D 7i 
 
 Social Sciences & Humanities Library 
 
 University of California, San Diego 
 Please Note: This item is subject to recall. 
 
 Date Due 
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 CI 39 (5/97) UCSD Lib.
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR
 
 THROUGH 
 THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE 
 
 \j K 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. 
 
 MCMIX
 
 Copyright, 1908, hy The McClure Company 
 
 Published, April, 1908 
 
 Copyright, 1906, 1907, 1908, by Arthur Conan Doyle
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 I CARE not how humble your bookshelf may 
 be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns. 
 Close the door of that room behind you, shut 
 off with it all the cares of the outer world, 
 plunge back into the soothing company of the 
 great dead, and then you are through the 
 magic portal into that fair land whither worry 
 and vexation can follow you no more. You 
 have left all that is vulgar and all that is 
 sordid behind you. There stand your noble, 
 silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass 
 your eye down their files. Choose your man. 
 And then you have but to hold up your hand 
 to him and away you go together into dream- 
 land. Surely there would be something eerie
 
 4 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 about a line of books were it not that familiar- 
 ity has deadened our sense of it. Each is a 
 mummified soul embalmed in cere-cloth and 
 natron of leather and printer's ink. Each 
 cover of a true book enfolds the concentrated 
 essence of a man. The personalities of the 
 writers have faded into the thinnest shadows, 
 as their bodies into impalpable dust, yet here 
 are their very spirits at your command. 
 
 It is our familiarity also which has les- 
 sened our perception of the miraculous good 
 fortune which we enjoy. Let us suppose that 
 we were suddenly to learn that Shakespeare 
 had returned to earth, and that he would fa- 
 vor any of us with an hour of his wit and his 
 fancy. How eagerly we would seek him out! 
 And yet we have him — the very best of him — 
 at our elbows from week to week, and hardly 
 trouble ourselves to put out our hands to 
 beckon him down. No matter what mood a 
 man may be in, when once he has passed 
 through the magic door he can svimmon the 
 world's greatest to sympathize with him in it.
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 5 
 
 If he be thoughtful, here are the kings of 
 thought. If he be dreamy, here are the mas- 
 ters of fancy. Or is it amusement that he 
 lacks? He can signal to any one of the 
 world's great story-tellers, and out comes the 
 dead man and holds him enthralled by the 
 hour. The dead are such good company that 
 one may come to think too little of the living. 
 It is a real and a pressing danger with many 
 of us, that we should never find our own 
 thoughts and our own souls, but be ever ob- 
 sessed by the dead. Yet second-hand romance 
 and second-hand emotion are surely better 
 than the dull soul-killing monotony which life 
 brings to most of the human race. But best 
 of all when the dead man's wisdom and the 
 dead man's example give us guidance and 
 strength in the living of our own strenuous 
 days. 
 
 Come through the magic door with me, 
 and sit here on the green settee, where you 
 can see the old oak case with its untidy lines 
 of volumes. Smoking is not forbidden.
 
 6 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 Would you care to hear me talk of them? 
 Well, I ask nothing better, for there is no vol- 
 ume there which is not a dear, personal friend, 
 and what can a man talk of more pleasantly 
 than that? The other books are over yon- 
 der, but these are my own favorites — the ones 
 I care to re-read and to have near my elbow. 
 There is not a tattered cover which does not 
 bring its mellow memories to me. 
 
 Some of them represent those little sacri- 
 fices which make a possession dearer. You 
 see the Hne of old, brown volumes at the bot- 
 tom? Every one of those represents a lunch. 
 They were bought in my student days, when 
 times were not too affluent. Threepence was 
 my modest allowance for my midday sandwich 
 and glass of beer; but, as luck would have it, 
 my way to the classes led past the most fasci- 
 nating bookshop in the world. Outside the 
 door of it stood a large tub filled with an ever- 
 changing litter of tattered books, with a card 
 above which announced that any volume 
 therein could be purchased for the identical
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR T 
 
 sum which I carried in my pocket. As I ap- 
 proached it a combat ever raged betwixt the 
 hunger of a youthful body and that of an 
 inquiring and omnivorous mind. Five times 
 out of six the animal won. But when the 
 mental prevailed, then there was an entrancing 
 five minutes' digging among out-of-date al- 
 manacs, volumes of Scotch theology, and ta- 
 bles of logarithms, until one found something 
 which made it all worth while. If you will 
 look over these titles, you will see that I did 
 not do so very badly. Four volumes of Gor- 
 don's "Tacitus" (life is too short to read orig- 
 inals so long as there are good translations). 
 Sir William Temple's Essays, Addison's 
 works, Swift's "Tale of a Tub," Clarendon's 
 "History," "Gil Bias," Buckingham's Poems, 
 Churchill's Poems, "Life of Bacon" — not so 
 bad for the old threepenny tub. 
 
 They were not always in such plebeian com- 
 pany. Look at the thickness of the rich 
 leather, and the richness of the dim gold let- 
 tering. Once they adorned the shelves of
 
 8 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 some noble library, and even among the odd 
 almanacs and the sermons they bore the 
 traces of their former greatness, like the 
 faded silk dress of the reduced gentlewoman, 
 a present pathos but a glory of the past. 
 
 Reading is made too easy nowadays, with 
 cheap paper editions and free libraries. A 
 man does not appreciate at its full worth the 
 thing that comes to him without effort. Who 
 now ever gets the thrill which Carlyle felt 
 when he hurried home with the six volumes 
 of Gibbon's "History" under his arm, his 
 mind just starving for want of food, to devour 
 them at the rate of one a day? A book 
 should be your very own before you can really 
 get the taste of it, and unless you have worked 
 for it, you will never have the true inward 
 pride of possession. 
 
 If I had to choose the one book out of all 
 that line from which I have had most jileasure 
 and most profit, I should point to yonder 
 stained copy of Macaulay's "Essays." It 
 seems entwined into my whole life as I look
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 9 
 
 backwards. It was my comrade in my stu- 
 dent days, it has been with me on the swelter- 
 ing Gold Coast, and it formed part of my 
 humble kit when I went a-whaling in the Arc- 
 tic. Honest Scotch harpooners have addled 
 their brains over it, and you may still see the 
 grease stains where the second engineer grap- 
 pled with Frederick the Great. Tattered and 
 dirty and worn, no gilt-edged morocco-bound [ 
 volume could ever take its place for me. 
 
 What a noble gateway this book forms 
 through which one may approach the study 
 either of letters or of history! Milton, 
 Machiavelli, Hallam, Southey, Bunyan, By- 
 ron, Johnson, Pitt, Hampden, Clive, Has- 
 tings, Chatham — what nuclei for thought! 
 With a good grip of each how pleasant and 
 easy to fill in all that hes between. The short, 
 vivid sentences, the broad sweep of allusion, 
 the exact detail, they all throw a glamour 
 round the subject and should make the least 
 studious of readers desire to go further. If 
 ^Macaulay's hand cannot lead a man upon those
 
 10 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 pleasant paths, then, indeed, he may give up 
 all hope of ever finding them. 
 
 When I was a senior schoolboy this book 
 — not this very volume, for it had an even 
 more tattered predecessor — opened up a new 
 world to me. History had been a lesson and 
 abhorrent. Suddenly the task and the drudg- 
 ery became an incursion into an enchanted 
 land, a land of color and beauty, with a kind, 
 wise guide to point the path. In that great 
 style of his I loved even the faults — indeed, 
 now that I come to think of it, it was the faults 
 which I loved best. No sentence could be too 
 stiff with rich embroidery, and no antithesis 
 too flowery. It pleased me to read that "a 
 universal shout of laughter from the Tagus 
 to the Vistula informed the Pope that the 
 days of the crusades were past," and I was de- 
 lighted to learn that "Lady Jerningham kept 
 a vase in which people placed foolish verses, 
 and Mr. Dash wrote verses which were fit to 
 be placed in Lady Jerningham's vase." Those 
 were the kind of sentences which used to fill
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 11 
 
 me with a vague but enduring pleasure, like 
 chords which linger in the musician's ear. A 
 man likes a plainer literary diet as he grows 
 older, but still as I glance over the Essays I 
 am filled with admiration, and wonder at the 
 alternate power of handling a great subject, 
 and of adorning it by delightful detail — just 
 a bold sweep of the brush and then the most 
 delicate stippling. As he leads you down the 
 path, he for ever indicates the alluring side- 
 tracks which branch away from it. An ad- 
 mirable, if somewhat old-fashioned, literary 
 and historical education might be effected by 
 working through every book which is alluded 
 to in the Essaj^s. I should be curious, how- 
 ever, to know the exact age of the youth when 
 he came to the end of his studies. 
 
 I wish Macaulay had wintten a historical 
 novel. I am convinced that it would have 
 been a great one. I do not know if he had 
 the power of drawing an imaginary character, 
 but he certainly had the gift of reconstruct- 
 ing a dead celebrity to a remarkable degree.
 
 12 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 Look at the simple half -paragraph in which 
 he gives us Johnson and his atmosphere. 
 Was ever a more definite picture given in a 
 shorter space — 
 
 "As we close it, the club-room is before 
 us, and the table on which stand the omelet 
 for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. 
 There are assembled those heads which live 
 for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There 
 are the spectacles of Burke, and the tall thin 
 form of Langton, the courtly sneer of Beau- 
 clerk and the beaming smile of Garrick, Gib- 
 bon tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua 
 with his trumpet in his ear. In the fore- 
 ground is that strange figure which is as fa- 
 miliar to us as the figures of those among 
 whom we have been brought up — the gigantic 
 body, the huge massy face, seamed with the 
 scars of disease, the brown coat, the black 
 worsted stockings, the gray wig with the 
 scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the nails 
 bitten and pared to the quick. We see the 
 eyes and mouth moving with convulsive
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 13 
 
 twitches; we see the heavy form rolHng; we 
 hear it puffing-, and then comes the 'Why, 
 sir!' and the 'What then, sir?' and the 'No, 
 sir!' and the 'You don't see your way through 
 the question, sir!' " 
 
 It is etched into your memory for ever. 
 
 I can remember that when I visited 
 London at the age of sixteen the first thing 
 I did after housing my luggage was to make 
 a pilgrimage to Macaulay's grave where he 
 lies in Westminster Abbey, just under the 
 shadow of Addison, and amid the dust of the 
 poets whom he had loved so well. It was the 
 one great object of interest which London 
 held for me. And so it might well be, when I 
 think of all I oavc him. It is not merely the 
 knowledge and the stimulation of fresh in- 
 terests, but it is the charming gentlemanly 
 tone, the broad, liberal outlook, the general 
 absence of bigotry and of prejudice. IMy 
 judgment now confirms all that I felt for him 
 then. 
 
 My four-volume edition of the History
 
 14 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 stands, as you see, to the right of the Essays. 
 Do you recollect the third chapter of that 
 work — the one which reconstructs the England 
 of the seventeenth century? It has always 
 seemed to me the very high-water mark of 
 IVIacaulay's powers, with its marvelous mix- 
 ture of precise fact and romantic phrasing. 
 The population of towns, the statistics of com- 
 merce, the prosaic facts of life are all trans- 
 muted into wonder and interest by the han- 
 dling of the master. You feel that he could 
 have cast a glamour over the multiplication 
 table had he set himself to do so. Take a 
 single concrete example of what I mean. 
 The fact that a Londoner in the country, or 
 a countryman in London, felt equally out of 
 place in those days of difficult travel, would 
 seem to hardly require stating, and to afford 
 no opportunity of leaving a strong impres- 
 sion upon the reader's mind. See what Ma- 
 caulay makes of it, though it is no more than 
 a hundred other paragraphs which discuss a 
 hundred various points —
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 15 
 "A cockney in a rural village, was stared 
 at as much as if he had intruded into a kraal 
 of Hottentots. On the other hand, when the 
 lord of a Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor ap- 
 peared in Fleet Street, he was as easily dis- 
 tinguished from the resident population as a 
 Turk or a Lascar. His dress, his gait, his 
 accent, the manner in which he gazed at the 
 shops, stumbled into gutters, ran against the 
 porters, and stood under the waterspouts, 
 marked him out as an excellent subject for the 
 operations of swindlers and banterers. Bul- 
 lies jostled him into the kennel. Hackney 
 coachmen splashed him from head to foot, 
 thieves explored with perfect security the huge 
 pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stood 
 entranced by the splendor of the Lord Mayor's 
 Show. Money-droppers, sore from the cart's 
 tail, introduced themselves to him, and ap- 
 peared to him the most honest friendly gentle- 
 men that he had ever seen. Painted women, 
 the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone 
 Park, passed themselves on him for countesses
 
 \6 TimOITGII THE MAGIC DOOR 
 and maids of honor. If he asked his way to 
 St. James', his informants sent him to Mile 
 End. If he went into a shop, he was instantly- 
 discerned to be a fit purchaser of everything 
 that nobody else would buy, of second-hand 
 embroidery, copper rings, and watches that 
 would not go. If he rambled into any fash- 
 ionable coffee-house, he became a mark for 
 the insolent derision of fops, and the grave 
 waggery of Templars. Enraged and morti- 
 fied, he soon returned to his mansion, and there, 
 in the homage of his tenants and the conversa- 
 tion of his boon companions, found consola- 
 tion for the vexations and humiliations which 
 he had undergone. There he was once more a 
 great man, and saw nothing above himself 
 except when at the assizes he took his seat 
 on the bench near the Judge, or when at the 
 muster of the militia he saluted the Lord Lieu- 
 tenant." 
 
 On the whole, I should put this detached 
 chapter of description at the very head of his
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 17 
 
 Essays, though it happens to occur in another 
 volume. The History as a whole does not, as 
 it seems to me, reach the same level as the 
 shorter articles. One cannot but feel that it 
 is a brilliant piece of special pleading from a 
 fervid Whig, and that there must be more to 
 be said for the other side than is there set forth, 
 Some of the Essays are tinged also, no doubt, 
 by his own political and religious limitations. 
 The best are those which get right away into 
 the broad fields of literature and philosophy. 
 Johnson, Walpole, ISIadame D'Arblay, Ad- 
 dison, and the two great Indian ones, Clive 
 and Warren Hastings, are my own favorites. 
 Frederick the Great too, must surely stand in 
 the first rank. Only one would I wish to elim- 
 inate. It is the diabolically clever criticism 
 upon Montgomery. One would have wished 
 to think that Macaulay's heart was too kind, 
 and his soul too gentle, to pen so bitter an at- 
 tack. Bad work will sink of its own weight. 
 It is not necessary to souse the author as well. 
 One would think more highly of the man if
 
 18 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 he had not done that savage bit of work. 
 I don't know why talking of JNIacauIay al- 
 ways makes me think of Scott, whose books, 
 in a faded, olive-backed line, have a shelf, you 
 see, of their own. Perhaps it is that they both 
 had so great an influence, and woke such ad- 
 miration in me. Or perhaps it is the real sim- 
 ilarity in the minds and characters of the two 
 men. You don't see it, you say? Well, just 
 think of Scott's "Border Ballads," and then of 
 Macaulay's "Lays." The machines must be 
 alike, when the products are so similar. Each 
 was the only man who could possibly have 
 written the poems of the other. What swing 
 and dash in both of them! What a love of all 
 that is manly and noble and martial ! So sim- 
 ple, and yet so strong. But there are minds 
 on which strength and simplicity are thrown 
 away. They think that unless a thing is ob- 
 scure it must be superficial, whereas it is often 
 the shallow stream which is turbid, and the 
 deep which is clear. Do you remember the 
 fatuous criticism of Matthew Arnold upon
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 19 
 
 the glorious "Lays," where he calls out "Is 
 this poetry?" after quoting — 
 
 " And how can man die better 
 Than facing fearful odds 
 For the ashes of his fathers 
 And the Temples of his Gods?" 
 
 In trying to show that Macaulay had not 
 the poetic sense he was really showing that he 
 himself had not the dramatic sense. The 
 baldness of the idea and of the language had 
 evidently offended him. But this is exactly 
 where the true merit lies. Macaulay is giving 
 the rough, blunt words with which a simple- 
 minded soldier appeals to two comrades to 
 help him in a deed of valor. Any high-flown 
 sentiment would have been absolutely out of 
 character. The lines are, I think, taken with 
 their context, admirable ballad poetry, and 
 have just the dramatic quality and sense which 
 a ballad poet must have. That opinion of 
 Arnold's shook my faith in his judgment, and 
 yet I would forgive a good deal to the man 
 who wrote —
 
 20 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 " One more charge and then be dumb, 
 When the forts of Folly fall, 
 May the victors when they come. 
 Find my body near the wall." 
 
 Not a bad verse that for one's life aspiration. 
 This is one of the things which human so- 
 ciety has not yet understood — the value of a 
 noble, inspiriting text. When it does we shall 
 meet them everywhere engraved on appropri- 
 ate places, and our progress through the 
 streets will be brightened and ennobled by one 
 continual series of beautiful mental impulses 
 and images, reflected into our souls from the 
 printed thoughts which meet our eyes. To 
 think that we should walk with empty, listless 
 minds while all this splendid material is run- 
 ning to waste. I do not mean mere Scrip- 
 tural texts, for they do not bear the same 
 meaning to all, though what human creature 
 can fail to be spurred onwards by "Work 
 while it is day, for the night cometh when no 
 man can work." But I mean those beautiful 
 thoughts — ^who can say that they are unin- 
 spired thoughts? — which may be gathered
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 21 
 from a hundred authors to match a hundred 
 uses. A fine thought in fine language is a 
 most precious jewel, and should not be hid 
 away, but be exposed for use and ornament. 
 To take the nearest example, there is a horse- 
 trough across the road from my house, a plain 
 stone trough, and no man could pass it with 
 any feelings save vague discontent at its ugli- 
 ness. But suppose that on its front slab you 
 print the verse of Coleridge — 
 
 " He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things, both great and small, 
 For the dear Lord who fashioned him 
 He knows and loveth all." 
 
 I fear I may misquote, for I have not "The 
 Ancient IMariner" at my elbow, but even as it 
 stands does it not elevate the horse-trough? 
 We all do this, I suppose, in a small way for 
 ourselves. There are few men who have not 
 some chosen quotations printed on their study 
 mantelpieces, or, better still, in their hearts. 
 Carlj^le's transcription of "Rest! Rest! 
 Shall I not have all Eternity to rest in!" is
 
 22 THROUGH T?IE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 a pretty good spur to a weary man. But 
 what we need is a more general application of 
 the same thing for public and not for private 
 use, until people understand that a graven 
 thought is as beautiful an ornament as any 
 graven image, striking through the eye right 
 deep down into the soul. 
 
 However, all this has nothing to do with 
 Macaulay's glorious lays, save that when you 
 want some flowers of manliness and patriotism 
 you can pluck quite a bouquet out of those. 
 I had the good fortune to learn the Lay of 
 Horatius off by heart when I was a child, 
 and it stamped itself on my plastic mind, so 
 that even now I can reel oiF almost the whole 
 of it. Goldsmith said that in conversation he 
 was like the man who had a thousand j)ounds 
 in the bank, but could not compete with the 
 man who had an actual sixpence in his pocket. 
 So the ballad that you bear in your mind out- 
 weighs the whole bookshelf which waits for 
 reference. But I want you now to move your 
 eye a little farther down the shelf to the line
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 23 
 
 of olive-green volumes. That is my edition 
 of Scott. But surely I must give you a little 
 breathing space before I venture upon them.
 
 II 
 
 It is a great thing to start life with a small 
 number of really good books which are your 
 very own. You may not appreciate them at 
 first. You may pine for your novel of crude 
 and unadulterated adventure. You may, and 
 will, give it the preference when you can. 
 But the dull days come, and the rainy days 
 come, and always you are driven to fill up the 
 chinks of your reading with the worthy books 
 which wait so j^atiently for your notice. And 
 then suddenly, on a day which marks an 
 epoch in your life, you understand the difi*er- 
 ence. You see, like a flash, how the one 
 stands for nothing and the other for literature. 
 From that day onwards you may return to 
 your crudities, but at least you do so with 
 some standard of comparison in your mind. 
 You can never be the same as you were be- 
 
 24
 
 TimOUGII THE MAGIC DOOR 25 
 
 fore. Then gradually the good thing be- 
 comes more dear to you; it builds itself up 
 with your growing mind ; it becomes a part of 
 your better self, and so, at last, you can look, 
 as I do now, at the old covers and love them 
 for all that they have meant in the past. Yes, 
 it was the olive-green line of Scott's novels 
 which started me on to rhapsody. They w^re 
 the first books I ever owned — long, long be- 
 fore I could appreciate or even understand 
 them. But at last I realized what a treasure 
 they were. In my boyhood I read them by 
 surreptitious candle-ends in the dead of the 
 night, when the sense of crime added a new 
 zest to the story. Perhaps you have observed 
 that my "Ivanhoe" is of a different edition 
 from the others. The first copy was left in 
 the grass by the side of a stream, fell into 
 the water, and was eventually picked up three 
 days later, swollen and decomposed, upon a 
 mud-bank. I think I may say, however, that 
 I had worn it out before I lost it. Indeed, 
 it was perhaps as well that it was some years
 
 26 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 before it was replaced, for my instinct was 
 always to read it again instead of breaking 
 fresh ground. 
 
 I remember the late James Payn telling the 
 anecdote that he and two literary friends 
 agreed to write down what scene in fiction they 
 thought the most dramatic, and that on exam- 
 ining the papers it was found that all three 
 had chosen the same. It was the moment 
 when the unknown knight, at Ashby-de-la- 
 Zouch, riding past the pavilions of the lesser 
 men, strikes with the sharp end of his lance, in 
 a challenge to mortal combat, the shield of the 
 formidable Templar. It was, indeed, a splen- 
 did moment! What matter that no Templar 
 was allowed by the rules of his Order to take 
 part in so secular and frivolous an affair as a 
 tournament? It is the privilege of great mas- 
 ters to make things so, and it is a churlish thing 
 to gainsay it. Was it not Wendell Holmes 
 who described the prosaic man, who enters a 
 drawing-room with a couple of facts, like ill- 
 conditioned bull-dogs at his heels, ready to let
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 27 
 them loose on any play of fancy? The great 
 writer can never go wrong. If Shakespeare 
 gives a sea-coast to Bohemia, or if Victor 
 Hugo calls an English prize-fighter Mr. Jim- 
 John-Jack — well, it was so, and that's an end 
 of it. "There is no second line of rails at that 
 point," said an editor to a minor author. "I 
 make a second line," said the author; and he 
 was within his rights, if he can carry his 
 readers' conviction with him. 
 
 But this is a digression from "Ivanhoe." 
 What a book it is! The second greatest his- 
 torical novel in our language, I think. Every 
 successive reading has deepened my admiration 
 for it. Scott's soldiers are always as good as his 
 women (with exceptions) are weak; but here, 
 while the soldiers are at their very best, the 
 romantic figure of Rebecca redeems the female 
 side of the story from the usual commonplace 
 routine. Scott drew manly men because he 
 was a manly man himself, and found the task 
 a sympathetic one. 
 
 He drew young heroines because a conven-
 
 28 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 tion demanded it, whieh he had never the hard- 
 ihood to break. It is only when we get him 
 for a dozen chapters on end with a minimum 
 of petticoat — in the long stretch, for example, 
 from the beginning of the Tournament to the 
 end of the Friar Tuck incident — that we real- 
 ize the height of continued romantic narrative 
 to which he could attain. I don't think in the 
 whole range of our literature we have a finer 
 sustained flight than that. 
 
 There is, I admit, an intolerable amount of 
 redundant verbiage in Scott's novels. Those 
 endless and unnecessary introductions make 
 the shell very thick before you come to the 
 oyster. They are often admirable in them- 
 selves, learned, witty, picturesque, but with no 
 relation or proportion to the story which they 
 are supposed to introduce. Like so much of 
 our English fiction, they are very good matter 
 in a very bad place. Digression and want of 
 method and order are traditional national sins. 
 Fancy introducing an essay on how to live on 
 nothing a year as Thackeray did in "Vanity
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 29 
 Fair," or sandwiching in a ghost story as 
 Dickens has dared to do. As well might a 
 dramatic author rush up to the footlights and 
 begin telling anecdotes while his play was sus- 
 pending its action and his characters waiting 
 wearily behind him. It is all wrong, though 
 every great name can be quoted in support of 
 it. Our sense of form is lamentably lacking, 
 and Sir Walter sinned with the rest. But 
 get past all that to a crisis in the real story, 
 and who finds the terse phrase, the short fire- 
 word, so surely as he? Do you remember 
 when the reckless Sergeant of Dragoons 
 stands at last before the grim Puritan, upon 
 whose head a price has been set: "A thou- 
 sand marks or a bed of heather!" says he, as 
 he draws. The Puritan draws also: "The 
 Sword of the Lord and of Gideon!" says he. 
 No verbiage there! But the very spirit of 
 either man and of either party, in the few stern 
 words, which haunt your mind. "Bows and 
 Bills!" cry the Saxon Varangians, as the 
 IVIoslem horse charges home. You feel it is
 
 30 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 just what they must have cried. Even more 
 terse and husinesshke was the actual hattle-cry 
 of the fathers of the same men on that long- 
 drawn day when they fought under the "Red 
 Dragon of Wessex" on the low ridge at Has- 
 tings. "Out! Out!" they roared, as the Nor- 
 man chivalry broke uj)on them. Terse, 
 strong, prosaic — the very genius of the race 
 was in the cry. 
 
 Is it that the higher emotions are not there? 
 Or is it that they are damped down and cov- 
 ered over as too precious to be exhibited? 
 Something of each, perhaps. I once met the 
 widow of the man who, as a young signal mid- 
 shipman, had taken Nelson's famous message 
 from the Signal Yeoman and communicated it 
 to the ship's company. The officers were im- 
 pressed. The men were not. "Duty!" they 
 muttered. "We've always done it. Why 
 not?" Anything in the least high-falutin' 
 would depress, not exalt, a British company. 
 It is the under statement which delights them. 
 German troops can march to battle singing
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 31 
 
 Luther's hymns. Frenchmen will work them- 
 selves into a frenzy by a song of glory and of 
 Fatherland. Our martial poets need not 
 trouble to imitate — or at least need not imagine 
 that if they do so they will ever supply a want 
 to the British soldier. Our sailors working 
 the heavy guns in South Africa sang: 
 "Here's another lump of sugar for the Bird." 
 I saw a regiment go into action to the refrain 
 of "A little bit off the top." The martial 
 poet aforesaid, unless he had the genius and 
 the insight of a Kipling, would have wasted a 
 good deal of ink before he had got down to 
 such chants as these. The Russians are not 
 unlike us in this respect. I remember reading 
 of some column ascending a breach and sing- 
 ing lustily from start to finish, until a few 
 survivors were left victorious upon the crest 
 with the song still going. A spectator in- 
 quired what wondrous chant it was which had 
 warmed them to such a deed of valor, and he 
 found that the exact meaning of the words, 
 endlessly repeated, was "Ivan is in the garden
 
 32 THROUGH THE INIAGIC DOOR 
 picking cabbages." The fact is, I suppose, 
 that a mere monotonous sound may take the 
 place of the tom-tom of savage warfare, and 
 hypnotize the soldier into valor. 
 
 Our cousins across the Atlantic have the 
 same blending of the comic with their most 
 serious work. Take the songs which they 
 sang during the most bloody war which the 
 Anglo-Celtic race has ever waged — the only 
 war in which it could have been said that they 
 were stretched to their uttermost and showed 
 their true form — "Tramp, tramp, tramp," 
 "John Brown's Body," "Marching through 
 Georgia" — all had a playful humor running 
 through them. Only one exception do I 
 know, and that is the most tremendous war- 
 song I can recall. Even an outsider in time 
 of peace can hardly read it without emotion. 
 I mean, of course, Julia Ward Howe's "War- 
 Song of the Republic," with the choral open- 
 ing line: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of 
 the coming of the Lord." If that were ever
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 33 
 
 sung upon a battlefield the effect must have 
 been terrific. 
 
 A long digression, is it not? But that is 
 the worst of the thoughts at the other side of 
 the INIagic Door. You can't pull one out 
 without a dozen being entangled with it. 
 But it was Scott's soldiers that I was talking 
 of, and I was saying that there is nothing 
 theatrical, no posing, no heroics (the thing of 
 all others which the hero abominates) , but just 
 the short bluff word and the simple manly 
 ways, with every expression and metaphor 
 drawn from within his natural range of 
 thought. What a pity it is that he, with his 
 keen appreciation of the soldier, gave us so 
 little of those soldiers who were his own con- 
 temporaries — the finest, perhaps, that the 
 world has ever seen. It is true that he wrote a 
 life of the great Soldier Emperor, but that 
 was the one piece of hackwork of his career. 
 How could a Tory patriot, w^hose whole train- 
 ing had been to look upon Napoleon as a
 
 34 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 nkalignant Demon, do justice to such a theme? 
 But the Europe of those days was full of ma- 
 terial which he of all men could have drawn 
 with a sympathetic hand. What would we 
 not give for a portrait of one of Murat's light- 
 cavalrymen or of a Grenadier of the Old 
 Guard, drawn with the same hold strokes as 
 the Rittmeister of Gustavus or the archers of 
 the French King's Guard in "Quentin Dur- 
 ward"? 
 
 In his visit to Paris Scott must have seen 
 many of those iron men who during the pre- 
 ceding twenty years had been the scourge and 
 also the redemption of Europe. To us the 
 soldiers who scowled at him from the side- 
 walks in 1814 would have been as interesting 
 and as much romantic figures of the past as 
 the mail-clad knights or ruffling cavaliers of 
 his novels. A picture from the life of a Pen- 
 insular veteran, with his views upon the Duke, 
 would be as striking as Dugald Dalgetty from 
 the German wars. But then no man ever does 
 realize the true interest of the age in which he
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 35 
 
 happens to live. All sense of proportion is 
 lost, and the little thing hard-by obscures the 
 great thing at a distance. It is easy in the 
 dark to confuse the fire-fly and the star. 
 Fancy, for example, the Old Masters seeking 
 their subjects in inn parlors, or St. Sebastians, 
 while Columbus was discovering America be- 
 fore their very faces. 
 
 I have said that I think "Ivanhoe" the best 
 of Scott's novels. I suj)pose most people 
 would subscribe to that. But how about the 
 second best? It speaks well for their general 
 average that there is hardly one among them 
 which might not find some admirers who 
 w^ould vote it to a place of honor. To the 
 Scottish-born man those novels which deal with 
 Scottish life and character have a quality of 
 raciness which gives them a place apart. 
 There is a rich humor of the soil in such books 
 as "Old Mortality," "The Antiquary," and 
 "Rob Roy," which puts them in a different 
 class from the others. His old Scottish 
 women are, next to his soldiers, the best series
 
 36 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 of types that he has drawn. At the same 
 time it must be admitted that merit which is 
 associated with dialect has such hmitations 
 that it can never take the same place as work 
 which makes an equal appeal to all the world. 
 On the whole, perhaps, "Quentin Durward," 
 on account of its wider interests, its strong 
 character-drawing, and the European im- 
 portance of the events and people described, 
 would have my vote for the second place. It 
 is the father of all those sword-and-cape 
 novels which have formed so numerous an ad- 
 dition to the light literature of the last cen- 
 tury. The pictures of Charles the Bold and 
 of the unspeakable Louis are extraordinarily 
 vivid. I can see those two deadly enemies 
 watching the hounds chasing the herald, and 
 clinging to each other in the convulsions of 
 their cruel mirth, more clearly than most 
 things which my eyes have actually rested 
 upon. 
 
 The portrait of Louis with his astuteness, 
 his cruelty, his superstition and his cowardice
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 37 
 
 is followed closely from Comines, and is the 
 more effective when set up against his bluff 
 and warlike rival. It is not often that 
 historical characters work out in their actual 
 physique exactly as one would picture them 
 to be, but in the High Church of Innsbruck 
 I have seen effigies of Louis and Charles 
 which might have walked from the very pages 
 of Scott — Louis, thin, ascetic, varminty; and 
 Charles with the head of a prize fighter. It 
 is hard on us when a portrait upsets all our 
 preconceived ideas, when, for example, we see 
 in the National Portrait Gallery a man with a 
 noble, olive-tinted, poetic face, and with a start 
 read beneath it that it is the wicked Judge 
 Jeffreys. Occasionally, however, as at Inns- 
 bruck, we are absolutely satisfied. I have be- 
 fore me on the mantelpiece yonder a portrait 
 of a painting which represents Queen Mary's 
 Bothwell. Take it down and look at it. 
 ]\Iark the big head, fit to conceive large 
 schemes; the strong animal face, made to cap- 
 tivate a sensitive, feminine woman; the bru-
 
 38 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 tally forceful features — the mouth with a 
 suggestion of wild boars' tusks behind it, the 
 beard which could bristle with fury: the whole 
 man and his life-history are revealed in that 
 picture. I wonder if Scott had ever seen the 
 original which hangs at the Hepburn family 
 seat? 
 
 Personally, I have always had a very high 
 opinion of a novel which the critics have used 
 somewhat harshly, and which came almost 
 the last from his tired pen. I mean "Count 
 Robert of Paris." I am convinced that if it 
 had been the first, instead of the last, of the 
 series it would have attracted as much atten- 
 tion as "Waverley." I can understand the 
 state of mind of the expert, who cried out in 
 mingled admiration and despair: "I have 
 studied the conditions of Byzantine Society 
 all my life, and here comes a Scotch lawyer 
 who makes the whole thing clear to me in a 
 flash!" Many men could draw with more or 
 less success Norman England, or mediaeval 
 France, but to reconstruct a whole dead
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 39 
 
 civilization in so plausible a way, with such 
 dignity and such minuteness of detail, is, I 
 should think, a most wonderful tour de force. 
 His failing health showed itself before the end 
 of the novel, but had the latter half equaled 
 the first, and contained scenes of such 
 humor as Anna Comnena reading aloud her 
 father's exploits, or of such majesty as the 
 account of the muster of the Crusaders upon 
 the shores of the Bosphorus, then the book 
 could not have been gainsaid its rightful place 
 in the very front rank of the novels. 
 
 I would that he had carried on his narra- 
 tive, and given us a glimpse of the actual 
 progress of the First Crusade. What an 
 incident! Was ever anything in the world's 
 history like it? It had what historical inci- 
 dents seldom have, a definite beginning, 
 middle and end, from the half -crazed preach- 
 ing of Peter down to the Fall of Jerusalem. 
 Those leaders! It would take a second 
 Homer to do them justice. Godfrey the 
 perfect soldier and leader, Bohemund the un-
 
 40 THROUGH Tin<: INIAGIC DOOR 
 scrupulous and formidable, Tancred the ideal 
 knight errant, Robert of Normandy the lialf- 
 mad hero! Here is material so rich that one 
 feels one is not worthy to handle it. What 
 richest imagination could ever evolve anything 
 more marvelous and thrilling than the actual 
 historical facts? 
 
 But what a glorious brotherhood the novels 
 are! Think of the pure romance of "The 
 Talisman" ; the exquisite picture of Hebridean 
 life in "The Pirate"; the splendid reproduction 
 of Elizabethan England in "Kenilworth"; 
 the rich humor of the "Legend of Montrose"; 
 above all, bear in mind that in all that splendid 
 series, written in a coarse age, there is not one 
 word to offend the most sensitive ear, and it 
 is borne in upon one how great and noble a 
 man was Walter Scott, and how high the serv- 
 ice which he did for literature and for hu- 
 manity. 
 
 For that reason his life is good reading, and 
 there it is on the same shelf as the novels. 
 Lockhart was, of course, his son-in-law and his
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 41 
 
 admiring friend. The ideal biographer should 
 be a perfectly impartial man, with a sympa- 
 thetic mind, but a stern determination to tell 
 the absolute truth. One would like the frail, 
 human side of a man as well as the other. I 
 cannot believe that anj'^ one in the world was 
 ever quite so good as the subject of most of our 
 biograj)hies. Surely these worthy people 
 swore a little sometimes, or had a keen eye for 
 a pretty face, or opened the second bottle when 
 they would have done better to stop at the first, 
 or did something to make us feel that they were 
 men and brothers. They need not go the 
 length of the lady who began a biography of 
 
 her deceased husband with the words — "D 
 
 was a dirty man," but the books certainly 
 would be more readable, and the subjects more 
 lovable too, if we had greater light and shade 
 in the picture. 
 
 But I am sure that the more one knew of 
 Scott the more one would have admired him. 
 He lived in a drinking age, and in a drinking 
 country, and I have not a doubt that he took
 
 42 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 an allowance of toddy occasionally of an 
 evening which would have laid his feeble suc- 
 cessors under the table. His last years, at 
 least, poor fellow, w^ere abstemious enough, 
 when he sipped his barley-water, while the 
 others passed the decanter. But what a 
 high-souled chivalrous gentleman he w^as, 
 with how fine a sense of honor, translating it- 
 self not into empty j^hrases, but into years of 
 labor and denial! You remember how he be- 
 came sleeping partner in a printing house, and 
 so involved himself in its failure. There was 
 a legal, but very little moral, claim against him, 
 and no one could have blamed him had he 
 cleared the account by a bankruptcy, which 
 would have enabled him to become a rich man 
 again within a few years. Yet he took the 
 whole burden upon himself and bore it for the 
 rest of his life, spending his work, his time, and 
 his health in the one long effort to save his 
 honor from the shadow of a stain. It was 
 nearly a hundred thousand pounds, I think, 
 which he passed on to the creditors — a great
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 43 
 
 record, a hundred thousand pounds, with his 
 hfe thrown in. 
 
 And what a power of work he had ! It was 
 superhuman. Only the man who has tried to 
 write fiction himself knows what it means 
 when it is recorded that Scott produced two 
 of his long novels in one single year. I re- 
 member reading in some book of reminiscences 
 — on second thoughts it was in Lockhart him- 
 self — how the writer had lodged in some rooms 
 in Castle Street, Edinburgh, and how he had 
 seen all evening the silhouette of a man out- 
 lined on the blind of the opposite house. All 
 evening the man wrote, and the observer could 
 see the shadow hand conveying the sheets of 
 paper from the desk to the pile at the side. 
 He went to a party and returned, but still the 
 hand was moving the sheets. Next morning 
 he was told that the rooms opi)osite were occu- 
 pied by Walter Scott. 
 
 A curious glimpse into the psychology of 
 the writer of fiction is shown by the fact that 
 he wrote two of his books — good ones, too —
 
 44 TllUOUCill THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 at a time when his health was such tliat he 
 could not afterwards remember one word of 
 them, and listened to them when they were 
 read to him as if he were hearing the work of 
 another man. Apparently the simplest proc- 
 esses of the brain, such as ordinary memory, 
 were in complete abeyance, and yet the very 
 highest and most complex facultj'^ — imagina- 
 tion in its supreme form — was absolutely un- 
 impaired. It is an extraordinary fact, and 
 one to be 2:)ondered over. It gives some sup- 
 port to the feeling which every writer of imag- 
 inative work must have, that his supreme work 
 comes to him in some strange way from with- 
 out, and that he is only the medium for placing 
 it uj^on the paper. The creative thought — 
 the germ thought from which a larger growth 
 is to come, flies through his brain like a bullet. 
 He is surprised at his own idea, with no con- 
 scious sense of having originated it. And 
 here we have a man, with all other brain func- 
 tions paralyzed, producing this magnificent 
 work. Is it possible that we are indeed but
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 45 
 
 conduit pipes from the infinite reservoir of the 
 unknown? Certainly it is always our best 
 work which leaves the least sense of personal 
 effort. 
 
 And to pursue this line of thought, is it 
 possible that frail physical j)owers and an un- 
 stable nervous system, by keeping a man's ma- 
 terialism at its lowest, render him a more fitting 
 agent for these spiritual uses? It is an old 
 tag that 
 
 " Great Genius is to madness close allied. 
 And thin partitions do those rooms divide." 
 
 But, apart from genius, even a moderate fac- 
 ulty for imaginative work seems to me to 
 weaken seriously the ties between the soul and 
 the body. 
 
 Look at the British poets of a century ago : 
 Chatterton, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Byron. 
 Burns was the oldest of that brilliant band, yet 
 Burns was only thirty-eight when he passed 
 away, "burned out," as his brother terribly ex- 
 pressed it. Shelley, it is true, died by acci-
 
 4G THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 dent, and Chatterton by poison, but suicide is 
 in itself a sign of a morbid state. It is true 
 that Rogers lived to be almost a centenarian, 
 but he was banker first and poet afterwards. 
 Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning have 
 all raised the average age of the poets, but for 
 some reason the novelists, especially of late 
 5^ears, have a deplorable record. They will 
 end by being scheduled with the white-lead 
 workers and other dangerous trades. Look 
 at the really shocking case of the young Amer- 
 icans, for example. What a band of promis- 
 ing young writers have in a few years been 
 swept away! There was the author of that 
 admirable book, "David Harum"; there was 
 Frank Norris, a man who had in him, I think, 
 the seeds of greatness more than almost any 
 living writer. His "Pit" seemed to me one of 
 the finest American novels. He also died a 
 premature death. Then there was Stephen 
 Crane — a man who had also done most bril- 
 liant work, and there was Harold Frederic, 
 another master-craftsman. Is there any pro-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 47 
 
 fession in the world which in proportion to its 
 numbers could show such losses as that? In 
 the meantime, out of our own men Robert 
 Louis Stevenson is gone, and Henry Seton 
 JNIerriman, and many another. 
 
 Even those great men who are usually 
 spoken of as if they had rounded off their 
 career were really premature in their end. 
 Thackeray, for example, in spite of his snowy 
 head, was only 52; Dickens attained the age 
 of 58; on the whole. Sir Walter, with his 61 
 years of life, although he never wrote a novel 
 until he was over 40, had, fortunately for the 
 world, a longer working career than most of 
 his brethren. 
 
 He employed his creative faculty for about 
 twenty years, which is as much, I suppose, as 
 Shakespeare did. The bard of Avon is an- 
 other example of the limited tenure which 
 Genius has of life, though I believe that he 
 outlived the greater part of his own family, 
 who were not a healthy stock. He died, I 
 should judge, of some nervous disease; that
 
 48 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 is shown by the progressive degeneration of 
 his signature. Probably it was locomotor 
 ataxy, which is the special scourge of the imag- 
 inative man. Heine, Daudet, and how many 
 more, were its victims. As to the tradition, 
 first mentioned long after his death, that he 
 died of a fever contracted from a drinking 
 bout, it is absurd on the face of it, since no 
 such fever is known to science. But a very 
 moderate di'inking bout would be extremely 
 likely to bring a chronic nervous complaint to 
 a disastrous end. 
 
 One other remark upon Scott before I 
 pass on from that line of green volumes which 
 has made me so digressive and so garrulous. 
 No account of his character is comj)lete which 
 does not deal with the strange, secretive vein 
 which ran through his nature. Not only did 
 he stretch the truth on many occasions in order 
 to conceal the fact that he was the author of 
 the famous novels, but even intimate friends 
 who met him day by day were not aware that
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 49 
 
 he was the man about whom the whole of 
 Europe was talking. Even his wife was 
 ignorant of his pecuniary liabilities until the 
 crash of the Ballantyne firm told her for the 
 first time that they were sharers in the ruin. 
 A psychologist might trace this strange twist 
 of his mind in the numerous elfish Fenella- 
 like characters who flit about and keep their 
 irritating secret through the long chapters of 
 so many of his novels. 
 
 It's a sad book, Lockhart's "Life." It 
 leaves gloom in the mind. The sight of this 
 weary giant, staggering along, burdened with 
 debt, overladen with work, his wife dead, his 
 nerves broken, and nothing intact but his 
 honor, is one of the most moving in the history 
 of literature. But they pass, these clouds, and 
 all that is left is the memory of the supremely 
 noble man, who would not be bent, but faced 
 Fate to the last, and died in his tracks with- 
 out a whimper. He sampled every human 
 emotion. Great was his joy and great his sue-
 
 50 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 cess, great was his downfall and bitter his 
 grief. But of all the sons of men I don't 
 think there are many greater than he who lies 
 under the great slab at Dryburgh.
 
 Ill 
 
 We can pass the long green ranks of the 
 Waverley Novels and Lockhart's "Life" which 
 flanks them. Here is heavier metal in the 
 four big gray volumes beyond. They are an 
 old-fashioned large-print edition of Boswell's 
 "Life of Johnson." I emphasize the large 
 print, for that is the weak point of most of 
 the cheap editions of English Classics which 
 come now into the market. With subjects 
 which are in the least archaic or abstruse you 
 need good clear type to help you on your way. 
 The other is good neither for your eyes nor for 
 your temper. Better pay a little more and 
 have a book that is made for use. 
 
 That book interests me — fascinates me — 
 and yet I wish I could join heartily in that 
 chorus of praise which the kind-hearted old 
 bully has enjoyed. It is difficult to follow 
 
 61
 
 52 THROUGH THE INIAGTC DOOR 
 his own advice and to "clear one's mind of 
 cant" upon the subject, for when you have 
 been accustomed to look at him through the 
 sympathetic glasses of Macaulay or of Bos- 
 well, it is hard to take them off, to rub one's 
 eyes, and to have a good honest stare on one's 
 own account at the man's actual words, deeds, 
 and limitations. If you try it you are left 
 with the oddest mixture of impressions. How 
 could one express it save that this is John Bull 
 taken to literature — the exaggerated John 
 Bull of the caricaturists — with every quality, 
 good or evil, at its highest? Here are the 
 rough crust over a kindly heart, the explosive 
 temper, the arrogance, the insular narrowness, 
 the want of sympathy and insight, the rude- 
 ness of perception, the positiveness, the over- 
 bearing bluster, the strong deep-seated reli- 
 gious principle, and every other characteristic 
 of the cruder, rougher John Bull who was the 
 great-grandfather of the present good-natured 
 Johnnie. 
 
 If Boswell had not lived I wonder how much
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 53 
 
 we should hear now of his huge friend ? With 
 Scotch persistence he has succeeded in inocu- 
 lating the whole world with his hero worship. 
 It was most natural that he should himself ad- 
 mire him. The relations between the two men 
 were delightful and reflect all credit upon each. 
 But they are not a safe basis from which any 
 third person could argue. When they met, 
 Boswell was in his twenty-third and Johnson 
 in his fifty-fourth year. The one was a keen 
 young Scot with a mind which was reverent 
 and imj^ressionable. The other was a figure 
 from a past generation with his fame already 
 made. From the moment of meeting the one 
 was bound to exercise an absolute ascendency 
 over the other which made unbiased criticism 
 far more difficult than it would be between 
 ordinary father and son. Up to the end this 
 was the unbroken relation between them. 
 
 It is all very well to pooh-pooh Boswell as 
 Macaulay has done, but it is not by chance 
 that a man writes the best biography in the 
 language. He had some great and rare liter-
 
 54 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 aiy qualities. One was a clear and vivid style, 
 more flexible and Saxon than that of his great 
 model. Another was a remarkable discretion 
 which hardly once permitted a fault of taste 
 in this whole enormous book where he must 
 have had to pick his steps with pitfalls on every 
 side of him. They say that he was a fool 
 and a coxcomb in private life. He is never so 
 with a pen in his hand. Of all his numerous 
 arguments with Johnson, where he ventured 
 some little squeak of remonstrance, before the 
 roaring "No, sir!" came to silence him, there 
 are few in wliich his views were not, as experi- 
 ence proved, the wiser. On the question of 
 slavery he was in the wrong. But I could 
 quote from memory at least a dozen cases, in- 
 cluding such vital subjects as the American 
 Revolution, the Hanoverian Dynasty, Re- 
 ligious Toleration, and so on, where Boswell's 
 views were those which survived. 
 
 But where he excels as a biographer is in 
 telling you just those little things that you 
 want to know. How often you read the life
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 55 
 of a man and are left without the remotest 
 idea of his personality. It is not so here. 
 The man lives again. There is a short descrip- 
 tion of Johnson's person — it is not in the Life, 
 but in the Tour to the Hebrides, the very next 
 book upon the shelf, which is typical of his 
 vivid portraiture. ]May I take it down, and 
 read you a paragraph of it? — 
 
 "His person was large, robust, I may say 
 approaching to the gigantic, and grown un- 
 wieldy from corpulency. His countenance 
 was naturally of the cast of an ancient statue, 
 but somewhat disfigured bj?- the scars of King's 
 evil. He was now in his sixty-fourth year 
 and was become a little dull of hearing. His 
 sight had always been somewhat weak, yet so 
 much does mind govern and even supply the 
 deficiencies of organs that his perceptions were 
 uncommonly quick and accurate. His head, 
 and sometimes also his body, shook with a kind 
 of motion like the effect of palsy. He ap- 
 peared to be frequently disturbed by cramps 
 or convulsive contractions of the nature of that
 
 56 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 distemper called St. Vitus' dance. He wore 
 a full suit of x)lain brown clothes, with twisted 
 hair buttons of the same color, a large bushy 
 grayish wig, a plain shirt, black worsted stock- 
 ings and silver buckles. Upon this tour when 
 journeying he wore boots and a very wide 
 brown cloth great-coat with pockets which 
 might almost have held the two volumes of his 
 folio dictionary, and he carried in his hand a 
 large English oak stick.'* You must admit 
 that if one cannot reconstruct the great Samuel 
 after that it is not Mr. Boswell's fault — and 
 it is but one of a dozen equally vivid glimpses 
 which he gives us of his hero. It is just these 
 pen-pictures of his of the big, uncouth man, 
 with his grunts and his groans, his Gargan- 
 tuan appetite, his twenty cups of tea, and his 
 tricks with the orange-peel and the lamp-posts, 
 which fascinate the reader, and have given 
 Johnson a far broader literary vogue than his 
 writings could have done. 
 
 For, after all, which of those writings can 
 be said to have any life to-day? Not "Rasse-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 57 
 
 las," surely — that stilted romance. "The 
 Lives of the Poets" are but a succession of 
 prefaces, and the "Ramblers" of ephemeral 
 essays. There is the monstrous drudgery of 
 the Dictionary, a huge piece of spadework, a 
 monument to industry, but inconceivable to 
 genius. "London" has a few vigorous lines, 
 and the "Journey to the Hebrides" some spir- 
 ited pages. This, with a number of political 
 and other pamphlets, was the main output of 
 his lifetime. Surely it must be admitted that 
 it is not enough to justify his predominant 
 place in English literature, and that we must 
 turn to his humble, much-ridiculed biographer 
 for the real explanation. 
 
 And then there was his talk. What was 
 it which gave it such distinction? His clear- 
 cut positiveness upon every subject. But this 
 is a sign of a narrow finality — impossible to 
 the man of sympathy and of imagination, who 
 sees the other side of every question and un- 
 derstands what a little island the greatest 
 human knowledge must be in the ocean of in-
 
 58 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 finite possibilities whieh surround us. Look 
 at the results. Did ever any single man, the 
 very dullest of the race, stand convicted of so 
 many incredible blunders? It recalls the re- 
 mark of Bagehot, that if at any time the views 
 of the most learned could be stamped upon the 
 whole human race the result would be to propa- 
 gate the most absurd errors. He was asked 
 what became of swallows in the winter. Roll- 
 ing and wheezing, the oracle answered: 
 "Swallows," said he, "certainly sleep all the 
 winter. A number of them conglobulate to- 
 gether by flying round and round, and then all 
 in a heap throw themselves under water and 
 lie in the bed of a river." Boswell gravely 
 dockets the information. However, if I re- 
 member right, even so sound a naturalist as 
 White of Selborne had his doubts about the 
 swallows. More wonderful are Johnson's 
 mis judgments of his fellow-authors. There, 
 if anywhere, one would have expected to find 
 a sense of proportion. Yet his conclusions 
 would seem monstrous to a modern taste.
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 59 
 
 "Shakespeare," he said, "never wrote six con- 
 secutive good Hnes." He would only admit 
 two good verses in Gray's exquisite " Elegy 
 Written in a Country Churchyard," where it 
 would take a very acid critic to find two bad 
 ones. "Tristram Shandy" would not live. 
 "Plamlet" was gabble. Swift's "Gulliver's 
 Travels" was poor stuff, and he never wrote 
 anything good except "A Tale of a Tub." 
 Voltaire was illiterate. Rousseau was a scoun- 
 drel. Deists, like Hume, Priestley, or Gib- 
 bon, could not be honest men. 
 
 And his political opinions! They sound 
 now like a caricature. I suppose even in those 
 daj^s they were reactionary. "A poor man 
 has no honor." "Charles the Second was a 
 good King." "Governments should turn out 
 of the Civil Service all who were on the other 
 side." "Judges in India should be encour- 
 aged to trade." "No country is the richer on 
 account of trade." (I wonder if Adam Smith 
 was in the company when this proposition was 
 laid down ! ) "A landed proprietor should turn
 
 60 THROUGH THE :\IAGIC DOOR 
 
 out those tenants who did not vote as he 
 wished." "It is not good for a laborer to have 
 his wages raised." "When the balance of 
 trade is against a country, the margin must be 
 paid in current coin." Those were a few of 
 his convictions. 
 
 And then his prejudices! Most of us have 
 some unreasoning aversion. In our more gen- 
 erous moments we are not proud of it. But 
 consider those of Johnson! When they were 
 all eliminated there was not so very much left. 
 He hated Whigs. He disliked Scotsmen. 
 He detested Nonconformists (a young lady 
 who joined them was "an odious wench"). 
 He loathed Americans. So he walked his nar- 
 row line, belching fire and fury at everything 
 to the right or the left of it. Macaulay's 
 posthumous admiration is all very well, but had 
 they met in life JNIacaulay would have con- 
 trived to unite under one hat nearly everything 
 that Johnson abominated. 
 
 It cannot be said that these prejudices were 
 founded on any strong principles or that they
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 61 
 
 could not be altered where his own personal in- 
 terests demanded it. This is one of the weak 
 points of his record. In his dictionary he 
 abused pensions and pensioners as a means by 
 which the State imposed slavery upon hire- 
 lings. When he wrote the unfortunate defini- 
 tion a pension must have seemed a most im- 
 probable contingency, but when George III., 
 either through policy or charity, offered him 
 one a little later, he made no hesitation in 
 accepting it. One would have liked to feel 
 that the violent expression of his convictions 
 represented a real intensity of feeling, but the 
 facts in this instance seem against it. 
 
 He was a great talker — but his talk was 
 more properly a monologue. It was a dis- 
 cursive essay, with perhaps a few marginal 
 notes from his subdued audience. How could 
 one talk on equal terms with a man who could 
 not brook contradiction or even argument upon 
 the most vital questions in life ? Would Gold- 
 smith defend his literary views, or Burke his 
 Whiggism, or Gibbon his Deism? There
 
 62 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 was no common ground of philosophic tolera- 
 tion on which one could stand. If he could 
 not argue he would be rude, or, as Goldsmith 
 put it: "If his pistol missed fire, he would 
 knock you down with the butt end." In the 
 face of that "rhinoceros laugh" there was an 
 end of gentle argument. Napoleon said that 
 all the other kings would say "Ouf !" when 
 they heard he was dead, and so I cannot help 
 thinking that the older men of Johnson's circle 
 must have given a sigh of relief when at last 
 they could speak freely on that which was near 
 their hearts, without the danger of a scene 
 where "Why, no, sir!" was very likely to ripen 
 into "Let us have no more on't!" Certainly 
 one would like to get behind Bos well's account, 
 and to hear a chat between such men as Burke 
 and Reynolds, as to the difference in the free- 
 dom and atmosphere of the Club on an even- 
 ing when the formidable Doctor was not there, 
 as compared to one when he was. 
 
 No smallest estimate of his character is fair 
 which does not make due allowance for the
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 63 
 
 terrible experiences of his youth and early 
 middle age. His spirit was as scarred as his 
 face. He was fifty-three when the pension 
 was given liim, and up to then his existence 
 had been spent in one constant struggle for 
 the first necessities of life, for the daily meal 
 and the nightly bed. He had seen his com- 
 rades of letters die of actual privation. From 
 childliood he had known no happiness. The 
 half blind gawky youth, with dirty linen and 
 twitching limbs, had always, whether in the 
 streets of Lichfield, the quadrangle of Pem- 
 broke, or the coffee-houses of London, been an 
 object of mingled pity and amusement. 
 With a proud and sensitive soul, every day of 
 his life must have brought some bitter humilia- 
 tion. Such an experience must either break 
 a man's spirit or embitter it, and here, no doubt, 
 was the secret of that roughness, that careless- 
 ness for the sensibilities of others, which caused 
 Boswell's father to christen him "Ursa Major." 
 If his nature was in any way warped, it must 
 be admitted that terrific forces had gone to the
 
 64 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 rending of it. His good was innate, his evil 
 the result of a dreadful experience. 
 
 And he had some great qualities. JNIemory 
 was the chief of them. He had read omniv- 
 orously, and all that he had read he remem- 
 bered, not merely in the vague, general way 
 in which we remember what we read, but with 
 every particular of place and date. If it were 
 poetry, he could quote it by the page, Latin 
 or English. Such a memory has its enormous 
 advantage, but it carries with it its corre- 
 sponding defect. With the mind so crammed 
 with other people's goods, how can you have 
 room for any fresh manufactures of your 
 own? A great memorj^ is, I think, often fatal 
 to originality, in spite of Scott and some other 
 exceptions. The slate must be clear before 
 you j)ut your own writing upon it. When 
 did Johnson ever discover an original thought, 
 when did he ever reach forward into the fu- 
 ture, or throw any fresh light upon those 
 enigmas with which mankind is faced? Over- 
 loaded with the past, he had space for nothing
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 65 
 
 else. INIodern developments of every sort cast 
 no first herald rays upon his mind. He jour- 
 neyed in France a few years before the great- 
 est cataclysm that the world has ever known, 
 and his mind, arrested by much that was trivial, 
 never once responded to the storm-signals 
 which must surely have been visible around 
 him. We read that an amiable Monsieur 
 Sansterre showed him over his brewery and 
 supplied him with statistics as to his outj^ut of 
 beer. It was the same foul-mouthed Sansterre 
 who struck up the drums to drown Louis' voice 
 at the scaffold. The association shows how 
 near the unconscious sage was to the edge of 
 that precij)ice and how little his learning 
 availed him in discerning it. 
 
 He would have been a great lawyer or 
 divine. Nothing, one would think, could have 
 kept him from Canterbury or from the Wool- 
 sack. In either case his memory, his learning, 
 his dignity, and his inherent sense of piety and 
 justice, would have sent him straight to the 
 top. His brain, working within its own limi-
 
 66 TUnOVGH THE MAGTC DOOR 
 tations, was remarkable. Tliere is no more 
 wonderful proof of this than his opinions on 
 questions of Scotch law, as given to Boswell 
 and as used by the latter before the Scotch 
 judges. That an outsider with no special 
 training should at short notice write such 
 weighty opinions, crammed with argument and 
 reason, is, I think, as remarkable a tour de 
 force as literature can show. 
 
 Above all, he really was a very kind-hearted 
 man, and that must count for much. His 
 was a large charity, and it came from a small 
 purse. The rooms of his house became a sort 
 of harbor of refuge in which several strange 
 battered hulks found their last moorings. 
 There were the blind Mr. Levett, and the acid- 
 ulous Mrs. Williams, and the colorless Mrs. De 
 JNIoulins, all old and ailing — a trying group 
 amid which to spend one's days. His guinea 
 was always ready for the j)oor acquaintance, 
 and no poet was so humble that he might not 
 preface his book with a dedication whose pon- 
 derous and sonorous sentences bore the hall-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 67 
 
 mark of their maker. It is the rough, kindly 
 man, the man who bore the poor street-walker 
 home upon his shoulders, who makes one for- 
 get, or at least forgive, the dogmatic pedantic 
 Doctor of the Club. 
 
 There is always to me something of interest 
 in the view which a great man takes of old 
 age and death. It is the practical test of how 
 far the philosophy of his life has been a sound 
 one. Hume saw death afar, and met it with 
 unostentatious calm. Johnson's mind flinched 
 from that dread opponent. His letters and his 
 talk during his latter years are one long cry 
 of fear. It was not cowardice, for physically 
 he was one of the most stout-hearted men that 
 ever lived. There were no limits to his 
 courage. It was spiritual diffidence, coupled 
 with an actual belief in the possibilities of the 
 other world, which a more humane and hberal 
 theology has done something to soften. How 
 strange to see him cling so desperately to that 
 crazy body, with its gout, its asthma, its St. 
 Vitus' dance, and its six gallons of di'opsy!
 
 68 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 What could be the attraction of an existence 
 where eight hours of every day were spent 
 groaning in a chair, and sixteen wheezing in 
 a bed? "I would give one of these legs," said 
 he, "for another year of life." None the less, 
 when the hour did at last strike, no man could 
 have borne himself with more simple dignity 
 and courage. Say what you ^vill of him, and 
 resent him how you may, you can never open 
 those four gray volumes without getting some 
 mental stimulus, some desire for wider read- 
 ing, some insight into human learning or char- 
 acter, which should leave you a better and a 
 wiser man.
 
 IV 
 
 Next to my Jolmsoniana are my Gibbons — ■ 
 two editions, if you please, for mj^ old com- 
 plete one being somewhat crabbed in the print 
 I could not resist getting a set of Bury's new 
 six-volume presentment of the History. In 
 reading that book you don't want to be handi- 
 capped in any way. You want fair type, clear 
 paper, and a light volume. You are not to 
 read it lightly, but with some earnestness of 
 purpose and keenness for knowledge, wuth a 
 classical atlas at your elbow and a note-book 
 hard by, taking easy stages and harking back 
 every now and then to keep your grip of the 
 past and to link it up with what follows. 
 There are no thrills in it. You won't be kept 
 out of your bed at night, nor will you forget 
 your appointments during the day, but you 
 will feel a certain sedate pleasure in the doing 
 
 69
 
 70 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 of it, and when it is done you will have gained 
 something which you can never lose — some- 
 thing solid, something definite, something that 
 will make you broader and deeper than before. 
 Were I condemned to spend a year uj)on a 
 desert island and allowed only one book for my 
 companion, it is certainly that which I should 
 choose. For consider how enormous is its 
 scope, and what food for thought is contained 
 within those volumes. It covers a thousand 
 years of the world's history, it is full and good 
 and accurate, its standpoint is broadly philo- 
 sophic, its style dignified. With our more 
 elastic methods we may consider his manner 
 pompous, but he lived in an age w^hen John- 
 son's turgid periods had corrupted our litera- 
 ture. For my o^vn part I do not dislike Gib- 
 bon's pomposity. A paragraph should be 
 measured and sonorous if it ventures to de- 
 scribe the advance of a Roman legion, or the 
 debate of a Greek Senate. You are wafted 
 upwards, with this lucid and just spirit by your 
 side upholding and instructing you. Be-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 71 
 neath you are warring nations, the clash of 
 races, the rise and fall of dynasties, the con- 
 flict of creeds. Serene you float above them 
 all, and ever as the panorama flows past, the 
 weighty measured unemotional voice whis- 
 pers the true meaning of the scene into your 
 ear. 
 
 It is a most mighty story that is told. You 
 begin with a description of the state of the 
 Roman Empire when the early C^sars were on 
 the throne, and when it was undisputed mis- 
 tress of the world. You pass down the line 
 of the Emperors with their strange alterna- 
 tions of greatness and profligacy, descending 
 occasionally to criminal lunacy. When the 
 Empire went rotten it began at the top, and it 
 took centuries to corrupt the man behind the 
 spear. iV^either did a religion of peace affect 
 him much, for, in spite of the adoption of 
 Christianity, Roman history was still written 
 in blood. The new creed had only added a 
 fresh cause of quarrel and violence to the many 
 which already existed, and the wars of angry
 
 12 THROUGH TPIE MAGIC DOOR 
 nations were mild compared to those of excited 
 sectaries. 
 
 Then came the mighty rushing wind from 
 without, blowing from the waste places of the 
 world, destroying, confounding, whirling 
 madly through the old order, leaving broken 
 chaos behind it, but finally cleansing and puri- 
 fying that which was stale and corrupt. A 
 storm-center somewhere in the north of China 
 did suddenly what it may very well do again. 
 The human volcano blew its top off, and 
 Europe was covered by the destructive debris. 
 The absurd point is that it was not the con- 
 querors who overran the Koman Empire, but 
 it was the terrified fugitives who, like a drove 
 of stampeded cattle, blundered over every- 
 thing which barred their way. It was a wild, 
 dramatic time — the time of the formation of 
 the modern races of Europe. The nations 
 came whirling in out of the north and east like 
 dust-storms, and amid the seeming chaos each 
 was blended with its neighbor so as to toughen 
 the fiber of the whole. The fickle Gaul got
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 73 
 
 his steadying from the Franks, the steady 
 Saxon got his touch of refinement from the 
 Norman, the Itahan got a fresh lease of hfe 
 from the Lombard and the Ostrogoth, the cor- 
 rupt Greek made way for the manly and 
 earnest Mahommedan. Everywhere one 
 seems to see a great hand blending the seeds. 
 And so one can now, save onty that emigra- 
 tion has taken the place of war. It does not, 
 for example, take much prophetic power to 
 say that something very great is being built 
 up on the other side of the Atlantic. When 
 on an Anglo- Celtic basis you see the Italian, 
 the Hun, and the Scandinavian being added, 
 you feel that there is no human quality which 
 may not be thereby evolved. 
 
 But to revert to Gibbon: the next stage 
 is the flight of Empire from Rome to Byzan- 
 tium, even as the Anglo-Celtic power might 
 find its center some day not in London but in 
 Chicago or Toronto. There is the whole 
 strange story of the tidal wave of Mahom- 
 medanism from the south, submerging all
 
 74 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 North Africa, spreading right and left to In- 
 dia on the one side and to Spain on the other, 
 finally washing right over the walls of Byzan- 
 tium until it, the bulwark of Christianity, be- 
 came what it is now, the advanced European 
 fortress of the Moslem. Such is the tremen- 
 duous narrative covering half the world's 
 known history, which can all be acquired and 
 made part of yourself by the aid of that 
 humble atlas, pencil, and note-book already 
 recommended. 
 
 When all is so interesting it is hard to pick 
 examples, but to me there has always seemed 
 to be something peculiarly impressive in the 
 first entrance of a new race on to the stage of 
 history. It has something of the glamour 
 which hangs round the early youth of a great 
 man. You remember how the Russians made 
 their debut — came down the great rivers and 
 appeared at the Bosphorus in two hundred 
 canoes, from which they endeavored to board 
 the Imperial galleys. Singular that a thou- 
 sand years have passed and that the ambition
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 75 
 
 of the Russians is still to carry out the task 
 at which their skin-clad ancestors failed. Or 
 the Turks again; you may recall the charac- 
 teristic ferocit}^ with which they opened their 
 career. A handful of them were on some mis- 
 sion to the Emi)eror. The town was besieged 
 from the landward side by the barbarians, and 
 the Asiatics obtained leave to take part in a 
 skirmish. The first Turk galloped out, shot 
 a barbarian with his arrow, and then, lying 
 down beside him, proceeded to suck his blood, 
 which so horrified the man's comrades that they 
 could not be brought to face such uncanny ad- 
 versaries. So, from opposite sides, those two 
 great races arrived at the city which was to be 
 the stronghold of the one and the ambition of 
 the other for so many centuries. 
 
 And then, even more interesting than the 
 rsiceCi which arrive are those that disappear. 
 There is something there which appeals most 
 powerfully to the imagination. Take, for ex- 
 ample, the fate of those Vandals who con- 
 quered the north of Africa. They were a
 
 76 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 German tribe, blue-eyed and flaxen-haired, 
 from somewhere in the Elbe country. Sud- 
 denly they, too, were seized with the strange 
 wandering madness which was epidemic at the 
 time. Away they went on the line of least re- 
 sistance, which is always from north to south 
 and from east to west. SouthwTst was the 
 course of the Vandals — a course which must 
 have been continued through pure love of ad- 
 venture, since in the thousands of miles which 
 they traversed there were many fair resting- 
 places, if that were only their quest. 
 
 They crossed the south of France, conquered 
 Spain, and, finally, the more adventurous 
 passed over into Africa, where they occupied 
 the old Roman province. For two or three 
 generations they held it, much as the English 
 hold India, and their numbers were at the least 
 some hundreds of thousands. Presently the 
 Roman Empire gave one of those flickers 
 which showed that there was still some fire 
 among the ashes. Belisarius landed in Africa 
 and reconquered the province. The Vandals
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 77 
 
 were cut off from the sea and fled inland. 
 Whither did they carry those blue eyes and that 
 flaxen hair? Were they exterminated by the 
 negroes, or did they amalgamate with them? 
 Travelers have brought back stories from the 
 Mountains of the Moon of a Negroid race 
 with light eyes and hair. Is it possible that 
 here we have some trace of the vanished Ger- 
 
 mans 
 
 It recalls the parallel case of the lost settle- 
 ments in Greenland. That also has always 
 seemed to me to be one of the most romantic 
 questions in history — the more so, perhaps, as 
 I have strained my eyes to see across the ice- 
 floes the Greenland coast at the point (or near 
 it) where the old "Eyrbyggia" must have 
 stood. That was the Scandinavian city, 
 founded by colonists from Iceland, which grew 
 to be a considerable place, so much so that they 
 sent to Denmark for a bishop. That would be 
 in the fourteenth century. The bishop, com- 
 ing out to his see, found that he was unable to 
 reach it on account of a climatic change which
 
 78 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 had brought down the ice and filled the strait 
 between Iceland and Greenland. From that 
 day to this no one has been able to say what 
 has become of these old Scandinavians, who 
 were at the time, be it remembered, the most 
 civilized and advanced race in Europe. They 
 may have been overwhelmed by the Esqui- 
 maux, the despised Skroeling — or they may 
 have amalgamated with them — or conceivably 
 they might have held their own. Very little 
 is known yet of that portion of the coast. It 
 would be strange if some ISTansen or Peary 
 were to stumble upon the remains of the old 
 colony, and find possibly in that antiseptic at- 
 mosphere a complete mummy of some bygone 
 civilization. 
 
 But once more to return to Gibbon. What 
 a mind it must have been which first planned, 
 and then, with the incessant labor of twenty 
 years, carried out that enormous work ! There 
 was no classical author so little known, no 
 Byzantine historian so diffuse, no monkish 
 chronicle so crabbed, that they were not assimi-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 79 
 
 lated and worked into their appropriate place 
 in the huge framework. Great appHcation, 
 great perseverance, great attention to detail 
 was needed in all this, but the coral polyp has 
 all those qualities, and somehow in the heart of 
 his own creation the individuality of the man 
 himself becomes as insignificant and as much 
 overlooked as that of the little creature that 
 builds the reef. A thousand know Gibbon's 
 work for one who cares anything for Gibbon. 
 And on the whole this is justified by the 
 facts. Some men are greater than their work. 
 Their work only represents one facet of their 
 character, and there may be a dozen others, 
 all remarkable, and uniting to make one com- 
 plex and unique creature. It was not so with 
 Gibbon. He was a cold-blooded man, with a 
 brain which seemed to have grown at the ex- 
 pense of his heart. I cannot recall in his life 
 one generous impulse, one ardent enthusiasm, 
 save for the Classics. His excellent judgment 
 was never clouded by the haze of human emo- 
 tion — or, at least, it was such an emotion as
 
 80 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 was well under the control of his will. Could 
 anything be more laudable — or less lovable? 
 He abandons his girl at the order of his father, 
 and sums it up that he "sighs as a lover but 
 obeys as a son." The father dies, and he re- 
 cords the fact with the remark that "the tears 
 of a son are seldom lasting." The terrible 
 spectacle of the French Revolution excited in 
 his mind only a feeling of self-j)ity because his 
 retreat in Switzerland was invaded by the un- 
 happy refugees, just as a grumpy country 
 gentleman in England might complain that he 
 was annoyed by the trippers. There is a touch 
 of dislike in all the allusions which Boswell 
 makes to Gibbon — often without even men- 
 tioning his name — and one cannot read the 
 great historian's life without understanding 
 why. 
 
 • I should think that few men have been born 
 with the material for self-sufficient content- 
 ment more completely within himself than 
 Edward Gibbon. He had every gift which a 
 great scholar should have, an insatiable thirst
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 81 
 
 for learning in every form, immense industry, 
 a retentive memory, and that broadly philo- 
 sophic temperament which enables a man 
 to rise above the partisan and to become the im- 
 partial critic of human affairs. It is true that 
 at the time he was looked upon as bitterly 
 prejudiced in the matter of religious thouglit, 
 but his views are familiar to modern 
 philosophy, and would shock no susceptibilities 
 in these more liberal (and more virtuous) 
 days. Turn him up in that Encyclopedia, and 
 see what the latest word is upon his conten- 
 tions. "Upon the famous fifteenth and six- 
 teenth chapters it is not necessary to dwell," 
 says the biographer, "because at this time of 
 day no Christian apologist dreams of denying 
 the substantial truth of any of the more im- 
 portant allegations of Gibbon. Christians 
 may complain of the suppression of some cir- 
 cumstances which might influence the general 
 result, and they must remonstrate against the 
 unfair construction of their case. But they 
 no longer refuse to hear any reasonable evi-
 
 82 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 dence tending to show that persecution was 
 less severe than had been once beheved, and 
 they have slowly learned that they can afford to 
 concede the validity of all the secondary causes 
 assigned by Gibbon and even of others still 
 more discreditable. The fact is, as the his- 
 torian has again and again admitted, that his 
 account of the secondary causes which contrib- 
 uted to the progress and establishment of 
 Christianity leaves the question as to the nat- 
 ural or supernatural origin of Christianity 
 practically untouched." This is all very well, 
 but in that case how about the century of abuse 
 which has been showered upon the historian? 
 Some posthumous apology would seem to be 
 called for. 
 
 Physically, Gibbon was as small as John- 
 son was large, but there was a curious affinity 
 in their bodily ailments. Johnson, as a youth, 
 was ulcerated and tortured by the king's evil, 
 in spite of the Royal touch. Gibbon gives us 
 a concise but lurid account of his own boy- 
 hood.
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 83 
 
 "I was successively afflicted by lethargies 
 and fevers, by opposite tendencies to a con- 
 sumptive and dropsical habit, by a contraction 
 of my nerves, a fistula in my eye, and the bite 
 of a dog, most vehemently suspected of mad- 
 ness. Every practitioner was called to my aid, 
 the fees of the doctors were swelled by the bills 
 of the apothecaries and surgeons. There was 
 a time when I swallowed more physic than 
 food, and my body is still marked by the in- 
 delible scars of lancets, issues, and caustics." 
 
 Such is his melancholy report. The fact is 
 that the England of that day seems to have 
 been very full of that hereditary form of 
 chronic ill-health which we call by the general 
 name of struma. How far the hard-drinking 
 habits in vogue for a century or so before had 
 anything to do with it I cannot say, nor can I 
 trace a connection between struma and learn- 
 ing; but one has only to compare this account 
 of Gibbon with Johnson's nervous twitches, 
 his scarred face and his St. Vitus' dance, to
 
 84 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 realize that these, the two most solid English 
 writers of their generation, were each heir to 
 the same gruesome inheritance. 
 
 I wonder if there is any picture extant of 
 Gibbon in the character of subaltern in the 
 South Hampshire Militia? With his small 
 frame, his huge head, his round, chubby face, 
 and the pretentious uniform, he must have 
 looked a most extraordinary figure. Never 
 was there so round a peg in a square hole! 
 His father, a man of a very different type, 
 held a commission, and this led to poor Gibbon 
 becoming a soldier in spite of himself. War 
 had broken out, the regiment was mustered, 
 and the unfortunate student, to his own utter 
 dismay, was kept under arms until the con- 
 clusion of hostilities. For three years he was 
 divorced from his books, and loudly and bit- 
 terly did he resent it. The South Hampshire 
 Militia never saw the enemy, which is perhaps 
 as well for them. Even Gibbon himself pokes 
 fun at them; but after three years under can- 
 yas it is probable that his men had more cause
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 85 
 
 to smile at their book-worm captain than he at 
 his men. His hand closed much more readily 
 on a pen-handle than on a sword-hilt. In his 
 lament, one of the items is that his colonel's ex- 
 ample encouraged the daily practice of hard, 
 and even excessive drinking, which gave him 
 the gout. "The loss of so many busy and idle 
 hours were not compensated for by any elegant 
 pleasure," says he; "and my temper was in- 
 sensibly soured by the society of rustic officers, 
 who were alike deficient in the knowledge of 
 scholars and the manners of gentlemen." 
 The picture of Gibbon flushed with wine at 
 the mess-table, with these hard-drinking 
 squires around him, must certainly have been 
 a curious one. He admits, however, that he 
 found consolations as well as hardships in his 
 spell of soldiering. It made him an English- 
 man once more, it improved his health, it 
 changed the current of his thoughts. It was 
 even useful to him as an historian. In a cele- 
 brated and characteristic sentence, he says, 
 "The discipline and evolutions of a modern
 
 86 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 battalion gave me a clearer notion of the Pha- 
 lanx and the Legions, and the captain of the 
 Hampshire Grenadiers has not been useless 
 to the historian of the Roman Efmpire." 
 
 If we don't know all about Gibbon it is not 
 his fault, for he wrote no fewer than six ac- 
 counts of his own career, each differing from 
 the other, and all equally bad. A man must 
 have more heart and soul than Gibbon to wTite 
 a good autobiography. It is the most difficult 
 of all human compositions, calling for a mix- 
 ture of tact, discretion, and frankness which 
 make an almost impossible blend. Gibbon, in 
 spite of his foreign education, was a very 
 typical Englishman in many ways, with the 
 reticence, self-respect, and self-consciousness 
 of the race. No British autobiography has 
 ever been frank, and consequently no British 
 autobiography has ever been good. Trol- 
 lope's, perhaps, is as good as any that I know, 
 but of all forms of literature it is the one least 
 adapted to the national genius. You could not 
 imagine a British Rousseau, still less a British
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 87 
 
 Benvenuto Cellini. In one way it is to the 
 credit of the race that it should be so. If we 
 do as much evil as our neighbors we at least 
 have grace enough to be ashamed of it and to 
 suppress its publication. 
 
 There on the left of Gibbon is my fine edi- 
 tion (Lord Braybrooke's) of Pepys' Diary. 
 That is, in truth, the greatest autobiography 
 in our language, and yet it was not deliberately 
 written as such. When Mr. Pepys jotted 
 down from day to day every quaint or mean 
 thought which came into his head he would 
 have been very much surprised had any one 
 told him that he was doing a work quite unique 
 in our literature. Yet his involuntary auto- 
 biography, compiled for some obscure reason 
 or for private reference, but certainly never 
 meant for publication, is as much the first in 
 that line of literature as Boswell's book among 
 biographies or Gibbon's among histories. 
 
 As a race we are too afraid of giving our- 
 selves away ever to produce a good autobiog- 
 raphy. We resent the charge of national
 
 88 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 hypocrisy, and yet of all nations we are the 
 least frank as to our own emotions — especially 
 on certain sides of them. Those affairs of the 
 heart, for example, which are such an index 
 to a man's character, and so profoundly modify 
 his life — what space do they fill in any man's 
 autobiography? Perhaps in Gibbon's case the 
 omission matters little, for, save in the instance 
 of his well-controlled passion for the future 
 Madame Neckar, his heart was never an or- 
 gan which gave him much trouble. The fact 
 is that when the British author tells his own 
 story he tries to make himself respectable, and 
 the more respectable a man is the less inter- 
 esting does he become. Rousseau may prove 
 himself a maudlin degenerate. Cellini may 
 stand self -convicted as an amorous ruffian. 
 If they are not respectable they are thoroughly 
 human and interesting all the same. 
 
 The wonderful thing about Mr. Pepys is 
 that a man should succeed in making himself 
 seem so insignificant when really he must have 
 been a man of considerable character and at-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 89 
 
 tainments. Who would guess it who read all 
 these trivial comments, these catalogues of 
 what he had for dinner, these inane domestic 
 confidences — all the more interesting for their 
 inanity 1 The effect left upon the mind is of 
 some grotesque character in a play, fussy, self- 
 conscious, blustering with women, timid with 
 men, dress-proud, purse-proud, trinmiing in 
 politics and in religion, a garrulous gossip im- 
 mersed always in trifles. And yet, though this 
 was the day-by-day man, the year-by-year man 
 was a very different person, a devoted civil 
 servant, an eloquent orator, an excellent writer, 
 a capable musician, and a ripe scholar who 
 accumulated 3,000 volumes — a large private 
 library in those days — and had the public spirit 
 to leave them all to his University. You can 
 forgive old Pepys a good deal of his philander- 
 ing when you remember that he was the only 
 official of the Navy Office who stuck to his post 
 during the worst days of the Plague. He may 
 have been — indeed, he assuredly was — a cow- 
 ard, but the coward who has sense of duty
 
 90 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 enough to overcome his cowardice is the most 
 truly brave of mankind. 
 
 But the one amazing thing which will never 
 be explained about Pepj^s is what on earth in- 
 duced him to go to the incredible labor of writ- 
 ing down in shorthand cipher not only all the 
 trivialities of his life, but even his own very 
 gross delinquencies which any other man would 
 have been only too glad to forget. The Diary 
 was kept for about ten years, and was aban- 
 doned because the strain upon his eyes of the 
 crabbed shorthand was helping to destroy his 
 sight. I suppose that he became so familiar 
 with it that he wrote it and read it as easily as 
 he did ordinary script. But even so, it was a 
 huge labor to compile these books of strange 
 manuscript. Was it an effort to leave some 
 memorial of his own existence to single him out 
 from all the countless sons of men? In such 
 a case he would assuredly have left directions 
 in somebody's care with a reference to it in the 
 deed by which he bequeathed his library to 
 Cambridge. In that way he could have en-
 
 TPIROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 91 
 
 siired having his Diary read at any date he 
 chose to name after his death. But no allu- 
 sion to it was left, and if it had not been for 
 the ingenuity and perseverance of a single 
 scholar the dusty volumes would still lie un- 
 read in some top shelf of the Pepysian 
 Library. Publicity, then, was not his object. 
 What could it have been? The only alterna- 
 tive is reference and self -information. You 
 will observe in his character a curious vein of 
 method and order by which he loved to be for 
 ever estimating his exact wealth, cataloguing 
 his books, or scheduling his possessions. It is 
 conceivable that this systematic recording of 
 his deeds — even of his misdeeds — was in some 
 sort analogous, sprung from a morbid tidiness 
 of mind. It may be a weak explanation but 
 it is difficult to advance another one. 
 
 One minor point which must strike the 
 reader of Pepys is how musical a nation the 
 English of that day appear to have been. 
 Every one seems to have had command of 
 some instrument, many of several. Part-
 
 92 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 singing was common. There is not much of 
 Charles the Second's days which we need 
 envy, but there, at least, they seem to have 
 had the advantage of us. It was real music, 
 too — music of dignity and tenderness — with 
 words which were worthy of such treatment. 
 This cult may have been the last remains of 
 those medieeval pre-Reformation days when 
 the English Church choirs were, as I have read 
 somewhere, the most famous in Europe. A 
 strange thing this for a land which in the 
 whole of last century has produced no single 
 master of the first rank! 
 
 What national change is it which has 
 driven music from the land? Has life be- 
 come so serious that song has passed out of 
 it? In Southern climes one hears poor folk 
 sing for pure lightness of heart. In England, 
 alas, the sound of a poor man's voice raised 
 in song means only too surely that he is drunk. 
 And yet it is consoling to know that the germ 
 of the old powers is always there ready to 
 sprout forth if they be nourished and culti-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 93 
 
 vated. If our cathedral choirs were the best 
 in the old Catholic days, it is equally true, I 
 believe, that our orchestral associations are 
 now the best in Europe. So, at least, the Ger- 
 man papers said on the occasion of the recent 
 visit of a north of England choir. But one 
 cannot read Pepys without knowing that the 
 general musical habit is much less cultivated 
 now than of old.
 
 It is a long jump from Samuel Pepys to 
 George Borrow — from one pole of the human 
 character to the other — and yet they are in 
 contact on the shelf of my favorite authors. 
 There is something wonderful, I think, about 
 the land of Cornwall. That long peninsula 
 extending out into the ocean has caught all 
 sorts of strange floating things, and has held 
 them there in isolation until they have woven 
 themselves into the texture of the Cornish 
 race. What is this strange strain which lurks 
 down yonder and every now and then throws 
 up a great man with singular un-English 
 ways and features for all the world to marvel 
 at? It is not Celtic, nor is it the dark old 
 Iberian. Further and deeper lie the springs. 
 Is it not Semitic, Phoenician, the roving men 
 of Tyre, with noble Southern faces and Ori- 
 
 94
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 95 
 ental imaginations, who have in far-off days 
 forgotten their bkie Mediterranean and set- 
 tled on the granite shores of the Northern 
 Sea? 
 
 Whence came the wonderful face and great 
 personality of Henry Irving? How strong, 
 how beautiful, how un-Saxon it was! I only 
 know that his mother was a Cornish woman. 
 Whence came the intense glowing imagina- 
 tion of the Brontes — so unlike the Miss- Aus- 
 ten-like calm of their predecessors? Again, I 
 only know that their mother was a Cornish 
 woman. Whence came this huge elfin crea- 
 ture, George Borrow, with his eagle head 
 perched on his rocklike shoulders, brown- 
 faced, white-headed, a king among men? 
 Where did he get that remarkable face, those 
 strange mental gifts, which place him by him- 
 self in literature? Once more, his father 
 was a Cornishman. Yes, there is something 
 strange, and weird, and great, lurking down 
 yonder in the great peninsula which juts into 
 the western sea. Borrow may, if he so
 
 96 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 pleases, call himself an East Anglian — "an 
 English Englishman," as he loved to term it 
 — but is it a coincidence that the one East 
 Anglian Lorn of Cornish blood was the one 
 who showed these strange quahties? The 
 birth was accidental. The qualities throw 
 back to the twilight of the world. 
 
 There are some authors from whom I shrink 
 because they are so voluminous that I feel that, 
 do what I may, I can never hope to be well 
 read in their works. Therefore, and very 
 weakly, I avoid them altogether. There is 
 Balzac, for example, with his hundred odd vol- 
 umes. I am told that some of them are mas- 
 terpieces and the rest pot-boilers, but that no 
 one is agreed which is which. Such an au- 
 thor makes an undue claim upon the little 
 span of mortal years. Because he asks too 
 much one is inclined to give him nothing at 
 all. Dumas, too! I stand on the edge of 
 him, and look at that huge crop, and content 
 myself with a sample here and there. But 
 no one could raise this objection to Borrow.
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 97 
 
 A month's reading — even for a leisurely reader 
 — will master all that he has written. There 
 are "Lavengro," "The Bible in Spain," 
 "Romany Rye," and, finally, if you wish to 
 go further, "Wild Wales." Only four books 
 — not much to found a great reputation upon 
 — but, then, there are no other four books 
 quite like them in the language. 
 
 He was a very strange man, bigoted, preju- 
 diced, obstinate, inclined to be sulky, as way- 
 ward as a man could be. So far his catalogue 
 of qualities does not seem to pick him as a 
 winner. But he had one great and rare gift. 
 He preserved through all his days a sense of 
 the great wonder and mystery of life — ^the 
 child sense which is so quickly dulled. Not 
 only did he retain it himself, but he was word- 
 master enough to make other people hark back 
 to it also. As he writes you cannot help see- 
 ing through his eyes, and nothing which his 
 eyes saw or his ear heard was ever dull or com- 
 monplace. It was all strange, mystic, with 
 some deeper meaning struggling always to the
 
 98 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 light. If he chronicled his conversation with 
 a washerwoman there was something arresting 
 in the words he said, something singular in her 
 reply. If he met a man in a puhlic-house one 
 felt, after reading his account, that one 
 would wish to know more of that man. If 
 he approached a town he saw and made you 
 see — not a collection of commonplace houses 
 or frowsy streets, but something very strange 
 and wonderful, the winding river, the noble 
 bridge, the old castle, the shadows of the 
 dead. Every human being, every object, was 
 not so much a thing in itself, as a symbol and 
 reminder of the past. He looked through a 
 man at that which the man represented. 
 Was his name Welsh? Then in an instant 
 the individual is forgotten and he is off, 
 dragging you in his train, to ancient Britons, 
 intrusive Saxons, unheard-of bards, Owen 
 Glendower, mountain raiders and a thousand 
 fascinating things. Or is it a Danish name? 
 He leaves the individual in all his modern 
 commonplace while he flies off to huge skulls
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 99 
 
 at Hythe (in parenthesis I may remark that 
 I have examined the said skulls with some 
 care, and they seemed to me to be rather below 
 the human average), to Vikings, Berserkers, 
 Varangians, Harald Haardraada, and the in- 
 nate wickedness of the Pope. To Borrow all 
 roads lead to Rome. 
 
 But, my word, what English the fellow 
 could write ! What an organ-roll he could get 
 into his sentences! How nervous and vital 
 and vivid it all is! 
 
 There is music in every line of it if you 
 have been blessed with an ear for the music 
 of prose. Take the chapter in "Lavengro" 
 of how the screaming horror came upon his 
 spirit when he was encamped in the Dingle. 
 The man who wrote that has caught the true 
 mantle of Bunyan and Defoe. And, observe 
 the art of it, under all the simplicity — notice, 
 for example, the curious weird effect produced 
 by the studied repetition of the word "dingle" 
 coming ever round and round like the master- 
 note in a chime. Or take the passage about
 
 100 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 Britain towards the end of "The Bihle in 
 Spain." I hate quoting from these master- 
 pieces, if only for the very selfish reason that 
 my poor setting cannot afford to show up 
 brilliants. None the less, cost what it may, 
 let me transcribe that one noble piece of im- 
 passioned prose — 
 
 "O England! long, long may it be ere the 
 sun of thy glory sink beneath the wave 
 of darkness ! Though gloomy and portentous 
 clouds are now gathering rapidly around thee, 
 still, still may it please the Almighty to dis- 
 perse them, and to grant thee a futurity 
 longer in duration and still brighter in renown 
 than thy past! Or, if thy doom be at hand, 
 may that doom be a noble one, and worthy 
 of her who has been styled the Old Queen of 
 the waters! May thou sink, if thou dost 
 sink, amidst blood and flame, with a mighty 
 noise, causing more than one nation to par- 
 ticipate in thy downfall! Of all fates, may 
 it please the Lord to preserve thee from a
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 101 
 disgraceful and a slow decay; becoming, ere 
 extinct, a scorn and a mockery for those self- 
 same foes who now, though they envy and 
 abhor thee, still fear thee, nay even against 
 their will, honor and respect thee. . . . 
 Remove from thee the false prophets, who 
 have seen vanity and divined lies; who have 
 daubed thy wall with untempered mortar, that 
 it may fall; who see visions of peace where 
 there is no peace; who have strengthened the 
 hands of the wicked, and made the heart of 
 the righteous sad. Oh, do this, and fear not 
 the result, for either shall thy end be a ma- 
 jestic and an enviable one; or God shall per- 
 petuate thy reign upon the waters, thou Old 
 Queen 1" 
 
 Or take the fight with the Flaming Tin- 
 man. It's too long for quotation — but read it, 
 read every word of it. Where in the language 
 can you find a stronger, more condensed and 
 more restrained narrative? I have seen with 
 my own eyes many a noble fight, more than
 
 102 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 one international battle, where the best of two 
 great countries have been pitted against each 
 other — yet the second-hand impression of Sor- 
 row's description leaves a more vivid remem- 
 brance upon my mind than any of them. This 
 is the real witchcraft of letters. 
 
 He was a great fighter himself. He has 
 left a secure reputation in other than literary 
 circles — circles which would have been amazed 
 to learn that he was a \mter of books. With 
 his natural advantages, his six foot three of 
 height and his staglike agilitj^ he could hardly 
 fail to be formidable. But he was a scientific 
 sparrer as well, though he had, I have been 
 told, a curious sprawling fashion of his own. 
 And how his heart was in it — how he loved 
 the fighting men! You remember his thumb- 
 nail sketches of his heroes. If you don't I 
 must quote one, and if you do you will be glad 
 to read it again — 
 
 "There's Cribb, the Champion of England, 
 and perhaps the best man in England; there
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 103 
 he is, with his huge, massive figure, and face 
 wonderfully like that of a lion. There is 
 Belcher, the younger, not the mighty one, who 
 is gone to his place, but the Teucer Belcher, 
 the most scientific pugilist that ever entered 
 a ring, only wanting strength to be I won't 
 say what. He appears to walk before me 
 now, as he did that evening, with his white hat, 
 white great-coat, thin genteel figure, springy 
 step, and keen determined eye. Crosses him, 
 what a contrast! Grim, savage Shelton, who 
 has a civil word for nobody, and a hard blow 
 for anybody. Hard! One blow given with 
 the proper play of his athletic arm will unsense 
 a giant. Yonder individual, who strolls about 
 with his hands behind him, supporting his 
 brown coat lappets, undersized, and who looks 
 anything but what he is, is the king of the 
 light-weights, so-called — Randall! The terri- 
 ble Randall, who has Irish blood in his veins; 
 not the better for that, nor the worse ; and not 
 far from him is his last antagonist, Ned Tur- 
 ner, who, though beaten by him, still thinks
 
 104 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 himself as good a man, in whicli he is, per- 
 haps, right, for it was a near thing. But how 
 shall I name them all? They were there by 
 dozens, and all tremendous in their way. 
 There was Bulldog Hudson, and fearless 
 Scroggins, who beat the conqueror of Sam the 
 Jew. There was Black Richmond — no, he 
 was not there, but I knew him well ; he was the 
 most dangerous of blacks, even with a broken 
 thigh. There was Purcell, who could never 
 conquer until all seemed over with him. There 
 was — ^what! shall I name thee last? Ay, why 
 not? I believe that thou art the last of all that 
 strong family still above the sod, where mayst 
 thou long continue — true piece of English 
 stuff — Tom of Bedford. Hail to thee, Tom 
 of Bedford, or by whatever name it may please 
 thee to be called. Spring or Winter! Hail 
 to thee, six-foot Englishman of the brown 
 eye, worthy to have carried a six-foot bow at 
 riodden, where England's yeomen triumphed 
 over Scotland's King, his clans and chivalry. 
 Hail to thee, last of English bruisers, after all
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 105 
 the many victories which thou hast achieved 
 ' — ^true Enghsh victories, unbought by yellow 
 gold." 
 
 Those are words from the heart. Long 
 may it be before we lose the fighting blood 
 which has come to us from of old! In a 
 world of peace we shall at last be able to root 
 it from our natures. In a world which is 
 armed to the teeth it is the last and only guar- 
 antee of our future. Neither our numbers, 
 nor our wealth, nor the waters which guard 
 us can hold us safe if once the old iron passes 
 from our spirit. Barbarous, perhaps — but 
 there are possibilities for barbarism, and none 
 in this wide world for effeminacy. 
 
 Borrow's views of literature and of literary 
 men were curious. Publisher and brother 
 author, he hated them with a fine compre- 
 hensive hatred. In all his books I cannot re- 
 call a word of commendation to any living 
 writer, nor has he posthumous praise for those 
 of the generation immediately preceding.
 
 106 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 Southey, indeed, he commends with what 
 most would regard as exaggerated warmth, 
 but for the rest he who Hved when Dickens, 
 Thackeray, and Tennyson were all in their 
 glorious prime, looks fixedly past them at 
 some obscure Dane or forgotten Welshman. 
 The reason was, I expect, that his proud soul 
 was bitterly wounded by his own early failures 
 and slow recognition. He knew himself to be 
 a chief in the clan, and when the clan heeded 
 him not he withdrew in haughty disdain. 
 Look at his proud, sensitive face and you hold 
 the key to his life. 
 
 Harking back and talking of pugilism, I 
 recall an incident which gave me pleasure. A 
 friend of mine read a pugilistic novel called 
 "Rodney Stone" to a famous Australian 
 prize-fighter, stretched upon a bed of mortal 
 sickness. The dying gladiator listened with 
 intent interest but keen, professional criticism 
 to the combats of the novel. The reader had 
 got to the point where the young amateur 
 fights the brutal Berks. Berks is winded, but
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 107 
 holds his adversary off with a stiff left arm. 
 The amateur's second in the story, an old 
 prize-fighter, shouts some advice to him as to 
 how to deal with the situation. "That's right. 
 
 By he's got him!" yelled the stricken man 
 
 in the bed. Who cares for critics after that? 
 You can see my own devotion to the ring 
 in that trio of brown volumes which stand, 
 ajjpropriately enough, upon the flank of Bor- 
 row. They are the three volumes of *'Pugi- 
 listica," given me years ago by my old 
 friend, Robert Barr, a mine in which you can 
 never pick for half an hour without striking 
 it rich. Alas! for the horrible slang of those 
 days, the vapid, witless Corinthian talk, with 
 its ogles and it fogies, its pointless jokes, its 
 maddening habit of italicizing a word or two 
 in every sentence. Even these stern and 
 desperate encounters, fit sports for the men 
 of Albuera and Waterloo, become dull and 
 vulgar, in that dreadful jargon. You have to 
 turn to Hazlitt's account of the encounter 
 between the Gasman and the Bristol Bull, to
 
 108 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 feel the savage strength of it all. It is a 
 hardened reader who does not wince even in 
 print before that frightful right-hander which 
 felled the giant, and left him in "red ruin" 
 from ej^ebrow to jaw. But even if there be 
 no Hazlitt present to describe such a combat 
 it is a poor imagination which is not fired by 
 the deeds of the humble heroes who lived 
 once so vividly upon earth, and now only ap- 
 peal to faithful ones in these little-read pages. 
 They were picturesque creatures, men of great 
 force of character and will, who reached the 
 limits of human bravery and endurance. 
 There is Jackson on the cover, gold upon 
 brown, "gentleman Jackson," Jackson of the 
 balustrade calf and the noble head, who wrote 
 his name with an 88-pound weight dangling 
 from his little finger. 
 
 Here is a pen-portrait of him by one who 
 knew him well — 
 
 "I can see him now as I saw him in '84 
 walking down Holborn Hill, towards Smith-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 109 
 field. He had on a scarlet coat worked in gold 
 at the buttonholes, ruffles and frill of fine lace, 
 a small white stock, no collar (they were not 
 then invented) , a looped hat with a broad black 
 band, buff knee-breeches and long silk strings, 
 striped white silk stockings, pumps and paste 
 buckles; his waistcoat was pale blue satin, 
 sprigged with white. It was impossible to 
 look on his fine ample chest, his noble shoul- 
 ders, his waist (if anything too small), his 
 large but not too large hips, his balustrade calf 
 and beautifully turned but not over delicate 
 ankle, his firm foot and peculiarly small hand, 
 without thinking that nature had sent him on 
 earth as a model. On he went at a good five 
 miles and a half an hour, the envy of all men 
 and the admiration of all women." 
 
 Now, that is a discriminating portrait — a 
 portrait which really helps you to see that 
 which the writer sets out to describe. After 
 reading it one can understand why even in 
 reminiscent sporting desci'iptions of those old
 
 110 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 days, amid all the Toms and Bills and Jacks, 
 it is always Mr. John Jackson. He was the 
 friend and instructor of Byron and of half 
 the bloods in town. Jackson it was who, in 
 the heat of combat, seized the Jew Mendoza 
 by the hair, and so ensured that the pugs for 
 ever afterwards should be a close-cropped 
 race. Inside you see the square face of old 
 Broughton, the supreme fighting man of the 
 eighteenth century, the man whose humble am- 
 bition it was to begin with the pivot man of 
 the Prussian Guard, and work his way through 
 the regiment. He had a chronicler, the good 
 Captain Godfrey, who has written some Eng- 
 lish which would take some beating. How 
 about this passage? — 
 
 "He stops as regularly as the swordsman, 
 and carries his blows truly in the line; he 
 steps not back distrustful of himself, to stop 
 a blow, and puddle in the return, with an arm 
 unaided by his body, producing but flyflap 
 blows. IN^o! Broughton steps boldly and
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 111 
 firmly in, bids a welcome to the coming blow; 
 receives it with his guardian arm; then, with 
 a general summons of his swelling muscles, 
 and his firm body seconding his arm, and sup- 
 plying it with all its weight, pours the pile- 
 driving force upon liis man." 
 
 One would like a little more from the gal- 
 lant Captain. Poor Broughton! He fought 
 once too often. "Why, damn you, you're 
 beat !" cried the Royal Duke. "Not beat, your 
 highness, but I can't see my man!" cried the 
 blinded old hero. Alas, there is the tragedy 
 of the ring as it is of life ! The wave of youth 
 surges ever upwards, and the wave that went 
 before is swept sobbing on to the shingle. 
 "Youth will be served," said the terse old pugs. 
 But what so sad as the downfall of the old 
 champion ! Wise Tom Spring — Tom of Bed- 
 ford, as Borrow calls him — had the wit to 
 leave the ring unconquered in the prime of 
 his fame. Cribb also stood out as a cham- 
 pion. But Broughton, Slack, Belcher, and
 
 112 THROUGH THE iVIAGIC DOOR 
 the rest — their end was one common tragedy. 
 The latter days of the figliting men were 
 often curious and unexpected, though as a 
 rule they were short-lived, for the alternation 
 of the excess of their normal existence and 
 the asceticism of their training undermined 
 their constitution. Their popularity among 
 both men and women was their undoing, and 
 the king of the ring went down at last before 
 that deadliest of light-weights, the microbe of 
 tubercle, or some equally fatal and perhaps 
 less reputable bacillus. The crockiest of spec- 
 tators had a better chance of life than the mag- 
 nificent young athlete whom he had come to 
 admire. Jem Belcher died at 30, Hooper at 
 31, Pearce, the Game Chicken, at 32, Turner 
 at 35, Hudson at 38, Randall, the Nonpareil, 
 at 34. Occasionally, when they did reach ma- 
 ture age, their lives took the strangest turns. 
 Gully, as is well known, became a wealthy 
 man, and Member for Pontefract in the Re- 
 form Parliament. Humphries developed into 
 a successful coal merchant. Jack Martin be-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 113 
 came a convinced teetotaller and vegetarian. 
 Jem Ward, the Black Diamond, developed 
 considerable powers as an artist. Cribb, 
 Spring", Langan, and many others, were suc- 
 cessful publicans. Strangest of all, perhaps, 
 was Broughton, who spent his old age haunt- 
 ing every sale of old pictures and hric-a-brac. 
 One who saw him has recorded his impression 
 of the silent old gentleman, clad in old-fash- 
 ioned garb, with his catalogue in his hand — 
 Broughton, once the terror of England, and 
 now the harmless and gentle collector. 
 
 Many of them, as was but natural, died 
 violent deaths, some by accident and a few 
 by their own hands. No man of the first 
 class ever died in the ring. The nearest ap- 
 proach to it was the singular and mournful 
 fate which befell Simon Byrne, the brave 
 Irishman, who had the misfortune to cause the 
 death of his antagonist, Angus INIackay, and 
 afterwards met his own end at the hands of 
 Deaf Burke. Neither Bj^-ne nor INIackay 
 could, however, be said to be boxers of the
 
 114 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 very first rank. It certainly would appear, 
 if we may argue from the prize-ring, that the 
 human machine becomes more delicate and is 
 more sensitive to jar or shock. In the early 
 days a fatal end to a fight was exceedingly 
 rare. Gradually such tragedies became rather 
 more common, until now even with the gloves 
 they have shocked us by their frequency, and 
 we feel that the rude play of our forefathers 
 is indeed too rough for a more highly organ- 
 ized generation. Still, it may help us to clear 
 our minds of cant if we remember that within 
 two or three years the hunting-field and the 
 steeple-chase claim more victims than the prize- 
 ring has done in two centuries. 
 
 Many of these men had served their coun- 
 try well with that strength and courage which 
 brought them fame. Cribb was, if I mistake 
 not, in the Royal Navy. So was the terrible 
 dwarf Scroggins, all chest and shoulders, 
 whose springing hits for many a year carried 
 all before them until the canny Welshman, 
 Ned Turner, stopped his career, only to be
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 115 
 stopped in turn by the brilliant Irishman, Jack 
 Randall. Shaw, who stood high among the 
 heavy-weights, was cut to pieces by the French 
 Cuirassiers in the first charge at Waterloo. 
 The brutal Berks died greatly in the breach 
 of Badajos. The lives of these men stood for 
 something, and that was just the one supreme 
 thing which the times called for — an unflinch- 
 ing endurance which could bear up against a 
 world in arms. Look at Jem Belcher — beau- 
 tiful, heroic Jem, a manlier Byron — but there, 
 this is not an essay on the old prize-ring, and 
 one man's lore is another man's bore. Let 
 us pass those three low-down, unjustifiable, 
 fascinating volumes, and on to nobler topics 
 beyond !
 
 VI 
 
 Which are the great short stories of the Eng- 
 lish language? Not a bad basis for a debate! 
 This I am sure of: that there are far fewer 
 supremely good short stories than there are 
 supremely good long books. It takes more 
 exquisite skill to carve the cameo than the 
 statue. But the strangest thing is that the 
 two excellences seem to be separate and even 
 antagonistic. Skill in the one by no means 
 ensures skill in the other. The great masters of 
 our literature, Fielding, Scott, Dickens, 
 Thackeray, Reade, have left no single short 
 story of outstanding merit behind them, with 
 the possible exception of Wandering Willie's 
 Tale in "Red Gauntlet." On the other hand, 
 men who have been very great in the short 
 story, Stevenson, Poe, and Bret Harte, have 
 
 116
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 117 
 
 written no great book. The champion sprinter 
 is seldom a five-miler as well. 
 
 Well, now, if you had to choose your team 
 whom would you put in ? You have not really 
 a large choice. What are the points by which 
 you judge them? You w^ant strength, nov- 
 elty, compactness, intensity of interest, a single 
 vivid impression left upon the mind. Poe is 
 the master of all. I may remark by the way 
 that it is the sight of his green cover, the next 
 in order upon my favorite shelf, which has 
 started this train of thought. Poe is, to my 
 mind, the supreme original short story writer 
 of all time. His brain was like a seed-pod full 
 of seeds which flew carelessly around, and 
 from which have sprung nearly all our modern 
 types of story. Just think of what he did in 
 his offhand, prodigal fashion, seldom troubling 
 to repeat a success, but pushing on to some new 
 achievement. To him must be ascribed the 
 monstrous progeny of writers on the detection 
 of crime — ''quorum pars parva fuir Each 
 may find some little development of his own,
 
 118 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 but his main art must trace back to those ad- 
 mirable stories of ]Monsieur Dupin, so wonder- 
 ful in their masterful force, their reticence, 
 their quick dramatic point. After all, men- 
 tal acuteness is the one quality which can be 
 ascribed to the ideal detective, and when that 
 has once been admirably done, succeeding writ- 
 ers must necessarily be content for all time to 
 follow in the same main track. But not only is 
 Poe the originator of the detective storj^; all 
 treasure-hunting, crj^ptogram-solving yarns 
 trace back to his "Gold Bug," just as all 
 pseudo-scientific Verne-and-Wells stories have 
 their prototypes in the "Voyage to the 3Ioon," 
 and the "Case of jNlonsieur Valdemar." If 
 every man who receives a cheque for a story 
 which owes its springs to Poe were to pay 
 tithe to a monument for the master, he would 
 have a pyramid as big as that of Cheops. 
 
 And yet I could only give him two places 
 in my team. One would be for the "Gold 
 Bug," the other for the "JNIurder in the Rue
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 119 
 Morgue." I do not see how either of those 
 could be bettered. But I would not admit 
 perfect excellence to any other of his stories. 
 These two have a proportion and a perspective 
 which are lacking in the others, the horror 
 or weirdness of the idea intensified b}^ the cool- 
 ness of the narrator and of the principal 
 actor, Dupin in the one case and Le Grand 
 in the other. The same may be said of Bret 
 Harte, also one of those great short story tell- 
 ers who proved himself incapable of a longer 
 flight. He was always like one of his own 
 gold-miners who struck a rich pocket, but found 
 no continuous reef. The pocket was, alas, a 
 very limited one, but the gold was of the best. 
 "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "Tennes- 
 see's Partner" are both, I think, worthy of a 
 place among my immortals. They are, it is 
 true, so tinged with Dickens as to be almost 
 parodies of the master, but they have a sym- 
 metry and satisfying completeness as short 
 stories to which Dickens himself never at-
 
 ISO THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 tained. The man who can read those two sto- 
 ries without a gulp in the throat is not a man 
 I envy. 
 
 And Stevenson? Surely he shall have two 
 places also, for where is a finer sense of what 
 the short story can do? He wrote, in my 
 judgment, two masterpieces in his life, and 
 each of them is essentially a short story, 
 though the one happened to be published as 
 a volume. The one is "Dr. Jekyll and IMr. 
 Hyde," which, whether you take it as a vivid 
 narrative or as a wonderfully deep and true 
 allegory, is a supremely fine bit of work. The 
 other story of my choice would be "The 
 Pavilion on the Links" — the very model of 
 dramatic narrative. That story stamped itself 
 so clearly on my brain when I read it in Corn- 
 hill that when I came across it again many 
 years afterwards in volume form, I was able 
 instantly to recognize two small modifications 
 of the text — each verj^ much for the worse — 
 from the oris^inal form. Thev were small 
 things, but they seemed somehow like a
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 121 
 chip on a perfect statue. Surely it is only 
 a very fine work of art which could leave so 
 definite an impression as that. Of course, 
 there are a dozen other of his stories which 
 would put the average writer's best work to 
 shame, all with the strange Stevenson glamour 
 upon them, of which I may discourse later, 
 but only to those two would I be disposed to 
 admit that complete excellence which would 
 pass them into such a team as this. 
 
 And who else? If it be not an imperti- 
 nence to mention a contemporary I should 
 certainly have a brace from Rudyard Kipling. 
 His power, his compression, his dramatic sense, 
 his way of glowing suddenly into a vivid flame, 
 all mark him as a great master. But which 
 are we to choose from that long and varied 
 collection, many of which have claims to the 
 highest? Speaking from memory, I should 
 say that the stories of his which have impressed 
 me most are "The Drums of the Fore and 
 Aft," "The Man who Would be King," "The 
 Man who Was," and "The Brushwood Boy."
 
 122 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 Perhaps, on the whole, it is the first two which 
 I should choose to add to my list of master- 
 pieces. 
 
 They are stories which invite criticism and 
 yet defy it. The great batsman at cricket is 
 the man who can play an unorthodox game, 
 take every liberty which is denied to inferior 
 players, and yet succeed brilliantly in the 
 face of his disregard of law. So it is here. 
 I should think the model of these stories is 
 the most dangerous that any young writer 
 could follow. There is digression, that most 
 deadly fault in the short narrative; there is 
 incoherence, there is want of proportion which 
 makes the story stand still for pages and bound 
 forward in a few sentences. But genius over- 
 rides all that, just as the great cricketer hooks 
 the off ball and glides the straight one to leg. 
 There is a dash, an exuberance, a full-blooded, 
 confident mastery which carries everything be- 
 fore it. Yes, no team of immortals would be 
 complete which did not contain at least two 
 representatives of Kipling.
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 123 
 And now whom? Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 never appealed in the highest degree to me. 
 The fault, I am sure, is my own, hut I always 
 seemed to crave stronger fare than he gave 
 me. It was too subtle, too elusive, for effect. 
 Indeed, I have been more affected by some 
 of the short work of his son Julian, though 
 I can quite understand the high artistic claims 
 which the senior writer has, and the delicate 
 charm of his style. There is Bulwer Lytton as 
 a claimant. His "Haunted and the Haunters" 
 is the very best ghost story that I know. As 
 such I should include it in my list. There was 
 a story, too, in one of the old Blachwoods — 
 "JNIetempsychosis" it was called, which left so 
 deep an impression upon my mind that I 
 should be inclined, though it is many years 
 since I read it, to number it with the best. 
 Another story which has the characteristics of 
 great work is Grant Allen's "John Creedy." 
 So good a story upon so philosophic a basis 
 deserves a place among the best. There is 
 some first-class work to be picked also from
 
 124 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 the contemporary work of Wells and of Quil- 
 ler-Couch which reaches a high standard. 
 One little sketch— "Old CEson" in "Noughts 
 and Crosses" — is, in my opinion, as good as 
 anything of the kind which I have ever read. 
 
 And all this didactic talk comes from look- 
 ing at that old green cover of Poe. I am 
 sure that if I had to name the few books 
 which have really influenced my own life I 
 should have to put this one second only to 
 Macaulay's Essays. I read it young when my 
 mind was plastic. It stimulated my imagina- 
 tion and set before me a supreme example of 
 dignity and force in the methods of telling a 
 story. It is not altogether a healthy influence, 
 perhaps. It turns the thoughts too forcibly to 
 the morbid and the strange. 
 
 He was a saturnine creature, devoid of hu- 
 mor and geniality, with a love for the gro- 
 tesque and the terrible. The reader must 
 himself furnish the counteracting qualities or 
 Poe may become a dangerous comrade. We 
 know along what perilous tracks and into what
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 125 
 deadly quagmires his strange mind led him, 
 down to that gray October Sunday morning, 
 when he was picked up, a dying man, on the 
 sidewalk at Baltimore, at an age which should 
 have seen him at the very prime of his strength 
 and his manhood. 
 
 I have said that I look upon Poe as the 
 world's supreme short story writer. His near- 
 est rival, I should say, was Maupassant. The 
 great Norman never rose to the extreme force 
 and originality of the American, but he had a 
 natural inherited power, an inborn instinct 
 towards the right way of making his effects, 
 which mark him as a great master. He pro- 
 duced stories because it was in him to do so, 
 as naturally and as perfectly as an apple tree 
 produces apples. What a fine, sensitive, 
 artistic touch it is ! How easily and delicately 
 the points are made ! How clear and nervous 
 is his style, and how free from that redundancy 
 which disfigures so much of our English work! 
 He pares it down to the quick all the time. 
 
 I cannot write the name of Maupassant
 
 126 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 without recalling what was either a spiritual 
 interposition or an extraordinary coincidence 
 in my own life. I had been traveling in 
 Switzerland and had visited, among other 
 places, that Gemmi Pass, where a huge cliff 
 separates a French from a German canton. 
 On the summit of this cliff was a small inn, 
 where we broke our journey. It was ex- 
 plained to us that, although the inn was in- 
 habited all the year round, still for about three 
 months in winter it was utterly isolated, be- 
 cause it could at any time only be approached 
 by winding paths on the mountain side, and 
 when these became obliterated by snow it was 
 impossible either to come up or to descend. 
 They could see the lights in the valley beneath 
 them, but were as lonely as if they lived in the 
 moon. So curious a situation naturally ap- 
 pealed to one's imagination, and I speedily 
 began to build up a short story in my own 
 mind, depending upon a group of strong an- 
 tagonistic characters being penned up in this 
 inn, loathing each other and yet utterly unable
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 127 
 to get away from each other's society, every 
 day bringing them nearer to tragedy. For a 
 week or so, as I traveled, I was turning over 
 the idea. 
 
 At the end of that time I returned through 
 France. Having nothing to read I happened 
 to buy a volume of Maupassant's Tales which 
 I had never seen before. The first story was 
 called "L'Auberge" (The Inn) — and as I ran 
 my eye down the printed page I was amazed 
 to see the two words, "Kandersteg" and 
 "Gemmi Pass." I settled down and read it 
 with ever-growing amazement. The scene 
 was laid in the inn I had visited. The plot 
 depended on the isolation of a group of peo- 
 ple through the snowfall. Everything that I 
 imagined was there, save that Maupassant had 
 brought in a savage hound. 
 
 Of course, the genesis of the thing is clear 
 enough. He had chanced to visit the inn, and 
 had been impressed as I had been by the same 
 train of thought. All that is quite intelligible. 
 But what is perfectly marvelous is that in
 
 128 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 that short journey I should have chanced to 
 buy the one book in all the world which would 
 prevent me from making a public fool of my- 
 self, for who would ever have believed that my 
 work was not an imitation? I do not think 
 that the hypothesis of coincidence can cover 
 the facts. It is one of several incidents in 
 my life which have convinced me of spiritual 
 interposition — of the promptings of some 
 beneficent force outside ourselves, which tries 
 to help us where it can. The old Catholic 
 doctrine of the Guardian Angel is not only a 
 beautiful one, but has in it, I believe, a real 
 basis of truth. 
 
 Or is it that our subliminal ego, to use the 
 jargon of the new psychology, or our astral, in 
 the terms of the new theology, can learn and 
 convey to the mind that which our own known 
 senses are unable to apprehend? But that is 
 too long a side track for us to turn down it. 
 
 When Maupassant chose he could run Poe 
 close in that domain of the strange and weird 
 which the American had made so entirely his
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 129 
 own. Have you read JNIaupassant's story 
 called "La Horla"? That is as good a bit 
 of diablerie as you could wish for. And the 
 Frenchman has, of course, far the broader 
 range. He has a keen sense of humor, 
 breaking out beyond all decorum in some of 
 his stories, but giving a pleasant sub-flavor 
 to all of them. And yet, when all is said, who 
 can doubt that the austere and dreadful Amer- 
 ican is far the greater and more original mind 
 of the two? 
 
 Talking of weird American stories, have 
 you ever read any of the works of Ambrose 
 Bierce? I have one of his works there, "In 
 the Midst of Life." This man had a flavor 
 quite his own, and was a great artist in his 
 way. It is not cheering reading, but it leaves 
 its mark upon you, and that is the proof of 
 good work. 
 
 I have often wondered where Poe got his 
 style. There is a somber majesty about his 
 best work, as if it were carved from polished 
 jet, which is peculiarly his own. I dare say if
 
 130 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 I took down that volume I could light any- 
 where upon a paragraph which would show 
 you what I mean. This is the kind of thing — 
 
 "Now there are fine tales in the volumes 
 of the Magi — in the iron-bound melancholy 
 volumes of the Magi. Therein, I say, are 
 glorious histories of the heaven and of the 
 earth, and of the mighty sea — and of the 
 genius that overruled the sea, and the earth, 
 and the lofty heaven. There was much lore, 
 too, in the sayings which were said by the 
 Sybils, and holy, holy things were heard of 
 old by the dim leaves which trembled round 
 Dodona, but as Allah liveth, that fable which 
 the Demon told me as he sat by my side in 
 the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most 
 wonderful of all." Or this sentence: "And 
 then did we, the seven, start from our seats in 
 horror, and stand trembling and aghast, for 
 the tones in the voice of the shadow were not 
 the tones of any one being, but of a multitude 
 of beings, and, varying in their cadences from
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 131 
 syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our ears 
 in the well-remembered and familiar accents of 
 many thousand departed friends." 
 
 Is there not a sense of austere dignity? 
 No man invents a style. It always derives 
 back from some influence, or, as is more usual, 
 it is a compromise between several influences. 
 I cannot trace Poe's. And yet if Hazlitt and 
 De Quincey had set forth to tell weird stories 
 they might have developed something of the 
 kind. 
 
 Now, by your leave, we will pass on to my 
 noble edition of "The Cloister and the 
 Hearth," the next volume on the left. 
 
 I notice, in glancing over my rambling re- 
 marks, that I classed "Ivanhoe" as the second 
 historical novel of the century. I dare say 
 there are many who would give "Esmond" the 
 first place, and I can quite understand their 
 position, although it is not my own. I recog- 
 nize the beauty of the style, the consistency 
 of the character-drawing, the absolutely per-
 
 132 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 feet Queen Anne atmosphere. There was 
 never an historical novel written by a man who 
 knew his period so thoroughly. But, great as 
 these virtues are, they are not the essential in 
 a novel. The essential in a novel is interest, 
 though Addison unkindly remarked that the 
 real essential was that the pastrycooks should 
 never run short of paper. Now "Esmond" 
 is, in my opinion, exceedingly interesting dur- 
 ing the campaigns in the Lowlands, and when 
 our Machiavelian hero, the Duke, comes in, and 
 also whenever Lord Mohun shows his ill- 
 omened face; but there are long stretches of 
 the story which are heavy reading. A pre- 
 eminently good novel must always advance and 
 never mark time. "Ivanhoe" never halts for 
 an instant, and that just makes its superiority 
 as a novel over "Esmond," though as a piece 
 of literature I think the latter is the more per- 
 fect. 
 
 No, if I had three votes, I should plump 
 them all for "The Cloister and the Hearth," 
 as being our greatest historical novel, and, in-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 133 
 deed, as being our greatest novel of any sort. 
 I think I may claim to have read most of the 
 more famous foreign novels of last century, 
 and (speaking only for myself and within 
 the limits of my reading) I have been more 
 impressed by that book of Reade's and by Tol- 
 stoi's "Peace and War" than by any others. 
 They seem to me to stand at the very top of 
 the century's fiction. There is a certain resem- 
 blance in the two — the sense of space, the num- 
 ber of figures, the way in which characters 
 di'op in and drop out. The Englishman is the 
 more romantic. The Russian is the more real 
 and earnest. But they are both great. 
 
 Think of what Reade does in that one book. 
 He takes the reader by the hand, and he leads 
 him away into the Middle Ages, and not a con- 
 ventional study-built Middle Age, but a period 
 quivering with life, full of folk who are as 
 human and real as a 'bus-load in Oxford 
 Street. He takes him through Holland, he 
 shows him the painters, the dykes, the life. He 
 leads him down the long line of the Rhine, the
 
 134 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 spinal marrow of Medieval Europe. He 
 shows him the dawn of printing, the begin- 
 nings of freedom, the life of the great mer- 
 cantile cities of South Germany, the state of 
 Italy, the artist-life of Rome, the monastic 
 institutions on the eve of the Reformation. 
 And all this between the covers of one book, so 
 naturally introduced, too, and told with such 
 vividness and spirit. Apart from the huge 
 scope of it, the mere study of Gerard's own 
 nature, his rise, his fall, his regeneration, the 
 whole pitiable tragedy at the end, make the 
 book a great one. It contains, I think, a 
 blending of knowledge with imagination, 
 which makes it stand alone in our literature. 
 Let any one read the "Autobiography of Ben- 
 venuto Cellini," and then Charles Reade's 
 picture of Medieval Roman life, if he wishes 
 to appreciate the way in which Reade has 
 collected his rough ore and has then smelted 
 it all down in his fiery imagination. It is 
 a good thing to have the industry to collect 
 facts. It is a greater and a rarer one to have
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 135 
 
 the tact to know how to use them when you 
 have got them. To be exact without pedantry, 
 and thorough without being dull, that should 
 be the ideal of the writer of historical romance. 
 
 Keade is one of the most perplexing figures 
 in our literature. Never was there a man so 
 hard to place. At his best he is the best we 
 have. At his worst he is below the level of 
 Surreyside melodrama. But his best have 
 weak pieces, and his worst have good. There 
 is always silk among his cotton, and cotton 
 among his silk. But, for all his flaws, the man 
 who, in addition to the great book of which 
 I have already spoken, wrote "It is Never Too 
 Late to Mend," "Hard Cash," "Foul Play," 
 and "Griffith Gaunt," must alwaj^s stand in 
 the very first rank of our novelists. 
 
 There is a quality of heart about his work 
 which I recognize nowhere else. He so abso- 
 lutely loves his own heroes and heroines, while 
 he so cordially detests his own villains, that he 
 sweeps your emotions along with his own. No 
 one has ever spoken warmly enough of the hu-
 
 136 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 inanity and the lovability of his women. It is 
 a rare gift — very rare for a man — this power 
 of drawing a human and dehghtful girl. If 
 there is a better one in nineteenth-century fic- 
 tion than JuHa Dodd I have never had the 
 pleasure of meeting her. A man who could 
 draw a character so delicate and so delightful, 
 and yet could write such an episode as that of 
 the Robber Inn in "The Cloister and the 
 Hearth," adventurous romance in its highest 
 form, has such a range of power as is granted 
 to few men. My hat is always ready to come 
 off to Charles Reade.
 
 VII 
 
 It is good to have the magic door shut behind 
 us. On the other side of that door are the 
 world and its troubles, hopes and fears, head- 
 aches and heartaches, ambitions and dis- 
 appointments; but within, as you lie back on 
 the green settee, and face the long lines of 
 your silent soothing comrades, there is only 
 peace of spirit and rest of mind in the com- 
 pany of the great dead. Learn to love, learn 
 to admire them ; learn to know what their com- 
 radeshi]) means; for until you have done so 
 the greatest solace and anodyne God has given 
 man have not yet shed their blessing upon you. 
 Here behind this magic door is the rest house, 
 where you may forget the past, enjoy the pres- 
 ent, and prepare for the future. 
 
 You who have sat with me before upon the 
 green settee are familiar with the upper shelf, 
 
 137
 
 138 TIIllOUGPI THE MAGIC DOOR 
 with the tattered INIacaulay, the dapper Gib- 
 bon, the drab Boswell, the oHve-green Scott, 
 the pied Borrow, and all the goodly company 
 who rub shoulders yonder. By the way, how 
 one wishes that one's dear friends would only 
 be friends also with each other. Whj^ should 
 Borrow snarl so churlishly at Scott? One 
 would have thought that noble spirit and ro- 
 mantic fancy would have charmed the huge 
 vagrant, and yet there is no word too bitter for 
 the younger man to use towards the elder. 
 The fact is that Borrow had one dangerous 
 virus in him — a poison which distorts the 
 whole vision — for he was a bigoted sectarian 
 in religion, seeing no virtue outside his own 
 interpretation of the great riddle. Down- 
 right heathendom, the blood-stained Berserk or 
 the chanting Druid, appealed to his mind 
 through his imagination, but the man of his 
 own creed and time who differed from him in 
 minutiae of ritual, or in the interpretation of 
 mystic passages, was at once evil to the bone, 
 and he had no charity of any sort for such a
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 139 
 person. Scott therefore, with his reverent re- 
 gard for old usages, became at once hateful 
 in his eyes. In any case he was a disap- 
 pointed man, the big Borrow, and I cannot 
 remember that he ever had much to say that 
 was good of any brother author. Only in the 
 bards of Wales and in the Scalds of the Sagas 
 did he seem to find his kindred spirits, though 
 it has been suggested that his complex nature 
 took this means of informing the world that he 
 could read both Cymric and Norse. But we 
 must not be unkind behind the magic door — 
 and yet to be charitable to the uncharitable is 
 surely the crown of virtue. 
 
 So much for the top line, concerning which 
 I have already gossiped for six sittings, but 
 there is no surcease for you, reader, for as you 
 see there is a second line, and yet a third, all 
 equally dear to my heart, and all appealing in 
 the same degree to my emotions and to my 
 memory. Be as patient as you may, while I 
 talk of these old friends, and tell you why I 
 love them, and all that they have meant to me
 
 140 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 in the past. If you picked any book from 
 that line you would be picking a little fiber 
 also from my mind, very small, no doubt, and 
 yet an intimate and essential part of what is 
 now myself. Hereditary impulses, personal 
 exj)eriences, books — those are the three forces 
 which go to the making of man. These are 
 the books. 
 
 This second line consists, as you see, of 
 novelists of the eighteenth century, or those 
 of them whom I regard as essential. After 
 all, putting aside single books, such as Sterne's 
 "Tristram Shandy," Goldsmith's "Vicar of 
 Wakefield," and Miss Burney's "Evelina," 
 there are only three authors who count, and 
 they in turn wrote only three books each, of 
 first-rate importance, so that by the mastery 
 of nine books one might claim to have a fairly 
 broad view of this most important and distinc- 
 tive branch of English literature. The three 
 men are, of course, Fielding, Richardson, and 
 Smollett. The books are: Richardson's 
 "Clarissa Harlowe," "Pamela," and "Sir
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 141 
 Charles Grandison"; Fielding's "Tom Jones," 
 "Joseph Andrews," and "Ameha"; Smollett's 
 "Peregrine Pickle," "Humphrey Clinker," 
 and "Roderick Random." There we have 
 the real work of the three great contempora- 
 ries who illuminated the middle of the eight- 
 eenth century — only nine volumes in all. Let 
 us walk around these nine volumes, therefore, 
 and see whether we cannot discriminate and 
 throw a little light, after this interval of a 
 hundred and fifty years, upon their compara- 
 tive aims, and how far they have justified them 
 by the permanent value of their work. A fat 
 little bookseller in the City, a rakehell wit of 
 noble blood, and a rugged Scotch surgeon 
 from the navy — those are the three strange im- 
 mortals who now challenge a comparison — 
 the three men who dominate the fiction of their 
 century, and to whom we owe it that the life 
 and the types of that century are familiar to 
 us, their fifth generation. 
 
 It is not a subject to be dogmatic upon, 
 for I can imagine that these three writers
 
 142 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 would appeal quite differently to every tem- 
 perament, and that whichever one might de- 
 sire to champion one could find arguments 
 to sustain one's choice. Yet I cannot think 
 that any large section of the critical puhlic 
 could maintain that Smollett was on the same 
 level as the other two. Ethically he is gross, 
 though his grossness is accompanied by a full- 
 blooded humor which is more mirth-compel- 
 ling than the more polished wit of his rivals. 
 I can remember in callow boyhood — puris om- 
 nia pura — reading "Peregrine Pickle," and 
 laughing until I cried over the Banquet in the 
 Fashion of the Ancients. I read it again in 
 my manhood with the same effect, though with 
 a greater appreciation of its inherent bestial- 
 ity. That merit, a gross primitive merit, he 
 has in a high degree, but in no other respect 
 can he challenge comparison with either Field- 
 ing or Richardson. His view of life is far 
 more limited, his characters less varied, his in- 
 cidents less distinctive, and his thoughts less
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 143 
 deep. Assuredly I, for one, should award him 
 the third place in the trio. 
 
 But how about Richardson and Fielding? 
 There is indeed a competition of giants. Let 
 us take the points of each in turn, and then 
 compare them with each other. 
 
 There is one characteristic, the rarest and 
 subtlest of all, which each of them had in a 
 supreme degree. Each could draw the most 
 delightful women — the most perfect women, 
 I think, in the whole range of our literature. 
 If the eighteenth-century women were like 
 that, then the eighteenth-century men got a 
 great deal more than they ever deserved. 
 They had such a charming little dignity of 
 their own, such good sense, and j^et such dear, 
 prett}^ dainty ways, so human and so charm- 
 ing, that even now they become our ideals. 
 One cannot come to know them without a 
 double emotion, one of respectful devotion to- 
 wards themselves, and the other of abhorrence 
 for the herd of swine who suiTounded them.
 
 144 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 Pamela, Plarriet Byron, Clarissa, Amelia, and 
 Sophia Western were all equally delightful, 
 and it was not the negative charm of the inno- 
 cent and colorless woman, the amiahle doll of 
 the nineteenth century, but it was a beauty of 
 nature depending upon an alert mind, clear 
 and strong principles, true womanly feelings, 
 and complete feminine charm. In this respect 
 our rival authors may claim a tie, for I could 
 not give a preference to one set of these per- 
 fect creatures over another. The plump little 
 printer and the worn-out man-about-town had 
 each a supreme woman in his mind. 
 
 But their men ! Alas, what a drop is there ! 
 To say that we are all capable of doing what 
 Tom Jones did — as I have seen stated — is the 
 worst form of inverted cant, the cant which 
 makes us out worse than we are. It is a libel 
 on mankind to say that a man who truly loves 
 a woman is usually false to her, and, above 
 all, a libel that he should be false in the vile 
 fashion which aroused good Tom Newcome's 
 indignation. Tom Jones was no more fit to
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 14*5 
 touch the hem of Sophia's dress than Captain 
 Booth was to be the mate of Ameha. Never 
 once has Fielding drawn a gentleman, save 
 perhaps Squire Alworthy. A lusty, brawling, 
 good-hearted, material creature was the best 
 that he could fashion. Where, in his heroes, 
 is there one touch of distinction, of spiritual- 
 ity, of nobility? Here I think that the ple- 
 beian printer has done very much better than 
 the aristocrat. Sir Charles Grandison is a 
 very noble type — spoiled a little by over-cod- 
 dling on the part of his creator perhaps, but 
 a very high-souled and exquisite gentleman 
 all the same. Had he married Sophia or 
 Amelia I should not have forbidden the banns. 
 
 Even the persevering Mr. B and the too 
 
 amorous Lovelace wxre, in spite of their ab- 
 errations, men of gentle nature, and had pos- 
 sibilities of greatness and tenderness within 
 them. Yes, I cannot doubt that Richardson 
 drew the higher type of man — and that in 
 Grandison he has done what has seldom or 
 never been bettered.
 
 146 TPIROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 Richardson was also the subtler and deeper 
 writer in my opinion. He concerns liimself 
 A\dth fine consistent character-drawing, and 
 with a very searching analysis of the human 
 heart, which is done so easily, and in such sim- 
 ple English, that the depth and truth of it 
 only come upon reflection. He condescends 
 to none of those scuffles and buffetings and 
 pantomime rallies which enliven, but cheapen, 
 many of Fielding's pages. The latter has, it 
 may be granted, a broader view of life. He 
 had personal acquaintance of circles far above, 
 and also far below, any which the douce cit- 
 izen, who was his rival, had ever been able or 
 willing to explore. His pictures of low Lon- 
 don life, the prison scenes in "Amelia," the 
 thieves' kitchens in "Jonathan Wild," the 
 sponging houses and the slums are as vivid and 
 as complete as those of his friend Hogarth — 
 the most British of artists, even as Fielding 
 was the most British of writers. But the 
 greatest and most permanent facts of life are 
 to be found in the smallest circles. Two men
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 147 
 and a woman may furnish either the tragedian 
 or the comedian with the most satisfying 
 theme. And so, although his range was Hm- 
 ited, Richardson knew very clearly and very 
 thoroughly just that knowledge which was es- 
 sential for his purpose. Pamela, the perfect 
 woman of humble life, Clarissa the perfect 
 lady, Grandison the ideal gentleman — these 
 were the three figures on which he lavished 
 his most loving art. And now, after one hun- 
 dred and fifty years, I do not know where we 
 may find more satisfying types. 
 
 He was prolix, it may be admitted, but who 
 could bear to have him cut? He loved to 
 sit down and tell you just all about it. His 
 use of letters for his narratives made this gos- 
 sipy stjde more easy. First lie writes and he 
 tells all that passed. You have his letter. 
 She at the same time ^vrites to her friend, and 
 also states her views. This also you see. 
 The friends in each case reply, and you have 
 the advantage of their comments and advice. 
 You really do know all about it before you
 
 148 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 finish. It may be a little wearisome at first, 
 if you have been accustomed to a more 
 hustling style with fireworks in every chapter. 
 But gradually it creates an atmosphere in 
 which you live, and you come to know these 
 people, with their characters and their trou- 
 bles, as you laiow no others of the dream- 
 folk fiction. Three times as long as an or- 
 dinary book no doubt, but why grudge the 
 time? What is the hurry. Surely it is bet- 
 ter to read one masterpiece than three books 
 which will leave no permanent impression on 
 the mind. 
 
 It was all attuned to the sedate life of that, 
 the last of the quiet centuries. In the lonely 
 country-house, with few letters and fewer 
 papers, do you suppose that the readers ever 
 complained of the length of a book, or could 
 have too much of the happy Pamela or of the 
 unhappy Clarissa? It is only under extraor- 
 dinary circumstances that one can now get 
 into that receptive frame of mind which was 
 normal then. Such an occasion is recorded by
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 149 
 JNIacaulay, when he tells how in some Indian 
 hill station, where books were rare, he let loose 
 a copy of "Clarissa." The effect was what 
 might have been expected. Richardson in a 
 suitable environment went through the com- 
 munity like a mild fever. They lived him, 
 and dreamed him, until the whole episode 
 passed into literary history, never to be for- 
 gotten by those who experienced it. It is tuned 
 for every ear. That beautiful style is so cor- 
 rect and yet so simple that there is no page 
 which a scholar may not applaud nor a serv- 
 ant-maid understand. 
 
 Of course, there are obvious disadvantages 
 to the tale which is told in letters. Scott re- 
 verted to it in "Guy Mannering," and there 
 are other conspicuous successes, but vividness 
 is always gained at the expense of a strain 
 upon the reader's good-nature and credulity. 
 One feels that these constant details, these 
 long conversations, could not possibly have 
 been recorded in such a fashion. The indig- 
 nant and dishevelled heroine could not sit
 
 150 THROUGH THE IMAGIC DOOR 
 down and record licr escape M-ith such cool 
 minuteness of description. Richardson does 
 it as well as it could be done, but it remains 
 intrinsically faulty. Fielding, using the third 
 person, broke all the fetters which bound his 
 rival, and gave a freedom and personal au- 
 thority to the novel which it had never before 
 enjoyed. There at least he is the master. 
 
 And yet, on the whole, my balance inclines 
 towards Richardson, though I dare say I am 
 one in a hundred in thinking so. First of 
 all, beyond anything I may have already 
 urged, he had the supreme credit of having 
 been the first. Surely the originator should 
 have a higher place than the imitator, even if 
 in imitating he should also improve and am- 
 plify. It is Richardson and not Fielding who 
 is the father of the English novel, the man 
 who first saw that without romantic gallan- 
 try, and without bizarre imaginings, enthrall- 
 ing stories may be made from everyday life, 
 told in everj^day language. This was his 
 great new departure. So entirely was Field-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 151 
 ing his imitator, or rather perhaps his paro- 
 dist, that with supreme audacity (some would 
 say brazen impudence) he used poor Richard- 
 son's own characters, taken from "Pamela" 
 in his own first novel, "Joseph Andrews," and 
 used them too for the unkind purpose of rid- 
 iculing them. As a matter of literary ethics, 
 it is as if Thackeray wrote a novel bringing in 
 Pickwick and Sam Weller in order to show 
 what faulty characters these were. It is no 
 wonder that even the gentle little printer grew 
 wrath, and alluded to his rival as a somewhat 
 unscrupulous man. 
 
 And then there is the vexed question of 
 morals. Surely in talking of this also, there 
 is a good deal of inverted cant among a cer- 
 tain class of critics. The inference appears 
 to be that there is some subtle connection be- 
 tween immorality and art, as if the handling 
 of the lewd, or the depicting of it, were in 
 some sort the hallmark of the true artist. It 
 is not difficult to handle or depict. On the 
 contrary, it is so easy, and so essentially dra-
 
 152 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 matic in many of its forms, that the tempta- 
 tion to employ it is ever present. It is the 
 easiest and cheapest of all methods of creating 
 a spurious eifect. The difficulty does not lie 
 in doing it. The difficulty lies in avoiding it. 
 But one tries to avoid it because on the face 
 of it there is no reason why a writer should 
 cease to be a gentleman, or that he should 
 write for a woman's eyes that which he would 
 be justly knocked down for having said in a 
 woman's ears. But "you must draw the 
 world as it is." Why must you? Surely it is 
 just in selection and restraint that the artist 
 is shown. It is true that in a coarser age 
 great writers heeded no restrictions, but life 
 itself had fewer restrictions then. We are 
 of our own age, and must live up to it. 
 
 But must these sides of life be absolutely 
 excluded? By no means. Our decency need 
 not weaken into prudery. It all lies in the 
 spirit in which it is done. ISTo one who wished 
 to lecture on these various spirits could preach 
 on a better text than these three great rivals,
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 153 
 Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. It is 
 possible to draw vice with some freedom for 
 the purpose of condemning it. Such a writer 
 is a moralist, and there is no better example 
 than Richardson. Again, it is possible to 
 draw vice with neither sympathy nor disap- 
 probation, but simply as a fact which is there. 
 Such a writer is a realist, and such was Field- 
 ing. Once more, it is possible to draw vice 
 in order to extract amusement from it. Such 
 a man is a coarse humorist, and such was 
 Smollett. Lastly, it is possible to draw vice 
 in order to show sympathy with it. Such a 
 man is a wicked man, and there were many 
 among the writers of the Restoration. But 
 of all reasons that exist for treating this side 
 of life, Richardson's were the best, and no- 
 where do we find it more deftly done. 
 
 Apart from his writings, there must have 
 been something very noble about Fielding as 
 a man. He was a better hero than any that 
 he drew. Alone he accepted the task of 
 cleansing London, at that time the most dan-
 
 154 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 gerous and lawless of European capitals. 
 Hogarth's pictures give some notion of it in 
 the pre-Fiekling day, the low roughs, the 
 high-born bullies, the drunkenness, the villain- 
 ies, the thieves' kitchens with their riverside 
 trapdoors, down which the body is thrust. 
 This was the Augean stable which had to be 
 cleaned, and poor Hercules was weak and frail 
 and physically more fitted for a sick-room 
 than for such a task. It cost him his life, for 
 he died at 47, worn out with his own exertions. 
 It might well have cost him his life in more 
 dramatic fashion, for he had become a marked 
 man to the criminal classes, and he headed his 
 own search-parties, when, on the information 
 of some bribed rascal, a new den of villainy 
 was exposed. But he carried his point. In 
 little more than a year the thing was done, 
 and London turned from the most rowdy to 
 what it has ever since remained, the most law- 
 abiding of European capitals. Has any man 
 ever left a finer monument behind him? 
 
 If you want the real human Fielding you
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 155 
 will find him not in the novels, where his real 
 kindliness is too often veiled by a mock cyni- 
 cism, but in his "Diary of his Voyage to Lis- 
 bon." He knew that his health was irretriev- 
 abl}^ ruined and that his years were numbered. 
 Those are the days when one sees a man as he 
 is, when he has no longer a motive for affecta- 
 tion or pretense in the immediate presence of 
 the most tremendous of all realities. Yet, sit- 
 ting in the shadow of death. Fielding dis- 
 pla)^ed a quiet, gentle courage and constancy 
 of mind, which show how splendid a nature 
 had been shrouded by his earlier frailties. 
 
 Just one word upon another eighteenth-cen- 
 tury novel before I finish this somewhat didac- 
 tic chat. You will admit that I have never 
 prosed so much before, but the period and the 
 subject seem to encourage it. I skip Sterne, 
 for I have no great sympathy with his finicky 
 methods. And I skip JMiss Burney's novels, 
 as being feminine reflections of the great mas- 
 ters who had just preceded her. But Gold- 
 smith's "Vicar of Wakefield" surely deserves
 
 156 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 one paragraph to itself. There is a book 
 which is tinged throughout, as was all Gold- 
 smith's work, with a beautiful nature. No 
 one who had not a fine heart could have writ- 
 ten it, just as no one without a fine heart could 
 have written "The Deserted Village." How 
 strange it is to think of old Johnson patroniz- 
 ing or snubbing the shrinking Irishman, when 
 both in poetry, in fiction, and in the drama the 
 latter has proved himself far the greater man. 
 But here is an object-lesson of how the facts 
 of life may be treated without offense. Noth- 
 ing is shirked. It is all faced and duly re- 
 corded. Yet if I wished to set before the sen- 
 sitive mind of a young girl a book which would 
 prepare her for life without in any way con- 
 taminating her delicacy of feeling, there is 
 no book which I should choose so readily as 
 "The Vicar of Wakefield." 
 
 So much for the eighteenth-centurj'- novel- 
 ists. They have a shelf of their own in the case, 
 and a corner of their own in my brain. For
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 157 
 years you may never think of them, and then 
 suddenly some stray word or train of thought 
 leads straight to them, and you look at them 
 and love them, and rejoice that you know 
 them. But let us pass to something which 
 may interest you more. 
 
 If statistics could be taken in the various 
 free libraries of the kingdom to prove the com- 
 parative popularity of different novelists with 
 the public, I think that it is quite certain that 
 Mr. George Meredith would come out very 
 low indeed. If, on the other hand, a number 
 of authors were convened to determine which 
 of their fellow-craftsmen they considered the 
 greatest and the most stimulating to their own 
 minds, I am equally confident that INIr. Mere- 
 dith would have a vast preponderance of votes. 
 Indeed, his only conceivable rival would be 
 Mr. Hardy. It becomes an interesting study, 
 therefore, why there should be such a diver- 
 gence of opinion as to his merits, and what the 
 qualities are which have repelled so many
 
 158 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 readers, and yet have attracted those whose 
 opinion must be allowed to have a special 
 weight. 
 
 The most obvious reason is his complete 
 unconventionality. The public read to be 
 amused. The novelist reads to have new light 
 thrown upon his art. To read Meredith is 
 not a mere amusement ; it is an intellectual ex- 
 ercise, a kind of mental dumb-bell with which 
 you develop your thinking powers. Your 
 mind is in a state of tension the whole time 
 that you are reading him. 
 
 If you will follow my nose as the sports- 
 man follows that of his pointer, you will ob- 
 serve that these remarks are excited by the 
 presence of my beloved "Richard Feverel," 
 which lurks in yonder corner. What a great 
 book it is, how wise and how witty! Others 
 of the master's novels may be more character- 
 istic or more profound, but for my own part 
 it is the one which I would always present to 
 the new-comer who had not yet come under the 
 influence. I think that I should put it third
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 159 
 after "Vanity Fair" and "The Cloister and 
 the Hearth" if I had to name the three novels 
 which I admire most in the Victorian era. 
 The book was published, I believe, in 1859, 
 and it is ahnost incredible, and says little for 
 the discrimination of critics or public, that it 
 was nearly twenty years before a second edi- 
 tion was needed. 
 
 But there are never effects without causes, 
 however inadequate the cause may be. What 
 was it that stood in the way of the book's suc- 
 cess? Undoubtedly it was the style. And 
 yet it is subdued and tempered here with little 
 of the luxuriance and exuberance which it at- 
 tained in the later works. But it was an inno- 
 vation, and it stalled off both the public and 
 the critics. They regarded it, no doubt, as an 
 affectation, as Carlyle's had been considered 
 twenty years before, forgetting that in the case 
 of an original genius style is an organic 
 thing, part of the man as much as the color 
 of his eyes. It is not, to quote Carlyle, a 
 shirt to be taken on and off at pleasure, but
 
 160 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 a skin, eternally fixed. And this strange, 
 powerful style, how is it to be described? 
 Best, perhaps, in his own strong words, when 
 he spoke of Carlyle with perhaps the arriere 
 pensce that the words would apply as strongly 
 to himself. 
 
 "His favorite author," says he, "was one 
 writing on heroes in a style resembling either 
 early architecture or utter dilapidation, so 
 loose and rough it seemed. A wind-in-the- 
 orchard style that tumbled down here and 
 there an appreciable fruit with uncouth blus- 
 ter, sentences without commencements run- 
 ning to abrupt endings and smoke, like waves 
 against a sea-wall, learned dictionary words 
 giving a hand to street slang, and accents fall- 
 ing on them haphazard, like slant rays from 
 driving clouds; all the pages in a breeze, the 
 whole book producing a kind of electrical agi- 
 tation in the mind and joints." 
 
 What a wonderful description and exam- 
 ple of style ! And how vivid is the impression 
 left by such expressions as "all the pages in
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 161 
 a breeze." As a comment on Carlyle, and as 
 a sample of Meredith, the j)assage is equally 
 perfect. 
 
 Well, "Richard Feverel" has come into its 
 own at last. I confess to having a strong be- 
 lief in the critical discernment of the public. 
 I do not think good work is often overlooked. 
 Literature, like water, finds its true level. 
 Opinion is slow to form, but it sets true at last. 
 I am sure that if the critics were to unite to 
 praise a bad book or to damn a good one they 
 could (and continually do) have a five-year in- 
 fluence, but it would in no wise affect the final 
 result. Sheridan said that if all the fleas in 
 his bed had been unanimous, they could have 
 pushed him out of it. I do not think that any 
 unanimity of critics has ever pushed a good 
 book out of literature. 
 
 Among the minor excellences of "Richard 
 Feverel" — excuse the prolixity of an enthu- 
 siast — are the scattered aphorisms which are 
 worthy of a place among our British proverbs. 
 What could be more exquisite than this,
 
 162 TPIROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 ^'Who rises from prayer a better man his 
 prayer is answered"; or this, "Expediency is 
 man's wisdom. Doing right is God's"; or, 
 "All great thoughts come from the heart"? 
 Good are the words "The coward amongst us 
 is he who sneers at the failings of humanity," 
 and a healthy optimism rings in the phrase 
 "There is for the mind but one grasp of hap- 
 piness; from that uppermost pinnacle of wis- 
 dom whence we see that this world is well de- 
 signed." In more playful mood is "Woman 
 is the last thing which will be civilized by 
 man." Let us hurry away abruptly, for he 
 who starts quotation from "Richard Feverel" 
 is lost. 
 
 He has, as you see, a goodly line of his 
 brothers beside him. There are the Italian 
 ones, "Sandra Belloni," and "Vittoria"; there 
 is "Rhoda Fleming," which carried Stevenson 
 off his critical feet; "Beauchamp's Career," 
 too, dealing with obsolete politics. No great 
 writer should spend himself upon a temporary 
 theme. It is like the beauty who is painted
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 163 
 in some passing fashion of gown. She tends 
 to become obsolete along with her frame. 
 Here also is the dainty "Diana," the egoist 
 with immortal Willoughby Pattern, eternal 
 type of masculine selfishness, and "Harry 
 Richmond," the first chapters of which are, in 
 my opinion, among the finest pieces of narra- 
 tive prose in the language. That great mind 
 would have worked in any form which his age 
 had favored. He is a novelist by accident. 
 As an Elizabethan he would have been a great 
 dramatist; under Queen Anne a great essay- 
 ist. But whatever medium he worked in, he 
 must equally have thrown the image of a great 
 brain and a great soul.
 
 VIII 
 
 IWe have left our eighteenth-century novel- 
 ists — Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett — 
 safely beliind us, with all their solidity and 
 their audacity, their sincerity, and their coarse- 
 ness of fiber. They have brought us, as you 
 perceive, to the end of the shelf. What, not 
 wearied? Ready for yet another? Let us 
 run down this next row, then, and I will tell 
 you a few things which may be of interest, 
 though they will be dull enough if you have 
 not been born with that love of books in your 
 heart which is among the choicest gifts of the 
 gods. If that is wanting, then one might as 
 well play music to the deaf, or walk round 
 the Academy with the color-blind, as appeal 
 to the book-sense of an unfortunate who has 
 it not. 
 
 There is this old brown volume in the cor- 
 164.
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 165 
 ner. How it got there I cannot imagine, 
 for it is one of those which I bought for three- 
 pence out of the remnant box in Edinburgh, 
 and its weather-beaten comrades are up yon- 
 der in the back gallery, while this one has el- 
 bowed its way among the quality in the stalls. 
 But it is worth a word or two. Take it out 
 and handle it! See how swarthy it is, how 
 squat, with how bullet-proof a cover of scal- 
 ing leather. Now open the fly-leaf ^''EoC 
 libris Guilielmi Whyte. 1672" in faded yel- 
 low ink. I wonder who William Whyte may 
 have been, and what he did upon earth in the 
 reign of the merry monarch. A prag- 
 matical seventeenth-century lawyer, I should 
 judge, by that hard, angular writing. The 
 date of issue is 1642, so it was printed just 
 about the time when the Pilgrim Fathers 
 were settling down into their new American 
 home, and the first Charles's head was still 
 firm upon his shoulders, though a little puz- 
 zled, no doubt, at what was going around it. 
 The book is in Latin — though Cicero might 
 
 '&'
 
 166 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 not have admitted it — and it treats of the laws 
 
 of warfare. 
 
 I picture some pedantic Dugald Dalgetty 
 bearing it about under his buff coat, or down 
 in his holster, and turning up the reference 
 for every fresh emergency which occurred. 
 "Hullo! here's a well!" says he. "I wonder 
 if I may poison it?" Out comes the book, 
 and he runs a dirty forefinger down the index. 
 ^'Ob fas est aquam liostis venere'' etc. "Tut, 
 tut, it's not allowed. But here are some of 
 the enemy in a barn? What about that?" 
 "Oh fas est Tiostem incendio/' etc. "Yes; he 
 says we may. Quick, Ambrose, up with 
 the straw and the tinder box." Warfare was 
 no child's play about the time when Tilly 
 sacked Magdeburg, and Cromwell turned his 
 hand from the mash tub to the sword. It 
 might not be much better now in a long cam- 
 paign, when men were hardened and embit- 
 tered. Many of these laws are unrepealed, 
 and it is less than a century since highly dis- 
 ciplined British troops claimed their dreadful
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 167 
 rights at Badajos and Rodrigo. Recent Eu- 
 ropean wars have been so short that discipHne 
 and humanity have not had time to go to 
 pieces, but a long war would show that man is 
 ever the same, and that civilization is the thin- 
 nest of veneers. 
 
 Now 3^ou see that whole row of books which 
 takes you at one sweep nearly across the shelf? 
 I am rather proud of those, for they are my 
 collection of Napoleonic military memoirs. 
 There is a story told of an illiterate million- 
 aire who gave a wholesale dealer an order for 
 a copy of all books in any language treating 
 of any aspect of Napoleon's career. He 
 thought it would fill a case in his library. He 
 was somewhat taken aback, however, when in 
 a few weeks he received a message from the 
 dealer that he had got 40,000 volumes, and 
 awaited instructions as to whether he should 
 send them on as an instalment, or wait for a 
 complete set. The figures may not be exact, 
 but at least they bring home the impossibility 
 of exhausting the subject, and the danger of
 
 168 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 losing one's self for years in a huge labyrinth 
 of reading, which may end by leaving no very 
 definite impression upon your mind. But 
 one might, perhaps, take a corner of it, as I 
 have done here in the military memoirs, and 
 there one might hope to get some finality. 
 
 Here is Marbot at this end — the first of all 
 soldier books in the world. This is the com- 
 plete three-volume French edition, with red 
 and gold cover, smart and debonnaire like 
 its author. Here he is in one frontispiece 
 with his pleasant, round, boyish face, as a 
 Captain of his beloved Chasseurs. And here 
 in the other is the grizzled old bull-dog as a 
 full general, looking as full of fight as ever. 
 It was a real blow to me when some one began 
 to throw doubts upon the authenticity of Mar- 
 bot's memoirs. Homer may be dissolved into 
 a crowd of skin-clad bards. Even Shakes- 
 peare may be jostled in his throne of honor 
 by plausible Baconians; but the human, the 
 gallant, the inimitable Marbot! His book is 
 that which gives us the best picture by far of
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 169 
 the Napoleonic soldiers, and to me they are 
 even more interesting than their great leader, 
 though his must ever be the most singular 
 figure in history. But those soldiers, with 
 their hugh shakoes, their hairy knapsacks, and 
 their hearts of steel — ^what men they were! 
 And what a latent power there must be in this 
 French nation which could go on pouring out 
 the blood of its sons for twenty-three years 
 with hardly a pause! 
 
 It took all that time to work off the hot 
 ferment which the Revolution had left in 
 men's veins. And they were not exhausted, 
 for the very last fight which the French 
 fought was the finest of all. Proud as we are 
 of our infantry at Waterloo, it was really 
 with the French cavalry that the greenest lau- 
 rels of that great epic rested. They got the 
 better of our own cavalrj^ they took our guns 
 again and again, they swept a large portion of 
 our allies from the field, and finally they rode 
 off unbroken, and as full of fight as ever. 
 Read Gronow's "Memoirs," that chatty little
 
 170 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 yellow volume yonder which brings all that 
 age back to us more vividly than any more 
 pretentious work, and you will find the chival- 
 rous admiration which our officers expressed 
 at the fine performance of the French horse- 
 men. 
 
 It must be admitted that, looking back upon 
 history, we have not always been good allies, 
 nor yet generous, co-partners in the battle- 
 field. The first is the fault of our politics, 
 where one party rejoices to break what the 
 other has bound. The makers of the Treaty 
 are staunch enough, as the Tories were under 
 Pitt and Castlereagh, or the Whigs at the 
 time of Queen Anne, but sooner or later the 
 others must come in. At the end of the Marl- 
 borough wars we suddenly vamped up a peace 
 and left our allies in the lurch, on account of 
 a change in domestic politics. We did the 
 same with Frederick the Great, and would 
 have done it in the Napoleonic days if Fox 
 could have controlled the country. And as 
 to our partners of the battlefield, how little
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 171 
 we have ever said that is hearty as to tilie 
 splendid staunchness of the Prussians at 
 Waterloo. You have to read the Frenchman, 
 Houssaye, to get a central view and to under- 
 stand the part they played. Think of old 
 Blucher, seventy years old, and ridden over by 
 a regiment of charging cavalry the day be- 
 fore, yet swearing that he would come to Wel- 
 lington if he had to be strapped to his horse. 
 He nobly redeemed his promise. 
 
 The loss of the Prussians at Waterloo was 
 not far short of our own. You would not 
 know it, to read our historians. And then the 
 abuse of our Belgian allies has been overdone. 
 Some of them fought splendidly, and one 
 brigade of infantry had a share in the critical 
 instant when the battle was turned. This 
 also you would not learn from British sources. 
 Look at our Portuguese allies also! They 
 trained into magnificent troops, and one of 
 Wellington's earnest desires was to have ten 
 thousand of them for his Waterloo campaign. 
 It was a Portuguese who first topped the ram-
 
 172 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 part of Badajos. They have never had their 
 due credit, nor have the Spaniards either, for, 
 though often defeated, it was their uncon- 
 querable pertinacity which played a great 
 part in the struggle. No ; I do not think that 
 we are very amiable partners, but I suppose 
 that all national history may be open to a sim- 
 ilar charge. 
 
 It must be confessed that Marbot's details 
 are occasionally a little hard to believe. Never 
 in the pages of Lever has there been such a 
 series of hairbreadth escapes and dare-devil 
 exploits. Surely he stretched it a little some- 
 times. You may remember his adventure at 
 Eylau — I think it was Eylau — how a cannon- 
 ball, striking the top of his helmet, paralyzed 
 him by the concussion of his spine; and how, 
 on a Russian officer running forward to cut 
 him down, his horse bit the man's face nearly 
 off. This was the famous charger which sav- 
 aged everything until Marbot, having bought 
 it for next to nothing, cured it by thrusting 
 a boiling leg of mutton into its mouth when
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 173 
 it tried to bite him. It certainly does need 
 a robust faith to get over these incidents. 
 And yet, when one reflects ujoon the hundreds 
 of battles and skirmishes which a Napoleonic 
 officer must have endured — how they must 
 have been the uninterrupted routine of his 
 life from the first dark hair upon his lip to the 
 first gray one upon his head, it is presumptu- 
 ous to say what may or may not have been 
 possible in such unparalleled careers. At any 
 rate, be it fact or fiction — fact it is, in my 
 opinion, with some artistic touching up of the 
 high lights — there are few books which I 
 could not spare from my shelves better than 
 the memoirs of the gallant Marbot. 
 
 I dwell upon tliis particular book because 
 it is the best; but take the whole line, and 
 there is not one which is not full of interest. 
 Marbot gives you the point of view of the 
 officer. So does De Segfur and De Fezensac 
 and Colonel Gonville, each in some different 
 branch of the service. But some are from the 
 pens of the men in the ranks, and they are
 
 174 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 even more graphic than the others. Here, for 
 example, are the papers of good old Cogniet, 
 who was a grenadier of the Guard, and could 
 neither read nor write until after the great 
 wars were over. A tougher soldier never 
 went into battle. Here is Sergeant Bour- 
 gogne, also with his dreadful account of that 
 nightmare campaign in Russia, and the gal- 
 lant Chevillet, trumpeter of Chasseurs, with 
 his matter-of-fact account of all that he saw, 
 where the daily "combat" is sandwiched in be- 
 twixt the real business of the day, which was 
 foraging for his frugal breakfast and supper. 
 There is no better writing, and no easier read- 
 ing, than the records of these men of action. 
 A Briton cannot help asking himself, as he 
 realizes what men these were, what would have 
 happened if 150,000 Cogniets and Bour- 
 gognes, with Marbots to lead them, and the 
 great captain of all time in the prime of his 
 vigor at their head, had made their landing 
 in Kent? For months it was touch-and-go. 
 A single naval slip which left the Channel
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 175 
 clear would have been followed by an em- 
 barkation from Boulogne, which had been 
 brought by constant practice to so incredibly 
 fine a point that the last horse was aboard 
 within two hours of the start. Any evening 
 might have seen the whole host upon the 
 Pevensey Flats. What then? We know 
 what Humbert did with a handful of men in 
 Ireland, and the story is not reassuring. Con- 
 quest, of course, is unthinkable. The Avorld 
 in arms could not do that. But Napoleon 
 never thought of the conquest of Britain. He 
 has expressly disclaimed it. What he did 
 contemplate was a gigantic raid in which he 
 would do so much damage that for years to 
 come England would be occupied at home in 
 picking up the pieces, Instead of having en- 
 ergy to spend abroad in thwarting his Con- 
 tinental plans. 
 
 Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Sheerness in 
 flames, with London either leveled to the 
 ground, or ransomed at his own figure — that 
 was a more feasible programme. Then, with
 
 176 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 the united fleets of conquered Europe at 
 his back, enormous armies and an inexhausti- 
 ble treasury, swollen with the ransom of Brit- 
 ain, he could turn to that conquest of Amer- 
 ica which w^ould win back the old colonies of 
 France and leave him master of the world. 
 If the worst happened and he had met his 
 Waterloo upon the South Downs, he would 
 have done again what he did in Efgypt and 
 once more in Russia: hurried back to France 
 in a swift vessel, and still have force enough 
 to hold his own upon the Continent. It 
 would, no doubt, have been a big stake to lay 
 upon the table — 150,000 of his best — but he 
 could play again if he lost; wMe, if he won, 
 he cleared the board. A fine game — if little 
 Nelson had not stopped it, and with one blow 
 fixed the edge of salt water as the limit of 
 Napoleon's power. 
 
 There's the cast of a medal on the top of 
 that cabinet which will bring it all close home 
 to you. It is taken from the die of the medal 
 which Napoleon had arranged to issue on the
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 177 
 day that he reached London. It serves, at any 
 rate, to show that his great muster was not a 
 bkiff , but that he really did mean serious busi- 
 ness. On one side is his head. On the other 
 France is engaged in strangling and throwing 
 to earth a curious fish-tailed creature, which 
 stands for perfidious Albion. "Frappe a 
 Londres" is printed on one part of it, and 
 "La Descente dans Angleterre" upon an- 
 other. Struck to commemorate a conquest, 
 it remains now as a souvenir of a fiasco. But 
 it was a close call. 
 
 By the way, talking of Napoleon's flight 
 from Egypt, did j^ou ever see a curious little 
 book called, if I remember right, "Intercepted 
 Letters?" No; I have no copy upon this 
 shelf, but a friend is more fortunate. It 
 shows the almost incredible hatred which ex- 
 isted at the end of the eighteenth century 
 between the two nations, descending even to 
 the most petty personal annoyance. On this 
 occasion the British Government intercepted 
 a mail-bag of letters coming from French
 
 178 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 officers in Egyj^t to their friends at home, and 
 they either pubHshed them, or at least allowed 
 them to be j)ublished, in the hope, no doubt, of 
 causing domestic complications. Was ever a 
 more despicable action ? But who knows what 
 other injuries had been inflicted to draw forth 
 such a retaliation? I have myself seen a 
 burned and mutilated British mail lying where 
 De Wet had left it ; but suppose the refinement 
 of his vengeance had gone so far as to publish 
 it, what a thunder-bolt it might have been! 
 
 As to the French officers, I have read their 
 letters, though even after a century one had a 
 feeling of guilt when one did so. But, on the 
 whole, they are a credit to the writers, and give 
 the impression of a noble and chivalrous set of 
 men. Whether they were all addressed to the 
 right people is another matter, and therein lay 
 the poisoned sting of this most un-British 
 affair. As to the monstrous things which were 
 done upon the other side, remember the arrest 
 of all the poor British tourists and commer- 
 cials who chanced to be in France when the war
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 179 
 was renewed in 1803. They had run over in 
 all trust and confidence for a little outing and 
 change of air. They certainly got it, for Na- 
 poleon's steel grip fell upon them and they 
 rejoined their families in 1814. He must have 
 had a heart of adamant and a will of iron. 
 Look at his conduct over the naval prisoners. 
 The natural proceeding would have been to 
 exchange them. For some reason he did not 
 think it good policy to do so. All representa- 
 tions from the British Government were set 
 aside, save in the case of the higher officers. 
 Hence the miseries of the hulks and the dread- 
 ful prison barracks in England. Hence also 
 the unhappy idlers of Verdun. What splen- 
 did loyalty there must have been in those 
 humble Frenchmen which never allowed them 
 for one instant to turn bitterly upon the author 
 of all their great misfortunes. It is all 
 brought vividly home by the description of 
 their prisons given by Borrow in "Lavengro." 
 This is the passage —
 
 180 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 "What a strange appearance had those 
 mighty casernes, with their blank, bhnd walls, 
 without windows or grating, and their slanting 
 roofs, out of which, through orifices where 
 the tiles had been removed, would be pro- 
 truded dozens of grim heads, feasting their 
 prison-sick eyes on the wide expanse of coun- 
 try unfolded from their airy height. Ah! 
 there was much misery in those casernes; and 
 from those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful 
 look was turned in the direction of lovely 
 France. Much had the poor inmates to en- 
 dure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace 
 of England be it said — of England, in gen- 
 eral so kind and bountiful. Rations of car- 
 rion meat, and bread from which I have seen 
 the very hounds occasionally turn away, were 
 unworthy entertainment even for the most 
 ruffian enemy, when helpless and captive; and 
 such, alas ! was the fare in those casernes. And 
 then, those visits, or rather ruthless inroads, 
 called in the slang of the place 'straw-plait 
 hunts,' when in pursuit of a contraband article.
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 181 
 
 t 
 which the prisoners, in order to procure them- 
 selves a few of the necessaries and comforts 
 of existence, were in the habit of making, red- 
 coated battahons were marched into the 
 prisons, who, with the bayonet's point, carried 
 havoc and ruin into every poor convenience 
 which ingenious wretchedness had been endea- 
 voring to raise around it; and then the tri- 
 umphant exit with the miserable booty, and 
 worst of all, the accursed bonfire, on the bar- 
 rack parade of the plait contraband, beneath 
 the view of glaring eyeballs from those lofty 
 roofs, amid the hurrahs of the troops fre- 
 quently drowned in the curses poured down 
 from above like a tempest-shower, or in the 
 terrific war-whoop of 'Vive I'Empereur !' " 
 
 There is a little vignette of Napoleon's men 
 in captivitj^ Here is another which is worth 
 preserving of the bearing of his veterans when 
 wounded on the field of battle. It is from 
 Mercer's recollections of the Battle of Water- 
 loo. ISIercer had spent the day firing case into
 
 182 THROUGH THE IVIAGIC DOOR 
 the French cavalry at ranges from fifty to two 
 hundd'ed yards, losing two-thirds of his own 
 battery in the process. In the evening he 
 had a look at some of his own grim handi- 
 work. 
 
 "I had satisfied my curiosity at Hougou- 
 mont, and was retracing my steps up the hill 
 when my attention was called to a group of 
 wounded Frenchmen by the calm, dignified, 
 and soldier-like oration addressed by one» of 
 them to the rest. I cannot, like Livy, com- 
 pose a fine harangue for my hero, and, of 
 course, I could not retain the precise words, 
 but the import of them was to exhort them 
 to bear their sufferings with fortitude; not to 
 repine, like women or children, at what every 
 soldier should have made up his mind to suffer 
 as the fortune of war, but above all, to remem- 
 ber that they were surrounded by Englishmen, 
 before whom they ought to be doubly careful 
 not to disgrace themselves by displaying such 
 an unsoldier-like want of fortitude.
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 183 
 "The speaker was sitting on the ground with 
 his lance stuck upright beside him — an old vet- 
 eran with thick bushy, grizzly beard, counte- 
 nance like a lion — a lancer of the old guard, 
 and no doubt had fought in many a field. 
 One hand was flourished in the air as he spoke, 
 the other, severed at the wrist, lay on the earth 
 beside him; one ball (case-shot, probably) had 
 entered his body, another had broken his leg. 
 His suffering, after a night of exposure so 
 mangled, must have been great; yet he be- 
 trayed it not. His bearing was that of a 
 Roman, or perhaps an Indian warrior, and I 
 could fancy him concluding appropriately his 
 speech in the words of the Mexican king, 'And 
 I too; am I on a bed of roses?' " 
 
 What a load of moral responsibility upon 
 one man! But his mind was insensible to 
 moral responsibility. Surely if it had not been 
 it must have been crushed beneath it. Now, 
 if you want to understand the character of 
 Napoleon — but surely I must take a fresh start
 
 184. THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 before I launch on so portentous a subject as 
 that. 
 
 But before I leave the military men let me, 
 for the credit of my own country, after that 
 infamous incident of the letters, indicate these 
 six well-thumbed volumes of "Napier's His- 
 tory." This is the story of the great Peninsu- 
 lar War, by one who fought through it him- 
 self, and in no history has a more chivalrous 
 and manly account been given of one's enemy. 
 Indeed, Napier seems to me to push it too far, 
 for his admiration appears to extend not only 
 to the gallant soldiers who opposed him, but to 
 the character and to the ultimate aims of their 
 leader. He was, in fact, a political follower 
 of Charles James Fox, and his heart seems to 
 have been with the enemy even at the moment 
 when he led his men most desperately against 
 them. In the verdict of history the action of 
 those men who, in their honest zeal for free- 
 dom, inflamed somewhat by political strife, 
 turned against their own country, when it was 
 in truth the Champion of Freedom, and ap-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 185 
 proved of a military despot of the most un- 
 compromising kind, seems wildly foolish. 
 
 But if Napier's politics may seem strange, 
 his soldiering was splendid, and his prose 
 among the very best that I know. There are 
 passages in that work — the one which describes 
 the breach of Badajos, that of the charge of 
 the Fusiliers at Albuera, and that of the 
 French advance at Fuentes d'Onoro — which 
 once read haunt the mind for ever. The book 
 is a worthy monument of a great national epic. 
 Alasl for the pregnant sentence with which it 
 closes, "So ended the great war, and with it 
 all memory of the services of the veterans." 
 Was there ever a British war of which the 
 same might not have been written? 
 
 The quotation which I have given from 
 Mercer's book turns my thoughts in the direc- 
 tion of the British military reminiscences of 
 that period, less numerous, less varied, and less 
 central than the French, but full of character 
 and interest all the same. I have found that 
 if I am turned loose in a large library, after
 
 186 TPmOUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 hesitating- over covers for half an hour or so, 
 it is usually a book of soldier memoirs which I 
 take down. INIan is never so interesting as 
 when he is thoroughly in earnest, and no one is 
 so earnest as he whose life is at stake upon the 
 event. But of all types of soldier the best is 
 the man who is keen uj^on his work, and yet 
 has general culture which enables him to see 
 that work in its due ^perspective, and to sympa- 
 thize with the gentler asj)irations of mankind. 
 Such a man is Mercer, an ice-cool fighter, with 
 a sense of discipline and decorum which pre- 
 vented him from moving when a bombshell 
 was fizzing between his feet, and yet a man of 
 thoughtful and philosophic temperament, with 
 a weakness for solitary musings, for children, 
 and for flowers. He has written for all time 
 the classic account of a great battle, seen from 
 the point of view of a battery commander. 
 Many others of Wellington's soldiers wrote 
 their personal reminiscences. You can get 
 them, as I have them there, in the pleasant 
 abridgment of "Wellington's Men" (admi-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 187 
 rably edited by Dr. Fitchett) — Anton the 
 Highlander, Harris the rifleman, and Kincaid 
 of the same corps. It is a most singular fate 
 which has made an Australian nonconformist 
 clergyman the most sympathetic and eloquent 
 reconstructor of those old heroes, but it is a 
 noble example of that unity of the British race, 
 which in fifty scattered lands still mourns or 
 rejoices over the same historic record. 
 
 And just one word, before I close down this 
 over-long and too discursive chatter, on the 
 subject of yonder twin red volumes which 
 flank the shelf. They are ^Maxwell's "History 
 of Wellington," and I do not think you w411 
 find a better or more readable one. The 
 reader must ever feel towards the great sol- 
 dier what his own immediate followers felt, 
 resj^ect rather than affection. One's failure to 
 attain a more aif ectionate emotion is alleviated 
 b}'- the knowledge that it was the last thing 
 which he invited or desired. "Don't be a 
 damned fool, sir!" was his exhortation to the 
 good citizen who had paid him a compliment.
 
 188 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 It was a curious, callous nature, brusque and 
 limited. The hardest huntsman learns to love 
 his hounds, but he showed no affection and a 
 good deal of contempt for the men who had 
 been his instruments. "They are the scum of 
 the earth," said he. "All English soldiers are 
 fellows who have enlisted for drink. That is 
 the plain fact — they have all enlisted for 
 drink." His general orders were full of un- 
 deserved rej)roaches at a time when the most 
 lavish praise could hardly have met the real 
 deserts of his army. When the wars were 
 done he saw little, save in his official capacity, 
 of his old comrades-in-arms. And yet, from 
 major-general to drummer-boy, he was the 
 man whom they would all have elected to serve 
 under, had the work to be done once more. As 
 one of them said, "The sight of his long nose 
 was worth ten thousand men on a field of bat- 
 tle." They were themselves a leathery breed, 
 and cared little for the gentler amenities so 
 long as the French were well drubbed. 
 
 His mind, which was comprehensive and
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 189 
 alert in warfare, was singularly limited in civil 
 affairs. As a statesman he was so constant 
 an example of devotion to duty, self-sacrifice, 
 and high disinterested character, that the coun- 
 try was the better for his presence. But he 
 fiercely opposed Catholic Emancipation, the 
 Reform Bill, and everything upon which our 
 modern life is founded. He could never be 
 brought to see that a pyramid should stand on 
 its base and not on its apex, and that the larger 
 the pyramid, the broader should be the base. 
 Even in military affairs he was averse from 
 every change, and I know of no improvements 
 which came from his initiative during all those 
 years when his authority was supreme. The 
 floggings which broke a man's spirit and self- 
 respect, the leathern stock which hampered his 
 movements, all the old traditional regime 
 found a champion in him. On the other hand, 
 he strongly opposed the introduction of the 
 percussion cap as opposed to the flint and 
 steel in the musket. Neither in war nor in pol- 
 itics did he rightly judge the future.
 
 190 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 And yet in reading his letters and dispatches, 
 one is surprised sometimes at the incisive 
 thought and its vigorous expression. There 
 is a passage in which he describes the way in 
 which his soldiers would occasionally desert 
 into some town which he was besieging. 
 "They knew," he writes, "that they must be 
 taken, for when we lay our bloody hands upon 
 a place we are sure to take it, sooner or later; 
 but they liked being dry and under cover, and 
 then that extraordinary caprice which always 
 pervades the English character! Our desert- 
 ers are very badly treated by the enemy ; those 
 who deserted in France were treated as the 
 lowest of mortals, slaves and scavengers. 
 Nothing but English caprice can account for 
 it; just what makes our noblemen associate 
 with stage-coach drivers, and become stage- 
 coach drivers themselves." After reading that 
 passage, how often does the phrase "the ex- 
 traordinary caprice which always pervades the 
 English character" come back as one observes 
 some fresh manifestation of it!
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 191 
 But let not my last note upon the great duke 
 be a carping one. Rather let my final sentence 
 be one which will remind you of his frugal and 
 abstemious life, his carpetless floor and little 
 camp bed, his precise courtesy which left no 
 humblest letter unanswered, his courage which 
 never flinched, his tenacity which never fal- 
 tered, his sense of duty which made his life 
 one long unselfish efl'ort on behalf of what 
 seemed to him to be the highest interest of the 
 State. Go down and stand by the huge gran- 
 ite sarcophagus in the dim light of the crypt 
 of St. Paul's, and in the hush of that austere 
 spot, cast back your mind to the days when 
 little England alone stood firm against the 
 greatest soldier and the greatest army that the 
 world has ever known. Then you feel what 
 this dead man stood for, and you pray that we 
 may still find such another amongst us when 
 the clouds gather once again. 
 
 You see that the literature of Waterloo is 
 well represented in my small military library. 
 Of all books dealing with the personal view of
 
 192 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 the matter, I think that "Siborne's Letters,'* 
 which is a collection of the narratives of sur- 
 viving officers made by Siborne in the year 
 1827, is the most interesting. Gronow's ac- 
 count is also very vivid and interesting. Of 
 the strategical narratives, Houssaye's book is 
 my favorite. Taken from the French point 
 of view, it gets the actions of the allies in truer 
 perspective than any English or German ac- 
 count can do; but there is a fascination about 
 that great combat which makes every narra- 
 tive that bears upon it of enthralling interest. 
 Wellington used to say that too much was 
 made of it, and that one would imagine that 
 the British Army had never fought a battle 
 before. It was a characteristic speech, but it 
 must be admitted that the British Army never 
 had, as a matter of fact, for many centuries 
 fought a battle which was finally decisive of 
 a great European war. There lies the peren- 
 nial interest of the incident, that it was the last 
 act of that long-drawn drama, and that to the 
 very fall of the curtain no man could tell how
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 193 
 the play would end — "the nearest run thing 
 that ever you saw" — that was the victor's de- 
 scription. It is a singular thing that during 
 those twenty-five years of incessant fighting 
 the material and methods of warfare made so 
 little progress. So far as I know, there was 
 no great change in either between 1789 and 
 1815. The breech-loader, heavy artillery, the 
 ironclad, all great advances in the art of war, 
 have been invented in time of peace. There 
 are some improvements so obvious, and at the 
 same time so valuable, that it is extraordinary 
 that they were not adopted. Signaling, for 
 examj)le, whether by heliograph or by flag- 
 waving, would have made an immense differ- 
 ence in the Napoleonic campaigns. The prin- 
 ciple of the semaphore was well known, and 
 Belgium, with its numerous windmills, would 
 seem to be furnished with natural semaphores. 
 Yet in the four days during which the cam- 
 paign of Waterloo was fought, the whole 
 scheme of military operations on both sides 
 was again and again imperilled, and finally
 
 194 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 in the case of the French brought to utter ruin 
 by lack of that inteUigence which could so 
 easily have been conveyed. June 18th was at 
 intervals a sunshiny day — a four-inch glass 
 mirror would have j^ut Napoleon in communi- 
 cation with Gruchy, and the whole history of 
 Europe might have been altered. Wellington 
 himself suffered dreadfully from defective in- 
 formation which might have been easily sup- 
 plied. The unexpected presence of the 
 French army was first discovered at four in 
 the morning of June 15. It was of enormous 
 importance to get the news rapidly to Welling- 
 ton at Brussels that he might instantly con- 
 centrate his scattered forces on the best line of 
 resistance — yet, through the folly of sending 
 only a single messenger, this vital informa- 
 tion did not reach him until three in the after- 
 noon, the distance being thirty miles. Again, 
 when Blucher was defeated at Ligny on the 
 16th, it was of enormous importance that Wel- 
 lington should know at once the line of his re- 
 treat so as to prevent the French from driving
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 195 
 a wedge between them. The single Prussian 
 officer who was despatched with this informa- 
 tion was wounded, and never reached his desti- 
 nation, and it was only next day that Welling- 
 ton learned the Prussian plans. On what tiny 
 things does History depend!
 
 IX 
 
 The contemplation of my fine little regiment 
 of French military memoirs had brought me 
 to the question of Napoleon himself, and you 
 see that I have a very fair line dealing with him 
 also. There is Scott's life, which is not en- 
 tirely a success. His ink was too precious to 
 be shed in such a venture. But here are the 
 three volumes of the physician Bourrienne — 
 that Bourrienne who knew him so well. Does 
 any one ever know a man so well as his doctor? 
 They are quite excellent and admirably trans- 
 lated. Meneval also — the patient Meneval — 
 who wrote for untold hours to dictation at ordi- 
 nary talking speed, and yet was expected to 
 be legible and to make no mistakes. At least 
 his master could not fairly criticise his legi- 
 bility, for is it not on record that when Na- 
 poleon's holograph account of an engagement 
 
 196
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 197 
 was laid before the President of the Senate, the 
 worthy man thought that it was a drawn plan 
 of the battle? Meneval survived his master 
 and has left an excellent and intimate account 
 of him. There is Constant's account, also 
 written from that point of view in which it is 
 proverbial that no man is a hero. But of all 
 the vivid terrible pictures of Napoleon the most 
 haunting is by a man who never saw him and 
 whose book was not directly dealing with him. 
 I mean Taine's account of him, in the first 
 volume of "Les Origines de la France Con- 
 temporaine." You can never forget it when 
 once you have read it. He produces his effect 
 in a wonderful, and to me a novel, way. He 
 does not, for example, say in mere crude words 
 that Napoleon had a more than mediaeval Ital- 
 ian cunning. He presents a succession of 
 documents — gives a series of contemporary in- 
 stances to prove it. Then, having got that 
 fixed in your head by blow after blow, he passes 
 on to another phase of his character, his cold- 
 hearted amorousness, his power of work, his
 
 198 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 spoiled child wilfulness, or some other quality, 
 and piles up his illustrations of that. Instead, 
 for example, of saying that the Emperor had 
 a marvelous memory for detail, we have the 
 account of the head of Artillery laying the list 
 of all the guns in France before his master, 
 who looked over it and remarked, "Yes, but 
 you have omitted two in a fort near Dieppe." 
 So the man is gradually etched in with indel- 
 ible ink. It is a wonderful figure of which 
 you are conscious in the end, the figure of an 
 archangel, but surely of an archangel of dark- 
 ness. 
 
 We will, after Taine's method, take one fact 
 and let it speak for itself. Napoleon left a 
 legacy in a codicil to his will to a man who tried 
 to assassinate Wellington. There is the 
 mediaeval Italian again! He was no more a 
 Corsican than the Englishman born in India 
 is a Hindoo. Read the lives of the Borgias, 
 the Sforzas, the ^ledicis, and of all the lustful, 
 cruel, broad-minded, art-loving, talented des- 
 pots of the little Itahan States, including
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 199 
 Genoa, from which the Buonapartes migrated. 
 There at once you get the real descent of the 
 man, with all the stigmata clear upon him — 
 the outward calm, the inward passion, the layer 
 of snow above the volcano, everything which 
 characterized the old despots of his native land, 
 the pupils of Machiavelli, but all raised to the 
 dimensions of genius. You can whitewash 
 him as you may, but you will never get a layer 
 thick enough to cover the stain of that cold- 
 blooded deliberate endorsement of his noble ad- 
 versary's assassination. 
 
 Another book which gives an extraordi- 
 narily vivid picture of the man is this one — the 
 INIemoirs of Madame de Remusat. She was 
 in daily contact with him at the Court, and she 
 studied him with those quick critical eyes of a 
 clever woman, the most unerring things in life 
 when they are not blinded by love. If you 
 have read those pages, you feel that you know 
 him as if you had yourself seen and talked 
 with him. His singular mixture of the small 
 and the great, his huge sweep of imagination.
 
 ^00 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 his very limited knowledge, his intense egotism, 
 his impatience of obstacles, his boorishness, his 
 gross impertinence to women, his diabolical 
 playing upon the weak side of every one with 
 whom he came in contact — they make up 
 among them one of the most striking of his- 
 torical portraits. 
 
 Most of my books deal with the days of 
 his greatness, but here, you see, is a three-vol- 
 ume account of those weary years at St. 
 Helena. Who can help pitying the mewed 
 eagle? And yet if you play the great game 
 you must pay a stake. This was the same man 
 who had a royal duke shot in a ditch because 
 he was a danger to his throne. Was not he 
 himself a danger to every throne in Europe? 
 Why so harsh a retreat as St. Helena, you say? 
 Remember that he had been j)ut in a milder 
 one before, that he had broken away from it, 
 and that the lives of fifty thousand men had 
 paid for the mistaken leniency. All this is 
 forgotten now, and the pathetic picture of the 
 modern Prometheus chained to his rock and
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 201 
 devoured by the vultures of his own bitter 
 thoughts, is the one impression which the world 
 has retained. It is always so much easier to 
 follow the emotions than the reason, especially 
 where a cheap magnanimity and second-hand 
 generosity are involved. But reason must still 
 insist that Europe's treatment of Napoleon 
 was not vindictive, and that Hudson Lowe was 
 a man who tried to live up to the trust which 
 had been committed to him by his country. 
 
 It was certainly not a post from which any 
 one would hope for credit. If he were slack 
 and easy-going all would be well. But there 
 would be the chance of a second flight with its 
 consequences. If he were strict and assidu- 
 ous he would be assuredly represented as a 
 petty tyrant. "I am glad when you are on 
 outpost," said Lowe's general in some cam- 
 paign, "for then I am sure of a sound rest." 
 He was on outpost at St. Helena, and because 
 he was true to his duties Europe (France in- 
 cluded) had a sound rest. But he purchased 
 it at the price of his own reputation. The
 
 202 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 greatest schemer in the world, having nothing 
 else on which to vent his energies, turned them 
 all to the task of vilifying his guardian. It 
 was natural enough that he who had never 
 known control should not brook it now. It is 
 natural also that sentimentalists who have not 
 thought of the details should take the Emper- 
 or's point of view. What is deplorable, how- 
 ever, is that our own people should be misled 
 by one-sided accounts, and that they should 
 throw to the wolves a man who was serving his 
 country in a post of anxiety and danger, with 
 such responsibility upon him as few could ever 
 have endured. Let them remember Montho- 
 lon's remark: "An angel from heaven would 
 not have satisfied us." Let them recall also 
 that Lowe with ample material never once 
 troubled to state his own case. "Je fais mon 
 devoir et suis indifferent pour le restef' said 
 he, in his interview with the Emperor. They 
 were no idle words. 
 
 Apart from this particular epoch, French 
 literature, which is so rich in all its branches,
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 203 
 is richest of all in its memoirs. Whenever 
 there was anything of interest going forward 
 there was always some kindly gossip who knew 
 all about it, and was ready to set it down for 
 the benefit of posterity. Our own history has 
 not nearly enough of these charming side- 
 lights. Look at our sailors in the Napoleonic 
 wars, for example. They played an epoch- 
 making part. For nearly twenty years Free- 
 dom was a Refugee upon the seas. Had our 
 navy been swept away, then all Europe would 
 have been one organized despotism. At times 
 everybody was against us, fighting against 
 their own direct interests under the pressure 
 of that terrible hand. We fought on the 
 waters with the French, with the Spaniards, 
 with the Danes, with the Russians, with the 
 Turks, even with our American kinsmen. 
 Middies grew into post-captains, and admirals 
 into dotards during that prolonged struggle. 
 And what have we in literature to show for it 
 all? Marryat's novels, many of which are 
 founded upon personal experience. Nelson's
 
 204* THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 and Collingwood's letters, Lord Cochrane's 
 biography — that is about all. I wish we had 
 more of CoUingwood, for he wielded a fine 
 pen. Do you remember the sonorous opening 
 of his Trafalgar message to his captains ? — 
 
 "The ever to be lamented death of Lord Vis- 
 count ISTelson, Duke of Bronte, the Command- 
 er-in-Chief, who fell in the action of the 21st, 
 in the arms of Victory, covered with glory, 
 whose memory will be ever dear to the British 
 Navy and the British Nation; whose zeal for 
 the honor of his king and for the interests of 
 his country will be ever held up as a shining 
 example for a British seaman — leaves to me a 
 duty to return thanks, etc., etc." 
 
 It was a worthy sentence to carry such a 
 message, written too in a raging tempest, with 
 sinking vessels all around him. But in the 
 main it is a poor crop from such a soil. No 
 doubt our sailors were too busy to do much 
 writing, but none the less one wonders that
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 205 
 among so many thousands there were not some 
 to understand what a treasure their experiences 
 would be to their descendants. I can call to 
 mind the old three-deckers which used to rot in 
 Portsmouth Harbor, and I have often thought, 
 could they tell their tales, what a missing chap- 
 ter in our literature they could supply. 
 
 It is not only in Napoleonic memoirs that 
 the French are so fortunate. The almost 
 equally interesting age of Louis XIV. pro- 
 duced an even more wonderful series. If you 
 go deeply into the subject you are amazed by 
 their number, and you feel as if every one at 
 the Court of the Roi Soleil had done what he 
 (or she) could to give away their neighbors. 
 Just to take the more obvious, there are St. 
 Simon's Memoirs — those in themselves give us 
 a more comprehensive and intimate view of the 
 age than anything I know of which treats of 
 the times of Queen Victoria. Then there is 
 St. Evremond, who is nearly as complete. Do 
 you want the view of a woman of quality? 
 There are the letters of JMadame de Sevif^ne
 
 206 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 (eight volumes of them), perhaps tlie most 
 wonderful series of letters that any woman 
 has ever penned. Do you want the confes- 
 sions of a rake of the period? Here are the 
 too salacious memoirs of the mischievous Due 
 de Roquelaure, not reading for the nursery 
 certainly, not even for the boudoir, but a 
 strange and very intunate picture of the times. 
 All these books fit into each other, for the char- 
 acters of the one reappear in the others. You 
 come to know them quite familiarly before you 
 have finished, their loves and their hates, their 
 duels, their intrigues, and their ultimate for- 
 tunes. If you do not care to go so deeply into 
 it you have only to put Julia Pardoe's four- 
 volumed "Court of Louis XIV." upon your 
 shelf, and you will find a very admirable con- 
 densation — or a distillation rather, for most 
 of the salt is left behind. There is another 
 book too — that big one on the bottom shelf — 
 which holds it all between its brown and gold 
 covers. An extravagance that — for it cost me 
 some sovereigns — but it is something to have
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 207 
 the portraits of all that wonderful galaxy, of 
 Louis, of the devout Maintenon, of the frail 
 Montes^jan, of Bossuet, Fenelon, Moliere, Ra- 
 cine, Pascal, Conde, Turenne, and all the saints 
 and sinners of the age. If you want to make 
 yourself a present, and chance upon a copy of 
 "The Court and Times of Louis XIV.," you 
 will never think that your money has been 
 wasted. 
 
 Well, I have bored you unduly, my patient 
 friend, with my love of memoirs, Napoleonic 
 and otherwise, which give a touch of human 
 interest to the arid records of history. Not 
 that history should be arid. It ought to be 
 the most interesting subject upon earth, the 
 story of ourselves, of our forefathers, of the 
 human race, the events which made us what 
 we are, and wherein, if Weismann's views hold 
 the field, some microscopic fraction of this 
 very body which for the instant we chance to 
 inhabit may have borne a part. But unfortu- 
 nately the power of accumulating knowledge 
 and that of imparting it are two very different
 
 208 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 things, and the uninspired historian becomes 
 merely the dignified compiler of an enlarged 
 almanac. Worst of all, when a man does come 
 along with fancy and imagination, who can 
 breathe the breath of life into the dry bones, it 
 is the fashion for the dryasdusts to belabor him, 
 as one who has wandered away from the ortho- 
 dox path and must necessarily be inaccurate. 
 So Froude was attacked. So also JNIacaulay 
 in his day. But both will be read when the 
 pedants are forgotten. If I were asked my 
 very ideal of how history should be written, I 
 think I should point to those two rows on yon- 
 der shelf, the one McCarthy's "History of Our 
 Own Times," the other Lecky's "History of 
 England in the Eighteenth Century." Curious 
 that each should have been written by an Irish- 
 man, and that though of opposite politics and 
 living in an age when Irish affairs have caused 
 such bitterness, both should be conspicuous not 
 merely for all literary graces, but for that 
 broad toleration which sees every side of a 
 question, and handles every problem from the
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 209 
 point of view of the philosophic observer and 
 never of the sectarian partisan. 
 
 By the way, talking of history, have you 
 read Parkman's works? He was, I think, 
 among the very greatest of the historians, and 
 yet one seldom hears his name. A New Eng- 
 land man by birth, and writing principally of 
 the early history of the American Settlements 
 and of French Canada, it is perhaps excus- 
 able that he should have no great vogue in 
 England, but even among Americans I have 
 found many who have not read him. There 
 are four of his volumes in green and gold down 
 yonder. "The Jesuits in Canada," and 
 "Frontenac," but there are others, all of them 
 well worth reading, "Pioneers of France," 
 "Montcalm and Wolfe," "Discovery of the 
 Great West," etc. Some day I hope to have 
 a complete set. 
 
 Taking only that one book, "The Jesuits in 
 Canada," it is worth a reputation in itself. 
 And how noble a tribute is this which a man of 
 Puritan blood pays to that wonderful Order!
 
 210 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 He shows how in the heyday of their enthu- 
 siasm these brave soldiers of the Cross invaded 
 Canada as they did China and every other place 
 where danger was to be faced, and a horrible 
 death to be found. I don't care what faith a 
 man may profess, or whether he be a Chris- 
 tian at all, but he cannot read these true rec- 
 ords without feeling that the very highest that 
 man has ever evolved in sanctity and devotion 
 was to be found among these marvelous men. 
 They were indeed the pioneers of civilization, 
 for apart from doctrines they brought among 
 the savages the highest European culture, and 
 in their own deportment an object-lesson of 
 how chastely, austerely, and nobly men could 
 live. France has sent myriads of brave men 
 on to her battlefields, but in all her long record 
 of glory I do not think that she can point to 
 any courage so steadfast and so absolutely 
 heroic as that of the men of the Iroquois Mis- 
 sion. 
 
 How nobly they lived makes the body of the 
 book, how serenely they died forms the end to
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 211 
 it. It is a tale which cannot even now be read 
 without a shudder — a nightmare of horrors. 
 Fanaticism may brace a man to hurl himself 
 into oblivion, as the Mahdi's hordes did before 
 Khartoum, but one feels that it is at least a 
 higher development of such emotion, where 
 men slowly and in cold blood endure so thank- 
 less a life, and welcome so dreadful an end. 
 Every faith can equally boast its martyrs — a 
 painful thought, since it shows how many thou- 
 sands must have given their blood for error — 
 but in testifying to their faith these brave 
 men have testified to something more impor- 
 tant still, to the subjugation of the body and to 
 the absolute supremacy of the dominating 
 spirit. 
 
 The story of Father Jogue is but one of 
 many, and yet it is worth recounting, as show- 
 ing the spirit of the men. He also was on the 
 Iroquois Mission, and was so tortured and 
 mutilated by his sweet parishioners that the 
 very dogs used to howl at his distorted figure. 
 He made his way back to France, not for any
 
 212 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 reason of personal rest or recuperation, but 
 because he needed a special dispensation to 
 say Mass. The Catholic Church has a regu- 
 lation that a priest shall not be deformed, so 
 that the savages with their knives had wrought 
 better than they knew. He received his dispen- 
 sation and was sent for by Louis XIV., who 
 asked him what he could do for him. No 
 doubt the assembled courtiers expected to hear 
 him ask for the next vacant Bisliopric. What 
 he did actually ask for, as the highest favor, 
 was to be sent back to the Iroquois INIission, 
 where the savages signalized his arrival by 
 burning him alive. 
 
 Parkman is worth reading, if it were only 
 for his account of the Indians. Perhaps the 
 very strangest thing about them, and the most 
 unaccountable, is their small numbers. The 
 Iroquois were one of the most formidable of 
 tribes. They were of the Five Nations, whose 
 scalping-parties wandered over an expanse of 
 thousands of square miles. Yet there is good 
 reason to doubt whether the whole five nations
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 213 
 could have put as many thousand warriors in 
 the field. It was the same with all the other 
 tribes of North Americans, both in the east, 
 the north, and the west. Their numbers were 
 always insignificant. And yet they had that 
 huge country to themselves, the best of cli- 
 mates, and plenty of food. Why was it that 
 they did not people it thickly? It may be 
 taken as a striking example of the purpose and 
 design which run through the affairs of men, 
 that at the very moment when the old world 
 was ready to overflow the new world was 
 empty to receive it. Had North America been 
 peopled as China is peopled, the Europeans 
 might have founded some settlements, but 
 could never have taken possession of the Con- 
 tinent. BufFon has made the striking remark 
 that the creative power appeared to have never 
 had great vigor in America. He alluded to 
 the abundance of the flora and fauna as com- 
 pared with that of other great divisions of the 
 earth's surface. Whether the numbers of the 
 Indians are an illustration of the same fact, or
 
 214 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 whether there is some special cause, is beyond 
 my very modest scientific attainments. When 
 one reflects upon the countless herds of bison 
 which used to cover the Western plains, or 
 marks in the present day the race statistics of 
 the French Canadians at one end of the Conti- 
 nent, and of the Southern negro at the other, 
 it seems absurd to suppose that there is any 
 geographical reason against Nature being as 
 prolific here as elsewhere. However, these be 
 deeper waters, and with your leave we will get 
 back into my usual six-inch wading-depth once 
 more.
 
 X 
 
 I don't know how those two httle books got 
 in there. They are Henley's "Song of the 
 Sword" and "Book of Verses." They ought 
 to be over yonder in the rather hmited Poetry 
 Section. Perhaps it is that I hke his work 
 so, whether it be prose or verse, and so have put 
 them ready to my hand. He was a remarkable 
 man, a man who was very much greater than 
 his work, great as some of his work was. I 
 have seldom known a personality more mag- 
 netic and stimulating. You left his presence, 
 as a battery leaves a generating station, 
 charged up and full. He made you feel what 
 a lot of work there was to be done, and how 
 glorious it was to be able to do it, and how 
 needful to get started upon it that very hour. 
 With the frame and the vitality of a giant he 
 was cruelly bereft of all outlet for his strength, 
 
 215
 
 ^16 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 and so distilled it off in hot words, in warm 
 sym2)athy, in strong prejudices, in all manner 
 of human and stimulating emotions. IMuch 
 of the time and energy which might have built 
 an imperishable name for himself was spent in 
 encouraging others; but it was not waste, for 
 he left his broad thumb-mark upon all that 
 passed beneath it. A dozen second-hand Hen- 
 leys are fortifying our literature to-day. 
 
 Alas that we have so little of his very best! 
 for that very best was the finest of our time. 
 Few poets ever wrote sixteen consecutive lines 
 more noble and more strong than those which 
 begin with the well-known quatrain — 
 
 " Out of the night that covers me, 
 Black as the pit from Pole to Pole, 
 I thank whatever Gods there be 
 For my unconquerable soul." 
 
 It is grand literature, and it is grand pluck 
 too; for it came from a man who, through no 
 fault of his own, had been pruned, and pruned 
 again, like an ill-grown shrub, by the surgeon's 
 knife. When he said —
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 217 
 
 " In the fell clutch of Circumstance, 
 
 I have not winced nor cried aloud. 
 
 Beneath the bludgeonings of Chance 
 
 My head is bloody but unbowed." 
 
 It was not what Lady Byron called "The 
 mimic woe" of the poet, but it was rather the 
 grand defiance of the Indian warrior at the 
 stake, whose proud soul can hold in hand his 
 quivering body. 
 
 There were two quite distinct veins of poetry 
 in Henley, each the very extreme from the 
 other. The one was heroic, gigantic, running 
 to large sweeping images and thundering 
 words. Such are the "Song of the Sword" 
 and much more that he has wi'itten, like the 
 wild singing of some Northern scald. The 
 other, and to my mind both the more charac- 
 teristic and the finer side of his work, is deU- 
 cate, precise, finely etched, with extraordinarily^ 
 vivid little pictures drawn in carefully phrased 
 and balanced English. Such are the "Hos- 
 pital Verses," while the "London Voluntaries" 
 stand midway between the two styles. What ! 
 you have not. read the "Hospital Verses!"
 
 218 TIIllOUGII THE MAGIC DOOR 
 Then get the "Book of Verses" and read them 
 without! delay. You will surely find some- 
 thing there which, for good or ill, is unique. 
 You can name — or at least I can name — noth- 
 ing to compare it with. Goldsmith and 
 Crabhe have written of indoor themes; but 
 their monotonous, if majestic meter, wxaries 
 the modern reader. But this is so varied, so 
 flexible, so dramatic. It stands by itself. 
 Confound the weekly journals and all the other 
 lightning conductors which caused such a man 
 to pass away, and to leave a total output of 
 about five booklets behind him! 
 
 However, all this is an absolute digression, 
 for the books had no business in this shelf at 
 all. This corner is meant for chronicles of 
 various sorts. Here are three in a line, which 
 carry you over a splendid stretch of French 
 (which usually means European) history, each, 
 as luck would have it, beginning just about 
 the time when the other leaves oif . The first 
 is Froissart, the second de Monstrelet, and the 
 third de Comines. When you have read the
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 219 
 three you have the best contemporary account 
 first hand of considerably more than a century 
 — a fair sKce out of the total written record of 
 the human race. 
 
 Froissart is always splendid. If you desire 
 to avoid the mediaeval French, which only a 
 specialist can read with pleasure, you can get 
 Lord Berners' almost equally medieval, but 
 very charming English, or you can turn to a 
 modern translation, such as this one of Johnes. 
 A single page of Lord Berners is delightful; 
 but it is a strain, I think, to read bulky vol- 
 umes in an archaic style. Personally, I prefer 
 the modern, and even with that you have shown 
 some patience before you have reached the end 
 of that big second tome. 
 
 I wonder whether, at the time, the old 
 Hainault Canon had any idea of what he was 
 doing — whether it ever flashed across his mind 
 that the day might come when his book would 
 be the one great authority, not only about the 
 times in which he lived, but about the whole in- 
 stitution of chivalry? I fear that it is far
 
 220 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 more likely that his whole object was to gain 
 some mundane advantage from the various 
 barons and knights whose names and deeds he 
 recounts. He has left it on record, for ex- 
 ample, that when he visited the Court of Eng- 
 land he took with him a handsomely-bound 
 copy of his work; and, doubtless, if one could 
 follow the good Canon one would find his jour- 
 neys littered with similar copies which were 
 probably expensive gifts to the recipient, for 
 what return would a knightly soul make for a 
 book which enshrined his own valor? 
 
 But without looking too curiously into his 
 motives, it must be admitted that the work 
 could not have been done more thoroughly. 
 There is something of Herodotus in the 
 Canon's cheery, chatty, garrulous, take-it-or- 
 leave-it manner. But he has the advantage of 
 the old Greek in accuracy. Considering that 
 he belonged to the same age which gravely ac- 
 cepted the travelers' tales of Sir John jMaun- 
 deville, it is, I think, remarkable how careful 
 and accurate the chronicler is. Take, for ex-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 221 
 ample, his description of Scotland and the 
 Scotch. Some would give the credit to Jean- 
 le-Bel, but that is another matter. Scotch 
 descriptions are a subject over which a four- 
 teenth-century Hainaulter might fairly be al- 
 lowed a little scope for his imagination. Yet 
 we can see that the account must on the whole 
 have been very correct. The Galloway nags, 
 the girdle-cakes, the bagpipes — every little de- 
 tail rings true. Jean-le-Bel was actually pres- 
 ent in a Border campaign, and from him 
 Froissart got his material ; but he has never at- 
 tempted to embroider it, and its accuracy, 
 where we can to some extent test it, must pre- 
 dispose us to accept his accounts where they 
 are beyond our confirmation. 
 
 But the most interesting portion of old 
 Froissart's work is that which deals with the 
 knights and the knight-err ants of his time, 
 their deeds, their habits, their methods of talk- 
 ing. It is true that he lived himself just a 
 little after the true heyday of chivalry ; but he 
 was quite early enough to have met many of
 
 222 THROUGH THE INIAGIC DOOR 
 the men who had been looked upon as the 
 flower of knighthood of the time. His book 
 was read too, and commented on by these very 
 men (as many of them as could read), and so 
 we may take it that it was no fancy portrait, 
 but a correct picture of these soldiers which 
 is to be found in it. The accounts are always 
 consistent. If you collate the remarks and 
 speeches of the knights (as I have had occa- 
 sion to do) you will find a remarkable uni- 
 formity running through them. We may be- 
 lieve then that this really does represent the 
 kind of men who fought at Crecy and at 
 Poictiers, in the age when both the French and 
 the Scottish kings were prisoners in London, 
 and England reached a pitch of military glory 
 which has perhaps never been equaled in her 
 history. 
 
 In one respect these knights differ from 
 anything which we have had presented to us 
 in our historical romances. To turn to the 
 supreme romancer, you will find that Scott's 
 mediaeval knights were usually muscular ath-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 223 
 letes in the prime of life : Bois-Guilbert, Front- 
 de-Boeuf, Richard, Ivanhoe, Count Rob- 
 ert — they all were such. But occasionally the 
 most famous of Froissart's knights were old, 
 crij)pled and blinded. Chandos, the best lance 
 of his day, must have been over seventy when 
 he lost his life through being charged upon the 
 side on which he had already lost an eye. He 
 was well on to that age when he rode out from 
 the English army and slew the Spanish cham- 
 pion, big Marten Ferrara, upon the morning 
 of Navaretta. Youth and strength were very 
 useful, no doubt, especially where heavy armor 
 had to be carried, but once on the horse's back 
 the gallant steed supplied the muscles. In an 
 English hunting-field many a doddering old 
 man, when he is once firmly seated in his famil- 
 iar saddle, can give points to the youngsters 
 at the game. So it was among the knights, 
 and those who had outlived all else could still 
 carry to the wars their wiliness, their experience 
 with arms, and, above all, their cool and un- 
 daunted courage.
 
 224 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 Beneath his varnish of chivahy, it cannot be 
 gainsaid that the knight was often a 
 bloody-minded and ferocious barbarian. 
 There was httle quarter in his wars, save when 
 a ransom might be claimed. But with all his 
 savagery, he was a light-hearted creature, like 
 a formidable boy playing a dreadful game. 
 He was true also to his own curious code, and, 
 so far as his own class went, his feelings were 
 genial and sympathetic, even in warfare. 
 There was no personal feeling or bitterness as 
 there might be now in a war between French- 
 men and Germans. On the contrary, the op- 
 ponents were very soft-spoken and polite to 
 each other. "Is there any small vow of which 
 I may relieve you?" "Would you desire to at- 
 tempt some small deed of arms upon me?" 
 And in the midst of a fight they would stop 
 for a breather, and converse amicably the 
 while, with many compliments upon each 
 other's prowess. When Seaton the Scotsman 
 had exchanged as many blows as he wished 
 with a company of French knights, he said.
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 225 
 "Thank you, gentlemen, thank you!" and gal- 
 loped away. An English knight made a vow, 
 "for his own advancement and the exaltation 
 of his lady," that he would ride into the hostile 
 city of Paris, and touch with his lance the inner 
 barrier. The whole story is most characteris- 
 tic of the times. As he galloped up, the 
 French knights around the barrier, seeing that 
 he was under vow, made no attack upon him, 
 and called out to him that he had carried him- 
 self well. As he returned, however, there 
 stood an unmannerly butcher with a pole-axe 
 upon the sidewalk, who struck him as he passed, 
 and killed him. Here ends the chronicler ; but 
 I have not the least doubt that the butcher had 
 a very evil time at the hands of the French 
 knights, who would not stand by and see one 
 of their own order, even if he were an enemy, 
 meet so plebeian an end. 
 
 De Comines, as a chronicler, is less quaint 
 and more conventional than Froissart, but the 
 writer of romance can dig plenty of stones out 
 of that quarry for the use of his own little
 
 226 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 building. Of course Quentin Durward has 
 come bodily out of the pages of De Coniines. 
 The whole history of Louis XI. and his rela- 
 tions with Charles the Bold, the strange life 
 at Plessis-le-Tours, the plebeian courtiers, the 
 barber and the hangman, the astrologers, the 
 alternations of savage cruelty and of slavish 
 superstition — it is all set forth here. One 
 would imagine that such a monarch was unique, 
 that such a mixture of strange qualities and 
 monstrous crimes could never be matched, and 
 yet like causes will always produce like results. 
 Read Walewski's "Life of Ivan the Terrible," 
 and you will find that more than a century later 
 Russia produced a monarch even more diabol- 
 ical, but working exactly on the same lines as 
 Louis, even down to small details. The same 
 cruelty, the same superstition, the same astrol- 
 ogers, the same low-born associates, the same 
 residence outside the influence of the great 
 cities — a parallel could hardly be more com- 
 plete. If you have not supped too full of 
 horrors when you have finished Ivan, then pass
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 227 
 on to the same author's account of Peter the 
 Great. What a land! What a succession of 
 monarchs! Blood and snow and iron! Both 
 Ivan and Peter killed their own sons. And 
 there is a hideous mockery of religion running 
 through it all which gives it a grotesque hor- 
 ror of its own. We have had our Henry the 
 Eighth, but our very worst would have been a 
 wise and benevolent rule in Russia. 
 
 Talking of romance and of chivalry, that 
 tattered book down yonder has as much be- 
 tween its disreputable covers as most that I 
 know. It is Washington Irving's "Conquest 
 of Grenada." I do not know where he got his 
 material for this book — from Spanish chron- 
 icles, I presume — but the wars between the 
 Moors and the Christian knights must have 
 been among the most chivalrous of exploits. I 
 could not name a book which gets the beauty 
 and the glamour of it better than this one, the 
 lance-heads gleaming in the dark defiles, the 
 red bale fires glowing on the crags, the stern 
 devotion of the mail-clad Christians, the dehon-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 naire and courtly courage of the dashing Mos- 
 lem. Had Washington Irving written noth- 
 ing else, that book alone should have forced 
 the door of every library. I love all his books, 
 for no man wrote fresher English with a purer 
 style; but of them all it is still "The Conquest 
 of Grenada" to which I turn most often. 
 
 To hark back for a moment to history as 
 seen in romances, here are two exotics side by 
 side, which have a flavor that is new. They 
 are a brace of foreign novelists, each of whom, 
 so far as I know, has only two books. This 
 green-and-gold volume contains both the 
 works of the Pomeranian Meinhold in an ex- 
 cellent translation by Lady Wilde. The first 
 is "Sidonia the Sorceress," the second "The 
 Amber Witch." I don't know where one may 
 turn for a stranger view of the Middle Ages, 
 the quaint details of simple life, with sudden 
 intervals of grotesque savagery. The most 
 weird and barbarous things are made human 
 and comprehensible. There is one incident 
 which haunts one after one has read it, where
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 229 
 the executioner chaffers with the villagers as 
 to what price they will give him for putting 
 some young witch to the torture, running them 
 up from a barrel of apples to a barrel and a 
 half, on the grounds that he is now old and 
 rheumatic, and that the stooping and straining 
 is bad for his back. It should be done on a 
 sloping hill, he explains, so that the "dear little 
 children" may see it easily. Both "Sidonia" 
 and "The Amber Witch" give such a picture 
 of old Germany as I have never seen else- 
 where. 
 
 But Melnhold belongs to a bj^gone genera- 
 tion. This other author in whom I find a new 
 note, and one of great power, is Merejkowski, 
 who is, if I mistake not, young and with his 
 career still before him. "The Forerunner" 
 and "The Death of the Gods" are the only two 
 books of his which I have been able to obtain, 
 but the pictures of Renaissance Italy in the 
 one, and of declining Rome in the other, are in 
 my opinion among the masterpieces of fiction. 
 I confess that as I read them I was pleased
 
 230 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 to find how open my mind was to new impres- 
 sions, for one of the greatest mental dangers 
 which comes upon a man as he grows older is 
 that he should become so attached to old favor- 
 ites that he has no room for the new-comer, 
 and persuades himself that the days of great 
 things are at an end because his own poor 
 brain is getting ossified. You have but to 
 open any critical paper to see how common is 
 the disease, but a knowledge of literary history 
 assures us that it has always been the same, and 
 that if the young writer is discouraged by ad- 
 verse comparisons it has been the common lot 
 from the beginning. He has but one resource, 
 which is to pay no heed to criticism, but to try 
 to satisfy his own highest standard and leave 
 the rest to time and the public. Here is a 
 little bit of doggerel, pinned, as you see, beside 
 my bookcase, which may in a ruffled hour bring 
 peace and guidance to some younger brother — 
 
 " Critics kind — never mind ! 
 Critics flatter — no matter ! 
 Critics blame — all the same! 
 Critics curse — none the worse ! 
 Do your best — the rest ! "
 
 XI 
 
 I HAVE been talking in the past tense of heroes 
 and of knight-errants, but surely their day is 
 not yet passed. When the earth has all been 
 explored, when the last savage has been tamed, 
 when the final cannon has been scrapped, and 
 the world has settled down into unbroken vir- 
 tue and unutterable dullness, men will cast 
 their thoughts back to our age, and will idealize 
 our romance and our courage, even as we do 
 that of our distant forbears. "It is wonderful 
 what these people did with their rude imple- 
 ments and their limited appliances!" That is 
 what they will say when they read of our ex- 
 plorations, our voyages, and our wars. 
 
 Now, take that first book on my travel 
 shelf. It is Knight's "Cruise of the Falcon.''' 
 Nature was guilty of the pun which put this 
 soul into a body so named. Read this simple 
 
 231
 
 232 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 record and tell me if there is anything in 
 Hakluyt more wonderful. Two landsmen — 
 solicitors, if I remember right — go down to 
 Southampton Quay. They pick up a long- 
 shore j^outh, and they embark in a tiny boat 
 in which they put to sea. Where do they turn 
 up? At Buenos Ayres. Thence they pene- 
 trate to Paraguay, return to the West Indies, 
 sell their little boat there, and go home. What 
 could the Elizabethan mariners have done 
 more? There are no Spanish galleons now to 
 vary the monotony of such a voyage, but had 
 there been I am very certain our adventurers 
 would have had their share of the doubloons. 
 But surely it was the nobler when done out of 
 the pure lust of adventure and in answer to 
 the call of the sea, with no golden bait to draw 
 them on. The old spirit still lives, disguise 
 it as you will with top hats, frock coats, and all 
 prosaic settings. Perhaps even they also will 
 seem romantic when centuries have blurred 
 them. 
 
 Another book which shows the romance and
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR S33 
 the heroism which still linger upon earth is that 
 large copy of the "Voyage of the Discovery 
 in the Antarctic" by Captain Scott. Written 
 in plain sailor fashion with no attempt at over- 
 statement or color, it none the less (or perhaps 
 all the more) leaves a deep imj^ression upon 
 the mind. As one reads it, and reflects on 
 what one reads, one seems to get a clear view 
 of just those qualities which make. the best kind 
 of Briton. Every nation produces brave men. 
 Every nation has men of energy. But there 
 is a certain type which mixes its bravery and its 
 energy with a gentle modesty and a boyish 
 good-humor, and it is just this type which is 
 the highest. Here the whole expedition seem 
 to have been imbued with the spirit of their 
 commander. No flinching, no grumbling, 
 every discomfort taken as a jest, no thought of 
 self, each working only for the success of the 
 enterprise. When you have read of such pri- 
 vations so endured and so chronicled, it makes 
 one ashamed to show emotion over the small 
 annoyances of daily life. Head of Scott's
 
 234 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 blinded, scurvy-struck party staggering on to 
 their goal, and then complain, if you can, of 
 the heat of a northern sun, or the dust of a 
 country road. 
 
 That is one of the weaknesses of modern 
 life. We complain too much. We are not 
 ashamed of complaining. Time was when it 
 was otherwise — when it was thought effemi- 
 nate to complain. The Gentleman should al- 
 ways be the Stoic, with his soul too great to be 
 affected by the small troubles of life. "You 
 look cold, sir," said an English sympathizer 
 to a French emigre. The fallen noble drew 
 himself up in his threadbare coat. "Sir," said 
 he, "a gentleman is never cold." One's con- 
 sideration for others as well as one's own self- 
 respect should check the grumble. This self- 
 suppression, and also the concealment of pain 
 are two of the old noblesse oblige characteris- 
 tics which are now little more than a tradition. 
 Public opinion should be firmer on the matter. 
 The man who must hop because his shin is 
 hacked, or wring his hand because his knuckles
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 235 
 are bruised should be made to feel that he is 
 an object not of pity, but of contempt. 
 
 The tradition of Arctic exploration is a 
 noble one among Americans as well as our- 
 selves. The next book is a case in point. It 
 is Greely's "Arctic Service," and it is a worthy 
 shelf-companion to Scott's "Account of the 
 Voyage of the Discovery.'' There are inci- 
 dents in this book which one can never forget. 
 The episode of those twenty-odd men lying 
 upon that horrible bluff, and dying one a day 
 from cold and hunger and scurvy, is one which 
 dwarfs all our puny tragedies of romance. 
 And the gallant starving leader giving lectures 
 on abstract science in an attempt to take the 
 thoughts of the dying men away from their 
 sufferings — what a picture! It is bad to suf- 
 fer from cold and bad to suffer from hunger, 
 and bad to live in the dark ; but that men could 
 do all these things for six months on end, and 
 that some should live to tell the tale, is, indeed, 
 a marvel. What a world of feeling lies in the 
 exclamation of the poor dying lieutenant:
 
 236 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 "Well, this is wretched," he groaned, as he 
 turned his face to the wall. 
 
 The Anglo-Celtic race has always run to in- 
 dividualism, and yet there is none which is ca- 
 pable of conceiving and carrying out a finer 
 ideal of discipline. There is nothing in Ro- 
 man or Grecian annals, not even the lava- 
 baked sentry at Pompeii, which gives a more 
 sternly fine object-lesson in duty than the 
 young recruits of the British army who went 
 down in their ranks on the Birkenhead. And 
 this expedition of Greely's gave rise to an- 
 other example which seems to me hardly less 
 remarkable. You may remember, if you have 
 read the book, that even when there were only 
 about eight unfortunates still left, hardly able 
 to move for weakness and hunger, the seven 
 took the odd man out upon the ice, and shot 
 him dead for breach of discipline. The whole 
 grim proceeding was carried out with as much 
 method and signing of papers, as if they were 
 all within sight of the Capitol at Washington. 
 His offense had consisted, so far as I can re-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 237 
 member, of stealing and eating the thong 
 which bound two portions of the sledge to- 
 gether, something about as appetizing as a 
 bootlace. It is only fair to the commander to 
 say, however, that it was one of a series of 
 petty thefts, and that the thong of a sledge 
 might mean life or death to the whole party. 
 
 Personally I must confess that anything 
 bearing upon the Arctic Seas is always of the 
 deepest interest to me. He who has once been 
 within the borders of that mysterious region, 
 which can be both the most lovely and the 
 most repellent upon earth, must always retain 
 something of its glamour. Standing on the 
 confines of known geography I have shot 
 the southward flying ducks, and have taken 
 from their gizzards pebbles which they have 
 swallowed in some land whose shores no hu- 
 man foot has trod. The memory of that in- 
 expressible air, of the great ice-girt lakes of 
 deep blue water, of the cloudless sky shading 
 away into a light green and then into a cold 
 yellow at the horizon, of the noisy companion-
 
 238 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 able birds, of the huge, greasy-backed water 
 animals, of the slug-like seals, startlingly 
 black against the dazzling whiteness of the ice 
 — all of it will come back to a man in his 
 dreams, and will seem little more than some 
 fantastic dream itself, so removed is it from 
 the main stream of his life. And then to 
 play a fish a hundred tons in weight, and 
 worth two thousand pounds — but what in the 
 world has all this to do with my bookcase? 
 
 Yet it has its place in my main line of 
 thought, for it leads me straight to the very 
 next upon the shelf, Bullen's "Cruise of the 
 Cachelotf a book which is full of the glamour 
 and the mystery of the sea, marred only by 
 the brutality of those who go down to it in 
 ships. This is the sperm-whale fishing, an 
 open-sea aifair, and very different from that 
 Greenland ice groping in which I served a 
 seven-months' apprenticeship. Both, I fear, 
 are things of the past — certainly the northern 
 fishing is so, for why should men risk their 
 lives to get oil when one has but to sink a
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 239 
 pipe in the ground. It is the more fortunate 
 then that it should have been handled by one 
 of the most virile writers who has described 
 a sailor's life. Bullen's English at its best 
 rises to a great height. If I wished to show 
 how high I would take that next book down, 
 "Sea Idylls." 
 
 How is this, for example, if you have an 
 ear for the music of prose? It is a simple 
 paragraph out of the magnificent description 
 of a long calm in the tropics. 
 
 "A change, unusual as unwholesome, came 
 over the bright blue of the sea. No longer 
 did it reflect, as in a limpid mirror the splen- 
 dor of the sun, the sweet silvery glow of the 
 moon, or the coruscating clusters of count- 
 less stars. Like the ashen-gray hue that be- 
 dims the countenance of the dying, a filmy 
 greasy skin appeared to overspread the recent 
 loveliness of the ocean surface. The sea was 
 sick, stagnant, and foul, from its turbid 
 waters arose a miasmatic vapor like a breath
 
 240 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 of decay, which clung clammily to the palate 
 and dulled all the senses. Drawn by some 
 strange force, from the unfathomable depths 
 below, eerie shapes sought the surface, blink- 
 ing glassily at the unfamiliar glare they had 
 exchanged for their native gloom — uncouth 
 creatures bedight with tasselled fringes like 
 weed-growths waving around them, fathom- 
 long, medusse with colored spots like eyes clus- 
 tering all over their transparent substance, 
 wriggling worm-like forms of such elusive 
 matter that the smallest exposure to the sun 
 melted them, and they were not. Lower 
 down, vast pale shadows creep sluggishly 
 along, happily undistinguishable as yet, but 
 adding a half-familiar flavor to the strange, 
 faint smell that hung about us." 
 
 Take the whole of that essay which describes 
 a calm in the Tropics, or take the other one: 
 "Sunrise as seen from the Crow's-nest," and 
 you must admit that there have been few 
 finer pieces of descriptive English in our
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR S41 
 time. If I had to choose a sea hbrary of only 
 a dozen volumes I should certainly given Bul- 
 len two places. The others? Well, it is so 
 much a matter of individual taste. "Tom 
 Cringle's Log" should have one for certain. 
 I hope boys respond now as they once did to 
 the sharks and the pirates, the planters, and 
 all the rollicking high spirits of that splendid 
 book. Then there is Dana's "Two Years be- 
 fore the Mast." I should find room also for 
 Stevenson's "Wrecker" and "Ebb Tide." 
 Clark Russell deserves a whole shelf for him- 
 self, but anyhow you could not miss out "The 
 Wreck of the GrosvenorJ" Marryat, of 
 course, must be represented, and I should pick 
 "Midshipman Easy" and "Peter Simple" as 
 his samples. Then throw in one of Melville's 
 Otaheite books — now far too completely for- 
 gotten — "Typee" or "Omoo," and as a quite 
 modern flavor Kipling's "Captains Coura- 
 geous" and Jack London's "Sea Wolf," with 
 Conrad's "Nigger of the Narcissus." Then 
 you will have enough to turn your study into
 
 242 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 a cabin and bring the wash and surge to your 
 ears, if written words can do it. Oh, how one 
 longs for it sometimes when Hfe grows too 
 artificial, and the old Viking blood begins to 
 stir! Surely it must linger in all of us, for 
 no man who dwells in an island but had an 
 ancestor in longship or in coracle. Still more 
 must the salt drop tingle in the blood of an 
 American when you reflect that in all that 
 broad continent there is not one whose fore- 
 father did not cross 3,000 miles of ocean. 
 And yet there are in the Central States mil- 
 lions and millions of their descendants who 
 have never seen the sea. 
 
 I have said that "Omoo" and "Typee," the 
 books in which the sailor Melville describes his 
 life among the Otaheitans, have sunk too rap- 
 idly into obscurity. What a charming and 
 interesting task there is for some critic of 
 catholic tastes and sympathetic judgment to 
 undertake rescue work among the lost books 
 which would repay salvage! A small volume 
 setting forth their names and their claims to
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 243 
 attention would be interesting in itself, and 
 more interesting in the material to which it 
 would serve as an introduction. I am sure 
 there are many good books, possibly there are 
 some great ones, which have been swept away 
 for a time in the rush. What chance, for 
 example, has any book by an unknown author 
 which is published at a moment of great na- 
 tional excitement, when some public crisis 
 arrests the popular mind? Hundreds have 
 been still-born in this fashion, and are there 
 none which should have lived among them? 
 Now, there is a book, a modern one, and writ- 
 ten by a youth under thirty. It is Snaith's 
 "Broke of Covenden," and it scarce attained 
 a second edition. I do not say that it is a 
 Classic — I should not like to be positive that 
 it is not — but I am perfectly sure that the 
 man who wrote it has the possibility of a 
 Classic within him. Here is another novel, 
 "Eight Days" by Forrest. You can't buy it. 
 You are lucky even if you can find it in a 
 library. Yet nothing ever written will bring
 
 244 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 the Indian Mutiny home to you as this book 
 will do. Here's another which I will warrant 
 you never heard of. It is Powell's "Animal 
 Episodes." No, it is not a collection of dog- 
 and-cat anecdotes, but it is a series of very 
 singularly told stories which deal with the ani- 
 mal side of the human, and which you will 
 feel have an entirely new flavor if you have 
 a discriminating palate. The book came out 
 ten years ago, and is utterly unknown. If I 
 can point to three in one small shelf, how many 
 lost lights must be flitting in the outer dark- 
 ness! 
 
 Let me hark back for a moment to the 
 subject with which I began, the romance of 
 travel and the frequent heroism of modern 
 life. I have two books of Scientific Explora- 
 tion here which exhibit both these qualities as 
 strongly as any I know. I could not choose 
 two better books to put into a young man's 
 hands if you wished to train him first in a 
 gentle and noble firmness of mind, and sec- 
 ondly in a great love for and interest in all
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 245 
 that pertains to Nature. The one is Darwin's 
 "Journal of the Voyage of the Beagle/'' 
 Any discerning eye must have detected long 
 before the "Origin of Species" appeared, 
 simply on the strength of this book of travel, 
 that a brain of the first order, united with 
 many rare qualities of character, had arisen. 
 Never was there a more comprehensive mind. 
 Nothing was too small and nothing too great 
 for its alert observation. One page is occu- 
 pied in the analysis of some peculiarity in the 
 web of a minute spider, while the next deals 
 with the evidence for the subsidence of a con- 
 tinent, and the extinction of a myriad ani- 
 mals. And his sweep of knowledge was so 
 great, botany, geology, zoology, each lending 
 its corroborative aid to the other. How a 
 youth of Darwin's age — he was only twenty- 
 three when in the year 1831 he started round 
 the world on the surveying ship Beagle — 
 could have acquired such a mass of informa- 
 tion fills one with the same wonder, and is per- 
 haps of the same nature, as the boy musician
 
 246 THROUGH THE IMAGIC DOOR 
 who exhibits by instinct the touch of the mas- 
 ter. Another quahty which one would be less 
 disposed to look for in the savant is a fine 
 contempt for danger, which is veiled in such 
 modesty that one reads between the lines 
 in order to detect it. When he was in the 
 Argentine, the country outside the Settle- 
 ments was covered with roving bands of horse 
 Indians, who gave no quarter to any whites. 
 Yet Darwin rode the four hundred miles be- 
 tween Bahia and Buenos Ayres, when even 
 the hardy Gauchos refused to accompany him. 
 Personal danger and a hideous death were 
 small things to him compared to a new beetle 
 or an undescribed fly. 
 
 The second book to which I alluded is Wal- 
 lace's "Malay Archipelago." There is a 
 strange similarity in the minds of the two men, 
 the same courage, both moral and physical, 
 the same gentle persistence, the same catholic 
 knowledge and wide sweep of mind, the same 
 passion for the observation of Nature. Wal- 
 lace by a flash of intuition understood and de-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 247 
 scribed in a letter to Darwin the cause of the 
 Origin of Species at the very time when the 
 latter was publishing a book founded upon 
 twenty years' labor to prove the same thesis. 
 What must have been his feelings when he 
 read that letter! And yet he had nothing to 
 fear, for his book found no more enthusiastic 
 admirer than the man who had in a sense an- 
 ticipated it. Here also one sees that Science 
 has its heroes no less than Religion. One of 
 Wallace's missions in Papua was to examine 
 the nature and species of the Birds-of-Para- 
 dise ; but in the course of the years of his wan- 
 derings through those islands he made a com- 
 plete investigation of the whole fauna. A 
 foot-note somewhere explains that the Papu- 
 ans who lived in the Bird-of -Paradise country 
 were confirmed cannibals. Fancy living for 
 years with or near such neighbors! Let a 
 young fellow read these two books, and he 
 cannot fail to have both his mind and his 
 spirit strengthened by the reading.
 
 XII 
 
 Here we are at the final seance. For the 
 last time, my patient comrade, I ask you to 
 make yourself comfortable upon the old green 
 settee, to look up at the oaken shelves, and 
 to bear with me as best you may while I 
 preach about their contents. The last time! 
 And yet, as I look along the lines of the vol- 
 umes, I have not mentioned one out of ten of 
 those to which I owe a debt of gratitude, nor 
 one in a hundred of the thoughts which course 
 through my brain as I look at them. As well 
 perhaps, for the man who has said all that he 
 has to say has invariably said too much. 
 
 Let me be didactic for a moment! I 
 assume this solemn — oh, call it not pedantic! 
 — attitude because my eye catches the small 
 but select corner which constitues my library 
 of Science. I wanted to say that if I were 
 
 M8
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 249 
 advising a young man who was beginning life, 
 I should counsel him to devote one evening a 
 week to scientific reading. Had he the perse- 
 verance to adliere to his resolution, and if he 
 began it at twenty, he would certainly find 
 himself with an unusually well-furnished 
 mind at thirty, which would stand him in right 
 good stead in whatever line of life he might 
 walk. When I advise him to read science, I 
 do not mean that he should choke himself with 
 the dust of the j)edants, and lose himself in 
 the subdivisions of the Lepidoptera, or the 
 classifications of the dicotjdedonous plants. 
 These dreary details are the prickly bushes in 
 that enchanted garden, and you are foolish 
 indeed if you begin your walks by butting 
 your head into one. Keep very clear of them 
 until you have explored the open beds and 
 wandered down every easy path. For this 
 reason avoid the text-books, which repel, and 
 cultivate that popular science which attracts. 
 You cannot hope to be a specialist upon all 
 these varied subjects. Better far to have a
 
 250 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 broad idea of general results, and to under- 
 stand their relations to each other. A ^Try 
 little reading will give a man such a ivnowl- 
 edge of geology, for example, as will make 
 every quarry and railway cutting an object of 
 interest. A very little zoologj^ will enable you 
 to satisfy your curiosity as to what is the 
 proper name and style of this buff -ermine 
 moth which at the present instant is buzzing 
 round the lamp. A very little botany will en- 
 able you to recognize every flower you are 
 likely to meet in your walks abroad, and to 
 give you a tiny thrill of interest when you 
 chance upon one which is beyond your ken. 
 A very little archaeology will tell you all about 
 yonder British tumulus, or help you to fill in 
 the outline of the broken Roman camp upon 
 the downs. A very little astronomy will 
 cause you to look more intently at the heavens, 
 to pick out your brothers the planets, who 
 move in your own circles, from the stranger 
 stars, and to appreciate the order, beauty, and 
 majesty of that material universe which is
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 251 
 most surely the outward sign of the spiritual 
 force behind it. How a man of science can 
 be a materialist is as amazing to me as how 
 a sectarian can limit the possibilities of the 
 Creator. Show me a picture without an ar- 
 tist, show me a bust without a sculptor, show 
 me music without a musician, and then j^ou 
 may begin to talk to me of a universe without 
 a Universe-maker, call Him by what name 
 you wall. 
 
 Here is Flammarion's "L'Atmosphere" — 
 a very gorgeous though weather-stained copy 
 in faded scarlet and gold. The book has a 
 small history, and I value it. A young 
 Frenchman, dying of fever on the west coast 
 of Africa, gave it to me as a professional fee. 
 The sight of it takes me back to a little ship's 
 bunk, and a sallow face with large, sad eyes 
 looking out at me. Poor boy, I fear that he 
 never saw his beloved Marseilles again! 
 
 Talking of popular science, I know no bet- 
 ter books for exciting a man's first interest, 
 and giving a broad general view of the sub-
 
 252 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 ject, than these of Samuel Laing. Who 
 would have imagined that the wise savant and 
 gentle dreamer of these volumes was also the 
 energetic secretary of a railway company? 
 Many men of the highest scientific eminence 
 have begun in prosaic lines of life. Herbert 
 Spencer was a railway engineer. Wallace 
 was a land surveyor. But that a man with 
 so pronounced a scientific brain as Laing 
 should continue all his life to devote his time 
 to dull routine work, remaining in harness 
 until extreme old age, with his soul still open 
 to every fresh idea, and his brain acquiring 
 new concretions of knowledge, is indeed a 
 remarkable fact. Read those books, and you 
 will be a fuller man. 
 
 It is an excellent device to talk about 
 what you have recently read. Rather hard 
 upon your audience, you may say; but with- 
 out wishing to be personal, I dare bet it is 
 more interesting than your usual small talk. 
 It must, of course, be done with some tact 
 and discretion. It is the mention of Laing's
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 253 
 works which awoke the train of thought 
 which led to these remarks. I had met some 
 one at a table d'hote or elsewhere who made 
 some remark about the prehistoric remains in 
 the valley of the Somme. I knew all about 
 those, and showed him that I did. I then 
 threw out some allusion to the rock temples 
 of Yucatan, which he instantly picked up and 
 enlarged upon. He spoke of ancient Peru- 
 vian civilization, and I kept well abreast of 
 him. I cited the Titicaca image, and he knew 
 all about that. He spoke of Quarternary man, 
 and I was with him all the time. Each was 
 more and more amazed at the fulness and the 
 accuracy of the information of the other, until 
 like a flash the explanation crossed my mind. 
 "You are reading Samuel Laing's 'Human 
 Origins'!" I cried. So he was, and so by a 
 coincidence was I. We were pouring water 
 over each other, but it was all new-drawn from 
 the spring. 
 
 There is a big two-volumed book at the end 
 of my science shelf which would, even now,
 
 254 TIIllOUGII THE MAGIC DOOR 
 have its right to be called scientific disputed 
 by some of the pedants. It is Myers' "Hu- 
 man Personality." My own opinion, for 
 what it is worth, is that it will be recognized 
 a century hence as a great root book, one from 
 which a whole new branch of science will have 
 sprung. Where between four covers will 
 you find greater evidence of patience, of 
 industry, of thought, of discrimination, of that 
 sweep of mind which can gather up a thousand 
 separate facts and bind them all in the meshes 
 of a single consistent system? Darwin has 
 not been a more ardent collector in zoology 
 than Myers in the dim regions of psychic re- 
 search, and his whole hypothesis, so new that 
 a new nomenclature and terminology had to 
 be invented to express it, telepathy, the sub- 
 liminal, and the rest of it, will always be a 
 monument of acute reasoning expressed in 
 fine prose, and founded upon ascertained fact. 
 The mere suspicion of scientific thought or 
 scientific methods has a great charm in any 
 branch of literature, however far it may be
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 255 
 removed from actual research. Poe's tales, 
 for example, owe much to this effect, though 
 in his case it was a pure illusion. Jules Verne 
 also produces a charmingly credible effect for 
 the most incredible things by an adept use of 
 a considerable amount of real knowledge of 
 nature. But most gracefully of all does it 
 shine in the lighter form of essay, where play- 
 ful thoughts draw their analogies and illus- 
 trations from actual fact, each showing up the 
 otlier, and the combination presenting a pecul- 
 iar piquancy to the reader. 
 
 Where could I get a better illustration of 
 what I mean than in those three little volumes 
 which make up Wendell Holmes' immortal 
 series, "The Autocrat," "The Poet," and "The 
 Professor at the Breakfast Table"? Here the 
 subtle, dainty, delicate thought is continually 
 reinforced by the allusion or the analogy which 
 shows the wide, accurate knowledge behind it. 
 What work it is, how wise, how witty, how 
 large-hearted and tolerant I Could one choose 
 one's philosopher in the Elysian fields, as once
 
 256 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 in Athens, I would surely join the smiling 
 group who listened to the human, kindly words 
 of the Sage of Boston. I suppose it is just 
 that continual leaven of science, especially of 
 medical science, which has from m}^ early stu- 
 dent days given those books so strong an at- 
 traction for me. Never have I so known and 
 loved a man whom I had never seen. It was 
 one of the ambitions of my lifetime to look 
 upon his face, but by the irony of Fate I ar- 
 rived in his native city just in time to lay a 
 wreath upon his newly-turned grave. Read 
 his books again, and see if you are not espe- 
 cially struck by the up-to-dateness of them. 
 Like Tennyson's "In JNIemoriam" it seems to 
 me to be work which sprang into full flower 
 fifty years before its time. One can hardly 
 open a page haphazard without Hghting upon 
 some passage which illustrates the breadth of 
 view, the felicity of phrase, and the singular 
 power of playful but most suggestive analogy. 
 Here, for example, is a paragraph — no better
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 257 
 than a dozen others — which combines all the 
 rare qualities — 
 
 "Insanity is often the logic of an accurate 
 mind overtasked. Good mental machinery 
 ought to break its own wheels and levers, if 
 anything is thrust upon them suddenly which 
 tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A 
 weak mind does not accumulate force enough 
 to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man 
 from going mad. We frequently see persons 
 in insane hospitals, sent there in consequence 
 of what are called religious mental disturb- 
 ances. I confess that I think better of them 
 than of many who hold the same notions, and 
 keep their wits and enjoy life very well, out- 
 side of the asylums. Any decent person 
 ought to go mad if he really holds such and 
 such opinions. . . . Anything that is 
 brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hope- 
 less for the most of mankind, and perhaps for 
 entire races — anything that assumes the neces-
 
 258 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 sity for the extermination of instincts which 
 were given to be regulated — no matter by what 
 name you call it — no matter whether a fakir, 
 or a monk, or a deacon believes it — if re- 
 ceived, ought to produce insanity^ in every well- 
 regulated mind." 
 
 'to' 
 
 There's a fine bit of breezy polemics for the 
 dreary fifties — a fine bit of moral courage too 
 for the University professor who ventured to 
 say it. 
 
 I put him above Lamb as an essayist, be- 
 cause there is a flavor of actual knowledge and 
 of practical acquaintance with the problems 
 and affairs of life, which is lacking in the elfin 
 Londoner. I do not say that the latter is not 
 the rarer quality. There are my "Essays of 
 Elia," and they are well-thumbed as you see, 
 so it is not because I love Lamb less that I 
 love this other more. Both are exquisite, but 
 Wendell Holmes is for ever touching some 
 note which awakens an answering vibration 
 within my own mind.
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 259 
 The essay must always be a somewhat repel- 
 lent form of literature, unless it be handled 
 with the hghtest and deftest touch. It is too 
 reminiscent of the school themes of our boy- 
 hood — to put a heading and then to show what 
 you can get under it. Even Stevenson, for 
 whom I have the most profound admiration, 
 finds it difficult to carry the reader through a 
 series of such papers, adorned with his orig- 
 inal thought and quaint turn of phrase. Yet 
 his "Men and Books" and "Virginibus Puer- 
 isque" are high examples of what may be done 
 in spite of the inherent unavoidable difficulty 
 of the task. 
 
 But his style! Ah, if Stevenson had only 
 realized how beautiful and nervous was his own 
 natural God-given style he would never have 
 been at pains to acquire another! It is sad to 
 read the much-lauded anecdote of his imitat- 
 ing this author and that, picking up and drop- 
 ping, in search of the best. The best is 
 always the most natural. When Stevenson 
 becomes a conscious stylist, applauded by so
 
 2G0 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 many critics, he seems to me like a man who, 
 having most natural curls, will still conceal 
 them under a wig. The moment he is precious 
 he loses his grip. But when he will abide by 
 his own sterling Lowland Saxon, with the di- 
 rect word and the short, cutting sentence, I 
 know not where in recent years we may find 
 his mate. In this strong, plain setting the 
 occasional happy word shines like a cut jewel. 
 A really good stylist is like Beau Brummell's 
 description of a well-dressed man — so dressed 
 that no one would ever observe him. The mo- 
 ment you begin to remark a man's style the 
 odds are that there is something the matter 
 with it. It is a clouding of the crystal — a 
 diversion of the reader's mind from the matter 
 to the manner, from the author's subject to 
 the author himself. 
 
 No, I have not the Edinburgh edition. If 
 you think of a presentation — but I should be 
 the last to suggest it. Perhaps on the whole I 
 would prefer to have him in scattered books, 
 rather than in a complete set. The half is
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 261 
 more than the whole of most authors, and not 
 the least of him. I am sm^e that his friends 
 who reverenced his memory had good warrant 
 and express instructions to publish this com- 
 plete edition — very possibly it was arranged 
 before his lamented end. Yet, speaking gen- 
 erally, I would say that an author was best 
 served by being very carefull^r pruned before 
 being exposed to the winds of time. Let every 
 weak twig, every immature shoot be shorn 
 away, and nothing but strong, sturdy, well- 
 seasoned branches left. So shall the whole 
 tree stand strong for years to come. How 
 false an impression of the true Stevenson 
 would our critical grandchild acquire if he 
 chanced to pick down any one of half a dozen 
 of these volumes! As we watched his hand 
 stray down the rank how we would pray that it 
 might alight upon the ones we love, on the 
 "New Arabian Nights," "The Ebb Tide," "The 
 Wrecker," "Kidnapped," or "Treasure Is- 
 land." These can surely never lose their 
 charm.
 
 262 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 What noble books of their class are those 
 last, "Kidnapped" and "Treasure Island"! 
 both, as you see, shining forth upon my lower 
 shelf. "Treasure Island" is the better story, 
 while I could imagine that "Kidnaj^jped" might 
 have the more permanent value as being an 
 excellent and graphic sketch of the state of 
 the Highlands after the last Jacobite insurrec- 
 tion. Each contains one novel and admirable 
 character, Alan Breck in the one, and Long 
 John in the other. Surely John Silver, with 
 his face the size of a ham, and his little gleam- 
 ing eyes like crumbs of glass in the center of it, 
 is the king of all seafaring desperadoes. Ob- 
 serve how the strong eiFect is produced in his 
 case, seldom by direct assertion on the part of 
 the story-teller, but usually by comj)arison, in- 
 nuendo, or indirect reference. The objection- 
 able Billy Bones is haunted by the dread of 
 "a seafaring man with one leg." Captain 
 Flint, we are told, was a brave man; "he was 
 afraid of none, not he, only Silver — Silver 
 was that genteel." Or, again, where John
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 263 
 himself says, "there was some that was feared 
 of Pew, and some that was feared of Fhnt; 
 but FHnt his own self was feared of meo 
 Feared he was, and proud. They was the 
 roughest crew afloat was Flint's. The devil 
 himself would have been feared to go to sea 
 with them. Well, now, I will tell you. I'm 
 not a boasting man, and you seen yourself how 
 easy I keep company; but when I was quar- 
 termaster, lambs wasn't the word for Flint's 
 old buccaneers." So by a touch here, and a 
 hint there, there grows upon us the individual- 
 ity of the smooth-tongued, ruthless, masterful, 
 one-legged devil. He is to us not a creation 
 of fiction, but an organic living reality with 
 whom w^e have come in contact; such is the 
 effect of the fine suggestive strokes with which 
 he is drawn. And the buccaneers themselves, 
 how simple, and yet how effective are the little 
 touches which indicate their ways of thinking 
 and of acting. "I want to go in that cabin, 
 I do; I want their pickles and wine and that." 
 "Now, if you had sailed along o' Bill you
 
 264 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 wouldn't have stood there to be spoke twice 
 — not you. That was never Bill's way, not 
 the way of sich as sailed with him." Scott's 
 buccaneers in "The Pirate" are admirable, but 
 they lack something human which we find here. 
 It will be long before John Silver loses his 
 place in sea fiction, "and you may lay to that." 
 Stevenson was deeply influenced by Mere- 
 dith, and even in these books the influence of 
 the master is apparent. There is the apt use 
 of an occasional archaic or unusual word, the 
 short, strong descriptions, the striking meta- 
 phors, the somewhat staccato fashion of 
 speech. Yet, in spite of this flavor, they have 
 quite individuality enough to constitute a 
 school of their own. Their faults, or rather 
 perhaps their limitations, lie never in the exe- 
 cution, but entirely in the original conception. 
 They picture only one side of life, and that a 
 strange and exceptional one. There is no fe- 
 male interest. We feel that it is an apothesis 
 of the boy-story — the penny number of our 
 youth in ecccelsis. But it is all so good, so
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOIl 265 
 fresh, so picturesque, that, however Hmited its 
 scope, it still retains a definite and well-assured 
 place in hterature. There is no reason why 
 "Treasure Island" should not be to the rising 
 generation of the twenty-first century what 
 "Robinson Crusoe" has been to that of the 
 nineteenth. The balance of probability is all 
 in that direction. 
 
 The modern masculine novel, dealing almost 
 exclusively with the rougher, more stirring 
 side of life, with the objective rather than the 
 subjective, marks the reaction against the 
 abuse of love in fiction. This one phase of life 
 in its orthodox aspect, and ending in the con- 
 ventional marriage, has been so hackneyed and 
 worn to a shadow, that it is not to be wondered 
 at that there is a tendency sometimes to swing 
 to the other extreme, and to give it less than its 
 fair share in the affairs of men. In British 
 fiction nine books out of ten have held up love 
 and marriage as the be-all and end-all of hfe. 
 Yet we know, in actual practice, that this may 
 not be so. In the career of the average man
 
 ^66 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 his marriage is an incident, and a momentous 
 incident; but it is only one of several. He is 
 swayed by many strong emotions ; his business, 
 his ambitions, his friendshij)s, his struggles 
 with the recurrent dangers and difficulties 
 which tax a man's wisdom and his courage. 
 Love will often play a subordinate part in his 
 life. How many go through the world with- 
 out ever loving at all? It jars upon us then 
 to have it continually held up as the predomi- 
 nating, all-important fact in life; and there is 
 a not unnatural tendency among a certain 
 school, of which Stevenson is certainly the 
 leader, to avoid altogether a source of interest 
 which has been so misused and overdone. If 
 all love-making were like that between Richard 
 Feverel and Lucy Desborough, then indeed we 
 could not have too much of it ; but to be made 
 attractive once more the passion must be han- 
 dled by some great master who has courage to 
 break down conventionalities and to go straight 
 to actual life for his inspiration. 
 
 The use of the novel and piquant forms of
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 267 
 speech is one of the most obvious of Steven- 
 son's devices. No man handles his adjectives 
 with greater judgment and nicer discrimina- 
 tion. There is hardly a page of his work 
 where we do not come across words and ex- 
 pressions which strike us with a pleasant sense 
 of novelty, and yet express the meaning with 
 admirable conciseness. "His eyes came coast- 
 ing round to me." It is dangerous to begin 
 quoting, as the examples are interminable, and 
 each suggests another. Now and then he 
 misses his mark, but it is very seldom. As an 
 example, an "eye-shot" does not commend it- 
 self as a substitute for "a glance," and "to tee- 
 hee" for "to giggle" grates somewhat upon the 
 ear, though the authority of Chaucer might 
 be cited for the expressions. 
 
 Next in order is his extraordinary faculty 
 for the use of pithy similes, which arrest the 
 attention and stimulate the imagination. 
 "His voice sounded hoarse and awkward, like 
 a rusty lock." "I saw her sway, like some- 
 thing stricken by the wind." "His laugh rang
 
 S68 TIIROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 false, like a cracked bell." "His voice shook 
 like a taut rope." "^ly mind flying like a 
 weaver's shuttle." "His blows resounded on 
 the grave as thick as sobs." "The private 
 guilty considerations I would continually ob- 
 serve to peep forth in the man's talk like rab- 
 bits from a hill." Nothing could be more 
 effective than these direct and homely compari- 
 sons. 
 
 After all, however, the main characteristic 
 of Stevenson is his curious instinct for saying 
 in the briefest space just those few words 
 A\'hich stamp the impression upon the reader's 
 mind. He will make you see a thing more 
 clearly than you would probably have done 
 had your eyes actually rested upon it. Here 
 are a few of these word-pictures, taken hap- 
 hazard from among hundreds of equal merit — 
 
 "Not far off Macconochie was standing 
 with his tongue out of his mouth, and his hand 
 upon his chin, like a dull fellow thinking hard. 
 
 "Stewart ran after us for more than a mile,
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 269 
 and I could not help laughing as I looked back 
 at last and saw him on a hill, holding his hand 
 to his side, and nearly burst with running. 
 
 "Ballantrae turned to me with a face all 
 wrinkled up, and his teeth all showing in his 
 mouth. . . . He said no word, but his 
 whole appearance was a kind of dreadful ques- 
 tion. 
 
 "Look at him, if you doubt; look at him, 
 grinning and gulping, a detected thief. 
 
 "He looked me all over with a warlike eye, 
 and I could see the challenge on his lips." 
 
 What could be more vivid than the effect 
 produced by such sentences as these? 
 
 There is much more that might be said as 
 to Stevenson's peculiar and original methods 
 in fiction. As a minor point, it might be re- 
 marked that he is the inventor of what may be 
 called the mutilated villain. It is true that 
 Mr. Wilkie Collins has described one gentle- 
 man who had not only been deprived of all his 
 limbs, but was further afflicted by the insup-
 
 S70 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 portable name of Miserrimus Dexter. Stev- 
 enson, however, has used the effect so often, 
 and with such telhng results, that he may be 
 said to have made it his own. To say nothing 
 of Hyde, who was the very impersonation of 
 deformity, there is the horrid blind Pew, Black 
 Dog with two fingers missing, Long John 
 with his one leg, and the sinister catechist who 
 is blind but shoots by ear, and smites about 
 him with his staff. In "The Black Arrow," 
 too, there is another dreadful creature who 
 comes tapping along with a stick. Often as 
 he has used the device, he handles it so artis- 
 tically that it never fails to produce its effect. 
 Is Stevenson a classic? Well, it is a large 
 word that. You mean by a classic a piece of 
 work which passes into the permanent litera- 
 ture of the country. As a rule you only know 
 your classics when they are in their graves. 
 Who guessed it of Poe, and who of Borrow? 
 The Roman Catholics only canonize their 
 saints a century after their death. So with 
 our classics. The choice lies with our grand-
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 271 
 children. But I can hardly think that healthy 
 boys will ever let Stevenson's books of adven- 
 ture die, nor do I think that such a short tale 
 as "The Pavilion on the Links" nor so magnif- 
 icent a parable as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" 
 will ever cease to be esteemed. How well I 
 remember the eagerness, the delight with which 
 I read those early tales in "Cornhill" away back 
 in the late seventies and early eighties. They 
 were unsigned, after the old unfair fashion, 
 but no man with any sense of prose could fail 
 to know that they were all by the same author. 
 Only years afterwards did I learn who that 
 author was. 
 
 I have Stevenson's collected poems over 
 yonder in the small cabinet. Would that he 
 had given us more! Most of them are the 
 merest playful sallies of a freakish mind. But 
 one should, indeed, be a classic, for it is in 
 my judgment by all odds the best narrative 
 ballad of the last century — that is if I am 
 right in supposing that "The Ancient Mar- 
 iner" appeared at the very end of the eight-
 
 272 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 
 eenth. I would put Coleridge's tour de force 
 of grim fancy first, but I know none other to 
 compare in glamour and phrase and easy power 
 with "Ticonderoga." Then there is his im- 
 mortal epitaj^h. The two i:)ieces alone give 
 him a niche of his own in our poetical litera- 
 ture, just as his character gives him a niche 
 of his own in our affections. No, I never met 
 him. But among my most prized possessions 
 are several letters which I received from Sa- 
 moa. From that distant tower he kept a sur- 
 prisingly close watch upon what was doing 
 among the bookmen, and it was his hand 
 which was among the first held out to the 
 striver, for he had quick appreciation and keen 
 sympathies which met another man's work half 
 way, and wove into it a beauty from his own 
 mind. 
 
 And now, my very patient friend, the time 
 has come for us to part, and I hope my little 
 sermons have not bored you over -much. If 
 I have put 37'ou on the track of anything which 
 you did not know before, then verify it and
 
 THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR 273 
 pass it on. If I have not, there is no harm 
 done, save that my breath and your time have 
 been wasted. There may be a score of mis- 
 takes in what I have said — is it not the privi- 
 lege of the conversationahst to misquote? Mjr 
 judgments may differ very far from yours, 
 and my hkings may be your abhorrence; but 
 the mere thinking and talking of books is in 
 itself good, be the upshot what it may. For 
 the time the magic door is still shut. You are 
 still in the land of faerie. But, alas, though 
 you shut that door, you cannot seal it. Still 
 come the ring of the bell, the call of the tele- 
 phone, the summons back to the sordid world 
 of work and men and daily strife. Well, 
 that's the real life after all — this only the imi- 
 tation. And yet, now that the portal is wide 
 open and we stride out together, do we not 
 face our fate with a braver heart for all the 
 rest and quiet and comradeship that we found 
 behind the Magic Door? 
 
 THE END
 
 INDEX 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 7, 13, 133 Forrest, R. E., 243 
 
 Allen, Grant, 133 Frederic, Harold, 46 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 19, Froissart, 218-225 
 
 20 Froude, J. A., 208 
 
 Balzac, 96 
 
 Barr, Robert, 107 
 
 Borrow, George, 94-106, 138- 
 
 9; quoted, 100-105; 180-1 
 Boswell, 51-54, 63, QG, 80; 
 
 quoted, 55-9, 62 
 Brontes, the, 95 
 Browning, Robert, 46 
 BuUen, F. T., 238-340 
 Burney, Miss, 140, 155 
 Burns, Robert, 45 
 Byron, Lord, 9, 45 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 8, 159-160; 
 
 quoted, 21 
 Cellini, Benvenuto, 87, 88, 134 
 Coleridge, S. T., 272; quoted, 
 
 21 
 Collingwood's Letters, 204 ; 
 
 quoted, 204 
 Collins, Wilkie, 269 
 Conrad, Joseph, 241 
 Crane, Stephen, 46 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 245-6 
 Daudet, Alphonse, 48 
 Dickens, Charles, 29, 47, 116 
 Dumas, Alexander, 96 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, 8, 59, 61, 
 69-88; quoted, 81-83 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 61, 140, 
 155-6; quoted, 22 
 
 Gray, Thomas, 59 
 
 Greely, A. W., 235-6 
 
 Gronow, Capt., 169, 193 
 
 Hardy, Thomas, 157 
 Harte, Bret, 116, 119 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 123 
 Heine, Heinrich, 48 
 Henley, W. E., 215-218 
 Hogarth, William, 146 
 Holmes, Wendell, 26, 255-258 
 Houssaye, A., 171, 191-2 
 Howe, Julia Ward, 32 
 Hugo, Victor, 27 
 Hume, David, 67 
 
 Irving, Henry, 95 
 
 Irving, Washington, 227-8 
 
 Jeflfreys, Judge, 37 
 Johnson, Samuel, 9-13, 51-68, 
 82-3, 156; quoted, 58-60 
 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 121-2, 241 
 
 Fielding, Henry, 116, 140-155 Laing, Samuel, 252-3 
 Fitchett, Dr., 187 Lamb, Charles, 258 
 
 Flammarion, C, 251 Lecky, W. E. H., 208 
 
 275
 
 276 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lockhart, J. G., 40, 43, 49 
 London, Jack, 241 
 Lytton, Biilwer, 123 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 8-11, 13, 17, 
 
 19, 22, 52-3, GO, 144, 208; 
 
 quoted, 12, 15-16, 19 
 McCarthy, Justin, 208 
 Marbot's Memoirs, 168-9, 
 
 172-3 
 Marryatt, Capt., 241 
 Maupassant, G. de, 125-9 
 Maxwell's "Wellington," 187- 
 
 188 
 Melville, Herman, 241-3 
 Mercer's Recollections, 185-7; 
 
 quoted, 182-3 
 Meredith, George, 157-8, 264, 
 
 quoted, 160-2 
 Merriman, H. S., 47 
 Myers' " Human Personality," 
 
 254 
 
 Napier's " Peninsular War," 
 
 184-5 
 Napoleon Buonaparte, 174-8, 
 
 196-202; quoted, 62 
 Nelson, Lord, 30 
 Norris, Frank, 46 
 
 Parkman, F., 209-14 
 PajTi, James, quoted, 26 
 Pepys, Samuel, 87-93 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, 116-119, 
 
 124-5, 128, 255; quoted, 
 
 130-1 
 Powell's "Animal Episodes," 
 
 244 
 " Pugilistica," 107-115 
 
 Quiller-Couch, A. T., 124 
 Reade, Charles, 116, 131-6 
 
 R^musat, Madame de, 199- 
 
 200 
 Richardson, Samuel, 140-154 
 Rogers, Samuel, 46 
 Rousseau, J. J., 59, 86, 88 
 Russell, W. Clark, 241 
 
 Scott, Capt. R. F., 233-4 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 18, 23, 25- 
 30, 33-40, 64, 116, 138-139, 
 149, 196, 264 
 Sevigne, Madame de, 205-6 
 Shakespeare, William, 4, 27, 
 
 47, 59, 168 
 Shelley, P. B., 45 
 Sheridan, R. B., quoted, 161 
 Siborne's "Letters," 192 
 Smollett, T., 136-143, 153-3 
 Snaith's " Broke of Coven- 
 den," 243 
 Southey, Robert, 9, 106 
 Spencer, Herbert, 252 
 Sterne, Lawrence, 140, 155 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 47, 
 116, 120-2, 241, 259-264, 
 266-273; quoted, 262-4, 
 267-9 
 Swift, Jonathan, 7, 59 
 
 Taine, Henri, 197-8 
 Tennyson, Lord, 46, 256 
 Thackeray, W. M., 28, 47, 
 
 116, 132, 159 
 Tolstoi, Comte Leon, 133 
 Trollope, Anthony, 86 
 
 Verne, Jules, 255 
 Voltaire, F. Arouet de, 59 
 
 Wallace, A. R., 246-7 
 Wellington, Duke of, 186-195, 
 
 198; quoted, 190 
 Wells, H. G., 124 
 Wordsworth, William, 46
 
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