LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS 
 
LETTERS 
 
 TO 
 
 LIVING AUTHORS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN A. STEUART 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' SELF-EXILED,' ETC. 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON 
 Limited 
 
 FETTER LANE, FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 1890 
 
 [A II rights reserved} 
 
TO 
 
 E. HOWARD 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED 
 
 557.179 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To MR. GEORGE MEREDITH, .... i 
 
 To DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, . . 18 
 
 To MR. JOHN RUSKIN, 36 
 
 To MR. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, ... 54 
 
 / To COUNT LYOF NIKOLAEVICH TOLSTOI, . 70 
 
 To MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, . . 85 
 
 v To MR. THOMAS HARDY, . . . . 101 
 
 To MR. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, . . 117 
 
 To MR. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, . 131 
 To MR. HALL CAINE, . . . . .149 
 
 To MR. ROBERT Louis STEVENSON, . . 163 
 
 v To MR. ANDREW LANG, 176 
 
 To MR. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, . . 191 
 
 To MR. WILLIAM BLACK, .... 207 
 
 To MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN, .... 221 
 
 To MR. R. D. BLACKMORE, . . . . 236 
 
 v To MR. MARK TWAIN, . . . . , 253 
 
The Publishers beg to acknowledge their indebted- 
 ness to Messrs. ELLIOTT & FRY for permission to 
 copy many of their Portraits of Authors given in 
 this Volume. 
 
GKORGK MEREDITH. 
 
LETTERS 
 TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 To MR. GEORGE MEREDITH. 
 
 SIR, There is a certain quality which, more 
 than talent, or genius, or energy, or force of 
 will, lies at the bottom of all material success 
 the quality which is known among men as 
 worldly wisdom. You can scarcely be con- 
 gratulated on possessing it, for throughout your 
 career you have shown less concern for the 
 comfort and convenience of your patrons, the 
 public, than any other literary caterer living to- 
 day. Indeed, with the exception of Carlyle, 
 no British writer of this generation has been so 
 utterly regardless of the ease of the critics and 
 the pleasure of the general reader. You seem 
 A 
 
2 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 perfectly oblivious of the fact that novels, 
 whether written for recreation or not, are, as a 
 rule,, most assuredly read for recreation ; and 
 that a work of fiction which does not primarily 
 please, apart from its literary merits, stands but 
 a meagre chance of being read at all. The 
 business of life is not popularly supposed to lie 
 in solving enigmas and puzzling the brain over 
 paradoxes. The British nation is chary very 
 chary of making exorbitant demands on its 
 head, especially in matters designed for its en- 
 tertainment. It has a natural aptitude for 
 enjoyment, and likes to have things made easy 
 for it. Would you be admonished, and gain 
 the popular vote ? Then trouble the reader 
 less with profound intellectual problems ; do 
 not so strenuously insist on his fathoming the 
 great deeps of philosophy ; let the world wag, 
 since it is so careless of its destiny ; in a word, 
 assume the jaunty indifference to all things 
 serious which is so pleasing a characteristic of 
 Mayfair, and study the tastes rather than the 
 needs of mankind. 
 
 Most writers, I believe, start with high moral 
 and aesthetic aims. They will regenerate the 
 
MR. GEORGE MEREDITH. 3 
 
 graceless sons of Adam ; they will wipe away 
 the grime of thousands of years of wickedness, 
 and establish the love of the noble and the 
 beautiful. But they speedily discover that the 
 ungrateful sons of Adam have really no desire 
 to be regenerated ; they are content to continue 
 sinful, and read sensational books full of wild 
 adventure and intrigue and gore and all the 
 other reprehensible things that are of so sweet 
 a savour to the depraved and vulgar palate. 
 And so the majority of our authors, having an 
 eye to results, prescribe and supply, not so much 
 what is needed, as what is demanded. 
 
 You are an exception. You have been 
 quixotical enough to remain steadfastly true to 
 your early ideals. You have given the world, 
 not what it wanted, but what you thought was 
 good for it. You have put intellect into every 
 sentence you have written, reckless of conse- 
 quences, therein departing very far indeed from 
 the glorious traditions of English fiction. To 
 say the truth, I think you have been too lofty 
 in your contempt of the rights and prerogatives 
 of that well-meaning and not ill-deserving, if 
 not very intelligent, individual, the habitual 
 
4 LETTERS 7V LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 novel reader. Other novelists may occasionally 
 take the bit between their teeth, as it were, and 
 indulge in a gallop to please themselves, but 
 they quickly slacken down to the conventional 
 ambling pace, and make everything comfortable 
 for the party in the saddle. To change the 
 metaphor, they mostly dilute their draught of 
 thought to suit the taste of consumers ; but 
 you stubbornly persist in for ever giving yours 
 over-proof, perfectly indifferent if people turn 
 away gasping. That is not the way to be 
 popular, and indeed you are at opposite poles 
 from one's ideal of a popular writer. 
 
 Your only commodity is thought, which is 
 not in any great demand in the present era. 
 You made a mistake at the beginning, and, less 
 discriminating than many who are your inferiors, 
 you have never seen it. All along you have 
 gone on the assumption that the world is craving 
 for more light, whereas it is rather obscuration 
 and forgetfulness it is seeking. You fancied 
 that on certain weighty and perplexing pro- 
 blems, which lay very near your heart, mankind 
 was pining for enlightenment, and, with the 
 noble audacity of a generous and gifted soul, 
 
MR. GEORGE MEREDITH. 5 
 
 you undertook to make things clear ; and you 
 have succeeded but too well. That is, you 
 have led the reading public to understand that 
 you are a moral and social reformer, and not a 
 story-teller. But for the ample proof to the 
 contrary contained in your works, your policy 
 might lead one to think that you know little or 
 nothing of human nature. Your course, in a 
 worldly sense, has been the height of inexpedi- 
 ency. You have forgotten, or ignored, or were 
 never aware of a fact well known to, and gener- 
 ally sedulously kept in mind by, every one 
 whose fortune hangs on the public taste, that 
 the world, even in its direst straits, can hardly 
 be induced to take medicine, except in the 
 form of confections. You might very well have 
 begun by putting your drugs in sweetmeats. 
 In other words, you might have made your 
 debut with bland and easy commonplace. We 
 pride ourselves upon being a practical and 
 commonplace people, who hold transcenden- 
 talism in contempt; and depend upon it the 
 man who ministers to our taste will not be 
 without his reward. And you might have 
 had your reward if, instead of following your 
 
6 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 own inclination, you had bent a little more 
 to ours. But you persevered in your head- 
 strong course, and the result has been pre- 
 cisely what might have been anticipated you 
 frightened those whom you sought to bene- 
 fit so that by the great mass of readers you 
 are still regarded with terror. Very condign 
 punishment indeed overtook you for your rash- 
 ness ; for hardly during the present century has 
 any writer of your intellectual force and fine 
 imaginative power been so long and cruelly 
 neglected. When. writers, without a twentieth 
 part of your gifts or your culture, have been 
 shooting aloft into fortune, and what is tempo- 
 rarily taken for fame, you have remained toiling 
 in comparative obscurity, no doubt eagerly 
 panting for appreciation, yet determined to bate 
 not one jot of your independence, or in the 
 smallest particular prove a traitor to your ideal. 
 Happily there are signs that the long-delayed 
 victory is coming at last, that you are gaining 
 recognition, or, to use a cant phrase of criticism, 
 that you ' are swimming into the ken of cul- 
 ture.' 
 
 Mr. Besant, in speaking of the hardships of 
 
MR. GEORGE MEREDITH. 7 
 
 poor Richard Jefferies, says that it must ulti- 
 mately be destructive of the highest genius to 
 toil year after year without reward or recognition. 
 He is of opinion that in order to do his best an 
 author must be praised. I don't think it would 
 be hard to show that Mr. Besant is mistaken. 
 At any rate there are a great many excep- 
 tions to the rule he would establish. Without 
 going far afield, we have Wordsworth and Carlyle 
 and yourself toiling for many years neglected, 
 or noticed only to be derided, and yet produc- 
 ing works of supreme excellence. When Words- 
 worth wrote his Ode to Immortality, he was 
 not earning enough by his literary labours to 
 buy salt for his porridge (it goes as a matter of 
 course that such a lover of simplicity took por- 
 ridge) ; when Carlyle produced his French 
 Revolution, it was with some dubitation that 
 the publishers accepted the manuscript ; and 
 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel was written 
 long before your name had any potency in the 
 republic of letters. It is hard, however, to bear 
 neglect, and you must have had a fine faith in 
 your own intellectual endowments, and the ulti- 
 mate appreciation of mankind, to have continued 
 
8 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 the battle so long. But fortunately for the 
 name of England you have now a large num- 
 ber of admirers, a number which is every day 
 increasing, and which no doubt will go on in- 
 creasing till you take your right place in the 
 literature of your country. 
 
 It is a significant fact that while you are ad- 
 mired, and even worshipped, you have not, so 
 far as I know, been imitated. Certain peculiari- 
 ties of your style are, indeed, creeping into some 
 of our latter-day novels ; but your modes of 
 thought, your manner of treatment, your bril- 
 liancy of expression, all that is essentially and 
 particularly George Meredith, has been left most 
 severely alone, and for very obvious reasons. 
 Not to speak of the difficulty of copying you 
 (which would be considerable), your style in 
 general is not one to be imitated by the tyro 
 aiming at popularity. ' Some styles,' says Pro- 
 fessor Teufelsdrockh, ' are lean, adust, wiry, the 
 muscle itself seems osseous; some are even 
 quite pallid, hunger-bitten, and dead-looking; 
 while others glow in the flush of health and 
 vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own 
 casie) not without an apoplectic tendency.' 
 
MR. GEORGE MEREDITH. 9 
 
 Yours may be called the apoplectic style, for it 
 is never for one moment to be depended upon. 
 It is jerky, irruptive, full of inequalities. The 
 reader never knows whether he is to be led 
 across flowery meads, or by winding paths 
 through bosky groves, or hurled over a precipice. 
 At times particularly at the beginning of a book 
 the manner is so stiff, so rugged, so difficult, 
 that only one who knows what is ahead would 
 persevere. Take for instance the opening of 
 The Egoist. It is brilliant, keenly intellectual, 
 full of fine thought and sharp-cut phrases, of wit, 
 of humour, of satire, of every quality, in fact, that 
 ought to make it popular, and yet it is far from 
 being easy reading. It has nothing of the ease 
 that lures, the softness that enchants, the grace 
 that captivates. It were an interesting problem 
 to solve how one who is always so brilliant can 
 be occasionally so repellent. The beginning of 
 The Egoist is as discouraging as the begin- 
 ning of Sartor Resartus, and indeed reminds 
 one of that now much lauded, though still little 
 read, book. The dissertation on the Comic 
 Muse is admirable and terrible. An ordinary 
 reader would never wade through that superb 
 
io LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 first chapter, nor would he (or is it she ? ) be able 
 to understand it if he were to read it a score of 
 times. There, and elsewhere throughout your 
 books, one is haunted by the suspicion that you 
 have mistaken your vocation, that you should 
 have taken to some other department of litera- 
 ture ; to history or philosophy or criticism, to 
 anything but story-telling. And you are too 
 fond of making the reader pant after you till he 
 is out of breath if not out of temper. What is 
 an ordinary mortal to make of a sentence like 
 the following ? 
 
 ' As when the foreman of a sentimental jury 
 is commissioned to inform an awful bench, 
 exact in perspicuous English, of a verdict that 
 must of necessity be produced in favour of the 
 hanging of the culprit, yet would fain attenu- 
 ate the crime of a palpable villain by a recom- 
 mendation to mercy, such foreman, standing in 
 the attentive eye of a master of grammatical 
 construction, and feeling the weight of at least 
 three sentences on his brain, together with a 
 prospect of judicial interrogation for the dis- 
 covery of his precise meaning, is oppressed, 
 himself is put on trial in turn, and he hesitates, 
 
MR. GEORGE MEREDITH. 11 
 
 he recapitulates, the fear of involution leads him 
 to be involved ; as far as a man so posted may, 
 he on his own behalf appeals for mercy, entreats 
 that his indistinct statement of preposterous 
 reasons may be taken for understood, and would 
 gladly, were permission to do it credible, throw 
 in an imploring word that he may sink back 
 among the crowd, without for one imperishable 
 moment publicly swinging in his lordship's 
 estimation : much so, moved by chivalry for a 
 lady, courtesy to the recollection of a hostess, 
 and particularly by the knowledge that his 
 hearer would expect with a certain frigid rigour 
 charity of him, Dr. Middleton paused, spoke 
 and paused, he stammered.' 
 
 And the reader is likely to do the same, and 
 to use strong language when he recovers his 
 breath and his self-possession. Would you find 
 a sentence like that in the work of any popular 
 pet, supposing our popular pets capable of 
 writing it ? Hardly. It is as bad as Carlyle in 
 his most contemptuous mood, when his aim is 
 to irritate and confuse. 
 
 But while you are guilty of these indiscretions, 
 it must be admitted that you have always one 
 
12 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 great excellence. As a phrase-maker you have 
 scarcely any living equal, certainly no living 
 superior. You can illuminate a character or a 
 scene in a sentence, and many excellent pro- 
 verbs might be culled from your writings. 
 
 ' She is clever,' says Clara Middleton of Mrs. 
 Mountstuart Jenkinson ; * she could tattoo me 
 with epigrams.' Which is true. You shower 
 your epigrams about as if they came to you as 
 easily as the dewdrops to the grass. Pope him- 
 self does not coruscate more continuously or 
 brilliantly. 
 
 ' You are cold, my love ; you shivered,' says 
 the Egoist. 
 
 ' I am not cold,' answers the wretched Clara. 
 ' Some one, I suppose, was walking over my 
 grave.' 
 
 As suggestive a sentence, I think, as there is 
 in all fiction. Then one scarcely knows whether 
 most to admire your wit or your wisdom. 
 
 'A pigmy's a giant if he can manage to 
 arrive in season,' is, one would say, a sentence 
 that is destined to live. 
 
 * No one?' she said, ' am I alone in the house?' 
 
 ' There is a figure naught,' said he, ' but it 's as 
 
MR. GEORGE MEREDITH. 13 
 
 good as annihilated, and no figure at all, if you 
 put yourself on the wrong side of it.' A very 
 pretty piece of wit, as Mr. Stevenson would say. 
 
 Again : ' He was the very sea-wind for bracing 
 unstrung nerves ' gives as succinct a description 
 of a strong-minded individual as one could well 
 have ; while Mrs. Berry's saying that ' it 's al'ays 
 the plan in a dielemmer to pray God and walk 
 forward ' is as sound a bit of moral philosophy 
 as ever came out of a pulpit. But your good 
 things are not to be picked out like plums from 
 a pudding. They lie so thick that any attempt 
 to extract them must prove futile. 
 
 Your success as a wit and phrase-maker, how- 
 ever, exposes you to a danger which you have 
 yourself well described through one of your 
 characters. ' You see how easy it is to deceive 
 one who is an artist in phrases. Avoid them, 
 Miss Dale, they puzzle the penetration of the 
 composer. That is why people of ability like 
 Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson ' (and Mr. George 
 Meredith) ' see so little ; they are so bent on 
 describing brilliantly.' 
 
 Excessive brilliance is rather an unusual com- 
 plaint, but it is one from which you frequently 
 
i 4 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 suffer. You are too witty to be entirely true to 
 nature, for nature is rather economical in that 
 respect ; and so, though not precisely for the 
 same reason, are most novelists. But with you 
 every boor is a wit, every rustic maid a potential 
 Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson. It is delightfully 
 stimulating to the reader, but it is not human 
 nature, a fact which no one knows better than 
 the sinner himself. 
 
 This leads to a consideration of how you 
 fulfil the prime function of the novelist in 
 other words, how you draw character in general. 
 After all, it matters little how magnificent the 
 achievements of a dramatist or novelist be in 
 other respects, if he fail in characterisation he 
 may justly be said to fail in all, because he fails 
 in the first essential of his art. It is the 
 crowning distinction of Shakespeare that he is 
 the best of all portrait-painters; that every 
 sentence, every word uttered by his characters 
 makes the self-revelation the clearer. And, 
 indeed, the same is true, in a lesser degree, of 
 all the great masters of humanity, of Cervantes, 
 of Scott, of Goethe, of Fielding, of Balzac, of 
 Hawthorne, and the whole illustrious band who 
 
MR. GEORGE MEREDITH. 15 
 
 discover to us the secrets of the soul. Now you 
 draw character as you do most other things 
 well ; but you are not so eminently, or rather 
 pre-eminently, successful in that line as in some 
 others. The cause, as you will forgive me for 
 saying, is, of course, primarily limitation of 
 faculty. You remember Addison's (or was it 
 Dick Steele's) illustration of the midwife. A 
 writer cannot give what he hasn't got, and he 
 shouldn't be censured for not giving it. But in 
 your case the reason is not wholly limitation of 
 faculty. I have already said that you suffer 
 from excessive brilliancy, and I repeat it with 
 emphasis, with tremenjous emphasis, as Arte- 
 mus Ward would say. Your merit is your 
 defect. Your wit is, in all seriousness, often 
 your bane. In the dazzle of your own bright- 
 ness you are blinded to the qualities of ordi- 
 nary human nature. Clever people you can 
 delineate with anybody, dead or living; but 
 clever people are the few in this world, and 
 dolts are the many; and in consequence of 
 your scorn or ignorance of the latter, instead 
 of drawing broad human nature, as Scott does, 
 for example, you draw glittering bits here and 
 
1 6 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 there, very beautiful, very attractive, stimulat- 
 ing, altogether delightful in themselves, but 
 giving little more conception of humanity at 
 large than a shooting-star gives of the mysteries 
 of the Solar System, or a piece of sparkling 
 mineral of the wonders of geology. You 
 draw English peasants, for instance, and it is 
 only necessary to compare them to Thomas 
 Hardy's to gauge your success. Mr. Hardy 
 gives us the real true blue the identical chaw- 
 bacon who is the backbone of our beloved 
 England ; you give the noble animal after he 
 has undergone a clarifying process, and, as the 
 Scottish people say, ' learned some wut.' On 
 the other hand, there are certain strong types of 
 character which you draw with a power which 
 is perhaps unmatched among contemporary 
 English novelists. Sir Willoughby Patterne is 
 one of the most magnificent studies in the whole 
 range of literature. No one who has not read 
 the Egoist can fully understand the meaning 
 of selfishness and conceit. But for myself, 
 much as I admire the splendours of the Egoist, 
 highly as I delight in Diana of the Crossways, 
 and Rhoda Fleming, I prefer Richard Fever el. 
 
MR. GEORGE MEREDITH. 17 
 
 I should be inclined, indeed, to say it is your 
 high-water mark in fiction. It has more 
 humour than is common with you, and also 
 more tenderness. Clare's Diary and the death 
 of Lucy are very affecting, perhaps because of 
 the admirable reticence. How Dickens would 
 have squeezed the sponge in those scenes ! 
 Then for humour there is the scamp Adrian, 
 and the escapades of the boys Richard and 
 Ripton. I think you could have written a 
 good boy's book. (I don't mean a book for 
 good boys.) And for general strength there is 
 Sir Austin, fit to stand beside Sir Willoughby 
 a great, strong, blind character, blind even to 
 the last, and in the midst of that frightful 
 tragedy which was the logical outcome of his 
 ' System.' I would have that book placed in 
 the hand of every father in the land with a son 
 whose welfare moral, mental, and material 
 is dear to him ; and I would have readers in 
 general (and moral reformers in particular) put 
 through a course of Mr. George Meredith. 
 
To DR. OLIVER WENDELL 
 HOLMES. 
 
 SIR, Mr. Swinburne says somewhere that 
 the most beloved of all English writers may be 
 Goldsmith or may be Scott, but the best beloved 
 will always be Charles Lamb. It may be that 
 among American men of letters you are not the 
 most beloved, but I venture to say that there 
 are few, if any, better beloved. Since you rode 
 into fame in that * Wonderful One-hoss Shay,' 
 with all the world laughing and huzzaing at 
 your heels, you have kept the affections of the 
 peoples of two hemispheres, without lapse and 
 without diminution. Few authors have ever, 
 in their own lifetime, enjoyed so long a lease of 
 unbroken popularity. There have been writers 
 who have risen higher than you in the popular 
 esteem, but most of them were only a kind of 
 literary rockets, that have burned for a moment 
 in the eyes of all men, then fallen and gone out 
 
 18 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 19 
 
 with a hiss and a sputter, leaving one to wonder 
 at the laws which govern such erratic and alto- 
 gether inexplicable creations. It were a curious 
 and interesting and instructive study to trace 
 the waxing and waning reputations of the past 
 half-century, to count the number of pseudo- 
 geniuses who have gone up at the tail of a 
 newspaper kite, to borrow a happy phrase from 
 Mr. Lowell, and come down headlong with the 
 velocity of the first arch-sinner to demonstrate 
 how very perilous those aerial flights are to them 
 who have nothing in the shape of natural wings 
 should anything go wrong with the kite. Since 
 the beginning of your career as an author many 
 meteors, to use a somewhat worn but apt and 
 expressive metaphor, have shot out of darkness, 
 flashed brilliantly against the sky, and, ere the 
 critics could adjust their glasses to determine 
 what the dazzling phenomena might be, have 
 gone out, leaving only darkness again, and 
 perhaps a suggestion of sulphur or gunpowder. 
 Much of this you have seen on all hands. You 
 have beheld the promising one, the new poet 
 or the new novelist, soar higher and higher, till 
 the eye was, perhaps, pained and the head dizzy 
 
20 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 watching him, or her ; and then all at once you 
 might perceive a tremulous motion, a flutter of 
 the plumage, as it were, a sign of waning force, 
 as if the gas in the balloon were exhausted, and 
 then, suddenly, the inevitable straight-down 
 descent. And while this upward and down- 
 ward rush has been going on, to the general 
 confusion of mankind, you have held along the 
 pleasant leafy ways of goodly prosperity, never 
 anxious to rise into unnatural altitudes, but 
 always careful to keep out of the ditches, com- 
 paratively careless of the company of the gods, 
 but ever on good terms with well-dressed, well- 
 to-do, well-mannered men and women. You 
 move along like a prosperous, good-humoured 
 man of the world, cracking a joke here and 
 there, letting fall, at the proper intervals, de- 
 lightful morsels of wisdom, so made up and 
 disguised that they shall be taken as confec- 
 tions ; not sweet enough, however, to nauseate, 
 nor heavy enough to cause an attack of dys- 
 pepsia. You are not commonplace, and you 
 are not " eccentric. You have as little of the 
 doleful gravity of the platitudinarian as of the 
 theatrical spirit of the mountebank or the 
 
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 21 
 
 juggler (all of whom flourish in literature in 
 this singular era) : your zeal or your vanity is 
 not so great that you carry anything to excess. 
 You believe in and, what is more, practise 
 the golden mean in all things. And this is one 
 cause of your long-continued popularity. 
 
 Another cause is that you are one of the most 
 companionable writers in the world that is, 
 one of the most genial. The sour may say 
 what they like, but the world, as a whole, is in- 
 clined to be agreeable, if only treated cour- 
 teously and fairly. You have the happy knack 
 of pleasing, and on almost all subjects. It is a 
 knack which is not always an attribute of genius. 
 There have been great men who were not plea- 
 sant men. Many well-intentioned folks spoil a 
 truth by their manner of enforcing it. Their 
 truculency raises a spirit of opposition. There 
 is so much of the schoolmaster in their mien 
 that one is for ever expecting to see the birch- 
 rod, and the anxiety to protect the knuckles 
 diverts one's mind from the lesson. The olive- 
 branch may be in front, but one always suspects 
 that there is a sharp switch, or, perhaps, even a 
 cudgel, behind. Truth and morality have little 
 
22 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 chance under such circumstances. Then there 
 are many teachers and moral philosophers who, 
 while not absolutely truculent, are disconcert- 
 ingly austere. Mr. Lowell neatly observes in 
 one of his essays that Milton was not a man to 
 be slapped on the back. No, the great Puritan 
 poet, whatever his other qualities may have 
 been, was not remarkable for his sociability. 
 And, since his day, other moral dignitaries and 
 grandees, whose virtues we are all ready to 
 admit, and even to extol when we are not asked 
 nor expected to emulate them, have been so 
 dreadfully severe, so exacting, so illiberal in 
 allowing for the inherited frailties of common 
 humanity, that well, that we would rather 
 shun their presence if possible. Their ethical 
 codes may be excellent, but their manner is 
 chilly, as if they had passed their youth on ice- 
 bergs, and had been incurably affected with cold. 
 With you, who are likewise a teacher, it is 
 wholly different. Warmth and brotherly feeling 
 pervade all you say. You have not that supe- 
 rior consciousness of self-immaculateness which 
 overawes and frightens the humble inquirer in 
 reading the writings of so many estimable authors. 
 
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 23 
 
 You convey your morals jocosely, and as it 
 were inadvertently, so that the patient swallows 
 the medicine almost without being aware of it. 
 This dexterity, or this geniality, or both com- 
 bined, have made people look on you as a 
 humorist pure and simple. Mr. George 
 Augustus Sala calls you ' a funny fellow, a 
 very funny fellow.' I own the description does 
 not much please me. It is true, to be sure, as 
 far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. 
 It is apt to give the impression that you aim 
 only at being ' funny, 3 like Mr. William Nye, 
 whose jokes remind one of the Scotsman's, 
 inasmuch as they are delivered with 'great 
 defeeculty'; or like Mark Twain, in whose 
 work, too, the labour is often much more 
 apparent than the humour. ' Nothing can be 
 more galling to a man's self-respect than to be 
 considered a mere jester,' says a famous country- 
 man of yours. Nothing surely, and you long 
 since saw this. * If the sense of the ridiculous,' 
 you say in one place, ' is one side of an impress- 
 ible nature, it is very well ; but if that is all 
 there is in a man, he had better have been an 
 ape at once, and so have stood at the head of 
 
24 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 his profession. Laughter and tears are meant 
 to turn the wheels of the same machinery of 
 sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other 
 water-power, that is all. . . . Do you know 
 that you feel a little superior to every man who 
 makes you laugh, whether by making faces or 
 verses ? Are you aware that you have a plea- 
 sant sense of patronising him, when you con- 
 descend so far as to let him turn somersets ; 
 literal or literary, for your royal delight ? ' Quite 
 true : professional jesting lowers a man, and to 
 describe you as a funny fellow, and nothing 
 more, may be the truth, but it is not the whole 
 truth. That you are a humorist, and a humorist 
 of the first water, none will deny. I take it that 
 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table is one of 
 the most genuinely humorous books written by 
 any living author. Yet I think there is more 
 than mere humour in it. Let us see. Says 
 the Autocrat, in illustrating the helplessness of 
 men : ' Do you want an image of the human 
 will or the self-determining principle, as com- 
 pared with its pre-arranged and impassable re- 
 strictions? A drop of water imprisoned in a 
 crystal ; you may see such a one in any mine- 
 
/M'. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 25 
 
 ralogical collection. One little fluid particle in 
 the crystalline prism of the solid universe.' It 
 could hardly be better put. There is something 
 there beyond the reach of most humorists. 
 Again, ' I find the great thing in this world is 
 not so much where we stand, as in what direc- 
 tion we are moving. To reach the port of 
 Heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind 
 and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and 
 not drift, nor lie at anchor. There is one very 
 sad thing in old friendships, to every mind 
 which is moving onward. It is this : that one 
 cannot help using his early friends, as the sea- 
 man uses the log, to mark his progress.' Those 
 depths were never fathomed by the professional 
 * funny man.' Nor did he ever give such speci- 
 mens of condensation as these : ' Every real 
 thought on every subject knocks the wind out 
 of somebody or other.' * Sin has many tools, 
 but a lie is the handle which fits them all.' 
 And so I might go on multiplying instances to 
 the confusion of Mr. Sala, and of all others who 
 look on you as a mere humorist. 
 
 Mr. Haweis is nearer the mark in saying that 
 ' Holmes is one of the few survivors of that 
 
26 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 chosen band of native thinkers and writers who 
 have created American literature. ... To 
 the pleasures of money they have added the 
 pleasures of imagination ; to the glories of trade 
 and commerce they brought the worship of 
 nature, the gift of the seeing eye, the sensitive 
 heart, the uplifted soul.' There is no exaggera- 
 tion there. You are a good deal more than a 
 jester ; you are a thinker, as every writer must 
 be who is to do more than satisfy a passing 
 need, or pander to a peculiar craze for the sake 
 of the wages. Moreover, you are a charming 
 poet and an effective story-teller. Not that I 
 would place you in the very front rank among 
 Transatlantic writers, either as a poet or a 
 novelist. Criticism is nothing at all if it be not 
 honest, and my conscience compels me to give 
 you only a second place in either class. One 
 must not forget that among the divine singers 
 of America are Whittier and Lowell, and among 
 its story-tellers Hawthorne and Poe. It is diffi- 
 cult to stand beside any one of the quartet 
 without feeling more or less overshadowed. I 
 dare say you would be the last man in the world 
 to claim equality with the author of The Scarlet 
 
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 27 
 
 Letter and The House of the Seven Gables on 
 the one hand, or with the author of Snow- 
 Bound and Home Ballads and Poems on the 
 other. Whittier seems to me one of the truest 
 and greatest sons of song whom this century has 
 produced ; and, in his own line, Hawthorne is, 
 in many respects, unrivalled. It will be a long 
 time, I fear, before we get another Scarlet Letter. 
 It is, in my estimation, the masterpiece of 
 American literature, so far, and it remains a 
 masterpiece in the literature of the world. 
 
 I do not think that so much could truthfully 
 be said of anything you have done in fiction. 
 You have not gone down into the deep places 
 of the soul as Hawthorne has done. Yet you 
 have touched some very deep springs, and shown 
 that when you concentrate yourself you can not 
 only be pathetic, but tragic ; you can not only 
 draw tears, but you can paint that misery which 
 is beyond the reach and the region of tears. 
 There are parts of Elsie Venner, that marvellous 
 romance of destiny, in which the tragedy is as 
 strong as most readers would care to have it, 
 and stronger than many could bear. Elsie is a 
 wonderful, a powerful, and a telling study, which, 
 
28 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 were it not for its pathological element, would 
 rank with the very best in the fiction of this 
 generation. 'Was Elsie Venner, poisoned by 
 the venom of a crotalus before she was born, 
 morally responsible for the volitional aberra- 
 tions which, translated into acts, become what is 
 known as sin, and, it may be, what is punished 
 as crime ? ' The question is an interesting and 
 pertinent one, but in trying to answer it you 
 make art suffer at the hand of science. Haw- 
 thorne, as you have yourself noticed, has a some- 
 what similar study in The Marble Faun, and 
 he, likewise, with all his penetration and ima- 
 gination, fails. Indeed, his failure is signal. 
 There is confusion ; the elements of character, 
 which he endeavours to combine, are too diverse 
 to coalesce in one congruous and artistic whole. 
 The fact is, such studies are properly outside 
 the scope of art. It is not really the province 
 of art to meddle with inherited disease ; and 
 you, in doing it, were acting more in your scien- 
 tific than in your artistic capacity. The novelist 
 had not quite mastered the doctor. The greatest 
 creations of genius are not founded on insanity. 
 Is Hamlet mad, think you ? If he is, or was, 
 
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 29 
 
 his madness had a great deal of method in it. 
 Ophelia was mad, and so was Lear ; but Shake- 
 speare is careful in both cases to show it was 
 the world, and not inherited disease, that had 
 brought on their insanity. So much said, how- 
 ever, one would be hard to please who cavilled 
 much at Elsie Vernier. As a story I do not 
 think the artistic blemish to which I have re- 
 ferred at all mars its interest. Nay, to many, 
 I dare say, it will be an additional source of 
 interest to watch the mental and physical par- 
 oxysms of the doomed girl doomed through 
 no fault of her own, but through a prenatal 
 occurrence in which she had no share except in 
 its consequence. One feels acutely for Elsie. 
 She is a terrible study, and yet there is something 
 soft and lovable in her. Hard, solitary, and 
 self-centred as she seems, her heart did once go 
 out to a fellow-being ; but, alas ! the love, which 
 was truly a passion, was not returned, and Elsie 
 curls up within herself again, more dangerous 
 to herself and all about her than ever before. 
 When the reader finds that Bernard Langdon 
 does not return the girl's affection, he feels in- 
 stinctively that she is doomed. Her one chance 
 
30 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 has miscarried, and there is nothing to look 
 forward to but a tragedy worse than death. 
 The other characters in Elsie Vernier are livingly 
 drawn. Dr. Kitterage is a fine old fellow ; and 
 I should say that Mr. Silas Peckham, Principal 
 of the Apollinean Institute, is the meanest man 
 in American fiction. Helen Darley is a sweet 
 creation, and makes a striking contrast to Elsie. 
 I should be disposed to think, however, that 
 of all the stories you have written that of Iris in 
 The Professor at the Breakfast Table would be 
 the favourite with the general reader. It is very 
 simple, very unpretentious, very touching ; true 
 in every line, every sentiment, and delightfully 
 humorous until the darkness begins to gather 
 at the close ; then, like life when there is only 
 a backward prospect, it grows stern for a little, 
 only, however, to soften into tender beauty again 
 as the sun sinks. The final impression is one 
 of peace and repose. Certain of your critics 
 have found this ' the most delicate as well as 
 the most powerful * of your works ; and that 
 opinion, while much admiring your other stories, 
 I am inclined, on the whole, to indorse. It is 
 not so elaborate as Elsie Venner or A Mortal 
 
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 31 
 
 Antipathy, but I think it is sweeter than either, 
 and surpasses both in fulness and strength of 
 purely human interest. Iris herself, though 
 slightly sketched, is a charming creation, and 
 she gains by her contact with the deformed little 
 gentleman. The latter is a very pathetic charac- 
 ter, especially in that little love-scene at the 
 close. That speech of his when the divinity 
 student comes to ask him if he is prepared for 
 the future is one not to be forgotten. ' " I am 
 not a man, sir," said the little gentleman " I 
 was born into this world the wreck of a man, 
 and I shall not be judged with a race to which I 
 do not belong. Look at this ! " he said, and 
 held up his withered arm " see there ! " and 
 he pointed to his misshapen extremities. " Lay 
 your hand here ! " and he laid his own on the 
 region of his misplaced heart. " I have known 
 nothing of the life of your race. When I first 
 came to consciousness, I found myself an object 
 of pity or a sight to show. . . . My life is 
 the dying pang of a worn-out race, and I shall 
 go down alone into the dust, out of this world 
 of men and women, without ever knowing the 
 fellowship of the one or the love of the other. 
 
32 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 1 will not die with a lie rattling in my throat. 
 If another state of being has anything worse in 
 store for me, I have had a long apprenticeship 
 to give me strength that I can bear it. I don't 
 believe it, sir. I have too much faith for that." ' 
 In the midst of his speech Iris bends over him 
 and kisses him him who had never had a kiss 
 or caress of affection since his mother had left 
 him. ' " Shall I pray with you ? " said the 
 divinity student, after a pause. A little before 
 he would have said, " Shall I pray for you ? " 
 The Christian religion, as taught by its Founder, 
 is full of sentiment, so we must not blame the 
 divinity student if he was overcome by those 
 yearnings of human sympathy which predomi- 
 nate so much more in the sermons of the Master 
 than in the writings of His successors, and which 
 have made the parable of the Prodigal Son the 
 consolation of mankind, as it has been the 
 stumblingblock of all exclusive doctrines.' 
 And the divinity student prays, meekly trusting 
 the crippled child of sorrow to the Infinite 
 Parent who does not fail to smooth the way. 
 Those who have yet to make your acquaint- 
 ance I should advise to get the story of Iris 
 
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 33 
 
 and read it, as a piece of genuine and touching 
 sentiment, as a piece, also, of genuine and 
 delightful humour. 
 
 The qualities which distinguish a writer's prose 
 must, of necessity, if he be true to himself, mark 
 his poetry also. Both in prose and verse you are 
 essentially the same the same keen observer, 
 the same humorous commentator, the same 
 genial companion, the same sterling friend of 
 humanity. As a poet and as a story-teller you 
 have the same lightness of touch, the same 
 fascinating method of pointing a moral and 
 adorning a tale; in a word, you are yourself 
 whatever you write ; so that your poetry need 
 not be gone into at any length here. This 
 much let me say, however, that in your poetic 
 attempts you are always a poet. It has been 
 your happy fortune to be able to ignore your 
 own counsel to the literary or poetic tyro : 
 
 ' Don't mind if the index of sense is at zero, 
 Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean ; 
 Leander, and Lilian, and Lillibullero, 
 Are much the same thing in the rhyming machine.' 
 
 I think you have very emphatically falsified 
 your own facetious dictum. 
 c 
 
34 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 Perhaps nothing concerning you is more 
 remarkable than the cheerful, hopeful philosophy 
 which sustains you in the evening of life. You 
 have always been a buoyant writer, and your 
 buoyancy is no less evident now than it was 
 half a century ago. I will not say that your 
 spirits are as high at eighty as they were at 
 thirty that were an unreasonable thing to 
 expect, but I will say that few writers of your 
 years have ever shown themselves so sunny. 
 In * Before the Curfew ' there is the inevitable 
 note of sadness, but there is no wail such as we 
 so often hear from octogenarians. You can 
 anticipate the ringing of the curfew, the putting 
 out of the fire, with that calmness which is, per- 
 haps, the most beautiful characteristic of old age, 
 as it is certainly the best reward of a long life. 
 There is subdued pathos, but no repining ; least 
 of all is there any quarrelling with the inevitable. 
 
 ' Not bedtime yet ! The full-blown flower 
 Of all the year this evening hour 
 
 With friendship's flame is bright ; 
 Life still is sweet, the heavens are fair, 
 Though fields are brown and woods are bare, 
 And many a joy is left to share 
 
 Before we say good-night ! 
 
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 35 
 
 And when, our cheerful evening past, 
 The nurse, long waiting, comes at last, 
 
 Ere on her lap we lie 
 In wearied nature's sweet repose, 
 At peace with all her waking foes, 
 Our lips shall murmur ere they close, 
 
 Good-night ! and not good-bye.' 
 
 That is too beautiful for comment. 
 
To MR. JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 SIR, Not long ago I read an article in a 
 popular monthly magazine, signed by a well- 
 known American artist, which proved, to the 
 writer's entire satisfaction, that the world is 
 miserably mistaken in considering you a reliable 
 authority on Art. Your claims as an Art critic 
 he ridiculed most mercilessly, and, having 
 laughed to his heart's content, he boldly pro- 
 ceeded to assault and battery. No iconoclast 
 was ever half so sweeping and destructive as 
 this ingenuous child of nature from the illimit- 
 able prairies of the great West. To say that he 
 left you not a leg to stand on would be but 
 feebly describing the completeness of his act of 
 demolition. Not satisfied with simply knock- 
 ing' you down, he danced on you, pulverised 
 you, as it were; and then, when the terrible 
 work was done, he smiled the triumphant smile 
 of a Roman gladiator viewing the gory corse of 
 
JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
MR. JOHN R US KIN. 37 
 
 an antagonist. I remember that he specially 
 singled out for ridicule that celebrated descrip- 
 tion of Turner's ' Slave Ship ' in Modern 
 Painters. I had read that passage before read- 
 ing the article of the artist, and was weak and 
 illiterate enough to think it magnificent. To 
 say the truth, I thought it a good deal better 
 than the picture it professed to describe, giving 
 rather what the painter might have had in his 
 mind's-eye, than what he succeeded in putting 
 on canvas. But it was no blemish to my mind 
 that it took more out of the picture than is 
 really in it ; nay, its superb exaggeration made 
 it, to me, one of the finest pieces of work 
 in all our English literature so fine, indeed, 
 did it seem to me that what must I do but 
 get it off by heart, like Byron's address to 
 the ocean, Portia's speech on the quality of 
 mercy, Burke's fantasy about Marie Antoinette, 
 De Quincey's description of a stage-coach, Car- 
 lyle's panegyric on the nobility of labour, and 
 such like passages, which are admired either for 
 beauty of diction, or loftiness and vigour of 
 thought. But after reading that magazine 
 article I felt as if I had been wasting my time 
 
38 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 imbibing wrong ideas. The writer did not, in- 
 deed, deny your power as a rhetorician. He 
 was so good as to acknowledge that you had a 
 marvellous mastery over words ; that your gift 
 of expression was in every way superb ; that you 
 had great emotional fervour ; and, he supposed, 
 a certain melody of style which captivated the 
 ear. But he said that your gifts in the matter 
 of style only made you the more unreliable as a 
 guide to uneducated persons seeking some 
 knowledge of Art ; and he went on to analyse 
 your description of Turner's ' Slave Ship,' and to 
 expose its fallacies. He asked, for instance, 
 and there was the scorn of victory in his tone, 
 how anything could lose itself ' in the hollow of 
 the night'; and he showed that you had intro- 
 duced your most admired passages, not for the 
 sake of truth, but for the sake of alliteration. 
 Finally, he said that as neither you nor Turner 
 had ever seen the deep sea, either in storm or 
 calm, you could not possibly know anything 
 about it. You were both dealing with vague 
 generalities which had as much to do with the 
 ocean as with the desert or the mountain ; and 
 you, as critic, were praising, as high excellences 
 
MR. JOHN R US KIN. 39 
 
 in the work of Turner, that which does not exist 
 in reality, never did exist, and never can exist, 
 so long as the laws of Nature remain what they 
 are. This, as you may suppose, was staggering 
 to one who had always thought that thorough- 
 ness and accuracy were the special features of 
 your work. To be told that you were writing 
 about things concerning which you were totally 
 ignorant, was a blow from which I did not at 
 once recover. 
 
 But more startling revelations were in store. 
 Scarcely had I got over the confusion into 
 which the Yankee artist had thrown me, when 
 I chanced to read the report of a speech de- 
 livered to a provincial audience by a ' dis- 
 tinguished ' member of the British Parliament. 
 The honourable member had evidently just been 
 making himself up in political economy, and, 
 as ill fortune would have it, had read what you 
 have to say on the ' dismal science.' He in- 
 stantly fell foul of you, and, with that consum- 
 mate art of which members of the British Par- 
 liament are masters, he entertained his auditors 
 with witty remarks on your fantastic notions of 
 what is good for the State, and I write it with 
 
40 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 awe your colossal ignorance. It was a great 
 effort, and he carried the whole house with him. 
 The speech, according to the reporters (who are 
 always impartial and veracious), was pointed 
 with ' screams of laughter ' and * roars of ap- 
 plause ' all, as you will understand, at your ex- 
 pense. You sneered at the principles of political 
 economy as laid down by political economists, 
 said the distinguished member of the House of 
 Commons, and what were you, pray ? ' A man 
 who found fault with the smoke of factories, and 
 who would abolish railways ; a man who would 
 rather see an old daub of a picture, for which 
 no right-minded man would give three brass 
 farthings, hanging against the wall of a pic- 
 turesque ruin than ships laden with merchan- 
 dise, or trains full of happy holiday people. 
 Here was a political economist indeed ! And 
 yet this singular individual had taken it upon 
 himself to correct Adam Smith Adam Smith, 
 ladies and gentlemen the father and founder 
 of the great science of political economy, and 
 John Stuart Mill, than whom, ladies and gentle- 
 men, a more acute intellect has never risen 
 among the sons of men. And, not only that, 
 
MR. JOHN RUSK IN. 41 
 
 but he has dared to laugh at our trusted leader 
 the man of the ages the man whose name 
 will be written in history beside that of the 
 Caesars and the Napoleons, the Ciceros and the 
 Pitts. Ladies and gentlemen, you will scarcely 
 believe it, but the person of whom I speak has 
 likened that great man to a pair of bagpipes 
 with steam drones (cries of "Shame ! "). It is not 
 only an insult to our trusted leader, but also to 
 every member of the House of Commons, that 
 first assembly of gentlemen in the world, to 
 which I am proud to belong. I tell Mr. Ruskin 
 to-night, that the world may get on without pic- 
 tures, as it will get on without cranks, but it 
 can never I repeat never get along without 
 political economy, and the man who says other- 
 wise speaks in crass and unpardonable ignor- 
 ance.' And so the distinguished member of the 
 first assembly of gentlemen in the world com- 
 placently exposed your fallacies as a political 
 economist, as the American artist had exposed 
 your fallacies as an Art critic. 
 
 Nor was I yet done with these shocks. A 
 little later, while in conversation with .a man of 
 the world, who had the reputation of being 
 
42 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 sharp and shrewd, and of having a good head 
 on his shoulders, I happened to mention your 
 name. ' Ah, Ruskin,' said my friend ; ' yes 
 not bad in some ways ; gives fancy descriptions 
 of scenery and old buildings, and pictures, and 
 all that but rather impracticable.' 
 
 These were three opinions of you which came 
 upon me, one after another, so rapidly as to 
 take away my breath, metaphorically speaking ; 
 and, though I emphatically dissent from them, 
 I much fear they give on the whole a too 
 accurate indication of the sentiments of your 
 countrymen regarding you. The blindest can 
 see that you are at variance with your age. 
 Much of what you regard with love and rever- 
 ence, your fellow-men regard with cold in- 
 difference, too often, indeed, with open and 
 insolent scorn. Much of what they praise and 
 cherish, you denounce with vehement indigna- 
 tion. Mere material prosperity, the seeking 
 after sensual pleasure, vulgar and extravagant 
 display nearly everything, in short, in which 
 this era delights you do not commend nor sym- 
 pathise with, while the moral beauty which is 
 holiness, the self-sacrifice, all that goes to make 
 
MR. JOHN RUSKIN. 43 
 
 the hero in the old sense of that word which 
 you admire, your contemporaries mostly laugh 
 at. Pursy Britannia goes her own way, pursu- 
 ing her own pleasures, content so long as she is 
 pursy, leaving you like one preaching in the 
 wilderness, or to an audience that has stopped 
 its ears. After all your exertions people still 
 prefer ices at Florian's and music by moonlight 
 on the Grand Canal, and paper lamps and the 
 English magazines at M. Onagaria's, to the 
 lessons of St. Mark's or the Ducal Palace. 
 Better days may come, but that is the temper 
 now. With the fate of Venice staring us in the 
 face, with the stern admonitions which you draw 
 from the ruins of her greatness and her gran- 
 deur, we still pursue selfish and ignoble plea- 
 sure while we have the means ; we close our 
 ears and harden our hearts and tell our souls 
 to eat, drink, and be merry, because our barns 
 are full and our presses bursting with new wine. 
 And, as we gaze on the crumbling walls of 
 Venice, heedless of any moral, so we think on 
 the punishment of Tyre as a just retribution for 
 her sins, unmindful that we, who inherit the 
 greatness of both, if we forget their example, 
 
44 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 ' may be led through prouder eminence to less 
 pitied destruction.' If ever we awake to the 
 lesson which the history of those old powers 
 teaches, the credit, I think, will be mainly due 
 to you. 
 
 In this century and England of ours, two men 
 have risen pre-eminent above all others in their 
 stern faith to themselves and duty men who 
 refused, with a heroism worthy of the primitive, 
 epochs of the world, to truckle to expediency 
 or barter their talents in the market-place for 
 silver and gold, and these only. One was 
 Thomas Carlyle, the other is yourself. In an 
 age which is too often flippant, ribald, and scoff- 
 ing, an age in which the cynic and the sceptic 
 reign alternately, as the humour is to doubt or 
 to sneer, an age that thinks of the Deity as a 
 serviceable subject, affording opportunity for 
 sallies of wit or graceful decorations of the fancy 
 in such an age you two have planted your- 
 selves on the Bible, and proclaimed to men, 
 without fear or favour, that they must live or 
 perish according as they regard its teachings. 
 One can imagine each of you starting forth on 
 his career with that grand old prayer of Milton's 
 
MR. JOHN R US KIN. 45 
 
 4 And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer 
 Before all temples the upright heart and pure, 
 Instruct me, for Thou knowest ; Thou from the first 
 Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread, 
 Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, 
 And mad'st it pregnant ; what in me is dark 
 Illumine ; what is low raise and support ; 
 That to the height of this great argument 
 I may assert eternal Providence, 
 And justify the ways of God to men.' 
 
 Not a little singular it is to find so much of 
 the ruling spirit of Puritanism reappearing two 
 centuries after it was supposed to be completely 
 dead and done with. There is no chance for 
 Puritanism, as it existed in the days of Crom- 
 well and Milton, to get itself re-established 
 in our midst. England, we are told, would not 
 tolerate it, because it is too narrow, too bigoted, 
 too much addicted to psalm-singing, too old- 
 fashioned. We want spaciousness of creed in 
 these liberal days. We cannot bear restraint, 
 for it would diminish our enjoyment ; nor anti- 
 quated notions of eternal punishment, for they 
 would imply that we were not progressive ; so 
 we cut ourselves loose from the past and take 
 up doctrines that are at once easy and elegant. 
 When one remembers what Puritanism once did 
 
46 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 for England at a critical time, and through Eng- 
 land for the world, one is almost inclined to 
 regret the vogue of that 'breadth' which can 
 so easily dispense with conviction and make 
 eternal life dependent on aesthetic tastes and 
 the ability to frame a syllogism. Faith has 
 been replaced by intellect. Man's reason, 
 which De Quincey called the most contempt 
 ible of all his faculties, has asserted itself, and 
 the finite has mastered the infinite. There 
 is no longer any mystery. Life and death are 
 scientifically accounted for, and explained ; and 
 man may take his ease amid his cushions and 
 his tawdry upholstery. In life the victualler, 
 the tailor, and the cabinetmaker are the grand 
 essentials ; in death, the fashionable undertaker 
 will not fail to do his duty : he will provide a fit 
 coffin and a respectable number of mourning- 
 coaches, and the exit is decently accomplished. 
 Puritanism was made of sterner stuff than this, 
 and so were Carlyle and you its latest, and, alas ! 
 its most hopeless apostles. 
 
 I have bracketed you with Carlyle because 
 you and he are associated in the popular mind, 
 because your aims are essentially the same, and 
 
MR. JOHN RUSK1N. 47 
 
 because you have called yourself his disciple. 
 But I do not mean to imply that you resemble 
 each other in mental constitution, that you are 
 of equal power, or have an equal chance of 
 literary immortality. Indeed, I think that you 
 cannot be properly compared, except in your 
 unswerving fidelity to all that is good and true, 
 and your hatred of all that is base and false. 
 You are a great writer, but you are not quite a 
 Carlyle. He had all your gifts, and more. But 
 perhaps I shall make myself clearer if I glance 
 very briefly at you separately. 
 
 Carlyle is no less distinguished by his imagi- 
 native force, than by his moral fervour. If 
 elements of power will make writings live, his 
 must long exist. Much, of course, depends on 
 the utility or inutility of a writer's doctrines, and 
 Carlyle's are not fashionable just now. But 
 there is that in his works which makes them 
 independent of doctrine and will preserve them 
 as literature. His philosophy may, or may not, 
 be the philosophy of the future ; it is to be 
 feared, indeed, that unless the world changes 
 radically he will appeal as a teacher only to a 
 few ; but his force cannot die, and his literary 
 
48 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 influence will always be great, even should his 
 moral influence be nil. A dull man may be a 
 moral reformer, but Carlyle was a man of intui- 
 tion, a poet in short, a man of genius. As 
 Emerson said of Goethe, he sees at every pore. 
 He is always more interesting than his subject, 
 and sheds light upon all he approaches, not 
 merely the light of purely intellectual faculties, 
 but the light of imagination. As you have 
 yourself said, only imagination can make writ- 
 ings live. The taste may be as elegant as that 
 of Chesterfield, the style as fine as that of Con- 
 greve; there may be wit, there may even be 
 humour, but if there be not imagination the 
 principle of life is wanting, and speedy death 
 and oblivion may be looked for. No learning, 
 no brilliancy, no analytical power will make up 
 for the want of imagination. Carlyle has a most 
 powerful and vivid imagination if not creative, 
 at least associative and penetrative. He has 
 other qualities of greatness besides unrivalled 
 humour, the most tender pathos, the most 
 scathing sarcasm. No historian has ever dared 
 to mingle humour, pathos, and tragedy as he 
 has mingled them. And he is equally great, 
 
MR. JOHN RUSK IN. 49 
 
 whether depicting men or things. As a portrait- 
 painter he is unsurpassed by any writer save 
 Shakespeare alone. Consider how well you 
 know his characters : Mirabeau, Danton, 
 Robespierre, Voltaire, Frederick the Great, 
 Cromwell, Jeffrey, Cagliostro, Dr. Francia. He 
 cannot touch on a character in the most casual 
 way, without lighting it up. View him how 
 you will, Carlyle is a Titan. 
 
 Now, while saying frankly that I consider you 
 a man of genius, I should not be disposed to 
 call you a Titan. As an interpreter of the sym- 
 bolic meaning of what is best in Art you are 
 unmatched. In that respect you are superior 
 to Carlyle, who knew little of Art, as represented 
 by pictures, and seemed not to value it at all. 
 In his Life of John Sterling, and elsewhere, he 
 speaks slightingly of it, calls it a windy doctrine, 
 and insinuates that it is quite unworthy of the 
 attention of any serious man. You have shown 
 that, if rightly considered, it may well be studied 
 by the best of men. This is your great merit. 
 You have shown that pictures are not merely 
 for the idler and the dilettante, but for earnest, 
 serious men and women, who have sufficient 
 D 
 
So LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 love and sympathy to perceive their hidden 
 meanings. And, then, as a descriptive writer 
 you occupy a quite unique position. No other 
 writer has ever described the face of Nature 
 with such elaboration as you, nor transferred 
 to his pages so much of her warmth and colour- 
 ing. There are parts of Modern Painters that 
 cannot be described save by the epithet { gor- 
 geous.' Nor is this gorgeousness attained by 
 the exclusion of the mean and the common. 
 Milton found Paradise enchanting, but you go 
 to our meadows, among the grazing kine, and 
 preach your sermon from a blade of grass ; and 
 it is only the truth to say that a field of pasture 
 becomes as interesting as the bower of Eve. 
 
 It should not be forgotten, however, that, as 
 you have yourself said, minds of the very highest 
 order do not take much to descriptions of 
 scenery; or, having taken to them, speedily 
 abandon them. Your work is scenic from. first 
 to last. You have given us no portraits worth 
 naming beside Carlyle's. It may be you have 
 never seriously tried portrait-painting. But it 
 is doubtful whether you could have succeeded, 
 even if you had made the endeavour ; for you 
 
, MR. JOHN R US KIN. 51 
 
 seem to lack that sympathetic insight which 
 marks the master of character. Perhaps it 
 would be fatal to the moral teacher to be too 
 widely sympathetic, yet Carlyle had as wide a 
 sympathy with men as Shakespeare himself. 
 You have not this sympathy, and therefore 
 cannot exhibit it in a gallery of portraits. 
 
 Much is made of style in these days, and a 
 writer's manner is often more looked to than 
 his matter. Whatever may be said of you in 
 other respects, no one will deny your unrivalled 
 superiority as a stylist. Let me give one example 
 of it. It is one which seems to have pleased 
 yourself, and, therefore, may be quoted with 
 fairness. I think I could give a more brilliant 
 example, but I am glad to take what has the 
 stamp of your own approval. It describes 
 Venice : 
 
 1 A city of marble did I say ? nay, rather a 
 golden city, paved with emeralds. For, truly, 
 every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, 
 overlaid with gold or bossed with jasper. Be- 
 neath, the unsullied sea drew in deep breathing 
 to and fro its eddies of green waves. Deep- 
 hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea the men 
 
52 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 of Venice moved in sway of power and war ; 
 pure as her pillars of alabaster stood her mothers 
 and maidens ; from foot to brow, all noble, 
 walked her knights ; the low bronzed gleaming 
 of sea-rusted armour shot angrily under her 
 blood-red mantle folds. Fearless, faithful, 
 patient, impenetrable, implacable every word 
 a fate, sate her Senate. In hope and honour, 
 lulled by flowing of wave around their isles of 
 sacred sand, each with his name written and the 
 cross graced at his side, lay her dead. A won- 
 derful piece of world. Rather, itself a world. 
 It lay along the face of the waters, no larger, as 
 its captains saw it from their masts at evening, 
 than a bar of sunset that could not pass away ; 
 but for its power, it must have seemed to them 
 as if they were sailing in the expanse of heaven, 
 and this a great planet, whose orient edge 
 widened through ether. A world from which 
 all ignoble care and petty thoughts were 
 banished, with all the common and poor ele- 
 ments of life. No foulness, nor tumult, in those 
 tremulous streets, that filled or fell beneath the 
 moon ; but rippled music of majestic change, 
 or thrilling silence. No weak walls could rise 
 
MR. JOHN RUSKIN. 53 
 
 above them ; no low-roofed cottage, nor straw- 
 built shed. Only the strength as of rock, and 
 the finished setting as of stones most precious. 
 And around them, as far as the eye could reach, 
 still the soft moving of stainless waters, proudly 
 pure ; as not the flower, so neither the thorn 
 nor the thistle could grow in the glancing fields. 
 Ethereal strength of Alps, dream-like, vanish in 
 high procession beyond the Torcellan shore; 
 blue islands of Paduan hills, poised in the 
 golden west. Above, free winds and fiery 
 clouds, raging at their will : brightness out of 
 the north, and balm from the south, and the 
 star of the evening and morning, clear in the 
 limitless light of arched heaven and circling 
 sea.' 
 
 As a gem of English, I do not think that 
 could easily be beaten, even in the present era 
 of stylists. 
 
To MR. JAMES RUSSELL 
 LOWELL. 
 
 SIR, When the critics find time hanging 
 heavy on their hands, it is their handsome and 
 pleasant fashion to fall foul of the age in which 
 they live ; and this, it seems, is one of irredeem- 
 able mediocrity. According to our literary 
 censors we have no great poems, no great plays, 
 no great novels, no great histories, no great 
 biographies nothing great in fact except, per- 
 haps, our pretensions, which, though vast 
 enough in all conscience, are of little present 
 value, and are certain to be quite worthless as 
 drafts on posterity. It is a doleful and depress- 
 ing view of the situation, and, I am inclined 
 to think, a false and, therefore, an unfair one. 
 As a creed, even when fallen back on only at 
 odd times, pessimism is always bad bad 
 morally, aesthetically, financially; nor does it 
 mend matters that its dismal and depreciatory 
 
 54 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
MR . JA MRS R USSELL L O WELL. 5 5 
 
 croakings have so often an aspect of truth. 
 Some one has aptly and truthfully observed 
 that it disenchants and ungifts us ; and what- 
 ever does that had better be avoided ; so that 
 as a question of policy a cheerful self-con- 
 fidence, a buoyant self-esteem, a tendency to 
 exaggeration on the score of our own merits, 
 despite the danger there may be from vanity, 
 are, on the whole, healthy and hopeful signs. 
 To say the truth, only the hopeless faultfinder 
 would seriously deny that this age, though the 
 butt of so much pleasant ridicule, the theme for 
 so much ingenious depreciation, is as respect- 
 ably equipped in the matter of literary talent as 
 most of the ages that have gone before it. 
 To be sure it is neither Augustan nor Eliza- 
 bethan; but it might be shown that we 
 have still some tolerable writers in both 
 prose and verse ; some writers whose works 
 will outlast this generation; and more than 
 one whose writings, if I have any critical 
 judgment, will go to permanently adorn and 
 enrich that treasury of English literature which, 
 after all our conquests and gains, remains the 
 grandest possession of the Anglo-Saxon race. 
 
56 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 Nothing is more amusing than man's constant 
 readiness to abuse the age in which he lives 
 and extol the ages that are past. We all know 
 at any rate all of us who are gifted with 
 imagination, that the past is, in all respects, 
 unmatchably glorious. A golden haze over- 
 hangs it, different altogether from the crude, 
 cold, grey atmosphere of the present. The 
 apples of the past were all grown in the garden 
 of the Hesperides ; they had a richer coat and 
 a more delicious flavour than the common bald- 
 wins and russets of to-day. The poetry of the 
 past was all indited in delectable grottoes and 
 fragrant bovvers and arbours and on the daisied 
 banks of limpid and purling brooks ; and it is 
 only fair to assume that the printers' ink was 
 tinted with gold and mixed with rosewater. 
 The romance of the past was real romance, not 
 simulated like ours. There were dryads, and 
 naiads, and shepherdesses in the past, while the 
 present possesses only matrons, young ladies, 
 and old maids. To be sure, men complained 
 in the past. But we wisely take no notice of 
 that, well knowing their querulousness was 
 caused by a superfluity of the delectable things 
 
MR. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 57 
 
 of life. Men complain, now, with reason. As 
 the poet says 
 
 ' Here is Hades, manifest, beholden 
 Surely, surely here, if aught be sure/ 
 
 Yet, though we cannot compete with the past, 
 that does not seem a sufficient reason for 
 abusing the present. 
 
 Seriously in a literary way, at least, the 
 present age has no reason to be ashamed of 
 itself. If it has no Shakespeares, nor Miltons, 
 it has, at least, its Drydens and its Popes. The 
 Era that produces 'The Ring and the Book,' 
 ' In Memoriam,' ' Snowbound,' and ' The Vision 
 of Sir Launfal,' may hold up its head beside 
 even the classic age of Queen Anne, an age 
 which, in my estimation, has received rather 
 more than its due meed of praise. Instead of 
 bemoaning our condition, as if only cowards 
 and dotards were generated nowadays, it is 
 better to believe with yourself that 
 
 ' Here 'mid the bleak waves of our life and care, 
 
 Float the green fortunate Isles 
 Where all the hero-spirits dwell and share 
 Our martyrdoms and toils ; 
 
 The present moves attended 
 With all of brave and excellent and fair 
 That made the old time splendid. ' 
 
58 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 However, it is not now my business to render 
 justice to the ages, but to set down, with what 
 brevity and clearness I may, my opinions of the 
 creator of ' Hosea Biglow.' I mention Hosea 
 especially, because it is to him rather than to 
 your more ambitious or more serious works 
 that you owe your vogue. 
 
 Of the Bigloiv Papers, then, which first 
 gained you recognition, and by which you are 
 still known to the majority, I find Mr. Thomas 
 Hughes writing as follows : ' For real unmis- 
 takable genius for that glorious fulness of 
 power which knocks a man down at a blow for 
 sheer admiration, and then makes him rush 
 into the arms of the knocker-down, and swear 
 eternal friendship with him for sheer delight, 
 the Biglow Papers stand alone.' The Biglow 
 Papers do certainly stand alone, at all events 
 they do not so closely resemble any other pro- 
 duction as to give the idea of imitation. Mr. 
 Hughes finds that if you resemble any of the 
 satirists it is Jean Paul Richter. With that 
 verdict, however, I cannot concur. Glimpses 
 and suggestions of Jean Paul you may give (a 
 man of your extensive reading could hardly 
 
MR. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 59 
 
 help picking up ideas from other minds), but it 
 seems to me that as a satirist you are much 
 more strongly under Scottish than German 
 influence. I think that if you had a model at 
 all in your satire it was Burns. Indeed, my 
 impression is that the original idea of the 
 Biglow Papers^ at any rate so far as their form 
 is concerned, came to you through reading the 
 works of the Scottish ploughman. Burns is a 
 standing example of what genius can do with 
 dialect. He was the first writer of real power 
 to adopt, in all its fulness and simplicity, the 
 common speech of the peasantry, which in his 
 hands is graceful and fluent, and for potency 
 unrivalled. It may be that his example set 
 you to work in the vein which has yielded so 
 much rich ore. Nor in such cases is it any 
 discredit to be a borrower. So long as the 
 borrower makes good use of what he takes he 
 is fairly within his rights in borrowing. Skake- 
 speare is the greatest writer, and the greatest 
 borrower of whom the world has any know- 
 ledge. . And could we wish that he had bor- 
 rowed less ? Surely not. He takes things in 
 such a princely way, and makes such splendid 
 
60 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 use of them, that we would fain see him take 
 more. And if you have taken a hint from 
 Burns, you certainly have made such use of it 
 as only genius can. The Biglow Papers, not- 
 withstanding their smack of Burns, are really 
 unique. One of your critics finds their charac- 
 teristics to be ' the most exuberant and ex- 
 travagant humour, coupled with strong, noble, 
 Christian purpose a thorough scorn for all 
 that is false and base, all the more withering 
 because of the thorough geniality of the writer 
 . . . every word tells, every laugh is a blow; 
 as if the good Momus had turned out as Mars, 
 and were hard at work fighting every inch of 
 him, grinning his broadest all the while.' It is 
 hard to say whether the wit, the humour, the 
 satire, the philosophy, or the Christianity of the 
 Biglow Papers is the more admirable. Cer- 
 tainly they are all there at their best ; all work- 
 ing, and working successfully in the cause of 
 humanity. But I prefer to consider the work 
 as a contribution to literature, rather than as an 
 effort in philanthropy. The cause you advo- 
 cated has been won, after such a struggle as the 
 world never before witnessed; but your writ- 
 
MR. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 61 
 
 ings remain, and, I think, will long remain as a 
 piece of literature. 
 
 In the first blush of pleasure on reading any- 
 thing so fresh and racy, so humorous and so 
 caustic, so popular and yet so profound, as the 
 Biglow Papers, one is apt to exaggerate merits. 
 Yet it would be hard to employ epithets regard- 
 ing the best parts of that work which could not 
 be justified on the strictest critical grounds. 
 The final test of all true merit is intellect. 
 When you say that there is intellect in any 
 work, you give it almost the highest possible 
 praise. The Biglow Papers show the stamp of 
 an acute and capacious mind. One reads with 
 the deepening impression that, had you cared, 
 you could have done anything else equally well. 
 ' 1 have no idea of a great man,' says Carlyle, 
 in his emphatic way, ' who could not be any- 
 thing he pleased.' And assuredly it is no 
 flattery to say that you give one the impression 
 of that power and adaptability which the sage 
 of Chelsea had in his mind's-eye. Hosea Big- 
 low and Bird o' Fredum Sawin would be 
 excellent politicians minus their consciences ; 
 and the Rev. Homer Wilbur, A.M., is a 
 
62 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 very sound philosopher, in his old-fashioned 
 way. 
 
 It is the fate of all eminent humorists to have 
 their one gift prized at the expense of all other 
 gifts they may possess. Your humour is so 
 abounding that it diverts the attention from 
 your other qualities. Every one is conscious of 
 your power to raise a laugh, but not every one, 
 in their glee at being so well entertained, what 
 there is in addition to the humour.. For in- 
 stance, in that keen and cutting satire, ' The 
 Pious Editor's Creed,' most readers find more 
 amusement than food for reflection ; yet there 
 is a deeper intent than to amuse. There is a 
 terrible grimness, a terrible earnestness behind 
 the laughter. It is rather Hercules with his 
 club than Momus with his grin that the clarified 
 vision will behold. I am not sure that since 
 ' Holy Willie's Prayer ' was written we have 
 had anything more severe than that ' Pious 
 Editor's Creed.' Were it not for its humour, 
 it is enough to make American editors squirm 
 in their chairs for ever. 
 
 Almost equally severe are your pictures of 
 the avaricious, time-serving politician, the man 
 
MR. JA MRS R USSELL L WELL . 63 
 
 without patriotism, without morality, without a 
 single worthy motive, a single ambition above 
 place and the emoluments and perquisites per- 
 taining to it the man who, whatever trouble 
 his country may be in, is always found * frontin' 
 north by south.' Then, in the broader phases 
 of humour, hardly anything could be more 
 mirth-provoking than such pieces as ' What Mr. 
 Robinson Thinks,' and ' The Epistles of Bird o' 
 Fredum Sawin.' In Mr. Sawin there is a jovial 
 spirit, which even prison walls and broken ribs, 
 and loss of arms and legs, cannot damp. When 
 he loses a lower limb, he is not without conso- 
 lation in his loss : 
 
 ' There 's one good thing though to be said about my 
 
 wooden new one. 
 The liquor can't get into it ez't used to in the true 
 
 one ; 
 So it saves drink,' 
 
 which is certainly a consideration to one whose 
 thirst is perennial and whose dollars are limited. 
 And in jail his jocularity is still unabated. He 
 apologises for his gross unpunctuality as a cor- 
 respondent by stating that he is 
 
64 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 ' Where sech things ez paper 'n ink air clean agin the 
 
 rules, 
 A kind o' vicy varsy house built dreffle strong and 
 
 stout, 
 So'st honest people can't git in, nor t'other sort git 
 
 out. 
 An' with the winders so contrived, you 'd prob'ly like 
 
 the view 
 Better a-lookin' in than out, though it seems singular, 
 
 tu; 
 But then the landlord sets by ye, can't bear ye out o' 
 
 sight, 
 And locks ye up ez reg'lar as an outside door at night.' 
 
 And no one will deny that correspondence is 
 difficult, and apt to be irregular under such 
 circumstances. But Mr. Sawin has a heart 
 and spirit above all the ills of fate, and can 
 laugh whatever betide. 
 
 In some parts of the Biglow Papers the 
 humour is so audacious that some good and 
 worthy people have thought it verged on irreve- 
 rence. For example, where Hosea insists on 
 personal responsibility for killing one's fellow- 
 creatures : 
 
 c If you take a sword an' dror it, 
 
 An' go stick a feller thru, 
 Guv'ment ain't to answer for it, 
 God '11 send the bill to you.' 
 
MR. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 65 
 And again, where he says : 
 
 ' Ye '11 hev' to git up airly 
 If ye want to take in God. ' 
 
 Certain Christian people, I say, mistaking 
 your motive in writing such lines, have taken 
 exception to the familiar use of the name of the 
 Deity. But it is only a plain statement of a 
 great and weighty truth ; and your own expla- 
 nation is ample when you state ' that one of the 
 things I am proud of in my countrymen is that 
 they do not put their Maker away far from them, 
 or interpret the fear of God into being afraid of 
 Him . . . and when people stand in great 
 dread of an invisible power, I suspect they mis- 
 take quite another personage for the Deity.' 
 Those who brought the charge of profanity had 
 not understood the spirit in which you wrote, 
 nor the lesson you wished to inculcate. But 
 there are always pious people to retard reforms 
 and misapprehend the intentions of authors. 
 
 I have dwelt long on the Biglow Papers, yet 
 
 I cannot quit them without noting one or two 
 
 of the pregnant sayings of the Rev. Homer 
 
 Wilbur. In the superabundance of humour 
 
 E 
 
66 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 and satire, Mr. Wilbur and his trenchant truths 
 are apt to be forgotten. That ' Table Talk ' of 
 his, short as it is, is excellent, as good in its 
 way as the table talk of Samuel Johnson. The 
 following are, I think, worthy of being stored in 
 the memory : ' There is no impiety so abject 
 as that which expects to be dead-headed through 
 life, and which, calling itself Trust in Provi- 
 dence, is in reality asking Providence to trust 
 us, and take up all our goods on false pre- 
 tences.' ' Unless one's thoughts pack more 
 neatly in verse than in prose, it is wiser to 
 refrain. Commonplace gains nothing by being 
 translated into rhyme, for it is something which 
 no hocus-pocus can transubstantiate with the 
 real presence of living thought.' ' Beware of 
 simulated feeling, it is hypocrisy's first cousin.' 
 ' There seem, nowadays, to be two sources of 
 literary inspiration fulness of mind and empti- 
 ness of pocket.' 'Attention is the stuff that 
 memory is made of, and memory is accumulated 
 genius.' ' Do not look for the Millennium as 
 imminent. One generation is apt to get all the 
 wear it can out of the old clothes of the last, 
 and is always sure to use up every paling of the 
 
MR. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 67 
 
 old fence that will hold a nail in building the 
 new.' 
 
 Your serious poems the poems by which, I 
 dare say, you would wish to be remembered 
 still remain to be noticed. They are not all of 
 equal merit, and perhaps none is quite Miltonic. 
 But they are one and all true poems that is, 
 they are not prose and commonplace, perked, 
 cramped, and squeezed into rhyme. They are 
 not a mere rhetorical jingle, like so much which 
 at present passes current for poetry. They are 
 instinct with fire, and they are full of imagina- 
 tion. It would be a great pleasure to me did 
 space permit, which it doesn't, to dilate on their 
 qualities. I think you are one of the most use- 
 ful and satisfying of modern poets. For the 
 growing mind wishing to imbibe right ideas of 
 men and things, I know not, among living 
 writers, your superior. Wherefore I should like 
 to dwell at length on the lessons you teach I 
 should like to look through that ' Fable for 
 Critics,' and that delightful ode, 'To a Dande- 
 lion,' and 'The Vision of Sir Launfal,' and 
 ' Heart's-ease and Rue,' where your muse is in 
 her mellow Indian summer (long may it be ere 
 
68 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 her winter come), and many other pieces ; but 
 I may not. 
 
 However, as I have indulged myself by tran- 
 scribing some specimens of your writing in a 
 comic and satirical vein, I cannot forbear to 
 quote one of your sonnets, which shows you in 
 a different light. It shows that the true poet, 
 the true man indeed, must, in spite of himself, 
 be sometimes serious. It is the sonnet ' To the 
 Spirit of Keats.' 
 
 ' Great Soul, thou sittest with me in my room, 
 Uplifting me with thy vast quiet eyes, 
 On whose full orbs with kindly lustre lies 
 
 The twilight warmth of ruddy ember-gloom j 
 
 Thy clear, strong tones will oft bring sudden bloom 
 Of hope secure to him who lonely cries, 
 Wrestling with the young poet's agonies, 
 
 Neglect and scorn, which seem a certain doom ; 
 Yes, the few words which, like great thunder-drops, 
 
 Thy large heart down to earth shoots doubtfully ; 
 Thrilled by the inward lightning of its might, 
 Serene and pure like gushing joy of light, 
 
 Shall track the eternal chords of destiny 
 After the moon-led pulse of ocean stops.' 
 
 Of your prose works it is hardly necessary to 
 speak, for I believe they are even better known 
 than your poetry. They display that humour 
 
MR. JA MES R USSELL L WELL . 69 
 
 and insight which distinguish your poems. 
 Moreover, they reveal a scholarship for which 
 your poems would hardly prepare one. As a 
 critic, perhaps, your chief characteristic is 
 sanity. Your essays on Dryden, Chaucer, 
 Dante, and Keats, are masterpieces. That on 
 Carlyle is not so satisfactory ; but in his case 
 there is some excuse, for the grim old man had 
 irritated you by his attitude on American ques- 
 tions during the Civil War. There is an asperity, 
 too, in the paper ' On a Certain Condescension 
 in Foreigners,' which is unusual with you. But 
 here, again, you had, as your countrymen say, 
 been rubbed ' agin the fur.' 
 
To COUNT LYOF NIKOLAEVICH 
 TOLSTOI. 
 
 MONSIEUR LE COMTE, When the late 
 Matthew Arnold wrote that ' the Russian novel 
 has now the vogue and deserves to have it : if 
 fresh literary productions maintain this vogue 
 and enhance it we shall all be learning Russian,' 
 he was for once in his life clearly and emphati- 
 cally giving voice to the popular sentiment. It 
 is really not improbable that we shall presently 
 be learning your language in order to study 
 your works ; for we are a peculiar people, and 
 think no labour too great that is undertaken in 
 honour of a favourite. Nay, if you are reason- 
 able, and do not expect too much of us, it may 
 be that in a lackadaisical way even your rather 
 singular doctrines may become fashionable 
 amongst us. Of late years you have dealt a 
 good deal in theology, and theology is gener- 
 ally supposed to be dry reading ; but you must 
 
 70 
 
I-KO TOLSTOI. 
 
COUNT LYOF NIKOLAEV1CH TOLSTOI. 71 
 
 not suppose, M. le Comte, that we dislike 
 theology. On the contrary, we delight, we 
 revel, in it. For instance, no novel is so popular 
 with us as the theological novel. Ladies cour- 
 ageously write this class of fiction, and other 
 ladies quite cheerfully take it to their boudoirs, 
 and puzzle their fair heads over its recondite 
 passages in preference to going to study the 
 fashions at the opera ; statesmen turn aside 
 from affairs of state to write articles on it ; clergy- 
 men take it into the pulpit with them and 
 preach sermons on it to enraptured audiences ; 
 merchants discuss it after 'change ; lawyers, oddly 
 enough, grow casuistical over it in a word, it 
 is immensely popular. There is little danger 
 therefore of our being offended with the theo- 
 logical foibles of any favourite writer. Only, as 
 I have already hinted, you must not expect us 
 to follow you too far. The line must be drawn 
 when our material interests are touched. As 
 you are perhaps aware, we are a practical people, 
 and you must see yourself how extremely incon- 
 venient it would be to put your charming 
 theories into practice. We shall be quite con- 
 tent to discuss them, and watch how they sue- 
 
72 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 ceed experimentally in autocratic Russia. When 
 there has been a general distribution of property 
 in that free and enlightened country we will 
 give the matter graver consideration here. It 
 is fit that reform, like charity, should begin at 
 home. 
 
 As a writer you were lucky in making your 
 appearance at a most opportune moment. ' A 
 pigmy 's a giant,' says our Mr. Meredith, ' if he 
 can manage to arrive in season ' ; and though 
 you are far from being a pigmy, there is an 
 obvious advantage even to you in arriving at a 
 time when there was a general search for novelty. 
 When you were discovered (an author never 
 makes himself known, but is always discovered) 
 our appetites were sorely cloyed; we were 
 languid and sick, inexpressibly bored with the 
 endless imitations of the grotesque horseplay 
 and free-weeping of Dickens, the ugly cynicism 
 of Thackeray, and the heavy tragedy of George 
 Eliot. We needed an alterative, and no altera- 
 tive was to be had. We turned our longing 
 faces to the great West and were disappointed. 
 Mr. Henry James, though extremely neat and 
 precise and well-bred, is a trifle chilly. Mr. 
 
COUNT LYOF NIKOLAEVICH TOLSTOI. 73 
 
 Howells is too much afraid of the big passions, 
 and Mr. Bret Harte is repeating himself un- 
 conscionably. To France we scarcely durst 
 look lest our characters might suffer. M. Zola 
 is really a shocking man, and M. Daudet is 
 hardly so circumspect as he might be (at any 
 rate so we were told), and, being piously credu- 
 lous in such matters, we sighed and passed on. 
 Germany, Italy, and Spain we found almost 
 barren, and we were just on the point of aban- 
 doning the weary search, when lo ! we saw three 
 amorphous figures looming on the steppes of 
 Russia. We hurried thither, and immediately 
 there was a sensation. We pounced on Tur- 
 gueneff, then on Dostoieffsky ; and now we are 
 struggling with yourself surveying you on all 
 sides, taking your dimension, and giving you an 
 occasional crack and thump to see whether or 
 no you sound hollow. The majority of us have 
 not yet quite made up our minds regarding you. 
 Nor need this be a surprise, for to the uncritical 
 you are a most tantalising phenomenon. You 
 bear no trace of familiar influence. You belong 
 to neither the romantic nor the naturalistic 
 school as established in our midst. You are 
 
74 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 not a bowwowist nor a 'dismal conceited 
 analyst.' Your philosophy is not the philo- 
 sophy of Robert Elsmere, nor of Professor 
 Huxley, nor of M. Renan. There is no evi- 
 dence that you know anything at all of the 
 sharp divisions set up between our several 
 schools of fiction. What is the stolid Briton, 
 as fond of his prejudices as of his roast-beef, to 
 make of you? Obviously he can only stare 
 and ejaculate, and turn you over, thinking what 
 manner of man you can be, and praying you 
 may not turn out a monster. That is the atti- 
 tude towards you of the average British reader. 
 But, as already stated, there are others even 
 in Britain who recognise in you those qualities 
 which constitute a bond of brotherhood be- 
 tween men of all ages and of all climes. You 
 are no partisan, you belong to no clique or 
 coterie you could not if you would ; for as a 
 man, by taking thought, cannot add one inch 
 to his stature, neither can a really great soul 
 narrow himself so as to become the creature of a 
 sect. You have the breadth and the courage of 
 greatness. In your fidelity to nature you some- 
 times remind one of Shakespeare and some- 
 
COUNT LYOF N1KOLAEVICH TOLSTOI. 75 
 
 times of Scott and sometimes of Cervantes and 
 sometimes of Balzac. Their work may not 
 always be pleasant, but it is always true, and 
 therefore always great. They are as unflinching 
 as Nature herself, and will not be turned aside 
 for fear of giving offence to the goody-goody 
 that saccharine compound of inanities and inep- 
 titudes which is at present threatening to take 
 all the savour out of life. You, like the great 
 ones I have named, deal with vice and crime, 
 with fierce and sinful passions, with a fine im- 
 partiality quite unexampled in a time when so 
 many of our writers are tremulously pious and 
 mealy-mouthed, and so many more are vaunt- 
 fully immoral. You do not go in search of the 
 base and the ugly, like some of the prurient 
 writers of France and their imitators in America, 
 nor do you absolutely shun them, like some of 
 our Sunday-school authors in England, who 
 will not so much as mention the devil except 
 by some polite and veiling appellative. Wicked- 
 ness stands in your way, and you touch on 
 it, as every writer must who is not a moral 
 coward ; but you never make sin engaging, and 
 you never fail to note its consequences. As 
 
76 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 Matthew Arnold well said, you do not pay 
 homage to the Goddess Lubricity. 
 
 As a novelist you are generally classed among 
 the realists. Arbitrary classification is perhaps 
 necessary in criticism, but it is misleading. 
 When realism is mentioned in England we 
 instantly think of M. Zola and yourself; and 
 though I am far from holding the conventional 
 British opinion of the inexorable author of 
 L'Assommoir, I believe the association does 
 you a clear injustice. You have just as little 
 and as much in common with M. Zola as with 
 Walter Scott and Victor Hugo. As a matter 
 of fact you are one of the writers (too few alas !) 
 who cannot be satisfactorily classed. If we 
 take War and Peace, for instance, it is diffi- 
 cult to decide whether romance or realism pre- 
 dominates. Both are there in the highest and 
 best sense. The realism is as faithful as the 
 best of Jane Austen, the romance as fine as the 
 best of Nathaniel Hawthorne ; and in combina- 
 tion they produce a result which is perhaps 
 unparalleled in the later literature of the world. 
 War and Peace is an unmatchable book, a book 
 which demonstrates the foolishness of critical 
 
COUNT LYOF NIKOLAEVICH TOLSTOI. 77 
 
 canons, and the futility of arbitrary classifica- 
 tions. 
 
 In such sketches as ' the death of Ivan 
 Ilyitch,' you are purely and simply, I had 
 almost said atrociously, realistic. I know no 
 piece of writing of equal length so exquisitely 
 gruesome as that sombre study of the insidious 
 progress of disease, and the blighting of a great 
 ambition. It is a study so absorbing that when 
 you begin to read you cannot stop till the end 
 is reached, and so painful, indeed so hideous, 
 that you seem to move in an atmosphere of 
 disease and death long after closing the book. 
 There, M. le Comte, you give unadulterated 
 realism, and there is no difficulty as to class, 
 but in your larger works you are quite as much 
 the poet as the analyst ; and it is unsafe and 
 unsatisfactory to relegate you to any particular 
 category. The most comprehensive label will 
 give but a dim and confused idea of your genius 
 and qualities. 
 
 And, indeed, why should we give ourselves 
 unnecessary trouble, and do you a gratuitous 
 injustice by affixing any label ? Is it not given 
 to intelligent men in this nineteenth century to 
 
78 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 enjoy and admire without being scientifically 
 concerned regarding that which yields them 
 pleasure? Would it not be feasible, for instance, 
 to say that War and Peace, or Anna Karenin, is 
 a great work without being painfully or mislead- 
 ingly argumentative in support of the statement ? 
 Is it absolutely necessary to say this part is 
 idyllic, this realistic, that again soundly philo- 
 sophic, that well reasoned, that analytic, that 
 romantic ? Must we dissect afresh, and pass a 
 cultured judgment on every character we en- 
 counter ? Must we, with laboured and pedantic 
 phraseology, go into the good and bad qualities 
 of Pierre Besuskof, of Andrew Bolkonsky, of 
 Helen, of Natacha Rostow, of Kiva, of Ivan 
 Ilyitch, of Zhilin, of Prince Basil ? Must we 
 take the gigantic canvas of War and Peace to 
 bits and examine each under the microscope ? 
 It surely is not necessary at this time of day. 
 At any rate, for myself, I would make the 
 simple confession that I think War and Peace 
 and Anna Karenin two of the few really 
 great novels of the world ? say two of the first 
 dozen ; or shall we stretch a point and say two 
 of the first score ? That they easily place you 
 
COUNT LYOF NIKOLAEVICH TOLSTOI. 79 
 
 among the giants is, I think, beyond all ques- 
 tion. You take your place in that illustrious 
 front rank with Walter Scott and Goethe and 
 Hugo and Balzac and Cervantes and George 
 Sand, an immortal while still in the flesh. 
 
 But it is a significant indication of our national 
 tastes, and the bent of our national genius, that 
 it is not as a novelist you interest us most. 
 Pre-eminent as you are in the art of writing 
 fiction, it is rather as a theologian and moral 
 philosopher that you occupy our attention. We 
 read with avidity, and discuss with solemnity, 
 those very remarkable works of yours setting 
 forth your religious beliefs, and your views on 
 certain portions of Scripture. I have already 
 said that theology interests us most profoundly; 
 and it is only stating a simple fact to say that 
 many who do not know your novels, or care 
 little for them, are deeply moved by your 
 religious writings. Perhaps it is because they 
 have rather more freshness and originality than 
 is usual in theological works. It may not, in- 
 deed, seem a very original thing to aspire to 
 follow the teachings of Jesus. For close on 
 twenty centuries the whole Christian world has 
 
8o LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 been persuading itself that its conduct has, 
 in the main, conformed to the commands of 
 Christ. Wherein then do your doctrines diifer 
 from those of the rest of mankind ? In deny- 
 ing that there was anything figurative in the 
 sermons and other addresses public and 
 private of Jesus. Christians even the most 
 devout and sincere have been wont to cross 
 great difficulties and chasms by the easy bridge 
 of figurativeness. It would be quite impos- 
 sible to literally obey such and such a com- 
 mand, they say. Jesus did not mean us to 
 perform impossibilities, therefore that parti- 
 cular part must be figurative. You answer 
 'No; it is not figurative nothing that Christ 
 ever spoke was figurative. Every utterance of 
 his was as direct and precise as language could 
 make it. Jesus meant you to obey his commands 
 literally. If you choose to make a plain injunc- 
 tion figurative you do so at your peril. Jesus 
 meant all he said.' And to make the matter 
 clearer you formulated your belief in five com- 
 mandments. 
 
 i st. 'Live in peace with all men treat no 
 one as contemptible and beneath you. Not 
 
COUNT LYOF NIKOLAEVICH TOLSTOI. 81 
 
 only allow yourself no anger, but do not rest 
 until you dissipate even unreasonable anger in 
 others against yourself.' 
 
 2d. ' No libertinage and no divorce : let 
 every man have one wife and every woman one 
 husband.' 
 
 3d. ' Never on any pretext take an oath of 
 service of any kind ; all such oaths are imposed 
 for a bad purpose.' 
 
 4th. ' Never employ force against the evil- 
 doer ; bear whatever wrong is done you without 
 opposing the wrongdoer or seeking to have him 
 punished.' 
 
 5th. 'Renounce all distinction of nationality; 
 do not admit that men of another nation may 
 ever be treated by you as enemies; love all 
 men alike as alike near to you ; do good to all 
 alike.' 
 
 It must be admitted that you support your 
 interpretation of the Gospels with very con- 
 siderable force of logic, and that in the 
 course of your inquiries you shed light on 
 many obscure passages of Scripture. You go 
 to the fountain-head, and are hardly civil to 
 Biblical Commentators. You find them all 
 F 
 
82 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 blinded by tradition, you say, not one of them 
 to be relied on ; and then you write this terrible 
 sentence ' I firmly believe that, a few centuries 
 hence, the history of what we call the scientific 
 activity of this age will be a prolific subject for 
 hilarity and pity.' Ah ! M. le Comte, how 
 unkind of you, considering the vast number of 
 religious and theological writers who have used 
 their talents and their learning in leading us 
 easily over thorny places ! You are indeed a 
 disturbing phenomenon ; we were at peace, and 
 you would not let us alone ; we were pleased to 
 exercise the imagination regarding the doctrine 
 of Jesus, and you say that imagination must be 
 rigidly excluded. 
 
 And then think, M. le Comte, what you bid 
 us do. * Our entire social fabric,' you say, ' is 
 founded upon principles that Jesus reproved.' 
 Has our civilisation been indeed then a failure, 
 and are we to make a fresh start ? Are we to 
 dismiss the constable, the magistrate, and the 
 executioner ? Are we to open the prison doors 
 and let the whole corrupt mass of humanity 
 that seethes within flow out and invade our 
 homes ? Is the thief to be allowed to put forth 
 
COUNT LYOF NIKOLAEVICH TOLSTOL 83 
 
 his hand and steal with impunity? Is the 
 murderer to take life, and the libertine to 
 debauch virtue without let or hindrance ? Are 
 we to divide our property with the idle and 
 profligate, and toil for those who oppress us ? 
 Is the Church to give up her tithes, and must 
 rulers forego their well-earned rewards? Is 
 there to be no distinction between man and 
 man, except in power to benefit others? Are 
 we, in a word, to undo all that civilisation 
 that great progressive cumulative force which 
 has been the theme of such frequent laudation 
 from the ablest and best of the sons of men 
 are we to undo all that it has done ? And you 
 answer, yes, most emphatically, yes; and as 
 your authority give, 'The Sermon on the 
 Mount.' But was the Sermon on the Mount 
 ever preached? Mr. Huxley doubts it; and 
 he doubts also whether 'the so-called Lord's 
 Prayer was ever prayed by Jesus of Nazareth.' 
 What then, M. le Comte, if your doctrine of 
 Jesus is not the doctrine of Jesus at all, but 
 something attributed to him by fable ? In that 
 case, would not your whole theological super- 
 structure collapse ? But whatever may be your 
 
84 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 fate as a theologian, I think that as an artist 
 there can be but one opinion concerning you 
 namely, that you are 'a great soul and a 
 great writer,' and that your place in universal 
 literature is secure. 
 
I AMI-IS ANTHONY I-ROUDH. 
 
To MR. JAMES ANTHONY 
 FROUDE. 
 
 SIR, You are known in the five-fold char- 
 acter of historian, biographer, novelist, essayist, 
 and writer of travels. That you should have 
 attempted so much proves that you are a man 
 of more than ordinary courage ; that you have 
 acquitted yourself so well in each of these 
 widely dissimilar roles shows that you are a man 
 of more than ordinary capacity. It is not, per- 
 haps, within the scope of human talent to be at 
 once various and supreme in excellence. The 
 Admirable Crichtons of whom we occasionally 
 hear are, I suspect, rather fables than facts, 
 stimulating creations of the imagination, and no 
 more to be treated as verities than Don Quixote, 
 or Baron Munchausen, or the Count of Monte 
 Cristo. At any rate one never meets them in real 
 life. And, indeed, though versatility is a good 
 thing, it is not without its disadvantages. Its 
 
 85 
 
86 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 achievements are specious rather than solid, and 
 rarely add to the world's stock of knowledge, or 
 enhance the world's comfort. One admires the 
 easy adaptability of Proteus, and the handiness 
 of Briareus in carrying on many occupations 
 simultaneously, but Hercules with only two 
 stout arms and an unchangeable shape did 
 more meritorious service than either. Folks 
 like that vicar of whom Praed sings that 
 
 ' His talk is like a stream which runs, 
 
 With rapid change, from rocks to roses ; 
 It slips from politics to puns, 
 
 It glides from Mahomet to Moses ; 
 Beginning with the laws that keep 
 
 The planets in their radiant courses, 
 And ending with some precept deep 
 
 For skinning eels or shoeing horses ' 
 
 though highly interesting and brilliant indi- 
 viduals, are in the main only a species of human 
 fire rockets that may for a little dazzle, but can 
 hardly benefit mankind. It remains mostly 
 true what the philosophic Mr. Pope long ago 
 asserted, that 
 
 ' One science only will one genius fit, 
 So wide is art, so narrow human wit. ' 
 
 Or as the German Shakespeare has it: 'We 
 
MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 87 
 
 should guard against a talent which we cannot 
 hope to practise in perfection. Improve it as 
 we may, we shall always, in the end, when the 
 merit of the master has become apparent to us, 
 painfully lament the loss of time and strength 
 devoted to "such botching.' 
 
 Now while it would be most unjust to aver 
 that you have ever botched anything you have 
 attempted, it is no more than the truth to say 
 that in hardly any work you have accomplished 
 have you shown yourself an impeccable artist. 
 Some critics, indeed, have fallen foul of your 
 entire series of works, and condemned them in 
 one sweeping sentence. Those astute persons 
 inform us that, as an historian, you are so full of 
 inveterate prepossessions, that your presenta- 
 tions of men and things have little value, 
 that as a biographer you are careless, and as a 
 writer of travels almost unprecedentedly inac- 
 curate. On the latter point, indeed, they claim 
 living witnesses. The Australians and New 
 Zealanders, for instance, are said to repudiate 
 your descriptions of themselves and their coun- 
 tries, to aver that you rarely took the trouble to 
 observe things for yourself, and that when you 
 
88 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 tried you were not successful. 'And how,' 
 demand your critics triumphantly, 'are we to 
 depend on the historical statements of a man 
 who cannot describe what he has seen with his 
 own eyes?' The question is pertinent, for it 
 seems no more than reasonable to doubt the 
 reliability of the historian who cannot tell us 
 the exact aspect of things he has himself looked 
 upon. Into the question whether you are right 
 or wrong regarding the Antipodes, however, I 
 will not now enter ; for I have seen so little of 
 the land of the kangaroo myself that it would 
 ill become me to question the correctness of 
 your observations concerning it ; only it might 
 be remarked that if you are right respect- 
 ing it, most other travellers, from the late 
 Anthony Trollope, and Mr. George Augustus 
 Sala, and Mr. Archibald Forbes, and Dr. Dale 
 down, are wrong. But your historical and 
 biographical work is another matter, and on 
 that I may be allowed an opinion like the rest 
 of your critics. 
 
 Macaulay, in one of his most brilliant essays, 
 informs us that ' History, at least, in its state of 
 ideal perfection, is a compound of poetry and 
 
MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 89 
 
 philosophy. It impresses general truths on the 
 mind by a vivid representation of particular 
 characters and incidents. But, in fact, the two 
 hostile elements of which it consists have never 
 been known to form a perfect amalgamation ; 
 and at length, in our time, they have been com- 
 pletely and professedly separated. Good his- 
 tories in the proper sense of the word we have 
 not. But we have good historical romances 
 and good historical essays. The imagination 
 and the reason, if we may use a legal metaphor, 
 have made partition of a province of literature 
 of which they were formerly seized, per my et 
 per tout-, and now they hold their respective 
 portions in severalty, instead of holding the 
 whole in common. To make the past present, 
 to bring the distant near, to place us in the 
 society of a great man, or on the eminence 
 which overlooks the field of a mighty battle, to 
 invest with the reality of human flesh and blood 
 beings whom we are too much inclined to con- 
 sider as personified qualities in an allegory, . . . 
 these parts of the duty which properly belongs 
 to the historian have been appropriated by the 
 historical novelist. On the other hand, to ex- 
 
90 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 tract the philosophy of history, to direct our 
 judgment of events and men, to trace the con- 
 nection of causes and effects, and to draw from 
 the occurrences of former times general lessons 
 of moral and political wisdom, has become the 
 business of a distinct class of writers.' 
 
 Like M. Sismondi, you combine the two 
 functions that is, you extract the philosophy 
 and direct the judgment, and you likewise 
 attempt to give that lively representation of 
 men, manners, and events which is the part of 
 the historical novelist. The combination, how- 
 ever, does not produce that state of ideal per- 
 fection referred to by the essayist. Neither as 
 a writer of history, in the ordinary sense of the 
 word, nor as a writer of fiction, do you stand in 
 the first rank. Your purely historical writings 
 do not, in my estimation, place you among the 
 great historians of our country, nor your fiction 
 among its great novelists. As an historian you 
 have not the reach of Gibbon, nor the brilliancy 
 of Macaulay, nor the exactness of Robertson, 
 nor the acumen and concinnity of Hume, nor 
 the force, the vividness, the lurid picturesque- 
 ness of Carlyle ; as a novelist you have not the 
 
MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 91 
 
 humour of Cervantes nor the imagination of 
 Scott. But, while saying this, I think that both 
 your scientific studies in history, and your fiction, 
 are distinctly good, notwithstanding all that has 
 been said to the contrary by critics of weight 
 and discernment. The. English in Ireland in 
 the Eighteenth Century is, to my mind, the very 
 best book on the subject which exists in the 
 English language ; and it should be remembered 
 to your credit that, as a British Tory, you had 
 special temptations to misrepresent our Irish 
 brethren. Those who wish to understand the 
 position of Ireland in the last century cannot 
 do better than read your three volumes. The 
 perusal of them would make clear much that 
 now seems inexplicable, and reasonable much 
 that now seems absurd to superficial observers 
 and politicians who are great in airing ignorance. 
 Nor in The Two Chiefs of Dunboy do I see 
 anything at all unworthy of you. It is not a 
 novel of the very highest order, as I have above 
 hinted, but it is far from being a bad one, or 
 deserving the hard names it has been called in 
 some quarters. One or two sapient critics 
 (conscious, I suppose, of their own superior 
 
92 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 ability) have pronounced it dull, insipid, and 
 characterless, and one gentleman went so far as 
 to say it positively was not worth reading. I 
 believe some perspicacious person long ago dis- 
 covered that wholesale condemnation is a com- 
 paratively easy thing. It requires no genius to 
 cavil, and a very ordinary talent is equal to the 
 task of pointing out faults. And the worst of 
 it is that even in the best of works there are 
 always faults in plenty to point out. I dare say 
 it would be safe to aver that never in this world 
 has there appeared a work of creative imagina- 
 tion in which defects were not a good deal thicker 
 than plums in a pudding. The greenest critic 
 will show you more defects in a single play of 
 Shakespeare's say in Othello than your arith- 
 metic can well compute ; and, as to the imper- 
 fections of the works of lesser lights, the task of 
 merely enumerating them would be so pro- 
 digious and so fearful that the galleys or the 
 treadmill were genuine recreation in comparison. 
 To say, then, that there are blemishes in The 
 Two Chiefs of Dunboy, is but to say that it is 
 written by a man and not by an angel or other 
 being of infinite skill and capacity. But with 
 
MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 93 
 
 all its faults, I did not find it dull, nor insipid, 
 nor characterless. 
 
 It is true that it does not quite succeed in 
 giving that lively representation of men and 
 things of which Macaulay speaks, and which we 
 find at its best in the novels of Scott. Through- 
 out the book there is a lack of freedom ; the 
 imagination is for the most part too closely 
 under the control of reason, and only breaks 
 out here and there, as it were, by accident and 
 against your will : in other words, the scientific 
 historian is too much for the creative artist. As 
 Byron said of Campbell, you are afraid to launch 
 out into the deep, to come face to face with 
 the glory and the terror of the storms of emo- 
 tion ; so that instead of warm and magnificent 
 pictures we have much valuable information 
 about soil and crops, many judicial reflections 
 on political conspiracies, no end of subtle 
 deductions, and a superabundance of extract of 
 philosophy. I have said that you are a man of 
 courage, but in this book you appear as a very 
 timid adventurer, indeed. Courage is no less 
 essential in writing novels than in commanding 
 armies or levying, taxes, and the bolder you are 
 
94 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 the more will be thought of you. Notice how 
 boldly Dumas spreads his wings and looks the 
 sun in the face; notice, too, the audacity of 
 Victor Hugo and Balzac, and, above all, the 
 free and independent movement of Scott. The 
 courage of Scott is sublime. ' Go,' he seems to 
 say to his imagination, ' and where you lead I 
 will follow.' And never once does he falter or 
 look back, never once does he feel dizzy, how- 
 ever high he may be soaring. If you compare 
 one of his historical novels say Kcnilworth 
 with The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, you will find 
 the latter superior in every technical detail and 
 inferior in most other qualities that go to the 
 making of a first-rate novel or romance in 
 breadth, in freedom, in warmth of colouring, in 
 picturesqueness, in power of characterisation 
 in short, in charm and interest. Moreover, 
 there is this difference (and it is one of more 
 consequence than may at first appear) between 
 such a book as Kenilworth and The Two Chiefs 
 of Dunboy, that while in the former the interest 
 radiates outward from the characters, in the 
 latter it goes inward from what may be called 
 the historical setting. And again Scott blends 
 
MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 95 
 
 fact and fancy so cunningly that you cannot 
 distinguish the one from the other, while with 
 you the transition from reality to fiction is often 
 difficult and nearly always clearly perceptible. 
 
 But perhaps I am judging you by too high a 
 standard. Every man improves with practice 
 the genius as well as the dolt, and it may be 
 that enlarged experience would give you con- 
 fidence enough to throw aside the scientific 
 crutch, and run with the best of them. If it 
 were the work of a young author I should say 
 The Two Chiefs of Dunboy is full of promise. 
 The story is occasionally of absorbing interest, 
 and several of the characters are well drawn. 
 Colonel Goring is as fine a fellow as one would 
 wish to meet, loyal and courageous every inch 
 of him, a man with a heart and a conscience 
 and leal to them both ; in a word, an Englishman 
 of the very best type the Puritan type, which 
 has done more for England than all other types 
 combined. One regrets that so good a soldier 
 and so true a man should have fallen in a 
 miserable scuffle in a blacksmith's shop. Morty 
 Sullivan, likewise, is a character that dwells with 
 the reader. The infatuated patriot, burning to 
 
96 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 free Ireland from the accursed Saxon yoke, 
 willing to sacrifice his life if so be that that will 
 win liberty for his country, is forcibly delineated. 
 He is the best character in the book, and one 
 of the best in recent fiction. Nor are the minor 
 characters ill-drawn. Sylvester O'Sullivan, Con- 
 nell, Blake, and Fitzherbert, all reveal themselves 
 in a manner more or less clear and definite. 
 Then as to incidents, the chase of the Doutelle 
 by the Government frigate ^Eolus is capitally 
 described ; so, also, is the duel between Morty 
 Sullivan and Colonel Goring. And, while 
 enumerating the good points of the book, I 
 must not omit to mention the limpid and 
 delightful flow of its English. Some hard 
 things have been said of British novelists on 
 the score of style, but he were a hypercritical 
 reader who would find fault with the style of 
 The Two Chiefs of Dunboy. 
 
 It is not, however, as a novelist, or historian, 
 or essayist, that you are best known, but as a 
 biographer. For every one who has read your 
 histories, or your essays, or your novel, ten have 
 read your Lift of Thomas Carlyle. It is safe to 
 say that no recent biographical work no recent 
 
MX. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 97 
 
 work, indeed, of any sort outside of fiction 
 has been so widely read or so variously criticised 
 as that biography of the Sage of Chelsea. 
 
 Nor is the reason hard to understand. The 
 book is one of the most readable biographies 
 in the language, and the subject is popular, and 
 peculiar. It was to be expected that of such 
 an original and unconventional, such an unique 
 character as Carlyle, there would be extreme 
 and diverse opinions ; and hence there must 
 likewise be a diversity of view regarding the 
 manner in which his biographer performed his 
 task. It was not your fault that so considerable 
 a section of the reading public came to the 
 perusal of your work with inveterate prejudices 
 and manifold preconceptions. But it was a 
 grave misfortune, for it made it hard nay, flatly 
 impossible, to give anything like general satis- 
 faction. Carlyle is a subject that could not be 
 made universally pleasing. In his lifetime he had 
 tramped, with no great show of politeness, on a 
 good many gouty toes, and the owners of the 
 gouty toes were, of course, savagely on the alert 
 to avenge their wrongs. Unhappily they had 
 but too many opportunities. Carlyle had not 
 G 
 
98 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 the virtue if virtue it be of reticence. The 
 man who could publicly speak of the entire 
 population of our beloved and enlightened 
 England as so many millions mostly fools 
 was not likely to be polite in his private utter- 
 ances. And assuredly Carlyle was not. In 
 conversation as in writing, in diaries as in works 
 professedly public, he expressed his whole mind 
 on every subject which occupied his attention, 
 careless whom he might offend; adverse and 
 disagreeable opinions he expressed with the 
 emphasis of thunder-claps : and when it is 
 added that his criticisms of contemporaries 
 were nearly always fiercely hostile or cuttingly 
 contemptuous, we have a subject that the 
 highest genius, the genius of Shakespeare him- 
 self, could not portray at once truthfully and 
 pleasingly at any rate to the majority. That 
 your portrait of the Sage is not, in many re- 
 spects, a flattering one, is at least as much 
 his fault as yours. Some of Carlyle's friends 
 have blamed you for quoting too freely from 
 his private papers. They seem to think that if 
 you had passed over in silence some of the ' ill- 
 natured criticisms ' of the great critic that the 
 
MR. JAMES A NTH ON Y FR UDE. 99 
 
 portrait would be much more agreeable. Doubt- 
 less ; but it would not be so near the truth. I 
 think that if Carlyle himself were to return to 
 criticise your work he would say that you have 
 quoted not too much but too little. I suppose 
 every biographer worthy of the name must in 
 some sort be a partisan, but he should yield as 
 little as possible to all temptations to suppress. 
 Your hero-worship has led you to suppress a 
 great deal of what Carlyle wrote, and to this 
 error of suppression nine-tenths of the blemishes 
 of the book are directly attributable. As it 
 stands the picture is more or less distorted, not, 
 as I believe, because you wished to give an 
 unfavourable presentation of your subject, but 
 because of a too great anxiety to conciliate 
 public opinion. Perfect independence is the 
 first essential in a biographer of Carlyle. I 
 believe that if every word ever written by 
 Carlyle were printed he would be found, what 
 indeed you often assure us he was, a man 
 of warm and wide affections, of generous dis- 
 position, and in the main of liberal judg- 
 ments. And even in your biography as it 
 now stands those who study it with open and 
 
ioo LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 free minds will find him anything but male- 
 volent, anything but a backbiter, anything but 
 an ogre : though those who have suffered 
 under his lash are likely, despite all the efforts 
 of a biographer, to continue to regard him as a 
 monster. 
 
 To his great intellectual power you do ample 
 justice. In your book he stands forth not only 
 as the most striking personality but as the 
 greatest writer of later times. 
 
THOMAS HARDY. 
 
To MR. THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 SIR, I think it would be safe to say that 
 you are the most distinctively modern of our 
 living novelists of note. Mr. Besant may oc- 
 casionally seem to deal more directly with the 
 perplexing problems of the day ; Mr. Meredith 
 may appear, to some, to be more emphatically 
 the intellectual child of the age ; but of certain 
 broad aspects which are as characteristically 
 nineteenth century as they are characteristically 
 English, you are, I think, beyond rivalry as a 
 delineator. The fashion now obtaining among 
 the better known of contemporary writers of 
 fiction is to travel back in search of the 
 romantic and the picturesque, as if these ele- 
 ments were entirely absent from latter-day life, 
 instead of being necessarily as perennial as 
 human nature itself, because they are part of it. 
 The best work of Mr. Blackmore and Mr. 
 
 Stevenson belongs almost exclusively to the 
 
 101 
 
102 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 past; even Mr. Besant, notwithstanding his 
 watchful and sympathetic interest in the welfare 
 of the poor, and his sturdy endeavours to be 
 realistic, likes, at times, to disentangle himself 
 from the present, and return to what are gra- 
 tuitously taken to have been freer and more 
 spacious days. Perhaps there was really more 
 freedom in the world during the rule of dark- 
 ness than in this era of light ; though, if such 
 were the case, the people were singularly blind 
 to their advantages, and grievously given to 
 grumbling; for we do not read the autobio- 
 graphy of any foregoing generation that was 
 satisfied with itself. The habit is always to 
 exaggerate the good things of the past, and 
 depreciate the good things of the present. In 
 retrospection our imaginations are only too apt 
 to ' transfigure dry remainder-biscuit into am- 
 brosia.' ' Ah ! beautiful young eyes,' exclaims 
 the poet, ' brimming with love and hope, wholly 
 vanished now in that other world we call the 
 Past, or peering doubtfully through the pensive 
 gloaming of memory, your light impoverishes 
 these cheaper days.' So it ever is. So is it, 
 especially, with the novelist who desires to give 
 
MR. THOMAS HARDY. 103 
 
 to his work something of that glamour of un- 
 reality, which is thought by some to be the 
 final touch of perfection in all things artistic. 
 A character seen in dim twilight, and supposed 
 to be sporting a wig, knee-breeches, and silver 
 buckles, with a sword, which usually proves 
 more a hindrance than a help, would seem to 
 be so much more impressive than one en- 
 countered in the prosaic glare of the sun, clad 
 in convenient, if commonplace, clothes, wearing 
 his natural hair, and unencumbered and unim- 
 peded by any weapon more unmanageable than 
 a penknife. So, I say, some novelists would 
 seem to think. But you are not of the number. 
 Your work, in texture and spirit, is distinctly of 
 to-day, an unmistakable product of the last 
 quarter of the nineteenth century. 
 
 But here I would guard against a false im- 
 plication. The school which is supposed to 
 represent the culture and taste of the day is 
 pre-eminently realistic ; or, perhaps, more cor- 
 rectly, tediously photographic. It gives the 
 warts and wrinkles, the angle of the hat and 
 the cut of the coat, the black eyes and the 
 abrasions, the bloated countenance, and the 
 
104 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 leaky shoes, with great care and fidelity. Nor 
 does it generally fail, with a subtle and refined 
 art peculiar to itself, to give something of the 
 malodorous atmosphere in which its materials 
 mature. But the soul is let as severely alone 
 as if it did not exist. And in truth, for the 
 thorough-going realist, it does not exist. You 
 cannot handle, weigh, and measure it as you 
 would a pound of flesh. It has no solidity; 
 there is nothing tangible and carnal about it ; 
 it does not appeal to what some one has called 
 the practical senses, and so it is ignored. Now 
 you are realistic, but you are something more. 
 With an eye for the outward appearance of 
 things as unerring as that of Zola himself, you 
 are kept wholesome and high by that fine 
 idealism which is the distinguishing charac- 
 teristic of George Sand, and of which every 
 writer, who is not merely a reporter, must have 
 at least a little. Perhaps no living writer can 
 give more genuinely realistic touches than are 
 to be found in abundance in all your books. 
 In the first sentence of Far from the Madding 
 Crowd, to take an easy example, when we are 
 told that, ' When Farmer Oak smiled, the cor- 
 
MR. THOMAS HARDY. 105 
 
 ners of his mouth spread till they were within 
 an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes 
 were reduced to mere chinks, and diverging 
 wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon 
 his countenance like the rays of a rudimentary 
 sketch of the rising sun,' we have a more lively 
 conception of Mr. Oak's facial characteristics 
 than most novelists could give by pages of de- 
 scription. On the other hand, the development 
 of the character is ideal throughout, and Far- 
 mer Oak does not turn out the clothes-horse, or 
 spiritual caricature, he would certainly prove in 
 the hands of the realists, whose rigid square- 
 and-rule method of treating life would at times 
 almost lead one to infer that there was no such 
 thing as destiny, and that passion had happily 
 been banished. The Greek conception of Fate 
 was much more pleasant, indeed, much more 
 rational, than the paltry modern doctrines about 
 'volition.' There is something in the Greek 
 theory which appeals irresistibly to primitive 
 man, if he only had the courage to confess it ; 
 the volitional doctrine is a mere feeder and 
 inflater of vanity, and could hardly become 
 popular on any other grounds. Your work has 
 
io6 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 really much of the Greek spirit in it, and is, 
 therefore, unique in the present era. It is 
 realistic, yet distinguished from the productions 
 of the realistic school by a strong element of 
 romance; it is romantic, yet differs from the 
 writings of the school of pure romance, by an 
 intense and overwhelming reality. This is to 
 say much, because it implies a combination of 
 the best features of the two schools. I do not 
 think the statement that such a combination is 
 seen in your books would be either rash or 
 exaggerated. Your best work does seem to me 
 at once ideal and realistic in the best sense. 
 It deals with present-day life as if there were 
 something perennial in it that is, that those 
 elements of romance which some profess an 
 nability to discover, save in the remote past, 
 are really as much present now as ever they 
 were while it does not disdain those ap- 
 parently prosaic features which the romancists 
 so studiously ignore, but which are so essen- 
 tial to any picture of humanity that has any 
 approximation to completeness. 
 
 In my estimation, the great defect of our 
 latter-day fiction is the lack of catholicity and 
 
MR. THOMAS HARDY. 107 
 
 breadth. Hard and fast lines are drawn be- 
 tween realism and romance, as if in their essence 
 they were irreconcilably opposed to each other, 
 instead of being mutually dependent. They 
 are both in life, and until the world and human 
 nature change, they are likely to remain in it. 
 Why, then, should they not go hand in hand in 
 books ? Yet we have two distinct sets of novel- 
 ists : one loudly declaring that romance is chaff, 
 and sedulously eschewing it; the other that 
 realism is mud, and cannot be touched without 
 contamination. Is it that our writers lack com- 
 prehensiveness ? that their vision is not large 
 and strong enough to take in the whole scope 
 of life, as the great ones of past generations 
 took it in ? I can hardly think so. I am of 
 opinion that perversity and slavish fear of in- 
 consistency are at the bottom of most of the 
 evils that affect the fiction of to-day. In this 
 versatile age authors write criticisms as well as 
 novels. It seems almost compulsory on them 
 to start with some inelastic theory of life; a 
 theory that cannot be altered or stretched to 
 embrace the new conditions of the new times. 
 And such a theory, once propounded, binds a 
 
io8 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 critic hand and foot for life, unless he be a per- 
 son of quite phenomenal honesty and courage. 
 One cannot believe that many of the doctrines 
 one sees upheld by some worthy writers, with 
 so much ingenious sophistry, represent actual 
 beliefs. One can imagine a writer saying to 
 himself something like this : ' I have said so 
 and so on such and such an occasion. I think 
 differently now, but I am committed ; there is 
 my past deliverance, and honour is honour. I 
 must be true to myself, I must stick to my 
 word; at all hazards I must be consistent; what 
 I said once I must say now, and to the end of 
 the chapter heigh-ho.' To be consistent in 
 the eyes of the world, a man must practise in 
 his old age what he has preached in his youth, 
 and at moments when, perhaps, he was not 
 quite sober or responsible. In most cases ser- 
 vile consistency is only dastardly cowardice. 
 Only a few choice souls in each generation 
 have the courage to be nobly inconsistent ; 
 and, paradoxical as it may seem, it is precisely 
 this inconsistency that we are in such pressing 
 need of to-day. One is often forced to turn 
 one's back on a friend ; why should not a man 
 
MR. THOMAS HARDY. 109 
 
 turn his back on himself when he is conscious 
 of error ? We find Scott perpetually disregard- 
 ing his own dicta ; we find Byron doing the 
 same; and it is more than probable that had 
 Shakespeare condescended to give us a sys- 
 tematised theory of life he would have been at 
 variance with himself, ignoring creatively the law 
 he had asserted critically. 
 
 You are fortunate in never having hampered 
 yourself with theories. You have laid down no 
 hard and fast rules for yourself, saying ' thus and 
 thus will I do, and thus and thus will I not do.' 
 You take what you want without fear of offend- 
 ing any pet prejudice, or falsifying any blatant 
 oracle, and the consequence is that you draw 
 life as it really exists, with all its sad realism and 
 its fascinating romance. There are some things 
 in The Mayor of Casterbridge, for example, to 
 take one instance out of many, so realistic, that 
 even the culture of Boston has signified its ap- 
 proval of them ; yet the atmosphere of the book 
 is essentially romantic. Henchard is a roman- 
 tic character in some parts his career is pre- 
 eminently romantic ; but we follow him through 
 realities which might be paralleled and verified 
 
I io LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 in a hundred towns like Casterbridge, on any 
 day of the week. One thing only disturbs the 
 harmony and general congruity of the book. I 
 refer to Henchard's sale of his wife. That in- 
 cident, I confess, seems to me to verge rather 
 too closely on the improbable, if not on the 
 farcical or absurd. It would almost appear 
 as if at the outset you had mistaken the scope 
 and quality of your material, and intended the 
 book to be something different from what it is 
 something half whimsical, perhaps, and that 
 you only recognised your opportunity when you 
 were well on with your story. The conduct of 
 Henchard's wife, too, is rather I was going to 
 write disappointing, but surprising would be the 
 better word. I suppose there are women who 
 would tramp round the country, if not quite 
 willingly, at least quite meekly, to be offered for 
 sale at every public-house that is passed, and 
 who would go off quietly with casual sailors as 
 their new lords and masters, but it has never 
 been my fortune to come into contact with them. 
 Considering the frailty and natural curiosity of 
 man, it is, on the whole, just as well that such 
 doves are rare, for one might be tempted to in- 
 
MR. THOMAS HARDY. in 
 
 vest hence domestic complications, and public 
 expense through the necessity of increasing the 
 judicial force in the Divorce Court. But, while 
 taking exception to the sale of the wife, it must 
 be admitted that, in the midst of the incongruity, 
 there is a reality that reminds one of Henry 
 Fielding, or, perhaps more forcibly, of Jonathan 
 Swift, and almost convinces one that it is right 
 and proper for men to dispose of wives who 
 prove an encumbrance, and altogether natural 
 that wives should be obedient and submissive 
 in such transactions. In Gulliver, once get 
 over the absurdity of the Flying Island, and all 
 seems as natural as need be ; in like manner, 
 when one is past the sale of the wife in The 
 Mayor of Casterbridge there is nothing in it to 
 disturb credulity. In other respects the book 
 is, like all your books, masterly. Michael Hen- 
 chard is a splendid character one of the best 
 you have ever drawn. Even in his degradation 
 he is noble. He is a creature of impulses, 
 but of generous impulses, so that often when 
 he is doing that for which the law would 
 punish him, the reader's sympathies are 
 entirely with him. Had he been less mag- 
 
H2 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 nanimous one feels that he would have been 
 more successful (not as an artistic creation, but 
 as a man of business), but the interest would 
 not then be half so keen. His treatment of 
 Donald Farfrae is almost heroic. Not the loss 
 of his business, not the blasting of his dearest 
 ambitions, not insults and aggravations could 
 make Henchard anything else than generous. 
 Even when he and Farfrae have quarrelled out- 
 right, and have met to dispose of each other for 
 ever, Henchard's better nature does not sink 
 out of sight. 
 
 In the fight between the two men, for instance, 
 Henchard begins with the intention of killing 
 Farfrae and he could have done it, there is no 
 doubt about that and he ends by handing him 
 his life and reproaching himself for his disgrace- 
 ful behaviour. 
 
 Farfrae is hardly so good a creation. He is 
 more conventional, more bookish, the result of 
 reading rather than observation and inspiration. 
 You do not know the Scotsman as well as you 
 know the rural Englishman. Even Donald's 
 speeches are rather strange to one who knows 
 much of the country and people lying beyond 
 
MR. THOMAS HARDY. 113 
 
 the Tweed. One might, for instance, inquire 
 what Presbyterian cream is, and how it could 
 be as warreming to the stomach as Casterbridge 
 ale ? and a summer jarreny to Edinboro', would, 
 doubtless, be a very pleasant novelty. But even 
 Farfrae is conceivable and companionable. 
 
 Indeed, I think it would be quite impossible 
 for you to touch a character, however lightly, 
 without imparting to it something of the vitality 
 which genius alone can give. Let there be no 
 mincing of words. It may be a heresy, after 
 all that has been said and written, to. assert that 
 such a thing as genius exists at all, and that you 
 are as great a master of character as any novelist 
 whom this country has produced, scarcely ex- 
 cepting even Scott, or Fielding, or Thackeray 
 it may be a heresy, I say, to state as much ; but 
 then one must be heretical occasionally, in order 
 to be truthful. All your books that I have ever 
 read are 'masterly in minute characterisation 
 and delicious in humour.' I have spoken at 
 some length of Henchard, and called him one 
 of your best creations, but he is not, by a long 
 way, your only good one. Gabriel Oak, and a 
 score or two others, might be named in the 
 H 
 
114 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 same sentence. And for general excellence it 
 seems to me that you are almost, if not quite, 
 unmatched among contemporary novelists. 
 Such a book as The Woodlanders is enough to 
 make one feel proud of one's generation, and, 
 while it is always hard to predict what will live 
 and what will not, I think it might surely be 
 prophesied that that book will be known long 
 after your generation. So, also, one would be 
 inclined to say, will Far from the Madding 
 Crowd, though not without a touch of melo- 
 drama here and there that is hardly in your best 
 style; while, if fidelity and idealism count for 
 anything, Under the Greenwood Tree is as sure 
 of life as anything that has been done in our 
 day. 
 
 I understand you are no favourite with the 
 young lady who patronises the circulating lib- 
 raries. She is in the habit of making mar- 
 ginal notes in your books which are sometimes 
 more entertaining than complimentary. Precisely 
 why the fair one quarrels with you is, of course, 
 among the mysteries of the world, but it is 
 vaguely understood she considers herself slan- 
 dered in your female characters, so she calls 
 
MR. THOMAS HARDY. 115 
 
 you * that horrid man Hardy,' a description 
 which I suppose, to the feminine mind, expresses 
 the height of disgust. What would she have ? 
 Mr. Lang, in upholding Thackeray in the face 
 of detraction on the score of his female charac- 
 ters, says that people should really find fault 
 with nature, and not with the novelist who copies 
 nature. You might make a similar reply to 
 your feminine critics. So long as Bathshebas 
 are tolerably common in life, why should they 
 not have their portraits painted ? Your women 
 are not conventional. They are not of the 
 flaccid, pink and white type ; but neither, so 
 far as I can remember, are they inherently 
 wicked. Let us have living creations that is 
 the great want in fiction and that you give us 
 in your women as well as in your men. Let us 
 be thankful. 
 
 For power in describing scenery and natural 
 objects generally, I hardly know your superior 
 among novelists since Scott. Nay, I think that, 
 in some respects, you are above the master 
 himself. If he had the freer hand, you have, 
 perhaps, the truer. Everywhere you are just as 
 poetic as he, and generally far more minute 
 
n6 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 without being in the least tedious. There are 
 as choice bits of description in your books as 
 are to be met with in all fiction I had almost 
 said in all literature. In reading you, one often 
 witnesses a whole world bursting into bloom ; 
 we feel the fragrance in our nostrils, and all but 
 see the circulation of the sap in those woods 
 you so much delight to describe. We have 
 writers who are more fastidious about having 
 nature always in holiday attire, but none who 
 paints her more truthfully or feelingly as she 
 is ordinarily, nor is there anything in the least 
 sentimental in your love of nature. Rousseau 
 has not infected you with his weakness, and 
 you have not copied the lackadaisical whin- 
 ings of so many of his disciples. In a word, in 
 describing nature, as in all else you do, you are 
 strong, and not only strong, but delightful. 
 
1 1 6 LE TTEKS TO LI VING A UTHORS. 
 
 without being in the least tedious. There are 
 as choice bits of description in your books as 
 are to be met with in all fiction I had almost 
 said in all literature. In reading you, one often 
 witnesses a whole world bursting into bloom ; 
 we feel the fragrance in our nostrils, and all but 
 see the circulation of the sap in those woods 
 you so much delight to describe. We have 
 writers who are more fastidious about having 
 nature always in holiday attire, but none who 
 paints her more truthfully or feelingly as she 
 is ordinarily, nor is there anything in the least 
 sentimental in your love of nature. Rousseau 
 has not infected you with his weakness, and 
 you have not copied the lackadaisical whin- 
 ings of so many of his disciples. In a word, in 
 describing nature, as in all else you do, you are 
 strong, and not only strong, but delightful. 
 
1 1 6 LE TTERS TO LI VING A UTHORS, 
 
 without being in the least tedious. There are 
 as choice bits of description in your books as 
 are to be met with in all fiction I had almost 
 said in all literature. In reading you, one often 
 witnesses a whole world bursting into bloom ; 
 we feel the fragrance in our nostrils, and all but 
 see the circulation of the sap in those woods 
 you so much delight to describe. We have 
 writers who are more fastidious about having 
 nature always in holiday attire, but none who 
 paints her more truthfully or feelingly as she 
 is ordinarily, nor is there anything in the least 
 sentimental in your love of nature. Rousseau 
 has not infected you with his weakness, and 
 you have not copied the lackadaisical whin- 
 ings of so many of his disciples. In a word, in 
 describing nature, as in all else you do, you are 
 strong, and not only strong, but delightful. 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WIIITTIl-K. 
 
To MR. JOHN GREENLEAF 
 WHITTIER. 
 
 SIR, In many respects yours has been an 
 ideal life. By this I do not mean that you 
 have enjoyed immunity from the cares and 
 crosses, the heart-break and the strife, that, in 
 the main, are the portion of mankind ; that you 
 have passed your days in a bower of roses, trill- 
 ing daintily like a species of mocking-bird, as 
 the humour seized you, or in a library jingling 
 euphonious rhymes designed for the delectation 
 of the sensuous ear. Quite the contrary. Nor 
 do you altogether realise to one's imagination 
 that majestic picture of Milton's of a ' poet soar- 
 ing in the high regions of his fancy, with his 
 garland and singing robes about him.' You 
 have, indeed, soared in the high regions of 
 fancy, else had you never earned the honour- 
 able title of poet ; but for garland you have had 
 the smoke of battle on your brow, and your 
 
 117 
 
n8 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 singing robe has been a common jacket. Your 
 life has not been one of Sybaritic ease and 
 ample leisure, but of hot and arduous conflict. 
 Nevertheless I repeat that in many respects it has 
 been an ideal one, for your efforts have mightily 
 hastened a glorious march from darkness into 
 light, from mephitic pestilential swamps, suffo- 
 cating in their noisomeness, to breezy, healthy 
 heights, where the soul of manhood can expand 
 and breathe as becomes it. In the pride of 
 your young strength you girded the sword on 
 the thigh, and went fearlessly forth to fight the 
 powers of tyranny and oppression, with hardly 
 any support, save that sublime conviction which 
 has so often won the day in unequal struggles 
 the conviction that, ultimately, wrong must 
 perish and right must triumph. The battle 
 was fierce and obstinate, for the enemy was 
 strong, and long was the issue dubious, but in 
 the darkest hour you never faltered. With a 
 faith as unflinching as that of our own brave 
 Cromwell, you, and the noble ones banded with 
 you, held on, growing ever the more determined 
 the heavier the odds against you. When Church 
 and State opposed you, when Cabinet Ministers 
 
MR. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 119 
 
 denounced you as revolutionary and anarchic, 
 and ministers of religion strove to prove from 
 the Bible that the white man had a vested right 
 to traffic in human flesh, you defiantly and 
 scornfully asked regarding the free citizen 
 
 1 Must he be told his freedom stands 
 
 On slavery's dark foundations strong 
 On breaking hearts and fettered hands, 
 
 On robbery and crime and wrong ? 
 That all his fathers taught is vain 
 That freedom's emblem is the chain?' 
 
 Then the moneyed opposition, stung into 
 defiant rage, after prophesying failure, asked 
 what were you that you should presume to dis- 
 turb the economy of nature ; that you should 
 dictate to your superiors, the holders of human 
 property, whose rights were perhaps equal to 
 those of the Deity Himself? You were un- 
 known, you were obscure, you were without 
 influence, all of which was true ; but you were 
 not without zeal, and so you fought on, never 
 despairing, till at last the head of the hydra was 
 crushed, and in view of the concourse of evil 
 prophets, many of them, I regret to say, hailing 
 from our own free isle, you sheathed the sword 
 
120 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 and put on the victor's crown. It was a glori- 
 ous triumph ; and now in the serenity of old 
 age, with the consciousness of duty well done, 
 you are reaping your reward in a fame as wide 
 as the civilised world, and the lasting affection 
 of all lovers of liberty. It is a sweet and peace- 
 ful evening after a stormy day. You could not 
 yourself have desired a serener or a more vic- 
 torious close to the battle. Those who were 
 once most virulent in their abuse, and most con- 
 fident in their predictions of failure, are now 
 amongst your most enthusiastic eulogists. No 
 voice now dares to defend the monstrous wrong 
 at which you hurled your thunders more than 
 a generation ago. Slavery has been stamped 
 out of existence among the Anglo-Saxon race, 
 and on the bright roll of the vanquishers there 
 is no name that will prove more enduring than 
 that of John Greenleaf Whittier. 
 
 Edmund Burke said, in passing a panegyric 
 on Fox for so valiantly espousing the cause of 
 the people of India, that ' it was not only in 
 the Roman customs, but it is in the nature and 
 constitution of things that calumny and abuse 
 are essential parts of triumph.' For you the 
 
MR. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 121 
 
 calumny and abuse are past, buried with the 
 hatred which gave them birth, and only the 
 splendid victory and the memory of your own 
 heroic conduct remain. Burke and Fox, and 
 those associated with them in their high endeav- 
 our, did not succeed in all their noble aims 
 regarding the people of India. They did not, 
 nobly as they struggled, even ' secure to every 
 man the rice in his pot ' ; but you and those who 
 worked with you made a free man of every 
 slave within the bounds and dominions of the 
 United States. 
 
 I am well aware that in the popular mind 
 you are not much associated with those reforms 
 in the laws of your country which made so 
 many millions of bondmen free. We talk of 
 William Lloyd Garrison, and Wendell Phillips, 
 and Abraham Lincoln, but we too often forget 
 the claims of J. G. Whittier. Not that you would, 
 yourself put forward any claims or feel disap- 
 pointed at being passed over in commemora- 
 tion odes and orations ; but if, as the old pro- 
 verb holds, justice is a jewel, then each should 
 have his right reward. We honour the names 
 and memories of Garrison, Phillips, and Lincoln. 
 
122 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 Garrison was undoubtedly the protagonist in 
 the great drama. The young man in the little 
 back office, in the little back street of Boston, 
 who wrote and printed his obscure sheet him- 
 self, deserves the highest encomiums that tongue 
 or pen can pass on him. He was the first to 
 inaugurate a systematic campaign against slavery, 
 and was, moreover, I believe, the means of en- 
 listing your sympathies and services in the cause 
 of emancipation ; so that in connection with 
 the abolition movement his claims to honour 
 are paramount. Nor will the powerful aid of 
 Wendell Phillips the silvery-tongued, as his 
 compatriots loved to call him the greatest 
 orator of the century, as he has been styled by 
 so good a judge as your friend, the late John 
 Bright, his aid, I say, will not readily be for- 
 gotten by the friends of freedom. And surely 
 the world will long cherish a kindly feeling for 
 the memory of Abraham Lincoln. Old Abe 
 the homely, the genial, the shrewd, the fore- 
 seeing, the great, who was equally at home 
 whether entertaining the loafers about a country 
 grocery store with yarns, or directing the affairs 
 of a State ; the provincial attorney who piloted 
 
MR. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 123 
 
 a nation through the most gigantic conflict that 
 ever taxed the manhood and energy of a people, 
 the 'new birth of our new soil, our first 
 American,' as Mr. Lowell has described him. 
 Surely the world will never forget him. For 
 hardly in modern times has such a ruler, so 
 sagacious, so far-seeing, so patient, so courage- 
 ous, so hopeful, and so helpful, either risen from 
 the ranks of the people or stepped from the 
 purple. 
 
 But his work, and the work of the others I 
 have named, being purely political, is easily seen 
 and easily appraised, whereas the value of your 
 work is hard to reckon. When poetry is an 
 element in the work of reformation, it is almost 
 certain to remain unappreciated. The poet 
 works silently and mysteriously in the deep 
 places of the soul, and so ignorant and careless 
 are people that the impulse which he gives is 
 often ascribed to somebody or something else. 
 Poetry is vaguely acknowledged to have an 
 ennobling influence, but it is not thought to 
 have much potency as a political factor. Yet, 
 Mr. Lowell claims for it ' an influence more 
 durable and more widely operative than that 
 
124 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 exerted by any other form in which human 
 genius has found expression.' And beyond 
 question he is right. The influence of poetry 
 in any cause it espouses is absolutely incalcul- 
 able. When Fletcher of Saltoun said, ' Give 
 me the making of a nation's songs, and I care 
 not who makes its laws,' he was not overrating 
 the power of poetry, as might very easily be 
 proved. It has been said that the poems of 
 Homer did more than aught else to unite the 
 Grecian States. We see the influence of song 
 in the struggles of Scotland and Ireland. Ritson 
 assures us that the poetic squibs of the Cavaliers, 
 during the Commonwealth, kept alive the spirit 
 of loyalty, and ultimately contributed to the 
 Restoration ; and so I might go on giving end- 
 less instances of the power of song over a 
 people's hearts and minds. But why multiply 
 examples with your own case before us ? It is 
 a fact which scarcely requires assertion, that 
 your poetry proved a mighty help to those who 
 were labouring to free the African in America. 
 You, perhaps, more than any other, with the 
 single exception of Garrison, prepared the way 
 for that act of manumission which has made the 
 
MR. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 125 
 
 memory of Abraham Lincoln as lasting as the 
 human race itself. 
 
 A poet, however, cannot be an active and 
 conscious reformer with impunity. Much of 
 your poetry having been written for a specific 
 purpose, to serve a passing, if pressing, need, 
 has already lost much of its value as literature. 
 A recent and sympathetic critic has well said, 
 ' Mr. Whittier can afford to own that he has 
 sometimes failed to rise above the level of the 
 verse maker. A writer who celebrates the 
 events of the passing hour must expect the 
 lustre of some performances to fade with the 
 interests which called them forth, and in the 
 mass of Mr. Whittier's productions, representing 
 as it does the fruitage of a long and busy life, 
 there is much, undoubtedly, of an ephemeral 
 character ; but there is an abundance of durable 
 work of a peculiar and rare quality, and there 
 are certain themes which, by right of discovery, 
 this writer has made his own.' Yes, there is 
 much that is durable after the patriotic and 
 indignant outbursts of verse have been excised ; 
 much that might make that strong address of 
 Mr. Swinburne's as appropriate to you as to 
 
126 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 your compatriot and brother poet, Walt Whit- 
 man : 
 
 * O strong-winged soul with prophetic 
 
 Lips, hot with the blood-beats of song, 
 With tremor of heart-strings magnetic, 
 With thoughts as thunders in throng, 
 With consonant ardours of chords 
 That pierce men's souls as with swords, 
 And hale them hearing along ! ' 
 
 If you could not in comparison to the mighty 
 ones of the realm of song be called great, if 
 
 ' Not yours the song whose thunderous chime 
 
 Eternal echoes render ; 
 The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, 
 And Milton's starry splendour,' 
 
 it is certainly a song which sweetens toil. Of 
 you it might be said what you have yourself so 
 feelingly sung of Burns 
 
 ' Through all his tuneful art how strong 
 
 The human feeling gushes ! 
 The very moonlight of his song 
 Is warm with smiles and blushes.' 
 
 But though you invite comparison with Burns, 
 I do not mean to imply that you are his equal 
 in poetic power. You have lyric force, but you 
 have not his lyric force. You have insight, but 
 not his insight ; you have tenderness and passion, 
 
MR. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 127 
 
 but they are not his tenderness and passion. 
 Of his powers of caricature and satire you have 
 very little, and of his humour less. Burns has 
 sung the loves and lives of men and women as 
 they never were sung before his time, as they 
 have not been sung since, and as, in all pro- 
 bability, they never will be sung again. Your 
 work then has not the high poetic qualities of 
 Burns's, and that to be sure is no disparage- 
 ment to you, seeing that Burns is out and away 
 the greatest poet we have had since the days of 
 Milton. But you resemble him in many ways, 
 and follow at a distance where he leads. Like 
 him you sing of humble things ; like him you 
 take for your text that 
 
 ' Rank is but the guinea stamp, 
 The man's the gowd for a' that,' 
 
 only your sermon, as compared with his, is 
 pitched in a minor key. 
 
 Nor in another line which is fashionable just 
 now, and for which you have shown a fondness, 
 do you compare quite favourably with some of 
 the older writers I mean the ballad. Charming 
 and pathetic ballads you have indeed given us, 
 as any one who has read ' Mary Garvin ' and 
 
128 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 1 Maud Muller ' knows, ballads that are among 
 the best of their class produced in the present 
 century. But this century hardly excels in 
 ballad writing. Nothing that you have done, 
 nothing that any of your fellow-poets of recent 
 times have done, will stand comparison, say 
 with 'The Twa Corbies' or 'Fair Helen of 
 Kirkconnell.' What a vista these simple words 
 open to the imagination ! 
 
 ' There were three rauens sat on a tre, 
 They were as blacke as they might be ; 
 The one of them said to his mate, 
 " Where shall we our breakfast take ? " 
 " Downe in yonder greene field 
 There lies a knight slain under his shield." ' 
 
 No more is wanted ; the imagination fills up 
 all the rest, and one sees the ghastly banquet 
 spread with a vividness that is positively painful. 
 And what modern verse so well expresses agony 
 of soul as these fearful and tragic lines : 
 
 ' Curst be the heart that thought the thought, 
 And curst the hand that fired the shot, 
 When in my arms burd Helen dropped 
 And died to succour me ! ' 
 
 There is the force of incipient madness there, 
 the heart-strings are cracking, the whole being 
 
MR. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 129 
 
 is thrilled with the ecstasy of despair, and the 
 grim spectre is waiting for his prey in the back- 
 ground. We cannot produce such effects now 
 by the use of written words, probably because 
 we have lost our simplicity and cannot feel with 
 sufficient intensity. Perhaps those old ballads 
 are after all too intense ; perhaps their lightning- 
 like brevity strikes home too quickly to be alto- 
 gether comfortable. We like to take our plea- 
 sures quietly at any rate such pleasures as we 
 derive from reading poetry : and the man who 
 stirs us too strongly is quite as likely to get a 
 reprimand as a nod of thanks or a smile of 
 encouragement. Your ballads, and indeed all 
 your poems, give satisfaction without rousing to 
 any painful pitch of excitement. And they are 
 as pure and fresh and wholesome as the breezes 
 blowing among the pines of your own Bay State, 
 or the springs gushing from its hillsides. If 
 your poetry cannot in strictness be called great, 
 it is at least genuine, and that is no slight 
 thing at a time when verbal flippancies and 
 oddities of form are so often the care of our 
 poets. You are a true child of nature un- 
 spoiled by any affectation. What you write 
 I 
 
130 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 comes from the heart and goes to the heart. 
 You are no mere jingler of rhyme ; there is an 
 earnest aim in all your work ; and it has merit 
 enough, I believe, to hand your name down to 
 future generations. 
 
 But I should imagine that you are compara- 
 tively careless of fame. After all, there is but 
 one thing that can give solid comfort in the 
 sunset hour of life, and that is the conscious- 
 ness of having used one's talents in the highest 
 service to which it was possible to put them. 
 That consciousness is surely yours. You have 
 done what you could for your fellow-men ; you 
 have fought the battle of the weak, and helped 
 to raise the down-trodden and the oppressed. 
 There is a glory higher than the laurel of the 
 poet : the glory of good deeds done in behalf of 
 suffering humanity ; and it is yours. You are 
 a poet, a true and sweet one, and something 
 better. 
 
'ALGERNON CHARLES SWINKURN!-:. 
 
To MR. ALGERNON CHARLES 
 SWINBURNE. 
 
 SIR, It is strictly within the limits of truth 
 to say that you are one of the hardest literary 
 enigmas of the age. To guess what your guid- 
 ing principle in public is supposing such a 
 thing to be among your personal possessions 
 would require not merely human ingenuity and 
 penetration, but something of that high gift of 
 clairvoyance or second-sight which is thought 
 to be the peculiar attribute of witches and 
 beings of a superhuman order of intelligence. 
 In the public and the public surely includes 
 the literary conduct of most men and women, 
 there is some leading principle, by the aid of 
 which one may arrive at some sort of judgment 
 concerning the motive of their lives. In yours 
 there should seem to be nothing of the kind. 
 Your career, so far as I have ever been able to 
 
 131 
 
132 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 discover, is safely above the charge of congruity, 
 consistency, or unity. It is your forte to be for 
 ever disappointing. If one seize on what 
 appears to be a trait, in the fond imagination 
 that at last he has found a clew which will guide 
 him in the labyrinth of conflicting evidence, he 
 is apt to find it negatived at some important 
 turn, and come back on his hands like a dis- 
 honoured cheque. Nor are what in the writings 
 of others would be accepted as pledges to be 
 depended on. Fronti nulla fides. You have 
 the most daring, the most fascinating, the 
 most tantalising way of contradicting yourself. 
 You are consistent only in your inconsistency. 
 You would appear to treat each separate thought 
 and opinion, to which you give utterance, as if 
 they had no connection with past thoughts and 
 opinions, and were to have no connection with 
 those which were to come. Alike as a poet, a 
 politician, and a critic, you have ' gone back on 
 yourself/ as the Americans say, regardless, con- 
 temptuously regardless, of uniformity and the 
 opinion of the world. What you said yester- 
 day, with the solemnity and assurance of an 
 oracle, is flatly contradicted by what you say to- 
 
MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 133 
 
 day ; and it may, without misgiving, be assumed 
 that what you say to-day will be contradicted 
 by the judgment on men and things it may 
 please you to pass to-morrow. You are heroic- 
 ally true to yourself in this, that no past utter- 
 ance of yours can be relied on as giving the 
 faintest indication of your future utterances. 
 
 This, be it frankly admitted, implies no 
 ordinary degree of courage. The fear of in- 
 consistency is, on the authority of the old adage, 
 the fear of fools. And to be sure we all live to 
 learn. It is beyond all question better to dis- 
 card the opinions of the past, if we discover 
 them to be wrong, than to stick to them at the 
 expense of truth, and for the mere sake of 
 making a creditable appearance in the eyes of 
 men. But there are two sorts of inconsistency : 
 that which springs from deep sincerity, and that 
 which springs from sheer capriciousness. In 
 other words, there is the inconsistency of ad- 
 vancing reason and intelligence, and the incon- 
 sistency of perverse humours. I am not going 
 to say, nor to imply, which of the two is yours. 
 I might make a guess and be wrong, in which 
 case I should be doing you an injustice. Like 
 
134 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 a certain astute politician, of whom you have 
 doubtless read 
 
 ' I don't make no insinooations ; 
 I jest let on I smell a rat.' 
 
 Old-fashioned science taught us that our 
 substance changed once in every seven years ; 
 new-fashioned science, by one of its brightest 
 apostles, Dr. Holmes, tells us that, instead of 
 undergoing a change every seven years, our 
 bodies really change with every breath we draw. 
 Perhaps it is with the mental as with the mate- 
 rial part of us ; so that it may be every minute 
 witnesses several complete changes in the con- 
 stitution of the mind. Bailey, indeed, says 
 distinctly that ' man's mind is like the moon,' 
 and the moon, we know, is subject to change. 
 And your own case might be instanced as an 
 argument in favour of the theory. I am not 
 jesting, but going strictly and seriously on the 
 evidence furnished by your own published 
 works. If we are to attach any importance to 
 an author's dogmatic expression of opinion, you 
 certainly are addicted to change. You began 
 your career as a red-hot Republican ; to-day 
 you are a Tory of the Tories, as rank and 
 
MR, ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 135 
 
 haughty, and scornful as the best, or worst, of 
 those whose special function in life it is to 
 trample on the liberties of the people. In the 
 ardour of your youth, and the first full force 
 of your manhood, you sympathised nobly and 
 eloquently with every aspiration for freedom, 
 wherever such was to be detected. You were 
 with Poland and Hungary in their struggles to 
 throw off the yoke of a grinding and alien 
 power ; you were with France in her efforts to 
 bring the tenure of Courts to a close. No 
 living author has wasted so much frenzied 
 rhetoric in espousing the cause of the masses 
 against the classes. Yet, that there might be 
 nothing wanting in the incongruity and incon- 
 sistency of your public appearance, no sooner 
 does there come an appeal to your own door 
 than you hasten with more than aristocratic 
 rigour and haughtiness to stop the ear that you 
 may not hear, and harden the heart that you 
 may not understand ; nay, you, who might not 
 seem to have had any special call that way, turn 
 aside to tell an oppressed people that liberty 
 the liberty which Englishmen are never tired of 
 boasting about is not among the things to 
 which they have any right. 
 
136 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 In purely literary matters, likewise, we find 
 the same charming inconstancy to self dis- 
 tinguishing your career at nearly every point. 
 We find you raising an idol to-day, for no 
 better reason, as it should seem, than that you 
 might have the pleasure of demolishing it to- 
 morrow. Lest I might be accused of unfair- 
 ness and exaggeration by those who have not 
 had the pleasure of witnessing your almost in- 
 credible agility in changing front and colour, 
 let me quote one or two of your judgments side 
 by side. At one time we discover you praising 
 Byron, and pouring out your indignation upon 
 all who dare say a word against him. ' The 
 excellence of sincerity and strength,' you say, 
 * without these no poet can live ; but few have 
 ever had so much of them as Byron.' As the 
 natural corollary to that take the following : 
 ' He ' (Byron) ' can only claim to be acknow- 
 ledged as a poet of the third class, who now 
 and then rises into the second, but speedily 
 relapses into the lower element where he was 
 born. . . . How very bad it ' (his lordship's un- 
 fortunate poetry) c was ; how very hollow were 
 its claims ; how very ignorant, impudent, and 
 
MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 137 
 
 foolish was the rabble rout of its adorers. . . . 
 In all the composition of his highly composite 
 nature there was neither a note of real music 
 nor a gleam of real imagination.' Truly there 
 is no craven fear of inconsistency to be dis- 
 covered there. 
 
 Again, look on these two pictures : ' His 
 glorious courage, his excellent contempt for 
 things contemptible, and hatred of hateful men, 
 are enough of themselves to embalm and endear 
 his memory in the eyes of all who are worthy to 
 pass judgment on him.' 
 
 ' The malevolent and cowardly conceit of a 
 Byron, ever shuffling and swaggering, and cring- 
 ing, and back-biting in a breath.' Once more 
 look at the noble partisanship that flies to arms 
 whenever the name or fame of the revered one 
 is menaced. 'At the first chance given or 
 taken, every obscure and obscene thing that 
 lurks for pay or prey among the fouler shallows 
 and thickets of literature flew against him ; 
 every hound and every hireling lavished upon 
 him the loathsome tribute of their abuse; all 
 nameless creatures that nibble and prowl, upon 
 whom the serpent curse has fallen to go upon 
 
138 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 his belly and eat dust all the days of his life, 
 assailed him with their foulest venom and their 
 keenest fangs.' 
 
 later on there was nothing discoverable in 
 Bryon but * grandiose meanness,' and ' faithless- 
 ness.' Clearer judgment said that he had no 
 honour, that he was a sneak, had no great regard 
 for the truth, and, in a general way, was no 
 gentlemen. 
 
 Unhappy Byron ! To be kissed and caressed, 
 extolled, defended, and then cast into the gutter 
 and trampled on, is not a desirable fate. And, 
 what are we to say of him who does the kissing, 
 and the caressing, and the extolling, and the 
 trampling ? At one time the noble qualities of 
 Byron were enough ' to embalm and endear his 
 memory in the eyes of all who are worthy to 
 pass judgment on him,' but now now alas ! all 
 that is changed. Or, is it that Mr. Algernon 
 Charles Swinburne is no longer worthy to pass 
 judgment on him ? The moralist assures us 
 that man changes. 
 
 At one time you spoke respectfully of the 
 ' great character ' of Carlyle, but lest you should 
 be suspected of remaining too long of one mind 
 
MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 139 
 
 you have since denounced the 'great character' 
 in such Billingsgate as certainly is no credit to 
 the literature of the day. Nor are these the 
 only cases in which you exhibit your fascinating 
 variableness. 
 
 To take just one more instance out of many. 
 There was a time when you sent a fervent 
 message of admiration and esteem to the vener- 
 able poet of America Walt Whitman in this 
 strain : 
 
 ' Send but a song over sea for us, 
 
 Heart of their hearts who are free. 
 Heart of their singer, to be for us 
 More than our singing can be ; 
 Ours, in the tempest at error, 
 With no light but the twilight of terror, 
 Send us a song over the sea.' 
 
 But now Walt Whitman is a clod-hopper, with 
 as little music and as little imagination as the 
 charlatan and impostor Byron. In one of your 
 critical pieces you say, 'Sir Walter Scott was 
 neither a profound nor a pretentious critic, 
 neither a refined nor an eccentric theorist, but 
 his judgments have always the now more than 
 ever invaluable qualities of clearness and con- 
 sistency.' What a double-edged sword criticism 
 
140 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 is, to be sure ! I wonder if any writer coming 
 after us will have courage enough to say that 
 the writings of Algernon Charles Swinburne 
 have the invaluable quality of consistency. I 
 wonder, also, if any subsequent critic can find 
 it in his heart to attribute humility to them. 
 'There is small chance of truth at the goal,' 
 says Coleridge, 'where there has not been a 
 childlike humility at the starting-post.' Neither 
 at start, nor at finish, do you ever seem to me 
 to be oppressed by any humility. 
 
 And yet, let me candidly confess, that to my 
 mind you have given us some of the very best 
 criticism which has directed the taste of this 
 generation. Those very qualities which under 
 the influence of prejudice make you so perverse 
 and so misleading, make you, when free from 
 prepossession, a valuable and companionable 
 critic. To the first-rate critic three things are 
 essential, perspicacity, sympathy, and inde- 
 pendence. The last you invariably have, the 
 two former you have when you are at your 
 best ; as, for instance, in your Study of Shake- 
 speare, and your Study of Victor Hugo, and 
 your various criticisms on Shelley. I question 
 
MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 141 
 
 if there is in the language a better 'Study' 
 of Shakespeare than yours. It is sympathetic ; 
 it glows with noble appreciation ; it is lumin- 
 ous and just; in some parts really creative, 
 and it always transcends the commonplace. 
 The best way to understand Shakespeare is, of 
 cdurse, to read him, but those who wish to get 
 at his best points by the short and easy byway 
 of criticism cannot do better than take you for 
 their guide. And, indeed, inasmuch as Shake- 
 speare is often obscure in his greatness, the 
 most intelligent readers might profit by a peru- 
 sal of your book. I do not say that you light 
 up the whole of Shakespeare that perhaps 
 were impossible save to an intellect as great as 
 his own but you do illumine in many dark 
 places, and even where such is not the case, 
 your writing is valuable and interesting simply 
 as a piece of literature. 
 
 Your Hugo, also, is a masterly performance 
 masterly in its grasp, its liberality, its contempt 
 for conventionalities, its force, its sweep and 
 splendour of diction; In it, better than in any 
 recent criticisms which I can at the moment of 
 writing think of, one sees how happily and 
 
142 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 beneficially the understanding and imagination 
 can work together. It would be hard, I think, 
 to give a more compendious estimate of Victor 
 Hugo and his work in a single sentence than 
 the following : ' In the first poem ' (the * Con- 
 templations ') 'a sublime humility finds such 
 expression as should make manifest to the 
 dullest eye, not clouded by malevolence and 
 insolent conceit, that when this greatest of 
 modern poets asserts in his own person the 
 high prerogative, and assumes for his own spirit 
 the high office of humanity to confront the 
 darkest problem, and to challenge the utmost 
 force of intangible and invisible justice as of 
 visible and tangible iniquity ; of all imaginable 
 as of all actual evil ; of superhuman indifference 
 as well as of human wrongdoing; it is no 
 merely personal claim that he puts forward, no 
 vain egotistic arrogance that he displays; but 
 the right of a reasonable conscience, and the 
 duty of a righteous faith, common to all men 
 alike, in whom intelligence of right and wrong, 
 perception of duty or conception of conscience, 
 can be said to exist at all.' 
 
 The book abounds in high and noble pas- 
 
MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 143 
 
 sages passages that lift one away out of the 
 common atmosphere altogether, and reveal 
 other worlds than we are accustomed to look 
 upon. 
 
 It is written of course in a spirit of frank 
 admiration, almost idolatry. There are many 
 expressions throughout it that one's calmer 
 judgment might be inclined to tone down; many 
 epithets that the critical mind, in its normal icy 
 condition, might be disposed to consider hyper- 
 bolical; but the judicious reader will overlook all 
 that and think only of the noble admiration of one 
 poet for another, and the eloquence that dazzles 
 and enchants. Your Victor Hugo is, with the 
 possible exception of your Shakespeare, if even 
 it can be made an exception, your best work in 
 prose. It is a work which almost deserves to 
 live beside the works of even 
 
 1 That one whose name gives glory, 
 One man whose life makes light, 
 One crowned and throned in story 
 Above all empires' height.' 
 
 Your work as a poet still remains to be con- 
 sidered. In it, as in so much of your prose, you 
 are an unequal, an erratic, and tantalising crafts- 
 
144 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 man, much given to paradox and often not a 
 little mysterious. Your poetry is hard to test 
 by any accepted standard, for you are a man of 
 new departures. You cannot be considered a 
 useful poet, as Mr. Birrell once designated your 
 opponent in so many rights, the late Matthew 
 Arnold. I am not quite sure, indeed, what the 
 author of Obiter Dicta meant by the word use- 
 ful. Either my memory is treacherous, or he 
 was not particularly explicit on the point. He 
 could not, I should think, have meant that a 
 poet ought to enter into competition with stock- 
 brokers, and advise us, in versified circulars, as 
 to the best and readiest means of making money. 
 That could hardly have been his meaning. Nor 
 could he have meant that our singers ought to 
 give hints on household management. I have 
 no doubt whatever that recipes in verse, and 
 axioms of domestic economy in rhyme, would be 
 highly interesting, though, I dare say, the cook 
 would prefer her instructions, and the housewife 
 her hints, in plain prose. The exigencies of 
 rhyme are so great that mistakes would almost 
 certainly be made if the poet were to invade the 
 kitchen. Therefore Mr. Birrell could not have 
 
MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 145 
 
 meant that. Nor could he have meant that it 
 is the poet's duty to consider whether or not the 
 working-man ought to buy his provisions in co- 
 operative stores. All that, I should imagine, is 
 outside the sphere of the singer. Of course 
 poets can be useful in a way. They are known 
 to be authorities on all erotic questions, so that 
 they might fairly be expected to help an 
 awkward and bashful bachelor in the choice 
 of a wife. But so far as things practical are 
 concerned, this is about all that a poet in his 
 poetical capacity could do. To be sure there 
 are higher and less direct ways of being useful ; 
 but in these I do not think that your work is of 
 any appreciable value. I do not think any one 
 would go to you for solace in the hour of trouble, 
 or for encouragement in the hour of doubt and 
 despair. What, then, are your claims as a poet ? 
 Perhaps your own answer is the best that could 
 be given. * The test of the highest poetry,' you 
 say in one of your essays, ' is that it eludes all 
 tests. Poetry in which there is no element at 
 once perceptible and indefinable by any reader 
 or hearer of poetic instinct may have every 
 other good quality, but it is not poetry above 
 K 
 
146 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 all, it is not lyric poetry of the first water. 
 There must be something in the mere progress 
 and resonance of the words, some secret in the 
 very motion and cadence of the lines, inexpli- 
 cable by the most sympathetic acuteness of 
 criticism. Analysis may be able to explain how 
 the colours of this flower of poetry are created 
 and combined, but never of what process its 
 odour is produced.' Excellently put, and true, 
 too, in a sense. But you know extremes meet. 
 If the highest poetry is indefinable, so, also, is 
 the lowest. Genius and insanity, philosophers 
 tell us, walk hand in hand, and their utterances 
 are sometimes hard to distinguish ; so that while 
 it may be perfectly true that the highest poetry 
 is indefinable, such a test does not always suffice 
 to show us what really is poetry, and what is not. 
 Mr. Robert Montgomery was considered a great 
 poet until Macaulay took him in hand ; and his 
 poetry certainly was indefinable. I am not sure, 
 however, that its flowers had any odour, unless, 
 being rooted in the nether regions, they smelled 
 of brimstone ; so that might have been a guide 
 in estimating their value. Apart, however, from 
 all whimsical speculations, if we are to test you 
 
MR. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. 147 
 
 by your own standard you certainly are a poet. 
 Your poetry, as I have said, does not comfort 
 nor give heart, differing in that respect from the 
 poetry of the world's greatest sons of song ; but 
 much of it is perfectly indefinable, in the best 
 sense of that word. Like Shelley's and Cole- 
 ridge's it depends a great deal on 'the mere 
 progress and resonance of the words.' It is not 
 stimulating poetry that is so dependent. It is 
 not the poetry of Shakespeare, nor the poetry of 
 Dante, nor even the poetry of Wordsworth. 
 But, in your case, it is poetry all the same. As 
 a specimen let us take the following from ' The 
 Garden of Cymodoce ' 
 
 ' O flower of all wind flowers and sea flowers, 
 
 Made lovelier by love of the sea 
 Than thy golden own field flowers or tree flowers 
 
 Like foam of the sea- facing tree ! 
 No foot but the sea-mew's there settles 
 
 On the spikes of thine anther-like horns, 
 With snow-coloured spray for thy petals, 
 
 Black rocks for the thorns.' 
 
 There is not much there to lay hold on, yet 
 one feels instinctively that it is poetry; and 
 most of your ' thunderous verse ' is as light and 
 intangible. As a dramatist I cannot notice your 
 
148 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 work further than to say, that in parts of your 
 dramas you seem to be at your best ; and that 
 here and there, particularly in Mary Stuart and 
 Atalanta in Calydon, you show a high and rare 
 power, and a grasp of character, for which such 
 poems as ' Songs before Sunrise ' would not 
 prepare one. 
 
1 1. M.I, CAINE. 
 
To MR. HALL CAINE. 
 
 SIR, If I were to make a prediction as to 
 which of the younger novelists of England should 
 ultimately take the lead should, to quote 
 Mr. Buchanan, ' rise in the end to genuine 
 eminence, to the sad sunless aureole of fame,' I 
 think I should name you. To many I dare say 
 my choice would appear singular, for there are 
 some of your younger contemporaries in the 
 field of fiction who have been received with 
 fourfold the acclaim ever accorded to you. 
 Yet, in spite of this discouraging fact, there 
 is not one among those who are still on the 
 upward grade whose work seems to me at once 
 so excellent a thing as it stands, and so splendid 
 an earnest of what is to come. The Deemster, 
 for example, besides being a fine piece of work 
 in itself, full of power and vital human interest, 
 is perhaps the most magnificent pledge of com- 
 ing achievement in the realm of imaginative 
 
 149 
 
150 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 prose that has been given to the English people 
 for at least a decade. Indeed, it is a book 
 so rich in promise that one might not un- 
 reasonably regard its writer as the possible 
 successor of Scott. Certainly in it he has what 
 Mr. Lowell calls * the large stride of the elder 
 race.' The book belongs to the big, the broad, 
 the strong and impressive order of fiction. It 
 has a spaciousness of air, an unconventionally, 
 and a reach of imagination which make it rare 
 among recent novels. Apart from the prospect 
 which it holds out, if I were to call it one of 
 the best things done by any living English 
 novelist I might be accused of exaggeration, 
 yet I think the statement would be tolerably 
 near the truth. Some of Mr. Hardy's novels, 
 and at least one of Mr. Blackmore's, surpass it, 
 in my estimation, in the requirements of high 
 art as well perhaps as in general power, but 
 that, I think, can be said of no work but theirs. 
 In saying this, I do not forget the claims of Mr. 
 Meredith, whose wit and penetration are un- 
 equalled among latter-day writers of fiction, if 
 not indeed among writers of fiction of any day. 
 Moreover, I suspect that he excels you in single 
 
MR. HALL CAINE. 151 
 
 scenes. In these he is sometimes unmatchable. 
 Some parts of The Egoist are almost Shake- 
 spearian in their impressiveness, and are as- 
 suredly among the strongest in the entire range 
 of British fiction ; yet I think that as an organic 
 whole, The Egoist hardly equals The Deemster ; 
 and I should be disposed to say that if Sir 
 Willoughby Patterne is one of the characters of 
 the century, Daniel Mylrea is another. There 
 is, of course, no. resemblance between the two 
 characters; nor are your literary methods the 
 least like those of Mr. Meredith. He is finical 
 and elaborate, an artist in phrase, a wit taking 
 the keenest delight in sparkling and pungent 
 witticisms, and prepared at any moment to 
 sacrifice the heart for the head. You, on the 
 other hand, are comparatively indifferent to 
 literary decoration, and pay more heed to the 
 emotions than to the intellect. Elaborate, in a 
 literary sense, you certainly are not, nor do you 
 pay any assiduous court to the Comic Muse. 
 You have apparently no time to coin epigrams ; 
 if you have humour you never jest ; satire you 
 indulge in sparely, and your moral reflections 
 are rather hammer-strokes than sermons. Dante 
 
152 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 himself is not more economical of words. In 
 The Deemster the effects are rendered with 
 almost unexampled rapidity. The imagination 
 seems all aglow, and will not be checked in 
 pouring out its shapes. Indeed, if one were 
 inclined to cavil at anything in the book, one 
 would say that the pace is too impetuous, that 
 the artist, eager to catch his own conceptions 
 in their virgin force and freshness, dashed them 
 on canvas, with little regard to finish or tech- 
 nical detail. This, I take it, is because you 
 approach your subject from the human instead 
 of the literary side. Such is not the method in 
 fashion now, but it is the method of all the 
 masters, from Cervantes and Scott down. 
 Humanity first, literary embellishments after- 
 wards. With you the latter receive perhaps 
 too scant attention ; and, as a consequence, 
 your work, compared with that of some of your 
 contemporaries, has an occasional aspect of 
 bluntness. But, on the other hand, no exer- 
 cise of technical skill, no verbal ornamentation, 
 could add one whit to the vividness of the 
 pictures presented. One forgets the abruptness 
 of style in the absorbing interest of the story, 
 
MR. HALL CA1NE. 153 
 
 and the fierce masterfulness of the characters ; 
 for they have a primitive strength that is over- 
 whelming. 
 
 One hears, indeed, enough, and more than 
 enough, about style ; and is glad to have it 
 sometimes thrust into the background \ to feel 
 that the life of a book lies in the matter, not in 
 the manner, and that forceful thought is never 
 without fit expression. We are all stylists in 
 this age. We can play tricks with words that 
 would astonish our ancestors, could they hear 
 them, as I dare say they will astonish posterity. 
 From M. Daudet to Mr. Stevenson and Mr. 
 Howells, the cry is so much for style, that one 
 is often reminded of Richter's gibe, that want 
 of matter makes one think too much of lan- 
 guage. The inordinate and irrational stress 
 which is at present laid on style in some 
 quarters makes it with many not a means, but 
 an end. It is as if the mathematician thought 
 only of his instruments, or the chemist of his 
 crucible. Mr. James, for instance, is so clever 
 a stylist that in those curious books which he 
 designates novels he can altogether dispense 
 with humanity and its sorry traits and passions, 
 
154 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 and with plot and its ridiculous evolutions, 
 and entertain the reader with neat phrases, and 
 elegant and elaborate paragraphs about nothing. 
 A wonderful achievement, betokening great 
 ingenuity ; but surely literature ought to be 
 something more than a species of legerdemain. 
 Do not suppose that I depreciate style. In a 
 Hawthorne I enjoy the grace and ductility of 
 language, but then Hawthorne has a forceful 
 thought here and there, by way of variety ; and 
 it may be it is this concession to old-fashioned 
 tastes that draws me along. The James school 
 is too * superior ' to do anything of the sort. 
 It will put the dictionary on the rack for you 
 with pleasure ; if you want more, well, it will 
 answer with many regrets that what you desire 
 is not in its line. And it must be admitted 
 that anything like force would indeed be an 
 odd anomaly in its pages. As Mr. Buchanan 
 recently reminded us, it is exceedingly ill-bred 
 to think, feel, or act strongly, according to the 
 James code of manners. 
 
 I am afraid you are ill-bred, for, while you 
 are comparatively negligent of style, you think 
 forcibly, and would seem to feel forcibly, for 
 
MR. HALL CAINE. 155 
 
 you make the reader feel forcibly \ and what 
 say Horace and Mr. Walter Besant on that 
 matter? Mr. Howells, to be sure, laughs at 
 the idea that an author is ever moved by his 
 own work. But then it might be questioned 
 whether Mr. Howells's laugh is conclusive on 
 the point. There are scenes in The Deemster 
 and A Son of Hagar that could hardly have 
 been written in cold blood. At any rate, I 
 think it would be hard to read some of them 
 in cold blood that one, for instance, in which 
 the blind Mercy Fisher and her child appear 
 for the last time, or that other on the Tynwald 
 Hill, when a father strikes himself to the heart 
 in sentencing the son he loves to perpetual 
 banishment, or that further one on the top of 
 Orris Head, where the cousins fight to the 
 death. These are one or two scenes from 
 among many that might be named which I 
 think might move even Mr. Howells. The 
 death of Mercy Fisher is as pathetic as that of 
 her betrayer, Hugh Ritson, is tragic, while the 
 scene on the Tynwald Hill is a thing which 
 once read of can never be forgotten. The 
 integrity, the stern justice of the judge, and the 
 
156 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 agony of the father in cutting off, as it were, 
 his own right arm, are admirably described. I 
 seriously do not think that Walter Scott or 
 Victor Hugo has anything better. Certainly 
 neither ever rises to a greater tragic height. 
 
 But your strength does not lie so much in 
 -detached scenes as in ' the entirety of expres- 
 sion and the cumulative effect of many par- 
 ticulars working toward a common end.' Like 
 a true artist your study is to evolve character, 
 not to present it in brilliant patches. And the 
 manner in which the characters of Hugh Ritson 
 and Daniel Mylrea are unfolded is, throughout, 
 masterly, and shows true sense of proportion as 
 well as the continuous working of the imagina- 
 tion. Your men are better than your women, 
 though Mercy Fisher and Mona are well and 
 naturally drawn. Perhaps as you proceed you 
 will pay more attention to your female char- 
 acters, and thus give more sweetness with 
 your strength. 
 
 And as you are still young, your future will 
 be watched with interest by all who have the 
 welfare of our English literature at heart. You 
 have shown that you are capable of great things ; 
 
MR. HALL CAINE. 157 
 
 you have also shown, or at least hinted, that 
 your aims are as high as your talents. In a 
 recent magazine article you wrote that, ' Already 
 the world seems to be growing weary of feeble 
 copies of feeble men and feeble manners. It 
 wants more grit, more aim, more thought, and 
 more imagination. . . . Dugald Stewart said 
 that human invention, like the barrel organ, 
 was limited to a specific number of tunes. 
 The present hurdy-gurdy business has been 
 going on a longish time. We are threatened 
 with the Minerva Press over again, and the 
 class of readers who see no difference between 
 Walter Scott and John Gait. But, free of the 
 prudery of the tabernacle and the prurience of 
 the boulevard, surely the novel has a great 
 future before it. Its possibilities seem to be 
 nearly illimitable. . . . To break down the 
 superstitions that separate class from class ; to 
 show that the rule of the world is right, and 
 that, though evil chance plays a part in life, 
 yet that life is worth living, these are among 
 the functions of the novelist.' 
 
 In truth the time seems ripe for energetic and 
 aggressive action in extending the scope of the 
 
158 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 novel. It has long enough conformed to anti- 
 quated models, and been a slavish caterer to 
 illiberal to use no harsher word tastes. But 
 it has not altogether been the fault of the un- 
 lucky novelist that so much of our fiction has 
 been, and is, ' a tawdry and hollow article suited 
 for immediate use and immediate oblivion.' 
 The blame must be shared by the public, and 
 to some extent also by its tutors the critics. 
 While conditions of life were perpetually chang- 
 ing, while civilisation was giving her luminous 
 and benignant impress to whole new continents, 
 while science, to borrow an expressive phrase 
 from Mr. Gladstone, was progressing by leaps 
 and bounds, while the stream of general know- 
 ledge, swollen by new streams and unexpected 
 confluents, was overflowing all ancient boun- 
 daries, and deluging the country of thought far 
 and wide, the venerable standards of fiction, 
 surviving mutation and vicissitude, remained as 
 fixed and unalterable as the laws of the Medes 
 and Persians, and the unhappy novelist had the 
 choice of conforming or starving. Being human, 
 he preferred to have bread, and so art suffered. 
 But there are signs of a change ; better things 
 
MR. HALL CA1NE. 159 
 
 seem to be in store for us, and the fact that 
 The Deemster has enjoyed a fair measure of 
 popularity shows a hopeful tendency in public 
 taste. 
 
 A great deal has been and is being written 
 about realism and romance, as if the two were 
 divided by a fence, or as if great writers were 
 not realistic and romantic by turns, and when 
 it suited them. And it is certain that in giving 
 the novel a wider scope, the novelist will press 
 both realism and romance into his service, for 
 in each lie essences of humanity which he can- 
 not well neglect. But I fancy, though I express 
 an opinion with all diffidence, that pure romance 
 can scarcely ever regain the position it once 
 occupied, and I should be inclined to regard 
 the phenomenal success of certain recent ex- 
 ploits in the way of revival rather as confirm- 
 ing than contradicting this view. The diffusion 
 of intelligence, the progress of science, the 
 greater familiarity with, and better comprehen- 
 sion of, the phenomena of Nature, the keen, 
 mechanical, materialistic bent of the age (I 
 speak in no theological sense) seem to me fatal 
 to the supremacy of pure romance. The most 
 
160 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 potent accessories to illusion are gone. Super- 
 stition no longer stalks at large to assist and 
 stimulate the imagination. Faith is dying, and 
 a spirit of haughty agnosticism is abroad. The 
 same power which increases our material com- 
 forts diminishes our imaginative pleasures. 
 Nature, in bestowing one talent, demands the 
 surrender of another, and this exchange and 
 barter, if beneficial on one side, is inimical on 
 the other. We are not in all respects the same 
 as our fathers have been. We are more cul- 
 tured than they were, more sceptical, more 
 cynical, and (in our own estimation at least) 
 harder to impose on. It would be absurd to 
 predict that we shall never have another great 
 romance on the lines of Ivanhoe or Don Quixote. 
 To genius all things are possible. Given a Titan 
 and we shall have titanic achievements. But 
 the fact that once upon a time Samson walked 
 placidly off with the Gates of Gaza hardly 
 warrants us in expecting to see the performance 
 repeated. The feat of writing romance in the 
 old sense is daily becoming more and more 
 difficult, and not less from the change in the 
 writer himself than from the altered attitude 
 
MR. HALL CA1NE. 161 
 
 of the audience. The imagination of a cul- 
 tured man is apt to cower before his intellect, 
 ashamed of its airy nothings; and if in so 
 recent a figure as Goethe we see the highest 
 culture and the boldest imagination working 
 in unison we but behold the exception that 
 proves the rule. 
 
 The great novel of the future is likely to 
 steer a middle course between Scylla and 
 Charybdis. It will combine the best elements 
 of realism and romance. The coming novelist 
 will do away with all arbitrary limitations. 
 Remembering that the primitive element in 
 man is never wholly eradicated, he will not 
 neglect the romantic, he will not disdain to 
 minister to the emotions ; and, always conscious 
 of the forward march of the world, the passing 
 away of so many old things, and the advent of 
 so many new, he will strive to give aesthetic 
 expression to the manners and forms of life 
 about him. But he will copy nature as an 
 artist, not as a photographer, and he will take of 
 the temporary only what tends to illustrate the 
 perennial. He has no right to be a bald his- 
 torian or chronicler of small talk, or scientist, or 
 L 
 
1 62 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 political economist, or even a philanthropist 
 except in so far as the best art is always phil- 
 anthropic. His mission will be to exhibit 
 human motives and passions under the new 
 lights of the new times. He will delight in 
 novel situations. He will not shrink from 
 showing human frailty; but he will not gloat 
 over it nor divorce it from the virtues by 
 which, save in rare and exceptional cases, it is 
 accompanied. And above all and beyond all, 
 he will not forget that it is of man's soul to 
 man's soul he is speaking. You, I believe, 
 keep this in mind, and it is mainly because 
 of this that you have done so well in the past, 
 and give so rich a promise for the future. 
 
ROBKKT i.ouis STI-:VI-:\SO\. 
 
To MR. ROBERT LOUIS 
 STEVENSON. 
 
 SIR, Your countryman, Carlyle, has said 
 that 'could ambition always choose its own 
 path, and were will in human undertakings syno- 
 nymous with faculty, all truly ambitious men 
 would be men of letters.' Not only have you 
 chosen the envied path, but you are treading 
 it with very eminent success. A very wide 
 circle of readers is waiting impatiently to catch 
 your every word, if not quite as if you were a 
 Delphic oracle pouring out celestial wisdom, at 
 least as if you were a wizard that could for a 
 little charm them into forgetfulness of the fret 
 and fume of this feverish life. Moreover, the 
 critics are almost unanimously with you, more 
 unanimously perhaps than with any other British 
 author of the day, certainly far more unani- 
 mously than with any of our younger authors; so 
 that it may be justly said you have conquered, 
 
 163 
 
164 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 and are fairly entitled to the honours and the 
 spoils of the victor to the laurel crown and 
 the golden guineas, or, as vulgar people say, to 
 the pudding and the praise. 
 
 It is no mean achievement to make a name 
 in English letters even to-day ; for despite the 
 dolorous croaking of pessimists, and the sapient 
 head-shaking of octogenarians, filled with fables 
 of the past, there is really a good deal of 
 literary talent in England at present. If she 
 has fewer intellectual giants than in ages that 
 are gone, the average stature is incomparably 
 greater. If no Hamlets or Tom Joneses or 
 Kenilworths are being produced, we turn out 
 manufactures in every way superior to the Oliver 
 Twists and the Pelhams of a preceding genera- 
 tion. So long as we have men like yourself 
 labouring in the realm of fiction we may hold 
 up our heads with self-respect, and feel that our 
 appearance, if, not very portly or imposing, is at 
 least eminently respectable. We might be out 
 of place in a chariot, but we are quite equal to 
 the dignity of a gig. 
 
 Public men, it was long ago observed, are 
 public property ; this is peculiarly the case with 
 
MR. ROBERT LOUfS STEVENSON. 165 
 
 authors. I do not exceed my proprietary rights, 
 then, in glancing briefly at what you have ac- 
 complished, and examining the ground whereon 
 your fame rests. You have been active in many 
 departments. According to your own statement 
 you have written innumerable dramas, which 
 have never seen the light. Presumably they were 
 not worth publishing ; for it is not your habit to 
 withhold anything that could be of any possible 
 interest to your literary admirers. So con- 
 siderate are you in this respect, indeed, that at 
 an early age you have given the world personal 
 memoirs such as most authors reserve either for 
 posthumous publication, or for publication at 
 the very close of their careers. But there is no 
 valid reason in the world why an author should 
 not publish his memoirs when it suits him ; and 
 the time is perhaps at hand when a writer will 
 make his first appeal to the public with a volume 
 of gossip about his baby playmates, and the 
 troubles of teething - time. Your memoirs, 
 though not without a touch of egotism, as some 
 think, are so interesting that we shaU be glad to 
 have more when you have matter and leisure. 
 Your chief work, however, has been in the 
 
1 66 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 realms of poetry, criticism, and romance. I 
 dare say you would yourself be readiest to ac- 
 knowledge that, if you had not been first favour- 
 ably known as a prose writer, your poetry would 
 hardly have gained you recognition. You have 
 publicly attributed your success to your dire 
 industry ; and it is in reading your poetry rather 
 than your prose that we see how just is your esti- 
 mate of your own endowments. 'An infinite capa- 
 city for taking trouble' does not always fitly take 
 the place of inspiration. In your A Child's Garden 
 of Verses there are many neat, sweet, and happy 
 little things suited to the tender age of childhood, 
 but nothing, or very little, that would prove 
 nutritious at a maturer period of life. I do not 
 mean to imply that the book is aught but what 
 it should be. It is excellent of its kind, only 
 that kind is hardly high enough to justify one in 
 giving you the title of poet. In Undenvoods 
 you take a more ambitious flight, and as ambi- 
 tion, while carrying a man triumphantly over 
 many obstacles, exhibits his weakness no less 
 than his strength, so in this book the limitations 
 of your genius are sharply emphasised. Through- 
 out the volume the mighty impress of Burns, to 
 
MR. ROBER T LO UIS STE VENSON. 1 67 
 
 quote a phrase from Mr. Lowell, is distinctly 
 visible. Like Shakespeare, Burns is so exceed- 
 ingly natural that we are often betrayed into the 
 self-delusion of imagining that what he has done 
 with such apparent ease we also can do. The 
 number of dramatists that the Stratford poacher 
 has made is probably beyond computation, and 
 Scotland is overrun with minor poets who would 
 never have sung a note but for the Ayrshire, 
 ploughboy. You are, of course, a man of too 
 wide a culture to limit yourself to a single model, 
 nor would your sense of fitness ever permit you 
 to go wholly on the lines of one who must ever 
 remain, more or less, an alien to the great mass 
 of the English people. Burns can never be 
 thoroughly appreciated by Englishmen, and it 
 is to Englishmen that you especially appeal. 
 Still, in Underwoods, the influence of Burns is 
 paramount, particularly in what I may call the 
 personal section of the book. In short the work 
 is imitative, and hardly takes high rank for 
 originality. Perhaps it was merely a tour de 
 force. If so, we may read it and enjoy it, and 
 lay it aside, treating it in no more serious spirit 
 than did the author. 
 
1 68 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 In criticism you show to more advantage. 
 To be sure, you are not absolutely without 
 bias, and a biased critic is not to be implicitly 
 trusted. You have called Tom Jones dull ; and 
 thereby drawn down on yourself the solemn 
 admonitions of Mr. Augustine Birrell, and the 
 sportful and partial anger of your friend, Mr. 
 Andrew Lang. We cannot let you call the work 
 of Henry Fielding dull and rank you as a great 
 critic. But you have made amends for this little 
 fantasy by being judicial in other directions. 
 
 Your judgments on Scott, and Dumas, and Vic- 
 tor Hugo, and Hawthorne, are, in the main, just; 
 you have sufficient perspicacity to see, and suffi- 
 cient candour to acknowledge, that Zola is not 
 a blockhead ; and you have courageously con- 
 demned the moral delinquencies of your poetic 
 model, Burns. But while you have done some- 
 thing in verse, and given us one or two volumes 
 of agreeable criticism, your true sphere is fiction. 
 It is on your romances that you would yourself 
 rest your claim to fame ; and it is as a writer of 
 romance that you are most widely known and 
 most warmly admired. 
 
 When Kidnapped^ which, I understand, you 
 
MR. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 169 
 
 consider your ' best, indeed your only good, 
 story,' was published, one enthusiastic journal 
 said it was as good as anything in Carlyle, and 
 far truer. I confess the aptness of the remark 
 did not strike me on perusing the book ; but 
 that is of little consequence. Another journal, 
 equally generous, called it as good as Rob Roy. 
 This last was very high praise indeed, and must 
 have been peculiarly gratifying to you for three 
 reasons first, because the journal which gave 
 the verdict was one of weight and influence ; 
 second, because you place Scott at the head of 
 all writers of romance ; and, third, because Rob 
 Roy is, on your own confession, an especial 
 favourite of yours. That you could wholly 
 agree with the verdict, however, is more than I 
 believe ; for you can hardly imagine yourself 
 just yet entitled to share Sir Walter's pedestal. 
 
 For myself, on reading Kidnapped I did 
 not think it quite as good as Rob Roy. But 
 I thought that for a boy's book, it was in many 
 respects too good that your fine gift of charac- 
 terisation was virtually thrown away ; for as you 
 once observed yourself, boys do not care much 
 for the study of character. If they did there 
 
1 70 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 would be but a poor chance for some books 
 which are enjoying considerable popularity. It 
 struck me, then, that your study of character 
 was too fine, especially your study of the cha- 
 racter of Alan Breck Stewart. But while think- 
 ing this, the manner in which that gentleman is 
 drawn gave me the keenest delight. ' Here,' I 
 said to myself, curiously enough, anticipating 
 Mr. Augustine Birrell, ' here we have another 
 splendid portrait added to the gallery of Scot- 
 tish heroes of fiction.' That was my first im- 
 pression. Further reflection, however, brought 
 an ugly suspicion that the portrait was not en- 
 tirely original after all; that, in fact, it had 
 merely been taken down and touched up ac- 
 cording to the latest canons in art. I felt as if 
 I had met the redoubtable Alan Breck some- 
 where before ; in other vestments, it is true, and 
 engaged in other pursuits, but surely the same 
 man. Where had I seen him ? Was it in some 
 previous state of existence, or only in a dream 
 of the night ? Sudden as a flash came the re- 
 velation. To be sure I had seen either him or 
 his double before, once when he was surrep- 
 titiously lifting his neighbour's cattle, and again 
 
MR. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 171 
 
 when he was holding complacent argument, 
 like the daring rascal that he was with a magi 
 strate in the Tolbooth of Glasgow. { Ah, eh, oh ! ' 
 I exclaimed, falling, in my surprise, into the man- 
 ner and dialect of the worthy Bailie Nicol Jar- 
 vie. ' My conscience, it 's impossible and yet 
 no! conscience it canna be; and yet again 
 Deil hae me ! that I should say sae, ye robber, 
 ye cateran ye born deevil that ye are to a' bad 
 ends and nae gude ane can this be you ? ' and 
 calmly came the laconic rejoinder. * E'en as 
 ye see.' I may be mistaken, but it certainly 
 seems to me that the lineaments of Mr. Stewart 
 too distinctly suggest those of Mr. Macgregor. 
 However, while saying this, let me hasten to 
 confess that I think Kidnapped the most de- 
 lightfully written boy's book which has appeared 
 for at least a decade. It is the work of one 
 who is an artist, and not a mere sensation- 
 monger. 
 
 Of Prince Otto likewise one must speak with 
 qualification. It is full of charming writing, 
 but the characters are occasionally shadowy, 
 and no amount of literary decoration will 
 make a work of fiction tolerable in which the 
 
172 LE TTERS TO LI VI NG A UTHORS. 
 
 characters are not under all circumstances and at 
 all times thoroughly alive. The reader scarcely 
 succeeds in getting into sympathy either with the 
 fantastic prince or his scheming wife ; and it is 
 hard to believe that you ever were in thorough 
 sympathy with them yourself. TJiere is one 
 part of the book, however, that could scarcely 
 be improved, and that is the description of the 
 flight of the Princess Seraphina when she finds 
 the game up and the palace on fire. There 
 is something like real inspiration in that pas- 
 sage. The picture of the conflagration, and the 
 wretched flying woman remains with the 
 reader long after he has forgotten all else. 
 
 Of The Black Arrow it is better I should 
 not speak, for I hold that an author should be 
 judged by his best performances, not by his 
 worst. 
 
 Besides novels and tales you have written 
 short stories, in which you have done yourself 
 perfect justice. With the single exception of 
 Mr. Thomas Hardy, no living British writer so 
 well understands, or so well succeeds in, this 
 extremely difficult branch of fiction as yourself. 
 But here again we have to be on our guard 
 
MR. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 173 
 
 against superlatives and false standards. The 
 short story does not flourish in these Islands. 
 They do these things better not only in France, 
 but among our own kinsmen in America. Com- 
 parisons, as Dogberry sagely observed, are odo- 
 rous, indeed they are malodorous, and I will 
 not mention names ; but I dare say you would 
 be among the first to admit that so far as short 
 stories are concerned British authors are not in 
 the running with their Transatlantic brethren. 
 Nevertheless your stories are distinctly good. 
 Thrawn Janet is a first-class ' bogle ' story of 
 the kind one might hear any winter's evening 
 by the ingle of a Scottish farmer or peasant, and 
 The Merrymen never lacks interest if it some- 
 times lacks probability. 
 
 And now, just a word regarding your work 
 in general. Mr. Andrew Lang has stated that, 
 since Thackeray, no Englishman of letters has 
 been gifted with, or has acquired, so charming 
 or original a style as yours. That is substan- 
 tially true. Your style is facile, quaint, and 
 suggestive : often it is brilliant and always dis- 
 tinctive. Moreover, it has that subtle charm 
 which lures one on one knows not how. In 
 
174 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 drilling yourself in the art of the novelist you 
 have studied widely, and one sees in your work 
 the influence of many masters. You have bor- 
 rowed something from Hugo, from Dumas, from 
 Scott, from Poe, from Hawthorne, and many 
 others. But in the matter of style you are 
 chiefly indebted to Hawthorne the best stylist, 
 to my mind, in the entire range of that huge 
 mass of fiction which is widely styled English. 
 To say that your style resembles his is no more 
 than the truth. There are parts of Prince 
 Otto which Nathaniel Hawthorne might have 
 written; especially might he have written that 
 part, already referred to, which describes the 
 flight and the bitter feelings of the Princess 
 Seraphina. That I think is your high water- 
 mark so far as style goes, and to say that it is 
 worthy of the author of The Scarlet Letter is 
 but to say that it would be hard to match it in 
 contemporary literature. 
 
 Nor in the enumeration of your qualities 
 should your humour be forgotten. Nothing is 
 rarer in literature than true humour; and in 
 these days of spasmodic and dreary jesting, 
 when the Comic Muse so often presents the 
 
MR. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 175 
 
 appearance of a draggled and broken-winded 
 jade when her skirts are so often foul with 
 the mire of the slums, and her breath hot with 
 the fumes of the pot-house, it is pleasant to 
 meet her in her native state, trim, light, 
 graceful, and clean, a shepherdess in her 
 laughing robes. Your humour is genuine and 
 spontaneous, and pervades all you write. It 
 does not show itself in caricature, nor in horse- 
 play, but rises naturally from the heart of the 
 matter like a gushing spring from the hard 
 rock to refresh the thirsty wayfarer. It is in 
 your humour that you are most original, and 
 perhaps most delicious. 
 
To MR. ANDREW LANG. 
 
 SIR, If shades be capable of envy, and one 
 sees no reason for doubting their capacity in 
 that way, that of the late Mr. Crichton, some- 
 time student at St. Andrews, must occasionally 
 have a rather uncomfortable time of it. To be 
 poet, critic, sportsman, wit, student, and pro- 
 fessor of Folk Lore, confidant and biographer 
 of fairies, novelist, parodist, anthropologist, 
 magazinist, journalist, humorist, and many other 
 -ists besides was not given to the most versatile 
 of foregoing men. He has, indeed, a tolerable 
 record in languages, if his history be not a fable, 
 or a ' muckle white lee,' as his own and your 
 countrymen would say ; but in literature his per- 
 formances were, after all, insignificant. Possibly 
 the dolorous ghost might complain, if it con- 
 descended to discuss the point at all, that 
 opportunities were scantier in the good old days 
 than in these degenerate ones ; that disputations 
 
 176 
 
ANDREW LANG. 
 
MR. ANDREW LANG. 177 
 
 in colleges were not so favourable for the dis- 
 play of mental power as the columns of the 
 daily, weekly, and monthly press. And perhaps 
 the ghost would be right. The world, on reliable 
 authority, is moving forward \ opportunities are 
 on the increase. And there is of course a cor- 
 responding increase in the power and ingenuity 
 of man. Every son of Adam progresses of 
 sheer necessity. Darwinism has proved that 
 he cannot stand still; nor can he go back to 
 his roost and caudal appendage, which ought to 
 be a consoling reflection. He is being con- 
 stantly ' evolved,' much as the ingenious novelist 
 evolves a character. Fresh faculties are, perhaps, 
 added ; at the very least old ones, which have 
 lain dormant since the days of our arboreal 
 ancestors, are developed and sharpened so as 
 to perform functions that are essentially new. 
 Hence it is that the pretensions of the Admirable 
 Crichtons of the past can hardly be matter for 
 serious consideration to-day. One would think 
 that the estimable geniuses of other days must 
 have something of the thankful feeling of Sir 
 Walter about having lived in ' the early days of 
 tradition,' when literary claims were not so 
 M 
 
178 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 narrowly scanned as they are to-day, and when 
 versatility, not to speak of universality, was 
 practically a thing unknown. At any rate it has 
 been reserved for this wondrous century, which 
 has witnessed so many striking phenomena, 
 to mark with admiration the achievements of 
 one whose only imperfections might seem to be 
 that he is too sparing of sentiment, and some- 
 how disinclined to do justice to *M. de Howells ' 
 and his sturdy compatriots. 
 
 Philosophers are wont to observe that man 
 is necessarily the creature of his age. None 
 can escape the influence of his time. Shake- 
 speare could not, nor Dante, nor Homer; and 
 how should lesser men expect to succeed 
 where the Titans failed ? You are part of your 
 age, yet not entirely of it. In some ways you 
 are a more satisfactory representative of the 
 latter half of the nineteenth century than the 
 Rev. Robert Elsmere himself. He represents 
 its narrowness ; you represent its breadth, its 
 many-sided culture, its neat and dainty univer- 
 sality. Our Time has as many arms as Briareus, 
 and can use them all with equal ease and equal 
 facility. You are 'grave and gay, lively and 
 
MR. ANDREW LANG. 179 
 
 severe,' trifling and trenchant, as the need arises, 
 and one never catches you in a role which you 
 do not play to perfection. You not only do 
 your 'level best' at all times and under all 
 circumstances, but your level best is so good 
 that one could hardly wish it better. In all this 
 you represent your age; for despite a great deal 
 of violent assertion to the contrary, thorough- 
 ness is not unknown. Where you do not 
 represent your age is in its propensity to stoop. 
 I am inclined to think that, notwithstanding 
 your ' infinite capacity for taking trouble,' there 
 is not much of the grubbing Teuton in you. 
 You have more of the light and sportful spirit 
 of Ariel, than the heavy, dull respectability and 
 conscientiousness of purpose which we value so 
 much in the adorable Dryasdust. The good 
 creature is useful, he has a great talent for 
 going to the bottom of things, but unhappily he 
 often remains there ; he is the dray-horse of 
 literature, fit for drawing heavy loads over 
 cobble-stones ; your sphere is in the upper 
 regions, where the movement is swift and grace- 
 ful, and whence there is a comprehensive view 
 without danger of contamination. 
 
i8o LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 One sees in you the odd anomaly of a 
 romantic scientist, or a scientific romancist 
 which you will, a polished scholar who loves and 
 clings to the barbarous element in humanity, 
 a shrewd man of the world who might be 
 more than half suspected of a lingering belief 
 in certain pleasant superstitions regarding the 
 supernatural and other kindred things, which 
 are usually objects of contempt to the enlight- 
 ened man about town. On the critical side 
 none is keener, on the romantic or imaginative 
 few more credulous or blindly extravagant. On 
 occasion you can assume the callous, cold- 
 blooded manner of Matthew Arnold with an 
 appearance of perfect naturalness. You can 
 deal with the scientific novel in a scientific spirit, 
 and with the theological novel with a super- 
 ficial look of delight, as if you really relished 
 rattling among the dry bones in the desolate 
 valley. But the enjoyment is superficial, for 
 the occupation, I take it, is not much to your 
 taste. You are fonder of following the vagaries 
 of Walter Scott than of working out the perplex- 
 ing problems of the realist and the theologian. 
 One can imagine you throwing yourself on the 
 
MR. ANDREW LANG. 181 
 
 sofa, after the style of a certain idle reader, and 
 exclaiming : ' Be mine to read eternal novels 
 by Walter Scott.' You write of brownies, bogles, 
 water-kelpies, border-feuds and forays with more 
 fervour than of the spiritual struggles of Deacon 
 Boozle, or the minute investigations of the 
 heart troubles of Miss Jemima Mildjoy, of 
 Boston, Mass. You have a keener relish of 
 Homer and Haggard than of the school which 
 describes life ' as it is.' Yet here again you are 
 odd, for you have defended good Henry 
 Fielding against the attacks of Mr. Stevenson, 
 and admitted perhaps reluctantly and regret- 
 fully, but still made the admission that Mr. 
 Henry James has accomplished the phenomenal 
 feat of writing three or four really interesting 
 novels about ' the young person ' of the capital 
 of New England. This shows that you can 
 appreciate the beauty and utility of the micro- 
 scope and the scalpel with an effort. But 
 admiration for the thew and sinew of manhood j 
 the spear and battle-axe, would seem to be in 
 the blood with you. Vigorous, buoyant, down- 
 right, above all successful, slaughter thrills you 
 with a grateful sense of satisfaction, perhaps 
 
1 82 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 because in that particular you like thoroughness, 
 while dissection or vivisection would seem to 
 leave only an impression of petty sacrilege, or 
 cruelty. And to be sure, Sir Henry Curtis 
 hewing down rebellious Africans is a more 
 imposing spectacle than Silas Lapham under- 
 going an examination of his emotional machin- 
 ery. Every man to his taste. Some are born 
 heroic, some realistic, and there really seems to 
 be room enough in the world for both classes. 
 
 I have long thought that you are somewhat 
 too severe on our Transatlantic friends. To 
 the dead, indeed, you have done full justice. 
 Hawthorne has had your discriminating praise, 
 so has Poe, so has Longfellow. But the living 
 cannot boast of it save in the minutest frag- 
 ments. The robust young man from Topeka, 
 Kansas, in top-boots, buckskin, and sombrero, 
 has little but your sarcasm. He is an innova- 
 tion in literature, and you do not seem to take 
 to him kindly. I do not know whether you 
 have studied Cousin Jonathan at home ; I 
 should fancy, from the vigour of your prejudices 
 against him, you have not ; but if you will take 
 the word of one who has ' been there,' he is 
 
MR. ANDREW LANG. 183 
 
 really a very fine fellow in his own way. To 
 be sure he has his imperfections a good crop 
 of them ; who has not ? He is brawny and 
 uncouth, and his spirits are sometimes too 
 boisterous for the sedate and the delicate. Be- 
 sides, he is not without conceit. He makes 
 himself out to be taller than he really is, and 
 pretends a total indifference to British opinion. 
 In reality, however, the dear fellow is very fond 
 of England, likes to visit it, and is extremely 
 sensitive to English criticism. It hurts him 
 when you sit on him. And I do not know that 
 it is good policy to laugh at him too much. 
 Washington Irving the most genial spirit in 
 American literature long ago pointed out the 
 danger of treating America as if she were in 
 every way mental, moral, and social an in- 
 ferior ; and a living author, whose pride or 
 patriotism is not greater than his general excel- 
 lence as a writer, has complained that Americans 
 are treated too much like children or clowns by 
 John Bull. 
 
 Moreover, it seems to me that on purely 
 intellectual grounds you scarcely mete out 
 justice to the Americans. Every man has a 
 
1 84 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 weak point, most men have many such points, 
 and to some it might appear that your weak- 
 ness lies in what I may call your American 
 side. There is much to be said against the 
 Americans as a people, as there must be against 
 any people so young, so strong, so prosperous, 
 and with such an unexampled retrospect and 
 prospect much to be said if one cared, or it 
 were profitable to say it. But if they have their 
 deficiencies, they have likewise their merits, 
 and all that they would ask for themselves is 
 that those merits be impartially considered. 
 ' We must submit ourselves to the European 
 standard of weights and measures,' says Mr. 
 Lowell. 'That we have made the hitherto 
 biggest gun might excite apprehension (were 
 there a dearth of iron), but can never exact 
 respect. That our pianos and patent reapers 
 have won medals does but confirm us in our 
 mechanical and material measure of merit. 
 We must contribute something more than mere 
 contrivances for saving of labour, which we 
 have been only too ready to misapply in the 
 domain of thought and the higher kinds of 
 invention. In those Olympic games, where 
 
MR. ANDRE W LA NG. 1 8 5 
 
 nations contend for truly immortal wreaths, it 
 may well be questioned whether a mowing- 
 machine would stand much chance in the 
 chariot races ; whether a piano, though made 
 by a chevalier, could compete successfully for 
 the prize of music.' They demand only simple 
 justice, and, to my mind, it is only simple 
 justice to let them have it. It is curious that 
 you, who have generally such an open eye for 
 all kinds of excellence, whether it be of the 
 grave or gay sort, should be so persistently 
 ' down ' on the Americans, who, I think, have 
 at present amongst them some first-rate artists. 
 I do not think that it requires any effort at 
 least I have never found it anything else than 
 a great pleasure to read the novels of, let us 
 say, Mr. Cable or Miss Murfree. And in regard 
 to criticism, I read the * Editor's Study ' in 
 Harper's, and ' At the Sign of the Ship ' in 
 Longman's, with the same profit and delight. 
 As a certain poet says, ' Oh wad ye tak' a thocht 
 an' men" in that American business. The 
 sarcasm which is so keen, so cutting, so destruc- 
 tive, so entertaining, would not then be under 
 the suspicion of occasional unfairness. 
 
1 86 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS, 
 
 For the rest, what is one to say? That if 
 you are not precisely the first of existing English 
 writers, you are by far the most versatile. I 
 think the statement might be seriously made, 
 and still keep on good terms with truth and con- 
 science. There may be writers who are more 
 trenchant force is not, perhaps, your forte ; 
 there may be those who tear the heart out of a 
 subject more pitilessly ; there may even be a 
 few who are more diverting ; but I cannot at 
 present recall the name of one who goes round 
 the entire circle of intellectual activity with 
 greater apparent ease, or more consummate 
 grace. From Herodotus to Hawthorne, from 
 Theocritus to Thackeray, from Homer to Mr. 
 Rider Haggard, from Lucretius to Longfellow, 
 from the Customs of Primitive Man to the 
 Curiosities of Parish Registers, you glide with 
 easy and fascinating mastery. In most men 
 this versatility would be fatal. The productions 
 of * the mob of gentlemen who write with ease ' 
 are not always, as Sheridan pointed out, the 
 easiest reading in the world. Not infrequently 
 they are a sore tax on patience. But you have 
 yet to learn the art of disappointing us. It is 
 
MR. ANDREW LANG. 187 
 
 an art which, unfortunately, most writers master 
 comparatively early in life, and go on practising 
 with an assiduity and success that are occasion- 
 ally too much for the most friendly of readers. 
 But you, whether we agree with you or not 
 (and I may say that, on many things, your 
 views are not mine), are always interesting in 
 the sense in which Mr. Haggard's young lady 
 would use that word. Wherein lies the magic ? 
 In the subjects you choose ? As often as 
 otherwise they are perfectly commonplace in 
 themselves. ' I heard the Rev. Henry Ward 
 Beecher the other night,' said Mr. Sala once. 
 * I was delighted with him, and didn't agree 
 with a word he said.' What is this magic that 
 charms without convincing ? It clearly lies in 
 the man, and not in the matter. 
 
 One cause of your success with cultivated 
 readers is, undoubtedly, that you are primarily 
 a poet. There is something of the sunshine of 
 the fancy in all you write, even your most 
 hurried notes. The harp is struck carelessly 
 no, not carelessly, but lightly, and often there 
 is only a passing note of music, but, like the 
 ' Mesopotamia ' of Whitfield, it never fails to 
 
1 88 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 fetch the reader. Another reason for your 
 success is that you are a humorist; and still 
 another, that you are never too much in earnest. 
 Earnest people are often rude, often tread, 
 and not always by accident, on the toes of 
 their best friends. We should as soon expect 
 clumsiness from M. Daudet, or cleanliness from 
 M. Zola, as rudeness from you. You can be 
 stern, you can be keen, you can hit mercilessly 
 in the joints of the harness, but your manner 
 will always be unimpeachable. You have 
 called Mr. Norris the successor of Thackeray. 
 Will you allow me to say that, of all living 
 writers, you seem to me to come nearest the 
 great master's manner. That rare penetration, 
 that perfect lucidity of thought, that light, yet 
 effective style, which seems merely sportive at 
 the first glance, yet cuts like a Damascus blade, 
 which belonged to Thackeray, belong also to 
 you. But I confess there are times when it 
 seems to me Thackeray might have hit straighter 
 from the shoulder with advantage. An honest 
 knock-down blow is a thing to admire, and be 
 grateful for on occasion. You are not, any 
 more than was the author of the Roundabout 
 
MR. ANDREW LANG. 189 
 
 Papers, a Hercules that is, you are averse to 
 the use of the club, when the club might be 
 more serviceable than the lighter weapons of 
 offence. One would like to see you ' tremen- 
 dously in earnest ' a little oftener. One would 
 like to see you take hold of the more serious 
 problems of life in a more serious spirit at 
 times. We may live in Mayfair now, but it 
 will not always be so. Life may have much 
 comedy in it, but it has more of tragedy, and 
 there are times when persiflage is barely toler- 
 able. Sentiment is a bad thing to parade, but 
 we like a writer at times to make us feel that he 
 has got a little of it in the closet. You have 
 just a trifle too much of the gift of self-repres- 
 sion, which is so needful to an artist, and yet 
 so fatal when exercised to excess. One often 
 thinks that if you had a touch of sentiment to 
 make your brilliancy mellow, you would be the 
 most charming of modern writers. 
 
 That you are capable of seriousness no one 
 who has read you will for a moment doubt. 
 Perhaps no more convincing instance could be 
 given of this little-known characteristic of your 
 literary genius than the sonnet with which you 
 
190 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 preface your translation of the Odyssey. I con- 
 sider it one of the most beautiful things in 
 recent literature : 
 
 ' As one that for a weary space has lain, 
 
 Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine, 
 In gardens near the pale of Proserpine, 
 Where that ^Eaean isle forgets the main, 
 And only the low lutes of love complain, 
 And only the shadows of wan lovers pine, 
 As such an one were glad to know the brine 
 Salt on his lips, and the large air again, 
 So gladly, from the songs of modern speech 
 
 Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free 
 Shrill winds beyond the close of heavy flowers, 
 And through the music of the languid hours 
 They hear, like ocean on a western beach, 
 The surge and thunder of the Odyssey. ' 
 
 A little more in that high, free spirit would be 
 very grateful. 
 
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. 
 
To MR. WILLIAM DEAN 
 HOWELLS. 
 
 SIR, Up to the date of the latest literary 
 intelligence from the West the Great American 
 Novel, so often announced with a triumphant 
 blare of trumpets from various centres of en- 
 lightenment throughout the Republic, and ever 
 postponed for certain mysterious, but, doubt- 
 less, satisfactory reasons this promising and 
 much desiderated work, in which we are to 
 have a full and faithful presentation of the 
 heterogeneous elements of American life, from 
 Alaska to New Orleans, from Maine to Cali- 
 fornia, has not yet made its appearance. Until 
 it shall have been written, or, at any rate, until 
 it shall have been published, it would be 
 something of an exaggeration to style any 
 American writer truly national. In a literary 
 congress of the world America could accredit 
 no single individual to represent her. The 
 
 191 
 
192 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 representation would have to be by districts, as 
 if Transatlantic authors could attain only to the 
 dignity of being parochial representatives, and 
 all owing to the delay in publishing that book. 
 Why is its publication so long deferred ? What 
 is wanting for a consummation so devoutly to 
 be wished as a full-length portrait of the fair and 
 spacious giantess, who on one side cools herself 
 in the surf of the Atlantic, and on the other suns 
 herself along the golden Pacific ? To outsiders, 
 like myself, not acquainted with matters of 
 internal policy, the question is pertinent and 
 interesting, and the failure of the authorities to 
 answer it might beget doubt of the ability of 
 Transatlantic writers to cope with the subject. 
 We frequently hear of the splendid oppor- 
 tunities of the American novelist. The fresh- 
 ness of his materials, we are told, the fluidity of 
 the social state, the sharp contrasts of manners 
 and complexions afford an artist a chance of 
 making a picture of unmatchable magnificence 
 and impressiveness ; but the picture itself has 
 not, so far as I am aware, yet reached these 
 shores. It would be idle to say that we have 
 any satisfactory likeness of the giant nation 
 
MR. WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 193 
 
 lying within the boundaries of the United 
 States. Delightful Vignettes, indeed, we have 
 in plenty ; for the American artist, if not always, 
 so virile or robust as one could wish, is rarely 
 lacking in deftness. We have glimpses of the 
 Republic and her people, which are often 
 beautiful, and not infrequently suggestive and 
 stimulating. Mr. Lowell, with rare and con- 
 summate art, gives us that singular combination 
 of worldly shrewdness and moral fervour rural 
 New England; Mr. Bret Harte, with almost 
 unmatched dramatic power, draws California in 
 her shirt sleeves, if I may be permitted to use 
 the expression a pick in one hand and a pack 
 of cards in the other ; Louisiana has her laureate 
 in Mr. Cable, and Tennessee in Miss Murfree ; 
 Ole Virginia and Georgia have skilful and 
 sympathetic delineators in Mr. Stockton and 
 Mr. Joel Chandler Harris; while Boston, the 
 Hub of the Universe, as Dr. Holmes face- 
 tiously called it, has had ample attention at the 
 hands of Mr. Henry James and yourself. Thus 
 we have sketches in abundance ; but the 
 finished and organic picture, which should 
 fitly present the multitudinous and diverse 
 N 
 
194 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 elements which constitute the national life we 
 have not. And why ? one is again tempted to 
 ask. Is it that the American novelist is abashed 
 by the dimensions of the subject? Beyond 
 question it is a large one, and one, moreover, 
 requiring no ordinary mental power, if it were 
 to be treated as it ought. Perhaps, indeed, 
 only a Shakespearian amplitude of intellect 
 were equal to its demands, for it embraces 
 not only America proper, but Europe, Asia, 
 and Africa as well. The great American 
 Novel when it does, in the course of the 
 centuries, arrive will be a phenomenal, an un- 
 paralleled book. I do not expect to have the 
 pleasure of perusing it. Nor, considering its 
 universal scope, am I altogether sorry; for 
 if writers have their limitations, so, also, 
 have readers; and too vast a book cannot 
 but prove a great weariness of both flesh and 
 spirit. 
 
 America, then, has hitherto produced no 
 writer who, in any strict sense, could be called 
 truly representative ; but this much, I think, 
 might truthfully be said, that, of all her writers, 
 none is more truly representative than yourself, 
 
MR. WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 195 
 
 Not only have you depicted, with inimitable 
 grace and unmatched fulness, certain char- 
 acteristic features of American life, but you 
 show fewer traces of foreign influence at least 
 of British influence than any other American 
 writer I could at present name. While most of 
 your writing compatriots have been eager to 
 display their tincture of European culture (and 
 European culture in America generally means 
 English culture), you have stood manfully on 
 your instincts, and stuck to your plain Repub- 
 lic. In this, as I have said, you are almost 
 alone ; for a thin cosmopolitanism is at once 
 the ambition and the vice of American men of 
 letters. Even so sturdy a patriot as Mr. Lowell, 
 whose pen has so often and so eloquently 
 defended his country and poured a withering- 
 sarcasm on her enemies and detractors, has ex- 
 pressly stated that in literature, at least, America 
 must take example by England. You assert 
 the contrary, and not only assert it, but practise 
 it. Things of indigenous growth are good 
 enough for you. Boston, in your estimation, 
 may vie with Athens, and New York would 
 seem to have tastes infinitely superior to those 
 
1 96 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 of London. Perhaps, aesthetically, Chicago is 
 above Edinburgh. 
 
 The English people are obviously little to 
 your mind. If we are to judge from your 
 books, you consider them always arrogant, and 
 often not a little insolent. Their conceit would 
 seem to be quite unmatchable, their modes of 
 thought to be antiquated, their views insular 
 and narrow, their novels mostly absurd, their 
 criticism entirely contemptible. When you 
 notice them, it is chiefly to contradict and 
 deride. When you want the weight of an 
 authoritative name, you do not choose from 
 their considerable list ; you pass them by con- 
 temptuously, and give your patronage to France, 
 or Italy, or Russia. You so far bow to tradi- 
 tion, indeed, as to speak with approval of 
 Shakespeare; you even borrow from him on 
 occasion, as witness some of your titles ; but as 
 a rule, when you are in the mood to admire, 
 you give British authors a wide berth, and 
 British critics a still wider one. 
 
 It were of course vain to quarrel with you for 
 all this. I trust I am as good a patriot as my 
 neighbours, and should as little like to see my 
 
MA\ WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. 197 
 
 country menaced or my countrymen maligned, 
 but candour must admit that there is a measure, 
 a considerable measure, of truth in many of 
 your strictures on questions affecting English 
 literature and English taste. I think it was 
 Emerson who said that a man of character 
 likes to be told of his faults ; and I am sure 
 that the English nation, as a whole, has char- 
 acter enough to receive your reproofs in a 
 spirit profitable for edification, and not only 
 that, but to admire your unswerving pertinacity 
 and your sturdy independence. On matters of 
 taste, it is perfectly clear that no oracle can be 
 final and conclusive ; and it is not to be ex- 
 pected that the British people will cast aside 
 the convictions which come of the accumulated 
 experience of centuries of high and earnest 
 endeavour to embrace doctrines which, however 
 admirable in their way, and however potent for 
 good in some communities, would often have 
 little to recommend them here, except their 
 novelty. The people of these Islands are, by 
 temperament and tradition, conservative. They 
 have a dread of what they style new-fangled 
 notions, a dread so keen that they often reject 
 
1 98 LE TTERS 70 LI VI NG A UTHORS 
 
 valuable counsel, for no more logical reason 
 than because it recommends innovations. This 
 is a failing which really arises from a virtue. 
 Conscious of a past which, in many respects, 
 transcends in glory all that is recorded of the 
 nations of antiquity, they feel with uncommon 
 acuteness the weight of responsibility resting 
 upon them. Their temper is to conserve at any 
 cost of sacrifice what has been gathered and 
 built up by a brave and noble ancestry ; hence 
 they are too often blind to the opportunities 
 and possibilities of the present. Like house- 
 holders who have amassed a competency, they 
 are timid in experimenting, lest experiment 
 should endanger their possessions. 
 
 There can be no doubt whatever that Eng- 
 land has much to learn from America, not only 
 in those manual and mechanical arts in which 
 we are usually willing to acknowledge our own 
 inferiority, but in the higher spheres of intel- 
 lectual activity, in which we are not so ready to 
 own any real rivalry. And in this respect the 
 strictures of a perspicacious critic like yourself 
 are invaluable. Let it be frankly admitted that 
 we are children of Adam, and have our short- 
 
MR. WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 199 
 
 comings ; that England is not the world, far 
 less the universe ; that our tastes are occasion- 
 ally peculiar, and not always pre-eminently 
 intelligent ; that our books are not immeasur- 
 ably superior to the books of all other nations ; 
 that our criticism would be none the worse of a 
 trifle more breadth at times ; in a word, that 
 we English are a fallible race, with serious 
 limitations, and not a few robust prejudices ; 
 and that we have not always shown that open- 
 ness and generosity of mind in respect of the 
 efforts and admonitions of Cousin Jonathan 
 that would perhaps be becoming ; let all this 
 be owned, and promises of amendment made. 
 
 On the other hand, it is possible that America, 
 if she were inclined that way, might learn some- 
 thing from England. The mother-country is 
 the older, and has the greater capital of expe- 
 rience ; moreover, her intellectual achievements 
 are in reality more considerable than those of 
 even her most stalwart daughter. Might it not 
 be well to bear this in mind while animadverting 
 on her performances ? To the general reader 
 it is very entertaining to find critics, on either 
 side of the Atlantic, indulging in caustic re- 
 
200 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 criminations ; but the judicious cannot but 
 regret the presence of so acrimonious a spirit 
 in international compliments. The Anglo- 
 Saxon race should have other aims than to show 
 its ingenuity in the elaboration of petty differ- 
 ences. Both England and America have so 
 many good points, so many points in common, 
 and they are both so strong, that they ought 
 not to indulge in small squabbles. A spirit of 
 chivalry is becoming in the high and powerful. 
 I have dwelt on this point at some length, 
 because I think it of more importance than is 
 generally conceived. Literature is so subtle, 
 it is necessarily so pervasive of all our best 
 thinking in every direction, that any infection, 
 which is likely to prove generally injurious, 
 should be especially guarded against. Besides, 
 if you will pardon me for saying so, it is not for 
 artists of your standing and talent to descend 
 to the demeaning trade of the John Dennises. 
 Healthy, hearty indignation is a thing to be 
 admired, but the spirit of carping is an evil 
 spirit, and to be avoided. Your skill is best 
 exhibited in giving us such delicately-drawn 
 characters as Lydia Blood and Egeria Boynton, 
 
MR. WILLIAM DEAN HOIVELLS. 201 
 
 Constance Wyatt and Isabel March. Give us 
 a little more of that feminine world, in deline- 
 ating which you have hardly a living rival, and 
 leave fault-finding to those whom Nature in- 
 tended for the business. 
 
 Mr. Henry James has said somewhere that it 
 is something for a novelist to have a plan, a 
 theory. Assuredly it is, but it is a great deal 
 more to give it artistic embodiment. It is not 
 every writer who makes precept and practice 
 agree. Now whatever adverse critics might say 
 of you, and they have said a good many things, 
 they could hardly call you inconsistent. Your 
 theories of life and art may be open to objec- 
 tion ; it might be said they lack breadth, but 
 no one could say that you preach one thing 
 and practise another. You have very distinct 
 ideas of what you wish to do, and you have the 
 power, the rare and enviable power, of carrying 
 out your conceptions. You have your limita- 
 tions, perhaps they could easily be shown ; but 
 as far as you go, you seem to me to have as 
 easy a mastery over your materials as any of 
 your contemporary novelists. Your ideals may 
 not, in the eyes of some, be particularly lofty ; 
 
202 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 but, so far as a reader can judge, you carry 
 them out to the utmost. This gift of perfect 
 expression is rare, in reality, perhaps, the rarest 
 in literature. Only a very few writers of all the 
 ages give one the impression of being able, 
 through literary mediums, to express precisely 
 what they wish. Shakespeare has this power 
 as he has most powers of which man has any 
 cognisance so has John Bunyan, so has De- 
 foe ; and so, in our own time, have two very 
 different men, Cardinal Newman and Mr, 
 Lowell. The power, as I have said, is yours 
 also. I do not know, I cannot imagine, how 
 you would deal with the heroic. It is probable 
 your keen critical sense and your intimate self- 
 knowledge would keep you from attempting 
 what Nature had not fitted you for. At any 
 rate you have essayed nothing hitherto which 
 you have not accomplished easily and well ; 
 so that if we might occasionally quarrel with 
 your ambition, it would be unjust to impugn 
 your power. 
 
 Your first characteristic, then, is clear-sighted- 
 ness (the root, one would say, of most excel- 
 lences which a writer can possess), and this is 
 
MR. WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 203 
 
 shown equally in your criticisms and your 
 creations. It emphasises your merits and marks 
 your limitations. Your comments on the Italian 
 poets, for example, are as shrewd and keen as 
 your analysis of the character of Professor 
 Owen, or Silas Lapham of Grace Breen, or 
 Kitty Ellison. And in your criticism and 
 your analysis alike, your compass is limited. 
 In many ways you are a most peculiar writer. 
 You see into your subject with uncommon 
 clearness for a certain distance, but you come, 
 all at once, as it were, to a blank wall, which 
 completely shuts off the view, and cannot be 
 scaled. I do not think your work gives much 
 evidence of intuition. You yourself would deny 
 that it gives any. And, certainly, what you do 
 not actually see you seem unable to divine. 
 And this, as I have said, is at once your excel- 
 lence and your defect. As there is nothing 
 vague in your writings, so there is not much 
 that is majestic. Grandeur is not in your line. 
 Your novels have been called the incarnation 
 of the commonplace. In another sense than 
 the critic intended, their highest merit is that 
 they are truly and truthfully commonplace, that 
 
204 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 they depict the world as we see it about us, and 
 depict it with exact and courageous fidelity. 
 What we call impressiveness is, in most authors, 
 oftener owing to defect than to perfection of 
 vision. Dante, .to be sure, can be impressive 
 and minute he is the greatest of all realists, 
 but Milton to be impressive must be vague ; 
 and it is with the majority of writers as with 
 Milton. We are impressed by Coleridge, by 
 Richter, and sometimes by Hawthorne, without 
 knowing precisely how or why; and we are 
 convinced they could not themselves reveal the 
 secret of their impressiveness. Thus much is 
 imposing, simply because it is vague. Now 
 you never have the advantage of dimness or 
 gloom. Your characters are always in the full 
 glare of the light. So soon as they pass out of 
 the sunlight, they pass out of the reader's ken. 
 They do not hover for an indefinite period in 
 the twilight, duskily seen in the falling darkness, 
 increasing in dimension in proportion as they 
 diminish in distinctness. With you there is no 
 duskiness, no debatable land. It is either white 
 light or complete darkness. Hence, so far as it 
 goes, everything is definite and unmistakable. 
 
MR. WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 205 
 
 But, oddly enough, this very definiteness has 
 given the impression that you are a superficial 
 observer of your fellow-men, whereas the fact 
 is there are few keener, few who see or feel 
 with so much certainty within certain limits. 
 Your creations, if they are seldom romantic and 
 never heroic, are always intensely human. They 
 may be commonplace characters (by common- 
 place, I presume, is meant people, such as we 
 ordinarily meet in real life), but they are beyond 
 all cavil creatures of flesh and blood, with the 
 same ambitions, the same impulses, and pretty 
 much the same foibles as ourselves. There is 
 hardly one of them whom we do not come to 
 know as thoroughly as we usually know our 
 acquaintances in the world. Your women are 
 especially admirable. I do not remember a 
 single dim or ineffectual portrait in all your 
 female gallery. Isabel March, Florida Vervain, 
 Lydia Blood, and the rest of them are capitally 
 drawn. All your grace, subtlety, and delicacy 
 come out in your women, for you seem to be 
 complete master of the variable feminine nature. 
 I do not know that ladies have always cause to 
 be grateful to you. You do not flatter them 
 
206 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 any more than does Mr. Hardy, but surely you 
 do not libel them. At all events your portraits 
 marvellously resemble many originals to be met 
 daily in the world about us. 
 
 The delicacy which finds its fittest expression 
 in the delineation of feminine character is also 
 seen in your style. I have seen you censured 
 for being fastidious and far-fetched in your 
 literary expression. Even if the charge were 
 just, it is surely better to be elegant and clean 
 than slovenly and coarse as so many of our 
 novelists are. But I do not think the indict- 
 ment will hold. In speaking of your style, I 
 think original would be a much more appro- 
 priate epithet than far-fetched ; and no one 
 with an eye or an ear for such things can deny 
 that your writing is graceful and musical almost 
 beyond example in the present day. 
 
WILLIAM BLACK. 
 
To MR. WILLIAM BLACK. 
 
 SIR, I sometimes try to imagine what the 
 aspect of our English literature of the nine- 
 teenth century would be with the works of 
 Scottish authors left out. I fancy the extent of 
 the breach would astonish most people, as- 
 suredly it would astonish such as are in the 
 habit of vaguely relegating intellect to the 
 southern half of the kingdom. In poetry, in- 
 deed, the loss would be trivial if every line 
 written by Scotsmen during the past ninety 
 years were expunged ; for even Campbell and 
 Scott do not stand in the first rank of poets, 
 nor very high in the second, while the hordes 
 of Wilsons and Aytouns and Tennants are 
 scarcely to be reckoned as making any sensible 
 contribution to the array of thought which con- 
 stitutes our national British literature. 
 
 In criticism, history, and biography Auld 
 Scotia does better ; for in these departments 
 
 207 
 
208 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 will be found the mighty names of Carlyle, 
 Jeffrey, and Macaulay ; but it is in fiction she 
 does best, since in it she leads the nations. 
 
 One often wonders how the world could ever 
 get along without the novels of Scott. How 
 did the readers of the ages preceding his birth 
 do without them ? without The Bride of Lam- 
 mermoor, Old Mortality^ The Antiquary 
 which so good a judge as Mr. Wilkie Collins 
 considers the best novel ever written and all 
 the others left us by the same creative hand ? 
 To be sure, there were novelists before Scott. 
 There was Fielding, brilliant, penetrative, humor- 
 ous, virile, original, daring, often coarse, and 
 sometimes positively indecent, it is true ; yet, 
 with all his faults, a writer to be proud of in 
 even an Augustan age, and who has his admirers 
 after the Wizard of the North has performed 
 his wonders, and the author of Kidnapped pro- 
 nounced Tom Jones dull. And there was 
 Smollet, just a little less in stature than Field- 
 ing, stained too, but vigorous and entertaining ; 
 and Defoe, with his immortal Crusoe ; and the 
 solemn and sentimental Mr. Samuel Richard- 
 son ; and Sterne, the finest humorist in all our 
 
MR. WILLIAM BLACK. 209 
 
 literature, except Burns ; and Goldsmith, lead- 
 ing his gentle Vicar, whose passage from the 
 blue room to the green is as interesting as most 
 people's voyage round the globe ; and the sub- 
 lime Mrs. Radcliffe with her Mysteries of Udol- 
 pho ; and the great and gloomy Swift with 
 his Gulliver, which still, perhaps, stands un- 
 rivalled for directness and force. But with all 
 these one is again constrained to ask how 
 our great-great-grandfathers and their elegant 
 spouses got along without the novels of Scott, 
 and how we should get along without them ? 
 Carlyle asked quite seriously whether we would 
 not rather part with our Indian Empire than 
 with our Shakespeare ; and, if the choice had 
 to be made, I dare say we should rather give up 
 any considerable piece of territory than our 
 Walter Scott. 
 
 That the greatest of all novelists should have 
 been a Scotsman, and that Scotsmen still take 
 the lead in fiction, is a matter of no little pride 
 to the people of Scotland, and of no little inte- 
 rest to folks at large. The national character 
 of the Scottish people is not popularly thought 
 
 to be such as would tend to give them pre- 
 O 
 
210 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 eminence in that engaging art of lying, the 
 decadence of which Mr. Oscar Wilde recently 
 lamented. No doubt there are ' grand leears ' 
 among the Scotch as among other enlightened 
 peoples ; but, as a whole, they are thought to 
 be rather sternly and solemnly veracious, paying 
 far more heed to hard fact, particularly when it 
 takes the form of hard cash, than to flowers of 
 fancy, however beautiful, or to creations of the 
 imagination, however sublime. They are not 
 romantic, but oppressively matter-of-fact ; in 
 fact, they are the last people in the world whom 
 we should suspect of sitting down to write ' idle 
 and profane stories.' Yet, prosaic as they are, 
 they are giving us the bulk of our best imagi- 
 native prose. 
 
 As you are one of the most popular of 
 novelists now living, so, also, you are one of 
 the best. You have, in my opinion, given us 
 more interesting stories and finer studies of 
 Scottish character than any other writer since 
 the days of Scott, though Mrs. Oliphant's pic- 
 tures of Scottish life are invariably excellent. 
 But I think Mrs. Oliphant scarcely does herself 
 justice. I fear she writes too much. The 
 
MR. WILLIAM BLACK. 211 
 
 mass of literature she has produced is so 
 stupendous that one is forced to sum up its 
 merits as Macaulay did the work of Dr. Nares 
 on Burleigh and his Times, by saying that it 
 consists of so many thousand printed pages, 
 that it occupies so many hundred inches, cubic 
 measure,- and that it weighs so many pounds 
 avoirdupois. To be sure, Mrs. Oliphant in- 
 variably turns out good work. She does not 
 scamp ; but then she rarely concentrates herself 
 upon any supreme effort. She is in such 
 a hurry that she hardly takes time to fuse 
 her characters in her mind, so that, while 
 one would not hesitate to pronounce them 
 well-drawn, there is still something hard and 
 undeveloped about them ; and it is only by 
 flashes and hints that we discern the real power 
 of the writer, or what she might accomplish if 
 she were less determinedly energetic. You 
 have been truer to yourself. It would perhaps 
 be impossible for a popular author to practise 
 the reticence which alone ensures continuous 
 artistic excellence, and I will not say you have 
 not been guilty of over-production ; but, on the 
 other hand, you have more than once bent all 
 
212 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 your faculties on a single book, and so done 
 yourself and your readers justice. A Daughter 
 of Heth, for instance, shows the artist master of 
 his art. Mr. Shorthouse, indeed, places it in 
 the very first rank of works of fiction, and says, 
 ' It not only fulfils the requirements of the 
 human spirit, but stands the more difficult test 
 of being perfect as a whole.' 
 
 That is high praise, but it is not undeserved. 
 The book grows naturally and organically, the 
 characters are consistent and clearly drawn, 
 there are both humour and pathos, and the 
 descriptions are compact and graphic. A 
 Princess of Thule, too, is a work of real art ; so, 
 likewise, is Madeod of Dare, notwithstanding 
 its unhappy ending. By the way, does it mar 
 the artistic merits of a book to end unhappily, 
 supposing such ending is logical and consistent ? 
 I have heard readers express themselves as 
 being delighted with all but the end of 
 Macleod of Dare. What would they have ? 
 Did they expect you to trample on logic, and 
 thwart destiny by bringing your hero out pink 
 and smiling ? Truly, there are some most un- 
 reasonable people in this world. The end of 
 
MR. WILLIAM BLACK. 213 
 
 Macleod of Dare is the best piece of work you 
 have ever done nay, more, it is one of the best 
 pieces of work done by any novelist, living or 
 dead. There is inspiration in it, and I dare say 
 you could not have averted the terrible fate of 
 the hero if you would. And why should you 
 if you could ? Does life always, or even invari- 
 ably, end in blissful sunshine? If not, then 
 why should novels, which are supposed to be 
 transcripts of life ? 
 
 * Ah, but it is so very distressing to witness 
 those catastrophes of unhappy endings,' says 
 the languid creature, who wishes to be amused. 
 Doubtless, but since Adam sinned, if we want 
 to look on truth we must look on suffering. 
 Had Eve not partaken of that unlucky apple, 
 then all might have been different. In an ideal 
 state, all novels should have happy endings, if, 
 indeed, in the ideal state, people would care for 
 anything so trivial as fiction. Other states 
 other tastes and amusements. Perhaps reality 
 would have a greater attraction then. 
 
 But, indeed, this outcry against unhappy end- 
 ings is inexpressibly silly ; and it is well that a 
 writer should occasionally please himself by 
 
214 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 taking his own way. If it be the right thing to 
 do, let him hang, drown, or shoot his hero, 
 regardless of censure. A man who is born for 
 misery and a violent death has clearly no right 
 to happiness and a peaceful exit. Nor should 
 a heroine, born under an adverse star, be 
 allowed to hug a husband or fondle a baby. 
 These things are- for the fortunate only. At 
 the same time, when Fate is propitious, it were 
 folly to thwart her. Weddings, after all, are, as 
 the young lady observed, 'very nice things 
 indeed, and there can hardly be too many of 
 them.' 
 
 Your forte is the delineation of Highland 
 character, which you understand well. Your 
 Highlanders always bear the stamp of reality. 
 One may meet them in the North any day. It 
 has been my lot to mingle with Highlanders 
 pretty frequently, and I must, in justice, say 
 that you draw the Scottish Celt as he has not 
 been drawn by any other living writer whatso- 
 ever. Nor do you depend for your interest on 
 the exceptional and abnormal. Your High- 
 landers are not Rob Roys and Alan Breck 
 Stewarts. That breed, thank heaven, is extinct, 
 
MR. WILLIAM BLACK. 215 
 
 and in its place has grown up a class infinitely 
 more heroic if less spectacular, though Southern 
 critics do not always seem to be aware of the 
 fact. It would be amusing, were it not so pain- 
 ful, to note the opinions which are still preval- 
 ent south of the Tweed regarding the people of 
 the far North. Notwithstanding the facilities 
 of travel, and the revolution which those facili- 
 ties have worked in almost every department of 
 knowledge, there is still a deplorable ignorance 
 of the Highland character in enlightened Eng- 
 land. This is not because Englishmen do not 
 visit the northern half of Scotland, but because 
 they are too lofty and precipitate in their 
 methods of judging. The Highlanders are not 
 to be understood in a day, nor in a week, nor 
 even in a year. They are proud, shy, and 
 sensitive, and do not readily reveal themselves 
 to strangers, particularly to strangers who affect 
 airs of superiority. A haughtier people than 
 the Highlanders does not exist, and never 
 did exist. Hospitable as are the Scottish Celts, 
 a word or look is often enough to make them 
 coil up within themselves like hedgehogs, and 
 show only bristles that will prick if touched. 
 
216 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 Above all, they cannot endure to be patronised ; 
 so that, when glib literary tourists of the Joseph 
 and Elizabeth Pennell species go north to air 
 their conceit, their prepossessions, and their 
 immeasurable ignorance, the poor Highlander, 
 having some self-respect, keeps to himself, pre- 
 ferring even misrepresentation to the dire 
 calamity of familiarity with such a' set. The 
 rubbish that has been printed about the High- 
 lands and the Highlanders passes the bounds 
 of imagination. There is something sublime in 
 the easy audacity with which peripatetic critics, 
 from the days of Samuel Johnson and Jamie 
 Boswell down, pronounce judgment on the un- 
 fortunate inhabitants of the Highlands. 
 
 Had you done nothing else than write A 
 Princess of Thule and Macleod of Dare you 
 would have deserved well of your generation 
 for courageously using your eyes and speaking 
 the truth respecting a people that has been 
 most cruelly misunderstood and misrepresented. 
 The name of William Black rouses enthu- 
 siasm in the north and west of Scotland. 
 The people there think that he at least under- 
 stands and loves them ; and they are right, for 
 
MR. WILLIAM BLACK. 217 
 
 he does both. Have you flattered them ? 
 Surely not. You have simply painted them as 
 they are, thereby once more proving that ' there 
 is nothing good or beautiful outside of what is 
 true, nothing noble or sacred outside of what is 
 natural.' 
 
 Into the question whether your work is in- 
 trinsically great, it were perhaps idle to enter, 
 seeing the world is so very uncertain in its own 
 mind respecting what constitutes real greatness. 
 You have truth and naturalness, and no incon- 
 siderable poetic power, and many would say 
 that these are in themselves the essence of great- 
 ness. But you remember what Carlyle says of 
 the first of all novelists. ' Friends to precision 
 of epithet,' says the Sage of Chelsea, ' will pro- 
 bably deny his title to the name "great." It 
 seems to us there goes other stuff to the making 
 of great men than can be detected here. One 
 knows not what idea worthy of the name of great, 
 what purpose, instinct, or tendency, that could 
 be called great Scott ever was inspired with. 
 . . . There is nothing spiritual in him. . . . 
 Winged words were not his vocation ; nothing 
 urged him that way ; the great Mystery of 
 
218 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 Existence was not great to him, did not drive 
 him into rocky solitudes to wrestle with it for 
 an answer to be answered or to perish. He 
 had nothing of the martyr ; into no dark region 
 to slay monsters for us did he, either led or 
 driven, venture down; his conquests were for 
 his own behoof mainly, conquests over common 
 market labour, and reckonable in good metallic 
 coin of the realm. . . . Shall we call this great ? 
 It seems to us there dwells and struggles another 
 sort of spirit in the inward parts of great men.' 
 
 This is not the standard by which we judge 
 our authors nowadays. Shall we apply it to 
 you ? Shall we inquire what dark regions you 
 have wrestled in, and what spiritual victories 
 you have gained? Shall we inquire whether 
 you have grown lean like Dante or Mahomet 
 in your spiritual fights ? or cast your inkstand 
 at the devil like Martin Luther? Shall we 
 throw your characters on the dissecting-table, 
 and see whether there be any Othellos, or 
 Hamlets, or Mignons among them? In a 
 word, shall we, in strictest scientific method, 
 proceed to probe and weigh you to ascertain 
 whether in the old high sense you are a great 
 
MR. WILLIAM BLACK. 219 
 
 man ? The practice is really out of date. 
 Time was when the transcendental philosopher 
 Fichte might truthfully describe the man of 
 letters as a priest interpreting, or endeavouring 
 to interpret, Heaven's message to man. But 
 that day has gone by. The world has changed, 
 marched forward, as some think, and the man 
 of letters has now other aims. Literature has 
 become a profession, and is followed like any 
 other, not for the purpose of ' revealing the 
 God-like to man,' but for most part as the 
 readiest means of securing a share of that good 
 metallic coin of the realm of which Mr. Carlyle 
 speaks so contemptuously. You do not con- 
 cern yourself with the slaying of monsters. 
 Readers will find few spiritual wrestlings in 
 your novels, a fact for which on the whole they 
 ought humbly to thank Heaven. Our spiritual 
 and religious needs are being so well looked 
 after by novelists, from Count Tolstoi to Mrs. 
 Ward, that it is really something of a relief a 
 wicked pleasure some might call it to read a 
 novel in which the hero does not go through 
 the agonies of religious doubt and despair, and 
 in which the heroine is not made miserable by 
 
220 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 doctrines she does not understand. After all, 
 foolish, erring, warm-blooded, passionate human 
 nature is better than the dolorous things that 
 issue, from time to time, from the shadows of 
 our theological seminaries to wring the hands, 
 to wail and tear the hair in public, as if their 
 chiefest function were to exhibit their skill and 
 ingenuity in making themselves wretched. The 
 novelist's first concern, one would say, should 
 be with humanity pure and simple. When 
 human nature has been exhausted he might 
 have a turn at theology, but in the meantime 
 the majority of readers would be better pleased 
 by his sticking to that desperately wicked and 
 deceitful thing the heart. That you have gener- 
 ally been content with it is at once the ground 
 of your excellence and the cause of your popu- 
 larity. 
 
ROBKRT BUCHANAN. 
 
To MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
 
 SIR, You are perhaps the best existing type 
 of the militant man of letters. Certainly none 
 is readier to fight, none less awed by the quality 
 of an opponent. You are not daunted by great 
 names, nor restrained by considerations of 
 policy. You donned your armour and fur- 
 bished your blade as readily and joyously to 
 meet the late Mr. Matthew Arnold as you now 
 assume the fighting gear to meet Mr. Andrew 
 Lang, or Mr. George Moore, or Mr. Edmund 
 Yates, or Mr. Labouchere. The challenge 
 never comes to you in vain ; nor are you to be 
 disturbed with impunity. The thistle might 
 well be engraven on your shield, and ' Ready, 
 aye ready ' would not be an inappropriate motto. 
 Like the bold Macpherson, your literary life has 
 been one of ' sturt and strife.' From that early 
 assault on ( The Fleshly School of Poetry ' to the 
 
 recent bombardment of ' Imperial Cockneydom,' 
 
 221 
 
222 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 you have encountered many a doughty warrior, 
 and dealt many a weighty and valorous blow. 
 And the spirit of the fray is still strong upon 
 you. To-day, as in times past, you present 
 yourself with girded loins and an undiminished 
 ardour for battle. I suppose there are times 
 when you would really prefer not to fight, but 
 the public knows nothing of you in such 
 moments of weakness. So far as you are known 
 to your readers, the arms are always in order, 
 and the spirit ever eager. 
 
 I am disposed to think that it is not love of 
 fighting for its own sake that leads you to un- 
 sheathe your sword so frequently, but a love of 
 truth, a love of fair-play, a love of purity and good- 
 ness, a love of high principles and your fellow- 
 men. You are not simply a polemic ; though, 
 once you are in the arena, you are as hot and stub- 
 born a controversialist as the late Charles Reade 
 himself. You do not seem, to me, to take up 
 arms for the pleasure of destroying, or the glory 
 of jumping on weak opponents. And certainly 
 you do not take them up with an eye to your own 
 profit. It is not by ' telling the truth and sham- 
 ing the deil,' as the Scottish proverb has it, that 
 
MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN. 223 
 
 men gather in the shekels. Though it is pain- 
 ful to be compelled to make the admission, 
 rather the contrary is the case. ' If a man 
 would fill his granaries and attain to the sub- 
 lime heights of worldly prosperity,' says a quaint 
 old moralist, 'three things he must earnestly 
 pray to be delivered from. He must petition, 
 first, that he be not stirred up to a vehement 
 insistence on disagreeable truths ; what men 
 profess to be deaf to let him be silent on : 
 second, that he be not tempted to cross the 
 vanity or self-love of his fellows ; for thereby 
 ensueth bitterness and strife which do mightily 
 hinder a man : third, that he be endowed with 
 the supple properties of the willow, which 
 bendeth gracefully before the blast; for as- 
 suredly it cometh to pass that the man like the 
 tree that bendeth not shall be levelled by the 
 hurricane. The Gallic proverb, that there is 
 nothing beautiful but truth, containeth a griev- 
 ous heresy. Verily it is my opinion that this 
 same wench who is called truth hath been the 
 ruin of many a right excellent man.' While 
 taking exception to some of the moralist's senti- 
 ments, there can be no question that the policy 
 
224 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 he inculcates is full of worldly wisdom. None 
 knows better than you how extremely detri- 
 mental it is to all one's worldly interest, in this 
 languid and euphuistic age, to call a spade a 
 spade and a quack a quack. You have recently 
 told us that at one period of your career it be- 
 came inexpedient to publish your works under 
 your own name, because on some question or 
 other, affecting the weal of the republic of 
 letters, you spoke your mind in forcible Saxon 
 language. Yet this knowledge, the knowledge 
 that plain speech is inimical to a man's financial 
 interests does not now deter you from saying 
 all you wish to say, and saying it in words as 
 plain as those of Swift himself; so that I might 
 appropriately apply to you the lines of Burns to 
 Charles James Fox 
 
 1 My much-honour'd patron, believe your poor poet, 
 Your courage much more than your prudence you 
 show it. ' 
 
 And, indeed, one never thinks of your deeds 
 without being struck with your colossal courage. 
 You, more markedly than most, possess that 
 ' perfect will which no terrors can shake, which 
 is attracted by frowns, or threats, or hostile 
 
MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN. 225 
 
 armies ; nay, needs these to awake and fan its 
 reserved energies into a pure flame, and is never 
 quite itself until the hazard is extreme.' We 
 may call you impetuous and impolitic, but we 
 dare not deny your courage. You shoot your 
 shafts straight at the mark, and not at some 
 substituted simulacrum, some shade or dim 
 adumbration set up as a decoy to deceive the 
 public. When your dander is up, as Dandie 
 Dinmont would say, none may approach you 
 too closely. As Mr. Lowell said of a certain 
 countryman of yours, when you are in the 
 storm and tumult of battle, you are like a three- 
 decker on fire dangerous alike to friend and 
 foe. Yet no one is readier to own an error or 
 make amends for a wrong. It is not given to 
 every man to be generous as well as just. I 
 believe they are comparatively few who could 
 address such lines as these to an old enemy 
 
 ' I would have snatched a bay-leaf from thy brow, 
 
 Wronging the chaplet on an honoured head ; 
 In peace and charity I bring thee now 
 
 A lily flower instead. 
 
 Pure as thy purpose, blameless as thy song, 
 Sweet as thy spirit may this offering be ; 
 Forget the bitter blame that did thee wrong, 
 And take the gift from me. ' 
 
226 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 This is, I dare say, as characteristic as any- 
 thing you have written, and made as great a 
 demand on courage as any conflict in which 
 you ever engaged. 
 
 Moreover, it is evidence that you have 
 learned the greatest lesson which destiny has 
 to teach that of being true to one's-self in 
 other words, the necessity of overcoming all 
 fear fear to acknowledge a fault as well as fear 
 to storm a stronghold. 'He has not learned 
 the lesson of life,' says one whose silver pen 
 you have yourself extolled, 'who does not 
 every day surmount a fear. . . . Have the cour- 
 age not to adopt another's courage. There is 
 scope, and cause, and resistance enough for us 
 in our proper work and circumstance. And 
 there is no creed of an honest man, be he 
 Christian, Turk, or Gentoo, which does not 
 equally preach it. If you have no faith in bene- 
 ficent power above you, but see only an adaman- 
 tine fate coiling its folds about nature and man, 
 then reflect that the best use of fate is to teach us 
 courage, if only because baseness cannot change 
 the appointed event. If you accept your 
 thoughts as inspirations from the Supreme 
 
MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN. 227 
 
 Intelligence, obey them when they prescribe 
 difficult duties, because they come only so long 
 as they are used ; or if your scepticism reaches 
 to the last verge, and you have no confidence 
 in any foreign mind, then be brave, because 
 there is one good opinion which must always 
 be of consequence to you namely, your own.' 
 I do not think it will be denied by any one who 
 has watched your career and studied your writ- 
 ings, that your opinions are most distinctly your 
 own. You do not belong to the flaccid class 
 that eternally assents ; you are not one of those 
 who live in perpetual fear of giving offence ; nor 
 will it be gainsaid that whatever difficult duties 
 your conscience prescribes, you perform to the 
 uttermost of your ability. 
 
 We may admire your courage, however, with- 
 out at all concurring in your opinions. Indeed, 
 we will admire the more because of a differ- 
 ence of sentiment. And for myself let me say 
 frankly that from many of your judgments I 
 entirely dissent. Your opinion of Goethe, 
 for example, seems to me altogether unworthy 
 of your perspicacity as a critic, and your 
 liberality as a thinker. Your estimates of 
 
228 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 George Eliot and Matthew Arnold, too, seem 
 to me curiously unjust. When you call George 
 Eliot a 'pragmatic rectangular prosaist,' and 
 speak of the ' preposterous ' career of the author 
 of Faust, and aver that he really never lived, 
 one is inclined to think that, like David when 
 he slandered all mankind, you spoke in very 
 inconsiderate haste. I for one see -nothing pre- 
 posterous in the career of Goethe, and I think 
 that George Eliot, far from being a prosaist, is, 
 except in occasional lapses, a truly creative 
 artist. But you seem to me most unjust in 
 denying the title of poet to Matthew Arnold. 
 I believe with Mr. Hall Caine that there is 
 poetry in the ' Strayed Reveller ' and ' Dover 
 Beach,' and I find 'The Youth of Nature' 
 touching and true. The lines 
 
 ' Race after race, man after man, 
 Have thought that my secret was theirs, 
 Have dreamed that I lived but for them, 
 That they were my glory and joy. 
 They are dust, they are changed, they are gone ! 
 I remain,' 
 
 seem to me to give out the right tone. But I 
 am more concerned with you as an artist than 
 as a critic. 
 
MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN. 229 
 
 You have been a busy worker in the realm 
 of imagination, and, to my mind, a successful 
 worker. You have written too much to be 
 always at your best, but your worst is never 
 bad. You have not had, or you have not taken, 
 the leisure to excise, polish, and amend your 
 productions, as among present-day poets Lord 
 Tennyson and Mr. Lowell have done, or among 
 past poets Pope and Gray. But you are always 
 a poet, and invariably an artist. Many of your 
 poems are exquisite in form, and nearly all of 
 them attest beyond a peradventure that even 
 at the close of the nineteenth century the spirit 
 of poetry is still in our midst. No one can 
 read Balder the Beautiful, or The Book of 
 Orm, or The City of Dream, without being 
 convinced (if he have an eye and ear for such 
 things) that he is reading the work of a true 
 poet. Nor is your prose less true or less im- 
 portant than your poetry. 
 
 As a novelist you work with a purpose. You 
 descend, as you say yourself, to the heresy of 
 instruction. Many eminent critics do hold it a 
 heresy to descend to instruction in works of 
 fiction, and many great authors are with the 
 
230 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 critics. Goethe (whom you will permit me to 
 call great), for instance, says in reference to his 
 own Werther, in that autobiography which 
 every student of literature should read, ' It 
 cannot be expected that the public should re- 
 ceive an intellectual work intellectually. In 
 fact, it was only the subject, the material part, 
 that was considered, as I had already found to 
 be the case among my own friends, while at the 
 same time arose that old prejudice, associated 
 with the dignity of a printed book that it 
 ought to have a moral aim. But a true picture 
 of life has none. It neither approves nor cen- 
 sures, but develops sentiments and actions in 
 their consequences, and thereby enlightens and 
 instructs.' These are Goethe's sentiments on 
 the subject. He did not believe in the novel 
 with a purpose ; nor did Scott consider himself 
 under any necessity to be didactic. Shake- 
 speare, likewise, was careless of his oppor- 
 tunities to play the role of schoolmaster, and it 
 is my candid opinion that Homer never really 
 concerned himself about the moral and social 
 welfare of his auditors. 
 
 However, the English people, though paying 
 
MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN. 231 
 
 little heed, as a rule, to moral instruction, like 
 nothing better as an amusement ; and there is 
 no valid reason for not gratifying their tastes. 
 Moreover, it pays to have a purpose when the 
 purpose is not flaunted too officiously in the 
 reader's face. Dickens, in various sweet pre- 
 parations, gave his readers heavy doses of 
 ' doctrines of reform,' and they clapped their 
 hands and shouted for joy. Mr. Besant, too, 
 has followed in the footsteps of the author 
 of David Copperfield^ with very gratifying suc- 
 cess, and Mrs. Ward has enjoyed quite a 
 ' boom ' as a teacher and reformer. You 
 have, therefore, precedent and example enough 
 in writing romance with a purpose. And let it 
 be granted without demur that in your case the 
 process of indoctrination has been accomplished 
 with a skill and an eloquence that give your 
 novels a high place in the best class of didactic 
 fiction. The Shadow of the Sword is, per- 
 haps, the most powerful polemic against public 
 war that has ever been written ; more powerful 
 than all the orations of all the orators from 
 Demosthenes to John Bright. Nor is it less 
 admirable as a work of art than as a protest 
 
232 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 against the most heinous, because the most 
 cruel and least excusable, crime that darkens 
 the annals of mankind. The characters and 
 situations alike are strong and telling, and abide 
 in one's memory. In another way your Mar- 
 tyrdom of Madeline is almost as good. But 
 I think it is in God and the Man that you 
 touch high-water mark. That is a powerful, a 
 terrible, a fascinating book. You call it ' a 
 study of the vanity and folly of individual Hate,' 
 and surely never before in romance was the folly 
 of individual hate more eloquently and fearfully 
 made manifest. Never before did human being 
 pursue an enemy more fiercely and relentlessly 
 than Christian Christiansen, or find revenge so 
 bitter. The character of Christian is titanic 
 titanic in its ferocity, its tenacity, and its ulti- 
 mate nobleness. Nothing could be more 
 savage than his appetite for vengeance, nothing 
 more disappointing than the dead-sea fruit to 
 which that vengeance turns in the moment of 
 expected triumph, nothing more touching than 
 the final sorrow and humility of the stricken 
 soul. Like a demon he prays and blasphemes 
 at the beginning 
 
MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN. 233 
 
 ' Yield up to me 
 
 This man alone of all men that I see ! 
 Give him to me and to misery ! 
 Give me this man if a God thou be. 
 
 But the cruel heavens all open lie, 
 No God doth reign o'er the sea and sky, 
 The earth is dark and the clouds go by, 
 But there is no God to hear me cry. 
 
 There is no God, none, to abolish one 
 
 Of the foul things thought, and dreamed, and done ! 
 
 Wherefore I hate, till my race is run, 
 
 All living men beneath the sun. 
 
 O Lord my God, if a God there be, 
 Give up the man I hate to me ! 
 On his living heart let my vengeance feed, 
 And I shall know Thou art God indeed. 
 
 The night is still, the waters sleep, the skies 
 Gaze down with bright innumerable eyes ; 
 A voice comes out of heaven and o'er the sea : 
 " I am ; and I will give this man to thee." ' 
 
 And with the bloodthirstiness of a sleuth- 
 hound he tracks his prey from point to point, 
 oh land, on sea, in green England, and amid 
 the snows and ice of the Polar regions, till at 
 last he has him fast ; and then then ven- 
 geance swift and terrible ah ! no, only a tem- 
 porary madness, a momentary exultation, a 
 
234 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 spasm of cruel delight in the misfortunes of 
 Richard Orchardson, and then God smites the 
 heart of the would-be murderer, till it melts 
 and gushes like the hard rock in Horeb. His 
 behaviour, when Richard Orchardson lies dying 
 before him, is piety itself. * When I knew that 
 he was dead indeed, I bent over him reverently, 
 placed his arms down by his side, and seeing 
 his eyes wide open, drew down the waxen lids 
 over the sightless orbs. Then I held a little 
 water in the palm of my hand, and cleansed the 
 dead face ; afterwards with careful fingers ar- 
 ranging his hair and beard. Lastly I took one 
 of my rude lights and set it at the corpse's 
 head, like the death-lights we burn round dead 
 folks in the Fens. . . . When I had ordered all 
 in Christian cleanliness and reverence, I sat 
 and gazed upon mine enemy. . . . Then one 
 still morn, when the air was bright for the 
 place and time of year, I lifted him in my arms 
 and carried him slowly forth across the snow. 
 I had the rude grave all ready, and now I laid 
 him down within it, with his white face to the 
 sky. As I stood above him, and took my last 
 look of him, more snow began to fall. . . . 
 
MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN. 235 
 
 Then standing bareheaded, eager still to keep 
 my pledge to him, I repeated, as far as I could 
 remember, the words of the old sweet Burial 
 Service out of our English Book of Prayer ; and 
 when I could remember no more, I stretched 
 out my arms in blessing, commending my 
 enemy's soul to God. Before I had ended, his 
 face had faded away in the falling whiteness ; 
 and seeing it vanish utterly, I sobbed like a 
 little child.' And so Christian Christianson 
 has his revenge, pouring out his heart in sorrow. 
 The other characters are almost equally well 
 drawn, and there are throughout the book 
 many delightful bits of description, and situa- 
 tions that thrill one to the marrow ; but over 
 these I may not now linger. Sufficient to say 
 that so long as we have writers writing books 
 like God and the Man, there is still hope for 
 the literature of our country. 
 
To MR. R. D. BLACKMORE. 
 
 SIR, Not many authors are regarded as 
 classics in their own lifetime, and have their 
 works read and treated with the admiration and 
 reverential affection which are thought to be 
 the meed of the great dead alone. The public 
 seem to have an idea that Spartan treatment is 
 best for existing writers, that their growth will 
 be sturdier and healthier on short rations and 
 some buffeting than on much pudding and 
 great praise. It is all very well to honour the 
 dead with monuments and eulogistic epitaphs, 
 but the living should not be spoiled by being 
 led to think too much of themselves. To be 
 sure there are instances to prove that the public 
 sometimes exercise a spirit of indulgence to- 
 wards living authors. Sir Walter Scott had a 
 foretaste of the honours of immortality, while 
 he was yet the 'Shirra,' notwithstanding the 
 chivalrous cry, as Mr. Lang calls it, of ' Burke 
 
MR. R. D. BLACKMORE. 237 
 
 Sir Walter,' which, ringing and echoing in the 
 dying man's ears, really affrighted and embit- 
 tered his last moments. Coleridge and Carlyle, 
 likewise, while still in the flesh, were allowed 
 to possess something of the power and potency 
 of them ' who rule our spirits from their urns,' 
 and our Poet Laureate, while happily still en- 
 riching our literature, has more of the homage 
 and veneration of men than most writers who 
 have gone to that bourne whence there is no 
 return. 
 
 But all these cases are exceptional. Post- 
 humous honours are seldom tendered to living 
 authors ; seldomer to novelists than to any ; for 
 the common novel being hardly less ephemeral 
 than the common newspaper, the presumption 
 is all against the fitness of a writer of fiction for 
 even a lower seat in the Valhalla of the gods. 
 But it will' hardly be deemed invidious, as it 
 will certainly be no flattery, to say that the 
 author of Lorna Doone is as sure of his niche 
 in the great Temple, as any writer on the 
 long and honourable roll of British fiction. 
 You still write, the critics still concern them- 
 selves with your productions, but to readers at 
 
238 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 large you have passed beyond the narrow con- 
 fines of criticism, and taken your place in the 
 hearts of the people. I am not quite certain 
 that harsh criticism of your writings would be 
 tolerated. The Englishman is a dangerous 
 animal when one attempts to interfere with one 
 of his favourites, far less with one of his idols. 
 
 And, indeed, if he is content to call you 
 great, there is no reason in the world why we 
 should quarrel with him. It is always unsatis- 
 factory to talk of greatness, since there is no 
 exact standard to guide the judgment. The 
 taste of one is not the taste of another, and to 
 speak ill of what pleases us, or to call that great 
 which we do not like, would be simply to be 
 guilty of atrocious falsehood. Intrinsic merit 
 or demerit is not susceptible of mathematical 
 demonstration. If a reader like a book, it is 
 totally impossible to prove that he shouldn't 
 like it ; if he doesn't like it, all one's skill in logic 
 and ingenuity in argument will not convince 
 him that that book is good for him. Therefore 
 it is idle, and worse than idle, to discuss or 
 quarrel over some epithet, which to ninety-nine 
 out of every hundred readers has no meaning 
 
MR. R. D. BLACKMORE. 239 
 
 nor intelligibility. Your best work may be 
 greater, or may be less than the best work of 
 our best novelists living and dead, but this 
 much, I think, might be said with the fullest 
 assurance, that it has as snug and secure a 
 corner in the hearts of the people as the work 
 of any writer of fiction, hardly excepting the 
 Wizard of the North himself. 
 
 While the public are so tolerant and indul- 
 gent with a popular favourite as generally to 
 read all his works, they have a singular predi- 
 lection for judging him by one, for making a 
 particular book the touchstone by which to try 
 all his other writings. The book by which 
 they have chosen to judge you is Lorna 
 Doone. But, though that is by far your most 
 popular book, I, for one, am not quite prepared 
 to say it is your best. At any rate, it cannot 
 make me forget that you are the author of 
 Springhaven and Christowell. However, since 
 it is the popular choice, I am quite willing 
 to accept it as mine also, and to make it the 
 ground on which briefly to examine the claim 
 your admirers advance for you, of being the 
 first of living English novelists. Without any 
 
240 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 tedious ' prelimbinaries,' as honest farmer Snowe 
 would say, let it be frankly owned, then, that in 
 your case the public have shown themselves 
 marvellously good critics. They are apt to 
 make mistakes, indeed, if I may be permitted 
 to use the expression, their forte seems to lie 
 in making mistakes, but in singling out such 
 a book as Lorna Doom for their warmest 
 approval, they have shown a quite surprising 
 acumen and accuracy of judgment. He would 
 be a bad reader who could not enjoy that book; 
 perhaps he would be a worse critic who would 
 condemn him for enjoying it. 
 
 What, one is often tempted to ask, is the 
 singular charm that fascinates us in that 
 Romance of Exmoor ? Is it in the style, or in 
 the characters, or in the scenery and action of 
 the story ? Doubtless it lies in all these, for it 
 is subtle and manifold. But if one were forced 
 to lay one's finger on a particular feature as the 
 chief one, I think it would be concluded that 
 that gentle and humane giant, John Ridd : 
 gentle and humane, yet full of a volcanic fire 
 and force, and capable on occasion of being 
 stern enough to deal out terrific justice I say 
 
MR. R. D. BLACKMORE. 241 
 
 there are obvious reasons why he should be 
 considered the central attraction of the book. 
 And, as a matter of fact, I believe he is. A 
 friend of mine, and one of the most discrimi- 
 nating of your admirers, recently spoke of the 
 book, as a whole, and John Ridd in particular, 
 as follows, and in so doing voiced the popular 
 verdict : * Lorna Doone is one of those books 
 which are national in character. The atmo- 
 sphere is the free air of our English moors. 
 The situations are always interesting, such 
 common occupations as sheep-shearing and 
 working in the fields never being prosaic. The 
 apotheosis of brute force is natural, or it would 
 be mean. It might still be mean if it were not 
 allied with perfect courage and undeniable 
 honesty and chastity. John Ridd is the type of 
 our perfect English manhood; he has within 
 him the element of all that is noble; nothing 
 but manliness could dwell in his great heart. 
 Martyrdom he would bear, but freedom he 
 must have. He would fight like a fiend for 
 freedom, but he would not be a libertine. It is 
 of the John Ridds of the world that you can- 
 not ask, " Is he a gentleman ? " Such a char- 
 Q 
 
242 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 acter as Mr. Blackmore's hero stands above 
 all questions of the kind. He is a man. 
 . . . Neither can criticism touch Lorna 
 Doone herself. She is the proper partner of 
 John, and when that is said you have given her 
 her due.' 
 
 It might be said that she is a very perfect 
 heroine indeed whom criticism cannot touch 
 more perfect than even that sweetest and most 
 perfect piece of fictitious womanhood, the mas- 
 terpiece of the master, the beautiful, the peerless, 
 the almost faultless Imogen. However, let it 
 be granted that Lorna Doone is the fit com- 
 panion for the doughty yeoman of Devon. 
 Though for myself, if I were disposed to be 
 captious, it is on Lorna I should fasten. It was 
 long ago observed by a wise man that a critic, 
 before attempting to criticise, should first of all 
 qualify himself for his office by lookfng at the 
 characters of his author from their creator's 
 point of view, for that without that there coulfl 
 be no true sympathy, and without sympathy 
 there could be no valuable criticism. It may be 
 that I have failed to fully grasp your intentions, 
 or fully comprehend some of the very peculiar 
 
MR. A'. D. BLACKMORE. 243 
 
 circumstances of the story, some of the circum- 
 stances in which Lorna is particularly involved, 
 but to me she is not the most satisfactory female 
 character you have drawn. Nay, I hardly think 
 her the most satisfactory female character in the 
 book to which she gives her name. Though pal- 
 pitating with life to the finger-tips (and that, of 
 course, is the first essential) she is not in all 
 respects so fine in my eyes as either Annie or 
 Mrs. Ridd. There are times when I think even 
 Ruth Huckaback better. Perhaps, indeed, no 
 character so slightly sketched as Ruth was ever 
 truer or more intensely alive. She has a 
 woman's heart in that little body of hers, a heart 
 that swells with big passions, and such aspira- 
 tions as only a woman can have, and, little as 
 we see of her, we know her thoroughly, and 
 what is more, sympathise with her deeply. 
 
 Lorna Doone we also know thoroughly, and 
 in most of her trying situations sympathise with. 
 But she hardly commands complete and perfect 
 sympathy and admiration. How is it that a 
 creation, in most respects so charming, fails to 
 make the reader, as it were, her own, through at 
 least the first half of the book ? Is it because, 
 
244 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 like Juliet, she is sometimes too much the un- 
 tutored child of nature to suit the modern taste, 
 or is it because the over-generous John, seeing 
 her with the eyes of infatuation, makes her just 
 a little too angelic, and thus sometimes lifts her 
 beyond the sphere of our sympathy ? Perhaps 
 the latter is the true explanation. It would be 
 interesting to find that once in a while, however 
 long the intervals might be, John was aware of 
 some slight human imperfection in his adored 
 inamorata. It is so human to be fallible, that 
 when we encounter a creature of divine perfec- 
 tion, much as we admire her, we can hardly feel 
 that bond of equality and kinship which alone 
 makes one child of Adam interesting to another. 
 Perhaps the fact that John Ridd is unable to 
 discover, or at any rate declines to reveal any 
 trifling defect in Lorna, is a strong argument 
 against the autobiographical form of fiction. 
 John is always ready enough to dwell, and 
 dwell with emphasis, on his own imperfections, 
 but it evidently is a sheer impossibility to see 
 any fault, hardly so much as a foible in the 
 goddess of the Doone Glen. Perhaps it would 
 be too much to expect the stern fidelity in a 
 
MR. R. D. BLACKMORE. 245 
 
 lover on which Cromwell insisted in the painter 
 of his portrait. Nature may deal in warts and 
 wrinkles, but lovers obviously do not. To point 
 out the blemishes in one's mistress were, per- 
 haps, to declare one's-self a monster. Hence 
 it might be considered unfortunate when it falls 
 to the lot of a lover, so fervent and single as 
 John Ridd, to paint the picture of the heroine 
 of such a book as Lorna Doom. The painter 
 is so zealous a worshipper of his subject that 
 he forgets the shadows ; and I believe it is an 
 axiom of art that the shades are no less essential 
 to the perfect portrait than the lights. After all 
 the objections that might justly be taken to what 
 is styled the analytical school, a little more of 
 its spirit would have saved the delineator of 
 Lorna Doone from giving us an angel instead 
 of a woman. But let it be frankly owned that, 
 even with her fault of a too elaborate perfection, 
 Lorna Doone is a splendid creation, noble in 
 all her instincts, and hardly suffering in a com- 
 parison with any heroine of any novelist living 
 or dead, except, perhaps, some of the heroines 
 of Goethe, and one or two of Mr. Howells's. 
 Concerning the hero, the titanic John, there 
 
246 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 can, I think, be but one opinion, the opinion 
 given by the critic I have already quoted, 
 namely, that he ( is the type of our perfect 
 English manhood.' A grand, massive character 
 he surely is, the embodiment of English strength, 
 English solidity, English generosity, English 
 fair-play a right sound piece of stuff, true as 
 the best-tempered steel, not to be shaken by 
 adversity, nor spoiled by prosperity a yeoman 
 of whom one would be proud to say that his 
 limbs were made in England. It is hard to 
 speak of John Ridd without going into super- 
 latives. He is so frank, so genial, of such vast 
 dimensions in mind and body, so caressing in 
 his gentleness, so terrific in his anger, so just, 
 so honourable, so fierce in his hatred of all that 
 is mean, so constant in his loyalty to all that is 
 noble, so perfectly admirable in his strength and 
 his weakness, that it is admiration first and criti- 
 cism nowhere. Some of Scott's characters would, 
 I dare say, equal him in strength and kindli- 
 ness of nature. He somewhat resembles Dandie 
 Dinmont. Not that there is the least trace of 
 imitation in him, but that great natures are 
 pretty much the same the wide world over, and 
 
MR. R. D. BLACKMORE. 247 
 
 that when they are faithfully drawn there must 
 be points of similarity in the pictures. Others 
 of Scott's characters, too, might match him in 
 most of his best qualities many of them are 
 much more romantic, but since the days of 
 "Scott I doubt if any novelist has given us a 
 character fit to stand beside John Ridd, except 
 it might be the creators of Christian Christian - 
 son and Daniel Mylrea. 
 
 For one of his physical proportions John 
 Ridd is gentle almost beyond example. As 
 the saying is, he would not hurt a fly if he could 
 help it, and his behaviour towards Lorna and 
 his mother and sisters is very beautiful. At 
 the same time, though gentleness is admirable 
 in a giant, I don't know that I like Ridd's soft- 
 ness best. Dr. Johnson professed to like a 
 good hater, and I own that I am partial to a 
 man who knows how to be angry on occasion. 
 A man's mettle is shown by the manner in 
 which he deals with an enemy; and perhaps 
 no incident in Ridd's career is more impressive 
 than that final meeting with Carver Doone, 
 after the chivalrous outlaw had shot Lorna at 
 the altar. It was a situation to try a man ; but 
 
248 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 John rises magnificently to the occasion. Not 
 long after the outlaw has taken his base re- 
 venge, John is able to announce that ' the black 
 bog had him by the feet, the sucking of the 
 ground drew on him like the thirsty lips of 
 death. In our fury we had heeded neither wet 
 nor dry ; nor thought of earth beneath us. I 
 myself might scarcely leap with the last spring 
 of o'erlaboured legs from the engulfing grave 
 of slime. He fell back with his swarthy breast 
 (from which my grip had rent all the clothing) 
 like a hummock of bog oak, standing out of the 
 quagmire ; and then he tossed his arms to 
 heaven, and they were black to the elbow. I 
 could only gaze and pant, for my strength was 
 no more than an infant's, from the fury and the 
 horror. Scarcely could I turn away while joint 
 by joint he sank from sight.' John Ridd can 
 be gentle, but he knows how to avenge a 
 wrong. 
 
 Nor with all his delicious self-depreciation, 
 his apparent heaviness and ignorance of life 
 and literature (except the Bible and Master 
 William Shakespeare), is he wanting in what the 
 Scotch call ' wut.' Like FalstafT, he hath a 
 
MR. R. D. BLACKMORE. 249 
 
 very pleasant humour. It rises spontaneously 
 and unexpectedly, as the best humour always 
 does and must, and ripples like sunshine over 
 scenes which would otherwise be exceedingly 
 grim indeed. His accounts of his own es- 
 capades, especially in the early portions of the 
 book, are done with a delightful sense of the 
 charm of lightenment. But this quality of 
 humour is one which is ever present in all your 
 works. You cannot even make a parson arrest 
 a thief without indulging in a little jocose- 
 ness, just enough to give savour to the scene 
 without destroying the excitement of it. 
 
 Besides the quality of humour, your charac- 
 ters are usually endowed with very considerable 
 powers of observation and reflection. John 
 Ridd, indeed, is a second Sancho Panza in the 
 liberal fashion in which he lets pearls of wisdom 
 drop by the way. ' Now, while I was walking 
 daily in and out/ he says, during one of his 
 visits to London, ' among great crowds of men 
 (few of whom had any freedom from the cares 
 of money, and many of whom were even morbid 
 with a worse pest called politics) I could not be 
 quit of thinking how we jostle one another. 
 
250 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 God has made the earth quite large, with a 
 spread of land enough for all to live on without 
 fighting, also a mighty spread of water, laying 
 hands on sand and cliff with a solemn voice in 
 storm time, and in the gentle weather moving 
 men to thoughts of equity. This as well is 
 full of food, being two-thirds of the world, and 
 reserve for devouring knowledge, by the time 
 the sons of men have fed away the dry land. 
 Yet before the land itself has acknowledged 
 touch of man upon one in a hundred acres, 
 and before one mile in ten thousand of the 
 exhaustless ocean has ever felt the plunge of 
 hook or the combing of the haul nets, lo ! we 
 crawl in flocks together upon the hot ground 
 that stings us, even as the black grubs crowd 
 upon the harried cattle. Surely we are given 
 too much to follow the tracks of each other.' 
 
 That is a bit of philosophy that might well 
 be conned even in this enlightened era. 
 
 One great charm, not only of Lorna Doone, 
 but of all your works, lies in the warmth of tone 
 that pervades them. Not only are your crea- 
 tions vital (in Springhaven they are fairly 
 exuberant with life), but we seem to feel the 
 
MR. A\ D. BLACKMORE. 251 
 
 pulse of Nature in your scenic pictures as well. 
 At the start I asked whether the charm of 
 Lorna Doom lay in the style. I think it might 
 be answered that, if the chief pleasure in read- 
 ing your writings is not derivable from style, at 
 least your style gives no small pleasure to every 
 reader with any appreciation of culture. It is 
 a style that is peculiar and hard to analyse. 
 Sometimes, in its expressiveness, it reminds 
 one of the style of John Bunyan, at other times 
 its circumstantial minuteness reminds one of 
 Defoe's ; but, as a whole, it is infinitely richer 
 than Bunyan's, and infinitely more poetic than 
 Defoe's. Perhaps its power is shown nowhere 
 as well as in the descriptions of Nature which 
 abound in all your writings. The following, I 
 think, gives evidence of what is called the poetic 
 sense : 
 
 ' The rising of the sun was noble in the cold 
 and warmth of it ; peeping down the spread of 
 light, he raised his shoulder heavily over the 
 edge of gray mountain and wavering length of 
 upland. Beneath his gaze the dewfogs dipped, 
 and crept to the hollow places, then stole away 
 in line and column holding skirts, and clinging 
 
252 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 subtly at the sheltering corners where rock hung 
 over grass-land, while the brave lines of the hills 
 came forth, one beyond other gliding. 
 
 ' Then the woods arose in folds, like drapery 
 of awakened mountains, stately, with a depth of 
 awe and memory of the tempests. Autumn's 
 mellow hand was on them, as they owned 
 already, touched with gold and red and olive ; 
 and their joy towards the sun was less to a 
 bridegroom than a father. 
 
 * Yet before the floating impress of the woods 
 could clear itself, suddenly the gladsome light 
 leaped over hill and valley, casting amber, blue, 
 and purple, and a tint of rich, red rose accord- 
 ing to the scene they lit on, and the curtain 
 flung around ; yet all alike dispelling fear and 
 the cloven hoof of darkness ; all on the wings 
 of hope advancing, and proclaiming, " God is 
 here." ' 
 
 Somehow I imagine that your success as a 
 portrait-painter hinders a due appreciation of 
 your merits as a landscape artist. It is a pity 
 to think that such a passage as the above should 
 be skipped. 
 
MARK TWAIN. 
 
To MR. MARK TWAIN. 
 
 SIR, I am writing to you because I think you 
 would like to hear from me, and I am sending 
 the letter to the public press because it is 
 fashionable. Every man of any pretension 
 does that now, and the more private and con- 
 fidential the letter is, the more papers he sends 
 it to; so, as I hate to lag behind the times, I am 
 following the fashion. In past ages, you know 
 say about the year 1492, when your illustrious 
 and acquisitive ancestor, John Morgan Twain, 
 crossed the Atlantic with Columbus, and on 
 landing deftly ' solde ye anchor to ye dam 
 sauvages from ye interior ; saying yt he hadde 
 found it, ye sonne of a ghun ' about the time 
 this philanthropist emigrated to America to look 
 after the morals of the Indians by erecting a 
 jail and a gallows, it was not thought 'good 
 form' to have private letters publicly printed. 
 It would then have been considered affectation 
 
 263 
 
254 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 to do anything of the sort. In those ridicu- 
 lously fastidious times people wrote to each 
 other under the strictest seal of secrecy, as if 
 they were conspirators plotting a general assassi- 
 nation of everybody worth killing, or thieves 
 planning a national burglary, and no one had 
 any fun when they called each other names, or 
 were any the wiser when they insinuated that 
 they could tell tales an they liked. We do 
 things better now. If this is not precisely a 
 simple it is an ingenuous age, and has nothing 
 to hide. All is done above board, and we don't 
 give a continental (by the way, what 's a conti- 
 nental ?) if the whole world, and what 's more, 
 the world's wife, read all we write. 
 
 To be sure there are old-fashioned people 
 hid away in nooks and corners of the earth, 
 who follow the customs of preceding ages and 
 still seal their letters. You hear these deluded 
 creatures sometimes in a stationer's shop asking 
 for well-gummed envelopes, as if they would 
 launch us back to antediluvian epochs ; but the 
 absurd and exclusive habit of giving a letter to 
 the party to whom it is addressed only is dying 
 out, like the belief in ghosts, and angels, and 
 
MR. MARK TWAIN. 255 
 
 miracles, and the Bible and other old super- 
 stitions. Oh, the world 's getting along, never 
 you fear ! It 's a good deal smarter to-day than 
 it was fifty years ago. You may bet on that. As 
 the old woman said I think she was a negress 
 of South Carolina 'things is pergressin'.' 
 We don't take much stock in the exploded 
 ideas of our fathers and grandfathers. We 
 have ideas of our own, and are not beholden 
 to anybody, not to Solomon, nor Socrates, 
 nor Carlyle, nor any of that tribe. The 
 youngest child among us wouldn't be taken in 
 by Moses, for example, after the dressing down 
 Colonel Ingersoll has given him. The old law- 
 giver made a great many mistakes in his day. 
 He was careless, you see, and his reputation 's 
 ruined. And then he didn't know quite so 
 much as he pretended. Colonel Ingersoll 
 knows a heap more than ever Moses dreamed 
 of knowing. Science didn't flourish to any 
 great extent amongst the Jewish Patriarchs. 
 Moses never was at college, and couldn't be 
 expected to be 'well up.' Moreover, there 
 were no telegraphs, or telephones, or stock 
 exchanges, or city councils, or lecture platforms, 
 
256 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 or encyclopaedias, or literary men like you and 
 me, or debating clubs, or public-houses in his 
 day. The engines of civilisation were wanting 
 sadly wanting ; so that it is clear at a glance 
 Colonel Ingersoll must of necessity be a superior 
 person to Moses. For what makes one man 
 superior to another? Education, to be sure, 
 and the privilege of reading such books as A 
 Tramp Abroad. Books like that open up the 
 mind and throw light on the dark recesses of 
 the soul. They show one the immensity of 
 human ignorance in times past : they are 
 great civilising agents. * Worth makes the man, 
 and want of it the fellow,' says Pope ; but it is 
 clear he meant education and wrote worth only 
 to suit the exigencies of verse. This proves, 
 you see, that verse is a cramped kind of com- 
 position, and that all men who wish to be 
 understood will steer clear of it. A man can't 
 get in the precise meaning he would like in 
 verse, and it is trying to get it in that makes so 
 many of our poets bald. A curious essay might 
 be written on ' Wherefore are poets so bald ? ' 
 though the answer might be succinctly given, 
 4 Because they tear out their hair.' Between 
 
MR. MARK TWAIN. 257 
 
 the question and the answer, however, you 
 could get in a great deal of interesting matter, 
 and you might have a nice enjoyable little 
 chuckle at the expense of Mr. Besant, who 
 seriously advises young writers to write a sonnet 
 daily before dinner, for the purpose not of 
 giving them an appetite but of improving their 
 style. I think your own suggestion that authors 
 should begin their career by eating a couple of 
 medium-sized whales is more sensible ; for fish 
 gives one brain power, while sonnets are too 
 often sapless and innutritious. But I seem to 
 be getting away from my subject. 
 
 I was talking of the beautiful and, happily, 
 growing custom of having private letters printed 
 in books, newspapers, and public journals. It 
 is a beautiful custom, for it lets the reading 
 public a section of mankind I greatly rever- 
 ence see how smart a man is, and how neatly 
 he can turn his phrases, and how aptly he can 
 hit the other fellow on the head and knock 
 him sprawling, thus yielding both amusement 
 and edification ; so I am sending this as a kind 
 of open letter that people may judge impartially 
 
 R 
 
258 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 between you and me. That's fair you see; 
 the public are not deprived of their rights, and 
 you are prevented from poking fun at my mis- 
 takes; for you must understand the printer 
 undertakes to do the square thing by this letter. 
 He says if my lucubration (he doesn't use the 
 word disrespectfully, it 's just his way of talking) 
 is legibly written on one side of the paper only 
 (it's economy to write on both sides, but he 
 won't have it), and doesn't contain more than 
 a thousand libels, nor more than two hundred 
 grammatical mistakes, and has some odd ideas 
 people would like to get a hold of, he'll 
 print it under a pretty and conspicuous heading, 
 with the name of the addressee given correctly 
 to the best of his ability. (I suppose the 
 last clause is intended as a sort of satire on my 
 penmanship, which is neither, very clear nor 
 conspicuously elegant.) The spelling and 
 punctuation he undertakes to look after him- 
 self, and the printer's devil no, I guess it's 
 the printer's reader takes care that, on an 
 average, not more than half the letters in a 
 word attempt to stand on their heads, and that 
 no stray sheep, so to speak, sneak in amongst 
 
MR. MARK TWAIN. 259 
 
 them. That 's our compact ; so that you may 
 say I 'm responsible for the sense and senti- 
 ments, and he's responsible for mostly every- 
 thing besides. Should you, therefore, discover 
 any egregious errors not directly connected 
 with the sense or the sentiment, you are at 
 liberty to publicly expose them ; but should 
 you discover anything ridiculous, either in the 
 opinions expressed or in the style of writing, 
 perhaps you would be good enough to com- 
 municate with me privately. That seems all 
 that need be said on that head, and now we '11 
 settle down to business. 
 
 I want to tell you in a plain way just what I 
 think of you. I am impelled to do this from a 
 sense of public duty, for I think there are mis- 
 taken notions entertained of your works. It will 
 be my business to set the popular judgment right. 
 
 You will, no doubt, be gratified to learn that 
 I have found your works very consoling in times 
 of trouble and affliction. And it doesn't in the 
 least detract from my enjoyment of them that I 
 clearly perceive you intended them to be, not 
 pathetic, but funny. After all, what matters it 
 what one intended ? One cannot always carry 
 
260 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 out one's intentions, and one sometimes mis- 
 takes one's forte. Some people start with the 
 idea that they are great poets, others that they 
 are great novelists, others that they are great 
 artists, others that they are great humorists, 
 others that they are great sages and philosophers, 
 others that they are great generals, and so forth ; 
 and very often they carry their delusions with 
 them to the grave. Delusions can do no harm 
 there ; still it is always better to leave them in 
 their natural place in the great inane above. 
 But while this is so, one shouldn't be too hard 
 on people for their mistakes ; and far be it from 
 me to say a word in censure of you for imagin- 
 ing that your forte lies in raising a laugh, while 
 all the time it lies in drawing tears. 
 
 You are excruciatingly pathetic. Sterne, 
 mourning over an ass, and refusing to be com- 
 forted, is positively hilarious compared with you 
 in your account of My late Senatorial Secretary- 
 ship, or The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef 
 Contract, or Journalism in Tennessee, or Niagara. 
 That description of the Indian attack on you is 
 very touching. ' It was the greatest operation 
 that ever was. I simply saw a sudden flash in 
 
MR. MARK TWAIN. 261 
 
 the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead-baskets, 
 and mocassins a single flash, and they all 
 appeared to hit me at once, and no two of 
 them in the same place. In the next instant 
 the entire tribe was upon me. They tore half 
 the clothes off me, they broke my arms and 
 legs, they gave me a thump that dented the top 
 of my head till it would hold coffee like a 
 saucer ; and to crown their disgraceful proceed- 
 ings, and add insult to injury, they threw me 
 over the Niagara Falls, and I got wet.' Nor is 
 that the most touching part of it ; for after you 
 had gone round and round forty-four times in 
 the eddy at the foot of the falls, ' a man walked 
 down, and sat down, and put a pipe in his 
 mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with 
 one eye, and kept the other on the match, while 
 he sheltered it in his hands from the wind,' 
 without offering to render you any assistance 
 whatever. 'Presently a puff of wind blew it 
 (the match) out. The next time I swept round, 
 he said 
 
 ' " Got a match ? " 
 
 ' " Yes, in my other vest. Help me out, 
 please." 
 
262 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 1 " Not for Joe." 
 
 ' When I came round again, I said : " Excuse 
 the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drown- 
 ing man, but will you explain this singular 
 conduct of yours ? " 
 
 ' " With pleasure. I am the coroner. Don't 
 hurry on my account. I can wait for you. But 
 I wish I had a match." 
 
 ' I said : " Take my place, and I '11 go and 
 get you one." 
 
 ' He declined. This lack of confidence on 
 his part created a coldness between us, and 
 from that time forward I avoided him. It was 
 my idea, in case anything happened to me, to 
 so time the occurrence as to throw my custom 
 into the hands of the opposition coroner over 
 on the American side. 
 
 ' At last a policeman came along, and arrested 
 me for disturbing the peace by yelling at the 
 people on shore for help. The judge fined me, 
 but I had the advantage of him. My money 
 was in my pantaloons, and my pantaloons were 
 with the Indians. 
 
 ' Thus I escaped. I am now lying in a very 
 critical condition. At least I am lying, anyway, 
 
MR. MARK TWAIN. 263 
 
 critical or not critical. I am hurt all over ; but 
 I cannot tell the full extent yet, because the 
 doctor is not done taking the inventory. He 
 will make out my manifest this evening. How- 
 ever, thus far he thinks that only sixteen of my 
 wounds are fatal.' 
 
 Was there ever a more touching tale of 
 cruelty more wanton, or more heroically borne. 
 The injustice is colossal. Not only were you 
 hurt all over, not only did you sustain sixteen 
 fatal wounds perhaps more, but sixteen for a 
 certainty but you got wet, probably indeed 
 drenched, and thus ran a serious risk of getting 
 your joints askew with rheumatism. The In- 
 dians were brutes, the coroner was a brute, the 
 policeman was a brute, the judge was a brute. 
 There is no evidence that you exaggerate ; your 
 story has every appearance of truth \ and being 
 true and simply told, without literary flourishes, 
 or any attempt to draw on the reservoirs of the 
 reader, it is all the more affecting. My eyes 
 are suffused with tears as I write. I feel my 
 heart swelling and welling with soft dewy pity 
 (that 's a pet phrase from the poets), and I am 
 drawn towards you in the bonds of brotherhood. 
 
264 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 You are a human creature like myself, alas ! 
 you are too, too human, and your mountain of 
 troubles is too, too solid, and refuses to melt ; 
 and the canon of destiny is aimed straight at 
 you (kindly compare with the speech of Ham- 
 let, the rollicking Prince of Denmark). You 
 know what it is to be in tribulation ; you know 
 what it is not only to suffer in the body, but in 
 the soul in the soul, sir. Ay, that is where 
 the rub is most poignantly felt. Nobody can 
 see into the soul; it is a great vacuum, an 
 invisible something or other that folks are not 
 very sure of, but it hurts awfully sometimes. 
 In speaking of it you cannot say, with any 
 semblance of truth, that the sting goes to the 
 quick, for there is no quick ; nor the dagger to 
 the marrow, for there is no marrow ; but, ugh ! 
 doesn't a wound in it make you cry out ? 
 
 You know the acute suffering of the soul, and 
 it is because of this that I always recommend 
 your books to people in sorrow in preference to 
 books that are avowedly devotional. I specially 
 recommend them to such as have suffered 
 bereavement such as have lost darling pugs, 
 or dear little tame rats, or gentle pet cats that 
 
MR. MARK TWAIN. 265 
 
 have, perhaps, been horribly mutilated by vicious 
 steel traps when walking abroad to pay social 
 visits in the cool of the evening. I have seen 
 these bereaved and inconsolable ones palpably 
 falling into a decline; I have known their 
 friends to get estimates from undertakers in sad 
 anticipation of what was coming ; I have known 
 the poor unfortunates to take leave of their 
 families and fold their hands and await the 
 inevitable; and I have gone and put one of 
 your works into their hands, and lo ! as if by 
 magic,, they began to mend. You can never 
 know the number of the people you have 
 snatched from death and the grave. You are 
 the greatest physician alive. Your medicines 
 work cures that are perfectly miraculous. O 
 sir, the world owes you a debt of gratitude it 
 can never, never, never repay ! 
 
 Let us say that some estimable lady has lost 
 a pet pug that has been the solace of her life 
 for ever so many years. The poor little affec- 
 tionate, docile thing has, perhaps, died from 
 want of breath, the windpipe having closed 
 from a surplus of fat an awful death, a most 
 affecting death even to think of. Naturally the 
 
266 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 estimable lady is stricken beyond expression. 
 Her grief is too great for tears. The heart has 
 been blasted. The seat of the affections has 
 been rocked like a ship in a hurricane. It may 
 be that the throne of reason itself has been 
 invaded. What are you to expect in such a 
 case ? It seems hopeless. The hand of death 
 is on the estimable owner of the late lamented 
 pug. She is doomed. She must go. That is 
 the natural supposition. But some one puts 
 one of your touching and tender books into her 
 hands. At first she reads languidly and without 
 interest, feeling that she has done with this 
 world; but by-and-by, and almost unconsciously, 
 she begins to turn the pages with some show 
 of enjoyment, then her feelings are touched, 
 then a nice cooling little stream begins to course 
 down either cheek, and the hot eyes have a 
 refreshing bath, and the heavy heart is relieved 
 of its pent-up what the deuce is pent-up in the 
 heart? Never mind, the pent-up heart is 
 relieved, and the estimable lady, feeling that she 
 is not alone in her sorrow, that you have suffered 
 before her, picks herself up, puts on her best 
 bonnet and her sweetest smile, and goes to look 
 
J/A'. MARK TWAIN. 267 
 
 up a successor to her dear departed. And that 
 is why I recommend your books. 
 
 But a curious thing happened to me lately. 
 A friend of mine was going to a funeral, and, 
 having to travel a considerable distance by rail, 
 he thought unto himself that he would like 
 something to read. Now he imagined it 
 would be rather disrespectful to the departed 
 to take up a secular newspaper, so he con- 
 sulted me. 
 
 * I can give you what you want exactly,' I 
 said, and with cheerful confidence put The 
 New Pilgrim's Progress into his hand. ' 1 
 know that will suit you,' I said, as he stepped 
 into the train. ' If you 're not as sober and 
 solemn as a judge pronouncing a death sentence 
 when you reach your destination, you may call 
 me a Dutchman.' Now the funny thing is he 
 never has called me a Dutchman, but two days 
 later I received the book back by post, with a 
 note of three lines couched in very formal style, 
 intimating that he had a natural dislike to being 
 made the butt of a clumsy and blasphemous 
 jest. I demanded what he meant, and this is 
 what he said, 'Do you call that gigantic and 
 
268 LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 persistent humbug religious? Why, the man 
 is perfectly incapable of writing the truth. He 
 can't describe a single thing as he saw it, or as 
 it really is. He says he acted as second to 
 Gambetta in a duel with some fool or other, 
 and actually proposed brickbats at three-quar- 
 ters of a mile. The thing is ridiculous ; it 's 
 monstrous ; it 's simply a lie, that 's what it is. 
 Again, he says that once during a thunderstorm, 
 by actual count, the lightning struck at his 
 establishment his establishment, indeed ! 
 seven hundred and sixty-four times in forty 
 minutes, and tripped on a rod and slipped down 
 some spiral twist and shot into the earth before 
 it had time to be surprised at the way the thing 
 was done. Isn't that a likely story ? And again, 
 when he is in Rome (where they should have 
 kept him) he gives it out as a sober fact that 
 he discovered a theatrical programme nearly 
 two thousand years old among the ruins of the 
 Coliseum, and that this bit of paper was as fresh 
 as the day it was printed. To make the lie 
 complete he should have said it was fresher. 
 And then when he is in the Holy Land mind 
 you, in the Holy Land his silly blasphemies 
 
MK. MARK TWAIN. 269 
 
 might be pardoned elsewhere on the score of 
 weakness of intellect, but in the Holy Land they 
 are unforgivable, well, what do you think this 
 fine writer of yours asserts as a solemn fact ? He 
 asserts that outside a certain mosque is a minia- 
 ture temple, which marks the spot where David 
 and Goliath used to sit and judge the people. 
 Did ever sane man, professing to be a Christian, 
 and having some knowledge of his Bible, print 
 such a statement as that before. Such colossal 
 ignorance astounded me. Nor is that all, nor 
 half, nor quarter, nor the tenth part, nor the 
 hundredth, nor the millionth of his absurdities. 
 He tells us, for instance, about a horse he 
 owned by the name of 'Jericho,' and calmly 
 remarks it was a mare. Well, this mare or 
 horse, or mule or ass, or whatever it was, had a 
 practice of fighting the flies with its heels, 
 because it had no tail, and it used also to 
 reach round and bite the rider's legs. He 
 says he didn't care for that, only he didn't like 
 to see a horse too sociable. I ask you, is that 
 likely ? I ask you, is it sensible ? But why go 
 on citing instances of the man's monstrosity? 
 He is utterly unreliable; he is a fraud; you 
 
2;o LETTERS TO LIVING AUTHORS. 
 
 don't know when he is attempting to palm 
 off some gigantic falsehood as a fact. And yet 
 this is the writer you would recommend to one 
 in distress ; this is the writer you would put 
 into my hand when I was going away to a dear 
 friend's funeral. Get out of my house, sir ; let 
 me never see your face again go out of this, 
 
 and go to with your Mark Twain.' That 
 
 is how the interview closed. I tried to reason 
 with him. I tried to show him that you some- 
 times attempted a little jest, and that when a 
 man intends a thing as a joke he should not 
 be harshly criticised for unveracity, even when 
 the joke is not so obvious as to make one 
 laugh. But he declined to listen to me, and as 
 I noticed a curious restlessness about the toe 
 of his right boot, I departed. We have not 
 spoken since. 
 
 But his was an exceptional case, and in 
 general I find, as already stated, that your works 
 are very soothing. With old ladies and gentle- 
 men, with no perception of humour and no 
 liking for it, they are particularly successful. 
 An old maiden lady who had just buried her 
 thirty-seventh cat recently said to me, * Heaven 
 
MR. MARK TWAIN. 271 
 
 bless Mr. Twain ; he made me cry for two 
 hours, two long hours ; it was so delicious. 
 He 's not frivolous, you know, like some you 
 read ; he never attempts to make you laugh 
 oh, he's so nice and feeling !' 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty, 
 at the Edinburgh University Press. 
 
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