! 
 
'?3P^%i 
 
 ^2.J2yLy , X 
 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 RAYMOND ASQUITH 
 FELLOW OF ALL SOULS 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 IN 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 1 780-1 860 
 
All Rights reserved. 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 IN 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 1780-1860 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 ^1 
 
 SECOND SERIES 
 
 J. M. DENT & CO. 
 1895 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The Essays contained in this volume are 
 devoted to the same period, and for the 
 most part observe the same style of com- 
 position, which furnished forth the first series 
 published under the same title five years ago 
 ^ by Messrs Rivington, Percival & Co. Like 
 the majority of those, the majority of these 
 appeared in Mannillans Magazine; and I 
 owe thanks to the publishers and editor thereof 
 for their kind permission to reproduce them, 
 as I do to Messrs Chapman & Hall for the 
 essay on Miss Ferrier. That on Madame 
 D'Arblay has not previously made its ap- 
 pearance in print. 
 
 I need say no more about the purport and 
 purpose of these essays than that, as has 
 
viii Preface 
 
 been more fully explained before, they are 
 attempts to fill in the literary map of the 
 period, on one coherent critical scheme, and 
 with constant reference implied, if not ex- 
 pressed, to other periods and other literatures. 
 If any very precise person should object that 
 the Essay on English War Songs, and the 
 first two of those on Historical Novels, con- 
 tain references to literature which is neither 
 English nor of 1780- 1860, I can only reply 
 that the central figure of the first is one of 
 the chief English literary figures of that 
 period, and that the historical novel in a 
 perfect form is perhaps the most notable and 
 characteristic of its special products. 
 
 The original dates and places of appear- 
 ance of the essays, except that on Madame 
 D'Arblay, are as follows : Miss Ferrier, Fort- 
 nightly Review, February 1882 ; Twenty 
 Years of Political Satire, Macmillan's Maga- 
 zine, March 1890; Hood, do., September 
 1890; English War Songs, do., May 1891 ; 
 
Preface ix 
 
 Cobbett, do.^ December 1891 ; Some Great 
 Biographies, do., June 1892; Landor, do.^ 
 February 1893 ; Three Humourists, do., 
 December 1893 ; The Historical Novel, 
 do., August - October 1894; Southey, do., 
 February 1895. 
 
 As some of the essays deal with more 
 subjects than one, the exact chronological 
 order of the first series could not here be 
 observed : and I have arranged them so as 
 best to obtain contrast of subject. 
 
: 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface .... 
 I. Robert Southey 
 II. William Cobbett . 
 
 III. Walter Savage Landor . 
 
 IV. Thomas Hood 
 V. Miss Ferrier 
 
 VI. English War-Songs — Campbell . 
 VII. Madame D'Arblay . 
 VIII. Twenty Years of Political Satire 
 IX. Three Humourists 
 
 HOOK, BARHAM, MAGINN. 
 
 *• X. The Historical Novel 
 
 I. — THE days of ignorance. 
 
 ^ XI. The Historical Novel 
 
 II. — SCOTT AND DUMAS. 
 
 XII. The Historical Novel 
 III. — the successors. 
 
 ;:ill. Some Great Biographies . 
 
 Appendix A — 
 
 coleridge and southey 
 
 Appendix B — 
 
 songs of the CRIMEAN WAR 
 
 PAGE 
 
 vii 
 I 
 
 38 
 
 81 
 
 109 
 
 134 
 171 
 
 203 
 237 
 
 270 
 
 303 
 328 
 
 356 
 
 383 
 
 415 
 418 
 
I. 
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY. 
 
 Nearly seventy years ago Macaulay expressed a 
 doubt whether Southey's poems would 
 
 SOUTHEY. , 1 . 1 ir ^ ^ 
 
 be read m halt a century, but was 
 certain that, if read, they would be admired. The 
 doubt has been certainly justified ; the certainty 
 may seem more than a little doubtful. Southey's 
 character, which was once subjected to the most 
 unjust, though not perhaps the most unintel- 
 ligible or inexcusable, obloquy, has long been 
 cleared ; and those who most dislike his matured 
 views in political and ecclesiastical matters are 
 the first to admit that few English men of 
 letters have a more stainless record. His prose 
 style, the merits of which were indeed never 
 denied by any competent judges, has won 
 more and more praise from such judges as 
 time went on. But he is less read than ever as 
 a whole, and his poems are the least read part 
 of him. These poems, which the best critics 
 of his own generation admired, if not without 
 
 A 
 
. • . 
 
 
 ■ ■ ' ' ' ' Essays in English 
 
 reserve in detail, without any misgiving on the 
 whole ; on which he himself counted, gQ^xHEY. 
 not in boastfulness or in pique, but with 
 a serene and quiet confidence, to make him as 
 much exalted by the next age as he thought him- 
 self unduly neglected by his own ; which Landor 
 admired to enthusiasm and many others to 
 warmth, while they extorted a grudging tribute 
 even from the prejudice of Byron, — now find 
 hardly any readers, and still fewer to praise 
 than to read. Even among the few who 
 have read them, and who can discern their 
 merits, esteem rather than enthusiasm is the 
 common note, and esteem is about the most 
 fatal sentiment that can be accorded to 
 poetry.* 
 
 It is of the prose rather than of the verse that 
 Macaulay's prognostication has been thoroughly 
 fulfilled. The Life of Nelson represents it a little 
 less forlornly, but with hardly less injustice than 
 
 * Since I wrote this essay, a selection, the advent of which was 
 quite unknown to me when the essay itself was begun, has been 
 published by Messrs Macmillan, under the very competent editor- 
 ship of Prof. Dowden, who had already done good work for 
 Southey by his biography in the English Men of Letters series, 
 and by editing his letters to Caroline Bowles. Naturally Prof. 
 Dowden's selection is not quite identical with that which I should 
 myself have made : and, in particular, while it gives more space to 
 some of the longer poems than I should, it exhibits Southey's 
 grotesque verse rather less freely than is, I think, desirable. But 
 it is an excellent introduction to a mass of poetical work far too 
 long neglected, and one which ought to do a great service to 
 Southey's memory. 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 3 
 
 The Battle of Ble^iheim and one or two other 
 thinors represent the verse in the 
 
 SOUTHEY. if- -T-1 1 
 
 pubhc memory. ine stately quartos 
 of The History of Brazil and The Peninsular 
 War^ the decent octavos of The Colloquies on 
 the Progi'css ayid Prospects of Society and The 
 Book of the Church, the handy little duodeci- 
 mos of Espriella and Omniaiia, with all the 
 rest, have to be sought in catalogues and got 
 together, not indeed with immense research (for 
 none of them is exactly rare) but with some 
 trouble and delay. In any other country a decent, 
 if not a splendid, complete edition would long ago 
 have enshrined and kept on view work so ad- 
 mirable in style always, frequently so excellent 
 in mere substance, so constantly enlivened with 
 flashes of agreeable humour or hardly less 
 agreeable prejudice, and above all informed 
 by such an astonishing knowledge of books. 
 Johnson may have been fitted to grapple with 
 whole libraries ; but Southey did grapple with 
 them, his industry being as notoriously untiring 
 as the great Lexicographers was notoriously 
 intermittent. 
 
 Even in the article of biography the same 
 malign, and to some slight degree mysterious, fate 
 has pursued him. His life was extremely un- 
 eventful ; but, except for the great catastrophe 
 of Sir Walter's speculative career, it was not much 
 more uneventful than Scott's. He was a delightful, 
 though a somewhat too copious letter-writer, he 
 
4 Essays in English 
 
 knew at all times of his life some of the most 
 interesting- people of the day, and 
 
 ° ^ ^ '' SOUTHEY. 
 
 scanty as were his means he was 
 a very hospitable host and an untiring cicerone 
 in a country flooded every year with tourists. 
 But he was as unlucky in his biographers as 
 Scott and Byron were lucky. Cuthbert Southey 
 appears to have been an excellent person of 
 good taste and fair judgment, but possessed 
 of no great literary skill in general, and of 
 no biographical genius in particular ; while he 
 had the additional disadvantage of being the 
 youngest child, born too late to know much of his 
 father, or of his father's affairs during earlier years. 
 Dr Warter, Southey's son-in-law, had more literary 
 ambition than Cuthbert ; but he was deficient in 
 judgment and in the indispensable power of 
 selecting from the letters of a man who seems 
 often to have written much the same things to 
 three or four correspondents on the same day. 
 The result is that, though the Life and Con'e- 
 spoiidence is a charming book as a book, with 
 portraits and frontispieces showing the dead and 
 delightful art of line-engraving at its best, and 
 though both it, the Selected Letters and the Letters 
 of Southey to Caroline Bozvles are full of interest, 
 that interest is so frittered and duplicated, watered 
 down and wasted in the eleven volumes, that 
 only patient and skilled extractors can get at it. 
 An abridgment, putting the life together in 
 Southey's own words, has, I believe, been executed 
 
Literature, ij8o-i86o 5 
 
 and by no incompetent hand ; but there is always 
 a curse on abridgments. And besides, 
 the charm of a biography consists 
 hardly more in the actual autobiographic matter, 
 found in letters or otherwise, than in the con- 
 necting framework. It is because Boswell and 
 Lockhart knew how to execute this framework 
 in such a masterly fashion that their books 
 possess an immortality which even the conversa- 
 tions of Johnson, even the letters of Scott, could 
 not have fully achieved by themselves. 
 
 Southey, for whose early years there is practi- 
 cally no source of information but an autobio- 
 graphic fragment written rather late in life, and 
 dwelling on detail with interesting though rather 
 disproportionate fulness, was born in Wine Street, 
 Bristol, on the 12th of August 1774. His birthday 
 gave him, according to an astrological friend, " a 
 gloomy capability of walking through desolation," 
 but does not seem to have carried with it any 
 sporting tendencies. At least his only recorded 
 exploit in that way is the highly eccentric, and 
 one would think slightly hazardous, one of shooting 
 wasps with a horse-pistol loaded with sand. His 
 father, also a Robert, was only a linendraper, but 
 the Southeys, though, as their omnilegent repre- 
 sentative confesses, " so obscure that he never 
 found the name in any book," were Somerset folk 
 of old date and entitled to bear arms. They had 
 moreover actual wealth in the possession of one of 
 their members, the poet's uncle, John Cannon 
 
6 Essays in English 
 
 Southey, and expectations in the shape of 
 estates entailed upon them in default 
 of the male heirs of Lord Somerville. 
 Southey, however, never benefited by either, 
 for his uncle's fortune went out of the family 
 altogether, and it turned out that Lord Somer- 
 ville had somehow got the entail barred. His 
 father too failed and died early, and all the 
 family assistance that he ever had came from the 
 side of his mother, Margaret Hill, who was pretty 
 well connected. Her half-sister, Miss Tyler, ex- 
 tended a capricious and tyrannical protection to 
 the boy in his extreme youth (turning him out of 
 doors later on the score of Pantisocracy and Miss 
 Fricker), while her brother, Mr Hill, a clergyman, 
 was Southey's Providence till long after he reached 
 manhood. After a childhood (unimportant though 
 interesting to read about) in which he very early 
 developed a passion for English literature, he was 
 sent by his uncle to Westminster in the spring of 
 1788, and remained there with not much inter- 
 mission till it was time for him to go to Oxford. 
 
 This latter translation, however, was not effected 
 without alarums and excursions. Although 
 Southey, neither as boy nor yet as man, was the 
 kind of person thoroughly to enjoy or thoroughly 
 to profit by a public school, he was on the whole 
 loyal to his own, and it produced a valuable and 
 durable impression on him. The coarser and more 
 hackneyed advantage of " making friends " he had 
 to the uttermost ; for it was there that he made 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 7 
 
 the acquaintance of Charles Watkin Williams 
 Wynn, who was through life his patron 
 as well as his friend, and of Grosvenor 
 Bedford, his constant correspondent and intellec- 
 tual double. He also profited as much as need 
 be in the matter of education, though, as has 
 happened with other boys who have gone to 
 school with more general information than solid 
 instruction, he was promoted rather too rapidly 
 to become a thorough scholar in the strict 
 sense. Nor did some rough experiences in his 
 early days do him much, if any, harm. 
 
 But the end of his stage was in a way unfortun- 
 ate. Nothing could have less resembled the real 
 man than his enemies' representation of him as a 
 supple and servile instrument, keen to note and 
 obstinate to seize the side on which his bread was 
 buttered, and born to be a frequenter of " Main- 
 chance Villa." As a matter of fact he was always an 
 uncompromising and impracticable idealist, though 
 with some safeguards to be noticed presently. 
 In his last days at school he showed this quality 
 just as he did twenty or forty years later, when he 
 constantly struggled to write in The Quarterly 
 Review as if he were sole proprietor, sole editor, 
 and sole contributor thereof, just as he did when 
 the heat of his Jacobinism was not at fullest, by 
 " declining to drink Suwarrow," just as he did after 
 he had thoroughly rallied to the Party of Order 
 by refusing, in spite of the personal instances of 
 the Duke of Wellington, to alter a judgment in his 
 
8 Essays in English 
 
 Peninsular War. It is needless to say that in 
 his time, as earlier and later, any 
 
 ' . , ... , SOUTHEY. 
 
 Westminster boy of ability rather 
 above the average and of tolerable character 
 and conduct, had his future made plain by the 
 way of Christ Church or Trinity as the case 
 might be. But Southey must needs start a peri- 
 odical called The Flagellant, whereof the very title 
 was in the circumstances seditious, and in an early 
 number made a direct attack on corporal punish- 
 ment. This arousing the authorities, he confessed 
 and expressed contrition ; but the head-master, Dr 
 Vincent, was implacable, and not only insisted on 
 his leaving the school, but directly or indirectly 
 caused Dean Cyril Jackson to refuse to receive 
 him even as a commoner at Christ Church. 
 
 He fell back, however, upon Balliol, and matricu- 
 lated without demur in November 1792, going into 
 residence in January. Perhaps, indeed, though 
 his fortunes were now entering on a rather pro- 
 longed low tide, this particular ill luck was, even 
 from the lowest point of view, not such very bad 
 luck after all. At Christ Church even as a com- 
 moner, much more as a junior student, under such 
 a Dean as Jackson, who bore the sword by no 
 means in vain, a youngster of Southey's tone and 
 temper, full of Jacobinism and all its attendant 
 crazes, would have come probably, and rather 
 sooner than later, to some signal mischance, even 
 more decided and damaging to his prospects than 
 the close of his Westminster career. At Balliol, 
 
Literattcre, ly 80- 1860 9 
 
 though he was in no particularly good odour, 
 they seem to have left him very much 
 
 SOUTHEY 
 
 alone, not resenting even the shocking 
 innovation of his wearing his hair uncropped 
 and unpowdered in hall. His tutor, with per- 
 haps more frankness than sense of duty, said to 
 him, " Mr Southey, sir, you won't learn any- 
 thing by my lectures ; so if you have any studies 
 of your own, you had better pursue them." 
 This he did by getting up at five o'clock in the 
 morning to breakfast (one shudders to hear) on 
 " bread and cheese and red wine negus," walking 
 all over the country, learning to swim and to row, 
 and associating chiefly with men of his old school. 
 He seems to have kept terms or not with a casualty 
 somewhat surprising even in that age of lax dis- 
 cipline and few or no examinations ; and after 
 about a year and a half of this sort of thing, he 
 ceased to reside at all. It is scarcely surprising 
 that he should have felt very little affection for a 
 place where he stayed so little and sat so loose ; 
 and long afterwards he notes that, though he was 
 constantly dreaming of Westminster, he never 
 dreamed of Oxford. 
 
 In fact he was busy with thoughts and schemes 
 quite alien from the existing scheme, or indeed 
 from any possible scheme, of the university. He 
 had made the acquaintance of Coleridge; his 
 boyish friendship with the Miss Frickers had 
 ripened into an engagement with one of them, 
 Edith ; he had, though the atrocities of the Terror 
 
lo Essays in English 
 
 had much weakened his Gallomania, written Joan 
 of Arc, and he had pluns^ed ardently 
 
 1 r 1 r « -r. .• SOUTHEY. 
 
 mto the famous schemes of rantiso- 
 cracy " and " Aspheterism." Of these much has 
 been heard, though I never could make out, 
 why, of these two characteristic specimens of 
 Estesian language, Pantisocracy should have 
 secured a place in the general memory which 
 its companion has not. As Coleridge's many 
 biographers have made known, Pantisocracy, a 
 scheme for a socialist colony in Pennsylvania or 
 Wales or anywhere, broke down ; and it pleased 
 Coleridge to consider that the blame was mainly 
 Southey's. As a matter of fact it was impossible 
 to start it without money, of which most of the 
 Pantisocrats had none, and the others very little ; 
 and no doubt Southey who, visionary as he still 
 was, had some common sense and a very keen 
 sense of what was due to others, saw that to 
 attempt it would be cruel and criminal. While 
 Coleridge had been ecstatically formulating his 
 enthusiasm in such sentences as " America ! 
 Southey ! Miss Fricker ! Pantisocracy ! " his more 
 practical friend was inquiring of Mr Midshipman 
 Thomas Southey, his brother, " What do your 
 common blue trousers cost ? " Alas ! when a man 
 combines even an enthusiastic love for Aspheterism 
 with a sense of the cost of common blue trousers, 
 the end cannot be doubtful. 
 
 If, however, anybody imagined (and Indeed the 
 manufacturers of " Mr P'eathernest " did try to set 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 1 1 
 
 up such a notion) that Southey relinquished his 
 generous schemes of honest toil abroad 
 
 SOUTHEY 
 
 for a life of pensioned and voluptuous 
 infamy at home, it was a very vain imagination. 
 For a time, in October 1794, and later, his prospects 
 were about as little encouraging as those of any 
 young man in England. He had steadfastly re- 
 solved not to take Orders, the cardinal point of his 
 benevolent uncle's scheme for him ; his aunt turned 
 him out of doors ; his mother had nothing to give 
 him ; and his intended bride was penniless. His 
 wants, however, were exceedingly modest, but fifty 
 pounds a year. He delivered historical lectures at 
 Bristol, lectures of the beautiful sweeping sort 
 (" from the Origin of Society to the American 
 War") which the intelligent undergraduate de- 
 lights in ; and they seem to have been not 
 unsuccessful. John Scott, the future victim of 
 that unlucky duel, undertook to find him journal- 
 ism at a guinea and a half a week, though it is not 
 clear that this ever came to anything. Cottle 
 (Joseph of Bristol, the brother of Amos) gave him 
 fifty guineas for Joan of Arc, and as many copies 
 of the book to get rid of by subscription. Lastly, 
 Mr Hill, his unwearied uncle, suggested that, as he 
 would not take Orders, he should go to Lisbon 
 (where Mr Hill was chaplain) for six months to 
 " simmer down," and should then read law. 
 Southey consented, but resolving to make de- 
 sertion of his betrothed impossible, married Edith 
 Fricker on November 14th, 1795. and parted from 
 her at the church-door. 
 
T2 Essays in English 
 
 This marriage, and the Portuguese journey 
 which immediately succeeded, may be 
 
 ^ 1 1 r- 1 ) SOUTHEY. 
 
 said to have finally settled Southeys 
 fortunes in life, young as he was at the time. 
 He was never the man to shirk a responsibility, 
 and though for some time to come he loyally 
 attempted to read law, he soon made up his 
 mind that it was never likely to give him a 
 livelihood. On the other hand, his visit to the 
 Peninsula, with the interest thus created in its 
 history and languages, gave him that central 
 subject and occupation which is almost indispens- 
 able to a working man of letters (such as he was 
 marked out to be and soon became) if he is not to 
 be a mere bookseller's hack. Directly, indeed, 
 Southey's Spanish and Portuguese books and 
 studies were about the least remunerative of all 
 his mostly ill-paid work. The great History of 
 Portugal, planned almost at once, never saw the 
 light at all; and The History of Brazil, its more 
 manageable offshoot and episode, was but an unpro- 
 fitable work. But this visit to Lisbon, and another 
 of somewhat longer duration which he took with 
 his wife some years later, were of immense service. 
 They thoroughly established his health, which had 
 been anything but strong ; they gave him, as has 
 been said, a central subject to work upon in which 
 he became an authority and which served as tie- 
 beam and king-post both to his multifarious work ; 
 and they furnished him with one of those invalu- 
 able stores of varied and pleasurable memory than 
 
Literature, ij 80- 1860 13 
 
 which nothing is of more consequence to a man 
 whose Hfe is to be passed in apparently 
 
 SOUTHEY. 1 TT 
 
 monotonous study. He more than 
 once planned a third visit, but war, scanty 
 finances, unceasing occupations, and other things 
 prevented it ; and though in his later years 
 he took a fair allowance of holidays, not un- 
 frequently on the Continent, he never returned 
 to Cintra and the Arrabida and those charmed 
 territories of the " Roi de Garbe " to which 
 b he looked back as a sort of earthly Paradise, 
 for all his consciousness that neither the things 
 nor the people there were in all ways very good. 
 
 Nor were many years to pass before he was 
 established in the district with which his name is 
 connected only less indissolubly than that of 
 Wordsworth. He had indeed no special fancy 
 for the Lakes, nor for their climate after that of 
 Portugal, and for some years at least had great 
 difficulty in reconciling himself to them. But he 
 hated London, where, when he at last gave up the 
 Bar, there was nothing particular to keep him ; 
 death and other chances weakened his ties to 
 Bristol, and he had none elsewhere, while his fast- 
 growing library made some settled abode imper- 
 B ative. At last Coleridge, who had already settled 
 t himself at Keswick in a house too large for him, 
 pressed the Southeys to join him there. Mrs 
 Southey naturally was glad to have the company 
 of her sister, and they went, at first for a short 
 time, but soon took root. Meanwhile the chief 
 
14 Essays in English 
 
 practical question had been settled first by the 
 acceptance from his friend Wynn, a man 
 
 r r -. c r ^ J SOUTHEY. 
 
 01 means, of an annuity of XjIoo, and, 
 secondly, by much miscellaneous newspaper work 
 in the form of poems and reviews. Thalaba, which 
 had been finished in Portugal (where Kehama, under 
 the name oi Keradon, was begun), brought him some 
 fame, though his gains from this kind of work 
 were always insignificant. But Southey, if he had 
 expensive tastes, did not indulge them ; his wife 
 was an excellent manager — too excellent indeed 
 as the sequel was thought to show, for her house- 
 wifely cares seemed to have helped to break down 
 her health of mind and body at last. So he con- 
 trived in some incomprehensible manner not only 
 to keep out of debt, but to help his own family 
 liberally and strangers with no sparing hand. 
 
 The sojourn at Keswick began in i8oi, and only 
 ceased with Southey's life, though immediately after 
 his arrival an appointment, which he soon gave 
 up, as secretary to Mr Corry, the Irish Chancellor, 
 interrupted it. Various attempts were made by 
 himself and his friends to get him something 
 better, but without success, and his own prefer- 
 ments, until quite late in his life Sir Robert Peel 
 supplemented them with a fresh pension, were a 
 Government annuity of ;^200 a year (much reduced 
 by fees), which enabled him to relinquish Wynn's, 
 and which was given him by the Whigs in 1808, 
 and the Laureateship in 18 14 with its pay of rather 
 less than £100 di year. Such were the ill-gotten 
 
Lite7'ature, ij8o-i86o 15 
 
 gains for which, according to the enemy, " Mr 
 Feathernest " sold his conscience. 
 
 Although Southey was but seven-and- 
 twenty when he settled at Keswick, and though 
 he lived for more than forty years longer, it is as 
 unnecessary as it would be impracticable to follow 
 his life during this later period as minutely as 
 we have done hitherto. The ply was now taken, 
 the vocation distinctly indicated, and the means 
 and place of exercising it more or less secured. 
 Thenceforward he lived in laborious peace, dis- 
 turbed only by the loss in 18 16 of his beloved 
 son Herbert, about ten years later by that of his 
 youngest daughter Isabel, and later by the mental 
 illness and death of his wife. He never recovered 
 this last shock ; and though he married again, his 
 second wife being the poetess Caroline Bowles, it 
 was as a nurse rather than as a wife that Edith's 
 successor accepted him, and he died himself after 
 some years of impaired intelligence on March 21st, 
 
 1843- 
 An almost extravagantly Roman nose (the other 
 
 Robert, Herrick, is the only Englishman I can 
 
 think of who excelled him in this respect) and an 
 
 extreme thinness did not prevent Southey from 
 
 being a very handsome man. His enemy Byron, 
 
 who had no reason to be discontented with his 
 
 own, declared that " to possess Southey's head 
 
 and shoulders he would almost have written his 
 
 Sapphics " ; and, despite his immense labours 
 
 ^nd his exceedingly bad habit of reading as he 
 
1 6 Essays in English 
 
 walked, he was till almost the last strong and 
 active. The excellence of his moral 
 
 , . , SOUTHEY. 
 
 character has never been seriously 
 contested by any one who knew ; and the only 
 blemish upon it appears to have been a slight 
 touch of Pharisaism, not indeed of the most 
 detestable variety which exalts itself above 
 the publican, but of the still trying kind which 
 is constantly inclined to point out to the publi- 
 can what a publican he is, and what sad things 
 publicans are, and how he had much better 
 leave off being one. We know even better than 
 was known fifty years ago what were Coleridge's 
 weaknesses, yet it is impossible not to wish that 
 Coleridge's brother-in-law had not written, and 
 difficult not to wonder that Coleridge's nephew 
 did not refrain from printing, certain elaborate 
 letters of reproof, patronage, and good advice. 
 So, too, the abuse and misrepresentation which 
 Byron, and those who took their cue from Byron, 
 lavished on Southey were inexcusable enough ; 
 but again one cannot help wishing that he had 
 been a little less heartily convinced of the utter 
 and extreme depravity and wickedness of these 
 men. Still, there was no humbug in Southey ; 
 there was a great deal of virtue, and a virtuous 
 man who is not something of a humbug is apt to 
 be a little of a Pharisee unless he is a perfect 
 saint, which Southey, to do him justice, was not. 
 On the contrary, he was a man of middle earth, 
 who was exceedingly fond of gooseberry tart and 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 17 
 
 black currant rum, of strong ale and Rhenish, who 
 loved to crack jokes, would give his 
 
 SOUTIIEY. , , 1 r 
 
 enemy at least as good as he got trom 
 him, and was nearly as human as any one could 
 desire. 
 
 Of his famous so-called tergiversation little need 
 be said. Everybody, whatever his own politics, 
 who has looked into the matter has long ago come 
 to the conclusion that it was only tergiversation 
 in appearance. Southey once said that political 
 writing required a logical attitude of mind which 
 he had not ; and this is quite true, so true that it 
 was a great pity he ever took to it. From sym- 
 pathising in a vague youthful way with what he 
 imagined to be the principles of the French Re- 
 volution, he changed to a hearty detestation of its 
 practice. His Hking for the Spaniards and his 
 dislike of the French turned him from an opponent 
 of the war to a defender of it, and it was this more 
 than anything else that parted him from his old 
 Whig friends. In short he was always guided by 
 his sympathies ; and as he was never in his hottest 
 days of Aspheterism anything like a consistent 
 and reasoned Radical, so in his most rancorous 
 days of reaction he never was a consistent or 
 reasoned Tory. 
 
 Of his life, however, and his character, and even 
 of his opinion, interesting as all three are, it is 
 impossible to say more here. We must pass over 
 with the merest mention that quaint freak of 
 Nemesis which made a mysterious Dissenting 
 
 B 
 
1 8 Essays in English 
 
 Minister produce from nobody knew where Wat 
 Tyler, and publish it as the work of a 
 
 rr/ T r • SOUTH EY. 
 
 Tory Laureate twenty-three years after it 
 was written by an undergraduate Jacobin, the oddity 
 of the thing being crowned by Lord Eldon's charac- 
 teristic refusal to grant an injunction on the ground 
 that a man could not claim property in a work 
 hurtful to the public. Which refusal assured the 
 free circulation of this hurtful work, instead of 
 its suppression. And we can only allude to the 
 not yet clearly intelligible negotiations, or mis- 
 understandings, as to his succession to the editor- 
 ship of TJie Quarterly Review when Gifford was 
 failing. In these Southey seems to have somehow 
 conceived that the place was his to take if he chose 
 (which he never intended) or to allot to some one 
 else as he liked ; with the very natural result that 
 a sort of bitterness, never completely removed 
 and visible in the Review's notice of his life, arose 
 between him and Lockhart after the latter's ap- 
 pointment. His selection by Lord Radnor (who 
 did not know him) as member for Downton in 
 the last days of rotten boroughs, and his election 
 without his knowing it was another odd incident. 
 The last important event of his life in this kind 
 was the offer of a baronetcy and the actual con- 
 ferring of an additional pension of ;^300 by Peel, 
 who, whatever faults he may have had, was the 
 only Prime Minister since Harley who has ever 
 taken much real interest in the welfare of men 
 of letters. 
 
Literature^ iy8o-i86o 19 
 
 But we must turn to the works ; and a mighty 
 armful, or rather several miefhty armfuls 
 
 SOUTHEY. , -T-i 1 • , 
 
 they are to turn to. 1 he poems, which 
 are the chief stumbling-block, were collected by 
 Southey himself in ten very pretty little volumes in 
 1837-8. After his death they were more popularly 
 issued in one, his cousin, the Rev. H. Hill, son 
 by a late mrrriage of the uncle who had been so 
 good to him, editing a supernumerary volume of 
 rather superfluous fragments, the chief of which 
 was an American tale called Oliver Newman^ on 
 which Southey had been engaged for very many 
 years. He had the good sense and pluck (indeed 
 he was never deficient in the second of these 
 qualities, and not often in the first), to print Wat 
 Tyler just as the pirates had launched it after 
 its twenty-three years on the stocks. It is very 
 amusing and exactly what might be expected 
 from a work written in three days by a Jacobin 
 boy who had read a good many old plays. Can- 
 ning, Ellis, and Frere together could have produced 
 in fun nothing better than this serious outburst 
 of Wat's. 
 
 Think ye, my friend, 
 That I, a humble blacksmith, here in Deptford, 
 Would part with these six groats, earned with hard toil, 
 All that I have, to massacre the Frenchmen, 
 Murder as enemies men I never saw, 
 Did not the State compel me ? 
 
 One would like to have heard Mr Wopsle in this 
 part. For the rest, the thing contains some good 
 
20 Essays in English 
 
 blank verse, and a couple of very pretty songs, — 
 considerably better, I should think, than 
 
 ^ ' 1 . 1 1 SOUTHEY. 
 
 most other things of the kind pub- 
 lished in the year 1794, which was about 
 the thickest of the dark before the dawn of 
 the Lyrical Ballads. Joan of Arc, Wat's elder 
 sister by a year, though not published till 
 a year after Wat was written, is now in a 
 less virgin condition than her brother, Southey 
 having made large changes in the successive (five) 
 early editions, and others in the definitive one 
 more than forty years after the first. The popu- 
 larity (for it was really popular) of the poem, 
 shows rather the dearth of good poetry at the 
 time of its appearance than anything else. It 
 displays very few of the merits of Southey's 
 later long poems, and it does display the chief 
 of all their defects, the defect which Coleridge, 
 during the tiff over Pantisocracy, hit upon in a 
 letter of which the original was advertised for sale 
 only the other day. This fault, least observable in 
 Thalaba and Kehania, but painfully obvious in the 
 others, consists in conveying to the reader a notion 
 that the writer has said, " Go to, let us make 
 a poem," and has accordingly, to borrow the 
 language of Joe Gargery's forge-song. 
 
 Beat it out, beat it out, 
 With a clink for the stout, 
 
 but with very little inspiration for the poetical. 
 Joan of Arc is a most respectable poem, admirable 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 21 
 
 in sentiment and not uninteresting as a tale in 
 verse. But the conception is pedestrian 
 
 SOUTHEY. , , , 1 1 . 1 
 
 and the blank verse is to match : 
 
 While thus in Orleans hope had banished sleep, 
 The Maiden's host had prayed their evening prayer, 
 And in the forest took their rest secure. 
 
 Very unexceptionable no doubt, but also ex- 
 tremely uninspiring. It is in its own way written 
 very well ; but one sees not why it should ever 
 have been written at all. 
 
 Between this crude production and the very 
 different Thalaba which followed it at some years' 
 distance, Southey wrote very many, perhaps most, 
 of his minor poems ; and the characteristics of 
 them may be best noticed together. In the 
 earliest of all it must be confessed that the 
 crotchet of thought and the mannerism of style 
 which drew down on him the lash of the Anti- 
 Jacobin are very plentifully exhibited. A most 
 schoolboy Pindaric is The Triumph of Woman. 
 The strange mixture of alternate childishness and 
 pomposity which is almost the sole tie between 
 the Lake Poets in their early work, pervades all 
 the Poems on the Slave Trade, the Botany Bay 
 Eclogues, the Sonnets and the Monodramas. 
 Even in the Lyrical Poems written at Bristol, or 
 rather Westbury in the years 1798-9, there would 
 be no very noticeable advance if it were not for the 
 delightful Holly Tree, from which Hazlitt has ex- 
 tracted the well-deserved text of a compliment 
 
22 Essays in English 
 
 more graceful than Hazlitt is usually credited with 
 conceiving-, and which, with the later 
 
 o' ' . . SOUTH EY. 
 
 but not better Stajizas written m my 
 Library, is Southey's greatest achievement as an 
 occasional poet in the serious kind. His claims in 
 the comic and mixed departments are much more 
 considerable. A bel Shiifflebottom is fun, and being 
 very early testifies to a healthy consciousness of 
 the ridiculous. For his English Eclogues I have 
 no great love ; but it is something to say in their 
 favour that they were the obvious originals of 
 Tennyson's English Idylls as much in manner as 
 in title. 
 
 The Ballads, with the much discussed Devil's 
 Walk as an early outsider in one key, and the 
 curious All for Love as a late one in another, have 
 much more to be said for them than that in the 
 same way they are the equally obvious originators 
 of the Ingoldsby Legends. They are not easily 
 criticised in a few words. In themselves they were 
 not quite ancestorless, for " Monk " Lewis, no great 
 man of letters, but something of a man of metre, 
 had taught the author a good deal. They are 
 nearly as unequal as another division of Southey's 
 own verse, his Odes, of which it is perhaps 
 sufficient to say here that they were remarkably 
 like Young's, especially in the way in which they 
 rattle up and down the whole gamut from sub- 
 limity to absurdity. The Ballads frequently 
 underlie the reproach of applying Voltairian 
 methods to anything in which the author did not 
 
\ 
 
 Literattire, ij 80- 1860 23 
 
 happen to believe, while nothing made him more 
 indignant than any such application 
 by others to things in which he did 
 believe, — a reproach urged forcibly by Lamb in 
 that undeserved but not unnatural attack in 
 The London Magazine, which Southey met with 
 a really noble magnanimity. But at their best 
 they are very original for their time, and very 
 good for all time. The Old Womaji of Berkeley y 
 one of the oldest and perhaps the most popu- 
 lar in its day, is perhaps the best. It has a 
 fair pendant in Bishop Hatto, and the Bishop 
 perhaps meets the modern taste even better than 
 the Old Woman. The Fastrada story is too much 
 vulgarised in King Charlemai^i, and it may be 
 generally confessed of Southey that to the finest 
 touches of romance he was rather insensitive, his 
 nature lacking the " strange and high " feeling of 
 passion. But he is thoroughly at home in The 
 King of the Crocodiles. Everybody knows The 
 IncJicape Rock, and The Well of St Keyne, and 
 T/ie Battle of Blenheim ; indeed it is very possible 
 that they are the only things of Southey that 
 everybody does know. The Spanish Ballads are 
 not nearly so good as Lockhart's : but Lockhart 
 had the illegitimate advantage of grafting Scott's 
 technique on Southey's special knowledge. Never- 
 theless, it may be said that all the ballads and 
 metrical tales are to this day well worth reading, 
 that both Scott and Byron owed them not a little, 
 and that they indicate a vein in their author which 
 
24 Essays in English 
 
 might have been worked in different circumstances 
 to even better advantage. 
 
 ° - - . . SOUTHEY. 
 
 Still Southey's chief poetical claim is 
 not here ; and the best of the things as yet mentioned 
 have been equalled by men with whom poetry was 
 a mere occasional pastime. Nor do his Inscriptions, 
 for which he has received high praise from some 
 good critics, seem to me quite of the first class. 
 They are, as a rule, too long, whereas an inscription, 
 whether verse or prose, can hardly be too short. 
 And what is worse, they too frequently have the 
 elevation on stilts, the monumental effort in plaster, 
 the slightly flatulent rhetoric, so incomparably 
 parodied and ridiculed in the Anti-Jacobin by means 
 of the immortal lines on Mrs Brownrigg. The style 
 7toble is the most dangerous of all styles. Of The 
 Vision of Judgment it cannot be necessary to say 
 anything in detail. It is not so bad as those who 
 only know it from Byron's triumphant castigation 
 may think, but otherwise I can only suppose that 
 the Devil, tired of Southey's perpetual joking at 
 him, was determined to have his revenge, and that 
 he was permitted to do so by the Upper Powers 
 in consequence of the bumptious Pharisaism of the 
 preface. The Pilgrimage to Waterloo and The 
 Tale of Paragiay are poetically no better though 
 rather more mature than Joan of Arc \ Madoc was 
 admired by good men at its appearance, but fre- 
 quent attempts, made with the best good will, to 
 read it have not enabled me to place it much 
 higher than these. 
 
Literature, iy8o-iS6o 25 
 
 Roderick, the last of the long poems in blank 
 verse, is also, I think, by far the best. 
 The absence of pulse and throb in 
 the verse, of freshness and inevitableness in the 
 phrase and imagery is indeed not seldom felt 
 here also ; but there is something which redeems 
 it. The author's thorough knowledge of the 
 details and atmosphere of his subject has vivified 
 the details and communicated the atmosphere ; 
 the unfamiliarity and the romantic interest of the 
 story are admirably given, and the thing is about 
 as good as a long poem in blank verse which is 
 not of the absolute first class can be. 
 
 Of Thalaba the Destroyer and The Curse of Ke- 
 Jiama we must speak differently. The one was 
 completely written, the other sketched and well 
 begun in that second sojourn at Lisbon which 
 was Southey's golden time : 
 
 When, friends with love and leisure. 
 
 Youth not yet left behind, 
 He worked or played at pleasure, 
 
 Found God and Goddess kind ; 
 
 when his faculties, tolerably matured by study, 
 were still in their first freshness, and when he had 
 not yet settled down, and was not yet at all certain 
 that he should have to settle down, to the dogged 
 collar-work of his middle and later age. I have no 
 hesitation as to which I prefer. The rhymeless 
 Pindarics of Thalaba, written while Southey was 
 following Sayers in that anti-rhyming heresy which 
 
26 Essays in English 
 
 nobody but Milton has ever rendered orthodox 
 by sheer stress of genius, are a great 
 
 ^ fc> > O SOUTHEY. 
 
 drawback to the piece ; there are 
 constant false notes like this of Maimuna, 
 
 Yi^x fi7ie face raised to Heaven, 
 
 where the commonplace adjective mars the pas- 
 sionate effect ; and though the eleventh and twelfth 
 books, with the journey to Domdaniel and the 
 successful attack on it, deserved to produce the 
 effect which they actually did produce on their 
 own generation, the story as a whole is a little 
 devoid of interest. 
 
 All these weak points were strengthened and 
 guarded in The Curse of Keharna, the greatest ^ 
 thing by far that Southey did, and a thing, as 
 I think, really great, without any comparatives 
 and allowances. Scott, always kind and well- 
 affected to Southey as he was, appears to me to 
 have been a little unjust to Kehama ; an injustice 
 which appears between the lines of his review of j 
 it, and in those of his reference to it in his 
 biography. It is perfectly true, as he suggests, 
 that Southey was specially prone to the general 
 weakness of insisting on and clinging to his 
 own weakest points. I often think, when I 
 read him, of a distinguished man of letters 
 whom I once heard reply to a very modest 
 remonstrance (not made by me), " I should write 
 it again to-morrow," setting his teeth as he did 
 so. But this foible as it seems to me is less, 
 
Literature, ij So- 1860 27 
 
 not more, obvious in The Curse of KeJiavia. In the 
 first place the poet has actually s^iven up 
 
 SOUTHEY J >-> ir 
 
 the craze for irregular blank verse, and 
 the additional charm of rhyme makes all the 
 difference between this poem and Thalaba. In 
 the second place the central idea — the acquisition, 
 through prescribed means, allowed by the gods, 
 of a power greater than that of the gods them- 
 selves, by even the worst man who cares to go 
 through the course — communicates a kind of 
 antinomy of interest, a conflict of official and 
 poetical justice which is unique, or if not unique, 
 rare out of Greek tragedy. In the mediaeval 
 legends, delightful as they are, the interest is 
 sometimes weakened by the illegitimate way in 
 which the Virgin, or somebody else, will inter- 
 fere to set things right. The defeat of Kehama 
 by his own wilful act in demanding the Amreeta- 
 cup is as unexpected and as artistically effective 
 as the maxim, 
 
 Less than Omniscience could not suffice 
 To wield Omnipotence, 
 
 is philosophically sound. 
 
 Moreover the characters are interesting, at 
 least to me. No Rejected Addresses shall avail 
 to make me laugh at the blessed Glendoveer, 
 who behaves throughout like a gentleman and 
 a Trojan, as does also Ladurlad. It may be 
 that Kailyal is almost too good a young person ; 
 but nowadays in particular, when we have an 
 almost unvarying supply of the other kind in 
 
2 8 Essays in English 
 
 literature, she ought to be welcome if only for a 
 change. Arvalan, though a very bad gQ^THEY. 
 man, is a most excellent ghost ; Lor- 
 rinite is a good witch. And then, to supplement 
 these several attractions, there are for the wicked 
 men who love " passages," who like " patches," 
 quite delectable things. The author pretended 
 (" not that it was really so," as Lamb says) to 
 think the famous and beautiful, 
 
 They sin who tell us love can die, 
 
 claptrap ; if it be so, would he had sinned a 
 little oftener in the same style ! Nobody, except 
 out of mere youthful paradox, can affect to 
 undervalue the Curse itself. It is thoroughly 
 good in scheme and in execution, in gross and 
 in detail ; there are no better six-and-twenty 
 lines for their special purpose in all English 
 poetry. And the first operation of the Curse 
 is good, and the recovery of Kailyal, and the 
 picture of the Swerga (though really Indra is 
 but a cool and insignificant Divine Person) and 
 that of Mount Meru. But the finest scenes of 
 the poem are no doubt ushered in by the descrip- 
 tion of the famous Sea City which Landor re- 
 described in the best known of all his stately 
 phrases in verse, and from this to the end there 
 is no break. The scenes in Padalon more 
 especially want reading ; they are in no need of 
 praise when they have once been read, and a 
 right melancholy thing it is to think how few 
 
 I 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 29 
 
 probably have read them nowadays. The Curse 
 of Kehania may not place Southey in 
 
 SOUTHFY 
 
 the very highest class of poets, if we 
 demand those special qualities in the poet which 
 distinguish certain of the greatest names. But it 
 puts him in the very first rank of the second. 
 
 I am aghast when I see how little room is left 
 for the enormous and interesting subject of 
 Southey's prose. As has been said, there is no 
 collected edition of it ; and there could be none 
 which should be complete. There are, it is 
 believed, no documents for identifying his earlier 
 contributions to newspapers and magazines ; but 
 he wrote nearly a hundred articles in The Quarterly 
 Review, many in many other Reviews, and the 
 historical part (amounting to something like a 
 volume on each occasion) of the Edinburgh 
 Annual Register for three years. He translated 
 or revised translations of Amadis, Palmerin, and 
 the Chronicle of the Cid. He edited the Morte 
 d Arthur, Cowper's Poems, divers Specimens and 
 Selections from English Poets and other things. 
 His Specimens of the Later English Poets which, 
 with some help from Grosvenor Bedford, he pro- 
 duced for Longmans in three very pretty volumes 
 (1807), is particularly interesting because of its 
 dealing with bards most of whom are utterly 
 forgotten. And of solid independent books in 
 prose he published, besides the three biographies 
 of Nelson, Wesley, and Bunyan, nearly a dozen 
 substantive works, some of them of very great 
 
30 Essays in English 
 
 size. None of these is so well known as the 
 bioGfraphies, especially those of Nelson 
 
 ^ ,^^ . ^. . , . . SOUTHEY. 
 
 and Wesley. The latter only just misses 
 the very first rank among the longer biographies 
 — those which enter into full detail and give docu- 
 ments. The Life of Nelson^ by common consent 
 of all the competent, does attain the first rank 
 among biographies of the shorter class. It will 
 probably be considered by posterity one of the 
 capital examples of that pedantic folly which is 
 always repeating itself that persons, at best 
 qualified to add footnotes of correction and ampli- 
 fication to it, have presumed in recent days to 
 speak of it with disrespect. But the less known 
 prose works must also receive attention. 
 
 At the date of Letters from Spain and Portu- 
 gal (1797), Southey had not outgrown (indeed he 
 was only twenty-three) that immature pomposity 
 of style which has been already referred to, and 
 which is apparent both in his verse and in his 
 letters of all this time. The Letters from England, 
 by Don Manuel Espriella, ten years later in date, 
 are also at least ten years better in matter and 
 form. The scheme, that of enabling Englishmen 
 to see themselves as others see them, was in- 
 deed rather old-fashioned, and not of those things 
 which are none the worse for being a little out of 
 fashion ; but it is very pleasantly carried out, and 
 I doubt whether there is anywhere a more agree- 
 able picture of the country and its ways in the 
 first decade of the century. In three pocket 
 
 \ 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 31 
 
 volumes the road from Falmouth to London, the 
 sights, ways, manners of the capital, the 
 
 SOUTHEY o ' • ' 17 
 
 life (chiefly of the well-to-do middle 
 classes), the chief country towns, the Lake district, 
 and a great number of other matters, are described 
 with a liveliness not seriously injured, and perhaps 
 to some tastes even improved, by the admixture of 
 a considerable amount of political and other re- 
 flection. It is surprising that it has not been 
 reprinted. Omniana, which was to have been 
 written by Southey and Coleridge together, but 
 to which the latter made only a very small con- 
 tribution, is less original, being a rather question- 
 able cross between a commonplace-book (such as, 
 after Southey's death, was actually issued in four 
 huge volumes) and a " table-talk " or miscellany of 
 short abstracts, summaries, comments, &c., of and 
 on curious passages in books. Nevertheless these 
 Horce Otiostores, as their second title goes, contain 
 much curious and not a little interesting reading ; 
 and they, too, thoroughly well deserve reprinting. 
 
 The History of Brazil followed, the chief, and, 
 with The Peninsular War, the only one actually 
 erected of what Southey used fondly to call " my 
 pyramids " — pyramids alas ! not often visited now, 
 though still in existence, and solidly enough built 
 and based. The latter suffered perhaps more than 
 any other of Southey's books from the necessity 
 which their author's poverty imposed on him of 
 constantly laying them aside for the bread-winning 
 work of the hour as it offered itself This delay 
 
32 Essays in English 
 
 gave time for it to be caught up and passed by 
 Napier's rival history which, though 
 
 . .... . . SOUTHEY. 
 
 more brilhantly written, is at least as 
 partial and prejudiced on the other side of 
 opinion, and (some authorities will have it) is 
 not really more trustworthy in fact. How- 
 ever, TJie Peninsular War was one of the few 
 works of Southey's which brought him a solid, 
 though inadequate, sum of money, — a thousand 
 pounds to wit. Neither TJie Book of the Church, 
 nor its appendix the Vindicice Anglicancs, had any 
 such satisfactory result, though both had a fair 
 sale, and though both aroused considerable, if 
 mainly angry, attention. The merits are indeed 
 rather impaired by the peculiarity of their author's 
 ecclesiastical attitude, which was that of a violent 
 *' Protestant " towards the Roman Church, and of 
 an uncompromising Anglican towards Protestant 
 Nonconformists. In fact Southey seems to have 
 been singularly unlucky in his money transactions, 
 for reasons partly indicated by Scott in a passage 
 given by Lockhart. The large comparative profits 
 which Cottle's apparently venturesome purchase of 
 Joan of Arc brought to the publisher, together 
 with his own unshaken conviction of the lasting; 
 quality of his work, seem to have made Southey 
 fall in love with, and obstinately cling to the 
 system of half-profits, which, in the case of not 
 very rapid sales, has a natural tendency to become 
 one of no profits at all. For his Naval History, or 
 Lives of the Admirals, he was paid down, and very 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o. 33 
 
 fairly paid ; but I do not know that he made any- 
 
 thinjT out of The Doctor, his last, and 
 SOUTHEY. r u- 1 ^ 1 • / • 
 
 one 01 his largest works, a quaint mis- 
 cellany of reading, reflection, and humour, like a 
 magnified Omniana with a threap of connection, 
 which is, I believe, little read now, and which 
 never was popular, but which a few tastes (my 
 own included) regard as, for desultory reading, 
 one of the most delightful books in English. 
 Macaulay, who, politics apart, cannot be called 
 an unfair critic of Southey, is unduly hard on 
 his humour. But the temper of Macaulay's mind, 
 whether owing to his Scotch blood or not, was, 
 though keenly appreciative of wit, and open 
 enough to at least some kinds of humour, always 
 intolerant of nonsense, of pure cap-and-bells fooling, 
 wherein Southey took a specially English delight. 
 Of this delight his poems bear frequent tes- 
 timony and his letters are full of it — those 
 especially describing the Lingo Grande, as he 
 chose to call the curiosities of language 
 which he attributed, justly or unjustly, to his 
 sister-in-law Mrs Coleridge. But The Doctor is its 
 chief exercising ground and home. Not that this 
 huge and charming book is by any means a mere 
 compound of alternate horse-play and book-learn- 
 ing. The descriptions of the early home of Daniel 
 Dove in the dales — where Northern scenery is 
 deftly worked in with reminiscences of the author's 
 youth in the West — are of singular beauty, and con- 
 tain some of the very best specimens of Southey *s 
 
 C 
 
34 Essays in English 
 
 admirable English. The famous "Story of the 
 Three Bears," thou£>:h the most finished, 
 
 C C U • ^1 1 SOUTHEY. 
 
 IS very far from bemg the only separ- 
 able episode in the endless, but by no means in- 
 coherent sequelae of matter. And of the treasures 
 of learning, nev4r merely dry in itself, and con- 
 stantly sweetened and moistened by fantastic 
 humour, there is no stint. 
 
 The characteristics of this wide and neglected 
 champaign of letters, — a whole province of prose, 
 as it may be called, — especially when we add the 
 huge body of published letters, present the widest 
 diversity of subject, and cannot fairly be said to 
 suffer from any monotony of style. To some 
 tastes in the present day, indeed, Southey may 
 seem flat. He scornfully repudiated, on more than 
 one occasion, the slightest attempt at " fine writing," 
 and ostensibly limited his efforts to the production 
 of clear and limpid sentences in the best classical 
 English. Not that he was by any means alarmed 
 at an appearance of neologism now and then. 
 His merely playful coinages in The Doctor and the 
 Letters do not, of course, count; but precisian 
 as he was, he was not of those precisians who will 
 not have a word, however absolutely justified by 
 analogy and principle, unless there is some definite 
 authority for it. On the contrary he took the 
 sounder course of actually rejecting words with 
 good authority but bad intrinsic titles. His 
 sentences are of medium length but incHning to 
 the long rather than the short, and distinctly 
 
Literature, ij So- 1860. 35 
 
 longer than the pattern, which the gradually in- 
 creasing love of antithetic balance had 
 made popular in the eighteenth century. 
 His most ornate attempts will be found in the de- 
 scriptive passages of The Colloquies, a book which, 
 though Macaulay's strictures are partly justified, is 
 of extreme interest and beauty at its best, and is 
 chiefly marred by the curiously unhappy selection 
 of the interlocutor, — an instance, with the plan of 
 The Vision of Judgment and some other things, 
 of a gap or weakness in Southey's otherwise ex- 
 cellent sense and taste. But in all his prose 
 writings, no matter what they be, even in those 
 unlucky political Essays, which he reprinted in 
 two very pretty little volumes at the most un- 
 fortunate time and with the least fortunate result, 
 he displays one of the very best prose styles of the 
 century, perhaps the very best (unless Lockhart's, 
 which is more technically faulty, be ranked with 
 it) of the quiet and regular kind in English. 
 
 In the case of no writer, however, is it more 
 necessary to look at him as a whole, to take his 
 prose with his verse, his writings with his history 
 and his character, than in the case of Southey. 
 Neither mere bulk, nor mere variety of writings 
 can, of course, be taken as a voucher for greatness ; 
 a man is no more a good writer because he was a 
 good man than because he was a bad one, which 
 latter qualification seems to be accepted by some ; 
 and even learning and industry will not exempt 
 their possessor from inclusion among the dulli 
 
2)6 Essays in English 
 
 canes, as Southey himself has it. But when all 
 these thin8!"s are found top;ether with the 
 
 . ..^. c 11 • SOUTHEY. 
 
 addition of a rare excellence in occa- 
 sional passages of verse, with the composition of 
 at least one long poem which goes near to, if it 
 does not attain, absolute greatness, with an ad- 
 mirable prose style and a curious blending of good 
 sense and good humour, then most assuredly the 
 mass deserves at least equal rank with excellences 
 higher in partial reach, but far smaller in bulk and 
 range. 
 
 In the general judgment, perhaps, there is a 
 certain reluctance to grant this. There is plausi- 
 bility in asking, not if a man can do many things 
 well, but if he has done one thing supremely ; and 
 unquestionably it is dangerous to multiply the 
 tribe of literary Jacks-of-all-trades. There is no 
 fear, however, of an extensive multiplication of 
 Southeys ; happy would our state be if there were 
 any chance. For the man knew enormously ; he 
 could write admirably ; it may be fairly contended 
 that he only missed being a great poet by the con- 
 stant collar-work which no great poet in the world 
 has ever been able to endure \ he had the truest 
 sensibility with scarcely any touch of the maudlin ; 
 the noblest sense of duty with not more than a 
 very slight touch of spiritual pride. If he thought 
 a little too well of himself as a poet, he was com- 
 pletely free alike from the morose arrogance of 
 his friend Wordsworth and from the exuberant 
 arrogance of his friend Landor. Only those who 
 
Literature, ij 80- 1860. 37 
 
 have worked through the enormous mass of his 
 verse, his prose, and his letters can fully 
 
 SOUTHEY. . ^ , . . . . "^ 
 
 appreciate his merits ; nor is it easy 
 to conceive any scheme of collection that would 
 be possible, or of selection that would do him 
 justice. But if no one of the Muses can claim him 
 as her best beloved and most accomplished son, 
 all ought to accord to him a preference never 
 deserved by any other of their innumerable family. 
 For such a lover and such a practitioner of almost 
 every form of literature, no literature possesses 
 save English, and English is very unlikely ever 
 to possess again.* 
 
 * See Appendix A., "Coleridge and Southey." 
 
II- 
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT. 
 
 To acquaint oneself properly with the works of 
 Cobbett is no child's play. It requires 
 
 COBBETT 
 
 some money, a great deal of time, still 
 more patience, and a certain freedom from super- 
 fineness. For, as few of his books have recently 
 been reprinted, and as they were all very popular 
 when they appeared, it is frequently necessary to 
 put up with copies exhibiting the marks of that 
 popularity in a form with which Coleridge and 
 Lamb professed to be delighted, but to which 
 I own that I am churl enough to prefer the 
 clean, fresh leaves of even the most modern 
 reprint. 
 
 And the total is huge ; for Cobbett's industry 
 and facility of work were both appalling, and while 
 his good work is constantly disfigured by rubbish, 
 there is hardly a single parcel of his rubbish in 
 which there is not good work. Of the seventy- 
 four articles which compose his bibliography, some 
 of the most portentous, such as the State Trials 
 38 
 
Essays in English Litcrahire, iySo-iS6o. 39 
 
 (afterwards known as Howell's) and the Parlia- 
 mentary Debates (afterwards known as 
 Hansard's), may be disregarded as simple 
 compilation ; and it is scarcely necessary for any 
 one to read the thirty years of The Register through, 
 seeing that almost everything in it that is most 
 characteristic reappeared in other forms. But this 
 leaves a formidable residue. The Works of Peter 
 Porcupine^ in which most of Cobbett's writings 
 earlier than this century and a few later are col- 
 lected, fill twelve volumes of fair size. The only 
 other collection, the Political Works, made up 
 by his sons after his death from T/ie Register and 
 other sources, is in six volumes, none of which 
 contains less than five hundred, while one contains 
 more than eight hundred large pages, so closely 
 printed that each represents two if not three of the 
 usual library octavo. The Rural Rides fill two 
 stout volumes in the last edition : besides which 
 there are before me literally dozens of mostly 
 rather grubby volumes of every size from TuU's 
 Htisbandry, in a portly octavo, to the Legacy to 
 Labourers, about as big as a lady's card-case. If 
 a man be virtuous enough, or rash enough, to stray 
 further into anti-Cobbett pamphlets (of which I 
 once bought an extremely grimy bundle for a 
 sovereign) he may go on in that path almost for 
 ever. And I see no rest for the sole of his foot 
 till he has read through the whole of " the bloody 
 old Times " or " that foolish drab Anna Brodie's 
 rubbish," as Cobbett used with indifferent geniality 
 to call that newspaper, — the last elegant dcscrip- 
 
40 Essays in English 
 
 tion being solely due to the fact that he had 
 become aware that a poor lady of the 
 
 , , , COBBETT. 
 
 name was a shareholder. 
 
 Let it be added that this vast mass is devoted 
 almost impartially to as vast a number of subjects, 
 that it displays throughout the queerest and (till 
 you are well acquainted with it) the most incred- 
 ible mixture of sense and nonsense, folly and wit, 
 ignorance and knowledge, good temper and bad 
 blood, sheer egotism and sincere desire to benefit 
 the country. Cobbett will write upon politics and 
 upon economics, upon history ecclesiastical and 
 civil, upon grammar, cookery, gardening, wood- 
 craft, standing armies, population, ice-houses, and 
 almost every other conceivable subject, with the 
 same undoubting confidence that he is and must 
 be right. In what plain men still call inconsist- 
 ency there never was his equal. He was ap- 
 proaching middle life when he was still writing 
 cheerful pamphlets and tracts with such titles as The 
 Bloody Buoy^ The Cannibal's Progress^ and so on, 
 destined to hold up the French Revolution to the 
 horror of mankind ; he had not passed middle life 
 when he discovered that the said Revolution was 
 only a natural and necessary consequence of the 
 same system of taxation which was grinding down 
 England. He denied stoutly that he was any- 
 thing but a friend to monarchical government, and 
 asseverated a thousand times over that he had not 
 the slightest wish to deprive landlords or any one 
 else of their property. Yet for the last twenty 
 
Litcrahire, ly 80- 1860. 41 
 
 years of his life he was constantly holding up the 
 happy state of those republicans, the 
 
 COBBETT. ^t.: ' .' 1 . r 
 
 profligacy, injustice, and tyranny ot 
 whose government he had earlier denounced. He 
 frequently came near, if he did not openly avow, 
 the " hold-the-harvest " doctrine ; and he deliber- 
 ately proposed that the national creditor should 
 be defrauded of his interest, and therefore practi- 
 cally of his capital. 
 
 A very shrewd man naturally, and by no means 
 an ill-informed one in some ways, there was no 
 assertion too wildly contradictory of facts, no 
 assumption too flagrantly opposed to common 
 sense, for him to make when he had an argument 
 to further or a craze to support. " My opinion is," 
 says he very gravely, " that Lincolnshire alone con- 
 tains more of those fine buildings [churches] than 
 the whole continent of Europe." The churches 
 of Lincolnshire are certainly fine ; but imagine 
 all the churches of even the western continent of 
 Europe, from the abbey of Batalha to Cologne 
 Cathedral, and from Santa Rosalia to the Folgoet, 
 crammed and crouching under the shadow of 
 Boston Stump ! He " dared say that Ely probably 
 contained from fifty to a hundred thousand people" 
 at a time when it is rather improbable that London 
 contained the larger number of the two. Only 
 mention Jews, Scotchmen, the National Debt, the 
 standing army, pensions, poetry, tea, potatoes, 
 larch trees, and a great many other things, and 
 Cobbett becomes a mere, though a very amusing, 
 
42 Essays in English 
 
 maniac. Let him come across in one of his pere- 
 grinations, or remember in the course 
 of a book or article, some magistrate 
 who gave a decision unfavourable to him twenty- 
 years before, some lawyer who took a side against 
 him, some journalist who opposed his pamphlets, 
 and a torrent of half humorous but wholly vindic- 
 tive Billingsgate follows ; while if the luckless one 
 has lost his estate, or in any way come to misfor- 
 tune meanwhile, Cobbett will jeer and whoop and 
 triumph over him like an Indian squaw over a 
 hostile brave at the stake. Mixed with all this you 
 shall find such plain shrewd common sense, such 
 an incomparable power of clear exposition of any 
 subject that the writer himself understands, such 
 homely but genuine humour, such untiring energy, 
 and such a hearty desire for the comfort of every- 
 body who is not a Jew or a jobber or a tax-eater, 
 as few public writers have ever displayed. And 
 (which is the most important thing for us) you 
 shall also find sense and nonsense alike, rancorous 
 and mischievous diatribes as well as sober dis- 
 courses, politics as well as trade-puffery (for 
 Cobbett puffed his own wares unblushingly), all 
 set forth in such a style as not more than two 
 other Englishmen, whose names are Defoe and 
 Bunyan, can equal. 
 
 Like theirs it is a style wholly natural and 
 unstudied. It is often said, and he himself con- 
 fesses, that as a young man he gave his days and 
 nights to the reading of Swift. But except in the 
 
Literattire^ iy8o-i86o. 43 
 
 absence of adornment, and the uncompromising 
 plainness of speech, there is really very 
 little resemblance between them, and 
 what there is is chiefly due to Cobbett's following 
 of the Drapier's Letters, where Swift, admirable as 
 he is, is clearly using a falsetto. For one thing, 
 the main characteristic of Swift — the perpetual un- 
 forced unflagging irony which is the blood and the 
 life of his style — is utterly absent from Cobbett. 
 On the other hand, if Cobbett imitated little, he 
 was imitated much. Although his accounts of the 
 circulation of his works are doubtless exaggerated 
 as he exaggerated everything connected with him- 
 self, it was certainly very large ; and though they 
 were no doubt less read by the literary than by 
 the non -literary class, they have left traces every- 
 where. As a whole Cobbett is not imitable ; the 
 very reasons which gave him the style forbade 
 another to borrow it. But certain tricks of his 
 reappear in places both likely and unlikely ; and 
 since I have been thoroughly acquainted with 
 him I think I can see the ancestry of some of the 
 mannerisms of two writers whose filiation had 
 hitherto puzzled me — Peacock and Borrow. In 
 the latter case there is no doubt whatever ; indeed 
 the kinship between Borrow and Cobbett is very 
 strong in many ways. Even in the former I do 
 not think there is much doubt, though Peacock's 
 thorough scholarship and Cobbett's boisterous 
 unscholarliness make it one of thought rather than 
 of form, and of a small part of thought only. 
 
44 Essays in English 
 
 Therefore Cobbett is very well worth studying, 
 the study beinef part of that never- 
 
 j. J J r uZr 1 f ^ • COBBETT. 
 
 ending and delightful game oi tracing 
 literary genealogies, of filling in the literary maps, 
 which is at once the business and the pastime 
 of the critic. His political importance has seldom 
 been questioned, and I think that on the whole 
 it has been even underrated. His personality 
 is extremely interesting and nearly always amus- 
 ing, though the amusement may sometimes go 
 a little close to disgust, — for no man ever illus- 
 trated both the faults and the merits of V Anglais^ 
 if not of rJiomme sensiiel moyen, as did Cobbett. 
 And last of all, though to me not least, there 
 are few more simply delightful writers to read 
 without bothering yourself at all about literary 
 filiations or ancestries, about political revolu- 
 tions or conversations, about Cobbett the man, 
 or England the nation. It is indeed true (and 
 this is the curse of all political writing, though less 
 of his than of most) that the lapse of time has 
 made it impossible to leave all trouble about 
 politics aside, unless you happen to be thoroughly 
 well acquainted with politics. Even the Rural 
 RideSy even the English Gardener^ nay, even the 
 very Gramviar itself, cannot be read currently if 
 you do not know who and what " the Thing " and 
 "the Wen" and "the Fool-Liar" and "Anna 
 Brodic" and "my dignitary Dr Black" were; if 
 you are not acquainted with all the circumstances 
 which made the very words "tea" or "taxes," 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o, 45 
 
 "paper-money" or "potatoes," throw Cobbett into 
 a kind of epilepsy ; if you are not in the 
 
 COBBETT. ^ -^. ^ ^ij. 
 
 secret of his perpetual divagations on 
 locust trees and swede turnips, on Cobbett's corn 
 and ridge cultivation. But my experience is that, 
 when you once do know these things, you bother 
 yourself very little about them afterwards so far as 
 the mere reading of Cobbett goes. The hottest 
 Tory gospeller could not think of getting angry 
 with Cobbett, or indeed getting into controversy 
 with him at all ; and I should doubt whether even 
 our modern Socialists, though some of his ideas are 
 very like theirs, would greet him very warmly as 
 an ally. He disreasons too much (to use a word 
 which is very much wanted in English and has 
 the strictest titles to admission), and his disreason- 
 ing, powerful as it was at the time, has lost too 
 much of its hold on present thought and present 
 circumstance. 
 
 He has left an agreeable and often quoted 
 account of his own early life in an autobiographic 
 fragment written to confound his enemies in 
 America. He was born on March 9th, 1762,* at 
 Farnham ; and the chief of his interests during his 
 life centred round the counties of Hampshire and 
 Surrey, with Berkshire and Wiltshire thrown in as 
 benefiting by neighbourhood. His father was a 
 small farmer, not quite uneducated, but not much 
 in means or rank above a labourer, and all the 
 
 * Cobbett himself says 1766, and the dates in the fragment are all 
 adjusted to this ; but biography says 1762. 
 
46 Essays in English 
 
 family were brought up to work hard. After some 
 unimportant vicissitudes, William ran 
 
 ^ ^ . . . .,, COBBETT. 
 
 away to London and, attemptmg quiU- 
 driving in an attorney's office for a time, soon got 
 tired of it and enlisted in a marching regiment which 
 was sent to Nova Scotia. This was in the spring 
 of 1784. As he was steady, intelligent, and not 
 uneducated, he very soon rose from the ranks, and 
 was sergeant-major for some years. During his 
 service with the colours he made acquaintance with 
 his future wife (a gunner's daughter of the literal 
 and amiable kind), and with Lord Edward Fitz- 
 gerald. The regiment came home in 1792, and 
 Cobbett got his discharge, married his beloved, and 
 went to France. Unfortunately he had other 
 reasons besides love and a desire to learn French 
 for quitting British shores. He had discovered, or 
 imagined, that some of his officers were guilty 
 of malversation of regimental money, he abused 
 his position as sergeant-major to take secret copies 
 of regimental documents, and when he had got 
 his discharge he lodged his accusation. A court- 
 martial was granted. When it met, however, there 
 was no accuser, for Cobbett had gone to France. 
 Long afterwards, when the facts were cast up 
 against him, he attempted a defence. The matter 
 is one of considerable intricacies and of no great 
 moment. Against Cobbett it may be said to be 
 one of the facts which prove (what indeed hardly 
 needs proving), that he was not a man of any 
 chivalrous delicacy of feeling, and did not see 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860. 47 
 
 that in no circumstances can it be justifiable to 
 bringr accusations of disG^raceful conduct 
 
 COBBETT. . , , , T 
 
 against others and then run away. In 
 his favour it may be said that, though not a very 
 young man, he was not in the least a man of the 
 world, and was no doubt sincerely surprised and 
 horrified to find that his complaint was not to be 
 judged off-hand and Cadi-fashion, but with all sorts 
 of cumbrous and expensive forms. 
 
 However this may be, he went off with his wife 
 and his savings to France ; and enjoyed himself 
 there for some months, tackling diligently to French 
 the while, until the Revolution (it was, let it be 
 remembered, in 1792), made the country too hot 
 for him. He determined to go to Philadelphia, 
 where, and elsewhere in the United States, he 
 passed the next seven years. They were seven 
 years of a very lively character ; for it was the 
 nature of Cobbett to find quarrels, and he found 
 plenty of them here. Some accounts of his ex- 
 ploits in offence and defence may be found in the 
 biographies, fuller ones in the books of the chronicles 
 of Peter Porcupine, his ?i07n de guerre in pam- 
 phleteering and journalism. Cobbett was at this 
 time, despite his transactions with the Judge Advo- 
 cate General, his flight and his selection of France 
 and America for sojourn, a red-hot Tory and a true 
 Briton, and he engaged in a violent controversy, 
 or series of controversies, with the pro-Gallic and 
 anti-English party in the States. The works of 
 Peter, besides the above-quoted Bloody Buoy and 
 
48 Essays in English 
 
 Cannibal's Progress, contain in their five thousand 
 pae^es or thereabouts, other cheerfully 
 
 . . y, r> COBBETT. 
 
 named documents, such as : A bone to 
 Gnaw for the Democrats, A Kick for a Bite, The 
 Diplomatic Blunderbuss, The American Rushlight, 
 and so on. This last had mainly to do with a 
 non-political quarrel into which Cobbett got with 
 a person of some professional fame, the " American 
 Sydenham," otherwise Dr Benjamin Rush.* Rush 
 
 * Soon after the original appearance of this essay, in which I 
 referred to Cobbett's antagonist as "a certain quack doctor named 
 Rush," I received from America, and especially from Philadelphia, 
 lively remonstrances against this description of him. Mr Rosen- 
 garten of the Quaker city, assuming that I had "taken Rush 
 on Cobbett's report," very kindly furnished me vi^ith some docu- 
 ments, especially a pamphlet-lecture by Dr Pepper, Provost of 
 the University of Pennsylvania, highly eulogistic of one whom 
 Mr Rosengarten himself describes as " the medical beau-ideal 
 of this city, and of the medical profession in this country." 
 I promised to make some explanation if I ever republished the 
 essay, and I now do so. The fact is that I ought not to have 
 called Rush "quack" simpliciter : for his education and degrees 
 were quite regular. But I had not entirely taken Cobbett's 
 word (he would be a rash man who should do so on any sub- 
 ject), and I must say that it still appears to me that Rush, even 
 on his advocate's showing, belonged to what may be called the 
 quack division of the faculty. He was essentially a faddist, and 
 between a faddist and a quack there is not much m.ore than a 
 syllable. He opposed capital punishment. He said himself, " I have 
 no more doubt of every crime having its cure in moral and physical 
 influence than I have of the efficacy of Peruvian bark in intermittent 
 fever." He was an anti-alcohol man, an anti-tobacco man, an 
 anti-classical education man. All this shows the quack ethos : 
 even though a man may have an array of diplomas that would 
 have covered the backs of the army of Pentapolin of the Naked 
 Arm in their natural sheepskin condition. 
 
Literature, ijSo-iSdo. 49 
 
 got Cobbett cast in heavy damages for libel ; and 
 thougrh these were paid by subscription, 
 
 COBIJETT i •' X ' 
 
 the affair seems to have disgusted our 
 pamphleteer and he sailed for England on June 
 I St, 1800. 
 
 There can be little doubt, though Cobbett's own 
 bragging and the bickering of his biographers 
 have rather darkened than illuminated the matter, 
 that he came home with pretty definite and very 
 fair prospects of Government patronage. More 
 than one of his Anti-Jacobin pamphlets had been re- 
 printed for English consumption. He had already 
 arranged for the London edition of " Porcupine's " 
 Works which appeared subsequently ; and he 
 had attracted attention not merely from literary 
 understrappers of Government but from men like 
 Windham. Very soon after his return Windham 
 asked him to dinner, to meet not merely Canning, 
 Ellis, Frere, Malone and others, but Pitt himself 
 The publication of the host's diary long afterwards 
 clearly established the fact, which had been rather 
 idly contested or doubted by some commentators. 
 
 How or why Cobbett fell away from Pitt's party 
 is not exactly known, and is easier to understand 
 than definitely to explain ; even when he left it is 
 not certain. He was offered, he says, a Govern- 
 ment paper or even two ; but he refused and 
 published his own Porcupiiie^ which lasted for 
 some time till it lapsed (with intermediate stages) 
 into the famous Weekly Register. In both, and in 
 their intermediates for some three or four years at 
 
 D 
 
50 Essays in English 
 
 least, the general policy of the Government, and 
 especially the war with France, was 
 
 , , ^ ^ 1 , COBBETT. 
 
 stoutly supported. But Cobbett was a 
 free-lance born and bred, and he never during the 
 whole of his life succeeded in working under any 
 other command than his own, or with any one on 
 equal terms. He got into trouble before very long 
 owing to some letters, signed Juvernay on the Irish 
 executive ; and though his contributor (one John- 
 son, afterwards a judge) gave himself up, and 
 Cobbett escaped the fines which had been imposed 
 on him, his susceptible vanity had no doubt been 
 touched. It was also beyond doubt a disgust to 
 his self-educated mind to find himself regarded as 
 an inferior by the regularly trained wits and 
 scholars of the Government press ; and I should 
 be afraid that he was annoyed at Pitt's taking no 
 notice of him. But, to do Cobbett justice, there 
 were other and nobler reasons for his revolt. His 
 ideal of politics and economics (of which more 
 presently), though an impossible one, was sincere 
 and not ungenerous ; and he could not but per- 
 ceive that a dozen years of war had made its 
 contrast with the actual state of the British farmer 
 and labourer more glaring than ever. 
 
 The influence which he soon wielded through 
 the Register, and the profit which he derived from 
 it, at once puffed him up and legitimately en- 
 couraged the development of his views. He 
 bought, or rather (a sad thing for such a denouncer 
 of •* paper "), obtained, subject to heavy mortgages. 
 
Literattire, ly 80- 1860. 51 
 
 a considerable estate of several farms at, and near 
 Botley, in Hampshire. Here for some 
 five years (1805 to 1809), he lived the 
 life of a very substantial yeoman, almost a squire, 
 entertaining freely, farming, coursing, encourag- 
 ing boxing and single-stick, fishing with drag- 
 nets, and editing the Register partly in person 
 and partly by deputy. Of these deputies, the 
 chief were his partner, and afterwards foe, the 
 printer Wright, and Howell of the State Trials. 
 This latter, being unluckily a gentleman and a 
 university man, comes in for one of Cobbett's 
 characteristic flings as "one of your college 
 gentlemen," who " have and always will have 
 the insolence to think themselves our betters ; 
 and our superior talents, industry and weight only 
 excite their envy." Prosperity is rarely good for 
 an Englishman of Cobbett's stamp, and he seems 
 at this time to have decidedly lost his head. He 
 had long been a pronounced Radical, thundering 
 or guffawing in the Register at pensions, sinecures, 
 the debt, paper-money, the game-laws (though he 
 preserved himself), and so forth ; and the author- 
 ities naturally enough only waited for an oppor- 
 tunity of explaining to him that immortal maxim 
 which directs the expectations of those who play 
 at any kind of bowls. 
 
 In July, 1809, he let them in by an article of 
 the most violent character on the suppression of 
 a mutiny among the Ely Militia. This had been 
 put down, and the ringleaders flogged by some 
 
52 Essays in English 
 
 cavalry of the German Legion ; and Cobbett took 
 advantage of it to beat John Bull's 
 
 COBBETT 
 
 drum furiously. It has been the custom 
 to turn up the whites of the eyes at Lord Ellen- 
 borough who tried the case, and Sir Vicary Gibbs 
 who prosecuted ; but I do not think any sane 
 man who remembers what the importance of 
 discipline in the army was in 1809, can find 
 fault with the jury who, and not Ellenborough 
 or Gibbs, had to settle the matter, and who 
 found Cobbett guilty. The sentence no doubt 
 was severe, — as such sentences in such cases 
 were then wont to be — two years in Newgate, a 
 fine of a thousand pounds, and security in the 
 same amount for seven years to come. Here, no 
 doubt, EUenborough's responsibility comes in, and 
 he may be thought to have looked before and 
 after as well as at the present. But the Register 
 was not stopped, and Cobbett was allowed to 
 continue therein without hindrance a polemic 
 which was not likely to grow milder. For he 
 never forgot or forgave an injury to his interests, 
 or an insult to his vanity ; and he was besides 
 becoming, quite honestly and disinterestedly, more 
 and more of a fanatic on divers points both of 
 economics and of politics proper. 
 
 I cannot myself attach much importance to 
 the undoubted fact that after the trial, which 
 happened in June, 18 10, but before judgment, 
 Cobbett, aghast for a moment at the apparent ruin 
 impending, made (as he certainly did make) some 
 
 i 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo, 53 
 
 overtures of surrender and discontinuance of the 
 ReHster. Such a course in a man with 
 
 COBBETT. 7 r -1 1 r 
 
 a large lamily and no means of sup- 
 porting it but his pen, would have been, if not 
 heroic, not disgraceful. But the negotiation some- 
 how fell through. Unluckily for Cobbett, he on 
 two subsequent occasions practically denied that 
 he had ever made any offer at all ; and the truth 
 only came out when he and Wright quarrelled, 
 nearly a dozen years later. This, the affair of the 
 court-martial, and another to be mentioned shortly, 
 are the only blots on his conduct as a man that I 
 know, and in such an Ishmael as he was they are 
 not very fatal. 
 
 He devoted the greater part of his time, during 
 the easy, though rather costly, imprisonment of 
 those days, to his Paper against Gold, in which, 
 with next to no knowledge of the matter, he 
 attacked probably the thorniest of all subjects, 
 that of the currency ; and the Register went on. 
 He came out of Newgate in July, 181 2, naturally 
 in no very amiable temper. A mixture of private 
 and public griefs almost immediately brought him 
 into collision with the authorities of the Church. 
 He had long been at loggerheads with those of 
 the State ; and it was now that he became more 
 than ever the advocate (and the most popular 
 advocate it had) of Parliamentary Reform. He 
 was, however, pretty quiet for three or four years, 
 but at the;end of that time, in September, 18 16, 
 he acted on a suggestion of Lord Cochrane's, 
 
54 Essays in English 
 
 cheapened the Register from one shilling to two- 
 pence, and opened the new series with 
 
 ^ ' ^ i 1 1 1 COBBETT. 
 
 one of his best pamphlet-addresses, 
 "To the Journeymen and Labourers of England, 
 Wales, Scotland and Ireland." For a time he 
 was very much in the mouths of men ; but 
 Ministers were not idle, and the suspension of 
 the Habeas Corpus and the famous Six Acts 
 prepared for him a state of things still .hotter 
 than he had experienced before. Cobbett did 
 not give it time to heat itself specially for him. 
 He turned his eyes once more to America, and, 
 very much to the general surprise, suddenly left 
 Liverpool on March 22nd, 18 17, arriving in May 
 at New York, whence he proceeded to Long 
 Island, and established himself on a farm there. 
 Unluckily there were other reasons for his flight 
 besides political ones. His affairs had become 
 much muddled during his imprisonment, and had 
 . not mended since ; while though his assets were 
 considerable they were of a kind not easy to 
 realise. There seems no doubt that Cobbett was 
 generally thought to have run away from a gaol 
 in more senses than one, and that the thought did 
 him no good. 
 
 But he was an impossible person to put down ; 
 even his own mistakes, which were pretty consider- 
 able, could not do it. His flight, as it was called, 
 gave handles to his enemies, and not least to 
 certain former friends, including such very different 
 persons as Orator Hunt and Sir Francis Burdett ; 
 
Literature, lySo-iSSo. 55 
 
 it caused a certain belatedncss, and, for a time, 
 a certain intermittency, in his contribu- 
 
 COBBETT. , ,1 J-, • . r 1 
 
 tions to the Register; it confirmed 
 him in his financial crazes, and it may possibly 
 have supported him in a sort of private repudia- 
 tion of his own debts, which he executed even 
 before becoming legally a bankrupt. Finally it 
 led him to the most foolish act of his life, 
 the lugging of Tom Paine's bones back to a 
 country which, though not prosperous, could at 
 any rate provide itself with better manure than 
 that. In this famous absurdity the purely silly 
 side of Cobbett's character comes out. For some 
 time after he returned he was at low water both in 
 finances and in popularity ; while such political 
 sanity as he ever possessed may be said to have 
 wholly vanished. Yet, oddly enough, or not oddly, 
 the transplanting and the re-transplanting seem to 
 have had a refreshing eftect on his literary pro- 
 duction. He never indeed again produced any- 
 thing so vigorous as the best of his earlier political 
 works, but in non-political and mixed styles he 
 even improved ; and though he is more extrava- 
 gant than ever in substance occasionally, there is 
 a certain mellowness of form which is very re- 
 markable. He was not far short of sixty when he 
 returned in 1819; but the space of his life, sub- 
 sequent to his flight, yielded the Year's Residence 
 in America, the EnglisJi Grammar, the Tivelve 
 Sermons, the Cottage Economy, the English (altered 
 from a previous American) Gardener, the History 
 
56 Essays in English 
 
 of the Reformation, the Woodlands, Cobbetfs Corn, 
 the A dvzce to Yo?mg Men, and a dozejjr ^^„„^^^ 
 other works original or compiled, be- 
 sides the Rtiral Rides and his other contributions 
 to the Register. 
 
 He could not have lived at Botley any longer if 
 he would, for the place was mortgaged up to the 
 eyes. But to live in a town was abhorrent to him ; 
 and he had in America rather increased than satis- 
 fied his old fancy for rural occupations. So he 
 set up house at Kensington, where he used a 
 large garden (soon supplemented by more land 
 at Barnes, and in his very last years by a place 
 near Ash, in his native district) as a kind of seed 
 farm, selling the produce at the same shop with 
 his Registers. He also utilized his now frequent 
 rural rides — partly to provide himself with political 
 poison and to deliver political addresses, partly as 
 commercial travelling for the diffusion of locust- 
 trees, swede turnip seed, and " Cobbett's corn " — a 
 peculiar kind of maize, the virtues of which he 
 vaunted loudly. 
 
 Also he began to think seriously of sitting in 
 Parliament. At the general election after George 
 the Third's death he contested Coventry, but with- 
 out even coming near success. Soon afterwards 
 he had an opportunity of increasing his general 
 popularity — which, owing to his flight, his repudia- 
 tion, and the foolery about Paine's bones, had sunk 
 very low — by vigorously taking Queen Caroline's 
 side. But he was not more fortunate in his 
 
Literature, ij 80- 1860. 57 
 
 next Parliamentary attempt at Preston, in 1826. 
 Sfeston, even before the Reform Bill, 
 was, though the Stanley influence was 
 strong, a comparatively open borough, and had 
 a large electorate ; but it would not have Cobbett, 
 nor was he ever successful till after the Bill passed. 
 Before its passing the very Whig Government 
 which had charge of it was obliged to pull him 
 up. If he had been treated with undeserved 
 severity before he was extremely fortunate now, 
 though his rage against his unsuccessful Whig 
 prosecutors was, naturally enough, much fiercer 
 than it had been against his old Tory enemies. 
 I do not think that any fair-minded person who 
 reads the papers in the Register, and the cheaper 
 and therefore more mischievous Two-penny Trash, 
 devoted to the subject of " Swing," can fail to see 
 that under a thin cloak of denunciation and dissua- 
 sion their real purport is " Don't put him under 
 the pump," varied and set off by suggestions how 
 extremely easy it would be to put him under the 
 pump, how well he deserves it, and how improbable 
 detection or punishment is. And nobody, further, 
 who reads the accounts of the famous Bristol riots 
 can fail to see how much Cobbett (who had been 
 in Bristol just before in full cry against "Tax- 
 Eaters " and " Tithe-Eaters ") had to do with them. 
 It was probably lucky for him that he was tried 
 before instead of after the Bristol matter, and even 
 as it was he was not acquitted ; the jury disagreed. 
 After the Bill, his election somewhere was a 
 
58 Essays in English 
 
 certainty, and he sat for Oldham till his death. 
 Except for a little tomfoolery at first, 
 
 , ^ . 1 r 11 • COBBETT. 
 
 and at intervals afterwards, he was ni- 
 offensive enough in the House. Nor did he survive 
 his inclusion in that Collective Wisdom at which 
 he had so often laughed many years, but died on ' 
 June 19th, 1835, at the age of seventy-three. If 
 medical opinion is right the Collective Wisdom 
 had the last laugh ; for its late hours and con- 
 finement seem to have had more to do with his 
 death than any disease. 
 
 I have said that it is of great importance to get 
 if possible a preliminary idea of Cobbett's general 
 views on politics. This not only adds to the 
 understanding of his work, but prevents perpetual 
 surprise and possible fretting at his individual 
 flings and crazes. To do him justice there was 
 from first to last very little change in his own 
 political ideal ; though there was the greatest 
 possible change in his views of systems, govern- 
 ments, and individuals in their relations to that 
 ideal and to his own private interests or vanities. 
 In this latter respect Cobbett was very human 
 indeed. The son of a farmer-labourer, and himself 
 passionately interested in agricultural pursuits, he 
 may be said never, from the day he first took to 
 politics to the day of his death, to have really and 
 directly considered the welfare of any other class 
 than the classes occupied with tilling or holding 
 land. In one place he frantically applauds a real 
 or supposed project of King Ferdinand of Spain 
 
Liter attire, ly 80- 1860. 59 
 
 for taxing every commercial person who sold, or 
 bought to sell again, goods not of his 
 own production or manufacture. If he 
 to a certain extent tolerated manufactures, other 
 than those carried on at home for immediate use, 
 it was grudgingly, and indeed inconsistently with 
 his general scheme. He frequently protests against 
 the substitution of the shop for the fair or market ; 
 and so jealous is he of things passing otherwise 
 than by actual delivery in exchange for actual 
 coin or payment in kind, that he grumbles at one 
 market (I think Devizes) because the corn is sold 
 by sample and not pitched in bulk on the market- 
 floor. 
 
 It is evident that if he possibly could have it, 
 he would have a society purely agricultural, men 
 making what things the earth does not directly 
 produce as much as possible for themselves in their 
 own houses during the intervals of field-labour. 
 He quarrels with none of the three orders, — 
 labourer, farmer, and landowner — as such ; he 
 does not want "the land for the people," or the 
 landlord's rent for the farmer. Nor does he want 
 any of the lower class to live in even mitigated 
 idleness. Eight hours' days have no place in 
 Cobbett's scheme ; still less relief of children from 
 labour for the sake of education. Everybody in 
 the labouring class, women and children included, 
 is to work and work pretty hard ; while the land- 
 lord may have as much sport as ever he likes pro- 
 vided he allows a certain share to his tenant at 
 
6o Essays in English 
 
 times. But the labourer and his family are to have 
 " full bellies " (it would be harsh but 
 
 COBBETT 
 
 not entirely unjust to say that the full 
 belly is the beginning and end of Cobbett's theory) 
 plenty of good beer, warm clothes, staunch and 
 comfortably furnished houses. And that they 
 may have these things they must have good 
 wages ; though Cobbett does not at all object 
 to the truck or even the "Tommy " system. He 
 seems to have, like a half socialist as he is, no 
 affection for saving, and he once, with rather 
 disastrous consequences, took to paying his own 
 farm labourers entirely in kind. In the same 
 way the farmer is to have full stack-yards, a snug 
 farm house, with orchards and gardens thoroughly 
 plenished. But he must not drink wine or 
 tea, and his daughters must work and not play 
 the piano. 
 
 Squires there may be of all sorts, from the 
 substantial yeoman to the lord (Cobbett has no 
 objection to lords), and they may I think, meet in 
 some way or other to counsel the king (for Cobbett 
 has no objection to kings). There is to be a militia 
 for the defence of the country, and there might be 
 an Established Church provided that the tithes 
 were largely, if not wholly, devoted to the relief of 
 the poor and the exercise of hospitality. Every- 
 body, provided he works, is to marry the prettiest 
 girl he can find (Cobbett had a most generous 
 weakness for pretty girls) as early as possible, and 
 have any number of children. But though there 
 
Literahtre, ly 80- 1860. 61 
 
 is to be plenty of game, there are to be no game- 
 laws. There is to be no standing 
 
 COBBETT. ^1 U i-l u 
 
 army, though there may be a navy. 
 There is to be no, or the very smallest, civil ser- 
 vice. It stands to reason that there is to be 
 no public debt ; and the taxes are to be as low 
 and as uniform as possible. Commerce, even 
 on the direct scale, if that scale be large, is 
 to be discouraged, and any kind of middleman 
 absolutely exterminated. There is not to be any 
 poetry (Cobbett does sometimes quote Pope, but 
 always with a gibe), no general literature (for 
 though Cobbett's own works are excellent, and 
 indeed indispensable, that is chiefly because of the 
 corruptions of the times), no fine arts — though 
 Cobbett has a certain weakness for church archi- 
 tecture, mainly for a reason presently to be ex- 
 plained. Above all there is to be no such thing 
 as what is called abroad a rentie7\ No one is to 
 "live on his means," unless these means come 
 directly from the owning or the tilling of land. 
 The harmless fund-holder with his three or four 
 hundred a year, the dockyard official, the half- 
 pay officer, are as abhorrent to Cobbett as the 
 pensioner for nothing and the sinecurist. This 
 is the state of things which he loves, and it is 
 because the actual state of things is so different, 
 and for no other reason, that he is a Radical 
 Reformer. 
 
 I need not say that no such connected picture 
 as I have endeavoured to draw will be found in 
 
62 Essays in English 
 
 any part of Cobbett's works.* The strokes which 
 compose it are taken from a thousand 
 
 ,./•/- 1 1 rii 1 . COBBETT. 
 
 different places and nlled m to a cer- 
 tain extent by guess-work. But I am sure it 
 is faithful to what he would have drawn him- 
 self if he had been given to imaginative con- 
 struction. It will be seen at once that it is a 
 sort of parallel in drab homespun, a more prac- 
 tical double (if the adjective may be used of 
 two impracticable things,) of Mr William Morris's 
 agreeable dreams. The artistic tobacco-pouches 
 and the museums, the young men hanging about 
 off Biffin's to give any one a free row on the 
 river, and so forth, were not in Cobbett's way. 
 But the canvas, and even the main composition of 
 the picture, is the same. Of course the ideal State 
 never existed anywhere, and never could continue 
 to exist long if it were set up in full working order 
 to-morrow. Labourer A. would produce too many 
 children, work too few hours, and stick too close 
 to the ale-pot ; farmer B. would be ruined by a 
 bad year or a murrain ; squire C. would outrun 
 the non-existent constable and find a Jew to help 
 him, even if Cobbett made an exception to his 
 hatred of placemen for the sake of a Crown tooth- 
 drawer. One of the tradesmen who were permitted 
 on sufferance to supply the brass kettles and the 
 grandfathers' clocks which Cobbett loves would 
 
 * The nearest approach is in tlie Manchester Lectures of 183 1 ; 
 but this is not so much a projet of an ideal State as a scheme for 
 reforming the actual. 
 
Literahtre, lySo-iSSo. 63 
 
 produce better goods and take better care of the 
 
 proceeds than another, with the result 
 
 of a better business and hoarded wealth. 
 
 In short men would be men, and the world the 
 
 world, in spite of Cobbett and Mr Morris ahke. 
 
 I doubt whether Cobbett, who knew something 
 of history, ever succeeded in deceiving himself, 
 great as were his powers that way, into believing 
 that this State ever had existed. He would have 
 no doubt gone into a paroxysm of rage, and have 
 called me as bad names as it was in his heart to 
 apply to any Hampshire man, if I had suggested 
 that such an approach to it as existed in his be- 
 loved fifteenth century was due to the Black Death, 
 the French wars, and those of the Roses. But the 
 fair vision ever fled before him day and night, 
 and made him more and more furious with the 
 actual state of England, — which was no doubt bad 
 enough. The labourers with their eight or ten 
 shillings a week and their Banyan diet, the farmers 
 getting half-price for their ewes and their barley, 
 the squires ousted by Jews and jobbers, filled 
 his soul with a certainly not ignoble rage, only 
 tempered by a sort of exultation to think in the 
 last case that the fools had brought their ruin on 
 their own heads by truckling to **the Thing." "The 
 Thing" was the whole actual social and political 
 state of England ; and on everything and every- 
 body that had brought " the Thing " about he 
 poured impartial vitriol. The war which had run 
 up the debt and increased the tax-eaters at the 
 
64 Essays in English 
 
 same time ; the boroughmongers who had counte- 
 nanced the war, the Jews and jobbers 
 that negotiated and dealt in the loans ; 
 the parsons that ate the tithes ; the lawyers that 
 did Government work, — Cobbett thundered against 
 them all. 
 
 But his wrath also descended upon far dififerent, 
 and one would have thought sufficiently guiltless, 
 things and persons. The potato, the " soul-destroy- 
 ing root" so easy to grow (Cobbett did not live 
 to see the potato famine, or I fear he would have 
 been rather hideous in his joy) so innutritious, 
 so exclusive of sound beef and bread, has worse 
 language than even a stock-jobber or a sinecurist. 
 Tea, the expeller of beer, the pamperer of foreign 
 commerce, the waster of the time of farmers' wives, 
 is nearly as bad as the potato. I could not within 
 any possible or probable space accorded me follow 
 out a tithe or a hundredth part of the strange 
 ramifications and divagations of Cobbett's grand 
 economic craze. The most comical branch per- 
 haps is his patronage of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, and the most comical twig of that branch 
 his firm belief that the abundance and size of 
 English churches testify to an infinitely larger 
 population in England of old than at the present 
 day. His rage at the impudent Scotchman who 
 put the populations at two millions when he is 
 sure it was twenty, and the earnestness with which 
 he proves that a certain Wiltshire vale, having 
 so many churches capable of containing so many 
 
Literature, tj8o-t86o 65 
 
 people must have once had so many score thousand 
 inhabitants, are about equally amusing. 
 That in the days which he praises so 
 much, and in which these churches were built, the 
 notion of building a church to "seat so many," or 
 with regard to the population at all, would have 
 been regarded as unintelligible if not blasphemous ; 
 that in the first place the church was an offering to 
 God, not a provision for getting worship done; 
 and that in the second, the worship of old, with 
 its processions, its numerous altars in the same 
 churches, and so on, made a disproportionate 
 amount of room absolutely necessary, — these were 
 things you could no more have taught Cobbett 
 than you could have taught him to like Marmion 
 or read the Witch of Atlas. 
 
 It is however time, and more than time, to 
 follow him rapidly through the curious labyrinth 
 of work in which, constantly though often very 
 unconsciously keeping in sight this ideal, he 
 wandered from Pittite Toryism to the extreme 
 of half socialist and wholly radical Reform. His 
 sons, very naturally but rather unwisely, have in 
 the great selection of the Political Works drawn 
 very sparingly on Peter Porcupine. But no esti- 
 mate of Cobbett that neglects the results of this, 
 his first, phase will ever be satisfactory. It is by 
 no means the most amusing division of Cobbett's 
 works ; but it is not the least characteristic, 
 and it is full of interest for the study both of 
 Enghsh and of American politics. The very best 
 
 E 
 
66 Essays in English 
 
 account that I know of the original American 
 Constitution, and of the party strife 
 
 1 r 11 11 -.1 T- 1 J COBBETT. 
 
 that followed the peace with England, 
 is contained in the Summary that opens the 
 Works. Then for some years we find Cobbett 
 engaged in fighting the Jacobin party, the fight 
 constantly turning into skirmishes on his private 
 account, conducted with singular vigour if at a 
 length disproportionate to the present interest 
 of the subject. Here is the autobiography be- 
 fore noticed, and in all the volumes, especially 
 the earlier ones, the following of Swift, often by 
 no means unhappy, is very noticeable. It is 
 a little unlucky that a great part of the whole 
 consists of selections from Porcupine's Gazette^ that 
 is to say, of actual newspaper matter of the time, — 
 "slag-heaps," to use Carlyle's excellent phrase, 
 from which the metal of present application has 
 been smelted out and used up long ago. 
 
 This inconvenience also and of necessity appHes 
 to the still larger collection, duplicating, as has 
 been said, a little from Porcupine, but principally 
 selected from the Register, which was published 
 after Cobbett's death. But this is of far greater 
 general importance, for it contains the pith and 
 marrow of all his writings on the subject to which 
 he gave most of his heart. Here, in the first 
 volume, besides the selection from Porcupine, are 
 the masterly Lettei's to Addington on the Peace of 
 A7?iiens, in which that most foolish of the foolish 
 things called armistices is treated as it deserved, 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 6y 
 
 and with a combination of vigour and statesman- 
 ship which Cobbett never showed after 
 he lost the benefit of Windham's patron- 
 age and (probably) inspiration. Here too is a 
 defence of bull-baiting after Windham's own heart. 
 The volume ends with the Letters to William 
 Pitt, in which Cobbett declared and defended 
 his defection from Pitt's system generally. The 
 whole method and conduct of the writings of 
 this time are so different from the rambling de- 
 nunciations of Cobbett's later days, and from the 
 acute but rather desultory and extremely per- 
 sonal Porcupinades, that one is almost driven to 
 accept the theory of "inspiration." The literary 
 model too has shifted from Swift to Burke, — 
 Burke upon whom Cobbett was later to pour 
 I torrents of his foolishest abuse ; and both in this 
 first and in the second volume the reformer, 
 wandering about in search of subjects not merely 
 political but general, — Crim. Con., Poor-laws, and 
 so forth — appears. But in the second volume we 
 have to notice a paper, still in the old style and 
 full of good sense, on Boxing. 
 
 In the third Cobbett is in full Radical cry. 
 Here is the article which sent him to Newgate ; 
 and long before it a series of virulent attacks on 
 the Duke of York in the matter of Mrs Clarke, 
 together with onslaughts on those Anti-Jacobins 
 to whom Cobbett had once been proud to be 
 long. It also includes a very curious Plafi for 
 an Army, which marks a sort of middle stage 
 
68 Essays hi English 
 
 in Cobbett's views on that subject. The latter 
 part of it, and the whole of the next ^^^^^^^ 
 (the fourth) consists mainly of long 
 series on the Regency (the last and permanent 
 Regency), on the Regent's disputes with his wife, 
 and on the American War. All this part dis- 
 plays Cobbett's growing ill-temper, and also the 
 growing wildness of his schemes— one of which 
 is a sliding scale adjusting all salaries, from the 
 civil list to the soldier's pay, according to the 
 price of corn. But there is still no loss of vigour, 
 if some of sanity ; and the opening paper of the 
 fifth volume, the famous Address to the Labourers 
 aforesaid, is, as I have said, perhaps the climax of 
 Cobbett's political writing in point of force and 
 form, — which thing I say utterly disagreeing 
 with almost all its substance. This same fifth 
 volume contains another remarkable instance of 
 Cobbett's extraordinary knack of writing, as well 
 as of his rapidly decreasing judgment, in the 
 "Letter to Jack Harrow, an English labourer, on 
 the new Cheat of Savings Banks." 
 
 At least half of the volume dates after Cobbett's 
 flight, while some is posterior to his return. The 
 characteristics which distinguish his later years, his 
 wild crotchets and his fantastic running-a-muck at 
 all public men of all parties, and not least at his 
 own former friends, appear both in it and in the 
 sixth and last, which carries the selection down to 
 his death. Yet even in such things as the Letter 
 to Old George Rose and that from The Labourers 
 
Literature, iy8o-iS6o 69 
 
 of the ten tittle Hard Parishes [this was Cobbett's 
 name for the district between Win- 
 chester and Whitchurch, much of which 
 had recently been acquired by the predecessors 
 of Lord Northbrook] to Alexatider Baring, Loan- 
 vio7iger, we can see, at a considerable distance 
 of time, the strength and the weakness of this 
 odd person in conspicuous mixture. He is as 
 rude, as coarse, as personal as may be; he is 
 grossly unjust to individuals and wildly flighty 
 in principle and argument ; it is almost im- 
 possible to imagine a more dangerous counsellor 
 in such, or indeed in any times. Except that 
 he is harder-headed and absolutely unchivalrous, 
 his politics are very much those of Colonel New- 
 come. And yet the vigour of the style is still 
 so great, the flame and heat of the man's convic- 
 tion are so genuine, his desire according to the 
 best he knows to benefit his clients, and his 
 unselfishness in taking up those clients, are so 
 unquestionable that it is impossible not to feel 
 both sympathy and admiration. If I had been 
 dictator about 1830 I think I should have hanged 
 Cobbett ; but I should have sent for him first and 
 asked leave to shake hands with him before he 
 went to the gallows. 
 
 These collections are invaluable to the political 
 and historical student ; and I hardly know any 
 better models, not for the exclusive, but for the 
 eclectic attention of the poHtical writer, especially 
 if his education be academic and his tastes rather 
 
yo Essays in English 
 
 anti-popular. But there is better pasture for the 
 cjeneral student in the immense variety 
 
 r 1 1 1-11 11 \. COBBETT. 
 
 of the works, which, though they cannot 
 be called wholly non-political — Cobbett would have 
 introduced politics into arithmetic and astronomy, 
 as he actually does into grammar — are non-political 
 in main substance and purport. They belong 
 almost entirely, as has been said, to the last 
 seventeen or eighteen years of Cobbett's life ; and 
 putting the Year's Residence aside, the English 
 Grammar is the earliest. It is couched in a series 
 of letters to his son James, who had been brought 
 up to the age of fourteen on the principle (by no 
 means a bad one) of letting him pick up the Three 
 R's as he pleased, and leaving him for the rest 
 " To ride and hunt and shoot, to dig the beds in 
 the garden, to trim the flowers, and to prune the 
 trees." It is like all Cobbett's books, on what- 
 soever subject, a wonderful mixture of imperfect 
 information, shrewd sense, and fantastic crotchet. 
 On one page Cobbett calmly instructs his son that 
 " prosody " means " pronunciation " ; on another, 
 he confuses "etymology" with "accidence." This 
 may give the malicious college-bred man cause to 
 be envious of his superior genius ; but there is no 
 doubt that the book contains about as clear an 
 account of the practical and working nature and 
 use of sound English speech and writing as can 
 anywhere be found. Naturally Cobbett is not 
 always right ; but if any one will compare his 
 book, say with a certain manual composed by 
 
Literatttre, ij 80- 1860 71 
 
 a very learned Emeritus Professor in a certain 
 University of Scotland, and lare^ely in- 
 
 COBBETT. _. , ^ , , /- 1 1-1 
 
 flicted on the youth of that kingdom as 
 well as to some extent on those of the adjoining 
 realm, he will not, I think, be in much doubt which 
 to prefer. 
 
 The grammar was published in 18 18, and Cob- 
 bett's next book of note was Religious Tracts, 
 afterwards called Twelve Sermons. He says that 
 many persons had the good sense to preach them ; 
 and indeed, a few of his usual outbursts excepted, 
 they are as sound specimens of moral exhortation 
 as anybody need wish to hear or deliver. They 
 are completed characteristically enough by a wild 
 onslaught on the Jews, separately paged as if 
 Cobbett was a little ashamed of it. Then came 
 the Cottage Economy^ instructing and exhorting the 
 English labourer in the arts of brewing, baking, 
 stock-keeping of all sorts, straw-bonnet making, 
 and ice-house building. This is perhaps the most 
 agreeable of all Cobbett's minor books, next to the 
 Rural Rides. The descriptions are as vivid as 
 Robinson Crusoe, and are further lit up by flashes 
 of the genuine man. Thus, after a most peaceable 
 and practical discourse on the making of rush- 
 lights, he writes : " You may do any sort of work 
 by this light ; and if reading be your taste you may 
 read the foul libels, the lies, and abuse which are 
 circulated gratis about me by the Society for 
 Promoting Christian Knowledge." Here too is 
 a charming piece of frankness : " Any beer is 
 
72 Essays in English 
 
 better than water; but it should have some 
 strencfth and some weeks of as^e at any 
 
 f o • COBBETT. 
 
 rate. 
 
 A rearrangement of the Horse-hoeing Industry 
 of Jethro Tull, barrister, and the French Grammar^ 
 hardly count among his purely and originally 
 literary work ; but the History of tJte Reformation 
 is one of its most characteristic if not one of its most 
 admirable parts. Cobbett's feud with the clergy 
 was now at its height ; he had long before been at 
 daggers drawn with his own parson at Botley. The 
 gradual hardening of his economic crazes made him 
 more and more hate " Tithe-Eaters," and his wrath 
 with them was made hotter by the fact that they 
 were as a body opponents of Reform. So with 
 a mixture of astounding ignorance and of self- 
 confidence equally amazing, he set to work to put 
 the crudest Roman view of the Reformation and of 
 earlier times into his own forcible English. The 
 book is very amusing ; but it is so grossly ignorant, 
 and the virulence of its tirades against Henry VIII. 
 and the rest so palpable, that even in that heated 
 time it would not do. It may be gathered from 
 some remarks of Cobbett's own that he felt it a 
 practical failure ; though he never gave up his 
 views, and constantly in his latest articles and 
 speeches invited everybody to search it for the 
 foundation of all truth about the Church of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 The more important of his next batch of publica- 
 tions, the Woodlands, The English Gardener, Cobbetfs 
 
Literature, ly So- 1860 y2> 
 
 Corn, restore a cooler atmosphere ; though even 
 here there are the usual spurts. Very 
 
 COBBETT. • • ^t J 4.U r 
 
 amusing is the suppressed wrath 01 
 the potato article in the English Gardener^ with 
 its magnanimous admission that "there appears 
 to be nothing unwholesome about it ; and it does 
 very well to qualify the effects of the meat 
 or to assist in the swallowing of quantities of 
 butter." Pleasing too is the remark, " If this 
 turnip really did come from Scotland, there is 
 something good that is Scotch." Cobbetfs Corn, 
 already noticed, is one of the most curious of 
 all his books, and an instance of his singular 
 vigour in taking up fancies. Although he sold 
 the seed, it does not appear that he could in any 
 case have made much profit out of it ; and he 
 gave it away so freely that it would, had it suc- 
 ceeded, soon have been obtainable from any seeds- 
 man in the kingdom. Yet he wrote a stout volume 
 about it, and seems to have taken wonderful 
 interest in its propagation, chiefly because he 
 hoped it would drive out his enemy the potato. 
 The English climate was naturally too much for 
 it ; but the most amusing thing, to me at least, 
 about the whole matter is the remembrance that 
 the ** yellow meal " which it, like other maize, pro- 
 duced, became, a short time after Cobbett's own 
 death, the utter loathing and abomination of 
 English and Irish paupers and labourers, a sort of 
 sign and symbol of capitalist tyranny. Soon 
 afterwards came the last of Cobbett's really re- 
 
74 Essays in English 
 
 markable and excellent works, the Advice to 
 Younz Men and Incidentally to Youn^ 
 Women, one of the kindliest and most 
 sensible books of its kind ever written. The other 
 books of Cobbett's later years are of little account 
 in any way ; and in the three little Legacies {to 
 Labourers, to Peel, and to Parsons) there is a double 
 portion of now cut-and-dried crotchet in matter, 
 and hardly any of the old power in form. 
 
 Yet to the last, or at any rate till his disastrous 
 election, Cobbett was Cobbett. The Rural Rides, 
 though his own collection of them stopped at 1830, 
 went on to 1832. This, the only one of his books, 
 so far as I know, that has been repeatedly and 
 recently reprinted, shows him at his best and his 
 worst ; but almost always at his best in form. 
 Indeed, the reader for mere pleasure need hardly 
 read anything else, and will find therein to the full 
 the delightful descriptions of rural England, the 
 quaint, confident, racy, wrong-headed opinions, the 
 command over the English language, and the ardent 
 affection for the English soil and its children, that 
 distinguish Cobbett at his very best. 
 
 I have unavoidably spent so much time on this 
 account of Cobbett's own works, — an account which 
 without copious extract must be, I fear, still inade- 
 quate, — that the anti-Cobbett polemic must go 
 with hardly any notice at all. Towards the crises 
 of the Reform Bill it became very active, and at 
 times remarkable. Among two collections which 
 I possess, one of bound tracts dating from this 
 
Literahire, lySo-iSdo 75 
 
 period, the other of loose pamphlets ranging over 
 the greater part of Cobbctt's life, the 
 keenest by far is a certain publication 
 called Cobbetfs Peimy Trash, which figures in 
 both, though one or two others have no small 
 point. The enemy naturally made the utmost 
 of the statement of the condemned labourer 
 Goodman, who lay in Horsham Gaol under sen- 
 tence of death for arson, that he had been stirred 
 up by Cobbett's addresses to commit the crime ; 
 but still better game was made controversially of 
 his flagrant and life-long inconsistencies, of his 
 enormous egotism, of his tergiversation in the 
 matter of the offer to discontinue the Register^ and 
 of his repudiation of his debt to Sir Francis Burdett. 
 And the main sting of the Penny Trashy which 
 must have been written by a very clever fellow 
 indeed, is the imitation of Cobbett's own later style, 
 its italics, its repetitions, its quaint mannerisms of 
 fling and vaunt. The example of this had of 
 course been set much earlier by the Smiths in 
 Rejected Addresses^ but it was even better done 
 here. 
 
 Cobbett was indeed vulnerable enough. He, if 
 any one, is the justification of the theory of Time, 
 Country, and Milieu, and perhaps the fact that it 
 only adjusts itself to such persons as he is the chief 
 condemnation of that theory. Even with him it 
 fails to account for the personal genius which after 
 all is the only thing that makes him tolerable, 
 and which, when he is once tolerated, makes him 
 
76 Essays in English 
 
 almost admirable. Only an English TerrcE Filius, 
 destitute of the education which the 
 traditional TerrcB Films had, writing too 
 in the stress of the great Revolutionary struggle 
 and at hand-grips with the inevitable abuses which 
 that struggle at once left unbettered, after the usual 
 gradual fashion of English betterment, and aggra- 
 vated by the pressure of economic changes — could 
 have ventured to write with so little knowledge or 
 range of logical power, and yet have written with 
 such individual force and adaptation of style to the 
 temper of his audience. At a later period and in 
 different circumstances Cobbett could hardly have 
 been so acrimonious, so wildly fantastic, so grossly 
 and almost impudently ignorant, or if he had been 
 he would have been simply laughed at or unread. 
 At an earlier period, or in another country, he 
 would have been bought off or cut off. Even at 
 this very time the mere circumstantial fact of the 
 connection of most educated and well-informed 
 writers with the Government or at least with the 
 regular Opposition, gave such a Free-lance as 
 this an unequalled opportunity of making him- 
 self heard. His very inconsistency, his very fero- 
 city, his very ignorance, gave him the key of the 
 hearts of the multitude, who just then were the 
 persons of most importance. And to these per- 
 sons that characteristic of his which is either most 
 laughable or most disgusting to the educated, — 
 his most unparalleled, his almost inconceivable 
 egotism — was no drawback. When Cobbett with 
 
Literature y ij So- 1860 
 
 // 
 
 many italics in an advertisement to all his later 
 books told them, " When I am asked 
 
 COBBETT. , , , 
 
 what books a young man or young 
 woman ought to read I always answer : * Let 
 him or her read all the books that I have written,' " 
 proceeding to show in detail that this was no 
 humorous gasconade but a serious recommenda- 
 tion, one " which it is my duty to give," the 
 classes laughed consumedly. But the masses 
 felt that Cobbett was at any rate a much cleverer 
 and more learned person than themselves, had 
 no objection on the score of taste, and were 
 naturally conciliated by his partisanship on their 
 own side. And, clever as he was, he was not too 
 clever for them. He always hit them between 
 wind and water. He knew that they cared nothing 
 about consistency, nothing about chivalry, nothing 
 about logic. He could make just enough and not 
 too much parade of facts and figures to impress 
 them. And above all he had that invaluable gift 
 of belief in himself and in his own fallacies which 
 no demagogue can do without. I do not know a 
 more fatal delusion than the notion, entertained 
 by many persons, that a mere charlatan, a 
 conscious charlatan, can be effective as a states- 
 man, especially on the popular side. Such a one 
 may be an excellent understrapper ; but he will 
 never be a real leader. 
 
 In this respect however Cobbett is only a 
 lesson, a memory, and an example, which are all 
 rather dead things. In respect of his own native 
 
yS Essays in English 
 
 literary genius he is still a thing alive and de- 
 lectable. I have endeavoured, so far 
 
 . COBBETT. 
 
 as has been possible in treating a 
 large subject in little room, to point out his 
 characteristics in this respect also. But, as happens 
 with all writers of his kidney, he is not easily 
 to be characterised. Like certain wines he has 
 the gofit du terroir ; and that gust is rarely or 
 never definable in words. It is however I think 
 critically safe to say that the intensity and 
 peculiarity of Cobbett's literary savour is in the 
 ratio of his limitation. He was content to ignore 
 so vast a number of things, he so bravely pushed 
 his ignorance into contempt of them and almost 
 into denial of their real existence, that the other 
 things are real for him and in his writings to a 
 degree almost unexampled. I am not the first by 
 many to suggest that we are too diffuse in our 
 modern imagination, that we are cumbered about 
 too many things. No one could bring this accusa- 
 tion against Cobbett ; for immense as his variety 
 is in particulars, these particulars group themselves 
 under comparatively few general heads. I do not 
 think I have been unjust in suggesting that this 
 ideal was little more than the belly-full, that 
 Messer Gaster was not only his first but his one 
 and sufficient master of arts. He was not irre- 
 ligious, he was not immoral; but his religion and 
 his morality were of the simplest and most matter- 
 of-fact kind. Philosophy, aesthetics, literature, the 
 more abstract sciences, even refinements of sensual 
 
Literature, ij 80- 1860 79 
 
 comfort and luxury he cared nothing for. In- 
 deed he had a stronp- disHke to most 
 
 COBBETT. . , _^ , , , 
 
 of them. He must always have been 
 
 fighting about something ; but I think his pole- 
 mics might have been harmlessly parochial at 
 another time. It is marvellous how this re- 
 solute confinement of view sharpens the eye- 
 sight within the confines. He has somewhere 
 a really beautiful and almost poetical passage of 
 enthusiasm over a great herd of oxen as " so much 
 splendid meat." He can see the swells of the 
 downs, the flashing of the winterbournes as they 
 spring from the turf where they have lain hid, the 
 fantastic outline of the oak woods, the reddening 
 sweep of the great autumn fields of corn, as few 
 have seen them, and can express them all with 
 rare force and beauty in words. But he sees 
 all these things conjointly and primarily from 
 the point of view of the mutton that the downs 
 will breed and the rivers water, the faggots that 
 the labourer will bring home at evening, the 
 bread he will bake and the beer he will brew 
 — strictly according to the precepts of Cottage 
 Economy. 
 
 This may be to some minds a strange and 
 almost incredible combination. It is not so to 
 mine, and I am sure that by dint of it and 
 by dint of holding himself to it he achieved 
 his actual success of literary production. To 
 beHeve in nothing very much, or in a vast 
 
8o Essays in English Literature, ly 80- 1860 
 
 number of things dispersedly, may be the secret 
 of criticism ; but to believe in some- 
 thing definite, were it only the belly- 
 full, and to believe in it furiously and exclu- 
 sively is, with almost all men, the secret of 
 original art. 
 
III. 
 
 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 
 
 There might be a worse occupation for some 
 proficient in the lighter kind of criti- 
 cal or miscellaneous writing than the 
 drawing up of a list of opinions and sayings 
 which, in other than Herodotean sense, it is not 
 now lawful to utter concerning certain famous 
 writers. Landor would come in for a good share 
 of that list. That the critics admire the author 
 of the Imaginary Co7tversations and that the 
 public does not ; that he is an example of 
 classical as opposed to romantic writing ; that 
 he will dine late, but that the room will be well 
 lighted and the guests select ; that he was partly 
 a philosopher and partly a schoolboy ; that he 
 was like Boythorn ; that he was not like Boy- 
 thorn ; that he was a better writer of ornate prose 
 than De Ouincey ; that he was not so good a 
 writer of ornate prose as De Quincey : these and 
 a good many other things require no more saying. 
 If they are said, let us by all means take off our 
 
 Y 8i 
 
82 Essays in English 
 
 hats to them as the French wit did in similar 
 case ; but let us not repeat them, if we 
 
 \, ^ -^ -ru A' ' ' LANDOR. 
 
 can help it. The dniing-room sayuig 
 especially, though it be Landor's own, is a most 
 treacherous dictum. It necessarily begets in the 
 quoter a secret sense that he is one of the select 
 guests, that the room has been lighted for him 
 at the late and sacred hour. The contrast-theory, 
 too, of philosopher and schoolboy is to be avoided 
 as much as possible, like all contrast theories, 
 which are for the most part, i( not universally, 
 as delusive as they are tempting and as barren 
 as they are facile. 
 
 It is an interesting, though perhaps in some little 
 degree an idle, question to enquire whether that 
 popularity, at least that real popularity, which the 
 critics prophesy and implore for Landor will ever 
 come. It is some years now since Mr Crump's 
 edition of the Conversations and of much of the 
 Poems leaves none of the old excuses open to the 
 slippery. It was true, till this edition appeared, 
 that it was not easy to get at Landor's work. 
 John Forster's edition of the Conversations — which 
 is still the only complete or nearly complete edition 
 of Landor's entire writings — was decidedly cum- 
 brous and not very comely. Nor was it any longer 
 to be easily or cheaply bought, having gone through 
 all the three stages which the reluctance of English- 
 men to buy library editions of classics is wont to 
 occasion, the steps of '* published price," dirt-cheap 
 remainder, and rather expensive recovery to a 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo ^;^ 
 
 price higher than the original. Mr Crump's edition 
 of the Conversations is cheap, hand- 
 some, handy, and generally desirable. 
 He has taken a great deal of trouble in giving 
 many, if not all, of the numerous various read- 
 ings, and there is no need to quarrel with his 
 own introduction and notes which are not of the 
 overwhelming kind lately brought once more into 
 fashion. If people will not now read Landor, at 
 least the Conversations, there must be something 
 in him which does not easily let itself be read 
 by the general, and which is only to be forgiven 
 by the real student of letters. And if they will 
 not read the Poems, it is not because almost the 
 whole of those likely to recommend themselves 
 to the general reader are not easily accessible. 
 
 In no purely critical disquisition on Landor can 
 it be now necessary to say very much about his 
 life. It is rather a pity that Mr Colvin did not 
 prefix a short biography to his excellent selection 
 in the Golden Treasury Series, a selection which, 
 while it may have made Landor better known in 
 a way, has also, I suspect, acted and will act as a 
 bar to his being known in his complete works. It 
 could have been done by abbreviating Mr Colvin's 
 own biography of Landor in the English Men of 
 Letters. Savagius, as Byron irreverently called him, 
 came of Warwickshire folk, affluent and respect- 
 able, and he was the eldest son and heir of entail, 
 having been born at Ipsley Court in 1775. I fear, 
 that to call things by their plain names, he was 
 
84 Essays in English 
 
 but an ill-conditioned youth. He appears to have 
 behaved at Rus^by like a kind of Guy 
 
 . , "^ - 1111 LANDOR. 
 
 Livingstone whose forte should nave 
 been scholarship rather than flirting, though 
 Landor was a bit of a flirt too in his way. 
 Having gone up to Trinity College, Oxford, he 
 was sent down, before he had been in residence 
 a year, for firing into another man's windows. 
 There is nothing very awful in that for an 
 undergraduate, and I have known it done by 
 persons of great excellence. But Landor did not 
 make the matter better by equivocating when 
 charged with the crime ; or by excusing himself 
 on the plea that the recipient of his shot was a 
 " Tory who entertained servitors " ; or by reject- 
 ing all overtures of restoration, like a sulky child. 
 That his escapade brought him into difficulties 
 with his father involves no discredit to either side ; 
 but the fact that the officers of the Warwickshire 
 Militia threatened to resign their commissions in 
 a body if he received one is more questionable, 
 even though the alleged cause was merely the 
 violence of the young man's political opinions. 
 Of the intercessions of a fair Miss Lyttelton for 
 him, and of his wanderings in Wales, of his fore- 
 gatherings with lanthe (that is to say Jane) and 
 lone (that is to say Miss Jones), of his coming 
 into his property, and his volunteering (in 1808) 
 to Spain, and his difficulties with the English 
 representatives and the Spanish authorities there, 
 and his exchange of his inheritances in Warwick- 
 
Literature, ij 80- 1860 85 
 
 shire for a wilderness in Wales, there is no room 
 here to speak. Yet one of his Welsh 
 
 LANDOR. -, ... , ., , .- 
 
 friendships — that with the Aylmer 
 family — cannot be passed in silence, for it re- 
 sulted in some of the most exquisite lines in the 
 world's poetry. 
 
 He married, in 181 1, a girl sixteen years younger 
 than himself, and one cause of their subsequent 
 dissensions (which broke out very soon) seems to 
 have been her habit of reminding him of the dif- 
 ference. But his marriage had nothing to do with 
 his troubles at Llanthony ; though his troubles at 
 Llanthony may have had not a little to do with 
 those of his marriage, by substituting exile and 
 wandering, with no very abundant means, for the 
 easy affluent life which the bride may have pro- 
 mised herself. It would be hardly possible for 
 any one to behave more foolishly than Landor 
 did at Llanthony. That he burdened the estate 
 heavily in order to possess himself of it, and then 
 wasted money on its improvement till he was all 
 but ruined, is nothing. That is the usual fate of 
 men of letters when they take to managing estates. 
 It is less pardonable that he went out of his way 
 to quarrel with everybody, the bishop, the judges, 
 the Lord Lieutenant, his own tenants, and his 
 tenants' labourers, in a manner which it is almost 
 too complimentary to call childish. I at least 
 cannot see anything engaging in a man of ripe 
 age, who, when the bishop had left a letter un- 
 answered, magnificently remarked, " God alone is 
 
'^ LANDOR. 
 
 86 Essays in English 
 
 great enough for me to ask anything of twice ; " 
 who availed himself of the formal charge 
 to the Grand Jury to present personally 
 an attorney and tax-surveyor who had offended 
 him, and who, when the Lord Lieutenant had 
 after this exploit declined to put him on the 
 Commission of the Peace, pestered the Lord 
 Chancellor to do so and wound up by saying 
 that he "will now never accept anything that 
 can be given by ministers or chancellors." This 
 sort of thing — this sort of cross between imitation- 
 Quixotry and the heroics of a Frenchman on the 
 stage or in the tribune — is too petty to be even 
 amusing, and too silly to be even pitiable. 
 
 Before long, however, Landor was duly filled 
 with the fruit of his own devices. He fled the 
 country under stress of both civil and (for he 
 had thrashed one of his foes) criminal proceed- 
 ings, and from 1814 to 1835 lived, save for a 
 very short time, abroad and chiefly at Fiesole. 
 The events of this long stretch of his life were 
 much the same as before it began, and ended by 
 serious, and ultimately final, quarrels with his wife; 
 they were also diversified by other quarrels with 
 his neighbours, with the meek if astute Italian 
 authorities, with his friends, with everybody. 
 When the final rupture with his family came he 
 travelled for some time, and then established him- 
 self at Bath, where another sojourn of about the 
 same length (1837-1858) was abruptly ended by 
 yet another quarrel. The painful story of the way 
 
LiteraUire, ij 80- 1860 87 
 
 in which, as a man of eighty-three, he had to fly 
 from England once more in order to 
 
 LANDOR. , , - . . 
 
 escape the results of an action for a 
 gross Hbcl on a lady, has been told with some- 
 what unintelligible reticence by Mr Forster, and 
 rather more clearly by Mr Colvin. The last stage 
 of this long and strange history was compara- 
 tive peace, thanks chiefly to Robert Browning. 
 Landor was established in Florence under proper 
 care, the breach with his family, except at the 
 very last with his younger children, proving hope- 
 less ; and he spent his last lustrum pretty happily, 
 though he sufi"ered from some of the inevitable 
 outrages of time. He died on September 17th, 
 1S64, having nearly reached the age of ninety. 
 
 It is a curious but necessary postscript to the 
 stormy record of his domestic life that almost all 
 his numerous friends (even those with whom he 
 sometimes quarrelled) describe him with one accord 
 as possessing one of the kindest, the most generous, 
 and, when he was not in one of his furious rages, 
 the gentlest and most considerate natures that 
 ever man had. Nor is this testimony in the least 
 limited to, or conditioned by, his circumstances. 
 Just after his flight from Bath, when a comparison 
 of his condition to Lear's might seem not extrava- 
 gant, much earlier when his strength was unim- 
 paired and he was in no sense, except for his own 
 follies, an object of pity, the testimonials are quite 
 as uniform, and are given by persons of the most 
 diverse characters in every respect. If anybody 
 
88 Essays in English 
 
 who ever really knew Landor disliked him, I think 
 that no literary record exists of the 
 
 ,. ... "" LANDOR. 
 
 dislike. 
 
 He was indeed a perfect slave of impulse, when 
 he offered to publish any poem that Southey might 
 write at his own expense, as much as when he 
 threw (or perhaps only threatened to throw) his 
 cook out of the window. But there is no record 
 that he ever repented his generous impulses, and 
 he constantly made amends for his violent ones. 
 He loved art, more well indeed than wisely, for he 
 was apt to bestow much good money on many 
 not seldom bad pictures. He loved literature 
 nearly as well, though not quite so consummately 
 as he practised it. He loved, with Attic taste and 
 not grossly, good wine, delicate food, fair prospects, 
 and most of all, fair women. Even in his silli- 
 nesses there was something not ignoble : even in 
 his most provoking weakness something to re- 
 concile and attract. 
 
 It is not easy, in reading over again Landor's 
 voluminous poetical work, to decide on the exact 
 reasons which have, with the large majority of 
 readers, relegated it to the upper shelf It is 
 almost never bad ; it is at times extremely good. 
 The famous passages which lighten the darkness 
 of Gebir and Count Julian are unstaled in their 
 attraction by any custom. You may read Rose 
 Aylmer for the hundredth time with the certain 
 effect of that " divine despair " which inspires and 
 is inspired by only the greatest poetry. Dirce, and 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 89 
 
 the companion passage which Aspasia sent to 
 Cleone, are equally sure of their own 
 effect. But Landor is by no means 
 obliged to rely on half a dozen purple passages 
 like these. His enormous total of verse, which 
 if printed with the usual luxury of new poetry 
 (a separate page for even the smallest piece, and 
 not more than twenty lines or so of the longest 
 on any), would fill volumes by the dozen or 
 score, never for long fails to yield something 
 altogether out of the common. From the unequal 
 and motelike crowd of the lanthe trifles to the 
 long " Hellenic " and dramatic or semi-dramatic 
 pieces, the same rule holds good. With Landor 
 you can never read long before coming to the 
 " flashing words, the words of light " ; and the light 
 of the flash is always distinct and not like that of 
 any other poetical star. If he is too "classical," 
 he is not more so than many poets of the seven- 
 teenth century, especially Jonson, whom he most 
 resembles, and whom (perhaps from a vague sense 
 of likeness) he rather undervalues and belittles. 
 His quality, from its intense peculiarity, is exactly 
 the quality which bribes the literary student. His 
 passion is not unreal ; his sense of beauty is ex- 
 quisite ; his power of expressing it is consummate; 
 and yet he is not, at least to some readers, interest- 
 ing as a whole. They have to gird themselves up 
 to him ; to get into training for him ; or else to 
 turn basely to the well-known pieces and re-read 
 (he did not like " re-read," by the way, but I do not 
 
 I 
 
90 Essays in English 
 
 remember that he allowed us to "relege") these 
 only. 
 
 Ihe reasons of this are probably 
 reasons of combination. Landor has accumulated, 
 in a fashion which might seem to be allowable in one 
 whose quest after unpopularity was so ostentatiously 
 intentional, different and even contradictory claims 
 to the honour of remaining unread. The very 
 scholarly poets are usually rather scant producers ; 
 he is enormously voluminous. The dealers in 
 epigrams and short lyrics rarely attempt long- 
 breathed poems ; Landor by turns rains epigram 
 (using that word in its proper sense) with the 
 copiousness of a whole anthology, and pours out 
 a steady stream of narrative or dramatic stuff with 
 the ceaseless flow of Spenser. Those two stout 
 volumes, crammed with poems of all sorts and 
 sizes, are full of delight for the few wh© really like 
 to read poetry. Let us permit ourselves Sortes 
 Landoriance and open one of the pair without even 
 looking to see which it is. We open on Dry 
 Sticks, certainly not a promising place to open, 
 and find these verses : 
 
 'Tis pleasant to behold 
 
 The little leaves unfold 
 Day after day, still pouting at the sun, 
 
 Until at last they dare 
 
 Lay their pure bosoms bare — 
 Of all these flowers, I know the sweetest one. 
 
 Quite trifling verses perhaps, but assuredly not 
 written in a quite trifling style. You may open a 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 91 
 
 hundred volumes of verse as they come fresh from 
 the press and not find one with that 
 
 LANDOK. , , . _^ , , 
 
 style-mark on it. Yet somehow the 
 stoutest devotee of style may be smitten with 
 hideous moments of scepticism when reading 
 Landor. Few men in our days, or in any days 
 at all near them, have had such a faculty of em- 
 balming in the selfsame amber beautiful things, 
 things presentable, and things absolutely trivial 
 and null. All the defects of the classical and 
 " marmoreal " style are perceived when we come 
 to such a thing as this, 
 
 Better to praise too largely small deserts 
 Than censure too severely great defects. 
 
 That has most eminently the fault of phrase- 
 making. It is a great question whether even what 
 is true in it is worth saying, and it is a greater 
 question still whether the larger part of it is not 
 false. It is moreover especially liable to the piti- 
 less treatment to which Thackeray subjected 
 another aphorism of the same kind. Why not 
 
 Better to praise too largely great deserts 
 Than censure too severely small defects } 
 
 or 
 
 Better to praise too scantly great deserts 
 Than censure over mildly small defects ? 
 
 or in short a dozen other truisms or paradoxes or 
 what not of the same easy kind } It is the in- 
 evitable penalty of the "classical" form that it 
 
92 Essays in English 
 
 adapts itself with the most delusive submissiveness 
 to almost any matter. The opposite 
 
 ^ 1 / 11 . V. . 1 LANDOR. 
 
 style (call it Romantic, rococo, or what 
 
 you will) is at least saved from this exasperating 
 
 liability ; and when Herrick or Donne is not 
 
 superlatively good, the one or the other is frankly 
 
 bad. 
 
 If we turn from Landor's shorter poems to his 
 longer we shall find, in different matter and in 
 different measure, the same merits and the same 
 defects. The poet with whom it is perhaps most 
 natural to compare him is Mr William Morris. It 
 is indeed almost impossible for any one who knows 
 the two not to think of the Hellejiics and the Acts 
 and Scenes when he reads the Life and Death of 
 fason and the Earthly Paradise. Nor is it a very 
 difficult thing to separate the comparative merits 
 and defects of the two. Mr Morris cannot pretend 
 to Landor's dignity, precision, and lasting certainty 
 of touch. He abounds in surplusage ; he is often, 
 if not exactly slipshod, loose and fluid ; his singing 
 robe is not girt up quite tight enough, and he tends 
 to the garrulous. But he is always interesting ; he 
 has the gift of story, he carries us along with him, 
 and the journey is always easy and sometimes 
 exciting. Landor, though nearly if not quite as 
 voluble as the later poet, has an air of the utmost 
 economy, proportion, and rigour. His phrase, if 
 sometimes rather long, is screwed to concert-pitch ; 
 he never apparently babbles ; there is an air, how- 
 ever modern his subject, of classical severity about 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 93 
 
 liim. Yet Landor can be exceedingly longwinded, 
 and does not often succeed in beinc^ 
 
 LANDOK. . ^ . -, . 1 • 1 
 
 very niteresting. Now there are knids 
 of literature, especially of poetry, in which in- 
 terest is only a secondary consideration. But I 
 can hardly conceive anyone, except in the way 
 of paradox, maintaining that either drama or 
 narrative ranks among the kinds which possess 
 and sometimes abuse this august and dangerous 
 privilege. 
 
 The merits and defects of Landor's very different 
 prose, are much the same ; especially in the chief 
 division of that prose, the vast aggregate of the 
 Conversations, into which he preferred to throw 
 such work of his as was not verse, while as has 
 been seen even his verse-work had a tendency to 
 assume the same guise. He seems indeed never 
 to have been quite at home in any other. Perhaps 
 he cannot in any case be ranked high as a critic, 
 but his exercises in that kind which are couched 
 in conversational form are at any rate much more 
 readable than the so-called criticisms which appear 
 in the eighth volume of his Works, and which are 
 either desultory jottings in the nature of annota- 
 tions, or else worked into a continuous form which 
 is stiff and lifeless. In fact I doubt very much 
 whether Landor could possibly have succeeded in 
 regular history or essay, narrative or disquisition. 
 His egotism (using the word in no unfavourable 
 sense) was so intense that only the egotistic forms 
 of literature, as I think we may without unfairness 
 
94 Essays in English 
 
 call the Conversation and the Letter, really suited 
 him. And I am not sure that the 
 
 T ,. •■ • 1 • 1 , LANDOR. 
 
 Letter did not suit him even better 
 than the Conversation. 
 
 He himself, however, preferred the Conversation, 
 and he has probably left us the largest, most 
 varied and elaborate collection of the kind in 
 existence. Lucian surpasses Landor as much in 
 variety of literary excellence as he excels Plato in 
 range and diversity of subject ; but the whole bulk 
 of Lucian's dialogues would not, I should think, 
 exceed, if it would equal, a volume and a half of 
 the size whereof Landor's fill five. Fontenelle 
 (who for the last century and perhaps more has 
 been too much undervalued) falls into a lower 
 rank than any of the other three, while Erasmus 
 (the only fifth to be set beside these) is, though 
 a much greater man than Fontenelle and even 
 than Landor, inferior to these two, and still more 
 to Plato and Lucian, in intellectual and literary 
 faculty. In these last and greatest respects Plato 
 of course stands alone ; and it is not a favourable 
 symptom of Landor's own capacities in either 
 respect that he evidently did not like him. Plato 
 at any rate is the first of all those who have written 
 or ever will write conversations. The only counter 
 claim which Landor can put in against his superi- 
 ority in dignity of matter and in mastery of style 
 is the greater variety of his own subjects. There 
 is indeed one other claim which he might urge, 
 though it is an illegitimate one at best, the fuller 
 
LiteraturCy iy8o-i86o 95 
 
 revelation of personality. We know from the 
 works that go under his name very 
 little, hardly anything, of Plato. From 
 the next, and, as it seems to me next greatest, 
 series of dialogues we know a good deal, though 
 in an indirect way, of Lucian. But from the third 
 we know almost everything of Landor. Given 
 the Conversations as the authentic data, with such 
 things as early troubles at college, an unsatis- 
 factory marriage, ample means, uncongenial sur- 
 roundings, foreign residence, and the like as 
 conjectural assistance, any novelist who knew his 
 business could depict the life of Walter Savage 
 Landor almost exactly as it happened. Nay, he 
 would from the Conversations divine most of the 
 circumstances just referred to. 
 
 The caution of the author to the reader — *' Avoid 
 a mistake in attributing to the writer any opinions 
 in this book but what are spoken under his own 
 name" is interesting but infantile. We always 
 know, we always should know if we knew nothing 
 else about him, from the constant presence of a 
 common and unmistakeable form, when Landor 
 is putting Landor's opinions in the mouth of no 
 matter who it may be. If this to some extent 
 communicates a charm to the various and volu- 
 minous work concerned, it must be admitted that 
 it also imparts a certain monotony to it. Greek or 
 Roman, mediaeval or modern, political or amatory, 
 literary or miscellaneous, the Conversations simply 
 convey in stately English, the soon well known 
 
96 Essays in English 
 
 and not exceedingly fresh or wide-ranging opinions 
 of the author on mundane things, with 
 
 , , , ,-111 LANDOR. 
 
 occasional and not particularly nappy 
 excursions into things divine. We know that 
 when any person of the other sex, especially 
 if she be very youthful, appears, she will herself de- 
 liver sentiments of an amiable but rather giggling 
 and missish mixture of archness and innocence, 
 while the interlocutor who more particularly re- 
 presents Landor will address her and speak of 
 her in the style of a more cultivated, gentlemanly, 
 and gifted Mr Tupman. We know that if politics 
 are in question, especially recent politics, the 
 sentiments of a generous but republican school- 
 boy will equally appear. If the subject is litera- 
 ture, woe to anyone who speaks ill of Southey 
 or well of Gifford. Woe again to anyone who 
 speaks ill of Milton ; but let nobody speak good 
 of him except in the particular way which is 
 satisfactory to Walter Savage Landor. We must 
 always speak well of Dr Parr, for he was a friend 
 of ours ; and we exchanged scholarship and polite- 
 ness with him when the Warwickshire Militia would 
 have none of us. But we must not speak ill of Dr 
 Johnson, though he was a Tory and a church- 
 man ; for he was a man of the Midlands, and so 
 a very honest fellow. Down with the wretch Pitt 
 (against whom we took a grudge when we knew 
 nothing about politics), with the ribald Canning 
 (who was an Oxford man and a scholar like 
 ourselves, but very successful when we were not 
 
Literature, iy8o-iS6o 97 
 
 quite that), with the villain George the Third 
 (who was a king and whose counten- 
 ance did not please us). We do not 
 like lords, but if we happen to know any par- 
 ticular lord and he is polite to us, or has pretty 
 daughters with euphonious names, or is related 
 to or connected in some way with our own family, 
 and has not quarrelled with us, let us speak of 
 him and his with a sweet and rotund mouth. 
 If anybody dares to interfere with our comfort 
 whether at Llanthony or Fiesole, in Paternoster 
 Row or elsewhere, let us attend to the sacred duty 
 of literary justice by gibbeting the fellow in as 
 Dantean a manner as we can manage. But when 
 there is nothing of this disturbing kind concerned, 
 and when our heart is full (as it very often is) of 
 the milk of human kindness, and our head (as it 
 generally is when it is not in a state of inordinate 
 heat) of the great wisdom and the stately fame 
 of the ancients, let us write with that pen which is 
 always almost a golden one, as very few English- 
 men had written before us, and as hardly one has 
 written since. 
 
 I hope this summary is not too flippant ; I am 
 sure that it is not in the least unjust. But the 
 only complete way of justifying it would be to go 
 through all the Conversations and characterise 
 each as we went. This would cost little trouble, 
 and it would be very pleasant to do : but I fear 
 it would occupy an inordinate amount of space. 
 By far the more excellent plan is to send readers 
 
 G 
 
98 Essays in English 
 
 to Landor himself, in which case I have no fear 
 of the result. 
 
 _.- ^ • r 11 r 1 LANDOR. 
 
 The Conversations are full of de- 
 lightful things, and it is impossible for any fit 
 reader to attempt them without discovering these 
 things. Let the subject admit of any description 
 of natural scenery, any dream-scene (Landor's 
 dreams are very nearly if not quite unapproached), 
 any passage dealing with the greater and simpler 
 emotions, any reflection on the sublime common- 
 places of life, and Landor is almost entirely to be 
 depended upon. It does not matter, it never with 
 him matters much, what the nominal subject is ; 
 the best things written in connection with it are 
 sure to be fine and may very likely be superb. In 
 the " Pericles and Aspasia " (which indeed is not 
 conversation in form but is hardly distinguishable 
 from it) in "The Pentameron," in many of the 
 classical dialogues, and in not a few of the "Lit- 
 erary Men " the author will be found quite at his 
 best. The famous " Epicurus, Leontium, and 
 Ternissa " probably shows him at almost his very 
 best, and at very nearly his very worst. In the 
 dialogues of " Sovereigns and Statesmen " I should 
 say (and not in the least because I generally dis- 
 agree with the political views there expressed) that 
 he was at his very worst. For politics is after all 
 an eminently practical science, and of the practical 
 spirit Landor had literally nothing. His only plan 
 was to put more or less odious or ridiculous state- 
 ments in the mouths of persons with whom he 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 99 
 
 does not agree, to mop and mow at them, or to 
 denounce them in Ciceronian strains 
 of invective. The infallible test of a 
 political writer, I think, is the reflection " Should 
 I like to have this man on my side or not ? " 
 For my part whenever I read Landor's political 
 utterances I say, "Thank Heaven, he is on the 
 other ! " 
 
 The dialogues of Famous Women are in the 
 same way flawed by that artificial and namby- 
 pamby conception of the female character which 
 has already been touched upon ; while the Miscel- 
 laneous Conversations obviously defy analysis as a 
 whole. The author has left nothing better than 
 some of them, such as the long, curious, unequal, 
 but admirable " Penn and Peterborough ; " while in 
 others he sinks almost below the level of rational 
 thought. " Lord Coleraine, Rev. Mr Bloombury 
 and Rev. Mr Swan " is fully worthy of the author 
 of the " Examination." It would be difficult to say 
 of whom "The Duke de Richelieu, Sir Firebracc 
 
 Cotes, Lady G , and Mr Normanby " is worthy. 
 
 " The Emperor of China and Tsing-ti " is probably 
 the very worst of all the imitations of Montesquieu ; 
 and on at least some others as harsh a judgment 
 would have to be passed if they were critically 
 judged at all. 
 
 There are however few writers on whom it must 
 be more repugnant to any lover of literature to 
 pass harsh judgments, because there are few, if 
 any, who have themselves combined such an 
 
loo Essays in English 
 
 intense love for literature with such noble practice 
 in it. For the two things are by no 
 means always combined, and Words- 
 worth is far from being the only great writer 
 who may be said to have had a very lukewarm 
 affection for any writings but his own. And 
 the quality of production is in Landor's case of 
 extraordinary strength and peculiarity. On all 
 happy occasions when his hand is in, when the 
 right subject is before him, and when he is not 
 tempted away from it into the indulgence of some 
 fling, into the memory of some petty wrong, 
 into the repetition of some tiresome crotchet, he 
 manages language literally as a great musician 
 manages the human voice or some other organ of 
 sound. The meaning, though it is often noble, is 
 never the first thing in Landor, and in particular 
 it is quite useless to go to him for any profound, 
 any novel, any far-reaching thought. The thought 
 is at best sufficient, and it very frequently is that; 
 but it seldom makes any tax upon even the most 
 moderate understanding, and it never by any 
 chance averts attention from the beauty and the 
 finish of the vesture in which it is clothed. 
 
 The famous dreams which close " The Penta- 
 meron " are things of which it is almost impossible 
 to tire. Nowhere else perhaps in English does 
 prose style, while never trespassing into that which 
 is not prose, accompany itself with such an exquisite 
 harmony of varied sounds ; nowhere is there such 
 a complicated and yet such an easily appreciable 
 
Lita-atitre, ly So- 1860 loi 
 
 scheme of verbal music. The sense is, as has 
 been said, just sufficient ; it is no more ; 
 
 LANDOR. .. • -^ If 1- 1 
 
 it IS not m itself peculiarly arresting. 
 Although the sentiment is heartfelt, it is not 
 exactly passionate. But it is perfectly and ex- 
 actly married to the verbal music, and the verbal 
 music is perfectly and exactly married to it. 
 Again, it is a whole ; if not perhaps quite flaw- 
 less yet with flaws which are comparatively un- 
 important. It does not consist, as "fine" writing 
 too often does, of a certain number of more or 
 less happy phrases, notes, or passages strung to- 
 gether. It is, as I have called it, a "scheme," — 
 a thing really deserving those terms from the 
 science of actual music which have been so fre- 
 ^ quently and tediously abused in literary criticism. 
 Moreover the qualities which exist pre-eminently 
 in this and other great passages of Landor appear 
 everywhere, on smaller scales, in his prose. It is 
 never safe, except when he attempts the comic, to 
 skip a single page. Anywhere you may come 
 across, in five words or in five hundred, the great 
 Landorian phrase, the sentence cunningly balanced 
 or intentionally and deftly broken, the paragraph 
 built with a full knowledge of the fact that a 
 paragraph is a structure and not a heap, the 
 adjective wedded to its proper substantive, not 
 indulging in unseemly promiscuity, the clause 
 proceeding clearly and steadily to the expres- 
 sion of the thought assigned to it. Whatever de- 
 ficiencies there may be in Landor (and, as has 
 
I02 Essays m English 
 
 been and will be seen, they are not few) he is 
 seldom if ever guilty of the worst 
 and the commonest fault of the ornate 
 writer, a superabundance of ornament. Of his 
 two contemporaries who tried styles somewhat 
 similar in point of ornateness, Wilson constantly 
 becomes tawdry, while De Quincey sometimes 
 approaches tawdriness. Of this, nearly the worst 
 of literary vices, Landor was constitutionally 
 almost incapable ; and his models and methods 
 had converted his natural inaptitude into a com- 
 plete and absolute immunity. He is sometimes, 
 especially in his fits of personal dignity and scorn, 
 a little too stately for the subject, — the jokes of 
 our rude forefathers on the Castilian strut may 
 recur to us. He is alas ! when he unbends this 
 pride, too often clumsily and even indecently 
 gamesome. But with tawdriness, even with 
 indulgence in literary frippery, he cannot for one 
 moment be charged. In this respect, and perhaps 
 in this respect only, his taste was infallible. His 
 good angel was fatally remiss in its warnings on 
 many points wherein such taste is concerned, but 
 on this never. 
 
 If we set ourselves to discover the particular 
 note in Landor which occasions these discords we 
 shall find it, I believe, in a quality which I can only 
 call, as I have already called it, silliness. There 
 are other great men of letters who have as much 
 or even more of the quality of mere childishness ; 
 but that is a different thing. Lafontaine and 
 
Litc7'atu7\\ I y So- 1 860 103 
 
 Goldsmith are the two stock examples of childish- 
 ness in literary history ; and childish 
 enough they were, almost inexcusably 
 so in life. But when we find them with pen 
 in hand we never think of them as of anything 
 but very clever men. Landor alone, or almost 
 alone, has written like an angel and like poor 
 Poll, and has written like both at once. Hazlitt 
 was quite as wrongheaded as Landor and much 
 more bad-blooded. Peacock was, at any rate in 
 his earlier years, as much the slave of whimsical 
 crazes. Coleridge was as unpractical. His own 
 dear friend Southey had almost as great a diffi- 
 culty in adjusting the things and estimates of 
 the study to the estimates and the things of the 
 forum. De Ouincey was still more bookish and 
 out-of-the-worldly. But even in passages of these 
 men with which we least agree we do not find 
 positive silliness, a positive incapacity to take the 
 standpoint and the view of a full-grown man who 
 has or ought to have mingled with and jostled 
 against the things of the world and of life. We do 
 find this in Landor. His apologists have admitted 
 that he was always more or less of a schoolboy ; I 
 should say that he was always more or less of a 
 baby. 
 
 The time-honoured Norman definition of a man 
 is " One who fights and counsels." Landor had in 
 almost superabundant measure that part of man 
 which fights ; he was abnormally deficient in the 
 part which counsels. In some cases where taste 
 
I04 Essays in English 
 
 (of certain, not of all kinds), scholarship, poetic 
 inspiration, chivalry (ag-ain of certain 
 
 ,.,. ,, 1-111 1 1 LANDOR. 
 
 kinds), and the like could supply the 
 place of judgment and ratiocinative faculty, he 
 has done nobly, even without taking into account 
 that matchless gift of expression which never de- 
 serts him for long together. But in any kind 
 of reasoning proper he is as an infant in arms ; 
 and in that faculty which (though sometimes 
 it be divorced from it) comes nearest to the 
 ratiocinative — the faculty of humour, he is almost 
 as defective. Here I know there is great differ- 
 ence and discrepancy between those who should 
 agree; but I shall boldly avow that I think 
 Landor's attempts both at humour and at wit for 
 the most part simply deplorable, as deplorable as 
 his idol Milton's. Some persons whom I respect, 
 as well as others whom I do not, have professed to 
 see a masterpiece of humour in The Examination 
 of William Shakespeare. If by a majority of 
 competent critics it is admitted that it is such, I 
 must be a heretic, yet at least a heretic who can 
 rejoice in Aristophanes (whom Landor did not 
 wholly like), in Lucian (in whom he saw much 
 banter and some wisdom but little wit), in Rabelais 
 (of whom he knew little and whom he evidently 
 did not like even so much as he liked Aristophanes), 
 in Swift (at whom he is always girding and grudg- 
 ing), in Fielding (whom he seldom or never 
 mentions), in Thackeray (of whom, though Landor 
 was his contemporary and survived him, I think as 
 
Literature, ij8o-i86o 105 
 
 much may be said), and in divers others. The 
 fact is that the entire absence of pro- 
 
 LANDOR. . . , ^ 
 
 portion m matter, so strangely con- 
 trasted with his excellent sense of proportion 
 in style, which characterised Landor appears in 
 this matter of the humorous not perhaps more 
 strongly but more eminently than anywhere else. 
 It was not that humorous ideas did not visit 
 him, for they did; but he did not in the least 
 know how to deal with them. He mumbles a 
 jest as a bull-dog worries or attempts to worry 
 a rat when he is set to that alien art. His 
 three sets of models, the classics, the English 
 writers of the seventeenth century, and the Italians 
 (for of French, German, and, if I mistake not, 
 
 |. Spanish, as well as of large tracts of English, he 
 knew but little) had each in them certain evil 
 precedent suggestions for a jester. Landor with 
 
 [: unerring infelicity seized on these, combined them, 
 worked them fully out, and produced things very 
 terrible, things which range from the concentrated 
 dreariness of the Examinatio7i and the " Pitt and 
 Canning " conversation to the smaller flashes-in- 
 the-pan of joking dulness which are scattered 
 about his writings passim. 
 
 Another thing which is extremely noticeable 
 about Landor is the marvellously small difference 
 between his poetry and his prose. Except again 
 
 I Milton (an instance ominous and full of fear) and 
 perhaps Wordsworth, I know no other English 
 writer of the first class of which this can be said. 
 
io6 Essays m English 
 
 But Landor has versified, or almost versified, 
 some of his actual conversations, and 
 
 . . , LANDOR. 
 
 has left explicit declaration that not 
 a few of his poems are simply conversations in 
 verse. He would have us believe that verse 
 was his amusement, prose his serious business ; 
 but it is certain that bhe began and for years 
 continued to write nothing but verse for publica- 
 tion in any lasting form. And of the vast 
 stores of work (forty or fifty thousand lines of 
 verse and some three thousand large and closely- 
 printed pages of prose) which remain to his 
 credit, the verse might almost always be accord- 
 ing to the old trick " unrhymed " and made 
 into prose with but slight alterations : the prose, 
 with certain allowances for greater exuberance 
 and verbosity in parts, might with hardly greater 
 trouble be arranged into Landorian verse. The 
 sententious, intense, rhythmical phrase is the same 
 in both ; the poetical intuition of sights and sounds, 
 and other delights of sense, is not more obvious 
 in one than in the other. The absence of con- 
 tinuous logical thought is not greater here than 
 there ; the remoteness from what may be called 
 the sense of business is always the same, whether 
 the syllables in a line be limited to ten at most, or 
 may run on to as many as the limits of the page 
 will admit. Although he was conscious of, and 
 generally avoided, the mistake of introducing 
 definitely poetic rhythm into prose, it is astonish- 
 ing how close is the resemblance of a short stave 
 
Literahi7x, iy8o-iS6o 107 
 
 of his verse to a sentence of his prose. It is owing 
 to this, among other things, that his 
 form of verse is as compared with that of 
 others a rather severe form, while his prose is, com- 
 pared with that of others, rather florid. It is owing 
 to this that, while some of the very happiest efforts 
 of his verse have the simplicity and directness 
 of the ancient epigram, some of the most agree- 
 able efforts of his prose have in the proper sense 
 an idyllic character. 
 
 And so we have in Landor an almost unmatched 
 example of the merits and the defects of style by 
 itself. To attempt once more to narrow down the 
 reasons of both, I should say that they lie in his 
 having had nothing particular to say with a match- 
 less faculty for saying anything. When the latter 
 faculty is exercised sparingly on the former defect, 
 we often get some of the finest things in literature. 
 The writer's idiosyncrasy is not too hardpressed ; 
 it has no time to tire us ; the freshness and savour 
 of it remain upon our palate ; and we appreciate it 
 to the full, perhaps indeed beyond the full. But 
 when the thing is administered in larger and ever 
 larger doses the intensity of the flavour palls and 
 the absence of anything else, besides and behind 
 the flavour, begins to tell. Yet at his very best, 
 and taken in not too large quantities, Landor 
 is the equal of all but the greatest, perhaps of 
 the greatest themselves. And if, according to a 
 natural but rather foolish fashion, we feel at any 
 time inclined to regret that he lived so long and 
 
io8 Essays in English Lito-ature, ly 80- 1860 
 
 had so much time to accumulate indifferent as well 
 as good work, let us remember on the 
 other hand that his best work is scattered 
 over almost every period of his life, except the 
 very last and the very first, and that the best 
 of it is of a kind worth wading through volumes of 
 inferior work to secure. The true critical question 
 with every writer is, " Could we spare him ? Could 
 we do without him ? " Most assuredly, if we tried 
 to do without Landor, we should lose something 
 with which no one else could supply us. 
 
IV. 
 
 1^ THOMAS HOOD. 
 
 Mr Swinburne, in his Study of Ben Jonson, has 
 |f spoken severely, but by no means with 
 
 extravagant severity, of the ordinary 
 W fashion in which Enghsh classics are edited. It 
 is bad enough in all conscience : but I do not 
 think I am acquainted with such a bad example 
 of it as the accepted edition of the works of 
 Thomas Hood. To no book known to me is Mr 
 Carlyle's favourite phrase, " formless agglomera- 
 tion," more applicable ; and one's wrath and 
 despair are not lessened by a preface in which 
 the late Thomas Hood, the younger, announces 
 that the arrangement is " deliberate," is " intended 
 to be of interest to more than the general reader." 
 For the sake of this Lector plusqiiam generalts, 
 it would seem, Mr Hood " diligently traced the 
 order " of his father's works, " added anything that 
 he found of interest bearing upon them," and " left 
 out nothing that may interest the thoughtful and 
 
 studious." The thoughtful and studious, pleased 
 
 109 
 
no Essays in English 
 
 at these attentions, turn to the text, and what do 
 they find ? 
 
 First of all three volumes and the 
 greater part of a fourth filled with Hood's Own, 
 Whims and Oddities, and what-not, served up re- 
 gardless of " the order of our father's works," un- 
 dated, and, as far as can be perceived, unannotated. 
 Then, without any preface, the chronological order 
 appears. From 1821 onwards, poems, essays, jests, 
 trivial reviews are huddled together in order of 
 publication, so that we get some sixpenny jokes 
 for the London cheek by jowl with " Fair Ines," 
 and that the Comic Annual for 1839 and Miss 
 Kilmansegg appear to be chapters of Up the Rhine. 
 As there is no general index a particular piece 
 must be hunted for all over the ten volumes unless 
 its date is known ; while for some mysterious 
 reason the original illustrations, which were in 
 Hood's case inseparably connected with his sub- 
 ject, are stolen from Peter and given Paul in the 
 most bewildering fashion ; the cuts of Up the 
 Rhine, for instance, being taken out of it (an out- 
 rage unforgivable till death by those who know the 
 original form) and scattered about Hoods Own, I 
 do not, however, know that even this is quite so 
 unpardonable either as the inclusion, not only of 
 a vast quantity of trivial matter which Hood did 
 republish, but of much that he did not, or as the 
 higgledy-piggledy arrangement just described, by 
 which work in its kind little short of the first rank, 
 is practically thrown into the dust-bin with work 
 
Literature^ ijSo-iSdo 1 1 1 
 
 that is almost rubbish. This collection has been 
 reprinted twice or thrice, and in the 
 latest form that I have seen, no attempt 
 has been made to remove the blemishes of the 
 earlier. It may be said, of course, that the serious 
 poems and the comic poems have been printed 
 separately and are separately obtainable. But 
 until very recently there was no separate reproduc- 
 tion of Up the Rhine^ the best of all the children 
 of Humphry Clinker^ while separate editions of 
 the comic poems are never complete and vary 
 considerably. Besides, even if it were otherwise, 
 a man ought to be represented best, not worst, in 
 his Collected Works. 
 
 As a matter of fact, three or four small volumes 
 at the most would contain all Hood's work that a 
 judicious admirer would care to retain. Tylney 
 Hall is by common consent worth but little : and 
 no one can forget the burst of generous, if some- 
 what hasty, indignation with which Thackeray 
 protested against Hood's wasting his time on the 
 jokes of Hood's Ozuti. It would not do to banish 
 that book entirely, for some of his best things are 
 in it ; but it may, or rather must be, admitted that 
 there is a very great deal there which is not his best 
 at all, which is hardly good at all. A volume con- 
 taining all the serious poems, another containing a 
 judicious selection of the comic pieces, Up the 
 RhUie by itself with its own illustrations, and a 
 fourth volume containing a selection (more "judi- 
 cious " still) from the prose miscellanies, would set 
 
112 Essays in English 
 
 Hood in his right place, and silence the ignorant 
 contempt with which he is sometimes 
 
 1 r 1 Ml r 1 HOOD. 
 
 spoken of by lU-read persons ot the 
 present generation. He never can be set in his 
 right place by omnium gatherum reproductions 
 of such merest pot-boilers as " The Last Shilling " 
 and " The Contrast." 
 
 Hood's special literary claim appears to me to 
 be twofold, the first part resting on the extra- 
 ordinary excellence of his comic vein, and the 
 second on its combination, in a way nowhere else 
 paralleled except in the very greatest men of 
 letters (among whom, of course, he does not rank), 
 with a vein of perfectly serious and genuine poetry. 
 This combination has, as I have said, existed, 
 though not uniformly, in the greatest men of all : 
 and it may be contended that even in the smaller 
 it is more often than not present in a certain 
 degree. To take Hood's contemporaries, Praed 
 has it, Barham has it (" As I lay a thinkynge," for 
 all its Chattertonism of dialect is a beautiful 
 thing). Although Thackeray's excellence in the 
 serious kind is shown chiefly in prose, every one 
 remembers touches of it in his verse, and generally 
 it may be said that the keenest humour is always 
 near if not to tears yet to thought. But the 
 remarkable thing about Hood is that his serious 
 verse would earn for him no mean place if he had 
 never written anything else. Obliged as he was 
 to turn ink into gold, to be " a lively Hood for a 
 livelihood," he did not pursue this vein far, the 
 
Literahtre, lySo-iSdo 113 
 
 fact, though it seems to shock some people, being 
 that no man can pursue serious poetry- 
 far if he has to earn a living by his 
 pen in the modern way. Nobody ever has done 
 it yet, and I dare swear that nobody ever will. 
 
 But between 1822 and 1828, pretty constantly, 
 and afterwards till the end of his life at intervals, 
 he did many delightful things in serious verse. 
 "The Haunted House" stands as much alone as 
 " The Red Fisherman," and is still freer from any 
 touch of burlesque ; while the greatest poets have 
 not excelled Hood in the peculiar gift he has here 
 shown of creating what may be called a musical or 
 rhythmical atmosphere suitable to and inseparable 
 from the matter of the poem. The heavy and 
 stifling air that hangs over the piece, the descrip- 
 tion just in keeping and not in the least exagger- 
 ated, the contrast of vivid touches and dark back- 
 ground, cannot be excelled. Lamb's stately 
 eulogy on " The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies " 
 is hardly pitched too high. " Fair Ines " I have 
 mentioned, and if anybody laughs at it let him 
 know that there is one note of poetry to which he 
 is deaf. And even *' Fair Ines " is exceeded in its 
 own simple way by — 
 
 It was the Time of Roses, 
 
 We plucked them as we passed. 
 
 •' Lycus the Centaur," one of the earliest of all, and 
 evidently written under the influence of Keats, has 
 some false notes, but is admirable as a whole : and 
 
 II 
 
1 1 4 Essays iii English 
 
 of even " Hero and Leander " it may be said that 
 
 hardly shall any one come off better 
 
 in vying with Christopher Marlowe. 
 
 Here was a man who could write an " Ode to 
 
 the Moon " without being ridiculous, and a " Hymn 
 
 to the Sun " without being inadequate. 
 
 He wrote so little of the kind, and was so 
 obviously called away from it by common cares, 
 that it is difficult to decide what he might have 
 done had he been able to devote himself to poetry 
 proper. I cannot quite agree with Thackeray that 
 " The Bridge of Sighs, was his Corunna," by 
 which I suppose we are to understand at once the 
 crowning and fatal achievement of his life. That 
 famous poem, as well as " The Song of the Shirt," 
 seems to me to be vitiated not only by some 
 literary mannerisms, but by a certain senti- 
 mentality which is very apparent in much of 
 the writing of that particular day, and which, 
 after going out of fashion for a time, has re- 
 appeared of late. "Eugene Aram," his principal 
 serious piece between his early poems of the kind 
 and the two great lamentations of his last year or 
 two, shows, like The Haunted House, the faculty 
 of creating music to fit words, while the " Bridge " 
 and the " Shirt " themselves exhibit this same 
 faculty almost unimpaired. Very few indeed save 
 the greatest possess this faculty, the faculty of 
 producing in fit readers when only a few lines of 
 the poem have been read, a sort of prescience of 
 the music of the whole almost independent (in the 
 
Literature, ij 80- 1860 115 
 
 case of one or two of Coleridge's and Shelley's 
 fragments it is independent) of actual 
 knowledge of the sequel and context. 
 But Hood has it : and though undoubtedly there 
 were some of the blemishes of the Cockney school 
 upon him — an unchastened and sometimes flaccid 
 style, lapses of grammar, confusions of " you " 
 and "thou" and so forth — he belongs, beyond, I 
 think, all question by those who are competent 
 to judge, to the division of the poets who with- 
 out being of the greatest, are poets undoubted 
 and unimpeachable. 
 
 Of his life there is not much to say, though the 
 Memorials, which contain the record of it, are by 
 far the best executed as well as the pleasantest part 
 of the very faulty collection already referred to. 
 He \vas the son of a bookseller, also named 
 Thomas Hood, and was born in the Poultry on 
 the 23rd day of May 1799. His mother was a 
 sister of the not unknown engraver, Robert Sands, 
 to whom, as well as to a better known member of 
 the same craft, Le Keux, the poet was afterwards 
 apprenticed. His father died when he was a boy, 
 and his mother does not seem to have been very 
 long-lived. Hood passed the years immediately 
 before he came to manhood in Scotland with some 
 relations. He did not feel much vocation for 
 engraving ; and when he was about one and 
 twenty he had a chance, which he took, of chang- 
 ing the graver for the pen. The famous, but up 
 to this very day constantly misrepresented, duel 
 
1 1 6 Essays in English 
 
 in which John Scott the Editor of the London 
 Magazine fell, threw the magazine into 
 the hands of Taylor and Hessey the 
 publishers, and they (who were friends of Hood's 
 and had probably had business connections with 
 his father) offered him the sub-editorship. He 
 contributed to the paper as well, and in both 
 capacities became known to and in some cases 
 intimate with its famous staff, the most brilliant 
 perhaps that a young periodical ever had at one 
 time. He was connected with the Londo?i for 
 nearly three years ; and it brought about a much 
 more lasting connection, to wit, his marriage with 
 the sister of one of the contributors, John Hamilton 
 Reynolds. 
 
 He was not yet five and twenty, and from the 
 Memorials (which frequently share the haziness of 
 the rest of the work in which they appear) it is 
 not quite clear what he lived upon when the 
 London ceased to employ him. But he managed 
 to publish the first series of Whims and Oddities 
 in 1826, and the second next year, with some 
 National Tales which are not good for very much. 
 The then popular Annuals seem to have yielded 
 him profit, and in 1829 Eugenie Aram appeared in 
 one of them, the Gem^ while his own Comic Annual 
 began at Christmas 1830. It was this that intro- 
 duced him to the Duke of Devonshire, and so 
 produced the somewhat well-known mock titles 
 for dummy bookcases at Chatsworth. Some of 
 these may not be so very well known now, and it 
 
I 
 
 Literature, iy8o-i86o \ 1 7 
 
 is barely possible that one or two (such as Bisk's 
 Retreat of the Ten Thousand^ may have 
 
 HOOD. , "^ . ,,. ., 1 • , 
 
 become unmtclligible without comment 
 to more than the common ignoramus. The best of 
 all (which Hood himself would have been obliged 
 to me for mentioning just after "ignoramus") is 
 On Trial by Jury, ivith reviarkable Packing Cases, 
 though perhaps Pompeii: or the Memoirs of a 
 Black Footman is the most comical. Boyle on 
 Steam, Prize Poems in Blank Verse and Pygmalion 
 by Lord Bacon have survived better than most 
 of them. 
 
 The Hoods seem to have lived chiefly at Wan- 
 stead — in comfortable friendship with Lamb and 
 other famous people — till 1835, when there came 
 upon them trouble vaguely described as " heavy 
 loss by the failure of a firm." This was the 
 genesis of Up the Rhine, for Hood set off for the 
 continent, at once to economise and to prevent his 
 greedier creditors from troubling, but fully intend- 
 ing to pay all that he owed. Except that it gave 
 us a charming book and some letters scarcely 
 inferior, this continental sojourn cannot be said 
 to have been fortunate. Any saving in actual 
 expenditure was balanced by the difficulty of 
 managing literary work {^Hood's Own was started 
 during this period), by the still greater difficulty 
 of disposing satisfactorily of that work while the 
 writer's legal status was something dubious, and 
 worst of all by bad health. Hood had never been 
 a strong man, but there can be little doubt that 
 
1 1 8 Essays in English 
 
 the long disease which with complications killed 
 him developed itself during his stay 
 
 , , , - . - HOOD. 
 
 abroad, and perhaps m consequence oi 
 some of the conditions of that stay. 
 
 The exile, however, lasted for some five years, 
 during which the family head-quarters were first 
 Coblentz and then Ostend for greater nearness to 
 England ; though Hood made divers excursions, 
 the best known and longest being that which 
 he undertook, in the company of a Prussian 
 marching regiment, to Berlin. He made many 
 friends among German officers, the chief being 
 a certain lieutenant Von (Hood calls him De) 
 Franck, with whom he kept up after his return to 
 England an extensive correspondence full of his 
 own wildest quips and cranks. The chagrins of 
 the exile were brought to a climax by the fact 
 that, owing to legal difficulties, the profits of Up 
 the Rhine which should have been considerable 
 (for the first edition was sold off at once) were 
 little or nothing. This as much as anything else 
 seems to have determined Hood to return, and 
 he became a resident Englishman (his heart un- 
 travelled had always been John Bullish to the 
 core) once again in the year 1840. Another term 
 of the same length was all the further life that was 
 lent him. He passed it first at Camberwell, then 
 in lodgings overlooking Lord's, and lastly in the 
 Finchley Road. His gains were still very small, 
 and his health became worse every year. But he 
 was more and more recognised as the prince of 
 
Literature, ij 80- 1860 119 
 
 his own literary province, he had numerous friends, 
 and seems always to have taken life 
 with an utterly unruffled temper, and 
 with as much positive enjoyment as a man in the 
 last stages of consumption, with little money and 
 less leisure, can have. His domestic, life had 
 always been extremely happy, and the severest 
 critic can only object ,to it that he used to play 
 ruthless practical jokes on his wife, which is bad, 
 and that she called him " Hood," which would 
 now be worse, though it was not necessarily so 
 in those days. 
 
 At Theodore Hook's death he was appointed 
 editor of the New Monthly Magazine, and when 
 after a year or two this post became distasteful to 
 him he started a magazine of his own and named 
 after himself In command of this he died. Of 
 his very last days and of Sir Robert Peel's kind- 
 ness to him Thackeray's Essay in the Roimdabout 
 Papers gives a sketch which it would be very rash 
 indeed for any one to attempt to rival or to para- 
 phrase. The end came after months of heroically 
 borne suffering on the 3rd of May 1845, the same 
 year that carried off his only but very different 
 rival Sydney Smith, and but a few days after he 
 had himself written the exquisite lines, " Farewell 
 Life ! my senses swim." He was buried in Kensal 
 Green Cemetery, where some years afterwards 
 they set up a monument to him. It is decorated 
 among other things with a grinning comic mask, 
 into the mouth of which when I saw it last some 
 
120 Essays in English 
 
 years ago, the taste and fancy of the British 
 Public had gracefully placed a half- 
 bitten apple. One's disgust was a little 
 mitigated by reflecting that nobody would have 
 been less hurt or more amused than Hood himself. 
 In the two years preceding his death there had 
 appeared the two poems which may be said to 
 have made his reputation with the million — the 
 ** Song of the Shirt " and the " Bridge of Sighs " 
 — the former in 1843, the latter in 1844. I have 
 already said that I do not rate these quite so high 
 as some persons seem to do ; and I have hinted at 
 the reason. There is a certain profanity in apply- 
 ing tests too narrowly and exactly critical to 
 work which has produced the poetic effect on so 
 many, which is so undoubtedly poetic, and which, 
 in the case of the later and greater poem, has 
 such remarkable metrical beauty. But both are 
 a little too long (the " Bridge " especially could 
 be curtailed with great advantage), the poet 
 occasionally loses sight of strict meaning in pro- 
 ducing his metrical and other effects, and there is 
 considerable abuse of the pathetic fallacy in both. 
 There was force though some brutality in the 
 answering gibe that however cheap and abundant 
 the flesh and blood of shirt-makers and shirt- 
 menders may be, it is very difficult and not at all 
 cheap to get a shirt made or mended properly. 
 And though it may be right to reply " Get thee 
 behind me ! " when He with the cock's feather and 
 the queer-shaped boot critically remarks that most 
 
Literature, ij8o-i86o 1 2 1 
 
 young women who throw themselves into the 
 Thames do it in a fit of bad temper 
 or of drink or else hoping to be fished 
 out, there is force in that observation too. But 
 to say this is to say little more than that Hood 
 was not Shakespeare, and that the " Song " and 
 the " Bridge " are not the last words of Charmian 
 or of Othello. And it is most particularly to 
 be remarked that Hood's humanitarianism had 
 not a streak in it of the maudlin sympathy with 
 crime which so often disgraces that amiable 
 quality. One of his very last fragments, dealing 
 with one of the recurrent epidemics of poison- 
 ing, ends with these excellent though unfinished 
 lines : — 
 
 Arrest the plague with cannabis 
 And ^ publish this 
 
 To quench the felon's hope — 
 Twelve drops of prussic acid still 
 Are not more prompt and sure to kill 
 
 Than one good Drop of Rope. 
 
 One question of interest — the question of 
 priority between Hood and Praed in the peculiar 
 style of antithetical punning for which both are 
 famous, is not an easy one to resolve. Most 
 people resolve it in Hood's favour off-hand ; while 
 ^per contra I have known an enthusiastic Praedite 
 disable my judgment with the loftiest of sneers 
 because I was not quite certain on the point of 
 Praed 's originality. The main facts are these. 
 
 ^ Blank in original. 
 
122 Essays in English 
 
 The "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Clapham 
 Academy," the most famous example 
 
 HOOD 
 
 of the style, is of 1824, while Praed's 
 " School and Schoolfellows " is five years later. 
 On the other hand, in Praed's early poems, dat- 
 ing before he left Eton and written in 1820 
 or 1 82 1, when Hood had written or at least 
 published nothing at all or nothing characteristic, 
 there are distinct traces of the same style, such 
 as " From Chords of Arcs to Chords of Fiddles." 
 I suppose it most probable that similar influences, 
 which it should not be impossible or even very 
 difficult to trace, worked on both ; though very 
 likely the definite crystallizing of the style by 
 the more professional man of letters also worked 
 on Praed's impressionable nature. For that 
 " School and Schoolfellows " has no direct in- 
 debtedness to "Clapham Academy" is not in 
 nature. On a former occasion I endeavoured 
 to point out some of the differences between 
 the work of these two men, so curiously alike in 
 talent and so curiously different in fortune, and 
 there is no need to repeat the attempt. I have only 
 written this paragraph for the purpose of showing 
 that the almost always silly charge of plagiarism 
 would be sillier than ever in either case. It is 
 practically impossible that Hood should have seen 
 Praed's early work ; and though Praed almost 
 certainly saw Hood's finished examples, whatever 
 he took from them only helped to develop and 
 encourage a vein which had independently existed 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 123 
 
 in himself. Whether the two ever met I do not 
 know or remember : but their spheres 
 of life lay far apart and it must have 
 been something of an accident if they did. 
 
 This, however, is a matter rather of curiosity 
 than of importance. Other " problems " there 
 are none in the admirable simplicity of Hood's 
 character and art — a simplicity which actually 
 explains, though it may at a hasty view seem to 
 conflict with the co-existence in him of the deepest 
 and most unforced pathos with abounding humour. 
 The spectacle which his life presents of simple, 
 natural, unpretentious enjoyment of such modest 
 good things as fell to his lot, and of equally 
 natural and unpretentious fortitude in bearing 
 things not good (whereof he had plenty) is not 
 more unbroken than the spectacle of native sim- 
 plicity and strength presented by his work. To 
 call him superficial would itself be a piece of 
 superficial impertinence. The quality in him 
 which might be thus misnamed belongs to those 
 who, not being among the very greatest of the 
 world in respect of variety of positive endowment, 
 rise above the great mass of men and of men of 
 letters by an almost absolute freedom from the 
 mental disease which generally (some would say 
 always) produces problems, contrasts of character 
 and work, mysteries, inequalities, secrets. To 
 Hood's infirm and frail body were united a heart 
 and a mind of such flawless sanity and purity, 
 that they were in the good metaphorical sense 
 
124 Essays in English 
 
 almost childlike. Despite his command of the 
 regions in which The Haunted House, 
 The Elm Trees, and parts of his other 
 work have their being, he was absolutely destitute 
 of anything that can be called brooding or morbid. 
 But he had, except for his great and natural 
 metrical gifts, no faculty of elaborate art : and in 
 particular he had hardly any art of constructing a 
 story beyond the range of the merest anecdote. It 
 is this which makes his prose tales (and especially 
 the later of them) disappointing, and which dis- 
 ables them from competing in comedy or tragedy, 
 as the case may be, with such contemporary or 
 nearly contemporary work as that of Maginn or 
 of Poe. There are excellent jgood things in them : 
 there is not unfrequently a happy single idea to 
 start with. But this idea is seldom or never 
 moulded into a real story, and the whole some- 
 times seems a mere bran-pie of scattered witti- 
 cisms. To read "The Friend in Need," founded 
 on the sufficiently promising notion of transfusion 
 of blood between a Quaker and a pugilist ; and to 
 think what it would have been in the hands of the 
 author of " A Story without a Tail " — to read " A 
 Tale of Terror " (a thing improvised to fill a sudden 
 gap in a magazine) and to remember " The Man 
 in the Bell " or " The Cask of Amontillado," is, to 
 speak unaffectedly, afflicting. Vast numbers of 
 the casual jests which Hood threw off, and which 
 have been so ruthlessly preserved, are equally 
 trying, though no one can read far without coming 
 
Literature, ij8o-i86o 125 
 
 to something as inimitable as the answer (said to 
 be again a mere impromptu insertion 
 to fill up a page) of the cat to the 
 marsupial who asked her why she didn't carry her 
 kittens in a pouch, ^^ 7ion ouinia possuimis omnes: 
 we're not all 'possums." 
 
 In these jests, be they good or be they bad, 
 there is this same quality of directness, of sim- 
 plicity, of genuine reflection of the whim of the 
 moment. It is sometimes the cause of their bad- 
 ness; it almost always gives an additional and 
 peculiar flavour to their goodness. Everything is 
 the first running, and often, if not always, a very 
 sprightly running indeed. And it is at least 
 capable of being contended that if Hood had been 
 less under pressure or had been more naturally 
 disposed to the labour of the file, the loss in fi'esh- 
 ness would have been more than equal to the 
 gain from the discarding of inferior matter. The 
 laboured joke is by no means very often the good 
 
 b joke. Now whatever may be said for and against 
 Hood's jokes they are at least not laboured. They 
 slip away from him, even the most extravagant of 
 them, as naturally as water from a spring. " Rose 
 
 W knows those bows' woes," itself an enormous 
 puerility, a really blessed and Mesopotamian piece 
 of nonsense, did not, I believe, cost him so much 
 as a second thought for the fifth jingle. There is 
 no effort about the suggestion in reference to 
 forged autographs, " how easily a few lines may be 
 twisted into a rope ; " none in that other piece of 
 
126 Essays in English 
 
 really deep wisdom as to the unhappy political 
 journalist the reward of whose con- 
 
 . , , , HOOD. 
 
 sistency was that he grew so warped, 
 mind and body, that he could only lie on one 
 side ; none in the disclaimer of any wish, despite 
 the atrocious conduct of Americans as to copy- 
 right, to alter the phrase in the New Testament 
 into " republicans and sinners." All these ex- 
 amples are taken from his least known work and 
 on the whole his least happy, the prose tales or 
 articles before referred to. 
 
 The verse jokes, who knows not 1 yet it may be 
 noted as a curious thing that Hood is happier in 
 what may be called the total effect of his verse- 
 comedy than in that of his prose. The point, 
 which in the prose stories is often lost or undis- 
 coverable, seldom fails in the verse. Take, for 
 instance, the admirable philanthropist's defence at 
 the end of the " Black Job," " We mean to gild 
 'em," or the pathetic and delightful catalogue of 
 the drawbacks of family unity, with its climax in 
 the impossibility of securing " Frederick B." for 
 the whole unanimous sisterhood. I do not know 
 whether it may seem fanciful or strained, but the 
 puns and quips in these verses produce on my ear 
 an effect not dissimilar to that of rhyme and 
 rhythm in poetry generally — they make a sort of 
 running accompaniment, a setting, as it were 
 illustrative but to some extent independent, of the 
 actual meaning. In such a recension of Hood as 
 I have suggested I should myself be very tender 
 
Literal lire y ij8o-i86o 127 
 
 of even the lightest of the verse, while I confess I 
 should slash with a very desperate hook 
 at field after field of the prose. 
 There is one division of Hood's humorous work 
 which has been perhaps as much admired as 
 any other, and which certainly deserves the praise 
 of being marvellously original and dexterous in an 
 extremely difficult way. This is the division at 
 the head of which is the famous " Miss Kilman- 
 segg," while other characteristic examples of it are 
 " The Desert Born," and that terrific ballad at the 
 end of which the wrecked mariner finds himself on 
 no demon ship but on the Mary Ann of Shields. 
 This is the class in which the strongest possible 
 contrast of the grotesque and terrible is used, the 
 author being comparatively indifferent whether he 
 leads up through a farcical prelude to a serious 
 termination or vice versd. I do not profess any 
 extraordinary affection for this mixed kind (which 
 was probably made popular first by Southey's 
 "Ballads"); and if anything like it must be done 
 I prefer the handling of "The Red Fisherman," 
 where there is no actual revulsion, no final change 
 from laughter to terror, or from terror to laughter, 
 but a sustained blending of the two. Nevertheless, 
 Hood's handling of the style is superlatively adroit 
 in its own way, and it would be superfluous to 
 praise the incidental passages which it gives him 
 opportunity to insert, such as those famous ones 
 in "Miss Kilmansegg" and "The Desert Born" 
 especially. But there is a good deal of mere trick 
 
128 Essays in English 
 
 in this whole class of verse — especially in the 
 tragi-comic or happy-ending division 
 of it — and whatsoever is mere trick can 
 hardly be pronounced good in the highest sense. 
 Perhaps the best thing to be said for it is that it 
 seems to have had the power of spurring the 
 author on to the production of his best things, 
 an effect not at all difficult to understand, and 
 which he himself would have expounded with 
 many whimsical illustrations, both verbal and 
 figurative. 
 
 For Hood's illustrations (in the ordinary sense of 
 the word) must never be forgotten in any account 
 of his work. He had had, as we have seen, a 
 regular education in a certain kind of art; but 
 though I do not pretend to profound technical 
 knowledge in that matter, I doubt whether this 
 education had much to do with the peculiar 
 character of the " cuts " with which he embellished 
 so much of his work. They are avowedly carica- 
 ture ; and it is possible that the faults of drawing, 
 which in them merely add to the effectiveness of 
 the work, would have been equally present if the 
 author had attempted things more ambitious. It 
 is also possible that this would not have been the 
 case. At any rate. Hood as an artist in line 
 never to my knowledge produces the effect which 
 Thackeray produces, and knew that he produced, 
 in that character — the effect of a man trying to do 
 what he cannot do. He hits his intended effect 
 of grotesque perfectly and admirably. It is most 
 
 IK 
 
Literature, 1^80-1860 129 
 
 natural to compare him with Cruikshank, but 
 however far below that artist he may 
 be as a mere draughtsman and as a 
 composer, he is above him in the felicity with 
 which he proportions his aims to his means. 
 Everybody knows plates of Cruikshank's in which 
 it is quite clear that the artist meant to de- 
 pict ordinary human beings and in which he 
 has merely depicted monsters. Hood always 
 kept clear of this danger. Nor indeed do I 
 know any artist in grotesque of this peculiar kind 
 during the century who has far excelled him, ex- 
 cept that admirable designer M. Caran D'Ache. 
 The Polish-Frenchman is of course far Hood's 
 superior as a draughtsman and as an artist, but 
 on the literary side, as artists are pleased to 
 call it, in which he himself is so excellent, he 
 does not go so far beyond the author and illus- 
 trator of Up the Rhine, of the Whims and Oddities, 
 of Hood's Own and the rest. It would be diffi- 
 cult to find two artists more unlike in technique, 
 and yet more similar in general spirit and con- 
 ception. 
 
 Still, when all is said and done I confess my own 
 preference for Hood as a writer of serious verse over 
 Hood as a jester, admitting likewise and at the 
 same time that the enjoyment of Hood as a serious 
 writer of verse might be less if we did not know 
 him as a jester. Life would be absolutely worth- 
 less without jest, without quip, without (let it 
 be frankly avowed) punning, but fortunately the 
 
 I 
 
130 Essays in English 
 
 faculty of these things is not often wholly denied 
 to men of brains who happen also to 
 
 HOOD 
 
 be of English birth. Borrow says, and 
 as I fear it is true, that nothing is so low as 
 a low Englishman. It might be said with equal 
 truth that nothing is so dull as a dull English- 
 man. Yet there has been vouchsafed to our 
 race in compensation a pretty general ability to 
 giggle and make giggle. There has rarely been 
 dearth of merriment in England till very late years 
 indeed — till in fact England became, it may be 
 better it may be worse, but certainly less English 
 than it used to be. Nor can it be said that Hood's 
 fun, good as it is and extraordinarily abundant as 
 it is in measure, is in any similarly extraordinary 
 way pecuHar in kind. It is genuine but not 
 remarkably distinct, fresh and original, but still 
 not very full of idiosyncrasy. It does not touch 
 Shakespeare or Swift or Thackeray or even 
 Dickens. It is rather in our literature the nearest 
 approach to that quality which in another re- 
 ceived the rather unjustly stinted praise that its 
 owner had more than any one else what every- 
 body had. In other words, it is perennially and 
 in a superior degree what the cl-everest under- 
 graduate has sometimes at a very happy two 
 o'clock in the morning. 
 
 In the serious verse a similar characteristic pro- 
 duces quite a different result. Here too there is 
 nothing extraordinarily rare or far brought in 
 kind. We shall not find in Hood anything like 
 
Literature, f/So-iSdo 131 
 
 the notes, once heard and never forgotten, of 
 "La belle Dame sans Merci," of "Oh 
 "'^''' World ! Oh Life ! Oh Time ! " of " All 
 Thoughts, all Passions, all Delights," of " Proud 
 Maisie." No poem of his attains quite the first rank 
 as a lyric ; and every poem of his which is not a 
 lyric has more or fewer blemishes, tediousnesses, 
 inequalities. Yet there is a singular variety in him 
 and each of the lines which makes up the variety 
 has a remarkable charm. It is as though a certain 
 average kind of thought and feeling had suddenly 
 been endowed with the faculty of presenting itself 
 poetically, and had taken the widest possible range 
 in doing so. Hood was not what is called a classi- 
 cal scholar, yet how many people who could give 
 him considerable odds in the matter of Attic per- 
 fects could have written "Giver of Glowing Light ".-^ 
 He was not, as Moore was, a musician, and he does 
 not seem to have had the natural song faculty of 
 the Irishman. Yet what ballads of their class sur- 
 pass " Fair Ines," and '' It was not in the Winter," 
 and "The Dead are in the Silent Graves," and 
 "The Stars arc with the Voyager".? Of "The 
 Haunted House " I have spoken, but how many 
 poets even if they had been able to write " The 
 Haunted House " could have paired it with such 
 a pendant as " The Elm Tree " } In all these 
 pieces the thing that particularly charms me is 
 what I may perhaps be allowed to call the un- 
 usually close contact of the commonplace and 
 the poetical — the fact that we have as it were in 
 
132 Essays in English 
 
 this poet got hold of the very meeting or parting 
 place, whichever phrase may be pre- 
 
 r \ r ^ HOOD. 
 
 ferred, of the two temperaments as 
 they are generally supposed to be. Scarcely 
 any poet who was so much of a Christian or 
 an ordinary man as Hood in all relations of 
 life, — who had so little of fine frenzy, who was 
 so little sad or bad or mad, who was so far 
 removed from Bohemianism, who lived such a 
 steady-going, hard-working, when he could scot- 
 and-lot paying existence — has left work of such 
 poetical quality: none who had so little literary 
 culture has such a flavour of literature properly so- 
 called. 
 
 And in no poet is there a clearer instance on the 
 one hand of the fact that poetry can touch any life 
 to its own issues, and on the other, of the curious, 
 the unmistakable, and yet the scarcely to be de- 
 fined difference between what is poetry and what 
 is not. It is no easy task, taking a piece of say 
 Haynes Bayly's and a piece of Hood's to point out 
 exactly what it is that makes one ridiculous and 
 the other delightful. Yet there the difference is, 
 and as there is still a tendency to look down on 
 verse that is not elaborately embroidered (did not a 
 critic once dismiss Lord Tennyson's " Crossing the 
 Bar " with kind approval as " homely "), it is always 
 comforting and desirable to come back to such 
 utterly unpretentious and yet such unmistakably 
 poetical work, to work so simple, so pure, so strong, 
 as Hood's. We might not care to have all Par- 
 
» 
 
 Literature^ ly 80- 1860 
 
 ^Z2> 
 
 nassus peopled with his likes ; he has only his 
 own place and only his own value. But 
 
 HOOD. , ^ , 1 ., , 1 
 
 that place and that value are secure 
 as long as any one who at once knows poetry 
 and can read English comes across the right 
 divisions of his work. 
 
V. 
 
 MISS FERRIER. 
 
 An old novel is to some people, I believe, a piece 
 of literature worthy to be ranked with an ^iss 
 old newspaper or an old almanack — not ferrier. 
 quite so dull as the last, a good deal duller than the 
 first, but sharing with both the same distinguishing 
 quality, that of essential incapacity to fulfil the 
 reason of its existence. Students of the philosophy 
 of language may be left to decide whether this is or 
 is not a proof of the singular tyranny of names — 
 an unconscious practical syllogism with the major 
 premiss that a novel must be new. But no one, I 
 think, is likely to contest the fact that such a view 
 of old novels does prevail. If it prevails with any 
 one who is accustomed to read for something else 
 than the mere story, this must be set down to a 
 conviction that in at least the majority of novels 
 there is nothing more than the story, and very 
 often exceedingly little of that. But the books 
 which form the subject of the present essay have 
 been exempted by high authorities and repeated 
 
 «34 
 
Essays in EngliJi Literature, iy8o-iS6o 135 
 
 reappearance from the reproach of more or less 
 MISS hardy annuals.* They have very high 
 
 FERRiER. testimonials, some of which must be 
 known to many people in whose way the books 
 themselves have never fallen. Scott praised them 
 highly, not only, as he was wont to do with per- 
 haps more generosity and good nature than strictly 
 critical exactness, in private, but in his published 
 works. Mackintosh read Destitiy with an absorp- 
 tion sufficient to make him forget all about an 
 impending dissolution of Parliament, for the news 
 of which he was anxiously waiting. There is 
 praise of Miss Ferrier in the Nodes — praise 
 which certainly does not require forgiveness as 
 in Tennyson's case. 
 
 But, above all, there is something curious and, 
 at the present day especially, almost portentous in 
 the fact that Miss Ferrier was content to write 
 three novels, and three only. She had no impera- 
 
 * This essay was originally written on the text of the six-volume 
 edition of Miss Ferrier's novels published by Messrs Bentley in 1882. 
 Twelve years later the publisher of this present book issued another 
 edition the introduction of which contained a not inconsiderable 
 selection of unpublished letters, furnished, I understand, by Miss 
 Ferrier's nephew, who has since been good enough to inform me 
 that he has a much larger store of them. They are of no small 
 intrinsic interest, which may be a little obscured to modern eyes by 
 the fact that, in the earlier ones at any rate. Miss Ferrier pretty 
 obviously had before her the letter-writers of the novelists from 
 Richardson dov/nwards and so herself writes in a kind of falsetto ; 
 while the severity of touch which is apparent in the novels is even 
 more marked here. But at the same time they exhibit the masculine 
 strength of their author's understanding, her shrewd observation, and 
 the excellent use she could make of it. 
 
136 Essays in English 
 
 tive private reasons for ceasing to write ; she had 
 won a great deal of reputation by her miss 
 books, and (a consideration which cer- ferrier. 
 tainly would not have weakened the case with 
 most people) she had made money in a most 
 agreeably increasing proportion by her three ven- 
 tures. Marriage brought her in £lS^\ ^^^ ^ 
 magnificent sum, certainly, but mojp than most 
 novelists even of greater genius have made by 
 their first novels. The Inheritance was sold for 
 ;^i,ooo, and Destiny for £\,jQO. She might pro- 
 bably have depended on at least as much for a 
 fourth novel. But she persistently refused to 
 write any more, and the probable reason for this 
 refusal (as to which I may have something to 
 say) rather heightens than impairs the merit of 
 the refusal. So she remains in literary history 
 a singular and almost unique figure. Men and 
 women of one book — a book in most cases in- 
 spired by some peculiar circumstance or com- 
 bination of circumstances — are not uncommon. 
 But that an author should live many days, should 
 try the game three several times with result of 
 praise and profit, and then retire from the field 
 without any disgust such as checked Congreve 
 or any sufficient disabling cause, this is certainly 
 a most unusual thing. 
 
 Susan Edmonstone Ferrier was born at Edin- 
 burgh on the 7th of September, 1782. The 
 memoirs which have been prefixed to the various 
 editions of her works, and to which I am indebted 
 
 I 
 
Literature, ij8o-i86o 137 
 
 for the facts of her biography, enter after the 
 MISS manner of the Scotch with some min- 
 FERRiER. uteness into her genealogy and family 
 connections. Among these latter in various dis- 
 tances of ascent, descent, and collateral relation 
 figure Archbishop Tait of Canterbury, Lord Brax- 
 field (famous as the hero of many anecdotes of 
 judicial and jocular brutality), and some other 
 persons of note. But the principal fact of in- 
 terest in this kind about Miss Ferrier is that she 
 was aunt of ** the last of the metaphysicians " 
 as he has sometimes been called, the late Pro- 
 fessor Ferrier of St Andrews. Her father was 
 a Writer to the Signet, and among his clients 
 was the fifth Duke of Argyll. He and his 
 daughter were frequent visitors at Inveraray, and 
 these visits are said, with pretty evident truth, to 
 have had not a little influence in supplying Miss 
 Ferrier with subjects of study and determining the 
 character and personal arrangement of her books. 
 Miss Clavering, her most frequent correspondent, 
 was the Duke's niece : Lady Charlotte Campbell 
 (afterwards Bury) was also an intimate of hers, 
 and friends and members of the Argyll family are 
 said to have sat for not a few personages of the 
 novels. Whatever criticism these works may be 
 exposed to, even Madame de Stael, in the mood in 
 which (according to a priceless anecdote recounted 
 by Mr Austen Leigh in his life of his aunt) she 
 returned one of Miss Austen's novels with the 
 disdainful comment, "vulgaire," could not have 
 
 > 
 
138 Essays in English 
 
 objected to the ton of Miss Ferrier's people. 
 Her first heroine is an earl's grand- miss 
 daughter ; her second, a countess in ferrier. 
 her own right ; her third, the only surviving child 
 of a great Highland chieftain ; and in all her 
 books, countesses and duchesses, baronets and 
 Honourable Mr So-and-so's, " do be jostling each 
 other." This, it is true, was very much the way 
 of the novel of the period, and Miss Austen was 
 almost the first to break through it — indeed, it 
 may be shrewdly suspected that Corinne's fine 
 feelings were secretly shared by a large number 
 of readers, and that this had not a little to do 
 with the comparatively limited success of Pride 
 and Prejudice and its fellows. There is, per- 
 haps, present in Miss Ferrier herself, the least 
 little feeling of the same kind ; her books contain 
 some excellent sentiments on the vanity of rank 
 and fashion, but somehow they leave on the 
 reader's mind an impression that the author is 
 secretly of Major Pendennis's mind as to the value 
 of good acquaintances, and that it was more com- 
 fortable to her to walk down her literary St 
 James's Street on the arm of an earl than on that 
 of a simple commoner who would have been 
 puzzled to tell the name and status of his grand- 
 father. However this may be, her sketches were 
 at least taken from the life, and she did not, like 
 certain writers of our own day, talk familiarly 
 of "the Honourable Jem and the Honourable 
 Jemima " on the strength of seeing the one at a 
 
Literature, ly 80-1 860 139 
 
 respectful distance in a club smoking-room, and 
 MISS the other across some yards of gravel 
 
 FERRiKR. and the railings of Rotten Row. 
 
 It is not quite clear at what time Marriage was 
 actually begun, but that it was begun in con- 
 sequence of the Inveraray visits and of the com- 
 pany of " fashionables " and of originals there open 
 to inspection, is pretty clear. It seems to have 
 been planned with the before mentioned Miss 
 Clavering, who was not only confidante, but was 
 allowed to hold in some small degree the more 
 honourable and responsible position of collaborator. 
 The book was certainly in great part written be- 
 fore 1 8 10, and was read in manuscript to Lady 
 Charlotte Campbell, who approved of it highly. 
 But though the author saw a great deal of literary 
 society — she and her father visited Scott at 
 Ashestiel soon after the date just mentioned — the 
 book did not appear till 1818, when it was 
 published by Blackwood. It may be suspected 
 that part of the reason for hesitation was the 
 audacious extent to which (as is acknowledged in 
 the correspondence with Miss Clavering) the 
 characters were taken from living originals. How- 
 ever this may be, it appeared at last and was 
 highly popular, drawing forth, immediately after 
 its appearance, a public compliment from Sir 
 Walter. 
 
 The original idea of Marriage is stated correctly 
 enough in a letter to Miss Clavering. It is the 
 introduction of a spoilt child of English fashion- 
 
140 Essays in Eftglisk 
 
 able life to a rough Highland home abounding 
 with characters. Miss Ferrier's way of miss 
 working out this conception was to ferrier. 
 a certain extent conventional — it is doubtful 
 whether, with all her power, she ever got quite 
 as clear of convention as did her admirable con- 
 temporary, Jane Austen — but it brings about 
 many very comical and delightful situations. 
 Lady Juliana Lindore is the daughter of a some- 
 what embarrassed English peer, the Earl of 
 Courtland. Having no idea beyond her collec- 
 tion of pets, the society to which she has been 
 accustomed, and a certain varnish of romance 
 about handsome lovers and love in a cottage with 
 a double coach-house, she receives with consterna- 
 tion her father's announcement that she is to 
 marry an ugly duke. For a time she vacillates, 
 chiefly owing to the splendour of the duke's 
 presents, but at last the good looks of her hand- 
 some lover, Harry Douglas, prevail, and the pair 
 elope to Scotland and are married. Douglas 
 has a commission in the Guards, and though he is 
 only the second son of a petty landowner, he has 
 fortunately attracted the attention of a rich bache- 
 lor, General Cameron. But the general is disgusted 
 with his favourite's escapade. Lord Courtland 
 disowns his daughter, and after a brief honeymoon 
 there is nothing for it but to accept his father's 
 invitation to the ancestral mansion in the High- 
 lands. The pair set out with man and maid, pug, 
 macaw, and squirrel, and Lady Juliana has pleasant 
 
Liter attire, iy8o-i86o 141 
 
 visions of a romantic, but at the same time elegant, 
 MISS retreat where they will sojourn for a 
 FERRiER. short time, receiving the attentions of 
 the countryside and giving fetes cJianipetres in re- 
 turn, till they once more enjoy the pleasures of 
 London with a handsome endowment from her 
 husband's father. The husband has some misgiv- 
 ings, but having left his home at a very early age, 
 and looking back at it through the " filmy blue " 
 of the past, is by no means prepared for the 
 actual condition of Glenfern. The introduction 
 of the pair to the reality of things takes place 
 as follows : — 
 
 " The conversation was interrupted ; for just at that 
 moment they had gained the summit of a very high hill, and 
 the post-boy, stopping to give his horses breath, turned 
 round to the carriage, pointing at the same time, with a 
 significant gesture, to a tall thin gray house, something 
 resembling a tower, that stood in the vale beneath. A small 
 sullen-looking lake was in front, on whose banks grew 
 neither tree nor shrub. Behind rose a chain of rugged 
 cloud-capped hills, on the declivities of which were some 
 faint attempts at young plantations ; and the only level 
 ground consisted of a few dingy turnip fields, enclosed with 
 stone walls, or dykes, as the post-boy called them. It was 
 now November ; the day was raw and cold ; and a thick 
 drizzling rain was beginning to fall. A dreary stillness 
 reigned all around, broken only at intervals by the screams 
 of the sea-fowl that hovered over the lake, on whose dark 
 and troubled waters was dimly described a little boat, plied 
 by one solitary being. 
 
 "'What a scene!' at length Lady Juliana exclaimed, 
 shuddering as she spoke. ' Good God, what a scene ! How 
 I pity the unhappy wretches who are doomed to dwell in 
 
142 Essays in English 
 
 such a place ! and yonder hideous grim house — it makes 
 
 me sick to look at it. For Heaven's sake, bid 
 
 him drive on.' Another significant look from the p^^^j^j^ 
 
 driver made the colour mount to Douglas's cheek, 
 
 as he stammered out, ' Surely it can't be ; yet somehow I don't 
 
 know. Pray, my lad,' letting down one of the glasses, and 
 
 addressing the post-boy, ' what is the name of that house ? ' 
 
 " ' Hoose ! ' repeated the driver ; ' ca' ye thon a hoose ? 
 Thon's gude Glenfern Castle.' " 
 
 Disenchantment follows disenchantment. Glen- 
 fern is a sufficiently commodious but quite un- 
 civilised mansion, and its inhabitants consist of 
 the father, a well-meaning chieftain, his three 
 maiden sisters (Miss Jacky, the sensible woman of 
 the parish. Miss Nicky, who is a notable house- 
 wife, and Miss Grizzy, who is nothing in partic- 
 ular), and five daughters. The eldest son with 
 his wife abides at a short distance. Very short 
 experience of these circumstances suffices to reduce 
 Lady Juliana to hysterics, which are treated by the 
 aunts in the following fashion : — 
 
 (( ( 
 
 Oh, the amiable creature ! ' interrupted the unsuspect- 
 ing spinsters, almost stifling her with their caresses as they 
 spoke : ' Welcome, a thousand times welcome, to Glenfern 
 Castle,' said Miss Jacky, who was esteemed by much the 
 most sensible woman, as well as the greatest orator in the 
 whole parish ; ' nothing shall be wanting, dearest Lady 
 Juliana, to compensate for a parent's rigour, and make you 
 happy and comfortable. Consider this as your future home ! 
 My sisters and myself will be as mothers to you ; and see 
 these charming young creatures,' dragging forward two tall 
 frightened girls, with sandy hair and great purple arms ; 
 ' thank Providence for having blest you with such sisters 1 ' 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 143 
 
 ' Don't speak too much, Jacky, to our dear niece at pre- 
 sent,' said Miss Grizzy ; ' I think one of Lady 
 __J*^^?.^ Maclaughlan's composing draughts would be 
 
 FERRIER. 
 
 the best thmg for her. 
 
 " ' Composing draughts at this time of day ! ' cried Miss 
 Nicky ; ' I should think a little good broth a much wiser 
 thing. There are some excellent family broth making 
 below, and I'll desire Tibby to bring a few.' 
 
 "'Will you take a little soup, love?' asked Douglas. 
 His lady assented ; and Miss Nicky vanished, but quickly 
 re-entered, followed by Tibby, carrying a huge bowl of 
 coarse broth, swimming with leeks, greens, and grease. 
 Lady Juliana attempted to taste it ; but her delicate palate 
 revolted at the homely fare ; and she gave up the attempt, 
 in spite of Miss Nicky's earnest entreaties to take a few 
 more of these excellent family broth. 
 
 " * I should think,' said Henry, as he vainly attempted to 
 stir it round, 'that a little wine would be more to the 
 purpose than this stuff.' 
 
 " The aunts looked at each other ; and, withdrawing to a 
 corner, a whispering consultation took place, in which Lady 
 Maclaughlan's opinion, 'birch, balm, currant, heating, 
 cooling, running risks,' &c., «&c., transpired. At length the 
 question was carried ; and some tolerable sherry and a 
 piece of very substantial shortbread were produced." 
 
 What follows may be ^^uessed without much 
 difficulty, though the recital is well worth reading. 
 Lady Juliana wearies her husband and his relatives 
 with every possible demonstration of insolence 
 and folly. The pipes make her faint ; her favourite 
 beasts and birds (which the old-fashioned polite- 
 ness of the laird and a certain respect for her 
 rank will not permit him to banish) become the 
 nuisances of the house ; and though she conde- 
 
144 Essays in English 
 
 scends to stay at Glenfern until she has enriched 
 the family tree with a new generation — miss 
 Major Douglas, the eldest son, has no ferrier. 
 children — she shows more and more her utter 
 vacuity of mind, her want of real affection for her 
 unlucky husband, and the impossibility of satisfying 
 her by any concessions consistent with the means 
 of the family. After a time, however, a new per- 
 sonage appears on the scene in the person of Lady 
 Maclaughlan, one of the strongest and most original 
 characters who had yet found a home in English 
 fiction. Her defects are two only, that she is 
 admitted to be very nearly a photograph from the 
 life, and that, like too many of the characters of 
 Marriage^ she has but very little to do with the 
 story. Lady Maclaughlan's humours are almost 
 infinite and can hardly hope to represent them- 
 selves in any sufficient manner by dint of extract. 
 She is a sort of cross between Lady Bountiful 
 and Lady Kew, a mixture which will be admitted 
 to be original, especially as one of the component 
 parts had not yet been separately presented at all 
 to the public. This is the fashion of her intro- 
 duction : — 
 
 *' Out of this equipage issued a figure, clothed in a light- 
 coloured, large-flowered chintz raiment, carefully drawn 
 through the pocket-holes, either for its own preservation, or 
 the more disinterested purpose of displaying a dark short 
 stuff petticoat, which, with the same liberality, afforded ample 
 scope for the survey of a pair of worsted stockings and black 
 leather shoes, something resembling buckets. A faded red 
 cloth jacket, which bore evident marks of having been severed 
 
Literature, ly So- 1860 145 
 
 from its native skirts, now acted in the capacity of a spencer. 
 On the head rose a stupendous fabric, in the 
 
 FERRiER ^^"^ °^ ^ ^^P' °" ^^^ summit of which was 
 placed a black beaver hat, tied a la poissarde. 
 A small black satin muff in one hand, and a gold-headed 
 walking-stick in the other, completed the dress and decor- 
 ation of this personage." 
 
 Lady Maclaughlan has a husband (more like 
 one of Smollett's characters than like any other 
 product of English fiction) who is a hopeless 
 cripple, and she is a tyrant to her friends, and 
 especially to " the girls," as she calls the aunts at 
 Glenfern ; but she has plenty of brains. An 
 excellent scene, though like many in the book 
 rather of an extravagant kind, is that where the 
 Glenfern party have come to dine with her on a 
 wrong day. They make their way into the house 
 with the utmost difficulty, surprise Sir Sampson 
 Maclaughlan in undress, and only at last are 
 ushered into the redoubtable presence : — 
 
 "After ascending several long dark stairs, and following 
 divers windings and turnings, the party at length reached the 
 door of the sancUnn sanctorum^ and having gently tapped, 
 the voice of the priestess was heard in no very encouraging 
 accents, demanding ' Who was there ? ' 
 
 " ' It's only us,' replied her trembling friend. 
 
 " ' Only us ? humph ! I wonder what fool is called 07ily 
 us / Open the door, Philistine, and see what only us wants.' 
 
 The door was opened and the party entered. The day 
 was closing in, but by the faint twilight that mingled with the 
 gleams from a smoky smouldering fire. Lady Maclaughlan 
 was dimly discernible, as she stood upon the hearth, watch- 
 ing the contents of an enormous kettle that emitted both 
 
 K 
 
146 Essays in English 
 
 steam and odour. She regarded the invaders with her usual 
 
 marble aspect, and without moving either joint 
 
 or muscle as they drew near. ferrier. 
 
 " * I declare — I don't think you know us, 
 Lady Maclaughlan,' said Miss Grizzy in a tone of affected 
 vivacity, with which she strove to conceal her agitation. 
 
 " ' Know you ! ' repeated her friend — ' humph ! Who you 
 are, I know very well ; but what brings you here, I do not 
 know. Do you know yourselves ?' 
 
 "'I declare — I can't conceive ' began Miss Grizzy ; but 
 
 her trepidation arrested her speech, and her sister therefore 
 proceeded — 
 
 " * Your ladyship's declaration is no less astonishing than 
 incomprehensible. We have waited upon you by your own 
 express invitation on the day appointed by yourself ; and 
 we have been received in a manner, I must say, we did not 
 expect, considering this is the first visit of our niece Lady 
 Juliana Douglas.' 
 
 " ' I'll tell you what, girls,' replied their friend, as she still 
 stood with her back to the fire, and her hands behind her ; 
 ' I'll tell you what, — you are not yourselves — you are all 
 lost — quite mad— that's all — humph ! ' 
 
 " * If that's the case, we cannot be fit company for your 
 ladyship,' retorted Miss Jacky warmly; 'and therefore the 
 best thing we can do is to return the way we came. Come, 
 Lady Juliana — come, sister.' 
 
 " ' I declare, Jacky, the impetuosity of your temper is — 
 
 I really cannot stand it ' and the gentle Grizzy gave way 
 
 to a flood of tears. 
 
 " ' You used to be rational, intelligent creatures,' resumed 
 her ladyship ; * but what has come over you, I don't know. 
 You come tumbling in here at the middle of the night — and 
 at the top of the house — nobody knows how — when I never 
 was thinking of you ; and because I don't tell a parcel of lies, 
 and pretend I expected you, you are for flying off again — 
 humph ! Is this the behaviour of women in their senses .f* 
 But since you are here, you may as well sit down and say 
 
MISS 
 
 Liter alter c, lySo-iSSo 147 
 
 what brought you. Get down, Gil Bias — go along, Tom 
 Jones,' addressing two huge cats, who occupied 
 a three-cornered leather chair by the fireside, 
 
 FERRIER. ,,,..,,.. 
 
 and who relinquished it with much reluctance. 
 
 "* How do you do, pretty creature?' kissing Lady Juliana, 
 as she seated her in this cat's cradle. * Now, girls, sit down, 
 and tell what brought you here to-day — humph ! ' 
 
 " ' Can your ladyship ask such a question, after having 
 formally invited us ?' demanded the wrathful Jacky. 
 
 " ' I'll tell you what, girls ; you were just as much invited 
 by me to dine here to-day as you were appointed to sup with 
 the Grand Seignior— humph !' 
 
 '"What day of the week does your ladyship call this ?' 
 
 " ' I call it Tuesday ; but I suppose the Glenfern calendar 
 calls it Thursday : Thursday was the day I invited you to 
 come.' 
 
 "* I'm sure — I'm thankful we're got to the bottom of it at 
 last,' cried Miss Grizzy ; ' I read it, because I'm sure you 
 wrote it, Tuesday.' 
 
 *' ' How could you be such a fool, my love, as to read it 
 any such thing ? Even if it had been written Tuesday, 
 you might have had the sense to know it meant Thursday. 
 When did you know me invite anybody for a Tuesday ? ' 
 
 "'I declare it's very true ; I certainly ought to have known 
 better. I am quite confounded at my own stupidity ; for as 
 you observe, even though you had said Tuesday, I might 
 have known that you must have meant Thursday.' 
 
 " ' Well, well, no more about it. Since you are here you 
 must stay here, and you must have something to eat, I 
 suppose. Sir Sampson and I have dined two hours ago ; 
 but you shall have your dinner for all that. I must shut 
 shop for this day,'it seems, and leave my resuscitating tincture 
 all in the deadthraw — Methusalem pills quite in their infancy. 
 But there's no help for it. Since you are here you must stay 
 here, and you must be fed and lodged ; so get along, girls, 
 get along. Here, Gil Bias — come, Tom Jones.' And, pre- 
 ceded by her cats, and followed by her guests, she led the 
 way to the parlour," 
 
14S Essays in English 
 
 The humours of Glenfern and its neighbourhood, 
 however, come to an end before long. miss 
 The offer of a farm to Harry Douglas by ferrier. 
 his good-natured old father and his wife's utter 
 horror at the idea, the birth of twin girls for whom 
 their mother entertains no feelings but profound 
 disgust, and the general revolt of the whole family 
 at Lady Juliana are happily succeeded by the 
 relenting of General Cameron. He procures the 
 restoration of the commission, which Douglas has 
 forfeited by breaking his leave, and gives him a 
 handsome allowance. One of the twins is left to 
 the care of Mrs Douglas, the elder brother's wife, the 
 other accompanies her parents to London. But 
 Lady Juliana's senseless folly once more ruins her 
 husband. Her discourtesy to General Cameron 
 alienates him, her insane extravagance far outruns 
 the allowance which even while marrying and dis- 
 inheriting Harry he does not withhold. Douglas 
 goes on foreign service, and practically nothing 
 more is heard of him. Lady Juliana finds a home 
 with her daughter Adelaide in the house of her 
 brother, who has been deserted by his wife. A 
 long gap occurs in the chronology, and the story 
 is resumed when Adelaide and Mary (whom her 
 mother has practically forgotten) are grown up. 
 It is thought proper (much to Lady Juliana's 
 disgust) that her daughter shall pay her a visit, 
 and the second volume of the novel is occupied by 
 the history of this. On the way to England there 
 is a lively episode in which Mary Douglas is taken 
 
Literature, ly 80-1860 149 
 
 to see an ancient great-aunt in Edinburgh, whose 
 MISS account of the " improvements " of 
 FERRiER. modern days is not a little amusing. 
 Mrs MacShake, indeed, is one of those originals, 
 evidently studies from the life, whom Miss Ferrier 
 could draw with a somewhat malicious but an 
 admirably graphic pen. Similar characters of a 
 redeeming kind in the second part of the book 
 are Dr Redgill, Lord Courtland's house physician, 
 a parasite of a bygone but extremely amusing type, 
 and Lady Emily, Lord Courtland's daughter, who 
 is one of a class of young women of whom for some 
 incomprehensible reason no novelist before Miss 
 Austen dared to make a heroine.* Mary herself, 
 who is the heroine, is a great trial to the modern 
 reader. 
 
 " * I am now to meet my mother ! ' thought she ; and, 
 unconscious of everything else, she was assisted from the 
 carriage, and conducted into the house. A door was thrown 
 open ; but shrinking from the glare of light and sound of 
 voices that assailed her, she stood dazzled and dismayed, 
 till she beheld a figure approaching that she guessed to be 
 her mother. Her heart beat violently — a film was upon her 
 eyes — she made an effort to reach her mother's arms, and 
 sank lifeless on her bosom ! 
 
 " Lady Juliana, for such it was, doubted not but that her 
 daughter was really dead ; for though she talked of fainting 
 every hour of the day herself, still what is emphatically called a 
 
 * Charlotte Grandison, afterwards " Lady G," the comic heroine 
 of Richardson's novel, has sometimes been regarded as Lady 
 Emily's original ; and the Lady Honoria of Cecilia might have been 
 instanced as a link between them. But Lady Emily is much less 
 of a caricature than either. 
 
150 Essays in English 
 
 dead-faint was a spectacle no less strange than shocking to 
 her. She was therefore sufficiently alarmed and 
 overcome to behave in a very interesting man- „„__._„ 
 ner ; and some yearnings of pity even possessed 
 her heart as she beheld her daughter's lifeless form extended 
 before her — her beautiful, though inanimate features, half 
 hid by the profusion of golden ringlets that fell around her. 
 But these kindly feelings were of short duration ; for no 
 sooner was the nature of her daughter's insensibility ascer- 
 tained, than all her former hostility returned, as she found 
 every one's attention directed to Mary, and she herself 
 entirely overlooked in the general interest ,she had excited ; 
 and her displeasure was still further increased as Mary, 
 at length slowly unclosing her eyes, stretched out her hands, 
 and faintly articulated, ' My mother ! ' " 
 
 In the same way '* trembling violently " she is 
 ready to fall upon her sister's neck, a proceeding 
 to which her sister (a young woman leaving some- 
 thing to desire in point of morality, but sensible 
 enough) strongly objects. This second volume 
 includes, besides the capital figure of Dr Redgill 
 (to whom I regret that justice cannot be done by 
 extracts), not a few isolated studies of the ridiculous 
 which can hardly be too highly spoken of. The 
 drawback is that they have no more than the 
 faintest connection with the story as such ; indeed, 
 it can hardly be said that there is any story in 
 Marriage. It is a collection of exceedingly clever 
 caricatures, some of which deserve a higher title, 
 and the best of which will rank with the best 
 originals in English fiction. 
 
 Six years passed between the appearance of 
 Marriage and the appearance of TJie Inheritance. 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 151 
 
 The practical success of the earlier book may best be 
 MISS judged by the fact that while Marriage 
 FERRiER. brought Miss Ferrier in ;^I50, Black- 
 wood, who had published it, gave her more than 
 six times as much for the new novel. For once dif- 
 ference of price and profit corresponded not unduly 
 to difference of merit. The individual studies and 
 characters of The Inheritance are as good as those 
 of Marriage^ while the novel, as a novel, is in- 
 finitely better. In her first work the author had 
 been content to string together amusing carica- 
 tures or portraits without any but a rudimentary 
 attempt at central interest. The Inheritance, if its 
 plot is of no great intricacy (Miss Ferrier was 
 never famous for plots), is at any rate decently 
 charpente, and the excellent studies of character, 
 which make it delightful to read, are bound to- 
 gether with a very respectable cement of narrative. 
 " The Inheritance " is the Earldom and estates of 
 Rossville, which, by a chapter of accidents, devolve 
 on Gertrude St. Clair, the only daughter of a 
 younger and misallied brother of the reigning 
 Earl, as inheritrix presumptive. She and her 
 mother are invited to Rossville Castle, the inhabi- 
 tants of which are the reigning Earl and his sister, 
 Lady Betty. Lady Betty is a nonentity, Lord 
 Rossville a pompous fool, who delights in his own 
 eloquence. 
 
 The Rossville society is completed by three 
 nephews, with one of whom Gertrude is intended 
 to fall in love, with another of whom she ought to 
 
152 Essays in English 
 
 fall in love, and (as a natural consequence) with 
 the third of whom she does fall in miss 
 love. The remaining characters of the ferrier. 
 book are more numerous than is the case in 
 Marriage^ and much better grouped. Miss Pratt, 
 a talkative cousin of the Rossville family, is one 
 of the few characters in Miss Ferrier's books 
 who can afford comparison with those of Miss 
 Austen. She is constantly citing the witticisms 
 of a certain Anthony Whyte, who may be justly 
 said to be an ancestor of Mrs Harris, inasmuch 
 as he is always talked about and never seen. 
 She is also foredoomed to cross the soul of Lord 
 Rossville, whose feelings of decency she outrages 
 by proposing that , a large company shall visit 
 his dressing-room, whose elaborate sentences she 
 constantly interrupts, and whom she finally kills, 
 by making her appearance in a hearse, the only 
 vehicle which she has been able to engage to 
 convey her through a snowstorm. The other 
 branch of Gertrude's connections, however, furnish 
 their full share to the gallery of satirical portraits. 
 One of them, the formidable " Uncle Adam," is 
 said to have been drawn from the author's own 
 father, while he has prophetic touches of no less a 
 person than Carlyle. The Blacks, Mrs St. Clair's 
 closest relations, have improved somewhat in 
 circumstances since she made a stolen match with 
 her husband, and they are now on the outskirts of 
 county society. The eldest daughter is engaged 
 to a wealthy and fairly well-connected Nabob, 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 153 
 
 Major Waddell, and on this unlucky pair Miss 
 MISS Ferrier concentrates the whole weight 
 FERRiER. of her sarcasm, especially on Miss Bell 
 Black, the bride elect, who is always talking about 
 "my situation." The gem, however, of this part 
 of the book is the following letter from Lilly Black, 
 the second sister and bridesmaid, who, according 
 to old fashion, accompanies Major and Mrs Waddell 
 on their bridal tour. Jeffrey is said to have ad- 
 mired this particularly, which shows that the awful 
 Aristarch of Craigcrook, when his prejudices were 
 not concerned, and when new planets did not swim 
 too impertinently into his ken, was quite ready to 
 give them welcome. 
 
 " The following letters were put into Gertrude's hand one 
 morning. The first she opened was sealed with an ever- 
 green leaf ; motto, Je 7ie change qu^en mourant. 
 
 " ' I am inexpressibly pained to think what an opinion my 
 dearest cousin must have formed of me, from having 
 allowed so much time to elapse ere I commenced a 
 correspondence from which, believe me, I expect to derive 
 the most unfeigned and heartfelt delight. But you, my dear 
 friend, whose fate it has been to roam, " and other realms to 
 view," will, I am sure, make allowance for the apparent 
 neglect and unkindness I have been guilty of, which, be 
 assured, was very far from designed on my part. Indeed, 
 scarce a day has elapsed since we parted that I have not 
 planned taking up my pen to address you, and to attempt 
 to convey to you some idea, however faint, of all I have 
 seen and felt since bidding adieu to Caledonia. But, alas ! 
 so many of the vulgar cares of life obtrude themselves even 
 here, in " wilds unknown to public view," as have left me 
 little leisure for the interchange of thought. 
 
 " ' Were it not for these annoyances, and the want of a 
 
154 Essays in English 
 
 congenial soul to pour forth my feelings to, I could almost 
 
 imagine myself in Paradise. Apropos^ is a 
 
 certain regiment still at B., and have you got ^^^^^t« 
 
 , _,_ FERRIER. 
 
 acquamted with any of the onicers yet? You 
 will perhaps be tempted to smile at that question ; but I 
 assure you there is nothing at all in it. The Major and 
 Bell (or Mrs Major Waddell, as she wishes to be called 
 in future, as she thinks Bell too familiar an appellation 
 for a married woman) are, I think, an uncommon happy 
 attached pair — the only drawback to their happiness is the 
 Major's having been particularly bilious of late, which he 
 ascribes to the heat of the weather, but expects to derive the 
 greatest benefit from the waters of Harrowgate. For my 
 part, I am sure many a " longing lingering look " I shall cast 
 behind when we bid adieu to the sylvan shores of Winander. 
 I have attempted some views of it, which may serve to carry 
 to you some idea of its beauties. One on a watch-paper, I 
 think my most successful effort. The Major has rallied me 
 a good deal as to who that is intended for ; but positively 
 that is all a joke, I do assure you. But it is time that I 
 should now attempt to give you some account of my travels, 
 though, as I promise myself the delight of showing you my 
 journal when we meet, I shall omit the detail of our journey, 
 and at once waft you to what I call Lake Land. But where 
 shall I find language to express my admiration ! 
 
 " ' One thing I must not omit to mention, in order that you 
 may be able to conceive some idea of the delight we ex- 
 perienced, and for which we were indebted to the Major's 
 politeness and gallantry. In order to surprise us, he pro- 
 posed our taking a little quiet sail, as he termed it, on the 
 lake. All was silence ; when, upon a signal made, figure to 
 yourself the astonishment and delight of Mrs Major and my- 
 self, when a grand flourish of French horns burst upon our 
 ears, waking the echoes all round ; the delightful harmony 
 was repeated from every recess which echo haunted on the 
 borders of the lake. At first, indeed, the surprise was 
 almost too much for Mrs Major, and she became a little 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 155 
 
 hysterical, but she was soon recovered by the Major's 
 tenderness and assurances of safety. Indeed 
 
 FFRRiFR ^^ *^' ^^'i^ho'J^ exception, the most exemplary and 
 
 devoted husband I ever beheld ; still I confess 
 
 (but that is entre nous\ that to me, the little taste he displays 
 
 for the tuneful Nine would be a great drawback to my 
 
 matrimonial felicity. 
 
 " ' After having enjoyed this delightful concert, we bade a 
 long adieu to the sylvan shores of Ulls Water, and pro- 
 ceeded to Keswick, or, as it is properly denominated, 
 Derwent Water, which is about three miles long ; its pure 
 transparent bosom, studded with numberless wooded islands, 
 and its sides beautifully variegated with elegant mansions, 
 snow-white cottages, taper spires, pleasant fields, adorned by 
 the hand of cultivation, and towering groves that seem as if 
 impervious to the light of day. The celebrated Fall of 
 Lodore I shall not attempt to depict ; but figure, if you can, 
 a stupendous cataract, rushing headlong over enormous 
 rocks and crags, which vainly seem to oppose themselves 
 in its progress. 
 
 "'With regret we tore ourselves from the cultivated 
 beauties of Derwent, and taking a look, en passant^ of the 
 more secluded Grassmere and Rydall, we at length found 
 ourselves on the shores of the magnificent Winander. 
 
 " ' Picture to yourself, if it be possible, stupendous moun- 
 tains rearing their cloud-capped heads in all the sublimity of 
 horror, w^hile an immense sheet of azure reflected the crim- 
 son and yellow rays of the setting sun as they floated o'er 
 its motionless green bosom, on which was impressed the 
 bright image of the surrounding woods and meadows, 
 speckled with snowy cottages and elegant villas ! I really 
 felt as if inspired, so much was my enthusiasm kindled, and 
 yet I fear my description will fail in conveying to you any 
 idea of this never-to-be-forgotten scene. But I must now 
 bid you adieu, which I do with the greatest reluctance. 
 How thought flows upon me when I take up my pen ! how 
 inconceivable to me the distaste which some people express 
 
156 Essays in English 
 
 for letter-writing ! Scribbling^ as they contemptuously term 
 
 it. How I pity such vulgar souls ! You, my 
 
 dear cousin, I am sure, are not one of them. ^,^„„^„„ 
 
 I have scarcely left room for Mrs Major to 
 
 add a PS. Adieu ! Your affectionate 
 
 " ' Lilly.' 
 
 " Mrs Waddell's postscript was as follows : — 
 
 "*Ma chere Cousine — Of course you cannot expect 
 that I, a married woman, can possibly have much time to 
 devote to my female friends, with an adoring husband, who 
 never stirs from my side, and to whom my every thought is 
 due. But this much, in justice to myself, I think it proper 
 to say, that I am the happiest of my sex, and that I find my 
 Waddell everything generous, kind, and brave ! 
 
 "'Isabella Waddell.'" 
 
 There are not many better things than this of 
 the kind, and it is matched by a long passage (too 
 long, unhappily, to quote) as to a certain Miss 
 Becky Duguid, an old maid, and a victim of com- 
 missions and such-like sacrifices to friendship. 
 But one passage also dealing with the Black 
 family must be given to show the keenness of Miss 
 Ferrier's observation, and the neatness of her 
 satirical expression : — 
 
 " Mrs Fairbairn was one of those ladies who, from the 
 time she became a mother, ceased to be anything else. All 
 the duties, pleasures, charities, and decencies of life were 
 henceforth concentrated in that one grand characteristic ; 
 every object in life was henceforth viewed through that 
 single medium. Her own mother was no longer her 
 mother ; she was the grandmother of her dear infants, her 
 brothers and sisters were mere uncles and aunts, and even 
 her husband ceased to be thought of as her husband from 
 
Liter attire, iy8o-i86o 157 
 
 the time he became a father. He was no longer the being 
 
 who had claims on her time, her thoughts, 
 
 FERRiER. ^^^ talents, her affections ; he was simply Mr 
 
 Fairbairn, the noun masculine of Mrs Fairbairn, 
 
 and the father of her children. Happily for Mr Fairbairn, 
 
 he was not a person of very nice feelings or refined taste ; 
 
 and although at first he did feel a little unpleasant when he 
 
 saw how much his children were preferred to himself, yet 
 
 in time he became accustomed to it, then came to look 
 
 upon Mrs Fairbairn as the most exemplary of mothers, 
 
 and finally resolved himself into the father of a very fine 
 
 family, of which Mrs Fairbairn was the mother. In all 
 
 this there was more of selfish egotism and animal instinct 
 
 than of rational affection or Christian principle ; but both 
 
 parents piqued themselves upon their fondness for their 
 
 offspring, as if it were a feeling peculiar to themselves, 
 
 and not one they shared in common with the lowest and 
 
 weakest of their species. Like them, too, it was upon the 
 
 bodies of their children that they lavished their chief care 
 
 and tenderness, for, as to the immortal interests of their 
 
 souls, or the cultivation of their minds, or the improvement 
 
 of their tempers, these were but little attended to, at least in 
 
 comparison of their health and personal appearance." 
 
 IP Such passages are fair, but not extraordinarily 
 favourable examples of the faculty of satire (a 
 
 1^ little " hard " oerhaps, as even her admirers ac- 
 knowledged it to be, but admirably clear-sighted 
 and felicitous in expression) with which Miss 
 Ferrier illustrated all her novels, and especially 
 this her masterpiece. The general story of T/ie 
 Inheritance is, however, quite sufficiently interest- 
 ing and well-managed, even without the embroid- 
 er}^ of character study. Lord Rossville, a well- 
 meaning but short-sighted man, begins to suspect, 
 
158 Essays in English 
 
 rightly enough in general, but wrongly in particular, 
 that his heiress is likely to be dis- miss 
 obedient to his desire that she shall ferrier. 
 marry her cousin (and failing her, his next heir), 
 Mr Delmour, a dull politician. She boldly tells 
 him that she cannot marry Mr Delmour, and 
 he threatens to disinherit her, but before his 
 mind is fully made up he dies suddenly, and 
 she succeeds. Her lover, the younger brother 
 of Mr Delmour, has shown signs of interestedness 
 which might be suspicious to a less guileless 
 person than Gertrude, but the chapter of accidents 
 enables him to regain his position, and he is more 
 attentive than ever to the Countess of Rossville in 
 her own right. Luckily an old promise to her 
 mother prevents her from marrying at once. But 
 at her lover's suggestion she goes up to London, 
 is introduced by him to fashionable society, 
 indulges in all sorts of expense and folly (Miss 
 Ferrier is great on the expense and folly of 
 London life, and the wickedness of absenteeism), 
 and neglects the good works at Rossville, in 
 which the third cousin Lindsay, the virtuous hero 
 of the story, has interested her before. At last 
 she returns to her home, and a storm, which has 
 long been brewing, breaks. A stranger, who has 
 before been introduced as mysteriously threaten- 
 ing and annoying Mrs St. Clair, makes himself 
 more objectionable than ever, forcing his way into 
 the castle, wantonly exhibiting his power over the 
 mother, and through her over her indignant 
 
 i 
 
Literature, iySo-i86o 159 
 
 daughter, and by degrees making himself wholly 
 MISS intolerable. At last the mystery is dis- 
 FERRiER. closed. Gertrude is not Countess of 
 Rossville at all, nor even daughter of Mrs St. Clair. 
 She is a supposititious child whom her ambitious 
 mother (so called) has taken for the purpose of foist- 
 ing her as heiress on the Rossville family. At first 
 it seems as if she were to suffer the intolerable 
 punishment of being handed over to the scoundrel 
 Lewiston as his daughter, but his pretensions to 
 her are so far disproved. Cetera quis nescit? 
 The faithless Colonel Delmour flies off, the good 
 W Lindsay remains, and a course of accidents replaces 
 Gertrude as mistress (though not in her own right) 
 at Rossville Castle. 
 
 The hiheritance is a book which really deserves 
 a great deal of praise. Almost the only excep- 
 tions to be taken to it are the rather violent 
 alternations of av ay vcopiai^ and irepLTrereia, which 
 lead to the conclusion, and the mismanagement of 
 the figure of Lewiston. This ruffian is represented 
 
 kas a Yankee, but he is not in the least like either 
 the American of history or the conventional 
 Yankee of fiction and the stage. He is clearly a 
 character for whom the author had no type ready 
 in her memory or experience, and whom she con- 
 sequently invented partly out of her own head and 
 partly from such rather inappropriate stock models 
 of villains as she happened to be acquainted with. 
 He is not probable in himself, nor are his actions 
 probable, for a business-like scoundrel such as he 
 
i6o Essays in English 
 
 is represented to be would have known perfectly 
 well that forcing himself into Rossville miss 
 Castle, and behaving as if it were his ferrier. 
 own property, was an almost certain method of 
 killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. But 
 these faults are not of the first importance, and 
 the general merits of the book are very great. 
 Gertrude herself is a consistent, lifelike, and agree- 
 able character, neither too sentimental nor too 
 humoursome, but perfectly human ; all the other 
 characters group well round her, and as for the 
 merely satirical passages and personages they are 
 wholly admirable. 
 
 The Inheritance was more popular even than 
 Marriage had been ; but the author still refused 
 to be hurried into production. She had always 
 been very coy about acknowledging her work 
 — all her books were published anonymously — 
 and she was accustomed to write (though that 
 operation may seem a harmless one enough) with 
 as much secrecy as Miss Austen herself observed. 
 But Sir Walter Scott was taken into confidence as 
 to the publication of Destiny^ and through his 
 good offices with Cadell she obtained a much 
 larger sum for it than she had hitherto received. 
 The book is an advance even upon The Inheritance^ 
 and much more upon Marriage, in unity and 
 completeness of plot, and it contains two or three 
 of Miss Ferrier's most elaborate and finished pic- 
 tures of oddities. But, as it seems to me, there is 
 a considerable falling off in verve and spontaneity. 
 
Literattirc, ly 80- 1860 161 
 
 The story-interest of the book centres on the 
 MISS fortunes of Glenroy, a Highland chief- 
 FERRiER. ^ain of large property, and his daughter 
 Edith. In former days an appanage of consider- 
 able extent has been carved out of the Glenroy 
 property, and this at the date of the story has 
 fallen in to a distant relation of the family, who 
 is childless, and who visits the country for the 
 first time. Glenroy, petty tyrant though he is 
 at home, condescends to court this kinsman for 
 the sake of his inheritance. The old man, how- 
 ever, who is both ill-natured and parsimonious, 
 and who is revolted by the luxurious waste of 
 Glenroy's household, leaves the property, under 
 rather singular conditions, to certain poor rela- 
 * tions of Glenroy's, Ronald Malcolm, a boy about 
 |. the same age as the chief's son, Norman, and 
 ■. his nephew, Reginald, being the special heir. This 
 boy goes to sea, and what may be called one 
 branch of the plot concerns his disappearance and 
 his unwillingness, by making himself known after 
 a long absence, to oust his father from the property 
 (as under the settlement he would be obliged to 
 do). The other branch, which is reunited with 
 this first branch rather adroitly, springs in this 
 wise. Glenroy, somewhat late in life, and after 
 the birth of his children Norman and Edith, has 
 married Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, a repro- 
 duction of Lady Juliana in Marriage, She has 
 one daughter, who, by the death of relations, 
 becomes a peeress in her own right (Miss Ferrier, 
 
 L 
 
1 62 Essays in English 
 
 it will be observed, has a genuinely Scotch objec- 
 tion to limiting the descent of honours miss 
 to heirs male), and Lady Elizabeth ferrier. 
 having quarrelled with her husband, is very glad 
 to take her daughter Florinda away with her. 
 Only after many years does she return, and the 
 rivalry (unconscious on Edith's part) between 
 Glenroy's daughter and ■ the English peeress for 
 the hand of Reginald gives rise to some good 
 scenes. Norman Malcolm, the heir, has died 
 already, and after a short period of dotage Glenroy 
 himself follows, leaving his daughter totally un- 
 provided for, in consequence of his belief in her 
 approaching marriage to Reginald, on whom the 
 estates devolve. Edith's subsequent fortunes (for, 
 as may be readily imagined, the beautiful and 
 wealthy Florinda carries the day) ; her stay with 
 some Cockney connections of her mother's ; the un- 
 lucky relations (again much copied from Marriage) 
 of Reginald and Florinda, all lead up to the final 
 reappearance of Ronald and the necessary marriage 
 bells. 
 
 The lighter dishes of this particular banquet 
 consist of a Hausfranzdsin^ Madame Latour (who 
 is perhaps somewhat indebted to Miss Edgeworth, 
 though there are suspicions of a personal model 
 and victim here as elsewhere) ; of the Cockney pair, 
 Mr and Mrs Ribley, amusing but conventional ; 
 of the chief's two dependants and butts, Benbowie, 
 a cocklaird of his own clan, and Mrs Macaulay, a 
 good-hearted, poor relation, who plays the mother 
 
Literature^ ly So- 1860 163 
 
 to Edith ; and, above all, of Mr McDow, the 
 MISS minister of the parish. This last portrait 
 FERRiER. is a satire of what Dryden called the 
 " bloody " kind (the same word in the same sense 
 is used to this day in the politest French, and I do 
 not know why English should be more squeamish), 
 on the foibles of the Presbyterian clergy. Jeffrey is 
 said to have pronounced Mr McDow an entire and 
 perfect chrysolite. With his " moderate " opinions, 
 his constant hunger and thirst after decreets and 
 augmentations (it may be explained to those who 
 do not know Scotland that a minister of the 
 Established Church, unlike his English compeer, 
 is enabled, if he chooses, to be a perpetual thorn 
 in the sides of the owners of real property in his 
 parish by claims for increased stipend, repairs to 
 the manse, &c.), his vulgarity, his stupid jokes, 
 his unfailing presence as an uninvited guest at 
 every feast, there is no doubt of the truth of the 
 picture or of the strength of the satire. But Miss 
 Ferrier occasionally lets her acid bite a little too 
 deeply, and it may be thought that she has done 
 this here. Mr McDow has the same fault as some 
 of Flaubert's characters — he is too uniformly dis- 
 gusting. A testimonial to this man, who is a 
 model, be it remembered, of coarseness, ignorance, 
 stupidity, and selfish neglect of his duties, is a 
 good specimen of the sharp strokes which Miss 
 Ferrier constantly dealt to the vices and follies of 
 society — strokes sharper perhaps than any lady 
 novelist has cared or known how to aim : — 
 
164 Essays in English 
 
 " My Dear Sir — It is with the most unfeigned satisfaction 
 I take up mv pen to bear my pubHc testimony 
 to worth such as yours, enriched and adorned as _.„„ j^!.„ 
 
 • • r \ ' 1 I'll FERRIER. 
 
 It is With abilities of the first order — pohshed 
 and refined by all that learning can bestow. From the 
 early period at which our friendship commenced few, I 
 flatter myself, can boast of a more intimate acquaintance 
 with you than myself; but such is the retiring modesty 
 of your nature, that I fear, were I to express the high 
 sense I entertain of your merit, I might wound that deli- 
 cacy which is so prominent a feature in your character. 
 I shall therefore merely affirm, that your talents I con- 
 sider as of the very highest order ; your learning and 
 erudition are deep, various, and profound ; while your 
 scholastic researches have ever been conducted on the 
 broad basis of Christian moderation and gentlemanly liber- 
 ality. Your doctrines I look upon as of the most sound, 
 practical description, calculated to superinduce the clearest 
 and most comprehensive system of Christian morals, to 
 which your own character and conduct afford an apt illustra- 
 tion. As a preacher, your language is nervous, copious, and 
 highly rhetorical ; your action in the pulpit free, easy, and 
 graceful. As a companion, your colloquial powers are of no 
 ordinary description, while the dignity of your manners, 
 combined with the suavity of your address, render your 
 company universally sought after in the very first society. 
 In short, to sum up the whole, I know no man more likely 
 than yourself to adorn the gospel, both by your precept and 
 example. With the utmost esteem and respect, 
 " I am, dear Sir, 
 
 " Most faithfully and sincerely yours, 
 " Roderick M'Craw, 
 
 ''''Professor of Belles Let Ires" 
 
 Destiny was published in 1831, and was its 
 author's last work. Nothing else from her pen 
 
Literahire, iySo-i86o 165 
 
 has been published to my knowledge, except 
 MISS certain brief reminiscences of visits to 
 
 FERRiER. Ashestiel and Abbotsford, and the 
 letters above referred to. Her silence was not 
 owing to want of invitation to write, for London 
 publishers offered her handsome terms ; but she 
 could not please herself with any idea that 
 occurred to her, and accordingly declined the 
 offers. Indeed, there are not, I think, wanting 
 signs in Destiyiy that a fourth book would have 
 been a failure. She was no longer young ; her 
 stock of originals, taken siw le vif, was probably 
 exhausted ; her old sarcastic pleasure in cynical 
 delineation was giving way to a somewhat pietistic 
 view of things which is very noticeable in her last 
 novel ; and, to crown all, she was in failing health 
 and suffered especially from impaired eyesight. 
 Yet she survived the publication of Destiny for 
 nearly a quarter of a century, and did not die till 
 November, 1854, at the age of seventy-two. 
 
 Miss Ferrier's characteristics as a novelist are 
 well marked and not likely to escape any reader. 
 But nothing brings them out so clearly as the in- 
 evitable comparison with her great contemporary, 
 Miss Austen, Of the many divisions which may 
 be made between different classes of fiction writers, 
 there is one which is perhaps as clearly visible, 
 though it is perhaps not so frequently drawn, as 
 any. There is one set of novelists (Le Sage, 
 Fielding, Thackeray, Miss Austen, are among its 
 most illustrious names) whose work always seems 
 
1 66 Essays in English 
 
 like a section of actual life, with only the neces- 
 sary differentia of artistic treatment. miss 
 There is another, with Balzac and i="errier. 
 Dickens for its most popular exponents, and 
 Balzac alone for its greatest practitioner, whose 
 work, if not false, is always more or less ab- 
 normal. In the one case the scenes on the stage 
 are the home, the forum, the streets which all 
 know or might have known if they had lived at 
 the time and place of the story. These writers 
 have each in his or her own degree something of 
 the universality and truth of Shakespeare. No 
 special knowledge is needed to appreciate them ; 
 no one is likely in reading them to stop himself to 
 ask — Is this possible or probable } In the other 
 case the spectator is led through a series of 
 museums, many if not most of the objects in 
 which are extraordinary specimens, "sports," mons- 
 trosities ; while some, perhaps, are like the quaint 
 creations of Waterton's fancy and ingenuity — some- 
 thing more than monsters, mere deliberate things 
 of shreds and patches more or less cleverly made 
 to look as if they might have been at some time or 
 other viables. Of these two schools. Miss Ferrier 
 belongs to the last, though she is not by any 
 means an extreme practitioner in it. A moment's 
 thought will show that the system on relying for 
 the most part on thumb-nail sketches which she 
 avowedly practised leads to this result. Not 
 only is the observer prompted to take the most 
 strongly marked and eccentric specimens in his 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 167 
 
 or her range of observation, but in copying them 
 MISS the invariable result of imitation, the 
 FERRiER. deepening of the strokes, and the harden- 
 ing of the lines, leads to further departure from 
 the common form. These eccentricities, too, 
 whether copied or imagined, fit but awkwardly 
 into any regular plot. The novelist is as much 
 tempted to let her story take care of itself while 
 she is emphasising her " humours " as another 
 kind of novelist is tempted to let it take care of 
 itself while he is discoursing to his readers about 
 his characters, or about things in general. Hence 
 the sort of writing which was Miss Ferrier's 
 particular forte leads to two inconveniences — the 
 neglect of a congruous and sufficient central in- 
 terest, and the paying of disproportionate atten- 
 tion to minor characters. The contrast, therefore, 
 even of The Inheritance with, let us say. Pride and 
 Prejudice^ is a curious one, and no reader can miss 
 the want in the later book of the wonderful per- 
 spective and proportion, the classical avoidance of 
 exaggeration, which mark Miss Austen's master- 
 piece. On the other hand, it is interesting enough 
 to let the imagination attempt to conceive what 
 Miss Ferrier would have made of Lady Catherine, 
 of Mr Collins, of the Meryton vulgarities. The 
 satire would be as sharp, but it would be rougher, 
 the instrument would be rather a saw than a razor, 
 and the executioner would linger over her task 
 with a certain affectionate forgetfulness that she 
 had other things to do than to vivisect. 
 
1 68 Essays in English 
 
 Nor shall we find it uninteresting to extend the 
 comparison to the third contemporary, miss 
 who, by a singular coincidence, com- ferr^er. 
 pletes with Miss Austen and Miss Ferrier the 
 trinity of English, Scotch, and Irish lady novelists 
 of the opening of this century. Miss Edgeworth 
 (on whose Patrojiage a rather direct critique exists 
 in one of Miss Ferrier's letters) had far more 
 geniality, a more fertile brain, and a wider and 
 more catholic range of interests and sympathies 
 than her Scotch sister : but it is fair to say that 
 no one of her books is so good as TJie Inheritance, 
 and that several of them are much worse than 
 either Marriage or Destiny. 
 
 Notwithstanding these drawbacks, notwithstand- 
 ing her admitted inability to manage pathos 
 (which in her hands becomes mere sensibility of 
 an obviously unreal kind), and lastly, notwith- 
 standing her occasional didactic passages which 
 are simply a bore. Miss Ferrier is an admirable 
 novelist, especially for those who can enjoy un- 
 sparing social satire and a masterly faculty of 
 caricature. She writes, as far as mere writing 
 goes, well, and not unfrequently exceedingly well. 
 It is obvious, not so much from her quotations, for 
 they are dubious evidence, but from the general 
 tone of her work that she was thoroughly well 
 read. There are comparatively few Scotticisms in 
 her, and she has a knack of dry sarcasm which 
 continues the best traditions of the eighteenth 
 century in its freedom from mere quaintness and 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 169 
 
 grotesque. The character of Glenroy at the begin- 
 Miss ning oi Destiny is nearly as well written 
 
 FERRiER. j^s 3t Evremond himself could have 
 done it, and the sentence which concludes it is 
 a good example of its manner. " As it was im- 
 possible, however, that any one so great in him- 
 self could make a great marriage, his friends and 
 followers, being reasonable people, merely ex- 
 pected that he would make the best marriage 
 possible." This little sentence, with the admir- 
 able piece of galitnatias in Mrs St. Clair's inter- 
 view with Lord Rossville, and the description 
 in Marriage of Miss Becky Douglas's arms as 
 " strapped back by means of a pink ribbon of no 
 ordinary strength or doubtful hue," are examples 
 taken at random of the verbal shafts which Miss 
 Ferrier scatters all about her pages to the great 
 delight of those who have alertness of mind enough 
 to perceive, and good taste or ill-nature enough 
 (for both explanations may be given) to enjoy 
 them. 
 
 Her main claim, however, to be read is un- 
 questionably in her gallery of originals, or (as it 
 has been, with the dispassionateness of a critic who 
 does not want to make his goose too much of a 
 swan, called) her museum of abnormalities. They 
 may or may not have places assigned to them 
 rather too prominent for the general harmony of 
 the picture. They may or may not be exaggerated. 
 There may or may not be a certain likeness to the 
 fiendish conduct of the ancestor of the author's 
 
1 70 Essays in Efiglish Literature^ ly 80- 1860 
 
 friend, Lord Cassilis, in the manner in which she 
 carefully oils them, and as carefully dis- miss 
 poses them on the gridiron for roasting, ferrier. 
 But they are excellent company. The three aunts, 
 Lady Maclaughlan, Mrs MacShake, Dr Redgill, 
 and in a minor degree the Bath Pr^cieuses in 
 Marriage^ Lord Rossville, Miss Pratt, Adam 
 Ramsay, and above all " Mrs Major " in TJie In- 
 heritance^ Molly Macaulay, Mr McDow, and the 
 Ribleys, in Destiny, are persons with whom the 
 reader is delighted to meet, sorry to part, and 
 (if he have any affection for good novels) certain 
 to meet again. When it is added that though she 
 does not often indulge it. Miss Ferrier possesses 
 a remarkable talent for description, it will be seen 
 that she has no mean claims. Indeed, of the four 
 requisites of the novelist, plot, character, descrip- 
 tion, and dialogue, she is only weak in the first. 
 The lapse of an entire half-century and a com- 
 plete change of manners have put her books to 
 the hardest test they are ever likely to have to 
 endure, and they come through it triumphantly. 
 
 i 
 
VI. 
 
 ENGLISH WAR-SONGS-CAMPBELL. 
 
 It has been admitted by a rather reluctant world, 
 — at least since the days of Marmontel 
 
 WAR SONGS. , . ^-11 . .^ 
 
 who gave three particularly exquisite 
 reasons for the fact — that the English excel in 
 poetry ; and it is most scholastically true that 
 he who excels in a subject shows his excellence 
 best in treating the best parts thereof Now of 
 ancient times it has been laid down in various 
 fashions that the two things best worth doing 
 in this world are fighting and love-making ; and 
 though the curious little sectarian heresy which 
 calls itself the Modern Spirit no doubt regards 
 the doctrine as a barbarous and exploded crudity, 
 it is not at all improbable that it may see many 
 Modern Spirits out. Therefore poetry being, as 
 we have all learnt, a criticism of life, and these 
 two things being at least among the most notable 
 and interesting things of life, it will follow that 
 poetry will busy itself best with them. Further 
 yet, I have been told that the natives of India, 
 
 171 
 
 k 
 
 ^- 
 
172 Essays in English 
 
 who have had some opportunity of observing us, 
 declare that an Enerlishman is never 
 
 , , , . , . . . WAR SONGS. 
 
 happy unless he is doing either one or 
 the other, — sport being included as partaking of 
 both. Therefore, yet once more, we shall conclude 
 that English poetry ought to sing well about them. 
 
 As a matter of fact it does. With the one 
 branch we have nothing here to do, and indeed no 
 human being could discuss it in the compass of a 
 single essay. The War-song or War-poem, how- 
 ever, is by no means so unmanageable, and with it 
 I may attempt to deal. And let it be stated at 
 the outset that, if I do not begin at what some 
 excellent persons think the beginning, it is not out 
 of any intention to insult them. There is good 
 fighting in Beowulf; but the average Englishman 
 (I think not thereby forfeiting his national claim 
 to good sense) absolutely declines to regard as 
 English a language scarcely a word of which he 
 can understand. For my own part, I cannot see 
 why if I am to draw on this Jutish Saga (or what- 
 ever it is) I may not equally well reach my hand 
 to the shelf behind me, take down my Corpus 
 Poetiaim Boreale, and draw on that ; of which 
 things there were no end. Therefore let these 
 matters, and the Song of Brunanburh, and all the 
 rest of it, be uncontentiously declined, and let us 
 start from what the plain man does recognise as 
 English, that is to say from Chaucer. 
 
 I have elsewhere* ventured to question the 
 
 * See Twenty Yean of Political Satire, ^. 237, 
 
Literahire, ly 80- 1860 173 
 
 wisdom of making pretty philosophical explana- 
 tions of literary phenomena, and I do not 
 
 WAR SONGS. ^ , 1 . . , . 
 
 purpose to spend much time m askmg 
 why in the earliest English poetry (as just defined) 
 there is hardly anything that comes within our sub- 
 ject. Five very simple and indisputable facts, — 
 that our Norse ancestors fought and sang of fight- 
 ing, both in the most admirable fashion ; that the 
 great heroes of the Hundred Years War did not 
 apparently care to sing about fighting at all; that 
 Elizabeth's wars gave us indirectly one of the few 
 war-songs of the first class, Drayton's Ballad of 
 Agincourt ; that the English Tyrtasus during the 
 desperate and glorious War of the Spanish Suc- 
 cession could get no further than Addison's Cam- 
 paign ; and that the Revolutionary struggle drew 
 from a poet, not exactly of the first rank, three 
 such masterpieces as Hohenlinden, Ye Mariners of 
 England, and TJie Battle of the Baltic — five such 
 facts as these, I think, should deter any one who 
 has not a mere mania for reason-making from in- 
 dulging in that process on this subject. The facts 
 are the facts. There is much excellent literary de- 
 scription of fighting in Chaucer, but it is distinctly 
 literary ; there is nothing of the personal joy of 
 battle in it. Eustache Deschamps was an infinitely 
 inferior poet to Master Geoffrey, yet there is far 
 more of the real thing in this particular way in 
 Car France est ciuietiere des Ajiglois, than in any 
 poetical compatriot and contemporary of the con- 
 querors of Cressy. In the next century we have, 
 
174 Essays in English 
 
 so far as I know, nothing at all to match the 
 admirable anonymous War-song of Fer- 
 
 , , TT y 1 . 1 i_ WAR SONGS. 
 
 rand de Vaudemont, which may be 
 found in M. Gaston Paris' Chansons Populaires, 
 and other anthologies. The Scotch literary poets 
 are a little better, if not very much ; but if 
 we could attach any definite date to most of 
 the Border and other ballads, we should be able 
 to say when some of the most admirable fighting 
 poetry in the world was written. Most of them, 
 however, are so thoroughly shot and veined with 
 modern touches that no man can tell where to 
 have them. For the actual spirit' of mortal combat 
 it is probably impossible to surpass the two stanzas 
 in " Helen of Kirkconnell." 
 
 As I went down the water side, 
 None but my foe to be my guide, 
 None but my foe to be my guide 
 On fair Kirkconnell Lea. 
 
 I lighted down my sword to draw, 
 I hached him in pieces sma', 
 I hached him in pieces sma', 
 For her sake that died for me ! 
 
 There is real Berserk-gang there : and yet the 
 poem, and even the passage, distinctly shows the 
 influence of the Eighteenth century, to say no 
 more. In its present cast and shape the whole of 
 this ballad-question is a mere labyrinth. I do not 
 know a more disheartening study than that of 
 Professor Child's magnificent volumes, with their 
 
Literatitre, iySo-iS6o 175 
 
 endless variants, which make a canonical text 
 impossible. Therefore, despite the ad- 
 mirable fighting that there is in them, 
 they will help us little. 
 
 Skelton Skeltonises in this as in other styles ; 
 but the Ballad of the Doughty Duke of Albany and 
 his Hundred Thousand Scots is a mere piece of 
 doggrel brag, utterly unworthy of the singer of 
 My Maiden Isabel or even of the author of Elinor 
 Rumniing. The honour of composing the first 
 modern English war-song has been recently, and 
 I think rightly, given to Humphrey Giffard, whose 
 Posy of Gilloflowers, published in 1580, just before 
 the overture of the " melodious bursts that fill The 
 spacious times of great Elizabeth," contains a 
 quaint and rough but really spirited piece, To 
 Soldiers, in this remarkable metre : 
 
 The time of war is come, prepare your corslet, spear and 
 shield ; 
 
 Methinks I hear the drum strike doleful marches to the 
 
 field, 
 Tantara, tantara the trumpets sound, which makes men's 
 
 hearts with joy abound : 
 
 The warning guns are heard afar and every thing announces 
 
 war. 
 Serve God, stand stout : bold courage brings this gear 
 
 about ; 
 Fear not, forth run : faint heart fair lady never won. 
 
 This, it must be admitted needs a good deal of 
 licking into shape as regards form, — as regards 
 spirit it has the root of the matter in it. Nor does 
 
176 Essays in English 
 
 the quaint prosaic alloy which so frequently affects 
 the English as compared with the 
 Scotch ballad prevent TJie Brave Lord 
 Willoughby from being a most satisfactory docu- 
 ment. The businesslike statement how, after that 
 unluxurious meal of dead horses and puddle-water, 
 
 Then turning to the Spaniards 
 A thousand more they slew, 
 
 is no doubt destitute enough of the last indefinable 
 touch which can transform words quite as simple 
 and inornate into perfect poetry. But it misses it 
 very narrowly, and almost provides a substitute by 
 its directness and force. 
 
 I do not know, however, that the real joy of 
 the thing is to be found anywhere before that 
 wondrous Battle of Agincoiirt to the brave Cambro- 
 Britons and their Harp, which Michael Drayton, 
 an Englishman of Englishmen and a poet whose 
 enormous versatility and copiousness have caused 
 him to be rated rather too low than too high, 
 produced in the early years of the seventeenth 
 century. With the very first lines of it the fit 
 reader must feel that there is no mistake possible 
 about this fellow : 
 
 Fair stood the wind for France 
 When we our sails advance, 
 Nor now to prove our chance 
 
 Longer would tarry : 
 But putting to the main, 
 At Caux, the mouth of Seine, 
 With all his martial train 
 
 Landed King Harry. 
 
Literature^ ly 80- 1860 177 
 
 There is no precedent for that dash and rush of 
 metre ; and if we look for followers it 
 
 WAR SONGS. -11 1 1 , ., ^, 
 
 will bear the contrast as happily. The 
 most graceful and scholarly poet of America, the 
 greatest master of harmonies born in England 
 during the present century, have imitated it. If 
 The Skeleton in Armour is delightful, and The 
 Charge of the Light Brigade (with its slight change 
 of centre of gravity in the rhythm) consummate, 
 what shall be said of this original of both t I 
 know an enthusiast who declared that he would 
 have rather written the single line " Lopped the 
 French lilies " than any even in English poetry 
 except a few of Shakespeare's. This was doubt- 
 less delirium, though not of the worst kind. But 
 the intoxication of the whole piece is almost un- 
 matched. The blood stirs all through as you read : 
 
 With Spanish yew so strong 
 Arrows a cloth-yard long 
 That like to serpents stung 
 
 Piercing the weather : 
 None from his fellow starts, 
 But playing manly parts 
 And like true English hearts 
 
 Stuck close together. 
 
 I always privately wish that he had written Shot 
 close together, but why gild the lily } Still better 
 is that gorgeous stanza of names : 
 
 Warwick in blood did wade, 
 Oxford the foe invade, 
 And cruel slaughter made 
 Still as they ran up : 
 M 
 
178 Essays in English 
 
 Suffolk his axe did ply, 
 Beaumont and Willoughby 
 
 , . , , M WAR SONGS. 
 
 Bare them right doughtily, 
 Ferrers and Fanhope. 
 
 For some time it seemed as though the question 
 with which the poem closes : 
 
 Oh ! when shall English men 
 With such acts fill a pen ? 
 
 was to be answered rather by the acts than by 
 the pen. As few songs as triumphs wait on a 
 cival war, and though Montrose might have done 
 the thing he did not. The dishonest combats of 
 the seventeenth century had to wait a couple of 
 hundred years for their laureate and then he 
 appeared on the wrong side. For even Mr 
 Browning's Cavalier Tunes are not as good as The 
 Battle of Naseby, which, Cavalier as I am, I wish 
 I could think was " pinchbeck." No man perhaps 
 ever lived who had more of the stuff of a Tyrtaeus 
 in him than Dryden ; but his time gave him 
 absolutely no subjects of an inspiriting nature, and 
 did not encourage him to try any others. The 
 Annus Mtradzlzs is fine enough in all conscience; 
 but Come if you dare^ and parts of Alexayider's 
 Feast show what might have been if the course of 
 events had been more favourable. To tell the 
 honest truth, the cause was generally too bad in 
 those fights with the Dutch, and the fights them- 
 selves (though we very properly call them victories) 
 were too near being defeats, to breathe much 
 vigour into the sacred bard \ while for some fifty 
 
Literature, ij8o-i86o 179 
 
 years of Glorious John's manhood, from the battle 
 of the Dunes to his death, there was 
 
 WAR SONGS. 1 , /. 1 . 1 11 
 
 no land nghtmg that could at once 
 cheer an Englishman and commend itself to a 
 Jacobite. In luckier circumstances Dryden was 
 the very man to have bettered Drayton and an- 
 ticipated Campbell. 
 
 When he was dead there was no more ques- 
 tion of anything of the kind for a very long time. 
 The Angel passage in Mr Addison's poem is 
 undoubtedly a very fine one ; I am exceedingly 
 sorry for any one who doubts or does not see that. 
 But the essence of a war-song or even a war-poem 
 is that it should stir the blood ; and this stirs it just 
 to the extent that is necessary to secure the cro(f)w<;, 
 in the sense of " Bravo," which Martial tells us 
 Roman reciters earned. It was really a pity. 
 Cutts is not such a pretty name as Ferrers or 
 Fanhope ; but "the Salamander" did deeds of 
 arms of which not the greatest of bards need 
 have disdained to be laureate. Blenheim was most 
 undoubtedly a famous victory : the fighting, such 
 as there was of it, at Ramillies was of the best 
 kind ; and as for Malplaquet, it ranks for sheer 
 dingdong figViting, and on a far larger scale, with 
 Albuera or Inkerman. But sing these things our 
 good fathers could not. Yet they tried in all con- 
 science. T.t is a rough, but very sufficient test to 
 take the copious anthology of anthologies which 
 Mr Bullfjn has recently edited in half-a-dozen 
 volumes for the beginning of the seventeenth 
 
i8o Essays in English 
 
 century and the last years of the sixteenth, the 
 collections variously called Musarum 
 
 ^ ,. . - , ^ „ r 1 WAR SONGS. 
 
 Delicice and the State Poems for the 
 middle of seventeenth, and the odd sweeping to- 
 gether of poetry, sculduddery, music, doggrel Verse 
 of Society and what-not which Tom D'Urfey made 
 out of the songs of his time for the end of the 
 Seventeenth and the beginning of the Eighteenth. 
 Tn the first and second divisions we shall find 
 hardly any warlike verse ; the third bristles with it. 
 The six volumes of the Pills to Purge Melan- 
 choly lie beside me as I write, plumed with paper 
 slips which I h3-ve put in them to mark pieces of 
 this sort. The l3adness of them (a few lines of 
 Dryden's, and onS^ or two not his, excepted) is 
 simply astounding, Ven to those who have pretty 
 well fathomed already* the poetic depths of the 
 late Seventeenth and earty Eighteenth centuries. 
 They cover the whole 'period of William of 
 Orange's stout if not succesy^^l fights, and of the 
 almost unparalleled triumphs^'^ of Marlborough ; 
 yet there is never a touch of \ inspiration. The 
 following is on the whole a reallf brilliant speci- 
 men : T 
 
 Health to the Queen ! then straight b!-S^^ 
 
 To Marlborough the Great and to brav ^ Eugene, 
 
 With them let valiant Webb come in, \ 
 
 Who lately performed a wonder. \ 
 
 Then to the ocean an offering make, 
 And boldly carouse to brave Sir John Lea ^' 
 Who with mortar and cannon Mahon did ^^ke 
 
 And made the Pope knock under. ^ 
 
Literattire, ly So- 1860 181 
 
 Here is an effort on Oudenardc: 
 
 WAR SONGS. 
 
 Sing mighty Marlborough's story ! 
 
 Men of the field, 
 
 He passes the shield, 
 And to increase his glory, 
 The French all fly or yield. 
 Vendosme drew out to spite him 
 Th' Household troops to fright him, 
 
 Princes o' the blood 
 
 Got off as best they cou'd 
 And ne'er durst return to fight him. 
 
 Malplaquet inspires a yet nobler strain : 
 
 Mounsieur ! Mounsieur ! Leave ofif Spain ! 
 
 To think to hold it is in vain, 
 
 Thy warriors are too few. 
 
 Thy Martials must be new, 
 
 Worse losses will ensue, 
 
 Then without more ado 
 
 Be wise and call home petite Anjou ! 
 
 At a still earlier period " The two Glorious 
 Victories at Donawert and Hochstet" had stirred 
 up somebody to write, to a tune by Mr Corbet, 
 Pindaricks to this effect : 
 
 Old Lewis, must thy frantic riot 
 
 Still all Europe vex? 
 Methinks 'tis high time to be quiet 
 
 Now at sixty-six. 
 
 There is a little more spirit in a ditty beginning : 
 
 From Dunkirk one night they stole out in a fright — 
 but it is political rather than battailous ; and for 
 
1 82 Essays in Eno^lish 
 
 a purely and wholly deplorable failure of combined 
 loyal and Bacchanalian verse, I hardly 
 know the equal of the following : 
 
 Then welcome from Vigo 
 
 And cudgelling Don Diego, 
 
 With rapscallion 
 
 And plundering the galleoons. 
 Each brisk valiant fellow 
 Fought at Redondellow, 
 
 And those who did meet 
 
 With the Newfoundland fleet. 
 Then for late successes 
 Which Europe confesses 
 At land by our gallant Commanders, 
 The Dutch in strong beer 
 Should be drunk for one year 
 With their Generals' health in Flanders ! 
 
 I do not know how long the reader's patience 
 will hold out against this appalling doggrel, which 
 represents the efforts of the countrymen of Shake- 
 speare and Shelley under the influence of victories 
 which might have made a Campbell of "hoarse 
 Fitzgerald." There is plenty more if any one likes 
 it. I can tell him how the victory over the Turks 
 proved that 
 
 Christians thus with conquest crowned, 
 Conquest with the glass goes round, 
 Weak coffee can't keep its ground 
 Against the force of claret. 
 
 How 
 
 The Duke then to the wood did come 
 
 In hopes Vendosme to meet, 
 When lo ! the Prince of Carignan 
 
 Fell at his Grace's feet. 
 
WAR SONGS. 
 
 Literature, lySo-iSdo 183 
 
 Oh, gentle Duke, forbear ! forbear ! 
 
 Into that wood to shoot. 
 If ever pity moved your Grace 
 
 But turn your eyes and look ! 
 
 This is an extract taken from a delightful ballad in 
 which the historical facts of Oudenarde are blended 
 quaintly with the Babes in the Wood. Then we 
 hear how 
 
 The conquering genius of our isle returns 
 Inspired by Ann the godlike hero burns. 
 
 We are told of Marlborough himself 
 
 Thus as his sprightly infancy was still inured to harms, 
 So was his noble figure still adorned with double charms. 
 
 While the selection may be appropriately finished 
 by the exordium of an indignant bard who cries — 
 
 Ulm is gone. 
 But basely won, 
 And treacherous Bavaria there has buried his renown : 
 
 That stroling Prince 
 Who few years since 
 Was crammed with William's gold I 
 
 Macaulay, who read everything at some time or 
 other, had probably not read these when he wrote 
 on Addison, or he would have selected some of 
 them to point still further the contrast of The 
 Campaign. The poor man who wrote about the 
 " capering beast " was a genius compared to most 
 of the known or unknown authors of these marvel- 
 lous exercitations, which would seem to have been 
 
184 Essays in English 
 
 composed after the effusion of liquor they generally 
 recommend. 
 
 Few glories attended the British arms, 
 on land and in Europe, from the setting of Corporal 
 John's star to the rising of that of " the Duke " ; 
 but the true singer, if he had been anywhere about, 
 might have found plenty of employment with the 
 Navy. Unfortunately he was not, and his sub- 
 stitutes preferred to write Admiral Hosier's Ghost ^ 
 or else melancholy lines like those of Langhorne, 
 which no human being would now remember if 
 Scott had not as a boy remembered them in the 
 presence of Burns. 
 
 This last name brings us to a poet who ought to 
 have sung of war even better than he did. As it 
 is, there is as little mistake possible about Scots 
 Wha Hae, as about Agmcourty or Ye Mariners of 
 England ; while for compressed and undiluted fire 
 it has the advantage of both. It is characteristic, 
 however, of the unlucky rant about freedom which 
 Burns had got into his head, that the " chains and 
 slavery" (which really were very little ones) play 
 an even more prominent part than that pure and 
 generous desire to thrash the person opposed to 
 you, because he is opposed to you, because he is 
 not "your side," which is the true motive of all 
 the best war-songs. This (though in neither 
 example is there equal poetical merit) is more 
 perceptible in the light but capital " I am a Son of 
 Mars " of the Jolly Beggars, and in those delight- 
 ful verses of " Scotch Drink," which so did shock 
 
Litcrahire, iy8o-i86o 185 
 
 the delicate nerves of Mr Matthew Arnold, and so 
 do shock still the sensitive conscience 
 
 WAR SONGS. . , , , , . 1 
 
 of the modern person, who thinks war 
 a dreadful thing, and carnage anything but God's 
 daughter. 
 
 Our chief writer of war-songs, however (for 
 Dibdin's capital songs are not quite such capital 
 poetry), is beyond doubt or question Thomas 
 Campbell ; and a very hard nut is the said 
 Thomas for " scientific " criticism to crack. He 
 certainly belonged to a warlike family of a 
 warlike nation ; but he shared this advantage 
 with some millions of other Scotchmen, and 
 some thousands of other Campbells. His father, 
 whose youngest child he was, and who was 
 sixty-seven when Thomas was born on July 27, 
 1777, was a Glasgow merchant, and he himself 
 began life in a merchant's office. The "estho- 
 psychological" (Heaven save us!) determining 
 cause of his temperament is not precisely or 
 eminently apparent. He was not, as Burns 
 was, of a romantic or adventurous disposition, 
 being all his life a quiet, literary gentleman. 
 He was tolerably prosperous, despite his being 
 an excessively bad arithmetician and husband of 
 his money. He had, after early struggles as a 
 tutor, a copying clerk and otherwise, a nice 
 little pension (1805), a nicer little legacy (nay, 
 several), some lucrative appointments and com- 
 missions. He lived chiefly at Sydenham and 
 Boulogne (where, on June 15, 1844, he died), 
 
1 86 Essays in English 
 
 though on his travels in Germany (in the dividing 
 year of the centuries) he did hear, and 
 
 •^ , 1 . /- 1 . WAR SONGS. 
 
 even perhaps see, shots fired in anger. 
 He also possessed at one period three hundred 
 pounds in bank-notes rolled up in his slippers. He 
 was not ungenerously devoted to port wine, was 
 somewhat less generously not devoted to his 
 poetical rivals, was well looked after by his 
 wife (his cousin Matilda Sinclair) while she lived, 
 and afterwards by a niece. He died on the 
 verge of three score years and ten, if not an 
 exceedingly happy or contented, yet on the whole 
 a sufficiently fortunate man. 
 
 He was especially fortunate in this, that pro- 
 bably no man ever gained so early and kept so 
 long such high literary rank on the strength of 
 so small a literary performance. In the very year 
 of his reaching man's estate, the Pleasures of Hope 
 seated him at once on the Treasury Bench in 
 the contemporary session of the Poets, and un- 
 like most occupants of Treasury Benches, he 
 was never turned off. Many far greater poets 
 appeared during the nearly fifty years which 
 passed between that time and his death ; but 
 they were greater in perfectly different fashions. 
 That what may be called his official, and what 
 may be called his real titles to his position were 
 not the same, may be very freely granted. But 
 he had real titles. The curious thing is that 
 even the official titles were so very modest in 
 volume. Setting his Specimens aside, all his 
 
i 
 
 Literattire, iySo-i86o 187 
 
 literary work (which is not in itself very large) 
 outside the covers of his Poems is as 
 
 WAR SONGS 
 
 nearly as possible valueless. For some 
 considerable time he was a journalist, and in later 
 life he was for some ten years editor of the 
 New Monthly Magazine, with a fair income, and 
 very little to do. In 1806 he compiled The 
 Annals of Great Britai7i frofn the Accession of 
 George II. to the Peace of Amiens, a work I 
 have no doubt of the soundest Whig principles, 
 but one which I confess I have never read. 
 Much later he wrote or compiled divers Lives 
 of Petrarch, of Frederick the Great (tenderly 
 handled as from Whig to Whig in Macaulay's 
 Essay), of Mj's Siddons. He was Perpetual 
 Chairman of the Friends of Poland, and thrice 
 Rector of the University of Glasgow. He thought 
 at least that he originated the University of 
 London. 
 
 The Poems themselves, the work of a long 
 lifetime, do not fill three hundred small pages, 
 and those of them which are really worth much, 
 would not, I think, be very tightly packed in 
 thirty. The Pleasures of Hope itself (published 
 in April 1799, welcomed with extraordinary 
 warmth, and having the good luck to precede 
 by some years the new Renaissance of poetry 
 in England) is beyond doubt the best of that 
 which I should not include. It is one of the 
 very best school exercises ever written ; it has 
 touches which only a school-boy of genius could 
 
1 88 Essays m English 
 
 achieve. But higher than a school exercise it 
 cannot be ranked. The other lone^er 
 
 r i_i .^ r^ ^ J X WAR SONGS. 
 
 poems are far below it. Gertrude of 
 Wyoming (1809) has several famous and a smaller 
 number of excellent lines ; but it is as much of an 
 artificial conglomerate, and as little of an original 
 organism as the Pleasures of Hope, and the choice 
 of the Spenserian stanza is simply disastrous. 
 " Iberian seemed his boot," the boot of the hero to 
 the eyes of the heroine ! To think that a man 
 should, in a stanza consecrated to the very quint- 
 essence of poetical poetry — a stanza in which, 
 far out of its own period and in mid-Eighteenth 
 century, Thomson had written the Castle of 
 Indolence, in which, before Campbell's own death, 
 Mr Tennyson was to write the Lotos Eaters, — 
 deliver himself of the phrase, "Iberian seemed 
 his boot"! 
 
 But by so much as Gertrude of Wyoming is 
 worse than the Pleasures of Hope by as much is 
 Theodric (1824) worse than Gertrude of Wyoming, 
 and the Pilgrim of Glencoe (1842) worse again 
 than Theodric. There are not more than five 
 or six hundred lines, including as usual some 
 good ones, in TJieodric ; but though I have just 
 re-read it before writing this I have only the 
 dimmest idea of what really happens. Theodric 
 makes love to two young women, a most re- 
 prehensible though not uncommon practice, and 
 they both die. One is named Constance and 
 
Literature, ij 80- 1860 189 
 
 the other Julia : and the last lines of Constance's 
 last letter to Theodric are rather prettv. 
 
 WAR SONGS. 01 1 • 1 1 • 1 • r / 
 
 bhe bids him not despair : 
 
 I ask you by our love to promise this 
 
 And kiss these words, where I have left a kiss ; 
 
 The latest from my living lips to yours. 
 
 But they are quite the best in the poem, which 
 is too short to have any narrative interest, and 
 too long to possess any other. Of the Pilgrim 
 of Glcjicoe it is enough to say that the most 
 enthusiastic Campbellites have seldom been able 
 to say a word for it, that it is rather in Crabbe's 
 style than in the author's own, and that Crabbe 
 has not to my knowledge ever written anything 
 so bad as a whole. 
 
 Even when we come to the shorter poems (which 
 were mostly written before Gertrude of Wyoming) 
 almost endless exclusions and allowances have 
 to be made. Campbell has left some exceed- 
 ingly pretty love-songs, not I think very generally 
 known, the best of which are " Withdraw not 
 yet those Lips and Fingers," and " How Delicious 
 is the Winning." But there is no great originality 
 about them, and they are such things as almost 
 any man with a good ear and an extensive know- 
 ledge of English poetry could write nearly as 
 well. Almost everything (I think everything) of 
 his that is really characteristic and really great 
 is comprised in the dozen poems as his works 
 are usually arranged (I quote the Aldine Edition) 
 
190 Essays in English 
 
 between O'Connor's Child and the Soldier's Dream ^ 
 with the addition of the translated song 
 of Hybrias the Cretan and, if anybody 
 likes, The Last Man. Even here the non- war- 
 like poems cannot approach the war-like ones in 
 merit. The fighting passages of O'Connor's Child 
 itself are much the best. Glenara (which by the 
 way ends with a line of extraordinary imbecility) 
 is not a very great thing except in the single 
 touch, 
 
 Each mantle unfolding a dagger displayed. 
 
 The Exile of Erin is again merely pretty, and 
 I should not myself care to preserve a line of 
 Lord Ullin's Daughter except the really magni- 
 ficent phrase 
 
 And in the scowl of Heaven each face 
 Grew dark as they were speaking. 
 
 As a whole the Lines written 071 revisiting a 
 Scene in Argyleshire^ with their admirable picture 
 of the forsaken garden, seem to me the best 
 thing Campbell did out of the fighting vein. 
 
 But in that vein how different a man was he ! 
 As a mere boy he had tried it, or something like 
 it, feebly enough in The Wounded Hussar ; and 
 he showed what he could do in it, even when the 
 subject did not directly touch his imagination, 
 by his spirited paraphrase of the Hybrias frag- 
 ment. His devotion to the style (which appears 
 even in pieces ostensibly devoted to quite different 
 
Literaticre, ly 80- 1860 191 
 
 subjects such as the Ode to Winter) is all the 
 more remarkable that Campbell was a 
 
 WAR SONGS. 
 
 staunch member of that political party 
 in England which hated the war. But it was a 
 clear case of over-mastering idiosyncrasy. It is an 
 odd criticism of the late Mr Allingham's (to be 
 matched, however, with several others in his re- 
 marks on Campbell) that the selection in the 
 Specimens of Thomas Penrose's poem beginning 
 
 Faintly brayed the battle's roar, 
 Distant down the hollow wind, 
 Panting terror fled before, 
 Wounds and death were left behind, 
 
 shows " how tolerant a true poet like Campbell 
 could be of the most frigid and stilted conven- 
 tionality of diction." Most certainly he could be 
 so tolerant ; but his tolerance here had clearly 
 nothing to do with the style. He was led away, 
 as nearly everybody is, by his sympathy with the 
 matter. Indeed before long Mr AUingham 
 recollects himself, and says, " Battle subjects 
 always took hold on him." They certainly did. 
 
 I do not care much for The Soldier's Dream as 
 a whole. Most of it is trivial and there is an 
 astonishing disregard of quantity throughout, any 
 three syllables being apparently thought good 
 enough to make an anapaest. Indeed Campbell 
 was at no time very commendable for attention 
 either as a metrist or as a rhymester. In the 
 latter capacity he is often shocking, and in both he 
 
192 Essays in English 
 
 wants the aid oi furor pocticus to enable him to 
 surmount his difficulties. But the open- 
 
 . ^ WAR SONGS. 
 
 mg stanza of the Dream is grand. 
 
 Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lowered, 
 And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky; 
 And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered, 
 The weary to sleep and the wounded to die. 
 
 Pictorially and poetically both, that is about as 
 good as it can be. LochieVs Warning has no 
 single passage as good : but it is far better as a 
 whole, despite some of the same metrical short- 
 comings. The immortal " Field of the dead 
 rushing red on the sight," the steed that "fled 
 frantic and far " (and inspired thereby one of the 
 finest passages of another Thomas), the hackneyed 
 but admirable "All plaided and plumed in their 
 tartan array," the " coming events " that a man 
 may admire but hardly now quote — these and 
 other things would save any copy of verses. 
 
 But still nothing can touch the immortal Three 
 — Hohenlindeity The Battle of the Baltic^ and Ye 
 Mariners of E7tgland. What does it matter that 
 no one of them is without a blemish, that Ye Mar- 
 iners is almost a paraphrase of a good old bal- 
 lad by good old Martin Parker, king of the ballad- 
 mongers of England, that (as a certain kind of critic 
 is never tired of telling us) there is not so much as 
 a vestige of a wild and stormy steep at Elsinore, 
 that to say " sepulchr^^," as we evidently must 
 in Hohenlinden, is trying if not impossible. 
 
Liieraturc, ij 80- 1860 193 
 
 Campbell, who is in prose a little old-fashioned 
 perhaps and slightly stilted, but on stilts 
 with the blood in them if I may say so, 
 who gave his reasons for thinking the launch 
 of a line-of-battle ship " one of the sublime ob- 
 jects of artificial life" deserved to write the Battle 
 of tlie Baltic. And he did more, Sempronius, he 
 wrote it. There is not a stanza of it in which 
 you may not pick out something to laugh or 
 to cavil at if you choose. There is not one, at 
 least in its final form, which does not stir the 
 blood to fever-heat. Ye Mariners of England is 
 much stronger in the negative sense of freedom 
 from faults, only the last stanza being in any 
 serious degree vulnerable ; and the felicity of the 
 rhythm is extraordinary. The famous second and 
 third stanzas, " The spirits of your fathers " and 
 "Britannia needs no bulwarks," are as nearly as 
 possible faultless. Matter and manner could not 
 be better wedded, nor could the whole fire and 
 force of English patriotism be better managed so 
 as to inform and vivify metrical language. 
 
 But I am not certain that if I were not an 
 Englishman I should not put Hohe?ilinden highest 
 of the three. It is less important "to us" it 
 appeals less directly to our thought and sentiment, 
 it might have been written by a man of any 
 country, — always provided that his country had 
 such a language to write in. Also it has a few of 
 Campbell's besetting slips. " Scenery " is weak in 
 the second stanza, and I could witness the deletion 
 
 N 
 
194 Essays in English 
 
 of the seventh altogether with some relief and 
 satisfaction. " Sepulchre " is so exceed- 
 ingly good in itself that the sense that 
 we ought to call it " sepulchree " as aforesaid is 
 additionally annoying (though by the way Glorious 
 John would have called upon us to do the same 
 thing without the slightest hesitation). But the 
 poem is imitated from nothing and so stands 
 above Ye Mariners ; its blemishes are trifling in 
 comparison with the terrible 
 
 Then the might of England flushed 
 To anticipate the scene. 
 
 (where the last line except with much good will 
 to help it is sheer and utter nonsense) and other 
 things in The Battle of the Baltic, Moreover the 
 concerted music of its rolling metre is unsurpassed. 
 The triplets of each stanza catch up and carry 
 on the sweep of the fourth line of the preceding 
 in a quite miraculous manner ; and that mixed 
 poetic and pictorial touch which has been noted 
 in Campbell appears nowhere so well. Although 
 to me, as to everybody, it has been familiar ever 
 since I was about seven years old, I never can 
 get over my surprise at the effect of so hackneyed 
 a word as " artillery." Indeed I knew a paradoxer 
 once who maintained that this was due to the 
 inspiration which made Campbell prefix " red " ; 
 " For," said he, " we are accustomed to see the 
 Artillery in blue." 
 
 And it would be improper to leave this subject j 
 
Literature, iySo-iS6o 195 
 
 of Campbell — almost if not quite our greatest war- 
 sin"-er — without another observation. 
 
 WAR SONGS 
 
 He was not only far below his best self in 
 all other departments of poetry, but he had little 
 taste for it in others. Though he lived till the nine- 
 teenth century was nearly half over, though he was 
 junior to all the great men who founded nine- 
 teenth century poetry, he was himself only a 
 belated son of the eighteenth century. He was 
 an apprentice of the Popian tradition to the last, 
 and never took out his freedom save in the single 
 department of the war-song. 
 
 Nearly a hundred years, more fertile in good 
 poetry and bad verse than any similar period in 
 the history even of England, have passed since 
 in the course of a few months Campbell sketched, 
 if he did not finish, all his three masterpieces. 
 The poetry and the verse both have done their 
 share of battle-writing. Of the great poets who 
 were Campbell's contemporaries and superiors 
 none quite equalled him in this way ; though Scott 
 ran him hard, and Byron, never perhaps writing 
 a wdiV-song of the first merit, abounded in war- 
 poetry of a very high excellence. Scott could do it 
 better than he could do almost anything else in 
 verse; and if volume and degrees of merit are 
 taken together the prize must be his. Nothing 
 can beat the last canto of Marmion as narrative 
 of the kind ; few things can equal the regular 
 lyrics of which Bonnie Dundee if not the best is 
 the best known, and the scores of battle-snatches 
 
196 Essays in English 
 
 of which Elspeth Cheyne's version of the battle 
 of Harlaw may rank first. The Lakers 
 
 , -lit WAR SONGS 
 
 were by temperament rather than by 
 principle unfitted for the style : though if Cole- 
 ridge, in the days of The Ancient Mariner^ 
 had tried it we should have had some great 
 thing. Shelley, though a very pugnacious per- 
 son, thought fighting wicked ; and Keats, though 
 he demolished the butcher, did not sing of 
 war. Moore is not at his best in such things. 
 In fact they have a knack of being written by 
 poets otherwise quite minor, such as Wolfe of 
 the not undeservedly famous Burial of Sir John 
 MoorCy a battle-piece surely rather than a mere 
 dirge. 
 
 The Epigoni of the great school of 1800 — 1830 
 have been on the whole more fruitful than that 
 school itself, though nothing that they have done 
 can quite touch Campbell in fire, and though 
 they have never surpassed Drayton in a sort of 
 buoyant and unforced originality which excludes 
 all idea of the mere literary copy of verses. One 
 of the earliest and certainly one of the best of 
 them in this kind (for Peacock's immortal War 
 Song of Dinas Vawr is too openly satirical) was 
 Macaulay. I wish I had space here to destroy 
 once for all (it could easily be done to the satis- 
 faction of any competent tribunal) the silly pre- 
 judice against Macaulay's verse which, as a result 
 of an exaggerated following of the late Mr Arnold 
 
Literatiire, ly 80-1 860 197 
 
 by criticasters, is still, among criticasters, common. 
 In Mr Arnold himself I suspect the 
 
 WAR SONGS . ,. ^ 1 1 1 
 
 prejudice to have been partly mere 
 crotchet (for great critic as he was in his day he 
 was full of crotchets), partly perhaps due to 
 some mere personal dislike of the kind which 
 Macaulay very often excited in clever and touchy 
 young men, but partly also and perhaps princi- 
 pally to the facts that Mr Arnold belonged to 
 a generation which affected to look on war as 
 a thing barbarous and outworn, and that he 
 himself had no liking for and was absolutely 
 unskilled in war-verse. Sohrab and Rustuni is 
 in parts and especially in its famous close a 
 very fine poem indeed ; but of the actual fighting 
 part I can not say much. 
 
 Still if Mr Arnold really disliked the Lays of 
 Ancient Rome he was quite right to say so ; it 
 is not easy to be equally complimentary to those 
 who affect to dislike them because they think it 
 the right thing to do. Tried by the standard of 
 impartial criticism Macaulay is certainly not a 
 great poet, nor except in this one line a poet 
 at all. Even in this line his greatness is of the 
 second not of the first order, for the simple reason 
 that it is clearly derivative. " No Sir Walter, 
 no Lays " is not a critical opinion ; it is a de- 
 monstrable fact. Granting so much, I do not 
 see how sane criticism can refuse high, very high, 
 rank to the said Lays^ and the smaller pieces of 
 
198 Essays in English 
 
 the same kind such as Ivry and Naseby^ and those 
 much less known but admirable verses 
 
 1.1 ,1111 1.1 1 WAR SONGS 
 
 which tell darkly what happened 
 
 When the crew with eyes of flame brought the ship without 
 a name 
 
 Alongside the Last Buccaneer. 
 
 For the test of this kind of verse is much simpler 
 and more unerring than that of any other. If in 
 the case of a considerable number of persons of 
 different ages, educations, ranks, and so forth, it 
 induces a desire to walk up and down the room, to 
 shout, to send their fists into somebody else's face, 
 then it is good and there is no more to be said. 
 That it does not cause these sensations in others is 
 no more proof of its badness than it is a proof that 
 a match is bad because it does not light when you 
 rub it on cotton wool. 
 
 The still common heresy on this subject has 
 made it necessary to dwell a little thereon. The 
 great mass of Victorian war-poetry it is only 
 possible to pass as it were in review by way rather 
 of showing how much there is and how good than 
 of criticising it in detail. Tennyson was excellent 
 at it. Some otherwise fervent admirers of his 
 are I believe dubious about The Charge of the 
 Light Brigade ; I have myself no doubt whatever, 
 though it is unequal. Still more unequal are The 
 Revenge and Lucknow, But the quasi-refrain of 
 the latter 
 
 And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew 
 
Liter attire, lySo-iSdo 199 
 
 is surpassed for the special merit of the kind by no 
 line in the lans^uap-e, thousfh it is run 
 
 WAR SONGS 00^ o 
 
 hard by the passage in the former, 
 beginning 
 
 And the sun went down and the stars came out far over the 
 summer sea. 
 
 There are flashes and sparks of the same fire all 
 over the last Laureate's poems, as in the splendid 
 
 Clashed with his fiery few and won 
 
 -9 
 
 of the Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wel- 
 lington, or the still finer distich 
 
 And drunk delight of battle with my peers 
 Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy 
 
 and the first stanza of Sir Galahad and a score of 
 others. Of Mr Browning's famous Cavalier Tunes 
 already mentioned "Give a Rouse" is the only one I 
 care much for ; the two others are artificial with 
 anything but Cavalier artificiality. Herve Riel if 
 not quite a war-song (albeit the art of judicious 
 running away is art and part of war) has more of 
 the root of the matter in it, ThrougJi the Metidja 
 more still (for all its mannerism, it is the only 
 successful attempt I know to give the very sound 
 and rhythm of cymbals in English verse), and 
 perhaps Prospice, though only metaphorically a 
 fighting-piece, most of all. For, let it be once 
 more repeated, it is the power of exciting the 
 combative spirit in the reader that makes a war- 
 song. 
 
200 Essays in English 
 
 We shall find this power present abundantly in 
 many poets durine^ these last days. In 
 
 , J, , , , . -R/r WAR SONGS 
 
 hardly any department perhaps is Mr 
 Swinburne's too great facility in allowing himself 
 to be mastered by instead of mastering words more 
 to be regretted, for no one has ever excelled him in 
 command both of the rhythms and the language 
 necessary for the style. Even as it is the Song in 
 Time of Order hits the perfectly right note in respect 
 of form and spirit. There is plenty of excellent 
 stuff of the sort in Mr William Morris' Defence of 
 Guinevere — plenty more in his later work. Charles 
 Kingsley ought to have left us something perfect 
 in the manner, and though he never exactly did, 
 TJie Last Buccaneer^ that excellent ballad where 
 
 They wrestled up, they wrestled down, 
 They wrestled still and sore, 
 
 the opening of 
 
 Evil sped the battle-play 
 On the Pope Calixtus' day, 
 
 and the last lines of the Ode to the North-East 
 Wind have all the right touch, the touch which 
 has guided us through this review. That touch 
 is to be found again in Sir Francis Doyle's Return 
 of the Guards, his Private of the Buffs, and most 
 of all in his Red Thread of Honour, one of the 
 most lofty, insolent and passionate things con- 
 cerning this matter that our time has produced. 
 
 But here we are reaching dangerous ground, 
 the ground occupied, and sometimes very well 
 
Literature, iy8o-iS6o 201 
 
 occupied, by younger living writers. It is better 
 to decline this and close the survey. It 
 
 WAR SONGS , , 11 ^ J 
 
 has shown us some excellent, and even 
 super-excellent things, some of surpassing and 
 gigantic badness, a very great deal that is good and 
 very good. I do not think any other language can 
 show anything at all approaching it. Despite the 
 excellence of old French in this kind, and despite 
 the abundant military triumphs of the modern 
 nation, the modern language of France has given 
 next to nothing of merit in it. The Marseillaise 
 itself, really remarkable for the way in which 
 it marries itself to a magnificent tune is, when 
 divorced from that tune, chiefly rubbish. The 
 Germans, — with one imperishable thing, Korner's 
 ScJiwertlied (sometimes sneered at by the same 
 class of persons who sneer at Macaulay) in the 
 pure style, and a few others, such as Heine's Die 
 Grenadiere in the precincts of it — have little that 
 is very remarkable. 
 
 In these and other European languages, so far 
 as I know, you often get war-pictures rendered 
 in verse not ill, but seldom the war-spirit rendered 
 thoroughly in song or snatch. Certain unpleasant 
 ones will tell us that as the fighting power dies 
 down, so the power of singing increases, that 
 "poets succeed better in fiction than in fact," 
 as Mr Waller, both speaker and hearer being 
 persons of humour, observed to his Majesty 
 Charles II. on a celebrated occasion. Luckily, 
 however, that Ballad to the Brave Cavibro-Britons 
 
202 Essays in English Lite7'aHire, lySo-iSdo 
 
 and their Harp, and The Battle of the Baltic will 
 settle this suggestion. It will hardly be 
 contended that the countrymen and con- 
 temporaries of Drayton, that the contemporaries 
 and countrymen of Campbell, had lost the trick of 
 fighting. Look too at Le Brun Pindare and his 
 poem on the Vengeur, a very few years earlier than 
 The Battle of the Baltic itself Le Brun belonged 
 to very much the same school of poetry as the 
 author of The Pleasures of Hope, and I do not 
 know that on the whole he was a very much 
 worse poet. The fictitious story of the Vengeur^ 
 on which he wrote, and which he not at all im- 
 probably believed (as most Frenchmen do to this 
 day) was even fresher than Copenhagen to Camp- 
 bell, and far more exciting. Yet scarcely even 
 those woful contemporaries of Corporal John, from 
 whom I have unfilially drawn the veil, made a 
 more hopeless mess of it than Le Brun. The 
 spirit of all poetry blows where it listeth, but 
 the spirit of none more than of the poetry of 
 war. Let us hold up our hands and be thankful 
 that it has seen fit to blow to us in England such 
 things as Agincotcrt, as Scots Wha Hae, as Ye 
 Mariners of Engla?id, and a hundred others not 
 so far inferior to them. * 
 
 * See Appendix B " Songs of the Crimean War." 
 

 VII. 
 
 MADAME D'ARBLAY. 
 
 There are so many things that are interesting in 
 MME. the life and works of Fanny Burney, that 
 d'arblay. it is difficult for any one to know ** where 
 to begin." Perhaps some smart person may rejoin 
 that it is not necessary to begin at all, inasmuch 
 as one of the acknowledged masters of what the 
 French call "bio-bibliographical " writing made her 
 the subject of a famous essay half a century ago. 
 But, without presumption, this judgment may be 
 disabled. In the first place it is the peculiarity, — 
 some may say the weakness — of critical writing that, 
 though it may contain final things, it never can be 
 as a whole final. Each generation takes its own 
 view, never to be anticipated, and with great diffi- 
 culty, in the absence of actual documents, to be 
 recovered, as to the interesting books and persons 
 of the past. Each deserves that this view should 
 be put on record : none can claim that the record 
 shall be closed. 
 
 And, again, though Macaulay seldom wrote a 
 
 203 
 
204 Essays in English 
 
 more interesting essay than that on Madame 
 D'Arblay, and though it would be ex- mme. 
 ceedingly rash for anyone to enter into d'arblay. 
 competition with him in some points, there are 
 others, in which he is exposed not merely to 
 his well-known besetting sins, but to some special 
 and peculiar objections. It was absurd and 
 almost ignoble of him to call Croker a "bad 
 writer." It was absurd, for Croker was not a 
 bad writer, though he was an ill-conditioned 
 person who had wreaked a very discreditable 
 revenge on an old lady of a great past, an 
 unblemished character, and a very amiable dis- 
 position, for her exceedingly pardonable refusal 
 to put her knowledge of Johnson at his disposal. 
 It was ignoble because, as instructed people then 
 knew, and as everybody knows now, Croker's fault 
 was the fault not of being a bad writer, but of 
 being a good speaker, and having tripped up 
 T. B. Macaulay in the Reform Bill debates more 
 than once. Again, Macaulay's anxiety to vindi- 
 cate the leaders of the Whig party for their per- 
 secution of Hastings is unduly prominent, all the 
 more so because Hastings certainly was not sup- 
 ported in any particularly decided way by the 
 leaders of the Tory party. And for a third com- 
 plaint Macaulay, though he did not originate the 
 exaggeration, exaggerates Miss Burney's sufferings 
 as a dame d' A tours : while he is rather perfunctory 
 and incomplete in his survey of her literary work. 
 To some extent indeed he could not help this, for 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 205 
 
 the old issue of the Diary was not carried to an end 
 MME. when he wrote, and the very delightful 
 d'arblay. Early Diary was not published till some 
 thirty years after his death. As usual, when the 
 critic is a great one, these supplements of informa- 
 tion have not in the least superannuated his work. 
 As usual also they have justified an attempt, with 
 however inferior powers, to supplement that work 
 itself. 
 
 Besides, Macaulay, writing with good will, and 
 " fighting a prize " against a rather ungenerous 
 assailant, has not wholly grappled with the literary 
 peculiarities of the problem, though he has ad- 
 mitted with fair confession, but also with a little 
 avoidance, the astounding declension of Madame 
 D'Arblay's literary talent. Her whole work has 
 never yet, I think, been surveyed. The readers 
 and the critics of the later novels and the Memoirs 
 of Dr Blimey were not acquainted with the charms 
 of the Diary. The devotees of the Diary have 
 very naturally said little or nothing — in some 
 cases I believe they have known little or nothing — 
 of anything but Evelina and Cecilia. In fact, 
 while the Memoirs are not a very common book, 
 Camilla and The Wanderer are now (in any 
 decent condition) very uncommon ones. They were 
 originally printed in large numbers, but they were 
 never reprinted. The copies were worn steadily 
 to death in circulating libraries ; and the result is, 
 that with the help of the recent mania among 
 book-collectors for first editions of novels, good 
 
2o6 Essays in English 
 
 copies of both, especially of The Wanderer^ fetch 
 ridiculous prices. Indeed you may pay a mme. 
 fair number of shillings for copies, which d'arblay. 
 a finical person will find it necessary to read in 
 gloves, of books which possess in the case of 
 Camilla little more than a remnant, and in the 
 case of The Wanderer not so much as a remnant, 
 of genius or even of talent. 
 
 It so happens that, as a result of the order of 
 publication, though not of the dates of writing. 
 Miss Burney's work falls into three natural and 
 excellent sections for criticism. There are first the 
 novels; then the Memoirs of Dr Bitrney ; and 
 lastly, the Diary and Letters early and late, though 
 here the early comes after the late by the accident 
 of posthumous publication. The novels pursue a 
 steady sinking down from excellent to atrocious 
 (for I cannot agree with some that Cecilia exceeds 
 Evelina in anything but bulk) ; the Memoirs drop 
 to a lower depth still ; and then the Diaries rise 
 to perhaps a higher height than that at which the 
 novels began. It is unfortunate, doubtless, that 
 the best work should be in fact all contemporaneous 
 and all early. But it is fair to say that even in 
 the latest written passages of the Dia^y and Letters, 
 happy touches meet us which may be looked for 
 absolutely in vain in the much earlier Wanderer 
 and Memoirs of Dr Burney. 
 
 Madame D'Arblay is so inimitable a historian 
 of her own life, it has been so well dealt with by 
 Macaulay, and it is in its general outline so com- 
 
Literature, iySo-i86o 207 
 
 monly known that there is no great need to 
 MME. dwell at any very great length on it 
 d'arblay. iicre, though certain points may require 
 notice. She was born at Lynn on the 13th of 
 June 1752 — a fact for the discovery of which 
 Croker took unnecessary trouble, and for the 
 revelation of which he received, as was meet, 
 unnecessary abuse. There is not the slightest 
 evidence that Fanny ever endeavoured to con- 
 ceal her acre : thous^h the admitted childishness of 
 her appearance made people think her younger 
 than she was. And so far from her having ever 
 attempted to represent Evelina as the work of a 
 "girl of seventeen," we have her own distinct state- 
 ment, which none but a fool could misunderstand, 
 and none but a churl affect to misunderstand, that 
 her heroine is the " girl of seventeen " and that she, 
 the novelist, is "past" that interesting age. Her 
 father was the Historian of Music, latterly Organist 
 to Chelsea Hospital, and the friend of the best men 
 of his time. One of her brothers was an officer of 
 Cook's, and later as " Admiral " Burney the friend 
 of Southey, Coleridge, and especially Lamb; an- 
 other was a scholar justly renowned for Greek in 
 the day of Porson. Her sisters were all clever, and 
 one of them was herself a novelist. There are 
 references in the Diary proper, and full ones in 
 the Early Diary, to Fanny's backwardness, shyness, 
 and so forth as a girl and young woman. But she 
 was always scribbling ; she was in a singularly 
 stimulating society, and she published Evelina in 
 
2o8 Essays in English 
 
 a clandestine sort of way (1778), not indeed at 
 "seventeen," but at not quite twenty- mme. 
 six. Then she became a lioness, and d'arblay. 
 remained so; Cecilia (1782) bringing her more 
 fame, and (which Evelina had not done), some 
 money.* Later still came the famous incident of 
 her becoming assistant Keeper of the Robes to 
 Queen Charlotte (1786) in which employment she 
 abode five years, pined, and grew positively ill. 
 
 A great deal of nonsense has been, in my humble 
 judgment, written about this episode. Macaulay, 
 no lover of kings, especially Tory ones, very hand- 
 somely acquits George the Third ; but he is re- 
 morselessly severe on Queen Charlotte. Others 
 have involved the royal family generally in con- 
 demnation \ and almost everybody, from Macaulay 
 himself downwards, has lamented the loss of im- 
 mortal works during the period, and put down the 
 subsequent drying up of Miss Burney's genius to 
 its evil effect. Let us (in the greatest words, never 
 to be hackneyed however often quoted, of her 
 greatest friend) " clear our minds of cant." The 
 offer of the appointment was, no doubt, a mistake 
 of good nature, and its acceptance was one of bad 
 judgment. Indeed, it seems to me that Dr Burney, 
 to please whom Fanny accepted it against her 
 wish, has never had his due measure of blame. 
 Despite his amiability he seems always to have 
 
 * Macaulay had heard this money put at ;i^2000, which is large ; 
 a letter printed later by Mrs Ellis from Charlotte Burney reduces 
 it to £,1^0, which seems unbelievably small. 
 
LiterattcrCy iy8o-i86o 209 
 
 been rather a silly man, as indeed is not obscurely 
 MME. hinted in the oxymel of Mrs Thrales' 
 d'arblay. verses on him, and as is established by the 
 fact of his not only writing a poem on astronomy 
 and pestering Herschel about it, but habitually 
 keeping a doggrel diary after a fashion common in 
 his day, and pardonable enough to schoolboys and 
 undergraduates, but not so pardonable in elderly 
 professional men. On this occasion, too, he was, 
 I fear, not merely silly, but selfish. It was the 
 dream of his life — a dream already once or twice 
 disappointed — to be " Master of the King's Band ; " 
 and he evidently thought that if his daughter were 
 close about the Royal person, he would secure this 
 coveted post. It is satisfactory that he did not. 
 
 As to the Queen — for the King, as we have seen, 
 is acquitted by a hostile judge — there are not so 
 many excuses required for her as seems to be 
 generally thought, and there are many more avail- 
 able than are required. It is equally history and 
 human nature that royal personages, whether their 
 royalty be political or metaphorical, should be 
 apt to think that the honour of serving them is far 
 more than sufficient recompense for the pains of it. 
 But this need not be counted. Queen Charlotte had 
 been accustomed to the slavish submission paid 
 to German Transparencies and Serenities much 
 humbler in rank than an English Queen. She 
 knew perfectly well that hundreds of ladies in 
 Germany and France, and dozens in England, 
 would have gone on their knees for the place. 
 
 O 
 
2IO Essays in English 
 
 She had the want of understanding of physical 
 weakness, which is far too common in mme. 
 physically strong people, be they queens d'arblay. 
 or not. Part of Miss Burney's sufferings was 
 due to their Majesties' natural attachment to 
 Mrs Schwellenberg, who, old cat as she was,* 
 was intensely faithful ; and part to her own failure 
 to assert herself and the equality which it would 
 seem she titularly held. The restrictions of 
 visitors and so forth, which are so bitterly com- 
 plained of in the Diary, were almost unavoidable 
 in a household which tried above all things to 
 avoid the licence of the two previous reigns and 
 of the Prince of Wales's establishment. The parsi- 
 mony was not shown to Miss Burney only. 
 
 But the important question for posterity is 
 whether this residence at Court really did as it 
 is pretended, "dry her vein" of novel writing, 
 and this will be best treated later ; it is enough to 
 say for the present that facts and probabilities are 
 equally against it. 
 
 When she was released (i79i),t the interesting 
 
 * Much may be forgiven to "Peter Pindar," for the way in 
 which, chiefly by anticipation and certainly in ignorance, he 
 avenged Fanny of **Cerbera" in some of the bitterest and most 
 amusing of his satires. 
 
 t The recently published Memoirs of Mrs Pappendick, who 
 some time after Fanny's day occupied the inferior position of 
 ** Wardrobe Woman," assert that it was a case of dismissal rather 
 than of resignation, and that the Queen was displeased at Miss 
 Burney's being always writing when her bell rang. Mrs Ellis has 
 had no difficulty in pointing out that this is irreconcilable, not 
 only with Fanny's own account, but with certain facts, It is, 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 211 
 
 part of her life to others was practically over, 
 MME. though the most interesting part of it 
 d'arblay. |-q herself was yet to begin. In the 
 society of her friends, the Lockes of Norbury 
 Park, she met an elderly and respectable hnigr^, 
 the Chevalier D'Arblay, who had no money, and 
 whose attractions generally were not very clear 
 except to the eyes of love. They married (1793) 
 — one suspects M. D'Arblay to have been a 
 rather poor though probably no unamiable kind 
 of creature — on nothing but the little pension 
 which the Queen had given Frances when she 
 left Court ; and the Chevalier took to garden- 
 ing and "invested the apartments with imper- 
 ceptible cupboards," as his wife says in the un- 
 believable English of her later times. A baby 
 — Alexander, who afterwards went to Cambridge, 
 was heard of by Macaulay, his six years junior, as 
 a rather remarkable mathematician, took orders in 
 the Church of England, and died three years before 
 his mother in 1837 — was born in 1794. Then 
 Madame D'Arblay wrote Camilla, which was 
 published in the first place by subscription with 
 great success, and brought her in some three 
 thousand pounds, but kept no hold on the public. 
 When Napoleon's power was established, M. 
 D'Arblay returned to France and obtained a civil 
 post ; but towards the end of the Tyranny his 
 
 however, likely enough to have been a back-stairs tradition founded 
 upon, or fostered by, some ill-tempered remark of the Schwellen- 
 berg's. 
 
212 Essays in English 
 
 wife and child took the opportunity to escape to 
 England. He had better luck under mme. 
 the Restoration than under the Empire, d'arblay. 
 but did not stay long in France, and returning to 
 England, died at Bath in 1818. Meanwhile his 
 wife had brought out the terrible failure of The 
 Wanderer (which, however, was widely sold before 
 people found out how bad it was), and in the 
 same year (18 14) lost her father. Not much is 
 recorded of her later years by others, except a 
 visit from Sir Walter Scott. She died aged 
 eighty-eight on the sixth of January 1840, hav- 
 ing brought out the unlucky Memoirs of her father 
 in 1832, her eightieth year. 
 
 Evelina delectable ; Cecilia admirable ; Camilla 
 estimable; The Wanderer impossible ; The Memoirs 
 of Dr Burney inconceivable ; the Diary and Letters^ 
 whether original or "early," unequal, but at their 
 best seldom equalled ; — this might serve in the 
 snip-snap and flashy way for a short criticism of 
 Madame D'Arblay's work. But that work is not 
 either in its merits or its defects to be polished off 
 so unceremoniously. 
 
 The special merits of Evelina and their source 
 may be found indicated with remarkable felicity 
 though with no intended application to Miss 
 Burney in a very unlikely place, the opening of 
 Ernest Maltravers^ or rather in the preface of 
 1840, which the author prefixed thereto. Speaking 
 of Pelhafn, Lord Lytton (or, as it is more natural 
 to call him in connection with these early works, 
 
Literature, iySo-i86o 213 
 
 Bulwer) says that " it has the faults and perhaps 
 MMB. the merits natural to a very early age, 
 d'arblay. -vvhen the novelty of life itself quickens 
 the apprehension, when we see distinctly and repre- 
 sent vividly what lies on the surface of the world, 
 and when, half sympathising with the follies we 
 satirise, there is a gusto in our paintings which 
 atones for their exaggeration. As we grow older 
 we observe less, we reflect more : and like Franken- 
 stein we dissect in order to create." We shall find, 
 I think, that this passage — one of many that show 
 in the author a critical faculty with which he is too 
 seldom credited, and which he certainly did not 
 bestow on his own work so often as he might — 
 supplies a tolerably complete key to Madame 
 D'Arblay's weakness as well as to her strength : 
 and indeed (certain things being added) explains 
 the amazing inequality of her work. But for the 
 present we are only concerned with the positive 
 side of it, and the application is certainly very 
 complete. For all the ungraciousness of the 
 Crokerian chronology, Evelina was written vir- 
 tually at a very early age : for Fanny Burney 
 was admittedly a very backward child, with a 
 haphazard and irregular education which made 
 her less accomplished in the ordinary sense at six 
 and twenty than more regularly trained misses 
 at sixteen. She began, moreover, to scribble very 
 early in actual years ; and though most of these 
 early attempts perished in the flames, we know 
 that Evelma was connected with one of them, 
 
214 Essays in English 
 
 and it would be contrary to all literary ex)eri- 
 ence if part of it was not written as mmi 
 early as they were. At any rate, nothing d'arbiw. 
 can depict more exactly and appropriately tian 
 these words of Bulwer's the special merits of the . 
 book — the quick observation, the distinct si^t, [ 
 the vivid presentation of surface things, and fina'^e 
 the " gusto " — obsolete but excellent word, whiie 
 perhaps has dropped out of use because t'r. 
 thing to which it applies has dropped out of 
 experience. " Gusto " was the reigning attribute 
 — engoue^nent they called it in France — character- 
 istic of the eighteenth century : it has steadily de- 
 clined in the nineteenth. 
 
 What admirable subjects of experience Fanny 
 had, the diaries sixty and a hundred years later 
 have amply told the world : and Macaulay has 
 summed them up in one of his famous and favour- 
 ite show passages. It is still not easily intelligible 
 why Dr Burney, with all his amiability and talent, 
 all the fancy of the time from the king down- 
 wards for music, and all the advantage that his 
 association with the charmed circle of Johnson 
 and Burke and Reynolds gave him, should with his 
 extremely modest position (he was neither more 
 nor less than a music master), his scanty fortune, 
 and his poky house in St Martin's Street, have 
 become such a pet of society. But he certainly 
 was a pet of it, and his daughter had the entree 
 to the very best as well as the bluest of London 
 sets, even before she made herself a new key to 
 
Literature, ij So- 1860 215 
 
 them by her work. In that work, too, we may note 
 MME. that half sympathy of which Bulwer also 
 d'arblay. speaks. Miss Burney is a satirist to 
 some extent or she could not be so amusing as she 
 is : but it is very small and very good-natured satire. 
 If we compare her with her famous sisters or rather 
 nieces in the next generation we shall find nothing 
 in her of the inexorable justice which has been 
 called cruelty in Miss Austen, of the severity, 
 which sometimes comes near to savagery, of Miss 
 Ferrier. She is even more lenient to her puppets 
 than Miss Edgeworth herself, though she may 
 seem to this generation too tolerant of some 
 things in that rougher society both as she repre- 
 sents them in fiction, and as she records them in 
 her actual experience.* 
 
 There is avowedly very little art in the book, 
 and its characters, like its composition, remind 
 us of the so-called humour-comedy of the time 
 between Jonson and Wycherley, the principles 
 of which had frequently been adopted by novel 
 writers, even such great ones as Smollett. Sporadic 
 eccentricities, accumulated more or less anyhow, 
 form a catalogue which does as a matter of fact 
 carry the reader from beginning to end of the 
 story, but which exhibits hardly the slightest 
 trace of regular plan. The " anagnorisis " of 
 Evelina at the end is one of the very weakest of 
 
 * Cf. particularly the atrocious conduct of the Packingtons at 
 Westwood to poor " Lilies and Roses." — Miss W. — in the Early 
 Diary. 
 
2i6 Essays m English 
 
 such things (which are rather apt to be weak), 
 and the only excuse for Mr Villars and mme. 
 Mrs Selwyn in not having long before d'arblay. 
 softened that "reed painted like iron," Sir John 
 Belmont, is to be found in the fact that Mr Villars 
 throughout his letters shows himself chiefly a fool, 
 and that Mrs Selwyn is represented as chiefly a 
 shrew. Evelina herself pants with propriety, and 
 blushes becomingly : and Lord Orville is not more 
 of a stick than most of his kind. But the outrageous 
 practical jokes of Captain Mirvan on the hapless 
 old harridan Duval and her more hapless because 
 more respectable French friend are overdone, 
 and have no sort of connection with the story, 
 while Sir Clement Willoughby's wildness is shock- 
 ingly tame. Yet all these faults are far more 
 than atoned for by the youthful zest and fresh- 
 ness of the general picture, by the liveliness with 
 which the incidents, desultory as they are, pick 
 up and succeed each other, and above all, by the 
 incomparable sketches of the Branghtons and 
 Mr Smith. In Poland Street, where the Burneys 
 had lived before moving to Queen's Square, and 
 then to Sir Isaac Newton's house just south of 
 Leicester Square, they seem to have associated 
 with a rather lower class of neighbours than later, 
 and Frances used her models royally. It cannot 
 be said that she is not at home with the upper 
 classes : she not only knew but could draw 
 gentlemen and ladies. Her keen as well as kind 
 Daddy Crisp was perfectly right in ejaculating in 
 
Literature, ly 80-1 860 2 1 7 
 
 reference to some epistolary " conversation-piece " 
 MME. of hers: "If specimens of this kind had 
 d'arblay. bgei-j preserved of the different Tons 
 that have succeeded each other for twenty centuries 
 last past, how interesting they would have been." 
 But Fanny was more than a mere 7^d7«-painter, 
 her best characters are more than gentlemen and 
 ladies : they are immortals, as perhaps no others 
 of hers are, with the doubtful exception of Sir 
 Sedley Clarendel, the chief spot of brightness in 
 the respectable blank of Camilla. 
 
 With all my sense of its defects, I never read 
 Evelina (and I have read it two or three times 
 at least during the last decade or so, as well as 
 often earlier) without delight. Of Cecilia I can only 
 borrow the famous libel on marriage, and say 
 that to me at least " it is good, but it is not de- 
 lightful." One feels immediately the presence of 
 a much more elaborate effort, of a much maturer 
 art, than can be found in Evelifta. Burneians 
 have always differed as to the tradition that 
 Johnson gave direct assistance. It is a matter 
 purely of tradition and of internal evidence, and 
 Johnson himself appears to have said (which does 
 not settle the matter) that he had never seen it 
 till it was printed. But it is fair to remember 
 that Macaulay, who was not only a good critic 
 but had access to stores of oral information long 
 since closed, was in favour of it ; and I own that 
 I agree with Macaulay. However, even if we 
 leave this open, it is impossible not to note the 
 
2i8 Essays in English 
 
 difference certain to exist, and existing, between 
 a book written absolutely without skilled mme. 
 censors and published anyhow, and one d'arblay. 
 deliberately composed under the eyes of two skilled 
 scholars such as Dr Burney and Daddy Crisp : 
 with a floating atmosphere, leaving Johnson out, of 
 literary friends from Burkes and Windhams down to 
 Murphys and Malones. It is not, I think, known 
 who suggested the extension of scale to the enor- 
 mous limits, or nearly so, which Richardson had in- 
 duced readers to tolerate if not to expect. Perhaps 
 it was the booksellers — which seems all the more 
 likely as Miss Burney always clung to the five 
 volumes afterwards. For myself I own that, after 
 the second volume or thereabouts, I find Cecilia 
 rather difficult to read. The introduction of the 
 girl to town has much of the liveliness of Evelina : 
 it was a theme evidently congenial : and though 
 many of the details are exaggerated, especially 
 the cockneyisms of Mr Briggs (the Branghtons, 
 alas ! are already far away), though the machina- 
 tions and melodrama of the Harrels might be 
 toned down with great advantage both to pro- 
 bability and pleasure, the whole is well grouped 
 and well machined. Cecilia, moreover, has the 
 advantage of her elder sister in character and 
 sense. But after the point named the interest 
 seems to me to die away and to be revived 
 chiefly by Lady Honoria who, though she owes 
 a good deal to Anna Howe and Charlotte 
 Grandison, has the advantage over them of being 
 
Literattire, ly 80-1 860 219 
 
 a lady in fact as well as in name. All the 
 MME. Delviles are naught ; Mr Monckton 
 D'ARBLAY. and Mr Albany, bad and good lay 
 figures ; while Miss Larolles, popular as she was 
 with her own generation, does not possess very 
 vital signs now. In other words, Miss Burney 
 wrote Evelina because she had a mind to do so : 
 she wrote Cecilia because she made up her mind 
 to do so. 
 
 The signs of the collar are to me so evident in 
 this book that I am wholly unable to accept the 
 view of those who think that, had she been left 
 unmolested by kings and queens, we should have 
 had more Evelinas or even more Cecilias from her. 
 In the first place there are in the Diary certain 
 distinct avowals, which I see no reason for assign- 
 ing to mere bashfulness or mock humility, that 
 she felt herself written out. There is at least one 
 almost explicit hint from the experienced and 
 affectionate Crisp that he thought she might be. 
 And most important of all, there are the books 
 themselves — those which come before and those 
 which follow. Let us pay a little attention to 
 these latter before coming to the general question. 
 I can see no reason, apart from a freezing of 
 the genial current, why Camilla should not have 
 been at least as good a book as Cecilia, To 
 listen to some of those who pity Miss Burney, one 
 would imagine that five years of rather harass- 
 ing and uncongenial employment in the very noon 
 of strength will ruin health and sterilise intellect 
 
2 20 Essays in English 
 
 for the rest of life. As a matter of fact, Miss 
 Burney had had another five years of mme. 
 entire rest, the first two spent in her d'arblay. 
 usual society and in pleasant travel, the last in 
 retired but extremely happy married life with 
 hospitable and accomplished neighbours. Her 
 former range of experience had been enriched 
 by her Court stage, which, confined as it was in 
 some ways, could not fail to give her new types. 
 It is said that she was hampered by the desire 
 of writing nothing that could offend the Queen. 
 Now this is surely rather childish. It would seem 
 as if some admirers of Fanny Burney had got 
 Charlotte of Mecklenburg on the brain. And 
 they do not seem to consider that they are paying 
 a very bad compliment to their own idol when 
 they suggest that she was not only a hopelessly 
 submissive courtier, but was destitute of versatility 
 in her own art — that she could not write a good 
 novel under certain not very difficult conditions 
 of pleasing, which, I must add, I do not myself 
 think were in the least incumbent on her. That 
 Camilla is not a great novel I am afraid cannot 
 be denied. It is one of its glories that Miss 
 Austen was among the original subscribers, and 
 the extreme Burneians have tried to extract a 
 testimonial from this great pupil. This will not do. 
 Camilla is indeed joined with Cecilia and Belinda 
 in Northanger Abbey to receive one of those 
 generous exaltings of contemporary work in its 
 own craft in which young genius, as opposed to 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 221 
 
 young cubbishness, often indulges. But it is de- 
 MME. plorably noticeable that though the more 
 d'arblay. elaborate depreciation of the book which 
 follows is put in the mouth of John Thorpe, whose 
 opinions the author certainly did not mean to en- 
 dorse, no distinct vindication of it is attempted, and 
 the illiberal sneer at " the woman who married an 
 emigrant " is the only criticism which is distinctly 
 held up to ridicule. The fact is that, as I must 
 repeat, Camilla is not a great novel. The char- 
 acter of the absent and pedantic Dr Orkborne 
 pleased good wits at the time — he is mentioned 
 in The A^itiqnary^ and it is almost the only 
 allusion of Scott's that, to my shame, I must 
 acknowledge not to have understood till a very 
 recent period. Camilla herself is really a very 
 nice girl, though one wishes for a more human 
 revolt in her now and then. Sir Sedley Clarendel, 
 the most complete of fops, has been praised before, 
 and may be praised again : Mrs Arlbery is almost 
 certainly Mrs Thrale, adapted with judgment and 
 good taste, and there are other separate sketches 
 which remind us that we are reading a book by 
 the author of Evelma. But Sir Hugh Tyrold, 
 who alters his will at every moment, not out of 
 caprice, but out of sheer silliness, who maintains, 
 teases, and fears the pedant Dr Orkborne, and 
 who generally behaves like a senile baby, justifies 
 John Thorpe's criticism to such an extent, that 
 I have sometimes been really afraid that the 
 griffe de la lionne appears in Miss Austen's own 
 
 / 
 
222 Essays in English 
 
 reference to the matter. The wicked governess, 
 Miss Margland, is the most uninterest- mme. 
 ing of unamiable duennas ; no under- d'arblay. 
 graduate, who was not an utter fool as well as an 
 infernal rascal, ever consented as Lionel Tyrold 
 does to blackmail his invalid uncle by anonymous 
 letters ; Mr Tyrold, Camilla's father, a learned, in- 
 telligent, and virtuous divine, ought to be whipped 
 for the way in which he treats his family, and allows 
 them to be treated. The hero, Edgar Mandlebert, 
 who vacillates between Camilla and her beautiful 
 fool and vixen of a cousin Indiana (the name is 
 interesting when we think of George Sand), and 
 who is held up as a pattern at once of chivalry 
 and brains, might have a set of halberts rigged 
 up next to Mr Tyrold's with great advantage. 
 
 The fact is that the whole thing, except a few 
 separate traits, is in the vague. The author has 
 indeed still got a plot, as she had in Cecilia^ which 
 is more than she had in Evelina. She has got 
 some good studies for the filling in : but she does 
 not in the least know what to do with them, and 
 she has no grasp of life as a whole. She is 
 constantly " off the rails ; " indeed it is exceedingly 
 rare that she is on them. 
 
 In The Wanderer it is not too much to say 
 that she never gets on them at all. The opening 
 scene of this unluckiest of books, a book which was 
 expected, hailed, welcomed by everybody, from 
 veterans to novices, and which sank as soon as 
 it appeared, has a faint touch of the personal 
 
Literature, ly So- 1860 223 
 
 experience which was always necessary to Fanny, 
 MME. and which she sometimes utih'sed so 
 d'arblay. -vvell, in the flight of the heroine by 
 boat from France. Madame D'Arblay had just 
 had something very Hke that experience. But 
 the rest is all stark nought. The fatal long- 
 lost or misknown daughter business invited her 
 once more, as in Evelina; and she could no 
 more, as in Evelina, redeem it with humours and 
 with the fresh insight of an unjaded eye. The 
 progress of " the Wanderer," alias " the pene- 
 trated Juliet" from her sufferings in the boat, 
 and from the vulgar persecutions of Mrs Ireton 
 
 |r till the time when, united with Mr Harleigh, she 
 is "embraced and owned by her honoured bene- 
 factress, the Marchioness," is a kind of nightmare 
 of dulness. The hardened reviewer, " famousM for 
 
 * fight" with thousands of novels, but just saves 
 his credit as he struggles through this fearful book, 
 where nobody is alive, and where the adventures 
 
 |g of the gibbering ghosts who figure in it are gibbered 
 in a language such as hardly our own day — a nurse 
 
 H of monsters in style — has seen. The victims of 
 Charlottophobia say that Miss Burney's sojourn 
 at Court among half-Germans, and her subsequent 
 sojourn in France, account for the frightful lingo 
 which defaces The Wanderer and The Memoi?'S 
 of Dr Burney. They forget again that only a 
 weak plant could be stifled by such atmospheres. 
 Macaulay set it down to Johnsonese uninteUigently 
 exaggerated, and there is something in this. But 
 
2 24 Essays in English 
 
 whatever the cause, the effect is not disputable, 
 and it may be said, without remorse mme. 
 and without caricature, that nothing d'arblay. 
 but the matter of The Wanderer could deserve 
 such a style, and that the style of The Wanderer 
 is, on the whole, almost too bad for the matter. 
 
 With the Memoirs things are, if possible, worse 
 still in point of form, and the matter, though 
 very much better, is almost hopelessly dis- 
 figured. Unfortunately the documents on which 
 it is founded were mainly destroyed. Mrs Ellis, 
 Madame D'Arblay's most faithful and most 
 generous defender, laments the fatal misuse of 
 these materials. They were, we know, abundant, 
 superabundant ; and Dr Burney had had oppor- 
 tunities such as few men have had. The actual 
 book is a tedious rhapsody, exceedingly hard to 
 read with any intelligent comprehension of dates 
 and surroundings, barren in matter while full of 
 the very worst art. Macaulay, doing his devoir 
 gallantly, tried to maintain that, though there was 
 deplorably bad writing, there was no "dotage." I 
 cannot be sure of this. It is not merely that the 
 style, as Macaulay himself fully admits, and shows 
 by extract, is horrible and heartrending, not merely 
 that not a few passages and themes which we 
 have delightfully treated in the Diary are here 
 re-presented " not in dog's likeness," as Mr Carlyle 
 used to say. It would be cruel to multiply the 
 specimens which Macaulay has already given of 
 the hopeless galimatias which distinguishes the 
 
Litc7'ature^ i'/ So- 1860 225 
 
 book. Ikit one instance of something worse may 
 MME. be given. Madame D'Arblay quotes 
 d'arblay. a.n anecdote of Bonaparte, who com- 
 plained that her husband had written him "a 
 devil of a letter," and added pleasantly, " How- 
 ever, I ought only to regard in it the husband 
 of Cecilia." One only wishes that all the anec- 
 dotes of the Corsican presented him in so pleasant 
 a light as this. But will it be believed that 
 Madame D'Arblay herself, the ''little character- 
 monger" of Johnson, the Fannikin of Crisp, the 
 not too azure blue who had held her own at 
 Streatham and in London, adds, " Of the author of 
 Cecilia of course he meant." She was eighty at 
 the time, no doubt, she had lost father, husband, 
 friends ; but what a gap is here between the 
 creator of the Branghtons and the commentator 
 of a kindly and fairly spirihiel confusion which is 
 as common as any figure of speech ! To quote 
 much from that unhappy book would be unworthy 
 of " decent gentility and education " (as Mark 
 Pattison has it), for in more than language it is the 
 " dotage," the clear dotage of a woman of delight- 
 ful talent, and in some ways of true genius. It 
 cannot be defended ; to criticise it seriously were 
 idle ; and to laugh at it inhuman and base. 
 
 And so we come to the Diary ^ no part of which 
 was issued during its author's lifetime, though it 
 formed the basis of much of the Memoirs of Dr 
 Bur7iey, and therefore exhibits, in a way even 
 more curious than melancholy, the fashion in 
 
 V 
 
2 26 Essays in English 
 
 which it is possible for a painter to paint his own 
 good work into bad. This Diary, even mme. 
 yet, is understood not to be published d'arblay. 
 completely, and probably never will be; but enough 
 is extant to make it one of the bulkiest things of the 
 kind. Nor is this surprising when it is remembered 
 that the letter and diary-writing habits of eighteenth 
 century young ladies are by no means caricatured 
 in the works of Richardson, which, in their turn, 
 helped to recommend and prolong the practice. 
 Until her marriage, and to some extent after it, 
 Fanny appears to have been incessantly scribbling 
 — for her father often, for herself almost as often ; 
 while almost the whole of her Court life is recorded 
 in a sort of letter-journal to " Susan and Fredy," 
 ?>., her sister Susanna, the wife of the Colonel 
 Phillip who was afterwards Charles Lamb's friend, 
 and Frederica Locke of Norbury. In later years 
 she cut these diaries about very considerably ; — 
 she had always, as in the famous instance of the 
 early holocaust of her MSS., at the direct or in- 
 direct instance of her stepmother, that comparative 
 readiness to part with the fruits of her labours 
 which usually, though not invariably, accompanies 
 extremely easy and rapid production. But she 
 left much, and much of that much would seem to 
 be still extant. 
 
 Delightful as the Diary is, its extreme volumin- 
 ousness, and the singular inequality which here as 
 elsewhere shows itself in the author's work, have 
 brought upon it some rather harsh judgments, such 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 227 
 
 as that it is " tiresome." I do not myself find 
 MME. it tiresome anywhere — even in the 
 d'arblay. interminable conversations with " Mr 
 Turbulent" and "Mr Fairly," even in the be- 
 wildering multitude of small details in the Early 
 Diary which Mrs Ellis, with a patience and skill 
 which no editor could surpass, has devoted herself 
 to explaining, adjusting and unravelling; hardly 
 even, though I confess that the " hardly " sometimes 
 needs to be accentuated, in the sketches of the later 
 years when little happened, when Madame D'Arblay 
 either was excluded from inspiriting society or left 
 no account of that which she did see, and when 
 the curse of jargon, though never so evident in 
 the Diary as in the published books, had laid 
 its grasp upon her. It will not, indeed, do to 
 expect too much or the wrong sort of things ; we 
 must not look for perpetual epigram or for frequent 
 good stories ; we must carry about with us con- 
 tinually the remembrance that we are in the 
 century of Richardson and of Horace Walpole, and 
 that Miss Burney, with all her gifts, had not those 
 of either, while she had the voluminousness of 
 both. We must remember yet again Diderot's 
 quaint excuse for his beloved English novelist that, 
 after all, the actual conversations in Graiidison, 
 etc., would, if you took part in them, take longer 
 than the record of them does in reading. 
 
 And in large parts of the book there is no need 
 for any remembrance, any allowance at all. The 
 brilliancy and charm of the Streatham parts of the 
 
2 28 Essays in English 
 
 Diary, of the best of the Court scenes, of the 
 Hastings trial, have been acknowledged mme. 
 by all good judges ever since they first d'arblay. 
 appeared. Macaulay in one of his most masterly 
 exercises of joint literary divination and inter- 
 pretation, constructed, out of the fragmentary and 
 pompous notices in the Memoirs, a glowing picture 
 of the salon, such a little one and so well attended, 
 in St Martin's Street ; but the actual documents 
 of the Early Diary bring out the details of this with 
 unexpected and seldom failing piquancy. The 
 want of these indications made him perhaps a little 
 wrong on " Daddy " Crisp and the Chesington 
 circle ; but the fuller descriptions of that odd 
 person, and his odd household, are all the more 
 welcome. Some hold that books of this sort ought 
 never to be read straight through ; I have read both 
 the diaries in that fashion more than once, and 
 with great pleasure. But for dipping they cer- 
 tainly have few superiors ; nor have they very 
 many equals even in that century of autobiography. 
 To what, then, are we to attribute the admitted 
 inequalities of the Diary and the steady declension 
 of power in the Novels ? All sorts of causes, some 
 already noted, have been assigned, besides that 
 absurd one of Miss Burney's powers having been 
 killed by five years' waiting at odd times to hand 
 the queen's clothes to the wardrobe women, and 
 fighting with Schwellenbergs at Windsor, very con- 
 siderably tempered by flirtations with equerries, 
 &c. The influence and the withdrawal of the 
 
Literatzcre, ij 80- 1860 229 
 
 influence of Johnson ; the bad English spoken 
 MME. by that devoted household of George 
 d'arblay. thg Third ; the worse or none at all 
 heard for so many years in France ; ill health, 
 narrow means, and divers other things have been 
 alleged. There is perhaps no region in which 
 the excellent French phrase about those who 
 " seek noon at fourteen o'clock " is so constantly 
 illustrated as in that of criticism. For, let us con- 
 sider what Fanny Burney's special talents are ; 
 what they were considered to be by those who 
 know her best ; and what she thought of them 
 herself. Perhaps the last may be ruled out as 
 treacherous, but I do not think so. Vanity is 
 common enough, and there are plenty of us who 
 think that with choice and chance we could do 
 great things. But persistent self-delusion about 
 literary powers is, I believe, except in the case of 
 poets, exceedingly rare, and Fanny was not a poet. 
 Moreover, self-delusion, which takes the form of 
 self-depreciation, is so rare both in poets and others, 
 as to be very nearly unknown. And we know 
 that Fanny at no time thought highly of her own 
 talents, that she had pretty distinctly proposed to 
 herself not to attempt anything after Cecilia^ and 
 that everything she did do afterwards, with a view 
 to publication, was planned more or less under the 
 pressure of necessity on the one hand and large 
 offers on the other. The necessity of writing — the 
 imperative impulse of which we sometimes hear — 
 may be very rare. But the impulse not to write 
 
230 Essays in English 
 
 when it does not come from constitutional laziness 
 (and Miss Burney was the most in- mme. 
 dustrious of women) is very seldom a d'arblay. 
 trick, very generally a kindly warning of nature. 
 
 Of what her friends thought we have fortunately 
 one document which is worth a thousand. The 
 researches of Mrs Ellis have shown that Macaulay's 
 estimate of the chagrin of Daddy Crisp at the com- 
 parative failure of a play which might, with quite 
 equal truth, have been said to have comparatively 
 succeeded, was mistaken, though quite reasonably 
 mistaken. It is impossible to argue (and Macaulay 
 had far too much sense even to hint the argument) 
 that Crisp, years after the incident, in a different 
 line altogether, and in reference to a person for 
 whom he had admittedly the fondest affection, was 
 in the very least degree likely to be jealous of 
 Fanny. Yet not in reference to Evelina, of which 
 the sudden and so to speak accidental success 
 might have encouraged a Job's comforter to try to 
 "rub the gilt off," but in reference to Cecilia, which 
 had been carefully engineered, had taken and kept 
 the top of the tide, and really deserved very high 
 praise, we find from this experienced, and if any- 
 thing partial monitor, a strangely serious and, in 
 the light of subsequent events, more strangely 
 prophetic warning. It is not to be summarised in 
 any single passage, but anybody who considers 
 the published letters to and from Crisp during 
 the progress of the book will see, I think, that 
 he was profoundly sceptical of Fanny keeping 
 
Literature, iy8o-iS6o 231 
 
 up her vein and not too well satisfied even with 
 MME. this famous and admired production 
 d'arblay. ^f i^ He tells her, indeed, that there 
 had been nothing so good since Fielding and 
 Smollett, and he was right. Smollett had died 
 seven years before the publication of Evelina^ 
 and for a good thirty years there was nothing 
 published, there was nothing even written (except 
 certain early works of the young lady who sub- 
 scribed to Camilla and defended it at once), which 
 could even touch Evelina and Cecilia in merit. 
 But the author of certain remarks about Voltaire 
 and Shakespeare which may be found in the Diary 
 was not likely to go wrong on the negative side 
 any more than on the positive ; and he must have 
 noted the seeds of decay in his " Fannikin," as 
 keenly as he noted the flowers of flourishing. 
 
 The fact, as it seems to me, is, that Fanny Burney 
 is in English literature our capital example of a 
 kind of writer commoner in the old conditions of 
 English life abroad than at home, and commoner 
 in all countries among women than among men. 
 In this class a talent of observation and presenta- 
 tion, real and charming to no small degree, is 
 forced at a certain time, and by favourable circum- 
 stances, into not premature but perfect bloom. Its 
 best members always remain happy and favour- 
 able subjects in point of receptivity ; but they have, 
 as a rule, no absolute root or spring of creative 
 genius ; and they do not assist the native want 
 by any thorough study of good models. Many 
 
 L 
 
232 Essays in English 
 
 critics of Fanny Burney have expressed an amiable 
 but not wholly intelligent surprise, at mme. 
 the very small amount that she seems d'arblay. 
 to have read — brought up among unguarded 
 books as she was — and at the somewhat limited 
 intelligence which her critical remarks show. The 
 fact is that she was the very reverse of bookish, 
 and the innocent raptures over certain love letters 
 (the work of that clever bookmaker, William 
 Combe) in which she and her Mr Fairly in- 
 dulged at Cheltenham, the comparison which in 
 an Early Diary she makes between the Vicar of 
 Wakefield^ and some stuff of which I should have 
 to go to the book even to remember the name, 
 show what power of literary discrimination she 
 had. Nor was her really creative instinct strong 
 — Eveliiia is a chaos, though a delightful one, 
 as far as plot or construction goes ; if Cecilia is 
 better we know that, putting Johnson out of ques- 
 tion and admitting his denial of having seen the 
 book before it was in print to the fullest, it was sub- 
 jected to severe criticism and radical alteration at 
 Crisp's hand, and was talked about between other 
 members of the Burneian circle. 
 
 Then, it may be asked, what had she ? She had 
 much. She had an eye for character — external 
 character, no doubt, chiefly, but still an eye for 
 character — such as nobody else born within many 
 years of her had. And she had, moreover, from 
 almost her earliest youth till almost past her 
 fortieth year, the most extraordinarily fertile field, 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 2^^ 
 
 jj 
 
 the most extraordinarily stimulating atmosphere, 
 MME. o( character study. The eighteenth 
 d'arblay. century is admittedly the special cen- 
 tury of the word "Society;" and Fanny Burney 
 was in the very hotbed of the English eighteenth 
 century. The habits of her family were scrib- 
 blative ; its society was immense, various, incom- 
 parable. She might, if she had been more pert 
 and less modest, have ascribed on her Diary the 
 slightly altered line — 
 
 " We've had Johnson and Burke ; all the wits have been 
 here." 
 
 To her clear eyes, and her ready if not very 
 critical pen, there presented themselves from the 
 early days in Poland Street, through those in 
 Queen Square, and most of all in the domus exilis 
 Newtonia^ through Streatham and Mrs Montagu's 
 peacock saloon, and all the rest to the stately if 
 sometimes dismal halls of Windsor and St James's, 
 and the dismal and not at all stately apartments 
 of Kew, the phantasmagoria of all sorts of society. 
 She registered it in her novels and in her diary 
 alike, but best in the latter, with unflagging vigour, 
 if with unequal success, while, as that passage 
 from Erftest Maltravers which I have quoted puts 
 it, " the novelty of life quickened the apprehen- 
 sion." At about middle age the stars grew less 
 propitious. The actual society of London seems 
 to have become decidedly less interesting and 
 stimulating. The great wits of "the Club," who, 
 
2 34 Essays in English 
 
 partly by accident and partly by the fact of 
 Burke's connection with politics, had mme. 
 made a junction between statesmanship d'arblay. 
 and literature, died. The younger Pitt, though 
 not himself a boor, was utterly indifferent to 
 letters. The Whigs assumed the ferocious and 
 limited partisanship of a small and hopeless op- 
 position, a farther gap being made by the split 
 between them and the Prince of Wales. Mrs 
 Thrale, that " Welsh fairy," had made herself im- 
 possible by her second marriage ; Fanny herself 
 put herself out of Court by her first and only one. 
 M. D'Arblay appears to have been an eminently 
 respectable person, but, I should think, rather a dull 
 one ; and he carried his wife off to France. During 
 the Empire she mixed with an interesting if a 
 rather priggish and doctrinaire society, but we have 
 no record of it from her hands and hardly any of 
 her participation in it from others. She came back, 
 an old woman, to domestic sorrows, to " new faces, 
 other minds ; " and it is scarcely wonderful that she 
 came back with only the ashes of her old gifts. 
 
 I have always thought that if "eloquent, just, 
 and mighty Death," the most merciful as the 
 mightiest of all potentates, had not removed 
 Charlotte Bronte, we should have had something 
 of a parallel in her to Madame D'Arblay's later 
 writings, though Miss Bronte's harder fortunes and 
 more passionate temper would not have consoled 
 us by anything like the Diary. There, too, was the 
 excitement — of a sufficiently different subspecies, 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 235 
 
 but parallel — of personal experience, with little aid 
 MME. from books, and with no great fund of 
 d'arblay. independent artistic spirit. There, too, 
 were the vivid, the original outpourings of this ex- 
 perience in novel-form. And there, too, had the 
 experience been prolonged, must have been the 
 break-down, the failure of the original impressions, 
 with no new ones to make them good, the Camillas 
 and the Wayiderers — not perhaps the Memoirs of 
 Dr Burney, because only an extraordinary con- 
 junction of inauspicious stars could ever produce 
 anything like that appalling production. 
 
 But this, it may be, is gratuitous ; and it would 
 be more gratuitous still to follow it out in the 
 cases of other novelists of the same sex, as could, 
 I believe (with the single exception of Miss Austen, 
 the exception to all rules), be done. It is more 
 germane to a reasonable matter to admit, and not 
 to attempt to excuse the fact that Miss Burney 
 — that at least Madame D'Arblay — was not one 
 of those fortunate persons who, from the first to 
 the last, with only human vicissitudes, persevere in 
 being capable, who even persist in being great. 
 
 But if she was not one of these, she was one of 
 the still not numerous band who, owing to no 
 matter what cause, do delightful things. To her 
 who gave us the Branghtons, Mr Smith, the first 
 volume if not the two first volumes of Cecilia, Sir 
 Sedley Clarendel even, let there be praise not in 
 the lowest by any means. To her who gave us 
 the quaint mixed presentation of Dr Burney's 
 
236 Essays in E^iglish LiteraUire, ly 80- 1860 
 
 visitors, the picture of a Johnson always amiable 
 and sometimes apologetic, the sketches mme. 
 of the sojourn of a young "lioness" in d'arblay. 
 the most various menageries, always with credit to 
 herself and with the result of something like im- 
 mortality to the other beasts — let there be praise 
 perhaps higher still. Historians may add that 
 Miss Burney has given us almost our only English 
 picture of an English Court, drawn completely 
 from the inside, without any ill nature such as 
 that which invalidates the truth, if it heightens 
 the zest, of books like Hervey's, with distinct 
 literary talent, and with total freedom from " pur- 
 pose." As a diarist Miss Burney is with Pepys 
 and Evelyn, as a letter-writer with Walpole and 
 Chesterfield. And unlike all these, except Horace, 
 she is a novelist as well, while I must confess that 
 though I like the kind of The Castle of Otranto 
 better than the kind of Evelina^ I must put Evelma 
 a good deal higher in its kind than The Castle of 
 Otranto, 
 
VIIL 
 
 TWENTY YEARS OF POLITICAL SATIRE. 
 
 Though it may seem to some a rather cowardly 
 POLITICAL thing for a critic to say, I am myself 
 SATIRE, much inclined to doubt whether any 
 very satisfactory result comes of attempts to decide 
 why this or that literary product came at that or 
 this time. The " product-of-the-circumstances " 
 theory was a very pretty and ingenious toy, which, 
 like many toys in literature, in philosophy, and 
 in other departments of toy-making, amused the 
 town for a time, but has now had its day. Too 
 surely does the critic who is not blinded by his 
 affection for it discover that, if you pick your cir- 
 cumstances very carefully, you can indeed account 
 for any product, but that you are exposed to 
 two awkward inquiries — " How about the other 
 circumstances which you have neglected .'* " and 
 "Were not these circumstances on which you 
 lay stress present at other times when the pro- 
 duct was not produced } " 
 
 Of course we can see in general why certain 
 
 2J7 
 
238 Essays in English 
 
 times — the time when Greece became, from an 
 insignificant collection of petty states political 
 the most formidable power in the satire. 
 Mediterranean, the time of the completest and 
 most unchallenged Roman domination, the time 
 when the " Dark " blossomed into the " Middle " 
 Ages, the time of the Reformation and the 
 discovery of America, the time of the French 
 Revolution — should all have been fertile in 
 literature. As a man is most inclined to per- 
 petrate literature when he is excited, so is a 
 world. But when you come down to minor 
 matters I doubt very much whether any such 
 explanation is possible. I could make twenty 
 very pretty ones for the singular development 
 of political and semi-political satire during the 
 last twenty years of the eighteenth century in 
 England ; but I should be the first to admit 
 that one was no better than another, and that 
 any twenty-first was likely to be as good, or at 
 least as sufficient, as the whole of them. The 
 popularity and novelty of the swinging easy 
 measures of Anstey's Bath Guide^ the fact of the 
 coincidence of the palmy days of the English 
 public school and University system, as regards 
 its peculiar style of scholarship, with the period 
 when public school and University men had most 
 direct, immediate, and easy entrance into politics, 
 the keenness of political disputes, which till the 
 Revolution itself broke out turned upon no vital 
 question but were all the keener, the general 
 
Literattcre, ly 80- 1860 239 
 
 curiosity and partial annoyance caused by the 
 POLITICAL supremacy of Pitt at so early an age, 
 
 SATIRE. |-j^g absence of any passionate or absorb- 
 ing school of literature to divert literary talent 
 from mere sport — these and a dozen other things 
 may be detected by any tolerably acute observer, 
 and justified by any tolerably diligent student. 
 It is sufficient for me to indicate them in passing. 
 
 The fact, however, of the existence of a peculiar 
 kind of political and semi-political verse at this 
 time — which has been rather imitated than con- 
 tinued since, and which is quite different from the 
 political satire of a hundred years earlier, at the 
 head of which towers Absalom and Achitophel^ 
 from the still earlier form of Butler, and from the 
 later work in which Churchill mixed Dryden with 
 vitriol and dirty water — is indisputable ; and it 
 is equally indisputable that it produced some of 
 the most amusing stuff to be found anywhere 
 in English literature. Its crowning achievement, 
 the inimitable though constantly imitated '' Poetry 
 of the Anti- Jacobin I' has been frequently re- 
 edited, the latest, or one of the latest, issues having 
 appeared under the care of the late Mr Henry 
 Morley. Mr Morley's indefatigable industry in 
 selecting and editing much of the best work of 
 English authors in cheap, easily accessible, and 
 sometimes by no means uncomely forms, could 
 never be too gratefully acknowledged by any 
 person of taste. And this great merit, joined to 
 that of having, as his pupils unanimously testified, 
 
240 Essays in English 
 
 inspired an unusual number of persons with his 
 own love for our literature, may dis- political 
 pense any generous critic from examin- satire. 
 ing too narrowly his critical powers and his 
 methods of editing. 
 
 In the same volume Mr Morley included 
 (chiefly it would appear for the reason that 
 George Ellis was a contributor to both books) 
 a very few specimens of the Rolliad^ a much earlier 
 and less finished production on the other side of 
 politics, but, allowing for the absence of two such 
 wits as Canning and Frere, not so much less 
 amusing. As his concern was with the work of 
 the trio exclusively, he also gave the Microcosm 
 and other non-political matter. My aim being 
 different, the subjects of this paper will be the 
 Rolliad, with its dependent Political Eclogues^ 
 Probationary Odes, and Political Miscellanies at 
 one end, and the Poetry of the Anti- Jacobin at the 
 other, with, between them, the exceedingly divert- 
 ing work of Peter Pindar. 
 
 The Rolliad (as its facetious authors themselves 
 record, with greater literal accuracy than attaches 
 to all their statements) " owed its existence to 
 the memorable speech of the member of {sic) 
 Devonshire on the first discussion of the West- 
 minster scrutiny" which followed the famous 
 Westminster election of 1784 — the contest between 
 Fox and Sir Cecil Wray. The Political Eclogues, 
 and the Probationary Odes for the Laureate si tip, 
 ostensibly occasioned by Whitehead's death, 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 241 
 
 followed in 1785 ; while the Political Miscellanies 
 POLITICAL were originally appended to the Rolliad 
 SATIRE, itself, or rather to the criticisms of and 
 specimens from that imaginary epic. They were 
 all the work of a knot of literary Whigs — for Ellis, 
 who was afterwards a staunch Tory, then had 
 Whiggish leanings — mostly members of Brooks's, 
 mostly personal friends of Fox, and all animated 
 by the keenest dislike of the boy Minister, Pitt. 
 Various " keys " have, as in other cases of the same 
 kind, indicated, no doubt more or less correctly, 
 their names, though not all the pieces are attribut- 
 able with certainty. Dr Lawrence, the friend of 
 Burke, seems to have been the guiding spirit, 
 and he was assisted by Lord John and Lord 
 George Townshend ; by two clever Irishmen, 
 Tickell and Fitzpatrick; sometimes by Richard 
 Burke ; by a still cleverer compatriot of theirs, 
 Tierney ; once or twice by Sheridan ; by General 
 Burgoyne, who, as is well known, was not quite 
 so inefficient with the pen as with the sword ; 
 and, besides others known or unknown, by Ellis, 
 then a little over thirty, author only of some 
 contributions to the once famous Bath-Easton 
 Vase, and of a few other light verses in the 
 eighteenth century manner, but already a very 
 wide, careful, and accomplished student of litera- 
 ture. It has been thought with some reason 
 that the rondeaux which figure among the Rolliad 
 verses, for the first and last time for many years 
 
 Q 
 
242 Essays in E^iglish 
 
 in English literature are due to him.* The variety, 
 indeed of the form of the Rolliad is one political 
 of its principal charms. The subjects satire. 
 are tolerably numerous — the Westminster election, 
 the wickedness of Hastings and Impey, the follies 
 and clovvnishness of the title-hero Mr Rolle (a 
 Devonshire squire of great wealth, popularity, and 
 power, who was obnoxious to the Whigs as a 
 pillar of Pittism in the west), Sir Cecil Wray, 
 Sir Joseph Mawbey, Dr Prettyman, and "those 
 about " Pitt generally, with, for a constant re- 
 source and change whenever other subjects grew 
 scarce or stale, Pitt himself, his policy, his 
 character, and above all his supposed dislike of 
 women. On this latter theme the wits were 
 never tired of descanting, despite the discourag- 
 ing fact that the British public obstinately refused 
 to see the joke. Nor has political satire ever 
 gone quite so far in this direction since. Mealy- 
 mouthed persons have thought that the Anti- 
 Jacobin writers gave themselves some license, 
 but they never came anywhere near the Rolliad. 
 Indeed, short as was the interval between the 
 two books, it may be doubted whether public 
 sentiment would have endured it if they had. 
 
 It would, however, be quite a mistake to 
 imagine that the appeal of the Rolliad lies in 
 mere scurrility. On the contrary, it is un- 
 
 * A copy, however, of the 1799 edition, with apparently con- 
 temporary pencil notes, which my friend Mr Austin Dobson has 
 lent me, attributes them to Lawrence. 
 
Literature, iySo-i86o 243 
 
 commonly good fun, and, Tory as I am, I have not 
 POLITICAL the least hesitation in admitting that 
 SATIRE, now, and for some time to come, the 
 Whig dogs, with Lawrence and his pack on one 
 side, and Wolcot, he by himself, on the other, had 
 very much the best of it. Pitt's notorious indiffer- 
 ence, despite his scholarship, to English letters and 
 English men of letters may have had something to 
 do with this, but so it was. Nothing on the other 
 side could touch the Rolliad and " Peter " till 
 the French Revolution made half these Whig 
 songsters themselves Tories, and considerably 
 softened even the " savage Wolcot " himself. 
 The Rolliad suffers, of course, from certain in- 
 evitable drawbacks of almost all political litera- 
 ture : the principal questions are not excessively 
 interesting, the minor ones utterly dead and 
 forgotten, there are constant allusions which 
 hardly anybody, and some that probably no 
 one, understands. The work, as all work done 
 by a great number of hands must be, is very 
 unequal. But the sparkle of it, the restless 
 energy, the constant change of form and front, 
 the vitalities in short, are very attractive : especi- 
 ally, no doubt, because they are at least often 
 combined with good literary form. 
 
 The thing was, of course, not original : it had 
 more or less immediate ancestors in the mis- 
 cellanies of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, and Gay, 
 and its lineage might easily be traced even 
 farther back. But I think that any one who 
 
244 Essays in English 
 
 reads the Rolliad will perceive in it that note of 
 noteworthiness which consists in being political 1 
 much more like what has come after it satire. | 
 than what came before it. Its epigrams are some- 
 what out of date — the epigram proper, more's the 
 pity, has been very little cultivated of late. Its 
 Virgilian parodies appeal less than they appealed 
 to a generation in which almost every educated 
 man knew his Virgil by heart. Its skits of verse 
 preserve the Popian style in a way which reminds 
 us that that style was still omnipotent. And yet 
 it has those vital marks which make the better 
 class of literary work in all ages seem modern | 
 to the tolerably well-read reader. We should, 
 alas ! — for engraving has gone out with epigrams 
 — find a difficulty in getting anything so well 
 engraved nowadays as its frontispiece, with a 
 genealogical tree starting out of the bowels of 
 Duke Rollo and bearing roundels recording how 
 divers RoUes were unfortunately "sus. per coll.," 
 or its title-page vignette, neatly exhibiting the 
 arms of the family — three French rolls or between 
 two rolls of parchment proper — and a demi-M aster 
 of the Rolls (Kenyon) for crest. But the text 
 might (let us hope it would have been written 
 equally well) have been, for most of its turns and 
 traits, written yesterday. " Mr Rous spoke for 
 two hours to recommend expedition. . . Sir Cecil's 
 tastes, both for poetry and small beer, are well 
 known ; as is the present unfinished state of his 
 newly-fronted house in Pall Mall." 
 
Literature^ iy8o-i86o 245 
 
 These little flashes show the sprightliness of 
 POLITICAL the authors, but soon they rise to 
 SATIRE, greater things and grapple with the 
 "Virtuous Boy" himself: 
 
 Pert without fire, without experience sage, 
 
 Young with more art than Shelburne gleaned from age, 
 
 Too proud from pilfered greatness to descend, 
 
 Too humble not to call Dundas his friend, 
 
 In solemn dignity and sullen state, 
 
 This new Octavius rises to debate. 
 
 The parody of Pope or, at least, of Akenside 
 is good, but the true merit of the thing is that 
 it gives us, as all political satire should give us, 
 the real points in the object which were unpopular 
 with his foes. The lines on Dundas are better 
 still, and it is amusing to remember that both 
 pieces are thought to be by Ellis : 
 
 For true to pubhc Virtue's patriot plan, 
 
 He loves the Minister and not the Man ; 
 
 Alike the advocate of North and Wit, 
 
 The friend of Shelburne, and the guide of Pitt. 
 
 His ready tongue with sophistries at will, 
 
 Can say, unsay, and be consistent still ; 
 
 This day can answer and the next retract. 
 
 In speech extol and stigmatise in act ; 
 
 Turn and re-turn, whole hours at Hastings bawl. 
 
 Defend, praise, thank, affront him, and recall ; 
 
 By opposition he his King shall court ; 
 
 And damn the People's cause by his support. 
 
 But it is not in this solemn kind of work that the 
 book shows its charms. These lie in such things 
 
246 Essays in English 
 
 as the famous passage which, from having been fre- 
 quently quoted, is probably known to political 
 many who do not know another line of it : satire. 
 
 Ah ! think what danger on debauch attends : 
 
 Let Pitt, once drunk, preach temperance to his friends ; 
 
 How as he wandered darkling o'er the plain, 
 
 His reason drowned in Jenkinson's champagne, 
 
 A rustic's hand, but righteous fate withstood, 
 
 Had shed a Premier's for a robber's blood. 
 
 As these lines are generally quoted, a pleasant 
 prose postscript to them is omitted in praise 
 of " the wonderful skill of our poet who could 
 thus bring together an orange girl [for the illustra- 
 tion has crowned a passage on temperance] and 
 the present pure and immaculate Minister, a con- 
 nection which it is more than probable few of our 
 readers would have in any way suspected." And 
 so poor Pitt gets equally laughed at for his prone- 
 ness to one foible and his abstinence from another, 
 a device never to be forgotten by those who lampoon 
 statesmen. This is at once a neat and a quotable 
 gird : of the others on the same subject most are 
 not quotable, though there is an exception in the 
 following very agreeable epigram (on the attempted 
 coalition between the Duke of Portland and Mr 
 Pitt, which failed because the parties could not 
 agree as to what was " fair and equal ") : 
 
 On fair and ec^ual terms to plan 
 
 A union is thy care ; 
 But trust me, Powis, in this case 
 The equal should not please his Grace, 
 
 And Pitt dislikes the fair. 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 247 
 
 Nor is English the only language in which the 
 POLITICAL hapless Rolle, his chief, and their friends 
 
 SATIRE. ^^Q epigrammatized. Latin, French, 
 Italian, even Greek (very fair Greek, though " with- 
 out the accents "), figure, and in a parcel of " foreign 
 epigrams " it is by no means uninteresting to 
 read by chance on the same page a mention of 
 the " University of Gottingen " and the name 
 " Casimir." For the wits of the Anti-Jacobin 
 undoubtedly knew their Rolliad well, and one 
 of them, as we have said, had the best cause to 
 know it. 
 
 The Political Eclogues which follow the Rolliad 
 proper are amusing enough though a little obvious, 
 the best of them being the first, where Lawrence 
 turns " Formosum pastor " into a gross but very 
 funny assault on George Rose. But the Proba- 
 tionary Odes must rank higher, and if they were 
 a little more compressed would rank higher still. 
 They are but half political, and sometimes almost 
 purely literary, till the ijifandics dolor (let me be 
 permitted to speak in character) smarts again, 
 and a whole sheaf of epigrams is fired at Mr 
 Pitt's modesty. Sir Cecil Wray's statesmanship, 
 and Dr Prettyman's apostolic virtues. Poor Tom 
 Warton, a most excellent person and a very nice 
 verse-writer in his day, is a constant butt, probably 
 as the most likely actual candidate, and the Pittites 
 come in for indiscriminate punishment with mere 
 blue-stockings and busybodies. Here is imitated 
 the stately style of the man who was not born to 
 
248 Essays in English 
 
 be Johnson's biographer, though he thought he 
 was, dropping at the end into the art- political 
 less verse : satire. 
 
 Here lies Sir John Hawkins, 
 Without his shoes and stockings. 
 
 Here poor Hannah More, after some most im- 
 proper insinuations, is made to say, "Heavens! what 
 would this amiable baronet [Sir Joseph Mawbey] 
 have been with the education of a curate ! " Here 
 Mrs George Anne Bellamy draws a delightful pic- 
 ture of herself " in a clean hackney coach, drawn 
 by grey horses, with a remarkably civil coachman, 
 fainting in my Cecil's arms." Here Warren Hast- 
 ings's more laboured style is hardly caricatured in 
 this description of the advocate who did his very 
 best to lose him his cause. Major Scott: — "I can 
 venture to recommend him as an impenetrable 
 arguer: no man's propositions flowing in a more 
 deleterious stream ; no man's expressions so little 
 hanging on the thread of opinion." And then 
 come the odes themselves — Wray, Mulgrave, 
 Mawbey, Macpherson, Wraxall, and a score more 
 compete. A very bad and impossible imitation of 
 Dundas's Scotch — the worst thing in the whole 
 book,. and showing how necessary it was that Burns 
 and Sir Walter should show Englishmen what 
 Scotch was really like — is redeemed a little later 
 by a capital Hibernian pendant due to Fitzpatrick, 
 and supposed to be Lord Mountmorres, a name of 
 tragic associations in our day, but then that of a 
 
Liter ahtre, ly 80- 1860 249 
 
 favourite butt. This pindaric must have delighted 
 POLITICAL Thackeray, and is very Hke his own 
 SATIRE. Irish verse. Even better is the ode 
 assigned to Thurlow, where the redoubtable Chan- 
 cellor's favourite verb accompanies the piece all 
 through with the most delectable crashes, the 
 epode, if I may so call it, containing rather more 
 d — ns than there are lines. And last of all we 
 have the Political Miscellanies, which in a manner 
 complete these odes, and in which most of the 
 epigrams proper and minor pieces above referred 
 to will be found. There is no doubt too much 
 of the thing on the whole, but that is the fate of 
 books that appear in parts and instalments. 
 
 Clever as ih^ Rolliadis, interesting and stimulat- 
 ing as it proved to its own and the succeeding 
 generations (it may give it an additional zest to 
 some readers to know that in his famous essays 
 on Hastings, Pitt, and others, Macaulay was evi- 
 dently thinking of it far more often than any 
 definite references show), the little finger of that 
 prince of English lampooners who called himself 
 Peter Pindar was thicker than the loins of any one 
 of its company of wits. I have at different times 
 of my life read Peter thrice right through (a very 
 considerable task, for the standard edition of him, 
 though it is said not to be complete, contains more 
 than two thousand five hundred pages), and each 
 time I have been more convinced that if he had 
 only been a little more of a scholar, and a great 
 deal more of a gentleman, he would have been a 
 
250 Essays in English 
 
 very great man indeed. As it is, his mere clever- 
 ness is something prodigious. But in political 
 the first place, he had very little, or a satire. 
 very intermittent, sense of style, and the ungirt flow 
 of his Muse's gown is often far too slatternly. In 
 the second place, he was a dirty Peter (dirty with a 
 French rather than an English dirtiness, sniggering 
 and Voltairian), a scurrilous Peter, a malevolent 
 Peter, a Peter to whom at least in his flourishing 
 days non erant lachrymcz 7'eruiii^ a Peter who could 
 beslaver George the Fribble at the moment that 
 he was assuming airs of Republican independence 
 towards George the Farmer, a Peter thoroughly 
 coarse in grain and fibre, a Boeotian buzzard 
 masquerading as a Theban eagle. To such bad 
 language does he give irresistible temptation every 
 now and then. And in another minute his shrewd- 
 ness, his unexpected and delightful quips, the good- 
 humour which in him was consistent with ill- 
 nature, above all, as I have said, his prodigious 
 cleverness, make one almost like, and very much 
 more than almost admire him. 
 
 John Wolcot was born at Dodbrooke, a suburb 
 of Kingsbridge in Devonshire, which is or was the 
 head if not sole quarters of the manufacture of 
 "white ale" — a rather terrible liquor which is 
 supposed to represent the real Saxon brewage. 
 Perhaps it was due to this that the future Peter 
 was fond of ale all his life, and of cakes likewise. 
 While he was still young, he went to live at Fowey, 
 the quaintest if not the prettiest town in Cornwall^^ 
 
Liierat7ire, ly So- 1860 251 
 
 with an uncle who was a doctor, and was educated 
 POLITICAL for his uncle's profession at Fowey itself, 
 SATIRE. ^^ Bodmin, in France, and in London. 
 When he was nearly thirty, one of his Cornish 
 neighbours, Sir William Trelawney, was made 
 Governor of Jamaica, took Wolcot with him, 
 and made him " Physician-General " to the island. 
 Then a thing happened which could hardly have 
 happened at any other time than the eighteenth 
 century. Trelawney thought he could give Wolcot 
 better patronage in the Church, sent him to England 
 to get ordained, and actually presented him to a 
 living on his return. A more unclerical cleric than 
 Wolcot perhaps never existed in our country. 
 His morals were not only decidedly but avowedly 
 and ostentatiously loose ; and if he had any 
 religion at all, it would seem to have been a sort 
 of Gallic willingness to admit the existence of an 
 easy-going Eire Supreme. He had, however, 
 apparently no great opportunities of corrupting or 
 scandalizing the faithful in Jamaica ; for one of 
 the few things personally recorded of him is that 
 no congregation usually appeared at his church, 
 whereupon, after decently waiting ten minutes, he 
 and the clerk would adjourn to the neighbouring 
 sea-shore, and shoot ring-tailed pigeons. When he 
 returned to England, as he did before long at 
 Trelawney 's death, he seems to have given up all 
 views as to clerical profession or preferment, and 
 resumed the practice of medicine in Cornwall. 
 Here he discovered the painter Hoppy or Opie (a 
 
252 Essays hi English 
 
 benefit which British art could have done with- 
 out), and wrote poetical jests on his political 
 neighbours. His love of art, which was satire. 
 sincere and on the whole judicious, seems to have 
 been the immediate cause of his beginning, in 
 1782, the series of odes to the Royal Academicians, 
 which made a considerable stir, was continued 
 annually for a time, and drew him once more to 
 London. Here he remained for some quarter of a 
 century, writing steadily for the booksellers despite 
 the calamity of blindness which latterly fell on 
 him. As a very old man he returned to Cornwall, 
 and died there in 1 8 19. 
 
 A great deal of Wolcot's work, all of which 
 was published under the name of " Peter Pindar, 
 Esq.," is not political at all. His biography has 
 been very scantily written, but I should think it at 
 least probable that the actual determination of his 
 lampooning powers against Farmer George was 
 due in great part to Farmer George's patronage 
 of West. With West, Peter, who as has been 
 said was really a good, though a harsh, partisan, 
 and whimsical art critic, could not away. The 
 King's taste in music, and his parsimony towards 
 musicians, were fresh faults in Wolcot's eyes. He 
 had inherited the good old British aversion to 
 "virtuosity," not in the sense of fiddles, but of 
 collecting and what are now called scientific pur- 
 suits. The British Museum, the Royal Society, 
 Sir Joseph Banks, Count Rumford, Sir William 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 253 
 
 Hamilton (as archseologist, not as husband), and 
 POLITICAL other similar things and persons, were 
 SATIRE. ^\\ obnoxious to Peter ; and as most 
 of them were not unwelcome at Windsor and 
 Buckingham House, the vials of Peter's wrath 
 were all the more freely emptied on the Royal 
 occupant of those palaces. If he wanted more 
 stimulus, it was supplied by the fact that some 
 well-known west-country persons, whom for this 
 or that reason he disliked, were King's men. 
 He too laughed at Rolle, and at Lord Mount- 
 Edgcumbe. He uses the most terrific language 
 concerning Mr Justice BuUer. About the middle 
 of his literary career, Gifford, a Devonshire man 
 like himself, aroused in him the kind of frantic 
 hatred which that strange personage seems to 
 have had the gift of arousing, and which Wolcot 
 vented in verse and in prose scarcely less furious 
 than the almost Bedlamite scream of Hazlitt's much 
 later " Letter." For all these personal reasons 
 and others, rather than, as it seems to me, from 
 any definite political predilections or antipathies, 
 Peter fixed on the King, occasionally distributing 
 a share of his attentions to the King's favourite 
 Minister : — 
 
 (Yes : I detested Pitt and all his measures, 
 And wrote f-F/V/ippics on administration, 
 
 as he says somewhere), to that Minister's associates, 
 Jenkinson, Rose, Dundas, and to certain noblemen 
 
2 54 Essays in English 
 
 and Court favourites. Of these were the Lord 
 Salisbury who enriched Peter's " Mar- political 
 gate Hoy" with the lines— satire. 
 
 Happy, happy, happy fly 1 
 
 Were I you, and were you I ! 
 But you will always be a fly 
 
 And I remain Lord Salisbury — 
 
 (and who, as another authority tells us, used 
 actually to stuff all the carriage pockets of the 
 post-chaises he travelled in with original manuscript 
 verses), Lord Cardigan, the Duke of Leeds, and 
 others. Finally a large, if not the largest, portion 
 was given to Queen Charlotte and the officials, 
 especially the German officials, of the household. 
 There is no doubt, though there are happy 
 strokes all about his work, that posterity has been 
 (as it generally though not always is) right in 
 fixing on Peter's personal lampoons on the King 
 and, in the good old sense, his " family " as the 
 things to remember Peter by. The " Odes to the 
 Academicians " are very good, " Sir Joseph Banks 
 and the Emperor of Morocco " excellent, many 
 other things of the same kind capital. " Bozzy 
 and Piozzi " I am inclined to think the very best 
 thing of its particular kind ever written : the 
 singular folly of the various claimants to the 
 "showmanship" of Johnson could hardly be better 
 ridiculed than in these answering strains of James 
 and the Lady. In serious eighteenth century 
 verse (" Know, lovely virgin, thy deluding art, 
 
Literature, ij 80 -i860 255 
 
 Hath lodged a thousand scorpions in my bieast," 
 
 POLITICAL and so forth) of which Wolcot, strange 
 
 SATIRE. ^Q g^y^ j^^g jgfj- Qopious specioiens, he 
 
 may be a little better or a little worse than Hayley, 
 though he could sometimes turn a very happy half- 
 serious epigram, as here : 
 
 Ah ! tell me not that I grow old, 
 
 That love but ill becomes my tongue ; 
 
 Chloe, by me thou ne'er vvert told, 
 
 Sweet damsel, that thou wert too young ! 
 
 In the same way, when he gets very serious even 
 in his satire he is not usually good, perhaps be- 
 cause he then imitates Churchill, without possess- 
 ing Churchill's indubitable gift of Drydenian verse. 
 His denunciation of Lord Lonsdale, for the not 
 very terrible crime of pointing out to the inhabi- 
 tants of Whitehaven that, pending a final decision 
 as to his legal liability for the sinking of ground 
 above his coal-mines, it would be necessary for 
 him, at great loss to himself as well as to them, to 
 suspend the working, is one of the funniest ex- 
 amples of explosion of good useful wrath through 
 the touch-hole that I know. Wolcot's best literary 
 mood is that of a cat — not a cat in a rage, but a 
 cat in a state of merriment, purring and mumbling, 
 and rolling about. In which state, as all judicious 
 lovers of the animal know, you may look out for 
 a shrewd scratch or bite shortly as part of the 
 game. When he gets really " savage " (the epithet 
 Macaulay assigns to him) he is seldom amusing. 
 
256 Essays in English 
 
 His best form is such as this, which I take almost 
 at random from his longest and most political 
 famous poem, the piece with the ugly satire. 
 name; 
 
 Thus, when Burgoyne, opposing all the Fates, 
 Defied, at Saratoga, General Gates, 
 Sudden the hero dropped his threatening fist, 
 And wisely deemed it folly to resist. 
 
 I could write a long dissertation to show why I 
 can never read or repeat to myself " defied, at 
 Saratoga, General Gates," without laughing, but it 
 is better to laugh again and not write it. 
 
 Of this mood the almost world-famous visit to 
 Whitbread's brewery house (the somewhat delusive 
 title of which is ** Instructions to a Celebrated 
 Laureate "), and (in the Devonshire dialect which 
 no one has ever written so well as Wolcot) the 
 Royal visit to Exeter, are the best known and 
 certainly among the best examples. But it is 
 impossible to turn over many pages of Peter (even 
 in his late and rather chapfallen Tristia, where it 
 is hard to be very certain whether his jokes about 
 making friends with the powers that be are jokes 
 on the right or the wrong side of the mouth) 
 without finding instances of it. I do not know 
 whether he has ever been " selected." It might be 
 impossible to perform that always dubious and 
 dangerous process on a person who has as much 
 of the satyr as of the satire. But on the face of 
 him few writers call for it more. Here, as indeed 
 
Literature y ij 80- 1860 257 
 
 was noted above, Wolcot avenges the caruni 
 POLITICAL caput of Fanny Burney on her enemy 
 SATIRE. Schwellenberg in so dreadful a manner 
 that even the soul of Daddy Crisp, with all his 
 affection for Fannikin and all his hatred of the 
 rest of the human race, might beg for mercy. 
 Elsewhere he is, though more playfully, almost 
 equally unkind to the great Mr Burke, for no 
 particular reason that I can discover, inasmuch 
 as they were at the time on the same side gener- 
 ally, except that Wolcot, who was a John Bull 
 to the core, hated Scotchmen and Irishmen. This 
 is horribly irreverent — 
 
 When Mister Burke, so famous for fine speeches, 
 From trope to trope a downright rabbit skipping, 
 
 Meant, schoolboy-like, to take down Hastings' breeches, 
 And give the noble governor a whipping. 
 
 And on the next page there is a much longer but 
 equally uncomplimentary simile for the Edmundian 
 eloquence. It would shock the admirable decency 
 of the present day to know the epithet which, at 
 the very opening of an ode, he gives to those 
 useful functionaries, the Lords of the Bedchamber. 
 But he was never quite so happy as in dealing 
 with Great George our King himself; and if that 
 monarch, who really knew something about litera- 
 ture, was half as good-natured as tradition makes 
 him out, he must have been as much amused by 
 Peter as it pleased Peter's waggery sometimes to 
 assert that he was. In such a mood Peter, offering 
 
 R 
 
258 Essays in English 
 
 an amnesty to King and Queen, but maintaining 
 the feud with the detested Schwellen- political 
 berg, thus addresses his book : satire. 
 
 Sweet babe ! to Weymouth shouldst thou find thy way, 
 
 The King, with curiosity so wild 
 May on a sudden send for thee and say : 
 
 " See, Charly ! Peter's child. Fine child, fine child ! 
 Ring, ring, for Schwellenberg, ring, Charly, ring : 
 
 Show it to Schwellenberg, show it, show it, show it. 
 She'll say, * Got dem de saucy stoopid thing ; 
 
 I hate more worse as hell what come from poet ! " 
 
 Perhaps the happiest, by the way, of these curious 
 
 Royal repetitions which Peter was never tired of 
 
 playing upon is in prose, and told in a note, to the 
 
 effect that when the King was visiting Mount 
 
 Edgcumbe, he strayed a little from the rest of the 
 
 party to see a monument which had been put up to 
 
 a departed pet pig named Cupid. Her Majesty 
 
 Queen Charlotte called to him to know what he 
 
 was looking at, and the King with perfect gravity 
 
 replied, ** Family grave, Charly ! family grave, 
 
 family grave." And the two next best things 
 
 attributed to the Royal pair are expressions of 
 
 repentance and amendment for the (on the whole 
 
 purely imaginary) crimes with which Master Peter 
 
 thought good to charge them. Rebuking the 
 
 horrid eagerness of the monster Pitt to oppress the 
 
 public, His Majesty frankly declares : 
 
 " Yes ! yes ! I know, I know, the hounds are howling. 
 
 God, Pitt ! I don't, I don't much like their growhng. 
 
 Hey, hey ? Growl, growl ? What, what .'' Things don't go 
 
 right ? 
 Why, quickly, quickly, Pitt, the dogs may bite? 
 
POLITICAL 
 SATIRE. 
 
 Literature, lySo-iSSo 259 
 
 That would be bad, bad, bad, a sad mishap, 
 Hey, Pitt, hey, hey ? I should not like a j;m/." 
 
 And his consort magnanimously chimes 
 
 m 
 
 " I geef my chewells to de Peepel's sighs, 
 All tings from Mistress Hastings as I gote ; 
 I geef de fine pig diamond of Arcote, 
 Iss, dat vich Rumbold geef, I geef again, 
 Rader dan see de Peepels suffer pain. 
 De Emperor presents, Lord ! I vil not tush, 
 Although de duty coss so very mush." 
 
 For as Her Majesty unanswerably asks : 
 
 "Vat signifies de millions in our purses. 
 If moneys do profoke de Peepel's curses?" 
 
 In one (and not the worst) of Wolcot's squibs, 
 )retending to be silenced by the severer legislation 
 ivhich followed the excesses of the French, he 
 laments sadly : 
 
 No more must we laugh at an ass. 
 
 No more run on topers a rig, 
 Since Pitt gets as drunk as Dundas, 
 
 And Dundas gets as drunk as a pig. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 Now farewell to fair Buckingham House, 
 To Richmond and Windsor and Kew, 
 
 Farewell to the tale of the L e. 
 
 Mother Redcap ! and monarchs, adieu ! 
 
 A worse thing came upon him and the other 
 [Opposition lampooners than the checks of the 
 law, which so far as I know, were never seriously 
 [applied to any of them. Peter remained valiantly 
 
26o Essays in English 
 
 singing, and years afterwards accomplished very 
 respectable " Epistles to Mrs Clarke," political 
 and jeremiads on his own exclusion satire. 
 from the Carlton House fetes. But the satiric 
 Muse was tired of her escapade for some years in 
 Whig company, or else was frightened back by 
 the French Revolution to the older quarters where 
 she had laughed of old with Aristophanes and 
 Lucian, with Butler and Swift. On November 
 the 20th, 1797, appeared the first number of the 
 Anti-Jacohin^ and three years later the Poetry of 
 the Anti-facobin was collected and published. 
 
 So much more is generally known about this 
 book than about my earlier subjects, neither of 
 which has, to my knowledge, been reprinted for 
 many years, that it is the less necessary to say 
 much about its authorship and intention here. 
 That its name neatly and accurately expressed 
 its purpose, that its editor was Gifford, and its 
 most brilliant contributors Canning, Ellis, and 
 Frere, though one or two others did good work, 
 are matters of universal knowledge. Frere, who 
 was the youngest, had also the cleanest political 
 record of the three, for he was a Tory from the 
 first, while Canning, as is well known, hovered 
 a little before settling, and Ellis was a convert. 
 Pitt cared nothing at all for literary praise or 
 blame, and is said to have addressed to Ellis 
 the neatest quotation of that century of classical 
 quotations next to Harley's famous consolation 
 to Prior. Both were present when some person, 
 
Literature, iySo-iS6o 261 
 
 thoughtless, ignorant, or malicious, asked Ellis 
 POLITICAL about the Rolliad, whereupon Pitt 
 SATIRE, promptly set any possible awkward- 
 ness straight by the line : 
 
 Immo age et a prima die, hospes, origine nobis. 
 
 I have not observed that many of the persons 
 who are justly proud of calling the poet "Vergil" 
 quote him as aptly as that. But whatever the 
 antecedents of any of the three might be, they 
 all thoroughly meant business in these attacks 
 on the Jacobins English and French, and the 
 enemies of Pitt. The great opening poem on 
 Mrs Brownrigg is most probably assigned to all 
 the three, the still greater " Knifegrinder " to 
 Canning and Frere. In the third of these 
 charming parodies (which, oddly enough, Southey 
 never seems to have had magnanimity enough 
 quite to forgive — the weakest thing I know about 
 him), the delightful dactylics about the " nice 
 clever books by Tom Paine the philanthropist" 
 Ellis may have shared. It must have been a 
 little awkward for him when Canning in an early 
 number gibed at those who 
 
 sit 
 Midst Brooks's elders on the bench of wit, 
 Where Hare, Chief Justice, frames the stern decree, 
 While with their learned brother sages three, 
 Fitzpatrick, Townshend, Sheridan, agree. 
 
 For his own name had been in the commission 
 with these very same learned brethren a bare 
 
262 Essays m English 
 
 dozen years before, and the Rolliad was the 
 result of 'it. But these little accidents political 
 will happen, and he had been personally satire. 
 and in a rather unmannerly fashion ("by Ellis' 
 sapient prominence of nose ") attacked in the piece 
 that Canning was ridiculing. At any rate there 
 was no mistake about him now. He seems to 
 have written by himself the capital parody of 
 " Acme and Septimius " — " Fox with Tooke to 
 grace his side," with its refrain : 
 
 He spoke, and to the left and right, 
 Norfolk hiccupped with delight. 
 
 And he took part in nearly all the most famous 
 things of the collection, "The Loves of the 
 Triangles," " The Progress of Man," " The Rovers," 
 " New Morality," and the rest. ^ 
 
 It is important to observe that all these pieces 
 are in a more or less direct sense political, and , 
 much more so than is sometimes thought nowa- ^ 
 days. Professor Morley, perhaps to soothe his 
 own or other persons' feelings, talks of the Anti- 
 Jacohin as chiefly an attack on " false sentiment " | 
 generally. " The Loves of the Triangles " has 
 often been regarded as a mere literary " skit " on 
 Darwin and his likes ; and " The Rovers " has 
 a false air of being pretty free from politics. 
 Look a little deeper, and different conclusions 
 will, I think, be reached. It was no doubt a god- 
 send to the Anti-Jacobins that so much external 
 folly of various kinds happened to be associated 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 263 
 
 with the maintenance of the new opinions in 
 POLITICAL politics and (horrid word, then not in- 
 sATiRE. vented ! ) sociology. But Canning's in- 
 exhaustible wit, Frere's audacious humour and 
 whimsical erudition (some of his prose notes are 
 unsurpassable), Ellis's eighteenth century polish 
 and Voltairian elegance, always drove straight at 
 the principles of innovation generally, of fantastic 
 sympathies and antipathies, of topsy-turvy theories, 
 which underlay the frippery of the outside. The 
 great Mr Higgins, the eidolon-author of the two 
 didactic poems and the drama (ah, when will re- 
 searches in St Mary Axe give us the " Catastrophe 
 of Mr and Mrs Gingham and the episode of Hip- 
 ponia," the *' Conspiracy against the Ordinate," and 
 the scene in "The Rovers" where "several children: 
 fathers and mothers unknown," are " produced 
 on all sides " ?), constantly enunciates in those 
 very confidential letters which he wrote to his 
 treacherous editors, the exact sentiments which 
 we know so v/ell to-day. When he talks about 
 privilege and prejudice, about the vicious refine- 
 ment of civilised society in regard to marriage, 
 the cumbrous establishments which the folly, 
 pride, and self-interest of the worst part of our 
 species have heaped up, the certainty of man's 
 perfectibility were he freed from kingcraft and 
 priestcraft and other incidents of the present social 
 system — all these things are perfectly unmistak- 
 able. We have them with us as fresh as ever. Sub- 
 stitute The DolFs House for Stella, read " Fabian 
 
264 Essays in English 
 
 Society" for poor Mr Higgins's clubs (but the works 
 of the Fabian Society are not so amus- political 
 ing as Mr Higgins's), and 1798 becomes satire. 
 any present year of grace you please. The very 
 names of "Sedition's evening host" are startling; 
 and we can fill in the blanks of that great hymn 
 with names " after the chances and changes of 
 the times," according to the author's direction, 
 without the slightest difficulty. There can be no 
 manner of reasonable doubt that if it had not 
 been for the maudlin Socialism (they did not 
 call it Socialism then, but it was the same thing) 
 of Southey's sapphics and dactylics, the windy 
 Republicanism of his poem on Marten, his 
 metrical freaks would have been left alone by 
 the mockers. Payne Knight and Darwin had 
 follies enough ; but if the one had not been 
 avowedly, and the other in a sort of half-hearted 
 way Jacobinical, they too might have disported 
 themselves in safety. Even " The Rovers " is 
 full of politics. Does the reader think that 
 "Crown and Anchor" in that beautiful jumble 
 of Beefington's (" England . . . our country . . . 
 Magna Charta ... it is liberated ... a new 
 era . . . House of Commons . . . Crown and 
 Anchor . . . opposition") is mere miscellaneous 
 farce ^ Not in the least. It was at the authentic 
 Crown and Anchor tavern that, on Fox's birth- 
 day, the Duke of Norfolk gave " Our Sovereigns' 
 health — the Majesty of the People." The dignity, 
 chivalry, and courage of the immortal waiter 
 
Literature, ij 80-1860 265 
 
 enforce the great doctrine that " the conscience 
 POLITICAL of a poor man ought to be more valuable 
 
 SATIRE. ^Q j^jj^ ^2x\ that of a prince in propor- 
 tion as it is generally more pure." The satirists 
 may, according to the excellent advice of their own 
 troubadour, " by a song conceal their purposes." 
 But those purposes are constantly what they are in 
 one place avowed to be — to ridicule and baffle the 
 appetite for change, to enforce the old proverb 
 that " seldom comes a better," to confound ideas 
 of equality, and the like. The Anti-Jacobin is 
 thus not only more constantly but much more 
 thoroughly political than the gibes of Brooks's, 
 because patronage and power were in the hands 
 of a thin man who did not like women instead 
 of in those of a fat man who did, or the personal 
 lampoons of Wolcot on the foibles and favourites 
 of a king. 
 
 The fact of this unity and directness of purpose 
 must, I think, be counted in for some of the 
 merit of the book, as well as the fact that Ellis 
 had incomparably stronger colleagues now than 
 before, and that the crimes of the political and 
 the follies of the social Jacobins gave a much 
 better subject. At any rate the merit is certainly 
 much greater. Of "The Rovers," that Ibsenism 
 before Ibsen, it is impossible to tire. I am told 
 that it was once tried on the stage and failed. 
 This does not surprise me, for even The Critic 
 is said not to be popular now, and " The Rovers " 
 requires much more literary, political, and mis- 
 
266 Essays in English 
 
 cellaneous knowledge to appreciate it than The 
 Critic does. But I believe that all boys political 
 of any brains, however little they may satire. 
 know of its antecedents, delight in " The Rovers " : 
 and I am sure that all middle-aged and aged 
 persons of any sense delight in it. Nobody can 
 exceed me in respect for Southey : but if I had to 
 choose between his poems in the vein which the 
 Anti-Jacobin parodied and the parodies of the * 
 Anti-Jacobin, I should certainly take the parodies. 
 The " Address to the Gunboats " (some " Keys " 
 attribute it to Lord Morpeth ; but he never could 
 have written it, and if the translation of Pictis 
 Puppibtis is not Frere's or, less probably, Canning's, 
 I am no two-legged creature) is not, I believe, 
 so great a favourite with some as it is with me. 
 But surely the last couplet — 
 
 Beware the Badger's bloody pennant, 
 And that d d invalid lieutenant ! — 
 
 has an extraordinary charm. All the world is 
 agreed as to the "Elegy or Dirge" on Jean Bon 
 Saint-Andre, and I suppose there is not much 
 more difference on the two didactic poems- 
 Time may make one gouty and grey-haired, 
 may bring disappointment at things that are not 
 and disgust at things that are, but scarcely shall 
 it deprive us of the faculty, nay, the irresistible 
 need of laughter as the well-known words recur : 
 
 The feathered race with pinions skim the air, 
 Not so the mackerel, and still less the bear ; 
 
Literatitrc, lySo-iSdo 267 
 
 as 
 
 POLITICAL Each shepherd clasped with undisguised delight 
 SATIRE. His yielding fair one — in the captain's sight ; 
 
 as that incomparable note of Frere's to " blue-eyed 
 wanton " *' Hyperbola : not figuratively speaking 
 as in rhetoric, but mathematically, and therefore 
 blue-eyed ; " or that other on *' Pons Asinorum," 
 where Mr Higgins, with the combined fairness 
 of a man of science and an enlightened politician, 
 after observing that " having frequently watched 
 companies of asses during their passage of a 
 bridge he never discovered in them any symptoms 
 of geometrical instinct," admits that "with Spanish 
 asses, which are much larger {vide Townsend's 
 Travels through Spairi) the case may possibly 
 be different." And the whole is appropriately 
 crowned with *' The New Morality," wherein in 
 truth the whole web of connection between the 
 different modes of thought satirized is given. 
 
 Of course, it is impossible that political sympathy 
 should not make one's enjoyment of such things 
 rather keener. But as I have made no secret of 
 the amusement with which I read the Rolliad 
 and Peter Pindar, having in neither case any such 
 sympathy with the writers, I do not think the 
 difference here is likely to carry me very far to 
 leeward of the truth in thinking that the superior 
 excellence of the Ayiti- Jacobin lies not more in 
 its greater literary polish than in the superior 
 sanity and largeness of its spirit. Though the 
 
268 Essays in English 
 
 personal satire is sometimes pretty sharp, it is 
 never as in the other cases merely per- political 
 sonal ; and I think I can imagine (I am satire. 
 rather inclined to think that I know one or two) 
 persons who, though by no means sympathizing 
 with Toryism, appreciate to the full the unsparing 
 and unerring fashion in which the Anti-Jacobin 
 lashes what may be called the Fool on the other 
 side of politics ; — the Fool who believes in political 
 nostrums and political revolutions, the Fool who 
 gushes over the inevitable and ineradicable in- 
 equalities of the world, the Fool who drops a 
 tear over criminals, the Fool who fails to see 
 that, though certain social rules may pinch in- 
 dividuals now and then, the permission of general 
 license would simply make the world unworkable. 
 It is, I think, to this heightening and enlarge- 
 ment of the political aim that we must at any 
 rate in part attribute the fact that the Poetry of 
 the Anti-Jacobin remains unsurpassed as a col- 
 lection of political verse-satire. We have had 
 excellent practitioners of that art since the century 
 began. Moore, Praed, and Mansel produced, and 
 there is at least one living writer who produces 
 work which Canning himself need not have refused 
 to sign. But all such writers have been exposed 
 to the inconvenience that the main " dependence," 
 in the old phrase, of the political quarrel has not 
 altered much, has altered very little, since 1800. 
 As I have said, the inimitable prefaces of Mr 
 Higgins reproduce themselves every day in our 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 269 
 
 midst, and " Divine Nonsensia " has found little 
 POLITICAL or nothing new, call she it by what- 
 sATiRE. ever new names, to talk about since 
 she furnished subjects to " The Rovers " and 
 " The Knifegrinder." But as yet, whatever may 
 be coming, neither the excitement of popular 
 imagination, nor the liberty of popular follies, 
 nor the exaggeration of popular crimes, has 
 equalled the state of things of 1793- 1800. There 
 has been no such death-grapple as there was 
 then, no such storm for the Pilot to weather, 
 no such topsy-turvifying of public sentiment as 
 could bring men like Goethe and Coleridge and 
 Southey (let it be remembered that each of 
 them saw the error of his ways) to write the 
 rubbish that kindled the " Singing Flames " of 
 the Anti-Jacobin's correction. They were kindly 
 flames * after all, and a God did save the culprits 
 — more happy than those referred to in Heine's 
 famous warning. If the occasion comes again — 
 which Heaven forbid ! — why, let the same God 
 send us "such hounds, such hawks, and such a 
 leman " — such Anti-Jacobins and such a Pilot ! 
 
 * An American critic once gravely commented on the ignorance 
 of the present writer in not knowing that Heine wrote *'s<rngenden," 
 " singeing," Possibly this was part of the "great American joke." 
 If not, it can only be said, in the first place, that Heine did not ; 
 and in the second, that if he did, "why, the less Heine he." 
 
IX. 
 THREE HUMOURISTS. 
 
 HOOK, BARHAM, MAGINN. 
 
 Among writers of the second or lower classes 
 there are few who hold their places in three 
 such a precarious fashion as humourists humourists. 
 of the second or lower class. Their brethren of the 
 first class occupy perhaps the surest position of all. 
 More than two thousand years have failed to lessen 
 in the very slightest degree the laughter-moving 
 powers of Aristophanes, and nearly two thousand 
 have not affected those of Lucian. But it may 
 be that even the greatest, at shorter distances 
 and intervals from their own time, are in danger 
 of temporary eclipses ; and all but the greatest 
 are in danger of eclipses which are only too 
 likely to be more than temporary. 
 
 On two, at least, of the three jesters whose 
 names are written above, the curse has certainly 
 come ; and I have been told, though I hope it 
 is not true, that even The Ingoldsby Legends have 
 fallen somewhat from the pride of place v/hich 
 370 
 
r 
 
 Essays hi English Literature, lySo-iSdo 271 
 
 they held so long. It may be all the more in- 
 THREE teresting to survey them in a trio, a 
 HUMOURISTS, conjunction to which they lend them- 
 selves with unusual ease. They were all contem- 
 poraries in life and still more in literature ; they all 
 pursued a peculiar kind of humourous writing to 
 which the institution, new in their day, of the lighter 
 kind of periodical literature gave opportunities 
 impossible before their date. All of them were 
 distinctly convivial and not like their other con- 
 temporary, Hood, retiring and domestic in jhabits, 
 though rollicking with the pen. Two of them 
 were Bohemians in the fullest sense of the word. 
 Two of them, but not the same two, were no 
 mean scholars. All had the natural and rarely 
 absent temperament of the humourist which 
 makes him sometimes a staunch and pronounced 
 Tory, and almost always an opponent of innova- 
 tions in Church, in State, in manners, and in 
 literature. All wrote a peculiar kind of easy 
 verse with extraordinary facility, and two, at 
 least, could sometimes drop, or rather rise, into 
 something not merely facile. 
 
 When the tale is of three men in one tub, 
 biographical particulars must necessarily be given 
 as sparingly as possible. Indeed no one of the 
 three lives was in the ordinary sense eventful ; 
 and a few dates and facts will be all that is 
 necessary to place them conveniently. Theodore 
 Hook was born in London, on September 22nd, 
 1788, of a musical and theatrical family which, 
 
272 Essays in English 
 
 in the person of his elder brother and still more 
 in that of his nephew, raised itself three 
 to high consideration in the Church, humourists. 
 Theodore was sent to Harrow and to Oxford, but, 
 as his official biographer says, " threw himself into 
 the arms of the Muse," which would not, to an 
 earlier generation, have conveyed the sense of 
 " left the University with no degree and for no 
 profession." Attracting the notice of the Regent 
 by his convivial gifts he was appointed (in 18 13) 
 to a valuable place at Mauritius, in which he 
 had Moore's ill-luck with, it would seem, much 
 less excuse beforehand than Moore's and with 
 very different consequences. Indeed conduct, as 
 Mr Arnold would have said, was never even a 
 hundredth part of Hook's life. Although when 
 he came home (in 1818) both his baser and his 
 nobler gifts brought him plenty of patronage 
 and plenty of money, he never made any serious 
 attempt to liquidate or compound his obligations 
 to the Treasury, and at his comparatively early 
 death (in 1840) a further laches (his omission to 
 marry the mother of his children) caused every- 
 thing that his family might have had left to them 
 to be swept away. He had filled the interval 
 with journalism of immense vivacity and not a 
 little scurrility, with popular novel-writing, and 
 with the fabrication of a vast amount of mainly 
 impromptu matter of the amusing kind, most, if 
 not all, of which has necessarily perished. 
 
 The next person on our list, Barham, is one of 
 
Lileraticrc, iy8o-i86o 273 
 
 the best known witnesses to the brilliancy of 
 THREE Hook's apparent or real improvisa- 
 HUMouRisTs. tions in the way of dining-room and 
 drawing-room entertainment, he himself being 
 singer, player, and extempore librettist. But the 
 testimony to this is unanimous ; and the gift made 
 him, till his health broke and his spirits flagged, 
 a welcome guest in rich men's houses. Then the 
 end came, and there was nothing left of poor Mr 
 Wagg but his batch of printed jestings, the rapidly 
 /ading memory of his conversational and enter- 
 taining powers, a disapproval of his life which 
 was not limited to Mrs Grundy, and one masterly 
 piece of friendly but truthful criticism, Lockhart's 
 article written for the Quarterly Review^ and after- 
 wards more than once reprinted alone. 
 
 Not so very different, though with fewer chances 
 than Hook's, is the tale of the life of our second 
 specimen of " bright broken Maginn," as the same 
 Lockhart, this time in a rhyming epitaph almost 
 unmatched for humourous pathos, described him — 
 of " the Doctor" of Erasers, " the Ensign" of Black- 
 wood's, the part originator at least of the Nodes 
 AvibrosiajicE, the part original of Captain Shandon, 
 the staunchest of Tories, one of the best of fellows 
 (for, like Lockhart, " I ne'er heard of a sin " of 
 an odious type, except in some Pecksniffian in- 
 sinuations made long years after by S. C. Hall) 
 and alas ! the most improvident of men. He was 
 born in Cork in 1793, was thoroughly educated 
 first by his father, a schoolmaster, then at Trinity 
 
 S 
 
2 74 Essays in English 
 
 College, Dublin, and for some time followed his 
 father's vocation. But Blackwood^s threb 
 Magazine came into being, and Maginn humourists. 
 seems to have gravitated to it much after the 
 fashion described in verses about another per- 
 son : — 
 
 How many wise ones for thy sake 
 
 Have flown to thee and left off plodding ! 
 
 Certainly Maginn was not an idle man even 
 after this, nor did he immediately give up keeping 
 school; but from about the middle of 1820, when 
 he paid a visit to Edinburgh, his heart was in the 
 lighter journalism and the Bohemianism which 
 then accompanied it as a matter almost of 
 course. He soon went to London ; was intro- 
 duced to Hook among editors, and Murray 
 among publishers ; took a hand in the John 
 Bull and the Representative and the Standard 
 (if not also in the Age and other downright 
 blackguardly prints) ; quarrelled with Blackwood ; 
 set up Fraser ; enraged and fought with Grantley 
 Berkeley ; translated Homer into ballads ; re- 
 ceived five hundred pounds from Thackeray ; 
 knew debts and duns and the Fleet ; was more 
 than once befriended by Peel, who whatever 
 faults he may have had was good to men of 
 letters; and died of consumption at Walton-on- 
 Thames on August 21st, 1842. 
 
 The contrast between these two lives, un- 
 fortunate at the best and at the worst not 
 
LiteraUtre, ly 80- 1860 275 
 
 easily to be defended from unkind adjectives, 
 THREE ^'^^ that of the third, which is placed 
 HUMOURISTS, between them, is, as our fathers would 
 have said, "odd and pretty," and withal very 
 English. Neither Hook nor Maginn had, it is 
 true, Barham's advantages to start with ; but it is 
 equally true that both were put in tolerably straight 
 roads and chose to fall out of them. Richard 
 Harris Barham, though as thorough a humourist 
 as either of them, and of anything but an unsociable 
 or unconvivial disposition, found his feet set on 
 the King's highway from the first and never 
 seems to have been tempted to stray out of it. 
 Whether the Barhams were really descended 
 from Reginald Fitzurse and the Irish Macmahons 
 I really do not know ; the author of The Ingoldsby 
 Legends is perhaps not the man from whom one 
 would accept an unproved pedigree with implicit 
 and childlike faith. But they were certainly a 
 good Kentish family, and Tapton (the elongation 
 to Tappington was venial) was an authentic 
 manor-house. Barham himself, however, was not 
 born there, but at Canterbury on December 6th, 
 1788 ; his father, a stout and cheerful person 
 but a little of a spendthrift, making amends by 
 dying and leaving his son to a minority of four- 
 teen or fifteen years. This he spent at St Paul's 
 School and Brasenose College, meeting at Oxford 
 Theodore Hook, who for a short time was an 
 undergraduate at St Mary's Hall. It would 
 appear that Barham himself was a little volatile. 
 
276 Essays in English 
 
 A severe illness, however, sobered him ; he took 
 orders, married pretty early, and was three 
 presented to a living in Romney Marsh, humourists. 
 the head-quarters of smuggling. Hence in 1821 
 he was transferred to a minor canonry at St Paul's, 
 and from this time forward lived chiefly in London. 
 His career was one of unostentatious, but real, 
 work in his profession, varied by the writing of 
 some novels (whereof the chief is My Cousin 
 Nicholas) and of the famous verses by which he 
 is still known. He died in 1845, the same year 
 which was fatal to Sidney Smith, his friend and 
 superior in the Pauline hierarchy. 
 
 And so turn we from the lives of these men 
 to their works. 
 
 To one who begins the reading of Theodore 
 Hook's novels for the first time, or with only a 
 dim and distant remembrance of Gilbert Guryiey 
 and one or two more of the best, read at an easily 
 amused period of youth, I should judge from my 
 own experience that a certain thing is like to 
 happen. He will remember how when Pendennis 
 came to London Mr Doolan informed him that 
 Mr Wagg got " three hundther pound " for every 
 volume of these novels, and how Arthur at once 
 began to calculate whether he himself might not, 
 on the same terms, make an income of about 
 five thousand a year. To tell the truth it is 
 almost, if not quite, impossible to rank most of 
 these productions high from any point of view. 
 The carelessness and slovenliness of the mere 
 
L iteralure, iy8o-i86o 277 
 
 writing- sometimes very nearly take away the 
 THREE breath even of a reviewer of novels in 
 HUMOURISTS, the present day. The matter is often 
 not much better than the form ; and when one 
 remembers the flattering impromptu of Barham : 
 
 Says I, " Gadzooks ! 
 That's Theodore Hook's, 
 Whose Sayings and Doings make such pretty books," 
 
 and that this represents a general opinion of our 
 fathers, who were not fools, the thing becomes 
 exceedingly surprising. 
 
 For clumsy sentences and slovenly constructions 
 are not the only things to quarrel with. A more 
 good-natured, a wider, and a less technical criticism 
 will find endless faults and, perhaps, not very 
 many merits. Take for instance these very Say- 
 ifigs and Doings. The three series of them contain 
 ten stories of varying lengths : Danvers, The 
 Friend of tJie Family, Mertoji, Martha the Gipsy^ 
 Tlie Suthei'lands, The Man of Many Friends, 
 Doubts and Fears^ Passion and Principle, Cousin 
 William^ and Gervase Skinner. Of these I do 
 not believe that at any time during the last forty 
 years any one, except possibly The Sutherlands 
 and certainly Gervase Skinner, would have had 
 the slightest chance of ranking as of even third- 
 rate merit. Danvers is a pointless and characterless 
 story of silly waste of money on the part of two 
 very harmless parvenus, enlivened at the opening 
 with one of those extravaganzas which from time 
 
278 Essays in English 
 
 to time catch the popular taste, the disturbance 
 created in a quiet household by the three 
 menagerie of a rich nabob. The humourists. 
 Friend of the Family is a little better, but alter- 
 nately sentimental and boisterous, and much 
 characterised by that weakness of Hook's which 
 Thackeray satirised by the suggestion of "put- 
 ting the characters up a step in the peerage all 
 round." Merton, which is extremely long, tells 
 how a decidedly foolish hero missed a good wife j 
 and married a bad one, without any happy end- 
 ing. Hook, to do him justice, was ambitious 
 enough to scorn the happy ending ; but he was 
 hardly strong enough to manage its opposite. 
 Martha the Gipsy is the shortest of the whole, 
 and was considered in its day a very effective 
 tale of terror, I can only say that though I am 
 rather fond of tales of terror, and, I believe, an 
 indulgent critic of them, it brings me for all its 
 shortness nearer to a yawn than to a shudder. 
 
 The Sutherlands is a distinct relief, though there 
 is not very much substance in it, and its merits are, 
 as Hook's merits generally are, rather dramatic 
 than narrative and less of comedy than of farce. 
 Still the two brothers, the headlong George and 
 the careful James, who come equally to grief, — the 
 one marrying a girl not in the very least better 
 than she should be, and the other expending end- 
 less diplomacy and a considerable sum of ready 
 money on securing an unattractive and illegitimate 
 heiress to a small annuity — are contrasted amus- 
 
I 
 
 Litei'atiire^ ly 80- 1860 279 
 
 ingly enough and meet their fate in no disagrce- 
 THREE able manner. Nearly as much may 
 HUMOURISTS, be said, though the thing is here even 
 more directly farcical and was indeed actually 
 dramatised, of Doubts and Fears, where a rou6 
 and lady-killer, w^ho is separated from his wife, 
 makes coincident assignations unawares both with 
 her and with his daughter, and all is gas and 
 gaiters afterwards. The Ma?i of Many Friends^ 
 which comes between the two, is one of the 
 hardest of all to read. Passion and Principle is 
 a strange compound of good and bad. Francis 
 Welsted's sojourns at the Holborn Inn and in the 
 Dalston Academy are full of lively touches which 
 (as do most of Hook's best things) show us where 
 both Dickens and Thackeray with others of their 
 contemporaries found models ; and they are good 
 to read to this day. But the trials of Welsted's 
 beloved Fanny with a nabob soldier of equally 
 detestable temper and character, the patronage of 
 that struggling usher by a noble family, and the 
 lamentable but scarcely pathetic end are all naught. 
 Cousin William is half society and half sentiment ; 
 but to me, at least, almost wholly uninteresting. 
 
 Only Gervase Ski?t7ier seems to me readable 
 now-a-days with genuine amusement right through. 
 Even here there is a good deal of that mixture of 
 simple exaggeration and of caricature which is 
 called in French charge, and which is Hook's main 
 resource. The devices by which Gervase, — a 
 country squire who is economical " on principle," 
 
28o Essays in English 
 
 a fully middle-aged bachelor whose pre-contract 
 to a young and pretty girl does not three 
 prevent him from aspiring to illicit humourists. 
 joys, and a simple bumpkin who tries to be 
 knowing and see life — is fleeced, tormented, and 
 almost ruined are scantily probable at times. 
 But still the thing is amusing, and it is salted 
 and spiced all through by Hook's ingenious use 
 of his unquestioned familiarity with theatrical 
 things and theatrical people. The Fuggleston 
 couple, — the wife an adventuress and a baggage ; 
 the husband full enough of apparent bonhomie but 
 one of those particularly ugly persons for whom 
 modern English has no name, but of whom Shake- 
 speare's contemporaries were very fond, though 
 Shakespeare himself would have none of him — are 
 what Hook's men and women are too seldom, alive, 
 hit off once for all, and added to the permanent 
 strength of the establishment of the army of 
 Fiction. 
 
 Here, too, that peculiar kind of interest to which 
 I have alluded above comes in very strongly. I 
 feel that I owe an apology to the blameless and 
 peerless Emily Fotheringay if I say that I do not 
 think she would have been precisely what she is if 
 Amelrosa Fuggleston, who was not at all blame- 
 less and only appeared peerless to a bumpkin 
 Lothario, had not preceded her. In the same way 
 Kekewich, the manager, stammers the language of 
 no less a person than Mr Jingle who, both for pro- 
 fessional and chronological reasons, may quite 
 
Literature, ij8o-iS6o 281 
 
 probably have learnt it of him, though it is fair to 
 THREE say that there are traces of this kind 
 HUMOURISTS, of lingo in fiction much earlier, as far 
 back, indeed, as the Mr Briggs of Cecilia. This 
 quality of suggestion and ancestorship has, for 
 those who read not merely for the story, a strong 
 attraction. But of other attractions I must confess 
 these Sayings and Doings seem to provide but a 
 scanty and fragmentary banquet. 
 
 Nor are the other books much more remunera- 
 tive. There is no doubt that tradition rather than 
 positive acquaintance is right in holding Gilbert 
 Gurtiey for the best of them. It is, if not a 
 specially amiable or estimable, a sufficiently bright 
 and cheerful example of the fiction of high jinks 
 and high spirits — of, as Hook's great follower has it, 
 the " British brandy and water " school of jollity. 
 The things by which it is best, if not solely re- 
 membered, — the hoaxes of Daly, the mistaking of 
 Gilbert for the Prince of Orange, the portrait of 
 Tom Hill, and so forth, — are still relishing with a 
 little good will even to rather difficult palates, and 
 still delectable to boyish appetites and simple 
 tastes generally. But even these are rather thin ; 
 and when they are left out of consideration the 
 interest of the book is reduced almost to zero. 
 There is scarcely any plot ; the hero, though not a 
 bad fellow, is a colourless nincompoop ; the female 
 characters (with the exception perhaps of Mrs 
 Fletcher Green) have, in a less libellous sense than 
 Pope's, no character at all : and the narrative jerks 
 
282 Essays in English 
 
 or joints itself along in unconnected fyttes which 
 might nearly, if not quite, as well be three 
 presented separately as short stories. humourists. 
 Faulty as it is, however, it is at any rate better 
 than Gurney Married^ of which all that can be 
 said is that Gilbert is a greater fool than ever, his 
 brother in a different way a greater fool than he, 
 and the humour of the Nubleys, the governess and 
 the children, very tragical mirth for the most part. 
 In Jack Brag matters are not much mended by 
 the hero being an offensive cad instead of a 
 chuckle-headed gentleman. Maxwell has attracted 
 most attention from the portrait sketch of Godfrey 
 Moss, which is known to be almost a photograph 
 of George the Fourth's unlucky led-parson Cannon ; 
 and the picture is certainly at first vivid if rather 
 disgusting. But Moss has very little to do with 
 the story, and his mannerisms — his " Neddums " 
 and " Kittums " and the rest — become after a time 
 as tiresome as they are irrelevant. Peregrine 
 Biince can plead that it was written when its 
 author was almost entirely broken down, — indeed 
 I believe he never finished it. But all the rest. 
 Cousin Geoffrey^ All in the Wrongs Precepts and 
 Practice, The Widow and the Marquis, etc., exhibit 
 the same faults with perhaps fewer merits than the 
 books already noticed. Pictures of manners so 
 stale and faded that it is impossible not to suspect 
 the drawing of having been at first but superficial ; 
 characters lacking in the universal traits which 
 alone give vitality ; careless writing ; construction 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 283 
 
 which is often no construction at all, — these things 
 THREE meet one at eveiy turn of leaf, at every 
 HUMOURISTS, change of volume, and even when the 
 laughter does provoke an echo, 
 
 Its voice is thin as voices from the grave. 
 
 With the best good will the reader is foiled ; and 
 he shuts the last book, agreeing more heartily than 
 ever with the aforesaid Mr Pendennis, when he 
 thought more than forty years ago that these 
 works were " not exactly masterpieces of the 
 human intellect." 
 
 Are we then to conclude that our fathers were 
 fools } That is about the last conclusion which I, 
 for one, will ever willingly accept Indeed the 
 answer which makes such a conclusion quite un- 
 necessary was practically given almost when Mr 
 Pendennis spoke, and in reply to him, by Lockhart, 
 whose critical dicta are never to be lightly passed 
 over, and may often, as here, be extended and 
 inferred from with advantage. In a note to his 
 biographical essay on Hook when it was reprinted, 
 the critic draws special attention to the rise of 
 Thackeray as qualifying certain remarks which he 
 had made on the merits of Hook's novels. The 
 fact is that during the late twenties and the 
 thirties, the years of Hook's fame and fortune, the 
 country was very badly off for novelists, and 
 especially for novelists of modern and contem- 
 porary life. Nearly all Scott's best were written, 
 and Miss Austen had ceased to write, when Hook 
 
284 Essays in English 
 
 began; Dickens had but just appeared, and Bulwer : 
 not so very long, when Hook died. three 
 Scott's line was different : Miss Austen humourists. 
 had made no school ; and though novels were being 
 written in ever increasing numbers their writers \ 
 were for the most part all abroad in the novel 
 proper. They could not get out of the tradition of 
 Fielding and Smollett, itself a survival of the pica- 
 resque romance. Although the life of their heroes 
 and heroines was supposed to be modern and actual, 
 it had to be spiced with adventures, and adjusted 
 to a sort of Odyssey (comic or tragic as the case 
 might be) watered with the tears of sensibility or 
 roused by the guffaws of broad farce. Except 
 Miss Austen and perhaps Miss Ferrier, nobody had 
 yet dared with conspicuous genius and success to 
 depict purely ordinary life : for even Miss Edge- 
 worth's work at its best is of an older fashioned 
 kind. Hook, for all his talent, all his faculty, all 
 his experience of the world, was certainly not the 
 man to strike out the new line. It is perfectly 
 obvious, not merely from his carelessness of style 
 and story, but from consideration of the life he led, 
 that he must almost always have written in a 
 scrambling hurry. He was in fact a born im- 
 provisatore, and I should imagine that the Sayings 
 and Doings (which brought him even more than 
 the sum named by Mr Doolan, inasmuch as for 
 one of the series he is said to have received two 
 thousand pounds) cost him very little more labour 
 or, in proportion, more time, than the famous 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 285 
 
 impromptu comediettas which he used to throw off 
 THREE ^t rich men's dinners by way of pay- 
 HUMouRisTs. ment for the claret and retainer for a 
 further invitation. 
 
 Nor was he by any means a man of such com- 
 manding genius that he could dispense with 
 labour ; though he had a certain amount of wit at 
 will, a command of rather theatrical pathos, un- 
 limited bustle and rattle, and sufficient familiarity 
 with those whom the middle classes of his day 
 called "high fellows" to dazzle the said middle 
 classes with titles and scraps of "silver fork" 
 detail. It is also probable that his manners are 
 truer to those of his time than we, to whom this 
 time is only a tradition, quite know. In the very 
 greatest works the essentially and eternally human 
 is so married to the ephemeral that it makes this 
 eternal too, and we have no difficulty in appreciat- 
 ing it for all its deadness. But the smaller men 
 cannot fix the manner of the minute in this way, 
 and their presentations appear to us, not as in- 
 teresting preservations and preparations, but as 
 worn-out stuff which is not alive to us now, and the 
 vitality of which at any time we feel more or less 
 inclined to doubt. It has amused me sometimes 
 in reading contemporary work of the kind to try 
 and separate the pieces which will have the first, 
 and those which have the second effect on readers 
 a hundred years hence. To a certain extent it can, 
 I think, be done, but probably never completely 
 even by the wariest critic, by him who has paid 
 
286 Essays in English 
 
 most attention to the abiding and the fleeting 
 characteristics of literature respectively. three 
 But this is a digression. In Hook, let humourists. 
 me only repeat, much is dead that may have once 
 been alive ; a little was alive and is so still ; but 
 much also, I think, never was properly alive at all, 
 and was only accepted as being so in the absence 
 of livelier studies. 
 
 Those who, as is not uncommon, maintain that 
 the preservative just referred to is more easily 
 applied, or at any rate is more commonly found, in 
 verse than in prose, may derive confirmation for 
 their opinion from the different fate of the second 
 author on our list. Barham and Hook were 
 friends and contemporaries, and, but for the differ- 
 ences noted above in their characters and fortunes, 
 might be said to resemble each other in many 
 ways, if not in most. They died within a few 
 years of each other, and at the time even of 
 Barham's death there can be no question that his 
 reputation was almost infinitesimal compared with 
 Hook's. Yet the greater fame was doomed to 
 decrease rapidly and continually, the smaller to 
 increase at once and to hold its ground. I have 
 been told indeed that The Ingoldsby Legends have 
 shown of very late years a certain loss of grip on 
 popular, at least on popular literary, estimation. 
 They are not so often quoted ; the young man of 
 letters of the day does not appreciate, but rather 
 disdains, them, and so forth. Even, however, if 
 this were true (and I am rather doubtful of its 
 
Literature, iySo-iS6o 287 
 
 truth), even if we were to suppose that the very 
 THREE amusing onslaught made upon the 
 HUMOURISTS. Legends some ten or a dozen years 
 ago by a person of the " aesthetic " persuasion (in 
 very nearly the same terms as those which good 
 Roger Ascham applied to the Morte d' Arthur), 
 had some effect, it would remain certain that for 
 at least an entire generation after their first col- 
 lected appearance in 1840, and probably for 
 an entire generation after their author's death 
 in 1845, they enjoyed an almost unexampled 
 and a certainly unexceeded popularity. They 
 were reprinted again and again, in cheap editions 
 and dear, with this man's illustrations and that 
 man's, and without illustrations at all. They were 
 the common delight of readers, and the common 
 quoting ground of writers. Every schoolboy liter- 
 ally knew them, and did not neglect them when 
 he ceased to be a schoolboy ; girls who were good 
 for anything were nearly as fond of them as boys. 
 For thirty years at least hardly anybody who 
 attempted light verse failed to imitate them, and 
 for at least the same number, if not a much larger 
 one, nobody who read light verse with any relish 
 failed to enjoy them. 
 
 How far did they deserve this really extra- 
 ordinary vogue, which to some extent still con- 
 tinues } The enemy, not merely in the person of 
 the aforesaid " aesthetic " energumen, but long be- 
 fore his time, has always accused them of being an 
 ignoble caricature of a noble period of history, of 
 
 l 
 
288 Essays in English ^ 
 
 encouraging brutal and Philistine emotions, of 
 being a hardly disguised and yet under- three 
 hand and unworthy attack on the Ox- humourists. 
 ford Movement, of drawing their piquancy from 
 the subtle pleasure which the baser side of human 
 nature feels in seeing great and holy things 
 degraded and burlesqued. Is there anything 
 in this } I think there is something, nay, a great 
 deal ; but I should have to apply very uncom- 
 plimentary language to the quality of it. It is 
 sometimes in pertinent, and not often thoroughly 
 to the point, to give personal impressions and 
 opinions as an argument ; but occasionally it is 
 well in place. Now I happen (which for the 
 present matter, if for that only, is of consequence) 
 to be a thorough sympathiser with the Oxford 
 Movement, and an impenitent, hardened, incur- 
 able lover of the Middle Ages. So long as, and 
 to the extent to which, Newman was loyal to the 
 Church of England, I should have followed him 
 without the slightest hesitation ; and I know no 
 reading which for pure delight exceeds that of 
 thirteenth century romances in twenty thousand 
 lines of verse or prose. But I have never found 
 The Ingoldsby Legends jar in the very slightest 
 degree on these tastes and opinions of mine. 
 
 Considering indeed that the Middle Ages liked 
 nothing better than burlesquing and rallying their 
 own raptures, their own mysticism, their own 
 religion, I really do not know why we should 
 be more sensitive for them than they were for | 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 289 
 
 themselves. There is a particular delight in mak- 
 THREE ing jests on one's own emotions and 
 HUMOURISTS, their objects, which only humourists, 
 who are also lovers, know. As for the argument 
 of brutality, for that there is absolutely no excuse. 
 It requires very little discussion and no mercy. It 
 is merely part of the rubbish talked and sometimes 
 believed by the average fool of an age which turns 
 up its eyes over England's part in the Napoleonic 
 wars, swoons at the idea of a man drinking a 
 bottle of port or a magnum, of claret, and while 
 crowding to see any stupid and tasteless feat of 
 acrobatism which gives a chance of a fatal accident, 
 goes into fits at the idea of a cock-fight, a prize- 
 fight, or a badger-drawing. 
 
 In the mere character, however, of the subjects, 
 except that their quaintness and variety have no 
 small charm, very little of the attraction of The 
 Ingoldsby Legends seems to me to reside. Although 
 the grotesque-supernatural, and the tragi-comic 
 suited Barham most admirably, and were perhaps 
 his special walk, his powers were in reality of very 
 wide application. My Cousin Nicholas is no con- 
 temptible attempt in the school of Hook. He is 
 not much less good in prose than in verse, and he 
 manages his alternations of grave and gay in verse 
 itself with a skill which is hardly smaller in amount, 
 though less delicate, than that of Praed, who pro- 
 bably gave him some lessons. His beautiful last 
 lines "As I lay a-thinking" do not require the not 
 very authentic antiquity of their spelling to give 
 
 T 
 
290 Essays in English 
 
 them charm. He had scholarship, which, when it 
 does not prevent a man from writing, three 
 is seldom without effect on the quality humourists. 
 of what he writes ; he had the wide vague reading 
 which scholarship nowadays too often excludes; 
 he had good humour, good feeling, good breeding, 
 an immense sense of fun and an inexhaustible 
 fund of rhymes and rhythms just suited for his 
 purpose. There is a fairly considerable class of 
 books and writers between which and whom a 
 peculiar relation exists, the book seeming to have 
 been made for the man and the man for the 
 book ; and it need hardly be said that where it 
 does exist the work is never valueless. In kind 
 it may be high or low, an epic or an epigram, a 
 romance or a riddle ; but it always has the merits 
 of supremacy in that kind. And in the kind of 
 burlesque poetical narrative I am quite sure that 
 Thomas Ingoldsby never has had a superior, and 
 I think it extremely improbable that he ever will 
 have one. 
 
 In the case of a writer whose best things are 
 universally known it is, fortunately, considering 
 space, unnecessary to enter into even as much 
 detail as is here unavoidable about one who is half 
 forgotten like Hook, or one who has never been 
 wholly known like Maginn. It would even be 
 dangerous, for when one began there would be no 
 stopping. I really think I could repeat half the 
 Legends ; I am almost certain that I could with 
 a cue here and there, And as no familiarity can 
 
. Literature, ij 80- 1860 291 
 
 dull, so no want of acquaintance ought to be 
 THREE proof against, the abundant and in- 
 HUMouRisTs. tense characteristics of this jovial 
 microcosm in verse. The hackneyed metaphors 
 of a fountain and a kaleidoscope are the only- 
 ones that are equal to its curious combination of 
 variety and formal perfection. The rhymes and 
 the metres flicker and vary just as the water does 
 when the winds blow its upthrown masses ; they 
 glitter and group themselves unerringly just as the 
 colours and shapes do in the turning tube. How 
 much of the charm may be due to the steady 
 background of good sense, of right feeling, even of 
 tenderness, which is spread behind these fantastic 
 combinations, may be matter of opinion ; how 
 much to the unfailing sun of wit and humour that 
 shines over the whole may be differently, though 
 not very differently, estimated. But the total 
 result can never fail of its effect except upon " bad 
 prigs," upon persons of undue natural density, and 
 upon those who, with amiable and estimable 
 tastes as to what is in the fashion, are not capable 
 of relishing what happens to be a little out of it. 
 Few are the things that one can read at fourteen 
 and at forty-eight with delight equal in intensity 
 and not very much altered in character. But of 
 these, in the case of "this Recensent" (and he 
 thanks the Upper Powers for it), are The Ingoldshy 
 Legends. 
 
 Yet I am not certain that of our three, the last 
 is not in certain ways the greatest. The work of 
 
292 Essays in English 
 
 Maginn, though easier to appreciate than it was 
 a few years ago, is even yet hid as three 
 a whole from the general cognisance, humourists. 
 I do not even know that it would be possible 
 to recover it entirely ; and I am quite sure 
 that if it were so recovered it would suffer 
 from the fatal drawback of being almost en- 
 tirely Journalism, and of a consequent inequality 
 all the greater that its author was the least 
 gifted of all men with the senses of responsi- 
 bility and hesitation. Barham, always in easy 
 circumstances and restrained by his profession as 
 well, wrote simply when it pleased him, and could 
 hold back what he wrote till it pleased him. Even 
 Hook had upon him the constraint of the book, 
 slight as that was in his case. Maginn published 
 little or nothing in book form. He was always a 
 contributor or an editor, one who lived by con- 
 tributions and editing ; and he appears to have 
 been as indifferent as Diderot himself to what 
 became of his work after he had sent in the copy, 
 and pocketed (a temporary process if ever there 
 was one) the payment. Since the pious care of Mr 
 R. W. Montagu collected in 1885 his Miscellanies 
 in two volumes, it has been possible by adding the 
 letterpress of the " Eraser Gallery " to them to 
 obtain something like a conspectus of Maginn's 
 extraordinary faculty. It is not a complete con- 
 spectus : and yet it is a conspectus which shows us 
 the flaws in the work and makes us pretty certain 
 that they would widen if the area of collection 
 were extended. 
 
Literature, 1^/80-1860 293 
 
 It shows us, however, at the same time the 
 THREE great and multifarious gifts of the man. 
 HUMOURISTS. In one respect I own I am a heretic. 
 I cannot away with Maginn's Homeric transla- 
 tions in ballad form. Mr Gladstone, I believe, 
 thinks their tone Homeric ; I should say it was 
 as much like Homer, though in a different way, 
 as Pope is. Mr Matthew Arnold thought them 
 "genuine poems in their own way," and he called 
 the Lays of Ancient Rome pinchbeck! Mr Con- 
 ington complimented Maginn on having realised 
 that Greek ballads can only be represented by 
 English, and Mr Conington was an Oxford man, 
 and must have learnt sound doctrine about petitio 
 principii I However, no more of this. In the 
 case of such as Maginn it is important not to 
 blame the small fragment of his work which for 
 some reason or other has been unduly praised, 
 but to bring forward the far greater part of it 
 which has never been praised enough. It is 
 astonishing how various and how vivid the lights 
 of that part are. 
 
 As for the letterpress of the " Fraser Gallery," 
 I own that, clever as it is, I have no great affection 
 for it. It is one of the earliest and one of the best 
 examples of a kind of journalism for which there 
 has since been greater and ever greater demand, 
 — the brief biography, smart in style and somewhat 
 swaggering in manner, of " Celebrities of the Day," 
 " Men of the Time," and what not. Maginn knew 
 a great deal : he was sufficiently on an intellectual 
 
294 Essays in English 
 
 equality with most of his subjects for his treatment 
 not to be merely impertinent ; and it is three 
 certain that he had at this particular humourists. 
 time a coadjutor in Lockhart, whose knowledge 
 and whose competency were even greater than 
 his own, though Lockhart's actual literary faculty 
 might not be quite so versatile. So the things are 
 amusing enough and sometimes more than amus- 
 ing ; also, which is not common in this kind of 
 thing, they contain a rather unusual amount of 
 positive biographical and miscellaneous informa- 
 tion, not no doubt to be accepted quite unveri- 
 fied, but often extremely useful in the way 
 of setting one on tracks. It is unlucky that 
 in addition to their other faults they contain a 
 great deal of the tedious and obsolete newspaper 
 mannerism of the time, a mannerism of knowing 
 and braggart assumption, which had been started 
 in Blackwood s Magazine^ which was to obtain for 
 many years, and which is not quite dead yet. It 
 must, I suppose have appealed to some taste, 
 have hit some cranny of the human mind, but it 
 certainly seems very unengaging to me. 
 
 This defect and others appear, but are less notable, 
 in the miscellanies of all kinds which Mr Montagu 
 has collected. In so far as there is any direct 
 original for the tricks which Maginn began to 
 play directly he became one of Blackwood's con- 
 tributors, I am rather disposed to see it in the 
 notes to The Anti- Jacobin and the combinations 
 of fanciful divagation, scholarly parallel, and 
 
Literahire, ly So- 1860 295 
 
 scurrilous personal attack which distinguished that 
 THREE celebrated periodical. Mr Montagu 
 HUMOURISTS, (^committing a crime too common, 
 though always unforgivable in arrangers of selec- 
 tions and collections) omits to furnish the dates 
 of the magazines from which he extracts, and to 
 rout them out from complete sets of the originals 
 requires time and opportunity. But the Memoirs 
 of Morgan GDoherty, from the allusions to Peters 
 Letters and other things, must have been very 
 early. There are in them all the traits which 
 Wilson subsequently elaborated and perfected in 
 the Nodes, — the interspersions of verse, serious and 
 comic, the studied desultoriness, the critical, social, 
 and literary vagaries. Indeed there is no doubt 
 that this famous series did owe its origin to 
 Maginn, who disputes the honour of suggesting 
 the motto. 
 
 The Memoirs themselves are filled with parodies 
 and patter songs of singular liveliness, and charac- 
 terised, as Maginn's writings generally are, by 
 odd, but by no means unhappy lapses into the 
 serious. They also show that wide familiarity 
 with literature, especially with classical literature, 
 by which the author was honourably distinguished. 
 Since the comparative disuse of a classical educa- 
 tion, these Greek and Latin freaks of Maginn's 
 have probably become something of a stumbling- 
 block to the generation which is now sent into 
 the world unfurnished with the keys to some of 
 the world's best things. Indeed in the not very 
 
296 Essays in English 
 
 abundant comments made on Maginn's centenary, 
 the British journalist not unfrequently three 
 had the honesty to confess the fact, humourists. 
 But if the habit is thus to some a disqualification, 
 it is, of course, to others an additional charm. 
 And I do not know that any one has ever managed 
 this particular style of academical wit better than 
 Maginn. He may not have been an extremely pro- 
 found or accurate scholar * but few men have had 
 more knowledge of the classics after the fashion 
 which delighted Professor Blackie, — the knowledge 
 which enables a man to talk and write in "the 
 tongues " almost as freely as in his own language, 
 and which leaves him rarely at fault for a quota- 
 tion from or a quip in them. Yet few men could 
 be more vernacular ; and in these very Memoirs 
 " The Powldoodies of Burran " exhibits a command 
 of the style which Swift invented for the purpose 
 of putting it into the mouth of Mrs Harris, un- 
 equalled since Swift's own examples. 
 
 O'Doherty (Maginn himself spells it in one 
 word, " Odoherty ") also does duty as eidolon- 
 author in another of " the Doctor's " most con- 
 siderable productions, indeed his most considerable 
 production taking length and merit together. 
 The Maxims of \Sir\ Morgan GDoherty used to 
 be procurable in a little pocket-volume which 
 I have not seen for very many years. More 
 
 * An Irish correspondent good-humouredly remonstrated with 
 me on this admission. But the slip of "Nugas Curialioe" (v. 
 infra) is not the only suspicious one to be found. 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 297 
 
 people probably know them from one or two 
 THREE references of Thackeray's than in them- 
 HUMouRisTs. selves, even since Mr Montagu's re- 
 print ; but they are very well worth knowing. 
 With not a few of what seem now, and a few of 
 what should surely have seemed at any time, 
 breaches of good manners and good taste, they 
 contain a great deal of wisdom on the first prin- 
 ciples of literature, feeding, and philosophy, with 
 a picture of Fourth-Georgian manners which, used 
 with discretion, is instructive, and, used with or 
 without discretion, entertaining. Maginn should 
 not have spelt Chateau Grillet, Chateau GrilU^ 
 which is absurd ; but it is greatly to his credit 
 that he pronounced that too little known wine 
 to be delicious. It shows that he had no vulgar 
 taste. 
 
 His most serious and solid work in matter and 
 manner, if not also in actual bulk, is the rather 
 famous Cotiszderation of Farmer^s Essay on the 
 Learning of Shakespeare. With some quite 
 astonishing slips (such as ** Nugae Curialiae," which 
 perhaps is due to carelessness in correcting his 
 proofs) it contains probably as much sound learn- 
 ing, shrewd wit, and acute criticism as can be 
 found in any single contribution to the enormous, 
 and too often worthless library of Shakesperian 
 comment. 
 
 His miscellaneous writings in verse and prose 
 are too numerous to be considered here in detail. 
 In both kinds there may be thought to be too 
 
298 Essays in English 
 
 much of the aforesaid exercises in parody and 
 burlesque criticism. The Rime of the three 
 Ancient Waggonere, The Third Part of'^^^^'^'^^^'^'^' 
 Christabel, Mooreish Melodies, and so forth, though 
 all very well in their own way and in small doses, 
 are apt to become a little tiresome when collected 
 in volumes. Nevertheless Maginn did some of his 
 best work in these forms. The Pewter Quart 
 is an admirable thing, the most spirited and 
 genuine drinking-song perhaps of this century, if 
 not the most poetical. Nor are the burlesque 
 commentaries on The Leather Bottell and The 
 Black Jack which follow by any means ungracious 
 fooling, though they may be thought to have 
 been carried on a little too long. There is great 
 merit, both political and sentimental, in the varia- 
 tions which he founded on that most beautiful 
 old song which begins "Let's drink and be merry." 
 Some of his Latin versions in The Embalmer and 
 elsewhere are excellent, and indeed it is difficult 
 to dip anywhere into this class of his writing 
 without finding pasture, though perhaps it is not 
 wise to browse too long at one time thereon, and 
 though not all the herbs are suited to all tastes. 
 For instance I have never been able myself to 
 take much delight in his exercises in jargon 
 and thieves' Latin ; but they please others. 
 
 A gift which Maginn must have had in ex- 
 traordinary measure, but which, for some reason 
 or other, he seems to have left for the most part 
 uncultivated, was his talent for prose fiction in 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 299 
 
 little. A long story I do" not suppose he could 
 
 THREE ever have managed, and his longest 
 
 HUMOURISTS, known to me The Last Words oj 
 
 Charles Edwards, is dreary enough. But the man 
 
 who wrote three such masterpieces, by no means 
 
 R in the same kind, as The Man in the Bell, Bob 
 
 ■ Burke's Duel with Ejisign Brady, and, best of all, 
 
 I A Story without a Tail, must have had it in him 
 
 to write a great many more. There are many in- 
 
 11 stances on record of men who have produced only 
 \ one or two poems of value ; very few I think of 
 men who have produced one or two extraordinarily 
 good prose-tales and no more. The sole explana- 
 tion that occurs to me is that work of actual in- 
 vention required a certain amount of planning and 
 thinking, which Maginn's incurably reckless and 
 u random nature and habits refused to give. If it 
 be so, the loss inflicted in this respect by his 
 foibles is greater that any other. I have read A 
 Story without a Tail literally scores of times and 
 never without fresh enjoyment. 
 
 Indeed in " the chronicle of wasted time " (to 
 play on words in his own manner) there are 
 few more melancholy histories than Maginn's. 
 Many of the greatest wits have had nothing like 
 ; his learning ; and hardly any man of very great 
 learning has had anything like his wit ; while it 
 cannot be said that he wanted opportunity. Yet 
 not only did he make a mess of his life, but he 
 also, in a way which by no means necessarily 
 follows, made a mess of his genius. It is hardly 
 
300 Essays in English 
 
 possible to open a page of his without finding 
 something that seems like indisputable three 
 evidence of that quality ; yet in twenty humourists. 
 years of literary production he did no great thing, 
 and not more than one or two small things that 
 are perfect. Neither drink nor debts, neither want 
 of method nor even want of industry, will fully ac- 
 count for this. And perhaps after all the truth is 
 here, as in so many other cases, that Maginn did 
 give the best that was in him to give, that his talents 
 were more showy and versatile than solid, that 
 the appearance in him was greater than the real 
 capacity, and that in furnishing forth the part 
 of a brilliant journalist and improvisatore he per- 
 formed his day's work as it was appointed for 
 him. I have never been able to make up my 
 mind whether this theory is a consoling one or 
 not, but it is of wide application and pretty 
 strongly supported. 
 
 It is not, however, necessary to argue for or 
 against it in this brief survey of an interesting 
 group of humourists, — of " amusers," as another 
 language has it. With Hood, who surpassed 
 them all in originality of wit and quahty of 
 poetry, and Praed, who in his smaller scale and 
 sphere excelled them all in fineness of touch, 
 they are perhaps the chief of all such as amused 
 the town during the third and fourth decades 
 of this century. Nothing that they did except 
 The Ingoldsby Legends can be called individually 
 important, and nothing with that exception is 
 
» 
 
 Literature, ij 80- 1860 301 
 
 destined, I should suppose, to a long lease of 
 THREE li^e or a probable hope of resurrec- 
 HUMODRisTs. tion. It IS difficult to believe that 
 Hook, at any rate in the bulk of his novels, can 
 ever find many readers again, and the strongest 
 of Maginn's claims, — the delusive and elusive 
 air of genius frustrated which somehow clings 
 to his work — is to be found chiefly in his 
 mixture of classical learning and farcical humour, 
 a mixture which I fear is less and less likely 
 to be appreciated until the slow wheel of 
 time has made a pretty long revolution. Ac- 
 cording to not the wisest part of old-fashioned 
 wisdom we ought perhaps to lament that they 
 did not employ their wits on something more 
 permanent, devote their energies to worthier 
 occupations, and so forth. Dignissimus if not 
 gratissimus error! With the rarest exceptions 
 the plays and the poems, the sermons and the 
 histories, which are not absolutely of the first 
 class, die almost as fast as the novels and 
 essays, the jokes and the journalism that de- 
 serve the same classification. They preserve 
 indeed a specious kind of apparent vitality in 
 some respects, but it is little greater in the way 
 of being actually read, while to the deliberate 
 enquirer the sermon is sometimes even duller 
 than the skit, the peroration less exciting than 
 the parody. 
 
 Yet the division of literature to which they 
 belong can never be indifferent to the lover of 
 
302 Essays in English Literature, ly 80- 1860 
 
 literature both in itself and in its connection with 
 humanity. Most of the work we have 
 
 -^ . THREE 
 
 been surveying has humourists. 
 Sunk into the stream 
 
 That whelms ahke sage, saint, and martyr, 
 And soldier sword and minstrel's theme. 
 And Canning's wit and Gatton's charter. 
 
 More perhaps will undergo the same immersion ; 
 till nothing but Ingoldsby remains above water, 
 and even his head is vexed by the foam of the 
 tides. But they were all very much alive once, 
 which is more than can always be said of the 
 sermons and the histories ; and where there has 
 been life there must always be, in degrees vary- 
 ing from the infinite to the infinitesimal, interest 
 for those who live. 
 
ft 
 
 I 
 
 X. 
 
 THE HISTORICAL NOVEL. 
 
 I. — THE DAYS OF IGNORANCE. 
 
 Who wrote the first Historical Novel? The 
 THE HisTOR- orthodox, and perhaps on the whole 
 icAL NOVEL. |.j^g sufficient, answer to this question 
 is, Xenophon. And indeed the Cyropcedia does 
 in many ways answer to the description of a 
 historical novel better than anything, at least 
 anything extant, before it, and as well as most 
 things for more than two thousand years after 
 I it. It is true that even nowadays hardly the 
 most abandoned devotee of the instructive in 
 novels, would begin a book with such a sen- 
 tence as, " It occurred to us once upon a time 
 how many democracies have come to an end at 
 the hands of those who wished to have some kind 
 of constitution other than a democracy." But 
 perhaps that is only because we are profoundly 
 immoral and sophisticated, while the Greeks were 
 straightforward and sincere. For the very novelist 
 who artfully begins with a scrap of dialogue, or a 
 
 303 
 
304 Essays in English 
 
 description of somebody looking over a gate, or a 
 pistol shot, or a sunset, or a tea-party, thehistor- 
 will, before many pages are turned, ical novel. 
 plunge you fathoms deeper than ever classical 
 plummet can have sounded in disquisition and 
 dulness. Still, there is no doubt that not merely 
 on this earliest, but on every early example of 
 the kind, there weighed a certain character of 
 amateurishness and novitiate. Not till within 
 the present century in the hands of Miss Austen 
 and Scott did prose fiction of any kind shake 
 itself entirely free from the trammels of secondary 
 purpose, without at the same time resigning itself 
 to the mere concoction of amusing or exciting 
 adventure. Even Fielding, though he would let 
 nothing interfere with his story, thought it desir- 
 able to interlard and accompany that story with 
 moral and philosophical disquisitions. 
 
 It is not therefore wonderful than Xenophon, 
 who was quite a different person from Fielding, 
 and was moreover simply exploring an untried 
 way, should have subordinated his novel to his 
 political purpose. In fact it is perhaps rather 
 excessive to regard him as having intentionally 
 written a novel, in our sense, at all. He wanted 
 to write a political treatise : he was a pupil of 
 Socrates ; and vastly as the Socrates of Plato and 
 the Socrates of Xenophon differ, they agree in 
 exhibiting a strong predilection for the use of 
 fictitious, or semi-fictitious literary machinery for 
 the conveyance of philosophical truth. The Cyro- 
 
Literature^ lySo-iSdo 305 
 
 pcedza is in fact a sort of Eviile of antiquity, devoted 
 THEHisTOR- to the education of a king instead of 
 icAL NOVEL. ^ private person. It may even be 
 argued that such romantic elements as it does 
 contain (the character, or at least personage, of 
 Panthea, the rivalry of Araspes and Abradatas, 
 and so forth) are introduced less for any attrac- 
 tion they may give to the story than for the 
 opportunities they afford to Cyrus of displaying 
 the proper conduct of the ruler. And it is scarcely 
 necessary to say that the actual historical element 
 in the book is very small indeed, scarcely ex- 
 tending beyond the parentage, personality, and 
 general circumstances of Cyrus. 
 
 Such as the book is, however, it is the nearest 
 approach to the kind that we have from classical 
 times. Some indeed would have it that Quintus 
 Curtius has taken nearly as great liberties with the 
 destroyer as Xenophon did with the founder of 
 the Persian monarchy : but the things obviously 
 belong to different kinds. The Cyropcedia is a 
 philosophical romance for which its author has 
 chosen to borrow a historic name or two; the 
 other (if indeed its author was a real classical 
 writer and not a mere re-arranger of medieval 
 fable) is a history which admits unhistorical and 
 romantic details. Nor can any of the extant 
 Greek Romances, as they are generally called, be 
 said to possess a historical complexion. They 
 may sometimes, for the convenience of the authors, 
 allude more or less slightly to historical facts ; but 
 
 V 
 
o 
 
 06 Essays in English 
 
 their general story and their characters have 
 nothing to do with anything of the thehistor- 
 kind. The remarkable adventures of ical novel. 
 the conventional pair of lovers need no such ad- 
 mixture ; and Anthea, Chariclea, Leucippe, Chloe, 
 and Hysmine are won and lost and won again 
 without any but glances (if even that) at historical 
 characters or incidents. Some things in Lucien's 
 True History and other burlesques have led to 
 the idea that the Historical Novel may have been 
 more fully represented in works that have perished ; 
 but there is little evidence of this. 
 
 It does not require very long or elaborate re- 
 flection to show that things could not well have 
 been different. The attraction of historical subjects 
 in fiction, for the writer to some extent and still 
 more for the reader, depends entirely upon the ex- 
 istence of a considerable body of written history, 
 and on the public acquaintance with it. Now 
 although erudite enquiry has sufficiently shown 
 that the ancients were by no means so badly ofT 
 for books as it pleased Dr Johnson and others to 
 assume, it is perfectly certain that they cannot 
 possibly have had such a body of history. Except 
 some scraps of chiefly Persian chronicle and a 
 certain knowledge of affairs in Egypt, the Greeks 
 had no history but their own, and this latter they 
 were making and writing, not reading. They left 
 the Romans a little more but not much. There 
 was thus little for a Roman, and next to nothing 
 for a Greek Scott or Dumas to go upon even had 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 307 
 
 he existed ; no materials to work up, no public 
 THEHisTOR- tastc, imagination, or traditions to ap- 
 icALNovKL. pg^^i ^Q_ Even if instincts and desires 
 
 of the kind did suggest themselves to any one, 
 the natural region in which it was sought to 
 gratify them was mythology, not history, while the 
 natural medium was verse, not prose. Apuleius, 
 who worked up the legend of Cupid and Psyche 
 so charmingly, might no doubt, if it had oc- 
 curred to him, have done something of the same 
 kind with Appius and Virginia, with the expul- 
 sion of the Pisistratidse, with a hundred other 
 Greek and Roman incidents of romantic capa- 
 bilities. He would have had, too, the immense 
 advantage of being (modern as he was in a way) 
 on the right side of the gulf, of being, as our 
 jargon has it, more or less "in touch" with his 
 subjects, and of being free from the laborious and 
 yet ineffectual gropings which have marred all 
 post-medicEval attempts at the Historical Novel 
 with a classical theme. But he did not ; and if he 
 did not there was certainly no one else who was 
 likely to do it. The Historical Novel of Greece is 
 as we have seen a philosophical treatise ; the 
 Historical Novel of Rome is an epic, an epic 
 differing in merit as Aifieid from Thebaid and 
 Thebaid from Belluin Punicuin^ but still alike in 
 being an epic, and not a novel. 
 
 When the kind revives after the deluge of the 
 barbarians it shows us one of the most curious and 
 interesting evidences of the strange fertilising 
 
3o8 Essays in English 
 
 power of that deluge. The very identical separa- 
 tion which in some five centuries dis- thehistor- 
 solves and precipitates Latin into ical novel. 
 Romance, begets the romance itself at the same 
 time. No doubt the new historical novels at 
 first seem to be epics, like their predecessors, 
 in so far as they had any. They are first in 
 verse ; but before very long they are in prose 
 also. And what is more, one of the most essen- 
 tial and formative characteristics of the Historical 
 Novel appears in them. The Virgils and their 
 followers had gone a thousand years back for 
 their subjects; even Silius Italicus had selected 
 his at a prudent distance of hundreds. But 
 the epics (before very long to become prose 
 romances) of the Carlovingian and Arthurian 
 cycles attack comparatively recent times; and 
 when the Crusades begin, by one of the most in- 
 teresting things in literature, contemporary event 
 actually transforms itself into romance. The story 
 of fact seems to become alive, to twist itself out of 
 the hands of the chronicler who has actually seen 
 the fearsome host of the Tafurs before Antioch, 
 and ridden " red-wetshod " into Jerusalem. More- 
 over it takes to itself all manner of strange 
 legendary accretions, and becomes (as in Les 
 CJMfs and other parts of the Crusading cycle) a 
 historical novel, with some personages and inci- 
 dents strictly matter-of-fact, and others purely and 
 obviously fictitious. 
 
 There is no more difficult question than that of 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 309 
 
 deciding in exactly what manner these Romances 
 THE HisTOR- werc received by our forefathers. These 
 icAL NOVEL, forefathers were (a dim consciousness 
 of it appears to be at last dawning on their 
 descendants) not by any means fools ; though 
 the belief that they were so may still survive 
 in company with the kindred beliefs that they 
 never took baths, that they were extremely 
 miserable, and so forth. They knew perfectly 
 well that these things were, as they said them- 
 selves, trovhy invented, sometimes by the very 
 person who sang or said them, always by some- 
 body like him. At the same time they knew that 
 there was a certain amount of historic truth about 
 some of the personages. Probably (the gods not 
 having made them critical about things where 
 criticism could well be spared) they took in the 
 thing pretty much the same delight that the 
 modern reader takes in the mixture of truth and 
 fiction which distinguishes the Historical Novel 
 itself, and did not care to separate the constituents 
 thereof. 
 
 It would take far too much space, and would 
 be less strictly appropriate to a handling of the 
 Historical Novel than to one of the Romance 
 generally, to sort out in any detail the different 
 kinds of mediaeval story and their exact relation 
 to our particular kind. And the investigation 
 would be a little perplexed by the incurable 
 mediaeval habit of putting everything in verse, 
 science as well as fiction, imagination as well as 
 
3IO Essays in English 
 
 history. Perhaps the nearest approach to the 
 Historical Novel proper is to be found the histor- 
 in the Icelandic Sagas, where the best ical novel. 
 authorities seem to agree that simple and sober 
 family and provincial history is tricked out in the 
 most inextricable and bewildering manner with 
 sheer Scaldic invention. But the explanation is, as 
 I have already hinted, that criticism was not born 
 or reborn. Some, I believe, would be well pleased 
 if it never had been ; but that is neither here nor 
 there. Has not Professor Flint, the most learned 
 and painstaking of investigators, told us that he 
 can find no trace of systematic historical criticism 
 before Ibn Khaldun, that erudite Arab and con- 
 temporary of Chaucer? Now as without a con- 
 siderable stock of history and some general know- 
 ledge of it there is no material for the Historical 
 Novel, so without a more or less distinct criticism 
 of history, of what pretty certainly has happened 
 as distinguished from what very certainly has not, 
 it is impossible for this kind of novel to attain 
 a distinct and separate existence. 
 
 And you never (or at any rate very seldom) can 
 put your finger on any part of any mediaival 
 history, in prose or verse, whether it be avowedly 
 chronicle or half-avowedly fiction, and say, " Here 
 the man consciously and deliberately left his facts 
 and took to his fictions." The difficulty, the im- 
 possibility, as it seems to me, of satisfactorily 
 tracing the origins of the Arthurian story lies 
 precisely in this. Your Nennius, your Caradoc 
 
Literature, ijSo-iSdo 3 1 1 
 
 of Lancarvan even, very possibly, nay most pro- 
 THEHisTOR- bably, believed that they were giving 
 icAL NOVEL, simple history. Perhaps your Arch- 
 deacon Walter (always supposing that he ever 
 existed) did the same. But what are we to make 
 of GeoftVey of Monmouth and persons like him "^ 
 Was Geoftrey a merely uncritical chronicler, taking 
 details from record and romance alike .'^ Was he, 
 whether plagiarist in the main, or plastic artist in 
 the main, a " maker," a conscious inventor .^ Or 
 was he a historical novelist before his time, taking 
 his facts from Nennius and Walter (if Walter there 
 was), his inventions partly from Welsh and Breton 
 poetry, partly from his own brains, and weaving it 
 all into something like a whole .'' That is exactly 
 what no one can say. 
 
 But I cling to my own contention that it is 
 impossible to find out how much in the average 
 mediaeval writer was intended history, and how 
 much deliberate romance, for the precise reason 
 that he had never as a rule bent his mind to 
 consider the difference between them. *' The 
 French book " said it, or the Latin book, or some- 
 thing, anything, else ; and he took the saying, com- 
 paratively indifferent to its source, and handed it on 
 a little increased, or at any rate not diminished, like 
 the thriftypersonage at the beginningof thei^^^/Z'//*;. 
 
 It will therefore be clear that, so long as this 
 attitude of mind prevailed, no Historical Novel in 
 the proper sense of the term was possible. History 
 and Romance passed into each other with too 
 
 b 
 
312 Essays in English 
 
 bewildering a metamorphosis ; what is pedantically 
 called "the respect of the document" was thehistor- 
 a thing absolutely unknown. In the ical novel. 
 days when the Homeric tale of Troy expanded 
 itself through Dictys and Dares, through Benoit 
 de Sainte-More and Guido Colonna, into endless 
 amplifications ; when the already rather romantic 
 Alexander of Curtius (always supposing the order 
 not to be the reverse one) acquired twelve Paladins, 
 and discovered the Fountain of Youth, and all but 
 achieved the Earthly Paradise; when the merely 
 poetical history of the Chanson d'Antioche branched 
 off into the sheer legend of Les Chetifs and the 
 endless imaginations of the Chevalier au Cygne, 
 there could be no special Historical Novel because 
 everything was at once novel and history. The 
 peculiarities of romantic handling had become in- 
 grained in, were as it were inextricably blended with 
 and joined to, the literary forms in common use. 
 Not m^erely a superhuman genius like Dante, when 
 he throws contemporary event and feeling into a 
 form which seems to belong to all time or none, 
 but lesser and more strictly practical persons like 
 Froissart and Guillaume de Machault, when the 
 one tells the contemporary prowess of the English 
 in France in brilliant prose, and the other sings 
 the contemporary exploits of Peter of Lusignan 
 at Alexandria in not very ornate verse, share in 
 the benefits or the drawbacks of this romantic 
 atmosphere. Without any scuffling they change 
 rapiers ; and you cannot tell which is which. 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 313 
 
 A kind which the restless ingenuity and fertile 
 THEHisTOR- invention of the Middle Ages had not 
 icAL NOVEL, discovered was very unlikely to find 
 existence in the dulness of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury. That age, so far as intellectual work is 
 concerned, was occupied either in tedious imita- 
 tion of the products of mediaeval genius, or in 
 laborious exhumation of the products of the genius 
 of the ancients. To history proper it did not 
 pay very much attention, and its chief achieve- 
 ment in fiction, the Amadis cycle, is mainly re- 
 markable for the way in which it cuts itself alto- 
 gether adrift from history. The older romances, 
 in conformity with the stock tag of one of their 
 writers about " the sayings and the doings and the 
 ways of the ancestors " tried to bring themselves 
 from time to time into a sort of contact with those 
 central and accepted points of older romance 
 which were almost history. But Lobeira, or 
 Montalvo, or whoever he was, with his or their 
 followers, hardly do this at all. Their world of 
 fantasy suffices them. And perhaps, if anybody 
 likes critical paradox, they may be said to have in 
 a way accelerated the real Historical Novel by 
 rejecting, half unconsciously no doubt, the admix- 
 ture of novel and history in the undistinguished 
 and indistinguishable fashion of the Middle Ages. 
 
 The sixteenth century was too busy with the 
 actual, and (in that which was not actual) with its 
 marvellous outburst of poetry and drama, with its 
 passionate devotion to religious, political, philo- 
 
314 Essays in English 
 
 sophical and other learning to pay much atten- 
 tion to the comparatively frivolous de- thehistor- 
 partment of prose fiction. Even if it ical novel. 
 had done so, the old constraints and disabilities 
 waited on it still. It was, however, getting rid 
 of them pretty rapidly. It was accumulating a 
 great mass of historical information which the 
 Press was spreading and making generally ac- 
 cessible; it was gradually forging and exercising 
 itself with the weapons of criticism ; and side by 
 side with this exercise, it was developing the 
 natural corrective and supplement — an intelligent 
 and affectionate retrospect of the past from the 
 literary point of view. This last is a thing of 
 which we find little trace either in classical or in 
 mediaeval times : the most obvious ancient indica- 
 tions of it are to be found in Alexandria, that 
 curious microcosm of the modern world, and especi- 
 ally in the writings of the Hellenistic Jews. But 
 it begins to appear or reappear in the sixteenth 
 century, and with it comes the promise of the 
 Historical Novel. 
 
 The promise, but not the performance. Among 
 the scanty fiction of the sixteenth century the 
 work of Rabelais and Cervantes (for though Don 
 Quixote did not appear till a year or two after 
 the century had arithmetically closed, it belongs 
 thereto) towers with a supremacy not merely born 
 of the want of rivals. But each is (so far as class 
 goes) only a parody of the older, and especially of 
 the Amadis, romances. The philosophical fictions, 
 
Literature, iySo-i86o 315 
 
 whether they be political like Utopia or social and 
 
 THE HisTOR- cclucational like Euphues^ are equally 
 
 icAL NOVEL, f^j. fi-om our subject, and obviously do 
 
 h but copy the forms of Plato and Xenophon. 
 
 Nearly all the rest is but tale-telling, with an 
 
 I imitation of the Greek pastoral here and there, 
 
 P blended with other kinds, as in Arcadia and 
 
 Astrcua and Diana. 
 
 The immediate descendants of these latter did 
 indeed in the next age attempt to give themselves 
 historical form, or at any rate historical names ; 
 and the names if not the form prevailed for a 
 considerable period. Indeed, Le Grand Cyrus 
 \ and Cleopatra and Clelie, if we take their glances 
 at the present, as well as their nominal references 
 to the past, are doubly historical; and this double 
 appeal continued in the ordinary French novel for 
 a long time. Thus the characters of the famous 
 Princesse de Cleves (the first modern novel as some 
 will have it to be) were all real persons, or most of 
 them, once upon a time, besides possessing real 
 doubles in the court of Louis the Fourteenth. But 
 it was in the latter, not in the former bearing of 
 them that their original readers took interest, while 
 the writers here and elsewhere cared not in the 
 very least for any historical verisimilitude whatever. 
 ^ And this continued to be the case throughout the 
 ^ eighteenth century. The Novel of Sensibility, 
 either out of mere habit or for some other reason, 
 was rather fond of taking historical names and 
 even in a very broad and general way historical 
 
*> 
 
 1 6 Essays in English 
 
 incidents to help it ; but nothing could be less like 
 a Historical Novel. thehistor- 
 
 In England, as is very well known, ^^^^ novel. 
 the seventeenth century gave us, properly speak- 
 ing, neither novel nor romance of the slightest 
 importance. It allegorised ; and on one occa- 
 sion its allegory shot up into the mighty crea- 
 tion of The Pilgrim's Progress. It pursued its 
 explorations in fictitious political geography from 
 Utopia to Atlantis and from Atlantis to Oceana. 
 It told a story or so as the humour took it. 
 But it was not till the next century that the 
 country which has since been the school of every 
 kind of novel to every other country in Europe, 
 and has in the past hundred and fifty years pro- 
 bably produced more novels than all the countries 
 of Europe put together, began seriously to de- 
 vote itself to the kind. And even then it did 
 not for a long time discover the real Historical 
 Novel. Defoe, indeed hovered around and about 
 this kind as he did around and about so many 
 others. The Memoirs of a Cavalier is a Historical 
 Novel almost full-fledged, and wanting only a 
 stronger dramatic and personal element in it. 
 That unequal and puzzling book Roxana is almost 
 another : and if the Memoirs of Captain Carleton 
 are fiction, they may perhaps take rank with these, 
 though at a greater distance. But either Defoe's 
 own incurable tendencies to mystification, or the 
 appetites of the time, seem to have imposed upon 
 him the need of pretending that everything which 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 317 
 
 he wrote was true. Nor did he ever attain to 
 THE HisTOR- that important variety of the novelist's 
 icAL NOVEL. ^j.|. -^hich consists in detaching and 
 isolating the minor characters of his book, — an 
 art which is nowhere of more consequence than 
 in the Historical Novel. If Roxana's Amy, and 
 William the Quaker in Captain Singleton stand 
 out among his characters, it is because by art 
 or accident he has been able to impart more of 
 this detachment and individuality to them than 
 to almost any others. And as we shall see when 
 we come presently to consider what the Historical 
 Novel ought to be, there is hardly any qualifica- 
 tion so necessary to it as this. 
 
 But Defoe, as is well known, exercised little 
 direct influence on English literature, for all his 
 genius, his immense industry, and the multifarious 
 ways in which he was a precursor and innovator. 
 He was read, rather than imitated or critically 
 admired ; and even if his influence had been more 
 direct, another current would have probably been 
 strong enough to drive back or absorb the waves of 
 his for a time. Le Sage with Gil Bias taking up 
 and enforcing the previous popularity of." Don 
 Quixote ; Marivaux with his lessons to Richardson ; 
 and the strong satiric allegory of Swift, slightly 
 sweetened and humanised but not much weakened 
 by Fielding, still held the Historical Novel aloof, 
 still kept it "a bodiless childful of life in the 
 gloom." And part of the cause was still, unless I 
 greatly mistake, that which has been already 
 
3i8 Essays m Eiiglish 
 
 assigned, the absence of a distinct, full, and toler- 
 ably critical notion of history such as thehistor- 
 the eighteenth century itself was hard ical novel. 
 at work supplying. 
 
 Nor was the mere accumulation of historical 
 facts, or the mere diffusion of knowledge of them, 
 the only work of preparation for this special pur- 
 pose in which the century was engaged ; though it 
 was the greatest. Few people, I think, quite 
 realise how little history was read and known in 
 England before the middle of the last century. It 
 was then that Johnson could mention Knollys (a 
 very good and interesting writer no doubt, but 
 already antiquated and certainly not of the first 
 class) as our best if not our only historian on the 
 great scale. And it was only then that Hume and 
 Robertson and Gibbon by ushering the Historic 
 Muse in full dress into libraries, and Goldsmith by 
 presenting her in rather careless but very agree- 
 able undress in schoolrooms, were at once taking 
 away this reproach and spreading the knowledge 
 of the subject ; in other words were providing the 
 historical novel-writer with material, and furnish- 
 ing the historical novel-reader with the appetite 
 and the modicum of knowledge necessary for their 
 enjoyment. Yet it may be doubted whether this 
 would have sufficed alone, or without that special 
 additional stimulus which was given by what is 
 vaguely called the Romantic movement. When in 
 their very different ways Percy and Walpole and 
 Gray, with many others, directed or excited public 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 319 
 
 curiosity about the incidents, the manners, and the 
 THEHisTOR- Htcrature of former times, they made 
 icAL NOVEL, the Historical Novel inevitable; and 
 indeed it began to show itself with very little 
 delay. 
 
 Want of practice, want of the aforesaid historical 
 knowledge, and perhaps, above all, want of a 
 genius who chose to devote himself to the special 
 subject, made the earliest babblings of the style 
 very childish babblings indeed. The Castle of 
 Otranto itself is in essence a Historical Novel 
 with the history omitted ; and a good many of 
 its imitators endeavoured to supply the want. 
 For a time they did it with astonishing clumsiness 
 and want of the historic sense. Even Godwin, 
 a historian by profession and a man of really 
 very considerable historical knowledge, appears 
 to have had not the remotest notion of local 
 colour, of antiquarian fitness, of the adjustment 
 of atmosphere and style. St Leon, for instance, 
 is in its opening scenes to no small extent 
 historical, and keeps up the historic connection 
 to some degree throughout ; but, except for a 
 few bare facts, the whole thing is a gross ana 
 chronism, only to be excused on the inadequate- 
 ground that in "a romance of immortality" you 
 cannot expect much attention to miserable con- 
 cerns of time. There is not the least attempt 
 to adjust the manners to those of Francis the 
 First's day, or the dialogue and general incidents 
 to anything known of the sixteenth century. 
 
320 Essays in English 
 
 The age still told its novels, as it mounted its 
 plays, with a bland and complete dis- thehistor- 
 regard of details such as these. ical novel. 
 
 And Godwin was a purist and a pedant in these 
 respects as compared with the great Anne Radcliffe. 
 The rare lapse into older carelessness which made 
 the sun set in the sea on the east coast of Scotland 
 in The Antiquary is a peccadillo not to be named 
 beside the astounding geography of the Mysteries 
 of UdolphOy or the wonderful glimpses of a France 
 such as the gifted lady imagined it to have been 
 in the time of the religious wars. Clara Reeve, 
 the author of the once famous Old English BaroUy 
 writing years before either Godwin or Mrs Rad- 
 cliffe, and on the direct and acknowledged model 
 of Walpole, threw the lessons of her master (who 
 really did know something both about mediaeval 
 history and manners,) entirely to the winds ; and 
 though she took Henry the Sixth's youth and the 
 regency of Bedford for her time, made her picture 
 one of no time at all. Her French contemporaries 
 were doing just the same or worse ; and all over 
 Europe the return to the Middle Ages was being 
 made to a Middle Age entirely, or almost entirely 
 of convention. Miss Reeve herself found not a 
 few imitators who were more boldly but not 
 more wisely historical than herself. In the ninth 
 decade of the eighteenth century when Scott was a 
 boy of twelve or fourteen, Miss Lee had produced 
 her egregious Recess, dealing with Elizabethan 
 times and Elizabeth herself. Many others 
 
Liter attire, ly 80- 1860 321 
 
 followed, and the not entirely forgotten novels 
 THEHisTOR- of Jane Porter, though they will be 
 icAL NOVEL, iioticcd later, actually preceded Scott. 
 If we could attach quite as much importance 
 to Scott's intromissions with Qtieenhoo //^//(i8o8) 
 as he himself seems to do in regard to the genesis 
 of Waverley, the performances of the Reeves and 
 the Radcliffes might be credited with a very large 
 share in determining the birth, at last, of the 
 genuine Historical Novel proper. For there can 
 be no doubt that it was because he was shocked 
 at the liberties taken and the ignorance shown in 
 these works, that that eminent and excellent anti- 
 quary, Mr Joseph Strutt, determined to show the 
 public how their ancestors really did live and 
 move and have their being, in the romance of 
 Queenhoo Hall. I am ashamed to say that my 
 knowledge of that work is entirely confined to 
 Scott's own fragment, for the book is a very rare 
 one ; at least I hardly ever remember having seen 
 P a copy catalogued. But the account of it which 
 Scott himself gives, and the fragment which he 
 seems to have very dutifully copied in manner 
 from the original, are just what we should expect. 
 Strutt — probably caring nothing for a story as a 
 story and certainly being unable to write one — 
 busied himself only about making his language 
 and his properties and his general arrangement 
 as archaically correct as possible. His book 
 therefore naturally bore the same resemblance 
 to a Historical Novel that Mr Oldbuck's Cale- 
 
 X 
 
322 Essays in English 
 
 doniad, could he ever have got it done according 
 to his own notions and without Lovel's the histor- 
 assistance, would have borne to an epic ^^^^ novel. 
 poem. 
 
 And now, as we have brought the Historical 
 Novel safely through that period of ante-natal 
 history which some great authorities have thought 
 the most important of all, as we have finished the 
 account of the Days of Ignorance (to adopt the 
 picturesque and pleasing Arab expression for the 
 period of Arabian annals before Mahomet), it 
 would be obviously improper to bring in the 
 Prophet himself at the end of even a short pre- 
 liminary enquiry. And there is all the more 
 reason for not doing so because this is the place 
 in which to consider what the Historical Novel 
 is. It will not do to adopt the system of the 
 bold empiric and say, "the Novel as written by 
 Scott." For some of the best of Scott's novels 
 (including Guy Mannering and The Antiquary) 
 are not historical novels at all. Yet it may be 
 confessed that Scott left but little in a general 
 way to be found out about the style, and that 
 his practice, according as it is less or more 
 successful, may almost be translated into the 
 principles of the art. 
 
 We have already seen something of what a 
 Historical Novel ought not to be and is not ; 
 while the eighty years which have passed since 
 the publication of Waverley^ if they have not 
 shown us all possible forms of what it ought to 
 
Literatttre, lySo-iSdo 323 
 
 be and is, have probably gone very far to do so. 
 THE HisTOR- For the possibih'ties of art, though quite 
 icAL NOVEL, infinite in the way of detail, by no means 
 include very many new things in their general out- 
 lines ; and when an apparently new leaf is turned, 
 the lines on that leaf are apt to be filled in pretty 
 quickly. Periclean and Elizabethan drama each 
 showed all it could do in less than the compass 
 of a lifetime, though no doubt good examples were 
 produced over a much longer period than this. 
 And though I hope that good historical novels 
 will be written for hundreds of years to come, 
 I do not think that they will be written on any 
 very different principles than those which showed 
 themselves in the novels produced during the 
 forty years which passed between the appearance 
 of Waverley and the appearance of Westward Ho ! 
 
 We have seen how the advent of the Historical 
 Novel was delayed by the want of a general know- 
 ledge of history, and we have seen how in that 
 fate of Qjuenhoo Hall, whereof Scott himself is 
 the chronicler, the opposite danger appeared when 
 the first had been removed. The danger of too 
 much history lay not merely in the way of too 
 much pedantry like that of the good Strutt, but 
 in that of an encroachment of the historic on the 
 romantic element in divers ways. This, if not 
 so destructive of the very existence of the thing 
 as the other danger, is the more fatal of the two 
 to its goodness when it does exist. 
 
 The commonest and most obvious form of this 
 
324 Essays in English 
 
 error is decanting too much of your history bodily 
 into your novel. Scott never falls into the histor- 
 this error; it is much if he once or twice ical novel. 
 approaches it very far off. But Dumas, in the 
 days when he let "the young men" do the work 
 with too little revision or warning, was prone to 
 it ; G. P. R. James often fell into it ; and Harrison 
 Ainsworth, in those painful later years when his 
 dotages fell into the reluctant hands of critics who 
 had rejoiced in him earlier as readers, was simply 
 steeped in it. It made not merely the besetting 
 sin, but what may be called the regular practice 
 (unconscious of sin at all) of writers like Southey's 
 friend, Mrs Bray; and the unwary beginner has 
 not shaken himself or herself free from it even 
 now. 
 
 This, however, is so gross and palpable a fault 
 that one could but wonder at its deceiving persons 
 ■of ability and literary virtue, if the temptations 
 to it were not equally palpable and gross. A 
 much subtler, though perhaps an even worse 
 mistake, comes next, and ruins books that might 
 have been good and very good to this day, though 
 Scott himself, besides the warning of his practice, 
 marked it " dangerous " in more than one place of 
 his critical introductions, and though all the better 
 critics from Joubert and Sainte-Beuve downwards 
 have blown their foghorns and rocked their bell- 
 buoys for its avoidance. This is the allotting too 
 prominent a position and too dominant an interest 
 to the real persons and the real incidents of the 
 
Literature^ ly 80- 1860 325 
 
 story. It is, I suppose, in vain to repeat the 
 THEHisTOR- aforcsaid warnings. Within the last 
 icAL NOVEL, t^^o or three years I can remember 
 two books — both written with extreme care by 
 persons of no ordinary talent, and one of them 
 at least introducing personages and a story of 
 the most poignant interest — which were failures 
 because the historical attraction was not rele- 
 gated to the second place. If Scott himself had 
 made Mary the actual heroine of The Abbot ^ had 
 raised George Douglas to the position of hero, 
 and had made their loves (practically fictitious 
 as they would have been) the central point of 
 the story, I do not doubt that he would have 
 failed. If it be urged, that he has made Richard 
 almost the avowed hero of The Talisman and not 
 much less than the hero of Ivanhoe, the answer 
 is clear : that the story is in the one case almost 
 entirely, in the other everywhere, save in a very 
 few points, removed from actual history, and 
 that while we gain the popular interest in the 
 Lion-Heart as a stimulus, we are not in reality 
 balked and hampered by the too narrow room, 
 the too inelastic circumstances, which historic fact 
 supplies. I have always thought it a proof of the 
 unerring :act which guided Sir Walter in general 
 on this matter that he never once, save in the case 
 of Rob Roy (and there the reality was but a little 
 one), took his title from a real person, and only 
 twice in the suggestive, but not hampering in- 
 stances of Kenilworth and Woodstock, from a real 
 
326 Essays in English 
 
 place. For The Legend of Mo7itrose and The Fair 
 Maid of Perth contain obvious fiction the histor- 
 as their main appeal. His successors ical novel. 
 were less wise; and they paid for their want of 
 wisdom. 
 
 The canons negative and affirmative will then 
 run somewhat thus : " Observe local colour and 
 historical propriety, but do not become a slave 
 either to Dryasdust or to Heavysterne. Intermix 
 historic interest and the charm of well-known 
 figures, but do not incur the danger of mere 
 historical transcription ; still more take care that 
 the prevailing ideas of your characters, or your 
 scene, or your action, or all three, be fantastic 
 and within your own discretion." When these are 
 put together we shall have what is vernacularly 
 called "the bones" of the Historical Novel. Here- 
 after we may go on .to see what flesh has been im- 
 posed on this skeleton by nearly three generations 
 of practitioners. For the present it may suffice to 
 add that the Historical Novel — like all other 
 novels without exception, if it is to be good — 
 must not have a direct purpose of any sort, though 
 no doubt it may, and even generally does, enforce 
 certain morals both historical and ethical. It is, 
 fortunately, by its very form and postulates, freed 
 from the danger of meddling with contemporary 
 problems ; it is grandly and artistically unactual, 
 though here again it may teach unobtrusive lessons. 
 Although, oddly enough, those imperfect French 
 examples of it to which we have referred incline 
 
I 
 
 Literature, ly 80- 1860 327 
 
 more to the novel than to the romance, and busy 
 THEHisTOR- thcmselvcs with a kind of analysis, it 
 icAL NOVEL, js q{ course in its nature synthetic 
 and not analytic. It is not in the least limited 
 by considerations of time or country ; it is as 
 much at home on a Mexican teocalli as in an 
 English castle, though it certainly has, hitherto, 
 exhibited the odd peculiarity that no one has 
 written a first-rate historical novel of classical 
 times. While enquiry and research maim the 
 chances of art in many, perhaps in most direc- 
 tions, they only multiply and enlarge the fields for 
 this. In the drudgeries of the very dullest dog that 
 ever edited a document there may be the germ of 
 a Quentin Durward\ and in itself this novel is 
 perhaps the most purely refreshing of all reading, 
 precisely because of its curious conjunction of 
 romance and reality. 
 
XL 
 THE HISTORICAL NOVEL. 
 
 II. — SCOTT AND DUMAS. 
 
 I DO not think that observation, however widely 
 she may extend and however narrowly the histor- 
 she may concentrate her view, will find ^^^^ novel. 
 in the history of literature anything quite similar 
 to the achievement of the Waverley Novels. Their 
 uniqueness does not consist wholly, or from the 
 present point of view even mainly, in the fact that 
 for bulk, excellence, and rapidity of production 
 combined they can probably challenge anything 
 else in letters. That they can do this I am by 
 no means disposed to deny. But the point of 
 pre-eminence at present to be considered is the 
 singular and miraculous fashion in which Sir 
 Walter, taking a kind of writing which had, as 
 we have seen, been tried, or at least tried at, for 
 more than two thousand years, and which had 
 never yet been got to run smoothly on its own 
 lines to its own end, by one stroke effected what 
 the efforts of those two millenniums had been 
 bungling and baulking themselves over. 
 328 
 
Essays in English Literature, ij So- 1860 329 
 
 That Waverley itself is the ideal of an historical 
 THE HisTOR- HOvcl need not be contended ; and I do 
 icAL NOVEL. j^Q^ know that any intelligent devotee 
 would contend for anything of the kind. It 
 bears, especially in its earlier chapters, too many 
 marks of the old false procedure ; and that 
 insipidity of the nominal hero, which is so con- 
 stantly and not so unjustly charged against Scott, 
 appears in it pretty strongly. His unworldly 
 education and the flustering influence of the 
 Blessed Bear do not wholly excuse Waverley 
 even in so early a matter as the Balmawhapple 
 Duel. We can hardly blame his brother officers 
 for suspecting him of poltroonery ; and he can 
 only clear himself from the charge of being a 
 coward by submitting to that of being a simpleton. 
 And though it is by no means the case that, 
 according to the stupid old rule of critics like 
 Rymer, a hero must be always wise as well as 
 always fortunate, always virtuous as well as always 
 brave, yet the kinds of folly permitted to him are 
 rather limited in number. It is worth while to 
 dwell on this in order to show that what is most 
 wonderful about Waverley is not its individual 
 perfection as a work of art ; though the Baron, the 
 Bailie, the whole of the actual scenes after the war 
 breaks out, and many other things and persons, 
 exalt it infinitely above anything of the kind 
 known earlier. 
 
 But the chief marvel, the real point of interest, 
 is the way in which, after thousands of years of 
 
330 Essays in English 
 
 effort to launch one particular ship into one 
 particular ocean, she at last slips as thehistor- 
 by actual miracle into the waves and ical novel. 
 sweeps out into the open sea. Exactly how this 
 came about it may be impossible to point out with 
 any exhaustive certainty. Some reasons why the 
 thing had not been done before were given in the 
 last paper ; some why it was done at this hour 
 and by this man may perhaps be given in the 
 present. But we shall have to end by assigning 
 at least a large share of the explanation to the 
 formula that " Walter Scott made historical novels 
 because there was in him the virtue of the historical 
 novelist." 
 
 Nevertheless we can perhaps find out a little 
 about the component parts of this virtue, a little 
 more about the antecedents and immediate work- 
 ings of it. The desiderata which have been re- 
 ferred to before — the wide knowledge of history, 
 the affectionate and romantic interest in the past 
 — Scott possessed in common with his generation, 
 but in very much larger measure and more intense 
 degree than most of its members. Nor was it 
 probably of slight importance that when he com- 
 menced historical novelist he was a man well 
 advanced in middle age, and not merely provided 
 with immense stores of reading, and with very con- 
 siderable practice in composition of many kinds, 
 but also experienced in more than one walk of 
 practical business, thoroughly versed in society 
 from the highest to the lowest ranks, and lastly, 
 
Literature, ly 80-1860 331 
 
 which Is a matter of great importance in all cases, 
 THEHisTOR- mastcr of a large portion of his own 
 icAL NOVEL, time. It had indeed for years pleased 
 him — as it did afterwards, fortunately or unfortun- 
 ately, to a still greater extent, — to dispose of much 
 of this leisure in literary labour ; but it was in 
 labour of his own choosing, and neither in task- 
 work nor in work necessary for bread-winning. 
 The Sheriffdom and the Clerkship (least distressful 
 of places) freed him from all cares of this kind, 
 augmented as his revenues were by the extra- 
 ordinary sums paid for his poems. 
 
 But the most happy predisposition or prepara- 
 tion to be found in his earlier career was beyond 
 all doubt his apprenticeship, if the word seem not 
 too unceremonious, to these poems themselves. 
 Here indeed he had far less to originate than in 
 the novels. From the dawn of literature the 
 narrative romance had been written in verse, and 
 from the dawn of literature it had been wont at 
 least to give itself out as historical. I am not 
 sure, however, that the present age, which, while it 
 gives itself airs of being unjust to Scott's prose, is 
 unjust in reality to his poetry, does not even here 
 omit to recognise the full value of his innovations 
 or improvements. Of most classical narrative 
 poems (the Odyssey being perhaps the sole excep- 
 tion) the famous saying about Richardson, that if 
 you read for the story you would hang yourself, is 
 true enough. It is true to a great extent of 
 Milton, to some extent even of Spenser, and of 
 
332 Essays in English 
 
 nearly all the great narrative poets of the Conti- 
 nent, except Ariosto, in whom it is thehistor- 
 rather the stories than the story, rather ^^^^ novel. 
 the endless flow of romantic and comic digression 
 than the plot and characters, that attract us. As 
 for the mediaeval writers whom Scott more im- 
 mediately followed, I believe I am in a consider- 
 able minority. I find them interesting for the 
 story ; but most people do not find them so, and 
 I cannot but admit myself that their interest of 
 this kind varies very much indeed, and is very 
 seldom of the highest. 
 
 With Scott it is quite different. Any child who 
 is good for anything knows why The Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel was so popular. It was not merely 
 or mainly because the form was novel and daring ; 
 for nearly a hundred years past that form has been 
 as familiar as Pope's couplet was to our great- 
 grandfathers. It was not merely (though it was 
 partly) because the thing is interspersed with 
 passages of delightful and undoubted poetry. It 
 was because it was and is interesting as a story ; 
 because the reader wanted to know what became 
 of Deloraine and the Goblin page, and the rest ; 
 because the incidents and the scenes attracted, 
 excited, fixed attention. This was even more the 
 case in Marmion (which moreover approaches the 
 historical novel in verse more nearly still), and it 
 never failed in any of the rest. It was, to take 
 6ome of the least popular of all the poems, because 
 Scott could tell an incident as he has told the ven- 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 333 
 
 geance of Bertram Risingham in Rokeby, because 
 THEHisTOR- He could knit together the well-worn 
 icAL NOVEL. ^^^ world-old string of familiar trials 
 and temptations as he has done in The Bridal of 
 Trier7nain, that he made his fortune in verse. He 
 had the secret of tale-telling and of adjusting tales 
 to facts. He taught it to Byron and others, and 
 he made the popularity of the thing. 
 
 The suitableness of verse, however, for the story 
 as the story, and especially for the historical novel 
 as the historical novel, is so far inferior to that of 
 prose, and the difficulty of keeping up a series of 
 fictions in verse is so immeasurably greater than 
 that of doing the same thing in prose, that I am 
 disposed to believe that Waverley would have 
 appeared all the same if there had been no Byron, 
 and no chance of dethronement. In fact, the 
 historical novel had to be created, and Scott had 
 to create it. He had learned — if so dull and 
 deliberate a process as learning can be asserted of 
 what seems to have been as natural and as little 
 troublesome to him as breathing — to build the 
 romantic structure, to decorate it with ornament 
 of fact and fancy from the records of the past, to 
 depict scenery and manners, to project character, 
 even to some extent to weave dialogue. And I 
 do not know that there is any more remarkable 
 proof of his literary versatility in general, and his 
 vocation for the historical novel in particular, than 
 the fact that the very fault of prose romances, 
 especially those immediately preceding his own, 
 
334 Essays in English 
 
 was also one most likely to be encouraged by a 
 course of poetical practice, and yet is thehistor- 
 one from which he is almost entirely free. ^^^^ novel. 
 The Godwins and the Mrs Radcliffes had perpetu- 
 ally offended, now by dialogue so glaringly modern 
 that it was utterly out of keeping with their story 
 and their characters, now by the adoption of the 
 conventional stage jargon which is one of the most 
 detestable lingos ever devised by man. With very 
 rare exceptions Sir Walter completely avoids both 
 these dangers. His conversation has not, indeed, 
 that prominence in the method of his work which 
 we shall find it possessing in the case of his great 
 French follower. But it is for the most part full 
 of dramatic suitableness, it is often excellently 
 humorous or pathetic, and it almost always 
 possesses in some degree the Shakespearean 
 V y quality of fitting the individual and the time and 
 / / the circumstances without any deliberate archaism 
 / or modernism. No doubt Scott's wide reading 
 enabled him to do a certain amount of mosaic 
 work in this kind. Few for instance, except those 
 whose own reading is pretty wide in the plays and 
 pamphlets of the seventeenth century, know how 
 much is worked from them into TJie Fortunes of 
 Nigel and Woodstock, But this dialogue is never 
 mere mosaic. It has the quality which, already 
 called Shakespearean, also belongs to men of such 
 different kinds and orders of greatness from Scott's 
 or Shakespeare's as, for instance, Goldsmith — the 
 quality of humanity, independent of time. 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 335 
 
 Now this is of itself of such importance to 
 THEHisTOR- the histoHcal novelist, that it may be 
 icAL NOVEL, doubted whether any other kind of 
 craftsman can find it more important. The 
 laborious and uninspired attempt at fidelity to 
 " ie^np. of tale " in language, is nearly as destruc- 
 tive of the equanimity proper to the reception 
 of a novel, as is the perpetual irritation which 
 glaring and tasteless anachronisms of speech ex- 
 cite. And it is not particularly easy to say 
 whether this knack plays a greater part in the 
 fashioning of the " Scotch novel," (as it used to be 
 called, with an odd mixture of propriety and im- 
 propriety), than the other ingredients of plot, 
 character, and description. In regard to plot, 
 Scott was from one point of view a great and con- 
 fessing sinner ; from another, a most admirably 
 justified one. Plot, in the strict sense, he never 
 achieved, and very seldom even attempted to 
 achieve it. It v/as only the other day that there 
 was published for the first time a letter from his 
 intimate friend and one of his best critics. Lady 
 Louisa Stuart (who, to be sure, had literature in 
 the blood of her), stigmatising, more happily per- 
 haps than has ever been done since, Sir Walter's 
 habit of " huddling up the cards and throwing them 
 into the bag in his impatience for a new deal." It 
 may almost be said that Scott never winds up a plot 
 artfully ; and the censure which he makes Captain 
 Clutterbuck pass in the introduction to The For- 
 tunes of Nigel \s undoubtedly valid. When Peacock, 
 
 L 
 
S3^ -Essays in English 
 
 in Crotchet Castle, made that very crotchety 
 comparison of Scott to a pantomine thehistor- 
 librettist, he might at least have justi- ical novel. 
 fied it by the extraordinary fondness of the novelist 
 for a sort of transformation-scene which finishes 
 everything off in a trice, and, as Dryden says of 
 his hasty preacher, 
 
 Runs huddling to the benediction. 
 
 The powerful and pathetic scenes at Carlisle 
 and the delightful restoration of the Baron some- 
 what mask, in Waverley itself, the extreme and 
 rather improbable ease with which the hero's 
 pardon is extorted from a government and a 
 general rather prone to deal harshly than mildly 
 with technical traitors. I never could make out 
 how, if Sir Arthur Wardour's fortune was half so 
 badly dipped as we are given to understand, his 
 son, even with more assistance from Lovel than a 
 young man of spirit was likely to accept from his 
 sister's suitor, could have disengaged it at the end 
 of The Antiquary. It is true that this is the least 
 historical of all the novels, but the procedure is 
 the same. Diana and her father were most 
 theatrically lucky, and Clerk Jobson, and even 
 Rashleigh, scoundrels as both were, were astonish- 
 ingly unlucky, at the close of Rob Roy ; and it is 
 especially difficult to understand why the attorney 
 was struck off the rolls for joining in the attempt 
 to secure an attainted person who subsequently 
 got off by killing the officers of the law in the 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 337 
 
 execution of their duty. One might go on with 
 THEHisTOR- this sort of peddling criticism right 
 icAL NOVEL, through the series, winding up with 
 that catastrophe of Woodstock where Cromwell's 
 mercy is even more out of character and more 
 unlikely than Cumberland's. Nor are these con- 
 clusions the only point of the novels, as usually 
 constructed, where a stop-watch critic may blas- 
 pheme without the possibility of at least tech- 
 nical refutation of his blasphemies. Scott has 
 a habit (due no doubt in part to his rapid and 
 hazardous composition) of introducing certain 
 characters and describing certain incidents with a 
 pomp and prodigality of detail quite out of pro- 
 portion to their real importance in the story. And 
 even a person who would no more hesitate to 
 speak disrespectfully of the Unities than of the 
 Equator may admit that such an arrangement as 
 that in Rob Roy, where something like a quarter 
 of the book is taken up with the adventures of 
 four-and- twenty hours, is not wholly artistic. 
 
 Yet for my part I hold that the defence made 
 by the shadowy Author of Waverley in the In- 
 troduction aforesaid is a perfectly sound one, 
 and that it applies with special propriety to the 
 historical division of the novels, and with them to 
 historical novels generally. The Captain's gibe, 
 conveyed in an anecdote of " his excellent grand- 
 mother," shows that Scott (as he was far too 
 shrewd not to do) saw the weak points as well as 
 the strong of this defence. Indeed I am not sure 
 
338 Essays in English 
 
 that he quite saw the strength of the strongest of 1 
 all. It was all very well to plead that the histor- 
 he was only " trying to write with sense ^^^^ novel. 
 and spirit a few scenes unlaboured and loosely put 
 together, but which had sufficient interest in them 
 to amuse in one corner the pain of body ; in an- 
 other to relieve anxiety of mind ; in a third place 
 to unwrinkle a brow bent with the furrows of daily 
 toil ; in another to fill the place of bad thoughts 
 and suggest better ; in yet another to induce an 
 idler to study the history of his country ; in all, 
 save where the perusal interrupted the discharge 
 of serious duties, to furnish harmless amusement." 
 But the Captain might, if he had ventured to 
 take such a liberty with the author of his being, 
 have answered : " But, sir, could not you amuse 
 and relieve and unwrinkle and fill and induce and 
 furnish, and all the rest on't, at the same time 
 joining your flats a little more carefully 1 " 
 
 The Eidolon with the blotted revise would have 
 done better, argumentatively speaking, to have 
 stuck to his earlier plea, that, following Smollett 
 and Le Sage, he tried to write rather a " history 
 of the miscellaneous adventures which befall an 
 individual in the course of life, than the plot of a 
 regular and concerted epopoeia, where every step 
 brings us nearer to the final catastrophe." For it 
 so happens that this plea, is much nearer to the 
 special business and ends of the historical novelist 
 than to those of the avowedly inventive writer. 
 As a matter of fact, we do know that Smollett 
 
Literature^ lySo-iSSo 339 
 
 certainly, and suspect that Le Sage probably, wove a 
 THE HisTOR- grcat deal of actual experience into their 
 icAL NOVEL, stories ; while Fielding-, who is in the 
 passage cited contrasted with them, seems never 
 to have incorporated incidents, and at most a few 
 characters, such as those of his wife, Allen, and one 
 or two more whom he drew mainly in outline. A 
 man who thus keeps clear of the servitude of actual 
 occurrence, communicating reality by the results 
 of his observation of human nature and human 
 life generally, can shape the ends of his story as 
 well as rough-hew them. But the man who makes 
 incident and adventure his first object, and in 
 some cases at least draws them from actual re- 
 cords, is bound to allow himself a licence much 
 greater than epic strictness permits. That truth 
 is stranger than fiction is only the copybook form 
 of a reflection which a hundred critics have made 
 and enforced in different ways since a thousand 
 writers put the occasion before them — to wit, that 
 in real life things happen in a more remiss and 
 disorderly fashion than is allowable in fiction. 
 
 This point is indeed put very well by Scott 
 himself in the introduction to The Abbot: "For 
 whatever praise may be due to the ingenuity which 
 brings to a general combination all the loose 
 threads of a narrative, like the knitter at the 
 finishing of her stocking, I am greatly deceived 
 if in many cases a superior advantage is not 
 attained by the air of reality which the deficiency 
 of explanation attaches to a work written on a 
 
340 Essays in English 
 
 different system. In life itself many things befall 
 every mortal of which the individual thehistor- 
 never knows the real cause or origin; ical novel. 
 and were we to point out the most marked distinc- 
 tion between a real and a fictitious narrative, we 
 would say that the former in reference to the 
 remote causes of the events it relates is obscure, 
 doubtful, and mysterious, whereas in the latter 
 case it is a part of the author's duty to afford 
 satisfactory details upon the causes of the events 
 he has recorded, and, in a word, to account for 
 everything." 
 
 The historical novel, however, escapes this 
 stricture in part because there the irregularities, 
 the unexpectednesses, the disproportions of action, 
 are things accepted and not to be argued about. 
 Certain well-attested points and contrasts in the 
 character and conduct of Marlborough and of 
 Catherine the Second might be justly objected to 
 as unnatural in fiction : such historical incidents 
 as Clive's defence of Arcot, or as the last fight of 
 the Revenge^ would at least be frowned or smiled 
 at as if they were mere inventions. Dealing as 
 the historical novelist must with actual and 
 authenticated things like these, and moulding, as 
 he will if he is a deacon in his craft, his fictitious 
 incidents on their pattern, and to suit them, he 
 can take to himself all the irregularity, all the 
 improbability, all the outrages on the exact scale 
 of Bossu, in which life habitually indulges. And 
 he is not obliged, — he is even decidedly unwise if 
 
Literature, lySo-iSSo 341 
 
 he attempts it — to adjust these things to theory 
 THE HisTOR- and probability by elaborate analyses 
 icAL NOVEL. Qf character. That is not his business 
 at all : he not only may, but should, leave it to 
 quite a different kind of practitioner. His is the 
 big brush, the bold foreshortening, the composi- 
 tion which is all the more effective according as it 
 depends least upon over-subtle strokes and shades 
 of line and colour. Not that he is to draw care- 
 lessly or colour coarsely, but that niggling finish of 
 any kind is unnecessary and even prejudicial to 
 his effects. And in the recognition, at least in the 
 practical recognition, of these laws of the craft, as 
 Scott set the example, so he also left very little 
 for any one else to improve upon. He may have 
 been equalled ; he has never been surpassed. 
 
 I have before now referred by anticipation to 
 another point of his intuition, his instinctive grasp 
 of the first law of the historical novel, that the 
 nominal hero and heroine, the ostensibly central 
 interest and story shall not be or concern historical 
 persons, or shall concern them only in some aspect 
 unrecorded or at best faintly traced in history. 
 The advantages of this are so clear and obvious 
 that it is astounding that they should have been 
 overlooked as they were, not merely by 'prentices 
 of all kinds and all times, but by persons of some- 
 thing more than moderate ability like G. P. R. 
 James and others. These advantages have been 
 partly touched upon, but one of them has not, I 
 think, been mentioned, and it may introduce to us 
 
342 Essays in English 
 
 another very important feature of the subject. 
 It is constantly useful, and it may at thehistor- 
 times be indispensable, for the his- ical novel. 
 torical novelist to take liberties with history. 
 The extent to which this is permissible or de- 
 sirable may indeed be matter for plentiful dis- 
 agreement. It is certainly carrying matters too 
 far to make, as in Castle Dangerous^ a happy 
 ending to a story the whole historical and romantic 
 complexion of which required the ending to be 
 unhappy ; but Sir Walter was admittedly but 
 the shadow of himself when Castle Dangerous 
 was written. Although Dryasdust and Smel- 
 fungus have both done after their worst fashion 
 in objecting to his anachronisms in happier days, 
 yet I certainly think that it was not necessary 
 to make Shakespeare the author of Midsitmmer 
 Nighfs Dream in the eleventh year of his age, if 
 not earlier, as is done in Kenilworth, or to play 
 the tricks with chronology required by the narra- 
 tive of the misdeeds of Ulrica in Ivanhoe. Nothing 
 is gained in either of these cases for the story. 
 But there are cases where the story does un- 
 doubtedly gain by taking liberties with history. 
 And it is evident that this can be done much more 
 easily and much more effectively when the actual 
 historical characters whose life is, so to speak, 
 " coted and marked," do not play the first parts 
 as far as the interest of the story goes. 
 
 But it might be tedious to examine more in 
 detail the special characteristics of work so well 
 
Litcrat7i7x, iy8o-i86o 343 
 
 known. Enough must have been said to show that 
 THEHisTOR- Scott had discovered, and to a great 
 icAL NOVEL, extent had discovered consciously, not 
 merely how to write an historical novel, but how 
 to teach others to write it. His critical faculty, 
 if not extraordinarily subtle, was always as sound 
 and shrewd as it was good-natured. And there is 
 hardly a better, as there is not a more interesting, 
 example of this combination than the remarks 
 in the "Diary" under the dates of October 17 
 and 18, 1826, occasioned by Harrison Ainsworth's 
 and Horace Smith's attempts in his style — Sir 
 John Chiverton and Branibletye House. In one so 
 utterly devoid of the slightest tendency to over- 
 value himself, his adoption of Swift's phrase, 
 
 Which I was born to introduce, 
 Refined it first and shewed its use, 
 
 is a very strong affidavit of claim ; and it is one 
 which, as we have seen, is absolutely justified. 
 Not less so are the remarks which follow a little 
 later, on what he calls, with his unfailing epieikeia 
 his " own errors, or, if you will, those of the style." 
 " One advantage," he says, " I think I still have 
 over all of them. They may do it with a better 
 grace, but I do it more naturally." And then in 
 a succession of light taps with the finger he in- 
 dicates not a {^"N of the faults of the worst sort of 
 historical novel : the acquiring information in order 
 to write, instead of using in an unconstrained 
 fashion what has become part of the regular furni- 
 
344 Essays in English 
 
 ture of the mind ; the dragging in historical events 
 by head and shoulders ; the too open the histor- 
 stealing of actual passages and pages ical novel. 
 from chronicles or previous works on the sub- 
 ject, and so forth ; though he ends up with his 
 usual honesty by confessing once more his own 
 occasional carelessness of the management of the 
 story. 
 
 He did not consider that his own plea of being 
 " hurried on so that he has no time to think of the 
 story " is a great deal more than an excuse. There 
 is extremely little danger of much fault being 
 found, except by professional fault-finders, with 
 any writer who neglects the conduct of his story 
 because he has so much story to tell. It is the 
 other people, the people who are at their wits' end 
 to know what ought to come next, who are intoler- 
 able, not those who have such an abundance of 
 arrows in their quiver that they sometimes pull 
 out one the notch of which does not exactly fit the 
 string. I remember reading Mr Crockett's The 
 Raiders^ — one of the best of those books, which 
 have been recently written in the more or less 
 direct following of Scott — when it first appeared. 
 I had to read it " in the way of business " (as Mr 
 TurnbuU would say), and I soon saw that in the 
 way of business there were many things that 
 might be said against it. It was here and there 
 too like this thing and that thing ; its parts did 
 not hang very well together ; there were impro- 
 babilities not a few, and the crowning incident was 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 345 
 
 not a little wanting in reason. But, having noted 
 THE HisTOR- down thesc things duly, I turned to the 
 icAL NOVEL, beginning of the book once more and 
 read it straight through, every word of it, a second 
 time for my own private and unprofessional de- 
 lectation. And I should suppose that the same 
 thing must have happened and happened often to 
 critics between 181 5 and 1830. 
 
 For who can ever praise enough, or read enough, 
 or enjoy enough, those forty-eight volumes of such a 
 reader's paradise as nowhere else exists "i The very 
 abundance and relish of their pure delightsomeness 
 has obscured in them qualities which would have 
 made a score of reputations. Of passion there may 
 be little or none ; that string in Scott's case, as in 
 those of Bacon, of Milton, of Southey, and others, 
 was either wanting, or the artist's hand shrank from 
 playing on it. But there is almost everything else. 
 I once began and mislaid, a collection of what 
 would be called in our modern jargon "realist" 
 details from Scott, which showed as shrewd a 
 knowledge at least and as uncompromising an ac- 
 knowledgment of the weaknesses of human nature 
 as with a little jargon and a little brutality would 
 have set up half a dozen psychological novelists, * 
 In the observation and delineation of his own 
 
 * Curiously enough, after writing the above, I came across the 
 following passage in a little-known but extraordinarily shrewd 
 French critic of English literature, Mr Browning's friend M. 
 Milsand. *' II y a plus de philosophie dans ses [Scott's] contes 
 (quoique la philosophie n'en soit pas le caract^re saillant) que dans 
 bon nombre de romans philosophiques. 
 
34^ Essays in English 
 
 countrymen he is acknowledged to have excelled 
 all other writers ; by which I do not the histor- 
 mean merely that no one has drawn ical novel. 
 Scotsmen as he has, but that no one writer has 
 drawn that 'writer's countrymen as Scott has. And 
 the consensus, I believe, of the best critics would 
 put him next to Shakespeare as a creator of 
 individual character of the miscellaneous human 
 sort, however far he may be below not merely 
 Shakespeare but Fielding, Thackeray, and perhaps 
 Le Sage in a certain subtle intimacy of detail and 
 a certain massive completeness of execution. And 
 all these gifts — all these and many more — he put 
 at the service of the kind that he "was born to 
 introduce," the kind of the historical novel. 
 
 Although Alexandre Dumas had begun to write 
 years before Sir Walter Scott's death, he had not 
 at that time turned his attention to the novels 
 which have ranked him as second only to Sir 
 Walter himself in that department. Nor was he 
 by any means Scott's first French imitator. He 
 was busy on dramatic composition, in which, 
 though he never attained anything like Scott's 
 excellence in his own kind of poetry, he was 
 nearly as great an innovator in his own country 
 and way. Nor can it be doubted that this practice 
 helped him considerably in his later work, just as 
 Scott's poetry had helped him, and in particular 
 that it taught Dumas a more closely knit construc- 
 tion and a more constant " eye to the audience " 
 than Scott had always shown. Not indeed that 
 
Literature, lySo-iSSo 347 
 
 the plots of Dumas, as plots, are by any means of 
 THEHisTOR- exccptional regularity. The crimes and 
 icAL NOVEL, punishment of Milady may be said to 
 communicate a certain unity to Les Trois Mousque- 
 taires, the vengeance of Dantes to Monte CristOy and 
 other things to others. But when they are looked 
 at from the strictly dramatic side, all more or less 
 are " chronicle plays " in the form of novels, rather 
 than novels ; lengths of adventure prolonged or 
 cut short at the pleasure or convenience of the 
 writer rather than definite evolutions of a certain 
 definite scheme, which has got to come to an end 
 when the ball is fully unrolled. The advantage 
 of Dumas's dramatic practice shows itself most in 
 the business-like way in which at his best he 
 works by tableaux, connected, it may be, with each 
 other rather by sequence and identity of person- 
 ages than by strict causality, but each possessing 
 a distinct dramatic and narrative interest of its 
 own, and so enchaining the attention. There 
 are episodes without end in Dumas ; but there 
 are comparatively few (at least in his best work) 
 of the " loose ends," of the incidents, neither 
 complete in themselves nor contributing anything 
 in particular to the general story, to which Sir 
 Walter pleads guilty, and which certainly are to 
 be found in him. 
 
 Another point in which Dumas may be said to 
 have improved, or at any rate alternated, upon 
 Scott, and which also may, without impropriety, 
 be connected with his practice for the stage, is 
 
348 Essays in English 
 
 the enormously increased part allotted to dialogue 
 in his novels. Certainly Scott was not the histor- 
 weak in dialogue ; on the contrary, the ^^^^ novel. 
 intrinsic excellence of the individual speeches of his 
 characters in humour, in truth to nature, in pathos, 
 and in many other important points, is decidedly 
 above the Frenchman's. But his dialogue plays a 
 much smaller part in the actual evolution of the 
 story. Take down at hazard three or four dif- 
 ferent volumes of Dumas from the shelf; open 
 them, and run over the pages, noting of what stuff 
 the letterpress is composed. Then do exactly the 
 same with the same number of Scott. You will 
 find that the number of whole pages, and still 
 more the number of consecutive pages, wholly 
 filled with dialogue, or variegated with other 
 matter in hardly greater proportion than that of 
 stage directions, is far larger in the French than 
 in the English master. It is true that the practice 
 of Dumas varies in this respect. In his latter 
 books especially, in his less good ones at all times, 
 there is a much greater proportion of solid matter. 
 But then the reason of this is quite obvious. He 
 was here falling either in his own person, or by 
 proxy, into those very practices of interpolating 
 lumps of chronicle, and laboriously describing 
 historic incident and scene, with which, in the pas- 
 sage above quoted, Scott reproaches his imitators. 
 But at his best Dumas delighted in telling his tale 
 as much as possible through the mouths of his 
 characters. In all his most famous passages — 
 
LiteraUire, ly So- 1860 349 
 
 the scene at the Bastion Saint-Gervais in Les Trots 
 THE HisTOR- MousquetaireSy the Vin de Porto and its 
 icAL NOVEL, ushering scenes in Vifigt Ans Apres^ the 
 choicest episodes of Le Vicotnte de Bragelonne, the 
 crises of Z^ Reine M argot and Les Qiiar ante-Cinq, 
 the thing is always talked rather than narrated. 
 It is hardly fanciful to trace Dumas's preference 
 for heroes like D'Artagnan and Chicot to the fact 
 that they had it by kind to talk. 
 
 I do not know whether it is worth while to lay 
 much stress on another difference between Scott 
 and Dumas — the much greater length of the latter's 
 novels and his tendency to run them into series. 
 Scott only did the latter once, in the case of TJie 
 Monastery and TJie Abbot, while it was probably 
 more a determination that the British public 
 should like him yet, in his dealings with so tempt- 
 ing a subject as the troubles of Queen Mary's 
 reign, than any inherent liking for the practice that 
 determined him to it in this case. Even if we 
 neglect the trilogy system, of which the adventures 
 of D'Artagnan and Chicot are the main specimens, 
 the individual length of Dumas's books is much 
 greater than that of Scott's. Putting such giants 
 as Mo7ite Cristo and the Vicornte de Bragelonne 
 aside, Vingt Ans Apres would make, I should 
 think, at least two Waverleys^ and La Reine 
 Margot (one of the shortest) an Ivanhoe and a 
 half. But this increase in length was only a 
 return to old practices ; for Scott himself had been 
 a great shortener of the novel. To say nothing of 
 
350 Essays in English 
 
 the romances of chivalry and the later imitations 
 of them, Le Sage, Richardson, Fielding, the histor- 
 Smollett, Mrs Radcliffe, had all in their ^^^l novel. 
 chief work run to a length far exceeding what Sir 
 Walter usually thought sufficient. But I rather 
 doubt whether even Mademoiselle de Scudery's 
 proverbial prolixity much exceeds in any one 
 instance the length of the Vicomte de Bragelonne. 
 
 That this length is pretty closely connected 
 with the conversational manner just noticed cannot 
 I think, be doubted. There is nothing so endless 
 as talk ; and inasmuch as an hour's leisurely speech 
 will fill some thirty octavo pages, valiant talkers 
 like Miss Bates must deliver (though fortunately 
 not in a form which abides with posterity) their 
 volume a day, year in and year out, given health 
 and listeners, without any difficulty or much 
 exertion. That is three hundred and sixty-five 
 volumes a year, whereas five were all that even 
 Southey's brazen-bowelled industry warranted 
 itself to produce ; and I do not think that Sir 
 Walter himself in his most tremendous bursts of 
 energy exceeded the rate of about a dozen. 
 
 Of the advantages and disadvantages, on the 
 other hand, of the length thus reintroduced into 
 novel-writing, it is not possible to speak with equal 
 confidence. People who read very fast, who like 
 to read more than once, and who are pleased to 
 meet old friends in constantly new situations, as 
 a rule, I think, like long books; but the average 
 subscriber to circulating libraries does not. The 
 
Literattcre, ly 80- 1860 351 
 
 taste for them is perhaps the more generous as 
 THKHisTOR- it ccrtainly is the most ancient and 
 icAL NOVEL, most human. It showed itself in the 
 cycles of the ancients and of mediaeval romance: 
 it positively revelled in the extraordinary filia- 
 tions of the Amadis story; and it has continued 
 to assert itself in different forms to the present 
 day, now in that of long single books, now in 
 that of direct series and continuations, now in that 
 of books like Thackeray's and Trollope's, which 
 are not exactly series, but which keep touch 
 with each other by the community of more or 
 fewer characters. Of course it is specially easy to 
 tempt and indulge this taste in the historical 
 department of novel-writing. Even as it is, 
 Dumas himself has made considerable progress in 
 the task of writing a connected novel-history of 
 France from the English wars to the Revolution 
 of 1789. I really do not know that, especially 
 now when the taste for the romance seems to have 
 revived somewhat vigorously, it would be an in- 
 conceivable thing if somebody should write an 
 English historical Amadis in more than as many 
 generations as the original, deducing the fortunes of 
 an English family from King Arthur to Queen 
 Victoria. Let it be observed that I do not as a 
 critic recommend this scheme, nor do I specially 
 hanker after its results as a reader. But it is not 
 an impossible thing, and it would hardly exceed 
 the total of Dumas's printed work. I have never 
 been able to count that mighty list of volumes 
 
352 Essays in English 
 
 twice with the same result, a phenomenon well 
 known in legend respecting the wonder- thehistor- 
 ful works of nature or of art. But it ical novel. 
 comes, I think, to somewhere about two hundred 
 and forty volumes ; that is to say, a hundred and 
 twenty novels of the length of Les Trots Mousque- 
 taires or La Reine M argot. And as that would 
 cover the time suggested, at not more than ten 
 or twelve years to a novel, it should surely be 
 ample. 
 
 To return to a proper seriousness : the main 
 points of strictly technical variation in Dumas as 
 compared with Scott are thus the more important 
 use made of dialogue, the greater length of the 
 stories, and the tendency to run them on in series. 
 In quality of enjoyment, also, the French master 
 added something to his English model. If Scott 
 is not deep (I think him much deeper than it is 
 the fashion to allow), Dumas is positively super- 
 ficial. His rapid and absorbing current of narra- 
 tive gives no time for any strictly intellectual 
 exertion on the part either of writer or reader ; 
 the style as style is even less distinct and less 
 distinguished than Scott's ; we receive not only 
 few ideas but even few images of anything but 
 action — few pictures of scenery, no extraordinarily 
 vivid touches of customs or manners. Dumas is 
 an infinitely inferior master of character to Scott ; 
 he can make up a personage admirably, but seldom 
 attains to a real character. Chicot himself and 
 Porthos are the chief exceptions ; for D'Artagnan 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 353 
 
 is more a type than an individual, Athos is the 
 THEHisTOR- incamatc gentleman chiefly, Aramis is 
 icAL NOVEL, incomplete and shadowy, and Monte 
 Cristo is a mere creature of melodrama. 
 
 But Dumas excels Scott himself in the peculiar 
 and sustained faculty by which he can hold his 
 reader by and for the story. With Sir Walter one 
 is never quite unconscious, and one is delighted to 
 be conscious, of the existence and individuality of 
 the narrator. The " architect, artist, and man " 
 (may Heaven forgive me, as Scott certainly would, 
 for coupling his idea in any way with that of the 
 subject of this phrase !) is always more or less before 
 us, with his vast, if not altogether orderly, reading, 
 his ardent patriotism, his saturation with romance 
 coexisting with the shrewdest common-sense and 
 knowledge of business, above all that golden 
 temperament which made him a man of letters 
 without pedantry and without vanity, a man of 
 the world without frivolity and without guile, a 
 " man of good " without prudery and without 
 goodiness. 
 
 Of Dumas's personality (and no doubt this is in 
 a way a triumph of his art) we never think at all. 
 We think of nothing but of the story : whether 
 D'Artagnan will ever bring the diamonds safe 
 home ; whether the compact between Richelieu 
 and Milady can possibly be fulfilled ; whether 
 that most terrible of all " black strap " that flowed 
 into the pewter pot when Grimaud tried the cask 
 
 Z 
 
354 Essays in English 
 
 will do its intended duty or not ; whether Margaret 
 will be able to divert the silk cord in the histor- 
 Alengon's hand from its destination on ^^^^ novel. 
 La Mole's neck. No doubt Scott has moments 
 of the same arresting excitement ; but they are 
 not so much his direct object, and from the dif- 
 ference of his method they are not so prominent 
 or so numerous or engineered in such a manner 
 as to take an equally complete hold of the 
 reader. No doubt the generation which as yet 
 had not Scott affected to find similar moments 
 in Mrs Radcliffe ; but oh ! the difference to us 
 of the moment when Emily draws aside the Black 
 Veil, and the moment when the corpse of Mor- 
 daunt shoots above water with the moonlight 
 playing on the gold hilt of the dagger ! Dumas 
 indeed has no Wandering Willie ; he had not 
 poetry enough in him for that. But in the scenes 
 where Scott as a rule excels him — the scenes where 
 the mere excitement of adventure is enhanced by 
 nobility of sentiment — he has a few, with the death 
 of Porthos at the head of them, which are worthy 
 of Scott himself; while of passages like the famous 
 rescue of Henry Morton from the Cameronians he 
 has literally hundreds. 
 
 It was, then, this strengthening and extending 
 of the absorbing and exciting quality which the 
 historical novel chiefly owed to Dumas, just as 
 it owed its first just and true concoction and 
 the indication of almost all the ways in which 
 
Literahcre, iy8o-i86o 
 
 355 
 
 it could seek perfection to Scott. I shall not, 
 THE HisTOR- I think, be charged with being unjust 
 icAL NOVEL. |-Q ^j^g pupil ; but, wonderful as his 
 
 work is, I think it not so much likely as certain 
 that it never would have been done at all if it 
 had not been for the Master. 
 
XII. 
 THE HISTORICAL NOVEL. 
 
 III. — THE SUCCESSORS. 
 
 It was evidently impossible that such a com- 
 bination of luck and genius as the thehistor- 
 Historical Novel, when at last it ap- ical novel. 
 peared from Scott's hands, should lack immediate 
 and unlimited imitation. As has been said, some 
 considerable number of years passed before the 
 greatest of Sir Walter's successors, — the only 
 successor who can be said to have made dis- 
 tinct additions to the style — turned his atten- 
 tion to novel-writing. But as the popularity 
 of Scott, not only in his own country, but else- 
 where, was instantaneous, so was the following 
 of him. The peace after Waterloo assisted this 
 popularity in the odd way in which political and 
 historical coincidences often do influence the 
 fortunes of literature ; and almost the whole of 
 Europe, besides English-speaking America, began 
 not merely to read Scott, not merely to translate 
 him, but to write in his style. It may even be 
 356 
 
Essays m EnglisJi Literature, ly So- 1860 357 
 
 doubted whether the subsequent or simultaneous 
 THE HisTOR- vogue abroad of his poetical supplanter 
 icAL NOVEL. Byron did not assist the popularity of 
 his novels ; for different as the two men and the 
 two styles intrinsically are, they have no small 
 superficial resemblance of appeal. In France the 
 Royalism and the Romanticism alike of the Re- 
 storation fastened eagerly on the style, and Victor 
 Hugo was only the greatest, if the most immature, 
 of scores of writers who hastened to produce the 
 historical, especially the chivalrous and medieval, 
 romance. Germany did likewise, and set on foot 
 as well a trade of " Scotch novels made in Ger- 
 many," of which I believe the famous Walladmor 
 (to which Scott himself refers, and the history 
 of which De Quincey has told at characteristic 
 length) was by no means the only example. 
 Walladmor appeared in 1823. G. P. R. James' 
 Richelieu, the first English example of consider- 
 able note by an author who gave his name, came 
 in 1825 ; while in America Cooper was four 
 years earlier with The Spy. 
 
 Hugo himself began writing novels (obviously 
 on Scott's suggestion, however little they might 
 be like Scott) with Ha7i d'Islafide in the same 
 year as Walladmor, and Germany, though cling- 
 ing still to her famous and to some extent in- 
 digenous romance of fantasy, produced numerous 
 early imitators of Scott of a less piratical character 
 than the Leipsic forger. Italy with Manzoni and 
 / Promessi Sposi in 1827 was a little, but only 
 
358 Essays in English 
 
 a little later, so that long before the darkness came 
 on him and to some extent before even the histor- 
 his worldly fortunes were eclipsed, Scott ^^^^ novel. 
 could literally see as no author before him or 
 since has ever seen the whole of Europe not 
 merely taking its refreshment under the boughs of 
 the tree he had planted, but nursing seeds and 
 shoots of it in foreign ground. In comparison 
 with this the greatest literary dictatorships of the 
 past were but titular royalties. Voltaire, whose in- 
 fluence came nearest to it in intensity and diffusion, 
 was merely the cleverest, most versatile, and most 
 piquant writer of an age whose writers were 
 generally of the second class. He had invented 
 no kind, for even the satirical fantasy-tale was 
 but borrowed from Hamilton and others. As a 
 provider of patterns and models, he was inferior 
 both to Montesquieu and to Rousseau. But 
 Scott enjoyed in this respect such a royalty in 
 both senses, the sense of pre-eminence and the 
 sense of patent rights, as had never been known 
 before. When he saved the beginning of 
 Waverley from among the fishing-tackle in the 
 old writing-desk, no one knew how to write a 
 historical novel, because no one had in the proper 
 sense written such a thing, though many had 
 tried. In a few years the whole of Europe was 
 greedily reading historical novels, and a very con- 
 siderable part of the literary population of Europe 
 was busily writing them. 
 
 Indeed Scott was still in possession of all his 
 
Lite7'aftn'€, ly So- 1860 359 
 
 faculties, and the imitations of him in England as 
 THE HisTOR- well as in other countries had not had 
 icAL NOVEL, time, or had not fallen under the hands 
 of the right man to produce anything but mere 
 imitation, when a book of far greater merit than 
 anything else anterior to Dumas appeared. I do 
 not mean Notre Dame de Paris, for though this 
 is historical after a kind, the history is the least 
 part of it, and Hugo with all his Titanic power 
 never succeeded in writing a good novel of any 
 sort. The book to which I refer and which 
 appeared in 1829, a good deal before Notre 
 Dame de Paris, is Merimee's Chroniqiie de 
 Charles IX. This book has been very variously 
 judged, and Merimee's most recent and best 
 critical biographer, M. Augustin Filon, does not^ 
 I think, put it quite as high as I do. It 
 has of course obvious faults. Merim^e, who had 
 already followed Scott in La Jacquerie, though 
 for some reason or other he chose in that case 
 to give a quasi-dramatic form to the work, had 
 all his life the peculiarity (which may be set 
 down either to some excess of the critical or 
 some flaw of the creative part in him) of taking 
 a style, doing something that was almost or quite 
 a masterpiece in it, and then dropping it alto- 
 gether. He did so in this instance, and the 
 Chronique had no follower from his hand. But 
 it showed the way to all Frenchmen who followed, 
 including Dumas himself, the way of transporting 
 the Scottish pattern into France, and blending 
 
360 Essays in English 
 
 with it the attractions (including one peculiarly- 
 French and inconvenient) necessary to thehistor- 
 acclimatise it. ^^^^ ^°v^^- 
 
 It cannot however be denied that in this 
 immense and unprecedented dissemination the 
 old proverb of the fiddle and the rosin was 
 plentifully illustrated and justified. It was only 
 Scott's good-nature which led him to concede 
 that his English imitators might perhaps "do 
 it with a better grace ; " while there is no doubt 
 at all that he was far within the mark in saying 
 that he himself "did it more natural." The 
 curses which have been already mentioned, and 
 others, rested on the best of them ; even upon 
 James, even upon Ainsworth, even upon Bulwer. 
 I used to be as fond of Henry Masterton and 
 Old St Pauls, and those about them, as every 
 decently constructed boy ought to be ; and I 
 can read a good many of the works of both 
 authors now with a great deal of resignation 
 and with a very hearty preference for them 
 over most of the novels of the present day. 
 I am afraid I cannot say quite so much of the 
 first Lord Lytton, who never seems to me to 
 have found his proper sphere in novel writing 
 till just before his death. But still no competent 
 critic, I suppose, would deny that TJie Last Days 
 of Pompeii is one of the very best attempts to 
 do what has never yet been thoroughly done, or 
 that The Last of the Barons is a very fine chronicle 
 novel. So too I remember reading Brambletye 
 
Liieraturr, ly So- 1860 361 
 
 House itself with a great deal of pleasure not 
 THEHisTOR- SO Very many years ago. But in the 
 icAL NOVEL, handling of all of these and of their 
 immediate contemporaries and successors before 
 the middle of the century there is what Mr Morris's 
 melancholy lover found in running over that list 
 of his loves as he rode unwitting to the Hill 
 of Venus — " some lack, some coldness." 
 
 One could forgive the two horsemen readily 
 enough, as well as other tricks of James's, if he 
 were not at once too conventional and too 
 historical. To read Mary of Biirgmidy and 
 before or after that exercise to read Quentin 
 Dtirward^ so near to it in time and subject, is 
 to move in two different worlds. In Quentin 
 Durward you may pick holes enough if you 
 choose, as even Bishop Heber, a contemporary, 
 a friend, I think, of Scott's, a good man, and a 
 good man of letters, does in his Indian Journal. 
 It takes some uncommon liberties with historical 
 accuracy, and it would not escape scot-free as 
 a novel from a charge of Lese-probabilite. But 
 it is all perfectly alive and of a piece ; the story, 
 whether historical or fictitious, moves uniformly 
 and takes the reader along with it ; the characters 
 (though I will give up Hayraddin to the sainted 
 manes of the Bishop) are real people who do 
 real things and talk real words. When the 
 excellent Mr Senior, meaning to be compli- 
 mentary, calls Louis and Charles " perfectly 
 faithful copies," he uses a perfectly inadequate 
 
 Ik 
 
362 Essays in English 
 
 expression. He might as well call Moroni's 
 Tailor or Velasquez' Philip IV. a, per- the histor- 
 fectly faithful copy. They are no ical novel. 
 copies ; they are re-creations, agreeing with all 
 we know of what, for want of a better word, we 
 call the originals, but endowed with independent 
 life. 
 
 In Mary of Burgundy, which is generally taken 
 to be one of the best of its author's, as in all that 
 author's books more or less, this wholeness and 
 symmetry are too often wanting. The history, 
 where it is history, is too often tediously lugged 
 in ; the fictitious characters lack at once power 
 and keeping ; and there is a fatal convention of 
 language, manners, general tone which is the 
 greatest fault of all. Instead of the only 
 less than Shakespearean universality of Scott's 
 humanity — which does equally for characters of 
 the eleventh, the fifteenth, or the eighteenth 
 century, simply because it is always human, — 
 James gives us a sort of paint-and-pasteboard 
 substitute for flesh and blood which cannot be 
 said to be definitely out of character with any 
 particular time, simply because it never could 
 have been vividly appropriate to any time at all. 
 In fact such caricatures as Barbazure were more 
 than justified by the historical-romantic novels 
 of sixty years ago, which might have gone far, 
 and indeed did go some way, to inspire a fear 
 that the kind would become as much a nuisance 
 and would fall as far short of its own highest 
 
L it era ture, iy8o-i 860 363 
 
 possibilities as the Romance of Terror which 
 THE HisTOR- had prccedcd it. James was by no means 
 icAL NOVEL, aj^ ignorant man, or a man of little 
 literary power. But he had not that gift of 
 character which is the greatest of all the gifts of 
 a novelist of whatever kind, and as a historical 
 novelist he was not sufficiently saturated with the 
 spirit of any period. Far less had he that exten- 
 sion of the historical faculty which enabled Scott, 
 though he might make small blunders easy to be 
 detected by any schoolmaster if not by any school- 
 boy, at once to grasp the spirit of almost any 
 period of which he had himself read something or 
 of any person with whom he was himself in even 
 slight sympathy. 
 
 Harrison Ainsworth had I think more " fire in 
 his belly" than James ever had; but he burned 
 it out too soon, and unluckily for him he lived 
 and wrote for a very long time after the flame 
 had changed to smoke. Fewer people perhaps 
 now know than formerly knew that most success- 
 ful of Father Prout's serious or quasi-serious 
 poems, the piece in which a moral is drawn from 
 the misfortune of the bird in 
 
 — the current old 
 Of the deep Garonne 
 
 for the warning of the then youthful novelist. 
 But it was certainly needed. I am glad to 
 believe, and indeed partly to know, that Ains- 
 worth has not lost his hold of the younger 
 
364 Essays in English 
 
 generation to-day as some other novelists have. 
 His latest books never I think came thehistor- 
 into any cheap form, and therefore are ical novel. 
 not likely to have come in many boys' way; but 
 sixpenny editions of TJie Tower of London and 
 Windsor Castle are seen often enough in the 
 hands of youth, which certainly they do not mis- 
 become. Not many, however, I should fancy, 
 either now read or ever have read Ainsworth much 
 when they were once out of their nonage. 
 
 He has, as indeed I have said, more fire, more 
 spirit than James. He either found out for him- 
 self, or took the hint early from Dumas, that 
 abundant dialogue will make a story go more 
 trippingly off than abundant description. But 
 there is a great deal of smoke mixed with his 
 fire, more than with that of James ; his chariots 
 though they move, drive heavily ; he writes any- 
 thing but good English ; and his dialogue is 
 uncommonly poor stuff for any eye or ear which 
 is naturally, or by study has become, attentive 
 to "keeping." It may, I think, be laid down 
 without much rashness that though the attrac- 
 tions which will suffice to lure a reader through 
 one reading, and in some cases even enable him 
 to enjoy or endure a second, are very numerous 
 and various, there must, in all but the very rarest 
 cases, be one or both of two things, style and 
 character, to make him return again and again 
 to any novel. Now Ainsworth certainly had 
 neither of these; he had not nearly so much of 
 
Literattirc, iy8o-iS6o 365 
 
 either as James. Most of the schoolboys who read 
 THEHisTOR- him could with a little practice write as 
 icAL NOVEL. ^^Q\\ as lie docs ; and though his pup- 
 pets box it about in a sufficiently businesslike 
 manner, they are puppets of the most candid and 
 unmistakable kind. As far as I can remember 
 Crichton and Esclairmonde used to affect me 
 with more interest than most of them : and I 
 am by no means certain that this was not as 
 much due to the lady's name as to anything 
 else. Generally speaking, one does not, even 
 as a boy, feel them to be alive at all when the 
 story is ended. They have rattled their mimic 
 quarterstaves bravely and gone back to their 
 box. After a time the novelist lost the faculty 
 even of making them rattle their quarterstaves ; 
 and then the wreck was indeed total. 
 
 The third member of the trio, who provided 
 England with historical novels during the second 
 quarter of the century, had of course far more 
 purely literary talent than either James or Ains- 
 worth. I have never been able to rate Bulwer 
 so highly as many people have done ; but no 
 one can possibly deny him a literary talent not 
 often surpassed in volume, in variety, or in 
 certain kinds of vigour. Why he never did 
 anything better in any one kind than he at 
 least seems to me to have done is a question 
 over which I have often puzzled myself. Per- 
 haps it was a one-sided critical faculty — it was cer- 
 tainly, to say the least, unfortunate for a man in 
 
366 Essays in English 
 
 the spring of his literary career to try to laugh 
 down Mr Alfred Tennyson, and in the the histor- 
 winter thereof to try the same operation ^^^^ novel. 
 upon Mr William Morris. Perhaps it was the 
 diffusion and dispersion of his aims and energies 
 between politics, literature, and society, between 
 prose, verse, and drama. Perhaps it was the un- 
 lucky sentimentality of thought and the still 
 more unlucky tawdriness of language which so 
 long defrayed the exercises of satirists. At any 
 rate, he never seems to me to have done anything 
 great or small that can be called a masterpiece, 
 except The Haunted and the Haunters, which 
 is all but, if not quite, perfect* Still he did 
 many things surprisingly well, and I do not 
 know that his historical novels were not among 
 the best of them. That Lord Tennyson, who 
 admired few things at all and fewer if any bad 
 ones, should have admired Harold is almost 
 decisive in its favour, though I own I like The 
 Last of the Barons better myself, and consider 
 it all but what it ought to be. If you mixed 
 The Last of the Barons with The Black Arrow ^ 
 
 * It is perhaps desirable to lay stress on the word "perfect" 
 lest anybody should exclaim "What ! you put a short ghost-story 
 before My Novel ?^^ Now I confess that I do not attach much 
 importance to mere bulk or mere shortness one way or the other. 
 But in the text I am only speaking of the relative consummateness 
 of a thing in its own kind. Both My Novel, and others of the 
 books, especially the latest (I have no small admiration for Kenelm 
 Chillingly), may be more considerable things in a kind deserving 
 more consideration than the thing and the kind of The Haunted 
 and the Haunters. But they are not so consummate. 
 
f 
 
 Literature, lySo-iSdo 367 
 
 another faulty but admirable book of another 
 THE HisTOR- generation, but on the same subject, you 
 icAL NOVEL, -^vould go Very near to perfection. The 
 Last Days of Po^npeii, though it has a double share 
 of the two faults mentioned above, is, as has been 
 said, easily first in its class, or first except Hypatia^ 
 of which more presently. No doubt the play- 
 wright's faculty which enabled Lord Lytton to 
 write more than one of the few very good acting 
 English plays of the century, stood him in stead 
 here as it stood Dumas. Perhaps this very 
 faculty prevented him more than it prevented 
 Dumas from writing a supremely good novel. 
 For the narrative and the dramatic faculties are 
 after all not the same thing and the one is never 
 a perfect substitute for the other. Yet I happen 
 to know that there are some who, regarding him 
 with considerably more admiration than I do, 
 set his shortcomings down to a far more serious 
 and damaging disability than this. They doubt 
 whether he had in any great, or at least in any 
 constant degree, the faculty of making a " live " 
 figure — one of those which can defy time and 
 occupy space. Nor of course, if this is once ad- 
 mitted, is there anything more to be said. 
 
 No reasonable space would suffice for a detailed 
 criticism, while a mere catalogue would be very 
 unamusing, of the imitators of these men, or of 
 Scott directly, who practised the historical novel 
 from seventy to forty years ago. The best of 
 them (so far as I can remember) was an anony- 
 
368 Essays in English 
 
 mous writer, whose name I think was Emma 
 Robinson, and whose three chief works the histor- 
 were Whitehall^ Whitefriars, and Owen ical novel. 
 Tudor. These books held a station about midway 
 between James and Ainsworth, and they seem to 
 me to have been as superior to the latter in interest 
 as they were to the former in bustle and movement. 
 But I think there can be no doubt that the in- 
 fluence of Dumas, who had by their time written 
 much, was great and direct on them. More than 
 once have I attempted in my graver years to 
 read again that well-loved friend of my boyhood 
 James Grant ; but each time my discomfiture has 
 been grievous. The excellent Chaplain-General 
 Gleig was a James of less fertility and liveliness, 
 indeed I fear he must be pronounced to have 
 deserved the same description as Mr Jingle's 
 packing-cases. In some others, such as G. W. M. 
 Reynolds, I confess that my study is but little. 
 But in such things of Reynolds as I have read, 
 though it would be absurd to say that there is 
 no ability, I never found it devoted to anything 
 but a very inferior class of bookmaking. 
 
 Marryat, close as he came to the historical kind, 
 seems to have felt an instinctive dislike or dis- 
 qualification for it ; and it will be noticed that his 
 more purely historical scenes and passages, — the 
 account of the Mutiny at the Nore in TJie King's 
 Own, that of the battle of Cape St Vincent in Peter 
 Simple, and so forth — are as a rule episodes and 
 scarcely even episodes. And though Lever wrought 
 
Litcraticrc, iy8o-i86o 369 
 
 the historical part of his stories more closely and 
 THE HisTOR- intimately into their substance, yet I 
 icAL NOVEL, should class him only with the irregulars 
 of the Historical Brigade. He is of course most 
 like a regular in Charles G'Malley. Yet even there 
 one sees the difference. The true historical novelist, 
 as has been pointed out more than once, employs 
 the reader's presumed interest in historical scene 
 and character as an instrument to .make his own 
 work attractive. Lever does nothing of the kind. 
 His head was full of the stories he had heard at 
 Brussels from the veterans of the Peninsula, of 
 Waterloo, and even of the Grande Arm^e. But 
 it was at least equally full (as he showed long 
 after when he had got rid of the borrowed stories) 
 of quaint inventions and shrewd observations of 
 his own. And even as a historical novelist the 
 original part got the better of him. Wellington 
 and Stewart and Crawford are little more than 
 names to us ; they are not one-tenth part as 
 real or one-hundredth part as interesting as Major 
 Monsoon. Nor is it the actual fate of war, at 
 Ciudad Rodrigo or on the Coa, that engrosses us 
 so much as the pell-mell fighting, the feats of 
 horsemanship, the devilled kidneys (that for some 
 incomprehensible reason so did irritate Edgar Poe) 
 and all the helter-skelter liberties with probability 
 and chronology and everything else which cram that 
 wonderful and to some people never wearisome 
 medley. 
 
 So too we need not trouble ourselves much with 
 
 2 A 
 
370 Essays in English 
 
 Dickens's efforts in the kind for a not dissimilar 
 reason. Barnaby Rudge earlier and A the histor- 
 Tale of Two Cities later, work in a great ^^^^ novel. 
 deal of historical fact and some historical character, 
 and both fact and character are studied with a 
 good deal of care. But the historical characters 
 are almost entirely unimportant ; while the whole 
 thing in each case is pure Dickens in its faults as 
 in its merit. We are never really in the Gordon 
 Riots of 1780 or in the Terror of thirteen years 
 later. We are in the author's No Man's Land 
 of time and space where manners and ethics 
 and language and everything else are marked 
 with "Charles Dickens," and the well-known 
 flourish after it. 
 
 It was about the middle of the century, I think, 
 or a little earlier, that the vogue which had sped 
 the Historical Novel for more than a technical 
 generation began to fail it, at least in England 
 with which we are chiefly concerned. The Dumas 
 furnaces were still working full blast abroad, and 
 of course there was no actual cessation of pro- 
 duction at home. But the public taste, either 
 out of satiety, or out of mere caprice, or tempted 
 by attractive novelties, began to go in quite other 
 directions. Charlotte Bronte had already begun, 
 and George Eliot was about to begin styles of 
 novels entirely different from the simple and 
 rather conventional romance which writers, unable 
 to keep at the level of Scott, had taken to turning 
 out. The general run of Dickens's performance 
 
Literatwx, lySo-iSdo 371 
 
 had been in a quite different direction. So was 
 THE HisTOR- THackeray's, which in its perfection was 
 icAL NOVEL. j^3^ beginning, though he was to pro- 
 duce not a little and at least one unsurpassable 
 thing in the historic kind. Many minor kinds typi- 
 fied by work as different as The Heir of Reddyffe 
 and Guy Ltvifigstone, as U?icle Tom's Cabin and 
 TJie Warden were springing up or to spring. And 
 so the Historical Novel though never exactly 
 abandoned (for George Eliot herself and most 
 of the writers already named or alluded to, as 
 well as others like Whyte-Melville, tried it now 
 and then) dropped, so to speak, into the ruck, 
 and for a good many years was rather despit- 
 eously spoken of by critics until the popularity 
 of Mr Blackmore's Lorna Doone came to give it 
 a new lease. 
 
 Yet in the first decade of this its disfavour, 
 and while most writers' and readers' attention 
 was devoted to other things, it could boast of 
 the two best books that had been written in it 
 since the death of Scott ; one an imperishable 
 masterpiece, the other a book which, popular as 
 it has been, has never had its due yet, — Esmofid 
 and Westward Ho ! 
 
 That when anybody is perpetually laughing 
 at another body or at something, this facetious- 
 ness really means that the laugher is secretly 
 enamoured of the object of ridicule, is a great 
 though not an universal truth which has been 
 recognised and illustrated by authorities of the 
 
'^']2 Essays in English 
 
 most diverse age and excellence from the author of 
 Much Ado About Nothing downwards, the histor- 
 It was well seen of Thackeray in the ical novel. 
 matter of the Historical Novel. He had been 
 jesting" at it for the best part of twenty years — 
 that is to say for the whole of his literary career. 
 He had made free with it a thousand times in a 
 hundred different ways, from light touches and 
 gibes in his miscellaneous articles to the admirable 
 set of Burlesques, to the longer parodies, if parodies 
 they can properly be called, of Rebecca and 
 Rowena'{onQ of his best things) and The Legend 
 of the Rhine, and on the biggest scale of all to 
 that strange unpleasant masterly failure Catherine. 
 It is to be presumed, though it is not certain, 
 that when he thus made fun of historical novels, 
 he did not think he should live to be a historical 
 novelist. Notwithstanding which, as every one 
 knows, he lived to write not one, but two, and 
 the beginning of a third. 
 
 It is not necessary to say much here about 
 Denis Duval, or to attempt to decide between 
 the opinions of those who say that it would have 
 been the author's masterpiece, and of those who 
 think that it could at best have stood to The 
 Virginians as The Virginians stands to Esmond. 
 It is however worth noting that De7tis Duval 
 displays that extremely careful and methodical 
 scaffolding and marshalling of historical materials 
 which Thackeray himself had been almost the 
 first to practise, and in which he has never been 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 2>72> 
 
 surpassed. Scott had set the example, not too 
 THE HisTOR- Well followed, of acquiring a pretty 
 icAL NOVEL, thorough familiarity with the history 
 and no small one with the literature of the 
 time of his story ; and he had accidentally or 
 purposely brought in a good deal of local and 
 other knowledge. But he had not made the 
 display of this latter by any means a rule, and 
 he had sometimes notoriously neglected it. Nor 
 did anybody till Thackeray himself make it a 
 point of honour to search the localities, to ac- 
 quire all manner of small details from guide-books 
 and county histories and the like, to work in 
 scraps of colour and keeping from newspapers and 
 novels and pamphlets. Dickens, it is true, had 
 already done something of the kind in reference to 
 his own style of fiction ; but Dickens as has been 
 said was only a historical novelist by accident, and 
 he was at no time a bookish man. The new, or at 
 least the improved practice was of course open to 
 the same danger as that which wrecked the labours 
 of the ingenious Mr Strutt; and it was doubtless 
 for this reason that Scott in the prefatory dis- 
 cussion to The Betrothed made " the Preses " sit 
 upon the expostulations of Dr Dryasdust and his 
 desire that " Lhuyd had been consulted." Too 
 great attention to veracity and propriety of detail 
 is very apt to stifle the story by overlaying it. Still 
 the practice when in strong and cunning hands no 
 doubt adds much to the attraction of the novel ; 
 and it is scarcely necessary to say more than that 
 
374 Essays in English 
 
 all the better historical novelists for the last forty 
 years have followed Thackeray, and that the histor- 
 Thackeray himself by no means impro- ^^^^ novel. 
 bably took a hint from Macaulay's practice in 
 history itself. 
 
 Another innovation of Thackeray's, or at least an 
 alteration so great as almost to be an invention, was 
 that adjustment of the whole narrative and style to 
 the period of the story of which Esmond \s the capital 
 and hitherto unapproached example. Scott, as we 
 have seen, had, by force rather of creative genius 
 than of elaborate study, devised a narrative style 
 which, with very slight alterations in the dialogue, 
 would do for any age. But he had not tried much 
 to model the vehicle of any particular story strictly 
 to the language and temper of that story's time. 
 Dumas had followed him with a still greater ten- 
 dency to general modernisation. Scott's English 
 followers had very rarely escaped the bastard and 
 intolerable jargon of the stage. But Thackeray in 
 Esmond did really clothe the thought of the mid- 
 nineteenth century (for the thought is after all of 
 the nineteenth century) in the language of the 
 early eighteenth with such success as had never 
 been seen before and such as I doubt will never be 
 seen again. It must be admitted that the result, 
 though generally, is not universally approved. I 
 have known it urged by persons whose opinions 
 are not to be lightly discredited, that the book is 
 after all somethiug of a tour de force, that there is 
 an irksome constraint and an unnatural air about 
 
LiteraUire, ly So- 1860 375 
 
 it, and that, effective as a falsetto may be, it never 
 THE HisTOR- can be so really satisfactory as a native 
 icAL NOVEL, note. We need not argue this out. It 
 is perhaps best, though there be a little confession 
 and avoidance in the evasion, to adopt or extend 
 the old joke of Conde or Charles the Second, 
 and wish heartily that those who find fault with 
 Esmond as falsetto would, in falsetto or out of 
 it, give us anything one-twentieth part as good. 
 For the merits of that wonderful book, though 
 they may be set off and picked out by its manner 
 and style, are in the main independent thereof 
 The incomparable character of Beatrix Esmond, 
 the one complete woman of English prose fiction, 
 would more than suffice to make any book a 
 masterpiece. And it would not be difficult to 
 show that the historical novel no less than the 
 novel generally may claim her. But the points of 
 the book which, if not historical in the sense of 
 having actually happened, are historic-fictitious, — 
 the entry of Thomas Lord Castlewood and his 
 injured Viscountess on their ancestral home, the 
 duel of Frank Esmond and Mohun, the presenta- 
 tion of the Gazette by General Webb to his Com- 
 mander-in-Chief at point of sword, and the im- 
 mortal scene in the turret chamber with James the 
 Third — are all of the very finest stamp possible, 
 as good as the best of Scott and better than the 
 best of Dumas. In a certain way Esnioid is the 
 crown and fiower of the historical novel ; " the 
 flamincr limits of the world " of fiction have been 
 
376 Essays in Ens^lish 
 
 reached in it with safety to the bold adventurer, 
 but with an impossibility of progress the histor- 
 further to him or to any other. ^^^^ novel. 
 
 One scene in the unequal and, I think, rather 
 unfairly abused sequel, — the scene where Harry 
 fails to recognise Beatrix's youthful portrait, — is 
 the equal of any in Esmond^ but this is not of the 
 strictly or specially historical kind. And indeed 
 the whole of The Virginians^ though there is 
 plenty of local colour and no lack of historical 
 personages, is distinctly less historical than its 
 forerunner. It is true that both time and event 
 so far as History goes, are much less interest- 
 ing ; and I have never been able to help thinking 
 that the author was consciously or unconsciously 
 hampered by a desire to please both Englishmen 
 and Americans. But whatever the cause may be 
 it is certain that the historical element is far less 
 strong in The Virginians than in Esmond^ and that 
 such interest as it has is the interest of the domestic 
 novel, the novel of manners, the novel of character, 
 rather than of the novel of history. 
 
 Esmond was published in 1852. Before the 
 next twelve-month was out Hypatia appeared, 
 and it was followed within two years more by 
 Westward Ho ! In one respect and perhaps in 
 more than one, these two brilliant books could 
 not challenge comparison with even weaker work 
 of Thackeray's than Esmond. Neither in know- 
 ledge of human nature, nor (still less) in power of 
 projecting the results of that knowledge into the 
 
L iteratu re^ rySo-i 860 ^^'jj 
 
 creation of character, nor in the adjustment to 
 THE HisTOR- scquencc of the minor and major 
 icAL NOVEL, events of life, was Kingsley the equal 
 of his great contemporary. But as has been 
 sufficiently pointed out, the most consummate 
 command of character in its interior working is 
 not necessary to the historical novelist. And in 
 the gifts which are necessary to that novelist, 
 Kingsley was very strong indeed, — not least so 
 in that gift of adapting the novel of the past 
 to the form and pressure of the present, which 
 if not a necessary, and indeed sometimes rather a 
 treacherous and questionable advantage, is un- 
 doubtedly an advantage in its way. He availed 
 himself of this last to an unwise extent perhaps 
 in drawing the Raphael of Hypatia, just as in 
 Westivard Ho! he gave vent to some of the anti- 
 Papal feelings of his day to an extent sufficient 
 to make him in more recent days furiously un- 
 popular with Roman Catholic critics, who have 
 not always honestly avowed the secret of their 
 depreciation. Nay, I have recently heard, with 
 almost incredulous amusement, that some younger 
 critics who sympathise with Liberalism in the form 
 into which Mr Gladstone brought it, are so 
 shocked and disgusted at Kingsley's opinions 
 that they can hardly read his work. This is 
 sufficiently odd to me: for others of these opinions 
 are quite as opposite to mine, and I never found 
 the opposition interfere in the very least with my 
 own enjoyment. 
 
378 Essays m E^iglish 
 
 But the solid as well as original merits of 
 these two books are such as cannot the histor- 
 possibly be denied by any fair criticism ^*^^^ novel. 
 which takes them as novels and not as some- 
 thing else. The flame which had not yet cleared 
 itself of smoke in the earlier efi"orts of Alton 
 Locke and Yeast, which was to flicker, and alter- 
 nate bright with dimmer intervals, in Two Years 
 Ago and Hereward the Wake, blazed with aston- 
 ishing brilliancy in both. I think I have read 
 Westward Ho I the oftener ; but I hardly know 
 which I like the better. No doubt if Kingsley 
 has escaped in Hypatia the curious curse which 
 seems to rest on the classical-historical novel, 
 it is by something not unlike one of those 
 tricks whereby Our Lady and the Saints outwit 
 Satan in legend. Not only is there much more 
 of the thought and sentiment of the middle of the 
 nineteenth century than of the beginning of the 
 fifth, but the very antiquities and local colour of 
 the time itself are a good deal advanced and made 
 to receive much of the mediaeval touch which, as 
 we have observed, is in possible keeping with the 
 modern, rather than of that elder spirit from which 
 we are so helplessly divided. 
 
 But this is a perfectly legitimate stratagem and 
 the success of it is wonderful. If no figure (except 
 perhaps the slightly sketched one of Pelagia) is of 
 the first order for actual life, not one falls below 
 the second, which, let it be observed, is a very high 
 class for the creations of fiction. The action 
 
Lite7'aticre^ ly 80- 1860 379 
 
 never fails or makes a fault ; the dialogue, if a 
 THE HisTOR- Httle mannered and literary now and 
 icAL NOVEL, then, is always crisp and full of pulse. 
 But the splendid tableaux of which the book is full, 
 tableaux artfully and even learnedly composed but 
 thoroughly alive, make the great charm and the 
 great merit of it as a historical novel. The voyage 
 down the Nile ; the night riots and the harrying of 
 the Jews ; the panorama (I know no other word 
 for it, but the thing is one of the finest in fiction), 
 of the defeat of Heraclian ; the scene in the theatre 
 at Alexandria; the murder of Hypatia and the 
 vengeance of the Goths ; — all of these are not only 
 bad to beat but in their own way, like all 
 thoroughly good things, they cannot be beaten. 
 Not that the book in the least degree drags 
 between them. On the contrary the reader is 
 carried on from start to finish as he never is save 
 in the best books. But I think these tableaux, 
 these " broads " if we may say so, of the stream of 
 story, are the triumph of it ; and if I were a 
 Croesus I should have one of the halls of my 
 Palace of Art exclusively and completely frescoed 
 with scenes from Hypatia. 
 
 The attractions of Westward Ho ! are less pic- 
 torial than those of its forerunner, which exceeds 
 almost any novel that I know in this respect ; but 
 they are even more strictly historic and more 
 closely connected with historical action. Minute 
 accuracy was never Kingsley's forte; and here, 
 though rather less than elsewhere, he laid himself 
 
380 Essays in English 
 
 open to the cavils of the enemy. But on the 
 whole, if not in detail, he had acquired the histor- 
 a more than competent knowledge of ^^^^ novel. 
 Elizabethan thought and sentiment, and had 
 grasped the action and passion of the time with 
 thorough and appreciative sympathy. He had 
 moreover thoroughly imbued himself with the 
 spirit of the regions over sea which he was 
 to describe, and he had a mighty action or 
 series of actions, real or feigned, for his theme. 
 The result was once more what may fairly be 
 called a masterpiece. There is again perhaps only 
 one character, Salvation Yeo, who is distinctly 
 of the first class as a character; for Amyas is a 
 little too typical, a little too much of the Happy 
 Warrior who has one temptation and overcomes 
 it. Frank (the enemy may say and there may be 
 some difficulty in gainsaying him) is mawkish ; 
 Rose a doll; Don Guzman a famous "portrait of 
 a Spaniard " craped and sworded duly ; Ayacanora 
 any savage princess. But even these go through 
 their motions quite satisfactorily ; and all the 
 minor characters from Gary and Jack downward 
 among the fictitious, from Sir Richard Grenvile 
 among the real, are as good as any reasonable 
 person can desire. And once more, though with 
 the slight change above noticed, the separate acts 
 and scenes hurry the reader along in the most 
 admirable fashion. From the day when Amyas 
 finds the horn to the day when he flings away the 
 sword (a quaint, but of course not intentional, 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 381 
 
 reminder of the old ballad) the chronicle goes on 
 THE HisTOR- with stcp Bs light as it is steady, with 
 icAL NOVEL, interest as well maintained as it is in- 
 tense. What anybody likes best will depend on 
 idiosyncrasy. Only, if he knows a good historical 
 novel, and one of the very best possible, when 
 he sees it, if he is not uncritically deterred by 
 differences in religion and politics, in nationality 
 and literature, he must like Westward Ho ! There 
 is no hope for him in this particular if he does 
 not. He may be a very good man : he may be 
 a very good judge of other novels ; but he does 
 not know a historical novel when he sees it. 
 
 It may seem odd that after the appearance of 
 three such books in little more than three years 
 the style which they represented should have lost 
 popularity. But such was the fact for reasons 
 partly assigned already, and similar phenomena 
 are by no means uncommon in literary history. 
 For the best part of twenty years the historical 
 novel was a little out of fashion. How it revived 
 with Mr Blackmore's masterpiece, and how it has 
 since been taken up with ever increasing zest, 
 everybody knows. But the efforts of our present 
 benefactors to the public are in all cases unfinished, 
 and in some, we may hope, have a long career to 
 run before the finish comes. Those who make 
 them are happily alive, and " stone dead hath no 
 fellow," for critical purposes as for others. 
 
 So what success their efforts met 
 The critic will not weigh, — as yet. 
 
382 Essays in English Literature, ly 80- 1860 
 
 But the mere fact of their existence and of their 
 flourishing makes it all the more in- the histor- 
 teresting to survey the history of what ^^^^ novel. 
 is still among the youngest, — though it has been 
 trying to be born ever since a time which would 
 have made it quite the eldest — of the kinds ot 
 Prose Fiction. 
 
XIII. 
 SOME GREAT BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 It is one of the best worn of commonplaces 
 GREAT that there is no book so generally 
 BIOGRAPHIES, interesting as a well done biography, 
 and none which is so rarely well done or so 
 difficult to do well. But there is often a good 
 deal of truth in commonplaces, and there is a 
 very great deal of it in this. Putting aside books 
 read owing to some fashion or fancy of the 
 time, and those which lend themselves to reading 
 simply because they require absolutely no know- 
 ledge or intelligence in those who read them, and 
 those in which positive genius insists upon atten- 
 tion being paid to it, no books have been so 
 steadily popular with the best class of readers 
 as the great biographies. On the other hand an 
 undeviating consensus of critics (whose natural 
 depravity could hardly have avoided slipping into 
 truth now and then if their opinion was feigned) 
 agrees that nothing is so bad as the average 
 biography. It may not be unamusing or unprofit- 
 
 383 
 
384 Essays in English 
 
 able to take some admittedly successful examples, 
 in the chief different kinds, and en- great 
 deavour to see what makes them good ; biographies. 
 it will certainly not be difficult to discern and 
 indicate in passing what makes the others bad. 
 
 All biography is obviously and naturally divided 
 into two kinds. There is the biography pure and 
 simple, in which the whole of the materials is 
 passed through the alembic of the biographer, and 
 in which few if any of these materials appear^ 
 except in an altered and digested condition. This, 
 though apparently the oldest, is artistically the 
 most perfect kind. Its shortest examples are 
 always its best, and some of the best and shortest 
 are among the best things in literature. The 
 Agricola of Tacitus at one end of the list and 
 Southey's Nelson almost at the other may save us 
 the trouble of a long enumeration of the master- 
 pieces ; while nobody needs to be told that the list 
 ranges from masterpieces like these down to those 
 that ego vel Chwienus may write. There has 
 always been a considerable demand for this sort 
 of thing ; but it is not quite the kind of biography 
 which has been specially popular for the last 
 century, and which lias produced the famous 
 books to which I have already alluded. This is 
 the kind of " applied " or " mixed " biography, 
 including letters from and to the hero, anecdotes 
 about him, and the like, connected and wrought 
 into a whole by narrative and comment of the 
 author, or, as he sometimes calls himself, the 
 
Literature^ ly 80- 1860 385 
 
 editor. To this belong more or less wholly the 
 GREAT great biographies which I shall take 
 BIOGRAPHIES. fQj- texts, Boswell's Johnson^ Moore's 
 Byron, Lockhart's Scott, Carlyle's Sterling (much 
 smaller than the others, for reasons, but distinctly 
 on the same lines with them), and, of books quite 
 recent, Sir George Trevelyan's Macaulay. And 
 to this class also, for reasons very easy to under- 
 stand, belong almost all the biographies recently 
 produced of men recently living. The reasons I 
 say are easy to find. There is the great popularity 
 of the great examples : there is the demand aris- 
 ing from this popularity ; but most of all there 
 is the fatal facility of the proceeding in appearance, 
 and in appearance only. 
 
 There can of course be no doubt that to the 
 inexperienced it looks easy enough. In the first 
 kind of biography the writer must to some extent 
 master a considerable quantity of matter and 
 subject it to some kind of intellectual or quasi- 
 intellectual process of his own. At the very worst, 
 the absolutely least, he must frame a sufficient 
 number of sentences in his own head and (unless 
 he dictates) write them with his own fingers, — a 
 number sufficient to fill the space between the 
 covers of the book. And, unless he is a quite 
 abnormally stupid or conceited man, he will be 
 more or less conscious that he is doing this well 
 or ill, sufficiently or insufficiently. He cannot to 
 any great extent merely extract or quote. He 
 must create, or at any rate build, or do something 
 
 2 B 
 
386 Essays in English 
 
 that may at least cheat himself into the idea that 
 he is building or creating. great 
 
 The second path is in comparison biographies. 
 quite a primrose one. In most cases the biographer 
 by hypothesis finds himself in possession of a cer- 
 tain, often a considerable, stock of material in the 
 way of diaries, letters and what not. Even if he 
 has struck out the notion of the book for himself 
 and is not ready furnished with his materials by 
 executorship, appointment of friends, and the like, 
 his own unskilled labour or that of a few jackals at 
 public and other libraries will generally stock him 
 amply with all the stuff he wants. Very often 
 this stuff is, in part at least, really interesting. 
 What more simple than to calendar it; to omit 
 whatever is more than is wanted to fill the one, 
 two or three volumes ordered or accepted by the 
 publisher; to string the rest together with a 
 
 " John-a-Nokes was born on the — th of Of 
 
 his earliest years we find " and so on ; to insert 
 here and there a reference, a reminiscence, a 
 reflection, or a connecting narrative; and, if the 
 operator be very conscientious, to wind up with an 
 appreciation or summary, " We have thus followed 
 a remarkable (or a painful, as the case may be) 
 career to its close. Had this," and so forth ? 
 What, I repeat, more simple ? 
 
 " It is not more stiff than that," says the en- 
 gaging idiom of the Gaul. At any rate there is 
 certainly a large and apparently an increasing 
 number of persons, many of them educated, pre- 
 
\ 
 
 Literature, ly 80- 1860 387 
 
 sumably not unintelligent, certainly not unac- 
 
 GREAT quainted with books, things, and men, 
 
 BIOGRAPHIES, ^^j^q consldcr that there is no greater 
 
 "stiffness" in it. Any competent critic, even 
 any tolerably intelligent reader who dutifully 
 studies or skims his new volumes from Mudie's, 
 could name books of this kind within the last 
 few years, nay, within the last few months, 
 some of which had no justification whatever for 
 their existence ; others which a really skilful hand 
 would have reduced to a small volume or even 
 to an ordinary quarterly essay ; others which, 
 though capable of having been made into books 
 of the right sort by the right treatment, had only 
 been made into books of the wrong sort by the 
 wrong treatment. Anybody on the other hand who 
 remembers many thoroughly satisfactory books 
 of the kind for some years past must either be a 
 much more fortunate or a much less fastidious 
 reader and critic than I can pretend to be.* Let 
 us therefore turn over once more those famous 
 biographies of the kind that are good, and see if 
 the secrets of their goodness are capable of being 
 disengaged. 
 
 It will be evident, and may possibly have been 
 already objected by some thorough-going Bos- 
 wellian, that the first, and as he would say the 
 
 * It so happens that since this paper first appeared a rather un- 
 usually large number of biographies — sometimes of the first interest 
 in subject — have been published. But I fear hardly one of them is 
 likely to challenge admission into the select class on the score of 
 execution. 
 
388 Essays in English 
 
 greatest, has some marked differences from the 
 others. This may be partly due to great 
 the fact that Boswell had practically biographies. 
 no model when he wrote his extraordinary book, 
 while the others all wrote with that book more 
 or less consciously before them. It may be 
 due also to the other fact that for by far the 
 greater part of his hero's life he did not know 
 him at all ; while for the rest he had excep- 
 tionally full stores of personal communication 
 to draw upon. A considerable variation of treat- 
 ment was therefore almost of necessity imposed 
 on him. To generalise about Boswell is a very 
 perilous task. Almost everything possible has 
 been said : and most, or at least many, of these 
 things clash and hurtle like the elements in 
 chaos. I shall give no opinion here whether 
 Boswell was the specially inspired zany of 
 Macaulay, or the man of some foibles but of good 
 brain and heart on the whole, and of an intelligent 
 rather than blind devotion to his master, whom 
 Carlyle preferred and who has been of late years 
 more and more the favourite. I do not myself 
 pretend to rank in the most ardent section of 
 Boswellians. Full of delightful matter as the 
 book is, it seems to me a book rather for perpetual 
 dips, — dips which should leave no part of it unex- 
 plored, but interrupted and comparatively short — 
 than for the long steady swim which the very 
 greatest literary streams invite, sustain, and make 
 delightful. It would indeed scarcely be possibhi 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 389 
 
 for even the most rapid reader to read Boswell 
 GREAT or Lockhart or Moore through at a 
 BIOGRAPHIES, sitting, unless it were as long as the 
 gambling sederunt in The You?ig Duke. But I 
 have read Lockhart often, and I hope to read him 
 often again, on successive evenings from beginning 
 to end. I have read Moore at least once if not 
 twice through in the same way, besides countless 
 dippings into both. I have never succeeded, and 
 I have more than once failed, in reading Boswell 
 through on the same plan. 
 
 This however may be my fault, not Boswell's : 
 and I am sure that there is not a page of him 
 that I have not read, and that often, with delight. 
 For he had, and he revealed to the others, the 
 secret of this kind of biography. And he had it, 
 if not so much as Lockhart (who seems to me the 
 prince of all biographers, past, present, and to 
 come) much more than any of those others, though 
 they had it too. This secret consists in fixing the 
 attention of the reader, even if it be unconsciously, 
 at once on the character of the subject ; and, so 
 far as possible, never giving a touch afterwards 
 which does not in some way fill out and fill up 
 that character. The satire poured on Bozzy's 
 minuteness by Wolcot and others is often (in 
 Peter Pindar himself at least) admirably good fun, 
 and not always quite unjust from certain points of 
 view.* And yet if we pause and with hand on 
 
 * As Bozzy and Piozzi has been twice praised, here and in the 
 Essay on Twenty years of Political Satire, it may be well to give a 
 
390 Essays in English 
 
 heart ask ourselves, " Is the most trivial of these 
 trivialities really superfluous?" it will be great 
 very difficult to answer in the affirma- biographies. 
 tive. There is hardly one incident, there is hardly 
 one saying of Johnson's, there is even hardly one of 
 those astounding platitudes or sillinesses of Bozzy's 
 own which support the " zany " theory, that does 
 not in some subtle and cunning fashion elaborate 
 and furnish forth that extraordinary personality 
 which some will have to be the most faithful 
 portraiture of a human being that we possess in 
 books, and others the most astonishing example of 
 an eidolon heightened and transcendentalised by 
 art. I have no doubt that much of Boswell's 
 attraction for the extreme Boswellians consists in 
 what his earliest thorough-going defender would 
 have called his " marine-stores " of detail about 
 
 brief specimen of its method, for it is not, I suspect, in all hands. 
 Perhaps the best passage of all is the version of Boswell's wonder- 
 ful account of his conduct to the Duchess of Argyle in her own 
 house, but it is rather long. The following may be better : 
 
 " With glee the Doctor did my girl behold, 
 
 Her name Veronica, just four months old, 
 
 This name Veronica, a name though quaint, 
 
 Belonged originally to a saint ; 
 
 But to my old great-grandam it was given, 
 
 As fine a woman as e'er went to Heaven ; 
 
 And what must add to her importance much. 
 
 The Lady's genealogy was Dutch. 
 
 The man who did espouse this Dame divine. 
 
 Was Alexander, Earl of Kincardine ; 
 
 Who poured along my body, like a sluice, 
 
 The noble, noble, noble blood of Bruce : 
 
 And who that owned this blood could well refuse 
 
 To make the world acquainted with the newsl &c., &c., &c. 
 
Literature, lySo-iSdo 391 
 
 all sorts of things and persons besides Johnson. 
 
 GREAT No one except Horace Walpole has 
 BIOGRAPHIES, giycn US such a collection of ana in 
 excelsis, of miscellanies miscellanied into quintes- 
 sence, as Boswell ; and Horace lacks the central 
 tie-beams that Bozzy provides. For yet once 
 more it must be said that in Boswell the whole 
 has a tendency and an aim, — a tendency which 
 reaches its end, an aim which is hit by the archer. 
 It is in this that the supremacy of Boswell's art 
 consists. Apparently desultory, he is never really 
 so ; apparently sucking in everything and dis- 
 gorging everything by turns with the indiscriminat- 
 ing action of a whirlpool, he is really subjecting 
 the whole to a cunning chemical process. 
 
 How different the process, or at least how 
 different the success is in the case of the bad and 
 even of the less good biographies the memory, full 
 of fright, of many a double-volumed night shall 
 easily tell us. In the selection and editing of 
 documents and in the construction of linking nar- 
 rative we shall find better models among the 
 biographers referred to than Boswell. But we 
 shall nowhere find a better — I am not quite sure 
 that we shall anywhere find one so good — in this 
 central requirement of always keeping the character 
 of the subject before the reader, and building up 
 the notion of it with here a little and there a little 
 of successive detail and touch. It may be that 
 Bozzy had so steeped himself in his hero that he 
 at last thought and saw all things in Johnson ; 
 
392 Essays in Efiglish 
 
 and that everything extraneous to that subject 
 naturally dropped off and became un- great 
 important to him. But this would be biographies. 
 only a scientific, not a critical, explanation of the 
 fact : and the fact itself remains. Now the very last 
 thing that we find in the average modern biographer 
 is this omnipresence of the subject in its quiddity. 
 The biographer may be earnestly, even tediously, 
 desirous to put a certain side or what he thinks 
 a certain side, of his subject before us. But "the 
 whole," as Empedocles (not Mr Arnold's but the 
 man himself) said, " few boast to find." We 
 turn over pages of surplusage, pages of repeti- 
 tion, pages of triviality ; but the central idea and 
 personality of the man, the idea that disengages 
 itself, once for all and unmistakably, from the pages 
 of Boswell, we are either altogether baffled in seek- 
 ing, or have to piece and patch out laboriously for 
 ourselves. There may be amusing stories about 
 the subject, or about other people : there may be 
 meritorious bursts of original writing from the 
 author or editor ; but the central idea, the central 
 tie-beam, is too often wanting. There is no com- 
 position, and therefore there is no art. In Boswell 
 there is this composition, though it is of a very 
 peculiar and perhaps a not easily imitable kind. 
 
 The next book in chronological order, Moore's 
 Byron ^ has very different lessons to teach. It 
 must of course be judged in the first place with 
 a most unusual amount of allowance. The mere 
 circumstances of the antecedent destruction of the 
 
Literature, I/S0-1S60 39 
 
 <> 
 
 Memoirs imposed upon Moore such a necessity 
 GREAT of dancing in fetters that probably, 
 BIOGRAPHIES, jf povcrty, and perhaps a little vanity 
 combined, had not dictated to will, he never 
 would have consented to undertake the exercise. 
 He wrote too soon after Byron's death not to 
 have been, even if this most harassing con- 
 dition had been absent, encumbered by innumer- 
 able considerations of this person's feelings, of 
 what that person had written, of what the moral 
 British public still thought, of what the enthusiastic 
 British public still felt. Frequent as are Byron's 
 own laudations of Moore's attitude towards "the 
 great," and creditable as on the whole that attitude 
 must be pronounced to have been, Moore suffered 
 under various personal disabilities in grappling 
 with his task. He was an Irishman writing of 
 English society ; a somewhat irregularly educated 
 Irishman dealing with English public-school and 
 university education ; a Whig writing of a period 
 of almost unbroken Tory rule ; a reformed Thomas 
 Little writing of a very unreformed Don Juan. 
 But he was a man of thorough literary faculty, 
 and literary faculty (which is a branch of wisdom) 
 is, like wisdom, justified of her children in all ways 
 and at all seasons. He had, in those letters and 
 other documents of Byron's which had escaped the 
 flames, illustrative matter of unsurpassed interest : 
 for there is a practical agreement between the 
 admirers and the depreciators of Byron's poetry, 
 that his prose letters are of the very best in their 
 
394 Essays in English 
 
 kind. Moore had, moreover, a central subject 
 which, if not of the least enigmatic, great 
 was intensely individual, and concern- biographies. 
 ing which the intensest curiosity was entertained 
 by his readers. With a man of the great literary 
 faculty already mentioned this conflict of draw- 
 backs and advantages was certain to produce 
 something notable. 
 
 The book is indeed full of faults, all of which 
 (withjsome things which are not faults at all) may 
 be found censured in his most florid style by 
 Wilson in the Nodes Ambrosiance. It was a mis- 
 take, at least as obvious as the reason for it, to be 
 excessively reticent as to the poet's English freaks 
 and unnecessarily loquacious as to his Italian dis- 
 sipations. It was a worse mistake to drop the pen 
 of the biographer now and then, and thump the 
 cushion of the preacher, an exercise which suited 
 the genial Thomas uncommonly ill. It was a still 
 more unwise extension of that mistake to indulge 
 in abstract discussions about education, marriage, 
 and what not, for which Moore (who was one of 
 the worst hands in the world at abstract disserta- 
 tion) was very badly equipped, and which, if they 
 had been handled by a combination of Solomon 
 and Berkeley, would still have been out of place 
 in the particular book. It would be quite easy to 
 pick other and minor faults all through. 
 
 But who that reads the book with heart's as 
 well as mind's eye cares to do any such thing .? 
 Here too we have the main and principal thing, 
 
Litcrattn^c, lySo-iSdo 395 
 
 which was in this case to let the subject speak 
 GREAT for himself. One of the more lecriti- 
 
 o 
 
 BIOGRAPHIES, matc faults which may be found with 
 Moore is that he has not " edited " quite enough, 
 that he has frequently allowed Byron (who like 
 most letter-writers from foreign parts necessarily 
 had to repeat himself to his various correspondents) 
 to appear in the book as tautologous to a rather 
 unjust extent. But even in this there is justifica- 
 tion for the biographer. He knew, being a man 
 of letters and a great man of letters, that what 
 was wanted was precisely this, — to let Byron speak 
 for himself There had been endless speaking 
 about him. 
 
 God's great gift of speech abused 
 Made the memory confused 
 
 of almost everybody on the subject. Moore had 
 been prevented from giving full liberty of speech 
 to his client even in this instance ; so, like a 
 judicious advocate he gave the fullest liberty that 
 he could in the matter left to him. At any rate 
 he too earns the meed due to the thorough 
 painting of the portrait, the finished construction 
 of the character. We have had all manner of 
 " real Lord Byrons " and of false Lord Byrons 
 since ; we have had things that Moore might 
 have told us had he chosen and been free to 
 speak, and things that he was too sensible to 
 tell however free his tongue had been. But it 
 may be safely said that nothing that can ever 
 
396 Essays in English 
 
 come out will be incompatible with the Lord 
 Byron made known to us by Moore. great 
 He is done, like Pantagruel, dans son biographies. 
 naturel ; and the natural or unnatural additions 
 will be found to answer thereto. 
 
 Far different again is this procedure from that 
 of the ordinary biographer. He copies Moore 
 in giving us much unnecessary matter ; he copies 
 him in giving us far more unnecessary comment. 
 The only things he does not copy him in are 
 the excuses for these two faults, and the merit 
 which, were they far greater, would redeem them. 
 
 The next example seems to me, as I have 
 already said, to be the capital example of the 
 kind. It is true that Lockhart had everything 
 in his favour. He had ample material ; he had 
 complete knowledge of it ; he had a real affection 
 for his subject ; he had nothing to conceal ; he 
 had, if not the same sort of personal curiosity, 
 half-genuine, half-morbid, which Moore had to 
 cater for in the case of Byron, a general interest 
 in his hero which has seldom been equalled and 
 never exceeded. But in literature, as in other 
 games, it is not sufficient to have cards ; you 
 must know how to play them. Lockhart played 
 his admirable cards to even greater admiration. 
 His play has indeed been subjected to tests that 
 may be called hardly fair. The recent publica- 
 tion, first of Scott's complete Diary, and then 
 of a large additional collection of his Letters, 
 was such a test ; and it is not necessary to 
 
Literature, iy8o-i86o 397 
 
 dwell much on the triumphant fashion in which 
 GREAT Lockhart emerged from it. Except 
 BIOGRAPHIES. ^ y^j-y ifttlc which for divers reasons 
 he could not have published, and a very little 
 more which on the whole it was better taste 
 for him not to publish, there may be said to 
 have been absolutely nothing of interest or im- 
 portance in the complete Diary which he had 
 not given in his extracts. We had more in 
 bulk, but we had nothing new in kind. We 
 learnt nothing, and there was no fear of our 
 learning anything, derogatory to Sir Walter and 
 hitherto concealed ; but we learnt also nothing 
 favourable to him that had, either by maladroitness 
 or bad faith, been held back. Some of the new 
 matter was painful ; almost all of it was superfluous. 
 Of the Letters, no doubt this could not be 
 said. The additions they made to our know- 
 ledge were always interesting, sometimes intensely 
 so. But whatever their degree of importance, it 
 was always easy to see why Lockhart had not 
 given them, and seldom possible to refuse approval 
 to his holding of them back. What is proper 
 enough to be known sixty years after a man's 
 death is often improper to be known on the 
 morrow of it. Yet perhaps few men in Lockhart's 
 position, well knowing the unjust aspersions which 
 had been cast on his action in the Scott-Christie 
 duel, would have had the combined good taste 
 and self-denial not to publish the acquittal, by 
 an authority from which there could be no appeal, 
 
39^ Essays in English 
 
 the Duke of Wellington, which these unpublished 
 letters contain. great 
 
 But only they of little faith or little biographies. 
 intelligence can have been much surprised or greatly 
 relieved by this passage of Lockhart's through the 
 ordeal. To any really good literary judge the thing 
 was certain beforehand. This Life had the " certain 
 vital marks." I am aware of course that, putting 
 entirely aside the usual vague and intangible 
 prejudice against Lockhart, some good and well- 
 disposed judges have expressed themselves as not 
 wholly satisfied with parts of his treatment — 
 have considered him unfair to Constable and the 
 Ballantynes and so forth. But the elaborate justi- 
 fication of Constable which was published some 
 years ago left on my mind no feeling that Lock- 
 hart had treated him unfairly ; and those who 
 disapprove of the treatment of the Ballantynes 
 usually incriminate not the Life itself, but divers 
 side controversies and appendices with which we 
 have here nothing to do. What we have to do 
 with is the presentation of the life and conversation 
 of a great man on a great scale ; and that this has 
 never been done better I am sure, that it ever will 
 be done better I find great difficulty in believing. 
 The special point of the work is the unmatched 
 combination of excellence in the selection and 
 editing with excellence in the connecting narrative. 
 Boswell's matter is delightful, and excellently 
 arranged for his purpose. But whenever he be- 
 comes at all original he becomes (were it not for 
 
Literahire, ly 80- 1860 399 
 
 the pleaslngncss of his coxcombry and its advan- 
 GREAT tages as a set-off) a bore. Moore's 
 BIOGRAPHIES, dissertatioiis are sometimes superfluous, 
 and not always intrinsically very sound. In the 
 examples to be noticed later Carlyle's mono- 
 logue, as was his wont, has sometimes a habit 
 of submerging Sterling ; and the biographer is 
 altogether so much greater a man than his sub- 
 ject, that there is an occasional sense of incon- 
 gruity. Sir George Trevelyan, whose relation 
 to his hero may be said to have been very similar 
 to that of Lockhart to Scott, and who, like 
 Lockhart, was fortunate in possessing abundant 
 material, sometimes seems to have found himself 
 a little cramped by the relationship, and nowhere 
 seems to me to have attained the full and equable 
 command both of his pen and his subject which is 
 so remarkable in his predecessor. 
 
 It is in this full and equable command both of 
 his materials and his own arrangement of them 
 that Lockhart's unique excellence consists. He 
 had to deal with an almost faultless subject, — for 
 there is absolutely no stain on Scott's memory 
 except his clandestine tradings with the Ballan- 
 tynes, where it is evident that some strange 
 delusion held him from the first as to the distinctly 
 unprofessional, nay as to the questionably honest, 
 character of these relations. There was therefore 
 a not inconsiderable danger that he should present 
 (as so many biographers have presented to us) a 
 faultless monster, or should busy himself in tedious 
 
400 Essays in English 
 
 endeavours to whitewash small faults into positive 
 virtues. The best evidence that he great 
 has not done this is the almost in- biographies. 
 credible but actual fact that there have been 
 people, both at the time and since, who have 
 thought him unfair to Scott. The truth of course 
 is that he has contrived with consummate art 
 to let the character of his hero show itself as 
 good but not in the least goody, as heroic but not 
 in the least theatrical. Yet another distinguishing 
 grace of this great book, — " the best book in the 
 world " as a person who was not ignorant of the 
 other best books in the world once called it to me 
 — is the singular skill with which the author, while 
 never obtruding, never obtrusively effaces himself. 
 He is often actually on the scene : he is constantly 
 speaking in his own person ; and yet we never 
 think of him as the man with the pointing-stick at 
 the panorama, as the beadle at the function, as the 
 ring-master of the show. He seems to stand rather 
 in the relation of the epic poet to his characters, 
 narrating, omnipresent, but never in the way. 
 
 No other biographer, I repeat, seems to me to 
 have reached quite this pitch of art. It is true that 
 Bozzy plays monkey to his master's bear in a very 
 diverting and effective manner ; but still the rela- 
 tion may always be stigmatised by foes, and must 
 sometimes be admitted even by friends, as that of 
 bear and monkey, a contrast diverting and effective, 
 but almost too violent for the best art. There is 
 nothing of this in the Life of Scott. Whether 
 
Literatitre, ij 80- 1860 401 
 
 Scott is speaking for himself in the autobiography, 
 GREAT the diary, and the letters ; or whether 
 BIOGRAPHIES. Lockhart is speaking of and for him, the 
 presentation is continuous, uniform, uninterrupted. 
 Two phrases, often foolishly used but in their 
 original meaning not only harmless but excellent, 
 may be used in that original meaning of this 
 book. It is " as interesting as a novel," and it 
 is **as good as a play." That is (to translate 
 these artless words into more elaborate phraseo- 
 logy), it has the uniform grasp, the sustained and 
 absorbing attraction, of the best works of nar- 
 rative and dramatic art. It is easy to say that 
 this is due to the subject, that " all depends on the 
 subject," and that here the subject is matchless. 
 I think this can, as it happens, be rather crushingly 
 rebutted by instance. I do not think that the 
 appreciation of Moore above quoted is grudging. 
 But let any one who knows the two books well 
 ask himself soberly what Moore would have made 
 of Scott, and what Lockhart would have made of 
 Byron. As for the ordinary biographer it is per- 
 haps too heartrending to think what he could have 
 made, if he had given his mind to it, of either. 
 Let any one who knows remember what Lord John 
 Russell made of Moore himself, a subject not of 
 course of the same interest as Scott or Byron, but 
 of interest much above the common ; let him 
 remember much more recent instances of even 
 more promising matter, treated by hardly less 
 approved artists, and what came of them. Then, 
 
 2 C 
 
402 Essays in English 
 
 if he does not bless Lockhart and award the crown 
 to him, I have nothing more to say but great 
 to repeat that I for my part know no biographies. 
 book of the kind equal to this. 
 
 Here then we have something like the type and 
 standard example of the elaborate biography of the 
 composite kind, the kind which not stinting itself 
 of any one possible sizing allowable to the biogra- 
 pher, admitting great portions of original matter, 
 and permitting the subject to a great extent to 
 illustrate himself, keeps a perpetual regulating 
 hand on these materials, adjusts the connecting 
 links of narrative and comment to one consistent 
 plan of exposition, and so presents the subject "in 
 the round," on all sides, in all lights, doing this not 
 merely by ingenious management in the original 
 part, but by severe and masterly selection in that 
 which is not original. It has been rumoured from 
 time to time that in addition to the Diary and even 
 to the additional Letters^ further instalments of the 
 Abbotsford papers are to be given to the public. 
 They can hardly be otherwise than welcome in 
 themselves, though it seems idle to wish for the 
 pinched-ofif clay, the marble chips, the bronze fil- 
 ings when you have the sculptor's finished statue. 
 But after the crucial example of the Diary itself, 
 I think it may be taken for granted that the 
 results will be uniform whatever is published. 
 We shall have no lower, but also no really fuller 
 idea of Scott ; and we shall have a higher idea 
 of what Lockhart gave and did, by beholding 
 
Lite7'atzirc , I/80-1860 40 
 
 ■^ 
 
 what he deh'berately refrained from doing and 
 
 GREAT giving. 
 BIOGRAPHIES. 'Yh.Q ncxt in order of our books is in 
 a certain way the greatest, as in a certain other 
 way the smallest, of all. But I do not think that 
 the superlative belongs to it as a biography. Of 
 its merits as a book there can be no question, and 
 there never has been any with competent judges. 
 It has sometimes indeed been thought the very 
 best of Carlyle's books, or second only to The 
 FreiicJi Revolution. Its modest length kept the 
 author from the voluminous digressions which 
 beset him so easily ; the frequent changes of 
 scene, and the constant necessity for making 
 more or less brief reference to distinguished or 
 interesting persons, excited and fed his unrivalled 
 power of description and characterisation to an 
 extraordinary degree. The sense of battle (for 
 the book begins, if it does not go on, as a polemic 
 against Hare's view of Sterling) gave zest and 
 spirit to the performance. And there can be 
 little doubt that personal memories and affections 
 helped likewise. 
 
 The result is astonishingly happy. It is brief 
 enough to be read at a moderate stretch; and 
 for my part, often as I have read it, I have 
 seldom been able to begin it again or even to 
 consult it for a casual reference, without follow- 
 ing it right through. Although full enough of 
 the author's characteristic manner, it does not 
 show his mannerism at anything like its furthest. 
 
404 Essays in English 
 
 The preaching is necessarily subdued : it is ad- 
 ministered dramatically and in short great 
 doses. The whole is an inculcation of biographies. 
 Carlylism no doubt; but it is effected by object- 
 lessons, and with swift and variegated change of 
 scene and character. The famous chapter on 
 Coleridge (admittedly the masterpiece of the book 
 if not of the author) is only the best of infinite 
 good things. The Welsh sketches ; the remarks 
 on Cambridge and Sterling's friends there ; the 
 ingenious economy of the Torrijos episode, where 
 the hapless expedition gets its full share of cele- 
 bration and Sterling's own not exactly heroic 
 part in it is skimmed without any dishonesty but 
 with consummate art ; the scores of portrait vig- 
 nettes scattered about, and the admirable com- 
 position of all these things, make up such a book 
 as few that the world's libraries contain. 
 
 Such a book ; but such a biography } Here 
 I am not so sure. You can of course " see" Sterling 
 plainly enough in it : but you hardly see what 
 others must have seen. To his friends and rela- 
 tions he was no doubt dear ; perhaps not the less 
 dear, as women often and men sometimes are, 
 for his weaknesses physical and mental. I should 
 be sorry to hurt any one's feelings in speaking 
 of his personality: and it must be distinctly under- 
 stood that it is of Carlyle's Sterling, not of Sterling 
 himself, that I speak. That he was, apparently, 
 the first of all such as cannot " make up their 
 minds to be damned" (in his biographer's words 
 
Literature, ly 80- 1860 405 
 
 of another person of somewhat sturdier sub- 
 GRKAT stance) and yet want better bread than 
 BIOGRAPHIES, jg made of wheat by virtue of which 
 they may be saved, — the father of all the deplor- 
 able family that includes the Arthur Cloughs of 
 real life and the Robert Elsmeres of fiction — the 
 conductor and coryphaeus of the caitiff choir who 
 sing undogmatic anthems to a Nehushtan of nega- 
 tion — should not perhaps count too much against 
 him. And no wise man will bear too hardly on 
 the fact of his having turned his back on a certain 
 troublesome and probably dangerous business, 
 to which he had put his hand, in order to dry 
 the tears of a " blooming young lady with black 
 eyes." But it is too evident that Sterling, his 
 physical health no doubt aggravating his meta- 
 physical complaints, was not a strong man, amiable 
 and not ungifted, but with no great originality in 
 him, and without a very great capacity for taking 
 trouble in order to make up for the lack of 
 originality. Very fortunate indeed was it for 
 him that he was called upon to play no other 
 part than that of an affluent scholarly invalid, and 
 that he died before youth had quite departed, 
 and therefore before his weakness had ceased to 
 be pathetic and begun to be painful to his 
 friends. 
 
 This is a brutal reduction to plain prose of 
 Carlyle's portrait of him. But the mere fact 
 that it will seem brutal shows on the one hand 
 how skilful the painter is, and on the other that 
 
4o6 Essays in English 
 
 the merits of his picture are the merits not of 
 biography — that is to say the presenta- great 
 tion of a man as he is — but of romance, biographies. 
 or the presentation of something as it is not. All 
 through the book Carlyle plays Socrates to this 
 poor friend of his (with very little fight in him at 
 any time and with none left now) and protects him 
 from the onset of the enemy. That he sometimes 
 effects the rescue by concentrating our attention 
 on himself, is part of the recognised procedure 
 in such cases. But it is by no means always 
 thus that he champions Sterling. I have not 
 the slightest doubt that the variety and brilliancy 
 of the scene-painting, the divergences into side 
 portraits, and all the other purple patches referred 
 to above, had a more or less conscious purpose 
 of avoiding the concentration of too much atten- 
 tion on the reader's part on the nominal hero. 
 The result no doubt is in a way triumphantly 
 successful. The book has practically founded 
 an immortal Sterling Club ; there will always be 
 voices to sing Tu Marcellus eras in honour of 
 Sterling ; and I protest that I am rather ashamed 
 of myself for having said what I believe to be 
 the truth about him just now. Nor can it be 
 said that the biographer may not smooth a little 
 and apologise a good deal ; especially where, as 
 in Sterling's case, the faults are only weaknesses 
 and wants. But still if the standard of biography 
 which has been set up earlier is at all a true one, 
 Sterling never could have furnished a subject 
 
Literahire, iy8o-iS6o 407 
 
 for one of the very best of biographies as such. 
 
 GREAT There was simply not enough Substance 
 BIOGRAPHIES. \^ j^jjy^ {q^ Qj^g ^j^j ^^^^ ^\^2\\ accord- 
 ingly find that what Carlyle with wonderful art has 
 done is to reverse the tricks of the conjurers, and 
 lead us to believe that we are readingf a life of 
 Sterling while Sterling is really " vanished," and 
 we are actually reading an extraordinarily interest- 
 ing history of the places that he lived in, the men 
 he knew, the actions which he shared or did not 
 share, and the personality of his redoubtable and 
 admirable friend and biographer, all thrown up on 
 a background of the shortcomings of th^ Church 
 and State of England in the nineteenth century. 
 
 No two books could in this respect stand in 
 much greater contrast to each other than the 
 Sterlifig and Sir George Trevelyan's Life and 
 Letters of Macaulay. The requirements of this 
 last were entirely different : they were met with 
 a just consciousness of their difference, and the 
 result is a success of a perfectly different kind. 
 Macaulay is still a difficult subject to handle. 
 He had grave faults as a writer and some foibles 
 as a man, accompanying great merits as a man 
 and greater gifts as a writer. By an almost un- 
 exampled coincidence he has been depreciated 
 by some in a manner which makes others forgive 
 him where he ought not to be forgiven ; and he 
 has been admired by some in a way which makes 
 others unduly shy of admiring him. But this 
 applies to his writing chiefly. Speaking under 
 
4o8 Essays in English 
 
 correction, I should say that for some fifteen years 
 after his death, the ideas of him among great 
 those who had not known him person- biographies. 
 ally were pretty uniform, and not much more un- 
 favourable among those who rather disliked his 
 writings than among those who admired them. 
 That is to say, he was thought of as an un- 
 doubtedly clever, a very generous, and an entirely 
 honourable man, who had retained the faults of a 
 clever and precocious boy, — " cocksureness," inor- 
 dinate loquacity, intolerance of fair give-and-take 
 in conversation to a hardly tolerable degree, — 
 a man whose " rough, pistolling ways " extended 
 from literature into life, who was not too scrupulous 
 about carrying personal and political antipathies 
 into his writings, and who was not only " cock- 
 sure" but also cock-a-hoop to a degree barely if 
 at all excusable. 
 
 And I think it is also not too much to say that 
 Sir George Trevelyan's biography changed this 
 almost at once, changed it even for some who 
 were rather prejudiced against Macaulay, and 
 made it almost impossible for any future genera- 
 tion which takes the trouble to acquaint itself 
 with him at all to entertain that notion of him 
 which Lord Melbourne's niot^ the Windsor Castle 
 incident, and a few other things had helped his 
 writings to establish in the minds of the generation 
 before. For it is, I venture to think, one of Sir 
 George's amiable mistakes (of which there are a 
 few in the book) to think that Macaulay's writings 
 
Liter attire, iy8o-i86o 409 
 
 "give us no more idea of the author than Shak- 
 GREAT speare's do." I should say myself that 
 BIOGRAPHIES, they give a very decided though, as it 
 happens, a very false or at any rate a very incom- 
 plete idea of him. There is scarcely a page of the 
 Essays or the History in which we do not seem to 
 see a man of unquestionable knowledge and of 
 equally unquestionable power, with no small range 
 of sympathy and taste, but with a huge pair of 
 blinkers on for everything and everybody with 
 whom or with which he is not in sympathy, posi- 
 tive to or beyond the verge of arrogance, ready to 
 pronounce and perhaps even to think everyone who 
 does not agree with him a fool or a knave or an ( 
 egregious combination of both, never quite dis- 
 honest, but often quite unjust, with little real 
 geniality even in his appreciation of humour, and 
 with little real sympathy even in his appreciation 
 of sentiment. 
 
 I do not know whether the family tradition was 
 too strong in Sir George for him even to be aware 
 of this notion of his uncle, which certainly existed 
 at the time he wrote in persons neither infantine 
 nor ill-blooded nor ill-informed. But he could 
 have taken no happier way to substitute something 
 better and juster for it than the way he actually 
 took. He is sincerely, even desperately, loyal 
 to ''the bluid of McAulay." With Mr Napier 
 I am unable to see that Johnson, who was very 
 frequently in the wrong, was wrong at all when 
 he smote the Reverend Kenneth and the Reverend 
 
4IO Essays in English 
 
 John for speaking unadvisedly with their lips. 
 But Sir George, the faithful, is sure great 
 that he was wrong ; and of this fidelity biographies. 
 there are many other odd examples in the book. 
 The very preface, however, to the second edition 
 shows that, despite this amiable weakness, he had 
 the root of the biographical matter in him. " It 
 was my business," says he, " to show my uncle as 
 he was, and not as I or any one else would have had 
 him." " Oh brave we ! " as Johnson himself might 
 have said. Not of course that the principle extends 
 to publishing tacenda of any kind. There are things 
 which are not disgraceful to a man to have done 
 or written, but of which the publication is obviously 
 unfair to him, which any biographer may suppress, 
 and which in some notable later examples of 
 biography have not been suppressed — to the dis- 
 credit of the subject in the minds of fools, of the 
 biographer in the minds of the wise. 
 
 But to quote, or rather to paraphrase Sir George 
 again, if a faithful picture of the subject cannot 
 be drawn without injuring his memory, let the 
 drawing alone ; if the drawing be undertaken, 
 let it be faithful. Consider what would have 
 happened if Sir George had set himself to cut 
 away all the early and later priggishness, all the 
 evidences of extreme partisanship in the Croker 
 and other matters, if he had given us a Macaulay 
 all family affection, all sweet reasonableness, all 
 pathetic humanity, a trimmed, shorn, and varnished 
 Macaulay. We should have revolted, we should 
 
Literature, I/80-1S60 411 
 
 have said that this was absurd : and we should 
 GREAT have liked Macaulay even less than 
 BIOGRAPHIES, bcforc, and had a strong suspicion that 
 Sir George was a garbler and a humbug. Whereas, 
 by giving the rough with the smooth, and letting 
 the man exhibit himself as he actually was, yet 
 with no treacherous or unfair revelation, the revolu- 
 tion of opinion in the minds of some, the establish- 
 ment once for all of a good opinion in those of 
 others, was done and done thoroughly, so that 
 it will never need to be done again and may 
 defy not merely the critic but also the indiscreet 
 busybody. 
 
 If anybody says that by much comparison of 
 instances I have made clear two secrets de Polichi- 
 7ielle, first that the life of a man should give us the 
 man and his life and not a collection of dead and 
 inhuman things, secondly that a good life of a man 
 will be found to have been well done itself, and 
 done probably in a rather different way from any 
 other, I bow to the remark. It is more and more 
 becoming clear to me that the only secrets much 
 worth finding out are secrets de Polichinelle, things 
 already known to all the world. To convince 
 yourself of the obvious, neither to fail to see it for 
 mere blindness like the fools, nor to fail to see it 
 because of elaborate and persistent turning away 
 from it like the clever ones, is certainly in these 
 days, and perhaps has been in all, a very important 
 and by no means an extremely simple task. Yet 
 it may be pleaded that if the secret of writing 
 
412 Essays in English 
 
 biographies is known to all the world, no small 
 number of persons in that world (to great 
 wit, the writers of biographies) seem biographies. 
 to be for the most part absolutely guiltless of 
 the knowledge. And yet *' Lives" are being 
 more and more written. In the notes to his 
 translation of Heine's Deutschland Mr Leland in- 
 forms us that "in one of the best-known minor 
 libraries in Europe " he " found two lives of a 
 distinguished English poet and not a line of his 
 works." It is entirely conceivable ; it would not 
 surprise me very much if he had said that he knew 
 an author who had written one of the lives without 
 having read a line of the works. Such things have 
 happened, and are happening. But still, things 
 being so, it might be supposed that the books for 
 which there is such a demand would be supplied 
 good. That would be a gross and grievous mis- 
 take. Demand may create supply ; it certainly 
 does not necessarily create good supply. 
 
 The examples I have taken are pretty well spread 
 over the century (or rather less) in which they all 
 appeared ; and though the latest of them made its 
 appearance so to speak yesterday, it is less satis- 
 factory to remember that the subject of that life 
 was born nearly at its beginning, and died within 
 the artificial period which has been laid down in 
 the title of this book. It is quite possible that the 
 materials for biography are not so promising as 
 they used to be. Some persons pretend that the 
 cry about the decay of letter-writing is nonsense. 
 
Literattu'c, iy8o-i86o 413 
 
 The cautious arguer will confine himself to re- 
 GREAT plying that at any rate there are 
 BIOGRAPHIES, great temptations not to write letters. 
 Telegrams, post-cards, correspondence-cards, letter- 
 cards, — all of these things the truly good and 
 wise detest and execrate ; it is not quite so 
 certain that they abstain from them. I believe 
 that the habit of keeping a diary has really 
 gone out to a great extent. Too often moreover 
 nowadays the unauthorised person steps in with 
 his privateering before the authorised person is 
 ready for sea ; and then the authorised person too 
 often indulges in undignified chasings and can- 
 nonadings of his predecessor. Above all there 
 seems to have been lost, in this and other things, 
 the all-important sense of proportion in books, and 
 we get Lives that would have been excellent in 
 one volume watered out into two. Lives that would 
 have been pleasant places in two, becoming path- 
 less deserts in four. These things have had a bad 
 effect on the class of persons who are likely to find 
 biographers. One hears of their destroying mater- 
 ials with a " Please God, nobody shall deal with 
 
 me as dealt with ." Or else, as was the 
 
 case with Cardinal Newman, they enjoin a method 
 of dealing with their materials, which, though it 
 permits any one of tolerable intelligence to con- 
 struct a biography for himself with comparatively 
 little difficulty, does not give him the biography 
 actually made. For it cannot be too often repeated 
 that a real biography ought to be something more 
 
414 Essays in English Literakire, lySo-iSdo 
 
 than the presentation of mere materials, however 
 excellently calendared, something more great 
 than Memoirs, Letters, Diary and so biographies. 
 forth. The whole ought to be passed through 
 the mind of a competent and intelligent artist, 
 and to be presented to us, not indeed in such a 
 way that we are bound to take his word for the 
 details, but in such a way that we see a finished 
 picture, a real composition, not merely a bundle 
 of details and data. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 Coleridge and Southey. 
 
 I HAVE in the text expressed my opinion that Southey 
 was, perhaps, a little too didactic in his dealings with 
 Coleridge. But it must be remembered that the roundest 
 and most uncompromising denunciation of Coleridge that 
 we have comes from Wordsworth, not Southey ; and I 
 cannot help thinking that the late Mr Dykes Campbell, 
 inestimable as are his dealings with the Lake set, and 
 little as any one who knew him is likely to feel disposed 
 to quarrel with him, was rather unfair to Southey, whom 
 he accused of " meddlesomeness " in bringing on the 
 marriage of Coleridge and Sara, and of whose letter to 
 Mrs Hughes on the occasion of Coleridge's death he 
 speaks severely. I should like to examine these two 
 points a little. For the modern memory is rather short, 
 and the modern judgment rather too apt to take things 
 at second-hand : and I have seen this " meddlesomeness " 
 recently taken as a thing proved and granted, by reviewers 
 and others. 
 
 Let us then take it first. The facts are not in dispute. 
 Coleridge, after engaging himself to Miss Fricker, took 
 one of his fits of abscondence, left Cambridge, went to 
 London, and abode there smoking and being smoked 
 with Lamb at the Salutation and Cat^ but giving no sign 
 
 4»5 
 
4 1 6 Appendix 
 
 of life to his fiancee and his Bristol friends. Southey, 
 visiting town either specially or for other purposes, 
 sought him out, brought him back, and so it was 
 that there was a redintegratio amoris and a marriage. 
 Surely it is going not a little far to call this " meddle- 
 someness." Southey had been Miss Fricker's friend 
 from childhood ; he had himself introduced Coleridge to 
 her ; he was going to marry her sister ; and it does not 
 appear that she had any male relatives to act for her. 
 Would any gentleman not have done what he did ? Let 
 it be remembered, too, that, after all, he could not simply 
 tuck Coleridge under his arm and drag him to the altar ; 
 that no compulsion appears to have been required ; that 
 Coleridge was at least as much in love with his pensive 
 Sara, both before and for some time after marriage, as 
 it was in his nature to be ; and that Southey, himself a 
 very young man, had had no time as yet to become 
 acquainted with the hopeless vacillation and instability 
 of his future brother-in-law's character. He did the duty 
 next him ; well would it be for most men if they had 
 nothing to reproach themselves with but that. 
 
 And now as to the letter to Mrs Hughes. " What he 
 wrote," said Mr Campbell, " is better forgotten." What 
 did he write ? That Coleridge " Had long been dead to 
 me, but his decease has naturally wakened up old recol- 
 lections." That " Whosoever edits his letters will have 
 a difficult and delicate task " {cf. Mr Ernest Coleridge's 
 preface to these letters, and not all of them, sixty years 
 later) ; that " all of his blood were in the highest degree 
 proud of his reputation, but this was their only feeling 
 concerning him "; that "Hartley has far greater powers 
 than anyone who now bears the same name." This is 
 absolutely all, and it will be observed that Southey does 
 
Appendix 4 1 7 
 
 not as a matter of fact express any personal opinion what- 
 ever of an unfavourable kind, though, no doubt, he may 
 be thought to guard himself rather carefully against 
 expressing a favourable one except in point of "genius." 
 There might have been a little more sentiment, perhaps ; 
 but Southey was not a sentimentalist, and the simple 
 phrase " wakened up old recollections " from him means 
 more than pages of regret and remorse would have meant 
 from Coleridge's own pen. There is no doubt some 
 evidence of the " natural death of love." Coleridge had 
 wearied Southey out as he wearied out his family, Words- 
 worth, Wedgwood, everybody with whom he had to do — 
 except people like the Morgans and the Gillmans, who 
 were sufficiently below him in intellectual rank to think 
 it an honour as well as a charity to dry-nurse him — as he 
 once at least was close to wearying out the angelic good- 
 ness, the humorous tolerance, and the rock-fast friendship 
 of Charles Lamb himself. Now Southey was not quite 
 an angel, and tolerance was not his strong point : but 
 nothing worse than this need, I am convinced, be said of 
 his relations with the " archangel a little damaged," to 
 whose forsaken family he was a father. 
 
 2 D 
 
4 1 8 Appendix 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 Songs of the Crimean War. 
 
 A RATHER curious and interesting paper, which would 
 not badly illustrate the difficulty, more than once pointed 
 at in the text, of making out any strict connection be- 
 tween opportunity and performance in the matter of War 
 Songs, might be written on those of the Crimean War. 
 It is, of course, true that "The Charge of the Light 
 Brigade," one of the capital things of our literature in 
 this kind, owes its inspiration to the subject ; and that 
 indirectly it is responsible for a good deal of not the 
 least powerful part of Maud. But when we have allowed 
 for these, and for the strictly bellicose parts of Sydney 
 Dobell's England in time of War, we have pretty 
 well exhausted the very notable things to which the one 
 great war in which England has been engaged for eighty 
 years, gave birth. Archbishop Trench's " Alma " is estim- 
 able but hardly great ; the other War Poems which 
 Dobell's coadjutor Alexander Smith, the resipiscent 
 Chartist Ernest Jones, and others produced, deserve no 
 stronger epithet. 
 
 The truth is that, here as elsewhere, the reverse of 
 Sorrow's dictum about beer applies to poetry. "The 
 goodness of ale," quoth he, " depends less upon who 
 brews it than upon what it is brewed of." I am not 
 quite certain even of this : but it is certain that the 
 goodness of poetry depends much less on the matter of 
 the song than on the gifts of the singer. And in this 
 case Tennyson was the only great English singer whom j 
 
Appendix 4 1 9 
 
 the war found ready. The subject does not seem to 
 have inspired Browning ; it was not very likely to inspire 
 Mr Arnold ; Kingsley, who might have sung nobly on it, 
 had already turned from poetry to prose. In fact the 
 war exactly coincided with the interval in English verse, 
 between the undisputed establishment of the power of 
 Tennyson and Browning, and the rise of the second 
 Victorian — the first purely Victorian — school with Mr 
 William Morris. Only the " Spasmodics " occupied the 
 field, and the Spasmodics, as has been said, did what 
 they could. 
 
 But if the enquirer goes still further and says, " Yes ; 
 but why did not the Crimean war develop its Campbell, 
 in addition to Tennyson, who was a universal not a 
 specialist singer ? " then no answer can be given except 
 that, as a matter of fact, it did not, and there's an end 
 on't. Even its unsatisfactory character in many ways 
 will give us no help ; for if there was blundering there 
 was no disgrace, and it is only disgrace that seals the 
 singer's lips. The hour had come, but the men had 
 not ; and that is the conclusion of the whole matter. 
 
./^' 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Addison, 179. 
 
 Ainsworth, Harrison, 324, 343, 
 
 363-5- 
 Allingham, Mr, 191. 
 
 Anti-Jacobin, The, 260-269. 
 
 Apuleius, 307, 
 
 Arnold, Mr Matthew, 196-7, 
 
 272. 
 Arthurian Story, The, 310, 311. 
 Austen, Miss, 137, 160, 165, 167, 
 
 284. 
 
 Balzac, 166. 
 
 Barham, Richard Harris, 112; 
 his Hfe, 272-6 ; his works, 286. 
 
 Biographies, Some Great, 383- 
 414; kinds of biography, 383- 
 387 ; Boswell, 387-392 ; 
 Moore, 392-396 ; Lockhart, 
 396 - 403 ; Carlyle's Ster- 
 ling, 403-407 ; Trevelyan's 
 Macai'lay, 407-411 ; final 
 remarks, 411 -414. 
 
 Bo row and CoblDett, 43. 
 
 Boswell, James, 5, 387-392. 
 
 Browning, 178, 199. 
 
 Ealvser, see Lytton, Lord. 
 
 Burney, Dr, 207, sqq. 
 
 Burney, P'anny, see Madame 
 D'Arblay. 
 
 Byron, 2, 15, 16, 195. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, 185-195 ; 
 his life, 185-6 ; his works, 
 186-7 ; his poems other than 
 war-songs, 187-190 ; his war- 
 songs, 190-195. 
 
 Canning, 96, 260, sq. 
 
 Caran D'Ache, M., 129. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 403-407. 
 
 Charlotte, Queen, 208, sqq. 
 
 Chaucer, 173. 
 
 Cobbett, William, 38-80 ; scale 
 and character of his work, 38- 
 40 ; his crotchets, 40-2 ; his 
 style, 42-3 ; its attraction, 44-5 ; 
 his life, 45-58 ; sketch of his 
 politics, 58-65 ; survey of his 
 work, 65-74 ; his critics, 74-5 ; 
 characteristics and work, 75-80. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 9, 10, 13; C. 
 and Southey, Appendix A. 
 
 Colvin, Mr, 83, 87. 
 
 Crimean War-Songs, Appendix 
 B. 
 
 Crockett, Mr, 344. 
 
 Croker, 204, sq. 
 
 Cruikshank, 129. - 
 
 Crump, Mr, 82-3. 
 
 Curtius, Quintus, 305, 312. 
 
 D'Arblay, Madame, 203-236; 
 Macaulay on her, 203-5 J her 
 books, 205 - 6 ; her life, 206- 
 212; the novels, 212-224; 
 the Memoirs, 224-5 ; her 
 Diaries, 225-8 ; causes of 
 her decline, 228-232; her 
 merits, 232-6. 
 
 Defoe, 316, 317. 
 
 Deschamps, Eustache, 173. 
 
 Dickens, 370. 
 
 Dowden, Prof., his selection of 
 Southey's poems, 2. 
 
 421 
 
422 
 
 Index 
 
 Doyle, Sir Francis, 200. 
 Drayton, 176-8. 
 Dryden, 178, 239. 
 Dumas, Alexandre, 346-355. 
 D'Urfey, 180. 
 
 Edgeworth, Miss, 168. 
 Ellis, George, 240, sq. 
 Ellis, Mrs, 210, sqq. 
 English War-So7tgs^ see War- 
 songs, English. 
 Erasmus, 94. 
 
 Ferrier, Susan Edmonstone, 
 134-170 ; preliminary re- 
 marks, 134-6; her life, 136, 
 sq. ; Marriage, 1 39- 1 50 ; The 
 Inheritance, 151- 160; Des- 
 tiny, 160-164 ; her death, 
 165 ; her general position as 
 a novelist, 165-170. 
 
 Fontenelle, 94. 
 
 " Eraser Gallery," The, 292. 
 
 Frere, 260, sq. 
 
 George the Third, 97. 
 
 Giffard, Humphrey, 175. 
 
 Gifford, 18, 96. 
 
 Gleig, Chaplain General, 368. 
 
 Godwin, 319, 320. 
 
 Grant, James, 368. 
 
 Heine, 201. 
 
 Historical Novel, The, 303-382 ; 
 the CyropcEdia and other class- 
 ical novels, 303-307 ; medi- 
 aeval Romances, 307-313 ; 
 experiments from the Re- 
 naissance to the end of the 
 i8th cent., 313-322; consider- 
 ations on these attempts, 322- 
 327 ; Scott, 328-346 ; Dumas, 
 346-355 ; Scott's followers, 
 356-368 ; later practitioners, 
 368-382. 
 
 Hood, Thomas, 109-133 ; in- 
 equality and chaotic condition 
 
 of his work, 1 09- II 2 ; his 
 note and value, 11 2-1 15; his 
 life, 115-120; the Song of the 
 Shirt and the Bridge of Sighs, 
 120,1 ; Hood and Praed, 
 121-3 ; his personal character, 
 123,4; his humour, 124-8; 
 his illustrations, 128-9; his 
 serious work, 130-133. 
 
 Hood, Thomas, the younger, 
 109, 
 
 Hook, Theodore, his life, 271-2; 
 his works, 276-286. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 357, 359. 
 
 Humourists, Three, 270 ; sec 
 Barham, Hook, Maginn. 
 
 Ingoldsby Legends, The, 270 sqq. 
 
 James, G. P. R., 360-363. 
 
 KiNGSLEY, Charles, 376-381. 
 Korner, 201. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 
 81-108 ; stock criticisms on 
 him, 81-2 ; accessibility of his 
 works, 82-3 ; his life, 83-7 ; 
 his personal character, 87-8 ; 
 his poems, 88-93 > ^i^ Con- 
 versations, etc., 93-99 ; his 
 literary quality generally, 99- 
 108. 
 
 Lawrence, Dr, 241. 
 
 Le Brun, Pindare, 202. 
 
 Leland, Mr, 412. 
 
 Lever, 369. 
 
 Lockhart, J. G., 5, 273, 283-5, 
 294, 396-403. 
 
 Lucian, 94. 
 
 Lytton, Lord, 212, sq.., 365-367. 
 
 MaCAULAY, I, 183, 196, sqq., 
 
 203 sq., 407-411. 
 Mackintosh, 135. 
 Maginn, William, his life, 273- 
 
 4 ; his works, 291-300. 
 
Index 
 
 42 
 
 
 Marryat, 568. 
 Marseillaise^ the, 201. 
 Merimee, 359. 
 Milsand, M., 345 note. 
 Montagu. Mr R. W., 292, stj, 
 Moore, Thomas, 392-396. 
 Morley, Mr Henry, 239-240. 
 Morris, Mr William, 62, 92, 
 200. 
 
 Pappendick, Mrs, 210 note. 
 
 Paris, M. Gaston, 174. 
 
 Parr, Dr, 96. 
 
 Peacock, and Cobbett, 43. 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, his kindness 
 to men of letters, 14, 119, 
 274. 
 
 Pills to Purge Melancholy ^ the 
 War-songs in, 180 sqq. 
 
 Pindar, Peter, see Wolcot. 
 
 Plato, 94. 
 
 Political Satire, Twenty years ot, 
 237-269 ; futility of literary 
 cause-making, '2.y]-'2,1<) ; the 
 Rolliad, 240-249 ; Wolcot 
 (" Peter Pindar "), 249-260 ; 
 the Anti-Jacobin, 260-269. 
 
 Porcupine, Peter, see Cobbett. 
 
 Porter, Jane, 321. 
 
 Praed, 112, 121-3. 
 
 Quarterly Review, the, 7, 18. 
 Queenhoo Hall, 321. 
 
 Reeve, Clara, 320. 
 Reynolds, G. V/. M., 368. 
 Robinson, Emma, 368. 
 Rosengarten, Mr, 48 note. 
 Rush, Dr Benjamin, 48, and 
 note. 
 
 Scott, Major, 248. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 195, 303-382, 
 
 passim. 
 Skelton, 175. 
 Southey, Cuthbert, 4 
 Southey, Robert, 1-37 ; present 
 
 state of his reputation 1-2 ; 
 
 Prof. Dowden's Selection, 2 ; 
 difficulties in studying him, 
 2-5 ; his life, 5-15 ; his 
 character, 15-19 ; his poems, 
 19-29 ; his prose, 29-34 ; 
 characteristics, 34-37 ; his 
 relations with Coleridge, Ap- 
 pendix A. 
 
 Stael, Madame de, 137. 
 
 Sterling, John, 403-407. 
 
 Strutt, Joseph, 321. 
 
 Swift and Cobbett, 42-3 ; and 
 Landor, 104. 
 
 Swinburne, Mr, 109, 200. 
 
 Tennyson, Lord, 198. 
 Thackeray, 112, 119, 128, 371- 
 
 376. 
 Three Humourists, 270-302 ; 
 
 Hook, 271-273, 276-286; 
 
 Maginn, 273-4, 291-300 ; 
 
 Barham, 274-276, 286-291 ; 
 
 their general value, 291-302. 
 Trevelyan, Sir George, 407-411. 
 
 Wagg, Mr, 273, 276. 
 
 War-Songs, English, 171-202 ; 
 irregular distribution of them 
 in English poetry, 171-175 ; 
 survey of them up to the great 
 Rebellion, 175-178 ; extreme 
 badness of those of the late 
 17th and i8th centuries, 178- 
 184; Burns, 184; Campbell, 
 185-195 ; War-Songs since 
 Campbell, 195-202. 
 
 Warter, Dr, 4. 
 
 Warton, T., 247. 
 
 Waverley, 329. 
 
 Whyte-Melville, 371. 
 
 Wolcot, John (" Peter Pindar "), 
 210, 249-260; his character- 
 istics, 249-250 ; his life, 250- 
 252 ; his work, 252-260 ; W. 
 and Boswell, 389 and note. 
 
 Xenophon, and the Cyropadia, 
 303-305- 
 
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