AT LOS ANGELES
! Y
THE EXCURSIONS OF A
BOOK- LOVER
BEING PAPERS ON LITERARY
THEMES
BY
FREDERIC ROWLAND MARVIN
"Dearly beloved old pigskin tomes!
Of dingy hue — old bookish darlings !
Oh cluster ever round my rooms,
And banish strifes, disputes, and snarlings.'
BOSTON
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY
1910
,
' > »
Copyright, 1910
Sherman French & Company
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CQ
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Is
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TO
c5 PERSIS
MY BELOVED WIFE
^ IN GLAD REMEMBRANCE OF
CD A HAPPY MARRIED LIFE
: n
THIS book is precisely what its
name indicates. The papers
of which it is composed represent
the many pleasant evenings which
a Book-lover has passed in delight-
ful association with what an Eng-
lish poet has called " the sweet
consolers of the mind. 1 ' There is
no plan or special purpose in the
arrangement. The Excursionist's
migrations were not, all of them,
" from the blue bed to the brown."
He visited the libraries of his
friends where he found not only
the goodly fellowship of many rare
volumes, but the companionship of
kindred souls, and the joy of a
fragrant cigar. The gladness of
many evenings is in these pages.
F. R. M.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. BOOKS 1
II. AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE . . 39
III. LITERARY FAME 53
IV. BOOK DEDICATIONS .... 83
V. AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS . .111
VI. ETHAN BRAND 129
VII. THE MAN OF GENIUS . . . .153
VIII. THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK . 179
IX. SHAKSPEARE'S BONES . . .213
X. HOLOGRAPHS 235
XL AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY . 275
I
BOOKS
Collegian.
Did you, ere we departed from the college,
O'erlook my library?
Servant.
Yes, sir; and I find
Although you tell me learning is immortal,
The paper and the parchment 'tis contain'd in,
Savours of much mortality.
The moths have eaten more
Authentic learning than would richly furnish
A hundred country pedants; yet the wormes
Are not one letter wiser.
— Glapthorn's "Wit in a Constable."
BOOKS
"And I would urge upon every young man, as
the beginning of his due and wise provision for
his household, to obtain as soon as he can, by the
severest economy, a restricted, serviceable, and
steadily — however slowly — increasing series of
books for use through life; making his little library,
of all the furniture in his room, the most studied
and decorative piece; every volume having its as-
signed place, like a little statue in its niche, and
one of the earliest and strictest lessons to the chil-
dren of the house being how to turn the pages of
their own literary possessions lightly and delib-
erately, with no chance of tearing or dog's ears."
John Ruskin.
NO, Mr. Ruskin, the man who would make of
books lasting and intimate friends will
never proceed in the way you recommend. The
man who truly loves good books will draw them
to himself by a subtile, mysterious, and inde-
scribable attraction. Books will not decorate his
shelves, "each volume having its assigned place,
like a little statue in its niche," but, like friends,
they will gather around him in affectionate com-
panionship. They will commune with him. Be-
tween him and them there will be absolutely no
ceremony. He will attract such books as give
him pleasure, and the night will be turned into
day with the splendor of their hallowed fellow-
ship. Charles Lamb, beloved of all book-lovers,
2 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
used sometimes to kiss the quaint and curious vol-
umes that, open upon his desk, awaited his com-
ing. They were to him in no wise like little
statues. They were his dearest friends. Thus
tenderly the author of Elia discourses of a noble
library :
"It seems as though all the souls of all the
writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these
Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dormi-
tory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to
profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could
as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learn-
ing, walking amid their foliage, and the odour of
their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the
fruit bloom of those sciential apples which grew
amid the happy orchard."
When you know a man's enemies, you know as
well something of his character. The hostility of
the right man is an honor not to be despised. In
the same way one may form some opinion of a
book by the aversions which it awakens. Books,
like their readers, have their own special enemies,
and it would be by no means a difficult task to
single out and name at least one or two famous
works that have created no small amount of
hatred and contention. But there are certain
general enemies that in all lands and in every age
attack good books of every kind, and that not in-
frequently menace literature itself. An able
author whose friendship I have long enjoyed, but
whose name it would be a breach of confidence to
disclose, told me that he always numbered among
BOOKS 3
the worst enemies of literature the ordinary pub-
lisher. I give his words as I remember them:
"The publisher of such cheap books as are sold
on railroad trains, and are greedily devoured on
the verandas of fashionable hotels and public
houses where idlers and pleasure-seekers gather —
the publisher of such books is certainly to be re-
garded as one of the most dangerous of all the re-
morseless enemies that books of whatever kind may
have. He prints for the dollars they bring him
novels of no worth whatever, and that crowd from
every available place such books as inform the mind
and arouse the mental energies. He prints poor
fiction by the cord as men saw hickory logs. There
is, however, this important difference: the wood is
reserved for merry flames that leap and dance upon
the hearth, shedding warmth and cheer through
long winter evenings, while, since the day when
the Holy Inquisition went out of business, books
(even the worst of them) have escaped such con-
suming and purifying fires. Yet now and then
some large and pretentious printing establishment,
by rare good fortune, goes up in flame and smoke;
and a worse than worthless stock of misused paper
sheds upon our dark world for one brief hour the
only effulgence it is capable of diffusing. The mer-
cenary publisher is but a shade less objectionable
than the mercenary clergyman. He is the evil
genius of the world of letters. Not a book of real
value will he touch, and not an unknown writer of
ability will he help to name or fortune."
It may be that my friend is too severe in his
judgment, and uncharitable in his somewhat
sweeping accusations. Yet when every allow-
ance has been made, and the exceptional pub-
4 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
lishers have been suitably acknowledged and com-
mended, is there not a substantial foundation of
truth beneath the seemingly harsh indictment?
Some time ago I made for my own amusement a
list of such unusually good books as I could think
of that had been "turned down" by more than one
publisher of excellent standing before at last they
came into the hands of men who had courage and
enterprise. The list was at once surprising and
humiliating. It included many of the best and
most famous of the books that will live. William
R. Alger's "History of the Doctrine of a Future
Life," with a wonderful catalogue of more than
five thousand works, in many languages, relat-
ing to the nature, origin, and destiny of the soul,
and having an Appendix giving an exhaustive
list of books treating of "the souls of brutes," has
now passed through fifteen editions. The author
gave ten years of hard study to the monumental
work, and when the book was completed there
was not a publisher in all the land who would give
it the slightest consideration. The book would
have remained unpublished had not Mr. George
W. Childs, who was applied to, discovered its im-
portance. Mr. Childs would not at first believe
that there could be any difficulty in obtaining a
publisher, but when he was made aware of the
situation he at once enabled the author to give
his great work to the world. It would not be dif-
ficult to cite many other cases which lend quite as
forcible an endorsement to my friend's seemingly
BOOKS 5
severe arraignment of the publishing fraternity.
The newspaper, so it seems to me, might be
counted in with the enemies of good books. Not
every periodical is to be classed with "the workers
of iniquity." There are worthy papers and
magazines, though there are fewer of these than
most men believe. Yet it is true that thousands
of journals are without concealment the foes of
whatever is noble and good in the great world of
letters. The man of affairs who might by some
acquaintance with worthy books save himself from
being buried alive beneath all that is sordid and
vulgar, is literally thrust into his grave with the
breath of life still in his body by mercenary edi-
tors who print and circulate countless pages of
rubbish. These, not content with slaughtering
the language in which they profess to print their
papers, destroy as well the soul of all high think-
ing. Wendell Phillips wrote many years ago:
"It is momentous, yes, a fearful truth, that the
millions have no literature, no school, and almost
no pulpit but the press. Not one in ten reads
books. But every one of us, except the very few
helpless poor, poisons himself every day with a
newspaper. It is parent, school, college, pulpit,
theatre, example, counselor, all in one. Every
drop of our blood is colored by it. Let me make
the newspapers, and I care not who makes the reli-
gion or the laws."
Never were truer words uttered or printed.
The newspaper-habit, like the opium-habit and
the thirst for alcohol, is a great national evil.
6 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Could about two-thirds of the journals now pub-
lished be, by some stroke of magic wand, swept
into the already overcrowded United States
Pharmacopoeia, to be henceforth dispensed only
upon the issuance of a physician's prescription,
as are other and less dangerous poisons, it may
be there would be few of the poorer journals pub-
lished, but we should, beyond doubt, have
stronger minds, purer morals, and better books.
Another enemy of good books is the public
library. Not every library is to be counted in
with the foes of our best literature. No sane man
could wish to suppress the Bodleian Library at
Oxford, the Emmanuel Library at Cambridge, or
the Library of Harvard University. For these
let us be ever thankful ! But think for a brief
moment of the Library of Congress at Washing-
ton — that vast dumping ground for thousands
upon thousands of copyrighted books !
In England few persons purchase books. Read-
ers borrow from circulating libraries. In
America things are different. We like to own
our books. One may see in even the open coun-
try little libraries that belong to men and women
of humble station and slender purse. We write
our names in our books, and scribble upon their
margins with a proud feeling of ownership. The
books belong in our homes, and are not "to be
returned." In a very true sense they are friends
and companions. But alas! how often they are
friends no wise reader can afford to choose.
BOOKS 7
Books are cheap. The old-bookman sells them
by the bushel. A dime will buy twenty-four hours'
worth of reading, such as it is, allowing for skip-
ping. Cheap literature is a national evil. Fewer
books and better ones are needed.
»
"I have a picture hanging in my library," wrote
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes in the Atlantic
Monthly, "a lithograph, of which many of my read-
ers may have seen copies. It represents a gray-
haired old book-lover at the top of a long flight of
steps. He finds himself in clover, so to speak,
among rare old editions, books he has longed to
look upon and never seen before, rarities, precious
old volumes, incunabula, cradle-books, printed
while the art was in its infancy — its glorious in-
fancy, for it was born a giant. The old book-worm
is so intoxicated with the sight and handling of the
priceless treasures, that he cannot bear to put one
of the volumes back after he has taken it from the
shelf. So there he stands — one book open in his
hands, a volume under each arm, and one or more
between his legs — loaded with as many as he can
possibly hold at the same time. Now, that is just
the way in which the extreme form of book-hunger
shows itself in the reader whose appetite has be-
come over-developed. He wants to read so many
books that he over-crams himself with the crude
materials of knowledge, which become knowledge
only when the mental digestion has time to assimi-
late them."
I doubt much if a general and indiscriminate
book-hunger is to be desired. "Bibliophagia" is
a new word, and many good scholars are far from
pleased when they see it in print ; yet it has come
8 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
to remain with us, and soon or late every diction-
ary in our language will hail its arrival and bid
it welcome. Book-hunger is not exactly like the
hunger one has for a joint of beef; it is less
gross, but in no wise less rapacious. Every book-
seller must be on his guard against the man who
steals books, not that he may sell them, but that
he may own them. The literary and book-loving
thief knows precisely what he wants, and he is a
good judge of values. The pockets of his coat
are constructed with a view to frequent visits to
the second-hand bookseller, whose dusty shelves
have a charm for those who understand such mat-
ters that no mere Philistine can ever comprehend.
It is astonishing how much the literary thief can
stow away in safe places. When he is so unfor-
tunate as to be caught, shame does not greatly
disturb him. He is far more anxious about the
fate of his plunder than he is about that of his
person.
In the city of Albany, where gather politicians
great and small from every corner of the Empire
State, and where I have been so fortunate as to
live for more than a dozen happy years, "Ye Olde
Booke Man" is one Joseph McDonough, a prince
among the mighty and sagacious traders in rare
and curious books from lands far and near. On
his sacred shelves the dust of learning is soft and
deep, and before one is aware of the danger, his
most holy resolutions are reduced to even finer
dust. Over that seductive and dangerous store-
BOOKS 9
house of knowledge the public authorities should
compel the good Joseph to inscribe for the protec-
tion of feeble wills and debilitated purses the
warning of Scripture, "Lead us not into tempta-
tion." Book-catalogues are seldom regarded as
a part of the body of literature, and yet surely
some such catalogues are genuine contributions to
that department of polite literature we call
belles-lettres. What can be more delightful than
a well printed catalogue, on good paper, with
wide margins. Some such are rendered still more
attractive by the insertion of finely executed
prints of sumptuous bindings and dainty tail-
pieces. Many catalogues are as well composed
as they are printed, and so it comes to pass that
the bookseller is not infrequently a bookmaker
whose contributions to the library are worthy of
preservation. How a well-prepared catalogue
stimulates the hunger for good books! This the
trained bookseller knows full well, and he pon-
ders upon the result as he constructs the capti-
vating pages.
In this connection it may be interesting to note
that there have been men who, under pressure
from those who did not wish them well, actually
devoured in a literal and not in a figurative sense
the printed page. Some time ago the Scientific
American gave its readers an account of the re-
markable meals of certain unfortunate men:
In 1370 Barnabo Visconti compelled two Papal
delegates to eat the bull of excommunication
10 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
which they had brought him, together with its
silken cord and leaden seal. As the bull was writ-
ten on parchment, not paper, it was all the more
difficult to digest.
A similar anecdote was related by Oelrich in his
"Dissertatio de Bibliothecarum et Librorum
Fatis," (1756), of an Austrian general who had
signed a note for two thousand florins, and was
compelled by his creditor, when it fell due, to eat
it.
A Scandinavian writer, the author of a politi-
cal book, was compelled to choose between being
beheaded or eating his manuscript boiled in broth.
Isaac Volmar, who wrote some spicy satires
against Bernard, Duke of Saxony, was not al-
lowed the courtesy of the kitchen, but was forced
to swallow his literary productions uncooked.
Still worse was the fate of Philip Oldenburger,
a jurist of great renown, who was condemned not
only to eat a pamphlet of his writing, but also
to be flogged during his repast, with orders that
the flogging should not cease until he had swal-
lowed the last crumb.
We cannot think such dinners good for diges-
tion, but perhaps they were not so distasteful as
at first glance they appear. We do remember that
a book-lover in the wild west wished that after his
death his body might be opened, and that under
his ribs, close to his heart, there might be stowed
away a certain little book that he had treasured
through many long years. Edwards, the book
BOOKS 11
collector, left written instructions with regard to
his coffin. It was to be made out of some of the
strong shelves of his library. Many an author
would like to have one or two of his books laid
upon his coffin, or could wish that at his funeral
some choice page from his best work might be
read by a literary friend. At the funeral of
Edmund Clarence Stedman the Rev. Dr. Van
Dyke read verses of his own making in honor of
the dead. They were good, but doubtless all who
were present would have much preferred to hear
some tender and gracious lines penned by the dead
singer. A stereotyped service in which a be-
gowned priest is the thing most conspicuous, and
his metallic voice the sound most distinctly re-
membered, is hardly the kind of service an artis-
tic mind would find pleasure in contemplating.
The Protestant Episcopal burial service, much
lauded in certain quarters, is well adapted to the
commonplace ministrations of an ordinary priest,
but its fixed and unalterable sentences and sonor-
ous but insipid platitudes are poorly adjusted to
finer needs. When they laid to rest the gifted and
gentle Whittier, Mr. Stedman spoke with deep
feeling and "a trained artist's judgment," and
those who heard his address felt that the right
word had been spoken.
In earlier ages, upon funeral occasions, noble
and beautiful words were uttered by men who
voiced the deep feeling of a true heart. We turn
the page yellowed with time, and come to the
12 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
"doleful complaints" of Sir Ector de Moris over
the dead Sir Launcelot. What manly grief and
noble speech! The venerable chronicler tells us:
"And then Sir Ector threw his shield, his sword,
and his helm from him; and when he beheld Sir
Launcelot's visage, he fell down in a swoon; and
when he awoke, it were hard for any tongue to
tell the doleful complaints that he made for his
brother. 'Ah! Sir Launcelot/ said he, 'thou wert
head of all Christian knights. And now I dare
say,' said Sir Ector, 'that Sir Launcelot, there thou
liest, thou wert never matched of any earthly
knight's hands; and thou wert the courtliest knight
that ever bear shield; and thou wert the truest
friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse; and
thou wert the truest lover of a sinful man that ever
loved woman, and thou wert the kindest man that
ever struck with sword; and thou wert the good-
liest person that ever came among press of knights;
and thou wert the meekest man, and the gentlest,
that ever eat in hall among ladies; and thou wert
the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put
spear in the rest.' "
Blessed is the man who lives in holy fellow-
ship with great and noble books. His is a world
upon which no evil genius may breathe the blight
of a selfish and unlovely spirit. Angels wait
upon him day and night. His solitude is peopled
with heavenly companionship. The highest de-
light possible to man is his. Before him open the
gates of Paradise.
BOOKS 13
n
One of the most interesting of the many
books that from a Romish point of view ex-
plain the liturgies of the Roman Catholic Church
is "The Mass and Vestments of the Catholic
Church," by the Rt. Rev. Monsignor John
Walsh, a learned and conscientious priest who
ministers to St. Mary's Church in the city of
Troy, N. Y. The book is all the more interesting
as well as astonishing because of the unquestioned
piety and unusual frankness of the author. Theo-
logians are not as a class conspicuously honest.
The amount of hedging and dodging encoun-
tered in an ordinary book on divinity or on
church history and public worship is enough to
demolish the faith of the stoutest believer. If a
man would retain the sweet and simple faith of
his early days he should leave untouched the
apologetics of every school, and keep himself un-
spotted from theological seminaries. Walsh has
given the world a remarkable book. The man
himself is profoundly honest. He believes with-
out question or reservation of any kind all the
astonishing puerilities and trivialities of the great
religious organization of which he is a repre-
sentative. And speaking as he does, with author-
ity, he endorses and recommends to his fellowmen
what he himself holds to be true. He does not
see that the very sincerity which he manifests
renders only the more absurd the astonishing
things which he represents to be of importance
14 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
in the sight of the Creator of heaven and earth.
That the self -existent and eternal Spirit "whose
presence bright all space doth occupy" could care
anything about the proportion of alcohol al-
lowed in the wine set apart for sacramental pur-
poses, or that it could be of any consequence to
that Spirit, whether raisins steeped in water
and crushed in a wine press for Eucharistic pur-
poses were to be accounted true wine, seems to me
a thing beyond the belief of a sound mind. Think
of a God answering to the Westminster Assem-
bly's definition of Deity — "a Spirit, infinite, eter-
nal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom,
power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth" —
think of such a God concerning Himself about a
beeswax candle or taking the slightest interest in
the head-covering of ecclesiastics. Yet here is a
learned and sincere man who thinks these things
are worth writing about, and who believes that
the Eternal One of whom we can have no adequate
conception gives thought to such trivialities.
I honor the man who in an age like this has a
real faith, and who stands by it under all circum-
stances, but I can have no personal interest in a
faith that is not reasonable. Some kind of an-
thropomorphism we must have. The sacred
writings of all lands represent the Eternal Spirit
as possessed of a body, and they ascribe to Him
such physical parts and acts as are proper to man.
He is said to hear, speak, come and go. He has
eyes, mouth, ears, hands and feet. But all this is
BOOKS 15
represented as analogy. Fundamental knowledge
of God as He is in and of Himself, and apart
from all His creatures, no man may have. I must
think of Him under some form or shape, and yet
that form or shape need not belittle His nature.
That is to say, it need not fall below the thought
and imagination of a cultivated mind. I must
think of Him as a person, though an infinite per-
son (attaching to the term its natural meaning)
is a self -contradictory phrase. But I am not re-
duced to the necessity of representing Him as an
arranger of altar-lights and a fitter of priests'
caps. The anthropomorphism may be at least
abreast of the best there is in man and the age.
More and more we are coming to think of God
as inseparably associated with nature, as working
with it and through it. We would not undervalue
the Divine revelation in man — "the Word was
made flesh" — but modern science has disclosed
Him in nature with new power and beauty. This
is a noble view of His presence and activity. In
the blush of the morning and in the evening
breeze He is present. In Him as in a mirror is
reflected the vast universe. You may call this
Pantheism if } r ou will, but it remains a noble
thought of the Creator. The poet apparels it in
something of its own beauty in "Tintern Abbey" :
"I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
16 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, —
A motion and a spirit which impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things." '
Perhaps there is a still higher reverence — a rev-
erence that refuses to discuss what must forever
transcend all human knowledge. Have we rea-
son to believe that God bears any real resem-
blance to our thought of Him? Is there any de-
scription that describes Him? The Hebrew
Scriptures tell us that "His thoughts are not as
our thoughts;" that "His ways are past finding
out." No name suffices for Him, nor can any
confession encircle Him.
"Who dares express Him?
And who confess Him,
Saying, I do believe?
A man's heart bearing,
What man has the daring
To say: I acknowledge Him not?
The All-enfolder,
The All-upholder,
Enfolds, upholds He not
Thee, me, Himself?"
The Incomprehensible must so remain. Over
the vast chasm that sunders the Infinite from the
finite no bridge may spring its arch. If I can
with my hands make no graven image, am I to
make with my mind another image less gross but
perhaps not less remote from the unseen Pres-
BOOKS IT
ence? Is there not also this danger, that my life
shall be conformed to a pattern having no resem-
blance to what I would copy? My thought as such
is ductile and tractable, but may it not harden
into unyielding dogma? Riding over the hills
beyond the little village of Altamont, I saw
builded into the walls that mark off different
farms and that separate them from the highway,
certain stones that contain shells. Once those
stones were soft mud on the bottom of a pre-his-
toric ocean. The wet earth, lifted above the water
by some tremendous cosmic unheaval, hardened
into enduring stone, and there today are the
shells that long ages ago held living creatures.
Other things than mud harden, and become firm,
solid, and compact. In man conduct tends in the
direction of character, and mental habits become
permanent. Opinions solidify into doctrines, and
these after a time we no longer recognize as bone
of our bone and flesh of our flesh — they seem to
us Divine, and it comes to pass that we fall down
and worship them. Our only safety is to be found
in the cultivation of an open mind ever ready to
welcome and entertain truth from whatever quar-
ter.
Narrow and puerile ideas of the Divine Pres-
ence destroy the power of that Presence. The
God who concerns Himself with religious trifles
and trinkets will be found to concern Himself
with nothing more important. Here lies the
danger of every kind of Ritualism. The toy and
18 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
the child go together, alike in cradle and pew.
Vestments, processions, incense, altar-cloth, mitre,
the pastoral staff, and candles — what are these but
the sacred tops, balls, and kites of children who
long ago should have developed into full-grown
men and women?
This thought of God as transcending all hu-
man relationships, — as not only more than man,
but different from him in every way, — was the
highest thought of the Greek mind. ^Eschylus
wrote of Zeus, "He exists in Himself." Solon in-
voked Zeus as "the source of life and death."
Thus ran the ancient Dodonian inscription accord-
ing to Pausanias, "Zeus was, and is, and is to be."
Everywhere in ancient literature we are charmed
and captivated by this wonderful thought of God
which represents Him as "all in all." This was
the great message of the Hebrew Scriptures,
"God is not a man." He was "The Self-existent
One" — He was Jahveh — "I am that I am." And
Jesus taught in the same direction, "God is a
spirit, and they that worship Him must worship
Him in spirit and in truth." Everywhere in the
Hebrew writings, and in the words of Jesus, is
this grandeur of inaccessible solitude lighted by
an Infinite Love. Is it not, then, pitiable that
God should be represented by any church, creed,
or book as not only a man, but as a trivial man, —
one who concerns himself with ecclesiastical re-
galia, candles, and things of that kind?
BOOKS 19
III
This is the inscription which Dr. Edward
Everett Hale makes Philip Nolan ask to have
cut into the stone that was to preserve his
memory, and with it the delightful writer brings
to an end his striking and strange story of "The
Man Without a Country."
IN MEMORY OF
PHILIP NOLAN,
LIEUTENANT
IN THE ARMY OF
THE UNITED STATES.
" He loved his country as no other man has loved her ;
but no man deserved less at her hands."
Nonsense ! sheer nonsense, good Dr. Hale ! No
sane man could love such a country as you have
described — a country that could treat any man,
to say nothing of one of its own soldiers, in the
way you have represented the United States as
having treated Philip Nolan in the story of which
we are now writing. Love for such a country
would be immoral, were it possible, and possible
it certainly is not. Nolan was a young officer
who in a moment of exasperation cried out:
"Damn the United States! I wish I may never
hear of the United States again !" The wish, if
it really was a wish, was beyond question not
patriotic, and "damn" is not exactly a Sunday
School word. Perhaps the young man might
have been punished as a traitor, but in that case,
while the United States would have gained no
glory, we should be the losers of a charming
20 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
story. Think of allowing a foolish court-martial
to wipe out "The Man Without a Country" as
you would erase with a wet sponge some mark
from a slate. Of course that is what would have
happened had the author of that picturesque
oath been shot. Dr. Hale entertains a strange
idea of what it would be right and just for the
United States Government to do with an indis-
creet and hot-headed young soldier. Think of
returning in these days to the cold-blooded bru-
tality of Torquemada ! And then again, think of
a normally constructed man cherishing anything
like respect, to say nothing of love, for the kind
of country Dr. Hale has pictured. There are in
this world better things than even one's country
— God, justice, and the love and service every
man owes to our human race, these come first.
The noblest patriotism does not fling its cap in
air, and shout, "My country, right or wrong!"
Philip Nolan was, notwithstanding his tempo-
rary lapse from loyalty, a very good sort of
man ; in fact, he was an unusually desirable citi-
zen. His extreme conscientiousness, which, since
there was in truth no such man as Nolan, must
have been Dr. Hale's conscientiousness, was just
the peculiar moral quality we as a people stand
most in need of. All the time that our unfortu-
nate soldier was the victim of a cruelty which we
are asked to believe was a reasonable punishment,
fat politicians of all political complexions were
swindling the public treasury and plundering it
BOOKS 21
without shame. It is fair to believe, if we are
to listen to Dr. Hale, that had those politicians
got the word "damn" and the name of their
country into anything like close proximity, the
one with the other, they would have been treated
to the fearful punishment of a life-long cruise.
But surely their more than damnable rascality
and corruption were worse than a passionate oath
soon repented of. Dr. Hale's book is everywhere
praised for what men call its patriotic teaching,
but to my mind its instructions are wrong and its
story immoral.
IV
Charles Sumner collected a large and valu-
able library, and one that covered many sub-
jects quite foreign to the one absorbing in-
terest of his life. To be sure, some of the
most unpromising works contributed to the liter-
ary embellishment of his public addresses, but
still not a few of them were, according to his own
statement, as far away from his personal feeling
and experience as a book could possibly be. Among
his books were some treating of religious doctrines
as such, and, what seems strange enough to any
one who will give the matter a thought, there
were among these some that were much the worse
for use. How could he enjoy the old English
preachers of the time of Bishop Taylor and yet
remain wholly destitute of religious feeling? So
far as is known the following letter which Sum-
22 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
ner wrote to his college friend, the Rev. Dr.
Stearns, of Newark, N. J., is the only record we
have of the distinguished statesman's religious
views. As such it has a permanent interest:
Cambridge, Jan. 12, 1833.
My Dear Friend: — I have received and am
grateful for your letter. The interest you manifest
in my welfare calls for my warmest acknowledg-
ments. I do not know how I can better show my-
self worthy of your kindness than with all frank-
ness and plainness to expose to you, in a few words,
the state of my mind on the important subject upon
which you addressed me.
The last time I saw you, you urged upon me
the study of the proofs of Christianity, with an
earnestness that flowed, I was conscious, from a
sincere confidence in them yourself, and the conse-
quent wish that all should believe; as in belief was
sure salvation. I have had your last words and
look often in my mind since. They have been not
inconstant prompters to thought and speculation
upon the proposed subject. I attended Bishop
Hopkins' lectures, and gave to them a severe atten-
tion. I remained and still remain unconvinced that
Christ was divinely commissioned to preach a reve-
lation to men, and that He was entrusted with the
power of working miracles. But when I make this
declaration I do not mean to deny that such a being
as Christ lived and went about doing good, or that
the body of precepts which have come down to us
as delivered by Him, were so delivered. I believe
that Christ lived when and as the Gospel says; that
He was more than man, namely, above all men who
had as yet lived — and yet less than God ; full of the
strongest sense and knowledge, and of a virtue su-
BOOKS 23
perior to any which we call Roman or Grecian or
Stoic, and which we best denote when, borrowing
His name, we call ourselves Christians. I pray
you not to believe that I am insensible to the good-
ness and greatness of His character. My idea of
human nature is exalted, when I think that such a
being lived and went as a man amongst men. And
here, perhaps, the conscientious unbeliever may find
good cause for glorifying his God; not because He
sent His Son into the world to partake of its trou-
bles and be the herald of glad tidings, but because
He suffered a man to be born in the world in whom
the world should see but one of themselves, en-
dowed with qualities calculated to elevate the stand-
ard of attainable excellence.
I do not know that I can say more without be-
traying you into a controversy, in which I should be
loath to engage, and from which I am convinced no
good will result to either party. I do not think I
have a basis for faith to build upon. I am without
religious feeling. I seldom refer my happiness or
acquisitions to the Great Father from whose mercy
they are derived. Of the first great commandment,
then, upon which so much hangs, I live in perpetual
unconsciousness — I will not say disregard, for that,
perhaps, would imply that it was present in my
mind. I believe, though, that my love to my
neighbor — namely, my anxiety that my fellow crea-
tures should be happy, and my disposition to serve
them in their honest endeavors — is pure and strong.
Certainly I do feel an affection for everything that
God created; and this feeling is my religion.
"He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small ;
24* EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."
I ask you not to imagine that I am led into the
above sentiment by the lines I have just quoted —
the best of Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient
Mariner" — but rather that I seize the lines to ex-
press and illustrate my feeling.
This communication is made in the fulness of
friendship and confidence. To your charity and
continued interest in my welfare, suffer me to com-
mend myself as
Your affectionate friend,
Chas. Sumner.
Very different is a letter which the distin-
guished philosopher and scientist, Joseph Henry,
wrote to his friend, Mr. Patterson, concerning his
religious belief. It was the last letter he indited,
and it was not mailed because he intended to read
it over before he sent it to its destination. Mr.
Patterson never received it. It was found in the
drawer of Prof. Henry's desk after his death. Its
interest for us centers in the fact that it, like the
letter of Sumner's writing, gives us in frank and
unconventional fashion the religious convictions
of a man of great learning and distinction. It
differs from Sumner's letter not so much in its
spirit and temper as in the substance of the be-
lief which it sets forth.
The letter is too long for unabridged trans-
cription, but a few salient excerpts may be given,
and from these the reader will with little difficulty
discover the drift of the entire letter :
BOOKS 25
"In the scientific explanation of physical phe-
nomena we assume the existence of a principle hav-
ing properties sufficient to produce the effects which
we observe; and when the principle so assumed ex-
plains by logical deductions from it all the phe-
nomena, we call it a theory; thus we have the
theory of light, the theory of electricity, etc. There
is no proof, however, of the truth of these theories
except the explanation of the phenomena which
they are invented to account for. This proof, how-
ever, is sufficient in any case in which every fact
is fully explained.
"In accordance with this scientific view, on what
evidence does the existence of a Creator rest? First,
it is one of the truths best established by experi-
ence in my own mind that I have a thinking, will-
ing principle within me, capable of intellectual ac-
tivity and of moral feeling. Second, it is equally
clear to me that you have a similar spiritual prin-
ciple within yourself, since when I ask you an in-
telligent question you give me an intelligent an-
swer. Third, when I examine operations of na-
ture I find everywhere through them evidences of
intellectual arrangements, of contrivances to reach
definite ends precisely as I find in the operations of
man; and hence I infer that these two classes of
operations are results of similar intelligence.
Again, in my own mind I find ideas of right and
wrong, of good and evil. These ideas, then, exist in
the universe, and therefore form a basis of our
ideas of a moral universe. Furthermore, the con-
ceptions of good which are found among our ideas
associated with evil, can be attributed only to a be-
ing of infinite perfections like the being whom we
denominate 'God.' On the other hand we are con-
scious of having such evil thoughts and tendencies
as prevent us from associating ourselves with a di-
26 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
vine being who is the director and the governor of
all, or even from calling upon him for mercy with-
out the intercession of one who may, being holy,
yet affiliate himself with us."
Of all published statements of faith or of want
of faith it seems to the writer that the Confession
of Octavius Brooks Frothingham, made by him
at the close of his ministry in New York, and
not many years before his death, is the saddest,
and in some ways the most astonishing. Mr.
Frothingham was graduated at Harvard in 1843,
and at the Cambridge Divinity School three years
later. His first pastorate was with the North
(Unitarian) Church in Salem, where he remained
about eight years. His second charge was in Jer-
sey City, and lasted four years. In 1860 he be-
came the pastor of the Third Unitarian Congre-
gational Church in the City of New York, and
that church soon after his settlement with it be-
came an "Independent" congregation, while Mr.
Frothingham became widely known as the leader
of the "Free Religious Movement." Mr. Froth-
ingham's reputation as a brilliant writer, elo-
quent speaker, and accomplished scholar was not
only national, but world-wide. Among his books
- — all of them crowded with interest and literary
charm — are "Transcendentalism in New Eng-
land," "The Religion of Humanity," "The Life
of Theodore Parker," "The Life of George Rip-
ley," "The Life of Gerrit Smith," "Recollections
and Impressions," "Boston Unitarianism," "The
BOOKS 27
Cradle of the Christ," "The Spirit of the New
Faith," "The Safest Creed," "The Beliefs of the
Unbelievers," "The Assailants of Christianity,"
"Visions of the Future," and a large number of
sermons, with several books of Bible-stories for
children.
After a ministry in New York of about twenty
years Mr. Frothingham's health failed, and a trip
abroad was taken without any change in the di-
rection of recovery. He resigned his charge, and
for the few years that remained to him devoted
himself to literature. His closing years were
marked by an increasing melancholy which may
have been due in part to ill-health. He was dis-
appointed in the result of his life-work, which he
accounted to have been in some measure a failure.
Mr. Frothingham in his "Recollections and Im-
pressions" ascribes the mental and spiritual dis-
quietude of certain distinguished unbelievers to
"temperament" and to the subjective results of
"transitional periods," but these certainly do not
entirely account for the extensive distribution of
the "downcast mood" among unbelievers of widely
differing temperaments and circumstances in
countries and civilizations far removed from each
other. Doubt and unbelief, though they may not
equally depress all, have yet no power to make
any either strong or happy. Elsewhere Froth-
ingham treats of Thomas Paine, but there is
abundant evidence that this man had something
of the "downcast mood" discoverable in Joseph
28 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Blanco White, "George Eliot," the author of
"Physicus," Aaron Burr, Shelley, and Robes-
pierre — widely differing temperaments, disposi-
tions, and purposes. And yet it is true that some
devoted Christians have shared this "downcast
mood." Cowper was quite as miserable in mind
as was White — he was much more miserable than
Shelley, and it must be remembered that a great
deal of Shelley's misery was merely poetry, and
then he was in ill-health.
So soon as it was known that Mr. Frothing-
ham had given up his church and his work, the
New York Evening Post secured from him a
statement of his views which was of such an extra-
ordinary character as to command the interest
and attention of all thoughtful men. A sadder
statement it is hard to find. From it we excerpt
these lines:
"One fact began to loom up before my mental
vision in a disquieting way — that the drift of free-
thought teaching was unquestionably toward a dead
materialism, which I have abhorred as deeply as
any evangelical clergyman I know. The men who
would become leaders in the free-thought movement
do not stop where I stop; they feel no tradition
behind them; they have no special training for the
work of 'restoring,' in which light I regard much
of my work; I did not aim to create any new be-
liefs or to tear down all existing ones, but to re-
store, to bring to light and prominence the spir-
itual essence of those faiths. . . . The men whom I
saw coming upon the stage as the apostles of the
new dispensation of free thought were destroyers
BOOKS 29
who tore down, with no thought of building up;
there seemed to be no limit to their destructive
mania, and no discrimination in their work. Their
notion seemed to be to make a clean sweep of every
existing creed; they apparently knew not and
cared not whether anything in the shape of belief
should arise from the ashes of the world's creeds.
"The situation, therefore, when I stopped
preaching and went to Europe, was about as fol-
lows: Evangelical religion was stronger, the
churches were better filled, there was more of the
religious spirit abroad than when I began work
twenty years ago. Such men as came forward as
teachers in the free-thought movement were out-
and-out materialists. Lastly, my own position was
unpleasant and my health was failing. . . .
"When I left New York for Europe I believed
and said that I might take up my work as pastor
of an independent church when I got back. But I
may as well say now that I could not do it. I
would not be able to teach as I did. Whether it is
that advancing years have increased in me what-
ever spirit of conservatism I may have inherited —
my father was a clergyman — or whether it is that
there is such a thing as devolution, as well as evo-
lution, and that I have received more light, I do not
know. But it is certain that I am unsettled in my
own mind concerning matters about which I was
not in doubt ten or even five years ago; I do not
know that I believe any more than I did years ago,
but I doubt more. . . . But, looking back over the
history of the last quarter of a century with the
conviction that no headway whatever has been
made ; with the conviction that unbridled free
thought leads only to a dreary negation called ma-
terialism; there has been a growing suspicion in
me that there might be something behind or below
30 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
what we call revealed religion, which the scientific
thinkers of our time are beginning vaguely to dis-
tinguish as an influence that cannot be accounted
for at present, but which nevertheless exists. . . .
I said a moment ago, let scientific investigation go
on by all means ; not only it can do no harm, but
I am sure that the farther it goes the more clearly
will scientific men recognize a power not yet de-
fined, but distinctly felt by some of the ablest of
them. This question has presented itself to me
many times in the last few years: What is the
power behind ignorant men who find dignity and
comfort in religion? Last summer, when in Rome,
I was much interested in observing the behavior
of the Romish clergy, not the men high in power
and steeped in diplomacy and intrigue, but the
working men of the church — the parish priests who
went about among the people as spiritual helpers
and almoners. I talked with many of these men,
and found them to be ignorant, unambitious, and
superstitious; and yet there was a power behind
them which must mystify philosophers. What is
this power? I cannot undertake to say. But it is
there, and it may be that those persons who deny
the essential truths of revealed religion are all
wrong. At any rate, I, for one, do not care to go
on denying the existence of such a force.
"To my old friends and followers, who may feel
grieved at such an admission on my part, I would
say that I am no more a believer in revealed re-
ligion today than I was ten years ago. But, as I
said before, I have doubts which I had not then.
The creeds of today do not seem in my eyes to be so
wholly groundless as they were then, and, while I
believe that the next hundred years will see great
changes in them, I do not think that they are des-
tined to disappear. To sum up the whole matter,
BOOKS 31
the work which I have been doing appears to lead
to nothing, and may have been grounded upon mis-
taken premises. Therefore it is better to stop.
But I do not want to give the impression that I re-
cant anything. I simply stop denying, and wait
for more light."
There died in 1902, in the ninety-second year
of his age, one of the most interesting of the few
public men it has been my good fortune to know.
Frederick Saunders was at one time city editor of
the New York Evening .Post, and, later, the suc-
cessor of Dr. Cogswell in the librarianship of the
Astor Library. The latter position he secured
through Washington Irving, who was his father's
friend, and it was held with honor to himself and
advantage to the institution until 1893, when the
increasing infirmities of age compelled him to
retire.
Mr. Saunders was born in London, and came
to the United States early in life as the repre-
sentative of his father's publishing house (Saun-
ders and Otley), and as an advocate of interna-
tional copyright law. He did not live to see the
enactment of the law, but he did much to create a
favorable public sentiment, and those who know
the history of that long and, at times, bitter con-
flict are agreed in pronouncing him the true ini-
tiator of the International Copyright Law, the
justice of which is now so generally recognized.
Through his father, who was an influential pub-
32 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Usher in earlier days before literature had suffered
the commercialization which is now its pitiable
disgrace, he had the privilege of knowing and of
counting among his friends such men and women
as Robert Southey, Harriet Martineau, Dr.
Chalmers, Thomas Carlyle, William Cullen Bry-
ant, George Bancroft, Thomas Moore, Henry
Hallam, Thomas Campbell, Maria Edge worth,
and Samuel Rogers.
Mr. Saunders was himself a man of letters. He
wrote, so far as I have been able to discover, fif-
teen books, the most popular among which were
"Salad for the Solitary" and "Salad for the So-
cial." His "Evenings with the Sacred Poets"
passed through several editions, and was finally
revised and enlarged. From its sale he derived a
considerable profit.
Mr. Saunders was a literary recluse. He de-
lighted in books, and was never happy when far
removed from his library. In no sense of the word
was he a man of the world. He lacked the fine
manners and charm of presence many of his
friends less gifted than himself possessed. He
knew his social and personal limitations, and it
was his consciousness of these that made him the
shy and awkward man he was. Yet in the com-
pany of those whose tastes and inclinations were
like his own, he was frank, self-possessed, and joy-
ous. He was a man who thought no guile. His
spirit was deeply religious. The unbelief of his
day, which found some eloquent expression in the
BOOKS 33
books and conversations of many gifted sons and
daughters of genius with whom he was well ac-
quainted, made no impression upon his deeply
religious nature. He was fond of devotional
books, though I do not know that any of his own
works would have answered to that description.
For works of a controversial nature he had no lik-
ing. His religion was personal and contemplative
rather than ecclesiastical and dogmatic. His
mind was of an antique cast, and he lived largely
in the past, concerning himself with old books, his-
torical associations, and archaeological investiga-
tions. As a companion he was in every way de-
lightful. He had a large fund of rare and valu-
able information of a bookish kind, and in the so-
ciety of literary friends he was never reticent or
taciturn.
His books were not marked by originality, and
yet they were in no sense of the word compilations.
Into them went the varied wisdom of one long
familiar with the literary landscape, and whose
wont it was to wander at will through wooded
vales and flower-encircled fields of learning. From
his literary excursions he often returned laden
with the choicest flowers. His books are read now
only by a select few who delight to stroll through
quaint and unfrequented ways, and are satisfied
with the old beauty in which their fathers de-
lighted and which the world can never wholly
outgrow.
Some good writers have received little honor in
34 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
their day and generation, and some authors of no
merit whatever have, for one reason or another,
found willing publishers and have received wide
and even enduring praise. Circumstances over
which no one may have any great control, and
mere accidents, and the whims and caprices of or-
dinary men not infrequently settle the entire
question of literary recognition. The opinion of
the President of the United States with regard to
the value of a book may be, from a literary point
of view, of no great importance; but neverthless
it remains true that if an author can get that dis-
tinguished gentleman to say his work is in some
way remarkable, its fortune is made. The un-
measured castigation of the religious press and of
the pulpit will accomplish the same result, for the
value of the advertisement is in neither praise
nor censure, but in the successful calling of the
attention to the wares to be marketed in such a
way as to pique curiosity or awaken interest.
Years ago the famous anti-religious writer, Fran-
ces Wright, publicly thanked the clergymen of
America, of all denominations, for their persist-
ent denunciation of her and her teachings. She
told them she owed much of her popularity to
their "misrepresentations," and she politely re-
quested them to continue their "gratuitous adver-
tising" of her lectures. Robert G. Ingersoll at-
tributed his success as a speaker to the religious
press, though, in truth, I think his splendid ora-
tory was responsible for the large audiences that
BOOKS 35
gathered to hear him attack a religion that has
withstood and will continue to withstand greater
assaults than he was ever capable of making.
More than one book has been suppressed into a
Twentieth Edition. Literature has in these ma-
terialistic days become so commercialized that real
worth not infrequently stands in the way of suc-
cess. It is humiliating but true that publishers
are not looking for good literature, but for "the
best sellers." An American publisher said to the
writer of this paper, "I am in business for
money. I think my judgment of books quite as
good as that of my neighbors, but I also think I
know what will sell." To be born in advance of
one's age is a commercial calamity. It means for
an author who is dependent upon his pen poverty
and neglect. The commonplaces of life are safe,
and only men of exceptional ability do well in
leaving the beaten track. Blazing a trail may be
interesting, but the wheels of civilization roll
complacently over macadamized roads or spin with
lightning speed along tracks of steel. One has
only to examine a book like Stedman's "Library
of American Literature" to see how large is the
company of those who aspire to fame in the world
of letters, and yet, though writing well, die un-
discovered. The writer of this paper is a mem-
ber of the Author's Club, an organization that
holds its meetings during the winter months in
the Carnegie Building, New York City. There
with good cheer and kindly fellowship gather the
36 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
men who make our books and papers, and whose
names are the common property of the world.
The club is not large, but among its members are
some whose reputations are assured and whose
books will be remembered and republished when
they themselves are dust. And yet how many of
that kindly and brilliant company are destined to
be forgotten! How many are today little known
to the reading world. Every large library is a
literary mausoleum where slumber in dust and
neglect the dead books of deceased authors.
Eight-tenths of all the popular novels published
in these times will be forgotten in another five
years. A man once asked the writer what became
of all the dead birds. There are millions of feath-
ered songsters in our tree-tops, and they are con-
stantly dying, but who ever sees a dead bird by
the roadside or on the lawn? The yellow-covered
novels, and novels of every other color, are dying
as fast as they are hatched by the publishing fra-
ternity. What becomes of them all? A day or
two ago I discovered their fate — an enormous
wagon trundled by my door, loaded down with
books of every description, on their way to the
paper-mill. I have had personal acquaintance
with many writers whose books were good and
whose names are unknown. They lived and died,
and the world remembers them no more.
Yet he is happy whose life is surrounded with
the charm of good literature. Even the unsuc-
cessful author has his consolation in the rare fel-
BOOKS 37
lowship of gifted souls. Why should the scholar
fret himself with the dull folly of idle fashions,
the vulgar ambition of place and power, and the
rude scramble for wealth that brings not with it
one day more of inward gladness? Rich in noble
reward is the philosophic and gentle life of high
and serene converse with the storied past and the
unspoken wonder and beauty of the great world
of human achievement.
A* 6 *J
II
AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE
"There are different kinds of dust. One can
well believe the dust that was not long ago a lovely
rose retains something of its early fragrance. To
the bibliophile and literary epicure there is a cer-
tain indescribable charm in the dust that old books
gather to themselves on their silent shelves. Cob-
webs embellish the necks of aged wine-bottles, and
render more attractive the sparkling juices they
imprison, and that once blushed in the purple clus-
ters. So in the dust of the well-filled library there
is a delight our prosaic house- wife cannot under-
stand." — Archceologia,"
"6-
"Can nothing that
Is new affect your mouldy appetite?"
— "The Witts."
AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE
"Hp HE Rev. Isaac Gosset, D.D., F. R. S."
J- — thus it is that Kirby announces Dr.
Gossett in his "Wonderful Museum," where we
have the learned gentleman's picture maliciously
done by a scamp of a print-seller, who has im-
mortalized the Doctor's cocked hat and stunted
figure. Dr. Gosset was born in Berwick Street,
London, in 1744, and had his early education at
Dr. Walker's, at Mile-end, where he learned
something of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic,
and gave promise of becoming a distinguished
scholar. Dr. Walker was a dried-up specimen of
humanity who loved books much more than he
loved boys, though it is on record that he was
kind, after the fashion of his time, to most of the
youngsters who were intrusted to his care. He
was more than kind to young Isaac because he
discovered, with the natural instinct which he
had for everything resembling book -lore, that the
lad was fond of the classics and literature. That
fondness for books was a strong tie binding to-
gether the dessicated heart of old Dr. Walker and
the eager, enquiring mind of the youth.
The school-master of a century ago was gener-
ally a man of one idea and not infrequently he
had not that much intellectual capital, all his
stock in trade being rigid discipline in the shape
of a birch rod. Dr. Walker was not in every way
41
42 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
a typical old-time pedagogue. Uninteresting and
wanting in good-fellowship as he must have
seemed to the ordinary men and women of his
day, and severe and exacting as he certainly was
at times in his relations with the young men who
were his pupils, he had still a very warm heart,
and liked nothing better than to see what he re-
garded as the graceful and noble development of
a promising intellect. When given the care and
training of such an intellect he was the embodi-
ment of enthusiasm, and no personal sacrifice was
too great for him to make in directing the ener-
gies and moulding the opinions of a favorite
pupil. It is said that upon one occasion, when a
little boy, whose years were so tender that noth-
ing of the kind could have been expected of him,
translated a page of Livy with something more
than mere correctness of rendering and gave evi-
dence of real delight in the Latin author, Dr.
Walker rose from his chair with tears in his eyes,
and, embracing the lad in the presence of his
class-fellows, kissed him upon both cheeks. Per-
haps there was nothing markedly original about
Dr. Walker, but neither was there anything rude
or vulgar in his nature, and his work was not
wholly commonplace. He deserved well of the
age in which he flourished, and certainly he is en-
titled to the kindly remembrance of the genera-
tions that follow him and are better for his hav-
ing lived.
From Dr. Walker's care young Isaac Gosset
AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE 43
went to Dr. Kennicote's school, where he remained
for some time. Later he sat at the feet of Mr.
Hinton, who had a national reputation for sound
learning and a large experience in the training of
youthful minds. He received his Master of Arts
from Oxford, and it was the same venerable in-
stitution that put the finishing touch to his dig-
nity in the shape of a Doctor of Divinity's hood,
which I take it was more ornamental than the
cocked hat which he wears in the malicious picture
to which reference has been made.
Dr. Gosset preached at Conduit Chapel, where
a cultivated congregation listened to his sermons,
which were always well written and correctly de-
livered but which, like most of the sermons of that
day and no small number of this as well, were wo-
fully wanting in earnestness and spiritual enthu-
siasm. His preaching was a literary perform-
ance and awakened only an intellectual response.
Preaching, unless constantly revitalized by that
inner communion with God which is of the very
essence of all true religion, becomes either coldly
intellectual or cheerless and perfunctory. The
machinery of worship has a direct and continuous
tendency to destroy those spiritual elements
which give to public religious services their pe-
culiar significance and value. There is some-
thing benumbing and stupefying in the too fre-
quent repetition of the same prayer, even though
the prayer be one of exceptional beauty and pe-
culiar fitness to voice the hopes and desires of
44 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
the human soul. Liturgical services sooner or
later degenerate into empty parade and lifeless
form. Dr. Gosset's lack of pulpit power was
due, however, not so much to the deadening in-
fluence of ritualism as to the unspiritual tendency
of a pure intellectualism that appealed to the head
only and left the heart untouched. And yet there
must have been something in his discourses that
addressed itself, if not to piety, at least to the
sentimental side of human nature, for there sat in
one of the pews directly in front of the pulpit a
young and beautiful lady of cultivated mind and
aristocratic associations, who, as she listened to
the preacher, fell deeply in love with him and
aspired to become his wife. Miss Hill, for that
was her name, was the daughter of a wealthy tim-
ber merchant and had considerable money in her
own right. It could not have been, it seems to me,
solely the person of Dr. Gosset that won the
young lady's heart, for he was ill-favored, being
a grotesque and at the same time vain-glorious
dwarf. I suppose there must be in all this world
a considerable number of men and women of dim-
inutive stature who are still of a modest and retir-
ing turn of mind, but so far as my own personal
experience extends, the most self-satisfied and
boastful specimens of humanity are of Liliputian
build. Gosset was not only a dwarf, but he was
an absurd dwarf, and nothing but his mental
power and literary ability saved him from becom-
ing the laughing-stock of his fellow men. When
AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE 45
in the pulpit, in order to see his congregation, he
was compelled to stand upon two hassocks ; and
it is related that upon one occasion, being some-
what warmed up in his discourse, he slipped from
the hassocks and for several minutes was invisible,
though the sermon went on without interruption.
Dr. Gosset's wife brought him a fortune of
£6,000, and it was no longer necessary that he
should preach in order to live. He did the only
thing proper for a man of his unspiritual nature
to do under the circumstances — he left the pulpit
and became a collector of books. It is only as a
collector of rare and costly books that the world
now remembers the man who once drew one of the
most cultivated of London congregations. Dr.
Gosset was a good husband and father, but his
wife had abundant reason to be jealous of his
library. He lived with his books. Entire days
were spent in their society, and he was even
known to address certain volumes in the most ten-
der and affectionate terms, assuring them of his
warmest appreciation and of his determination
never to part from them.
As early as 1781 Dr. Gosset was to be seen at
the great book-sales. Everybody knew him at
Patterson's, Leigh and Southeby's, and most of
the other halls in London where books were sold.
He gave large sums for choice editions of his fa-
vorite authors. It is not necessary to name the
works Dr. Gosset purchased. Were he living to-
day it is more than likely he would make a very
4)6 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
different selection. He was fond of theological
books, which is not strange when one considers
the temper of the age and the peculiar training
he had received. Theology is now at a sad dis-
count, and were the amiable Doctor now living in
these times and in the city of Albany, he might
have, I am quite sure, for a sum so small that I
will not belittle the books by naming it, all the
works on theology in "Ye Olde Booke Man's"
shop. I should not like to tempt "Ye Olde Booke
Man" with the shekels had I no cart at his door
ready to receive the goods. And, in truth, I do
not see how I could be induced to either risk the
shekels or pay for the cart. Ponderous tomes on
Election, Reprobation, Decrees, and kindred
themes have lost their charm. Perhaps we are,
all of us, worse for the change that has come
over the public mind and eclipsed the glory of pul-
pit literature. I will not dispute with my reader
if he believes that the dawn upon our horizon of a
mighty revival of Baxter, Taylor, Cudworth, and
Edwards would improve our morals and deepen
our spiritual life. It may be that that is precisely
the kind of a revival we need, but certain I am that
it is precisely the kind of a revival we shall none
of us ever see. Even dear old Dr. Hodge, whose
sweet and gracious memory will haunt for many
a year the classic shades of Princeton, is struck
with death, and the dust already lies heavy and
undisturbed upon the faded covers of his "Syste-
matic Theology." Shedd's "Dogmatic Theology"
AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE 47
will soon go the lonely way of all dogmatic things.
Muller's "Christian Doctrine of Sin" is passing
hand in hand with Dorner's "System of Christian
Doctrine" to the peaceful shades of sacred obliv-
ion. Before our careless vision they slip into the
dark, and will be soon forgotten. Am I glad of
all this ? Now, my inquisitive reader, why do you
ask that question? I am neither glad nor sad.
I only state things as they are ; and all the while
I quietly cherish in the secret recesses of my in-
nermost heart the comforting belief that as God
lived before Baxter was born, so He will continue
to live when Shedd and Dorner are no more. Did
you remark that they do not think precisely that
way at Princeton and venerable New Brunswick?
Well, perhaps not ; yet there are those who cherish
even now the pleasing fancy that approaching
day-dawn makes less dun the sedges of Newark
Bay and the marshes of picturesque Hoboken. It
is a flying popular report (not yet a promulgation
from the house-top) that not a few wise men may
be found in the halls of sacred learning already
named who firmly believe that God is greater than
their fathers thought, and that His love is larger
than their little systems of theology have made
that love appear. Strange rumor ! — yet "import-
ant if true."
Dr. Gosset, queer old soul ! loved theology, but
he was also fond of the Latin and Greek classics,
and translated Epictetus. Toward the end of his
life he became so antique in mental structure that
48 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
he was more at home in the Greece of two thousand
years ago than in the merry England of his own
time. He was a scholar, and yet he was not for
that reason unsocial. He took delight in conver-
sation, went to the theatre, rode in a fine chariot,
and had a beautiful home.
At last the end came. He died suddenly, De-
cember 16th, 1812, leaving behind him two sons,
one daughter, and more than four thousand
books. His life as a literary collector had not
impoverished him, for he made all his children
rich. His sons had, each of them, £50,000, and
his daughter had £20,000. To these sums must
be added the financial results arising from the sale
of his library. These were large for that day,
notwithstanding the ecclesiastical and theological
shadows that hung like damp veils of mist over
the entire collection. It was thought by those
who had given the matter consideration that the
Doctor would leave all his sacred treasures to some
university, and it was hinted that Oxford, having
dignified him with a Doctor of Divinity's hood,
expected to receive in return his valuable collec-
tion of books. But Dr. Gosset was too wise a
man to hide his costly library in the receiving
tomb of a learned institution. In his will he gave
his beloved books a fatherly blessing and bade
them journey to every corner of England, mak-
ing for themselves new homes and new friends
by humble firesides as well as in stately museums.
Not long ago there died a man of most beauti-
AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE 49
ful spirit and of exquisite taste, who thought, in
the matter of the disposal of a library after its
collector's death, as old Gosset thought not far
from a century ago. "Read, mark, learn, and in-
wardly digest" (forgive, I pray you, good reader,
the slightly theological cast of the sentence) this
extract from the will of Edmond de Goncourt,
which even in an English translation no bookman
can contemplate without emotion:
"My wish is that my Drawings, my Prints, my
Curiosities, my Books — in a word, these things of
art which have been the joy of my life — shall not
be consigned to the cold tomb of a museum, and
subjected to the stupid glance of the careless
passer-by; but I require that they shall all be dis-
persed under the hammer of the Auctioneer, so that
the pleasure which the acquiring of each one of
them has given me shall be given again, in each
case, to some inheritor of my own tastes."
There is another reason, and it is a good one,
so it seems to me, why after the death of a collec-
tor an auctioneer should make the acquaintance
of his library. Colleges and museums are now the
recipients of so many gifts that often they have
upon their shelves three or four copies of the same
book. Shelf room must be economized. The du-
plicates are sold. I purchased not long ago a
volume that had been in the library of Yale Uni-
versity and that contained the university book-
plate, beneath which was plainly stated the fact
that the said book had come to the institution
from the "Bequest of Jonathan Edwards, M.D.,
50 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
in 1887." The book is before me as I write, and
furnishes one more argument against sending a
valuable library to the classic halls of a modern
college.
After Dr. Gosset's death kind and appreciative
notices of his life and character appeared. There
was published also a poem of some length, and
well worth reading. Few now remember that Gos-
set once lived in the heart of England and there
collected rare and costly books ; yet not long ago
a gentleman told me it was his opinion that old
Gosset, remembered, if remembered at all, by his
cocked hat and deformed figure, was the father
of our modern book collectors.
Four years after the sale of Gosset's library,
William Roscoe, a man of great learning and
beautiful spirit, whose books ''The Pontificate of
Leo X." and "The Life of Lorenzo de Medici"
will long remain standard in English literature,
met with reverses in business, and was compelled
to dispose of his library. Gosset and Roscoe must
have known each other, though, in truth, I doubt
if there was much in common between them save
the love of letters. When Roscoe had seen the
last book pass from his fond possession, he sat
down in his dismantled room, before his empty
shelves, and penned this lovely sonnet:
"As one who, destined from his friends to part,
Regrets his loss, yet hopes again, erewhile,
To share their converse and enjoy their smile,
And tempers, as he may, affliction's dart, —
AN OLD-TIME BIBLIOPHILE 51
Thus, loved associates! chiefs of elder Art!
Teachers of wisdom! who could once beguile
My tedious hours, and lighten every toil,
I now resign you — nor with fainting heart.
For, pass a few short years, or days, or hours,
And happier seasons may their dawn unfold,
And all your sacred fellowship restore;
When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers,
Mind shall with mind direct communion hold,
And kindred spirits meet to part no more."
Roscoe rests in the burying ground connected
with the Unitarian church in Renshaw Street,
Liverpool. Nearby, in the same ground, is the
grave of Joseph Blanco White. The church con-
tains a beautiful bust of Roscoe, and upon the
walls are elaborate memorials of various members
of his family. I do not know where Gosset lies
at rest, but doubtless some day the book-lovers of
England and America will rear over his dust a
memorial shaft of snowy marble to bear his hon-
ored name and record their affectionate regard.
Dear old Dr. Gosset, we love you none the less
for the few faults that only make you seem more
human. In a commercial age we treasure in our
hearts your delight in noble and gracious books.
Be pleased, we pray you, to gaze with kindly vis-
ion from the empyrean where you dwell, and add
your blessing to the gladness of our hearts as we
gather round us those sweet and wondrous souls
that were your joy and are our delight.
Ill
LITERARY FAME
" *T is a fine thing that one weak as myself
Should sit in his lone room, knowing the words
He utters in his solitude shall move
Men like a swift wind — that tho' dead and gone,
New eyes shall glisten when his beauteous dreams
Of love come true in happier frames than his."
— Robert Browning.
"I shall dine late; but the dining-room will be
well lighted, the guests few and select."
—Landor.
LITERARY FAME
THE honors and pleasures of this world, and
it may be of other worlds as well if such ex-
ist, are for the men and women who have cour-
age to take them. Strong, self-reliant souls
spend no time in foolish regret, but reach out in
every direction and appropriate to their own use
whatever is fitted for their service. Audacity wins
by divine right of conquest. Think meanly of
yourself, and the world will take you at your own
estimate. No man need go down into an entirely
obscure grave if he have but the wit and courage
to keep out of it. Much less is there any com-
pulsion or limitation, divine or human, that places
noble living beyond the reach of any earnest soul.
Yet it is not in audacity alone that the victory
over oblivion is won; there must be something in
the man to justify the audacity. Or if there be
in him nothing of the kind, there must be at least
some rare circumstance to preserve the soul in
amber. But, one way or another, the timid al-
ways bid for inglorious obscurity. Gods and men
delight in the hero. If they do not herald his ad-
vent, they are never weary of celebrating his
vices and virtues when once he has lived his life
and made an end of it. His mouldering bones
have in death this strange power, that they can
change a mound of dust and sod into a sacred
shrine. Only a man must think well of himself
55
56 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
unless he have extraordinary genius. Genius of
high order concerns itself little about laws and
regulations that help the wingless to rise. Men
of moderate ability find in all kinds of conform-
ity both safety and advancement. The great
genius trusts his own strength. Homer and
Shakspeare concern themselves about many
things that scarcely enter our intellectual world,
but all our rules and regulations are to them as
the green withes Delilah bound about the strong
limbs of the giant Samson. They can even afford
to think lightly of themselves, for their strength
is great, and their proportions are revealed to all
by the vastness of their shadows. Very different
is it with men of ordinary ability. They must be-
lieve in themselves, and that belief must find ade-
quate expression. Shakspeare, it would seem,
had no care for his plays. He never revised them,
nor did he make any effort to preserve them. They
were saved from destruction by other hands than
his. With a moderate competence he settled him-
self in Stratford-upon-Avon, and thought no
more of what he had written. There is a certain
unconsciousness about every immortal work. In
"Macbeth" we are told that
' Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
The little men who thus think and feel find
LITERARY FAME 57
every line descriptive of the life they know and
call their own. They give rein to the trivial ele-
ments in themselves, "strut and fret" a brief
season, and are then decently interred beneath
their own insignificance. Few are like the mas-
ters of thought and the leaders of great enter-
prises who are too vast for oblivion. And still
the colossal men err on the safe side. Dante
makes himself the friend and companion of Vir-
gil. He claims a place with great poets. He
praises his old schoolmaster for this, that he
"taught him how men eternize themselves." Was
it vanity that led Napoleon to say in an un-
guarded moment, "God created Napoleon and
rested"? When they asked Cicero of his lineage,
he responded, "I commenced an ancestry." "It
becomes all men," wrote Sallust, "who desire to
excel other animals, to strive to the utmost of
their power not to pass through life in obscurity,
like the beasts of the field, which Nature has made
grovelling and subservient to appetite." Horace
made no mistake when he closed the third book of
his Odes with these deathless lines :
"I have reared a monument
More enduring than bronze,
And loftier than the regal pyramids,
Which neither wasting raindrops,
Nor the wild north-wind shall destroy.
I shall not wholly die —
I shall live in the remembrance of posterity,
So long as the pontiff shall ascend the Capitol
With the silent and sacred virgin."
58 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Virgil felt the same craving for remembrance
when he wrote in his third Georgic, referring to
the achievements of others, these striking words :
"I, too, must attempt a way whereby to lift me
from the ground and to spread, victorious, my
fame through the mouths of men." The gifted
Fielding, whose "Tom Jones" will for many a
long year preserve the literary fame of its au-
thor, had a spirit not unlike that of the Latin
poet. These are his words: "Come, bright
love of fame. Comfort me by the solemn as-
surance that when the little parlor in which
I now sit shall be changed for a worse furnished
box, I shall be read with honor by those who
never knew or saw me." Even good David
Brainerd was not free from this desire for re-
membrance which, in his Journal, he accounts
to be a sin. Thus he puts himself on record:
"The sins I had most sense of were pride and
a wandering mind, and the former of these evil
thoughts excited me to think of writing and
preaching and converting the heathen or per-
forming some other great work that my name
might live when I should be dead."
Great men believe in themselves ; and in how
many instances with prophetic vision they fore-
cast their destiny. Genius at its best is always
prophetic. Learning acquaints us with the past,
observation gives us knowledge of the present,
but genius alone enables its possessor to antici-
pate the future. This power of prevision has
LITERARY FAME 59
sustained many a great man in the hour of neg-
lect. When Charlotte Corday had donned the
red chemise des condemnes she said, " This is the
toilet of death, arranged by somewhat rude hands,
but it leads to immortality." Danton was asked
at his trial, "What is your name? Where is the
place of your abode?" He answered, "My name
is Danton, a name tolerably well known in the
Revolution; my abode will soon be annihilation,
but I shall live in the pantheon of history."
Junius was sure that his book would be read long
after he had himself descended into the grave.
Such assurance creates within the bosom that
cherishes it an audacity the common mind cannot
understand. It gives to the hour of defeat all
the support and enthusiasm of victory; it takes
from neglect its sting, and renders the soul indif-
ferent to the poor opinion of a thoughtless mul-
titude. It was assurance born of this prevision
that enabled Thucydides to say of one of his own
books, "It is so composed as to be regarded as a
permanent possession, rather than as a prize
declamation intended only for the present." Just
pride, noble ambition, superiority to fate, undis-
turbed composure in times of trouble, regard for
posterity — these are not unworthy of a superior
man. It is impossible to think that such a man
could be devoid of all these. " I hear the voices
of generations yet to be, and I hasten to render
myself worthy of their applause," exclaimed a re-
jected philosopher in the hour of his soul's mar-
60 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
t jrdom. Noble were the voices that called to him ;
even nobler was his response. The appeal to pos-
terity relieves the man who can make it from all
concern about the " snap-shot " opinions of the
rude and vulgar, detaches the vision from a poorer
self within one's own bosom that would, from mo-
tives of immediate self-interest, make terms with
the canaille ; it gives an exalted ideal.
Yet a man should make sure that he is of the
elect. There were great men before Agamemnon,
but who knows anything about them? There was
something wanting either in the work or in the
workman. It is not wholly a fault of the age that
we know so little of men who were once so distin-
guished. "Time," writes a gifted author, "hath
spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, and con-
founded that of himself." The impartial years
treat with calm indifference all our artificial dis-
tinctions. The houses of fame that men build
with large expense of space and toil are, many of
them, of such light pasteboard that not the faint-
est evening breeze shall be able to go by and leave
them standing. They only are elect who elect
themselves. The work must have in it some
worthy or, at least, some unusual element. Cis-
tacious made so gracious an obeisance to Eternal
Forgetfulness that even the silent genius of Ob-
livion spared his name, and would have spared
more had there been more to spare. Not one
mason of all those who labored in the building of the
Temple of Diana has left to us even his name, but
LITERARY FAME 61
it is known to every schoolboy that Herostratus
burned that sacred structure. Time, that effaced
with ruthless hands so many worthy names, has
embalmed in history the less worthy name of "the
aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian dome."
It is common to describe fame as a poor and
paltry thing, the while it is the dearest ambition
of the very men who thus describe it. Dr. Bartol
said, "Self-forgetfulness is God's remembrance,"
and it is true that the man who feeds upon him-
self feeds upon littleness, yet the wish to escape
the fate of a mere worm is surely not a thing to
provoke derision. Is one less a man because he
would aspire to a man's future? Man is not only
the intelligent observer of the universe, but he is
in a certain subordinate sense its creator. For
him
"The blossoming stars upshoot —
The flower-cups drink the rain."
All things look to him for recognition. The
story in Genesis made him master of "every living
thing." Unlike other animals, he faces the stars.
" I, who have conversed with noble men and women
who were as stars in the firmament of our common
humanity, cannot contemplate oblivion; nor
would I lose the rich treasures of a well-filled mind
in the dark waters of Lethe. I would remember
and be remembered." Thus a great thinker ex-
pressed himself in the hour of death. Man's do-
minion over the universe begets within him the
wish that conquers time.
62 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Immortality hangs upon a thread. A single
poem may guard for long centuries the name of
its fortunate author.
"A single word may make a life immortal
Immortally said,
When all the deeds this side th' eternal portal
Basely done are dead."
Here is a list, interesting though imperfect, as all
such lists must be, of names saved from oblivion
by the happy accident of a single inspiration :
Sarah Flower Adams, "Nearer, my God, to
Thee."
S. J. Adams, "We are coming, Father Abra-
ham, Three Hundred Thousand More."
James Aldrich, "A Death-Bed."
Cecil Frances Alexander, "The Burial of
Moses."
Elizabeth Akers Allen, "Rock Me to Sleep."
Ernst Maritz Arndt, "What is the German
Fatherland ?"
Anna Laetitia Barbauld, "Life."
Lady Anne Barnard, "Auld Robin Gray."
James Beattie, "The Minstrel."
Ethel Lynn Beers, "The Picket Guard."
Robert Bloomfield, "The Farmer's Boy."
Francis William Bourdillon, "Light."
William Goldsmith Brown, "A Hundred Years
to Come."
Mrs. Brewer, "Little Drops of Water."
H. H. Brownell, "The River Fight."
Michael Bruce, "Elegy Written in Spring."
Wiliam Allen Buter, "Nothing to Wear."
Henry Carey, "Sally in our Alley."
Phoebe Cary, "Nearer Home."
LITERARY FAME 63
Eliza Cook, "The Old Arm-Chair."
Philip P. Cooke, "Florence Vane."
Julia Crawford, "We Parted in Silence."
Richard Henry Dana, "Buccaneer."
William Douglas, "Annie Laurie."
Joseph Rodman Drake, "The Culprit Fay," and,
perhaps, "The American Flag."
Timothy Dwight, "Columbia, the Gem of the
Ocean."
Daniel Emmet, "Dixie's Land."
Thomas Dunn English, "Ben Bolt."
David Everett, "You'd Scarce Expect One of
my Age."
William Falconer, "The Shipwreck."
Francis M. Finch, "The Blue and the Gray."
Patrick S. Gilmore, "When Johnny Comes
Marching Home."
Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard."
Albert G. Greene, "Old Grimes."
Fitz Greene Halleck, "Marco Bozzaris," and,
perhaps, "On the Death of Joseph Rodman
Drake."
Francis Bret Harte, "The Heathen Chinee."
William Hamilton, "The Braes of Yarrow."
Reginald Heber, "From Greenland's Icy Moun-
tains."
Julia Ward Howe, "Battle Hymn of the Repub-
lic."
Mary Woolsey Howland, "In the Hospital."
Joseph Hopkinson, "Hail Columbia! Happy
Land!"
Thomas Ken, "L. M. Doxology"— "Praise God
from Whom all blessings flow."
Lady Caroline Keppel, "Robin Adair."
Francis Scott Key, "The Star-spangled Banner."
Karl Theodor Kbrner, "The Sword Song."
64 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Rouget de Lisle, La Marseillaise."
William H. Lytle, "Antony and Cleopatra."
Francis Sylvester Mahony ("Father Prout")>
"The Bells of Shandon."
Clement C. Moore, "A Visit from St. Nicholas."
George P. Morris, "Woodman Spare That Tree."
William Augustus Muhlenberg, "I would not
Live always."
Theodore O'Hara, "The Bivouac of the Dead."
Kate Putnam Osgood, "Driving Home the
Cows."
John Howard Payne, "Home, Sweet Home."
Edward C. Pinkney, "I Fill a Cup to One Made
Up."
James R. Randall, "Maryland."
John Roulstone, "Mary had a Little Lamb."
Max Schneckenburger, "The Watch on the
Rhine."
F. H. Smith, "Tenting To-night on the Old
Camp Ground."
Samuel Francis Smith, "America."
Charles Sprague, "Ode on Shakspeare."
John Still, "Good Ale."
W. W. Story, "Cleopatra." Story will be re-
membered as a sculptor.
Rosa Hartwick Thorpe, "Curfew Must not Ring
To-night."
Augustus Montague Toplady, "Rock of Ages."
Joseph Blanco White, "Night."
Richard Henry Wilde, "My Life is Like a Sum-
mer Rose."
Forceyth Willson, "Old Sargeant."
Emma Willard, "Rock'd in the Cradle of the
Deep."
Henry C. Work, "Marching through Georgia."
Charles Wolfe, "Burial of Sir John Moore."
LITERARY FAME 65
Samuel Woodworth, "The Old Oaken Bucket."
Andrew Young, "There is a Happy Land, Far,
Far Away."
A number of the poems included in the above
list are poems only by courtesy, and in some cases
it is a courtesy stretched almost to the breaking
point. Of course such productions as "Little
Drops of Water" and "Mary had a Little Lamb"
are, without question, catalogued under the head
of doggerel ; and, in truth, it is in no wise likely
wise catalogueable. Yet even the foolish rhymes
named may easily preserve the names of their mak-
ers when erudite professors and distinguished judges
have been forgotten. They require no mental ex-
ertion, and their appeal to our instinctive love of
rhythm is resistless. The tintinnabulous sounds
of tinkling lines that lull to drowsy slumber or
set the feet in motion, as the periodical recurrence
of impulses and accents seizes upon sensitive
nerves, fascinate and captivate the entire man.
Truthfully the poet represents in these lines the
marvelous power of his divine art :
"Lo, with the ancient
Roots of man's nature,
Twines the eternal
Passion of song.
Ever Love fans it,
Ever Life feeds it,
Time cannot age it,
Death cannot slay.
66 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Deep in the world-heart
Stand its foundations,
Tangled with all things
Twin-made with all.
Nay, what is Nature's
Self, but an endless
Strife toward music,
Euphony, rhyme?
Trees in their blooming,
Tides in their flowing,
Stars in their circling,
Tremble with song.
God on his throne is
Eldest of poets:
Unto his measures
Moveth the Whole."
The two great war-songs on the Southern side
in our civil conflict of half a century ago were
"Maryland" and "Dixie." The first of these was
published in the Charleston Mercury, and at
once became the delight of the Confederate heart.
The second, strange to say, was written by a
Northern man who was himself greatly surprised
when he found himself the author of the song most
popular with Southern soldiers. But Daniel De-
catur Emmet did not write it for the use to
which it was put. He was a minstrel of the kind
our fathers liked, singing and cracking his jokes
and delighting young and old with his peculiar
mingling of wit and pathos. Blackened with
burnt cork, he impersonated the negro, and gave
LITERARY FAME 67
his audiences striking and new pictures of South-
ern life. Thus he traveled over England, return-
ing with a fortune that slipped through his fin-
gers, leaving him poor as he was when first he
blackened his face and strung his violin.
He was the inventor of "the walk-around," and
soon his name was in a million mouths. The lost
fortune was his again. He composed negro songs
with wonderful mastery of that peculiar vein of
feeling and melody. Most of his songs are no
longer remembered, but "Dixie" lived, and will
always live because of its old war-time associa-
tions. It was as part of a "walk-around" that
"Dixie" was constructed. Of a Sunday night, un-
der the pressure of necessity, the great Southern
war-song was written with no thought of its fu-
ture. The following Monday it was sung, and a
new fortune fell into the lap of Emmet. It was
sung by everybody, and when, onty twelve
months later, the war commenced, the Southern
soldiers caught up the strain and sang it in the
camp and on the march. Upon more than one
occasion they went into battle singing it. It be-
came the great song of the Confederacy, made
sacred by the thousands of brave men who per-
ished with its notes upon their lips.
Many a man once envied for his wealth and
world-wide renown, having played his part upon
the stage of life, is no longer remembered ; but
how well preserved, like the fly in amber, are
many names of once lowly minstrels because long
68 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
years ago a few simple lines touched the popular
heart.
A friend, gazing thoughtfully at some of the
prominent books in my library, remarked: "A
writer could, a hundred years ago, win immortal-
ity with much smaller expenditure of intellectual
power and ability than is required now to make
even the faintest and most ephemeral impression
upon the reading world. Were John Ray and
Andrew Bernard living today, they could not find
a paper or magazine of any standing that would
care to publish their rhymes. Hundreds of fugi-
tive verses in village papers are far more worthy
of preservation than anything poet-laureate
Thomas Shadwell ever dreamed of writing." The
critics's eye continued wandering over the shelves
until it suddenly lighted upon "The Poems of
William Whitehead," and then came an explosion
that was contagious, though not so complimentary
to my literary discrimination as I could have
wished. Whitehead was a quiet and inoffensive
man, with a faculty for rhyming, but without the
faintest spark of fire divine; still he was poet-
laureate between Colley Cibber and the Rev. Dr.
Thomas Warton, who was himself nothing of a
poet though a very good-natured and scholarly
man. The fact is, when we speak of an English
laureate we are thinking of Tennyson, and yet he
was but one of the fifteen laureled singers of old
England, and he was followed by Austin, even
as was Chaucer by John Ray, and Dryden by
Thomas Shadwell.
LITERARY FAME 69
Not the least valuable of the familial volumes
that welcome me when it is my fortune to open
them, are some old hymn books with verses that
seem strange enough in these days of fine phrases
and delicate rhetoric. Antiquarians will always
value Sternhold and Hopkins for quaint expres-
sion of "old-fashioned piety." Metrical versions
of the Psalms are rarely successful, but this ver-
sion was more than felicitous, and its good fortune
has not yet passed away. In the edition of 1602
are found the remarkable lines to which refer-
ence is often made, and in which the Lord is urged
to "give his foes a rap." They are in the twelfth
stanza of the seventy-fourth Psalm, and read as
follows :
"Why doest withdraw thy hand abacke and hide it
in thy lappe?
O, plucke it out and be not slacke to give thy foes
a rappe."
Equally quaint is the thirty-sixth stanza of
the seventy-eighth Psalm, in which God's cove-
nant of mercy is described as a trade'.
"For why, their hearts were nothing bent to him nor
to his trade,
Nor yet to keepe or to performe the covenant that
was made."
These lines are also very curious:
"For why? a cup of mighty wine is in the hand of
God;
And all the mighty wine therein Himself doth
poure abroad.
70 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
As for the lees an' filthy dregs that do remain of
it,
The wicked of the earth shall drink and suck them
every whit."
Of all good books, ancient and modern, the
words of Carlyle are forever true:
"In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time;
the articulate, audible voice of the Past, when the
body and material substance of it has altogether
vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies,
harbors and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed,
many-engined — they are precious, great; but what
do they become? Agamemnon, the many Agamem-
nons, Pericleses and their Greece; all is gone now
to some ruined fragments, dumb, mournful wrecks
and blocks ; but the Books of Greece ! There
Greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives;
can be called up again into life. No magic Rune
is stronger than a Book. All that mankind has
done, thought, gained, or been; it is lying in magic
preservation in the pages of Books. They are the
chosen possession of men."
Prince and peasant are equally mortal. The
vast army that marches oblivionward without
halting day or night is not composed of the poor
and illiterate alone. In its ranks are lords and
ladies and proud bishops of half a dozen religious
denominations. Not one person in a hundred
thousand will be heard of fifty years hence. Not
more than one in five hundred thousand will ever
be called to mind at the end of another century.
Darkness and oblivion with open arms wait to en-
fold our race. And yet, such is the irony of fate,
LITERARY FAME 71
in the midst of all this forgetfulness here and
there some man by mere accident impresses a
wholly inconsequent name upon the enduring his-
tory of our world, or enshrines it in the imperish-
able literature of mankind. The page that pre-
serves for us the name of John the beloved re-
cords as well that of Judas, the betrayer of our
Lord. Czolgosz will live in infamy as long, it
may be, as Washington will continue in the love
and veneration of our race. Learned and distin-
guished professors in Oxford and Harvard may
write many books, but everlasting Forgetfulness
awaits both them and the literary results of all
their toil. The shelves of the Bodleian Library
are heavy with discarded intellectual timber. Yet
a student, dissatisfied with Dr. Fell, wrote four
lines of no real value about the dull but erudite
professor, and lo ! that learned gentleman put on
immortality. "I do not love thee, Doctor Fell" —
had the clever translator rendered differently his
"Martial," the world would never have known so
well the name of the now famous Oxford instruc-
tor. Gifford, who reviewed Keats' ''Endymion"
with that flavor of wormwood which attached it-
self to nearly everything he wrote, whether in the
Quarterly or in some other equally self-righteous
mentor, once refused to reply to an attack made
upon him by an obscure poet. "I will not kick
the scamp into immortality !" said he. Another
literary assassin connected with the Quarterly
said of an antagonist, "I will not honor the fellow
72 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
by spitting upon him. Should I do so he would
boast of it until his last hour upon earth. I can-
not touch him without immortalizing him." It is
known that the Patriarch of Alexandria, who is
the Abyssinian Pope, blesses his people by spit-
ting upon them, and his loyal subjects believe
there is some peculiar virtue in episcopal saliva ;
but it is only very recently that the writer of this
paper discovered how daft on the subject of ex-
pectoration are English men of letters. Edward
Fitzgerald, the translator of Omar Khayyam's
beautiful poem, was once so unlucky as to write
these inconsiderate words about Mrs. Brown-
ing: "Mrs. Browning's death is rather a relief to
me, I must say. No more 'Aurora Leighs', thank
God ! A woman of real genius, I know ; but what
is the upshot of it all? She and her sex had bet-
ter mind the kitchen and their children, and per-
haps the poor." Mr. Browning was very angry,
and the only thing he could think of under the in-
fluence of a temporary fury was "spitting."
This is what he wrote and published in the
Athenaeum, as a rejoinder to Fitzgerald:
TO EDWARD FITZGERALD
"I chanced upon a new book yesterday,
I opened it, and where my finger lay
'Twixt page and uncut page these words I read —
Some six or seven at most — and learned thereby
That you, Fitzgerald, whom by ear and eye
She never knew, thanked God my wife was dead.
Ay, dead, and were yourself alive, good Fitz.,
LITERARY FAME 73
How to return you thanks would task my wits.
Kicking you seems the common lot of curs,
While more appropriate greeting lends you grace;
Surely to spit there glorifies your face-
Spitting from lips once sanctified by hers."
Browning's lips, it appears, were sanctified;
had his pen also been somewhat sanctified it is not
unlikely we should have been spared the above
twelve lines. Perhaps it is too much to expect
entire sanctification in a modern Englishman of
letters, jet it is something to know that Browning
was in a measure sorry for his miserable screed.
It also helps us in our appreciation of Stevenson
to believe that he regretted his Damien letter. An
irascible pen should always be followed by a peni-
tent heart. It is not difficult to understand Fitz-
gerald's sense of relief when he knew that the
author of "Aurora Leigh" was safely stowed
away under the sacred shadows of the little Prot-
estant cemetery at Florence. "Aurora Leigh" is
a nine-book novel in verse, complex and full of
learned allusions. Mr. Whipple describes its
style as "elaborately infelicitous." Doubtless it
is a work of genius and contains some quotable
passages, but most of the poem is hard to under-
stand and its images and allusions are far re-
moved from our common human sympathy.
There have been authors of no mean ability
who from conscientious motives have suppressed
their names, refusing to have them printed on the
title-pages of their books. Of course they were
74 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
men of deep religious spirit who feared that am-
bition might supplant within their hearts a su-
preme desire for the glory of God, and so alienate
from them and their work the Divine Blessing.
Their books treated of religious themes, and were
written solely for the spiritual advantage of their
fellow-men. The author of the famous "Imitation
of Christ" furnishes an instance of such inward
humility and deliberate self -surrender. The book
is usually attributed to Thomas a Kempis, whose
real name was Hammerlein. A copy of the book
was found among his papers after his death, and
as it was in manuscript his associates came at once
to the conclusion that he was its author. The
best informed scholars and antiquarians attribute
it to John Charlier Gerson, who was Chancellor
of the University of Paris and Canon of Notre
Dame. In well-nigh every language of the civil-
ized world that treatise has been published, and it
is one of the few immortal books in the devotional
literature of our Christian faith. Yet no one
whose claim carries with it any weight ever sought
to be accounted the author of that remarkable
work. "The Whole Duty of Man" is another
book that has gone over the entire globe, influ-
encing for good thousands of readers. The man
who wrote it wrote it out of a deep spiritual ex-
perience, and his pen was dipped in his own
heart's blood. He would not push himself into
the light lest the pride of this world, which he so
feared, should come between the blessing of God
LITERARY FAME 75
and his work. Heaven's benediction was courted,
but the applause of the world was held to be of
little account. Charles H. Mackintosh, an Eng-
lish schoolmaster, would have only the initials
C. H. M. printed upon many devout and uplift-
ing books that came from his consecrated pen.
These men were all of them superior to personal
ambition, and in their self -surrender we see the
power of strong and earnest faith.
There have been, on the other hand, some mak-
ers of religious literature who viewed the matter
differently, — writers who found peculiar pleasure
in closely associating their names with what
seemed to them to be for the glory of God and the
good of their fellowmen. Their delight in such
associating of themselves with God arose from no
love of fame, but from the thought that they were
connecting themselves with an enterprise that
seemed to them to be more worthy of the noblest
thought and effort than any other in all the
world. Most of the immortal hymns that have en-
riched the sacred services of the church have
rendered illustrious the names of their authors. It
is not difficult to believe that Toplady, who wrote
"Rock of Ages," was quite as devout as was the
author of the "Imitation of Christ." The wish to
live on through the centuries in beautiful associa-
tion with some high and holy enterprise or some
piece of devout and noble literature is certainly
no mean or unworthy desire.
It must be remembered that there is a pride of
76 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
humility even more offensive than the common sat-
isfaction ordinary men feel in receiving praise
from others. There is nothing lovely in self-
abasement practiced for its own sake. The self-
reliant man is the successful man, and self-reliance
implies some degree of self-assertion. We view
with pleasure one who conquers with resolute
heart adverse circumstances; we are not greatly
disturbed when we find him somewhat inclined to
congratulate himself upon well-earned success.
But mock-humility is a thing to despise, for it is
the meanest kind of hypocrisy. Both Coleridge
and Southey are sure that the devil's "darling sin
is the pride that apes humility." The entire
world feels by common instinct that Uriah Heep
is a detestable sneak.
There have been authors who from other than
religious motives have striven to conceal their
identity. Byron issued his "Don Juan" anony-
mously. Southey sent his book "The Doctor"
into the world with no acknowledgment of auth-
orship. Walter Scott sent out his novels as the
work of "The Author of Waverley" and at the
same time, in order to distract the attention of the
public, he published his poems and biography
under his own name. Edmund Burke at twenty-
seven printed anonymously his "Vindication of
Natural Society," which was for a time ascribed
to Bolingbroke. Pope did not put his name to
the "Dunciad," and to escape detection he pub-
lished the book in Dublin. James Hogg was "The
LITERARY FAME 77
Etrick Shepherd." Thomas Moore called himself
"Thomas Little" and sometimes "Mr. Little."
Professor Wilson came before the world as
"Christopher North." Dr. Wolcott was "Peter
Pindar." Francis Mahoney disguised himself as
"Father Prout." In later days Mrs. Lewes was
"George Eliot." Dickens was known as "Boz."
Mme. Dudevant took the name of "George Sand."
Louise De la Ramee was famous in every land as
"Ouida." In America Franklin, Irving, Dr. Hol-
land, Clemens, Rossiter Johnson, and many other
gifted writers had pen names. No one is abso-
lutely sure that Sir Philip Francis wrote "The
Letters of Junius." Chatterton had his reason
for hiding behind the "Rowley Poems." Bertram
and Ireland disguised themselves as "Richardus
Corinensis" and "William Shakspeare." Neither
love of fame nor fear of its consequences had any-
thing to do with their concealment of themselves.
There are to this day those who believe in a Celtic
Homer. James Macpherson knew right well that
a stupid world could see neither power nor beauty
in "Fingal" and "Temora" were it known that he
was himself the better part of the great Ossian.
How the gifted and ingenious Scotchman must
have chuckled when he read his friend's learned
essay intended to prove the authenticity of those
glorious forgeries. Dr. Hugh Blair, professor
of rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh, went
so far as to declare his belief that the poems of
Ossian must have been composed in the hunting
78. EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
stage of man's existence. "The allusions to herds
of cattle are not many," said he in his famous re-
view, "and of agriculture there is not a trace."
How Macpherson managed to keep his face
straight is more than one who has knowledge of
the matter can understand. Think of Boswell
kissing the "sacred relics of Shakspeare" — relics
that had been manufactured out of whole cloth by
one of his own acquaintances. Think of the liter-
ary rascality of the inventor of the false "Decre-
tals of Isidore" that for eight hundred years or
more deceived the entire Christian world. George
Psalmanazar was the assumed name of a literary
imposter who passed himself off for a native of
the island of Formosa. After many adventures
he came to London and there translated the cate-
chism of the State Church into his invented For-
mosan language. He also published a fictitious
"Description of Formosa." So great was his suc-
cess that he made enough money in two years to
enable him to spend more than five years in idle-
ness and extravagance in London. Later in life
he repented of his evil ways, and for fifty years
conducted himself in so exemplary a manner and
with such piety as to win the confidence of all
who knew him. What shall be said of Vella, Mait-
land, Peraira, Simonides, and Baricourt? Not all
who have concealed their identity have had at
heart a worthy motive.
The real man is, after all, not the man with
whom we have personal acquaintance. Not till
LITERARY FAME 79
Time has sifted out the chaff can we garner the
pure grain. Only when the visible man has be-
come a phantom are we able to discern the sub-
stantial and enduring man whose home is history,
and whose work is the common possession of an
entire race.
The story of insufficient compensation for good
literary work is as old as literature itself. Ju-
venal, in his Fifth Satire, has left the world bitter
lines that require no comment:
"Quick, call for wood, and let the flames devour
The hapless produce of the studious hour;
Or lock it up, to moths and worms a prey,
And break your pens, and fling your ink away: —
Or pour it rather o'er your epick flights,
Your battles, sieges (fruit of sleepless nights),
Pour it, mistaken men, who rack your brains,
In dungeons, cocklofts, for heroick strains;
Who toil and sweat to purchase mere renown,
A meagre statue, and an ivy crown !"
And in Macrobius is a witty story that comes
to the same end, and impresses the same truth:
"A Greek poet had presented Augustus with
many little compliments, in the hope of some tri-
fling remuneration. The Emperour, who found them
of only moderate value, took no notice of the poor
man; but, as he persisted in offering him his adu-
latory verses, composed himself an epigram in
praise of the poet; and when he next waited on
him with his customary panegyrick, presented his
own to him with amazing gravity. The man took
and read it with apparent satisfaction; then putting
80 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
his hand into his pocket, he deliberately drew out
two farthings and gave them to the Emperour,
saying, 'This is not equal to the demands of your
situation, Sire, but 'tis all I have: if I had more,
I would give it to you.' Augustus, who was not an
ill-natured man, could not resist this; he burst into
a fit of laughter, and made the poet a handsome
present."
Fame or money the author justly accounts the
reward of worthy labor — what shall be said when
both are deserved, and neither is accorded?
Genius neglected in life and forgotten in death
is one of the saddest of all things the literary
mind is ever called to contemplate. The story of
Chatterton, a suicide at seventeen and buried in
a pauper's grave, is one of the most familiar of
illustrations. Byron visited the last resting place
of Churchill, and thus describes it :
"I stood beside the grave of one who blazed,
The comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres."
How strange a thing is fame. It has no visible
presence, yet thousands woo it with all the passion
of a lover, and are willing to die if only they may
hear their names sounded from its lips of song
and story. Verily men chase a phantom. Yet his-
tory were something quite unlike the record it
now is had not the heart of humanity thrilled to
the music of remembrance. The grave is deep,
but vast are the heavens to which we aspire, and
glory crowns the dream of youth as well as the
toil of mid-life and the serene wisdom of age.
LITERARY FAME 81
How noble and yet how poor a thing is Fame.
The ancients said much about its beauty and
evanescence, and much also about its debasing in-
fluence over those who gave it the supreme place
in their hearts. Marcus Aurelius expressed in
clear and graceful words the feeling of the best
men and women of his day with regard to all
earthly glory:
MiKpbv be Kal ij /jlt]kI(ttij v<TTepo<prip.la, Kal airrr) 5tJ /cotA biaboxv"
dvOpanraplwv rdx'crra redvritop.e'vwv, Kal ovk elbbruv oiidf eavrovs
ovri ye rbv trp6tra\ai riBv-rtKbra.
'AXXA rb bol-dptbv o~e itepicr-ndcrei. ' Kmbuv tit rb rdxos T V* trdf-
T(ov Xrjdrjs Kal rb x<*os TOV i<p eKarepa dtrtlpov acwvos, Kal rb Ktvbv
ttjs dir^x^cewj, Kal rb evp.erd(3o\ov Kal &Kparov rQv dip' tj/mv
Sokovvtwv Kal rb arevbv tov rbirov iv iJ trepiypdcptTai. "OXtj re yap
7) yrj <TTiyp.rj Kal ravrrji itbaov yuvlbiov i) KarolKr)(Tis avrrj] Kal 4v-
ravda -rrbcroi, Kal 8iol rives ol iitai.vecbp.evoi.
In closing this brief paper the writer would in-
sist upon an independent spirit as the essential
element in all enduring work. One must dismiss
anxiety concerning the passing opinions of the
men and women who surround him. He must give
no heed to seducing voices. He must refuse to be
the mouthpiece of his neighbor's whims and con-
victions. Schopenhauer has written strong words
(stronger still in the German), and with them let
this paper end:
"The history of literature generally shows that
all those who made knowledge and insight their goal
have remained unrecognized and neglected whilst
those who paraded with the vain show of it re-
ceived the admiration of their contemporaries, to-
82 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
gether with the emoluments. ... It is a prime
condition for doing any great work — any work
which is to outlive his own age — that a man pay no
heed to his contemporaries, their views and opin-
ions, and the praise or blame which they bestow.
This condition is, however, fulfilled of itself when
a man does anything really great, and it is fortunate
that it is so. For if, in producing such a work, he
were to look to the general opinion or the judgment
of his colleagues, they would lead him astray at
every step. Hence, if a man wants to go down to
posterity, he must withdraw from the influence of
his own age."
IV
BOOK DEDICATIONS
"If my book shall live, then live thy name,
Thrice dear and gentle friend;
What bright meed I have of worthy fame,
Be thine till time shall end."
— Old Dedication.
"The one human element in many a famed book
is its dedication. Like a flower that blooms in some
sheltered nook of the far North, and there sheds
its fragrance amid snow and ice, the kindly dedi-
cation whispers of love upon the threshold of some
cold and passionless treatise of abstract truth."
— "The Hermit/'
BOOK DEDICATIONS
THE writing of elaborate dedications and
graceful prefaces was a pleasant custom of
the olden time. The book was not well presented
to good literary society that had no carefully
written preface or introduction in which was set
forth the peculiar merit of the volume, and in
which was made the usual debasement of the
author in a salam of high-sounding words. Some
of these exordiums, as Calvin's Dedication of his
Institution to Francis I. of France, and Dr.
Samuel Johnson's Preface to his edition of
Shakspeare, are enduring monuments of good and
scholarly parts. But things are changed now,
and we are fallen upon the rude and unattractive
literature of "jerks and starts." Epigrammatic
and telegraphic styles have jostled and crowded
from their places the calm and dignified utter-
ances of older writers. The modern preface is re-
duced to a pale and ineffectual "foreword," and
seems destined to become a fore-syllable. Yet
we have this consolation, and it is by no means
a poor one, that in parting from the dignity and
grace of the fathers we have escaped a consider-
able amount of fulsome adulation. Casaubon's
"Preface to Polybius" is no longer imitated, but
it comforts us to know that now no one is so
wanting in self-respect as to be willing to tread
meekly in the steps of translators who could dedi-
85
86 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
cate their rendering of the Sacred Scriptures to
"the most high and mighty Prince James." Did
those venerable translators actually believe that
Queen Elizabeth was "a bright occidental star of
most happy memory"? It may be they did; and
yet we cannot resist the impression that in their
hearts they knew the Virgin Queen to be the hard
and unlovely shrew she most certainly was.
Shorn of dedication and preface, the modern
feast of letters may be commonplace, but after
all, is there not a decided gain in self-respect?
The authors who named themselves "a crumb of
mortality," "a pinch of dust," and "a puff of
wind" may have described themselves correctly,
but we are unable to believe they added anything
to the dignity of literary art. Many an old-time
dedication was humiliating to the last degree ; and
the amount of lying that authors, big and little,
offered upon the altar of patronage was simply
astonishing.
The long and prolix Preface is now dead and
soon the grass will be green over its unhonored
grave. Never can any literary resurrection give
new life to its dry bones. Perhaps the time is not
far distant when the shorter Preface will also go
the way of all the living and disappear forever;
and the book, whatever might have been its man-
ners under other circumstances, will bolt into our
best society with not even so much of ceremony
as a decent bow. But the Dedication will, beyond
all question, survive. We like to associate our
BOOK DEDICATIONS 87
work with those we love. A book is worth more
to its author when it bears in gracious lines and
tender phrases the loved one's name. Like a
sweet and fragrant flower the dainty dedication
glows in beauty just over the garden wall of some
volume otherwise cold and possibly unattractive.
We turn to it again and again, and the book
seems more inviting. It helps us to think well
of the author.
Chief among noble and attractive inscriptions
is that which accompanies Reiske's edition of the
Greek Orators. Reiske affixed his wife's portrait
to the learned and excellent work, and in the
Preface to his first volume he placed these beau-
tiful and just words:
"She is a modest and frugal woman; she loves
me, and my literary employments, and is an indus-
trious and skillful assistant. Induced by affection
for me, she applied herself to the study of Greek
and Latin under my tuition. She knew neither of
these languages when we were married; but she was
soon able to lighten the multifarious and very se-
vere labors to be performed in this undertaking.
The Aldine and Pauline editions she alone com-
pared ; also the fourth Augustine edition. As I had
taught her the Erasmian pronounciation, she read
first to me the Morellian copy, while I read those
in manuscript. She labored unweariedly in ar-
ranging, correcting and preparing my confused copy
for the press. As I deeply feel, and publicly ex-
press my gratitude for her aid, so I trust that pres-
ent and future generations may hold her name in
honored remembrance."
88 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Comte lacked Reiske's calm dignity, but he had
much of that author's sentiment and tender feel-
ing when he made this impassioned address to
Madame de Vaux, six years after her death :
"Adieu, my unchangeable companion ! Adieu,
my holy Clothilde, who are to me at once wife, sis-
ter and daughter! Adieu, my dear pupil, and my
fit colleague. Thy celestial inspiration will domi-
nate the remainder of my life, public as well as pri-
vate, and preside over my progress towards perfec-
tion, purifying my sentiments, ennobling my
thoughts, and elevating my conduct. Perhaps, as
the principal reward to the grand tasks yet left me
to complete under thy powerful invocation, I shall
inseparably write thy name with my own, in the
latest remembrances of a grateful humanity."
I do not know precisely why, but always
Comte's address to Clothilde de Vaux reminds me
of the inscription which John Stuart Mill placed
upon the stone over his wife's tomb in the cem-
etery at Avignon, France. It was January 5,
1886, as I discover from my note book, when I
stood by the last resting place of that gifted
woman, and copied upon a slip of paper these
lines:
The Beloved Memory
of
Harriet Mill,
The dearly loved and deeply regretted
Wife of John Stuart Mill.
Her great and loving heart,
Her noble soul,
BOOK DEDICATIONS 89
Her clear, powerful, original and
Comprehensive intellect
Made her the guide and support,
The instructor in wisdom,
And the example in goodness,
As she was the sole earthly delight,
Of those who had the happiness to belong
to her.
As earnest for all public good
As she was generous and devoted
To all who surrounded her,
Her influence has been felt
In many of the greatest
Improvements of the age,
And will be in those still to come.
Were there even a few hearts and in-
tellects like hers,
This earth would already become
The hoped for heaven.
She died,
To the irreparable loss of those
Who survive her,
At Avignon, Nov. 3, 1858.
John Stuart Mill and his wife now repose in
the same tomb. During my brief visit to Avig-
non I had the good fortune to occupy the room
in the little French inn in which through long
and lonely hours the great philosopher and distin-
guished author watched in anguish of heart by
the bedside of his dear wife. Very happy was
the married life of Mill. His wife shared his
tastes, his culture, and his opinions, and in all his
literary work there was abundant evidence of her
co-operation. Her beautiful soul made life radi-
90 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
ant with a love which he called divine. These are
the words in which Mill dedicates his immortal
"Essay on Liberty" to his wife years after her
death :
"To the beloved and deplored memory of her
who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all
that is best in my writings, — the friend and wife
whose exalted sense of truth and right was my
strongest incitement, and whose approbation was
my chief reward, — I dedicate this volume. Like all
that I have written for many years, it belongs as
much to her as to me; but the work as it stands
has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inesti-
mable advantage of her review; some of the most
important portions having been reserved for a more
careful re-examination, which they are never des-
tined to receive. Were I but capable of interpret-
ing to the world one-half the great thoughts and
noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I
should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than
is ever likely to arise from any thing that I can
write unprompted and unassisted by her all but un-
rivalled wisdom."
Balzac dedicated his "Modeste Mignon" to a
Polish lady. Who the lady was he does not tell
us, but I think we are safe in saying she was none
other than the Countess Hanska, with whom the
gifted writer lived in happy wedlock a brief sea-
son which he has elsewhere described as the sum-
mer of his earthly existence:
TO A POLISH LADY.
Daughter of an enslaved land, angel through
love, witch through fancy, child by faith, aged by
BOOK DEDICATIONS 91
experience, man in brain, woman in heart, giant by
hope, mother through sorrow, poet in thy dreams,
to thee belongs this book, in which thy love, thy
fancy, thy experience, thy sorrow, thy hope, thy
dreams, are the warp through which is shot a woof
less brilliant than the poetry of the soul, whose ex-
pression when it shines upon thy countenance is to
those who love thee what the characters of a lost
language are to scholars.
Worthy of a place among beautiful dedications
are the words with which Loti prefaces his "From
Lands of Exile":
"I dedicate this to the memory of a noble and
exquisite woman, whose never to be forgotten image
rises before me strangely vivid whenever I have
time to think. These notes from the faraway Yel-
low Land were originally written for her alone. I
used to send them to her out of the distance as a
sort of chat to amuse her during the long, weary
months while she was slowly fading out of life,
slowly and with a serene smile."
The brilliant author is not satisfied with his
own graceful lines, but follows them with a deli-
cate and touching description of his dear friend.
He brings the charming invalid before us in such
a way as to show her refinement and fascination.
He so associates the entire book with her delight-
ful personality that one can never think of it
without beholding as in a vision the enchanting
woman whose memory its enduring pages en-
shrine.
With these pathetically beautiful lines Eu-
92 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
gene Field dedicates "A Little Book of Western
Verse" to his sister:
"A dying mother gave to you
Her child a many years ago;
How in your gracious love he grew,
You know, dear, patient heart, you know.
The mother's child you fostered then
Salutes you now, and bids you take
These little children of his pen,
And love them for the author's sake.
To you I dedicate this book,
And, as you read it line by line,
Upon its faults as kindly look
As you have always looked on mine.
Tardy the offering is and weak,
Yet were I happy if I knew
These children had the power to speak
My love and gratitude to you."
In all these graceful and touching dedications
it is the heart rather than the mind that speaks.
And it is just because the dedication furnishes so
happy an opportunity for the expression of kind-
ness and affection that it is likely to endure when
the dull and wearisome preface and many another
adjunct of the published book or printed poem
has been forever abandoned. In the dedication
the author finds companionship, and shares with
wife or friend the praise which he hopes his lit-
erary work may bring him. The companionship
is sometimes far more enduring than one finds in
BOOK DEDICATIONS 93
a brief life-time of a few years. Two hundred and
fifty years ago Sir William Davenant wrote and
published his "Madagascar," and today two dear
friends live in equal remembrance with him in
the graceful dedication:
"If these poems live, may their memories by
whom they are cherished, Endymion Poster and H.
Jarmyn live with them."
Davenant's dedication has been imitated many
times. Three years after the publication of
"Madagascar" Sheppard dedicated his "Epi-
grams, Theological, Philosophical and Romantic"
in almost the same words:
"If these Epigrams survive (maugre the vo-
racitie of Time) let the names of Christopher Clap-
ham and James Winter (to whom the author dedi-
cateth these his devours) live with them."
The anonymous author of a curious and now
scarce poetical tract, "The Martyrdom of St.
George of Cappadocia, Titular Patron of Eng-
land and the Most Noble Order of the Garter,"
which appeared in 1614, dedicated his work:
"To all the Nobles, Honourable and Worthy in
Great Britaine bearing the name of George; and to
all others, the true friends of Christian Chivalrie,
lovers of Saint George's name and virtues."
Richard Brathwayte prefixed to his "Strappado
for the Divell" (1615) the following odd "Epis-
tle Dedicatorie" :
94 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
ctr
'To all usurers, broakers, and promoters, ser-
geants, catch-poles, and regraters, ushers, panders,
suburbes traders, cockneies that have manie fathers;
ladies, monkies, parachitoes, marmosites and cato-
mitoes, falls, high-tires and rebatoes, false-haires,
periwigges, monchatoes, grave gregorians and shee-
painters — send I greeting at adventures, and to all
such as be evill, by Strappado for the Divell."
William Hornby inscribed his "Scourge of
Drunkenness" thus:
"To all the impious and relentless-hearted ruf-
fians and roysterers under Bacchus' regiment,
Cornu-apes wisheth remorse of conscience and more
increase of grace."
Cornu-apes was a name Hornby had assumed.
He followed the inscription with some verses of
little value, and printed upon the title page the
picture of a wild man very like an ape, smoking
a pipe with one hand and holding a scourge in
the other.
The three inscriptions last quoted are not in any
true sense of the word dedications. Dedicating a
book to the memory of all the men in Great Brit-
ain who may happen to have the name of George
is like erecting a grave-stone to all who have died
bearing the name of John Smith. As for Horn-
by's inscription, it is a mere eccentricity.
Always a true dedication is a matter of feel-
ing. It is a thing of the heart. Though into it
a delicate humor or pleasantry may sometimes in-
trude, it can still never be other than gracious,
BOOK DEDICATIONS 95
dignified, and affectionate. A good illustration
of what a book-dedication should be is found in
the inscription which Martha Baker Dunn has
given her "Memory Street":
"To my father, a man whose brain is as clear as
his conscience, and whose long record of stainless
purity and integrity is his children's best heritage,
this book is affectionately dedicated."
General Brinkerhoof thus dedicates his "Recol-
lections of a Lifetime":
"To My Wife. For forty-eight years, through
sunshine and through cloudy weather, she has been
my traveling companion in life's journey, and in all
the vicissitudes of those years she has done more
than her share in overcoming hindrances and in
making our journey enjoyable; in all the vicissitudes
of life she has been my counsellor and helper, and
always ready to make a sacrifice herself for my
advancement or comfort. In short, she has not
only made my home a haven of rest and encourage-
ment, but she has made my public career possible;
and if I have accomplished anything of value, it is
to her wise provision and optimistic faith in Provi-
dential care it is largely due."
The author of the little book, "As Seen by Me,"
has furnished her readers a very delightful dedi-
cation, but it is to be regretted that she did not
give them the name of her "speck of humanity."
"To that most interesting speck of humanity, all
perpetual motion and kindling intelligence and
sweetness unspeakable, my little nephew Billy, ab-
sence from whom racked my spirit with its most
96 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
unappeasable pangs of homesickness, and whose
constant presence in my study since my return has
spared the public no small amount of pain."
It seems to us that always in every book dedi-
cation and in every mortuary inscription the name
of the person memorized should be given. Why
carve upon the grave-stone "My Dear Father"?
If the name is so sacred it may not be transferred
to marble, why refer to the relationship? The
sorrowing heart knows for whom it sorrows, and
the mere relationship with date and possibly a line
of verse or of Scripture has for the passing
stranger no significance of any kind. In future
years when all who were related are dead it may
still be a matter of interest to know where some
one, humble in his day but of importance now in
local history, rests. We like to see something of
the story of the man's life upon the stone that
covers his dust. Soon enough all earthly records
will be effaced. Let us not anticipate time and
hurry on oblivion.
There was about the old-fashioned book-dedi-
cation not infrequently a vulgar and obsequious
commercialism. The author had a patron, or he
was diligently seeking for one with wealth and
high social standing. The Dedication was too
often for sale. There is record of an author who,
publishing a book in many volumes, dedicated
each separate volume to a different patron, and so
harvested a multifarious reward before any of
the injured contributors to his exchequer discov-
BOOK DEDICATIONS 97
ered the deception. The convenience of having
a literary sponsor was very great ; sometimes it
was an absolute necessity. I doubt not a consid-
erable number of good authors have fallen into
obscurity and many have failed of a publisher
through want of some titled ignoramus whose
name and station would certainly have impressed
the book-selling fraternity. Some of the old in-
scriptions are exceedingly humiliating. The
author who described himself as a certain lord-
ship's "door-mat" was not by any means the most
servile of the writing brotherhood. A very re-
spectable author described the noble lady whose
name graced his dedication, and whose money
made his book possible, as "a phoenix feeding on
perfumes." Perhaps he really thought she re-
sembled something of the kind. She may have
been beautiful, notwithstanding the commercial
relation she sustained to author and book. The
old patron system had its good points, and was
often of advantage to both writer and benefactor,
but it had also its disadvantages. It degraded
literary art and destroyed personal independence.
It did more. Sometimes it cut up, root and
branch, all reverence for sacred things, and even
for God Himself. What shall be said of a dedi-
cation like this which a French writer bestowed
upon Cardinal Richelieu:
"Who has seen your face without being seized
by those softened terrors which made the prophet
shudder when God showed the beams of his glory!
98 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
But as he whom they dared not approach in the
burning brush, and in the noise of thunders, ap-
peared to them sometimes in the freshness of the
zephyrs, so the softness of your august counte-
nance dissipates at the same time and changes into
dew the small vapours which cover its majesty."
It is only fair to say that the author who in-
dited the above dedication was upon the death of
Richelieu conscience-stricken, and in a second edi-
tion of his book suppressed the blasphemous in-
scription, and, by way of penance, inscribed the
book to Jesus Christ. When James I. of England
answered Conrad Vorstius' book on the attributes
of God, he saw no impropriety in the following
dedication :
"To ] the Honour | of our Lord and | Saviour
Jesus Christ, | the Eternal Sonne of the | Eternal
Father, the onely GEANGPflnOS, Mediatour, | and
Reconciler | of Mankind, | In signe of Thankeful-
nesse, | His most humble | and most obliged | Ser-
vant, James by the Grace of | God, King of Great
Britaine, | France and Ireland, | Defender of the
Faith, | Doeth dedicate, and consecrate | this his
Declaration."
Hundreds of books, good, bad and indifferent,
have been dedicated to the Virgin Mary, who is
variously addressed as the Mother of God, the
Queen of Heaven, the Lady of Angels, and the
Rose of Mercy. Thousands of appellations of
honor and praise have been showered upon her by
Roman Catholic authors, and in some cases by
Protestant writers as well. A number of books
BOOK DEDICATIONS 99
have been dedicated to the Apostles, among whom
the Beloved John seems always to be favored, not-
withstanding the peculiar eminence of Peter.
In ancient pagan days, before men turned their
thoughts to the Holy Virgin of our Christian
faith, Hippolytus dedicated a crown to the beau-
tiful Diana, the goddess of hunting, in these ten-
der and gracious words:
"To thee, O lady, I offer this crown, formed of
flowers from a pure meadow, where no shepherd
thinks to lead his flock, nor scythe has come, but
the bee skims over the pure spring meadow, which
the morning waters with river-dews. To persons
whose knowledge is not acquired by learning, but
whose wisdom is inspired by Nature in all things
always, to them it is allowed to cull the flowers, but
not to the wicked."
Kenan's "Life of Jesus" (C. E. Wilbour's
translation) contains what seems to the writer of
this paper the most lovely dedication in all litera-
ture. It is possibly too long, but its exceeding
great beauty would make us loth to lose a single
line. We give it here as it is found on the open-
ing page of the gifted Frenchman's "Vie de
Jesus" :
"To the Pure Spirit of My Sister Henrietta, Who
Died at Byblus, Sept. 24, 1861.
Do you remember, from your rest in the bosom
of God, those long days at Ghazir, where, alone
with you, I wrote these pages, inspired by the
scenes we had just traversed? Silent by my side
you read every leaf, and copied it as soon as writ-
100 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
ten, while the sea, the villages, the ravines, the
mountains, were spread out at our feet.
When the overwhelming light of the sun had
given place to the innumerable army of stars, your
fine and delicate questions, your discreet doubts,
brought me back to the sublime object of our com-
mon thoughts.
One day you told me you should love this book,
first, because it had been written with you, and also
because it pleased you. If sometimes you feared
for it the narrow judgments of frivolous men, you
were always persuaded that spirits truly religious
would be pleased with it.
In the midst of these sweet meditations Death
struck us both with his wing; the sleep of fever
seized us both at the same hour. I woke alone ! . . .
You sleep now in the land of Adonis, near the holy
Byblus and the sacred waters where the women of
the ancient mysteries came to mingle their tears.
Reveal to me, O my good genius, to me whom you
loved, those truths which master Death, prevent us
from fearing, and make us almost love it."
This is the witty and kindly dedication that
Lamb affixed to his "Essays of Elia":
To the Friendly and Judicious Reader.
Who will take these papers as they were meant;
not understanding every thing perversely in the
absolute and literal sense, but giving fair construc-
tion as to an after-dinner conversation, allowing
for the rashness and necessary incompleteness of
first thoughts ; and not remembering, for the pur-
pose of an after taunt, words spoken peradventure
after the fourth glass. The author wishes (what
he would will for himself) plenty of good friends
to stand by him, good books to solace him, prosper-
BOOK DEDICATIONS 101
ous events to all his honest undertakings, and a
candid interpretation to his most hasty words and
actions. The other sort (and he hopes many of
them will purchase his book too) he greets with the
curt invitation of Timon, 'Uncover, dogs, and lap,'
or he dismisses them with the confident security of
the philosopher, 'You beat but in the case of
Elia.'
Nothing, it seems to the writer of this paper,
could be better in its way than the inscription
which introduces "Tristam Shandy":
To the Right Honourable Mr. Pitt.
Sir, — Never poor wight of a dedicator had less
hopes from his dedication, than I have from this of
mine; for it is written in a large corner of the.
kingdom, and in a retired thatch'd house, where I
live in a constant endeavour to fence against the
infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by
winter; being firmly persuaded that every time a
man smiles, but much more so when he laughs, that
it adds something to this fragment of life.
I humbly beg, Sir, that you will honour this
book by taking it (not under your protection, it
must protect itself, but) into the country with you;
when if I am ever told it has made you smile, or
can conceive it has beguiled you of one moment's
pain, I shall think myself as happy as a minister of
State, perhaps much happier than any one (one
only excepted) that I have ever read or heard of.
I am, great Sir,
(and what is more to your Honour),
I am, good Sir,
Your well-wisher,
And most humble Fellow Subject,
The Author.
102 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
The whimsical spirit of the humorist and novel-
ist is apparent in every line of the foregoing
inscription, with just enough of implied pathos
to awaken sympathy. Poor Sterne was not ten-
der-hearted. He was a cold and licentious egotist
who, to use the words of another, "preferred
whining over a dead ass to relieving a living
mother." A Frenchman tells us that ''there was
nothing good in the man, though his 'Tristam
Shandy' is one of the best of books if one likes
the kind." He did not have the frank out-and-
out sensuality of Fielding, with whom he is some-
times compared, but he had all the rotten scandal
of the worst writers of his time. Taine lets his
readers into the spirit of the man when he writes :
"That an epicurean delights in detailing the
pretty sins of a pretty woman is nothing wonder-
ful; but that a novelist takes pleasure in watch-
ing the bedroom of a musty, fusty old couple, in
observing the consequences of the fall of a burn-
ing chestnut in a pair of breeches, in detailing
the questions of Mrs. Wadman on the conse-
quences of wounds in the groin, can only be ex-
plained by the aberration of a perverted fancy,
which finds its amusement in repugnant ideas, as
spoiled palates are pleased by the repugnant fla-
vor of decayed cheese."
The end of Sterne was a sad one. Alone and
deserted, while some of his companions were ca-
rousing in a neighboring street, he passed unla-
mented to his grave, in which he was not allowed
BOOK DEDICATIONS 103
to rest. Two nights after his burial, he was dug
up by grave-robbers who sent him down to Cam-
bridge, where Mr. Collignon, the distinguished
Professor of Anatomy, dissected him before some
of the medical fraternity.
Formal and stilted in its phrasing and in its
loud-sounding, but seemingly insincere, expres-
sion of humility, Byron's inscription of "Sardan-
apalus" may be taken as an illustration of what
a book dedication should not be.
To
THE ILLUSTRIOUS GOETHE
a stranger presumes to offer the homage
of a literary vassal to his liege lord,
the first of existing writers
who has created the literature of his own country
and illustrated that of Europe.
The unworthy production which the author ventures
to inscribe to him
is entitled
SARDANAPALUS
It is difficult to believe that Byron ever re-
garded anything that his pen had given the world
as an "unworthy production." Certainly the
"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" gave the
men of his day a different impression. Byron
never lost sight of himself. Of himself he
thought and dreamed. It has been truly said, "He
could not metamorphose himself into another.
The sorrows, revolts, and travels described in his
books are all his own. He does not invent, he ob-
serves; he does not create, he transcribes. His
104 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
copy is darkly exaggerated, but it is a copy."
Surely the keen-sighted Goethe must have discov-
ered without much effort what kind of humility
it was the great English poet brought him in the
dedication of "Sardanapalus."
Thackeray's inscription of "Pendennis" is a
beautiful tribute to a dear friend and an able
physician :
To
DR. JOHN ELLIOTSON
My dear Doctor, — Thirteen months ago, when it
seemed likely that this story had come to a close, a
kind friend brought you to my bedside, whence, in
all probability, I never should have risen but for
your constant watchfulness and skill. I like to re-
call your great goodness and kindness (as well as
many acts of others, showing quite a surprising
friendship and sympathy) at that time, when kind-
ness and friendship were most needed and welcome.
And as you would take no other fee but thanks,
let me record them here in behalf of me and mine,
and subscribe myself,
Yours most sincerely and gratefully,
W. M. Thackeray.
Thus Stanley dedicates to the memory of his
mother his "Lectures on the History of the Jew-
ish Church":
To the dear memory of Her
by whose firm faith, calm wisdom, and tender
sympathy,
these and all other labours
have for years been sustained and cheered:
TO MY MOTHER
this work,
BOOK DEDICATIONS 105
which shared her latest care,
is now dedicated
in sacred and everlasting remembrance.
The following are two excellent dedications
from the poet Swinburne. The first, which is af-
fixed to "The Tale of Baten," throws a strong
and noble light upon the heart of the great writer,
and rebukes those who malevolently represent him
as devoid of natural affection.
TO MY MOTHER
Love that holds life and death in fee,
Deep as the clear, unsounded sea
And sweet as life or death can be,
Lays here my hope, my heart, and me
Before you, silent, in a song.
Since the old, wild tale, made new, found grace,
When half sung through, before your face,
It needs must live a springtime space,
While April suns grow strong.
The second dedication prefaces the matchless
"Atlanta in Calydon":
TO THE MEMORY OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
I now dedicate, with equal affection, reverence,
and regret, a poem inscribed to him while yet alive
in words which are retained because they were laid
before him; and to which, rather than cancel them,
I have added such others as were evoked by the
news of his death : that though losing the pleasure,
I may not lose the honour of inscribing in front of
my work the highest of contemporary names.
Worthy of a place among the dedications to
which attention has been called is one with which
106 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
F. Hopkinson Smith has enriched his delightful
little book, "A White Umbrella in Mexico" :
"I dedicate this book to the most charming of
all the senoritas I know. The one whose face lin-
gers longest in my memory when I am away, and
whose arms open widest when I return. The most
patient of my listeners, the most generous of my
critics, my little daughter, Marion."
A curious and interesting thing in connection
with the literature of mortuary and book dedica-
tions is the fact that domestic animals have had a
share of remembrance in some popular and in
not a few learned works. Their pet names have
also been chiseled in the stones that mark their
graves ; and there are now a number of burial
gardens set aside for cats, dogs, birds, and even
creatures of the barn-yard. A cemetery for cats
has been opened near London. The prospectus,
in which it is called "The Zoological Necropolis,"
gives an imposing array of patrons, among whom
are bankers, brokers, and men and women of
wealth and social standing. Near Newport, the
fashionable summer home of American million-
aires, is an animal cemetery where repose under
marble and surrounded by costly and fragrant
flowers, the bodies of polo ponies, angora cats,
and even a few monkeys that have been "socially
prominent." But all this is as nothing when we
consider the animal cemetery at St. Ouen. To
borrow the words of a modern magazine writer:
BOOK DEDICATIONS 107
"Here are monuments of the most elaborate de-
scription, and fresh wreaths everywhere. The
most striking tomb is that of a Saint Bernard who
saved forty persons, but was killed by the forty-
first — a hero of whose history one would like to
know more, but the gatekeeper is curiously unin-
structed.
I walked among these myriad graves, all very
recent in date, and was not a little touched by the
affection that had gone to their making. I noted a
few names: Petit Bob, Esperance (whose portrait
is in bas-relief, accompanied by that of its mas-
ter), Peggie, Fan, Pincke, Manon, Dick, Siko,
Lonette (aged 17 years and 4 months), Toby, Kiki,
Ben-Ben ( ' toujoars gai, Jidele et caressant ' —
what an epitaph to strive for!), Javotte, Nana,
Lili, Dedjaz, Trinquefort, Teddy, and Prince
(whose mausoleum is superb), Fifi (who saved
lives), Colette, Dash (a spaniel with a little bronze
sparrow perching on his tomb), Boy, Bizon (who
saved his owner's life and therefore has this sou-
venir), and Mosque (regrelte et Jidele ami). There
must be hundreds and hundreds altogether, and it
will not be long before another 'God's Acre' is re-
quired."
"In due time," says the Pall Mall Gazette,
"we shall have cats' undertakers." The simple
truth of the matter is that we already have under-
takers in our large cities who devote themselves
to the burial of domestic animals. There was not
long ago in New York a dog's funeral, and the
little creature, for he was a diminutive lap-dog,
was encased in an elegant satin-lined casket which
was in turn inclosed in a fine oaken box. The
burial was in a cemetery near Nyack, N. Y. The
108 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
cost of a casket and funeral for a dog whose mor-
tal remains repose in Woodlawn cemetery was
named to the writer, and as near as he remem-
bers, it was something like one hundred and fifty
dollars. On the stones that mark the graves of
various pets in the cemetery for animals near
London one may read some very touching inscrip-
tions. Harriet L. Keeler, who wrote a charming
book on "Our Native Trees," dedicates her work
to two pet dogs, Phyllis and Nicholas ; she de-
scribes them as her "loving companions through
field and wood." An English lady inscribed her
book to her favorite cat, whose prowess in captur-
ing mice is duly celebrated. John Burroughs, the
distinguished naturalist and essayist, dedicated
his "Bird and Bough," a little book of delightful
verses, thus : "To the kinglet that sang in my
evergreens in October, and made me think it was
May." Even the canary bird has winged its way
into the charmed circle, and readers far and near
may listen to the music of its song in notes that
link the feathered creature of the air with the
charm of poetry and romance. Why should not
the animals be remembered? The old Egyptians
worshipped the cat under the name of Aelurus.
It was a tradition that Diana assumed the form
of a cat. Surely if religion is in no wise dishon-
ored by Tabby's presence, our modern books are
not diminished in dignity by an occasional dedi-
cation to a sparrow, a squirrel, or a dog. So re-
nowned a poet as Tasso celebrated the virtues and
BOOK DEDICATIONS 109
immortalized the name of a pet cat; and Chau-
teaubriand has preserved for us, and for all the
world, the name and exploits of the famous Mi-
cetto.
AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS
Murcielagos literarios
Que haceis a pluma y a pelo,
Si quereis vivir con tddos,
Miraos en este espejo."
— Yriarte.
"Y ahora digo yo; Llene un volumen
De disparates un autor famoso,
Y si no le alebaren, que me eraplumen."
— Yriarte.
AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS
VICTOR HUGO had many and long argu-
ments with his friend Schoelcher, who did
not believe in a future life. One day when Schoel-
cher had given religion a peculiarly bad name,
Hugo retorted: "Schoelcher, you are quite right.
Not every one is immortal. Upon a certain day
Dante wrote two stanzas on a sheet of paper, and
left them on his desk while he exercised in the open
air. No sooner was the great poet out of sight
than the first stanza said to the second, 'It is a
fine thing to be written by Dante, for that makes
us immortal !' The second stanza answered, 'I
am not so sure of that ; do you really believe that
both of us shall live forever?' In a moment or
two Dante returned, re-read the stanzas, and de-
ciding that the second was worthless, erased
it." Whatever may be the fate of that deli-
cate and ethereal part of our human construction
which theologians call the Soul, it is true beyond
doubt that some men live many years, if not for-
ever, in the history of the race or in its wonderful
literature because the Power that created them
made them worthy of remembrance, while count-
less millions of men and women in all lands and
ages, strive as earnestly as they may, are fore-
doomed to oblivion.
It is as Sir Thomas Browne tells us in his "Urn
Burial," "Oblivion is not to be hired." The
113
114 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
greater part must be content to be as though they
had not been — to be in the register of God, not
in the record of man. It is hard to find in all
history a greater tragedy than that of the unre-
mitting but futile toil of inconsequent persons to
make for themselves places and names in the en-
during memorials of mankind. "Mute, inglorious
Miltons" crowd our cemeteries. Georges Ohnet's
"Le Maitre des Forges" is one of the good books
of the world, but it came very near sharing the
unhappy fate of Dante's second stanza. Every
publisher in Paris returned the manuscript. The
author, disappointed and disgusted, threw the
work into the open grate wherein smouldered a
partly extinguished fire. As the flames touched
the paper, Ohnet's accomplished wife, who had
herself assisted in the composition of the book,
came into the room and snatched the precious
manuscript from its perilous position. "We have
money enough and can publish the book our-
selves," she said, "and it may be those brutal pub-
lishers will yet rue the day they let 'Le Maitre des
Forges' slip through their stupid fingers." The
book sold faster than Ohnet and his wife could
print it and a score of managers sought to obtain
dramatization rights, which Konig alone secured
after much work, and the outlay of a considerable
sum of money. For three hundred nights a bril-
liant German actress sustained the character of
Claire de Beaulieu, and it is said that when the
curtain dropped upon the last performance she
AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 115
burst into tears because she had lost the dear
friend she had so long impersonated. Ohnet was
fortunate in two things : He had a cultivated and
sympathetic wife who knew good literature and
could help him in its construction, and he had also
enough money to render him independent of the
publishing fraternity. A good wife and plenty
of money ! What more can a man want in this
little life of ours? Yet with even these one may
fail in the world of letters if there be not sufficient
genius for the work, and with genius it is even
possible to succeed without either the counsel of a
wife or the magic of money. It is doubtless the
duty of every man to cultivate a forgiving spirit,
and no one will deny that "Love your enemies"
includes the obligation to think kindly of one's
publishers. Yet we are most of us very human.
If Dante could rejoice when he saw havoc made
of Filippo Argenti by the people of the mire,
surely so humble an individual as the writer of this
paper may hope to escape with a whole skin when
he rejoices in the sad discomfiture of those Paris
publishers.
But not all the sinners live in France. English
publishers have made mistakes, and some very
serious ones. Long years ago "Tristram Shandy"
was offered to a bookseller at York, and that same
bookseller, turning up his nose at what he
thought the miserable nonsense of a fool, in-
formed Sterne that "the stuff" was not worth
printing. "The sermon in Tristram Shandy,"
116 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
wrote Sterne in his preface to his "Sermons,"
"was printed by itself some years ago, but could
find neither purchasers nor readers." Its appear-
ance in the immortal work named created so great
a demand for all of the eccentric preacher's dis-
courses that an edition in eight volumes was at
once projected. De Foe, though at the time a
writer of acknowledged ability, traveled over all
England endeavoring to find a publisher for his
"Robinson Crusoe." Murray would not give
Horace and James Smith twenty pounds for the
"Rejected Addresses," though later when the book
had made for itself a name, he was glad to pay one
hundred and thirty pounds for the right to issue
a single edition. He could well afford that
amount, for every copy was disposed of at once,
a large part of the edition being sold before pub-
lication. After "Vanity Fair" had been printed
in Colburn's Magazine, a publisher sa?d that he
did not want it because public interest had been
exhausted by its brief career in the periodical. A
printer and bookseller at Bath purchased Jane
Austen's "Northanger Abbey" for ten pounds,
and then did not dare to risk more money on what
he accounted a ''shaky venture." So great was
his cowardice that the book remained unpublished
a number of years.
Charles Wolfe was a good man who preached
the Gospel in a desolate and lonely part of Ire-
land. His parishioners were rude and poor, and
his home was humble and bare of adornment. By
AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 117
himself, without intellectual sympathy and com-
panionship, the Irish clergyman kept the sacred
fire burning upon the beautiful altar of literature.
When the labors of the day were ended, his library
of a few books afforded him a safe and blessed re-
treat from the poverty and wretchedness which
his parish duties compelled him to witness. It was
his good fortune to write an "Ode on the Death of
Sir John Moore," that Byron pronounced one of
the best short poems in the English language. He
himself, though a man of unusual humility of
spirit, thought the lines good and sent them to the
most prominent magazine in England. The edi-
tor returned the manuscript and pronounced the
poem mere doggerel. He could find no publisher
and so, in sheer desperation, he gave the gem to
an obscure Irish paper, and it was printed for
glory alone.
Now that attention has been called to the lonely
name of Charles Wolfe, it may interest the reader
to know, if he does not already know, that the
Irish poet's grave is in Clonmel Parish church-
yard, which was in his day the cemetery of
Queenstown. Mrs. Piatt, an American lady of
rare poetic gifts who has written several books
of delightful verse, often visited that grave when
her husband was United States consul at Queens-
town. In a volume of poems which she published
in 1885 there are some pleasing lines about
Wolfe's last resting place, and among them are
these :
118 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
"Where the graves are many, we looked for one,
Oh, the Irish rose was red
And the dark stones saddened the setting sun
With the names of the early dead.
Then a child, who, somehow, had heard of him
In the land we loved so well,
Kept sipping the grass till the dew was dim
In the churchyard of Clonmel.
But the sexton came. 'Can you tell us where
Charles Wolfe is buried?' 'I can.
See, that is his grave in the corner there.
(Ay, he was a clever man,
If God had spared him!) It's many that come
To be asking for him,' said he.
But the boy kept whispering, 'Not a drum
Was heard,' in the dusk to me."
The poem goes on to tell how the gray sexton
"tore a vine from the wall of the roofless church"
where the poet's dust reposed, and swept from the
grave the incumbering leaves "that the withering
year let fall," disclosing upon the stone an in
scription scarcely legible and covered with moss
that had to be removed before a single line could
be made out.
Mr. Armistead C. Gordon, in a communication
to the New York Times Saturday Review of Books
and Art, under the date of July 15, 1902, wrote:
"Ten years after the lad had sought for the
poet's grave in the grass of the Clonmel church-
yard, Katherine Tynan, herself one of the most
melodious and lovely of the younger Irish poets,
wrote 'Poets in Exile/ a prose description of the
Piatts in Queenstown, in which she narrates the
AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 119
boy's untimely death. In Clonmel Parish Church-
yard, not far from the Priory, lies the second boy,
who was drowned in Queenstown harbor, just be-
low the town, in 1881 — a tragedy which evoked the
deepest sympathy. Readers of Mrs. Piatt's poetry
will remember her poem about Charles Wolfe's
grave. The golden-haired child who kept repeating
'Not a drum was heard' is now the poet's neighbor
in Clonmel Parish Churchyard.
Young poet, I wonder did you care,
Did it move you in your rest
To have that child with his golden hair
From the mighty woods of the West
Repeating your verse of his own sweet will
To the sound of the twilight bell,
Years after your beating heart was still
In the churchyard of Clonmel?"
There were some English publishers who re-
jected "Jane Eyre." I believe one of them did
not think the book was moral. Before Prescott
gave Bentley a chance to print "The History of
Ferdinand and Isabella," two publishers of re-
nown returned the manuscript, and one of them
was good enough to tell the author that his work
was quite too dull and commonplace for English
readers. Whatever may be said for or against
the incumbents of Saint Peter's Chair who put so
much of this world's best literature under eccle-
siastical ban, certain it is that neither French nor
English publishers are infallible. Yet with all
their faults they are more to my mind than are
the vain-glorious men who figure in papers and
magazines as critics. Publishers have money at
120 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
stake, unless they make the author pay for the
printing of his own books, but critics who damn
volumes they do not take the trouble to read, risk
not a single dollar. They do not even come out
into the open and show themselves. The author
is tried and condemned without knowing even the
name of his accuser. No stupidity of any pub-
lisher can hold the candle to a paragraph like
this from the Quarterly Review for April, 1818,
in which Mr. John Wilson Croker discusses
"Endymion" :
"This author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt, but he
is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as
diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd
than his prototype, who, though he impudently pre-
sumed to seat himself in the chair of criticism, and
to measure his own poetry by his own standard, yet
generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats has ad-
vanced no dogmas which he is bound to support by
examples ; his nonsense is therefore quite gratui-
tous; he writes it for its own sake, and, being bitten
by Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than
rivals the insanity of his own poetry."
Here is another charming specimen of critical
discernment and acuteness which purports to be
a review of Caryle's "French Revolution." It
made its appearance in the Athenceum for May
20th, 1837 :
"Originality of thought is unquestionably the
best excuse for writing a book; originality of style
is a rare and refreshing merit; but it is paying
rather dear for one's whistle to qualify for obtain-
AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 121
ing it in the University of Bedlam. Originality,
without justness of thought, is but novelty of error;
and originality of style, without sound taste and
discretion, is sheer affectation. Thus, as ever, the
corruptio optimi turns out to be pessima; the abor-
tive attempt to be more than nature has made us,
and to add a cubit to our stature, ends by placing
us below what we might be if contented with being
simply and unaffectedly ourselves. There is not,
perhaps, a more decided mark of the decadence of
literature than the frequency of such extravagance.
The applicability of these remarks to the 'His-
tory of the French Revolution,' now before us, will
be understood by such of our readers as are fa-
miliar with Mr. Carlyle's contributions to our
periodical literature. But it is one thing to put
forth a few pages of quaintness, neologism, and a
whimsical coxcombry, and another to carry such
questionable qualities through three long volumes
of misplaced persiflage and flippant pseudo philo-
sophy. To such a pitch of extravagance and ab-
surdity are these peculiarities exalted in the vol-
umes before us that we should pass them over in
silence, as altogether unworthy of criticism, if we
did not know that the rage for German literature
may bring such writing into fashion with the ar-
dent and unreflecting."
American publishers may have a long account
to settle, but they are not to be classed with their
brethren across the sea. It is true that Emerson
was viewed with suspicion when he published his
first book, and it is also true that it was a long
time before that book was appreciated. No one
had faith in Thoreau's genius. At the time Syl-
vanus Cobb was charming American readers
122 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
through the columns of the New York Ledger
with thrilling stories of love and adventure,
Thoreau was industriously hunting for a pub-
lisher. He looked far and near, but no publisher
appeared upon the horizon. Lew Wallace inter-
viewed nearly every publishing house from Boston
to San Francisco before the Harpers with some
misgivings consented to be his good angel, and
printed "Ben Hur." Lafcadio Hearn translated
Gautier's "Avatar," but could find no publisher.
One night, in a fit of desperation, he threw the
manuscript into the fire. Mistakes have been
made and are still made on both sides of the At-
lantic, but the American publisher is, in my opin-
ion, much ahead of the craft on the other side of
the sea. I do not undertake to say whether he has
a brighter mind, but I know he has a larger cour-
age. His commercialism may be as great as that
of the English publisher, but his love of letters is
more pronounced. Between him and the writers
who trust their literary fortunes to his keeping
there develops often a warm and sincere friend-
ship. In America it not infrequently happens
that the publisher is himself an author and for
that reason understands sympathetically the writ-
er's feeling, and appreciates his aim and purpose.
Many are the authors who have greatly improved
both the literary form and the market value of
their books by following advice freely given them
by their publishers.
It is not generally known that Shelley always
AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 123
had to pay for the publishing of his poems. Rob-
ert Browning published his early books at his own
expense. Hans Christian Andersen paid in full
for the printing of his exquisite "Fairy Tales" be-
cause there was not a publisher in Copenhagen
who dared to have anything to do with the work.
It is said that publishers in the United States are
not now so timid and are very much more discern-
ing. Perhaps it is so, but we are not all of us so
sure of it. As throwing light upon this subject
a paragraph from the Dial (Chicago) for Decem-
ber 16, 1906, certainly possesses an amusing in-
terest :
"The ready recognition of literary merit, and
the eagerness of editors and publishers to welcome
genius whencesoever it may hail, is a theory often
urged, though naturally a little difficult of belief
to those whose contributions are rejected. Some
doubter of this class recently tried the experiment
of copying, with changes of personal and place
names, one of Mr. Kipling's most popular stories,
and sent it out to ten leading magazines of this
country, by all of which it was politely declined
with no indication that the hoax was discovered.
Finally the very publishers who had originally is-
sued the story, after gravely weighing its merits
for seven weeks, sent the practical joker a letter
of acceptance and a check. Of course the check
was returned and the manuscript recovered. One
offered explanation of the ten rejections is that al-
though the fraud was detected, the editors were
too polite to mention so rude a thing."
Ohnet's wife is not the only wife who has had
124 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
the good fortune to rescue a husband's work from
destruction. It is said that Kipling's "Reces-
sional" was taken from the waste basket by Mrs.
Kipling. Edward Rawnsley is credited with hav-
ing saved Tennyson's beautiful lyric, "The
Brook," from the flames. Poor Warburton had no
friend at hand when his servant lighted the fire
with his precious manuscripts of sixty-five un-
printed plays of Massinger, Ford, Lekker, Rob-
ert Green, Chapman, Tornure and Thomas Mid-
dleton. Lady Burton did not follow in the steps
of Ohnet's wife, but perhaps it is just as well she
did what she did. She had a woman's distaste for
the kind of literature her husband was constantly
translating from Oriental sources ; and after Sir
Richard F. Burton's death she committed to the
flames the unpublished manuscript of his transla-
tion of "The Scented Garden" (the full title in
English is "The Scented Garden for the Soul's
Recreation"), an Arabic "Art of Love." She
was for some time undecided as to what was her
duty in the matter of the manuscript which, with
all her husband's papers, came into her possession
with his death. During the period of indecision
she received an offer of six thousand guineas for
the work. The man who made the offer said, "I
know of from fifteen hundred to two thousand
men who will buy the book at four guineas, that
is, at two guineas the volume, and as I shall not
restrict myself as to numbers, but supply all ap-
plicants on payment, I shall probably make
AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 125
twenty thousand pounds out of the transaction."
Lady Burton replied : "Out of the fifteen hundred
men who will probably read the book, not more
than fifteen will regard it in the spirit of science.
The remaining fourteen hundred and eighty-five
will devour the book for its filth, and they will also
pass it to their friends, who will be injured by the
publication." She received all kinds of advice and
many tempting offers. Alone with her own heart
in the silence of her chamber, she sought help from
above. She tells us she knew that "what a gen-
tleman, a scholar, a man of the world may write
when living, he might view differently when, a
poor, naked soul, he stands before a pure God,
with all his deeds to answer for, and their conse-
quences to face and endure." Again she tells
us:
"My heart said, 'you can have six thousand
guineas; your husband worked for you, kept you
in a happy home with honor and respect for thirty
years. How are you going to reward him? That
your wretched body may be fed, and clothed, and
warmed for a few miserable months or years, will
you let that soul, which is part of your soul, be left
out in cold and darkness till the end of time, till
all those sins which may have been committed on
account of reading those writings have been expi-
ated, or passed away forever? Why, it would be
just parallel with the original thirty pieces of
silver?'
I fetched the manuscript and laid it on the
ground before me — two large volumes' worth. Still
my thoughts were, 'would it be a sacrilege?' It
126 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
was his magnum opus — his last work, that he was
so proud of, that was to have been finished on the
awful morrow — that never came. Will he rise up
in his grave and curse me or bless me? The ques-
tion will haunt me to death, but Sadi and El
Shaykh el Nafzawi, who were pagans, begged par-
don of God and prayed not to be cast into hell fire
for having written the work, and implored their
friends to pray for them to the Lord, that he would
have mercy on them."
The author made this book for scholars only,
and when, later, he saw the common people read-
ing it, he became alarmed, and, lest the book
should do harm, he added these lines:
"O you who read this, and think of the author
And do not exempt him from blame,
If you spare your good opinion of him, do not
At least fail to say 'Lord, forgive us and him.' "
She continues:
"And then I said : 'Not only not for six thousand
guineas, but not for six million guineas will I risk
it.' Sorrowfully, reverently, and in fear and
trembling, I burned sheet after sheet until the
whole of the volume was consumed.
It is my belief that by that act, if my husband's
soul were weighted down, the cords were cut, and
it was left to soar to its native heaven. As we had
received no money in advance I was mistress of
the situation. If any judge otherwise and deem
me unworthy of their friendship, I must bear it in
silence."
Think of the thousands of books that have dis-
appeared, and among them several referred to in
AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS 127
our Sacred Scriptures. Where are the sixty-six
lost plays of ^£schylus? What would not the
world give for the plays of Euripides that have
vanished? The few plays that remain make fear-
fully apparent the damage literature has sus-
tained by their destruction. We have but little of
Sophocles. Of Sappho we have only a few frag-
ments. It may be that somewhere in Egyptian
tombs or in the buried city of Herculaneum
manuscripts of priceless value are awaiting the
pick and the spade of the archaeologist. Let us
hope it may be so.
VI
ETHAN BRAND
"Quare et tibi, Publi, et piis omnibus retinendus
est animus in custodia* corporis ; nee injussu ejus, a
quo ille est vobis datus, ex hominum vita migrandum
est, ne munus humanum assignatum a Deo defugisse
videamini." — Cicero.
"But is there yet no other way, besides
These painful passages; how we may come
To death, and mix with out connatural dust?"
— Milton.
ETHAN BRAND
"I remember, I remember
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky ;
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm further off from heaven
Than when I was a boy."
DEAR old Tom Hood was never so far off
from heaven as sometimes he imagined
himself to be ; and when, the evening lamp being
lighted and the curtains drawn, I forgot the
rude world as I laugh over his whimsicalities and
sigh over the tender pathos of his serious poems,
it seems to me the sharing of his gentle compan-
ionship in those merry English days that can
never more return must have been something not
far removed from heaven. Rossetti won from me
something of love and no little silent but true
discipleship when he pronounced the poet of
"Nellie Gray" and "The Bridge of Sighs" the
first English poet between Shelley and Tenny-
son. I too remember childish ignorance, and,
preacher though I have been these thirty years,
I sometimes think I was never so far off from
heaven as I am in these times of perplexed ex-
perience and scholastic doubt. Are we really so
much nearer all that is good and beautiful in
131
132 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
early days of careless fun and frolic? I know
not. Perhaps we are always nearer heaven than
we are wont to believe. I too have dreams and
visions; what would life be without the wonder-
world of imagination? Well do I remember a
certain hamlet on the shore of the beautiful Hud-
son, where that river spreads itself out into the
wide expanse of Tappan Bay. Half a century
ago it was a lovely cluster of houses embowered
in green, but now it is something hard to de-
scribe^ — neither village nor city, but a dusty and
noisy town, ineffectually struggling toward
municipal life and importance. It was there
that for many years my father served as village
pastor. The old church building is gone and
now a smart new structure stands where rose
gray, dingy walls that echoed the sound of inar-
tistic praise in days when paid choirs were "a
wicked city frivolity." I did not understand the
sermons, and it is more than likely that they
were not written with any thought of the chil-
dren, who were supposed to be sufficiently in-
structed in the Sunday School. I remember the
long winter nights. They were filled with curi-
ous tales of genii, fairies, and every kind of
wood-sprite, goblin, and gnome. Many were the
phantoms that lived in the dark and shadowy
woods that crowned the precipitous cliffs called
in those days "Hook Mountain." They are dead
now, those astonishing creatures that made the
world romantic and attractive to a child's fancy.
ETHAN BRAND 133
Life is a series of disillusionments. First, the
fairies die, then the wiser theories of early years,
later the plans of a mature judgment, and last
of all the radiant hopes and, sometimes, the good
resolves of those weary days in which we so com-
monly make a virtue of our unlovely necessities.
But memory lives on with a sweet and gentle per-
sistence. Out of the wreck of life she saves the
most beautiful things, and youth fares best of
all at her hands.
Beneath the spreading boughs of a certain
maple tree in my father's garden there lived a
little winged creature capable of changing itself
at will into man or beast. My sister had seen a
headless ghost, near the shelter of a tall tree,
seated in the full splendor of the moon on a
cloudless night. Strange lights danced upon the
lawn at eventide, and startling sounds issued at
times from the mysterious, dark recesses of the
old garret. And all these marvelous phenomena
of the haunted world wherein I lived and moved
and had my being were explained in a most satis-
factory way by a school-mate learned in such
matters and wise above his years in the folk-lore
of childhood. He knew of a most bloody murder
that had been committed long, long years ago just
where grew a scraggy lilac-bush in front of the
parlor window. There had been a more recent,
though less sanguinary, deed of violence in the
room over the parlor, for there I had surrepti-
tiously slashed my sister's doll and let out the
134 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
vital current of its sawdust. Long and bitter
was the mourning for little wax-headed Jane with
eyes of heavenly blue and golden ringlets of the
finest jute, wonderful and fair to behold. Now
that I am "further off from heaven than when I
was a boy," it seems to me I must have had a pe-
culiarly angelic disposition for so young a child,
as was evidenced by the speed with which I mem-
orized that most innutritious of literary docu-
ments known as "The Westminster Catechism"
and fairly shouted, "Man's chief end is to glorify
God and enjoy Him forever!" under the resist-
less stimulus of a candy cane that danced before
my vision as the fascinating reward of being able
to repeat without mistake of any kind three pages
of the "sacred manual." With all my celestial
sweetness of disposition I failed to repent, I
grieve to say, of that brutal assault upon little
Jane's precious sawdust until a counter and pa-
rental assault had been made upon my sensitive
integument.
Under such favorable circumstances and with
such helpful environment I came to know, as I
grew a little older, something about Hoffman's
"Wierd Tales," Poe's "Black Cat," Dr. War-
ren's "Diary of a Late Physician," and Haw-
thorne's "Ethan Brand." These specimens of
wild and mysterious literature, though somewhat
hearselike, gave me no discomfort. Youth de-
lights in tragedy. It is only when later years
have made one personally acquainted with real
ETHAN BRAND 135
tragedy that there is developed a more wholesome
preference for comedy.
The tale of "Ethan Brand" was a special de-
light, and even after I had arrived at man's estate
I continued to regard it as unique. That was
because I knew so little about books and believed
many things original that later I knew were
borrowed, stolen, or begged from whatever treas-
ury of literary resources happened to be nearest
at hand. Not much in this world is original.
Shakspeare pillaged North's "Plutarch" to make
his "Anthony and Cleopatra," and it is said that
even Homer dined on smaller fish. How surely
and swiftly the illusions of life dissolve and dis-
appear. The romance of this world is smitten
with a fatal malady, and our children's children
will, no doubt, be present at the funeral. How
many beautiful things and gracious arts are with
us no more. Letter-writing expired when men
came to put their trust in the telegraph and tele-
phone. Conversation has gone the way of all the
living. In the near future some enterprising
Traction Company will cross the lagoon, and the
graceful gondola will be seen no more on the
winding canals of Venice. Soon the department-
shops of Jerusalem, Bagdad, and Mecca will
rival those of New York, Philadelphia, and Chi-
cago. Under the disenchantment of the winged
years I also came at last to see that "there is
nothing new under the sun" and that the man
who went in search of the unpardonable sin had
136 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
his double in real life and in the literature of
many lands as well. Thousands of distressed and
distracted men and women in all countries, but
especially in orthodox Scotland and in the New
England of a hundred years ago, have been
crushed to earth by the grim and relentless belief
that they had themselves made the same fatal dis-
covery that compassed the ruin of Ethan Brand.
The goblins of our youth are with us still. They
change their names, and their pranks are differ-
ent, but age only increases their power. They
still terrify imagination and hurt the sensitive
conscience. Superstition wears a charmed life.
We die, but the ghosts live on. When they are
no longer able to plague us, they plague our
children and our grandchildren. Over and over
again the wierd story of Francis Spira, the apos-
tate, has been repeated with extra touches of hor-
ror by casuists of nearly every shade of religious
belief and by writers upon theological and eccle-
siastical themes in papers and books without end.
The life and last hours of the once notorious
William Pope have been almost as fruitful of psy-
chological mysteries and spiritual terrors. And
there is the death of Voltaire. What a discus-
sion, unseemly in every way, has concerned itself
with that man's last hours ! Is it aught to you
or to me, good reader, how the gentleman of
"sardonic grin and infernal smirk" went out from
this life so fragile and brief? Long ago he left
us, and to make a clean job of the unsavory
ETHAN BRAND 137
affair a mob of such men and women as only
Paris can engender pulled him out of his tomb
and we have not even his bones, which a certain
French writer said were the most conspicuous
thing about him in his later years. But we have
his books and, with all their faults, who would
wish them destroyed? Their loss would impov-
erish the literature not of France alone, but of
the entire world. And Thomas Paine (good peo-
ple still call him "Tom" Paine) is another bogy
that has been rubbed threadbare by the religious
acerbity of believers and unbelievers. It is more
than likely the attrition will continue. Let me
not sit in judgment upon his character, nor in
this paper or elsewhere pronounce upon the des-
tiny of his soul. It is to be hoped that his im-
mortal part fared better than his bones, which in
1836 were offered for sale with the effects of
Mr. Corbett in a London auction room. Mr. (he
used to be called "Rev.") Moncure D. Conway,
who loves the memory of the author of ''The Age
of Reason," is possessed of a bit of Paine's brain
which was removed and preserved by Mr. Ben-
jamin Tilley. Conway paid twenty-five dollars
for the little convolution of gray matter.
Brains are cheap at that rate, but Conway did
not need another man's cerebral tissue; he had
enough of his own, and some to spare.
What interests me just at present is not the
mental condition nor yet the moral status of
Ethan Brand, but the peculiar method of self-
138 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
destruction which Hawthorne selected as suited to
the character of a man who went in search of the
unpardonable sin and found that it was a sin of
which he had himself been guilty. Ethan Brand
ended his life by leaping into a burning lime-kiln.
"Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms
on high. The blue flames played upon his face,
and imparted the wild and ghastly light which
alone could have suited his expression; it was that
of a fiend on the verge of plunging into his gulf of
intensest torment.
O Mother Earth/ he cried, 'who art no more
my Mother, and into whose bosom this frame shall
never be resolved ! O Mankind, whose brotherhood
I have cast off, and trampled thy great heart be-
neath my feet! O stars of heaven, that shone on
me of old, as if to light me onward and upward! —
farewell all, and forever. Come, deadly element of
Fire, — henceforth my familiar friend! Embrace
me, as I do thee!'
In the morning when the lime-burner looked
into the kiln the marble was all burnt into perfect
snow-white lime. But on its surface, in the midst
of the circle, — snow-white too, and thoroughly
converted into lime, — lay a human skeleton, in the
attitude of a person who, after long toil, lies down
to long repose. Within the ribs — strange to say
— was the shape of a human heart.
'Was the fellow's heart made of marble?' cried
Bartram, in some perplexity at this phenomenon.
'At any rate, it is burnt into what looks like special
good lime, and taking all the bones together, my
kiln is half a bushel the richer for him.'
So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole,
and, letting it fall upon the skeleton, the relics of
Ethan Brand were crumpled into fragments."
ETHAN BRAND 139
A gentleman who has given much time to the
study of exceptional and out-of-the-way occur-
rences assured me that the dreadful method of
suicide adopted by Ethan Brand was wholly
original with the gentle and melancholy New
England novelist. "Hawthorne," he said, "con-
structed the tale after he had decided upon the
way in which its hero was to be disposed of; the
story was made to fit the denouement.'''' I must
think otherwise. The death of Empedocles, who
threw himself into the crater of Mount iEtna,
might easily have suggested to Hawthorne's
classically educated mind that fearful leap into
the burning lime-kiln; and the philosopher's
sandal thrown up from the volcano some time
afterward might have given the author of
"Ethan Brand" his first hint of the snow-white
skeleton that made the lime-kiln half a bushel
richer. Even the death of Marcus Curtius, who,
to secure the safety of the Roman Republic,
mounted his horse and rode full-armed into a gulf
that immediately closed over him, might have
awakened in Hawthorne's mind the first thought
of that dreadful plunge which gives to the story
of "Ethan Brand" its peculiar horror.
It is by no means certain that the method of
self-destruction made use of in the tale under
review was without parallel in the common life of
our American people when Hawthorne first pub-
lished the story of "Ethan Brand." Instances of
the same kind of suicide in later years are on
140 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
record; and when I take into account the illit-
eracy of the men who thus disposed of them-
selves, I find it impossible to believe that they
were in any wise influenced in the selection of the
peculiar kind of coup-de-grace by the story of
the man who leaped into a burning lime-kiln. In
1883 a tramp who gave his name as Bell and his
home as Jamestown in Pennsylvania stood for
some time by a furnace in the Fay Williams
Company Glass Works at Kent, Ohio. He
smoked a pipe while the workmen were preparing
to throw sand into the furnace, which was heated
to its greatest intensity. The foreman ordered
him to step aside. "Why should I move out of
your way?" enquired the tramp. "Because I
want to get at the fire," was the answer. "So do
I," said the tramp, and with that he cast aside
his pipe and jumped through the open door into
the blazing mass of coal and gas. In 1901 an-
other man leaped into a blast furnace at the
Shoenberger plant of the American Steel and
Wire Company at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He
mounted the cage thirty feet above the ground
and waited for a man named Martin Lee, who was
in charge of the top filler, to open the mouth of
the furnace. The moment the mouth was open
and the flames shot skyward, the stranger
leaped to his death. In 1895 a remarkable fun-
eral took place at the Midvale Steel Works,
where an immense ingot of steel was buried with
the rites of the Roman Catholic Church. The
ETHAN BRAND 141
ingot contained the bodies of John Farkin and
Joseph Gazda, who were engulfed in 82,000
pounds of molten steel which proceeded from a
leaky furnace and fell into a pit in which the
men were at the time working. In one second
not a vestige of the two men remained, and
scarcely a puff arose to indicate the complete in-
cineration.
Ethan Brand's death, horrible and striking as
it certainly was, cannot be called, in view of what
has been said, unique. New methods of self-
destruction are hard to find in an age so fertile
of resources. Yet perhaps the following excerpt
from a Medical Journal gives what is at present,
and will long remain, an entirely unique method
of suicide:
"A nurse at one of the Paris hospitals not long
since tried a new way of committing suicide —
namely, by swallowing two tubes of Eberth's pure
culture of the typhoid bacillus. On the following
day and the day after that she felt no inconveni-
ence. On the third day she had some headache
but no fever. On the sixth day she felt heavy and
stupid and experienced great weakness in her legs,
being obliged to take to her bed. On the seventh
day her temperature was, in the morning, 37.6° C.
and in the evening 38.6°C. On the eighth day she
had two attacks of epistaxis and her temperature in
the evening was 40.2°C. Several rose spots were
also visible. On the tenth day serum reaction was
positive. Otherwise the typhoid fever followed
its normal course, but it was a very severe attack
and the patient had in all 176 baths. The remark-
able points of this case are the very short duration
142 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
of the period of incubation, — namely, only two
days — and the rapid appearance of the rose spots,
eight days after infection. M. Duflocq and Voisin,
who reported the case, explained the very short
duration of the incubation period by the large quan-
tity of bacilli which were introduced into the di-
gestive tract."
In "The Dream of Love" by Henry Abbey
we have a poem in which the deadly power of the
cholera spirillum is made use of in the creation of
artistic effect. The "heavy villain" of the poem
endeavors to commit a diabolical murder by in-
troducing into a living human body loathsome
bacteria. The germs are described as they ap-
pear under the lens of a microscope.
Even the speech of Ethan Brand which, ac-
cording to Hawthorne, was delivered by the
wretched man while he stood upon the edge of the
lime-kiln just before his fatal leap, is paralleled
in Matthew Arnold's fine poem, "Empedocles on
j^Etna." These are the words, so we are told,
that the old-time philosopher uttered when he
plunged into the crater:
"Is it for a moment?
— Ah, boil up, ye vapors !
Leap and roar, thou sea of fire!
My soul glows to meet you.
Ere it flag, ere the mists
Of despondency and gloom
Rush over it again,
Receive me, save me !"
When one considers the many painless methods
ETHAN BRAND 143
of self-destruction known to men of even mod-
erate education, it is surprising that any one pos-
sessed of a sane mind should ever resort to any
of those dreadful and violent assaults upon life
which seem to fascinate certain of our race. Why
do the Japanese disembowel themselves, living, as
they do, so near the great fields of opium-pop-
pies? Why should anyone drink that liquid fire
we call carbolic acid when one can as easily pur-
chase a few ounces of benumbing chloroform? It
is one of the mysteries of perverted human na-
ture.
Perhaps the most fantastic attempt at suicide
on record is the one related by Fodere of an
Englishman who advertised that on a certain day
he would destroy himself in Covent Garden "for
the benefit of his wife and family. Tickets of
admission, a guinea each." He deserves a place
in the same paragraph with the man who hung
himself to the clapper of the bell of the church
at Fressonville, in Picardy, and by swaying to
and fro caused the bell to sound in a most extra-
ordinary manner. Of course the sound gave the
alarm and he was cut down before life was ex-
tinct.
The laughter of Ethan Brand heightens the
gruesome and uncanny effect of the tale and im-
parts to it a subtile and penetrating supernatu-
ralism which increases as the narrative nears the
final catastrophe. Bartram's child, more sensi-
tive than the coarse and rude lime-burner, whis-
144 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
pers : "He does not laugh like a man that is glad.
So the noise frightens me !" Little Joe uncon-
sciously singles out in that brief sentence the ele-
ment of tragedy which distinguishes the laughter
of Ethan Brand from that of the vulgar crowd
at the village inn. Lawyer Giles and his com-
panion, the tipsy doctor, are pitiable specimens
of our race, but their noisy merriment has in it
nothing beyond the merely human note. The
laughter of Ethan Brand is not coarse like that
of the two men named. It is the laughter of a
nature that has in some measure refined itself by
the moral and intellectual acuteness involved in
and developed by the dreadful quest. It is
purely a thing of the understanding and has
nothing to do with the heart. Greek drama-
tists as well as writers of today agree in as-
cribing to joyless laughter an element of
tragedy. Victor Hugo tells us in "Les Miser-
ables" that Jean Valjean, when he had decided
to conceal his identity at cost of a compara-
tively innocent man, heard an "internal burst of
laughter." It was not the laughter of gladness,
but of a fiend within the bosom that had, by an
evil resolve, given it fatal admittance. Those
who have been much with the insane, especially
with such insane persons as imagine that they
have committed great crimes, know something of
the penetrating fear and awful sense of calamity
that in their disordered laughter usurp the place
of human gladness. The vacant and joyless
ETHAN BRAND 145
laughter of a maniac, though not to be con-
founded with the derisive laughter of Ethan
Brand, is a thing from which the sane and nor-
mal mind shrinks.
The ethics of suicide are not necessarily in-
volved in the story under review. We do not
have to answer now the question: "Is suicide in
and of itself an evil in such a way and to such
an extent that it becomes a duty under all cir-
cumstances to condemn it without qualification?"
That question might be answered one way or the
other without affecting in any way either the
character or the interest of Hawthorne's narra-
tive. Still no thoughtful man, especially if he
be of an introspective turn of mind, can read the
story of that fearful leap into the burning lime-
kiln without catching sight of the not-far-distant
ethical problem that, though not directly in-
volved in the story, is still suggested by it.
Themistocles poisoned himself in order to avoid
leading the Persians against his countrymen.
The Emperor Otho killed himself to save his sol-
diers. Every college boy knows what was the
choice of the noble virgins of Macedon when dis-
honor stared them in the face. The story of Ar-
nold von Winkleried, the Swiss patriot, who
broke the Austrian phalanx at the battle of
Sempach in 1385 by rushing against the points
of their spears and gathering within his arms as
many as he could clasp, commands the unquali-
fied admiration of all good men and women. He
146 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
fell pierced with many wounds, but the Swiss
were victorious. His act was deliberate ; that is
to say, it was one of choice and not of neces-
sity. It was not the execution of a military order
he was compelled as a soldier to obey. Neither
was it the undertaking of a desperate enterprise
that furnished him a single chance of escape.
Death was certain. He intentionally impaled
himself upon the Austrian spears for the accom-
plishment of an end that seemed to him so im-
portant as to warrant the sacrifice. He made a
breach in the Austrian ranks through which his
comrades, passing over his dead body, forced their
way to the very heart of the resisting forces and
carried the day. His last words are thus re-
ported: "Friends, I am going to lay down my
life to procure }^ou victory. All I request is that
you provide for my family. Follow me and imi-
tate my example." It matters little from an ethi-
cal point of view whether he himself or the
Austrian soldiers gave the deadly thrust. Either
way the deed was his own.
To come down to modern times, let me call at-
tention to a provision which, we are told, all offi-
cers engaged in fighting Indians make for
escaping the dreadful consequences of capture by
blood-thirsty savages. An officer with whom I
was well acquainted assured me that he always
carried poison with him when he went on an ex-
pedition against hostile tribes. He endeavored to
select a poison swift and painless in its action,
ETHAN BRAND 147
but he accounted death by any drug better than
the fate awaiting him in the event of capture.
He once went into a skirmish with aconite and
prussic acid hidden in his clothing in quantities
sufficient to destroy not only his own life, but the
lives of a considerable number of his men.
Colonel Inman some time ago published in
Topeka, Kansas, a collection of short stories
which he called "Tales of the Trail." In that
book he expressed it as his opinion that General
Custer committed suicide at the last moment,
when he found himself face to face with the hor-
rors of capture.
"With the Indians there appears to be some close
affiliation between the departed spirit and the hair.
I have questioned many a blood-begrimed warrior
why he should want a dead man's hair, and invari-
ably there have been assigned a number of reasons,
three of which are most prominent: First, it is an
evidence to his people that he has triumphed over
an enemy; second, the scalps are employed very
prominently in the incantations of the 'medicine
lodge' — a part of their religious rites; third, the
savage believes there is a wonderful power inherent
in the scalp of an enemy. All the excellent quali-
ties of the victim go with his hair the moment it is
wrenched from his head. If it be that of a re-
nowned warrior, so much the more is the savage
anxious to procure the scalp, for the fortunate pos-
sessor then inherits all the bravery and prowess of
its original owner.
• ••••••••
He who kills himself in battle, accidentally or
purposely, has positively no hereafter; he is irre-
148 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
vocably lost. Those who are struck by lightning
or die by any other apparently direct operation of
the Manitou (the Great Spirit) are hurriedly
buried where they fall, without any ceremony, and
no mound or other mark is erected over them. If
after a battle there are found corpses not scalped
or mutilated, it is certain that those persons came
to death by their own hand, for it is part of the re-
ligion of an Indian not to scalp or mutilate the
body of an enemy who has committed suicide. His
superstition in regard to persons dying by suicide
or by lightning is as religiously cherished as any
of his other myths."
General Custer was found unscalped and with-
out mutilation. This Inman regards as substan-
tial proof of suicide. Custer was known among
all the Indian tribes as not only a brave man, but
an officer of distinction, and no doubt the sav-
ages were eager to obtain his scalp with its sup-
posed communicable virtue. Great must have
been their disappointment when they found that
Custer had escaped their cruelty and had de-
prived his scalp of all that made it worth possess-
ing.
No sharp and ironclad rule can be adopted.
Under ordinary circumstances suicide is of the
nature of murder, and yet circumstances may
arise which call for the voluntary surrender of
life. A man may be required to give his life for
the preservation of another. A disabled ship
was about to sink. There were not enough boats
to save the entire crew. The sailors drew for
places in the life-boats. One sailor who had
ETHAN BRAND 149
drawn a place gave it to his mess-mate saying:
"You have a wife and little children at home and
I have no one dependent upon me. Take my
place ; it is hetter that I should die than that you
should have to leave a family without support."
That man might have saved himself. He was en-
titled to the place which he surrendered. In a
certain way he may be said to have taken his own
life, but it was at the call, I will not say of duty,
but of a rare opportunity.
It seems to me that we may sometimes make
choice of the kind of death we must undergo.
General Custer thought so when he made sure
that the Indians should find his dead body on the
field of battle. In certain parts of the world a
man under sentence of death is allowed to choose
one of three methods of execution. He may elect
to be hanged, to be beheaded, or to be shot.
Most persons would much prefer the last and
would certainly make that choice. Yet there have
been conscientious men who have declined to ex-
press a preference on the ground that such ex-
pression might make them in some measure re-
sponsible for their own death.
After all has been said that can be said by such
ancient writers as Lucan, Epictetus, and Pliny,
and by such modern authors as Hume, Donne,
Voltaire, and Newman, it still remains true that
self-destruction is, under ordinary circumstances,
wrong in every sense of the word. The question
of suicide is one not to be settled by either the
150 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
opinions of Cato or the peculiar circumstances
that surrounded Philip Strozzi, but by the en-
lightened moral sense of good men under the in-
fluence of Christian civilization. Not all the
ancients agreed with Cato of Utica. Darius is
represented as saying in his darkest moment: ''I
will wait the issue of my fate. You wonder that
I do not terminate my life, but I choose rather to
die by another's crime than by my own." Ac-
cording to Euripides, Hercules said : "I have con-
sidered, and though oppressed with misfortunes,
I have determined thus: Let no one depart out
of life through fear of what may happen to him ;
for he who is not able to resist evils will fly like
a coward from the darts of the enemy." The
laws of Thebes deprived the suicide of funeral
rites and branded his name and memory with in-
famy. Equally severe was the Athenian law.
But for those who live under the brighter light
and larger privilege of modern civilization and
Christian education better arguments are at hand.
Life has been given to us that we may cherish
and use it in accordance with the will of Heaven
for our own good and for the benefit of others.
Every man's life belongs not to himself alone,
but to his friends and to all the world. Even the
poorest life may serve some good end. We can-
not say that self-destruction is at all times and
under all circumstances evil, for instances have
been cited which prove the contrary, but as
ordinarily understood and as generally practiced
ETHAN BRAND 151
by those who resort to it from cowardly and un-
worthy motives it is certainly the sin against
God and the crime against humanity which the
entire modern world accounts it to be. The fa-
miliar lines of Milton cover, for the most part,
man's duty in this matter:
"Nor love thy life, nor hate: but while thou liv'st
Live well; how long or short permit to Heaven."
VII
THE MAN OF GENIUS
"Sed nimirum quae sunt in manu hominum, ea et
mihi et multis contigerunt: illud vero ut adipisci
arduum, sic etiam sperare nimium est, quod dari
non nisi a diis potest."
— Plinius Minor.
The world's wealth is its original men, and it can
in no wise forget them; not till after a long while;
sometimes not till after thousands of years. For-
getting them, what, indeed, should it remember?
The world's wealth is its original men ; by these and
their works it is a world and not a waste."
— Carlyle.
THE MAN OF GENIUS
PROFESSOR Cesare Lombroso's book, "The
Man of Genius," is a work the publication
of which good men have reason to regret and to
the title-page of which Charles Scribner's Sons
should have refused their imprint. The blas-
phemous chapters that represent our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ as an insane man of genius
and the conversion of St. Paul as the result of
an epileptic seizure are painful and unprofitable
reading. But putting aside the gross impiety of
the book, we still find in what remains little to
praise and much to censure. The man who, pre-
tending to voice the latest results of that de-
partment of medical science which deals with
diseases of the human brain and disorders of the
mind, gives it as his opinion that the greatest
men and women of all lands and ages were in-
sane and that genius itself is a neurosis of an
epileptoid nature, is scarcely to be taken seri-
ously or to be regarded with any great consid-
eration. Our only reason for calling attention
to "The Man of Genius" is to be found in the
sad fact that many untrained minds, without
realizing the nature of the book, absorb its
poison and are deluded by its foolish pretensions.
The work is printed in "The Contemporary
Science Series," but its claims to scientific stand-
ing are slight. It is in every sense a popular
155
156 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
book, addressed to educated men and women in
all departments of industry and in all circles of
society. Dr. Havelock Ellis, who edits "The
Contemporary Science Series" in which Lom-
broso's book appears, is a man of great learning
in the not always fragrant departments of sci-
ence which he delights to investigate. His books
on "Sexual Inversion," "Modesty, Sexual Peri-
odicity, and Auto-erotism," and "The Analysis
of the Sexual Impulse in Women" are as wonder-
fully suggestive as they are in places surprisingly
indelicate. They are the work of an original in-
vestigator who knows the way over which he
travels, but who has himself not much use for the
"modesty" which he has subjected to the most ex-
acting scientific analysis. That he is willing to
appear as the editor of Lombroso's book is due
not so much to any great importance which he at-
taches to the work as to the fact that his attitude
and that of Lombroso toward the religious world,
and in some measure toward the social world as
well, are closely related.
Lombroso believes that genius is a neurosis.
The underlying foundation of the world's best
literature and finest art is Bedlam. Behind the
thrilling deeds of heroism that make history the
glorious thing it is, one may discover, if he will,
the disordered visage of Topsy-Turvy. Max
Nordau, whose book called "Degeneration" made
him famous with unscientific readers, agrees with
Lombroso in defining genius as a morbid affection
THE MAN OF GENIUS 157
of the nervous system. But he still thinks there
may be cases in which genius is not morbid. He
tells us that "science does not assert that every
genius is a lunatic ; there are some geniuses of
superabundant power whose high privilege con-
sists in the possession of one or another extraor-
dinarily developed faculty, without the rest of
their faculties falling short of the average
standard."
Nordau thinks Goethe was sane, and he tells
us that the poet, had he "never written a line of
verse, would all the same have remained a man of
the world, of good principles, a fine art connois-
seur, a judicious collector, a keen observer of na-
ture." Lombroso is more sweeping and unspar-
ing. He assures us that many of Goethe's poems
were composed in a somnabulistic state, and that
the poet was subject to hallucinations of a start-
ling and confusing nature. No man of genius
slips through Lombroso's fingers. Tagged and
labelled, from Socrates dancing and jumping
in the street without reason, to Comte who
thought himself the "High Priest of Humanity,"
the race of man adorns his cabinet of psycholog-
ical specimens. lepidum caput, remains there
not for you also, Cesare Lombroso, some gilded
peg upon which you may hang your own rare au-
dacity, and so make at last in your wonderful
museum the shining cluster complete?
Here are some of Lombroso's mad men: Plato,
Socrates, Julius Caesar, Nero, Septimus Severus,
158 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Mahomet, Martin Luther, Columbus, Dante,
Oliver Cromwell, Giordano Bruno, George Fox,
Bunyan, Richelieu, Peter the Great, Fred-
erick the Great, Napoleon, Descartes, Carlo
Dolce, Michael Angelo, Petrarch, Tasso, Moliere,
Alfieri, Goethe, Schiller, Rossini, Rousseau, Shel-
ley, Lord Byron, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Robert
Burns, Coleridge, Pope, Victor Hugo, Charles
Lamb, Tolstoi, Carlyle, Talma, Charles Darwin,
Abraham Lincoln.
These were all crazy ! Heaven grant this one
prayer, that we may all of us go stark mad, and
join the hallowed fellowship of lunatics so di-
vinely gifted. They were not wholly sans rime
et sans raison, but upon the dazzling splendor of
each and every one of them, the all-discerning eye
of Lombroso discovered the plague spot of de-
generacy, and restrained by no foolish sense of
delicacy, his unerring and remorseless finger is
placed upon the fell contagion. George Sand is
not of this illustrious companionship. Alas, she
was sane ! We have it from Lombroso himself
that she was "free from all neurosis," which is
the same as saying that she was not a woman of
genius. To be sure, she had her seasons of mel-
ancholy, and mental depression was the sign of
degeneration in Abraham Lincoln ; but she at-
tributed her thoughtful and pensive spirit to bile.
Poor Lincoln was so far gone that he did not
know what was the matter with his hepatiogastric
contrivance. It was the French novelist's "bile"
THE MAN OF GENIUS 159
that caught Lombroso's eye. That the gifted
authoress neither romanced nor sentimentalized
about her depression of spirits, but seized upon
a commonplace and vulgar explanation and was
satisfied therewith, was a sure sign of mental
health and vigor. The trite, the hackneyed, the
ordinary, the vulgar, the inferior — these are the
elements of a sound and well-balanced mind.
Just here a word with regard to pessimism
may be injected without injury to the continuity
of our paper. Is the inscription on the old sun-
dial on the Rhine the true motto of a strong and
far-seeing life? "I note none but the cloudless
hours," is what the dial said. What kind of a
man would he be who could take note of only the
cloudless hours? Day and night have equal places
in the economy of nature. There is a dark side
to our world. Tooth and claw are as real as are
flowers and fruit. The Latin "Memento mori" is
as wise a bit of counsel as is the more agreeable
"Gedenke zu Leben" of the Germans. Sorrow and
calamity are in our world, and we cannot escape
them by declining to see them. But if we will
recognize their presence and square our living to
their demands, we may put them to noble use in
the development of character and in the shaping
of material circumstances. The loneliness of high
thinking furnishes no good argument against
effort to reach those altitudes upon which forever
lies repose. Willful sadness may be wrong and
Matthew Arnold's "Empedocles on ^Etna" may be
160 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
decadent, but there is a sadness in no way will-
ful, and that is so far from being wrong that
it is the secret of much power. The litera-
ture of power is seldom optimistic. Misery and
anguish are the soil in which it finds root. Dark-
ness and even sin minister to its life. Some of the
greatest benefactors of mankind have been ac-
counted pessimists. Dante and Michael Angelo
lived somewhat in the shadow. Tolstoi and Car-
lyle were never very light-hearted. Abraham
Lincoln was a man of depressed spirit who car-
ried in anguish and love upon his great heart the
distress of a mighty nation. He was melancholy.
In his nature were strangely mingled kindness
and loneliness. His temper and disposition were
such as to occasion in Lombroso very decided sus-
picions with regard to his mental condition.
Max Nordau goes farther, and finds the writ-
ings of revolutionists attributable to degeneracy.
He does not tell us what he thinks of the "Dec-
laration of Independence" but we read between
the lines, and since it was undeniably a revolu-
tionary document, we credit him with discerning
in it good evidence of the lunacy of Thomas
Jefferson and the renowned but misguided men
who joined him in signing it. Lincoln's "Address
at Gettysburg" was due to hyperesthesia, but
poor man! he had not the remotest suspicion of
it. He thought that his address was due to
patriotism, when, in fact, it was due to a certain
"offness in the upper region" when neither Nor-
THE MAN OF GENIUS 161
dau nor Lombroso were at hand to set him right.
There is a sense in which Lincoln was a pessimist.
Certainly no one ever accused him of being an
optimist. His wit and laughter-provoking sallies
were not the natural offspring of a merry heart.
Like Liston, Grimaldi and Carlini, he made others
laugh while his own heart was breaking within
him. But if ever there was in any heart a warm
and tender love, in any bosom a noble purpose, in
any life brave, wise and clear-sighted action, then
Lincoln was of all men most sane.
Schopenhauer may have thought this "the
worst of all possible worlds" and that "sleep is
better than waking, and death than sleep," but
the German thinker is by no means the only in-
terpreter of life's mystery and gloom. Nor are
his coadjutors, Hartmann, Mainlander and
Bohnsen, the only high priests of a cult not with-
out its saints and martyrs. No man who is alive
to the world as it is can remain uninfluenced by
its sore distress. He may sing with the poet:
"O threats of hell and hopes of paradise!
One thing at least is certain — this life flies;
One thing is certain, and the rest is lies;
The flower that once has bloomed forever dies/'
but he will not be found behind other men in his
effort to render the life that flies as sweet and
noble as may be for the flower that dies. The
pessimist has his place among men, and his mis-
sion to the age and to his race is by no means an
unworthy one. In the gloom of his twilight
162 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
things are visible that no man may see in the
meridian splendor of a noon-day sun. In the
shady grove, where his soul delights to dwell, are
springs of strength and refreshment that are
known to him alone. In periods of great politi-
cal corruption, of dying faith, dissolving empires,
revolutions, and catastrophes, he comes to the
front, and is often the saviour of his country.
Not in such periods do men turn to
"Lighted halls
Crammed full of fools and fiddles,"
but to those quiet and shadowy retreats where the
pessimist may have for next-door neighbor De-
spondency of Spirit, but where as well he holds
high communion with nobler ideals than haunt
the empty brains of the children of this world.
Men like Lombroso may count all the sad-eyed
prophets of the soul hopelessly mad, but the gen-
erations of men rise up and call them blessed.
According to Lombroso, genius inclines those
who possses that dangerous gift to excessive in-
dulgence in stimulants and narcotics. He tells
us that "great writers who have been under the
dominion of alcohol have a style peculiar to
themselves." He knows just what that style is.
It is characterized by deliberate eroticism, and
"an inequality which is rather grotesque than
beautiful." It unites the deepest melancholy with
the most obscene gaiety. It is true that many
great men and a few great women have been in-
THE MAN OF GENIUS 163
temperate. Robert Burns, Cooke the actor,
Thomas Moore, George Moreland, O'Carolan the
Irish bard, Edgar A. Poe and Hartley Coleridge
did themselves great injury by their fondness for
alcohol. Randolph, William Wilberforce, Dante,
Gabriel Rossetti, Alfred de Musset, Coleridge,
Erskine the English advocate, Dr. Hall the dis-
tinguished English clergyman, Kemble the tra-
gedian, and Thomas De Quincey were addicted to
the use of opium. Newton the great philosopher,
Tennyson the poet, Thomas Carlvle, General
Grant, Robert Louis Stevenson, President Mc-
Kinley, and a countless host of the sons of
genius found soothing and refreshment in to-
bacco. Napoleon I. took snuff, as did also Pius
IX. and Leo XIII. Henry Ward Beecher wanted
strong coffee. Hoffman, the German author,
mingled spirits and opium. Mrs. Jordan, the
Irish actress, dissolved calves-foot jelly in sherry.
Kean, the actor, wanted beef tea with cold brandy.
Charles Lamb was not satisfied with brandy, but
must have as well gin and tobacco. Schiller de-
lighted in the smell of apples when the fruit
could be obtained ; when he could not have apples
he wanted large quantities of coffee or cham-
pagne. Mrs. Siddons liked porter. Bishop
Berkley drank large quantities of tea. Bayard
Taylor had, wherever he went, his beer.
It is freely admitted that many men and
women of genius have used stimulants and nar-
cotics — some of them have grossly abused intoxi-
164 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
cants. But even were it true that all men and
women of genius were in the past and are now
intemperate, still how small must be the number
when compared with the countless multitudes of
common-place and even uneducated persons who
once were or now are intemperate. If the posses-
sion of genius inclines a man to the indulgence
of appetite, what shall be said of the greater peril
to which the multitudes of our race who have no
genius are exposed? Certainly the vast majority
of hard drinkers, in whatever age, have been
wholly innocent of anything even remotely re-
sembling genius. We do not believe that a man
of genius is any more likely to have delirium tre-
mens than is his humdrum and common-place
landlady. Milton was a great poet, but he never
indulged, so far as we know, in anything more
invigorating than light wine and tobacco. The
American authors, Washington Irving, Longfel-
low, Emerson and Whittier must have had some
genius, but we never heard it whispered that they
were intemperate. Henry D. Thoreau was a
man of great genius, but he ate no flesh, drank
no wine, and never used tobacco. Robert G.
Ingersoll, Horace Greeley and William Cullen
Bryant were men of genius, but who ever heard
of their being intoxicated? Lombroso's shot fell
wide of the mark when he associated genius with
intemperance and labelled them both insanity.
Vagabondage is another sign of genius, accord-
ing to Lombroso. He mentions Heine, Alfieri,
THE MAN OF GENIUS 165
Byron, Burns, Leopardi, Tasso, Goldsmith,
Sterne, Gautier, Musset, Lenau and Foscolo. All
these immortal ones loved wandering and could
not be persuaded to remain long in one place.
Meyerbeer traveled for thirty years, composing
the while his beautiful operas. Wagner jour-
neyed on foot from Riga to Paris. Over against
Lombroso's list let us name Goethe, Tennyson,
Emerson, Thoreau and Whittier. Goethe wan-
dered some in his youth, but during most of his
life remained at home in Weimar. Tennyson
lived quietly in England. Emerson went abroad
twice, but was never a wanderer. Thoreau went
into Canada for a brief season, but most of his
life was spent in Concord. Whittier clung to
his home and was averse to travel. These were
all men of genius, but there was in their nature
nothing of the vagabond. The life of Thoreau
was marked by certain eccentricities, but the im-
pulse to rove was not among them. The fields
and forests of New England were quite to his
mind, and it is doubtful if he ever entertained
the thought of visiting remote lands, or even re-
mote parts of his own country.
Sterility is pointed out by our author as an-
other mark of genius. Many distinguished men
remain bachelors, and among those who marry,
the majority have no children. The words of
Bacon are cited, "The noblest works and founda-
tions have proceeded from childless men, which
have sought to express the images of their minds,
166 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
where those of their bodies have failed. So the
care of posterity is most in them that have no
posterity." Lombroso is strong on names, and
here is his list of persons who have died childless :
Ben Jonson, Milton (Lombroso should have
known that Milton had daughters), Otway, Dry-
den, Rowe, Addison, Pope, Swift, Gay, Johnson,
Goldsmith, Cowper, Hobbes, Camden — these are
all Englishmen. He adds the names of other
celibates — Kant, Newton, Pitt, Fox, Fontenelle,
Beethoven, Gassendi, Galileo, Descartes, Locke,
Spinoza, Bayle, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Gray,
Dalton, Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, Lamb, Ben-
tham, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Reynolds,
Handel, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Schopenhauer,
Camoens, Voltaire, Chateaubriand, Flaubert,
Foscolo, Alfieri, Cavour, Pellico, Mazzini, Aleardi,
Guerrazzi, Florence Nightingale, Catherine Stan-
ley, Gaetana Agnesi, and Luigia Laura Bassi.
Surely he has given us a formidable array of
names. The one weak place in it is, however,
quite apparent. Another list might be made of
distinguished persons who have married, and in
that list would be found many who had children.
The following persons of pronounced genius
were not celibates: Chaucer, Shakspeare, Dante,
Bunyan, Milton, Cervantes, Sterne, Goethe, Schil-
ler, Bishop Berkeley, Marzolo, Edward Young,
Coleridge, Addison, Carlyle, Landor, Comte,
Haydon, Ary Scheffer, Anna Letitia Barbauld,
Dickens, George Sand, Edgar A. Poe, Shelley,
THE MAN OF GENIUS 167
Bulwer Lytton, Rossetti. The following persons
were not only not celibates, but were fathers:
Oliver Cromwell, Edmund Spenser, Bismarck,
James Beattie, De Quincey, Byron, Burns, Ten-
nyson, Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, Bay-
ard Taylor. Lists amount to little. They may
be so constructed as to favor either side. Lom-
broso's lists are worthless, and the lists prepared
by the writer of this paper are of no greater
value. Genius has absolutely nothing to do with
marriage, and Lombroso, though he appears to
be entirely under the thumb of his own mistaken
theories, must have known that in naming steril-
ity as a mark of genius he was trifling with his
readers.
The height of absurdity is reached when
Lombroso makes stammering and left-handedness
to be signs of genius. All who know anything
about the lives of distinguished men know very
well that the vast majority of men, whether
gifted with genius or not, are right-handed ; and
that while a few persons like Erasmus, Charles
Lamb, and Mendelssohn stammered, the number
of stammerers, both among men of genius and
men of no genius, is never large.
According to Lombroso and Max Nordau,
Henrik Ibsen and Victor Hugo are insane.
Ibsen's power to sketch rapidly and with great
force a peculiar situation or a deep emotion is
largely due to a neurosis, the fatal tendency of
which is in the direction of complete idiocy. The
168 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
high poetical endowments of Ibsen are conceded,
but "A Doll's House" and "The Pillars of So-
ciety" are decadent literature. That Ibsen's
parents were of a religious turn of mind and that
the poet was reared in a religious atmosphere are
responsible for much of his morbid moralizing
and for his later dislike for established religious
life and usages. His free-thinking is the decad-
ent result of early piety. All Ibsen's characters
live in a psychological atmosphere and in each
career is some one vice or defect, the result of
heredity or of some social environment. The in-
heritance is always evil and only evil. Yet these
characters revolve around some religious idea.
The Christian doctrine of the Atonement, in one
form or another, is never lost sight of. Nordau
tells us that "Ibsen's personages voluntarily and
joyfully bear the cross in keeping with the Chris-
tian idea; now it is put upon the shoulders by
force or artifice, which is, as theologians would
say, a diabolical mockery of this idea ; now the
sacrifice for another is sincere ; now mere hypoc-
risy." But in whatever way the doctrine of the
Atonement is introduced it becomes the centre of
thought — the ever-recurring motif.
Now all this to a mind like that of Lombroso
evidences mental degeneration. Religion is in
itself a species of delusion. The most sacred
characters from our Saviour to the humblest of
his followers appear to him to be victims of a
more or less disturbed intellect.
THE MAN OF GENIUS 169
He tells us that Ibsen is the victim of three
"Christo-dogmatic obsessions" ; these are, he de-
clares, original sin, confession, and self-sacrifice.
They constitute a mystic circle within which his
troubled mind revolves. Nordau, who reinforces
Lombroso, finds Ibsen's thought chaotic, lacking
in clearness and precision. "Everything floats
and undulates, nebulous and amorphous, as in
weak-brained degenerates." He seems to preach
free-love, and "his eulogy of a licentiousness un-
checked by any self-control, regardless of con-
tracts, laws and morality, has made of him a
'modern spirit,' in the eyes of Georg Brandes and
similar protectors of those 'youths who wish to
amuse themselves a little.' " "Unchastity in a
man is a crime, but in a woman it is permissible."
Everywhere is unrestrained individualism, and a
mystico-religious obsession of voluntary self-sac-
rifice for others. Nordau tells us that Ibsen "seems
to exact that no girl should marry before she is
fully matured, and possesses an experience of life
and a knowledge of the world and of men." He
represents Ibsen as preaching "experimental mar-
riage for a longer or shorter period." Surely if
Lombroso and Nordau are right, Ibsen is a raving
maniac. But how could such a maniac obtain so
large a following and win such unqualified praise
from trained and judicious critics? That is a
question Lombroso does not deign to answer.
Lombroso calls attention to Charles Darwin.
He is sure the great naturalist was a neuropath.
170 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
For twenty-four years he was an invalid. He
could not bear heat or cold. He could not con-
verse late into the evening without insomnia. He
suffered from dyspepsia. He had spinal anaemia,
which suggested to Lombroso's mind epilepsy.
During the later part of his life he was able to
work only three hours a day. He had some re-
markable crotchets. He wrote rough drafts of
his correspondence upon the backs of the proof-
sheets of his books. He indulged himself in some
strange experiments, such as having a bassoon
played close to the cotyledons of a plant. Be-
fore instituting an interesting experiment he was
absent-minded. In his old age he disliked nov-
elty. He did not believe in hypnotism. He had
some difficulty in pronouncing the letter w. He
had a short nose and his ears were largo and long.
Such is Lombroso's evidence of the mental un-
soundness of one of the greatest, if not the great-
est, of all the naturalists and men of science this
world has ever known. Let the reader run his eye
over the evidence, and see what it amounts to.
To our thinking it amounts to nothing. Certainly
something more than chronic invalidism and a few
eccentricities are required to make out a case of
derangement. Dryden's couplet is as true as it
is familiar:
"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide,"
but it is a near alliance only, and partitions,
THE MAN OF GENIUS 171
though often thinner than we sometimes believe,
do still divide the two.
Lombroso has no doubt of the insanity of most
of the Protestant reformers. Luther was very
crazy. Savonarola was stark mad. Napoleon I.
was also out of his mind. We suppose George
Washington escaped a place among lunatics only
through some inadvertence, for beyond doubt had
Lombroso thought of him he would have been
caught and labelled with all the other great men
of every age and land.
Walt Whitman wrote a suspicious kind of
poetry. It was rhymeless. Lombroso speaks of
him as the creator of that kind of poetry, but
there were other writers who made use of it before
his day. Nordau describes him as a vagabond, a
reprobate, and a rake, all of which he thinks
might be summed up in the one word "genius."
He tells us that Whitman's poems "contain out-
bursts of erotomania so artlessly shameless that
their parallel in literature could hardly be found
with the author's name attached." Whitman is
"morally insane, and incapable of distinguishing
between good and evil, virtue and crime." To
prove that the poet was a megalomaniac he prints
these lines which, being separated from their con-
text, actually prove nothing but the mendacity
of Max Nordau:
"From this hour I decree that my being be freed
from all restraints and limits.
I go where I will, my own absolute and complete
master.
172 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
I breathe deeply in space. The east and the west
are mine.
Mine all the north and the south. I am greater
and better than I thought myself.
I did not know that so much boundless goodness
was in me.
Whoever disowns me causes me no annoyance.
Whoever recognizes me shall be blessed, and will
bless me."
We have not verified these lines. We let them
stand as they are, for the reason that they, in
truth, prove nothing but an unworthy spirit in
Nordau.
In speaking of Whitman's patriotic poems
Nordau is unable to conceal his hatred of America
and of American institutions. He tells us that
Whitman's patriotic poems are sycophantic and
corrupt. They glorify the "American vote-buy-
ing, official-bribing, power-abusing, dollar-de-
mocracy. They cringe to the most arrogant
Yankee conceit." He thinks "Drum Taps" may
be described as "swaggering bombast and stilted
patter." The dishonesty of Nordau is made ap-
parent by his refusal to quote the best lines in
"Drum Taps" — such lines, for instance, as we
have in the poem, "O Captain ! My Captain !"
We suppose no one will dissent from the opin-
ion advanced by Lombroso and others that Ma-
homet was deranged, and that his hallucinations
preceded violent epileptic attacks which not only
convulsed his body, but affected as well his mind.
Maudsley says, in his "Responsibility in Mental
Diseases :"
THE MAN OF GENIUS 173
"There can be little, if any, doubt in the minds
of those who do not subscribe to that faith (Ma-
hometanism) , that an epileptic seizure was the occa-
sion of Mahomet's first vision and revelation, and
that, deceived or deceiving, he made advantage of
his distemper to beget himself the reputation of a
divine authority. The character of his visions was
exactly of that kind which medical experience
shows to be natural to epilepsy. Similar visions,
which are believed in as realities and truths by
those who have them, occur not infrequently to epi-
leptic patients confined in asylums. For my part,
I would as soon belive that there was deception in
the trance which converted Saul the persecutor into
Paul the Apostle, as believe that Mahomet at first
doubted the reality of the events which he saw in
his vision."
Washington Irving, in his "Life of Mahomet,"
says :
"He would be seized with a violent trembling,
followed by a kind of swoon, or rather convulsion,
during which perspiration would stream from his
forehead in the coldest weather; he would lie with
his eyes closed, foaming at the mouth and bellowing
like a young camel. Ayesha, one of his wives, and
Zaid, one of his disciples, are among the persons cited
as testifying to that effect. They considered him at
such times as under the influence of a revelation. He
had such attacks, however, in Mecca, before the
Koran was revealed to him."
Were Mahomet now living, he would be con-
fined in an asylum, and the Koran would remain
unrevealed. We shall never know how many
revelations as wonderful as any which dawned
174 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
upon the astonished vision of Mahomet and
Swedenborg are prevented, and how many incipi-
ent religions are nipped in the bud by judicious
doses of bromide of potassium, belladonna, and
zinc, by confinement in the wards of an asylum,
and by other remedial agents. Certain it is that
asylums are thickly settled with prophets, saints,
spiritual healers, and mediums of one kind or
another, of whose visions and revelations the
world is deprived. Yet even now, and in our own
country, there are some who escape confinement
and openly minister to the deluded multitudes
that follow them. The founder of "Christian
Science" is an illustration of what we are saying,
as was also the late John Alexander Dowie, who
founded the "Christian Catholic Church in Zion."
Dowie died as he lived, firm in the belief in his
divine mission. An hour before his death it was
suggested by one of his followers, whose faith
failed him, that a physician be called. The aged
leader rose on his couch, and gazing fixedly at
the watchers, said : "I need no physician. God is
all in all."
Ann Lee was an epileptic, and her revelations
and system of theology are the outcome of in-
sanity. She is described as "a wild creature from
birth," a prey to hysteria and convulsions, violent
in her conduct, ambitious of notice, and devoted
to the lust of power.
It is now believed by many that Joseph Smith,
the founder of Mormonism and, it may be, the
THE MAN OF GENIUS 175
author of the "Book of Mormon," was an epi-
leptic. Much in his life seems to accord with that
theory. The character of his work and his own
words raise the suspicion that he was not wholly
in his right mind. He was vain, boastful and li-
centious, and withal very emotional and religious.
His theology is a purely pagan composite. He
believed that there were many gods, and that they
were polygamous or "sealed" human beings
grown divine. That the great God over all gods
was once a man was with him a foundation doc-
trine, for he held that it was man's duty and
privilege to learn how to become divine. He
thought that God the Father and Jesus Christ
were two persons in the same sense in which Mat-
thew and John were two persons, and that God
and Jesus Christ both had material parts, and
that they had wives and children. The grotesque
and heterogeneous nature of his creed would seem
to fit in with a theory of mental unsoundness. It
must also be remembered that his ancestry was
somewhat neurotic.
Beyond doubt many of the historic personages
brought before us upon the pages of Lombroso's
book, "The Man of Genius," were more or less de-
ranged, but the sweeping statement that all men
of genius are neurotic is not only absurd bat in-
sulting to the most gifted minds our world has
ever known. It is no doubt true that "great
thinkers and poets are constitutionally inclined
to melancholy," but in most cases it is because
176 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
thej are constitutionally sensitive t sorrow
and distress of the world and alive to the mystery
of human lift. For the same reason many of
them incline to pessimism. Aristotle wa> right
•when, manv centuries aero, he declared that "men
of genius are likely to be of melancholy tempera-
ment." Men of genius are likelv to be as well men
of knowledge, and while knowledge means usually
increased power, it does not always bring with it
There is a sense in which Goethe's
words are true, "Every increase of knowledge is
an increase of sorrow." "He that increaseth
knowledge, increaseth sorrow." exclaims the Sa-
cred Writer. How often we see an ignoramus
approach a serious surgical operation with no
anxiety. The well informed mar. ers re
for apprehension where the unenlightened rusti
is filled with calm assurance. The courage of
youth is. for the most part, due to mexpa
The young man is certain o^ everything b
he knows so little. It is b that "fools rush ::.
where angels fear to tread." Multitudes of earn-
est souls trace their religious doubts to in se of
knowledge. "If only I knew less," said a sorrow-
ful sceptic. "I could believe more, and believing
more I should be a stronger and a happi r man;'
The poet who said, "There is always in the
of genius a tear." was not far out of the way:
but the shallow author of that unworthy book,
"T. .;■ Man of Genius." only smutched a subject
of which he was incompetent to treat.
THE MAN OF GENIUS 177
The optimist is good in his place, but as much
may be said for the pessimist. Not always, but
often, there is about the optimist a certain vul-
garity not to be discovered in the pessimist.
There is an offensive smacking of the lips over
the good things of this life, and an indifference to
the troubles of others that not infrequently render
the optimist somewhat disgusting to men of finer
nerve and kinder heart. We know little of Lom-
broso as a man, but we gather from his sometimes
blasphemous and always humiliating pages a be-
lief that he is an optimist. The smack of the
lips, the self-satisfaction, and the vulgar assur-
ance are in evidence upon nearly every page. His
book will be short-lived, and he himself iriD be
soon forgotten, but the men and women of genius
who are insulted in nearly every line he has writ-
ten will live on in the grateful remembrance of
generations yet to come.
VIII
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK
"I have thought in my heart that it were a singu-
lar good work if the Lord would stirre up the
hearts of some or other of his people in England to
give some maintenance toward some Schoole or Col-
legiate exercise this way, wherein there should be
Anatomies and other instructions that way, and
where there might be some recompence given to
any that should bring in any vegetable or other
thing that is vertuous in the way of Physick."
— John Eliot in a Letter to Mr. Shepherd.
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK
IT is sometimes represented by those who are
unacquainted with the facts in the case that
physicians, through long familiarity with pain
and distress, come in time to lose every feeling of
compassion, and that in many instances they ac-
quire a hard, grasping and avaricious disposition
that scruples not to make gain out of the physi-
cal needs and mental discomforts of a sick world.
A man of more than ordinary intelligence said in
the presence of a large number of persons, none
of whom disputed his statement, that most physi-
cians were so intent upon a fat fee that they had
neither time nor inclination to serve men of mod-
erate means. He went on to explain that doctors,
through trading in sickness and death, come in
the course of a few years of professional life to
kill within their own bosoms the lovely and gra-
cious feeling of pity. "They view," said he,
"their patients as cases to be studied and ex-
ploited. To the modern doctor Mrs. Jones is in
no sense of the word Mrs. Jones, but only 'case
No. 520,' and his interest in the unfortunate lady
extends no further than the amount of his fee and
the result of his experiments."
The severe accusation is not wholly without
semblance of truth. There are among physicians
some black sheep. What profession is without
its share of inky wool? Even the ministry of
181
182 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
religion has its conspicuous specimens of decadent
divinity. In a certain sense every man, no mat-
ter what his calling in life, dwells in a glass
house. In most cities, and in some small villages,
there are a few medical men who are "in business"
for "revenue" only ; and there are hospitals and
asylums in which carelessness and brutality are
not unknown. It would be worse than foolish to
deny that some unworthy men enter the profes-
sion, and that certain institutions of charity and
mercy are such in name only. But a mercenary
spirit is by no means common among medical men.
On the contrary, the average doctor is proverbi-
ally careless in money matters. His absorption in
his profession seems to render him indifferent to
his own financial interests. I know of a doctor
of great ability and large practice who could
never have collected half the fees due him had not
his wife, with a commendable interest in good
housekeeping, made out the bills and forwarded
them to their proper destinations. A lady said
to me: "I wish the doctor would give me his bill.
My husband has three times asked for it without
result ; I am told that he never sends out a bill
until some pressing necessity reminds him of his
account book."
The "Aphorisms" of Hippocrates reflect a
noble and beautiful spirit, but it cannot be for-
gotten that De la Mettrie, the physician of Fred-
erick the Great, left the members of his profession
advice of the most selfish and cynical character.
De la Mettrie said :
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 183
"Distrust your professional brother — medicus
medicum odit. If you are in a fix lay the respon-
sibility on the backs of the consultants. Never try
an active remedy on a person of high position; it
is better that a great lord should yield to human
destiny, even prematurely, than that the doctor
should be compromised. In the case of consulta-
tions try to arrive on the scene a quarter of an hour
before the others, in order that you may see the pa-
tient alone and gain his confidence while seeming to
study his disease. Visit the patient during the time
the remedy is displaying its effects ; make some
small change in the mode of administration; thus
you will supplant not only one or two brother prac-
titioners, but the whole faculty. Take care to stand
well with the surgeons and pay court to the apothe-
caries. Do not give medicines to those who do not
like them. In the case of the others order only
drugs that are anodyne, well known, and have not
a bad taste. Do not pay too many visits ; this
would gain for you the reputation of being eager
for fees. Unpunctuality will be excused if you
plead the number of people you have to see. Al-
ways have the air of being busy. If you are asked
out to dinner, arrive late and look as if you had
been hurrying, and arrange that you shall be sent
for at dessert. If women discuss the causes of a
disease, do not contradict them, but agree with
them. If women advertise you, your fortune is
made. Above all, do not despise the support of
ladies' maids and nurses."
Yet few doctors die rich. Not more than forty
per cent, of all the young men who are graduated
from medical schools ever derive from their pro-
fession an income of more than $1,000 a year.
There are not a few physicians in rural districts
184. EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
who never earn in the practice of medicine more
than $500 a year. The standard of education is
high, and the examinations are increasingly diffi-
cult to pass. A man must study more to become
a good physician than to qualify as an educated
lawyer. And the rewards of medical service,
viewed from a commercial perspective, are insig-
nificant when compared with the golden recom-
pense that awaits a successful attorney. Think
of the "graft," "boodle," "perquisites" and other
interesting things that hang directly over the
heads of legally educated gentlemen. Few phy-
sicians are subjected to any great temptation
from what are facetiously described in political
journals as "plums." The worst that can be said
of a doctor is that he seeks fat fees, but these
are never so corpulent as fat offices.
Dr. Robert C. Myles, a New York physician of
distinction, said to a representative of the New
York Herald:
"The number of able young physicians in this
city is growing rapidly. The city is full of young
men who have great ability and natural gifts. They
have studied hard and made brilliant records. They
will be heard from in the future. Then there are
able, modest, unassuming men with offices in side
streets who are really as competent as others widely
known and of assured fame. And though they are
equally successful in the same classes of cases, their
fees are comparatively small and their meagre in-
comes altogether out of proportion to the high
character of their achievements. So it is evident
that no one can say just what the physician's fees
shall be."
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 185
The late Sir James Paget followed the after-
histories of 1,000 medical students in Great Brit-
ain and Ireland. Of these 23 achieved distin-
guished success, 66 considerable success, 507 fair
success, 124 very limited success, 41 died while
students, 87 died within twelve years of com-
mencing practice, 56 failed entirely in the pro-
fession, and 96 abandoned it for some other call-
ing. At a later date Dr. Squire Sprigge made a
somewhat similar study of 250 students, and with
somewhat similar results. In America the aver-
ages are better, but the general results are not
very different.
Why do young men of ability make choice of
a profession so exacting and arduous, and offer-
ing, in a large proportion of cases, such meagre
financial returns? There can be but one answer
to that question. The choice is made from a love
of the profession, and from a willingness, born of
that love, to incur the risks and to face the hard-
ships incident to a medical practice. Young men
when they commence the study of the healing art
know many of the difficulties that must be over-
come. Their professors, as if to discourage any
mercenary straggler who may have unwittingly
matriculated, do not hesitate to refer to the peril
and self-sacrifice of a doctor's life. A medical
lecturer once in my hearing thus addressed his
class :
"Young gentlemen, the path of a conscientious
doctor is not strewn with roses. Much of his prac-
186 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
tice is night-work. His time is never his own.
When other men fly from the sick room or the hos-
pital, frightened by the contagions and infections
of such diseases as small-pox, yellow fever and
plague, the physician must remain at his post even
at the risk of his life. A thousand political honors
and emoluments await the lawyer, and the wealth
of the Indies knocks at the successful merchant's
door, but hard work, personal peril and moderate
compensation are most likely the only results you
will have to show in the final making up of your ac-
count. Over much of the way no one will travel
with you but the minister of religion whose work
and spirit are not unlike your own. Yet if you love
your profession, and desire to give yourself to its
development and to the service of your fellow men,
you have before you in the practice of medicine a
future of which you may well be proud."
Does anyone think such words likely to attract
to the study of medicine men of mercenary spirit ?
No, that spirit is far from common among medi-
cal students and physicians. It never was com-
mon among them. So long ago as the time of
the famous Dr. Mead the same superiority to sor-
did considerations prevailed. During the impris-
onment of Dr. Friend, who in 1722 was sent to
the Tower for expressing too freely his mind on
matters of state, his colleague, Dr. Mead, though
of an entirely different political persuasion, cared
for his medical practice without compensation.
When Dr. Friend was set at liberty Dr. Mead pre-
sented him with all the money he had received
from his patients — five thousand guineas.
Well, that was long ago? Yes, it was a long
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 187
time ago as we measure the years of a life-time,
but the same spirit is still active in the profession.
The beautiful kindness of Dr. Michael K. War-
ner, who died in Baltimore, Md., July 22, 1905,
should be remembered. The bare statement of it
refutes a thousand calumnies and gives us, as I
believe, a good picture of the true spirit of a large
part of the medical profession. Because many of
Dr. Warner's patients were poor, the doctor, just
before his death, destroyed all books containing
accounts against them. This he did to make it
impossible for his administrators to press those
who were unable to meet without great personal
sacrifice the just demands -that might be made
upon them. Dr. Warner said that his patients
knew what they owed, and that he was sure they
would, most of them, so far as they were able, pay
his heirs when he was gone. It would be impos-
sible for most physicians to follow Dr. Warner's
example, and destroy, in view of approaching
death, all evidences of obligation ; but the cultiva-
tion of Dr. Warner's spirit is practicable, and is,
I believe, shared today by an increasingly large
body of noble and self-forgetting men in the pro-
fession of medicine.
The writer of this paper is peculiarly interested
in physicians because, though he has been all his
life a clergyman, he was early trained for their
profession, and was in 1870 graduated from the
College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of
New York. During three busy pastorates he has
188 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
continued to follow in thought and reading the
marvelous developments of the healing art. There
were physicians of large experience and ability in
the three churches he has served — strong, kind-
hearted, and wise men, all of them, of whose coun-
sel he was always glad to avail himself. They
were, without a single exception, good to the
poor. One physician connected with his church
in Portland, Oregon, attended without compensa-
tion a number of indigent families in the parish.
The writer once said to him: "You are a busy
man, and have a large practice. The duties of
your professorship in the Medical College are no
light matter. You hardly do yourself justice in
giving so much of your time and strength to
charity." He replied : "You respond to calls out-
side of your parish, and I know you would be
ashamed to confine your sympathies and services
to the single church of which you are the pastor.
Is, then, the profession of medicine so ignoble a
thing that it may not stand side by side with that
of religion?"
The heroism of medical men is astonishing
when one considers how little applause it wins.
We all admire the brave soldier who follows his
flag into the thickest of the fight. If he is dis-
abled through wounds received in battle how
gladly we vote him a pension. But the daring of
the doctor is greater than that of the soldier. The
latter goes into battle to the sound of martial
music, surrounded by enthusiastic comrades, while
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 189
the physician, alone and with no public demon-
stration of approval, enters the pest-house and
there calmly and without ostentation ministers to
suffering humanity. The soldier is not rendered
by his peculiar training more sensitive to the
perils of his dangerous profession. On the con-
trary, the more extensive his training and experi-
ence, the more indifferent he becomes to danger.
It is not so with the educated physician. To his
cultivated mind a thousand risks in the matter of
contagion, of which the ordinary man knows noth-
ing, are clear and distinct. The civilized world
was moved to admiration by the story of Father
Damien's courage and self-sacrifice. The priest
■went to live with lepers on the Island of Molokai
in order to minister to them in spiritual things.
But when in a southern country I visited a leper
hospital I found there, hard at work and with no
thought of danger or of disgust at the loath-
someness of the disease, a number of able physi-
cians and efficient nurses. Brave, patient, self-
sacrificing, loyal to the spirit of science, those
noble men and women were working day and
night to help and comfort the distressed.
In this connection it is interesting to notice the
two widely sundered views of hospital-life that
have found melodious expression through the in-
spired pens of two women of wholly dissimilar
temperaments. In weird lines Rose Terry Cooke
describes the death-fancies of an old sailor who
is waiting to go out with the tide :
190 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
IN THE HOSPITAL.
How the wind yells on the Gulf and prairie !
How it rattles in the windows wide !
And the rats squeak like our old ship's rigging;
I shall die with the turn of the tide.
I've had a rough life on the ocean,
And a tough life on the land;
Now I'm like a broken hulk in the dockyard —
I can't stir foot nor hand.
There are green trees in the Salem graveyard,
By the meeting house steps they grow;
And there they put my poor old mother,
The third in the leeward row.
There's the low red house on the corner,
With a slant roof and a well-sweep behind,
And yellow-headed fennel in the garden —
How I see it when I go blind !
I wish I had a mug of cold water
From the bottom of that old curb well,
I wish my mother's face was here alongside,
While I hear that tolling bell!
There's a good crop of corn in the meadow,
And the biggest boy ain't there to hoe;
They'll get in the apples and the pumpkins,
But I've done my last chores below.
Don't you hear the norther risin', doctor?
How it yells and hollers, far and wide !
And the moon's a-shinin' on that graveyard —
Hold on, I'm a-goin' with the tide."
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 191
With different spirit, yet with like genius,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning tells of kindness dis-
covered where kindness is not always found:
KINDNESS FIRST KNOWN IN A HOSPITAL.
'The place seemed new and strange as death,
The white strait bed, with others strait and white,
Like graves dug side by side at measured lengths,
And quiet people walking in and out
With wonderful low voices and soft steps,
And apparitional equal care for each,
Astonished her with order, silence, law:
And when a gentle hand held out a cup,
She took it as you do at sacrament,
Half awed, half melted — not being used, indeed,
To so much love as makes the form of love
And courtesy of manners. Delicate drinks
And rare white bread, to which some dying eyes
Were turned in observation. O my God,
How sick we must be ere we make men just!
I think it frets the saints in heaven to see
How many desolate creatures on the earth
Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship
And social comfort in a hospital ! ' '
In my "Companionship of Books," I recounted
the heroism of Dr. Franz Mueller, of Vienna, who
fell a victim to the bubonic plague when that dis-
ease was first under bacteriological investigation
in that city in 1897. At the risk of tedious repe-
tition, let me say that Dr. Mueller contracted the
malady from the bacilli in culture tubes. When
he became certain that he was infected he imme-
diately locked himself in an isolated room and
192 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
posted a message on the window-pane reading
thus: ''I am suffering from the plague. Please
do not send a doctor to me, as in any event my
end will come in four or five days."
At once a number of his associates, all of them
young physicians with much to live for, and with
full knowledge of the chances to which they would
expose themselves, stepped forward and not only
offered their services, but, in some cases, begged
to be sent to Dr. Mueller. The patient refused
to receive them, and died alone within the time
predicted. He wrote a farewell letter to his
parents, placed it against the window, so that it
could be copied from the outside, and then burned
the original with his own hands, fearful that it
might be preserved and carry out the mysterious
and deadly germ. It is possible that Dr. Mueller
might have been saved had he been willing to per-
mit his fellow physicians to encounter the great
danger they would have faced in treating him.
To my thinking the heroism of Dr. Mueller and
his associate physicians was much greater than
that required for a feat of arms on the field of
battle.
I am aware that it would not be difficult to place
over against what has been said the actual record
of enormous medical fees paid under peculiar cir-
cumstances to distinguished physicians. Every
one knows that there have been some medical men
of large means. Our fathers used to read fifty
or more years ago a delightful little book called
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 193
"The Gold-Headed Cane" All the doctors de-
scribed in that book were men of the noblest qual-
ity, and they were also men of large fortunes.
Sir William Gull received, it is reported, for treat-
ing King Edward in 1871, when he was the
Prince of Wales, the handsome sum of ten thou-
sand pounds. The Vegetarian is authority for
the statement that Sir Morell Mackenzie received
for his attendance upon the late Emperor Fred-
erick twenty thousand pounds. The doctors who
prescribed for Queen Victoria in her last illness
got two thousand guineas each. Dr. Lapponi had
for removing a cyst from the side of Leo XIII. a
sum that would be in the money of our country
about twenty-five hundred dollars. Dr. Dimsdale
went to St. Petersburgh years ago to vaccinate
the empress, and he received for his services ten
thousand pounds with five thousand pounds for
traveling expenses, and later a life pension of five
hundred pounds a year. Dr. Lorenz, of Vienna,
went to Chicago to operate upon a child who had
congenital dislocation of the hip. He had for his
services one hundred thousand dollars and travel-
ing expenses for himself and his assistant.
Mr. D'Arcy Power in discussing the "Fees of
Our Ancestors" reminds his readers of the old-
time story of the skillful Democedes, who re-
ceived from Darius Hystaspes of Susa a fee
that our modern surgeons may dream of in
"the first sweet sleep of the night," but that
none of them may ever hope to obtain in any-
194 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
thing more substantial than a dream. Da-
rius had dislocated his foot at the ankle-
joint, and Democedes was called in after the
failure of an Egyptian surgeon. His treat-
ment was successful, and he was at once pre-
sented with two golden fetters, in delicate allusion
to his position. Having delighted Darius by ask-
ing him "whether he meant to double his punish-
ment, that monarch told him to go through the
harem as the man who had saved the king's life.
The ladies each gave him a golden bowl piled up
with staters, so many of which fell on the floor
that the slave who conducted him made a hand-
some fortune by picking them up."
It would not be difficult to describe other large
fees, including the contested one of ex-Queen
Kilinakalani's physician.
All these fees, with the single exception of the
one received by Dr. Lorenz, were paid by royalty,
and were in reality gifts rather than fees. The
physicians who had them may imagine that they
were in return for services rendered, but, in truth,
they were in no sense a quid pro quo. The phy-
sicians were men of exceptional skill, and in treat-
ing royalty they assumed an exceptional respon-
sibility; yet men of even their unusual ability
could expect such compensation in only rare in-
stances. It must be remembered also that these
fees were not in settlement of medical bills alone,
but covered the expense of long journeys and the
loss to private practice occasioned by protracted
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 195
absence from home. In the case of Dr. Lorenz
we have a scientific man of world-wide reputation
crossing the ocean to treat the child of a multi-
millionaire who could, were he so inclined, and
were the thing permissible, buy out half a dozen
small kingdoms in Europe or elsewhere. And it
must not be forgotten that Dr. Lorenz while in
this country treated a number of poor persons
without compensation, and gave demonstrations
of his skill in hospitals for the benefit of Ameri-
can physicians.
The Bulletin of Pharmacy has this witty ac-
count of the way in which a distinguished sur-
geon was defrauded out of a fee to which he was
entitled :
"Sir Morel Mackenzie once received a dispatch
from Antwerp asking him for his charges for a cer-
tain operation. He replied £500, and was told to
come at once. When he stepped upon the dock he
was met by three men in mourning, who informed
him sadly that he had come too late; the patient
had died that morning.
'But,' said the spokesman of the party, 'we
know that you did what you could, and we do not
intend that you shall be out of pocket a shilling.
We shall pay you your full fee.' And they did.
'And now,' said the man, 'since you are here, what
do you say to visiting the city hospital and giving
a clinic for the benefit of our local surgeons? It
is not often they have an opportunity of benefitting
by such science as yours.'
Sir Morel said he would gladly comply. He
went to the hospital and performed many opera-
tions, among which were two of a similar nature to
196 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
that for which he had been called over. When he
had finished all thanked him profusely. On the
steamer going home he met a friend who had a
business house in Antwerp.
'Pretty scurvy trick they played on you, Sir
Morel.'
'What do you mean/ asked the surgeon.
'Told you the patient died before you arrived,
didn't they?'
'Yes.'
"Lied. You operated on him and a friend with
the same trouble at the clinic. Got two operations
for one price.' "
Dr. Murray, of New York City, is reported
to have said to a representative of the press :
"I know of a case where a foreign merchant do-
ing business in New York entered a leading hos-
pital of this city as a poor man. He was operated
on for appendicitis. It was a successful operation
and the man speedily recovered, yet he paid only
the hospital ward rate of ten dollars a week, and
went on his way rejoicing. It was afterward dis-
covered that he was a thriving merchant worth a
hundred thousand dollars."
Whether a fee is large or small must depend
upon circumstances. No ordinary patient would
be willing to pay one hundred dollars to a physi-
cian of average standing in his profession, nor,
indeed, would he willingly pay that sum to a phy-
sician of any standing, for a single office call ;
but Mr. Armour, Mr. Astor, or Mr. Carnegie
might be ready to pay that sum twice over to
a physician of exceptional ability for less time
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 197
than is required for an office call. It is not a ques-
tion of what a certain doctor could collect under
the law from either of the above-named gentle-
men, but it is a question of that doctor's special
worth to his multi-millionaire patient under excep-
tional circumstances at a given time. There is
no good reason why a distinguished physician
should refuse a large fee, but if he makes that fee
the measure of his usefulness to ordinary men and
women he is false to the spirit of his profession,
and may be accounted selfish and mercenary.
Medical societies have been from time immemorial
pursuing quacks and irregular practitioners, but
to my thinking no quackery is deserving of so
severe a censure as is the cold and selfish temper
of indifferenec to the sorrow and distress of man-
kind when lodged in the heart of a medical man.
The physician, like the minister of religion, is
something more than a business man ; and he can
never view his services to the world in the light
of mere dollars and cents without debasing; him-
self and disgracing his profession.
It is not generally known, or, at least, it is not
generally remembered, that medically educated
men have furnished no small part of the perma-
nent literature of the world. Ficinus gave us a
Latin version of Plato ; Julius Scaliger was a
great literary critic; Perrault translated Vitru-
vius and lectured on geometry and architecture;
Swammerdam was one of the most celebrated of
Dutch naturalists; Sir Thomas Browne will be
198 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
remembered as the author of "Religio Medici"
and the "Treatise on Urn Burial ;" Schiller, the
great German poet, was educated as a physician ;
Akenside was not only a doctor but a famous
English poet ; Armstrong was a poet ; Smollet
gave us "Roderick Random," "Peregrine Pickle,"
and "Humphry Clinker;" Goldsmith was a de-
lightful author; Madden gave us the once popu-
lar "Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia, and Pal-
estine ;" Camus wrote "La Medicine de l'Esprite"
and "Abdeker, or the Art of Cosmetics ;" Valen-
tine Mott's "Travels in Europe and the East" de-
lighted our grandfathers ; Draper left us a "His-
tory of the Intellectual Development of Europe ;"
Huxley's "Lay Sermons" are well worth reading,
and many a year will go by before the essays,
stories and poems of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes
are forgotten. It would not be difficult to name
two or three hundred physicians who will be re-
membered because of services rendered to litera-
ture.
And sometimes literature, which has been so en-
riched by the genius of medical men, makes com-
pensation in kind; an illustration of which gen-
erosity is furnished by a German writer in the
following Latin lines in memory of the distin-
guished scientist, Dr. Virchow:
"Summo cum ingenio
Morbos illustravit;
Explorando mortuos
Vivos adiuvavit.
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 199
Vitae persecutus est
Intima arcana
Et ubique somnia
Dissipavit vana.
'Omnis' dixit 'cellula
E cellula exorta' ;
Turn doctrinae lucidse
Patefacta porta.
Quae reliquit opera
Perdiu vigebunt
Magna haec vestigia
Non evanescebunt."
The New York Medical Journal prints its
readers this translation :
"With sublimest genius
On disease light giving,
Through the study of the dead
Aided he the living.
To Life's innermost recess
Hath he penetrated;
Empty dreams on every hand
Hath he dissipated.
'Every cell from cell hath sprung' — »
Thus he spake, and straighway
Illuminating Science saw
Open wide her gateway.
So the works that he hath left
Shall endure forever,
And his mighty footprints be
Obliterated never."
200 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Women also have played an honorable part in
the practice of medicine. Seven hundred years
ago a woman had charge of the department of
"Diseases of Women" at the University of Sal-
erno ; and the chair which she filled with such
credit to herself was afterward held in turn by
medical women of trained mind and large experi-
ence through seven professorships. History has
preserved the names of such distinguished women
as Trotula, the noted gynecologist ; Abella, the
author of a once famous work on "Melancholy";
Mercuriade, a celebrated writer on medical
themes, and a surgeon of exceptional ability ; Re-
becca Guarana, a distinguished author and prac-
titioner; Alessandra Giliani, the famous specialist
in anatomy who invented a new method of prepar-
ing anatomical specimens. Of her Dr. James J.
Walsh writes in the third volume of "Interna-
tional Clinics" (nineteenth series), recently pub-
lished in Indianapolis:
"She would cleanse most skillfully the smallest
vein, the arteries, all the ramifications of the ves-
sels, without lacerating or dividing them; and to
prepare them for demonstration she would fill
them with various colored liquids which, after being
driven into the vessels, would harden without de-
stroying the vessels. Again, she would paint these
vessels so naturally that, added to the wonderful
explanations and teachings of the master, Mondino,
they brought him great fame and credit."
The physician, like the lawyer, weighs evi-
dence, only his evidence is more exact than that
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 201
of the lawyer, and far more trustworthy. It is
the evidence not of fallible and sometimes dishon-
est men, but of impartial and remorseless nature.
The statement of the patient goes for less every
year with the trained and scientific physician.
The medical man is possessed of surer means of
coming at the exact truth. Less and less he relies
upon the word of his patient, and more and more
he trusts his own observation, his delicately ad-
justed instruments, and his careful laboratory
analysis. It used to be said that medicine could
never be accounted an exact science. But medi-
cine is rapidly becoming mathematical in its pre-
cision, and every year it is harder for an un-
trained mind to keep pace with its swift march.
How resolutely the medical societies fight
quacks and empiricism. If they would only give
the matter due consideration they would see that
the increasing severity in the standard by which
the physician is to be measured is largely respon-
sible for the increasing army of quacks. The ex-
actions of legitimate medicine are too great for
the limited capacities of inferior minds. The re-
sult is that such minds seek easier and less scien-
tific channels. Many empirics are really good
physicians up to a certain point, but beyond that
point they cannot go. And it is just as true that
many proprietary medicines are regular prescrip-
tions such as physicians commonly employ put
up in a more convenient and agreeable form. If
medicine continues to advance in the future as
202 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
rapidly as it has in the last half century, no sin-
gle mind will be able to qualify in the profession
as an entirety. All physicians will become spe-
cialists, and the general family practitioner will
disappear.
It is not always an easy thing to distinguish
the honest physician from his cousin-german, the
quack. The two have points of resemblance that
are very confusing to the unenlightened non-pro-
fessional mind. George Washington had in his
last illness the services of several medical gentle-
men who were regarded as the ablest practitioners
at the time in the country ; and yet in 1800, about
eight years after the death of Washington, Dr.
Dick and his associate medical brother signed the
following statement which was published in the
Medical Repository:
"Some time on Friday, the night of December
13th, General Washington was attacked with an
inflammatory affection of the upper part of the
windpipe, called in technical language cynanche
trachealis. The disease commenced with a violent
ague accompanied with some pain in the upper and
fore part of the throat, a sense of stricture, a
cough, and a difficult, rather than a painful, deglu-
tition. The necessity of blood-letting suggested it-
self to the General, and he procured a bleeder in
the neighborhood, who took from his arm in the
night twelve or fourteen ounces of blood. He would
not by any means be prevailed upon by the family
to send for the attending physician until the fol-
lowing morning; the physician arrived at Mount
Vernon about eleven o'clock on Saturday. Dis-
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 203
covering the case to be highly alarming, and fore-
seeing the fatal tendency of the disease, two con-
sulting physicians were immediately sent for. In
the interim were employed two copious bleedings, a
blister was applied to the part affected, two mod-
erate doses of calomel were given, and an injection
was administered, which operated on the lower in-
testines, but all without any perceptible advantage,
the respiration becoming still more difficult and dis-
tressing. Upon the arrival of the first of the con-
sulting physicians it was agreed that, as yet there
were no signs of accumulation in the bronchial ves-
sels of the lungs, to try the result of another bleed-
ing. When about thirty-two ounces of blood were
drawn without the smallest apparent alleviation of
the disease, vapors of vinegar and water were fre-
quently inhaled, ten grains of calomel were given,
succeeded by repeated doses of emetic tartar,
amounting in all to five or six grains, with no other
effect than a copious discharge from the bowels.
The powers of life were now manifestly yielding
to the force of the disorder, respiration grew more
and more contracted and imperfect, till half past
eleven o'clock on Saturday night, when retaining
the full possession of his intellect he expired with-
out a struggle.
Several hours before his decease, after repeated
efforts to be understood, he succeeded in expressing
a desire that he might be permitted to die without
interruption.
(Signed) James Craik, Att. Phys.
Elisha C. Dick, Cons. Phys."
The Medical Record for December 29th, 1900,
has this to say of the treatment which Washing-
ton received at the hands of two of the most dis-
tinguished physicians of the day:
204 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
"The treatment of an old man, sick with a dis-
ease very exhausting to vitality, and so severe that
the illness lasted but twenty-four hours, consisted
in the abstraction of between two and three quarts
of blood, the administration of about gr. xx. of cal-
omel and gr. vi. of tartar emetic, an injection, with
external applications of a blister — and a pressure
of the hand. This treatment administered to a well
man in so short a time would go far toward prepar-
ing him for his last journey.
The repeated regretful statements of the physi-
cians that they noted no benefit from their treat-
ment, with continual repetition of the unsatisfac-
tory means of cure already employed, and their ap-
parent inability to suggest others, and the last re-
quest of General Washington that he might be al-
lowed to 'die without interruption' have their
pathetic side. Brandy was surely in common use at
the time, and no doubt 'in the house.' Peruvian
bark, iron, and digitalis were well-known drugs in
the materia medica of 1800, but there is no record
of their use. The almshouse patient today has
more rational treatment than the ex-president of
the United States had in 1800."
Will some one tell us how we are to distinguish
the able physician from the untutored empiric on
one hand, and from the stupid servant of habit
following his routine practice on the other? We
are reminded of old Dr. Samuel Garth, who wrote
the once famous "Dispensary," and who was
knighted by George I. When Garth saw his phy-
sicians consulting together just before his death,
he lifted himself in bed and said with some effort,
"Dear gentlemen, let me die a natural death.'*
Washington, it would seem, did not die a natural
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 205
death. He escaped powder and sword, only to
fall at last before the deadly lancet of the regular
practitioner.
It goes without saying that the popularity of
the physician must always depend upon the suc-
cess of his treatment. He may be a very wise
man, but if his patients die he might as well be
an uneducated quack so far as any regard for his
professional services is concerned. And if he suc-
ceeds, the great world of suffering men and
women will not stop to enquire into his scientific
attainments, nor will they ask if he is a member
in "good and regular standing" in some accred-
ited medical society. The story is that when
Lorenzo the Magnificent, Grand Duke of Tus-
cany, died, the patient's friends caught the fa-
mous physician from Padua who had failed to
cure the great man, and threw him down the well
in the quadrangle. We do not throw unsuccess-
ful doctors down wells in these days, but we cover
them with abuse, and in some cases we prosecute
them for malpractice. Not many years ago a
physician in one of our western cities, having
failed to cure the mayor, found posted upon his
office door a notice to quit the place under pen-
alty of being shot.
The government of the United States, in 1864,
sent Dr. Samuel A. Mudd to the Dry Tortugas
for setting the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth,
the assassin of President Lincoln. Booth in his
flight from Washington after shooting the Presi-
206 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
dent stopped at Dr. Mudd's house to have his leg
cared for ; and it was claimed by the government,
at the time of the trial, that Dr. Mudd knew who
his patient was, and how he came by the broken
leg; and that, in setting the bone, he practically
assisted him in his flight. It always seemed to
me that Dr. Mudd did nothing more than his duty
as a surgeon, and that his conviction and punish-
ment were grossly unjust. Dr. Mudd insisted
that he did not know that he was rendering medi-
cal assistance to Booth, and that at the time he
had not heard of the assassination of Lincoln.
But even supposing that Dr. Mudd did know that
he was treating the assassin of President Lincoln,
still, to my thinking, he was doing only his duty
as a medical man. No physician considers it
necessary to enquire into the moral character of
his patient before rendering medical or surgical
aid. Were I in the practice of medicine I would
set the broken leg of a thief, a murderer or an
assassin as conscientiously as I would that of the
most godly minister of the Gospel.
I quite approve the conduct of a doctor in a
southern city who after shooting a burglar who
had entered his house in the night immediately set
to work to staunch the flow of blood and save the
life of the miserable man. There is a curious
story, the truth of which I do not know, of a phy-
sician who saved a man who had been hung for
murder. The supposed dead body was conveyed
to the physician's office where the resuscitation
took place.
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 207
The murderer, assisted by his friends, made
good his escape, but the doctor was arrested for
interfering with the execution of the law. The
jury acquitted him upon the ground that he did
his duty as a physician. He was under no obli-
gation to enquire how the patient came to be in
need of his services ; nor was he required by any
law to assist directly or indirectly the executioner,
who should have known that the man whose life
he thought he had taken was not dead. It is
the duty of the medical man to preserve and not
to destroy life ; when life must be taken, as in
obstetric cases calling for the sacrifice of the child
in order to save the mother, the physician kills
only to preserve a still more valuable life.
It was a law in ancient Egypt that the phj T si-
cian was to take charge of his patient for the first
three days at the patient's own risk and cost,
but if after three days the patient was still sick
the unfortunate doctor must continue the treat-
ment without further compensation. It is re-
corded that on the third day the apprehensive
doctor was in the habit of prescribing an imme-
diate journey to the seacoast, the mountains, or
the springs. The wealthy invalid would close his
house in Memphis, and engage a camel to con-
vey him to Faioum in the desert or to Alexandria
on the Mediterranean. The old law is gone the
way of all laws, but the Faioum and Alexandria
of today are spelled "Newport" and "Saratoga."
208 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Plato said, in his "Republic," "Physicians are
the only men who may lie at pleasure, since our
health depends upon the vanity and falsity of
their promises." Plato was a wise philosopher
who knew well the medical gentlemen of his day.
It is not unlikely that some one or more of them
had posted him off to a well-nigh impossible place
on the edge of civilization for the benefit of his
health. If so, he must have improved, for he
had a soft spot in his heathen heart for the keen-
sighted disciples of old Father ^Esculapius.
Plato thought a good physician might lie with-
out guilt if in his opinion a lie was what the pa-
tient most needed. He would have put lies of
various kinds into the pharmacopseia, for to him
they seemed to be a part of the great body of
Materia Medica. Why swallow a nauseous drug
when a delicious little sugar-coated lie would do
just as well? What harm could come of saying,
"You are very much better than you were yes-
terday" ? A grain or two of hope might be good
for a patient even if he were actually in articulo
mortis. The doctor is engaged to cure the sick
man, and he must use such remedial agents as
are adapted to the case. Hope has an immense
therapeutic value. Why not use it? Dear old
Plato, you lived before religious casuists quib-
bled ! You had a warm heart and good red blood
under your pagan ribs! So have also the doc-
tors of the twentieth century. Hope is in the
pharmacopasia, and liberal doses {quantum suf-
ficit) are good for the patient.
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK 209
There Is certainly nothing in sickness and
morbid conditions of either body or mind to at-
tract the poet's fancy or to allure the lovers
of beauty. On the contrary, the theory and
practice of medicine is repellent to the artistic
temperament, and in some cases actually disgust-
ing. Yet the poet has not allowed the sad ail-
ments that our flesh is heir to in this sick and
sorry world to go wholly uncelebrated. Some
diseases have been so minutely and circumstan-
tially described in verse that no one educated in
medicine could fail of knowing at once the na-
ture of the disorder. Henry Kirke White, who
himself died of tuberculosis at the age of
twenty-one, has left us a "Sonnet to Consump-
tion" which is greatly admired, and which is here
reproduced :
"Gently, most gently, on thy victim's head,
Consumption, lay thine hand ! — let me decay
Like the expiring lamp, unseen, away,
And softly go to slumber with the dead.
And if 'tis true what holy men have said,
That strains angelic oft foretell the day
Of death to those good men who fall thy prey,
O let the aerial music round my bed,
Dissolving sad in dying symphony,
Whisper the solemn warning in mine ear;
That I may bid my weeping friends good-by
Ere I depart upon my journey drear:
And, smiling faintly on the painful past,
Compose my decent head, and breathe my last."
This same English poet wrote the following
lines on the "Prospect of Death" :
210 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
"On my bed, in wakeful restlessness,
I turn me wearisome; while all around,
All, all, save me, sink in f orgetfulness ;
I only wake to watch the sickly taper
Which lights me to my tomb. — Yes, 'tis the hand
Of Death I feel press heavy on my vitals,
Slow sapping the warm current of existence.
My moments now are few — the sand of life
Ebbs fastly to its finish. Yet a little,
And the last fleeting particle will fall,
Silent, unseen, unnoticed, unlamented.
Come then, sad Thought, and let us meditate
While meditate we may."
What can be more beautiful than Milton's
description of his own blindness:
"Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou, celestial light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse."
Shakspeare had venesection or phlebotomy in
view when he wrote "Love's Labor's Lost":
"A fever in your blood! Why, then incision
Would let her out in saucers."
THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WORK £11
He had rigor mortis in mind when he wrote in
"Romeo and Juliet":
"Alas! she's cold;
Her blood is settled; and her joints are stiff;
Life and those lips have long been separated."
Cowper wrote stanzas which he subjoined
yearly to the Bill of Mortality of the Parish of
All Saints for six years. Armstrong, who was
himself both physician and poet, left the world
a long and dull poem on "The Art of Preserving
Health," and in it are a number of subdivisions
which treat of air, diet, exercise, and the pas-
sions. He assures us that
"Music exalts each joy, allays each grief,
Expels diseases, softens every pain,
Subdues the rage of poison, and the plague;
And hence the wise of ancient days adored
One power of physic, melody, and song."
IX
SHAKSPEARE'S BONES
"History preserves only the fleshless bones
Of what we were; and by the mocking skull
The would-be wise pretend to guess the features.
Without the roundness and the glow of life,
How hideous is the skeleton."
— Bulwer.
/
SHAKSPEARE'S BONES
STRATFORD-UPON-AVON has become
one of the most famous of all the many
famous towns of England through no en-
terprise of its citizens and through no attractive-
ness of surrounding scenery, though, in truth,
the winding and graceful river and the verdure-
clad and beautiful hillsides are worth a long jour-
ney to behold. The world's interest in Stratford
(and all the world has an increasingly great in-
terest in that quaint and sleepy little collection
of old-fashioned houses and streets bare of
adornment) gathers about and centers in its
Shakspeare associations. The birth-place, the
school, and a few other spots closely connected
with the life of the great dramatist attract every
year thousands of pilgrims, but the supreme cen-
ter of absorbing interest is the tomb of the
Chancel of Holy Trinity. Here as nowhere else
is entrenched the great Shakspeare-myth that in-
creases in authority and importance with every
flying year. Do not for one moment imagine that
I question, much less that I openly deny, that
there once lived that "sweet swan of Avon" who
is described as having "small Latin and less
Greek," but who, nevertheless, made those im-
mortal plays that this world of ours will never
allow to die, and the superb glory of which the
indefatigable but blind disciples of Bacon will
215
216 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
never with all their toil be able to capture for
their great master. Much or little Latin and
Greek, he knew English, and wrote "The Mer-
chant of Venice," "Julius Caesar," "Hamlet,"
and all the rest. In Stratford he lived, and there
he died, and there also, so far as any man's
knowledge extends, his bones were entombed be-
neath those four lines of astonishing doggerel
that every school-boy knows by heart. For what
may be called the "Bacon Theory" I never enter-
tained even the most remote regard. I protect
my use of the term "Shakspeare-myth" by a
frank avowal of my entire want of sympathy with
those who are endeavoring to deprive Shakspeare
of the unique glory which will always remain his
alone. A myth is not necessarily a fiction nor a
mere creation of the imagination. It may be a
fanciful narrative or a collection of such narra-
tives in some measure founded upon real events,
and, perhaps, so interwoven with those events as
to make anything like historical criticism impos-
sible. The real Shakspeare and the myth are
now one. Of course I do not subscribe to the
clodhopper theory that represents the noblest
literature in our English language as having
bubbled up from the uninstructed brain of a
country bumpkin. It is admitted that Shaks-
peare was not a profound scholar. He was far
from being possessed of Bacon's erudition ; he
had not Milton's Latin ; and I doubt if he knew
a word of Greek. No one denies he laid violent
SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 217
hands upon the literary property of other men.
Whatever he wanted, play, narrative, or poem, he
appropriated without troubling himself to give
the pillaged author credit. But it is also true
that whatever he touched he beautified ; and much
that was worthless as he found it became pure
gold in the transmuting fires of his genius.
Great writers live no small part of their time
upon the thin edge of the grossest plagiarism,
and yet whatever they appropriate they make
their own, giving it a spirit and a new beauty
of which the original author never dreamed.
Goethe was full of Shakspeare. Iago and Ham-
let were borrowed almost bodily. Marguerite is
Ophelia in well-nigh every detail. Both women
came from humble life, and were wooed by men
of superior social standing. Marguerite was be-
trayed, and there are reasons for suspecting that
Ophelia was seduced. Ophelia's mad-song re-
appears in Faust. To both women Fate appor-
tioned madness and death. Compare the Witch's
Kitchen with the Witch Scene in "Macbeth."
Can one read the "Walpurgis Night" and not be
reminded of the "Midsummer Night's Dream"?
Goethe was scarcely less indebted to Marlowe and
Calderon. The famous Prologue in Heaven is
surely taken from the Book of Job. It was
charged against Bunyan that he made his "Pil-
grim's Progress" out of Caxton's "Pilgrimage of
the Soul" and Bernard's "Isle of Man." The
charge of literary dishonesty was brought for-
218 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
ward during Bunyan's life, for there are pre-
served four lines from his pen in which he repels
the charge. Moliere derived his plots, his dia-
logues, and even whole scenes, from Italian come-
dies. It may be the larger fish in the sea of life
and letters have a right to subsist upon the small
fry, and yet the doctrine is dangerous that one
may steal with impunity what he puts to good
use.
Were we living in Stratford, and so fortunate
as to own a corner lot or two in that sleepy old
town, we would most certainly resist every move-
ment looking toward the opening of Shakspeare's
tomb. Were we so highly honored as to be the
vicar, or an influential member of the corpora-
tion of Holy Trinity, nothing could be too bad
for us to say about poor little Delia Bacon, who
thought to bribe the sexton and work her way
under cover of night like a grave-robber into the
famous vault. But we frankly confess that our
watch-dog proclivities could hardly be called al-
truistic, for the opening of that tomb would
mean the bursting of one of the most profitable
of financial bubbles. Stratford is the outer crust
over an inner core of Shakspeare-myth. To dis-
credit the myth would be to put Holy Trinity out
of business, close the twenty or more souvenir and
relic shops that every year entice from literary
pilgrims and more vulgar excursionists their
nimble shillings, and render the Red Horse, the
Falcon, and whatever other hostelries have hung
SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 219
out their signboards, the prey of the rapacious
auctioneer. It may be the Red Horse could sub-
sist for a time upon the bones of Washington
Irving, if they are not already picked too clean,
but the glory of its uncomfortable rooms and in-
digestible dinners would be gone.
More than forty thousand sixpences were paid
in one year (1906) for the privilege of seeing
Shakspeare's birthplace, and this was but a single
item in the revenue brought in by the famous
Shakspeare-myth. Nearly every visitor gives an-
other sixpence to enter the museum. Still an-
other sixpence is required for admission to the
Memorial Theatre. Every one goes to Anne
Hathaway's house, and you must give at least a
sixpence to the custodian. The sixpenny fees
alone in Stratford-on-Avon seldom come to less
for the year than twenty thousand dollars. Mr.
Fitzgerald, in The Munsey for September, 1907,
has this to say:
"As Irving said, at Stratford the traveler's mind
'refuses to dwell on anything that is not connected
with Shakspeare' ; and the town practically lives
upon the cult. Shakspeare is its trade-mark, so to
speak. There is a Shakspeare Hotel, with rooms
named after the plays; there are Shakspeare tea-
rooms; Shakspeare busts meet us at every turn; not
to speak of picture post-cards, plates and cups,
handkerchiefs, colored models of the birthplace,
and a thousand odds and ends more or less remotely
connected with the poet's name and fame.
New Place, where Shakspeare spent his last
years, was long ago demolished, but the conscien-
220 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
tious pilgrim must pay sixpence to see the site of
the mansion and a mulberry -tree said to be a scion
of the one that the poet planted with his own hand.
The original tree was cut down in 1756 by a tenant
who disliked the importunities of visitors; but to
this day men come to you on the streets of Strat-
ford and offer you, in mysterious whispers, pipes,
brooches, and toys made out of the last remaining
fragments of its wood.
Scattered through the surrounding country are
subsidiary shrines. More famous than many a
royal palace is the long, low cottage where dwelt
Anne Hathaway, in the village of Shottery, a mile
from Stratford. The visitor may tread today the
very footpath through the fields along which, no
doubt, the lad Shakspeare often hurried to court
his sweetheart; and for a fee, he may enter the cot-
tage and inspect its relics. Then there is another
fee for the cottage at Wilmcote where Mary Arden
— Shakspeare's mother — was born; and you must
pay for a carriage and guide to Charlecote, the
ancient home of Sir Thomas Lucy, whom the poet
satirized as 'Justice Shallow.' "
There can be little doubt that the tomb of
Shakspeare has been opened more than once.
The doggerel over the vault could hardly restrain
the curiosity of an entire world, and there is not
the slightest evidence that those crude lines were
the work of the great poet. It is more than likely
the limping and absurd lines were cut into the
stone by direction of some member of the family
who feared that in time the bones beneath might
be hustled out of their resting place and tossed
into the charnel house which at that day adjoined
the chancel of the church. Only the graves of
SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 221
kings, nobles, and great generals were safe.
Common bones had no value and received little
consideration. It is so in some measure even now.
Nothing prevents the running of a street over
the dust of Joseph Rodman Drake but periodical
outbursts of popular wrath. The Roman authori-
ties chafe under restraints that prevent them
from digging up the dust of Keats and the
"flame-proof heart" of Shelley in the old Prot-
estant Cemetery at Rome to make way for a
smart new avenue which they are quite sure would
be a greater glory to the immortal city than two
scarcely ornamental gravestones. Not long ago a
section of the wall of the cemetery was taken
down to provide room for a street. The British
Embassy at Rome must every two or three years
interfere and head off the intended vandalism.
Once Queen Victoria herself had to bring to bear
the power of her personal influence. The bones
of Schiller were tumbled into a public vault,
whence they were recovered with difficulty and
uncertainty. We all know what happened in the
Chancel of St. Giles, Cripplegate, in 1679, if
Aubrey's account of the violation of the tomb
of Milton is to be trusted. Shakspeare was only
a poet, and when he died the world cared little for
his memory, and if possible even less for the
preservation of his tomb. He was simply Mr.
Shakspeare of Stratford-on-Avon, a good actor
and a successful play-writer. There was the best
of reasons for carving over the poet's tomb that
222 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
rude curse. It was a device intended to keep his
bones out of the charnel house. Of course all
this is based upon the assumption that his body
was really placed beneath the stone upon which is
inscribed the far-famed curse. There have been
those who questioned the fact. The stone itself
records no name, and the lines are quite unworthy
of the poet. But one way or the other, those
lines were intended to protect whatever body was
deposited beneath them. Conceding that they
have accomplished the end for which they were
composed and carved upon the stone, still there
is absolutely no reason for believing that they
have for about three hundred years prevented
the opening of that tomb.
Mr. Donnelly introduces a remarkable ex-
planation of the lines over the tomb. He thinks
that Shakspeare requested Bacon to write an in-
scription for his tombstone that would prevent
his bones from being cast out when the discov-
ery of the Cipher should be made. As Donnelly
thinks that Bacon introduced the Cipher, and as
he also thinks Ben Jonson conveyed to Shaks-
peare intelligence of its presence in the Plays, so
he naturally credits Bacon with the doggerel in-
scription. The author of this paper does not re-
gard Mr. Donnelly's Cipher-theory as in any way
worthy of study or discussion, but any investi-
gator who may wish to look into the matter for
himself can find Mr. Donnelly's views fully ex-
pounded in his book, "The Great Cryptogram,"
SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 223
published in 1888. The first part of the book is
an interesting study of the Plays and will repay
a careful reading, but the second part, which is
taken up with the Cipher, discredits the entire
work. Mr. Donnelly calls attention to the dis-
covery in the Bodleian Library of a letter from
a certain William Hall addressed to Edward
Thwaites, the Anglo-Saxon scholar, in which it
is stated that Shakspeare ordered the four lines
of doggerel cut on the tombstone during his life-
time, and that he wished to be buried "full seven-
teen feet deep." It is understood that Halliwell-
Phillipps pronounces the letter genuine. It was
probably written in 1694. The "seventeen feet
deep" of course only renders the possibility of
finding any Shakspeare remains still more remote.
Some time ago Mr. James Hare published in a
Birmingham paper an account of a remarkable
visit he made to Shakspeare's tomb. Mr. Hare
said that in 1827 he went to Stratford with a
friend and "on visiting the poet's tomb found the
vault adjoining it open, probably for the recep-
tion of a body." These are his words :
"We got into the adjoining vault and stood upon
a board. While there we looked through an open-
ing in the wall that separated Shakspeare's tomb
from the one in which we were standing, and we
could see nothing in it but a slight elevation of
mouldering dust on its level floor, and the smallness
of the quantity surprised me. No trace or appear-
ance of a coffin or of undecomposed bones, and cer-
tainly no such elevation as a skull would occasion
224 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
was observed. The impression produced by what
we saw was that the remains had been enclosed in
an ordinary wooden coffin and simply laid on the
floor of the vault, which may have been of earth,
though of that we could determine nothing. If a
leaden casket had been used, it would have been
present in some form or other, or had an amount
of earth been dug out to bury it below the surface,
a depression would have been the natural conse-
quence, and the elevation could not then be ac-
counted for."
I would attach no undue importance to Mr.
Hare's communication, which at the time of its
publication attracted some attention. I merely
insist that there is no good reason for thinking
that the Shakspeare vault has remained unex-
plored during all the time it has been a center of
world-wide interest. The fact that there is no
authentic account of such exploration signed by
suitable witnesses, favors rather than opposes the
opinion advanced. Any person who should open
that tomb and find it empty, and who should have
the temerity to publish that most unwelcome fact
to an indignant world, would find himself counted
forever among the enemies of mankind. The
Rev. Francis Gastrell, who cut down the Shaks-
peare mulberry -tree, and the classically inclined
Malone, who painted the decorated bust of the
poet in the chancel a snowy white, are both of
them pilloried. It is hard to say what might be-
come of the man who should break into the tomb
and find it empty ; for his offense the pillory
SHAKSPEARE'S BOXES 225
would seem to be too mild an instrument of ven-
geance.
Of course there are those, and they are largely
in the majority, who hold to a very different
opinion. It is only fair that these should have a
hearing, though, in truth, thev have never been
backward about helping themselves to what
seems to be something more than a just share of
public attention. Mr. J. Parker Norris some
time ago relieved his mind in the Manhattan
Magazine. He believes that Shakspeare was en-
tombed in an hermetically-sealed coffin and that it
is more than likely the poet's body is even now
in a state of perfect preservation. These are his
words :
"Shakspeare was buried under the chancel of
the Church of Holy Trinity at Stratford-upon-
Avon, alongside of the graves of his wife, his
daughter Susanna Hall. John Hall her husband,
and Thomas Nash the husband of Elizabeth, who
was the daughter of John and Susanna Hall.
These graves he side by side, and stretch across the
chancel of the church immediately in front of the
rail separating the altar from the remainder of the
chancel.
The situation of these graves shows that Shak-
speare and his family were persons of importance
in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, and makes it
very probable that the poet was buried in an her-
metically-sealed leaden coffin. Such coffins were
commonly used in those days for those whose rela-
tions could afford them. If this conjecture be true,
the remains will certainly be found in a much bet-
ter state of preservation than they would be in
226 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
were a mere wooden coffin alone employed, although
even in the latter case, we must not despair of find-
ing much that would be of utmost value in deter-
mining Shakspeare's personal appearance.
Not many years ago some graves of those who
were buried about the same time that Shakspeare
was entombed were opened at Church Lawford, in
England, and the faces, figures, and even the very
dresses of their occupants were found to be quite
perfect. Half an hour after the admission of air
they became heaps of dust. A long enough period
elapsed, however, to enable a photographer to
make successful pictures of them, had any suitable
preparations been thought of.
Think of a photograph of Shakspeare 'in his
habit as he lived.' Would not such a relic be of in-
estimable value to the world, and what would not
be given for such a treasure?"
Does anyone in his sober senses, who has given
the matter an hour's serious and intelligent con-
sideration, believe that the body of Shakspeare
could lie unexamined in a tomb where it must
sooner or later disintegrate, and that it could
remain in that tomb unexamined three hundred
years, during most of which time the entire civi-
lized world was so anxious to know all about the
poet that an essayist could feel himself justified
in exclaiming, "Think of a photograph of
Shakspeare 'in his habit as he lived.' Would not
such a relic be of inestimable value to the world,
and what would not be given for such a treas-
ure?"
"What would not be given?" — well, most any-
SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 227
thing would be given, including permission to
open the tomb and make the coveted pictures.
No such price as the opening of the tomb has,
according to the Stratford authorities, ever been
paid, nor do we believe that the aforesaid author-
ities will ever incline to the payment of such a
price. The reason is not far to see. Before you
photograph a man, you must make certain of his
presence. The positive assurance that the tomb
in Holy Trinity is at the present moment the
actual guardian of the poet's bones, that those
bones had been seen by competent witnesses, and
that accurate photographs of them had been
made and could be viewed by all who were in-
clined to examine them, would, even were the
bones in a partly disintegrated condition, increase
rather than diminish the importance of Stratford
in general and of Holy Trinity in particular.
The entire civilized world would be interested in
such an assurance. Still the vault remains, ac-
cording to the custodians, unopened. Do I be-
lieve that it has never been opened? Good
reader, I believe nothing of the kind. I think I
see in the reluctance to open that tomb very good
evidence that it has been opened, and that those
who have the largest personal interest in the mat-
ter are satisfied that the public opening of what
is known as the Shakspeare tomb would have a
disastrous effect upon the Shakspeare-myth, and
upon Stratford revenues.
No other tomb, so far as I know, has ever re-
228 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
sisted the pressure that has been brought to bear
upon the vault in Holy Trinity. Men have ex-
plored the mummy-pits of Egypt, and it is
believed by those who are competent to form an
opinion in the matter that the veritable body of
Cleopatra now rests in a glass case in the British
Museum. Men have digged in the tombs of
Agamemnon, Kassandra and Eurymedon, and in
the very dust of Achilles and Ajax. The dis-
covery of the relics of Theseus has been reported.
The tomb of the Scipios has been opened. Even
the sacred relics of the Buddha have been
brought to light, and are now reverently pre-
served by the followers of his faith. To come
down to later times, the tombs of Charles Martel,
Charlemagne, Frederick II. of Germany, Queen
Elizabeth, Charles I. of England, Tycho Brahe,
Raphael, Emanuel Swedenborg, and George
Washington have been opened. Is the tomb of
the Bard-of-Avon more sacred than all these
tombs? How are we to account for the fact that
the vault in Stratford has resisted and still re-
sists greater pressure than was necessary to open
all these and many other tombs in every part of
the world? There can be, so it seems to me, but
one answer — the Shakspeare tomb has not re-
sisted the pressure, but has been opened and
thoroughly explored. Why, then, have we no
authentic account of such opening? My dear
reader, ask the vicar of Holy Trinity and the
custodians of the tomb that question.
SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 229
Mr. Norris is persuaded that the body of
Shakspeare was buried in an hermetically-sealed
leaden coffin. What reason has he for such a
persuasion? He tells us it was customary to bury
persons of distinction in such coffins when their
friends were able to meet the increased expense.
But there is nothing to indicate that Shaks-
peare's relatives would be likely to indulge the
dead body in any luxury of the kind, and we have
no account of any provision made by the poet
himself for so expensive an interment. A leaden
coffin would certainly have rendered the body rea-
sonably safe, but the very fact that the family
cut those doggerel lines over the vault to prevent
desecration inclines us to believe that no one knew
anything about a leaden coffin. Such a coffin
would have made the disagreeable epigraphic
curse wholly unnecessary.
Why should the Shakspeare family bury the
leaden coffin? Vaults are usually supposed to do
away with the necessity for earth-burial. The
cases are rare in which the floor of a vault has
been dug up in order to inhume a coffin of any
kind. No, reader, there was neither leaden cof-
fin nor earth-burial. If the body of Shakspeare
was ever placed in that vault, it was placed there
incased in a wooden coffin and that coffin rested
upon the floor of the vault, which may have been
of stone, cement, or common earth. There is
an old tradition that cannot be traced back of
1693, that Shakspeare's wife and daughter de-
230 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
sired to be laid in the same grave with the poet,
but that "not one, for fear of the curse above
said, dare touch his gravestone." The tradition
is nothing more than a tradition, but it shows us
something of the power of superstition in an age
of great ignorance, and it helps us to see how
those four lines may have prevented Shakspeare's
bones from being thrown into the charnel-house ;
but that the rude curse had any terror for en-
lightened antiquaries, or that it now renders the
opening of the vault difficult, it would be folly
to assert. Curses of the kind were not uncom-
mon. Many tombs have been opened in the face
of even more ferocious imprecations. The old
Romans were in the habit of denouncing upon the
stones over their dead whoever should dare to dis-
turb the bones beneath. By the Aurelian gate
was the following inscription belonging to the
Pagan period:
C. TVLIVS. C. L.
BARNAEVS
OLLA. EJVS. SI. QVI
OV VIOLARIT. AD
INFEROS. NON RECIPIATVR.
C. Tullius Barnaeus. If any one violate this urn,
let him not be received into the Infernal Regions
(i. e., Elysium).
Maitland has recorded one to the same import
among the Christian remains in the Lapidarian
Gallery :
SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 231
MALE. PEREAT. INSEPVLTVS
IACEAT. NON. RESVRGAT
CVM. IVDA. PARTEM. HABEAT
SI QVIS. SEPVLCHRVM. HVNC
VIOLAVERIT.
If any one violate this Sepulchre, let him perish
miserably, lie unburied, and not arise, but have his
lot with Judas.*
Here is a Greek inscription:
"I summon to the guardianship of this tomb the
lower Gods, Pluto, Demeter, Persephone, and all
the others. If any one despoils it, opens it, or in
any way disturbs it, by himself or an agent, may
his journey on land be obstructed, on the sea may
he be tempest-tossed and thoroughly baffled and
driven about in every way. May he suffer every
ill, chills and fevers, remittent and intermittent,
and the most repulsive skin diseases. Whatever is
injurious and disturbing in life may it fall on him
that dares remove anything from this tomb."
The following is from the Phoenician of Es-
munazar, King of the Two Sidons: t
"I have departed hence,
And am no more forever.
Like the day I vanished,
Hath my spirit faded from the world,
And my voice
Ceased from sounding in the ears of men.
Hush! Here sleeps a king,
Encoffined in the tomb
He builded with his wealth;
*Petegrew: "Collection of Epitaphs, p. 194.
tMarvin: "Flowers of Song from Many Lands," p. 119.
232 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVEB.
Bequeathing unto whomsoe'er
Shall move his bones,
Or dig for treasure in his mould'ring dust,
A curse that shall continue,
And consume his race:
To him and his be there no rest for evermore,
Nor fruit of any toil;
Let him, when dead, lie rotting on the field,
His bones the prey of jackals.
I have departed hence,
To dwell no more with men;
And, like the day I vanished,
Hath my spirit faded into nothingness:
Farewell."
What is the upshot of the whole matter ? This :
The body of Shakspeare, if it was ever deposited
beneath the stone that does not bear the poet's
name and that is defaced by four lines of con-
summate doggerel, was there deposited in an or-
dinary wooden coffin which was left resting upon
the floor of the vault, and which in due time crum-
bled away. The last vestige of the person of
Shakspeare has, I doubt not, returned to earth.
There is one other possibility painful to contem-
plate, and which need not detain us here. Hun-
dreds of graves in England and elsewhere have
been pillaged. There have been, and there are
today, many persons who would be glad to open
the tomb of Shakspeare by stealth, no other way
being possible. There are even those who would
be glad to plunder it for gain. But no one who
should succeed in entering that vault would care
SHAKSPEARE'S BONES 233
to report himself, unless he had found something
to justify in the eyes of the world his audacity,
and it may be, sacrilege. What discovery could
justify his act in the eyes of Stratford and Holy
Trinity? No discovery of any kind, and cer-
tainly not the discovery of nothing at all.
It has been suggested that the word "moves" in
the famous curse over what is believed to be the
Shakspeare vault, should be understood as having
the sense of ranoves, and if I am right in think-
ing that the inscription was intended only to pre-
vent the bones from being cast into the charnel-
house, then certainly no malediction, stated or im-
plied, stands in the way of a thorough examina-
tion of the tomb and its contents, should any con-
tents be discovered. Of course, as has been said,
there is uncertainty with regard to the exact lo-
cation of Shakspeare's last resting place. Less
than a century ago the slab over the vault, hav-
ing sunk so as to be somewhat below the level of
the pavement, was removed, and another stone
was substituted. Shakspeare's name was not upon
the original stone, nor is it cut into the stone that
replaces it, though the lines appear upon both
slabs. There is no absolute certainty that the
new stone was placed in exactly the position pre-
viously occupied by the old one. Still there could
be little difficulty in finding the remains, suppos-
ing them to be in existence, for one way or the
other, the body of Shakspeare must have been de-
posited near the present stone which, in all proba-
bility, covers at least a portion of the vault.
234 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
The Stratford authorities cannot plead the use-
lessness of an examination of the Shakspeare
tomb as an excuse for their refusal to permit such
examination, for the recovery of the skull would
set at rest various questions that have for a long
time disturbed the minds of students and critics.
It would determine the value of the Bust, the
Kesselstadt Death-Mask, the Droeshout engrav-
ing, the Janssen portrait on wood in the collection
of the Duke of Somerset, the Chandos portrait,
the Croker portrait, the Hunt picture at the
Birthplace, and a number of other representations
of one kind or another.
There are many and good reasons why the
tomb should be opened, at least from the anti-
quarian's point of view, but never will the Strat-
ford authorities give consent. It would mean,
as has been shown, the collapse of a Shakspeare-
myth, involving the fortunes of Holy Trinity and
the prosperity and importance of Stratford-upon-
Avon.
HOLOGRAPHS
"O most gracious and worshipful Lord God,
wonderful in Thy providence, I return all possible
thanks to Thee for the care Thou hast always
taken of me. I continually meet with signal in-
stances of this Thy providence, and one act yester-
day, when I unexpectedly met with three old MSS.,
for which, in a particular manner, I return my
thanks, beseeching Thee to continue the same pro-
tection to me a poor helpless sinner, and that for
Jesus Christ his sake."
— Prayer of Thomas Hearne the Antiquary.
HOLOGRAPHS
NOTHING connected with the life of a
great man is, strictly speaking, private.
My humble neighbor's fireside is his own, and
of it no man may despoil him; but Shakspeare
has no fireside that may not be invaded. Who-
ever will, may enquire into the dramatist's do-
mestic and other affairs without the remotest
approach to indelicacy of any kind. The great
man is something more than a man ; he is so much
of the world as he has enriched, and the age in
which he lived lives and will always live in him.
Browning's son has been censured for publishing
certain letters that passed between his father and
mother before their marriage ; but those who cen-
sure him forget the greatness of the two poets,
who, because of that greatness, belong to the en-
tire world. A dealer may vend those letters if he
will, and who will pay for them may have them
with wrong to no man. A late decision of the Court
of Appeal in England declares the right to pub-
lish certain letters of Charles Lamb to reside with
their present possessor. By inference, at least,
the decision gives the receiver of letters the right
to publish such letters without the consent of the
writer or of his executor or other legal repre-
sentative should he be no longer living. The de-
cision, so far as it affects the unpublished letters
of men and women in no way connected with pub-
237
238 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
lie life, may be wrong, but it only recognizes a
fact already established and acted upon, that the
letters of distinguished persons belong in a cer-
tain sense to all the world, and the collector may
be said to hold them in trust. When the library
of the late William Andrews, who wrote so many
valuable books on antiquarian subjects, was cata-
logued for public sale, it was found that more
than half of the books to be offered by the auc-
tioneer had been enriched by the insertion of one
or more letters written by authors. The owner
of a valuable letter may have a legal right to
destroy it, but no man could have an ethical
right to drop a letter written by Shakspeare, were
he so fortunate as to possess such a treasure, into
the fire, nor could he, without wronging his fel-
low men, deliberately destroy an epistle addressed
by Abelard to Heloise or one written by either
Vittoria Colonna or Michael Angelo. Private
ownership can never extinguish the world's inter-
est in its great men and in such treasures as
closely connect themselves with the sons and
daughters of genius. The Italian government
will not permit the owner of a celebrated picture
or statue to sell the work of art to one who in-
tends to remove it from the country. Egypt has
so absolutely and unconditionally forbidden the
exposing of her antiquities for sale that the large
and famous museums of the world find it hard to
obtain even the ordinary remains of ancient times
that one expects to find in extensive collections of
antiquities.
HOLOGRAPHS 239
I never called myself an autograph collector,
but m} r fondness for books and my great interest
in the literary life, as well as my large acquaint-
ance with men and women who "drive the quill,"
have resulted in a library table drawer full of
letters, documents, and mementos that have
yielded a large return in the purest intellectual
satisfaction. Many delightful evenings have been
passed in fellowship and communion with those
creased and time-worn treasures. I am sure they
have not made me selfish, for I am ready at all
times to unlock that treasure-house of delight for
the gladness and satisfaction of others.
Here we have a letter from Joel Barlow ad-
dressed to his friend John Fellows, who was in
his day and generation an author of some note,
though few in these later times know very much
about him. So fades the glory of this world.
He was a wise man who described fame as a
flower upon the bosom Death. To most of us
Fellows is now little more than a name in a bio-
graphical dictionary, if indeed he is even that.
Barlow was a Congregational clergyman and a
chaplain in the American army. Later, when the
world, if not the flesh and the devil, had com-
passed him about, and grasped him tight, he
was admitted to the bar. Then as now the law
led on to political preferment, and so it came to
pass that our author became consul in Algiers.
He was also minister plenipotentiary to the
French Government, and in the autumn of 1812
240 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
he received an invitation to a conference with
Napoleon at Wilnar in Poland. He died before
the meeting with the Emperor. Our interest in
Barlow centers in none of his public achieve-
ments and honors, but in his literary work. He
wrote "Hasty Pudding" and "The Columbiad,"
both of which are conspicuous among early con-
tributions to American literature. Few who
think of him as a preacher of the Gospel and a
compiler of one of our New England hymn-books
know that he forsook the faith of his early days
and became a warm personal friend and disciple
of Thomas Paine. The following letter will
show how far he wandered from the religious be-
lief in which he was educated and which he once
preached. Here, so far as I know, this letter
finds itself in cold print for the first time:
Hamburg, May 23rd, 1795.
To John Fellows,
New York.
Dear Sir:
I received a few weeks ago by Capt. Jenkins
your favor of the 12th March, with the bundle of
pamphlets and books. This being the first copy I
have seen of the New York Edition of the "Ad-
vice." I am mortified to find it so full of errors.
It is enough for me to answer for my own non-
sense without having an additional quantity forged
by the Printers. I now send you a corrected Edi-
tion of the Four Political Pieces, which I wish
you to publish in the order in which I place them,
with the title I have just put to the whole. I do
this because you mention your intention of publish-
HOLOGRAPHS 241
ing a new edition, which I hope you have not done
before this arrives as I am very anxious you should
make use of this corrected edition.
You will observe that in this edition no notice
is taken of First and Second parts in the "Advice,"
nor of the remaining three chapters which it was
my intention to write, but which my other occupa-
tions have prevented me from writing. As to the
title of the "Advice," I always felt it to be an un-
fortunate one, but it is now too late to remedy the
matter. It must take its fate in the world in its
present form. But you can in the advertisements
mention the subjects of the different chapters.
I think it will continue to be a book of a steady,
slow sale, but I never expected it to be rapid.
As to the little poem I sent to Carey, I care noth-
ing about it. If it should come to you, you may
publish it, but without the Dedication. I don't
know Mr. Carey; but a man of common civility
would at least have answered my letter, which he
has not done.
I have seen sometime ago N. W.'s criticisms on
the "Advice." It is no more than what I might ex-
pect. I have no doubt of his friendship for me.
His intentions are much better than his arguments.
I had seen before what he wrote on the French
Revolution, — a thing he knows nothing about. He
took his text, I suppose, from an English minister-
ial paper where a decree was made for the Con-
vention that "Death is an Eternal Sleep" — a de-
cree which the Convention certainly never heard of
unless they may have read it in an English paper
or in Mr. Webster's book. It is in this manner that
the people of Europe have been perpetually misin-
formed with respect to the affairs of France, and
it is not strange that the people of America should
share in this imposition so long as you find grave
historians who will sit down in their closets in New
£42 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
York and give them the French Revolution from
the mouths of their enemies.
I am sorry to find such a slavish spirit of aris-
tocracy as is manifest in America. It is what I
foresaw from the beginning of the Funding System,
and it might have been known to be the object of
its authors by those who knew the men. But I
likewise see a retrograde march in this phalanx of
little despots. It is impossible for them to with-
stand the great current of opinion that will set the
other way with a vast accumulation of force as soon
as the French Revolution shall be understood, and
especially when a like change of government shall
take place in England, which is an event as irresist-
ible as the march of Time. We have many good
things in American character, but it does not sig-
nify for us to deny that on subjects in general we
are the apes of European opinions. We receive
some of these opinions from France, but most of
them come from England, and when good opinions
shall prevail there, there will be no danger of our
own.
I rejoice at the progress of good sense over the
damnable imposture of Christian mummery. I had
no doubt of the effect of Paine's 'Age of Reason."
It must be cavilled at awhile, but it must prevail.
Though things as good have been often said, they
never were said in as good a way. I am glad to
see a translation, and so good a one, of Boulanger's
Christianisme Devoile." It is remarkably correct
and elegant. I have not had time to compare the
whole of the translation with the original, but so
far as I have compared it I never saw a better one.
Some few mistakes indeed I have noticed which
appear to be the effect of haste. I have not at this
moment the translation by me, or I would point
them out to you for correction in another edition.
I wish Mr. Johnson would go on and give us the
HOLOGRAPHS 243
next volume — the history of that famous mounte-
bank called St. Paul. I should think these two books
would give such a currency to the author in Amer-
ica that the translator might be encouraged to go on
and complete his whole works, especially "L'An-
tiquite Devoile," and his "Oriental Despotism." I
do not know that these books have been translated,
but if they have, they are probably not rendered so
well as this translator would render them.
I need not request your particular attention to
the press in this new edition of my works. I ob-
serve with pleasure in the "Letter to the Piedmon-
tese" there are only two slight mistakes (page 40)
and I will not swear that these were not in the
copy.
You need not send me any more after you get
this, as I shall, I hope, be with you before winter.
I wish you would not suffer a word of this letter
to go into a newspaper.
With thanks for the agreeable presents you sent
me, I salute you with fraternal affection.
Joel Barlow.
Apropos of Barlow's religious defection, Dr.
Moncure D. Conway told me the sad story of the
spiritual unrest and final rejection of Christianity
as a divinely revealed system of faith by Sarah
Flower Adams. Mrs. Adams was, it will be re-
membered, the author of the lovely hymn,
"Nearer, My God, to Thee" — a hynm that can
never become obsolete. The "South Place Hymn
Book" (published in 1841) was largely the work
of the Rev. W. J. Fox, who was the pastor of the
South Place Chapel, and his gifted parishioner,
Sarah Flower Adams. The congregation wor-
244 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
shipping in the chapel was at first liberal Uni-
tarian, but under the ministry of Mr. Fox it be-
came rationalistic, and Dr. Conway's preaching
greatly increased the liberal sentiment for which
it now stands. The hymn "Nearer, My God, to
Thee" was printed first in the book above named
and it is hard to believe, what is beyond all doubt
true, that the beautiful hymn, a portion of which
President McKinley repeated most devoutly upon
his deathbed, was written by one who had aban-
doned belief in revealed religion.
In one's mental attitude toward Thomas Paine
it is right to keep in view the fact that public
opinion of the man and his work was largely
formed by the avowed opponents of Paine, some
of whom hesitated at nothing that could do him
harm. I cannot think the author of "The
Age of Reason" was all that his biographer
represents him to have been, but he had his vir-
tues, and some of his deeds were noble and wor-
thy of remembrance. The discussion of Barlow's
letter with Conway led the latter to address me
the following note which I took, some time ago,
from the little drawer in my library table and
fastened into the second volume of Conway's
"Life of Thomas Paine," where whoever pur-
chases the book will find it when the auctioneer
deals with my estate:
Dear Sir:
Thank you for your "Christ Among the Cattle."
It was the much-abused "Tom Paine" who began
HOLOGRAPHS 245
in this country the protest against cruelty to ani-
mals, in the Pennsylvania Magazine, which he
edited (May, 1775). In his "Age of Reason"
Paine declared:
"The moral duty of man consists in imitating the
moral goodness and beneficence of God in the crea-
tion towards all His creatures. Seeing, as we do, the
goodness of God to all men, we have an example
calling upon all men to practice the same toward
each, and consequently everything of persecution
and revenge between man and man, and everything
of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty."
This I mention simply because I think it may in-
terest you. And for the same reason I will call
your attention (though you may have seen it) to
the papyrus discovered in Egypt (1904) by the Ox-
ford explorers, Rev. Drs. Grenfell and Hunt, con-
taining a lost saying of Jesus. The parentheses of
the discoverers are conjectural and I think one of
them is erroneous, but there is no doubt about the
authenticity of the papyrus (much mutilated) :
Jesus said, (Ye ask who are these) that draw
us (to the kingdom, if) the kingdom is in heaven?
The birds of the air and all beasts that are under
the earth or upon the earth, and the fishes of the
sea, (these are they which draw) you, and the king-
dom of heaven is within you; and whoever shall
know himself shall find it."
In the course of my fifty years of ministry I
have dealt much with the subject that interests
you so greatly. It is complicated by the contention
of the scientific defenders of vivisection that de-
struction of animals to obtain knowledge — food for
the mind — is more moral than destruction for bod-
ily food. And many point out that in attacking
those who destroy animals for ornament we strain
at the gnat while swallowing the camel of cruel
hunting (of which President Roosevelt is so fond,
246 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
— just now slaughtering happy creatures of earth
and air in Virginia, while sending Root here to de-
nounce the wickedness of Hearst in his name!).
The sportsman — in all the world the chief of-
fender — has inherited his killing propensity from
his four-footed ancestors who hunt their prey, and
we can hardly hope to civilize him. A more serious
difficulty is our European and American inheritance
of the carniverous habit. It is, generally speaking,
impossible to exist without the butcher shop. I
have known two or three successful vegetarians,
but most of these succumbed at their first serious
illness. A lovely maiden of my London chapel died
of that experiment, and another is now a skeleton
doomed to die soon because, though conscious of the
mistake, she cannot take flesh on her stomach. I
sometimes fear that I was too emotional and too in-
cautious in preaching about 'our poor relations, the
animals.'
I sympathize deeply with the spirit of your im-
pressive discourse, and especially with what you
say of the destruction of bird-life for fashionable
ornamentation, for that may touch the heart of
woman. And I see little hope for true reformation
in any direction except where the woman is hiding
her leaven in the measure of our coarse masculine
meal.
Cordially,
Moncure D. Conway.
When one is taking interesting letters from his
table-drawer and presenting them, so far as con-
tents are concerned, to readers with whom he has
no personal acquaintance and who will give for
them in return nothing beyond the paltry price
of the book in which they are printed, it is
HOLOGRAPHS 247
surely right for him to select the letters that
are to be sacrificed. I say sacrificed because
never before, so far as I know, were they put
into print for all the world to read and dis-
cuss. Put into print, they become in a certain
sense the property of all who care to read them,
and never again can the nominal owner lock them
entirely up in that mysterious table-drawer where
so many treasures repose. He may do what he
will with paper and ink-scratches, but the thought
and feeling that give value to the document are
henceforth and forever public property. If then
I may bring out what letters I like most to share
with my readers, let me continue to press upon
their attention those that interest us in the bril-
liant men and women who lead the hosts of dis-
sent in religious controversy. Here is a letter
from one of the most courageous of men, who was
at once a profound scholar and a lover of truth,
and of his race as well :
Liverpool, Oct. 25, 1845.
Rev'd and dear Sir:
I have been inexcusably long in answering your
gratifying and interesting letter. To the fault of
delay I will not add the offense of self-justification
or fruitless apology: but, in reliance on your for-
bearing disposition, proceed at once to the main
subject of interest between us.
In your general position, that mere textual con-
troversy can never settle the points at issue be-
tween the Unitarians and their orthodox opponents,
I certainly concur. No doubt there is a preliminary
question to be set at rest, as to the degree and kind
248 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
of authority to be conceded to the Scriptures, and a
controversy between two parties secretly at vari-
ance on this preliminary is an aimless battle of the
blind. That the Unitarians in general do differ
from other churches on this point, that they see a
larger human element in the sacred Writings, that
they are more prepared to acknowledge the mani-
fest discrepancies in the historical portions, and in-
conclusive reasonings in the doctrinal, that, practic-
ally, their submission to Scripture is conditional on
its teaching no nonsense, I am fully persuaded.
And believing this to be their state of mind, — often
ill-defined to themselves, — I cannot but disapprove
as insincere their professions of agreement with the
orthodox on everything except Interpretation, their
appeal to the Scriptures under the misleading name
of the Word of God, their affected horror at every-
one who plainly speaks about the Bible the truths
which they themselves, if they would dare to con-
fess it, privately hold; and the various other arti-
fices of theological convention, by which they de-
lude themselves and hang out false colors to the
world. To this moral untruthfulness and the un-
reality it gives to their position, much more than
to their errors and unsoundness as interpreters, do
I attribute the small amount of their success as a
religious sect. I believe indeed, with you, that their
interpretations of the writings of the Apostles John
and Paul are altogether untenable, and that, so
long as the people gather their theological faith
without discrimination, from the Epistles and the
Fourth Gospel, our doctrines cannot prevail.
But then I am unable to accept the other half of
your proposition; I cannot admit that, because the
Unitarians, as interpreters, are wrong, the Evangel-
icals are right. If the Apostle Paul could come and
hear one of Hugh McNeile's sermons, I am per-
suaded he would be aghast with indignation, and
HOLOGRAPHS 249
protest vehemently against the wretched perver-
sion of his letters to the early churches. So long as
both parties take for granted that Paul, with full
knowledge of the destinies of Christianity as the
religion of successive ages, wrote on the theory of
human nature in its moral relations to God and laid
down universal truths as to the scheme of the Di-
vine Government from the Creation to the judg-
ment, so long both parties must go astray. No just
view can, in my opinion, be reached till it is remem-
bered that the Apostle wrote everything from an
erroneous assumption as to the approaching end of
the world. This is not a slight matter which can
be put aside as an incidental imperfection in his
opinions. From its very nature, so grand, so trans-
porting, it necessarily absorbed everything into it,
tinged all his theory of the Past and his visions of
the Future, determined his estimate of Christ's
mission and gave a peculiarity of the highest im-
portance to his sentiments in reference to the rela-
tive position of the Hebrew and the Pagan worlds.
From their entirely missing his point of view, the
Evangelicals appear to me to be no less completely
wrong than the Unitarians in their interpretation
of Paul. I do not know whether the publications
connected with the Liverpool Controversy in 1839
have attracted your attention at all, but if they
have, you will recognise in my present statements
the opinions more fully expressed in the "Fifth
and Sixth Lectures" of that Series. Though ques-
tions of interpretation shrink to a very diminished
importance as soon as we cease to stake our faith
upon them, a clear understanding of what the Apos-
tle Paul really meant is more than a mere matter
of curiosity. It is a vast relief to men accustomed
to a Calvinistic reading of the Epistles to discover
in them, without the slightest straining, a very dif-
ferent system of ideas, and the "Sixth Lecture" to
250 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
which I refer has, I know, among Joseph Barker's
people been the means of bringing hundreds over
from the ranks of orthodoxy.
Still, no satisfactory way can be made toward
the pure truth and the free heart till the prevalent
Bibliolatry is overthrown. And, for my own part, I
have never shrunk and hope I never shall shrink
from taking my little part in the iconoclastic work.
At the same time, I so heartily reverence all sincere
and earnest religion that the simply destructive pro-
cedure of controversy is only half welcome to me, —
performed with some reluctance. I am always
ready for it in self-defence, but dislike it as a meas-
ure of aggression. To draw forth the permanent
elements of Christianity from the Scriptures; to
impart to men such a consciousness of the adapta-
tion of these to their nature that all doubt of their
sufficiency shall become impossible; to make no dis-
guise about the temporary and questionable charac-
ter of all the rest; to attack only inordinate claims
set up for it when requisite, — but for the most part
to let those claims die out by forming men's spiritual
and moral taste on better models and by the constant
presence of higher ideas; this appears to me to be
the true course for those who love Christianity for
what it is more than they dislike its counterfeits
for what they are not. Bigots of all classes will refuse
a hearing to those who — with or without a name —
boldly challenge their favorite opinions; and all
other men — such at least is my cheering faith — are
more readily drawn to noble and true ideas than
driven from mean and false ones. What compari-
son, for instance, can there be between the amaz-
ing influence of Channing on the sentiments of his
age and the most brilliant success that could attend
on any writings that stopped with the disproof of
prevalent theological errors and superstitions? I
think, however, you will admit that I am not charge-
HOLOGRAPHS 251
able with reserve on the question of Inspiration,
and that especially in the "Second Lecture of the
Liverpool Controversy" ('The Bible, what it is, and
what it is not"), the very sentiments to which you
attach importance are plainly advanced.
At all events, my dear Sir, I am greatly indebted
to you for your valuable suggestions. Possibly if I
were a man of leisure, I should put your sugges-
tions at once into practice. But my course of la-
bour as minister of a large congregation, as Pro-
fessor in a public college, as an Editor of a Review,
as, not least, father of a large family that I must
educate at home, is very much marked out for me;
and I must hope by faithfulness in these several
callings to do incidentall}' some small portion of
the good work which your kind opinion would as-
sign to me by practice or precept.
Believe me Rev. and dear Sir,
Yours with true regard,
James Martineau.
To the Rev. Geo. Crabbe.
Not all men have Dr. Martineau's mind; few
are gifted with his ability or dowered with his
wealth of scholarship. Yet earnest men are found
in every religious faith, and nowhere shall we
look in vain for brave souls intent on knowing
the truth. Here is a letter written by a man un-
known to fame. I spread it before my readers
not because of any interest in the writer, but be-
cause of the kindly and beautiful spirit reflected
in every word, and also because it seems to me
to fit into the t. ain of thought awakened by the
letters already given:
252 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
My dear Friend:
The questions contained in yours of the nine-
teenth and which cause you so much mental and
moral unrest are, in my opinion, unanswerable from
a purely scientific point of view. The question of
Immortality is open upon every side to doubt and
uncertainty. What Prof. Fiske has said in his
"Life Everlasting" appears to me to be the most
helpful and hopeful, if not absolutely the best sin-
gle treatise in the direction indicated in your letter.
My friend, a short time before his death, told me
that he regarded the question of Immortality as one
of probability only. He thought it amounted to
nothing more than a great and alluring hope. The
hope when entertained by noble souls is noble and
to be encouraged: when held by a rude and selfish
spirit it is base and of no value whatever. I share
in some degree his uncertainty, though I do not al-
ways possess his calm and tender trust in the good-
ness of the final outcome. There are some excellent
reasons for believing in the deathlessness of man's
spiritual nature, and those reasons seem to me to
rather gain than lose as the years go by. May it
not be that the noble and divine part of our race
will survive the shock of death, if, indeed, there is
any shock in death? Why should the great multi-
tude who have no worthy use for the few years they
have now and here, find themselves possessors of an
endless existence? Harriet Martineau, when dying,
said: "I have had a noble share of life, and I do
not ask for any other life." But I should say that
Miss Martineau was just the kind of woman to
make good use of an eternity, and I cannot but en-
quire, "What about the millions of men and women
who have not had a noble share of life?"
I am unable to answer your questions. All you
sav about Jesus I both believe and feel. There
HOLOGRAPHS 253
have been times in my life when the thought of him
saved me from absolute despair, and, it may be,
from suicide. To that extent, at least, I may speak
of Jesus as my Saviour. His ideal of life is the
highest of which we have any knowledge. His life
as recorded in the Gospels is the sweetest, the holi-
est, and in every way the best this world has ever
seen. There is a sense in which I worship him.
His memory and recorded words I love. Perhaps
I thus feel because of early religious training, for
I had, as you know, a Christian father and a
mother who prayed for me every day. I can never
get away from the power of my mother's life of
faith. It holds me fast as nothing else can. But
in all this there is, I am fully aware, no satisfying
and substantial foundation for religious certitude;
nor is there any approach to an answer for the
great question, "If a man die, shall he live again?"
My dear friend, we are neither of us young, and
very soon if there is any other side we shall know
it; if there is not, we shall not survive to regret it.
We can only conjecture with regard to eternity, but
we do know something about time and the life that
now is. We know that truth is better than a lie,
that purity it better than lust, that kindness is
better than cruelty, and so on to the end of the Ten
Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount.
What more do we require? If we are good and do
good we live to a worthy end, whether there be any
life beyond or not.
I do not think Col. Ingersoll can help you. I
had once a long conversation with Ingersoll to no
purpose whatever. He is a kind and good man, but
quite too much of a party pleader and stump
speaker. He treats spiritual matters just as he
deals with political questions, and there all his
power of helping troubled hearts and consciences
ends.
254 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
No, your questions cannot be answered, but you
can sit at the feet of the noblest of all our race, and
receive his spirit of love and service. We can both
of us follow Jesus, and that, in a poor, blind way, I
am endeavoring to do. We shall make no mistake
if we cast in our lot with him. There may be an-
other life and then, again, there may be no such life
— we cannot know, but we can do our duty, and
there, I suppose, is the end of the whole matter.
I wish I could help you, but I cannot help my-
self along the line you indicate, and surely I am
powerless to cast much light on the way over which
we must go.
I am truly and ever your friend,
Henry C. Appleton.
Again I open the little drawer in my library
table, and extract a letter by Theodore Parker :
Please do not show this page to anyone: it might
hurt the feelings of some of the parties.
Dear Sir:
This is a list of the best lecturers in and about
Boston. I put them in their order of merit, as it
seems to me:
R. W. Emerson (the King of Lecturers).
Wendell Phillips (anti-slavery, humane, schol-
arly, eloquent, and beautiful in matter and manner).
Prof. H. D. Ropes (a scientific man, learned,
exact, humorous, generous, liberal-minded. He
knows everything with great power of making
clear).
E. P. Whipple (literary, brilliant, witty, humor-
ous. He is a keen man, on the fence between the
"Hunkers" and the "other party").
Dr. O. W. Holmes (literary, brilliant, funny,
satirical; a little malignant, poetical, nice, sharp;
HOLOGRAPHS 255
born, bred, and living on the "Hunker" side of the
fence).
Then there are persons like Rev. T. W. Higgin-
son of Newburyport, Mass., Rev. Samuel Johnson
of Salem, Mass., and Wm. P. Atkinson, Esq., of
Brookline, Mass. There is one that I ought to men-
tion with those on the other side of the sheet: viz.
Rev. A. L. Stone of Boston. He is the minister
of a celebrated church in the city. He is orthodox,
able, generous, liberal, a good scholar, and quite
eloquent. I do not know him, but gather this from
report.
I do not find anyone to deliver the lectures on
Practical Mechanics. We have heard no such thing
in the English language. But Prof. H. D. Ropes
I think would do the thing better than any man in
America, if not too busy with his "Report on the
Geology of Pennsylvania." He has the knowledge,
the power of presenting it, and the desire to spread
the results of science before the working men to a
greater degree than any other man that I know of.
If you will write him a letter telling as well as may
be what you wish, I think he might lecture for you.
Truly yours,
Theodore Parker.
S. F. Seymour, Esq.
It is interesting to know that John Fiske
wished in the latter part of his life to disown his
little book on "Tobacco and Alcohol'* which he
published in 1869 through Leypoldt and Holt.
Dr. Moncure D. Conway told me that Mr. Fiske
in the closing years of his life endeavored to work
his way back to the Christian faith which he had
repudiated. How great was his success I do not
know, but certainly two steps were taken, as Mr.
256 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Fiske supposed, in that direction, — he delivered
and published his lecture on "Life Everlasting,"
to which reference is made in Mr. Appleton's let-
ter, and he requested that among the books com-
prising his collected works the "Tobacco and
Alcohol" should not have a place. The little book
is from a scientific point of view quite orthodox,
if Professor Miinsterberg may be allowed to rep-
resent either science or orthodoxy. There is no
reason to think that Mr. Fiske wished to unsay
anything printed in "Tobacco and Alcohol," but
it does appear that under the influence of an
awakened conscience he feared that the influence
of his book might be found upon the side of in-
temperance, for its purpose was to prove that "the
coming man will drink wine," and that "it does
pay to smoke." The book was a fierce and most
uncharitable onslaught upon Mr. James Parton,
who had published a very commonplace and not
over-interesting book called "Smoking and Drink-
ing," in which tobacco and alcohol are repre-
sented as being responsible for most of the wick-
edness and misery of our suffering world. This
is the letter which Fiske wrote in 1893 to Lynds
E. Jones, and which represents his final feeling
with regard to the book under discussion. As the
letter is brief and has, so far as I know, appeared
up to the present time nowhere else, it may not
be unwise to take it from the drawer for the en-
tertainment of my readers:
HOLOGRAPHS 257
Cambridge, Oct. 26, 1893.
Lynds E. Jones, Esq.,
Dear Sir:
The article in Appleton's "Cyclopaedia of
American Biography," Vol. II., p. 469, was written
by myself, and contains all needed facts, except as
regards the list of my published works. If you give
such a list at all, please omit "Tobacco and Alco-
hol"; omit the statement that I am publishing a
"History of the American People"; add "The Crit-
ical Period of American History," Boston, 1888;
"The Beginnings of New England," Boston, 1889;
"The War of Independence, for Young People,"
Boston, 1889; "Civil Government in the United
States," Boston, 1891; "The Discovery of Amer-
ica," 2 vols., Boston, 1892.
Yours very truly,
John Fiske.
To a letter of inquiry addressed to Houghton,
Mifflin & Company, a reply was returned under
date of June 2d, 1905, from which the follow-
ing excerpt is taken:
We wish to thank you for the information which
you send regarding Fiske's "Tobacco and Alcohol."
We know of this little book. Prof. Fiske made out
the list of his writings which he desired to have in-
cluded in the Standard Edition which we publish,
and he did not desire to have the little book you
refer to perpetuated for obvious reasons. It was
therefore left out. Our edition is the only author-
ized standard edition, and as we stated before, its
contents were arranged by Prof. Fiske, and it was
his intention that it should be regarded as the au-
thorized edition of his writings.
With best regards, we are
Yours very truly,
Houghton, Mifflin & Company.
258 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
The publishers do not say just what is to be
understood by those two words "obvious reason,"
but guided by Conway's statement the meaning
can be found, I think, with no great difficulty.
Yet there have been and there still may be found
men of even greater learning than was the pos-
session of Mr. Fiske, and men whose consciences
are quite as sensitive as was the newly-stirred
conscience of the author of "Tobacco and Alco-
hol" who have used and who still use both tobacco
and alcohol. Professor James has represented al-
coholic stimulation as standing to the poor and
unlettered in the place of symphony concerts and
literature, but he adds : "It is a part of the deeper
mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and
gleams of something that we immediately recog-
nize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many
of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what
in the totality is such a degrading poison." Pro-
fessor Miinsterberg tells us that "the master-
pieces of music and poetry which are beyond the
comprehension of the poor and unlettered have
been the result of the use of alcohol." There is
absolutely no period in history, as there is abso-
lutely no nation upon the earth, in which we do
not find evidence of this dependence upon stimu-
lants and narcotics. It has been estimated that of
alcoholic liquors there is an aggregate product
every year enough, if collected into one sea, to
float the united navies of the world. The esti-
mate is, I think, to be doubted, but certainly the
HOLOGRAPHS 259
amount is far beyond the thought of most of
those who give the matter consideration. Coffee
leaves are taken in the form of infusion by two
millions of the world's inhabitants, to say noth-
ing of the greater use of the coffee berry. Para-
guay and Chinese teas are consumed by more
than five hundred millions of our race. Opium is
taken by about four hundred millions. Every
year about 865,000,000 pounds of tobacco are
consumed. To tell the truth, I cannot but feel
sorry that Fiske's little book on "Tobacco and
Alcohol" is not included in the final and other-
wise complete set of his wonderfully interesting
and valuable works.
Here is a letter from Horace Greeley that,
while it has little other value, is of considerable
importance as a specimen of Mr. Greeley's indif-
ference to some of the common refinements of
civilized life:
New York, Sept. 27, 1852.
Sir:
I haven't the honor of knowing you from a side
of sole-leather, and cannot say that your epistolary
exhibitions have begotten in me any fervent desire
to make your acquaintance. I know nothing of
your essay on "Democracy," and I think I never
saw it, nor heard of it save in your letter.
I beseech you, if you suppose me in any manner
3'our debtor, to collect whatever amount may be
due you forthwith. Don't let it rest an hour, for
though I am not one penny in your debt, I desire
to have any suspicion that I might be, dispelled as
260 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
soon as possible. So bother me with no more let-
ters (as none will be answered), but trot out your
bears.
Yours,
Horace Greeley.
Here is a note from Henry Ward Beecher, ad-
dressed to the Rev. John Sullivan Dwight, who
was for some time a Unitarian preacher, and who
later edited "Dwight's Journal of Music." Mr.
Dwight was a musical critic of exceptional abil-
ity, and will be remembered as the author of a
little poem, the first stanza of which runs thus:
"Sweet is the pleasure
Itself cannot spoil!
Is not true leisure
One with true toil?"
Mr. Beecher's letter has in it all the directness
and wit for which the great Brooklyn preacher
was so distinguished:
Brooklyn, March 23rd, 1865.
My dear Mr. Dwight:
I am very much obliged to you for your reply.
It was useful. As to Mr. Thayer:
1st. What would he consider a good salary? Let
him say plainly.
2nd. To what extent is he willing to do the mu-
sical work of our congregation? i. e., the care and
training of the children, the conduct of our reli-
gious week-night meetings, and the training of our
congregation in singing.
In other words, would he make an enthusiasm
of our work, or would he hunger and thirst after
HOLOGRAPHS 261
Philharmonic grandeur and a National Superhuman
Choral Pentecostal Society for the Musical Regen-
eration of the World?
No man can be the musical pastor of a church
without undertaking a good deal of work.
Is he apt and influential with men in commu-
nity? Our congregation is large, and wrecks any
man who has no general in him.
I am truly yours,
H. W. Beecher.
P. S. Can you, by asking a question, tell me the
standing of Mr. Wilder of Bangor, Me.? He will
be known among musical convention men.
H. W. B.
The body of John Howard Payne, or so much
of it as could be found, was in 1883 removed
from the old grave in Tunis, and deposited in
Oak Hill Cemetery at Georgetown. The poet of
"Home, Sweet Home" died April 1st, 1852. Lit-
tle of the body was found after those thirty
years of burial, but the public was led to believe
that the entire skeleton was obtained, and that it
was brought to America. Even the bones had
become fine dust. A little gilt used in the con-
struction of the epaulets and the gilt stripes that
were on the sides of the trousers, with a button or
two of metal and a mere spicule of bone, were all
that was found. The real grave of Payne was
and still is upon the other side of the ocean,
where it should have remained undesecrated.
Mr. Horace Taylor was at the time of the
opening of Payne's grave the Consul at Mar-
262 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
seilles. Acting under instruction from the State
Department, he forwarded the body, or so much
of it as could be secured, to the United States.
An article in the New York Evening Post of Oct.
21, 1901, describing Mr. Taylor's part in the
removing of the body, did what it could to unde-
ceive the public in the matter of the exhumation.
I addressed Mr. Taylor a letter on the subject,
and received from him in return a letter of some
interest as showing the exact condition of the re-
mains. That letter is here given, and its lesson
is, I think, this, that the graves of distinguished
men should not be disturbed after time has hal-
lowed them:
Treasury Department, Washington, D. C.
October 26, 1901.
My dear Sir:
I am in receipt of your letter of October 23rd
with reference to the disinterment of the remains
of John Howard Payne as reported in an article in
a late number of the New York Evening Post. The
article in question was not altogether accurate.
The correspondent told me he had written it sev-
eral months ago, but it had been mislaid or for some
reason not published until now. It is not, as
stated, true that I was present at the time the cof-
fin containing Payne's remains was opened, al-
though my son was there and Mr. Reade, an offi-
cial of the British Government, and they reported
to me that the remains had substantially gone to
dust and little of the skeleton was left. The most
conspicuous features of the remains were the gold
buttons and traces of the gold leaf that had orna-
mented the uniform in which he was buried. It
HOLOGRAPHS 263
was thought desirable that such of his remains as
were left should be properly encased in a suitable
casket covered with lead, outside of which was put
a hardwood coffin, and a strong box still outside of
these. Enclosed in this way the remains were sent
by me to New York, as per instructions from the
State Department.
Very truly yours,
H. A. Taylor.
I treasure among my mementos of "the irre-
pressible conflict" which, when I was a youth,
filled all the land with wild disorder, this half of
a letter the poet Hayne addressed to some one
dear to him, but to me unknown:
Can we ever forgive the infernal people who
have reduced us to such wretched vassalage?
My chief delight in editing the "Southern Opin-
ion" is to have some opportunity of abusing the
Puritan, and, indeed, the whole Yankee Race.
I know not how long this may be permitted.
Some fine morning we may all be quietly clapped
in a Yankee Bastile! But what does it matter?
Life is worth but little now, and I don't see that
we need care very particularly about consequences.
Pray give our united love to Cousin Lucy, and
kiss "Douschka" for us. Willie often speaks of his
"Cousin Francis." He has grown much, and is
fond of his books.
Always Faithfully,
Paul H. Hayne.
There certainly can be no doubt in any mind
after a glance at the above fragment that the
gifted poet of the Sunny South was quite un-
reconstructed.
264 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
The next letter is a long one, but it seems to
me that its contents will justify an unabridged
transcript :
My dear Mr. Wilde:
How shall I apologize to you for my long neg-
lect to answer your kind and so highly prized let-
ter of May 11th? Shall I tell you that this is the
third attempt I have made to write to you, and that
sickness (not my own) interrupted the first, that
a fit of despondency or the blues broke up the sec-
ond attempt, and caused me to tear in pieces the
vile and unworthy answer to your beautiful letter,
and, finally, my wife's confinement prevented an-
other effort to write from being made until I could
assure you of her health as well as of my own.
I can say now that we are all well and in good
spirits; and in the word "all" I wish you to include
another little daughter whom we intend to name
"Florence," as my wife thinks it will jingle well
with Powers. She appears to be a fine sample of
what may be done in Tuscany, and I might fill sev-
eral pages with descriptions of her various excel-
lencies. But as I am writing to a grave philoso-
pher, and not to his sister, I shall forbear. My
wife at this moment is telling me that she will write,
and that Miss Wilde shall have all about this prod-
igy even to the most minute description of her toe
nails. This account she intends to insert in her
reply to the letter she received from your sister
soon after I received yours.
I received a letter full of kind expressions from
Col. Preston not long ago, and I answered it im-
mediately and assured him of his mistake in sup-
posing I had not written to him for a whole year.
It is true, however, that I did not write so often
as I should have done. The truth is, I write to
HOLOGRAPHS 265
him always with embarrassment, for I know not
how to express the high sense I entertain of his
noble conduct towards me. I fear to give utterance
to my thought lest my sincerity be suspected, and
then if I say too little I may appear unmindful of
his goodness. I feel much more at ease while I
think of doing something for him than I do while
writing to him. This is all wrong, I know very well,
yet I cannot help myself. I must feel so. But in
future I am resolved to write to him freely. I
need not say that his letter placed my mind at ease
in regard to pecuniary matters.
I am now in another studio. It is near the Gol-
doni Theatre, and I think it the finest studio in
Florence. The rooms are large and high and well
lighted, so that my statue appears to much greater
advantage than in the old studio. The statue is not
yet finished in clay, but there remains now but little
to be done, and I think I may safely say it has
been much improved since you saw it. There have
been no material alterations made, but instead
slight changes and modifications over the whole of
it so that the improvements appear as greater reali-
ties of flesh and movement of the parts. All this
you perceive in a moment on looking at it. It was
a nice thing to convey the statue from the old stu-
dio to the new one, and I constructed a machine for
the purpose which answered perfectly. It was
made on the principle of the universal joint, so that
the statue hung, as it were, like a pendulum, and
swayed gently in every direction according to the
irregular motion of the four men who bore the whole
concern on their shoulders. I believe this to have
been the first instance of carrying a clay model of
a standing statue the distance of half a mile with-
out the slightest injury.
Col. Thomson informed me lately that it was
possible you might not conclude to return here, he
266 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
r
having received a letter from which he so inferred.
This information brought on another fit of the
blues, for I had regarded your coming back to Flor-
ence as a thing to be counted on, and I had looked
forward to the time of your return with confidence
and extreme pleasure.
I have lately received a letter from the son of
Mr. Van Buren in reply to one written by me to
his father on the subject of the bust sent to him to
the care of Messrs. Goodhue & Co. In this letter
Mr. Van Buren authorizes his son to say that he
had no knowledge of ever having given me an order
for his bust. Judge of my surprise on reading such
a statement. Fortunately Mr. Clevenger is a wit-
ness to Mr. Van Buren's acknowledgement of hav-
ing given me an order, and at several different
times, while he (Mr. C.) was modeling another
bust of Mr. Van Buren. So I took the evidence of
Mr. Clevenger in writing, and I also wrote myself
a statement of the facts as they occurred, and sent
all in a letter to Messrs. Goodhue & Co., with di-
rections to publish them, and have the bust sold at
public auction in New York. Mr. Van Buren's
letter and my statement and Mr. Clevenger's evi-
dence together place the character of Mr. Van
Buren in rather an unfavorable light, — that is, if
the words of two humble individuals like Mr. Clev-
enger and myself will stand against the denial of
an ex-President of the United States. As you will
most probably see the correspondence in some
newspaper, I will not repeat it here. I merely men-
tion that he gave me the order verbally at the
time when he was about going into the presidential
chair, and he received my letter, as his son states,
announcing the arrival of the bust just as he was
leaving it, and this may account for his forgetful-
ness as well as for his patronage of the fine arts.
Mr. Van Buren sat, in the first instance, at my re-
HOLOGRAPHS 267
quest, and it was a long time after that he ordered
a marble copy of the bust. He said, "Let me pay
you for it," and I took him at his word, and charged
him perhaps a trifle over expenses — the charge was
$500.
Mr. Greenough has sent off the Washington, but
stays here himself, which I wonder at, for I think
he should be there to look to the placing of it. Col.
Thomson has left here for Paris on business, and
Greenough is about traveling with his wife on a
tour of pleasure to Milan, Munich, etc. Gov. Ever-
ett is here, but not in the city. Clevenger and I
are "cocks of the walk" among the Americans you
know here. Mr. Baldwin is living at a villa outside
of Florence.
Lady Bulwer and Mrs. Trollope have just left
Florence for the baths of Lucca. I saw but little
of them. Lady Bulwer became a great favorite
with Mr. Greenough. She is a fine looking woman,
as to person, with rosy cheeks and flashing eyes.
She tells pretty hard things about her husband, but
as I heard her say that she had been stung by a
wasp one day, by a bee on the next, and last night
had been bitten by a tarantula — all in Florence — I
thought it not difficult for Lady Bulwer to "stretch
it a little" in her stories, especially as a tarantula
here happens to be toothless.
Mr. Peale has not yet sent me the rattle-snake's
head, but do not give yourself any trouble about it,
as I can obtain engravings which with recollections
will enable me to do without it.
If there be anything in which I can serve you
do let me know of it and always rely on me as one
ever ready and eager to be of use to you. I have
written this hastily for fear of another breaking
off; and I dare not look it over for fear of being
tempted to burn it, it is written so badly in all re-
spects. I will do better in the future. My wife
268 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
joins me in best regards to your sister and to your-
self.
Believe me ever truly yours,
Hiram Powers.
Florence, July 12th, 1841.
There is good reason for believing that Pow-
ers was mistaken in thinking that ex-President
Van Buren had given him an order. Van Buren
was regarded in his day as a very trickish and
unreliable politician, but his private honesty was
never, so far as I knoAv, seriously challenged. We
are easily deceived. It is quite possible that both
Powers and his friend Clevenger were wrong,
though they were sure they had heard the order
given which Mr. Van Buren declared he never
gave and never intended to give. I know a paral-
lel case in which a brother and sister both profess
to have witnessed an engagement which they rep-
resent another brother to have made, and which
to my certain knowledge he did not make. So
sure are they of what is not true that nothing
short of a miracle could undeceive them. This
being an age far removed from heavenly won-
ders, the unkind error must continue to live its
own evil life to the end, and the wrong must go
unrighted. I cannot believe Mr. Van Buren a
miscreant, nor do I think the sculptor dishonest.
I count the case to be one of misunderstanding, in
which all the persons concerned were both honest
and wrong.
Here is a letter from one of the witnesses ap-
HOLOGRAPHS 269
pointed to view the remains of Abraham Lincoln
when they were entombed for the last time, and
whose duty it was to identify those remains from
a personal acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln during
his life. The interest that attaches to this letter
for us and others grows out of associations con-
nected with its contents, and not out of any pe-
culiar value that belongs to the manuscript itself.
In fact, the letter is type-written, the signature
only being the direct work of the writer's pen, so
that strictly speaking it is not a manuscript. The
letter is addressed to me, and is in response to
an inquiry concerning the condition of Mr. Lin-
coln's body when exhumed for reinterment.
Alton, EL, Dec. 12th, 1901.
My dear Sir:
I received a letter from you some time ago re-
garding the condition of the body of Abraham Lin-
coln which was lately reinterred at Springfield,
while I was acting Governor of this State. Your
letter was addressed to me at Springfield, and was
forwarded to me here, and mislaid until to-day,
when the same was found by me. In answer to
your inquiry I will say that the body was in an ex-
cellent state of preservation, and the features were
recognizable by any one who had ever seen Mr.
Lincoln. Even his clothing seemed to have been
little affected by the length of time since his first
burial. The splendid condition of the remains was
a very agreeable surprise to all who saw them. I
have not received your book. I am sorry that I did
not reply sooner, and beg your pardon for so care-
lessly mislaying your letter.
Yours very truly,
John J. Brenholt.
270 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
The body of Lincoln was thoroughly embalmed
by Dr. Thomas Holmes, who lived at the time in
Brooklyn, N. Y. The process, which was known
to Dr. Holmes only, was unlike any employed be-
fore his time and was a secret that he guarded
with great care until at last it was interred with
him in his grave.
During the Civil War Dr. Holmes embalmed
the bodies of a number of distinguished soldiers,
and so it came to pass that President Lincoln be-
came interested in the process and expressed a
wish that after his death his own body might be
embalmed by Dr. Holmes, should the Doctor be
living at the time.
Dr. Holmes advertised his art, and invited the
representatives of the press and a number of
prominent men to examine his claims. He ex-
hibited specimens of his work, some of which had
been embalmed more than thirty years. Few took
any interest in the discovery, and in disgust and
disappointment Dr. Holmes resolved to take the
secret with him to his grave. His last request
was that when he was dead his own remains should
not be embalmed, and his wish was respected.
When first entombed the remains of Lincoln
were deposited in a red cedar coffin which was en-
closed by a leaden coffin. Both coffins were placed
in a sarcophagus. An attempt was made to steal
the body, which led to a re-burial. A new grave
was dug in the crypt of the magnificent monu-
ment in Oak Ridge Cemetery at Springfield, 111.,
HOLOGRAPHS 271
and on the fourteenth of April, 1887, the leaden
coffin was placed in this grave, which was then
filled in with six feet of concrete and covered with
the sarcophagus.
On the 26th of September, 1901, the last en-
tombment of the body of Abraham Lincoln took
place, and it is thought that never again can any
occasion arise for the removal of the remains, as
the monument beneath which it reposes is in every
way satisfactory and worthy of the memory of
the great man whose sacred dust it guards.
At a conference of the Monument Commission-
ers which took place in the Memorial Hall con-
nected with the Monument, the question of open-
ing the coffin was discussed. It was necessary to
view the body for the purpose of identification,
so that there might be for all time a certainty in
the public mind that the sacred dust was actually
contained in the tomb beneath the Monument that
a grateful people had reared to the memory of
the illustrious dead. Everyone was excluded from
the room except members of the Commission and
the Lincoln Guard of Honor and the workmen
who were to break open the metal casing. It was
the first time since May 13th, 1887, that the re-
mains were exposed to view. The features and
hands were found, as Gov. Brenholt stated in the
letter quoted, "in an excellent state of preserva-
tion." The formality of identification accom-
plished, the casket was resealed and the workmen
bore it on their shoulders to the place prepared
272 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
for it — a bed of iron and masonry fifteen feet
below the base of the shaft of the Monument.
The Lincoln Monument is of Quincy granite
upon a foundation of concrete. The main plat-
form is fifteen feet and ten inches from the
ground, and is reached by four staircases, one at
each corner of the balustrades. The platform is
floored with Illinois limestone, and forms the
foundation for the statuary, which rests upon
shafts eleven feet in diameter. From the center
rises the shaft twelve feet square at the base and
eight at the top, ninety-eight feet and four inches
from the ground. A winding staircase within
conducts to the top. Just below the upper base
of this shaft are shields of polished granite bear-
ing the names of the States and joined together
by bands of polished stone. Heroic groups in
bronze adorn the Monument, and above them
rises a bronze statue of Lincoln holding in his
hands the Proclamation of Emancipation. The
statue was modeled by Larkin G. Mead, and is
regarded as a noble production of the best
American art. At the base of the Monument are
Memorial Hall, containing various relics of the
President, and the crypt in which the body was
at first placed and where it remained for some
time.
It is difficult to determine wherein lies the pe-
culiar charm of autograph-collecting. Perhaps
the sense of personal contact with distinguished
HOLOGRAPHS 273
and interesting characters and close association
with deeds of historical importance may have
much to do with the delight which attaches to the
possession of rare and interesting letters and doc-
uments. To hold in one's own hand the identical
paper that once a great poet or statesman held,
and to gaze upon lines there traced by one who
has, in his literary work, placed the entire civi-
lized world under obligation to himself, is surely
a great delight. There is also to be added, in
many cases, actual information of importance im-
parted by the document, or, it may be, a confirma-
tion of information already possessed. The let-
ters and journals of men who have filled positions
of public trust are often of the utmost value.
Furthermore, there is something in the actual
autograph that introduces its possessor to an
inner knowledge of the writer. The kind of pen-
manship, the orthography and punctuation, and
the grammatical construction all have much to do
with our acquaintance with the author.
The hour is late. With care I fold these let-
ters, one by one, and lay them away in the little
drawer. I turn the key and leave them to silence
and repose. Thus at last must come to us, human
documents, the evening hour when we, creased by
time and somewhat the worse for much handling,
shall be consigned to darkness and oblivion. Yet
when night falls upon the busy world, some-
where the sun will still continue to shine. Shall
274 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
I think so much of these letters that I guard with
lock and key, and shall the Author of these "liv-
ing epistles" that are "known and read of all
men" care nothing for His hand-writing? It
cannot be.
XI
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY
"Along the gentle slope of life's decline
He bent his gradual way, till full of years
He dropt like mellow fruit into the grave."
— Porteus.
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY
I
AT Windsor, in the merry land of England,
where linger still those simple manners that
keep us young long after the years have silvered
the hair and furrowed the brow, there died in 1832
Thomas Pope, a shepherd who, like the Good
Shepherd of whom we read in the Sacred Book,
"loved the sheep." He had seen the flowers of
ninety-six summers bloom and fade in the door-
yard that had been the delight of his early days,
and in which he sat through many a twilight hour
of the long evening of his well-spent life.
He commenced tending sheep when as a lad he
received but two pence per day, and nothing could
induce him to change his occupation. His humble
station in life was lifted above the rudeness and
vulgarity that so easily attach themselves to its
seemingly trivial duties by the artless sincerity
and sweet purity of the man. He was every day
alone with the sheep many hours, and, wanting
human companionship, he would seat himself
upon a moss-grown boulder under a spreading elm
where he could see the creatures of his charge and
watch with curious attention their way of living.
He came after a time to love the sheep, and he
thought them better company than the men and
women with whom he conversed at the village inn
and with whom he worshipped in the old stone
277
278 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
church, where for many generations his lowly
ancestors had lifted their untutored hearts to
Heaven.
At last the old man came to die, and when the
doctor could do no more they sent for the
preacher. "Old Thomas, the Shepherd," for so
they called him for miles and miles around, lis-
tened to the reading of the prayers for the sick,
and added his own quiet and reverent Amen. Then
he said it was his particular wish that his crook
and bell might be buried with him — the crook in
one hand and the bell in the other.
Early in the morning the sun looked in at the
window of the low-thatched cottage, but the
shepherd saw it not, for he had gone far away to
abide with the countless dead that, if they be not
great or wise, we soon forget. A crowd of rustic
folk from far and near, and with them the lord
of the Manor, followed the shepherd to his lowly
grave. In the deal coffin that the village carpen-
ter made were the crook and bell from which old
Thomas would not be parted. With the funeral
procession came also the meek-eyed sheep that had
for so long a time followed their kindly care-
taker ; and their bleating mingled not irreverently
with the solemn words of prayer.
The minister read the Twenty-third Psalm, in
which the Lord is represented as the Shepherd of
his people; and then they covered the old man
with turf, and left him under the flowers and the
trees that were so soon to drink up the juices of
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 279
his body, changing them into the beauty of the
rose and the grateful refreshment of shade under
boughs of oak and elm. More than seventy years
the old man has rested in the grave they gave him
that Autumn day, and now, after so long a time,
by mere chance, I have come upon the story of his
obscure life and well-rendered service. There is
to me something very pleasant in the thought that
after this life is over, another life in shrub, and
bush, and tree awaits us. When the body is no
longer able to entangle the forces of the universe
in its wonderful web of nerves, arteries, and veins,
and cannot use them to further its own ends, it is
handed over to those forces to be by them re-
solved into its original elements. Two groups of
natural substances await our coming. The first
is carbonic acid, water, and ammonia ; the second
is mineral constituents more or less oxidized, ele-
ments of the earth's structure, lime, phosphorus,
iron, sulphur, and magnesia. The first group
passes into the air and becomes food for plants,
while the second enters the earth and enriches it.
We do not know precisely what death is, but that
supreme experience, however we may view it, does
not separate us from the visible universe. On the
contrary, it gives us back to the earth so far as
our material substance is concerned. Uncon-
sciously we recognize our oneness with the physi-
cal universe in the emblems and designs with
which we surround death. In all ages men have
covered the lifeless forms of their dear ones with
280 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
the choicest flowers of field and garden. Memorial
Day in our Southern States and Decoration Day
at the North breathe the same spirit. By some
curious association flowers soften the thought of
death, and take from the grave something of its
desolation. Our fathers carved upon the grave-
stone a grewsome skull or an unsightly skeleton,
but we chisel upon the monuments that mark the
graves of our loved ones, if not the sacred emblem
of our faith or some blessed angel winging its
way heavenward, then a rose to remind us of
Heaven, or a lily, or it may be some wild flower
that one sees growing by the brook or in the sun-
lighted meadow — clover, daisy, or spurge. And
thus it comes to pass that Nature in no small de-
gree reconciles our love of life with our certainty
of death. When we picture in our minds the end
of earthly existence we frame that picture in all
the rural beauty and attractiveness of our modern
garden cemetery. A poet has put something of
this thought and feeling into graceful lines:
"Though life speeds on to its ending,
I am not afraid;
To protean earth descending,
I shall pass undismayed,
Who count the long learning and spending
By the dream outweighed.
Bleak winds from eternity blowing
Pass, leaving no trace ;
The seed of an unfathomed sowing,
I must sink to my place.
May it be near a calm river's flowing,
Where grow green things apace,
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 281
Where happy lovers thereafter
Will pause as they roam,
And house room and sill and rafter
Will build them a home,
And there will be children's laughter
In the garden abloom."
n
We like to think that the things most precious
to us in this life will be in some way associated
with our death and burial. We desire to rest
with our kindred, surrounded by the associations
and natural scenery of earlier days. Napoleon,
in his will, expresses a wish that gives voice to the
desire of the human heart in every age and clime.
The pilgrim to sacred shrines of genius and de-
votion may read that wish carved upon the mag-
nificent tomb of the Emperor, high above the door
leading to the enclosure where rests the sarcopha-
gus:
JE DESIRE QUE MES CENDRES
REPOSENT
SUR LES BORDS DE LA SEINE
AU MILIEU DE CE PEUPLE FRAN£AIS
QUE J'AI TANT AIME*
The lovely poem of Ruth, written in the very
dawn of history, discloses to us the deep and
abiding secret of human affection in the never-
to-be-forgotten words of the gentle Moabitish
woman : "Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to re-
turn from following after thee: for whither thou
282 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
goest I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will
lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy
God my God: where thou diest will I die, and
there will I be buried." When we would express
our most ardent love for the land we call our own,
we describe that land as the "burial-place of our
fathers." Sir Walter Scott hastened home with
anxious heart, for he would not die in a strange
land and leave his bones to crumble in foreign
earth. Washington Irving took great pleasure in
his quiet and retired life on the banks of the
Hudson, and he desired above all things that
when death should have robbed him of his queer
old seventeenth century mansion and of the
beauty of river and landscape, his dust might
mingle with that of his kindred in Sleepy Hollow,
near the little church in which the credulous
schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, led the choir.
And as of places, so of things. The shepherd
of Windsor was not unlike wiser and greater men
in his wish to mingle with death the sweeter asso-
ciations of life. Over the dead Raphael floated
the Transfiguration which the illustrious artist
painted for the cathedral of Norbonne in France,
and which is now preserved among the most sa-
cred treasures of the Vatican. On Richter's coffin
they placed a copy of one of his books. The
great soldier must have his sword accompany him
to the grave. A western vine-grower whose vine-
yards made purple all the hill-side had buried
with him a bottle of his choicest wine. An aged
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 283
violinist held in his unconscious grasp the musi-
cal instrument he loved so well. A clergyman had
placed in his coffin a copy of the New Testament
in which his mother had written her name when he
was a child. In a grave near the city of Rich-
mond there is deposited a little tin bank filled with
coins of small value that were collected and prized
by a child. The mother placed the treasure there
because in that grave she had herself deposited a
much greater treasure. All the world knows how
Dante Gabriel Rossetti buried in his wife's grave
the manuscript of a volume of his unpublished
poems. In that volume were some of the poet's
best verses. The treasure was recovered only
after the pleading of some of his warmest friends.
It has always seemed strange to me that so mo-
mentous and certain an experience as death, an
experience that so deeply concerns every human
being, and that of necessity obtrudes itself so
often upon the mind of man, should be, by almost
universal consent, excluded from the subject-
matter of ordinary conversation. An English sov-
ereign threatened with relentless and severe pun-
ishment all who should in any way, in his pres-
ence, hint at the fact of mortality. By tacit
agreement the very word death is avoided in
what we call "good society," and for it are sub-
stituted such weak and poor expressions as "pass-
ing away," "going to rest," and "falling asleep."
The old Romans used to say, "He has ceased to
live." Why should we go all our days in fear of
284 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
dissolution? I knew of a man who was in great
distress day and night because he could not re-
main on earth forever. Much wiser was Walt
Whitman, whose comforting and reassuring
poem, "When Lilacs Last in the Door- Yard
Bloom'd," will live in our literature. One drinks
in peace with every word of lines like these :
"Come, lovely and soothing Death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, ar-
riving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate Death.
Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest wel-
come?
Then I chant it for thee — I glorify thee above all;
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed
come, come unfalteringly.
Approach, strong Deliveress!
When it is so — when thou hast taken them, I joy-
ously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee — adorn-
ments and feastings for thee ;
And the sights of the open landscape, and the
high-spread sky, are fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and thought-
ful night.
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 285
The night, in silence, under many a star;
The ocean-shore, and the husky whispering wave,
whose voice I know;
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-
veil'd Death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song!
Over the rising and sinking waves — over the myr-
iad fields, and the prairies wide;
Over the dense-pack'd cities all, and the teeming
wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O
Death !"
Is death painful? No, not in itself. The mere
act of dissolution is in the very nature of the case
entirely free from all distress. It must be so, for
otherwise we should be always in pain, since we
are always dying. The death of which we speak
is molecular, but in the final analysis all death of
which we have knowledge is molecular. We usu-
ally divide death into Somatic and Molecular.
Somatic death effects the entire organism, while
molecular effects only a limited and definite num-
ber of molecules. "The spherule of force which
is the primitive basis of a cell," writes Mr. Alger
in his valuable work, "A Critical History of the
Doctrine of a Future Life," "spends itself in the
discharge of its work. The amount of vital ac-
tion which can be performed by such living cells
has a definite limit. When that limit is reached,
the exhausted cell is dead. No function can be
performed without the disintegration of a certain
286 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
amount of tissue. This final expenditure on the
part of a cell of its force is the act of molecular
death and the germinal essence of all decay. This
organic law rules in every living structure, and is
a necessity inherent in creation. . . Wherever we
look in the realm of physical man, from the red
outline of the first Adam to the shapeless adipose
of the last corpse when fate's black curtain falls
on our race, we shall discern death, for death is
the other side of life."
Plants and animals depend for their growth
upon the subordination of their cells — these yield
their little lives for the larger life of the whole.
"The formation of a perfectly organized plant,"
says Leibnitz, "is made possible only through the
continuous dying and replacement of its cells."
Even so the cells which compose our structures die
that we may live, and in like manner our death
is necessary to the growth and development of the
race. We are the separate cells that constitute
the one man, Humanity. His integrity depends
on our subordination. The greater that subordi-
nation, the more perfect his structure.
Molecular death, as has been said, is painless,
and so it comes to pass that somatic death which
is still molecular must also be without pain. It
is true that persons sometimes die in a state of
torture, but that torture is a phenomenon of dis-
ease or of some accident, and not of death — the
distress might befall the man without death. It
is a fact that death is in most cases free from all
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 287
association with both physical pain and mental
distress. Sir Charles Blagden died in his chair
while drinking coffee, and his departure was so
calm that not a drop was spilled from the cup in
his hand. Dr. Black, also, died so composedly
that the milk in the spoon which he held to his
lips was all preserved. Dr. Walloston watched
with scientific interest the gradual failure of his
own vital power. Dr. Cullen whispered in his last
moments, "I wish I had the power of writing, for
then I would describe to you how pleasant a thing
it is to die." In my book on "The Last Words
of Distinguished Men and Women" which was
published a few years ago, I collected the dying
words of many prominent persons. Very few of
the persons whose last words are recorded in that
book faced death with serious apprehension or ex-
perienced great pain. Dr. Adam of Edinburgh,
the high-school headmaster, murmured in his de-
lirium, "It grows dark, boys, you may go." The
last words of Goethe were, "Draw back the cur-
tains, and let in more light." The last words of
Sir Walter Scott, addressed to Lockhart, were,
"Be a good man, my dear."
The phrase "last agony" has helped to fasten
upon the popular mind the belief that death is
painful. But there is no such thing as a "last
agony." Death is a normal event, and medical
science has made it clear that the dying, as a rule,
pass away in unconscious slumber. Dr. Osier, in
his Ingersoll lecture on "Immortality," says: "I
288 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
have careful records of about five hundred death-
beds, studied particularly with reference to the
modes of death and the sensations of dying. The
latter alone concern us here. Ninety suffered
bodily pain or distress of one sort or another."
That would make not far from one-sixth of the
cases observed attended with pain, but this physi-
cal distress, as Dr. Osier points out, was in no
instance connected with the act of mortality. It
was a concomitant of disease and would have been
precisely the same had the disease ended in re-
covery. In most cases the immediate cause of
death is the poisoning of the nerve-centres by car-
bonic acid. It must be remembered that carbonic
acid accumulating in the blood is as truly anaes-
thetic in its action as are chloroform and sulphuric
ether. It puts the man to sleep, but the sleep is
one that knows no awakening in this life. The
poets did not stray far from the truth when they
described death as a sleep. Thus also our Saviour
represented death. And thus as well do we, con-
templating its calmness and repose, view the close
of our mortal existence as a deep and dreamless
slumber. Continuing his statement with regard
to the five hundred death-beds that he had studied,
Dr. Osier writes: "Eleven showed mental appre-
hension" (that was before the carbonic acid had
taken effect), "two positive terror, one expressed
spiritual exultation, one bitter remorse. The
great majority gave no sign one way or the
other; like their birth, their death was 'a sleep
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 289
and a forgetting.' The Preacher was right in
this matter, for man 'hath no pre-eminence above
the beast — as the one dieth, so dieth the other.' "
Nature sustains a balance between animal and
vegetable life. There was a time, countless cen-
turies ago, when that balance did not exist. In
the Carboniferous Age plant-life reached a luxu-
riance of which we can now form but a faint idea.
The air had to become respirable for man, and
then the human race made its appearance. Ani-
mals inhale oxygen and nitrogen, and exhale car-
bonic acid, watery vapor, and a trace of animal
matter in a gaseous form. Plants reverse the
process, and consume carbonic acid while they
yield oxygen. The growth of the flora of the
Carboniferous Age was a means of purifying the
atmosphere so as to fit it for the higher terrestrial
life that was afterwards to possess the earth. It is
by constantly breathing each other's breath that
man and his neighbor, the tree, live. What, then,
becomes of the first group into which we are con-
verted by the beautiful chemistry of death? It
goes into the air and fills the millions of open
mouths of vegetables. The hungry plants con-
sume the carbonic acid which would otherwise
render the air irrespirable for man. The car-
bon, separated and assimilated, comes to form
vegetable fibre. The wood that burns merrily in
the fire-place, the food and wine that make man
strong and healthy, the crimson foliage of Aut-
umn, and the golden grain of harvest-time have
290 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
passed thousands of times to and from both ani-
mal and vegetable states of existence Tree and
man are closely related in the economy of nature.
Life and death are never far apart.
Life evermore is fed by death,
In earth, and sea, and sky;
And that a rose may breathe its breath,
Some living thing must die.
We gaze upon the statue with different emo-
tions from those with which we look upon a corpse.
One we recognize as a work of art and the other
we view as a work of impassive death. The fin-
gers that lightly glide over the smoothness of one
are drawn with horror from the coldness of the
other. Men who faint in the dissecting room
stand or sit at ease in the sculptor's studio. A
wide difference is supposed to exist between the
scalpel and the chisel, but no such difference ex-
ists. Every atom of marble in the statue once,
long before man trod the planet, lived and suf-
fered, and was glad and died. Those little shin-
ing atoms of marble are the skeletons of animal-
culas — millions of minute animalculae that were
fused in the heat of central fires beneath great
oceans many thousands of years ago. The statue
is a corpse — more, a congeries of corpses. The
microscope reveals their disk-like structures ; and
by careful study of what they have left us we
may come to some knowledge of what the life they
once lived must have been like. The marbles of
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 291
Phidias and Polycletus once throbbed with life,
and the old gods of Greece and Rome were not
always deaf and blind.
The earth we tread is a vast cemetery. The
stones under our feet are all written over with his-
tories and marvelous tales of the dead — histories
and tales no eye will ever read, and to which no
ear will listen. It has been estimated by scientists
that on each square rod of our earth something
like 1280 human beings lie buried, each rod being
scarcely sufficient for ten graves, with each grave
containing 128 persons. The entire surface of
our globe, then, has been dug up 128 times to
bury its dead. The dead are everything, they are
everywhere, — under our feet, over our heads, and
on every side. They are in the solid earth on
which we stand, the unfathomed oceans that sur-
round our continents, and through the spaces of
the air they ride on every wind. Not formless
phantoms wrought from the texture of a dream
are the unnumbered hosts that come and go
through all the crowded thoroughfares of life,
but real and tangible in the perfume of the rose
and the whiteness of the untrodden snow, the mo-
tion of the wave and the hardness of the rock, the
richness of the harvest and the primeval grandeur
of the forest. In the familiar lines of an Ameri-
can poet:
"Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground
292 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements —
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings,
The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good —
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre."
It is a popular belief that sensibility remains
for a time after decapitation. It is said that
Charlotte Corday's cheeks blushed at the exposure
of her person ; that the eyes of Madame Roland
opened as if in surprise; that the lips of Phillip
Egaliti curled in scorn when his head was held up
to the multitude ; and that the lips of Mary Stuart
under similar circumstances prayed visibly. There
may be some truth in the belief that sensibility
remains for a time. There are certain results of
scientific observation that look in that direction.
Brouardel records a case witnessed by competent
observers in which the heart continued to beat for
one hour in a decapitated murderer, and he states
it as a fact that he himself saw the heart beat for
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 293
more than twenty minutes in a decapitated dog.
Since life continues in one part of the body, it
may be it continues as well in other parts. Cell-
life, it would seem, remains for a time, and that
life is identical with the larger or somatic life.
There are dead cells in the living body ; and in
the dead body, it is more than likely, there are
living ones. These cells have different periods of
birth and death. Every moment they are being
formed and destroyed. The man is, physically
considered, the aggregate of all the various cells
that make up his body. There are no particles
in the body that were there when the man was a
child, and in a few years there will be no particles
in the organism that are there now. No man's
body is identically the same two days in succession.
Concerning the celebrated historic premoni-
tions of death, it is well to play the skeptic.
The disease of Fletcher, which caused him to
send for a sculptor and order his tomb ; the
salutation of Wolsey, so eloquently dramatized;
the whining cant of Foote, when Weston
died, "Soon shall others say 'Poor Foote !' "
and the last picture of Hogarth, which he
entitled "The End of All Things," adding,
"This is the end," — all these and many other
so-called premonitions are open to uncertainty.
They are unsustained by scientific observation,
and though they are interesting and in some
measure astonishing, still they are far from com-
pelling the mind's assent. Hayden, the unfor-
294 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
tunate painter who, in a fit of despondency, took
his own life, has this entry in his Journal under
the date of February 15th, 1815 :
"About this time, I had a most singular dream.
I dreamed Wilkie and I were both climbing up an
immensely high wall, at the top of which were
sweet creatures smiling and welcoming us. He
could scarcely keep hold, it was so steep and slip-
pery; when all of a sudden he let go, and I saw
him wind and curve in the air, and I felt the hor-
rible conviction that his body would be dashed to
pieces. After a moment's grief, I persevered and
reached the top, and there found Mrs. Wilkie and
his sister, lamenting his death."
Later, Hayden added, "This is like a presenti-
ment of his (Wilkie's) dying first." There are
countless stories of apparitions, spectres, and
ghosts appearing to men and foretelling the ap-
proach of death. Perhaps it will never be possi-
ble to fully explain these premonitions — that is
to say, to explain them to the reasoning and sci-
entific mind. Madden, in his ''Shrines and Sep-
ulchres,' says: "A great light of intelligence is
going out; it flares up occasionally, fitfully per-
haps, but never fails to make the darkness visible
that is around it, till every sense has ceased to be
perceptive and every vital organ has given over
the performance of its functions." One who has
been often with the dying has witnessed time and
time again what Madden describes. As the smould-
ering embers, fanned by a sudden breeze, start
into a bright flame, so sometimes the mind glows
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 295
with unexpected and peculiar brilliancy just be-
fore it darkens forever. No doubt expectation is
often responsible for premonitions, and yet there
is something more in these experiences than mere
expectation. Ozanam, the distinguished mathema-
tician, had no thought or anticipation of death,
and yet so strong was the presentiment when it
came, and so persistent was it, that he refused to
take pupils who wished to study under his direc-
tion. Mozart wrote his Requiem under the con-
viction that death was at hand. He had not been
thinking of death, and yet the premonition came
suddenly and without any expectation on his part.
In many cases some degree of anticipation is pres-
ent. A number of stories, some of them well
authenticated, illustrate the marvellous power of
imagination and expectation. In Welby's "Mys-
teries of Life, Death, and Futurity" is this ac-
count of the use made of suggestion by the
profligate abbess of a convent, the Princess Gon-
zaga of Cleves and Guise, and the equally profli-
gate Archbishop of Rheims. "They took it into
their heads, for a jest, to visit one of the nuns
by night and exhort her as a person who was
visibly dying. While in the performance of their
heartless scheme they whispered to each other,
'She is just departing,' and behold she did depart
in earnest." Suggestion is the very life-blood of
the psychological side of human existence. We
are confirmed in what we are or changed for good
or ill by whatever touches us. The sounds of
296 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
nature no less than the voice of man influence our
thought, feeling, and conduct. There is "a
tongue in the trees" for all who have ears with
which to catch the marvellous harmony of the
great world of natural objects that surrounds us.
There are "books in running brooks" for those
who can feel the subtile charm of such literature.
We are moved by unseen, undreamed of influences,
and even the hardest heart is as clay in the hand
of the potter. Countless suggestions at every turn
impress themselves upon our imagination, and
later years, with riper knowledge and changed
opinions, are powerless to remove them. Dr.
Saleeby does not overestimate the force of sugges-
tion in this striking paragraph which is taken
from his interesting and profitable book on
"Worry":
"It (suggestion) can kill outright, as in well at-
tested cases, where , for instance, the joke has been
played of blindfolding a school-boy, telling him
that he is to be beheaded, and then striking his
neck at word of command with a wet towel. In
such circumstances a boy has been known to die in-
stantly. It can cause unconsciousness, as when the
nurse injects ten drops of a solution of common
salt under the soporific name of morphia — in a few
moments the patient is asleep. It can determine
immunity or susceptibility to infectious disease, as
when the person who fears infection is struck down,
while he or she who does not fear or does not care
escapes. That these things happen there is no pos-
sible doubt. That suggestion can produce or relieve
pain every one knows. That it can produce sub-
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 297
cutaneous hemorrhages and severe ulcerations is
proved by the cases of the 'stigmata' of St. Francis
and others."
Professor Pavlov, of the Military Academy in
St. Petersburg, has shown that suggestion has a
powerful influence over the secretions of the lower
animals. He demonstrated that the expectation
of food caused an increased flow of both saliva
and gastric juice in a dog upon which he oper-
ated in his laboratory.
Hypnotic sleep is one of the results of sugges-
tion, and this sleep is in some cases sufficiently
profound to enable the patient to undergo a sur-
gical operation without an anaesthetic. Dr. Aid-
rich, a distinguished London surgeon, removed a
woman's leg without resorting to an anaesthetic.
The physicians who were present doubted the pos-
sibilty of performing the operation without re-
sorting to chloroform, but the emergency they
expected did not arise. While the surgeon was at
his work, the woman chatted with the nurse and
drank wine. To an ordinary observer she would
have appeared perfectly conscious.
Though it has been shown that death is in itself
never painful, still multitudes approach it with
the greatest apprehension. The fear of death,
which is for the most part a fear of something
beyond the grave and of which we know but little,
is well-nigh universal. Man naturally dreads
what he does not understand :
298 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
"The dread of something after death —
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns — puzzles the will;
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of."
To this vast uncertainty with regard to the
future there is added the powerful influence of
early training. Those who have been educated
under enlightened views of God, duty, and destiny
can never know how dreadful has been the torture
to which the old conceptions of life and death
have subjected men. The fancied risks of another
world have plunged this world into abysses of in-
expressible darkness and distress. Imagination
called up countless spirits of shame and despair,
and over all the world inscribed the fearful line
that Dante saw above the portal of Hell :
"All hope abandon ye who enter here."
Our fathers, who were well acquainted with the
Greek and Latin classics, should have profited by
the wisdom of one who lived in a darker age than
that in which they lived and wrought out their
problems in thought and morals. Thus the old
poet and philosopher Lucretius taught: "That
dreadful fear of hell is to be driven out, which
disturbs the life of man and renders it miserable,
overcasting all things with the blackness of dark-
ness, and leaving no pure, unalloyed pleasure."
John Calvin was not only one of the greatest
of men, but he was a man loyal to the light that
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 299
was in him. Never was one braver or more stead-
fast. He counted no cost, but with unshaken pur-
pose did what he believed to be the will of God,
and to him the entire Protestant church and all
who enjoy free institutions are under an obliga-
tion that can never be discharged. And yet the
lofty and lonely form of Calvin casts over all
subsequent history a long dark shadow wherein
the souls of thousands of men and women, and
even little children, have experienced the bitter-
ness of a despair no language is adequate to
describe. Men were taught that, wicked by na-
ture and wicked in every part of that nature, they
were unable to do the will of God, and that still
they were under obligation to obey God and to
do His will. Eternal doom could be averted only
by special grace. The very disability which men
did not occasion, and which they lamented, was
in itself sinful. Religion, especially in Scotland
and New England, was an indescribable night-
mare. How different was the teaching of Jesus !
He casts over the world no dark shadow. From
Him, as from the sun in the heavens, falls the
gladness and glory of cloudless light. He taught
men to say, "Our Father who art in heaven." He
did not hide from men the just judgments of God,
but He opened their eyes, and lo ! they discovered
at once that "God is love." Men of feeble faith
were welcomed ; not all who believe have clear and
unquestioning faith. Coleridge wrote what
others as well have experienced: "I should,
300 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
perhaps, be a happier, at all events a more
useful man, if my mind were otherwise con-
stituted. But so it is: and even with regard
to Christianity itself, like certain plants, I
creep towards the light, even though it draw me
away from the more nourishing warmth. Yea, I
should do so, even if the light made its way
through a rent in the wall of the Temple. My
prayer has always been that of Ajax, 'Give me
light.' "
The animals below man, though they fear dan-
ger, show no sign of anxiety with regard to the
future. They do not fear death. So far as we
know, they neither understand nor think of the
end of their individuality. Dr. Grenfell, in his
little book, "Adrift on an Ice-pan," tells his
readers how he had to stab several of his dogs in
order to preserve his own life, and he remarks :
"The other dogs licked their coats and endeav-
ored to get dry, but they apparently took no notice
of the fate of their comrades, — but I was very care-
ful to prevent the dying dogs from crying out, as the
noise of fighting would probably have been followed
by the rest attacking the down dog, and that was too
close to me on the narrow ice-pan to be pleasant
In fact, the other dogs after a time tried to satisfy
their hunger by gnawing at the dead bodies of their
brothers."
Man in a savage state has little fear of death.
He fears sorcery and diabolism for the reason
that these have power, in his opinion, to so influ-
ence his life on earth as to make it both brief and
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 301
unfortunate. Only when the unknown seizes upon
the imagination and demands an explanation,
because the brain of man has in the process of
development reached a larger growth, does the
fear of death become oppressive. The fear is
largely selfish, and from it escape is possible
through either religious or altruistic channels : the
former leads to an alliance with what we dread,
and the latter conducts the mind away from the
thought of self.
The "lighting up before death" to which ref-
erence has been made, and which is often noticed
in persons who have remained, sometimes for
weeks, in a semi-conscious or wholly unconscious
condition, is not infrequently attributed to psy-
chological causes, when in reality it is due to the
presence of venous blood in the brain, caused by
the non-arterialization of the blood. Thus the
mind often dwells on visions of coming glory or
shame, and contemplates heaven or hell. Shak-
speare makes Queen Catherine, in "Henry VIIL",
say : "Saw you not even now a blessed troop invite
me to banquet, whose bright faces cast a thou-
sand beams upon me like the sun; they promised
me eternal happiness, and brought me garlands,
my Griffith, which I feel I am not worthy yet to
wear." Charles IX. lived over again the fearful
tragedy of Saint Bartholomew's eve, and in an
agony of soul cried out: "Nurse, nurse, what
murder! what blood!" The distinguished Con-
federate general, "Stonewall" Jackson, started up
302 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
from a deep sleep, exclaiming, "Let us go over
the river, and sit under the refreshing shadow of
the trees." For hours before his death his mind
was occupied with the thought of trees and of the
beauty of nature. Thurlow Weed, an American
journalist of distinction, thought during his last
hours that he was conversing with President Lin-
coln and General Scott.
A number of experiments of various kinds have
been conducted by psychologists and others with
the hope of finding out the character of the sensa-
tions — if there are any — which accompany the
approach and experience of death. Preaching at
Saint Pancras Parish Church some time ago, the
Bishop of London — who had recently undergone
a slight operation — stated to his hearers his be-
lief that the anaesthetic which was given him at
the time disclosed to him something of the mystery
of death. He said: "At an operation, when you
receive whatever it is that makes you for the time
being insensible, you seem to be carried for the
moment out of the body — the body is for the time
dead. Your spirit, your mind, is perfectly active.
I doubt not it is the experience of many others
that you seem to be swept swiftly under the stars
toward your God. When you are out of the body,
or seem to be, if only for a few moments, you
realize what death will be." But the Bishop as-
sumed what remains to be proved, — that there are
any sensations connected with death. Oliver
Wendell Holmes thought that chloroform had
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 303
done for him precisely what the Bishop of London
thought it had accomplished . in his case. Dr.
Holmes has recorded that when the anaesthetic was
taking effect he experienced a strange thrill which
seemed to take possession of his entire body. Like
Hamlet he said to himself, "Quick, my tablets : let
me write it down !" But on recovering his senses
he found that the marvellous disclosure with re-
gard to death which he was so anxious to set down
was all summed up in these words, "A strong smell
of turpentine pervades the whole." The disclos-
ures of anaesthetics are very much like those of
Spiritualism, brilliant and hope-inspiring while
the intoxication lasts, but inexpressibly foolish
and even silly when once the mind has regained
control of its faculties. Professor William James
says, in his "Varieties of Religious Experience,"
"Nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide,
when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulate the
mystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree.
Depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to
the inhaler. This truth fades out, however, or
escapes at the moment of coming to; and if any
words remain over in which it seemed to clothe
itself, they prove to be the veriest nonsense. Nev-
ertheless, the sense of a profound meaning having
been there persists; and I know more than one
person who is persuaded that in the nitrous oxide
trance we have a genuine metaphysical revela-
tion."
The "sense of a profound meaning" certainly
304 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
remained in the case of the Bishop of London.
But I think we may all of us be quite sure that for
the scientific mind no help in understanding death
will ever come from drugs or chemicals of any
kind.
The same phenomena mark the rise and decline
of life. The circulation of the blood first an-
nounces existence, and ceases last. The right
auricle pulsates first, and does not cease until
death supervenes. The mind loses the faculty of
association; judgment gives place to recollection;
and the senses vanish in succession. The ruling;
passion is often, though concealed from child-
hood, revealed in the hour of death ; and the
thoughts of boyhood bound into the sunset of de-
clining age.
Ill
It is sometimes said that it can be of little
consequence to a man what disposition the liv-
ing make of his body when once the breath of
life has departed from him. But history and
common experience show us that nothing of the
kind can be true. Though we may, when dead,
have no consciousness of our condition nor of any
posthumous honors paid us, still while we live it
gives us pleasure to think that we shall when dead
be remembered with regard and buried amid sa-
cred and beautiful associations. The desire for
imperishable fame that nerves the soldier and in-
spires the poet is an illustration of man's concern
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 305
for himself and that little handful of dust he calls
his body, when the dream of life is ended. How
anxious were the Egyptians with regard to the
preservation of their mummies ; how desirous were
the Greeks to be entombed where the living could
not forget them ; and how careful are we to pre-
pare places of repose where at last we may
mingle our dust with that of loved ones in a com-
mon earth. And how many and strange are the
special directions that have been given with re-
gard to the burials and tombs of distinguished
men. Walther von der Vogelweide requested that
he might rest where a leafy tree cast its refresh-
ing shadow; and it was his special wish that the
birds might be fed every day from the stone over
his grave. Four holes in that stone were to hold
the yellow corn for the heavenly choir of "feath-
ered minnesingers." Alexander Wilson, the orni-
thologist, just before his death asked to be buried
where the birds could sing to him. John Howard,
the philanthropist, wished above all things that a
sun-dial might mark his grave. Humphry Rep-
ton, whose "Landscape Gardening and Landscape
Architecture" will always delight the thoughtful
reader, was anxious that his last resting place
should be ''a garden of roses." Over his grave
beside the Church of Aylesham, in Norfolk, Eng-
land, a wild rose-bush fills the summer air with
fragrance. John Zisca had a grim delight in be-
lieving that from his skin was to be made a drum,
at sound of which his enemies would fly in terror.
306 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
Jeremy Bentham left directions that his skeleton
should be clothed in the garments he wore when
living, and that, seated in a chair, staff in hand,
he should be preserved in the museum of a medi-
cal college. There are also many instances of
this thoughtfulness with regard to the last rest-
ing place in the literature of ancient Greece and
Rome. Very beautiful are the lines of Leonidas
in which Clitagoras asks that when he is dead the
sheep may bleat above him, and the shepherds
pipe from the rock as they gaze in quiet glad-
ness along the valley, and the countryman in
spring pluck a meadow flower and lay it on his
grave. There is a lovely Greek poem that bids
the mountain-brooks and cool upland pastures tell
the bees, when they go forth anew on their flowery
way, that their old keeper fell asleep on a Win-
ter night and will not come back with Spring.
A Greek epitaph invites the wayfarer to "sit be-
neath the poplars when weary, and draw water
from the spring ; and ever remember the fountain
was made by Simus as a memorial of his dead
child." Another Greek epitaph reads: "Dear
Earth, take old Amyntichus to thy bosom, re-
membering his many labors on thee; for ever
he planted in thee the olive-stock, and often made
thee fair with vine-cuttings, and filled thee with
herbs and plenteous fruits: do thou in return lie
softly over his grey temples and flower into
tresses of Spring-herbage." How delightful the
prayer of an old Greek: "May flowers grow
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 307
thick on thy newly-built tomb, not the dry
bramble, nor the evil weed, but violets and mar-
joram and wet narcissus. Around thee may all
be roses."
Perhaps one of the greatest benefits derived
from the thought of our common mortality is
the liberation from fear which it confers upon
minds that have long felt the oppressive weight
of dark and distressing apprehension. Hundreds
and thousands of our race are rendered miserable
all their days by the lonely shadow of death.
The Anglo-Saxon especially, who views the world
through serious eyes and is never long separated
from his conscience, is a victim of the tormenting
dread of dissolution. This distressing alarm,
which has in so many cases deprived life of all its
sweetness, may be overcome and even entirely dis-
pelled by a calm and reasonable consideration of
death. It has seemed to many thoughtful per-
sons that Walt Whitman has accomplished for
himself and his readers something of the kind in
that wonderful invocation to Death from which
extracts have been already selected for the read-
ers of this paper, and which is, as John Bur-
roughs has pointed out, the climax of the superb
poem written to commemorate the death of Pres-
ident Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Door-
Yard Bloom'd."
Cardinal Manning has this to say about the
well-nigh universal dread of death: "So long as
God intends a man to live He wisely infuses into
308 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
his soul a certain natural dread and horror of
death, in order that he may be induced to take or-
dinary care of himself and to guard against
danger and needless risks. But when God in-
tends a man to die there is no longer any object
for such fear. It can serve no further purpose.
What is the result? Well, I take it, God simply
withdraws it." It is true that men who are long
at the gate of death lose much of that dread of
dissolution which renders so many lives wretched.
Sometimes this deliverance is called "Dying
Grace," and sometimes it is called by another
name; but still the victory is to the man who ac-
customs himself to frequent and natural views of
death.
In all ages and in every country men have en-
tertained a reverence for the dead, and yet the
opening of tombs has continued. In some cases
the impelling motive was desire for knowledge, in
others it was hatred of the dead, and in still others
it was a desire to honor those who had made them-
selves a name in the world's regard.
However unattractive may be the twisted sack
of bones that now represent the once beautiful
queen of ancient Egypt, of whom "legends of
passion were writ in pain," and whose name will
be ever associated with that of the Roman An-
tony in song and story, the mummy of Seti I.
(1327-1275 B. C), which was found in the tomb
of Her-Hor and may be seen in the Soane Mu-
seum, is certainly pleasing to look upon. It
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 309
helps us to believe what history records of
him, that he was a strong and noble ruler who
covered the shores of the Nile with beautiful
shrines and temples, and who did much to develop
artistic and literary excellence in the aspiration
and attainment of his people. Dr. Ward, in an
instructive book on "The Sacred Beetle," writes:
"The only royal mummy that is pleasing to look
upon is that of Seti I. His features are calm,
dignified, and noble. His arms crossed on his
breast give him the appearance of one who
sleeps." The monarch's sarcophagus, which is
one of the finest and most costly yet discovered,
is carved out of one block of transparent alabas-
ter and is elaborately ornamented in every part
with the most graceful and artistic figures.
The wooden coffins of the Egyptians are not
all of them alike in either shape or decoration.
The earliest are rectangular and devoid of em-
bellishment, and have only a very short inscrip-
tion carved upon the lid and in some cases cut
into the sides. The lid was ornamented with hu-
man faces constructed of bits of wood fastened
to the coffin by pegs. Later gaudy colors made
their appearance. Elaborate and extended in-
scriptions, sometimes conveying an entire chap-
ter from the "Book of the Dead," took the place
of the quiet and simpler inscriptions that pre-
vailed in earlier times. In the XlXth Dynasty
coffins began to conform in shape to that of the
mummy, and a well-modeled face, having eyes
310 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
let into some harder material and wooden hands
crossed over the breast, came to be a common kind
of decoration. In this Dynasty the custom began
to prevail of encasing the dead in three, and even
five coffins, all of which were carefully and elabo-
rately painted. Religious scenes, and pictures
taken from the life of the dead man, came to be
regarded as necessary ; and these were painted,
often at great cost, not only upon the lids but
upon the sides of the coffins.
After the decoration was completed all the
coffins were coated with a thick yellow varnish.
The art of coffin-making continued to develop up
to the XXVIth Dynasty, after which period a de-
generation commenced which soon resulted in a
general disregard for those sacred associations
which in all lands gather about the tombs of the
dead. But in all the deterioration that came to
the undertaker's art in ancient Egypt there never
arrived a period when the cheap, machine-manu-
factured casket of the present day would have
been tolerated. There is now a feeling every-
where prevalent that it is a waste of money to
decorate a coffin that must be covered over with
earth or consumed in the flames of a crematorium.
The Egyptians embalmed their dead, and the
coffins were deposited in large tombs beautifully
decorated. We wish to have our dead return to
the earth so soon as possible, but the Egyptian,
moved by his religious belief, sought to preserve
the body which he had carefully embalmed so
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 311
that it might not decay. With all our thought
of the resurrection, and with all the tender en-
dearments of modern civilized life, we treat our
dead with little respect. We see them encased in
cheap, unadorned boxes often covered with black
broadcloth to conceal the poverty of the material
out of which the box is constructed. We see
those boxes lowered into deep pits which, after
they have received their sacred treasures, are
swiftly and unceremoniously filled with loose earth
and stones. The beauty of our modern garden-
cemetery only renders more appalling to the
thoughtful mind the revolting corruption that
beneath carved marble and fragrant flowers
awaits our abandoned dead. Cremation is a great
improvement upon earth-burial. The urn is bet-
ter than the coffin. But the modern rude casket
is inexcusable when we remember the artistically
constructed and elegantly adorned coffin of the
Egyptian of three and four thousand years ago.
The robbing of graves is not a new thing.
Against it the kings of old Egypt sought to de-
fend themselves. Abundant evidence is furnished
by the condition of some of the coffins when dis-
covered, and in not a few cases by the misplace-
ment or entire absence of the mummy, that the
ancient tenants of the tomb had been, in a num-
ber of instances, disturbed in their long rest many
centuries ago by grave-robbers.
It is an interesting fact, and one that has oc-
casioned much discussion, that while there remain
to this day hundreds of elaborate and costly
312 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
tombs, many of them retaining much of their
original beauty, there are hardly any ruins of
Egyptian dwellings. There may be found
along the shores of the Nile great temples that
preserve in stone the architectural concep-
tions of early centuries, but nothing of im-
portance remains of the humbler structures
once associated with the domestic life of
the Egyptian people. The mystery remains
such no longer when once the pages of Di-
odorus are turned. "The Egyptians," he tells
us, "call their houses hostelries, on account of
the short time during which they inhabit them,
but the tombs they call eternal dwelling-places."
Their houses they builded of perishable material,
but their temples and tombs they cut out of solid
rock. The men who dwelt upon the shores of the
sacred Nile in the early dawn of our human his-
tory believed that after the lapse of many cen-
turies they should return to reinhabit their
earthly frames. To preserve the dead body from
decay that it might be in condition for occupancy
when again claimed by the immortal soul was the
absorbing desire of all classes and conditions of
men. The years of life on earth were few, and
for their every purpose a frail and inexpensive
structure was good enough, but for the vast
period of time during which the tomb must fur-
nish enduring shelter all the arts of the embalmer
were called for. Through circling ages that no
human intellect could measure those tombs were
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 313
to be trusted to preserve the sacred inclosures
committed to their care.
The general structure of all Egyptian tombs
was the same. Each consisted of three parts —
a chamber or scries of chambers forming what
we should in these days call a chapel; a passage
or shaft leading from the outer chamber to the
sepulchral chamber; and the sepulchral chamber
itself where were deposited the mummies. Men
were more desirous of owning a tomb than of pos-
sessing a home, and whatever money a man had to
spare he invested in a depository for his own body
and for those of the members of his family. The
tombs of the wealthy were elaborately decorated
with sacred scenes representing, in most cases,
the occupations of their owners. In a little secret
depository in the wall were placed the Ka statues ;
the depository connected with the chamber of the
mummies by a small aperture through which the
smoke of incense could penetrate to the statues.
When the tomb was cut out of solid rock, the
inner chamber where the dead were placed was
reached by a deep shaft (the deepest of which we
have knowledge is that in the tomb of Bakt III.
at Beni Hasan; it is over 105 feet deep) which,
after the body had been deposited, was filled with
rubble that the place of sepulture might be con-
cealed.
Every effort was made to outwit the grave-
robber. Valuable mummies were taken from cav-
ern to cavern in order to preserve them from
314 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
sacrilege. Strange were some of the experiences
that befell a number, and it may be all, of the
distinguished refugees who were sheltered in the
cavern of Her-Hor. Inscriptions have been
found upon many of the mummy-cases and ban-
dages that reveal the fact that the mummies were
periodically examined by official Inspectors of
Tombs, who renewed the wrappings when neces-
sary and repaired the coffins. These Inspectors
had full control and care of the illustrious dead,
and could remove them, in case of necessity, to
other tombs, and do whatever was required for
their safe preservation. Inscriptions found upon
the mummy-cases of Seti I. and Rameses II., and
upon those of other Egyptian monarchs, made in
marking-ink, tell how the priests and Inspectors
had from time to time examined and repaired the
casements and coffins and had re-decorated the
hands and faces of the dead.
In the Sixteenth Century another enemy of the
mummy appeared in the apothecary, who main-
tained that the substance of the mummy was, in
one form or another, valuable as a medicine.
French physicians used it in the treatment of
nearly every disease with which our human race
is afflicted. Francis I. carried with him wherever
he went a mixture of pulverized mummy and rhu-
barb, which he believed to be a sovereign cure for
all the accidents, disorders, and dangers of life.
Lord Bacon also held human flesh in an embalmed
condition to be of great use in staunching the
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 315
flow of blood. Boyle recommended it as better
than all other medicines for the healing of cuts,
bruises, and open sores. Lemery believed it to be
capable of resisting gangrene. Shirley, the
dramatist, alludes to the medicinal use of mummy
in "The Bird Cage" — a composition of some
merit, but with which few in these days have any
acquaintance :
"Make mummy of my flesh, and sell me to the
apothecaries."
In such great esteem was the veritable mummie
d'Egypte held that the avaricious tore open what-
ever tombs could be found along the Nile, and
soon an enormous trade in mummy was created.
The dead were consumed by the living. The
gross superstition which made such a species of
cannibalism possible has not yet wholly disap-
peared. The Arabs still believe that mummy-
powder is better than all other medicines for
bruises, and their mantey, which is a disgusting
mixture of mummy and butter, may be had from
some of the apothecaries of Cairo.
There is still a commercial value for mummy
which when powdered makes one of the best of all
the colors used by artists. Every dealer in oil
paints sells ground mummy which, when mixed
with poppy oil, gives us the beautiful tint of
brown that artists use with such effect in painting
the wavy hair with glints of gold that give
glory to faces of lovely women. Mummy is a
316 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
costly pigment, but no artist can do without it,
and those who supply the material, as well as
those who use it, look with anxiety and disquietude
to a time certainly approaching when the dead
will cease their ministry of art and beauty to the
living, and it will be no longer possible to buy
mummy and grind it into the coloring matter
which the old masters loved, and which a modern
art-critic tells us turns to pure gold in the sun-
light. It is certainly a pleasant thought that art
thus gives beauty again to those whom death has
despoiled.
Perhaps there is not, after all, so much sacri-
lege in the opening and even in the despoiling of
historic tombs as some have imagined. There are
no ties of personal relationship, and in most
cases even the civilization itself with which the
occupant of the tomb was acquainted has perished.
What feeling of delicacy or sense of propriety
could suffer from the investigation of an ancient
mummy-pit or a tomb like that of Alexander the
Great?
IV
The tomb of Achilles has been clearly iden-
tified from ancient and reliable authorities.
Pliny and Quintus Scamander indicate its lo-
cality, and Homeric references confirm their
statements. The tomb was opened in 1786 by or-
der of Choiseul-Gouffier, who was at that time
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 317
French Ambassador at Constantinople. Dr.
Henry Schliemann says:
"A shaft was sunk from the top, and the virgin
soil was reached at a depth of twenty-nine feet.
The upper part of the conical tumulus was found
to consist of well-beaten clay to the depth of six
feet; then followed a compact layer of stones and
clay, two feet deep; a third stratum consisted of
earth mixed with sand; a fourth of very fine sand.
In the center was found a small cavity, four feet
in length and breadth, formed of masonry and cov-
ered with a flat stone, which had broken under the
weight pressing upon it. In the cavity were found
charcoal, ashes impregnated with fat, fragments of
pottery exactly similar to the Etruscan, several
bones, easy to distinguish among which was a tibia,
and the fragment of a skull; also fragments of an
iron sword ; and a bronze figure seated on a chariot
with horses. Several of the clay vases were much
burnt and vitrified, whereas all the vessels were
unhurt."
Such is Dr. Schliemann's description given by
him in "Die Ehene von Troja, nach dem Graf en
Choiseul-Gouffier," but he does not wish his read-
ers to understand that he expresses any confidence
in the excavation. He adds: "No one of experi-
ence or worthy of confidence was present at the
excavation, and scholars seem to have distrusted
the account from the first" (Hios, p. 65). Dr.
Schliemann desired to explore the tomb, but as
the owner of the land, who was a Turk, asked in
advance for permission to sink a shaft the unrea-
sonable sum of £500, the work was not under-
318 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
taken. The articles found in the tomb, and re-
ported as above, may have been placed in the
cavity to excite interest and secure to the owner
of the land a considerable sum from scholars who
would be anxious to push investigations. That
is a difficulty all explorers of ancient tombs have
to encounter. In Egypt the word of no native is
to be believed. All along the Nile modern an-
tiquities and newly manufactured mummies are
offered at every kind of price. And not infre-
quently veritable mummies of the greatest an-
tiquity are discovered by the natives and are by
them concealed until such time as they can safely
dispose of them at exorbitant figures. Miss Amelia
B. Edwards, who will be remembered with grat-
itude by all Egyptologists and archaeologists, de-
scribes in an article called "Lying in State in
Cairo," which she contributed to Harper's Maga-
zine, the discovery and arrest of a famous Arab
guide and dealer who was in possession of a royal
tomb, and who had also a hiding-place where were
found piled up thirty-six mummies of kings,
queens, princes and high-priests.
Of the tomb of Achilles Plutarch has this to
say: "Alexander passed the Hellespont and came
to Troy, where he sacrificed to Pallas and made a
libation to the heroes ; he also poured oil upon the
tomb of Achilles, and, according to the accus-
tomed manner, he with his friends ran about it
naked and placed a crown upon it, pronouncing
of Achilles that he was a most happy and f ortun-
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 319
ate person ; for that while he lived he had so
good a friend as Patroclus, and when dead, that
he had so famous a publisher as Homer." He
was even more fortunate, for after a life of
hardship and adventure it was his privilege to
die for the beautiful Polyxena, daughter of
Priam, for whose sake he went unarmed to the
temple of Apollo, where Paris slew him. And
so alike in life and death he was a hero, cele-
brated in lofty song and in the noblest story.
V
The Tumulus of In Zepeh on the shore of
the Hellespont is supposed to be the tomb
of Ajax. Pausanias relates a legend current in
his day that the side of the tumulus looking
toward the shore was washed away by the action
of the waves, so that the tomb could be entered
without difficulty. The remains, it is asserted,
were found, and were of gigantic proportion.
The curious story is confirmed by Philostratus,
who adds that Ajax must have been, from the
bones that were discovered, a man eleven cubits
long. The tomb is said to have been erected by
Hadrian, who was at the time a visitor to Troy.
Hadrian kissed the bones and gave them funeral
honors. Strabo also identified the spot as the
tomb of Ajax. Dr. Schliemann explored the tu-
mulus and found nothing but pebbles and a few
large bones which Professor Rudolf Virchow of
Berlin identified as horse bones.
320 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
VI
Plutarch has an account of the finding of the
bones of Theseus. How much of the narrative is
of historical value, and how much is due to the
primitive imagination, it is impossible to say:
"Lycomedes, either jealous of the glory of so
great a man, or to gratify Menestheus, having led
him up to the highest cliff of the island, on pretence
of showing him from thence the lands that he de-
sired, threw him headlong down from the rock, and
killed him. Others say he fell down of himself by
a slip of his foot, as he was walking there, accord-
ing to his custom, after supper. At that time there
was no notice taken, nor were any concerned for
his death, but Menestheus quietly possessed the
Kingdom of Athens. His sons were brought up in
a private condition, and accompanied Elephenor to
the Trojan war, but after the decease of Menes-
theus in that expedition returned to Athens and re-
covered the government. But in succeeding ages,
besides several other circumstances that moved the
Athenians to honor Theseus as a demigod, in the
battle which was fought at Marathon against the
Medes many of the soldiers believed they saw an
apparition of Theseus in arms, rushing on at the
head of them against the barbarians. And after
the Median war, Phaedo being archer of Athens, the
Athenians, consulting the oracle at Delphi, were
commanded to gather together the bones of The-
seus, and, laying them in some honorable place,
keep them as sacred in the city. But it was very
difficult to recover these relics, or as much as to find
out the place where they lay, on account of the in-
hospitable and savage temper of the barbarous peo-
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 321
pie that inhabited the island. Nevertheless, after-
wards, when Cimon took the island (as is related
in his Life), and had a great ambition to find out
the place where Theseus was buried, he by chance
spied an eagle upon a rising ground pecking with
her beak and tearing up the earth with her talons,
when on the sudden impulse it came into his mind,
as it were by some divine inspiration, to dig there
and search for the bones of Theseus. There was
found in that place a coffin of a man of more than
ordinary size, and a brazen spear-head and a sword
lying by it, all which he took aboard his galley and
brought with him to Athens. Upon which the Athe-
nians, greatly delighted, went out to meet and re-
ceive the relics, with splendid processions and with
sacrifices, as if it were Theseus himself returning
alive to the city. He lies interred in the middle of
the city, near the present gymnasium. His tomb
is a sanctuary and refuge for slaves, and all those
of mean condition that fly from the persecution of
men in power, in memory that Theseus while he
lived was an assister and protector of the dis-
tressed, and never refused the petitions of the af-
flicted that fled to him."
VII
The sepulchre of the great Cyrus, King of
Persia, was violated in the days of Alexander the
Great, in such a manner that his bones were dis-
placed and thrown out ; and the urn of gold that
was fixed in his coffin, when it could not be
wholly pulled away, was broken off by parcels.
When Alexander was informed of the sacrilege
he caused the magi who were intrusted with the
care and keeping of the tomb to be exposed to
m% EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
tortures, in order to extort from them thereby a
confession, and so find out who were the robbers.
The magi, however, denied that they had any
knowledge of the matter, and it was never known
who despoiled the resting place of Cyrus. Plu-
tarch declares that Polymachus, a noble Pellean,
was the guilty one.
Alexander died in Babylon, and there was some
suspicion of poison. Great as he was, still his
corpse had to wait the convenience of his mutin-
ous officers, who allowed the body to remain un-
buried seven days in the heat of Mesopotamia, at
the end of which time the embalmers did their
work. Still it was two years before the remains of
one who had conquered the world and filled all
lands with the glory of his achievements could re-
ceive funeral honors. Ptolemeus received the
body at Memphis, and later it found repose in
the city of Alexandria. But even here the vicis-
situdes of life pursued the dead, and Alexander's
tomb was opened that the body might be shown
to Augustus Caesar after his victory over Anto-
nius and Cleopatra. The body was in a glass
coffin when Augustus saw it, but the royal curi-
osity was not satisfied, and Dion Cassius tells us
that Alexander was removed from his coffin that
the later monarch might pass his hand over the
face of the dead. When the body was exposed
to the fresh air from which it had been long pro-
tected, the nose crumbled into dust. Diodorus
Siculus tells us that Alexander's first coffin was
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 323
of beaten gold, hammered to the shape of the
body ; it was partly filled with aromatic spices.
The tomb of Virgil is over the entrance to the
old Grotto of Posilipo at Naples. The tomb-
chamber is a little over sixteen feet square, with
three windows and a vaulted roof. There are in
the walls ten niches for cinerary urns; in the
center there is a rimmed depression much larger
than any of the ten, and in this it is supposed the
ashes of Virgil were deposited.
Travelers who visited the tomb in 1326 have
left it upon record that the poet's ashes reposed
upon nine marble pillars, but nothing is now
found to suggest that such supports ever ex-
isted. What has become of the urn? No one
knows. There is an old story that may be true
for anything we know to the contrary, in which
Robert of Anjou is reported as concealing it in
the Castle Nouvo, where it may still hold inviolate
the precious dust that was once the great and
beautiful Virgil. Some say it came into the pos-
session of a distinguished ecclesiastic who died at
Genoa.
Virgil died at Brundisium, September 22, B. C.
19. In accordance with an expressed wish, the
urn containing his ashes was entombed upon
his Posilipo estate near the villa of Cicero. Vir-
gil's Posilipo property passed into the hands of
Silius Italicus, as did also at a later day the villa
of Cicero, the ruins of which extend down the
road connecting Naples with Pozzuoli (Puteoli
324 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
of Acts XXVIII). The estate fell into good
hands so far as the memory of Virgil was con-
cerned, for Pliny tells us that Silius celebrated
the anniversary of Virgil's birth with more so-
lemnity than he observed in honoring his own
birthday; especially at Naples, where he used to
approach the tomb with as much veneration as
if it had been a temple (Lib. III. Ep. 7). Mar-
tial has two epigrams upon the care Silius be-
stowed upon the tomb of Virgil.
A curious legend makes the Apostle Paul visit
the last resting place of Virgil, there to weep that
so noble a bard should perish without the knowl-
edge of the Gospel. At Mantua, on St. Paul's
Day, a hymn that commemorates the touching
scene is still sung. Perhaps the Apostle's was a
mistaken sorrow, and it may be he and the great
Latin poet are now together in that blessed
world for which we all hope. God was as merci-
ful in the old Roman days as he is now. Virgil
was temperate in his habits, pure-minded and
chaste in an age of profligacy. He was kind,
unselfish, and loyal to his friends. Perhaps the
entire Roman world was not so bad as Juvenal
has painted it in his wonderful Satires. Its life
and literature were not wholly evil. Some of the
best books our world has ever known came from
the old Latin writers. In the funeral services of
the Romans, and in the way in which they re-
membered the dead, there was always manifest a
deep and tender domestic feeling. No doubt there
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 325
were in Rome, even in its most degenerate days,
loving hearts and pure souls that preserved upon
the altar of piety the clear flame of spiritual
aspiration. Thus believed Hamilton Aide, who
tells us in a beautiful poem how a voice from an
old Roman tomb uttered such words as these:
"Oblivion quickly gathers round our lives:
The spade may strike some urn that tells of
Fame,
But of the struggle of that life survives
Naught save an empty name!
Our Race is passed away. At dead of night
The Master called us; and we did his will.
Ye, who through widening avenues of light
Are gathering knowledge still,
Who, to the Poet's accumulated wealth,
Add, day by day, fresh stores that inward roll,
The large experience that bringeth health
And wisdom to the soul,
Learn yet one thing: He who is wise alone
Leadeth in every age His children home;
And He, beholding, something found to love,
Even in Pagan Rome."
It may be interesting in this connection to
call to mind the customs and forms observed by
the Romans in the inurning of the ashes of the
dead, and in the depositing of the urn in the col-
umbarium. The nearest relative fired the funeral
pile with averted face. When the flames had
done their work and the wood and flesh were re-
326 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
duced to ashes, the glowing embers were sprinkled
with wine and milk. The bones, and in some cases
the ashes, whether of the pyre or of the body,
were carefully gathered and placed with fragrant
spices in an urn, sometimes of great cost and
beauty. Before this, however, the bones and
ashes were folded in a linen cloth where they were
left a short time that they might become per-
fectly dry. The urn was sprinkled with old
wine and new milk, after which it was ready for
deposit in the columbarium, which had been ren-
dered fragrant by the sprinkling of perfumes
and the burning of incense. By the side of the
urn in the columbarium or tomb were deposited
lamps and lachrymatoria, so called, which were
in reality phials containing perfumes, and not
tear-bottles. Then came the tender and last fare-
well to the dead. All present were sprinkled with
lustral water, and the ilicit, or word of dismissal,
was spoken.
Nine days after the funeral there were observed
the novendialia or feriae novendiales, with sacri-
fices and a funeral repast to which guests were
sometimes invited. These repasts were usually
quiet and simple, but there are on record instances
of great prodigality, as that of Q. Maximus,
who, after the death of Africanus, invited the en-
tire Roman people to partake of his hospitality.
On the anniversaries of the birth and death of a
dear friend, beautiful wreaths and flowers were
deposited upon the tomb or taken into the colum-
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 327
barium and placed upon the urn ; and every year
in the month of February was celebrated a day
sacred to the memory of the dead.
Many centuries ago, musing by the tomb of
Virgil, a Latin poet wrote these lines:
"Lo! idly wandering on the sea-beat strand
Where the famed Siren on Ausonia's land
First moored her bark, I strike the sounding
string;
At Virgil's honored tomb I sit and sing;
Warmed by the hallowed spot, my muse takes fire,
And sweeps with bolder hand my humble lyre.
These strains, Marcellus, on the Chalcian shores
I penned, where great Vesuvius smokes and roars,
And from his crater ruddy flames expires,
With fury scarce surpassed by ^Etna's fires."
Petrarch, it is said, planted a bay-tree by the
tomb of Virgil to replace one that was originally
there, but that perished when Dante died in 1290.
It was at the tomb of Virgil that Boccaccio re-
nounced the career of a merchant and dedicated
his life to the cultivation of poetry and to the
study of literature.
The Augustan Mausoleum at Rome was
broken into by Gothic soldiers who hoped to find
in it great treasure, at the time of the sack of
the Imperial City in the year 406. It is said
that there had long been prophetic warnings that
the tomb would be violated and its dead cast
forth to be trodden under foot of the living.
Suetonius and Dion record portents that filled
the mind with fear and occasioned anxiety in the
328 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
hearts of men. The first ashes deposited in the
Augustan Mausoleum were those of Marcellus,
son of Octavia, Augustus' sister, by her first hus-
band, Claudius Marcellus. This young man,
the Emperor's nephew, was his destined heir, and
his death at the age of twenty-two, B. C. 22, was
the cause of wide-spread sorrow. Twelve years
before Christ the ashes of Agrippa, and one year
later the remains of Octavia, were placed in the
Mausoleum. After the deposit of the ashes of
Nerva in the year 96 A. D. the tomb was per-
manently closed. The Gothic soldiery destroyed
the contents of the Augustan Mausoleum and
scattered the bones of the dead. The ashes of
Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus, escaped,
however, and the urn which contained them was
discovered in modern times ; but what has now be-
come of it no one knows.
The opening of the tomb of the Scipios, on the
Appian Way, Rome, in 1780, created great ex-
citement. The most highly cultivated men of
Italy were profoundly interested in the excava-
tion, and Verri produced upon that occasion his
"Notti Romane," which is justly ranked among
the classic productions of modern Italian litera-
ture. A sarcophagus was found containing the
skeleton of L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, Consul
297 ; and near the sarcophagus was a bust sup-
posed to be that of the poet Ennius, the friend of
Scipio Africanus. There is every reason to be-
lieve the bust is really that of Ennius, as it is
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 329
known that he requested to be buried in the tomb
of the Scipios, and it was generally believed at
the time that his request had been complied with.
Both sarcophagus and bust were removed to the
Vatican by Pius VII. The skeleton of Scipio
Barbatus is described as having been perfect in
every way and white as snow. It was removed
by a Venetian senator, who constructed for it a
tomb and a monument at his villa near Padua.
VIII
The fear of being buried alive has occasioned
in many minds the greatest anxiety and distress.
So apprehensive have men been, that some have
had recourse to strange and even repulsive meas-
ures in their effort to render premature inter-
ment impossible. Harriet Martineau bequeathed
her physician ten pounds on condition that he
amputate her head before burial. This some-
what startling method of making it certain that
every vestige of life had disappeared was later
so changed as to secure to the doctor his ten
pounds for the severance of the jugular vein only.
She wanted her brain given to Dr. Atkinson, of
Upper Gloucester Place, London, for scientific
observation. When Miss Martineau made her
home in London the only authorized supply of
"subjects" for dissection was from the gallows,
and as a natural result there followed the "Burke
and Hare" murders and persistent "body-snatch-
ing." With the passing of the Warburton Bill
330 EXCURSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER
the difficulty in a measure disappeared, and,
yielding to the solicitation of her friends, Miss
Martineau changed her will, but to the last she
insisted upon the severance of the jugular vein.
Frances Power Cobbe had the same fear of pre-
mature burial, and insisted upon the same safe-
guard. Edmond Yates left money to his phy-
sician with the understanding that the same oper-
ation was to be performed upon his body so soon
as life was extinct. Hans Christian Andersen
entertained a like fear and provided a like remedy.
Bishop Berkeley and Daniel O'Connell left spe-
cial directions providing against premature bur-
ial. Berkeley directed in his will that his body
should be kept above ground more than five days,
and until it became "offensive by the cadaverous
smell." He also directed that during the time
it was awaiting burial it should remain unwashed,
undisturbed, and covered by the same bed clothes
in the same bed.
I think this fear of being buried alive is one of
the commonest of fears. Wilkie Collins was all
his days in bondage to it ; he kept upon his table
a letter addressed to any person who should find
him in an unconscious state, asking for the most
careful medical examination. I knew of a man
who requested that there might be placed in his
coffin a loaded revolver so that in case of prema-
ture burial he might have at hand the means of
ending life at once. A medical man requested
that there might be deposited in his coffin a bottle
AT LAST THE SILENT MAJORITY 331
of chloroform. Of course the embalmer's fluid,
the chief constituent of which is arsenic, would
ensure death even were the previous withdrawal
of the blood from its natural channels incompe-
tent to bring about that result. In these days of
embalming there is little reason for fearing pre-
mature interment. But once, no doubt, the dan-
ger was great, and in the past dreadful accidents
happened. In tropical lands, where burial takes
place at once and embalming is rarely resorted to,
there is still great danger. In the case of an epi-
demic of such an infectious disease as cholera or
yellow-fever, or after a battle where little care is
taken to separate the wounded from the dead, it
is quite possible to bury the living with the life-
less. Great caution should be observed in cases
of suspended animation, and it is well to allow
the body to remain unburied, where there is any
doubt, until there are signs of decomposition.
Indian fakirs who submit to burial under certain
restrictions and safeguards for a monetary con-
sideration have the appearance of being dead
though all the vital functious are unimpaired.
We find something of the same kind in the sleep
of hibernating animals. Bears pass several
months in a state of completely suspended ani-
mation. Some animals, after the winter sleep be-
gins, may be frozen and yet retain life. There
is no sign or group of signs that can positively
assure us that death has taken place short of ac-
tual putrefaction.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES
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