THE IBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 I.
 
 y 
 
 1/ 
 
 i/
 
 BOOKS AND PLAYS
 
 * 
 « 
 
 * This Edition is limited to 400 copies.
 
 Books and Plays 
 
 By Allan Monkhouse 
 
 LONDON 
 
 ELKIN MATHEWS 
 
 AND JOHN LANE 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT Co. 
 
 MDCCCXCIV
 
 SI I 
 
 To L. M. 
 
 
 554y. 
 
 OGLISII
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MR Meredith's novels . . . . i 
 MR Meredith's poems . . . , 47 
 
 GEORGE borrow 8o 
 
 TURGENIEFF 1 18 
 
 IBSEN's SOCIAL PLAYS . . . -155 
 
 THREE PLAYS BY MR STEVENSON AND MR 
 
 HENLEY l86 
 
 THE POLITICS OF DRAMATIC ART . . 193
 
 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 MR MEREDITH'S NOVELS 
 
 Mr Meredith's position among contemporary 
 novelists is a peculiar one though it has recently 
 undergone some modification. His following 
 has hitherto made up in enthusiasm what it has 
 lacked in numbers, but he has lately become 
 known to a wider circle of readers, and has 
 necessarily, therefore, increased his admirers, who 
 have been encouraged to proclaim their belief 
 in his powers and accomplishments, and their 
 confidence in his ultimate recognition as one of 
 the first literary artists of his time and country. 
 His increased fame seems to date from the 
 publication of ' Diana of the Cross ways,' which 
 is less fitted to the requirements of popular 
 taste than others of his books, but which had 
 the advantage of timely and unsparmg praise 
 
 A
 
 2 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 from several of the critical journals. Whether 
 this accounts in any measure for its relatively 
 remarkable success or not, it appears to have 
 been the first of Mr Meredith's books to pene- 
 trate beyond a very limited circle. The result 
 has been an increased and, perhaps, increasing 
 interest in his productions, several of which had 
 been for some time out of print, and, as Mr 
 Stevenson said, ' sought for on bookstalls like 
 an Aldine.' Now we have them in a cheap 
 and in a cheaper edition, and other signs of 
 popular attention are not wanting. The new 
 journalism knows all about him, he is discussed 
 in the critical weeklies, and if he has not yet 
 attained the honour of the proverbial 'slating' 
 in the Quarterly^ he has been shown his place — 
 which is not with the novelists it seems — by 
 a distinguished writer in the National Review. 
 At the time when popular attention was 
 directed toward him most of his books were 
 either out of print or little known. Presently 
 some half dozen masterpieces were tumbled upon 
 the market, and they have proved a little difl5- 
 cult to digest. They are not like anything to 
 which we were accustomed, for Mr Meredith 
 has steadily pursued his own ideal, disregarding 
 all temptations to aim at a superficial success.
 
 MR Meredith's novels 
 
 His style shows few signs of conformity to 
 any accepted standard, and, though his human 
 sympathy is wide and deep, he has not scrupled 
 to express his friendly contempt for the judg- 
 ment of the ' British Public' Yet the British 
 Public learns its lesson even though it learns it 
 by rote. It can show tolerance and simulate 
 respect towards Browning, and there are some 
 striking points of resemblance between him and 
 Mr Meredith. They are masters of the in- 
 direct, the presentation by side-lights, inferences 
 and hints, a rare and curious trait in writers 
 so intense and earnest. Both are enemies of 
 sentimentalisms and scourgers of cants and 
 shams. Fortified by far different creeds, they 
 front alike inevitable evil and misfortune with 
 stout hearts, declaring that this is yet a world 
 in which wisdom is on the side of joy and not of 
 grief. There is, too, the obvious analogy that 
 their strong and wilful personalities sometimes 
 find perverse and obscure expression, and if Mr 
 Meredith has not yet the advantage of a society 
 to elucidate his meaning it is not the fault of 
 his poems, which offer extraordinary oppor- 
 tunities for floundering. Between the novels and 
 the poems there is an interesting race for fame, 
 and perhaps it is the latest fashion to praise the
 
 4 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 poems at the expense of the novels. Readers 
 of poetry have at least the intention to seek 
 for intellectual beauty, and are usually more 
 critical and discerning than the average of 
 novel readers, whose demand is for something 
 light and amusing coupled with the current 
 morality. For this reason the poems might 
 be expected to have a relatively wider accept- 
 ance, though their bibliography hardly bears out 
 such a conclusion. But neither are likely to 
 become widely popular. A popular artist who 
 is also a great artist is not popular by virtue 
 of his art; Tennyson's sentiment has penetrated 
 beyond his poetry; the farce and melodrama of 
 Dickens have attracted more than that humour 
 and pathos which a younger generation is 
 beginning to find antiquated; Sir John Millais's 
 pretty pictures have made more friends than 
 his beautiful ones ; and Shakespeare himself, 
 if he is popular, which is, perhaps, an un- 
 verified assumption, owes it to such accidental 
 circumstances as the force of tradition, the 
 insistence of critics, our national vanity, and 
 the fact that, apart from their greater qualities, 
 several of his plays may be distorted into 
 effective entertainments. 
 
 Mr Meredith has none of these secondary
 
 MR Meredith's novels 
 
 qualifications which help to make a supporting 
 public outside the circle of genuine appreciation. 
 Whether he could have achieved a great popular 
 success or not, he has never tried for it. He 
 must be taken on his own terms. He will not 
 vulgarise his art to obtain an audience; and as 
 the mountain shows no signs of coming to 
 Mahomet, Mahomet has begun to stir in the 
 direction of the mountain. To them who read 
 novels as the easiest form of brain rest, he is 
 impracticable and preposterous. His persistent 
 habit of putting things in an unusual way, for 
 the purpose of provoking ideas, when we have 
 been accustomed to cheat our brains with 
 phrases, results, occasionally, in something of 
 a hit or miss style, and though the successes 
 enormously outnumber the failures, these give 
 plausible opportunities to the zealous fault- 
 finder, who is an altogether different person 
 from the conscientious critic. Nor is he pos- 
 sessed with that touching devotion to our good 
 Anglo-Saxon, which prefers that a man should 
 fail to express his meaning, with a little word, 
 rather than resort to the hated polysyllable. 
 Then he is a professed psychologist, with some- 
 thing of a professional's taste for curious cases. 
 He has a turn for the fantastical, and his
 
 ° BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 creatures — truly children of his brain — are pos- 
 sessed, one and all, with ' thick coming fancies.' 
 Metaphors, analogies, similes, epigrams, chase 
 one another through his pages. It may savour 
 of a reproach, to say that he constantly aims 
 at wit, but I remember that Charles Lamb has 
 said (I don't know whether Lamb really said it, 
 but I conform gladly to the custom that gives 
 him all wandering good things that are good 
 enough), that this is, at least, better than aiming 
 at dulness. Wit, indeed, is assumed to be the 
 common attribute of the human race, and it 
 may be admitted that his manifestation of it is, 
 sometimes, brilliantly inappropriate. He has 
 such an abundance of good things to say, that 
 when he has worked off all that can be held by 
 introduction and digression, a few remain for 
 forcible distribution among his characters. And 
 so difficult and elusive are many of these good 
 things that it seems as if Mr Meredith, who has 
 faith in the progress of the race, is preparing 
 for a sharper-witted posterity. If these sugges- 
 tions appear flippant I can only say that a hasty 
 perusal of one of these novels has sometimes a 
 bewildering effect on a casual reader of this 
 generation. ' They are magnificent, but they 
 are not novels,' such an one may exclaim, or he
 
 MR Meredith's novels 
 
 will grant that there is a world of matter, but 
 without form and void. If it is acknowledged 
 that the novel is the most potent and highly- 
 organised of modern literary forms, careful study 
 is not an unreasonable demand, and careful 
 study will do much to remove these prejudices. 
 It will be found that order is gradually evolved 
 from seeming chaos; that every incident, every 
 character, and every comment, has its value in 
 forwarding the action or completing the picture. 
 We live in a critical age, and one reason for the 
 decline of the drama, before the novel, is probably 
 that the later form is not only a representation 
 of life, but gives opportunity for direct criticism 
 of it. Like all his fellows Mr Meredith is not 
 constantly dramatic — his own personality is in- 
 truded, from time to time, to deliver a kind of 
 explanatory lecture that is neither unwelcome 
 nor unnecessary. For these expressions are full 
 of ripe wisdom and genial humour and flowering 
 fancy. Without them we could never see every 
 side of the complex and changing figures that 
 they illumine. The recent romantic revival has 
 tended to discourage analytic processes, and, 
 perhaps, it is judicious to abstain from analysis 
 of some of the popular figures of contemporary 
 romance, but he has never been able to perceive,
 
 8 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 in life, the material for a flowing narrative. He 
 writes, as history is written now, with copious 
 notes, recognising the endless complications, 
 qualifications, reflections that prevent smooth or 
 rapid progress, but which give us the truth or 
 bring us nearer to it at last. 
 
 A friendly critic has yielded to the temptation 
 of epigram so far as to declare that Mr Meredith 
 might have been Moliere if he had not tried to 
 be Congreve, and his bouts of wit do occasionally 
 remind us of a kind of glorified drawing-room 
 game such as Congreve might have delighted in. 
 But between their wit in its most characteristic 
 expression there is a difference in kind. 'The 
 great art of Congreve is especially shown in this,' 
 says Lamb, ' that he has entirely excluded from 
 his scenes — some little generosities on the part 
 of Angelica perhaps excepted — not only any- 
 thing like a faultless character, but any preten- 
 sions to goodness or good feelings whatsoever.' 
 The wit that flourishes in such a soil can have 
 little in common with that which thus expresses 
 its ideal — 'The well of true wit is truth itself, 
 the gathering of the precious drops of right 
 reason, wisdom's lightning,' and whose function 
 is ' to strike roots in the mind, the Hesperides of 
 good things.' No better instance of this kind of
 
 MR Meredith's novels 9 
 
 wit occurs to me than Jenny Denham's reply to 
 Beauchamp, when he says of the election he has 
 lost — ' " It's only a skirmish lost, and that counts 
 for nothing in a battle without end; it must be 
 incessant." "But does incessant battling keep 
 the intellect clear? " ' was her memorable answer. 
 This is not in the style of the dexterous Congreve. 
 Yet Mr Meredith's wit does not aim to maintain 
 a pedantic standard. He takes a pleasure in 
 mental gymnastics that is not invariably shared 
 by the reader. ' Diana of the Crossways ' is 
 probably the wittiest novel in the language. Its 
 good things are pressed down and running over. 
 Diana's retort to Mrs Cramborne Wathin is some- 
 thing to be thankful for: — ' " Our life below is 
 short," she said, to which Diana tacitly assented. 
 " We have our little terms, Mrs Warwick, it is 
 soon over. On the other hand, the platitudes 
 concerning it are eternal." ' Again, when Lord 
 and Lady Esquart had been kept awake by the 
 strange performances of the bells in a Swiss vil- 
 lage, they are asked by Diana ' " what they had 
 talked of during the night ? " " You, my dear, 
 partly," said Lady Esquart. — " For an opiate ? " 
 — " An invocation of the morning," said Dacier.' 
 Of a very different kind from such splendidly 
 luminous wit is this : ' " Women are a blank to
 
 lo BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 men, I believe," said Whitmonby, and Westlake 
 said — " Traces of a singular scrawl have been 
 observed when they were held in close proximity 
 lo the fire." ' For an instance of Mr Meredith's 
 peculiarly felicitous employment of irony, we 
 must hear what Mrs Wathin says of her ideal 
 young woman: — ' " She does not pretend to wit. 
 To my thinking, depth of sentiment is a far more 
 feminine accomplishment." ' Yet another ex- 
 ample, and this is his own: — ' When we have 
 satisfied English sentiment our task is done in 
 every branch of art, I hear, and it will account 
 to posterity for the condition of the branches.' 
 It is, I suppose, almost a commonplace of com- 
 parative criticism that the novels of England 
 and of France offer this remarkable distinction, 
 that while we have usually and characteristically 
 been ready to sacrifice truth to what we call 
 decency, they have, in great measure, devoted 
 themselves to the study and magnification of one 
 class of physical phenomena and its social condi- 
 tions, to which they have assigned the position 
 and dedicated the powers due to universal truth. 
 Mr Meredith has named these opposite schools 
 or tendencies, the ' rose-pink ' and the ' dirty- 
 drab.* But besides the systems that treat of 
 man as a bourgeois convention and as a senti-
 
 MR Meredith's novels " 
 
 mental animal (though to do them justice they 
 have sometimes omitted the sentiment), there is 
 that whose subject for good or evil is the mind 
 and spirit of man, and which, recognising and 
 rejoicing in the ties that bind him to the earth, 
 can yet permit the declaration that ideas 'are 
 actually the motives of men in a greater degree 
 than their appetites.' In his essay on Balzac, 
 Mr Henry James has said — ' When we approach 
 Thackeray and George Eliot, George Sand and 
 TurgeniefiF, it is into the conscience and the 
 mind that we enter, and we think of these 
 writers primarily as great consciences and great 
 minds. When we approach Balzac we seem to 
 enter into a great temperament — a prodigious 
 nature.' He says again — ' A magnificent action 
 with him is not an action which is remarkable 
 for its high motive, but an action with a great 
 force of will or of desire behind it, which throws 
 it into striking and monumental relief. It may 
 be a magnificent sacrifice, a magnificent devo- 
 tion, a magnificent act of faith; but the pre- 
 sumption is that it will be a magnificent lie, a 
 magnificent murder, or a magnificent adultery.' 
 I do not presume to say how far these passages 
 are true of Balzac, or, to bring it nearer home, 
 in what limited and qualified sense they are true
 
 12 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 of our own Dickens, between whom and Balzac 
 the differences are, as Mr James says, chiefly of 
 race. They are quoted because they express and 
 distinguish, so much better than I can do, the 
 primary characteristic of Mr Meredith's genius. 
 He, too, is a great conscience and a great mind, 
 and the momentous questions of conduct and 
 of hfe that he raises are referred to this arbitra- 
 ment. They whom he thinks worthy of the 
 post of honour and danger — his heroes and 
 heroines — can count upon no pleasantly varie- 
 gated course of successful adventure. What 
 they do is not of such account as what they are 
 and what they may become. To him as to us 
 they are very real. He knows them well, and 
 he seeks to know them better. He plays upon 
 them from the lowest note to the top of their 
 compass. He plucks out the heart of their 
 mystery. They must pass through a fiery 
 ordeal in which no fair seeming dross avails. 
 He has love for them, but no mercy. Have 
 they a weakness? he exposes it; a shallowness? 
 he sounds it. He does not shrink from the 
 supreme test — to lay upon them a burden 
 greater than they can bear. 'Our souls,' he 
 says, ' if flame of a soul shall have come in the 
 agony of flesh, are beyond the baser mischances.*
 
 MR Meredith's novels 13 
 
 ' The philosopher,' who as he humorously says, 
 'fathers his dulness on me,' ' bids us to see that 
 we are not so pretty as rose-pink, not so repul- 
 sive as dirty-drab; and that, instead of everlast- 
 ingly shifting those barren aspects, the sight of 
 ourselves is wholesome, bearable, fructifying, 
 finally a delight.' ' And how do you know that 
 you have reached to philosophy ? You touch 
 her skirts when you share her hatred of the sham 
 decent, her derision of sentimentalism.' 
 
 It is said that when TurgeniefF was dying he 
 sent to his greatest rival a message begging him 
 to return to the exercise of the art that he had 
 deserted. To those who believe in Mr Meredith's 
 unselfish devotion to that art, his reproach to 
 Thackeray has something of a kindred pathos. 
 ' A great modern writer,' he says, ' of clearest 
 eye and head, now departed, capable in activity 
 of presenting thoughtful women, thinking men, 
 groaned over his puppetry — that he dared not 
 animate them, flesh though they were, with the 
 fires of positive brainstuff. He could have done 
 it, and he is of the departed ! Had he dared he 
 would (for he was Titan enough) have raised the 
 art in dignity on a level with history.' 
 
 But if it is the mental and moral side of life 
 that seems to Mr Meredith to be of peremptory
 
 14 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 importance, he has approached it in no narrow 
 or sectarian spirit. The large charity of humour 
 gives breadth and unity to his view. He has 
 the insight and catholicity of a poet, disdaining 
 neither science nor romance. Com.edy, he pro- 
 nounces to be our means of reading swiftly and 
 comprehensively. 'She it is who proposes the 
 correction of pretentiousness, of inflation, of dul- 
 ness, and the vestiges of rawness and grossness 
 to be found among us. She is the ultimate 
 civiliser, the polisher, a sweet cook. If she 
 watches over sentimentalism with a birch rod, 
 she is not opposed to romance. You may love, 
 and warmly love, so long as you are honest. 
 Do not offend reason.' Again, he says of ro- 
 mance : ' The young who avoid that region 
 escape the title of fool at the cost of a celestial 
 crown.' Of poetry: 'Those who have souls 
 meet their brothers there.' Yet though much 
 of his philosophy of life may be deduced from 
 the novels it is to the poems that we must turn 
 for a complete understanding of his view of the 
 relation of man to nature. 
 
 The subject of Mr Meredith's style is not to 
 be approached with a light heart for it is vari- 
 ously estimated as his chief virtue and as his 
 damning defect.
 
 MR Meredith's novels ^S 
 
 Though a style may be acquired that shall 
 have great effect in the regulation and control 
 of ideas, these come first in the natural order, 
 and that style is the best which gives them full 
 and proper expression. Swift is a great master 
 of style, because, as Landor says, ' No one ever 
 had such a power of saying forcibly and com- 
 pletely what he meant to say.' And as it would 
 have been impossible for the author of ' Sartor 
 Resartus ' to unburden himself in the style of 
 ' The Vicar of Wakefield,' so it is idle to expect 
 that ' The Egoist ' could be expressed in terms 
 of 'Tom Jones.' Mr Meredith is himself an 
 acute critic, and through the medium of Mr 
 Barrett, in ' Sandra Belloni,' has given us a 
 view, that we may perhaps venture to accept as 
 in some measure his view of individualism in 
 literature. I have condensed the following 
 passage : ' The point to be considered is whether 
 fiction demands a perfectly smooth surface. 
 Undoubtedly a scientific work does, and a philo- 
 sophic treatise should. When we ask for facts 
 simply, we feel the intrusion of a style. Of 
 fiction it is part. In the one case, the classical 
 robe, in the other, any mediaeval phantasy of 
 clothing. We are still fighting against the 
 Puritan element in literature as elsewhere.
 
 l6 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 And more than this, our language is not rich 
 in subtleties for prose. A writer who is not 
 servile, and has insight, must coin from his 
 own mint. In poetry, we are rich enough; but 
 in prose also we owe everything to licence our 
 poets have taken in the teeth of critics. Our 
 simplest prose style is nearer to poetry with us, 
 for this reason, that the poets have made it. 
 Read French poetry. With the first couplet 
 the sails are full, and you have left the shores 
 of prose far behind. An imaginative English- 
 man, pen in hand, is the cadet and vagabond of 
 the family, an exploring adventurer; whereas, 
 to a Frenchman, it all comes inherited, like a 
 well-filled purse. The audacity of the French 
 mind, and the French habit of quick social in- 
 tercourse, have made them nationally far richer 
 in language. Let me add, individually, as 
 much poorer. Read their stereotyped descrip- 
 tions. They all say the same things. They 
 have one big Gallic trumpet. Wonderfully 
 eloquent : we feel that : but the person does 
 not speak.' 
 
 Whatever may be said of Mr Meredith's 
 style — and it has sometimes been thought an 
 ill-favoured thing — it is assuredly his own. He 
 is not content to be the heir of the ages, but
 
 MR Meredith's novels 17 
 
 insists on bringing his own contribution. His 
 rapacious mind makes every thought his own 
 and dresses it in his hvery. He will have none 
 of the facile phrases that have done duty so 
 often as its expression. It is perhaps his mis- 
 fortune that he is not merely a man of genius, 
 but a very clever man of genius. He is in the 
 main stream of humanity and he trims his sail 
 to every breeze. The eternal is good with him 
 and so is the particular. Condensation, too, is 
 especially a characteristic of his style. A prodi- 
 gal in ideas he is a niggard in words, and gives 
 us ' infinite riches in a little room.' ' The art 
 of the pen is to arouse the inward vision,' he 
 says, and ' our flying minds cannot contain a 
 protracted description.' So, by the cultivation 
 of essential wit, he helps us forward in the 
 struggle against the physical limits of life. The 
 process of compression gives a cycle of Cathay 
 in the fifty years of Europe, and we can con- 
 ceive almost an immortality of contraction. 
 
 Mr Meredith's use of metaphor and analogy, 
 his accumulations, indications, inferences are 
 not an idle nor a barren habit. Knowledge 
 comes by accumulation and inference. It is 
 the way of life. He seeks by any means and 
 every means to penetrate and refine, to get 
 
 B
 
 l8 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 closer to his subject, to obtain a perfect quality 
 of expression, a gathering of more delicate 
 factors. To me it seems that his object is 
 achieved — that he has reached a degree of ex- 
 pression more exact and more profound than 
 any novelist has reached before him. He has 
 combined closest observation with poetical de- 
 scription. If at his occasional worst he is 
 crabbed, mannered, obscure, polysyllabic, it may 
 be a warning to those critics who find him an 
 easy prey, whose faculty of selection is so un- 
 erring that it would be to them but a holiday 
 task to prove Landor incoherent or Swift 
 waterish, to remember of Diana that ' a fit of 
 angry cynicism now and then set her compos- 
 ing phrases as baits for the critics to quote, 
 condemnatory of the attractiveness of the work.' 
 Perhaps Mr Meredith has a definitive edition 
 of his works in reserve without the few little 
 excrescences and eccentricities that give colour 
 to the adverse estimate of finickin pedantry. 
 But cynicism — the refuge of the disillusioned 
 sentimentalist — is not for him. If he has from 
 time to time protested against the judgments 
 and satirised the aims of the world that over- 
 looked him, he has kept his serene and healthy 
 nature undefiled by any taint of envy of the
 
 MR Meredith's novels i9 
 
 deserved successes of his peers. Genius un- 
 recognised tends towards pessimism or self- 
 assertion. He did not abandon his hope in 
 humanity because his novels were not read 
 as they ought to have been, and if he was not 
 content to acquiesce in the verdict that would 
 have relegated him to that dusty nook where 
 obscure eccentrics pine for the light of popular 
 favour, some allowance may perhaps be made 
 for the respect which it is natural for him to 
 feel toward what he calls ' that acute and hon- 
 ourable minority which consents to be thwacked 
 with aphorisms and sentences and a fantastic 
 delivery of the verities,' and which has main- 
 tained through evil and good report that his 
 first novel gained for him a position, since 
 strengthened and secured, second to none of 
 his predecessors or contemporaries in English 
 fiction. 
 
 According to Alen of the Time Mr Meredith 
 was born ' about 1828.' As in the case of other 
 immortals there seems to have been some 
 uncertainty about the event — or perhaps this 
 vagueness is owing merely to an early immunity 
 from interviewers. His first publication was a 
 volume of poems in 1851 which was soon fol- 
 lowed by ' The Shaving of Shagpat,' an Arabian
 
 20 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 entertainment, which is a tremendous medley of 
 extravagant genius, and ' Farina,' the fanciful 
 setting of an old German legend. In these an 
 exuberant imagination was allowed free play, 
 and it might be a nice consideration how 
 far a mind naturally impatient of restraint has 
 gained or lost by such initial exercises. 
 
 In 1859, being then about thirty years of age, 
 Mr Meredith published ' The Ordeal of Richard 
 Feverel,' perhaps the most widely admired of 
 his works. Novelists are later than poets in 
 attaining maturity, and ' Richard Feverel ' is 
 so elaborate and solid a work that it is difficult 
 to believe it to be a first essay in this form. 
 The first edition, however, which, like all Mr 
 Meredith's early editions, is at a premium, is said 
 to be a much cruder performance than the later 
 revised versions. Whether ' Richard Feverel ' is 
 the best of his novels or not, it contains much 
 of his finest quality. He has studied the genus 
 boy with kindly attention, and it has never 
 failed to yield the joke that each one carries 
 at the centre of his being. Richard and Ripton, 
 the first of that gallant and entertaining com- 
 pany, of which Crossjay, and Temple, and 
 Harry Richmond, and Nevil Beauchamp are 
 worthy members, make us wish, while we
 
 MR Meredith's novels 21 
 
 are with them, that their author could spare 
 time from graver labours to give us once for 
 all that epic of boyhood of which he, and he 
 only, is capable. But if it is hard to part 
 with the Bantam and Dame Bakewell, and 
 the other accessories to Richard's early exploits, 
 we are presently consoled by some of the very 
 prettiest lovemaking in literature. Richard 
 and Lucy are our modern Ferdinand and 
 Miranda, whose fortunes are wrecked by a 
 blind and infatuated Prospero. A Prospero 
 whom the winds and waves do not obey, whose 
 belief in his spells is unshaken, and whose 
 attitude of command is unrelaxed till the per- 
 emptory awakening of calamity is at once a 
 comic and a tragic spectacle. When Sir Austin 
 speaks to Mr Thompson of Ripton, and says, 
 ' " Do you establish yourself in a radiatory centre 
 of intuition? Do you base your watchfulness 
 on so thorough an acquaintance with his 
 character, so perfect a knowledge of the instru- 
 ment, that all its movements — even the ec- 
 centric ones — are anticipated by you, and pro- 
 vided for ? " ' and Mr Thompson replies that 
 ' " he was afraid he could not affirm that much 
 though he was happily enabled to say that 
 Ripton had borne an extremely good character
 
 2 2 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 at school," ' we feel that we are in the region 
 of pure comedy. But Sir Austin is essentially 
 a tragic character, and if there is some justice 
 in the objection that the story's strange and 
 pitiful ending is not inevitable as a tragic issue 
 should be, it is, I think, because his position 
 is not sufficiently enforced. He is a man of 
 high intelligence and noble aims, whose fatal 
 pedantry brings ruin and misery upon the son 
 he loves. Of Richard's own contribution to 
 the calamitous tangle in his neglectful absence 
 from his wife, it is not easy to speak. It is 
 inexplicable to the gross and literal sense of 
 the dogged school of criticism, but we may 
 take comfort in remembering that other in- 
 consequent writer who taught us that ' cause 
 and will and strength and means' may be 
 a prelude with no succeeding act, and who 
 has left unanswered and unanswerable the por- 
 tentous question : — 
 
 ' Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil 
 Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and bod)- ? ' 
 
 The humour of ' Richard Feverel ' is constant 
 in operation and eminent in quality. It is 
 sometimes snatched from the very jaws of 
 tragedy, as in those most daring and dehghtful
 
 MR Meredith's novels 23 
 
 episodes, the historical readings of the infatuated 
 and bewildered Lord Mountfalcon. It gives us 
 a wretched dyspeptic engaged on a history of 
 Fairy Mythology and a ' wise youth,' himself a 
 humourist, whose philosophy is cunningly under- 
 mined by his contemptuous author. Of its 
 pathos I will only say that the last chapter is 
 one of the most moving things in our literature. 
 Fmust confess that to me ' Evan Harrington ' is 
 the least worthy of Mr Meredith's novels. The 
 Countess de Saldar is not of the race of these 
 great comic characters that justify themselves 
 under any conditions. Never elsewhere has her 
 author concerned himself so far with the presen. 
 tation of a person essentially vulgar. She is an 
 ordinary person in an extraordinary position, and 
 ' Evan Harrington ' is a comedy of circumstance 
 rather than of character. The tenacity of an 
 adventuress is not the most fruitful of themes 
 for the creator of Richmond Roy and Sir Wil- 
 loughby Patterne. She is a great success, but 
 a success of a lower order. Rose and Evan are 
 a delightful pair of lovers, Lady Jocelyn is ex- 
 cellent, and Mrs Harrington, possibly the very 
 best of minor woman characters, one of Mr 
 Meredith's strongest points. Mr Raikes is, per- 
 haps, dangerously near the line which separates
 
 24 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 the fantastical from the preposterous, but with 
 old Tom Cogglesby, who seems to have strayed 
 from Dickens's collection, he contributes some 
 very curious and characteristic humour. 
 
 No better example of Mr Meredith's power in 
 simple, passionate narrative can be chosen than 
 Emilia's story of her early life in the book that 
 has been re-named ' Sandra Belloni.' ' " Such a 
 touch on the violin as my father has, you never 
 heard. You feel yourself from top to toe when 
 my father plays. I feel as if I breathed music 
 like air. One day came news from Italy, all in 
 the newspaper, of my father's friends and old 
 companions shot and murdered by the Austrians. 
 He read it in the evening, after we had had a 
 quiet day. I thought he did not mind it much, 
 for he read it out to us quite quietly ; and then 
 he made me sit on his knee and read it out. I 
 cried with rage, and he called to me ' Sandra ! 
 Peace ! ' and began walking up and down the 
 room, while my mother got the bread and 
 cheese and spread it on the table, for we were 
 beginning to be richer. I saw my father take 
 out his violin. He put it on the cloth and 
 looked at it. Then he took it up, and laid his 
 chin on it like a man full of love, and drew the 
 bow across just once. He whirled away the
 
 MR MEREDITH S NOVELS 25 
 
 bow and knocked down our candle, and in the 
 darkness I heard something snap and break with 
 a hollow sound. When I could see, he had 
 broken it, the neck from the body — the dear old 
 violin ! I could cry still. I — I was too late to 
 save it. I saw it broken, and the empty belly, 
 and the loose strings ! It was murdering a 
 spirit — that was ! My father sat in a corner one 
 whole week, moping like such an old man ! I 
 was nearly dead with my mother's voice. By- 
 and-by we were all silent, for there was nothing 
 to eat." ' Here, to use a famous phrase, ' Nature 
 takes the pen from him and writes.' I presume 
 that no fault will be found with this even by 
 the literary Puritan. Emilia subsequently kept 
 her parents upon a potato diet, in order that she 
 might save money for her singing lessons — an 
 altogether delightful circumstance, though per- 
 haps startling to those who would require a 
 heroine to follow the usual sympathetic course. 
 She is a natural young woman, a living refuta- 
 tion of the doctrine of original sin, and an 
 assurance of her author's belief and hope in 
 human nature. She does not comprehend evil, 
 but instinctively abhors it. Without superficial 
 cleverness, she penetrates to essentials. She has 
 something of the primal gratitude and devotion
 
 26 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 of an animal. Among the highly-organised 
 ladies of Brookfield, she moves like a young 
 panther among domestic cats. These civilised 
 young persons who are, if less amusing, on a 
 higher plane of comedy than the Countess de 
 Saldar, have some reason to complain of the fate 
 that confronts them with nature in the phe- 
 nomenal forms of Emilia and Mrs Chump, by 
 whom their distinctions, their reserves, their 
 ideals, are roughly broken down and inexorably 
 scattered. In Wilfred, too, we have a careful and 
 relentless study of one who tries to make senti- 
 ment do the work of passion, 'passion which,' 
 we are told with profound insight, ' may tug 
 against common sense, but is never in a great 
 nature divorced from it.' There is not much 
 common sense in Wilfred's vagaries, which, 
 commented upon in most fanciful fashion, are 
 exceedingly good reading for the confirmed 
 Meredithian. The uninitiated may be more 
 confidently recommended to the life-like and 
 grotesque Mr Pericles, to that irresistible Irish- 
 woman, Mrs Chump, or to Mr Pole, a really 
 notable instance of a commonplace person raised 
 to first rate interest by the humour, force, and 
 truth of his presentation. 
 
 If diversity of opinion as to Mr Meredith's
 
 MR Meredith's novels 27 
 
 masterpiece is limited only by the number of his 
 books, there can be little doubt in assigning to 
 'Rhoda Fleming' a place among the highest. 
 Less rich and various than some of its rivals, it 
 is of singular intensity and unmatched power. 
 In those marvellous passages where Dahlia defies 
 all laws of God or bonds of man that keep her 
 from her lover, the sharp note of tragedy is 
 struck with a strong and sure hand. Some of 
 her phrases ring in the memory like great 
 Shakesperean lines. Opposed to this creature 
 of frenzied passion is her patient depressed father, 
 a man of narrow mind and inflexible principles. 
 'This world has been too many for me,' said Mr 
 Tulliver, and Farmer Fleming, too, has been 
 worsted in the conflict with that redoubtable 
 adversary. It is in these contrasted figures of 
 father and daughter that the peculiar quality of 
 the drama is displayed, but Rhoda is a noble 
 example of those reliable women whose lives are 
 a refutation of the stupid calumny that attaches 
 the vices of fickleness and faintness to their sex, 
 and to name one more where many are worthy 
 of full and adequate discussion, Mrs Sumfit is in 
 her degree a perfect and beautiful creation. 
 
 I understand that there is a class of orderly 
 and sedate minds to which ' Vittoria ' is a dull
 
 28 BOOKS AND PLATS 
 
 and confused narrative of improbable events. 
 Such was the impression recorded some time ago 
 by an American critic who, strange to say, 
 admired Mr Meredith heartily in the main. It 
 is, indeed, of almost bewildering motion and 
 variety, and without it a great region of its 
 author's genius would remain imperfectly ex- 
 plored. It has in the highest degree the quality 
 of dramatic picturesqueness, which may be 
 illustrated by two short connected passages from 
 the scene at the opera when the Austrians 
 occupied the Countess Ammiani's box 'Her face 
 had the unalterable composure of a painted head 
 upon an old canvas. The General persisted in 
 tendering excuses. She replied, " It is best, 
 when one is too weak to resist, to submit to an 
 outrage quietly." ' Ammiani saw the apparition 
 of Captain Weisspriess in his mother's box. He 
 forgot her injunction, and hurried to her side, 
 leaving the doors open. His passion of anger 
 spurned her admonishing grasp of his arm, and 
 with his glove he smote the Austrian officer on 
 the face. Weisspriess plucked his sword out; 
 the house rose; there was a moment like that 
 of a wild beast's show of teeth. It passed.' 
 The whole incident of the opera is one of the 
 finest examples of Mr Meredith's faculty for
 
 MR Meredith's novels 29 
 
 conveying the tone and feeling of a scene, the 
 incompleteness and confusion of life. 
 
 ' Vittoria ' is the crowning achievement of 
 prose romance. It is vitalised and exalted by 
 that passion for Italy and Italian freedom that 
 has inspired so many of England's best. The 
 manifestation of this passion is its distinguish- 
 ing feature. It is serene and beneficent in 
 Vittoria, generous in Powys, austere in the 
 Countess Ammiani, cunning in Barto Rizzo, 
 fanatical in the Guidascarpi. Even the noble 
 character of Vittoria, stronger and deeper than 
 when we knew her as Emilia, which gives 
 coherence to the story and which dominates the 
 strange figures that surround her, scarcely holds 
 our imagination as do Angelo and Rinaldo, 
 Barto Rizzo's wife, and the Countess Ammiani 
 — tragic actors in the drama of a nation. 
 
 ' The Adventures of Harry Richmond ' is Mr 
 Meredith's only essay in the autobiographical 
 form, and it is well that he has given us this if 
 only for the sake of those most charming of 
 childish reminiscences which change with deli- 
 cate gradations through the distincter recollec- 
 tions of boyhood to the recorded experience of 
 the man. The early part of the book — before 
 the moral complications set in — is what I would
 
 3° BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 respectfully advance as a proof of its author's 
 strength in picturesque narrative. The school- 
 days, the flight with the gipsy -girl, those 
 gallant topers, Captain Bulsted and Squire 
 Greg, the fog and the fire in London, the 
 barque Priscilla and her skipper, the inimit- 
 able Captain Jasper Welch, the entrance into 
 the beautiful German land, and the sensational 
 discovery of Harry's father, form a magnificent 
 series of scenes and pictures. They are pre- 
 liminary to the chief business of the story, the 
 development of one of the most individual pro- 
 ducts of English fiction. Readers of ' Evan 
 Harrington ' who are able to feel but a quali- 
 fied admiration for its principal character can 
 hardly fail to be struck with the possibilities in 
 such a personage as the grandiose tailor whose 
 death is the first incident in the story, and who 
 looms portentous throughout its course. But 
 the Great Mel is but a shadow of the brilliant 
 figure in which the fantastic side of Mr Mere- 
 dith's genius has found its full and perfect ex- 
 pression. If Sir Willoughby Patterne is his 
 greatest contribution to classical, or rather to 
 typical comedy, Richmond Roy is the most 
 notable instance of an absolute creation. Per- 
 haps his nearest affinities are such psycho-
 
 MR Meredith's novels 3^ 
 
 logical curiosities as TurgeniefFs Dimitri Rou- 
 dine or Mr Henry James's Roderick Hudson. 
 I can only refer to Squire Beltham, the unde- 
 generate descendant of Squire Western, with 
 a pathos all his own, and to the two heroines 
 Janet and Ottilia, the first staunch and tender- 
 hearted, to whom a promise is a sacred thing, 
 and the other, one of that rare order of women 
 in which feelings are subordinated to principles. 
 Mr Meredith warns us not to expect a plot in 
 ' Beauchamp's Career,' for if he had one it would 
 be useless to attempt to persuade his characters 
 to conform to it. Like Frankenstein's monster, 
 they would escape from the control of their 
 creator and make for awkward places outside 
 the prescribed bounds. But if there is no plot 
 there is, at any rate, that best kind of construc- 
 tion, which is evolution tempered by a not too 
 obtrusive special Providence. The hero is act- 
 ually the centre and mainspring of the drama, 
 his actions are the inevitable outcome of his 
 character and position, and the men and women 
 by whom he is surrounded are developed and 
 combined in their relations to him. He is 
 the touchstone by which they are tried and 
 judged, for here, as elsewhere, there is no 
 escaping the moral estimate. It is a proof
 
 32 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 of constructive ability that the crucial scene 
 between Renee and Beauchamp is reinforced 
 in interest and importance by every preceding 
 episode, and cannot be fully appreciated with- 
 out a present remembrance, not only of the 
 morning on the Adriatic and the adventure 
 of the boat, but of all his relations to Cecilia, to 
 Everard Romfrey, to Dr Shrapnel and, indeed, 
 to all his world. 
 
 The aristocratic radical is not a new type, and 
 may be made a very dreary personage. Nevil 
 Beauchamp has something of the spirit of the 
 political Shelley. He is one of those militant 
 heroes who cannot be persuaded to endure what 
 is wrong, or to see in expediency a tolerable sub- 
 stitute for right. We learn that, as a boy, he 
 ' talked of his indignation nightly to his pretty 
 partners, at balls ' — the cause being no less than 
 international — and that ' he loved his country, 
 and for another and a broader love, growing out 
 of his first passion, fought it.' This political 
 fight is conducted under social conditions that 
 might daunt any man. He alienates his friends, 
 he quarrels with the uncle on whom he is de- 
 pendent, he is surrounded by misunderstandings 
 and misjudgments. But he clings fast to his 
 faith in working and fighting — a faith that one
 
 MR Meredith's novels 33 
 
 only has power to shake. Renee, ' a brunette of 
 the fine lineaments of the good blood of France/ 
 is the most finely wrought of Mr Meredith's 
 women. We are sometimes told that it is not 
 sufficient in literary matters to have a faith — we 
 must have a reason, and Mr Coventry Patmore 
 has declared that ' there already exists in the 
 writings and sayings of Aristotle, Hegel, Lessing, 
 Goethe and others, the greater part of the 
 materials necessary for the formation of a body 
 of institutes of art which would supersede and 
 extinguish nearly all the desultory chatter which 
 now passes for criticism.' When these institutes 
 are selected and approved, and critics are agreed 
 upon a code that will determine authoritatively 
 and arithmetically the value of artistic products, 
 we shall no longer have an excuse for a prefer- 
 ence unexplained. Our heroines of romance 
 will be duly measured and docketed; and as 
 their sisters in real life are estimated by their 
 conformity to or divergence from a standard of 
 morals and manners strangely compounded of 
 nature and convention, so will they be referred 
 for judgment and correction to the accepted code 
 of literary positivism. Meanwhile, I fear that I 
 cannot render sound reasons for my admiration 
 of Renee. Her attraction is too subtle to be ex- 
 
 C
 
 34 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 pressed by any feeble epitome of mine. Her 
 perfect distinction and incomparable charm 
 elude criticism and defy analysis. The position 
 of a runaway wife rejected by her lover is a hard 
 one to support with dignity, nor, when it is the 
 lover who has changed his mind, does his seem 
 a part in which much credit may be gained. 
 Yet this situation is chosen for the crowning 
 trial of each, and never, it seems to me, have 
 the relations of social man and woman been 
 treated with a wiser charity, never have they 
 been touched by a stronger or a tenderer hand. 
 'Beauchamp's Career' is singularly rich in 
 character. Even Renee does not obliterate her 
 rivals, and Everard Romfrey, ' in mind a medi- 
 aeval baron,' and concerning whom we are told 
 that 'the conversation he delighted in most 
 might have been going in any century since the 
 Conquest,' is a portrait as faithful and superb as 
 Thackeray's Lord Steyne himself. Rosamond 
 Culling, Dr Shrapnel, Lord Palmet, Colonel 
 Halkett, with many others that are not less 
 artistically complete, because they are carefully 
 subordinated, are wholly and admirably success- 
 ful. It is a political novel, and its comments on 
 the temporary and the essential conditions of 
 our life are worth many tons of blue books and
 
 MR Meredith's novels 35 
 
 reports of partisan speeches. With the imparti- 
 ality of great art it gives us hope for democracy, 
 while it shows that no finer race exists than the 
 English aristocracy. In humour and pathos, in 
 dialogue and incident, in description and ro- 
 mance, it touches its author's highest mark. It 
 is more than curious, it is bewildering that it 
 has received so little attention. Even now, 
 when Mr Meredith is in vogue, there seems to 
 be something assertive in naming it as one of 
 the masterpieces of English literature. 
 
 One of the most appreciative of critics has de- 
 clared that ' The Egoist ' is ' on a pinnacle apart 
 among novels, and marks the writer for one of 
 the breed of Shakespeare and Moliere.' The 
 counter blast came when a man of letters no less 
 distinguished classed these novels — so crammed 
 with movement, thought, and Hfe — as '.anaemic,' 
 and said that, ' Speaking in sober literalness, and 
 with due attention to the force and value of 
 words, my impression of 'The Egoist' is that it is 
 the most entirely wearisome book purporting to 
 be a novel that I ever toiled through in my life.' 
 These contrasted opinions or impressions admit 
 of no compromise ; one or the other is absurd. 
 Sir Willoughby may, it seems, be found 'sop- 
 orific ' and Clara Middleton ' unrealisable.' To
 
 36 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 some of us Clara is more than realisable : she is 
 exquisitely and beautifully true, and Willoughby 
 is a great type who yields to comedy his last and 
 finest fruits when he is eager to make any sacri- 
 fice of honour or of substance to keep up appear- 
 ances before two or three old women whom he 
 despises. The fact is that ' The Egoist ' is a 
 book to be enjoyed by those who have an appre- 
 ciable infusion of its hero's nature. This con- 
 sideration may be offered as a consolation to 
 those who do not enjoy it. Sir Willoughby 
 should be realised sympathetically. ' I am what 
 I am,' he says, and he might have added — 
 
 ' And they who level 
 At my abuses reckon up their own.' 
 
 Few men can read of him without at least a 
 slight feeling of uneasiness, so many are the 
 touches of nature that reveal our kinship to 
 him. But he must not be taken too earnestly. 
 He must not be hated, or all the fine aroma of 
 the comedy is lost. We know that Clara is 
 safe — it would be no comedy, if she were not; 
 and knowing this, we may watch his evolu- 
 tions peacefully. Such a character might be 
 treated tragically, as in that indication of a 
 mediseval Willoughby in Browning's ' My Last
 
 MR Meredith's novels 37 
 
 Duchess,' where too is the ill-fated prototype 
 of the more fortunate Clara, whose happy union 
 with Vernon Whitford, that fine example of 
 the man who can ' plod on and still keep the 
 passion fresh,' is the most satisfactory of all 
 possible endings. In the person of the kind 
 and witty great lady, Mrs Mountstuart Jenkin- 
 son, Mr Meredith has given us some of the 
 best of his epigrams, and a close acquaintance 
 with the characters they qualify is necessary to 
 appreciate such triumphs as 'Here she comes 
 with a romantic tale on her eyelashes,' applied 
 to Lsetitia Dale, * Phoebus Apollo turned fasting 
 friar,' to Whitford, and above all, the ' dainty 
 rogue in porcelain,' to Clara. The dialogue of 
 ' The Egoist,' is pitched in a high key, so high 
 that to some untrained ears the result is not 
 more than silence. 'The exceedingly lively 
 conversation at his table was lauded by Lady 
 Culmer, " though," said she, " what it all meant 
 and what was the drift of it, I couldn't tell to 
 save my life. Is it every day the same with 
 you here ? " " Very much." " How you must 
 enjoy a spell of dulness.'" Mr Meredith gives 
 us no spells of dulness, and those who, like 
 Mr Dale, are ' unable to cope with analogies,' 
 and ' have but strength for the slow digestion
 
 3^ BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 of facts,' are likely to have a hard time of it. 
 But they have Crossjay, and he is such a capital 
 fellow that I must quote his description. He 
 is ' a rosy-cheeked, round bodied rogue of a 
 boy, who fell upon meats and puddings, and 
 defeated them, with a captivating simplicity in 
 his confession that he had never had enough 
 to eat in his life. He had gone through a 
 training for a plentiful table. At first, after 
 a number of helps, young Crossjay would sit 
 and sigh heavily, in contemplation of the un- 
 finished dish. Subsequently, he told his host 
 and hostess that he had two sisters above his 
 own age, and three brothers and two sisters 
 younger than he; " all hungry ! " said the boy. 
 His pathos was most comical. It was a good 
 month before he could see pudding taken away 
 from table without a sigh of regret that he 
 could not finish it, as deputy for the Devonport 
 household. The pranks of the little fellow, and 
 his revel in a country life, and muddy wildness 
 in it, amused Lsetitia from morning to night. 
 She, when she had caught him, taught him in 
 the morning ; Vernon, favoured by the chase, 
 in the afternoon. Young Crossjay would have 
 enlivened any household. He was not only 
 indolent, he was opposed to the acquisition of
 
 MR Meredith's novels 39 
 
 knowledge through the medium of books, and 
 would say : " But I don't want to ! " in a tone 
 to make a logician thoughtful. Nature was 
 very strong in him. He had, on each return 
 of the hour of instruction, to be plucked out 
 of the earth, rank of the soil, like a root, for 
 the exercise of his big round head-piece on 
 these tyrannous puzzles. But the habits of 
 birds, and the place for their eggs, and the 
 management of rabbits, and the tickling of 
 fish, and poaching joys with combative boys 
 of the district, and how to wheedle a cook 
 for a luncheon for a whole day in the rain, he 
 soon knew of his great nature.' 
 
 If it is the ultimate fate of Mr Meredith's 
 admirers to become a fighting minority, it is 
 probable [that they will rarely choose ' The 
 Tragic Comedians ' for a battle ground. It 
 is not so much a novel as a problem of hard 
 incredible facts, only to be solved by the applica- 
 tion of the spirit of comedy, and audacious is the 
 imagination that can conceive Alvan as a comic 
 character. It gives the impression of a case 
 presented by an advocate of extreme insight, 
 eloquence, and conviction. 
 
 Mr Swinburne, who, as a critic, is perhaps 
 rather one who lights the way than an infallible
 
 40 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 guide, in his splendid eulogy of Charlotte Bronte, 
 has attempted the hard task of distinguishing 
 between what he regards as the two great classes 
 of imaginative writing, and assigning to George 
 Eliot and George Meredith foremost places in the 
 honourable, but inferior class, whose methods are 
 intellectual rather than instinctive, he says that 
 * George Eliot, a woman of the first order of 
 intellect, has once and again shown how much 
 further, and more steadily, and more hopelessly, 
 and more irretrievably, and more intolerably 
 wrong it is possible for mere intellect to go, 
 than it ever can be possible for mere genius.' 
 Now, while it may be permissible wholly to 
 dissent from Mr Swinburne's judgment upon 
 the memorable incident, which he cites as the 
 justification of this passage, and to doubt the 
 soundness of a principle that seems to require or 
 condone the absence of that greatest gift of God- 
 like reason from the highest imaginative ex- 
 pression, it is certain that great intellectual gifts 
 may be employed in the production of elaborate 
 error. Mr Meredith has himself given an admir- 
 able example of this in Sir Austin Feverel, 
 whose antithesis — the invaluable Mrs Berry — 
 triumphantly vindicates the cause of the simple 
 natural instincts. In 'Diana of the Crossways,'
 
 MR MEREDITH S NOVELS 41 
 
 he seems to invite criticism on these Hnes. I 
 have said that he has a taste for curious cases. 
 Here we have to accept no less than this: that a 
 woman, incapable of base imaginings, who is, as 
 he says, ' mentally active up to the point of 
 spiritual clarity,' may yet act basely. It is an 
 appeal from the judgments of the world. A 
 moral lapse in the direction of treachery is 
 impossible to conceive of Diana. Her act must 
 be the result of abnormal mental conditions. 
 We may most satisfactorily elude the question 
 by calling it an act of temporary madness. It 
 is as if the custodian of a magazine should apply 
 torch to powder with no prospective or immediate 
 thought of an explosion. For Diana was brought 
 up to politics. She had a political environment. 
 Her act involved not merely paralysis of reason, 
 but distortion of instinct, and it seems to me 
 that Mr Meredith has here fallen into the 
 temptation to attempt to defeat his old enemy, 
 the confident, clamorous world, upon its own 
 terms, and has committed the capital fault, 
 foreign to his best method, of fitting his 
 character to the situation he has chosen. In- 
 credible too seems Dacier's merely temporary 
 incredulity and prompt acceptance of the literal 
 fact. Of course, no reader can take him for a
 
 42 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 great-hearted man — those who remember his 
 author's care in the selection of names will find 
 his to be ominously composed of sibilants — but 
 he is represented as not only without compassion, 
 but almost without curiosity. His passages with 
 Constance Asper are strong and biting satire, 
 rather than impartial art. 
 
 But if there is any justice in these criticisms 
 — I do not need to be reminded of their pre- 
 sumption and insufficiency — they leave un- 
 touched the essential parts of a noble character, 
 of a various and generally consistent picture 
 of life, and of a piece of writing throughout 
 forcible and brilliant, which, to adopt the 
 familiar simile that makes language the gar- 
 ment of thought, is of fine and strong texture, 
 stiff with gems. 
 
 It might have been supposed that the access 
 of what is probably the nearest to popularity 
 that Mr Meredith will obtain, would provoke 
 some genial recognition in the latest of his 
 novels. He has had a good advertisement — the 
 legitimate advertisement of interested discussion, 
 and the public, or some portion of it, was pre- 
 pared to give him favourable consideration. 
 The opening chapters of ' One of our Con- 
 querors,' however, must have dissipated any ex-
 
 MR Meredith's novels 43 
 
 pectation that he would seize what might be 
 considered his opportunity. The ' Old Veuve ' 
 chapter is as hopelessly removed from the ' large 
 accent ' of simplicity as from the thick accent 
 of coarseness, and Colney Durance is a worthy 
 successor to his author's other brilliant mouth- 
 pieces. Yet it contains three characters of quite 
 the first rank. Nataly and Nesta are a mother 
 and daughter standing alone in English fiction. 
 The beauty, nobility, and pathos of their re- 
 lations is beyond all description or praise. 
 Victor, too, is one of the characters that only 
 Mr Meredith could produce. He is of the 
 rank of Sir Willoughby and Richmond Roy, 
 and with Nataly completes a great tragic com- 
 bination. If Mr Meredith's style were the 
 worst in the world, if every fault that is urged 
 against him were understated, such characterisa- 
 tion would place him at the head of his order. 
 
 This paper is rather a record of impressions 
 than a justification by first principles, and it is 
 time to sum up briefly the qualities upon which 
 Mr Meredith's claim for acceptance as a great 
 novelist might be founded. Leaving out of 
 account occasional aberrations from which no 
 one is free, he has a style at once vivid and 
 thoughtful, his dialogue is brilliant and gener-
 
 44 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 ally characteristic, he is a master of narrative, 
 a great wit, and a genial and profound humorist; 
 in description he is a poet, in incident an in- 
 spired witness; he has insight, charity, and 
 patriotism; he has tragic and pathetic power; 
 and he is capable of combining these great 
 qualities into a consistent and effectual whole. 
 With him the novel is a moral agent, not be- 
 cause he is immediately and professedly didactic, 
 but because his head and heart are right, and he 
 deals fully and sincerely with the aspects of life 
 that he has chosen to describe. It may be said 
 that though ' where virtue is these are more 
 virtuous,' there is one first and sufficient test 
 beside which all others are irrelevant — that a 
 novelist must stand or fall by his characters — 
 by the number and quality of realised and real- 
 isable human beings that he has devised and 
 presented. Of all others, this is the test that 
 the lover of Meredith will welcome. And 
 especially will such an one claim for him, not 
 a high place merely, but the supreme place as 
 a delineator of good women — of good women, 
 because, of their kind, Becky Sharp, and Beatrix 
 Esmond, Rosamond Vincy, and Hetty Sorrel 
 can hardly be excelled. He is a lover of 
 England, and if there be any that think patriot-
 
 MR Meredith's novels 45 
 
 ism a narrow or exclusive passion, he may pass 
 from Janet, and Lucy, and Dahlia, and Rose, 
 and Clara, the very flower of English woman- 
 hood, to the Irish Diana, the French Renee, the 
 German Ottilia, the Italian Emilia. To say 
 that his heroes are not unworthy of these, is 
 the highest praise that can be given to them. 
 They have this much in common with the 
 conventional heroes of romance, that they are 
 handsome, dashing, virtuous. The addition of 
 brains and purpose has actually made them in- 
 teresting, a feat in which no other first rate 
 English novelist has succeeded. To enlist our 
 sympathies, Thackeray must deprive his men 
 of personal graces, as Esmond, or of brains, as 
 Harry Warrington ; Scott and Dickens produced 
 walking gentlemen, and George Eliot never 
 attempted the type. 
 
 There is a class of critics which constantly 
 bewails our modern craving for the new and 
 strange. ' Who now reads Fielding, and Dickens, 
 and Thackeray ? ' ask Mr Lang and his fellows. 
 Who does not 1 To read good new novels gives 
 us an enlarged capacity for the old. It enlarges 
 our charity too, and helps us to a more lenient 
 view of the shallow cynicism in Thackeray, 
 shallow because he was at heart no cynic, of
 
 46 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 those characters of Fielding's that have so much 
 more of corivention than of nature in their com- 
 position, of the school-girl crudities of Charlotte 
 Bronte, the dulness of Scott, the sham passion 
 of Dickens, the occasional flat passion of George 
 Eliot. Who, indeed, is perfect, except Jane 
 Austen ? Her reach and grasp are coincident, 
 and if the world could be reduced to her scale, 
 she would be supreme and all-sufficient. And 
 yet, in spite of their faults, I suppose that most 
 of us would place above her all the great writers 
 I have named. I confess that to me Mr Mere- 
 dith's faults are at least not greater than theirs. 
 His virtues entitle him to an honourable place 
 among them, and if it is denied by his own 
 generation, our children, and our children's 
 children may repair the error, but they can 
 never atone for the injustice.
 
 MR Meredith's poems 
 
 ' That precisely in the particulars which would 
 win them popular attention, the men whom it 
 would be most profitable for the public to study 
 should so often fail, becomes to me, as I grow 
 older, one of those deepest mysteries of life, 
 which I can only hope to have explained to me, 
 when my task of interpretation is ended.' 
 
 These pathetic words of one great preacher of 
 our time seem to have a particular significance 
 of appHcation to another. Different as are their 
 methods and their aims Mr Ruskin and Mr 
 Meredith are alike in this — that through all the 
 variations of their work they maintain a whole 
 view of life ; and as in Mr Ruskin's conception 
 architecture is the head and total which embraces 
 and subordinates sculpture, painting, and all 
 manner of design, so do they regard the whole 
 conduct of life as necessarily greater than a part,
 
 48 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 even though this be the exercise of an art or a 
 devotion to art. 
 
 Mr Meredith's work rests upon the sure 
 foundation of a keen and dehcate appreciation 
 of Hfe. This is the rough material of poetry, 
 but it must be reformed in the crucible of 
 the imagination and its ends must be shaped 
 by exquisite expression. It would be difficult 
 to write sympathetically of his verse without 
 frequent excursions into his philosophy. Though 
 the artist piir sang looks upon morals as the 
 particular weakness of this country and protests 
 against the inveterate British habit of associat- 
 ing them with art, it is likely that for some time 
 to come our poets will be read as much for 
 the message as for the manner. The division 
 of labour is not yet fully accomplished and 
 until a glorified trade unionism of poets arises, 
 art will continue to be vitiated, or vitalised, 
 by the external motive. To take it conversely, 
 must a sermon eschew art ? An invitation to 
 the dance may be a work of art, why not an 
 invitation to a sober life ? Or is preaching the 
 generic art which embraces every kind ? It 
 might be held that it is the great preachers who 
 have been impelled to the succinct forms of art. 
 According to Mr Myers, Tennyson is great by
 
 MR Meredith's poems 49 
 
 virtue of 'the intuition, discovery and promulga- 
 tion of fundamental cosmic law.' The main im- 
 pulse in the production of much of his poetry is 
 incontestably didactic. He is a zealous moralist, 
 as are Browning, Shelley and Wordsworth; Mr 
 Swinburne's illuminating word of Byron is, 
 *the excellence of sincerity and strength,' Mr 
 Swinburne himself is at least full of spiritual 
 sustenance; Arnold gives to conduct the first 
 place; Keats and Coleridge are in a minority 
 among the great stars of modern poetry. 
 
 The preachers and the teachers cannot be 
 spared. If a division of labour allows him 
 to fashion his part excellently while he knows 
 nothing of the whole undertaking, it degrades 
 the artist to the level of commercial economics. 
 The isolation of art, its separation from life or 
 from the large part of life that consists of con- 
 duct, is its besetting danger. The artist who is 
 above or apart from the external politics of life 
 must be controlled by movements in which he 
 has no share. He may do his work with satis- 
 faction to himself and, within its limits, it may 
 be perfect, but its relation to the sum of human 
 activities is a moral relation. Mr Meredith is 
 intensely English though he is never offensively 
 British, and whether he is a poet, a philo- 
 
 D
 
 5° BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 sopher, or merely a perverse clever man, he is 
 a vigorous and inveterate preacher. ' Iterate, 
 iterate, harp on the trite,' he says boldly, 
 seeming to lack the artist's horror of recurrence. 
 
 Perhaps sermons have fallen into disrepute 
 because there have been so many bad ones. A 
 more constant reason lies in the nature of our 
 egoism. Early in our development we begin to 
 regard ourselves as flowers that need no forcing. 
 We resent a stimulus that mars the full expres- 
 sion of our tendencies, and we are in such 
 mighty fear of our little individualities that 
 we would not expose them to the influence of 
 appeals from without. For sermons are ad- 
 dressed to what we have in common with the 
 rest ; they are a calling up into line, and our 
 tortuous peculiarities are dear to us. They may 
 be poor, but they are our own. We prefer to 
 sing the solo out of tune rather than to merge 
 ourselves in the chorus. The austerity of the 
 strait and narrow way competes ill with the 
 gracious curves of the line of least resistance. 
 So by putting a fine point on our selfishness 
 we think to redeem it from baseness. 
 
 The egoist is often melancholy, for he who 
 takes himself for his chief study has a sorrowful 
 experience. When pessimism is not yet out of
 
 MR Meredith's poems Si 
 
 fashion, when poets still persistently sound their 
 ' eternal note of sadness,' when the so-called 
 realists are elaborating their impeachment of the 
 human race, and when we hear of such dreadful 
 conceptions of the relation of man to nature as 
 of one playing at chess against an automaton of 
 perfect construction which must win, it is a joy- 
 ful relief to hear a strong and confident voice 
 proclaim that we are not, after all, the actors in 
 a barren tragedy. There are too many sad and 
 terrible books in the world and though we could 
 not now consent to lose some of them, it is time 
 to place the standard higher for masterpieces of 
 misery. It is right that our friends should share 
 our sorrows, but not that we should seek to bring 
 them to our condition of normal gloom. Like 
 Mr Woodhouse in ' Emma ' with his * let us all 
 have a little gruel,' we find it tedious to be 
 miserable alone. Mr Meredith on the other 
 handj calls on us to share his delight in the 
 beautiful earth, the lasting material for art even 
 when all the conditions of tragedy are reformed 
 away. His poems are the best antidote to the 
 introspective pessimism which is the deplor- 
 able tendency of civilised people. A consider- 
 able section of them is actually an exhortation 
 against egoism — not indeed against individuality
 
 52 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 — a man must be himself but not too fatuously 
 himself — a declaration of the unity of man and 
 earth. As in the novels Mr Meredith deals with 
 men as individuals, here he is concerned with 
 the life and destiny of man. A loving study of 
 the richness, order, and beauty of the earth, 
 which knows no persistent fits of dulness, is the 
 panacea for all human ills. He views it from no 
 misty transcendental height but closely and 
 reverently, finding in the life of the woods and 
 fields many close and subtle analogies to our 
 life. Earth is more than a background, more 
 than an environment, not merely the scene of 
 man's life and labours, not merely his temporary 
 home. He is of it and for it, its child and its 
 labourer. There are occasions of ecstatic exalta- 
 tion when the fighters for a cause count life and 
 death as mere external incidents. To secure and 
 perpetuate these emotions — in right degree and 
 quality — is the aim of Mr Meredith's teaching. 
 Our cause is the cause of man, of earth, and 
 through them, if we will, the cause of God, and 
 the sense should be ever with us of the smallness 
 of our personal stake, the greatness of that sum 
 of life of which we are a part. — 
 
 ' With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared, 
 And made them on each side a shadow seem.'
 
 MR Meredith's poems 53 
 
 and love is here that universal unselfish 
 
 love. 
 
 There is nothing comfortable about this. It 
 is incredibly unattractive to a bourgeois world. 
 Yet, austere and reasonable, it gives a footing 
 where was the quaking bog. The mystery is 
 still a mystery, but it is less a burden if we 
 realise that the seasons' changes, sunshine, wind 
 and rain, the habits of birds and beasts, growth 
 and decay, are not merely the facts by which 
 we must shape our course but are part of our own 
 existence, that the stars are no alien lights, for :— 
 
 ' The fire is in them whereof we are born, 
 The music of their motion may be ours.' 
 
 Mr Meredith does not hesitate to face the worst. 
 He takes life at its irreducible minimum and 
 finds it good ; he confronts it at its hardest and 
 most inexplicable without dismay. In ' A Faith 
 on Trial ' which Mr Le Gallienne has called * the 
 most spiritually helpful of modern poems,' the 
 situation is no less than that 
 
 • When the hand that never had failed 
 In its pressure to mine, hung slack.' 
 
 His test case is untainted by egoism of the baser 
 kind. The loss of comrade and mate is not to 
 be sustained by the weakening of human ties,
 
 54 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 but by the strengthening of the ties that bind 
 Man to Earth. 
 
 ' For the flesh in revolt at her laws, 
 Neither song nor smile in ruth, 
 Nor promise of things to reveal, 
 Has she, nor a word she saith : 
 We are asking her wheels to pause. 
 Well knows she the cry of unfaith. 
 If we strain to the farther shore. 
 We are catching at comfort near. 
 Assurances, symbols, saws. 
 Revelations in legends, light 
 To eyes rolling darkness, these 
 Desired of the flesh in affright. 
 For the which it will swear to adore. 
 She yields not for prayers at her knees ; 
 The woolly beast bleating will shear. 
 These are our sensual dreams ; 
 Of the yearning to touch, to feel 
 The dark Impalpable sure, 
 And have the Unveiled appear ; 
 Whereon ever black she beams. 
 Doth of her terrible deal. 
 She who dotes over ripeness at play, 
 Rosiness fondles and feeds, 
 Guides it with shepherding crook, 
 To her sports and her pastures alway. 
 Not she gives the tear for the tear : 
 Harsh wisdom gives Earth, no more ; 
 In one the spur and the curb : 
 An answer to thoughts or deeds ; 
 To the Legends an alien look ; 
 To the Questions a figure of clay. 
 Yet we have but to see and hear, 
 Crave we her medical herb.'
 
 MR Meredith's poems 55 
 
 Again and again the uselessness of the vague 
 appeal from the inevitable is insisted upon : — 
 
 ' He may entreat, aspire, 
 He may despair, and she has never heed. 
 She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need, 
 Not his desire.' 
 
 The natural appetites, personal communion and 
 fellowship, what is present and immediate, are 
 all good, are all precious, but sight and touch 
 are only the ministers to memory and imagina- 
 tion — memory, not the revival of vain regrets, 
 but the perennial store of happy impressions 
 and noble emotions — imagination — not an in- 
 strument of self-deception, but the faculty that 
 winnows and purifies, combines and projects. 
 
 What comfort then, may man look for when 
 death comes at last to him, when all the sup- 
 ports that love and service of Earth have given 
 begin to tremble beneath him ? He looks for 
 no comfort of a sensual kind. He acquiesces in 
 the course of Nature, and does not seek to im- 
 pose his own cravings upon it : his spirit 
 
 ' neither desires 
 The sleep nor the glory ; it trusts.' 
 
 In imagination, so far as failing powers can serve, 
 he may send out his thoughts towards the life 
 that unrolls itself beyond him, he may yet feel
 
 5^ BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 those unselfish and impersonal emotions of kind- 
 liness and love to men and pride in the race 
 that we feel at our best, and he sinks into the 
 void fortified by a faith other than that which 
 builds itself on the egoist's soul. 
 
 ' Into the breast that gave the rose 
 Shall I with shuddering fall ? ' 
 
 Perhaps there is nothing very new about all 
 
 this as it is here barely and dimly indicated, 
 
 but the messages which the human spirit now 
 
 requires are not vague illuminations or rough 
 
 awakening truths, but exquisite adaptations to 
 
 its needs. Our teachers must be of the rank 
 
 of poets. We grasp at the splendours of Mr 
 
 Meredith's poetry and find ourselves sustained 
 
 by its reason. We are ruled by impressions, 
 
 feelings, emotions. He guides them to flow in 
 
 the channels of reason. Who shall say which 
 
 of us sees the furthest into the sky ? He brings 
 
 us to the green earth, there to find the measure 
 
 of our souls. Our egoism becomes the life of 
 
 widening circles — self, family, country, race — 
 
 until at last : — 
 
 ' this love of earth reveals 
 A soul beside our own to quicken, quell, 
 Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift.' 
 
 No better instance than this last superb line
 
 MR Meredith's poems 57 
 
 could be given of the mutual aid of form and 
 spirit. It owes its effect to art, its power to 
 wisdom and truth. 
 
 If Mr Meredith's great gifts of refreshment 
 and sustainment are sorely needed, they are of 
 too little avail. He calls for a very keen in- 
 telligence or an immense patience. He has 
 himself referred to that ' acute and honourable 
 minority' who read his books, and some of us 
 may claim to belong to a minority even more 
 honourable as it is less acute. 'Envy me, sir, 
 envy me,' said the fearful Mr Malthus in the 
 'Suicide Club,' 'I am a coward!' And, envy 
 me, many an one of us might say, for I am a 
 dull reader. For us the gold was seldom on the 
 surface; we have dug for it with labour and 
 pain until it became our rich possession. The 
 glimpses and fragments of meaning are some- 
 times more to us than any plain tale could be. 
 And if we are lost in the ' Woods of Wester- 
 main ' what does it matter when we come across 
 such verse as : — 
 
 ' Mossy-footed squirrels leap, 
 Soft as winnowing plumes of sleep.' 
 
 Yet when we have made the most of such con- 
 solations it may be confessed that at times the 
 difficulties beset us. We are disposed to share
 
 5^ BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 the spitefulness of the uninitiated ' to whom the 
 incomprehensible is the abominable,' for this ob- 
 scurity is of all faults the least easy to forgive. 
 We may more readily pardon dulness or feeble- 
 ness in a writer, for these give us an advantage 
 over him that is not altogether unpleasant. 
 When he baffles our wits it irritates us into 
 blaming him out of all proportion to the offence. 
 Faults of weakness that are covered by easy 
 cadences are not easily distinguished. Faults of 
 misdirected power, of wilfulness, the faults of a 
 strong man, bristle out only too conspicuously. 
 To overlook or to condone the one variety and 
 to condemn the other is the time-hallowed pre- 
 rogative of incompetency (and most of us are in- 
 competent in our various degrees). Vigorous 
 and original work is sure to arouse the opposi- 
 tion of all conventional critics. 
 
 Most readers experience some uneasiness at 
 the increasing difficulty of English poetry, and 
 fear at times that they will be left behind. 
 Hitherto we have made a great family party with 
 Shakespeare and Milton, Goldsmith and Scott 
 and the rest. We could all enjoy good litera- 
 ture together. There was at least the appear- 
 ance of community. Soon, however, that active 
 minority, the clever people, will have books
 
 MR Meredith's poems 59 
 
 specially written for them, a step in the evolu- 
 tionary process that will subdivide the human 
 race. We have already a foretaste of the time 
 when the study of literature will most advantage- 
 ously be pursued concurrently with the more 
 teasing developments of the higher mathematics. 
 With all allowances for subject and method, I 
 think it cannot be denied that in Mr Meredith's 
 verse many difficulties arise, not so much from 
 intricacy or subtlety of thought as from remote- 
 ness and even irrelevancy of reference. Of 
 course the essence of his method is to discard 
 the irrelevant, but he does this to the extent of 
 omitting the necessary connections between ideas 
 that are not obviously related. Great as is his 
 command of verse he sometimes lays upon it 
 impossible tasks. Putting aside the question of 
 so-called ' inspiration ' which can account at 
 most for but a small part of any poet's work, 
 verse is a compromise between thought and the 
 conditions of its expression, and in cases of their 
 apparent happy union we don't know how much 
 is stifled or withdrawn. Mr Meredith is per- 
 haps too persistent in forcing into harness an 
 unmanageable idea. Even at the expense of 
 symmetry or coherence he uses the word or 
 phrase which seems to him to reveal his mean-
 
 6o BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 ing most vividly or searchingly. A writer may 
 be controlled and limited by his sense of form, 
 but form is at the best an obedient servant. Mr 
 Meredith has never been overawed by his own 
 style. It is not an instrument of too much 
 dignity for every-day use, and if it is not suffici- 
 ently flexible for his purpose, he breaks it. Per- 
 fection of style cannot make amends for leaving 
 half the world untouched or half his own mind 
 unsounded. He does not know the limitations 
 of perfection. With perfection interest ceases, 
 for the perception of perfection is the complete 
 comprehension that brings us to a standstill. 
 We crave these final achievements that arrest 
 and calm the mind, and the craving is a form of 
 indolence. Mr Meredith's work is too earnest, 
 too far-reaching, too great for perfection. Who 
 can follow all ramifications, weigh all essences, 
 distinguish all relations of a great artist ? It is 
 opposed to the spirit of art to be satisfied with a 
 low order of success. As it is comparatively 
 easy for a painter to obtain tone if his key of 
 colour is low, it is comparatively, not actually, 
 easy to express placid thoughts in harmonious 
 words. The technical difficulties of verse in- 
 crease with the vividness, variety, and strength 
 of what has to be expressed, and much of what
 
 MR Meredith's toems ^^ 
 
 is greatest and most significant in art is marred 
 by irregularities and lapses. No competent 
 person will deny that Mr Meredith is a profound 
 critic of life. No less will it be denied that his 
 verse is remarkable, distinguished, powerful. 
 He has not feared to be strong lest he should 
 cease to be exquisite, and the plausible attack 
 upon him will be the contention that his work 
 is not beautiful, but only full of beauties; that 
 verse is an instrument tJiat he has forced and 
 strained to his service, but that he lacks the fine 
 sense of harmony to interpret the sweetness of 
 nature. 
 
 To some of his work this objection may be 
 not wholly irrelevant though the concession 
 may mean rather a change of classification than 
 a condemnation, and if to the critic of complete 
 culture, smooth verse only is tolerable it might 
 be worth while for the Philistine to resist the 
 approach of enlightenment until he has assimi- 
 lated the substance and bathed his spirit in the 
 glories of this verse. 
 
 In verse, as in prose, Mr Meredith is some- 
 thing of an experimentalist. His creations are 
 too strong to respect invariably the limits of a 
 practised criticism. His ideas do not always 
 come to him clothed in their appropriate ex-
 
 62 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 pression. If not beyond the reaches of our souls 
 they are at least beyond the reaches of our 
 language. He has neither the wonderful 
 spontaneity of Shelley or Mr Swinburne nor 
 the acquired harmonious taste of Rossetti or 
 Tennyson. These, or some of these, it is pos- 
 sible to read with a degree of sensuous enjoy- 
 ment in that condition of partial attention 
 when the mind travels little beyond the sound 
 and form of the verse. With Mr Meredith 
 understanding is a necessity of acquiescence. 
 Such a line as : — 
 
 ' The years, which fasten rigid whom they cool,' 
 
 requires, for most of us, a slight mental effort 
 before we can accept it. He is so alert and 
 vivacious, his ideas are drawn from so wide a 
 field and have such a peculiar impress of his own 
 that we cannot cheat ourselves with a conven- 
 tional acceptance. There can be no doubt, I 
 think, that in his case sympathy and attention 
 do much toward promoting harmony of rhythm. 
 He is not of the race with whom 'a common 
 greyness silvers everything.' His world is very 
 much alive. Beauties of movement appeal to 
 him more than beauties of repose. 
 
 If his verse is sometimes disfigured by traces
 
 MR Meredith's poems 63 
 
 of hard thinking, it is certain, too, that his 
 triumphs of expression are innumerable. Few 
 poets could render such an account as he if 
 value were estimated by the proportion of fine 
 lines to quantity of verse, and perhaps even 
 fewer if by the wealth and variety of thought 
 in single lines and stanzas. His concentration 
 is extreme. No one has less of the inclination 
 to languish over vowel sounds. Of course to 
 those whose demand is only for the 'sincere 
 large accent, nobly plain,' who accept without 
 qualification the ' simple, sensuous, impassioned ' 
 definition of poetry and whose rigid standard 
 is founded on nothing less secure than Homer, 
 Wordsworth and Scott, Mr Meredith is often an 
 irritation. They relieve themselves by plati- 
 tudes about a poetic gift marred by eccentricities 
 and obscurities. He can be plain enough on 
 occasion, and his plainness is welcomed some- 
 times with the excess of appreciation awarded 
 to the effect that depends on contrast. And it 
 might be supposed that no lover of poetry could 
 be insensible to the splendours of his style. 
 These attributes of style can hardly be denied 
 to him — that his message gains in the telling : 
 that told in any other way something would be 
 lost : that what is said in his own distinctive
 
 64 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 manner yet appeals to a sense derived from the 
 best of his predecessors. Distinction of style is 
 his from first to last; we find it through all 
 varieties of his verse; in the plain line from 
 ' The Appeasement of Demeter,' 
 
 ' The hand of man was a defeated hand,' 
 
 ' Long watches through at one with godly night,' 
 
 'A lily in a linen clout 
 She looked when they had lain her out * 
 
 ' Too late may valour then avail ! 
 As you beheld my cannonier, 
 
 When with the staff of Benedek 
 On the plateau of Koniggratz, 
 You saw below that wedging speck ; 
 Foresaw proud Austria rammed to wreck, 
 Where Chlum drove deep in smoky jets.' 
 
 He may be obscure as in 
 
 ' A woman who is wife, despotic lords 
 Count faggot at the question, shall she live ! ' 
 
 which acquaintance with the context can hardly 
 render luminous, or queer as in 
 
 ' Love it so you could accost 
 Fellowly a livid ghost,' 
 
 which is more remarkable for uncouthness than 
 force, or harsh as in 
 
 ' In that grey veil, green grassblades brushed we by,*
 
 MR Meredith's poems 65 
 
 a line which no effort can bring trippingly off 
 the tongue, but in all these there is a certain 
 ineffaceable dignity of style. He is never feeble, 
 never desultory, never obvious. We never sus- 
 pect him of not being a great man. No doubts 
 or qualifications beset us when we read the 
 opening lines of ' Phoebus with Admetus ' 
 
 ' When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked 
 Sentencing to exile the bright sun-god,' 
 
 with its fine effect of accent hammered on the 
 last three syllables. This whole poem is flooded 
 by the sun. Such a line as — 
 
 ' Bulls that walk the pastures with kingly-flashing coats,' 
 
 will last one all day and come fresh again in 
 the morning. With ' Phoebus with Admetus ' 
 must be placed the beautiful ' Melampus ' whose 
 tender fancy and noble charm are reared upon 
 a firm substructure of science and philosophy. 
 
 It is hardly possible to conceive that any one 
 of Mr Meredith's poems could have been written 
 by another man, but perhaps of his greater 
 ones the beauties of ' Love in a Valley ' are 
 nearest to beauties not distinctively his own. 
 Yet its most exquisite stanza could be attributed 
 to no other : — 
 
 E
 
 66 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 ' Happy, happy time, when the white star hovers 
 Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew. 
 Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness, 
 Threading it with colour, as yewberries the yew. 
 Thicker crowd the shades while the grave East deepens 
 Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells. 
 Maiden still the morn is ; and strange she is, and secret; 
 Strange her eyes ; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells.' 
 
 Such verse cannot suffer by comparison with the 
 work of any English poet. Nor is success of 
 such high quality unique or rarely occasional. 
 ' The Day of the Daughter of Hades ' a poem 
 seldom quoted, and except to earnest students, 
 practically unknown, is certainly one of Mr 
 Meredith's best and most characteristic works. 
 It is the story of the daughter of Proserpine; 
 how she escaped for a single day from her 
 gloomy birthplace, and of the uses to which she 
 put her short, precarious holiday. The in- 
 herited love of Earth is strong upon her : — 
 
 ' As one that had toil of her own 
 She followed the lines of wheat 
 Tripping straight through the field, green blades. 
 To the groves of olive grey. 
 Downy-grey, golden tinged : and to glades 
 Where the pear-blossom thickens the spray 
 In a night, like the snow-packed storm : 
 Pear, apple, almond, plum : 
 Not wintry now : pushing, warm ! 
 And she touched them with finger and thumb.
 
 MR Meredith's poems 67 
 
 As the vine-hook closes : she smiled, 
 Recounting again and again, 
 Com, wine, fruit, oil ! like a child. 
 With the meaning known to men.' 
 
 Again, the peculiar delicacy, reticence and 
 dignity of the verse is shown in the description 
 of the meeting with the youth Callistes : — 
 
 ' She did not fly. 
 Nor started at his advance : 
 She looked, as when infinite thirst 
 Pants pausing to bless the springs, 
 Refreshed, unsated. Then first 
 He trembled with awe of the things 
 He had seen ; and he did transfer, 
 Divining and doubting in turn, 
 His reverence unto her ; 
 Nor asked what he crouched to learn: 
 The whence of her, whither, and why 
 Her presence there, and her name, 
 Her parentage : under which sky 
 Her birth, and how hither she came. 
 So young, a virgin, alone. 
 Unfriended, having no fear, 
 As Oreads have ; no moan, 
 Like the lost upon earth ; no tear ; 
 Not a sign of the torch in the blood, 
 Though her stature had reached the height 
 When mantles a tender rud 
 In maids that of youths have sight, 
 If maids of our seed they be : 
 For he said : A glad vision art thou ! 
 And she answered him : Thou to me 
 As men utter a vow.'
 
 68 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 The poem leaves the impression of a noble 
 pathos, far removed from the cherishing of 
 sentiment, which gives to the Daughter of 
 Hades spiritual affinities to the more realised 
 and elaborated heroines of Mr Meredith's novels. 
 I believe it is the fashion to extol the 
 ' Modern Love ' volume at the expense of the 
 later ones. If something less vivid and con- 
 centrated it is less inveterately didactic and less 
 obscure than they. The title poem is, of course, 
 unique and incomparable ; it has no equal, for 
 there is nothing like it. It has been praised 
 well by great poets. Exquisite details combine 
 to a fine unity of effect. It holds a position 
 between the novels and the nature poems, 
 between the individual and the typical. The 
 avoidance of a regular sonnet form may seem 
 to some an instance of its author's determina- 
 tion to do nothing in the usual way. It is 
 evident, however, that the octave and sestet 
 employed in a continuous dramatic poem would 
 be formal and monotonous, while a closing 
 rhymed couplet would be even less appro- 
 priate to its character. Although it is in- 
 tensely tragical it has no taint of pessimism. If 
 it shows that vague aspirations are not a suf- 
 ficient equipment for the changes and chances
 
 MR Meredith's poems 69 
 
 of married life it gives no discouragement to 
 lovers who have the sympathy and the com- 
 radeship that come of interests and work in 
 common. It is an effective beacon over the 
 shallows of sentiment and might save many 
 a desperate wreck. The love ' that fed not on 
 the advancing hours ' is burnt out, romance is 
 evaporated. There remain many meanderings 
 of pity and generosity, reconciliations and in- 
 terludes, all tending to a tragic end. Yet we 
 know that there is a specific ; that to the 
 marriage of true minds there is no impediment. 
 Consistency may seem a ludicrous attribute to 
 claim for a poet. Yet Mr Meredith does see 
 life whole, and so is not at the mercy of the 
 whimsical lyric moods, the little casual joys and 
 sorrows that delight us in another. The main 
 stream of his poetry does not reject contributory 
 rillsj but it does not overflow its banks in chance 
 irrigation. ' Modern Love ' is in accord with all 
 the later work in its foundation of reason and 
 reality. The sentimentalist whose cry is always 
 for permanence would inflate every boy and girl 
 affair to the heroic dimensions, and would pin 
 down a butterfly to secure eternal beauty. On 
 the other hand the scientific cynicists who insist, 
 and so far rightly insist, on change as the
 
 7° BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 necessity of growth, refuse to see that change 
 without limitation is chaos, and that the life of 
 man and woman within the prosaic confines of 
 marriage may be progressive and exalted. 
 Nature ' plays for Seasons not Eternities,' says 
 Mr Meredith, and again advises us to ' kiss the 
 seasons and shun regrets.' Here is the spirit of 
 Omar Khayyam, but the later poet has a further 
 word to say of nature, a word which marks the 
 difference between his hope and the despair of 
 the Persian, that *of her harmonies she is full 
 sure.' Yet sometimes when we read certain 
 stanzas of ' Modern Love ' — the first, the last, the 
 ' Am I failing,' the ' We saw the swallows 
 gathering in the sky,' the 'In our old ship- 
 wrecked days there was an hour,' philosophy 
 seems to shrink into a small matter. It is not 
 strange to us that poetic impulses have not 
 always regarded the marks and limits set by the 
 rule of life; and then again our imaginations are 
 awakened by that constant conception of life, 
 that ' ever fixed mark ' that shines always through 
 the moods of art. For he never fails us. We 
 always see him like the Sirius of his great 
 sonnet : 
 
 ' With cheerful fervour of a warrior's mien 
 Who holds in his great heart the battle scales.'
 
 MR Meredith's poems 7' 
 
 To estimate a poet rightly judgment must be 
 enforced by enthusiasm. There are many care- 
 ful and excellent persons who hold that Mr 
 Meredith is an extremely clever man who has 
 wrecked himself by affectation and eccentricities. 
 They are often highly sensitive; by no means 
 dull or stereotyped of judgment; and they re- 
 main unconvinced of his surpassing merit. Con- 
 fronted by a confident enthusiasm they declare 
 that such a state precludes a sober judgment. 
 The lukewarm does duty for temperance, carp- 
 ing is mistaken for discrimination. Yet some 
 things can be seen clearly only in the light of 
 passion : emotion is the legitimate stimulant of 
 reason. Faults we may admit : — 
 
 ' Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete, 
 Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy 
 Earth and air, may brave faults from head to feet.' 
 
 And the good gossips may be assured that nothing 
 is further from our minds than a deprecatory 
 or defensive attitude. No ingenious explanation 
 of failure is necessary for a great, a brilliant, an 
 overwhelming success. The depreciators of Mr 
 Meredith's verse might arouse considerable anger 
 among his admirers were it not that pity prevails 
 towards those who cannot accept with a whole
 
 72 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 heart the most stimulating and enthralhng of 
 writers. 
 
 In all differences of opinion about these matters 
 there remains the appeal to posterity. This is a 
 harmless exercise and would be less popular, 
 perhaps, if we ran the risk of being confounded 
 before that shadowy tribunal. It is curious that 
 a conviction of the decadence of taste and 
 viciousness of tendency of our own time may co- 
 exist with the expectation of a generation of clear 
 sight and cool brain. However this may be, I 
 think it is no paradox that the best time to 
 appreciate a poet is the time in which he lives 
 and writes. Posterity may get the right per- 
 spective, the right proportions, but they are of 
 less account than the vivid glimpses through 
 the dust and turmoil of the present. In all the 
 greatest work there is a constant element that 
 defies time, that is true to the unchanging facts 
 of nature and life, and this is always fresh and 
 vital. But the form and temper of the work are 
 often suited, by an art only less than the highest 
 to time and circumstances. This temporary 
 value, this special didactic value, is slighted by 
 an age in which every man takes his own casual 
 errors as a standard. Yet for everyone and for 
 all time there remains in these poems that
 
 MR Meredith's poems 73 
 
 intensely individual expression that brings to us 
 
 the smell of earth, the forms and hues of its 
 
 growths, the cries and movements of its creatures, 
 
 the glow and quiver of its lights, every detail as 
 
 part of a great harmony, and every detail with its 
 
 own peculiar significance. If more beautiful 
 
 verse has been written about the earth there has 
 
 been none that makes her seem so beautiful. If 
 
 we take Mr Meredith simply as an impressionist 
 
 we find such verse as this: — 
 
 ' Now seems none but the spider lord ; 
 Star in circle his web waits prey, 
 Silvering bush-mounds, blue-brushing sward ; 
 Slow runs the hour, swift flits the ray. 
 Now to his thread-shroud is he nigh, 
 Nigh to the tangle where wings are sealed. 
 He who frolicked the jewelled fly ; 
 All is adroop on the down and the weald.' 
 
 ' Mists more lone for the sheep-bell enwrap 
 Nights that tardily let slip a morn 
 Paler than moons, and on noontide's lap 
 Flame dies cold, like the rose late born.' 
 
 And again of very different weather : — 
 
 ' Is the land ship ? we are rolled, we drive 
 Tritonly, cleaving hiss and hum ; 
 Whirl with the dead, or mount or dive, 
 Or down in dregs, or on in scum. 
 And drums the distant, pipes the near,. 
 And vale and hill are grey in grey. 
 As when the surge is crumbling sheer, 
 And sea-mews wing the haze of spray.
 
 74 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 Clouds — are they bony witches ? — swarms, 
 
 Darting swift on the robber's flight, 
 
 Hurry an infant sky in arms : 
 
 It peeps, it becks ; 'tis day, 'tis night. 
 
 Black while over the loop of blue 
 
 The swathe is closed, like shroud on corse. 
 
 Lo, as if swift the Furies flew, 
 
 The Fates at heel at a cry to horse ! ' 
 
 with its rapid change of metaphor to coincide 
 with the rush and swirl of the elements. Such 
 verse is not less exquisite because it seems to 
 make our casements rattle. Mr Meredith is the 
 poet of the wind and the rain. He has the most 
 reality in dealing with these subjects because he 
 is the most imaginative. There is a soaking 
 wet day in ' The Egoist ' that lives in the memory 
 of the reader, and in ' Earth and a Wedded 
 Woman' there is a night of sweet rain that 
 remains a perpetual refreshment. 
 
 Few things in Mr Meredith's work are more 
 striking than his success in fields that might be 
 thought not quite his own. ' Vittoria ' is such a 
 triumph, and as it is the legitimate successor to 
 ' The Last of the Mohicans,' thrilling the man as 
 this the boy, so 'The Nuptials of Attila' minis- 
 ters to a need that the ' Lays of Ancient Rome ' 
 might have created. We have sung our ' Hymn 
 to Intellectual Beauty ' between the one and the 
 other. Then we all know Mr Swinburne's
 
 MR Meredith's poems 75 
 
 praise of 'Margaret's Bridal Eve' awarding it 
 the next place, ' perhaps not very far below it ' 
 to Rossetti's * Sister Helen ' high praise indeed, 
 for there is room for a gradation of masterpieces 
 below that matchless ballad. Readers of Mr 
 Meredith's novels know that he has an extra- 
 ordinary range. His poems extend that range 
 indefinitely : a dozen might be named of which 
 no two have any categorical affinity, and leave 
 us yet works so far apart from each other 
 and the rest as the noble ' Ode to France,' the 
 strangely impressive ' Song of Theodolinda ' and 
 'The Young Princess,' a beautiful romantic ballad 
 with nightingales and the tinkle of steel in it 
 in which we nearly, but perhaps not quite, 
 forget that its author is a preacher. 
 
 Of course variety is not the certain sign of 
 greatness, but variety of excellence is better than 
 accumulation of excellence. 
 
 Mr Meredith has not written a play, or at 
 least he has never produced one, but some readers 
 of 'Chloe' have thought that in this short tale 
 there is fine dramatic material, and certainly 
 anything that he attempted in this direction 
 would be of interest and value. The ardent 
 disciple will go further, and on very little provo- 
 cation will maintain, not only that his criticism
 
 76 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 of life is the largest, sanest, most stimulating of 
 the time, but that he is the best political intelli- 
 gence as well as one of the best literary critics. 
 It may be a damaging admission to make of a 
 poem, but there is a great deal of sound sense, 
 and good democratic politics in ' The Empty 
 Purse,' and the ' Ballad of Fair Ladies in 
 Revolt ' is at least better reading than Mrs 
 Lynn Lynton's polite trifling. 
 
 As to Mr Meredith's relation to the general 
 reader, it is not likely that he can make much 
 progress. Outside the small minority which 
 loves poetry there is no doubt a larger audience 
 which will read it under certain conditions — if 
 it is fashionable, if it is diverting, if it is dis- 
 tinctly understood to be unexceptionable and 
 improving in its tendency, if it is easy. ' The 
 Woods of Westermain ' appearing in the fore- 
 front of 'Poems and Lyrics,' makes short work 
 of feeble inquirers and probably saves a good 
 deal of trouble. But it is no more reasonable 
 to judge Mr Meredith by misunderstanding his 
 poems of exceptional difficulty than to consider 
 Browning merely as the poet of 'Fifine at the 
 Fair' and 'Sordello,' or Blake of 'William Bond' 
 and the Prophetic Books. His poems are seldom 
 easy, but yet more rarely are they quite dark to
 
 MR Meredith's poems 77 
 
 the average mind. Like most good poetry they 
 need patience and attention, though it would, of 
 course, be idle to deny that they are more 
 difficult than most good poetry. We must take 
 them as they are, for it is too late for Mr 
 Meredith, whether he is mannerist or stylist, to 
 begin afresh. As an earnest man grows older 
 his intentions become more persistent. The 
 tendency of a difficult writer is to become more 
 difficult. As he has never tempered his expres- 
 sion to the capacity of his readers he becomes, 
 with practice, more accomplished in a concen- 
 tration of allusion that satisfies himself. Thus 
 as he works primarily with reference to his own 
 mind and not with constant consideration for 
 the expectations and capacities of his readers we 
 get closer to the individuality of such a writer. 
 Perhaps in the particular case there is an open- 
 ing for a populariser or interpreter, for a selec- 
 tion made in the interests of plain people would 
 miss much of the best, and there seems to be 
 little prospect now that Mr Meredith will re- 
 consider the too flattering estimate of the mental 
 grasp of his readers. His latest volume contains 
 the pathetically beautiful ' Jump to Glory Jane ' 
 and several fine patriotic pieces, as well as the 
 ' Night of Frost in May ' one of the poems about
 
 78 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 which there can be little difference of opinion, 
 but it contains also ' The Empty Purse ' and an 
 ode or two that come up to his standard of im- 
 practicability for all but the earnest seeker. His 
 appeal, then, is, almost wholly, to that inner 
 class of critical and serious readers who must 
 always in the long run determine the position 
 of a poet. By some of them it will be urged 
 that eccentricities and lapses disqualify him 
 from taking the rank that should be his by 
 virtue of his matter and style at their best. 
 'The best poetry,' says Matthew Arnold, 'will 
 be found to have a power of informing, sustain- 
 ing, and delighting us, as nothing else can.' 
 Judged by this standard Meredith stands high 
 among the highest. With clear vision he has 
 realised what lies within our sight, finding here 
 infinite interest and infinite delight : — 
 
 'So mine are there new fruitings rich 
 The simple to the common brings. 
 1 keep the youth of souls who pitch 
 Their joy in this old heart of things.' 
 
 And so the great philosopher, the deep and in- 
 tricate thinker brings us back to a simple love 
 of Earth : 
 
 ' For love we Earth, then serve we all ; 
 Her mystic secret then is ours :
 
 MR Meredith's poems 79 
 
 We fall, or view our treasures fall, 
 Unclouded, as beholds her flowers 
 
 Earth, from a night of frosted wreck, 
 Enrobed in morning's mounted fire. 
 When lowly, with a broken neck 
 The crocus lays her cheek to mire.' 
 
 A hard lesson : and when we have learnt it — 
 when our love of the greater life supports us 
 through the dark valley — we have made the 
 advance from stoicism to fortitude.
 
 GEORGE BORROW 
 
 George Borrow has an established position in 
 the world of letters, and his qualities are, per- 
 haps, hardly matters for debate. When, however, 
 a man of genius is placed fairly and securely on 
 his pedestal he runs some risk of neglect, for as 
 he is no longer attacked, he need not be defended, 
 and literary criticism, except in rare instances, is 
 nothing if not militant. Comparative methods 
 are usually competitive also, but it is difficult to 
 find any one with whom Borrow may be com- 
 pared profitably. I think that he should be 
 written about occasionally, if only for the reason 
 that, his name being so seldom heard, there is 
 some danger of the right people going to their 
 graves without encountering him — a mischance 
 that cannot be contemplated easily by any right- 
 thinking man. Of course, he is known in 
 ' literary ' circles, but then all the right people
 
 GEORGE BORROW 
 
 8i 
 
 are not of these, and there might be reasonable 
 cause for complaint that so few disinterested 
 attempts have been made to direct attention 
 to so notable a writer, a writer with whom 
 literary form is subordinated to a strong person- 
 ality expressing itself with vigorous eccentricity. 
 
 Mr Theodore Watts has lately put forth an 
 ingenious claim, for himself and another dis- 
 tinguished man of letters, to exclusive rights in 
 Borrow. It is a personal matter, he says, and 
 they knew him personally. They have an 
 advantage, and it is possible that our points of 
 view are wrong and that we can never see the 
 meaning and value of Mr Watts' observations. 
 Yet if our Borrow is not the true one or 
 the best one, he is at least a good one — quite 
 good enough for us. If we do not rank him as a 
 genius, it is because it is impossible to rank him 
 at all. There are men of genius, and there is 
 George Borrow. 
 
 In this very serious world we leave ourselves 
 little time for the pursuit of innocent pleasure. 
 It is, no doubt, a pleasure to read a poem by 
 Tennyson, a novel by Mr James, or a psycho- 
 logical study by one of the great Russians, but 
 these are pleasures to which we bend our 
 minds as to a responsible undertaking. For 
 
 F
 
 82 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 what they give us they demand something in 
 return. Didactic art is not in vogue, but a 
 moral lesson is nevertheless enforced by every 
 work that calls for judgment. Art may be 
 unmoral, but criticism, when it passes beyond 
 casual appreciation, is a moral exercise of the 
 sternest and most fatiguing kind. The critical 
 reader loses a good deal of the pleasure that 
 comes of ease of mind and abandonment to 
 the direction of his author, though it may 
 be hoped that he makes himself amends in 
 other ways. There are among the delights of 
 Borrow that he may best be approached un- 
 critically, that he does not require careful 
 attention, and that judgment upon him is un- 
 necessary. We like this sort of thing, or we 
 don't like it, and we need no canons of art 
 to determine it. I do not propose, then, to 
 weigh, to analyse, to test; such processes might 
 leave us nothing very substantial, for Borrow's 
 peculiar essence or aroma would inevitably elude 
 my coarse attempts; I shall be satisfied to con- 
 vey, principally from his own lips, an impression 
 of a curious and fascinating personage, and to 
 introduce or to recall, as far as space will 
 permit, a few of the queer figures in his queer 
 world.
 
 GEORGE BORROW ^3 
 
 In the perpetual struggle waged between 
 variety and uniformity the railway and all it 
 brings with it have given to the latter at least 
 a temporary advantage. They have levelled 
 many of the little inequalities which make up 
 a great part of such a book as ' Lavengro.' 
 With the stage-coachmen — monsters of insol- 
 ence and rapacity, according to Borrow — has 
 disappeared much of the miscellaneous life of 
 the roads. Horse-fairs are not what they were, 
 the Gypsies are gradually being merged in other 
 races or exterminated, remote eccentrics of all 
 kinds have been brought under the civilising 
 influence of the morning paper. Whether the 
 morning paper is helping to destroy all useful 
 and beautiful variations, or whether it is ful- 
 filling its function in lifting the generality of 
 the race to a higher level whence the variations 
 may begin anew, is a question that we need not 
 discuss here, for it is a serious question. Any- 
 how, the conditions that might help to make 
 another 'Lavengro' have almost ceased to exist. 
 Where now may we meet with a ratcatcher who 
 is filled with enthusiasm for his calling, believing 
 it to be the finest and most interesting in the 
 world ? The ratcatcher now strains toward a 
 sense of proportion, and adopting the foolish and
 
 84 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 misleading view that he is only a ratcatcher, en- 
 deavours to put himself into right relations to 
 rats and to the universe, and the chances are, 
 either that he has progressive ideas and hopes to 
 see his son an alderman, or that he sinks into an 
 abasement that is irrational and immoral. It is 
 this fatal anxiety to get the proportions right 
 that threatens the interest of life. In Borrow, 
 happily, they are all wrong. He is crammed 
 with prejudices and irrelevancies of every kind; 
 he is full of useless knowledge; he is unaccount- 
 able and inconsistent. He leaves us in doubt 
 as to whether he is the most self-revealing or the 
 most secretive of men; and, excellent humorist 
 as he is, he staggers us with the intermissions 
 of his humour. 
 
 I should, I suppose, after recording that Bor- 
 row was born in 1803, at East Dereham, in 
 Norfolk, proceed to deduce certain character- 
 istics from his parentage, and as he came on 
 his father's side from a Cornish, and on his 
 mother's from a Norman stock, I feel that in 
 neglecting to enlarge upon these points, I am 
 missing an opportunity. To attempt to ac- 
 count for him scientifically would be, I am con- 
 vinced, a difficult task, and it must suffice to 
 say that as his father was a recruiting officer
 
 GEORGE BORROW 85 
 
 and shifted his quarters according to the exi- 
 gencies of his profession the boy's bent towards 
 change and wandering had much encourage- 
 ment, especially as in the matter of companions 
 and recreations he seems to have had a fairly 
 free hand. He was thrown upon the world 
 very early, and in London, where he sought his 
 fortune, he soon drifted into a publisher's hack. 
 He had a share in the compilation of the 
 ' Newgate Calendar,' work which necessitated 
 a peculiar and not entirely uncongenial course 
 of reading. According to his own, or rather to 
 Lavengro's account, it was the proceeds of the 
 * Life of Joseph Sell ' — a very remarkable tour 
 de force — that enabled him to quit London and 
 commence a roving life. It is said that this 
 work has been searched for occasionally by keen 
 Borrovians, but as it is more than probable that 
 the book, Hke its subject, is wholly imaginary, 
 it is not strange that no one has yet found 
 it. The actual details of Borrow's wanderings 
 through England and elsewhere belong to the 
 unrevealed, and will most likely never be dis- 
 entangled from the mass of autobiographical 
 romance. One of the most curious authentic 
 records is that he was a foreign correspondent 
 for the Morning Herald in 1837-9, and is said
 
 86 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 to have been the first of the kind. He married 
 in 1840, and settled at Oulton Broads, where he 
 appears to have played a variation upon the 
 country gentleman, mixing more with tramps 
 and Gypsies than with his more conventional 
 neighbours. His interests were largely philo- 
 logical, and though languages seem to have had 
 rather more of romantic than of scientific in- 
 terest for him, his knowledge must have been 
 extraordinarily copious and extensive, one of 
 his publications actually consisting of metrical 
 translations from thirty languages and dialects. 
 He died in 1881, leaving behind him 'moun- 
 tains of manuscript ' which have not hitherto 
 seen the light, and which his admirers await 
 with some trepidation. 
 
 'Lavengro' and 'The Romany Rye,' though 
 not the first of his works in order of publication, 
 nor probably of composition, are, undoubtedly, 
 a highly idealised account of his own early life. 
 They are, like all his books, an olla podrida 
 of many kinds, with a satisfactory and admir- 
 able preponderance of the good. How much 
 is genuine autobiography and how much cun- 
 ningly concocted fable must always, it is to be 
 hoped, remain a mystery. For my part, I 
 cannot pretend to say when Borrow is serious
 
 GEORGE BORROW 87 
 
 — for I believe he is often serious — and when 
 he is having his httle joke, for he has a re- 
 markable faculty for speaking soberly and dis- 
 creetly with his tongue in his cheek. If it is 
 impossible that all these things should have 
 happened to him, it seems no less impossible 
 that he should have made them up. How 
 could any one make up such a story as that of 
 the King of the Vipers, and are there, or were 
 there ever to be met with, such persons as its 
 narrator? Then there is the marvellous adven- 
 ture of Sergeant Bagg, when he made a good 
 attempt to hand over Jerry Grant to the quarter 
 sessions, an attempt defeated by a storm which 
 he considered ' not fair, but something Irish and 
 supernatural'; there is the man who touched to 
 keep off the evil chance ; the footman who had 
 advanced views on the drama and considered 
 that ' Shakespeare culminated some time ago,' a 
 prototype of the generation that will soon be 
 upon us ; the Welsh preacher who had committed 
 the unpardonable sin — this last the hero of a 
 truly fine piece of narrative — and others innumer- 
 able. But it is not until Lavengro has bought 
 Jack Slingsby's cart and apparatus (Jack had 
 been frightened off his beat by the Flaming 
 Tinman), and has fairly taken the road as a
 
 88 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 travelling tinker, that we get to the heart of the 
 matter. An attempt upon his life by the 
 old Gypsy, Mrs Hearne, who is not without a 
 certain grotesque tragedy and whose motives are 
 honourably conservative, is frustrated by the 
 unpardonable sinner and his wife (a very pleasing 
 young woman), and when, according to the old 
 lady's reading of the laws controlling matter, 
 Lavengro should be dead, and is actually dis- 
 covered ' disputing about religion with a Welsh 
 Methody ' she hangs herself, a disappointed 
 woman. Mr Jasper Petulengro, her son-in-law, 
 though reasonable enough on the general subject 
 of her decease, insists, as a point of honour, upon 
 satisfaction with the 'naked morleys.' A few 
 rounds satisfy him, being ' all that can reasonably 
 be expected for an old woman who carried so 
 much brimstone about her.' 
 
 Then comes the camping in ' Mumpers' Dingle,' 
 and Lavengro's possession by the evil one, to be 
 followed next day by the hardly less formidable 
 Flaming Tinman. A combat ensues — short, but 
 of the right quality, and we are introduced to 
 the great Isopel Berners, a travelling acquaint- 
 ance of the Tinman's, who officiates as Lavengro's 
 second, while Grey Moll performs a like duty 
 for his opponent. The turning point in the
 
 GEORGE BORROW 89 
 
 struggle is reached when Isopel says that ' it's of 
 no use flipping at the Flaming Tinman with 
 your left hand,' and recommends ' LongMelford.' 
 Long Melford does it, and the Tinman leaves 
 the field with his mort Grey Moll, while Belle 
 and Lavengro commence their strange intimacy. 
 Isopel Berners is one of the bravest, freshest, and 
 most charming of heroines, and her too short 
 history constitutes one of the very finest idylls 
 of the road. In no other relation does Borrow — 
 and I abandon all attempt to separate him from 
 Lavengro — show himself so human, though even 
 here he proves himself something less or some- 
 thing more than a man. Isopel was born in the 
 * great house ' of Long Melford, where she learnt 
 ' to read and sew, to fear God, and to take her 
 own part.' The principal detail of this last ac- 
 complishment is a swashing blow with the right, 
 straight from the shoulder, to which she gives 
 the expressive title of 'Long Melford,' there 
 being ' nothing like it for shortness all the world 
 over,' To the wandering maiden it had proved 
 a safeguard as effectual in its way as the ' Erin's 
 honour and Erin's pride ' relied upon by the 
 simpering young lady in the song. Isopel is, 
 indeed, the prototype of the valiant young 
 woman, now taking the world by storm, who
 
 9° BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 has grown dissatisfied with assurances that 
 matters will go on very comfortably if she will 
 only place implicit confidence in the honour 
 and pride of her natural protector, and who has 
 found something of exhilaration, and no loss 
 of honour, or pride that is worth having, in 
 taking her own part. In defiance of conven- 
 tion, Isopel and Lavengro now camp beside 
 one another in the .dingle, taking tea together 
 regularly, a menage strongly condemned by 
 Mrs Chikno — the gypsy Mrs Grundy — as being 
 of a character that she was determined not 
 to 'sanctify' by social concessions. Others are 
 less particular, or more charitable, and we get 
 a little too much of the man in black, an 
 emissary of Rome, who is rather a poor affair, 
 though he certainly so far conveys the impres- 
 sion of a loathsome brute as to make us regret 
 that the threat of the gentle Isopel to ' break 
 his glass against his mouth ' is not carried 
 out. Mr and Mrs Petulengro make amends 
 by paying a ceremonial visit, arrayed in the 
 Roman fashion, in spite of the determined 
 opposition of their relative Mrs Chikno, who 
 goes so far as to suggest that the offer of a 
 nobleman to marry Mrs Petulengro before she 
 espoused her present husband — an offer which
 
 GEORGE BORROW 9» 
 
 is naturally a source of pride and occasional 
 reminiscence to the lady— was, after all, ' in 
 the roving and uncertificated line.' Mrs Petul- 
 engro's reply is sound. 'In whatever line it 
 was,' said she * the offer was a good one.' Then 
 we come to that most curious incident when 
 Lavengro sat under a hedge for three hours con- 
 versing with the gypsy girl Ursula, and making 
 a not unsuccessful attempt to combine flirtation 
 with moral vivisection, which resulted in sur- 
 prises on both sides. ' A rum conversation it 
 was,' as Mr Petulengro said, and he ought to 
 know, as he had planned the meeting, jnd 
 sat on the other side of the hedge all the 
 time. I do not ask for anything better than 
 the idea of Jasper, the baffled humorist, listen- 
 ing to the unexpected turns of that conversa- 
 tion. It is hard to escape his conclusion that 
 Lavengro 'cared for nothing in the world 
 but old words and strange stories,' and we 
 may even go so far as to say that if Borrow 
 had a full equipment of human emotions his 
 reticence is one of the most astonishing of 
 literary feats. In his cool way Lavengro seems 
 to have been in love with Isopel, who is by far 
 the most real and most pathetic of Sorrow's 
 characters. After some wooing of an uncon-
 
 92 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 ventional kind, which consists mainly of dis- 
 sertations on the Armenian language, he even 
 offers marriage, which is declined for the 
 singular reason that as he is mad — not an 
 insuperable objection in itself — it is a point of 
 honour with the proud workhouse girl not to 
 take advantage of his infirmity, Lavengro ac- 
 cepts what he is pleased to consider the inevit- 
 able pretty easily— far too easily — for Isopel is 
 decidedly the woman for whom to risk every- 
 thing, and after a few decent fits of melancholy 
 he takes the road gaily enough. He has the 
 wanderer's temperament ; the company of the 
 roads is good enough for him — light come, light 
 go, and no loss is irreparable. Certainly, a man 
 who can sit on the shaft of his cart ' musing now 
 on the structure of the Roman tongue, now on 
 the rise and fall of the Persian power, and now 
 on the powers vested in recorders at quarter 
 sessions,' has within himself considerable re- 
 cuperative resources. 
 
 By this time we are out of ' Lavengro ' and 
 into ' The Romany Rye,' which is not merely 
 a sequel to, but a continuation of the former. 
 Borrow actually played his readers the trick of 
 stopping in the middle of an episode and taking 
 up the thread after an interval of six years with-
 
 GEORGE BORROW 93 
 
 out, so far as can be seen, the slightest explana- 
 tion or apology. ' The Romany Rye ' is much 
 shorter than its predecessor, and the best praise 
 that can be given to it is that it does not fall 
 conspicuously below the former standard. The 
 admirable sententious irony of Mr Petulengro 
 enriches the earlier pages, while later we have 
 a good assortment of eccentrics, and some capital 
 horsey business. Perhaps, as a genuine oddity, 
 the prize must be given to the old man who 
 employed his abundant leisure in keeping 
 melancholy at bay by the singular expedient 
 of learning Chinese from the crockery he col- 
 lected. In the course of thirty-five years he 
 had acquired a fair proficiency in the tongue 
 and an enormous amount of china. This is un- 
 usual enough, but the oddest thing about this 
 old gentleman is that, through indolence, he 
 had never learnt to tell the time. Looking at 
 the clock, he admitted that he could ' give a 
 guess to within a few minutes.' I suppose that 
 most of us now flatter ourselves that we can 
 tell the time pretty accurately, though there 
 are still villages in Ireland without clock or 
 watch, and yet one can look into a world where 
 time does not much matter with fascination 
 and envy.
 
 94 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 'The Bible in Spain,' upon which with 
 ' Lavengro,' Borrow's reputation mainly rests, 
 seems to be, in the main, an authentic account 
 of his adventures in Spain as an agent of the 
 Bible Society. It was published in 1843, being 
 preceded by ' The Gypsies in Spain,' which 
 covers the same ground, but is specially devoted 
 to what Mr Carlyle's maid-servant would call 
 the 'fakes and manoeuvres ' of that body. 
 
 The Edinburgh Review for February, 1843, 
 described 'The Bible in Spain' as 'something 
 between Le Sage and Bunyan.' This is very 
 well, but if we are to get at Borrow in this way, 
 I should say something, also, of Hawthorne, a 
 vast deal of John Bull, a little bit of Don 
 Quixote, and a touch of Dugald Dalgetty. 
 
 We have various expedients now-a-days for 
 putting the world right among which the dis- 
 tribution of Testaments to foreign peoples hardly 
 holds its own, and though no one can help ad- 
 miring Borrow's pluck, and it goes without 
 saying that he believed firmly in the efficacy of 
 his method, it would be difficult to determine 
 the proportions of motive power in his zeal for 
 the Christian religion, delight in a roving life, 
 and desire to annoy the Pope of Rome. For 
 the intrepid Borrow, his saddle-bags filled with
 
 GEORGE BORROW 95 
 
 Testaments, faring forth into the wilds of Spain 
 to fight the powers of darkness, is by no means 
 the typical missionary. No obstacle daunts him 
 on the work he sets himself to do, but he is 
 always ready to turn aside for an odd character 
 or a good bit of dialogue. His courage is not 
 of a fantastic or of a conventionally heroic kind, 
 and his simple narrative seems neither to ex- 
 aggerate ,the dangers that he ran, nor with false 
 modesty to minimise them. They are a matter 
 of course, a part of the day's work, and he 
 ventures into gloomy robber-haunted passes with 
 a nonchalance which is perhaps derived in part 
 from the confidence which his extraordinary 
 immunity from mishap had given him. That 
 he does not get his throat cut he attributes, with 
 sincere piety, to the watchful care of God, 
 though possibly under other conditions the 
 fatalist philosophy of his guide that ' it was not 
 so written ' might have served him equally well. 
 Pious though he is, he is buoyed up by no 
 spiritual enthusiasm; he is merely a plain man 
 doing his duty, a duty that is, on the whole, 
 highly congenial to him. It would have been 
 equally congenial, I am sure, to supply the 
 Spaniards with good ale had such a mission 
 been feasible, and he would have risked his life
 
 96 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 for this cause with the same fortitude. We 
 laugh at Borrow here as elsewhere, but it is 
 with the happy laughter of pride and affection. 
 
 In the course of his travels he ran almost as 
 many risks as St Paul, these ranging from 
 apparent and measurable dangers to such in- 
 cidents as that when, on a pitch dark night, in 
 a district infested by murderous bandits, he 
 heard the straining and gasping of men under a 
 heavy burden, who crossed the road within a 
 few feet of where he was halted. On another 
 occasion, when on shipboard off Cape Finisterra, 
 all hope was abandoned : — 
 
 ' We were now close to the rocks, when a 
 horrid convulsion of the elements took place. 
 The lightning enveloped us as with a mantle; 
 the thunders were louder than the roar of a 
 million cannon ; the dregs of the ocean seemed 
 to be cast up, and in the midst of all this tur- 
 moil, the wind, without the slightest intimation, 
 veered right about, and pushed us from the 
 horrible coast faster than it had previously 
 driven us towards it.' It is no wonder that the 
 oldest sailors on board acknowledged that they 
 had never witnessed so providential an escape. 
 What is of more importance to us, this incident 
 was the cause of one of Borrow's most entertain-
 
 GEORGE BORROW 97 
 
 ing adventures. This was a characteristic expe- 
 dition to Finisterra, to bestow his last remaining 
 Testament upon the inhabitants of that remote 
 region, in commemoration of his escape. The 
 Quixotic element in his character here asserts 
 itself, temporarily overpowering the Dugald 
 Dalgetty. The roads were frightful, the country 
 outlandish and dangerous, the destination al- 
 most unknown — a combination of circumstances 
 which became almost ideal, when, by a happy 
 chance, he acquired a guide quite after his own 
 heart : — ' His face was very long, and would 
 have borne some slight resemblance to a human 
 countenance had the nose been more visible, fo 
 its place seemed to have been entirely occupied 
 by a wry mouth and large staring eyes. His 
 dress consisted of three articles — an old and 
 tattered hat of the Portuguese kind, broad at 
 the crown and narrow at the eaves ; something 
 which appeared to be a shirt, and dirty canvas 
 trousers. Willing to enter into conversation 
 with him, and remembering that the alquilador 
 had informed me that he spoke languages, I 
 asked him in English if he had always acted in 
 the capacity of guide, whereupon he turned his 
 eyes with a singular expression upon my face, 
 gave a loud laugh, a long leap, and clapped his 
 
 G
 
 98 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 hands thrice above his head. Perceiving that 
 he did not understand me, I repeated my de- 
 mand in French, and was again answered by the 
 laugh, leap, and clapping. At last he said, in 
 broken Spanish, " Master mine, speak Spanish, 
 in God's name, I can understand you, and still 
 better if you speak Gallegan, but I can promise 
 no more. I heard what the alquilador told you, 
 but he is the greatest embustero in the whole 
 land, and deceived you then as he did when he 
 promised to accompany you. I serve him for 
 my sins, but it was an evil hour when I left the 
 deep sea, and turned guide," adding, " When my 
 master told you that I should bear you pleasant 
 company by the way, it was the only word of 
 truth that has come from his mouth for a 
 month ; and long before you reach Finisterra 
 you will have rejoiced that the servant, and not 
 the master, went with you ; he is dull and 
 heavy, but I am what you see." He then gave 
 two or three first-rate summersets, again laughed 
 loudly, and clapped his hands.' This strange 
 person describes himself in a phrase of quite 
 poetical exactness as ' a fellow who rides upon 
 the clouds, and is occasionally whisked away by 
 a gust of wind,' and confirms the impression of 
 his fitness for a guide to Finisterra by a confiden-
 
 GEORGE BORROW 99 
 
 tial acknowledgment that he had never heard of 
 such a place, offering, however, to '"push for- 
 ward to Corcuvion, which is five mad leagues 
 from hence." After a little time, " Do you 
 think we shall reach Corcuvion to-night ? " said 
 I to the guide, as we emerged from this valley 
 to a savage moor, which appeared of almost 
 boundless extent. 
 
 *"I do not, I do not. We shall in no 
 manner reach Corcuvion to-night. I by no 
 means like the appearance of this moor. The 
 sun is rapidly sinking, and then if there comes 
 on a haze, we shall meet the Estadea." 
 ' " What do you mean by the Estadea ? " 
 ' " What do I mean by^ the Estadea ? My 
 master asks me what I mean by the Estadinha. 
 I have met the Estadinha but once, and it was 
 upon a moor, something like this. I was in 
 company with several women, and a thick haze 
 came on, and suddenly a thousand lights shone 
 above our heads in the haze, and there was a 
 wild cry, and the women fell to the ground 
 screaming, " Estadea ! Estadea ! " and I myself 
 fell to the ground crying out " Estadinha ! " 
 The Estadea are the spirits of the dead which 
 ride upon the haze, bearing candles in their 
 hands. I tell you frankly, my master, that if
 
 lOO BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 we meet the assembly of the souls, I shall leave 
 you at once, and then I shall run and run till 
 I drown myself in the sea, somewhere about 
 Muros.'" 
 
 ' Somewhere about Muros ' is good. 
 
 It throws some light upon Borrow's disposi- 
 tion that it does not appear to have occurred 
 to him to turn back from this unpromising 
 expedition. He duly accomplished his mission, 
 though the inhabitants of Finisterra came very 
 near to shooting both him and his guide, being 
 quite unable to conceive of any legitimate 
 motive for the visit. The Spanish horses are 
 almost as entertaining as the men. One pony 
 was offered for sale by a soldier with the start- 
 ling recommendation that ' when he once com- 
 mences running, nothing will stop him but the 
 sea.' For this redoubtable beast, about which 
 Mr Swinburne ought to write a poem, the 
 soldier asked two hundred and sixty dollars, 
 and ' no less.' 
 
 ' " That is a large sum," ' said I. 
 
 ' " No senor, not at all, considering that he is 
 a baggage pony, and belongs to the troop, and 
 is not mine to sell.' " 
 
 Borrow's sojourn in the city was not free from 
 striking episodes : — ' One of the ruffians of
 
 GEORGE BORROW lOI 
 
 Madrid, called Manolos, came up to me one 
 night in a dark street, and told me that unless I 
 discontinued selling my " Jewish books," T should 
 have a knife " nailed in my heart," but I told 
 him to go home, say his prayers, and tell his 
 employers that I pitied them.' In spite of such 
 interruptions. Borrow managed to dispose of six 
 hundred Testaments in the streets and alleys of 
 Madrid, ' a fact which,' he says, ' I may be per- 
 mitted to mention with gladness and decent 
 triumph in the Lord.' His enemies seem to have 
 been more malignant than powerful, and their 
 momentary triumph in obtaining his committal 
 to prison gave them small satisfaction, for he 
 caused the authorities extreme embarrassment 
 by refusing to come out again. He found that 
 the prison offered a precious opportunity for 
 ' making investigations in the robber language 
 of Spain, a subject about which I had long felt 
 much curiosity.' 
 
 ' The Gypsies in Spain ' was published in 
 1841, about two years before the 'Bible.' It 
 need not be said that such a man as Borrow, a 
 vagabond by choice, whose particular hobby was 
 to ferret out peculiarities of language and race, 
 should find much with which to sympathise in 
 Gypsy life, and much to attract him in Gypsy
 
 I02 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 lore. His account of the Spanish Gypsies — 
 casual, inexact, and picturesque — is not the least 
 entertaining of his books. Judged by the stan- 
 dards of scientific philology, it may be deficient; 
 for he is interested in curiosities rather than in 
 essentials; but it gives a living impression of a 
 strange and unique race. He actually ministered 
 to their spiritual needs by the production of a 
 Gypsy Gospel of St Luke, and employed Gypsies 
 to aid him in the work of translation in order 
 to maintain the idiom, a notable instance of 
 thorough work. It is interesting to hear that 
 this work enjoyed a great reputation as a charm 
 against dangers and mischances, and was in par- 
 ticular request in this capacity upon thieving 
 expeditions. Nor were Sorrow's personal ex- 
 hortations always attended with success of the 
 kind anticipated : — ' I spoke of the power of 
 God, manifested in preserving them as a separate 
 and distinct people among the nations until the 
 present day. I warmed with my subject. I 
 subsequently produced a manuscript book, from 
 which I read a portion of the Scriptures, and the 
 Lord's Prayer and Apostles' Creed, in Romany. 
 When I had concluded, I looked around me. 
 The features of the assembly were twisted, and 
 the eyes of all turned upon me with a frightful
 
 GEORGE BORROW 103 
 
 squint, not an individual present but squinted 
 — the genteel Pepa, the good-humoured Chi- 
 charona, the Casdami, etc., etc. The Gypsy 
 fellow, the contriver of the jest, squinted worst 
 of all. Such are Gypsies.' 
 
 But if the morals of the Spanish Gypsies left 
 a good deal to be desired, it is easy to believe 
 that Sorrow's official or missionary desire that 
 it should be otherwise could co-exist with a feel- 
 ing akin to Mr Swinburne's toward the Mary 
 Stuart whom an infatuated school of historians 
 are anxious to prove ' innocent.' I think that 
 the Gypsy soldier had more attraction for 
 Borrow than any quantity of smug converts 
 could have had, and as his story is one of the 
 finest narratives in the whole of the works we 
 are considering, I shall venture to quote it at 
 some length : — In person he is a kind of De 
 Flores. ' His eyes were small, and like ferrets, 
 red and fiery ; his complexion like a brick, 
 chequered with spots of purple.' He is racked 
 by a horrible outrageous cough, the conse- 
 quence, as he declares, of one of his numerous 
 wounds — a shot through the lungs. This fan- 
 tastic savage, proud of his Gypsy blood, im- 
 proves Borrow's acquaintance. 
 
 ' On the third day, as I was sitting down
 
 I04 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 to dinner, in he walked unannounced. I am 
 rather hospitable than otherwise, so I cordially 
 welcomed him to partake of my meal. " Con 
 miicha gusto," he replied, and instantly took his 
 place at the table. I was again astonished, for if 
 his cough was frightful, his appetite was yet 
 more so. He ate like a wolf of the sierra ; soup, 
 puchero, fowl, and bacon disappeared from be- 
 fore him in a twinkling. I ordered in cold 
 meat, which he instantly despatched ; a large 
 piece of cheese was then produced. We had 
 been drinking water. 
 
 ' " Where is the wine ? " said he. 
 
 ' " I never use it," I replied. 
 
 ' He looked blank. The hostess, however, 
 who was present waiting, said, " If the gentle- 
 man wish for wine, I have a bota nearly full, 
 which I will instantly fetch." The skin bottle, 
 when full, might contain about four quarts. 
 She filled him a very large glass, and was re- 
 moving the skin, but he prevented her, saying, 
 " Leave it, my good woman ; my brother here 
 will settle with you for the little I shall use." 
 
 * He now lighted his cigar, and it was evident 
 that he had made good his quarters. On the 
 former occasion I thought his behaviour suffici- 
 ently strange, but I liked it still less on the
 
 GEORGE BORROW 105 
 
 present. Every fifteen minutes he emptied his 
 glass, which contained at least a pint; his con- 
 versation became horrible; he related the atro- 
 cities which he had committed when a robber 
 and brigand in La Mancha. "It was our 
 custom," he said, "to tie our prisoners to the 
 olive trees, and then, putting our horses to full 
 speed, to tilt at them with our spears." As he 
 continued to drink he became waspish and 
 quarrelsome: he had hitherto talked Castilian, 
 but he would now only converse in Gypsy and 
 in Latin, the last of which languages he spoke 
 with great fluency, though ungrammatically. 
 He told me, that he had killed six men in 
 duels; and, drawing his sword, fenced about 
 the room. I saw, by the manner in which he 
 handled it, that he was master of his weapon. 
 His cough did not return, and he said it seldom 
 afflicted him when he dined well. He gave me 
 to understand that he had received no pay for 
 two years. " Therefore you visit me," thought 
 I. At the end of three hours, perceiving that 
 he exhibited no signs of taking his departure, 
 I arose, and said I must again leave him. " As 
 you please, brother," said he, " use no ceremony 
 with me. I am fatigued, and will wait a little 
 while." I did not return till eleven at night,
 
 lo6 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 when my hostess informed me that he had just 
 departed, promising to return next day. He 
 had emptied the bota to the last drop, and the 
 cheese produced being insufficient for him, he 
 had sent for an entire Dutch cheese on my 
 account, part of which he had eaten and the 
 rest carried away. I now saw that I had 
 formed a most troublesome acquaintance, of 
 whom it was highly necessary to rid myself, if 
 possible; I therefore dined out for the next 
 nine days. For a week he came regularly at 
 the usual hour, at the end of which time he 
 desisted; the hostess was afraid of him, as she 
 said that he was a brujo or wizard, and only 
 spoke to him through the wicket. 
 
 'On the tenth day I was cast into prison, 
 where I continued several weeks. Once during 
 my confinement he called at the house, and 
 being informed of my mishap, drew his sword, 
 and vowed with horrible imprecations to murder 
 the Prime Minister, Ofalia, for having dared to 
 imprison his brother. On my release I did not 
 visit my lodgings for several days, but lived at 
 an hotel. I returned late one afternoon with my 
 servant Francisco, a Basque of Hernani, who had 
 served me with the utmost fidelity during my 
 imprisonment, which he had voluntarily shared
 
 GEORGE BORROW ^07 
 
 with me. The first person I saw on entering 
 was the Gypsy soldier, seated by the table, 
 whereon were several bottles of wine which he 
 had ordered from the tavern, of course on my ac- 
 count. He was smoking, and looked savage and 
 sullen : perhaps he was not much pleased with 
 the reception he had experienced. He had forced 
 himself in, and the woman of the house sat in a 
 corner, looking upon him with dread. I ad- 
 dressed him, but he would scarcely return an 
 answer. At last he commenced discoursing 
 with great volubility in Gypsy and Latin. I 
 did not understand much of what he said. His 
 words were wild and incoherent, and he re- 
 peatedly threatened some person. The last 
 bottle was now exhausted — he demanded more. 
 I told him in a gentle manner that he had drunk 
 enough. He looked on the ground for some 
 time, then slowly, and somewhat hesitatingly, 
 drew his sword and laid it on the table. It was 
 become dark. I was not afraid of the fellow, 
 but I wished to avoid anything unpleasant. I 
 called to Francisco to bring lights, and, obeying 
 a sign which I made him, he sat down at the 
 table. The Gypsy glared fiercely upon him. 
 Francisco laughed, and began with great glee 
 to talk in Basque, of which the Gypsy understood
 
 io8 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 not a word. The Basques like all Tartars — and 
 such they are — are paragons of fidelity and good 
 nature; they are only dangerous when outraged, 
 when they are terrible indeed. Francisco, to the 
 strength of a giant, joined the disposition of a 
 lamb. He was beloved, even in the palio of the 
 prison, where he used to pitch the bar, and 
 wrestle with the murderers and felons, always 
 coming off victor. He continued speaking 
 Basque. The Gypsy was incensed; and, forget- 
 ting the language in which for the last hour 
 he had been speaking, complained to Francisco 
 of his rudeness in speaking any tongue but 
 Castilian. The Basque replied by a loud car- 
 cajada, and slightly touched the Gypsy on the 
 knee. The latter sprang up like a mine dis- 
 charged, seized his sword, and, retreating a few 
 steps, made a desperate lunge at Francisco. 
 The Basques, next to the Pasiegos, are the best 
 cudgel players in Spain, and in the world. 
 Francisco held in his hand part of a broomstick, 
 which he had broken in the stable, whence he 
 had just ascended. With the swiftness of 
 lightning he foiled the stroke of Chaleco, and 
 in another moment, with a dexterous blow, 
 struck the sword out of his hand, sending it 
 ringing against the wall. The Gypsy resumed
 
 GEORGE BORROW 109 
 
 his seat and his cigar. He occasionally looked 
 at the Basque. His glances were at first 
 atrocious, but presently changed their expression, 
 and appeared to me to become prying and 
 eagerly curious. He at last arose, picked up his 
 sword, sheathed it, and walked slowly to the 
 door; when there he stopped, turned round, 
 advanced close to Francisco, and looked him 
 steadfastly in the face, •' My good fellow," said 
 he, " I am a Gypsy, and can read baji. Do you 
 know where you will be at this time to- 
 morrow ? " Then, laughing like a hyena, he 
 departed, and I never saw him again. 
 
 * At that time on the morrow, Francisco was 
 on his death-bed. He had caught the jail-fever, 
 which had long raged in the Cural de la Corte, 
 when I was imprisoned. In a few days he was 
 buried, a mass of corruption, in the Campo Santo 
 of Madrid.' 
 
 This splendid piece of writing is a good 
 example of Sorrow's method. It is a vivid 
 glimpse of a strange, almost a tragic figure — 
 superficial, isolated, inconsequent, and yet suf- 
 ficient. Of the essential spirit, of the meaning 
 of this man, we know nothing : of whence he 
 comes and whither he goes, we care nothing. 
 
 In 'Wild Wales' (1862), the last of Borrow's
 
 no BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 five popular books, we find him under changed 
 conditions. He travels with a wife and step- 
 daughter in a civilised manner, and has become, 
 generally, a feasible person, with only occasional 
 dashes into the wilds. As usual, he shows no sign 
 of the burden of responsibility that weighs upon 
 the literary artist, and there is more than enough 
 of frivolity and even of puerility. It is one of 
 his virtues that his narrative depends rather 
 upon quality than point, but in this veritable 
 chronicle of small beer there is sometimes 
 neither style nor matter. Yet even this waste 
 of realism is, in its degree, a genuine transcript 
 from life, and this high old Tory gives us a fine 
 sense of the brotherhood of man, not by the 
 depth or breadth of his sympathies, still less by a 
 high conception of justice derived from abstract 
 reasoning, but by the pervading spirit of kindli- 
 ness and friendliness in relations that are slight 
 and casual. To ask the road is an opportunity 
 for fellowship, and the liking for a glass of good 
 ale is the touch of nature in which he gladly 
 recognises kinship with all the world worth 
 considering. 
 
 There are few contributions of the first rank 
 to the gallery of eccentrics, though we have a 
 good one in a ' serious looking gentleman ' with
 
 GEORGE BORROW I" 
 
 a glass of ' something ' before him, who occupied 
 an inn-parlour. It appeared that this worthy 
 believed in predestination, and was convinced 
 that he himself would inevitably be damned, a 
 circumstance which gave him a kind of ' gloomy 
 consequence.' Borrow reasoned with him, not 
 without a kind of success, for he left the un- 
 happy man considerably annoyed at having had 
 the worst of the argument. 
 
 ' Wild Wales ' is pitiless in its details. Every 
 sixpence spent, every greeting uttered, every 
 glass of ale drunk — and they are many — is 
 deemed worthy of careful record. A fact is a 
 fact for Borrow, and his appetite for these is 
 insatiable and astounding. For example : — ' It 
 grew darker and darker. On I hurried along 
 the road; at last I came to lone, lordly groves. 
 On my right was an open gate and a lodge. 
 The door was open, and in a little room I 
 beheld a nice-looking old lady sitting by a table 
 on which stood a lighted candle, with her eyes 
 fixed on a large book : "Excuse me," said I, " but 
 who owns this property ? " The old lady looked 
 up from her book, which appeared to be a Bible, 
 without the slightest surprise, though I certainly 
 came upon her unawares, and answered : ** Mr 
 John Wynn." ' This is a complete incident
 
 112 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 without relation or development. But though 
 ' Wild Wales ' is the mildest in flavour of 
 Borrow's books, and, from the reader's point of 
 view, a wife and daughter are as poor an ex- 
 change for Isopel Berners as the comparatively 
 tame Welshmen for the Flaming Tinman and 
 Mr Petulengro, there is very much in these ex- 
 cursions to the dwelling-places and burial-places 
 of old Welsh bards that is of delightful quality. 
 We feel some scepticism as to the surpassing 
 merits of the bards, but none as to the 
 enthusiasm of their lover, and if we cannot 
 share the pleasure of his little triumphs in 
 astonishing the natives by a knowledge of their 
 history and antiquities surpassing their own, 
 even as before we have condoned his harmless 
 vanity in devising scenes for the display of his 
 learning in Gypsy-lore and foreign tongues, these 
 books are not for us. Borrow's child-like 
 genius may easily be ridiculed by little men, 
 and, indeed, it is impossible, as it is unnecessary, 
 to maintain an attitude of strict reverence to- 
 wards him. He seems to have no critical faculty 
 worth mentioning, and consequently has no 
 knowledge of his own strong points. He hates 
 his critics to such purpose that he acknowledges 
 having laid traps for them in the misspelling of
 
 GEORGE BORROW I 13 
 
 foreign words, in order that he might denounce 
 their ignorance when they failed to discover 
 the mistakes. In an appendix to the ' Romany 
 Rye,' which is mainly a reply to criticisms on 
 ' Lavengro,' he reviews this work in a manner 
 in which irrelevance, complacency, and fatuity 
 are agreeably mingled, informing us in an 
 exquisite passage that it was undertaken ' for 
 the express purpose of inculcating virtue,' and 
 other nice things, ' for awakening a contempt for 
 nonsense of every kind, and a hatred for priest- 
 craft, more especially that of Rome.' It is 
 hardly too much to say that all his roads lead to 
 Rome, 'the machinations of Rome ' being, in his 
 view, the principal hindrance to human progress. 
 He hates the Pope with a fine old British 
 hatred, and veils his fear of the Jesuits with 
 the most insulting contempt. As to French- 
 men, he admits that since the decay of pugilism 
 it is no longer true, as it was conspicuously true 
 in its palmy days, that one Englishman is a 
 match for two of them, but this apparent con- 
 cession seems to be for the temporary purpose of 
 glorifying the noble art, of which he writes with 
 fine enthusiasm on one page, while on the next 
 we may read of a revivalist preaching which he 
 has followed with reverence and attention. 
 
 H
 
 "4 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 Happily the time has passed for these antipathies 
 to be taken seriously as matters for regret and 
 irritation, and we may now take a mild pleasure 
 in these antiquities of feeling. 
 
 Mr Saintsbury has declared that Borrow has 
 ' flashes of ethical reflection which, though, like 
 all ethical reflections, often one-sided, are of the 
 first order of insight.' I confess that I cannot 
 recall any examples, and I almost think that I 
 should be sorry to find them. Certainly he had 
 a good stock of working virtues, but he seems to 
 me seldom to get nearer to ethical reflection 
 than somewhat facile rhapsody, just as violent 
 prejudice is commonly as far as he travels on 
 the road of passion. It is less difficult to find 
 passages that are one-sided. He says, * In 
 regard to conscience, be it permitted to observe 
 that it varies much according to climate, 
 country, and religion; perhaps nowhere is it so 
 terrible and strong as in England; I need not 
 say why.' If this is one of Mr Saintsbury's 
 ' flashes,' we might go on to claim for him a 
 critical method on the strength of such refer- 
 ences as that to 'a most extraordinary genius, 
 some of whose productions possess merit of a 
 very high order.' 
 
 It seems almost time to say a good word for
 
 GEORGE BORROW 1^5 
 
 him in whose honour this paper is compiled, or 
 I must justify myself by a theory that a combina- 
 tion of faults and absurdities may make up a 
 meritorious whole; and even now I must begin 
 with something like depreciation. In any 
 scheme of liberal education Borrow is decidedly 
 an ' extra.' He solves for us no problems of the 
 universe; he makes no appeal to our deepest 
 tragic emotions nor to our finest sense of comedy; 
 he has little grasp of character, and we know his 
 people only by som»e salient point; nor has he 
 the habit of introspective analysis that might 
 give us something of the fashionable * human 
 document.' His temper is romantic; the order 
 and beauty of the world appeal to him less than 
 its strangeness. He is hardly a great literary 
 artist, and his style, like his matter, is varied 
 and unequal. His humour, sly rather than 
 subtle, and with an old-fashioned flavour that 
 adds to its piquancy, finds expression in much 
 good and even fine dialogue. Mr George 
 Milner, a warm admirer of Borrow, describes 
 him as 'an egotist pure and simple,' and attri- 
 butes much of his success to this thorough- 
 going audacity of egotism. It is an egotism 
 without qualms, natural with the nature of 
 primitive man, unvexed with the compromises
 
 Ii6 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 of social conditions. It is this which gives to 
 his narrative style, founded to some extent on 
 Defoe, a directness and naivete that can deal 
 with extraordinary incidents without forcing the 
 note. He takes us to the region of oddities, 
 where the normal would be the surprising. 
 
 What then, is the meaning and value of 
 Borrow to us ? I recall what Mr Pater has said 
 of Wordsworth — that his function is ' not to 
 teach lessons, or to enforce rules, or even to 
 stimulate to noble ends; but to withdraw the 
 thoughts for a little while from the mere 
 machinery of life, to fix them, with appropriate 
 emotions, on the spectacle of those great facts in 
 man's existence which no machinery affects.' 
 What Borrow can do for us is not so great, so 
 high an office; it is, indeed, almost the converse 
 of this, being, as I take it, rather to liberate us 
 for a time from thoughts beyond the reaches of 
 our souls; to take us from all our immensities 
 and profundities to a good old-fashioned ad- 
 venturous world, with some mystery and a good 
 deal of madness in it — to show us how much of 
 fine and varied life may be gathered on the 
 surface— to turn us once and again from the 
 strenuous moderns, with their almost intolerable 
 burdens of moral and artistic responsibility, to
 
 GEORGE BORROW "7 
 
 take refuge in the shallow and the quaint — to 
 play for us a diversion that may help us to for- 
 get the shadow of the ultimate tragic facts of 
 human life. 
 
 I am prepared to hear that Borrow had really 
 an adequate and profound philosophy of life, 
 but if it is so, I rejoice to have escaped it. His 
 mosaic of queer little bits will hardly make a 
 ' placid and continuous whole.' And yet he is 
 no mere fantastic personage. Taking hold of 
 things at first hand, as he did, he pierced through 
 conventions to a basis of reality. He liked this 
 life of the roads better than any other, and 
 though he calls on us sometimes with com- 
 placency to marvel at the extraordinary taste 
 that prefers the society of Gypsies and pugilists 
 to that of the bourgeois, he knew what was good 
 for him. In the art, the literature, the political 
 questions of his time, he took curiously little 
 interest; he had not a deep and full appreciation 
 of earth or man; but he lived his own life in 
 his own way; he was a valiant and patriotic 
 Englishman, and he wrote what will not be 
 superseded and should not be forgotten.
 
 TURGENIEFF 
 
 ' The Russian Noveh/ wrote Matthew Arnold 
 in 1887, 'has now the vogue and deserves to 
 have it.' Tolstoi was his theme, and then and 
 since the vogue has been mainly the vogue of 
 Tolstoi. The others have had but the crumbs 
 that fall from his table. And yet ten years be- 
 fore Arnold wrote on Tolstoi Mr James had 
 declared of Turgenieff that he took ' a view of 
 the great spectacle of human life more general, 
 more impartial, more unreservedly intelligent, 
 than that of any novelist we know.' 
 
 Whatever may be the opinions of critics, 
 Turgenieff, who was the first of the Russians 
 to make a mark in England, has been super- 
 seded in popular esteem, or in popular demand, 
 by his great rival. Perhaps their relative posi- 
 tions in the book-market are determined by 
 circumstances with which their literary qual'i- 
 
 i
 
 TURGENIEFF "9 
 
 ties have little to do. Both are great novelists, 
 but Tolstoi is something besides. All liberal 
 minds have been greatly interested and greatly 
 moved by the man who, in simple earnestness, 
 can accept the command to sell all that he has 
 and give to the poor. Personalities count for a 
 good deal with a people so generally inartistic as 
 ourselves, and here is a great personality. In 
 the conditions of publication too, Tolstoi has 
 been fortunate, though these may be as much 
 the effect of popularity as its cause. His books 
 are procurable in a well known and uniform 
 English edition, capably translated, whereas 
 Turgenieff can be obtained only in shreds and 
 patches, and if some of the versions seem satis- 
 factory enough, others are evidently somewhat 
 casual. One has to brave the coloured boards 
 of the railway novel and to accept the peculiar 
 orthography which we shall hate all the more 
 when the Americans have completely justified 
 it. Turgenieff may be read in French, how- 
 ever; in some instances the versions are his 
 own; but despite the supercilious assumptions of 
 some critics that all capable novel readers read 
 French, and whatever may be the commercial 
 prospects of such an enterprise, there could be 
 few more interesting ventures for a publisher
 
 120 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 than a good English edition of Turgenieflf's 
 novels. 
 
 I do not believe that he could ever attain a 
 popularity of the wide and shallow kind, but 
 to the increasing number who bring a little 
 taste and intelligence to their reading his 
 merits should be convincing and stimulating. 
 He does not, indeed, meet our national demand 
 for amusement tempered with morality, for he is 
 not in any casual and superficial sense, amusing, 
 he is never facetious, and his morality wears so 
 stern a face that we can hardly recognise its 
 kinship to the aspiration towards comfort which 
 we sometimes call by the same name. He has, 
 however, one or two popular qualities; he is a 
 very clear writer, and his subject matter has 
 still to most of us the charm of strangeness. 
 
 Perhaps we have not yet fully realised the 
 historical significance of the novel. More and 
 more we shall ask for a history of society, rather 
 than for a chronicle of events; more and more 
 we shall require to realise a period by its typical 
 life. The historian of the future will have to 
 read the novels of his period — an alarming pro- 
 spect for the post-Victorian age. Turgcnieffs 
 novels will be an invaluable record of the relations 
 of proprietors to peasants, and, indeed of the
 
 TURGENIEFF 121 
 
 whole social fabric of Russian life, and at a 
 period of special interest and importance. He 
 was born in 1818 and died in 1883, so that about 
 1861, the year of the emancipation of the serfs, 
 he was at the height of his literary activity, and 
 most of his books were written in the light of 
 that event. His earliest publications, however, 
 following the usual schoolboy's tragedy, were 
 two volumes of poems by which he gained the 
 approval of Byelinski the Russian critic. Tur- 
 genieff himself viewed these efforts modestly, for 
 when an admirer, with the modern passion for 
 overdoing things thoroughly, applied for a copy 
 of the early scarce work for critical purposes, 
 the great man replied that ' he knew nothing 
 about the old rubbish.' 
 
 An artist who is strong enough to excel, if not 
 independent of opportunity, asks for no more 
 than his share. Nevertheless the quality and 
 direction of the characters of a novel, must 
 receive a determining influence from the society 
 of which they are the offspring. The society 
 of Thackeray's novels or of Balzac's may well 
 produce more potent individuals and more 
 serious combinations, than the society of Miss 
 Austen's. And perhaps there was never a 
 better opportunity for the production of strong
 
 122 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 and interesting novels than has been afforded to 
 the Russians. The novel is still in its youth — 
 its vigorous and fertile youth. Russian life and 
 character offer enough of fresh material. Their 
 social system brings together the peasantry and 
 aristocracy in close relations, so that one picture 
 embraces many types. The servants have a 
 value and an individuality, that is rarely ap- 
 parent in England. Then in Russia, more than 
 in any country that we know, there is the 
 marked and suggestive contrast between a 
 minority of the acutest intelligence and most 
 advanced ideas, and a huge immoveable mass 
 of superstitious and custom-bound peasantry. 
 Before everything Turgenieff is a Russian, and 
 the great complex Russian problem is with him 
 continually. Roudine, Markelof, Neshdanof, 
 Bazarof — most of his great characters, have 
 their particular relations to it, and their futility 
 as Russians gives to each of them a pathos 
 beyond what is personal. It is usual to bring 
 the charge of ' parochialism ' against a writer 
 who realises a particular society, but a back- 
 ground and an environment are necessary, and 
 a background of hotels, such as Mr James too 
 often gives us, is the dreary perfection of 
 cosmopolitanism. Turgenieff is a physician
 
 TURGENIEFF 123 
 
 diagnosing his country's disease, his studies are 
 too rarely of healthy life. Ibsen has shown 
 something of the same temper. Both these 
 writers have remained voluntary exiles, with 
 a regard towards their respective countries very 
 different from that of the exiles of romance. 
 « Dimitri Roudine ' and ' Peer Gynt ' are works 
 of significant analogy. 
 
 When Turgenieff wrote, Russia was awaken- 
 ing from her long sleep. In the fermentation 
 of society all varieties of trivial and insincere 
 persons posed as revolutionaries, cant and folly 
 passed as philosophy, the world seemed overrun 
 with gabblers, skin-deep liberals, monomaniacs 
 without the intensity that makes monomania 
 respectable. Behind these stood the peasants 
 with their fixed traditions, their laissez faire^ 
 their dulness, and the cupidity which is ex- 
 pressed in a proverb, 'The Russian peasant 
 would skin God.' The eager, active life of the 
 towns beat vainly against the vast inertia of the 
 country. In one of Turgenieff's earliest studies 
 we find a singular observation on the Russian 
 peasant — the extraordinary callousness with 
 which he regards death, looking upon it as 'a 
 circumstance, an inevitable formality.' In this 
 first prose volume, a little book entitled ' Recits
 
 124 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 d'un Chasseur ' we read of a proprietor — a man 
 of ideas, who tries to substitute nettles for flax, 
 to feed his pigs upon mushrooms, and who 
 ' having read an article in a Moscow paper one 
 day on the high morality in the villages, he 
 decreed that everyone should learn this by 
 heart, and should recite it frequently,' and 
 also * for order and regularity,' required that 
 each of his subjects should have a number, and 
 that he should carry it upon the collar of his 
 coat. Every time a peasant met his master he 
 cried: 'No. 21, or No. 7,' and the master re- 
 plied : * God preserve you.' Between peasants 
 and masters we find such an overseer as is de- 
 scribed in ' Fathers and Sons ' : 'a tall thin 
 man with a crafty eye, a soft and honied voice,' 
 who ' replied to every observation of Nicholas 
 Petrovich with an " assuredly ! without any 
 doubt," and was always trying to represent the 
 peasants as drunkards and thieves.' 
 
 In this social turmoil TurgeniefF seems to seek, 
 and often to seek in vain, the ruling spirit 
 whose work will endure. Bazarof in ' Fathers 
 and Sons ' is, of all his characters, the freshest 
 and strongest. The book was published in 
 1862, the year after the emancipation of the 
 serfs, and as its title denotes it deals with two
 
 TURGENIEFF 125 
 
 generations of this time of change. It is not 
 a work of elaborate construction. The princi- 
 pal persons in the story are presented with ex- 
 treme delicacy and precision and with a naive 
 directness that fixes our attention. We quickly 
 see them as types and every touch adds to their 
 individuality. Two elderly brothers, Nicholas 
 and Paul Petrovich, are living in retirement on 
 the estate of the former when Arcadi, Nicholas' 
 son, returns from the university at the termina- 
 tion of his student's career, bringing with him 
 Bazarof, his friend and fellow-student. Bazarof, 
 a character of extraordinary force and distinc- 
 tion, is a materialist, a physiologist with a com- 
 plete faith in physiology and a contempt for 
 everything indefinite. ' What is of importance,' 
 he says, ' is that two and two make four,' and 
 he declares that * nature is not a temple but a 
 workshop.' He is described as a Nihilist, and 
 it is said, though the point is disputed, that this 
 was the introduction of the word into Russian 
 literature. His nihilism does not find outward 
 expression in explosive bombs, and though the 
 proportions between egotism and altruism in 
 his character are not crudely defined, it is one 
 of the surprises of the book that, in spite of his 
 brutalities, the reader begins to perceive that he
 
 126 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 is, at bottom, a good fellow. Opposed to him is 
 Paul Petrovich, a refined and punctilious noble 
 of exquisite habits and manners, filled with ro- 
 mantic and aristocratic traditions. As to Arcadi, 
 the son of the house, he is an amiable, but com- 
 monplace young man, full of enthusiasm for his 
 friend, and thirsting for opportunities to display 
 his heterodoxy. Thus, when his father begins, 
 with some embarrassment, to explain the pres- 
 ence in his house of Fenitchka, a girl whom he 
 has taken for his mistress, Arcadi, in place of the 
 remonstrances that his father dreads, adopts an 
 attitude of benignant approval. Convenient as 
 this is at the time, it disturbs the old man's 
 ideas of the fitness of things. It soon becomes 
 apparent to the brothers Paul and Nicholas 
 that they are superannuated — the bitterest of 
 reflections for intelligent men. ' " I do all I can 
 to keep up with the age," ' says Nicholas. ' " I 
 read, I study, and make every effort to be on 
 a level with the wants of the country, and they 
 say that my song is sung. After all it is very 
 possible they are right." ' Their situation is piti- 
 able ; they have, as they think, gone with the 
 times; they have resisted the conservatism of age 
 and look for appreciation of their enlightened 
 conduct; but they find their moderate liberalism
 
 TURGENIEFF 127 
 
 hopelessly distanced. Bazarof and his docile 
 pupil do not even take them seriously. Paul, 
 however, will not be brushed aside. He tries a 
 fall with Bazarof but is bewildered by his nega- 
 tions. The old loose ideas have no common 
 ground with a creed that begins and ends with 
 physics. Nor can the younger man sympathise 
 with an attitude which is typified by that of 
 a certain government official who prides him- 
 self, ' that none of the phenomena of social life 
 escaped his observation,' and who ' even followed 
 the literary movement, but affected to do it with 
 a majestic condescension as a man of ripe age 
 sometimes follows in the street for some minutes 
 a procession of young rascals.' This weak and 
 sham liberalism is to be met with everywhere, 
 Bazarof and Arcadi pay a visit to a provincial 
 town and meet there Sitnikof, another of the feeble 
 and silly persons whom powerful and original 
 men carry in their train. He proposes a visit 
 to a lady of his acquaintance, an ' emancipated ' 
 woman. ' " She lives, you understand, separate 
 from her husband, and is quite independent." 
 
 Is she pretty ? " asked Bazarof. 
 
 No, I cannot say she is." 
 
 Then why the devil should you take us to 
 see her." ' 
 
 ( a 
 ( a 
 i u
 
 128 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 Hearing that she will give them champagne, 
 Bazarof consents to go. Sitnikof and the 
 emancipated lady proceed from one extravagance 
 to another, while even Arcadi is scandalised, 
 and Bazarof devotes himself to the champagne, 
 which, under the circumstances, appears the 
 most temperate course. It is a masterly scene, 
 keenly and bitterly ironical. 
 
 Bazarof is a strong man, but he is human. 
 Against his will he falls in love v/ith Madame 
 Odintsof a great lady whom he visits. Her 
 portrait is remarkable for its reticences, and 
 in the hands of a lesser artist she would be 
 sentimentalised. As it is she remains sub- 
 sidiary, an important element in Bazarofs life, 
 though by no means without an interest of her 
 own. It is the drama of the man deeply moved 
 and the cold woman nearly roused. 
 
 But of all the contrasts in which the book 
 abounds, none is more striking than that of the 
 terrible Bazarof with his poor old parents. 
 The father poses before the son as a man of the 
 world with broad scientific views, and is found 
 at night prostrated before an image praying for 
 that son. The mother with her quaint and 
 careful habits, her pride and affection toward her 
 graceless son, her superstitions and her piety.
 
 TURGENIEFF 129 
 
 makes a figure entirely beautiful. Though 
 Bazarof is not willingly unkind to them he finds 
 their company irksome and returns with Arcadi 
 to his father's house. There he is forced into a 
 duel by Paul on the alleged ground that he had 
 ' expressed himself in my presence in an im- 
 proper manner on the subject of Sir Robert 
 Peel,' which is surely a reminiscence of the man 
 who spoke disrespectfully of the equator. The 
 duel has no fatal results, but it drives Bazarof 
 away. Then he parts with Arcadi, dismissing 
 that rosewater revolutionist in a superb and 
 characteristic speech. ' " Our dust reddens your 
 eyes, our mire soils you; truly you are not of our 
 height; you admire yourself complacently, you 
 take pleasure in reproaching yourself; all that 
 bores us ; we have other things to do than to 
 admire or to reproach ourselves; we must have 
 the others broken on the wheel." ' 
 
 Bazarof returns to his home, and lives quietly 
 for a while with his parents. They are happy 
 to have him there, and with intuitive devotion 
 they almost efface themselves lest they should 
 annoy him. Suddenly their sky is overcast. 
 Bazarof cuts his hand during an operation. The 
 wound is slight, but it is fatal. The story 
 resolves itself into the struggle of a man of 
 
 I
 
 13° BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 vital energy and undaunted mind with death : — 
 ' Bazarof remained lying down all the rest of 
 the day, and passed the night in a heavy and 
 fatiguing state of drowsiness. Opening his eyes 
 with difficulty, towards one o'clock in the 
 morning, he saw, by the light of the night lamp, 
 the pale face of his father, who was at his bed- 
 side, and he begged him to retire; the old man 
 obeyed, but re-entered almost immediately on 
 tiptoe, and cowering behind the half open door 
 of a closet, continued to watch his son. Arina 
 Vlassievna, too, did not go to bed; she came 
 every moment to the door of the room to listen 
 to Eniousha's breathing, and to assure herself 
 that Vasili Ivanovitch was still at his post. She 
 could only distinguish her husband's broad, 
 bowed back; but that sufficed to tranquillise 
 her a little. Bazarof tried to get up when it was 
 day : he was taken with dizziness, soon followed 
 by bleeding from the nose, and he went to bed 
 again without delay. Vasili Ivanovitch assisted 
 him in silence; Arina Vlassievna approached 
 and asked him how he felt. " I am better," he 
 replied, turning to the wall. Vasili Ivanovitch 
 signed to his wife with both hands to withdraw, 
 she bit her lips to keep herself from crying, and 
 went out. Everything in the house seemed in
 
 TURGENIEFF 13 1 
 
 some way to be darkened, every face was 
 lengthened, a strange silence reigned, even in 
 the yard; they sent off to the village a crowing 
 cock, which must have been remarkably sur- 
 prised by such a proceeding. Bazarof remained 
 in bed, with his face turned to the wall. Vasili 
 Ivanovitch spoke to him several times, but his 
 questions annoyed the sick man, and the old 
 man remained motionless in his chair, wringing 
 his hands from time to time. He went into the 
 garden for a few minutes, and stood there im- 
 movable as a statue; he seemed under the shock 
 of an unheard of astonishment (the expression 
 of surprise hardly left his face), then he returned 
 to his son, seeking to avoid his wife. She suc- 
 ceeded at last in seizing him by the hand, and 
 asking him in a convulsed, almost menacing 
 tone. " What is the matter with him ? " Vasili 
 Ivanovitch to reassure her, tried to smile, but 
 to his own astonishment, it was a burst of 
 laughter that came from his lips.' Their prayers 
 and solicitudes are in vain. Bazarof dies, and 
 his father, maddened with grief, cries out in 
 rebellion against this visitation of God- But 
 the mother, * all in tears hung on his neck, 
 and they fell together, with their faces to the 
 ground, like two lambs in the heat of the da3^'
 
 132 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 Thus the strong Russian — the man who was 
 capable of great things — is no better than the 
 weakest. He has done nothing, but his power 
 is not less manifest. Turgenieff's incurable 
 pessimism forbids a more fortunate ending. 
 We have to content ourselves with Arcadi's 
 conversion to a hero of the beaten track. He 
 marries a charming girl, gives up nihilism, and 
 settles down as a careful cultivator of his estate. 
 
 In Bazarof we see a great power wasted; in 
 ' Dimitri Roudine,' published six years before 
 ' Fathers and Sons,' we see a great impulse 
 wasted. 
 
 ' Dimitri Roudine ' is the most dramatic of 
 Turgenieff's books, and Roudine is absolutely in 
 the first rank of typical characters. His place is 
 with Don Quixote and Sir Willoughby Patterne. 
 Like Sir Willoughby he is drawn from the in- 
 most depths of generic man. He is at once indi- 
 vidual, national, and universal. His conception 
 is so refined that he seems unique : he is in 
 reality a perfect specimen of an universal type. 
 We see him first as a chance visitor at the house 
 of a great lady. Brilliant, fervid, and eloquent, 
 he takes her and her household by storm. Nor 
 are his effects wholly evanescent, for the en- 
 thusiasm and loyalty of BassistofF, the poor
 
 TURGENIEFF 133 
 
 tutor, are never dimmed. But he has no depth 
 of feeling or passion; he is unstable, and, in 
 the deepest sense, insincere, and yet he is un- 
 changeable, in that his impulses spring from a 
 perennial source. Leschnieff, an old fellow- 
 student whom he meets after a separation of 
 many years — a strong, undemonstrative, effective 
 man — the restful character in the story, is proof 
 against his influence. '"It is not that he is 
 futile," says this good, but as yet not wholly 
 charitable man, "'we are all that more or less. 
 I say nothing about his being a tyrant at heart, 
 idle, half-educated, liking to live at other 
 people's expense, etc. — what is really serious is 
 that he is as cold as ice." ' 
 
 What favourable judgment can be formed of 
 a man who neglects his mother, borrows money 
 without the prospect of repaying it, estranges 
 his friends, puts his hand to no useful labour, 
 and perpetually pours forth a stream of talk ? 
 He gets into some curious straits. He robs a 
 man of his sweetheart, and when the poor 
 devil is still smarting, visits him to expatiate 
 on his pure motives and to sentimentalise gen- 
 erally. But the other is angry and hurt and 
 can't understand this at all — tells him to go to 
 the deuce, and wants to fight — is quite bewil-
 
 134 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 dered at this meaningless magnanimity. It is 
 a scene of perfect comedy though quite without 
 the unction that we associate with comedy. 
 Yet Roudine is not really in love, or he is like 
 the churchman mentioned by Newman who 
 could not make up his mind whether he be- 
 lieved a certain doctrine or not. He cannot 
 bridge the chasm between cause and will; his 
 actions run to seed in speech; he stimulates 
 his feelings with a burning eloquence, and 
 falls away at the first check. 
 
 His character is a marvel of observation. It 
 is all so subtle and seems so simple. The course 
 of the story has displayed him perfectly. We 
 feel for him the appropriate emotions of pity 
 and contempt; the storms that he set in motion 
 have subsided; the young people whom he dis- 
 turbed are happy again, and an diable to him. 
 Observation, however, is only the basis of Tur- 
 geniefTs art, imagination is its essence. Above 
 all he is a dramatist. LeschniefF, who had judged 
 Roudine most harshly, remembers him most 
 kindly. He pronounces a farewell speech to 
 his memory, full of kindliness and apprecia- 
 tion, and replying to the baser taunts, he 
 says : — ' " He does not live on other people like 
 a parasite, but like a child." '
 
 TURGENIEFF 135 
 
 Then in an epilogue, years after the action 
 of the . story ends, LeschniefF meets Roudine 
 again. Chance brings them together at an 
 hotel in a provincial town. Leschnieff is a 
 happy and prosperous man, Roudine is pre- 
 maturely old, shabby, and sad. Dispirited and 
 worn out as he is, the lamp of his enthusiasm 
 burns low. Leschnieff prevails upon him to 
 tell the history of his life since they parted. 
 It is the old tale of fruitless endeavour. He 
 still wanders over the earth pursuing the phan- 
 toms of his brain, striving with fore-doomed 
 futility to become a man of action and to in- 
 stitute practical reforms, and never for a moment 
 swerving from his own standard. We see him 
 at last with the eyes of the wise and just Lesch- 
 nieff — an object for pity, but more for respect. 
 Depth of feeling has been denied him, but the 
 high strenuous fervour of the mind has resisted 
 all encroachments of faintness or sensuality. 
 ' " Thou wilt not deny," ' he says to Leschnieif, 
 " that I have always had high aims." ' 
 
 They eat and drink together, they touch 
 glasses and sing the old student song, and 
 then they separate for ever. We have again 
 a last glimpse of Roudine dying gallantly and 
 uselessly on a Paris barricade.
 
 136 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 What would result if Roudine's fervour and 
 Leschnieflfs solid virtues were united in the same 
 person ? This is a question that we may ask 
 in vain. In ' Virgin Soil,' published as recently 
 as 1877, we have again a hero of the ineffectual 
 kind. Turgenieff himself speaks of Neshdanof 
 as the Russian Hamlet. It is a Hamlet of 
 Goethe's imagining who ' sinks beneath a 
 burden that he cannot bear, and must not cast 
 away.' He is the artist forced into a path — a 
 path from which he may not withdraw for it is 
 a difficult and dangerous one. It is his part to 
 rouse the peasants to revolt. He succeeds only 
 in getting drunk with them. The regeneration 
 of mankind is not too great an object for him. 
 His accomplishment is suicide. 
 
 Besides Neshdanof 'Virgin Soil' contains a 
 whole gallery of strong and original portraits. 
 Foremost among them is Markelof, a proprietor 
 who devotes himself to the redemption of the 
 serfs. He is incapable of understanding the 
 temper of the people and the nature of the 
 problem. His attempt at revolt is a fiasco. 
 His peasants think him mad, seize him, and 
 deliver him to the authorities. His whole life 
 has been wretched beyond expression; nothing 
 prospers with him, for his judgment is always at
 
 TURGENIEFF ^37 
 
 fault. He fails in love, and Neshdanof his 
 comrade is his successful rival. Neshdanof is 
 the natural son of an aristocrat, and in a scene of 
 startling poignancy the noble-minded Markelof, 
 stung by countless irritations makes the aston- 
 ishing speech: — 
 
 ' " It is not a question of merit, or of extra- 
 ordinary qualities — moral or physical — no ! It 
 is merely the good luck, the cursed good luck of 
 those damned bastards." ' I have separated this 
 passage from the scene of which it is the 
 culmination because it seems so fine an example 
 of TurgeniefTs power. It is so natural, so un- 
 expected; it seems such an impossible thing for 
 Markelof to say, it makes us pity him so 
 immensely and see him so clearly. Yet in spite 
 of its tragic elements ' Virgin Soil ' has more of 
 hope in it than others of Turgenieff's books. 
 Solomine the factory manager, a strong and 
 earnest man, marries a pure and earnest woman, 
 and wherever they may be we look, if not for a 
 revolution, at least for good and wholesome work. 
 
 There is, too, an excellent light character — 
 Pakline, invaluable to the general effect, and to 
 him we owe a very charming interlude : 
 
 ' " Imagine an oasis. Neither politics, nor 
 literature, nor anything belonging to the
 
 13S BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 present day ever penetrates there. A little 
 swell front house, such as is to be found no- 
 where else; the whole atmosphere of the 
 place is rococo; the people themselves are 
 rococo; the very air which you breathe is 
 rococo; everything you see is rococo; Catherine 
 II, powder, hoops, the eighteenth century per- 
 sonified ! As for the master and mistress of 
 this house — picture to yourself two little old 
 people, very, very old ! husband and wife ! of the 
 same age, and unwrinkled; plump, round, neat, 
 real love-birds; and their kindness amounts to 
 folly, to saintliness — their kindness is unlimited ! 
 You will tell me that unlimited kindness is 
 often joined to a want of moral sense; but I 
 can't enter into these subtleties. I only know 
 one thing, that my little old couple are the very 
 best of good people ! They have never had any 
 children — lucky mortals ! In the town they are 
 called the blessed, or the fools, or the innocents, 
 whichever you prefer. They both wear the 
 same costume — a striped cloak, made of a firm 
 material not found elsewhere. They are aston- 
 ishingly alike; the only difference between them 
 is that she wears a cap, and he a " Kolpak," with 
 ruffles like those on the cap, but without a bow 
 of ribbon. This ribbon bow is the only thing
 
 TURGENIEFF ^39 
 
 which distinguishes them from each other, the 
 husband having no beard. He is called Fo- 
 moushka, and she Fimoushka. I assure you it 
 would be worth paying to see them. They are 
 incredibly fond of each other; they welcome 
 anyone who comes to see them, and play off 
 all their graces for them ! " ' 
 
 I must find room for one trait of these old- 
 world people, so curiously stationary in this 
 seething world : — ' On one point only they de- 
 parted from the old customs: never, on any 
 account, had they prosecuted or punished any- 
 one. When one of their people was convicted 
 of being a drunkard or a downright thief, they 
 bore it long and patiently — as one endures bad 
 weather — before making up their minds to get 
 rid of him, to find him a place with someone 
 else. " Let everyone take his turn," they would 
 say. "It is time someone else should bear with 
 him now,"' which seems to indicate a reason- 
 able compromise in dealing with the criminal 
 classes. 
 
 In ' Virgin Soil ' we have enough of im- 
 postors such as the sham revolutionary Gol- 
 oushkine and the sham liberal Sipiagin with 
 his exquisitely unpleasant wife, but we must 
 turn to ' Smoke ' for its author's fullest exposi-
 
 140 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 tion of the follies of his countrymen. It is a 
 story of the seduction of a lover by a brilliant, 
 unstable woman. It is crowded with foolish 
 clamorous persons who are treated with too 
 much irony for entire truthfulness. We might 
 comfort ourselves with the analogy that as the 
 hero Litvinof settles down sedately at last with 
 the right woman, so Russia will one day see 
 that steady work, and not frothy talk, is the 
 road of progress. Almost the only man with 
 any pretensions to sense, a certain Potoughine 
 gives the note of the book— a note that seems 
 unlikely to help Turgenieff to gain the affec- 
 tions of his fellow-countrymen : — ' " Last spring, 
 I visited the Crystal Palace at London; in that 
 building, as you know, are collected specimens 
 of all kinds of inventions; it is, so to speak, an 
 encyclopedia of humanity. As I was walking 
 among all those machines and implements, and 
 gazing at all the statues of great men about me, 
 this thought came into my mind : if any nation 
 were suddenly to disappear from the surface 
 of the globe, and if, at the same time, every- 
 thing which this nation had invented were 
 to vanish from this building, our dear good 
 mother, orthodox Russia might bury herself in 
 Tartary, without making the slightest disturb-
 
 TURGENIEFF Ml 
 
 ance. Everything would remain quietly in 
 its place; for the samovar, the bark shoes, and 
 the knout — our most important productions, 
 these even were not invented by us. The 
 disappearance of the Sandwich Islands would 
 produce more effect; their inhabitants have de- 
 signed certain lances and canoes ; their absence 
 would be noticed by the visitors. All our early 
 inventions came from the East, all our late ones 
 from the West, and still we continue to dilate 
 on the originality of our art and our national 
 productions. Some young philosophers have 
 even discovered a Russian science, a Russian 
 arithmetic. Two and two make four here as 
 elsewhere, but more completely, it appears." ' 
 But Potoughine is an embittered man — too 
 good a hater to be quite a fair judge. Perhaps 
 Turgenieff, truthful observer though he is, may 
 not always be trusted in his application when 
 he is concerned with the wrongs his country 
 suffers from her own sons. Irony is too 
 often his weapon, and irony, though it may 
 serve the cause of truth, is a departure from 
 its rule. Nor do we find the simplicity 
 of truth in the description of ' a woman so 
 old that she caused a constant feeling of ap- 
 prehension among those looking at her, lest
 
 142 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 she should at any moment crumble into dust.' 
 It has a certain rude imaginative force, but 
 the following shows more of his power : — ' In 
 her youth she had led a very dissipated life ; in 
 her old age she retained only two passions — the 
 love of dainties and the love of cards. When 
 her appetite was satiated, and when she was not 
 playing cards or talking nonsense, her counten- 
 ance rapidly assumed an almost death-like ex- 
 pression. She would sit and gaze and breathe, 
 but it was plain that there was not a single idea 
 stirring in her mind.' Here in few words we 
 realise the awfulness of a life that is separated 
 from death only by an appetite, and a frivolity. 
 This is from ' Liza, or a Nest of Nobles,' known 
 in England by Mr Ralston's translation. It is a 
 simple and beautiful story, perhaps the most 
 tranquil of all. The description of Lavretaky's 
 return to his birthplace, his reception by the 
 old servants, and the quiet country life there, is 
 one of the passages about which lovers of litera- 
 ture will not disagree. Old Anton the serving 
 man is fit to stand by Caleb Balderstone, though 
 even he is hardly so impressive a figure as the 
 speechless old peasant who stood by Markelof's 
 door. 
 
 If, after reading TurgeniefFs longer books —
 
 TURGENIEFF 143 
 
 none of them is long — a reader's spirits are 
 unimpaired, the shorter stories remain. If 
 there are yet a few persons too fatuously cheer- 
 ful to be in sympathy with their environment, 
 here is their opportunity. ' Polished little 
 pieces of misery,' Mr James calls them, not 
 without reason. If ever it is permissible that 
 the impression of the art of the narrative should 
 overpower the impression of life, such a tale — 
 it is hardly a tale — as the 'Journal d'un Homme 
 de trop' is that special case. It seems hardly 
 worth having on other terms. It is not only 
 that the man dies lonely and wretched, forced 
 as a refuge from ennui to chronicle the betises 
 of a life that has failed at every point, but that 
 he loses his last friend, he loses the sympathy 
 of the reader. To us also he is de trop^ and he 
 strains our faith in the discretion of his author. 
 It is not sad, it is dismal. Again in ' Toc-toc- 
 toc,' a tragi-comedy, in which, as Mr Meredith 
 would say, ' the comic in their natures led by 
 interplay to the tragic issues,' we find an abuse 
 of coincidence to bring about, or at least to en- 
 force a rather superfluous casualty. And yet, 
 if it is superfluous, all is superfluous, except 
 beauties of detail. The courses of these stories 
 are, in their main lines, often obvious enough.
 
 144 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 It is the particular shade of meaning, the quality 
 of the action that matters. And if more artisti- 
 cally compact, they have sometimes a touch of 
 artifice from which the longer books, with their 
 larger view of life, are free. 
 
 To English readers the ' King Lear of the 
 Steppe ' must always possess an initial attraction. 
 He is a bold man, who, with ' Lear ' and ' Le 
 Pere Goriot ' before him attempts a variation of 
 the theme. It was, perhaps, too seductively 
 miserable an one for Turgenieff to resist. 
 Kharlof, a giant in size and strength, and a man 
 of phlegmatic though imperious temper, receives, 
 as he thinks, warning of his approaching death. 
 He determines to make over his property to his 
 two daughters, which he does in a ceremonial 
 scene, the decorum of which is marred only by 
 the jeers of a hanger-on, a kind of buffoon, who 
 foretells Kharlofs calamities. The Fool of this 
 Lear is indeed a ' bitter fool.' The calamities — 
 slights, injuries, outrages, follow in course, and 
 Kharlof accepts them without reprisals, for his 
 spirit is broken. At last he is driven from the 
 house, but he is rescued by friends who seek to 
 shelter and solace him ; again the buffoon 
 appears and his taunts prevail. Then Kharlof 
 has his moment of triumph. He is permitted a
 
 TURGENIEFF "45 
 
 last debauch of passionate power. He returns to 
 the home from which he has been driven and 
 proceeds to demolish it with his own hands. 
 His daughters look on, and the peasants gather 
 together, half stupefied and yet with a kind of 
 approval, for, as they mutter among them- 
 selves, he had received injustice. They think 
 it a strange proceeding, but they shake their 
 heads and say that certainly he had received 
 injustice. Kharlofs triumph is not only a 
 physical one. Though there is no Cordelia, it 
 is not quite unmitigated Goneril and Regan. 
 Evlampia, his youngest daughter, is a curious 
 study. She has remained unmoved by her 
 father's sufferings, but the hour of his strength 
 and fury subdues her. Cruel and sensual, an 
 appeal to her feelings is vain, but there is yet 
 access to her imagination. She is a sensualist 
 with a passion for the pride of power stronger 
 than the senses. Kharlof dies with her name 
 on his lips, but whether his words are a curse 
 or a blessing no one can say. 
 
 Perhaps of all TurgeniefF's work, 'The 
 Brigadier,' a short sketch of extreme simplicity, 
 makes the most direct impression. We are 
 shown an old officer, poor as a rat and half 
 imbecile, living out the residue of his life in 
 
 K
 
 146 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 obscure privation. He has a history; he has 
 ruined himself for a woman whose portrait he 
 keeps and whose grave he visits devoutly. So 
 reticently is he displayed that we can hardly 
 guess whether some remnants of his passion 
 remain or whether he clings to the habits, born 
 of the passion, which have outlasted its spirit. 
 He never becomes intelligible; once or twice 
 by glimpses, something of his former self is 
 revealed, faint flashes suggesting a man of 
 gallantry and address, but the darkness closes 
 again upon him. We have learnt the details 
 of his story; we digest them at his grave. 
 Nothing can be simpler than the incidents and 
 their narration, but through them we receive 
 an apprehension of the tragic issues of loss and 
 decay. Here is the function of great art. It 
 is not to set down facts, not even an effective 
 arrangement from facts. It is to arouse a 
 kindred imagination. Yet Turgenieff himself 
 has said : — ' I have never attempted to " create 
 an image," without having for my point of de- 
 parture not an idea, but a living being around 
 which I gathered and assembled by degrees 
 all the befitting elements. So it was with 
 ' Fathers and Sons.' As the ground work of 
 its chief character, Bazarof, I took a young
 
 TURGENIEFF 147 
 
 country doctor whose personality had struck 
 
 me.' 
 
 It is inevitable that comparisons should be 
 made between TurgeniefF and Tolstoi, though 
 they do not fall easily into crisp and telling 
 antithesis. On the contrary they have much in 
 common. Both have their feet firmly planted on 
 the ground — observation, careful and thought- 
 ful observation, is the foundation on which they 
 rely. As an observer it seems to me that 
 Tolstoi is more thorough, more competent, he 
 gives the texture of life more completely than 
 any other writer. It is easy to talk of the 
 photographic details of the realist, but Tolstoi 
 is very much more than a photographer, un- 
 essential though some of his details may be; 
 his observations do not stop at the surface; he 
 notes all phases and variations of the feelings 
 and of the mind. He has the scientific im- 
 agination rather than the artistic one, and his 
 great work ' War and Peace,' has something of 
 the effect of an original scientific treatise. His 
 discovery is worthy of the age of democracy 
 for it is no less than that armies lead their 
 generals, peoples their rulers. It opens our 
 eyes, as it opens the eyes of an ignoramus in 
 science to read ' The Origin of Species.' To
 
 1 48 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 such formulas as the 'survival of the fittest,' 
 or the ' conservation of energy ' we are ready to 
 add such an one as ' the persistence of masses.' 
 
 The typical history which the novel supplies 
 gains in significance if it is established that the 
 prominent individuals, the Bonapartes and the 
 Csesars, are not really the propelling forces that 
 they seem to be. There is no great man in 
 Tolstoi's books, for he has never seen a great 
 man. He has no character so forcible as 
 Bazarof, though some as real and human. If 
 he had met the ' young country doctor,' around 
 which TurgenieflF gathered the ' befitting ele- 
 ments,' he would have described him as he 
 was. If Tolstoi were nothing more, he would 
 be a storehouse of truthful notes, invaluable to 
 future novelists. He has seldom gathered his 
 innumerable observations into types. Perhaps 
 he does not believe in types. There is a passage 
 in ' The Cossacks,' in which the death of three 
 soldiers is described, and as they lie on the 
 ground he tells us that each face has its own 
 peculiar expression. This is what Tolstoi has 
 done, and has done better than anyone; he has 
 given to each face its own peculiar expression. 
 So we may make the distinction that Tolstoi 
 gives a direct transcript from Nature, so that
 
 TURGENIEFF ^49 
 
 ' what it loses in art it gains in reality,' while 
 TurgeniefF, in the compromise between what is 
 perceived and what is imagined, gives to 
 imagination a larger share. This is not to say 
 that either method is wrong; the world would 
 be infinitely poorer if criticism could determine 
 a mean of expression and prevail upon all 
 authors to adopt it. Nor should it be supposed 
 that TurgeniefF can be entirely acquitted of 
 chronicling irrelevances In the first paragraph 
 of ' Fathers and Sons,' he introduces a servant 
 with 'chubby cheeks, small dull eyes, and a 
 round chin covered with a colourless down.' 
 How far is this intrusion of pictorial detail 
 necessary or allowable ? The servant plays no 
 part in the story; his chubby cheeks will not 
 re-appear ; such details are only accumulations, 
 the essential details are growths. Nevertheless 
 a novel that carries no irrelevancies has the 
 effect of a mechanical contrivance or of a ma- 
 thematical puzzle. Charles Lamb declared that 
 a pun ' is the better for not being perfect in 
 all its parts. What it gains in completeness, it 
 loses in naturalness,' and the same criticism 
 applies to more serious work. The feeling of 
 life is not obtained by complete co-relation. 
 Art must not be too artful : it must not over-
 
 15° BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 power the expression of life. The first im- 
 pression of a novel should be of life, its final 
 and lasting impression should be of life. The 
 standard of relevance and coherence changes, 
 and the old-fashioned olla podrida novel has 
 given way to a much more closely-knit affair. 
 Perhaps some of TurgeniefTs short stories are 
 almost too much to the point. Their action is 
 inevitable to the degree of obviousness. He 
 never strains after originality He is simple 
 with the simplicity of art, the art that effaces 
 itself to give the purity, the essence of Nature. 
 In their kind they are unsurpassed. We prize 
 them as Mr James has said, 'as we prize all 
 the very best things, according to our medita- 
 tive after-sense of them.' By this test we find 
 them an unfailing source of beauty and re- 
 finement. 
 
 TurgeniefTs style seems to be distinguished 
 by preciseness and lucidity. His translators 
 seem rarely, if ever, in doubt as to his meaning 
 or shade of meaning. He knows what he wants 
 to say, and he comes to the point as quickly and 
 easily as a child. He introduces his figures with 
 something of the facility of an experienced chess 
 player beginning his opening, but the comparison 
 will not go far, for he is too fine an observer to
 
 TURGENIEFF 15' 
 
 DC satisfied with an average type. His irony 
 may keep him at a little distance from them for 
 a Ume, but he soon gets to closer quarters. I 
 don't know what his method of composition 
 may have been but can believe that he refined 
 from 5rst drafts. I should be surprised to learn 
 that he was one of the writers who 'never 
 blotted a line.' To arrive at his quintessential 
 style there would seem to have been an elimina- 
 tion of superfluities. We are inclined to ask 
 why novels should be usually so long in view of 
 their brie!" masterpieces. It has been said that 
 he wrote up the previous histories of all the 
 characters in his novels, though only a few of 
 these histories find their way into his pages. It 
 is possible, too, that he submits his characters to 
 some analytical process to which we are not 
 partners, for no writer is less of an analyst in 
 public. Mr James is sometimes described as the 
 disciple of Turgenieff (though he has told us that 
 the masrer regarded his stories as hardly meat for 
 men) and in fineness of perception and unity of 
 effect they have much in common. Mr James, 
 however, though some of his best and most 
 elaborated characters are not analysed at all, has 
 the passion for disintegration which is noticeably 
 absent from Turgenieff who is content to describe
 
 1 52 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 the actions and to record the words of his men 
 and women. His narrative suggests a mastery 
 over his material. He is not, Hke Mr Meredilh, 
 a student continually striving for a deeper and 
 remoter meaning. 
 
 Turgenieff has little of the humour that mani- 
 fests itself in a genial charity. With an intel- 
 lectual perception of all the elements of humour 
 he seems to lack the sympathetic quality which 
 combines them. To see the reason of laughter 
 too clearly to laugh oneself is plainly an abuse 
 of science. His laughter is too often ironical. 
 He is so deeply in earnest that the lapses from 
 a reasonable sincerity which are the food 
 of laughter are by him bitterly resented. But 
 in essence, if not in temper, he is finely 
 humorous. Bambaef, in ' Smoke ' is a truly 
 humorous character. His attachment to Russia 
 has a genuine foolish pathos about it. Eagged, 
 broken, degraded, he retains his ^enthusiasm : 
 — ' " Look at that pair of geese," ' he says, 
 ' " you cannot find their equal in all Europe." ' 
 As to wit, in its current sense, I suppose 
 that it is no disparagement of the human 
 race to say that a writer with any pretensions 
 to realism has not much concern with it. 
 His dialogues are pitched in the key of nature.
 
 TURGENIEFF ^53 
 
 Of wit, in its better meaning of fineness 
 of apprehension, he is the notable exponent. 
 He distinguishes with unerring delicacy the 
 dilettante from the weak true man. His 
 women are individualised with rare perception, 
 and it is pleasant to know that he believes at 
 least in the young womanhood of Russia. His 
 girls are almost always pure and good. Lisa, 
 Tatiana, Katia are charming, and the unhappy 
 heroines of ' First Love ' and of ' Punin and 
 Baburin ' — one of his most pathetic stories — 
 and even the baleful beauty Irene in ' Smoke ' 
 retain as least something of our sympathy. To 
 all oppressed, needy and unhappy folk his heart 
 is open and we can forgive him if his good men 
 are sometimes a little bearish, while elegant 
 manners are the outward sign of depravity. 
 For, on the whole, his national and social pre- 
 possessions detract in no marked degree from his 
 sense of justice. Leschnieff and Solomine, 
 Roudine and Neshdanof, are equal in the eyes 
 of art, and as for such a man as Sipiagin he 
 is seen best on the gibbet. He is too serious to 
 be treated with an extenuating humour. 
 
 The world, then, according to Turgenieff is 
 a miserable world, but what an interesting one. 
 Life is a series of losses and disasters, but after
 
 154 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 all we may bring them to a fine point. It has 
 its brighter moments but they carry with them 
 the seeds of decay. If he writes of the joys of 
 youth it is a reminiscence of age. Never was 
 our good bourgeois ideal of making things com- 
 fortable so ruthlessly disregarded. We may 
 search his pages in vain for any equivalent to 
 Trotty Veck, and the Cheeryble brothers would 
 be incredible to him. It is probable that the 
 facetious optimism which we find so good an 
 alternative to morose dulness would be to him 
 an impertinence. We must make allowances for 
 differences of racial temperament. But if his 
 books are sad they are noble. In the struggle 
 between sense and spirit he is ever on the right 
 side. He teaches us that duty is peremptory, 
 that faithful work is the only condition of 
 righteousness, that the reward of a well-spent 
 life is a mind at peace; and if the first article in 
 his creed is submission, the last is fortitude.
 
 Ibsen's social plays 
 
 Ibsen is really an interesting subject and though 
 the cynical critic affects to be weary of him he 
 maintains his fascination for those who have 
 come under his influence. His social plays are 
 a curious mixture of the trite and the strange, 
 the obvious and the profound, combinations 
 that may perhaps be traced to his ideality, for 
 the idealist is more likely to be satisfied with 
 conventional detail than the realist with whom 
 detail is all-important. 
 
 A criticism founded upon translation is neces- 
 sarily inaccurate and as this criticism refers to 
 the English versions of a portion of his prose 
 plays only, leaving out of account what is, per- 
 haps, most important in his work, it can have 
 no pretensions to completeness or finality. I 
 don't know whether an apology is needed for 
 presuming to criticise at all under such circum-
 
 156 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 stances, but though a knowledge of the originals 
 is necessary for any authoritative estimate of 
 Ibsen's genius, it is only reasonable that the new 
 audience to which these translations introduce 
 him — which is, or may be, greater in numbers 
 than his own Norwegian audience — should be 
 permitted to record its own impressions. 
 
 Nowadays the expression of an author's 
 temper and meaning is rightly regarded as the 
 first duty of a translator. The current transla- 
 tions of Ibsen seem to have been undertaken 
 with a proper sense of responsibility. A de- 
 lightfully absurd rendering of ' A Doll's House ' 
 that was quoted some little time ago by Mr 
 Archer, erred partly from an excess of this con- 
 scientious quality. Its bald literalness was as 
 far from the truth as that opposite method 
 which gained its most striking example when 
 Hamlet's ejaculation, ' Angels and ministers of 
 grace defend us ! ' was spiritedly rendered into 
 the French idiom by ' Tiens ! qiCest ce que c^est, 
 que ca? ' So far as may be judged from the 
 form of the translations, and from the criticisms 
 that have been passed upon them, Mr Archer 
 and his fellow-workers seem to have steered a 
 happy course between these extremes, and those 
 of us who cannot read Ibsen's own words may at
 
 Ibsen's social plays is7 
 
 least read him in good English, which is yet 
 a faithful attempt to reproduce to the fullest 
 possible extent what is essential of his form and 
 spirit. 
 
 His types are frequently familiar ones and 
 though he sometimes deals with the mental 
 processes of abnormal persons rather than with 
 the actions of typical ones there is little about 
 them that is particularly Scandinavian. The 
 striking point about his public life is his 
 voluntary exile from Norway. He suffered, as 
 other distinguished Norwegians seem to have 
 suffered, from the want of a sufficiently wide and 
 serious circle of appreciation, a condition almost 
 unavoidable in a thinly populated country; but 
 his chief quarrel was with the apathy and time- 
 serving of the dominant classes. Whether his 
 indignant virulence is due mainly to the special 
 conditions of Norway or to his own temperament 
 is a question that we need not attempt to decide. 
 At any rate, he is one of those whose patriotism 
 takes the form of hatred of his country's vices 
 and scorn of its weaknesses. It seems curious 
 that the chapter of Herr Jaeger's book which 
 deals with * Brand ' and ' Peer Gynt ' as well as 
 with ' The League of Youth,' is headed ' Attacks 
 on Norway.' ' The League of Youth,' as a re-
 
 158 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 presentation of provincial politics, is probably 
 exaggerated. It is difficult to see how such a 
 society could hold together. As all active 
 intelligence is directed to selfish and material 
 ends, stupidity seems to be its only saving 
 quality. Judged by this play alone, Ibsen 
 would seem singularly deficient in the sense of 
 the complexity and subtlety of the differences 
 that distinguish individuals. His characters are 
 somewhat commonplace abstractions. Stens- 
 gaard is completed in the first act, and so far as 
 his personal development is concerned, can only 
 mark time afterwards. Aslaksen, the printer, is 
 not a man with a mind and a stomach, but a 
 mere concoction of phrases. In its rapid 
 changes of situation, it bears a curious resem- 
 blance to a Criterion farce. It is, however, 
 cleverly constructed, and its dialogue abounds in 
 effective satiric touches. 
 
 Between ' The League of Youth ' and ' The 
 Pillars of Society ' is an interval of eight years. 
 In this Ibsen attempts to show the deterioration 
 of the moral nature of a man who has founded 
 his life upon a lie, and its subsequent rehabilita- 
 tion under the influence of a good woman. The 
 general possibilities of such a situation may be 
 granted; it does not need a new literary pro-
 
 Ibsen's social plays i59 
 
 phet to proclaim them, and it may be that a 
 hypocritical wretch who has committed, or con- 
 templated, a variety of crimes of the baser sort, 
 may, by a happy turn for casuistry, convince 
 himself that he is a worthy and invaluable 
 member of society. But for such an one there 
 is no repentance. Consul Bernick belongs to 
 the class of melodrama from which it should be 
 the mission of realistic art to free us, and the 
 play is docked of its natural tragic ending, not, 
 to do him justice, because Ibsen has any special 
 partiality for making things pleasant at the fall 
 of the curtain, but because he required an op- 
 portunity for a particular kind of moralising. 
 Of course, any other conclusion would neces- 
 sitate some modification of the relations of 
 Lona Hessell to Bernick, but this is a matter 
 of comparatively small importance. As it is, 
 the effect of the strongest scenes — those be- 
 tween Bernick and Aune — is frittered away by 
 the subsequent accidental events which prevent 
 their proper disastrous consequences. 
 
 It is not quite fair to compare the characters 
 of a play with those of a novel. The novelist 
 has many chances. Pages may miss the mark, 
 and yet leave room for the building up of a 
 truthful and convincing whole. The playwright
 
 l6o BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 works in such a narrow space that he can afford 
 no misses and no mistakes. He must display 
 his figures by a few decisive strokes, and many 
 fine touches that the noveHst might employ 
 must be discarded as impracticable or ineffective. 
 The actors may supply much that helps to give 
 reality and refinement, and a stage play cannot 
 be wholly and fairly judged without having been 
 seen. But after all allowances and abatements, 
 I think that if we compare Consul Bernick with 
 a character something akin in motive and cir- 
 cumstances, Mr Bulstrode in ' Middlemarch,' the 
 advantage is all in favour of the Englishwoman. 
 To my thinking all Ibsen's pictures of provin- 
 cial society are strained and superficial beside 
 the great Middlemarch collection. His satire 
 is no match for George Eliot's humour. But 
 pictures of society are not his forte, and perhaps 
 we may rightly consider these two first social 
 plays as to some extent initial and preparatory. 
 In the next the originality of his dramatic 
 idea overrides all plausible objections. ' A Doll's 
 House ' has some claim to rank as epoch-making 
 in dramatic art. Its performance roused a storm 
 of discussion that has hardly subsided, but ques- 
 tions of art were nearly smothered under social 
 economics and moral problems. The motive of
 
 ibsen's social plays i6i 
 
 the play may be briefly indicated by this 
 passage : — 
 
 Helmek, Before all else you are a wife and a mother. 
 
 Nora. That I no longer believe. I think that before all 
 else I am a human being —I, as much as you. At least, I will 
 try to become one. 
 
 To me, this speech of Nora's seems good sense 
 and sound morality, but it is not necessary to 
 discuss it. We are concerned with the evolu- 
 tion of character, not with ethical problems. 
 Nora is a charming character, uniting frivolous 
 habits to greatness of heart in a manner original 
 and by no means unconvincing. She lies about 
 trifles to her husband, and is capable of con- 
 tinued, if ill-considered, devotion. The scene 
 with Krogstad, in which she acknowledges her 
 forgery, is an admirable example of the coin- 
 cident development of character and situation, 
 expressed in dialogue fresh, pointed, and natural. 
 But when, under pressure of the necessity for 
 the inevitable didactic issue, she suddenly dis- 
 cards nature and habits, and from a creature of 
 noble instincts indeed, but of excessive frivolity 
 and instability, becomes at once a paragon of 
 philosophic thought, she is no longer a human 
 being, but a moralist's puppet. It is curious 
 that her author, who, as we shall see, assigns 
 
 L
 
 1 62 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 excessive power to the habits derived from an- 
 cestors, should at times seem to disregard the 
 nature created by our own habits. Miracles 
 are a strange engraftment upon the realistic 
 drama, but Nora's conversion is little short 
 of miraculous. So finished and adroit is her 
 presentation that she becomes almost possible. 
 She has not the human nature of flesh and 
 blood; but the life of imagination is in her. It 
 may be said that her change though superfi- 
 cially sudden, has really been gradual, that the 
 weight of her secret, her nights of lonely labour, 
 her constant reticence, have all tended to seri- 
 ousness and thoughtfulness. Yet is it possible 
 for a woman quite uneducated, with no train- 
 ing to distinguish fairly right from wrong, and 
 who has at most a partial apprehension of con- 
 flicting ideas as a moral equipment, to emerge 
 from all her prepossessions under stress of the 
 discovery of a husband's brutality and to be- 
 come a consistent and unimpeachable professor 
 of the extremely modern and by no means 
 instinctive opinions that are associated with 
 Ibsen's name. I think it would require great 
 modifications of Nora's character to make this 
 most interesting and suggestive play a work of 
 real solidity. It is not necessary to assume
 
 ibsen's social plays 163 
 
 that Ibsen's moral aim has warped his judg- 
 ment. The question whether his art is ever 
 overpowered by his morahty, or the latest ad- 
 vanced substitute for morality, is immaterial. 
 If Nora and Bernick are unnatural, it matters 
 little whether this is because they are object 
 lessons or because they are impossible develop- 
 ments of dramatic motives. 
 
 Ibsen is nothing if not persistent, and as 
 Nora contains the germ of ' The Lady from the 
 Sea,' so Dr Rank is the prototype of Oswald in 
 ' Ghosts.' Here, as in ' A Doll's House ' and 
 indeed in most of the social play^, Ibsen concerns 
 himself with the ethics of marriage. It is a 
 study of physiology and psychology in regions 
 so remote and extraordinary that it is perhaps 
 rash to pronounce a fluent opinion upon it. 
 Many years before the play begins, Mrs Alving 
 had contracted a marriage of convenience with 
 a man of vicious habits and temper. Overcome 
 with horror at the wickedness of her act and 
 the falseness of her position, she leaves him to 
 take refuge with her lover, Manders, who pre- 
 vails upon her to return to what he, in common 
 with the rest of the world, regards as the path 
 of duty. She accepts her life of misery and 
 deception, devoting herself to the task of hiding
 
 164 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 her husband's character and habits from the 
 world, and to saving their only son Oswald 
 from his father's influence and contamination. 
 To accomplish this the child is sent away from 
 home, and does not return until after the death 
 of his father, whom he regards as a man of 
 blameless life and active charity. When the 
 play opens, Oswald, a young man but a suc- 
 cessful painter, has just come home from Paris 
 to attend the ceremonial opening of an orphan- 
 age which is to be dedicated to his father's 
 memory. In compliance with the old-fashioned 
 superstition of *the pious people of the neigh- 
 bourhood the orphanage is not insured, and it 
 is characteristic of the emphatic moral method 
 that this circumstance must be clinched by the 
 inevitable fire, a consequence of the prayer- 
 meeting that marks the completion of the 
 building. Manders, who is the representative 
 of conventional morality, has also come to take 
 part in the ceremony, and in his presence 
 Oswald defends the relations of Parisian students 
 and their mistresses. He is warmly supported 
 by his mother to the amazement and horror 
 of Manders, who now learns that the incident 
 which he has regarded as the great moral victory 
 of his life has had consequences hideously dif-
 
 ibsen's social plays 165 
 
 ferent from what he had supposed; that instead 
 of sending back a repentant woman to re- 
 organise a home, he had condemned her to a 
 life of hypocrisy and shame, and that the pattern 
 good man whom they have assembled to honour 
 lived and died a hopeless profligate. His mag- 
 nanimous action is branded as a crime against 
 nature and morality by the woman he had loved 
 and sacrificed. He learns, too, that Regina, a 
 servant who has lived from childhood with Mrs 
 Alving, is actually her husband's daughter, her 
 mother, we are led to assume, having been a 
 woman of dissolute character. Then follows 
 the catastrophe, an effect of an unique kind. 
 The sins of the fathers are visited upon the 
 children. Oswald and Regina are victims of the 
 inevitable principle of heredity. Training and 
 example are lost upon her. Her parents were 
 heartless and wanton, and heartless and wanton 
 she must remain. Oswald's deterioration is 
 primarily physical. In him are the ineradicable 
 seeds of drunkenness, profligacy, and madness. 
 They develop with startling rapidity. He has 
 no power to struggle against his fate, his 
 mother's cares and sacrifices are in vain, and 
 nothing remains for him but a horrible and 
 shameful death.
 
 1 66 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 Such are some of the points of this strange 
 drama. Ibsen has achieved at least a sensational 
 success. It is sufficiently horrifying. But he 
 has committed the characteristic fault of didactic 
 writers in endeavouring to enforce a principle 
 by extreme, extravagant, impossible instances. 
 Oswald and Regina are not typical examples; 
 they are horrible exceptions — not real enough to 
 be terrible. Ibsen is called a realist. This is 
 not realism; it is a nightmare engendered by a 
 science primer, and a primer rather out of date. 
 The conjunction of Oswald and Regina, with no 
 hint that strength and virtues are hereditary too, 
 and no recognition of the essential principle of 
 heredity — that we are the children of our 
 ancestors rather than of our parents — takes from 
 its merit, if we regard it as a sermon. I re- 
 member a little book, of a kind now happily 
 extinct, which consisted exclusively of anecdotes 
 of little children who had trifled with the truth 
 and had thereupon been suddenly struck dead. 
 This extreme instance of didactic art failed of its 
 effect upon a healthy child whose experience in 
 real life condemned this ghastly uniformity as 
 inherently improbable. Just so, what Mr 
 Havelock Ellis calls the 'robust naturalism' of 
 ' Ghosts ' will rather be regarded by the man of
 
 ibsen's social plays 167 
 
 the world as diseased fantasy. It is true that 
 concentration is the duty, and coincidence the 
 necessary licence of the dramatist, and we may 
 expect and allow much of these when they serve 
 merely to increase the interest and smooth the 
 progress of the play. As stage-work gives no 
 opportunity for the gradual evolution or slow 
 building-up of character and situation, allowance 
 must be made for something of sharpness and 
 suddenness in action and development. But we 
 demand a higher degree of reality from the pro- 
 pagandist, who is bound to give a fair statement 
 of his case, than from the artist, who has no con- 
 cern with proofs and propositions. 
 
 It is the singular attribute of pure tragedy 
 that it calms and satisfies the mind. No obtrud- 
 ing doubts or irritations mar the impression of a 
 natural and inevitable catastrophe. But in this 
 modern tragedy, professedly the impartial ex- 
 hibition of cause and effect, we chafe under a 
 dispensation that seems irrelevant and casual. 
 We are shaken and appalled, but we resent the 
 means by which we are overcome. 
 
 With all deductions, however, if such deduc- 
 tions are due, 'Ghosts' remains a work of ex- 
 treme interest, of moral tendency, and of great, 
 if ill-regulated, power. If Manders is a rather
 
 1 68 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 superficial exponent of an orthodoxy that has a 
 better case than he puts for it, Mrs Alving, on 
 the other hand, is one of the strongest, most 
 convincing, and most Hfe-Hke of Ibsen's women. 
 It is not to be wondered at that ' Ghosts,' 
 whether true or untrue essentially, should have 
 met with no complacent reception. It seems, 
 indeed, to have awakened fierce antagonism, and 
 its author was treated as a fanatic with a grudge 
 against the human race rather than as a saviour 
 of society. The attacks roused Ibsen to retort 
 upon his critics with ' An Enemy of the People,' 
 a kind of allegorical declaration of his own 
 position, typified by that of a hot-headed doctor, 
 who provokes a storm of obloquy by acting in 
 single-minded opposition to the supposed in- 
 terests of the community. On its merits, it is 
 a fresh and racy setting of an old situation. 
 Dr Stockman, a really fine and hearty figure, 
 is the single character of first-rate interest. 
 Such people as Hovstad and Billing, and As- 
 laksen, who, as the representative of the rate- 
 paying middle-class that Ibsen is attacking, is 
 the most important of the secondary characters, 
 are instances of the abuse of typical methods. 
 They have no individual existence whatever, 
 and consist entirely of phrases designed to show
 
 ibsen's social plays 169 
 
 the cowardly selfishness of their kind. They 
 are, indeed, the simple figures that are de- 
 manded by a demonstration to which clearness 
 and simplicity are essential. On the whole, I 
 think that ' An Enemy of the People ' may be 
 ranked with ' The League of Youth ' and ' The 
 Pillars of Society ' as one of the less important 
 of the group, though its vigour and healthiness 
 might tempt us to assign a higher place to it. 
 
 ' The Wild Duck ' seems to be something of 
 a stumbling-block to the thorough-going of 
 Ibsen's admirers. Mr Gosse considers it 'ob- 
 scure, cynical, and distressing to the last degree,' 
 and Mr Ellis admits that it is 'the least re- 
 markable of Ibsen's plays of this group' — a 
 rather curious pronouncement. It is, in fact, 
 the grimmest of comedies, and it is so far a 
 satire on Ibsen's own work that it seems as 
 though it might be the outcome of that not 
 unusual conviction of the champion of a cause 
 that he can put his opponents' case more 
 effectively than they can. It would be rash to 
 declare precisely the moral intention of the 
 play; but further than this, the charge of 
 obscurity might as reasonably be brought 
 against any work that does not carry in itself 
 a creed or a personal explanation. His in-
 
 17° BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 terpreters will hardly allow us to believe that 
 Ibsen has for once worked in the region of 
 morals without becoming a partisan. There 
 is no definite contention. The questions that 
 are raised receive no answers, or else doubtful 
 and enigmatic ones. The hunter of the social 
 lie seems at best to be following a cold scent, 
 and they would have him always in full cry. 
 It seems as though the preacher might yet 
 degenerate into a mere tragic poet. To me it 
 seems that Ibsen is here on the right path. 
 This play is a proof, if proof were needed, of 
 his essential liberality — the liberality which 
 changes its point of view, and is no less the 
 sign of firmness of faith. Of course, it is easy 
 to draw a complete and plausible ' moral ' from 
 the upshot of the play — that the claims of the 
 ' ideal ' are not always in season, and that when 
 commonplace people are jogging comfortably 
 along — ideal or no ideal — it may be as well to 
 let them alone. This is obvious enough, but 
 the last words of the play take us a little 
 further : — . 
 
 Gregers : If you're right and I'm wrong, then life is not 
 worth living. 
 
 Relling : Oh, life would be quite tolerable after all, if 
 only we could be rid of the confounded duns that keep 
 pestering us in our poverty with the claims of the ideal.
 
 ibsen's social plays 171 
 
 Gregers: In that case, I'm glad that my destiny is 
 what it is. 
 
 Relling : Excuse me ; what is your destiny ? 
 Gregers : To be the thirteenth at table. 
 
 which may, I suppose, be interpreted that 
 Gregers, who is the representative, serious or 
 satirical, of Ibsen's views, would be a scourge if 
 he could not be a guide. Does Ibsen, then, in- 
 sist upon taking everyone seriously? I think 
 we may give him credit for a dramatic concep- 
 tion, and that Gregers may be allowed to speak 
 for himself, and not necessarily for his author. 
 He is at any rate a warning to moral reformers 
 to maintain delicacy of touch in dealing with 
 sensitive subjects like Hedvig, and discretion in 
 avoiding impossible ones like Hialmar. There 
 is no line to divide the heroic worker from the 
 officious meddler, and that it should be possible 
 to ask concerning Hedvig's death — a death 
 which, it must be remembered, saved the child 
 from a miserable life, and was the consummation 
 of a sublime martyrdom— is it Gregers' condem- 
 nation or his justification? is it apotheosis or 
 catastrophe? seems rather evidence of artistic 
 balance than of obscurity, 
 
 Ibsen's women are always better than his men, 
 and Gina Ekdel seems to me among his most 
 artistic achievements. There is no finer art in
 
 ^72 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 these plays than the unforced contrast between 
 the fervent, high-minded Gregers, doing the 
 work of a busybody, and the cast-off mistress 
 whose perceptions are too blunt to be troubled 
 much about false positions and degraded ideals, 
 but whose life is an example of faithfulness and 
 self-denial. She is wholly and admirably free 
 from sensationalism and sentimentality, and has 
 no touch of the farcical satire, the constant use 
 of which is a besetting fault of Ibsen's, which 
 mars Gregers and ruins Hialmar, who is sadly 
 overdrawn. She remains the fixed quantity 
 among the shaking and changing of theories 
 and theorists. When Gregers says ' Do you 
 believe I meant all for the best, Mrs Ekdel ? ' 
 she replies, 'Yes, I suppose so; but, God forgive 
 you, all the same.' This speech, so pathetically 
 illogical, and yet so charitable and appropriate, 
 has more dramatic quality than countless repeti- 
 tions of those stale catchwords that are such an 
 unhappy substitute for sustained consistency of 
 character-drawing. Ibsen's humour is often 
 overpowered by his earnestness, but the incident 
 of old Werle's marriage with Mrs Sorby is a 
 telling piece of satiric humour, not the less 
 effective because it is apparently directed against 
 himself.
 
 ibsen's social plays 173 
 
 In ' Rosmersholm ' and ' The Lady from the 
 Sea,' the motive common to these plays is quali- 
 fied by fine elements of romance. They have 
 this curious feature in common that their char- 
 acters are developed less by action than by re- 
 trospective explanations. Ibsen understands the 
 function of the drama to be to supply typical 
 subjective history and he troubles himself little 
 about picturesque events. He never lingers 
 with pleasure over the details of life. In 
 ' Rosmersholm ' the action, or the principal 
 part of it, takes place before the play begins, 
 and it could, with slight alterations, be played 
 in a single scene. It appears to be something 
 of a compromise between two motives and two 
 manners. Cause and Fate have each a share 
 in its catastrophe, realism and romance in its 
 manner. In ' The Lady from the Sea ' too, 
 which comes as a happy relief after the gloom 
 and horror of 'Rosmersholm,' there is the strange 
 blending of science and fantasy which is one 
 of the fascinations of these plays. The prosaic 
 and the supernatural are interwoven, and it is 
 almost too much to expect that an English 
 audience, always so cruelly on the watch for 
 incongruities, could ever reconcile itself to the 
 stranger. If the play must be criticised on any-
 
 174 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 thing like logical lines, its weakness would lie, 
 perhaps, in the change of EUida's mood being 
 made absolute and unconditional. She settles 
 down suddenly into the good housewife. Her 
 yearning and fascination for the sea have not 
 been rationalised or reduced to reasonable limits; 
 they have disappeared altogether. This is not 
 human nature, and no lesson bearing upon 
 human nature can be enforced under such con- 
 ditions, but it is best to accept Ellida as she is, 
 and to look to ' The Forsaken Merman ' as a 
 sufficiently realistic sequel to her choice. 
 
 The discussions which raged round 'A Doll's 
 House,' were renewed and intensified by the ap- 
 pearance of 'Hedda Gabler.' She is at least an 
 interesting problem. To Mr James she is ' in 
 short the study of an exasperated woman,' while 
 another critic declares her to be ' an artist with- 
 out a vocation,' who works in life, like Mr 
 James's own Gabriel Nash, but without the self- 
 consciousness of that gentleman, or like lago, if 
 Ave accept Mr Swinburne's interpretation of 
 him as having the instinct of an 'inarticulate 
 poet.' It seems to be like ' The Wild Duck,' 
 a study of the reverse of the medal. If Ibsen 
 teaches any lesson it is that we should live our 
 lives freely and naturally. Here, with superb
 
 Ibsen's social plays 175 
 
 candour, the principle is applied to an utterly 
 depraved woman, who gives such scope to her 
 peculiar individuality that we are fain to cry 
 for a few saving conventions to cover the naked- 
 ness of such a nature. Hedda Gabler is a type 
 of the profound frivolity which results from an 
 aimless life and a strong will. Utterly without 
 purpose and without interests, she has yet a 
 great capacity for sensation. She is an egoist 
 without self-love, and a sinner without passion. 
 Her character is set forth with much subtlety 
 of dialogue : 
 
 Brack — You have never lived through anj'thing really 
 stimulating. 
 
 Hedda — An5^hing serious, you mean ? 
 
 Thus she grasps no meaning in ' stimulating,' 
 which implies the existence of higher interests. 
 She married, as she carelessly avows, because 
 she was 'tired of dancing,' and the proposed 
 husband was quite presentable. She is not in 
 act unfaithful to her husband, because to be 
 so might be inconvenient and disagreeable. 
 Besides there is nothing so human about her as 
 a passion. The prospects of maternity suggest 
 to her only irritations and dangers. The round 
 of small cares and duties that is offered to her 
 is hopelessly inadequate to feed her hunger for
 
 176 BOOKS AND PLATS 
 
 life. With some motive of jealousy in the first 
 instance — not, as I understand it, in revenge, 
 but rather in sheer wantonness — to admire his 
 descent, as one throws a twig into a stream, she 
 pushes a poor devil of a reclaimed drunkard 
 upon the inclined plane again, and is only 
 distressed that the manner of his death lacks 
 something of distinction. She, herself, prefers 
 suicide to the alternatives of a public scandal 
 and the subjection of her will. Hedda Gabler 
 is a personification of ennui, a daring effort of 
 imagination, a great piece of construction, a 
 study of essentials with all accidental human 
 elements omitted, a work indeed not of realism, 
 though surrounded by realistic details, but be- 
 longing rather to such ideal art as the ' Melen- 
 colia ' of Albert Durer. 
 
 As to 'The Master Builder,' the last and 
 most curious fruit of Ibsen's genius, it is hard 
 to resist the conviction that it shows a decline 
 in force and coherence. It is concerned again 
 with the oppositions of duty and will, though 
 perhaps there is not much essential advance in 
 thought from what is expressed or implied in 
 the ' Ode to Duty.' Wordsworth would not 
 be likely, however, to admit either Solness or 
 Hilda as persons to whom 'joy' might properly
 
 ibsen's social plays 177 
 
 become ' its own security.' Duty, as represented 
 by Mrs Solness, who is set up to be bowled 
 down by the robust Hilda, is certainly an un- 
 satisfactory matter, but should not a set of de- 
 finitions be prepared for use in Ibsen's plays, 
 including the difficult one of Duty. The Master 
 Builder begins so far back as his duty to God, 
 which is presently modernised into duty to 
 humanity. Readers of Ibsen, who may choose 
 varieties of meaning for themselves, will not 
 be surprised to find that the last stage of 
 development is a kind of transcendent egoism. 
 In 'The Master Builder,' I can recognise trains 
 of thought and patches of human nature, but 
 no credible human being. These characters 
 have more possibilities about them than the 
 dull race of men. Men and women will not 
 fit into an allegory, and this is an allegory 
 at once wearisome and fascinating. We think 
 we have it one day and are bewildered by 
 it the next. Fragments that seem illuminating 
 once, again appear like burlesque. It is a 
 magnanimous reader who can quite believe 
 that the appearance of subtlety is due in no 
 measure to confusion. However this may be, 
 there are some very hearty admirers of Ibsen 
 who would rather see him try his hand on a 
 
 M
 
 178 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 good melodrama than on such another study in 
 the ' Higher Egoism.' 
 
 Of the characteristics common to Ibsen's plays 
 the dialogue is generally terse and pointed, and 
 on occasion vivid and intense. Sometimes, in- 
 deed, it reminds us of those exercises, dear to 
 the closet politician, in which a feeble and fore- 
 doomed opponent is set up to ring the changes 
 from confident volubility to acquiescence or col- 
 lapse; but though it is not possible here to speak 
 of particular niceties of manner, even these 
 translations establish beyond doubt his posses- 
 sion of a style of which relevance and concise- 
 ness are no less characteristic than subtlety and 
 fulness. His wit is a means rather than an end, 
 for he condescends to no irrelevant jokes and 
 is content to be direct without epigram. His 
 humour is satiric and never genial; his pathos is 
 hard and austere, never sympathetic. We are 
 interested and stimulated, but rarely profoundly 
 stirred or greatly exalted. In character he 
 seems to have a difficulty in touching the mean 
 between the commonplace and the abnormal, a 
 difficulty inherent to the satiric method. He 
 appears to rely more upon a fertile imagination 
 and a power of construction than upon careful 
 studies of men and women at first hand. Thus,
 
 ibsen's social plays 179 
 
 in place of displaying human beings, he tracks, 
 with great ingenuity, human tendencies, so that 
 his characters are oftener intricate than complex. 
 But I must here attempt to make a distinction 
 which is, I think, by no means an arbitrary one, 
 between the earlier and the later social plays. 
 Up to ' An Enemy of the People,' he appears as 
 an aggressive social reformer. Satire is his chief 
 weapon in the strife that he wages with a world 
 out of joint. To him the mere artist is a fiddler 
 in sight of burning Rome. In discussing him it 
 is difficult to remain on the literary plane. His 
 aim seems so persistently a moral one, that we 
 are likely to concern ourselves more with the 
 value in practice of his ideas than with the 
 manner of their expression, and it is possible 
 that he would deprecate any estimate of his 
 work which separated these constituents. The 
 artistic element may be the valuable one; it 
 may be wise to concentrate attention upon it, 
 but of the moral intention there can be no 
 reasonable doubt. His plea is for Nature and 
 the Individual — for a natural life or a nearer 
 approach to it, and his mission, as he under- 
 stands it, is to strike at the dogmas and con- 
 ventions that at once conceal and paralyse the 
 social state, which —
 
 i8o BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 Do but skin and film the ulcerous place, 
 Whiles rank corruption mining all within 
 Infects unseen. 
 
 It is a latter-day theory that the artist writes 
 because he must — because his ideas take form 
 and cry for expression. But it is probable that 
 some good as well as much bad literature has 
 been produced at the instance of the printer's 
 boy; it is certain that very much of the best 
 owes its incubation to the want of money. To 
 write with a moral object is no more forbidden 
 to the artist than to write for wages. Each is 
 a legitimate motive, but as we demand of the 
 one that his wages shall never become a bribe, 
 we demand of the other that he shall not seek 
 to promote the cause of truth by falsehood. 
 All we ask of the didactic writer is impartiality. 
 He must play no tricks with Nature. If he sees 
 that the natural evolution of character and in- 
 cidents make for his thesis he has the right to 
 display them. But such an one is rarely im- 
 partial. He insists too much upon his points, 
 and Nature is ever chary of points. Ibsen is 
 too often a moralist first and an artist after- 
 wards, and moral fervour is a great, but danger- 
 ous quality. Such an order is actually less 
 likely to promote his object if he appeals to
 
 ibsen's social plays i8i 
 
 trained intelligences, with whom to indicate is 
 a surer method than to persuade. 
 
 The impulses that produce such works as 
 * The Song of the Shirt ' and ' Jenny,' at once 
 magnificent art and of vital social influence, 
 are not moral but human and sympathetic. 
 Hood and Rossetti were not fettered by pre- 
 conceived ideas that called for illustration. It 
 was their part to express the pity and terror 
 of their themes, not to discuss their politics. 
 Ibsen seems to me to be deficient in sympa- 
 thetic apprehension. His characters develop, 
 not according to the laws of the universe and 
 the tendencies of man's nature, but in the 
 direction best fitted for the enforcement of 
 their author's moral prepossessions. As it 
 suits his purpose he exaggerates the power of 
 heredity or of the individual will. He holds 
 what may be called the Jack - in - the - Box 
 theory of moral emotions; the more they are 
 crushed down the more elastic and rampant is 
 their rebound. Shake a frivolous woman and 
 she emerges a well-equipped moral engine. 
 Startle a hypocrite of life-long standing, and 
 he overflows with frankness and magnanimity. 
 They are not mere men and women to him — 
 they are examples; and however little their
 
 l82 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 previous experiences may have suggested such 
 an accomplishment they are astonishingly well 
 up in his principles at a crisis. But with 
 * The Wild Duck ' he enters upon a new phase, 
 and henceforth these criticisms have at most 
 a very partial application. He seems, as a 
 critic has said, to have become ' wary,' and 
 while his work remains moral in intention it 
 is not so obtrusively didactic. Yet in each of 
 the series we see a phase of the perpetual war 
 waged between growth and limitation, between 
 character and authority. If his unity of idea 
 seems near akin to narrowness of vision it may 
 be remembered that in all things, in art as in 
 nature, there is an infinite contraction, as well 
 as an infinite expansion. The fields laid open 
 by the microscope are boundless as the celestial 
 sphere. It is not enough to see life whole. 
 The larger views must be strengthened and 
 refined by the intense and particular view of 
 the specialist. Ibsen has concentrated himself 
 upon a narrow but fruitful field of thought. 
 
 He is frequently alluded to as a realist, 
 a classification that seems surprisingly inept. 
 The typical realist is Tolstoi, between whom 
 and Ibsen an interesting comparison might be 
 instituted. He too is a didactic writer, seeking
 
 ibsen's social plays 183 
 
 to show the folly and futility of life unless it is 
 put into right relations to God and Nature, and 
 to discover what these relations are. His pain- 
 fully minute and exhaustive method seems 
 almost to dispense with artistic selection. He 
 will draw his conclusions — they may be strange 
 and erratic — but they will be founded upon an 
 impartial examination of all the circumstances 
 as far as he can see them. It is as though he 
 feared to select lest he should not select fairly. 
 From particular experiences faithfully observed 
 and recorded he has deduced and now preaches a 
 philosophy of life totally irreconcileable with the 
 current convictions and tendencies of mankind. 
 The appalling thing about the ' Kreutzer Sonata ' 
 is its convincing reality. It is at once the 
 triumph and the condemnation of realism, which 
 seeks for facts rather than for truth. As a par- 
 ticular case, as a human ' document,' it is 
 hideously truthful. Upon such experiences he 
 forms his creed, as from a microscopic examina- 
 tion of certain details one might attempt to 
 deduce the Creator's plan. Ibsen's method, on 
 the other hand, is in this respect precisely 
 opposite. He is essentially an idealist in that 
 his work is concerned with the realising of his 
 ideas, a more or less fixed quantity. He believes
 
 l84 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 that the development of the individual and a 
 right regard for the scientific conditions of life 
 are vital to the well-being of the human race, 
 and it is the enforcement of these principles and 
 such as these with which he is primarily con- 
 cerned. Thus his own innate ideas have a large 
 share in his characters, the details of whose con- 
 structions come rather from a store of ac- 
 cumulated notes than from the observation of 
 particular persons; and while Tolstoi's men and 
 women strike us as having been closely studied 
 from the life, Ibsen's are usually deficient in 
 verisimilitude. It is a significant circumstance 
 that he continues his dramas of Norwegian 
 
 o 
 
 character twenty years after his opportunities 
 of study at first hand have ceased. 
 
 This imperfect criticism takes no account of 
 the splendid dramatic poems to which most of 
 Ibsen's countrymen and many appreciative 
 critics agree in assigning his chief and per- 
 manent claim to consideration. Whether his 
 work has vital interest for all time or not, and 
 to me it seems that ' Hedda Gabler' at least is a 
 classic, he is a striking figure in the life and 
 literature of to-day. It is impossible to read 
 these plays without receiving a great impression 
 of his intellectual fearlessness and his noble
 
 ibsen's social plays 185 
 
 capacity for scorn of what is base and evil, and if 
 his work as an artist is marred, and his chances 
 of immortality are endangered by his zeal to 
 help forward his own generation in the ways of 
 truth and light, it is a fault, which we, for whom 
 he labours, may forgive.
 
 THREE PLAYS, BY MR STEVENSON AND 
 MR HENLEY 
 
 If we are to have good plays it is well for our 
 men of genius to set about producing them. 
 They are more likely to succeed than the others, 
 indeed, by any fine standard .of success, they 
 only can succeed. It will be an unmitigated 
 tyranny when all the best men have the best 
 places, and the luxuries of grumbling and de- 
 nouncing are withdrawn, but we may risk this 
 in any present encouragement of dramatic art. 
 It was certainly one of the most original ideas 
 ever acted upon by a man of genius, to consider 
 that a boy's book would be a suitable form of 
 expression for him, and Mr Stevenson has now 
 followed up this innovation by attacking drama- 
 tic art from the side of melodrama. Main- 
 taining the tradition that it takes two powerful 
 men to make a melodrama, he has entered into
 
 THREE PLAYS 1 87 
 
 collaboration with Mr Henley. Such a com- 
 bination must surely, one would think, prove 
 a fruitful one. It is inconceivable that two 
 such critics should put forth work of any but 
 high quality. It is even more certain that 
 they would find something to say. Creation 
 is assured, a chastening criticism is assured. 
 They have only to make themselves acquainted 
 with the forms, the technique of the art, and 
 masterpieces must ensue. How often has such 
 reasoning proved delusive. Yet here the effect 
 is not unworthy of its generation. If these 
 plays are not masterpieces they are certainly 
 work of a high excellence. Profound and 
 original in conception they are not, but they 
 are exquisite in workmanship and their detail 
 is full of vigour and truth of imagination. 
 Their characters look like familiar stock figures 
 at first sight, but we are startled to find them 
 alive. It would be futile and impertinent to 
 endeavour to assign their respective shares to 
 the two authors. Such speculative disintegra- 
 tion is forbidden by work of such unity and 
 coherence. There is some room for disagree- 
 ment as to the passages ' suggested for omission 
 in representation.' Even if we were willing to 
 spare all these, it is a dangerous custom to en-
 
 1 88 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 courage, whatever precedents may be cited, that 
 the reading and the acting versions of a play 
 should differ. 
 
 ' Deacon Brodie ' is an unpretentious play. 
 It pretends to be nothing more than a melo- 
 drama, and it retains some share of the un- 
 reality of its class, but it is a melodrama brought 
 to a finer issue. If it is impossible and inhuman, 
 it contains elements of truth and of humanity. 
 Like most stage plays, it assumes that everyone 
 is blind of one eye, and it accepts the fantasy 
 which Mr Stevenson, if any man, could make 
 convincing, that Dr Jekyll can withstand for 
 long the encroachments of Mr Hyde. Deacon 
 Brodie is the respected citizen by day, the 
 robber and roysterer by night. Melodrama is 
 incoherent at best; the sequence of cause and 
 effect must not be insisted upon too rigidly. 
 The lime light gives vivid effects, but we cannot 
 look to it for the sweet sobriety of the light of 
 day. To make the play a real tragedy Brodie 
 should be a lower type, or a worse man. As 
 it is, in his better moments, he is entirely free 
 from the taint that a life of mean crime must 
 inevitably bring. It is impossible to believe in 
 Deacon Brodie, though when he says : — ' I 
 began it in the lust of life, in a hey-day of
 
 THREE PLAYS '^9 
 
 mystery and adventure,' we recognise the tact 
 that makes him plausible. If criticism of such 
 work must stop short at a point, that point is 
 yet some distance below the surface. In beauty 
 and appropriateness of speech it more than holds 
 its own with any of the more pretentious plays 
 of our time. 
 
 It is probable that a general opinion would fix 
 upon ' Beau Austin ' as the most considerable of 
 the three plays. It has at least one scene of 
 fine dramatic interest— that between Austin and 
 Fenwick. Austin starts from one fixed convic- 
 tion ; he has perfected the surface of life ; — he 
 is a gentleman. By an argument without a 
 flaw, by an appeal of sweet reasonableness, 
 Fenwick shows him that life goes deeper than 
 the surface. The appeal is to Austin's own 
 shallow ideals of generosity and good taste, but 
 such as they are they are held sincerely and 
 cannot be lightly dismissed. Nor can they be 
 maintained against the hard fact of a base 
 action : 
 
 Austin. I am a gentleman. What do you ask of me ? 
 Fenwick. To be the man she loved. 
 
 The self-sacrificing lover is one of the most 
 familiar of stock figures, but Fenwick has little
 
 190 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 in common with these florid heroes. He has the 
 quahties of strength and loyalty that throw into 
 the right relief the dilettante virtues of the Beau 
 and give, without accentuation, the slight flavour 
 of satire in the comedy. It will be an objection 
 only to the dullest of realists that the characters 
 are on a higher imaginative plane than people in 
 real life, but it is a question whether a rake — 
 even a well-regulated rake like Beau Austin, 
 could maintain intact through so many years 
 of deteriorating triumph the feelings that make 
 effectual such an appeal as that to which he 
 succumbs. Yet classics make their own first 
 principles — and surely this is destined to be a 
 classic. Its authors have too much originality to 
 attempt to be original, but it is witty with a 
 beautiful simplicity and directness, as witty 
 almost as Congreve and with a far better hold 
 on life. 
 
 The last play in the volume ' Admiral 
 Guinea ' introduces us to an old acquaint- 
 ance — the formidable blind man of ' Treasure 
 Island.' He is less terrible than he was, but 
 dangerous still, and with a dreadful jocularity 
 added. Many of his speeches are admirably 
 quaint and natural, as when upon Gaunt's re- 
 jection of his overtures, in the form of an ex-
 
 TPIREE PLAYS ^9 1 
 
 hortation to repentance, he says : ' Now I want 
 this clear : Do I understand that you're going 
 back on me, and you'll see me damned ftrst ? * 
 Gaunt and Kit are finely indicated — the ran^e 
 of the play does not admit of much elaboration 
 — and their dialogue in the first act has strong 
 dramatic interest. They represent opposing and 
 seemingly irreconcileable forces, but it must be 
 admitted that their conjunction is brought about 
 by adventures and interludes. The detail is 
 excellent, but development depends upon acci- 
 dents, not forces. Yet these adventures are 
 spirited enough, and would be thrilling on the 
 stage. Some of the business in the last scene 
 should bring the house down, as when the blind 
 man burns his hand at the candle. 
 
 If this is not work of surprising genius, it is so 
 fresh and delicate, so sane and competent, so free 
 from verbiage and fustian, that it gives a higher 
 idea of the possibilities of the drama than a suc- 
 cess of the sensational kind. Good as they are 
 we have the impression that their authors, main- 
 taining the high quahty of their writing, might 
 carry stronger dramatic material. A partner- 
 ship which counts Mr Stevenson's imagination 
 as an asset need fear no bankruptcy, and we 
 would gladly give them credit for greater under-
 
 192 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 takings. Yet they have commanded little suc- 
 cess beyond that which is best worth having, the 
 cordial recognition of lovers of art, and instead 
 of being an incitement to aspiring dramatic 
 authors they must surely act as a deterrent. 
 Who that has a thirst for the grosser kinds of 
 glory, and we are all human, can be less than 
 discouraged when he reflects that a few per- 
 formances of ' Beau Austin ' sufficed, and that 
 ' Admiral Guinea ' never saw the footlights. He 
 can hardly hope to do better than these, he is a 
 bold man if he expects to do as well. Surrender 
 is less uncomfortable when it is called com- 
 promise, and he will turn to the study of ' The 
 Dancing Girl ' and ' Sweet Lavender,' ' Di- 
 plomacy ' and ' The Bauble Shop.'
 
 THE POLITICS OF DRAMATIC ART 
 
 A LANGUISHING art may be revived either by 
 the introduction of new methods and new 
 matter, or by the raising of the standard of 
 quality in the old forms. In English dramatic 
 art to-day we have an excellent example of each 
 kind. Mr Stevenson and Mr Henley by their 
 failure to command anything beyond a ' liter- 
 ary' success have given distressing evidence of 
 the prevalent indifference to quality, and Ibsen, 
 who has greater virtues than novelty, has per- 
 haps obtained a partial and unstable success 
 rather by arousing the curiosity than by sat- 
 isfying the instinct of the British public. 
 Whether curiosity will change to interest and 
 excitement to stimulation is a question of some 
 importance to the playgoer who deprecates a 
 fall into the old rut. It is not only as an artist 
 and a moralist that Ibsen has claim upon our 
 
 N
 
 194 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 consideration. He is a writer for the stage, 
 and an innovator in theatrical matters, and it 
 may be considered ultimately to be not the 
 least of his accomplishments, that he has done 
 something — perhaps very much — towards en- 
 larging the limits of subject-matter beyond the 
 trivial and conventional. Our dramatic art lags 
 far behind its sister arts in almost all essentials 
 — in subtlety, in variety, in inspiration, even in 
 intensity. It is not the fault of the writers 
 for the stage, but of the conditions under which 
 they work; nor is it the fault of those who 
 might, and do not, write for the stage, but of 
 those conditions which they would have to 
 accept. 
 
 The theatre is at once the most democratic and 
 the most conservative of institutions (and may 
 offer to politicians an example of the essential 
 conservatism of democracy). Progress can be 
 made only by continued slight departures from 
 tradition. Our playwrights have to attempt the 
 difficult compromise between their own dramatic 
 instincts and popular theatrical taste. The re- 
 sult is sometimes a strange medley, scenes of 
 insight and delicacy alternating with antiquated 
 clap-trap and that curious concession to a striv- 
 ing humanity which is technically known as
 
 THE POLITICS OF DRAMATIC ART 195 
 
 comic relief. In our easy condemnation of the 
 stage writers of the period we do not always 
 consider it relevant to ask what would have been 
 the effect upon the work of Mr Watts, of Mr 
 Thorneycroft, or of Mr Swinburne — to say 
 nothing of Mr Burne Jones or Mr Pater, if 
 they had been compelled all along to consider 
 the verdict of ' the man in the street ' ; if a 
 necessity of their artistic existence had been a 
 choosing of common ground, not only with the 
 ignorant and vulgar, but with those even greater 
 enemies of what is beautiful and good — the 
 facetious, sensational, sentimental, and all the 
 other varieties of distorted commonplace. 
 
 There seem to be two chances for this heavily 
 handicapped dramatic art : the specialising of 
 audiences, and the elevation of the general level 
 of taste. At present the first can be exercised 
 only in great communities and to a limited 
 extent, as in Mr Tree's innovation at the 
 Haymarket when Mondays were set aside for 
 literature. Towards the second, Ibsen's plays 
 may prove an influence of the greatest im- 
 portance. What is required is to rouse the 
 interest and intelligence of the people, who 
 are bored by poetical plays of old types. How 
 can this be better done than by giving them
 
 196 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 plays which bear directly on the actual problems 
 and conditions of life. Every man is a critic of 
 Ibsen because every man knows that he is 
 subject, in some degree, to the principles of 
 heredity, and has opinions or prejudices of some 
 kind on woman's destiny, political consistency 
 or commercial morality. Mr Pinero's ' The 
 Profligate ' was so far of the school of Ibsen 
 that it faced a social problem with courage and 
 frankness. It was very sentimental and had 
 some dreadful lapses into fatuity, but on the 
 whole, what an advance upon the irrelevance 
 and inconsequence of the ' Ironmasters,' the 
 ' Captain Swifts,' the * Sweet Lavenders ' or the 
 ' Bauble Shops.' These are the more or less 
 pretty or effective settings of the old stale and 
 unprofitable conventions, the eternal platitudes 
 garnished and displayed anew. 
 
 Ibsen and those who follow in his steps have 
 at least, as Mr Gosse says, ' such elements of life 
 as call forth eager comment and lead to excited 
 discussion.' Comment and discussion make the 
 healthy atmosphere in which art thrives. Any- 
 thing is better than stagnation, and whether or 
 not we are convinced by Ibsen, we are, at any 
 rate, set a-thinking. When the storm and 
 ridicule have finally subsided it may be seen
 
 THE POLITICS OF DRAMATIC ART 197 
 
 that the production of his plays has done more 
 for dramatic art than very many meritorious 
 lashings of the dead horse of the ' poetic ' drama, 
 attempts which owe their occasional apparent 
 success to the indomitable persistence of the 
 English audience which never knows when it 
 is beaten in a cause which it believes to be a 
 good one. 
 
 At present it is principally to London that we 
 must look for an audience to support artistic 
 experiments. Nevertheless the politics of this 
 subject are not confined to the Strand. The 
 provincial audience is very much the same as 
 the London one. It cannot, of course, concen- 
 trate so many people of exceptional taste and 
 is, on this account, a safer indication of average 
 taste. In regarding it we may put aside the 
 exceptional cases that might cause us to under- 
 value the magnitude of the dead weight that 
 must be lifted. Take the case of Manchester — 
 a city by no means dormant in matters of art 
 and which has the advantage of some highly 
 competent dramatic criticism. Manchester usu- 
 ally begins the year with Christmas pantomime 
 at each of its five theatres, and pantomime which 
 shows signs of vigorous revival in London is 
 undoubtedly the favourite branch of dramatic
 
 198 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 art in the provinces. There is yet some faint 
 remainder of an excuse for it because it permits 
 us to share the shallow jollities of our children 
 at the festive season. But our children do 
 not control the quality of pantomime; the 
 average sensual man controls it. To him we 
 owe this conglomeration of discordant noises, 
 garish lights, tawdry dresses, blatant coarseness, 
 puking silliness; of singing without music, 
 romping without merriment, laughter without 
 mirth. Occasionally, indeed, a few good things 
 may be seen, a few clever feats, a pretty effect, 
 an appeal to a rough natural humour. Then 
 for persons of refined taste there is the ballet 
 — an honourable art fallen upon evil days, for 
 pantomime ballets are usually inefficient and 
 linger rather as a tradition than as an essential. 
 Altogether, under favourable circumstances, 
 there might be scraped together out of the 
 wreck of a pantomime some few minutes en- 
 tertainment for a vapid mind. But as for the 
 whole performance what strikes one is the ab- 
 sence of daintiness, the pervading quality of 
 coarse facetious sensualism. The appeal is not 
 to primitive man, not to natural man, but to 
 debauched man. The pleasures, such as they 
 are, are well within the scope of the beery lout,
 
 THE POLITICS OF DRAMATIC ART 199 
 
 and in so far as we are pleased we approach 
 the condition of the beery lout. It is supported 
 by coarse people or by people at their coarsest, 
 Its authors set to work to find the greatest 
 common measure of the most numerous classes, 
 and find a perverted animalism in all. Its com- 
 binations of light and colour might have the 
 effect of awakening and enlivening an unused 
 sense, and so possibly prove useful to a backward 
 baby, but for children whose minds are be- 
 ginning to be active it is an effective method of 
 blunting and vulgarising. 
 
 There are some who would make the theatre 
 a mere assistant to the parson and the school- 
 master. Puritans still exist who utterly abhor 
 it. For my part, if a pure minded ascetic old 
 lady showed signs of liberality and wished to see 
 this theatre of whose beneficent influence she 
 had heard so much, I would rather not conduct 
 her to the pantomime. Yet good people go, 
 even refined people go, the respectable father 
 of a family goes with his flock of innocents; but 
 respectability has a glazed surface that keeps it 
 from harm; respectability is the petrifaction of 
 innocence and shares its immunities. 
 
 As the gallery and pit are crowded we may 
 take it that the British Democracy goes, and it
 
 200 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 is ill to argue with it. Take the members of 
 the pit individually and their opinions are 
 worthless, but by some process, as yet un- 
 explained, they become infallible in combina- 
 tion. After all there is something human in 
 what is equally to the taste of the man about 
 town and the country bumpkin, and something 
 liberal and friendly too in the recognition of a 
 common descent from apes or to Yahoos. 
 
 All this may be condemned as a straining 
 after the attitude of the superior person. But 
 men lose their souls sometimes through a quite 
 unfounded fear of becoming superior persons. 
 The evil is recognised by most cultivated people. 
 What is the remedy ? We don't want to make 
 things dull. It is the dulness that is complained 
 of. We don't want to encourage a monopoly of 
 five act tragedies. Perhaps the first practical 
 step would be to become total abstainers from 
 pantomime. Then we might take every oppor- 
 tunity of sneering at those of our friends who 
 persist in going. Much may be done by 
 judicious sneering. A sinner who is deaf to 
 the trumpet calls of eloquent appeal will meekly 
 slip into the straight path at a whisper of 
 contempt. It may be embarrassing to have to 
 convey to friends whom we esteem that their
 
 THE POLITICS OF DRAMATIC ART 20I 
 
 tastes are low, and by implication to arrogate 
 to ourselves the possession of finer instincts, but 
 such qualms must be ruthlessly repressed. 
 Presently we might have the satisfaction of 
 hearing that a manager is ruined. As an in- 
 dividual he would receive our commiseration but 
 as an instrument we should rejoice over his de- 
 struction. The ruin of a manager will not carry 
 us very far. The substitution of an odd comic 
 opera for a pantomime will not carry us very 
 far. What is the remedy for the whole state of 
 which the pantomime is the worst symptom ? 
 
 Perhaps it may be asked — Why should not 
 dramatic art be permitted to make its own way : 
 why should not natural selection work un- 
 disturbed ? Artificial selection is the higher 
 development of what we call natural selection. 
 Spartan treatment has killed many a weakly 
 growth that carried the essential elements of 
 strength. The arts are not practised under 
 similiar conditions. The poet may scrape to- 
 gether twenty pounds to launch his volume upon 
 an unheeding world, and posterity is the richer 
 for it. In the intervals between pot-boilers, the 
 painter may achieve immortality ; the sculptor, 
 as there is no demand for his work, may as well 
 be artistic as not ; but the playwright must have
 
 202 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 extraordinary luck, possess unlimited means, or 
 be a genius in practical politics to express him- 
 self at all. In other arts, the best men, so far 
 as they work for an audience at all, assume an 
 ideal audience ; their expression is without com- 
 promise or limitation other than is imposed by 
 the laws of art. The dramatic writer can only 
 exist by subordinating his instincts to the taste 
 of the average man. The machinery of play 
 acting is on so large a scale that few individuals 
 can afford to put it in motion and still fewer can 
 continue to work it unless it pays immediately. 
 Almost the whole of the best of our poetry, 
 almost the whole of the best of our painting 
 would have been strangled at birth, if its produc- 
 tion had been controlled by conditions analogous 
 to these under which the drama exists. If it is 
 said that dramatic art is alone in this — that its 
 healthy life depends upon popular acceptance, 
 that it must move on simple lines, that its control 
 by the average playgoer is a proper limitation, 
 then I say that it is the lowest of the arts and 
 that everyone whom we call a great dramatist 
 is great, because he has broken the rules of his 
 art. Such a contention is refuted by its state- 
 ment. The application of such laws to the other 
 arts would be of precisely equal reasonableness.
 
 THE POLITICS OF DRAMATIC ART 203 
 
 Some little time ago it was said that a 
 London manager had received forty-seven plays 
 in a single day. Making allowance for Sundays 
 and Bank Holidays, this would be at the rate 
 of about 14,000 a year for the one manager, 
 which is clearly excessive. It must have been 
 an exceptional day; perhaps it was the man- 
 ager's birthday; but the number received yearly 
 by the whole body of London managers must 
 be enormous, and, deducting what there may 
 be of five act tragedies by schoolboys and tem- 
 perance dialogues by country spinsters and the 
 like, there must remain a good many serious 
 attempts by serious men. Do we see the best 
 of the plays that are sent in, or are masterpieces 
 even now gathering dust in pigeon-holes or 
 wearing away in constant journeyings through 
 the post ? From the manager's point of view, 
 his legitimate and unassailable business stand- 
 point, no doubt we see the best of them, but 
 it is impossible to believe that the plays that 
 see the light are the best dramatic expression 
 that is possible to this cultivated, earnest, and 
 artistic age. The successful dramatist addresses 
 himself to a low average of intelligence, a low 
 average of taste. So, in many sorry instances, 
 does the actor, like a barrister making his points
 
 204 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 with a stupid jury. Our actors are almost 
 always too emphatic. Our serious plays are 
 overdone with emotion. Reticence is needed in 
 writing and acting alike. These dreadful emo- 
 tional speeches and moppings of the brow are 
 intolerable as the perpetual baiting of the trap 
 for laughter. It is not the first and only duty 
 of the actor to widen the swing of the pendulum 
 between laughter and tears. 
 
 That most of our actors work with a heavy 
 hand is apparent when we compare them with 
 what we have of exceptional refinement. For 
 instance in ' A Pair of Spectacles ' it is the 
 superficiality of Mr Hare's acting that con- 
 stitutes its profound merit. In real life some 
 of the situations would be extremely serious, 
 but this play is not real life and is not intended 
 to represent it. When, therefore, Mr Hare has 
 to depict the passion of a husband who believes 
 his wife to be unfaithful, he shows the comic 
 aspects only of the passion. When he finds that 
 the letters which he took for his rival's are 
 really his own treasured love-letters, he does 
 not suggest big words, like remorse or pathos, 
 but gives a touch of regretful penitence, a touch 
 of sentiment. I admit gladly that this refined 
 performance was widely appreciated — people are
 
 THE POLITICS OF DRAMATIC ART 205 
 
 not SO stupid as they try to believe — but the 
 excellent realism of Mr Groves' acting in the 
 same piece, acting equal in its degree to Mr 
 Hare's, but of a lower kind, met with even 
 larger popular acceptance. 
 
 Art does not appeal directly to the emotions; 
 it appeals to them through the mind. Where 
 are we to look for this saving quality of im- 
 agination in the drama of the day ? What 
 manager will help us ? 
 
 Mr Irving is such a splendid Shakespearian 
 actor that we could wish for nothing better 
 than to see him in the classic parts, but he has 
 done little for the modern drama. Mr Tree has 
 played ' Beau Austin ' a few times, which is 
 an honourable distinction, but it is but as one 
 swallow in a very late spring. We shall hardly 
 be saved by Mr and Mrs Kendal in a round of 
 their favourite parts, nor even by Mr Benson's 
 astute presentation of ' A Midsummer Night's 
 Dream,' a performance which has met with 
 considerable success in the provinces, not, if I 
 may speak plainly, because the people who 
 applauded it had largely the appreciation of its 
 poetical beauties, but because in the prettiness 
 of its scenery no less than in its execrable fool- 
 ing it bore some faint resemblance to the beloved
 
 206 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 pantomime. Shall we then look for salvation 
 to Ibsen and his adherents and exponents who 
 are conducting so gallant a campaign ? If Ibsen 
 is not a man of the first rank, and I am very 
 willing to grant that he is not, because it 
 strengthens the case enormously; if his plays, so 
 extraordinarily interesting and absorbing except 
 to the host of dull fanatics and the inevitable 
 clever dissenters, are only second rate, what a 
 dramatic outburst there will be when a man of 
 genius works with an equal disregard of clogging 
 conventions. But Ibsen is not respectable. The 
 capacity for righteous indignation sharpens the 
 scent for garbage, and the British householder in 
 his relation to Ibsen is like the foreigner who 
 begins the study of our language with its oaths. 
 Of course it would be ungracious to deny that 
 we have playwrights who do good work within 
 the limits assigned to them. 
 
 No doubt the plays of to-day are better than 
 these of a generation ago. But we don't get on 
 fast enough ; sometimes it seems that we don't 
 get on at all. We want a school of farce that 
 will ridicule what is ephemeral and eccentric in 
 the manners of the day ; a school of comedy 
 that shall be contemporary too in manners 
 and motive ; but which shall be centred
 
 THE POLITICS OF DRAMATIC ART 207 
 
 and limited in human nature ; a school of 
 tragedy which, confining itself to no time or 
 country for its themes, shall substitute for the 
 mechanism of melodrama and the sentimental- 
 ities of domestic drama, the labours and crises 
 of the soul. These are what we want, and these, 
 in a high degree, our contemporaries could give 
 us. What is lacking is an audience. How is it 
 to be obtained ? It cannot be formed in the 
 near future without extraneous pecuniary aid 
 and judicious cultivation. Desperate conditions 
 suggest desperate remedies. There is, for 
 instance, the Municipal Theatre. The idea is 
 neither novel nor preposterous. By accepting 
 the management of Picture Galleries, the various 
 corporations have conceded every principle. 
 The management of a municipal Art Gallery is 
 easier than the management of a theatre, prin- 
 cipally because its mismanagement is less ap- 
 parent. If a governing body can perform a 
 necessary function better than the individuals 
 who are attempting it : if no injustice is done 
 to these individuals : if the governing body 
 does not thereby cripple itself in other direc- 
 tions : then no traditions or prejudices should 
 interfere with its duty. Perhaps such weary 
 Titans as the Manchester or Liverpool corpora-
 
 2o8 BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 tions would shrink from the unusual burden. 
 But the municipal theatre should be managed 
 by an individual with a free hand. Probably 
 there would not be much difficulty in obtain- 
 ing a competent man who would enter upon 
 his duties with interest and even with en- 
 thusiasm. Managers do not all like rubbishy 
 plays. Many of them would gladly take 
 masterpieces if they could get them, and if 
 they would pay. The municipal theatre need 
 not pay — at any rate at first. Ultimately it 
 might pay in many ways — even pecuniarily. It 
 might have ten times the influence of all the 
 picture galleries in Lancashire. It might in- 
 augurate a new era of dramatic art. It would 
 be a failure. Such attempts are always failures, 
 but they are better than some successes. It 
 might give us dull pieces, preachy pieces, 
 pieces in which the kissing is done on the 
 brow, which are the last things we want, but 
 it might, by happier chances, foster our coming 
 dramatic genius. Even better, perhaps, than 
 a municipal venture would be the advent of 
 a benevolent and right-minded millionaire, or 
 even a combination of enthusiastic men of 
 wealth. It is surprising that among all the 
 various ' social departures ' there has scarcely
 
 THE POLITICS OF DRAMATIC ART 209 
 
 been an attempt in England to run a theatre 
 as a philanthropic or an artistic experiment. 
 Rich men choose usually what they consider 
 safer channels for their benevolent expenditure, 
 and to 'elevate the masses,' is not, indeed, a 
 more honourable object than to feed the poor. 
 Yet a theatre would make a magnificent hobby, 
 and* would be a good variation from the art 
 galleries, technical schools, public parks, and 
 the rest. 
 
 Failing these, and rather a complement or 
 addition than a rival to managers who are pur- 
 suing the right course, is the Independent 
 Theatre, not the last, it may be hoped, of such 
 experiments. Of course every attempt in this 
 kind must meet with a large amount of opposi- 
 tion from interested, malignant and stupid per- 
 sons, but it is depressing to find how many who 
 cannot fairly be ranked under these heads persist 
 in an attitude of unreasonable aversion towards 
 all unaccustomed ideas on this subject. There 
 are dangers to avoid of course; there must be 
 failures, there may hQ fiascos^ and the intolerance 
 of many people who ought to know better may 
 provoke it into attempts to startle the Philistines 
 — the most futile of proceedings. The sense of 
 decency in the British playgoer is a curious 
 
 o
 
 2IO BOOKS AND PLAYS 
 
 study for the physiologist. Old Eccles is per- 
 mitted and rejoiced in, while Oswald, in 
 ' Ghosts ' is considered disgraceful. If vice is 
 introduced it must not be accounted for and 
 it must be made funny. What chance has an 
 art when its professors are met at the outset by 
 the condition that they must not inquire too 
 deeply and must not be too serious. 
 
 But there is another aim which no community 
 can afford to neglect. The duty of governing 
 bodies and of private individuals is not alone 
 towards classes or a class, not alone to minister 
 to the necessities of all. It is, besides, to give 
 the individual his opportunity, to foster the 
 genius whose triumph is also the delight and 
 glory of the race. We cannot make a Shake- 
 speare but we may give him scope and freedom. 
 No sane critic considers the possibilities of the 
 novel to be exhausted, but our stock of novels 
 might last for a few years without additions. 
 To the piercing eye of the artist no life is 
 prosaic. Our modern conditions have opened 
 out new fields for the exercise of a form more 
 vivid and concentrated than the novel. The 
 time is ripening for the advent of our next 
 dramatic genius. It is for us to prepare the 
 way. 
 
 THE END
 
 The Essays on Mr Meredith's Novels, on Borrow, 
 and on Ibsen, appeared originally in the Manchester 
 Quarterly and are republished here by the courteous 
 permission of the Editor.
 
 List of Books 
 
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 ARE PUBLISHED AT NET PRICES 
 
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 ' Bodleian, London '
 
 ' A WORD must be said for the manner in which the publishers 
 -^~^ have produced the volume (i.e. "The Earth Fiend"), a 
 sumptuous folio, printed by Constable, the etchings on Japanese 
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 John Lane, who are rapidly gaining distinction for their beautiful 
 editions of belles-lettres.' — Daily Chronicle, Sept. 24, 1892. 
 
 Referring to Mr. Le Gallienne's 'English Poems' and 
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 How is it done, Messrs. Elkin Mathews and John Lane? 
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 St, James's Gazette.
 
 March 1894 
 
 List of Books 
 
 IN 
 
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 PUBLISHED BY 
 
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 ADAMS (FRANCIS). 
 
 Essays in Modernity. Cr. Svo. 5s. net. {Immediately. 
 
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 [In preparation. 
 
 KEATS (JOHN). 
 
 Three Essays, now issued in book form for the first time. 
 Edited by H. Buxton Forman. With Life-mask 
 by Haydon. Fcap. 4to. los. 6d. net. 
 
 [ Very few remain. 
 
 KEYNOTES SERIES. 
 
 Each volume complete in itself. Crown Svo, cloth. 
 3s. 6d. net. 
 Vol. I. Keynotes. By George Egerton. With 
 Title-page by Aubrey Beardsley. 
 
 \_Fotirth edition now ready. 
 Vol. II. Poor Folk. Translated from the Russian of 
 F. Dostoievsky by Lena Milman. With 
 a Preface by George Moore. 
 
 [/« rapid preparation.
 
 8 THE PUBLICATIONS OF 
 
 KEYNOTES SERIES— comUnued. 
 
 Vol. III. The Dancing Faun. By Florence Emery. 
 
 Vol. IV. A Child of the Age. By Francis Adams. 
 
 [Shortly. 
 
 Vol. V. The Great God Pan and The Inmost 
 Light. By Arthur Machen. 
 
 [S/iOfiljy. 
 LEATHER (R. K.). 
 
 Verses. 250 copies. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. net. 
 
 Transferred by the Author to the present Publishers. 
 
 LEATHER (R. K.), & RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. 
 The Student and the Body-Snatcher and Other 
 Trifles. [Small paper edition out of print. 
 
 There remain a very few of the 50 large paper copies. 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 LE GALLIENNE (RICHARD). 
 
 Prose Fancies. With a Portrait of the Author by 
 Wilson Steer. Crown 8vo. Purple cloth, uniform 
 with 'Tlie Religion of a Literary Man.' 5s. net. 
 
 Also a limited large paper edition. 12s. 6d. net. 
 
 LE GALLIENNE (RICHARD). 
 
 The Book Bills of Narcissus. An Account rendered 
 by Richard le Gallienne. Second Edition. 
 Crown 8vo, buckram. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 LE GALLIENNE (RICHARD). 
 
 English Poems. Third Edition, crown 8vo. Purple 
 cloth, uniform with ' The Religion of a Literary Man.' 
 5s. net. 
 
 LE GALLIENNE (RICHARD). 
 
 George Meredith: Some Characteristics. With a Biblio- 
 graphy (much enlarged) by John Lane, portrait, etc. 
 Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s, 6d. net.
 
 ELKIN MATHEWS A' JOHN LANE 
 
 LE GALLIENNE (RICHARD). 
 
 The Religion of a Literary Man, 3rd thousand. 
 Crown Svo. Purple cloth. 3s. 6d. net. 
 Also a special rubricated edition on hand-made paper. Svo. 
 I OS. 6d. net. 
 
 LETTERS TO LIVING ARTISTS. 
 
 500 copies. Fcap. Svo. 3s.6d.net. [Very few remain. 
 
 MARSTON (PHILIP BOURKE). 
 
 A Last Harvest : Lyrics and Sonnets from the 
 
 Book of Love. Edited by Louise Chandler 
 
 MouLTON. 500 copies. Fcap. Svo. 5s. net. 
 
 Also 50 copies on large paper, hand-made. los. 6d. net. 
 
 [ Very few remain. 
 
 MARTIN (W. WILSEY). 
 
 Quatrains, Life's Mystery and other Poems. i6mo, 
 2s. 6d. net. [ Very few remain. 
 
 MARZIALS (THEO.). 
 
 The Gallery of Pigeons and Other Poems. Fcap. 
 Svo. 4s. 6d. net. [ Very few remain. 
 
 Transferred by the AutJior to the present Publishers. 
 
 MEYNELL (MRS.), (ALICE C. THOMPSON). 
 
 Poems. Second Edition. Fcap. Svo. 3s. 6d. net. A 
 few of the 50 large paper copies (First Edition) remain, 
 I2s. 6d. net. 
 
 MEYNELL (MRS.). 
 
 The Rhythm of Life, and other Essays. Second 
 Edition. Fcap. Svo. 3s. 6d. net. A few of the 50 
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 MONKHOUSE (ALLAN). 
 
 Books and Plays : A Volume of Essays. 400 copies. 
 Crown Svo. 5s. net. 
 
 MURRAY (ALMA). 
 
 Portrait as Beatrice Cenci. With critical notice 
 containing four letters from Robert Browning. 
 Svo, wrapper. 2s. net.
 
 THE PUBLICATIONS OF 
 
 NETTLESHIP (J. T.). 
 
 Robert _ Browning : Essays and Thoughts. A Third 
 Edition is in preparation. Crown 8vo. 5s. 6d. net. 
 Half a dozen of the Whatman large paper copies 
 (First Edition) remain. £1, is. net. 
 
 NOBLE (JAS. ASHCROFT). 
 
 The Sonnet in England and Other Essays. Title- 
 page and Cover Design by Austin Young. 600 
 copies. Crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 Also 50 copies large paper. 12s. 6d. net. 
 
 NOEL (PION. RODEN). 
 
 Poor People's Christmas. 250 copies. i6mo. is. net. 
 
 [ Very few remain. 
 OXFORD CHARACTERS. 
 
 A series of lithographed portraits by Will Rothenstein, 
 with text by F. York Powell and others. To be 
 issued monthly in term. Each number will contain 
 two portraits. Parts I. to V. ready. 200 sets only, 
 folio, wrapper, 5s. net per part ; 25 special large 
 paper sets containing proof impressions of the por- 
 traits signed by the artist, los. 6d. net per part. 
 
 PINKERTON (PERCY). 
 
 Galeazzo : A Venetian Episode and other Poems. 
 Etched Frontispiece. i6mo. 5s. net. 
 
 [ Very few remain. 
 Transferred by the Author to the present Publishers. 
 
 RADFORD (DOLLIE). 
 
 Songs. A New Volume of Verse. \In preparation. 
 
 RADFORD (ERNEST). 
 
 Chambers Twain. Frontispiece by Walter Crane. 
 250 copies. Imp. i6mo. 5s. net. 
 Also 50 copies large paper. los. 6d. net. [Very few remain. 
 
 RHYS (ERNEST). 
 
 A London Rose and Other Rhymes. With Title-page 
 designed by Selwyn Image. 500 copies. Crown 
 8vo. 5s. net.
 
 ELKIN MATHEWS &* JOHN LANE 
 
 RICKETTS (C. S.)AND C. H. SHANNON. 
 
 Hero and Leander. By Christopher Marlowe 
 and George Chapman. With Borders, Initials, and 
 Illustrations designed and engraved on the wood by 
 C. S. RicKETTS and C. H. Shannon. Bound in 
 English vellum and gold. 200 copies only. 35s. net. 
 
 RHYMERS' CLUB, THE BOOK OF THE. 
 
 A second volume will appear in the Spring of 1894. 
 
 SCHAFF (DR. P.). 
 
 Literature and Poetry : Papers on Dante, etc. 
 Portrait and Plates, 100 copies only. 8vo. los. net. 
 
 STODDARD (R. H.). 
 
 The Lion's Cub ; with other Verse. Portrait. 
 100 copies only, bound in an illuminated Persian 
 design. Fcap. 8vo. 5s. net. [ Very few remain. 
 
 STREET (G. S.). 
 
 The Autobiography of a Boy. Passages selected by 
 his friend G. S. S. With Title-page designed by 
 C. W. Furse. 500 copies. Fcap. Svo. 3s.6d.net. 
 
 SYMONDS (JOHN ADDINGTON). 
 
 In the Key of Blue, and other Prose Essays. 
 Cover designed by C. S. Ricketts. Second Edition. 
 Thick Crown Svo. 8s. 6d. net. 
 
 THOMPSON (FRANCIS). 
 
 Poems. With Frontispiece, Title-page and Cover Design 
 by Laurence HousMAN. Fourth Edition. Pott4to. 
 5s. net. 
 
 TODHUNTER (JOHN). 
 
 A Sicilian Idyll. Frontispiece by Walter Crane. 
 250 copies. Imp. l6mo. Ss. net. 
 Also 50 copies large paper, fcap. 4to. 10s. 6d. net. 
 
 [ Very few remain.
 
 THE PUBLICATIONS OF 
 
 TOMSON (GRAHAM R.). 
 
 After Sunset. A Volume of Poems, With Title-page and 
 Cover Design by R. Anning Bell. Fcap. 8vo. 5s. 
 net. 
 Also a limited large paper edition. 12s. 6d. net. [In preparation. 
 
 TREE (H. BEERBOHM). 
 
 The Imaginative Faculty : A Lecture delivered at the 
 Royal Institution. With portrait of Mr. Tree from 
 an unpublished drawing by the Marchioness of Granby. 
 Fcap. 8vo, boards. 2S. 6d. net. 
 
 TYNAN HINKSON (KATHARINE). 
 
 Cuckoo Songs. With Title-page and Cover Design by 
 Laurence Housman. 500 copies. Fcap. 8vo. 5s. 
 net. 
 
 VAN DYKE (HENRY). 
 
 The Poetry of Tennyson. Third Edition, enlarged. 
 Crown 8vo. 5s. 6d. net. 
 
 The late Laureate himself gave valuable aid in correcting 
 
 various details. 
 
 WATSON (WILLIAM). 
 
 The Eloping Angels: A Caprice. Second Edition. 
 Square i6mo, buckram. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 WATSON (WILLIAM). 
 
 Excursions in Criticism : being some Prose Recrea- 
 tions of a Rhymer. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 5s.net. 
 
 WATSON (WILLIAM). 
 
 The Prince's Quest, and other Poems. With a 
 Bibliographical Note added. Second Edition. Fcap. 
 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 WEDMORE (FREDERICK). 
 
 Pastorals of France— Renunciations. A volume of 
 
 Stories. Title-page by John Fulleylove, R.I. 
 
 Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 
 A few of the large paper copies of R enunciations {First Edition) 
 remain, los. 6d. net.
 
 ELKIN MATHEWS &' JOHN LANE 13 
 
 WICKSTEED (P. H.). 
 
 Dante. Six Sermons. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. net. 
 
 WILDE (OSCAR). 
 
 The Sphinx. A poem decorated throughout in line and 
 colour, and bound in a design by Charles Ricketts. 
 250 copies. £2, 2s. net. 25 copies large paper. 
 ;^5. 5s. net. 
 WILDE (OSCAR). 
 
 The incomparable and ingenious history of Mr. W. H., 
 being the true secret of Shakespear's sonnets now for 
 the first time here fully set forth, with initial letters 
 and cover design by Charles Ricketts. 500 copies, 
 los. 6d. net. 
 Also 50 copies large paper. 21s.net. [In preparation. 
 
 WILDE (OSCAR). 
 
 Dramatic Works, now printed for the first time with a 
 specially designed Title-page and binding to each 
 volume, by Charles Shannon. 500 copies. Small 
 4to. 7s. 6d. net per vol. 
 Also 50 copies large paper. 15s. net per vol. 
 
 Vol. I. Lady Windermere's Fan : A Comedy in 
 Four Acts. [Ready. 
 
 Vol. II. A Woman of No Importance : A Comedy 
 in Four Acts. {Shortly. 
 
 Vol. in. The Duchess of Padda : A Blank Verse 
 Tragedy in Five Acts. [In preparation. 
 
 WILDE (OSCAR). 
 
 Salom£ : A Tragedy in one Act, done into English. 
 With II Illustrations, Title-page, and Cover Design 
 by Aubrey Beardsley. 500 copies. Small 4to. 
 15s. net. 
 Also 100 copies, large paper. 30s. net. 
 
 WYNNE (FRANCES). 
 
 Whisper. A Volume of Verse. With a Memoir by 
 Katharine T>'nan and a Portrait added. Fcap. 8vo. 
 2s. 6d. net. 
 Trans/erred by the Author to tJte present Publishtrs.
 
 14 PUBLICATIONS OF ELKIN MATHEWS <5t» JOHN LANE 
 
 The Hobby Horse 
 
 A new series of this illustrated magazine will be published 
 quarterly by subscription, under the Editorship of Herbert 
 P. Home. Subscription £1 per annum, post free, for the 
 four numbers. Quarto, printed on hand-made paper, and 
 issued in a limited edition to subscribers only. The 
 Magazine will contain articles upon Literature, Music, 
 Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and the Decorative Arts; 
 Poems; Essays ; Fiction; original Designs; with reproduc- 
 tions of pictures and drawings by the old masters and 
 contemporary artists. There will be a new title- 
 page and ornaments designed by the Editor. 
 Among the contributors to the 
 Hobby Horse are : 
 
 The late Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Laurence Binyon. 
 
 Wilfrid Blunt. 
 
 Ford Madox Brown. 
 
 The late Arthur Burgess. 
 
 e. burne-jones, a.r.a. 
 
 Austin Dobson. 
 
 Richard Garnett, LL.D. 
 
 A. J. HiPKiNS, F.S.A. 
 
 Selwyn Image. 
 
 Lionel Johnson. 
 
 Richard Le Gallienne. 
 
 Sir F. Leighton, Bart., P.R.A. 
 
 T. Hope McLachlan. 
 
 May Morris. 
 
 C. Hubert H. Parry, Mus. Doc. 
 
 A. W. Pollard, 
 
 F. York Powell. 
 Christina G. Rossetti. 
 W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 John Ruskin, D.C.L., LL.D. 
 
 Frederick Sandys. 
 
 The late W. Bell Scott. 
 
 Frederick J. Shields. 
 
 J. H. Shorthouse. 
 
 The late James Smetham. 
 
 Simeon Solomon. 
 
 A. Somervell. 
 
 The late J. Addington Svmonds. 
 
 Katharine Tynan. 
 
 G. F. Watts, R.A. 
 Frederick Wedmore. 
 Oscar Wilde. 
 
 Prospectuses on Application. 
 
 THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO STREET, LONDON, W.
 
 ' Nearly every book put out by Messrs. Elkin Mathews & 
 John Lane, at the Sign of the Bodley Head, is a satisfaction to 
 the special senses of the modern bookman for bindings, shapes, 
 types, and papers. They have surpassed themselves, and 
 registered a real achievement in English bookmaking by the 
 volume of * ' Poems, Dramatic and Lyrical, " of Lord De Tabley. ' 
 
 Newcastle Daily Chronicle. 
 
 * A ray of hopefulness is stealing again into English poetry 
 after the twilight greys of Clough and Arnold and Tennyson. 
 Even unbelief wears braver colours. Despite the jeremiads, 
 which are the dirges of the elder gods, England is still a nest 
 of singing-birds (/i?^^<f the Catalogue of Elkin Mathews and John 
 Lane).'— Mr. Zangwill in Pall Mall Magazine. 
 
 'All Messrs. Mathews & Lane's Books are so beautifully 
 printed and so tastefully issued, that it rejoices the heart of a 
 book-lover to handle them ; but they have shown their sound 
 judgment not less markedly in the literary quality of their 
 publications. The choiceness of form is not inappropriate to 
 the matter, which is always of something more than ephemeral 
 worth. This was a distinction on which the better publishers 
 at one time prided themselves ; they never lent their names to 
 trash ; but some names associated with worthy traditions have 
 proved more than once a delusion and a snare. The record of 
 Messrs. Elkin Mathews & John Lane is perfect in this respect, 
 and their imprint is a guarantee of the worth of what they 
 publish.' — Birmingham Daily Post, Nov. 6, 1893. 
 
 ' One can nearly always be certain when one sees on the title- 
 page of any given book the name of Messrs Elkin Mathews & 
 John Lane as being the publishers thereof that there will be 
 something worth reading to be found between the boards.' — 
 World.
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable 
 Printers to Her Majesty
 
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