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 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS
 
 <:St/r 'W'TS^uc^mo-nJ 9i.Jl.p'uru)C't 
 
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 ADVENTURES 
 AMONG BOOKS 
 
 BV 
 
 ANDREW LANG 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 
 1905 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 * . ' • 
 
 • • a • « ' 
 
 • • > 
 
 « • < 
 
 € • « • •
 
 A54 
 
 TO 
 
 C. M. FALCONER, Esq., 
 
 Dear Mr. Falconer, 
 
 Among other " veniable parts 
 of things lost" you hoarded and preserved 
 these old records of old Adventures among 
 Books, which noiu recognise in you the 
 foster father of such literary '■^ da Its." 
 
 o 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 ■IN 
 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 A. LANG 
 
 ) 
 
 St. Andrews, 
 
 
 V 
 
 February 9, 
 
 1905. 

 
 PREFACE 
 
 Of the Essays in this volume " Adventures 
 among Books," and " Rab's Friend," appeared 
 in Scribner s Magazine ; and " Recollections of 
 Robert Louis Stevenson " (to the best of the 
 author's memory) in The North American 
 Review. The Essay on "Smollett" was in the 
 Anglo-Saxon, which has ceased to appear ; and 
 the shorter papers, such as "The Confessions of 
 Saint Augustine," in a periodical styled Wit and 
 Wisdom. For " The Poems of William Morris " 
 the author has to thank the Editor of Longman's 
 Magazine; for "The Boy," and "Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 Novels,"the Proprietors of The Comhill Magazine ; 
 for " Enchanted Cigarettes," and possibly for 
 "The Supernatural in Fiction," the Proprietors of 
 The Idler. The portrait, after Sir William 
 Richmond, R.A., was done about the time when 
 most of the Essays were written — and that 
 was not yesterday.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Adventures Among Books . . . . i 
 Recollections of Robert Louis Stevenson . 39 
 
 Rab's Friend 57 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes ..... 79 
 
 v^Mr. Morris's Poems 97 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's Novels . , . . .119 
 A Scottish Romanticist of 1830 . . -139 
 
 \/The Confessions of Saint Augustine . -157 
 
 \^ Smollett . . . . . . • • i73 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne 211 
 
 The Paradise of Poets . . . .225 
 
 Paris and Helen ...... 235 
 
 Enchanted Cigarettes 249 
 
 Stories and Story-Telling .... 259 
 
 \/The Supernatural in Fiction . . . .271 
 An Old Scottish Psychical Researcher . 281 
 The Boy 295
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 In an age of reminiscences, is there room for the 
 confessions of a veteran, who remembers a great deal 
 about books and very Httle about people ? I have often 
 wondered that a Biographia Literaria has so seldom 
 been attempted — a biography or autobiography of a man 
 in his relations with other minds. Coleridge, to be 
 sure, gave this name to a work of his, but he wandered 
 from his apparent purpose into a world of alien disquisi- 
 tions. The following pages are frankly bookish, and to 
 the bookish only do they appeal. The habit of reading 
 has been praised as a virtue, and has been denounced 
 as a vice. In no case, if we except the perpetual study 
 of newspapers (which cannot fairly be called reading), is 
 the vice, or the virtue, common. It is more innocent 
 than opium-eating, though, like opium-eating, it unlocks 
 to us artificial paradises. I try to say what I have found 
 in books, what distractions from the world, what teaching 
 (not much), and what consolations. 
 
 In beginning an autohiographia literaria, an account 
 of how, and in what order, books have appealed to a 
 mind, which books have ever above all things delighted,
 
 4 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 the author must pray to be pardoned for the sin of 
 egotism. There is no other mind, naturally, of which 
 the author knows so much as of his own. On n'a que 
 soi, as the poor girl says in one of M. Paul Bourget's 
 novels. In literature, as in love, one can only speak 
 for himself. This author did not, like Fulke Greville, 
 retire into the convent of literature from the strife of the 
 world, rather he was born to be, from the first, a dweller 
 in the cloister of a library. Among the poems which I 
 remember best out of early boyhood is Lucy Ashton's 
 song, in the "Bride of Lammermoor" : — 
 
 " Look not thou on beauty's charming, 
 Sit thou still when kings are arming, 
 Taste not when the wine-cup glistens, 
 Speak not when the people listens, 
 Stop thine ear against the singer, 
 From the red gold keep thy finger, 
 Vacant heart, and hand, and eye, 
 Easy live and quiet die." 
 
 The rhymes, unlearned, clung to my memory ; they 
 would sing themselves to me on the way to school, or 
 cricket-field, and, about the age of ten, probably without 
 quite understanding them, I had chosen them for a kind 
 of motto in life, a tune to murmur along the fallentis 
 semita vitce. This seems a queer idea for a small boy, 
 but it must be confessed. 
 
 " It takes all sorts to make a world," some are soldiers 
 from the cradle, some merchants, some orators ; nothing 
 but a love of books was the gift given to me by the 
 fairies. It was probably derived from forebears on both 
 sides of my family, one a great reader, the other a con-
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 5 
 
 siderable collector of books which remained with us and 
 were all tried, persevered with, or abandoned in turn, by 
 a student who has not blanched before the Epigoniad, 
 
 About the age of four I learned to read by a simple 
 process. I had heard the elegy of Cock Robin till I 
 knew it by rote, and I picked out the letters and words 
 which compose that classic till I could read it for myself. 
 Earlier than that, " Robinson Crusoe " had been read 
 aloud to me, in an abbreviated form, no doubt. I re- 
 member the pictures of Robinson finding the footstep 
 in the sand, and a dance of cannibals, and the parrot. 
 But, somehow, I have never read " Robinson " since : 
 it is a pleasure to come. 
 
 The first books which vividly impressed me were, 
 naturally, fairy tales, and chap-books about Robert 
 Bruce, William Wallace, and Rob Roy. At that time 
 these little tracts could be bought for a penny apiece. I 
 can still see Bruce in full armour, and Wallace in a kilt, 
 discoursing across a burn, and Rob Roy slipping from the 
 soldier's horse into the stream. They did not then awaken 
 a precocious patriotism ; a boy of five is more at home 
 in Fairyland than in his own country. The sudden 
 appearance of the White Cat as a queen after her head 
 was cut off, the fiendish malice of the Yellow Dwarf, 
 the strange cake of crocodile eggs and millet seed which 
 the mother of the Princess Frutilla made for the Fairy 
 of the Desert — these things, all fresh and astonishing, 
 but certainly to be credited, are my first memories of 
 romance. One story of a White Serpent, with a wood- 
 cut of that mysterious reptile, I neglected to secure, 
 probably for want of a penny, and I have regretted it
 
 6 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 ever since. One never sees those chap books now. 
 " The White Serpent," in spite of all research, remains 
 introtivable. It was a lost chance, and Fortune does 
 not forgive. Nobody ever interfered with these, or 
 indeed with any other studies of ours at that time, as 
 long as they were not prosecuted on Sundays. "The 
 fightingest parts of the Bible," and the Apocrypha, and 
 stories like that of the Witch of Endor, were sabbatical 
 literature, read in a huge old illustrated Bible. How 
 I advanced from the fairy tales to Shakespeare, what 
 stages there were on the way — for there must have been 
 stages — is a thing that memory cannot recover. A 
 nursery legend tells that I was wont to arrange six open 
 books on six chairs, and go from one to the others, 
 perusing them by turns. No doubt this was what 
 people call " desultory reading," but I did not hear the 
 criticism till later, and then too often for my comfort. 
 Memory holds a picture, more vivid than most, of a 
 small boy reading the " Midsummer Night's Dream " 
 by firelight, in a room where candles were lit, and some 
 one touched the piano, and a young man and a girl 
 were playing chess. The Shakespeare was a volume of 
 Kenny Meadows' edition ; there are fairies in it, and 
 the fairies seemed to come out of Shakespeare's dream 
 into the music and the firelight. At that moment I 
 think that I was happy ; it seemed an enchanted glimpse 
 of eternity in Paradise ; nothing resembling it remains 
 with me, out of all the years. 
 
 We went from the border to the south of England, 
 when the number of my years was six, and in England 
 we found another paradise, a circulating library with
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 7 
 
 brown, greasy, ill-printed, odd volumes of Shakespeare 
 and of the " Arabian Nights." How their stained pages 
 come before the eyes again — the pleasure and the puzzle 
 of them ! What did the lady in the Geni's glass box 
 want with the Merchants? what meant all these con- 
 versations between the Fat Knight and Ford, in the 
 " Merry Wives " ? It was delightful, but in parts it was 
 difficult. Fragments of " The Tempest," and of other 
 plays, remain stranded in my memory from these read- 
 ings : Ferdinand and Miranda at chess, Cleopatra 
 cuffing the messenger, the asp in the basket of figs, 
 the Friar and the Apothecary, Troilus on the Ilian 
 walls, a vision of Cassandra in white muslin with her 
 hair down. People forbid children to read this or that. 
 I am sure they need not, and that even in our infancy 
 the magician, Shakespeare, brings us nothing worse than 
 a world of beautiful visions, half realised. In the 
 Egyptian wizard's little pool of ink, only the pure can 
 see the visions, and in Shakespeare's magic mirror 
 children see only what is pure. Among other books 
 of that time I only recall a kind of Sunday novel, 
 "Naomi; or. The Last Days of Jerusalem." Who, 
 indeed, could forget the battering-rams, and the man 
 who cried on the battlements, "Woe, woe to myself 
 and to Jerusalem ! " I seem to hear him again when 
 boys break the hum of London with yells of the latest 
 " disaster." 
 
 We left England in a year, went back to Scotland, 
 and awoke, as it were, to know the glories of our 
 birth. We lived in Scott's country, within four miles 
 of Abbotsford, and, so far, we had heard nothing of it.
 
 8 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 I remember going with one of the maids into the cottage 
 of a kinsman of hers, a carpenter ; a delightful place, 
 where there was sawdust, where our first fishing-rods 
 were fashioned. Rummaging among the books, of 
 course, I found some cheap periodical with verses in 
 it. The lines began — 
 
 *' The Baron of Smaylhome rose with day, 
 He spurred his courser on, 
 Without stop or stay, down the rocky way 
 That leads to Brotherstone." 
 
 A rustic tea-table was spread for us, with scones and 
 honey, not to be neglected. But they were neglected 
 till we had learned how — 
 
 " The sable score of fingers four 
 
 Remains on that board impressed, 
 And for evermore that lady wore 
 A covering on her wrist." 
 
 We did not know nor ask the poet's name. Children, 
 probably, say very little about what is in their minds ; 
 but that unhappy knight. Sir Richard of Coldinghame, 
 and the Priest, with his chamber in the east, and the 
 moody Baron, and the Lady, have dwelt in our mind 
 ever since, and hardly need to be revived by looking at 
 "The Eve of St. John." 
 
 Soon after that we were told about Sir Walter, how 
 great he was, how good, how, like Napoleon, his evil 
 destiny found him at last, and he wore his heart away 
 for honour's sake. And we were given the "Lay," and 
 "The Lady of the Lake." It was my father who first 
 read "Tarn o' Shanter " to me, for which I confess I
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 9 
 
 did not care at that time, preferring to take witches and 
 bogies with great seriousness. It seemed as if Burns 
 were trifling with a noble subject. But it was in a 
 summer sunset, beside a window looking out on Ettrick 
 and the hill cf the Three Brethren's Cairn, that I first 
 read, with the dearest of all friends, how — 
 
 " The stag at eve had drunk his fill 
 Where danced the moon on Monan's rill, 
 And deep his midnight lair had made 
 In lone Glenartney's hazel shade." 
 
 Then opened the gates of romance, and with Fitz- 
 James we drove the chase, till — 
 
 " Few were the stragglers, following far, 
 That reached the lake of Vennachar, 
 And when the Brig of Turk was won, 
 The foremost horseman rode alone." 
 
 From that time, for months, there was usually a little 
 volume of Scott in one's pocket, in company with the 
 miscellaneous collection of a boy's treasures. Scott 
 certainly took his fairy folk seriously, and the Mauth 
 Dog was rather a disagreeable companion to a small 
 boy in wakeful hours.^ After this kind of introduction 
 to Sir Walter, after learning one's first lessons in history 
 from the " Tales of a Grandfather," nobody, one hopes, 
 can criticise him in cold blood, or after the manner of 
 Mr. Leslie Stephen, who is not sentimental. Scott is. 
 not an author like another, but our earliest known 
 friend in letters ; for, of course, we did not ask who 
 
 1 " Mauth" is Manx for dog, I am told.
 
 lo ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Shakespeare was, nor inquire about the private history 
 of Madame d'Aulnoy. Scott peopled for us the rivers 
 and burnsides with his reivers ; the Fairy Queen came 
 out of Eildon Hill and haunted Carterhaugh ; at Newark 
 Tower we saw " the embattled portal arch " — 
 
 " Whose ponderous grate and massy bar 
 Had oft rolled back the tide of war," — 
 
 just as, at Foulshiels, on Yarrow, we beheld the very 
 roofless cottage whence Mungo Park went forth to trace 
 the waters of the Niger, and at Oakwood the tower of 
 the Wizard Michael Scott. 
 
 Probably the first novel I ever read was read at Elgin, 
 and the story was "Jane Eyre." This tale was a creepy 
 one for a boy of nine, and Rochester was a mystery, St. 
 John a bore. But the lonely little girl in her despair, 
 when something came into the room, and her days of 
 starvation at school, and the terrible first Mrs. Rochester, 
 were not to be forgotten. They abide in one's recollec- 
 tion with a Red Indian's ghost, who carried a rusty 
 ruined gun, and whose acquaintance was made at the 
 same time. 
 
 I fancy I was rather an industrious little boy, and that 
 I had minded my lessons, and satisfied my teachers — 
 I know I was reading Pinnock's " History of Rome " for 
 pleasure — till "the wicked day of destiny" came, and 
 I felt a "call," and underwent a process which may be 
 described as the opposite of " conversion." The " call " 
 came from Dickens. " Pickwick " was brought into the 
 house. From that hour it was all over, for five or six 
 years, with anything like industry and lesson-books. I
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS ii 
 
 read " Pickwick " in convulsions of mirth. I dropped 
 Pinnock's "Rome" for good. I neglected everything 
 printed in Latin, in fact everything that one was under- 
 stood to prepare for one's classes in the school whither 
 I was now sent, in Edinburgh. For there, living a 
 rather lonely small boy in the house of an aged relation, 
 I found the Waverley Novels. The rest is transport. 
 A conscientious tutor dragged me through the Latin 
 grammar, and a constitutional dislike to being beaten on 
 the hands with a leather strap urged me to acquire a 
 certain amount of elementary erudition. But, for a 
 year, I was a young hermit, living with Scott in the 
 " Waverleys " and the " Border Minstrelsy," with Pope, 
 and Prior, and a translation of Ariosto, with Lever 
 and Dickens, David Copperfield and Charles O'Malley, 
 Longfellow and Mayne Reid, Dumas, and in brief, with 
 every kind of light literature that I could lay my hands 
 upon. Carlyle did not escape me ; I vividly remember 
 the helpless rage with which I read of the Flight to 
 Varennes. In his work on French novelists, Mr, 
 Saintsbury speaks of a disagreeable little boy, in a 
 French romance, who found Scott assommant, stun- 
 ningly stupid. This was a very odious little boy, it 
 seems (I have not read his adventures), and he came, 
 as he deserved, to a bad end. Other and better boys, 
 I learn, find Scott " slow." Extraordinary boys ! Per- 
 haps '* Ivanhoe " was first favourite of yore ; you cannot 
 beat Front de Boeuf, the assault on his castle, the 
 tournament. No other tournament need apply. Sir 
 Arthur Conan Doyle, greatly daring, has attempted to 
 enter the lists, but he is a mere Ralph the Hospitaller.
 
 12 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Next, I think, in order of delight, came " Quentin 
 Durward," especially the hero of the scar, whose name 
 Thackeray could not remember, Quentin's uncle. Then 
 " The Black Dwarf," and Dugald, our dear Rittmeister. 
 I could not read " Rob Roy " then, nor lately ; nay, not 
 till I was forty. Now Di Vernon is the lady for me ; the 
 queen of fiction, the peerless, the brave, the tender, and 
 true. 
 
 The wisdom of the authorities decided that I was 
 to read no more novels, but, as an observer remarked, 
 " I don't see what is the use of preventing the boy 
 from reading novels, for he's just reading ' Don Juan ' 
 instead." This was so manifestly no improvement, that 
 the ban on novels was tacitly withdrawn, or was per- 
 mitted to become a dead letter. They were far more 
 enjoyable than Byron. The worst that came of this 
 was the suggestion of a young friend, whose life had 
 been adventurous — indeed he had served in the Crimea 
 with the Bashi Bazouks — that I should master the 
 writings of Edgar Poe. I do not think that the 
 " Black Cat," and the " Fall of the House of Usher," 
 and the "Murders in the Rue Morgue," are very good 
 reading for a boy who is not peculiarly intrepid. Many 
 a bad hour they gave me, haunting me, especially, with 
 a fear of being prematurely buried, and of waking up 
 before breakfast to find myself in a coffin. Of all the 
 books I devoured in that year, Poe is the only author 
 whom I wish I had reserved for later consideration, 
 and whom I cannot conscientiously recommend to 
 children. 
 
 I had already enjoyed a sip of Thackeray, reading
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 13 
 
 at a venture, in " Vanity Fair," about the Battle of 
 Waterloo. It was not like Lever's accounts of battles, 
 but it was enchanting. However, "Vanity Fair" was 
 under a taboo. It is not easy to say why ; but Mr. 
 Thackeray himself informed a small boy, whom he 
 found reading "Vanity Fair" under the table, that he 
 had better read something else. What harm can the 
 story do to a child ? He reads about Waterloo, about 
 fat Jos, about little George and the pony, about little 
 Rawdon and the rat-hunt, and is happy and unharmed. 
 
 Leaving my hermitage, and going into the very dif- 
 ferent and very disagreeable world of a master's house, 
 I was lucky enough to find a charming library there. 
 Most of Thackeray was on the shelves, and Thackeray 
 became the chief enchanter. As Henry Kingsley says, 
 a boy reads him and thinks he knows all about life. 
 I do not think that the mundane parts, about Lady 
 Kew and her wiles, about Ethel and the Marquis of 
 Farintosh, appealed to one or enlightened one. Ethel 
 was a mystery, and not an interesting mystery, though 
 one used to copy Doyle's pictures of her, with the 
 straight nose, the impossible eyes, the impossible waist. 
 It was not Ethel who captivated us ; it was Clive's 
 youth and art, it was J. J., the painter, it was jolly 
 F. B. and his address to the maid about the lobster. 
 " A finer fish, Mary, my dear, I have never seen." 
 Does not this solve the vexed question whether lobsters 
 are fish, in the French sense ? Then " The Rose and 
 the Ring " came out. It was worth while to be twelve 
 years old, when the Christmas books were written by 
 Dickens and Thackeray. I got hold of "The Rose
 
 14 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 and the Ring," I know, and of the " Christmas Carol," 
 when they were damp from the press. King Valoroso, 
 and Bulbo, and Angelica were even more delightful 
 than Scrooge, and Tiny Tim, and Trotty Veck. One 
 remembers the fairy monarch more vividly, and the 
 wondrous array of egg-cups from which he sipped 
 brandy — or was it right Nantes ? — still " going on sip- 
 ping, I am sorry to say," even after "Valoroso was 
 himself again." 
 
 But, of all Thackeray's books, I suppose " Pen- 
 dennis " was the favourite. The delightful Marryat 
 had entertained us with Peter Simple and O'Brien 
 (how good their flight through France is !) with Mesty 
 and Mr. Midshipman Easy, with Jacob Faithful (Mr. 
 Thackeray's favourite), and with Snarleyyow ; but 
 Marryat never made us wish to run away to sea. That 
 did not seem to be one's vocation. But the story of 
 Pen made one wish to run away to literature, to the 
 Temple, to streets where Brown, the famous reviewer, 
 might be seen walking with his wife and umbrella. 
 The writing of poems "up to" pictures, the beer with 
 Warrington in the mornings, the suppers in the back- 
 kitchen, these were the alluring things, not society, and 
 Lady Rockminster, and Lord Steyne. Well, one has 
 run away to literature since, but where is the matutinal 
 beer ? Where is the back-kitchen ? Where are War- 
 rington, and Foker, and F. B.? I have never met 
 them in this living world, though Brown, the celebrated 
 reviewer, is familiar to me, and also Mr. Sydney Scraper, 
 of the Oxford and Cambridge Club. Perhaps back- 
 kitchens exist, perhaps there are cakes and ale in the life
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 15 
 
 literary, and F. B. may take his walks by the Round Pond. 
 But one never encounters these rarities, and Bungay and 
 Bacon are no longer the innocent and ignorant rivals 
 whom Thackeray drew. They do not give those wonder- 
 ful parties ; Miss Bunnion has become quite conventional ; 
 Percy Popjoy has abandoned letters ; Mr. Wenham does 
 not toady ; Mr. Wagg does not joke any more. The 
 literary life is very like any other, in London, or is it 
 that we do not see it aright, not having the eyes of 
 genius? Well, a Hfe on the ocean wave, too, may not 
 be so desirable as it seems in Marryat's novels : so 
 many a lad whom he tempted into the navy has dis- 
 covered. The best part of the existence of a man of 
 letters is his looking forward to it through the spectacles 
 of Titmarsh. 
 
 One can never say how much one owes to a school- 
 master who was a friend of literature, who kept a house- 
 ful of books, and who was himself a graceful scholar, 
 and an author, while he chose to write, of poetic and 
 humorous genius. Such was the master who wrote the 
 " Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster," Mr. D'Arcy Went- 
 worth Thompson, to whom, in this place, I am glad to 
 confess my gratitude after all these many years. While 
 we were deep in the history of Pendennis we were also 
 being dragged through the Commentaries of Caius Julius 
 Caesar, through the Latin and Greek grammars, through 
 Xenophon, and the Eclogues of Virgil, and a depressing 
 play of Euripides, the " Phoeniss?e." I can never say 
 how much I detested these authors, who, taken in small 
 doses, are far, indeed, from being attractive. Horace, 
 to a lazy boy, appears in his Odes to have nothing to
 
 i6 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 say, and to say it in the most frivolous and vexatious 
 manner. Then Cowper's " Task," or " Paradise Lost," 
 as school-books, with notes, seems arid enough to a 
 school-boy. I remember reading ahead, in Cowper, 
 instead of attending to the lesson and the class-work. 
 His observations on public schools were not uninterest- 
 ing, but the whole English school-work of those days 
 was repugnant. One's English education was all got 
 out of school. 
 
 As to Greek, for years it seemed a mere vacuous 
 terror ; one invented for one's self all the current 
 arguments against " compulsory Greek." What was 
 the use of it, who ever spoke in it, who could find 
 any sense in it, or any interest? A language with 
 such cruel superfluities as a middle voice and a 
 dual ; a language whose verbs were so fantastically 
 irregular, looked like a barbaric survival, a mere plague 
 and torment. So one thought till Homer was opened 
 before us. Elsewhere I have tried to describe the vivid 
 delight of first reading Homer, delight, by the way, 
 which St. Augustine failed to appreciate. Most boys 
 not wholly immersed in dulness felt it, I think ; to 
 myself, for one, Homer was the real beginning of study. 
 One had tried him, when one was very young, in Pope, 
 and had been baffled by Pope, and his artificial manner, 
 his " fairs," and " swains." Homer seemed better read- 
 ing in the absurd " crib " which Mr. Buckley wrote for 
 Bohn's series. Hector and Ajax, in that disguise, were 
 as great favourites as Horatius on the Bridge, or the 
 younger Tarquin. Scott, by the way, must have made 
 one a furious and consistent Legitimist. In reading the
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 17 
 
 " Lays of Ancient Rome," my sympathies were with the 
 expelled kings, at least with him who fought so well at 
 Lake Regillus : — 
 
 " Titus, the youngest Tarquin, 
 Too good for such a breed." 
 
 Where — 
 
 " Valerius struck at Titus, 
 
 And lopped off half his crest; 
 But Titus stabbed Valerius 
 A span deep in the breast," — 
 
 I find, on the margin of my old copy, in a schoolboy's 
 hand, the words "Well done, the Jacobites!" Perhaps 
 my politics have never gone much beyond this senti- 
 ment. But this is a digression from Homer. The very 
 sound of the hexameter, that long, inimitable roll of the 
 most various music, was enough to win the heart, even 
 if the words were not understood. But the words 
 proved unexpectedly easy to understand, full as they 
 are of all nobility, all tenderness, all courage, courtesy, 
 and romance. The "Morte d' Arthur" itself, which 
 about this time fell into our hands, was not so dear as 
 the "Odyssey," though for a boy to read Sir Thomas 
 Malory is to ride at adventure in enchanted forests, to 
 enter haunted chapels where a light shines from the 
 Graal, to find by lonely mountain meres the magic boat 
 of Sir Galahad. 
 
 After once being initiated into the mysteries of 
 Greece by Homer, the work at Greek was no longer 
 tedious. Herodotus was a charming and humorous 
 story-teller, and, as for Thucydides, his account of 
 
 £
 
 i8 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 the Sicilian Expedition and its ending was one of 
 the very rare things in literature which almost, if not 
 quite, brought tears into one's eyes. Few passages, 
 indeed, have done that, and they are curiously discre- 
 pant. The first book that ever made me cry, of which 
 feat I was horribly ashamed, was " Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
 with the death of Eva, Topsy's friend. Then it was 
 trying when Colonel Newcome said Adsum, and the 
 end of Socrates in the Phaedo moved one more than 
 seemed becoming — these, and a passage in the his- 
 tory of Skalagrim Lamb's Tail, and, as I said, the ruin 
 of the Athenians in the Syracusan Bay. I have read 
 these chapters in an old French version derived through 
 the Italian from a Latin translation of Thucydides. 
 Even in this far- descended form, the tale keeps its 
 pathos ; the calm, grave stamp of that tragic telling 
 cannot be worn away by much handling, by long time, 
 by the many changes of human speech. " Others too," 
 says Nicias, in that fatal speech, when — 
 
 " All was done that men may do. 
 And all was done in vain," — 
 
 " having achieved what men may, have borne what men 
 must." This is the very burden of life, and the last 
 word of tragedy. For now all is vain : courage, 
 wisdom, piety, the bravery of Lamachus, the good- 
 ness of Nicias, the brilliance of Alcibiades, all are 
 expended, all wasted, nothing of that brave venture 
 abides, except torture, defeat, and death. No play nor 
 poem of individual fortunes is so moving as this ruin 
 of a people; no modern story can stir us, with all its
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 19 
 
 eloquence, like the brief gravity of this ancient history. 
 Nor can we find, at the last, any wisdom more wise 
 than that which bids us do what men may, and bear 
 what men must. Such are the lessons of the Greek, 
 of the people who tried all things, in the morning of 
 the world, and who still speak to us of what they tried 
 in words which are the sum of human gaiety and gloom, 
 of grief and triumph, hope and despair. The world, 
 since their day, has but followed in the same round, 
 which only seems new : has only made the same ex- 
 periments, and failed with the same failure, but less 
 gallantly and less gloriously. 
 
 One's school-boy adventures among books ended not 
 long after winning the friendship of Homer and Thucy- 
 dides, of Lucretius and Catullus. One's application 
 was far too desultory to make a serious and accurate 
 scholar. 
 
 I confess to having learned the classical languages, 
 as it were by accident, for the sake of what is in them, 
 and with a provokingly imperfect accuracy. Cricket 
 and trout occupied far too much of my mind and my 
 time : Christopher North, and Walton, and Thomas 
 Tod Stoddart, and "The Moor and the Loch," were 
 my holiday reading, and I do not regret it. Philologists 
 and Ireland scholars are not made so, but you can, in 
 no way, fashion a scholar out of a casual and inaccurate 
 intelligence. The true scholar is one whom I envy, 
 almost as much as I respect him ; but there is a kind 
 of mental short-sightedness, where accents and verbal 
 niceties are concerned, which cannot be sharpened into 
 true scholarship. Yet, even for those afflicted in this
 
 20 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 way, and with the malady of being " idle, careless little 
 boys," the ancient classics have a value for which there 
 is no substitute. There is a charm in finding ourselves 
 — our common humanity, our puzzles, our cares, our 
 joys, in the writings of men severed from us by race, 
 religion, speech, and half the gulf of historical time — 
 which no other literary pleasure can equal. Then there 
 is to be added, as the university preacher observed, 
 " the pleasure of despising our fellow-creatures who do 
 not know Greek." Doubtless in that there is great 
 consolation. 
 
 It would be interesting, were it possible, to know what 
 proportion of people really care for poetry, and how the 
 love of poetry came to them, and grew in them, and 
 where and when it stopped. Modern poets whom one 
 meets are apt to say that poetry is not read at all. 
 Byron's Murray ceased to publish poetry in 1830, just 
 when Tennyson and Browning were striking their pre- 
 ludes. Probably Mr. Murray was wise in his generation. 
 But it is also likely that many persons, even now, are 
 attached to poetry, though they certainly do not buy 
 contemporary verse. How did the passion come to 
 them ? How long did it stay ? When did the Muse 
 say good-bye? To myself, as I have remarked, poetry 
 came with Sir Walter Scott, for one read Shakespeare 
 as a child, rather in a kind of dream of fairyland and 
 enchanted isles, than with any distinct consciousness 
 that one was occupied with poetry. Next to Scott, with 
 me, came Longfellow, who pleased one as more re- 
 flective and tenderly sentimental, while the reflections 
 were not so deep as to be puzzling. I remember how
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 21 
 
 " Hiawatha " came out, when one was a boy, and how 
 delightful was the free forest life, and Minnehaha, and 
 Paupukkeewis, and Nokomis. One did not then know 
 that the same charm, with a yet fresher dew upon it, 
 was to meet one later, in the " Kalewala." But, at that 
 time, one had no conscious pleasure in poetic style, 
 except in such ringing verse as Scott's, and Campbell's 
 in his patriotic pieces. The pleasure and enchantment 
 of style first appealed to me, at about the age of fifteen, 
 when one read for the first time — 
 
 " So all day long the noise of battle rolled 
 Among the mountains by the winter sea ; 
 Until King Arthur's Table, man by man, 
 Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord." 
 
 Previously one had only heard of Mr. Tennyson as a 
 name. When a child I was told that a poet was coming 
 to a house in the Highlands where we chanced to be, 
 a poet named Tennyson. " Is he a poet like Sir Walter 
 Scott ? " I remember asking, and was told, " No, he was 
 not like Sir Walter Scott." Hearing no more of him, I 
 was prowling among the books in an ancient house, a 
 rambling old place with a ghost-room, where I found 
 Tupper, and could not get on with " Proverbial Philo- 
 sophy." Next I tried Tennyson, and instantly a new 
 light of poetry dawned, a new music was audible, a new 
 god came into my medley of a Pantheon, a god never to 
 be dethroned. " Men scarcely know how beautiful fire 
 is," Shelley says. I am convinced that we scarcely know 
 how great a poet Lord Tennyson is ; use has made him 
 too familiar. The same hand has "raised the Table
 
 2 2 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Round again," that has written the sacred book of 
 friendship, that has lulled us with the magic of the 
 "Lotus Eaters," and the melody of "Tithonus." He 
 has made us move, like his own Prince — 
 
 " Among a world of ghosts, 
 And feel ourselves the shadows of a dream." 
 
 He has enriched our world with conquests of romance ; 
 he has recut and reset a thousand ancient gems of 
 Greece and Rome ; he has roused our patriotism ; he has 
 stirred our pity ; there is hardly a human passion but 
 he has purged it and ennobled it, including " this of 
 love." Truly, the Laureate remains the most various, 
 the sweetest, the most exquisite, the most learned, 
 the most Virgilian of all English poets, and we may 
 pity the lovers of poetry who died before Tennyson 
 came. 
 
 Here may end the desultory tale of a desultory 
 bookish boyhood. It was not in nature that one 
 should not begin to rhyme for one's self. But those 
 exercises were seldom even written down ; they lived a 
 little while in a memory which has lost them long ago. 
 I do remember me that I tried some of my attempts 
 on my dear mother, who said much what Dryden said 
 to "Cousin Swift," "You will never be a poet," a 
 decision in which I straightway acquiesced. For to 
 rhyme is one thing, to be a poet quite another. A good 
 deal of mortification would be avoided if young men 
 and maidens only kept this obvious fact well posed in 
 front of their vanity and their ambition. 
 
 In these bookish memories I have said nothing about
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 23 
 
 religion and religious books, for various reasons. But, 
 unlike other Scots of the pen, I got no harm from " The 
 Shorter Catechism," of which I remember little, and 
 neither then nor now was or am able to understand a 
 single sentence. Some precocious metaphysicians com- 
 prehended and stood aghast at justification, sanctifica- 
 tion, adoption, and effectual calling. These, apparently, 
 were necessary processes in the Scottish spiritual life. 
 But we were not told what they meant, nor were we dis- 
 tressed by a sense that we had not passed through them. 
 From most children, one trusts, Calvinism ran like water 
 off a duck's back ; unlucky were they who first absorbed, 
 and later were compelled to get rid of, "The Shorter 
 Catechism ! " 
 
 One good thing, if no more, these memories may 
 accomplish. Young men, especially in America, write 
 to me and ask me to recommend " a course of reading." 
 Distrust a course of reading ! People who really care 
 for books read all of them. There is no other course. 
 Let this be a reply. No other answer shall they get 
 from me, the inquiring young men. 
 
 II 
 
 People talk, in novels, about the delights of a first love. 
 One may venture to doubt whether everybody exactly 
 knows which was his, or her, first love, of men or 
 women, but about our first loves in books there can 
 be no mistake. They were, and remain, the dearest of 
 all ; after boyhood the bloom is off the literary rye.
 
 24 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 The first parcel of these garrulities ended when the 
 author left school, at about the age of seventeen. One's 
 literary equipment seems to have been then almost as 
 complete as it ever will be, one's tastes definitely formed, 
 one's favourites already chosen. As long as we live we 
 hope to read, but we " never can recapture the first fine 
 careless rapture." Besides, one begins to write, and 
 that is fatal. My own first essays were composed at 
 school — for other boys. Not long ago the gentleman 
 who was then our English master wrote to me, informing 
 me he was my earliest public, and that he had never 
 credited my younger brother with the essays which that 
 unscrupulous lad ("I speak of him but brotherly") was 
 accustomed to present for his consideration. 
 
 On leaving school at seventeen I went to St. Leonard's 
 Hall, in the University of St. Andrews. That is the 
 oldest of Scotch universities, and was founded by a 
 papal bull. St. Leonard's Hall, after having been a 
 hospitiiim for pilgrims, a home for old ladies (about 
 1500), and a college in the University, was now a kind 
 of cross between a master's house at school, and, as 
 before 1750, a college. We had more liberty than 
 schoolboys, less than English undergraduates. In the 
 Scotch universities the men live scattered, in lodgings, 
 and only recently, at St. Andrews, have they begun to 
 dine together in hall. We had a common roof, common 
 dinners, wore scarlet gowns, possessed football and 
 cricket clubs, and started, of course, a kind of weekly 
 magazine. It was only a manuscript affair, and was 
 profusely illustrated. For the only time in my life, I 
 was now an editor, under a sub-editor, who kept me up
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 25 
 
 to my work, and cut out my fine passages. The editor's 
 duty was to write most of the magazine — to write essays, 
 reviews (of books by the professors, very severe), novels, 
 short stories, poems, translations, also to illustrate these, 
 and to "fag" his friends for "copy" and drawings. A 
 deplorable flippancy seems, as far as one remembers, to 
 have been the chief characteristic of the periodical — 
 flippancy and an abundant use of the supernatural. 
 These were the days of Lord Lytton's " Strange Story," 
 which I continue to think a most satisfactory romance. 
 Inspired by Lord Lytton, and aided by the University 
 library, I read Cornelius Agrippa, Trithemius, Petrus de 
 Abano, Michael Scott, and struggled with lambHchus 
 and Plotinus. 
 
 These are really but disappointing writers. It soon 
 became evident enough that the devil was not to be 
 raised by their prescriptions, that the philosopher's 
 stone was beyond the reach of the amateur. lamblichus 
 is particularly obscure and tedious. To any young 
 beginner I would recommend Petrus de Abano, as 
 the most adequate and gruesome of the school, for 
 " real deevilry and pleesure," while in the wilderness of 
 Plotinus there are many beautiful passages and lofty 
 speculations. Two winters in the Northern University, 
 with the seamy side of school life left behind, among 
 the kindest of professors — Mr. Sellar, Mr. Ferrier, Mr. 
 Shairp — in the society of the warden, Mr. Rhoades, and 
 of many dear old friends, are the happiest time in my 
 life. This was true literary leisure, even if it was not 
 too well employed, and the religio loci should be a 
 liberal education in itself. We had debating societies —
 
 26 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 I hope I am now forgiven for an attack on the character 
 of Sir WiUiam Wallace, latro quida?n, as the chronicler 
 calls him, "a certain brigand." But I am for ever 
 writing about St. Andrews — writing inaccurately, too, 
 the Scotch critics declare. " Farewell," we cried, 
 "dear city of youth and dream," eternally dear and 
 sacred. 
 
 Here we first made acquaintance with Mr. Browning, 
 guided to his works by a parody which a lady wrote in 
 our little magazine. Mr. Browning was not a popular 
 poet in 1 86 1. His admirers were few, a little people, 
 but they were not then in the later mood of reverence, 
 they did not awfully question the oracles, as in after 
 years. They read, they admired, they applauded, on 
 occasion they mocked, good-humouredly. The book by 
 which Mr. Browning was best known was the two green 
 volumes of " Men and Women." In these, I still think, 
 is the heart of his genius beating most strenuously and 
 with an immortal vitality. Perhaps this, for its compass, 
 is the collection of poetry the most various and rich of 
 modern English times, almost of any English times. 
 But just as Mr. Fitzgerald cared little for what Lord 
 Tennyson wrote after 1842, so I have never been able 
 to feel quite the same enthusiasm for Mr. Browning's 
 work after " Men and Women." He seems to have 
 more influence, though that influence is vague, on 
 persons who chiefly care for thought, than on those who 
 chiefly care for poetry. I have met a lady who had 
 read "The Ring and the Book" often, the "Lotus 
 Eaters" not once. Among such students are Mr. 
 Browning's disciples of the Inner Court : I dwell but in
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 27 
 
 the Court of the Gentiles. While we all — all who 
 attempt rhyme — have more or less consciously imitated 
 the manner of Lord Tennyson, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. 
 Rossetti, such imitations of Mr. Browning are uncom- 
 monly scarce. He is lucky enough not to have had the 
 seed of his flower stolen and sown everywhere till — 
 
 "Once again the people 
 Called it but a weed." 
 
 The other new poet of these days was Mr. Clough, 
 who has many undergraduate qualities. But his peculiar 
 wistful scepticism in religion had then no influence on 
 such of us as were still happily in the ages of faith. 
 Anything like doubt comes less of reading, perhaps, 
 than of the sudden necessity which, in almost every life, 
 puts belief on her trial, and cries for an examination of 
 the creeds hitherto held upon authority, and by dint of 
 use and wont. In a different way one can hardly care 
 for Mr. Matthew Arnold, as a boy, till one has come 
 under the influence of Oxford. So Mr. Browning was 
 the only poet added to my pantheon at St. Andrews, 
 though Macaulay then was admitted and appeared to 
 be more the true model of a prose writer than he seems 
 in the light of later reflection. Probably we all have a 
 period of admiring Carlyle almost exclusively. College 
 essays, when the essayist cares for his work, are 
 generally based on one or the other. Then they 
 recede into the background. As for their thought, 
 we cannot for ever remain disciples. We begin to 
 see how much that looks like thought is really the 
 expression of temperament, and how individual a
 
 28 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 thing temperament is, how each of us must construct 
 his world for himself, or be content to wait for an 
 answer and a synthesis " in that far-off divine event 
 to which the whole creation moves." So, for one, 
 in these high matters, I must be content as a "master- 
 less man," swearing by no philosopher, unless he be 
 the imperial Stoic of the hardy heart, Marcus Aurelius 
 Antoninus. 
 
 Perhaps nothing in education encourages this in- 
 credulity about " masters " of thought like the history of 
 philosophy. The professor of moral philosophy, Mr. 
 Ferrier, was a famous metaphysician and scholar. His 
 lectures on " The History of Greek Philosophy " were 
 an admirable introduction to the subject, afterwards 
 pursued, in the original authorities, at Oxford. Mr. 
 Ferrier was an exponent of other men's ideas so fair and 
 persuasive that, in each new school, we thought we had 
 discovered the secret. We were physicists with Thales 
 and that pre-Socratic " company of gallant gentlemen " 
 for whom Sydney Smith confessed his lack of admira- 
 tion. We were now Empedocleans, now believers in 
 Heraclitus, now in Socrates, now in Plato, now in 
 Aristotle. In each lecture our professor set up a new 
 master and gently disintegrated him in the next. 
 " Amurath to Amurath succeeds," as Mr. T. H. Green 
 used to say at Oxford. He himself became an Amurath, 
 a sultan of thought, even before his apotheosis as the 
 guide of that bewildered clergyman, Mr. Robert Elsmere. 
 At Oxford, when one went there, one found Mr. Green 
 already in the position of a leader of thought, and of 
 young men. He was a tutor of Balliol, and lectured on
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 29 
 
 Aristotle, and of him eager youth said, in the words of 
 Omar Khayyam, '■^ He knows I he knows/" What was 
 it that Mr. Green knew ? Where was the secret ? To 
 a mind already sceptical about masters, it seemed that 
 the secret (apart from the tutor's noble simplicity and 
 rare elevation of character) was a knack of translating 
 St. John and Aristotle alike into a terminology which 
 we then believed to be Hegelian. Hegel we knew, not 
 in the original German, but in lectures and in translations. 
 Reasoning from these inadequate premises, it seemed to 
 me that Hegel had invented evolution before Mr. 
 Darwin, that his system showed, so to speak, the spirit 
 at work in evolution, the something within the wheels. 
 But this was only a personal impression made on a 
 mind which knew Darwin, and physical speculations in 
 general, merely in the vague popular way. Mr. Green's 
 pupils could generally write in his own language, more 
 or less, and could " envisage " things, as we said then, 
 from his point of view. To do this was believed, 
 probably without cause, to be useful in examinations. 
 For one, I could never take it much more seriously, 
 never believed that "the Absolute," as the Oxford 
 Spectator said, had really been "got into a corner." 
 The Absolute has too often been apparently cornered, 
 too often has escaped from that situation. Somewhere 
 in an old notebook I believe I have a portrait in pencil 
 of Mr. Green as he wrestled at lecture with Aristotle, 
 with the Notion, with his chair and table. Perhaps he 
 was the last of that remarkable series of men, who may 
 have begun with Wycliffe, among whom Newman's is a 
 famous name, that were successively accepted at Oxford
 
 30 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 as knowing something esoteric, as possessing a shrewd 
 guess at the secret. 
 
 " None the less 
 I still came out no wiser than I went." 
 
 All of these masters and teachers made their mark, 
 probably won their hold, in the first place, by dint of 
 character, not of some peculiar views of theology and 
 philosophy. Doubtless it was the same with Socrates, 
 with Buddha. To be like them, not to believe with 
 them, is the thing needful. But the younger we are, 
 the less, perhaps, we see this clearly, and we persuade 
 ourselves that there is some mystery in these men's 
 possession, some piece of knowledge, some method of 
 thinking which will lead us to certainty and to peace. 
 Alas, their secret is incommunicable, and there is no 
 more a philosophic than there is a royal road to the 
 City. 
 
 This may seem a digression from Adventures among 
 Books into the Book of Human Life. But while much 
 of education is still orally communicated by lectures 
 and conversations, many thoughts which are to be found 
 in books, Greek or German, reach us through the hear- 
 ing. There are many pupils who can best be taught 
 in this way ; but, for one, if there be aught that is 
 desirable in a book, I then, as now, preferred, if I could, 
 to go to the book for it. 
 
 Yet it is odd that one remembers so Httle of one's 
 undergraduate readings, apart from the constant study 
 of the ancient classics, which might not be escaped. 
 Of these the calm wisdom of Aristotle, in moral thought
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 31 
 
 and in politics, made perhaps the deepest impression. 
 Probably politicians are the last people who read 
 Aristotle's " Politics." The work is, indeed, apt to 
 disenchant one with political life. It is melancholy 
 to see the little Greek states running the regular round 
 — monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny, democracy in all its 
 degrees, the "ultimate democracy" of plunder, law- 
 lessness, license of women, children, and slaves, and 
 then tyranny again, or subjection to some foreign power. 
 In politics, too, there is no secret of success, of the 
 happy life for all. There is no such road to the 
 City, either democratic or royal. This is the lesson 
 which Aristotle's " Politics " impresses on us, this and 
 the impossibility of imposing ideal constitutions on 
 mankind. 
 
 " Whate'er is best administered is best." These are 
 some of the impressions made at Oxford by the studies 
 of the schools, the more or less inevitable " curricoolum," 
 as the Scotch gentleman pronounced the word. But at 
 Oxford, for most men, the regular work of the schools 
 is only a small part of the literary education. People 
 read, in different degrees, according to their private 
 tastes. There are always a few men, at least, who love 
 literary studies for their own sake, regardless of lectures 
 and of "classes." In my own time I really believe you 
 could know nothing which might not " pay " in the 
 schools and prove serviceable in examinations. But a 
 good deal depended on being able to use your know- 
 ledge by way of literary illustration. Perhaps the 
 cleverest of my own juniors, since very well known in 
 letters, did not use his own special vein, even when he
 
 32 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 had the chance, in writing answers to questions in ex- 
 aminations. Hence his academic success was much 
 below his deserts. For my own part, I remember my 
 tutor saying, " Don't write as if you were writing for a 
 penny paper." Alas, it was " a prediction, cruel, smart." 
 But, "as yet no sin was dreamed." 
 
 At my own college we had to write weekly essays, 
 alternately in English and Latin. This might have been 
 good literary training, but I fear the essays were not 
 taken very seriously. The chief object was to make the 
 late learned Dr. Scott bound on his chair by paradoxes. 
 But nobody ever succeeded. He was experienced in 
 trash. As for what may be called unacademic literature, 
 there were not many essays in that art. There have 
 been very literary generations, as when Corydon and 
 Thyrsis "lived in Oxford as if it had been a great 
 country house ; " so Corydon confessed. Probably 
 many of the poems by Mr. Matthew Arnold and many 
 of Mr. Swinburne's early works were undergraduate 
 poems. A later generation produced " Love in Idle- 
 ness," a very pleasing volume. But the gods had not 
 made us poetical. In those days I remember picking 
 up, in the Union Reading-room, a pretty white quarto, 
 " Atalanta in Calydon," by A. C. Swinburne. Only 
 once had I seen Mr. Swinburne's name before, signing 
 a brief tale in Once a Week. " Atalanta " was a revela- 
 tion ; there was a new and original poet here, a Balliol 
 man, too. In my own mind "Atalanta" remains the 
 best, the most beautiful, the most musical of Mr. 
 Swinburne's many poems. He instantly became the 
 easily parodied model of undergraduate versifiers.
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 33 
 
 Swinburnian prize poems, even, were attempted, 
 without success. As yet we had not seen Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold's verses. I fell in love with them, one long 
 vacation, and never fell out of love. He is not, and 
 cannot be, the poet of the wide world, but his charm is 
 all the more powerful over those whom he attracts and 
 subdues. He is the one Oxford poet of Oxford, and 
 his " Scholar Gypsy " is our " Lycidas." At this time he 
 was Professor of Poetry ; but, alas, he lectured just at 
 the hour when wickets were pitched on Cowley Marsh, 
 and I never was present at his discourses, at his humorous 
 prophecies of England's fate, which are coming all too 
 true. So many weary lectures had to be attended, could 
 not be " cut," that we abstained from lectures of super- 
 erogation, so to speak. For the rest there was no 
 " literary movement " among contemporary under- 
 graduates. They read for the schools, and they rowed 
 and played cricket. We had no poets, except the stroke 
 of the Corpus boat, Mr. Bridges, and he concealed his 
 courtship of the Muse. Corpus is a small college, but 
 Mr. Bridges pulled its boat to the proud place of second 
 on the river. B. N. C. was the head boat, and even 
 B. N. C. did Corpus bump. But the triumph was 
 brief. B. N. C. made changes in its crew, got a new 
 ship, drank the foaming grape, and bumped Corpus 
 back. I think they went head next year, but not that 
 year. Thus Mr. Bridges, as Kingsley advises, was 
 doing noble deeds, not dreaming them, at that moment. 
 
 There existed a periodical entirely devoted to verse, 
 but nobody knew anybody who wrote in it. A comic 
 journal was started ; I remember the pride with which 
 
 c
 
 34 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 when a freshman, I received an invitation to join its 
 councils as an artist. I was to do the caricatures of all 
 things. Now, methought, I shall meet the Oxford wits 
 of whom I have read. But the wits were unutterably 
 disappointing, and the whole thing died early and not 
 lamented. Only one piece of academic literature 
 obtained and deserved success. This was The Oxford 
 Spectator^ a most humorous little periodical, in shape 
 and size like Addison's famous journal. The authors 
 were Mr. Reginald Copleston, now Bishop of Colombo, 
 Mr. Humphry Ward, and Mr. Nolan, a great athlete, 
 who died early. There have been good periodicals 
 since ; many amusing things occur in the Echoes from 
 the Oxford Magazine, but the Spectator was the flower 
 of academic journals. " When I look back to my own 
 experience," says the Spectator, " I find one scene, of 
 all Oxford, most deeply engraved upon ' the mindful 
 tablets of my soul.' And yet not a scene, but a fairy 
 compound of smell and sound, and sight and thought. 
 The wonderful scent of the meadow air just above 
 Iffley, on a hot May evening, and the gay colours of 
 twenty boats along the shore, the poles all stretched out 
 from the bank to set the boats clear, and the sonorous 
 cries of 'ten seconds more,' all down from the green 
 barge to the lasher. And yet that unrivalled moment 
 is only typical of all the term ; the various elements of 
 beauty and pleasure are concentrated there." 
 
 Unfortunately, life at Oxford is not all beauty and 
 pleasure. Things go wrong somehow. Life drops her 
 happy mask. But this has nothing to do with books. 
 
 About books, however, I have not many more con-
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 35 
 
 fessions that I care to make. A man's old self is so far 
 away that he can speak about it and its adventures 
 almost as if he were speaking about another who is 
 dead. After taking one's degree, and beginning to 
 write a little for publication, the topic has a tendency 
 to become much more personal. My last undergraduate 
 literary discoveries were of France and the Renaissance. 
 Accidentally finding out that I could read French, I 
 naturally betook myself to Balzac. If you read him 
 straight on, without a dictionary, you begin to learn a 
 good many words. The literature of France has been 
 much more popular in England lately, but thirty years 
 agone it was somewhat neglected. There does seem to 
 be something in French poetry which fails to please 
 " the German paste in our composition." Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold, a disciple of Sainte-Beuve, never could appre- 
 ciate French poetry. A poet-critic has even remarked 
 that the French language is nearly incapable of poetry ! 
 We cannot argue in such matters, where all depends on 
 the taste and the ear. 
 
 Our ancestors, like the author of the " Faery Queen," 
 translated and admired Du Bellay and Ronsard ; to 
 some critics of our own time this taste seems a 
 modish affectation. For one, I have ever found an 
 original charm in the lyrics of the Pleiad, and have 
 taken great delight in Hugo's amazing variety of 
 music, in the romance of Alfred de Musset, in the 
 beautiful cameos of Gautier. What is poetical, if 
 not the " Song of Roland," the only true national epic 
 since Homer? What is frank, natural verse, if not that 
 of the old Pasioureiles? Where is there naivete of
 
 36 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 narrative and unconscious charm, if not in Aucasstn et 
 Nicolettel In the long normally developed literature 
 of France, so variously rich, we find the nearest analogy 
 to the literature of Greece, though that of England 
 contains greater masterpieces, and her verse falls more 
 winningly on the ear. France has no Shakespeare and 
 no Milton ; we have no Moliere and no " Song of 
 Roland." One star differs from another in glory, but 
 it is a fortunate moment when this planet of France 
 swims into our ken. Many of our generation saw it 
 first through Mr. Swinburne's telescope, heard of it in 
 his criticisms, and are grateful to that watcher of the 
 skies, even if we do not share all his transports. There 
 then arose at Oxford, out of old French, and old oak, 
 and old china, a "school" or "movement." It was 
 aesthetic, and an early purchaser of Mr. William Morris's 
 wall papers. It existed ten or twelve years before the 
 public "caught on,'' as they say, to these delights. But 
 except one or two of the masters, the school were only 
 playing at aesthetics, and laughing at their own perform- 
 ances. There was more fun than fashion in the cult, 
 which was later revived, developed, and gossiped about 
 more than enough. 
 
 To a writer now dead, and then first met, I am 
 specially bound in gratitude — the late Mr. J. F. 
 M'Lennan. Mr. M'Lennan had the most acute and 
 ingenious of minds which I have encountered. His 
 writings on early marriage and early religion were revela- 
 tions which led on to others. The topic of folk-lore, 
 and the development of custom and myths, is not 
 generally attractive, to be sure. Only a few people seem
 
 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 37 
 
 interested in that spectacle, so full of surprises — the 
 development of all human institutions, from fairy tales 
 to democracy. In beholding it we learn how we owe 
 all things, humanly speaking, to the people and to 
 genius. The natural people, the folk, has supplied us, 
 in its unconscious way, with the stuff of all our poetry, 
 law, ritual : and genius has selected from the mass, has 
 turned customs into codes, nursery tales into romance, 
 myth into science, ballad into epic, magic mummery 
 into gorgeous ritual. The world has been educated, but 
 not as man would have trained and taught it. " He led 
 us by a way we knew not," led, and is leading us, we 
 know not whither ; we follow in fear. 
 
 The student of this lore can look back and see 
 the long trodden way behind him, the winding tracks 
 through marsh and forest and over burning sands. 
 He sees the caves, the camps, the villages, the towns 
 where the race has tarried, for shorter times or longer, 
 strange places many of them, and strangely haunted, 
 desolate dwellings and inhospitable. But the scarce 
 visible tracks converge at last on the beaten ways, the 
 ways to that city whither mankind is wandering, and 
 which it may never win. We have a foreboding of 
 a purpose which we know not, a sense as of will, 
 working, as we would not have worked, to a hidden 
 end. 
 
 This is the lesson, I think, of what we call folk- 
 lore or anthropology, which to many seems trivial, to 
 many seems dull. It may become the most attractive 
 and serious of the sciences ; certainly it is rich in strange 
 curiosities, like those mystic stones which were fingered 
 
 fs-.. 9.i,'~ '"■ .1,
 
 38 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 and arrayed by the pupils in that allegory of Novalis. 
 I am not likely to regret the accident which brought me 
 up on fairy tales, and the inquisitiveness which led me 
 to examine the other fragments of antiquity. But the 
 poetry and the significance of them are apt to be hidden 
 by the enormous crowd of details. Only late we find 
 the true meaning of what seems like a mass of fantastic, 
 savage eccentricities. I very well remember the moment 
 when it occurred to me, soon after taking my degree, 
 that the usual ideas about some of these matters were 
 the reverse of the truth, that the common theory had to 
 be inverted. The notion was "in the air," it had 
 already flashed on Mannhardt, probably, but, like the 
 White Knight in " Alice," I claimed it for " my own 
 invention." 
 
 These reminiscences and reflections have now been 
 produced as far as 1872, or thereabouts, and it is 
 not my intention to pursue them further, nor to 
 speak of any living contemporaries who have not won 
 their way to the classical. In writing of friends and 
 teachers at Oxford, I have not ventured to express 
 gratitude to those who still live, still teach, still are the 
 wisest and kindest friends of the hurrying generations. 
 It is a silence not of thanklessness, but of respect and 
 devotion. About others — contemporaries, or juniors by 
 many years — who have instructed, consoled, strength- 
 ened, and amused us, we must also be silent.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 TUSITALA 
 
 We spoke of a rest in a Fairy hill of the north, but he 
 
 Far from the firths of the east and the racing tides of the west 
 
 Sleeps in the sight and the sound of the infinite southern sea, 
 Weary and well content, in his grave on the Vaea crest. 
 
 Tusitala, the lover of children, the teller of tales. 
 Giver of counsel and dreams, a wonder, a world's dehght, 
 
 Looks o'er the labour of men in the plain and the hill, and the sails 
 Pass and repass on the sea that he loved, in the day and the night. 
 
 Winds of the west and the east in the rainy season blow. 
 Heavy with perfume, and all his fragrant woods are wet, 
 
 Winds of the east and the west as they wander to and fro, 
 Bear him the love of the lands he loved, and the long regret. 
 
 Once we were kindest, he said, when leagues of the limitless sea. 
 Flowed between us, but now that no range of the refluent tides 
 
 Sunders us each from each, yet nearer we seem to be. 
 
 When only the unbridged stream of the River of Death divides. 
 
 Before attempting to give any "reminiscences" of 
 
 Mr. Stevenson, it is right to observe that reminiscences 
 
 of him can best be found in his own works. In his 
 
 essay on "Child's Play," and in his "Child's Garden 
 
 of Verse," he gave to the world his vivid recollections 
 
 of his imaginative infancy. In other essays he spoke 
 
 41
 
 42 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 of his boyhood, his health, his dreams, his methods of 
 work and study. " The Silverado Squatters " reveals 
 part of his experience in America. The Parisian scenes 
 in "The Wrecker "are inspired by his sojourn in French 
 Bohemia; his journeys are recorded in "Travels with 
 a Donkey " and " An Inland Voyage " ; while his South 
 Sea sketches, which appeared in periodicals, deal with 
 his Oceanic adventures. He was the most autobio- 
 graphical of authors, with an egoism nearly as complete, 
 and to us as delightful, as the egoism of Montaigne. 
 Thus, the proper sources of information about the author 
 of " Kidnapped " are in his delightful books. 
 
 "John's own John," as Dr. Holmes says, may be very 
 unlike his neighbour's John ; but in the case of Mr. 
 Stevenson, his Louis was very similar to my Louis ; I 
 mean that, as he presents his personality to the world 
 in his writings, even so did that personality appear to 
 me in our intercourse. The man I knew was always 
 a boy. 
 
 " Sing me a song of the lad that is gone," 
 
 he wrote about Prince Charlie, but in his own case the 
 lad was never "gone." Like Keats and Shelley, he 
 was, and he looked, of the immortally young. He and 
 I were at school together, but I was an elderly boy of 
 seventeen, when he was lost in the crowd of "gytes," 
 as the members of the lowest form are called. Like 
 all Scotch people, we had a vague family connection ; 
 a great-uncle of his, I fancy, married an aunt of my 
 own, called for her beauty, " The Flower of Ettrick." 
 So we had both heard ; but these things were before
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF R. L. STEVENSON 43 
 
 our day. A lady of my kindred remembers carrying 
 Stevenson about when he was " a rather peevish baby," 
 and I have seen a beautiful photograph of him, like 
 one of Raffael's children, taken when his years were 
 three or four. But I never had heard of his existence 
 till, in 1873, I think, I was at Mentone, in the interests 
 of my health. Here I met Mr. Sidney Colvin, now of 
 the British Museum, and, with Mr. Colvin, Stevenson. 
 He looked as, in my eyes, he always did look, more 
 like a lass than a lad, with a rather long, smooth oval 
 face, brown hair worn at greater length than is common, 
 large lucid eyes, but whether blue or brown I cannot 
 remember, if brown, certainly light brown. On appeal- 
 ing to the authority of a lady, I learn that brown was 
 the hue. His colour was a trifle hectic, as is not un- 
 usual at Mentone, but he seemed, under his big blue 
 cloak, to be of slender, yet agile frame. He was like 
 nobody else whom I ever met. There was a sort of un- 
 common celerity in changing expression, in thought and 
 speech. His cloak and Tyrolese hat (he would admit 
 the innocent impeachment) were decidedly dear to him. 
 On the frontier of Italy, why should he not do as the 
 Itahans do ? It would have been well for me if I could 
 have imitated the wearing of the cloak ! 
 
 I shall not deny that my first impression was not 
 wholly favourable. " Here," I thought, " is one of your 
 aesthetic young men, though a very clever one." What 
 the talk was about, I do not remember; probably of 
 books. Mr. Stevenson afterwards told me that I had 
 spoken of Monsieur Paul de St. Victor, as a fine writer, 
 but added that " he was not a British sportsman." Mr.
 
 44 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Stevenson himself, to my surprise, was unable to walk 
 beyond a very short distance, and, as it soon appeared, 
 he thought his thread of life was nearly spun. He had 
 just written his essay, " Ordered South," the first of his 
 published works, for his " Pentland Rising" pamphlet was 
 unknown, a boy's performance. On reading "Ordered 
 South," I saw, at once, that here was a new writer, a 
 writer indeed ; one who could do what none of us, nous 
 autres, could rival, or approach. I was instantly " sealed 
 of the Tribe of Louis," an admirer, a devotee, a fanatic, 
 if you please. At least my taste has never altered. 
 From this essay it is plain enough that the author (as 
 is so common in youth, but with better reason than 
 many have) thought himself doomed. Most of us have 
 gone through that, the Millevoye phase, but who else 
 has shown such a wise and gay acceptance of the 
 apparently inevitable ? We parted ; I remember little 
 of our converse, except a shrewd and hearty piece of 
 encouragement given me by my junior, who already 
 knew so much more of life than his senior will ever do. 
 For he ran forth to embrace life like a lover : his motto 
 was never Lucy Ashton's — 
 
 " Vacant heart, and hand, and eye, 
 Easy live and quiet die." 
 
 Mr. Stevenson came presently to visit me at Oxford. 
 I make no hand of reminiscences ; I remember nothing 
 about what we did or said, with one exception, which 
 is not going to be published. I heard of him, writing 
 essays in the Fort/olio and the Cornhiii, those delightful 
 views of life at twenty-five, so brave, so real, so vivid.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF R. L. STEVENSON 45 
 
 so wise, so exquisite, which all should know. How we 
 looked for "R. L. S." at the end of an article, and how 
 devout was our belief, how happy our pride, in the 
 young one ! 
 
 About 1878, I think (I was now a slave of the quill 
 myself), I received a brief note from Mr. Stevenson, 
 introducing to me the person whom, in his essay on 
 his old college magazine, he called " Glasgow Brown." 
 What his real name was, whence he came, whence the 
 money came, I never knew. G. B. was going to start 
 a weekly Tory paper. Would I contribute? G. B. 
 came to see me. Mr. Stevenson has described him, 7iot 
 as I would have described him : like Mr. Bill Sikes's 
 dog, I have the Christian peculiarity of not liking dogs 
 "as are not of my breed." G. B.'s paper, London, was 
 to start next week. He had no writer of political leading 
 articles. Would I do a "leader"? But I was not in 
 favour of Lord Lytton's Afghan policy. How could I 
 do a Tory leader? Well, I did a neutral-tinted thing, 
 with citations from Aristophanes ! I found presently 
 some other scribes for G. B. 
 
 What a paper that was ! I have heard that G. B. 
 paid in handfuls of gold, in handfuls of bank-notes. 
 Nobody ever read London, or advertised in it, or 
 heard of it. It was full of the most wonderfully clever 
 verses in old French forms. They were (it afterwards 
 appeared) by Mr. W. E. Henley. Mr. Stevenson him- 
 self astonished and delighted the public of London (that 
 is, the contributors) by his " New Arabian Nights." 
 Nobody knew about them but ourselves, a fortunate 
 few. Poor G. B. died and Mr. Henley became the
 
 46 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 editor. I may not name the contributors, the flower 
 of the young lions, elderly lions now, there is a new 
 race. But one lion, a distinguished and learned lion, 
 said already that fiction, not essay, was Mr. Stevenson's 
 field. Well, both fields were his, and I cannot say 
 whether I would be more sorry to lose Virginibus 
 Puerisque and "Studies of Men and Books," or 
 "Treasure Island "and "Catriona." With the decease 
 of G. B., Pactolus dried up in its mysterious sources, 
 London struggled and disappeared. 
 
 Mr, Stevenson was in town, now and again, at the old 
 Saville Club, in Saville Row, which had the tiniest and 
 blackest of smoking-rooms. Here, or somewhere, he 
 spoke to me of an idea of a tale, a Man who was Two 
 Men. I said " ' William Wilson ' by Edgar Poe," and 
 declared that it would never do. But his " Brownies," 
 in a vision of the night, showed him a central scene, 
 and he wrote " Jekyll and Hyde." My " friend of these 
 days and of all days," Mr. Charles Longman, sent me 
 the manuscript. In a very common -place London 
 drawing-room, at 10.30 p.m., I began to read it. Arriv- 
 ing at the place where Utterson the lawyer, and the 
 butler wait outside the Doctor's room, I threw down the 
 manuscript and fled in a hurry. I had no taste for 
 solitude any more. The story won its great success, 
 partly by dint of the moral (whatever that may be), 
 more by its terrible, lucid, visionary power. I remember 
 Mr. Stevenson telling me, at this time, that he was 
 doing some " regular crawlers," for this purist had a 
 boyish habit of slang, and I ihink it was he who called 
 Julius Caesar "the howlingest cheese who ever lived."
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF R. L. STEVENSON 47 
 
 One of the " crawlers " was " Thrawn Janet " ; after 
 " Wandering Willie's Tale " (but certainly after it), to 
 my taste, it seems the most wonderful story of the 
 " supernatural " in our language. 
 
 Mr. Stevenson had an infinite pleasure in Boisgobey 
 Montepin, and, of course, Gaboriau. There was nothing 
 of the "cultured person" about him. Concerning a 
 novel dear to culture, he said that he would die by my 
 side, in the last ditch, proclaiming it the worst fiction 
 in the world. I make haste to add that I have only 
 known two men of letters as free as Mr. Stevenson, 
 not only from literary jealousy, but from the writer's 
 natural, if exaggerated, distaste for work which, though 
 in his own line, is very different in aim and method 
 from his own. I do not remember another case in 
 which he dispraised any book. I do remember his 
 observations on a novel then and now very popular, 
 but not to his taste, nor, indeed, by any means, impec- 
 cable, though stirring ; his censure and praise were both 
 just. From his occasional fine efforts, the author of this 
 romance, he said, should have cleared away acres of 
 brushwood, of ineffectual matter. It was so, no doubt, 
 as the writer spoken of would be ready to acknowledge. 
 But he was an improviser of genius, and Mr. Stevenson 
 was a conscious artist. 
 
 Of course we did by no means always agree in literary 
 estimates ; no two people do. But when certain works 
 — in his line in one way — were stupidly set up as rivals 
 of his, the person who was most irritated was not he, 
 but his equally magnanimous contemporary. There 
 was no thought of rivalry or competition in either mind.
 
 48 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 The younger romancists who arose after Mr. Stevenson 
 went to Samoa were his friends by correspondence ; 
 from them, who never saw his face, I hear of his 
 sympathy and encouragement. Every writer knows 
 the special temptations of his tribe : they were tempta- 
 tions not even felt, I do believe, by Mr. Stevenson. 
 His heart was far too high, his nature was in every 
 way as generous as his hand was open. It is in thinking 
 of these things that one feels afresh the greatness of 
 the world's loss ; for " a good heart is much more than 
 style," writes one who knew him only by way of letters. 
 
 It is a trivial reminiscence that we once plotted a 
 Boisgobesque story together. There was a prisoner in 
 a Muscovite dungeon. 
 
 " We'll extract information from him," I said. 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " With corkscrews." 
 
 But the mere suggestion of such a process was terribly 
 distasteful to him ; not that I really meant to go to 
 these extreme lengths. We never, of course, 'could really 
 have worked together ; and, his maladies increasing, he 
 became more and more a wanderer, living at Bourne 
 mouth, at Davos, in the Orisons, finally, as all know, 
 in Samoa. Thus, though we corresponded, not un- 
 frequently, I never was of the inner circle of his friends. 
 Among men there were school or college companions, 
 or companions of Paris or Fontainebleau, cousins, like 
 Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, or a stray senior, like Mr. 
 Sidney Colvin. From some of them, or from Mr. 
 Stevenson himself, I have heard tales of " the wild 
 Prince and Poins." That he and a friend travelled
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF R. L. STEVENSON 49 
 
 utterly without baggage, buying a shirt where a shirt 
 was needed, is a fact, and the incident is used in " The 
 Wrecker." Legend says that once he and a friend did 
 possess a bag, and also, nobody ever knew why, a large 
 bottle of scent. But there was no room for the bottle 
 in the bag, so Mr. Stevenson spilled the whole contents 
 over the other man's head, taking him unawares, that 
 nothing might be wasted. I think the tale of the 
 endless staircase, in "The Wrecker," is founded on 
 fact, so are the stories of the atelier, which I have heard 
 Mr. Stevenson narrate at the Oxford and Cambridge 
 Club. For a nocturnal adventure, in the manner of the 
 " New Arabian Nights," a learned critic already spoken 
 of must be consulted. It is not my story. In Paris, at 
 a cafe, I remember that Mr. Stevenson heard a French- 
 man say the English were cowards. He got up and 
 slapped the man's face. 
 
 "Monsieur, vous m' avez frappe ! " said the Gaul. 
 
 " A ce qu'il parait" said the Scot, and there it ended. 
 He also told me that years ago he was present at a play, 
 I forget what play, in Paris, where the moral hero 
 exposes a woman "with a history." He got up and 
 went out, saying to himself: 
 
 " What a play ! what a people ! " 
 
 ^^ Ah, Monsieur, vous eies Men jeune/" said an old 
 French gentleman. 
 
 Like a right Scot, Mr. Stevenson was fond of " our 
 auld ally of France," to whom our country and our 
 exiled kings owed so much. 
 
 I rather vaguely remember another anecdote. He 
 missed his train from Edinburgh to London, and his 
 
 D
 
 50 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 sole portable property was a return ticket, a meerschaum 
 pipe, and a volume of Mr. Swinburne's poems. The 
 last he found unmarketable ; the pipe, I think, he made 
 merchandise of, but somehow his provender for the 
 day's journey consisted in one bath bun, which he could 
 not finish. 
 
 These trivial tales illustrate a period in his life and 
 adventures which I only know by rumour. Our own 
 acquaintance was, to a great degree, literary and bookish. 
 Perhaps it began " with a slight aversion," but it seemed, 
 like madeira, to be ripened and improved by his long 
 sea voyage; and the news of his death taught me, at 
 least, the true nature of the affection which he was 
 destined to win. Indeed, our acquaintance was like 
 the friendship of a wild singing bird and of a punctual, 
 domesticated barn-door fowl, laying its daily "article" 
 for the breakfast-table of the citizens. He often wrote 
 to me from Samoa, sometimes with news of native 
 manners and folklore. He sent me a devil-box, the 
 "luck" of some strange island, which he bought at a 
 great price. After parting with its " luck," or fetish (a 
 shell in a curious wooden box), the island was unfor- 
 tunate, and was ravaged by measles. 
 
 I occasionally sent out books needed for Mr. Steven- 
 son's studies, of which more will be said. But I must 
 make it plain that, in the body, we met but rarely. His 
 really intimate friends were Mr. Colvin and Mr. Baxter 
 (who managed the practical side of his literary business 
 between them) ; Mr. Henley (in partnership with whom 
 he wrote several plays) ; his cousin, Mr. R. A. M. 
 Stevenson ; and, among other literati^ Mr. Gosse, Mr.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF R. L. STEVENSON 51 
 
 Austin Dobson, Mr. Saintsbury, Mr Walter Pollock, 
 knew him well. The best portrait of Mr. Stevenson 
 that I know is by Sir. W. B. Richmond, R.A., and 
 is in that gentleman's collection of contemporaries, with 
 the effigies of Mr. Holman Hunt, Mr. William Morris, 
 Mr. Browning, and others. It is unfinished, owing to 
 an illness which stopped the sittings, and does not show 
 the subject at his best, physically speaking. There is 
 also a briUiant, slight sketch, almost a caricature, by 
 Mr. Sargent. It represents Mr. Stevenson walking about 
 the room in conversation. 
 
 The people I have named, or some of them, knew 
 Mr. Stevenson more intimately than I can boast of 
 doing. Unlike each other, opposites in a dozen ways, 
 we always were united by the love of letters, and of 
 Scotland, our dear country. He was a patriot, yet he 
 spoke his mind quite freely about Burns, about that 
 apparent want of heart in the poet's amours, which our 
 countrymen do not care to hear mentioned. Well, 
 perhaps, for some reasons, it had to be mentioned once, 
 and so no more of it. 
 
 Mr. Stevenson possessed, more than any man I ever 
 met, the power of making other men fall in love with 
 him. I mean that he excited a passionate admiration 
 and affection, so much so that I verily believe some 
 men were jealous of other men's place in his liking. 
 I once met a stranger who, having become acquainted 
 with him, spoke of him with a touching fondness and 
 pride, his fancy reposing, as it seemed, in a fond con- 
 templation of so much genius and charm. What was 
 so taking in him ? and how is one to analyse that
 
 52 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 dazzling surface of pleasantry, that changeful shining 
 humour, wit, wisdom, recklessness ; beneath which beat 
 the most kind and tolerant of hearts ? 
 
 People were fond of him, and people were proud of 
 him : his achievements, as it were, sensibly raised their 
 pleasure in the world, and, to them, became parts of 
 themselves. They warmed their hands at that centre 
 of light and heat. It is not every success which has 
 these beneficent results. We see the successful sneered 
 at, decried, insulted, even when success is deserved. 
 Very little of all this, hardly aught of all this, I think, 
 came in Mr. Stevenson's way. After the beginning 
 (when the praises of his earliest admirers were irritating 
 to dull scribes) he found the critics fairly kind, I believe, 
 and often enthusiastic. He was so much his own 
 severest critic that he probably paid little heed to 
 professional reviewers. In addition to his " Rathillet," 
 and other MSS. which he destroyed, he once, in the 
 Highlands, long ago, lost a portmanteau with a batch 
 of his writings. Alas, that he should have lost or burned 
 anything! "King's chaff," says our country proverb, 
 " is better than other folk's corn." 
 
 I have remembered very little, or very little that I 
 can write, and about our last meeting, when he was so 
 near death, in appearance, and so full of courage — how 
 can I speak ? His courage was a strong rock, not to be 
 taken or subdued. When unable to utter a single word, 
 his pencilled remarks to his attendants were pithy and 
 extremely characteristic. This courage and spiritual 
 vitality made one hope that he would, if he desired it, 
 live as long as Voltaire, that reed among oaks. There
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF R. L. STEVENSON 53 
 
 were of course, in so rare a combination of characteristics, 
 some which were not equally to the liking of all. He 
 was highly original in costume, but, as his photographs 
 are familiar, the point does not need elucidation. Life 
 was a drama to him, and he delighted, like his own 
 British admirals, to do things with a certain air. He 
 observed himself, I used to think, as he observed others, 
 and " saw himself " in every part he played. There was 
 nothing of the cabotin in this self-consciousness ; it was 
 the unextinguished childish passion for " playing at 
 things " which remained with him. I have a theory 
 that all children possess genius, and that it dies out 
 in the generahty of mortals, abiding only with people 
 whose genius the world is forced to recognise. Mr. 
 Stevenson illustrates, and perhaps partly suggested, this 
 private philosophy of mine. 
 
 I have said very little ; I have no skill in reminiscences, 
 no art to bring the living aspect of the man before those 
 who never knew him. I faintly seem to see the eager 
 face, the light nervous figure, the fingers busy with roll- 
 ing cigarettes ; Mr. Stevenson talking, listening, often 
 rising from his seat, standing, walking to and fro, always 
 full of vivid intelligence, wearing a mysterious smile. I 
 remember one pleasant dark afternoon, when he told me 
 many tales of strange adventures, narratives which he had 
 heard about a murderous lonely inn, somewhere in the 
 States. He was as good to hear as to read. I do not 
 recollect much of that delight in discussion, in con- 
 troversy, which he shows in his essay on conversation, 
 where he describes, I believe, Mr. Henley as " Burley," 
 and Mr. Symonds as " Opalstein." He had great
 
 54 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 pleasure in the talk of the late Professor Fleeming Jenkyn, 
 which was both various and copious. But in these 
 nodes coefiaeque deum I was never a partaker. In many 
 topics, such as angling, golf, cricket, whereon I am 
 willingly diffuse, Mr. Stevenson took no interest. He 
 was very fond of boating and sailing in every kind ; he 
 hazarded his health by long expeditions among the fairy 
 isles of ocean, but he " was not a British sportsman," 
 though for his measure of strength a good pedestrian, a 
 friend of the open air, and of all who live and toil 
 therein. 
 
 As to his literary likings, they appear in his own con- 
 fessions. He revelled in Dickens, but, about Thackeray 
 — well, I would rather have talked to somebody else ! 
 To my amazement, he was of those (I think) who find 
 Thackeray " cynical." " He takes you into a garden, 
 and then pelts you with " — horrid things ! Mr. 
 Stevenson, on the other hand, had a free admiration 
 of Mr. George Meredith. He did not so easily forgive 
 the longueurs and lazinesses of Scott, as a Scot 
 should do. He read French much ; Greek only in 
 translations. 
 
 Literature was, of course, his first love, but he was 
 actually an advocate at the Scottish Bar, and, as such, 
 had his name on a brazen door-plate. Once he was a 
 competitor for a Chair of Modern History in Edinburgh 
 University ; he knew the romantic side of Scottish 
 history very well. In his novel, " Catriona," the character 
 of James Mohr Macgregor is wonderfully divined. 
 Once I read some unpublished letters of Catriona's 
 unworthy father, written when he was selling himself as
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF R. L. STEVENSON 55 
 
 a spy (and lying as he spied) to the Hanoverian usurper. 
 Mr. Stevenson might have written these letters for 
 James Mohr ; they might be extracts from " Catriona.' 
 
 In turning over old Jacobite pamphlets, I found a 
 forgotten romance of Prince Charles's hidden years, and 
 longed that Mr. Stevenson should retell it. There was 
 a treasure, an authentic treasure ; there were real spies, 
 a real assassin ; a real, or reported, rescue of a lovely 
 girl from a fire at Strasbourg, by the Prince. The tale 
 was to begin sur le pont d' Avignon : a young Scotch 
 exile watching the Rhone, thinking how much of it he 
 could cover with a salmon fly, thinking of the Tay or 
 Beauly. To him enter another shady tramping exile, 
 Blairthwaite, a murderer. And so it was to run on, as 
 the author's fancy might lead him, with Alan Breck and 
 the Master for characters. At last, in unpublished MSS. 
 I found an actual Master of Ballantrae, a Highland 
 chief — noble, majestically handsome — and a paid spy of 
 England ! All these papers I sent out to Samoa, too 
 late. The novel was to have been dedicated to me, 
 and that chance of immortality is gone, with so much 
 else. 
 
 Mr. Stevenson's last letters to myself were full of his 
 concern for a common friend of ours, who was very ill. 
 Depressed himself, Mr. Stevenson wrote to this gentle- 
 man — why should I not mention Mr. James Payn ? — 
 with consoling gaiety. I attributed his depression to 
 any cause but his own health, of which he rarely spoke. 
 He lamented the " ill-staged fifth act of life " ; he, at 
 least, had no long hopeless years of diminished force to 
 bear.
 
 56 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 I have known no man in whom the pre-eminently 
 manly virtues of kindness, courage, sympathy, generosity, 
 helpfulness, were more beautifully conspicuous than in 
 Mr. Stevenson, no man so much loved — it is not too 
 strong a word — by so many and such various people. 
 He was as unique in character as in literary genius. 

 
 RAB'S FRIEND 

 
 RAB'S FRIEND 
 
 To say what ought to be said concerning Dr. John 
 Brown, a man should have known him well and long, 
 and should remember much of that old generation of 
 Scotchmen to whom the author of " Rab and his 
 Friends " belonged. But that generation has departed. 
 One by one these wits and scholars of the North, 
 these epigoni who were not, indeed, of the heroes, 
 but who had seen and remembered Scott and 
 Wilson, have passed away. Aytoun and Carlyle and 
 Dr. Burton, and last. Dr. Brown, are gone. Sir 
 Theodore Martin alone is left. In her memoir of 
 Dr. Burton — the historian of Scotland, and author of 
 " The Book-hunter " — Mrs. Burton remarks that, in her 
 husband's later days, only Dr. John Brown and Pro- 
 fessor Blackie remained of all her husband's ancient 
 friends and coevals, of all who remembered Lockhart, 
 and Hogg, and their times. But many are left who 
 knew Dr. Brown far better and more intimately than 
 the author of this notice. I can hardly say when I first 
 became acquainted with him, probably it was in my 
 childhood. Ever since I was a boy, certainly, I used to 
 see him at intervals, especially in the Christmas vaca- 
 tions. But he seldom moved from Edinburgh, except 
 in summer, which he frequently passed in the country 
 
 59
 
 6o ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 house of certain friends of his, whose affection made 
 much of the happiness of his latest years, and whose 
 unfailing kindness attended him in his dying hours. 
 Living always in Scotland, Dr. Brown was seen but 
 rarely by his friends who resided in England. Thus, 
 though Dr. Brown's sweetness of disposition and charm 
 of manner, his humour, and his unfailing sympathy and 
 encouragement, made one feel toward him as to a 
 familiar friend, yet, of his actual life I saw but little, 
 and have few reminiscences to contribute. One can 
 only speak of that singular geniality of his, that temper 
 of goodness and natural tolerance and affection, which, 
 as Scotsmen best know, is not universal among the Scots. 
 Our race does not need to pray, like the mechanic in 
 the story, that Providence will give us " a good conceit 
 of ourselves." But we must acknowledge that the 
 Scotch temper is critical if not captious, argumentative, 
 inclined to look at the seamy side of men and of their 
 performances, and to dwell on imperfections rather than 
 on merits and virtues. An example of these blemishes 
 of the Scotch disposition, carried to an extreme degree 
 in the nature of a man of genius, is offered to the world 
 in the writings and " Reminiscences " of Mr. Carlyle. 
 
 Now, Dr. John Brown was at the opposite pole of 
 feeling. He had no mawkish toleration of things and 
 people intolerable, but he preferred not to turn his 
 mind that way. His thoughts were with the good, the 
 wise, the modest, the learned, the brave of times past, 
 and he was eager to catch a reflection of their qualities 
 in the characters of the living, of all with whom he came 
 into contact. He was, for example, almost optimistic
 
 RAB'S FRIEND 6i 
 
 in his estimate of the work of young people in art or 
 literature. From everything that was beautiful or good, 
 from a summer day by the Tweed, or from the eyes of a 
 child, or from the humorous saying of a friend, or from 
 treasured memories of old Scotch worthies, from re- 
 collections of his own childhood, from experience of 
 the stoical heroism of the poor, he seemed to extract 
 matter for pleasant thoughts of men and the world, and 
 nourishment for his own great and gentle nature. I have 
 never known any man to whom other men seemed so 
 dear — men dead, and men living. He gave his genius to 
 knowing them, and to making them better known, and 
 his unselfishness thus became not only a great personal 
 virtue, but a great literary charm. When you met him, 
 he had some " good story " or some story of goodness 
 to tell — for both came alike to him, and his humour 
 was as unfailing as his kindness. There was in his face 
 a singular charm, blended, as it were, of the expressions 
 of mirth and of patience. Being most sensitive to pain, 
 as well as to pleasure, he was an exception to that rule 
 of Rochefoucauld's — " nous avons ious assez de force pour 
 supporter les maux d'auirui." ^ 
 
 He did not bear easily the misfortunes of others, 
 and the evils of his own lot were heavy enough. 
 They saddened him ; but neither illness, nor his 
 poignant anxiety for others, could sour a nature so 
 unselfish. He appeared not to have lost that ano- 
 dyne and consolation of religious hope, which had 
 been the strength of his forefathers, and was his best 
 
 ' It is easy to bear the misfortunes of others.
 
 62 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 inheritance from a remarkable race of Scotsmen. 
 Wherever he came, he was welcome ; people felt glad 
 when they had encountered him in the streets — the 
 streets of Edinburgh, where almost every one knows 
 every one by sight — and he was at least as joyously 
 received by the children and the dogs as by the grown- 
 up people of every family. A friend has kindly shown 
 me a letter in which it is told how Dr. Brown's love of 
 dogs, his interest in a half-blind old Dandy which was 
 attached to him, was evinced in the very last hours of 
 his life. But enough has been said, in general terms, 
 about the character of " the beloved physician," as Dr. 
 Brown was called in Edinburgh, and a brief account 
 may be given, in some detail, of his life and ways. 
 
 Dr. John Brown was born in Biggar, one of the gray, 
 slaty-looking little towns in the pastoral moorlands of 
 southern Scotland. These towns have no great beauty 
 that they should be admired by strangers, but the 
 natives, as Scott said to Washington Irving, are attached 
 to their " gray hills," and to the Tweed, so beautiful 
 where man's greed does not pollute it, that the Border 
 people are all in love with it, as Tyro, in Homer, loved 
 the divine Enipeus. We hold it " far the fairest of the 
 floods that run upon the earth." How dear the border 
 scenery was to Dr. John Brown, and how well he knew 
 and could express its legendary magic, its charm woven 
 of countless ancient spells, the music of old ballads, the 
 sorcery of old stories, may be understood by readers of 
 his essay on " Minchmoor." ^ The father of Dr. Brown 
 
 1 In the third volume of his essays.
 
 RAB'S FRIEND 63 
 
 was the third in a lineage of ministers of the sect called 
 Seceders. To explain who the Seceders were, it would 
 be necessary to explore the sinking morasses of Scotch 
 ecclesiastical history. The minister was proud of being 
 not only a " Seceder " but a " Burgher." He inherited, 
 to be brief, the traditions of a most spiritually-minded 
 and most spirited set of men, too much bent, it may 
 appear to us, on establishing delicate distinctions of 
 opinions, but certainly most true to themselves and to 
 their own ideals of Hberty and of faith. 
 
 Dr. Brown's great-grandfather had been a shepherd boy, 
 who taught himself Greek that he might read the New 
 Testament ; who walked twenty-four miles — leaving his 
 folded sheep in the night — to buy the precious volume in 
 St. Andrews, and who, finally, became a teacher of much 
 repute among his own people. Of Dr. Brown's father, he 
 himself wrote a most touching and beautiful account in 
 his " Letter to John Cairns, D.D." This essay contains, 
 perhaps, the very finest passages that the author ever 
 penned. His sayings about his own childhood remind 
 one of the manner of Lamb, without that curious fan- 
 tastic touch which is of the essence of Lamb's style. 
 The following lines, for example, are a revelation of 
 childish psychology, and probably may be applied, 
 with almost as much truth, to the childhood of our 
 race : — 
 
 " Children are long of seeing, or at least of looking at 
 what is above them ; they like the ground, and its flowers 
 and stones, its 'red sodgers' and lady- birds, and all its 
 queer things ; their world is aboict three feet high, and they
 
 64 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 are more often stooping than gazing up. I know I was past 
 ten before I saw, or cared to see, the ceiHngs of the rooms 
 in the manse at Biggar." 
 
 I have often thought that the earliest fathers of our 
 race, child-hke in so many ways, were child-Uke in this, 
 and worshipped, not the phenomena of the heavens, but 
 objects more on a level with their eyes — the " queer 
 things " of their low-lying world. In this essay on his 
 father, Dr. Brown has written lines about a child's first 
 knowledge of death, which seem as noteworthy as Steele's 
 famous passage about his father's death and his own 
 half-conscious grief and anger. Dr. Brown describes a 
 Scottish funeral — the funeral of his own mother — as he 
 saw it with the eyes of a boy of five years old, while his 
 younger brother, a baby of a few months — 
 
 " leaped up and crowed with joy at the strange sight — the 
 crowding horsemen, the coaches, and the nodding plumes 
 of the hearse. . . . Then, to my surprise and alarm, the 
 coffin, resting on its bearers, was placed over the dark hole, 
 and I watched with curious eye the unrolling of those neat 
 black bunches of cords, which I have often enough seen 
 since. My father took the one at the head, and also 
 another much smaller, springing from the same point as 
 his, which he had caused to be placed there, and unrolling 
 it, put it into my hand. I twisted it firmly round my 
 fingers, and awaited the result ; the burial men with their 
 real ropes lowered the coffin, and when it rested at the 
 bottom it was too far down for me to see it. The grave 
 was made very deep, as he used afterwards to tell us, that 
 it might hold us all. My father first and abruptly let his 
 cord drop, followed by the rest. This was too much. I 
 now saw what was meant, and held on and fixed my fist 
 and feet, and I believe my father had some difficulty in
 
 RAB'S FRIEND 65 
 
 forcing open my small fingers ; he let the little black cord 
 drop, and I remember, in my misery and anger, seeing its 
 open end disappearing in the gloom." ^ 
 
 The man who wrote this, and many another passage 
 as true and tender, might surely have been famous in 
 fiction, if he had turned his powers that way. He had 
 imagination, humour, pathos ; he was always studying 
 and observing life ; his last volume, especially, is like a 
 collection of fragments that might have gone toward 
 making a work, in some ways not inferior to the romances 
 of Scott. When the third volume of Essays was pub- 
 lished, in the spring of his last year, a reviewer, who 
 apparently had no personal knowledge of Dr. Brown, 
 asked why he did not write a novel. He was by that 
 time over seventy years of age, and, though none guessed 
 it, within a few weeks of his death. What he might 
 have done, had he given himself to literature only, it is 
 impossible to guess. But he caused so much happiness, 
 and did so much good, in that gentle profession of heal- 
 ing which he chose, and which brought him near to 
 many who needed consolation more than physic, that 
 we need not forget his deliberate choice. Literature 
 had only his horae subsecivae, as he said : Subseciva 
 quaedam tempoi-a quae ego perire non patior, as Cicero 
 writes, "shreds and waste ends of time, which I suffer 
 not to be lost." 
 
 ' " I remember I went into the room where my father's body lay, 
 and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my 
 hand, and fell a-beatingthe coffin and calling ' Papa,' for I know not 
 how, I had some slight idea that he was locked up there." — Steele, 
 The Tatler, June 6, 1710. 
 
 E
 
 66 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 The kind of life which Dr. Brown's father and his 
 people lived at Biggar, the austere life of work, and of 
 thought intensely bent on the real aim of existence, on 
 God, on the destiny of the soul, is perhaps rare now, 
 even in rural Scotland. We are less obedient than 
 of old to the motto of that ring found on Magus 
 Moor, where Archbishop Shairp was murdered, Re- 
 membe? upon Dethe. If any reader has not yet made 
 the acquaintance of Dr. Brown's works, one might 
 counsel him to begin with the " Letter to John 
 Cairns, D.D.," the fragment of biography and auto- 
 biography, the description of the fountainheads from 
 which the genius of the author flowed. In his early 
 boyhood, John Brown was educated by his father, a 
 man who, from his . son's affectionate description, seems 
 to have confined a fiery and romantic genius within the 
 channels of Seceder and Burgher theology. When the 
 father received a call to the " Rose Street Secession 
 Church," in Edinburgh, the son became a pupil of that 
 ancient Scottish seminary, the High School — the school 
 where Scott was taught not much Latin and no Greek 
 worth mentioning. Scott was still alive and strong in 
 those days, and Dr. Brown describes how he and his 
 school companions would take off their hats to the 
 Shirra as he passed in the streets. 
 
 " Though lame, he was nimble, and all rough and alive 
 with power ; had you met him anywhere else, you would 
 say he was a Liddesdale store farmer, come of gentle blood 
 — ' a stout, blunt carle,' as he says of himself, with the 
 swing and stride and the eye of a man of the hills — a 
 large, sunny, out-of-door air all about him. On his broad
 
 RAB'S FRIEND 67 
 
 and stooping shoulders was set that head which, with 
 Shakespeare's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in all 
 the world." Scott was then Hving in 39 Castle Street. I 
 do not know whether the many pilgrims, whom one 
 meets moving constantly in the direction of Melrose and 
 Abbotsford, have thought of making pilgrimage to Castle 
 Street, and to the grave, there, of Scott's "dear old 
 friend," — his dog Camp. Of Dr. Brown's schoolboy 
 days, one knows little — days when " Bob Ainslie and I 
 were coming up Infirmary Street from the High School, 
 our heads together, and our arms intertwisted, as only 
 lovers and boys know how or why." Concerning the 
 doctor's character, he has left it on record that he liked 
 a dog-fight. " ' A dog-fight,' shouted Bob, and was off, 
 and so was I, both of us all hot, praying that it might 
 not be over before we were up. . . . Dogs like fighting ; 
 old Isaac (Watts, not Walton) says they ' delight ' in it, 
 and for the best of all reasons ; and boys are not cruel 
 because they like to see the fight. This is a very 
 diflFerent thing from a love of making dogs fight." And 
 this was the most famous of all dog-fights — since the 
 old Irish Brehons settled the laws of that sport, and 
 gravely decided what was to be done if a child inter- 
 fered, or an idiot, or a woman, or a one-eyed man — for 
 this was the dog-fight in which Rab first was introduced 
 to his historian. 
 
 Six years passed after this battle, and Dr. Brown 
 was a medical student and a clerk at Minto Hospital. 
 How he renewed his acquaintance there, and in what 
 sad circumstances, with Rab and his friends, it is 
 superfluous to tell, for every one who reads a:
 
 68 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 all has read that story, and most readers not with- 
 out tears. As a medical student in Edinburgh, 
 Dr. Brown made the friendship of Mr. Syme, the 
 famous surgeon — a friendship only closed by death. 
 I only saw them once together, a very long time 
 ago, and then from the point of view of a patient. 
 These occasions are not agreeable, and patients, like 
 the old cock which did not crow when plucked, are apt 
 to be "very much absorbed" ; but Dr. Brown's attitude , 
 toward the man whom he regarded with the reverence 
 of a disciple, as well as with the affection of a friend, 
 was very remarkable. 
 
 When his studies were over. Dr. Brown practised 
 for a year as assistant to a surgeon in Chatham. It 
 must have been when he was at Chatham that a 
 curious event occurred. Many years later, Charles 
 Dickens was in Edinburgh, reading his stories in public, , 
 and was dining with some Edinburgh people. Dickens [ 
 began to speak about the panic which the cholera had 
 caused in England : how ill some people had behaved. 
 As a contrast, he mentioned that, at Chatham, one poor 
 woman had died, deserted by every one except a young ] 
 physician. Some one, however, ventured to open the 
 door, and found the woman dead, and the young doctor 
 asleep, overcome with the fatigue that mastered him on 
 his patient's death, but quite untouched by the general 
 panic. " Why, that was^Dr. John Brown," one of the guests I 
 observed ; and it seems that, thus early in his career, the 
 doctor had been setting an example of the courage and j 
 charity of his profession. After a year spent in Chatham, j 
 he returned to Edinburgh, where he spent the rest of i
 
 RAB'S FRIEND 69 
 
 his life, busy partly with his art of healing, partly with 
 literature. He lived in Rutland Street, near the railway 
 station, by which Edinburgh is approached from the 
 west, and close to Princes Street, the chief street of the 
 town, separated by a green valley, once a loch, from 
 the high Castle Rock. It was the room in which 
 his friends were accustomed to see Dr. Brown, and 
 a room full of interest it was. In his long life, 
 the doctor had gathered round him many curious 
 relics of artists and men of letters ; a drawing of a 
 dog by Turner I remember particularly, and a copy 
 of " Don Juan," in the first edition, with Byron's manu- 
 script notes. Dr. Brown had a great love and knowledge 
 of art and of artists, from Turner to Leech ; and he had 
 very many friends among men of letters, such as Mr. 
 Ruskin and Mr. Thackeray. Dr. Brown himself was a 
 clever designer of rapid little grotesques, rough sketches 
 of dogs and men. One or two of them are engraved in 
 the little paper-covered booklets in which some of 
 his essays were separately published — booklets which 
 he was used to present to people who came to see 
 him and who were interested in all that he did. I 
 remember some vivacious grotesques which he drew for 
 one of my brothers when we were schoolboys. These 
 little things were carefully treasured by boys who knew 
 Dr. Brown, and found him friendly, and capable of 
 sustaining a conversation on the points of a Dandy 
 Dinmont terrier and other mysteries important to youth. 
 He was a bibliophile — a taste which he inherited from 
 his father, who "began collecting books when he was 
 twelve, and was collecting to his last hours."
 
 70 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 The last time I ever saw Dr. Brown, a year before his 
 death, he was kind enough to lend me one of the rarest of 
 his treasures, " Poems," by Mr. Ruskin. Probably Mr. 
 Ruskin had presented the book to his old friend ; in no 
 other way were it easy to procure writings which the author 
 withdrew from publication, if, indeed, they ever were, 
 properly speaking, published. Thus Dr. Brown was all 
 things to all men, and to all boys. He " had a word for 
 every one," as poor people say, and a word to the point, 
 for he was as much at home with the shepherd on the 
 hills, or with the angler between Hollylea and Cloven- 
 fords, as with the dusty book-hunter, or the doggy young 
 Border yeoman, or the child who asked him to " draw her 
 a picture," or the friend of genius famous through all the 
 world, Thackeray, when he " spoke, as he seldom did, of 
 divine things." 
 
 Three volumes of essays are all that Dr. Brown has 
 left in the way of compositions : a light, but imperishable 
 literary baggage. His studies are usually derived from 
 personal experience, which he reproduced with singular 
 geniality and simplicity, or they are drawn from the 
 tradition of the elders, the reminiscences of long-lived 
 Scotch people, who, themselves, had listened attentively 
 to those who went before them. Since Scott, these 
 ancient ladies with wonderful memories have had no 
 such attentive listener or appreciative reporter as Dr. 
 Brown. His paper called " Mystifications," a narrative 
 of the pranks of Miss Stirling Graham, is a brief, vivid 
 record of the clever and quaint society of Scotland sixty 
 years ago. Scotland, or at least Scottish society, is now 
 only English society — a little narrower, a little prouder,
 
 RAB'S FRIEND 71 
 
 sometimes even a little duller. But old people of 
 position spoke the old Scotch tongue sixty years ago, 
 and were full of wonderful genealogies, full of reminis- 
 cences of the " '45," and the adventures of the Jacobites. 
 The very last echoes of that ancient world are dying 
 now from memory, like the wide reverberations of that gun 
 which Miss Nelly Mac William heard on the day when 
 Prince Charles landed, and which resounded strangely 
 all through Scotland. 
 
 The children of this generation, one fears, will 
 hardly hear of these old raids and duels, risings and 
 rebellions, by oral tradition handed down, unbroken, 
 through aunts and grandmothers. Scott reaped a 
 full, late harvest of the memories of clannish and 
 feudal Scotland; Dr. Brown came as a later gleaner, 
 and gathered these stirring tales of " A Jacobite Family " 
 which are published in the last volume of his essays. 
 When he was an observer, not a hearer only. Dr. Brown 
 chiefly studied and best wrote of the following topics : 
 passages and characters of humour and pathos which he 
 encountered in his life and profession ; children, dogs. 
 Border scenery, and fellow- workers in life and science. 
 Under one or other of these categories all his best 
 compositions might be arranged. The most famous and 
 most exquisite of all his works in the first class is the 
 unrivalled " Rab and his Friends" — a study of the 
 stoicism and tenderness of the Lowland character 
 worthy of Scott. In a minor way the little paper on 
 " Jeems," the door-keeper in a Dissenting house of the 
 Lord, is interesting to Scotch people, though it must 
 seem a rather curious revelation to all others. " Her
 
 72 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 last Half-crown" is another study of the honesty that 
 survived in a starving and outcast Scotch girl, when all 
 other virtues, as we commonly reckon virtue, had gone 
 before her character to some place where, let us hope, 
 they may rejoin her ; for if we are to suffer for the vices 
 which have abandoned us, may we not get some credit 
 for the virtues that we have abandoned, but that once 
 were ours, in some heaven paved with bad resolutions 
 unfulfilled ? " The Black Dwarf's Bones " is a sketch 
 of the misshapen creature from whom Scott borrowed 
 the character that gives a name to one of his minor 
 Border stories. The real Black Dwarf (David Ritchie 
 he was called among men) was fond of poetry, but hated 
 Burns. He was polite to the fair, but classed mankind 
 at large with his favourite aversions : ghosts, fairies, and 
 robbers. There was this of human about the Black 
 Dwarf, that "he hated folk that are aye gaun to dee, 
 and never do't." The village beauties were wont to 
 come to him for a Judgment of Paris on their charms, 
 and he presented each with a flower, which was of a 
 fixed value in his standard of things beautiful. One 
 kind of rose, the prize of the most fair, he only gave 
 thrice. Paris could not have done his dooms more 
 courteously, and, if he had but made judicious use of 
 rose, lily, and lotus, as prizes, he might have pleased all 
 the three Goddesses ; Troy still might be standing, and 
 the lofty house of King Priam. 
 
 Among Dr. Brown's papers on children, that called 
 " Pet Marjorie " holds the highest place. Perhaps 
 certain passages are " wrote too sentimentally," as 
 Marjorie Fleming herself remarked about the practice
 
 RAB'S FRIEND 73 
 
 of many authors. But it was difficult to be perfectly 
 composed when speaking of this wonderful fairy-like 
 little girl, whose affection was as warm as her humour 
 and genius were precocious. " Infant phenomena " are 
 seldom agreeable, but Marjorie was so humorous, so 
 quick-tempered, so kind, that we cease to regard her 
 as an intellectual "phenomenon." Her memory remains 
 sweet and blossoming in its dust, like that of little 
 Penelope Boothby, the child in the mob cap whom Sir 
 Joshua painted, and who died very soon after she was 
 thus made immortal. 
 
 It is superfluous to quote from the essay on Marjorie 
 Fleming ; every one knows about her and her studies : 
 " Isabella is teaching me to make simme colings, nots of 
 interrigations, peorids, commoes, &c." Here is a Shake- 
 spearian criticism, of which few will deny the correctness : 
 " ' Macbeth ' is a pretty composition, but awful one." 
 Again, "I never read sermons of any kind, but I read 
 novelettes and my Bible." " ' Tom Jones ' and Gray's 
 •Elegy in a Country Churchyard' are both excellent, 
 and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the 
 men." Her Calvinistic belief in '■'■unquestionable fire 
 and brimston " is unhesitating, but the young theologian 
 appears to have substituted "unquestionable" for "un- 
 quenchable." There is something humorous in the 
 alteration, as if Marjorie refused to be put off with an 
 " excellent family substitute " for fire and brimstone, and 
 demanded the " unquestionable " article, no other being 
 genuine, please observe trade mark. 
 
 Among Dr. Brown's contributions to the humorous 
 study of dogs, " Rab," of course, holds the same place
 
 74 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 as Marjorie among his sketches of children. But if his 
 " Queen Mary's Child Garden," the description of the 
 little garden in which Mary Stuart did not play when a 
 child, is second to " Marjorie," so " Our Dogs " is a good 
 second to "Rab." Perhaps Dr. Brown never wrote 
 anything more mirthful than his description of the 
 sudden birth of the virtue of courage in Toby, a comic 
 but cowardly mongrel, a cur of low degree. 
 
 " Toby was in the way of hiding his culinary bones in the 
 small gardens before his own and the neighbouring doors. 
 Mr. Scrymgeour, two doors off, a bulky, choleric, red-faced 
 man — torvo vultu — was, by law of contrast, a great culti- 
 vator of flowers, and he had often scowled Toby into all but 
 non-existence by a stamp of his foot and a glare of his eye. 
 One day, his gate being open, in walks Toby with a huge 
 bone, and making a hole where Scrymgeour had two 
 minutes before been planting some precious slip, the name 
 of which on paper and on a stick Toby made very light 
 of, substituted his bone, and was engaged covering it, or 
 thinking he was covering it up with his shovelling nose, 
 when S. spied him through the inner glass door, and was 
 out upon him, like the Assyrian, with a terrific gowl. I 
 watched them. Instantly Toby made at him with a roar 
 too, and an eye more torve than Scrymgeour's, who, retreat- 
 ing without reserve, fell prostrate, there is reason to believe, 
 in his own lobby. Toby contented himself with proclaiming 
 his victory at the door, and, returning, finished his bone- 
 planting at his leisure ; the enemy, who had scuttled behind 
 the glass door, glared at him. From this moment Toby was 
 an altered dog. Pluck at first sight was lord of all. . . . 
 That very evening he paid a visit to Leo, next door's dog, 
 a big tyrannical bully and coward. . . . To him Toby paid
 
 RAB'S FRIEND 75 
 
 a visit that very evening, down into his den, and walked 
 about, as much as to say, ' Come on, Macduff' ; but Macduff 
 did not come on." 
 
 This story is one of the most amazing examples of 
 instant change of character on record, and disproves the 
 sceptical remark that "no one was ever converted, 
 except prize-fighters, and colonels in the army." I am 
 sorry to say that Dr. Brown was too fond of dogs to be 
 very much attached to cats. I never heard him say 
 anything against cats, or, indeed, against anybody ; but 
 there are passages in his writings which tend to show 
 that, when young and thoughtless, he was not far from 
 regarding cats as " the higher vermin." He tells a story 
 of a Ghazi puss, so to speak, a victorious cat, which, 
 entrenched in a drain, defeated three dogs with severe 
 loss, and finally escaped unharmed from her enemies. 
 Dr. Brown's family gloried in the possession of a Dandy 
 Dinmont named John Pym, whose cousin (Auld Pepper) 
 belonged to one of my brothers. Dr. Brown was much 
 interested in Pepper, a dog whose family pride was only 
 matched by that of the mother of Candide, and, at one 
 time, threatened to result in the extinction of this branch 
 of the House of Pepper. Dr. Brown had remarked, and 
 my own observations confirm it, that when a Dandy is 
 not game, his apparent lack of courage arises " from 
 kindness of heart." 
 
 Among Dr. Brown's landscapes, as one may call his 
 descriptions of scenery, and of the ancient historical 
 associations with Scotch scenery, " Minchmoor " is the 
 most important. He had always been a great lover of
 
 76 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 the Tweed. The walk which he commemorates in 
 " Minchmoor " was taken, if I am not mistaken, in com- 
 pany with Principal Shairp, Professor of Poetry in the 
 University of Oxford, and author of one of the most 
 beautiful of Tweedside songs, a modern " Bush aboon 
 Traquair : " —   
 
 " And what saw ye there, 
 
 At the bush aboon Traquair ; 
 Or what did ye hear that was worth your heed? 
 
 I heard the cushie croon 
 
 Thro' the gowden afternoon, 
 And the Quair burn singing doon to the vale o' Tweed." 
 
 There is in the country of Scott no pleasanter walk 
 than that which Dr. Brown took in the summer after- 
 noon. Within a few miles, many places famous in 
 history and ballad may be visited : the road by which 
 Montrose's men fled from Philiphaugh fight ; Traquair 
 House, with the bears on its gates, as on the portals of 
 the Baron of Bradwardine; Williamhope, where Scott 
 and Mungo Park, the African explorer, parted and 
 went their several ways. From the crest of the road 
 you see all the Border hills, the Maiden Paps, the 
 Eildons cloven in three, the Dunion, the Windburg, 
 and so to the distant Cheviots, and Smailholm Tower, 
 where Scott lay when a child, and clapped his hands at 
 the flashes of the lightning, hand sine Dis animosus 
 infans, like Horace. 
 
 From the crest of the hill you follow Dr. Brown 
 into the valley of Yarrow, and the deep black pools, 
 now called the "dowie dens," and so, "through the
 
 RAB'S FRIEND 77 
 
 pomp of cultivated nature," as Wordsworth says, to 
 the railway at Selkirk, passing the plain where Janet 
 won back Tamlane from the queen of the fairies. 
 All this country was familiar to Dr. Brown, and on 
 one of the last occasions when I met him, he was 
 living at HoUylea, on the Tweed, just above Ashestiel, 
 Scott's home while he was happy and prosperous, before 
 he had the unhappy thought of building Abbotsford. 
 At the time I speak of, Dr. Brown had long ceased to 
 write, and his health suffered from attacks of melan- 
 choly, in which the world seemed very dark to him. I 
 have been allowed to read some letters which he wrote 
 in one of these intervals of depression. With his 
 habitual unselfishness, he kept his melancholy to him- 
 self, and, though he did not care for society at such 
 times, he said nothing of his own condition that could 
 distress his correspondent. In the last year of his life, 
 everything around him seemed to brighten : he was 
 unusually well, he even returned to his literary work, 
 and saw his last volume of collected essays through the 
 press. They were most favourably received, and the 
 last letters which I had from him spoke of the pleasure 
 which this success gave him. Three editions of his 
 book ("John Leech, and Other Essays") were published 
 in some six weeks. All seemed to go well, and one 
 might even have hoped that, with renewed strength, he 
 would take up his pen again. But his strength was less 
 than we had hoped. A cold settled on his lungs, 
 and, in spite of the most affectionate nursing, he grew 
 rapidly weaker. He had Uttle suffering at the end, and 
 his mind remained unclouded. No man of letters could
 
 78 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 be more widely regretted, for he was the friend of all 
 who read his books, as, even to people who only met 
 him once or twice in life, he seemed to become dear 
 and familiar. 
 
 In one of his very latest writings, "' On Thackeray's 
 Death," Dr. Brown told people (what some of them 
 needed, and still need to be told) how good, kind, and 
 thoughtful for others was our great writer — our greatest 
 master of fiction, I venture to think, since Scott. Some 
 of the lines Dr. Brown wrote of Thackerary might be 
 applied to himself: "He looked always fresh, with that 
 abounding silvery hair, and his young, almost infantile 
 face " — a face very pale, and yet radiant, in his last 
 years, and mildly lit up with eyes full of kindness, and 
 softened by sorrow. In his last year, Mr. Swinburne 
 wrote to Dr. Brown this sonnet, in which there seems 
 something of the poet's prophetic gift, and a voice 
 sounds as of a welcome home : — ' 
 
 " Beyond the north wind lay the land of old, 
 
 Where men dwelt blithe and blameless, clothed and fed 
 With joy's bright raiment, and with love's sweet bread, — 
 The whitest flock of earth's maternal fold. 
 None there might wear about his brows enrolled 
 A light of lovelier fame than rings your head, 
 Whose lovesome love of children and the dead 
 All men give thanks for ; I, far off, behold 
 A dear dead hand that links us, and a light 
 The blithest and benignest of the night, — 
 
 The night of death's sweet sleep, wherein may be 
 A star to show your spirit in present sight 
 Some happier isle in the Elysian sea 
 Where Rab may lick the hand of Marjorie."
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 Never but once did I enjoy the privilege of meeting 
 the author of " Elsie Venner " — Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 It was at a dinner given by Mr. Lowell, and of conver- 
 sation with Dr. Holmes I had very little. He struck 
 me as being wonderfully erect, active, and vivacious for 
 his great age. He spoke (perhaps I should not chronicle 
 this impression) — he spoke much, and freely, but rather 
 as if he were wound up to speak, so to say — wound up, 
 I mean, by a sense of duty to himself and kindness 
 to strangers, who were naturally curious about so well- 
 known a man. In his aspect there was a certain dryness, 
 and, altogether, his vivacity, his ceaselessness, and a 
 kind of equability of tone in his voice, reminded me of 
 what Homer says concerning the old men around Priam, 
 above the gate of Troy, how they " chirped like cicalas 
 on a summer day." About the matter of his talk I 
 remember nothing, only the manner remains with me, 
 and mine may have been a false impression, or the 
 manner may have been accidental, and of the moment : 
 or, again, a manner appropriate for conversation with 
 strangers, each coming up one after the other, to view 
 respectfully so great a lion. Among his friends and 
 intimates he was probably a different man, with a tone 
 other and more reposeful. 
 
 8i J.
 
 82 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 He had a long, weary task before him, then, to talk 
 his way, ever courteous, alert, attentive, through part 
 of a London season. Yet, when it was all over, he 
 seems to have enjoyed it, being a man who took 
 pleasure in most sorts of experience. He did not affect 
 me, for that one time, with such a sense of pleasure as 
 Mr. Lowell did — Mr. Lowell, whom I knew so much 
 better, and who was so big, strong, humorous, kind, 
 learned, friendly, and delightfully natural. 
 
 Dr. Holmes, too, was a delightful companion, and 
 I have merely tried to make a sort of photographic 
 " snap-shot " at him, in a single casual moment, one of 
 myriads of such moments. Turning to Dr. Holmes's 
 popular, as distinct from his professional writings, one 
 is reminded, as one often is, of the change which seems 
 to come over some books as the reader grows older. 
 Many books are to one now what they always were ; 
 some, like the Waverley novels and Shakespeare, grow 
 better on every fresh reading. There are books which 
 filled me, in boyhood or in youth, with a sort of 
 admiring rapture, and a delighted wonder at their 
 novelty, their strangeness, freshness, greatness. Thus 
 Homer, and the best novels of Thackeray, and of 
 Fielding, the plays of Moliere and Shakespeare, the 
 poems of — well, of all the real poets, moved this 
 astonishment of admiration, and being read again, they 
 move it still. On a different level, one may say as much 
 about books so unlike each other, as those of Poe and 
 of Sir Thomas Browne, of Swift and of Charles Lamb. 
 
 There are, again, other books which caused this happy 
 emotion of wonder, when first perused, long since, but
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES St, 
 
 which do so no longer. I am not much surprised to find 
 Charles Kingsley's novels among them. 
 
 In the case of Dr. Holmes's books, I am very sensible 
 of this disenchanting effect of time and experience. 
 " The Professor at the Breakfast Table " and the novels 
 came into my hands when I was very young, in "green, 
 unknowing youth." They seemed extraordinary, new, 
 fantasies of wisdom and wit ; the reflections were such 
 as surprised me by their depth, the illustrations dazzled 
 by their novelty and brilliance. Probably they will still 
 be as fortunate with young readers, and I am to be 
 pitied, I hope, rather than blamed, if I cannot, like the 
 
 wise blackbird —   
 
 " Recapture 
 The first fine careless rapture." 
 
 By this time, of course, one understands many of the 
 constituents of Dr. Holmes's genius, the social, historical, 
 ancestral, and professional elements thereof. Now, it is 
 the business of criticism to search out and illustrate 
 these antecedents, and it seems a very odd and unlucky 
 thing, that the results of this knowledge when acquired, 
 should sometimes be a partial disenchantment. But we 
 are not disenchanted at all by this kind of science, when 
 the author whom we are examining is a great natural 
 genius, like Shakespeare or Shelley, Keats or Scott. Such 
 natures bring to the world far more than they receive, 
 as far as our means of knowing what they receive are 
 concerned. The wind of the spirit that is not of this 
 earth, nor limited by time and space, breathes through 
 their words, and thoughts, and deeds. They are not 
 mere combinations, however deft and subtle, of known
 
 84 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 atoms. They must continually delight, and continually 
 surprise ; custom cannot stale them ; like the heaven- 
 born Laws in Sophocles, age can never lull them to 
 sleep. Their works, when they are authors, never lose 
 hold on our fancy and our interest. 
 
 As far as my own feelings and admiration can inform 
 me. Dr. Holmes, though a most interesting and amiable 
 and kindly man and writer, was not of this class. As 
 an essayist, a delineator of men and morals, an un- 
 assuming philosopher, with a light, friendly wit, he 
 certainly does not hold one as, for example, Addison 
 does. The old Spectator makes me smile, pleases, 
 tickles, diverts me now, even more than when I lay on 
 the grass and read it by Tweedside, as a boy, when the 
 trout were sluggish, in the early afternoon. It is only 
 a personal fact that Dr. Holmes, read in the same old 
 seasons, with so much pleasure and admiration and 
 surprise, no longer affects me in the old way. Carlyle, 
 on the other hand, in his " Frederick," which used to 
 seem rather long, now entertains me far more than ever. 
 But I am well aware that this is a mere subjective 
 estimate; that Dr. Holmes may really be as great a 
 genius as I was wont to think him, for criticism is only 
 a part of our impressions. The opinion of mature 
 experience, as a rule, ought to be sounder than that of 
 youth ; in this case I cannot but think that it is sounder. 
 
 Dr. Holmes was a New Englander, and born in what 
 he calls " the Brahmin caste," the class which, in England, 
 before the sailing of the May Flower, and ever since, 
 had always been literary and highly educated. " I like 
 books ; I was born and bred among them," he says.
 
 OLIVER Wr<:NDELL HOLMES 85 
 
 "and have the easy feeling, when I get into their 
 presence, that a stable-boy has among horses." He is 
 fond of books, and, above all, of old books— strange, 
 old medical works, for example — full of portents and 
 prodigies, such as those of Wierus. 
 
 New England, owing to its famous college, Harvard, 
 and its steady maintenance of the literary and learned 
 tradition among the clergy, was, naturally, the home of 
 the earliest great American school of writers. These 
 men — Longfellow, Lowell, Ticknor, Prescott, Haw- 
 thorne, and so many others— had all received the same 
 sort of education as Europeans of letters used to receive. 
 They had not started as printers' devils, or newspaper 
 reporters, or playwrights for the stage, but were academic. 
 It does not matter much how a genius begins — as a 
 rural butcher, or an apothecary, or a clerk of a Writer 
 to the Signet. Still, the New Englanders were academic 
 and classical. New England has, by this time, estab- 
 lished a tradition of its literary origin and character. 
 Her children are sons of the Puritans, with their inde- 
 pendence, their narrowness, their appreciation of comfort, 
 their hardiness in doing without it, their singular scruples 
 of conscience, their sense of the awfulness of sin, their 
 accessibility to superstition. We can read of the later 
 New Englanders in the making, among the works of 
 Cotton Mather, his father Increase INIather, and the witch- 
 burning, periwig-hating, doctrinal Judge Sewall, who 
 so manfully confessed and atoned for his mistake about 
 the Salem witches. These men, or many of them, were 
 deeply-learned Calvinists, according to the standard of 
 their day, a day lasting from, say, the Restoration to
 
 86 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 1730. Cotton Mather, in particular, is erudite, literary — 
 nay, full of literary vanity — mystical, visionary, credulous 
 to an amusing degree. 
 
 But he is really as British as Baxter, or his Scottish 
 correspondent and counterpart, Wodrow. The sons or 
 grandsons of these men gained the War of Independence. 
 Of this they are naturally proud, and the circumstance is 
 not infrequently mentioned in Dr. Holmes's works. Their 
 democracy is not roaring modern democracy, but that 
 of the cultivated middle classes. Their stern Calvinism 
 slackened into many " isms," but left a kind of religi- 
 osity behind it. One of Dr. Holmes's mouthpieces sums 
 up his whole creed in the two words Pater Noster. All 
 these hereditary influences are consciously made con- 
 spicuous in Dr. Holmes's writings, as in Hawthorne's. 
 In Hawthorne you see the old horror of sin, the old 
 terror of conscience, the old dread of witchcraft, the 
 old concern about conduct, converted into aesthetic 
 sources of literary pleasure, of literary effects. 
 
 As a physician and a man of science, Dr. Holmes 
 added abundant knowledge of the new sort ; and apt, 
 unexpected bits of science made popular, analogies and 
 illustrations afforded by science are frequent in his 
 works. Thus, in " Elsie Venner," and in " The Guardian 
 Angel," "heredity" is his theme. He is always brood- 
 ing over the thought that each of us is so much made 
 up of earlier people, our ancestors, who bequeath to us 
 so many disagreeable things — vice, madness, disease, 
 emotions, tricks of gesture. No doubt these things are 
 bequeathed, but all in such new proportions and rela- 
 tions, that each of us is himself and nobody else, and
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 87 
 
 therefore had better make up his mind to be himself, 
 and for himself responsible. 
 
 All this doctrine of heredity, still so dimly under- 
 stood, Dr. Holmes derives from science. But, in 
 passing through his mind, that of a New Englander 
 conscious of New England's past, science takes a 
 stain of romance and superstition. Elsie Venner, 
 through an experience of her mother's, inherits the 
 nature of the serpent, so the novel is as far from 
 common life as the tale of " Melusine," or any other 
 echidna. The fantasy has its setting in a commonplace 
 New England environment, and thus recalls a Haw- 
 thorne less subtle and concentrated, but much more 
 humorous. The heroine of the " Guardian Angel," 
 again, exposes a character in layers, as it were, each 
 stratum of consciousness being inherited from a different 
 ancestor — among others, a red Indian. She has many 
 personalities, like the queer women we read about in 
 French treatises on hysterics and nervous diseases. 
 These stories are "fairy tales of science," by a man of 
 science, who is also a humourist, and has a touch of the 
 poet, and of the old fathers who were afraid of witches. 
 The "blend" is singular enough, and not without its 
 originality of fascination. 
 
 Though a man of science Dr. Holmes apparently 
 took an imaginative pleasure in all shapes of supersti- 
 tion that he could muster. I must quote a passage 
 from " The Professor at the Breakfast Table," as pecu- 
 liarly illustrative of his method, and his ways of half 
 accepting the abnormally romantic — accepting just
 
 88 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 enough for pleasure, like Sir Walter Scott. Connected 
 with the extract is a curious anecdote. 
 
 " I think I am a little superstitious. There were two 
 things, when I was a boy, that diabolised my imagina- 
 tion, — I mean, that gave me a distinct apprehension of 
 a formidable bodily shape which prowled round the 
 neighbourhood where I was born and bred. The first 
 was a series of marks called the ' Devil's footsteps.' 
 These were patches of sand in the pastures, where no 
 grass grew, where even the low-bush blackberry, the 
 " dewberry," as our Southern neighbours call it, in 
 prettier and more Shakespearian language, did not 
 spread its clinging creepers, where even the pale, dry, 
 sadly-sweet ' everlasting ' could not grow, but all was 
 bare and blasted. The second was a mark in one of 
 the public buildings near my home, — the college dormi- 
 tory named after a Colonial Governor. I do not think 
 many persons are aware of the existence of this mark, — 
 little having been said about the story in print, as it 
 was considered very desirable, for the sake of the 
 Institution, to hush it up. In the north-west corner, 
 and on the level of the third or fourth storey, there 
 are signs of a breach in the walls, mended pretty well, 
 but not to be mistaken. A considerable portion of 
 that corner must have been carried away, from within 
 outward. It was an unpleasant affair, and I do not 
 care to repeat the particulars ; but some young men 
 had been using sacred things in a profane and unlawful 
 way, when the occurrence, which was variously ex- 
 plained, took place. The story of the Appearance in 
 the chamber was, I suppose, invented afterwards ; but
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 89 
 
 of the injury to the building there could be no question ; 
 and the zigzag line, where the mortar is a little thicker 
 than before, is still distinctly visible. 
 
 "The queer burnt spots, called the 'Devil's footsteps,' 
 had never attracted attention before this time, though 
 there is no evidence that they had not existed previously, 
 except that of the late Miss M., a ' Goody,' so called, 
 who was positive on the subject, but had a strange horror 
 of referring to an affair of which she was thought to 
 know something. ... I tell you it was not so pleasant 
 for a little boy of impressible nature to go up to bed 
 in an old gambrel-roofed house, with untenanted locked 
 upper chambers, and a most ghostly garret, — with 
 ' Devil's footsteps ' in the fields behind the house, and 
 in front of it the patched dormitory, where the unex- 
 plained occurrence had taken place which startled those 
 godless youths at their mock devotions, so that one of 
 them was epileptic from that day forward, and another, 
 after a dreadful season of mental conflict, took to re- 
 ligion, and became renowned for his ascetic sanctity." 
 
 It is a pity that Dr. Holmes does not give the whole 
 story, instead of hinting at it, for a similar tale is told at 
 Brazenose College, and elsewhere. Now take, along 
 with Dr. Holmes's confession to a grain of superstition, 
 this remark on, and explanation of, the curious coinci- 
 dences which thrust themselves on the notice of most 
 people. 
 
 " Excuse me, — I return to my story of the Commons- 
 table. Young fellows being always hungry, and tea and 
 dry toast being the meagre fare of the evening meal, it 
 was a trick of some of the boys to impale a slice of meat
 
 90 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 upon a fork, at dinner-time, and stick the fork, holding 
 it, beneath the table, so that they could get it at tea-time. 
 The dragons that guarded this table of the Hesperides 
 found out the trick at last, and kept a sharp look-out for 
 missing forks ; — they knew where to find one, if it was 
 not in its place. Now the odd thing was, that, after 
 waiting so many years to hear of this College trick, I 
 should hear it mentioned a second time within the same 
 twenty-four hours by a College youth of the present 
 generation. Strange, but true. And so it has happened 
 to me and to every person, often and often, to be hit in 
 rapid succession by these twinned facts or thoughts, as 
 if they were linked like chain-shot. 
 
 "I was going to leave the simple reader to wonder 
 over this, taking it as an unexplained marvel. I think, 
 however, I will turn over a furrow of subsoil in it. The 
 explanation is, of course, that in a great many thoughts 
 there must be a few coincidences, and these instantly 
 arrest our attention. Now we shall probably never have 
 the least idea of the enormous number of impressions 
 which pass through our consciousness, until in some 
 future life we see the photographic record of our 
 thoughts and the stereoscopic picture of our actions. 
 
 " Now, my dear friends, who are putting your hands 
 to your foreheads, and saying to yourselves that you feel 
 a little confused, as if you had been waltzing until things 
 began to whirl slightly round you, is it possible that you 
 do not clearly apprehend the exact connection of all I 
 have been saying, and its bearing on what is now to 
 come ? Listen, then. The number of these living ele- 
 ments in our bodies illustrates the incalculable multi-
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 91 
 
 tude of our thoughts ; the number of our thoughts 
 accounts for those frequent coincidences spoken of; 
 these coincidences in the Avorld of thought illustrate 
 those which we constantly observe in the world of 
 outward events." 
 
 Now for the anecdote — one of Mark Twain's. 
 
 Some years ago, Mark Twain published in Harper's 
 Magazine an article on " Mental Telegraphy." He 
 illustrated his meaning by a story of how he once 
 wrote a long letter on a complicated subject, which had 
 popped into his head between asleep and awake, to a 
 friend on the other side of America. He did not send 
 the letter, but, by return of post, received one from his 
 friend. " Now, I'll tell you what he is going to say," 
 said Mark Twain, read his own unsent epistle aloud, 
 and then, opening his friend's despatch, proved that 
 they were essentially identical. This is what he calls 
 " Mental Telegraphy " ; others call it " Telepathy," and 
 the term is merely descriptive. 
 
 Now, on his own showing, in our second extract. Dr. 
 Holmes should have explained coincidences like this as 
 purely the work of chance, and I rather incline to think 
 that he would have been right. But Mark Twain, in 
 his article on "Mental Telegraphy," cites Dr. Holmes 
 for a story of how he once, after dinner, as his letters 
 came in, felt constrained to tell, a propos des bottes, the 
 story of the last challenge to judicial combat in England 
 (18x7). He then opened a newspaper directed to him 
 from England, the Sporting Times, and therein his eyes 
 lighted on an account of this very affair — Abraham 
 Thornton's challenge to battle when he was accused
 
 92 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 of murder, in 1817. According to Mark Twain, Dr. 
 Holmes was disposed to accept " Mental Telegraphy " 
 rather than mere chance as the cause of this coinci- 
 dence. Yet the anecdote of the challenge seems to 
 have been a favourite of his. It occurs in "The 
 Professor," in the fifth section. Perhaps he told it 
 pretty frequently; probably that is why the printed 
 version was sent to him ; still, he was a little staggered 
 by the coincidence. There was enough of Cotton Mather 
 in the man of science to give him pause. 
 
 The form of Dr. Holmes's best known books, the set 
 concerned with the breakfast-table and " Over the Tea- 
 cups," is not very fortunate. Much conversation at 
 breakfast is a weariness of the flesh. We want to eat 
 what is necessary, and then to go about our work or play. 
 If American citizens in a boarding-house could endure 
 these long palavers, they must have been very unlike 
 the hasty feeders caricatured in "Martin Chuzzlewit." 
 Macaulay may have monologuised thus at his breakfast 
 parties in the Albany ; but breakfast parties are obsolete 
 — an unregrettable parcel of things lost. The mono- 
 logues, or dialogues, were published serially in the 
 Atlantic Monthly, but they have had a vitality and 
 a vogue far beyond those of the magazine causerie. 
 Some of their popularity they may owe to the descrip- 
 tion of the other boarders, and to the kind of novel 
 which connects the fortunes of these personages. 
 But it is impossible for an Englishman to know 
 whether these American types are exactly drawn or 
 not. Their fortunes do not strongly interest one, 
 though the "Sculpin" — the patriotic, deformed Bos-
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 93 
 
 tonian, with his great-great-grandmother's ring (she 
 was hanged for a witch) — is a very original and 
 singular creation. The real interest lies in the wit, 
 wisdom, and learning. The wit, now and then, seems 
 to-day rather in the nature of a " goak." One might 
 give examples, but to do so seems ill-natured and 
 ungrateful. 
 
 There are some very perishable puns. The learning 
 is not so recherche as it appeared when we knew nothing 
 of Cotton Mather and Robert Calef, the author of a 
 book against the persecution of witches. Calef, of 
 course, was in the right, but I cannot forgive him for 
 refusing to see a lady, known to Mr. Mather, who 
 floated about in the air. That she did so was no good 
 reason for hanging or burning a number of parishioners ; 
 but, did she float, and, if so, how ? Mr. Calef said it 
 would be a miracle, so he declined to view the perform- 
 ance. His logic was thin, though of a familiar descrip- 
 tion. Of all old things, at all events. Dr. Holmes was 
 fond. He found America scarcely aired, new and raw, 
 devoid of history and of associations. " The Tiber has 
 a voice for me, as it whispers to the piers of the Pons 
 ^Hus, even more full of meaning than my well-beloved 
 Charles, eddying round the piles of West Boston 
 Bridge." No doubt this is a common sentiment 
 among Americans. 
 
 Occasionally, like Hawthorne, they sigh for an 
 historical atmosphere, and then, when they come to 
 Europe and get it, they do not like it, and think 
 Schenectady, New York, "a better place." It is not 
 easy to understand what ailed Hawthorne with Europe;
 
 94 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 he was extremely caustic in his writings about that con- 
 tinent, and discontented. Our matrons were so stout 
 and placid that they irritated him. Indeed, they are a 
 little heavy in hand, still there are examples of agreeable 
 slimness, even in this poor old country. Fond as he 
 was of the historical past, Mr. Holmes remained loyal 
 to the historical present. He was not one of those 
 Americans who are always censuring England, and 
 always hankering after her. He had none of that 
 irritable feeling, which made a great contemporary of 
 his angrily declare that he could endure to hear "Ye 
 Mariners of England " sung, because of his own 
 country's successes, some time ago. They were gallant 
 and conspicuous victories of the American frigates ; we 
 do not grudge them. A fair fight should leave no 
 rancour, above all in the victors, and Dr. Holmes's 
 withers would have been unwrung by Campbell's 
 ditty. 
 
 He visited England in youth, and fifty years later. 
 On the anniversary of the American defeat at Bunker's 
 Hill (June 17), Dr. Holmes got his degree in the old 
 Cambridge. He received degrees at Edinburgh and at 
 Oxford ; in his " Hundred Days in Europe " he says 
 very little about these historic cities. The men at 
 Oxford asked, "Did he come in the 'One HossShay'?" 
 the name of his most familiar poem in the lighter vein. 
 The whole visit to England pleased and wearied him. 
 He likened it to the shass caffy of Mr. Henry Foker — 
 the fillip at the end of the long banquet of life. He 
 went to see the Derby, for he was fond of horses, of 
 racing, and, in a sportsmanlike way, of boxing. He had
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 95 
 
 the great boldness once, audax Juvefita, to write a song 
 in praise of that comfortable creature — wine. The 
 prudery of many Americans about the juice of the 
 grape is a thing very astonishing to a temperate Briton. 
 An admirable author, who wrote an account of the old 
 convivial days of an American city, found that repu- 
 table magazines could not accept such a degrading 
 historical record. There was no nonsense about Dr. 
 Holmes. His poems were mainly "occasional" verses 
 for friendly meetings ; or humorous, like the celebrated 
 " One Horse Shay." Of his serious verses, the " Nau- 
 tilus " is probably too familiar to need quotation ; a 
 noble fancy is nobly and tunefully " moralised." Pleas- 
 ing, cultivated, and so forth, are adjectives not dear to 
 poets. To say "sublime," or "magical," or "strenuous," 
 of Dr. Holmes's muse, would be to exaggerate. How 
 far he maintained his scholarship, I am not certain ; but 
 it is odd that, in his preface to "The Guardian Angel," 
 he should quote from "Jonathan Edwards the younger," 
 a story for which he might have cited Aristotle. 
 
 Were I to choose one character out of Dr. Holmes's 
 creations as my favourite, it would be "a frequent corre- 
 spondent of his," and of mine — the immortal Gifted 
 Hopkins. Never was minor poet more kindly and 
 genially portrayed. And if one had to pick out three 
 of his books, as the best worth reading, they would be 
 "The Professor," "Elsie Venner," and "The Guardian 
 Angel." They have not the impeccable art and dis- 
 tinction of " The House of the Seven Gables " and 
 "The Scarlet Letter," but they combine fantasy with 
 living human interest, and with humour. With Sir
 
 96 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Thomas Browne, and Dr. John Brown, and — may we 
 not add Dr. Weir Mitchell? — Dr. Holmes excellently 
 represents the physician in humane letters. He has left 
 a blameless and most amiable memory, unspotted by the 
 world. His works are full of the savour of his native 
 soil, naturally, without straining after " Americanism ; " 
 and they are national, not local or provincial. He 
 crossed the great gulf of years, between the central 
 age of American literary production — the time of Haw- 
 thorne and Poe — to our own time, and, like Nestor, he 
 reigned among the third generation. As far as the 
 world knows, the shadow of a literary quarrel never fell 
 on him ; he was without envy or jealousy, incurious of 
 his own place, never vain, petulant, or severe. He was 
 even too good-humoured, and the worst thing I have 
 heard of him is that he could never say "no" to an 
 autograph hunter.
 
 MR. MORRIS'S POEMS
 
 MR. MORRIS'S POEMS 
 
 "Enough," said the pupil of the wise Imlac, "you 
 have convinced me that no man can be a poet." The 
 study of Mr. WiUiam Morris's poems, in the new 
 collected edition,^ has convinced me that no man, or, 
 at least, no middle-aged man, can be a critic. I read 
 Mr. Morris's poems (thanks to the knightly honours 
 conferred on the Bard of Penrhyn, there is now no 
 ambiguity as to ' Mr. Morris '), but it is not the book 
 only that I read. The scroll of my youth is unfolded. 
 I see the dear place where first I perused "The Blue 
 Closet"; the old faces of old friends flock around 
 me ; old chaff, old laughter, old happiness re-echo and 
 revive. St. Andrews, Oxford, come before the mind's 
 eye, with 
 
 " Many a place 
 That's in sad case 
 
 Where joy was wont afore, oh ! " 
 
 as Minstrel Burne sings. These voices, faces, land- 
 scapes mingle with the music and blur the pictures 
 of the poet who enchanted for us certain hours passed 
 in the paradise of youth. A reviewer who finds him- 
 self in this case may as well frankly confess that he 
 can no more criticise Mr. Morris dispassionately than 
 
 1 Longmans. 
 99
 
 loo ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 he could criticise his old self and the friends whom he 
 shall never see again, till he meets them 
 
 " Beyond the sphere of time, 
 And sin, and griefs control, 
 Serene in changeless prime 
 Of body and of soul. " 
 
 To write of one's own "adventures among books" may 
 be to provide anecdotage more or less trivial, more or 
 less futile, but, at least, it is to write historically. We 
 know how books have affected, and do affect ourselves, 
 our bundle of prejudices and tastes, of old impressions 
 and revived sensations. To judge books dispassion- 
 ately and impersonally, is much more difficult — indeed, 
 it is practically impossible, for our own tastes and 
 experiences must, more or less, modify our verdicts, 
 do what we will. However, the effort must be made, 
 for to say that, at a certain age, in certain circumstances, 
 an individual took much pleasure in "The Life and 
 Death of Jason," the present of a college friend, is cer- 
 tainly not to criticise "The Life and Death of Jason." 
 
 There have been three blossoming times in the 
 English poetry of the nineteenth century. The first 
 dates from Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, and, later, 
 from Shelley, Byron, Keats. By 1822 the blossoming 
 time was over, and the second blossoming time 
 began in 1 830-1 833, with young Mr. Tennyson and 
 Mr. Browning. It broke forth again in 1842 and did 
 not practically cease till England's greatest laureate 
 sang of the " Crossing of the Bar." But while Tenny- 
 son put out his full strength in 1842, and Mr. Browning
 
 MR. MORRIS'S POEMS loi 
 
 rather later, in " Bells and Pomegranates " (" Men and 
 Women"), the third spring came in 1858, with Mr. 
 Morris's " Defence of Guinevere," and flowered till 
 Mr. Swinburne's " Atalanta in Calydon " appeared in 
 1865, followed by his poems of 1866. Mr. Rossetti's 
 book of 1870 belonged, in date of composition, mainly 
 to this period. 
 
 In 1858, when "The Defence of Guinevere" came 
 out, Mr. Morris must have been but a year or two 
 from his undergraduateship. Every one has heard 
 enough about his companions, Mr. Burne Jones, Mr. 
 Rossetti, Canon Dixon, and the others of the old 
 Oxford and Cajtibridge Magazine, where Mr. Morris's 
 wonderful prose fantasies are buried. Why should 
 they not be revived, these strangely coloured and 
 magical dreams? As literature, I prefer them vastly 
 above Mr. Morris's later romances in prose — " The 
 Hollow Land " above " News from Nowhere ! " Mr. 
 Morris and his friends were active in the fresh dawn 
 of a new romanticism, a mediceval and Catholic revival, 
 with very little Catholicism in it for the most part. 
 This revival is more "innerly," as the Scotch say, 
 more intimate, more " earnest " than the larger and 
 more genial, if more superficial, restoration by Scott. 
 The painful doubt, the scepticism of the Ages of Faith, 
 the dark hours of that epoch, its fantasy, cruelty, luxury, 
 no less than its colour and passion, inform Mr. Morris's 
 first poems. The fourteenth and the early fifteenth 
 century is his " period." In " The Defence of Guine- 
 vere " he is not under the influence of Chaucer, whose 
 narrative manner, without one grain of his humour,
 
 I02 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 inspires "The Life and Death of Jason" and 
 "The Earthly Paradise." In the early book the 
 rugged style of Mr. Browning has left a mark. There 
 are cockney rhymes, too, such as "short" rhyming to 
 "thought." But, on the whole, Mr. Morris's early 
 manner was all his own, nor has he ever returned to 
 it. In the first poem, " The Queen's Apology," is this 
 passage : — 
 
 " Listen : suppose your time were come to die, 
 And you were quite alone and very weak ; 
 Yea, laid a-dying, while very mightily 
 
 " The wind was ruffling up the narrow streak 
 Of river through your broad lands running well : 
 Suppose a hush should come, then some one speak : 
 
 " ' One of these cloths is heaven, and one is hell, 
 Now choose one cloth for ever, which they be, 
 I will not tell you, you must somehow tell 
 
 " ' Of your own strength and mightiness ; here, see !' 
 Yea, yea, my lord, and you to ope your eyes, 
 At foot of your familiar bed to see 
 
 " A great God's angel standing, with such dyes. 
 Not known on earth, on his great wings, and hands. 
 Held out two ways, light from the inner skies 
 
 " Showing him well, and making his commands 
 Seem to be God's commands, moreover, too, 
 Holding within his hands the cloths on wands ; 
 
 " And one of these strange choosing-cloths was blue, 
 Wavy and long, and one cut short and red ; 
 No man could tell the better of the two. 
 
 " After a shivering half-hour you said, 
 ' God help ! heaven's colour, the blue ; ' and he said, ' Hell.' 
 Perhaps you then would roll upon your bed,
 
 MR. MORRIS'S POEMS 103 
 
 " And cry to all good men that loved you well, 
 ' Ah, Christ ! if only I had known, known, known.' " 
 
 There was nothing like that before in EngUsh poetry ; 
 it has the bizarrerie of a new thing in beauty. How far 
 it is really beautiful how can I tell ? How can I dis- 
 count the " personal bias " ? Only I know that it is 
 unforgettable. Again (Galahad speaks) : — 
 
 " I saw 
 
 One sitting on the altar as a throne, 
 
 Whose face no man could say he did not know, 
 
 And, though the bell still rang, he sat alone, 
 
 With raiment half blood-red, half white as snow." 
 
 Such things made their own special ineffaceable impact. 
 Leaving the Arthurian cycle, Mr. Morris entered on 
 his especially sympathetic period — the gloom and sad 
 sunset glory of the late fourteenth century, the age of 
 Froissart and wicked, wasteful wars. To Froissart it all 
 seemed one magnificent pageant of knightly and kingly 
 fortunes; he only murmurs a "great pity" for the death 
 of a knight or the massacre of a town. It is rather the 
 pity of it that Mr. Morris sees : the hearts broken in a 
 corner, as in " Sir Peter Harpedon's End," or beside 
 "The Haystack in the Floods." Here is a picture 
 like life of what befell a hundred times. Lady Alice 
 de la Barde hears of the death of her knight : — 
 
 "Alice 
 
 "Can you talk faster, sir? 
 Get over all this quicker ? fix your eyes 
 On mine, I pray you, and whate'er you see 
 Still go on talking fast, unless I fall. 
 Or bid you stop.
 
 I04 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 "Squire 
 
 ' ' I pray your pardon then, 
 And looking in your eyes, fair lady, say 
 I am unhappy that your knight is dead. 
 Take heart, and listen ! let me tell you all. 
 We were five thousand goodly men-at-arms, 
 And scant five hundred had he in that hold ; 
 His rotten sandstone walls were wet with rain, 
 And fell in lumps wherever a stone hit ; 
 Yet for three days about the barriers there 
 The deadly glaives were gather'd, laid across, 
 And push'd and puU'd ; the fourth our engines came ; 
 But still amid the crash of falling walls. 
 And roar of bombards, rattle of hard bolts. 
 The steady bow-strings flash'd, and still stream'd out 
 St. George's banner, and the seven swords. 
 And still they cried, ' St. George Guienne,' until 
 Their walls were flat as Jericho's of old, 
 And our rush came, and cut them from the keep." 
 
 The astonishing vividness, again, of the tragedy told in 
 " Geffray Teste Noire " is like that of a vision in a 
 magic mirror or a crystal ball, rather than like a picture 
 suggested by printed words. " Shameful Death " has 
 the same enchanted kind of presentment. We look 
 through a " magic casement opening on the foam " of 
 the old waves of war. Poems of a pure fantasy, un- 
 equalled out of Coleridge and Poe, are "The Wind" 
 and " The Blue Closet." Each only lives in fantasy. 
 Motives, and facts, and " story " are unimportant and out 
 of view. The pictures arise distinct, unsummoned, spon- 
 taneous, like the faces and places which are flashed on our 
 eyes between sleeping and waking. Fantastic, too, but 
 with more of a recognisable human setting, is " Golden
 
 MR. MORRIS'S POEMS 105 
 
 Wings," which to a slight degree reminds one of 
 Theophile Gautier's Chateau de Soiivenir. 
 
 " The apples now grow green and sour 
 Upon the mouldering castle wall, 
 Before they ripen there they fall : 
 There are no banners on the tower, 
 
 The draggled swans most eagerly eat 
 The green weeds trailing in the moat ; 
 Inside the rotting leaky boat 
 
 You see a slain man's stiffen'd feet." 
 
 These, with "The Sailing of the Sword," are my own 
 old favourites. There was nothing like them before, 
 nor will be again, for Mr. Morris, after several years of 
 silence, abandoned his early manner. No doubt it was 
 not a manner to persevere in, but happily, in a mood 
 and a moment never to be re-born or return, Mr. Morris 
 did fill a fresh page in English poetry with these im- 
 perishable fantasies. They were absolutely neglected 
 by " the reading public," but they found a few staunch 
 friends. Indeed, I think of " Guinevere " as Fitzgerald 
 did of Tennyson's poems before 1842. But this, of 
 course, is a purely personal, probably a purely capri- 
 cious, estimate. Criticism may aver that the influence 
 of Mr. Rossetti was strong on Mr. Morris before 1858. 
 Perhaps so, but we read Mr. Morris first (as the world 
 read the "Lay" before " Christabel "), and my own 
 preference is for Mr. Morris. 
 
 It was after eight or nine years of silence that Mr. 
 Morris produced, in 1866 or 1867, " The Life and Death 
 of Jason." Young men who had read "Guinevere"
 
 io6 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 hastened to purchase it, and, of course, found them- 
 selves in contact with something very unHke their old 
 favourite. Mr. Morris had told a classical tale in deca- 
 syllabic couplets of the Chaucerian sort, and he regarded 
 the heroic age from a mediaeval point of view ; at all 
 events, not from an historical and archaeological point of 
 view. It was natural in Mr. Morris to " envisage " the 
 Greek heroic age in this way, but it would not be natural 
 in most other writers. The poem is not much shorter 
 than the " Odyssey," and long narrative poems had been 
 out of fashion since "The Lord of the Isles " (1814). 
 
 All this was a little disconcerting. We read " Jason," 
 and read it with pleasure, but without much of the more 
 essential pleasure which comes from magic and distinc- 
 tion of style. The peculiar qualities of Keats, and Tenny- 
 son, and Virgil are not among the gifts of Mr. Morris. 
 As people say of Scott in his long poems, so it may be 
 said of Mr. Morris — that he does not furnish many 
 quotations, does not glitter in " jewels five words long." 
 
 In " Jason " he entered on his long career as a 
 narrator ; a poet retelling the immortal primeval stories 
 of the human race. In one guise or another the legend 
 of Jason is the most widely distributed of romances ; 
 the North American Indians have it, and the Samoans 
 and the Samoyeds, as well as all Indo-European peoples. 
 This tale, told briefly by Pindar, and at greater length by 
 ApoUonius Rhodius, and in the " Orphica," Mr. Morris 
 took up and handled in a single and objective way. 
 His art was always pictorial, but, in " Jason " and later, 
 he described more, and was less apt, as it were, to flash 
 a picture on the reader, in some incommunicable way.
 
 MR. MORRIS'S POEMS 107 
 
 In the covers of the first edition were announcements 
 of the " Earthly Paradise " : that vast collection of the 
 world's old tales retold. One might almost conjecture 
 that "Jason" had originally been intended for a part 
 of the " Earthly Paradise," and had outgrown its limits. 
 The tone is much the same, though the "criticism of 
 life " is less formally and explicitly stated. 
 
 For Mr. Morris came at last to a " criticism of life." 
 It would not have satisfied Mr. Matthew Arnold, and 
 it did not satisfy Mr. Morris ! The burden of these 
 long narrative poems is vanitas vattitatum : the fleeting, 
 perishable, unsatisfying nature of human existence, the 
 dream " rounded by a sleep." The lesson drawn is to 
 make life as full and as beautiful as may be, by love, 
 and adventure, and art. The hideousness of modern 
 industrialism was oppressing to Mr. Morris ; that hideous- 
 ness he was doing his best to relieve and redeem, by 
 poetry, and by all the many arts and crafts in which 
 he was a master. His narrative poems are, indeed, part 
 of his industry in this field. He was not born to slay 
 monsters, he says, "the idle singer of an empty day." 
 Later, he set about slaying monsters, like Jason, or 
 unlike Jason, scattering dragon's teeth to raise forces 
 which he could not lay, and could not direct. 
 
 I shall go no further into politics or agitation, and I say 
 this much only to prove that Mr. Morris's " criticism of 
 life," and prolonged, wistful dwelling on the thought of 
 death, ceased to satisfy himself. His own later part, as a 
 poet and an ally of SociaUsm, proved this to be true. It 
 seems to follow that the peculiarly level, lifeless, decora- 
 tive effect of his narratives, which remind us rather of
 
 s/ 
 
 ( 
 
 I 
 
 io8 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 glorious tapestries than of pictures, was no longer wholly 
 satisfactory to himself. There is plenty of charmed and 
 delightful reading — " Jason " and the "Earthly Paradise " 
 are literature for The Castle of Indolence, but we 
 do miss a strenuous rendering of action and passion. 
 These Mr. Morris had rendered in "The Defence of 
 Guinevere " : now he gave us something different, some- 
 thing beautiful, but something deficient in dramatic 
 vigour. ApoUonius Rhodius is, no doubt, much of a 
 pedant, a literary writer of epic, in an age of Criticism. 
 He dealt with the tale of "Jason," and conceivably he 
 may have borrowed from older minstrels. But the 
 Medea of ApoUonius Rhodius, in her love, her tender- 
 ness, her regret for home, in all her maiden words and 
 ways, is undeniably a character more living, more 
 human, more passionate, and more sympathetic, than 
 the Medea of Mr. Morris. I could almost wish that he 
 had closely followed that classical original, the first true 
 love story in literature. In the same way I prefer 
 Apollonius's spell for soothing the dragon, as much 
 terser and more somniferous than the spell put by Mr. 
 Morris into the lips of Medea. Scholars will find it 
 pleasant to compare these passages of the Alexandrine 
 and of the London poets. As a brick out of the vast 
 palace of " Jason " we may select the song of the Nereid 
 to Hylas — Mr. Morris is always happy with his Nymphs 
 and Nereids : — 
 
 " I know a little garden-close 
 Set thick with lily and with rose, 
 Where I would wander if I might 
 From dewy dawn to dewy night,
 
 MR. MORRIS'S POEMS 109 
 
 And have one with me wandering. 
 
 And though within it no birds sing, 
 And though no pillared house is there, 
 And though the apple boughs are bare 
 Of fruit and blossom, would to God, 
 Her feet upon the green grass trod. 
 And I beheld them as before. 
 
 There comes a murmur from the shore. 
 And in the place two fair streams are. 
 Drawn from the purple hills afar, 
 Drawn down unto the restless sea ; 
 The hills whose flowers ne'er fed the bee, 
 The shore no ship has ever seen, 
 Still beaten by the billows green, 
 Whose murmur comes unceasingly 
 Unto the place for which I cry. 
 
 For which I cry both day and night, 
 For which I let slip all delight. 
 That maketh me both deaf and blind. 
 Careless to win, unskilled to find. 
 And quick to lose what all men seek. 
 
 Yet tottering as I am, and weak, 
 Still have I left a little breath 
 To seek within the jaws of death 
 An entrance to that happy place, 
 To seek the unforgotten face 
 Once seen, once kissed, once reft from me 
 Anigh the murmuring of the sea." 
 
 "Jason" is, practically, a very long tale from the 
 " Earthly Paradise," as the " Earthly Paradise " is an 
 immense treasure of shorter tales in the manner of 
 " Jason." Mr. Morris reverted for an hour to his four- 
 teenth century, a period when London was " clean." 
 This is a poetic license ; many a plague found mediaeval 
 London abominably dirty'! A Celt himself, no doubt, 
 with the Celt's proverbial way of being impossibiliuni
 
 no ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 cupitor, Mr. Morris was in full sympathy with his Breton 
 Squire, who, in the reign of Edward III., sets forth to seek 
 the Earthly Paradise, and the land where Death never 
 comes. Much more dramatic, I venture to think, than any 
 passage of "Jason," is that where the dreamy seekers of 
 dreamland, Breton and Northman, encounter the stout 
 King Edward III., whose kingdom is of this world. 
 Action and fantasy are met, and the wanderers explain 
 the nature of their quest. One of them speaks of death 
 in many a form, and of the flight from death : — 
 
 " His words nigh made me weep, but while he spoke 
 I noted how a mocking smile just broke 
 The thin line of the Prince's lips, and he 
 Who carried the afore-named armoury 
 Puffed out his wind-beat cheeks and whistled low : 
 But the King smiled, and said, ' Can it be so ? 
 I know not, and ye twain are such as find 
 The things whereto old kings must needs be blind. 
 For you the world is wide — but not for me, 
 Who once had dreams of one great victory 
 Wherein that world lay vanquished by my throne, 
 And now, the victor in so many an one, 
 Find that in Asia Alexander died 
 And will not live again ; the world is wide 
 For you I say, — for me a narrow space 
 Betwixt the four walls of a fighting place. 
 
 Poor man, why should I stay thee ? live thy fill 
 Of that fair life, wherein thou seest no ill 
 But fear of that fair rest I hope to win 
 One day, when I have purged me of my sin. 
 
 Farewell, it yet may hap that I a king 
 Shall be remembered but by this one thing. 
 That on the morn before ye crossed the sea 
 Ye gave and took in common talk with me ; 
 But with this ring keep memory with the morn, 
 O Breton, and thou Northman, by this horn 
 Remember me, who am of Odin's blood.' "
 
 MR. MORRIS'S POEMS in 
 
 All this encounter is a passage of high invention. 
 The adventures in Anahuac are such as Bishop Eric 
 may have achieved when he set out to find Vinland the 
 Good, and came back no more, whether he was or was 
 not remembered by the Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl. The 
 tale of the wanderers was Mr. Morris's own ; all the rest 
 are of the dateless heritage of our race, fairy tales coming 
 to us, now "softly breathed through the flutes of the 
 Grecians," now told by Sagamen of Iceland. The whole 
 performance is astonishingly equable ; we move on a high 
 tableland, where no tall peaks of Parnassus are to be 
 climbed. Once more literature has a narrator, on the 
 whole much more akin to Spenser than to Chaucer, 
 Homer, or Sir Walter. Humour and action are not so 
 prominent as contemplation of a pageant reflected in a 
 fairy mirror. But Mr. Morris has said himself, about 
 his poem, what I am trying to say : — 
 
 " Death have we hated, knowing not what it meant ; 
 Life have we loved, through green leaf and through sere, 
 Though still the less we knew of its intent ; 
 The Earth and Heaven through countless year on year, 
 Slow changing, were to us but curtains fair, 
 Hung round about a little room, where play 
 Weeping and laughter of man's empty day." 
 
 Mr. Morris had shown, in various ways, the strength 
 of his sympathy with the heroic sagas of Iceland. He 
 had rendered one into verse, in "The Earthly Paradise," 
 above all, "Grettir the Strong" and "The Volsunga" 
 he had done into English prose. His next great poem 
 was "The Story of Sigurd," a poetic rendering of the 
 theme which is, to the North, what the Tale of Troy
 
 112 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 is to Greece, and to all the world. Mr. Morris took the 
 form of the story which is most archaic, and bears most 
 birthmarks of its savage origin — the version of the 
 *' Volsunga," not the German shape of the " Nibelungen- 
 lied." He showed extraordinary skill, especially in 
 making human and intelligible the story of Regin, Otter, 
 Fafnir, and the Dwarf Andvari's Hoard. 
 
 " It was Reidmar the Ancient begat me; and now was he waxen 
 
 old. 
 And a covetous man and a king ; and he bade, and I built him a 
 
 hall, 
 And a golden glorious house ; and thereto his sons did he call, 
 And he bade them be evil and wise, that his will through them 
 
 might be wrought. 
 Then he gave unto Fafnir my brother the soul that feareth nought, 
 And the brow of the hardened iron, and the hand that may never 
 
 fail, 
 And the greedy heart of a king, and the ear that hears no wail. 
 
 " But next unto Otter my brother he gave the snare and the net. 
 And the longing to wend through the wild-wood, and wade the 
 
 highways wet ; 
 And the foot that never resteth, while aught he left alive 
 That hath cunning to match man's cunning or might with his 
 
 might to strive. 
 
 •' And to me, the least and the youngest, what gift for the slaying 
 
 of ease ? 
 Save the grief that remembers the past, and the fear that the 
 
 future sees ; 
 And the hammer and fashioning-iron, and the living coal of fire; 
 And the craft that createth a semblance, and fails of the heart's 
 
 desire ; 
 And the toil that each dawning quickens, and the task that is 
 
 never done ; 
 And the heart that longeth ever, nor will look to the deed that 
 
 is won.
 
 MR. MORRIS'S POEMS 113 
 
 " Thus gave my father the gifts that might never be taken again ; 
 Far worse were we now than the Gods, and but little better 
 
 than men. 
 But yet of our ancient might one thing had we left us still : 
 We had craft to change our semblance, and could shift us at our 
 
 will 
 Into bodies of the beast-kind, or fowl, or fishes cold ; 
 For belike no fixed semblance we had in the days of old, 
 Till the Gods were waxen busy, and all things their form must 
 
 take 
 That knew of good and evil, and longed to gather and make." 
 
 But when we turn to the passage of the eclaircissement 
 between Sigurd and Brynhild, that most dramatic and 
 most modern moment in the ancient tragedy, the 
 moment where the clouds of savage fancy scatter in the 
 light of a hopeless human love, then, I must confess, I 
 prefer the simple, brief prose of Mr. Morris's translation 
 of the "Volsunga" to his rather periphrastic paraphrase. 
 Every student of poetry may make the comparison for 
 himself, and decide for himself whether the old or the 
 new is better. Again, in the final fight and massacre 
 in the hall of Atli, I cannot but prefer the Slaying of 
 the Wooers, at the close of the " Odyssey," or the last 
 fight of Roland at Roncesvaux, or the prose version 
 of the "Volsunga." All these are the work of men who 
 were war-smiths as well as song-smiths. Here is a 
 passage from the "murder grim and great": — 
 
 " So he saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared 
 on high, 
 But all about and around him goes up a bitter cry 
 From the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steel 
 Sends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the Niblung war-ranks reel 
 
 H
 
 114 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Behind the steadfast Gunnar : but lo, have ye seen the corn, 
 While yet men grind the sickle, by the wind streak overborne 
 When the sudden rain sweeps downward, and summer groweth 
 
 black, 
 And the smitten wood-side roareth 'neath the driving thunder- 
 wrack ? 
 So before the wise-heart Hogni shrank the champions of the 
 
 East 
 As his great voice shook the timbers in the hal) of Atli's feast, 
 There he smote and beheld not the smitten, and by nought were 
 
 his edges stopped ; 
 He smote and the dead were thrust from him ; a hand with its 
 
 shield he lopped ; 
 There met him Atli's marshal, and his arm at the shoulder he 
 
 shred ; 
 Three swords were upreared against him of the best of the kin of 
 
 the dead ; 
 And he struck off a head to the rightward, and his sword through 
 
 a throat he thrust, 
 But the third stroke fell on his helm-crest, and he stooped to the 
 
 ruddy dust, 
 And uprose as the ancient Giant, and both his hands were wet : 
 Red then was the world to his eyen, as his hand to the labour he 
 
 set ; 
 Swords shook and fell in his pathway, huge bodies leapt and 
 
 fell ; 
 Harsh grided shield and war-helm like the tempest-smitten bell, 
 And the war-cries ran together, and no man his brother knew. 
 And the dead men loaded the living, as he went the war-wood 
 
 through ; 
 And man 'gainst man was huddled, till no sword rose to smite, 
 . And clear stood the glorious Hogni in an island of the fight, 
 And there ran a river of death 'twixt the Niblung and his foes, 
 And therefrom the terror of men and the wrath of the Gods 
 
 arose." 
 
 I admit that this does not affect me as does the figure 
 of Odysseus raining his darts of doom, or the courtesy
 
 MR. MORRIS'S POEMS 115 
 
 of Roland when the blinded Oliver smites him by mis- 
 chance, and, indeed, the Keeping of the Stair by Um- 
 slopogaas appeals to me more vigorously as a strenuous 
 picture of war. To be just to Mr. Morris, let us give 
 his rendering of part of the Slaying of the Wooers, from 
 his translation of the " Odyssey " : — 
 
 " And e'en as the word he uttered, he drew his keen sword out 
 Brazen, on each side shearing, and with a fearful shout 
 Rushed on him ; but Odysseus that very while let fly 
 And smote him with the arrow in the breast, the pap hard by, 
 And drove the swift shaft to the liver, and adown to the ground 
 
 fell the sword 
 From out of his hand, and doubled he hung above the board, 
 And staggered ; and whirling he fell, and the meat was scattered 
 
 around, 
 And the double cup moreover, and his forehead smote the 
 
 ground ; 
 And his heart was wrung with torment, and with both feet 
 
 spurning he smote 
 The high-seat ; and over his eyen did the cloud of darkness float. 
 
 " And then it was Amphinomus, who drew his whetted sword 
 And fell on, making his onrush 'gainst Odysseus the glorious 
 
 lord. 
 If perchance he might get him out-doors : but Telemachus him 
 
 forewent, 
 And a cast of the brazen war-spear from behind him therewith 
 
 sent 
 Amidmost of his shoulders, that drave through his breast and out, 
 And clattering he fell, and the earth all the breadth of his fore- 
 head smote." 
 
 There is no need to say more of Mr. Morris's 
 " Odysseus." Close to the letter of the Greek he usually 
 keeps, but where are the surge and thunder of Homer ? 
 Apparently we must accent the penultimate in " Amphi-
 
 ii6 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 nomus" if the line is to scan. I select a passage of 
 peaceful beauty from Book V. : — 
 
 " But all about that cavern there grew a blossoming wood, 
 Of alder and of poplar and of cypress savouring good ; 
 And fowl therein wing-spreading were wont to roost and be, 
 For owls were there and falcons, and long-tongued crows of the 
 
 sea, 
 And deeds of the sea they deal with and thereof they have a care 
 But round the hollow cavern there spread and flourished fair 
 A vine of garden breeding, and in its grapes was glad ; 
 And four wells of the white water their heads together had, 
 And flowing on in order four ways they thence did get ; 
 And soft were the meadows blooming with parsley and violet. 
 Yea. if thither indeed had come e'en one of the Deathless, e'en he 
 Had wondered and gladdened his heart with all that was there 
 
 to see. 
 And there in sooth stood wondering the Flitter, the Argus-bane. 
 But when o'er all these matters in his soul he had marvelled 
 
 amain, 
 Then into the wide cave went he, and Calypso, Godhead's Grace, 
 Failed nowise there to know him as she looked upon his face ; 
 For never unknown to each other are the Deathless Gods, though 
 
 they 
 Apart from one another may be dwelling far away. 
 But Odysseus the mighty-hearted within he met not there. 
 Who on the beach sat weeping, as oft he was wont to wear 
 His soul with grief and groaning, and weeping ; yea, and he 
 As the tears he was pouring downward yet gazed o'er the un- 
 
 tilled sea." 
 
 This is close enough to the Greek, but 
 
 " And flowing 071 in order four -ways they thejice did get" 
 
 is not precisely musical. Why is Hermes "The Flitter"? 
 But I have often ventured to remonstrate against these 
 archaistic peculiarities, which to some extent mar our
 
 MR. MORRIS'S POEMS 117 
 
 pleasure in Mr. Morris's translations. In his version of 
 the rich Virgilian measure they are especially out of 
 place. The "^neid" is rendered with a roughness 
 which might better befit a translation of Ennius. Thus 
 the reader of Mr. Morris's poetical translations has in his 
 hands versions of almost literal closeness, and (what is 
 extremely rare) versions of poetry by a poet. But his 
 acquaintance with Early English and Icelandic has 
 added to the poet a strain of the philologist, and his 
 English in the " Odyssey," still more in the " ^neid," 
 is occasionally more archaic than the Greek of 900 B.C. 
 So at least it seems to a reader not unversed in attempts 
 to fit the classical poets with an English rendering. 
 But the true test is in the appreciation of the lovers of 
 poetry in general. 
 
 To them, as to all who desire the restoration of beauty 
 in modern life, Mr. Morris has been a benefactor almost 
 without example. Indeed, were adequate knowledge 
 mine, Mr. Morris's poetry should have been criticised 
 as only a part of the vast industry of his life in many 
 crafts and many arts. His place in English life and 
 literature is unique as it is honourable. He did what 
 he desired to do — he made vast additions to simple and 
 stainless pleasures.
 
 MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS
 
 MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS 
 
 Does any one now read Mrs. Radcliffe, or am I the only 
 wanderer in her windy corridors, listening timidly to 
 groans and hollow voices, and shielding the flame of a 
 lamp, which, I fear, will presently flicker out, and leave 
 me in darkness? People know the name of "The 
 Mysteries of Udolpho ; " they know that boys would say 
 to Thackeray, at school, "Old fellow, draw us Vivaldi 
 in the Inquisition." But have they penetrated into the 
 chill galleries of the Castle, of Udolpho ? Have they 
 shuddered for Vivaldi in face of the sable-clad and 
 masked Inquisition ? Certainly Mrs. Radcliffe, within 
 the memory of man, has been extremely popular. The 
 thick double-columned volume in which I peruse the 
 works of the Enchantress belongs to a public library. 
 It is quite the dirtiest, greasiest, most dog's-eared, and 
 most bescribbled tome in the collection. Many of the 
 books have remained, during the last hundred years, 
 uncut, even to this day, and I have had to apply the 
 paper knife to many an author, from Alciphron (1790) 
 to Mr. Max MuUer, and Dr. Birkbeck Hill's edition of 
 Bozzy's "Life of Dr. Johnson." But Mrs. Radcliffe 
 has been read diligently, and copiously annotated. 
 This lady was, in a literary sense, and though, like the
 
 122 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 sire of Evelina, he cast her off", the daughter of Horace 
 Walpole. Just when King Romance seemed as dead as 
 Queen Anne, Walpole produced that Gothic tale, " The 
 Castle of Otranto," in 1764. In that very year was born 
 Anne Ward, who, in 1787, married William RadcliffCj 
 Esq., M.A., Oxon. In 1789 she published "The Castles 
 of Athlin and Dunbayne." The scene, she tells us, is 
 laid in " the most romantic part of the Highlands, the 
 north-east coast of Scotland." On castles, anywhere, 
 she doted. Walpole, not Smollett or Miss Burney, 
 inspired her with a passion for these homes of old 
 romance. But the north-east coast of Scotland is 
 hardly part of the Highlands at all, and is far from 
 being very romantic. The period is " the dark ages " 
 in general. Yet the captive Earl, when "the sweet 
 tranquillity of evening threw an air of tender melancholy 
 over his mind . . . composed the following sonnet, 
 which (having committed it to paper) he the next even 
 ing dropped upon the terrace. He had the pleasure 
 to observe that the paper was taken up by the ladies, 
 who immediately retired into the castle." These were 
 not the manners of the local Mackays, of the Sinclairs, 
 and of "the small but fierce clan of Gunn," in the dark 
 ages. 
 
 But this was Mrs. Radclifife's way. She delighted in 
 descriptions of scenery, the more romantic the better, 
 and usually drawn entirely from her inner consciousness. 
 Her heroines write sonnets (which never but once are 
 sonnets) and other lyrics, on every occasion. With his 
 usual generosity Scott praised her landscape and her 
 lyrics, but, indeed, they are, as Sir Walter said of Mrs.
 
 MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS 123 
 
 Hemans, "too poetical," and probably they were skipped, 
 even by her contemporary devotees. " The Castles of 
 Athlin and Dunbayne " frankly do not permit themselves 
 to be read, and it was not till 1790, with "A Sicilian 
 Romance," that Mrs. Radcliffe "found herself," and her 
 public. After reading, with breathless haste, through 
 " A Sicilian Romance," and " The Romance of the 
 Forest," in a single day, it would ill become me to 
 speak lightly of Mrs. Radcliffe. Like Catherine Mor- 
 land, I love this lady's tender yet terrific fancy. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe does not always keep on her highest 
 level, but we must remember that her last romance, 
 "The Italian," is by far her best. She had been feel- 
 ing her way to this pitch of excellence, and, when she 
 had attained to it, she published no more. The reason 
 is uncertain. She became a Woman's Rights woman, 
 and wrote " The Female Advocate," not a novel ! 
 Scott thinks that she may have been annoyed by her 
 imitators, or by her critics, against whom he defends 
 her in an admirable passage, to be cited later. Mean- 
 while let us follow Mrs. Radcliffe in her upward course. 
 
 The "Sicihan Romance " appeared in 1790, when the 
 author's age was twenty-six. The book has a treble 
 attraction, for it contains the germ of " Northanger 
 Abbey," and the germ of "Jane Eyre," and — the germ 
 of Byron! Like "Joseph Andrews," "Northanger 
 Abbey" began as a parody (of Mrs. Radcliffe) and 
 developed into a real novel of character. So too 
 Byron's gloomy scowling adventurers, with their dark- 
 ling past, are mere repetitions in rhyme of Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's Schedoni. This is so obvious that, when discuss-
 
 124 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 ing Mrs. Radcliffe's Schedoni, Scott adds, in a note, 
 parallel passages from Byron's "Giaour." Sir Walter 
 did not mean to mock, he merely compared two kin- 
 dred spirits. " The noble poet " " kept on the business 
 still," and broke into octosyllabics, borrowed from Scott, 
 his descriptions of miscreants borrowed from Mrs. 
 Radcliffe. 
 
 " A Sicilian Romance " has its scene in the palace of 
 Ferdinand, fifth Marquis of Mazzini, on the northern 
 coast of Sicily. The time is about 1580, but there is 
 nothing in the manners or costume to indicate that, or 
 any other period. Such "local colour " was unknown 
 to Mrs. Radcliffe, as to Clara Reeve. In Horace Wal- 
 pole, however, a character goes so far in the mediaeval 
 way as to say " by my halidome." 
 
 The Marquis Mazzini had one son and two daughters 
 by his first amiable consort, supposed to be long dead 
 when the story opens. The son is the original of Henry 
 Tilney in " Northanger Abbey," and in General Tilney 
 does Catherine Morland recognise a modern Marquis of 
 Mazzini. But the Marquis's wife, to be sure, is not 
 dead ; like the first Mrs. Rochester she is concealed 
 about the back premises, and, as in " Jane Eyre," it is 
 her movements, and those of her gaolers, that produce 
 mystery, and make the reader suppose that "the place 
 is haunted." It is, of course, only the mystery and the 
 " machinery " of Mrs. Radcliffe that Miss Bronte 
 adapted. These passages in " Jane Eyre " have been 
 censured, but it is not easy to see how the novel could 
 do without them. Mrs. Radcliffe's tale entirely depends 
 on its machinery. Her wicked Marquis, having secretly
 
 MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS 125 
 
 immured Number One, has now a new and beautiful 
 Number Two, whose character does not bear inspection. 
 This domestic position, as Number Two, we know, was 
 declined by the austere virtue of Jane Eyre. 
 
 "Phenomena" begin in the first chapter of "A 
 Sicihan Romance," mysterious lights wander about 
 uninhabited parts of the castle, and are vainly investi- 
 gated by young Ferdinand, son of the Marquis. 
 This Hippolytus the Chaste, loved all in vain by the 
 reigning Marchioness, is adored by, and adores, her 
 stepdaughter, Julia. Jealousy and revenge are clearly 
 indicated. But, in chasing mysterious lights and figures 
 through mouldering towers, Ferdinand gets into the very 
 undesirable position of David Balfour, when he climbs, 
 in the dark, the broken turret stair in his uncle's house 
 of Shaws (in " Kidnapped "). Here is a fourth author 
 indebted to Mrs. Radcliffe : her disciples are Miss 
 Austen, Byron, Miss Bronte, and Mr. Louis Stevenson ! 
 Ferdinand " began the ascent. He had not proceeded 
 very far, when the stones of a step which his foot had 
 just quitted gave way, and, dragging with them those 
 adjoining, formed a chasm in the staircase that terrified 
 even Ferdinand, who was left tottering on the sus- 
 pended half of the steps, in momentary expectation of 
 falling to the bottom with the stone on which he rested. 
 In the terror which this occasioned, he attempted to 
 save himself by catching at a kind of beam which sus- 
 pended over the stairs, when the lamp dropped from 
 his hand, and he was left in total darkness." 
 
 Can anything be more "amazing horrid," above all 
 as there are mysterious figures in and about the tower ?
 
 126 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's lamps always fall, or are blown out, in 
 the nick of time, an expedient already used by Clara 
 Reeve in that very mild but once popular ghost story, 
 "The Old English Baron" (1777). All authors have 
 such favourite devices, and I wonder how many fights 
 Mr. Stanley Weyman's heroes have fought, from the 
 cellar to their favourite tilting ground, the roof of a 
 strange house ! 
 
 Ferdinand hung on to the beam for an hour, when 
 the ladies came with a light, and he scrambled back to 
 solid earth. In his next nocturnal research, "a sullen 
 groan arose from beneath where he stood," and when 
 he tried to force a door (there are scores of such weird 
 doors in Mrs. Radcliffe) " a groan was repeated, more 
 hollow and dreadful than the first. His courage for- 
 sook him " — and no wonder ! Of course he could not 
 know that the author of the groans was, in fact, his 
 long-lost mother, immured by his father, the wicked 
 Marquis. We need not follow the narrative through the 
 darkling crimes and crumbling galleries of this terrible 
 castle on the north coast of Sicily. Everybody is always 
 "gazing in silent terror," and all the locks are rusty. 
 " A savage and dexterous banditti " play a prominent 
 part, and the imprisoned Ferdinand "did not hesitate 
 to believe that the moans he heard came from the rest- 
 less spirit of the murdered della Campo." No working 
 hypothesis could seem more plausible, but it was erro- 
 neous. Mrs. Radcliffe does not deal in a single 
 avowed ghost. She finally explains away, by normal 
 causes, everything that she does not forget to explain. 
 At the most, she indulges herself in a premonitory
 
 MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS 127 
 
 dream. On this point she is true to common sense, 
 without quite adopting the philosophy of David Hume. 
 " I do not say that spirits have appeared," she re- 
 marks, "but if several discreet unprejudiced persons 
 were to assure me that they had seen one — I should 
 not be bold or proud enough to reply, it is impossible ! " 
 But Hume was bold and proud enough : he went 
 further than Mrs. Radcliffe. 
 
 Scott censures Mrs. Radcliffe's employment of ex- 
 planations. He is in favour of "boldly avowing the 
 use of supernatural machinery," or of leaving the matter 
 in the vague, as in the appearance of the wraith of the 
 dying Alice to Ravenswood. But, in Mrs. RadcHffe's 
 day, common sense was so tyrannical, that the poor 
 lady's romances would have been excluded from families, 
 if she had not provided normal explanations of her 
 groans, moans, voices, lights, and wandering figures. 
 The ghost -hunt in the castle finally brings Julia to a 
 door, whose bolts, "strengthened by desperation, she 
 forced back." There was a middle-aged lady in the 
 room, who, after steadily gazing on Julia, "suddenly 
 exclaimed, ' My daughter ! ' and fainted away." Julia 
 being about seventeen, and Madame Mazzini, her 
 mamma, having been immured for fifteen years, we 
 observe, in this recognition, the force of the maternal 
 instinct. 
 
 The wicked Marquis was poisoned by the partner of 
 his iniquities, who anon stabbed herself with a poniard. 
 The virtuous Julia marries the chaste Hippolytus, and, 
 says the author, " in reviewing this story, we perceive 
 a singular and striking instance of moral retribution."
 
 128 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 We also remark the futility of locking up an incon- 
 venient wife, fabled to be defunct, in one's own country 
 house. Had Mr. Rochester, in "Jane Eyre," studied 
 the "Sicilian Romance," he would have shunned an 
 obsolete system, inconvenient at best, and apt, in the 
 long run, to be disastrous. 
 
 In the "Romance of the Forest" (1791), Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe remained true to Mr. Stanley Weyman's favourite 
 period, the end of the sixteenth century. But there are 
 no historical characters or costumes in the story, and all 
 the persons, as far as language and dress go, might have 
 been alive in 1791. 
 
 The story runs thus : one de la Motte, who appears 
 to have fallen from dissipation to swindling, is, on the 
 first page, discovered flying from Paris and the law, with 
 his wife, in a carriage. Lost in the dark on a moor, he 
 follows a light, and enters an old lonely house. He is 
 seized by ruffians, locked in, and expects to be murdered, 
 which he knows that he cannot stand, for he is timid by 
 nature. In fact, a ruffian puts a pistol to La Motte's 
 breast with one hand, while with the other he drags 
 along a beautiful girl of eighteen. "Swear that you 
 will convey this girl where I may never see her more," 
 exclaims the bully, and La Motte, with the young lady, 
 is taken back to his carriage. " If you return within an 
 hour you will be welcomed with a brace of bullets," is 
 the ruffian's parting threat. 
 
 So La Motte, Madame La Motte, and the beautiful 
 girl drive away. La Motte's one desire being to find a 
 retreat safe from the police of an offended justice. 
 
 Is this not a very original, striking, and affecting
 
 MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS 129 
 
 situation ; provocative, too, of the utmost curiosity ? A 
 fugitive from justice, in a strange, small, dark, ancient 
 house, is seized, threatened, and presented with a young 
 and lovely female stranger. In this opening we recognise 
 the hand of a master genius. There must be an explana- 
 tion of proceedings so highly unconventional, and what 
 can the reason be ? The reader is enipoigne in the first 
 page, and eagerly follows the flight of La Motte, also of 
 Peter, his coachman, an attached, comic, and familiar 
 domestic. After a few days, the party observe, in the 
 recesses of a gloomy forest, the remains of a Gothic 
 abbey. They enter; by the light of a flickering lamp 
 they penetrate " horrible recesses," discover a room 
 handsomely provided with a trapdoor, and determine 
 to reside in a dwelling so congenial, though, as La 
 Motte judiciously remarks, "not in all respects strictly 
 Gothic." After a few days, La Motte finds that some- 
 body is inquiring for him in the nearest town. He 
 seeks for a hiding-place, and explores the chambers 
 under the trapdoor. Here he finds, in a large chest 
 — what do you suppose he finds? It was a human 
 skeleton ! Yet in this awful vicinity he and his wife, 
 with Adeline (the fair stranger) conceal themselves. 
 The brave AdeHne, when footsteps are heard, and a 
 figure is beheld in the upper rooms, accosts the stranger. 
 His keen eye presently detects the practicable trapdoor, 
 he raises it, and the cowering La Motte recognises in 
 the dreaded visitor — his own son, who had sought him 
 out of filial affection. 
 
 Already Madame La ^Nlotte has become jealous of 
 Adeline, especially as her husband is oddly melancholy, 
 
 I
 
 I30 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 and apt to withdraw into a glade, where he mysteriously 
 disappears into the recesses of a genuine Gothic 
 sepulchre. This, to the watchful eyes of a wife, is 
 proof of faithlessness on the part of a husband. As 
 the son, Louis, really falls in love with Adeline, 
 Madame La Motte becomes doubly unkind to her, and 
 Adeline now composes quantities of poems to Night, 
 to Sunset, to the Nocturnal Gale, and so on. 
 
 In this uncomfortable situation, two strangers arrive 
 in a terrific thunderstorm. One is young, the other is 
 a Marquis. On seeing this nobleman, " La Motte's 
 limbs trembled, and a ghastly paleness overspread his 
 countenance. The Marquis was little less agitated," and 
 was, at first, decidedly hostile. La Motte implored 
 forgiveness — for what ? — and the Marquis (who, in fact, 
 owned the Abbey, and had a shooting lodge not far off) 
 was mollified. They all became rather friendly, and 
 Adeline asked La Motte about the stories of hauntings, 
 and a murder said to have been, at some time, com- 
 mitted in the Abbey. La Motte said that the Marquis 
 could have no connection with such fables ; still, there 
 was the skeleton. 
 
 Meanwhile, Adeline had conceived a flame for 
 Theodore, the young officer who accompanied his 
 colonel, the Marquis, on their first visit to the family. 
 Theodore, who returned her passion, had vaguely 
 warned her of an impending danger, and then had 
 failed to keep tryst with her, one evening, and had 
 mysteriously disappeared. Then unhappy Adeline 
 dreamed about a prisoner, a dying man, a coffin, a 
 voice from the coffin, and the appearance within it
 
 MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS 131 
 
 of the dying man, amidst torrents of blood. The 
 chamber in which she saw these visions was most 
 vividly represented. Next day the Marquis came to 
 dinner, and, though rehictantly, consented to pass the 
 night : Adeline, therefore, was put in a new bedroom- 
 Disturbed by the wind shaking the mouldering tapestry, 
 she found a concealed door behind the arras and a suite 
 of rooms, one of which was the chamber of her drea/n ! 
 On the floor lay a rusty dagger ! The bedstead, being 
 touched, crumbled, and disclosed a small roll of manu- 
 scripts. They were not washing bills, like those dis- 
 covered by Catherine Morland in "Northanger Abbey." 
 Returning to her own chamber, Adeline heard the 
 Marquis professing to La Motte a passion for herself. 
 Conceive her horror ! Silence then reigned, till all was 
 sudden noise and confusion ; the Marquis flying in 
 terror from his room, and insisting on instant departure. 
 His emotion was powerfully displayed. 
 
 What had occurred? Mrs. Radcliffe does not say, 
 but horror, whether caused by a conscience ill at ease, 
 or by events of a terrific and supernatural kind, is 
 plainly indicated. In daylight, the Marquis audaciously 
 pressed his unholy suit, and even offered marriage, a 
 hollow mockery, for he was well known to be already 
 a married man. The scenes of Adeline's flight, capture, 
 retention in an elegant villa of the licentious noble, 
 renewed flight, rescue by Theodore, with Theodore's 
 arrest, and wounding of the tyrannical Marquis, are all 
 of breathless interest. Mrs. Radcliffe excels in narra- 
 tives of romantic escapes, a topic always thrilling when 
 well handled. Adeline herself is carried back to the
 
 132 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Abbey, but La Motte, who had rather not be a villain 
 if he could avoid it, enables her again to secure her 
 freedom. He is clearly in the power of the Marquis, 
 and his life has been unscrupulous, but he retains traces 
 of better things. Adeline is now secretly conveyed to a 
 peaceful valley in Savoy, the home of the honest Peter 
 (the coachman), who accompanies her. Here she learns 
 to know and value the family of La Luc, the kindred of 
 her Theodore (by a romantic coincidence), and, in the 
 adorable scenery of Savoy, she throws many a ballad to 
 the Moon. 
 
 La Motte, on the discovery of Adeline's flight, was 
 cast into prison by the revengeful Marquis, for, in fact, 
 soon after settling in the Abbey, it had occurred to 
 La Motte to commence highwayman. His very first 
 victim had been the Marquis, and, during his mysterious 
 retreats to a tomb in a glade in the forest, he had, in 
 short, been contemplating his booty, jewels which he 
 could not convert into ready money. Consequently, 
 when the Marquis first entered the Abbey, La Motte 
 had every reason for alarm, and only pacified the vin- 
 dictive aristocrat by yielding to his cruel schemes against 
 the virtue of Adeline. 
 
 Happily for La Motte, a witness appeared at his trial, 
 who cast a lurid light on the character of the Marquis. 
 That villain, to be plain, had murdered his elder brother 
 (the skeleton of the Abbey), and had been anxious to 
 murder, it was added, his own natural daughter — that is, 
 Adeline ! His hired felons, however, placed her in a 
 convent, and, later (rather than kill her, on which the 
 Marquis insisted), simply thrust her into the hands of
 
 MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS 133 
 
 La Motte, who happened to pass by that way, as we saw 
 in the opening of this romance. Thus, in making love 
 to Adeline, his daughter, the Marquis was, uncon- 
 sciously, in an awkward position. On further examina- 
 tion of evidence, however, things proved otherwise. 
 Adeline was tiot the natural daughter of the Marquis, 
 but his niece, the legitimate daughter and heiress of 
 his brother (the skeleton of the Abbey). The MS. 
 found by Adeline in the room of the rusty dagger 
 added documentary evidence, for it was a narrative of 
 the sufferings of her father (later the skeleton), written 
 by him in the Abbey where he was imprisoned and 
 stabbed, and where his bones were discovered by La 
 Motte. The hasty nocturnal flight of the Marquis 
 from the Abbey is thus accounted for : he had pro- 
 bably been the victim of a terrific hallucination repre- 
 senting his murdered brother ; whether it was veridical 
 or merely subjective Mrs. Radcliffe does not decide. 
 Rather than face the outraged justice of his country, 
 the Marquis, after these revelations, took poison. La 
 Motte was banished ; and Adeline, now mistress of the 
 Abbey, removed the paternal skeleton to " the vault 
 of his ancestors." Theodore and Adeline were united, 
 and virtuously resided in a villa on the beautiful banks 
 of the Lake of Geneva. 
 
 Such is the " Romance of the Forest," a fiction in 
 which character is subordinate to plot and incident. 
 There is an attempt at character drawing in La Motte, 
 and in his wife ; the hero and heroine are not dis- 
 tinguishable from Julia and Hippolytus. But Mrs. 
 Radcliffe does not aim at psychological niceties, and
 
 134 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 we must not blame her for withholding what it was no 
 part of her purpose to give. "The Romance of the 
 Forest " was, so far, infinitely the most thrilling of 
 modern English works of fiction. "Every reader felt 
 the force," says Scott, " from the sage in his study, to 
 the family group in middle life," and nobody felt it more 
 than Scott himself, then a young gentleman of nineteen, 
 who, when asked how his time was employed, answered, 
 " I read no Civil Law." He did read Mrs. Radcliffe, 
 and, in " The Betrothed," followed her example in the 
 story of the haunted chamber where the heroine faces 
 the spectre attached to her ancient family. 
 
 "The Mysteries of Udolpho," Mrs. Radcliffe's next 
 and most celebrated work, is not (in the judgment of 
 this reader, at least) her masterpiece. The booksellers 
 paid her what Scott, erroneously, calls "the unprece- 
 dented sum of ;^5oo" for the romance, and they must 
 have made a profitable bargain. " The public," says 
 Scott, " rushed upon it with all the eagerness of curiosity, 
 and rose from it with unsated appetite." I arise with 
 a thoroughly sated appetite from the " Mysteries of 
 Udolpho." The book, as Sir Walter saw, is "The 
 Romance of the Forest " raised to a higher power. We 
 have a similar and similarly situated heroine, cruelly 
 detached from her young man, and immured in a howl- 
 ing wilderness of a brigand castle in the Apennines. In 
 place of the Marquis is a miscreant on a larger and more 
 ferocious scale. The usual mysteries of voices, lights, 
 secret passages, and innumerable doors are provided 
 regardless of economy. The great question, which I 
 shall not answer, is, what did the Black Veil conceal 1
 
 MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS 135 
 
 iV<?/"the bones of Laurentina," as Catherine Morland 
 supposed. 
 
 Here is Emily's adventure with the veil. "She 
 paused again, and then, with a timid hand, lifted the 
 veil ; but instantly let it fall — perceiving that what it 
 had concealed was no picture, and before she could 
 leave the chamber she dropped senseless on the floor. 
 When she recovered her recollection, . . . horror occu- 
 pied her mind." Countless mysteries coagulate around 
 this veil, and the reader is apt to be disappointed when 
 the awful curtain is withdrawn. But he has enjoyed, 
 for several hundred pages, the pleasures of anticipation. 
 A pedantic censor may remark that, while the date of 
 the story is 1580, all the virtuous people live in an 
 idyllic fashion, like creatures of Rousseau, existing solely 
 for landscape and the affections, writing poetry on 
 Nature, animate and inanimate, including the common 
 Bat, and drawing in water colours. In those elegant 
 avocations began, and in these, after an interval of 
 adventures "amazing horrid," concluded the career of 
 Emily. 
 
 Mrs. Radclifife keeps the many entangled threads of 
 her complex web well in hand, and incidents which 
 puzzle you at the beginning fall naturally into place 
 before the end. The character of the heroine's silly, 
 vain, unkind, and unreasonable aunt is vividly designed 
 (that Emily should mistake the corse of a moustached 
 bandit for that of her aunt is an incident hard to defend)- 
 Valancourt is not an ordinary spotless hero, but sows 
 his wild oats, and reaps the usual harvest ; and Annette 
 is a good sample of the usual soubrette. When one has
 
 136 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 said that the landscapes and bandits of this romance are 
 worthy of Poussin and Salvator Rosa, from whom they 
 were probably translated into words, not much remains 
 to be added. Sir Walter, after repeated perusals, con- 
 sidered " Udolpho " " a step beyond Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 former work, high as that had justly advanced her." 
 But he admits that "persons of no mean judgment" 
 preferred " The Romance of the Forest." With these 
 amateurs I would be ranked. The ingenuity and origin- 
 ality of the " Romance " are greater : our friend the 
 skeleton is better than that Thing which was behind 
 the Black Veil, the escapes of Adeline are more thrilling 
 than the escape of Emily, and the " Romance " is not 
 nearly so long, not nearly so prolix as " Udolpho." 
 
 The roof and crown of Mrs. Radcliffe's work is " The 
 Italian" (1797), for which she received ^800.^ The 
 scene is Naples, the date about 1764; the topic is the 
 thwarted loves of Vivaldi and Ellena ; the villain is the 
 admirable Schedoni, the prototype of Byron's lurid 
 characters. 
 
 "The Italian" is an excellent novel. The Prelude, 
 " the dark and vaulted gateway," is not unworthy of 
 Hawthorne, who, I suspect, had studied Mrs. Radcliffe. 
 The theme is more like a theme of this world than 
 usual. The parents of a young noble might well try 
 to prevent him from marrying an unknown and penniless 
 girl. The Marchese Vivaldi only adopts the ordinary 
 paternal measures ; the Marchesa, and her confessor, 
 the dark-souled Schedoni, go farther — as far as assassina- 
 
 1 I like to know what the author got.
 
 MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS 137 
 
 tion. The casuistry by which Schedoni brings the lady 
 to this pass, while representing her as the originator of 
 the scheme, is really subtle, and the scenes between the 
 pair show an extraordinary advance on Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 earlier art. The mysterious Monk who counteracts 
 Schedoni remains an unsolved mystery to me, but of 
 that I do not complain. He is as good as the Dweller 
 in the Catacombs who haunts Miriam in Hawthorne's 
 " Marble Faun." The Inquisition, its cells, and its 
 tribunals are coloured 
 
 "As when some great painter dips 
 His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse." 
 
 The comic valet, Paulo, who insists on being locked up 
 in the dungeons of the Inquisition merely because his 
 master is there, reminds one of Samuel Weller, he is a 
 Neapolitan Samivel. The escapes are Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 most exciting escapes, and to say that is to say a good 
 deal. Poetry is not written, or not often, by the heroine. 
 The scene in which Schedoni has his dagger raised to 
 murder EUena, when he discovers that she is his 
 daughter, " is of a new, grand, and powerful character " 
 (Scott), while it is even more satisfactory to learn later 
 that EUena was not Schedoni's daughter after all. 
 
 Why Mrs. Radclifife, having reached such a pitch of 
 success, never again published a novel, remains more 
 mysterious than any of her Mysteries. Scott justly 
 remarks that her censors attacked her " by showing that 
 she does not possess the excellences proper to a style 
 of composition totally different from that which she has 
 attempted." This is the usual way of reviewers. Tales
 
 138 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 that fascinated Scott, Fox, and Sheridan, " which possess 
 charms for the learned and unlearned, the grave and 
 gay, the gentleman and clown," do not deserve to be 
 dismissed with a sneer by people who have never read 
 them. Following Horace Walpole in some degree, Mrs. 
 Radcliffe paved the way for Scott, Byron, Maturin, 
 Lewis, and Charlotte Bronte, just as Miss Burney filled 
 the gap between Smollett and Miss Austen. Mrs. 
 Radcliffe, in short, kept the Lamp of Romance burning 
 much more steadily than the lamps which, in her novels, 
 are always blown out, in the moment of excited appre- 
 hension, by the night wind walking in the dank corridors 
 of haunted abbeys. But mark the cruelty of an in- 
 tellectual parent ! Horace Walpole was Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 father in the spirit. Yet, on September 4, 1794, he 
 wrote to Lady Ossory : " I have read some of the de- 
 scriptive verbose tales, of which your Ladyship says I 
 was the patriarch by several mothers" (Miss Reeve and 
 Mrs. Radcliffe?). "All I can say for myself is that I 
 do not think my concubines have produced issue more 
 natural for excluding the aid of anything marvellous."
 
 A SCOTTISH ROMANTICIST 
 OF 1830
 
 A SCOTTISH ROMANTICIST OF 1830 
 
 The finding of a rare book that you have wanted long 
 is one of the happier moments in life. Whatever we 
 may think of life when we contemplate it as a whole, it 
 is a delight to discover what one has sought for years, 
 especially if the book be a book which you really want 
 to read, and not a thing whose value is given by the 
 fashion of collecting. Perhaps nobody ever collected 
 before 
 
 THE 
 
 DEATH-WAKE, OR LUNACY 
 
 A NECROMAUNT 
 
 In Three Chimeras 
 By Thomas T. Stoddart. 
 
 " Is't like that lead contains her ?— 
 It were too gross 
 To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave."— 
 
 Sliakespeare. 
 
 Edinburgh : 
 
 Printed for Henry Constable, Edinburgh, 
 
 And Hurst, Chance, & Co., London. 
 
 MDCCCXXXI. 
 141
 
 142 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 This is my rare book, and it is rare for an excellent 
 good reason, as will be shown. But first of the author. 
 Mr. Thomas Tod Stoddart was born in 1810. He died 
 in 1880. Through all his pilgrimage of three-score years 
 and ten, his "rod and staff did comfort him," as the 
 Scottish version of the Psalms has it ; nay, his staff was 
 his rod. He "was an angler," as he remarked when 
 a friend asked : " Well, Tom, what are you doing now." 
 He was the patriarch, the Father Izaak, of Scottish 
 fishers, and he sleeps, according to his desire, like 
 Scott, within hearing of the Tweed. His memoir, pub- 
 lished, by his daughter, in "Stoddart's AngUng Songs" 
 (Blackwood), is an admirable biography, quo fit ut omiiis 
 Votiva pateat vclutt descripta tabella Vita senis. 
 
 But it is with the "young Tom Stoddart," the poet 
 of twenty, not with the old angling sage, that we have 
 to do. Miss Stoddart has discreetly republished only 
 the Angling Songs of her father, the pick of them being 
 classical in their way. Now, as Mr. Arnold writes : — 
 
 • ' Two desires toss about 
 
 The poet's feverish blood, 
 One drives him to the world without. 
 And one to solitude." 
 
 The young Stoddart's two desires were poetry and fish- 
 ing. He began with poetry. " At the age of ten his 
 whole desire was to produce an immortal tragedy. . . . 
 Blood and battle were the powers with which he worked, 
 and with no meaner tool. Every other dramatic form 
 he despised." It is curious to think of the schoolboy, 
 the born Romanticist, labouring at these things, while
 
 A SCOTTISH ROMANTICIST 143 
 
 Gerard de Nerval, and Victor Hugo, and Theophile 
 Gautier, and Petrus Borel were boys also — boys of 
 the same ambitions, and with much the same romantic 
 tastes. Stoddart had, luckily, another love besides the 
 Muse: "With the spring and the May fly, the dagger 
 dipped in gore paled before the supple rod, and the 
 dainty midge." Finally, the rod and midge prevailed. 
 
 " Wee dour-looking hooks are the thing, 
 Mouse body and laverock wing." 
 
 But before he quite abandoned all poetry save fishing 
 ditties, he wrote and published the volume whose title- 
 page we have printed, " The Death Wake." The lad 
 who drove home from an angling expedition in a hearse 
 had an odd way of combining his amusements. He 
 lived among poets and critics who were anglers — Hogg, 
 the Ettrick Shepherd (who cast but a heavy line, they 
 say, in Yarrow), Aytoun, Christopher North, De 
 Quincey — 
 
 " No fisher 
 But a well-wisher 
 To the game," 
 
 as Scott has it — these were his companions, older or 
 younger. None of these, certainly not Wilson, nor 
 Hogg, nor Aytoun, were friends of the Romantic school, 
 as illustrated by Keats and Shelley. None of them 
 probably knew much of Gautier, De Nerval, Borel, le 
 lycanthrope, and the other boys in that boyish move- 
 ment of 1830. It was only Stoddart, unconsciously 
 in sympathy with Paris, and censured by his literary 
 friends, who produced the one British Romantic work
 
 144 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 of 1830. The title itself shows that he was partly 
 laughing at his own performance ; he has the mockery 
 of Les Jeunes France in him, as well as the wormy and 
 obituary joys of La Comedie de la Mort. The little 
 book came out, inspired by " all the poetasters." 
 Christopher North wrote, four years later, in Black- 
 wood's Magazine, a tardy review. He styled it " an 
 ingeniously absurd poem, with an ingeniously absurd 
 title, written in a strange, namby-pamby sort of style, 
 between the weakest of Shelley and the strongest of 
 Barry Cornwall." The book " fell dead from the Press," 
 far more dead than " Omar Khayyam." Nay, misfor- 
 tune pursued it, Miss Stoddart kindly informs me, and 
 it was doomed to the flames. The "remainder," the 
 bulk of the edition, was returned to the poet in sheets, 
 and by him was deposited in a garret. The family had 
 a cook, one Betty, a descendant, perhaps, of " that 
 unhappy Betty or Elizabeth Barnes, cook of Mr. War- 
 burton, Somerset Herald," who burned, among other 
 quartos, Shakespeare's " Henry I.," " Henry H.," and 
 " King Stephen." True to her inherited instincts, Mr. 
 Stoddart's Betty, slowly, relentlessly, through forty years, 
 used " The Death Wake " for the needs and processes 
 of her art. The whole of the edition, except probably 
 a few "presentation copies," perished in the kitchen. 
 As for that fell cook, let us hope that 
 
 " The Biblioclastic Dead 
 
 Have diverse pains to brook, 
 They break Affliction's bread 
 With Betty Barnes, the Cook," 
 
 as the author of " The Bird Bride " sings.
 
 A SCOTTISH ROMANTICIST 145 
 
 Miss Stoddart had just informed me of this disaster, 
 which left one almost hopeless of ever owning a copy of 
 "The Death Wake," when I found a brown paper parcel 
 among many that contained to-day's minor poetry " with 
 the author's compliments," and lo, in this unpromising 
 parcel was the long-sought volume ! Ever since 
 one was a small boy, reading Stoddart's " Scottish 
 Angler," and old Blackwood' s^ one had pined for a 
 sight of " The Necromaunt," and here, clean in its 
 " pure purple mantle " of smooth cloth, lay the desired 
 one ! 
 
 "Like Diaii's kiss, unasked, unsought, 
 It gave itself, and was not bought," 
 
 being, indeed, the discovery and gift of a friend who 
 fishes and studies the Lacustrine Muses. 
 
 The copy has a peculiar interest ; it once belonged to 
 Aytoun, the writer of " The Scottish Cavaliers," of " The 
 Bon Gaultier Ballads," and of "Firmilian," the scourge 
 of the Spasmodic School. Mr. Aytoun has adorned the 
 margins with notes and with caricatures of skulls and 
 cross-bones, while the fly-leaves bear a sonnet to the 
 author, and a lyric in doggerel. Surely this is, indeed, 
 a literary curiosity. The sonnet runs thus : — 
 
 " O wormy Thomas Stoddart, who inheritesl 
 
 Rich thoughts and loathsome, nauseous words and rare, 
 Tell me, my friend, why is it that thou ferretest 
 
 And gropest in each death-corrupted lair? 
 Seek'st thou for maggots such as have affinity 
 
 With those in thine own brain, or dost thou think 
 That all is sweet which hath a horrid stink ? 
 Why dost thou make Haut-gout thy sole divinity ? 
 
 K
 
 146 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Here is enough of genius to convert 
 
 Vile dung to precious diamonds and to spare, 
 
 Then why transform the diamond into dirt, 
 
 And change thy mind, which should be rich and fair, 
 
 Into a medley of creations foul. 
 
 As if a Seraph would become a Ghoul ? " 
 
 No doubt Mr. Stoddart's other passion for angling, 
 in which he used a Scottish latitude concerning bait,^ 
 impelled him to search for " worms and maggots " : — 
 
 " Fire and faggots, 
 Worms and maggots," 
 
 as Aytoun writes on the other fly-leaf, are indeed the 
 matter of " The Death Wake." 
 
 Then, why, some one may ask, write about " The 
 Death Wake " at all ? Why rouse again the nightmare 
 of a boy of twenty ? Certainly I am not to say that 
 " The Death Wake " is a pearl of great price, but it does 
 contain passages of poetry — of poetry very curious 
 because it is full of the new note, the new melody which 
 young Mr. Tennyson was beginning to waken. It 
 anticipates Beddoes, it coincides with Gautier and Les 
 Chwieres of Gerard, it answers the accents, then 
 unheard in England, of Poe. Some American who 
 read out of the way things, and was not too scrupu- 
 lous, recognised, and robbed, a brother in Tom Stoddart. 
 Eleven years after " The Death Wake " appeared in 
 England, it was published in Graham's Magazine, as 
 " Agatha, a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras,'' by 
 Louis Fitzgerald Tasistro." Now Poe was closely con- 
 nected with Graham's Magazine, and after " Arthur 
 
 1 Salmon roe, I am sorry to say.
 
 A SCOTTISH ROMANTICIST 147 
 
 Gordon Pym," " Louis Fitzgerald Tasistro " does suggest 
 Edgar Allen Poe. But Poe was not Tasistro. 
 
 So much for the literary history of the Lunacy. 
 
 The poem begins — Chimera I. begins : — 
 
 "An anthem of a sister choristry ! 
 And, like a windward murmur of the sea, 
 O'er silver shells, so solemnly it falls ! " 
 
 The anthem accompanies a procession of holy fathers 
 towards a bier ; 
 
 "Agathe 
 Was on the lid — a name. And who ? No more ! 
 'Twas only Agathe." 
 
 A solitary monk is prowling around in the moonlit 
 cathedral; he has a brow of stony marble, he has 
 raven hair, and he falters out the name of Agathe. He 
 has said adieu to that fair one, and to her sister Peace, 
 that lieth in her grave. He has loved, and loves, the 
 silent Agathe. He was the son of a Crusader, 
 
 ' ' And Julio had fain 
 Have been a warrior, but his very brain 
 Grew fevered at the sickly thought of death. 
 And to be stricken with a want of breath." 
 
 On the whole he did well not to enter the service. 
 Mr. Aytoun has here written — "A rum Cove for a 
 hussar." 
 
 " And he would say 
 A curse be on their laurels. 
 
 And anon 
 Was Julio forgotten and his line — 
 No wonder for this frenzied tale of mine."
 
 148 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 How ? asks Aytoun, nor has the grammatical enigma 
 yet been unriddled. 
 
 " Oh ! he was wearied of this passing scene ! 
 But loved not Death ; his purpose was between 
 Life and the grave ; and it would vibrate there 
 Like a wild bird that floated far and fair 
 Betwixt the sun and sea ! " 
 
 So " he became monk," and was sorry he had done so, 
 especially when he met a pretty maid, 
 
 " And this was Agathe, young Agathe, 
 A motherless fair girl," 
 
 whose father was a kind of Dombey, for 
 
 " When she smiled 
 He bade no father's welcome to the child, 
 But even told his wish, and will'd it done. 
 For her to be sad-hearted, and a nun ! " 
 
 So she " took the dreary veil." 
 
 They met like a blighted Isabella and Lorenzo : 
 
 " They met many a time 
 In the lone chapels after vesper chime, 
 They met in love and fear." 
 
 Then, one day, 
 
 " He heard it said : 
 Poor Julio, thy Agathe is dead." 
 
 She died 
 
 " Like to a star within the twilight hours 
 Of morning, and she was not ! Some have thought 
 The Lady Abbess gave her a mad draught."
 
 A SCOTTISH ROMANTICIST 149 
 
 Here Mr. Aytoun, with sympathy, writes " Damn her ! " 
 (the Ladyi Abbess, that is) and suggests that thought 
 must be read "thaft." 
 
 Through " the arras of the gloom " (arras is good), 
 the pale breezes are moaning, and Julio is wan as stars 
 unseen for paleness. However, he lifts the tombstone 
 "as it were lightsome as a summer gladness." "A 
 summer gladness," remarks Mr. Aytoun, "may possibly 
 weigh about half-an-ounce." Julio came on a skull, a 
 haggard one, in the grave, and Mr. Aytoun kindly 
 designs a skeleton, ringing a bell, and crying " Dust ho !" 
 
 Now go, and give your poems to your friends ! 
 
 Finally Julio unburies Agathe : — 
 
 " Thou must go, 
 My sweet betrothed, with me, but not below, 
 Where there is darkness, dream, and solitude, 
 But where is light, and life, and one to brood 
 Above thee, till thou wakest. Ha, I fear 
 Thou wilt not wake for ever, sleeping here, 
 Where there are none but the winds to visit thee. 
 And Convent fathers, and a choristry 
 Of sisters saying Hush ! But I will sing 
 Rare songs to thy pure spirit, wandering 
 Down on the dews to hear me ; I will tune 
 The instrument of the ethereal moon. 
 And all the choir of stars, to rise and fall 
 In harmony and beauty musical." 
 
 Is this not melodious madness, and is this picture 
 of the distraught priest, setting forth to sail the seas 
 with his dead lady, not an invention that Nanteuil 
 might have illustrated, and the clan of Bousingots 
 approved ?
 
 I50 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 The Second Chimera opens nobly : — 
 
 " A curse ! a curse ! ^ the beautiful pale wing 
 Of a sea-bird was worn with wandering, 
 And, on a sunny rock beside the shore, 
 It stood, the golden waters gazing o'er ; 
 And they were nearing a brown amber flow 
 Of weeds, that glittered gloriously below ! " 
 
 JuHo appears with Agathe in his arms, and what 
 ensues is excellent of its kind : — 
 
 " He dropt upon a rock, and by him placed, 
 Over a bed of sea-pinks growing waste. 
 The silent ladye, and he mutter'd wild, 
 Strange words about a mother and no child. 
 "And I shall wed thee, Agathe! although 
 Ours be no God-blest bridal — even so I " 
 And from the sand he took a silver shell, 
 That had been wasted by the fall and swell 
 Of many a moon-borne tide into a ring — 
 A rude, rude ring ; it was a snow-white thing. 
 Where a lone hermit limpet slept and died 
 In ages far away. ' Thou art a bride, 
 Sweet Agathe ! Wake up ; we must not linger 1 ' 
 He press'd the ring upon her chilly finger, 
 And to the sea-bird on its sunny stone 
 Shouted, ' Pale priest that liest all alone 
 Upon thy ocean altar, rise, away 
 To our glad bridal ! ' and its wings of gray 
 All lazily it spread, and hover'd by 
 With a wild shriek — a melancholy cry ! 
 Then, swooping slowly o'er the heaving breast 
 Of the blue ocean, vanished in the west." 
 
 1 "Why and Wherefore," Aytoun.
 
 A SCOTTISH ROMANTICIST 151 
 
 Julio sang a mad song of a mad priest to a dead 
 maid : — 
 
 " A rosary of stars, love ! a prayer as we glide, 
 And a whisper on the wind, and a murmur on the tide, 
 And we'll say a fair adieu to the flowers that are seen, 
 With shells of silver sown in radiancy between. 
 
 * ' A rosary of stars, love ! the purest they shall be, 
 Like spirits of pale pearls in the bosom of the sea ; 
 Now help thee,^ Virgin Mother, with a blessing as we go, 
 Upon the laughing waters that are wandering below." 
 
 One can readily believe that Poe admired this musical 
 sad song, if, indeed, he ever saw the poem. 
 
 One may give too many extracts, and there is scant 
 
 room for the extraordinary witchery of the midnight 
 
 sea and sky, where the dead and the distraught drift 
 
 wandering, 
 
 " And the great ocean, like the holy hall, 
 Where slept a Seraph host maritimal, 
 Was gorgeous with wings of diamond " — 
 
 it was a sea 
 
 " Of radiant and moon-breasted emerald." 
 
 There follows another song — 
 
 " 'Tis light to love thee living, girl, when hope is full and fair, 
 In the springtide of thy beauty, when there is no sorrow there ; 
 No sorrow on thy brow, and no shadow on thy heart, 
 When, like a floating sea-bird, bright and beautiful thou art. 
 
 " But when the brow is blighted, like a star at morning tide, 
 And faded is the crimson blush upon the cheek beside. 
 It is to love as seldom love the brightest and the best, 
 When our love lies like a dew upon the one that is at rest." 
 
 1 Forsitan legendiim, " Help Thou."
 
 152 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 We ought to distrust our own admiration of what is 
 rare, odd, novel to us, found by us in a sense, and 
 especially one must distrust one's liking for the verses 
 of a Tweedside angler, of a poet whose forebears lie 
 in the green kirkyard of Yarrow. But, allowing for 
 all this, I cannot but think these very musical, accom- 
 plished, and, in their place, appropriate verses, to have 
 been written by a boy of twenty. Nor is it a common 
 imagination, though busy in this vulgar field of horrors, 
 that lifts the pallid bride to look upon the mirror of the 
 
 sea — 
 
 " And bids her gaze into the startled sea, 
 And says, ' Thine image, from eternity, 
 Hath come to meet thee, ladye ! ' and anon 
 He bade the cold corse kiss the shadowy one 
 That shook amid the waters." 
 
 The picture of the madness of thirst, allied to the 
 disease of the brain, is extremely powerful, the delirious 
 monk tells the salt sea waves 
 
 " That ye have power, and passion, and a sound 
 As of the flying of an angel round 
 The mighty world ; that ye are one with time ! " 
 
 Here, I can't but think, is imagination. 
 
 Mr. Aytoun, however, noted none of those passages, 
 nor that where, in tempest and thunder, a shipwrecked 
 sailor swims to the strange boat, sees the Living Love 
 and the Dead, and falls back into the trough of the 
 wave. But even the friendly pencil of Bon Gaultier 
 approves the passage where an isle rises above the sea, 
 and the boat is lightly stranded on the shore of pure 
 and silver shells. The horrors of corruption, in the
 
 A SCOTTISH ROMANTICIST 153 
 
 Third Chimera, may be left unquoted. x^ytoun 
 parodies — 
 
 '• The chalk, the chalk, the cheese, the cheese, the cheeses, 
 And straightway dropped he down upon his kneeses." 
 
 Julio comes back to reason, hates the dreadful bride, 
 and feeds on limpets, " by the mass, he feasteth well ! " 
 There was a holy hermit on the isle, 
 
 " I ween like other hermits, so was he." 
 
 He is Agathe's father, and he has retired to an eligible 
 island where he may repent his cruelty to his daughter. 
 Julio tells his tale, and goes mad again. The apostrophe 
 to Lunacy which follows is marked "Beautiful" by 
 Aytoun, and is in the spirit of Charles Lamb's remark 
 that madness has pleasures unknown to the sane. 
 
 " Thou art, thou art alone, 
 A pure, pure being, but the God on high 
 Is with thee ever as thou goest by." 
 
 Julio watches again beside the Dead, till morning comes, 
 bringing 
 
 " A murmur far and far, of those that stirred 
 Within the great encampment of the sea." 
 
 The tide sweeps the mad and the dead down the shores. 
 " He perished in a dream." As for the Hermit, he 
 buried them, not knowing who they were, but on a 
 later day found and recognised the golden cross of 
 Agathe, 
 
 " For long ago he gave that blessed cross 
 To his fair girl, and knew the relic still."
 
 154 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 So the Hermit died of remorse, and one cannot say, 
 with Walton, "and I hope the reader is sorry." 
 
 The " other poems " are vague memories of Shelley, 
 or anticipations of Poe. One of them is curiously styled 
 " Her, a Statue," and contains a passage that reminds us 
 of a rubaiyat of Omar's, 
 
 " She might see 
 A love-wing'd Seraph glide in glory by, 
 Striking the tent of its mortality. 
 
 " But that is but a tent wherein may rest 
 A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest ; 
 The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash 
 Strikes, and prepares it for another guest." 
 
 Most akin to Poe is the " Hymn to Orion," 
 
 " Dost thou, in thy vigil, hail 
 Arcturus on his chariot pale, 
 Leading him with a fiery flight — 
 Over the hollow hill of night ? " 
 
 This, then, is a hasty sketch, and incomplete, of a 
 book which, perhaps, is only a curiosity, but which, 
 I venture to think, gave promise of a poet. Where is 
 the lad of twenty who has written as well to-day — nay, 
 where is the mature person of forty ? There was a wind 
 of poetry abroad in 1830, blowing over the barricades of 
 Paris, breathing by the sedges of Cam, stirring the 
 heather on the hills of Yarrow. Hugo, Mr. Browning, 
 Lord Tennyson, caught the breeze in their sails, and 
 were borne adown the Tigris of romance. But the 
 breath that stirred the loch where Tom Stoddart lay and 
 mused in his boat, soon became to him merely the curl
 
 A SCOTTISH ROMANTICIST 155 
 
 on the waters of lone St. Mary's or Loch Skene, and he 
 began casting over the great uneducated trout of a 
 happier time, forgetful of the Muse. He wrote another 
 piece, with a sonorous and delightful title, "Ajalon of 
 the Winds." Where is "Ajalon of the Winds"? Miss 
 Stoddart knows nothing of it, but I fancy that the thrice- 
 loathed Betty could have told a tale. 
 
 MALIM CONVIVIS QVAM PLACVISSE COQVIS. 
 
 We need not, perhaps, regret that Mr. Stoddart with- 
 drew from the struggles and competitions of poetic 
 literature. No very high place, no very glorious crown, 
 one fancies, would have been his. His would have 
 been anxiety, doubt of self, disappointment, or, if he 
 succeeded, the hatred, and envyings, and lies which even 
 then dogged the steps of the victor. It was better to be 
 quiet and go a-fishing. 
 
 " Sorrow, sorrow speed away 
 
 To our angler's quiet mound, 
 With the old pilgrim, twilight gray, 
 
 Enter through the holy ground ; 
 There he sleeps whose heart is twined 
 
 With wild stream and wandering burn, 
 Wooer of the western wind 
 
 Watcher of the April morn ! "
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT 
 AUGUSTINE
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT 
 AUGUSTINE 
 
 My copy of the Confessions is a dark little book, "a 
 size uncumbersome to the nicest hand," in the format of 
 an Elzevir, bound in black morocco, and adorned with 
 " blind-tooled," that is ungilt, skulls and crossbones. It 
 has lost the title-page with the date, but retains the 
 frontispiece, engraved by Huret. Saint Augustine, in 
 his mitre and other episcopal array, with a quill in his 
 hand, sits under a flood of inspiring sunshine. The 
 dumpy book has been much read, was at some time 
 the property of Mr. John Philips, and bears one touch- 
 ing manuscript note, of which more hereafter. It is, I 
 presume, a copy of the translation by Sir Toby Matthew. 
 The author of the Preface declares, with truth, that the 
 translator " hath consulted so closely and earnestly with 
 the saint that he seemeth to have lighted his torch att 
 his fire, and to speak in the best and most significant 
 English, what and how he would have done had he 
 understood our language." 
 
 There can be no better English version of this famous 
 book, in which Saint Augustine tells the story of his 
 eager and passionate youth — a youth tossed about by 
 
 the contending tides of Love, human and divine. Read- 
 
 159
 
 i6o ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 ing it to-day, with a mundane curiosity, we may half 
 regret the space which he gives to theological meta- 
 physics, and his brief tantalising glimpses of what most 
 interests us now — the common life of men when the 
 Church was becoming mistress of the world, when the 
 old Religions were dying of allegory and moral inter- 
 pretations and occult dreams. But, even so. Saint 
 Augustine's interest in himself, in the very obscure 
 origins of each human existence, in the psychology of 
 infancy and youth, in school disputes, and magical pre- 
 tensions ; his ardent affections, his exultations, and his 
 faults, make his memoirs immortal among the unveilings 
 of the spirit. He has studied babies, that he may know 
 his dark beginnings, and the seeds of grace and of evil. 
 " Then, by degrees, I began to find where I was ; and I 
 had certain desires to declare my will to those by whom 
 it might be executed. But I could not do it, . . . 
 therefore would I be tossing my arms, and sending out 
 certain cryes, . . . and when they obeyed me not . . . 
 I would fall into a rage, and that not against such as 
 were my subjects or servants, but against my Elders and 
 my betters, and I would revenge myself upon them by 
 crying." He has observed that infants " begin to laugh, 
 first sleeping, and then shortly waking ; " a curious note, 
 but he does not ask wherefore the sense of humour, or 
 the expression of it, comes to children first in their 
 slumber. Of what do babies dream? And what do 
 the nested swallows chirrup to each other in their sleep? 
 "Such have I understood that such infants are as I could 
 know, and such have I been told that I was by them who 
 brought me up, though even they may rather be accounted
 
 CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE i6i 
 
 not to know, than to know these things." One thing he 
 knows, "that even infancy is subject to sin." From the 
 womb we are touched with evil. "Myselfe have scene 
 and observed some little child, who could not speake ; 
 and yet he was all in an envious kind of wrath, looking 
 pale with a bitter countenance upon his foster-brother." 
 In an envious kind of wrath ! Is it not the motive of 
 half our politics, and too much of our criticism ? Such 
 is man's inborn nature, not to be cured by laws or 
 reforms, not to be washed out of his veins, though 
 "blood be shed like rain, and tears like a mist." For 
 " an infant cannot endure a companion to feed with him 
 in a fountain of milk which is richly abounding and 
 overflowing, although that companion be wholly destitute, 
 and can take no other food but that." This is the 
 Original Sin, inherited, innate, unacquired ; for this are 
 " babes span-long " to suffer, as the famous or infamous 
 preacher declared. " Where, or at what time, was I 
 ever innocent ? " he cries, and hears no answer from 
 "the dark backward and abysm" of the pre-natal life. 
 
 Then the Saint describes a child's learning to speak ; 
 how he amasses verbal tokens of things, "having tamed, 
 and, as it were, broken my mouth to the pronouncing of 
 them." " And so I began to launch out more deeply 
 into the tempestuous traffique and society of mankind." 
 Tempestuous enough he found or made it — this child of 
 a Pagan father and a Christian saint, Monica, the saint 
 of Motherhood. The past generations had " chalked 
 out certain laborious ways of learning," and, perhaps. 
 Saint Augustine never forgave the flogging pedagogue — 
 the plagosus Orbilius of his boyhood. Long before his 
 
 I.
 
 i62 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 day he had found out that the sorrows of children, and 
 their joys, are no less serious than the sorrows of mature 
 age. "Is there, Lord, any man of so great a mind that 
 he can think lightly of those racks, and hooks, and other 
 torments, for the avoiding whereof men pray unto Thee 
 with great fear from one end of the world to the other, 
 as that he can make sport at such as doe most sharply 
 inflict these things upon them, as our parents laughed 
 at the torments which we children susteyned at our 
 master's hands ? " Can we suppose that Monica laughed, 
 or was it only the heathtn father who approved of 
 " roughing it ? " " Being yet a childe, I began to beg 
 Thy ayde and succour ; and I did loosen the knots of 
 my tongue in praying Thee ; and I begged, being yet a 
 little one, with no little devotion, that I might not be 
 beaten at the schoole." One is reminded of Tom 
 TuUiver, who gave up even praying that he might 
 
 learn one part of his work : " Please make Mr. 
 
 say that I am not to do mathematics." 
 
 The Saint admits that he lacked neither memory nor 
 wit, "but he took delight in playing." "The plays and 
 toys of men are called business, yet, when children fall 
 unto them, the same men punish them." Yet the 
 schoolmaster was " more fed upon by rage," if beaten 
 in any little question of learning, than the boy; "if in 
 any match at Ball I had been maistered by one of my 
 playfellows." He "aspired proudly to be victorious in 
 the matches which he made," and I seriously regret to 
 say that he would buy a match, and pay his opponent 
 to lose when he could not win fairly. He liked 
 romances also, " to have myne eares scratched with
 
 CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE i6 
 
 o 
 
 lying fables " — a " lazy, idle boy," like him who dallied 
 with Rebecca and Rowena in the holidays of Charter 
 House. 
 
 Saint Augustine, like Sir Walter Scott at the Uni- 
 versity of Edinburgh, was " The Greek Dunce." Both 
 of these great men, to their sorrow and loss, absolutely 
 and totally declined to learn Greek. "But what the 
 reason was why I hated the Greeke language, while I 
 was taught it, being a child, I do not yet understand." 
 The Saint was far from being alone in that distaste, and 
 he who writes loathed Greek like poison — till he came 
 to Homer. Latin the Saint loved, except *' when read- 
 ing, writing, and casting of accounts was taught in Latin, 
 which I held not for lesse paynefuU or penal than the 
 very Greeke. I wept for Dido's death, who made her- 
 selfe away with the sword," he declares, "and even so, 
 the saying that two and two makes foure was an un- 
 grateful song in mine ears; whereas the wooden horse full 
 of armed men, the burning of Troy, and the very Ghost 
 of Creusa, was a most delightful spectacle of vanity." 
 
 In short, the Saint was a regular Boy — a high-spirited, 
 clever, sportive, and wilful creature. He was as fond as 
 most boys of the mythical tales, "and for that I was 
 accounted to be a towardly boy." Meanwhile he does 
 not record that Monica disliked his learning the foolish 
 dear old heathen fables — " that flood of hell ! " 
 
 Boyhood gave place to youth, and, allowing for the 
 vanity of self-accusation, there can be little doubt that 
 the youth of Saint Augustine was une j'eutiesse orageuse. 
 " And what was that wherein I took delight but to love 
 and to be beloved." There was ever much sentiment
 
 i64 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 and affection in his amours, but his soul "could not 
 distinguish the beauty of chast love from the muddy 
 darkness of lust. Streams of them did confusedly 
 boyl in me" — in his African veins. "With a restless 
 kind of weariness" he pursued that Other Self of the 
 Platonic dream, neglecting the Love of God : 
 
 " Oh, how late art thou come, O my Joy ! " 
 
 The course of his education — for the Bar, as we should 
 say — carried him from home to Carthage, where he 
 rapidly forgot the pure counsels of his mother " as old 
 wife's consailes." " And we delighted in doing ill, not 
 only for the pleasure of the fact, but even for the 
 affection of prayse." Even Monica, it seems, justified 
 the saying : 
 
 " Every woman is at heart a Rake." 
 
 Marriage would have been his making, Saint Augustine 
 says, " but she desired not even that so very much, lest 
 the cloggs of a wife might have hindered her hopes of 
 me. ... In the meantime the reins were loosed to me 
 beyond reason." Yet the sin which he regrets most 
 bitterly was nothing more dreadful than the robbery of 
 an orchard ! Pears he had in plenty, none the less he 
 went, with a band of roisterers, and pillaged another 
 man's pear tree. " I loved the sin, not that which I 
 obtained by the same, but I loved the sin itself." There 
 lay the sting of it ! They were not even unusually 
 excellent pears. "A Peare tree ther was, neere our 
 vineyard, heavy loaden with fruite, which tempted not 
 greatly either the sight or tast. To the shaking and
 
 CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE 165 
 
 robbing thereof, certaine most wicked youthes (whereof 
 I was one) went late at night. We carried away huge 
 burthens of fruit from thence, not for our owne eating, 
 but to be cast before the hoggs." 
 
 Oh, moonHt night of Africa, and orchard by these 
 wild seabanks where once Dido stood ; oh, laughter of 
 boys among the shaken leaves, and sound of falling 
 fruit; how do you live alone out of so many nights 
 that no man remembers? For Carthage is destroyed, 
 indeed, and forsaken of the sea, yet that one hour of 
 summer is to be unforgotten while man has memory of 
 the story of his past. 
 
 Nothing of this, to be sure, is in the mind of the 
 Saint, but a long remorse for this great sin, which he 
 earnestly analyses. Nor is he so penitent but that 
 he is clear-sighted, and finds the spring of his mis-doing 
 in the Sense of Humour ! " It was a delight and laughter 
 which tickled us, even at the very hart, to find that we 
 were upon the point of deceiving them who feared no 
 such thing from us, and who, if they had known it, 
 would earnestly have procured the contrary." 
 
 Saint Augustine admits that he lived with a fast set, 
 as people say now — " the Depravers "or " Destroyers " ; 
 though he loved them little, " whose actions I ever did 
 abhor, that is, their Destruction of others, amongst 
 whom I yet lived with a kind of shameless bashfulness." 
 In short, the " Hell-Fire Club " of that day numbered 
 a reluctant Saint among its members ! It was no 
 Christian gospel, but the Hortensius of Cicero which 
 won him from this perilous society. "It altered my 
 affection, and made me address my prayers to Thee,
 
 i66 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Lord, and gave me other desires and purposes than 
 
 1 had before. All vain hopes did instantly grow base 
 in myne eyes, and I did, with an incredible heat of hart, 
 aspire towards the Immortality of Wisdom." Thus it 
 was really "Saint Tully," and not the mystic call of 
 Tolle ! Lege! that "converted" Augustine, diverting 
 the current of his life into the channel of Righteousness. 
 " How was I kindled then, oh, my God, with a desire 
 to fly from earthly things towards Thee." 
 
 There now remained only the choice of a Road. 
 Saint Augustine dates his own conversion from the 
 day of his turning to the strait Christian orthodoxy. 
 Even the Platonic writings, had he known Greek, 
 would not have satisfied his desire. " For where was 
 that Charity that buildeth upon the foundation of 
 Humility, which is Christ Jesus ? . . . These pages " 
 (of the Platonists) "carried not in them this counte- 
 nance of piety — the tears of confession, and that sacrifice 
 of Thine which is an afflicted spirit, a contrite and 
 humbled heart, the salvation of Thy people, the Spouse, 
 the City, the pledge of Thy Holy Spirit, the Cup of our 
 Redemption. No man doth there thus express himself. 
 Shall not my soul be subject to God, for of Him is my 
 salvation? For He is my God, and my salvation, my 
 protectour ; I shall never be moved. No man doth there 
 once call and say to him : ' Come unto me all you that 
 labour.' " 
 
 The heathen doctors had not the grace which Saint 
 Augustine instinctively knew he lacked — the grace of 
 Humility, nor the Comfort that is not from within but 
 from without. To these he aspired ; let us follow him
 
 CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE 167 
 
 on the path by which he came within their influence ; 
 but let us not forget that the guide on the way to the 
 City was kind, clever, wordy, vain old Marcus Tullius 
 Cicero. It is to the City that all our faces should be 
 set, if we knew what belongs to our peace ; thither we 
 cast fond, hopeless, backward glances, even if we be of 
 those whom Tertullian calls " Saint Satan's Penitents." 
 Here, in Augustine, we meet a man who found the path 
 — one of the few who have found it, of the few who 
 have won that Love which is our only rest. It may be 
 worth while to follow him to the journey's end. 
 
 The treatise of Cicero, then, inflamed Augustine " to 
 the loving and seeking and finding and holding and 
 inseparably embracing of wisdom itself, wheresoever it 
 was." Yet, when he looked for wisdom in the Christian 
 Scriptures, all the literary man, the rhetorician in him, 
 was repelled by the simplicity of the style. Without 
 going further than Mr. Pater's book, " Marius, the 
 Epicurean," and his account of Apuleius, an English 
 reader may learn what kind of style a learned African 
 of that date found not too simple. But Cicero, rather 
 than Apuleius, was Augustine's ideal ; that verbose and 
 sonorous eloquence captivated him, as it did the early 
 scholars when learning revived. Augustine had dallied 
 a little with the sect of the Manichees, which ap- 
 pears to have grieved his mother more than his wild 
 life. 
 
 But she was comforted by a vision, when she found 
 herself in a wood, and met "a glorious young man," who 
 informed her that " where she was there should her son 
 be also." Curious it is to think that this very semblance
 
 i68 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 of a glorious young man haunts the magical dreams of 
 heathen Red Indians, advising them where they shall 
 find game, and was beheld in such ecstasies by John 
 Tanner, a white man who lived with the Indians, 
 and adopted their religion. The Greeks would have 
 called this appearance Hermes, even in this guise Odys- 
 seus met him in the oak wood of Circe's Isle. But 
 Augustine was not yet in his mother's faith ; he still 
 taught and studied rhetoric, contending for its prizes, 
 but declining to be aided by a certain wizard of his 
 acquaintance. He had entered as a competitor for a 
 " Tragicall poeme," but was too sportsmanlike to seek 
 victory by art necromantic. Yet he followed after 
 Astrologers, because they used no sacrifices, and did not 
 pretend to consult spirits. Even the derision of his 
 dear friend Nebridius could not then move him from 
 those absurd speculations. His friend died, and " his 
 whole heart was darkened ; " " mine eyes would be 
 looking for him in all places, but they found him not, 
 and I hated all things because they told me no news of 
 him." He fell into an extreme weariness of life, and no 
 less fear of death. He lived but by halves ; having lost 
 dimidunn afiimae suae, and yet dreaded death, " Lest 
 he might chance to have wholy dyed whome I extremely 
 loved." So he returned to Carthage for change, and 
 sought pleasure in other friendships; but "Blessed is 
 the man that loves Thee and his friend in Thee and 
 his enemy for Thee. For he only never loseth a dear 
 friend to whom all men are dear, for His sake, who is 
 never lost." 
 
 Here, on the margin of the old book, beside these
 
 CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE 169 
 
 thoughts, so beautiful if so helpless, like all words, to 
 console, some reader long dead has written : — 
 
 " Pray for your poor servant, J. M." 
 
 And again, 
 
 " Pray for your poor friend." 
 
 Doubtless, some Catholic reader, himself bereaved, 
 is imploring the prayers of a dear friend dead; and 
 sure we need their petitions more than they need ours, 
 who have left this world of temptation, and are at peace. 
 
 After this loss Saint Augustine went to Rome, his 
 ambition urging him, perhaps, but more his disgust 
 with the violent and riotous life of students in Carthage. 
 To leave his mother was difficult, but " I lyed to my 
 mother, yea, such a mother, and so escaped from her." 
 And now he had a dangerous sickness, and afterwards 
 betook himself to converse with the orthodox, for 
 example at Milan with Saint Ambrose. In Milan his 
 mother would willingly have continued in the African 
 ritual — a Pagan survival — carrying wine and food to 
 the graves of the dead ; but this Saint Ambrose forbade, 
 and she obeyed him for him " she did extremely affect 
 for the regard of my spirituall good." 
 
 From Milan his friend Alipius preceded him to Rome, 
 and there "was damnably delighted" with the gladiatorial 
 combats, being "made drunk with a delight in blood." 
 Augustine followed him to Rome, and there lost the girl 
 of his heart, " so that my heart was wounded, as that the 
 very blood did follow." The lady had made a vow of 
 eternal chastity, "having left me with a son by her."
 
 170 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 But he fell to a new love as the old one was departed, 
 and yet the ancient wound pained him still " after a more 
 desperate and dogged manner." 
 
 Haeret letalis arundo ! 
 
 By these passions his conversion was delayed, the 
 carnal and spiritual wills fighting against each other within 
 him. "Give me chastity and continency, O Lord," he 
 would pray, "but do not give it yet," and perhaps this 
 is the frankest of the confessions of Saint Augustine. In 
 the midst of this war of the spirit and the flesh, " Behold 
 I heard a voyce, as if it had been of some boy or girl 
 from some house not farre off, uttering and often repeat- 
 ing these words in a kind of singing voice, 
 
 " Tolle, Lege ; Tolle, Lege, 
 Take up and read, take up and read." 
 
 So he took up a Testament, and, opening it at random, 
 after the manner of his Virgilian lots, read : — 
 
 " Not in surfeiting and wantonness, not in carnality 
 and uncleanness," with what follows. " Neither would 
 I read any further, neither was there any cause why I 
 should." Saint Augustine does not, perhaps, mean us 
 to understand (as his translator does), that he was 
 " miraculously called." He knew what was right per- 
 fectly well before ; the text only clinched a resolve 
 which he has found it very hard to make. Perhaps 
 there was a trifle of superstition in the matter. We 
 never know how superstitious we are. At all events, 
 henceforth " I neither desired a wife, nor had I any 
 ambitious care of any worldly thing." He told his 
 mother, and Monica rejoiced, believing that now her 
 prayers were answered.
 
 CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE 171 
 
 Such is the story of the conversion of Saint Augustine. 
 It was the maturing of an old purpose, and long de- 
 ferred. Much stranger stories are told of Bunyan and 
 Colonel Gardiner. He gave up rhetoric ; another man 
 was engaged " to sell words " to the students of Milan. 
 Being now converted, the Saint becomes less interesting, 
 except for his account of his mother's death, and of that 
 ecstatic converse they held "she and I alone, leaning 
 against a window, which had a prospect upon the 
 garden of our lodging at Ostia." They 
 
 " Came on that which is, and heard 
 The vast pulsations of the world." 
 
 " And whilest we thus spake, and panted towards the 
 divine, we grew able to take a little taste thereof, with 
 the whole strife of our hearts, and we sighed profoundly, 
 and left there, confined, the very top and flower of our 
 souls and spirits ; and we returned to the noyse of 
 language again, where words are begun and ended." 
 
 Then Monica fell sick to death, and though she had 
 ever wished to lie beside her husband in Africa, she 
 said : " Lay this Body where you will. Let not any care 
 of it disquiet you ; only this I entreat, that you will re- 
 member me at the altar of the Lord, wheresoever you 
 be." " But upon the ninth day of her sickness, in the 
 six-and-fiftieth year of her age, and the three-and- 
 thirtieth of mine, that religious and pious soul was 
 discharged from the prison of her body." 
 
 The grief of Augustine was not less keen, it seems, 
 than it had been at the death of his friend. But he 
 could remember how " she related with great dearness
 
 172 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 of affection, how she never heard any harsh or unkind 
 word to be darted out of my mouth against her." And 
 to this consolation was added who knows what of con- 
 fidence and tenderness of certain hope, or a kind of 
 deadness, perhaps, that may lighten the pain of a heart 
 very often tried and inured to every pain. For it is 
 certain that " this green wound " was green and grievous 
 for a briefer time than the agony of his earlier sorrows. 
 He himself, so earnest in analysing his own emotions, is 
 perplexed by the short date of his tears, and his sharpest 
 grief: "Let him read it who will, and interpret it as it 
 pleaseth him." 
 
 So, with the death of Monica, we may leave Saint 
 Augustine. The most human of books, the " Confes- 
 sions," now strays into theology. Of all books that 
 which it most oddly resembles, to my fancy at least, is 
 the poems of Catullus. The passion and the tender 
 heart they have in common, and in common the war of 
 flesh and spirit ; the shameful inappeasable love of 
 Lesbia, or of the worldly life ; so delightful and dear 
 to the poet and to the saint, so despised in other moods, 
 conquered and victorious again, among the battles of 
 the war in our members. The very words in which 
 the Veronese and the Bishop of Hippo described the 
 pleasure and gaiety of an early friendship are almost the 
 same, and we feel that, born four hundred years later, 
 the lover of Lesbia, the singer of Sirmio might actually 
 have found peace in religion, and exchanged the earthly 
 for the heavenly love.
 
 SMOLLETT
 
 SMOLLETT 
 
 The great English novelists of the eighteenth century 
 turned the course of English Literature out of its older 
 channel. Her streams had descended from the double 
 peaks of Parnassus to irrigate the enamelled fields and 
 elegant parterres of poetry and the drama, as the critics 
 of the period might have said. But Richardson, Field- 
 ing, Smollett, and Sterne, diverted the waters, from poetry 
 and plays, into the region of the novel, whither they 
 have brought down a copious alluvial deposit. Modern 
 authors do little but till this fertile Delta : the drama is 
 now in the desert, poetry is a drug, and fiction is 
 literature. Among the writers who made this revolution, 
 Smollett is, personally, the least well known to the 
 world, despite the great part which autobiography and 
 confessions play in his work. He is always talking about 
 himself, and introducing his own experiences. But there 
 is little evidence from without ; his extant correspond- 
 ence is scanty ; he was not in Dr. Johnson's circle, 
 much less was he in that of Horace Walpole. He was 
 not a popular man, and probably he has long ceased to 
 be a popular author. About 1780 the vendors of chil- 
 dren's books issued abridgments of "Tom Jones" and 
 
 "Pamela," "Clarissa" and "Joseph Andrews," adapted 
 
 175
 
 176 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 to the needs of infant minds. It was a curious enter- 
 prise, certainly, but the booksellers do not seem to have 
 produced " Every Boy's Roderick Random," or " Pere- 
 grine Pickle for the Young." Smollett, in short, is less 
 known than Fielding and Sterne, even Thackeray says 
 but a word about him, in the " English Humorists," and 
 he has no place in the series of "English Men of 
 Letters." 
 
 What we know of Smollett reveals a thoroughly typical 
 Scot of his period ; a Scot of the species absolutely 
 opposed to Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, and rather akin 
 to the species of Robert Burns. "Rather akin," we 
 may say, for Smollett, like Burns, was a humorist, 
 and in his humour far from dainty ; he was a personal 
 satirist, and a satirist far from chivalrous. Like Burns, 
 too, he was a poet of independence; like Burns, and 
 even more than Burns, in a time of patronage he was 
 recalcitrant against patrons. But, unlike Burns, he was 
 farouche to an extreme degree; and, unlike Burns, he 
 carried very far his prejudices about his "gentrice," his 
 gentle birth. Herein he is at the opposite pole from 
 the great peasant poet. 
 
 Two potent characteristics of his country were at war 
 within him. There was, first, the beUef in "gentrice," 
 in a natural difference of kind between men of coat 
 armour and men without it. Thus Roderick Random, 
 the starving cadet of a line of small lairds, accepts 
 the almost incredible self-denial and devotion of 
 Strap as merely his due. Prince Charles could not 
 have taken the devotion of Henry Goring, or of Neil 
 MacEachain, more entirely as a ma^tter of course, in-
 
 SMOLLETT 177 
 
 volving no consideration in return, than Roderick 
 took the unparalleled self-sacrifice of his barber 
 friend and school-mate. Scott has remarked on this 
 contemptuous and ungrateful selfishness, and has con- 
 trasted it with the relations of Tom Jones and 
 Partridge. Of course, it is not to be assumed that 
 Smollett would have behaved like Roderick, when, 
 '' finding the fire in my apartment almost extinguished, 
 I vented my fury upon poor Strap, whose ear I pinched 
 with such violence that he roared hideously with 
 pain. . . ." To be sure Roderick presently "felt un- 
 speakable remorse . . . foamed at the mouth, and kicked 
 the chairs about the room." Now Strap had rescued 
 Roderick from starvation, had bestowed on him hun- 
 dreds of pounds, and had carried his baggage, and 
 dined on his leavings. But Strap was not gently born ! 
 Smollett would not, probably, have acted thus, but he 
 did not consider such conduct a thing out of nature. 
 
 On the other side was Smollett's Scottish spirit of 
 independence. As early as 15 15, James Ingles, chap- 
 lain of Margaret Tudor, wrote to Adam Williamson, 
 " You know the use of this country. . . . The man hath 
 more words than the master, and will not be content 
 except he know the master's counsel. There is no 
 order among us." Strap had the instinct of feudal 
 loyalty to a descendant of a laird. But Smollett boasts 
 that, being at the time about twenty, and having bur- 
 dened a nobleman with his impossible play, " The 
 Regicide," " I resolved to punish his barbarous in- 
 difference, and actually discarded my Patron." He 
 was not given to " booing " (in the sense of bowing), 
 
 M .
 
 1 78 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 but had, of all known Scots, the most "canty conceit 
 o' himsel'." These qualities, with a violence of temper 
 which took the form of beating people when on his 
 travels, cannot have made Smollett a popular character. 
 He knew his faults, as he shows in the dedication of 
 " Ferdinand, Count Fathom," to himself. " I have 
 known you trifling, superficial, and obstinate in dispute ; 
 meanly jealous and awkwardly reserved ; rash and 
 haughty in your resentment ; and coarse and lowly in 
 your connections." 
 
 He could, it is true, on occasion, forgive (even 
 where he had not been wronged), and could com- 
 pensate, in milder moods, for the fierce attacks 
 made in hours when he was " meanly jealous." Yet, 
 in early life at least, he regarded his own Roderick 
 Random as " modest and meritorious," struggling nobly 
 with the difficulties which beset a "friendless orphan," 
 especially from the " selfishness, envy, malice, and base 
 indifference of mankind." Roderick himself is, in fact, 
 the incarnation of the basest selfishness. In one of his 
 adventures he is guilty of that extreme infamy which the 
 d'Artagnan of " The Three Musketeers " and of the 
 " Memoirs " committed, and for which the d'Artagnan 
 of Le Vicomte de Bragelonne took shame to himself. 
 While engaged in a virtuous passion, Roderick not 
 only behaves like a vulgar debauchee, but pursues the 
 meanest arts of the fortune-hunter who is ready to marry 
 any woman for her money. Such is the modest and 
 meritorious orphan, and mankind now carries its " base 
 indifference " so far, that Smollett's biographer, Mr. 
 Hannay, says, " if Roderick had been hanged, I, for
 
 SMOLLETT 179 
 
 my part, should have heard the tidings unmoved. . . . 
 Smollett obviously died without realising how nearly the 
 hero, who was in some sort a portrait of himself, came 
 to being a ruffian." 
 
 Dr. Carlyle, in 1758, being in London, found Smollett 
 "much of a humorist, and not to be put out of his 
 way." A "humorist," here, means an overbearingly 
 eccentric person, such as Smollett, who lived much in 
 a society of literary dependants, was apt to become. 
 But Dr. Carlyle also found that, though Smollett 
 "described so well the characters of ruffians and 
 profligates," he did not resemble them. Dr. Robert- 
 son, the historian, "expressed great surprise at his 
 polished and agreeable manners, and the great urbanity 
 of his conversation." He was handsome in person, as 
 his portrait shows, but his " nervous system was exceed- 
 ingly irritable and subject to passion," as he says in the 
 Latin account of his health which, in 1763, he drew up 
 for the physician at Montpellier. Though, when he 
 chose, he could behave like a man of breeding, and 
 though he undeniably had a warm heart for his wife 
 and daughter, he did not always choose to behave well. 
 Except Dr. Moore, his biographer, he seems to have 
 had few real friends during most of his career. 
 
 As to persons whom he chose to regard as his ene- 
 mies, he was beyond measure rancorous and dangerous. 
 From his first patron. Lord Lyttelton, to his last, 
 he pursued them with unscrupulous animosity. If he 
 did not mean actually to draw portraits of his grand- 
 father, his cousins, his school-master, and the apothecary 
 whose gallipots he attended — in " Roderick Random," —
 
 i8o ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 yet he left the originals who suggested his characters in 
 a very awkward situation. For assuredly he did enter- 
 tain a spite against his grandfather : and as many of the 
 incidents in " Roderick Random " were autobiographical, 
 the public readily inferred that others were founded on 
 fact. 
 
 The outlines of Smollett's career are familiar, though 
 gaps in our knowledge occur. Perhaps they may partly 
 be filled up by the aid of passages in his novels, plays, 
 and poems : in these, at all events, he describes condi- 
 tions and situations through which he himself may, or 
 must, have passed. 
 
 Born in 172 1, he was a younger son of Archibald, 
 a younger son of Sir James Smollett of Bonhill, a house 
 on the now polluted Leven, between Loch Lomond and 
 the estuary of the Clyde. Smollett's father made an 
 imprudent marriage : the grandfather provided a small, 
 but competent provision for him and his family, during 
 his own life. The father, Archibald, died ; the grand- 
 father left nothing to the mother of Tobias and her 
 children, but they were assisted with scrimp decency by 
 the heirs. Hence the attacks on the grandfather and 
 cousins of Roderick Random : but, later, Smollett re- 
 turned to kinder feelings. 
 
 In some ways Tobias resembled his old grandsire. 
 About 17 10 that gentleman wrote a Memoir of his own 
 life. Hence we learn that he, in childhood, like Roderick 
 Random, was regarded as "a clog and burden," and was 
 neglected by his father, ill-used by his step-mother. 
 Thus Tobias had not only his own early poverty to 
 resent, but had a hereditary grudge against fortune.
 
 SMOLLETT i8i 
 
 and "the base indifference of mankind." The old 
 gentleman was lodged "with very hard and penurious 
 people," at Glasgow University. He rose in the world, 
 and was a good Presbyterian Whig, but " had no liberty " 
 to help to forfeit James IL "The puir child, his son" 
 (James IIL and VIIL), "if he was really such, was 
 innocent, and it were hard to do anything that would 
 touch the son for the father's fault." The old gentle- 
 man, therefore, though a Member of Parliament, evaded 
 attending the first Parliament after the Union : " I had 
 no freedom to do it, because I understood that the 
 great business to be agitated therein was to make laws 
 for abjuring the Pretender . . . which I could not go in 
 with, being always of opinion that it was hard to impose 
 oaths on people who had not freedom to take them." 
 
 This was uncommonly liberal conduct, in a Whig, 
 and our Smollett, though no Jacobite, was in distinct and 
 courageous sympathy with Jacobite Scotland. Indeed, 
 he was as patriotic as Burns, or as his own Lismahago. 
 These were times, we must remember, in which Scottish 
 patriotism was more than a mere historical sentiment. 
 Scotland was inconceivably poor, and Scots, in Eng- 
 land, were therefore ridiculous. The country had, so 
 far, gained very little by the Union, and the Union was 
 detested even by Scottish Whig Earls. It is recorded 
 by Moore that, while at the Dumbarton Grammar 
 School, Smollett wrote "verses to the memory of 
 Wallace, of whom he became an early admirer," having 
 read " Blind Harry's translation of the Latin poems of 
 John Blair," chaplain to that hero. There probably 
 never were any such Latin poems, but Smollett began
 
 i82 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 with the same hero-worship as Burns. He had the 
 attachment of a Scot to his native stream, the Leven, 
 which later he was to celebrate. Now if Smollett had 
 credited Roderick Random with these rural, poetical, 
 and patriotic tastes, his hero would have been much 
 more human and amiable. There was much good in 
 Smollett which is absent in Random. But for some 
 reason, probably because Scotland was unpopular after 
 the Forty-Five, Smollett merely describes the woes, ill 
 usage, and retaliations of Roderick. That he suffered as 
 Random did is to the last degree improbable. He had 
 a fair knowledge of Latin, and was not destitute of 
 Greek, while his master, a Mr. Love, bore a good 
 character both for humanity and scholarship. He must 
 have studied the classics at Glasgow University, where 
 he was apprenticed to Mr. Gordon, a surgeon. Gordon, 
 again, was an excellent man, appreciated by Smollett 
 himself in after days, and the odious Potion of" Roderick 
 Random " must, like his rival. Crab, have been merely a 
 fancy sketch of meanness, hypocrisy, and profligacy. 
 Perhaps the good surgeon became the victim of that 
 " one continued string of epigrammatic sarcasms," such 
 as Mr. Colquhoun told Ramsay of Ochtertyre, Smollett 
 used to play off on his companions, " for which no 
 talents could compensate." Judging by Dr. Carlyle's 
 Memoirs this intolerable kind of display was not unusual 
 in Caledonian conversation : but it was not likely to make 
 Tobias popular in England. 
 
 Thither he went in 1739, with very little money, ''and 
 a very large assortment of letters of recommendation : 
 whether his relatives intended to compensate for the
 
 SMOLLETT 183 
 
 scantiness of the one by their profusion in the other is 
 uncertain ; but he has often been heard to declare that 
 their liberality in the last article was prodigious." The 
 SmoUetts were not " kinless loons " ; they had connec- 
 tions : but who, in Scotland, had money ? Tobias had 
 passed his medical examinations, but he rather trusted 
 in his MS. tragedy, " The Regicide." Tragical were its 
 results for the author. Inspired by George Buchanan's 
 Latin history of Scotland, Smollett had produced a play, 
 in blank verse, on the murder of James L That a boy, 
 even a Scottish boy, should have an overweening 
 passion for this unlucky piece, that he should expect by 
 such a work to climb a step on fortune's ladder, is 
 nowadays amazing. For ten years he clung to it, modi- 
 fied it, polished, improved it, and then published it in 
 1749, after the success of " Roderick Random." Twice 
 he told the story of his theatrical mishaps and dis- 
 appointments, which were such as occur to every writer 
 for the stage. He wailed over them in " Roderick 
 Random," in the story of Mr. Melopoyn ; he prolonged 
 his cry, in the preface to " The Regicide," and probably 
 the noble whom he " lashed " (very indecently) in his 
 two satires ("Advice," 1746, "Reproof," 1747, and in 
 " Roderick Random ") was the patron who could not 
 get the tragedy acted. First, in 1739, he had a patron 
 whom he "discarded." Then he went to the West 
 Indies, and, returning in 1744, he lugged out his tragedy 
 again, and fell foul again of patrons, actors, and mana- 
 gers. What befell him was the common fate. People 
 did not, probably, hasten to read his play : managers 
 and " supercilious peers " postponed that entertainment.
 
 i84 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 or, at least, the noblemen could not make the managers 
 accept it if they did not want it. Our taste differs so 
 much from that of the time which admired Home's 
 "Douglas," and "The Regicide" was so often altered 
 to meet objections, that we can scarcely criticise it. Of 
 course it is absolutely unhistorical ; of course it is empty 
 of character, and replete with fustian, and ineffably 
 tedious; but perhaps it is not much worse than other 
 luckier tragedies of the age. Naturally a lover calls 
 his wounded lady "the bleeding fair." Naturally she 
 exclaims — 
 
 " Celestial powers 
 Protect my father, shower upon his — oh ! " {Dies). 
 
 Naturally her adorer answers with — 
 
 " So may our mingling souls 
 To bliss supernal wing our happy — oh ! " {Dies). 
 
 We are reminded of — 
 
 " Alas, my Bom ! " {Dies). 
 " ' Bastes ' he would have said I " 
 
 The piece, if presented, must have been damned. 
 But Smollett was so angry with one patron. Lord 
 Lyttelton, that he burlesqued the poor man's dirge on 
 the death of his wife. He was so angry with Garrick that 
 he dragged him into " Roderick Random " as Marmozet. 
 Later, obliged by Garrick, and forgiving Lyttelton, he 
 wrote respectfully about both. But, in 1746 (in "Advice"), 
 he had assailed the " proud lord, who smiles a gracious 
 lie," and " the varnished ruffians of the State." Because 
 Tobias's play was unacted, people who tried to aid him
 
 SMOLLETT 185 
 
 were liars and ruffians, and a great deal worse, for in 
 his satire, as in his first novel, Smollett charges men 
 of high rank with the worst of unnamable crimes. 
 Pollio and Lord Strutwell, whoever they may have been, 
 were probably recognisable then, and were undeniably 
 libelled, though they did not appeal to a jury. It is 
 improbable that Sir John Cope had ever tried to oblige 
 Smollett. His ignoble attack on Cope, after that un- 
 fortunate General had been fairly and honourably ac- 
 quitted of incompetence and cowardice, was, then, wholly 
 disinterested. Cope is "a courtier Ape, appointed 
 General." 
 
 " Then Pug, aghast, fled faster than the wind, 
 Nor deign'd, in three-score miles, to look behind ; 
 While every band for orders bleat in vain, 
 And fall in slaughtered heaps upon the plain," — 
 
 of Preston Pans. 
 
 Nothing could be more remote from the truth, or 
 more unjustly cruel. Smollett had not here even the 
 excuse of patriotism. Sir John Cope was no Butcher 
 Cumberland. In fact the poet's friend is not wrong, 
 when, in "Reproof," iie calls Smollett "a flagrant mis- 
 anthrope." The world was out of joint for the cadet of 
 Bonhill : both before and after his very trying experi- 
 ences as a ship surgeon the managers would not accept 
 " The Regicide." This was reason good why Smollett 
 should try to make a little money and notoriety by 
 penning satires. They are fierce, foul-mouthed, and 
 pointless. But Smollett was poor, and he was angry; 
 he had the examples of Pope and Swift before him ;
 
 1 86 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 which, as far as truculence went, he could imitate. 
 Above all, it was then the fixed belief of men of letters 
 that some peer or other ought to aid and support them ; 
 and, as no peer did support Smollett, obviously they 
 were "varnished ruffians." He erred as he would not 
 err now, for times, and ways of going wrong, are 
 changed. But, at best, how different are his angry 
 couplets from the lofty melancholy of Johnson's satires ! 
 
 Smollett's "small sum of money " did not permit him 
 long to push the fortunes of his tragedy, in 1739; and 
 as for his "very large assortment of letters of recom- 
 mendation," they only procured for him the post of 
 surgeon's mate in the Cumberland of the line. Here 
 he saw enough of the horrors of naval life, enough of 
 misery, brutality, and mismanagement, at Carthagena 
 {1741), to supply materials for the salutary and sicken- 
 ing pages on that theme in " Roderick Random." He 
 also saw and appreciated the sterling qualities of cour- 
 age, simplicity, and generosity, which he has made 
 immortal in his Bowlings and Trunnions. 
 
 It is part of a novelist's business to make one half of 
 the world know how the other half lives; and in this 
 province Smollett anticipated Dickens. He left the 
 service as soon as he could, when the beaten fleet was 
 refitting at Jamaica. In that isle he seems to have 
 practised as a doctor ; and he married, or was betrothed 
 to, a Miss Lascelles, who had a small and far from 
 valuable property. The real date of his marriage is 
 obscure : more obscure are Smollett's resources on his 
 return to London, in 1744. Houses in Downing Street 
 can never have been cheap, but we find " Mr. Smollett,
 
 SMOLLETT 187 
 
 surgeon in Downing Street, Westminster," and, in 1746, 
 he was living in May Fair, not a region for slender 
 purses. His tragedy was now bringing in nothing but 
 trouble, to himself and others. His satires cannot have 
 been lucrative. As a dweller in May Fair he could not 
 support himself, like his Mr. Melopoyn, by writing 
 ballads for street singers. Probably he practised in 
 his profession. In "Count Fathom" he makes his 
 adventurer "purchase an old chariot, which was new 
 painted for the occasion, and likewise hire a footman. 
 . . . This equipage, though much more expensive than 
 his finances could bear, he found absolutely necessary 
 to give him a chance of employment. ... A walking 
 physician was considered as an obscure pedlar." A 
 chariot, Smollett insists, was necessary to "every raw 
 surgeon"; while Bob Sawyer's expedient of "being 
 called from church" was already vieux Jeu, in the way 
 of advertisement. Such things had been " injudiciously 
 hackneyed." In this passage of Fathom's adventures, 
 Smollett proclaims his insight into methods of getting 
 practice. A physician must ingratiate himself with 
 apothecaries and ladies' maids, or "acquire interest 
 enough " to have an infirmary erected " by the voluntary 
 subscriptions of his friends." Here Smollett denounces 
 hospitals, which "encourage the vulgar to be idle and 
 dissolute, by opening an asylum to them and their 
 families, from the diseases of poverty and intemperance." 
 This is odd morality for one who suffered from "the 
 base indifference of mankind." He ought to have 
 known that poverty is not a vice for which the poor 
 are to be blamed ; and that intemperance is not the
 
 i88 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 only other cause of their diseases. Perhaps the unfeel- 
 ing passage is a mere paradox in the style of his own 
 Lismahago. 
 
 With or without a chariot, it is probable that Tobias 
 had not an insinuating style, or "a good bedside 
 manner " ; friends to support a hospital for his renown 
 he had none; but, somehow, he could live in May 
 Fair, and, in 1 746, could meet Dr. Carlyle and Stewart, 
 son of the Provost of Edinburgh, and other Scots, 
 at the Golden Ball in Cockspur Street. There they 
 were enjoying "a frugal supper and a little punch," when 
 the news of Culloden arrived. Carlyle had been 
 a Whig volunteer : he, probably, was happy enough ; 
 but Stewart, whose father was in prison, grew pale, and 
 left the room. Smollett and Carlyle then walked home 
 through secluded streets, and were silent, lest their 
 speech should bewray them for Scots. "John Bull," 
 quoth Smollett, "is as haughty and valiant to-day, as 
 he was abject and cowardly on the Black Wednesday 
 when the Highlanders were at Derby." 
 
 " Weep, Caledonia, weep ! " he had written in his 
 tragedy. Now he wrote " Mourn, hapless Caledonia, 
 mourn." Scott has quoted, from Graham of Gartmore, 
 the story of Smollett's writing verses, while Gartmore 
 and others were playing cards. He read them what he 
 had written, "The Tears of Scotland," and added the 
 last verse on the spot, when warned that his opinions 
 might give offence. 
 
 " Yes, spite of thine insulting foe, 
 My sympathising verse shall flow."
 
 SMOLLETT 189 
 
 The "Tears "are better than the " Ode to Blue-Eyed 
 Ann," probably Mrs. Smollett. But the courageous 
 author of "The Tears of Scotland," had manifestly 
 broken with patrons. He also broke with Rich, the 
 manager at Covent Garden, for whom he had written 
 an opera libretto. He had failed as doctor, and as 
 dramatist ; nor, as satirist, had he succeeded. Yet he 
 managed to wear wig and sword, and to be seen in 
 good men's company. Perhaps his wife's little fortune 
 supported him, till, in 1748, he produced "Roderick 
 Random." It is certain that we never find Smollett in 
 the deep distresses of Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith. 
 Novels were now in vogue ; " Pamela " was recent, 
 "Joseph Andrews" was yet more recent, "Clarissa 
 Harlowe " had just appeared, and Fielding was publishing 
 "Tom Jones." Smollett, too, tried his hand, and, at 
 last, he succeeded. 
 
 His ideas of the novel are offered in his preface. 
 The Novel, for him, is a department of Satire; "the 
 most entertaining and universally improving." To 
 Smollett, " Roderick Random " seemed an " improv- 
 ing " work ! On le didacticisme va fil se nicker ? 
 Romance, he declares, "arose in ignorance, vanity, 
 and superstition," and declined into "the ludicrous 
 and unnatural." Then Cervantes " converted romance 
 to purposes far more useful and entertaining, by 
 making it assume the sock, and point out the follies 
 of ordinary life." Romance was to revive again some 
 twenty years after its funeral oration was thus delivered. 
 As for Smollett himself, he professedly "follows the 
 plan" of Le Sage, in "Gil Bias" (a plan as old as
 
 igo ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Petronius Arbiter, and the " Golden Ass " of Apuleius) ; 
 but he gives more place to "compassion," so as not 
 to interfere with " generous indignation, which ought to 
 animate the reader against the sordid and vicious dis- 
 position of the world." As a contrast to sordid vice, 
 we are to admire " modest merit " in that exemplary 
 orphan, Mr. Random. This gentlem.an is a North 
 Briton, because only in North Britain can a poor orphan 
 get such an education as Roderick's " birth and character 
 require," and for other reasons. Now, as for Roderick, 
 the schoolmaster "gave himself no concern about the 
 progress I made," but, "should endeavour, with God's 
 help, to prevent my future improvement." It must 
 have been at Glasgow University, then, that Roderick 
 learned " Greek very well, and was pretty far advanced 
 in the mathematics," and here he must have used his 
 genius for the belles lettres, in the interest of his " amorous 
 complexion," by " lampooning the rivals " of the young 
 ladies who admired him. 
 
 Such are the the happy beginnings, accompanied by 
 practical jokes, of this interesting model. Smollett's 
 heroes, one conceives, were intended to be fine, though not 
 faultless young fellows ; men, not plaster images ; brave, 
 generous, free-living, but, as Roderick finds once, when 
 examining his conscience, pure from serious stains on 
 that important faculty. To us these heroes often appear 
 no better than ruffians ; Peregrine Pickle, for example, 
 rather excels the infamy of Ferdinand, Count Fathom, 
 in certain respects ; though Ferdinand is professedly 
 "often the object of our detestation and abhorrence," 
 and is left in a very bad, but, as " Humphrey Clinker "
 
 SMOLLETT 191 
 
 shows, in by no means a hopeless way. Yet, throughout, 
 Smollett regarded himself as a moralist, a writer of 
 improving tendencies; one who "lashed the vices of 
 the age." He was by no means wholly mistaken, but 
 we should probably wrong the eighteenth century if we 
 accepted all Smollett's censures as entirely deserved. 
 The vices which he lashed are those which he detected, 
 or fancied that he detected, in people who regarded a 
 modest and meritorious Scottish orphan with base indif- 
 ference. Unluckily the greater part of mankind was guilty 
 of this crime, and consequently was capable of everything. 
 Enough has probably been said about the utterly 
 distasteful figure of Smollett's hero. In Chapter LX. 
 we find him living on the resources of Strap, then 
 losing all Strap's money at play, and then " I bilk my 
 taylor." That is, Roderick orders several suits of new 
 clothes, and sells them for what they will fetch. Mean- 
 while Strap can live honestly anywhere, while he has 
 his ten fingers. Roderick rescues himself from poverty 
 by engaging, with his uncle, in the slave trade. We are 
 apt to consider this commerce infamous. But, in 1763, 
 the Evangelical director who helped to make Cowper 
 "a castaway," wrote, as to the slaver's profession: "It 
 is, indeed, accounted a genteel employment, and is 
 usually very profitable, though to me it did not prove 
 so, the Lord seeing that a large increase of wealth could 
 not be good for me." The reverend gentleman had, 
 doubtless, often sung — 
 
 " Time for us to go. 
 Time for us to go. 
 And when we'd got the hatches down, 
 ' 7 was time for us to go ! "
 
 192 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Roderick, apart from "black ivory," is aided by his 
 uncle and his long lost father. The base world, in the 
 persons of Strap, Thompson, the uncle, Mr. Sagely, and 
 other people, treats him infinitely better than he deserves. 
 His very love (as always in Smollett) is only an animal 
 appetite, vigorously insisted upon by the author. By 
 a natural reaction, Scott, much as he admired Smollett, 
 introduced his own blameless heroes, and even Thackeray 
 could only hint at the defects of youth, in " Esmond." 
 Thackeray is accused of making his good people stupid, 
 or too simple, or eccentric, and otherwise contemptible. 
 Smollett went further : Strap, a model of benevolence, 
 is ludicrous and a coward ; even Bowling has the stage 
 eccentricities of the sailor. Mankind was certain, in the 
 long run, to demand heroes more amiable and worthy 
 of respect. Our inclinations, as Scott says, are with 
 "the open-hearted, good-humoured, and noble-minded 
 Tom Jones, whose libertinism (one particular omitted) is 
 perhaps rendered but too amiable by his good quaUties." 
 To be sure Roderick does befriend " a reclaimed street- 
 walker" in her worst need, but why make her the con- 
 fidante of the virginal Narcissa? Why reward Strap 
 with her hand? Fielding decidedly, as Scott insists, 
 "places before us heroes, and especially heroines, of a 
 much higher as well as more pleasing character, than 
 Smollett was able to present." 
 
 " But the deep and fertile genius of Smollett afforded 
 resources sufficient to make up for these deficiencies. . . . 
 If Fielding had superior taste, the palm of more bril- 
 liancy of genius, more inexhaustible richness of inven- 
 tion, must in justice be awarded to Smollett. In
 
 SMOLLETT 193 
 
 comparison with his sphere, that in which Fielding 
 walked was limited. ..." The second part of Scott's 
 parallel between the men whom he considered the 
 greatest of our novelists, qualifies the first. Smollett's 
 invention was not richer than Fielding's, but the sphere 
 in which he walked, the circle of his experience, was 
 much wider. One division of life they knew about 
 equally well ; the category of rakes, adventurers, card- 
 sharpers, unhappy authors, people of the stage, and 
 ladies without reputations, in every degree. There were 
 conditions of higher society, of English rural society, 
 and of clerical society, which Fielding, by birth and 
 education, knew much better than Smollett. But 
 Smollett had the advantage of his early years in 
 Scotland, then as little known as Japan ; with the 
 "nauticaj multitude," from captain to loblolly boy, he 
 was intimately familiar ; with the West Indies he was 
 acquainted ; and he later resided in Paris, and travelled 
 in Flanders, so that he had more experience, certainly, 
 if not more invention, than Fielding. 
 
 In " Roderick Random " he used Scottish " local 
 colour " very little, but his life had furnished him with 
 a surprising wealth of " strange experiences." Inns 
 were, we must believe, the favourite home of adven- 
 tures, and Smollett could ring endless changes on 
 mistakes about bedrooms. None of them is so inno- 
 cently diverting as the affair of Mr. Pickwick and the 
 lady in yellow curl-papers ; but the absence of that 
 innocence which heightens Mr. Pickwick's distresses 
 was welcome to admirers of what Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu calls "gay reading."
 
 194 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 She wrote from abroad, in 1752, "There is something 
 humorous in R. Random, that makes me believe that 
 the author is H. Fielding " — her kinsman. Her lady- 
 ship did her cousin little justice. She did not com- 
 plain of the morals of " R. Random," but thought 
 "Pamela" and "Clarissa" "likely to do more general 
 mischief than the works of Lord Rochester." Probably 
 " R. Random " did little harm. His career is too 
 obviously ideal. Too many ups and downs occur to 
 him, and few orphans of merit could set before them- 
 selves the ideal of bilking their tailors, gambling by way 
 of a profession, dealing in the slave trade, and wheedling 
 heiresses. 
 
 The variety of character in the book is vast ; in 
 Morgan we have an excellent, fiery, Welshman, of the 
 stage type ; the different minor miscreants are all vividly 
 designed ; the eccentric lady author may have had a 
 real original ; Miss Snapper has much vivacity as a wit ; 
 the French adventures in the army are, in their rude 
 barbaric way, a forecast of Barry Lyndon's ; and, 
 generally, both Scott and Thackeray owe a good deal 
 to Smollett in the way of suggestions. Smollett's ex- 
 traordinary love of dilating on noisome smells and 
 noisome sights, that intense affection for the physically 
 nauseous, which he shared with Swift, is rather less 
 marked in " Roderick " than in " Humphrey Clinker," 
 and "The Adventures of an Atom." The scenes in 
 the Marshalsea must have been familiar to Dickens. 
 The terrible history of Miss Williams is Hogarth's 
 Harlot's Progress done into unsparing prose. Smollett 
 guides us at a brisk pace through the shady and brutal
 
 SMOLLETT 195 
 
 side of the eighteenth century; his vivacity is as un- 
 flagging as that of his disagreeable rattle of a hero. 
 The passion usually understood as love is, to be sure, 
 one of which he seems to have no conception ; he 
 regards a woman much as a greedy person might 
 regard a sirloin of beef, or, at least, a plate of ortolans. 
 At her marriage a bride is " dished up ; " that is all. 
 
 Thus this "gay writing" no longer makes us gay. 
 In reading "Peregrine Pickle" and "Humphrey 
 Clinker," a man may find himself laughing aloud, but 
 hardly in reading " Roderick Random." The fun is of 
 the cruel primitive sort, arising merely from the con- 
 templation of somebody's painful discomfiture. 
 Bowling and Rattlin may be regarded with affec- 
 tionate respect ; but Roderick has only physical courage 
 and vivacity to recommend him. Whether Smollett, 
 in Flaubert's deliberate way, purposely abstained 
 from moralising on the many scenes of physical distress 
 which he painted ; or whether he merely regarded them 
 without emotion, has been debated. It seems more 
 probable that he thought they carried their own moral. 
 It is the most sympathetic touch in Roderick's character, 
 that he writes thus of his miserable crew of slaves : 
 " Our ship being freed from the disagreeable lading of 
 negroes, to whom indeed I had been a jniserable slave 
 since our leaving the coast of Guinea^ I began to 
 enjoy myself." Smollett was a physician, and had the 
 pitifulness of his profession ; though we see how 
 casually he makes Random touch on his own unwonted 
 benevolence. 
 
 People had not begun to know the extent of their
 
 196 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 own brutality in the slave trade, but Smollett pro- 
 bably did know it. If a curious prophetic letter 
 attributed to him, and published more than twenty 
 years after his death, be genuine ; he had the strongest 
 opinions about this form of commercial enterprise. But 
 he did not wear his heart on his sleeve, where he wore 
 his irritable nervous system. It is probable enough 
 that he felt for the victims of poverty, neglect, and 
 oppression (despite his remarks on hospitals) as keenly 
 as Dickens. -We might regard his offensively ungrate- 
 ful Roderick as a purely dramatic exhibition of a young 
 man, if his other heroes were not as bad, or worse ; 
 if their few redeeming qualities were not stuck on in 
 patches ; and if he had omitted his remark about 
 Roderick's "modest merit." On the other hand, the 
 good side of Matthew Bramble seems to be drawn from 
 Smollett's own character, and, if that be the case, he 
 can have had little sympathy with his own humorous 
 Barry Lyndons. Scott and Thackeray leaned to the 
 favourable view : Smollett, his nervous system apart, 
 was manly and kindly. 
 
 As regards plot, " Roderick Random " is a mere string 
 of picturesque adventures. It is at the opposite pole 
 from " Tom Jones " in the matter of construction. 
 There is no reason why it should ever stop except 
 the convenience of printers and binders. Perhaps we 
 lay too much stress on the somewhat mechanical art 
 of plot-building. Fielding was then setting the first 
 and best English example of a craft in which the very 
 greatest authors have been weak, or of which they were 
 careless. Smollett was always rather more incapable,
 
 SMOLLETT 197 
 
 or rather more indifferent, in plot-weaving, than greater 
 men. 
 
 In our day of royalties, and gossip about the gains of 
 authors, it would be interesting to know what manner 
 and size of a cheque Smollett received from his pub- 
 lisher, the celebrated Mr. Osborne. We do not know, 
 but Smollett published his next novel "on commis- 
 sion," "printed for the Author"; so probably he was 
 not well satisfied with the pecuniary result of " Roderick 
 Random." Thereby, says Dr. Moore, he "acquired 
 much more reputation than money." So he now pub- 
 lished "The Regicide" "by subscription, that method 
 of publication being then more reputable than it has 
 been thought since " (1797). Of "The Regicide," and 
 its unlucky preface, enough, or more, has been said. 
 The pubUc sided with the managers, not with the meri- 
 torious orphan. 
 
 For the sake of pleasure, or of new experiences, or 
 of economy, Smollett went to Paris in' 1750, where he 
 met Dr. Moore, later his biographer, the poetical Dr. 
 Akenside, and an affected painter. He introduced the 
 poet and painter into " Peregrine Pickle " ; and makes 
 slight use of a group of exiled Jacobites, including Mr. 
 Hunter of Burnside. In 1750, there were Jacobites 
 enough in the French capital, all wondering very much 
 where Prince Charles might be, and quite unconscious 
 that he was their neighbour in a convent in the Rue St. 
 Dominique. Though Moore does not say so (he is pro- 
 vokingly economical of detail), we may presume that 
 Smollett went wandering in Flanders, as does Peregrine 
 Pickle. It is curious that he should introduce a
 
 198 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Capucin, a Jew, and a black-eyed damsel, all in the 
 Ghent diligence, when we know that Prince Charles 
 did live in Ghent, with the black-eyed Miss Walken- 
 shaw, did go about disguised as a Capucin, and was 
 tracked by a Jewish spy, while the other spy, Young 
 Glengarry, styled himself " Pickle." But all those 
 events occurred about a year after the novel was 
 published in 1751. 
 
 Before that date Smollett had got an M.D. degree 
 from Aberdeen University, and, after returning from 
 France, he practised for a year or two at Bath. 
 But he could not expect to be successful among 
 fashionable invalids, and, in " Humphrey Clinker," 
 he make Matthew Bramble give such an account of 
 the Bath waters as M. Zola might envy. He was still 
 trying to gain ground in his profession, when, in March 
 1 75 1, Mr. D. Wilson published the first edition of 
 " Peregrine Pickle " " for the Author," unnamed. I 
 have never seen this first edition, which was "very 
 curious and disgusting." Smollett, in his preface to the 
 second edition, talks of " the art and industry that were 
 used to stifle him in the birth, by certain booksellers 
 and others." He now " reformed the manners, and 
 corrected the expressions," removed or modified some 
 passages of personal satire, and held himself exempt 
 from " the numerous shafts of envy, rancour, and revenge, 
 that have lately, both in private and public, been levelled 
 at his reputation." Who were these base and pitiless 
 dastards ? Probably every one who did not write 
 favourably about the book. Perhaps Smollett suspected 
 Fielding, whom he attacks in several parts of his works,
 
 SMOLLETT 199 
 
 treating him as a kind of Jonathan Wild, a thief-taker, 
 and an associate with thieves. Why Smollett thus 
 misconducted himself is a problem, unless he was 
 either " meanly jealous," or had taken offence at some 
 remarks in Fielding's newspaper. Smollett certainly 
 began the war, in the first edition of " Peregrine 
 Pickle." He made a kind of palinode to the " trading 
 justice " later, as other people of his kind have done. 
 
 A point in " Peregrine Pickle " easily assailed was 
 the long episode about a Lady of Quality : the beautiful 
 Lady Vane, whose memoirs Smollett introduced into his 
 tale. Horace Walpole found that she had omitted the 
 only feature in her career of which she had just reason 
 to be proud : the number of her lovers. Nobody 
 doubted that Smollett was paid for casting his mantle 
 over Lady Vane : moreover, he might expect a success 
 of scandal. The rotnan a clef is always popular with 
 scandal-mongers, but its authors can hardly hope to 
 escape rebuke. 
 
 It^was not till 1752 that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 
 in Italy, received " Peregrine," with other fashionable 
 romances — "Pompey the Little," "The Parish Girl," 
 " Eleanora's Adventures," " The Life of Mrs. Theresa 
 Constantia Phipps," "The Adventures of Mrs. Loveil," 
 and so on. Most of them contained portraits of real 
 people, and, no doubt, most of them were therefore 
 successful. But where are they now? Lady Mary 
 thought Lady Vane's part of "Peregrine" "more in- 
 structive to young women than any sermon that I 
 know." She regarded Fielding as with Congreve, the 
 only " original " of her age, but Fielding had to write
 
 200 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 for bread, and that is " the most contemptible way of 
 getting bread." She did not, at this time, even know 
 Smollett's name, but she admired him, and, later, calls 
 him " my dear Smollett." This lady thought that 
 Fielding did not know what sorry fellows his Tom 
 Jones and Captain Booth were. Not near so sorry 
 as Peregine Pickle were they, for this gentleman is a 
 far more atrocious rufifian than Roderick Random. 
 
 None the less " Peregrine " is Smollett's greatest work. 
 Nothing is so rich in variety of character, scene, and 
 adventure. We are carried along by the swift and 
 copious volume of the current, carried into very queer 
 places, and into the oddest miscellaneous company, but 
 we cannot escape from Smollett's vigorous grasp. Sir 
 Walter thought that " Roderick " excelled its successor 
 in " ease and simplicity," and that Smollett's sailors, in 
 "Pickle," "border on caricature." No doubt they do: the 
 eccentricities of Hawser Trunnion, Esq., are exaggerated, 
 and Pipes is less subdued than Rattlin, though always 
 delightful. But Trunnion absolutely makes one laugh 
 out aloud : whether he is criticising the sister of Mr. 
 Gamaliel Pickle in that gentleman's presence, at a pot- 
 house ; or riding to the altar with his squadron of 
 sailors, tacking in an unfavourable gale; or being run 
 away into a pack of hounds, and clearing a hollow road 
 over a waggoner, who views him with " unspeakable 
 terror and amazement." Mr. Winkle as an equestrian is 
 not more entirely acceptable to the mind than Trunnion. 
 We may speak of "caricature," but if an author can 
 make us sob with laughter, to criticise him solemnly is 
 ungrateful.
 
 SMOLLETT 201 
 
 Except Fielding occasionally, and Smollett, and Swift, 
 and Sheridan, and the authors of "The Rovers," one 
 does not remember any writers of the eighteenth century 
 who quite upset the gravity of the reader. The scene of 
 the pedant's dinner after the manner of the ancients, 
 does not seem to myself so comic as the adventures of 
 Trunnion, while the bride is at the altar, and the bride- 
 groom is tacking and veering with his convoy about the 
 fields. One sees how the dinner is done : with a know- 
 ledge of Athenaeus, Juvenal, Petronius, and Horace, 
 many men could have written this set piece. But 
 Trunnion is quite inimitable : he is a child of humour 
 and of the highest spirits, like Mr. Weller the elder. 
 Till Scott created Mause Headrig, no Caledonian had 
 ever produced anything except " Tam o' Shanter," that 
 could be a pendant to Trunnion. His pathos is pos- 
 sibly just a trifle overdone, though that is not my own 
 opinion. Dear Trunnion ! he makes me overlook the 
 gambols of his detestable protege^ the hero. 
 
 That scoundrel is not an impossible caricature of an 
 obstinate, vain, cruel libertine. Peregrine was precisely 
 the man to fall in love with Emilia pour le bon motif, 
 and then attempt to ruin her, though she was the sister 
 of his friend, by devices worthy of Lovelace at his last 
 and lowest stage. Peregrine's overwhelming vanity, 
 swollen by facile conquests, would inevitably have 
 degraded him to this abyss. The intrigue was only 
 the worst of those infamous practical jokes of his, in 
 which Smollett takes a cruel and unholy delight. 
 Peregrine, in fact, is a hero of naturalisme, except 
 that his fits of generosity are mere patches daubed on, 
 
 r
 
 202 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 and that his reformation is a farce, in which a modern 
 naturaliste would have disdained to indulge. Emilia, 
 in her scene with Peregrine in the botige to which he has 
 carried her, rises much above Smollett's heroines, and 
 we could like her, if she had never forgiven behaviour 
 which was beneath pardon. 
 
 Peregrine's education at Winchester bears out Lord 
 Elcho's description of that academy in his unpublished 
 Memoirs. It was apt to develop Peregrines ; and Lord 
 Elcho himself might have furnished Smollett with suit- 
 able adventures. There can be no doubt that Cad- 
 wallader Crabtree suggested Sir Malachi Malagrowther 
 to Scott, and that Hatchway and Pipes, taking up their 
 abode with Peregrine in the Fleet, gave a hint to 
 Dickens for Sam Weller and Mr. Pickwick in the 
 same abode. That " Peregrine " " does far excel ' Joseph 
 Andrews ' and ' Amelia,' " as Scott declares, few modern 
 readers will admit. The world could do much better 
 without "Peregrine" than without "Joseph"; while 
 Amelia herself alone is a study greatly preferable to the 
 whole works of Smollett : such, at least, is the opinion 
 of a declared worshipper of that peerless lady. Yet 
 " Peregrine " is a kind of Odyssey of the eighteenth 
 century : an epic of humour and of adventure. 
 
 In February 1753, Smollett "obliged the town" 
 with his "Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom," 
 a cosmopolitan swindler and adventurer. The book 
 is Smollett's " Barry Lyndon," yet as his hero does not 
 tell his own story, but is perpetually held up as a 
 " dreadful example," there is none of Thackeray's irony, 
 none of his subtlety. "Here is a really bad man, a
 
 SMOLLETT 203 
 
 foreigner too," Smollett seems to say, " do not be 
 misled, oh maidens, by the wiles of such a Count ! 
 Impetuous youth, play not with him at billiards, basset, 
 or gleek. Fathers, on such a rogue shut your doors : 
 collectors, handle not his nefarious antiques. Let all 
 avoid the path and shun the example of Ferdinand, 
 Count Fathom !" 
 
 Such is Smollett's sermon, but, after all, Ferdinand is 
 hardly worse than Roderick or Peregrine. The son of 
 a terrible old sutler and camp-follower, a robber and 
 slayer of wounded men, Ferdinand had to live by his 
 wits, and he was hardly less scrupulous, after all, than 
 Peregrine and Roderick. The daubs of casual gene- 
 rosity were not laid on, and that is all the difference. 
 As Sophia Western was mistaken for Miss Jenny 
 Cameron, so Ferdinand was arrested as Prince Charles, 
 who, in fact, caused much inconvenience to harmless 
 travellers. People were often arrested as "The Pre- 
 tender's son " abroad as well as in England. 
 
 The life and death of Ferdinand's mother, shot by 
 a wounded hussar in her moment of victory, make 
 perhaps the most original and interesting part of this 
 hero's adventures. The rest is much akin to his earlier 
 novels, but the history of Rinaldo and Monimia has a 
 passage not quite alien to the vein of Mrs. Radcliffe. 
 Some remarks in the first chapter show that Smollett 
 felt the censures on his brutality and " lowness," and 
 he promises to seek "that goal of perfection, where 
 nature is castigated almost even to still life . . . where 
 decency, divested of all substance, hovers about like a 
 fantastic shadow."
 
 204 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Smollett never reached that goal, and even the shadow 
 of decency never haunted him so as to make him afraid 
 with any amazement. Smollett avers that he " has had 
 the courage to call in question the talents of a pseudo- 
 patron," and so is charged with " insolence, rancour, and 
 scurrility." Of all these things, and of worse, he had 
 been guilty; his offence had never been Hmited to 
 " calling in question the talents " of persons who had 
 been unsuccessful in getting his play represented. Re- 
 monstrance merely irritated Tobias. His new novel 
 was but a fainter echo of his old novels, a panorama 
 of scoundrelism, with the melodramatic fortunes of the 
 virtuous Monimia for a foil. If read to-day, it is read 
 as a sketch of manners, or want of manners. The 
 scene in which the bumpkin squire rooks the accom- 
 plished Fathom at hazard, in Paris, is prettily conceived, 
 and Smollett's indignation at the British system of pews 
 in church is edifying. But when Monimia appears to 
 her lover as he weeps at her tomb, and proves to be no 
 phantom, but a " warm and substantial " Monimia, 
 capable of being "dished up," like any other Smollettian 
 heroine, the reader is sensibly annoyed. Tobias as un 
 roviantique is absolutely too absurd; "not here, oh 
 Tobias, are haunts meet for thee." 
 
 Smollett's next novel, " Sir Launcelot Greaves," was 
 not published till 1761, after it had appeared in numbers, 
 in The British Magazine. This was a sixpenny serial, 
 published by Newbery. The years between 1753 and 
 1760 had been occupied by Smollett in quarrelling, 
 getting imprisoned for libel, editing the Critical Revieiv^ 
 writing his " History of England," translating (or adapt-
 
 SMOLLETT 205 
 
 ing old translations of) " Don Quixote," and driving a 
 team of literary hacks, whose labours he superintended, 
 and to whom he gave a weekly dinner. These exploits 
 are described by Dr. Carlyle, and by Smollett himself, 
 in " Humphrey Clinker." He did not treat his vassals 
 with much courtesy or consideration ; but then they 
 expected no such treatment. We have no right to 
 talk of his doings as " a blood-sucking method, literary 
 sweating," like a recent biographer of Smollett. Not to 
 speak of the oddly mixed metaphor, we do not know 
 what Smollett's relations to his retainers really were. 
 As an editor he had to see his contributors. The work 
 of others he may have recommended, as " reader " to 
 publishers. Others may have made transcripts for him, 
 or translations. That Smollett "sweated" men, or 
 sucked their blood, or both, seems a crude way of saying 
 that he found them employment. Nobody says that 
 Johnson "sweated" the persons who helped him in 
 compiling his Dictionary ; or that Mr. Jowett " sweated " 
 the friends and pupils who aided him in his translation 
 of Plato. Authors have a perfect right to procure 
 literary assistance, especially in learned books, if they 
 pay for it, and acknowledge their debt to their allies. 
 On the second point, Smollett was probably not in 
 advance of his age. 
 
 " Sir Launcelot Greaves " is, according to Chambers, 
 " a sorry specimen of the genius of the author," and Mr. 
 Oliphant Smeaton calls it " decidedly the least popular " 
 of his novels, while Scott astonishes us by preferring 
 it to "Jonathan Wild." Certainly it is inferior to 
 "Roderick Random" and to "Peregrine Pickle," but
 
 2o6 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 it cannot be so utterly unreal as " The Adventures of 
 an Atom." I, for one, venture to prefer " Sir Launcelot " 
 to " Ferdinand, Count Fathom." Smollett was really 
 trying an experiment in the fantastic. Just as Mr. Anstey 
 Guthrie transfers the mediaeval myth of Venus and the 
 Ring, or the Arabian tale of the bottled-up geni (or 
 djinn) into modern life, so Smollett transferred Don 
 Quixote. His hero, a young baronet of wealth, and of 
 a benevolent and generous temper, is crossed in love. 
 Though not mad, he is eccentric, and commences 
 knight-errant. Scott, and others, object to his armour, 
 and say that, in his ordinary clothes, and with his well- 
 filled purse, he would have been more successful in 
 righting wrongs. Certainly, but then the comic fantasy 
 of the armed knight arriving at the ale-house, and 
 jangling about the rose-hung lanes among the astonished 
 folk of town and country, would have been lost. 
 Smollett is certainly less unsuccessful in wild fantasy, 
 than in the ridiculous romantic scenes where the sub- 
 stantial phantom of Monimia disports itself. The 
 imitation of the knight by the nautical Captain Crowe 
 (an excellent Smollettian mariner) is entertaining, and 
 Sir Launcelot's crusty Sancho is a pleasant variety in 
 squires. The various forms of oppression which the 
 knight resists are of historical interest, as also is the 
 contested election between a rustic Tory and a smooth 
 Ministerialist : " sincerely attached to the Protestant 
 succession, in detestation of a popish, an abjured, and 
 an outlawed Pretender." The heroine, Aurelia Darrel, 
 is more of a lady, and less of a luxury, than perhaps 
 any other of Smollett's women. But how Smollett
 
 SMOLLETT 207 
 
 makes love ! " Tea was called. The lovers were 
 seated ; he looked and languished ; she flushed and 
 faltered ; all was doubt and delirium, fondness and 
 flutter." 
 
 "All was gas and gaiters," said the insane lover of 
 Mrs. Nickleby, with equal delicacy and point. 
 
 Scott says that Smollett, when on a visit to Scotland, 
 used to write his chapter of "copy" in the half-hour 
 before the post went out. Scott was very capable of 
 having the same thing happen to himself. " Sir Launce- 
 lot " is hurriedly, but vigorously written : the fantasy was 
 not understood as Smollett intended it to be, and the 
 book is blotted, as usual, with loathsome medical details. 
 But people in Madame du Deffand's circle used openly 
 to discuss the same topics, to the confusion of Horace 
 Walpole. As the hero of this book is a generous gentle- 
 man, as the most of it is kind and manly, and the 
 humour provocative of an honest laugh, it is by no 
 means to be despised, while the manners, if caricatured, 
 are based on fact. 
 
 It is curious to note that in "Sir Launcelot Greaves," 
 we find a character. Ferret, who frankly poses as a 
 strugforlifeur. M. Daudet's strugforlifeur had heard of 
 Darwin. Mr. Ferret had read Hobbes, learned that 
 man was in a state of nature, and inferred that we ought 
 to prey upon each other, as a pike eats trout. Miss 
 Burney, too, at Bath, about 1780, met a perfectly 
 emancipated young "New Woman." She had read 
 Bolingbroke and Hume, believed in nothing, and was 
 ready to be a " Woman who Did." Our ancestors could 
 be just as advanced as we are.
 
 2o8 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Smollett went on compiling, and supporting himself 
 by his compilations, and those of his vassals. In 1762 
 he unluckily edited a paper called The Briton in the 
 interests of Lord Bute. The Briton was silenced by 
 Wilkes's North Briton. Smollett lost his last patron; 
 he fell ill ; his daughter died ; he travelled angrily in 
 France and Italy. His "Travels" show the choleric 
 nature of the man, and he was especially blamed for not 
 admiring the Venus de Medici. Modern taste, en- 
 lightened by the works of a better period of Greek art, 
 has come round to Smollett's opinions. But, in his own 
 day, he was regarded as a Vandal and a heretic. 
 
 In 1764, he visited Scotland, and was warmly wel- 
 comed by his kinsman, the laird of Bonhill. In 1769, 
 he published "The Adventures of an Atom," a stupid, 
 foul, and scurrilous political satire, in which Lord Bute, 
 having been his patron, was "lashed" in Smollett's 
 usual style. In 1768, Smollett left England for ever. 
 He desired a consulship, but no consulship was found 
 for him, which is not surprising. He died at Monte 
 Nova, near Leghorn, in September (others say October) 
 177 1. He had finished "Humphrey Clinker," which 
 appeared a day or two before his death. 
 
 Thackeray thought "Humphrey Clinker" the most 
 laughable book that ever was written. Certainly nobody 
 is to be envied who does not laugh over the epistles of 
 Winifred Jenkins. The book is too well known for 
 analysis. The family of Matthew Bramble, Esq., are 
 on their travels, with his nephew and niece, young Mel- 
 ford and Lydia Melford, with Miss Jenkins, and the 
 squire's tart, greedy, and amorous old maid of a sister,
 
 SMOLLETT 209 
 
 Tabitha Bramble. This lady's persistent amours and 
 mean avarice scarcely strike modern readers as amusing. 
 Smollett gave aspects of his own character in the 
 choleric, kind, benevolent Matthew Bramble, and in 
 the patriotic and paradoxical Lieutenant Lismahago. 
 Bramble, a gouty invalid, is as full of medical abomi- 
 nations as Smollett himself, as ready to fight, and as 
 generous and open-handed. Probably the author shared 
 Lismahago's contempt of trade, his dislike of the Union 
 (1707), his fieryindependence (yet he^ic^i- marry Tabitha!), 
 and those opinions in which Lismahago heralds some of 
 the social notions of Mr. Ruskin. 
 
 Melford is an honourable kind of "walking gentle- 
 man " ; Lydia, though enamoured, is modest and 
 dignified ; Clinker is a worthy son of Bramble, with 
 abundant good humour, and a pleasing vein of Wesleyan 
 Methodism. But the grotesque spelling, rural vanity, 
 and fidivete of Winifred Jenkins, with her affection for 
 her kitten, make her the most delightful of this 
 wandering company. After beholding the humours and 
 partaking of the waters of Bath, they follow Smollett's 
 own Scottish tour, and each character gives his picture 
 of the country which Smollett had left at its lowest ebb 
 of industry and comfort, and found so much more 
 prosperous. The book is a mine for the historian of 
 manners and customs : the novel-reader finds Count 
 Fathom metamorphosed into Mr. Grieve, an exemplary 
 apothecary, "a sincere convert to virtue," and "un- 
 affectedly pious." 
 
 Apparently a wave of good-nature came over Smollett : 
 
 he forgave everybody, his own relations even, and he 
 
 o
 
 2IO ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 reclaimed his villain. A patron might have played 
 \vith him. He mellowed in Scotland : Matthew there 
 became less tart, and more tolerant; an actual English 
 Matthew would have behaved quite otherwise. " Hum- 
 phrey Clinker " is an astonishing book, as the work of 
 an exiled, poor, and dying man. None of his works 
 leaves so admirable an impression of Smollett's virtues : 
 none has so few of his less amiable qualities. 
 
 With the cadet of Bonhill, outworn with living, and 
 with labour, died the burly, brawling, picturesque old 
 English novel of humour and of the road. We have 
 nothing notable in this manner, before the arrival of Mr. 
 Pickwick. An exception will scarcely be made in the 
 interest of Richard Cumberland, who, as Scott says, 
 " has occasionally . . . become disgusting, when he 
 meant to be humorous." Already Walpole had begun 
 the new "Gothic romance," and the "Castle of Otrarito," 
 with Miss Burney's novels, was to lead up to Mrs. 
 Radcliffe and Scott, to Miss Edgeworth and Miss 
 Austen.
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Sainte-Beuve says somewhere that it is impossible to 
 speak of "The German Classics." Perhaps he would 
 not have allowed us to talk of the American classics. 
 American literature is too nearly contemporary : Time 
 has not tried it. But, if America possesses a classic 
 author (and I am not denying that she may have 
 several), that author is decidedly Hawthorne. His 
 renown is unimpeached : his greatness is probably per- 
 manent, because he is at once such an original and 
 personal genius, and such a judicious and determined 
 artist. 
 
 Hawthorne did not set himself to "compete with 
 life." He did not make the effort — the proverbially 
 tedious effort — to say everything. To his mind, fiction 
 was not a mirror of commonplace persons, and he was 
 not the analyst of the minutest among their ordinary 
 emotions. Nor did he make a moral, or social, or politi- 
 cal purpose the end and aim of his art. Moral as many 
 of his pieces naturally are, we cannot call them didactic. 
 He did not expect, nor intend, to better people by them. 
 He drew the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale without hoping 
 that his Awful Example would persuade readers to 
 
 "make a clean breast" of their iniquities and their 
 
 213
 
 214 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 secrets. It was the moral situation that interested him, 
 not the edifying effect of his picture of that situation 
 upon the minds of novel-readers. 
 
 He set himself to write Romance, with a definite idea 
 of what Romance-writing should be ; "to dream strange 
 things, and make them look like truth." Nothing can be 
 more remote from the modern system of reporting com- 
 monplace things, in the hope that they will read like truth. 
 As all painters must do, according to good traditions, he 
 selected a subject, and then placed it in a deliberately 
 arranged light — not in the full glare of the noonday sun, 
 and in the disturbances of wind, and weather, and cloud. 
 Moonshine filling a familiar chamber, and making it un- 
 familiar, moonshine mixed with the " faint ruddiness on 
 walls and ceiling " of fire, was the light, or a clear brown 
 twilight was the light by which he chose to work. So 
 he tells us in the preface to "The Scarlet Letter." The 
 room could be filled with the ghosts of old dwellers in 
 it ; faint, yet distinct, all the life that had passed through 
 it came back, and spoke with him, and inspired him. 
 He kept his eyes on these figures, tangled in some rare 
 knot of Fate, and of Desire : these he painted, not 
 attending much to the bustle of existence that surrounded 
 them, not permitting superfluous elements to mingle 
 with them, and to distract him. 
 
 The method of Hawthorne can be more easily traced 
 than that of most artists as great as himself. Pope's 
 brilliant passages and disconnected trains of thought are 
 explained when we remember that " paper-sparing," as 
 he says, he wrote two, or four, or six couplets on odd, 
 stray bits of casual writing material. These he had to
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 215 
 
 join together, somehow, and between his " Orient Pearls 
 at Random Strung " there is occasionally " too much 
 string," as Dickens once said on another opportunity. 
 Hawthorne's method is revealed in his published note- 
 books. In these he jotted the germ of an idea, the first 
 notion of a singular, perhaps supernatural moral situa- 
 tion. Many of these he never used at all, on others he 
 would dream, and dream, till the persons in the situa- 
 tions became characters, and the thing was evolved into 
 a story. Thus he may have invented such a problem 
 as this : " The effect of a great, sudden sin on a simple 
 and joyous nature," and thence came all the substance of 
 " The Marble Faun " (" Transformation "). The original 
 and germinal idea would naturally divide itself into an- 
 other, as the protozoa reproduce themselves. Another 
 idea was the effect of nearness to the great crime on a 
 pure and spotless nature : hence the character of Hilda. 
 In the preface to "The Scarlet Letter," Hawthorne 
 shows us how he tried, by reflection and dream, to warm 
 the vague persons of the first mere notion or hint into 
 such life as characters in romance inherit. While he 
 was in the Civil Service of his country, in the Custom 
 House at Salem, he could not do this ; he needed free- 
 dom. He was dismissed by political opponents from 
 office, and instantly he was himself again, and wrote his 
 most popular and, perhaps, his best book. The evolu- 
 tion of his work was from the prime notion (which he 
 confessed that he loved best when "strange") to the 
 short story, and thence to the full and rounded novel. 
 All his work was leisurely. All his language was picked, 
 though not with affectation. He did not strive to make
 
 2i6 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 a style out of the use of odd words, or of familiar words 
 in odd places. Almost always he looked for " a kind of 
 spiritual medium, seen through which" his romances, 
 like the Old Manse in which he dwelt, "had not quite 
 the aspect of belonging to the material world." 
 
 The spiritual medium which he liked, he was partly 
 born into, and partly he created it. The child of a race 
 which came from England, robust and Puritanic, he had 
 in his veins the blood of judges — of those judges who 
 burned witches and persecuted Quakers. His fancy is 
 as much inflenced by the old fanciful traditions of Pro- 
 vidence, of Witchcraft, of haunting Indian magic, as 
 Scott's is influenced by legends of foray and feud, by 
 ballad, and song, and old wives' tales, and records of 
 conspiracies, fire-raisings, tragic love - adventures, and 
 border wars. Like Scott, Hawthorne lived in phantasy 
 — in phantasy which returned to the romantic past, 
 wherein his ancestors had been notable men. It is a 
 commonplace, but an inevitable commonplace, to add 
 that he was filled with the idea of Heredity, with the 
 belief that we are all only new combinations of our 
 fathers that were before us. This has been made into a 
 kind of pseudo-scientific doctrine by M. Zola, in the 
 long series of his Rougon-Macquart novels. Hawthorne 
 treated it with a more delicate and a serener art in " The 
 House of the Seven Gables." 
 
 It is curious to mark Hawthorne's attempts to break 
 away from himself — from the man that heredity, and 
 circumstance, and the divine gift of genius had made 
 him. He naturally " haunts the mouldering lodges of 
 the past " ; but when he came to England (where such
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 217 
 
 lodges are abundant), he was ill-pleased and cross- 
 grained. He knew that a long past, with mysteries, 
 dark places, malisons, curses, historic wrongs, was the 
 proper atmosphere of his art. But a kind of con- 
 scientious desire to be something other than himself — 
 something more ordinary and popular — make him thank 
 Heaven that his chosen atmosphere was rare in his 
 native land. He grumbled at it, when he was in the 
 midst of it ; he grumbled in England ; and how he 
 grumbled in Rome! He permitted the American 
 Eagle to make her nest in his bosom, "with the cus- 
 tomary infirmity of temper that characterises this un- 
 happy fowl," as he says in his essay "The Custom 
 House." "The general truculency of her attitude" 
 seems to " threaten mischief to the inoffensive com- 
 munity" of Europe, and especially of England and 
 Italy. 
 
 Perhaps Hawthorne travelled too late, when his 
 habits were too much fixed. It does not become 
 Englishmen to be angry because a voyager is annoyed 
 at not finding everything familiar and customary in 
 lands which he only visits because they are strange. 
 This is an inconsistency to which English travellers 
 are particularly prone. But it is, in Hawthorne's case, 
 perhaps, another instance of his conscientious attempts 
 to be, what he was not, very much like other people. 
 His unexpected explosions of Puritanism, perhaps, are 
 caused by the sense of being too much himself. He 
 speaks of " the Squeamish love of the Beautiful " as if 
 the love of the Beautiful were something unworthy of 
 an able-bodied citizen. In some arts, as in painting
 
 2i8 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 and sculpture, his taste was very far from being at home, 
 as his Italian journals especially prove. In short, he 
 was an artist in a community for long most inartistic. 
 He could not do what many of us find very difficult — 
 he could not take Beauty with gladness as it comes, 
 neither shrinking from it as immoral, nor getting girlishly 
 drunk upon it, in the aesthetic fashion, and screaming 
 over it in an intoxication of surprise. His tendency 
 was to be rather shy and afraid of Beauty, as a pleasant 
 but not immaculately respectable acquaintance. Or, 
 perhaps, he was merely deferring to Anglo-Saxon public 
 opinion. 
 
 Possibly he was trying to wean himself from him- 
 self, and from his own genius, when he consorted 
 with odd amateur socialists in farm-work, and when he 
 mixed, at Concord, with the " queer, strangely-dressed, 
 oddly-behaved mortals, most of whom took upon them- 
 selves to be important agents of the world's destiny, yet 
 were simple bores of a very intense water." They 
 haunted Mr. Emerson as they haunted Shelley, and 
 Hawthorne had to see much of them. But they neither 
 made a convert of him, nor irritated him into resent- 
 ment. His long-enduring kindness to the unfortunate 
 Miss Delia Bacon, an early believer in the nonsense 
 about Bacon and Shakespeare, was a model of manly 
 and generous conduct. He was, indeed, an admirable 
 character, and his goodness had the bloom on it of 
 a courteous and kindly nature that loved the Muses. 
 But, as one has ventured to hint, the development of 
 his genius and taste was hampered now and then, 
 apparently, by a desire to put himself on the level of
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 219 
 
 the general public, and of their ideas. This, at least, 
 is how one explains to oneself various remarks in his 
 prefaces, journals, and note-books. This may account 
 for the moral allegories which too weirdly haunt some 
 of his short, early pieces. Edgar Poe, in a passage 
 full of very honest and well-chosen praise, found fault 
 with the allegorical business. 
 
 Mr. Hutton, from whose " Literary Essays " I borrow 
 Poe's opinion, says : " Poe boldly asserted that the con- 
 spicuously ideal scaffoldings of Hawthorne's stories were 
 but the monstrous fruits of the bad transcendental atmos- 
 phere which he breathed so long." But I hope this way 
 of putting it is not Poe's. " Ideal scaffoldings," are odd 
 enough, but when scaffoldings turn out to be "fruits" of 
 an "atmosphere," and monstrous fruits of a "bad tran- 
 scendental atmosphere," the brain reels in the fumes 
 of mixed metaphors. " Let him mend his pen," cried 
 Poe, "get a bottle of visible ink, come out from the 
 Old Manse, cut Mr. Alcott," and, in fact, write about 
 things less impalpable, as Mr. Mallock's heroine pre- 
 ferred to be loved, " in a more human sort of way." 
 
 Hawthorne's way was never too ruddily and robustly 
 human. Perhaps, even in "The Scarlet Letter," we 
 feel too distinctly that certain characters are moral con- 
 ceptions, not warmed and wakened out of the allegorical 
 into the real. The persons in an allegory may be real 
 enough, as Bunyan has proved by examples. But that 
 culpable clergyman, Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, with his 
 large, white brow, his melancholy eyes, his hand on 
 his heart, and his general resemblance to the High 
 Church Curate in Thackeray's " Our Street," is he
 
 220 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 real? To me he seems very unworthy to be 
 Hester's lover, for she is a beautiful woman of flesh 
 and blood. Mr. Dimmesdale was not only immoral ; 
 he was unsportsmanlike. He had no more pluck than 
 a church-mouse. His miserable passion was degraded 
 by its brevity ; how could he see this woman's disgrace 
 for seven long years, and never pluck up heart either 
 to share her shame or peccare fortiterl He is a lay 
 figure, very cleverly, but somewhat conventionally made 
 and painted. The vengeful husband of Hester, Roger 
 Chillingworth, is a Mr. Casaubon stung into jealous 
 anger. But his attitude, watching ever by Dimmesdale, 
 tormenting him, and yet in his confidence, and ever 
 unsuspected, reminds one of a conception dear to 
 Dickens. He uses it in "David Copperfield," where 
 Mr. Micawber (of all people !) plays this trick on Uriah 
 Heep; he uses it in "Hunted Down"; he was about 
 using it in " Edwin Drood " ; he used it (old Martin 
 and Pecksniff) in "Martin Chuzzlewit." The person 
 of Roger Chillingworth and his conduct are a little too 
 melodramatic for Hawthorne's genius. 
 
 In Dickens's manner, too, is Hawthorne's long 
 sarcastic address to Judge Pyncheon (in "The House 
 of the Seven Gables"), as the judge sits dead in 
 his chair, with his watch ticking in his hand. 
 Occasionally a chance remark reminds one of Dickens ; 
 this for example: He is talking of large, black 
 old books of divinity, and of their successors, tiny 
 books, Elzevirs perhaps. " These little old volumes 
 impressed me as if they had been intended for very 
 large ones, but had been unfortunately blighted at an
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 221 
 
 early stage of their growth." This might almost deceive 
 the elect as a piece of the true Boz. Their widely 
 different talents did really intersect each other where 
 the perverse, the grotesque, and the terrible dwell. 
 
 To myself "The House of the Seven Gables" has 
 always appeared the most beautiful and attractive of 
 Hawthorne's novels. He actually gives us a love story, 
 and condescends to a pretty heroine. The curse of 
 " Maule's Blood " is a good old romantic idea, terribly 
 handled. There is more of lightness, and of a cob- 
 webby dusty humour in Hepzibah Pyncheon, the de- 
 cayed lady shopkeeper, than Hawthorne commonly cares 
 to display. Do you care for the " first lover," the 
 Photographer's Young Man? It may be conventional 
 prejudice, but I seem to see him going about on a 
 tricycle, and I don't think him the right person for 
 Phoebe. Perhaps it is really the beautiful, gentle, 
 oppressed Clifford who haunts one's memory most, a 
 kind of tragic and thwarted Harold Skimpole. " How 
 pleasant, how delightful," he murmured, but not as if 
 addressing any one. "Will it last? How balmy the 
 atmosphere through that open window ! An open 
 window ! How beautiful that play of sunshine. Those 
 flowers, how very fragrant ! That young girl's face, how 
 cheerful, how blooming. A flower with the dew on it, 
 and sunbeams in the dewdrops. . . ." This comparison 
 with Skimpole may sound like an unkind criticism of 
 Clifford's character and place in the story — it is only a 
 chance note of a chance resemblance. 
 
 Indeed, it may be that Hawthorne himself was 
 aware of the resemblance. "An individual of Clif-
 
 222 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 ford's character," he remarks, " can always be pricked 
 more acutely through his sense of the beautiful and 
 harmonious than through his heart." And he suggests 
 that, if Clifford had not been so long in prison, his 
 aesthetic zeal " might have eaten out or filed away his 
 affections." This was what befell Harold Skimpole — 
 himself "in prisons often" — at Coavinses ! The Judge 
 Pyncheon of the tale is also a masterly study of swag- 
 gering black-hearted respectability, and then, in addition 
 to all the poetry of his style, and the charm of his 
 haunted air, Hawthorne favours us with a brave con- 
 clusion of the good sort, the old sort. They come into 
 money, they marry, they are happy ever after. This is 
 doing things handsomely, though some of our modern 
 novelists think it coarse and degrading, Hawthorne 
 did not think so, and they are not exactly better artists 
 than Hawthorne. 
 
 Yet he, too, had his economies, which we resent. I 
 do not mean his not telling us what it was that Roger 
 Chillingworth saw on Arthur Dimmesdale's bare breast. 
 To leave that vague is quite legitimate. But what had 
 Miriam and the spectre of the Catacombs done ? Who 
 was the spectre ? What did he want ? To have told 
 all this would have been better than to fill the novel 
 with padding about Rome, sculpture, and the Ethics of 
 Art. As the silly saying runs : " the people has a right 
 to know " about Miriam and her ghostly acquaintance.^ 
 But the "Marble Faun" is not of Hawthorne's best 
 
 1 I know, now, who Miriam was and who was the haunter of the 
 Catacombs. But perhaps the people is as well without the knowledge 
 of an old and ' ' ower true tale " that shook a throne.
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 223 
 
 period, beautiful as are a hundred passages in the 
 tale. 
 
 Beautiful passages are as common in his prose as gold 
 in the richest quartz. How excellent are his words on 
 the first faint but certain breath of Autumn in the air, 
 felt, perhaps, early in July. " And then came Autumn, 
 with his immense burthen of apples, dropping them 
 continually from his overladen shoulders as he trudged 
 along." Keats might have written so of Autumn in the 
 orchards — if Keats had been writing prose. 
 
 There are geniuses more sunny, large, and glad than 
 Hawthorne's, none more original, more surefooted, in 
 his own realm of moonlight and twilight.
 
 THE PARADISE OF POETS
 
 THE PARADISE OF POETS 
 
 We were talking of Love, Constancy, the Ideal. " Who 
 ever loved like the poets ? " cried Lady Violet Lebas, 
 her pure, pale cheek flushing. " Ah, if ever I am to 
 love, he shall be a singer ! " 
 
 " Tenors are popular, very," said Lord Walter. 
 
 " I mean a poet," she answered witheringly. 
 
 Near them stood Mr. Witham, the author of " Heart's 
 Chords Tangled." 
 
 " Ah," said he, " that reminds me. I have been 
 trying to catch it all the morning. That reminds me 
 of my dream." 
 
 " Tell us your dream," murmured Lady Violet Lebas, 
 and he told it. 
 
 " It was through an unfortunate but pardonable 
 blunder," said Mr. Witham, " that I died, and reached 
 the Paradise of Poets. I had, indeed, published volumes 
 of verse, but with the most blameless motives. Other 
 poets were continually sending me theirs, and, as I 
 could not admire them, and did not like to reply by 
 critical remarks, I simply printed some rhymes for the 
 purpose of sending them to the gentlemen who favoured 
 me with theirs. I always wrote on the fly-leaf a quota- 
 tion from the " Iliad," about giving copper in exchange 
 for gold ; and the few poets who could read Greek 
 
 were gratified, while the others, probably, thought a 
 
 227
 
 228 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 compliment was intended. Nothing could be less 
 culpable or pretentious, but, through some mistake 
 on the part of Charon, I was drafted off to the Paradise 
 of Poets. 
 
 " Outside the Golden Gate a number of Shadows 
 were waiting, in different attitudes of depression and 
 languor. Bavius and Maevius were there, still com- 
 plaining of 'cliques,' railing at Horace for a mere 
 rhymer of society, and at Virgil as a plagiarist. 'Take 
 away his cribs from Homer and Apollonius Rhodius,' 
 quoth honest Maevius, 'and what is there left of him?' 
 I also met a society of gentlemen, in Greek costume, 
 of various ages, from a half-naked minstrel with a 
 tortoiseshell lyre in his hand to an elegant of the age 
 of Pericles. They all consorted together, talking various 
 dialects of Aeolic, Ionian, Attic Greek, and so forth, 
 which were plainly not intelligible to each other. I 
 ventured to ask one of the company who he was, but 
 he, with a sweep of his hand, said, ' We are Homer ! ' 
 When I expressed my regret and surprise that the 
 Golden Gate had not yet opened for so distinguished, 
 though collective, an artist, my friend answered that, 
 according to Fick, Peppmiiller, and many other learned 
 men, they were Homer. ' But an impostor from Chios 
 has got in somehow,' he said ; ' they don't pay the least 
 attention to the Germans in the Paradise of Poets.' 
 
 "At this moment the Golden Gates were thrown 
 apart, and a fair lady, in an early Italian costume, carrying 
 a laurel in her hand, appeared at the entrance. All 
 the Shadows looked up with an air of weary expectation, 
 like people waiting for their turn in a doctor's consulting- 
 room. She beckoned to me, however, and I made
 
 THE PARADISE OF POETS 229 
 
 haste to follow her. The words ' Charlatan ! ' ' You a 
 poet ! ' in a variety of languages, greeted me by way 
 of farewell from the Shadows. 
 
 " ' The renowned Laura, if I am not mistaken,' I 
 ventured to remark, recognising her, indeed, from the 
 miniature in the Laurentian library at Florence. 
 
 "She bowed, and I began to ask for her adorer, Petrarch. 
 
 " ' Excuse me,' said Laura, as we glided down a 
 mossy path, under the shade of trees particularly dear 
 to poets, 'excuse me, but the sonneteer of whom you 
 speak is one whose name I cannot bear to mention. 
 His conduct with Burns's Clarinda, his heartless in- 
 fatuation for Stella ' 
 
 "'You astonish me,' I said. 'In the Paradise of 
 Poets ' 
 
 "'They are poets still — incorrigible!' answered the 
 lady; then slightly raising her voice of silver, as a 
 beautiful appearance in a toga drew near, she cried 
 ' Catullo inio ! ' 
 
 "The greeting between these accomplished ghosts 
 was too kindly to leave room for doubt as to the ardour 
 of their affections. 
 
 " 'Will you, my Catullus,' murmured Laura, 'explain 
 to this poet from the land of fogs, any matters which, 
 to him, may seem puzzling and unfamiliar in our 
 Paradise ? ' 
 
 "The Veronese, with a charming smile, took my 
 hand, and led me to a shadowy arbour, whence we 
 enjoyed a prospect of many rivers and mountains in 
 the poets' heaven. Among these I recognised the 
 triple crest of the Eildons, Grongar Hill, Cithaeron 
 and Etna ; while the reed-fringed waters of the Mincius
 
 230 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 flowed musically between the banks and braes o' bonny 
 Doon to join the Tweed. Blithe ghosts were wander- 
 ing by, in all varieties of apparel, and I distinctly 
 observed Dante's Beatrice, leaning loving on the arm 
 of Sir Philip Sidney, while Dante was closely engaged 
 in conversation with the lost Lenore, celebrated by 
 Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. 
 
 " ' In what can my knowledge of the Paradise of Poets 
 be serviceable to you, sir ? ' said Catullus, as he flung 
 himself at the feet of Laura, on the velvet grass. 
 
 "'I am disinclined to seem impertinently curious,' 
 I answered, ' but the ladies in this fair, smiling country — 
 have the gods made them poetical ? ' 
 
 " ' Not generally,' replied Catullus. ' Indeed, if you 
 would be well with them, I may warn you never to mention 
 poetry in their hearing. They never cared for it while 
 on earth, and in this place it is a topic which the 
 prudent carefully avoid among ladies. To tell the truth, 
 they have had to listen to far too much poetry, and 
 too many discussions on the caesura. There are, indeed, 
 a few lady poets — very few. Sappho, for example ; 
 indeed I cannot recall any other at this moment. The 
 result is that Phaon, of all the shadows here, is the most 
 distinguished by the fair. He was not a poet, you 
 know; he got in on account of Sappho, who adored 
 him. They are estranged now, of course.' 
 
 " ' You interest me deeply,' I answered. ' And now, 
 will you kindly tell me why these ladies are here, if they 
 were not poets ? ' 
 
 " ' The women that were our ideals while we dwelt 
 on earth, the women we loved but never won, or, at all 
 events, never wedded, they for whom we sighed while
 
 THE PARADISE OF POETS 231 
 
 in the arms of a recognised and legitimate affection, have 
 been chosen by the Olympians to keep us company in 
 Paradise ! ' 
 
 " ' Then wherefore,' I interrupted, ' do I see Robert 
 Burns loitering with that lady in a ruff, — Cassandra, 
 I make no doubt — Ronsard's Cassandra ? And why is 
 the incomparable Clarinda inseparable from Petrarch ; 
 and Miss Patty Blount, Pope's flame, from the Syrian 
 Meleager, while his Heliodore is manifestly devoted to 
 Mr. Emerson, whom, by the way, I am delighted, if 
 rather surprised, to see here ? ' 
 
 " ' Ah,' said Catullus, ' you are a new-comer among us. 
 Poets will be poets, and no sooner have they attained 
 their desire, and dwelt in the company of their earthly 
 Ideals, than they feel strangely, yet irresistibly drawn to 
 Another. So it was in Hfe, so it will ever be. No Ideal 
 can survive a daily companionship, and fortunate is the 
 poet who did not marry his first love ! ' 
 
 ** ' As far as that goes,' I answered, ' most of you were 
 highly favoured ; indeed, I do not remember any poet 
 whose Ideal was his wife, or whose first love led him to 
 the altar.' 
 
 " ' I was not a marrying man myself,' answered the 
 Veronese ; ' few of us were. Myself, Horace, Virgil — 
 we were all bachelors.' 
 
 " ' And Lesbia ! ' 
 
 " I said this in a low voice, for Laura was weaving 
 bay into a chaplet, and inattentive to our conversation. 
 
 •"Poor Lesbia!' said Catullus, with a suppressed 
 sigh. ' How I misjudged that girl ! How cruel, how 
 causeless were my reproaches,' and wildly rending his 
 curled locks and laurel crown, he fled into a thicket,
 
 232 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 whence there soon arose the melancholy notes of the 
 Ausonian lyre.' 
 
 " ' He is incorrigible,' said Laura, very coldly ; and 
 she deliberately began to tear and toss away the frag- 
 ments of the chaplet she had been weaving. ' I shall 
 never break him of that habit of versifying. But they 
 are all alike.' 
 
 "'Is there nobody here,' said I, 'who is happy with 
 his Ideal — nobody but has exchanged Ideals with some 
 other poet ? ' 
 
 " ' There is one,' she said. ' He comes of a northern 
 tribe ; and in his life-time he never rhymed upon his 
 unattainable lady, or if rhyme he did, the accents never 
 carried her name to the ears of the vulgar. Look there.' 
 
 "She pointed to the river at our feet, and I knew 
 the mounted figure that was riding the ford, with a green- 
 mantled lady beside him like the Fairy Queen. 
 
 " Surely I had read of her, and knew her — 
 
 " ' She whose blue eyes their secret told, 
 Though shaded by her locks of gold.' 
 
 " ' They are different ; I know not why. They are 
 constant,' said Laura, and rising with an air of chagrin, 
 she disappeared among the boughs of the trees that bear 
 her name. 
 
 " ' Unhappy hearts of poets,' I mused. ' Light things 
 and sacred they are, but even in their Paradise, and 
 among their chosen, with every wish fulfilled, and united 
 to their beloved, they cannot be at rest ! ' 
 
 " Thus moralising, I wended my way to a crag, whence 
 there was a wide prospect. Certain poets were stand- 
 ing there, looking down into an abyss, and to them 
 I joined myself.
 
 THE PARADISE OF POETS 233 
 
 " ' Ah, I cannot bear it ! ' said a voice, and, as he 
 turned away, his brow already clearing, his pain already 
 forgotten, I beheld the august form of Shakespeare. 
 
 " Marking my curiosity before it was expressed, he 
 answered the unuttered question. 
 
 " ' That is a sight for Pagans,' he said, ' and may give 
 them pleasure. But my Paradise were embittered if I 
 had to watch the sorrows of others, and their torments, 
 however well deserved. The others are gazing on the 
 purgatory of critics and commentators.' 
 
 " He passed from me, and I joined the ' Ionian father 
 of the rest' — Homer, who, with a countenance of un- 
 speakable majesty, was seated on a throne of rock, 
 between the Mantuan Virgil of the laurel crown, Hugo, 
 Sophocles, Milton, Lovelace, Tennyson, and Shelley. 
 
 "At their feet I beheld, in a vast and gloomy hall, 
 many an honest critic, many an erudite commentator, an 
 army of reviewers. Some were condemned to roll logs 
 up insuperable heights, whence they descended thundering 
 to the plain. Others were set to impositions, and I 
 particularly observed that the Homeric commentators 
 v/ere obliged to write out the " Iliad " and " Odyssey " in 
 their complete shape, and were always driven by fiends to 
 the task when they prayed for the bare charity of being 
 permitted to leave out the ' interpolations.' Others, fearful 
 to narrate, were torn into as many fragments as they had 
 made of these immortal epics. Others, such as Aristar- 
 chus, were spitted on their own critical signs of dis- 
 approval. Many reviewers were compelled to read the 
 books which they had criticised without perusal, and it was 
 terrible to watch the agonies of the worthy pressmen 
 who were set to this unwonted task. ' May we not
 
 234 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 be let off with the preface ? ' they cried in piteous accents. 
 * May we not glance at the table of contents and be done 
 with it?' But the presiding demons (who had been 
 Examiners in the bodily life) drove them remorseless to 
 their toils. 
 
 "Among the condemned I could not but witness, 
 with sympathy, the punishment reserved for translators. 
 The translators of Virgil, in particular, were a vast and 
 motley assemblage of most respectable men. Bishops 
 were there, from Gawain Douglas downwards ; Judges, 
 in their ermine ; professors, clergymen, civil servants, 
 writhing in all the tortures that the blank verse, the 
 anapaestic measure, the metre of the " Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel," the heroic couplet and similar devices can 
 inflict. For all these men had loved Virgil, though not 
 wisely : and now their penance was to hear each other 
 read their own translations." 
 
 "That must have been more than they could bear," 
 said Lady Violet. 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Witham ; " I should know, for down 
 I fell into Tartarus with a crash, and writhed among the 
 Translators." 
 
 "Why?" asked Lady Violet. 
 
 *' Because I have translated Theocritus ! " 
 
 " Mr. Witham," said Lady Violet, " did you meet your 
 ideal woman when you were in the Paradise of Poets ? " 
 
 "She yet walks this earth," said the bard, with a too 
 significant bow. 
 
 Lady Violet turned coldly away. 
 
 Mr. Witham was never invited to the Blues again — the 
 name of Lord Azure's place in Kent. 
 The Poet is shut out of Paradise.
 
 PARIS AND HELEN
 
 PARIS AND HELEN 
 
 The first name in romance, the most ancient and the 
 most enduring, is that of Argive Helen. During three 
 thousand years fair women have been born, have lived, 
 and been loved, " that there might be a song in the ears 
 of men of later time," but, compared to the renown of 
 Helen, their glory is dim. Cleopatra, who held the 
 world's fate in her hands, and lay in the arms of Caesar ; 
 Mary Stuart {Maria Verticordia), for whose sake, as a 
 northern novelist tells, peasants have lain awake, sorrow- 
 ing that she is dead ; Agnes Sorel, Fair Rosamond, la 
 belle Stuart, "the Pompadour and the Parabere," can 
 still enchant us from the page of history and 'chronicle. 
 "Zeus gave them beauty, which naturally rules even 
 strength itself," to quote the Greek orator on the mistress 
 of them all, of her who, having never lived, can never 
 die, the Daughter of the Swan. 
 
 While Helen enjoys this immortality, and is the ideal 
 of beauty upon earth, it is curious to reflect on the 
 modernite of her story, the oldest of the love stories of 
 the world. In Homer we first meet her, the fairest of 
 women in the song of the greatest of poets. It might 
 almost seem as if Homer meant to justify, by his deal- 
 ing with Helen, some of the most recent theories of 
 
 237
 
 238 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 literary art. In the " Iliad " and " Odyssey " the tale of 
 Helen is without a beginning and without an end, like a 
 frieze on a Greek temple. She crosses the stage as a figure 
 familiar to all, the poet's audience clearly did not need 
 to be told who Helen was, nor anything about her 
 youth. 
 
 The famous judgment of Paris, the beginning of 
 evil to Achaeans and Ilian men, is only mentioned 
 once by Homer, late, and in a passage of doubtful 
 authenticity. Of her reconciliation to her wedded lord, 
 Menelaus, not a word is said ; of her end we are told 
 no more than that for her and him a mansion in 
 Elysium is prepared— 
 
 " Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow." 
 
 We leave her happy in Argos, a smile on her lips, 
 a gift in her hands, as we met her in Troy, beautiful, 
 adored despite her guilt, as sweet in her repentance as 
 in her unvexed Argive home. Women seldom mention 
 her, in the epic, but with horror and anger; men 
 never address her but in gentle courtesy. What is 
 her secret? How did she leave her home with Paris — 
 beguiled by love, by magic, or driven by the implacable 
 Aphrodite ? Homer is silent on all of these things ; 
 these things, doubtless, were known by his audience. 
 In his poem Helen moves as a thing of simple grace, 
 courtesy, and kindness, save when she rebels against her 
 doom, after seeing her lover fly from her husband's 
 spear. Had we only Homer, by far our earliest literary 
 source, we should know little of the romance of Helen ; 
 should only know that a lawless love brought ruin on
 
 PARIS AND HELEN 239 
 
 Troy and sorrow on the Achaeans ; and this is thrown 
 out, with no moral comment, without praise or blame. 
 The end, we learn, was peace, and beauty was recon- 
 ciled to life. There is no explanation, no denouement ; 
 and we know how much denouements and explanations 
 hampered Scott and Shakespeare. From these trammels 
 Homer is free, as a god is free from mortal limitations. 
 
 All this manner of telling a tale — a manner so ancient, 
 so original — is akin, in practice, to recent theories of 
 what art should be, and what art seldom is, perhaps 
 never is, in modern hands. 
 
 Modem enough, again, is the choice of a married 
 woman for the heroine of the earliest love tale. Apol- 
 lonius Rhodius sings (and no man has ever sung so 
 well) of a maiden's love ; Virgil, of a widow's ; Homer, 
 of love that has defied law, blindly obedient to destiny, 
 which dominates even Zeus. Once again, Helen is not 
 a very young girl ; ungallant chronologists have attri- 
 buted to her I know not what age. We think of her 
 as about the age of the Venus of Milo ; in truth, she 
 was "ageless and immortal." Homer never describes 
 her beauty ; we only see it reflected in the eyes of the 
 old men, white and weak, thin-voiced as cicalas : but 
 hers is a loveliness " to turn an old man young." " It 
 is no marvel," they say, "that for her sake Trojans and 
 Achaeans slay each other." 
 
 She was embroidering at a vast web, working in 
 gold and scarlet the sorrows that for her sake befell 
 mankind, when they called her to the walls to see Paris 
 fight Menelaus, in the last year of the war. There she 
 stands, in raiment of silvery white, her heart yearning for
 
 240 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 her old love and her own city. Already her thought is 
 far from Paris. Was her heart ever with Paris ? That 
 is her secret. A very old legend, mentioned by the 
 Bishop of Thessalonica, Eustathius, tells us that Paris 
 magically beguiled her, disguised in the form of Mene- 
 laus, her lord, as Uther beguiled Ygerne. She sees the 
 son of Priam play the dastard in the fight ; she turns in 
 wrath on Aphrodite, who would lure her back to his 
 arms ; but to his arms she must go, " for the daughter 
 of Zeus was afraid." Violence is put upon beauty ; it is 
 soiled, or seems soiled, in its way through the world. 
 Helen urges Paris again into the war. He has a heart 
 invincibly light and gay ; shame does not weigh on him. 
 " Not every man is valiant every day," he says ; yet 
 once engaged in battle, he bears him bravely, and his 
 arrows rain death among the mail-clad Achaeans. 
 
 What Homer thinks of Paris we can only guess. His 
 beauty is the bane of Ilios ; but Homer forgives so 
 much to beauty. In the end of the " Iliad," Helen sings 
 the immortal dirge over Hector, the stainless knight, 
 " with thy loving kindness and thy gentle speech." 
 
 In the "Odyssey," she is at home again, playing the 
 gracious part of hostess to Odysseus's wandering son, 
 pouring into the bowl the magic herb of Egypt, "which 
 brings forgetfulness of sorrow." The wandering son of 
 Odysseus departs with a gift for his bride, "to wear 
 upon the day of her desire, a memorial of the hands 
 of Helen," the beautiful hands, that in Troy or Argos 
 were never idle. 
 
 Of Helen, from Homer, we know no more. Grace, 
 penitence in exile, peace at home, these are the portion
 
 PARIS AND HELEN 241 
 
 of her who set East and West at war and ruined the 
 city of Priam of the ashen spear. As in the strange 
 legend preserved by Servius, the commentator on Virgil, 
 who tells us that Helen wore a red " star-stone," whence 
 fell gouts of blood that vanished ere they touched her 
 swan's neck ; so all the blood shed for her sake leaves 
 Helen stainless. Of Homer's Helen we know no more. 
 The later Greek fancy, playing about this form of 
 beauty, wove a myriad of new fancies, or disinterred 
 from legend old beliefs untouched by Homer. Helen 
 was the daughter of the Swan — that is, as was later 
 explained, of Zeus in the shape of a swan. Her 
 loveUness, even in childhood, plunged her in many 
 adventures. Theseus carried her off; her brothers 
 rescued her. All the princes of Achaea competed for 
 her hand, having first taken an oath to avenge whom- 
 soever she might choose for her husband. The choice 
 fell on the correct and honourable, but rather incon- 
 spicuous, Menelaus, and they dwelt in Sparta, beside the 
 Eurotas, "in a hollow of the rifted hills." Then, from 
 across the sea, came the beautiful and fatal Paris, son of 
 of Priam, King of Troy. As a child, Paris had been 
 exposed on the mountains, because his mother dreamed 
 that she brought forth a firebrand. He was rescued 
 and fostered by a shepherd ; he tended the flocks ; he 
 loved the daughter of a river god, CEnone. Then came 
 the naked Goddesses, to seek at the hand of the most 
 beautiful of mortals the prize of beauty. Aphrodite won 
 the golden apple from the queen of heaven, Hera, and 
 from the Goddess of war and wisdom, Athena, bribing 
 the judge by the promise of the fairest wife in the world. 
 
 Q
 
 242 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 No incident is more frequently celebrated in poetry 
 and art, to which it lends such gracious opportunities. 
 Paris was later recognised as of the royal blood of Troy. 
 He came to Lacedaemon on an embassy, he saw Helen, 
 and destiny had its way. 
 
 Concerning the details in this most ancient love- 
 story, we learn nothing from Homer, who merely makes 
 Paris remind Helen of their bridal night in the isle of 
 Cranae. But from Homer we learn that Paris carried 
 off not only the wife of Menelaus, but many of his 
 treasures. To the poet of the " Iliad," the psychology 
 of the wooing would have seemed a simple matter. 
 Like the later vase-painters, he would have shown us 
 Paris beside Helen, Aphrodite standing near, accom- 
 panied by the figure of Peitho — Persuasion. 
 
 Homer always escapes our psychological problems by 
 throwing the weight of our deeds and misdeeds on a 
 God or a Goddess, or on destiny. To have fled from 
 her lord and her one child, Hermione, was not in 
 keeping with the character of Helen as Homer draws 
 it. Her repentance is almost Christian in its expres- 
 sion, and repentance indicates a consciousness of sin 
 and of shame, which Helen frequently professes. Thus 
 she, at least, does not, like Homer, in his chivalrous 
 way, throw all the blame on the Immortals and on 
 destiny. The cheerful acquiescence of Helen in destiny 
 makes part of the comic element in La Belle Helene, 
 but the mirth only arises out of the incongruity between 
 Parisian ideas and those of ancient Greece. 
 
 Helen is freely and bitterly blamed in the "Odyssey" 
 by Penelope, chiefly because of the ruinous conse-
 
 PARIS AND HELEN 243 
 
 quences which followed her flight. Still, there is one 
 passage, when Penelope prudently hesitates about recog- 
 nising her returned lord, which makes it just possible 
 that a legend chronicled by Eustathius was known to 
 Homer, — namely, the tale already mentioned, that Paris 
 beguiled her in the shape of Menelaus. The incident 
 is very old, as in the story of Zeus and Amphitryon, 
 and might be used whenever a lady's character needed 
 to be saved. But this anecdote, on the whole, is in- 
 consistent with the repentance of Helen, and is not 
 in Homer's manner. 
 
 The early lyric poet, Stesichorus, is said to have 
 written harshly against Helen. She punished him by 
 blindness, and he indited a palinode, explaining that 
 it was not she who went to Troy, but a woman 
 fashioned in her likeness, by Zeus, out of mist and light. 
 The real Helen remained safely and with honour in 
 Egypt. Euripides has made this idea, which was calcu- 
 lated to please him, the groundwork of his " Helena," 
 but it never had a strong hold on the Greek imagination. 
 Modern fancy is pleased by the picture of the cloud- 
 bride in Troy, Greeks and Trojans dying for a phantasm. 
 " Shadows we are, and shadows we pursue." 
 
 Concerning the later feats, and the death of Paris, 
 Homer says very little. He slew Achilles by an arrow- 
 shot in the Scaean gate, and prophecy was fulfilled. He 
 himself fell by another shaft, perhaps the poisoned shaft 
 of Philoctetes. In the fourth or fifth century of our 
 era a late poet, Quintus Smyrnaeus, described Paris's 
 journey, in quest of a healing spell, to the forsaken 
 CEnone, and her refusal to aid him ; her death on his
 
 244 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 funeral pyre. Quintus is a poet of extraordinary merit 
 for his age, and scarcely deserves the reproach of lazi- 
 ness affixed on him by Lord Tennyson. 
 
 On the whole, Homer seems to have a kind of half- 
 contemptuous liking for the beautiful Paris. Later art 
 represents him as a bowman of girlish charms, wearing 
 a Phrygian cap. There is a late legend that he had 
 a son, Corythus, by Q^none, and that he killed the lad 
 in a moment of jealousy, finding him with Helen and 
 failing to recognise him. On the death of Paris, per- 
 haps by virtue of the custom of the Levirate, Helen 
 became the wife of his brother, Deiphobus. 
 
 How her reconciliation with Menelaus was brought 
 about we do not learn from Homer, who, in the 
 " Odyssey," accepts it as a fact. The earliest traditional 
 hint on the subject is given by the famous " Coffer of 
 Cypselus," a work of the seventh century, B.C., which 
 Pausanias saw at Olympia, in a.d. 174. Here, on a 
 band of ivory, was represented, among other scenes 
 from the tale of Troy, Menelaus rushing, sword in 
 hand, to slay Helen. According to Stesichorus, the 
 army was about to stone her after the fall of Ilios, but 
 relented, amazed by her beauty. 
 
 Of her later life in Lacedaemon, nothing is known on 
 really ancient authority, and later traditions vary. The 
 Spartans showed her sepulchre and her shrine at 
 Therapnae, where she was worshipped. Herodotus 
 tells us how Helen, as a Goddess, appeared in her 
 temple and healed a deformed child, making her the 
 fairest woman in Sparta, in the reign of Ariston. It 
 may, perhaps, be conjectured that in Sparta, Helen
 
 PARIS AND HELEN 245 
 
 occupied the place of a local Aphrodite. In another 
 late story she dwells in the isle of Leuke, a shadowy 
 bride of the shadowy Achilles. The mocking Lucian, 
 in his Vera Bistoria, meets Helen in the Fortunate 
 Islands, whence she elopes with one of his companions. 
 Again, the sons of Menelaus, by a concubine, were said 
 to have driven Helen from Sparta on the death of her 
 lord, and she was murdered in Rhodes, by the vengeance 
 of Polyxo, whose husband fell at Troy. But, among all 
 these inventions, that of Homer stands out pre-eminent. 
 Helen and Menelaus do not die, they are too near akin 
 to Zeus ; they dwell immortal, not among the shadows 
 of heroes and of famous ladies dead and gone, but in 
 Elysium, the paradise at the world's end, unvisited by 
 storms. 
 
 "Beyond these voices there is peace." 
 
 It is plain that, as a love-story, the tale of Paris and 
 Helen must to modern readers seem meagre. To 
 Greece, in every age, the main interest lay not in the 
 passion of the beautiful pair, but in its world-wide con- 
 sequences : the clash of Europe and Asia, the deaths 
 of kings, the ruin wrought in their homes, the con- 
 sequent fall of the great and ancient Achaean civilisa- 
 tion. To the Greeks, the Trojan war was what the 
 Crusades are in later history. As in the Crusades, 
 the West assailed the East for an ideal, not to recover 
 the Holy Sepulchre of our religion, but to win back the 
 living type of beauty and of charm. Perhaps, ere the 
 sun grows cold, men will no more believe in the 
 Crusades, as an historical fact, than we do in the siege
 
 246 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 of Troy. In a sense, a very obvious sense, the myth of 
 Helen is a parable of Hellenic history. They sought 
 beauty, and they found it ; they bore it home, and, with 
 beauty, their bane. Wherever Helen went " she brought 
 calamity," in this a type of all the famous and peerless 
 ladies of old days, of Cleopatra and of Mary Stuart. 
 Romance and poetry have nothing less plausible than 
 the part which Cleopatra actually played in the history 
 of the world, a world well lost by Mark Antony for 
 her sake. The flight from Actium might seem as 
 much a mere poet's dream as the gathering of the 
 Achaeans at Aulis, if we were not certain that it is 
 truly chronicled. 
 
 From the earliest times, even from times before 
 Homer (whose audience is supposed to know all about 
 Helen), the imagination of Greece, and later, the ima- 
 gination of the civilised world, has played around 
 Helen, devising about her all that possibly could be 
 devised. She was the daughter of Zeus by Nemesis, or 
 by Leda ; or the daughter of the swan, or a child of the 
 changeful moon, brooding on " the formless and multi- 
 form waters." She could speak in the voices of all 
 women, hence she was named " Echo," and we might 
 fancy that, like the witch of the Brocken, she could 
 appear to every man in the likeness of his own first 
 love. The ancient Egyptians either knew her, or 
 invented legends of her to amuse the inquiring Greeks. 
 She had touched at Sidon, and perhaps Astaroth is only 
 her Sidonian name. Whatever could be told of 
 beauty, in its charm, its perils, the dangers with which 
 it surrounds its lovers, the purity which it retains, un-
 
 PARIS AND HELEN 247 
 
 smirched by all the sins that are done for beauty's sake, 
 could be told of Helen. 
 
 Like a golden cup, as M. Paul de St. Victor says, 
 she was carried from lips to lips of heroes, but the gold 
 remains unsullied and unalloyed. To heaven she re- 
 turns again, to heaven which is her own, and looks 
 down serenely on men slain, and women widowed, 
 and sinking ships, and burning towns. Yet with 
 death she gives immortality by her kiss, and Paris and 
 Menelaus live, because they have touched the lips of 
 Helen. Through the grace of Helen, for whom he fell, 
 Sarpedon's memory endures, and Achilles and Memnon, 
 the son of the Morning, and Troy is more imperishable 
 than Carthage, or Rome, or Corinth, though Helen 
 
 " Burnt the topless towers of Ilium." 
 
 In one brief passage, Marlowe did more than all 
 poets since Stesichorus, or, at least since the epitha- 
 lamium of Theocritus, for the glory of Helen. Roman 
 poets knew her best as an enemy of their fabulous 
 ancestors, and in the " ALneid," Virgil's hero draws his 
 sword to slay her. Through the Middle Ages, in the 
 romances of Troy, she wanders as a shining shadow 
 of the ideally fair, like Guinevere, who so often recalls 
 her in the Arthurian romances. The chivalrous 
 mediaeval poets and the Celts could understand better 
 than the Romans the philosophy of " the world well lost " 
 for love. Modern poetry, even in Goethe's " Second 
 part of Faust," has not been very fortunately inspired 
 by Helen, except in the few lines which she speaks in 
 " The Dream of Fair Women." 
 
 " I had great beauty ; ask thou not my name."
 
 2 48 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Mr. William Morris's Helen, in the " Earthly Para- 
 dise," charms at the time of reading, but, perhaps, leaves 
 little abiding memory. The Helen of "Troilus and 
 Cressida " is not one of Shakespeare's immortal women, 
 and Mr. Rossetti's ballad is fantastic and somewhat 
 false in tone — a romantic pastiche. Where Euripides 
 twice failed, in the " Troades " and the " Helena," it 
 can be given to few to succeed. Helen is best left 
 to her earliest known minstrel, for who can recapture the 
 grace, the tenderness, the melancholy, and the charm 
 of the daughter of Zeus in the " Odyssey " and " Iliad " ? 
 The sightless eyes of Homer saw her clearest, and Helen 
 was best understood by the wisdom of his unquestioning 
 simplicity. 
 
 As if to prove how entirely, though so many hands 
 paltered with her legend, Helen is Homer's alone, there 
 remains no great or typical work of Greek art which 
 represents her beauty, and the breasts from which were 
 modelled cups of gold for the service of the gods. We 
 have only paintings on vases, or work on gems, which, 
 though graceful, is conventional and might represent 
 any other heroine, Polyxena, or Eriphyle. No Helen 
 from the hands of Phidias or Scopas has survived to 
 our time, and the grass may be growing in Therapnae 
 over the shattered remains of her only statue. 
 
 As Stesichorus fabled that only an eidolon of Helen 
 went to Troy, so, except in the " Iliad" and "Odyssey," 
 we meet but shadows of her loveliness, phantasms 
 woven out of clouds, and the light of setting suns.
 
 ENCHANTED CIGARETTES
 
 ENCHANTED CIGARETTES 
 
 To dream over literary projects, Balzac says, is like 
 "smoking enchanted cigarettes," but when we try to 
 tackle our projects, to make them real, the enchantment 
 disappears. We have to till the soil, to sow the seed, to 
 gather the leaves, and then the cigarettes must be manu- 
 factured, while there may be no market for them after all. 
 Probably most people have enjoyed the fragrance of these 
 enchanted cigarettes, and have brooded over much 
 which they will never put on paper. Here are some of 
 " the ashes of the weeds of my delight " — memories of 
 romances whereof no single line is written, or is likely to 
 be written. 
 
 Of my earliest novel I remember but little. I know 
 there had been a wreck, and that the villain, who was 
 believed to be drowned, came home and made himself 
 disagreeable. I know that the heroine's mouth was not 
 " too large for regular beauty." In that respect she was 
 original. All heroines are " muckle-mou'd," I know 
 not why. It is expected of them. I know she was 
 melancholy and merry ; it would not surprise me to learn 
 that she drowned herself from a canoe. But the villain 
 never descended to crime, the first lover would not fall 
 
 in love, the heroine's own affections were provokingly 
 
 251
 
 252 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 disengaged, and the whole affair came to a dead stop for 
 want of a plot. Perhaps, considering modern canons of 
 fiction, this might have been a very successful novel. It 
 was entirely devoid of incident or interest, and, con- 
 sequently, was a good deal like real life, as real life 
 appears to many cultivated authors. On the other hand, 
 all the characters were flippant. This would never have 
 done, and I do not regret novel No. I., which had not 
 even a name. 
 
 The second story had a plot, quantities of plot, nothing 
 but plot. It was to have been written in collaboration 
 with a very great novelist, who, as far as we went, con- 
 fined himself to making objections. This novel was 
 stopped (not that my friend would ever have gone on) 
 by " Called Back," which anticipated part of the idea. 
 The story was entitled " Where is Rose ? " and the motto 
 was — 
 
 " Hosa quo locoru7n 
 Sera i/ioratur.'" 
 
 The characters were — (i) Rose, a young lady of quality. 
 (2) The Russian Princess, her friend (need I add that, 
 to meet a public demand, her name was Vera?). (3) 
 Young man engaged to Rose. (4) Charles, his friend. 
 (5) An enterprising person named "The Whiteley of 
 Crime," the universal Provider of Iniquity. In fact, he 
 anticipated Sir Arthur Doyle's Professor Moriarty. The 
 rest were detectives, old ladies, mob, and a wealthy 
 young Colonial larrikin. Neither my friend nor I was 
 fond of describing love scenes, so we made the heroine 
 disappear in the second chapter, and she never turned
 
 ENCHANTED CIGARETTES 253 
 
 up again till chapter the last. After playing in a comedy 
 at the house of an earl, Rosa and Vera entered her 
 brougham. Soon afterwards the brougham drew up, 
 empty ^ at Rose's own door. Where tvas Rose ? Traces 
 of her were found, of all places, in the Haunted House 
 in Berkeley Square, which is not haunted any longer. 
 After that Rose was long sought in vain. 
 
 This, briefly, is what had occurred. A Russian de- 
 tective " wanted " Vera, who, to be sure, was a Nihilist. 
 To catch Vera he made an alliance with " The Whiteley 
 of Crime." He was a man who would destroy a parish 
 register, or forge a will, or crack a crib, or break up a Pro- 
 Boer meeting, or burn a house, or kidnap a rightful heir, 
 or manage a personation, or issue amateur bank-notes, or 
 what you please. Thinking to kill two birds with one 
 stone, he carried ofif Rose for her diamonds and Vera for 
 his friend, the Muscovite police official, lodging them both 
 in the Haunted House. But there he and the Russian 
 came to blows, and, in the confusion, Vera made her 
 escape, while Rose was conveyed, as Vera, to Siberia. 
 Not knowing how to dispose of her, the Russian police 
 consigned her to a nunnery at the mouth of the Obi. 
 Her lover, in a yacht, found her hiding-place, and got a 
 friendly nun to give her some narcotic known to the 
 Samoyeds. It was the old true of the Friar in " Romeo 
 and Juliet." At the mouth of the Obi they do not bury 
 the dead, but lay them down on platforms in the open 
 air. Rose was picked up there by her lover (accom- 
 panied by a chaperon, of course), was got on board the 
 steam yacht, and all went well. I forget what happened 
 to " The Whiteley of Crime." After him I still rather
 
 254 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 hanker — he was a humorous ruffian. Something could 
 be made of " The Whiteley of Crime." Something has 
 been made, by the author of "Sherlock Holmes." 
 
 In yet another romance, a gentleman takes his friend, 
 in a country place, to see his betrothed. The friend, 
 who had only come into the neighbourhood that day, is 
 found dead, next morning, hanging to a tree. Gipsies 
 and others are suspected. But the lover was the mur- 
 derer. He had been a priest, in South America, and the 
 lady was a Catholic (who knew not of his Orders). Now 
 the friend fell in love with the lady at first sight, on 
 being introduced to her by the lover. As the two men 
 walked home, the friend threatened to reveal the lover's 
 secret — his tonsure — which would be fatal to his hopes. 
 They quarrelled, parted, and the ex-priest lassoed his 
 friend. The motive, I think, is an original one, and not 
 likely to occur to the first comer. The inventor is open 
 to offers. 
 
 The next novel, based on a dream, \vas called " In 
 Search of Qrart." 
 
 What is Qrart 1 I decline to divulge this secret 
 beyond saying that Qrart was a product of the civilisa- 
 tion which now sleeps under the snows of the pole. It 
 was an article of the utmost value to humanity. Farther 
 I do not intend to commit myself. The Bride of a God 
 was one of the characters. 
 
 The next novel is, at present, my favourite cigarette. 
 The scene is partly in Greece, partly at the Parthian 
 Court, about 80-60 B.C. Crassus is the villain. The 
 heroine was an actress in one of the wandering Greek 
 companies, splendid strollers, who played at the Indian
 
 ENCHANTED CIGARETTES 255 
 
 and Asiatic Courts. The story ends with the repre- 
 sentation of the "Bacchae," in Parthia. The head of 
 Pentheus is carried by one.of the Bacchae in that drama. 
 Behold, it is not a mask, but the head of Crassus, and 
 thus conveys the first news of the Roman defeat. Ob- 
 viously, this is a novel that needs a great deal of pre- 
 Hminary study, as much, indeed, as " Salammbo." 
 
 Another story will deal with the Icelandic discoverers 
 of America. Mr. Kipling, however, has taken the wind 
 out of its sails with his sketch, " The Finest Story in the 
 World." There are all the marvels and portents of the 
 Eyrbyggja Saga to draw upon, there are Skraelings to 
 fight, and why should not Karlsefni's son kill the last 
 mastodon, and, as Quetzalcoatl, be the white-bearded 
 god of the Aztecs? After that a romance on the in- 
 trigues to make Charles Edward King of Poland sounds 
 commonplace. But much might be made of that, too, 
 if the right man took it in hand. Believe me, there are 
 plenty of stories left, waiting for the man who can tell 
 them. I have said it before, but I say it again, if I 
 were king I would keep court officials, Mr. Stanley 
 Weyman, Mr. Mason, Mr. Kipling, and others, to tell 
 me my own stories. I know the kind of thing which I 
 like, from the discovery of Qrart to that of the French 
 gold in the burn at Loch Arkaig, or in " the wood by 
 the lochside " that Murray of Broughton mentions. 
 
 Another cigarette I have, the adventures of a Poet, a 
 Poet born in a Puritan village of Massachusetts about 
 1670. Hawthorne could have told me my story, and 
 how my friend was driven into the wilderness and lived 
 among the Red Men. I think he was killed in an
 
 256 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 attempt to warn his countrymen of an Indian raid ; I 
 think his MS. poems have a bullet-hole through them, 
 and blood on the leaves. They were in Carew's best 
 manner, these poems. 
 
 Another tale Hawthorne might have told me, the tale 
 of an excellent man, whose very virtues, by some bane- 
 ful moral chemistry, corrupt and ruin the people with 
 whom he comes in contact. I do not mean by goading 
 them into the opposite extremes, but rather something 
 like a moral jettahira. This needs a great deal of 
 subtlety, and what is to become of the hero? Is he 
 to plunge into vice till everybody is virtuous again? 
 It wants working out. I have omitted, after all, a 
 schoolboy historical romance, explaining why Queen 
 Elizabeth was never married. A Scottish paper offered 
 a prize for a story of Queen Mary Stuart's reign. I did 
 not get the prize — perhaps did not deserve it, but my 
 story ran thus : You must know that Queen Elizabeth 
 was singularly like Darnley in personal appearance. 
 What so natural as that, disguised as a page, her Majesty 
 should come spying about the Court of Holyrood ? 
 Darnley sees her walking out of Queen Mary's room, he 
 thinks her an hallucination, discovers that she is real, 
 challenges her, and they fight at Faldonside, by the 
 Tweed, Shakespeare holding Elizabeth's horse. Eliza- 
 beth is wounded, and is carried to the Kirk of Field, 
 and laid in Darnley's chamber, while Darnley goes out 
 and makes love to my rural heroine, the lady of Fernilee, 
 a Kerr. That night Bothwell blows up the Kirk of 
 Field, Elizabeth and all. Darnley has only one resource. 
 Borrowing the riding habit of the rural heroine, the lady
 
 ENCHANTED CIGARETTES 257 
 
 of Fernilee, he flees across the Border, and, for the rest 
 of his life, personates Queen Elizabeth. That is why 
 Elizabeth, who was Darnley, hated Mary so bitterly (on 
 account of the Kirk of Field affair), and that is why 
 Queett Elizabeth was never married. Side-lights on 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets were obviously cast. The young 
 man whom Shakespeare admired so, and urged to marry, 
 was — Darnley. This romance did not get the prize (the 
 anachronism about Shakespeare is worthy of Scott), 
 but I am conceited enough to think it deserved an 
 honourable mention. 
 
 Enough of my own cigarettes. But there are others 
 of a more fragrant weed. Who will end for me the 
 novel of which Byron only wrote a chapter ; who, as 
 Bulwer Lytton is dead ? A finer opening, one more 
 mysteriously stirring, you can nowhere read. And the 
 novel in letters, which Scott began in 1819, who shall 
 finish it, or tell us what he did with his fair Venetian 
 courtezan, a character so much out of Sir Walter's way ? 
 He tossed it aside — it was but an enchanted cigarette — 
 and gave us "The Fortunes of Nigel" in its place. I 
 want both. We cannot call up those who " left half told " 
 these stories. In a happier world we shall listen to 
 their endings, and all our dreams shall be coherent and 
 concluded. Meanwhile, without trouble, and expense, 
 and disappointment, and reviews, we can all smoke our 
 cigarettes of fairyland. Would that many people were 
 content to smoke them peacefully, and did not rush 
 on pen, paper, and ink ! 
 
 R
 
 STORIES AND STORY-TELLING
 
 STORIES AND STORY-TELLING 
 
 {From Strath Naver) 
 
 We have had a drought for three weeks. During a 
 whole week this northern strath has been as sunny as 
 the Riviera is expected to be. The streams can be 
 crossed dry-shod, kelts are plunging in the pools, but 
 even kelts will not look at a fly. Now, by way of a 
 pleasant change, an icy north wind is blowing, with 
 gusts of snow, not snow enough to swell the loch that 
 feeds the river, but just enough snow (as the tourist 
 said of the water in the River Styx) " to swear by," or 
 at ! The Field announces that a duke, who rents three 
 rods on a neighbouring river, has not yet caught one 
 salmon. The acrimoniously democratic mind may take 
 comfort in that intelligence, but, if the weather will not 
 improve for a duke, it is not likely to change for a mere 
 person of letters. Thus the devotee of the Muses is 
 driven back, by stress of climate, upon literature, and 
 as there is nothing in the lodge to read he is compelled 
 to write. 
 
 Now certainly one would not lack material, if only 
 one were capable of the art of fiction. The genesis of 
 novels and stories is a topic little studied, but I am 
 
 inclined to believe that, Uke the pearls in the mussels of 
 
 261
 
 262 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 the river, fiction is a beautiful disease of the brain. 
 Something, an incident or an experience, or a reflection, 
 gets imbedded, incrusted, in the properly constituted 
 mind, and becomes the nucleus of a pearl of romance. 
 Mr. Marion Crawford, in a recent work, describes his 
 hero, who is a novelist, at work. This young gentleman, 
 by a series of faults or misfortunes, has himself become 
 a centre of harrowing emotion. Two young ladies, to 
 each of whom he has been betrothed, are weeping out 
 their eyes for him, or are kneeling to heaven with 
 despairing cries, or are hardening their hearts to marry 
 men for whom they " do not care a bawbee." The 
 hero's aunt has committed a crime ; everybody, in fact, 
 is in despair, when an idea occurs to the hero. In- 
 different to the sorrows of his nearest and dearest, he 
 sits down with his notion and writes a novel — writes 
 like a person possessed. 
 
 He has the proper kind of brain, the nucleus has 
 been dropped into it, the pearl begins to grow, and 
 to assume prismatic hues. So he is happy, and even 
 the frozen -out angler might be happy if he could 
 write a novel in the absence of salmon. Unluckily, 
 my brain is not capable of this aesthetic malady, 
 and to save my life, or to " milk a fine warm cow 
 rain," as the Zulus say, I could not write a novel, or 
 even a short story. About The Short Story, as they call 
 it, with capital letters, our critical American cousins 
 have much to say. Its germ, one fancies, is usually 
 an incident, or a mere anecdote, according to the 
 nature of the author's brain ; this germ becomes either 
 the pearl of a brief conte^ or the seed of a stately tree, in
 
 STORIES AND STORY-TELLING 263 
 
 three volumes. An author of experience soon finds out 
 how he should treat his material. One writer informs 
 me that, given the idea, the germinal idea, it is as easy 
 for him to make a novel out of it as a tale — as easy, 
 and much more satisfactory and remunerative. Others, 
 like M. Guy de Maupassant, for example, seem to find 
 their strength in brevity, in cutting down, not in ampli- 
 fying ; in selecting and reducing, not in allowing other 
 ideas to group themselves round the first, other 
 characters to assemble about those who are essential. 
 That seems to be really the whole philosophy of this 
 matter, concerning which so many words are expended. 
 The growth of the germinal idea depends on the nature 
 of an author's talent — he may excel in expansion, or in 
 reduction; he may be economical, and out of an 
 anecdote may spin the whole cocoon of a romance ; or 
 he may be extravagant, and give a capable idea away 
 in the briefest form possible. 
 
 These ideas may come to a man in many ways, as we 
 said, from a dream, from a fragmentary experience (as 
 most experiences in life are fragmentary), from a hint 
 in a newspaper, from a tale told in conversation. Not 
 long ago, for example, I heard an anecdote out of 
 which M. Guy de Maupassant could have made the most 
 ghastly, the most squalid, and the most supernaturally 
 moving of all his contes. Indeed, that is not saying 
 much, as he did not excel in the supernatural. Were it 
 written in French, it might lie in my lady's chamber, 
 and, as times go, nobody would be shocked. But, by 
 our curious British conventions, this tale cannot be told 
 in an English book or magazine. It was not, in its
 
 264 x\DVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 tendency, immoral ; those terrible tales never are. The 
 events were rather calculated to frighten the hearer into 
 the paths of virtue. When Mr. Richard Cameron, the 
 founder of the Cameronians, and the godfather of the 
 Cameronian Regiment, was sent to his parish, he was 
 bidden by Mr. Peden to " put hell-fire to the tails " of 
 his congregation. This vigorous expression was well 
 fitted to describe the conte which I have in my mind (I 
 rather wish I had it not), and which is not to be 
 narrated here, nor in English. 
 
 For a combination of pity and terror, it seemed to 
 me unmatched in the works of the modern fancy, or in 
 the horrors of modern experience ; whether in experi- 
 ence or in imagination it had its original source. But 
 even the EngUsh authors, who plume themselves on 
 their audacity, or their realism, or their contempt for 
 " the young person," would not venture this little 
 romance, much less, then, is a timidly uncorrect pen- 
 man likely to tempt Mr. Mudie with the conte. It is 
 one of two tales, both told as true, which one would 
 like to be able to narrate in the language of Moliere. 
 The other is also very good, and has a wonderful scene 
 with a corpse and a chapelle ardente, and a young lady ; 
 it is historical, and of the last generation but one. 
 
 Even our frozen strath here has its modern legend, 
 which may be told in English, and out of which, I 
 am sure, a novelist could make a good short story, or 
 a pleasant opening chapter of a romance. What is the 
 mysterious art by which these things are done ? What 
 makes the well-told story seem real, rich with life, actual, 
 engrossing ? It is the secret of genius, of the novelist's
 
 STORIES AND STORY-TELLING 265 
 
 art, and the writer who cannot practise the art might 
 as well try to discover the Philosopher's Stone, or to 
 "harp fish out of the water." However, let me tell 
 the legend as simply as may be, and as it was told 
 to me. 
 
 The strath runs due north, the river flowing from a 
 great loch to the Northern sea. All around are low, 
 undulating hills, brown with heather, and as lonely 
 almost as the Sahara. On the horizon to the south 
 rise the mountains, Ben this and Ben that, real moun- 
 tains of beautiful outline, though no higher than some 
 three thousand feet. Before the country was divided 
 into moors and forests, tenanted by makers of patent 
 corkscrews, and boilers of patent soap, before the rivers 
 were distributed into beats, marked off by white and 
 red posts, there lived over to the south, under the 
 mountains, a sportsman of athletic frame and adven- 
 turous disposition. His name I have forgotten, but we 
 may call him Dick Lindsay. It is told of him that he 
 once found a poacher in the forest, and, being unable 
 to catch the intruder, fired his rifle, not at him, but 
 in his neighbourhood, whereon the poacher, deliberately 
 kneeling down, took a long shot at Dick. How the 
 duel ended, and whether either party flew a flag of 
 truce, history does not record. 
 
 At all events, one stormy day in late September, Dick 
 had stalked and wounded a stag on the hills to the south- 
 east of the strath. Here, if only one were a novelist, 
 one could weave several pages of valuable copy out of 
 the stalk. The stag made for the strath here, and Dick, 
 who had no gillie, but was an independent sportsman
 
 266 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 of the old school, pursued on foot. Plunging down the 
 low, birch -clad hills, the stag found the flooded river 
 before him, black and swollen with rain. He took the 
 water, crossing by the big pool, which looked almost 
 like a little loch, tempestuous under a north wind blow- 
 ing up stream, and covered with small white, vicious 
 crests. The stag crossed and staggered up the bank, 
 where he stood panting. It is not a humane thing 
 to leave a deer to die slowly of a rifle bullet, and Dick, 
 reaching the pool, hesitated not, but threw off" his 
 clothes, took his skene between his teeth, plunged in, 
 and swam the river. 
 
 All naked as he was he cut the stag's throat in the 
 usual manner, and gralloched him with all the skill of 
 Bucklaw. This was very well, and very well it would 
 be to add a description of the stag at bay; but as I 
 never happened to see a stag at bay, I omit all that. 
 Dick had achieved success, but his clothes were on one 
 side of a roaring river in spate, and he and the dead 
 stag were on the other. There was no chance of ford- 
 ing the stream, and there was then no bridge. He did 
 not care to swim back, for the excitement was out of 
 him. He was trembling with cold, and afraid of cramp. 
 " A mother-naked man," in a wilderness, with a flood 
 between him and his raiment, was in a pitiable position. 
 It did not occur to him to flay the stag, and dress in 
 the hide, and, indeed, he would have been frozen before 
 he could have accomplished that task. So he recon- 
 noitred. 
 
 There was nobody within sight but one girl, who 
 was herding cows. Now for a naked man, with a
 
 STORIES AND STORY-TELLING 267 
 
 knife, and bedabbled with blood, to address a young 
 woman on a lonely moor is a delicate business. The 
 chances were that the girl would flee like a startled fawn, 
 and leave Dick to walk, just as he was, to the nearest 
 farmhouse, about a mile away. However, Dick had to 
 risk it; he lay down so that only his face appeared 
 above the bank, and he shouted to the maiden. When 
 he had caught her attention he briefly explained the 
 unusual situation. Then the young woman behaved 
 like a trump, or like a Highland Nausicaa, for students 
 of the "Odyssey" will remember how Odysseus, simply 
 clad in a leafy bough of a tree, made supplication to 
 the sea-king's daughter, and how she befriended him. 
 Even if Dick had been a reader of Homer, which is 
 not probable, there were no trees within convenient 
 reach, and he could not adopt the leafy covering of 
 Odysseus. 
 
 " You sit still ; if you move an inch before I give 
 you the word, I'll leave you where you are ! " said Miss 
 Mary. She then cast her plaid over her face, marched 
 up to the bank where Dick was crouching and shiver- 
 ing, dropped her ample plaid over him, and sped away 
 towards the farmhouse. When she had reached its 
 shelter, and was giving an account of the adventure, 
 Dick set forth, like a primeval Highlander, the covering 
 doing duty both for plaid and kilt. Clothes of some 
 kind were .provided for him at the cottage, a rickety 
 old boat was fetched, and he and his stag were rowed 
 across the river to the place where his clothes lay. 
 
 That is all, but if one were a dealer in romance, much 
 play might be made with the future fortunes of the
 
 268 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 sportsman and the maiden, happy fortunes or unhappy. 
 In real life, the lassie "drew up with" a shepherd lad, as 
 Miss Jenny Denison has it, married him, and helped 
 to populate the strath. As for Dick, history tells no 
 more of his adventures, nor is it alleged that he ever 
 again visited the distant valley, or beheld the face of his 
 Highland Nausicaa. 
 
 Now, if one were a romancer, this mere anecdote 
 probably would "rest, lovely pearl, in the brain, and 
 slowly mature in the oyster," till it became a novel. 
 Properly handled, the incident would make a very 
 agreeable first chapter, with the aid of scenery, botany, 
 climate, and remarks on the manners and customs of 
 the red deer stolen from St. John, or the Stuarts 
 d'Albanie. Then, probably, one would reflect on the 
 characters of Mary and of Richard; Mary must have 
 parents, of course, and one would make them talk in 
 Scottish. Probably she already had a lover ; how should 
 she behave to that lover? There is plenty of room for 
 speculation in that problem. As to Dick, is he to be 
 a Lothario, or a lover pour le bon motifi ^Vhat are his 
 distinguished family to think of the love affair, which 
 would certainly ensue in fiction, though in real life 
 nobody thought of it at all ? Are we to end happily, 
 with a marriage or marriages, or are we to wind all up 
 in the pleasant, pessimistic, realistic, fashionable modern 
 way ? Is Mary to drown the baby in the Muckle Pool ? 
 Is she to suffer the penalty of her crime at Inverness ? 
 Or, happy thought, shall we not make her discarded 
 rival lover meet Dick in the hills on a sunny day and 
 then — are they not (taking a hint from facts) to fight a 
 duel with rifles ? I see Dick lying, with a bullet in his
 
 STORIES AND STORY-TELLING 269 
 
 brow, on the side of a corrie ; his blood crimsons the 
 snow, an eagle stoops from the sky. That makes a 
 pretty picturesque conclusion to the unwritten romance 
 of the strath. 
 
 Another anecdote occurs to me ; good, I think, for a 
 short story, but capable, also, of being dumped down in 
 the middle of a long novel. It was in the old coaching 
 days. A Border squire was going north, in the coach, 
 alone. At a village he was joined by a man and a young 
 lady : their purpose was manifest, they were a runaway 
 couple, bound for Gretna Green. They had not travelled 
 long together before the young lady, turning to the 
 squire, said, " Voas parlez franfais, Alonsieur ? " He 
 did speak French — it was plain that the bridegroom did 
 not — and, to the end of the journey, that remarkable 
 lady conducted a lively and affectionate conversation with 
 the squire in French ! Manifestly, he had only to ask 
 and receive, but, alas ! he was an unadventurous, plain 
 gentleman ; he alighted at his own village ; he drove 
 home in his own dogcart ; the fugitive pair went 
 forward, and the Gretna blacksmith united them in holy 
 matrimony. The rest is silence. 
 
 I would give much to know what that young person's 
 previous history and adventures had been, to learn what 
 befell her after her wedding, to understand, in brief, 
 her conduct and her motives. Were I a novelist, a 
 Maupassant, or a Meredith, the Muse, " from whatsoever 
 quarter she chose," would enlighten me about all, and 
 I would enlighten you. But I can only marvel, only 
 throw out the hint, only deposit the grain of sand, the 
 nucleus of romance, in some more fertile brain. Indeed, 
 the topic is much more puzzling than the right conclu-
 
 2 70 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 sion for my Highland romance. In that case fancy 
 could find certain obvious channels, into one or other of 
 which it must flow. But I see no channels for the lives 
 of these three queerly met people in the coach. 
 
 As a rule, fancies are capable of being arranged in but 
 a few familiar patterns, so that it seems hardly worth 
 while to make the arrangement. But he who looks at 
 things thus will never be a writer of stories. Nay, even 
 of the slowly unfolding tale of his own existence he may 
 weary, for the combinations therein have all occurred 
 before ; it is in a hackneyed old story that he is living, 
 and you, and I. Yet to act on this knowledge is to 
 make a bad affair of our little life : we must try our best 
 to take it seriously. And so of story-writing. As Mr. 
 Stevenson says, a man must view "his very trifling 
 enterprise with a gravity that would befit the cares of 
 empire, and think the smallest improvement worth 
 accomplishing at any expense of time and industry. 
 The book, the statue, the sonata, must be gone upon 
 with the unreasoning good faith and the unflagging 
 spirit of children at their play." 
 
 That is true, that is the worst of it. The man, the 
 writer, over whom the irresistible desire to mock at 
 himself, his work, his puppets and their fortunes has 
 power, will never be a novelist. The novelist must 
 " make believe very much " ; he must be in earnest with 
 his characters. But how to be in earnest, how to keep 
 the note of disbelief and derision "out of the memo- 
 rial " ? Ah, there is the difficulty, but it is a difficulty of 
 which many authors appear to be insensible. Perhaps 
 they suffer from no such temptations.
 
 THE SUPERNATURAL IN 
 FICTION
 
 THE SUPERNATURAL IN FICTION 
 
 It is a truism that the supernatural in fiction should, 
 as a general rule, be left in the vague. In the creepiest 
 tale I ever read, the horror lay in this — there ivas no 
 ghost! You may describe a ghost with all the most 
 hideous features that fancy can suggest — saucer eyes, 
 red staring hair, a forked tail, and what you please — 
 but the reader only laughs. It is wiser to make as if you 
 were going to describe the spectre, and then break off, 
 exclaiming, " But no ! No pen can describe, no memory, 
 thank Heaven, can recall, the horror of that hour ! " 
 So writers, as a rule, prefer to leave their terror (usually 
 styled " The Thing ") entirely in the dark, and to the 
 frightened fancy of the student. Thus, on the whole, 
 the treatment of the supernaturally terrible in fiction is 
 achieved in two ways, ifther by actual description, or 
 by adroit suggestion, the author saying, like cabmen, 
 " I leave it to yourself, sir." There are dangers in both 
 methods ; the description, if attempted, is usually over- 
 done and incredible : the suggestion is apt to prepare us 
 too anxiously for something that never becomes real, 
 and to leave us disappointed. 
 
 Examples of both methods may be selected from 
 
 poetry and prose. The examples in verse are rare 
 
 273 s
 
 2 74 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 enough ; the first and best that occurs in the way of sug- 
 gestion is, of course, the mysterious lady in " Christabel." 
 
 " She was most beautiful to see, 
 Like a lady of a far countree." 
 
 Who was she? What did she want? Whence did 
 she come? What was the horror she revealed to the 
 niaiht in the bower of Christabel ? 
 
 'tD* 
 
 " Then drawing in her breath aloud 
 Like one that shuddered, she unbound 
 The cincture from beneath her breast. 
 Her silken robe and inner vest 
 Dropt to her feet, and full in view 
 Behold her bosom and half her side — 
 A sight to dream of, not to tell ! 
 O shield her ! shield sweet Christabel ! " 
 
 And then what do her words mean ? 
 
 " Thou knowest to-night, and wilt know to-morrow, 
 This mark of my shame, this seal of my sorrow." 
 
 What was it — the " sight to dream of, not to tell " ? 
 
 Coleridge never did tell, and, though he and Mr. 
 Oilman said he knew, Wordsworth thought he did not 
 know. He raised a spirit that he had not the spell to 
 lay. In the Paradise of Poets has he discovered the 
 secret? We only know that the mischief, whatever it 
 may have been, was wrought. 
 
 " O sorrow and shame 1 Can this be she — 
 'I'he lady who knelt at the old oak tree ? "
 
 THE SUPERNATURAL IN FICTION 275 
 
 *' A star hath set, a star hath risen, 
 O Geraldine, since arms of thine 
 Have been the lovely lady's prison. 
 O Geraldine, one hour was thine." ^ 
 
 If Coleridge knew, why did he never tell ? And yet 
 he maintains that "in the very first conception of the 
 tale, I had the whole present to my mind, with the 
 wholeness no less than with the liveliness of a vision," 
 and he expected to finish the three remaining parts 
 within the year. The year was 181 6, the poem was 
 begun in 1797, and finished, as far as it goes, in 1800. 
 If Coleridge ever knew what he meant, he had time to 
 forget. The chances are that his indolence, or his for- 
 getfulness, was the making of " Christabel," which 
 remains a masterpiece of supernatural suggestion. 
 
 For description it suffices to read the " Ancient 
 Mariner." These marvels, truly, are speciosa miracula, 
 and, unlike Southey, we believe as we read. "You 
 have selected a passage fertile in unmeaning miracles," 
 Lamb wrote to Southey (1798), "but have passed by 
 fifty passages as miraculous as the miracles they cele- 
 brate." Lamb appears to have been almost alone in 
 appreciating this masterpiece of supernatural description. 
 Coleridge himself shrank from his own wonders, and 
 wanted to call the piece " A Poet's Reverie." " It is as 
 bad as Bottom the weaver's declaration that he is not a 
 lion, but only the scenical representation of a lion. 
 What new idea is gained by this title but one subversive 
 of all credit — which the tale should force upon us — of its 
 truth?" Lamb himself was forced, by the temper of 
 
 J Cannot the reader guess ? I am afraid that I can !
 
 276 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 the time, to declare that he "disliked all the miraculous 
 part of it," as if it were not all miraculous ! Words- 
 worth wanted the Mariner "to have a character and a 
 profession," perhaps would have liked him to be a 
 gardener, or a butler, with " an excellent character ! " 
 In fact, the love of the supernatural was then at so low 
 an ebb that a certain Mr. Marshall " went to sleep while 
 the ' Ancient Mariner ' was reading," and the book was 
 mainly bought by seafaring men, deceived by the title, 
 and supposing that the "Ancient Mariner" was a 
 nautical treatise. 
 
 In verse, then, Coleridge succeeds with the super- 
 natural, both by way of description in detail, and of 
 suggestion. If you wish to see a failure, try the ghost, 
 the moral but not affable ghost, in Wordsworth's " Lao- 
 damia." It is blasphemy to ask the question, but is the 
 ghost in " Hamlet " quite a success ? Do we not see 
 and hear a little too much of him ? Macbeth 's airy and 
 viewless dagger is really much more successful by way 
 of suggestion. The stage makes a ghost visible and 
 familiar, and this is one great danger of the supernatural 
 in art. It is apt to insist on being too conspicuous. 
 Did the ghost of Darius, in " ^schylus," frighten the 
 Athenians? Probably they smiled at the imperial 
 spectre. There is more discretion in Caesar's ghost — 
 
 " I think it is the weakness of mine eyes 
 That shapes this monstrous apparition," 
 
 says Brutus, and he lays no very great stress on the 
 brief visit of the appearance. For want of this dis- 
 cretion, Alexandre Dumas's ghosts, as in " The Corsican
 
 THE SUPERNATURAL IN FICTION 277 
 
 Brothers," are failures. They make themselves too 
 common and too cheap, like the spectre in Mrs. 
 Oliphant's novel, "The Wizard's Son." This, indeed, 
 is the crux of the whole adventure. If you paint your 
 ghost with too heavy a hand, you raise laughter, not 
 fear. If you touch him too lightly, you raise unsatisfied 
 curiosity, not fear. It may be easy to shudder, but it is 
 difficult to teach shuddering. 
 
 In prose, a good example of the over vague is 
 Miriam's mysterious visitor — the shadow of the cata- 
 combs — in "Transformation; or. The Marble Faun." 
 Hawthorne should have told us more or less ; to be 
 sure his contemporaries knew what he meant, knew who 
 Miriam and the Spectre were. The dweller in the 
 catacombs now powerfully excites curiosity, and when 
 that curiosity is unsatisfied, we feel aggrieved, vexed, 
 and suspect that Hawthorne himself was puzzled, and 
 knew no more than his readers. He has not — as in 
 other tales he has — managed to throw the right atmos- 
 phere about this being. He is vague in the wrong way, 
 whereas George Sand, in Les Datnes Veries, is vague in 
 the right way. We are left in Les Dames Vertes with 
 that kind of curiosity which persons really engaged in 
 the adventure might have felt, not with the irritation of 
 having a secret kept from us, as in " Transforma- 
 tion." 
 
 In "Wandering Willie's Tale " (in " Redgauntlet "), the 
 right atmosphere is found, the right note is struck. All 
 is vividly real, and yet, if you close the book, all melts 
 into a dream again. Scott was almost equally successful 
 with a described horror in " The Tapestried Chamber."
 
 278 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 The idea is the commonplace of haunted houses, the 
 apparition is described as minutely as a burglar might 
 have been ; and yet we do not mock, but shudder as 
 we read. Then, on the other side — the side of antici- 
 pation — take the scene outside the closed door of the 
 vanished Dr. Jekyll, in Mr. Stevenson's well-known 
 apologue : 
 
 They are waiting on the threshold of the chamber 
 whence the doctor has disappeared — the chamber 
 tenanted by what? A voice comes from the room. 
 " Sir," said Poole, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, 
 " was that my master's voice ? " 
 
 A friend, a man of affairs, and a person never accused 
 of being fanciful, told me that he read through the book 
 to that point in a lonely Highland chateau, at night, and 
 that he did not think it well to finish the story till next 
 morning, but rushed to bed. So the passage seems 
 " well-found " and successful by dint of suggestion. On 
 the other side, perhaps, only Scotsmen brought up in 
 country places, familiar from childhood with the terrors 
 of Cameronian myth, and from childhood apt to haunt 
 the lonely churchyards, never stirred since the year of 
 the great Plague choked the soil with the dead, perhaps 
 they only know how much shudder may be found in Mr. 
 Stevenson's "Thrawn Janet." The black smouldering 
 heat in the hills and glens that are commonly so fresh, 
 the aspect of the Man, the Tempter of the Brethren, we 
 know them, and we have enough of the old blood in us 
 to be thrilled by that masterpiece of the described 
 supernatural. It may be only a local success, it may 
 not much affect the English reader, but it is of sure
 
 THE SUPERNATURAL IN FICTION 279 
 
 appeal to the Lowland Scot. The ancestral Covenanter 
 within us awakens, and is terrified by his ancient 
 fears. 
 
 Perhaps it may die out in a positive age — this power 
 of learning to shudder. To us it descends from very 
 long ago, from the far-off forefathers who dreaded the 
 dark, and who, half starved and all untaught, saw spirits 
 everywhere, and scarce discerned waking experience 
 from dreams. When we are all perfect positivist 
 philosophers, when a thousand generations of nurses 
 that never heard of ghosts have educated the thousand 
 and first generation of children, then the supernatural 
 may fade out of fiction. But has it not grown and 
 increased since Wordsworth wanted the " Ancient 
 Mariner" to have "a profession and a character," 
 since Southey called that poem a Dutch piece of work, 
 since Lamb had to pretend to dislike its " miracles " ? 
 Why, as science becomes more cock-sure, have men and 
 women become more and more fond of old follies, and 
 more pleased with the stirring of ancient dread within 
 their veins ? 
 
 As the visible world is measured, mapped, tested, 
 weighed, we seem to hope more and more that a 
 world of invisible romance may not be far from us, or, 
 at least, we care more and more to follow fancy into 
 these airy regions, et mania regna. The supernatural 
 has not ceased to tempt romancers, like Alexandre 
 Dumas, usually to their destruction ; more rarely, as 
 in Mrs. Oliphant's " Beleaguered City," to such success 
 as they do not find in the world of daily occupation. 
 The ordinary shilling tales of " hypnotism " and mes-
 
 28o ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 merism are vulgar trash enough, and yet I can believe 
 that an impossible romance, if the right man wrote it in 
 the right mood, might still win us from the newspapers, 
 and the stories of shabby love, and cheap remorses, and 
 commonplace failures. 
 
 " But it needs Heaven-sent moments for this skill."
 
 AN OLD SCOTTISH PSYCHICAL 
 RESEARCHER
 
 AN OLD SCOTTISH PSYCHICAL 
 RESEARCHER 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 " If any Gentlemen, and others, will be pleased to send 
 me any relations about Spirits, Witches, and 
 Apparitions, In any part of the Kingdom ; or any 
 Information about the Second Sight, Charms, 
 Spells, Magic, and the like, They shall oblige 
 the Author, and have them publisht to their 
 satisfaction. 
 
 " Direct your Relations to Alexander Ogstouns, Shop 
 Stationer, at the foot of the Plain-stones, at 
 Edinburgh, on the North-side of the Street." 
 
 Is this not a pleasing opportunity for Gentlemen, and 
 Others, whose Aunts have beheld wraiths, doubles, and 
 fetches ? It answers very closely to the requests of 
 the Society for Psychical Research, who publish, as 
 some one disparagingly says, " the dreams of the middle 
 classes." Thanks to Freedom, Progress, and the decline 
 of Superstition, it is now quite safe to see apparitions, 
 and even to publish the narrative of their appearance. 
 
 But when Mr. George Sinclair, sometime Professor of 
 
 283
 
 284 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Philosophy in Glasgow, issued the invitation which I 
 have copied, at the end of his "Satan's Invisible World 
 Discovered," ^ the vocation of a seer was not so secure 
 from harm. He, or she, might just as probably be 
 burned as not, on the charge of sorcery, in the year 
 of grace, 1685. However, Professor Sinclair managed 
 to rake together an odd enough set of legends, " proving 
 clearly that there are Devils," a desirable matter to have 
 certainty about. "Satan's Invisible World Discovered" 
 is a very rare little book ; I think Scott says in a MS. 
 note that he had great difficulty in procuring it, when 
 he was at work on his "infernal demonology." As a 
 copy fell in my way, or rather as I fell in its way, a 
 helpless victim to its charms and its blue morocco 
 binding, I take this chance of telling again the old tales 
 of 1685. 
 
 Mr. Sinclair began with a long dedicatory Epistle 
 about nothing at all, to the Lord Winton of the period. 
 The Earl dug coal-mines, and constructed "a molimi- 
 nous rampier for a harbour." A " moliminous rampier " 
 is a choice phrase, and may be envied by novelists 
 who aim at distinction of style. "Your defending 
 the salt pans against the imperious waves of the raging 
 sea from the NE. is singular," adds the Professor, 
 addressing "the greatest coal and salt-master in Scot- 
 land, who is a nobleman, and the greatest nobleman 
 who is a Coal and Salt Merchant." Perhaps it is already 
 plain to the modern mind that Mr. George Sinclair, 
 though a Professor of Philosophy, was not a very 
 sagacious character. 
 
 i Edinburgh, 1685.
 
 AN OLD PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER 285 
 
 Mr. Sinclair professes that his proofs of the existence 
 of Devils " are no old wife's trattles about the fire, but 
 such as may bide the test." He lived, one should 
 remember, in an age when faith was really seeking 
 aid from ghost stories. Glanvil's books — and, in 
 America, those of Cotton Mather — show the hospitality 
 to anecdotes of an edifying sort, which we admire in 
 Mr. Sinclair. Indeed, Sinclair borrows from Glanvil 
 and Henry More, authors who, like himself, wished to 
 establish the existence of the supernatural on the strange 
 incidents which still perplex us, but which are scarcely, 
 regarded as safe matter to argue upon. The testimony 
 for a Ghost would seldom go to a jury in our days, 
 though amply sufficient in the time of Mr. Sinclair. 
 About " The Devil of Glenluce " he took particular 
 care to be well informed, and first gave it to the world 
 in a volume on — you will never guess what subject — 
 Hydrostatics ! In the present work he offers us 
 
 "The Devil of Glenluce Enlarged 
 
 With several Remarkable Additions 
 
 from an Eye and Ear Witness, 
 
 A Person of undoubted 
 
 Honesty." 
 
 Mr.. Sinclair recommends its "usefulness for refuting 
 Atheism." Probably Mr. Sinclair got the story, or had 
 it put off on him rather, through one Campbell, a 
 student of philosophy in Glasgow, the son of Gilbert 
 Campbell, a weaver of Glenluce, in Galloway ; the 
 scene in our own time, of a mysterious murder. 
 Campbell had refused alms to Alexander Agnew. a
 
 286 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 bold and sturdy beggar, who, when asked by the Judge 
 whether he beUeved in a God, answered : " He knew 
 no God but Salt, Meal, and Water." In consequence 
 of the refusal of alms, "The Stirs first began," The 
 "Stirs" are ghostly disturbances. They commenced 
 with whistling in the house and out of it, "such as 
 children use to make with their small, slender glass 
 whistles." "About the Middle of November," says 
 Mr. Sinclair, "the Foul Fiend came on with his extra- 
 ordinary assaults." Observe that he takes the Foul 
 Fiend entirely for granted, and that he never tells us 
 the date of the original quarrel, and the early agitation. 
 Stones were thrown down the chimney and in at the 
 windows, but nobody was hurt. 
 
 Naturally Gilbert Campbell carried his tale of sorrow to 
 the parish Minister. This did not avail him. His warp 
 and threads were cut on his loom, and even the clothes 
 of his family were cut while they were wearing them. 
 At night something tugged the blankets off their beds, 
 a favourite old spiritual trick, which was played, if I 
 remember well, on a Roman Emperor, according to 
 Suetonius. Poor Campbell had to remove his stock- 
 in-trade, and send his children to board out, "to try 
 whom the trouble did most follow." After this, all 
 was quiet (as perhaps might be expected), and quiet 
 all remained, till a son named Thomas was brought 
 home again. Then the house was twice set on fire, 
 and it might have been enough to give Thomas a 
 beating. On the other hand, Campbell sent Thomas 
 to stay with the Minister. But the troubles continued 
 in the old way. At last the family became so accus-
 
 AN OLD PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER 287 
 
 tomed to the Devil, "that they were no more afraid 
 to keep up the Clash" (chatter) "with the Foul Fiend 
 than to speak to each other." They were like the 
 Wesleys, who were so familiar with the fiend Jeffrey, 
 that haunted their home. 
 
 The Minister, with a few of the gentry, heard of their 
 unholy friendship, and paid Campbell a visit. "At 
 their first coming in the Devil says : ' Qmi77i Literarum 
 is good Latin.' " These are the first words of the Latin 
 rudiments which scholars are taught when they go to 
 the Grammar School. Then they all prayed, and a 
 Voice came from under the bed: "Would you know 
 the Witches of Glenluce?" The Voice named a few, 
 including one long dead. But the Minister, with rare 
 good sense, remarked that what Satan said was not 
 evidence. 
 
 Let it be remarked that " the lad Tom " had that very 
 day " come back with the Minister." The Fiend then 
 offered terms. "Give me a spade and shovel, and 
 depart from the house for seven days, and I will make 
 a grave, and lie down in it, and trouble you no more." 
 Hereon Campbell, with Scottish caution, declined to 
 crive the Devil the value of a straw. The visitors then 
 hunted after the voice, observing that some of the chil- 
 dren were in bed. They found nothing, and then, as 
 the novelists say, " a strange thing happened." 
 
 There appeared a naked hand and an arm, from the 
 elbow down, beating upon the floor till the house did 
 shake again. " The Fiend next exclaimed that if the 
 candle were put out he would appear in the shape of 
 Fireballs."
 
 288 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 Let it be observed that now, for the first time, we 
 learn that all the scene occurred in candle-light. The 
 appearance of floating balls of fire is frequent (if we 
 may believe the current reports) at spiritualistic seances. 
 But what a strange, ill-digested tale is Mr. Sinclair's ! 
 He lets slip an expression which shows that the in- 
 vestigators were in one room, the But, while the Fiend 
 was diverting himself in the other room, the Ben ! The 
 Fiend (nobody going Ben) next chaffed a gentleman 
 who wore a fashionable broad-brimmed hat, "where- 
 upon he presently imagined that he felt a pair of shears 
 going about his hat," but there was no such matter. 
 The voice asked for a piece of bread, which the others 
 were eating, and said the maid gave him a crust in the 
 morning. This she denied, but admitted that some- 
 thing had " clicked " a piece of bread out of her hand. 
 
 The seance ended, the Devil slapping a safe portion 
 of the children's bodies, with a sound resembling ap- 
 plause. After many months of this really annoying 
 conduct, poor Campbell laid his case before the Presby- 
 ters, in 1655, thirty years before the date of pubUcation. 
 So a " solemn humiliation " was actually held all through 
 the bounds of the synod. But to little purpose did 
 Glenluce sit in sackcloth and ashes. The good wife's 
 plate was snatched away before her very eyes, and then 
 thrown back at her. In similar " stirs," described by 
 a Catholic missionary in Peru soon after Pizarro's con- 
 quest, the cup of an Indian chief was lifted up by an 
 invisible hand, and set down empty. In that case, too, 
 stones were thrown, as by the Devil of Glenluce. 
 
 And what was the end of it all ? Mr. Sinclair has not
 
 AN OLD PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER 289 
 
 even taken the trouble to inquire. It seems by some 
 conjuration or other, the Devil suffered himself to be 
 put away, and gave the weaver a habitation. The 
 weaver " has been a very Odd man that endured so long 
 these marvellous disturbances." 
 
 This is the tale which Mr. Sinclair offers, without 
 mentioning his authority. He complains that Dr. 
 Henry More had plagiarised it, from his book of 
 Hydrostatics. Two points may be remarked. First : 
 modern Psychical Inquirers are more particular about 
 evidence than Mr. Sinclair. Not for nothing do we 
 live in an age of science. Next : the stories of these 
 "stirs" are always much the same everywhere, in Glen- 
 luce, at Tedworth, where the Drummer came, in Peru, 
 in Wesley's house, in heroic Iceland, when Glam, the 
 vampire, " rode the roofs." It is curious to speculate 
 on how the tradition of making themselves little 
 nuisances in this particular manner has been handed 
 down among children, if we are to suppose that chil- 
 dren do the trick. Last autumn a farmer's house in 
 Scotland was annoyed exactly as the weaver's home 
 was, and that within a quarter of a mile of a well-known 
 man of science. The mattress of the father was ten- 
 anted by something that wriggled like a snake. The 
 mattress was opened, nothing was found, and the dis- 
 turbance began again as soon as the bed was restored 
 to its place. This occurred when the farmer's children 
 had been sent to a distance. 
 
 One cannot but be perplexed by the problem which 
 
 these tales suggest. Almost bare of evidence as they 
 
 are, their great number, their wide diffusion, in many 
 
 T
 
 290 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 countries and in times ancient and modern, may estab- 
 lish some substratum of truth. Scott mentions a case 
 in which the imposture was detected by a sheriffs 
 officer. But a recent anecdote makes me almost dis- 
 trust the detection. 
 
 Some EngUsh people, having taken a country house 
 in Ireland, were vexed by the usual rappings, stone- 
 throwings, and all the rest of the business. They sent 
 to Dublin for two detectives, who arrived. On their 
 first night, the lady of the house went into a room, 
 where she found one of the policemen asleep in his 
 chair. Being a lively person, she rapped twice or thrice 
 on the table. He awakened, and said : " Ah, so I 
 suspected. It was hardly worth while, madam, to bring 
 us so far for this." And next day the worthy men with- 
 drew in dudgeon, but quite convinced that they had 
 discovered the agent in the hauntings. 
 
 But they had not ! 
 
 On the other hand, Scott (who had seen one ghost, 
 if not two, and had heard a " warning ") states that Miss 
 Anne Robinson managed the Stockwell disturbances by 
 tying horsehairs to plates and light articles, which then 
 demeaned themselves as if possessed. 
 
 Here we have vera causa, a demonstrable cause of 
 " stirs," and it may be inferred that all the other his- 
 torical occurrences had a similar origin. We have, then, 
 only to be interested in the persistent tradition, in 
 accordance with which mischievous persons always do 
 exactly the same sort of thing. But this is a mere 
 example of the identity of human nature. 
 
 It is curious to see how Mr. Sinclair plumes himself 
 on this Devil of Glenluce as a " moliminous rampier "
 
 AN OLD PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER 291 
 
 against irreligion. " This one Relation is worth all the 
 price that can be given for the Book." The price I 
 have given for the volume is Ten Golden Guineas, and 
 perhaps the Foul Thief of Glenluce is hardly worth 
 the money. 
 
 " I believe if the Obdurest Atheist among men would 
 seriously and in good earnest consider that relation, 
 and ponder all the circumstances thereof, he would 
 presently cry out, as a Dr. of Physick did, hearing a 
 story less considerable, 'I believe I have been in the 
 wrong all the time — if this be true.'" 
 
 Mr. Sinclair is also a believer in the Woodstock 
 devils, on which Scott founded his novel. He does 
 not give the explanation that Giles Sharp, aHas Joseph 
 Collins of Oxford, alias Funny Joe, was all the Devil in 
 that affair. Scott had read the story of Funny Joe, 
 but could never remember " whether it exists in a 
 separate collection, or where it is to be looked for." 
 
 Indifferent to evidence, Mr. Sinclair confutes the 
 Obdurest Atheists with the Pied Piper of HameUn, with 
 the young lady from Howells' " Letters," whose house, 
 like Rahab's, was "on the city wall," and with the 
 ghost of the Major who appeared to the Captain (as he 
 had promised), and scolded him for not keeping his 
 sword clean. He also gives us Major Weir, at full 
 length, convincing us that, as William Erskine said, 
 " The Major was a disgusting fellow, a most ungentle- 
 manlike character." Scott, on the other hand, re- 
 marked, long before " Waverley," " if I ever were to 
 become a writer of prose romances, I think I would 
 choose Major Weir, if not for my hero, at least for an 
 agent and a leading one, in my production." He
 
 292 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 admitted that the street where the Major lived was 
 haunted by a woman " twice the common length," " but 
 why should we set him down for an ungentlemanly 
 fellow?" Readers of Mr. Sinclair . will understand the 
 reason very well, and it is not necessary, nor here even 
 possible, to justify Erskine's opinion by quotations. 
 Suffice it that, by virtue of his enchanted staff, which 
 was burned with him, the Major was enabled "to com- 
 mit evil not to be named, yea, even to reconcile man 
 and wife when at variance." His sister, who was hanged, 
 had Redgauntlet's horse-shoe mark on her brow, and one 
 may marvel that Scott does not seem to have remembered 
 this coincidence. "There was seen an exact Horse- 
 shoe, shaped for nails, in her wrinkles. Terrible enough, 
 I assure you, to the stoutest beholder ! " 
 
 Most modern readers will believe that both the 
 luckless Major and his sister were religious maniacs. 
 Poverty, solitude, and the superstition of their time were 
 the true demon of Major AVeir, burned at the stake in 
 April 1670. Perhaps the most singular impression 
 made by " Satan's Invisible World Discovered " is that 
 in Sinclair's day, people who did not believe in bogies 
 believed in nothing, while people who shared the 
 common creed of Christendom were capable of believing 
 in everything. 
 
 Atheists are as common as ghosts in his marvellous 
 relations, and the very wizards themselves were often 
 Atheists. 
 
 Note. — I have said that Scott himself had seen one ghost, if not 
 two, and heard a " warning." The ghost was seen near Ashestiel, on 
 an open spot of hillside, "please to observe it was before dinner,"
 
 AN OLD PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER 293 
 
 The anecdote is in Gillis's " Recollections of Sir Walter Scott," p. 170. 
 The vision of Lord Byron standing in the great hall of Abbotsford 
 is described in the " Demonology and Witchcraft." Scott alleges 
 that it resolved itself into "great coats, shawls, and plaids "—a 
 hallucination. But Lockhart remarks (" Life," ix. p. 141) that he 
 did not care to have the circumstance discussed in general. The 
 " stirs " in Abbotsford during the night when his architect, Bullock, 
 died in London, are in Lockhart, v. pp. 309-315. "The noise re- 
 sembled half-a-dozen men hard at work putting up boards and 
 furniture, and nothing can be more certain than that there was 
 nobody on the premises at the time." The noise, unluckily, occurred 
 twice, April 28 and 29, 1818, and Lockhart does not tell us on 
 which of these two nights Mr. Bullock died. Such is the casualness 
 of ghost story-tellers. Lockhart adds that the coincidence made a 
 strong impression on Sir Walter's mind. He did not care to ascertain 
 the point in his own mental constitution " where incredulity began to 
 waver," according to his friend, Mr. J. L. Adolphus.
 
 THE BOY
 
 THE BOY 
 
 As a humble student of savage life, I have found it 
 
 necessary to make researches into the manners and 
 
 customs of boys. Boys are not what a vain people 
 
 supposes. If you meet them in the holidays, you find 
 
 them affable and full of kindness and good qualities. 
 
 They vv-ill condescend to your weakness at lawn-tennis, 
 
 they Avill aid you in your selection of fly-hooks, and, to 
 
 be brief, will behave with much more than the civility of 
 
 tame Zulus or Red Men on a missionary settlement. 
 
 But boys at school and among themselves, left to the 
 
 wild justice and traditional laws which many generations 
 
 of boys have evolved, are entirely different beings. 
 
 They resemble that Polynesian prince who had rejected 
 
 the errors of polytheism for those of an extreme sect 
 
 of Primitive Seceders. For weeks at a time this prince 
 
 was known to be " steady," but every month or so he 
 
 disappeared, and his subjects said he vas" lying off." 
 
 To adopt an American idiom, he " felt like brandy and 
 
 \\ ater " ; he also " felt like " wearing no clothes, and 
 
 generally rejecting his new conceptions of duty and 
 
 decency. In fact, he had a good bout of savagery, and 
 
 then he returned to his tall hat, his varnished boots, his 
 
 hymn-book, and his edifying principles. The life of 
 
 297
 
 298 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 small boys at school (before they get into long-tailed 
 coats and the upper-fifth) is often a mere course of 
 "lying-off" — of relapse into native savagery with its 
 laws and customs. 
 
 If any one has so far forgotten his own boyhood as to 
 think this description exaggerated, let him just fancy 
 what our comfortable civilised life would be, if we could 
 become boys in character and custom. Let us suppose 
 that you are elected to a new club, of which most of 
 the members are strangers to you. You enter the 
 doors for the first time, when two older members, who 
 have been gossiping in the hall, pounce upon you with 
 the exclamation, " Hullo, here's a new fellow ! You 
 fellow, what's your name?" You reply, let us say, 
 "Johnson." "I don't believe it, it's such a rum name. 
 What's your father?" Perhaps you are constrained to 
 answer " a Duke " or (more probably) " a solicitor." 
 In the former case your friends bound up into the 
 smoking-room, howling, " Here's a new fellow says his 
 father is a Duke. Let's take the cheek out of him." 
 And they " take it out " with umbrellas, slippers, and 
 other surgical instruments. Or, in the latter case (your 
 parent being a solicitor) they reply, "Then your father 
 must be a beastly cad. All solicitors are sharks. My 
 father says so, and he knows. How many sisters have 
 you?" The new member answers, "Four." "Any of 
 them married?" "No." "How awfully awkward for 
 you." 
 
 By this time, perhaps, luncheon is ready, or the 
 evening papers come in, and you are released for a 
 moment. You sneak up into the library, where you
 
 THE BOY 299 
 
 naturally expect to be entirely alone, and you settle on 
 a sofa with a novel. But an old member bursts into 
 the room, spies a new fellow, and puts him through the 
 usual catechism. He ends with, " How much tin have 
 you got ? " You answer " twenty pounds," or whatever 
 the sum may be, for perhaps you had contemplated 
 playing whist. " Very well, fork it out ; you must give 
 a dinner, all new fellows must, and you are not going to 
 begin by being a stingy beast?" Thus addressed, as 
 your friend is a big bald man, who looks mischievous, 
 you do "fork out" all your ready money, and your new 
 friend goes off to consult the cook. Meanwhile you 
 " shed a blooming tear," as Homer says, and go home 
 heart-broken. Now, does any grown-up man call this 
 state of society civilisation ? Would life be worth living 
 (whatever one's religious consolations) on these terms ? 
 Of course not, and yet this picture is a not overdrawn 
 sketch of the career of some new boy, at some schools 
 new or old. The existence of a small schoolboy is, in 
 other respects, not unlike that of an outsider in a lawless 
 " Brotherhood," as the Irish playfully call their murder 
 clubs. 
 
 The small boy is in the society, but not of it, as 
 far as any benefits go. He has to field out (and I 
 admit that the discipline is salutary) while other boys 
 bat. Other boys commit the faults, and compel him to 
 copy out the impositions — say five hundred lines of 
 Virgil — with which their sins are visited. Other boys 
 enjoy the pleasures of football, while the small boy has 
 to run vaguely about, never within five yards of the ball. 
 Big boys reap the glories of paperchases, the small boy
 
 300 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 gets lost in the bitter weather, on the open moorsj or 
 perhaps (as in one historical case) is frozen to death 
 within a measurable distance of the school playground. 
 And the worst of it is that, as a member of the great 
 school secret society, the small boy can never complain of 
 his wrongs, or divulge the name of his tormentors. It is 
 in this respect that he resembles a harmless fellow, dragged 
 into the coils of an Anarchist " Inner Brotherhood." 
 He is exposed to all sorts of wrongs from his neigh- 
 bours, and he can only escape by turning "informer," 
 by breaking the most sacred law of his society, losing 
 all social status, and, probably, obliging his parents to 
 remove him from school. Life at school, as among the 
 Celtic peoples, turns on the belief that law and authority 
 are natural enemies, against which every one is banded. 
 The chapter of bullying among boys is one on which 
 a man enters with reluctance. Boys are, on the whole, 
 such good fellows, and so full of fine unsophisticated 
 qualities, that the mature mind would gladly turn away 
 its eyes from beholding their iniquities. Even a cruel 
 bully does not inevitably and invariably develop into a 
 bad man. He is, let us hope, only passing through the 
 savage stage, in which the torture of prisoners is a recog- 
 nised institution. He has, perhaps, too little imagina- 
 tion to understand the pain he causes. Very often 
 bullying is not physically cruel, but only a perverted 
 sort of humour, such as Kingsley, in " Hypatia," recog- 
 nised among his favourite Goths. 1 remember a feeble 
 foolish boy at school (feeble he certainly was, and was 
 thought foolish) who became the subject of much 
 humorous bullying. His companions used to tie a
 
 THE BOY 3or 
 
 thin thread round his ear, and attach this to a bar at 
 such a height that he could only avoid breaking it by 
 standing on tiptoe. But he was told that he must not 
 break the thread. To avoid infringing this command- 
 ment, he put himself to considerable inconvenience 
 and afforded much enjoyment to the spectators. 
 
 Men of middle age, rather early middle age, remem- 
 ber the two following species of bullying to which 
 they were subjected, and which, perhaps, are obso- 
 lescent. Tall stools were piled up in a pyramid, and 
 the victim was seated on the top, near the roof of the 
 room. The other savages brought him down from this 
 bad eminence by hurling other stools at those which 
 supported him. Or the victim was made to place his 
 hands against the door, with the fingers outstretched, 
 while the young tormentors played at the Chinese knife- 
 trick. They threw knives, that is to say, at the door 
 between the apertures of the fingers, and, as a rule, 
 they hit the fingers and not the door. These diversions 
 I know to be correctly reported, but the following pretty 
 story is, perhaps, a myth. At one of the most famous 
 public schools, a praepostor, or monitor, or sixth-form 
 boy having authority, heard a pistol-shot in the room 
 above his own. He went up and found a big boy and 
 a little boy. They denied having any pistol. The 
 monitor returned to his studies, again was sure he 
 heard a shot, went up, and found the little boy dead. 
 The big boy had been playing the William Tell trick 
 with him, and had hit his head instead of the apple. 
 That is the legend. Whether it be true or false, all 
 boys will agree that the little victim could not have
 
 302 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 escaped by complaining to the monitor. No. Death 
 before dishonour. But the side not so seamy of this 
 picture of school life is the extraordinary power of honour 
 among boys. Of course the laws of the secret society 
 might well terrify a puerile informer. But the sentiment 
 of honour is even more strong than fear, and will pro- 
 bably outlast the very disagreeable circumstances in 
 which it was developed. 
 
 People say bullying is not what it used to be. The 
 much abused monitorial system has this in it of good, 
 that it enables a clever and kindly boy who is high up in 
 the school to stop the cruelties (if he hears of them) of 
 a much bigger boy who is low in the school. But he 
 seldom hears of them. Habitual bullies are very cunning, 
 and I am acquainted with instances in which they carry 
 their victims off to lonely torture cells (so to speak) and 
 deserted places fit for the sport. Some years ago a 
 small boy, after a long course of rope's-ending in out-of- 
 the-way dens, revealed the abominations of some naval 
 cadets. There was not much sympathy with him in the 
 public mind, and perhaps his case was not well managed. 
 But it was made clear that whereas among men an un- 
 popular person is only spoken evil of behind his back, 
 an unpopular small boy among boys is made to suffer in 
 a more direct and very unpleasant way. 
 
 Most of us leave school with the impression that there 
 was a good deal of bullying when we were little, but 
 that the institution has died out. The truth is that we 
 have grown too big to be bullied, and too good-natured 
 to bully ourselves. When I left school, I thought bully- 
 ing was an extinct art, like encaustic painting (before it was
 
 THE BOY 303 
 
 rediscovered by Sir William Richmond). But a distin- 
 guished writer, who was a small boy when I was a big 
 one, has since revealed to me the most abominable 
 cruelties which were being practised at the very moment 
 when I supposed bullying to have had its day and 
 ceased to be. Now, the small boy need only have 
 mentioned the circumstances to any one of a score of 
 big boys, and the tormentor would have been first 
 thrashed, and then, probably, expelled. 
 
 A friend of my own was travelling lately in a wild 
 and hilly region on the other side of the world, 
 let us say in the Mountains of the Moon. In 
 a mountain tavern he had thrust upon him the 
 society of the cook, a very useless young man, who 
 astonished him by references to one of our univer- 
 sities, and to the enjoyments of that seat of learning. 
 This youth (who was made cook, and a very bad cook 
 too, because he could do nothing else) had been expelled 
 from a large English school. And he was expelled 
 because he had felled a bully with a paving-stone, and 
 had expressed his readiness to do it again. Now, there 
 was no doubt that this cook in the mountain inn was a 
 very unserviceable young fellow. But I wish more boys 
 who have suffered things literally unspeakable from 
 bullies would try whether force (in the form of a paving 
 stone) is really no remedy. 
 
 The Catholic author of a recent book ( " Schools," by 
 Lieut.-Col. Raleigh Chichester), is very hard on "Pro- 
 testant Schools," and thinks that the Catholic system of 
 constant watching is a remedy for bullying and other 
 evils. "Swing-doors with their upper half glazed, might
 
 304 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 have their uses," he says, and he does not see why a boy 
 should not be permitted to complain, if he is roasted, 
 like Tom Brown, before a large fire. The boys at 
 one Catholic school described by Colonel Raleigh 
 Chichester, "are never without surveillance of some sort." 
 This is true of most French schools, and any one who 
 wishes to understand the consequences (there) may 
 read the published confessions of a pioti — an usher, or 
 " spy." K more degraded and degrading life than that of 
 the wretched pion^ it is impossible to imagine. In an 
 English private school, the system of espionnage and tale- 
 bearing, when it exists, is probably not unlike what Mr. 
 Anstey describes in Vice Versa. But in the Catholic 
 schools spoken of by Colonel Raleigh Chichester, the 
 surveillance may be, as he says, " that of a parent ; an 
 aid to the boys in their games rather than a check." 
 The religious question as between Catholics and Pro- 
 testants has no essential connection with the subject. 
 A Protestant school might, and Grimstone's did, have 
 tale-bearers ; possibly a Catholic school might exist 
 without parental surveillance. That system is called by 
 its foes a "police," by its friends a "paternal" system. 
 But fathers don't exercise the " paternal " system them- 
 selves in this country, and we may take it for granted 
 that, while English society and religion are as they are, 
 surveillance at our large schools will be impossible. If 
 any one regrets this, let him read the descriptions of 
 French schools and schooldays, in Balzac's Louis 
 Lambert^ in the "Memoirs" of M. Maxime du Camp, in 
 any book where a Frenchman speaks his mind about his 
 youth. He will find spying (of course) among the ushers,
 
 THE BOY 305 
 
 contempt and hatred on the side of the boys, unwhole- 
 some and cruel punishments, a total lack of healthy 
 exercise ; and he will hear of holidays spent in premature 
 excursions into forbidden and shady quarters of the 
 town. 
 
 No doubt the best security against bullying is in con- 
 stant occupation. There can hardly (in spite of Master 
 George Osborne's experience in "Vanity Fair") be 
 much bullying in an open cricket-field. Big boys, too, 
 with good hearts, should not only stop bullying when 
 they come across it, but make it their business to find 
 out where it exists. Exist it will, more or less, despite 
 all precautions, while boys are boys — that is, are passing 
 through a modified form of the savage state. 
 
 There is a curious fact in the boyish character which 
 seems, at first sight, to make good the opinion that 
 private education, at home, is the true method. Before 
 they go out into school life, many little fellows of nine, 
 or so, are extremely original, imaginative, and almost 
 poetical. They are fond of books, fond of nature, and, 
 if you can win their confidence, will tell you all sorts 
 of pretty thoughts and fancies which lie about them 
 in their infancy. I have known a little boy who liked 
 to lie on the grass and to people the alleys and glades 
 of that miniature forest with fairies and dwarfs, whom 
 he seemed actually to see in a kind of vision. But 
 he went to school, he instantly won the hundred yards 
 race for boys under twelve, and he came back a young 
 barbarian, interested in "the theory of touch" (at 
 football), curious in the art of bowling, and no more 
 capable than you or I of seeing fairies in a green meadow. 
 
 u
 
 3o6 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 He was caught up into the air of the boy's world, and 
 his imagination was in abeyance for a season. 
 
 This is a common enough thing, and rather a melan- 
 choly spectacle to behold. One is tempted to believe 
 that school causes the loss of a good deal of genius, and 
 that the small boys who leave home poets, and come back 
 barbarians, have been wasted. But, on the other hand, 
 if they had been kept at home and encouraged, the 
 chances are that they would have blossomed into infant 
 phenomena and nothing better. The awful infancy of 
 Mr. John Stuart Mill is a standing warning. Mr. Mill 
 would probably have been a much happier and wiser 
 man if he had not been a precocious linguist, economist, 
 and philosopher, but had passed through a healthy stage 
 of indifference to learning and speculation at a public 
 school. Look again, at the childhood of Bishop Thirl- 
 wall. His Primitiae were published (by Samuel Tipper, 
 London, 1808), when young Connop was but eleven 
 years of age. His indiscreet father "launched this 
 slender bark," as he says, and it sailed through three 
 editions between 1808 and 1809. Young Thirlwall 
 was taught Latin at three years of age, "and at four 
 read Greek with an ease and fluency which astonished 
 all who heard him." At seven he composed an essay 
 " On the Uncertainty of Human Life," but " his taste 
 for poetry was not discovered till a later period." His 
 sermons, some forty, occupy most of the little volume 
 in which these Primitiae were collected. 
 
 He was especially concerned about Sabbath desecra- 
 tion. "I confess," observes this sage of ten, "when I 
 look upon the present and past state of our public
 
 THE BOY 307 
 
 morals, and when I contrast our present luxury, dis- 
 sipation, and depravity, with past frugality and virtue, 
 I feel not merely a sensation of regret, but also of 
 terror, for the result of the change." " The late 
 Revolution in France," he adds, "has afforded us a 
 remarkable lesson how necessary religion is to a 
 State, and that from a deficiency on that head arise 
 the chief evils which can befall society." He then 
 bids us " remember that the Nebuchadnezzar who may 
 destroy our Israel is near at hand," though it might 
 be difficult to show how Nebuchadnezzar destroyed 
 Israel. 
 
 As to the uncertainty of life, he remarks that 
 " Edward VI. died in his minority, and disappointed 
 his subjects, to whom he had promised a happy reign." 
 Of this infant's thirty-nine sermons (just as many as 
 the Articles), it may be said that they are in no way 
 inferior to other examples of this class of literature. 
 But sermons are among the least " scarce " and " rare " 
 of human essays, and many parents would rather see 
 their boy patiently acquiring the art of wicket-keeping 
 at school than moralising on the uncertainty of life at 
 home. Some one " having presented to the young 
 author a copy of verses on the trite and familiar subject 
 of the Ploughboy," he replied with an ode on " The 
 Potboy." 
 
 " Bliss is not always join'd to wealth, 
 Nor dwells beneath the gilded roof, 
 For poverty is bliss with health, 
 Of that my potboy stands a proof."
 
 3o8 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 The volume ends with this determination, 
 
 " Still shall I seek Apollo's shelt'ring ray, 
 To cheer my spirits and inspire my lay." 
 
 If any parent or guardian desires any further infor- 
 mation about Les Enfans deveniis cclcbres par leurs ecrits, 
 he will find it in a work of that name, published in 
 Paris in 1688. The learned Scioppius published works 
 at sixteen, " which deserved " (and perhaps obtained) 
 "the admiration of dotards." M. Du Maurier asserts 
 that, at the age of fifteen, Grotius pleaded causes at 
 the Bar. At eleven Meursius made orations and 
 harangues which were much admired. At fifteen, 
 Alexandre le Jeune wrote anacreontic verses, and (less 
 excusably) a commentary on the Institutions of Gaius. 
 Grevin published a tragedy and two comedies at the 
 age of thirteen, and at fifteen Louis Stella was a pro- 
 fessor of Greek. But no one reads Grevin now, nor 
 Stella, nor Alexandre le Jeune, and perhaps their time 
 might have been better occupied in being "soaring 
 human boys" than in composing tragedies and com- 
 mentaries. Monsieur le Due de Maine published, in 
 1678, his (Euvres d'un Auteur de Sept Ans, a royal 
 example to be avoided by all boys. These and 
 several score of other examples may perhaps reconcile 
 us to the spectacle of puerile genius fading away in 
 the existence of the common British schoolboy, who is 
 nothing of a poet, and still less of a jurisconsult. 
 
 The British authors who understand boys best are 
 not those who have written books exclusively about 
 boys. There is Canon Farrar, for example, whose
 
 THE BOY 309 
 
 romances of boyish life appear to be very popular, but 
 whose boys, somehow, are not real boys. They are too 
 good when they are good, and when they are bad, they 
 are not perhaps too bad (that is impossible), but they 
 are bad in the wrong way. They are bad with a man- 
 nish and conscious vice, whereas even bad boys seem 
 to sin less consciously and after a ferocious fashion of 
 their own. Of the boys in " Tom Brown " it is difificult 
 to speak, because the Rugby boy under Arnold seems 
 to have been of a peculiar species. A contemporary 
 pupil was asked, when an undergraduate, what he con- 
 ceived to be the peculiar characteristic of Rugby boys. 
 He said, after mature reflection, that " the differetitia of 
 the Rugby boy was his moral thoughtfulness." Now the 
 characteristic of the ordinary boy is his want of what 
 is called moral thoughtfulness. 
 
 He lives in simple obedience to school traditions. 
 These may compel him, at one school, to speak in a 
 peculiar language, and to persecute and beat all boys 
 who are slow at learning this language. At another 
 school he may regard dislike of the manly game of foot- 
 ball as the sin with which " heaven heads the count 
 of crimes." On the whole this notion seems a useful 
 protest against the prematurely artistic beings who fill 
 their studies with photographs of Greek fragments, vases, 
 etchings by the newest etcher, bits of China, Oriental 
 rugs, and very curious old brass candlesticks. The 
 " challenge cup " soon passes away from the keeping 
 of any house in a public school where Bunthorne is a 
 popular and imitated character. But when we reach 
 aesthetic boys, we pass out of the savage stage into
 
 o 
 
 lo ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 hobbledehoyhood. The bigger boys at public schools 
 are often terribly " advanced," and when they are not at 
 work or play, they are vexing themselves with the riddle 
 of the earth, evolution, agnosticism, and all that kind 
 of thing. Latin verses may not be what conservatives 
 fondly deem them, and even cricket may, it is said, 
 become too absorbing a pursuit, but either or both are 
 better than precocious freethinking and sacrifice on the 
 altar of the Beautiful. 
 
 A big boy who is tackling Haeckel or composing 
 virelais in playtime is doing himself no good, and 
 is worse than useless to the society of which he is a 
 member. The small boys, who are the most ardent 
 of hero-worshippers, either despise him or they allow 
 him to address them in chansons royaux, and respond 
 with trebles in triolets. At present a great many boys 
 leave school, pass three years or four at the universities, 
 and go back as masters to the place where some of their 
 old schoolfellows are still pupils. It is through these 
 very young masters, perhaps, that "advanced" specula- 
 tions and tastes get into schools, where, however excel- 
 lent in themselves, they are rather out of place. Indeed, 
 the very young master, though usually earnest in his 
 work, must be a sage indeed if he can avoid talking 
 to the elder boys about the problems that interest him, 
 and so forcing their minds into precocious attitudes. 
 The advantage of Eton boys used to be, perhaps is still, 
 that they came up to college absolutely destitute of 
 " ideas," and guiltless of reading anything more modern 
 than Virgil. Thus their intellects were quite fallow, and 
 they made astonishing progress when they bent their
 
 THE BOY 311 
 
 fresh and unwearied minds to study. But too many 
 boys now leave school with settled opinions derived 
 from the very latest thing out, from the newest German 
 pessimist or American socialist. It may, however, be 
 argued that ideas of these sorts are like measles, and 
 that it is better to take them early and be done with 
 them for ever. 
 
 While schools are reformed and Latin grammars of 
 the utmost ingenuity and difficulty are published, boys 
 on the whole change very little. They remain the beings 
 whom Thackeray understood better than any other 
 writer : Thackeray, who liked boys so much and was 
 so little blind to their defects. I think he exaggerates 
 their habit of lying to masters, or, if they lied in his 
 day, their character has altered in that respect, and they 
 are more truthful than many men find it expedient to be. 
 And they have given up fighting ; the old battles between 
 Berry and Biggs, or Dobbin and Cuff (major) are things 
 of the glorious past. Big boys don't fight, and there 
 is a whisper that little boys kick each other's shins 
 when in wrath. That practice can hardly be called an 
 improvement, even if we do not care for fisticuffs. 
 Perhaps the gloves are the best peacemakers at school. 
 When all the boys, by practice in boxing, know pretty 
 well whom they can in a friendly way lick, they are 
 less tempted to more crucial experiments " without the 
 gloves." 
 
 But even the ascertainment of one's relative merits 
 with the gloves hurts a good deal, and one may thank 
 heaven that the fountain of youth (as described by Pontus 
 de Tyarde) is not a common beverage. By drinking
 
 312 ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS 
 
 this liquid, says the old Frenchman, one is insensibly 
 brought back from old to middle age, and to youth and 
 boyhood. But one would prefer to stop drinking of the 
 fountain before actually being reduced to boy's estate, 
 and passing once more through the tumultuous ex- 
 periences of that period. And of these, not having 
 enough to eat is by no means the least common. The 
 evidence as to execrable dinners is rather dispiriting, 
 and one may end by saying that if there is a worse 
 fellow than a bully, it is a master who does not see 
 that his boys are supplied with plenty of wholesome 
 food. He, at least, could not venture, like a distin- 
 guished headmaster, to preach and publish sermons on 
 " Boys' Life : its Fulness." A schoolmaster who has 
 boarders is a hotel-keeper, and thereby makes his in- 
 come, but he need not keep a hotel which would be 
 dispraised in guide books. Dinners are a branch of 
 school economy which should not be left to the wives 
 of schoolmasters. They have never been boys. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson <5r^ Co. 
 Edinburgh £r^ London 
 
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