THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
s
J - "
f
PEN AND INK
'Books by Grander CMattbews :
ESSAYS AND CRITICISMS
French Dramatists of the igth Century
Pen and Ink, Essays on subjects of more
or less importance
Aspects of Fiction, and other Essays
The Historical Novel, and other Essays
Parts of Speech, Essays on English
The Development of the Drama (in
preparation)
PEN AND INK
PAPERS ON SUBJECTS OF MORE OR LESS
IMPORTANCE
BY
BRANDER MATTHEWS
THIRD EDITION
REVISED AND ENLARGED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1902
Copyright, 1888, 1902,
BY BRANDER MATTHEWS.
Published February, 1902.
THE CAXTON PRESS
NEW YORK.
PS
.237.2
If 02
PEN Aim INK.
Ye wanderers that were my sires,
Who read men' s fortunes in the hand t
Who -voyaged with your smithy fires
From waste to waste across the land,
Why did you leave for garth and town
Your life by heath and river's brink ?
Why lay your Gipsy freedom down
And doom your child to Pen and Ink ?
You wearied of the wild-wood meal
That crowned, or failed to crown, the day,
Too honest or too tame to steal,
You broke into the beaten way:
Wied loom or awl like other men
t/Jnd learned to love the guinea's chink.
Oh, recreant sires, who doomed me then
To earn so few with Pen and Ink!
Where it hath fallen the tree must lie.
'Tis over-late for ME to roam.
Yet the caged bird who hears the cry
Of his wild fellows fleeting home
1966920
<Mayfeel no sharper pang than mine,
Who seem to hear, "whene'er I think,
Spate in the stream and wind in pine
Call me to quit dull Pen and Ink.
For then the Spirit wandering,
That sleeps within the blood, awakes;
For then the summer and the spring
I fain would meet by streams and lakes.
But ah, my birtlrright long is sold,
T^ut custom chains me, link on link,
<And I must get me, as of old,
'Back to my tools, to Pen and Ink.
A. LANG.
PAGE
'"Pen and Ink," by A. Lang . . . xiii
I On the Antiquity of Jests I
II The Ethics of 'Plagiarism 23
III The True Theory of the Preface ... 53
IV The Philosophy of the Short-story . . 73
V A &ote on the Essay 107
VI Two Latter-day Lyrists 119
I Frederick Locker
II Austin Dobson
VII The Songs of the Civil War . . . .167
VIII On the French spoken by those who do
not speak French 197
IX The Tiramati^ation of U^avels . . .219
X The Whole T)uty of Critics . . . .253
"An Epistle to the Author," by H. C.
TSunner 275
I
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS
ON THE ANTIQyiTY OF JESTS.
HERE are not a few very interesting
and instructive books waiting to be
written. Two goodly tomes there
are, for example, which I am anx
ious to own, the 'Anecdote His
tory of Private Theatricals/ and 'A Historical
Treatise on Scene-Painting and Stage-Mechanism.'
Unfortunately nobody has yet thought it worth
his while to write either of them, though it would
be difficult to find anywhere two books about the
stage more entertaining, more useful, and easier
to put together. But a book which I would
receive with more welcome and review more
willingly even than these is the ' Authentic Jest-
Book, chronologically arranged, with exact refer
ences to the original authorities and a collation of
the parallel passages in other authors/ It may be
thought that of jest-books we have a many, and
that, at best, they are but dreary reading. And
so it is. But the ' Authentic Jest-Book ' is wholly
unlike any other collection of jokes and gibes and
2 PEN AND INK.
repartees and witticisms ; it is unlike them all,
and better than any of them. In the ordinary
gathering of merry jests, whether it be the collec
tion of Hierocles, the Greek, or of Abou-na-wass,
the Persian, whether it be the ' Moyen de Par-
venir,' the compilation of some contemporary of
Rabelais, or the ' Gesta Romanorum ' growing
together in monkish hands, whether it be the
humorous anthology of the worthy Poggio or that
credited to the unworthy Joseph Miller, in any and
all of the recognized receptacles of the waifs and
strays of wit and humor, there is one marked,
permanent, and fatal defect : the most of the jokes
are unidentified and unauthenticated ; they are set
down as they were familiar in men's mouths at the
time when Poggio and Hierocles and the double
of Joseph Miller and their fellows went about tak
ing notes. In other words, no effort has been
made hitherto to show the genesis of jests, and
to declare with precision and with authority just
when a given joke was first made and just what
transformations and adventures it has since under
gone.
The jest-book I want is one giving chapter and
verse for every laugh in it. In ' L'Esprit dans
1'Histoire' and in 'L'Esprit des Autres,' Edouard
Fournier made an attempt along the right path ;
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. y
and he was followed aptly and promptly by
Mr. Hayward in the essay on the 'Pearls and
Mock-Pearls of History.' Fournier and Hayward
succeeded in showing that many an accepted witti
cism is a very Proteus, reappearing again and again
with a change of face. Other jokes are, like Cagli-
ostro, turning up once in a century quite as
young as ever. There is, for instance, a story told
by Lord Stair, called the politest man in France
because he obeyed the king's request and
jumped into the royal carriage before his majesty.
Lord Stair bore a singular resemblance to Louis
XIV., who was moved to ask him if Lord Stair's
mother had ever been to Paris ; to which Lord
Stair replied, "No, your majesty, but. my father
has." The same story is told of Henri IV. and a
certain gentleman of Gascony. It can be found in
Macrobius, where it is related of a general who
came from Spain to the court of the Caesars.
Now, in the 'Authentic Jest-Book,' this anecdote
would reappear in an English translation of the
exact words of Macrobius, with a note setting
forth the revival of the retort under Henri IV. and
Louis XIV. : no doubt it has been told of many
another monarch who was the father of his people
in the fashion of the roi vert-galant. Moore, as
in duty bound, sets down Sheridan's light-hearted
4 PEN AND INK.
jest while he watched the burning of Drury Lane
Theatre from the coffee-house where he was sip
ping a glass of sherry " Surely a man may take
a glass of wine at his own fireside ! " This is a
saying quite worthy of Sheridan, and one which
he was quite capable of making ; but Moore, with
a wise scepticism, suggested that it "may have
been, for aught I know, like the Wandering Jew,
a regular attendant upon all fires since the time of
Hierocles."
There is, indeed, a metempsychosis of profes
sional jokes. A merry jest about a preacher or
a player or a physician is reincarnated in every
generation. It is like royalty, it never dies Le
roi est mort! Vive le roil Garrick's death eclipses
the gayety of nations, but the stroke of, humor
which told for or against Garrick soon tells for or
against Grimaldi. By a sort of apostolic succes
sion, the anecdotes about a popular clergyman pass
to the clergyman who succeeds him in popularity.
Two of these perennial tales one about a player,
and the other about a preacher have had an excep
tionally strong hold on life. In the first a severe
hypochondriac consults a physician, who advises
recreation : " You should see Listen ! " " I am
Listen ! " answers the severe hypochondriac. This
is told of Grimaldi and of many another comic
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 5
performer before and since his time. The earliest
instance I have been able to find is in connec
tion with Dominique, the famous arlequin of the
Comedie-Italienne under Louis XIV. Arlequin
Dominique was ready of speech, as an anecdote
proves which has yet only one hero : the monarch
was fond of the mimic, and seeing him thirsty one
day, bade a servant give him a goblet filled to the
brim. Now the goblet was of gold, so Arlequin
slyly queried, " And the wine, too, your majesty ?"
But this is a digression.
The second story relates to a certain popular
preacher, who on a sultry summer morning arose
in his pulpit and wiped his forehead and said, " It
is damned hot ! " And when the congregation
were properly shocked into wakefulness, he said,
"Such were the words which met my ears this
morning as I entered this house of worship ! " and
then he proceeded to preach a vigorous sermon
against the sin of profanity. In the article which
an important London weekly devoted to the cele
bration of Mr. Spurgeon's fifty years of ministry,
this saying and this sermon were placed in the
mouth of Mr. Spurgeon. In the United States
Mr. Henry Ward Beecher was generally supposed
to have said them there are not wanting those
who declare that they heard him in spite of the
6 PEN AND INK.
eloquent protests and denial of his sister, Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe. But Rowland Hill pre
ceded both Mr. Beecher and Mr. Spurgeon as the
protagonist of this little sacred play ; and Robert
Hall had appeared in the part before Rowland Hill.
Who the real originator may be will not be known
with certainty until the ' Authentic Jest-Book '
appears.
One class of anecdote should be excluded scru
pulously from my model collection. It is the
anecdote unvouched for by a recognizable proper
name as one of the dramatis persona. It is the
anecdote which relates us the faits et gestes of " a
certain Oxford scholar" or " a well-known wit"
or " a foolish fellow." These anonymous tales are
as unworthy of credence as an anonymous letter.
A merry jest ought always to be accompanied by
the name of the hero, necessarily for publication
and as a guarantee of good faith. When the tale
is tagged to a man whose name we know, investi
gation is possible and we may get at the truth.
But these nameless stories are of no country and
of no century rather are they of all nations and
of all times. It has been well said that Irish bulls
were calves in Greece. There is a familiar Irish
anecdote, not to be told here, though innocent
enough, which turns on the continuance of the
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 7
pattering of the rain-drops. This was confided
to me a few years ago in America as the latest
importation from the Emerald Isle. A year later,
I read it in one of the ten volumes of the ' His-
toriettes' of Tallemant des Reaux, who flourished
in the middle of the seventeenth century. The
next summer, I happened to choose for my light
reading ' Le Moyen de Parvenir,' attributed by
most to Beroalde de Varville, although it may pos
sibly be, in part at least, the work of Rabelais ;
and in this collection, put together in the sixteenth
century, again I found my Irish story, Gascon,
this time, I think ; certainly no longer Hibernian.
It is characteristic of the transmigration of tales,
that the story which we find first in the ' Moyen
de Parvenir/ avowedly a work of fiction, reappears
a hundred years later in the Memoirs of Tallemant
as a fact. It is a wise anecdote that knows its
own father.
To another French collection, the ' Contes du
Sieur Galliard,' by Tabourot des Accords, Mr.
Richard Grant White has traced one of the most
amusing stanzas of ' Yankee Doodle '
Yankee Doodle came to town
And wore his striped trowsis ;
Said he couldn't see the town,
There were so many houses.
8 PEN AND INK.
The French ancestor is: " Chascun me disoit
que je verrois une si grande et belle ville ; mais
on se mocquoit de moi ; car on ne le peut voir a
cause de la multitude des maisons qui empechent
la veue." And I think there is an even older
English saying to the effect that one could not see
the forest for the trees.
There is no need here to enter on the vexed
question of plagiarism, though it is very tempt
ing at all times. One chapter of the ' History of
Plagiarism ' another of the interesting books
waiting to be written must contain many facts
of interest tending to show the survival of humor.
Almost the oldest literary monument in the his
tory of the French comedy is the ' Farce de Maitre
Pierre Pathelin ' ; it is as primitive and as positive
in its humor as a play can be. An adaptation of
it under the name of ' L'Avocat Pathelin ' was
made by Brueys and Palaprat, in accordance with
the canons of French dramatic art which obtained
in the eighteenth century. From ' L'Avocat Pathe
lin ' was taken an English farce, the ' Village
Lawyer/ brought out at Drury Lane under the
management of David Garrick. The ' Village
Lawyer ' kept the stage for nearly a century, and
the last time it was acted in New-York Mr. Joseph
Jefferson took the chief part. A perversion of the
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 9
'Village Lawyer,' under the title of the 'Great
Sheep Case,' has been made for the use of the
ruder and more boisterous actors who perform in
the entertainments known, for some inscrutable
reason, as Variety Shows. Thus it happens that
one of the earliest comic plays of France still keeps
the stage in America as strong an instance of
the tenacity of humor as one could wish.
When a story is authenticated by a proper name
we are inclined to treat it with more respect than
when it is a mere bastard with no right to a
patronymic. There has recently been put into
circulation in America an anecdote sharpened to
the same point as an anecdote recorded in the his
trionic biographies of the last century ; but the
proper names which appear in both versions lead
one to believe that there has been no wilful in
fringement of copyright. Foote was forever gird
ing at Garrick's parsimony very unjustly, for
Garrick was careful of the pence only that he
might have pounds to lend and to give. Garrick
dropped a guinea once and sought it in vain, until
he gave up the search, saying petulantly, "I be
lieve it has gone to the devil ! " Whereupon
Foote remarked that Davy could make a guinea go
farther than any one else. This is the tale as told
in the last century in the Old World. Here is the
I0 PEN AND INK.
tale as told in the New World in this century.
When Mr. William M. Evarts was Secretary of
State he went with a party to see the Natural
Bridge in Virginia, not very far from the capi
tal. Somebody repeated the tradition that George
Washington once threw a silver dollar over the
bridge a very remarkable feat of strength and
skill. " In those days," was the comment of Mr.
Evarts, "in those days a dollar went so much
farther than it does now ! " Although the point
is the same on which the two tales turn, they
impress one as of quite independent invention ;
we may doubt whether Mr. Evarts, who has a
merry wit of his own, ever heard of Foote's gibe.
When, however, the story is not vouched for
by a proper name, the probability is that the suc
cessive reappearances of an anecdote are due to a
survival in oral tradition. There is in America a
familiar tale, summed up in the phrase "Let the
other man walk ! " It relates that a traveller in a
hotel was kept awake long past midnight by a
steady tramp, tramp, tramp, on the floor over
him. At last he went upstairs and asked what
the matter might be. The occupant of the upper
room said that he owed money to another man for
which he had given a note, and the note came
due on the morrow and he could not meet it.
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 1 1
"Are you certain that you cannot pay your debt?"
asked the visitor. "Alas, I cannot," replied the
debtor. "Then," said the visitor, "if it cannot
be helped, lie down and go to sleep and let the
other man walk ! " Now this is a mere Ameri
canization of a story of Poggio's of an inhabitant
of Perugia, who walked in melancholy because
he could not pay his debts. " Vah, stulte," was
the advice given him, " leave anxiety to your
creditors ! "
Another well-worn American anecdote describes
the result of owning both a parrot and a monkey.
When the owner of the bird and the beast comes
home one day, he finds the monkey decked with
red and green feathers, but he does not find the
parrot for a long while. At last, the bird appears
from an obscure corner plucked bare save a single
tail-feather; he hops upon his perch with such
dignity as he can muster and says, with infinite
pathos, " Oh, we have had a hell of a time 1" At
first nothing could seem more American than
this, but there is a story essentially the same
in Walpole's Letters. Yet another parrot story
popular in New-York, where a well-known wit
happens to be a notorious stutterer, is as little
American as this of Walpole's. The stutterer is
supposed to ask the man who offers the parrot for
13 PEN AND INK.
sale if it oc-c-can t-t-t-talk. " If it could not talk
better than you I'd wring its neck," is the ven
der's indignant answer. I found this only the
other day in Buckland's ' Curiosities of Natural
History,' first published nearly a quarter of a cen
tury ago ; and since this paper was first published
a contributor to the Dramatic Re-view has traced it
back to Henry Philips's ' Recollections.'
The two phrases, "let the other man walk"
and "we have had a hell of a time," have passed
into proverbs in America. The anecdotes in which
they are enshrined happened to tickle the fancy
of the American people most prodigiously. There
is in them, as they are now told in the United
States, a certain dryness and directness and sub
tlety and extravagance four qualities character
istic of much of the American humor which is one
of the most abundant of our exports. In nothing
is the note of nationality more distinct than in
jokes. The delicate indelicacies of M. Grevin are
hardly more un-English than the extravagant vaga
ries of the wild humorists of the boundless prairies
of the West. In Hebrew I am informed and be
lieve the pun is a legitimate figure of lofty rhetoric,
and in England I have observed it is the staple of
comic effort ; in America most of us are intolerant
of the machine-made pun. To be acceptable to
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 13
the American mind the pun must have an element
of unexpected depravity like Dr. Holmes's im
mortal play on a word when he explains to us that
an onion is like an organ because it smell odious.
As a rule, however, the native American humorist
eschews all mere juggling with double meanings.
He strives to attain an imaginative extravagance,
recalling rather Rabelais than the more decorous
contributors to the collection of Mr. Punch. Arte-
mus Ward suggests quietly that it would have
been money in Jeff. Davis's pocket if he had never
been born. Mark Twain in an answer to a corre
spondent recommends fish as a brain-food, and
after considering the contributions proffered by the
correspondent, indicates as his proper diet two
whales not necessarily large whales, just ordinary
ones. But one of the best characters Mark Twain
ever sketched from life, Colonel Mulberry Sellers,
is almost exactly like a character in Ben Jonson's
' The Devil is an Ass/ And Charles Lamb and
Sydney Smith would have felt a thrill of delight at
meeting the man who wanted to run up to Rome
from Civita Vecchia that he might have ' twenty
minutes in the Eternal City.' Indeed, if Mark
Twain had only been a parson, he might have
written singularly like unto the merry curate who
once lived five miles from a lemon. Perhaps the
14 PEN AND INK.
strict theological training would have checked that
tendency to apparent irreverence which leads
Americans to speak disrespectfully of the equator.
I think this irreverence is more apparent than
actual. Americans are brought up on the Bible,
and they use the familiar phrases of the authorized
version without intent of irreverence. I have
seen an Englishman shocked at passages in the
' Biglow Papers ' which an American accepted
without hesitation or thought of evil.
Perhaps the most marked of the four chief char
acteristics of contemporary American humor
dryness, directness, subtlety, and extravagance
is a compound of the two latter into something
very closely resembling imagination. An Ameri
can reviewer of Mr. John Ashton's ' Humor, Wit,
and Satire of the Seventeenth Century' a most
useful work, by the way, to whosoever shall
undertake hereafter the editing of the ' Authentic
Jest-Book' drew attention to the unlikeness of
the mere telling of an incident possibly comic
enough in its happening, but vapid and mirthless
beyond measure when it is set down in cold print
the unlikeness of this sort of comic tale to the
more imaginative anecdotes now in favor in Amer
ican newspapers. The reviewer copied from Mr.
Ashton's book a comic tale taken from the ' Sack-
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. i 5
ful of Newes, ' published in 1673, and set over
against it a little bit of the paragraphic humor
which floats hither and thither on the shifting
waves of American journalism. Here is the merry
jest of two centuries ago :
" A certain butcher was flaying a calf at night,
and had stuck a lighted candle upon his head,
because he would be the quicker about his busi
ness, and when he had done he thought to take
the same candle to light him to bed ; but he had
forgot where he had set it, and sought about the
house for it, and all the while it stuck in his cap
upon his head and lighted him in seeking it. At
the last one of his fellows came and asked him
what he sought for. * Marry (quoth he), I look
for the candle which I did flay the calf withal.'
' Why, thou fool,' qd. he, ' thou has a candle in
thy cap.' And then he felt towards his cap, and
took away the candle burning, whereat there was
great laughing and he mocked for his labor, as he
was well worthy."
And here is the journalistic joke of our own day :
" A colored individual who went down on the
slippery flags at the corner of Woodward Avenue
and Congress Street, scrambled up and backed out
into the street, and took a long look towards the
roof of the nearest building.
l6 PEN AND INK.
' You fell from that third-story window ! '
remarked a pedestrian who had witnessed the
tumble.
' Boss, I believes yer ! ' was the prompt reply ;
' but what puzzles me am de queshun of how I
got up dar, an' why I was leanin' outer de
winder ! ' '
Of course neither of these tales would find a
place in the 'Authentic Jest-Book,' for the first is a
flat telling of a flat fact and the second is an obvi
ous invention of the enemy. But they are valuable
as indications of the steady and increasing evolu
tion of humor. Even if the merry jest about the
butcher and his candle had been ennobled by a
great name, it would have gone to the wall as one
of the weakest jokes known to the student of the
history of humor. The doctrine of the survival
of the fittest in the struggle for existence is as
applicable to jests as it is to other entities. A given
joke develops best in a given environment a
pun, for example, has more chance of life in Eng
land, a bit of imaginative extravagance in America,
and a gibe at matrimonial infelicity or infidelity in
France. It would be a great step gained if we
could get at the primordial germs of wit or dis
cover the protoplasm of humor.
Certain jests, like certain myths, exist in variants
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 17
in all parts of the world. Comparative mytholo-
gists are diligently collecting the scattered folk
lore of all races; why should they not also be
gathering together the primitive folk-humor?
Cannot some comparative philologist reconstruct
for us the original jest-book of the Aryan people?
It would be very interesting to know the exact
stock of jokes our forefathers took with them in
their migrations from the mighty East. It would
be most instructive to be informed just how far
they had got in the theory and practice of humor.
It would be a pure joy to discover precisely what
might be the original fund of root-jests laughed, at
by Teuton and Latin and Hindoo before these races
were differentiated one from another by time and
travel and climate. I wonder whether the pastoral
Aryan knew and loved an early form of Lamb's
favorite comic tale, the one in which a mad wag
asks the rustic whether that is his own hare or a
wig ? And what did the dark-haired Iberian laugh
at before the tall blonde Aryan drove him into the
corners of Europe ? It was probably some practical
joke or other, in which a bone knife or a flint
arrow-head played the chief part. The records of
the Semitic race are familiar to us, but we know
nothing or next to nothing about the primitive
humor of the alleged Turanians.
1 8 PEN AND INK.
When this good work is well in hand, and when
the collector of comic orts and ends is prepared to
make his report, there might be held an Interna
tional Exhibition of Jokes, which would be quite
as useful and quite as moral as some of the Inter
national Exhibitions we have had of late years. I
think I should spend most of my time in the Retro
spective Section studying the antique jests. " Old
as a circus joke" might be a proverb, and the
Christmas pantomime and the Christy Minstrel
can supply jokes both practical and otherwise,
quite as fatigued and as hoary with age as those
of the circus. Among its many advantages this
International Exhibition of Jokes would have one
of great importance it would forever dispel the
belief in the saying of one of old that there were
only thirty-eight good stories in existence, and
that thirty-seven of these could not be told
before ladies. There might have been some
foundation for this saying in the days when the
ladies had to leave the table after dinner because
the conversation of the gentlemen then became
unfit for their ears. While a good joke should
be like a pin, in that it should come to a head
soon and be able to stand on its point, yet only
too many sorry jests are rather to be defined
as unlike a mathematical line, in that they have
breadth as well as length.
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 19
It is perhaps owing to the existence of stories
of this sort that woman has lost the faculty of
story-telling. Of course, I do not mean that the
fair sex are not felicitous at fiction ; the Schehera-
zades of the serials would confute me at once. I
mean that women do not amuse each other by the
exchange of anecdote as men are wont to do.
They do not retail the latest good thing. They
chat, gossip, giggle, converse, talk, and amuse
themselves easily together, but they do not swop
stories in man-fashion. Where man is objective,
woman is subjective. She is satisfied with her own
wit, without need of colporting the humor of a
stranger. Woman's wit has sex. It is wholly dif
ferent from man's wit. From Beatrice (though
she was said to take hers from the 'C. Merry
Tales') to Mrs. Poyser (who gave us that marvel
lous definition of a conceited man as one who was
like the cock that thought the sun rose to hear him
crow), the bright women of fiction have been witty
rather than humorous. It may be that the dis
tinction between wit and humor is one of sex after
all. I have a friend he is an editor who de
clares that the difference between wit and humor,
and again between talent and genius, is only the
difference between the raspberry and the straw
berry. Doubtless God might have made a better
berry than the strawberry, and doubtless God
20 PEN AND INK.
might have given man a better gift than humor
but he never did. Woman has not the full gift;
she has wit and some humor, it is true, but she
has only a slighter sense of humor, whence comes
much marital unhappiness. As George Eliot tells
us, "a difference of taste in jests is a great strain
of the affections. "
It is said that the rustic, both the male and the
female of that peculiar species, has a positive hos
tility to a new joke. I do not believe this. Of a
certainty it is not true of the American of New
England, who is as humorous in his speech as he
is shrewd in his business dealings, and the more
humor he has the less sharp he is in trade and the
less severe in his views as to the necessity of work.
We may cite in proof of this Mrs. Stowe's delight
ful portrait of that village ne'er-do-well, Sam Law-
son. And I doubt if it is true of the English rustic
as he really is, for we know it is not true of him as
he appears in the pages of George Eliot and of Mr.
Thomas Hardy. There he has a mother-wit of his
own, and although fond of the old joke, the mean
ing of which has been fully fathomed, he is not
intolerant of a new quip or a fresh gibe. What he
cannot abide is a variation in the accepted form
of an accepted anecdote. This he will none of as
a child resolutely rejects the slightest deviation
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 31
from the canonical version of the fairy-tale with
which she is fondly familiar. The rustic and the
child are loyal to old friends, whether it be The
Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, or Brer Rabbit and
the Tar-Baby, or Old Grouse in the Gunroom, at
which honest Diggory had laughed these twenty
years, and which now, alas ! is utterly lost to the
knowledge of man, even Goldsmith's latest and
most learned biographer confessing perforce that
he has been wholly unable to recover it from out
the darkness of the past.
(1885)
II
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.
HEN Sir Walter Scott came to consider
' Gil Bias/ and the alleged plagiarisms
it contains from the Spanish story
tellers, he spoke with the frankness
and sturdy sense which were two of
chief characteristics. "Le Sage's claim to
originality in this delightful work," he wrote,
"has been idly, I had almost said ungratefully,
contested by those critics who conceive they de
tect a plagiarist wherever they see a resemblance
in the general subject of the work to one which
has been before treated by an inferior artist. It is
a favorite theme of laborious dulness to trace out
such coincidences ; because they appear to reduce
genius of the higher order to the usual standard
of humanity, and, of course, to bring the author
nearer a level with his critics. It is not the mere
outline of a story, not even the adopting some
details of a former author, which constitutes the
26 PEN AND INK.
literary crime of plagiarism. The proprietor of the
pit from whence Chantrey takes his clay might as
well pretend to a right in the figure into which it
is moulded under his plastic fingers ; and the ques
tion is in both cases the same not so much from
whom the original substance came, as to whom
it owes that which constitutes its real merit and
excellence."
In his delightful paper on Gray, Mr. Lowell de
clares that "we do not ask where people got their
hints, but what they made out of them." Mr.
Lowell, I doubt me, is speaking for himself alone,
and for the few others who attempt the higher
criticism with adequate insight, breadth, and
equipment. Only too many of the minor critics
have no time to ask what an author has done, they
are so busy in asking where he may have got his
hints. Thus it is that the air is full of accusations
of plagiary, and the bringing of these accusations is
a disease which bids fair to become epidemic in
literary journalism. Perhaps this is a sign, or at
least a symptom, of the intellectual decadence of
our race which these same critics sometimes vent
ure to announce. In the full flood of a creative
period people cannot pause to consider petty
charges of plagiarism. Greene's violent outbreak
against the only Shakescene of them all, who had
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM. 37
decked himself out in their feathers, seems to have
excited little or no attention. Nowadays, a pam
phlet like Greene's last dying speech and confes
sion would serve as a text for many a leading article
and for many a magazine essay.
"There is, I fear," wrote Lord Tennyson to Mr.
Dawson, a year or two ago, "a prosaic set grow
ing up among us, editors of booklets, bookworms,
index-hunters, or men of great memories and no
imagination who impute themselves to the poet,
and so believe that he, too, has no imagination,
but is forever poking his nose between the pages
of some old volumes in order to see what he can
appropriate. " A pleasant coincidence of thought is
to be noted between these words of Lord Tenny
son and the remarks of Sir Walter Scott about ' Gil
Bias/ Both poets think ill of the laborious dulness
of the literary detective, and suggest that he is actu
ated by malice in judging others by himself. The
police detective is akin to the spy, and although
his calling is often useful, and perhaps even neces
sary, we are not wont to choose him as our bosom
friend ; the amateur literary detective is an almost
useless person, who does for pleasure the dirty
work by which the real detective gets his bread.
The great feat of the amateur literary detective
is to run up parallel columns, and this he can ac-
28 PEN AND INK.
complish with the agility of an acrobat. When
first invented, the setting of parallel passages side
by side was a most ingenious device, deadly to an
impostor or to a thief caught in the very act of
literary larceny. But these parallel passages must
be prepared with exceeding care, and with the
utmost certainty. Unless the matter on the one
side exactly balance the matter on the other side,
like the packs on a donkey's back, the burden is
likely to fall about the donkey's feet, and he may
chance to break his neck. Parallel columns should
be most sparingly used, and only in cases of abso
lute necessity. As they are employed now only
too often, they are quite inconclusive ; and it has
been neatly remarked that they are perhaps like
parallel lines, in that they would never meet,
however far produced. Nothing can be more
puerile, childish, infantine even, than the eager
ness with which the amateur literary detective
shows, to his own complete satisfaction, that two
of the most original authors who ever wrote
Shakspere and Moliere were barefaced borrowers
and convicted plagiarists. There are not a few
other of his deeds almost as silly as this. I won
der that the secure ass (the phrase is from the
' Merry Wives of Windsor,' and not mine, I regret
to say) who thinks that Sheridan took his ' Rivals'
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM. 39
from Smollett's ' Humphrey Clinker ' and his
' School for Scandal ' from his mother's ' Memoirs
of Miss Sydney Biddulph ' the absurd persons
who have gravely doubted whether Mr. Stevenson
did not find the suggestion of his ' Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ' in Hawthorne's ' Dr.
Grimshawe's Secret' and the malicious folk who
have been accusing Mr. Haggard with filching the
false teeth and lifting the white calves of other
African explorers who were not in search of King
Solomon's mines I wonder that the amateur lit
erary detective of this sort has never seen what a
strong case can be made out against M. Alphonse
Daudet (a notorious imitator of Dickens, it may be
remembered) for having extracted the ' Rois en
Exile ' from the third paragraph of the first chapter
of the * History of Henry Esmond,' and against Mr.
Thackeray for having derived this passage from
his recollections of a scene in Voltaire's ' Candide.'
It was the original owner of King Solomon's
mines who asserted that there was nothing new
under the sun ; and after the lapse of hundreds of
years one may suggest that a ready acceptance of
the charge of plagiarism is a sign of low culture,
and that a frequent bringing of the accusation is
a sign of defective education and deficient intelli
gence. Almost the first discovery of a student of
^O PEN AND INK.
letters is that the history of literature is little more
than a list of curious coincidences. The folk-tales
which lie at the foundation of all fiction are almost
the same the wide world over, from the Eskimo
at the top of North America to the Zulu at the tip of
South Africa ; they can hardly have had a common
source, and there are few traces of conscious bor
rowing or of unconscious lending.
These folk-tales are as ancient as they are wide
spread, and when Uncle Remus relates the advent
ures of Brer Rabbit and Brer Terrapin, he is re
peating a variant of adventures which were told
in Greece before Homer sang. And as these folk
tales were made each by itself and yet alike, in
many places and at all ages of the world, so in
more formal literature do we find stories strangely
similar one to another, and yet independently in
vented. People have always been ready, like the
Athenians of old, to hear or to tell some new
thing and the new thing, when dissected, is
soon seen to be an old thing. The tales have all
been told. If we were to take from the goodman
La Fontaine the contes which had had another
owner before he found them by the highway, he
would be left like a Manx cat or the flock of Little
Bo-Peep. There are some situations, primitive
and powerful, which recur in all literatures with
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM. $\
the inevitable certainty of the fate which domi
nates them. What is the ' Hamlet ' of Shakspere,
in its essence, but the ' Orestes ' trilogy of -/Eschy-
lus ? And what man shall be bold enough to claim
for himself or for another the first use of the Hidden
Will, of the Infants-changed-at-Nurse, or of the
Stern-Parent-who-cuts-off-his-Son-with-a-Shilling?
After recording a slight similarity of subject and
of point of view between the 'Famille Benoiton'
of M. Victorien Sardou and the 'Young Mrs. Win-
throp' of Mr. Bronson Howard, Mr. William
Archer remarks pertinently that " in the domain
of the drama there is no such thing as private
property in the actual soil ; all that the playwright
can demand is security for his improvements," and
he adds that "were tenure in fee-simple permis
sible, the whole cultivable area would long ago
have been occupied by a syndicate of pestilent
land-grabbers, named Menander, Calderon, Shak
spere & Co., and the dramatist of to-day would
have had no resource save emigration to some
other planet." I have read that Schiller in the last
century, and Scribe in this, made out a list of all
the possible dramatic situations, and that both lists
were surprisingly brief. M. Zola's admirable defi
nition of art is "Nature seen through a tempera
ment" ; and the most a man may bring nowadays
$2 PEN AND INK.
is his temperament, his personal equation, his
own pair of spectacles, through which he may
study the passing show in his own way.
As it is with situations which are the broad
effects of the drama or the novel or the poem, so
it is with the descriptions and the dialogue which
make the smaller effects. Words are more abun
dant than situations, but they are wearing out
with hard usage. Language is finite, and its com
binations are not countless. "It is scarcely pos
sible for any one to say or write anything in this
late time of the world to which, in the rest of the
literature of the world, a parallel could not be
found somewhere," so Lord Tennyson declared in
the letter from which I have already quoted.
"Are not human eyes all over the world looking
at the same objects, and must there not conse
quently be coincidences of thought and impres
sions and expressions?" The laureate was not at
all surprised to be told that there were two lines
in a certain Chinese classic (of which he had never
heard) exactly like two of his. Once I found an
exceedingly close translation of one of Lord Tenny
son's lines in a French comedy in verse, and when
I asked the dramatist about it, I soon saw that he
did not know anything about the English poem,
or even about the English poet.
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM. ^
In cases like these there is no need to dispute
the good faith of the author who may chance to be
later in point of time. ' ' When a person of fair char
acter for literary honesty uses an image such as
another has employed before him, the presump
tion is that he has struck upon it independently,
or unconsciously recalled it, supposing it his
own," said the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
After this dictum in ethics, Dr. Holmes enunciated
a subtle psychologic truth, which is known to all
conscientious writers, and which should be made
known to all amateur literary detectives: "It is
impossible to tell, in a great many cases, whether
a comparison which suddenly suggests itself is a
new conception or a recollection. I told you the
other day that I never wrote a line of verse that
seemed to me comparatively good but it appeared
old at once, and often as if it has been borrowed."
Sheridan bears witness to the same effect in the
preface to the ' Rivals/ when he says that " faded
ideas float in memory like half-forgotten dreams ;
and the imagination in its fullest enjoyments be
comes suspicious of its offspring, and doubts
whether it has created or adopted." Perhaps the
testimony of Sheridan is not altogether beyond
suspicion ; he had an easy conscience and a mar
vellous faculty of assimilation, and it may be that
34 1>EN AND INK.
he was apologetically making the plea of con
fession and avoidance, as the lawyers call it.
But I think that Lord Tennyson, Sir Walter Scott,
and Mr. Lowell are unimpeachable witnesses. It
is with malice prepense that I have quoted from
them frequently and at length, and perhaps in
excess, that I might establish my case not out of
my own mouth, but out of theirs.
After all, there is little need to lay stress on the
innocence of many if not most of the coincidences
with which the history of literature is studded.
The garden is not large, and those who cultivate it
must often walk down the same path, sometimes
side by side, and sometimes one after another,
even though the follower neither wishes nor in
tends to tread on his predecessor's heels or to
walk in his footsteps. They may gather a nose
gay of the same flowers of speech. They may
even pluck the same passion-flower, not knowing
that any one has ever before broken a blossom
from that branch. Indeed, when we consider
how small the area is, how few are the possible
complications of plot, how easily the poetic vocab
ulary is exhausted, the wonder is really, not that
there are so many parallel passages, but that there
are so few. In the one field which is not circum
scribed there is very little repetition : human
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM. 35
nature is limitless, and characters comparatively
rarely pass from one book to another. The
dramatists and the romancers have no choice but
to treat anew as best they may the well-worn
incidents and the weary plots ; the poets happen
on the same conceits generation after generation ;
but the dramatists and the romancers and the
poets know that there is no limit to the variety of
man, and that human nature is as deep and as
boundless and as inexhaustible as the ocean. No
matter how heavy a draft Shakspere and Moliere
may have made, no matter how skilfully and how
successfully Dickens and Thackeray may have
angled, no matter how great the take of Haw
thorne and Poe, there are still as good fish in the
sea of humanity as ever were caught. And I
offer this fact, that we do not find the coincidence
in character which we cannot help seeing in plot
and in language, as a proof that most apparent
plagiarism is quite unconscious and due chiefly to
the paucity of material.
Hitherto I have considered only the similarity
which was unconscious. Originality is difficult;
it is never accidental ; and it is to be obtained only
by solitary confinement and hard labor. To make
his fiction out of whole cloth, to spin his net,
spider-like, out of himself, is one of the highest
36 PEN AND INK.
achievements of the intellect. Only a rare genius
may do this, and he must do it rarely. A man
may always draw from the common stock without
compunction, and there are many circumstances
under which he may borrow unhesitatingly from
other authors. For example, Mr. Haggard has
recently been encompassed about by a cloud of
false witnesses, accusing him of having plagiarized
certain episodes of his story, ' King Solomon's
Mines,' from a certain book of travels. He prompt
ly denied the charge, and of course it fell to the
ground at once. But had he done what he was
accused of doing, there would have been no harm
in it. Mr. Haggard, in writing a romance of Africa,
would have been perfectly justified in using the
observations and experiences of African travellers.
Facts are the foundation of fiction, and the novelist
and the romancer, the dramatist and the poet, may
make free with labors of the traveller, the his
torian, the botanist, and the astronomer. Within
reason, the imaginative author may help himself
to all that the scientific author has stored up. One
might even go so far as to say that science in
which I include history exists to supply facts for
fiction, and that it has not wholly accomplished its
purpose until it has been transmuted in the im
agination of the poet. If Mr. Haggard had made
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.
37
use of a dozen books of African travel in the com
position of that thrilling and delightful romance of
adventure, 'King Solomon's Mines,' there would
have been no more taint of plagiary about it than
there was in Shakspere's reworking of the old
chronicles into his historical plays.
Shakspere and Moliere borrowed from Plautus,
as Plautus had borrowed from Menander ; and this
again is not plagiarism. Every literary worker has
a right to draw from the accumulated store of the
past, so long as he does not attempt to conceal
what he has done nor to take credit for what is not
his own invention, and so long as he has wholly
absorbed and assimilated and steeped in his own
gray matter what he has derived from his prede
cessors. The elder Dumas has told us how he
found some of the scattered elements of his virile
and vigorous drama ' Henri III.' in Anquetil and in
Scott and in Schiller; but the play is his, none the
less ; and this was no plagiarism, for he had mixed
himself, with what he borrowed, "an incalculable
increment," as Mr. Lowell said of Gray. ' Henri III.'
lives with its own life, which Dumas gave it, and
which is as different as possible from the life of
the fragments of Anquetil, Scott, and Schiller, each
of these again differing one from the other. It
was as unlike as may be to that merely literary
38 PEN AND INK.
imitation which Hawthorne compared to a plaster
cast.
Another French dramatist, M. Sardou, had prof
ited by the reading of Poe's 'Purloined Letter'
when he sat down to plan his ' Pattes de Mouche';
but it is absurd to talk of plagiary here, and to call
M. Sardou's charming comedy a dramatization of
Poe's short story, for, although the bare essential
idea is the same, the development is radically dif
ferent. And in like manner Poe found an incident
in Mr. Mudford's 'Iron Shroud' which probably
suggested to him his own appalling tale of the
'Pit and the Pendulum/ Here what Poe took from
Mr. Mudford was very little compared with what
he contributed himself; and in any discussion of
plagiarism quite the most important question is
the relative value to the borrower of the thing
borrowed. If he has flocks of his own, he may
lift the ewe lamb of his neighbor, and only labori
ous dulness will object. The plagiarist, in fact, is
the man who steals his brooms ready made, be
cause he does not know how to make them.
Dumas and M. Sardou and Poe were men having
a highly developed faculty of invention, and seek
ing originality diligently. Those from whom they
borrowed have no more right to claim the resulting
works than has the spectator who lends a coin to a
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM. 39
conjurer a right to consider himself a partner in the
ingenious trick the conjurer performs with it. If
this be plagiary, make the most of it. Let us all
wish for more of it. And this reminds me of a
little story, as Lincoln used to say : in the darkest
days of our war, when defeat followed defeat, and
Grant alone was victorious at Vicksburg, some
busybody went to Lincoln and told him that Grant
drank whiskey. "Does he ? " said the President,
gravely. "Do you happen to know what kind of
whiskey it is ? Because I should like to send a
barrel of it to some of the other generals."
"Far indeed am I from asserting that books, as
well as nature, are not, and ought not to be, sug
gestive to the poet," wrote Lord Tennyson. "I am
sure that I myself and many others find a peculiar
charm in those passages of such great masters as
Virgil or Milton, where they adopt the creation of
a bygone poet, and reclothe it, more or less, ac
cording to their fancy." Wordsworth said that
Gray helped himself from everybody and every
where ; but what Gray made out of these old bits
borrowed from others was a new poem, and it was
his own. In the latest editions of Gray's poems, as
Mr. Lowell has put it picturesquely, "The thin line
of text stands at the top of the page like cream,
and below it is the skim-milk drawn from many
4 PEN AND INK.
milky mothers of the herd out of which it has
risen." It was because the author of 'Evangeline'
followed the example of the author of the 'Elegy'
that Poe was able to write his foolish paper on
'Mr. Longfellow and other Plagiarists' a wanton
attack which Longfellow bore with beautiful seren
ity. One must set a plagiarist to cry "Stop thief! "
and Poe was not above stealing his brooms, or at
least his smaller brushes, ready made. We may
absolve him for levying on Mudford for the 'Pit and
the Pendulum,' but in his 'Marginalia' he retailed
as his own Sheridan's joke about the phoenix and
Whitbread's poulterer's description of it.
I believe that both Ben Jonson and the elder
Dumas defended their forays into the marches of
their elders, and even of their contemporaries, by
the bold assertion that genius does not steal, it
conquers. And there is force in the plea. Genius
takes by right of eminent domain, and rectifies its
frontier by annexing outlying territory, making
fruitful that which before was but a barren waste.
In literature, that is his at last who makes best use
of it. And here is the essence of the controversy
in a nutshell : it is plagiarism for an author to take
anything from another author and reproduce it
nakedly ; but it is not necessarily plagiarism if he
reclothes it and dresses it up anew. If the second
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM. 4I
comer can improve on the work of the first comer,
if he makes it over and makes it better, and
makes it his own, we accept the result and ask no
questions. But if he make no change, or if he
make a change for the worse, we send for the
police at once. A man may be allowed to keep
his borrowed brats, if he clothe them and feed
them and educate them, and if he make no
attempt to disguise them, and if he is not guilty
of the fatal mistake of disfiguring them " as the
gypsies do stolen children to make 'em pass for
their own." (This figure, by the way, was an
orphan of Churchill's when Sheridan came along
and adopted it.) Thus, we find it hard to forgive
Herrick for one of his thefts from Suckling, when
he took the loveliest lines of the lovely ' Ballad
upon a Wedding' :
Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, stole in and out,
As if they feared the light,
and in his ' Hesperides ' he spoilt them to
Her pretty feet, like snails, did creep a little out.
Nothing is further from my desire than that I
should be taken either as a defender of plagiarism
or as a denier of its existence. It exists, and it is
42 PEN AND INK.
an ugly crime. What I am seeking to show is
that it is not as frequent as many may imagine,
and more especially that much which is called
plagiarism is not criminal at all, but perfectly
legitimate. For instance, Mr. Charles Reade's in
corporation of fragments of the ' Dialogues ' of
Erasmus in the 'Cloister and the Hearth,' and of
Swift's ' Polite Conversation ' in the ' Wandering
Heir,' was a proper and even a praiseworthy use
of preexisting material. But Mr. Reade did not
always remain within his rights, and it is im
possible to doubt that his ' Portrait ' was first
hung in the private gallery of Mme. Reybaud,
and that some of his ' Hard Cash ' was filched
from the coffers of the 'Pauvres de Paris' of
MM. Brisebarre and Nus. Mme. Reybaud's pic
ture was not a Duchess of Devonshire which a
man might so fall in love with that he could
not help stealing it indeed, it is not easy to
discover why Mr. Reade wanted it ; but the
drama of MM. Brisebarre and Nus is ingeniously
pathetic, and although no one has made as skil
ful use of its fable as Mr. Reade, it has served
to suggest also Miss Braddon's ' Rupert God
win, Banker,' Mr. Sterling Coyne's 'Fraud and
its Victims,' and Mr. Dion Boucicault's ' Streets of
New-York.'
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.
43
It is in the theatre that we hear the most accusa
tions of plagiarism. Apparently there is an un
willingness on the part of the public to believe
that a play can be original, and a dramatist
nowadays is forced not only to affirm his in
nocence, but almost to prove it. I am inclined
to think that the habit of adapting from the
French a habit now happily in its decline is
responsible for this state of things, for the laxity
of morals on the part of the author, and for the
general and ungenerous suspicion on the side of
the public.
It is the playwright's fault, one must confess, if
the playgoer is doubtful as to the paternity of every
new play. So many pieces were brought out as
"new and original," which were neither original
nor new, that the playgoer was confirmed in his
suspicions; and he finds it hard to surrender the
habit of doubt even now when a French drama in
an English or American theatre generally bears the
French author's name, and when the best work of
the best English and American dramatists is really
their own. Mr. Herman Merivale and Mr. Bronson
Howard, Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Pinero, and other of
the little band of young playmakers whose work
seems to promise a possible revival of the English
drama as a form of art and a department of litera-
44 PEN AND INK.
ture, are quite above the meanness of taking a
foreign author's plot without authority or acknowl
edgment. Yet they suffer for the sins of their
predecessors.
Credit, said a great economist, is suspicion
asleep ; and the saying is as true in the playmaking
profession as it is in the trade of moneymaking.
Suspicion is suffering from an acute attack of in
somnia just now, and many dramatic critics are
quick to declare a resemblance between Macedon
and Monmouth, if there be salmons in both, and
when the dramatist is shown to have lifted a tiny
lamb they are ready to hang him for a stalwart
sheep. Now, there is no department of literature
in which similarities are as inevitable as they are in
the drama. I have tried to show already that the
elements of the drama are comparatively few, and
that the possible combinations are not many.
There are only a few themes suited for treatment
in the theatre, and many a topic which a novelist
can handle to advantage the dramatist is debarred
from attempting by the conditions of the stage. A
certain likeness there must needs be between the
new plays and the old plays in which the same
subject has been discussed by the dramatist. And
these coincidences may be as innocent as they are
"curious."
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.
45
I remember that when Mr. Dion Boucicault origi
nally produced the ' Shaughraun ' it was at Wai-
lack's Theatre in New- York ten or twelve years
ago there was an attempt to prove that he had
taken his plot from an earlier Irish drama by Mr.
Wybert Reeve. At first sight the similarity between
the two plays was really striking, and parallel col
umns were erected with ease. But a closer investi
gation revealed that all that was common to these
two plays was common to fifty other Irish plays,
and that all that gave value to the 'Shaughraun'
the humor, the humanity, the touches of pathos,
the quick sense of character was absent from the
other play. There is a formula for the mixing of
an Irish drama, and Mr. Reeve and Mr. Boucicault
had each prepared his piece according to this
formula, making due admixture of the Maiden-in-
Distress, the Patriot-in-danger-of-his-Life, and the
Cowardly Informer, who have furnished forth
many score plays since first the Red-Coats were
seen in the Green Isle. Both dramatists had drawn
from the common stock of types and incidents,
and there was really no reason to believe that Mr.
Boucicault was indebted to Mr. Reeve for anything,
because Mr. Reeve had little in his play which had
not been in twenty plays before, and which Mr.
Boucicault could not have put together out of his
46 PEN AND INK.
recollections of these without any knowledge of
that. Of course there is a great difference between
the original and the commonplace, but if a man
cannot be the former it is no sin to be the latter.
Commonplace is not plagiarism. That a coat is
threadbare is no proof that it has been stolen on
the contrary.
To any one understanding the subtlety of mental
processes, and especially the movements of the
imagination, a similarity of situation is often not
only not a proof of plagiarism, but a proof that
there has been no plagiarism. This sounds like a
paradox, but I think I can make my meaning clear
and evident. When we find the same strikingly
original idea differently handled by two authors,
we may absolve the later from any charge of
literary theft if we find that his treatment of the
novel situation differs from his predecessor's. If
the treatment is different, we may assume that the
second writer was not aware of the existence of
the first writer's work. And for this reason : if
the later author were acquainted with the startlingly
novel effect of the earlier author, he could not have
treated the same subject without repeating certain
of the minor peculiarities also. He must perforce
have taken over with the theme in some measure
the treatment also. All literary workmen know
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.
47
how difficult it is to disentangle the minor details
from the main idea, and to strip the idea naked,
discarding the mere detail. Had the second writer
known of the first writer's work, he could not help
being influenced by it. Thus it is that a similarity
of subject may be evidence of originality. There
is a short story by Fitzjames O'Brien, called 'What
Was It? ' in which there is a palpable but invisible
being. Since this was first published there have
been two other short stories on the same idea, one
published in the Atlantic Monthly by Mr. Charles
de Kay, and the other published anonymously in
the Cornbitt Magazine. The tale in the Cornbitt
coincides in detail as well as in idea, and it is
almost impossible to declare its anonymous author
guiltless of plagiarism. But Mr. de Kay's story
was wholly different in its elaboration, and the two
tales, although the chief figure in each was a being
palpable but invisible, were as unlike as possible.
Here there was obviously no plagiarism. The
coat to take up the figure of the last para
graph was made of the same cloth, but its cut
was not the same.
(Lately since this paper first appeared the
central figure of Fitzjames O'Brien's story has
been seen again in 'Le Horla' of M. Guy de Mau
passant, but with a treatment so personal and a
48 PEN AND INK.
modification so striking that it seems impossible
that the French author has not happened on it in
dependently, however easy it might be to pre
pare parallel columns to prove him a plagiarist.)
Three or four years ago the Saturday Review
laid down the law of plagiarism in three clauses :
1. "In the first place, we would permit any great
modern artist to recut and to set anew the literary
gems of classic times and of the Middle Ages."
2. "Our second rule would be that all authors
have an equal right to the stock situations which
are the common store of humanity." 3. " Finally,
we presume that an author has a right to borrow
or buy an idea, if he frankly acknowledges the
transaction." In commenting on this code, I sug
gested that there might be a difficulty of interpre
tation in the first clause, for who is to declare any
modern a great artist? In the second clause the
law is clearly stated, and whether any given situa
tion is or is not common property is a question of
fact for the jury. The only difficulty in applying
the third clause is in defining precisely the degree
of frankness and fulness required in acknowledg
ing the indebtedness. But hypercriticism is out
of place in considering a suggestion as valuable, as
needful just now, and as neatly put up as this
triple law of the contributor to the Saturday
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.
49
Review. A general acceptance of this code would
tend to clear the air of the vague charges of pla
giarism which hang in heavy clouds over the liter
ary journals. Before we can decide whether an
author is guilty of the offence, we must be agreed
on what constitutes the crime, what are its ele
ments, and what are the exemptions. I have
ventured to draw up the statute of exemptions in
a form slightly different from that given in the
Saturday Review, a little broader and stronger,
and perhaps a little simpler : A writer is at liberty
to use the work of his predecessors as he will,
provided always that (i) he does not take credit
(even by implication) for what he has not invented,
and (2) that he does not in any way infringe on
the pecuniary rights of the original owner.
When M. Sardou brought out the farcical com
edy ' Les Pommes du Voisin,' he was accused
of having stolen it from a tale of Charles de Ber
nard, and he retorted instantly with evidence that
he had the permission of the holders of the Ber
nard copyrights, who were to share in the profits
of the play. Here M. Sardou was innocent under
the second clause of my law, but guilty under the
first, insomuch as he had concealed his indebted
ness to Charles de Bernard and had taken credit
for an invention which was not his own. When
5O PEN AND INK.
Mr. Charles Reade turned Mrs. Burnett's ' That
Lass o' Lowrie's' into a play called 'Joan/ without
asking the permission of the American author, he
was guilty under the second clause and innocent
under the first, for there was no concealment of
the source of the drama.
With a proper understanding of what is and
what is not plagiarism, there should go a greater
circumspection in bringing the accusation. Plagiar
ism is the worst of literary crimes. It is theft,
neither more nor less. All who desire to uphold
the honor of literature, and to see petty larceny
and highway robbery meet with their just punish
ment, are concerned that the charge shall not be
idly brought or carelessly answered. But now so
often has the amateur literary detective cried
"Wolf" that patience is exhausted, and accusa
tions of literary theft have been flung broadcast,
until they may be met with a smile of contempt.
This is not as it should be. It is contrary to public
policy that the literary conscience should become
callous. The charge of plagiarism is very serious,
and it should not be lightly brought or lightly
borne. The accusation is very easy to make and
very hard to meet; it should be a boomerang,
which, when skilfully thrown, brings down the
quarry with a single deadly blow, but which,
THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM. 51
when carelessly cast, rebounds swiftly and breaks
the head of him who threw it. The man who
makes the charge of plagiarism should be ready
to stand to his guns, and to pay the penalty of
having opened fire. And the penalty for having
failed to prove the accusation should be heavy.
The accuser should be put under bonds, so to
speak, to make his charge good, and if he loses his
case he should be cast in damages. It is not right
to force an author either unjustly to lie under an
accusation of theft, or to undergo the annoyance
and expense of refuting vague allegations, urged
in wanton carelessness by some irresponsible per
son. Nothing is more disagreeable or thankless
than a dispute with an inferior. Years ago Dr.
Holmes declared the hydrostatic paradox of con
troversy: "Controversy equalizes fools and wise
men in the same way and the fools know it! "
If we were to hold to a strict accountability the
feeble-minded persons who delight in pointing out
alleged coincidences and similarities, if we were to
discourage the accusation of plagiarism, except on
abundant evidence, if we were to declare that
any man who fails to sustain his charge shall be
discredited, we should do much to put down
plagiarism itself. When the difficulties and the
dangers of making the accusation are increased
52 PEN AND INK.
and it is now neither difficult nor dangerous the
number of accusations will be decreased at once,
and in time the public conscience will be quickened.
Then it would be possible to get serious attention
for the serious case of literary theft, and then the
writer who might be found with stolen wares con
cealed about his person would be visited with
swifter condemnation and with more certain pun
ishment. But now all we can do is to remember
that
The man who plants cabbages imitates too.
(1886)
Ill
THE TRUE THEORY OF THE
PREFACE
THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE
A Confidential Communication to all Makers of Books.
PPARENTLY the true theory of the Pref
ace is apprehended by very few of
those who are, by trade, makers of
books to use Carlyle's characteri
zation of his own calling. Mr. Mat
thew Arnold, indeed, master of all literary arts,
was highly skilful in the use of the Preface, which,
in his hands, served to drive home the bolt of his
argument, and to rivet it firmly on the other side.
Those who have read one of Mr. Arnold's prefaces
know what to expect, and fall to, with increased
appetite, on the book itself. But not many men
may wield the weapons of Mr. Arnold, and very
few, as I have hinted already, are skilled in the use
of the Preface. Many, ignorant of its utility,
choose to ignore it altogether. More, accepting it
as a necessary evil, acquit themselves of it in the
most perfunctory fashion. There is slight sur
vival of the tradition which made the appeal to
56 PEN AND INK.
the Gentle Reader a fit and proper custom. But
nowadays the appeal is useless, and the Gentle
Reader oh, where is he? In the days when
there was a Gentle Reader there was no giant
critic to appal the trembling author with his
thunderous Fee-Fo-Fum. In the beginning, when
printing was a new invention, it served for the
multiplication of books alone ; newspapers lagged
long after ; and it is only in the present century
that the reading public began to allow that middle
man, the critic, to taste and try before they buy.
The Preface in forma pauperis, in which the author
confessed his sinful publication and implored for
giveness, urging as his sole excuse "hunger and
request of friends," is now as much out of date
and as antiquated in style as the fulsome dedica
tion to a noble patron. The two lived together
and died together about the time when the work
ing man of letters moved out of his lodgings in
Grub Street.
The Preface in which the writer takes a humor
ous view of his own work is a late device ; it is
capable of good results in the hands of a literary
artist like Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, who sug
gests in the pages which prepare us to enjoy his
record of ' An Inland Voyage ' that in his Preface
an author should stand afar off and look at his
THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE.
57
book affectionately, if he will, but dispassionately.
"It is best, in such circumstances," he asserts,
"to represent a delicate shade of manner be
tween humility and superiority, as if the book
had been written by some one else, and you had
merely run over it and inserted what was good."
Clever as this is, and characteristic and delightful
as its humor is, I feel constrained to assert my be
lief that Mr. Stevenson is not standing on the solid
ground of a sound theory. Mr. Stevenson is a
writer of exceptional gifts, and he may venture on
liberties which would be fatal to the rest of us :
his example affords no safe rule for ordinary mor
tals. In the Preface a man must take himself seri
ously, for a Preface is a very serious thing. It
cannot be denied that the humorous attitude is
much wiser than the self-depreciatory and the apol
ogetic, which are, unfortunately, far more com
mon. A humorist has, at least, a wholesome belief
in himself, and he can hide his doubting sorrow
with a smile ; whereas the plaintive author, who
confesses his weakness with tears in his eyes, is a
sorry spectacle that no critic need respect.
The cause of the apologetic Preface is obvious
enough. Although printed at the beginning of
the book, the Preface is the final thing written.
When the long labor of composition is over at
58 PEN AND INK.
last, and the intense strain is relaxed suddenly,
then it is that the author sits down to his Preface.
There is a cooling of the enthusiasm which has
carried him through his work ; there is often,
indeed, a violent reaction ; and it is at this mo
ment of depression and despondency, when the
writer is a prey to dread doubt about his book and
about himself, that the Preface has to be composed.
Just then the author sometimes wonders whether
it is not his duty to throw what he has written in
to the fire, and so rid the world of a misconceived
and misshapen abortion. Rarely is this feeling,
acute as it is, and painful, quite strong enough to
make the author actually cast his MS. into the
grate never until, like Pendennis, he has made
sure that the fire is out. But his morbidity of spirit
and his self-distrust find vent in the Preface. Not
unfrequently is the Preface worded like a last
dying speech and confession. As M. Octave Uz-
anne says in the lively Preface to his lively little
book called the 'Caprices d'un Bibliophile,' "the
Preface is the salutation to the reader, and too
often, alas ! the terrible salutation of the gladiators
to Caesar ZMorituri te salutant! "
This is rank heresy : and all such heretics should
be burnt at the stake, or at least they should have
their books burnt in the market-place by the com-
THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE.
59
mon hangman. The Preface is not the fit time
and occasion for the author to exhale his plaints,
to make confession of his sins, and to promise to
do penance. It is perhaps not too much to say that
the Preface is the most important part of a book,
except the Index. Anybody can write a book,
such as it is, but only a gifted man, or a man
trained in the art, can write a Preface, such as it
ought to be.
In the Preface the author must put his best foot
foremost, and this is often the premier pas qui
coute. A Preface should be appetizing, alluring,
enticing. As a battle well joined is half-won, as a
work well begun is half-done, so a book with a
good Preface is half-way on the high-road to suc
cess. In the Preface the author offers his first-
fruits and pours his libation. In the Preface the
author sets a sample of his text as in a show-
window. In the Preface the author strikes the
key-note of his work. Therefore must the good
Preface set forth the supreme excellence of the
book it should precede, as a brass-band goes
before a regiment. As delicately, and yet as un
hesitatingly, as the composer knows how, the
Preface should sound triumphant paeans of exult
ant self-praise. There is no need that a Preface
should be long ; it takes a large cart to carry a
60 PEN AND INK.
score of empty casks, almost worthless, while a
ten-thousand-dollar diamond may go snugly in a
waistcoat-pocket. But a Preface must be strong
enough to do its allotted work. Now, its allotted
work and here we are laying bare the secret of
the true theory of the Preface is to furnish to the
unwitting critic a syllabus or a skeleton of the
criticism which you wish to have him write.
The thoughtless may declare that "nobody
reads a Preface " ; but there could be no more
fatal blunder. Perhaps that impalpable entity, the
general reader, may skip it not infrequently ; but
that tangible terror, the critic, never fails to read
the Preface, even when he reads no farther. Now
and again the general reader may dispense with
the reading of the Preface, as legislative assemblies
dispense with the reading of the minutes of the
last meeting, that they may the sooner get to the
business in hand. The critic is a very different
sort of person from the general reader, and it is
meat and drink to him to read a Preface. The
author should recognize this fact ; he should ac
cept the altered conditions of the Preface. Con
sider for a moment what the Preface was, what it
is now, and what it should be. It was addressed
to the reader, who read it rarely. It is now, as
we have seen above, anything or nothing, some-
THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE. 6l
times absent, often artless, seldom apt. It should
be a private letter from the author to the critic
indicating the lines upon which he (the author)
would like him (the critic) to frame an opinion and
to declare a judgment. A good Preface is like
the trick modern magicians use, when, under pre
tence of giving us free choice, they force us to
draw the card they have already determined upon.
So if a book have a proper Preface, contrived with
due art, the critic cannot choose but write about it
as the author wishes. A master of the craft will
blow his own horn in the Preface of his book so
skilfully and so unobtrusively that only a faint
echo shall linger in the ear of the critic, iterating
and reiterating the Leit-Motiv of self-praise until
the charmed reviewer repeats it unconsciously.
Of course it is not easy for a gentleman to praise
himself publicly as he feels he deserves to be
praised. The pleasantest and most profitable
Preface for the beginner in book-making is the in
troduction by one of the acknowledged leaders of
literature. Then, by a strange reversal of custom,
it is the celebrity who waits at the door like an
usher to declare the titles of the young man who
is about to cross the threshold for the first time.
Thus the young author has granted to him a pass
port by which he may gain admittance where else
62 PEN AND INK.
he might not enter. Jules Janin was a master-
hand at the issuing of these introductory letters of
credit ; he was easy and good-natured, and rarely
or never did he refuse a novice the alms of a Pref
ace. Janin had the ear of the public, and he liked
to lead the public by the ear. Perhaps, too, he
liked the opportunity of using his high praise of
the new-comer slyly to deal a blow between the
ribs or under the belt of some old favorite whose
reputation came between him and the sun. He
who makes the Preface to another's book stands
on a vantage-ground and is free from responsi
bility ; he may classify under heads the things that
he hates, and then, in accordance with the precept
and the practice of Donnybrook, hit a head where-
ever he sees it. Truly a man may wish, " O that
mine enemy would let me write his Preface !
Could I not damn with faint praise and stab with
sharp insinuendo? " to use the labor-saving and
much-needed word thoughtlessly invented by the
sable legislator of South Carolina.
The Preface by another hand is often a pleasant
device for the display of international courtesy.
Merimee introduced Turgenef to the Parisians. In
the United States an English author may be pre
sented to the public by an American celebrity, and
in Great Britain an American book may be pub-
THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE. 63
lished with a voucher of its orthodoxy signed by a
dignitary of the Church. The exalted friend of the
author who provides the introduction, if he be but
a true friend, may praise far more highly than even
the wiliest author would dare to praise himself.
If he understands the obligation of his position and
does his duty, he should blare the trumpet boldly
and bang the big-drum mightily, and bid the
whole world walk up and see the show which is
just about to begin. Even if the public be dull
and laggard and refuse to be charmed, the author
has at least the signal satisfaction for once in his
life of hearing his effort properly appreciated at its
exact value. If by any chance he is a truly modest
man a rare bird indeed, a white black-bird he
may have some slight qualms of conscience on
seeing himself over-praised in the pages of his own
book. But these qualms are subdued easily
enough for the most part. "I never saw an
author in my life saving perhaps one," says the
Autocrat, "that did not purr as audibly as a full-
grown domestic cat on having his fur smoothed
the right way by a skilful hand."
In default of a friend speaking as one having
authority, the author must perforce write his own
Preface and declare his own surpassing virtues.
The old-fashioned Preface, inscribed to the Gentle
64 PEN AND INK.
Reader of the vague and doubtful past, often failed
to reach its address. The Preface of the new
school, constructed according to the true theory,
is intended solely for the critic. Now, the critic is
the very reverse of the Gentle Reader, and he
must be addressed accordingly. He studies the
Preface carefully to see what bits he can chip away
to help build his own review. " A good Preface
is as essential to put the reader into good humor
as a good prologue to a play," so the author of the
'Curiosities of Literature' tells us; but nowadays
our plays have no prologues, and it is the critic
whom the Preface must put into good humor.
Now, the critic is not the ogre he is often repre
sented ; he is a man like ourselves, a man having
to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, a man
often over-worked and often bound down to a dis-
tastefultask. He is quick to takea hint. Forhisbene-
fit the Preface should fairly bristle with hints. The
Preface should insinuate adroitly that the book it pre
cedes is in the choice phrase of the advertise
ment "a felt-want filled." This need not be done
brutally and nakedly. On the contrary, it is bet
ter to lead the mind of the critic by easy steps.
Dwell on the importance of the subject, and de
clare that in the present work it has been regarded
for the first time from a new and particular point
THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE. 65
of view. Point out, modestly but firmly, the
special advantages which the author has enjoyed,
and which make him an authority on the subject.
Casually let drop, in quotation marks, a few words
of high praise once addressed to the author by a
great man, now no longer with us, and trust that
you have done all in your power to merit such
gratifying encomiums. You may even venture to
intimate that although you cannot expect the pro
fane vulgar to see the transcendent merit of your
work, yet the favored few of keener insight will
recognize it at once : flattery is a legal-tender with
out Act of Congress, and the critic accepts it as
readily, perhaps, as the author. The critic is only
a fellow human being after all, and like the rest of
our fellow human beings he is quite ready to take
us at our own valuation. Hold the head up; look
the world in the eye ; and he is a churlish critic
who does not at least treat you with respect.
But if the Preface is weak in tone, if it is nerve
less, if it is apologetic, then the critic takes the
author at his word and has a poor opinion of him,
and expresses that opinion in plain language. If
you throw yourself on the mercy of the court, the
critic gives you at once the full penalty of the
law. Confess a lamb and the critic hangs you
for a sheep. Give him but five lines of Preface
66 PEN AND INK.
and he can damn any book. Acknowledge any
obligation, however slight, and the critic pounces
upon it ; and your character for originality is lost.
Every admission will be used against you. He be
lieves that you undervalue your indebtedness to
others ; and if you rashly call his attention to it, he
tries to balance the account by overstating your
debt. I know an author who had studied a sub
ject for years, contributing from time to time to
periodicals an occasional paper on certain of its
sub-divisions, until at last he was ready to write
his book about it ; his honesty moved him to say
in the Preface of the volume that he had made use
of articles in certain magazines and reviews. He
did not specifically declare that these articles were
his own work, and so one critic called the book "a
compilation from recent periodical literature," leav
ing the reader to infer that the author had been
caught decking himself out in borrowed plumes.
Two friends of the same author kindly consented
to read the proof-sheets of another of his books ;
and in the Preface thereof he thanked them by
name for " the invaluable aid they have kindly
given me in the preparation of these pages for the
press." One critic took advantage of this acknowl
edgment to credit the two friends with a material
share in the work of which they had only read the
THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE. 67
proof. The author of that remarkable book, the
' Story of a Country Town,' wrote a most pathetic
Preface, a cry of doubt wrung from his heart ; and
there was scarcely a single favorable review of
the volume the praise of which had not been
dampened by the Preface.
The only safe rule is resolutely to set forth the
merits of the book in the Preface, and to be silent
as to its faults. Do not apologize for anything.
Confess nothing. If there are omissions, pride
yourself on them. If the book has an inevitable
defect, boast of it. A man has the qualities of his
faults, says the French maxim ; in a Preface, a man
must defiantly set up his faults as qualities. Of
course this needs to be done with the greatest
skill ; and it is seen in perfection only in the Pref
aces of those who have both taste and tact, and
who combine a masculine vigor of handling with
a feminine delicacy of touch. Anybody can write
a book, as I have said already, but only a man
singularly gifted by nature and richly cultivated by
art can write a Preface as it ought to be written.
If common decency requires absolutely that the
author confess something, an indebtedness to a
predecessor, or the like, even then this confession
must not encumber and disfigure the Preface.
Dismiss the thought of the confession wholly from
68 PEN AND INK.
your mind while you are composing the Preface.
Then declare your indebtedness and avow any of
the seven deadly sins of which you may have been
guilty in a note, in a modest and unobtrusive
little note, either at the end of the book or at the
bottom of the page. The critic always reads the
Preface, but only a man really interested in the
subject ever digs into a note. A foot-note, lurking
shyly in fine type, is perhaps the best place for a
man to confess his sins in. And yet there is a
great advantage in postponing the bad quarter of
an hour as long as possible that is to say, to the
very end of the book. When the aspiring drama
tist brought his tragedy to Sheridan as the mana
ger of Drury Lane, he said that he had written the
prologue himself and he had ventured to hope that
perhaps Mr. Sheridan would favor him with an
epilogue. "An epilogue, my dear sir," cried
Sheridan ; "it will never come to that ! "
In talking over the true theory of the Preface
with friends engaged in other trades than that of
letters, I have found that the same principle ob
tains elsewhere. A learned professor told me that
he never declared the limitations of his course in
his first lecture ; he preferred to begin by getting
the attention of the students ; when he had once
acquired this, why, then he found occasion casu-
THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE. 69
ally in the second or third, or even the fourth
lecture, to let his hearers know, as if by accident,
just what bounds he proposed to set to his dis
course. The case of the dramatist is even harder,
for an acknowledgment of any kind printed in the
playbill, before the curtain rises on the first act for
the first time, is more dangerous than the most
apologetic Preface. Dramatists have always
availed themselves of the royal privilege of prig
ging or, if this sound unseemly, let us say, of
taking their goods wherever they found them. So
many playwrights have presented as new and
original plays which were neither new nor original,
that critics are wary and suspicious. They are
inclined to believe the worst of their fellow-man
when he has written a play : after all, as M. Thiers
said, it is so easy not to write a tragedy in five
acts. But if a man has written a tragedy in five
acts or a comedy in three, if a man is an honest
man, and if he is under some trifling obligations
to some forgotten predecessor, what is he to do ?
The critics are sure to suppose that the author has
understated his indebtedness. If he say he took a
hint for a scene or a character from Schiller or Sir
Walter Scott or Alexandre Dumas, the critics are
likely to record that the play is derived from
Schiller, or Scott, or Dumas. If he say his plot
TO PEN AND INK.
was suggested by a part of an old play, they are
likely to set it down as founded on the old play.
If he confess that his piece is remotely based on
another in a foreign tongue, they call it an adapta
tion. And if he, in the excess of his honesty, pre
sents his play humbly as an adaptation, they go a
step farther and accept it as a translation, and are
even capable of finding fault with it because it
does not exactly reproduce the original. If Mr.
Pinero, when in his charming comedy, the
' Squire,' he sought to bring the scent of the hay
across the footlights, had made an allusion to Mr.
Hardy's story, not a few dramatic critics would
have called the play an adaptation of the story
which it was not. It is impossible for the drama
tist to frame an acknowledgment which shall
declare with mathematical precision his indebted
ness to any given predecessor for a bit of color,
for a vague suggestion of character, for a stray hint
of a situation, or for a small but pregnant knot of
man and motive. It cannot be set down in plain
figures. Unfortunately for him who writes for
the stage, the playbill which everybody reads
is the only Preface ; and there are no foot-notes
possible. The dramatist has to confess his obliga
tion at the very worst moment, or else forever
after hold his peace.
THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE. 71
"A Preface, being the entrance to a book,
should invite by its beauty. An elegant porch an
nounces the splendor of the interior," said the
elder Disraeli, setting forth the theory of the Pref
ace as it was in the past. But this is not the new
and true theory of the Preface, which should be
written in letters of gold in the study of every
maker of books : "If you want to have your
book criticized favorably, give yourself a good
notice in the Preface ! " This is the true theory,
in the very words of its discoverer. If it is not ab
solutely sound and water-tight, it is, at all events,
an admirable working hypothesis. Although others
had had faint glimmerings of the truth, it was left
for a friend of mine to formulate it finally and as I
have given it here. To him are due the thanks of
all makers of books and he is a publisher.
(1885)
IV
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE
SHORT-STORY
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY.
F it chance that artists fall to talking
about their art, it is the critic's place
to listen, that he may pick up a
little knowledge. Of late, certain of
the novelists of Great Britain and the
United States have been discussing the principles
and the practice of the art of writing stories. Mr.
Howells declared his warm appreciation of Mr.
Henry James's novels ; Mr. Stevenson made public
a delightful plea for Romance ; Mr. Besant lectured
gracefully on the Art of Fiction ; and Mr. James
modestly presented his views by way of supple
ment and criticism. The discussion took a wide
range. With more or less fulness it covered the
proper aim and intent of the novelist, his material
and his methods, his success, his rewards, social
and pecuniary, and the morality of his work and
of his art. But, with all its extension, the discus
sion did not include one important branch of the
art of fiction : it did not consider at all the minor
art of the Short-story. Although neither Mr.
75
76 PEN AND INK.
Howells nor Mr. James, Mr. Besant nor Mr. Ste
venson specifically limited his remarks to those
longer, and, in the picture dealer's sense of the
word, more " important," tales known as Novels,
and, although, of course, their general criticisms
of the abstract principles of the art of fiction ap
plied quite as well to the Short-story as to the
Novel, yet all their concrete examples were full-
length Novels, and the Short-story, as such,
received no recognition at all.
The difference between a Novel and a Novelette
is one of length only : a Novelette is a brief Novel.
But the difference between a Novel and a Short-
story is a difference of kind. A true Short-story is
something other and something more than a mere
story which is short. A true Short-story differs
from the Novel chiefly in its essential unity of im
pression. In a far more exact and precise use of
the word, a Short-story has unity as a Novel can
not have it. Often, it may be noted by the way,
the Short-story fulfils the three false unities of the
French classic drama : it shows one action in one
place on one day. A Short-story deals with a sin
gle character, a single event, a single emotion, or
the series of emotions called forth by a single situ
ation. Poe's paradox that a poem cannot greatly
exceed a hundred lines in length under penalty of
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 77
ceasing to be one poem and breaking into a string
of poems, may serve to suggest the precise differ
ence between the Short-story and the Novel. The
Short-story is the single effect, complete and self-
contained, while the Novel is of necessity broken
into a series of episodes. Thus the Short-story
has, what the Novel cannot have, the effect of
"totality," as Poe called it, the unity of impres
sion. The Short-story is not only not a chapter
out of a Novel, or an incident or an episode ex
tracted from a longer tale, but at its best it im
presses the reader with the belief that it would be
spoiled if it were made larger or if it were incor
porated into a more elaborate work. The differ
ence in spirit and in form between the Lyric and
the Epic is scarcely greater than the difference
between the Short-story and the Novel ; and the
' Raven ' and ' How we brought the good news
from Ghent to Aix ' are not more unlike the ' Lady
of the Lake ' and ' Paradise Lost,' in form and in
spirit, than the ' Luck of Roaring Camp ' and the
'Man without a Country,' two typical Short-
stories, are unlike ' Vanity Fair ' and the ' Heart
of Midlothian,' two typical Novels.
Another great difference between the Short-
story and the Novel lies in the fact that the Novel,
nowadays at least, must be a love-tale, while the
78 PEN AND INK.
Short-story need not deal with love at all. Al
though ' Vanity Fair ' was a Novel without a Hero,
nearly every other Novel has a hero and a heroine,
and the novelist, however unwillingly, must con
cern himself in their love-affairs. But the writer
of Short-stories is under no bonds of this sort. Of
course he may tell a tale of love if he choose, and if
love enters into his tale naturally and to its enrich
ing ; but he need not bother with love at all unless
he please. Some of the best of Short-stories are
love-stories too, Mr. Aldrich's 'Marjory Daw'
for instance, Mr. Stimson's ' Mrs. Knollys , ' Mr.
Bunner's ' Love in Old Cloathes ' ; but more of
them are not love-stories at all. If we were to
pick out the ten best Short-stories, I think we
should find that fewer than half of them made any
mention at all of love. In the ' Snow Image ' and
in the ' Ambitious Guest,' in the ' Gold Bug ' and
in the ' Fall of the House of Usher, ' in ' My Double,
and how he Undid me,' in ' Devil-Puzzlers,' in the
' Outcasts of Poker Flat,' in ' Jean-ah Poquelin,' in
' A Bundle of Letters,' there is little or no mention
of the love of man for woman, which is the chief
topic of conversation in a Novel. While the
Novel cannot get on without love, the Short-story
can. Since love is almost the only thing which
will give interest to a long story, the writer of
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 79
Novels has to get love into his tales as best he
may, even when the subject rebels and when he
himself is too old to take any interest in the
mating of John and Joan. But the Short-story,
being brief, does not need a love-interest to hold
its parts together, and the writer of Short-stories
has thus a greater freedom: he may do as he
pleases ; from him a love-tale is not expected.
But other things are required of a writer of
Short-stories which are not required of a writer of
Novels. The novelist may take his time : he has
abundant room to turn about. The writer of
Short-stories must be concise, and compression,
a vigorous compression, is essential. For him,
more than for any one else, the half is more than
the whole. Again, the novelist may be common
place, he may bend his best energies to the photo
graphic reproduction of the actual ; if he show us
a cross section of real life we are content ; but the
writer of Short-stories must have originality and
ingenuity. If to compression, originality, and in
genuity he add also a touch of fantasy, so much
the better. It may be said that no one has ever
succeeded as a writer of Short-stories who had
not ingenuity, originality, and compression, and
that most of those who have succeeded in this
line had also the touch of fantasy. But there are
80 PEN AND INK.
not a few successful novelists lacking not only in
fantasy and compression, but also in ingenuity
and originality : they had other qualities, no
doubt, but these they had not. If an example
must be given, the name of Anthony Trollope will
occur to all. Fantasy was a thing he abhorred ;
compression he knew not ; and originality and in
genuity can be conceded to him only by a strong
stretch of the ordinary meaning of the words.
Other qualities he had in plenty, but not these.
And, not having them, he was not a writer of
Short-stories. Judging from his essay on Haw
thorne, one may even go so far as to say that
Trollope did not know a good Short-story when
he saw it.
I have written Short-story with a capital S and
a hyphen because I wished to emphasize the dis
tinction between the Short-story and the story
which is merely short. The Short-story is a high
and difficult department of fiction. The story
which is short can be written by anybody who
can write at all ; and it may be good, bad, or in
different ; but at its best it is wholly unlike the
Short-story. In ' An Editor's Tales ' Trollope has
given us excellent specimens of the story which is
short ; and the stories which make up this book
are amusing enough and clever enough, but they
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 8 1
are wanting in the individuality and in the com
pleteness of the genuine Short-story. Like the
brief tales to be seen in the English monthly mag
azines and in the Sunday editions of American
newspapers into which they are copied, they are,
for the most part, either merely amplified anec
dotes or else incidents which might have been
used in a Novel just as well as not. Now, the
genuine Short-story abhors the idea of the Novel.
It can be conceived neither as part of a Novel nor
as elaborated and expanded so as to form a Novel.
A good Short-story is no more the synopsis of a
Novel than it is an episode from a Novel. A slight
Novel, or a Novel cut down, is a Novelette : it is
not a Short-story. Mr. Howells's ' Their Wed
ding Journey ' and Miss Howard's ' One Sum
mer' are Novelettes, little Novels. Mr. Anstey's
' Vice Versa/ Mr. Besant's ' Case of Mr. Lucraft/
Hugh Con way's ' Called Back,' Mr. Julian Haw
thorne's 'Archibald Malmaison,' and Mr. Steven
son's ' Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'
are Short-stories in conception, although they are
without the compression which the Short-story
requires. In the acute and learned essay on vers
de sodete which Mr. Frederick Locker prefixed to
his admirable ' Lyra Elegantiarum,' he declared
that the two characteristics of the best vers de
4*
82 PEN AND INK.
societe were brevity and brilliancy, and that the
'Rape of the Lock' would be the type and model
of the best vers de societe if it were not just a
little too long. So it is with the ' Case of Mr.
Lucraft/ with ' Vice Versa/ with 'Archibald Mal-
maison ' : they are just a little too long.
It is to be noted as a curious coincidence that
there is no exact word in English to designate
either vers de societe or the Short-story, and yet in
no language are there better vers de societe or
Short-stories than in English. It may be re
marked also that there is a certain likeness be
tween vers de societe and Short-stories : for one
thing, both seem easy to write and are hard.
And the typical qualifications of each may apply
with almost equal force to the other: vers de
societe should reveal compression, ingenuity, and
originality, and Short-stories should have brevity
and brilliancy. In no class of writing are neatness
of construction and polish of execution more
needed than in the writing of vers de societe and
of Short-stories. The writer of Short-stories
must have the sense of form, which Mr. Lathrop
has called "the highest and last attribute of a
creative writer." The construction must be logi
cal, adequate, harmonious. Here is the weak
spot in Mr. Bishop's ' One of the Thirty Pieces,'
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. $}
the fundamental idea of which has extraordinary
strength perhaps not fully developed in the story.
But other of Mr. Bishop's stories the ' Battle of
Bunkerloo,' for instance are admirable in all
ways, conception and execution having an even
excellence. Again, Hugh Conway's ' Daughter
of the Stars' is a Short-story which fails from
sheer deficiency of style : here is one of the very
finest Short-story ideas ever given to mortal man,
but the handling is at best barely sufficient. To
do justice to the conception would task the execu
tion of a poet. We can merely wonder what the
tale would have been had it occurred to Haw
thorne, to Poe, or to Theophile Gautier. An idea
logically developed by one possessing the sense of
form and the gift of style is what we look for in
the Short-story.
But, although the sense of form and the gift of
style are essential to the writing of a good Short-
story, they are secondary to the idea, to the con
ception, to the subject. Those who hold, with a
certain American novelist, that it is no matter what
you have to say, but only how you say it, need not
attempt the Short-story ; for the Short-story, far
more than the Novel even, demands a subject.
The Short-story is nothing if there is no story to
tell. The Novel, so Mr. James told us not long
84 PEN AND INK.
ago, "is, in its broadest definition, a personal im
pression of life." The most powerful force in
French fiction to-day is M. Emile Zola, chiefly
known in America and England, I fear me greatly,
by the dirt which masks and degrades the real
beauty and firm strength not seldom concealed in
his novels ; and M. Emile Zola declares that the
novelist of the future will not concern himself
with the artistic evolution of a plot : he will take
une bistoire quelconque, any kind of a story, and
make it serve his purpose, which is to give elab
orate pictures of life in all its most minute details.
The acceptance of these theories is a negation
of the Short-story. Important as are form and
style, the subject of the Short-story is of more im
portance yet. What you have to tell is of greater
interest than how you tell it. I once heard a
clever American novelist pour sarcastic praise
upon another American novelist, for novelists,
even American novelists, do not always dwell to
gether in unity. The subject of the eulogy is the
chief of those who have come to be known as the
International Novelists, and he was praised be
cause he had invented and made possible a fifth
plot. Hitherto, declared the eulogist, only four
terminations of a novel have been known to the
most enthusiastic and untiring student of fiction.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 85
First, they are married ; or, second, she marries
some one else ; or, thirdly, he marries some one
else ; or, fourthly, and lastly, she dies. Now,
continued the panegyrist, a fifth termination
has been shown to be practicable : they are not
married, she does not die, he does not die, and
nothing happens at all. As a Short-story need
not be a love-story, it is of no consequence at all
whether they marry or die ; but a Short-story in
which nothing happens at all is an absolute im
possibility.
Perhaps the difference between a Short-story
and a Sketch can best be indicated by saying that,
while a Sketch may be still-life, in a Short-story
something always happens. A Sketch may be an
outline of character, or even a picture of a mood
of mind, but in a Short-story there must be some
thing done, there must be an action. Yet the
distinction, like that between the Novel and the
Romance, is no longer of vital importance. In the
preface to the ' House of the Seven Gables,' Haw
thorne sets forth the difference between the Novel
and the Romance, and claims for himself the priv
ileges of the romancer. Mr. Henry James fails to
see this difference. The fact is, that the Short-
story and the Sketch, the Novel and the Romance,
melt and merge one into the other, and no man
86 PEN AND INK.
may mete the boundaries of each, though their
extremes lie far apart. With the more complete
understanding of the principle of development and
evolution in literary art, as in physical nature, we
see the futility of a strict and rigid classification
into precisely defined genera and species. All that
is needful for us to remark now is that the Short-
story has limitless possibilities : it may be as real
istic as the most prosaic novel, or as fantastic as
the most ethereal romance.
As a touch of fantasy, however slight, is a wel
come ingredient in a Short-story, and as the Amer
ican takes more thought of things unseen than the
Englishman, we may have here an incomplete ex
planation of the superiority of the American Short-
story over the English. "John Bull has suffered
the idea of the Invisible to be very much fattened
out of him," says Mr. Lowell: "Jonathan is con
scious still that he lives in the World of the
Unseen as well as of the Seen." It is not enough
to catch a ghost white-handed and to hale him
into the full glare of the electric light. A brutal
misuse of the supernatural is perhaps the very
lowest degradation of the art of fiction. But " to
mingle the marvellous rather as a slight, delicate,
and evanescent flavor than as any actual portion
of the substance," to quote from the preface to
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 87
the * House of the Seven Gables/ this is, or should
be, the aim of the writer of Short-stories when
ever his feet leave the firm ground of fact as he
strays in the unsubstantial realms of fantasy. In
no one's writings is this better exemplified than
in Hawthorne's ; not even in Poe's. There is a
propriety in Hawthorne's fantasy to which Poe
could not attain. Hawthorne's effects are moral
where Poe's are merely physical. The situation
and its logical development and the effects to be
got out of it are all Poe thinks of. In Hawthorne
the situation, however strange and weird, is
only the outward and visible sign of an inward
and spiritual struggle. Ethical consequences are
always worrying Hawthorne's soul : but Poe did
not know that there were any ethics.
There are literary evolutionists who, in their
whim of seeing in every original writer a copy of
some predecessor, have declared that Hawthorne
is derived from Tieck, and Poe from Hoffmann,
just as Dickens modelled himself on Smollett and
Thackeray followed in the footsteps of Fielding.
In all four cases the pupil surpassed the mas
ter, if haply Tieck and Hoffmann can be consid
ered as even remotely the masters of Hawthorne
and Poe. When Coleridge was told that Klopstock
was the German Milton, he assented with the dry
88 PEN AND INK.
addendum, "A very German Milton." So is
Hoffmann a very German Poe, and Tieck a very
German Hawthorne. Of a truth, both Poe and
Hawthorne are as American as any one can be. If
the adjective American has any meaning at all, it
qualifies Poe and Hawthorne. They were Ameri
can to the core. They both revealed the curious
sympathy with Oriental moods of thought which
is often an American characteristic. Poe, with his
cold logic and his mathematical analysis, and Haw
thorne, with his introspective conscience and his
love of the subtile and the invisible, are repre
sentative of phases of American character not to
be mistaken by any one who has given thought
to the influence of nationality.
As to which of the two was the greater, discus
sion is idle, but that Hawthorne was the finer
genius few would deny. Poe, as cunning an
artificer of goldsmith's work, and as adroit in its
vending as was ever M. Josse, declared that
"Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, crea
tion, imagination, originality, a trait which in
the literature of fiction is positively worth all the
rest." But with the moral basis of Hawthorne's
work, which had flowered in the crevices and
crannies of New England Puritanism, Poe did not
concern himself. In Poe's hands the story of the
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 89
' Ambitious Guest ' might have thrilled us with a
more powerful horror, but it would have lacked
the ethical beauty which Hawthorne gave it and
which makes it significant beyond a mere feat of
verbal legerdemain. And the subtile simplicity of
the ' Great Stone Face ' is as far from Poe as the
pathetic irony of the ' Ambitious Guest.' In all
his most daring fantasies Hawthorne is natural,
and, though he may project his vision far beyond
the boundaries of fact, nowhere does he violate
the laws of nature. He had at all times a whole
some simplicity, and he never showed any trace
of the morbid taint which characterizes nearly all
Poe's work. Hawthorne, one may venture to
say, had the broad sanity of genius, while we
should understand any one who might declare
that Poe had mental disease raised to the w th .
Although it may be doubted whether the fiery
and tumultuous rush of a volcano, which may be
taken to typify Poe, is as powerful or impressive
in the end as the calm and inevitable progression
of a glacier, to which, for the purposes of this
comparison only, we may liken Hawthorne, yet
the effect and influence of Poe's work are indis
putable. One might hazard the assertion that in
all Latin countries he is the best known of Ameri
can authors. Certainly no American writer has
90 PEN AND INK.
been as widely accepted in France. Nothing bet*
ter of its kind has ever been done than the ' Pit
and the Pendulum,' or than the 'Fall of the House
of Usher,' which Mr. Stoddard has compared re
cently with Browning's ' Childe Roland to the
Dark Tower came' for its power of suggesting
intellectual desolation. Nothing better of its kind
has ever been done than the 'Gold Bug,' or than
the 'Purloined Letter,' or than the 'Murders in
the Rue Morgue.' This last, indeed, is a story of
marvellous skill : it was the first of its kind, and
to this day it remains a model, not only unsur
passed, but unapproachable. It was the first of
detective stories ; and it has had thousands of imi
tations and no rival. The originality, the ingenu
ity, the verisimilitude of this tale and of its fellows
are beyond all praise. Poe had a faculty which
one may call imaginative ratiocination to a degree
beyond all other writers of fiction. He did not at
all times keep up to the high level, in one style,
of the * Fall of the House of Usher,' and in another
of the ' Murders in the Rue Morgue/ and it was
not to be expected that he should. Only too
often did he sink to the grade of the ordinary
'Tale from Blackwood,' which he himself satir
ized in his usual savage vein of humor. Yet even
in his flimsiest and most tawdry tales we see the
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 91
truth of Mr. Lowell's assertion that Poe had " two
of the prime qualities of genius, a faculty of
vigorous yet minute analysis, and a wonderful
fecundity of imagination." Mr. Lowell said also
that Poe combined " in a very remarkable manner
two faculties which are seldom found united, a
power of influencing the mind of the reader by
the impalpable shadows of mystery and a minute
ness of detail which does not leave a pin or a
button unnoticed. Both are, in truth, the natural
results of the predominating quality of his mind,
to which we have before alluded, analysis." In
Poe's hands, however, the enumeration of pins
and buttons, the exact imitation of the prosaic
facts of humdrum life in this workaday world, is
not an end, but a means only, whereby he con
structs and intensifies the shadow of mystery
which broods over the things thus realistically
portrayed.
With the recollection that it is more than half a
century since Hawthorne and Poe wrote their best
Short-stories, it is not a little comic to see now
and again in American newspapers a rash asser
tion that "American literature has hitherto been
deficient in good Short-stories," or the reckless
declaration that "the art of writing Short-stories
has not hitherto been cultivated in the United
92 PEN AND INK.
States." Nothing could be more inexact than
these statements. Almost as soon as America
began to have any literature at all it had good
Short-stories. It is quite within ten, or at the
most twenty, years that the American novel has
come to the front and forced the acknowledgment
of its equality with the English novel and the
French novel ; but for fifty years the American
Short-story has had a supremacy which any com
petent critic could not but acknowledge. Indeed,
the present excellence of the American novel is
due in great measure to the Short-story ; for nearly
every one of the American novelists whose works
are now read by the whole English-speaking race
began as a writer of Short-stories. Although as
a form of fiction the Short-story is not inferior
to the Novel, and although it is not easier, all
things considered, yet its brevity makes its com
position simpler for the 'prentice hand. Though
the Short-stories of the beginner may not be
good, yet in the writing of Short-stories he shall
learn how to tell a story, he shall discover by ex
perience the elements of the art of fiction more
readily and, above all, more quickly than if he had
begun on a long and exhausting novel. The
physical strain of writing a full-sized novel is far
greater than the reader can well imagine. To this
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 93
strain the beginner in fiction may gradually accus
tom himself by the composition of Short-stories.
(Here, if the digression may be pardoned, occa
sion serves to say that if our writers of plays had
the same chance that our writers of novels have,
we might now have a school of American drama
tists of which we should be as proud as of our
school of American novelists. In dramatic com
position, the equivalent of the Short-story is the
one-act play, be it drama or comedy or comedietta
or farce. As the novelists have learned their trade
by the writing of Short-stories, so the dramatists
might learn their trade, far more difficult as it is
and more complicated, by the writing of one-act
plays. But, while the magazines of the United
States are hungry for good Short-stories, and sift
carefully all that are sent to them, in the hope of
happening on a treasure, the theatres of the
United States are closed to one-act plays, and the
dramatist is denied the opportunity of making a
humble and tentative beginning. The conditions
of the theatre are such that there is little hope of a
change for the better in this respect, more's the
pity. The manager has a tradition that a ' ' broken
bill," a programme containing more than one
play, is a confession of weakness, and he prefers,
so far as possible, to keep his weakness concealed.)
94 PEN AND INK.
When we read the roll of American novelists,
we see that nearly all of them began as writers of
Short-stories. Some of them, Mr. Bret Harte, for
instance, and Mr. Edward Everett Hale, never got
any farther, or, at least, if they wrote novels,
their novels did not receive the full artistic appre
ciation and popular approval bestowed on their
Short-stories. Even Mr. Cable's < Grandissimes '
has not made his readers forget his ' Posson Jone,'
nor has Mr. Aldrich's ' Queen of Sheba,' charming
as she was, driven from our memory his ' Marjory
Daw,' as delightful and as captivating as that other
non-existent heroine, Mr. Austin Dobson's ' Doro
thy.' Mrs. Burnett, Miss Woolson, and Miss Mur-
free put forth volumes of Short-stories before they
attempted the more sustained flight of the full-
fledged Novel. Miss Jewett, Mr. Bunner, Mr.
Bishop, and Mr. Julian Hawthorne wrote Short-
stories before they wrote novels ; and Mr. James
has never gathered into a book from the back-
numbers of magazines the half of his earlier
efforts.
In these references to the American magazine I
believe I have suggested the real reason of the
superiority of the American Short-stories over the
English. It is not only that the eye of patriotism
may detect more fantasy, more humor, a finer
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 95
feeling for art, in these younger United States, but
there is a more emphatic and material reason for
the American proficiency. There is in the United
States a demand for Short-stories which does not
exist in Great Britain, or at any rate not in the
same degree. The Short-story is of very great
importance to the American magazine. But in
the British magazine the serial Novel is the one
thing of consequence, and all else is termed "pad
ding." In England the writer of three-volume
Novels is the best paid of literary laborers. So in
England whoever has the gift of story-telling is
strongly tempted not to essay the difficult art of
writing Short-stories, for which he will receive
only an inadequate reward ; and he is as strongly
tempted to write a long story which may serve
first as a serial and afterward as a three-volume
Novel. The result of this temptation is seen in
the fact that there is not a single English novelist
whose reputation has been materially assisted by
the Short-stories he has written. More than once
in the United States a single Short-story has made
a man known, but in Great Britain such an event
is well-nigh impossible. The disastrous effect on
narrative art of the desire to distend every subject
to the three-volume limit has been dwelt on un
ceasingly by English critics.
96 PEN AND INK.
The three-volume system is peculiar to Great
Britain : it does not obtain either in France or the
United States. As a consequence, the French and
American writer of fiction is left free to treat his
subject at the length it demands, no more and
no less. It is pleasant to note that there are signs
of the beginning of the break-up of the system
even in England ; and the protests of the chief
English critics against it are loud and frequent. It
is responsible in great measure for the invention
and protection of the British machine for making
English Novels, of which Mr. Warner told us in
his entertaining essay on fiction. We all know
the work of this machine, and we all recognize
the trade-mark it imprints in the corner. But Mr.
Warner failed to tell us, what nevertheless is a
fact, that this British machine can be geared down
so as to turn out the English short story. Now,
the English short story, as the machine makes it
and as we see it in most English magazines, is
only a little English Novel, or an incident or epi
sode from an English Novel. It is thus the exact
artistic opposite of the American Short-story, of
which, as we have seen, the chief characteristics
are originality, ingenuity, compression, and, not
infrequently, a touch of fantasy. I do not say, of
course, that the good and genuine Short-story is
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 97
not written in England now and then, for if I
were to make any such assertion some of the best
work of Mr. Stevenson, of Mr. Besant, and of Mr.
Anstey would rise up to contradict me ; but this is
merely an accidental growth, and not a staple of
production. As a rule, in England the artist in fic
tion does not care to hide his light under a bushel,
and he puts his best work where it will be seen of
all men, that is to say, not in a Short-story. So
it happens that the most of the brief tales in the
English magazines are not true Short-stories at all,
and that they belong to a lower form of the art of
fiction, in the department with the amplified anec
dote. It is the three-volume Novel which has killed
the Short-story in England.
Certain of the remarks in the present paper I
put forth first anonymously in the columns of the
Saturday Review. To my intense surprise, they
were controverted in the Nation. The critic be
gan by assuming that the writer had said that
Americans preferred Short -stories to Novels.
What had really been said was that there was a
steady demand for Short-stories in American mag
azines, whereas in England the demand was
rather for serial Novels. " In the first place," said
the critic, "Americans do not prefer Short-stories,
as is shown by the enormous number of British
98 PEN AND INK.
Novels circulated among us ; and in the second
place, tales of the quiet, domestic kind, which
form the staple of periodicals like All the Year
Round and Chambers' 's Journal, have here thou
sands of readers where native productions, how
ever clever and original, have only hundreds,
since the former are reprinted by the country
papers and in the Sunday editions of city papers
as rapidly and regularly as they are produced at
home." Now, the answer to this is simply that
these English Novels and English stories are re
printed widely in the United States, not because
the American people prefer them to anything else,
but because, owing to the absence of international
copyright, they cost nothing. That the American
people prefer to read American stories when they
can get them is shown by the enormous circula
tion of the periodicals which make a specialty of
American fiction.
I find I have left myself little space to speak of
the Short-story as it exists in other literatures
than those of Great Britain and the United States.
The conditions which have killed the Short-story
in England do not obtain elsewhere ; and else
where there are not a few good writers of Short-
stories. Turgenef, Bjornsen, Sacher-Masoch, Frey-
tag, Lindau, are the names which one recalls
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 99
at once and without effort as masters in the
art and mystery of the Short-story. Turgenef 's
Short-stories, in particular, it would be difficult to
commend too warmly. But it is in France that
the Short-story flourishes most abundantly. In
France the conditions are not unlike those in the
United States ; and, although there are few French
magazines, there are many Parisian newspapers
of a wide hospitality to literature. The demand
for the Short-story has called forth an abundant
supply. Among the writers of the last generation
who excelled in the conte which is almost the
exact French equivalent for Short-story, as nou-
vette may be taken to indicate the story which is
merely short, the episode, the incident, the ampli
fied anecdote were Alfred de Musset, Theophile
Gautier, and Prosper Merimee. The best work
of Merimee has never been surpassed. As com
pression was with him almost a mania, as, indeed,
it was with his friend Turgenef, he seemed born on
purpose to write Short-stories. Turgenef carried
his desire for conciseness so far that he seems al
ways to be experimenting to see how much of his
story he may leave out. One of the foremost writ
ers of contes is Edmond About, whose exquisite
humor is known to all readers of the ' Man with
the Broken Ear,' a Short-story in conception,
100 PEN AND INK.
though unduly extended in execution. Few of the
charming contes of M. Alphonse Daudet, or of the
earlier Short-stories of M. Emile Zola, have been
translated into English ; and the poetic tales of M.
Franfois Coppee are likewise unwisely neglected in
this country. The ' Abbe Constantin ' of M. Ludo-
vic Halevy has been read by many, but the Gallic
satire of his more Parisian Short-stories has been
passed over, perhaps wisely, in spite of their broad
humor and their sharp wit. In the very singular
collection of stories which M. Jean Richepin has
called the ' Morts Bizarres ' we find a modern
continuation of the Poe tradition, always more
potent in France than elsewhere.
(Here I cancel a casual sentence written in 1885,
before Guy de Maupassant had completely revealed
his extraordinary gifts and his marvellous crafts
manship. His Short-stories are masterpieces of
the art of story-telling, because he had a Greek
sense of form, a Latin power of construction, and
a French felicity of style. They are simple, most
of them ; direct, swift, inevitable, and inexorable
in their straightforward movement. If art consists
in the suppression of non-essentials, there have
been few greater artists in fiction than Maupassant.
In his Short-stories there is never a word wasted,
and there is never an excursus. Nor is there any
feebleness or fumbling. What he wanted to do
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. JQI
he did, with the unerring certainty of Leather-
stocking, hitting the bull's-eye again and again.
He had the abundance and the ease of the very
great artists ; and the half-dozen or the half-score
of his best stories are among the very best Short-
stories in any language.
In his later tales there is to be noted a tendency
toward the psychology of the morbid. The
thought of death and the dread of mental disease
seemed to possess him. In ' Le Horla,' for exam
ple, we find Maupassant taking for his own Fitz-
james O'Brien's uncanny monster, invisible and
yet tangible ; and the Frenchman gave the tale an
added touch of terror by making the unfortunate
victim discover that the creature he feared had a
stronger will than his own, and that he was being
hypnotized to his doom by a being whom he
could not see, but whose presence he could feel.)
The Short-story should not be void or without
form, but its form may be whatever the author
please. He has an absolute liberty of choice. It
may be a personal narrative, like Poe's ' Descent
into the Maelstrom ' or Mr. Hale's ' My Double,
and How He Undid Me'; it may be impersonal,
like Mr. Frederick B. Perkins's ' Devil-Puzzlers ' or
Colonel J. W. De Forest's 'Brigade Commander';
it may be a conundrum, like Mr. Stockton's in
soluble query, the ' Lady or the Tiger ? ' it may be
102 PEN AND INK.
'A Bundle of Letters,' like Mr. Henry James's
story, or 'A Letter and a Paragraph,' like Mr.
Banner's ; it may be a medley of letters and tele
grams and narrative, like Mr. Aldrich's ' Margery
Daw ' ; it may be cast in any one of these forms,
or in a combination of all of them, or in a wholly
new form, if haply such may yet be found by
diligent search. Whatever its form, it should
have symmetry of design. If it have also wit or
humor, pathos or poetry, and especially a dis
tinct and unmistakable flavor of individuality, so
much the better. But the chief requisites are
compression, originality, ingenuity, with now and
again a touch of fantasy. Sometimes we may de
tect in a writer of Short-stories a tendency toward
the over-elaboration of ingenuity, toward the ex
hibition of ingenuity for its own sake, as in a
Chinese puzzle. But mere cleverness is incom
patible with greatness, and to commend a writer
as "very clever" is not to give him high praise.
From this fault of supersubtlety, women are free
for the most part. They are more likely than men
to rely on broad human emotion, and their ten
dency in error is toward the morbid analysis of a
high-strung moral situation.
The more carefully we study the history of fic
tion the more clearly we perceive that the Novel
and the Short-story are essentially different that
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY.
103
the difference between them is not one of mere
length only, but fundamental. The Short-story
seeks one set of effects in its own way, and
the Novel seeks a wholly distinct set of effects
in a wholly distinct way. We are led also to
the conclusion that the Short-storyin spite of
the fact that in our language it has no name
of its own is one of the few sharply defined
literary forms. It is a genre, as M. Brunetiere
terms it, a species, as a naturalist might call it,
as individual as the Lyric itself and as vari
ous. It is as distinct an entity as the Epic, as
Tragedy, as Comedy. Now the Novel is not a
form of the same sharply defined individuality ; it
is or at least it may be anything. It is the
child of the Epic and the heir of the Drama ; but
it is a hybrid. And one of the foremost of living
American novelists, who happens also to be one
of the most acute and sympathetic of American
critics, has told me that he was often distracted
by the knowledge of this fact even while he was
writing a novel.
In the history of literature the Short-story was
developed long before the Novel, which indeed is
but a creature of yesterday. The Short-story also
seems much easier of accomplishment than the
Novel, if only because it is briefer. And yet the
list of the masters of the Short-story is far less
104 PEN AND INIC
crowded than the list of the masters of the longer
form. There are a dozen or more very great nov
elists recorded in the history of fiction ; but there
are scarcely more than half a dozen Short-story
writers. From Chaucer and Boccaccio we pass to
Hawthorne and Poe almost without finding an
other name that insists upon enrolment. A little
later we light upon Merimee and Turgenef, whose
title to be recorded there is none to dispute.
Now at the end of the nineteenth century we find
two more that no competent critic would dare to
omit Guy de Maupassant and Rudyard Kipling.
(1885-1900)
P. S. So far as the author is aware, he had no
predecessor in asserting that the Short-story differs
from the Novel essentially, and not merely in
matter of length. So far as he knows, it was in
the present paper the suggestion was first made
that the Short-story is in reality a genre, a separate
kind, a genus by itself. But although this dis
tinction may not have been made explicitly by
any earlier critic, there is little doubt that Poe felt
it, even if he did not formulate it in set terms. It
seems to be implicit in more than one of his criti
cal essays, more particularly in that on Haw
thorne's tales. And it is from this essay that the
following quotations are taken :
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY.
105
"The ordinary novel is objectionable from its
length, for reasons already stated in substance-
As it cannot be read at one sitting, it deprives it
self, of course, of the immense force derivable from
totality. Worldly interests intervening during the
pauses of perusal modify, annul, or contract, in a
greater or less degree, the impressions of the book.
But simply cessation in reading would, of itself,
be sufficient to destroy the true unity. In the
brief tale, however, the author is enabled to carry
out the fullness of his intention, be it what it may.
During the hour of perusal the soul of the reader is
at the writer's control. There are no external or
extrinsic influences resulting from weariness or
interruption.
"A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale.
If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to ac
commodate his incidents; but having conceived,
with deliberate care, a certain unique or single
effect to be wrought out, he then invents such
incidents, he then combines such events, as may
best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect.
If his very initial sentence tend not to the out-
bringing of this effect, then he has failed in his
first step. In the whole composition there should
be no word written of which the tendency, direct
or indirect, is not to the one preestablished design.
As by such means, with such care and skill, a
106 PEN AND INK.
picture is at length painted which leaves in the
mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred
art a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of
the tale has been presented unblemished, because
undisturbed ; and this is an end unattainable by
the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptiona
ble here as in the poem ; but undue length is yet
more to be avoided."
In one of his ' Vailima Letters ' Stevenson de
clares his adherence to what Poe called the princi
ple of " totality ":
"Make another end to it? Ah, yes, but that's
not the way I write; the whole tale is implied ; I
never use an effect when I can help it, unless it
prepares the effects that are to follow ; that's
what a story consists in. To make another end,
that is to make the beginning all wrong. The de
nouement of a long story is nothing; it is just 'a
full close,' which you may approach and accom
pany as you please it is a coda, not an essential
member in the rhythm ; but the body and end of a
short story is bone of the bone and blood of the
blood of the beginning." ('Vailima Letters,' vol.
i., p. 147.)
V
A NOTE ON THE ESSAY
A NOTE ON THE ESSAY.
OWADAYS fiction may seem to some
of us the most many-sided depart
ment of literature, for it is no longer
content to tell a story only ; it insists
at least in pointing a moral, even
when it does not undertake also to give instruction
in history and in theology. But I doubt if the
Novel is really as protean as the Essay. Mr. Owen
Wister is not further removed from Mrs. Hum
phry Ward, Mark Twain is not more widely sep
arated from George Sand, than Thoreau is from
Charles Lamb, or Dr. Johnson from Montaigne.
It would be difficult, indeed, to frame a definition
wide enough to include the essays of Bacon and
Emerson, of Steele and Goldsmith and Irving, of
Hazlitt and Bagehot and Lowell, of Stevenson and
Mr. Howells. The dictionary declares that an
Essay is "a discursive composition concerned with
a particular subject, usually shorter and less me
thodical and finished than a treatise." Few things
in literature are more methodical and finished than
109
1 10 PEN AND INK.
most of Macaulay's essays, and few things are less
discursive than most of Matthew Arnold's essays,
wherein a skeleton of logical structure is always
to be laid bare not far below the surface.
One lexicographer quotes from Bacon his asser
tion that he chose "to write certain brief notes,
set down rather significantly than curiously,
which I have called essays," following this with
the explanation that "the word is late, but the
thing is ancient." How ancient it is we can see
for ourselves when we find another writer seeking
its origin in the "dispersed meditations" of Sen
eca's 'Epistles to Lucilius,'and when we reflect that
if the germ of the Essay is to be sought in any
collection of " dispersed meditations," it can surely
be found in the Proverbs of Solomon, the son of
David, King of Israel to know wisdom and in
struction; to perceive the words of understanding;
to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice and
judgment, and equity; to give subtlety to the
simple, to the young man knowledge and dis
cretion.
So abiding is the influence of Montaigne that a
certain doubtful suggestion of desultoriness still
attaches itself to the Essay, as though it were fit
reading only for the days when, in Thoreau's
phrase, idleness is "the most attractive and pro
ductive industry." A content so modest as this
A NOTE ON THE ESSAY. j 1 1
tends to unfit it for the adequate description of
writing as strenuous as Carlyle's or as whimsically
elaborated as Lamb's, however accurately it may
apply to the playful pleasantry of Steele and Irving,
for instance. It is hard to draw the line between
the Essay on the one side and the Treatise or Dis
quisition or Thesis on the other. It is not hard,
however, to discover in the Essay itself at least
two broad divisions, in one of which we find the
names of Montaigne, Bacon, and Emerson, while
in the other we have Steele and Addison, Oliver
Goldsmith, and Washington Irving. This second
group it is that we have in mind when we talk
of the English essayists, and yet it is the first
group that has the securer title, or at least the
earlier.
Wherever Montaigne may have got the hint,
whether from Plutarch or from Cicero's Letters
or from Seneca, he devised a new literary form,
which Bacon borrowed from him, and which
Emerson in turn claimed as his own also. These
are the three great masters of the wandering and
shapeless medley of thoughts more or less relating
to a single topic. The charm in their essays is
not in any artful arrangement; it is in the pithy
sayings partly, and partly in the writers' self-reve
lation. They were all three of them kindly and
frank, tolerant and shrewd, keen-eyed and quick--
112 PEN AND INK.
witted. Montaigne was more a man of the world,
Bacon more a man of affairs, and Emerson more a
man of the library.
Steele, aided by Addison, took the Essay where
Montaigne and Bacon had left it, and gave it an un
expected development, influenced perhaps by Wal
ton and perhaps by La Bruyere. The eighteenth-
century Essay, as we have it in the Tatter and the
Spectator and in all the cloud of their copyists, seems
to me sometimes almost as though it were a
definite literary form, as distinct as the Short-story
or the Elegy. It has in prose the characteristics
which we ask in rhyme from versde societe the
"familiar verse" of Cowper. Like that, it is
brief and brilliant and buoyant; it has ease and
elegance; it only hints its pathos, and it never in
sists on its wit; it reveals the gentleman and the
scholar, and yet it recalls always the man about
town.
In the most of the successes of Steele and Addi
son the effort of imitation is obvious; a copy
has been set which they are trying to follow, often
awkwardly and sometimes even clumsily. Dr.
Johnson's grace is but elephantine when he tries to
dance in these fetters; and even Dr. Johnson's foe,
Lord Chesterfield, clever as he was, failed to hit
the mark, giving to the Essay a metallic hardness
A NOTE ON THE ESSAY. \\j
and a cynical brilliance not quite in keeping. But
Goldsmith was perfectly at ease, and he handled
the form as naturally as though he had invented
it for his own use. With all his individuality
in life, Oliver Goldsmith was in literature of
the lineage of Richard Steele, and so also was
Washington Irving. It was in the shop Gold
smith had inherited from Steele that Irving
served his apprenticeship; but he soon set up for
himself; and in its delicacy and its grace and its
ease, Irving's best work is quite worthy of com
parison with the masterpieces of the elder brothers
of the craft.
Slight and airy as the Essay was in the hands of
Steele and Addison, the service it rendered in the
development of the art of character-drawing can
not easily be overestimated. If Steele and Addi
son descended from Montaigne on one side, on
the other they were the heirs of Cervantes also.
Sir Roger de Coverley is the great-grandnephew
of the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. This
fertile Cervantine tradition they transmitted to
those who came after them. The richly colored
portrait of the Tory Foxhunter had been hung in
Addison's studio years before Fielding painted
the robustious Squire Western. Ned Softly the
Poet had exhibited his pleasant pedantry in the
114 PEN AND INK.
pages of the Tatter years before Jane Austen
had etched the imperturbable Mr. Collins. The
' Fine Lady's Journal ' had been printed in the
Spectator years before Miss Edgeworth drew the
character of the flighty Mrs. Delacour.
And here, if a discursive inquiry be not debarred,
occasion serves to put a puzzling question. When
the Essay is at its best, it has the spontaneity,
the unstudied charm, the pleasantly personal flavor
of a good letter. Now, it is notorious that women
have ever been the most artistic, as they are the
most abundant, of letter-writers. Nowadays at
least women are the only masters of the art of
epistolary correspondence, since men no longer
take pen in hand to gossip leisurely with a distant
friend. Men dictate to a type-writer when they
are not content to condense their communication
into a peremptory telegram. Women also are
more interested than men in the minor points of
manners and of morals, which are of the essence
of the Essay; and in detecting these as well as
in dissecting them their eyes are sharper. Yet
there is no woman's name inscribed high upon
the roll of the essayists. The fact is indisputable,
whatever the reason for it. Woman never gave
her mind to the Essay, and so she has left no
mark upon it. She waited rather until the modern
Novel had been invented, and in that she seems
A NOTE ON THE ESSAY. 115
to have found the best medium for her self-expres
sion.
Not only fiction was aided in its development
by the labors of Steele and Addison and of their
allies, but formal criticism also and more than one
other branch of literature now flourishing abun
dantly in our magazines. The eighteenth-century
Essay was not monotonous; indeed, it was very
varied in its attack. From the Spectator alone
one could pick out a typical character-sketch, a
typical Short-story, a typical humorous skit, a
typical Essay in criticism, a typical theatrical re
view, and even a typical obituary notice.
Mr. Henry James's brief memorial of the late
George du Maurier might have had for its uncon
scious model Steele's 'Dick Estcourt: In Memori-
am ' ; alike in method, the two papers are alike
also in the warmth of affectionate regret that
prompted them. Mr. Howells's recent ' East Side
Ramble ' may be matched by Steele's ' Day's
Ramble in London'; and in both Essays can be
seen a kindred keenness of observation, a kindred
interest in the little things of which life is made
up, and a kindred kindliness of spirit in the ob
server who is making the record. Mr. Frank R.
Stockton's ' Casting Away of Mrs. Leeks and
Mrs. Aleshine ' (or any other of his marvellously
matter-of-fact impossibilities) is compounded ac-
1 1 6 PEN AND INK.
cording to a recipe very like that which served
Addison when he wrote out the details of the
traveller's tale of the ' Frozen Voices.' The sim
ple pathos of the two papers in which Mr. Bick-
erstaff visits a friend, and the homely touches of
human nature that make the people real to us and
alive these are qualities we can duplicate in
many an American Short-story and character-
sketch in Mr. Page's ' Marse Chan' and ' Meh
Lady,' for example; in Miss Wilkins's ' Revolt of
Mother,' in Mr. Garland's 'Return of the Private.'
So also we cannot but see that it was Addison's
rather labored and rather empty papers on ' Para
dise Lost' that helped to make it possible for
Macaulay afterward to write his trenchant criti
cism of Milton.
Perhaps it is this very versatility of the Essay as
we find it in the Tatter and the Spectator that
has misled some of us into thinking that the form
is not as popular to-day as it was once. The
Essay, as it was then, has now differentiated itself
into the Short-story and into criticism, neither of
which is remembered to have had any connection
with it; and the name has been narrowed again
to indicate chiefly the paper of "dispersed medi
tations." It may be said of the Essay that the
stream flows nowadays with a fuller current than
ever before, but as it has worn several new mouths
A NOTE ON THE ESSAY.
117
for itself, no one of them has the prominence or
the importance of the old single channel. Yet,
even when we take the word in its most reduced
meaning, the Essay has not lacked masters in the
last half of the nineteenth century Thoreau and
Lowell and Stevenson.
(1897)
VI
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.
MR. FREDERICK LOCKER.
ATRICIAN rhymes" is the apt phrase
Mr. Stedman coined to characterize
that kind of vers de societe, name
less in English, which is more than
mere society-verse. It describes Mr.
Locker's poetry more accurately than Mr. Austin
Dobson's, for example, or Mr. Calverley's, since
Mr. Locker confines himself more strictly within
the circle of " good society," of Park Lane, and of
fashion. Mr. Locker is the du Maurier of song,
and his ' London Lyrics ' are as entertaining and
as instructive to the student of Victorian manners
as Mr. du Maurier's 'Pictures of English Society.'
Mr. Locker has succeeded Praed as the laureate of
the world, and he ignores the flesh, and is igno
rant of the devil, just like Praed, and just like so
ciety itself. But it seems to me that Mr. Locker's
range is wider than Praed's, whose success lay
122 PEN AND INK.
almost altogether in his songs of society; Praed
was out of place when he ventured far from May-
fair and beyond the sound of St. George's in Han
over Square ; while Mr. Locker's Pegasus pauses
at the mouth of Cite Fadette as gracefully as it
treads the gravel of Rotten Row. The later poet
has wider sympathies than the elder, who, indeed,
may be said to have had but one note. The
' Vicar ' is a beautiful bit of verse, but its touch of
tenderness sets it apart from all Praed's other
work, which is brilliant with a hard and metallic
brilliancy. Praed dazzles almost to weariness ;
his lines stand out sharply like fireworks at mid
night. More brilliant than Praed no poet could
well be. More pleasing Mr. Locker is, and he
gives a higher pleasure. He has wit like Praed,
but far more humor; and the soft radiance of
humor never tires the eye like the quick flashes of
wit. With broader humor, he has a broader
humanity and a finer individuality. In short, the
difference between the two may be summed up
in favor of the younger man, by saying that Mr.
Locker can write Praedesque poems, compare
the ' Belle of the Ball-room,' for instance, and
'A Nice Correspondent,' while it may well be
doubted whether Praed could have emulated Mr.
Locker's ' To My Mistress' and 'At Her Window.'
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 123
Of course, it is easy to say that Mr. Locker con
tinues the tradition of Prior and Praed ; it is easy
also to see that, in two respects, at least, the pro
gression shows the progress of the age. One im
provement is in the form used by the poet ; the
other in the feeling, the temper of the poet him
self. Praed contented himself with putting his
best work into the eight-line stanza, now a little
worn from overwork :
Our love was like most other loves ;
A little glow, a little shiver,
A rosebud and a pair of gloves,
And 'Fly not yet' upon the river;
Some jealousy of some one's heir,
Some hopes of dying broken-hearted,
A miniature, a lock of hair,
The usual vows and then we parted.
In this metre, Mr. Locker and Mr. Austin Dob-
son, in England, and Mr. Saxe, in America, have
written verses that Praed might not disown ;
but though the metal was theirs, the mould was
Praed's. Mr. Locker's best work has not gone
into any one form ; he has wisely varied his
metre; he has invented of his own, and he has
borrowed from his neighbor. ' A Nice Corre
spondent' is Swinburnian in its rhythm, and
124 PEN AND INK.
'To My Grandmother' repeats the measures of
Holmes's 'Last Leaf/ a delightful and most diffi
cult metre, lending itself easily to intricate har
monies, and not to be attempted now by meaner
hands :
This Relative of mine,
Was she seventy-and-nine
When she died?
By the canvas may be seen
How she looked at seventeen,
As a Bride.
Beneath a summer tree
Her maiden reverie
Has a charm :
Her ringlets are in taste ;
What an arm ! . . . what a waist
For an arm !
Is not this the perfection of daintiness and deli
cacy? Is it not delightful this mingling of sly
fun and playful banter? And this brings us to
the second quality, in which Mr. Locker and Mr.
Dobson are plainly superior to Prior and Praed
in their treatment of woman. Prior thought of
women with little feeling, and he wrote of them
with little respect ; however much he might pre
tend to worship a dame or a damsel, he kept a
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 125
keen and unkind eye on her failings. At all times
his tone toward women is one of good-natured
contempt, often ill-concealed. With Praed, a
complete change had come in the attitude ; he
is avowedly a friendly critic, and yet his verse
catches no tinge of warmth from his friendliness.
Though he may have felt deeply, he lets his scep
ticism and his wit hide his feeling until we are
well-nigh forced to doubt whether he had any
feeling to hide. The lively beauties who figure in
Praed's glittering verse are far more true to life
than the French fictions of Prior, but the ladies of
Mr. Locker and Mr. Dobson are quite as charm
ing and indubitably more natural. They are true
women, too, not mere figments of the fancy ;
they are the result of later and deeper observation ;
and they have far more variety from the given
prototype. Prior wrote of women at large, and
Praed rang the changes on the * Belle of the Ball
room.' Now, Mr. Locker has a gallery of girls, all
fresh and ingenuous young maidens. Prior did
not respect women ; Praed admired them coldly ;
Mr. Locker has a warm regard for them and a
manly respect, and also a demure humor which
sees into their wiles and their weaknesses quite as
sharply as did Prior or Praed.
Having set forth thus some of the things which
126 PEN AND INK.
Mr. Locker, the poet, is and is not, it may be well
to give a few facts about Mr. Locker, the man. He
was born in 1821. His father, Edward Hawke
Locker, was in the public service, and took a
warm interest in literature and art. His grand
father, Captain W. Locker, R. N., was an old
friend of Lord Nelson's ; and both Collingwood
and Nelson served under him. Mr. Locker com
posed little until late in life, or at least until he was
thirty ; and he found great difficulty, so he wrote
to a friend, "in persuading editors to have any
thing to say to my verses ; but Thackeray believed
in me, and used to say, ' Never mind, Locker, our
verse may be small beer, but at any rate it is the
right tap.' ' Thus encouraged, Mr. Locker wrote
on, and in time editors began to relent. In 1857
he gathered his scattered poems and put them forth
in a single volume as 'London Lyrics.' As edition
followed edition he has added the few poems he
has written of late years, and has dropped those of
his earlier poems that he thought unworthy. The
latest published edition the eighth, I think it
is is scarcely any heavier than the first. Later
than this, however, is a little book,, beautifully
printed and beautifully bound, which Mr. Locker
has recently given to his friends, and which con
tains a special selection of his very best work,
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 127
made by Mr. Austin Dobson, who has prefixed
this friendly little sextain :
Apollo made, one April day,
A new thing in the rhyming way ;
Its turn was neat, its wit was clear,
It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear ;
Then Momus gave a touch satiric,
And it became a 'London Lyric.'
Besides putting his own vers de societe into a
book, Mr. Locker made a collection, under the title
of 'Lyra Elegantiarum/ of the best specimens in
English of the vers de societe and vers d' occasion of
poets no longer living. Of this a new and revised
edition was published in 1 867 ; it is a model of what
such a selection should be ; and it was ushered in by
an essay of the editor's all too brief on the art
of writing vers de societe. In 1 879 Mr. Locker pub
lished a most amusing little volume of ' Patch
work,' containing bits of rhyme and bits of talk,
with here a jest and there a joke, excerpts from
his commonplace book, and enlivened with a few
of the anecdotes he is wont to tell most effectively.
For the lyrist of London is no recluse ; he is a man
of the world, even more than he is a man of letters.
In life as in literature he has both humor and good-
humor. Although satiric by nature, he is thor-
128 PEN AND INK.
oughly sympathetic and generous. Well-to-do fri
the world, he has been able to indulge his liking
for the little things in art which make life worth
living. His collections of china, of drawings, of
engravings, are all excellent; and his literary
curiosities, first editions of great books and
precious autographs of great men, make a poor
American wickedly envious. He is a connoisseur
of the best type, never buying trash or bargain-
hunting; knowing what he wants, and why he
wants it, and what it is worth ; and his treasures
are freely opened to any literary brother who is
seeking after truth.
In studying Mr. Locker's pictures of English
society we cannot but feel that the poet has drawn
his lines with the living model before him. It is in
the distinctively London-town lyrics in the ' Pil
grims of Pall Mall,' in 'Rotten Row,' in 'At Hurl-
ingham,'in ' St. James' Street,' and in ' Piccadilly,'
Piccadilly ! Shops, palaces, bustle, and breeze,
The whirring of wheels and the murmur of trees,
By night or by day, whether noisy or stilly,
Whatever my mood is, I love Piccadilly.
it is in these that Mr. Locker most shows the
influence of Praed, which is decidedly less apparent
in the less local poems, in 'A Garden Lyric,' in
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.
129
' On an Old Muff, ' in ' Geraldine, ' and in the sportive
and brightsome lines on ' A Human Skull ' :
A human Skull, I bought it passing cheap ;
No doubt 'twas dearer to its first employer !
I thought mortality did well to keep
Some mute memento of the Old Destroyer.
Time was, some may have prized its blooming skin ;
Here lips were woo'd, perhaps, in transport tender ;
Some may have chuck'd what was a dimpled chin,
And never had my doubt about its gender.
It may have held (to shoot some random shots)
Thy brains, Eliza Fry! or Baron Byron's;
The wits of Nelly Gwynne or Doctor Watts
Two quoted bards. Two philanthropic sirens.
But this, I trust, is clearly understood,
If man or woman, if adored or hated
Whoever own'd this Skull was not so good
Nor quite so bad as many may have stated.
Besides the playful humor of these poems, two
things especially are to be noted in them individu
ality and directness of expression. Whatever influ
ence you may think you see here of some other poet,
Horace, or Beranger, or Gautier, or Thackeray,
and the variety of these names shows the poet's
versatility, you cannot doubt that these poems
are of a truth Mr. Locker's own, stamped with his
130 PEN AND INK.
seal, marked with his image and superscription.
Here plainly is a man with a character of his own,
looking at life through his own eyes, now laughing
with hearty gayety, again smiling a sad smile :
" I still can laugb" is still my boast,
But mirth has sounded gayer ;
And which provokes my laughter most,
The preacher or the player?
Alack, I cannot laugh at what
Once made us laugh so freely;
For Nestroy and Grassot are not,
And where is Mrs. Keeley?
Quite as noteworthy as the individuality of the
poet is his studied clearness. There is never an
inversion or an involution ; the verse is as straight
forward as prose, and as easy to be " understanded
of the people." The rhythm flows freely; the
rhymes are neat and novel, and never forced ; and
the manner never intrudes itself to the injury of
the matter. But Mr. Locker is not like Theophile
Gautier, that Benvenuto Cellini of verse, nor like
the cunning artificers of Gautier's school poets
who polish a poor little idea until they can see
themselves in it. That he is ever going over his
work with the file any one can see who will com
pare the first stanzas of 'Geraldine and I,' and of
'A Garden Lyric'; but he never overweights his
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 131
verse with a gorgeous setting, from selfish delight
in the skill of his workmanship. Indeed, Mr. Locker
sometimes has carried his search for simplicity of
statement almost too far. But so many poets now
adays are as hard to understand as a Greek chorus,
that we ought to be thankful to one who takes
pains to be clear, and direct, and unaffected.
Affectation, indeed, is always a stumbling-block
in the path of the maker of vers de societe ; but in
' London Lyrics ' there are no traces of any slip.
The poems are as simple and honest as the verse
is direct and clear. Nowhere is affectation more
easy than in addressing childhood ; and, with the
exception of Victor Hugo and Longfellow, per
haps no poet of our day has written of children as
often as Mr. Locker. He has made a ' Rhyme of
One,' and 'Little Dinky/ a rhyme of less than one
(she is twelve weeks old). He has written * To
Lina Oswald' (aged five years), and to 'Geraldine*
(who is fifteen); and 'Gertrude's Necklace* be
longed to a maiden not much older. And all
these poems to the young reveal the subdued
humor and the worldly wit we have seen in the
others written for their elders and betters, their
pastors and masters, and they have even more of
delicate tenderness and of true sentiment tainted
by no trace of sentimentality.
132
PEN AND INK.
One of Mr. Locker's songs has a lyric grace and
an evanescent sweetness, recalling Herrick or
Suckling :
AT HER WINDOW.
Beating Heart! we come again
Where my Love reposes ;
This is Mabel's window-pane ;
These are Mabel's roses.
Is she nested ? Does she kneel
In the twilight stilly,
Lily-clad from throat to heel,
She, my Virgin Lily ?
Soon the wan, the wistful stars,
Fading, will forsake her ;
Elves of light, on beamy bars,
Whisper then, and wake her.
Let this friendly pebble plead
At the flowery grating ;
If she hear me, will she heed ?
Mabel, I am waiting.
Mabel will be decked anon,
Zoned in bride's apparel ;
Happy zone ! oh, hark to yon
Passion-shaken carol.
Sing thy song, thou tranced thrush,
Pipe thy best, thy clearest ;
Hush, her lattice moves, O, hush
Dearest Mabel! dearest.
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 133
Is not this a marvel of refinement and restraint ?
It is as purely a lyric as the song of the thrush
itself. Especially in poems like this is it that Mr.
Locker is wholly other than Praed, with whom
people persist in linking him. He has at once a
finer vein of poetry and a broader vein of humor.
Perhaps, after all, humor is Mr. Locker's chief
characteristic, a gentle humor, always under
control, and never boisterous or burly, yet frank
and free and full of mischief, the humor of a
keen observer, who is at once a gentleman and a
poet. What, for example, can be more comic in
conception, or more clear-cut in execution, than
this?
A TERRIBLE INFANT.
I recollect a nurse call'd Ann,
Who carried me about the grass,
And one fine day a fine young man
Came up and kissed the pretty lass.
She did not make the least objection !
Thinks I "Aba!
Wben I can talk I'll tell mamma ! "
And that's my earliest recollection.
It is in this quality of humor mainly, and in the
fact that his verse is more individual than imper
sonal, that Mr. Locker's gifts differ from those of
Mr. Austin Dobson. There is no need to make
134 P N AND INK.
a comparison of Mr. Locker's work with Mr.
Dobson's ; and, at best, comparisons are futile.
Criticism is nowadays the tenth muse, and I am
sure that Mrs. Malaprop would say that compari
sons do not become that young woman. Suffice
it to state that Mr. Frederick Locker and Mr. Aus
tin Dobson stand, each on his own ground, at the
head of the poets who sing of English society as it
is. Mr. Locker is the elder, and it was to him
that Mr. Dobson dedicated his ' Proverbs in Porce
lain/ in these lines :
Is it to kindest friend I send
This nosegay gathered new ?
Or is it more to critic sure,
To singer clear and true ?
I know not which, indeed, nor need:
All three I found in you.
(.883)
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.
II.
MR. AUSTIN DOBSON.
s Mr. Lang told us in his sympathetic
paper on M. Theodore de Banville,
some literary reputations are like the
fairies in that they cannot cross run
ning water. Others again, it seems
to me, are rather like the misty genii of the Ara
bian Nights, which loom highest when seen from
afar. Poe, for example, is more appreciated in
England than at home; and Cooper is given a
more lofty rank by French than by American
critics. In much the same manner, we note,
Carlyle gained the ear of an American audience
when he was not listened to with attention in
Great Britain ; and the scattered verses of Praed
were collected together for American admirers
long before the appearance of an English edition.
And so it is, I think, with Mr. Austin Dobson,
whose position as a leader in one division of Eng-
136 PEN AND INK.
lish poetry was recognized more immediately and
more unhesitatingly in these United States than
in his native Great Britain. To Mr. Dobson the
young school of American writers of familiar
verse to use Cowper's admirable phrase look
up as to a master ; and his poems are read and
pondered and imitated by not a few of the more
promising of our younger poets.
Mr. Austin Dobson was born at Plymouth, Jan
uary 1 8, 1840. He comes of a family of civil
engineers, and it was as an engineer that his
grandfather, toward the end of the last century,
went to France, where he settled, and married a
French lady. Among the earliest recollections of
Mr. Dobson's father was his arrival in Paris on
one side of the Seine as the Russians arrived on
the other. This must have been in 1814. But
the French boy had long become an English man
when the poet was born. At the age of eight or
nine Austin Dobson was taken by his parents
so a biographer tells us "to Holyhead, in the
island of Anglesea; he was educated atBeaumaris,
at Coventry, and finally at Strasburg, whence he
returned, at the age of sixteen, with the inten
tion of becoming a civil engineer." But in De
cember, 1856, he accepted an appointment in the
civil service, where he has remained ever since.
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.
'37
Thus he has been able to act on the advice of
Coleridge, often urged again by Dr. Holmes, to
the effect "that a literary man should have an
other calling." Dr. Holmes adds the sly sug
gestion that he should confine himself to it ;
and this is what for nearly ten years Mr.
Dobson did. He dabbled a little in art, having,
like Theophile Gautier, the early ambition of be
coming a painter. He learned to draw a little on
wood. He wrote a little, mostly in prose. In
fact, there are only four poems in the first edition
of ' Vignettes in Rhyme ' which were written be
fore 1868. It was in this year that Si. Paul's
magazine was started by Anthony Trollope, an
editor at once sympathetic and severe ; he ap
preciated good work, and was unsparing in the
kindly criticism which might make it better. In
St. Paul's, therefore, between March, 1868, and
March, 1874, appeared nearly twoscore of Mr.
Dobson's pieces, including some of his very best :
' Tu Quoque/ ' A Dialogue from Plato/ ' Une
Marquise,' ' An Autumn Idyll/ ' Dorothy/ ' A
Gentleman of the Old School/ ' A vice/ with its
hazardous, bird-like effect, French in a way and in
exquisite taste, and the subtle and pathetic
' Drama of the Doctor's Window/ In October,
1873, tnere was published the first edition of
IjS PEN AND INK.
' Vignettes in Rhyme,' and the poet received for
the first time that general recognition which de
nies itself to the writer of verses scattered here
and there, throughout magazines and newspapers.
' Vignettes in Rhyme ' passed into its third edi
tion ; and less than four years after its appearance
Mr. Dobson made a second collection of his verses,
published in May, 1877, as 'Proverbs in Porce
lain.' From these two volumes the author made
a selection, adding a few poems written since the
appearance of the second book, and thus prepared
the collective American volume, called ' Vignettes
in Rhyme,' issued by Henry Holt & Co. in 1880,
with a graceful and alluring introduction by Mr.
Stedman. ' Old- World Idylls,' published in Lon
don in the fall of 1883, is based on this American
selection of 1880. It has been followed by 'At
the Sign of the Lyre,' which includes most of the
poetry he wrote before 1885. Unfortunately we
have not Mr. Dobson's complete poems even in
these two collections, for his own fastidious taste
has excluded poems which the less exacting reader
had learned to like, and which the admirers of fine
humorous verse will not willingly let die. Let us
hope that there will be vouchsafed to us, in due
time, a volume in which we may treasure Mr.
Dobson's 'Complete Poetical Works.' Akin to
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.
139
the fastidiousness which rejects certain poems
altogether and quite as annoying to many is
the fastidiousness with which the poet is contin
ually going over his verses with a file, polishing
until they shine again, smoothing an asperity
here, and there rubbing out a blot. This is
always a dangerous pastime, and the poet is rarely
well advised who attempts it, as all students of
Lord Tennyson will bear witness. If the poet is
athirst for perfection, he may lay his poems by
for the Horatian space of nine years, but when
they are once printed and published, he had best
keep his hands off them. Of course the most
of Mr. Dobson's alterations are unexceptionable
improvements, yet there are a few that we reject
with abhorrence.
Mr. Aldrich has said that Mr. Dobson " has the
grace of Suckling and the finish of Herrick, and is
easily master of both in metrical art." The beauty
of his poetry is due in great measure to its lyric
lightness. He has many lines and many whole
poems which sing themselves into the memory,
and cannot be thrust thence. Who that has made
acquaintance with the 'Ladies of St. James's'
can forget "Phillida, my Phillida " ? And who
cannot at will call up before him Autonoe and
Rosina and Rose and all the other " damosels,
140
PEN AND INK.
blithe as the belted bees," whom the poet has
set before us with so much breezy freshness ?
To know them is to love them, and to love
the poet who has sung them into being. Next
to the airy grace and the flowing and unfailing
humor which inform all Mr. Dobson's poems,
perhaps the quality which most deserves to be
singled out is their frank and hearty wholesome-
ness. There is nothing sickly about them, or
morbid, or perverse, as there is about so much
contemporary British verse. Mr. Dobson is entirely
free from the besetting sin of those minor poets
who sing only in a minor key. He has no trace
of affectation, and no taint of sentimentality. He
is simple and sincere. His delicacy is manly, and
not effeminate. There is a courtly dignity about
all his work ; and there is nowhere a hint of bad
taste. Mr. Locker once spoke to me of the ' Un
finished Song/ and said that "the spirit is so
beautiful"; and of a truth the spirit of all Mr.
Dobson's work is beautiful. There is unfailing
elevation. Mr. Dobson, injoubert's phrase, never
forgets that the lyre is a winged instrument. Here
is a lyric, not one of his best known, and not in
the style he most frequently attempts ; but it is
lifted out of commonplace, though the subject is
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 141
hackneyed and worn; it soars, and sings as it
soars, like the lark :
A SONG OF THE FOUR SEASONS.
When Spring comes laughing
By vale and hill,
By wind-flower walking
And daffodil,
Sing stars of morning,
Sing morning skies,
Sing blue of speedwell,
And my Love's eyes.
When comes the Summer,
Full-leaved and strong,
And gay birds gossip
The orchard long,
Sing hid, sweet honey
That no bee sips ;
Sing red, red roses,
And my Love's lips.
When Autumn scatters
The leaves again,
And piled sheaves bury
The broad-wheeled wain,
Sing flutes of harvest
Where men rejoice ;
Sing rounds of reapers,
And my Love's voice.
142 PEN AND INK.
But when comes Winter
With hail and storm,
And red fire roaring
And ingle warm,
Sing first sad going
Of friends that part ;
Then sing glad meeting,
And my Love's heart.
And with all this elevation and lyric lightness
there is no lack of true pathos and genuine feeling
for the lowly and the hopeless. More than once
has Mr. Dobson expressed his sympathy for the
striving, and especially for those strugglers who
are handicapped in the race, and who eat their
hearts in silent revolt against hard circumstances :
Ah, Reader, ere you turn the page,
I leave you this for moral :
Remember those who tread life's stage
With weary feet and scantest wage,
And ne'er a leaf for laurel.
The best of Mr. Dobson 's poems result from a
happy mingling of a broad and genial humanity
with an extraordinarily fine artistic instinct. Just
as Chopin declared that there were paintings at the
sight of which he heard music, so it may be said
that there are poems the hearing of which calls up
a whole gallery of pictures. Side by side with
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.
143
the purely lyric pieces are as many more as purely
pictorial. The ' Cure's Progress,' for example, is
it not a like masterpiece of genre? And the bal
lade ' On a Fan, that Belonged to the Marquise de
Pompadour,' with its wonderful movement and
spirit, and its apt suggestion of the courtiers and
courtesans "thronging the CEil-de-Boeuf through,"
is it not a perfect picture of
The little great, the infinite small thing
That ruled the hour when Louis Quinze was king?
This is a Fragonard, as the other is a Meissonnier.
It is not that the pathetic ' Story of Rosina ' has
for its hero Francois Boucher, or that other poems
abound in references to Watteau and Vanloo and
Hogarth ; it is not even that these references
are never at random, and always reveal an exact
knowledge and a nice appreciation ; it is rather
that Mr. Dobson is a painter at heart, in a degree
far from common even in these days of so-called
" word-painting." He excels in the art of calling
up a scene before you by a few motions of his
magic pen ; and, once evoked, the scene abides
with you alway. Mr. E. A. Abbey told me that
once in a nook of rural England he happened
suddenly on a sun-dial, and that lines from Mr.
Dobson's poem with that title rose to his lips at
144
PEN AND INK.
once, and he felt as though nature had illustrated
the poet.
This delightful effect is produced by no abuse
of the customary devices of "word-painting,"
and by no squandering of " local color." On the
contrary, Mr. Dobson is sober in his details, and
rarely wastes time in description. He hits off a
scene in a few happy strokes ; there is no piling
of a Pelion of adjectives on an Ossa of epithets.
The picture is painted with the utmost economy
of stroke. Mr. Dobson's method is like that of
the etchers who work in the bath ; his hand needs
to be both swift and sure. Thus there is always
a perfect unity of tone ; there is always a shutting
out of everything which is not essential to the pict
ure. Consider the ballad of the Armada and the
'Ballad of Beau Brocade,' a great favorite with
Dr. Holmes, by the way, and see if one is not
as truly seventeenth century in thought and feeling
as the other is eighteenth century, while both are
thoroughly and robustly English. And how cap-
tivatingly Chinese are the verses about the " little
blue mandarin " !
Of the French pictures I have already spoken,
but inadequately, since I omitted to cite the ' Prov
erbs in Porcelain/' which I should ascribe to a
French poet, if I knew any Frenchman who could
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 145
have accomplished so winning a commingling of
banter and of grace, of high breeding and of play
fulness. How Roman are the various Horatian
lyrics, and, above all, how Greek is 'Autonoe'!
" ' Autonoe,'" as a friend writes me, "is the most
purely beautiful of all Mr. Dobson's work. It does
not touch the heart, but it rests the spirit. Most
so-called ' classicism ' shows us only the white
temple, the clear high sky, the outward beauty
of form and color. This gives us the warm air
of spring and the life that pulses in a girl's veins
like the soft swelling of sap in a young tree. This
is the same feeling that raises 'As You Like It'
above all pastoral poetry. Our nineteenth cen
tury sensibilities are so played on by the troubles,
the sorrows, the little vital needs and anxieties
of the world around us, that sometimes it does
us good to get out into the woods and fields
of another world entirely, if only the atmosphere
is not chilled and rarefied by the lack of the breath
of humanity. There are times when the ' Drama
of the Doctor's Window' would excite us, but
when 'Autonoe' would rest us and not with
a mere selfish intellectual rest."
About twelve years ago, early in 1 876, Mr. Dob-
son began to turn his attention to what are gener
ally known as the French forms of verse, although
146 PEN AND INK.
they are not all of them French. Oddly enough,
it happens that the introduction, at Mr. Dobson's
hands, of these French forms into English literature
is due indirectly at least to an American. In
criticising Mr. Dobson's earlier verses in 'Victorian
Poets/ Mr. Stedman amiably admonished him that
"such a poet, to hold the hearts he has won, not
only must maintain his quality, but strive to vary
his style." This warning from the American
critic, this particular Victorian poet, perhaps hav
ing some inner monitions of his own, took to
heart, and he began at once to cast about for some
new thing. His first find was the 'Odes Funam-
bulesques' of M. Theodore de Banville, the reviver
of the triolet, the rondeau, and the ballade. Here
was a new thing a truly new thing, since it was
avowedly an old thing. Mr. Dobson had written
a set of triolets already, in 1874; it was in May,
1876, that he published the first original ballade
ever written in English, the firm and vigorous
'Prodigals,' slightly irregular in its repetition of
rhymes, but none the less a most honorable begin
ning. Almost at the same time he attempted also
the rondeau and the rondel. A year later, in May,
1877, he published his second volume of verse,
'Proverbs in Porcelain/ and this, followed almost
immediately by Mr. Gosse's easy and learned ' Plea
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 147
for Certain Exotic Forms of Verse,' in the CornUll
Magazine of July, 1877, drew general attention to
the new weapons with which the poet's armory
had been enriched.
It would be idle to maintain that they have met
with universal acceptance. Mr. Stedman, when
introducing the author to the American public,
confesses that he is not certain whether to thank
Mr. Dobson or to condole with him on bringing
into fashion the ballade and the rondeau and its
fellows. Perhaps this was partly due to the sudden
rush of versifiers who wreaked themselves on
these forms, and did their little best to bring them
into disrepute. Perhaps it was due to a wider dis
like of metrical limitations and of all that tempts the
poet to expend any of his strength otherwise than
on the straightforward delivery of his message.
Yet rhyme itself, as M. Edmond Scherer tells us,
"is a very curious thing, and it is a very com
plex pleasure which it gives. We do not like to
confess how great in every art is the share of
difficulty vanquished, and yet it is difficulty van
quished which gives the impression of surprise,
and it is surprise which gives interest ; it is the
unexpected which gives us the sense of the writer's
power." The testimony of Sidney Lanier an
untiring student of his art and its science is to
I 4 8 PEN AND INK.
the same effect: "It is only cleverness and small
talent which is afraid of its spontaneity ; the
genius, the great artist, is forever ravenous after
new forms, after technic; he will follow you to
the ends of the earth, if you will enlarge his ar
tistic science, if you will give him a fresh form."
Finally, the fact remains that great poets Dante,
Milton, Wordsworth have not scorned the son
net's scanty plot of ground ; and the sonnet is as
rigid and quite as difficult, if you play the game
fairly, as either the ballade or the rondeau. The ron
deau and rondel, have they not a charm of their
own when handled by a genuine poet? And the
ballade, that little three-act comedy in rhyme
with its epigram-epilogue of an envoy, has it
not both variety and dignity?
For the Malayan pantoum, as for the Franco-
Italian sestina, with their enervating and exasper
ating monotony, there is really nothing to be said.
And perhaps there is no need to say much for the
tiny triolet, effective as it may be for occasional
epigram, or for the elaborate and stately chant-
royal, which is a feat of skill, no more and no less ;
that Mr. Dobson has done it as well as he has
suggests, perhaps, only the pertinent query as
to whether it was well worth doing. Perhaps
no more must be said in favor of the dainty
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.
149
little villanelle a form which exists under the
greatest disadvantage, since the first and typical
specimen, the ever fresh and graceful 'J'ai perdu
ma tourterelle ' of Passerat, remains to this day un
surpassable and unapproached. But the rondeau
and rondel carry no such weight, and in the hands
of a master of metres they are capable of being
filled with a simple beauty most enjoyable. What
could be more delicate, more pensive, more charm
ing than this rondel of Mr. Dobson's?
THE WANDERER.
Love comes back to his vacant dwelling,
The old, old Love that we knew of yore !
We see him stand by the open door,
With his great eyes sad, and his bosom swelling.
He makes as though in our arms repelling,
He fain would lie as he lay before ;
Love comes back to his vacant dwelling,
The old, old Love that we knew of yore !
Ah, who shall help us from over-telling
That sweet forgotten, forbidden lore !
E'en as we doubt in our heart once more,
With a rush of tears to our eyelids welling,
Love comes back to his vacant dwelling.
The ballade, however, is by far the best of all
these forms. I hold it second to the sonnet alone,
150 PEN AND INK.
and for some purposes superior even to the sonnet.
It is fair to say that it is the only one of the French
poems which in France itself has held its own
against the Italian sonnet. The instrument used
by Clement Marot, by Villon, that "voice out
of the slums of Paris," as Mr. Matthew Arnold
called him, by La Fontaine, and in later times by
Albert Glatigny and Theodore de Banville, is surely
worthy of honor. In Villon's hands it has dignity
and depth, in Glatigny's it has pathos, and in Marot's,
in Mr. Dobson's, and in Mr. Lang's it has playfulness
and gayety. I believe Mr. Dobson himself likes the
' Ballade of Imitation ' better than any of his other
ballades, while I confess my own preference for the
'Ballade of Prose and Rhyme,' the only ballade a
double refrain worthy to be set alongside Oement
Marot's 'Frere Lubin.' It is almost too familiar to
quote here at length, and yet it must be quoted per
force, for nohow else can I get the testimony of my
best witness fully before the jury :
THE BALLADE OF PROSE AND RHYME.
(Ballade It Double Rt/ratn.)
When the ways are heavy with mire and rut,
In November fogs, in December snows,
When the North Wind howls, and the doors are shut,
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 151
But whenever a scent from the whitethorn blows,
And the jasmine-stars at the casement climb,
And a Rosalind-face at the lattice shows,
Then hey! for the ripple of laughing rhyme!
When the brain gets dry as an empty nut,
When the reason stands on its squarest toes,
When the mind (like a beard) has a "formal cut,"
There is place and enough for the pains of prose ;
But whenever the May-blood stirs and glows,
And the young year draws to the " golden prime"
And Sir Romeo sticks in his ear a rose,
Then hey ! for the ripple of laughing rhyme !
In a theme where the thoughts have a pedant-strut,
In a changing quarrel of "Ayes" and "Noes,"
In a starched procession of " If" and "But,"
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever a soft glance softer grows
And the light hours dance to the trysting-time,
And the secret is told "that no one knows,"
Then hey! for the ripple of laughing rhyme !
ENVOY.
In the work-a-day world, for its needs and woes,
There is place and enough for the pains of prose ;
But whenever the May-bells clash and chime,
Then hey ! for the ripple of laughing rhyme !
It seems to me that in these poems Mr. Dobson
proves that the rondel at its best and the ballade
at its finest, belong to the poetry of feeling and
152 PEN AND INK.
not to the poetry of ingenuity. It seems to me,
also, that the poet has been helped by his restric
tions. Here are cases where a faith in these
forms is justified by works. We may ask, fairly
enough, whether either of these poems would be
as good in any other shape. From the compres
sion enforced by the rules, they have gained in
compactness, and therefore in swiftness. They
are, in Miltonic phrase, " woven close, both mat
ter, form, and style."
It is to Mr. Dobson primarily and to his fellow-
workers that the credit is due of acclimatizing
these exotic metres in English literature. It is not
that he was absolutely the earliest to write them
in English excepting only the ballade, of which
the 'Prodigals' was the first. Chaucer wrote
rondels, the elder Wyatt rondeaus, and Patrick
Carey, about 1651, was guilty of devotional trio
lets ! But England was not then ready for the
conquest, and the forms crossed the Channel, like
the Norseman, just to set foot on land and then
away again. Even in France they had faded out of
sight. Moliere speaks slightingly of ballades as
old-fashioned. Only in our own times, since M.
de Banville set the example, has the true form
been understood. Wyatt's rondeaus were printed
as though they were defective sonnets. Both
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.
153
Longfellow and Bryant translated Clement Marot's
' Frere Lubin,' and neither of them knew it was a
ballade a doitble refrain. Nor is Rossetti's noble
rendering of Villon's famous ' Ballade of Dead
Ladies ' accurately formal. Mr. Lang, in his ' Bal
lads and Lyrics of Old France' (1872), was plainly
on the right track, but he failed then to reach the
goal. At last the time was ripe.
It was doubtless again due to Mr. Stedman's
warning that, although there is no work which
when well done secures a welcome as instant as
vers de societe, there is also "none from which the
world so lightly turns upon the arrival of a new
favorite with a different note," it was this wise
warning which led Mr. Dobson to vary his style,
not only with the revival of the French forms, but
also with fables and with a slight attempt at the
drama in so far as the dainty and delicate
' Proverbs in Porcelain ' are substantial enough to
be called dramatic. Like John Gay and like the
late John G. Saxe, Mr. Dobson took to rhyming
fables after making a mark by more characteristic
verse. And Mr. Dobson's fables, good as they
are, and pertinent and brightsome as they needs
must be, since he wrote them, are like Gay's and
Saxe's in that they are not their author's best
work. The fault plainly is in the fable form,
154 PEN AND INK.
if Mr. Dobson's fables are not as entertaining as
his other poems ; at any rate, I am free to confess
that I like his other work better.
I have to confess, also, with great doubt and
diffidence, that the half-dozen little dialogues
called 'Proverbs in Porcelain,' airy as they are
and exquisite, are less favorites with me than they
are with critics whose taste I cannot but think
finer than mine Mr. Aldrich, for instance, and
Mr. Stedman. I am inclined to believe I like them
less because they assume a dramatic form without
warrant. The essence of the drama is action, and
in these beautiful and witty playlets there is but
the ghost of an action. I doubt not that I am
unfair to these dialogues, and that my attitude
toward them is that of the dramatic critic rather
than that of the critic of poetry pure and simple.
But that is their own fault for assuming a virtue
they have not. To counterbalance this harsh
treatment of the ' Proverbs in Porcelain,' I must
declare that I take more pleasure in ' A Virtuoso '
than do most of Mr. Dobson's admirers, and for
the same reason. I find in ' A Virtuoso ' all the
condensed compactness of the best stage dialogue,
where a phrase has to be stripped to run for its
life. To be read quickly by the fireside, ' A Vir
tuoso ' may seem forced ; but to be acted or
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 155
recited, it is just right. I see in this cold and cut
ting poem, masterly in its synthesis of selfish
symptoms, a regard for theatrical perspective, and
a selection and a heightening of effect in accord
ance with the needs of the stage, which I confess
I fail to find in the seemingly more dramatic
'Proverbs in Porcelain.' Most people, however,
liking Mr. Dobson mainly for playful tenderness
and tender playfulness, dislike the marble hard
ness of 'A Virtuoso/ just as they are annoyed by
the tone of 'A Love-letter,' one of the poet's
cleverest pieces. If Mr. Dobson yielded to the
likes and dislikes of his admirers he would soon
sink into sentimentality, and he would never dare
to write as funny as he can. There are readers
who are shocked and pained when they discover
the non-existence of ' Dorothy.'
After all, this is perhaps the highest compli
ment that readers can pay the writer, when they
enter so heartily into his creations that they revolt
against any trick he may play upon them. And
in these days of haste without rest, it ill becomes
us to fling the first stone at an author who is
enamored of elusive perfection and who is willing
to spare no pains to give us his best and only his
best. He may be thankful that he is not as infer
tile on the one hand as Waller, who was "the
1 5 6
PEN AND INK.
greater part of a summer correcting ten lines for
Her Grace of York's copy of Tasso," or as reckless
on the other hand as Martial, who disdained to
elaborate :
Turpe est difficile habere nugas
Et stultus labor est ineptiarum.
Not infrequently do we find Mr. Frederick
Locker and Mr. Dobson classed together as though
their work was fundamentally of the same kind.
The present writer has to plead guilty to the
charge of inadvertently and inaccurately linking
the two names in critical discussion. The like
ness is accidental rather than essential, and the
hasty conjunction is due, perhaps, more to the fact
that they are friends, and that they both write what
has to be called vers de societe, than to any real like
ness between their works. The fact is, the more
clearly we define, and the more precisely we limit
the phrase vers de societe, the more exactly do we
find the best and most characteristic of Mr. Locker's
poems agreeing with the definition and lying at
ease within the limitation ; while the best and
most characteristic of Mr. Dobson's poems would
be left outside. In his criticism of Praed's work
prefixed to the selection from his poems in the
fourth volume of Mr. Ward's ' English Poets ' Mr.
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.
'57
Dobson declares that " as a writer of ' society verse '
in its exacter sense, Praed was justly acknowl
edged to be supreme," and then he adds, "We
say 'exacter sense' because it has of late become
the fashion to apply this vague term in the vaguest
way possible so as to include almost all verse but
the highest and the lowest. This is manifestly a
mistake. Society verse as Praed understood it,
and as we understand it in Praed, treats almost ex
clusively of the votum, timor, ira, voluptas (and
especially the voluptas) of that charmed circle of
uncertain limits known conventionally as 'good so
ciety' those latter-day Athenians who, in town
and country, spend their time in telling or hearing
some new thing, and whose graver and deeper
impulses are subordinated to a code of artificial
manners." Of these it is indisputable that Mr.
Locker is, as Praed was, the laureate-elect, and
that ' ' the narrow world in which they move is the
main haunt and region of his song." Mr. Locker
writes as one to the manner born, and nowhere
reveals the touch of the parvenu which betrayed
Praed now and again. In the exact sense of the
phrase, Mr. Locker, like Praed, is the poet of so
ciety, which Mr. Dobson is not because, for one
thing, we may doubt whether society is of quite so
much interest or importance or significance to him
158 PEN AND INK.
as to the author of 'London Lyrics.' The distinc
tion is evasive, and has to be suggested rather than
said ; but it is none the less real and vital. It is,
perhaps, rather that Mr. Dobson is more a man
of letters, while Mr. Locker is more a man of
the world. Certainly Mr. Dobson has a more con
sciously literary style than Mr. Locker, a style
less simple and less direct. Henri Monnier would
say that Mr. Dobson had more mots d'auteur.
Admirable as is Mr. Dobson's verse, it has not
the condensed clearness nor the incisive vigor of
Mr. Locker's. One inclines to the opinion that
the author of ' London Lyrics ' is willing to make
more sacrifices for vernacular terseness than the
author of 'Vignettes in Rhyme/ It is not that
Mr. Dobson is one of the poets who keep their
choicest wares locked in an inner safe guarded by
heavy bolts, and to whose wisdom no man may
help himself unless he has the mystic letters which
unlock the massive doors, but he is not quite will
ing to be simple to the point of bareness as is Mr.
Locker, who wears his heart upon his sleeve. In
some things Mr. Locker is like Mr. du Maurier,
even in the little Gallic twist, while Mr. Dobson
is rather like Randolph Caldecott or our own
Abbey, with the quaint Englishry of whose style
Mr. Dobson's has much in common. Yet after say-
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.
159
ing this I feel inclined to take it all back, for I recall
together 'This was the Pompadour's fan' and
'This is Gerty's glove' and here it is Mr. Dob-
son who is brilliant and French and Mr. Locker
who is more simple in sentiment and more Eng
lish. Yet again it is the worldly-minded Mr.
Locker who declares that
The world's as ugly, aye, as sin
And nearly as delightful,
a sentiment wholly foreign to Mr. Dobson's feel
ings. This suggests that there is a certain town
stamp in the appropriately named 'London Lyrics'
not to be seen in ' Vignettes in Rhyme,' some of
which are vignettes from rural nature. But both
books are boons to be thankful for. Both are
havens of rest in days of depression ; both have a
joyousness most tonic and wholesome in these
days when the general tone of literature is gray ;
both preach the gospel of sanity, and both may
serve as antiseptics against sentimental decay.
Here occasion serves to say that each of these
masters of what Dr. Johnson, while declaring its
difficulty, called "easy verse," has set forth his
views of the art of writing vers de societe. Mr.
Locker made his declaration of faith in the admi
rable preface, all too brief, to the selection of vers
l6o PEN AND INK.
de societe and -vers d' occasion, which he published
in 1867 as 'Lyra Elegantiarum.' Mr. Dobson, at
the request of the present writer, drew up a code
for the composition of familiar verse. Here are
Mr. Dobson 's 'Twelve Good Rules':
I. Never be vulgar.
II. Avoid slang and puns.
HI. Avoid inversions.
IV. Be sparing of long words.
V. Be colloquial, but not commonplace.
VI. Choose the lightest and brightest of measures.
VII. Let the rhymes be frequent, but not forced.
VIII. Let them be rigorously exact to the ear.
IX. Be as witty as you like.
X. Be serious by accident.
XL Be pathetic with the greatest discretion.
XII. Never ask if the writer of these rules has observed them
himself.
Mr. Dobson has not confined his labors in prose
to the canons of familiar verse. Although it is
as a poet that he is most widely known, his prose
has qualities of its own. Besides scattering maga
zine articles, it includes half a dozen apt and alert
criticisms in Mr. Ward's ' English Poets,' the final
chapter in Mr. Lang's little book on the ' Library,'
and prefaces to a fac-simile reprint of ' Robin
son Crusoe,' and to the selection from Herrick's
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. jgi
poems, illustrated by Mr. Abbey with such abun
dant sympathy and such delightful grace and
fancy. More important than these are the vol
umes in which Mr. Dobson has given us selec
tions from the best of the ' Eighteenth Century
Essays,' and in which he has introduced and an
notated the ' Fables ' of John Gay, the ' Poems '
and 'Vicar of Wakefield ' of Oliver Goldsmith, the
' Essays ' of Richard Steele, and the ' Barbier de
Seville' of Beaumarchais.
Still more important are the biographical sketches
of his favorite Hogarth, and of Bewick and his pu
pils ; and the lives of Fielding, Steele, and Gold
smith. It was to Mr. Dobson's biography that Mr.
Lowell referred when he unveiled Miss Margaret
Thomas's bust of Fielding in the Somersetshire
hall. In the course of his speech, as rich and elo
quent as only his speeches are, Mr. Lowell said
that "Mr. Austin Dobson has done, perhaps, as
true a service as one man of letters ever did to
another, by reducing what little is known of the
life of Fielding from chaos to coherence, by ridding
it of fable, by correcting and coordinating dates,
by cross-examining tradition till it stammeringly
confessed that it had no visible means of subsist
ence, and has thus enabled us to get some authen
tic glimpse of the man as he really was. Lessing
162 PEN AND INK.
gives the title of ' Rescues ' to the essays in which
he strove to rehabilitate such authors as had been,
in his judgment, unjustly treated by their contem
poraries, and Mr. Dobson's essay deserves to be
reckoned in the same category. He has rescued
the body of Fielding from beneath the swinish
hoofs which were trampling it as once they tram
pled the Knight of La Mancha, whom Fielding so
heartily admired."
It has been well said that the study of practice
of verse is the best of trainings for the writing of
prose. Mr. Dobson's prose style is firm and pre
cise ; it has no taint of the Corinthian luxuriance
which Mr. Matthew Arnold has castigated, or of
the passionate emphasis which passes for criti
cism in some quarters. His ideal in prose writ
ing is a style exact and cool and straightforward.
Sometimes the reader might like a little more
glow. It is not that his prose style is sapless,
for it has life ; it is rather that it is generally cut-
and-dried of malice prepense. He can write
prose with more color and more heat when he
chooses, as he who will may see in the par
agraphs of the preface to Mr. Abbey's ' Herrick.'
In general, however, Mr. Dobson forgets that he
is a poet when he takes up his pen to write prose,
and he remembers only that he is an antiquary
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 163
and an investigator. In fact, his prose is the prose
of a scientific historian ; and Mr. Dobson has the
scientific virtues, the passion for exactness, the
untiring patience in research, and the unwilling
ness to set down anything which has not been
proved. If we apply De Quincey's classification,
we should declare that Mr. Dobson's poetry like
all true poetry belongs to the literature of
power, while his prose belongs to the literature
of knowledge.
It is to be remarked, also, that the poet some
times remembers that he is an antiquary, also.
Here Mr. Dobson is not unlike Walter Scott, who
was also an antiquary-poet, with a strong love for
the past, and a gift for making dead figures start
to life at his bidding. Much of Mr. Dobson's
poetry is like his prose in that it is based on re
search. His learning in the manners and customs
of past times is most minute. Especially rich is
his knowledge of the people and of the vocabulary
of the eighteenth century. This is the result of
indefatigable delving in the records of the past.
His acquaintance with the ways and words of the
contemporaries of Steele and of Fielding and of
Hogarth is as thorough as Lord Tennyson's knowl
edge of botany, for instance ; and it is the proof
of as much minute observation. Although Mr.
1 64 PEN AND INK.
Dobson disdains all second-hand information, and
likes to verify facts for himself, he never lets his
learning burden his verse. That runs as freely
and as trippingly as though the seeking of the facts
on which it might be founded had not been a labor
of love, for which no toil was too great. The
' Ballad of Beau Brocade ' is a strong and simple
tale, seemingly calling for no special study ; but it
does not contain a single word not in actual use at
the time of the guide-book where it germinated,
and in print in the pages of the Gentleman's Mag-
aqine of that reign. In like manner, in the noble
and virile ballade of the Armada, which the Virgin
Queen might have joyed to accept, there is no
single word not in Gervase Markham.
Writing always out of the fulness of knowl
edge, there is nowhere anything amateurish, and
there is always a perfect certainty of touch. His
work as Mr. W. C. Brownell has told us is
"as natural an outgrowth as Lamb's." And he
is like Lamb in that capacity for taking infinite
pains which has been held the true trade-mark of
genius. He is like Lamb, again, in that he has
resolutely recognized his limitations. Ruler of his
own territory, he has carefully refrained from
crossing his neighbor's boundaries. Indeed, he is
as admirable an instance as one could wish of the
TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. ^5
exactness of Swift's dictum, "It is an uncontrolled
truth that no man ever made an ill figure who
understood his own talents, nor a good one who
mistook them."
(1884)
VII
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.
NATIONAL hymn is one of the
things which cannot be made to
order. No man has ever yet sat him
down and taken up his pen and said,
"I will write a national hymn," and
composed either words or music which a nation
was willing to take for its own. The making of
the song of the people is a happy accident, not to
be accomplished by taking thought. It must be
the result of fiery feeling long confined, and sud
denly finding vent in burning words or moving
strains. Sometimes the heat and the pressure
of emotion have been fierce enough and intense
enough to call forth at once both words and
music, and to weld them together indissolubly
once and for all. Almost always the maker of
the song does not suspect the abiding value of his
work ; he has wrought unconsciously, moved by
a power within; he has written for immediate
109
1 70 PEN AND INK.
relief to himself, and with no thought of fame or
the future ; he has builded better than he knew.
The great national lyric is the result of the con
junction of the hour and the man. Monarchs can
not command it, and even poets are often powerless
to achieve it. No one of the great national hymns
has been written by a great poet. But for his
single immortal lyric, neither the author of the
' Marseillaise ' nor the author of the ' Wacht am
Rhein ' would have his line in the biographical dic
tionaries. But when a song has once taken root
in the hearts of a people, time itself is powerless
against it. The flat and feeble 'Partant pour la
Syrie,' which a filial fiat made the hymn of im
perial France, had to give way to the strong and
virile notes of the 'Marseillaise,' when need was
to arouse the martial spirit of the French in 1 870.
The noble measures of ' God Save the King,' as
simple and dignified a national hymn as any coun
try can boast, lift up the hearts of the English
people ; and the brisk tune of the ' British Grena
diers ' has swept away many a man into the ranks
of the recruiting regiment. The English are rich
in war tunes ; and the pathetic ' Girl I left behind
me' encourages and sustains both those who go to
the front and those who remain at home. Here
in the United States we have no 'Marseillaise/ no
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.
171
'God Save the King,' no 'Wacht am Rhein'; we
have but ' Yankee Doodle ' and the ' Star-spangled
Banner.' More than one enterprising poet, and
more than one aspiring musician, has volunteered
to take the contract to supply the deficiency; as
yet no one has succeeded. 'Yankee Doodle' we
got during the Revolution, and the ' Star-spangled
Banner ' was the gift of the War of 1 8 1 2 ; from the
Civil War we have received at least two war songs
which, as war songs simply, are stronger and
finer than either of these 'John Brown's Body'
and 'Marching Through Georgia.'
Of the lyrical outburst which the war called forth
but little trace is now to be detected in literature
except by special students. In most cases neither
words nor music have had vitality enough to sur
vive a quarter of a century. Chiefly, indeed, two
things only survive, one Southern and the other
Northern ; one a war-cry in verse, the other a mar
tial tune : one is the lyric 'My Maryland,' and the
other is the marching song 'John Brown's Body.'
The origin and development of the latter, the rude
chant to which a million of the soldiers of the
Union kept time, is uncertain and involved in dis
pute. The history of the former may be declared
exactly, and by the courtesy of those who did
the deed for the making of a war song is of a
1 72 PEN AND INK.
truth a deed at arms I am enabled to state fully
the circumstances under which it was written, set
to music, and first sung before the soldiers of the
South.
' My Maryland ' was written by Mr. James R.
Randall, a native of Baltimore, and now residing
in Augusta, Georgia. The poet was a professor
of English literature and the classics in Poydras
College at Pointe Coupee, on the Fausse Riviere,
in Louisiana, about seven miles from the Missis
sippi; and there in April, 1861, he read in the
New Orleans Delta the news of the attack on the
Massachusetts troops as they passed through Bal
timore. " This account excited me greatly," Mr.
Randall wrote in answer to my request for infor
mation ; "I had long been absent from my native
city, and the startling event there inflamed my
mind. That night I could not sleep, for my
nerves were all unstrung, and I could not dismiss
what I had read in the paper from my mind.
About midnight I rose, lit a candle, and went to
my desk. Some powerful spirit appeared to pos
sess me, and almost involuntarily I proceeded to
write the song of ' My Maryland/ I remember
that the idea appeared to first take shape as music
in the brain some wild air that I cannot now re
call. The whole poem was dashed off rapidly
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.
173
when once begun. It was not composed in cold
blood, but under what may be called a conflagration
of the senses, if not an inspiration of the intellect.
I was stirred to a desire for some way linking my
name with that of my native State, if not * with
my land's language/ But I never expected to do
this with one single, supreme effort, and no one
was more surprised than I was at the widespread
and instantaneous popularity of the lyric I had been
so strangely stimulated to write." Mr. Randall
read the poem the next morning to the college boys,
and at their suggestion sent it to the Delta, in which
it was first printed, and from which it was copied
into nearly every Southern journal. "I did not
concern myself much about it, but very soon,
from all parts of the country, there was borne to
me, in my remote place of residence, evidence
that I had made a great hit, and that, whatever
might be the fate of the Confederacy, the song
would survive it."
Published in the last days of April, 1861, when
every eye was fixed on the border States, the stir
ring stanzas of the Tyrtaean bard appeared in the
very nick of time. There is often a feeling afloat
in the minds of men, undefined and vague for
want of one to give it form, and held in solution,
as it were, until a chance word dropped in the ear
174 PEN AND INK.
of a poet suddenly crystallizes this feeling into
song, in which all may see clearly and sharply re
flected what in their own thought was shapeless
and hazy. It was Mr. Randall's good fortune to
be the instrument through which the South spoke.
By a natural reaction his burning lines helped to
fire the Southern heart. To do their work well,
his words needed to be wedded to music. Unlike
the authors of the ' Star-spangled Banner ' and the
'Marseillaise,' the author of 'My Maryland' had
not written it to fit a tune already familiar. It
was left for a lady of Baltimore to lend the lyric
the musical wings it needed to enable it to reach
every camp-fire of the Southern armies. To the
courtesy of this lady, then Miss Hetty Gary, and
now the wife of Professor H. Newell Martin, of
Johns Hopkins University, I am indebted for a pict
uresque description of the marriage of the words
to the music, and of the first singing of the song
before the Southern troops.
The house of Mrs. Martin's father was the
headquarters for the Southern sympathizers of Bal
timore. Correspondence, money, clothing, sup
plies of all kinds went thence through the lines to
the young men of the city who had joined the
Confederate army. " The enthusiasm of the girls
who worked and of the ' boys ' who watched for
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 175
their chance to slip through the lines to Dixie's land
found vent and inspiration in such patriotic songs
as could be made or adapted to suit our needs.
The glee club was to hold its meeting in our parlors
one evening early in June, and my sister, Miss
Jenny Gary, being the only musical member of the
family, had charge of the programme on the occasion .
With a school-girl's eagerness to score a success,
she resolved to secure some new and ardent ex
pression of feelings that by this time were wrought
up to the point of explosion. In vain she searched
through her stock of songs and airs nothing
seemed intense enough to suit her. Aroused by
her tone of despair, I came to the rescue with the
suggestion that she should adapt the words of
'Maryland, my Maryland/ which had been con
stantly on my lips since the appearance of the lyric
a few days before in the South. I produced the
paper and began declaiming the -verses. 'Lauriger
Horatius/ she exclaimed, and in a flash the immortal
song found voice in the stirring air so perfectly
adapted to it. That night, when her contralto voice
rang out the stanzas, the refrain rolled forth from
every throat present without pause or preparation ;
and the enthusiasm communicated itself with such
effect to a crowd assembled beneath our open win
dows as to endanger seriously the liberties of the
party."
176 PEN AND INK.
'Lauriger Horatius' has long been a favorite
college song, and it had been introduced into the
Gary household by Mr. Burton N. Harrison, then a
Yale student. The air to which it is sung is used
also for a lovely German lyric, 'Tannenbaum, O
Tannenbaum/ which Longfellow has translated ' O
Hemlock Tree.' The transmigration of tunes is too
large and fertile a subject for me to do more here
than refer to it. The taking of the air of a jovial
college song to use as the setting of a fiery war-
lyric may seem strange and curious, but only to
those who are not familiar with the adventures
and transformations a tune is often made to under
go. Hopkinson's 'Hail Columbia!' for example,
was written to the tune of the ' President's March,'
just as Mrs. Howe's ' Battle Hymn of the Republic '
was written to 'John Brown's Body/ The ' Wear
ing of the Green,' of the Irishman, is sung to the
same air as the ' Benny Havens, O ! ' of the West-
Pointer. The 'Star-spangled Banner' has to make
shift with the second-hand music of 'Anacreon in
Heaven,' while our other national air, 'Yankee
Doodle/ uses over the notes of an old English
nursery rhyme, 'Lucy Locket/ once a personal
lampoon in the days of the 'Beggars' Opera/ and
now surviving in the ' Baby's Opera' of Mr. Walter
Crane. 'My Country, 'tis of Thee/ is set to the
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.
177
truly British tune of ' God Save the King,' the origin
of which is doubtful, as it is claimed by the French
and the Germans as well as the English. In the
hour of battle a war-tune is subject to the right
of capture, and, like the cannon taken from the
enemy, it is turned against its maker.
To return to 'My Maryland': a few weeks
after the welding of the words and the music, Mrs.
Martin, with her husband and sister, went through
the lines, convoying several trunks full of military
clothing, and wearing concealed about her person
a flag bearing the arms of Maryland, a gift from the
ladies of Baltimore to the Maryland troops in the
Confederate army. In consequence of reports
which were borne back to the Union authorities the
ladies were forbidden to return. "We were liv
ing," so Mrs. Martin writes me, "in Virginia in
exile, when, shortly after the battle of Manassas,
General Beauregard, hearing of our labors and
sufferings in behalf of the Marylanders who had
already done such gallant service in his command,
invited us to visit them at his headquarters near
Fairfax Court House, sending a pass and an escort
for us, and the friends by whom we should be
accompanied. Our party encamped the first night
in tents prepared for us at Manassas, with my
kinsman, Captain Sterrell, who was in charge of the
178 PEN AND INK.
fortifications there. We were serenaded by the
famous Washington Artillery of New Orleans,
aided by all the fine voices within reach. Captain
Sterrell expressed our thanks, and asked if there
were any service we might render in return.
'Let us hear a woman's voice/ was the cry which
arose in response. And, standing in the tent-
door, under cover of the darkness, my sister sang
'My Maryland!' This, I believe, was the birth of
the song in the army. The refrain was speedily
caught up and tossed back to us from hundreds
of rebel throats. As the last notes died away there
surged forth from the gathering throng a wild
shout ' We will break her chains ! She shall be
be free! She shaft be free! Three cheers and a
tiger for Maryland ! ' And they were given with
a will. There was not a dry eye in the tent, and,
we were told the next day, not a cap with a rim on
it in camp. Nothing could have kept Mr. Randall's
verses from living and growing into a power. To
us fell the happy chance of first giving them voice.
In a few weeks ' My Maryland ! ' had found its way
to the hearts of our whole people, and become a
great national song."
I wish I could call as charming and as striking a
witness to set forth the origin of 'John Brown's
Body.' The genesis of both words and music is
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.
179
obscure and involved. The raw facts of historical
criticism names, places, dates are deficient.
The martial hymn has been called a spontaneous
generation of the uprising of the North a self-
made song, which sang itself into being of its own
accord. Some have treated it as a sudden evolu
tion from the inner consciousness of the early
soldiers all aglow with free-soil enthusiasm ; and
these speak of it as springing, like Minerva from
the head of Jove, full armed and mature. Others
have more happily likened it to Topsy, in that it
never was born, it growed ; and this latter theory
has the support of the facts as far as they can be
disentangled from a maze of fiction and legend.
A tentative and conjectural reconstruction of the
story of the song is all I dare venture upon ; and I
stand corrected in anticipation.
The Latter-day Saints of 1843 na d a camp-
meeting song referring to the Second Advent,
' Say, brothers, will you meet us ? ' Whence this
tune came, and whether or not it is a native negro
air, I have been wholly unable to discover. I can
be certain only of its later popularity. Within
fifteen years it spread over the country. Mr. C.
G. Leland says that the song "was a great favorite
with John Brown " and that "it was sung with an
improvised variation adapted to John Brown him-
180 PEN AND INK.
self by those who were in his funeral as it passed
through the streets of New-York."
John Brown was hanged in December, 1859.
A little more than a year later the report of the
shot against the flag at Sumter rang through all
the States and startled the blood of every man in
the nation. Then suddenly the new song of
' John Brown's Body ' sprang into being. It was
the song of the hour. There was a special taunt
to the South in the use of the name of the martyr
of abolition, while to the North that name was as
a slogan. As the poet a prophet again, for
once had written when John Brown was yet
alive, though condemned to death:
But, Virginians, don't do it ! for I tell you that the flagon,
Filled with blood of old Brown's offspring, was first poured
by Southern hands ;
And each drop from old Brown's life-veins, like the red gore
of the dragon,
May spring up a vengeful fury, hissing through your slave-
worn lands!
And old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
May trouble you more than ever, when you've nailed his
coffin down !
The putting together of the rude version first
sung in the rising heat of the war fever, the fitting
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 181
of plain rough words to the tune of ' Say, brothers,
will you meet us?' the tune of which was
made more marked, and modified to a march
seems to have been done by a little knot of men
in the second battalion, the Tigers, a Massachu
setts command quartered at Fort Warren, in Bos
ton Harbor, in April, 1861, just at the time when
' My Maryland ' was getting itself sung at the
South. A writer in the Boston Herald says that
"the manner in which 'the old tune' was taken
to Fort Warren was simple. Two members of
the Tigers were present at a camp-meeting service
in a small town in New Hampshire during the fall
preceding the occupancy of the fort," and they
learned the air there. Their names were Purring-
ton and Brown ; and when the Tigers went to
the fort and joined the 1 2th regiment, these two
vocalists took unto themselves two more, Edgerly
and Greenleaf the latter a professional musician.
By this quartet the rudimentary John Brown song
seems to have been evolved out of the old camp-
meeting lyric. Beyond all question it was the
Webster regiment which first adopted 'John
Brown's Body ' as a marching song. The soldiers
of this regiment sang it as they marched down
Broadway, in New- York, July 24, 1861, on their
way from Boston to the front. They sang it
lS2 PEN AND INK.
incessantly until August, 1862, when Colonel
Webster died, and when the tune had been taken
up by the nation at large and hundreds of thou
sands of soldiers were marching forward to the
fight with the name of John Brown on their lips.
There was a majestic simplicity in the rhythm
like the beating of mighty hammers. In the begin
ning the words were bare to the verge of barren
ness. There was no lack of poets to fill them out.
Henry Howard Brownell, the singer of the 'Bay
Fight ' and the ' River Fight,' skilfully utilized the ac
cepted lines, which he enriched with a deeper mean
ing. Then Mrs. Howe wrote her 'Battle Hymn of
the Republic/ perhaps the most resonant and ele
vated of the poems of American patriotism. Its
religious fervor was in consonance with the camp-
meeting origin of the song, and even more fully
with the intense feeling of the time. Of late the
air has been taken again by Mr. William Morris,
poet and socialist, decorator and reformer, as the
one to which shall be sung his eloquent and stir
ring 'March of the Workers/
Curiously enough, the history of 'Dixie' is not
at all unlike the history of 'John Brown's Body/
'Dixie' was composed in 1859, by Mr. Dan D.
Emmett, as a "walk-around" for Bryant's min
strels, then performing at Mechanics' Hall in New-
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 183
York. Mr. Emmett had travelled with circuses,
and had heard the performers refer to the States
south of Mason and Dixon'slineas "Dixie's land,"
wishing themselves there as soon as the Northern
climate began to be too severe for those who live
in tents like the Arabs. It was on this expression
of Northern circus performers,
I wish I was in Dixie,
that Mr. Emmett constructed his song. The
"walk-around " hit the taste of the New-York play-
going public, and it was adopted at once by various
bands of wandering minstrels, who sang and danced
it in all parts of the Union. In the fall of 1860
Mrs. John Wood sang it in New Orleans in John
Brougham's burlesque of ' Pocahontas/ and in
New Orleans it took root. Without any authority
from the composer, a New Orleans publisher had
the air harmonized and arranged, and he issued it
with words embodying the strong Southern feel
ing of the chief city of Louisiana. As from Boston
'John Brown's Body' spread through the North,
so from New Orleans 'Dixie' spread through the
South ; and as Northern poets strove to find fit
words for the one, so Southern poets wrote fiery
lines to fill the measures of the other. Of the sets
of verse written to 'Dixie/ the best, perhaps, is
1 84 PEN AND INK.
that by General Albert Pike, of Arkansas, who
happens, by a fortuitous chance, to have been
a native of Vermont. With Republican words
'Dixie* had been used as a campaign song in
1860; and it was perhaps some vague remem
brance of this which prompted Lincoln to have the
air played by a band in Washington in 1865, a
short time after the surrender at Appomattox,
remarking that as we had captured the rebel army
we had captured also the rebel tune.
From New Orleans also came another of the
songs of the South, the ' Bonnie Blue Flag/ Mr.
Randall writes me that 'Dixie' and the 'Bonnie
Blue Flag ' were the most popular of Southern
songs. Like ' Dixie,' the ' Bonnie Blue Flag' came
from the theatre. The tune is an old Hibernian
melody, the 'Irish Jaunting Car.' The earliest
words were written by an Irish comedian, Harry
McCarthy, and the song was first sung by his
sister, Miss Marion McCarthy, at the Varieties
Theatre, in 1861. It was published by Mr. A. E.
Blackmar, who wrote to a friend of mine that Gen
eral Butler " made it very profitable by fining every
man, woman, or child who sang, whistled, or
played it on any instrument, $25," besides arrest
ing the publisher, destroying the sheet music, and
fining him $500. Later a stirring lyric, to be sung
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 185
to this air, was written by Miss Annie Chambers
Ketcham.
In Louisiana, of course, there was also the 'Mar
seillaise/ "The Creoles of New Orleans," Mr.
Cable has written me, "followed close by the An
glo-Americans of their town, took up the 'Mar
seillaise' with great enthusiasm, as they have
always done whenever a war spirit was up. They
did it when the British invaded Louisiana in 1814.
It was good enough as it stood ; they made no new
adaptations of it, but sang it in French and English
(I speak of 1861), 'dry so,' as the Southern rustics
say. ' Dixie' started with the first mutter of war
thunder. ... I think the same is true of
'Lorena.' This doleful old ditty started at the
start, and never stopped till the last musket was
stacked and the last camp-fire cold. It was, by all
odds, the song nearest the Confederate soldier's
heart. It was the 'Annie Laurie' of the Confed
erate trenches."
Nowadays it is not a little difficult to detect in
the rather mushy sentimentality of the words
of 'Lorena,' or in the lugubrious wail of its music,
any qualities which might account for the affection
it was held in. But the vagaries of popular taste are
inscrutable. Dr. Palmer's vigorous lyric, ' Stone
wall Jackson's Way,' written within sound of the
1 86 PEN AND INK.
cannonading at Antietam, was so little sung that
Mr. Randall thought it had not been set to music.
I have, however, succeeded in discovering two airs
to which it was sung one published by Mr. Black-
mar, and the other the familiar ' Duda, duda, day.'
The Northern equivalent of 'Lorena' is to be
sought among the songs which made a lyric address
to 'Mother,' and of which 'Just before the Battle,
Mother,' may be taken as a type. 'Mother, I've
Come Home to Die' was sung with feeling and
with humor by many a gallant fellow who is now
gathered at the bivouac of the dead. Mr. George
F. Root, of Chicago, was both the author and com
poser of 'Just before the Battle, Mother,' as he was
also of the ' Battle Cry of Freedom,' and of ' Tramp,
Tramp, Tramp ; the Boys are Marching.' It is
difficult to say which one of these three songs was
the most popular; there was a touch of realistic
pathos in 'Just before the Battle, Mother,' which
brought the simple and unpretending words home
to the hearts of the men who had girded on the
sword and shouldered the musket. Yet captivity
was not seldom more bitter to bear than death it
self, and this gave point to the lament of the soldier
who sat in his "prison cell" and heard the tramp,
tramp, tramp of the marching boys. Probably,
however, the first favorite with the soldiers in the
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 187
field, and certainly the song of Mr. Root's which
has the best chance of surviving, is the ' Battle Cry
of Freedom.' It was often ordered to be sung as
the men marched into action. More than once its
strains arose on the battle-field and made obedience
more easy to the lyric command to rally round the
flag. With the pleasant humor which never deserts
the American, even in the hard tussle of war, the
gentle lines of 'Mary had a Little Lamb' were fitted
snugly to the tune ; and many a regiment short
ened a weary march or went gayly into action,
singing,
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom ;
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom.
Now the song is sure of immortality, for it has
become a part of those elective studies which are
the chief gains of the college curriculum. At the
hands of the American college boys, ' Rally round
the Flag' can get a renewed lease of life for
twenty-one years more or forever. A boy is
your true conservative ; he is the genuine guardian
of ancient rites and customs, old rhymes and
songs ; he has the fullest reverence for age if so
be it is not incarnated in a Prof, or the Prex.
1 88 PEN AND INK.
Lowell, in declaring the antiquity of the New World,
says that " we have also in America things amaz
ingly old, as our boys, for example." And the
borrowing of the ' Battle Cry of Freedom ' by the
colleges is only the fair exchange which is no rob
bery; for, as we have seen, it was from the col
lege that the air of ' Lauriger Horatius ' was taken
to speed the heated stanzas of ' My Maryland.'
Another college song, if the digression may be
pardoned, the ' Upidee-LJpida,' to which we so
wickedly sing the quatrains of Longfellow's ' Ex
celsior,' I have heard rising sonorously from the
throats of a stalwart regiment of German Landwehr
in the summer of 1870, as they were on their way
to the French frontier and to Paris.
Although they came at the beginning of the
war, 'John Brown's Body' and the ' Battle Cry of
Freedom ' have been sung scarcely more often
than 'Marching through Georgia/ which could not
have come into being until near the end of the fight.
Now that the war has been over for twenty years
and more, and the veteran has no military duty
more harassing than fighting his battles o'er,
' Marching through Georgia ' has become the song
dearest to his heart. The swinging rhythm of the
tune and the homely directness of the words gave
the song an instant popularity, increased by the
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 189
fact that it commemorated the most striking epi
sode of the war, the march to the sea. ' Marching
through Georgia' was written and composed by
the late Henry C. Work. In his history of 'Music
in America/ Professor Ritter refers to Stephen C.
Foster, the composer of 'Old Folks at Home, 'as one
who " said naively and gently what he had to say,
without false pretension or bombastic phrases";
and this praise may be applied also to Work, who
had not a little of the folk-flavor which gives quality
to Foster. Like Foster, Work was fond of reflect
ing the rude negro rhythms ; and some of his best
songs seem like actual echoes from the cotton-
field and levee. 'Wake, Nicodemus,' 'Kingdom
Coming/ and ' Babylon is Fallen ' have this savor
of the soil, sophisticated, it may be, and yet pun
gent and captivating. I have heard it suggested
that ' Marching through Georgia ' was founded
on a negro air, and also that it is a reminiscence
of a bit of the ' Rataplan ' of the ' Huguenots/ It
is possible that there is a little truth at the bottom
of both of these stories. The ' Huguenots ' was
frequently performed at the New Orleans Opera
House before the war, and many a slave must
have heard his young mistress singing and playing
selections from Meyerbeer's music ; and it may be
that Work, in turn, overheard some negro's ram-
190 PEN AND INK.
bling recollection of the ' Rataplan.' This is idle
conjecture, however ; the tune of ' Marching
through Georgia ' is fresh and spirited ; and it bids
fair with 'John Brown's Body' to be the chief
legacy of the war. Work was also the author
and composer of two other songs which had their
day, ' Drafted into the Army ' and ' Brave Boys are
They.' The latter has had the honor of being
sung of late by Mr. Cable, who heard first at a
Southern camp-fire from the lips of a comrade the
chorus of Northern origin, equally apt in its appli
cation in those troublous times to the homes on
either side of Mason and Dixon's line :
Brave boys are they,
Gone at their country's call ;
And yet and yet we cannot forget
That many brave boys must fall.
It was in the dark days of 1862, just after Lin
coln had issued the proclamation asking for three
hundred thousand volunteers to fill up the stricken
ranks of the army and to carry out the cry which
urged it ' On to Richmond,' that Mr. John S. Gib
bons wrote
We are coming, Father Abraham,
Three hundred thousand more,
a lyric which contributed not a little to the bring-
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 191
ing about of the uprising it declared. The author
of this ringing call to arms was a member of the
Society of Friends, in other words, a Hicksite
Quaker, " with a reasonable leaning, however,
toward wrath in cases of emergency," as his son-
in-law, Mr. James H. Morse, neatly put it, in a
recent letter to me. He joined the abolition
movement in 1830, when he was barely twenty
years old. Three years later he married a daugh
ter of Isaac T. Hopper, the Quaker philanthropist.
For a short time he was one of the editors of the
Anti-Slavery Standard, and like many of the
Quakers of his school, he was always ardent in
the cause of negro freedom. At the outbreak of
the war, Mrs. Gibbons and her eldest daughter
went to the front, and they served in the hospitals
until the end. While they were away the riots
of '63 occurred, and their house in New- York was
sacked, Mr. Gibbons and the two younger daugh
ters taking refuge with relatives in the house next
door but one, and thence over the roofs to Eighth
Avenue, where Mr. Joseph H. Choate had a car
riage in waiting for them. The house was sin
gled out for this attention because it had been
illuminated when the Emancipation Proclamation
was issued, on which occasion it had been
daubed and defiled with coal tar.
192 PEN AND INK.
At the request of Mr. Morse, Mr. Gibbons has
put on paper an account of the circumstances
under which he wrote ' We are coming, Father
Abraham/ and from this I am privileged to
quote. It must be premised that Mr. Gibbons,
although he had written verse, as who has
not? was best known as a writer on economic
topics : he has published two books about bank
ing and he was for a while the financial editor of
the Evening Post. In 1862, after Lincoln had
issued his call for volunteers, Mr. Gibbons used to
take long walks alone, often talking to himself.
" I began to con over a song," he writes. " The
words seemed to fall into ranks and files, and to
come with a measured step. Directly would
come along a company of soldiers with fife and
drum, and that helped the matter amazingly. I
began to keep step myself three hun-dred thou
sand more. It was very natural to answer the
President's call we are coming and to prefix
the term father. Then the line would follow.
We are coming, Father Abraham,
and nothing was more natural than the number
of soldiers wanted.
Three hundred thousand more.
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand
more.
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.
'93
" Where from? Shore is the rhyme wanted."
Just then Mr. Gibbons met "a western regi
ment from Minnesota, it was and the line
came at once in full,
From Mississippi's winding stream, and from New Eng
land's shore.
" Two lines in full . . . Then followed how
naturally !
We leave our ploughs and workshops, our wives and children
dear,
With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear.
" And so it went on, word by word, line by
line, until the whole song was made." When it
was written, only one slight verbal alteration was
made, and then it was printed in the Evening Post
of July 1 6, 1862. It is interesting to note that it
was in the Evening Post of May 29, 1819, nearly
half a century before, that another famous patriotic
poem had first been published Drake's ' Ameri
can Flag.' Mr. Gibbons's song appeared anony
mously and its authorship was ascribed at once to
Bryant, who was then the editor of the Evening
Post. At a large meeting in Boston, held the
evening after it had appeared, it was read byjosiah
Quincy as " the latest poem written by Mr. Wm.
C. Bryant."
194 PEN AND IN K.
One of the Hutchinson family set it to music,
and they sang it with great effect. A common
friend told Jesse Hutchinson that the song was
not by Bryant but by Mr. Gibbons. "What our
old friend Gibbons ? " he asked in reply. It is re
ported that when he was assured that his old
friend Gibbons was the real author of the song,
Jesse Hutchinson hesitated thoughtfully for a mo
ment and then said, "Well, we'll keep the name
of Bryant, as we've got it. He's better known
than Gibbons." The stirring song was set to
music by several other composers, most of whom
probably supposed that it was Bryant's. I find in
a stray newspaper cutting an account of Lincoln's
coming down to the Red Room of the White
House one morning in the summer of 1864, to
listen with bowed head and patient, pensive eyes
while one of a party of visitors sang
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand
more.
A rattling good war song which has kept its
hold on the ears of the people is ' When Johnny
comes Marching Home,' published in 1863 by
"Louis Lambert." Behind this pseudonym was
hidden Mr. P. S. Gilmore, the projector of the
Boston "Peace Jubilee," and the composer after-
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.
195
ward of a more ambitious national hymn, which
has hitherto failed to attain the popularity of its
unpretending predecessor with the rousing refrain.
It is related that after the performance of ' Glory to
God on High,' from Mozart's Twelfth Mass, on
the first day of the Jubilee, an old soldier of the
Webster regiment took occasion to shake hands
with Mr. Gilmore and to proffer his congratula
tions on the success of the undertaking, adding
that for his part what he had liked best was the
piece called the ' Twelfth Massachusetts/
At the Boston Peace Jubilee, and again at the
Centennial Exhibition, there was opportunity for
the adequate and serious treatment of the war
tunes which have survived the welter and turmoil
of the actual struggle ; but the occasion was not im
proved. Little more has been done than a chance
arrangement of airs in the clap-trap manner of
Jull'en's ' British Army Quadrilles/ The ' Cen
tennial March ' which Richard Wagner wrote for
us was the work of a master, no doubt, but it was
perfunctory, and hopelessly inferior to his resplen
dent 'Kaiser March/ The German composer had
not touch of the American people, and as he did not
know what was in our hearts, we had no right to
hope that he should give it expression. The time
is now ripe for the musician who shall richly and
196 PEN AND INK.
amply develop with sustained and sonorous dig
nity the few simple airs which represent and
recall to the people of these United States the
emotions, the doubts, the dangers, the joys, the
sorrows, the harassing anxieties, and the final
triumph of the four long years of bitter strife. The
composer who will take 'John Brown's Body'
and ' Marching through Georgia,' and such other
of our war tunes as may be found worthy, and
who shall do unto them as the still living Hunga
rian and Scandinavian composers have done to
the folk-songs of their native land, need not hesi
tate from poverty of material or from fear of the
lack of a responsive audience. The first American
composer who shall turn these war tunes into
mighty music to commemorate the events which
called them forth, will of a certainty have his re
ward.
(1887)
VIII
ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN BY
THOSE WHO DO NOT
SPEAK FRENCH
ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN BY THOSE WHO
DO NOT SPEAK FRENCH.
HAVE always thought it a great pity
that Thackeray did not leave us a
Roundabout Paper ' On the French
spoken by those who do not speak
French/ No one is so competent and
so capable of doing justice to the topic as Thack
eray. It is a subject which seems most suitable
for the author of the ' Book of Snobs ' ; for, above
all things, is there snobbishness in the affectation
of being on speaking terms with the French lan
guage, when in very truth it barely returns your
bow. The title of the proposed paper is perhaps
a little long ; but there is wealth enough of ma
terial to warrant an article as ample as the name
may promise. Indeed, the title is almost too com
prehensive, for it includes the blunders of those
who know they cannot speak French, but never
theless try to make themselves understood, and
the errors of those who insist in thinking that they
199
200 PEN AND INK.
can speak French in spite of oral testimony which
convinces every one else. And it would also in
clude certain extraordinary phrases which pass for
French in ordinary English speech.
The first of these classes is the French of Strat-
ford-at-Bow, the French of the Hoosier or the
Cockney, the French of those who affectionately
refer to the capital of France as "Parry" as
though it were an Arctic explorer ; there are even
those, I am told, who descend so low as " Parree,"
because, mayhap, like Mrs. General Gil/lory,
they " have been so long abroad." At this type
the French themselves never tire of poking fun. In
caricature, pictorial or dramatic, it is an endless
source of amusement; and the seeker for illustra
tive anecdote has an abundance to choose from.
One of the most amusing is a dialogue between a
Cockney passenger, who has full belief in the purity
of his French, and the conductor of a diligence.
The Cockney begins by calling the coachman a
pig and, indeed, cocher is not so very unlike
cochon. Then he addresses himself to the con
ductor :
" Etes-vous le diligence ? "
" Non, m'sieur, je suis le conducteur."
" C'est tout le meme chose. Donnez-moa doux
places dans votre interieur."
ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN. 2OI
Unable to get inside seats, he tries to mount to
the roof. Unfortunately, he slips and falls heavily
to the ground. The conductor runs to his assist
ance.
" A,vez-vous de mal, m'sieur?"
"No, moa pas de malle, moa only a portman
teau."
Here the blunderer was English ; but in another
narrative it seems to me that the fault lies rather
with the Frenchman. An Anglo-Saxon was trav
elling in the south of France, and once, as the train
into the station drew, he asked an attendant :
" Est-ce que c'est ici Hyeres ? "
Unfortunately, he pronounced the name of
the town as though it were written Her ; and so
he received the puzzled answer :
" Mais non, m'sieur, c'est ici aujourd'hui."
Of honest blundering in the use of the foreign
tongue, and of frank ignorance, there is no lack of
anecdotes. The young lady brought up in an
establishment where "French is the language of
the school " is not always above asking "qu'elle
est la matiere ? " and telling you that " il n'y a pas
de depeche," when she means to inquire what
may be the matter, and to inform you that there is
no hurry. I believe that Americans pick up French
more quickly than do the English; but when
202 PEN AND INK.
one seeks for typical blunders of beginners and of
pretenders, honors are easy. It was a young Amer
ican who asked for "cafe au lait without any
milk," and who alluded to " gendre pictures," and
who described a dress as " trimmed all down the
front with bouillon fringe." But internal evidence
compels me to assign to an Englishman the part
of the protagonist in two merry jests of this sort.
In one he says, " Je veux un poitrine de canons,"
and it is discovered that he had dug out from the
dictionary this translation of " chest of drawers. '
In the other the scene is laid on a channel steamer,
and as this thrusts its nose into the chopping sea,
an English bagman calls frantically for the steward,
adding, "Jesens mauvais. Quest ma naissance?"
I have been told that he supposed he was saying
the French equivalent for " I feel bad. Where is
my berth ? "
An American again, and a rigid Republican, is
the hero of another anecdote. He met the Ger
man king who has won fame in the study of
Dante, and he told his majesty that he was pleased
to meet him. He parted from the royal scholar
with the remark, "Je vous honore pas comme roi
mais comme ecolier ! " It is a strange sight to see
two Anglo-Saxon strangers meet and "terrify each
other into mutual unintelligibility with that lingua
ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN.
203
franca of the English-speaking traveller, which is
supposed to bear some remote affinity to the French
language, of which both parties are as ignorant as
an American ambassador " as Mr. Lowell wrote
in his 'Fireside Travels,' not foreseeing the time
when the scholar in politics should be minister at
Madrid and London.
When Dr. Holmes acted as a medium and mate
rialized the sturdy spectre of Dr. Johnson, the ear
lier autocrat declared to the later that ' ' to trifle
with the vocabulary, which is the vehicle of social
intercourse, is to tamper with the currency of
human intelligence " ; and the orotund presence
added the characteristic sentiment that in his
opinion " he who would violate the sanctities of
his mother-tongue would invade the recesses of
the paternal till without remorse, and repeat the
banquet of Saturn without indigestion." From
the context we learn that just then the spirit of the
great lexicographer had been perturbed by certain
trifling puns or verbal witticisms with which the
breakfast-table had been amused ; but his ponder
ous criticism has always seemed to me to be quite
as applicable to the ill-advised speakers and writers
who find the English language inadequate to the
full expression of their teeming thoughts, and who
are therefore forced to filch phrases from foreign
tongues.
204 PEN AND INK -
The habit of dropping into French, for example,
is as enfeebling as the habit of punning ; and the
one is quite as fairly to be considered a violation
of the sanctities of the mother-tongue as the other.
Either habit indicates a certain flabbiness of fibre,
intellectual as well as ethical. It is difficult to be
lieve either in the moral rectitude or in the mental
strength of a man or of a woman addicted to the
quoting of odd scraps of odd French. When we
take up the latest work of a young-lady-novelist,
and when we find scattered through her pages
soiibriquet, and double-entendre, and nom de plume,
and a I'outrance, and other words and phrases
which no Frenchman knows, we need not read
further to be sure that the mantle of Jane Austen
and George Eliot has not fallen on the shoulders
of the fair author. Even Mrs. Oliphant, a novelist
who is old enough to know better, and who has
delighted us all with her charming tales of truly
English life, is wont to sprinkle French freely
through her many volumes, not in her novels
only, but even in her unnecessary memoir of Sher
idan, whom she credits with gaite du cceur. In
his ' Letter to Young Contributors/ Colonel Hig-
ginson gave sound advice to the literary tyro when
suggesting that he should "avoid French as some
of the fashionable novelists avoid English."
ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN.
205
Has any one ever noted that there is a far greater
fondness in England for French words and phrases
than there is in America ? Whether I am the dis
coverer or not, the fact seems to me to be beyond
question. In the new Grand Hotel in London,
which is supposed to be managed on the Ameri
can plan, more or less, but which has a name bor
rowed from Paris, the very gorgeous dining-room
is labeled Satte a Manger. In another English
hotel I saw a sign on what we call the " elevator,"
and the English, with greater simplicity, term a
"lift," declaring it to be an ascenseur. The port
able fire-extinguisher familiar to all Americans as a
" Babcock," is in England called an extinfleur. On
the programmes of the itinerant opera company
managed by Mr. Mapleson, and called, comically
enough, Her Majesty's Opera, the wig-maker and
costumer appear as the perruquier and the cos
tumier. In the window of a shop in Regent
Street, toward the end of the season, I saw exposed
for sale a handsome china tea-service in a hand
some silk-lined box, bearing in its cover two little
placards, that to the right declaring that it was
suitable for A Wedding Present, while that on the
left suggested its fitness as Un Present De Noces.
In another English shop I have seen a heap of nap
kins surmounted by a placard setting forth the
206 PEN AND INK.
price of these serviettes, and not far off was a pile
of oddly named serviette-rings. But perhaps this
is not more painful than a sign still to be seen in
New Bond Street, declaring that the house to which
it is affixed is occupied by " Blank et Cie., Artistes
in Corsets." This, in the language of the wild
Western humorist after he had been to Paris, frappe
tout chose parfaitement froid !
Of course it cannot be denied that certain French
words (and not those only which came over with
the Conqueror) have fairly won a right of domicile
in England. Ennui, for example, and pique these
have no exact English equivalents, and their re
moval from common speech would leave an aching
void. (To denouement I shall recur later.) But
why should we speak of an employe when the
regularly formed "employee" is at our service?
And what evil spirit possesses Mrs. Tompkins, the
London milliner, and Miss Simkins, the London
dressmaker, to emblazon their golden signs with
the mystic "Mdme. Tompkins, Modes," and
" Mdlle. Simkins, Robes"? And here occasion
serves to protest, with whatever strength may in
me lie, against the superfluous d which British cus
tom has injected into the French contractions for
Madame and Mademoiselle. We say British, for
this error is confined to Great Britain and her co-
ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN.
207
lonial dependencies, the inhabitants of the United
States of America having happily escaped it. In
America, as in France, Madame and Mademoiselle
are contracted to Mme. and Mile., and it is only
the Briton who writes Mdme. and Mdtte., in the
fond belief that he has caught the exact Parisian
touch. I venture to hint also that even after a
French word has been admitted into the English
language, the Englishman is inclined to recall its
foreign origin in pronouncing it, while the Ameri
can treats it frankly as an English word. Thus
charade has nearly the same sound in the mouth
of an educated Englishman that it has in the mouth
of a Frenchman, whereas it falls from the lips of
an American as a perfect rhyme for " made." And
in like manner trait retains its French pronuncia
tion in Great Britain, while in the United States it
is spoken as it is spelt to rhyme with " strait."
The pun in the title of Dr. Doran's ' Table Traits,
with something on them,' wholly evades an
American unfamiliar with the British usage. But
the American who girds at this English peculiarity
must remember that he has heard his fellow-citi
zens call a menu a " maynew," and a debut a
" debyou " ; and that some of them are in doubt
whether depot ought to rhyme happily with
"Aleppo," or haply with "teapot," and there-
208 PEN AND INK.
fore compromise illogically by rhyming it with
"sweep oh ! "
To the ignorant and affected misuse of French
or quasi-French, there is another kind of snob
bishness closely akin and deserving castigation as
severe. It is the use of the native name of a place,
or worse yet, of the French name, instead of the
English. What sort of figure would be cut by a
returned traveller who described his journeys and
his sojournings in Italia and Deutschland? Is it
not as bad to speak of Mainz? and worse still, of
Mayence ? when there is an honest English name,
Mentz, inscribed in a hundred lusty chronicles of
illustrious wars? And how often do we hear
ladies talk of Malines lace, meaning the while the
lace made at Mechlin, for the town is Dutch,
although the French have chosen to give it a name
of their own fashioning, as they have also to Mentz
and many another city.
It may be as well to note that the French phrase
is a entrance, that there is no u in sobriquet, and
that the French know no such expression as nom de
plume or double-entendre, the nearest approach to
the one being nom de guerre and to the other dou
ble entente, a double meaning, which is, however,
wholly devoid of the ulterior significance attached
to double-entendre. Perhaps the word most sinned
ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN. 209
against is artiste. There is really no excuse what
ever for the use of this word in English speech.
It is the exact translation and complete equivalent
of the English word artist, and it does not mean
a female artist any more than pianixte means a
female pianist. I can now recall with a shudder
a programme thrust into my hand at a watering-
place two or three years ago, in which a certain
charming artist was announced as "the greatest
living lady pianiste in the world." Encore, although
used in English in a sense wholly different from
that which it has in French, has now taken out its
naturalization papers ; and so has a hybrid word
parquette used in America to indicate what the
English call the stalls or orchestra chairs.
But on the stage, or rather in writings for and
of and about the stage, there is an enormous con
sumption of French phrases, or of phrases fondly
supposed to be French. The dramatic critic is wont
to refer to the rentree of an old favorite when he
means his or her reappearance ; and he comments
on the skilful way in which M. Sardou brings
about his denoument, and for this there is per
haps some excuse, as there is no English word
which is the exact technical equivalent of denou
ment. But he will record the attempting of a new
role by the ingeniie, and he will congratulate that
210 PEN AND INK.
clever comedienne on the enlarging of her repertoire.
To him the "juvenile lead " is zjeune premier and
the tragic actress is a tragedienne educated at the
conservatoire. In his eyes a ballet-dancer is a
danseuse, and in his ears the comic singer sings a
chansonnette. There is really no reason for this
frequent French ; and although the vocabulary of
the dramatic critic is overworked, with a little care
he may avoid tautology by less violent means.
Over the door of a free-and-easy or cheap con
cert-saloon near Union Square I have seen a
transparency announcing that the place was a
"Resorte Musicale." And in a theatrical weekly
paper I discovered once an advertisement even
more remarkable. I give it here as it stood, chang
ing only the proper names :
ANNIE BLACK,
The popular favorite and Leading Lady of Theatre
Comique, will be at liberty after June to engage for the season
of '81-82, as Leading Lady with first-class comb. Also
E. J. BLACK,
(Nee EDWARD BROWN,)
CHARACTER ACTOR.
Please read this carefully, and note the delight
fully inappropriate use of nee, and the purely pro
fessional cutting short into " comb." of the word
ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN. 211
"combination," technically applied to strolling
companies. Above all, pray remark the fact that
the gray mare is the better horse, and that the man
has given up his own name for his wife's.
It would not be fair thus to rebuke our fellow-
countrymen without noting the fact that the French
are nowadays quite as prone to quote English as
the English are to quote French, and also that there
is very little to choose between the results. An
article on sport in a French paper is almost as curi
ous and macaronic a medley as an article on the
fashions in an English paper. Just as the techni
cal phrases which hint at the mighty mysteries
of ladies' apparel are all French, so the technical
phrases of masculine outdoor amusement are nearly
all English. The report of a horse-race as it ap
pears in a Parisian newspaper is quite as comic as
the description of a bride's gown as it appears in
a London organ of society. The French dandy,
who was once a gandin, and who is now a gom-
meux, is driven to the course in a breach drawn by
a pair of steppers ; on the track he mingles with
the betting-men and makes a book. Thus he ac
complishes his duty to society, and is acknowl
edged to be tout ce qu'ily a de plus hig-lif. We
are informed and believe that this strange perver
sion of " high life " is pronounced as it is written,
212 PEN AND INK.
" hig-lif." When the French swell is not mingling
with the other s~portmen on the turf, he has per
haps gone to the river to see the rovingmen, or
into some garden to watch the jeunes misses play
ing crockett, by which last word the French are
wont to designate the formerly popular game of
croquet. In the summer, or rather in the early
autumn, he varies these amusements by a paper-
chase of some unknown variety, which he compla
cently calls a ratty e-papier.
To see just how far can go this absurd com
mingling of tongues, complicated by preternatu-
rally ingenious blundering, one must give his days
and nights to the reading of the ' Garnet d'un
Mondain,' which the Figaro publishes under the
signature of " Etincelle." To see how even clever
and well-informed writers may err in bad com
pany, one must read the always interesting and
often instructive chroniques which M. Jules Clare-
tie contributed every week to the Temps, and
which were gathered together every year under
the title of ' La Vie a Paris.' M. Claretie reads
English, and he has travelled in England ; but he
makes repeated use of a hybrid verb interwiever,
which we assume to be some sort of a Gallicized
interview. Interwiever is the act accomplished by
the reporter another word which the French
ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN. 2 l}
have snatched across the Channel. But interwiever,
bad as it is, and absurd as it is, is not a whit
worse or more absurd than double-entendre and
soubriquet. In fact, the better one knows the
popular misinformation on both sides of the Chan
nel, the more willingly will one admit that honors
are easy, and that English bad French is no better
and no worse than French bad English.
Ten years ago M. Justin Amero put forth two
little pamphlets full of the most amusing blunders
of the Anglo-Frenchman and the Franco-English
man. .One, ' L'Anglomanie dans le francais et les
barbarismes anglais usites en France/ was intended
to warn those of his fellow-countrymen who
write " Times is money " in the belief that they
are quoting Shakspere; and the other, 'French
Gibberish,' a review showing how the French lan
guage is misused in England and in other English-
speaking countries, was meant for those who
write coute qui coute instead of coute que coute.
There is an ancient and musty jest about a city
madam who spoke only the French habitually used
in young ladies' schools, and who rendered into
English the familiar ris de veau a la financiere as
"a smile of the little cow in the manner of the
female financier." But this is not more startling
than many other things to be discovered by those
214 PEN AND INK -
who search the cook-books diligently. I remem
ber a bill of fare in an American hotel in which
all the familiar dishes were translated into unfamil
iar French, the climax being reached when ginger-
snaps, the sole dessert, appeared transmogrified into
gateux de gingembre. Perhaps it is in revenge for
repeated insults like this that the Parisians now
advertise on the windows of the cafes on the boule
vards that Boissons Americaines are sold within,
the only American drink particularized being a cer
tain " Shery Gobbler," warranted to warm the
heart of all vagrant American humorists who may
chance to visit Paris while alive and in the flesh.
In essence sbery gobbler is but little more comic
than rosbif, or than biftech, which are recognized
French forms of the roast beef of old England and
of the beefsteak which plays second to it. Both
rosbif and bifteck are accepted by Littre, who finds
for the latter a sponsor as early and as eminent as
Voltaire. And sbery gobbler is not as comic as ' ' cut-
lete" and "tartlete," which I detected day after
day on the bill of fare of a Cunard steamer crossing
from Liverpool to New-York three or four years
ago. When I drew the attention of a fellow-
traveller to the constant recurrence of the superflu
ous e at the end of cutlet and tartlet, the active and
intelligent steward, who anticipated our slightest
ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN.
215
wants, leant forward with a benignant smile, and
benevolently explained the mystery. "It's the
French, sir," he said; "cutlete and tartlete is
French, sir ! "
A bill of fare at the Grand Hotel in Paris, in
1885, offered " Irisch-stew a la franchise " truly
a marvellous dish. In a certain restaurant of the
Palais Royal, however, there is a bi-Iingual bill of
fare which recalls the Portuguese ' Guide to Con
versation/ if indeed it does not "break the record."
In this we are proffered our choice of "barbue
dutch manner " (barbue a la Hottandai&e), or " eel
in tartar," or of "a sole at Colbert." We may
have "beef at flamande " or " beef at mode " (bceuf
a la mode), or "beefsteack with haricots." The
cotelette saute a la minute appears as " one mutton
chop at minute," and a cotelette de chevreuil appears
as " a chops of kid " (sic). We may order, if we
will, a " fillet napolitan manner," or a " chicken at
Marengo," or a " sweet bread at fmanciere."
But quite the wildest linguistic freak which ever
came within my ken is the following notice, copied
years ago from the original as it hung on the walls
of a cheap hotel in New- York frequented by the
smaller theatrical people of all nationalities : " Mes
sier et Medammes chaque Diners, soupes, etc., se
que ont portez dan le chambres son chargait a par."
2i6 PEN AND INK.
Of the many amusing stories in circulation and
turning on an English misuse of French, the most
popular is perhaps the anecdote in which one of
two gentlemen occupying an apartment in Paris
leaves word with the concierge that he does not
wish his fire to go out ; as he unfortunately ex
presses this desire in the phrase " ne laissez pas
sortir le fou," much inconvenience results to the
other gentleman, who is detained in the apartment
as a dangerous lunatic. This pleasant tale has in
its time been fathered on many famous English
men. And like unto it is another which Ameri
cans are wont to place to the credit of a Cockney,
while the English are sure that its true hero was a
Yankee both parties acting on the old principle
of "putting the Frenchman up the chimney when
the tale is told in England." The story goes
that a certain Anglo-Saxon for thus I may avoid
international complications entered into a Paris
ian restaurant with intent to eat, drink, and be
merry. Wishing to inform the waiter of his hun
ger he said, "J'ai une femme!" to which the
polite but astonished waiter naturally responded,
"J'espere que madame se porte bien?" Where
upon the Anglo-Saxon makes a second attempt at
the French for hunger, and asserts, "Je suis
fameux ! " to which the waiter's obvious reply is,
ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN.
217
"Je suis bien aise de le savoir, monsieur ! " Then
the Anglo-Saxon girded up his loins and made a
final effort, and declared, "Je suis femmel" to
which the waiter could answer only, "Alors
madame s'habille d'une facon tres-etrange." After
which the Anglo-Saxon fled and was seen no more.
This merry jest came to me by word of mouth
and vouched for by an eye-witness ; but I am told
on good authority that it was used by the elder
Charles Mathews in one of his At Homes at least
half a century ago.
(1887)
IX
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS.
EW literary tasks seem easier of ac
complishment than the making of a
good play out of a good novel. The
playwright has ready to his hand a
story, a sequence of situations, a
group of characters artfully contrasted, the sug
gestion of the requisite scenery, and occasional
passages of appropriate conversation. What more
is needed than a few sheets of paper and a pair of
scissors, a pen and a little plodding patience ? The
pecuniary reward is abundant; apparently the feat
is temptingly facile; and every year we see many
writers succumb to the temptation. Whenever a
novel hits the popular fancy and is seen for a
season in everybody's hands, be it ' Mr. Barnes of
New York 'or 'She,' 'The Quick or the Dead ?'
or 'Robert Elsmere,' the adapter steps forward
and sets the story on the stage, counting on the
reflected reputation of the novel to attract the pub
lic to witness the play. But the result of the cal
culation is rarely satisfactory, and the dramatized
222 PEN AND INK.
romance is rarely successful. Frequently it Is an
instant failure, like the recent perversion of ' Robert
Elsmere ' ; occasionally it is forced into a fleeting
popularity by managerial wiles, like the stage ver
sions of ' She ' and ' Mr. Barnes of New York' ; and
only now and again is it really welcomed by the
public, like the dramatizations of ' Little Lord Faun-
tleroy ' and ' Uncle Tom's Cabin.' So it is that, if
we look back along the lists of plays which have
had prolonged popularity, we shall find the titles
of very few dramatizations, and we shall discover
that those which chance to linger in our memory
are recalled chiefly because of a fortuitous associa
tion with the fame of a favorite actor; thus the
semi-operatic version of ' Guy Mannering ' brings
before us Charlotte Cushman's weird embodiment
of Meg Merrilies, just as the artless adaptation of
the ' Gilded Age ' evokes the joyous humor of John
T. Raymond as Colonel Sellers. And if we were
to make out a list of novels which have been
adapted to the stage in the past thirty years or so,
we should discover a rarely broken record of over
whelming disaster.
The reason of this is not far to seek. It is to be
found in the fundamental difference between the
art of the drama and the art of prose-fiction a
difference which the adapter has generally ignored
or been ignorant of. Perhaps it is not unfair to
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS. 223
suggest that the methods of the dramatist and of
the novelist are as unlike as the methods of the
sculptor and of the painter. The difference be
tween the play and the novel is at bottom the dif
ference between a precise and rigid form, and a
form of almost unlimited range and flexibility. The
drama has laws as unbending as those of the son
net, while the novel may extend itself to the full
license of an epic. It is hardly too much to say
that nowadays the novelist has complete freedom
in choice of subject and in method of treatment.
He may be concise or he may be prolix. He may
lay the scene of his story in a desert, and find his
effect in the slow analysis of a single human soul
in awful solitude; or he may create a regiment of
characters which shall perform intricate evolutions
and move in serried ranks through the crowded
streets of a busy city. He may riot in the great
phenomena of nature, forcing the tornado, the gale
at sea, the plunge of a cataract, the purple sunset
after a midsummer storm, to create his catastrophe
or to typify some mood of his hero. He may be
a persistent pessimist, believing that all is for the
worst in the worst of all possible worlds, and
painting his fellow-man in harsh black-and-white,
with a most moderate use of the white. He may
be a philosopher, using a thin veil of fiction as a
transparent mask for the exposition of his system
224
PEN AND INK.
of life. He may adopt the novel as a platform or
as a pulpit; he may use it as a means or he may ac
cept it as an end ; he may do with it what he will;
and if he be a man to whom the world wishes to
listen or a man who has really something to say,
he gains a hearing.
In contrast with the license of the novelist the
limitations of the dramatist were never more dis
tinct than they are to-day. As the playwright
appeals to the play-goer, he is confined to those
subjects in which the broad public can be inter
ested and to the treatment which the broad pub
lic will accept. While the writer of romance may
condense his work into a short-story of a column
or two, or expand it to a stout tome of a thousand
pages, the writer for the stage has no such choice ;
his work must be bulky enough to last from half-
past eight to half-past ten at the shortest, or at the
longest from eight to eleven. In the present con
dition of the theatre in Great Britain and the United
States, there is little or no demand for the comedi
etta or for the two-act comedy; a play must be
long enough and strong enough to furnish forth the
whole evening's entertainment. The dramatist may
divide his piece into three, or four, or five acts, as
he may prefer, but except from some good and suffi
cient reason, there must be but a single scene to
each act. The characters must be so many in
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS.
225
number that no one shall seem unduly obtrusive ;
they must be sharply contrasted; most of them
must be sympathetic to the spectators, for the
audience in a theatre, however pessimistic it may
be individually, is always optimistic as a whole.
There must be an infusion of humor at recurrent
intervals, and a slowly increasing intensity of emo
tional stress. In short, the fetters of the drama
tist are as obvious as is the freedom of the novelist.
Perhaps the chief disadvantage under which the
dramatist labors is that it is almost impossible for
him to show adequately the progressive and well-
nigh imperceptible disintegration of character
under the attrition of recurring circumstance.
Time and space are both beyond the control of
the maker of plays, while the story-teller may
take his hero by slow stages to the world's end.
The drama has but five acts at most, and the
theatre is but a few yards wide. Description is
scarcely permissible in a play ; and it may be the
most beautiful and valuable part of a novel. Com
ment by the author is absolutely impossible on
the stage ; and there are many who love certain
novels Thackeray's for example chiefly be
cause they feel therein the personal presence of
the author. It is at once the merit and the diffi
culty of dramatic art that the characters must
reveal themselves ; they must be illuminated from
226 PEN AND INK.
within, not from without ; they must speak for
themselves in unmistakable terms ; and the au
thor cannot dissect them for us or lay bare their
innermost thoughts with his pen as with a scalpel.
The drama must needs be synthetic, while now
the novel, more often than not, is analytic. The
vocabulary of the playwright must be clear, suc
cinct, precise, and picturesque, while that of the
novelist may be archaic, fantastic, subtle, or allu
sive. Simplicity and directness are the ear-marks
of a good play; but we all know good novels
which are complex, involute, tortuous. A French
critic has declared that the laws of the drama are
Logic and Movement, by which he means that in
a good play the subject clearly exposed at first
moves forward by regular steps, artfully prepared,
straight to its inevitable end.
After all, art is but a question of selection : no
man can put the whole of life either on the stage
or into a book. He must choose the facts which
seem to him salient and which will best serve his
purpose. He must reject unhesitatingly all the
others, as valuable in themselves, it may be, but
foreign to the work in hand. The principles differ
which govern this selection by the dramatist and
by the novelist. Details which are insignificant
in a story may be of the greatest value in a play ;
and effects of prime importance in the tale may be
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS.
227
contrary to the practice of the playwright, or even
physically impossible on the stage. George Sand
was a great novelist who was passionately occu
pied with the theatre, although she was wholly
without the dramatic gift ; and in his biographical
study of her career and her character the late M.
Caro noted her constant failure as a dramatist,
both with original plays and with adaptations of
her own novels, declaring in these words the rea
son of this failure : "What is needed on the stage
is the art of relief, the instinct of perspective,
adroitness of combination, and, above all, action,
again action, and always action. It is natural and
laughter-forcing gaiety, or the secret of power
ful emotion, or the unexpectedness which grips
the attention" all qualities which George Sand
lacked.
A mere sequence of tableaux vivants, even if it
include the characters and present the situations
of a successful tale, is not necessarily a successful
play, and certainly it is not a good play. It is
easy enough to scissor a panorama of scenes from
a story, but to make over the story itself into a
play is not so easy. To get a true play out of a
novel, the dramatist must translate the essential
idea from the terms of narrative into the terms of
the drama. He must disengage the fundamental
subject from the accidental incidents with which
228 PEN AND INK.
the novelist has presented it. He must strip it to
the skeleton, and then he must clothe these bare
bones with new flesh and fresh muscle in accord
ance with the needs of the theatre. He must dis
entangle the primary action, and set this on the
stage clearly and simply. To do this it may be
necessary to modify characters, to alter the
sequence of scenes, to simplify motives, to con
dense, to clarify, to heighten. The more famous
the novel one might almost say the better the
novel the less likely is it to make a good play,
because there is then a greater difficulty in disen
gaging the main theme from its subsidiary de
velopments ; and even when the playwright
understands his trade, and realizes the gulf which
yawns between the novel and the drama, the
temptation to retain this fine scene of the story,
or that delicately drawn character, or the other
striking episode, is often too strong to be over
come, though he knows full well that these
things are alien to the real play as it ought to be.
The playwright is conscious that the play-goers
may look for these unessential scenes and charac
ters and episodes, and he yields despite his judg
ment. Then in the end the play becomes a mere
series of magic-lantern slides to illustrate the book ;
the real and the essential disappear behind the acci
dental and incidental; and the spectator cannot
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS.
229
see the forest for the trees. The dramatizations of
Scott, of Cooper, and of Dickens, whatever their
temporary popularity might be, and their imme
diate pecuniary success, were none of them good
plays, nor were they ever wholly satisfactory to
those who knew and loved the original novels.
And Scott, Cooper, and Dickens are all sturdy
and robust story-tellers, whose tales, one would
think, might readily lend themselves to the free
hand treatment and distemper illumination of the
theatre. And ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' has had much
the same fate on the stage ; the rough-hewn
dramas made out of it have succeeded by no art
of their own, but because of the overwhelming
interest of the novel. I know of no stage version
of Mrs. Stowe's story, or of any novel of Scott, of
Cooper, or of Dickens, which has either organic
unity or artistic symmetry.
The finer the novel, the more delicate and de
lightful its workmanship, the more subtle its
psychology, the greater is the difficulty in drama
tizing it, and the greater the ensuing disappoint
ment. The frequent attempts to turn into a play
'Vanity Fair' and the 'Scarlet Letter' were all
doomed to the certainty of failure, because the
development of the central character and the lead
ing motives, as we see them in the pages of the
novelist, are not those by which they would best
230
PEN AND INK.
be revealed before the footlights. A true dramatist
might treat dramatically the chief figures of Thack
eray's novel or of Hawthorne's romance. I can
conceive a Becky Sharp play and an Arthur
Dimmesdale drama the first a comedy, with un
derlying emotion ; and the second a tragedy, noble
in its simple dignity : but neither of these possi
ble plays would be in any strict sense of the word
dramatized from the novel, although the germi-
nant suggestion was derived from Thackeray and
from Hawthorne. They would be original plays,
independent in form, in treatment, and in move
ment ; much as ' All for Her ' is an original play
by Messrs. Simpson and Merivale, though it was
obviously suggested by the essential ideas of
'Henry Esmond' and 'A Tale of Two Cities,'
which were adroitly combined by two accom
plished playwrights feeling themselves at liberty
to develop their theme without any sense of
responsibility to the novelists. In like manner
Mr. Boucicault's admirably effective dramas, the
'Colleen Bawn ' and the 'Long Strike,' are
founded, one on the ' Collegians ' of Gerald GrifTm,
and the other on Mrs. Gaskell's ' Mary Barton ' ;
but the dramatist, while availing himself freely of
the novelist's labors, held himself equally free to
borrow from them no more than he saw fit, and
felt in nowise bound to preserve in the play what
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS.
231
did not suit him in the story. I am told that the
foundation of Lord Lytton's ' Richelieu ' can be
discovered in a romance by G. P. R. James ; and
I have heard that a little story by Jules Sandeau
was the exciting cause of MM. Sandeau and Au-
gier's ' Gendre de M. Poirier,' the finest comedy
of our century. At all times have playwrights
been prone to take a ready-made myth. The
great Greeks did it, using Homer as a quarry from
which to get the rough blocks of marble needed
for their heroic statues; while Shakspere found
material for more than one piece in contemporary
prose-fiction. But it would be absurd to consider
any of these plays as a mere dramatization of a
novel.
The difficulties and disadvantages of trying to
make a play out of a popular tale, when the se
quence and development of the story must be
retained in the drama, are so distinctly recognized
by novelists who happen also to be dramatists,
that they are prone to stand aside and to leave the
doubtful task to others. Dumas did not himself
make a play out of his romantic tale, the ' Corsican
Brothers.' And in the fall of 1887 there were pro
duced in Paris two adaptations of successful
novels which had been written by accomplished
dramatists, 'L'Abbe Constantin,' by M. Ludovic
Halevy, and ' L' Affaire Clemenceau,' by M. Alex-
PEN AND INK.
andre Dumas fits; and in neither case did the
dramatist adapt his own story. He knew better;
he knew that the good novel would not make a
good play ; and while the novice rushed in where
the expert feared to tread, the original author
stood aside, ready to take the profit, but not to
run the risk.
I trust that I have not suggested that there are no
novels which it is profitable or advisable to adapt
to the stage. Such was not my intent, at least.
What I wished to point out was that a panorama
was not a play ; that to make a play out of a
novel properly was a most difficult task ; and
that the more widely popular the story, the less
likely was the resultant piece to be valuable,
because of the greater pressure to retain scenes
foreign to the main theme as necessarily simplified
and strengthened for the theatre.
Sometimes a story is readily set on the stage,
because it was planned for the theatre before it
appeared as a book. M. Georges Ohnet's ' Serge
Panine,' for example, was first written as a play
and afterward as a novel, although the piece was
not performed until after the story had achieved
success. Charles Reade's 'Peg Woffington ' is
avowedly founded on the comedy of ' Masks and
Faces,' which Reade had written in collaboration
with Tom Taylor, and of which it may seem to
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS.
233
be a dramatization. Reade also found it easy to
make an effective play out of his ' Never Too Late
to Mend,' because this novel was itself based on
'Gold,' an earlier piece of his.
Nor is this ex-post-facto dramatization the only
possible or proper adaptation of a novel. A story
of straightforward emotion may often be set on
the stage to advantage, and with less alteration
than is demanded by the more complex novel of
character. Mr. R. L. Stevenson declares that "a
good serious play must be founded on one of the
passionate cruces of life, where duty and inclina
tion come nobly to the grapple ; and the same is
true of what I call, for that reason, the dramatic
novel." Now it is this dramatic novel, handling
broadly a pregnant emotion, which can most
often be dramatized successfully and satisfactorily.
And yet, even then, the story is perhaps best set
on the stage by a playwright who has never read
it. This may sound like a paradox, but I can
readily explain what I mean. A well-known
French piece, 'Miss Multon,' is obviously
founded on the English novel 'East Lynne.' I
once asked M. Eugene Nus, one of the authors of
' Miss Multon,' how he came to adapt an Eng
lish book ; and he laughingly answered that nei
ther he nor his collaborator, M. Adolphe Belot,
had ever read ' East Lynne/ At a pause during a
234 PEN AND 1NK -
rehearsal of another play of theirs, an actress had
told M. Belot that she had just finished a story
which would make an excellent play, and there
upon she gave him the plot of Mrs. Wood's novel.
And the plot, the primary suggestion, the first
nucleus of situation and character, this is all these
dramatists needed ; and in most cases it is all that
the dramatist ought to borrow from the novelist.
It is thus that we may account in part for the
merit of Mr. Pinero's play the 'Squire,' which
is perhaps more or less remotely derived from
Mr. Hardy's 'Far from the Madding Crowd.'
Not to have read the story he is to dramatize is,
however, a privilege possible to but few play
wrights.
The next best thing is to have the needful
power to disengage the main theme of the story
and to be able to reincarnate this in a dramatic
body. A good example may be seen in ' Esmer-
alda,' the comedy which Mr. William Gillette
helped Mrs. Burnett to make out of a tale of hers.
But this has been done so rarely on the English-
speaking stage that I must perforce seek other
examples in France. As it happens, I can name
three plays, all founded on novels, all adapted to
the stage by the novelist himself, and all really
superior to the novels from which they were
taken. M. Jules Sandeau's ' Mademoiselle de la
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS. 235
Seigliere ' is a pretty tale, but the comedy which
the late eminent comedian, M. Regnier of the
Comedie-Francaise, aided M. Sandeau to found
upon it is far finer as a work of literature. ' Le
Marquis de Villemer ' of George Sand is a lovely
novel, but it lacks the firmness, the force, and the
symmetry to be found in the play which M. Alex-
andre Dumas fils helped her to construct from it,
and which, therefore, won the popular favor denied
to most of her other dramatic attempts. And in
like manner M. Dumas himself recomposed his
'Dame aux Camelias,' and made a moving novel
into one of the most moving plays of our time.
In all three cases the drama is widely different from
the story, and the many needful modifications have
been made with marvellous technical skill. Hardly
any more profitable investigation could be sug
gested to the prentice playwright than first to
read one of these novels, and then to compare it
faithfully with the play which its author evolved
from it ; and the student of the physics of play-
making could have no better laboratory work than
to think out the reasons for every change.
Such a student will discover, for instance, that
the dramatist cannot avail himself of one of the
most effective devices of the novelist, who may
keep a secret from his readers, which is either
revealed to them unexpectedly and all at once,
236 PEN AND INK.
or which they are allowed to solve for themselves
from chance hints skilfully let fall in the course of
the narrative. But the dramatist knows that to
keep a secret from the spectator for the sake of
a single sudden surprise is to sacrifice to one
little and temporary shock of discovery the cu
mulative force of a heroic struggle against a fore
seen catastrophe. To take an example from one
of the most accomplished of Greek playwrights,
the strife against awakening doubt, the wrestling
with a growing conviction, the agony of final
knowledge which we see in 'CEdipus,' and the
indisputable effect these have on us, are the re
sult of not keeping a secret. The great play of
Sophocles has the interest of expectation, though
every spectator might foresee and foretell the out
come of the opening situations. True dramatic
interest is aroused, not by deceiving or disap
pointing the audience as to the end to be reached,
or even by keeping it unduly in doubt as to this,
but by choosing the least commonplace and most
effective means of reaching that end. And true
dramatic interest is sustained, not by a vulgar
surprise, but by exciting the sympathy of the
spectator for the character immeshed in dangers
which the audience comprehend clearly by ex
citing the sympathy of the spectator so that he
becomes the accomplice of the playwright, putting
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS.
himself in the place of the persons of the play, and
feeling with them as the dread catastrophe draws
nigh.
The novelist may play tricks with his readers,
because he knows that they can take time to
think if they are in doubt, and can even turn
back a chapter or two to straighten out the se
quence of events. But the dramatist knows that
the spectators have no time for retrospection and
for piecing together, and therefore he is not war
ranted in leaving them in the dark for a minute.
And it is this total divergence of principle that so
many novelists, and so many of those who attempt
to dramatize novels, absolutely fail to apprehend.
In her needless biography of Richard Brinsley
Sheridan, Mrs. OHphant found fault with the
screen scene of the ' School for Scandal ' because
we see Lady Teazle conceal herself. " It would,
no doubt," she wrote, "have been higher art
could the dramatist have deceived his audience as
well as the personages of the play, and made us
also parties in the surprise of the discovery."
This criticism is simply a master stroke of dra
matic incompetence, and it is astounding that any
one able to read and write could consider that
most marvelous specimen of dramatic construc
tion, the screen scene of the ' School for Scan
dal,' without seeing that the whole effect of the
238 PEN AND INK.
situation, and half the force of the things said and
done by the characters on the stage, would be
lost if we did not know that Lady Teazle was in
hiding within hearing of Joseph's impotent expla
nations, Charles's careless gaiety, and Sir Peter's
kindly thoughtfulness.
In a play there must be as little as possible of
either confusion or doubt. As the French critic
said, the laws of the drama are Logic and Move
ment logic in the exposition and sequence of
events, movement in the emotions presented.
And here we come to another dissimilarity of the
drama from prose-fiction the need of more care
ful and elaborate structure in a play. A novel a
man may make up as he goes along haphazard,
but in a play the last word must be thought out
before the first word is written. The plot must
move forward unhesitatingly to its inevitable con
clusion. There can be no wavering, no faltering,
no lingering by the wayside. And every effect,
every turn of the story, must be prepared adroitly
and unostentatiously. M. Legouve calls the play
goer both exacting and inconsistent, in that he
insists that everything which passes before him on
the stage shall be at once foretold and unforeseen.
The play-goer is shocked if anything drops from
the clouds unexpected, yet he is bored if anything
is unduly announced. The dramatist must now
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS.
239
and again take the play-goers into his confidence
by a chance word to which they pay no attention
at the time, so that when the situation abruptly
turns on itself, they say to themselves, "Why, of
course; he warned us of that. What fools we
were not to guess what was coming!" And
then they are delighted.
In considering Lord Tennyson's 'Queen Mary'
when it first appeared, Mr. Henry James remarked
that the "fine thing in a real drama is that, more
than any other work of literary art, it needs a
masterly structure, a process which makes a de
mand upon an artist's rarest gifts." And then
Mr. James compressed a chapter of criticism into
a figure of speech. "The five-act drama," he
said, "serious or humorous, poetic or prosaic, is
like a box of fixed dimensions and inelastic mate
rial, into which a mass of precious things are to be
packed away. . . . The precious things seem
out of all proportion to the compass of the recep
tacle; but the artist has an assurance that with
patience and skill a place may be made for each,
and that nothing need be clipped or crimped,
squeezed or damaged." It is this infinite patience
and this surpassing skill that the ordinary theatri
cal adapter of a novel is wholly without. He
does not acknowledge the duties of the dramatist,
and he is hardly conscious even that a play is a
340 PEN AND INK.
work of literary art. Few of those who try to
write for the stage, without having penetrated the
secret of the drama, realize the indisputable neces
sity of the preliminary plan. They do not suspect
that a play must needs be built as carefully and as
elaborately as a cathedral, in which not only the
broad nave and the massive towers but every airy
pinnacle and every flying buttress contribute to
the total effect. As the architect, who is primarily
an artist, must do his work in full accord with the
needs of the civil engineer who understands the
mechanics of building, so the dramatist, who deals
with human character and human passion, is
guided in his labor by the precepts and practice of
the mere play-maker, the expert who is master of
the mechanics of the stage. The accomplished
architect is his own civil engineer, and the true
dramatist is a playwright also, a man fully conver
sant with the possibilities of the theatre and fully
recognizing its limitations. "To work success
fully beneath a few grave, rigid laws," said Mr.
James in the criticism from which I have already
quoted, " is always a strong man's highest ideal
of success." This serves to explain why the son
net, with its inexorable rules, has been ever a favor
ite with great poets, and why the drama with its
metes and bounds has always had a fascination for
the literary artist
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS. 241
Some of the limitations of the drama are inhe
rent in the form itself, and are therefore immutable
and permanent. Some are external, and are there
fore temporary and variable. For example, it has
always seemed to me that inadequate attention
has been given to the influence exerted on dra
matic literature by the size of the theatre and by
the circumstances of the performance. This influ
ence was most potent in shaping the Greek drama,
the Elizabethan plays of England, and the French
tragedy under Louis XIV. The unadorned direct
ness of ./Eschylus impresses us mightily; the same
massive breadth of treatment we find also, al
though in a minor degree, in Sophocles and
Euripides: on all three dramatists it was imposed
by the physical conditions of the theatre. Their
plays were to be performed out of doors, by actors
speaking through a resonant mouthpiece in a huge
mask, and lifted on high shoes so that they might
be seen by thousands of spectators from all classes
of the people. Of necessity the dramatist chose
for his subject a familiar tale, and gave it the ut
most simplicity of plot, while he sought a gradually
increasing intensity of emotion. The movement
of his story must needs be slow; there was no
change of scene, and there was no violence of ac
tion. Thus it happens that the impassable dignity
of the Greek drama was due, not wholly to the
242
PEN AND INK.
esthetic principles of Greek art, but to the physi
cal conditions of the Greek theatre. The so-called
rule of the three unities the rule that a play
should show but one action in one place and in
one day, a rule that later critics deduced from the
practice of the Greeks was not consciously
obeyed by ./Eschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides, al
though the most of their plays seem to fall within
it, simply from force of circumstances.
As different as may be were the large and splen
did open-air representations of these great Greek
dramas before the assembled citizens of a Greek
state, and the cramped and dingy performances of
Shakspere's plays in the rude theatre of Queen
Elizabeth's day, when the stage was but a small
platform set up at one end of the half-roofed court
yard of an inn. Then there was but a handful of
spectators, standing thickly in the pit or seated in
the shallow galleries close to the actors. The
stage was unencumbered with scenery, and author
and actors felt themselves free to fill it with move
ment; and so the plays of that time abound in
murders and trials, in councils and in battles. The
audience had perforce to imagine the background
of the story, and so the authors did not hesitate to
change the scene with careless frequency. As the
noble marble theatres of Greece imposed on the
dramatist an equal severity, so the mean, half-
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS.
243
timbered playhouses of Elizabethan England war
ranted the noisy violence and the rushing eloquence
and the fiery poesy which seem to us to-day chief
among the characteristics of the dramatic literature
of that epoch.
Crossing the Channel to France, we find that
the decorum and pseudo-dignity of tragedy under
Louis XIV. are due, in part at least, to the court
plumes and velvet coats which the actors wore
even when personating the noblest of Romans or
the simplest of Greeks; and also to the fact that
the stage was circumscribed by a double row of
benches occupied by the courtiers. Through the
ranks of these fine gentlemen, coming and going
at their will, and chatting together freely, the Cid
and Phedre had to make their way to a small cen
tral space where they might stand stock-still to
declaim. Swift motion and even vigorous gesture
were impossible. The wily Racine found his ac
count in substituting a subtle self-analytic and con
centrated psychologic action for purely physical
movement, a choice consonant to his genius.
On the production of Voltaire's 'Semiramis,'
it is recorded that an usher had to break
through the ring of spectators seated and stand
ing on the stage, with a plaintive appeal that
they would make way for the ghost of Ninus.
Under conditions like these it is no wonder that
244
PEN AND INK.
in time French tragedy stiffened into a parody
of itself.
The physical conditions of the stage are different
in every time and in every place; they are continu
ally changing; but the true dramatist makes his
work conform to them, consciously or uncon
sciously. The poet who is not a true dramatist
seeks to model a modern drama on an ancient
a fundamental and fatal defect. The attempt of
Voltaire to imitate Sophocles was foredoomed to
failure. The endeavor of many later English poets
to use the Shaksperian formula is equally futile.
Mr. Stedman has shrewdly pointed out that
Tennyson's ' Queen Mary ' differs from the work
of the Elizabethan dramatist in that it is the result
of a "forced effort, while the models after which
it is shaped were in their day an intuitive form of
expression."
This forced effort is really due to a misunder
standing of the older dramatists. If Sophocles had
lived in the days of Voltaire, he would have writ
ten in accordance with the physical conditions of
the French theatre of that era. If Shakspere had
lived in the days of /Eschylus, he would have pro
duced Greek plays of the most sublime simplicity.
Were he alive now, we may be sure that he would
not construct a piece in mimicry of the Elizabethan
dramatists, as Lord Tennyson chose to do. He
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS.
245
would use the most modern form: and, incom
parable craftsman as he was, he would bend to
his bidding every modern improvement music,
costume, scenery, and lighting. Were Caesar and
Napoleon men of our time, they would not now
fight with the short sword or the flint-lock, but
with the Winchester and the Gatling.
This, I take it, is one of the chief characteristics
of the true dramatist that he sees at once when
a form is outworn, and lets the dead past bury its
dead ; that he utilizes all the latest devices of the
stage, while recognizing frankly and fully the
limitations imposed by the physical conditions of
the theatre. As I have already suggested, these
limitations forbid not a few of the effects permissi
ble to the novelist No dramatist may open his
story with a solitary horseman, as was once the
fashion of fiction ; nor can he show the hero casu
ally rescuing the heroine from a prairie on fire, or
from a slip into the rapids of Niagara; and he finds
it impossible to get rid of the villain by throwing
him under the wheels of a locomotive. Not only
is the utilization of the forces of nature very diffi
cult on the stage, and extremely doubtful, but the
description of nature herself is out of place; and
however expert the scene-painter, he cannot hope
to vie with Victor Hugo or Hawthorne in calling
up before the eye the grandeur or the picturesque-
246 PEN AND INK.
ness of the scene where the action of the story
comes to its climax.
Time was when the drama was first, and prose-
fiction limped a long way after; time was when
the novelists, even the greatest of them, began as
playwrights. Cervantes, Le Sage, Fielding, all
studied the art of character-drawing on the boards
of a theatre, although no one of their plays keeps
the stage to-day, while we still read with undi-
minished zest the humorous record of the adven
tures and misadventures of Don Quixote, Gil Bias,
and Tom Jones. Scott was, perhaps, the first great
novelist who did not learn his trade behind the
scenes. It seemed to Lowell that before Fielding
"real life formed rather the scenic background
than the substance, and that the characters are,
after all, merely players who represent certain
types rather than the living types themselves."
It may be suggested that the earlier novels reflected
the easy expedients and artificial manners of the
theatre, much as the writers may have employed
the processes of the stage. Since Fielding and
Scott the novel has been expanding, until it seeks
to overshadow its elder brother. The old inter
dependence of the drama and prose-fiction has
ceased; nowadays the novel and the play are
independent, each with its own aims and its own
methods.
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS.
247
While, on the one hand, there are not lacking
those who see in the modern novel but a bastard
epic in low prose, so there are not wanting others,
novelists and critics of literature, chiefly in France,
where the principles of dramatic art are better
understood than elsewhere, who are so impressed
by the number and magnitude of the restrictions
which bind the dramatist that they are inclined
to declare the drama itself to be an outworn form.
They think that the limitations imposed on the
dramatist are so rigid that first-rate literary work
men will not accept them, and that first-rate
literary work cannot be hoped for. These critics
are on the verge of hinting that nowadays the
drama is little more than a polite amusement, just
as others might call oratory now little more than
the art of making after-dinner speeches. They
suggest that the play is sadly primitive when
compared with the perfected novel of the nine
teenth century. They remark that the drama can
show but a corner of life, while prose-fiction may
reveal almost the whole of it. They assert boldly
that the drama is no longer the form of literature
best suited to the treatment of the subjects in
which the thinking people of to-day are interested.
They declare that the novelist may grapple reso
lutely with a topic of the times, though the drama
tist dare not scorch his fingers with a burning
248 PEN AND INK.
question. The Goncourts, in the preface of their
undramatic play, ' La Patrie en Danger,' announced
that "the drama of to-day is not literature."
It is well to mass these criticisms together that
they may be met once and for all. It is true that
the taste for analysis which dominates the prose-
fiction of our time has affected the drama but
little; and it is not easy to say whether or not
the formulas of the theatre can be so enlarged,
modified, and made more delicate that the drama
tist can really rival the novelist in psychologic
subtlety. Of course, if the novel continues to
develop in one direction in accordance with a
general current of literature, and if the drama does
not develop along the same lines, then the drama
will be left behind, and it will become a mere
sport, an empty spectacle, a toy for children,
spoon-meat for babes.
A book, however fine or peculiar, delicate or
spiritual, goes in time to the hundred or the thou
sand congenial spirits for whom it was intended;
it may not get to its address at once or even in its
author's lifetime; but sooner or later its message
is delivered to all who are ready to receive it. A
play can have no such fate; and for it there is
no redemption, if once it is damned. It cannot
live by pleasing a few only; to earn the right to
exist, it must please the many. And this is at
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS. 349
the bottom of all dislike for the dramatic form
that it appeals to the crowd, to the broad public,
to all classes alike, rich and poor, learned and
ignorant, rough and refined. And this is to me
the great merit of the drama, that it cannot be
dilettante, finikin, precious, narrow. It must
handle broad themes broadly. It must deal with
the common facts of humanity. It is the democrat
of literature. Theophile Gautier, who disliked the
theatre, said that an idea never found its way on
the stage until it was worn threadbare in news
papers and in novels. And he was not far out.
As the drama appeals to the public at large, it
must consider seriously only those subjects which
the public at large can understand and are inter
ested in. There are exceptions, no doubt, now
and again, when an adroit dramatist succeeds in
captivating the public with a theme still in de
bate. M. Sardou, for example, wrote 'Daniel Ro-
chat ' ten years before Mrs. Ward wrote ' Robert
Elsmere,' and the Frenchman's play was acted in
New York for more than a hundred nights. M.
Alexandre Dumas fits has again and again dis
cussed on the stage marriage and divorce and
other problems that vex mankind to-day. And
in Scandinavia, Henrik Ibsen, a dramatist of ex
ceeding technical skill and abundant ethical vigor,
has brought out a series of dramas (many of them
250
PEN AND INK.
successful on the stage), of which the most im
portant is 'Ghosts,' wherein he considers with
awful moral force the doctrine of heredity, proving
by example that the sins of the fathers are visited
on the children. With instances like these in our
memories, we may suggest that the literary defi
ciencies of the drama are not in the form, but in
the inexpertness or inertness of the dramatists of
the day. There are few of the corner-stone facts
of human life, and there are none of the crucible-
tried passions of human character, which the
drama cannot discuss quite as well as the novel.
Indeed, the drama is really the noblest form of
literature, because it is the most direct. It calls
forth the highest of literary faculties in the highest
degree the creation of character, standing firm
on its own feet, and speaking for itself. The per
son in a play must be and do, and the spectator
must see what he is, and what he does, and why.
There is no narrator standing by to act as chorus,
and there needs none. If the dramatist know his
trade, if he have the gift of the born playwright,
if his play is well made, then there is no call for
explanation or analysis, no necessity of dissecting
or refining, no demand for comment or sermon,
no desire that any one palliate or denounce what
all have seen. Actions speak louder than words.
That this direct dramatic method is fine enough
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS. 25!
for the most abstruse intellectual self-questioning
when the subject calls for this, and that in the
mighty hand of genius it is capable of throwing
light in the darkest corners and crannies of the
tortured and tortuous human soul, ought not to
be denied by any one who may have seen on the
stage the 'CEdipus' of Sophocles, the 'Hamlet'
of Shakspere, the 'Misanthrope' of Moliere, or the
' Faust ' of Goethe.
(1889)
X
THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS
THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS.
OUBTLESS criticism was originally be
nignant, pointing out the beauties
of a work rather than its defects.
The passions of man have made it
malignant, as the bad heart of Pro
crustes turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into
an instrument of torture." So wrote Longfellow
a-many years ago, thinking, it maybe, on 'English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' or on the Jedburgh
justice of Jeffrey. But we may question whether
the poet did not unduly idealize the past, as is the
custom of poets, and whether he did not unfairly
asperse the present. With the general softening
of manners, no doubt those of the critic have
improved also. Surely, since a time whereof the
memory of man runneth not to the contrary, "to
criticise," in the ears of many, if not of most, has
been synonymous with "to find fault." In Far-
quhar's 'Inconstant,' now nearly two hundred
years old, Petit says of a certain lady: "She's a
*55
256 PEN AND INK.
critic, sir; she hates a jest, for fear it should please
her."
The critics themselves are to blame for this mis
apprehension of their attitude. When Mr. Arthur
Pendennis wrote reviews for the Pall Mall Gazette,
he settled the poet's claims as though he ' ' were my
lord on the bench, and the author a miserable little
suitor trembling before him." The critic of this
sort acts not only as jury and judge, first finding
the author guilty and then putting on the black
cap to sentence him to the gallows, but he often
volunteers as executioner also, laying on a round
dozen lashes with his own hand and with a hearty
good will. We are told, for example, that Cap
tain Shandon knew the crack of Warrington's
whip and the cut his thong left. Bludyer went
to work like a butcher and mangled his subject,
but Warrington finished a man, laying " his cuts
neat and regular, straight down the back, and
drawing blood every time."
Whenever I recall this picture I understand the
protest of one of the most acute and subtle of
American critics, who told me that he did not
much mind what was said about his articles so
long as they were not called "trenchant." Per
haps trenchant is the adjective which best defines
what true criticism is not. True criticism, so Jou-
bert tells us, is un exercice mtthodique de discerne-
THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS.
257
ment. It is an effort to understand and to explain.
The true critic is no more an executioner than he
is an assassin ; he is rather a seer, sent forward to
spy out the land, and most useful when he comes
back bringing a good report and bearing a full
cluster of grapes.
La critique sans bonU trouble le gout et empoi-
sonne les saveurs, said Joubert again; unkindly
criticism disturbs the taste and poisons the savor.
No one of the great critics was unkindly. That
Macaulay mercilessly flayed Montgomery is evi
dence, were any needed, that Macaulay was not
one of the great critics. The tomahawk and the
scalping-knife are not the critical apparatus, and
they are not to be found in the armory of Lessing
and of Sainte-Beuve, of Matthew Arnold and of
James Russell Lowell. It is only incidentally
that these devout students of letters find fault.
Though they may ban now and again, they came
to bless. They chose their subjects, for the most
part, because they loved these, and were eager to
praise them and to make plain to the world the
reasons for their ardent affection. Whenever they
might chance to see incompetence and pretension
pushing to the front, they shrugged their shoul
ders more often than not, and passed by on the
other side silently ; and so best. Very rarely did
they cross over to expose an impostor.
258 PEN AND INK.
Lessing waged war upon theories of art, but he
kept up no fight with individual authors. Sainte-
Beuve sought to paint the portrait of the man as
he was, warts and all; but he did not care for a
sitter who was not worth the most loving art.
Matthew Arnold was swift to find the joints in
his opponent's armor; but there is hardly one of
his essays in criticism which had not its exciting
cause in his admiration for its subject. Lowell
has not always hidden his scorn of a sham, and
sometimes he has scourged it with a single sharp
phrase. Generally, however, even the humbugs
get off scot-free, for the true critic knows that
Time will attend to these fellows, and there is
rarely any need to lend a hand. It was Bentley
who said that no man was ever written down
save by himself.
The late Edmond Scherer once handled M.
mile Zola without gloves: and M. Jules Lemaitre
has made M. Georges Ohnet the target of his
flashing wit. But each of these attacks attained
notoriety from its unexpectedness. And what
has been gained in either case ? Since Scherer fell
foul of him, M. Zola has written his strongest
novel, ' Germinal ' (one 01 the most powerful tales
of this century), and his rankest story, ' La Terre '
(one of the most offensive fictions in all the history
of literature). M. Lemaitre's brilliant assault on
THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS.
259
M. Ohnet may well have excited pity for the
wretched victim; and, damaging as it was, I
doubt if its effect is as fatal as the gentler and
more humorous criticism of M. Anatole France, in
which the reader sees contempt slowly gaining the
mastery over the honest critic's kindliness.
For all that he was a little prim in taste and a
little arid in manner, Scherer had the gift of appre
ciation the most precious possession of any
critic. M. Lemaitre, despite his frank enjoyment
of his own skill in fence, has a faculty of hearty
admiration. There are thirteen studies in the first
series of his ' Contemporains,' and the dissection
of the unfortunate M. Ohnet is the only one in
which the critic does not handle his scalpel with
loving care. To run amuck through the throng
of one's fellow-craftsmen is not a sign of sanity
on the contrary. Depreciation is cheaper than
appreciation; and criticism which is merely de
structive is essentially inferior to criticism which
is constructive. That he saw so little to praise is
greatly against Poe's claim to be taken seriously as
a critic; so is his violence of speech; and so also
is the fact that those whom he lauded might be as
little deserving of his eulogy as those whom he
assailed were worthy of his condemnation. The
habit of intemperate attack which grew on Poe is
foreign to the serene calm of the higher criticism.
260 PEN AND INK.
F. D. Maurice made the shrewd remark that the
critics who take pleasure in cutting up mean books
soon deteriorate themselves subdued to that
they work in. It may be needful, once in a way,
to nail vermin to the barn door as a warning, and
thus we may seek a reason for Macaulay's cruel
treatment of Montgomery, and M. Lemaitre's piti
less castigation of M. Ohnet. But in nine cases
out of ten, or rather in ninety-nine out of a hun
dred, the attitude of the critic toward contempo
rary trash had best be one of absolute indifference,
sure that Time will sift out what is good, and that
Time winnows with unerring taste.
The duty of the critic, therefore, is to help the
reader to "get the best," in the old phrase of
the dictionary-venders, to choose it, to under
stand it, to enjoy it. To choose it, first of all;
so must the critic dwell with delighted insistence
upon the best books, drawing attention afresh to
the old and discovering the new with alert vi
sion. Neglect is the proper portion of the worth
less books of the hour, whatever may be their
vogue for the week or the month. It cannot be
declared too frequently that temporary popularity
is no sure test of real merit; else were ' Proverbial
Philosophy,' the 'Light of Asia,' and the 'Epic
of Hades ' the foremost British poems since the
decline of Robert Montgomery; else were the
THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS. 26 1
' Lamplighter ' (does any one read the ' Lamp
lighter' nowadays, I wonder?), 'Looking Back
ward,' and 'Mr. Barnes of New York ' the typical
American novels. No one can insist too often on
the distinction between what is "good enough "
for current consumption by a careless public, and
what is really good, permanent, and secure. No
one can declare with too much emphasis the dif
ference between what is literature and what is
not literature, nor the width of the gulf which
separates them. A critic who has not an eye
single to this distinction fails of his duty. Perhaps
the best way to make the distinction plain to the
reader is to persist in discussing what is vital and
enduring, pointedly passing over what may happen
to be accidentally popular.
Yet the critic mischooses who should shut him
self up with the classics of all languages and in
rapt contemplation of their beauties be blind to
the best work of his own time. If criticism itself
is to be seen of men, it must enter the arena and
bear a hand in the combat. The books which
have come down to us from our fathers and from
our grandfathers area blessed heritage, no doubt;
but there are a few books of like value to be picked
out of those which we of to-day shall pass along
to our children and to our grandchildren. It may
be even that some of our children are beginning
262 PEN AND INK.
already to set down in black and white their im
pressions of life, with a skill and with a truth
which shall in due season make them classics
also. Sainte-Beuve asserted that the real triumph
of the critic was when the poets whose praises
he had sounded and for whom he had fought
grew in stature and surpassed themselves, keep
ing, and more than keeping, the magnificent prom
ises which the critic, as their sponsor in baptism,
had made for them. Besides the criticism of the
classics, grave, learned, definitive, there is another
more alert, said Sainte-Beuve, more in touch with
the spirit of the hour, more lightly equipped, it may
be, and yet more willing to find answers for the
questions of the day. This more vivacious criti
cism chooses its heroes and encompasses them
about with its affection, using boldly the words
"genius" and "glory," however much this may
scandalize the lookers-on :
Nous tiendrons, pour lutter dans 1'arene lyrique,
Toi la lance, moi les coursiers.
To few critics is it given to prophesy the lyric
supremacy of a Victor Hugo it was in a review
of ' Les Feuilles d'Automne ' that Sainte-Beuve
made this declaration of principles. A critic lack
ing the insight and the equipment of Sainte-Beuve
may unduly despise an Ugly Duckling, or he may
THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS. 263
mistake a Goose for a Swan, only to wait in vain
for its song. Indeed, to set out of malice pre
pense to discover a genius is but a wild-goose
chase at best; and though the sport is pleasant
for those who follow, it may be fatal to the chance
fowl who is expected to lay a golden egg. Long
fellow's assertion that " critics are sentinels in the
grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of
newspapers and reviews to challenge every new
author," may not be altogether acceptable, but it
is at least the duty of the soldier to make sure of
the papers of those who seek to enlist in the
garrison.
" British criticism has always been more or less
parochial," said Lowell, many years ago, before
he had been American Minister at St. James's. "It
cannot quite persuade itself that truth is of immor
tal essence, totally independent of all assistance
from quarterly journals or the British army and
navy." No doubt there has been a decided im
provement in the temper of British criticism since
this was written ; it is less parochial than it was,
and it is perhaps now one of its faults that it af
fects a cosmopolitanism to which it does not attain.
But even now an American of literary taste is
simply staggered there is no other word for it
whenever he reads the weekly reviews of contem
porary fiction in the Atbenceum, the Academy, the
264 PEN AND INK -
Spectator, and the Saturday Review, and when he
sees high praise bestowed on novels so poor that
no American pirate imperils his salvation to reprint
them. The encomiums bestowed, for example,
upon such tales as those which are written by the
ladies who call themselves "Rita," and "The
Duchess " and "The Authoress of 'The House
on the Marsh,' " seem hopelessly uncritical. The
writers of most of these reviews are sadly lacking
in literary perception and in literary perspective.
The readers of these reviews if they had no
other sources of information would never sus
pect that the novel of England is no longer what
it was once, and that it is now inferior in art to the
novel of France, of Spain, and of America. If the
petty minnows are magnified thus, what lens will
serve fitly to reproduce the lordly salmon or the
stalwart tarpon ? Those who praise the second-
rate or the tenth-rate in terms appropriate only to
the first-rate are derelict to the first duty of the
critic which is to help the reader to choose the
best.
And the second duty of the critic is like unto
the first. It is to help the reader to understand
the best. There is many a book which needs to
be made plain to him who runs as he reads, and
it is the running reader of these hurried years that
the critic must needs address. There are not a
THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS. 265
few works of high merit (although none, perhaps,
of the very highest) which gain by being explained,
even as Philip expounded Esaias to the eunuch of
Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians, getting up into
his chariot and guiding him. Perhaps it is para
doxical to suggest that a book of the very highest
class is perforce clear beyond all need of com
mentary or exposition; but it is indisputable that
familiarity may blur the outline and use may wear
away the sharp edges, until we no longer see the
masterpiece as distinctly as we might, nor do we
regard it with the same interest. Here again the
critic finds his opportunity; he may show the pe
rennial freshness of that which seemed for a while
withered ; and he may interpret again the meaning
of the message an old book may bring to a new
generation. Sometimes this message is valuable
and yet invisible from the outside, like the political
pamphlets which were smuggled into the France
of the Second Empire concealed in the hollow
plaster busts of Napoleon III., but ready to the
hand that knew how to extract them adroitly at
the proper time.
The third duty of the critic, after aiding the
reader to choose the best and to understand it, is
to help him to enjoy it. This is possible only
when the critic's own enjoyment is acute enough
to be contagious. However well informed a critic
2 66 PEN AND INK.
may be, and however keen he may be, if he be
not capable of the cordial admiration which warms
the heart, his criticism is wanting. A critic whose
enthusiasm is not catching lacks the power of dis
seminating his opinions. His judgment may be
excellent, but his influence remains negative.
One torch may light many a fire ; and how far a
little candle throws its beams ! Perhaps the ability
to take an intense delight in another man's work,
and the willingness to express this delight frankly
and fully, are two of the characteristics of the true
critic; of a certainty they are the characteristics
most frequently absent in the criticaster. Con
sider how Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold and
Lowell have sung the praises of those whose poems
delighted them. Note how Mr. Henry James and
M. Jules Lemaitre are affected by the talents of
Alphonse Daudet and of Guy de Maupassant.
Having done his duty to the reader, the critic
has done his full duty to the author also. It is to
the people at large that the critic is under obliga
tions, not to any individual. As he cannot take
cognizance of a work of art, literary or dramatic,
plastic or pictorial, until after it is wholly complete,
his opinion can be of little benefit to the author.
A work of art is finally finished when it comes
before the public, and the instances are very few
indeed when an author has ever thought it worth
THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS. 267
while to modify the form in which it was first pre
sented to the world. A work of science, on the other
hand, depending partly on the exactness of the
facts which it sets forth and on which it is founded,
may gain from the suggested emendations of a
critic. Many a history, many a law-book, many
a scientific treatise, has been bettered in successive
editions by hints gleaned here and there from the
reviews of experts.
But the work of art stands on a wholly different
footing from the work of science; and the critics
have no further duty toward the author, except,
of course, to treat him fairly, and to present him
to the public if they deem him worthy of this
honor. The novel or the poem being done once
for all, it is hardly possible for critics to be of any
use to the novelist or to the poet personally. The
artist of experience makes up his mind to this,
and accepts criticism as something which has
little or nothing to do with his work, but which
may materially affect his position before the public.
Thackeray, who understood the feelings and the
failings of the literary man as no one else, has
shown us Mr. Arthur Pendennis reading the news
paper notices of his novel, 'Walter Lorraine,' and
sending them home to his mother. "Their cen
sure did not much affect him ; for the good-natured
young man was disposed to accept with consid-
268 PEN AND INK.
arable humility the dispraise of others. Nor did
their praise elate him overmuch; for, like most
honest persons, he had his own opinion about his
own performance, and when a critic praised him
in the wrong place he was hurt rather than pleased
by the compliment."
Mr James tells us that the author of ' Smoke '
and 'Fathers and Sons,' a far greater novelist than
the author of 'Walter Lorraine,' had a serene
indifference toward criticism. Turgenef gave
Mr. James "the impression of thinking of criti
cism as most serious workers think of it that it
is the amusement, the exercise, the subsistence
of the critic (and, so far as this goes, of immense
use), but that, though it may often concern other
readers, it does not much concern the artist him
self." Though criticism is of little use to the
author directly, it can be of immense service to
him indirectly, if it be exposition rather than com
ment; not a bald and barren attempt at classifica
tion, but a sympathetic interpretation. At bottom,
sympathy is the prime requisite of the critic; and
with sympathy come appreciation, penetration,
revelation such, for example, as the American
novelist has shown in his criticisms of the Russian.
There is one kind of review of no benefit either
to the author or to the public. This is the careless,
perfunctory book-notice, penned hastily by a tired
THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS. 269
writer, who does not take the trouble to formulate
his opinion, and perhaps not even to form one.
Toward the end of 1889 there appeared in a Brit
ish weekly the following notice of a volume of
American short stories :
A littery gent in one of Mr. [ ]'s short stories says: "A
good idea for a short story is a shy bird, and doesn't come for
the calling." Alas! alas! it is true. The French can call a
great deal better than we can; but the Americans, it would
seem, cannot. The best of Mr. [ ]'s stories is the first,
about a tree which grew out of the bosom of a buried suicide,
and behaved accordingly to his descendants; but, so far from
being a short story, it is a long one, extending over some hun
dreds of years, and it suffers from the compression which Mr.
[ ] puts upon it. It deserves to have a volume to itself.
Refraining from all remark upon the style in
which this paragraph is written or upon the taste
of the writer, I desire to call attention to the fact
that it is not what it purports to be. It is not a
criticism within the accepted meaning of the word.
It indicates no intellectual effort on the part of its
writer to understand the author of the book. An
author would need to be superlatively sensitive who
could take offense at this paragraph, and an author
who could find pleasure in it would have to be
unspeakably vain. To me this notice seems the
absolute negation of criticism mere words with
no suggestion of a thought behind them. The
PEN AND INK.
man who dashed this off robbed the author of a
criticism to which he was entitled if the book was
worth reviewing at all; and in thus shirking his
bounden duty he also cheated the proprietor of the
paper who paid him. Empty paragraphing of this
offensive character is commoner now than it was a
few years ago, commoner in Great Britain than in
the United States, and commoner in anonymous
articles than in those warranted by the signature
of the writer. Probably the man who was guilty
of this innocuous notice would have been ashamed
to put his name to it.
If a book is so empty that there is nothing to
say about it, then there is no need to say anything.
It is related that when a dramatist, who was read
ing a play before the Committee of the Comedie
Franchise, rebuked M. Got for slumbering peace
fully during this ceremony, the eminent comedian
answered promptly, " Sleep, monsieur, is also an
opinion." If a book puts the critic to sleep, or
so benumbs his faculties that he finds himself
speechless, he has no call to proceed further in
the matter. Perhaps the author may take heart
of grace when he remembers that of all Shak-
spere's characters, it was the one with the ass's
head who had an exposition of sleep come upon
him, as it was the one with the blackest heart who
said he was nothing if not critical.
THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS.
271
If I were to attempt to draw up Twelve Good
Rules for Reviewers, I should begin with :
I. Form an honest opinion.
II. Express it honestly.
III. Don't review a book which you'cannot take
seriously.
IV. Don't review a book with which you are
out of sympathy. That is to say, put yourself in
the author's place, and try to see his work from
his point of view, which is sure to be a coign of
vantage.
V. Stick to the text. Review the book be
fore you, and not the book some other author
might have written; obiter dicta are as value
less from the critic as from the judge. Don't
go off on a tangent. And also don't go round
in a circle. Say what you have to say, and
stop. Don't go on writing about and about the
subject, and merely weaving garlands of flowers
of rhetoric.
VI. Beware of the Sham Sample, as Charles
Reade called it. Make sure that the specimen
bricks you select for quotation do not give a false
impression of the facade, and not only of the ele
vation merely, but of the perspective also, and of
the ground-plan.
VII. In reviewing a biography or a history, criti
cise the book before you, and don't write a parallel
372 PEN AND INK.
essay for which the volume you have in hand
serves only as a peg.
VIII. In reviewing a work of fiction, don't give
away the plot. In the eyes of the novelist, this
is the unpardonable sin. And, as it discounts the
pleasure of the reader also, it is almost equally un
kind to him.
IX. Don't try to prove every successful author
a plagiarist. It may be that many a successful
author has been a plagiarist, but no author ever
succeeded because of his plagiary.
X. Don't break a butterfly on a wheel. If a book
is not worth much, it is not worth reviewing.
XI. Don't review a book as an east wind would
review an apple-tree so it was once said Doug
las Jerrold was wont to do. Of what profit to
any one is mere bitterness and vexation of spirit ?
XII. Remember that the critic's duty is to the
reader mainly, and that it is to guide him not
only to what is good, but to what is best. Three
parts of what is contemporary must be temporary
only.
Having in the past now and again fallen from
grace myself and written criticism, I know that
on such occasions these Twelve Good Rules would
have been exceedingly helpful to me had I then
possessed them; therefore I offer them now hope
fully to my fellow-critics. But I find myself in a
THE WHOLE DUTY OF CRITICS.
273
state of humility (to which few critics are accus
tomed), and I doubt how far my good advice will
be heeded. I remember that, after reporting the
speech in which Poor Richard's maxims were all
massed together, Franklin tells us that "thus the
old gentleman ended his harangue. The people
heard it and approved the doctrine; and imme
diately practised the contrary, just as if it had been
a common sermon."
(1890)
AN EPISTLE
To (Master Grander {Matthews, writer, on tie occasion of bis
putting fortb a booh entitled " 'Pen and Ink."
New London, Conn., Sept. 10, 1888.
Dear Grander:
I have known ihee long, and found
Thee wise in council, and of judgment sound;
Steadfast in friendship, sound and clear in wit t
And more in virtues than may here be writ.
But most I joy, in these machine-made days.
To see thee constant in a craftsman's ways;
That the plain tool that knew thy 'prentice hand
Gathers no rust upon thy writing-stand;
That no Invention saves the labor due
To any Task that's worth the going through;
That now when butter snubs the stranger churn,
Plain pen and ink still serve a writer s turn.
Though I, more firmly orthodox, still hold,
In dire default of quills, to steel or gold,
And though thy pen be rubber let it pass
A breath of blemish on thy soul's clear glass.
971
There is no "writing fluid " in thy pot,
'But honest ink ofnutgatt brew, God wot!
Thou dost not an eleftric needle ply
And, like a housewife with an apple-pie,
Prick thy fair page into a stencil-plate
Then daub with lampblack for a duplicate.
Nor thine the sloven page whereon the shirk
With the rough tool attempts the finished work,
And introduces to the sight of men
The Valet Pencil for the Matter Pen.
Not att like thee! in this uneasy age,
When more by trick than toil we earn our wage.
Here by the sea a gentle poet dwells,
And in fair leisure weaves bis magic Spells;
And yet doth dare with countenance serene
To weave them on a tinkling steel machine.
Where an impertinent and soulless bell
Rings, at each finished line, a jangling hneU.
The muse and I, we love him, and I think
She MAY forgive his slight to pen and ink,
And let no dull mechanic cam or cog
The lightsome movement of his metres clog;
But oh! I grieve to see his fingers toy
With this base slave in dalliance close and coy,
While in his standisb dries the atrid Spring
Where hides the shyer muse that loves to sing.
Give me the old-time ink, black, flowing, free,
And give, oh, give! the old goose-quill to me
The goose-quill, whispering of humility.
-\
It whispers to the bard: "Fly not too bigb!
You flap your wings remember, so could I.
I cackled in my lifetime, it is true;
'But yet again remember, so do You.
And tbere were some things possible to me
That possible to you will never be.
I stood for hours on one columnar leg,
And, if my sex were such, could lay an egg.
Ob, well for you, if you could thus beget
Material for your morning omelette;
Or, iftbings came to such a defperate pass,
You could in calm contentment nibble grass!
Conceited bard ! and can you sink to rest
Upon the feather-pillow of your breast?"
Hold, my dear Grander, to your pot of ink:
The muse sits poised upon that fountain's brink.
eAnd that you long may live to bold a pen
I'll breatbe a prayer;
The world will say "Amen!"
H. C. BUNNER.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
Los Angeles
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