, not to cross-examine. 
 
 Scrip. I plead, then, to the jurisdiction. I have 
 never yet met a man of those who assume to sit in 
 judgment on newspapers upon that charge, who was 
 philologically qualified for a seat on the bench. 1 
 have the gravest doubts whether many of those who 
 pretend to one are able to distinguish between a 
 Saxon and a Latin word. 
 
 Min. Oh ! come now ! 
 
 Scrip. I have certainly often heard some of them 
 descanting upon the beauties of 'plain Saxon Eng- 
 lish,' in what was evidently a most happy uncon- 
 sciousness that one of the three words they were 
 using, and that the shortest and simplest, was 
 Latin. 
 
 Min. Yes; that, no doubt, was unfortunate. But 
 you hardly propose to contend, do you, that none of 
 those who repeat this charge possess any safer test of 
 the distinction between Saxon and Latin than these 
 worthy admirers of plaiuness were content with ? 
 
 Scrip. I do not propose to commit myself to any 
 sweeping contentions ; but I verily believe that if the 
 number of our censors who go by no other rule than 
 that monosyllables are Saxon and polysyllables Latin 
 or French, could be computed, the result would a 
 little weaken the force of their censures. Did I ever 
 tell you of au experiment v,''hich I once tried upon 
 one of these gentlemen with the view of ascertaining 
 
 187
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 how far bis zeal for Saxon Englisli was accorcliug to 
 knowledge ? 
 
 Min. No, I think not. 
 
 Scrip. Well, it Avas on this wise. In illustration 
 of the superiority of the Saxon to the Latin element 
 in our language, I quoted to him the following 
 imaginary extract from an essay on the subject, and 
 invited him to note how the very style of the pas- 
 sage confirmed the truth of its contents : ' Our 
 English,' said the supposed essayist, 'shall be plain, 
 clear, pure: we will be brief; we will be simple; wq 
 will use no long words. Yet in English of this sort 
 there need be nothing common or vulgar. I have 
 known it to be noble, to be even grand.' My friend 
 was delighted with this specimen of homely Saxon, 
 as he called it — so delighted, indeed, that I had not 
 the heart to undeceive him : and in a moment of false 
 humanity I did him the cruel kindness of allowing 
 him to go away and quote it to more erudite persons 
 as a justification of his preferences in the matter of 
 English. ' p]nghsh,' indeed, is one of the few words 
 after his own heart — which it realhj contains. 'Words' 
 is another, and 'nothing' is another. But 3'ou, of 
 course, don't need to be told that, deducting what I 
 may call the mere bolts and rivets of the sentences 
 — the prepositions, pronouns, auxiliaries, etc. — my 
 piece of homely Saxon does not contain another 
 purely Saxon word. Plaia, clear, pure, simple Eug- 
 
 188
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 lisb, as it is, there is not oue other word in it which 
 we do not either get straight from the Latin, or 
 jointly derive, Teutonic and Latin together, from one 
 common root. 
 
 Min. Your trap Avas cunningly set, I grant ; or 
 would you rather 1 should say it was ingeniously 
 constructed, I concede 1 Come, Scriptorius, you must 
 allow, I think, that it is possible to weaken a phrase 
 by translating it from the Teutonic into the Latin, 
 and that those who have better means of distinguish- 
 ing between the two than by mere counting of sylla- 
 bles — though, mind, I don't altogether admit that 
 that is so very unsafe a test in the majority of cases 
 — are right as a rule in preferring the former to the 
 latter. 
 
 Scrip. They are right, of course, in preferring it 
 when it is the stronger: and provided also that 
 
 Min. But is it not generally the stronger ? 
 
 Scrii). Wait a moment. And provided also that 
 it satisfies your own condition of superior clearness 
 as well as of superior force. But it is in conciliating 
 these two requirements that the difficulty of choosing 
 between the Teutonic and the Latin is mainly felt. 
 Yet of this difficulty our Saxon-loving friends, who 
 are more often men whose pleasure it is to read 
 rather than men whose business it is to write, are 
 sublimely unconscious. Suppose I allow that the 
 shorter, simpler, homelier words are usually Teutonic 
 
 189
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 and not Latin, and that these words, by reason, as I 
 believe, of certain associations which for the moment 
 I need not stop to notice, convey the more vivid 
 impression of the act or the thing described — what 
 then ? Vividness of presentment to the imagination 
 is not all that language has to provide for, though 
 'doubtless it is all that many writers think about ; it 
 has to provide for accuracy of presentment to the 
 thought. The instance you just now selected — or 
 rather created — is one upon which no difficulty could 
 arise; for the phrase you prefer has as much the 
 advantage in accuracy as in vigour. None but the 
 penniest of penny-a-liners would hesitate for an in- 
 stant between ' cunningly setting ' and ' ingeniously 
 adjusting' a trap, not only because the former phrase 
 more impresses the imagination, but because the 
 latter fails even to put the mind in full possession of 
 the thought. The artfulness of a trapper is not fully 
 expressed by the neutral word ingenuity ; it is in- 
 genuity directed to the capture of his prey ; and, 
 while the word ingeniously contains no suggestion 
 of the sinister purpose of his act, so the word in- 
 sidious, had you chosen that, would have contained 
 no adequate suggestion of its technical quality. But 
 the word ' cunningly ' imports both. Parenthetically, 
 however, please to remember, in abatement of your 
 pride of Saxonism, that its moral association is not 
 inherited, but acquired. The instance you have 
 
 190
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 choseu is, as 1 have said, an instance in which no 
 difficulty of selection could possibly arise. And so, 
 to do only justice to their dexterity in illustration, 
 are most of the examples cited to prove the superi- 
 ority of plain Saxon. 
 
 Mill. Is that so ? 
 
 Scrip. Well, is it not so ? What do these gentle- 
 men ever try their Saxon hands upon by way of 
 showing their command of monosyllables, unless it 
 be the description of some daily scene, the account 
 of some most commonplace act, the expression of 
 some most familiar thought of life — scene, act, and 
 thought, for which the simple vocabulary of a child 
 suffices, and which no sensible adult would think of 
 describing in any other than the child's terms '? Pass 
 beyond the sphere of mere sensuous impression and 
 of the most elementary processes of thought — enter 
 that of conception, and still more that of ratiocina- 
 tion, and see how far your Saxon will carry you. 
 
 Min. A very little way, it would indeed seem. 
 Ratiocination is not a pretty word, is it ? not so neat 
 and compact as one could wish. 
 
 Scrip. It is certainly not a word for the waistcoat 
 pocket. As a word four syllables shorter, 1 should 
 much have preferred ' reasoning ' ; but then, 1 used 
 the longer word to illustrate my own point. Where 
 absolute exactitude is required, 'reasoning' will not 
 supply the place of 'ratiocination.' The former is 
 
 191
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 both ci process and a product ; the latter is a process 
 alone. Depend upon it that most of the men who 
 protest against the use of Greek words, Latin words, 
 and generally of every word over two syllables in 
 places where they contend that shorter synonyms 
 * will do,' are in fact ignorant of what will ' do,' and 
 what will not. They may have some taste in lan- 
 guage as a vehicle of sense, impression, and associa- 
 tion, but they are mostly quite incapable of consider- 
 ing it as an instrument for the precise expression of 
 thought. Long words in great numbers have an 
 ugly and affected look; no man who cares for ap- 
 pearances in writing would string together more of 
 them than he could help. But the high and mighty 
 censor who strides up and down your sentences with 
 a pen in his hand scoring out polysyllables wherever 
 he meets them is as often as not a mere presump- 
 tuous 
 
 Mhi. Stop ! He won't insist on any monosyllable 
 here, I'll be bound. 
 
 Scrip. Then I will end the sentence with ignor- 
 amus. As a quadrisyllable, and Latin after a fashion, 
 it may annoy him even more than the triliteral 
 Saxon. For no doubt he would regard 'ass' as 
 ' plain ' Saxon, though it isn't. 
 
 Ilin. Well, go on. A presumptuous ignoramus. 
 
 Scrip. Yes ; as much so as the man who thinks 
 that if he were a parliamentary draftsman or a con- 
 
 192
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 veyancer be could get a complex act of Parliament 
 into a score of clauses, aucl a declaratiou of trust 
 into as many lines. Our law, fortunately for the 
 public, does not permit him to try bis band at con- 
 densation in tbe former case ; in tbe latter case, 
 fortunately for tbe lawyers, it does. 
 
 Min. Your defence of tbe newspapers, Scrip- 
 torius, appears a curious one. So far as I can see, 
 it tends to sbow, not tbat tbey are free from tbe 
 faults alleged against tbem, but tbat tbose faults are 
 unavoidable. We are to understand, according to 
 you, it seems, tbat tbe newspaper-writer is neitber 
 brief nor simple, and, baving to express sucb migbtily 
 complex ideas, cannot be expected to be eitber. Is 
 tbat any reason, however, why his sentences should 
 see-saw for ever, pivoted on an ' and ' or a ' but,' 
 across tbe trunk of a semicolon till monotony itself 
 cries out upon them 1 Is that any reason why be 
 should never make a direct statement or a direct 
 denial, only 'venturing to believe' this, and 'per- 
 mitting himself to doubt ' tbe other'? Does it justify 
 bis perpetual formalities of ' with reference to,' ' with 
 respect to,' ' with regard to,' ' in connection with ' — 
 vile phrases, however excusable to men who seldom 
 write ' about ' a subject, but only ' about and about ' 
 it ? And do the needs of this marvellous logical 
 accuracy which be endeavours to compass warrant 
 him in always rejecting the outdoor name of a thing 
 

 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 for that which seems to smell of the very leather of 
 the library '? in never preferring that word which still 
 retains the sharpness of its stamp and milling, to the 
 worn counter of language, as smooth, no doubt, and 
 as polished, but as lustreless and edgeless as an old 
 shilhng? 
 
 Scrip. Bravo, Miuutius ! You have actually con- 
 descended upon particulars at last, have you? The 
 charge, it is true, is getting slightly altered. The 
 coiner, it seems, is guilty of nothing worse than a 
 preference for coins which have seen most service. 
 And as to all your complaints of the monotony, the 
 circumlocution, the ' common form ' of newspapers, 
 why, faults of that kind seem hardly worth denounc- 
 ing as depravations of English style. They are 
 traceable, one and all, to defects in the journalist's 
 material. If the public have a fancy for huge doses 
 of politics daily, whether there is anything fresh to 
 say about them or not, how can those who gratify 
 this fancy avoid these faults ? How can he avoid 
 them who has to repeat what he has said a score of 
 times before ? and how dispense with circumlocution, 
 who has to eke out even that stale material ? As to 
 ' common form,' pray consider its labour-saving value, 
 and don't forbid its use to men who have to write in 
 a hurry. 
 
 Mill. I really cannot see how all this differs from 
 confession. We both seem to agree that the style of 
 
 194
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND ENGLISH 
 
 the newspaper-writer is mouotonoiis, cumbersome, 
 conventional, full of unmeaning stock phrases, a foe 
 to brevity and simplicity, unvarying in its preference 
 of the tamer to the more spirited word. We may 
 account for it in different manners, but we agree as 
 to the fact ; and how you can dispute, therefore, that 
 a newspaper is one huge repertory of the vices 
 which writers should avoid, and so a widely circu- 
 lating medium of literary demoralisation, I fail to 
 see. 
 
 Scrij). Suppose I were to convince you that the 
 faults which you complain of in the newspaper are 
 but the symptoms, exaggerated no doubt, but still 
 unmistakable, of one of those changes which lan- 
 guages at certain periods of their history are bound 
 to undergo, would you withdraw your charges then ? 
 
 Min. But do you really contemplate so vast an 
 undertaking .^ 
 
 Scrij). 1 do. 
 
 Min. Then, my dear Scriptorius, 1 must really 
 wish you good morning. Some other day — some 
 21st of June, for choice— I should be only too de- 
 lighted ; but for the present I must forego the plea- 
 sure, and with your leave we will regard the present 
 discussion as a drawn game. 
 
 O 2
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 Lord Byron, we know, was under the impression 
 that be hated Horace because that deh'ghtful classic 
 had been forced so uumercifnlly down his throat by 
 the instructors of his youth. The treatment of which 
 he complains and the implied patience of his submis- 
 sion to it are not strikingly in accord with the earlier 
 reputation either of the particular schoolboy or of 
 the particular school ; and one would like to have 
 interrogated a few of the noble poet's contemporaries 
 at Harrow on the point. But, assuming the fact to 
 have been as stated in the well-known stanza of 
 Chihie Harold, one may venture perhaps to dispute 
 the inference. The truth is that the belief which 
 Byron there avows is too suspiciously common to be 
 accepted with ready credence. The man who be- 
 lieves that only injudicious training at school has 
 spoilt a fine scholar in his person doth greatly 
 abound. A little less insistence on the stock Vir- 
 gilian criices, and he would never, he thinks, have 
 
 196
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 contracted his self-defensive passion for that particu- 
 lar athletic exercise in which he has subsequently 
 achieved fame. A little more forbearance in the 
 matter of corrupt choruses, and he might have risen 
 on a masterly edition of ^schylus to the Bench of 
 Bishops, instead of becoming merely an ornament of 
 the Stock Exchange. Such pleasing illusions of 
 middle age it would be cruel to disturb, and humane 
 men for the most part treat them with respect. The 
 truth, however, in at least ninety-nine out of every 
 hundred such cases, is that the early blighted scholar 
 was not really any more disgusted with his youthful 
 experiences of the Greek and Latin tongues than was 
 the schoolfellow who has actually ripened into a pro- 
 fessor. It is an error to suppose that ' the rudi- 
 ments ' of anything can be made agreeable to 
 anybody, least of all to the young. What is true of 
 the dead languages is equally true of the immortal 
 game of cricket. Many excellent men of mature 
 years no doubt entertain the firm conviction that 
 they would probably have ' played for the Gentle- 
 men' if compulsory 'fagging out' had not early 
 inspired them with a distaste for the noble game. 
 They fail to explain how it is that the cricketer who 
 has risen through his public school and university 
 elevens to the deathless honour of being one of 
 eleven amateurs selected to do battle with the Aus- 
 tralians did his ' scouting ' too as a boy, and hated 
 
 197
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 it : hated it at the time perhaps as much as many a 
 now accompHshed scholar detested his Latin acci- 
 dence and his Greek irregnlar verbs. 
 
 No ; there is not often much in the complaint that 
 the steady and tiresome drill to which the raw recruit 
 of scholarship has to submit disgusts him out of all 
 capacity for appreciating those beautiful and stately 
 evolutions of thought and language which that 
 training alone enables him to follow. Those who 
 do not care for these things in mature years never 
 would have cared for them, however their boyhood 
 had been spent ; and those who do care for them 
 know well how much of their pleasure they owe to 
 the slow and laborious transit of their boyhood 
 through the mill of the gerund-grinder. It will at 
 any rate hardly be contended, I think, that the keenest 
 sensibihty to the charm of the classical masterpieces 
 is to be found (except in one such instance out of a 
 thousand as that of Keats) in the man who has made 
 his first acquaintance with them as an adult ; though^ 
 according to the theory I have been examining, he 
 certainly ought to enjoy them the most. Keats, as 
 we know, has imperishably recorded his emotions 
 on first hearing ' Chapman speak out loud and bold ' 
 (and one may add with a freedom amounting to 
 Hcence) in his translation of Homer. The poet felt 
 hke stout Cortez surveying the Pacific from a peak 
 in Darien ; but that was because he ivas a poet. And 
 
 198
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 though 1 do not for a moment suggest that the 
 average schoolboy feels at all like stout Cortez on 
 first looking into the Iliad or the Odyssey in the 
 original, I suspect that the like effect of Chapman's 
 translation upon an average adult would be every bit 
 as rare. The truth is that not only the vast Pacific 
 of the Homeric poems, but even such a smaller matter 
 as the sunny Archipelago of the Horatian Odes, by 
 no means breaks upon most of us in the form of a 
 sudden revelation. It is oulj' by a gradual dispersion 
 of the veiling mists of language, accompanied by as 
 gradual an education of the imaginative eye, that 
 most of us ever attain to any clear view of these 
 great sights at all ; and, other things being equal, he 
 whose faculty of literarj- vision has had the longest 
 training is likely to see thein best. 
 
 But though 1 do not admit that the strictly critical, 
 or even the minutely grammatical study of the Latin 
 and Greek classics which is or was exacted from 
 schoolboys before they are or were of an age to ap- 
 preciate the literary excellence of those works is 
 really responsible for the consequences sometimes 
 sought to be attached to it, I would not go so far as 
 to deny that Englisli scholastic traditions may some- 
 what too rigidly prescribe the selection of text-books. 
 I would not take upon me to maintain that they con- 
 cede as much as they might to that natural desire of 
 the student for what ho can understand and in a 
 
 199
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 great measure appreciate at the moment ; and that 
 they do as much as they might in the way of supply- 
 ing him with that most potent of all incentives to the 
 study of a language, a lively interest in the subject- 
 matter of the work in which that language is being 
 studied. Such a reflection presses with peculiar im- 
 portunity upon a lover of Lucian. How comes it, he 
 is apt to ask himself, that so many schoolboys have 
 been breaking their teeth for generations past over 
 ' craggy ' bits of Thucydides, or plodding along un- 
 interested through the lonicisms of the Father of 
 Histor}^ while Lucian's delightful dialogues, abound- 
 ing, even for those who are too young to relish their 
 inimitable satire, with the fascination of dramatic life 
 and movement, have been permitted to slumber on 
 the pedagogic shelves ? For a slumber to all intents 
 and purposes it has been, since it was never worth 
 while to have disturbed the neglected humourist for 
 the mere sake of the snippets of dialogue which I 
 recollect as helping to furnish forth the school 
 Analecta of forty years ago. Why should not our 
 schoolmasters have put their sixth forms through the 
 whole three sets of dialogues — the Dialogues of the 
 Gods, of the ISea Gods, and of the Dead, together 
 with Zeus the Tragedian, the Tcaro-Menippus, the Vera 
 Historia, and perhaps one or two other pieces ? 
 Why, above all, should not the University of Oxford 
 have long since opened the door of Moderations (let 
 
 200
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 US hope it has done so by this time) to Lucian, as an 
 author who may be ' taken in ' to the schools as a 
 whole? What indeed has excluded him? Not his 
 unorthodoxy surely, for that can hardly shock anyone 
 but a Polytheist. Not his Greek, for it is excellent, 
 a genuine Platonic revival, in the literary instead of 
 the philosophical sense — a revival effected by that 
 best of revivalists, the writer who has saturated him- 
 self with the thought and style of the original. And 
 its stimulating power for a student of the under- 
 graduate age would of course be much greater than 
 it is for the schoolboy who, though he is or should 
 be able to understand and appreciate a straight- 
 forward joke, is hardly at home with irony of the 
 graver kind. Why should not schoolboys be in- 
 troduced to the True History^ earliest of essays in the 
 humorous-imaginative, archetype of so many a later 
 effort of satiric fancy, founder of the family of w^hich 
 the immortal Captain Lemuel Gulliver is the most il- 
 lustrious son ? Or why not to the Icaro-Menippus, that 
 ironical Sindbad whose aerial flight on the borrowed 
 ■wings of an eagle and a vulture would surely be as 
 full of narrative charm even for the youngest reader 
 as his sardonic survey of our auts'-uest of an earth 
 is full of philosophic pungency for the adult ? Many 
 of us have found it difficult to determine whether the 
 delights of Gulliver are greater for the young than 
 for the old — greater for those to whom Lihputiaus 
 
 201
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 and Brobdingnagians are merely creatures of a new 
 and wonderful world in no allegorical relations 
 with our own, or to those who are of an age to 
 understand its inner meaning, and to wonder at the 
 triumphant art by which every fresh stroke of the 
 fancy is made to drive home the barb of the satire. 
 Lucian as a satirist is not of course to be compared 
 with Swift, but he possesses Swift's rare power of 
 combining the fascinating story-teller with the grave 
 humoiu'ist ; and, minor as is the degree in which he 
 exhibits this combination, it is sufficient to give him 
 an absolutely unique place among the writers of the 
 ancient world. 
 
 Let me here remark that in the foregoing sentence 
 ' grave ' is the emphatic word. There is nothing 
 \7hich so pointedly distinguishes Lucian from all his 
 predecessors, Greek or Latin, in the field either of 
 poetic or pedestrian satire — nothing which more 
 brings him into such close kindred with the greatest 
 satirists of modern times, than the invincible gravity 
 of his manner. It is this which makes his elaborate 
 and pertinacious ridicule of the Polytheistic legends 
 in his Dialogues of the Gods and of the Dead so 
 curiously effective. Unlike Voltaire, with whom he 
 is often, though not always i think judiciously, com- 
 pared, he never allows himself to interpolate any 
 irrelevant witticism of his own in his exposure of the 
 mythical absurdities of the decaying creed at which 
 
 ^^ 202
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 be mocked. Dramatic propriety is always strictly 
 maintained. His Zeus, his Hera, his Aphrodite, his 
 Hermes, are the Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Hermes of 
 the ' ages ol' faith.' The admirable comedy of their 
 presentment is produced and preserved by the simple 
 but essentially artistic device of exhibiting these sur- 
 vivals of a childlike and unmoral period of human 
 thought in all their gross and glaring repugnancy to 
 the intelligence of a refined and cultivated and 
 sceptical era. The amours of Jove, the jealousies of 
 his consort, the miraculous births of Minerva and 
 Bacchus, are recounted or commented upon in a 
 demurely matter-of-fact fashion which is infinitel}' 
 more efFectivo for the purpose than the broadest 
 burlesque. In so far as we may regard Lucian as 
 writing with a dehberately rationalistic purpose, he 
 could not have adopted a better method. 
 
 But it is a mistake, I think, of the over-serious in 
 all ages to suppose that this deliberately ratiouaHstic 
 purpose was always present to Lucian's mind. He 
 was a born scoffer — not merely at holy or reputedly 
 holy things, but at all things profane as well as 
 sacred. For instance, much superfluous ingenuity 
 has been expended on the question as to which, if 
 any, school of philosophy Lucian belonged, the 
 worthy debaters of this question having been greatly 
 exercised in their minds by his indiscriminate ridicule 
 of every philosophy without exception in the Auction 
 
 203
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 of Lives. Of course the simple explanation of the 
 puzzle is that he avus a humourist first and a 
 philosopher afterwards. Such preferences as he 
 might have for any particular philosophical systems 
 would not iu the least have prevented him from 
 sharpening his wit upon them, and might indeed 
 have very likely induced him to give it a keener 
 edge. He says of Alexander the Impostor, in his 
 vivid sketch of that singular charlatan, that of all 
 philosophers he hated Epicurus the most. ' As well 
 he might,' adds Lucian, with honest Avarmth. ' For 
 with whom else should a juggler, a sham miracle- 
 monger, and a truth-hater more rightly Avage war 
 than with Epicurus, the philosopher who has pene- 
 trated into things, and alone among men discovered 
 their hidden truth?' Yet the Epicurean iu the 
 Auction of Lives is knocked down for a couple of 
 mina3 — only a little more than eight pounds English I 
 If it be asked how Ave knoAV that this is a .poor price 
 for a philosopher, the answer is that Socrates is 
 bought by Dio of Syracuse for four hundred and 
 eighty-seven pounds tea shillings ; that even 
 Pythagoras, AA'ho is the most unmercifully ridiculed 
 of all, goes for 0A*er forty pounds; and that if the 
 Cyrenaic has to be -reserved,' it is not so much 
 because of the moral defects of his theory as be- 
 cause of the costliness of reducing it to practice. 
 ' You Avill have,' says a half-intending bidder 
 
 204
 
 ♦ LUCIAN 
 
 candidly, ' to look about for a wealthier purchaser. I 
 am simply not in a position to buy the " merry life " of 
 this philosophy.' ' It looks, Zeus,' observes Hermes, 
 ' as if this lot would remain on our hands.' ' Let him 
 stand on one side,' replies the Father of gods and 
 men promptly, 'and put up another.' Whereupon 
 Democritus and Heraclitus take their places on the 
 stand to be sold ' in one lot ;' and as I find it im- 
 possible to get away from the Auction of Lives with- 
 out an attempt at Englishing its excellent drolleries, 
 I shall take leave to give a brief extract (freely 
 paraphrased where the jest is untrauslateable) from 
 Lucian's report of the proceedings. 
 
 ' Hermes. Come forward, if you please, you two. I have here 
 two most excellent Lives to offer. We put them up as the wisest 
 of them all. 
 
 ' Buyer. Good heavens, what a contrast ! One of them is 
 continually laughing ; while the other has apparently lost a friend, 
 for he is as incessantly weeping. What does it all mean ? You, 
 sir, 1 am addressing. What are you laughing at? 
 
 'Democritus. What am I laughing at? What a question! 
 Why, at the ridiculous human race and their ridiculous affairs.' 
 
 ' B. What ? You are laughing us and our affairs to scorn ? 
 
 ' Z>. Most assuredly. There is nothing serious about them. 
 Vanity are they all : a rush of atoms through the infinite void. 
 
 ' D. Vanity yourself ! You and the infinite void you have got 
 in your head. Still laughing, eh ? What impudence ! But you 
 my good sir, to whom it seems better to address myself , — what are 
 you weeping for ? 
 
 ' Heraclitus. My friend, I regard all the affairs of men as 
 miserable and tear-worthy, and wretched in their subjection to 
 death. That is why T pity and weep over them. I have but a 
 
 205
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 small opiniou of the j)rescnt, and the fixture I regard as absolute- 
 ly dreadful— a future of conflagration and cosmic catastrophe. I 
 lament, too, that there is no fixity or stability anywhere, but 
 that things are whirled round as if they were in a barley- 
 stirabout — pain and pleasure, knowledge and ignorance, the great 
 and the little, dancing up and down and changing places, — a sort 
 of a puss-iu-the-coruer of Eternity. 
 
 '£. What is Eternity? 
 
 ' H. Eternity? A schoolboy at play with his draught-board, 
 or wrangling with his school-mates. 
 
 ' B. What then are men ? 
 
 ' H. Men are mortal gods. 
 
 ' B. And gods ? 
 
 ' H. Immortal men. 
 
 ' B. You repeat riddles, sir, or you are yourself an inventor of 
 conundrums. You are as obscure as Apollo himself. 
 
 ' H. I care nothing for you. 
 
 ' B. Indeed. Then no sensible man will buy you. 
 
 ' H. Weep all of you, from youth upwards. Buyers or not, 
 I adjure you all to weej). 
 
 ' B. This gentleman's complaint does not widely differ from 
 melancholy. I shall not buy either of them. 
 
 ' Herm. Again, an unsold lot ! 
 
 ' Zeus. Put up another.' 
 
 Aucl Socrates is theu brought forward to be valued 
 by Lucian (who certainly knew his Plato well, and 
 must have admired him) with an amount of irrever- 
 ence wliich would of itself suffice to show that there 
 was no malice or even serious purpose in this par- 
 ticular jest. 
 
 And so, J am persuaded, it often is with Lucian. 
 It is no doubt true enough that where the specific 
 Polytheistic faith is a gross or demorahzing one, he 
 
 206
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 may have been inspired to his ridicule of it by some 
 contemptuous indignation at the thought that the 
 vulgar beheved it; but in much the larger majority 
 of cases there is no trace of any such feeling. This 
 distinction is plainly to be seen in his dealing vrith 
 the nether world. No doubt he was as desiroui? as 
 Lucretius to discredit the belief in Hades as a place of 
 material torment; as for instance in the curious 
 dialogue between Menippus and Tantalus, in which 
 the Cynic, after pointing out with admirable good 
 sense to the Phrygian king that having no body 
 he could not possibly thirst, proceeds to dispose 
 of what were evidently contemporary efforts to 
 spiritualize the meaning of the pagan legend. But 
 when the myth was mere harmless poetry, — such for 
 example as that of the Charon and his ferry-boat, of 
 whom and which Lucian makes such continual fun, 
 — it is unnecessary to suppose that the pleasantries 
 were meant to be particularly hostile. It is indeed 
 unhkely that a writer who had his Homer literally 
 at his fingers' end, with a line from the Iliad or 
 (Mijssey ready for every possible occasion, and who 
 dearly appreciated the poetic beauty of those immor- 
 tal ballads, should, as some commentators would ap- 
 parently have us believe, have deliberately set to work 
 to bring the poet into contempt. Much more reason- 
 able is it to suppose that it Avas simply the strong 
 instinct of burlesque which impelled Lucian to bring 
 
 207
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 out for more mirth's sake the anthropomorpbic side 
 of the religious legeucl, which he himself does not 
 scruple to employ, allegorically of course, for the 
 serious purposes of liis ofteu profound satire on the 
 vanities of human life. He quite sees, for instance, 
 as the Charon dialogue shows, how much might be 
 made in the serious vein out of the old ferryman of 
 the Styx ; but that does not prevent him from getting 
 fun out of a matter-of-fact application of the legend 
 which makes him receive a toll from the dead for 
 ferrying them over, and represents him as ' in account 
 with ' Mercury for goods supplied. The quaint com- 
 mercial gravity of the short dialogue between the 
 two on that subject could evidently have had no 
 didactic afterthought of any kind. 
 
 ' Herm. Let us go through our accouuts, if you please, Mr. 
 Ferryman, and see at once what you owe me, in order to prevent 
 disputes hereafter. 
 
 ' Char. Let us go through them, by all means, Hermes ; it will 
 be better to ascertain them at once and save future trouble. 
 
 ' H. Yqvy well, then. To one anchor, procured by me to your 
 order, five drachm eg. 
 
 ' Ch. A stiff price ! 
 
 ' H. It's what I had to give, though, by Pluto ; five drachmae, 
 no less. Then the oar-thoug, two obols. 
 
 ' Ch. Right. Put down five drachma} and two obol?. 
 
 ' H. And a darning-needle for the sail. That I had to give five 
 obols for. 
 
 ' Ch. Down with the five obols. 
 
 ' H. And wax for stopping leaks, and nails, and the rope you 
 made a brace of — two drachmae the lot. 
 
 ' Ch. Good ; you got those a bai'gaiu. 
 
 208
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 * H. Well, that is all, unless something has escaped my memory. 
 And now, when are you going to pay up ? 
 
 ' Ch. At present, Hermes, I regret to say I am not in a position 
 to do so. Times are too bad. If a good plague now, or a war, 
 were to send me down a crowd of passengers, I might turn an 
 honest penny on the whole number of them by cooking the 
 accounts of the fares. 
 
 ' H. Then I suppose I must sit down and hope for the worst, — 
 that I may get my debt paid out of these calamities. 
 
 ' Ch. I am afraid there is no help for it. You see yourself 
 what business is like : how few arrivals there are. These are the 
 piping times of peace. 
 
 ' H. Well, 'tis better so, even if it does somewhat delay the 
 payment of my debt. But think of the old times, Charon. You 
 remember in what sort of plight the men of those days used to 
 come down to us — sturdy fellows all, bathed in blood most of 
 them, or riddled with wounds. But nowadays it is some one who 
 has been dcsed out of the world by a wife or a son, or who has 
 swollen himself to death, by way of stomach and lips, with glut- 
 tony — pallid miserable wretches, not to compare with their fore- 
 fathers. Most of them, to judge by their appearance, find their 
 way here through plotting to get each other's money. 
 
 ' Ch. Yes, 'tis an article in considerable request. 
 
 ' H. To be sure ; but how then could you blame me if I were 
 sternly to demand payment of my debt ?' 
 
 The iconoclastic satirist — the writer who sets him- 
 self to ' sap a creed,' whether ' solemn ' or not, even 
 with a sneer which is not solemn but lively — is not 
 as a rule a very attractive personality. Many worthy 
 people, quite capable of admiring his extraordinary 
 and many-sided genius, have never succeeded in tak- 
 ing Voltaire thoroughly to their hearts. Even the 
 tolerant Charles Lamb admitted just so much want 
 of sympathy with the brilliant Frenchman as is im- 
 
 P
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 plied in the remark that he would not care to ' read 
 Candide in a church.' But I cannot understand any- 
 one reading the works of Lucian — dialogues, rhetorical 
 exercises, burlesques, romance, or what not — intelli- 
 gently and appreciatively, and feeling anything of 
 that kind of half-repugnance which, even while he 
 dazzles, the scoffer at the religious weaknesses of his 
 fellows excites in so many minds. To my thinking he 
 is saved from that by a thorough geniality of humour 
 which in most of the scoffers, and in the very greatest 
 of them all, is almost or altogether wanting. No 
 one, I should think, could read the charming little 
 autobiographical sketch which he has left us in the 
 Dream (would that many another by many another 
 hand of ancient times had been written and had sur- 
 vived !) without feehug attracted to the man who 
 wrote it. The touch is so light, the style so frank 
 and unaffected, that one cannot imagine the author 
 to have been other than a good fellow. 
 
 Lucian adds another to that tolerably numerous 
 list of great names in literature whose owners had 
 been destined in the parental counsels for quite a 
 different walk in life. His account of this matter is 
 delightful. He was the son of parents in poor cir- 
 cumstances, and when he had reached his fifteenth 
 year his father was advised by friends of the family, 
 officious in all ages, to take him from school and ap- 
 prentice him to his uncle, a statuary — probably not 
 
 210
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 in a very flourishing way of business, but who at any 
 rate, as did many more distinguished artists then and 
 since, combined the profession of the sculptor wit!i 
 something like the handicraft of a working mason — 
 the scheme was thought the more hopeful because 
 the youth was supposed to have shown a turn for 
 art. In his play hours, he says, ' I had been accus- 
 tomed to model oxen, horses, or even, heaven save 
 the mark ! men, out of wax, and as my father thought, 
 cleverly. I was caned for my performances by my 
 master, but still they obtained me the praise of native 
 genius, and my plastic dexterity raised good hopes 
 that I should speedily master my art.' To his maternal 
 the uncle's studio or workshop accordingly was 
 little Lucian sent, thinking with what pride he would 
 bear himself before his school-fellows when he could 
 model gods, or portraits of himself or of whomsoever 
 he pleased among them. His uncle began by giving 
 him a chisel, and bidding him use it gently on a 
 marble slab before him, sententiously delivering him- 
 self at the same time of the gnome that the ' begin- 
 ning is half of the whole.' The beginning in the 
 youthful apprentice's case was more than half of the 
 whole: it was the whole itself. Bearing too hard 
 upon the instrument, Lucian broke the slab which he 
 had been set to polish, and the indignant statuary 
 caught up a leathern thong which lay near him, and 
 administered chastisement in ' no very mildly 'per- 
 
 p2
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 snasive manner, so that tears were my introduction 
 to art. I ran home choldng with sobs, and over- 
 flowing with tears ; and there I recited the pathetic 
 story of the thong and showed my stripes, and com- 
 plained of the great cruelty of my uncle,' adding 
 (this is a delicious touch), 'that it was due to his 
 envious fear of my excelhug him in his art. My 
 indignant mother heaped reproaches upon her brother, 
 and I rethed still in tears to my bed, there to pass a 
 night of sleepless cogitation.' 
 
 Thus far, continues Lucian, who evidently com- 
 posed and delivered the Dream as a lecture, perhaps 
 to an audience of his own fellow-citizens of Samosata, 
 after his return from his travels, ' I have been re- 
 counting to you merely ridiculous and boyish inci- 
 dents ; but what follows, gentlemen, [the co avSpe<; 
 stamps the character of the piece,] is not to be as 
 lightly accounted.' And what does follow is the 
 finely-told story of a vision, in which Paideia and 
 Techu^ (Learning and Handicraft) contend for him 
 like Virtue and Vice for Hercules in the Fable of 
 Prodicus. Handicraft was ' dressed in artisan's garb, 
 a masculine-looking, shock-headed, horny-handed 
 creature, covered with marble dust, hke my uncle at 
 the stone-polishing work.' Her rival Avas fair to look 
 upon, graceful of figure and comely of dress. Handi- 
 craft, who is the first to address Lucian, warns him 
 not to condemn her for her squaHd appearance, ' since 
 
 212
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 from such beginnings came Phidias who revealed 
 Zeus to the world, and Polycletus who wrought the 
 Hera, and the much-praised Mj^ron and Praxiteles 
 the wonderful — men who are now honoured next to 
 the gods/ Learning, however, reminds him that 
 everybody cannot be a Phidias or a Praxiteles, and 
 that even those who admire the art of those masters 
 do not envy them the actual practice of their calling ; 
 and Learning wins the day. Lucian quitted the 
 workshop for ever, and rose, as he tells his audience, 
 to fame and fortune by letters. And he concludes 
 his lecture with the moral, possibly of doubtful wis- 
 dom in those days as in these, that youth should 
 always follow the supposed bent of its genius, and 
 Avith the moral no more doubtful in those days than 
 in these, that the mere dread of poverty ought not 
 alone to be sufficient to deter him from following 
 it. 
 
 From the date of this fortunate accident at his 
 uncle's— how thankful we ought to be that the mar- 
 ble slab was not a little more tough, or the leathern 
 thong a little less so ! — until some thirty years later, 
 that is to say from about 135 a.d. to about IGo A.D., 
 Lucian led the wandering life of the sophistes, or paid 
 rhetorician, of those days. In his twentieth year, or 
 four years after quitting his native Syria, he seems to 
 have visited Greece, and to have made the acquaint- 
 ance of the Platonic philosopher Nigrinus, who gives 
 
 213
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 the title to one of the dialogues. Other passages 
 from his writings — for it is, of course, from these 
 alone that our scanty knowledge of his life has been 
 built up — shov/ that he practised for some time at the 
 bar in Antioch, but abandoned the profession of the 
 law in disgust at the dishonesty of its practitioners ; 
 that he visited Rome in about his thirtieth year ; that 
 from Italy he passed into Southern Gaul, where he 
 remained to exercise his calling of rhetorician, or pub- 
 lic lecturer, for some ten years ; that thence he re- 
 turned to his native place ; and that j&nally, about 
 the age of forty-five, he migrated with the surviving 
 members of his family to Athens, where he passed 
 nearly the whole of the remainder of his life. All 
 that is further known of him is the curious and inter- 
 esting fact that at an advanced age his circumstances 
 became reduced ; that he was only saved from poverty 
 by the timely interference of some imperial patron — 
 which of the Roman emperors it was is not quite cer- 
 tain — and that the most famous writer of his age and 
 country died a judicial sinecurist. He was appointed 
 to the clerkship or registrarship of the law-courts of 
 Alexandria, the duties of which office he delegated to 
 a deputy, so that he was enabled to spend the re- 
 mainder of his life in comfort at Athens. 
 
 His defence of himself was characteristic. He had 
 in one of his earlier satirical pieces somewhat bitterly 
 criticized those of his order who accepted the posi- 
 
 2U
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 tiou of salaried dependent in the houses of the rich ; 
 and after accepting the sinecure ofiSce from the 
 Emperor he composed an Apology, addressed to his 
 friend Sabinus, in which he pointed out how vevy 
 different a case was his from that of those whom he 
 had assailed with his satire. 
 
 ' In my present capacity,' he argues, ' I remain an independent 
 man ; while my public office is one of great honour and authority. 
 Practically I administer a large share of the Imperial government 
 in Egypt. I grant judicial decrees. I fix the order of judicial pro- 
 ceedings, and see to the keeping of their records. I arrange and 
 regulate the pleadings of litigants, and I look after the registration 
 and faithful prosecution of the edicts of the Sovereign. Further 
 you must remember that my emoluments come to me not from a 
 Ijrivate individual, but from the Emperor, and that they are very 
 handsome ; and that the post gives good hopes of leading to fur- 
 ther advancement.' 
 
 And he humorously goes on to argue that since the 
 Emperor himself did not scruple to receive very splen- 
 did douceurs in the shape of dedicatory shrines and 
 statues, and other material as well as moral forms of 
 gratification, over and above the regular revenues, 
 a humble citizen might certainly be excused for 
 following his example at a properly respectful 
 distance. 
 
 Luciau, as his latest translator observes — and it is 
 another point of justification for the well-worn com- 
 parison between him and Voltaire — displayed an 
 extraordinary versatiUty of talent. ' He is almost 
 encyclopedic,' says one of his translators, 'in the 
 
 215
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 extent and rarity of bis productions. He was critic, 
 moralist, philosopher, politician, poet, romancist, 
 litterateur.' It is strange that Mr. Williams should 
 have left out the title by which he is the best known 
 to posterity — that of satirist ; and indeed to the clas- 
 sification of ' romancist ' he might have added with 
 but a slight deviation from technical accuracy that 
 of dramatist also, for Lucian's dramatic gift is as- 
 suredly conspicuous in all his dialogues. His personw 
 are not, as Landor's in most cases almost avowedly 
 and designedly were, mere mouthpieces for the ex- 
 position of his own views. They are almost always 
 distinct and individualized. Examples of this abound 
 in the Dialogues of the Gods : an excellent instance 
 of it appearing in the scene between Hermes, Paris, 
 and the three goddesses who compete for the prize 
 of beauty. Nothing could be more delicate and skil- 
 ful than the discrimination with which the varying 
 characters of the three divine ladies are hit off. The 
 spiteful jealousy of Hera is particularly well brought 
 out in her apparently innocent suggestion, on reach- 
 ing Mount Ida, that Aphrodite should go first and 
 show the way, having familiarized herself, ' they do 
 say,' with the locality by her frequent visits to Au- 
 chises. Much of the same power of dramatic char- 
 acterization is displayed in the exceedingly droll 
 colloquy between Zeus and Hera on the subject of 
 the misconduct of Ixion, a piece in which a con- 
 
 216
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 temporary critic has well noted ' the admirable dis- 
 tinction of the reprobate masculine humour of one 
 speaker from the feminine, though highly creditable, 
 incapacity to appreciate humour in the latter.' 
 Lucian's highest effort of comedy, however, is his 
 Zeus tlie Tragedian — the scene of the meeting 
 convened by the uneasy father of the gods to con- 
 sider the grave question of the dechne in mortal 
 reverence which the Olympian family had recently 
 undergone, and the best measures to be taken for 
 stemming the tide of infidelity. The deeper satire of 
 the piece is excellent, but not less so in its way is the 
 broad Aristophanic fun of the ceremony of convoca- 
 tion and of the arrangement of the delicate question 
 of precedence. Hermes, as master of the ceremonies, 
 as well as usher (a sort of combination of Gold Stick 
 and Black Rod) is directed by Zeus to seat the gods 
 as they arrive, according to rank as fixed either by 
 material or art : the Golden in the front rank, the 
 Silver next, then the Ivory, and lastly the Bronze and 
 Marble ones. Among these last art might be taken 
 into account, and precedence was to be given to the 
 gods of Phidias, Alcamenes, Myron and Euphranor ; 
 but the tag-rag and bob-tail, who have no pretensions 
 either to beauty of workmanship or intrinsic value, 
 are to take back seats, and be content to figure as 
 silent members. Upon this follows an admirable bit 
 of character. Mercury, as the patron of art, cannot 
 
 217
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 readily bring himself to assign such importance to 
 mere material costliness. How, he asks, if some of 
 these many hundred-weighted golden fellows be of 
 wretched workmanship, out of taste and proportion, 
 glaringly vulgar and plebeian? Are they to have 
 the pas of the bronzes of Myron, Polycletus, and 
 Phidias, and the marbles of Alcamenes ? Or should 
 Dot art by rights have the precedence ? ' By rights, 
 yes,' replies Jupiter ; « but still,' he adds, like the 
 thorough man of the world he is, ' it must be given 
 to gold.' This double-edged stroke of satire, which 
 at once hits an ignoble trait in human character and 
 the common weakness of anthropomorphism in all 
 human religions, is delivered by a master-hand. 
 
 Lucian's intimate and at the same time genially 
 tolerant knowledge of human nature is indeed con- 
 spicuous throughout his Avritiugs, and in none more 
 so, perhaps, than in the Hetasric Dialogues. The 
 gallery of female portraits through which one passes 
 in the series of conversations is not exactly an edify- 
 ing one, but only one or two of its presentments are 
 properly speaking unpresentable. For the rest it is 
 au extremely interesting procession, in which one 
 hardly knows whether to admire more the force and 
 truth with which Lucian has set forth some of the 
 eternal generic types of female character, or the skill 
 with which he has contrived to discriminate, through 
 a series of no fewer than fifteen dialogues, between 
 
 218
 
 LUCTAN 
 
 their specific illustrations. The lightness of touch 
 which he displays in these portions of his work he 
 owed no doubt in some measure to his training and 
 practice as a rhetorician. His purely rhetorical 
 exercises (mere fantasias, of course, as they now and 
 then arej are still worthy of study as something more 
 than mere old-world literary curiosities. We need not 
 suppose with Wieland that his Encomium on a Fly 
 was an impromptu recitation in order to feel plenty 
 of admiration for the grace and spirit with which the 
 little trifle is worked out. 
 
 It is of course, however, unnecessary to say that on 
 this side of Lucian's encyclopsedic genius he is 
 naturally the furthest removed from modern sym- 
 pathies. Nowadays we have nothing like — or at any 
 rate nothing avowedly, even if we have anything in- 
 tentionally, like — the rhetorical exercise of a travel- 
 ling lecturer of the second century of the Christian 
 era. It is extinct as a literary form ; and of course 
 the place of an ancient writer in modern estimation 
 will be fixed by the work which he has left behind 
 him in those forms which have proved imperishable. 
 In such forms, however, lies the bulk of Lucian's 
 work. It is in satire — the department of his pro- 
 ductions which Mr. Williams has so siragularly 
 omitted to specify in the foregoing list — that Lucian 
 has most clearly established his claim to a 
 place among the great writers of all time : not 
 
 219
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 of course in theological satire alone, or even 
 principally, though it is to that branch of his satiric 
 work that most attention has been given by the 
 world at large, aad perhaps 'even by the narrower 
 world of scholars. For though he lives and will live 
 as a satirist in a,ll acceptations, particular as well as 
 general, of the term, he will not live so surely, or at 
 any rate not so justly, for his witty raillery at a dying 
 superstition, as for the broad philosophic disdain with 
 which he contemplates human life in the man. His 
 topics are of course and necessarily those which have 
 been the commonplaces of satire in all ages — the 
 vanity of wealth and power, the self-torment of 
 avarice and ambition, the folly and pretension of 
 human philosophies, the dream-stuff of life itself. 
 Every satirist that ever lived has had his say on 
 these matters ; but it is only a few of the very great- 
 est who have handled them with such command as 
 Luciau. His eye and hand are unerring. It matters 
 not what is the dramatic stand-point which for the 
 moment he has selected. It matters not whether, as 
 in the Icaro-Menippus, he gazes down from his airy 
 height on this swarming ant-hill of humanity ; or 
 whether, as in the Dialogues of the under-world, he 
 looks up at us through the purged eyes of the dead ; 
 there is always the Shakespearean breadth of vision 
 though not of course the Shakespearean fiuahty of 
 touch. One of the masterpieces in satire of this widely- 
 
 220
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 reaching order is his Timon the Misanthrope — a piece 
 ■which is doubly interesting from the fact of its deal- 
 ing with a subject which has been also treated, if 
 only perhaps as a reconstruction of the work of 
 others, by Shakespeare himself. Whence Shake- 
 speare took his Timon is doubtful, and whether the 
 play which bears that name was founded upon and 
 contains the inferior matter of some other dramatists, 
 we know not ; but one thing is certain, that the 
 Timon of Shakespeare is not that mere vulgar 
 Thersites, the Timon of Plutarch, and that it is, 
 at least in many of its more striking and dignified 
 traits, the Timon of Lucian. There is little or no 
 probability of Shakespeare's having seen Lucian's 
 Dialogue, even in a translation ; but the coincidences 
 of action alone between the dialogue and the drama 
 are far too remarkable to be fortuitous. The Dia- 
 logue opens, indeed, with the very second scene of 
 Act iv., where the ruined Timon is discovered dig- 
 ging ; and though there is a strong dash of Lucian's 
 habitual burlesque in his hero's bitterly ironical in- 
 vocation of Zeus, the note of seriousness is struck al- 
 most immediately afterwards, and is maintained to 
 the end. The response of the father to the noisy out- 
 cry of this beggared dupe of the sycophant and the 
 sponge has a certain Olympian majesty about it. 
 ' Who is this, Hermes, that shouts to us thus out of 
 Attica from beside the base of Hymettus? Yort 
 
 221
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 squalid wretch in the garment of skins. See ! he who 
 stoops as though to dig. A prating fellow that, and 
 a daring one ; some philosopher belike ; for no one 
 else would have vented such a torrent of impious 
 words !' Hermes replies that it is Timon the sou of 
 Echecratides, the rich man who once feasted them 
 with so many hecatombs, but who had been brought 
 to ruin by the parasites upon whom he had wasted 
 his wealth. 
 
 ' Whilst these vultures were preying upou his liver, he thought 
 them his best frieutls, and that they fed upon him out of pure 
 love and affection. But they, after having picked his bones ac- 
 curately clean, and diligently sucked out any marrow they could 
 find in him, took their departure, leaving him withered and cut 
 down to the very roots, and, so far from assisting him in their 
 turn, declined either to recognize or look at him — for why should 
 they f Thus it is that, spade in hand, and in skin garments, he 
 digs for hire, ashamed to show himself in the city, and melan- 
 choly mad with his troubles ; since those who have fattened on 
 him now pass him haughtily by, as though they knew not his verj' 
 name, whether it be Timon or no.' 
 
 Jupiter then resolves to despatch Hermes and 
 Plutus to bestow new wealth on Timon — a command 
 which the god of riches very reluctantly obeys, 
 urging that if he returns to the spendthrift he will 
 only become once more the prey of parasites and 
 courtesans. On their way to earth the two gods 
 discuss mankind and their employment of wealth in 
 a vein of the keenest satire; and, reaching Timon at 
 last, they find him working with his spade, in com- 
 
 222
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 pany with Labour, Wisdom, and Courage— attend- 
 ants, according to their invariable wont, in the train 
 of Poverty. Poverty, on learning their errand, 
 complains bitterly. 
 
 ' Would you take from me,' she asks, ' the man whom I re- 
 ceived from Luxury in sucli miserable plight, aud whom I handed 
 over to Labour aud "Wisdom to turn into the man of dignity and 
 worth that you behold? Are you, Plutus, to rob me of him, and 
 to give him back again to Arrogance aud Vanity, in order that 
 they may reconvert him into the creature of effeminacy and folly 
 that he was before, aud that yet again he may return to me, this 
 time a worthless rag ?' 
 
 Timon, liowever, rejects the offer which Plutus 
 makes him, and the gods leave him, desiring him to 
 continue digging. He does so, and finds gold ; and 
 the fine outburst of cynicism with which he greets 
 the discover}'- should be compared with the parallel 
 passage in Shakespeare (Act iv., sc. 3), in which the 
 same incident occurs, if we w^ant to appreciate at 
 once the resemblance between the Timons of Lucian 
 and Shakespeare, and the difference between his two 
 delineators in point of imaginative wealth. It is clear 
 that the incident of the gold-finding, and of the 
 insults which the finder heaps upon his returning 
 parasites, must have been derived by Shakespeare 
 from some writer or other who had seen the Timon 
 of Lucian ; and no less clear is it to all who can re- 
 cognize Shakespeare's hand that none other man, 
 living or dead, could have helped him to the fiercely 
 
 223
 
 LUCTAN 
 
 passionate rhapsody wliich follows. Luciaii had 
 nothing, of course, of Shakespeare's torrent-flow of 
 imagination. The thought of the discovered trea- 
 sure does not bring all the multitudinous powers of 
 gold in a rush of imagery before his eyes. Lucian's 
 Timon turns at once to the thought of the use that 
 he will make of it in gratifying his eternal enmity 
 towards his race ; but the passage is one of great 
 power and even solemnity, and ma}- stand as one of 
 the finest specimens of Lucian's serious manner. 
 
 ' I will purchase the whole of this sequestered spot, aucl hereon 
 I will build me a tower, to keep my gold, to house myself and 
 none other, and to serve me for a tomb when I am dead. And 
 from thenceforth let my rule and law of life be this : To shun all 
 men, to know no man, to despise all ; to treat the name of friend, 
 of guest, of comrade, of the shrine of Pity herself, as an empty 
 sound. Let compassion for the unhappy, or succour for the 
 needy, be as the violation of law, and as the dissolution of morals. 
 Be my life solitary as the wolf's, and Timou alone be Timon's 
 friend. Let all other men be to me as foes and betrayers. Let 
 converse with them be pollution ; and the sight of them make 
 the day accursed.' 
 
 And in this strain he runs on in a sort of grim 
 parody of the style of his Psepldsma, winding up 
 with a ' decreed by us, Timon the son of Echecratides, 
 and confirmed by us the aforesaid Timon of the deme 
 of Colyttos.' He goes on to declare, almost in the very 
 words quoted with too painful a suspicion of a false 
 quantity by Shakespeare, that the name by which 
 he would most like to be called is that of misan- 
 
 224
 
 LUCIAN 
 
 thropos. But the whole dialogue should, as 1 have 
 said, be read together with the play ; and, if the 
 comparison leaves the eminence of the great Master 
 of all time as unapproachable as ever, it can never- 
 theless hardly fail to show (and this is all that 
 can ever be shown of any man) that more than one, 
 or even two, of the Master's vast array of gifts was 
 possessed, and in no insignificant measure, by Lucian 
 of Samosata.
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 A BOSWELLIAN FRAGMENT 
 
 Some days ago I accepted 
 for Dr. Johnson and myself an invitation to a Lon- 
 don spirit-party, at which a very distinguished author 
 was to be among the corporeal guests. It was with 
 some uneasiness that I announced this to my revered 
 friend, as hitherto I had been always accustomed to 
 take his pleasure on the matter before making any 
 engagement of the kind. At first, as I feared, he 
 took it very much amiss. ' Sir,' he said, ' you have 
 permitted yourself to use an unwarrantable freedom. 
 Why did you accept for me?' BoswELL : 'I imag- 
 ined, sir, that I was sufficiently acquainted with your 
 tastes to justify me in assuming that this visit to my 
 friend would be agreeable to you.' Johnson : ' Sir, 
 the event itself shows that you were mistaken, as 
 people commonly are who act upon " imaginations " ' 
 
 226
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GUUB STREET 
 
 (blowing with derision) ' as thongh they were rea- 
 soned beliefs. Sir, the very word yon employ con- 
 victs you of levity and oificiousness.' BOSWELL: 
 « You used to be well pleased to dine with our friend 
 Mr. Dilly, the bookseller, in the Poultry, where we 
 met many literary persons.' JOHNSON: *Well, sir, 
 and what of that ? This gentleman you speak of is 
 no friend of Mr. Dilly's, nor have I met him before.' 
 Boswell: 'True, sir; but 1 thought that as you 
 were formerly not averse from the company of 
 authors, you might be amused by again meeting one 
 of them.' Johnson (testily) : ' And so, eir, you 
 might argue that because I had a liking for roast 
 veal and stuffing, I should have an equal relish for 
 apple-pie and custard. Sir, you are talking at ran- 
 dom. Authors are not like peas in a pod, and, if 
 some of them are civil and clubbable men, we are 
 not to suppose that all are so.' I was casting about 
 for other excuses with which to mollify him, but he 
 cut me short. ' Nay, sir,' he said, ' let us deal plainly 
 with each other. You wished to accept the invita- 
 tion because you had a curiosity to meet the gentle- 
 man, and you father your own inclinations upon me.' 
 1 saw from the humour he was in that it would be 
 better to drop the subject for the time, in the ex- 
 pectation that when the day of our engagement ar- 
 rived, he would recur to it of his own accord, and in 
 a more compliant mood. Of this I was not disap- 
 
 q2
 
 THE EEVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 pointed, for when the day came he said, in a sudden 
 way : ' Well, sir, are we not going to your friend's V 
 To this I replied that I was myself ready and willing, 
 and shonld like nothing better; but that the least I 
 could do to atone for my unfortunate misapprehension 
 of his wishes was to make quite sure of them now, 
 and that I had merely been waiting for some indica- 
 tion of their direction. JoHXSON (smiKug) : ' I see, 
 sir, that you are determined to make an accomplice 
 of me. Well, let us go.' Here I saw my opportunity 
 for appeahng to his love of controversy. ' I beg, sir,' 
 I said, 'that you will not consider yourself under any 
 obligation to fulfil this unauthorised engagement 
 which I have made for you. Pray look upon yourself 
 as released from it.' JoHXSON : ' How can I do that, 
 sir, without permission, and what right have you to 
 permit me ? The right is your friend's, and he has 
 given you no more authority to release me than 1 
 gave you to bind me. Sir, you are seeking to make 
 amends for one freedom by committing another.' 
 BOSWELL : ' But surely, sir, it is not possible that an 
 undertaking given in your name, but without your 
 sanction, can impose upon you any liability to dis- 
 charge it.' Johnson : ' Why not, sir ? It happens 
 every day in the City of London. Yon have forgot 
 the maxim. Fieri non debet, factum valet. Your friend 
 may well suppose that I have given you a general 
 authority to accept invitations for me, and that I 
 
 228
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 have specially revoked it in his case. 1 should not 
 like the dog to think that we have no manners here. 
 Come, sir, let us go.' 
 
 His argumentative victory had so pleased him that 
 he started on his journey in high good humour ; 
 but before we reached my friend's house I saw that 
 a change had come over him. I believe he was 
 vexed by the informahty of the invitation, now that 
 he had time to reflect upon it, and came prepared to 
 stand on his dignity. He was certainly in his gruffest 
 mood when the Eminent Author, whose name I think 
 it better to conceal, was brought forward to be 
 introduced to him. 
 
 The conversation, to which I listened very atten- 
 tively, began thus : The AUTHOR : ' Dr. Johnson, 
 your most obedient servant.' .JoHNSON: 'Who are 
 you, sir ]' The Author : ' I am a humble soldier in 
 the army of which you were the illustrious com- 
 mander. My weapons are those which, in your 
 
 powerful hand ' Johnson : ' Nay, sir, 1 asked 
 
 for neither flatteries nor figures of speech. A plain 
 answer to a plain question will serve me well enough. 
 Are you a writer of books V The Author : ' That is 
 indeed my calling.' Johnson : ' Then, sir, 1 wish you 
 joy of it. It was a beggarly trade in my day, and 
 many a man who plied it had better left it alone. But 
 you, at any rate, seem to have prospered at it. There 
 are no holes in your coat, and you do not look as if 
 
 229
 
 THE EEVOLUTION IN GKUB STREET 
 
 you had ofteu had to go without your dinner.' The 
 Author (complacently) : ' 'Tis true, sir, I have been 
 prosperous enough. My last book has just reached 
 its fiftieth thousand.' Johnson : ' Sir, you surprise 
 rae. Either the sales of all books must be vastly 
 larger than ever I remember, or you must be the 
 most admired writer of your time, or indeed of all 
 time.' The Author : ' You offer me an emban-as- 
 sing choice of alternatives, Dr. Johnson ; and, un- 
 fortunately, honesty rejects the one which modesty 
 would prefer. 1 cannot truthfully say that the sales 
 of all books are larger than you remember them.' 
 Johnson : ' Is it an epic, sir f The Author : ' Some 
 of my friends are good enough to call it a prose 
 epic' Johnson : ' A prose epic ! Not like Mr. Mac- 
 pherson's Ossian, I trust.' The AUTHOR : ' No, in- 
 deed, it is a work of fiction.' JoHNSON : ' So, in my 
 opinion, was Mr. Macpherson's Ossian. But doubt- 
 less 3'ou may mean a romance, sir, like my own 
 Rasselas.' 
 
 The gentleman seemed rather discomposed, I 
 thought, at the comparison, and 1 judged it time to 
 come to his assistance. ' Perhaps, sir,' 1 said, ' Mr. 
 
 's romance is of a less philosophical cast than 
 
 your history of the Prince of Abyssinia.' Johnson : 
 ' Nay, sir, let the gentleman speak for himself. Why 
 trouble us with your " perhaps this," and " perhaps 
 t'other " ? You are wasting our time over coujec- 
 
 230
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 tures, when if yon would only be silent for a moment, 
 we should learn the facts. Was your romance a love- 
 story, sir?' The Author : 'It was; a story of love 
 and of betrayal.' Johnson : ' I surmised as much, 
 A tale after the manner of Dr. Goldsmith's Vicar of 
 Wakefield, I suppose?' Here the gentleman again 
 seemed a little in doubt, but, after a short pause, he 
 replied that, with allowances for differences of treat- 
 ment, the tale was one of the same kind. Johnson 
 (laughing and rolling about) : ' And you tell me, sir, 
 that the booksellers have sold fifty thousand copies 
 of this history of Jenny and Jessamy ? Pray, sir, at 
 what price ?' The Author : ' The published price is 
 six shillings.' JoHNSON : Six shillings only ! Then I 
 conclude it must be a little book.' The author, how- 
 ever, assured him that that was not the case. It was 
 at least three times the length of the Vicar of Wake- 
 field. At this Dr. Johnson was greatly surprised, be- 
 ing unable, as he said, to understand how so large a 
 book could be sold at such a price and return a profit. 
 ' Why, sir,' he inquired, ' what in the world does it 
 cost to produce if?' The gentleman replied, a shil- 
 ling. Johnson: 'What, and sells for six?' The 
 Author : ' No, sir, six shillings is but the published 
 price, as it is called. The price to the purchaser is only 
 some four shillings and sixpence.' Johnson : ' Be it 
 so, sir; but that leaves still a handsome profit to the 
 bookseller. Why, sir, if the fellow does all his busi- 
 231
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GEUB STREET 
 
 ness on those terms he must roll iu wealth.' The 
 Author : ' It is not all clear profit to him, but he 
 does very well.' 
 
 The conversation here shifted for a time to other 
 topics, but I could see that my illustrious friend was 
 still revolving in his mind the strange particulars he 
 had just heard, and that he was, above all, curious 
 to know what could have been the author's gains 
 from this marvellous book. I therefore had the tem- 
 erity to say : ' There is a question, sir, which I see 
 Dr. Johnson wishes to ask you ; but he is afraid to 
 do so for fear of appearing uncivil. He would like 
 to know what was the sum paid you for the book.' 
 I confess 1 put this question with no little trepidation, 
 and held myself prepared for a terrible rebuke ; but 
 to my great relief the Sage took my interference in 
 excellent part. ' Sir,' said he, smiling, ' when you 
 become better acquainted with Mr. Boswell, you will 
 find that it is his common practice to impute his own 
 weaknesses to me. But 1 own that, in this case, I 
 keep him in countenance. It would interest me much 
 to hear what the bookseller paid you for so vastly 
 successful a work.' The author not at once replying, 
 Dr. Johnson added : ' I trust the rogue did not get it 
 too cheap.' BoswELL : ' Dr. Goldsmith, sir, only got 
 sixty guineas for the Vica)- of Wakefield.' Johnson : 
 ' What of that, sir ? Beggars cannot be choosers, and 
 poor Goldy was in great straits when I found him a 
 
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 purchaser fov bis book.' Bosv^ELL: 'But the pur- 
 chaser, sir ! Ought any man to take advantage of 
 another in that situation V JOHXSON : ' Sir, what 
 matters whether he ought or not ? We know that, 
 as man is constituted, he usually will, and the spend- 
 thrift whose necessities place him at the mercy of 
 others should blame his own improvidence, not tlieir 
 cupidity. But you, sir,' (turning to the author,) ' can 
 have had no necessities for cupidity to prey upon. I 
 trust you did not part with your romance for less 
 than a hundred pounds?' 
 
 Here a gentleman of the company, who had been 
 listening to the talk with evident signs of amusement, 
 could contain himself no longer, and burst out a- 
 laughing. JOEXSON (sternly) : ' Sir, this ill-timed 
 merriment is mighty offensive. What was it in my 
 last speech that you are pleased to find ridiculous 1' 
 The gentleman, much alarmed, made haste to assure 
 Dr. Johnson that he meant no offence, and was laugh- 
 ing, not so much at anything that had been said, as 
 at his own thoughts. JOHNSON (somewhat mollified, 
 but unwilling to let the gentleman go without an- 
 other rub): 'For aught I know, sir, your thoughts 
 may deserve to be laughed at for their absurdity ; 
 but ' (smiHng) ' if it is their wit that tickles you, I 
 think you should share them with the company.' 
 The Gentleman (vastly relieved by the Sage's re- 
 turn to good hunionr) : ' With all my heart, though 
 
 233
 
 THE EEVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 I cannot claim the merit of wit for them. I happen 
 for my sins, or those of other people, to be a book- 
 seller, and I was laughing to myself at the thought 
 of what our successful authors would say if we paid 
 them as we did in your days.' JOHNSOX : '0 ho ! 
 sir, you are a bookseller, are yoii? Then you will be 
 
 able to check Mr. 's accounts for ns : at least, 
 
 when he renders them, which he seems somewhat 
 loth to do.' The Author -. ' Not at all. Dr. Johnson , 
 not at all, 1 assure you. I consider the labourer 
 worthy of his hire. I receive a modest royalty of 
 five-aud-twenty per cent., thirteen copies as twelve.' 
 Johnson : ' Sir, I do not catch your meaning.' The 
 gentleman who had described himself as a bookseller 
 explained that the royalty spoken of was a percent- 
 age on the published price of each cop}- sold, with 
 the exception of one in every thirteen, on which no 
 royalty is paid. The Author : 'It came to one and 
 fourpence-halfpenny a copy.^ 
 
 Dr. Johnson receiving this information in silence, 
 the author, after a few moments, observed, somewhat 
 anxiou.sl}-, ' I hope, sir, you do not consider that as 
 otherwise than a modest sum. But you say nothing.' 
 Johnson (something impatiently) : ' Sir, I wish you 
 would follow my example for a moment, if you desire 
 me to answer your questions. You mistake the 
 silence of computation for the reticence of dissent. 
 I was reckoning the profits of this love-story of yours, 
 
 234
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 and I find' (he added, after a few moments,) 'that 
 they come to near three thousand five hundred 
 pounds.' The Author : ' Well, sir, is that sum an 
 exorbitant one?' Johnson: 'Why, no, sir. It is 
 large, but we are to consider things in their relations. 
 There was a very large sum to be divided.' The 
 Author : ' Then you would not accuse me of un- 
 bridled greed for demanding and obtaining this share 
 of the sum so divisible?' JoHXSON : 'No, sir. Let 
 us not wrest language from its natural meaning. He 
 only is greedy who grasps at a larger share cf any- 
 thing than he can justly claim. The bookseller, I 
 suppose, was a free agent; and, if so, in agreeing to 
 your claim, he admitted its justice.' Boswell : ' But 
 might he not agree to it, sir, for reasons of his own, 
 yet -without considering it just V JoHNSON : ' I do 
 not think so. How can it be unjust for one man to 
 strike a bargain with another, which each judges to 
 be to his advantage ? Moreover, the event showed 
 
 that each judged rightly. The sale of Mr. 's 
 
 romance at four shiUings and sixpence, after it had 
 cost but a shilling to print and bind, left three shil- 
 lings and sixpence to be divided between the author 
 and the bookseller. If the author's share of this was 
 one shilling and fourpence-halfpenny, there must have 
 remained for the bookseller a profit of two shillings 
 and three-halfpence on each volume — surely a very 
 pretty sum.' 
 
 235
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GKUB STREET 
 
 Seeing that the bookssller was agaia hard put to 
 it to restrain his laughter, Johnson turned to him 
 and said good-humouredly, 'I see that either 1 or 
 this gentleman's thoughts have again been fortunate 
 enough to amuse him. If it be his thoughts, I hope 
 he will once more entertain us with them.' The 
 
 Bookseller : ' I wish, sir, you would ask Mr. 
 
 whether his bookseller —or, as he and I should call 
 him, his publisher — drew two shillings and three- 
 halfpence of profit per copy from the sale of his last 
 novel.' Johnson : ' Nay, sir, ask him yourself, or 
 tell us without asking him, since it is pretty evident 
 that you know.' But the author here interposed, 
 and admitted of his own accord that his publisher's 
 profit on the book had not amounted to more than 
 elevenpence a copy. Johnson : ' Then pray, sir, 
 what becomes of the rest of the money?' The 
 Author : ' Sir, it is sweated away as it passes 
 through the hands of middlemen. The London pub- 
 lisher, or bookseller, as you would have called liim, 
 passes it on to some great wholesale bookseller or 
 other, and by the time it reaches the country book- 
 shop there is nothing left but a beggarly shred of 
 profit for the last seller.' 
 
 As I saw that the bookseller was listening to this 
 with much impatience, and with many signs of a 
 desire to speak, I endeavoured to obtain a hearing 
 
 for him by interrupting Mr. with the words, 
 
 236
 
 THE EEVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 ' Sir, the gentleman wishes to be heard. Praj, sir, 
 give the gentleman leave.' Dr. Johnson, however, 
 seemed nettled at my interference, and rapped out 
 smartly: 'Nay, sir, give this gentleman leave. 
 
 Mr. , as I judge, is relating facts within his own 
 
 experience, and that is a relation which no one else 
 is quahfied to correct. 1 conclude that he is going 
 on to tell us why the seller of his book took it at all 
 from the man through whose hands it last passed if 
 he could not resell it at a reasonable profit, or why 
 he did not clap so much on to the last price as would 
 repay him.' The author assured us that this was 
 impossible, because of the active competition of 
 others in the trade who would undersell and ruin 
 him if he attempted such a thing. JoHXSON : ' Then 
 why, sir, does he not buy direct of the bookseller 
 who printed the work ? Why should he let any 
 wholesale dealer come between them V The Author : 
 ' That, sir, would in fact be competing with the 
 wholesale dealer, and he has not the capital for such 
 a venture.' JoHNSOX : ' Sir, if that is so, he had 
 better quit bookselling and shift his money to some 
 other concern.' The Author : ' Surely, sir, he has 
 a right to live and thrive on this business which his 
 father before him found at least profitable enough to 
 subsist upon. The publisher should take care that 
 the book reaches him at a price which will afford him 
 what we now call " a living wage." I have before 
 
 237
 
 THE EEVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 this stipulated with my pubhsher as part of mj'- own 
 agreement with him that the country bookseller 
 should get my book on such terms as will afford him 
 a decent margin of profit on the sales.' Johnson : 
 * Vastly well indeed, sir. Of course, if you choose 
 out of charity to forego a part of your own profits 
 (perhaps the fourpence-halfpeuuy over the shilHug 
 on each copy) in order that a v;orthy man may be 
 supported in a trade that he cannot make a living at, 
 you can do so, and there's an end on't.' 
 
 Here, for some reason or other, the company fell 
 silent. The bookseller seemed to be again so much 
 diverted with his own thoughts and with watching 
 the author (who appeared to me might}' uneasy) as 
 to have lost all his former inclination to speak. The 
 conversation, moreover, was becoming rather tedious 
 to myself, and I wished, if I could, to give it an 
 impulse in some new direction. I therefore turned 
 to the bookseller, and inquired the meaning of an 
 expression which had fallen from one of the company 
 before our talk about bookselling had begun. Who 
 and what, I asked, was the New Woman ? Seeing 
 that the gentleman hesitated a little, Johnson said, 
 pleasantly enough : ' You see, sir, that Mr. Boswell's 
 habit of curiosity still survives. But the term which 
 perplexes him is one I have never heard ; nor should 
 1 readily beheve that there is anything in nature 
 corresponding to it.' The Bookseller : ' What, sir, 
 
 238
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 you think a New Woman an impossibility ?' John- 
 son : ' Why, yes, sir, to be sure. Man himself has 
 changed but infiuitesimally in the course of ages, 
 and woman, in whom the primitive instincts are 
 necessarily stronger, changes with still more diffi- 
 culty.' BoswELL : ' What do you say, sir, to the 
 Varium et mutabile of Virgil T JOHNSON : ' Nay, sir, 
 you should finish your quotation before asking me 
 what I say to it. It is varium et mutabile SEilPER 
 femina. What do you say to the semper? The poet 
 is on my side, not yours. What he ascribes to 
 woman is an immutable mutability. He says in 
 eifect of her that she is constant to her inconstancy, 
 an unchanging type of change.' 
 
 I was not convinced nor, I think, was the book- 
 seller by the reply of Johnson's, Avho here, as in other 
 instances, seemed to mo to be merely talking for an 
 argumentative victory. But the author, who had re- 
 mained silent, and who seemed to me to be reflecting 
 with more and more disquiet on the remark Johnson 
 had last addressed to him, here broke in, a little 
 abruptly, with tlie question, ' Why, sir, should the 
 publisher exist at all ?' Johnson, who never rehshed 
 such sudden interruptions of a conversation in which 
 he was interested, answered him something shortly : 
 ' I thought we were done with your business, sir. 
 We cannot be for ever talking of you and your 
 wonderful book.' The author, however, seemed in 
 
 239
 
 THE EEVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 uo wise dashed by the Sage's reproof, but continued 
 to enlarge upon what was evidently the favourite 
 subject, with increasing vehemence of manner. 'Why 
 should we not deal directly with the country book- 
 seller, and squeeze out the publisher altogether? 
 Only two parties are necessary to the production of 
 a book : the man who makes it, and the man who 
 sells it to the public. The publisher is a modern in- 
 vention, or rather a late and superfluous growth. He 
 is a mere excrescence, a wart, a wen. He did not 
 exist in England even as recently as your own day, 
 Dr. Johnson. Authors then talked of writing for the 
 booksellers, not for the publishers.' JoHXSON : ' Why, 
 sir, what stuff is this ? How did Mr. Cave, or Mr. 
 Cadell, or Mr. Millar, or Mr. Dodsley differ from the 
 men you now call publishers ? It is true we talked 
 of writing for the booksellers: but the book had to 
 be made before it could be sold, and the one book- 
 seller who made it to be sold by himself and other 
 booksellers answered to your publisher. Do you say 
 there is no need for him ?' The Author : ' No, sir. 
 I repeat that only two parties are necessary to the 
 production of a book : the man who makes it, and the 
 man who sells it to the public' JoHNSON : ' Yes, sir, 
 1 hear you repeat it. Like many other disputants 
 you are content with merely repeating what it is 
 your business to elucidate and defend. Let me ob- 
 serve, however, that you do not state your own case 
 
 240
 
 THE EEVOLUTION IN GRUB STEEET 
 
 accurately, or as favourably for yourself as you might. 
 You say that two parties are necessary to the pro- 
 ductiou of a book, aud you set about to prove it by 
 adding that it takes one mau to produce the book 
 and another to sell it, which is a wholly different 
 operation. Why, sir,' (laughing), ' this is to talk Hke 
 the urchin who said that currant pie was of two kinds 
 — currant pie, and currant-and-raspberry pie.' 
 
 I saw that Johnson had put himself into good 
 humour by his jest, so I thought it well to interpose 
 no remark of my own. But the author, thinking to 
 trip up my venerable friend in his talk, exclaimed 
 rather loudly : * Be it so, sir ; I accept your estimate. 
 Let me say that only one man is required.' Johnson : 
 ' Let us say no such thing, sir. The estimate, as you 
 call it, is none of mine. I did but correct yours in 
 order to reduce it ad ahsurdum. For what can be 
 more absurd than to say that even to the production 
 of a book but one man is necessary — the man who 
 makes it. Is it then made by one man, aud that man 
 the author, or is it to be so made in future ? Is the 
 writer of the book to make the paper on which it is 
 printed, and to set up the type, and to bind the 
 volumes'?' The Author: 'No, sir, I do not mean 
 that. I should, perhaps, have used the word " dis- 
 tribution " instead of the word " production." It is 
 in the distribution of a book that the publisher is, in 
 my opinion, unnecessary. To that process there are, 
 
 R
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 I maiatain, but two necessary parties : the author 
 and the bookseller. Why should not the author send 
 his book direct from the printer and bookbinder to 
 the shop of the bookseller? A business representa- 
 tive, a clerk, a cashier, is all he would want for such 
 a purpose V Johnson : ' Does a book then drop 
 down from heaven ready printed and bound? If 
 not, how is it to be got into the hands of the printer 
 and bookbinder? Is the author's clerk, his cashier, 
 to do this business for him, too ? Is he to make his 
 contract with the paper-maker for the paper, and 
 v/ith the printer for the printing, and with the binder 
 for the binding ? Why, sir, at that rate every author 
 will have to keep a counting-house of his own, with 
 all its apparatus, and will have to spend more hours 
 at his ledger than in his library. Besides, if he can 
 do this, why stop there ? Why should he not abolish 
 the bookseller and sell his own books? Why not 
 plant a clerk or a cashier in a rented shop in fifty 
 country towns ? They could doubtless make shift to 
 sell a thousand copies each, and you would then add 
 the bookseller's profits, such as they are, on the whole 
 fifty thousand, to your own.' 
 
 In spite of the vigour with which Johnson pressed 
 home these arguments, the author still held his ground 
 sturdily. 'Publishers,' he complained, 'have been 
 threatening in a high and mighty fashion to send us 
 back to Grub Street, but we will show them that in 
 
 242
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 these days the dwellers iu Grub Street have learned 
 the lesson of revolt. They had no such temptation in 
 your time, Dr, Johnson ; for bookselling was iu a 
 thriving state in those days, and authors were not so 
 often starved out of existence.' Johnson (agitated) : 
 ' Hold, sir. You are now talking of matters you 
 know nothing of. In all ages there have been writers 
 who lacked bread, and there are some such, I doubt 
 not, in your own times. But if you think you would 
 have bettered yourselves by going back to the days 
 of Richard Savage, or if anyone has led } ou to sup- 
 pose that there were fewer pens scribbling in vain to 
 feed an empty belly in my time than in yours, why 
 then, sir, your credulity has been much abused. We 
 do not forget what we suffered in Grub Street, 
 though there is neither sense nor pleasure in recalling 
 it.' 
 
 I have not often seen this firm-minded and almost 
 stoick philosopher so deeply moved at an^'thing, and 
 by way of turning his thoughts in the more pleasant 
 direction of his own poetical treatment of this sad 
 subject, 1 softly whispered the well-known couplet 
 from the Vanity of Human Wishes: 
 
 ' There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, 
 Toil, envy, v/ant, the patron, and the jail.' 
 
 'At least/ I added, 'you have got rid of patrons.' 
 The Author : * There is but little gain in that. The 
 
 R 2
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 publisher is but the patrou iu another form. And 
 you know what the publisher is, Dr. Johnson ; you 
 
 who once knocked down a bookseller with a fo ' 
 
 Johnson (hastily) : ' Sir, it was not so. The story is 
 a ridiculous fable. The fellow was impertinent to 
 me, and I beat him ; but it was not with a folio. I 
 had too much respect for books.' The Author : 
 'But you have spoken against booksellers.' John- 
 son : ' Why, yes, sir ; and so may you have spoken 
 against those you have a value for. But I have said 
 much more for them than 1 have ever said against 
 them. Mr. Boswell's book, if indeed it is still to be 
 procured, will tell you that I spoke of them as 
 " generous, liberal-minded men." I acknowledged 
 myself to have been handsomely treated by Mr. 
 Millar for my Dictionary, though the sum I received 
 for it will seem email indeed to you, sir — a poor fif- 
 teen hundred and seventy-five pounds — but little 
 more than a third of the profits which have come to 
 you from your love-tale.' The Author : * Posterity, 
 Dr. Johnson, has admired your own magnanimity 
 more than the liberality of the booksellers.' JOHN- 
 SON : ' Sir, I am much beholden to posterity ; but, 
 wiiat is your own complaint of the booksellers ? You 
 do not seem to have fared so ill at their hands. Their 
 faults, whatever they are, have not prevented you 
 from obtaining a princely sum for your last work. 
 This seems no sufficient cause for a grudge against 
 
 244
 
 TPIE REVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 them.' The Author: 'Pardon me, Dr. Johnson, 
 but you mistake my motives. I have no grudge 
 against the publisher. I am merely anxious to pro- 
 tect the country bookseller.' Johnson : ' Oh, if that 
 is all you are concerned about, I think you may very 
 well let it alone. I had supposed that you wished 
 to increase your profits. You said, did you not, that 
 by dealing directly with the last handler of your book 
 before it goes to the reader you would put more into 
 your own pocket as well as into his ?' The 
 Author : ' True, I did say so ; and so it would be ; 
 but that is a consideration which does not weigh 
 with me. My object is to save the country book- 
 seller from extinction.' JOHNSON : ' Sir, the country 
 bookseller would have reason to be grateful to you, 
 but you would hardly earn the applause of the vir- 
 tuous by so invidious a benevolence. Nor will you 
 increase the sum of human happiness if you merely 
 save one trade from extinction by extinguishing 
 another.' 
 
 The author was about to answer, but Johnson, 
 who I perceived was becoming impatient of his 
 tenacity, anticipated his reply with a 'Nay, sir, I 
 beg you will use no further argument on a question 
 that, in truth, admits of none. Had you pleaded 
 your own interest you had silenced me ; for that 
 must be left to every man to decide for himself.' 
 BoswELL : ' Yes, sir, every man is the best judge of 
 
 245
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GKUB STREET 
 
 that.' Johnson : ' Why, no, sir, a man is not neces- 
 sarily the best judge of it. But he is the only judge 
 Avith an authoritative commission to act, or with any 
 power to execute his decrees. And so, sir, had you 
 told me that you were consulting your own advan- 
 tage in this, I had said nothing. But when you 
 inform me that you are for setting the world to rights 
 in this matter, I shall hardly be thought intrusive in 
 attempting to dissuade you from such an adventure. 
 It is not for fallible mortals to determine what law- 
 ful trades shall continue to exist for the good of 
 Society, or to essay the part of an earthly Providence 
 by attempting to cocker one trade and to crush out 
 another. No, sir, if you will be guided by me, you 
 will write another love-story, since such tales seem 
 most to take the present taste of the town, and see 
 if you cannot sell a hundred thousand copies of it at 
 the same, or, if you can obtain it, at a higher per- 
 centage, leaving the booksellers, in town and coun- 
 try, to settle their own bargains with, each other by 
 the higgling of the market.' 
 
 It being now cock-crow we took our leave, and on 
 our way back I ventured to rally Dr. Johnson on his 
 zeal in the cause of the booksellers. ' After all, sir,' 
 I said, ' is it any concern of the world how the author 
 and the bookseller divide their spoils ? And would 
 it not be more decent of them to keep their disputes 
 to themselves T Johnson : ' Why, yes, sir, that may 
 
 246
 
 THE KEVOLUTION IX GRUB STREET 
 
 be ; but we are not to allow ourselves to be put off 
 with false morality and bad reasoning in a public 
 controversy because the disputants ought to have 
 quarrelled in private. If a man and his wife fall to 
 fisticuffs in Drury Lane instead of within doors, we 
 may have an opinion on the battle and express it.' 
 BOSWELL : ' That is true, sir ; but we do not care a 
 fig which wins ; and why, then, should it matter to 
 
 you whether Mr. could extinguish publishers or 
 
 not ?' JoHNSOX : ' Sir, it does matter. It matters to 
 every man, woman, and child in the kingdom. Sup- 
 pose it were possible for him to do without the pub- 
 lisher in his own case, and, by that means, to drive 
 an even better trade in his own works than he seems 
 to have driven hitherto. Nay, suppose all other 
 writers of the same kind could do the same thing. 
 What would that prove as to the publishers' utility 
 or inutility to the world ? The gentleman talks as if 
 all literature were contained within the covers of 
 six-shilling romances that run through fifty editions 
 in a year. But unless all literature be, in fact, con- 
 tained therein, how will it fare with the remainder of 
 it? Could the publisher be dispensed with for that ? 
 Can the poet, the historian, the moralist, open shop 
 for themselves and send their own works by " a clerk 
 or a cashier " direct from the binder to the country 
 bookseller, to be by him disposed of to an eager 
 crowd of buyers at the rate of a thousand copies a 
 
 U7
 
 THE REVOLUTION IN GRUB STREET 
 
 week ? No, sir, we all well know that they cannot ; 
 and that, since they cannot, they will always need 
 the services of some trader — call him publisher, book- 
 seller, or what yon will — with capital enough to 
 undertake the venture, and to lie out of his money 
 till its slow returns come back to him.' 
 
 Though I was only half convinced, I did not well 
 see what to reply to this argument ; which, Johnson 
 noticing, he observed in a playful way .... 
 
 {Here, unfortunately^ the fragment ends.) 
 
 248
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 The royal roads to excellence in literary style are so 
 numerous, that one cannot but wonder at the small 
 number of those writers "who complete the journey. 
 And this wonder is increased when we remember by 
 whom it is that the plan of the country has been 
 drawn and the roads set down ; when we reflect that 
 this has been the work not of the mere theoretical 
 topographer tracing in his study the hypothetical 
 windings of a priori paths, but of the successful trav- 
 ellers in person. It is the men who have made the 
 journey themselves, that have supplied the materials 
 for the itineraries in chief repute ; and a most per- 
 plexing emharras de choix do they present. One great 
 writer has been reared on the Greek and Latin 
 classics; another has perfected himself by the as- 
 siduous study of the masterpieces, in every order of 
 writing, of his own tongue ; a third has given his 
 nights and days to the English Bible alone; a fourth 
 attributes his success to his habit of translating from 
 
 249
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 his own into other languages ; a fifth to his habit of 
 transkxtiug from other languages into his own ; until 
 at last the bewildered student is driven, according to 
 the measure of his own success, to one of the two 
 alternative conclusions, that all roads lead to Rome, 
 or none; that some men may acquire excellence of 
 style in any way, and that others can do so in no way 
 — that some are boru to move freely and gracefully 
 in composition, while others are destined to limp awk- 
 wardly on paper all their days. The only truth 
 which would seem to be beyond question in the 
 whole subject is the negative one that, be the capac- 
 ity itself innate or acquired, it is by practice only that 
 it can pass from the potential to the actual; just afe, 
 though it may be idle to discuss whether a consum- 
 mate swordsman is born or made, it is equally idle to 
 deny that no man can become a swordsman at all 
 without the laborious training of the fencing-school. 
 Yet even this modest proposition seems to be shaken 
 to its very foundation by such a case as that of 
 Pascal, and such a feat of consummate literary sword- 
 play as the Pvovincial Letters. Where, must many 
 an astonished Jesuit have asked, did this novice learn 
 his carte and tierce '? What is the use of long prac- 
 tice, what avails it to have studied every thrust — 
 foul as well as fair — that your maitre cCarmes can 
 teach you, if an invalid mathematician, who has 
 never taken a polemical rapier in his baud before, is 
 
 250
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 to beat clown your guard with disdainful ease at the 
 first assault, and only not run you through the body 
 because he can show his mastery and his contempt 
 more effectively by prolonging the bout ? And the 
 same question must suggest itself, with no diminution 
 of its interest, to all who turn from such records as we 
 possess of Pascal's life to that monument of his many- 
 sided genius which he has left behind him in the 
 Provincial Letters. 
 
 There is probably no case in which the intellectual 
 personality and intellectual history of an author are 
 less likely to be correctly deduced from a mere ex- 
 amination of his works than the case of Blaise Pascal. 
 His hereditary bent and his early studies, from at 
 least the age of twelve, were exclusively mathe- 
 matical. Even if, with Professor de Morgan, we 
 reject as mythical the story of Pascal's having at 
 twelve years of age worked out the first thirty-two 
 propositions of Euclid's first book, from independent 
 reasoning on the properties of geometrical figures, 
 and without his having opened an Euclid in his 
 life, we may safely assume that the myth had some 
 foundation in fact. It is natural, at any rate, to 
 assume that nothing but some remarkable evidence 
 of the boy's precocious talent for mathematics would 
 have induced the elder Pascal to withdraw his 
 former inhibition of his son from entering upon this 
 line of study. Certain it is that from Pascal's twelfth 
 
 251
 
 THE PKOVIKCIAL LETTERS 
 
 year (1635) upwards, be had full liberty to indulge bis 
 genius for mathematical pursuits, and that he availed 
 himself of the permission with the greatest ardour and 
 success. From this date until the year of his final 
 retirement from the world, Pascal's recorded life is 
 one continuous history of mathematical and physical 
 studies, interrupted occasionally by the wretched 
 health to which he was a victim from bis eighteenth 
 year, but never, so far as is known, diverted sys- 
 tematically to any other form of intellectual, and 
 certainly not to any other form of literary, occupation. 
 In 1G39, at the age of sixteen, he wrote that 
 treatise on Conic Sections which excited the as- 
 tonished admiration of Descartes; at nineteen be 
 contrived bis remarkable * arithmetical machine ;' some 
 years later he began that memorable series of 
 experimental inquiries into the ponderability of air, 
 which will always preserve an honourable place for 
 his name in the history of physical science. Before 
 the close of his twenty-sixth year these experiments 
 were concluded, and, impelled probably by his fast 
 declining health (he had had a stroke of paralysis two 
 years before), he virtually abandoned secular studies 
 altogether. In IG')!, shortly after the accident which 
 nearly cost him his life, and which left a permanent 
 effect upon his mind, he finall}^ retired from the 
 world, and joined that band of illustres et danger eii.v 
 solitaires, at Port Royal, who had just commenced 
 
 252
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 their struggle with the Papacy, destined to be waged, 
 with one brief interval of armistice, for upwards of 
 sixty years. Of his life in the monastery we know 
 little, save that it was a life of the severest self-morti- 
 fication, which could have left him little time or inclin- 
 ation for other than spiritual matters, — none assuredly 
 for the cultivation, either by study or practice, of 
 that consummate controversial style of which he was 
 within two years to appear as a master. His life was 
 probably that of a thoughtful ascetic, divided be- 
 tween religious exercises and theological reflection ; 
 as for secular reading, he was, as he himself tells us, 
 liomo unius libri, the essays of Montaigae. 
 
 And it was from this retirement, from this inaction, 
 we may say, that Pascal emerged, in 1656, the most 
 brilliant and deadly controversalist that ever wielded 
 a pen, and one of the greatest masters of literary 
 style — a writer who, by the confession of an unsym- 
 pathetic, and in some respects an unfair critic, rivalled 
 Bossuet in eloquence and Moliere in wit, and to whose 
 work, on the testimony of the same witness, Voltaire, 
 ilfaut rapporter Vipoque de la fixation du language. 
 
 One must admit, I thiuk, that the engraftment of a 
 devot on a mathematician is a process from which we 
 should hardly have expected such splendid results ; 
 but it is not so much their mere intellectual splendour 
 as their artistic perfection— not their genius, great as 
 it is, so much as their craftsmausliip, which surprises. 
 
 2.53
 
 TUB PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 Were it otherwise, were the Provincial Letters merely 
 a collection of eloquent, powerfully-reasoned, subtle, 
 thoughtful, witty ' things,' instead of forming as they 
 do one ' thing ' very different from and much rarer 
 than these or any collection of these, one might get 
 much nearer to explaining them from a consideration 
 of the occasion and the man. Intense moral earnest- 
 ness has a distinct intellectual reaction, and indignatio 
 of the nobler order makes eloquence and force, and 
 wit too, as well as verse. No doubt Pascal's deep 
 religious feeling, his sympathy with the oppressed 
 Jansenists, his zeal for a pure morality, and his scorn 
 and detestation of those whose doctrines were adul- 
 terating it, all conspired to give not only warmth but 
 brilliancy to his writings. The lambent flash of his 
 wit leaped up, no doubt, even as the steady flame of 
 his denunciation glowed forth, from the inner fires 
 of an intense spiritual conviction. But all this leaves 
 the real difficulty untouched, which is that Pascal's 
 peculiar power — the power and enduring vitality of 
 his great work as a whole — is derived from that most 
 complex, and, in some sense, artificial of all creations 
 — style. Intense earnestness, acting on adequate 
 intellectual gifts, will do much. It will enkindle, or 
 rather, when raised to a certain power, it will of itself 
 become eloquence ; it will quicken the play of the 
 reasoning faculty ; it will stimulate that fine sense of 
 latent analogy which begets wit, and that fine sense of 
 
 254
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 latent incoDgruity which begets humour ; but it cannot 
 create the power of co-ordinating all these results 
 so as to give them their maximum effect in combin- 
 ation. This is, and remains, the alchemic secret of 
 ' style.' 
 
 The magnitude of Pascal's obligations to his style 
 may, I think, be insisted on without any danger of 
 incurring that charge of dogmatism which justly lies 
 against so many of the attempts to assign to form 
 and matter their respective shares in the production 
 of a writer's total literary effect. Of course the 
 operation cannot in any case, least of all in the case 
 of a foreign writer, be performed with more than 
 approximate accuracy ; but in the instance of Pascal 
 there are at least two grounds on which we are 
 justified in assigning an unusually large share of 
 his total literary effect to sheer excellence of form. 
 The most salient characteristics of the Provincial 
 Letters are the perfect finish of their wit, and the 
 masterly ease with which, especially in the earlier 
 Letters, an abstruse argument is conducted in the 
 colloquial and narrative styles, and without any re- 
 course to that logical, or rather mathematical, form of 
 arrangement which wearies the reader at least, if it 
 assists the writer. Both of these characteristics bear 
 a specially intimate relation to the form of expression. 
 The value of ' form ' in wit belongs theoretically to 
 one of the most obscure parts of an obscure subject ; 
 
 255
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTEBS 
 
 but iu practice it ranks almost as a commonplace of 
 observation. It is proved experimentally nearly every 
 day in the magical effect produced by the slightest 
 change in the phrasing of a 7not. In no other case 
 are words of so high an intrinsic value, and yet so 
 worthless ' in exchange.' To ascribe great finish of 
 wit to any work is almost ex vi terminorum to attri- 
 bute to it great excellence of pure form ; and the wit 
 of Pascal is of a perfection of finish rarely met with 
 even in a language renowned for its capacities in 
 this kind of perfection. It is distinguished by that 
 masterly restraint and repression which gives to the 
 wit of two or three, and only two or three, of the 
 most briUiant of Frenchmen, a subtle power which 
 the less habile genius of our language denies to 
 English wit. We may say, I think, ' of our language,' 
 and not of our intellectual habit, for the ' heaviness of 
 hand ' of which English wit is sometimes accused 
 seems more often — if at least we confine ourselves to 
 the best specimens — a defect in the instrument rather 
 than in the hands that wield it. It is not, as is 
 sometimes said, especially by Frenchmen, that we 
 English do not value innuendo, but that our language 
 does not lend itself to innuendo : it is not that we do 
 not feel the artistic force of saying less than is meant, 
 but that in English it is so much more difficult than 
 in French to convey more than one says. To at- 
 tempt to rival in our language the finesse of the 
 
 256
 
 THE PEOVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 best Freuch wit is to rim the risk of either miss- 
 ing the desired eflfect altogether, through obscurity, 
 or of marring it by paraphrases at ouce too elaborate 
 and too obviously premeditated. It is like attempt- 
 ing to draw a very fine line with a very blunt pencil, 
 by studied lightness of touch. A thick hue must be 
 drawn, or the paper will remain blank. But the 
 French language has a point like a ' crowquill,' and 
 in fingers which can ply it deftly it produces efi"ects 
 which we English can admire but cannot copy. Sel- 
 dom has the instrument been plied by a lighter baud 
 than Pascal's ; indeed, when one has named Voltaire, 
 one can think of no other writer Avhose touch is to 
 be matched against that of the author of the Provincial 
 Letters — of none certainly whom this form of excel- 
 lence has ever stood in better polemical stead. For 
 the impression of calculated restraint which this light- 
 ness of touch conveys is to Pascal, as again and 
 again to Voltaire, a distinct point of controversial 
 power, in virtue of the air of careless superiority 
 which it gives to his attack, as well as of the im- 
 mense reserve of intellectual strength which it seems 
 to hint at. To recur to the metaphor from the fencing- 
 school, it is as though the skilful swordsman, having 
 easily put aside his adversary's guard, should forego 
 the death lunge which would end the duel at once, 
 and content himself with inflicting a disdainful scratch. 
 Even in the mere personalities of controversy, this 
 
 S
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 effect may be produced. We have all the feeling of 
 the Bpectators of some such unequal struggle when 
 Voltaire, ridiculing Warburton's denial of the vin- 
 dictiveness of the Jewish character, exclaims, ' Est-il 
 2J0ssible quun eceur tel que le tien se trompe si gros- 
 sierement sur la haine'^. C'cst un usurier qui ne sait 
 pas compter.^ A less contemptuously confident swords- 
 man would hardly have contented himself with this 
 lightning-like pass and recovery, but would have 
 transfixed his adversary again and again. A minor 
 master of sarcasm who had lighted on this venomous 
 gibe would have diluted its vitriol over half a page. 
 
 Pascal, though his sarcasm is free from the per- 
 sonality, and has assuredly none of the somewhat 
 diabolic flavour of the above sally, uses often the 
 same contem.ptuous brevity and compression. Nor 
 is it only in single thrusts at his adversaries that he 
 shows this power. Throughout the whole Story of 
 Jean d'Alba, and Pascal's application of it to the 
 Jesuit morality, what an appearance of power is pro- 
 duced by the humiliating leniency with which he 
 treats his casuist interlocutor, by the studied modera- 
 tion and dryness of the irony with which he points 
 out the weak spot in the secular relations of the 
 Jesuit system ! Jean d'Alba, servant at a Jesuit 
 college, has robbed his masters, and has pleaded 
 the casuisms of Father Bauny before the criminal 
 court, with no better result than that of being sen- 
 
 258
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 tenced to a flogging, and of seeing the works of his 
 dangerous preceptor handed over to the torch of the 
 public executioner by the indignant judge.' But on 
 Pascal's relating this story to his Jesuit friend, the 
 latter, not quick at passing from books to facts, finds 
 it strangely irrelevant. Pascal, he complains, is in- 
 terrupting their interesting talk on the subject of 
 casuistic ethics by des Jiistoires Jiors de propos. 
 
 ' " I did but make a passing reference to the anecdote," I re- 
 plied, "just to call your attention to an important point which I 
 find you have overlooked in establishing your ' doctrine of pro- 
 bability."' " Eh ! what is that?" said the father ; " what flaw can 
 there be in the doctrine after so many acute persons have 
 examined it ?" " This," I replied. " You have amply secured, so 
 far as God and their own consciences are concerned, the position 
 of those who follow your ' probable opinions ;' for according to 
 your doctrine, one may make oneself quite easy on those heads 
 by following the opinion of a doctor of weight. Further, you 
 have secured your disciples' position on the side of the con- 
 fessors ; for you compel your confessors, under pain of mortal sin, 
 to grant absolution for any act committed in reliance on a ' pro- 
 bable opinion.' But on the side of the judges, you have omitted 
 to secure the position of your disciples so that they find them- 
 selves in danger of the scourge or the gibbet in following your 
 ' probabilities.' It is a capital omission, that." " You are right," 
 replied the father, " and I am much obliged to you ; but the 
 reason is that we have not the same authority over magistrates 
 that we have over confessors, who are obliged to refer to us on all 
 cases of conscience ; for on those matters we arc the supreme 
 judges." " I see," replied I. " Still, if on the one hand you arc 
 the judges^of the confessors, are you not, on the other hand, the 
 confessors of the judges? Your power is very extensive ; why 
 not compel the judges, under pain of excommunication, to acquit 
 these criminals who have a probable opinion on their side, so as 
 
 S2
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 to prevent its happening to the great contempt and scandal of 
 the probability doctrine, that those whom you pronounce innocent 
 in theory be flogged or hanged in practice. Otherwise how will 
 you obtain disciples?" "I must think this over," replied he, "it 
 is not a matter to be neglected. I will refer it to our Provincial." ' 
 
 Nor is the power of pure style less manifest in the 
 unsought lucidity of Pascal's exposition, the orderly 
 though unordered procession of his argument. There 
 is no parade of arrangement, no employment of the 
 favourite mechanical artifices for keeping the reader's 
 — and as often as not the writer's — head clear ; but 
 yet the thread of the argument need never be missed 
 by a commonly attentive student. This mastery of 
 what may be called (in the best sense) popular 
 dialectic, this gift of managing an intricate reasoning- 
 process in entire independence of scholastic method, 
 is very rare ; it is perhaps rarest of all in those who 
 have trained themselves on the mathematics for the 
 work of controversy. A purely mathematical culture 
 is perhaps the worst preparation for the acquirement 
 of that popular dialectic in which Pascal so excelled. 
 To those who have undergone such a training, and 
 have become thoroughly imbued ^nth its method, the 
 digressions, the inversions, the transposition of parts 
 which are of the essence of popular dialectic, are 
 repugnant, if not impossible. The steps of their 
 argument must follow one another in regular series, 
 or not at all. They themselves are men of ' sections,' 
 
 260
 
 THE PEOVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 * 8ub-sections,' ' sub-sub-sections,' and the rest of it ; 
 and they exhaust the accepted symbols of para- 
 graphic sub-division in their efforts after a precise and 
 logical arrangement of their matter. Their argument 
 moves forward like an army in battle array, Avith a 
 Roman numeral commanding each division, italic 
 numerals heading the brigades, the regiments under 
 command of the letters of the English alphabet, and 
 (a), (/3), (7), &c., each leading his allotted company. 
 ' C'est la ffiierre, mais ce nest pas magnijique,^ ex- 
 cept perhaps to the professional student of the art of 
 controversial war. 
 
 Nothing but Pascal's complete emancipation from 
 this repulsive method could have won him readers 
 for the earlier Letters-, since they, it must be remem- 
 bered, have none of the claims to interest which were 
 possessed by the later. As soon as ' M. de Montalte ' 
 began to carry the war into the enemy's country, as 
 soon as it became known that the policy and morality 
 of the Jesuits were being exposed and dissected by a 
 master-hand, it is no wonder that readers should have 
 multiplied. But Pascal did not begin this retaliatory 
 warfare ; probably the thought of it did not occur to 
 him until the great success of his first letters had as- 
 sured him of a large and sympathetic audience. And 
 it is the success of these, the popularity, that is to say, 
 of three disquisitions upon the ponvoir prochain, the 
 grace sujisante, and the grace actuellc, winch consti- 
 
 2G1
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 tutes the real triumph of his expository style. No 
 doubt the Port Royalists and their learned and pious 
 lerider enjoyed a fair share of popular admiration and 
 sympathy at the outset ; but it was one thing to 
 sympathise generally with Arnauld, and quite another 
 to devour with, delight the history of a theological 
 intrigue which even Pascal's wonderful art cannot 
 always make it easy to follow. This could not have 
 been popularised but by means of the dramatic interest, 
 the unflagging life and movement with which Pascal 
 contrives to inform his narrative. The power which 
 it shows in this respect is of a very high kind. M. 
 Villemain's declaration indeed — ' that he should have 
 admired Pascal less if he had lived after Moliere in- 
 stead of before him ' — is, so far as it institutes a com- 
 parison between the dramatic achievements of the 
 two writers, surely a freak of eulogy, which is alone 
 sufficient to show that the ' literary influence of 
 academies ' does not always ' make for ' sanity of 
 criticism ; but without indulging in extravagances of 
 this sort one may give full recognition to Pascal's 
 dramatic gift. And in doing this one should protest 
 as much against the litotes of M. Villemain's com- 
 parison of Pascal with Plato, as against the 
 hyperbole of his comparison of Pascal with Moliere. 
 Of the four elements of dramatic excellence, Plato 
 has at most but the mastery of two — character and 
 diak)gue ; while Pascal, besides being a far greater 
 
 262
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 master of both these, adds to them a command of 
 plot and situation. Witness the remarkable skill with 
 which the Jesuit intrigue for the censure of Arnauld 
 by the Sorbonne is gradually unfolded in the first 
 letter, and the genuine high comedy of the denoue- 
 ment, in which the Dominican who has agreed to a 
 hollow verbal truce with the Jesuit is nearly ruining 
 all ^by being betrayed into an explanation of his 
 meaning. It was not only easier but safer to rely on 
 'monks than reasons' for the condemnation of the 
 Port Royalist leader. 
 
 With the third letter, however, the interest of 
 plot, so to call it, is at an end, and in the exposure 
 of the Jesuit policy and morality, the interest of 
 character and of exquisite ironic dialogue takes un- 
 disputed place. Here there is more room for the 
 comparison between Pascal and Plato, but it cannot 
 be said that the resemblance after all is very close or 
 very suggestive. Plato's Sophist and Pascal's Casu- 
 ist are very different figures, and assume wddely 
 different attitudes. The adulterator of philosophy 
 is, it must be confessed, ' something of a shadowy 
 being,' like the ghost described by Dr. Johnson — at 
 any rate, he has little vitality, and is at best a mere 
 lay figure to hang fallacies on ; the adulterator of 
 morals in the pages of Pascal is a creation of unmis- 
 takable flesh and blood, and a highly finished one lo 
 boot. The skill with which the Jesuit casuist is 
 
 263
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 drawD, and especially with wliich the naivete and 
 simplicity of the character (so amusingly illustrated 
 in the extract above quoted) are brought out, serves 
 of course a dialectical end ; but not, one feels, a 
 dialectical end alone. It has a deeper purpose than 
 this. For the intention and the efifect of the portrait 
 is to render casuistry credible as a profession ; to 
 show how, given the requisite combination of pe- 
 dantry and esprit de corps, it could be adopted as a 
 profession by a body of men not universally, or even 
 perhaps generally, less scrupulous than their neigh- 
 bours. Pascal's Jesuit interlocutor is, one easily 
 sees, far better than his principles, which indeed are 
 sometimes plainly at variance with his healthier in- 
 stincts. ' Ce nest pas de moi-meme,' he protests on 
 one occasion, when Pascal exclaims against the 
 enormity of a certain doctrine. But, good man, he 
 is a little blunt of perception, and he has turned the 
 edge of his faculties still further by exclusive devo- 
 tion to the text-books of casuistry. He has, in short, 
 paid the penalty which is inseparably attached to 
 excess of unintelligent study — to reading uninformed 
 by reflection — which means the cultivation of the 
 receptive faculty at the expense of the judgment. 
 He has arrived at that stage in which the learning 
 of books bulks larger than the realities of things, in 
 which ' what has been written ' so fills the mind that 
 it cares not to, and even cannot, inquire, ' What is.' 
 
 264
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 Pedantry and the exaggerated faith of the pedant in 
 the utility of his laboriously acquired knowledge, 
 these and esprit de corps^ the be-all and end-all of 
 Jesuit training, combine to effect the astounding 
 result. Pascal's Jesuit is conscious that he is learn- 
 ed, that the doctors he has studied are subtle and of 
 blameless lives, that the great Society of Jesus is an 
 organization of all-embracing power and activity, 
 and so, on the whole, he will bring himself to teach 
 and defend the most marvellous perversions of 
 morality, and even exclaim at last in genuine sur- 
 prise, ' Doutez-vons cVime cJio.<^e que nos auteurs 
 enseignentV 
 
 It is by means of this so real and vivid portrait 
 that Pascal contrives to give practical interest, and, 
 as it were, ' urgency ' to the attack on Jesuitism. 
 We feel that it is no question of demolishiug a 
 speculative error, but of combating a practical and 
 instant danger to the human commonwealth. We 
 feel that Pascal is at war not with a theory, but with 
 an organization ; and we only begin to appreciate 
 the insidious and far-reaching power of that organi- 
 zation when we see in the person of Pascal's inter- 
 locutor what respectable weapons it is able to em- 
 ploy, what well-meaning blunt-wits it can enlist in 
 its evil service. 
 
 Pascal's own view of the spirit and methods of the 
 great Society is of course sternly hostile, but it is 
 
 265
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 distorted by none of that blind hatred which makes 
 so mucli of our ultra-Protestant invective against 
 Jesuitism fly wide of the mark. Few more astonish- 
 ing errors have been made by one great writer about 
 another than the blunder of which Voltaire has been 
 guilty in his criticism of Pascal. The attempt of the 
 Provincial Letters, says the author of the Siecle de 
 Louis XIV., is to prove that they (the Jesuits) had 
 conceived ' the deliberate design of corrupting the 
 morals of mankind, a design which no sect or society 
 ever had or ever could have.' Voltaire's last quoted 
 reflection is so obviously just that one can only won- 
 der at his imputing to Pascal the error which it 
 condemns. As a matter of fact, Pascal repudiates 
 it in express terms, and in a sentence which is ac- 
 quitted of any suspicion of irony, by the sarcastic 
 remark which follows it. It is less surprising, how- 
 ever, that Voltaire, and after him M. Villemaiu, 
 should have overlooked this passage than that, even 
 having overlooked it, they should not have hesitated 
 on mere a priori grounds to attribute to Pascal so 
 vulgar and unintelhgent a theory of Jesuit pohcy. 
 Pascal, we might have been sure, even without his 
 word for it, better understood the genesis and pur- 
 pose of those perversions of morality which he was 
 about so ruthlessly to expose. But his own language 
 on the point is clear : — ' Sachez done que leur objet 
 n'est pas de corrompre les moeurs : ce n'est pas leur 
 
 266
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 dessein. Mais ils n'ont pas aussi pour unique but 
 celui de les reformer : ce serait une mauvaise poli- 
 tique. Voici quelle est leur pensee. lis out assez 
 bonne opinion d'eux-memes pour croire qu'il est utile 
 et comme necessaire au bien de la religion que leur 
 credit s'etende partout et qu'ils gouvernent toutes 
 les consciences.' (Lett. V.) 
 
 This is certainly a more intelligent theory of Jesuit- 
 ism than that denounced by Voltaire, though we must 
 admit, I think, that even this analysis is not quite 
 adequate. A religious organization aiming at secular 
 ascendancy, and prepared to sacrifice rigour of morals 
 in their efibrts after their object, is undoubtedly a 
 more credible conception than that of a society aim- 
 ing at the ' corruption of morals ' for its own sake : 
 but though it is a sufficient account of ' organic 
 Jesuitism,' so to say, it fails, I think, to distinguish an 
 important element in the formation of the individual 
 Jesuit. There was and is something more than mere 
 worldly ambition and esprit de corps amongst the rank 
 and file of the Order. The truth, though it may seem 
 to resemble a paradox, is, 1 think, that there was a 
 moral element in the Jesuit system which, and which 
 alone, has enabled it to enlist the services of con- 
 scientious men; and made it possible for them to 
 read the motto of the Society, — Ad Majorem Dei 
 Gloriam — without that strong temptation to augurial 
 smiling which plain men in all times have found it so 
 
 267
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 difficult to prevent crediting them with. The moral 
 element, such as it is, is one with which Pascal's stern 
 and semi-Calvinistic theology, as well as his austere 
 morality, rendered him incapable of sympathizing ; 
 but which, nevertheless, appeals to one of the deep- 
 est instincts of a certain order of mind. The Jesuit 
 casuistry was, in part at least, the expression of a 
 feeling — profoundly unscriptural, no doubt, but still 
 profoundly human — that the way of salvation must 
 not be made too hard for men ; that quantity as well 
 as quality in the matter of converts deserves to be 
 considered ; and that as it is given to few to attain 
 complete virtue, God may be well served by leading 
 man a little distance at least upon the road. Dan- 
 gerous as this principle is, and monstrous as we see 
 its results to have been in practice, there is nothing 
 absolutely astonishing in the fact that conscientious 
 men found it possible to accept the principle and 
 shut their e^-es to the results. The resources of 
 human self-deception are practically boundless, as we 
 may see illustrated in our own day. After all, the 
 attitude of the Jesuits towards morals was not widely 
 different from the attitude of a modern school of 
 theology towards faith. The Jesuits were in fact the 
 ' Broad Churchmen ' of morahty, and hardly perform- 
 ed more astounding feats of legerdemain with their 
 consciences than we see certain divines among us 
 performing every day with their intellects. 
 
 268
 
 THE TROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 With this aspect of the Jesuit system, however, it 
 was not, as has been said, in Pascal's loftily ascetic 
 nature to sympathize. When he had admitted that 
 the Jesuits made terms with the flesh as followers of 
 the world merely, and not as agents of the devil ; 
 that they sophisticated virtue not from mere delight 
 in vice, but to gain certain temporal ends of their own, 
 he had gone to the utmost limit of his concessions. As 
 men of the world masquerading in the character of 
 men of the other world, they deserved, he thought, no 
 quarter at his hands ; while as the ubiquitous and 
 all-powerful Society, the very spiders of pohtical in- 
 trigue, the ever-busy band of schemers with a foot 
 in every powerful house, and a whisperer at the ear 
 of every prince, supreme at Versailles, and never 
 long in abeyance at the Vatican, leniency towards 
 them w^ould, he felt, be as dangerous as undeserved. 
 Odious, as the defilers of morality and the contami- 
 uators of the sincere milk of Augustinian doctrines, 
 they were formidable as unscrupulous political ad- 
 versaries ; and the instinct of self-preservation con- 
 spired with zeal for the truth to urge that the attack 
 upon them should be as resolute and as deadly as it 
 could be made. 
 
 How Pascal did the work which he thus set him- 
 self remains on record for all time. He did it in such 
 a way that since his day it has needed no second 
 doing. The Jesuits, in giving to the Provincial 
 
 269
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 Letters the nickname of the ' immortal liars,' have at 
 least hit the mark in their adjective ; whether the 
 letters tell the truth or not, anyone who doubts can 
 ascertain for himself, for Pascal's charges are pre- 
 ferred with all the precision of an indictment, and 
 chapter and verse are given for every one of those 
 lax dicta of the Jesuit doctors over which the thun- 
 der of his denunciation and the lightning of his 
 ridicule have rolled and flashed. But while he thus 
 traces home every vicious sophism to its individual 
 author, he never loses sight for a moment of the 
 mauy-visaged presence of his real enemy, the Society 
 itself; It is a striking illustration of the forensic 
 thoroughness of Pascal's work, that he should have so 
 decisively anticipated the only plea by which an un- 
 wonted apologist of the Jesuits attempted a century 
 later to save the collective credit of the Order at the 
 expense of certain individual members. When Vol- 
 taire complains of Pascal's having unfairly attributed 
 to the whole Society the extravagant opinions of a 
 few Spanish and Flemish doctors, he overlooks two 
 points which Pascal is at special pains to impress upon 
 his readers — first, that the perniissiis superiorum, with- 
 out which no Jesuit work can be published, fixes the 
 Order as a whole with responsibility for all the doc- 
 trines which any such work may contain ; and 
 secondly, that the existence of a rigid, as well as a 
 lax school of Jesuit casuistry, is in no respect sur- 
 
 270
 
 THE PEOVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 prising, but on the contrary a result naturally to be 
 expected from the adroit policy of the Order. God 
 and Mammon, in fact, could scarce have been jointly 
 served with success on any other terms. It would 
 have been a waste of power for the Society to have 
 encouraged the existence of any large number of lax 
 casuists. Thanks to the invaluable Jesuit doctrine 
 of Probability, the sanction of even a single 'doctor 
 of weight ' was sufficient to justify the vicious in in- 
 dulging their favourite vices ; while, on the other 
 hand, it was, as Pascal points out, a most convenient 
 thing to be able to quiet the scruples of alarmed virtue 
 by appealing, when occasion arose, to the severer 
 maxims of other Jesuit doctors of equal learning and 
 repute. 
 
 But, however strongly our moral sympathies may 
 be enlisted on the side of Pascal, it is scarcely pos- 
 sible on the whole case to refrain from commiserat- 
 ing the Jesuits. Their ill-luck in the matter was as 
 monstrous as would be that of a man who should be 
 called out and shot in a duel by an adversary chal- 
 lenging him under a complete misconception of facts. 
 For the deadly disputant against whom they found 
 themselves pitted had, after all, taken the field under 
 a mistake. It was Pascal's sympathy for Aruauld 
 and his zeal for the true faith, which he believed the 
 Port Royahst doctor to bo supporting — these motives, 
 and not, at least originally, any desire to expose the 
 
 271
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 Jesuit teachiug — that first brought him iuto the fray. 
 And as he entered, so he quitted it. His first letter 
 is on the poiivoir procliain, and his last on the ques- 
 tion of the Papal falhbility, sur le fait — the fait of 
 course being whether the five condemned proposi- 
 tions were or were not in the Augustinus. He began 
 and ended as a theologian, and as a theologian he 
 W'as in error throughout on the practical question at 
 issue betwe(;n the Jansenists and Jesuits. It must, 
 then, have been deeply mortifying to these latter, or 
 to their successors of a somewhat later date, to learn 
 that Pascal himself afterwards recognized his error, 
 and that he had, on more mature consideration, to 
 abandon altogether the position which he assumed 
 on the Jansenist controversy throughout the Provin- 
 cial Letters. His convictions reached maturity sadly 
 too late for the interests of the Jesuit doctors ; for in 
 the meantime, aud by way of efl:ecting a mere diver- 
 sion, he had utterly annihilated the elaborate structure 
 of the Jesuit casuistry. 
 
 That the position which Pascal took up in the 
 Jansenist dispute was unteuable — if we must again 
 fill our bellies with the east wind of this arid contro- 
 versy — it will not be difficult to show. Only as 
 regards the second of the five condemned proposi- 
 tions can he be pronounced to have made out even 
 an appearance of a case ; on the others, and on the 
 question of fact connected with them, he manifestly 
 
 272 
 
 i
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 fails. He was able to show -with some plausibility 
 that Jansenius had not taught downright Calvinism 
 regarding the operation of predestination to life, but 
 he failed to distinguish either Jansenius's doctrine or 
 his own, or for that matter that of the Church, on 
 the subject of reprobation, from the doctrine of Calvin 
 upon the same point. First, as to the former question. 
 Pascal points out, with his usual felicitous perspicuity 
 of style, that Jansenius had not committed himself 
 to the Calvinist necessarian theory that man cannot 
 resist grace, and the line of argument which he 
 adopts exposes clearly the origin of what he con- 
 ceives to be the misconception of those wlio 
 condemned Jansenius on this point. 
 
 Jansenius, according to him, had not taught pure 
 necessarianism in teaching that man could not resist 
 Divine grace. Man in Jansenius's system, as ex- 
 plained by Pascal, still retained his free-will, and 
 might use it in endeavoiu'ing to resist Divine grace : 
 only the endeavour would be of necessity unsuccess- 
 ful. Grace must and would produce its effect in 
 time ; but it would do so not by overruling, but 
 by enlisting his will in God's service — by sanctifying 
 it so that it was infallibly led to God, par iin mouve- 
 ment toute lihre, tout volontaire, tout amoureux. 
 
 We are of course far from saying that the distinc- 
 tion here sought to be drawn between what are only 
 two modes of equal necessity- has any real existence. 
 
 T
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 It has not ; but it may have a theological existence, 
 theological distinctions having in all ages been nobly 
 independent of any objective foundation ; and Pascal 
 doubtless thought that it was not incumbent upon 
 him to show that Jansenius held a doctrine of genu- 
 ine free-will, but that it was sufficient for him to 
 prove that he did not hold a doctrine identical in 
 terms with that of Calvinistic necessity. But, though 
 he may have gained a technical triumph on this 
 second proposition, not even on this did ho gain a 
 substantial victory. It was merely the form in which 
 the condemnation of Jansenius on this point had 
 happened to be couched which enabled Pascal to 
 achieve a semblance of success. For the doctrine 
 intended to be condemned in the second proposition 
 was the doctrine that ' Divine grace never fails of its 
 effect.' • This was the heresy of Jansenius, and this 
 heresy remains after PascaPs vindication, since he 
 also held, as we have seen, that Divine grace was 
 invariably efficacious, and it was immaterial, there- 
 fore, whether this invariable efficacy was the result 
 
 1 The second of the condemued propositions does not occur 
 textually in the Angustinus, but is matter of inference fronia pas- 
 sage in the second book. ' H?ec est vera ratio cur nulla omnino 
 mediciualis gi-atia Christi effectu suo careat,' &c., Book ii. c. 55. 
 On which comments a latter Catholic theologian, ' Si autem nulla 
 gratia effectu suo careat igitur interiori gratia nimquam resistitur 
 cum gratije interiori resistere idem sit ac earn effectu suo 
 dcfraudare,' the Catholic doctrine being, he adds, that grace ' non 
 semper eum obtinet effectum ad quem a Deo datur.' 
 
 274
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 of pure necessity, or of a human will being invari- 
 ably directed to God par un mouvement tout lihre, tout 
 volontaire, tout amoureux. 
 
 On all the other propositions Pascal's failure to make 
 out his case is still more conspicuous. To take first 
 the question of the fait^ the question, that is, of the 
 authorship of the condemned propositions as dis- 
 tinguished from the question of their heterodoxy. 
 His well-known argument was that Papal infallibility 
 was confined to the droit, and did not extend to the 
 fait, and that while the Jansenists could be called on 
 to repudiate the five condemned propositions (which, 
 added Pascal, they did ex animo), they could not be 
 justly required to believe and confess that Janseuius 
 had afiirmed these propositions, at least in the sense 
 in which the Holy See had condemned them. And 
 all this argument is conducted in Pascal's best man- 
 ner. But it is a line of argument suited only to a 
 controversy which had itself been conducted from 
 beginning to end in total defiance of that method so 
 caustically recommended by Voltaire—-' II eut mieux 
 valu peut-etre la peine de citer les passages du livre : 
 c'est ce qu'on ne fit jamais.' Had the passages from 
 Jansenius been openly cited by the Jesuits, which 
 — from fear of falling foul of Augustin, under whose 
 eanctiou they had been put forward — none dared to 
 do, they would have thoroughly refuted Pascal. The 
 fact is that all these four propositions are to be found 
 
 T 2
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 verbatim, or nearly m, in Jansenins's book. The 
 first proposition, condemned by Innocent X. as 
 ' temerarjam impiara, blasphemam, anathemate 
 damnatam, et ha3reticam,' was the proposition that 
 ' there are some commands of God which righteous 
 and good men are absolutely unable to obey, though 
 disposed to do so, and that God does not give them 
 so much grace that they are able to observe thera.' 
 And in A^igustijini^ (Book iii. c. 13), we find, ' Htec 
 igitur plenissime planissimeque demonstrat nihi 
 esse in S. Augustiui doctrina certius ac fundatius 
 quam esse pra^cepta qua3dam qua3 hominibus non 
 tantum iufidelibus, excascatis, obdnratis, sed fidelibus 
 quoque et justis, volentibus, conantibus secundum 
 prassentes quas habeant vires, sunt impossibilia : 
 deesse quoqua gratiam qua fiant possibilia.' The 
 second proposition we have already discussed. The 
 third subject of the Papal anathema is the doctrine 
 ' that in order to a man's being worthy of praise or 
 blame before God, he need not be exempt from sub- 
 jective necessity, but merely from objective coercion.' 
 And Jausenius says {Aug,, B. vi. c. 24), ' Clarissimis 
 verbis docuit S. Thomas arbitrium honiinis dictum 
 esse liberum quia non cogitur,' and ' opus esse laude 
 vel vituperio dignura meritorum ex hoc quod est 
 voluntarium, spontaneum, non coactum, tametsi deter- 
 iniuahim ad iinumJ The fourth condemned proposition 
 was the doctrine that ' the semi-Pelagian error con- 
 
 276
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 sisted in believing that the human will had the power 
 of either admitting or rejecting the operations of 
 Divine grace.' The passage in the Aiigitstinus (Book 
 viii. c. 6) is, ' Hoc proprie semi-Pelagianorum error 
 solus est quod aliquod prim£BV£e libertatis reliquum 
 putant . . . quod sicut Adam si voluisset poterat 
 . . . ita lapsus homo saltern credere potest si vellet, 
 neuter tamen absque interioris gratia adjutorio, cujus 
 usus vel abusus esset in unius cujasque arbitrio et 
 potestati.' Lastly, the Pope had condemned the pro- 
 position that it was a semi-Pelagian error to hold that 
 ' Christ died for the sins of all mankind/ And 
 Jansenius has plainly affirmed that doctrine to be 
 false in the passage B. iii. c. 21 : ' Quse sane cum in 
 Augustini doctrina perspicua certaque sint, nullo 
 modo principiis ejus cousentaneum est ut Christus 
 Dominus vel pro infidelium in infidelitate morieutium 
 vel pro justorum non perseverantium a^terua salute 
 mortuus esse, sanguinem fudisse, senaet ipsum 
 redemptorem dedisse, gratiam obsecrasse sentiatur. 
 Solvit enim quo quisquejamab a3terno pra^destinatus 
 erat, solvit hoc decrctum neque ullius pretii oblatione 
 mutandum esse uec seipsum velle mutare, ex quo 
 factum est ut juxta Sanctissimum Doctorem non 
 magis Patrem pro asterna liberatione ipsoruni quam 
 pro diabolorum deprecatus fucrit.' All these pro- 
 positions, says Pascal, the Jansenists arc bound to 
 condemn and do condemn e.c aniino, but tliey are not 
 
 277
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 bound to believe that tbey are in the AugustinuSy 
 and, in fact, tbey and I deny that they are there. 
 There, nevertheless, they are. 
 
 So much, then, for the question of i\iQ fait. It re- 
 mains only to point out that Pascal and, so far as he 
 represented them, the Jansenists were within the 
 Papal condemnation of the first and most important 
 proposition as regards the droit also. For he himself 
 maintains the exact equivalent of the condemned 
 doctrine on his own account, and asserts it to be, as 
 probably enough it was, the orthodox teaching of the 
 Church on the subject. He contends at the close of Let- 
 ter I, in summing up the results of his exposure of the 
 Jesuit machinations against Arnauld, that the follow- 
 ing propositions have never been condemned either on 
 one side or the other : ' (1) that grace is not given to 
 all men ; (2) that all the just have always the power 
 to obey the commandments of God ; (3) that never- 
 theless, in order to perform them, and even to pray 
 for grace to perform them, they have need of an 
 efficient grace which invincibly determines their will ; 
 (4) that that efficient grace is not always given to all 
 the just, but depends on the pure mercy of God.' 
 But surely (2), (3), and (4) if taken together establish 
 a contradiction (for how can all just men possess a 
 power which is itself conditional on a gift of grace not 
 vouchsafed to all the just?) ; while it is evident that 
 (3) and (4) taken together assert by implication the 
 
 278
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 first of the condemned propositions, for if the just can- 
 not perform the divine commandments without a gift 
 of grace, which some of them do not receive, to those 
 not so favoured the said commandments are im- 
 possible. 
 
 It is of course equally true that the Jesuits who 
 condemned Jausenius, themselves held nominally, or 
 at any rate could not venture to deny openly, the 
 condemned proposition. The only distinction which 
 they could have set up between their own and the 
 Jansenist doctrine (and this distinction had to be 
 kept in the backgrouud in order to the sham alliance 
 with the Dominicans to compass the censure of Arnauld 
 in the Sorbonne) was this : — that whereas the Jansen- 
 ists, their opponents, and the Dominicans, their sham 
 allies, alike held that grace was necessary even to 
 enable a man to pray for such grace as would enable 
 him to do the will of God, they, the Jesuits, held 
 that the just required no antecedent gift of grace to 
 enable them to pray for grace. But even then, as 
 the Jesuits dared not deny that grace was necessary 
 as a means of obeying the commandments, and as 
 they admitted that it was not freely given to all, and 
 did not venture to affirm that it was even given to 
 all who prayed for it, they had no right to condemn 
 as a heresy the proposition that some of the divine 
 commandments were to some of the just impossible. 
 
 The truth i?, as must appear to all who have the 
 279
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 courage to wade through these barren polemics, that 
 there are ouly two logical positions to beheld on this 
 question — the position of the Pelagian and that of the 
 Calvinist — the position of those who believe that man 
 can secure his salvation of his own free-will, and the 
 position of those who hold that he is the abject slave 
 of necessity, to be saved or damned solely according 
 as a grace, which he is unable to secure or even soli- 
 cit of his own free-will, is given to or withheld from 
 him by an omnipotent being. Pascal really belonged 
 to the latter of these schools and the Jesuits to the 
 former ; but, from widely differing motives, mental 
 and moral, neither party could or did admit his true 
 affinities. Pascal was an unconscious Calvinist, try- 
 ing in vain to distinguish between his own creed and 
 that which had been condemned by his Church, and 
 doing so from an honest desire to submit himself to 
 that Church. The Jesuits Avere conscious Pelagians, 
 who skilfully concealed their heresy for fear of losing 
 their influence. The practical result of this contest 
 between candour and duplicity was such as might 
 have been expected. Pascal in his efforts to escape 
 the condemnation incurred by Calvin, and to avert it 
 from the teacher whom he followed, contended with 
 manifest ill success that his teacher never taught, and 
 that he himself never held, the doctrine which had 
 been condemned. The Jesuits, on the other hand, 
 without committing themselves to an open denial of 
 
 280
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 Augustinian doctriue, succeeded in procuring its con- 
 demnation in the person of an alleged follower of 
 Calvin. In the meantime, it is true, as Gibbon says, 
 hat the difference between Augustin whom the 
 Church of Rome has canonized and Calvin whom she 
 has reprobated is invisible. 
 
 Yet the Jesuits, with their usual art, contrived to 
 conceal in a great measure their own embarrassment 
 while consummating their adversaries' disgrace. The 
 intellectual self-deception of Pascal is, however, more 
 surprising than the moral dishonesty of the Jesuits, 
 and the probability that this self-deception could not 
 have permanently prevailed over so acute a mind, 
 lends much credibility to the story cited by Bayle, 
 from the Histoire des Cinq Propositions, to the effect 
 that Pascal subsequently recognised the fact that it 
 was the orthodox doctrine — the true faith as held and 
 taught by Augustin, and as embraced, for all his 
 alleged heresy, 1)y Calvin, which had been anathema- 
 tized by Innocent X. In other words, he came at last 
 to see, what only theological controversy could have 
 ever hidden from liim, that his own theory of an im- 
 potent 'power' to obey the commandments was in 
 truth no whit less absurd and self-contradictory than 
 the inadequate 'sufficient grace' of the MoHnists 
 which he had transfixed with some of the happiest 
 shafts of his ridicule. 
 
 But who now cares for this I Who now troubles 
 281
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 himself to inquire whether Pascal was victorious or 
 vanquished on the theological issue ? What now 
 would be the whole weary literature of Jansenism to 
 mankind but for this one work of matchless art and 
 strength ? A vast field of half-buried ruins, lost be- 
 neath the luxuriant overgrowth of modern interest 
 and modern thought — a hidden world into which the 
 curious antiquarian might find his account in burrow- 
 ing, but which the traveller intent on worthier objects 
 would pass by. As it is, however, there are few in- 
 deed who make the journey of self-culture without 
 turning aside for a pilgrimage to these else unlovely 
 ruins, for in their midst stands the great work of Pas- 
 cal, erect, solitary, flawless ; a single stately column 
 visible from afar. 
 
 282
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 Among many signs of a growing recognition of 
 human brotherhood not the least notable are the 
 praiseworthy attempts of ' the peoples ' to understand 
 and, if possible, appreciate each other's recorded 
 jokes. There is an element of the humorous in the 
 very endeavour. It assumes, to begin with, that a 
 joke, whether considered as a natural or, as is too 
 often the case, a manufactured product, is necessarily 
 a subject of international exchange. This is, from the 
 economical point of \aew, a curious theory, which ap- 
 parently implies that though all, or at any rate most, 
 nations produce their]own jokes some in greater, some 
 in less quantity, but usually in an amount sufficient 
 to supply the home market, and to render the native 
 consumer independent of foreign supplies, it is, never- 
 theless, at his option to vary the quality of the con- 
 sumable product to any extent by taking consign- 
 ments of it from abroad. It is a mere question of tlie 
 
 283
 
 THE rUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 cost and difficulty of tmDsport, which latter word, it 
 should be noted, is etymologically almost identical 
 with the word ' translation.' These matters arranged, 
 and the foreign joke delivered safely to the pur- 
 chaser, he has nothing to do but to sit down to its 
 enjoyment ; and this with as absolute an assurance 
 of relishing it, even though ' made in Germany,' as 
 the gourmet feels in opening a jar of Russian caviare. 
 If the taste disappoints him he attributes the defect 
 to the fault of the intermediary, and reproaches the 
 translator as a consignee of goods would reproach a 
 slovenly packer through whose negligent perform- 
 ance of his duty they had ' gone bad ' in transit. 
 That the goods may be quite unsuited to his taste, 
 or outside the range of his appreciation, never seems 
 to occur to him, still less that before their consign- 
 ment they^may have already deteriorated, even in the 
 country of their production. 
 
 This conception of the joke as in itself an im- 
 perishable creation, a permanent addition to the 
 world's wealth, and fit companion of the serious work 
 of Thucydides, as a ' possession for ever,' is really 
 very humorous, when you come to reflect upon 
 it. It is almost as humorous, indeed, as Mr. Labou- 
 chere's theory of poetry, which he regards, as he 
 would coal or iron, solely from the point of view of 
 the realised product, and not at all from that of the 
 productive energy, arguing therefrom that since the 
 
 284
 
 THE FUTURE OF HOIOUR 
 
 world has accumiilated enough of the former the 
 latter should now cease. ' We have,' he once wrote 
 in comment upon some remarks of mine, 'already 
 enough of the article ' — that is poetiy — ' which has 
 come down to us from former generations, and time 
 has taken care that only what is good and sound has 
 reached us. Why, then, should we trouble to read 
 any more ?' And, therefore, why trouble to write, or, 
 at any rate, to print, any more ? ' Poetry,' in fact, 
 means ' poems ' to Mr. Labouchere in precisely the 
 same way and to the same extent as * coal-mining ' 
 means ' coal.' You examine your stocks of botli 
 commodities, find you have enough, and cease de- 
 manding: whereupon down go profits and up come 
 strikes in one of the two businesses, though not, 
 cm'iously enough, in the other. In the same way it 
 is quite clear that to a great many worthy people 
 ' humour ' means the contents of a jest-book. If 
 there are many jest-books in existence, in your own 
 and other languages, then you are well supplied with 
 humour, and, as far as you are concerned, there is no 
 reason why the ' humourist ' should go on producing 
 any more. It is true that there is more of a pre- 
 judice against jocularity ' which has come down to 
 us from former generations ' than there is against 
 poetiy of a similarly imposing length of descent, and 
 that the ' good and sound ' joke does not in all 
 circles enjoy the respect that 'is paid to seasoned and 
 
 285
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 well-preserved verse. Still, there is a considerable 
 class of consumers who are quite satisfied with it 
 even in its original state, and, unlike the poem, it is 
 capable of being, and constantly is, ' worked up ' 
 again into new and attractive forms. 
 
 We need not, however, trouble ourselves about 
 those excellent and most fortunate persons to whom 
 the old, in all kinds, even in the humorous, is prefer- 
 able to the new. Long may they live and flourish, 
 and when they die, may the lapidary have the brilliant 
 inspiration of inscribing ' Affliction sore,' or ' To live 
 in hearts we leave behind,' on their tombstones, while 
 Joe Miller acts as their Virgil through the Elysian 
 Fields. Byron, I think it is, who in a note to one of his 
 poems describes a certain country gentleman as one 
 who 'would have the same joint for dinner every Sun- 
 day in order that he might make the same joke upon 
 it.' Which of us with a sense of humour would be 
 able, if he were a weekly guest of the squire, to help 
 sharing in this amusement, tickled not, perhaps, by 
 the jest, but at any rate by the laughter ? And who 
 will deny that the simple souls who have but one 
 joke, and never tire of it, do themselves contribute 
 in no small measure to the not unkindly mirth of the 
 world? 
 
 It is with that more sophisticated and fastidious 
 person who craves for novelty in his funniments that 
 I am just now concerned. For it is a serious matter, 
 
 286
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 when you come to think of it, that humour should 
 ' wear out.' Relative as our perceptions may be, 
 they manage in other provinces of thought and feel- 
 ing to keep up a respectable appearance of the ab- 
 solute and the uni^'ersal, of the unchangeable from 
 age to age, and the indistinguishable as between 
 nation and nation. The sublime, the terrible, the 
 tender, the pathetic — there does seem to be some 
 common international standard of these qualities ; it 
 is possible (continues our ' self-torturing sophist ') to 
 say, with a rough approximation to truth, that those 
 written words which move a reader of one civiHsed 
 nationality to awe or pity, which stir him to delight 
 in the imaginative contemplation of Nature, or agi- 
 tate him by the vivid portrayal of human passion, 
 will, as a rule, produce the same effect in kind upon 
 all readers of the same average level of intelligence, 
 to whatever race' they may belong. Of course (he 
 admits; the effect may differ widely in degree. 
 Dutch sublimity may only moderately impress me, 
 and Norwegian pathos may leave me comparatively 
 cold. Yet still I recognise the fact that both the 
 pathos and the sublimity appeal, in their several 
 degrees, successfully to the same emotions as are 
 swayed by Shakespeare and Milton. But with what 
 truth can I say of some of the jests which tickled the 
 reader of Hierocles, or of thousands of others which 
 have no doubt shaken millions of midriffs since that 
 
 287
 
 THE FUTURE OE HUMOUR 
 
 Greek Joe Miller's day, that they appeal even faintly 
 to those emotions which are swayed by Swift and 
 Sterne, by Fielding and Dickens ? So far from doing 
 this, they 'reverse the engine,' so to speak; they set 
 the emotional machinery working in precisely the 
 opposite direction. 
 
 It is not a mere effect of time, either ; or, at least, 
 it cannot be that alone. For age does not wither nor 
 custom stale the beauties of serious literature. People 
 have not yet begun to think that the prayer of Priam 
 to Achilles is poor stuff; or that Lucretius' description 
 of the gods and their abode is fustian ; or that Dante 
 has spoilt the story of Paolo and Francesca. The 
 judicious critic does not propose to obelise all the 
 lines from ' The cloud-capped towers ' down to ' is 
 rounded with a sleep ' inclusive ; though the manager 
 about to produce The Tempest might very likely pro- 
 nounce them ' cackle/ and mark them with the blue 
 pencil as ' to be omitted in representation.' We still 
 read Lycidas with pleasure, and would hardly con- 
 sent to strike out even the ' No Popery ' part about 
 the ' wolf with privy paw.' Even on lower literary 
 levels good things of the serious description contrive 
 to last. We still find Swift's account of the Struld- 
 brugs passably impressive, and we do not set down 
 Home Tooke as a mere watery-headed ' cry-baby,' 
 because the stern pathos of the closing paragraph of 
 his enemy Johnson's Preface to the Dictionary affected 
 
 288
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 him to tears. It is humour alone which will not 
 wear : it happens only to the joke to seem exquisite 
 to the men of one age, and imbecile to the men of 
 another ; and this difference (concludes our despair- 
 ing sceptic) must be due to something essentially 
 perishable, something fundamentally relative, limited, 
 occasional, about humour and its products. Who 
 can know, then, what is its 'true inwardness,' how 
 and in what form it can be assured of survival, or 
 whether it is destined to survive in any form at 
 
 ain 
 
 These, no doubt, are melancholy — even desolating 
 — thoughts and questions ; but 1 am not sure that the 
 evocation of them will be without its salutary effects. 
 The alarmist will get over his apprehensions as to 
 the disappearance of humour when he has attained 
 to a more accurate conception of what that peculiar 
 faculty is ; and in working his way to this he will 
 find abundant consolation for the gradual decay of 
 its successive products, and even for the circumstance 
 that they are not in all cases suitable subjects of 
 international exchange. 
 
 It would be hardly safe, perhaps, to affirm with 
 absolute confidence that any one human energy is, 
 as such, indestructible, still less that no such energy 
 is transformable out of recognition in the course of 
 the World-Process. It is possible to maintain, as a 
 pessimistic thesis, that even the poetic instinct and 
 
 U
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 faculty will in course of time disappear ; that its 
 period of greatest strength is coincident with com- 
 paratively early stages of human development, and 
 that, like the measles and other maladies which take 
 such masterful hold of primitive races, its power is 
 progressively declining with the advance of civil- 
 isation. At present, however, there are no signs of 
 this ; indeed, such signs as there are altogether ' con- 
 tra-indicate ' it, as doctors say ; and on present ap- 
 pearances one would be disposed to hold that, 
 whether our supply of the poetic product (warranted 
 ' good and sound ') be sufficient or not, or whether, if 
 insufficient, the contemporary producer be capable 
 or incapable of making any real addition to it, the 
 work of poetic production is likely to continue, and 
 to continue at an increasing rate. 
 
 So with humour. It is possible, as a pessimistic 
 thesis, to maintain the probability of its efFacement 
 from the list of human energies; and it must be 
 sorrowfully admitted, especially when we study cer- 
 tain results of the energising of the humorous faculty, 
 that it seems to possess the less effective vitality of 
 the two ; but the contingency of its future disap- 
 pearance seems practically as problematical and 
 ; remote. Humour, like poetry, is the habit of con- 
 I templatmg, and of being affected by, the facts of 
 I consciousness in a particular way. It sees the mutual 
 ( relations of thoughts, things, and persons — that is to 
 
 290
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 say, of thoughts to each other, of things and persons 
 to each other, and of thoughts to things and persons 
 — under an aspect, just as poetry does, of its own. 
 Poetry unveils the hidden beauty, humour exposes 
 the lurking incongruity, of these relations ; and the 
 charm of the humorous as of the poetic product 
 varies directly as the sum of three ingredients — first, 
 the objective truth and force of the revelation ; 
 secondly, its novelty and unexpectedness as such 
 revelation ; and thirdly, the subjective skill with 
 which it is effected. In the greatest humorists, as in 
 the greatest poets, all these three contributories 
 touch their maximum. In their case the illuminant, 
 humorous or poetic, is the most powerful and the 
 most commandingly directed, and the illuminated 
 object the most delightfully surprising in its new 
 aspect. It is their chiefest triumph to transfig-ure 
 with beauty and renew with humour those common 
 things on which the careless eye of the world has 
 rested, unsuspecting of their secret charm, a thousand 
 times. 
 
 But all this is only true of the gi-eatest in either 
 kind ; and where the poet or the humorist is some- 
 thing less than supreme he rarely has that magical 
 gift of handhug the ' eternally common ' which will 
 assure his work of sharing the perpetuity of its 
 material. People see this clearly enough in the case 
 of poetry, and are apparently resigned to it. At any 
 
 u2
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 rate, thej do not seem to distress themselves— I am 
 not now speaking of Mr. Labouchere alone — at the 
 reflection that the heritage of < good and sound 
 poetry ' which has come down to us from former 
 generations is small indeed compared to the total 
 amount of the poetry which was regarded — and 
 surely some of it justly — as ' good and sound ' at the 
 time of its production. In other words, they acquiesce 
 philosophically enough in the fact that poetry — that 
 is, some poetry — can grow old and perish, while they 
 seem to be dismayed at the thought that humour — 
 that is, some humour — is of the fashion that passeth 
 away. 
 
 Of course, the actual discovery that it is of this 
 fashion — at any rate when that discovery is made in 
 the work of some dearly-loved humorist of one's 
 youth — is indefinitely the more painful of the two. 
 That is for the reason already referred to : namely, 
 that humour which fails to give its intended pleasure 
 gives positive pain — a pain which is not in the 
 smallest degree mitigated by the literary skill with 
 which the product is presented. Better a thousand 
 times to be a poet of a mode outworn than a rococo 
 humorist ; for the former, though banished from the 
 common household of man, may in virtue of his style 
 possess an eternal refuge in the temple of letters. 
 What human heart is moved in these days by the 
 poetry of Pope, yet what lover of the art of literature 
 
 292
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 has it ceased, or will it ever cease, to delight? The 
 rhetorical passion which leaves him cold does not 
 offend him ; the decay of its once prized ' poetic 
 beauties ' detracts no whit from his enjoyment of its 
 grace, its elegance, its matchless skill ; nay, perhaps 
 their charm is heightened by that scent of faded 
 flowers. But think of the difference for a devoted 
 Dickensian who suddenly finds himself confronted 
 with some well-known passage of the master's ' high 
 jinks,' the delight of his admirer's early youth, but 
 now all gone flat — its humours changed into mere 
 mechanical clowning from which all the spirit has 
 departed ! The writing is as good as ever, the 
 movement of the scene as brisk, the technical skill 
 of the whole, in short, as admirable as ever. But do 
 these qualities console the disenchanted worshipper? 
 Can he even bear to linger over the page in the hope 
 that they may yield him consolation ? No, he turns 
 the leaf, perhaps closes the book, v/ith a curious 
 emotion of shame ; to examine the vainly-grinning 
 jest more closely would seem a kind of impiety. He 
 almost feels like one who has unwittingly ' uncovered 
 the nakedness of his father.' 
 
 Yet he is wrong to close the book, though right 
 enough to turn the leaf ; for if he has the courage to 
 face the loss of some of his early illusions, ho will 
 find much happy and refreshing confirmation of his 
 early tastes. If the critic in him should be, as it is
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 in some of ns, for good or evil, not so very many 
 years younger than the man, he will never have been 
 able to accept all the Dickensian humour with abso- 
 lute unreserve. Nay, even the comparatively un- 
 critical youth of five-aud-thirty years ago — a far less 
 precocious period than the present — could not away 
 with the whole of it ; so that as regards some of its 
 more exuberant mirth-making there is no illusion to 
 destroy. Much of the rest, however, and that very 
 often of the broadest, is still vital; it only needs that 
 the breadth of the caricature should have some 
 broadly human vice or foible to sustain it. There 
 was always genius in its very exaggeration, and 
 that genius will be found in most cases to have kept 
 it alive. It is only, after all, the too narrowly local, 
 the too eccentrically individual element, which has 
 perished. 
 
 No doubt it is a blow to find — if we do find — that 
 the humours of Pickwick have largely staled, and that 
 we can no longer laugh as erst we laughed at the 
 cockneyisms of Sara Weller. Yet, at least, the noble 
 and impossible Pecksniff is still left to us almost as 
 fresh as ever, and the fun of Todgers's — that Pension 
 Vauquer of a more genial Balzac — groweth not old. 
 Even Mrs. Gamp, now fallen unamusing as to her 
 more than human perversions of articulate speech, is, 
 beneath her lifeless bizan^erie of externals, living still. 
 We feel it when she sits down to tea with Mrs. Prig. 
 
 294
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 Her type has perished and passed away, but there is 
 that in her — as there seems not to be in Sam Weller, 
 a more purely stage construction — which holds of 
 human nature and survives. The ' sick and monthly ' 
 of fifty years ago may have been folded up like a 
 vesture and changed ; but greed and cunning, 
 vanity and unscrupulousness and gross animalism, and 
 the semi-salacious interest of the lower order of 
 womankind in the reproductive side of life — these are 
 permanent human characteristics : and fused into one 
 comic whole with the humour of unconsciousness it 
 seems that they have power to delight us still. 
 
 Generally, therefore, we may venture, for the bene- 
 fit of the too serious and desponding persons to whom 
 I have referred, to hazard the proposition that Nature 
 as exhibited in the human race, is not yet played 
 out ; nay, that in respect of her inexhaustible power 
 of supplying art with perennially fresh material, she 
 should be recognised as no less a ' rum 'un ' by the 
 present generation than by the age of Mr. Wackford 
 Squeers. Only she cannot be expected to admit 
 parentage of every artistic product, humorous or 
 other, Avhich one seeks to ' mother ' upon her, and to 
 shelter it as such for ever from the wasting hand of 
 time. She will not do this even for a Dickens, as she 
 has not done it even for a Sterne. Slie takes only 
 from the hand of every romancer and every hum- 
 orist, great or small, such children of his begetting 
 
 295
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 as are clearly stamped with her own image ; such 
 contrasts of character, such paradoxes of thought, 
 such incongruities of association, as are drawn from 
 her own bosom or ordered by her own hand; and the 
 residue she relentlessly lets go. The loss of all that, 
 from age to age, is certain, and may occasionally be 
 painful ; but it is not more certain than the preserva- 
 tion of what Nature has ' quoted and signed ' as fit to 
 be preserved. Hence let no one fear — as, perhaps, 
 none do fear, save those defectively humorous per- 
 sons who cling with such pathetic anxiety to the jest- 
 book — that the written record of Bumour is not as 
 imperishable a part of man's spiritual possessions as 
 the deposit of Poetry. 
 
 Whether it will be largely added to in the future 
 is another question. That depends— it is less a truism 
 thau it seems to say so — on the persistence of the crea- 
 tive faculty as distinct from the appreciative sense 
 of humour among civihsed races. And there is not 
 quite enough reassurance in sayiug that this faculty, 
 having now become thoroughly ' organised ' in the 
 mental constitution of man, is not likely to disappear 
 altogether. Perhaps not ; but one cannot escape a 
 fear that it may by degrees become dormant, or fall, 
 so to speak, 'into abeyance ' — like a peerage on fail- 
 ure of male heirs. One cannot help observing that 
 the exercise even of the appreciative sense of humour 
 appears to require a certain elasticity of the emotions, 
 
 296
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 which, to put it mildly, does not seem to be becoming 
 a more common quality than it was. The young man 
 whom one pronounces to 1be destitute of a sense of 
 humour is not always iptellectually incapable of per- 
 ceiving the incongruous in human hfe ; or even the 
 incongruous in his own person, position, and conduct. 
 But the perception is a strictly intellectual one : it 
 gives him no pleasure, but rather pain ; the last thing 
 we should expect of it is that it should provoke him 
 to a laugh. 
 
 It is contended, I am aware, in some highly optim- 
 istic quarters that this proves nothing. We have 
 become less demonstrative than our fathers, that is 
 all ; and we do not enjoy our humour any less than 
 they did because we do not give such noisy expres- 
 sion to our amusement. I confess to regarding this 
 as a very dangerous doctrine. True as it undoubtedly 
 is that some of the most exquisite humour in the 
 world is the most silently enjoyed, I have never myself 
 met a thorough appreciator of this form of humour who 
 was proof against that^ importunate demand which 
 some sudden flashes of the humorous make upon 
 one for an audible response. The power of laughter, 
 and of hearty laughter — so far, at least, as my own 
 experience goes — almost always accompanies a keen 
 emotional sense of humour. As to the mere intellec- 
 tual appreciation of it I say nothing; that power, 
 which is, no doubt, possessed in a high degree by the 
 
 1^97
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 Devil, is of little value to mankind. But I should 
 doubt myself whether this emotional sense of hum- 
 our — this capacity not only for perceiving the 
 incongruous, but for tahing pleasure in the sight — is 
 ever accompanied by an inability to laugh. Among 
 that very low-typed Oriental race, the Veddahs of 
 Ceylon, this inability is said to be absolute ; but my 
 own inference from that, which I give for what it is 
 worth, is that the Veddahs of Ceylon do not under- 
 stand a joke. 
 
 I am not aware, however, that the point has ever 
 been definitely settled, and since, in view of the 
 growing seriousness of our young men, it is beginning 
 to assume scientific importance, I suggest that steps 
 should be taken to determine it once for all. A com- 
 mittee of ethnologists charged with the duty of 
 investigating the matter might be despatched to 
 Ceylon, where the Bishop of Colombo, himself a 
 genuine humorist, and part author, in his pre-episcopal 
 days, of one of the happiest academic skits ever 
 written, Avould, I am sure, be glad to render them 
 any assistance in his power. Translations of a few 
 of the most approved works of our latest humorists 
 might be presented to this interesting people for 
 perusal, and the result observed and recorded. If it 
 proved that although incapable of laughing at these 
 pleasantries they had an intellectual appreciation of 
 them — that is to say, that they could point out, if 
 
 298
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 only geographically, as it were, the exact spot on the 
 printed page at which the laughter they are them- 
 selves incapable of supplying is intended to ' come 
 iu ' — well, in that case their state would not be much 
 less gracious than that of many old-fashioned people 
 among ourselves. At any rate, the result of the 
 experiment would be full of hope for the future of a 
 country so many of whose most intellectual young 
 men are in the habit of taking themselves almost as 
 seriously as the Veddahs of Ceylon. 
 
 Meanwhile, and in the painful uncertainty of the 
 present outlook, it is not surprising that the psycholo- 
 gist should come to the assistance of his fellow-citizens, 
 and endeavour by analytic investigation of this 
 apparently disappearing quality and by discovery of 
 its true inwardness, to enable us to save it from ex- 
 tinction. If, argues he, we could only find out 
 exactly what humour is 'in its quiddity,' we could 
 keep ourselves humorous, or at any rate bring up 
 our children to be so. This is very good of the 
 psychologist : it is like his kindness ; and his attempt 
 to console and encourage us by these inquiries is the 
 more praiseworthy because, from the popular point of 
 view, the task is so essentially a thankless one. 
 
 There are indeed few studies which are pursued 
 by the philosopher under such severe discourage- 
 ments from simple and subtle ahkc. lie soon finds 
 that those who take any serious interest in the in- 
 
 299
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 quiry are far too iutent upon the establishmeut of 
 their own theories to pay any attention to his; while 
 as to the general public, they are precluded by an 
 incurable levity from considering the matter with 
 any seriousness at all. Indeed, they are apt to find 
 something unspeakably ridiculous in the mere fact 
 that, despite its subject, there is no more fun in it 
 than there is in other psychological inquiries — that, 
 in fact, the analyst of the Humorous is not, or not at 
 that moment, and in that capacity, a humorist. 
 This, of course, is a preposterous injustice. It is 
 worse than requiring the man wlio drives fat oxen to 
 be himstlf as fat ; it is to insist that he should be 
 equally good to eat, Nothing, for instance, could 
 have been more amusing in their irrevelance than 
 were many of the newspaper comments on Mr. W. S. 
 Lilly's recent investigation of this subject. Some of 
 these dashing commentators showed evident signs of 
 disappointment at not finding the ' Theory of the 
 Ludicrous' more amusing; others were excited to 
 scornful mirth by its logical method and arrangement. 
 One of them fouud that ' a philosopher analysing 
 jokes is a bit of a joke himself;' and I have no doubt 
 at all that many a reader chuckled assent to the 
 proposition. Mr. Lilly enumerated twenty-one forms 
 of the Ludicrous, beginning with Humour and ending 
 with Practical Joking ; and at this also the critic 
 from whom I have quoted was hugely tickled. The 
 
 300
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 idea of a mau gravely couutiug the number of differ- 
 ent ways in which one can be made to laugh ! It 
 was too absurd I The philosopher who could do 
 such a thing may possibly have attained to a certain 
 cold intellectual comprehension of a joke ; but he 
 cannot have the true sympathetic appreciation of 
 humour, or he would be unable to contemplate the 
 incongruity of his own position with unmoved 
 muscles. 
 
 All this is very disheartening to analysts of the 
 ludicrous, and has prevented at least one of them 
 from taking a hand at the game (though it is one 
 which he enjoys greatly) for some years past. Another 
 discouragement which the analyst feels acutely is 
 that his speculations are in like case with those of 
 Dr. Primrose : they are addressed to the learned 
 world, but the learned world takes no notice of them 
 whatever. Perhaps the individual analyst has no 
 right to complain, for he never notices the analysis 
 of anyone else, or not, at least, of anyone later than 
 Sydney Smith. We all begin with Sydney Smith 
 and his famous dissertoiion in the Edinburgh Revieic 
 article on ' Irish Bulls,' though Mr. Lilly only does so 
 in order to dismiss the Canon's definition of humour 
 as a ' surprising proposition :' which no doubt it does 
 seem to be when taken in connection with the in- 
 felicitous examples which Sydney gives. But for 
 one who has endeavoured to pursue the analysis 
 
 301
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 further, and who believes himself to have worked 
 out the much-debated distinction between Wit and 
 Humour in a formula, to which the only possible 
 objection is that it seems far too symmetrical to be 
 sound — for such an one, I say, to find that his labours 
 have passed absolutely unnoticed by a fellow-inquirer 
 (and how much more certainly, therefore, by an in- 
 curious and unpsychological public), there is good 
 excuse for feeling something of the disappointment 
 of Mr. Walter Shandy, when, master though he was 
 of one of the finest chains of reasoning in the world, 
 he was unable, for the life of him, to get a single link 
 of it into the head of his wife. 
 
 No attempt, however, will here be made to subject 
 the public to the cranial operation which would 
 evidently have been necessary in the case of Mrs. 
 Shandy. The analytic process referred to shall not 
 be repeated in these pages. It will be enough to 
 borrow one of them for a concise statement of its 
 results. 
 
 They are embodied in the following proposi- 
 tions : 
 
 1. Wit and Humour, which have sometimes 
 been treated as difierent results or aspects 
 of the same mental process, are in reality 
 the respective products of tw^o diametrically 
 opposed operations of the mind. 
 802
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 2. Wit consists in the revelation of unsuspected 
 
 similarity between two otherwise dissimilar 
 objects of thought. 
 
 3. Humour consists in the display (though not 
 
 necessarily the revelation) of incongruity be- 
 tween two otherwise associable objects of 
 thought. 
 
 4. Revelation being essential to wit, though 
 
 not to humour, it follows that the element 
 of surprise is a uniform constituent of the 
 effect produced by the former, though not 
 of that produced by the latter. 
 
 5. All incongruity implies dissimilarity ; but not 
 
 e converso, dissimilarity being recognised by 
 a purely intellectual apprehension, while 
 incongruity exists only between such dis- 
 similars as cannot be united in thought 
 without producing an emotional shock. 
 
 6. The ' passion of laughter ' is excited by in- 
 
 congruity alone. Humour, therefore, in 
 its various forms, is the sole excitant of 
 laughter. 
 
 7. The response to wit, as such, is not laughter, 
 
 but merely that more sedate form of 
 pleasurable emotion which the sudden dis- 
 covery of fitness brought about by human
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 ingenuity — as in a clever raechariical in- 
 vention, or the ingenious solution of a pro- 
 blem — is accustomed to evoke. 
 
 8. The fact that laughter is a frequent accom- 
 paniment of the response to wit is due to 
 the fact that the objects between which 
 wit reveals similarity are often not only dis- 
 similar, but incongruous also, and their union 
 in thought produces the emotional shock 
 which is the characteristic effect of humour. 
 
 Several more propositions in the nature of corollaries 
 to the foregoing might easily — perhaps only too 
 easily — be added ; but 1 refrain. The first and the 
 last three will quite suffice, I feel sure, to provoke 
 the vehement opposition of all those rival theorists 
 who do not prefer to treat them with an even more 
 vehement neglect. Space does not permit me to 
 support them with examples, but it will be easy for 
 anyone who doubts their soundness, especially that of 
 No. 8, to test it by examples. Everybody who has 
 any intelligent appreciation of wit will at once admit 
 that over and above the epigrams, repartees, and 
 hons mots, which have excited his mirth as well as 
 admiration, he has heard in conversation, or met 
 ■with in reading, an immense number of brilliant 
 phrases, felicitous illustrations, apt comparisons, and 
 other indubitable and indisputable specimens of wit 
 
 304
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 ■which have afforded him keen intellectual pleasure, 
 "without, however, provoking in him the slightest in- 
 chnation to laugh. If, then, he will compare these 
 specimens with those which have the power of ex- 
 citing laughter, he will find that in every instance of 
 the latter kind the wit has brought two incongruous 
 objects into mental association ; and has thus pro- 
 duced that emotional shock that results from collision 
 between ideas which, like the sublime and the ig- 
 noble, the comic and the tragic, the poetic and the 
 prosaic, are respectively contemplated in two 
 different jnoods of mind. For it is in the sudden 
 descent or ascent from one of these moods that the 
 emotions get their shock, and by a simple physiolo- 
 gical process, which Mr. Herbert Spencer's ex- 
 planation will presently be quoted to elucidate, 
 laughter ensues. 
 
 Perhaps, however, I have lingered long enough on 
 a side of the subject in which only a very small 
 minority are interested. The British public, with its 
 resolute practicality, has never taken kindly to 
 analysis. It is essentially a synthetic public. It 
 ' drives at practice,' as Mr. Matthew Arnold used to 
 say of somebody else ; and its secret sympathies have 
 always been with Mr. Squeers^ when, after instruct- 
 ing his pupils in the orthography — or rather 
 heterography — of the word ' winder,' he sends him 
 away to clean one. It is tolerably certain that if 
 
 X
 
 Tx^IE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 one were to •write quite a thick volume on the 
 Analysis of the Humorous, with specimens of humour 
 (constructed as per analysis) at the end, the public 
 would turn to the last page first, just for all the 
 world as if the treatise were a sensation novel. 
 Ever driving at practice, our people would hasten to 
 examine these concrete examples of the humorous 
 with the view of ascertaining beforehand whether a 
 study of its abstract principles would be Hkely to re- 
 pay them by developing the faculty in question. 
 
 Nor is there any doubt that, in secret, they suspect 
 the soundness of any psychological reasoning on this 
 subject which the psychologist is unable to prove by 
 practice. The analyst, it is plain to see, is often un- 
 easily conscious of this ; and sometimes he longs to 
 work out synthetically the demonstration of his 
 theories. But it is when synthesis succeeds to ana- 
 lysis that disappointment ensues. You may work 
 out your Theory of the Ludicrous with triumphant 
 thoroughness; but when you pass from theory to 
 practice, when you attempt to reintegrate your re- 
 solved ingredients and turn out a properly com- 
 pounded joke, then it is that you find yourself face 
 to face with the real difficulty. You get your two 
 ' incongruous objects,' you excogitate your ' con- 
 cept,' ' subsume ' the former under the latter ; and 
 you let off your little joke. And lo 1 nobody laughs. 
 Everything has been done according to rule. If you 
 
 306
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 doubt it^ you look up your Schopenhauer and satisfy 
 yourself. Perhaps you re-read the famous passage 
 justly praised by Mr. Lilly from Isaac Barrow, or you 
 take a turn at your Sydney Smith. According to all 
 these authorities you have been humorous ; you have 
 scrupulously followed the instructions of the learned, 
 and you are rewarded with the quiet conscience of 
 the painstaking though unsuccessful artist. But the 
 fact remains that you have failed to evoke that re- 
 sponse from 3^our audience without which even the 
 most self-sufBcient and stoical of jesters is rarely 
 content. You have not made anybody laugh. 
 
 It may be that, as the world grows older, sadder, 
 more fastidious, its humorists may learn to be con- 
 tent with the reward of their own consciences, and 
 will cease to expect anybody to laugh. Perhaps, 
 having themselves grown more philosophical, they 
 will argue that the intrinsic merit of a joke, or even 
 its projected power of amusing, can have little or 
 nothing to do with anything so purely physical as 
 that meaningless agitation of the abdominal and 
 other muscles which we describe as laughter. True, 
 it is a muscular convulsion of very ancient origin, 
 and interesting to the biologist on that account. But 
 so also are the primitive and rudimentary forms of 
 humour : there is, indeed, a stage in human civilisa- 
 tion at which humour is as simple and as practical as 
 laughter itself. 
 
 X 2
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 Let us, for instance, endeavour to conjure up to 
 our imagination that scene of artless jollity — the old- 
 fashioned country fair. Behold that circle of chubby 
 bumpkins, each with his blowsy, apple-cheeked 
 sweetheart at his side, and note that leathern ellip- 
 soidal ring raised some five feet from the ground and 
 fixed in that position, midmost the village green. 
 As Victor Hugo would ask and answer in similar 
 circumstances : 
 
 ' What is it ■? It is a horse-collar.' 
 
 All eyes are bent eagerly on the empty frame, and 
 all await with tense expectancy the 'living picture' 
 who is about to fill it. Many others have filled it 
 already with more or less credit, but it is in the 
 prowess of Giles Joskin that the knowing ones be- 
 lieve. See I Giles is here. Lightly, confidently, he 
 steps up to the collar, and in another moment there 
 appears through its aperture, framed but ill-confined 
 within it, the ' too vast orb ' of his face. There is a 
 moment's pause, during which the spectators criti- 
 cally survey the champion's countenance, red and 
 round as a foggy sun ; and then, in a moment, the 
 ruddy disc is suddenly cloven in twain by a horizon- 
 tal fissure, which lengthening laterally and broaden- 
 ing vertically, like the chasm which swallowed the 
 tliree rebels against Moses and Aaron, touches at 
 last the sides of its environment, and bisects, at its 
 
 808
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 short axis, the leathern ellipse. It is Giles Joskin's 
 smile : a smile which all who see it recognise as vic- 
 torious ; and as the judge approaches with the prize 
 of victory in his hand, and announces that Giles has 
 carried off the flitch of bacon, to be awarded to him 
 who should grin most effectively through the horse- 
 collar, the welkin rings with rustic guffaws. 
 
 What has happened ? Psychologically and physio- 
 logically, what has happened? There is no real 
 doubt on either point; both have been well ascer- 
 tained. Explained in terms of the emotions, the 
 laughter of the tickled yokels is the expression of 
 the 'sudden glory' of Hobbes — that glory 'arising 
 from the sudden conception of some eminency in 
 ourselves as compared with the infirmities of others.' 
 Giles Joskin's grin — nay, his mere willingness to grin 
 for the entertainment of the village — is the 'infir- 
 mity' which excites their sudden glory. For a flitch 
 of bacon and the barren honour of exhibiting the 
 biggest mouth in the country-side he has pubhcly 
 made an ass of himself, while we (glorious thought !) 
 we, his neighbours, are sitting here, eminent, supe- 
 rior, not grinning through horse-collars ourselves, 
 but laughing at the ugliness and despising the 
 shamelessness of those who do. 
 
 Explained in terms of the uervo-muscular func- 
 tions, the case is equally clear. ' A large amount of 
 
 309
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUE 
 
 nervous energy,' says Mr. Herbert Speucer, ' instead 
 of being allowed to expend itself in producing an 
 equivalent amount of the new thoughts and emo- 
 tions which were nascent ' (with reference namely to 
 Giles Joskin's chances of success) 'is suddenly check- 
 ed in its flow ' (that is to say, by the apparition of 
 Giles's grin, and the instantaneous conviction that 
 such an incomparable rictus must inevitably carry off 
 the prize). ' The excess must discharge itself in 
 some other direction, and there results an efflux 
 through the motor nerves to various classes of the 
 muscles, producing the half-convulsive actions we 
 term laughter.' 
 
 No doubt this explanation is physiologically com- 
 plete. Audrey giggling behind her beefy hand ; her 
 hee-hawing swain with palms pressed upon his Sun- 
 day waistcoat ; the aged hedger who has broken his 
 ' churchwarden ' between his toothless gums in the 
 convulsions of his mirth, are all simply working off an 
 excess of nervous energy through the muscles of the 
 jaws, thorax, and abdomen. So far all is plain sail- 
 ing. Where the difficulty arises, that difficulty which 
 so besets us in the field of practice, is in this : that a 
 philosopher, looking on at this primitive competition, 
 would not feel that he had any ' excess of nervous 
 energy ' to discharge. No resulting efflux pours 
 along his motor nerves in the direction of his malar, 
 
 310
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 thoracic, and abdomiual muscles; but, on the con- 
 trary, there is, if anything, a stimulus given to those 
 portions of the muscular apparatus whereby we 
 manifest a gentle depression of the spirits. And it 
 then begins to dawn upon the philosopher that the 
 analysis of humour can never be of much value as a 
 basis for synthetical operations, having regard to the 
 essentially subjective character of the ridiculous, and 
 to the fact at that moment so importunately thrust 
 upon him that what at one stage of the human in- 
 telligence may be found most potently laughter- 
 moving, will at a higher stage prove absolutely 
 incapable of exciting to merriment. 
 
 To console himself under these reflections, it is 
 necessary that the philosopher should have in him 
 what all philosophers have not, a dash of the humorist 
 also. If he has, he will find that the scene is not 
 wanting in food for genial mirth. To take but the 
 most obvious of its suggestions, he may treat himself 
 to an ample draught of that 'sudden glory' whereof 
 we have been speaking. The yokels around him are 
 laughing at Giles Joskin, but he will be laughing at 
 the laughter of the yokels. While they are revelling 
 in ' the sudden conception of their own eminency 
 as compared with the infirmity ' of a man who can 
 grin in public through a horse-collar, ho will be 
 moved to mirth by the comparison of his own emiu- 
 
 311
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 eucy with the infirmity of men whom a man grinning 
 in pubHo through a horse-collar can amuse. But if 
 he is a humorist of the truer and deeper sort, the 
 scene of childish merriment will yield him more, much 
 more, than this. The narrow, unsympathetic, con- 
 temptuous feeling of amusement, wliich is all that 
 Hobbes took account of in his partially correct but 
 wholly inadequate analysis of the ' passion of laugh- 
 ter,' will be of the shortest possible duration. A 
 moment later, and he will think of the infinite intel- 
 lectual interval, the innumerable gradations of refine- 
 ment by which these clownish antics are divided from 
 the satire of Swift or the irony of Voltaire, and the 
 self-centred glory of superiority will give instant 
 place to that strange, delightful, all-embracing sense 
 of expansion and exaltation which suffuses our whole 
 being when humour suddenly Avidens for us the 
 horizons of the world. 
 
 And yet the broad buffooneries of the bumpkin 
 and the subtlest strokes of the satirist are in their 
 nature essentially one. The grin through the horse- 
 collar is humour in the germ, and it has the pathetic 
 interest of all rude beginnings. No doubt it is even 
 further removed from the subtlety and finesse of the 
 latest literary forms of humour than were the wag- 
 gon and wine-lees of Thespis from the splendid 
 equipment of the modern stage. But that is only 
 
 312
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 because its beginnings were immeasurably earlier in 
 the history of human development than the birth of 
 the drama. It may be that man began in the Stone 
 Age to find amusement in any chance eminency over 
 the infirmities of his fellows ; to see another cut him- 
 self accidentally with a flint knife may have been 
 the one great joke of the Palfeolithic period. For, 
 saddening as it may be to the sentimentalist to 
 admit, the sense of humour must undoubtedly have 
 had not a sympathetic but an anti-pathetic origin. 
 We may take it as certain that the ' passion of laugh- 
 ter' in a Cave man was wholly and solely due to a 
 sudden glory of superiority over some other Cave 
 man ; exultation in the fact that he was crippled or 
 deformed, or for some reason or other weaker than the 
 laugher, and therefore, should circumstances require 
 it, his easy prey. Naturally it M^ould take a good 
 many feons to transform this attitude by a process of 
 gradual modification to that (say) which is adopted 
 by Sterne or an appreciative reader of Sterne to- 
 wards the weaknesses of My Uncle Toby. 
 
 Very little progress had been made at any rate 
 until after the heroic age of Greek poetry. The 
 Homeric sense of humour, for instance, when you 
 come to consider it, is quite in the stage of the 
 country fair. Vulcan goes halting round the Olym- 
 pian circle, cup in hand, in the absence of Ganymede, 
 
 313
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 and the lively gods break forth into peals of merri- 
 ment. Did ever anyone see the like ? This limping, 
 ill-favoured blacksmith, grimy from his forge, to 
 volunteer for the part of ' understudy ' to the beau- 
 tiful Id^eau youth ! What an exquisite joke ! And 
 so the ' inextinguishable laughter ' of the immortals 
 rolls on. How nai/ again is the mirth of the Achasan 
 chiefs "when Ulysses canes Thersites on the hump 
 with his baton for scurrility of language, and Ther- 
 sites blubbers I It is evident, too, that Homer (or 
 the Homeric Company) found matter of amusement 
 in the personal aspect of the ill-conditioned railer. 
 The poet dwells with relish on his squint, his hunched 
 back, his strangely shaped and decorated skull — 
 
 ' He had a sugar-loaf head with a thin stubble of hair 
 sprouting from its apex.' There is quite a modern 
 gust about this description ; it almost anticipates the 
 comic brutality with which human ugliness is treated 
 by Smollett and humorists of his school. As a rule, 
 too, one may say that physical infirmities and 
 deformities were a good joke to the Roman of the 
 classical era. Even Horace, an essentially good- 
 natured little man, can snigger horribly over the 
 luridi denies and capitis nives of the superannuated 
 Lyce, and indeed he congratulates the young men of 
 
 314
 
 THE FUTUKE OF HUMOUR 
 
 Rome generally on the excellent sport they must find 
 in the contemplation of her ruined charms. The 
 gods, he says, have prolonged her life to a raven's 
 length of days, that our ardent youth might have the 
 fun of seeing (possent visere multo non sine risu) the 
 torch by which they once were kindled now smoulder- 
 ing in ashes. An 'Arry of the worst modern type 
 would be incapable of jumping figuratively upon 
 the most unworthy of 'Arriets in such a fashion as 
 this. 
 
 We may say indeed that not to find food for mirth 
 in the lowering misfortimes or disabling ph^^sical 
 defects of others was distinctly exceptional with the 
 ancients. It is with quite a shock of agreeable sur- 
 prise that we find Persius speaking with contempt of 
 a man who could taunt another on the loss of an eye 
 — lusco qui possit dicere, Liisce. We are astonished at 
 the magnanimity which could afford to neglect such 
 an opening for pungent epigram, and feel that the 
 poet must have been vastly iu advance of his age. 
 But in that idea of course there is a considerable 
 mixture of egotistical self-deception. If we are to 
 speak of mankind in the mass, and not of a certain 
 small and highly-subtilized section of the human 
 race, it would be perhaps wiser for us not to give our- 
 selves too many airs over the country bumpkins 
 gazing hilarious on the voluntary self-humiliation of 
 
 315
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 their clowning comrade. It is more than doubtful 
 whether, for the great mass of humanity, the humor- 
 ous has ever yet purged itself of this element of 
 Aristotehan eTn^aipeKaKia, or 'joy at one's neighbours' 
 ills ;' whether, in other words, the multitude are even 
 jQi capable of being much amused except at the ex- 
 pense of their fellow-man. I do not see, indeed, how 
 anyone can fail to appreciate the secular persistence 
 of this element in the most popular forms of appeal 
 to the sense of humour who merely considers the part 
 played in fiction and drama, for many ages, by the 
 deceived husband. From Boccaccio to Moliere and 
 Congreve, and from the comedians of the seventeenth 
 century to the farceurs of the late nineteenth, the 
 assumption that the unconscious dupe of the wife and 
 the lover is essentially a ridiculous figure has im- 
 movably held its ground. That the person and 
 situation have also been treated tragically is true but 
 immaterial ; it does not affect the significance of the 
 fact that they can be, and for centuries have been, 
 treated as a legitimate subject for comedy often of 
 the most extravagant kind. Nor is it to the point 
 •that there has of late years been a much more pre- 
 valent inclination on the part of dramatists to treat 
 the subject seriously. That unfortunately may only 
 be a proof, not so much that our jokes have become 
 more humane, as that a certain prominent, though not 
 
 316 
 
 "3
 
 THE FUTURE OF HU.^[OUR 
 
 numerous, section of us are getting too solemn to 
 joke at all. 
 
 It is with the view, therefore, of warning the 
 analytical humorist that the above retrospective 
 sketch — cursory and imperfect as it is — of the history 
 of humour has been attempted. The object of it is 
 to remind him that, however skilled he may be in the 
 subsumption of objects under concepts, people will 
 only laugh at what amuses them; and that the 
 question as to what does amuse them, has received, 
 in different ages and among different peoples, a great 
 variety of answers. Shakespeare, who, without being 
 a professed and systematic analyst, stumbled oc- 
 casionally upon analytic apergus of no inconsiderable 
 value, has made an often-quoted remark about the 
 ' fortunes of a jest ' lying in the ear that hears, rather 
 than on the tongnie that utters it ; and this is a golden 
 saying for all investigators of the psychology of 
 humour. Our earnest pursuit of culture in these 
 latter days has tended somewhat to obscure this 
 truth. The humorous has been treated in too objec- 
 tive a spirit. It has been too easily assumed that it 
 is a subject to be ' got up ' Hke another ; and it has 
 been tackled with all the conscientious solemnity of 
 the University Extension student. The result, of 
 course, has been disappointing. It has been found 
 that the 'personal equation,' even the ' international 
 
 317
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUIMOUR 
 
 equation,' if I may say so, coimts for a good deal 
 more than the conscientiously solemn student had 
 supposed. 
 
 The 'international equation.' Yes, the expression 
 though strange is correct, and has been advisedly 
 used. It recalls me to that part of my subject to 
 which I briefly referred at the outset of these remarks — 
 I mean the resolute, nay, the desperate attempt which 
 has been made of late years to ' internationalise 'jokes. 
 It seems to have occurred to some earnest caterer for 
 earnest students that for the benefit of those v/ho pro- 
 pose to 'take up' humour, it would be an excellent 
 and highly ' educational ' thing to start a Humour of 
 the Nations Series, if that is its name, and the idea 
 has been carried out with a grim and smileless 
 perseverance which has in itself a richly humorous 
 effect. The editor and contributors of these mournful 
 hand-books have apparently kept their countenances ; 
 perhaps they do not see the 'joke within the joke ;' 
 there could be no more delightful joke than that they 
 should not. But to the philosopher who is also a 
 humorist, the reception of the whole series, or at least 
 of the volumes of it which have appeared so far, has 
 been vastly diverting. The very first to appear was 
 a staggerer, at any rate, to those who had not 
 previously made the acquaintance at school of the 
 Scholasticus of Hierocles. This, then, was the 
 
 318
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 hiimonr of i\ncient Greece. How was it to be 
 received? Was it possible to receive it with any- 
 warmer or more hilarious emotion than that of the 
 reverence due to its venerable old age? Earnest 
 students were discovered in odd corners with this 
 perplexing Attic salt-cellar in their hands. Aris- 
 tophanes, they had heard, was a great humorist, and 
 by studying him in translation they had been able, 
 if not to provoke themselves to laughter, at least to 
 find the spot at which at the Dionysia the laughter 
 was supposed to come in. But where, I where, was 
 its point of entrance in the pages of this Athenian 
 Joe Miller? 
 
 The Humour of Ancient Greece was followed, I 
 believe, by that of Ancient Rome, and this again by 
 the Humour of Holland. We are, or were, promised 
 some time ago the Humour of Scotland, and the 
 Humour of Japan; but I have never seen them, and 
 I do not know whether they are or are not of high 
 educational value. But the general effect of the 
 series was very disturbing to the popular mind. It 
 shook the public faith in the possibility of a Science 
 of the Humorous ; it spread far and wide a desolating 
 sense of the relativity of all human jokes. For a 
 time, too, it paralyzed the energies of the psychol- 
 ogist, who, in the very act of ' subsuming incongruous 
 ideas under concepts which only apply to them from 
 
 319
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 one poiut of view,' was overtaken by a sort of ag- 
 nostic despair. Why bother one's head with con- 
 cepts? he asked himself. Why continue to subsume 
 when the only result will be to produce a formula 
 which, even if it applies, as is more than doubtful, 
 to jokes that amuse the people of the Netherlands, 
 may utterly fail as an analysis of such pleasantries as 
 are acceptable to the Japanese? Mr. Lilly has been 
 the first to recover from this temporary depression, 
 and to philosophise calmly and even hopefully on 
 this attractive subject once more. Perhaps he has 
 not come across the Ilinnoii.r of the Nations Series, 
 if that be its name. 
 
 Nothing, however, is to be gained by sliutting our 
 eyes to the disquieting outlook before us. So far 
 from its being possible to 'internationalise' humour, 
 we may think ourselves lucky if we can manage to 
 preserve even a national type. The Dickensian 
 humour, it would seem, is ' off;' the American droll, 
 after a vogue of a good many years, is apparently 
 ceasing to amuse ; the ' inverted aphorism ' had but 
 a short popularity, and ultimately perished in calam- 
 itous and indeed unmentionable circumstances ; and 
 nothing seems growing up to take its place. The 
 new generation ' knocking at the door' rat-tats with 
 quite portentous gravity. This is, no doubt, an 
 improvement on the older generations, who thought 
 it a first-rate stroke of wit to wrench off the knocker ; 
 
 320
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 but their successors are surely carrying a virtue to 
 excess. It seems a pity that they should be unable 
 to laugh; but the most respected and 'intellectual' 
 among them cannot. It was the way of certain 
 frivolous old fogies a few years ago to twit them with 
 their supposed taste for what was then called the 
 New Humour, but there was really no foundation for 
 the taunt. The New Humour turned out to be 
 simply the Old Buffoonery ' writ small,' and, whoever 
 its patrons are or were, they are not to be found 
 among the thoughtful young men who represent the 
 generation with its hand on the door-knocker. 
 
 Altogether we seem to be within measurable dis- 
 tance of a time when nobody will be outwardly 
 amused by the humour of anybody else ; or when no 
 one, at any rate, will be moved or movable to those 
 mere muscular demonstrations of merriment which 
 the ludicrous was wont to provoke. To ' shake the 
 midriff,' I will not say of despair, but of mere indif- 
 ference, will be a feat beyond the power of the most 
 skilled and experienced jester to perform. He will 
 think himself lucky if, by his most successful pleas- 
 antry, he shall succeed in illuminating the counte- 
 nances of his younger hearers with a wintry smile. 
 So far have we now got from the primitive simplicity 
 of the horse-collar and its enshrined grin. It is not, 
 of course, that jokes will be worse than they used to 
 be. On the contrary, if there is anything in scionce, 
 
 Y
 
 THE FUTURE OF HUMOUR 
 
 they ought to be, scientifically speaking, better ; for 
 they will be the results of a synthesis based upon 
 and starting from an analytic process, which will be 
 brought ever nearer and nearer to perfection. That 
 they fail to tickle will not be due to any want of the 
 qualities necessary to titillatory power, but simply to 
 loss of sensibilit}' in the patient. The feathers are 
 right enough ; it is merely a chronic case of anaes- 
 thesis of the mental footsoles. 
 
 Of course, there will be consolations for the hu- 
 morist ; there are consolations already. The spec- 
 tacle — (and spectacles) — of the earnest young man 
 gravely studying comic masterpieces, this and the 
 Humour of the Nations Series (if that is its right 
 name) are distinctly in the nature of consolations. 
 And on the final arrival of the time when, although 
 jokes still continue to be made as psychological ex- 
 periments, nobody any longer laughs at the jokes of 
 anybody else, or even at his own, there is no doubt 
 that a situation of an intensely humorous character 
 will be created for all those — by that time it is to be 
 feared but a dwindling minority — who are capable 
 of appreciating it. The sense of humour, especially 
 in the elderly, tends in these days to become con- 
 tinually more and more self-centred and egoistic ; 
 they see life — especially youthful life — around them 
 more and more completely converting itself into a 
 comedy which they have all to themselves, at least 
 
 322
 
 THE FUTURE OP HUMOUR 
 
 if they may judge from the countenances of the 
 actors; and it will be only a fitting termination to 
 the process if one of them should find himself at last 
 — like Campbell's Last Man, with a difference — alone 
 in a world of humour of his own, enjoying the great 
 Cosmic Joke in strict privacy amid many millions of 
 earnest young men who do not see it, and deriving 
 a subtle addition to his enjoyment from that very 
 fact. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Note. — The foregoing essays, which severally appeared for the 
 first time in the Nineteenth Centuri/, the Fortnightly Review, the Con- 
 temporary Review, the National Revieiu, the New Review, and 3Iac- 
 millans Magazine, have been carefully revised and in some cases 
 virtually re-written for the purpose of inclusion in this volume. To 
 the Proprietors of the above-mentioned Periodicals my thanks are 
 dne for permission to reprint. — H. D. T. 
 
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 THE AWAKENING OF MARY FENWICK. 
 
 By Beatrice Whitby. 
 
 "We have no hesitation in declaring that ' The Awakening of Mary Fenwick ' is tha 
 best novel of its kind that we have seen for some years, it is apparently a first efforL 
 and, as sneh is really remarkable. The story is extremely simple. Mary Mauser marries 
 her husband for external, and perhaps rather inadequate, reasons, and then discovers 
 
 that he married her because she was an heiress. Sue feels the indignity acutely and 
 does not scruple to tell him her opicion— her very candid opinion— of bis behaviour That 
 IS the effect of the first few chapters, and the rest of Miss Whitby's book is devol 
 relating how this divided couple bated, quarrelled, and finally fell in love with one a-n. 
 Mary Fenwick and her husband live aud move ami make us believe in them in i 
 which few but the great masters of fiction have been able to compass."— ithenxum. 
 
 TWO ENGLISH GIRLS. 
 
 By Mabel Hart. 
 
 "This story is distinguished by its pure and elegant English, and the refinement of i. 
 style and thought. It is a lively account, with many touches of humour of Art study i'u 
 Florence, and the story weaved into it exhibits a high ideal of life . . . The lively, plea.- 
 tint, and refined tone of the narrative and dialogue will recommend the story to all 
 cultivated readers." — Spectator. 
 
 '■Beatrice Hamlyn is an emancipated young woman of the most pleasing type and her 
 friend Evelyn is hardly lef-s amiable. But the cleverness of Miss Hart's story lies in tho 
 simple yet effective portrait of the Italian character. The elder Vivaldi is presented to us 
 jn a way that shows both knowledge and sympathy. There are pleasing touches of 
 humour, too, in the minor personages." — Saturday lieview. 
 
 HIS LITTLE MOTHER, AND OTHER TALES. 
 
 By the Author of 'John Halifax, Gentlejian.' 
 
 " 'His Little Mother" is the story of a sister's self-sacrifice from her childhood until her 
 early death, worn out in her brother's and his children's service. It is a pathetic story 
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 touches, and the question of short-sighted though loving foolishness is kept in the back- 
 ground. The volume is written in a pleasant informal manner, and contains many tender 
 generous thoughts, and not a few practical ones. It is a book that will be read with in- 
 terest, and that cannot be lightly forgotten."— .«. James's Oatette. 
 
 "The book is written wiib all Mr.'--. Craik's grace of style, the chief charm of which, 
 after all, is its simplicity." —Gtej^oir Ikrald. 
 
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 By M. E. Le Clekc. 
 
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 politics as such do more than forma background for tbcswei't figure of Mi.streBs Uoatrico, 
 one of the simplest, most charming, tender, and heroic madonK of fiction. It Ih a jrooJ 
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 pleasant book, well-written, well-conceived. A book that is written in good sensible 
 English, and wherein the characters are mostly gentlefolk and 'behave as sich,' is not to 
 be met with every day, and consequently deserves a considerable meed of praise." — World. 
 
 " The characters are so brightly and vividly conceived, and the complications which go 
 to make up the story are so natural, so inevitable, and yet so fresh, that the interest 
 awakened by the opening of the tale never declines until the close, but rather, as is fitting, 
 becomes richer and deeper." — Acadtmy. 
 
 NINETTE. 
 
 By the Author of ' Vera,' ' Blue Roses,' Etc. 
 
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 ney, very badly, and getting engaged to another girl, who transfers her affections to the 
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 that the thing against which her whole nature had risen in revolt has become the one 
 desire of her heart. The mutual relations each to each of the impetuous Mtdge, her selt- 
 willed, stubborn grandfather, who has arranged the match, and her lover Jocelyn, with 
 his loyal, devoted, sweetly-balanced nature, are portrayed with fine truth of insight ; but 
 perhaps the authors greatest triumph is the portrait of Mrs. Lindsay, who, with the 
 knowledge of the terrible skeleton in the cupboard of her apparently happy home, wears 
 so bravely the mask of light gaiety as to deceive everybody but the one man who knows 
 her secret It is refreshing to read a novel in which there is not a trace of Blipsbod work." 
 — Spectator. 
 
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 JANET. 
 
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 any forced manipulation, a product of story which is rich in strong dramatic situations." 
 '-Manchester Examimr. 
 
 •• Mrs. Oliphant's hand has lost none of its cunning, despite her extraordinary — and, one 
 would think, exhausting — industry. 'Janet' may fairly rank among the best of her recent 
 productions." — St. James's Gazette. 
 
 •'■Janet ' is really an exciting story, and contains a great deal more plot and incident 
 til an has been the case in any of Mrs. Oliphant's recent novels. The character sketches 
 are worthy of their authorship.'' — Queen. 
 
 A RAINBOW AT NIGHT. 
 
 By the Author of ' Mistress Beatrice Cope.' 
 
 " In common, we should imagine, with a large circle of novel-readers, we have been 
 rather impatiently looking forward to the time when M. E Le Clerc, the author of ' Mis- 
 tress Beatrice Cope,' would produce a successor to that singularly interesting and charm- 
 ing tale. 'A Rainbow at Night,' though it certainly lacks the romantic and dramatic 
 character, combined with the llavour of a fascinating period, which gave special distinc- 
 tion to its forerunner, has no trace of falling off in the essential matters of construction, 
 portraiture, and styXe."— Graphic. 
 
 "Thanks to an interesting plot and a graphic as well as reflned manner, 'A Eainbow at 
 Night,' when once commenced, will not readily be laid aside." — Morning Post. 
 
 IN THE SUNTIME OF HER YOUTH. 
 
 By Beatrice Whitby. 
 
 "A description of a home stripped by the cold wind of poverty of all its comforts, but 
 which remains home still. The careless optimism of the head of the family would be in- 
 credible, if we did not know how men exist full of responsibilities yet free from solici- 
 tudes, and who tread with a jaunty step the very verge of ruin; l)is inconsolable widow 
 would be equally improbable, if we did not meet every day with women who devote them- 
 selves to such idols of clay. The characters of their charming children, whose penury we 
 deplore do not deteriorate, as often happens in that cruel ordeal. A sense of fairness 
 pervades the book which is rarely found in the work of a lady. There is interest in it 
 from first to last, and its pathos is relieved by touches of true 'h.\>.-iaQ\xT."— Illustrated 
 London News. 
 
 MISS BOUVERIE. 
 
 By Mrs. Molesworth. 
 
 "Mrs. Molesworth has long established a reputation as one of the freshest and moat 
 graceful of contemporaneous writers of light Action ; but in ' Miss Bouverie ' she has sur- 
 passed her.self, and it is no exuggeration to say that this is one of the prettiest stories which 
 has appeared for years." — Morning Post. 
 
 ■' fcveryone knows Mrs. Molesworth by her exquisite Christmas stories for children, and 
 can guess that any novel she writes is interesting, without sensationalism. The refine- 
 ment which pervades all Mrs. Molesworth's stories comes evidently from a pure, spiritual 
 nature, which unconsciously raises the reader's tone of thought, without any approach to 
 didactic writing." — Spectator. 
 
 6) 
 
 LOND0x\ : HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED.
 
 Each in One Volume, Crown Octavo, 3s. Qd. 
 
 FROM HARVEST TO HAYTIME. 
 
 By the Author of ' Two English Girls.' 
 
 "The accomplished author of 'Two English Girls ' has produced another novel of con- 
 siderable merit. The story is one of a rural district In England, into which there intro- 
 duces himself one day a foot-sore, hungry, sick tramp, who turns out to be a young man 
 of education and consideration, whose career in the past is strange, and whose career in 
 the future the author has depicted as stranger still. The writer is successful chiefly in the 
 excellent life-like pictures which she presents of Kose Purley, the young lady who man- 
 ages the farm, and of the village doctor, Gabriel Armstrong. The book is one which may 
 be read with pleasure." — Scotsman. 
 
 THE WINNING OF MAY. 
 
 By the Author of ' Dr. Edith Romney.' 
 
 " It is the writing of one who is determined, by dint of conscientious and painstaking 
 work, to win success from that portion of the pubHc that does not look for the brilliant 
 achievements of genius, but can recognise meritorious work. The tale is an agreeable 
 one, and the character of Mr. Beresford is admirably drawn, showing considerable in- 
 sight and understanding. The author has a steady mastery over the story she wishes 
 to tell, and she tells it clearly and eloquently, without hesitation and without prolixity. 
 The book has this merit — the first merit of a novel — that the reader is interested in the 
 people rather than the plot, and that he watches the development of character rather 
 than that of event."— Literary World. 
 
 SIR ANTHONY. 
 
 By Adeline Sergeant. 
 
 "Sir Anthony introduces two mysterious children, Henry and Elfrida, into his house, and 
 compels his wife, whom he dishkes, to protect and virtually adopt them. In due course 
 he tells these children, in his own vigorous Anglo-Saxon, 'You two are my eldest son 
 and daughter, lawfully begotten of my wife, once Mary Derrick, and known afterwards 
 as Mary Paston. You will be Sir Henry Kesterton when I die, and Elfrida is heiress 
 to her grandmother's money and jewels.' Lady Kesterton overhears this terrible 
 statement. He repeats it in a still more offensive form. Thereupon she gives him an 
 overdose of chloral, and fights desperately, and with temporary success, for what she re- 
 gards as the rights of her children, but especially of her son Gerard. Failure overtakes 
 her, and Elfrida, though not poor Henry, comes by her own. The plot is good and 
 thoroughly sustained from first to last." — Academy 
 
 THUNDERBOLT. 
 
 By the Rev. J. Middleton Macdonald. 
 
 " 'Thunderbolt' is an Australian rival of Claude Duval, and Mr. Macdonald records his 
 daring feats with unflagging verve. Never was police officer more defied nor bewildered 
 than the Major Devereux, of brilliant Indian reputation, who, in the Australian bush, 
 finds that to catch a robber of Thunderbolt's temperament and ability requires local 
 knowledge, as well as other gifts undreamt-of by the Hussar oillcer. Thunderbolt goes 
 to races under the Major's nose, dances in the houses of his friends, robs Her Majo.'ity's 
 mails and diverse banks, but conducts himself with (on occasion) the chivalrous cour- 
 tesy that characterised his prototype His tragical end is told with spirit, while the book 
 has excellent descriptions of Australian life, both in town and country." — Moruinij Post. 
 
 LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED. 
 
 C
 
 Each in One Volume, Crown Octavo, 2>s. 6c?. 
 
 MARY FENWICK'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 By Beatrice Whitby. 
 
 "This is one of the most delightful novels we have read for a long time. 'Bab' Fen- 
 wick is an ' out of doorB ' kind of girl, full of spirit, wit, go, and sin, both original and 
 acquired. Her lover. Jack, is all that a hero should be, and great and magnanimous as 
 he is, finds some difficulty in forgiving the insoiiciante mistress all her little sins of omis- 
 sion and commission. When she finally shoots him in the leg — by accident — the real 
 tragedy of the story begins. The whole is admirable, if a little long." — Black and White. 
 
 ROBERT CARROLL. 
 
 By the Author of ' Mistress Beatrice Cope.' 
 
 " M. E. Le Clerc devotes herself to historic fiction, and her success is sufficient to justify 
 her in the occasional production of stories like ' Mistress Beatrice Cope ' and ' Robert Car- 
 roll.' Beatrice Cope was a Jacobite's daughter, so far as memory serves, and Robert Carroll 
 was the son of a Jacobite baronet, who played and lost his stake at Preston, fighting for the 
 Old Pretender. Of course the hero loved a maiden whose father was a loyal servant of 
 King George, and, almost equally of course, one of this maiden's brothers was a Jacobite. 
 A second brother, by the way, appears as a lad of sixteen in the spring of 1714, and as a 
 wounded colonel of cavalry on the morrow of the fight at Preston, less than two years 
 later — rapid promotion evea for those days, though certainly not impossible. The author 
 has taken pains to be accurate in her references to the events of the time, and her blend 
 of fact and fiction is romantic enough." — Atfiemeuni. 
 
 THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE. 
 
 By the Author of ' Some Married Fellows.' 
 
 "It is a comfort to turn from the slipshod English and the tiresome slang of many 
 modern novels to the easy and cultured style of ' The Husband of One Wife,' and we have 
 been thoroughly interested in the story, as well as pleased with the manner in which it is 
 told. As for Mrs. Goldenour, afterwards Mrs. Garfoyle, afterwards Mrs. Pengelley, she is 
 certainly one of the most attractive as well as one of the most provoking of heroines, and 
 Mrs. Venn has succeeded admirably in describing her under both aspects. The scone of 
 the dinner-party, and the description of the bishop's horror at its magnificence is very 
 clever. We are very glad to meet several old friends again, especially Mrs. Qruter, who 
 is severe and amusing as ever. Altogether we feel that Mrs. Venn's novels are books to 
 which we can confidently look forward with ■plea.suie."— Guardian. 
 
 BROTHER GABRIEL. 
 
 By IVI. Betham-Edwards. 
 
 " The story will be followed with unfaltering interest. Nor is anything short of un- 
 mixed praise due to several of the episodes and separate incidents of which it is composed. 
 ■The principal characters — Delmar, Zo^'s cousin and lover — stand out in decided and life- 
 like relief. In the sketches of scenery, especially those of the coast of Brittany and the 
 aspect of its sea, both in calm and storm, Miss Betham-Edwards need not fear comparison 
 with the best masters of the art." — Spectator. 
 
 "The book is one that maybe read with pleasure ; it is fluently, flowingly, carefully 
 written; and it contains very pleasant sketches of character." — Academy. 
 
 LONDON: HURST AND BLACFETT, LIMITED- 
 
 8)
 
 Eack in One Volume, Croion Octavo, 3s. ^d. 
 
 A MATTER OF SKILL. 
 
 By Beatrice Whitby. 
 
 "Miss Whitby essays a lighter vein than usual in her collection of stories, entitled ' A 
 Hatter of Skill.' But she writes with the same excellence and freedom, and all these 
 miniature love-stories will be cordially welcomed. Lovely woman appears in these pages 
 in a variety of moods, liumorous and pathetic, and occasionally she seems not a little 
 'uncertain, coy, and hard to please.' The title story, showing how a stately girl is captured, 
 after a good deal of trouble, by a short and common-place young man, is very amuBiog; 
 and there are other Bketches in which it is interesting to follow the wiles of Mother Eve 
 ere she has come to years of discretion." — Academy. 
 
 JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN. 
 
 By Mrs. Craik. 
 
 "The new and cheaper edition of this interesting work will doubtless meet with great 
 -enccess. John Halifax, the hero of this most beautiful story, is no ordinary hero, and 
 this his history is no ordinary hook. It is a full-length portrait of a true gentleman, one 
 of nature's own nobiUty. It is also the history of a home, and a thoroughly English one. 
 The work abounds in incident, and many of the scenes are full of graphic power and true 
 pathos. It is a book that few will read without becoming wiser and better." — Scots/nan. 
 
 A LIFE FOR A LIFE. 
 
 By Mrs. Craik. 
 
 "We are always glad to welcome this author. She writes from her own convictions, 
 and she has the power not only to conceive clearly what it is that she wishes to say, but 
 to express it in language effective and vigorous. In ' A Life for a Life ' she is fortuuate 
 in a good subject, and she has produced a work of strong effect. The reader, having read 
 the buok through for the story, will be apt (if he be of our persuasion) to return and read 
 again many pages and passages with greater pleasure than on a Urst perusal. The whole 
 book is replete with a graceful, tender delicacy ; and, in addition to its other merits, it is 
 written in good careful English."— Atheneeum. 
 
 CHRISTIAN'S MISTAKE. 
 
 By Mrs. Ci:aik. 
 
 "A more charming story, to our taste, has rarely been written. Within the compass 
 of a pingle volume the writer has hit off a circle of varied characters, all true to nature- 
 some true to the highest nature— and she has entangled them in a story which keeps us 
 in suapcDse till the knot is happily and gracefully rosijlved; while, at the same time, a 
 pathetic; interest is sustained by an art of which it would be difficult to analyse the secret. 
 It is a choice gift to be able thus to render human nature so truly, to penetrate its depths 
 with such a searching sagacity, and to illuminate them with a radiance so eminently the 
 writer s own.'' — Tlie Times. 
 
 LONDON : HUKST AND CLACKKTT, LIMITED. 
 
 (9
 
 Each in One Volume, Crown Octavo, 3s. 6c?. 
 
 A NOBLE LIFE. 
 
 By Mrs. Craik. 
 
 "Few men and no women will read 'A Noble Lift' without feeling themselves t'aa 
 better for the effort.'' — Spectator. 
 
 " A beautifully written and touching tale. It is a noble book." — Morning Post. 
 
 "'A Noble Life' is remarkable for the high typea of character it presents, and- the 
 skill with which they are made to work out a story of powerful and pathetic intereoi." 
 —Daily News. 
 
 THE WOMAN'S KINGDOM. 
 
 By Mrs. Craik. 
 
 " 'The Woman's Kingdom' sustains the author's rep;itation as a writer of the purest 
 and noblest kind of domestic stories." — Alkenceum. 
 
 " ' The Woman's Kingdom ' is remarkable for its romantic interest. The characters are 
 masterpieces. Edna is worthy of the hand that drew John Halifax." — Morning Post. 
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 By Mrs. Craik. 
 
 " A very good novel, showing a tender sympathy with human nature, and permeated 
 by a pure and noble spirit.'' — Examiner. 
 
 " A most charming story." — Standard. 
 
 "We earnestly recommend this novel. It is a special and worthy specimen of the 
 author's remarkable powers. The reader's attention never for a moment flags." — Post. 
 
 MISTRESS AND MAID. 
 
 By Mrs. Craik. 
 
 "A good, wholesome book, as pleasant to read as it is instructive." — Athenaeum. 
 "This book is written with the same true-hearted earnestness as 'John Halifax.' Tha 
 spirit of the whole work is excellent." — Examiner. 
 " A charming tale charmingly told." — Standard. 
 
 LONDON : BURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED. 
 
 10)
 
 Each in One Volume, Crown Octavo, 35. 6c?. 
 
 YOUNG MRS. JARDINE. 
 
 By Mrs. Craik. 
 
 " ' Youag Mrs. Jardine ' is a pretty story, written ia pure Engliali." — The Times. 
 
 " There is much good feeling in this book. It is pleasant; and wholesome." — Athenceum. 
 
 " A book that all should read. Whilst it is quite the equal of any of its predecessors 
 in elevation of thought or style, it is perhaps their superior in interest of plot and 
 dramatic intensity. The cliaracters are admirably delineated, and the dialogue is natural 
 and clear." — Morning Post. 
 
 HANNAH. 
 
 By Mrs. Craik. 
 
 "A powerful novel of social and domestic life. One of the most successful efforts of a 
 successful novelist." — Daily Newi. 
 
 ■' A very pleasant, healthy story, well and artistically told. The book is sure of a wide 
 circle of readers. The character of Hannah is one of rare beauty. — Standard. 
 
 NOTHING NEW. 
 
 By Mrs. Craik. 
 
 " 'Nothing New " displays all those superior merits which have made 'John Halifax ' 
 one of the most popular novels of the day." — Morning Post. 
 
 "The reader will find these narratives calculated to remind him of that truth and 
 energy of human portraiture, that spell over human affections and emotions, which have 
 stamped this author as one of the first novelists of our day."' — John Bull. 
 
 IN TIME TO COME. 
 
 By Eleanor Holmes. 
 
 " ' In Time to Come,' by Miss Eleanor Holmes, merits a good place among one-volume 
 novels. The theme is interesting, the characters who work it out have been observantly 
 studied and carefully drawn, and the sequel justifies what at the first blush seems rather 
 a vague title."— Ownrfee Advertiser. 
 
 LONDON : HUEST AND BLAOKETT, LIMITED. 
 
 (11
 
 Each in One Volume, Crown Octavo, os. <od. 
 
 THE UNKIND WORD. 
 
 By Mrs. Craik. 
 
 ■' The author of ' John Halifax ' has written many fascinating stories, but we can call to 
 mind nothing from her pen that has a more enduring charm than the graceful sketches 
 in this work. Such a character as Jessie stands out from a crowd of heroines as the type 
 of all that is truly noble, pure, and womanly.'' — United Service Magazine. 
 
 DALEFOLK. 
 
 By Alice Rea. 
 " ' Dalefolk ' tells of the effect produced on a^simple and impressible people by a terrific 
 curse, pronounced by a half-insane clergyman on a parishioner whom he believes to have 
 written an anonymous letter of complaint to the Bishop of the diocese. The cloud of 
 mingled awe and repulsion that rests on the family for two generations is forcibly de- 
 scribed. But this la only a background for a series of capital sketches of life as it was 
 among the West Cumberland dalesmen at a period — this is the only note of time — when 
 the diocese was ruled from Chester instead of, as now, from Carlisle. The author evidenly 
 writes from full acquaintance with her subject, and brings out in vivid colours the quaint, 
 old festivities, the dancings, and wrestlings, and card-playings, the great gatherings for 
 shearings and ' salvings,' all of them excuses for genial and unstinted hospitalities, and 
 renewals of kind, neighbourly feeling and good-fellowship, which were so needed among 
 the loneliness and isolation which were of necessity the habitual lot of the occupiers of 
 the great sheep farms. She is equally happy in entering into the ways of thought and 
 feeling which must have been characteristic of the primitive and simple folk to whom 
 the reader is introduced in her pleasant pages." — Guardian. 
 
 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 By Mrs. Craik. 
 
 " These studies are truthful and vivid pictures of life, often earnest, always full of 
 right feeling, and occasionally lightened by touches of quiet genial humour. The volume 
 is remarkable for thought, sound sense, shrewd observation, and kind and sympathetic 
 feeling for all things good and beautiful." — Morning Post. 
 
 A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT W^OMEN. 
 
 By Mrs. Craik. 
 
 "A book of sound counsel. It is one of the most sensible works of its kind, well 
 written, true-hearted, and altogether practical. Whoever wishes to give advice to a 
 young lady may thank the author for means of doing so." — Examiner. 
 
 'These thoughts are worthy of the earnest and enlightened mind, the all-embracing 
 charity and well-earned reputation of the author of 'John Halifax.' " — Standard. 
 
 ' This excellent book is characterised by good sense, good taste, and feeling, and is 
 written in an earnest, philanthropic, as well as practical spirit."— J/orninj/ Post. 
 
 LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED. 
 
 12)
 
 MRS. CRAIK'S NOVELS 
 
 Each in One Volume, Crown Octavo, Ss. 6d. 
 JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN. 
 
 •'The new and cheaper edition of this interesting work will doubtless meet with great 
 success. John Halifax, the hero of this most beautiful story, is no ordinary hero, and this 
 his history is no ordinary hook. It is a full-length portrait of a true gentleman, one of 
 nature's own nobility. It is also the history of a home, and a thoroughly English one. 
 The work abounds in incident, and is full of graphic power and true pathos. It ia a book 
 that few will read without becoming wiser and better." — Scotsmayi. 
 
 A LIFE FOR A LIFE. 
 
 "We are always glad to welcome this author. She writes from her own convictions, 
 and she has the power not only to conceive clearly what it is that she wishes to say, but 
 to express it in language effective and vigorous. In ' A Life for a Life ' she is fortunate 
 in a good subject, and she has produced a work of strong effect. The reader, having read 
 the book through for the story, will be apt (if he be of our persuasion) to return and read 
 again many pages and passages with greater pleasure than on a first perusal The whole 
 book is replete with a graceful, tender delicacy ; and in addition to its other merits, it is 
 written in good careful English. ' — Athinseum. 
 
 CHRISTIAN'S MISTAKE. 
 
 "A more charming story, to our taste, has rarely been written. "Within the compaSs 
 of a single volume the writer has hit off a circle of varied characters, all true to nature — 
 some true to the highest nature — and she has entangled them in a story which keeps us 
 in suspense till the knot is happily and gracefully resolved; while, at the same time, a 
 pathetic interest is sustained by an art of which it would be difficult to analyse the secret, 
 it is a choice gift to be able thus to render human nature so truly, to penetrate its depths 
 with such a searching sagacity, and to illuminate them with a radiance so eminently the 
 writer's own."— r/ie Times. 
 
 A NOBLE LIFE. 
 
 "This is one of those pleasant tales in whijh the author of 'John Halifax ' speaks out 
 of a generous heart the purest truths of life. " — Examiner. 
 
 "Few men, and no women, will read 'A Noble Life' without finding themselves the 
 better." — Spectator. 
 
 " A atory of powerful and pathetic interest " — Dailt/ Ifews. 
 
 THE WOMAN'S KINGDOM. 
 
 "'The Woman's Kingdom' sustains the author's reputation as a writer of the purest 
 and noblest kind of domestic stories. The novelist's lesson is given with admirable force 
 and sweetness " — Athenseum. 
 
 "'The Woman's Kingdom' is remarkable for its romantic interest The characters 
 are masterpieces. Edna is worthy of the hand that drew John Halifax."— Post. 
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 "A very good novel, showing a tender sympathy with human nature, and permeated 
 by a pure and noble spirit" — Examiner. 
 
 "A most charming story." — Standard. 
 
 " We earnestly recommend this novel It is a special and worthy specimen of the 
 author's remarkable powers. The reader's attention never for a moment flags." — Post. 
 
 MISTRESS AND MAID. 
 
 "A good, wholesome book, as pleasant to read as it is instructive." — Athenaeum. 
 "This book is written with the same true-hearted earnestness as 'John Halifax.' The 
 spirit of the whole work is excellent" — Examiner. 
 "A charming tale charmingly told." — Standard. 
 
 LONDON : HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED.
 
 MRS. CRAIK'S NOVELS 
 
 Each in One Volume Crown Octavo, 3s. Qd. 
 YOUNG MRS. JARDINE. 
 
 "'Young'Mra. Jardine' is a pretty story, written in pure English." — T!ie Times. 
 
 "There is much good feeling in this book. It is pleasant and wholesome." — Athensivm. 
 
 "A book that all shou'd read. Whilst it is quite the equal of any of its predecessors 
 in elevation of thought and style, it is perhaps their superior in interest of plot and 
 dramatic intensity. The characters are admirably delineated, and the dialogue is natural 
 and clear." — Morning Post. 
 
 HANNAH. 
 
 " A powerful novel of social and domestic life. One of the most successful efforts of a 
 successful novelist" — Daily News. 
 
 " A very pleasant, healthy story, well and artistically told The book is sure of a wide 
 circle of readers. The character of Hannah is one of rare beauty." — Standard. 
 
 NOTHING NEW. 
 
 " ' Nothing New ' displays all those superior merits which have made ' John Halifax ' 
 one of the most popular works of the day." — Post. 
 
 " The reader will find these narratives calculated to remind him of that truth and 
 energy of human portraiture, that spell over human affections and emotions, which have 
 stamped this author as one of the first novelists of our day." — John Bull. 
 
 THE UNKIND WORD. 
 
 "The author of 'John Halifax ' has written many fascinating stories, but we can call to 
 mind nothing from her pea that has a more enduring charm than th« graceful sketches in 
 this work, buoh a character as Jessie stands out from a crowd of heroines as the type of 
 all that is truly noble, pure, and womanly." — United Service Magazine. 
 
 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 "These studies are truthful and vivid pictures of life, often earnest, always full of right 
 feeling, and occasionally lightened by touches of quiet genial humour. The volume is re- 
 markable for thought, sound sense, shrewd observation, and kind and sympathetic feeling 
 for all things good and beautiful" — Post. 
 
 A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN. 
 
 "A book of sound counsel It is one of the most sensible works of its kind, well written 
 true-hearted, and altogether practical Whoever wishes to give advice to a young lady 
 may thani tbe author for means of doing so." — E.raminer. 
 
 'These thoughts are worthy of the earnest and enlightened mind, the all-embracing 
 charity, and the well-earned reputation of the author of 'John Halifax.'" — Standard 
 
 "This excellent book is characterised by good sense, good taste, and feeling, and ia 
 written in an earnest, philanthropic, as well as practical spirit." — Post. 
 
 HIS LITTLE MOTHER. 
 
 " ' His Little Mother' is the story of a sister's self-saoriflce from her childhood until her 
 early death, wora out in her brother's and his children's service. It is a pathetic story 
 as the author tells it. The beauty of the girl's devotion is described with many tender 
 touches, and the question of short-sighted though loving foolishness is kept in the buck- 
 ground. The volume is written in a pleasant informal manner, and contains many tender 
 generohs thoughts, and not a few practical ones. It is a book that will be read with in- 
 terest, and that cannot be lightly forgotten.'' — St. Ja7nes's Gazette 
 
 LONDON : HDIiST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED.
 
 BEATRICE WHITBY'S NOVELS. 
 
 EACH IN ONE VOLUME CROWN 8vo-3s. 6d. 
 
 THE AWAKENING OF MARY FENWICK. 
 
 " We have no hesitation in declaring that 'The Awakening of Mary Fenwick ' is the 
 best novel of its kind that we have seen for some years. It is apparently a first effort, 
 and, as such, is really remarkable. The story is extremely simple. Mary Mauser marries 
 her husband for external, and perhaps rather inadequate, reasons, and then discovers 
 that he married her because she was an heiress. She feels the indignity acutely, and 
 does not scruple to tell him her opinion — her very candid opinion — of his behaviour. That 
 is the effect of the first few chapters, and the rest of Miss Whitby's book is devoted to 
 relating how this divided couple hated, quarrelled, and finally fell in love with one another. 
 Mary Fenwick and her husband live and move and make us believe in them in a way 
 which few but the great masters of fiction have been able to compass." — Athenwum 
 
 ONE REASON WHY. 
 
 "The governess makes a re-entry into fiction under the auspices of Beatrice Whitby in 
 'One Season Why.' Readers generally, however, will take a great deal more interest, for 
 once, in the children than in their instructress. ' Bay ' and ' Ellie ' are charmingly natural 
 additions to the children of novel-land ; so much so, that there is a period when one dreads 
 a death-bed scene for one of them — a fear which is happily unfulfilled. — Graphic. 
 
 PART OF THE PROPERTY. 
 
 'The book is a thoroughly good one. The theme is fairly familiar — the rebellion of a 
 spirited girl against a match which has been arranged for her without her knowledge or 
 consent; her resentment at being treated, not as a woman with a heart and will, but as 
 'part of the property ;' and her final discovery, which is led up to with real dramatic sbilL, 
 that the thing against which her whole nature had risen in revolt has become the one 
 desire of her heart. The author's greatest triumph is the portrait of Mrs Lindsay, who, 
 with the knowledge of the terrible skeleton in the cupboard of her apparently happy 
 home, wears so bravely the mask of light gaiety as to deceive everybody but the one man 
 who knows her secret." — Spectator. 
 
 IN THE SUNTIME OF HER YOUTH. 
 
 'A description of a home stripped by the cold wind of poverty of all its comforts, but 
 which remains home stilL The careless optimism of the head of the family would be in- 
 credible, if we did not know how men exist lull of responsibilities yet free from solici- 
 tudes, and who tread with a jaunty stpp the very verge of ruin ; his inconsolable widow 
 would be equally improbable, if we did not meet every day with women who devote them- 
 selves to such idols of clay. There is interest in it from first to last, and its pathos is re- 
 lieved by touches of true humour." — Illustrated London News. 
 
 MARY FENWICK'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 "This is one of the most delightful novels we have read for a long time. 'Bab' Fen- 
 wick is an ' out of doors ' kind of girl, full of spirit, wit, go, and sin, both original and 
 acquired. Her lover. Jack, is all that a hero should be, and great and magnanimous as 
 he is, finds some difficulty in forgiving the inxmicicuitc niistress all her little sins of omis- 
 sion and commission. When she finally shoots him in the leg — by accident — the real 
 tragedy of the story begins. The whole is admirable."— ^/acit an(/ White. 
 
 A MATTER OF SKILL. 
 
 " Lovely woman appears in these pages in a variety of moods, humorous and pathetic, 
 and occasionally she seems not a little 'uncertain, coy, and hard to please.' The title 
 story, showing how a stately girl is captured, after a good deal of trouble, by a short and 
 commonplace young man, is very amusing; and there are other sketches in whifh it is 
 interesting to follow the wiles of Mother £vo ere she has come to years of discretion."— 
 Academij. 
 
 LONDON : HUEIST AND BLACKliTT, LIMITED.
 
 EDNA LYALL'S NOVEL 
 
 EACH IN ONE VOLUME CROWN 8vo— SIX SHILLINGS. 
 
 DONOVAN: A MODERN ENGLISHMAN. 
 
 "This is a very admirable work. The reader is from the first carried away by the 
 gallant unconventionality of its author. ' Donovan ' is a very excellent novel; but it is 
 something more and better. It should do as much good as the best sermon ever written 
 or delivered extempore. The story is told with a grand simplicity, an unconscious poetry 
 of eloquence which stirs the very depths of the heart. One of the main excellencies of 
 this novel is the delicacy of touch with which the author shows her most delightful char- 
 acters to be after all human beings, and not angels before their time." — Standard. 
 
 WE TWO. 
 
 " There is artistic realism both in the conception and the delineation of the personages 
 ttie action and interest are unflaggingly sustained from first to last, and the book is per- 
 vaded by an atmosphere of elevated, earnest thought"— -Sco^^man. 
 
 IN THE GOLDEN DAYS. 
 
 •'Miss Lyall has given us a vigorous study of such life and character as are really worth 
 reading about The central figure of her story is Algernon Sydney; and this figure she 
 invests with a singular dignity and power. He always appears with effect, but no liber- 
 ties are taken with the facts of his life." — Spectator. 
 
 KNIGHT-ERRANT. 
 
 "The plot, and, indeed, the whole story, is gracefully fresh and very charming; thert 
 is a wide humanity in the book that cannot fail to accomplish its author's purpose."— 
 Literary World. 
 
 WON BY WAITING. 
 
 " The Dean's daughters are perfectly real characters — the learned Cornelia especially -. 
 
 the little impulsive French heroine, who endures their cold hospitality and at last winf 
 
 their affection, is thoroughly charming; while throughout the book there runs a golden 
 thread of pure brotherly and sisterly love, which pleasantly reminds us that the making 
 and marring of marriage is not, after all, the sum total of real life." — Academy. 
 
 A HARDY NORSEMAN. 
 
 " All the quiet humour we praised in ' Donovan ' is to be found in the new story. And 
 the humour though never demonstrative, has a charm of it.s own. It is not Edna Lyall's 
 plan to give' her readers much elaborate description, but when she does describe scenery 
 her picture is always alive with vividness and grace."— Athenseum. 
 
 TO RIGHT THE AYRONG. 
 
 •' We are glad to welcome Miss Lyall back after her long abstraction from the fields ot 
 prosperous, popular authorship which she had tilled so successfully. She again affronts 
 her public with a very serious work of fiction indeed, and succeeds very well in that 
 thorny path of the historictti novel in which so many have failed before her. That ' glory 
 of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,' John Hampden, lives again, to a certain extent, 
 in that dim half light of posthumous research and loving and enthusiastic imagination 
 which is all the novelist can do for these great figures of the past, resurrected to make the 
 plot of a modern novel." — Black and White. 
 
 LONDON : HUEST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED.
 
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