STUDIES 
 
 IN 
 
 FRANKNESS 
 
BV THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE PAGEANTRY OF LIFE 
 
 A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS 
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE 
 THACKERAY 
 
 LITERARY PORTRAITS 
 
 WILLIAM PITT 
 
 AMERICAN SKETCHES 
 
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STUDIES 
 
 IN 
 
 FRANKNESS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES WHIBLEY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON ^ CO. 
 
 1912 
 
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La franchise absolue, moyen d^originalite 
 
 BAUDELAIRE 
 
 241510 
 
/ desire to thank the Editors and Proprietors 
 of * The Nineteenth Century,' ' The Tudor 
 Translations,^ and ' The New Review,' as 
 well as Messrs. Methuen and Messrs. Lawrence 
 ^ Bullen, Ltd,, for their courteous permission 
 to reprint the chapters of this book which have 
 appeared under their auspices. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION i 
 
 PETRONIUS 27 
 
 HELIODORUS 49 
 
 LAURENCE STERNE 79 
 
 APULEIUS ,,5 
 
 HERONDAS 143 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 161 
 
 LUCIAN-I ig7 
 
 LUCIAN— II 205 
 
 SIR THOMAS URQUHART .... 227 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 WHEN Adam and Eve were chased from a 
 blameless Paradise, they were forced to 
 cover that which it had never been a dishonour to 
 reveal. It was not until the devil murmured in the 
 branches that a knee became more guilty than an 
 eyebrow, and the prophets of concealment would be 
 wise to remember that the reticence which they 
 account the chief of virtues was the first penalty paid 
 by guilty man to an enraged deity. Thus, in expia- 
 tion of the primaeval disobedience, we are still cursed 
 or blessed with a shamefaced diffidence ; we are com- 
 pelled to the public denial of many truths which we 
 acknowledge in secret ; from our cradles to our graves 
 we hide behind a mask of prudent discretion, or minc- 
 ing chicanery ; and we still share with the Puritan 
 the punishment imposed upon the world by Eve's 
 complacency. The Puritan, in truth, forgetting the 
 cause of his modesty, makes righteousness of necessity, 
 and believes that in prolonging a garment or blinking 
 an eye he is doing a reputable service to the cause of 
 virtue. But he is only bowing his neck beneath the 
 
2 STUDIES IN FKANKNESS 
 
 inevitable yoke ; he is only bearing his part in the 
 universal condemnation. 
 
 Though reticence was our first and heaviest punish- 
 ment, it did not come upon us w^ithout compensations. 
 The mere command that man should clothe his naked- 
 ness was sufficient to create the love of adornment and 
 its attendant vanity. So the manifold arts of dandyism 
 and coquetry came into being ; and man, by giving a 
 separate colour to his life, distinguished himself from the 
 beasts who know neither ornament nor shame. Then, 
 also, was born sin ; then lawlessness, which hitherto 
 had recognised vice as little as virtue, became law, 
 and parcelled out all the possible actions of mankind 
 into right and wrong, involving the pristine simplicity 
 in unnumbered complications. Modesty was in- 
 vented to keep pace with restraint ; licence dogged 
 the footsteps of obedience ; and the presence of death 
 gave man his first lesson in the value of life. And 
 with sin was born humour, which could not breathe 
 in a perfect Paradise — humour which sweetens misery 
 with a laugh, and sets our heaviest misfortunes in a 
 just relation. But, that the new-made sinners might 
 not too loudly exult, prudery was appointed the watch- 
 dog of humour, and it is from the tangled combat of 
 these opposites that wit and adventure, joyousness and 
 romance, come forth victorious. 
 
 Life, then, whether we will or no, preserves its 
 privacies and restraints, which have grown stronger 
 by tradition, and whose imperious sway no lover of 
 curiosity will resent. Thus, there are ordained for us 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 a thousand intricate rules, in obedience to which we 
 play the game or fight the battle of existence. Nor 
 are they irksome, these infringements upon our liberty, 
 since life is made interesting by prohibition, and since 
 it is to them that we owe our morals, our manners, 
 the very elegancies of human conduct. To dream or 
 licence with equanimity is impossible. The most 
 ardent worshipper of the red-cap would find no 
 pleasure if once he realised his vain scheme of 
 freedom, and happily the force of tradition is still 
 strong enough to thwart his worst intention. But 
 the Puritan has applied the laws of life, and others ten 
 times sterner, to the art of literature, so that words are 
 detected in flagrant criminality, and poetry has become 
 a liveried convict. 
 
 The confusion of literature with its material pos- 
 sesses, like many another vice, the dignity of age. 
 Yet its inveteracy is no palliation, and never had the 
 vice less excuse than to-day, when the last subtlety of 
 the art should be understood. Life, in its many- 
 coloured relations, and in all its restless vicissitudes, 
 is the proper field of literature. But while life is 
 governed by the laws of habit and the empire, litera- 
 ture bows only to its own dictates. Knowing this 
 single restraint, it is otherwise untrammelled as free- 
 dom itself; and he who would throw a needless chain 
 upon it might as well attempt to stem the torrent or 
 fetter the whirlwind. But the hopelessness of an 
 enterprise seldom deters the foolish, and from the very 
 beginning of time literature, poor innocent litera- 
 
4 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 ture, has suffered a twofold misunderstanding. In the 
 first place, its motive has been tried by the inexorable 
 law of life ; its every incident has been scrutinised by the 
 cross-eye of moral censure ; and each reckless Aristar- 
 chus has asked not how the parts perfect the whole, 
 not how the episodes combine to a proper climax, but 
 whether such adventures as decorate the narrative 
 might enter into his own experience without a pro- 
 test. In the second place, the creator has been pil- 
 loried for the sins of his own creatures. " Who 
 drives fat oxen must himself be fat," and he who 
 draws the character of a tall man must himself overtop 
 six feet. The manifold and contradictory virtues and 
 vices which give life and variety to a book are visited 
 for punishment upon one devoted head. Heedless of 
 logic or common sense, forgetting that a work of art 
 — the result of a personality — is still impersonal, the 
 censorious are wont to endow the inventor with all the 
 attributes of all his characters. Thus Fielding in one 
 aspect is as brave a spark as Tom Jones himself, in 
 another blameless as the fair Sophia ; and you shudder 
 at the folly which would make Balzac one with the 
 heroic world of passion and intrigue, of love and 
 terror, of spendthrift extravagance and hard economy, 
 which he has called into being. 
 
 But the end of impertinence is not yet reached. 
 The Methodist who is convinced that nothing has a 
 right to exist which does not exercise a beneficial 
 influence upon conduct, has framed the converse 
 axiom that none save a good man may write a 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 good book. And more than this : the man should 
 be good with the Methodist's own particular good- 
 ness. He must be prepared to wave aloft the 
 flame-coloured banner of the conventicle, and his life 
 will bear instant testimony to his genius. So the 
 Methodist averting his eyes from poem or romance, 
 turns criticism into a kind of indiscreet biography. 
 The printed page need say nothing to him ; he is 
 content to rake in the dust-heap of the past ; and 
 should he discover the compromising evidence of one 
 sin, he proceeds to a judgment, proud in the conviction 
 that he is not only displaying his own intelligence, but 
 is conferring a distinguished favour upon morality. 
 
 Naught else remains than to frame definitions, to 
 fit the craft of letters with fantastic titles, or to 
 condemn it for ever as an Exponent of the Ethical 
 Life. The ethics, uncovered by this method of 
 criticism, are as simple as the field is narrow ; 
 but the zealot consoles himself by making scandal 
 a check upon his judgment, and by proving the 
 dramas of Shakespeare masterpieces because the 
 writer was a '' kind man." The pursuit, indeed, has 
 a charm for all such as love statistics, but even the 
 statistician may feel a pang of regret when an acci- 
 dental document compels him to revise a lifelong 
 opinion of Shelley's art or morals. And how shall he 
 esteem a work to which tradition has attached no 
 name ? To him, alas ! the Satiricon must be a 
 perpetual puzzle, since no ingenuity can disclose the 
 dossier of its unknown author. But this perversity 
 
6 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 of judgment, which involves literature in inex- 
 tricable confusion, is not permitted to interrupt the 
 pursuit of humbler trades. Not even the w^ildest 
 enthusiast would condemn a boot because it was cut 
 from the hide of a vicious animal, or because the 
 shoemaker devoted his leisure to whisky and sedition. 
 
 However, when once the censor has laid a heavy- 
 hand upon literature, he is not induced by reason to 
 relinquish his grasp. But his pertinacity is never 
 aroused to understanding. If only he could analyse 
 his displeasure, he might discover that it is genius not 
 impropriety that repels him. His reprobation proceeds 
 less from morality than from lack of imagination. 
 Incapable of disengaging life from its presentation, he 
 forms an instant picture of the written word, which 
 he straightway charges with the infamy of his own 
 distorted vision. And first with an energy of con- 
 demnation he would exclude from the privilege of 
 type all such words and phrases as are not heard at 
 his own fireside. Nor could he pronounce a less 
 apposite judgment ; since between the written lan- 
 guage and the spoken there is a complete divorce. 
 It is by an accident that speech and literature 
 employ the same symbols, and a formal expression 
 instantly changes the value of the common currency. 
 To conversation and oratory are appointed their own 
 rules, while literature retains a special freedom. The 
 tongue, in brief, is an enemy to literary expression, 
 and Cicero showed himself keenly sensitive to his art, 
 when, having composed the denunciation of Catiline 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 in his study, he refrained from its delivery. Thus it is 
 that the word for word report has killed the possibility 
 of lasting eloquence. Time was when the orator 
 translated his speech from the language of the voice 
 to the language of ink and paper, before the eye of 
 man might look upon it j to produce in silence the 
 effect of sound and gesture, another phrase, another 
 style are necessary ; but the trick of shorthand has 
 baffled his art, and henceforth there will be speaking in 
 unrestrained volubility, but no persuasive oratory that 
 will Hve in the closet. 
 
 So a thousand dishevelled words, which the primaeval 
 ban forbids us to use in familiar intercourse, may be proper 
 matter for literature. These libertines of speech have 
 a value which does not depend upon the ideas which 
 they connote. They are, so to say, strong notes of 
 colour upon the printed page, and their use is controlled 
 not by morals but by taste. Yet it is not given to 
 every scribbler to open the door to an indiscriminate 
 rabble. Frankness is the privilege of genius alone. 
 Where tone and style permit, and where courage 
 comes to the aid of invention, there are few things 
 that may not be said with dignity and distinction. 
 But writers there are, to whom no freedom is per- 
 mitted, in whose books a single word, innocuous 
 elsewhere, gives you a shudder of disgust. Rabelais, 
 on the other hand, is sovereign of himself. With 
 a heartwhole laugh of wisdom he purged the last 
 grossness of offence. Since he knew all things, and 
 with a perfect humour set them in their proper places, 
 
8 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 no door was closed to his intrusion, no corner secluded 
 from his prying eye. He might thrust his rake into 
 the worst rubbish-heap and withdraw it unspotted 
 from the contact. Nor are you surprised that he 
 spent his life in reflective taciturnity, and was known 
 to his contemporaries for a dreamer. 
 
 But the Puritan is not content with sentencing to 
 outlawry these words, for which his starveling soul has 
 no employ. A grumble is still heard when he has 
 replaced outspokenness by a clumsy artifice of cere- 
 monious delicacy. He would also sit in judgment 
 upon the visions which literature evokes, upon the 
 fanciful characters she portrays. He finds the poet 
 wandering in a paradise of license, and straightway he 
 would drive him out, bidding him cover his beautiful 
 images with the clout of shamefacedness. This in- 
 tolerance has never fallen short of its opportunity, and 
 the Puritan, whose censure is but the expression of a 
 private dislike, pretends that he is fighting the cause of 
 the people. But genius does not "address its pen 
 or style unto the people whom books do not redress," 
 and, in warning the illiterate against such works as 
 they are doomed to misunderstand, the Puritan does but 
 stimulate an unrighteous pruriency. For the illiterate 
 have no concern with such masterpieces, as might un- 
 cover to their eyes the hidden places of the earth. 
 Content to feed their fancy on the vulgar novel, they 
 should run no risk from the contamination of genius. 
 Yet it is this anxiety for the people which, ever since 
 Plato, has been the worst enemy of literature. 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 As the savage round the camp fire sings his song of 
 bravery that he may feed the warlike spirit of his tribe, 
 so Plato saw in poetry naught but a means of fashioning 
 good citizens. Strange it is to find the acute philo- 
 sopher ranged on the side of the '' poor Indian." But 
 Plato's business was with politics rather than with 
 literature, and (for the moment) he would rather have 
 banished all poetry from the perfect city of his imagina- 
 tion than have endangered the morals of a single leather- 
 seller. Moreover, the poetry of Greece, though the 
 highest form of art, was still intimately related to the 
 worship of the gods, and, save in the poet's own 
 esteem, it did not yet exist as an end unto itself. 
 But this is less a question of art than of history, and 
 presently Aristotle came to the aid of literature, 
 declaring that pleasure was its aim, and that no 
 poet need refrain from the presentation in words of 
 such things as in life are painful or abhorrent. 
 
 Literature, then, is unconcerned with the im- 
 provement of the citizen, or the welfare of the state. 
 A thing of beauty, it knows no law save the law of its 
 own embellishment. It sings in the ear, it laughs in 
 the brain. It has the touch of Midas and transmutes, 
 with happier effect, whatever is common into gold. 
 The ugly in life instantly changes to loveliness at its 
 potent wizardry. The pain and misery of Philoctetes 
 are informed with a noble majesty when once they 
 have passed into the verse of Sophocles. "The 
 Dean," said Stella, " could write finely about a broom- 
 stick," and thus, unconsciously maybe, put the case of 
 
10 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 artistic freedom in an epigram. To the artist, indeed, 
 nothing comes amiss if only his treatment justify his 
 choice. The unnoticed corners of reality, the distant 
 provinces of devilry and magic — he is free of them all. 
 His world, which embraces yet transcends the narrow 
 world of life, knows not the limits which are set upon 
 the hardiest traveller. And if he will he may envelop his 
 puppets in an unknown atmosphere. He may lift them 
 to a table-land where all things have a different 
 meaning, where the literal is dead, where flagrancy is 
 humour, where only the inartistic is ugly. Or he may 
 imagine a country where the ten commandments do 
 not run, he may deftly transpose vice and virtue, and 
 he may do it with so invincible a joyousness that his 
 fantasy is pure of offence. But into this gay kingdom 
 the censor with his prying eye may never penetrate ; 
 for he will detect in its flowers the iridescence of a 
 stagnant pool, and carry away a legend of horrors that 
 he has never seen. He will turn the fairy tale ot 
 Petronius into a shameful reality, and cavil at the 
 shadow-land of Poe because he finds it a patent outrage 
 upon nature. He will recoil from whatever is frank 
 and outspoken because his own withered tongue can 
 only frame the catchwords of the newspaper, because 
 his discoloured eye perverts merriment and sincerity 
 into evilness of speech and thought. But his 
 persecution, dangerous though it be, dies with his 
 death, and is remembered only in the contemptuous 
 indignation of his victim. 
 
 So romance, poetry, satire, have fought the double 
 
INTRODUCTION ii 
 
 battle with the difficulties of their art, and with those 
 enemies who would limit the field of their enterprise. 
 Nor have their enemies been constant in severity save 
 at one point. Now they will condemn the super- 
 natural as the enemy of faith, now they will pro- 
 nounce the legends of brigandage a direct incentive 
 to crime, but never will they swerve one inch from 
 their denunciation of " passion " in whatever terms it 
 be expressed. For them, at least, the unknown is not 
 magnificent, and in a fury of hatred they resent a 
 reference to the sentiment which can never be theirs. 
 With as clear a reason might they cry out upon a 
 heroine with blue eyes or red hair because a dark-eyed 
 beauty is nearer to their heart. But they have always 
 fought in defiance of reason, and while they have 
 changed their weapons they have displayed a fierce 
 persistence in the combat. Aristophanes, who tuned 
 his lyre to satire, melody, or wit, and who hid the 
 patriot behind a mask of laughter, was fiercely 
 attacked in his own lifetime, and still appeared coarse 
 and obscene to no less a critic than Plutarch. 
 
 But it was Catullus, hapless lover and impeccable 
 poet, who first found the perfect answer to his 
 assailants. With an energy of rage he destroyed 
 Aurelius and Furius who dared to assume his character 
 from his works, and who, judging his verses molliculos, 
 would denounce the writer as parum pudicum. His 
 triumphant answer has been echoed by a hundred poets 
 at bay. " Nam castum esse," he wrote, with superb 
 dignity. 
 
12 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 " Nam castum esse decet pium poetam 
 ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est." 
 
 And neither Ovid nor Martial* could wish a 
 better defence, while our own Herrick would have 
 placed at his book's end a translation which long since 
 became classic : "Jocund his muse was, but his life 
 was chaste." Thus should the cavillers be silenced, 
 though the chastity of a poet's life does but little 
 concern them. Thus might they learn to avoid a uni- 
 versal stumbling block were they not beyond guidance. 
 Nor were the poets alone in the public displeasure. 
 Romance fell eariy under the curse ; the Milesian 
 stories, those masterpieces of gaiety, which, destroyed 
 by popularity, have floated down to us on the stream 
 of memory and imitation, were esteemed disgrace- 
 ful even by the Parthians ; and there is no more 
 entertaining criticism in ancient literature than 
 the anecdote of Surena's hypocrisy, as related by 
 Plutarch. It is thus the story is told in North's 
 version : f " Surena having called the Senate of 
 
 * "Vita verecunda est, musa jocosa mihi": thus Ovid, and 
 Martial does but give the same sentiment another turn: "Las- 
 civa est nobis pagina, vita proba." Pascal, who is not a tainted 
 witness, finds another, and a more liberal comment for the poet 
 of the Epigrams : " L,'homme airae la malignite," he writes : 
 " mais ce n'est pas contre les borgnes, ni contre les malheureux, 
 mais contre les heureux superbes ; on se trompe autrement. Car 
 la concupiscence est la source de tons nos mouvements, et 
 I'humanite." An unexpected judgment, truly, and a strange 
 conjunction. 
 
 t The Life of Crassus. 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 Seleucia together layed before them Aristides book 
 of ribaldrie, intituled The Milesians y which was no fable, 
 for they were found in a Romanes fardell or trusse, 
 called Rustius. This gave Surena great cause to 
 scorne and despise the behaviour of the Romanes, 
 which was so far out of order, that even in the warres 
 they could not refraine from doing evill, and from the 
 reading of such vile books." There is a touch of 
 comedy in the barbarian's lofty indignation against the 
 levity of his enemies, who beguiled a tedious campaign 
 with the best of light-hearted literature. But still 
 more amusing is Plutarch's comment. "I will not 
 deny," he writes with a cunning respectability, " but 
 Rustius deserved blame : but yet withall, I say, that 
 the Parthians were shamelesse to reprove these bookes 
 of the vanities of the Milesians, considering that 
 many of their kinges, and of the royal blood of the 
 Arsacides, were borne of the Ionian and Milesian 
 curtisans." Was there ever such a jumble of hypo- 
 crisies ? The Romans were infamous to relieve the 
 serious pursuit of war with a jest-book. So far 
 Surena and Plutarch agree. But Surena, says Plu- 
 tarch, was debarred from objection by the pedigree of 
 his kings, which he at least could not control, and 
 which might have turned the royal house to grave 
 reflection. Here is no word in defence of Aristides 
 and his fables ; no scorn of the Parthian's folly ; only 
 a jumbled reprobation of accuser and accused. Nor 
 was the censure of Rustius universal. For those there 
 were who believed that Surena had himself put The 
 
14 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Milesians at the sack's mouth, thus repeating the 
 trick played upon the innocence of Benjamin. And 
 Surena's imposture is easily credible, since many a 
 worse artifice has been contrived in the name of an 
 acrimonious morality. 
 
 Thus at all times austerity has resented the 
 pastime of the sage. Was not Heliodorus, whose, 
 worthy intention should have atoned for more than 
 his innocent freedom, chased from his bishopric ? 
 Had Chaucer's splendid sincerity any better chance of 
 escape than Boccaccio's delicate devices ? Has not 
 Shakespeare been judged as coarse as the Classics ? Yet 
 none ever so conclusively proved that " to the pure all 
 things are impure" as Jeremy Collier. This notorious 
 nonjuror, indeed, resumed in his single talent the 
 prejudice of all the ages. He undertook a crusade 
 against the theatre, and he possessed every qualifica- 
 tion which the task demanded. He was stupid, 
 ignorant, and energetic. Like the clown at a country 
 fair, he belaboured all the talents with a bladder 
 tied to a string, and so long as his blows were 
 sounding he cared not for their effect. Gifted, 
 moreover, with the trick of advertisement, he made 
 himself a far greater place in the world than his merit 
 warranted. He was, in fact, a pestilent fellow that 
 every one knew, and the pillory aiding, he won a large 
 share of that notoriety which appears to some more 
 gratifying and which oftentimes is no less lasting 
 than legitimate fame. 
 
 His moral arrogance was prodigious; never had a 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 corrupt universe known so splendid a castigation ; and 
 the esteem of his contemporaries fell but little short of 
 his own pride. Congreve paid him the extravagant 
 compliment of a reply, and Dryden (from indolence, 
 let us hope) was driven to submission. Yet beyond an 
 occasional vigour of phrase and an immense peevish- 
 ness the man possessed no quality of taste or intelli- 
 gence. So deeply was he absorbed in fault-finding, 
 where no fault was, that reason and justice were out of 
 his reach. A casual familiarity with the Classics merely 
 led him still further astray, and he is prepared to 
 applaud the blaspheming of Euripides, for instance, 
 because that poet directed his assault against paganism, 
 and never struck a blow at the orthodoxy of a non- 
 juror ! " When Pegasus is jaded," he wrote at the 
 beginning of his tract, " and would stand still, he is apt 
 like other Tits to run into every puddle." And truly 
 Jeremy Collier's own was a jaded Tit, for she is never 
 out of the mire. 
 
 Armed with a false definition, he easily demolishes 
 the whole fabric of modern literature. "The 
 business of plays," says he, "is to recommend virtue 
 and discountenance vice ; " and whenever he finds 
 the drama of his age falling short of this ideal, 
 he is transported with rage. Wit and humour, gaiety 
 of invention, the necessity of amusement — these are 
 nothing to him. He will confuse the playhouse with 
 the pulpit, and attack all the poets with equal folly 
 and brutality. They are obscene, says he ; they are 
 blasphemous ; therefore away with them all from 
 
i6 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Shakespeare to Tom D'Urfey. Hamlet's author, 
 indeed, comes ofF badly from the trial. " He is too 
 guilty," writes the censorious Collier, '' to make an 
 evidence ; but I think he gains not much by his 
 misbehaviour." Assuredly he profits not at all from 
 the pulpit's point of view. And again : " Phedra 
 keeps her modesty even after she had lost her wits. 
 Had Shakespeare secured this Point for his young 
 Virgin Ophelia, the play had been better contrived." 
 Did ever lack of humour drive a man into greater 
 folly ? Ophelia spotless ! Why not Hamlet sane ? 
 But Collier is unable to distinguish between his own 
 world and the stage, that kingdom of paste-board and 
 plank, where language assumes a separate meaning, 
 and where the sea coast of Bohemia is authentic as 
 London Bridge. So having laid it down most 
 properly that to swear before women is not only 
 a breach of good behaviour but a most unchristian 
 practice, he is ready to abolish all plays, within the 
 limits of whose five acts a single oath is heard. 
 '' A well-bred man," he declares with evident truth, 
 " will no more swear than fight in the Company of 
 Ladies," and if he were logical, he would perforce have 
 condemned the alarums and excursions of Shakespeare 
 as so many outrages upon good manners. 
 
 But it is blasphemy which tempts him to his 
 highest flights. " Sometimes," he exclaims in the very 
 climax of his denunciation, " sometimes they don't stop 
 short at blasphemy." The offence is scarce credible, 
 and the instances which this nonjuror is able to 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 quote are warranted to send a thrill of horror through 
 the most hardened atheist. Think of the naked 
 levity of Lady Froth, who calls Jehu a hackney 
 coachman ! And the monstrous profanation of the 
 author who dared to give his Sir Sampson Legend the 
 name of that hero who triumphed over the Philistines ! 
 In spite of the p a covert attack upon the Christian 
 faith is evident, and one shudders to think what had 
 become of England without the timely intervention of 
 Jeremy Collier. But the worst is not yet told. Vain- 
 love, in The Old Bachelour^ asks Belmour if he could 
 be content to go to heaven. To Vainlove only one 
 answer was possible. But did he give it ? Oh, dear 
 no ! With the shameful flippancy of the stage he 
 replied: " Hum, not immediately in my conscience, not 
 heartily." And nowhere does Collier prove his moder- 
 ation more nobly than in his comment upon this 
 monstrous wickedness. Here indeed was an oppor- 
 tunity for pious wrath, but with a perfect reserve 
 he stays the tide of reproach. "This is playing, I take 
 it, with edged tools." These are his very words, and 
 yet one would have thought that the impious Belmour 
 had forfeited all his lingers ! 
 
 Such is the man who presumed to detect the seven 
 deadly sins and seventy-seven others in the works 
 of Congreve ! He might as easily have sought crime 
 in a lace-frilled shirt or a satin coat. The cold, 
 intellectual presentation of life which we get in the 
 incomparable Way of the World possesses wit, alert- 
 ness, repartee, all the graces of spirited converse, but it 
 
 B 
 
i8 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 possesses nothing else. The world, whose way Con- 
 greve pictures, is a world which Jeremy Collier never 
 could have penetrated. For its gates are shut against 
 the dullard and the pedant. Its inhabitants are not 
 controlled by the laws which run outside the chartered 
 domain. It is, in truth, an Abbaye deTheleme where 
 the sole restriction is '' what you will ; " and no man 
 can understand its merriment who does not first put off 
 the superstitions of an interested piety. The actions, 
 performed within its borders, are judged neither by 
 their motive nor their result, but rather by the method 
 and style of their performance. 
 
 In brief, the Artificial Comedy has no contact with 
 actuality. You may pass it by in dislike if you will, 
 but you may not set it in the dock prepared for the 
 criminal's reception. Charles Lamb, the most inven- 
 tive critic of our stage, pierced the mystery with a 
 flash, and his luminous paradox is no paradox at all. 
 Given the proper atmosphere, and Joseph Surface is 
 a hero, if only he bear himself with a magnificent 
 levity. As for Jeremy Collier, he made no attack upon 
 Congreve, because he understood not one line of that 
 master's composition. He thought he knew one lan- 
 guage j his victim wrote another. And the fact that 
 Congreve deemed it a gentleman's duty to reply to such 
 a tangle of impertinence is a sad comment upon the 
 England that was governed by William of Orange. But 
 the insult to Congreve was not Collier's last offence. 
 So hopeless was the confusion of this befogged Puritan, 
 that he condemned Juvenal for all the sins lashed in his 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 satire, "He writes more like a pimp than a poet^*^ 
 
 said he with accustomed elegance " Such nau^ 
 
 seous stuff is almost enough to debauch the alphabet, 
 and make the language scandalous." Why did he not 
 go one step further, and saddle the intrepid Jeremy 
 with all the vices of obscenity and profanation which 
 he ascribed without thought or reason to his betters ? 
 
 But Jeremy Collier not only enjoyed the admiration 
 of his age ; he is still regarded as a literary Her- 
 cules who cleansed the dramatic stable of its filth. 
 And never since have zealots been lacking to carry on 
 his work of obfuscation and stupidity. The appear- 
 ance of a masterpiece is sufficient to render the blood- 
 hounds restless in their leash. No sooner was Madame 
 Bovary printed in the pages of a review than imperial 
 France shuddered for her virtue. The author was 
 thrust with his publisher in the dock, and the argu- 
 iments paraded against them are but an iteration of 
 Jeremy Collier's fallacies. " Gentlemen," said the 
 prosecuting counsel, doubtless with a majestic wave of 
 his honest hand, " Gentlemen, did Madame Bovary 
 love her husband, or did she even try to love him ? " 
 Thus the game of cross-questions and crooked answers 
 was played, as it will be played another thousand times ; 
 thus literature was clipped again to the petty standard 
 of the hour. On either side the discussion was in- 
 apposite. The attack pronounced the book a glorifica- 
 tion of adultery ; the defence, unyielding in folly, 
 discovered in its pages a treatise upon education. And 
 Tlaubert — where was he in this genial interchange of 
 
lo STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 absurdities ? He had written a great book : wherefore 
 he was disgraced, and his escape from justice was a 
 miraculous accident. 
 
 Baudelaire fared worse ; he was tried, and he was 
 condemned. Accused of all the crimes suggested by 
 his poetry, he would have been for ever silenced had the 
 rage of the crowd prevailed against him. But never 
 once, to use his own phrase, did he " confuse ink with 
 virtue ; " never once did he accept the foolish verdict 
 of the rabble. When the trial was finished a friend 
 asked him if he had expected acquittal. " Acquitte ! "" 
 he replied; '* j'attendais qu'on me ferait reparation 
 d*honneur." Yet he knew no reparation, save the 
 esteem of poets, and the ultimate restoration of his 
 criminal works. Nevertheless he recoiled not from the 
 popular verdict. He saw clearly the bedevilment of his 
 enemies, and was content. " Chaste as paper," he 
 wrote, " sober as water, eager for devotion as a com- 
 municant, inoffensive as a martyr, I am not displeased 
 to masquerade as a monster of debauchery, a drunkard, a 
 blasphemer and an assassin." And in this noble pride 
 of spirit he forgot the wanton insult to his genius, 
 and by this the world is forgetting it also. 
 
 So the magistrate would usurp the world of 
 intelligence, and cramp genius to fit his own Pro- 
 crustean code, believing that a supremacy in the courts 
 endows him with the control of imagination. But 
 the triumph of to-day becomes the disgrace of to- 
 morrow, and prays for oblivion. On the one side 
 are arrayed " the dissembling and counterfeit saints. 
 
INTRODUCTION it 
 
 demure lookers, hypocrites, pretended zealots, rough 
 friars, buskin monks, and other such sects of men 
 who disguise themselves like maskers to deceive the 
 world." On the other side fight the honest fellows, 
 lovers of merriment and all good things, the frank, 
 the free, the courageous, who esteem beauty above 
 prejudice, and who know that there are a thousand 
 kingdoms whereof the magistrate does not dream. And 
 if for a while the magistrate has his way, they win who 
 deserve the victory. For frankness at the last con- 
 quers its opponents, and though its champions fall by 
 the way the cause knows not the ignominy of ultimate 
 failure- In truth it is frankness not "immorality," 
 which the people fear — frankness in whatever guise 
 it presents itself. Now, it is the frankness of revela- 
 tion that is condemned, that spirit of curiosity which 
 would uncover all things to the lantern of art j 
 now, it is the frankness of intelligence which is 
 thrust into prison, that frankness which would tell \/ 
 the truth even in the face of the ballot-box. So it 
 was that Edgar Poe fell upon misfortune. Not con- 
 tent with picturing new worlds of fancy and humour, 
 not content with winning the realm of mystery for 
 literature, he did not shrink from speaking out to a 
 country submerged in commerce, and miserably he paid 
 the penalty of his misdeeds. Had he not been a critic, 
 to whom prevarication was a cardinal sin, America in 
 her pride might have called him blessed, and rewarded 
 him with her opulent approval. But a habit of can- 
 dour persuaded him to tell his countrymen the truth^ 
 
a Studies in frankness 
 
 and he fell a victim to the common hatred which 
 might in another hemisphere have ruined Congreve 
 and Baudelaire. 
 
 But license, also, must obey the laws of its being, 
 the more stringent, because an infraction leads to the 
 greater infamy. And thus we contemplate the other 
 side of the question. The lighthearted and sincere 
 remain beyond reproach, so long as they find their 
 justification in literature, so long as they are enveloped 
 in the strange atmosphere and live in the false world 
 of romance. But once they reveal their purpose, once 
 they smile self-consciously at their own bravery, they 
 are detestable. If the obscene be sentimental, if it 
 address itself to any other than the artistic sense, it is 
 instantly condemned. There is no essential differ- 
 ence between the Marquis de Sade and the leader 
 of a revival meeting. Each attempts to arouse a false 
 sentiment by illicit means ; each would hit its victim 
 below the belt of reason. In either case no appeal 
 is made to the intelligence. The maniac, whether he 
 be pornagraphist or preacher, is anxious to do some- 
 thing, good or bad ; and this very anxiety to " do 
 something " renders him suspect. But it is not the 
 magistrate who may play the critic; it is the critic 
 who should play the magistrate. For the right and 
 wrong of literature must be decided by the law, not 
 of the land but of taste. Rabelais, if he have the 
 mind, is free of the world's vocabulary ; Dunbar, 
 when he would flyte an enemy, may decorate his 
 speech with what exotic flowers he can find in his 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 fancy's hedgerow. But when the realist, with no 
 better excuse than to satisfy his pedantry, collects a 
 heap of dull ir relevancies, then he pleads guilty to 
 impropriety. For he offends not against morality, 
 but against the law of his art. Accuracy is but a 
 poor defence for the scrupulous ugliness of his choice. 
 " Not to know that a hind has no horns," said 
 Aristotle, "is a less serious matter than to paint it 
 inartistically." And the realist who defends himself 
 from attack on the plea of truth, advances an argu- 
 ment which does not concern his offence. For his 
 is not a sin of outspokenness j he errs in the resolu- 
 tion to unveil secresies, which are merely shocking 
 because they are foreign to the purpose of his romance. 
 Briefly he is no worse than tiresome ; yet he owes his 
 notoriety to the general advertisement that he is as 
 daring as Rabelais, as unfettered in his fancy as 
 Petronius himself 
 
 And what of the crooked man, who always detects 
 the immorality of his brother ? For him, indeed, 
 shall no excuse be found. His purpose is more in- 
 famous than the worst sentimentality, and none has 
 rightly appreciated him save Rabelais, his secular 
 enemy. " Fly from these men," said Alcofribas ; 
 *' abhor and hate them as much as I do, and upon 
 my faith you will find yourselves the better for it." 
 Furius and Aurelius are their companions ; Jeremy 
 Collier and the persecutors of Baudelaire fight dis- 
 loyally by their side. And to-day, their heirs stand at 
 every street-corner, scratching an advertisement from 
 
24 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 the revelation of somebody else's " impurity." How 
 well you know them, and their trick of cunning 
 abnegation ! If they do give their time to the reading 
 of books, it is not to enjoy them, but rather to hurt the 
 author by some mischievous contrivance. Their sin- 
 cerity is as doubtful as their wisdom ; at the best they 
 can only attract the attention of the prurient to that 
 which he would never have found without guidance j 
 and as they are wont to strip their enemy of his wit 
 before they crucify him, they alone may achieve the 
 harm whereof they would convict others. 
 
 In truth, to quote the inspired aphorism of Pascal, 
 " Few men can speak of chastity chastely." And in 
 these words is condemned not only the censorious 
 guardian of his brother, but that unhappy novelist 
 who would cover his freedom with a purpose. There 
 is not, and there can never be, any legitimate purpose 
 in print save pleasure and delight, so that he who would 
 hide his art behind the broken wall of moral ex- 
 cellence is instantly suspected of foul play. When 
 once another intention be admitted than the awakening 
 of sense or intelligence, "moral" or "immoral" matters 
 not a jot. Guilt is confessed in the " purpose," and 
 thereafter the smallest latitude is an outrage upon 
 taste. And so powerful is this cant of shameful latitude 
 condoned by irrelevant aspiration, that the future will 
 not easily escape its tyrannical restriction. But the past 
 at any rate holds a treasury of masterpieces, open and 
 unashamed, which need no concealment for their 
 dignity or their courage. So we may still enjoy a 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 library which arouses the fury and defies the censure 
 of the Puritan. Nor is there any need to close it 
 against the scrutiny of peeping eyes. For genius 
 has locked it, and only intelligence may turn the 
 releasing key. 
 
PETRONIUS 
 
PETRONIUS 
 
 THE twin enemies of wit — Prudery and Pedantry 
 — have for centuries obscured the proper under- 
 standing of Petronius. A chance passage in Tacitus, 
 with the superfluous confusion of a name, long since 
 convinced the scholar that the Satiricofi was a pamph- 
 let designed for the castigation of Nero, and, when 
 resemblance was lacking, a twisted ingenuity caught 
 glimpses of the dashing Emperor in a common ruffler, 
 a grizzled poet, in the obscene extravagant Trimalchio 
 himself. And while the Pedant was busy torturing a 
 masterpiece out of shape, the Prude averted his eyes 
 in horror lest a spark of brilliant impurity should 
 dazzle him into blindness. But the fear of the Prude 
 is as groundless as the conjecture of the Pedant. The 
 Satiricon takes note neither of history nor of morals ; 
 it is as remote from ethics as from familiarity. It bids 
 avaunt both the hungry persons, whose inappeasable 
 maw is always avid of moral sustenance, and the 
 sorry scholars, who would leave no jest without its 
 commentary. Petronius, in brief, speaks only to the 
 sincere and the well-disposed ; he says no word to- 
 
30 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 those miscreants who would overwhelm wit and gaiety 
 with an infamous suspicion. 
 
 The Satiricon has one restraining motive : enter- 
 tainment within the bounds of art. To other fetters 
 it is as resentful as the winds or sea. Not even the 
 learned Teuton, who discovered its controlling subject 
 to be the wrath of Priapus, was justified of his wit. 
 Ingenious as is the fancy, it still lays too heavy a 
 chain upon this wayward, irresponsible Odyssey. No 
 more can be said than that the work of Petronius is a 
 prose epic, the epic (if you will) of the beggar student. 
 Though we know it only in fragments we are confi- 
 dent that its end was as gay a hazard as its beginning : 
 it opened as its author chose, it closed in obedience to 
 the same imaginative will. The bland childhood of 
 the world thrilled at the epic as Homer knew it : the 
 austere nobility of men who were half gods, and of 
 gods who were wholly men, delighted the temper of 
 those too simple to take other than a large view. 
 Even Virgil, with a more conscious art, captured an 
 audience of worshippers, but with him died the love 
 of grandiose types and giant machinery. An age 
 which was curious and introspective demanded an 
 observation which was more precise, more personal ; 
 and Petronius, choosing prose for his medium, a prose 
 which was lightened by incomparable interludes of 
 verse, threw a gossamer bridge from the old world to 
 the new. Call it what you will — epic or romance — 
 set over it whatever deity satisfies your whim — 
 Fortuna or Priapus — the Satiricon is the gayest, the 
 
PETRONIUS 31 
 
 most light-hearted invention which ever revolutionised 
 the taste and the aspiration of an epoch. 
 
 Its heroes are beggars all, beggars draggle-tailed and 
 out-at-elbows. No worse ruffians than the immortal 
 trio — Encolpios, Ascyltos, and Giton — ever took to 
 the highway. They knew neither finery nor self- 
 respect ; to-morrow's goal was as far from them as a 
 life's ambition. They wandered under the sun, or 
 sought the discreet encouragement of the stars with 
 that easy conscience which comes of undetected 
 villainy. Home was as strange to them as a change 
 of linen ; they journeyed from inn to inn ; and they 
 were lucky if, after an evening's debauch, they found 
 their resting-place, or escaped a brawl and a beating. 
 When Encolpios lost himself in the market-place of 
 some nameless city, he provoked a beldame to laughter 
 with the polite question : " Do you know where I 
 have found a lodging for the night ? " And after the 
 memorable feast at the house of their patron, Trimal- 
 chio, fuddled with wine and luxury, they would have 
 lost their unaccustomed way had not the cunning 
 Giton blazed the posts which should lead to their 
 retreat. Oftentimes, too, when they crawled back 
 from some masterpiece of wickedness, they knew no 
 rest but fisticuffs. "Are you drunk or runaways ? " 
 asked the landlord on a celebrated occasion, and there 
 followed a frantic duel between an earthen jar and a 
 wooden candlestick. No trick of gain, no weapon of 
 offence came amiss to the miscreants ; and thus they 
 robbed and fought through the breadth and length of 
 
32 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Southern Italy. When they had money they sewed 
 it into the seams of a threadbare tunic, and when they 
 had none they made not the smallest scruple of 
 theft. 
 
 Nowhere did they encounter a luckier adventure 
 than at the nocturnal market. They had had the ill- 
 luck to lose their whole fortune in a wood, that 
 fortune which was stitched into an ancient garment. 
 But, in revenge, they had stolen, these beggar students, 
 an elegant and valuable mantle. No sooner had they 
 entered the forum, under the safeguard of night, than 
 they met a ruffian with their lost tunic on his back, 
 and, creeping behind the thief, they presently dis- 
 covered that their little hoard lurked safe within the 
 seams. Encolpios, himself red-handed, was for having 
 the law of the offender ; but Ascyltos, who more 
 prudently trembled at the sight of a policeman, gave 
 his vote for strategy. " Let us buy back the treasure," 
 said he, " rather than embroil ourselves in a trouble- 
 some suit." But unhappily two small pieces alone 
 were left in the locker, and these were destined for the 
 purchase of pulse, that hunger might be deferred 
 another day. So there was naught for it but the sale 
 of the stolen mantle. Straightway they displayed 
 their treasure to the admiration of the crowd : but it 
 was instantly recognised, and the ominous shout of 
 " Thieves ! thieves ! " was raised. The brazen 
 adventurers flung down their prize, and avowed them- 
 selves willing to take in exchange the battered tunic. 
 Thereupon a brace of hungry lawyers intervened. 
 
PETRONIUS 33 
 
 urging the sequestration of tunic and mantle, but a 
 scoundrel who hung about the courts clung to the 
 more splendid garment, and our adventurers managed 
 to smuggle the ragged tunic to their lodging. 
 
 Thus they wander the world up and down, blatant 
 and unashamed. There is no disaster but falls upon 
 their back; yet they make light of all things with an 
 imperturbable serenity, and leap lightly from crime to 
 crime. They account no dishonour too heavy to be 
 borne ; they are flogged and outraged at every turn ; 
 but the chance of a meal or of a full pocket heartens 
 them at once, and they are quick indeed to forget an 
 insult. Careless as they are, indifferent as they pro- 
 fess themselves to the misery of the morrow, ill luck 
 pursues them with a persistent and tireless devotion. 
 When to escape from a present evil they go on ship- 
 board, it is not surprising that they find themselves 
 face to face with Lichas and Tryphaena, the prime 
 authors of their misfortune. No disguise is effectual 
 against their enemies. They shave their heads and 
 eyebrows, onlj to disturb the superstition of a seasick 
 passenger, who denounces them for the unlawful act 
 of clipping their hair, when the winds and waves are 
 at variance. Instantly Lichas recognises them by 
 their voices, and heaven knows what would have been 
 the embroilment, had not shipwreck interrupted a 
 thousand threats of suicide, reconciliation, and revenge. 
 
 And who are they, these marvellous beggars, 
 whom Petronius bade to tramp from Cumae to 
 Naples, and then transported over sea to the hapless 
 
 c 
 
34 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Crotona ? Blackguards and scholars all. First there 
 is Encolpios, upon whose tongue the narrative is 
 hung, a scoundrel apt for any cheat, for any effrontery. 
 He is the cleverest and pluckiest of a craven crew. 
 His villainy is checked by no scruple of conscience or 
 tradition. His virtue — if he ever knew it — is torn, 
 like his coat, into ribbons. His life has been passed in 
 many a dishonest shift -, once he was a gladiator (so 
 says his friend), but he escaped from the arena, and 
 thereafter murdered his host, who had shown him 
 naught save kindness. What wonder is it, then, 
 that he finds himself a fugitive and an outlaw in a far 
 city of Magna Graecia ? What wonder is it that 
 his chosen companions are the victims of nameless 
 vice and unutterable crime ? Once, in his sordid 
 career, this pillager of temples, this breaker of friendly 
 houses, sits and deplores his fate in an access of 
 genuine remorse. But it is not his wickedness that 
 irks him : upon that he would smile and smile and 
 be content. He regrets only that he is deserted by 
 the execrable Giton, and presently, buckling his sword 
 at his side, he rushes into the street intent upon 
 vengeance. No sooner, however, is he abroad than a 
 soldier confronts him, demanding the name of his 
 legion and his centurion. And the ready lie that 
 leaps to Encolpios' lips might have saved him had he 
 not been shod like a Greek. " Do the soldiers wear 
 shoes in your army ? " asks the guardian of the peace, 
 bidding the ragamuffin lay down his arms. And 
 Encolpios, who dares as much as any man this side 
 
PETRONIUS 35 
 
 cowardice, sorrowfully obeys. For even under the 
 happiest circumstances he is a miracle of poltroonery. 
 When Habinnas, the freedman, enters Trimalchio's 
 banqueting hall, Encolpios takes him for a praetor, and 
 shudders, in his cups, at the imagined majesty of law. 
 At sight of the infamous Quartilla he turns colder 
 than a winter in Gaul, and there is no adventure from 
 which he emerges without a beating. In fact he is 
 flogged as soundly and as often as the fool in a 
 comedy, nor dare he ever resent the perpetual dusting 
 of his threadbare jacket. It was not his to complain. 
 "Ego vapulo tantum" is doubtless his amiable comment 
 upon each fresh outrage, since there is no emergency 
 which he does not fit with a classical allusion. 
 
 For this scoundrel Ascyltos is a fit companion. A 
 runaway slave, he, too, has stained his hands with 
 countless crimes, and seeks a discreet oblivion in a 
 wandering life. A bully, as well as a coward, he 
 shares the fears, and the vices, of his friend ; he, too, 
 trembles at the approach of authority ; nor is he ever 
 so happy as when he may sponge a dinner. In 
 evil-doing he knows neither scruple nor hesitation so 
 long as he can pit strategy against force, and when he 
 takes the road with Encolpios he recks as little of his 
 villainy as of his rags. These rapscallions, then, with 
 the infamous Giton, are the real heroes of the Satir'icon^ 
 and thus the beggar-students make their first entrance 
 upon the stage of literature. They would steal in the 
 morning, that at night they might prate the more 
 fluently of poetry and eloquence. No mischief makes 
 
36 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 them unmindful of their erudition. " We are men of 
 culture," says Encolpios with pride, forgetting for an 
 instant his ragged tunic. They pack their discourse 
 with quip and quotation ; tags from Virgil are ever at 
 their tongue-tip ; and when Encolpios straps the 
 miscreant Giton beneath his bed, he is reminded per- 
 force of Ulysses under the belly of the Cyclops' ram. 
 As they loaf in the market-place of some strange city, 
 or wander in search of plunder along the highway, 
 they will join company with the first-comer, if only 
 he vaunt his learning or profess a pretty taste in 
 poetry. 
 
 Thus it is they encounter Agamemnon, the type 
 of the cunning and voluble rhetorician. At the out- 
 set he dazzles them with a trite harangue upon the 
 decay of forensic eloquence, and concludes with a 
 foolish copy of verses in the Lucilian manner. But if 
 his knowledge is skin-deep, his villainy reaches his very 
 marrow. In rascality he is a match for his com- 
 panions, in subtlety he is easily superior ; above 
 all, is he an adept in the art of dining at the rich 
 man's table. He it is, in effect, who brings his 
 ragged companions to the banquet of Trimalchio, and 
 he follows with complete success the twin trades of 
 toady and of bore. Far more amusing and even less 
 reputable is Eumolpos, the ancient poet, whom 
 Encolpios surprises in a picture gallery. His rags 
 proclaim him no friend of the rich, but he has a 
 settled confidence in his own genius, and in season or 
 out he will still recite his intolerable and interminable 
 
PETRONIUS 37 
 
 verses. Poverty and the weight of years have neither 
 broken his spirit nor impaired his gaiety. Not even 
 the fear of death avails to check his volubility, he 
 composes amid the rattle of the storm, and no sooner 
 do they take the road after shipwreck, than he begins 
 to declaim his celebrated epic The Civil War. But 
 no man may live by poetry alone, and at Crotona, 
 Eumolpos discovers a brilliant industry in the decep- 
 tion of the legacy-hunters. Now, in that remote city 
 both learning and honesty were held in the lightest 
 esteem. For it was peopled only by the rich who 
 had money to leave, and by the greedy poor who would 
 prey upon inheritances. By a humorous fancy none but 
 the childless were permitted to enter the theatre or to 
 assume a public office. In this realm of comic opera 
 nobody was more at home than Eumolpos. Posing for 
 the carcase, he clamorously invited the attentions of 
 the crows, and for a while the carcase got the better 
 of the bargain. But though his stratagem gave him a 
 welcome taste of magnificence, misfortune and death 
 overwhelmed him at last, and none would have been 
 readier to declare his discomfiture the proper fortune 
 of war than this braggart poetaster. 
 
 With such characters, how should the romance 
 satisfy the sensibihty of the Prude ? You might as 
 reasonably demand that Encolpios should masquerade 
 in a tie-wig and buckle-shoes as expect the manners 
 of South Kensington in this dissipated Odyssey. A 
 French critic in an admirable phrase once praised the 
 " serene unmorality " of Petronius, and the most 
 
38 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 scrupulous can do no more than confess that the 
 author of the Satiricon did not twist his creatures to 
 suit the standard of the law. Why should he, 
 when the policeman was their hourly dread ? No, 
 he bade them wander through a distant colony, rags 
 on their back and a jest on their tongue, troubled 
 only by the fear of hunger and the gaol. Villon is of 
 their company : gladly would they have cracked a 
 quart with him, gladly would they have replied to 
 his verses with ballades of their own. The heroes 
 of picaresque romance — Gil Bias and Guzman and 
 Lazarillo — are their sworn brethren, and so enduring 
 is the type of the beggar-student that you may meet 
 Encolpios to-day without surprise or misunder- 
 standing. 
 
 He haunts the bars of the Strand, or hides him in 
 the dismal alleys of Gray's Inn Road. One there was 
 (one of how many!) who, after a brilliant career at 
 the University, found the highway his natural home, 
 and forthwith deserted the groves of learning for 
 the common hedgerow of adventure. The race- 
 course knew him, and the pavement of London ; 
 blacklegs and touts were his chosen companions ; 
 now and again he would appear among his old 
 associates, and enjoy a taste of Trimalchio*s banquet, 
 complaining the while that the money spent on his 
 appetite might have been better employed in the 
 backing of horses. Though long since he forgot 
 he was a gentleman, he always remembered that he 
 was a scholar, and, despite his drunken blackguardism, 
 
PETRONIUS 39 
 
 he still took refuge in Horace from the grime and 
 squalor of his favourite career. Not long since he 
 was discovered in a cellar, hungry and dishevelled ; 
 a tallow^ candle crammed into a beer-bottle was his 
 only light ; yet so reckless was his irresponsibility 
 that he forgot his pinched belly and his ragged coat, 
 and sat on the stone floor, reciting Virgil to another 
 of his profession. Thus, if you doubt the essential 
 truth of Petronius, you may see his grim comedy 
 enacted every day, and the reflection is forced upon 
 you that Encolpios will roam the streets so long as 
 poetry keeps her devotees, and scholarship throws a 
 glamour over idle penury. 
 
 Petronius, then, who has been accused of satirising 
 Nero, says no word of Courts or of the great world. 
 He writes as though politics were an extinct science, 
 as though he deemed the earth the ruffler's proper 
 inheritance. Yet in revenge, his most brilliant episode 
 is a parody of magnificence. The Banquet ofTrimal- 
 chio is, to be sure, the reverse of the medal, but 
 nowhere in literature has vulgar display been treated 
 with so genial a humour. So long as print and 
 paper can confer immortality, so long Trimalchio 
 will remain the supreme type of the Beggar on 
 Horseback. The machinery is admirable : the wooden 
 hen sitting upon paste eggs, each of which contains a 
 stuffed ortolan ; the Signs of the Zodiac, with their 
 proper dishes , the huge boar, out of which flies a 
 flock of birds — these are inventions in futile extra- 
 vagance, which correspond completely to the freed- 
 
40 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 man's pompous views of luxury. But far better even 
 than the machinery are the host and hostess. To 
 have dravi^n two such characters in an age preoccupied 
 with the abstract and the impersonal was a triumph 
 of art, and Petronius has no cause to haggle for his 
 sovereignty. 
 
 The very entrance of Trimalchio is a masterpiece : 
 no sooner are you presented with the sketch of the 
 bald man playing tennis and the mob of long-haired 
 boys than you are convinced of the author's quick 
 wit and vivid imagination. Trimalchio's, indeed, is 
 the heroism of wealth : he would as soon pick 
 up a ball which had fallen to the ground as use 
 a silver dish which the clumsiness of a slave has 
 permitted to touch the dust. No wonder he has a 
 timepiece in his hall, and a trumpeter to remind him 
 of the flight of time. His wine is superb. Does not 
 a contemporary label remind the connoisseur that it 
 is Opimian Falernian bottled a hundred years ago ? 
 The beggar students could not have found a house 
 better suited to their extravagant taste ; their greed 
 renders them easily obsequious ; and at the recital 
 of Trimalchio's grandeur their hungry mouths gape 
 wider and wider. He owns as much land as a kite 
 can fly over ; he buys nothing, since everything is 
 grown at home ; he recks neither of expense nor 
 distance ; he sends to Attica that he may improve his 
 bees, and the seeds from which his mushrooms are 
 grown were fetched from the Indies. As he cannot 
 recognise one-tenth of his slaves, so he knows neither 
 
PETRONIUS 41 
 
 the boundaries nor the names of his vast possessions, 
 and he is consumed with anger when a slave announces 
 a newly-acquired and unadvertised estate. 
 
 His arrogance is as boundless as his wealth, and 
 he treats his guests with a fine mixture of patronage 
 and eiFrontery. " Be merry," says he complacently; 
 " once I was no better off than you, but by my own 
 industry I am what I am." He reserves the place of 
 honour for himself, tells the poor devils who gorge 
 at his table that, though they are less distinguished 
 than yesterday's party, they are drinking better wine, 
 and only permits the conversation to grow friendly or 
 casual when it suits his royal fancy. Of wit he has 
 not a touch, but he lightens the gloom with flashes 
 of boorish humour, and his table-talk is a perfect 
 epitome of slavish intelligence. Above all, he delights 
 in verbal puns, and it is his most brilliant sally to call 
 his carver "Carpe," that one word may be both 
 summons and command. The Signs of the Zodiac 
 provoke him to a profound dissertation, and not 
 without a sense of fun he declares that under the 
 Archer are born the cross-eyed scoundrels who stare 
 at the cabbage and steal the bacon. Of the arts he 
 has but a poor opinion, confessing that he cares for 
 nothing but acrobats and trumpeters, and he further 
 avows that, though he did once buy a company of 
 comedians, he only allowed them to play Punch and 
 Judy. At the same time he would be a patron of 
 literature, and he brags for his friends' benefit that 
 he has two libraries, the one of Greek books, the 
 
42 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 other of Latin. He has even studied declamation, 
 and pertinently asks Agamemnon the subject of the 
 day's controversy. "A poor man and a rich w^ere 
 once at enmity," begins Agamemnon, whereupon 
 Trimalchio, rising to the very summit of his colossal 
 impudence, asks : " What is a poor man ? " His taste 
 for poetry has persuaded him to confuse history and 
 legend. He places Hannibal at the siege of Troy, 
 and w^ith the splendid ignorance of a self-neglected 
 man he confuses Medea with Cassandra, and never 
 dreams for a moment that the ruffians, whose 
 momentary admiration he purchases with a meal, 
 are laughing in their sleeves. 
 
 Not content with these experiments, he recites 
 some verses of his own composition, compares Cicero 
 and Publius in a lucid criticism, and presently, at 
 a convenient pause, discusses which, after literature, 
 are the most difficult professions. These he pronounces 
 with a pompous security to be medicine ?.nd money- 
 changing — medicine, because, the doctor can look inside 
 us, and money-changing, because the professor can see 
 bronze through the silver. As the wine goes round, 
 the monumental arrogance of Trimalchio receives its 
 last embellishment. Believing himself almost divine, 
 the freedman has his will read, and even recites his 
 own epitaph, wherein he is described as one who 
 never listened to a philosopher. Happily Habinnas, 
 the maker of tombstones, is present, and he can take 
 for the thousandth time the last dying commands of 
 his patron. But the scene of aggrandisement is dis- 
 
PETRONIUS 43 
 
 turbed by a quarrel which breaks out suddenly between 
 Trimalchio and his consort, who throws the last words 
 of abuse in her lord's face, and receives by way of 
 guerdon a cup flung at her head and the very lees 
 of obloquy. Finally, Trimalchio devises the supreme 
 punishment, which shall be commensurate with her 
 offence. "Habinnas," he says, "do not put this 
 woman's statue upon my tomb." And, as though 
 this misery were insufficient, "Take care," he adds, 
 " that she be not permitted to kiss my corpse ! " 
 
 Nor even here shall you find the climax of mon- 
 strous stupidity. No sooner is the proper vengeance 
 designed Fortunata than Trimalchio contrives another 
 masterpiece of vanity. He rehearses with a perfect 
 realism his own funeral. Lying in state, he bids the 
 trumpeters blow, and exacts from his friends a tribute 
 of interested praise. But the trumpeters blow to such 
 purpose, that the watchmen burst into the house, 
 fearing a fire, and in the confusion the drunken 
 beggars make their escape, to pursue with a gay heart 
 and a tempered magnificence their ancient professions 
 of vagabondage and thievery. 
 
 The portrait of Trimalchio is a triumph of realism. 
 Yet none the less, it is of heroical proportions. Its 
 grandeur and loftiness are, at least, as remarkable as 
 its pitiless veracity. Here, in fact, is a new element 
 in literature : truth cast in a large and epic mould. 
 You laugh at the freedman's extravagance, but your 
 laughter lags behind your admiration, and you feel 
 that you are confronted by the inverse of some vast 
 
44 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 j deity. /Fortunata,|on the other hand, is more inti- 
 mate andlinofe mt/dern. She is burnt into the page 
 with a grotesque certainty that suggests an etching by 
 Goya, and being less heroically designed, she is niore 
 personal, more living than Trimalchio himself. He 
 is the luck of the household, she the brain. She 
 counts her money by the bushel, and nothing escapes 
 her that concerns her lord or his possessions. Obscure 
 as she is, and ill-born, she rules him with a word, and 
 if she says it is dark at noonday, he lights the lamp. 
 But his faith puts no check on her loyalty, and no 
 drop of water moistens her lips until the household is at 
 peace. She counts the silver, she divides the broken 
 meats among the slaves, and then, and not till then, 
 will she sit down to dinner, or believe herself the 
 equal of her husband. Yet, in her hours of ease, she 
 is not without accomplishments ; she will dance the 
 cordax^ that marvel of impropriety, against the whole 
 world, and she has a perfect talent for scurrility. 
 When Habinnas and his horrible wife Scintilla arrive at 
 Trimalchio's feast from a funeral, Fortunata is nowhere 
 to be seen. Forthwith the slaves are bidden to call 
 her, and four times her name is shouted. She enters 
 in all her squalid finery, wiping her hands on the 
 handkerchief round her neck ; her sHppers are laced 
 with gold, and corded buskins show beneath her gown, 
 which is cherry-coloured and girdled with green. 
 Forthwith she mumbles affectionately to Scintilla, 
 and the good-humoured ladies brag to each other of ( 
 their vulgar finery. ^ J 
 
PETRONIUS 45 
 
 Fortunata, indeed, is etched by a master, and at the 
 banquet none of the guests fall far below the quality 
 of their hosts. In the absence of Trimalchio they 
 exchange the stock phrases of an impoverished intelH- 
 gence with a genius of persistence that cannot be 
 matched outside the Polite Conversation. They send 
 across the table an endless fire of proverbs and catch- 
 words. They pack their discourse full of the gags of 
 the tavern, as though they were actors preparing for 
 the Saturnalia or a Christmas pantomime. They 
 anticipate Sam Weller with a " better luck next time, 
 as the yokel said when he lost his speckled pig." 
 They slip in a quip or a quirk, alive from the street, 
 at the briefest interruption of wit. They are magni- 
 ficent, worthless, obscene ; but they are never dull, 
 and an evening spent in the blackguard society of these 
 beggar-students passes in a flash of merriment. You 
 meet them with pleasure, you leave them with regret, 
 and only when the author of their being tempts you 
 to curiosity about himself. 
 
 For Petronius is as secret as Shakespeare, as im- 
 personal as Flaubert. If he has crammed his book 
 with the fruits of a liberal experience, he has reso- 
 lutely suppressed himself. Whether or no he be the 
 Petronius of the Annals is uncertain and indifferent. 
 Most assuredly the author of the Satiricon would have 
 hated the brutality of Tigellinus and despised the taste 
 of Nero, that Imperial Amateur. But history is 
 silent, and conjecture is a mule. Wherefore we know 
 him only as the writer of an incomparable romance, 
 
46 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 which has no other motive than amusement, and no 
 better virtues than gaiety and lightheartedness. The 
 masterpiece, as vs^e have it to-day, is but a collection 
 of fragments, but its composition is not impaired by 
 incompleteness, and there is scarce a fragment vsrhich 
 is not perfect in itself. For Petronius had the true 
 genius of the story-teller : his openings are as direct as 
 if silhouetted in black upon a virhite sheet. Before all 
 the ancients, he had a sense of background j he knew 
 precisely what space his figures would occupy ; and 
 he never permitted a wanton exaggeration or a pur- 
 poseless perversion. The material of his romance was 
 the squalid life of his age, by land and by sea, by day 
 and by night, in the close town and under the large air 
 of heaven. He was a very prince of intelligence ; he 
 understood as acutely as he observed, and nothing 
 escaped either mind or eye. His courage, moreover, 
 was equal to his understanding : he never shrank from 
 laying violent hands upon truth ; he turned life inside 
 out with a very passion of fearlessness. 
 
 The first among the ancients to cultivate the gift 
 of curious characterisation, he invented a set of 
 personages, who are not only types but living men. 
 He handled the sorcery and superstition of his age 
 with a skill which not even Apuleius might excel, 
 and for all his levity he knew how to strike the 
 reader with horror. Moreover, he was an adept at 
 the Milesian Fable, a haunting form of literature 
 which eludes the most diligent research ; and the 
 Story of the Ephesian Widow ^ which even Jeremy 
 
PETRONIUS 47 
 
 Taylor does not disdain to quote, is the very model of 
 its kind, and withal the perfection of ironic humour. 
 Nor does this complete the tale of his perfections : he 
 was as accomplished a critic as antiquity can show. 
 His parody of Lucan is a dissertation upon the art of 
 poetry ; the reflections which precede it are a miracle 
 of insight ; and what praise need you bestow upon 
 the man who first discovered in Horace a " curiosa 
 felicitas " ? 
 
 Who was he ? What was he ? Whence came 
 he ? These questions must remain for ever without 
 an answer. One thing only is certain, he was a 
 gentleman, and incomparably aristocratic. He stood 
 a creator, high above the puppets of his creation, and 
 in nothing does he show his greatness so admirably as 
 in the serene aloofness of his temperament. One 
 Petronius, surnamed Arbiter Elegantiarum^ broke two 
 Murrhine vases envied by an Emperor, and when, 
 driven to suicide, he opened a vein, he stopped the 
 blood, so long as the converse of his friends was an 
 entertainment. The author of the Satiricon was 
 capable of both these actions, and an age is rich indeed 
 that produced two such heroes. But no more may 
 be said save that he revealed himself a classic and the 
 friend of tradition. In the very act to invent a new 
 literature, he quoted Virgil and Horace with an 
 admirable devotion ; he wrote a prose so pure and 
 simple that even the flashes of slang and popular speech 
 wherewith it is illuminated do not interrupt its high 
 tranquillity. We may yet discover another fragment 
 
48 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 of his priceless work : we are never likely to pierce 
 the mystery of his being. But we are content to look 
 upon him as a great gentleman, and to acknowledge 
 that under his auspices we would rather dine with 
 Trimalchio and his rapscallions than with LucuUus 
 himself. 
 
HELIODORUS 
 
HELIODORUS* 
 
 HELIODORUS, Bishop of Tricca, bidden to 
 choose between the prelacy and his Mthiopica^ 
 rather suffered the deprivation of his title than " lose 
 the glory of so excellent piece." Such is the one poor 
 legend which serves Heliodorus for a biography. Nor 
 may it claim the honour of antiquity, since, though 
 in modern times it has never lacked appreciative itera- 
 tion, its invention is no older than Nicephorus Callistus 
 and the fourteenth century. Translated into all modern 
 tongues, this unsupported testimony has aroused an 
 admiration for Heliodorus in the breasts of thousands 
 for whom the Mthiopica is merely Greek, and who 
 have scarce heard, even at second hand, of the loves of 
 Theagenes and Chariclia. From Montaigne f the fable 
 
 * An ^Ethiopian Historic, written in Greeke by Heliodorus, 
 no lesse wittie than pleasaunt. Englished by T. Underdowne, 
 and newly corrected and augmented with divers and sundrie 
 new additions by the said Authour. Imprinted by F. Coldocke. 
 London. 1587. 
 
 t " Heliodorus, ce bon evesque de Tricca," thus runs the 
 passage, " ay ma mieulx perdre la dignity, le profit, la devotion, 
 d'une prelature si venerable, que de perdre sa fille, fille qui dure 
 encore bien gentille, mais, a I'aventure pourtant un peu trop 
 curieusement et mollement goderonnee, pour fille ecclesiastique 
 •et sacerdotale, et de trop amoureuse fa^on." 
 
52 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 crept into Burton's Anatomy^ and thence into every 
 treasury of the commonplace, until, industriously re- 
 peated, it has become more true than truth itself. 
 And yet, like truth itself, it is manifestly difficult of 
 belief. For, in Montaigne's despite, the Mthiopica is 
 a work of which the most exalted bishop might be 
 proud. In one aspect it is nothing less than a pane- 
 gyric of chastity — a Joseph Andrews stripped of its 
 satire. And should not the bishop rather enjoy pro- 
 motion for so conspicuous a service than witness the 
 destruction of his solitary child ? Nor does Helio- 
 dorus stand in need of any false dignity, since his 
 style and description, devised, as an epilogue, by him- 
 self, are far more honourable than the title bestowed of 
 JN'icephorus : " Thus endeth the -/Ethiopian historic of 
 Theagenes and Chariclia," you read on the last page, 
 " the authour whereof is Heliodorus of Emesos, a citie 
 in Phoenicia, sonne of Theodosius, which fetched his 
 petigree from the Sunne." * Who would not rather 
 boast a descent direct from the Sun, than sit in far-ofF 
 Thessaly upon the throne of Tricca ? But Nice- 
 phorus Callistus had thus much support for his in- 
 genious fiction, that Socrates, an ecclesiastical writer 
 of the fifth century, gave the see of Tricca to one 
 Heliodorus. Nevertheless, similarity of name is poor 
 evidence, and until you desert the author for his work 
 you may believe whatever legend you will. 
 
 * Toiovhe iripas tax^ ^^ avvrayixa. tQv irepl Qeayhrjv Kal "KaplKXeiap 
 \Ai6ioTnKUV 6 cvvira^ev dvrjp 6oiVt^ 'E/uetnyyos, TiSu d<p' *R\tovy4i>oSt 
 Qcodocriov 7rats'H\t65a>/>os. 
 
HELIODORUS 53 
 
 The Mthtoptca is the forerunner of the modern 
 Romance, the ancestor in a direct line of the Novel of 
 Adventure. The invention of Heliodorus carries the 
 reader far away from life and observation. Blood- 
 thirsty pirates and armed men, caves and ambushes, 
 <lreams and visions, burnings, poisonings, and sudden 
 deaths, battle and rapine — these are the material of his 
 ancient story. It has been called a prose epic ; yet it 
 is more nearly related to Ivanhoe than to the Iliad. 
 There is no artifice of the " historical novel " which 
 Heliodorus does not anticipate. The challenge thrown 
 down in his Fourth Book by "one of goodly person- 
 age and of greate courage " might have been devised 
 by Sir Walter himself, and the miraculous escapes of 
 the hero and heroine are still the commonplaces of 
 popular fiction. But the chastity of Chariclia, the 
 more than human control of Theagenes, are of the 
 author's own contriving; and these qualities most 
 assuredly give character and consistency to his narra- 
 tive. It is in his opening scene that Heliodorus best 
 approves his skill. He plunges at once into a very 
 tangle of events, and captures the attention by a fear- 
 less contempt of prologue and explanation. " As 
 soone as the day appeared," to quote Underdowne's 
 picturesquely inaccurate version, "and the Sunne 
 began to shine on the tops of the hilles, men whose 
 custome was to live by rapine and violence ranne to 
 the top of a hill that stretched towards the mouth of 
 Nylus, called Heracleot : where standing awhile they 
 viewed the sea underneath them, and when they had 
 
54 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 looked a good season a far off into the same, and could 
 see nothing that might put them in hope of pray, they 
 cast their eyes somewhat neare the shoare : where a 
 shippe, tyed with cables to the maine land, lay at road, 
 without sailers, and full fraughted, which thing, they 
 who were a farre of might easily conjecture : for the 
 burden caused the shippe to drawe water within the 
 bourdes of the decke." And when a maid, "endued 
 with excellent beauty," is pictured gazing upon a 
 sorely wounded youth, the reader knows forthwith 
 what is in store for him, and foresees the happy end 
 of a familiar embroilment. Throughout the author 
 shows himself a master of construction. Though his 
 plot be involved, though his story begin anywhere else 
 than at the beginning, it is the surest of hands which 
 holds the threads. The countless misfortunes which 
 befall the actors of the melodrama, before ever the 
 thieves of Egypt carry away their prey, are set forth 
 in a series of episodes, which gives the book an appear- 
 ance of separate stories lightly held together. Na 
 fresh personage comes upon the scene but he proceeds 
 to divulge the adventures of the past. Thus Cnemoa 
 relates the story of Demeneta, his jealous stepmother^ 
 an invention worthy the genius of Boccaccio ; thus 
 Calasiris, that blameless old man, true descendant of 
 the Tragic Chorus, only begetter of unnumbered Old 
 Adams, recounts his own mishaps with peevish tedious- 
 ness, adding thereto the early history of Chariclia and 
 Theagenes ; thus you are told how Chariclia, exposed 
 to doubtful fortune, was committed, jewels and all,. 
 
HELIODORUS 55 
 
 to Charicles, and how Theagenes went forth from 
 Thessaly to perform the funeral rites of Pyrrhus, son 
 of Achilles. Yet, despite this constant doubling back 
 to the past, the purpose of the narrative is never con- 
 fused, and you reach the appointed end with a com- 
 plete consciousness of the story's shape and construc- 
 tion. To-day the artifice seems simple enough. The 
 personages of the romance are known to one another 
 by token or by recollection at the first encounter, until 
 the effect savours rather of modern farce and the 
 strawberry mark than of the pitiless self-discovery of 
 CEdipus. But the trick might well have showed a 
 miracle of ingenuity in the fourth century ; nor does 
 Heliodorus pretend either to Sophoclean irony or to 
 the compact development of Athenian tragedy. In 
 brief, he tells a discursive story of love and capture,, 
 and tells it to such purpose that his very faults have 
 served for an example to centuries of romance. 
 
 For him the adventure was the beginning and the 
 end of art. His book contains scarce a hint of 
 character, and he wove his vast tapestry from the 
 plays and epics of Greece without a glance thrown on 
 the life of his time. Wherefore his Mthioplca belongs, 
 to no period and to no country. It is as remote from 
 reality as the Arcadia — of which, perchance, it was an 
 inspiration — or the other dead romances of the Eliza- 
 bethans. For Heliodorus Egypt and Thessaly are 
 names and no more ; his personages fight and love^ 
 are captured and set free in an age which is heroic 
 despite its complications. The motives which per- 
 
56 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 suade Theagenes and Chariclia to their intervals of 
 activity are of the simplest. No subtlety ever dis- 
 turbs the logical result of hate or jealousy ; not one 
 creation submits to an individual impulse. Each has 
 his qualities, each acts or suffers, not as in a real world 
 but as in a world of phantasy, wherein Heliodorus 
 pulls the strings. Now and again the novelist is sur- 
 prised into a piece of observation, the more strange for its 
 very rarity : for instance, Arsinoe is despised of Nausi- 
 kles, " because that while she sang her cheekes swelled, 
 and were unseemly, and her eyes stared, almost leaving 
 their accustomed place."* Not a miracle of insight, 
 truly, but a patch of vivid relief upon a pallid picture. 
 The deaf fisherman, too, whom Calasiris (in Book v.) 
 finds mending his nets, is a sketch fashioned from 
 memory or a notebook, and is free from the prevailing 
 taint of the heroic. " After I had gone a little way," 
 thus Underdowne, " I sawe an olde man which was a 
 fisher, that satte mending his broken nettes, before his 
 doore. I came to him, and saide, Goode man, God save 
 you, and tell me I pray you, where a man may gette 
 lodging ? He answered me : it was rent upon a pro- 
 montorie hereby : being lette slippe upon a rock, 
 which they sawe not. I aske not that, quoth I, but 
 you shall show us great courtesie, if either you your- 
 selfe wilbe our hoste, or else shewe us some other Inne. 
 
 * The Greek is more obviously realistic than Underdowne's 
 English. Here it is : iiretdi^ Kvprovfiivqv ai>T'y ttjv irapeiav iv rdii 
 avXi^fiaffi elde, Kai irpbs t6 ^iaiov rdv (pva-rj/xdruv airpeiricxTepov iirl 
 rds pipas dviffrafxiPTjv, t6 re 6ixp.a. irifx.'irpdfxevov Kal r^s oUeias edpas 
 i^udoifievov. 
 
HELIODORUS 57 
 
 He answeared, not I, for I was not aborde with them." 
 But this cross-purpose is not characteristic : it seems 
 to have crept by stealth into an impersonal narrative. 
 Again, Heliodorus is curiously insensitive to land- 
 scape : a failing the more noteworthy since the author 
 of the incomparable Daphnis and Chloe was doubtless 
 his near contemporary. You journey with Chariclia 
 from Egypt into Thessaly; with Cnemon you wander 
 to the Peiraeus ; but the impression of atmosphere is 
 faint indeed. If the long, low banks of the Nile 
 compel the writer's interest, if he have some vague 
 sense of marshland, he caught it not from life but from 
 Herodotus ; and Underdowne's phrase, " When all 
 was whishte in the marish," is infinitely more expres- 
 sive than the original Greek : aLyifiQ Se to %\og icara- 
 <j\ov(Tr]g. 
 
 But, though we know not whether Heliodorus were 
 Bishop of Tricca or descendant of the Sun, his book 
 assures us more certainly than the word of all the 
 Fathers that he was a lettered recluse, who sought in 
 books the experience which Hfe denied him. There 
 was never a writer who closed his senses more reso- 
 lutely to the sights and sounds of the world. In him the 
 faculty of observation was replaced by the self-conscious- 
 ness of the student. Not even his vocabulary was fresh 
 or original. Coray, the wisest of his editors, has 
 proved that he borrowed his words as ingeniously as 
 he concocted his episodes. His prose, in fact, is 
 elaborately composed of tags from Homer and the 
 Tragedians. It is as though an English novelist 
 
58 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 should establish his diction upon a study of Chaucer 
 and the Elizabethan drama ! There results the style 
 of a bookworm, not even remotely poetical, but broken 
 by inapposite echoes of all the poets. To turn from. 
 Heliodorus to Longus is to change a clever craftsman 
 for a finished artist. For Longus played upon lan- 
 guage as upon a various and subtle instrument, calling 
 therefrom harmonies unknown before, and it is the 
 misfortune of Heliodorus that time and subject compel 
 a comparison of the ^thiopica with Daphnis and 
 Chloe^ indisputably the greatest of Greek romances. 
 
 One other habit determines the writer of culture : 
 a delight in commonplace and in the improvement of 
 the occasion. He will always point a moral, if he do 
 not thereby adorn his tale. " Such is the appearance 
 of very nobilitie," you read in the Enghsh of 
 Underdowne, "and the force of comeliness, which 
 can subdue the disposition of theeves, and bring 
 under the wilde and savage." The reflection may 
 be matched for triteness where you will. But when 
 Heliodorus calls upon Calasiris to prove that Homer 
 was an Egyptian, he approaches still more nearly the 
 Barlovian ideal, and when the irreproachable Calasiris- 
 replies to Cnemon's entreaty : "Although it be nothing 
 neare to our purpose to talk of such things, yet I 
 will briefly tell you : " you expect a vision of Harry 
 Sandford. However, if Heliodorus wrote the prose 
 of a bookworm, if he looked for life rather on his 
 shelves than in the market-place, if the love of Thea- 
 genes and Chariclia be the milk-and-water of passion^ 
 
HELIODORUS 59 
 
 the passion, indeed, of Paul and Virginia, his invention 
 is beyond reproach, and an age which prefers insight 
 before fancy may still admire the Mthiopica as the 
 beginning of romance. 
 
 The popularity of Heliodorus was early estab- 
 lished. His masterpiece has been translated into many 
 tongues. Nor has it proved a mere solace and inspi- 
 ration : there is a legend that in the sixteenth century 
 it was gravely considered a handbook of tactics. In 
 1534 the Editio Princeps* appeared, and seventeen 
 years later an adventurous Pole, one Stanislaus 
 Warschewiczki, turned it into plain and serviceable 
 Latin.f The preface, which is dated ' Ex Warsche- 
 wiczke, paterno rure, Calendas Augusti, 155 1," gives 
 a human interest to a long-forgotten work. It is 
 strange, indeed, that HeHodorus, travelling betimes 
 to far-ofF Poland, should have amused the leisure of 
 a territorial lord. But for us the ancient editions have 
 a more than picturesque interest, because they must 
 needs have been in the hands of Thomas Under- 
 downe, the first to English the loves of Theagenes 
 and Chariclia. Unlike Sir Thomas North, Under- 
 downe owed no debt to Amyot, whose /Ethiopicay 
 pubHshed in 1559, is not for an instant comparable 
 to his masterly versions of Plutarch and Longus. 
 
 * Heliodori iEthiopicae Historiae libri decern, nunquam antea 
 in lucem editi. Basilese, 1534. 
 
 t Thus the book, a noble quarto, is described upon the title- 
 page : Heliodori ^thiopicae Historiae libri decern, nunc primum 
 e Graeco sermone in Latinum translati. Stanislao Warschewiczki 
 Polono Interpreti. Basileae, 1551. 
 
6o STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Prolix and tasteless, it neither represents the original, 
 nor is it worthy on its separate merit. Amyot failed 
 with Heliodorus as Angell Day failed with Longus, 
 and as Amyot turned Daphnis and Chloe into a 
 phantasy, beautiful as his original, so Thomas 
 Underdowne converted Theagenes and Chariclia from 
 the faded experiment of a studious pedant into a fresh 
 and open-aired romance. 
 
 But Underdowne fails as a translator, because his 
 ignorance of Greek and Latin was frank and magnifi- 
 cent. There is no page of him that is not shamed by 
 a childish misunderstanding of the original. That he 
 used the Latin more intimately than the Greek is 
 proved by the fact that he follows the ingenious 
 Warschewiczki into his every error. Indeed, he 
 nowhere declares his acquaintance with Greek, 
 though now and again the ingenuity of his fault 
 suggests that the true text of Heliodorus was in his 
 hands ; while he indirectly acknowledges his debt to 
 the Latin version by translating into characteristic 
 English a brief biography of his author. " In the 
 «tile," writes Underdowne, after the Polish scholar, 
 "is much exquisite diHgence, yet doth it bring with 
 it a certaine delightful oblectation, united, as is meete 
 in such an Argument, with singular myrth." But, 
 if Underdowne had any sense of his author's style 
 (which is hardly credible), he kept sternly aloof 
 from it. There is no trace in the English version 
 of the Greek writer's foppish pedantry. The style of 
 Underdowne is all unspoiled by inapposite quotation or 
 
HELIODORUS 6r 
 
 ingenious illusion, and if it be more truly poetical than 
 the original, that is because a rhythmically cadenced 
 prose is nearer poetry than a bundle of conceits. But 
 he made no attempt to represent his author : by design 
 or accident he got as far from Heliodorus as possible. 
 To compare the two is to wonder that the one has 
 even a distant relation to the other. For so fine is 
 Underdowne's feeling for adventure, so admirable is 
 his local colour, that he gives the story the period 
 and the atmosphere which Heliodorus perforce with- 
 held. With the English in your hand, you lose 
 that uncertainty of time and place which the Greek's 
 vague heroism inspires. You are in the very citadel 
 of Romance ; and the citadel is built in Elizabethan 
 England ; and the romance is unfolded to you, not in 
 the tasteless phrase thought out by a man of culture 
 in his sombre study, but in a medley of vivid words 
 culled from the chap-books or heard in the market- 
 place. For Underdowne was of those who would 
 put the gods into doublet and hose. His hero is 
 " Captaine Theagenes " ; Calasiris addresses Charicles 
 frankly with a "Marry Syr Caricles," while such 
 phrases as "Syr Prieste"and"JoUie Dame"(65 OavjULatria) 
 sparkle on every page. The modern tone, as Under- 
 downe understood it, is so scrupulously preserved that 
 you will not find a dozen suggestions of a classica* 
 origin in the book. "Tush (quoth she), thy prating 
 is of no effect " : thus the old woman Cybele to her 
 son. And when Chariclia stands at the stake, un- 
 harmed by the fire, " Arsace, not well in her wits. 
 
^2 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 skipte from the walks, and came out at a posterne 
 with a great company of her guarde." (ri^v St 
 'ApcTUKYiv fi^i Karaaxovaav KaSaXiaOai ts oltto riov 
 THxCoVj Ka\ Sia TTvXidog f/cSpaftoucrav crvv TroXXy 
 dopv(l>oplci.) Then, that there may never be a retro- 
 gression into antiquity, juouoraov appears as " studie," 
 Kiddpav as " Virginalls," and an one occasion Thea- 
 genes is seen " walking about the church and in the 
 cloisters." (nspX rbv vtwv koX tov TTfpfjSoXov.) To 
 resume, Underdowne was a poor translator but a great 
 writer. He had neither the knowledge nor the subtlety 
 to put Heliodorus into an appropriate dress. He did 
 but take the Mthioptca for his motive, fashioning there- 
 upon an excellent narrative, which might still be an 
 ensample to writers of romance ; and thus he proved 
 that the translator may be above his original, that 
 inaccuracy is no bar to a brilliant " transformation." 
 
 As it was Underdowne's supreme ambition to 
 quicken the Greek into the vigorous life of romantic 
 English, he was ever on the outlook for strange and 
 daring words. MofxaraL he converts into " plays the 
 naughtipack," a phrase whose excellent sound and 
 humour are ill warranted by the original. Thus, 
 too, he renders the commonplace fxetpcLKiov by so 
 expressive a word as "princocks," and there is not 
 a sentence that his courage does not improve out 
 of knowledge. "When this affection had gripped 
 their hearts, they became pale," he writes of the 
 lovers' meeting ; and you realise how picturesque is 
 the English when you turn to the Greek, and find 
 
HELIODORUS 63 
 
 no more than tov TraOovg kol rriv Kapdiav liridpa- 
 fiovTOQy wxpiaaav. With admirable effect, too, does 
 he throw a characteristic word into his sentence : 
 *' And therewithal Cariclia glistered at the race ende," 
 though " glistered " finds its suggestion in l^iXafjixpsv. 
 When Calasiris wraps Chariclia's quiver ''in a torne 
 and naughty piece of leather " {TeTpvx(j^l^ivoig Kwdiotg)^ 
 it is difficult to explain your delight in the phrase, yet 
 you know that none but an Elizabethan could have 
 written it. And when Underdowne renders riva rCov 
 a.yopai(t)Vy "one of the makeshifts of the city," or, 
 having no better occasion than Eiprjvrfg avroig lyivETO 
 wpvTavig^ stumbles upon so ingenious an expansion as 
 "made himself their loveday and peace," it is plain 
 that if he treated his Heliodorus with scant courtesy, 
 at least he knew how to embellish him. 
 
 His version, then, is purely English, untouched of 
 Greek or foreign influence. Gifted with an unerring 
 tact of narrative, endowed with a rare sense of rhythm, 
 Underdowne w^as more than the most of his con- 
 temporaries a maker of English prose. In his pages 
 may be found an origin of the Authorised Version. 
 Accustomed to esteem our own Bible a separate 
 masterpiece, we forget that the translators of James's 
 reign were but the heirs of the Elizabethans. The 
 style, which they handled with so fine a bravery, 
 they found fashioned ready to their hand. North and 
 Underdowne, Holland and Adlington, had come 
 before to establish a tradition of distinguished prose. 
 And it is Underdowne who most nearly approaches 
 
64 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 the august severity of the English Bible. For ex- 
 ample, contemplate the following passage : " Where- 
 fore I with wayling beweepe my sorrow, like a Birde, 
 whose nest a dragon pulleth down, and devoureth her 
 young before her face, and is afraid to come nigh, 
 neither can she flee away." Might not these lines be 
 culled from the Psalms or the Prophets ? And while 
 Underdowne preserves the dignity and colour of his^ 
 narrative at this high level, he holds in reserve the 
 power of raising his note, of making his page blare 
 (so to say) with a trumpet call. Thus Theagenes 
 comes before the wanton Arsace to find her habited 
 in splendour : " When he came in and sawe her 
 sittinge in her chaire of estate, clothed in purple and 
 clothe of golde, glorious with jolly jewels, and her 
 costly bonet, finely attyred and decked, with her 
 garde about her, and the chiefe magistrates of the 
 Persians by her, he was not abashed a whit but 
 rather the more incouraged against the Persian 
 braverie." Though the passage bear not the smallest 
 likeness to the thinly accurate Greek, how admirable 
 are its qualities of sound and strength ! Or choose 
 another specimen at hazard, and let Underdowne 
 prove himself a master of the picturesque. It is a 
 portrait of Theagenes drawn by Calasiris : " Such 
 brightness did hys sight bring unto us, in as much as 
 he was on horseback also, with a speare of Ashe, 
 poynted with Steele in his hande ; he had no helmet 
 on, but was bare headed. His cloke was of Purple 
 wrought with Gplde, wherein was the battell of the 
 
HELIODORUS 65 
 
 Centaures and Lapithes : on the button of his cloke 
 was Pallas pictured, bearing a shielde before her 
 breast, wherein was Gorgons head. The comelines 
 and commendation of that which was done was some- 
 what increased by the easie blowing of the winde, 
 which mooved his haire about his necke, parting it 
 before his forhead, and made his cloake wave, and 
 the nether parts thereof to cover the back and buttocks 
 of his horse. You would have sayde that hys horse 
 did knowe the beautie of his master, and that he 
 beeing very faire himselfe, did beare a passing seemely 
 man, he rayned so, and with pricked up eares, he tossed 
 his head, and rolled his eyes fiercelie, and praunced, and 
 leapt in so fine sort." That is prose of a form and 
 substance which could only have been understood in 
 the fresh childhood of literature. And it is good indeed 
 to contemplate the splendid barbarity of this ancient 
 style in an age when a hatred of affectation, a foolish 
 deference to an attenuated tradition, have replaced 
 every individual characteristic by a precise uniformity. 
 Such the book upon which Thomas Underdowne 
 has established his claim to the grateful memory of all 
 those who love rich, well-measured English. It is 
 described upon the title-page with characteristic 
 circumstance and completeness. "An Ethiopian 
 Historie," thus runs the edition of 1587, "written in 
 Greeke by Heliodorus, no lesse wittie than pleasaunt. 
 Englished by T. Underdowne, and newly corrected 
 and augmented with divers and sundrie new additions 
 by the said Authour. Imprinted by F. Coldocke. 
 
66 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 London. 1587." If we may believe Bliss (in his 
 Athena Oxon'ienses\ the first edition, which bears no 
 date, was printed for Henrie Wykes by Frances Coldocke 
 in 1577, so that the book had been ten years in the 
 world before it was " newly augmented." The " his- 
 torie " is dedicated in terms of pomp and flattery to 
 the Right Honourable Edward Deviere, Lord Boul- 
 becke. Earl of Oxenford, Lord Great Chamberlain of 
 England, to whom the author acknowledges himself 
 ** not knowen." His choice of a patron is excellently 
 reasoned, being withal a proof of implicit trust in his 
 author. " Now of al knowledge fit for a noble gentle- 
 man, I suppose the knowledge of histories is most 
 seeming. For furthering whereof, I have englished a 
 passing fine and witty historye, written in Greeke by 
 Heliodorus, and for right good cause consecrated the 
 same to your honourable Lordship." In the address to 
 the Gentle Reader, which stands by way of preface, the 
 worthy Underdowne is not so wisely guided. He repents 
 him of his folly, and craves pardon for his boldness. 
 Grimly conscious that the stationers* shops are " full- 
 fraughted with books of small price," he confesses that 
 *' the looseness of these dayes rather requireth grave 
 exhortations to vertue, than wanton allurements to 
 leudnesse." But the harm being done, he deems it 
 no dishonour to correct the errors wherewith his own 
 or the corrector's negligence has disfigured the pages. 
 His theory of correction is still unintelligible, for no 
 book was ever read for the press with more shameful 
 inaccuracy than this "newly corrected and aug- 
 
HELIODORUS 67 
 
 merited" edition of 1587. But why insist upon 
 orthography, where you find nobility of style ? The 
 translator then excuses the enterprise, which his riper 
 years condemn, on the ground that the book 
 "punisheth the faultes of evill doers, and rewardeth 
 the well livers." " What a king is Hidaspes ? " he 
 asks triumphantly. "What a patterne of a good 
 prince ? What happy successe had he ? Contrari- 
 wise. What a leawde woman was Arsace ? What a 
 patterne of evill behaviour ? What an evill end had 
 shee ? " Thus he would ask a superfluous pardon, and 
 excuse a work that needed no defence. And the world 
 is content, readily condoning this slender fault of moral 
 apology, inevitable imder Elizabeth, as in the later age 
 of Victoria. 
 
 Of Thomas Underdowne's life little enough is 
 certain. The son of Steven Underdowne, he 
 sojourned a while at the University of Oxford. But 
 he left it without a degree ; and we know not whether 
 he betook himself to the church or spent a more 
 adventurous life in the courts. His published works 
 provide a scanty knowledge, which we search in vain 
 to supplement. In 1566 there was printed by 
 Rychard Jones a small octavo, little more than a 
 pamphlet, entitled The Excellent Historie of Theseus 
 and Ariadne^ "written in English Meeter by Thomas 
 Underdowne."* Such was the beginning, and three 
 
 * Thus it stands in the Stationers' Registers for 1566: 
 " Recyvyd of Richard Jonnes for his lycense for the prynting of 
 an history, intituled Thesious and Arr(i)adne, iiijd." 
 
68 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 years later a more ambitious work was registered at 
 the Stationers' Hall: Ovid^ his invective against 
 Ibis, " Translated into English Meeter, whereunto 
 is added by the translator, a short draught of all the 
 stories and tales contained therein, very pleasant to 
 read."* On the title-page is no note of author- 
 ship ; but the dedication, addressed in the common 
 style of adulation to Sir Thomas Sackville, is signed 
 T. U., and the writer avows that he honours Sir 
 Thomas, partly because he is the friend of poets, partly 
 on account of " the good affection your honour hath 
 had to my dear father, Steven Underdo wne." The 
 version is of the slenderest merit, for Underdowne 
 was no poet, and the loose rattle of his lines is neither 
 an echo of the Latin nor an original harmony. The 
 Tudor translators, skilled as they were in prose, failed 
 most miserably in the more delicate task of Englishing 
 poetry, while the truth was still undiscovered that in 
 a strange tongue prose is the best equivalent of verse. 
 The incidental lines, which break the march of 
 Heliodorus' narrative, are turned into the merest 
 doggrel : 
 
 To-morrow shalt thou with the maide 
 
 escape Arsaces band : 
 And soone be brought with her into 
 
 the Ethiopian land. 
 
 * Under 1569 you may read in the Registers: "Recevyd of 
 Thomas e (a)st for his lycense for the pryntynge of a booke 
 intituled OVIDE Invictive againste Ibis . . . iiijd." 
 
HELIODORUS 69 
 
 This jingle halts for an elegiac couplet, in the 
 eighth book of the Mthiopica. But Underdowne 
 had already determined his metre when he laid hands 
 upon the Ibis, and thus he renders Ovid's exquisitely 
 finished verse : 
 
 The Spring with Autumne shalbe one 
 
 with Winter Sommers guyse : 
 And in one countrey shall the Sun 
 
 at once both set and yse. 
 Ere I will concord have with thee, 
 
 sith thou didst breake the band : 
 And set these weapons clean a syde, 
 
 that I have tane in hand. 
 
 And not content v^^ith thus dishonouring his author, 
 Underdowne bombasts out his book with classical 
 mythology, which, for all its characteristic euphuism, 
 is well-nigh unreadable, and inclines you to believe 
 that, after all, Underdowne was a pedant, who, like 
 Philemon Holland, left Oxford for an usher's stool, 
 and employed a scanty leisure in the Englishing of 
 Latin verse or Greek prose. 
 
 Now, this brief record of achievement speaks little 
 of Underdowne's life or character. But the preface 
 to the /Ethiopian Historie convicts him of a pleasant 
 coquetry with morality, and the notes which adorn 
 his "margent," and which, as the author too san- 
 guinely suggests, "will well supply the want of a 
 table," amply sustain the conviction. For it is in 
 
70 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 this "margent" that the translator most clearly 
 reveals himself. His erudition is no less obvious than 
 his determination to do good. On every page are 
 such pearls of the commonplace as "Mans life un- 
 stable " or " A w^oman is best at a souden attempt." 
 At times he will quote Seneca, and '' Necessitas plus 
 poscit quam pietas solet" is his comment upon 
 Thisbe's hasty burial. Or he w^ill derive instruction 
 for the present from the piety of the past, thus proving 
 his implicit faith in the ^Ethiopian History. When 
 Calasiris, in love w^ith Rhodopis, " determined not to 
 dishonest the Priesthoode," Underdowne is ready with 
 the admirably trite reflection : '' God graunt that the 
 honestie of this heathen priest condemne not some ot 
 our ministers which professe the gospel." Is that not 
 written with the very accent of Puritanism ? Or he 
 will turn for his sustenance to ancient history, and 
 suggest that Charicles '* was perhaps of Themistocles' 
 opinion, who rather chose for his daughter a man with- 
 out money, than money without a man." But though 
 the notes do not serve " for a table," they prove that 
 Underdowne's instruction was sound as his morality 
 was sincere. 
 
 The popularity of the /Ethiopian Historie is well 
 attested by the great rarity of Underdowne's tiny 
 quarto. The book that drifts to the fishmongers 
 most commonly escapes destruction : it is the chap- 
 book, passed through a thousand hands, that is read 
 into efFacement. But there is other testimony that 
 Heliodorus was a favourite from Elizabeth's reign to 
 
HELIODORUS 71 
 
 the close of the seventeenth century. Shakespeare* 
 knew him, and read him, you may be certain, in 
 Underdowne's version. Not a few other translators 
 tried their hand upon him, accentuating by their 
 childish bungling the admirable style and sense of the 
 first version. Abraham Fraunce, for instance, in The 
 Countess of Pembroke's Tvy Church^\ would parade his 
 scholarship by forcing a fragment of Heliodorus into 
 clumsy hexameters. Of this work Ben Jonson, in a 
 conversation with Drummond of Hawthornden, said 
 the first and last word : " that Abraham Fraunce in 
 his English Hexameters was a fool." Concerning 
 this truth there is no argument, and 10 read Fraunce's 
 Beginning of Heliodorus his Mthiopicall History^ is to 
 prefer the unkempt doggrel of Underdowne's inter- 
 ludes. Fortunately the "beginning" only occupies 
 six pages j but the Countess of Pembroke can scarce 
 have appreciated such stuff as this : 
 
 As soone as Sun-beames could once peepe out fro* the 
 
 mountaynes. 
 And by the dawne of day had somewhat lightened 
 
 Olympus, 
 
 * In Twelfth Night (Act V. sc. i.) there is a direct reference to 
 Theagenes and CharicUa. Says Orsino : 
 
 " Why should I not, had I the heart to do it, 
 Like to the Egyptain thief, at point of death. 
 Kill what Hove?" 
 t The Countess of Pembroke's Yvy Church. By Abraham 
 Fraunce. London. Printed by Thomas Orwyn, for William 
 Ponsonby, dwelling in Paules Churchyard, at the signe of the 
 Bishop's Head. 1591. 
 
72 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Men, whose lust was law, whose life was still to be 
 
 lusting, 
 Whose thryving thieving, conveyd themselves to an 
 
 hil-top, 
 That stretched forward to the Heracleotical entry 
 And mouth of Nylus : looking thence downe to the 
 
 maine sea 
 For sea-faring men ; but seeing none to be sayling, 
 They knew 'twas booteless to be looking there for a 
 
 booty. 
 
 Yes, Abraham Fraunce in his hexameters was a fool. 
 There is not a line that will scan without violence to 
 sense and accent ; and the brief fragment's sole merit 
 is its abrupt termination. 
 
 A story less dramatic than Theagenes and ChartcUa 
 can scarce be imagined. Its essential characteristic is 
 to unfold itself after the manner of an epic. A tangle 
 of episodes, whose chief distinction is in its interludes, 
 how should it be fitted for the stage, save by the ex- 
 cision of all but the love of hero and heroine ? Yet 
 one nameless writer was courageous enough to attempt 
 the impossible, and there is hidden in the Karleian 
 Collection of Manuscripts a poor, foolish play, entitled 
 The White Mthiopian^ still-born of Heliodorus. From 
 the very dawn of the drama, the playwright sought 
 his motive in novels, and while the masters of the craft 
 were content to steal a hint and make a masterpiece, 
 the journeymen, clinging too close to their model, 
 produced nothing better than a series of dialogues. 
 When Tom Hey wood failed to convert The Golden 
 
HELIODORUS 73 
 
 Ass into a respectable masque, our unknown writer 
 could not hope to turn so inconsequent a piece as 
 the Mthiopica into a consistent assemblage of acts and 
 scenes. And his enterprise fared so ill that not even 
 literary curiosity can prompt an admiration of The 
 White Ethiopian. No ingenuity of construction, no 
 dignity of phrase redeems the reckless essay from 
 contempt. In describing Theagenes (among the 
 " dramatis personae ") as a " gymnosophist," and giving 
 him for companions two other " gymnosophists," 
 the author reveals a solitary flash of unconscious 
 humour. But this is insufficient to condone a prologue, 
 four acts, and an epilogue, composed in rhymed 
 couplets and interrupted by songs. The play, per- 
 chance, was written by some student of the University, 
 at once to display his erudition and to win him a 
 welcome at a tavern. By a wayward chance it sur- 
 vives, while oblivion snatches much that is ten times 
 more worthy, but not even its antiquity is likely to 
 procure for it the honour of print. 
 
 Still more remarkable is WilHam Lisle's famous 
 Historie of Heliodorus, '' Amplified, augmented, and 
 delivered paraphrastically in verse."* The earliest 
 
 * This is the full style and title of a later edition : The 
 famous Historie of Heliodorus. Amplified, augmented and 
 delivered paraphrastically in verse; by their Majesties most 
 humble subject and servant, William Lisle. Whereunto is added 
 divers testimonies of learned men concerning the Author. 
 Together with a briefe summary of the whole History. London* 
 Printed by John Dawson for Francis Eglesfield, and are to be 
 sold at the signe of the Marigold in Pauls Churchyard. 1638. 
 
74 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 edition is dated 1631, and the prefatory fragments are 
 enough to prove that, had William Lisle elected to 
 write in prose, his work would have had a fantastical 
 interest. For though he displays a profound ignorance 
 of verse, he handles prose with an elaborate curiosity. 
 The testimonies wherewith he prefaces the transla- 
 tion are set forth in the most whimsical terms. Here, 
 according to Lisle, is Melancthon's judgment upon 
 Heliodorus : " His style is neat, not smelling, full of 
 excellent variety, delivering counsailes, occasions, events 
 and affections even to life." Still more high-sounding 
 is his version of Dempster's eulogy : " Heliodorus, 
 the Phcenix of Phcenicia : an elegant writer of chast 
 Love, and in the contexture of this history a most 
 elaborate Author." And thereupon Lisle, laying hands 
 on this Phoenix of Phoenicia, turns him to ashes. He 
 elected the rhymed couplet to represent the prose 
 of Heliodorus, and he wrote it like a schoolboy : 
 Blacke-winged night flew to th' Antipodes 
 At sight of Morning Starre, and the Easterne seas 
 With-held the rising Beame, untill it guilt 
 The top of trees, and turrets highest built. 
 And so on for many a weary page. Nor was he 
 content with this experiment : he must needs reflect 
 upon his own language in a metrical preface. Thus 
 his criticism opens : 
 
 About the tongues when divers with me wrangle, 
 And count our English but a mingle-mangle, 
 I tell them, all are such, and in conclusion 
 Will grow so more by curse of first confusion. 
 
HELIODORUS 75 
 
 The familiar style, the outlandish words, the tripping 
 metre, remind you (at a distance) of Charles Cotton, 
 and no serious work was ever introduced by so flippant 
 a fragment. 
 
 But with William Lisle, English was not yet bank- 
 rupt in character, and it was a later generation that 
 mimicked in another tongue the trivialities of the 
 Mthtopica. For at last Heliodorus fell into the hands 
 of Nahum Tate and a Person of Quality. Now, 
 with the advent of the Person of Quality the art of 
 translation died a miserable death. When this cul- 
 tured abstraction, ill-equipped for the task, took the 
 Englishing of Latin and Greek as its hobby, colour 
 and distinction had vanished from our prose. The 
 stateliness of the Tudor style was replaced by a 
 glib facility, with naught to recommend it save a 
 pretension of good sense and simplicity. Not one of 
 the "Various Hands," for instance, who with Dryden's 
 connivance murdered Lucian, rose to a proper under- 
 standing of his author, and yet all would doubtless 
 have agreed that the ancient translators were out- 
 rageous barbarians who understood not their art. 
 Assuredly not one of them understood it after the 
 pedant's own fashion, and he who demands a word 
 for word translation had better betake himself to 
 Dr. Giles. There are, however, several methods of 
 rendering the symbols of one language by the symbols 
 of another. It was Robert Browning's opinion that 
 " a translation should be literal at every cost save that 
 of absolute violence to our language " ; and Robert 
 
76 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Browning's own achievement in the Agamemnon should 
 be enough to refute the opinion. For in that version 
 not only is violence continually done to our language, 
 but there is scarce a page intelligible without the 
 Greek. A literal translation generally resembles a 
 photograph : seemingly true to its original, it is 
 essentially and inherently false. A reckless importance 
 is given to trivial details, and while the outline of the 
 object is still recognisable, its beauty and character are 
 offered a sacrifice to a mistaken theory of accuracy. 
 Transplant a verb or a substantive from one language 
 to another, and it may lose all savour and significance : 
 changing its place in a sentence, it cannot but change 
 its effect. To an ear trained in the loose-knit license 
 of English, the austerer syntax of Greek may appear 
 somewhat hard and constrained ; but to render Helio- 
 dorus by a rigid phrase would be to misreprent his aim 
 and his meaning. In fact, the most accomplished 
 translators have treated their originals with the utmost 
 freedom, assuring themselves of fidelity by far subtler 
 methods than the paltry correspondence of balanced 
 words. Not seldom the shortest cut to an accurate 
 version is an elaborate detour ; not seldom is it neces- 
 sary to recede as far as possible from the original to 
 ensure a harmonising or a corresponding effect. 
 But such was not the fashion of Nahum Tate's 
 time, and we are fortunate to-day in returning to a 
 juster appreciation of the triie masterpieces. To 
 contrast a single page written by this particular 
 Person of Quality, who chose Heliodorus for his own 
 
HELIODORUS ']'^ 
 
 with a page of Underdowne's sounding prose, is to 
 distinguish a living, characteristic style from an effete 
 and faded manner. 
 
 And yet, a worse fate was in store for Heliodorus — 
 the fate of neglect. He is not adventurous enough to 
 satisfy the common taste for blood, he is not intro- 
 spective that the analyst should desire him. He is but 
 a romantic, born out of season, blowing the trumpet, 
 throwing down the glove, bidding his heroes enter the 
 lists to compete for the smiles and the hands of fair 
 women. If his episodes are old-fashioned to-day, it 
 is because they have been unconsciously stolen by an 
 unbroken line of novehsts. But as he is not appointed 
 to be read in schools, as his insipid style dismays the 
 amateur, he is not likely to recapture his popularity. 
 No, his best hope of immortality lies in the version of 
 Underdowne. For Underdowne, though he had but 
 little Greek, understood the language of Romance, 
 and if he did not translate his author, he replaced him, 
 with a version no less rich in invention than ingenious 
 in style. 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 
 
 THE hero of primitive romance was the lusty 
 picaroon, who wandered the world over in 
 search of adventures. To help a damsel in distress or 
 to cut a brother's purse — these were his simple-hearted 
 ambitions. He knew no other motives than curiosity 
 and an empty pocket ; and as he was merry without 
 reason, so he suffered without regret. Now and again 
 his enterprises are tedious through lack of invention : 
 so industriously does he pad the hoof along the familiar 
 highway, so intimately does he accustom you to his 
 prodigies, that his most marvellous escapes are seldom 
 unexpected. But there is an enchantment even in his 
 irresponsibility. For him murder and rapine are rather 
 the expression of a joyous temper than the illustrations 
 of a theory, he develops no character wherewith 
 to flatter the psychologist, he runs his course from 
 the cradle to the grave mainly for his own and his 
 readers' disport, and he wins the world's gratitude in 
 that, though he may lapse into dulness, his purpose 
 is seldom the improvement of mankind. 
 
 Now the brain, too, has its adventures : there is a 
 
 F 
 
82 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 picaresque, also, of the intellect. This other adventurer 
 wanders in a limitless and ever-changing land, w^here 
 the highroad is set with ideas for trees, where there are 
 no flowers 'save sparkling epigrams. Here the only 
 pockets picked are the brains of others, the maidens 
 succoured are generous impulses ; here, instead of lives 
 taken, reputations are unlaced. And a very pretty 
 fellow he may appear, this intellectual picaroon. He 
 is akin to Lucian, to Athenacus, to Rabelais, to Burton. 
 Never weary of exploring the waste-places of know- 
 ledge, he will break a lance with every passing paradox, 
 and with the sword of satire in his hand will rescue 
 Wit from the dungeon of Stupidity. No enterprise is 
 too high for his courage, no desert too remote for his 
 discovery, and you may set out with him when you 
 will, confident that he will lead you through pleasant 
 places, and will solace the journey with deeds of 
 speculative intrepidity. To this ingenious confraternity 
 Laurence Sterne belongs ; and if Gargontua be the 
 Robinson Crusoe of the intellect, if the Anatomy be 
 the Gulliver of the brain, then Tristram Shandy 
 takes its place in this assembly of gallant ventures 
 as the Gil Bias of the spirit, separated always by a 
 discreet distance from the peerless Don ^ixote de la 
 Mancha^ the supreme example of the picaroon in mind 
 and prowess whereof the world's literature may boast. 
 
 For Laurence Sterne is a prince among literary 
 tramps, a king in the Bohemia of phrase and fable. 
 He takes the road with a debonair frivolity, starting 
 nowhere to go nowhither. He recognises no purpose 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 83 
 
 in his travel, save his determination to be rid ot useless 
 encumbrance ; it even irks him to keep to the big 
 road, and no sooner has he ambled a dozen paces than 
 he skips over a stile or takes a bridle-path. To follow 
 his track is an enterprise impossible ; as surely as you 
 catch a glimpse of him trudging on ahead, so surely 
 shall he elude you at the next corner. His Tristram 
 Shandy is a triumph in the art* of digression. Never 
 was a book patched together (you cannot say composed) 
 with so little sense of a plan or of a hero. Its very 
 title, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy^ 
 Gent. — is purposely misleading, since as Tristram is 
 not born until the third volume, so we know little 
 more of his career, save a misadventure with a window- 
 sash, the dignity of his breeching, and his departure for 
 the grand tour ; while that critic would be a miracle of 
 ingenuity who should disengage from the nine volumes 
 a single opinion that does not belong rather to the 
 author than to his puppet. 
 
 At the outset Sterne describes his policy, or rather 
 lack of policy, with unwonted circumstance, and for 
 the moment we are compelled to give him our 
 allegiance. "Therefore, my dear friend and com- 
 panion," he writes in the first volume, " if you should 
 think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my 
 first setting out — bear with me, — and let me go on, 
 and tell my story in my own way j or, if I should 
 seem now and then to trifle upon the road, — or should 
 sometimes put on a fool's cap with a bell to it, for a 
 moment or two as we pass along — don't fly oiF, — but, 
 
84 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 rather, courteously give me credit for a little more 
 wisdom than appears upon my outside ; — and, as we 
 jog on, either laugh with me or at me, or in short do 
 anything, — only keep your temper." To keep your 
 temper is seldom difficult, even if the artifice or 
 digression, pushed beyond the limit of humour, robs 
 you of your patience. But you hesitate before you 
 give the author " credit for more wisdom than appears 
 on the outside," since it is evident that when he set the 
 full-stop to volume two, he knew not what volume three 
 would bring forth. He designed the book for a medley 
 of humour and reflection, of pathos and impertinence. 
 He dreamed half seriously of Shandeism raised to a 
 philosophy ; his vanity almost prayed that a habit of 
 life might proceed from the turns and twists of his 
 flippancy. " I have converted many unto Shandeism," 
 he wrote to Garrick from Paris — " for be it known, I 
 Shandy it away fifty times more than ever I was wont, 
 talk more nonsense than ever you heard me talk in 
 your days — and to all sorts of people." No wonder the 
 Comte de Choiseul was amazed. " Qui le diable est 
 cet homme-la, ce Chevalier Shandy," he is said to have 
 asked, thereby enchanting Sterne. And by an irony 
 the Chevalier is remembered most tenderly as a 
 delineator of character. To reflect upon his master- 
 piece is to call up the images of My Uncle Toby and 
 My Father, of Yorick and Trim, of My Mother and 
 Dr. Slop. The preference is just and inevitable. The 
 personages of the book are more ingenious than its 
 theory, but they chime with their author's aimlessness. 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 85 
 
 and you will better appreciate them if first you master 
 the principles of Shandeism. 
 
 Shandeism, then, is a genial humour tempered by an 
 exaggerated sensibility. There are no facts nor fictions 
 of life which may not be resolved in accordance with 
 its tenets, if only it be remembered that the grave 
 controversy must be flippantly considered, that a 
 proper solemnity puts the best face upon a frivolous 
 discussion. Erudition, false by preference, is a 
 necessary accompaniment, and the witty story a 
 pleasurable interlude. The theory, as well as its 
 exposition, is borrowed from Rabelais ; and Sterne, 
 ever a thrifty soul, is scarce original in his own 
 defence. " True Shandeism," he says, with more 
 than a reminiscence of Pantagruel, "think what you 
 will against it, opens the heart and lungs, and, like all 
 those affections which partake of its nature, it forces 
 the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run 
 freely through its channels, makes the wheel of life 
 run long and cheerfully round." 
 
 A well-founded boast, so far as touches the humour 
 of Shandeism. For Sterne is humorous not only in 
 his character but in his incident. What could be 
 wittier, for all its theft, than the various spirit 
 wherein the news of My brother Bobby's death is 
 received ? Where is a scene conceived in a finer 
 vein of folly than the bed of justice, held upon 
 the Breeching of Tristram ? The Tristrapadia^ 
 moreover, is a marvel of whimsical instruction. 
 And the episode of the midwife, the clauses of My 
 
86 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Mother's marriage-settlement, the dissertation upon 
 Christian names, the influence of nose upon character,, 
 Mr. Shandy's incomparable letter concerning love and 
 its dietary — are not these separate oddities treated with 
 a learning that is ever gay, with a gaiety that is ever 
 learned? But before all is the habit of disputation 
 most pompously burlesqued, and a climax is reached 
 when the decay of eloquence is gravely ascribed with 
 a true Rabelaisian touch to "nothing else in the 
 world but short coats and the disuse of trunk hose.'* 
 Nor is the wayward design of the chapters one 
 whit less amusing : it is impossible, for example, to 
 withhold a laugh from the King of Bohemia, whose 
 story never gets told by Corporal Trim. And 
 none ever compassed, wupa TrpocrSoKiav, more or 
 more delightful topsy-turvydoms of speech : "We'll 
 go, brother Toby^ said my father, whilst dinner is 
 coddling — to the Abbey of Saint Germain, if it be 
 only to see these bodies, of which Monsieur Sequier 
 has given such a recommendation. — I'll go see any- 
 body, quoth my uncle Toby ; for he was all compliance 
 through every step of the journey. — Defend me ! said 
 my father — they are all mummies. — Then one need 
 not shave, quoth my uncle TohyT The irrelevance of 
 that reply is a joy which no familiarity can stale. 
 
 But if Sterne tickled the humours of incongruity 
 with the lightest of light fingers, if he made a wise 
 man's sport with the follies of erudition, he failed, as 
 only a sentimentalist can fail, in the province of pathos. 
 Once he changes laughter for tears, he loses all 
 
 <v^' 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 87 
 
 sense of proportion. There is no trifle, animate or 
 inanimate, he will not bewail, if he be but in the 
 mood ; nor does it shame him to dangle before the 
 public gaze those poor shreds of sensibility he calls 
 his feehngs. Though he seldom deceives the reader 
 into sympathy, none will turn from his choicest agony 
 without a thrill of aesthetic disgust. The Sentimental 
 "Journey^ despite its interludes of tacit humour and 
 excellent narrative, is the last extravagance of irrele- 
 vant grief. The road from Calais to Paris is watered 
 with Yorick's tears. Whether a dead ass or a live 
 starhng be the excuse, whether the misery spring 
 from the absent Eliza or the very present Maria, the 
 pose and folly of the mourner are not dissembled. 
 Though it were easy to prove that Sterne was stoically 
 indifferent to the woes of others, the demonstration is 
 inapposite, since a writer may be a monster of cruelty 
 and yet possess the talent of moving his readers to a 
 willing grief. But genuine sentiment was as strange 
 to Sterne the writer as to Sterne the man ; and he 
 conjures up no tragic figure that is not stuffed with 
 sawdust and tricked out in the rags of the green-room. 
 Fortunately, there is scant opportunity for idle tears 
 in Tristram Shandy^ whose spirit of burlesque is too 
 volatile for pathos. Yet no occasion is lost, and the 
 joyous comedy is not without its blemishes. Yorick's 
 death is false alike to nature and to art. The vapid 
 emotion is properly matched with a commonness of 
 expression, and the bad taste is none the more readily 
 excused by the suggestion of self-defence. Even the 
 
88 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 humour of My Uncle Toby is something degraded by 
 the oft-quoted platitude : " Go, poor devil," says he, 
 to an over-grown fly which had buzzed about his nose, 
 "get thee gone. Why should I hurt thee? This 
 world surely is big enough to hold both thee and me." 
 And who would not spare Le Fevre's lachrymose 
 death-bed at the inn ? Sentimentality, indeed, is 
 Sterne's sorriest weakness, and if it makes but a modest 
 encroachment upon Tristram Shandy^ it turns many 
 of the Letters to ridicule, and reserves its worst 
 excesses for that journey of reflection, "through 
 France and Italy," where the mind wanders further 
 afield than the body, where the true traveller is the 
 brain. 
 
 But though Tristram is free from the grosser taint 
 of pathos, it is marred by a kindred vice. In places it 
 is manifestly obscene. Now, in life, obscenity may 
 prove immoral ; in literature, it is a question of taste ; 
 and it is improper, as well as superfluous, to charge 
 Sterne with an outrage upon the virtues. The 
 Puritan, through lack of imagination, is wont to try 
 literature by the same narrow standard which 
 strengthens him to condemn the conduct of his 
 brothers. He no sooner reads of an impropriety, 
 than he visualises it, and, bereft of humour, shudders at 
 what he deems the wickedness of print. As though 
 an artist were guilty of every act he chronicles ! As 
 though every jest, transcending the experience of the 
 suburbs, should be brought to justice and visited with 
 the common fine of forty shillings ! But Sterne's 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 89 
 
 offence being proven, acquittal is impossible despite 
 the extenuating circumstances. He is not overtly 
 immoral, alas ! he is only too pure. He is always 
 hankering after a licence he dare not enjoy ; and his 
 obscenity is but his sentiment in another form. Each 
 vice springs from a constant incapacity to see things 
 in a sane relation. Had Sterne always been as frank 
 as Rabelais, you had not noticed the indecency. Also, 
 that he could be frank, if he pleased, there are a dozen 
 passages to prove. My Uncle Toby's courtship is 
 without reproach, since the Widow Wadman never 
 encountered her bashful lover without a boisterous 
 rally. And the invention of the earlier chapters is as 
 fresh as their treatment is sound. 
 
 But while Rabelais' laugh, open and rotund, is borne 
 upon the ear without shame and without disguise, 
 Sterne too often sniggers and smirks at his reader's 
 surprise, proving that, whether he be sentimental or 
 obscene, he is still self-conscious. As he poses for 
 a marvel of sensibility, so he would appear completely 
 emancipated. " Behold," he cries, " how valiantly I 
 tread the orderly conventions beneath my feet ! Am 
 I not, as Voltaire would have it, the English Rabelais? 
 Is there any ordinance of purity which I respect ! " 
 And the answer comes : " Yes, you respect them all ; 
 you are the legitimate ancestor of the impuritans, who 
 have made our own generation an occasion of ridicule. 
 When you would be brave, you are tiresome. You 
 attempt, with the satisfaction of the salacious school- 
 boy, to tickle the sensibility of the innocent. But 
 
90 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 you never cease to exclaim upon your freedom, to 
 boast of your jollity in that spirit of self-consciousness 
 which convicts you of a malicious and inartistic 
 purpose. In brief, you omit no opportunity of blink- 
 ing behind the arras, and your indecency proceeds not 
 from what you reveal, but from what you cover up, 
 with your ogling shamefacedness." Between Yorick 
 and Rabelais lies the chasm impassable. "Never 
 trust those men," said Pantagruel, " that always peep 
 out at one hole." And Sterne is among the untrust- 
 worthy. Whatever be the topic, he will, an he can, 
 pervert it to an unuttered obscenity. He has not 
 even the excuse of delighting in strange words. An 
 unwonted expression, a forbidden word, lights up a 
 page, as the friends of Gargantua know, with irre- 
 sistible effect. There is none fit to appreciate good 
 literature that applies the full-blooded, wanton joyous- 
 ness of Rabelais or Petronius to the experience of 
 common life. Colour, movement, unexpectedness, 
 are the qualities of a humour that is broad as well as 
 wholesome, and these qualities appeal to the literary 
 sense alone. 
 
 But Sterne is ever reticent ; he is always " macerat- 
 ing his sensuality." Only on one page of his book 
 does he use conspicuously " bad " words, and then 
 he divides them between an abbess and a novice. 
 Nor does his attempted justification palliate his impure 
 purity. " Heaven is witness," he protests, " how 
 the world has revenged itself upon me for leaving so 
 many openings to equivocal strictures — and for de- 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 91 
 
 pending so much as I have done, all along, upon the 
 cleanliness of my reader's imagination." 'Tis said, of 
 course, in irony, since he always insists that his 
 " reader's imagination " should supply the words his 
 own tongue dare not utter. Aposippesis is the essence 
 of Tristram^ as it is the end of the Sentimental yourney^ 
 and there is an artistic meanness in setting an ox upon 
 your tongue, and reproaching those you invite to drive 
 it off. " Heaven forbid," he wrote again in a famous 
 letter, "the stock of chastity should be lessened by 
 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy^^ and, as 
 only the dullard or the maniac deadens or enhances his 
 chastity by literature, the prayer was doubtless heard. 
 But there is an artistic as well as a moral chastity, 
 " by nature, the gentlest of all affections ; " and 
 Sterne " gave it its head," so that with him " 'tis like 
 a ramping and a roaring lion." 
 
 Frankness, in brief, is the only purity ; and while 
 Rabelais is without blame, the reticence of Sterne too 
 nearly resembles a purposed sentimentality, the in- 
 human horror of the modern novel. And all the while 
 he hoped his " indecorums " might prove a source of 
 profit. He confides to Garrick an ingenious arrange- 
 ment made with Crebillon : each should recriminate 
 upon the "Hberties" of the other, and the money 
 should be divided equally. Though the pamphlet never 
 appeared, it was " good Swiss- Policy," but not the 
 artifice of a writer affronted by " unclean imagina- 
 tions." Worse still, the " obscenity " is commonly 
 dull. The mind which delights in the Abbess of 
 
92 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Andouillets, and laughs over the embarrassment of 
 Phutatorius with the chestnuts, will honestly deplore 
 the dead ass, and believe that the Traveller's tears 
 welled from an honest and a sympathetic heart. 
 
 When we turn from Shandeism to the characters of 
 the romance, there is naught but praise for the author. 
 It is of a piece with Sterne's whimsicality, that setting 
 out upon a voyage of reflection, he was happiest with 
 the personages he encountered by the way. To speak 
 temperately of the brothers Shandy is impossible, and 
 were ungracious. They are eternal with the eternity 
 of literature. From the mist of false erudition and 
 flippant Shandeism they emerge, poignantly realised 
 and exquisitely shaped. How could either find a 
 better foil ? My Father's habit of contention is most 
 admirably countered by My Uncle Toby's Argumentum 
 Fistulatorium ; the complex folly of the one could not 
 be more nicely balanced than by the childlike gravity 
 of the other. The innocence of My Uncle Toby 
 does but increase his humanity, and none that is his 
 friend endures him off his hobby-horse. Whenever 
 My Father's erudition is befogged by My Uncle 
 Toby's simplicity, laughter is inevitable, and the per- 
 sistence wherewith Uncle Toby accepts Mr. Shandy's 
 metaphysical discoveries as contributions to the art of 
 fortification is never tedious. And Sterne was vividly 
 conscious of the excellence of his own creation. " So 
 much am I delighted with My Uncle Toby's imagi- 
 nary character," he wrote to Lady , " that I am 
 
 become an enthusiast," and the world is easily 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 93 
 
 persuaded to share his enthusiasm. One knows not 
 which is the more admirable, the Captain's hobby- 
 horse or the Captain's courtship, while Trim, with his 
 Montero hat and his Turkish tobacco pipes, is the 
 properest and most fantastical of corporals. 
 
 More complicated, yet in a sense less original, is My 
 Father's personality — more complicated, because it 
 depends upon the quips and cranks of sham learning — 
 less original, because it is drawn from books as well as 
 from life. From one point of view it is a literary 
 concretion. Mr. Traill, in his excellent monograph, 
 would have him a personification of " theory run 
 mad," but whether such be the intent, or whether he 
 be an anthropomorphism of Burton's Anatomy^ he is 
 still the most whimsical philosopher in literature. 
 And My Mother — with what skill is her unyielding 
 stupidity suggested ! Despite her few appearances, 
 she and her invincible irresponsiveness are as familiar 
 as Mr. Shandy's antic knowledge or My Uncle 
 Toby's amiability. And the others — Dr. Slop, the 
 man-midwife, the honest, sensitive Corporal, the 
 alluring Widow Wadman, even Susanna and Bridget 
 — are they not all drawn with as sure a hand as the 
 Shandy brothers, if with less distinction than that 
 noble pair ? 
 
 This briefly is the unrivalled achievement of 
 the book : to have furnished forth a gallery of 
 living portraits, whose features the world is as 
 likely to forget as to despise. And the characters 
 live, because Sterne never disdained nature. Had his 
 
94 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 father not been captain in a marching regiment, My 
 Uncle Toby and the Corporal might have lacked 
 verisimilitude. Even w^hen he coloured his observa- 
 tion with caricature, he still drew from Hfe, and his 
 less amiable personages were recognised with resent- 
 ment. Dr. Slop was known at once for a travesty of 
 Dr. Burton, a Jacobite, whom Sterne's uncle had 
 arrested upon a charge of high treason. And a 
 certain nameless doctor attacked the author of Tristram 
 in set terms for having, as he said, dishonoured the 
 memory of Dr. Mead. The controversy matters not 
 a jot to-day, and is only memorable because it illus- 
 trates Sterne's theory of portraiture, and gave him an 
 opportunity to justify his work, as well as to prove 
 how fallacious is the maxim " de mortuis nil nisi 
 bonum." 
 
 But not only had he met his characters in 
 the flesh ; many a picturesque episode, many a 
 dramatic scene, was prompted by his long experience 
 of a Yorkshire village. Shandy Hall, its intimates 
 and estates, had an existence, you are sure, in the 
 neighbourhood of StilHngton. To quote a single 
 instance : when My Aunt Dinah left My Father a 
 legacy of a thousand pounds, he straightway debated 
 whether he should enclose Oxmoor, "a fine, large, 
 whinny, undrained, unimproved common," or send 
 My Brother Bobby forth upon the Grand Tour. 
 Similar projects of enclosure engrossed the country 
 clergyman, and thus he complains to his cousin : 
 "'Tis a church militant week with me, full of 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 95 
 
 marches and counter-marches — and treaties about 
 Stillington Common, which we are going to enclose." 
 Such then is the relation of the romance to life, and 
 such the faculty of observation whereby it is separated 
 from its distinguished model, The Anatomy of Melan- 
 choly. 
 
 But if Sterne owed much to experience, he owed 
 more to books, and it is impossible to consider Tris- 
 tram Shandy apart from its origins. Yet so con- 
 summately shameless are the thefts of Yorick, that 
 reproach is forgotten in amazement. Like a true 
 highwayman, he commits his robberies on every 
 road of literature. Without hesitation or remorse, he 
 bids his betters stand and deliver, tricking out his own 
 person with whatever treasures fall into his hand. His 
 debt to Rabelais was patent from the first ; indeed he 
 never ventured upon concealment. The very frame- 
 work of his book is borrowed, and for Shandean read 
 Pantagruelian, and you recognise that not even the 
 philosophy is original. Careless as he commonly 
 is of expression, he does not disdain to prig the cadence 
 of a phrase. " Now, my dear anti-Shandeans, and 
 thrice able criticks and fellow-labourers (for to you I 
 write this Preface) " ; thus Sterne echoes the first 
 lines of Urquhart's Gargantua : '' Most noble and 
 illustrious drinkers, and you thrice precious pockified 
 blades (for to you and none else do I dedicate my 
 writings)." 
 
 But it was not until the appearance of Dr. 
 Ferriar's Illustrations that the full measure was 
 
96 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 taken of Yorick's depredation. Never was a stranger 
 tribute paid by disciple to his master. It was for 
 Sterne's sake, said Ferriar, that he plodded through 
 '' miry ways of antic wit, and quibbling mazes drear ; " 
 as well might a prosecuting counsel claim the grati- 
 tude of the prisoner skulking in the dock. For this 
 disciple convicted his master of indiscriminate and 
 unwarrantable theft. It is true that once upon the 
 quest he pushes his ingenuity too far, and makes dis- 
 coveries which the finest subtlety might overlook. 
 But the main charge is most ably sustained, and 
 Tristram is revealed, in one aspect, an industrious 
 mosaic. Rabelais and Beroalde, Montaigne and Bishop 
 Hall, Bruscambille and Burton are one and all laid 
 under contribution. Rabelais' part in the chapter on 
 Noses is indirectly acknowledged, and if, when Yorick 
 relates the contest between Tripet and Gymnast, he 
 omits to explain that it is taken from Urquhart's 
 Rabelaisy at least the fragment is printed between 
 inverted commas. Moreover, his admiration for Pan- 
 tagruel is plainly avowed. " By the ashes of my dear 
 Rabelais, and dearer Cervantes " is the choicest of his 
 oaths, and more than once he quotes openly from the 
 curate of Meudon. 
 
 But his respect for Burton is at once more 
 secret and more practical. Though he nowhere 
 mentions his master's name, he lies under a hundred 
 unrevealed obligations. Not only does he adapt 
 the habit of erudite quotation, but he steals quota- 
 tion, phrase, and all. For instance, Mr. Sterne's 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 
 
 97 
 
 edifying reflections upon the death of My Brother 
 Bobby are lifted bodily from the Anatomy. One 
 example of his method will serve as well as another,, 
 but surely parallel columns never exposed a more: 
 abandoned conveyance : 
 
 Burton. 
 
 Returning out of Asia^ 
 when I sailed from ^gina 
 towards Megara, T began to 
 view the country round 
 about. -(lEgina was behind 
 me, Megara before, Pyrseus 
 on the right hand, Corinth 
 on the left ; what flourish- 
 ing towns heretofore now 
 prostrate and overwhelmed 
 before mine eyes ! Alas^ 
 why are we men so much 
 disquieted with the depar- 
 ture of a friend, whose life 
 is much shorter, when sa 
 many goodly cities lie 
 buried before us ? Remem- 
 ber, O Servius, thou art a 
 man ; and with that I wa& 
 much confirmed, and cor- 
 rected myself. 
 
 True, Sterne confesses the passage an extract from 
 Servius Sulpicius' consolatory letter to Tully ; true 
 also, with characteristic whimsicality, he makes My^ 
 
 G 
 
 Sterne. 
 Returning out of Asia, 
 when I sailed from ^gina 
 towards Megara, I began to 
 view the country round 
 about, ^gina was behind 
 me, Megara was before me, 
 Pyraeus on the right hand, 
 Corinth on the left. What 
 flourishing towns now pros- 
 trate on the earth ! Alas ! 
 alas ! said I to myself, that 
 a man should disturb his 
 soul for the loss of a child, 
 when so much as this lies 
 awfully buried in his pre- 
 sence. Remember, said I 
 to myself again — remember 
 that thou art a man. 
 
98 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Uncle Toby, mindful of My Father's concern in the 
 Turkey trade, put the question : " And pray, brother, 
 what year of our Lord was this ? " But there is no 
 mention of Burton, and Sterne maybe trusted with 
 whole-hearted confidence to the ignorance of his 
 fellows. Meaner still are the paltrier loans — the loans 
 of phrase or witty turn. Even if it be pleaded that 
 a tangle of quotations comes apt to the purpose of 
 Tristram^ the pilfering of a line has no justifica- 
 tion. Yet Sterne, having gone once to the cupboard, 
 cannot stay his hand. "But where am I?" he 
 exclaims, involved in too deep a consideration ; " and 
 into what a delicious riot of things am I rushing ? " 
 A travesty, in fact, of one of B urton's conclusions : 
 " But where am I ? into what subject have I 
 rushed ? " Again, cries Sterne in his preface : " Lay 
 hold of me — I am giddy — I am stoneblind — Fm dying 
 — I am gone— Help ! help ! help ! " ; and again Dr. 
 Ferriar quotes from Burton : "But, hoo ! I am now 
 gone quite out of sight : I am almost giddy with 
 roving about." 
 
 But in his eagerness to keep up an appearance of 
 honesty, Sterne permits himself a still more daring 
 freedom : he steals Burton's own condemnation of the 
 plagiarist. " Shall we for ever make new books as 
 apothecaries make new mixtures," asks this stalwart 
 champion of originality, " by pouring only out of one 
 vessel into another ? Are we for ever to be twisting 
 and untwisting the same rope, for ever in the same 
 track, for ever at the same pace ? " And turning to 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 99 
 
 Burton you trace the ironical felony : /'As apothe- 
 caries we make new mixtures every day, pour out of 
 one vessel into another j and as those old Romans 
 robbed all the cities of the world, to set out their bad- 
 sited Rome, we skim off the cream of other men's 
 wits, pick the choice flowers of their tilled gardens, to 
 
 set out our own sterile plots We weave the 
 
 same web still, twist the same rope again and again." 
 How Sterne must have laughed at his own impudence ! 
 Yet the criminal cannot escape with a laugh, and he 
 leaves the inquiry with many a stain upon his 
 character. 
 
 In truth, he oversets all one's theories of plagiary. 
 When Virgil was charged with stealing from Ennius, 
 he answered, without a thought of his victim : " I did 
 but take pearls from a dung-heap." Neither Shake- 
 speare nor Moliere, one fancies, felt an acute sympathy 
 with the writers they plundered ; and they are readily 
 absolved, since the greatest can do no wrong. They 
 stripped their inferiors, that is all ; and rewarded them 
 with a vicarious immortality. But Sterne picked the 
 brains of wiser men. Yorick's most ardent admirer 
 would scarcely insist that Burton and Rabelais were 
 honoured by the contribution levied upon them. No: 
 he tricked himself out in the plumage of nobler birds, 
 and claimed the stolen feathers for his own. Even his 
 sermons profited by his thievery, and those there are 
 who decree this his most heinous sin. But the ques- 
 tion is over subtle, and the flippant may urge that the 
 sacred occasion gave but a pleasant sauce to his 
 
100 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 humour. Tried by the easiest code of morals, he is- 
 found guilty, since there is no law of literary honour 
 that he does not violate. Yet his very flippancy saves 
 him from a heavy sentence, especially as he may plead 
 in extenuation an absence of motive. 
 
 However much of its satire Tristram owes to 
 Burton's erudite collections, Sterne did not lack wit, and 
 he might have composed his book without incurring a 
 single debt. Was he then guilty of a vulgar klepto- 
 mania? Was he unable to withhold his hand from the 
 property of others ? Or shall we set his villainy down to 
 the humours of Shandeism ? " Je prends mon bien ou 
 je le trouve," he might have murmured with a shrug of 
 frivolity, esteeming his furtive villainy no worse than 
 a culmination of his own philosophy. Yet another 
 explanation is possible. He may have set a wanton 
 trap to catch his readers. He may have planned a 
 deliberate attack upon their ignorance. You Hke to 
 believe it, and the belief does no injustice to his 
 character. But whatever the excuse, his crime was 
 successful. For a while he escaped detection with 
 marvellous felicity, and so skilfully did he throw dust 
 in the critics' eyes, that Diderot sets it down to his 
 peculiar glory, that alone of his countrymen he was 
 guiltless of theft. And when at last his robbery wa& 
 revealed, the veil was Hfted with so gentle a hand, that 
 Yorick's wandering spirit could scarce resent the dis- 
 covery. After all, let us temper the wind of justice to 
 the shorn lamb of his iniquity, since that which is best 
 in Sterne is still Sterne's own, and not all the pedants- 
 
LAURENCE STEkNE " " ' ' 'ibf 
 
 in the world could have improved by a touch the por- 
 trait of My Uncle Toby. 
 
 His style, on the other hand, is unborrowed, and, if 
 at times it be admirably suited to the matter, it is 
 seldom distinguished and uniformly inaccurate. He 
 set out upon the road of authorship with a false ideal : 
 ^'Writing," said he, "when properly managed, is but 
 a different name for conversation." It would be juster 
 to assert that writing is never properly managed, un- 
 less it be removed from conversation as far as possible. 
 But familiarity is Sterne's essential weakness. He 
 spins his sentences with a sublime nonchalance. The 
 grammar may be topsy-turvy, the relatives in admired 
 disorder ; but he cares not, so long as he arrives at 
 some sort of an effect. Words, as the materials of an 
 art, have no fascination for him. His vocabulary, in 
 fact, is scanty and impersonal ; his construction is 
 as loose and ill-strung as carelessness can make it. 
 Seldom do you feel the words in a sentence held 
 together by a firm and supple thread, and an indifferent 
 passage is apt to astonish you by its dignity. 
 
 " He stood like Hamlet's ghost, motionless and speech- 
 less, for a full minute and a half, at the parlour door 
 (Obadiah still holding his hand), with all the majesty 
 of mud." Thus is Dr. Slop's entry described, and, 
 though it is scarce a masterpiece, it is projected at 
 once from the surrounding sobriety. Nor is this lack 
 of distinction astonishing : Sterne's sentences suffer 
 from the prevailing theory of the book. What digres- 
 sion is to a chapter, that parenthesis is to a period, and 
 
102 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 never, until you have accounted for many an inter- 
 vening clause, may you arrive safely at an expected 
 conclusion. But if Sterne was not accomplished in 
 the use of words and the facture of sentences, if he 
 found grammar a perpetual difficulty and substituted a 
 confusion of dashes for a reasoned punctuation, he had 
 a brilliant gift of dramatic presentation — one chief 
 element of style — and could set forth an argument or 
 realise a scene with uncommon vividness. No artist 
 in words, he was still a master of the picturesque, 
 always true to his own ideal, that writing and conver- 
 sation were one and the same art. 
 
 His influence was immediate and only too far- 
 reaching. Nor did this expert in robbery view the 
 sins of others with a lenient eye. " I wish from my 
 soul," said he, " that every imitator in Great Britain,. 
 France, and Ireland had the farcy for his pains." 
 Most shameless were those who anticipated by spurious 
 travesties the later volumes of Tristram. There was 
 John Carr, for instance, honourably famous for his 
 translation of Lucian, who printed a third volume in 
 1 769, and asked the world to believe that it was from the 
 hand of the master. For thirty years similar deceits 
 were practised with a similar ineptitude. No sooner 
 was Yorick dead than The Posthumous Work of a Late 
 Celebrated Genius^ deceased (1770) astonished the town. 
 The parody was sorry enough, yet it was presently 
 reissued with its title changed to The Koran^ was 
 turned into French, and was at last fastened upon 
 one Richard Griffiths, the son or husband of a popular 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 103 
 
 novelist. Then there were the endless travels where- 
 with the incompetent attempted to steal a rag of 
 reputation, such as Torick's Sentimental journey Con^ 
 tinued[i']()l). Nor must the cloud of pamphlets be for- 
 gotten. As early as the May of 1 760 there was published 
 The Clockmaker's Outcry against the ^Author of Tristram 
 Shandy^ which drew from Sterne the wish " that they 
 would write a hundred such," though he naturally 
 resented the impertinence of those who attributed to 
 himself a scurrilous epistle. To my Cousin Shandy on his 
 Coming to Town. 
 
 In France, as in England, Shandeism had its 
 followers, and La ^inzaine Jngloise (1777), which 
 purported to be a translation from the English, is a 
 singularly ingenuous account of a pigeon and his 
 rook. But the least contemptible of a poor lot is 
 Gorgy, whose name was intended for an anagram 
 of Yorick, and whose imitation was open and avowed. 
 He, too, kept up the fiction of a posthumous work 
 and described his Nouveau Voyage Sentimental as " the 
 translation of a few sheets of manuscripts which 
 served to cover some merchandise from London." 
 If the machinery and style are Sterne's, the dul- 
 ness is all the unknown author's own. Flat 
 and tepid, it lacks the point and humour of the 
 original. But Yorick's artifice is most faithfully 
 reproduced. Here is the chapter without a heading ; 
 there is the deferred preface. The tears shed would 
 float a ship, and while La Fleur is amplified to 
 stupidity, a chapter is added upon the ways and habits 
 
104 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 of the grisette. This came in 1785, and six years later 
 were printed Les Tablettes sentiment ales du bon Pam- 
 phile^ memorable only for the conversion of My Uncle 
 Toby into M. de Bosstacq, who resembles his original 
 in a lame leg and a hobby for fortification. Shandean 
 .also was Jnn'quin Bredou'ille^ a series of six tiny 
 pamphlets, half an imitation of Sterne, half a 
 •commentary on the Revolution. It seems fatuous 
 enough to-day, nor will the blank page, " cadre a 
 remplir par le lecteur," and Yorick's other tricks 
 endear it to the reader. " C'est tout bonnement," 
 writes Gorgy, " un petit cousin de Tristram Shandy, 
 un peu allie aux Rabelais, aux Merlin Cocaye, aux 
 Scarron, et pour le prouver aux incredules, ce sera par 
 'defunte Jacqueline Lycurgues, actuellement FifFre 
 Major au GrefFe des menus Derviches." There is 
 naught else to say save that the work is well-nigh 
 inaccessible, and that none will regret its rarity. 
 
 A far better echo is Jacques le Fataliste (i 796), but even 
 Jacques, despite his ingenuity, is not hilarious. Not 
 only does Diderot honestly confess the source of his 
 inspiration ; he descends in places to faithful adapta- 
 tion. The relation of master to servant is freely 
 borrowed from My Uncle and the Corporal, while in 
 such passages as the dissertation upon names, and the 
 love-making between Denise and Jacques, Sterne is 
 almost literally reproduced. In a less degree you may 
 trace Yorick's influence in that vivacious compost of 
 obscenity and adventure, le Compere Matthieu ou les 
 Bigarrures de r esprit humain^ a piece of fantasy once 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 105 
 
 attributed to Voltaire, but actually the work of the 
 Abbe Dulaurens, who endured a thousand persecu- 
 tions, and died a captive in 1 797. In England Yorick's 
 most conspicuous pupil was Henry Mackenzie, whose 
 Man of Feeling is a sort of Shandy stripped of humour, 
 and clothed with a pathos not anticipated in the most 
 dolorous page of The Sentimental ^Journey. But more 
 remarkable is Sterne's indirect influence. For all his 
 dependence upon others, he added a new element to 
 literature, and thus once more appears constant to the 
 whim of contradiction. Since his death, there has not 
 been published a single work of reflection or fancy but 
 is subject to his example. And if he be not as widely 
 read as Defoe or Swift, his style and theory have passed 
 into the blood and substance of English literature. 
 
 His life, as we read it to-day, bears a strange likeness 
 to his book. It is diversified by few incidents, nor 
 ever disturbed by an adventure. A journey to London, 
 2l trip to the Continent, a fatally mild flirtation — these 
 are its liveHest passages. Such facts as we know are 
 best told by Sterne himself, for he is one of the few 
 who have escaped the impertinence of casual biography. 
 If the few memorials he left for his daughter's curiosity 
 and a confused collection of letters are all that remain 
 for the world's enlightenment, they provide as much 
 as the world has a right to know. By his own 
 account, then, Laurence Sterne was born at Clonmel 
 on November 24, 1713 ; the son of a gallant officer, 
 Roger Sterne, and of a widow, Agnes Nuttle, whose 
 father-in-law was "a noted sutler in Flanders, in 
 
io6 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Queen Ann's wars, where my father married his- 
 wife's daughter {N.B. — he was in debt to him)."" 
 His early years were spent in the tiresome wanderings 
 demanded by the Captain's duty, though, to be sure,, 
 the family never lacked the excitements of births or 
 deaths. Two incidents lend a glamour to his youths 
 "It was in this parish (of Animo),'^ thus he tells the 
 story, " during our stay, that I had that wonderful 
 escape in falling through a mill-race whilst the mill 
 was going, and of being taken up unhurt. The story 
 is incredible, but known for truth in all that part of 
 Ireland — where hundreds of the common people 
 flocked to see me." The miraculous escape recalls an 
 experience of the infant Horace, and surely Yorick 
 was not born to be drowned. The other legend is- 
 less credible, and still more wisely prophetic. It is of 
 the hero's school-days, and again his own words shall 
 convey the anecdote : " The schoolmaster says he had 
 had the ceiling of the schoolroom new white-washed — 
 the ladder remained there. I one unlucky day mounted 
 it, and wrote with a brush in large capital letters LAU. 
 STERNE, for which the usher severely whipped me.. 
 My master was very much hurt at this, and said, before 
 me, that never should this name be effaced, for I was 
 a boy of genius, and he was sure I should come ta 
 preferment." 
 
 In due course he was sent by his cousin to the- 
 University of Cambridge, where he was admitted 
 of Jesus College, July 6, 1733, under the tuition oi 
 Mr. Cannon. As in duty bound he sent his own 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 107 
 
 Tristram to the same distinguished college, and to pay 
 it a further honour swore by St. Rhadegunda, the 
 patron saint of this ancient foundation. In 1741 he 
 married Miss Lumley, who secured his affection by 
 murmuring, when his heart was almost broken : " My 
 dear Laurey, I can never be yours, for I verily believe 
 I have not long to live — but I have left you every 
 shilling of my fortune." However, the lady recovered 
 to spend many years in amiable estrangement, and it 
 was through her interest that he added to Sutton the 
 living of StilHngton. 
 
 Now, it was not until 1760 that Laurence 
 Sterne revealed his talent to the world. Had he 
 died before that year he would have descended to 
 the grave in respectable obscurity. Like Fielding,, 
 like Cervantes, like Sir Walter, he came into the full 
 possession of his talent at an age whereat the most of 
 men are happy in the contemplation of their master- 
 pieces. Yet the twenty years of retirement were not 
 fruitless, and when, at last,* the first two volumes of 
 Tristram Shandy were given to the world, their author 
 was straightway proclaimed a man of genius, and his- 
 visit to London was nothing less than a triumph. He 
 
 * Thus were the volumes of Tristram published : 
 
 Volumes i and 2. — York, 1759. Printed for and sold by- 
 John Hinxham, Bookseller in 
 Stonegate. London, 1760. 
 
 Volumes 3 and 4. — London, 1761. Dodsley. 
 
 Volumes 5 and 6. — London, 1762. -^ 
 
 Volumes 7 and 8.— London, 1765. j- Becket and de Hondt. 
 
 Volume 9. — London, 1767. ^^ 
 
io8 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 fell into the life of the court as though he had never 
 strayed a mile from Whitehall, and had scarce an 
 acquaintance without a title. His table, he takes care 
 to tell his friends, was littered with invitations ; in fact 
 he Shandied it with excellent effect. " Any man who 
 has a name," said Dr. Johnson, "or who has the power 
 of pleasing, will be very generally invited in London. 
 The man Sterne, I am told, has had engagements for 
 three months." There is a certain scorn in the utter- 
 ance, though when Goldsmith objected, "And a very 
 dull fellow," Johnson replied with a generous and 
 characteristic " Why, no, sir." 
 
 Patronised by the court, admitted to the friend- 
 ship of Lord Bathurst, Sterne welcomed his belated 
 celebrity with enthusiasm. The letters written in 
 the early days of his triumph are joyous with 
 an almost childlike joyousness. He hears debates 
 in the Commons j he attends the ceremonies of 
 state ; and withal believes himself a very fine and 
 dashing personage. Nor was Yorick sent empty 
 away. No sooner were the two volumes published 
 than he received from Lord Falconbridge the curacy 
 of Coxwold — "a sweet retirement in comparison of 
 Sutton." On the other hand there were those who 
 sneered and carped at his success, and Sterne was 
 assailed so bitterly with charges of indecent personality, 
 that he was driven perforce to a defence. At the out- 
 set he explains the reason of his authorship : " Why, 
 
 truly," he writes to Mrs. F , "I am tired of 
 
 employing my brains for other people's advantage. 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 109 
 
 'Tis a foolish sacrifice I have made for some years to 
 an ungrateful person." Here is a protest against his- 
 uncle, on behalf of whose Whiggery Sterne had already- 
 squandered his gifts. This is a mere skirmish, and 
 not until he was goaded to anger by an impertinent 
 Doctor, did he attempt to justify himself in allserious-- 
 ness. "You will get a penny by your sins, and. 
 that's enough," sneered the Doctor, and Sterne, having 
 honestly owned that he " proposed laying the world 
 under contribution when he set pen to paper," pro- 
 ceeds to an analysis of his motives. He opens with an- 
 idle profession of benevolence. " I had other views," 
 he writes, " the first of which was the hopes of doing 
 the world good, by ridiculing what I thought deserv- 
 ing of it." The occasion, no doubt, condones his 
 hypocrisy, but his other statement, that if the book "is 
 writ against anything, 'tis writ against the spleen," is- 
 at once more honest and more reasonable. Presently 
 he discloses his real purpose in the oft-quoted assertion : - 
 " I wrote not to be fed, but to be famous," and the 
 first few months of London must have convinced him 
 of success. 
 
 But far more grievous was the charge of black- 
 mail, caught up in gossip and repeated to him by 
 Garrick. Sterne, it was said, and tacitly acknow- 
 ledged, received a purse from Warburton, and the 
 ingenuity of malice instantly suggested that the prelate- 
 had thus bought ofF a disgraceful appearance as Tris- 
 tram's tutor. The reply, dated " Thursday, 1 1 o'clock 
 — Night," is indignant and conclusive. " 'Twas for" 
 
no STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 all the world," wrote Sterne to Garrick, " like a cut 
 across my finger with a sharp penknife. I saw the 
 blood — gave it a suck — wrapt it up — and thought no 
 more about it. But there is more goes to the healing 
 of a wound than this comes to," and Sterne proves the 
 groundlessness of the accusation with dignity and 
 -emotion, though not without a touch of Yorick's 
 sentimentality. Surely, with the world at logger- 
 heads over his masterpiece, the victim might have 
 been spared this added infamy ? Still, he lived to be 
 described by Warburton as an " irrevocable scoundrel," 
 and for a man of sensibility, he was strangely insensi- 
 tive to assaults made upon his virtue. 
 
 The opening of Tristram Shandy was followed by the 
 appearance of Yorick's Sermons^ and from the first Sterne 
 regarded his novel as a spring-board from which his 
 spiritual counsel might take a higher leap. Published by 
 a country rector, the sermons would have had no suc- 
 cess : as the compositions of the amiable Yorick they 
 claimed an eager and an immediate attention. None 
 was so keenly conscious of this profitable curiosity as 
 their author. The third and fourth volumes, he 
 assured Mr. Foley, would bring him a handsome sum. 
 "Almost all the nobility of England honour me with 
 their names," he added, " and 'tis thought it will be 
 the largest and most splendid list which ever pranced 
 before a book, since subscriptions came into fashion." 
 Thus he prospered, always buoyant and always in 
 xliificulties. In 1762 he made his journey in France, 
 and two years later wandered through Italy in search 
 
LAURENCE STERNE iii 
 
 of health. The appearance and reception of his books 
 furnished the one reasonable excitement of his life, 
 until in 1768 there was published The Sentimental 
 Journey, in some respects his most characteristic and 
 most finished performance. 
 
 If his life resembled his book in its paucity of 
 incident, the resemblance of sentiment is remarkable 
 also. Both in its whimsicality and its pathos, Tristram 
 Shandy is largely autobiographical. Sterne was reso- 
 lute in the cultivation of incongruous experience. A 
 country clergyman, he entertained a very poor regard 
 for his profession. Continually he complains of the 
 duties laid upon him by the Church, and if he delights 
 in subscription-lists, he has a poor opinion of sermon- 
 making. " 'Tis my vile errantry, as Sancho says, and 
 that is all that can be made of it." Yet his sermons 
 are but essays in worldliness, and suggest the pulpit 
 only in their framework. Even in the pulpit he 
 <:ould not resist a pleasantry, and one wonders what 
 thought the congregation of the Ambassador's Chapel 
 in Paris, when he chose Hezekiah and the Messengers 
 for the subject of his discourse. But his masterpiece 
 is the discourse on the Prodigal Son, which contains an 
 exquisitely Shandean paraphrase of the ancient legend. 
 The Prodigal, declares the preacher, "was cheated at 
 Damascus by one of the best men in the world ; . . . 
 a whore of Babylon swallowed his best pearl and 
 anointed the whole city with his Balmof Gilead ; . . . 
 the apes and peacocks which he had sent for from 
 Tharsis lay dead upon his hands ; the mummies had 
 
112 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 not been dead long enough, which had been brought 
 him out of Egypt." Doubtless the village audience 
 listened in bewilderment, and Sterne was the more 
 encouraged to fresh experiments upon the stolidity of 
 his flock. 
 
 Again, the sentiment of his life is no more real than the 
 sentiment of his book ; yet he was for ever shedding tears 
 over the unattainable. If it was not Kitty it was Eliza, 
 but whatever the name, there was the same excuse for 
 pathos and nobility of soul. Thackeray, after his own 
 fashion, scolded Sterne as an usher might scold a 
 naughty schoolboy, soundly rating him for his errors,* 
 but the condemnation is wholly lacking in humour, 
 since Sterne was ever an inveterate philanderer, who 
 felt as lightly as he expected others to feel. His 
 sympathy for Eliza is as genuine as his sympathy 
 for the dead ass. In not one of the letters is there 
 a line of i passion, and the lady's departure left him 
 imperturbed. Nor can you believe, without imperti- 
 nence, that her own eyes were dim with tears. " Were 
 your husband in England," wrote Sterne in what were 
 supposed the throes of an illicit love, " I would freely 
 give him five hundred pounds to let you sit by me 
 two hours a day." And why this generous, this 
 
 * The climax of impertinent reproof is reached by the American 
 Allibone, who thus sums up Sterne's villainy : " A standing re- 
 proach to the profession which he disgraced, grovelling in his 
 tastes, indiscreet, if not licentious in his habits, he lived un- 
 honoured, and died unlamented, save by those who found 
 amusement in his wit or countenance in his immorality ! " 
 
LAURENCE STERNE 113 
 
 impassioned offer ? Because he is sure that The 
 Sentimental ^Journey ''would sell so much the better 
 for it, that I should be reimbursed the sum more than 
 seven times told." Is that the voice of guilty senti- 
 ment, which shocked the scruples of Mr. Thackeray ? 
 Is it possible that a critic with a sense of humour 
 should grudge this elderly clergyman his diversion ? 
 True, if another had suggested that when Eliza's 
 husband and his own wife were overtaken by death, 
 a happier marriage might be made, censure would 
 not have been unreasonable. But you need not give 
 a malicious interpretation to a proposal, whose very 
 extravagance commended itself to Sterne. 
 
 Thus he lived in an atmosphere of false and pleasing 
 sentiment. And when death came upon him (in March 
 1768), it found him where he professed a hope to 
 die — at a lodging. His thievery pursued him, even 
 to his deathbed, since the prayer that he might breathe 
 his last at an inn was stolen from Bishop Burnet. 
 Truly no man of feeling ever so fantastically borrowed 
 his sentiments ! Dying in poverty, he was robbed of 
 his sleeve links that the undertaker might be satisfied, 
 and there is a dark and incredible story told on the 
 authority of Malone, that, after his body had been laid 
 in the burial-ground belonging to St. George's, Han- 
 over Square, it was snatched and carried to Cambridge 
 for dissection. 
 
 Still more strange is the circumstance of his tomb- 
 stone. When Yorick died, Eugenius laid a marble 
 slab upon his grave, " with no more than these three 
 
 H 
 
114 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 words of inscription, serving both for epitaph and 
 elegy : 
 
 ALAS. POOR YORICK! 
 
 Yorick's creator was not thus fortunate. No stone 
 marked the place, and when at last a monument was 
 set up, they were strangers who paid the tardy homage. 
 Their own excuse might have been invented by their 
 idol. They proclaim themselves "brother masons," 
 asserting that Sterne, "although he did not live to 
 be a member of their society," always " acted by rule 
 and square ; " wherefore they " rejoice in this oppor- 
 tunity of perpetuating his high and irreproachable 
 character to after ages." With that purpose, they 
 inscribed upon the stone a dozen ill-made verses, 
 and misled the "after ages" not only as to their 
 " brother's " age, but as to the date of their " brother's " 
 death. And the pious admirer does not complain : he 
 merely reflects how gaily Sterne, that master of the 
 incongruous, smiles in the Shades at this final triumph 
 of incongruity. 
 
APULEIUS 
 
APULEIUS* 
 
 ** T^HE Golden Ass" of Apuleius is, so to say, a 
 1 beginning' of modern literature. From this 
 brilliant medley of reality and romance, of wit and 
 pathos, of fantasy and observation, was born that new 
 art, complex in thought, various in expression, which 
 gives a semblance of frigidity to perfection itself. An 
 indefatigable youthfulness is its distinction. As it was 
 fresh when Adlington translated it '' out of Latine " 
 three centuries since, so it is familiar to-day, and is 
 like to prove an influence to-morrow. Indeed, it is 
 among the marvels of history that an alien of twenty- 
 five — and Apuleius was no more when he wrote his 
 Metamorphoses — should have revolutionised a lan- 
 guage not his own, and bequeathed us a freedom 
 which, a thousand times abused, has never since been 
 taken away. 
 
 * " The XI Bookes of The Golden Asse, containing the Meta- 
 morphosie of Lucius Apuleius, interlaced with sundry pleasant 
 and delectable Tales: with an excellent Narration of the 
 Marriage of Cupid and Pysches, translated out of Latine into 
 English, by William Adlington. 1566, 
 
ii8 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 A barbarian born, a Greek by education, Apuleius 
 only acquired the Latin tongue by painful effort. 
 Now a foreigner, not prejudiced by an inveterate 
 habit of speech, seldom escapes a curiosity of phrase. 
 Where the language is the same, whether written or 
 spoken, art is wont to lapse into nature. But there 
 was no reason why Apuleius, who could not but be 
 conscious of his diction, should ever deviate from 
 artifice. His style, in truth, he put on as a garment, 
 and it fitted the matter without a crease. His exotic 
 vocabulary was the fruit of the widest research. He 
 ransacked the ancient plays for long-forgotten words. 
 He cared not where he picked up his neologisms, so 
 they were dazzling and bizarre. Greece, his own 
 Carthage, the byways of Rome, contribute to the 
 wealth of his diction, for he knew naught of that 
 pedantry which would cramp expression for authority's 
 sake. The literary use of slang was almost his own 
 invention. He would twist the vulgar words of every 
 day into quaint, unheard-of meanings, nor did he ever 
 deny shelter to those loafers and footpads of speech 
 which inspire the grammarian with horror. On every 
 page you encounter a proverb, a catchword, a literary 
 allusion, a flagrant redundancy. One quality only was 
 distasteful to him : the commonplace. He is ever the 
 literary fop, conscious of his trappings and assured of a 
 handsome effect. 
 
 In brief, he belonged to the African School, for 
 which elaboration was the first and last law of 
 taste. He may even have been a pupil of Fronto, 
 
APULEIUS 119 
 
 the prime champion of the " elocutio novella", the 
 rhetorician who condemned Cicero in that he was not 
 scrupulous in his search for effect, and urged upon his 
 pupils the use of "insperata atque inopinata verba." 
 No wonder poor Adlington, whose equipment of Latin 
 was of the lightest, hesitated for a while ! No wonder 
 that he complained that " the Author had written his 
 work in so darke and high a stile, in so strange and 
 absurd words, and in such new invented phrases as hee 
 seemed rather to set it forth to shew his magnificencie 
 of prose than to participate his doings to others ! " 
 But the difficulty is not invincible ; and the adven- 
 turous have their reward. The prose sparkles with 
 light and colour. Not a page but is rich inlaid with 
 jewels of fantastic speech. For Apuleius realised cen- 
 turies before Baudelaire that a vocabulary is a palette, 
 and he employed his own with incomparable daring 
 and extravagance. 
 
 Though his style be personal, the machinery of his 
 story is frankly borrowed. The hero who, trans- 
 formed by magic to an ass, recovers human shape by 
 eating roses was no new invention. He had already 
 supplied two writers with a motive ; and the learned 
 have not decided whether it was from Lucian (so- 
 called) or from Lucius of Patrae that Apuleius got his 
 inspiration.* But a comparison of the Latin version 
 
 * That the hero transformed to an ass was the motive of two 
 Greek romances can hardly be doubted after Photius' statement. 
 The one, he says, was the work of Lucius of Patrae (who wrote 
 /x€Ta/top0c&<rewi' X67oi's dia<p6povi), the other the work of Lucian. 
 
120 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 with its Greek forerunner, commonly attributed to 
 Lucian, proves the debt a feather's weight. Whatever 
 Apuleius conveyed, he so boldly changed and elaborated 
 as to make the material his own. His method is a 
 miracle of simplicity. He accepts the Aovkioq ri *'Ovog 
 as a framework, sometimes following it word for word, 
 yet decorating it with so lavish an array of phrases, trick- 
 ing it out with episodes so fertile and ingenious, as to 
 force you to forget the original in the copy. Only in 
 a single incident does his fancy lag behind. His 
 hero's interview with the serving-maid is chastened 
 and curtailed. The professionally elaborate detail, 
 wherewith Lucian enhances this famous episode, is 
 touched by Apuleius with a light and summary hand. 
 But elsewhere he appropriates to adorn. Though 
 again and again the transference is verbal, the added 
 ornament is entirely characteristic, and it is as unjust 
 to charge the author with plagiarism as it were to 
 
 The Aoi5/ctos ij "Ovos, preserved in the works of Lucian, is doubtless 
 one of the romances known to Photius. But its style and im- 
 partiality never for an instant suggest Lucian, who would have 
 made the Metamorphosis a peg for satire. And modern scholars 
 are for the most part agreed that Lucian was not the author. 
 Other considerations prevent our assigning it to Lucius, who, it 
 is said, ran to a greater length, while it would be difficult to set 
 forth the story in briefer terms than are employed by the author 
 of Aoi/Ktos 7j "Ovos. Probably it is the work of neither, though it 
 may well be the romance attributed to Lucius by Photius. The 
 only sure fact is that in the AoiJ/ctos ij "Ovos are to be found the 
 dry bones of The Golden Ass. The curious may consult Professor 
 Rohde's Ueber Lucian' s Schri/t Aoijkios i} "Ovos und ihr Verhaeltniss 
 zu Lucius von Patrae und den Metamorphosen des Apuleius. 
 
APULEIUS 121 
 
 condemn the Greek tragedians for their treatment of 
 familiar themes. 
 
 Indeed, the two writers approach the matter from 
 opposite points of view. Lucian's austere con- 
 cision is purely classical. He has a certain story to 
 present, and he reaches the climax by the shortest 
 possible route. The progress is interrupted neither by 
 phrase nor interlude, and at the end you chiefly 
 admire the cold elegance wherewith the misfortunes of 
 Lucius are expressed, as it were, in their lowest terms. 
 Apuleius, on the other hand, is unrestrainedly romantic. 
 He cares not how he loiters by the way ; he is always 
 ready to beguile his reader with a Milesian story — one 
 of those quaint and witty interludes which have 
 travelled the world over, and become part, not merely 
 of every literature, but of every life. Our new fashion 
 of analysis, our ineradicable modesty, have at last denied 
 them literary expression, and to-day they eke out a 
 beggarly and formless existence by the aid of oral 
 tradition. But time was they were respectable as well 
 as joyous. What reproach is attached to the widow 
 of Ephesus, who has wandered from Petronius even 
 unto Rabelais ? To what admirable purpose is the 
 Sermo Milesius handled in the Decamerone to which 
 Apuleius himself contributed one delectable tale ! 
 Did not the genius of Balzac devise a monument 
 proper to its honourable antiquity in the Contes 
 Drolatiques? And yet the second century was its 
 golden age, and none so generously enhanced its 
 repute as Apuleius. 
 
122 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 His masterpiece, in truth, is magnificently inter- 
 laced with jests, sometimes bound to the purpose 
 of the story by the thinnest of thin threads, 
 more often attached merely for their own or for 
 ornament's sake. But not only thus is he separate 
 from his model. Though he is romantic in style and 
 temper alike — and romanticism is an affair of treat- 
 ment rather than of material — he never loses touch 
 with actuality. He wrote with an eye upon the 
 realities of life. Observation was a force more potent 
 with him than tradition. If his personages and in- 
 cidents are wholly imaginary, he could still give them 
 a living semblance by a touch of intimacy or a sugges- 
 tion of familiar detail. Compare his characters to 
 Lucian's, and measure the gulf between the two ! 
 Lucian's Abroea is a warning voice — that, and no 
 more. Byrrhena, on the other hand, is a great lady, 
 sketched, with a quick perception of her kind, cen- 
 turies before literature concerned itself with the indivi- 
 dual. And is not Milo the miser leagues nearer the 
 possibility of life than Hipparchus ? Even Palaestra, 
 despite the ingenuity of one episode, is not for an 
 instant comparable in charm and humour to Fotis, 
 most complaisant of serving-maids. 
 
 Nor is it only in the portrayal of character that 
 Apuleius proves his observation. There are many scenes 
 whose truthful simplicity is evidence of experience. 
 When Lucius, arrived in Hypata, goes to the market to 
 buy him fish, he encounters an old fellow student — 
 Pythias by name— ^ready invested with the authority 
 
APULEIUS 123 
 
 and insignia of an aedile. Now he, being a veritable 
 jack-in-oifice, is enraged that Lucius has made so ill a 
 bargain, and overturning his fish, bids his attendants 
 stamp it under foot, so that the traveller loses supper 
 and money too. The incident is neither apposite nor 
 romantic ; it is no more Milesian than mystical ; but it 
 bears the very pressure of life, and you feel that it was 
 transferred straight from a note-book. Again, where 
 will you find a franker piece of realism than the picture 
 of the mill, whereto the luckless Ass was bound ? Very 
 ugly and evil-favoured were the men, covered only 
 with ragged clouts ; and how horrible a spectacle the 
 horses, with their raw necks, their hollow flanks, their 
 broken ribs ! 
 
 The Greek author, disdaining atmosphere, is con- 
 tent to set out his incidents in a logical sequence. 
 Apuleius has enveloped his world of marvels in a 
 heavy air of witchery and romance. You wander 
 with Lucius across the hills and through the dales of 
 Thessaly. With all the delight of a fresh curiosity 
 you approach its far-seen towns. You journey at 
 midnight under the stars, listening in terror for the 
 howling of the wolves or the stealthy ambush. At 
 other whiles, you sit in robbers' cave and hear the 
 ancient legends of Greece retold. The spring comes 
 on and " the little birds chirp and sing their Steven 
 melodiously." Secret raids, ravished brides, valiant 
 rescues, the gayest of intrigues — these are the diverse 
 matters of this many-coloured book. The play of 
 fancy, the variety of style, the fertility of resource are 
 
124 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 inexhaustible. Mythology is lifted into life, and life 
 itself transformed to mystery at the wizard's touch. 
 The misery and terror of the Ass's life are intercepted 
 by the story of Cupid and Psyche, set forth with rare 
 beauty and distinction of style. And yet this inter- 
 lude, exquisitely planned and phrased, which suggested 
 a worthless play * to Tom Hey wood, and has been an 
 inspiration to many poets, from Mrs. Tighe to Mr. 
 Bridges, is the one conspicuous fault of the book. 
 Admirable in itself, it is out of proportion as well as 
 out of key ; though you turn to it again for its own 
 sake, you skip it industriously when it keeps you from 
 robbery and witchcraft. 
 
 But the most remarkable characteristic of The Golden 
 Ass is the ever-present element of sorcery, of the 
 Macabre^ as Mr. Pater calls it. Grim spectres and horrid 
 ghosts stalk through its pages. The merriest Milesian 
 jest turns sudden to the terror of death and corruption. 
 The very story which Boccaccio borrowed is shifted by 
 Apuleius to a weird conclusion. The baker, having 
 most wittily avenged his wife's deceit, is lured into a 
 chamber by a meagre, ragged, ill-favoured woman, her 
 hair scattering upon her face, and when the servants 
 burst open the door to find their master, behold ! no 
 woman, but only the baker hanging from a rafter 
 dead ! And where for pure horror will you match 
 
 * Loves Maistrese : or the Queen's Masque. As it was three 
 times presented before their two Excellent Majesties, within 
 the space of eight dayes. In the presence of sundry foraigne 
 Ambassadors. 1636. 
 
APULEIUS 125 
 
 Meroe's mutilation of Socrates ? Secretly the witch 
 attacks him in his sleep, drives her sword deep into his 
 neck, and dragging out his heart stops the wound with 
 a sponge. Aristomenes, unwilling witness of the 
 cruelty, half believes it a dream, and gladly they 
 resume the journey, until, when Socrates goes to the 
 river to drink, the sponge falls out and with it the last 
 faint pulse of life. Again, when Thelyphron watches 
 in the chamber of the dead lest witches should bite ofF 
 morsels of the dead man's face, and falling asleep at 
 sight of a weasel, loses his ears and nose, who so 
 callous as to feel no shudder of alarm ? But the most 
 terrific apparition of all is the obscene priest of the 
 Syrian goddess, with his filthy companions, carrying 
 the divine image from village to village and clanging 
 their cymbals to call the charitable. This grimy 
 episode, with its sequent orgies, is related with an 
 incomparably full humour which, despite its Oriental 
 barbarity, i» unmatched in literature. 
 
 So there is scarce a scene without its ghostly enchant- 
 ment, its supernatural intervention. And herein you 
 may detect the personal predilection of Apuleius. The 
 infinite curiosity wherewith Lucius pries into witch- 
 craft and sorcery was shared by his author. The 
 hero transformed suffered his many and grievous bufFet- 
 ings because he always coveted an understanding of 
 wizardry and spells ; and Apuleius, in an age devoted 
 to mysticism, was notorious for a magic-monger. 
 Seriously it was debated, teste St. Augustine, whether 
 Christ or he or ApoUonius wrought the greatest 
 
126 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 marvels ; and though the shape wherein the romance 
 is cast induced a confusion of author and hero, it is 
 recorded that Apuleius was a zealous magician, and 
 doubtless it is himself, not Lucius, he pictures in his 
 last book among the initiate. In the admirable 
 description of Isis and her visitation, as of the 
 ceremonies wherein he was admitted to the secret 
 worship of the goddess, he departs entirely from his 
 Greek original. Here, indeed, we have a fragment of 
 autobiography. When in 158 a.d., at the dramatic 
 moment of an adventurous career, Apuleius delivered 
 his Apology — pro se de magia — before Claudius 
 Maximus, he confessed that he had been initiated into 
 all the sacred rites of Greece and had squandered the 
 better part of a comfortable fortune in mysticism and 
 the grand tour. 
 
 The main accusation was that he had won his 
 wife — a respectable and wealthy widow — by magic 
 arts. He was also charged with other acts of witch- 
 craft and enchantment. Thattus, it was said, and 
 a free-born woman had swooned in his presence, 
 a piece of superstition which reminds you of Cotton 
 Mather. But, replied Apuleius, with excellent humour 
 and scepticism worthy of Reginald Scot, they were 
 epileptics, who could stand in the presence of none 
 save a magician. In brief, we cannot appreciate The 
 Golden Ass^ until we realise the modern spirit of 
 curiosity which possessed its author. The lecturer's 
 fame well-nigh outran the writer's. Apuleius travelled 
 the length of civilised Africa with his orations, as the 
 
APULEIUS 127 
 
 popular lecturer of to-day invades America ; and the 
 majesty of ^Esculapius, a favourite subject, vtras an 
 excellent occasion for his familiar mysticism. He had 
 been as intimately at home in the nineteenth century 
 as in the second. Were he alive to-day, Paris w^ould 
 have been his field, and he the undisputed master of 
 Decadence and Symbolism. The comparison is close 
 at all points. Would he not have delighted in the 
 Black Mass, as celebrated on the heights of Mont 
 Parnasse ? Like many among the makers of modern 
 French literature he w^as an alien w^riting an alien 
 tongue. His curiosity of diction, his unfailing 
 loyalty to speech, his eager search after the strange 
 and living vv^ord, his love for an art which knows no 
 concealment — these qualities proclaim the Decadent. 
 And that Symbolist is wayward indeed who finds not 
 matter for his fancy in the countless stories which a 
 perverse ingenuity has twisted a hundred times into 
 allegory. 
 
 Such the author and his book. And when William 
 Adlington, in the untried youth of English prose, under- 
 took the translation of The Golden Asse^ you would have 
 thought no apter enterprise possible. Primitive and 
 Decadent approach art in the same temper. Each is 
 of necessity inclined to Euphuism and experiment. 
 In the sixteenth century the slang, the proverb, the 
 gutter phrase, which Apuleius brought back to the 
 Latin tongue, were not yet sifted from English by the 
 pedantry of scholars. But William Adlington, though 
 an Elizabethan, was something of a purist. To be 
 
128 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 sure he was unable to purge his diction of colour and 
 variety, and his manner was far better suited to the 
 rendering of Apuleius than the prose of to-day, which 
 has passed through the sieve of the eighteenth century. 
 But with an excellent modesty he pleads acceptance 
 for his " simple translation." Though he applauds 
 the '' franke and flourishing stile " of his author, " as 
 he seems to have the Muses at his will to feed and 
 maintaine his pen," he uses of deliberation " more 
 common and familiar words " — the phrase proves the 
 essential recognition of his own style — " fearing lest 
 the book should appear very obscure and darke, and 
 thereby consequently loathsome to the reader." Indeed 
 he elected to translate the one book of the world which 
 demanded the free employment of strange terms, and 
 set himself incontinent to avoid slang and to simplify 
 redundancies. And his restraint is the more unex- 
 pected when you recall the habit of contemporary 
 translators. Barnaby Rich studded Herodotus thick 
 with colloquialisms and fresh-minted words. Philemon 
 Holland made no attempt to chasten his vocabulary. 
 But Adlington, his opportunity being the higher, fell 
 the more marvellously below it. 
 
 For the most part, then, you will ransack his version 
 in vain for obsolete words or exotic flowers of speech. 
 And yet not even his love of simplicity has kept his 
 vocabulary entirely pure. Again and again a coined 
 phrase, a strange form gleams upon his page like a dash 
 of scarlet. " The rope-ripe boy " thus he renders " puer 
 ille peremptor meus" by a happy inspiration, which 
 
APULEIUS 129 
 
 Apuleius himself might envy. Fresh and unhack- 
 neyed is "the gleed of the sun" for "jubaris orbe." 
 How exquisitely does " a swathell of red silke " repre- 
 sent " russea fasceola " : " traiFe or baggage " is more 
 pleasantly picturesque than "sarcinam vel laciniam," 
 and one's heart rejoices to hear a churl styled " a rich 
 chufFe." Again, " ungles " is far more expressive if 
 less common than " claws " ; and who would write 
 " niggardly " when " niggish " is ready to his hand ? 
 And is not "a carraine stinke" a high-sounding 
 version of " fetore nimio " ? To encounter so sturdy 
 and wholesome a phrase as " I smelling his crafty and 
 subtil fetch " — though it be a poor echo of " ego 
 perspiciens malum istum verberonem blaterantem et 
 inconcinne causificantem " — is to regret the impover- 
 ishment of our English tongue. But not often are 
 you rejoiced by the unexpected, and for the most part 
 Adlington is a scrupulous critic of his diction. 
 
 As he makes no attempt to represent in English his 
 author's vocabulary, so is he wont to shirk the imagery 
 and curtail the redundancy affected by Apuleius, 
 repressing the hyperbolical ostentations of his original, 
 save only when he indulges in extravagances of his 
 own. When the miserable Thelyphron is protecting 
 a dead man from the witch woman thus does Apuleius, 
 with his admirable sense of words, enhance the horror 
 of crawling minutes : " cum ecce crepusculum et nox 
 provecta et nox altior et dein concubia altiora ; et 
 jam nox intempesta " for which Adlington writes in all 
 brevity "midnight." Apuleius again has a dozen 
 
 I 
 
130 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 fantastical notions of the dawn, and Adlington cuts 
 them all down to the colourless level of "when 
 morning was come." Thus even does he reduce so 
 garishly purple a piece of imagery as, "commodum 
 punicantibus phaleris Aurora roseum quatiens lacertum 
 coelum inequitabat." When the thieves return to their 
 den after the sack of Milo's house, and sit them down 
 to revelry, Apuleius surpasses even his own habit 
 of opulent description. "Estur ac potatur," thus 
 he writes, "incondite pulmentis acervatim, panibus 
 aggeratim, poculis agminatim ingestis." "Cups in 
 battalions ! " 'Tis a pretty conceit, and for Adlington it 
 means no more than " they drank and eat exceedingly." 
 
 But having accustomed you to a chaste severity of 
 language, he will break out suddenly into a decorative 
 passage, for which the Latin gives no warrant. 
 "Moreover there be divers that will cast off their 
 partlets, collars, habiliments, fronts, cornets and 
 krippins " ; thus he turns a perfectly simple sentence — 
 *' lacinias omnes exuunt, amicula di movent " — proving 
 his quietude of phrase the effect of design rather than of 
 necessity. So also he is wont to clip and crop his 
 author's metaphors. " While I considered these 
 things" is a withered, nerveless rendering of "cum 
 isto cogitationis salo fluctuarem " ; yet is it entirely 
 characteristic of his method. Indeed, from beginning 
 to end he treats his author with the freest hand, and 
 never permits the form and colour of the Latin to 
 interrupt his conception of English prose. 
 
 But if he sacrificed something by too scrupulous a 
 
APULEIUS 131 
 
 restraint, he sacrificed still more by his scanty know- 
 ledge of Latin. Scholarship was as little fashionable 
 in Tudor England as pedantry, the defect correspond- 
 ing to' its quality ; and Adlington laid no claim to 
 profound erudition. He did but purpose, " according 
 to his slender knowledge (though it were rudely, and 
 farre disagreeing from the fine and excellent doings 
 nowadayes)," to translate "the delectable j easts of 
 Lucius Apuleius into our vulgar tongue." Nor is the 
 confession of " slender knowledge " a mere parade of 
 modesty : it is wholly justified by the event. To 
 compile a list of errors were superfluous. In truth, 
 there is no page without its blunder, though, as we 
 shall presently see, the translator commonly manages 
 to tumble not only into sense but into distinction. 
 Now and again the mistakes are so serious as to per- 
 vert the meaning, and then one regrets that Adlington 
 was not more wisely guided. For instance, the 
 servants of Philebus, the priest of the Syrian goddess, 
 are called " puellae" by Apuleius in contempt of their 
 miserable profession, and the translator impenetrably ob- 
 scures the episode by rendering the word " daughters " 
 without a hint of explanation. 
 
 Still, all are not so grave, though you are constantly 
 driven to wonder at the ingenuity of error. When 
 Byrrhena, in her panegyric of Hypata, tells Lucius that 
 there the merchant may encounter the bustle of Rome, 
 the quiet visitor enjoy the peace of a country-house, 
 Adlington thus heroically misses the mark : "When the 
 Roman merchants arrive in this city they are gently 
 
132 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 and quietly entertained, and all that dwell within this 
 province (when they purpose to solace and repose them- 
 selves) do come to this city ! " Verily there is magnifi- 
 cence (of a kind) in such confusion ; and how shall one 
 reproach a translator, upon whom accuracy sets so light 
 a burden ? Again, with a sublime recklessness Adling- 
 ton perverts " extorta dentibus ferarum trunca calvaria " 
 into " the jaw-bones and teeth of wilde beasts," not 
 pausing to consider the mere formality of grammatical 
 concord. And when Fotis relates how Pamphile, 
 having failed to advance her suit by other arts ("quod 
 nihil etiam tunc in suos amores ceteris artibus pro- 
 moveret"), designs to assume the shape and feathers of 
 a bird, Adlington so carelessly confounds cause and 
 effect as to say that the transformation was intended 
 "to worke her sorceries on such as she loved." 
 
 "Tunc solus ignoras longe faciliores ad expugnandum 
 domus esse majores ? " asks one of the robbers ; and 
 Adlington, with the twisted cleverness of a fourth-form 
 boy, extorts therefrom this platitude : " Why are you 
 only ignorant that the greater the number is, the 
 sooner they may rob and spoil the house ? " When one 
 of Psyche's wicked sisters threatens to go and hang 
 herself if Psyche prove the mother of a god ("si divini 
 puelli — quod absit — haec mater audierit, statim me 
 laqueo nexili suspendam "), " if it be a divine babe," 
 says the sister in the translation, " and fortune to come 
 to the ears of the mother (as God forbid it should !) then 
 I may go and hang my selfe : " thus ignorant was our 
 Englishman of the commonest idiom. Once at the 
 
APULEIUS 133 
 
 marriage of Charite, good fortune seemed to wait 
 upon the Ass, and his mistress promised him hay- 
 enough for a Bactrian camel ("foenum camelo Bac- 
 trinae sufficiens ") : a promise misinterpreted by a 
 masterpiece of grotesquerie into '' she would call me 
 her little camell." With his very easy baggage of 
 Latin, the translator lost the point of every catchword, 
 and turned the literary allusion into nonsense. In the 
 phrase "non cervam pro virgine sed hominem pro 
 homine," the reference to Iphigenia is patent, and yet 
 our excellent Adlington gets no nearer the truth than 
 '" not a servant for his maidens, but rather an Asse for 
 himselfe ! " 
 
 So much must be said in dispraise of what, after all, 
 IS a masterpiece of prose. The translator, said Dr. 
 Johnson, " is to exhibit his author's thoughts in such 
 a dress as the author would have given them had his 
 language been English." Now, Adlington has failed, 
 with the rest of the world, to reach this high standard. 
 Under no conceivable circumstances could Apuleius 
 'have written in his terms and with his significance. 
 For the perfect translation a knowledge of two lan- 
 guages is necessary. The modern translator is com- 
 monly endowed with a complete apprehension of Latin 
 or Greek, and is withal lamentably ignorant of English. 
 Adlington, on the other hand, was sadly to seek in 
 Latin, but he more than atoned for his slender know- 
 ledge by an admirable treatment of his own language. 
 Though he abandoned the colour and variety of 
 Apuleius, he turned his author into admirable prose. 
 
134 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 From the first page to the last you will not find a trace 
 of foreign idiom. The result is not so much a fine 
 translation as a noble original, fitted to endure by its 
 vigorous diction and excellent rhythm. The manner 
 is perfectly adapted to narration, and there are few can 
 handle story with better delicacy and point. The style, 
 if simple for its age, has all the distinction of simplicity. 
 The cadences are a perpetual pleasure to the ear. There 
 is a stateliness, a dignity of effect, which proves that the 
 prose of the Authorised Version was no invention, but 
 a growth. 
 
 Though Adlington does not pretend to echo the 
 locutions of Apuleius, he is, after his own method, 
 a master of phrase. "Girded with her beautiful 
 skarfe of love " — is it not an exquisite idea ? How 
 more nearly or more adroitly would you turn " tamen 
 nisi capillum distinxerit " than in these terms : " if her 
 hair be not curiously set forth ? " Did the modern 
 translators are to represent "ementita lassitudo" by 
 *' feigned and coloured weariness," there were hope 
 that his craft might rise above journey-v/ork. Who 
 would complain that the original was embroidered 
 when it is to such admirable purpose as : " Thus she 
 cried and lamented, and after she had wearied herself 
 with sorrow and blubbered her face with tears, she 
 closed the windows of her hollow eyes, and laid her 
 down to sleep." Here is prose, ever vivid and alert, 
 ever absolved from the suspicion of the stereotyped 
 phrase. In Adlington's day "good taste" had not 
 banned freshness and eccentricity from the language. 
 
APULEIUS 135 
 
 A century later it had been impossible to translate 
 " glebosa camporum " into " cloggy fallowed fields ; " 
 yet this is Adlington's expression, and it may be 
 matched or bettered on every page. 
 
 Above all, his work is distinguished by that sustained 
 nobility of rhythm which makes the Tudor prose the 
 best of good reading. " And while I considered these 
 things, I looked about, and behold I saw afarre off a 
 shadowed valley adjoyning nigh unto a wood, where, 
 amongst divers other hearbes and plesant verdures, me 
 thought I saw divers flourishing Roses of bright damaske 
 colour; and said within my beastiall mind. Verily 
 that place is the place of Venus and the Graces, where 
 secretly glistereth the royall hew, of so lively and 
 delectable a floure : " here are no exotic words, no 
 long-sought images ; the rare effect is attained by a 
 harmony which not even the sternest simplicity can 
 impoverish. Or take a passage in another key : " In 
 the meane season while I was fed with dainty morsels, 
 I gathered together my flesh, my skin waxed soft, my 
 haire began to shine, and was gallant on every part, 
 but such faire and comely shape of my body was 
 cause of my dishonour, for the Baker and Cooke mar- 
 velled to see me so slick and fine, considering I did 
 eat no hay at all." Although the word " slick " 
 (aptly suggested by " nitore ") is, so to say, a high Hght, 
 the beauty still depends upon the rhythm, to which 
 Adlington's ear is ever attuned. In brief, whatever 
 defects of scholarship and restraint mar the trans- 
 lation, it remains a model of that large, untrammelled 
 
136 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 prose which, before the triumph of common sense, 
 seemed within the reach of all. But is it not the 
 strangest paradox of literary history, that they who 
 lived in the golden age of translation sought their 
 original at second hand, or fumbled for their meaning 
 in the dark ! 
 
 One advantage at least was enjoyed by Adlington. 
 He studied Apuleius in the native Latin, using, we 
 may believe, the famous folio of 1500 [cum Beroaldi 
 commentariis\ prefaced by that Vita Lucii Apuleii 
 summatim relata^ which he paraphrased in English 
 with his accustomed inaccuracy. Howbeit, he did 
 not '' so exactly pass through the author, as to point 
 every sentence according as it is in Latine ; " for so, 
 he adds, *' the French and Spanish translators have 
 not done." Nor is there any doubt that he attempted 
 to amend his ignorance of Latin by the aid of a 
 French version. It is some proof of the early popu- 
 larity of *The Golden Ass that Spain, Italy and France 
 had each its translation into the vulgar tongue before 
 Adlington undertook the work. In 1522 there 
 appeared a tiny quarto bearing this legend upon its 
 
 title-page : " Lucius Apuleius de Lasne dore 
 
 On les vend a Paris en la grand rue St. Jacques, Par 
 Philippe le noir." It was by one Guillaume Michel ; 
 and though before the English translation was a- 
 making there had appeared two other versions, the one 
 by Georges de la Bouthiere (Lyons, 1553), adorned 
 with cuts in the manner of Bernard Salmon, the other 
 by I, Louveau d'Orleans, composed in 1553 and pub- 
 
APULEIUS 137 
 
 lished at Lyons five years later, the earliest book was 
 a guide, and too often a blind guide, unto Adlington's 
 footsteps. 
 
 The Frenchman was the riper scholar, but not 
 only did he indulge the tiresome habit of com- 
 menting by the way, and without warning, upon his 
 text, but he was also guilty of the most ingenious 
 blunders, which Adlington, as though his own errors 
 were not sufficient, too readily followed. A com- 
 parison of the versions sets the matter beyond un- 
 certainty. If again and again the same inaccuracy 
 glares in English and French, it is obvious that the 
 one was borrowed from the other. At the very 
 outset there is a clear clue. Guillaume Michel, 
 according to his habit of expansion, paraphrases " haec 
 me suadente " in half a dozen lines ; Adlington, turn- 
 ing his invigilant eye from Latin, is guilty of the like 
 unwarranted prolixity. Moreover, when Apuleius by 
 a quip says of Meroe, "sic reapse nomen ejus tunc 
 fabulis Socratis convenire sentiebam," you are puzzled 
 by the ingenuity of Adlington's rendering : " being so 
 named because she was a Taverner," until you turn to 
 the French and find in "taverniere" the source of error. 
 
 Again, Diophanes, the magician in Milo's story, is 
 consulted by a certain merchant, Cerdo by name. 
 (The Latin is unmistakable : "Cerdo quidam nomine 
 negotiator.") Now, Adlington boldly translates "a 
 certaine Cobbler," and instantly the Frenchman's 
 *'quelque savatier" explains the blunder. "Toutfoys 
 mon cheval et lautre beste lasne de Milo ne me voulurent 
 
138 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 souffrir avec eulx paistre : " so Michel at the begin- 
 ning of the Fourth Book. And thus Adlington : 
 "but myne own horse and Miloes Asse would not 
 suffer me to feed there with them, but I must seeke my 
 dinner in some other place." The renderings agree 
 precisely in a gross inaccuracy, and the Latin "nee 
 me cum asino vel equo meo compascuus coetus 
 attinere potuit adhuc insolitum alioquin prandere 
 foenum" is involved enough to explain Adlington'& 
 reliance upon the French. Another passage is even 
 more convincing. "Ad quandam villam possessoris 
 beati perveniunt," writes Apuleius, whom Adlington 
 translates : " we fortuned to come to one Britunis 
 house ; " nor would it appear who this Britunis might 
 be, unless you turned to Michel's French and read, 
 "en aucun village chiez ung riche laboureur nomme 
 Brulinus." This strange correspondence in error 
 might be enforced by countless examples. But by 
 this it is evident that, although Adlington did not, like 
 Angell Day, Sir Thomas North, George Nichols 
 (translator of Thucydides), render his author from 
 the French openly and without shame, he consulted 
 the French as well as the Latin, and fared rather the 
 worse therefor. 
 
 If for a judgment of Adlington the writer there is 
 ample material, of Adlington the man we know 
 nothing more than he vouchsafes himself. That six 
 editions appeared in some seventy years is proof of 
 the book's popularity. But its only mention is 
 in the Register of the Stationers' Company, where 
 
APULEIUS 139 
 
 it figures " In the enterynge of Coopyes " between 
 July 22, 1565, and July 22, 1566, something earlier 
 than the date of the dedication. " Wekes. Recevyd 
 of henry wekes," thus it runs, "for his lycense 
 for pryntinge of a boke intituled the hole boke of 
 lucious apelious of ye golden asse^ viijd." The epistle 
 dedicatory to Thomas, Earl of Sussex, is dated 
 "from University College in Oxenford, the xviii. 
 of September 1566."* But whether or no he was a 
 graduate of that seat of learning is still uncertain. 
 His name does not appear in the Register of the 
 University, and in vain you consult the common 
 sources of information. He presents his book to his 
 patron in the customary terms of extravagant eulogy : 
 "The which if your honourable Lordship shall 
 accept," writes he of his Apule'ius^ " and take in good 
 part, I shall not only thinke my small travell and 
 labour well employed, but shall also receive a further 
 comfort to attempt some more serious matter." 
 
 If the serious matter were ever attempted, its very 
 gravity has sunk it out of knowledge : unless Adiington 
 be the author of that very rare and exceeding obvious 
 tract in verse, entitled, A Speciall ^emedie against 
 the force of lawlesse Love,'\ This was published 
 
 • The first edition was "imprinted at London in Fleet Streate 
 at the Signe of the Oliphante by Henry Wykes, Anno 1566." 
 Other editions appeared in 1571, 1582 (the rarest), 1596, 1600 and 
 1639. 
 
 t The full title runs thus : *• A Speciall Remedie against the 
 furious force of lawlesse Love. And also a true description of 
 the same. With our delightfull devices of daintie delightes to 
 
140 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 in 1579, and ascribed upon the title-page to W. A. 
 As the agreement of name and date is perfect, 
 so also the tone of the preface corresponds precisely 
 with Adlington's admonition to the reader of The 
 Golden Jsse. When the friendly reader of the 
 Speciall Remedie is warned "how like unto a beast 
 love transformeth a man, during the which nothing 
 can be exercised in minde, nothing by reason or study 
 of minde can be done," you are forthwith reminded 
 of Apuleius, and of Lucius changed to an ass. The 
 verses are properly forgotten, but by his own con- 
 fession we know him subject to an invincible morality 
 which, ill according with his century, drove him 
 perchance, to undertake this enterprise, gloomy enough 
 for oblivion. "Lector intende : laetaberis;" such is the 
 bidding of Apuleius. And Adlington apologises that 
 "although the matter seeme very light and merry, 
 yet the effect thereof tendeth to a good and vertuous 
 moral," just as the author of the Speciall Remedie 
 remarks with Plinie, " there is no book so simple, but 
 that therein is somewhat worthy the noating." As 
 though the Milesian Tale were judged, not by its 
 pleasantry and delight, but by the quality of its moral 
 sustenance ! 
 
 But Adlington was of those who would allegorise 
 
 passe away idle time, with pleasure and profit. Newly compiled 
 in English verse by W. A. Imprinted by Richard Jhones, and 
 are to be sold at his shop over against S. Sepulchres Church 
 without Newgate, 1579." The tract, which is unique, was found 
 in the Evidence Room in Northumberland House, and reprinted 
 in 1844 by the Roxburghe Society. 
 
APULEIUS 141 
 
 both mythology and romance. The fall of Icarus 
 is an example to proud and arrogant persons that 
 "weeneth to climbe up to the heavens;" and further, 
 he holds that "by Mydas is carped the foul sin 
 of Avarice." And as if to excuse the translation 
 of a " meere jeast and fable," he addresses to the reader 
 the most solemn homily, setting forth the example 
 of Nebuchadnezzar and upholding the efficacy of 
 prayer. " Verily under the wrap of this transforma- 
 tion is taxed the life of mortall men," thus he writes 
 in the proper spirit of the divine -, " concluding that 
 we can never bee restored to the right figure of 
 ourselves, except we taste and eat the sweet Rose of 
 reason and vertue, which the rather by mediation of 
 praier we may assuredly attaine." Nor is this the 
 mere perversion of ingenuity. His prudery is per- 
 fectly sincere. In many places he is inclined, by a 
 modest suppression, to mitigate the gaiety of the 
 Apuleian narrative. But only once he completely 
 sacrifices his author's effect to his own scruples ; and 
 the restrained nobility of his prose more than atones 
 for lack of scholarship and a prudish habit of mind. 
 The lapse of three centuries has left his book as fresh 
 and living as its original, and withal as brave a piece 
 of narrative as the literature of his century has ta 
 show. 
 
HERONDAS 
 
HERONDAS 
 
 BOOKS, says Hazlitt, are not like women, the 
 worse for being old. But the most of men, 
 loving the crude better than the mellow, would cheer- 
 fully surrender the Classics, three-fifths of which 
 America has condemned as "very filthy trash," for 
 the last sensation of the circulating library. Perhaps 
 it is the spirit of optimism which compels this eager 
 interest in the newest literature. Upon so vast a 
 rubbish-heap, whispers Hope, surely some pearls 
 may lie concealed. And then how pleasant a satis- 
 faction is it to forestall your neighbour, to discourse 
 familiarly of a modern masterpiece, which has eluded 
 a rival's vigilance ! Reading is pursued less for its 
 own sake than from the lust of discovery. Nowadays 
 genius must e'en divide the honours with its Columbus, 
 and not a few critics affect to believe that, if they did 
 not actually create the works which they " first intro- 
 duced to the public," at least they have the sole right 
 to appraise them. What doth it profit us to read 
 Shakespeare or Balzac ? In their works there is no 
 monopoly. He who knows them not must needs 
 
 K 
 
146 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 In very shame feign their acquaintance. So ancient 
 volumes — in letters ten years are as a thousand — are 
 imprisoned, like criminals or paupers, in the gloomy 
 dungeon of a library, while the common novel enjoys 
 the larger freedom of Mudie's and the bookstall. And 
 shriller and shriller rises the voice of Boston, pro- 
 claiming that before it all was chaos. 
 
 The Mimes of Herondas, the treasure brought to 
 light some years since in the British Museum, should 
 gratify a double taste. Two thousand years old, 
 they are as young as yesterday. Though they have 
 survived the searching test of time, they have been 
 unseen of mortal eyes for countless centuries. Pliny, 
 with perhaps a suspicion of recklessness, praised their 
 elegance and charm ("humanitas et venustas "), and 
 yet if you buy Mr. Kenyon's transcription, with 
 your own paper-knife you may separate their virgin 
 pages. The few short dialogues, thus revealed to us, 
 will keep the critics busy for years to come. The 
 lexicon must extend shelter to their oTraS u^twxkva ; their 
 disorderly perfects will be placed upon trial before a 
 jury of grammarians, while he whom no grammatical 
 licence can terrify will see in the Mimes of Herondas 
 the revelation of a lost genre as well as a vivid and 
 familiar image of ancient life. Even in the golden 
 age of Greek literature the mime was practised and 
 esteemed. The works of Sophron, the master of the 
 form, have followed Menander and Sappho into the 
 night of forgetfulness. Yet it is their glory to have 
 won the admiration of Plato, whose last hours they 
 
HERONDAS 147 
 
 soothed, and who is said to have died with a copy beneath 
 his pillow. A few poor fragments and half a dozen 
 titles are all that remain, and of Sophron no more may 
 be said than that he wrote a kind of rhythmic prose 
 or Whitmanian verse, and that he pictured the 
 characters of his contemporaries and the habit of their 
 lives in dramatic dialogues. 
 
 But there is nothing new under the sun, and the 
 recovery of Herondas proves beyond dispute that the 
 long-lost mime is still handled with success, that it 
 is indeed none other than that dialogue which to-day 
 threatens the supremacy of the novel. The resemblance 
 is more than superficial. In either case the medium is 
 the same. The favourite theme of Herondas, as of his 
 unconscious imitators, is the passion and frivolity of 
 women, and he treats it with a verve and freedom 
 after which the moderns limp in vain. So the sugges- 
 tion that the Mimes were intended for dramatic repre- 
 sentation appears ridiculous. Assertion must be backed 
 sby overwhelming evidence before so preposterous an 
 opinion may be entertained. To bury these dainty 
 pictures of life and character beneath the machinery 
 of the stage were too shameless an outrage upon the 
 proprieties, which the Greek temperament was wont 
 to respect. Unless the Young Reciter were as deadly 
 a blight upon the ancient as upon the modern world, 
 the lines of Herondas can scarce have been spoken 
 in public. Imagine The Jealous Woman performed 
 with the pomp and circumstance of scenic display ! 
 The mere suggestion is blasphemy. 
 
148 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 For the niceties of verse Herondas displays a perfect 
 contempt. His metre — the choliambic — is more 
 familiar than refined, and he has treated it with so 
 licentious an asperity that it produces the effect of 
 prose. It may be compared to the formless couplet 
 wherein Reece and Blanchard were wont to enshrine 
 their pearls of thought. The resemblance is merely 
 external, as Herondas never stoops to the folly and 
 dulness of those masters of burlesque. The diction 
 is designedly undistinguished. In vain you look for 
 coloured phrase or long-sought image. One expression 
 — and one alone — lingers in the memory. In the 
 sixth mime two ladies are discussing with infinite 
 animation some mysterious implement, the handi- 
 work of Cerdon, the leather- worker. *' Its softness," 
 says Coritto, in a moment of feminine enthusiasm, 
 "is sleep itself" (17 juaXoKorijc virvog). The phrase 
 is elegant, and though it may have been borrowed from 
 Theocritus, at any rate the application is original. 
 
 But if Herondas, in spite of Pliny's criticism, was not 
 wont to polish and to refine his style, he had a mar- 
 vellous talent for presentation. His characters breathe 
 and live ; his simple situations are sketched in a dozen 
 strokes, but with so vivid a touch that they are perfectly 
 realised. The material is drawn from the common- 
 place of life, but it is handled with so just a sense of 
 reality that two thousand years have not availed to 
 tarnish the truth of the picture. The book is as 
 modern as though it had been written — not recovered — 
 yesterday. The emotions which Herondas delineates 
 
HERONDAS 149 
 
 are not Greek, but human, and no preliminary cram- 
 ming in archaeology is necessary for their appreciation. 
 The student of Greek literature is so intimately accus- 
 tomed to the austere pomp of tragedy, to the measured 
 dignity of restrained prose, that he is apt to forget 
 that those who spake the tongue which Sophocles 
 wrote also lived an engrossing life of their own. You 
 contemplate their masterpieces of art, and you dream 
 that they paced through life apparelled ever in flowing 
 robes, a finger upon their brow, as though they were 
 still rapt in adoration of the ideal. And you open 
 Heron das, and Gyllis apologises to Metriche for not 
 having called before, but then they do live so far 
 apart, and the roads are so muddy ; or Metro and 
 Coritto deplore the shortcomings of their servants, 
 or a group of trippers gaze open-eyed at the glories 
 of the temple of Asclepius. What can touch the 
 sympathies more nearly than these sketches of life ? 
 Not even the most real of American realists could 
 snifF therein the pitiful odour of romance or classicism. 
 Their familiarity is, in a sense, more thrilling than 
 the most exquisite verse. Here, indeed, is the Greek 
 revealed in dressing-gown and slippers. The veri- 
 similitude is heightened by the proverbs — or slang, if 
 you will — wherewith the creations of Herondas enforce 
 their meaning. "A ship," says Gyllis, pressing the 
 temptation of Metriche, " is not safe on one cable ; " 
 while the same lady, in extolling the virtues of her 
 champion, Gryllus, exclaims after Aristophanes : "he 
 inever moves a chip (ov^£ kojo^oc Kiviwv) ; he never 
 
 \ 
 
150 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 felt Cythera's dart." When the unhappy Battarus 
 has received a thrashing at Thales* hands, he tells 
 the jury he "suffered as much as a mouse in a 
 pitch-pot." Thus spake the ancients, and thus might 
 the men and women speak of to-day. As the world 
 was never young, so it will never grow old. The 
 archaeologist devotes years of research to compiling 
 a picture of Greek life, and the result is Chartdes 
 — a solid and unrelieved mass of "local colour." 
 The life and exploits of a generation are ruthlessly 
 ascribed to one poor youth, who must needs crowd 
 every hour of his life, that no custom be left without 
 its illustration. There is no proportion, no atmo- 
 sphere, no background, so that all is false save the 
 details, which merely overload the canvas. Herondas, 
 on the other hand, presents not a picture, but an im- 
 pression ; and one mime reveals more of life as it was 
 lived two thousand years ago than the complete works 
 of Becker, Ebers, and the archaeologists. 
 
 Metriche and Gyllis, who conduct the first dialogue, 
 might have walked straight out of (or into) the ribald 
 page of la Vie Parisienne. Theocritus has handled the 
 same situation — a morning call — but then he was a 
 poet, and carried the mime off with him to the skies* 
 Metriche, the young wife of Mandris ; Gyllis, an old 
 lady ; and Threissa, Metriche's maid, are the persons 
 of the tiny drama, and thus it opens : 
 
 " Metriche, Threissa, there is a knock at the door ; 
 go and see if it is a visitor from the country. 
 
 " Threissa, Who's there ? 
 
HERONDAS 151 
 
 « Gyllis, 'Tis I. 
 
 *' Threissa. Who are you ? Are you afraid to come 
 any nearer ? 
 
 '' Gyllts, All right, you see, I am coming in. 
 
 " Threissa, What name shall I say ? 
 
 "Gy///V. Gyllis, the mother of Philainium. Go in- 
 doors, and announce me to Metriche. 
 
 " Threissa, A caller, ma*am. 
 
 " Metriche, What, Gyllis, dear old Gyllis ! Turn 
 the chair round a little, girl. What fate induced you 
 to come and see me, Gyllis ? An angel's visit, indeed ! 
 Why, I believe it's five months since any one dreamt 
 of your knocking at my door. 
 
 " Gyllis, I live far off, my dear, and the mud in the 
 lane is up to your knees. I am no stronger than a 
 fly, for old age is heavy upon me, and the shadow of 
 death is at my side. 
 
 " Metriche, Cheer up ! don't malign Father Time ; 
 you are strong enough yet to strangle others. 
 
 " Gyllis, Joke away ; that's natural for girls like 
 you, though joking won't stir your blood. But, my 
 dear girl, what a long time you've been a widow. 
 It's ten months since Mandris was despatched to 
 Egypt, and he hasn't sent you a single line; doubtless 
 he has forgotten you, and is drinking at a new spring. 
 The house of the goddess is there. For in Egypt you 
 may find all things that are or ever were — wealth, athle- 
 tics, power, fine weather, glory, goddesses, philosophers, 
 gold, handsome youths, the shrine of the god and 
 goddess, the most excellent king, the finest museum in 
 
152 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 the world, wine, all the good things you can desire, 
 and women, by Persephone, countless as the stars and 
 beautiful as the goddesses that appealed to Paris." 
 
 So Gyllis, increasing her boldness, suggests that 
 Mandris is dead, and reveals the purpose of her visit. 
 
 " Now listen to the news I have brought you after 
 this long time. You know Gryllus, the son of Mata- 
 chene, who was such a famous athlete at school, won 
 a couple of prizes at Corinth when a youth, and 
 remains to-day an eminent bruiser ? Then he is 
 very rich, and he leads the quietest life — a virgin seal, 
 so help me Cytherea. Well, he saw you the other day 
 in the procession of Misa, and was smitten to the 
 heart. And, my dear girl, he never leaves my house 
 day or night, but he bemoans his fate ; he is positively 
 dying of love. Now, my dear Metriche, for my sake 
 do commit this one little sin. You will have a double 
 joy. . . . Think it over, take my advice, he loves you." 
 
 Metriche is righteously indignant. 
 
 "By the fetes, Gyllis, your white hairs blunt your 
 reason. As I hope for the return of Mandris and 
 the favour of our Lady Demeter, I shouldn't like to 
 have heard this from another woman's lips. . . . And 
 you, my dear, never come to my house with such 
 proposals again. . . . For none may make mock of 
 Mandris. But, if what the world says be true, I 
 needn't speak to Gyllis like this. Threissa, let us 
 have some refreshments ; bring the decanter and some 
 water, and give the lady something to drink. . . . 
 Now, Gyllis, drink, and show that you aren't angry." 
 
HERONDAS 153 
 
 And so with a delightful interchange of civilities the 
 quarrel is brought to an end. " The chatter of women," 
 says the translator of Theocritus, "has changed no 
 more in a thousand years than the song of birds." 
 
 The second mime is in a very different key. The 
 scene is a law court, where Battarus, who pursues the 
 pandar's ancient calling, brings an action against one 
 Thales, a Phrygian plutocrat, a famous rastaquoere^ 
 for assault and battery. The plaintiff's speech is as 
 admirable a specimen of Old Bailey tub-thumping as 
 may be found outside the private orations of Demos- 
 thenes. " Deem not," exclaims the valiant Battarus, 
 " that in protecting me you are guarding the interest 
 of a poor pimp. No, the honour and independence of 
 your city are at stake. I have been assaulted and 
 robbed by one who is not a citizen, who is not even a 
 man, but a Phrygian rascal — Artimmas was his name, 
 though now he has the effrontery to call himself Thales. 
 He thinks because he has a yacht and smart clothes that 
 he is a gentleman with the privilege of assault. But 
 your laws condemn him — your laws which protect even 
 the slave from injury. Yet what should you, Thales, 
 know of laws or cities — you who spend to-day at 
 Bricindera, and are off towards Abdera to-morrow ? 
 I suffered as much as a mouse in the pitchpot. 
 To cut a long story short, this Thales came to my 
 house the other night, broke open my door, knocked 
 me down, and carried off my Myrtale by force. Come 
 here, Myrtale, show yourself to the court : don't be 
 ashamed ; imagine that the jury who face you are 
 
154 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 all brothers and fathers. See, gentlemen, how di- 
 shevelled she looks ; that's all because this scoundrel 
 dragged her off with intolerable violence. O, old age, 
 had it not been for you, this ruffian should have spilt 
 his blood ! You laugh ? I follow a disreputable trade 
 — that I don't deny — and my name is Battarus, and 
 my father Sisymbrus, and my grandfather Sisymbris- 
 cus (both inglorious names), were pandars before me, 
 but Thales should treat me decently all the same. 
 You, Thales, will object that you love Myrtale ; 
 well, I love porridge ; give me the one and you shall 
 have the other. Nay, if you wish it, Thales, I am 
 ready to be put to the torture, but you must first 
 deposit the penalty. When I ask you for a verdict, 
 gentlemen, I am thinking not only of myself, but of 
 all the strangers who take refuge in your city. You 
 will show how great is Cos, how powerful Merops ; 
 you will declare the fame that belonged to Thessaly 
 and to Hercules ; you will relate how Asclepius 
 came hither from Tricca, and how it was here that 
 Phcebe gave birth to Leto. And it will do Thales 
 good to be cast, for the more you beat a Phrygian 
 the better he is, if the ancient proverb do not lie." 
 And doubtless the jurymen of Cos found the flattery 
 of Battarus, if not his eloquence, irresistible, and 
 awarded a comfortable verdict. The speech, though it 
 be not literature of the best kind, is an interesting 
 document ; and in the plaintiflPs frank confession of 
 his own iniquities, as in the exquisitely pompous 
 peroration, there is even a touch of the sublime. 
 
HERONDAS 155 
 
 The scene shifts to the house of a schoolmaster, who 
 is implored by an indignant mother to chastise her 
 impudent good-for-nothing son. Flog him, she says, 
 within an inch of his miserable life {a-xpig v ^l^vxn 
 avTOv iirl X£tXi(t)v jULOvvov 17 KaKrj XsKJidy)* The text is 
 so corrupt that we can only form a vague opinion of 
 the rascal's crimes. He has a taste for bad company 
 and spends the livelong day in knuckle-bones, and when 
 that seems too tame, he brings ruin on his mother's 
 house with pitch-and-toss. Then "he positively re- 
 fuses to work, and his wretched slate lies desolate in a 
 corner, except when with a leer of destruction he 
 rubs it all out. But his knuckle-bones are always 
 polished and put away in their bag, brighter than 
 the oil-jar, which we use for everything. And then 
 he doesn't even know his alphabet unless one shouts 
 it at him a dozen times. . . . Indeed I think I was a 
 fool to teach him his letters, thinking he would be a 
 prop for my old age, when he is only fit to feed donkeys. 
 ... And if we dare to scold, he won't cross the 
 threshold for three days, and breaks his poor old 
 mother's heart with anxiety, or he will sit astride the 
 roof like a monkey and glare down at us. And that 
 is not all. He breaks the tiles, so that when the winter 
 comes, the neighbours have but one voice : * Cottalus 
 the son of Metrotime has been at his tricks again.' Stripe 
 him black and blue, Lampriscus, as a Delian fisher- 
 man, who drags out his wretched life upon the sea." 
 The schoolmaster is stern, as becomes his trade, and 
 calls for his cow-hide. Poor Cottalus is unmercifuUy^ 
 
156 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 thrashed, and promises repentance between the blows, 
 invoking the friendly Muses and his master's beard. 
 But his mother is obdurate. " Take him away," says 
 the schoolmaster to his slaves. " No, Lampriscus,'* 
 shouts the mother, " don't leave ofF until the sun goes 
 down." " He is far more mottled than a water-snake 
 already," replies Lampriscus, and the boy is driven 
 off to reflect in confinement upon his crimes and their 
 punishment. 
 
 Far gayer in spirit is The Visit to the Temple of 
 t/^sclepius. Here are two ladies laden with offerings 
 who come to consult the god. The demands of piety 
 once satisfied by a comprehensive prayer to Ascle- 
 pius, and to all the gods and goddesses who cherish his 
 hearth, they wander off to look at the statues which 
 adorn the temple, and to express with confidence their 
 innocent enthusiasm. They might be modern tourists 
 at Westminister Abbey. " Dear, dear, friend Cynno," 
 murmurs one, "do look at the beautiful statues. 
 Whose work is that, and who set it up ? " " The 
 sons of Praxiteles were the sculptors," replies Cynno, 
 " can't you see, it's written on the base ? And Euthies, 
 the son of Prexo, set it up. . . . But see the girl 
 gazing at the apple. She will die on the spot if she 
 doesn't get hold of it \ and look at the boy strangling 
 the goose ! If it weren't made of stone you would say 
 that he would speak in our very presence. Before very 
 long, men will be able to put life into stones. Follow 
 me, my dear, and I will show you such wonders as you 
 have never seen in all your life." The art criticism. 
 
HERONDAS 157 
 
 the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, is interrupted 
 by Cynno's altercation with her maid. " Go and fetch 
 the verger ! " screams the visitant. But the poor girl, 
 overcome doubtless by the many splendours of the 
 temple, merely stands gaping at her mistress. '' She 
 glares with an eye bigger than a crab's. Go and fetch 
 the verger, I tell you ! " Cynno's friend attempts to 
 soothe the lady's frenzy. " She is a slave," she mutters, 
 " and the ears of a slave are always slow." And even 
 Cynno is pacified at last. " Stay," she cries, " the 
 door is open and we can enter the chancel " ; and 
 again the ladies fall to art criticism. " You might 
 think that Athene fashioned those beautiful works." 
 " If I were to scratch this naked boy," replies the 
 other, " don't you think I should leave a scar ? And 
 this cow, and the man leading it, and the woman who 
 meets him, and that hook-nosed fellow, and the man 
 with bristles on his forehead, aren't they lifelike ? " 
 " To be sure they are," says Cynno ; '' but then 
 Apelles always is so realistic." These words are an 
 echo of the country cousin at the Academy ; but the 
 verger approaches to declare that the ladies' sacrifice 
 is acceptable and of a good portent, and to call down 
 the blessing of the god upon them and their kin. 
 Whereupon he is made happy by the drumstick — a 
 cock was the offering ; and it is only the payment in 
 kind, which separates the drama from our own time. 
 
 But The Jealous Woman (17 ?rjXoru7rof ) is 
 Herondas' masterpiece. Its reality may only be 
 matched in the most modern French literature. 
 
158 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 There is a frank brutality in its subject which 
 might have endeared it to M. de Maupassant, but so 
 exquisitely is it handled, so justly is it proportioned, 
 that its realism does not and cannot offend. Bitinna, 
 an elderly lady, is madly jealous of Gastro, her favourite 
 slave. She has caught him w^ith Amphytaea, Meno's 
 daughter, and the poor v^^retch sheepishly confesses 
 that he " has seen " the girl his mistress mentions. 
 Bitinna is furious, and Gastro replies with much 
 dignity : " Bitinna, I am a slave ; use me as you will, 
 but do not suck my blood day and night " — a phrase 
 which might have come from the very latest and most 
 daring of French novels. However, Bitinna is not 
 to be appeased. "It is I," says she, " who made you 
 a man among men, and if I did wrong, you will not 
 again find Bitinna the fool you think her." So in a 
 frenzy she orders her favourite to be stripped and 
 flogged — a thousand stripes on his back, a thousand 
 on his belly, and bids her slaves drag him off to the 
 punishment. " Bitinna," he pleads, " forgive me this 
 once. I am but a man and I sinned. But if ever 
 again you catch me doing what you do not wish, 
 brand me." At length, after a torrent of altercation and 
 abuse, she changes her mind and, resolving to brand 
 him, bids Cosis to attend with his needles and his 
 ink. Then Cydilla, a slave girl, intercedes for the 
 miserable Gastro, and the hard heart of Bitinna is soft- 
 ened by the vapid argument that it is a Saint's day, 
 and that the festival of the dead is approaching. 
 " This time I will forgive you, but give your thanks 
 
HERONDAS 159 
 
 to Cydilla here, whom I love as well as my own 
 Batyllis, and whom I nursed with my own hands." 
 
 The denouement is tame and trivial, and wholly un- 
 worthy of the spirited opening. But the fact that they 
 do live happy ever after avails not to spoil a marvel- 
 lously vivid and cruel picture of life. In Greek 
 literature it is unsurpassed, and the world scarce 
 realises yet how precious a treasure it has got in 
 Herondas. There is not a single mime that has not a 
 character and interest of its own. The others, difficult 
 as they are, contain the most spirited passages. Coritto 
 and Metro, for example, prattle with light-hearted 
 vivacity of a disreputable object — /3av/3a>v they call it — 
 the work of an artist in leather, named Cerdo. Metro 
 is burning to find the author of the masterpiece, and 
 implores Coritto to tell her where he may be seen. 
 At last Coritto is complaisant, and presently — in 
 another mime — Metro pays the distinguished cobbler 
 a visit. These three personages are realised with 
 perfect conviction and more than a touch of malice. 
 The corrupt Coritto, the eager, cunning Metro, 
 the volubly insolent Cerdo will be familiar till the end 
 of time. The fragments, moreover, are provoking in 
 their incompleteness. There is enough left of The 
 Dream to convince you that the farmer's indignant 
 wife, who in a fury awakens her lazy slaves, bidding 
 them drive the pig to pasture, would have been a por- 
 trait not unworthy its gallery. But, alas ! its conclusion 
 is no better than a collection of inarticulate symbols. 
 
 Such, in brief outline, is the work of this long- 
 
i6o STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 forgotten poet. To have brought him once more to 
 light is an achievement of which the British Museum 
 may well be proud. The mimes are not statues of the 
 fifth century, but rather exquisite terra-cottas, quaintly 
 and daintily fashioned, such as prudery commonly 
 withdraws from public exhibition, and softened by that 
 touch of nature which makes fiction real, and renders 
 the old new again. And it gives us good hope of the 
 future. If Herondas be found, why not Sophron, or 
 Menander, or the priceless Sappho herself? An unjust 
 fate still hides the works of these artists from our gaze. 
 But we have Herondas, and let us make the best of 
 him. At any rate, he has proved that scholarship too 
 may know the excitement of discovery. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 IF Poe's life was a tangle of contradiction, his 
 posthumous fame has been a very conflict of 
 opposites. He has been elevated to heaven, he has 
 been depressed to hell ; he has been pictured angel 
 and devil, drunkard and puritan. His poetry has 
 seemed to this one the empty tinkling of a cymbal, to 
 that the last expression of verbal beauty. But despite 
 the warfare of opinions, he has been read and imitated 
 throughout the world, and he is still, after half a 
 century, the dominant influence of three literatures. 
 An inventor in many fields, he deserves whatever 
 homage may be paid him ; and if his genius has been 
 somewhat obscured by the monument, in ten volumes, 
 which Chicago has erected to his honour, the zealot 
 will discover many a block of pure marble, half hidden 
 in the heap of shot rubble. 
 
 Poe in ten volumes ! Did fortune ever play a more 
 wayward trick upon a man ? Poe in ten volumes — 
 Poe, to whom a long poem was a flat contradiction ! 
 His editors omit nothing, who might have omitted so 
 much. They spare you neither his casual reflections 
 
i64 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 upon handwriting, nor his ephemeral portraits of 
 America's forgotten literati. Did he, in the Forties, 
 review such a piece of bookmaking as was not worth 
 his momentary regard, it is at last set forth with the 
 added dignity of enclosing covers. There is no doubt 
 that he would have been shocked himself at this work 
 of patient resurrection. Had he but lived to edit his 
 own work, his fastidious care would assuredly have re- 
 jected the journalism and cut the final edition short by 
 five volumes. Yet it were ungracious to reproach the 
 piety of his editors. If you are indiiFerent to Poe's 
 opinion of Christopher P. Cranch, you need not read 
 it ; and, having all, you are not harassed by the fear 
 that you have been defrauded of a masterpiece. 
 
 No sooner was Poe dead than he became the im- 
 mediate prey of the body-snatcher. The literary 
 hyena fastened upon his corpse, and fattened hideously 
 upon his desecrated blood. No poet, since Shelley, 
 had given the ghoul so rich an opportunity. As the 
 whole tragedy of Poe's life sprang from a hostile 
 environment, so after his death the environing enemies 
 leapt to their final act of resentment and revenge. He 
 was a drunken monster, who had committed all the 
 crimes invented in his gloomiest romances. JVilUam 
 Wilson was a true page of autobiography ; the brutali- 
 ties of The Black Cat were among the slightest of his 
 indiscretions ; worse even, teste Gilfillan, he murdered 
 his wife that he might find a suitable motive for The 
 Raven I Now, if Gilfillan had read the works of his 
 victim, he would have known that realism was loath- 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 165 
 
 some to the temperament of Poe, who had no need to 
 rehearse his effects. But when the slanderer is abroad, 
 he cares not how flagrant are his calumnies, especially 
 if he speak in the cause of morality. Stupidity's true 
 mouthpiece, however, was one Rufus Griswold, who 
 easily outgilfillaned the smug Gilfillan himself. This 
 vessel of wrath had been the poet's friend, and (strange 
 to tell) Poe, by appointing him his literary executor, 
 was unconsciously guilty of posthumous suicide. 
 Griswold was not one to lose an illegitimate occasion. 
 Poe died on October 8, 1849. On October 9 
 Griswold's infamy was in type. Hate and malice 
 scream in every line of this monumental hypocrisy. 
 Here speaks, through the mouth of Griswold, the 
 hungry middle-class, which hated poetry and loathea 
 the solitary dignity of Poe. The poet's character, 
 said this literary Pecksniff, was " shrewd and naturally 
 unamiable." He recognised no "moral susceptibili- 
 ties " J he knew " little or nothing of the true point of 
 honour." His one desire was to ^^ succeed — not shine, 
 not serve — succeed, that he might have the right to 
 despise a world which galled his self-conceit." And 
 so magnificently did he " succeed," so vilely did he 
 sacrifice his art to prosperity, that America, which 
 kept Griswold in affluence, condemned the author of 
 William Wilson to starvation and neglect ! 
 
 But Griswold's purple patch must be given in its 
 true colour. In these terms did our moralist describe 
 the friend, laid but a few hours since in the grave : 
 ^' Passions, in him, comprehended many of the worst 
 
i66 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 emotions which militate against human happiness. 
 You could not contradict him but you raised quick 
 choler ; you could not speak of wealth but his cheek 
 paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing natural 
 advantages of this poor boy — his beauty, his readiness, 
 the daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery 
 atmosphere — had raised his constitutional self-con- 
 fidence into an arrogance that turned his very claims 
 to admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, 
 envious — bad enough, but not the worst, for these 
 salient angles were all varnished over with a cold, 
 repellent cynicism ; his passions vented themselves in 
 sneers." Those there are who assert that Griswold's 
 outrage upon truth and taste was a revenge, deliberately 
 taken upon Poe's hostile criticism. But there is no 
 need to spy out a motive for so simple a crime. 
 Griswold spoke not for himself, but for his world. 
 Genius is repellent to those who know it not ; gaiety is 
 a crime in the eyes of unhappier men who fear not the 
 disease. The envious morality of hypocrites, in whose 
 veins vinegar flows for blood, rises superior to all the 
 obligations of taste and friendship. No doubt the 
 infamous Rufus laid down his pen that day with infi- 
 nite content ; no doubt he adjusted his spectacles over 
 the Tribune next morning with a more than usual 
 placidity. Thus he, who would not allow a poet the 
 licence of displeasure, gives an easy rein to his own 
 denunciation. Nor does the poor devil divine the 
 incongruity. Poe's " harsh experience," he says in a 
 tone of grievance, " had deprived him of all faith in 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 167 
 
 Of course it had : Poe had known 
 Griswold. 
 
 But all the world was not as Griswold. Willis was 
 quick to champion the dead man, and to declare that 
 he had always been for him an exemplar of amiability. 
 Indeed, there is a cloud of witnesses to prove not only 
 the cowardice of Griswold, but his untruth. To 
 Mrs. Osgood Poe was never " otherwise than gentle, 
 generous, well-bred, and fastidiously refined." The 
 intelligent few among his contemporaries understood 
 him, at least by flashes, and did not apply to him the 
 rigorous code of a magistrate trying a drunken navvy. 
 To visit him at his house (you are told) was to be 
 convinced of his refinement and simplicity. There 
 was one friend who found this envious monster devot- 
 ing himself to the care of birds and flowers. And, 
 strangest irony of all, Mrs. Whitman, whom Poe*s 
 enemies assert to have endured the worst affront, 
 proved the noblest and most eloquent of his cham- 
 pions. Had not the shriek of malice been raised so 
 often, Poe's character might be left to defend itself. 
 His works are ours , his opinions are familiar, if not 
 accepted ; the music of his verse still sings in our ear. 
 But the dishonour done to his memory compels a 
 defence, especially since the very simplicity of his 
 character exposed him to affront. There should, then, 
 be no uncertainty in a benign judgment. Some men, 
 says Baudelaire, have guignon written upon their fore- 
 head, and Edgar Poe was of their number. He was 
 born out of time, out of place. He was bidden to 
 
i68 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 live in an alien and a hostile world, whence he recoiled 
 in an impotent horror. A poet whose intelligence 
 was solitary and aloof, he was driven into the battle- 
 field, and it is not surprising that he suffered irre- 
 mediable defeat at the hands of the Griswolds of his 
 time. His life was always a dream, often a nightmare ; 
 and, since he lived shut up within himself, he knew 
 not envy, but merely contempt. How should lie be 
 envious of the contemporaries whom he surpassed ? 
 Despite his melancholy, he enjoyed those periods of 
 sanguine expectation which are proper to his tempera- 
 ment. For instance, he preserved a fervent faith in 
 The Stylus^ that imagined review which should reform 
 American literature and fill his pocket. The exem- 
 plary burgess denounced him for a drunkard and a 
 sloth, forgetting, in his hasty censure, that Poe was 
 not only devoted to his family and friends, but that in 
 sixteen years he produced a greater sum of admirable 
 work than any octogenarian in America. 
 
 He was an idealist, caught up into a real world ; he 
 was a poet stifled in an atmosphere of commerce and 
 morality ; he was a Southerner in the midst of Abo- 
 litionists ; he was a lofty aristocrat living in an un- 
 bridled democracy. His very beauty, the charm of 
 his voice, the quiet distinction of his manner, his love 
 of splendour, of noble houses, and Italian gardens — all 
 these qualities aroused the suspicion of his contempo- 
 raries. His years of travel, his swiftly garnered ex- 
 perience had given him that air of a " gentleman " 
 which is seldom beloved in a progressive state. Though 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 169 
 
 it is ever hazardous to confuse a writer with his work, 
 yet one may believe that in The Domain of Arnheim 
 Ellison's ideals are Poe's own. Little enough have 
 they to do with citizenship or a liberal franchise. 
 Here they are — ( i ) free exercise in the open air ; 
 {2) the love of woman ; (3) the contempt of ambition ; 
 (4) the conviction that attainable happiness is in pro- 
 portion to its spirituality. Naturally Griswold found 
 nothing in these aspirations save arrogance and con- 
 tempt. 
 
 But Poe, in a letter to Lowell, has best described 
 his own temperament. "I am excessively slothful 
 and wonderfully industrious," he said, " by fits." He 
 denies that he is ambitious, unless negatively. ''I 
 really perceive," goes on the passage of self-revelation, 
 "that vanity about which most men merely prate — 
 the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live 
 continually in a reverie of the future. I have no 
 faith in human perfectibility. I think that human 
 exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity." 
 How should a poet frank enough to formulate these 
 truths, a poet whose life was " whim, impulse, passion, 
 a longing for solitude, a scorn of all things present " — 
 how should he appeal to the sympathy of his age or 
 even to the bluff optimism of Mr. Lowell ? 
 
 But the dullard's heaviest artillery has been mar- 
 shalled against the crime of drunkenness. The poet's 
 life is — in this aspect — a series of iterated and repelled 
 charges. Yet the most that has been proved against 
 Poe is that wine had an instant and perverse effect 
 
170 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 upon his brain. Let the dullard go home and thank 
 God for that superior virtue which permits him to 
 drink his muddy beer in peace ; let him also reflect 
 that no wine could purchase for him the dreams, the 
 poems, the hopes which it purchased for Poe. That 
 his death was tragic and premature is, alas ! indisputable. 
 And here, again, has been an occasion for much 
 foolishness. He died, like Marlow and many another 
 man of genius, in the street, unheeded, almost un- 
 recognised. But he died at his own time, when his 
 work was done, a victim to the stolid stupidity of 
 circumstance. He was great, not on account of his 
 frailty, which the foolish sometimes mistake for talent, 
 but in his frailty's despite ; and he yields not in good 
 fortune to the mirror of respectability, whose sole 
 congratulation is that his unremembered and useless 
 life trickles out amiably in bed. 
 
 It is strangely ironical that though he would have 
 chosen to live in the Kingdom of Fancy, he was 
 driven at the outset to a picturesque activity. His 
 descent was distinguished, yet he was little better than 
 a foundling when he was adopted into the family of 
 John Allan, who brought him up in gentle affluence. 
 His education was varied and efficient. Two years 
 spent at Stoke Newington, at the school of Dr. 
 Bransby, gave him the local colour for William Wilson^ 
 and a hint for the description of that veritable " palace 
 of enchantment," wherein his unhappy hero met his 
 conscience. Thereafter he returned to America, spent 
 a year without profit at the University of Virginia, 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 171 
 
 and presently, following the example of his admired 
 Coleridge, enlisted as a private soldier. Lowell relates, 
 without a definite authority, that Poe had already set 
 forth to fight at Byron's side for the independence of 
 Greece, and that, having got into trouble at St. Peters- 
 burg, he was rescued by the American Consul. For 
 the sake of romance you are willing to believe the 
 legend, and you regret that fortune had not favoured 
 the brave so far as to bring Poe into the presence of 
 Byron. But at least it is true that Poe served three 
 years in the United States Army, meanwhile, like 
 Cumberbatch, cultivating the Muses. Then it was 
 that Allan performed his last service. Having found 
 a substitute, he entered him, though already disqualified 
 by years, as a cadet at West Point. But West Point 
 was as little to his mind as the barrack, and it was not 
 long before a breach of discipline procured his dismissal. 
 He published his poems by subscription among the 
 cadets, and having no more to expect from his bene- 
 factor, he determined upon the profession of letters. 
 
 His first success was achieved (in 1833) with The 
 MS, found in a Bottle^ which won a prize offered by 
 The Saturday Visiter. Henceforth, with varying 
 fortune, he earned his living by his pen. He wrote 
 stories, satires, poems ; his criticism became the terror 
 of the incompetent ; and since his Southern descent, 
 his genius, his reasonable contempt, rendered him 
 unpopular in the North, he was, many years before 
 his death, the best hated and most highly respected 
 of his kind^. The one constant ambition of his life 
 
172 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 — to start a magazine of his own — was disappointed ; 
 but alone of his contemporaries he captured a reputation 
 in Europe, and neither ill-health nor misfortune shook 
 for an instant his legitimate confidence in himself, his 
 determination to set in their place the pigmies who 
 surrounded him. Meanwhile, his strange marriage 
 with Virginia Clemm, who at the ceremony was not 
 yet fourteen, and his unfailing devotion to his fragile wife 
 and her mother, disproved the boorish cruelty where- 
 with he was so complacently charged. On the other 
 hand, the affection, requited yet unsuccessful, which 
 he cherished at the end for Mrs. Whitman, for " Annie," 
 and for Mrs. Shelton, does not suggest the humour of 
 one who had a strong, rational hold upon existence. 
 But he lived his own life, as he died his own death, 
 and it is for the Gris wolds to hold their peace in the 
 presence of genius. 
 
 At least his works remain to confute the blasphemer, 
 and it is certain that no writer ever bequeathed so 
 many examples to posterity. Although he went not 
 beyond the tradition of his time, although he owed 
 something to Maturin and Mrs. RadclyfFe, something 
 also, in decoration and decay, to the romantiques of 
 1830, he was essentially an inventor. He touched no 
 kind of story without making it a type for all time. 
 Even The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym^ which 
 you confess to be tiresome and elaborate, has been a 
 stimulus to a whole generation of romance-mongers ; 
 and you feel, despite its faults, that it displays a greater 
 verisimilitude, if not a greater knowledge, than the 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 173 
 
 best of its successors. Before all things, Poe had the 
 faculty of detaching himself from the present and of 
 imagining unseen continents. With seamanship, 
 science, erudition, mysticism, with all the branches of 
 human knowledge he feigned an acquaintance. He 
 tells you with pride that The MS. Found in a Bottle 
 was written many years before he had seen the maps 
 of Mercator ; and you find yourself eagerly forgiving 
 the amiable pedantry of his confession. 
 
 But it is in The Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque 
 that Poe first revealed his personal imagination — an 
 imagination rather of tone than of incident. The 
 House of Usher^ Ligeia, and the rest surpass all other 
 stories in economy of method and suggestion. Death, 
 catalepsy, and the supernatural are the material of them 
 all. They know neither time nor place ; they are 
 enwrapped in an atmosphere only substantial enough 
 to enclose phantoms ; ghostly castles frown upon 
 sombre tarns, destined to engulph them ; clouds, 
 fantastically outlined, chase one another across a 
 spectral sky ; ancient families totter to their doom, 
 overwhelmed in misery and disease j ruined halls are 
 resplendent with red lanterns and perfumed with 
 swinging censers ; the heroine's hand is cold as 
 marble, marble-cold also is her forehead, but she is 
 learned in all the sciences, and the castle library con- 
 tains the works of Caelius Secundus Curio and Tertul- 
 lian. Everywhere there is a sombre splendour, a for- 
 bidding magnificence. No wonder that the dweller 
 in an English abbey shudders at " the Bedlam patterns 
 
174 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 of the carpets of tufted gold." Naught save the 
 names, which are of no country and of no age, heightens 
 the colour of the monotone romance. Madeleine, 
 Berenice, Ligeia, Morella, Eleonora — do they not echo 
 the strangest harmonies, and by their beauty make 
 more horrible the cold tragedy of their deaths ? To 
 analyse these fantasies closely is impossible ; you must 
 leave them to the low, dim-tinted atmosphere wherein 
 Poe has enveloped them. They are vague, fleeting, 
 mystical, perverse — a sensation of tapestry, whereon 
 luminous figures wander hand in hand. Silence and 
 horror are their cult, and there is not one of these 
 ladies whose ever-approaching death would not be 
 hastened by a breath of reality. 
 
 Ligeia dwells in "a dim and decaying city by the 
 Rhine," but who would seek to discover her habitation ? 
 It were as infamous as to search beneath a tropical sun 
 for " the Valley of the Many-coloured Grass," where 
 pined the hapless Eleonora. The best of these fancies, 
 in truth, are rather poetry than prose, and it was in 
 their prose that Poe perfected his artifice of refrain. A 
 sonorous passage in Eleonora is repeated with the state- 
 liest effect, and the horror of Silence is increased tenfold 
 by the oft-recurring phrase : " And the man trembled in 
 the solitude, but the night waned, and he sat upon the 
 rock." In these grotesque imaginings even laughter 
 becomes a terror. At Sparta, says the monster of The 
 Assignation^ "the altar of Laughter survived all the 
 others," and he chuckles at the very point of death. 
 When, in The Cask of Amontillado^ the last stone is 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 175 
 
 fitted to Fortunato's living tomb, " there came from 
 out the niche a low laugh," which might well have 
 sent Montresor's hair on end. Not even did Morella's 
 lover meet his doom with tears. " I laughed with a 
 long and bitter laugh," he says, " as I found no trace 
 of the first in the charnel where I laid the second — 
 Morella." But, worst of all, the demon laughs when 
 the whole world is cursed to silence : wherefrom you 
 may deduce as sinister a theory of the ludicrous as you 
 please. 
 
 And then he turned to another kind, and created at 
 a breath M. Dupin, that master of insight, who proved 
 that the complex was seldom profound, and who dis- 
 covered by the natural transition from a colliding 
 fruiterer, through street stones, stereotomy, Epicurus, 
 and Dr. Nicholls, to Orion, that Chantilly was a very 
 little fellow, and would do better for the Theatre des 
 Varietes. Now, Monsieur Charles A. Dupin is of 
 good family — so much you are ready to believe j he 
 is also young — a statement you decline to accept on 
 the word of a creator, unless, indeed, he be the 
 Wandering Jew. But whatever his age and breeding, 
 he is a master of analysis, and plays at ratiocination as 
 a boy plays with a peg-top. He knows by long experi- 
 ence that in pitting your intelligence against another's 
 you are sure to win if you identify yourself with your 
 adversary. And when once this principle is under- 
 stood, it is as easy as a game of marbles, and more pro- 
 fitable. M. Dupin loves darkness better than light, 
 not because his deeds are evil, but because, being a 
 
176 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 poet and a mathematician, he works better by lamp- 
 light. Hence it is his practice to live through the 
 day by the glimmer of two flickering candles, and to 
 walk abroad at night under the spell of the gas-lamps. 
 But if his work be serious, or if he be forced to 
 interview the doltish Prefect of Police, then he sits in 
 the dark, and silently pufFs his meerschaum. 
 
 The smallest indication was suflicient for him, and 
 while the police fumbled over the murders in the Rue 
 Morgue, arresting a harmless bank-clerk, he not only 
 discovered the true culprit, but was convinced that the 
 culprit's master was a sailor, belonging to a Maltese 
 vessel. " How was it possible ? " asked his incredulous 
 accomplice, " that you should know the man to be a 
 sailor, and belonging to a Maltese vessel ? " " I do 
 not know it," said Dupin. " I am not sure of it ! 
 Here, however, is a small piece of ribbon, which from 
 its form, and from its greasy appearance, has evidently 
 been used in tying the hair in one of those long queues 
 of which sailors are so fond. Moreover, this knot is 
 one which few besides sailors can tie, and is peculiar to 
 the Maltese." Imagine the joy of happening upon 
 this masterpiece of combined observation and analysis, 
 in the days before the trick had not been vulgarised 
 beyond recognition ! And yet, despite this flash of 
 genius, M. Dupin affected to despise ingenuity, which 
 he regarded as the cheapest of human qualities ; and 
 he would persuade you that all his finest effects were 
 produced by pure reason ! His most daring deed was 
 done in the Rue Morgue : the instant discovery of the 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 177 
 
 inhuman murderer was adroitness itself; and the 
 advertisement of the recovered Ourang-Outang was 
 even more brilliant. Unhappily there is a touch of 
 melodrama in the locked door, the pistol upon the 
 table, and the extorted confession. But M. Dupin is 
 seldom guilty of such an indiscretion, and you readily 
 forgive him. A more subtle achievement was the 
 recovery of the purloined letter, for in this exploit he 
 
 opposed the great Minister D , and proved the 
 
 superior at all points. In brief, his shining qualities 
 are as stars in the night, nor have they been dimmed by 
 the flickering rushlights of the unnumbered imitators, 
 who mimic the tone of the inimitable Dupin. 
 
 Though The Gold Bug is a masterpiece of another 
 sort, it is nearly related to The Purloined Letter, It 
 displays the perfect logic, the complete lucidity, the 
 mastery of analysis, which make M. Dupin immortal. 
 No step in the adventure but is foreseen and inevitable. 
 Never before nor since has use so admirable been made 
 of ciphers and buried treasure. The material, maybe, 
 was not new, but the treatment, as of a glorified prob- 
 lem in mathematics, was Poe's own invention. In 
 his hands the slightest incident ceased to be curious, 
 and became (so to say) a link in the chain of fate. 
 Not only was he unrivalled in the art of construction, 
 but he touched the simplest theme with a clairvoyant 
 intelligence, which seemed at the same moment to 
 combine and analyse the materials of his story. Thus, 
 also, the best of his scientific parables convince the 
 imagination, even if they leave the reason refractory. 
 
 M 
 
178 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 But the purpose of these is too obvious, their central 
 truths are too heavily w^eighted w^ith pretended docu- 
 ments, for immortality. It is upon the grotesque, the 
 horrible, and the ingenious that Poe has established 
 his reputation. And surely the author of Ligeia^ of 
 Silence^ of William Wilson^ of the Dupin Cycle, of The 
 Gold Bug^ and of The Mask of the Red Death need 
 not defend his title to undying fame. 
 
 Though Poe was a maker of great stories, he was 
 not a great writer. That he might have been is 
 possible, for none ever showed in fragments a finer 
 sense of words ; that he was not is certain. An 
 American critic would excuse him upon the ground 
 that he lived before Pater, Flaubert, and Arnold. 
 Never was a more preposterous theory formulated. 
 As though the art of prose were newly invented ! The 
 English tongue, accurate, noble, coloured, is centuries 
 older than Pater ; and even in Poe's own time there 
 were models worth the following. He knew Coleridge 
 from end to end, and did not profit by his example. 
 So conscious is he of style in others, that he condemns 
 the Latinity of Lamb, but he rarely knits his own 
 sentences to perfection. The best he wraps round 
 with coils of useless string, and he is not incapable 
 of striking false notes upon the Early-Victorian drum. 
 He shocks you, for instance, by telling you that 
 William Wilson at Oxford "vied in profuseness 
 of expenditure with the haughtiest heirs of the 
 wealthiest earldoms in Great Britain" — a sentence 
 equally infamous whether it appeal to the ear or to 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 179 
 
 the brain. Egeaus, again, the ghoulish lover of 
 Berenice, boasts, with a pride which Mrs. RadclyfFe 
 might envy, that "there are no towers in the land 
 more time-honoured than my gloomy, grey, hereditary 
 halls." This is fustian, and you regret it the more 
 because in construction, in idea, Poe was seldom at 
 fault. The opening of his stories is commonly perfect. 
 How could you better the first page of The House of 
 Ushery whose weird effect is attained throughout by 
 the simplest means ? Another writer would take five 
 pages to explain what Poe has suggested in the first 
 five lines of The Oval Portrait ; and to how many has 
 this rejection of all save the essential been a noble 
 example ? But Poe, writing on the impulse of a 
 whim, let the style which he knew elude his grasp, 
 and if his carelessness cast a shadow upon his true 
 masterpieces, it reduces the several volumes of properly 
 forgotten fentasies to the level of journalism. 
 
 The criticism of Poe inaugurated a new era, a new 
 cult of taste and beauty. Whether in theory or in 
 practice he was ahead not only of his time, but of all 
 time. That same keen intelligence which created 
 M. Dupin, tore to pieces the prevailing superstitions 
 and disclosed in a few pages the true qualities of 
 literature. Beauty is his cult ; poetry for him is ^ 
 "the rhythmical creation of beauty." He is neither 
 preacher nor historian. Being an artist, he esteems 
 facts as lightly as morals. Art, he says, has "no 
 concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth." 
 A poem is written solely for the poem's sake. " Per- 
 
^8p STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 severance," again, " is one thing, genius quite another ;" 
 and the public has as little to do with the industry as 
 with the inspiration of the artist. To us who have 
 lived through the dark age of naturalism his passage 
 upon Truth rings like a prophecy : " The demands 
 of Truth," he writes in The Poetic Principle^ '' are 
 severe ; she has no sympathy with the myrtles. All 
 that which is so indispensable in Song, is precisely all 
 that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It 
 is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreath her 
 in gems and flowers." Even more precise and bitter 
 is his epigrammatic indictment of Realism. "The 
 defenders of this pitiable stufF" — you will find the 
 lines in Marginalia — " uphold it on the ground of its 
 truthfulness. Taking the thesis into question, the 
 truthfulness is the one overwhelming defect. An 
 original idea that — to laud the accuracy with which 
 the stone is hurled that knocks us in the head. A 
 little less accuracy might have left us more brains. 
 And here are critics absolutely commending the truth- 
 fulness with which only the disagreeable is conveyed ! 
 In my view, if an artist must paint decayed cheeses, 
 his merit will lie in their looking as Httle like decayed 
 cheeses as possible." And that was written twenty R 
 years before the advent of Zola ! 
 
 In The Philosophy of Composition^ moreover, he ex- 
 plains, what should never have needed explanation, 
 that a work of art is the result not of accident but of 
 a reasoned artifice ; and he illustrates his thesis by a 
 whimsical, far-fetched analysis of his own Raven. He 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE iBi 
 
 treats the poem with the same impartial intelligence 
 which M. Dupin would have brought to the detection 
 of a murderer or the discovery of a missing trinket. 
 He was, in truth, the Dupin of Criticism. For he 
 looked, with his keen eye and rapid brain, through the 
 innumerable follies wherewith literature was obscured, 
 and he rejected the false hypotheses as scornfully as 
 M. Dupin set aside the imbecilities of the Prefect. As 
 a censor of his contemporaries, he dipped his pen in 
 gall. His sense of honour knew neither civility nor 
 favouritism. Alone among critics he has come forth 
 with a chivalrous defence of that craft, in which he 
 took a fierce and lawful pride. He was no adulator 
 ready-made to serve a Society of Authors : he was a 
 judge, condemning the guilty with an honourable 
 severity. "When we attend less to authority," he 
 wrote, " and more to principles, when we look less at 
 merit and more at demerit, we shall be better critics 
 than we are." Is that not enough to make the 
 Popular Novelist turn green with fury, especially 
 since it is the deliberate utterance of a man whose 
 example has furnished forth a whole library of popular 
 novels ? Twice he quotes the parable of the critic 
 who " presented to Apollo a severe censure upon an 
 excellent poem. The god asked him for the beauties 
 of the work. He replied that he only troubled himself 
 about the errors. Apollo presented him with a sack 
 of unwinnowed wheat, and bade him pick out the chafF 
 for his pains." Now, this is the critic's severest 
 condemnation, and yet Poe defends his trade with an 
 
i82 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 honourable loyalty : he is not sure, says he, that the 
 god was in the right. 
 
 Being a severe judge, he was generously misunder- 
 stood. Longfellow was magnanimous enough to 
 attribute " the harshness of his criticism to the irrita- 
 tion of a sensitive nature, chafed by some indefinite 
 sense of wrong." Thus the illiterate are wont to 
 ascribe the lightest censure to a critic's envy. And 
 they do not see, neither Longfellow nor the illiterate, 
 that they are bringing superfluous charges of bad faith. 
 Is it possible that Longfellow could not imagine the 
 necessity of censure ? Is it possible that he, like the 
 bleating lambs of fiction, believed that criticism is 
 written, not for its own sake, but for the voidance of 
 gall ? If such were his creed, if he, being a critic, 
 would never have written a line unblotted by hatred 
 or irritation, it is fortunate that he did not lapse from 
 his devotion to poetry. But Poe was not always 
 harsh, and when he used the scourge, he used it in 
 defence of his craft. It was his misfortune to review 
 his contemporaries ; and they, though they resented 
 his reproach, have already justified his severity by 
 crawling, one and all, into oblivion. A bold judgment, 
 indeed, would suppress these innumerable pages of 
 books reviewed — pages which served their turn at 
 the moment, and which dimly reflect the brilliant in- 
 sight of Marginalia, But when Poe encountered a 
 master, he was eager in appreciation. His praise of 
 Alfred Tennyson was as generous as it was wise. 
 *' In perfect sincerity," he wrote, " I regard him as 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 183 
 
 the noblest poet that ever lived." And, again, 
 remembering that this was written in 1843, 7^^ 
 recognise in Poe the gift of prophecy. 
 
 But to complete the cycle of his accomplishments 
 he was also a poet, and it is as a poet that he wears the 
 greenest bays. Here his practice coincided accurately 
 with his theory. He believed that a long poem was 
 a contradiction in terms, and he only erred once 
 against the light when he called Eureka.^ a tedious 
 treatise upon all things and nothing, " a prose poem." 
 In his eyes the sole aim of poetry was beauty, and 
 such beauty as should touch the ear rather than the 
 brain. His musical art eludes analysis, and he 
 esteemed it great in proportion as it receded from the 
 hard shapes and harder truths of life. Of him it 
 might be said truly that " he seemed to see with his 
 ear." You do not question Annabel Lee and Vlalume, 
 You do not attempt to drag a common meaning from 
 their gossamer loveliness. You listen to their refrains 
 and repeated cadences ; you delight in their rippling 
 sound and subtle variations ; and you are content to 
 find yourself in the presence of an art which, like 
 music, does not represent, but merely presents, an 
 emotion. And because Poe acknowledged the artifice 
 of his poetry, some have denied him imagination. 
 But imagination most clearly manifests herself in 
 artistic expression ; and has naught in common with 
 the rhymester's rolling eye and untutored fancy. 
 
 It is not surprising that Poe's multiform genius 
 should have proved a dominant influence upon 
 
i84 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 European literature. Not only was he a sombre light 
 to the decadence ; not only was he a guiding flame in 
 the pathway of the mystics ; he also revived the novel 
 of adventure and lost treasure, of the South Seas and 
 of Captain Kidd. The atrocities which have been 
 committed in the name of his Dupin are Hke the sands 
 for number ; and the detective of fact, as of romance, 
 has attempted to model himself upon this miracle of 
 intelligence. Thus he has been an example to both 
 houses — to M. Huysmans, who has emulated his erudi- 
 tion, and to Gaboriau, who has cheapened his mystery. 
 It is his unique distinction to have anticipated even the 
 trivialities of life. His title. The Man that Was Used 
 up^ has let in upon us the legion of imbeciles who did 
 or didn't, who would or wouldn't. He it was, too, that 
 imagined the philosopher who, in the vanity of his heart, 
 should spell his god with a little g ! By a strange 
 accident his influence came to us, not from America 
 but from France. No sooner was The Murders in the 
 Rue Morgue published in America, than it appeared as 
 a feuilleton in le Commerce^ and in 1 846 was printed a 
 volume of Contes^ translated by Isabelle Meunier. 
 Ten years later Baudelaire began the brilliant series 
 of translations, which added the glory of Poe to 
 French literature. That Poe gained in the trans- 
 ference there is no doubt : the looseness of his style 
 was tightened in the distinguished prose of Baudelaire; 
 and henceforth Poe was free to shape the literary future 
 of France. So it was his example that moulded the conte 
 to its ultimate completion. His talents of compression 
 and facile exposition, his gift of building up a situation in 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 185 
 
 a hundred words, were imitated by the army of writers 
 who first perfected the short story, and then sent it 
 across the Channel. Nor is Baudelaire the only poet 
 who has turned Poe into French. M. Stephane 
 Mallarme, also, has proved his sympathy with the 
 author of The Raven in a set of matchless translations. 
 He has changed the verse of Poe into a rhythmical 
 prose, and withal he has kept so close to the original 
 that the prose echoes not only the phrase but the 
 cadence of the verse. And from France Poe pene- 
 trated every country in Europe. He is known and 
 read in those remote corners which he described, yet 
 never saw. He is as familiar in Spain as in Scandinavia, 
 and The Raven has been translated "direct from 
 English " in far-ofF Valparaiso. 
 
 And here is the final contrast of his life. The 
 prophet of silence and seclusion is blown to the four 
 winds of heaven. But he has conquered glory with- 
 out stooping one inch from his proper attitude of 
 aristocracy. He is still as exclusive and morose as his 
 stories. Between him and his fantasies there is no 
 discord. You imagine him always stern-faced and 
 habited in black, with Virginia Clemm at his side, 
 Virginia shadowy as Ligeia, amiable as the mild 
 Eleonora in the Valley of the Many-coloured Grass. 
 He dwelt in mid-America, and he was yet in fairy- 
 land. Though the squalor of penury and the 
 magazines gave him neither " ancestral hall " nor 
 " moss-grown abbey," he lived and died enclosed 
 within the iny)regnable castle of his mind. 
 
LUCIAN 
 I 
 
LUCIAN* 
 I 
 
 IT is a commonplace of criticism that Lucian was 
 the first of the moderns, but in truth he is near 
 to our time, because of all the ancients he is nearest to 
 his own. He was of those who made the discovery 
 that there is material for literature in the debased and 
 various life of every day — that to the seeing eye the 
 individual is more wonderful in colour and complexity 
 than the severely simple abstraction of the poets. He 
 replaced the tradition, respected of his fathers, by an 
 observation more vivid and less pedantic than the note- 
 book of the naturalist. He set the world in the dry 
 light of truth, and since the vanity of mankind is a 
 constant factor throughout the ages, there is scarce a 
 page of Lucian's writing that wears the faded air of 
 antiquity. His 'personages are as familiar to-day as 
 they were in the second century, because, with his 
 pitiless determination to unravel the tangled skein of 
 human folly, he never blinded his vision to their true 
 
 * Certaine Select Dialogues of Lucian together with his true 
 Historic, translated from the Greeke into English by Mr^ 
 Francis Hickes. Printed by William Turner. 1634. 
 
190 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 qualities. And the multiplicity of his interest is as 
 fresh as his penetration. Nothing came amiss to his 
 eager curiosity. For the first time in the history of 
 literature (with the doubtful exception of Cicero) we 
 encounter a writer whose ceaseless activity includes 
 the world. While others had declared themselves 
 poets, historians, philosophers, Lucian comes forth as 
 a man of letters. Had he lived to-day, he would have 
 edited a newspaper, written leading articles, and kept 
 his name ever before the public in the magazines. 
 For he possessed the qualities, if he avoided the 
 defects, of the journalist. His phrase had not been 
 worn by constant use to imbecility ; his sentences 
 were not marred by the association of commonness ; 
 his style was still his own and fit for the expression of 
 a personal view. But he noted such types and 
 incidents as make an immediate, if perennial, appeal, 
 and to study him is to be convinced that literature 
 and journalism are not necessarily divorced. 
 
 The profession was new, and with the joy of the 
 innovator Lucian was never tired of inventing new 
 genres. Romance,^ criticism, satire — he mastered them 
 all. In Toxaris and The Ass^ if indeed that work 
 may be attributed to him, he proved with what 
 delicacy and restraint he could handle the story. His 
 hapless apprenticeship to a sculptor gave him the 
 taste and feeling for art which he turned to so admir- 
 able an account. He was, in fact, the first of the art 
 critics, and he pursued the craft with an easy uncon- 
 sciousness of the heritage he bequeathed to the world. 
 
LUCIAN 191 
 
 Though he is silent concerning the technical practice 
 of the Greeks ; though he leaves us in profound 
 ignorance of the art of Zeuxis, whose secrets he might 
 have revealed had he been less a man of letters, he 
 found in painting and sculpture an opportunity for 
 elegance of phrase, and we would forgive a thousand 
 shortcomings for such inspirations of beauty as the 
 smile of Sosandra : ro ftciSiajua (refivov koX XeXtiOog, 
 In literary criticism he was on more familiar ground, 
 yet here also he leaves the past behind. His knowledge 
 of Greek poetry was profound ; Homer he had by 
 heart ; and on every page he proves his sympathies by 
 covert allusion or precise quotation. His treatise con- 
 cerning the writing of history {Uiog Set [(rropiav 
 (Tvyypat^iLv) preserves its force irresistible after seven- 
 teen centuries, nor has the wisdom of the ages im- 
 peached or modified this lucid argument. With a 
 modest wit he compares himself to Diogenes, who, 
 when he saw his fellow citizens busied with the pre- 
 parations of war, gathered his skirts about him and fell 
 to rolling his tub up and down. So Lucian, un- 
 ambitious of writing history, sheltered himself from 
 *'the waves and the smoke," and was content to 
 provide others with the best of good counsel. Yet 
 such is the irony of accident that, as Lucian's criti- 
 cism has outlived the masterpieces of Zeuxis, so the 
 historians have snatched an immortality from his 
 censure ; and let it be remembered for his glory that 
 he used Thucydides as a whip wherewith to beat 
 impostors. 
 
192 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 But matters of so high import did not always 
 engross his humour, and in The Illiterate Book- 
 buyer (II/ooc Tov airai^iVTOv kol iroXXa j5ij5Xla 
 wvovfitvov) he satirises a fashion of the hours and of 
 all time with a courage and brutality which tear the 
 heart out of truth. How intimately does he realise 
 his victim ! And how familiar is this same victim in 
 his modern shape ! You know the very streets he 
 haunts ; you know the very shops wherein he is wont 
 to acquire his foolish treasures ; you recognise that not 
 by a single trait has Lucian dishonoured his model. 
 In yet another strange instance Lucian anticipated the 
 journalist of to-day. Though his disciples know it 
 not, he invented the interview. In that famous visit 
 to the Elysian Fields, which is a purple patch upon 
 his masterpiece, The True History^ he "went to talk 
 with Homer the poet, our leisure serving us both 
 well," and he put precisely those questions which the 
 modern hack, note-book in hand, would seek to 
 resolve. First, remembering .the seven cities, he 
 would know of Homer what fatherland claimed him, 
 and when the poet " said indeed he was a Babylonian, 
 and among his own countrymen not called Homer but 
 Tigranes," Lucian straightly "questioned him about 
 those verses in his books that are disallowed as not of 
 his making j " whereto Homer replied with a proper 
 condemnation of Zenodotus and Aristarchus. And 
 you wonder whether Lucian is chastising his contem- 
 poraries or looking with the eye of a prophet into the 
 future. 
 
LUCIAN 193 
 
 But even more remarkable than his many-coloured 
 interest is Lucian's understanding. He was, so to 
 say, a perfect intelligence thrown by accident into an 
 age of superstition and credulity. It is not only that 
 he knew all things : he saw all things in their right 
 shape. If the Pagan world had never before been 
 conscious of itself, it had no excuse to harbour illusions 
 after his coming. Mr. Pater speaks of the intellectual 
 light he turned upon dim places, and truly no corner 
 of life escaped the gleam of his lantern. Gods, philo- 
 sophers, necromancers yielded up their secrets to his 
 inquiry. With pitiless logic he criticised their ex- 
 travagance and pretension ; and, actively anticipating 
 the spirit of modern science, he accepted no fact, he. 
 subscribed to no theory, which he had not examined 
 with a cold impartiality. Indeed, he was scepticism 
 in human shape, but as the weapon of his destruction 
 is always raillery, as he never takes either himself or 
 his victims with exaggerated seriousness, you may 
 delight in his attack, even though you care not which 
 side wins the battle. His wit was as mordant as 
 Heine's own — is it fantastical to suggest that Lucian 
 too carried Hebrew blood in his veins ? — yet when the 
 onslaught is most unsparing he is still joyous. For a 
 gay contempt, not a bitter hatred, is the note of his 
 satire. And for the very reason that his scepticism 
 was felt, that it sprang from a close intimacy with the 
 follies of his own time, so it is fresh and famihar to an 
 age that knows not Zeus. Not even the Dialogues 
 of the Gods are out of date, for if we no longer 
 
 N 
 
194 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 reverence Olympus we still blink our eyes at the flash 
 of ridicule. And might not the Philopseudes^ that 
 masterly analysis of ghostly terrors, have been written 
 yesterday ? 
 
 And thus we arrive at Lucian's weakness. In spite 
 of its brilliance and flippancy, his scepticism is at 
 times over-intelligent. So easy is it to extract sport 
 from popular theology, that his ridicule of the Gods, 
 exquisitely as it is expressed, sometimes suggests the 
 odious pleasantry of the modern freethinker. His 
 good sense baflles you by its infallibility ; his sanity 
 is so magnificently beyond question, that you pray 
 for an interlude of unreason. The sprightliness of 
 his wit, the alertness of his fancy, mitigate the per- 
 petual rightness of his judgment. But it must be 
 confessed that for all his delicate sense of ridicule he 
 cherished a misguided admiration of the truth. If 
 only he had understood the joy of self-deception, if 
 only he had realised more often (as he realised in 
 his stories) the delight of throwing probability to 
 the winds, we had regarded him with a more con- 
 stant affection. His capital defect sprang from a 
 lack of the full-blooded humour which should at 
 times have led him into error. And yet by an irony 
 it was this very love of truth which suggested The 
 True History^ that enduring masterpiece of phantasy. 
 Setting out to prove his hatred of other men's lies, he 
 shows himself on the road the greatest liar of them all. 
 "The father and founder of all this foolery was 
 Homer's Ulysses : " thus he writes in his preface, con- 
 
LUCIAN 195 
 
 fessing that in a spirit of emulation he " turned his style 
 to publish untruths," but with an honester mind, " for 
 this one thing I confidently pronounce for a truth, 
 that I lie." 
 
 Such is the spirit of the work, nor is there 
 the smallest doubt that Lucian, once embarked upon 
 his voyage, slipped from his ideal, to enjoy the lying 
 for its own sake. If The True History fails as a 
 parody, that is because we care not a jot for Ctesias, 
 lambulus and the rest, at whom the satire is levelled. 
 Its fascination, in fact, is due to those same qualities 
 which, in others, its author affected to despise. The 
 facile variety of its invention can scarce be matched in 
 literature, and the lies are told with so delightful an 
 unconcern, that belief is never difficult. Nor does the 
 narrative ever flag. It ends at the same high level of 
 felsehood in which it has its beginning. And the 
 credibility is increased by the harmonious consistency 
 of each separate lie. At the outset the traveller dis- 
 covers a river of wine, and forthwith travels up stream 
 to find the source, and " when we were come to the 
 head" (to quote Hickes' translation), "no spring at all 
 appeared, but mighty vine-trees of infinite number, 
 which from their roots distilled pure wine, which 
 made the river run so abundantly." So conclusive is 
 the explanation, that you only would have wondered 
 had the stream been of water. And how admirable is 
 the added touch that he who ate fish from the river was 
 made drunk ! Then by a pleasant gradation you are 
 carried on from the Hippogypians, or the Riders of 
 
196 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Vultures, every feather in whose wing is bigger and 
 longer than the mast of a tall ship, from the fleas as large 
 as twelve elephants, to those spiders of mighty bigness, 
 every one of which exceeded in size an isle of the 
 Cyclades. " These were appointed to spin a web in 
 the air between the Moon and the Morning Star, 
 which was done in an instant, and made a plain cham- 
 paign, upon which the foot forces were planted." 
 
 Truly a very Colossus of falsehood, but Lucian's 
 ingenuity is inexhausted and inexhaustible, and the 
 mighty whale is his masterpiece of impudence. For 
 he " contained in greatness fifteen hundred furlongs " ; 
 his teeth were taller than beech-trees, and when he 
 swallowed the travellers, he showed himself so far 
 superior to Jonah's fish, that ship and all sailed down 
 his throat, and happily he caught not the pigmy 
 shallop between his chops. And the geographical 
 divisions of the whale's belly, and Lucian's adven- 
 tures therein, are they not set down with circum- 
 stantial verity ? Then there is the episode of the 
 frozen ship, and the sea of milk, with its well-pressed 
 cheese for an island, which reminds one of the Eliza- 
 bethan madrigal : '' If there were O an Hellespont of 
 Cream." Moreover, the verisimilitude is enhanced by 
 a scrupulously simple style. No sooner is the preface 
 concerning lying at an end than Lucian lapses into 
 pure narrative. A wealth of minutely considered 
 detail gives an air of reality to the most monstrous 
 impossibility ; the smallest facts are explicitly divulged -, 
 the remote accessories described with order and im- 
 
LUCIAN 197 
 
 pressiveness j so that the wildest invention appears 
 plausible, even inevitable, and you know that you are 
 in company with the very genius of falsehood. Nor 
 does this wild diversity of invention suggest romance. 
 It is still classic in style and form ; not a phrase nor 
 a word is lost, and expression, as always in the Classics, 
 is reduced to its lowest terms. 
 
 But when the travellers reach the Islands of the 
 Blessed, the style takes on a colour and a beauty 
 which it knew not before. A fragrant air breathed 
 upon them, as of "roses, daffodils, gillyflowers, 
 lilies, violets, myrtles, bays, and blossoms of vines." 
 Happy also was the Isle to look upon, evBa ^ri 
 KOI Kadeu)pu)iuL£v Xi/uEvag re noWovg zrept iratrav 
 afcXvoTOVc icai juieyakovg, iroTafiovg ts diavyhg 
 l^iovrag ripe/xa eg rrjv OaXarrav' ert ^e XufXMvag 
 KoX vXag KOL opvea fiovrrLKCLy ra filv lin rtjv rfiovtjv 
 ^covTOj iroXXa de koX ctfi rwv KXa^tjv' arip re Kovtjiog 
 KOI svTTVOvg TrfpUKt)(yTO rrjv \(l)pav : " a still and 
 gentle air compassing the whole country." Where 
 will you find a more vivid expression of serenity and 
 delight ? or where match " the melody of the 
 branches, like the sound of wind instruments in a 
 solitary place " (otTro tCjv kXo^wv Kivovfi^vtjv Tspirvd 
 Kal (Twexifi fiiXi) a'n'e<TvpiZeTO soiKora roig en Ipripiag 
 avXyjinaai tCjv irXayi^v avXCjv) ? And when the 
 splendour of the city breaks upon you, with its 
 smaragdus, its cinnamon-tree, its amethyst, ivory and 
 beryl, the rich babarity suggests Solomon's Temple, or 
 the City of the Revelation. Its inhabitants are the 
 
198 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 occasion of infinite jesting, and again and again does 
 Lucian satirise the philosophers, his dearest foes. 
 Socrates was in danger of being thrust forth by 
 Rhadamanthus, i]v ^Xuapi? koI jmrj eOiXy a(pe\g r»)i^ 
 elpojvdav evojxeXcrBaiy while as for Diogenes the Sino- 
 pean, so profoundly was he changed from his old 
 estate, that he had married Lais the Harlot. 
 
 The journey to Hell is another excuse to gird at the 
 historians. The severest torments were inflicted, says 
 Lucian, upon Ctesias the Cnidian, Herodotus and 
 many others, which the writer beholding " was put in 
 great hopes that I should never have anything to do 
 there, for I do not know that ever I spake any un- 
 truth in my life." And yet with all his irony, all his 
 scorn, Lucian has ever a side-glance at literature. 
 The verse of Homer is constantly upon his lips, and it 
 is from Homer that the gods take their ditties in the 
 Elysian fields. Again, when the traveller visits the 
 city of Nephelococcygia, it is but to think upon the 
 poet Aristophanes, " how wise a man he was, and how 
 true a reporter, and how little cause there is to ques- 
 tion his fidelity for what he hath written." 
 
 Such is the work which, itself a masterpiece, has 
 been a pattern and an exemplar unto others. If 
 Utopia and its unnumbered rivals derive from Plato, 
 there is not a single Imaginary Traveller that is not 
 modelled upon Lucian. The True History was, in 
 effect, the ancestor of a very full literature. Not only 
 was its framework borrowed, not only was its habit of 
 fantastic names piously imitated, but the disciples, like 
 
LUCIAN 199 
 
 the master, turned their voyages to the purpose of 
 satire. It was Rabelais, his speech emboldened by the 
 frankness of his master, who made the first adaptation, 
 for, while Epistemon's descent into Hell was certainly 
 suggested by Lucian, Pantagruel's voyage is an ample 
 travesty of The True History ; and Lanterland, the 
 home of the Lychnobii, is but Lychnopolis, Lucian's 
 own City of Lights. The seventeenth century dis- 
 covered another imitator in Cyrano de Bergerac, 
 whose tepid Voyage dans la Lune is interesting merely 
 because it is a link in the chain that unites Lucian 
 with Swift. Yet the book had an immense popu- 
 larity, and Cyrano's biographer has naught to say of 
 the original traveller, save that he told his story " avec 
 beaucoup moins de vraisemblance et de gentillesse 
 d'imagination que M. de Bergerac." An astounding 
 judgment surely, which time has already reversed. And 
 then came Gulliver'* 5 Travels^ incomparably the greatest 
 descendant of The True History, To what excellent 
 purpose Swift followed the lead of Lucian is proved 
 alike by the amazing probability of his narrative and 
 the cruelty of his satire. Like Lucian, he professed an 
 unveiled contempt for philosophers and mathematicians; 
 unlike Lucian, he made his imaginary journey the 
 occasion for a fierce satire upon kings and politicians. 
 But so masterly is the narrative, so convincing the 
 reality of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, that Gulliver 
 retains its hold upon our imagination, though the 
 meaning of its satire is long since blunted. Swift's 
 work came to astonish the world in 1727, and some 
 
200 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 fourteen years later in the century Holberg amazed 
 the wits of Denmark with a satire cast in Lucian's 
 mould. Nicolat Kllmii Iter Subterraneum — thus ran 
 the title ; and from Latin the book was translated into 
 every known tongue. The city of walking trees, the 
 home of the Potuans, and many another invention, prove 
 Holberg's debt to the author of The True History, 
 Hereafter unnumbered Spaniards followed in the beaten 
 track, while, though Fielding's Journey to the Next 
 World is eclipsed by his novels, it still shows him a 
 faithful imitator. And if the form is dead to-day, 
 it is dead because the most intrepid humourist would 
 hesitate to walk in the footsteps of Lemuel Gulliver. 
 
 Fortunate in his imitators, Lucian has been not 
 wholly unfortunate in his translators. Not even envy 
 could pick a quarrel with Francis Hickes, who first 
 Englished The True History. The book appeared 
 under the auspices of Hickes' son in 1634, four years 
 after the translator's death. Thus it is described 
 on the title-page : " Certaine Select Dialogues of 
 Lucian together with his true Historie, translated 
 from the Greeke into English by Mr. Francis Hickes. 
 Whereunto is added the life of Lucian gathered out of 
 his own Writings with briefe Notes and Illustrations 
 upon each Dialogue and Booke, by T. H., Master 
 of Arts, of Christ Church in Oxford. Printed by 
 William Turner, 1634." Composed with a certain 
 dignity, it is dedicated " to the Right Worshipful Dr. 
 Duppa, Deane of Christ Church, and Vice-Chancellor 
 of the famous Universitie in (Oxford." And the work 
 
LUCIAN 201 
 
 reflects a wholesome glory upon the famous Univer- 
 sity. For it is the work of a scholar, who knew both 
 the languages. Though his diction lacked the spirit 
 and colour which distinguish the more splendid ver- 
 sions of the Tudor age, he was far more keenly 
 conscious of his original than his predecessors. Not 
 only did he translate directly from the Greek, but 
 he followed his original with loyalty and patience. 
 In brief, his Lucian is a miracle of suitability. 
 The close simplicity of Hickes fits the classical 
 restraint of The True History to admiration. As 
 the Greek is a model of narrative, so you cannot 
 read the English version without thinking of the 
 incomparable Hakluyt. Thirty years after the first 
 printing of the translation, Jasper Mayne published 
 his Part of Lucian made English^ wherein he added 
 sundry versions of his own to the work already 
 accomplished by Francis Hickes. And in his Epistle 
 Dedicatory he discusses the art of translation with an 
 intelligence which proves how intimately he realised 
 the excellent quality of Hickes* version. " For as the 
 painter" — thus Jasper Mayne — "who would draw a 
 man of a bald head, rumpled forehead, copper nose, 
 pigge eyes, and ugly face, draws him not to life, nor 
 doth the business of his art, if he draw him less de- 
 formed or ugly than he is ; or as he who would draw 
 a faire, amiable lady, limbes with an erring pencil, and 
 drawes a libell, not a face, if he gives her not just 
 features, and perfections : So in the translation of 
 Bookes, he who makes a dull author elegant and 
 
202 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 quick ; or a sharp, elegant author flat, rustick, rude 
 and dull, by contrary wayes, commits the same sinne, 
 and cannot be said to translate, but to transforme." 
 That is sound sense, and judged by the high standard 
 of Jasper Mayne, Francis Hickes has most valiantly 
 acquitted himself. 
 
 He was the son of Richard Hickes, an arras weaver 
 of Barcheston, in Warwickshire, and after taking the 
 degree of Bachelor in the University of Oxford, which 
 he entered in 1579, at the age of thirteen, he was 
 diverted (says Thomas, his son) "by a country re- 
 tirement;" henceforth he devoted his life to husbandry 
 and Greek. Besides Lucian, he translated Thucy- 
 dides and Herodian, the manuscripts of which are said 
 to survive in the library of Christ Church. Possibly it 
 was his long retirement that gave a turn of pedantry 
 to his mind. It was but natural that in his remote 
 garden he should exaggerate the importance of the 
 knowledge acquired in patient solitude. But certain 
 it is that the notes wherewith he decorated his margins 
 are triumphs of inapposite erudition. When Lucian 
 describes the famous cobwebs, each one of which was 
 as big as an island of the Cyclades, Hickes thinks to 
 throw light upon the text with this astonishing 
 irrelevancy : " They are in the iEgean Sea, in 
 number 13." The foible is harmless, nay pleasant, 
 and consonant with the character of the learned 
 recluse. Thus lived Francis Hickes, silent and un- 
 known, until in 1630 he died at a kinsman's house 
 at Sutton, in Gloucestershire. And you regret that 
 
LUCIAN 203 
 
 his glory was merely posthumous. For, pedant as he 
 was, he made known to his countrymen the Rabelais of 
 the ancients, the veritable enemy of all the pedants, 
 and matched a masterpiece of Greek with another 
 masterpiece of sound and scholarly English. 
 
LUCIAN 
 II 
 
LUCIAN 
 II 
 
 BORN in Syria, educated, maybe, in Rome, a 
 citizen of the great empire, familiar with the 
 men and countries of the known world, Lucian re- 
 mained until his death a devout Athenian. Though 
 it pleased him to lecture through the length and 
 breadth of Macedonia, though he carried culture to 
 far-distant Gaul, he never forgot that — as a man 
 of letters — he owed his allegiance to that miraculous 
 city of the sea, which centuries ago had closed her 
 book of glory. For to Lucian Athens was still an 
 alma mater^ who with splendour undimmed cherished 
 the destinies of literature, and imposed her laws upon 
 all the world. Never once does he hint at decline ; 
 never once does he suggest that the age of Pericles is 
 past. With an admirable dogmatism he suppresses the 
 intervening years, and pictures you a city which, still 
 the home of Thucydides, listens awestruck to the 
 wisdom of Socrates. The eminence of Rome avails 
 not to turn him from his loyalty ; though he never 
 loses an occasion to quote a tag from the poets, though 
 the lightest of his essays is embellished with a literary 
 
2o8 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 allusion, he knows naught of Virgil or Horace, and, 
 what is still stranger, professes no acquaintance with 
 Plautus or Terence. In brief, he chose his home and 
 he chose his period, and there is little beyond a hand- 
 ful of references to prove that Rome had passed its 
 Augustan age a hundred years before Lucian's birth, 
 and that she was throughout his career the undisputed 
 mistress of three continents. 
 
 He describes himself somewhere as one who lived 
 with the ancients, and for all his ceaseless questing 
 after new ideas, for all his valiant curiosity and research, 
 for all his reckless destruction of idols, he was in 
 literature as in life a staunch Conservative. His fancy 
 wandered far back into the past, and that for which he 
 had no appreciation was neither good nor bad : it was 
 condemned to silence. History can hardly show a 
 more violent paradox than this hard, sceptical, modern 
 philosopher for whom nothing seemed real save the 
 remote, and who, though a professed critic, had no 
 word of praise or blame for the dominant literature of 
 his time. He would conquer for his craft a whole 
 kingdom of new material , but meanwhile he knew 
 no other classics than Homer and Thucydides, than 
 Herodotus and i^schylus. Sculpture for him meant 
 the masterpieces of Phidias, of Polycletus, of Myron 
 and Alcamenes, while Zeuxis and Apelles, the only 
 painters worthy of admiration, might perchance be 
 Hving yet. Wherefore it is not surprising that he 
 wrote Greek with the austere suavity of the ancients. 
 T hough separated from his models by some five 
 
LUCIAN 209 
 
 centuries, by as wide a lapse as divides Tennyson and 
 Chaucer, he cultivated a style which Plato or Sophron 
 would have understood, and he achieved this marvel 
 without betraying the smallest trace of archaism. 
 Could there be found a better example of tradition's 
 tyranny ? Lucian was a writer of delicate taste, to 
 whom the extremes of affectation and artificiality were 
 repugnant ; yet so strong a hold had the Greek tongue 
 kept upon the world, that his language would have 
 appeared not only correct but admirable to the genera- 
 tion which heard Sophocles in the theatre of Dionysus. 
 Imagine Mr. Pater apeing the style of Wycliffe and 
 escaping notice ! And Lucian's achievement is evep 
 stranger, for he was a foreigner dwelling in foreign 
 cities, who chose Greek as Apuleius chose Latin, by a 
 whimsical preference. Moreover, he never spoke it 
 without an accent. "I talk Greek," he confesses 
 himself, " like a barbarian " ; but at least he wrote it 
 like the Athenian he elected to be, and the mobs which 
 listened to him could not detect the Syrian quality of 
 his speech. 
 
 .Nor was the Athens of his adoration the greedy, 
 mean, unscrupulous city wherewith the Roman satirists 
 have made us familiar. The hungry Greekling had 
 no place in the paradise of lofty thought and noble 
 conduct which Lucian saw in his dreams. The 
 panegyric of Athens put into the mouth of Nigrinus, 
 was obviously fashioned by his own brain, and could 
 only befit a commonwealth of heroism and restraint. 
 Yet its ardent sincerity is beyond question -, and in 
 
210 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Lucian's eyes tradition still snatched the victory from 
 decadence and death. Athens, then, is the proper 
 refuge for the needy philosopher, who values the 
 refinements of life above the indiscriminate scramble 
 for wealth. For such a one, be he stranger or native- 
 born, Athens has always a generous welcome. But 
 luckless is he who would challenge her sympathy with 
 ostentation, and capture her affection by display. Yet 
 her citizens are moderate in their displeasure, and re- 
 proach even vulgarity with a jest. " The bath has en- 
 joyed a long peace," they whisper to some foreigner who 
 comes among them with an enormous retinue, " there 
 is no need of a camp here." And when the upstart 
 would astonish the town with a coat of many colours 
 and purple trappings, "Look," they murmur, "the 
 Spring is here already," or, " Where did this peacock 
 spring from?" or, "Perhaps this robe is his mother's? " 
 But for him who loves a simple life, and the pursuit of 
 philosophy, Athens is the pleasantest resort, since there 
 may you live in accordance with nature and in the 
 presence of beautiful things. So Lucian contrasts 
 Rome with this perfect harmony, and handsomely 
 avenges the Gr a cuius esuriens. " Why, poor devil, 
 did you leave the sunlight ? " asks Nigrinus of him- 
 self, when he sets foot in the capital of the Empire, 
 where pleasure is admitted at every gate — pleasure 
 with its attendant vice — and where all men race for 
 the wealth which shall buy them gratification and 
 satiety. There the slave of to-day is the rich man of 
 to-morrow, and in the pitiless struggle honesty and 
 
LUCIAN 211 
 
 learning are despised. How should philosophy prevail 
 against the universal love of horse-racing ? How 
 should you expect simplicity from a city which sets up 
 the statues of its jockeys at every street corner, and 
 babbles only of its favourites' names ? Thus Lucian, 
 preferring the condemned, forgotten Athens, shows in 
 his preference as in his style that he is the last of the 
 Classics. 
 
 Yes, this Syrian with a provincial accent is a true 
 classic — classic in the humane management of his 
 style, classic also in his whole-hearted admiration of 
 the past. But when you desert the form for the 
 substance, you see how just is the commonplace, 
 already quoted, that he was the first of the moderns. 
 His achievement was nothing less than a miracle. He 
 poured the new wine of modern experience into the 
 old bottle of classic style, and neither wine nor bottle 
 was spoilt. If taste and reverence restrained his ex- 
 pression, his thought was free as air, and with perfect 
 truth he quoted the tag of Terence (doubtless from its 
 Greek original) : " Nothing that is human is foreign 
 to me." Remembering also his familiarity with the 
 Gods, to human he might have added divine. He 
 found his material where he chose — in the shadowy 
 palace of Olympus or in the highways of Rome. 
 Now it was Zeus that engrossed his scorn, now it 
 was Alexander the False Prophet that amused his 
 fancy ; and God or Charlatan was sufficient excuse 
 for sly wit or swift imagination. But in nothing does 
 he display the perfect freshness of his invention so 
 
212 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 evidently as in the bitter spirit of criticism which 
 animates the most of his works. There is a legend 
 that he left the sculptor's studio, where he should have 
 learnt his art, because he broke in two the first block 
 of marble submitted to his chisel. And this is a 
 symbol of his career : his talent was analytic and 
 destructive ; he was always breaking superstition in 
 pieces, or tearing the follies of mankind to shreds. 
 Nor, when he had cleared the ground of its impeding 
 rubble did he profess an ambition to build anew. He 
 was of those happy ones who can live by the light of 
 honesty and honour, and who need no compulsion of 
 creed or system to drive them to virtue and content. 
 Only he must examine all things ; and, having dis- 
 covered folly to himself, he must expose it to others 
 for the satisfaction of his irony. 
 
 Thus he was the first critic not of literature 
 merely, not of art, but of human life, and of all that 
 it embraced. And if his ironic method of judgment 
 was of his own devising, the shape of his criticism was 
 fresh, various, imaginative. Now, his contempt would 
 take the form of a tiny drama ; now, he would half 
 reveal his hidden meaning in a parable. But rarely 
 does he descend to express a bald opinion in the bald 
 terms of conviction. Of the dialogue he was the first 
 and perfect master. Doubtless he had gathered hints 
 from Plato and the mimes ; doubtless he had learnt 
 whatever the New Comedy had to teach of argument 
 and repartee. And yet the dialogue, as he practised it, 
 was essentially his own. His prose, more familiar than 
 
LUCIAN 213 
 
 Plato's, is as sprightly as the sprightliest comedy ; and 
 now for the first time was the ancient form, perfected 
 in a sort of verse by Sophron, turned to the easy 
 dissection of abuse, to the fierce confusion of the 
 foolish and superstitious. He blends narrative with 
 irony ; he quickens a smile when his reprobation is 
 heaviest ; and to beguile the progress of his acid 
 merriment he takes the reader on ship-board or by the 
 pleasant lanes of Attica, or bids him look from the 
 Acropolis on the shining city beneath. 
 
 And what were the terrors against which the critic 
 hurled his satire ? Like an excellent Conservative he 
 hated the democrat who governs the assembly of the 
 rich, who is hungry only for games, baths and 
 spectacles, and who is ready in recompense for 
 generosity to stone the wealthy citizen that feeds him. 
 With a proper scorn he assailed the upstart who marks 
 his accession to an ill-gotten fortune by adding two 
 syllables to his name, the simple unnoticed Simon, who 
 bids the world respect the dignity of Simonides. But 
 he aimed his heaviest shafts at the philosophers, whose 
 tangled beards and greasy mantles were his constant 
 target. Now, the philosophers occupied in Lucian's 
 world the space filled in after ages by the friars. 
 Their gulching bellies refuted the plea of hunger and 
 beggary. Though they would not work, still must 
 they eat ; and while they preached temperance to 
 others, their noses were at once the symbol and the 
 result of a too-patient devotion to the bottle. Eager 
 only for money and advertisement, they believed their 
 
214 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 duty done when they had chosen a label, and put on 
 the uniform of rags. Why do the Pythagoreans 
 refuse to eat beans and flesh ? Not for the sake of 
 virtue, but that they may become famous by their very 
 eccentricity, that they may be pointed at in the street 
 with the murmured surprise : " There go the philo- 
 sophers who abstain from, flesh and beans." 
 
 So the philosophers pursued no calling ; they per- 
 formed no service to the State : a useless fardel of the 
 earth, they shouted calumniously, and levied a pitiless 
 blackmail on the rich and complacent. Yet, despite 
 their constant habit of beggary, they pretended that 
 they were high exalted above the need of money, and 
 clamorously asserted that the wise man alone is rich. 
 Though virtue was ever on their tongue, their heart 
 was packed full of avarice and slander. A resolute 
 training carried them safely through their studied per- 
 formance, but the sight of an obol was suflicient to 
 lead them astray, so that they resembled nothing so 
 much as those monkeys whom a King of Egypt taught 
 to perform the Pyrrhic dance, and whose performance 
 was perfect, until one day a spectator threw a handful 
 of nuts into the theatre. Instantly the well-trained 
 rascals rid themselves of their masks, tore their coats 
 to pieces, and scrambled for the nuts, remembering 
 that if they were dancers afterwards they were monkeys 
 first. So, too, the primal impulse of the man was too 
 strong for the cant of the philosopher, and when (in 
 The Fisher) the Cynic's wallet was open, they found 
 therein — not a crust, a book, and a handful of 
 
LUCIAN 215 
 
 beans — but gold, perfumes, a mirror, and a dice-box. 
 In the miserable Peregrinus, however, all the sins of 
 his class were met together, and Lucian, well skilled 
 in the portraiture of the charlatan, never surpassed his 
 contemptuous presentation of this impostor. 
 
 The illustrious Peregrinus then, who after the Zeus 
 of Phidias was the single wonder of the earth, deter- 
 mined, by an act of sacrifice, not only to show his 
 fellow citizens how a philosopher could die, but to 
 illumine his name with a more brilliant advertisement 
 than countless generations of Barnums have devised 
 since. Having lived like Hercules, he determined like 
 Hercules to die. Wherefore he built him a vast pyre 
 at Olympia and died at the stake in the presence of 
 thousands. Lucian, himself a witness of the philo* 
 sopher's "roasting," describes how to the last Pere- 
 grinus, an ingrained coward, hoped that the crowd 
 would frustrate his design. And bitter was his dis- 
 appointment when, tired of the foolish spectacle, they 
 cried aloud : " Make an end of it, make an end of it ! " 
 Thus died the foolish philosopher, who governed his 
 life by vanity and the lust of popular approval. And 
 Democritus would have laughed at the spectacle, and 
 yet not found laughter enough, while " as for you," 
 says Lucian to his friend Theagenes, " you laugh too, 
 and above all, laugh when you hear others marvelling 
 at such folly." 
 
 But if Lucian was unsparing in his contempt of 
 vanity and pretence, he was generous in admiration of 
 the true philosopher. He visited Nigrinus as a sick 
 
2i6 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 man visits a physician, and thereafter composed a 
 sincere panegyric of his wisdom and eloquence. But 
 the supreme hero, in his eyes, was Demonax, whose 
 perfections he employs as a scourge wherewith to 
 scourge the upstart and impostor, and whose praise is, 
 in a sense, the severest criticism of his fellows. Above 
 all he reveres this philosopher, because his wisdom had 
 never made him forget that he was a gentleman as well 
 as a scholar. He refused to vie with the footpads of 
 Athens in eccentricity of garb and uncomeliness of 
 person. He did nothing to attract the notice of the 
 crowd ; he dressed like others, and lived a life of dis- 
 tinguished simplicity. Above all he protected himself 
 against the popular insolence by a bitterness of repartee, 
 which, if it were not precisely the Socratic irony, 
 was always touched with Attic grace. And as Lucian 
 admired the few wise men w^ho found wisdom else- 
 where than in the blind adherence to a school, so for 
 Philosophy, his dear mistress, he cherished an undying 
 reverence. But alas ! it was in vain that he sought 
 her. " I know not where she lives," he wrote, " and 
 yet I have wandered up and down a weary while 
 seeking her house that I might pay her a visit." 
 
 Possibly he never found her save in a dream, yet 
 sedulously did he practise the rites of her worship, and 
 the bitterest of his irony is devoted to her defence. 
 But of literature also he was an eager champion, and 
 a theory of criticism may be deduced from his casual 
 utterances. He followed Aristotle implicitly in the 
 belief that the end and aim of art was to give pleasure. 
 
LUCIAN 217 
 
 He shrank from realism as he shrank from novelty, as 
 he shrank from every ingenuity which marred the 
 perfect beauty of a piece. There is a certain pathos 
 in the apology which he made, at the top of his fame, 
 for his favourite dialogue. An over zealous friend had 
 proclaimed him the " Prometheus of literature," and 
 he disowns the name in a passage of admirable dignity. 
 " Perhaps," says he, in effect, " I am called Prometheus 
 because my works are fresh in form and follow the 
 example of no man But in my eyes strange- 
 ness without beauty has no merit .... and I should 
 deserve to be torn to pieces by sixteen vultures if I 
 thought that a work of art could be distinguished by 
 novelty alone." So he would prove that the form is 
 no new thing at all, but the legitimate child of 
 Dialogue and Comedy ; so he would reject the false 
 praise which his admirers would bid him share with 
 the black camel of Bactria or with the striped man 
 that Ptolemy brought to Egypt. So in the Zeuxis^ 
 this ancient classic, who could not withhold his hand 
 from new material, and who always had ready a new 
 form of parable, adds to his eloquent denunciation of 
 novelty a candid defence of technique against the 
 tyranny of subject. He had left a lecture-room, he 
 tells you, furious with the ill-considered applause of his 
 audience, and especially enraged against the constant 
 comphment heaped upon the novelty of his discourse.* 
 
 * The shouts of the people were as fatuous then as to-day. 
 Q TTJs KaivdrrjTOSy they cried ; 'Hpd/cXeis, rijs irapado^oXoyias. 
 ivfirjxo-vos AvSpuiros. oi/dh 6.v ris etiroi ttjs iirivoias veapdrrepov. 
 
2i8 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 As he went homeward, chagrined that he is admired 
 only because he has left the common road ; that 
 he receives the praise of a facile conjurer ; that 
 the harmony of his Attic style, the swiftness of 
 his imagination, his many-coloured fancy count for 
 nothing ; he bethought him of the mishap which befel 
 Zeuxis. Now, Zeuxis painted a family of centaurs, 
 the mare stretched upon the deep grass, and the centaur 
 keeping watch in the background, a long-haired, savage 
 child of the mountain. But the people passed by in 
 idle contempt not only the beauty of the drawing and 
 the exquisite harmony of the colour, but also the variety 
 of expression, and the changing characters of the 
 centaurs. They only applauded the singular motive, 
 because they had never seen it treated before. " Roll 
 up the canvas," said Zeuxis to his pupil, " and take it 
 home. These men only praise the mud of our art. 
 In their eyes the novelty of a subject eclipses every 
 excellence of execution." 
 
 The rebuke is commonplace to-day, though it has 
 seldom been administered with a better tact. But in 
 Lucian's time it was as strange as the craze of inven- 
 tion which he condemned, and despite his own protest 
 he must once again be flattered for his originality. 
 Nor was his contempt of realism less apt than his 
 hatred of charlatanry, and to illustrate his dislike he 
 chose the art he loved the best, the art of pantomime. 
 Moreover, after his wont, he put his criticism in the 
 form of an anecdote. " Once upon a time there was 
 a mime who played the part of Ajax mad, and he 
 
LUCIAN 219 
 
 played it with so reckless a disregard of the rules of 
 his art that he did not represent madness ; he seemed 
 rather to be mad himself. He tore the coat from the 
 back of one of those who beat time with their iron 
 sandals, and snatching a flute from one of the players, 
 he struck Ulysses, who stood by exulting in his victory, 
 so fiercely on the head that he surely would have died 
 had not his helmet broken the force of the blow. And 
 then the whole theatre went mad with Ajax ; the 
 spectators leapt to their feet, they shouted, they tore ofF 
 their cloaks. The more foolish among them, unable 
 to distingush between good and evil, thought they saw 
 before them a lifelike representation of madness, while 
 the more intelligent, ashamed at what was going on, 
 were reluctant to condemn the performance by their 
 silence, and attempted by applause to cover the folly of 
 the performance. But all the while they knew that it 
 was the madness not of Ajax but of the player that they 
 were witnessing. The poor devil, still unsatisfied, 
 went to yet greater lengths. He descended into the 
 theatre and took his seat between two of consular rank, 
 each of whom feared that he would seize and flog him 
 like a sheep. And some wondered and some laughed, 
 and others were afraid that the actor's feigned madness 
 would turn to a true malady." 
 
 Never were the limits of art expressed in an apter 
 parable. How well we know the foolish man who 
 shouts "lifelike" when he contemplates an outrage 
 upon good taste ! And the conclusion is as wise as 
 the parable. Imitation, says Lucian, is not reality -, 
 
220 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 and he who would actually perform that which he 
 should represent is no artist, but a madman. Even 
 the actor, relates the critic, was so ashamed at this 
 triumph of excess that he never again played the part 
 of Ajax, though it had been written for him. " It is 
 enough," he murmured, " to have been mad once," 
 and straightway with a reasonable generosity, unique 
 in the annals of the stage, he resigned his part to a 
 popular rival, who played the mad scene with perfect 
 restraint, and received the highest possible praise for 
 that he never overstepped the legitimate boundaries of 
 his art. 
 
 Simple as is the anecdote, it expresses a judgment of 
 perennial sanity. What else is the realist than the 
 actor who mistakes the madness of Ajax for his own, 
 and who would willingly break the head of his neigh- 
 bour and assault the people, if only he may be certain 
 of an instant and violent effect ? Indeed, as you turn 
 over the pages of Lucian, you understand that he was 
 not only modern, but prophetic. He anticipated by 
 many centuries the steam-engine and the telegraph. 
 Timolaus (in The Ship) would announce the name of 
 the Olympian victor in Babylon the very day the race 
 was run ; he would breakfast in Syria, and dine in 
 Italy. And yet more wonderful, Lucian provides in 
 his criticism for the last-born vice or virtue of litera- 
 ture. He is always ready to ridicule our folly with a 
 quip, and to turn the flash of his irony upon a modern 
 ineptitude. But perhaps he nowhere shows himself 
 a truer prophet . than in his admirable essay upon 
 
LUCIAN 221 
 
 Pantomime. This essay, inspired by the unmeasured 
 enthusiasm of the poet, and tempered with the genial 
 pedantry of the scholar, is the perfection of ironic 
 criticism. As you read it you t^:nk perforce of 
 Deburau, of Nodier, of the Funamhules^ with its saw- 
 dust and oranges. You might be reading a trans- 
 figured rhapsody devised by Gautier himself, or look- 
 ing upon a brilliant picture of which Janin's theatre 
 a ^atre Sous is a pallid reflection. For here is the 
 real essence of romantic pantomime as it was praised 
 in Athens by the wisest of philosophers, and adored on 
 the Boulevard du Temple by the wittiest of critics. 
 
 So pantomime in Lucian's eyes is the greatest of 
 the arts. While he follows the opinion of Aristotle, 
 he embroiders it with so extravagant a bravery that 
 the austere author of The Poetics would never recog- 
 nise his own. As it is the finest, so it is the oldest of 
 the arts. The earliest dancers* were the stars, and 
 even the planets wove a stately, rhythmical measure. 
 And then with a sly parade of inapposite history, 
 Lucian reviews the progress of the art in all ages and 
 countries, from the savagery of the Corybantes and 
 the finer elegance of Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, 
 to the practice of his own day. He finds it superior 
 to tragedy, in that, while it employs the same materials, 
 it combines them with a far greater freedom and variety. 
 Thus, still true to his noble enthusiasm, he sketches 
 the mime, and demands of him so vast a learning and 
 
 * "Opxnf^i-^ is Lucian's Greek for pantomime, an art indis- 
 tinguishable from the dance. 
 
222 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 prowess, that you wonder that he was ever able to 
 gratify his legitimate taste. The mime (or dancer), 
 says he, must win the favour of Mnemosyne and 
 Polymnia. Like Homer's Calchas, he must know the 
 present, past, and future. As it is his function to 
 imitate, to give an outward expression of thought, to 
 make clear the obscure, his highest praise is that which 
 Thucydides found for Pericles, that he knew what he 
 should and could explain it. Moreover, since the 
 material of pantomime is ancient history, the mime 
 must be familiar with all things from Chaos to Cleo- 
 patra, and even with this mastery of universal learning 
 he is at the threshold of his art. Dumb, he must be 
 understood, and though he speak not, yet men must 
 hear him. 
 
 His perfection is measured in the rebuke administered 
 to Demetrius the Cynic, who thought so ill of panto- 
 mime that he charged the mime with relying for his 
 effect upon trivial accessories — the trappings of silk, 
 the dainty mask, the music of the flute. Whereupon 
 a most renowned actor, who best knew the history of 
 his art, and excelled all living men in the beauty of 
 his gesture, freed his stage for the moment of all 
 decoration. He put aside both costume and mask ; 
 he silenced the music, suppressed the chorus and per- 
 formed alone the Love of Ares and Aphrodite. With- 
 out aid he represented the betrayal of the intrigue, the 
 trap laid by Hephaestus, the shame of Aphrodite, the 
 fearful supplication of Ares ; and with so exquisite a 
 precision that Demetrius made immediate submission. 
 
LUCIAN 223 
 
 He put no limit on the extravagance of his praise. 
 " I hear," said he to the actor, " all that you do ; I do 
 not merely see ; in truth you appear to speak with your 
 fingers." 
 
 In such terms was Deburau praised by a hundred 
 critics who knew not Lucian, and the universality of 
 the criticism is evidence, maybe, of its truth. But 
 Lucian has not yet exhausted the qualities of his 
 actor ; for he would have him know as much of life 
 as of history. He must not stay like a limpet on his 
 rock J he must know the manners of many cities, and 
 travel the wide world up and down. Grace, especially 
 grace of hand, is essential ; strength, also, must belong 
 to the perfect mime. And then having united in his 
 proper person all the elegances and harmonious ges- 
 tures, having mastered history and science and studied 
 the intelligence of mankind, he still falls short of his 
 art if he do not compel the spectators to see in his 
 performance their own passions and experience as in a 
 mirror. In brief, avoiding the very appearance of 
 realism, he must suggest by a movement of hand or 
 eye the poignant moment of a tragedy or the heart- 
 v/hole laughter of a trivial farce. 'Tis a pleasing 
 paradox, this elevation of what to-day is wrongly held 
 the humblest of the arts to the throne of dignity. Yet 
 Lucian is justified even in his paradox. The other 
 arts, says he, express one emotion ; pantomime pre- 
 sents them all. It shows you body and soul inex- 
 tricably blended ; it combines the form of sculpture, 
 the colour of painting with the swift movement of 
 
224 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 life and of the brain. And you imagine this ancient 
 philosopher, with a smile for the pedantic irony of his 
 own treatise, sitting day after day at his favourite 
 spectacle, and administering to Crates the same re- 
 proof which Gautier might have framed for them who 
 detected at the Funambules nothing but sawdust 
 and grotesquery. 
 
 Thus, while in his creative work Lucian remained 
 a critic, his criticism was always creative. Yet now 
 and again he laid aside his more serious intent, and 
 drew a portrait for its own sake. His Alexander^ 
 or the False Prophet^ is a masterpiece of ruffianism ; 
 and though he confesses that he bit the impostor's 
 hand when he should have kissed it, it is evident that 
 he delighted in his villainous adroitness, in the splen- 
 dour of his purple and gold, in the pitiful trick of the 
 tamed and harmless snake. The Dialogues of 
 Courtesans^ again, had fulfilled their admirable pur- 
 pose the instant they were written. The type, with 
 its small jealousies, its worldly wisdom, its half-assumed 
 timidity has never been more skilfully realised ; while 
 the mother, fat, careful, of no age, and blousy (you are 
 sure) displays the same eternal, unchanging qualities 
 in Lucian's deHcate prose as in the pictured satire of 
 Forain. So the erudite philosopher kept his sleepless 
 eye upon life, and, for all his learning, turned what- 
 ever was serious into merriment. Not even did he 
 spare the gout, which, says rumour, carried him off at 
 last. For he immortalised the universal enemy in an 
 admirable burlesque, whose wit should have procured 
 
LUCIAN 225 
 
 him a grateful release from pain. But doubtless he 
 despised the plague, and died, as he lived, a satirist, free 
 and frank, without wish or regret, with no other am- 
 bition than to laugh at those who desire the unattain- 
 able, and yet respect philosophy. 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 
 
 FROM whichever point you approach Cromarty, 
 you seem to have arrived at the world's end. 
 You may drive across the Black Isle, or you may 
 enter the land-locked harbour in a casual ferry-boat. 
 But you can go no further, for there are the Suters to 
 bar your progress, and there is the narrow street 
 leading nowhither to remind you that at least one 
 county town is remote from the populous highway. 
 Its aspect is ancient, cold and grey, and yet the 
 enlarging sea has compelled the new town again and 
 again to supersede the old, so that it is less time than 
 a forgotten fashion which gives the impression of 
 immemorial solidity. The houses are trim ; trim too 
 are the gardens ; and withal marked by that austerity 
 which should defend them for ever from the reproach 
 of villadom. An alley, dignified with the name of the 
 Vennel, carries the traveller far back into the past, 
 while the dark aspect of the fisherfolk, more gipsy 
 than highlander, proves that Cromarty is still a fast- 
 ness. It is no surprise to detect over the red lintel of 
 a dilapidated stable the scutcheon of those brave men 
 
230 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 who once were hereditary sheriffs of the place ; you 
 marvel only at the intermittent golf-club, which 
 declares that no corner is free from the national 
 scourge ; you only regret that the sentiment of Hugh 
 Miller should eclipse the glory of Sir Thomas 
 Urquhart. But neither Hugh Miller nor golf can 
 cheapen Cromarty nor persuade her to increase her 
 borders. For north and south the Suters stretch 
 seawards, this one bleak and low-lying, that one 
 lofty with its coronal of trees, and rich in the 
 mysteries of Witches' Hole and Gallows' Hill, and 
 either resolute to oppose encroachment. From the 
 land they are a barrier against the mastery of the sea ; 
 from the sea they appear sentinels of refuge — Swrrjjoecj 
 so Sir Thomas called them — which should point the 
 path of safety to the sailor in distress. 
 
 Such is Cromarty, which boasts to have given birth, 
 in 1605, to Sir Thomas Urquhart, most fantastical 
 of Scotsmen. His ancestors had been hereditary 
 sheriffs and proprietors of the soil for twenty-two 
 hundred years and more, if we may trust his fearless 
 imagination. And these centuries are but a fringe 
 upon his antiquity. So noble a conceit had he in the 
 house of Cromarty, that he traced his genealogy 
 through all ages and all countries to Adam himself. 
 There are no great cities, and few great families, 
 which did not aid in the making of Sir Thomas 
 Urquhart, and all are set forth with pride and 
 circumstance in the TLavToxpovoxavov^ or a Peculiar 
 Promptuary of Time. The effrontery of this ingenious 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 231 
 
 piece is no less enchanting than its simple faith. 
 The author twists folk-lore into fact, and bombasts 
 his quick invention with all the circumstance of 
 historical research. Doubtless he compiled his de- 
 scent in emulation of Pantagruel, but while Rabelais 
 laughed at his own pompous imagination, Sir Thomas 
 was eager to believe the wildest fiction, and to forget 
 that he had not written authority for every vain 
 extravagance. 
 
 Thus Adam, the common father of us all, " sur- 
 named the Protoplast," was created out of the red 
 earth, merely that he might be the forbear of all 
 the Urquharts. Better still, the sixteenth in descent 
 from the renowned Protoplast, one Esormon, son of 
 Pasiteles, was surnamed ovpoxaprog for his fortune in 
 the wars and his affable conversation, and so gave his 
 name to the illustrious family whose glory culminated 
 in Sir Thomas Free of Speech. Now Esormon, 
 albeit he was born in the year before Christ two 
 thousand one hundred and thirty-nine, was Prince of 
 Achaia, and had for his arms "three banners, three 
 ships and three ladies, in a field dor^ with a picture of 
 a young lady above the waste, holding in her right hand 
 a brandished sword, and a branch of myrtle in the left, 
 for crest ; and for supporters two Javanites after the 
 souldier-habit of Achaia." Thus heraldry flourished 
 in the childhood of the world, and it is no surprise 
 that Molin, the fortieth from Adam, married Panthea, 
 Deucalion's daughter, and allied the Urquharts with 
 one of the best families in Greece. A century later 
 
232 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Propetes took to wife Hypermnestra, "the choicest of 
 Danaus' fifty daughters," while a less remote ancestor 
 espoused the Queen of Sheba, that no talent should be 
 lacking to the perfected Sir Thomas. 
 
 Some thousand years before Christ you touch Scottish 
 soil, for when Alypos, the Queen of Sheba's own son, 
 married Proteusa, the sister of Eborak, who founded 
 York, Scotland was already called Olbion (or Albion in 
 the Aeolick dialect), already the castle of Edinburgh 
 frowned upon the valley where Prince's Street was 
 presently to be built, and the promontories of Cromarty 
 had won the name of SwTijptc, which they retain unto 
 this day. But the Urquharts had not yet come 
 into their own. True, Alypos had paid a casual visit 
 to the harbour of Ochonchar, now called Cromarty, and 
 Beltistos, the seventy-sixth in descent from Adam, 
 had founded the castle of Urquhart above Inverness. 
 But it was reserved for the honoured Nomostor to 
 build that house upon the South Suter which remained 
 for two thousand years the home of the Urquharts. 
 Henceforth these heroes remained within their own 
 borders, fighting the Picts, and making plain their 
 eloquence to all the world. Neither Lutork, the valiant 
 conqueror of Lochaber, not the famous Stichopaeo 
 himself, neither Sosomenos nor Eunoemon, husband of 
 the first Morray that ever came to Scotland, strayed 
 beyond the limits of Cromarty and its fortress. So with 
 Sir Jasper, who had the dexterity to cure the King's 
 Evil, and who still flourished when William the Norman 
 invaded England, we emerge from fable into the 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 233 
 
 semblance of history, and hear with a mild surprise 
 that Thomas, born 1476, was surnamed Paterhemon 
 because "he had of his wife Helen Abenethie, a 
 daughter of my Lord Salton, five-and-twenty sons, all 
 men, and eleven daughters, all married women." 
 Far more puzzling is the nickname of Walter, Sir 
 Thomas's own great-grandfather. For he was called 
 " Exaftallocrinus," for no better reason than that he 
 judged others by himself. But there were learned 
 men in ancient Cromarty, and instantly the real Sir 
 Thomas was called to the throne the popular voice 
 acclaimed him Parresiastes, or Free of Speech, after 
 the same Greek work which, says Rabelais, gave to 
 the Parisians their name and title. 
 
 With such a pedigree it was plainly impossible to 
 remain obscure, and Thomas Urquhart gave early 
 signs of the scholarship and fancy which ever dis- 
 tinguished him. After a boyhood spent in the castle, 
 which then stood upon the southern Suter, and 
 devoted doubtless to the zealous discovery of family 
 secrets, he passed to the University of Aberdeen, for 
 which he retained a ceaseless respect and admiration. 
 His loyalty bade him spare no occasion of praising 
 those who, like himself, owed their education to 
 Aberdeen, which, said he, " for honesty, good fashions 
 and learning, surpasseth as far all other towns and 
 cities in Scotland, as London doth for greatness, 
 wealth, and magnificence, the smallest hamlet or 
 village in England." 
 
 And so, his head packed with all the knowledge 
 
234 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 of his time, and his quick hand always at his sword- 
 hilt, he set forth upon the conquest of Europe. In 
 this enterprise he followed the fashion of his age and 
 country. When Urquhart went upon his travels the 
 whole world was the heritage of Scotland. There 
 was no University that did not seek its professors 
 from the savage country beyond the Tweed, and 
 wherever the rumour of war was heard, there were a 
 a hundred Scots ready to sell their sword and their 
 life in the service of the foreigner. While Sinclair 
 taught mathematics at Paris, Seaton took his degrees at 
 Padua, and disported his " lofty and bravashing humour" 
 at Rome ; Dempster travelled the whole length of 
 France and Italy, teaching the humanities, and resent- 
 ing with his right arm the smallest affront put upon 
 his dignity. And before all, Crichton, the glorious and 
 invincible Crichton, had carried away the palm, whether 
 for scholarship or valour, in every capital in Europe. It 
 was in emulation, then, of such heroes as these that 
 Thomas Urquhart left his native Cromarty, convinced 
 that no learning was too high for his attainment, no 
 enemy too strong for his assault. Wherever he went, 
 he bore himself as a gallant gentleman, adding to the 
 rare store of his learning, and winning golden opinions 
 for his courage and address. If he had only composed 
 a history of his wanderings instead of attempting to 
 square the circle, how rich had been the record ! As 
 it is, we must be content with his few digressions, and 
 piece together a slender biography from a handful 
 of casual hints. 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 235 
 
 He made a " peragration " (so he calls it) of France, 
 Spain and Italy, whence he crossed to Sicily, and was 
 most astonished to discover at Messina a man who 
 posed for the Great Alexander of Macedon. Ever 
 anxious, despite the weight of his immense learning, 
 to recall what was trivial or eccentric, he tells 
 you no more of Madrid than that he there saw ''a 
 bald-pated fellow who believed he was Julius Caesar, 
 and therefore went constantly in the street with a 
 laurel-crown on his head." His mastery of languages 
 was perfect ; he spoke all tongues " with the 
 liveliness of the country accent," and there was no 
 city whereof he might not have passed for a native, 
 had not his patriotism rejected the imposture. Did 
 a Spaniard or a Frenchman suggest the disguise, " he 
 plainly told them, without any bones, that truly he 
 had as much honour by his own country." For 
 in those days, he boasted, " the name of a Scot was 
 honourable over all the world, and the glory of his 
 ancestors was a passport and safe conduct sufficient for 
 any traveller." Nor did Urquhart do aught to 
 besmirch this fair fame. He was as prompt in a 
 quarrel as in the exercise of his tongue, and in the 
 early years, before his brains "were ripened for 
 eminent undertakings," he thrice entered the lists 
 to vindicate his native land from calumnies. And 
 thrice he disarmed his antagonist, compelling him 
 at the price of his life to acknowledge his error, 
 so that, "in lieu of three enemies that formerly 
 they were, I acquired three constant friends, both 
 
236 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 to myself and my compatriots." Thus he wandered 
 over the world, obeying the valiance of his heart, 
 and yet packing his head with all the jumbled 
 and intricate sciences, unrivalled in swordsmanship, 
 and always alert in the fashionable art of disputation. 
 But so strenuous a patriot could not spend his life in 
 foreign service, and Urquhart was still young when 
 he returned a finished courtier to his father's house in 
 Cromarty. 
 
 He brought with him a library which he valued 
 beyond all else, especially because it did not contain 
 three books, "which were not of his own purchase, 
 and all of them together, in the order wherein he 
 had ranked them, compiled like to a compleat nosegay 
 of flowers, which in his travels he had gathered out 
 of the gardens of above sixteen several kingdoms." 
 In Cromarty, indeed, he had no resource but study. 
 A courtier and a scholar, he felt as little sympathy 
 with field sports as with the barbarous life of his 
 fellows. While others were pleased in the dead 
 season of winter to search for wild fowl, wading 
 through many waters, he would stay at home, 
 employed in diversions of another nature, "such as 
 optical secrets, mysteries of natural philosophy, reasons 
 for the variety of colours, the finding out of the 
 longitude, and the squaring of the circle." And when 
 he was twitted for his inaction by those who esteemed 
 bodily exercise above the recreation of the mind, he 
 had the satisfaction of supping excellently, while the 
 sportsmen were too weary to touch the birds which 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 237 
 
 had fallen to their guns. So, in the seclusion of his 
 castle, this descendant of Danaus became the master 
 pedant of his time. Not only was he familiar with 
 all the extravagant learning of Europe, but he was 
 already busied in the composition of those unnumbered 
 treatises whose loss after Worcester fight he lamented 
 until his death. 
 
 Alas ! an end soon came to the repose which is 
 necessary for the squaring of the circle or the discovery 
 of a universal language. The house of Urquhart fell 
 upon ruin. The old Sir Thomas, in spite of the oath 
 given to Alexander, Lord Elphinstone, on his marriage, 
 that he would hand on his estate unencumbered, became 
 the sudden prey of creditors. The reason of this 
 disaster is uncertain ; but it was rather amiable care- 
 lessness than wanton extravagance which undid the 
 generous and worthy knight. He had given to 
 all who asked with thoughtless prodigality ; he had 
 never refused to be surety for any ; yet herein his 
 kindness was matched by good fortune, and he did 
 not "pay above two hundred pounds English for all 
 his vadimonial favors." However, his creditors at 
 last began to clamour. With a recklessness which 
 you can easily understand in the father of his son, 
 he had neglected his household and forgotten his 
 tradesmen. Unfaithful servants had filched much of 
 his personal estate ; swindling baiHfFs had embezzled 
 his rents ; and by the frequency of disadvantageous 
 bargains in which the slyness of the subtle merchant 
 involved him, his loss came unawares upon him, 
 
238 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 and irresistibly, like an armed man. The mishap 
 was the stranger because in the arbitrament of 
 another's affairs none was held so wise as Sir Thomas 
 Urquhart ; yet, said his son, he thought it " derogating 
 to the nobility of his house to look too closely into 
 his own purse." 
 
 The result was ruin, and in 1637 the hereditary 
 Sheriff of Cromarty was so hard pressed that he 
 was forced to seek relief from the King. The 
 relief was granted in a letter of protection from 
 Charles I., which defended him "from all diligence 
 at the instance of his creditors." But, in the mean- 
 time, his sons had taken what steps they might 
 to secure the remains of their inheritance ; and de- 
 spite their protestations of fiHal obedience, had seized 
 upon their father, and imprisoned him in an upper 
 chamber of his own castle, called " the inner dortour." 
 Whether they resorted to this savagery, that the old 
 knight might be prevented from the conclusion of a 
 bad bargain, or whether they were impelled by dis- 
 appointment and revenge, remains unknown ; but true 
 it is that they kept their father locked up the best 
 part of a week, and that they only escaped the proper 
 consequence of their cruelty by the interposition of 
 the Privy Council. And notwithstanding this inter- 
 lude of enmity, the son never tired of praising the 
 justice, honour, and munificence of the father. And 
 you like to think that his solitary fault was inspired by 
 a stern fidelity to the interests of his house. 
 
 Henceforth misfortune was his constant bedfellow. 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 239 
 
 Not only was the estate encumbered beyond hope of 
 redress, but Urquhart, a staunch Episcopalian, stood 
 for the King, and hated the Covenant with all the 
 fury of a travelled gentleman and a pleasure-loving 
 courtier. Moreover, he was neither sufficiently 
 cunning to dissemble his opinion, nor sufficiently 
 dishonest to espouse an infamous cause for his own 
 profit. He found upon his own country the three 
 foul blots of tergiversation, covetousness and hypocrisy ; 
 and he exposed the blots with all the eloquence and 
 iteration at his command. Scotland, said he, was 
 ruined by the selfishness of Kirks and Presbyteries. 
 The minister was always the greediest man in the 
 parish, the most unwilling to bestow anything in 
 deeds of charity. He denounced without ceasing 
 the democratical tyranny of the Kirk, and with 
 all the Cavalier's eagerness to back his opinion 
 with the sword, he forcibly opposed Lord Fraser and his 
 allies. A retainer of his house was the first to lose his 
 life in conflict with the bloody Covenanters ; and 
 Urquhart, having marched upon Aberdeen, was circum- 
 vented by the Earl Marischal after a brief success, 
 and compelled to embark in the presence of six hundred 
 enemies for Berwick-on-Tweed. Henceforth he was 
 exiled to the English court ; two years later — in 1641 
 — he was knighted by the King at Whitehall, and the 
 following year by the death of his father he inherited 
 a worthless estate, and with the Sheriffdom of 
 Cromarty a yet more worthless title. 
 
 Poor and unfriended, he despised conciliation. 
 
240 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 He whose tongue had known no mercy found no 
 mercy in the hearts of his enemies. His father left 
 him but a poor six hundred a year, and for encum- 
 brances twelve or thirteen thousand pounds of debt, 
 " five brethren, all men, and two sisters almost 
 marriageable," with as fine a set of importunate 
 creditors as ever disturbed a scholar's peace. All 
 attempts at a settlement were frustrated by the malice 
 and envy of merchants and money-lenders, and at 
 the last Urquhart had no resource but contempt 
 and vituperation. How, indeed, should this arrogant 
 gentleman, this marvel of the perfections, grant 
 satisfaction to the greed of scoundrels ? The fiercest 
 of his creditors was one Leslie of Findrassie, whose 
 name he protests he will never mention, but whose 
 name is rarely ofF his tongue. This rascal, who 
 kept "his daughters the longer unhusbanded that 
 they might serve him for so many stalking-horses, 
 whereby to intangle some neighbourhood wood- 
 cocks," pursued the Lord of Cromarty with an 
 ingenuity of venom. Not only did he decline to 
 treat with his enemy upon any terms, but he at- 
 tacked one of his victim's farms with all the horse 
 and foot he could command. He even attempted 
 to quarter a troop upon Sir Thomas, that he might 
 the more quickly bring him to surrender. Worse 
 than all, he contrived the seizure of his library, 
 and the destruction of not a few manuscripts which 
 their author held priceless. But fruitlessly did 
 Urquhart bewail that the wickedest of the land 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 241 
 
 should bie permitted to possess his inheritance ; 
 fruitlessly did he deplore the sacrilege of those who 
 dismantled the honour of a house and dilapidated 
 an ancient estate. Time was, said he, when no 
 stranger might own an ell of Scottish land, when 
 even Rizzio was not permitted to purchase a 
 hundred pounds of rent whereby to acquire a tide. 
 But now the structure of ancient grandeur was 
 "crumbled into the very rubbish of a neophytick 
 parity." So his own land was sequestrated, and if 
 after his father's death he pursued his studies at 
 Cromarty, he lived rather as a prisoner than as a 
 sheriff, and the utmost of his freedom was to hold all 
 things ready for a siege. 
 
 While his creditors were inexorable, the Kirk, 
 which had many an ancient offence to avenge, did not 
 lag behind in evil-doing. At the outset his inherited 
 right of patronage was curtailed, and, that he might be 
 the more heavily embarrassed, the single parish, which 
 contained the churches of Cullicudden and Kirkmichael, 
 was divided into two, and the miserable Urquhart 
 compelled to provide the double stipend. His protest 
 was as vain as his indignation. To fight the Kirk 
 was to kick against the pricks, and this intrepid 
 warrior would never withdraw an unprotected foot. 
 His arguments in his own behalf were convincing 
 enough to ensure failure, and yet Sir Thomas 
 was not of those who would veil the truth for a 
 present advantage. No, he boldly proclaimed himself 
 Christianus Presbyteromastixy and went unflinching 
 
 Q 
 
242 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 to his doom. For the Kirk and State, not content 
 with stripping him of his goods, carried their hostility 
 still further, and in 1649 ^^^ declared him rebel and 
 traitor. 
 
 But Urquhart, like Joseph II., was royaliste de son 
 metier^ and, though he regretted his bitter spoliation, 
 he cared not that the world called him rebel. He 
 threw himself with the greater fury into the fray, 
 he fought the last fight for his rightful King, and he 
 suffered at Worcester the culmination of his disasters. 
 For not only was Worcester the one battle wherein 
 he gave ground to the enemy, but in the kennels of 
 Worcester City he lost the precious manuscripts which 
 were to have conferred immortality upon him. To 
 this ultimate mishap he recurs and recurs, though 
 he nowhere explains why he should have gone 
 into battle with the work of a lifetime at his back. 
 However, no sooner was the fight finished, than the 
 victorious soldiers broke into Master Spilsbury's house 
 ("a very honest man, and hath an exceeding good 
 woman to his wife"), and there found three port- 
 mantles full of very precious commodity, or in other 
 words of manuscripts in folio. These inestimable 
 treasures were presently devoted to the packing up 
 of "figs, dates, almonds, caraway, and other such 
 like dry confections," to the kindling of tobacco pipes, 
 or even to worse employments. A few fragments 
 alone were saved, from which Sir Thomas was able to 
 rescue such treatises as remain. But with the defeat 
 of Worcester his active life was finished. What could 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 243 
 
 he, " a Scot and a prisoner of war," make or mar in 
 the London of the Roundheads ? 
 
 Cromwell, in truth, treated him with more 
 than common liberality, permitting him to print his 
 elaborate vindication, setting him free upon parole, 
 and "enlarging him to the extent of the lines of 
 London's communication." For all these courtesies 
 he is properly thankful, and he closes the epilogue of 
 all his works with a eulogy of Mr. Roger Williams. 
 By what freak of destiny the reverend preacher of 
 Providence in New England should have come to 
 Urquhart's aid is left unexplained, but certain it is 
 that this monument of piety not only presented 
 Urquhart with "many worthy books set forth by 
 him," but frequently solicited the Parliament and 
 Council of State in his behalf. In brief, writes 
 Sir Thomas, "he did approve himself a man of 
 such discretion and inimitably sanctified parts, that 
 an archangel from Heaven could not have shown 
 more goodness with less ostentation ! " But Mr. 
 Roger Williams solicited in vain, and the victim 
 himself had no better luck. His desperate appeals 
 to Cromwell for the restoration of his estates and 
 for his unconditioned liberty failed. Nor was there 
 from the first a chance of success. He could not 
 cloak his loyalty to the Stuarts, even when he 
 addressed the Lord Protector; and so, having com- 
 mitted to the press some scraps and shreds of his 
 dispersed masterpieces, he escaped the vigilance of 
 his warders, set sail for France, the country he 
 
244 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 loved so well, and never again set foot in Scotland. 
 His whimsical death well suited so whimsical a 
 life. He died of laughter, saith rumour, on hearing 
 that Charles II. was restored to his kingdom. 
 And thus, by a last misfortune, his persistent loyalty 
 availed him nothing, since, at the very moment of 
 victory, his sense of incongruity carried him beyond 
 the hope of gratitude or reward. Others inherited 
 the estate of which he was so worthily proud, and 
 even in Cromarty itself Urquhart was soon the shadow 
 of a name. 
 
 Despite the devastation of Worcester, Sir Thomas 
 was able in the two years which followed the battle to 
 prove himself not only the greatest translator of all 
 time, but the master of as fantastic a style as ever 
 came to the aid of an eccentric imagination. He was 
 not new to authorship : as early as 1641, the year of 
 his knighthood, he had dedicated a volume of Epigrams 
 to the Marquis of Hamilton. But this slender volume 
 gives not the slightest promise of talent. The sestets, 
 which fill the greater part of the book, are indis- 
 tinguished and indistinguishable. There is no reason 
 why any one should have written them. On the 
 other hand, there is no reason why any one should 
 have not. They express the usual commonplaces : 
 the inevitableness of death and the worth of endeavour. 
 A mildly Horatian sentiment is dressed up in the 
 tattered rags of Shakespeareanism ; and the surprise is 
 that the author, whose prose is restrained by no con- 
 sideration of sound or sense, should deem it worth 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 245 
 
 while to print so tame a collection of exercises. His 
 real epigrams, however, are still in manuscript, and are 
 not likely to get into print. They number, it is said, 
 some eleven hundred, " contryved, clerked, and digested 
 ... in a thirteen weeks' time," thus arguing in the 
 author "a great maturity and promptnesse of wit."* 
 
 Four years later came The Trissotretras : or a Most 
 Exquisite Table for resolving all manner of Triangles^ in 
 which the greatness of Urquhart is already foreshadowed. 
 This work, " published for the benefit of those that are 
 mathematically affected," is reputed unintelligible even 
 to professors of mathematics, but it is prefaced by a 
 dedication "to my deare and loving mother," and a 
 eulogy of that " brave spark " Lord Napier of Mer- 
 chiston, which are composed in the true vein. How- 
 ever, it was not until defeat had stimulated invention 
 that Urquhart came into the full and free possession of 
 his amazing style. The 'Eico-icu/BaXavpov, or the Dis- 
 covery of a most exquisite Jewel^ and the Logopandectei- 
 sion^ or an Introduction to the Universal Language^ have 
 not their counterpart in any literature. Though the 
 one serves " to frontal a vindication of the honour of 
 Scotland," though the other was contrived " for the 
 utilitie of all pregnant and ingenious spirits," the glorifi- 
 cation of Sir Thomas Urquhart is the object of both. 
 
 * In 1683 this manuscript belonged to George Ogilvie, Master 
 of Banff, and afterwards, according to Dr. Irving, who was fortu- 
 nate enough to see it, it passed into the possession of Lord Hynd- 
 ford. It was then sold for £2^ los., and became the property of 
 James Gibson Craig. Some time since it figured, for the modest 
 sum of ;^io los., in the catalogue of an Edinburgh bookseller. 
 
246 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 The author discusses history and theology, philosophy 
 and politics ; yet all the sciences are but a cloak to his 
 own excellences. Sir Thomas Urquhart is a captive ; 
 the world stands idle upon its axis, the sun declines to 
 rise and set ; liberate Sir Thomas, and the universe will 
 resume its functions ; darkness will usurp the light 
 at the proper season, and the brilliance of day will 
 succeed to the sullen obscurity of night. But in one 
 respect his modesty conquered his ambition of notoriety, 
 and he pretends to keep the secret of authorship in- 
 violate. The ^EK(TKvj5a\avpov is written with the 
 definite aim of eulogising Scotland and of restoring 
 the great and good Sir Thomas to his own kingdom. 
 And who wrote it ? From internal evidence it is 
 plainly disinterested — for Sir Thomas is ever belauded 
 in the third person. Just as the famous pedigree, that 
 illustrious TlavToxgovoxavov which gives the Knight of 
 Cromarty Deucalion for an ancestor, was rescued 
 from the battlefield by " a surprising honest and civil 
 oflicer of Colonel Pride's regiment," and prefaced by 
 an unknown and mysterious G. P., so the vindica- 
 tion of Scotland and Sir Thomas might have been 
 composed by a partial stranger. The object is frankly 
 confessed : " He is the only man for whom this 
 book is intended, the mere scope whereof is the fur- 
 therance of his weal and the credit of his country." 
 Again, he describes himself as " the author whose muse 
 I honour, and the strains of whose pen to imitate is 
 my greatest ambition." And then, weary of mystifica- 
 tion he boasts with an engaging frankness "that it 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 247 
 
 mentioneth Sir Thomas Urquhart in the third person, 
 which seldom is done by any author in a treatise of his 
 own penning ! " 
 
 But in truth it was his constant fancy to cover 
 reality with a shield of romance, and to defend his 
 purpose with perpetual digression. And thus, having 
 designed a lofty panegyric of himself and his country, 
 he breaks off — in the Exquisite Jewel — into a brief 
 description of his Universal Language. But he re- 
 veals no more than shall whet the public appetite, since 
 he desires to sell his invention for the wealth and 
 leisure which should justly be his. The secret of 
 learning which he claims to have discovered will, says 
 he, abridge the labour of scholars by two years out of 
 five, a benefit which cannot be estimated at less than 
 ten thousand pounds a year. Nor does he make 
 appeal to the generosity of Parliament. If only the 
 Lord Protector will restore to him the inheritance 
 which the " cochlimatory wasps " of the Presbytery have 
 torn from him, he is ready to devote his whole life 
 to the cause of learning, and to the manifest embellish- 
 ment of the Scottish nation. But the Lord Protector 
 was not tempted to interfere, and Sir Thomas's Lan- 
 guage remains a vague and summary sketch. 
 
 The praise of Scotland, on the other hand, is neither 
 summary nor vague. No literature in the world can 
 show a nobler piece of boastfulness, and, despite its 
 elaborate decoration, it is an historical treatise of 
 enduring value. Now, Sir Thomas had witnessed 
 the supremacy of his countrymen both in the schools 
 
248 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 and in the tourney. He had seen the discomfiture of 
 their opponents in all the capitals of Europe, and 
 himself had carried off a dozen trophies. None, then, 
 was better qualified to sing the praise of the ever- 
 renowned Both well, or to applaud the prowess of 
 Francis Sinclair, the valiant bastard of Caithness, who 
 conquered a gallant nobleman of High Germany in 
 the presence of the Emperor and all his Court. But 
 the ' supreme hero of all time in Urquhart's eye was 
 C rich ton, Scotus Jdmirabilis^ the matchless and noble- 
 hearted warrior, the irresistible lover, the miracle of 
 eloquence. If Sir Thomas failed to force his Uni- 
 versal Language upon the world's acceptance, he 
 invented that which was far more wonderful : the 
 Admirable Crichton. A single episode, dropped by 
 hazard into the Exquisite Jewel^ not only conferred 
 legitimate glory upon a renowned adventurer, but 
 fixed for all time the type ot perfection. His achieve- 
 ment at the Duke of Mantua's Court ; the glorious 
 victory of wit snatched from the thrice-renowned 
 University of Paris ; his brilliant appearance at the 
 Louvre in a bufF suit, " more like a favourite of Mars, 
 than one of the Muses' minions, where, in presence of 
 some princess of the Court, and great ladies that came 
 to behold his gallantry, he carried away the ring fifteen 
 times on end, and broke as many lances as the 
 Saracen " — these are related in a very gust of enthu- 
 siasm, and with a breathless torrent of strange and 
 lofty words. And, then, to prove that bombast was 
 not the only note upon his lyre, he describes with a 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 249 
 
 veritable pathos the death of Crichton at the hands of 
 the prince whose court he had purged of a monsten 
 The amplitude -of his vocabulary merely quickens 
 the narrative and intensifies the emotion. When 
 Crichton falls, you can but echo the frenzied threnody 
 of the princess, w^ho, " rending her garments and tear- 
 ing her hair, like one of the Graces possessed with a 
 Fury, spoke thus : ' O villains ! what have you done ? 
 you vipers of men, that have thus basely slain the 
 valiant Crichton, the sword of his own sex, and the 
 buckler of ours, the glory of this age, and restorer of 
 the lost honour of the Court of Mantua : O Crich- 
 ton, Crichton ! ' " 
 
 Having thus chanted the excellences of Scotland, 
 he descends, in the Logopandecteision^ to a nearer con- 
 sideration of the Universal Language. Yet again his 
 pedantry holds him but a moment, and he is soon 
 inspired to an elaborate iteration of his grievances. 
 Never was a grammatical treatise set forth with a 
 more whimsical parade of titles. True, the first book, 
 styled Neaudethaumatj^ is concerned with the wonders 
 of the new speech, which with its four numbers and 
 eleven genders is to find one word, and one only, for 
 each idea, and to teach by words '' in the matter of 
 colours the proportion of light, shadow or darkness 
 commixed in them." But he soon leaves the meaner 
 theme of science ; and so far is he from grammar in 
 his second book, that it is intituled Chrestasehe'ia^ or 
 Impious Dealing of Creditors^ and thus you are easily 
 prepared to consider the Cleronomaporia^ or the Intricacy 
 
250 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 of a Distressed Successor^ or Apparent Heir, Once again 
 he describes the innumerable benefits he has conferred, 
 or is willing to confer, upon mankind 5 once more with 
 the honestest indiscretion he proclaims the goodness 
 and grandeur of the Stuarts, while he denounces with 
 a gasping ferocity the infamous machinations of all 
 covenants and presbyteries. With greater fulness 
 than ever he describes his baffled ambitions. " I 
 would have been," he writes, "a Maecenas to the 
 scholar, a pattern to the soldier, a favorer of the mer- 
 chant, a protector of the tradesman and upholder of 
 the yeoman, had not the impetuosity of the usurer 
 overthrown my resolutions, and blasted my aims in 
 the bud." 
 
 But above all he deplores his poverty for the sake 
 of Cromarty. The disappointment of the hope he 
 cherished for his native town was more poignantly 
 grievous than the failure of the Universal Language or 
 the loss of his manuscripts after Worcester fight. If 
 only Sir Thomas had entered upon an unencumbered 
 inheritance, the history of the world's commerce would 
 have been changed. The ships of all nations might 
 have sailed between the protecting Suters into that 
 harbour, where in the wildest hurricane a fleet of ten 
 thousand might find safe anchorage. Many a mer- 
 chant adventurer had promised to send his richest 
 argosies to Cromarty, and nothing could have impeded 
 the success of the project save the baseness of Inver- 
 ness. Was not Sir Philbert Vernati, who had "a 
 great ascendant in counsel over all the adventurous 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 251 
 
 merchants of what nation soever," resolved to make 
 the fortune of Cromarty and its sheriff? On every 
 side mines would have been open ; the pick would 
 have been heard in a hundred quarries. Italy would 
 have sent northwards her best skilled artificers, while 
 " men of literature and exquisite spirits of invention " 
 would have taught Cromarty to surpass Aberdeen 
 herself in poetry and learning. But, alas ! Sir Thomas 
 Urquhart was not allowed to aggrandise his estate. 
 His enemies still layiin wait, " cannibal-like to swallow 
 him up at a breakfast." Inverness looks with disdain 
 upon her hapless rival, and Cromarty remains to-day 
 the highland village of the seventeenth century. 
 
 Such is the sum of Sir Thomas Urquhart's original 
 achievement, and the style in which his treatises are com- 
 posed falls not an inch below his ingenious fancy. Like 
 many another Scot, Hke Hawthornden, like Thomson, 
 like Robert Louis Stevenson, he wrote English as a 
 foreign tongue, which he had acquired after painful 
 effort. You cannot read a page without being convinced 
 that English was to him not the language of common 
 speech, but a strange instrument, which at the touch 
 of a master should yield a lofty sounding music. The 
 style which he conquered was as remote from his 
 native Scots as Greek or Latin, and he decorated it 
 with a curious elaboration, which proves that he 
 recognised the difference between literature and con- 
 versation. There is, perhaps, a touch of pedantry 
 in his scrupulous avoidance of Scottish words. A 
 diligent search has revealed but one, and the avoidance 
 
252 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 is the more remarkable because he had no aversion to 
 the slang and proverbs of the street. But the fytings^ 
 those masterpieces of Amoebean scurrility, which 
 doubtless he knew well and which encouraged his 
 habit of stringing synonyms, exerted no more than a 
 general influence upon him, and this influence is more 
 noticeable in his Rabelais than in his original treatises. 
 His vocabulary is vast and various; he pilfered a dozen 
 languages and all the sciences that he might enlarge 
 it ; nor does he ever hesitate to invent such words as 
 are lacking to his purpose. He frankly avows his 
 detestation of what is common or obvious. Where 
 others would employ a paraphrase, he is quick to invent 
 so new a term as scripturiency or nixurience, " Pre- 
 face " being without significance, he prefers (after 
 Mathurin Regnier) "epistle liminary" ; and in the 
 use of such strange compounds as accresce he is 
 as ingenious as the decadents of ten years ago. 
 Moreover, he defends his practice in a passage which 
 will serve as a plea for a free vocabulary : " that which 
 makes this disease (the paucity of words) the more 
 incurable is that, when an exuberant spirit would to 
 any high researched conceit adapt a peculiar word of 
 his own coining, he is branded with incivility, if he 
 apologise not for his boldness with a quod ita dixer'im^ 
 par cant Cicerontana manes ^ tgmscat Demosthenis 
 genius^ and other such phrases, acknowledging his 
 fault of making use of words never uttered by others, 
 or at least by such as were most renowned for elo- 
 quence." And he assuredly asks no pardon from the 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 253 
 
 shade of Cicero, but straightway declares that the 
 Indians "were very temulencious symposiasts," while 
 presently he proceeds to denounce the mean as " clus- 
 ter-fists," and to reproach the Presbyterians with their 
 "blinkard minds." 
 
 His style, again, was curiously shaped by his study 
 of science, and mathematical metaphors are found 
 on every page. Thus he describes the effect of Crich- 
 ton's apparition : " The affections of the beholders, like 
 so many several diameters drawn from the circum- 
 ference of their various intents, did all encounter in 
 the point of his perfection." On the other hand no 
 artifice is too familiar, if his mood be flippant. " How 
 now, pescods on it ! " he cries when he has forgotten 
 a name ; or he will confuse a piece of new-fangled 
 science with the slang of the minute. And you can 
 forgive a writer a dozen faults who calls his enemy a 
 "pristinary lobcock." Moreover, he has a constant 
 care for the rhythm of his prose ; he wrote with his 
 ear as well as with his brain, and knew well how to 
 set his periods to music. Where the poor apostle of 
 simplicity at any price would write " backgate," Sir 
 Thomas prefers " some secret angiport and dark 
 postern door ; " and the advantage both for sound and 
 expression is on the side of Sir Thomas. From so 
 vast a volume of eloquence it is difficult to select, but 
 this reproof of the Presbyterians for their treatment of 
 kings displays the more modest qualities of Urquhart's 
 prose : " For of a king they only make use for their 
 own ends, and so they will of any other supreme 
 
254 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 magistracy that is not of their own erection. Their 
 kings are but as the kings of Lacedaemon, whom the 
 Ephors presumed to fine for any small offence; or as 
 the puppy kings which after children have trimmed 
 with bits of taffeta, and ends of silver lace, and set 
 upon wainscoat cupboards beside marmalade and sugar- 
 cakes, are oftentimes disposed of, even by those that 
 did pretend so much respect unto them for a two- 
 penny custard, a pound of figs, or a mess of cream." 
 But he is not always thus restrained ; he is apt to 
 forget proportion, or, in his own simile, to put such a 
 "porch upon a cottage as better befits a cathedral." 
 Yet he would be punctilious in his adaptation of words 
 to thoughts. The conclusion of the Exquisite Jewel^ 
 the most complicated rhapsody in English prose, is 
 nothing else than an apology for its simple reticence. 
 " I could," he confesses, " have enlarged this discourse 
 with a choicer variety of phrase, and made it overflow 
 the field of the reader's understanding, with an inun- 
 dation of greater eloquence. ... I could have intro- 
 duced, in case of obscurity, synonymal, exargastick, 
 and palilogetick elucidations ; for sweetness of phrase, 
 antimetathetick commutations of epithets." But he 
 quenched his ardour ; he " adhibited to the embellish- 
 ment of his tractate " none of these tropes or figures, 
 because for the moment " the matter was more preva- 
 lent with him than the superficial formality of a quaint 
 discourse." In such wise does he formulate his the6ry 
 of the relation of sound to sense, and if you did not 
 recognise the sincerity of his humour, you might 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 255 
 
 believe that for once he was laughing at his reader's 
 innocence. 
 
 Never once in all his works does he mention 
 Rabelais, though in his astounding genealogy as in his 
 extravagant diction he pays him the compliment of 
 imitation. Yet it is to his translation of Gargantua 
 and Pantagruel that Urquhart owes his immortality, 
 and surely no man better deserves the wreath of un- 
 dying fame. His masterpiece shares the honour with 
 our own Authorised Version of being the finest transla- 
 tion ever made from one language into another. The 
 English lacks none of the abounding life and gaiety 
 which make the original a perpetual joy. In fact it 
 is not a translation at all : had Rabelais been a Briton, 
 it is precisely in these terms that he would have 
 written his golden book. It might have been com- 
 posed afresh, as was the original " in eating and drink- 
 ing." The very spirit of Rabelais breathes again in 
 this perfect version, which, without the dimmest 
 appearance of effort, echoes the very rhythm of the 
 French, and for all its ingenuity of phrase and proverb, 
 resolutely respects the duty of interpretation. But 
 failure was impossible from the beginning: once in 
 the history of the world a master of language found 
 the task for which his genius was eminently adapted. 
 
 In point of style, Urquhart was Rabelais reincarnate. 
 If Master Alcofribas handled a vocabulary of surpass- 
 ing richness. Sir Thomas, the most travelled man of 
 his age, had stored his memory with the pearls of five 
 languages. Science and slang were the hobbies of 
 
256 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 each, and both Scot and Frenchman were as quick to 
 find his metaphors in the gutter as to gather them 
 after thoughtful research in the solemn treatises of the 
 middle age. But above all, it is in his treatment of slang 
 that Urquhart shows his supremacy. His courage is 
 as great as his knowledge, and bookish as he was, he 
 kept his ears always alert to the quick impressions 
 of the street. The Puritan, who, finding not enough 
 immorality in life to glut his censure, invests simple 
 words with vice, has wreaked his idle fury on the dead Sir 
 Thomas, and more than once has dragged his master- 
 piece into the malefactor's dock. But the masterpiece 
 remains to defy the Puritan, as it defies the critic, and 
 it is no less assured of eternity than its magnificent 
 original. To belaud its perfection is to confess its 
 blemishes, yet its blemishes lean ever to the side of 
 excellence. Though Urquhart crept into the very 
 skin of Rabelais, at times the skin sits a little tightly 
 upon him. He outdoes Rabelais even in extravagance, 
 thereby achieving what might have seemed a plain 
 impossibility. When the master exhausts every corner 
 of human knowledge or human life in a list of 
 synonyms, Urquhart is always ready to increase the 
 list from the limitless depths of his own research. 
 One list of thirteen he has expanded to thirty-six ; 
 another famous chapter he has doubled in length ; and 
 yet every line bears the true impress of Rabelais. 
 Again, at times he is apt to explain rather than to 
 interpret ; but his explanation is so rigidly within the 
 boundaries of the original, that not even the pedant 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 257 
 
 can find heart to protest. As for his mistakes, they 
 are condoned by their magnificence ; and if now 
 and then he says what Rabelais did not, you wonder 
 which has the better of it, the original or the version. 
 
 Like all great works, Urquhart's translation had 
 its forerunner ; and its forerunner was Randle Cot- 
 grave, without whose superb dictionary * the Rabelais 
 might never have been accomplished. It is the 
 common superstition of the schools that the use of a 
 dictionary is fatal to the acquisition of a full and free 
 vocabulary. Yet here is Urquhart, whose eccentric 
 vocabulary has never been surpassed, working with a 
 dictionary at his elbow. Now, Cotgrave's " bundle of 
 words," as his modesty styles it, contains such fagots as 
 never before were collected by mortal man. No wonder 
 his French colleague declares that he had read books 
 of every kind and in every dialect, nor is it strange 
 that, writing at the very beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, he should have made a generous use of 
 Rabelais. But he was one of those to whom words 
 are living, breathing things, with colour and character 
 of their own, and his dictionary, which Shakespeare 
 may have used, can still be read with the rapidity 
 and excitement of a romance. In his love of 
 synonyms, he rivalled Urquhart ; like Urquhart, he 
 would never content himself with one word when 
 twenty were available. A famous naturalist, he helped 
 
 * A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. Compiled 
 by Randle Cotgrave. London : Printed by Adam Islip. Anno 
 1611. 
 
 R 
 
258 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 the translator at the point wherein his weakness was 
 most palpably confessed, and the names of strange 
 birds and beasts may easily be traced to their authentic 
 source. 
 
 Cotgrave, moreover, packs into his book — this 
 "verball creature," and indeed it is "a creature," a 
 living thing — all the folklore and superstition of his 
 age -y and here again he was a sure guide to the 
 footsteps of Urquhart. But Urquhart followed him 
 even in his errors. To quote an example : " friar 
 John of the Funnels" is at least as celebrated as 
 *' frere Jean des Entommeures," and you wonder where 
 Urquhart found his false translation, until you con- 
 sult the page of Cotgrave, which refers you from 
 Entommeure to Entonnoir^ which being interpreted is a 
 funnel. And thus it is that in English friar John 
 takes the title, which he will never lose, not from the 
 " cuttings " or " carvings," but from the Funnels. Of 
 Cotgrave himself we know nothing, save that he 
 dedicated his dictionary to " the Right Honourable, and 
 my very good Lord and Maister, Sir William Cecil, 
 Knighty Lord Burghley, and sonne and heire apparant 
 unto the Earle of Exceter." But never in any 
 enterprise were three masters so admirably matched as 
 these three : Rabelais, Cotgrave, Urquhart. And 
 who shall say which of the three within his limits was 
 the greatest ? 
 
 Urquhart translated Rabelais, and had they been of 
 the same century Rabelais would have flouted the 
 hero, who gave him a second life. For as in style 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 259 
 
 Urquhart was the last of the Elizabethans, so in 
 science he resumed the fallacies of the Middle Ages. 
 He regarded with a childish reverence the many 
 problems, at which Rabelais laughed from the comfort- 
 able depth of his easy chair. And there is a delightful 
 irony in the truth, that this perfect translator was in 
 his own original essays nothing else than Rabelais 
 stripped of humour. He would discuss the inter- 
 minable stupidities of the schoolmen with a grave face 
 and ceaseless ingenuity. He had no interest in aught 
 save the unattainable. To square the circle and 
 perfect the Universal Language were the least of his 
 enterprises. And here we touch the tragedy of his 
 life. He was like the man he met at Venice, " who 
 believed he was sovereign of the whole Adriatic Sea, 
 and sole owner of all the ships that came from the 
 Levant." His madness — for it was nothing less — 
 inspired him with the confidence that all things were 
 possible to his genius. He was Don Quixote with 
 a yet wilder courage. "I do promise," he says 
 somewhere, "shortly to display before the world 
 ware of greater value than ever from the East Indies 
 was brought in ships to Europe " ; and straightway he 
 pictures himself another Andromeda, chained to the 
 rock of hard usage, and exposed to the merciless 
 dragon usury, beseeching " the sovereign authority of 
 the country, like another Perseus mounted on the 
 winged Pegasus of respect to the weal and honour 
 thereof, to relieve us, by their power, from the 
 eminent danger of the jaws of so wild a monster." 
 
26o STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 But, despite his madness, he was in many aspects wise 
 beyond the wisdom of his generation. When all the 
 world was resolute in the persecution of witches, he 
 looked upon witchcraft with a sensible scepticism 
 worthy of Reginald Scot. He would leave all men 
 free to speculate in theology ; for, says he, every one, if 
 he be sincere, will confess that he has his own 
 religion. Even in his discourse upon the Universal 
 Language there is many a generalisation, which, when 
 set forth many years after by Lord Monboddo and 
 others, was deemed a marvel of intelligence. In 
 politics, above all, he was inspired to a noble patri- 
 otism. He insisted with all his eloquence upon the 
 union of England and Scotland. He would have 
 compelled the general use of Great Britain for a title, 
 and he pleaded that Scots should find the same equal 
 privileges in London, which had long since been 
 granted them by the city of Paris. Withal his 
 character was gay, sanguine, and honourable, as 
 George Glover, who drew him from the life, has 
 worthily suggested. The portrait, indeed, is rarely 
 characteristic of Urquhart's elegance and foppery. 
 The pose declares the happy assurance of a hero, half- 
 duellist, half-orator, as quick to use his tongue as his 
 sword, while the huge rosettes, emphasised by a slim 
 figure, are at once the symbol and the measure of the 
 Cavalier's vanity. But for all his vanity he was 
 so honest a gentleman, that he would never change 
 an opinion for the sake of profit, and persisted 
 in his just condemnation of the Kirk and Parliament, 
 
SIR THOMAS URQUHART 261 
 
 even when he was suing his enemies for their con- 
 sideration. Of his amiability and courage there is no 
 doubt. With characteristic candour he declares that 
 he has never coveted the goods of any man ; he has 
 never violated the trust reposed in him ; he has given 
 ground to no enemy before the day of Worcester. 
 That he is surnamed Parresiastes, or Free of Speech, is 
 his favourite boast ; for he loves ever to be open-hearted 
 and of an explicit discourse. What wonder is it, then, 
 that in the triumph of traitors and covenants, he should 
 have been easily discomfited ? 
 
 He left no school, and only one imitator : the Earl 
 of Worcester, hapless and ingenious as himself. This 
 nobleman echoed the career of Urquhart perforce, and 
 echoed of set purpose his language and research. He, 
 too, met ruin on Worcester field ; he, too, spent his 
 eloquence in the hopeless demand for liberty, a favour 
 which he too would have repaid by discoveries no 
 less marvellous than the new language. Freedom 
 for him meant the discovery of the steam-engine and 
 a revolution in the art of war ; and he pleaded for 
 freedom in the very terms used by Urquhart. He, 
 too, had lost his notes, and the title of the treatise * 
 which he was not permitted to publish, and which he 
 also valued at many thousands of pounds, might have 
 been composed by the author of the Exquisite Jewel. 
 
 * Thus it runs : " A century of the Names and Scantlings of such 
 Inventions, as at present I can call to mind to have tried and 
 perfected (my former notes being lost) " — with much more to the 
 same purpose. 
 
262 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 Thus a single generation produced these two menjwhose 
 eccentric genius and unmerited misfortune give them a 
 place apart in the history of the world. Urquhart's 
 misery is the more acute, for the greater height of his 
 aspirations. His life was marred by broken ambitions, 
 and made by one surpassing masterpiece. His mani- 
 fold schemes of progress and of scholarship died with 
 the brain which they inhabited. The Italian artificers 
 and French professors whom he bade to Cromarty 
 never obeyed the invitation ; the castle which once 
 stood upon the South Suter was so fiercely demo- 
 lished, that the place of its foundation is left unmarked. 
 The vulgar reputation of Hugh Miljer has persuaded 
 the town, whereof Sir Thomas was sheriff, to forget 
 that it was the birthplace of a great man. But the 
 translation of Rabelais remains, and that will only die 
 with the death of Pantagruel himself. 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson <5r» Co. 
 London &> Edinburgh 
 
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