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 
 
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