ZtitM^ 
 
 University of California • Berkeley 
 
 From the Collection of 
 Joseph Z. Todd 
 
 Gift of 
 Hatherly B. Todd 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 Vol. XIII 
 
 VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE 
 MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
*THE TRAVELS and 
 ESSAYS OF ROBERT 
 LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 V r IRGINIBUS PUERISQUE 
 ft MEMORIES AND POR- 
 TRAITS * ft % % ft 
 
 ^PUBLISHED IN 
 
 NEW YORK BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S 
 SONS * * 1907 t 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE AND OTHER 
 PAPERS 3 
 
 MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS .... 177 
 
My dear William Ernest Henley, 
 
 We are all busy in this world building Towers of Babel ; and the 
 child of our imaginations is always a changeling when it comes from 
 nurse. This is not only true in the greatest, as of wars and folios, but 
 in the least also, like the trifling volume in your hand. Thus 1 began 
 to write these papers with a definite end : I was to be the Advocatm, 
 not I hope Diaboli, but Juventutis; I was to state temperately the be- 
 liefs of youth as opposed to the contentions of age; to go over all the 
 field where the two differ, and produce at last a little volume of special 
 pleadings which 1 might call, without misnomer, Life at Twenty-five. 
 But times kept changing, and I shared in the change. I clung hard to 
 that entrancing age; but, with the best will, no man can be twenty-five 
 for ever. The old, ruddy convictions deserted me, and, along with 
 them, the style that fits their presentation and defence. 1 saw, and in- 
 deed my friends informed me, that the game was up. A good part of 
 the volume would answer to the long-projected title; but the shadows 
 of the prison-house are on the rest. 
 
 It is good to have been young in youth and, as years go on, to 
 grow older. Many are already old before they are through their teens; 
 but to travel deliberately through one's ages is to get the heart out of a 
 liberal education. Times change, opinions vary to their opposite, and 
 still this world appears a brave gymnasium, full of sea-bathing, and 
 horse exercise, and bracing, manly virtues; and what can be more en- 
 couraging than to find the friend who was welcome at one age, still 
 welcome at another? Our affections and beliefs are wiser than we; the 
 best that is in us is better than we can understand; for it is grounded 
 beyond experience, and guides us, blindfold but safe, from one age on 
 to another. 
 
 These papers are like milestones on the wayside of my life; and as 
 I look back in memory, there is hardly a stage of that distance but I see 
 you present with advice, reproof, or praise. Meanwhile, many things 
 have changed, you and I among the rest; but 1 hope that our sympathy, 
 founded on the love of our art, and nourished by mutual assistance, 
 shall survive these little revolutions undiminished, and, with God's help, 
 unite us to the end. 
 
 IV.. L» O. 
 
 Davos Platz, i88i. 
 
VIRGIN IB US PUERISQUE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE"— 
 
 I 3 
 
 II 17 
 
 III On Falling in Love 28 
 
 IV Truth of Intercourse 40 
 
 CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH 51 
 
 AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS 67 
 
 ORDERED SOUTH 80 
 
 JES TRIPLEX 95 
 
 EL DORADO 106 
 
 THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS 110 
 
 SOME PORTRAITS BY RAEBURN 126 
 
 CHILD'S PLAY i}6 
 
 WALKING TOURS 150 
 
 PAN'S PIPES 160 
 
 A PLEA FOR GAS LAMPS 165 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE FOREIGNER AT HOME 177 
 
 SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES 191 
 
 OLD MORTALITY 199 
 
 A COLLEGE MAGAZINE 211 
 
 AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER 223 
 
 PASTORAL 231 
 
 THE MANSE 241 
 
 MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET 250 
 
 THOMAS STEVENSON 258 
 
 TALK AND TALKERS : First Paper . . . . . ... 265 
 
 TALK AND TALKERS : Second Paper 280 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF DOGS 293 
 
 "A PENNY PLAIN AND TWOPENCE COLOURED" . . 306 
 
 A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S 315 
 
 A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE 327 
 
 A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE ?44 
 
VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE 
 
 AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
I 
 
 WITH the single exception of Falstaff, all Shake- 
 speare's characters are what we call marrying 
 men. Mercutio, as he was own cousin to Benedick and 
 Biron, would have come to the same end in the long 
 run. Even Iago had a wife, and, what is far stranger, 
 he was jealous. People like Jacques and the Fool in 
 Lear, although we can hardly imagine they would ever 
 marry, kept single out of a cynical humour or for 
 a broken heart, and not, as we do nowadays, from a 
 spirit of incredulity and preference for the single state. 
 For that matter, if you turn to George Sand's French 
 version of As You Like It (and I think I can promise you 
 will like it but little), you will find Jacques marries Ce- 
 lia just as Orlando marries Rosalind. 
 
 At least there seems to have been much less hesitation 
 over marriage in Shakespeare's days; and what hesi- 
 tation there was was of a laughing sort, and not much 
 more serious, one way or the other, than that of Pan- 
 urge. In modern comedies the heroes are mostly of 
 Benedick's way of thinking, but twice as much in ear- 
 nest, and not one quarter so confident. And I take this 
 diffidence as a proof of how sincere their terror is. They 
 know they are only human after all ; they know what 
 
 3 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 ^ins and pitfalls lie about their feet ; and how the shadow 
 of matrimony waits, resolute and awful, at the cross- 
 roads. They would wish to keep their liberty ; but if 
 that may not be, why, God's will be done ! "What, are 
 you afraid of marriage ? " asks Cecile, in Maitre Guerin. 
 " Oh, mon Dieu, non! " replies Arthur; " I should take 
 chloroform." They look forward to marriage much in 
 the same way as they prepare themselves for death : each 
 seems inevitable; each is a great Perhaps, and a leap 
 into the dark, for which, when a man is in the blue 
 devils, he has specially to harden his heart. That splen- 
 did scoundrel, Maxime de Trailles, took the news of 
 marriages much as an old man hears the deaths of his 
 contemporaries. ' ' C'est desesperant, " he cried, throw- 
 ing himself down in the arm-chair at Madame Schontz's ; 
 "c'est desesperant, nous nous marions tous!" Every 
 marriage was like another gray hair on his head; and 
 the jolly church bells seemed to taunt him with his fifty 
 years and fair round belly. 
 
 The fact is, we are much more afraid of life than our 
 ancestors, and cannot find it in our hearts either to marry 
 or not to marry. Marriage is terrifying, but so is a cold 
 and forlorn old age. The friendships of men are vastly 
 agreeable, but they are insecure. You know all the 
 time that one friend will marry and put you to the door; 
 a second accept a situation in China, and become no 
 more to you than a name, a reminiscence, and an occa- 
 sional crossed letter, very laborious to read ; a third will 
 take up with some religious crotchet and treat you to 
 sour looks thenceforward. So, in one way or another, 
 life forces men apart and breaks up the goodly fellow- 
 ships for ever. The very flexibility and ease which 
 
 4 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERJSQUE" 
 
 make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, 
 make them the easier to destroy and forget. And a man 
 who has a few friends, or one who has a dozen (if there 
 be any one so wealthy on this earth), cannot forget on 
 how precarious a base his happiness reposes; and how 
 by a stroke or two of fate — a death, a few light words, 
 a piece of stamped paper, a woman's bright eyes — he 
 may be left, in a month, destitute of all. Marriage is 
 certainly a perilous remedy. Instead of on two or three, 
 you stake your happiness on one life only. But still, as 
 the bargain is more explicit and complete on your part, 
 it is more so on the other; and you have not to fear so 
 many contingencies ; it is not every wind that can blow 
 you from your anchorage; and so long as Death with- 
 holds his sickle, you will always have a friend at home. 
 People who share a cell in the Bastille, or are thrown to- 
 gether on an uninhabited island, if they do not imme- 
 diately fall to fisticuffs, will find some possible ground 
 of compromise. They will learn each other's ways and 
 humours, so as to know where they must go warily, 
 and where they may lean their whole weight. The 
 discretion of the first years becomes the settled habit of 
 the last; and so, with wisdom and patience, two lives 
 may grow indissolubly into one. 
 
 But marriage, if comfortable, is not at all heroic. It 
 certainly narrows and damps the spirits of generous 
 men. In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, 
 and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being. 
 It is not only when Lydgate misallies himself with Rosa- 
 mond Vincy, but when Ladislaw marries above him 
 with Dorothea, that this may be exemplified. The air 
 of the fireside withers out all the fine wildings of the 
 
 5 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 husband's heart. He is so comfortable and happy that 
 he begins to prefer comfort and happiness to everything 
 else on earth, his wife included. Yesterday he would 
 have shared his last shilling; to-day "his first duty is 
 to his family," and is fulfilled in large measure by laying 
 down vintages and husbanding the health of an invalu- 
 able parent. Twenty years ago this man was equally 
 capable of crime or heroism ; now he is fit for neither. 
 His soul is asleep, and you may speak without con- 
 straint; you will not wake him. It is not for nothing 
 that Don Quixote was a bachelor and Marcus Aurelius 
 married ill. For women, there is less of this danger. 
 Marriage is of so much use to a woman, opens out to 
 her so much more of life, and puts her in the way of 
 so much more freedom and usefulness, that, whether 
 she marry ill or well, she can hardly miss some benefit. 
 It is true, however, that some of the merriest and most 
 genuine of women are old maids; and that those old 
 maids, and wives who are unhappily married, have 
 often most of the true motherly touch. And this would 
 seem to show, even for women, some narrowing influ- 
 ence in comfortable married life. But the rule is none 
 the less certain: if you wish the pick of men and 
 women, take a good bachelor and a good wife. 
 
 I am often filled with wonder that so many marriages 
 are passably successful, and so few come to open fail- 
 ure, the more so as I fail to understand the principle on 
 which people regulate their choice. I see women mar- 
 rying indiscriminately with staring burgesses and ferret- 
 faced, white-eyed boys, and men dwelling in contentment 
 with noisy scullions, or taking into their lives acidulous 
 vestals. It is a common answer to say the good people 
 
 6 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUER1SQUE" 
 
 marry because they fall in love; and of course you may 
 use and misuse a word as much as you please, if you 
 have the world along with you. But love is al least a 
 somewhat hyperbolical expression for such lukewarm 
 preference. It is not here, anyway, that Love employs 
 his golden shafts ; he cannot be said, with any fitness 
 of language, to reign here and revel. Indeed, if this be 
 love at all, it is plain the poets have been fooling with 
 mankind since the foundation of the world. And you 
 have only to look these happy couples in the face, to 
 see they have never been in love, or in hate, or in any 
 other high passion, all their days. When you see a dish 
 of fruit at dessert, you sometimes set your affections upon 
 one particular peach or nectarine, watch it with some 
 anxiety as it comes round the table, and feel quite a 
 sensible disappointment when it is taken by some one 
 else. I have used the phrase "high passion." Well, 
 I should say this was about as high a passion as gener- 
 ally leads to marriage. One husband hears after mar- 
 riage that some poor fellow is dying of his wife's love. 
 "What a pity!" he exclaims; "you know I could so 
 easily have got another! " And yet that is a very happy 
 union. Or again: A young man was telling me the 
 sweet story of his loves. ' ' I like it well enough as long 
 as her sisters are there," said this amorous swain; "but 
 I don't know what to do when we're alone." Once 
 more: A married lady was debating the subject with 
 another lady. " You know, dear," said the first, "after 
 ten years of marriage, if he is nothing else, your husband 
 is always an old friend." " I have many old friends," 
 returned the other, "but I prefer them to be nothing 
 more. " ' ' Oh, perhaps I might prefer that also ! " There 
 
 7 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 is a common note in these three illustrations of the mod- 
 ern idyll; and it must be owned the god goes among 
 us with a limping gait and blear eyes. You wonder 
 whether it was so always ; whether desire was always 
 equally dull and spiritless, and possession equally cold. 
 1 cannot help fancying most people make, ere they 
 marry, some such table of recommendations as Hannah 
 Godwin wrote to her brother William anent her friend, 
 Miss Gay. it is so charmingly comical, and so pat to 
 the occasion, that I must quote a few phrases. "The 
 voung lady is in every sense formed to make one of your 
 disposition really happy. She has a pleasing voice, with 
 which she accompanies her musical instrument with 
 judgment. She has an easy politeness in her manners, 
 neither free nor reserved. She is a good housekeeper 
 and a good economist, and yet of a generous disposi- 
 tion. As to her internal accomplishments, I have rea- 
 son to speak still more highly of them : good sense with- 
 out vanity, a penetrating judgment without a disposition 
 to satire, with about as much religion as my William 
 likes, struck me with a wish that she was my William's 
 wife/' That is about the tune: pleasing voice, moder- 
 ate good looks, unimpeachable internal accomplishments 
 after the style of the copy-book, with about as much 
 religion as my William likes; and then, with all speed, 
 to church. 
 
 To deal plainly, if they only married when they fell in 
 love, most people would die unwed; and among the 
 others, there would be not a few tumultuous house- 
 holds. The Lion is the King of Beasts, but he is scarcely 
 suitable for a domestic pet. In the same way, I suspect 
 love is rather too violent a passion to make, in all cases, 
 
 8 
 
"VIRG1NIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 a good domestic sentiment. Like other violent excite- 
 ments, it throws up not only what is best, but what is 
 worst and smallest, in men's characters. Just as some 
 people are malicious in drink, or brawling and virulent 
 under che influence of religious feeling, some are moody, 
 jealous, and exacting when they are in love, who are 
 honest ; downright good-hearted fellows enough in the 
 everyday affairs and humours of the world. 
 
 How then, seeing we are driven to the hypothesis 
 that people choose in comparatively cold blood, how is 
 it they choose so well ? One is almost tempted to hint 
 that it does not much matter whom you marry ; that, 
 in fact, marriage is a subjective affection, and if you 
 have made up your mind to it, and once talked yourself 
 fairly over, you could " pull it through " with anybody. 
 But even if we take matrimony at its lowest, even if we 
 regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognised 
 by the police, there must be degrees in the freedom and 
 sympathy realised, and some principle to guide simple 
 folk in their selection. Now what should this principle 
 be ? Are there no more definite rules than are to be 
 found in the Prayer-book ? Law and religion forbid the 
 bans on the ground of propinquity or consanguinity; 
 society steps in to separate classes ; and in all this most 
 critical matter, has common sense, has wisdom, never a 
 word to say ? In the absence of more magisterial teach- 
 ing, let us talk it over between friends : even a few 
 guesses may be of interest to youths and maidens. 
 
 In all that concerns eating and drinking, company, 
 climate, and ways of life, community of taste is to be 
 sought for. It would be trying, for instance, to keep 
 bed and board with an early riser or a vegetarian. In 
 
 9 
 
"VIRG1NIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 matters of art and intellect, I believe it is of no conse- 
 quence. Certainly it is of none in the companionships 
 of men, who will dine more readily with one who has 
 a good heart, a good cellar, and a humorous tongue, 
 than with another who shares all their favourite hobbies 
 and is melancholy withal. If your wife likes Tupper, 
 that is no reason why you should hang your head. 
 She thinks with the majority, and has the courage of 
 her opinions. I have always suspected public taste to 
 be a mongrel product out of affectation by dogmatism ; 
 and felt sure, if you could only find an honest man of 
 no special literary bent, he would tell you he thought 
 much of Shakespeare bombastic and most absurd, and 
 all of him written in very obscure English and weari- 
 some to read. And not long ago I was able to lay by 
 my lantern in content, for I found the honest man. He 
 was a fellow of parts, quick, humorous, a clever painter, 
 and with an eye for certain poetical effects of sea and 
 ships. I am not much of a judge of that kind of thing, 
 but a sketch of his comes before me sometimes at night. 
 How strong, supple, and living the ship seems upon the 
 billows ! With what a dip and rake she shears the fly- 
 ing sea ! I cannot fancy the man who saw this effect, 
 and took it on the wing with so much force and spirit, 
 was what you call commonplace in the last recesses of 
 the heart. And yet he thought, and was not ashamed 
 to have it known of him, that Ouida was better in every 
 way than William Shakespeare. If there were more 
 people of his honesty, this would be about the staple of 
 lay criticism. It is not taste that is plentiful, but cour- 
 age that is rare. And what have we in place ? How 
 many, who think no otherwise than the young painter, 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 have we not heard disbursing second-hand hyperboles ? 
 Have you never turned sick at heart, O best of critics! 
 when some of your own sweet adjectives were returned 
 on you before a gaping audience ? Enthusiasm about 
 art is become a function of the average female being, 
 which she performs with precision and a sort of haunt- 
 ing sprightliness, like an ingenious and well-regulated 
 machine. Sometimes, alas! the calmest man is carried 
 away in the torrent, bandies adjectives with the best, 
 and out-Herods Herod for some shameful moments. 
 When you remember that, you will be tempted to put 
 things strongly, and say you will marry no one who is 
 not like George the Second, and cannot state openly a 
 distaste for poetry and painting. 
 
 The word "facts " is, in some ways, crucial. 1 have 
 spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathema- 
 ticians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old 
 gentlemen in bird's-eye neckcloths ; and each under- 
 stood the word "facts" in an occult sense of his own. 
 Try as I might, I could get no nearer the principle of 
 their division. What was essential to them, seemed to 
 me trivial or untrue. We could come to no compromise 
 as to what was, or what was not, important in the life 
 of man. Turn as we pleased, we all stood back to back 
 in a big ring, and saw another quarter of the heavens, 
 with different mountain-tops along the sky-line and dif- 
 ferent constellations overhead. We had each of us some 
 whimsy in the brain, which we believed more than any- 
 thing else, and which discoloured all experience to its 
 own shade. How would you have people agree, when 
 one is deaf and the other blind ? Now this is where 
 there should be community between man and wife. 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 They should be agreed on their catchword in "facts of 
 religion, ' ' or "facts of science, "ox" society, my dear ' '; 
 for without such an agreement all intercourse is a pain- 
 ful strain upon the mind. "About as much religion as 
 my William likes," in short, that is what is necessary 
 to make a happy couple of any William and his spouse. 
 For there are differences which no habit nor affection can 
 reconcile, and the Bohemian must not intermarry with 
 the Pharisee. Imagine Consuelo as Mrs. Samuel Budget, 
 the wife of the successful merchant ! The best of men 
 and the best of women may sometimes live together 
 all their lives, and, for want of some consent on funda- 
 mental questions, hold each other lost spirits to the end. 
 A certain sort of talent is almost indispensable for 
 people who would spend years together and not bore 
 themselves to death. But the talent, like the agreement, 
 must be for and about life. To dwell happily together, 
 they should be versed in the niceties of the heart, and 
 born with a faculty for willing compromise. The wo- 
 man must be talented as a woman, and it will not much 
 matter although she is talented in nothing else. She 
 must know her metier de femme, and have a fine touch 
 for the affections. And it is more important that a per- 
 son should be a good gossip, and talk pleasantly and 
 smartly of common friends and the thousand and one 
 nothings of the day and hour, than that she should speak 
 with the tongues of men and angels; for a while to- 
 gether by the fire, happens more frequently in marriage 
 than the presence of a distinguished foreigner to dinner. 
 That people should laugh over the same sort of jests, and 
 have many a story of " grouse in the gun-room," many 
 an old joke between them which time cannot wither 
 
 12 
 
"V1RGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 nor custom stale, is a better preparation for life, by your 
 leave, than many other things higher and better sound- 
 ing in the world's ears. You could read Kant by your- 
 self, if you wanted ; but you must share a joke with 
 some one else. You can forgive people who do not fol- 
 low you through a philosophical disquisition ; but to find 
 your wife laughing when you had tears in your eyes, 
 or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go 
 some way towards a dissolution of the marriage. 
 
 I know a woman who, from some distaste or disabil- 
 ity, could never so much as understand the meaning of 
 the word politics, and has given up trying to distinguish 
 Whigs from Tories ; but take her on her own politics, 
 ask her about other men or women and the chicanery 
 of everyday existence — the rubs, the tricks, the vani- 
 ties on which life turns — and you will not find many 
 more shrewd, trenchant, and humorous. Nay, to make 
 plainer what I have in mind, this same woman has a 
 share of the higher and more poetical understanding, 
 frank interest in things for their own sake, and enduring 
 astonishment at the most common. She is not to be 
 deceived by custom, or made to think a mystery solved 
 when it is repeated. I have heard her say she could 
 wonder herself crazy over the human eyebrow. Now 
 in a world where most of us walk very contentedly in 
 the little lit circle of their own reason, and have to be 
 reminded of what lies without by specious and clamant 
 exceptions — earthquakes, eruptions of Vesuvius, banjos 
 floating in mid-air at a stance, and the like — a mind so 
 fresh and unsophisticated is no despicable gift. I will 
 own I think it a better sort of mind than goes necessar- 
 ily with the clearest views on public business. It will 
 
 13 
 
'VIRG1N1BUS PUER15QUE" 
 
 wash. It will find something to say at an odd moment. 
 It has in it the spring of pleasant and quaint fancies. 
 Whereas I can imagine myself yawning all night long 
 until my jaws ached and the tears came into my eyes, 
 although my companion on the other side of the hearth 
 held the most enlightened opinions on the franchise or 
 the ballot. 
 
 The question of professions, in as far as they regard 
 marriage, was only interesting to women until of late 
 days, but it touches all of us now. Certainly, if I could 
 help it, I would never marry a wife who wrote. The 
 practice of letters is miserably harassing to the mind; 
 and after an hour or two's work, all the more human 
 portion of the author is extinct ; he will bully, backbite, 
 and speak daggers. Music, I hear, is not much better. 
 But painting, on the contrary, is often highly sedative; 
 because so much of the labour, after your picture is once 
 begun, is almost entirely manual, and of that skilled sort 
 of manual labour which offers a continual series of suc- 
 cesses, and so tickles a man, through his vanity, into 
 good humour. Alas ! in letters there is nothing of this 
 sort. You may write as beautiful a hand as you will, 
 you have always something else to think of, and cannot 
 pause to notice your loops and flourishes; they are 
 beside the mark, and the first law stationer could put 
 you to the blush. Rousseau, indeed, made some account 
 of penmanship, even made it a source of livelihood, 
 when he copied out the Httoise for dilettante ladies ; and 
 therein showed that strange eccentric prudence which 
 guided him among so many thousand follies and insani- 
 ties. It would be well for all of the genus irritabile thus 
 to add something of skilled labour to intangible brain- 
 
 U 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 work. To find the right word is so doubtful a success 
 and lies so near to failure, that there is no satisfaction in 
 a year of it ; but we all know when we have formed a 
 letter perfectly ; and a stupid artist, right or wrong, is 
 almost equally certain he has found a right tone or a right 
 colour, or made a dexterous stroke with his brush. 
 And, again, painters may work out of doors ; and the 
 fresh air, the deliberate seasons, and the " tranquillising 
 influence " of the green earth, counterbalance the fever 
 of thought, and keep them cool, placable, and prosaic. 
 A ship captain is a good man to marry if it is a mar- 
 riage of love, for absences are a good influence in love 
 and keep it bright and delicate ; but he is just the worst 
 man if the feeling is more pedestrian, as habit is too 
 frequently torn open and the solder has never time to set. 
 Men who fish, botanise, work with the turning-lathe, or 
 gather sea- weeds, will make admirable husbands; and 
 a little amateur painting in water-colour shows the in- 
 nocent and quiet mind. Those who have a few intimates 
 are to be avoided; while those who swim loose, who 
 have their hat in their hand all along the street, who can 
 number an infinity of acquaintances and are not charge- 
 able with any one friend, promise an easy disposition 
 and no rival to the wife's influence. I will not say they 
 are the best of men, but they are the stuff out of which 
 adroit and capable women manufacture the best of hus- 
 bands. It is to be noticed that those who have loved 
 once or twice already are so much the better educated to 
 a woman's hand ; the bright boy of fiction is an odd and 
 most uncomfortable mixture of shyness and coarseness, 
 and needs a deal of civilising. Lastly (and this is, per- 
 haps, the golden rule), no woman should marry a teeto- 
 
 15 
 
"V1RG1N1BUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 taller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for no- 
 thing that this "ignoble tabagie," as Michelet calls it, 
 spreads over all the world. Michelet rails against it be- 
 cause it renders you happy apart from thought or work ; 
 to provident women this will seem no evil influence in 
 married life. Whatever keeps a man in the front garden, 
 whatever checks wandering fancy and all inordinate 
 ambition, whatever makes for lounging and content- 
 ment, makes just so surely for domestic happiness. 
 
 These notes, if they amuse the reader at all, will prob- 
 ably amuse him more when he differs than when he 
 agrees with them ; at least they will do no harm, for 
 nobody will follow my advice. But the last word is of 
 more concern. Marriage is a step so grave and decisive 
 that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very 
 awfulness. They have been so tried among the incon- 
 stant squalls and currents, so often sailed for islands in 
 the air or lain becalmed with burning heart, that they 
 will risk all for solid ground below their feet. Desper- 
 ate pilots, they run their sea-sick, weary bark upon the 
 dashing rocks. It seems as if marriage were the royal 
 road through life, and realised, on the instant, what we 
 have all dreamed on summer Sundays when the bells 
 ring, or at night when we cannot sleep for the desire of 
 living. They think it will sober and change them. 
 Like those who join a brotherhood, they fancy it needs 
 but an act to be out of the coil and clamour for ever. 
 But this is a wile of the devil's. To the end, spring 
 winds will sow disquietude, passing faces leave a regret 
 behind them, and the whole world keep calling and 
 calling in their ears. For marriage is like life in this — 
 that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses. 
 
 \6 
 
II 
 
 Hope, they say, deserts us at no period of our exist- 
 ence. From first to last, and in the face of smarting 
 disillusions, we continue to expect good fortune, better 
 health, and better conduct; and that so confidently, that 
 we judge it needless to deserve them. I think it im- 
 probable that I shall ever write like Shakespeare, con- 
 duct an army like Hannibal, or distinguish myself like 
 Marcus Aurelius in the paths of virtue ; and yet I have 
 my by-days, hope prompting, when I am very ready to 
 believe that I shall combine all these various excellences 
 in my own person, and go marching down to posterity 
 with divine honours. There is nothing so monstrous 
 but we can believe it of ourselves. About ourselves, 
 about our aspirations and delinquencies, we have dwelt 
 by choice in a delicious vagueness from our boyhood 
 up. No one will have forgotten Tom Sawyer's aspira- 
 tion : ' ' Ah, if he could only die temporarily ! ' ' Or, per- 
 haps, better still, the inward resolution of the two pi- 
 rates, that "so long as they remained in that business, 
 their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime 
 of stealing." Here we recognise the thoughts of our 
 boyhood ; and our boyhood ceased — well, when ? — 
 not, I think, at twenty; nor, perhaps, altogether at 
 twenty-five ; nor yet at thirty ; and possibly, to be quite 
 
 «7 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQiJE" 
 
 frank, we are still in the thick of that Arcadian period. 
 For as the race of man, after centuries of civilisation, still 
 keeps some traits of their barbarian fathers, so man the 
 individual is not altogether quit of youth, when he is al- 
 ready old and honoured, and Lord Chancellor of Eng- 
 land. We advance in years somewhat in the manner 
 of an invading army in a barren land ; the age that we 
 have reached, as the phrase goes, we but hold with an 
 outpost, and still keep open our communications with 
 the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march. 
 There is our true base ; that is not only the beginning, 
 but the perennial spring of our faculties ; and grandfather 
 William can retire upon occasion into the green en- 
 chanted forest of his boyhood. 
 
 The unfading boyishness of hope and its vigorous 
 irrationality are nowhere better displayed than in ques- 
 tions of conduct. There is a character in the Pilgrim's 
 Progress, one Mr. Linger-after- Lust, with whom I fancy 
 we are all on speaking terms; one famous among the 
 famous for ingenuity of hope up to and beyond the mo- 
 ment of defeat; one who, after eighty years of contrary 
 experience, will believe it possible to continue in the 
 business of piracy and yet avoid the guilt of theft. Every 
 sin is our last ; every i st of January a remarkable turning- 
 point in our career. Any overt act, above all, is felt to 
 be alchemic in its power to change. A drunkard takes 
 the pledge ; it will be strange if that does not help him. 
 For how many years did Mr. Pepys continue to make 
 and break his little vows ? And yet I have not heard 
 that he was discouraged in the end. By such steps we 
 think to fix a momentary resolution; as a timid fellow 
 hies him to the dentist's while the tooth is stinging. 
 
 18 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 But, alas, by planting a stake at the top of flood, you 
 can neither prevent nor delay the inevitable ebb. There 
 is no hocus-pocus in morality; and even the "sanc- 
 timonious ceremony " of marriage leaves the man 
 unchanged. This is a hard saying, and has an air of 
 paradox. For there is something in marriage so natural 
 and inviting, that the step has an air of great simplicitv 
 and ease; it offers to bury for ever many aching pre- 
 occupations; it is to afford us unfailing and familiar 
 company through life; it opens up a smiling prospect 
 of the blest and passive kind of love, rather than the 
 blessing and active ; it is approached not only through 
 the delights of courtship, but by a public performance 
 and repeated legal signatures. A man naturally thinks 
 it will go hard with him if he cannot be good and fortu- 
 nate and happy within such august circumvallations. 
 
 And yet there is probably no other act in a man's life 
 so hot-headed and foolhardy as this one of marriage. 
 For years, let us suppose, you have been making the 
 most indifferent business of your career. Your experi- 
 ence has not, we may dare to say, been more encourag- 
 ing than Paul's or Horace's; like them, you have seen 
 and desired the good that you were not able to accom- 
 plish ; like them, you have done the evil that you loathed. 
 You have waked at night in a hot or a cold sweat, 
 according to your habit of body, remembering, with 
 dismal surprise, your own unpardonable acts and say- 
 ings. You have been sometimes tempted to withdraw 
 entirely from this game of life; as a man who makes 
 nothing but misses withdraws from that less dangerous 
 one of billiards. You have fallen back upon the thought 
 that you yourself most sharply smarted for your misde- 
 
 <9 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQLJE" 
 
 meanours, or, in the old, plaintive phrase, that you were 
 nobody's enemy but your own. And then you have 
 been made aware of what was beautiful and amiable, 
 wise and kind, in the other part of your behaviour; and 
 it seemed as if nothing could reconcile the contradiction, 
 as indeed nothing can. If you are a man, you have shut 
 your mouth hard and said nothing; and if you are only 
 a man in the making, you have recognised that yours 
 was quite a special case, and you yourself not guilty of 
 your own pestiferous career. 
 
 Granted, and with all my heart. Let us accept these 
 apologies; let us agree that you are nobody's enemy 
 but your own ; let us agree that you are a sort of moral 
 cripple, impotent for good ; and let us regard you with 
 the unmingled pity due to such a fate. But there is 
 one thing to which, on these terms, we can never agree : 
 — we can never agree to have you marry. What! you 
 have had one life to manage, and have failed so strangely, 
 and now can see nothing wiser than to conjoin with it 
 the management of some one else's ? Because you have 
 been unfaithful in a very little, you propose yourself to 
 be a ruler over ten cities. You strip yourself by such a 
 step of all remaining consolations and excuses. You 
 are no longer content to be your own enemy ; you must 
 be your wife's also. You have been hitherto in a mere 
 subaltern attitude; dealing cruel blows about you in 
 life, yet only half responsible, since you came there by 
 no choice or movement of your own. Now, it appears, 
 you must take things on your own authority : God made 
 you, but you marry yourself; and for all that your wife 
 suffers, no one is responsible but you. A man must 
 be very certain of his knowledge ere he undertake to 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQLJE" 
 
 guide a ticket-of-leave man through a dangerous pass ; 
 you have eternally missed your way in life, with conse- 
 quences that you still deplore, and yet you masterfully 
 seize your wife's hand, and, blindfold, drag her after 
 vou to ruin. And it is your wife, you observe, whom 
 you select. She, whose happiness you most desire, you 
 choose to be your victim. You would earnestly warn 
 her from a tottering bridge or bad investment. If she 
 were to marry some one else, how you would tremble 
 for her fate! If she were only your sister, and you 
 thought half as much of her, how doubtfully would you 
 entrust her future to a man no better than yourself ! 
 
 Times are changed with him who marries; there are 
 no more by-path meadows, where you may innocently 
 linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to 
 the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and even 
 wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect 
 when you have a wife to support. Suppose, after you 
 are married, one of those little slips were to befall you. 
 What happened last November might surely happen 
 February next. They may have annoyed you at the 
 time, because they were not what you had meant; but 
 how will they annoy you in the future, and how will 
 they shake the fabric of your wife's confidence and 
 peace! A thousand things unpleasing went on in the 
 chiaroscuro of a life that you shrank from too particu- 
 larly realising; you did not care, in those days, to make 
 a fetish of your conscience ; you would recognise your 
 failures with a nod, and so, good day. But the time 
 for these reserves is over. You have wilfully introduced 
 a witness into your life, the scene of these defeats, and 
 can no longer close the mind's eye upon uncomely pas- 
 
"V1RGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 sages, but must stand up straight and put a name upon 
 your actions. And your witness is not only the judge, 
 but the victim of your sins; not only can she condemn 
 you to the sharpest penalties, but she must herself share 
 feelingly in their endurance. And observe, once more, 
 with what temerity you have chosen precisely her to be 
 your spy, whose esteem you value highest, and whom 
 you have already taught to think you better than you 
 are. You may think you had a conscience, and believed 
 in God ; but what is a conscience to a wife ? Wise men 
 of yore erected statues of their deities, and consciously 
 performed their part in life before those marble eyes. A 
 god watched them at the board, and stood by their bed- 
 side in the morning when they woke; and all about 
 their ancient cities, where they bought and sold, or 
 where they piped and wrestled, there would stand some 
 symbol of the things that are outside of man. These 
 were lessons, delivered in the quiet dialect of art, which 
 told their story faithfully, but gently. It is the same 
 lesson, if you will — but how harrowingly taught ! — 
 when the woman you respect shall weep from your un- 
 kindness or blush with shame at your misconduct. Poor 
 girls in Italy turn their painted Madonnas to the wall : you 
 cannot set aside your wife. To marry is to domesticate 
 the Recording Angel. Once you are married, there is 
 nothing left for you, not even suicide, but to be good. 
 And goodness in marriage is a more intricate problem 
 than mere single virtue; for in marriage there are two 
 ideals to be realised. A girl, it is true, has always lived 
 in a glass house among reproving relatives, whose word 
 was law ; she has been bred up to sacrifice her judg- 
 ments and take the key submissively from dear papa; 
 
"VIRG1N1BUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 and it is wonderful how swiftly she can change her tune 
 into the husband's. Her morality has been, too often, 
 an affair of precept and conformity. But in the case of 
 a bachelor who has enjoyed some measure both of pri- 
 vacy and freedom, his moral judgments have been passed 
 in some accordance with his nature. His sins were al- 
 ways sins in his own sight; he could then only sin when 
 he did some act against his clear conviction ; the light 
 that he walked by was obscure, but it was single. Now, 
 when two people of any grit and spirit put their fortunes 
 into one, there succeeds to this comparative certainty a 
 huge welter of competing jurisdictions. It no longer 
 matters so much how life appears to one; one must con- 
 sult another: one, who may be strong, must not offend 
 the other, who is weak. The only weak brother I am 
 willing to consider is (to make a bull for once) my wife. 
 For her, and for her only, I must waive my righteous 
 judgments, and go crookedly about my life. How, then, 
 in such an atmosphere of compromise, to keep honour 
 bright and abstain from base capitulations ? How are 
 you to put aside love's pleadings ? How are you, the 
 apostle of laxity, to turn suddenly about into the rabbi 
 of precision ; and after these years of ragged practice, 
 pose for a hero to the lackey who has found you out ? 
 In this temptation to mutual indulgence lies the particular 
 peril to morality in married life. Daily they drop a little 
 lower from the first ideal, and for a while continue to 
 accept these changelings with a gross complacency. At 
 last Love wakes and looks about him ; finds his hero 
 sunk into a stout old brute, intent on brandy pawnee; 
 finds his heroine divested of her angel brightness ; and 
 in the flash of that first disenchantment, flees for ever. 
 
 23 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 Again, the husband, in these unions, is usually a 
 man, and the wife commonly enough a woman; and 
 when this is the case, although it makes the firmer 
 marriage, a thick additional veil of misconception hangs 
 above the doubtful business. Women, I believe, are 
 somewhat rarer than men ; but then, if I were a woman 
 myself, I daresay I should hold the reverse; and at least 
 we all enter more or less wholly into one or other of 
 these camps. A man who delights women by his femi- 
 nine perceptions will often scatter his admirers by a 
 chance explosion of the under side of man; and the 
 most masculine and direct of women will some day, to 
 your dire surprise, draw out like a telescope into suc- 
 cessive lengths of personation. Alas ! for the man, 
 knowing her to be at heart more candid than himself, 
 who shall flounder, panting, through these mazes in the 
 quest for truth. The proper qualities of each sex are, in- 
 deed, eternally surprising to the other. Between the 
 Latin and the Teuton races there are similar divergences, 
 not to be bridged by the most liberal sympathy. And 
 in the good, plain, cut-and-dry explanations of this life, 
 which pass current among us as the wisdom of the 
 elders, this difficulty has been turned with the aid of 
 pious lies. Thus, when a young lady has angelic fea- 
 tures, eats nothing to speak of, plays all day long on the 
 piano, and sings ravishingly in church, it requires a 
 rough infidelity, falsely cal'ed cynicism, to believe that 
 she may be a little devil after all. Yet so it is : she may 
 be a tale-bearer, a liar, and a thief; she may have a taste 
 for brandy, and no heart. My compliments to George 
 Eliot for her Rosamond Vincy ; the ugly work of satire 
 she has transmuted to the ends of art, by the companion 
 
 24 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 figure of Lydgate; and the satire was much wanted for 
 the education of young men. That doctrine of the ex- 
 cellence of women, however chivalrous, is cowardly as 
 well as false. It is better to face the fact, and know, 
 when you marry, that you take into your life a creature 
 of equal, if of unlike, frailties ; whose weak human heart 
 beats no more tunefully than yours. 
 
 But it is the object of a liberal education not only to 
 obscure the knowledge of one sex by another, but to 
 magnify the natural differences between the two. Man 
 is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but prin- 
 cipally by catchwords; and the little rift between the 
 sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one 
 set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys. 
 To the first, there is shown but a very small field of ex- 
 perience, and taught a very trenchant principle for judg- 
 ment and action ; to the other, the world of life is more 
 largely displayed, and their rule of conduct is propor- 
 tionally widened. They are taught to follow different 
 virtues, to hate different vices, to place their ideal, even 
 for each other, in different achievements. What should 
 be the result of such a course ? When a horse has run 
 away, and the two flustered people in the gig have each 
 possessed themselves of a rein, we know the end of 
 that conveyance will be in the ditch. So, when I see a 
 raw youth and a green girl, fluted and fiddled in a danc- 
 ing measure into that most serious contract, and setting 
 out upon life's journey with ideas so monstrously diver- 
 gent, I am not surprised that some make shipwreck, 
 but that any come to port. What the boy does almost 
 proudly, as a manly peccadillo, the girl will shudder at as 
 a debasing vice; what is to her the mere common sense 
 
 25 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUER1SQUE" 
 
 of tactics, he will spit out of his mouth as shameful. 
 Through such a sea of contrarieties must this green 
 couple steer their way ; and contrive to love each other ; 
 and to respect, forsooth ; and be ready, when the time 
 arrives, to educate the little men and women who shall 
 succeed to their places and perplexities. 
 
 And yet, when all has been said, the man who should 
 hold back from marriage is in the same case with him 
 who runs away from battle. To avoid an occasion for 
 our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push for- 
 ward pluckily and make a fall. It is lawful to pray God 
 that we be not led into temptation ; but not lawful to 
 skulk from those that come to us. The noblest passage 
 in one of the noblest books of this century, is where the 
 old pope glories in the trial, nay, in the partial fall and 
 but imperfect triumph, of the younger hero. 1 Without 
 some such manly note, it were perhaps better to have 
 no conscience at all. But there is a vast difference be- 
 tween teaching flight, and showing points of peril that 
 a man may march the more warily. And the true con- 
 clusion of this paper is to turn our back on apprehen- 
 sions, and embrace that shining and courageous virtue, 
 Faith. Hope is the boy, a blind, headlong, pleasant 
 fellow, good to chase swallows with the salt; Faith is 
 the grave, experienced, yet smiling man. Hope lives 
 on ignorance; open-eyed Faith is built upon a knowl- 
 edge of our life, of the tyranny of circumstance and the 
 frailty of human resolution. Hope looks for unqualified 
 success ; but Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes 
 honourable defeat to be a form of victory. Hope is a 
 kind old pagan; but Faith grew up in Christian days, 
 
 iBrowning's Ring and Book. 
 26 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 and early learnt humility. In the one temper, a man is 
 indignant that he cannot spring up in a clap to heights 
 of elegance and virtue ; in the other, out of a sense of 
 his infirmities, he is filled with confidence because a 
 year has come and gone, and he has still preserved some 
 rags of honour. In the first, he expects an angel for a 
 wife; in the last, he knows that she is like himself — 
 erring, thoughtless, and untrue; but like himself also, 
 filled with a struggling radiancy of better things, and 
 adorned with ineffective qualities. You may safely go 
 to school with hope ; but ere you marry, should have 
 learned the mingled lesson of the world: that dolls are 
 stuffed with sawdust, and yet are excellent playthings ; 
 that hope and love address themselves to a perfection 
 never realised, and yet, firmly held, become the salt 
 and staff of life; that you yourself are compacted of in- 
 firmities, perfect, you might say, in imperfection, and 
 yet you have a something in you lovable and worth 
 preserving; and that, while the mass of mankind lies 
 under this scurvy condemnation, you will scarce find 
 one but, by some generous reading, will become to you 
 a lesson, a model, and a noble spouse through life. So 
 thinking, you will constantly support your own unwor- 
 thiness, and easily forgive the failings of your friend. 
 Nay, you will be wisely glad that you retain the sense of 
 blemishes ; for the faults of married people continually 
 spur up each of them, hour by hour, to do better and to 
 meet and love upon a higher ground. And ever, be- 
 tween the failures, there will come glimpses of kind 
 virtues to encourage and console. 
 
 27 
 
III.— ON FALLING IN LOVE 
 
 "Lord, what fools these mortals be! " 
 
 There is only one event in life which really astonishes 
 a man and startles him out of his prepared opinions. 
 Everything else befalls him very much as he expected. 
 Event succeeds to event, with an agreeable variety in- 
 deed, but with little that is either startling or intense; 
 they form together no more than a sort of background, 
 or running accompaniment to the man's own reflections ; 
 and he falls naturally into a cool, curious, and smiling 
 habit of mind, and builds himself up in a conception of 
 life which expects to-morrow to be after the pattern of 
 to-day and yesterday. He may be accustomed to the 
 vagaries of his friends and acquaintances under the in- 
 fluence of love. He may sometimes look forward to it 
 for himself with an incomprehensible expectation. But 
 it is a subject in which neither intuition nor the behaviour 
 of others will help the philosopher to the truth. There 
 is probably nothing rightly thought or rightly written on 
 this matter of love that is not a piece of the person's ex- 
 perience. I remember an anecdote of a well-known 
 French theorist, who was debating a point eagerly in his 
 cenacle. It was objected against him that he had never 
 experienced love. Whereupon he arose, left the society, 
 and made it a point not to return to it until he considered 
 
 28 
 
"VIRG1NIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 that he had supplied the defect. "Now," he remarked, 
 on entering, " now I am in a position to continue the 
 discussion. " Perhaps he had not penetrated very deeply 
 into the subject after all; but the story indicates right 
 thinking, and may serve as an apologue to readers of 
 this essay. 
 
 When at last the scales fall from his eyes, it is not 
 without something of the nature of dismay that the man 
 finds himself in such changed conditions. He has to 
 deal with commanding emotions instead of the easy dis- 
 likes and preferences in which he has hitherto passed his 
 days ; and he recognises capabilities for pain and pleas- 
 ure of which he had not yet suspected the existence. 
 Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one 
 thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, 
 in our trite and reasonable world. The effect is out of 
 all proportion with the cause. Two persons, neither of 
 them, it may be, very amiable or very beautiful, meet, 
 speak a little, and look a little into each other's eyes. 
 That has been done a dozen or so of times in the ex- 
 perience of either with no great result. But on this oc- 
 casion all is different. They fall at once into that state 
 in which another person becomes to us the very gist and 
 centrepoint of God's creation, and demolishes our labori- 
 ous theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so 
 bound up with the one master-thought that even the 
 trivial cares of our own person become so many acts of 
 devotion, and the love of life itself is translated into a 
 wish to remain in the same world with so precious and 
 desirable a fellow-creature. And all the while their ac- 
 quaintances look on in stupor, and ask each other, with 
 almost passionate emphasis, what so-and-so can see in 
 
 29 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 that woman, or such-an-one in that man ? I am sure, 
 gentlemen, I cannot tell you. For my part, I cannot 
 think what the women mean. It might be very well, 
 if the Apollo Belvedere should suddenly glow all over 
 into life, and step forward from the pedestal with that 
 godlike air of his. But of the misbegotten changelings 
 who call themselves men, and prate intolerably over 
 dinner-tables, I never saw one who seemed worthy to 
 inspire love — no, nor read of any, except Leonardo da 
 Vinci, and perhaps Goethe in his youth. About women 
 1 entertain a somewhat different opinion; but there, I 
 have the misfortune to be a man. 
 
 There are many matters in which you may waylay 
 Destiny, and bid him stand and deliver. Hard work, high 
 thinking, adventurous excitement, and a great deal more 
 that forms a part of this or the other person's spiritual 
 bill of fare, are within the reach of almost any one who 
 can dare a little and be patient. But it is by no means 
 in the way of every one to fall in love. You know the 
 difficulty Shakespeare was put into when Queen Eliza- 
 beth asked him to show FalstafT in love. I do not be- 
 lieve that Henry Fielding was ever in love. Scott, if it 
 were not for a passage or two in Rob Roy, would give 
 me very much the same effect. These are great names 
 and (what is more to the purpose) strong, healthy, high- 
 strung, and generous natures, of whom the reverse might 
 have been expected. As for the innumerable army of 
 anaemic and tailorish persons who occupy the face of 
 this planet with so much propriety, it is palpably absurd 
 to imagine them in any such situation as a love-affair. 
 A wet rag goes safely by the fire; and if a man is blind, 
 he cannot expect to be much impressed by romantic 
 
 30 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 scenery. Apart from all this, many lovable people miss 
 each other in the world, or meet under some unfavour- 
 able star. There is the nice and critical moment of dec- 
 laration to be got over. From timidity or lack of op- 
 portunity a good half of possible love cases never get so 
 far, and at least another quarter do there cease and de- 
 termine. A very adroit person, to be sure, manages to 
 prepare the way and out with his declaration in the nick 
 of time. And then there is a fine solid sort of man, who 
 goes on from snub to snub ; and if he has to declare forty 
 times, will continue imperturbably declaring, amid the 
 astonished consideration of men and angels, until he has 
 a favourable answer. I daresay, if one were a woman, 
 one would like to marry a man who was capable of do- 
 ing this, but not quite one who had done so. It is just 
 a little bit abject, and somehow just a little bit gross ; 
 and marriages in which one of the parties has been thus 
 battered into consent scarcely form agreeable subjects 
 for meditation. Love should run out to meet love with 
 open arms. Indeed, the ideal story is that of two peo- 
 ple who go into love step for step, with a fluttered con- 
 sciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into 
 a dark room. From the first moment when they see 
 each other, with a pang of curiosity, through stage after 
 stage of growing pleasure and embarrassment, they can 
 read the expression of their own trouble in each other's 
 eyes. There is here no declaration properly so called; 
 the feeling is so plainly shared, that as soon as the man 
 knows what it is in his own heart, he is sure of what it 
 is in the woman's. 
 
 This simple accident of falling in love is as beneficial 
 as it is astonishing. It arrests the petrifying influence 
 
 31 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 of years, disproves cold-blooded and cynical conclusions, 
 and awakens dormant sensibilities. Hitherto the man 
 had found it a good policy to disbelieve the existence of 
 any enjoyment which was out of his reach ; and thus he 
 turned his back upon the strong sunny parts of nature, 
 and accustomed himself to look exclusively on what was 
 common and dull. He accepted a prose ideal, let him- 
 self go blind of many sympathies by disuse; and if he 
 were young and witty, or beautiful, wilfully forewent 
 these advantages. He joined himself to the following of 
 what, in the old mythology of love, was prettily called 
 nonchaloir ; and in an odd mixture of feelings, a fling 
 of self-respect, a preference for selfish liberty, and a great 
 dash of that fear with which honest people regard seri- 
 ous interests, kept himself back from the straightforward 
 course of life among certain selected activities. And 
 now, all of a sudden, he is unhorsed, like St. Paul, 
 from his infidel affectation. His heart, which has been 
 ticking accurate seconds for the last year, gives a bound 
 and begins to beat high and irregularly in his breast. It 
 seems as if he had never heard or felt or seen until that 
 moment; and by the report of his memory, he must 
 have lived his past life between sleep or waking, or 
 with the preoccupied attention of a brown study. He 
 is practically incommoded by the generosity of his feel- 
 ings, smiles much when he is alone, and develops a 
 habit of looking rather blankly upon the moon and stars. 
 But it is not at all within the province of a prose essayist 
 to give a picture of this hyperbolical frame of mind; and 
 the thing has been done already, and that to admiration. 
 In Adelaide, in Tennyson's Maud, and in some of Heine's 
 songs, you get the absolute expression of this midsum- 
 
 32 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 mer spirit. Romeo and Juliet were very much in love ; 
 although they tell me some German critics are of a dif- 
 ferent opinion, probably the same who would have 
 us think Mercutio a dull fellow. Poor Antony was in 
 love, and no mistake. That lay figure Marius, in Les 
 Miserable*, is also a genuine case in his own way, and 
 worth observation. A good many of George Sand's 
 people are thoroughly in love ; and so are a good many 
 of George Meredith's. Altogether, there is plenty to 
 read on the subject. If the root of the matter be in him, 
 and if he has the requisite chords to set in vibration, a 
 young man may occasionally enter, with the key of art, 
 into that land of Beulah which is upon the borders of 
 Heaven and within sight of the City of Love. There 
 let him sit awhile to hatch delightful hopes and perilous 
 illusions. 
 
 One thing that accompanies the passion in its first 
 blush is certainly difficult to explain. It comes (I do 
 not quite see how) that from having a very supreme 
 sense of pleasure in all parts of life — in lying down to 
 sleep, in waking, in motion, in breathing, in continuing 
 to be — the lover begins to regard his happiness as bene- 
 ficial for the rest of the world and highly meritorious in 
 himself. Our race has never been able contentedly to 
 suppose that the noise of its wars, conducted by a few 
 young gentlemen in a corner of an inconsiderable star, 
 does not re-echo among the courts of Heaven with quite 
 a formidable effect. In much the same taste, when 
 people find a great to-do in their own breasts, they 
 imagine it must have some influence in their neighbour- 
 hood. The presence of the two lovers is so enchanting 
 to each other that it seems as if it must be the best thing 
 
 33 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUER1SQUE" 
 
 possible for everybody else. They are half inclined to 
 fancy it is because of them and their love that the sky is 
 blue and the sun shines. And certainly the weather is 
 usually fine while people are courting. ... In point 
 of fact, although the happy man feels very kindly to- 
 wards others of his own sex, there is apt to be some- 
 thing too much of the magnifico in his demeanour. If 
 people grow presuming and self-important over such mat- 
 ters as a dukedom or the Holy See, they will scarcely sup- 
 port the dizziest elevation in life without some suspicion 
 of a strut; and the dizziest elevation is to love and be 
 loved in return. Consequently, accepted lovers are a 
 trifle condescending in their address to other men. An 
 overweening sense of the passion and importance of 
 life hardly conduces to simplicity of manner. To women, 
 they feel very nobly, very purely, and very generously, 
 as if they were so many Joan-of-Arc's ; but this does not 
 come out in their behaviour; and they treat them to 
 Grandisonian airs marked with a suspicion of fatuity. I 
 am not quite certain that women do not like this sort 
 of thing; but really, after having bemused myself over 
 Daniel Deronda, I have given up trying to understand 
 what they like. 
 
 If it did nothing else, this sublime and ridiculous su- 
 perstition, that the pleasure of the pair is somehow 
 blessed to others, and everybody is made happier in 
 their happiness, would serve at least to keep love gen- 
 erous and great-hearted. Nor is it quite a baseless super- 
 stition after all. Other lovers are hugely interested. They 
 strike the nicestbalance between pity and approval, when 
 they see people aping the greatness of their own senti- 
 ments. It is an understood thing in the play, that while 
 
 34 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 the young gentlefolk are courting on the terrace, a rough 
 flirtation is being carried on, and a light, trivial sort of 
 love is growing up, between the footman and the sing- 
 ing chambermaid. As people are generally cast for the 
 leading parts in their own imaginations, the reader can 
 apply the parallel to real life without much chance of 
 going wrong. In short, they are quite sure this other 
 love-affair is not so deep-seated as their own, but they 
 like dearly to see it going forward. And love, consid- 
 ered as a spectacle, must have attractions for many who 
 are not of the confraternity. The sentimental old maid 
 is a commonplace of the novelists ; and he must be rather 
 a poor sort of human being, to be sure, who can look on 
 at this pretty madness without indulgence and sym- 
 pathy. For nature commends itself to people with a 
 most insinuating art; the busiest is now and again ar- 
 rested by a great sunset; and you may be as pacific or 
 as cold-blooded as you will, but you cannot help some 
 emotion when you read of well-disputed battles, or meet 
 a pair of lovers in the lane. 
 
 Certainly, whatever it may be with regard to the world 
 at large, this idea of beneficent pleasure is true as between 
 the sweethearts. To do good and communicate is the 
 lover's grand intention. It is the happiness of the other 
 that makes his own most intense gratification. It is not 
 possible to disentangle the different emotions, the pride, 
 humility, pity and passion, which are excited by a look 
 of happy love or an unexpected caress. To make one's 
 self beautiful, to dress the hair, to excel in talk, to do any- 
 thing and all things that puff out the character and attri- 
 butes and make them imposing in the eyes of others, is 
 not only to magnify one's self, but to offer the most del- 
 
 35 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 icate homage at the same time. And it is in this latter 
 intention that they are done by lovers ; for the essence 
 of love is kindness ; and indeed it may be best defined 
 as passionate kindness : kindness, so to speak, run mad 
 and become importunate and violent. Vanity in a merely 
 personal sense exists no longer. The lover takes a peril- 
 ous pleasure in privately displaying his weak points 
 and having them, one after another, accepted and con- 
 doned. He wishes to be assured that he is not loved 
 for this or that good quality, but for himself, or some- 
 thing as like himself as he can contrive to set forward. 
 For, although it may have been a very difficult thing to 
 paint the marriage of Cana, or write the fourth act of 
 Antony and Cleopatra, there is a more difficult piece of 
 art before every one in this world who cares to set about 
 explaining his own character to others. Words and acts 
 are easily wrenched from their true significance; and 
 they are all the language we have to come and go upon. 
 A pitiful job we make of it, as a rule. For better or 
 worse, people mistake our meaning and take our emo- 
 tions at a wrong valuation. And generally we rest pretty 
 content with our failures ; we are content to be misap- 
 prehended by cackling flirts; but when once a man is 
 moonstruck with this affection of love, he makes it a point 
 of honour to clear such dubieties away. He cannot have 
 the Best of her Sex misled upon a point of this import- 
 ance; and his pride revolts at being loved in a mistake. 
 He discovers a great reluctance to return on former 
 periods of his life. To all that has not been shared with 
 her, rights and duties, bygone fortunes and dispositions, 
 he can look back only by a difficult and repugnant effort 
 of the will. That he should have wasted some years in 
 
 36 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 ignorance of what alone was really important, that he 
 may have entertained the thought of other women with 
 any show of complacency, is a burthen almost too 
 heavy for his self-respect. But it is the thought of 
 another past that rankles in his spirit like a poisoned 
 wound. That he himself made a fashion of being alive 
 in the bald, beggarly days before a certain meeting, is 
 deplorable enough in all good conscience. But that She 
 should have permitted herself the same liberty seems in- 
 consistent with a Divine providence. 
 
 A great many people run down jealousy, on the score 
 that it is an artificial feeling, as well as practically incon- 
 venient. This is scarcely fair; for the feeling on which 
 it merely attends, like an ill-humoured courtier, is itself 
 artificial in exactly the same sense and to the same de- 
 gree. I suppose what is meant by that objection is that 
 jealousy has not always been a character of man ; formed 
 no part of that very modest kit of sentiments with which 
 he is supposed to have begun the world ; but waited to 
 make its appearance in better days and among richer 
 natures. And this is equally true of love, and friend- 
 ship, and love of country, and delight in what they call 
 the beauties of nature, and most other things worth hav- 
 ing. Love, in particular, will not endure any historical 
 scrutiny : to all who have fallen across it, it is one of the 
 most incontestable facts in the world ; but if you begin 
 to ask what it was in other periods and countries, in 
 Greece for instance, the strangest doubts begin to spring 
 up, and everything seems so vague and changing that 
 a dream is logical in comparison. Jealousy, at any rate, 
 is one of the consequences of love ; you may like it or 
 not, at pleasure ; but there it is. 
 
 37 
 
"VIRG1N1BUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 It is not exactly jealousy, however, that we feel when 
 we reflect on the past of those we love. A bundle of 
 letters found after years of happy union creates no sense 
 of insecurity in the present; and yet it will pain a man 
 sharply. The two people entertain no vulgar doubt of 
 each other: but this pre-existence of both occurs to the 
 mind as something indelicate. To be altogether right, 
 they should have had twin birth together, at the same 
 moment with the feeling that unites them. Then indeed 
 it would be simple and perfect and without reserve or 
 afterthought. Then they would understand each other 
 with a fulness impossible otherwise. There would be 
 no barrier between them of associations that cannot be 
 imparted. They would be led into none of those com- 
 parisons that send the blood back to the heart. And they 
 would know that there had been no time lost, and they 
 had been together as much as was possible. For besides 
 terror for the separation that must follow some time or 
 other in the future, men feel anger, and something like 
 remorse, when they think of that other separation which 
 endured until they met. Some one has written that 
 love makes people believe in immortality, because there 
 seems not to be room enough in life for so great a ten- 
 derness, and it is inconceivable that the most masterful 
 of our emotions should have no more than the spare mo- 
 ments of a few years. Indeed, it seems strange ; but if 
 we call to mind analogies, we can hardly regard it as 
 impossible. 
 
 "The blind bow-boy," who smiles upon us from the 
 end of terraces in old Dutch gardens, laughingly hails his 
 bird-bolts among a fleeting generation. But for as fast 
 as ever he shoots, the game dissolves and disappears into 
 
 38 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQyE-» 
 
 eternity from under his falling arrows ; this one is gone 
 ere he is struck; the other has but time to make one 
 gesture and give one passionate cry ; and they are all the 
 things of a moment. When the generation is gone, 
 when the play is over, when the thirty years' panorama 
 has been withdrawn in tatters from the stage of the 
 world, we may ask what has become of these great, 
 weighty, and undying loves, and the sweethearts who 
 despised mortal conditions in a fine credulity ; and they 
 can only show us a few songs in a bygone taste, a few 
 actions worth remembering, and a few children who 
 have retained some happy stamp from the disposition of 
 their parents. 
 
 39 
 
IV.— TRUTH OF INTERCOURSE 
 
 Among sayings that have a currency in spite of being 
 wholly false upon the face of them for the sake of a half- 
 truth upon another subject which is accidentally com- 
 bined with the error, one of the grossest and broadest 
 conveys the monstrous proposition that it is easy to tell 
 the truth and hard to tell a lie. I wish heartily it were. 
 But the truth is one ; it has first to be discovered, then 
 justly and exactly uttered. Even with instruments spe- 
 cially contrived for such a purpose — with a foot rule, a 
 level, or a theodolite — it is not easy to be exact ; it is 
 easier, alas ! to be inexact. From those who mark the 
 divisions on a scale to those who measure the boundaries 
 of empires or the distance of the heavenly stars, it is by 
 careful method and minute, unwearying attention that 
 men rise even to material exactness or to sure knowledge 
 even of external and constant things. But it is easier to 
 draw the outline of a mountain than the changing ap- 
 pearance of a face ; and truth in human relations is of this 
 more intangible and dubious order: hard to seize, harder 
 to communicate. Veracity to facts in a loose, colloquial 
 sense — not to say that I have been in Malabar when as 
 a matter of fact I was never out of England, not to say 
 that I have read Cervantes in the original when as a 
 
 40 
 
" VIRG1NIBUS PUERISQUE » 
 
 matter of fact I know not one syllable of Spanish — this, 
 indeed, is easy and to the same degree unimportant in 
 itself. Lies of this sort, according to circumstances, may 
 or may not be important; in a certain sense even they 
 may or may not be false. The habitual liar may be a very 
 honest fellow, and live truly with his wife and friends ; 
 while another man who never told a formal falsehood in 
 his life may yet be himself one lie — heart and face, from 
 top to bottom. This is the kind of lie which poisons in- 
 timacy. And, vice versa, veracity to sentiment, truth in 
 a relation, truth to your own heart and your friends, 
 never to feign or falsify emotion — that is the truth which 
 makes love possible and mankind happy. 
 
 L'art de bien dire is but a drawing-room accomplish- 
 ment unless it be pressed into the service of the truth. 
 The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write 
 what you mean ; not to affect your reader, but to affect 
 him precisely as you wish. This is commonly under- 
 stood in the case of books or set orations; even in mak- 
 ing your will, or writing an explicit letter, some diffi- 
 culty is admitted by the world. But one thing you can 
 never make Philistine natures understand; one thing, 
 which yet lies on the surface, remains as unseizable to 
 their wits as a high flight of metaphysics — namely, that 
 the business of life is mainly carried on by means of this 
 difficult art of literature, and according to a man's pro- 
 ficiency in that art shall be the freedom and the fulness 
 of his intercourse with other men. Anybody, it is sup- 
 posed, can say what he means; and, in spite of their no- 
 torious experience to the contrary, people so continue to 
 suppose. Now, I simply open the last book I have been 
 reading — Mr. Leland's captivating English Gipsies. " It 
 
 41 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 is said," I find on p. 7, "that those who can converse with 
 Irish peasants in their own native tongue form far higher 
 opinions of their appreciation of the beautiful, and of the 
 elements of humour and pathos in their hearts, than do 
 those who know their thoughts only through the me- 
 dium of English. I know from my own observations 
 that this is quite the case with the Indians of North 
 America, and it is unquestionably so with the gipsy." 
 In short, where a man has not a full possession of the 
 language, the most important, because the most amiable, 
 qualities of his nature have to lie buried and fallow ; for 
 the pleasure of comradeship, and the intellectual part of 
 love, rest upon these very "elements of humour and 
 pathos." Here is a man opulent in both, and for lack 
 of a medium he can put none of it out to interest in the 
 market of affection ! But what is thus made plain to our 
 apprehensions in the case of a foreign language is par- 
 tially true even with the tongue we learned in childhood. 
 Indeed, we all speak different dialects ; one shall be co- 
 pious and exact, another loose and meagre ; but the speech 
 of the ideal talker shall correspond and fit upon the truth 
 of fact — not clumsily, obscuring lineaments, like a man- 
 tle, but cleanly adhering, like an athlete's skin. And 
 what is the result ? That the one can open himself more 
 clearly to his friends, and can enjoy more of what makes 
 life truly valuable — intimacy with those he loves. An 
 orator makes a false step ; he employs some trivial, some 
 absurd, some vulgar phrase; in the turn of a sentence he 
 insults, by a side wind, those whom he is labouring to 
 charm; in speaking to one sentiment he unconsciously 
 ruffles another in parenthesis ; and you are not surprised, 
 for you know his task to be delicate and filled with per- 
 
 42 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 ils. "0 frivolous mind of man, light ignorance! " As 
 if yourself, when you seek to explain some misunder- 
 standing or excuse some apparent fault, speaking swiftly 
 and addressing a mind still recently incensed, were not 
 harnessing for a more perilous adventure ; as if yourself 
 required less tact and eloquence ; as if an angry friend or 
 a suspicious lover were not more easy to offend than a 
 meeting of indifferent politicians ! Nay, and the orator 
 treads in a beaten round ; the matters he discusses have 
 been discussed a thousand times before; language is 
 ready-shaped to his purpose; he speaks out of a cut and 
 dry vocabulary. But you — may it not be that your de- 
 fence reposes on some subtlety of feeling, not so much as 
 touched upon in Shakespeare, to express which, like a 
 pioneer, you must venture forth into zones of thought 
 still unsurveyed, and become yourself a literary inno- 
 vator? For even in love there are unlovely humours; 
 ambiguous acts, unpardonable words, may yet have 
 sprung from a kind sentiment. If the injured one could 
 read your heart, you may be sure that he would under- 
 stand and pardon; but, alas! the heart cannot be shown 
 — it has to be demonstrated in words. Do you think it 
 is a hard thing to write poetry ? Why, that is to write 
 poetry, and of a high, if not the highest, order. 
 
 I should even more admire "the lifelong and heroic 
 literary labours " of my fellow-men, patiently clearing 
 up in words their loves and their contentions, and speak- 
 ing their autobiography daily to their wives, were it not 
 for a circumstance which lessens their difficulty and my 
 admiration by equal parts. For life, though largely, is 
 not entirely carried on by literature. We are subject to 
 physical passions and contortions ; the voice breaks and 
 
 43 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUER1SQUE" 
 
 changes, and speaks by unconscious and winning in- 
 flections; we have legible countenances, like an open 
 book ; things that cannot be said look eloquently through 
 the eyes; and the soul, not locked into the body as a 
 dungeon, dwells ever on the threshold with appealing 
 signals. Groans and tears, looks and gestures, a flush 
 or a paleness, are often the most clear reporters of the 
 heart, and speak more directly to the hearts of others. 
 The message flies by these interpreters in the least space 
 of time, and the misunderstanding is averted in the mo- 
 ment of its birth. To explain in words takes time and 
 a just and patient hearing; and in the critical epochs of 
 a close relation, patience and justice are not qualities on 
 which we can rely. But the look or the gesture explains 
 things in a breath ; they tell their message without am- 
 biguity; unlike speech, they cannot stumble, by the 
 way, on a reproach or an allusion that should steel your 
 friend against the truth ; and then they have a higher 
 authority, for they are the direct expression of the heart, 
 not yet transmitted through the unfaithful and sophisti- 
 cating brain. Not long ago I wrote a letter to a friend 
 which came near involving us in quarrel ; but we met, 
 and in personal talk I repeated the worst of what I had 
 written, and added worse to that; and with the com- 
 mentary of the body it seemed not unfriendly either to 
 hear or say. Indeed, letters are in vain for the purposes 
 of intimacy ; an absence is a dead break in the relation ; 
 yet two who know each other fully and are bent on per- 
 petuity in love, may so preserve the attitude of their 
 affections that they may meet on the same terms as they 
 had parted. 
 Pitiful is the case of the blind, who cannot read the 
 44 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQLJE" 
 
 face; pitiful that of the deaf, who cannot follow the 
 changes of the voice. And there are others also to be 
 pitied ; for there are some of an inert, uneloquent nature, 
 who have been denied all the symbols of communica- 
 tion, who have neither a lively play of facial expression, 
 nor speaking gestures, nor a responsive voice, nor yet 
 the gift of frank, explanatory speech : people truly made 
 of clay, people tied for life into a bag which no one can 
 undo. They are poorer than the gypsy, for their heart 
 can speak no language under heaven. Such people we 
 must learn slowly by the tenor of their acts, or through 
 yea and nay communications; or we take them on trust 
 on the strength of a general air, and now and again, 
 when we see the spirit breaking through in a flash, cor- 
 rect or change our estimate. But these will be uphill 
 intimacies, without charm or freedom, to the end; and 
 freedom is the chief ingredient in confidence. Some 
 minds, romantically dull, despise physical endowments. 
 That is a doctrine for a misanthrope; to those who like 
 their fellow-creatures it must always be meaningless; 
 and, for my part, I can see few things more desirable, 
 after the possession of such radical qualities as honour 
 and humour and pathos, than to have a lively and not a 
 stolid countenance; to have looks to correspond with 
 every feeling ; to be elegant and delightful in person, so 
 that we shall please even in the intervals of active pleas- 
 ing, and may never discredit speech with uncouth man- 
 ners or become unconsciously our own burlesques. But 
 of all unfortunates there is one creature (for 1 will not call 
 him man) conspicuous in misfortune. This is he who 
 has forfeited his birthright of expression, who has cul- 
 tivated artful intonations, who has taught his face tricks, 
 
 45 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 like a pet monkey, and on every side perverted or cut 
 off his means of communication with his fellow-men. 
 The body is a house of many windows: there we all 
 sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to 
 come and love us. But this fellow has filled his win- 
 dows with opaque glass, elegantly coloured. His house 
 may be admired for its design, the crowd may pause 
 before the stained windows, but meanwhile the poor 
 proprietor must lie languishing within, uncomforted, 
 unchangeably alone. 
 
 Truth of intercourse is something more difficult than 
 to refrain from open lies. It is possible to avoid false- 
 hood and yet not tell the truth. It is not enough to an- 
 swer formal questions. To reach the truth by yea and nay 
 communications implies a questioner with a share of in- 
 spiration, such as is often found in mutual love. Yea 
 and nay mean nothing ; the meaning must have been re- 
 lated in the question. Many words are often necessary 
 to convey a very simple statement; for in this sort of 
 exercise we never hit the gold ; the most that we can 
 hope is by many arrows, more or less far off on differ- 
 ent sides, to indicate, in the course of time, for what 
 target we are aiming, and after an hour's talk, back and 
 forward, to convey the purport of a single principle or a 
 single thought. And yet while the curt, pithy speaker 
 misses the point entirely, a wordy, prolegomenous bab- 
 bler will often add three new offences in the process of 
 excusing one. It is really a most delicate affair. The 
 world was made before the English language, and seem- 
 ingly upon a different design. Suppose we held our 
 converse not in words, but in music; those who have 
 a bad ear would find themselves cut off from all near 
 
 46 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQLJE" 
 
 commerce, and no better than foreigners in this big 
 world. But we do not consider how many have "a 
 bad ear " for words, nor how often the most eloquent 
 find nothing to reply. I hate questioners and ques- 
 tions ; there are so few that can be spoken to without a 
 lie. " Do you forgive me? " Madam and sweetheart, 
 so far as I have gone in life I have never yet been able 
 to discover what forgiveness means. " Is it still the 
 same between us} " Why, how can it be ? It is eter- 
 nally different; and yet you are still the friend of my 
 heart. " Do you understand me? ' God knows; I 
 should think it highly improbable. 
 
 The cruellest lies are often told in silence. A man 
 may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his 
 teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend 
 or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have per- 
 ished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that 
 unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to 
 betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the rela- 
 tion, has but hung his head and held his tongue ? And, 
 again, a lie may be told by a truth, or a truth conveyed 
 through a lie. Truth to facts is not always truth to sen- 
 timent; and part of the truth, as often happens in answer 
 to a question, may be the foulest calumny. A fact may 
 be an exception ; but the feeling is the law, and it is that 
 which you must neither garble nor belie. The whole 
 tenor of a conversation is a part of the meaning of each 
 separate statement; the beginning and the end define 
 and travesty the intermediate conversation. You never 
 speak to God ; you address a fellow-man, full of his own 
 tempers; and to tell truth, rightly understood, is not to 
 state the true facts, but to convey a true impression ; 
 
 47 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 truth in spirit, not truth to letter, is the true veracity. 
 To reconcile averted friends a Jesuitical discretion is often 
 needful, not so much to gain a kind hearing as to com- 
 municate sober truth. Women have an ill name in this 
 connection ; yet they live in as true relations ; the lie of 
 a good woman is the true index of her heart. 
 
 "It takes," says Thoreau, in the noblest and most 
 useful passage I remember to have read in any modern 
 author, 1 "two to speak truth — one to speak and an- 
 other to hear." He must be very little experienced, or 
 have no great zeal for truth, who does not recognise the 
 fact. A grain of anger or a grain of suspicion produces 
 strange acoustical effects, and makes the ear greedy to 
 remark offence. Hence we find those who have once 
 quarrelled carry themselves distantly, and are ever ready 
 to break the truce. To speak truth there must be 
 moral equality or else no respect; and hence between 
 parent and child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a 
 verbal fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become 
 ingrained. And there is another side to this, for the 
 parent begins with an imperfect notion of the child's 
 character, formed in early years or during the equinoctial 
 gales of youth ; to this he adheres, noting only the facts 
 which suit with his preconception; and wherever a per- 
 son fancies himself unjustly judged, he at once and finally 
 gives up the effort to speak truth. With our chosen 
 friends, on the other hand, and still more between lovers 
 (for mutual understanding is love's essence), the truth 
 is easily indicated by the one and aptly comprehended 
 by the other. A hint taken, a look understood, conveys 
 
 1 A IVeek on the Concord and Merrimack T^ivers, Wednesday, p. 
 a8 3 . 
 
 48 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 the gist of long and delicate explanations ; and where the 
 life is known even yea and nay become luminous. In 
 the closest of all relations — that of a love well founded 
 and equally shared — speech is half discarded, like a 
 roundabout, infantile process or a ceremony of formal 
 etiquette ; and the two communicate directly by their 
 presences, and with few looks and fewer words contrive 
 to share their good and evil and uphold each other's 
 hearts in joy. For love rests upon a physical basis ; it 
 is a familiarity of nature's making and apart from vol- 
 untary choice. Understanding has in some sort outrun 
 knowledge, for the affection perhaps began with the 
 acquaintance; and as it was not made like other rela- 
 tions, so it is not, like them, to be perturbed or clouded. 
 Each knows more than can be uttered; each lives by 
 faith, and believes by a natural compulsion ; and between 
 man and wife the language of the body is largely devel- 
 oped and grown strangely eloquent. The thought that 
 prompted and was conveyed in a caress would only lose 
 to be set down in words — ay, although Shakespeare 
 himself should be the scribe. 
 
 Yet it is in these dear intimacies, beyond all others, 
 that we must strive and do battle for the truth. Let but 
 a doubt arise, and alas! all the previous intimacy and 
 confidence is but another charge against the person 
 doubted. " What a monstrous dishonesty is this if I 
 have been deceived so long and so completely ! ' ' Let but 
 that thought gain entrance, and you plead before a deaf 
 tribunal. Appeal to the past; why, that is your crime! 
 Make all clear, convince the reason ; alas ! speciousness is 
 but a proof against you. " If you can abuse me now, the 
 more likely that you have abused me from the first. " 
 
 49 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 For a strong affection such moments are worth sup- 
 porting, and they will end well ; for your advocate is 
 in your lover's heart, and speaks her own language; 
 it is not you but she herself who can defend and clear 
 you of the charge. But in slighter intimacies, and for a 
 less stringent union ? Indeed, is it worth while ? We 
 are all incompris, only more or less concerned for the 
 mischance; all trying wrongly to do right; all fawning 
 at each other's feet like dumb, neglected lap-dogs. 
 Sometimes we catch an eye — this is our opportunity 
 in the ages — and we wag our tail with a poor smile. 
 " Is that all? " All ? If you only knew! But how can 
 they know ? They do not love us ; the more fools we 
 to squander life on the indifferent. 
 
 But the morality of the thing, you will be glad to hear, 
 is excellent; for it is only by trying to understand others 
 that we can get our own hearts understood; and in mat- 
 ters of human feeling the clement judge is the most suc- 
 cessful pleader. 
 
 50 
 
CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH 
 
 M You know my mother now and then argues very notably; always 
 very warmly at least. I happen often to differ from her; and we both 
 think so well of our own arguments, that we very seldom are so happy 
 as to convince one another. A pretty common case, I believe, in all 
 vehement debatings. She says, I am too witty; Anglice, too pert; I, 
 that she is too wise; that is to say, being likewise put into English, not 
 so young as she has been." — Miss Howe to Miss Harlowe, Clarissa, 
 vol. ii. Letter xiii. 
 
 THERE is a strong feeling in favour of cowardly and 
 prudential proverbs. The sentiments of a man 
 while he is full of ardour and hope are to be received, 
 it is supposed, with some qualification. But when the 
 same person has ignominiously failed and begins to eat 
 up his words, he should be listened to like an oracle. 
 Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of 
 mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious 
 attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. 
 And since mediocre people constitute the bulk of hu- 
 manity, this is no doubt very properly so. But it does 
 not follow that the one sort of proposition is any less 
 true than the other, or that Icarus is not to be more 
 praised, and perhaps more envied, than Mr. Samuel 
 Budgett the Successful Merchant. The one is dead, to 
 be sure, while the other is still in his counting-house 
 
 51 
 
" VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE » 
 
 counting out his money ; and doubtless this is a consid- 
 eration. But we have, on the other hand, some bold 
 and magnanimous sayings common to high races and 
 natures, which set forth the advantage of the losing side, 
 and proclaim it better to be a dead lion than a living dog. 
 It is difficult to fancy how the mediocrities reconcile such 
 sayings with their proverbs. According to the latter, 
 every lad who goes to sea is an egregious ass ; never to 
 forget your umbrella through a long life would seem a 
 higher and wiser flight of achievement than to go smil- 
 ing to the stake ; and so long as you are a bit of a cow- 
 ard and inflexible in money matters, you fulfil the whole 
 duty of man. 
 
 It is a still more difficult consideration for our average 
 men, that while all their teachers, from Solomon down 
 to Benjamin Franklin and the ungodly Binney, have 
 inculcated the same ideal of manners, caution, and re- 
 spectability, those characters in history who have most 
 notoriously flown in the face of such precepts are spoken 
 of in hyperbolical terms of praise, and honoured with 
 public monuments in the streets of our commercial cen- 
 tres. This is very bewildering to the moral sense. You 
 have Joan of Arc, who left a humble but honest and 
 reputable livelihood under the eyes of her parents, to go 
 a-colonelling, in the company of rowdy soldiers, against 
 the enemies of France; surely a melancholy example for 
 one's daughters! And then you have Columbus, who 
 may have pioneered America, but, when all is said, was 
 a most imprudent navigator. His life is not the kind of 
 thing one would like to put into the hands of young 
 people ; rather, one would do one's utmost to keep it 
 from their knowledge, as a red flag of adventure and 
 
 52 
 
CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH 
 
 disintegrating influence in life. The time would fail me 
 if I were to recite all the big names in history whose ex- 
 ploits are perfectly irrational and even shocking to the 
 business mind. The incongruity is speaking; and I 
 imagine it must engender among the mediocrities a very 
 peculiar attitude towards the nobler and showier sides 
 of national life. They will read of the Charge of Bala- 
 clava in much the same spirit as they assist at a perform- 
 ance of the Lyons Mail. Persons of substance take in 
 the Times and sit composedly in pit or boxes according 
 to the degree of their prosperity in business. As for the 
 generals who go galloping up and down among bomb- 
 shells in absurd cocked hats — as for the actors who 
 raddle their faces and demean themselves for hire upon 
 the stage — they must belong, thank God! to a differ- 
 ent order of beings, whom we watch as we watch the 
 clouds careering in the windy, bottomless inane, or read 
 about like characters in ancient and rather fabulous an- 
 nals. Our offspring would no more think of copying 
 their behaviour, let us hope, than of doffing their clothes 
 and painting themselves blue in consequence of certain 
 admissions in the first chapter of their school history of 
 England. 
 
 Discredited as they are in practice, the cowardly prov- 
 erbs hold their own in theory ; and it is another instance 
 of the same spirit, that the opinions of old men about 
 life have been accepted as final. All sorts of allowances 
 are made for the illusions of youth ; and none, or almost 
 none, for the disenchantments of age. It is held to be 
 a good taunt, and somehow or other to clinch the ques- 
 tion logically, when an old gentleman waggles his head 
 and says: "Ah, so I thought when I was your age." 
 
 53 
 
"VIRGiNIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 It is not thought an answer at all, if the young man re- 
 torts : "My venerable sir, so I shall most probably think 
 when I am yours." And yet the one is as good as the 
 other : pass for pass, tit for tat, a Roland for an Oliver. 
 
 "Opinion in good men," says Milton, "is but know- 
 ledge in the making." All opinions, properly so called, 
 are stages on the road to truth. It does not follow that 
 a man will travel any further; but if he has really con- 
 sidered the world and drawn a conclusion, he has trav- 
 elled as far. This does not apply to formulae got by 
 rote, which are stages on the road to nowhere but sec- 
 ond childhood and the grave. To have a catchword in 
 your mouth is not the same thing as to hold an opin- 
 ion ; still less is it the same thing as to have made one 
 for yourself. There are too many of these catchwords in 
 the world for people to rap out upon you like an oath and 
 by way of an argument. They have a currency as in- 
 tellectual counters; and many respectable persons pay 
 their way with nothing else. They seem to stand for 
 vague bodies of theory in the background. The im- 
 puted virtue of folios full of knockdown arguments is 
 supposed to reside in them, just as some of the majesty 
 of the British Empire dwells in the constable's truncheon. 
 They are used in pure superstition, as old clodhoppers 
 spoil Latin by way of an exorcism. And yet they are 
 vastly serviceable for checking unprofitable discussion 
 and stopping the mouths of babes and sucklings. And 
 when a young man comes to a certain stage of intellec- 
 tual growth, the examination of these counters forms a 
 gymnastic at once amusing and fortifying to the mind. 
 
 Because I have reached Paris, I am not ashamed of 
 having passed through Newhaven and Dieppe. They 
 
 54 
 
CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH 
 
 were very good places to pass through, and I am none 
 the less at my destination. All my old opinions were 
 only stages on the way to the one I now hold, as itself 
 is only a stage on the way to something else. I am no 
 more abashed at having been a red-hot Socialist with a 
 panacea of my own than at having been a sucking infant. 
 Doubtless the world is quite right in a million ways ; but 
 you have to be kicked about a little to convince you of 
 the fact. And in the meanwhile you must do something, 
 be something, believe something. It is not possible to 
 keep the mind in a state of accurate balance and blank ; 
 and even if you could do so, instead of coming ultimately 
 to the right conclusion, you would be very apt to remain 
 in a state of balance and blank to perpetuity. Even in 
 quite intermediate stages, a dash of enthusiasm is not a 
 thing to be ashamed of in the retrospect : if St. Paul had 
 not been a very zealous Pharisee, he would have been a 
 colder Christian. For my part, I look back to the time 
 when I was a Socialist with something like regret I 
 have convinced myself (for the moment) that we had 
 better leave these great changes to what we call great 
 blind forces; their blindness being so much more per- 
 spicacious than the little, peering, partial eyesight of 
 men. I seem to see that my own scheme would not 
 answer; and all the other schemes I ever heard pro- 
 pounded would depress some elements of goodness just 
 as much as they encouraged others. Now I know that 
 in thus turning Conservative with years, I am going 
 through the normal cycle of change and travelling in 
 the common orbit of men's opinions. I submit to this, 
 as I would submit to gout or grey hair, as a concomitant 
 of growing age or else of failing animal heat ; but I do 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 not acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the 
 better — I daresay it is deplorably for the worse. I have 
 no choice in the business, and can no more resist this 
 tendency of my mind than I could prevent my boay 
 from beginning to totter and decay. If I am spared (as 
 the phrase runs) I shall doubtless outlive some trouble- 
 some desires; but I am in no hurry about that; nor, 
 when the time comes, shall I plume myself on the im- 
 munity. Just in the same way, I do not greatly pride 
 myself on having outlived my belief in the fairy tales of 
 Socialism. Old people have faults of their own ; they 
 tend to become cowardly, niggardly, and suspicious. 
 Whether from the growth of experience or the decline 
 of animal heat, I see that age leads to these and certain 
 other faults; and it follows, of course, that while in one 
 sense I hope I am journeying towards the truth, in an- 
 other I am indubitably posting towards these forms and 
 sources of error. 
 
 As we go catching and catching at this or that corner 
 of knowledge, now getting a foresight of generous possi- 
 bilities, now chilled with a glimpse of prudence, we may 
 compare the headlong course of our years to a swift 
 torrent in which a man is carried away; now he is 
 dashed against a boulder, now he grapples for a moment 
 to a trailing spray ; at the end, he is hurled out and over- 
 whelmed in a dark and bottomless ocean. We have no 
 more than glimpses and touches; we are torn away 
 from our theories; we are spun round and round and 
 shown this or the other view of life, until only fools or 
 knaves can hold to their opinions. We take a sight at 
 a condition in life, and say we have studied it ; our most 
 elaborate view is no more than an impression. If we 
 
 56 
 
CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH 
 
 Tiad breathing space, we should take the occasion to 
 modify and adjust; but at this breakneck hurry, we are 
 no sooner boys than we are adult, no sooner in love than 
 married or jilted, no sooner one age than we begin to be 
 another, and no sooner in the fulness of our manhood than 
 we begin to decline towards the grave. It is in vain to 
 seek for consistency or expect clear and stable views in a 
 medium so perturbed and fleeting. This is no cabinet sci- 
 ence, in which things are tested to a scruple ; we theorise 
 with a pistol to our head ; we are confronted with a new 
 set of conditions on which we have not only to pass a 
 judgment, but to take action, before the hour is at an end. 
 And we cannot even regard ourselves as a constant; in 
 this flux of things, our identity itself seems in a perpetual 
 variation ; and not infrequently we find our own disguise 
 the strangest in the masquerade. In the course of time, 
 we grow to love things we hated and hate things we 
 loved. Milton is not so dull as he once was, nor per- 
 haps Ainsworth so amusing. It is decidedly harder to 
 climb trees, and not nearly so hard to sit still. There is 
 no use pretending; even the thrice royal game of hide 
 and seek has somehow lost in zest. All our attributes 
 are modified or changed ; and it will be a poor account of 
 us if our views do not modify and change in a proportion. 
 To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is 
 to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, 
 not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched 
 and none the wiser. It is as if a ship captain should sail 
 to India from the Port of London ; and having brought 
 a chart of the Thames on deck at his first setting out, 
 should obstinately use no other for the whole voyage. 
 And mark you, it would be no less foolish to begin at 
 
 57 
 
" VIRG1NIBUS PUER1SQUE » 
 
 Gravesend with a chart of the Red Sea. Si Jeunesse 
 savait, si Vieittesse pouvait, is a very pretty sentiment, 
 but not necessarily right. In five cases out of ten, it is 
 not so much that the young people do not know, as that 
 they do not choose. There is something irreverent in the 
 speculation, but perhaps the want of power has more to 
 do with the wise resolutions of age than we are always 
 willing to admit. It would be an instructive experiment 
 to make an old man young again and leave him all his 
 savoir. I scarcely think he would put his money in the 
 Savings Bank after all ; I doubt if he would be such an ad- 
 mirable son as we are led to expect; and as for his con- 
 duct in love, I believe firmly he would out-Herod Herod, 
 and put the whole of his new compeers to the blush. 
 Prudence is a wooden Juggernaut, before whom Benjamin 
 Franklin walks with the portly air of a high priest, and 
 after whom dances many a successful merchant in the 
 character of Atys. But it is not a deity to cultivate in 
 youth. If a man lives to any considerable age, it cannot 
 be denied that he laments his imprudences, but I notice 
 he often laments his youth a deal more bitterly and with 
 a more genuine intonation. 
 
 It is customary to say that age should be considered, 
 because it comes last. It seems just as much to the 
 point, that youth comes first. And the scale fairly kicks 
 the beam, if you go on to add that age, in a majority of 
 cases, never comes at all. Disease and accident make 
 short work of even the most prosperous persons; death 
 costs nothing, and the expense of a headstone is an in- 
 considerable trifle to the happy heir. To be suddenly 
 snuffed out in the middle of ambitious schemes, is 
 tragical enough at best ; but when a man has been grudg- 
 
 58 
 
CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH 
 
 ing himself his own life in the meanwhile, and saving 
 up everything for the festival that was never to be, it 
 becomes that hysterically moving sort of tragedy which 
 lies on the confines of farce. The victim is dead — and 
 he has cunningly overreached himself: a combination of 
 calamities none the less absurd for being grim. To hus- 
 band a favourite claret until the batch turns sour, is not 
 at all an artful stroke of policy; and how much more 
 with a whole cellar — a whole bodily existence! Peo- 
 ple may lay down their lives with cheerfulness in the 
 sure expectation of a blessed immortality; but that is a 
 different affair from giving up youth with all its admi- 
 rable pleasures, in the hope of a better quality of gruel in 
 a more than problematical, nay, more than improbable, 
 old age. We should not compliment a hungry man, 
 who should refuse a whole dinner and reserve all his 
 appetite for the dessert, before he knew whether there 
 was to be any dessert or not. If there be such a thing 
 as imprudence in the world, we surely have it here. 
 We sail in leaky bottoms and on great and perilous 
 waters ; and to take a cue from the dolorous old naval 
 ballad, we have heard the mermaidens singing, and 
 know that we shall never see dry land any more. Old 
 and young, we are all on our last cruise. If there is a 
 fill of tobacco among the crew, for God's sake pass it 
 round, and let us have a pipe before we go ! 
 
 Indeed, by the report of our elders, this nervous 
 preparation for old age is only trouble thrown away. 
 We fall on guard, and after all it is a friend who comes 
 to meet us. After the sun is down and the west faded, 
 the heavens begin to fill with shining stars. So, as 
 we grow old, a sort of equable jog-trot of feeling is 
 
 59 
 
"VIRGIN1BUS PUER1SQUE" 
 
 substituted for the violent ups and downs of passion 
 and disgust; the same influence that restrains our hopes, 
 quiets our apprehensions; if the pleasures are less in- 
 tense, the troubles are milder and more tolerable; and 
 in a word, this period for which we are asked to hoard 
 up everything as for a time of famine, is, in its own right, 
 the richest, easiest, and happiest of life. Nay, by man- 
 aging its own work and following its own happy in- 
 spiration, youth is doing the best it can to endow the 
 leisure of age. A full, busy youth is your only prelude 
 to a self-contained and independent age; and the muff 
 inevitably develops into the bore. There are not many 
 Doctor Johnsons, to set forth upon their first romantic 
 voyage at sixty-four. If we wish to scale Mont Blanc 
 or visit a thieves' kitchen in the East End, to go down 
 in a diving dress or up in a balloon, we must be about 
 it while we are still young. It will not do to delay 
 until we are clogged with prudence and limping with 
 rheumatism, and people begin to ask us: "What does 
 Gravity out of bed ? " Youth is the time to go flashing 
 from one end of the world to the other both in mind 
 and body; to try the manners of different nations; to 
 hear the chimes at midnight; to see sunrise in town and 
 country; to be converted at a revival; to circumnavi- 
 gate the metaphysics, write halting verses, run a mile 
 to see a fire, and wait all day long in the theatre to ap- 
 plaud Hernani. There is some meaning in the old 
 theory about wild oats; and a man who has not had 
 his green-sickness and got done with it for good, is as 
 little to be depended on as an unvaccinated infant. 
 "It is extraordinary," says Lord Beaconsfield, one of 
 the brightest and best preserved of youths up to the 
 
 60 
 
CRABBED AGE ,AND YOUTH 
 
 date of his last novel, 1 "it is extraordinary how hourly 
 and how violently change the feelings of an inexperi- 
 enced young man." And this mobility is a special 
 talent entrusted to his care ; a sort of indestructible vir- 
 ginity; a magic armour, with which he can pass un- 
 hurt through great dangers and come unbedaubed out 
 of the miriest passages. Let him voyage, speculate, see 
 all that he can, do all that he may ; his soul has as many 
 lives as a cat, he will live in all weathers, and never be 
 a halfpenny the worse. Those who go to the devil in 
 youth, with anything like a fair chance, were probably 
 little worth saving from the first; they must have been 
 feeble fellows — creatures made of putty and pack-thread, 
 without steel or fire, anger or true joyfulness, in their 
 composition; we may sympathise with their parents, 
 but there is not much cause to go into mourning for 
 themselves ; for to be quite honest, the weak brother is 
 the worst of mankind. 
 
 When the old man waggles his head and says, "Ah, 
 so I thought when I was your age," he has proved the 
 youth's case. Doubtless, whether from growth of ex- 
 perience or decline of animal heat, he thinks so no longer; 
 but he thought so while he was young ; and all men have 
 thought so while they were young, since there was dew 
 in the morning or hawthorn in May ; and here is another 
 young man adding his vote to those of previous gener- 
 ations and rivetting another link to the chain of testi- 
 mony. It is as natural and as right for a young man to 
 be imprudent and exaggerated, to live in swoops and 
 circles, and beat about his cage like any other wild thing 
 newly captured, as it is for old men to turn grey, or 
 
 1 Lothair. 
 6\ 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 mothers to love their offspring, or heroes to die for 
 something worthier than their lives. 
 
 By way of an apologue for the aged, when they feel 
 more than usually tempted to offer their advice, let me 
 recommend the following little tale. A child who had 
 been remarkably fond of toys (and in particular of lead 
 soldiers) found himself growing to the level of acknowl- 
 edged boyhood without any abatement of this childish 
 taste. He was thirteen ; already he had been taunted 
 for dallying overlong about the playbox; he had to blush 
 if he was found among his lead soldiers ; the shades of 
 the prison-house were closing about him with a venge- 
 ance. There is nothing more difficult than to put the 
 thoughts of children into the language of their elders ; 
 but this is the effect of his meditations at this juncture : 
 "Plainly," he said, "I must give up my playthings, in 
 the meanwhile, since I am not in a position to secure 
 myself against idle jeers. At the same time, I am sure 
 that playthings are the very pick of life ; all people give 
 them up out of the same pusillanimous respect for those 
 who are a little older; and if they do not return to them 
 as soon as they can, it is only because they grow stupid 
 and forget. I shall be wiser ; I shall conform for a little 
 to the ways of their foolish world ; but so soon as I have 
 made enough money, I shall retire and shut myself up 
 among my playthings until the day I die." Nay, as he 
 was passing in the train along the Esterel mountains be- 
 tween Cannes and Frejus, he remarked a pretty house 
 in an orange garden at the angle of a bay, and decided 
 that this should be his Happy Valley. Astrea Redux; 
 childhood was to come again ! The idea has an air of 
 simple nobility to me, not unworthy of Cincinnatus, 
 
 62 
 
CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH 
 
 And yet, as the reader has probably anticipated, it is 
 never likely to be carried into effect. There was a 
 worm in the bud, a fatal error in the premises. Child- 
 hood must pass away, and then youth, as surely as age 
 approaches. The true wisdom is to be always season- 
 able, and to change with a good grace in changing cir- 
 cumstances. To love playthings well as a child, to lead 
 an adventurous and honourable youth, and to settle when 
 the time arrives, into a green and smiling age, is to be a 
 good artist in life and deserve well of yourself and your 
 neighbour. 
 
 You need repent none of your youthful vagaries. They 
 may have been over the score on one side, just as those 
 of age are probably over the score on the other. But 
 they had a point; they not only befitted your age and 
 expressed its attitude and passions, but they had a re- 
 lation to what was outside of you, and implied criticisms 
 on the existing state of things, which you need not allow 
 to have been undeserved, because you now see that they 
 were partial. All error, not merely verbal, is a strong 
 way of stating that the current truth is incomplete. The 
 follies of youth have a basis in sound reason, just as much 
 as the embarrassing questions put by babes and suck- 
 lings. Their most antisocial acts indicate the defects of 
 our society. When the torrent sweeps the man against 
 a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need 
 not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory. 
 Shelley, chafing at the Church of England, discovered 
 the cure of all evils in universal atheism. Generous lads 
 irritated at the injustices of society, see nothing for it but 
 the abolishment of everything and Kingdom Come of 
 anarchy. Shelley was a young fool ; so are these cock- 
 
 63 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 sparrow revolutionaries. But it is better to be a fool than 
 to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of 
 a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and in- 
 congruities of life and take everything as it comes in a 
 forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe 
 like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smil- 
 ing images pushed from behind. For God's sake give 
 me the young man who has brains enough to make a 
 fool of himself ! As for the others, the irony of facts 
 shall take it out of their hands, and make fools of them 
 in downright earnest, ere the farce be over. There shall 
 be such a mopping and a mowing at the last day, and 
 such blushing and confusion of countenance for all those 
 who have been wise in their own esteem, and have not 
 learnt the rough lessons that youth hands on to age. If 
 we are indeed here to perfect and complete our own 
 natures, and grow larger, stronger, and more sympa- 
 thetic against some nobler career in the future, we had 
 all best bestir ourselves to the utmost while we have the 
 time. To equip a dull, respectable person with wings 
 would be but to make a parody of an angel. 
 
 In short, if youth is not quite right in its opinions, 
 there is a strong probability that age is not much more 
 so. Undying hope is co-ruler of the human bosom with 
 infallible credulity. A man finds he has been wrong at 
 every preceding stage of his career, only to deduce the 
 astonishing conclusion that he is at last entirely right. 
 Mankind, after centuries of failure, are still upon the eve 
 of a thoroughly constitutional millennium. Since we 
 have explored the maze so long without result, it fol- 
 lows, for poor human reason, that we cannot have to 
 explore much longer; close by must be the centre, with 
 
 6 4 
 
CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH 
 
 a champagne luncheon and a piece of ornamental water. 
 How if there were no centre at all, but just one alley 
 after another, and the whole world a labyrinth without 
 end or issue ? 
 
 I overheard the other day a scrap of conversation, 
 which I take the liberty to reproduce. " What I ad- 
 vance is true," said one. "But not the whole truth," 
 answered the other. "Sir," returned the first (and it 
 seemed to me there was a smack of Dr. Johnson in 
 the speech), "Sir, there is no such thing as the whole 
 truth!" Indeed, there is nothing so evident in life as 
 that there are two sides to a question. History is one 
 long illustration. The forces of nature are engaged, day 
 by day, in cudgelling it into our backward intelligences. 
 We never pause for a moment's consideration, but we 
 admit it as an axiom. An enthusiast sways humanity 
 exactly by disregarding this great truth, and dinning it 
 into our ears that this or that question has only one 
 possible solution ; and your enthusiast is a fine florid fel- 
 low, dominates things for a while and shakes the world 
 out of a doze; but when once he is gone, an army of 
 quiet and uninfluential people set to work to remind us 
 of the other side and demolish the generous imposture. 
 While Calvin is putting everybody exactly right in his 
 Institutes, and hot-headed Knox is thundering in the 
 pulpit, Montaigne is already looking at the other side in 
 his library in Perigord, and predicting that they will 
 find as much to quarrel about in the Bible as they had 
 found already in the Church. Age may have one side, 
 but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing 
 more certain than that both are right, except perhaps 
 that both are wrong. Let them agree to differ; for who 
 
 65 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 knows but what agreeing to differ may not be a form 
 of agreement rather than a form of difference ? 
 
 I suppose it is written that any one who sets up for 
 a bit of a philosopher, must contradict himself to his 
 very face. For here have I fairly talked myself into 
 thinking that we have the whole thing before us at 
 last; that there is no answer to the mystery, except 
 that there are as many as you please; that there is no 
 centre to the maze because, like the famous sphere, its 
 centre is everywhere; and that agreeing to differ with 
 every ceremony of politeness, is the only "one undis- 
 turbed song of pure concent "to which we are ever 
 likely to lend our musical voices. 
 
 66 
 
AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS 
 
 " Bos well: We grow weary when idle. 
 
 "Johnson: That is, sir, because others being busy, we want com- 
 pany; but if we were idle, there would be no growing weary; we 
 should all entertain one another." 
 
 JUST now, when every one is bound, under pain of a 
 decree in absence convicting them of /^-respecta- 
 bility, to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour 
 therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a 
 cry from the opposite party who are content when they 
 have enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the mean- 
 while, savours a little of bravado and gasconade. And 
 yet this should not be. Idleness so called, which does 
 not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal 
 not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling 
 class, has as good a right to state its position as industry 
 itself. It is admitted that the presence of people who 
 refuse to enter in the great handicap race for sixpenny 
 pieces, is at once an insult and a disenchantment for 
 those who do. A fine fellow (as we see so many) takes 
 his determination, votes for the sixpences, and in the 
 emphatic Americanism, "goes for" them. And while 
 such an one is ploughing distressfully up the road, it is 
 not hard to understand his resentment, when he per- 
 ceives cool persons in the meadows by the wayside, 
 
 6 7 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 lying with a handkerchief over their ears and a glass at 
 their elbow. Alexander is touched in a very delicate 
 place by the disregard of Diogenes. Where was the 
 glory of having taken Rome for these tumultuous bar- 
 barians, who poured into the Senate house, and found 
 the Fathers sitting silent and unmoved by their success ? 
 It is a sore thing to have laboured along and scaled the 
 arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity 
 indifferent to your achievement. Hence physicists con- 
 demn the unphysical ; financiers have only a superficial 
 toleration for those who know little of stocks ; literary 
 persons despise the unlettered ; and people of all pursuits 
 combine to disparage those who have none. 
 
 But though this is one difficulty of the subject, it is not 
 the greatest. You could not be put in prison for speak- 
 ing against industry, but you can be sent to Coventry for 
 speaking like a fool. The greatest difficulty with most 
 subjects is to do them well ; therefore, please to remember 
 this is an apology. It is certain that much may be ju- 
 diciously argued in favour of diligence; only there is 
 something to be said against it, and that is what, on the 
 present occasion, I have to say. To state one argument 
 is not necessarily to be deaf to all others, and that a man 
 has written a book of travels in Montenegro, is no reason 
 why he should never have been to Richmond. 
 
 It is surely beyond a doubt that people should be a 
 good deal idle in youth. For though here and there a 
 Lord Macaulay may escape from school honours with all 
 his wits about him, most boys pay so dear for their medals 
 that they never afterwards have a shot in their locker, 
 and begin the world bankrupt. And the same holds true 
 during all the time a lad is educating himself, or suffer- 
 
 68 
 
AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS 
 
 ing others to educate him. It must have been a very 
 foolish old gentleman who addressed Johnson at Oxford 
 in these words : "Young man, ply your book diligently 
 now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years 
 come upon you, you will find that poring upon books 
 will be but an irksome task." The old gentleman 
 seems to have been unaware that many other things 
 besides reading grow irksome, and not a few become 
 impossible, by the time a man has to use spectacles and 
 cannot walk without a stick. Books are good enough 
 in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless sub- 
 stitute for life. It seems a pity to sit, like the Lady of 
 Shalott, peering into a mirror, with your back turned on 
 all the bustle and glamour of reality. And if a man reads 
 very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have 
 little time for thoughts. 
 
 If you look back on your own education, I am sure it 
 will not be the full, vivid, instructive hours of truantry 
 that you regret; you would rather cancel some lack- 
 lustre periods between sleep and waking in the class. 
 For my own part, I have attended a good many lectures 
 in my time. I still remember that the spinning of a top 
 is a case of Kinetic Stability. I still remember that Em- 
 phyteusis is not a disease, nor Stillicide a crime. But 
 though I would not willingly part with such scraps of 
 science, I do not set the same store by them as by cer- 
 tain other odds and ends that I came by in the open 
 street while I was playing truant. This is not the mo- 
 ment to dilate on that mighty place of education, which 
 was the favourite school of Dickens and of Balzac, and 
 turns out yearly many inglorious masters in the Science 
 of the Aspects of Life. Suffice it to say this : if a lad 
 
 69 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQLJE" 
 
 does not learn in the streets, it is because he has no fac- 
 ulty of learning. Nor is the truant always in the streets, 
 for if he prefers, he may go out by the gardened suburbs 
 into the country. He may pitch on some tuft of lilacs 
 over a burn, and smoke innumerable pipes to the tune 
 of the water on the stones. A bird will sing in the 
 thicket. And there he may fall into a vein of kindly 
 thought, and see things in a new perspective. Why, if 
 this be not education, what is ? We may conceive Mr. 
 Worldly Wiseman accosting such an one, and the con- 
 versation that should thereupon ensue : — 
 
 " How now, young fellow, what dost thou here?" 
 
 " Truly, sir, I take mine ease." 
 
 " Is not this the hour of the class ? and should'st thou 
 not be plying thy Book with diligence, to the end thou 
 mayest obtain knowledge ? " 
 
 "Nay, but thus also I follow after Learning, by your 
 leave." 
 
 " Learning, quotha ! After what fashion, I pray thee ? 
 Is it mathematics ? " 
 
 "No, to be sure." 
 
 "Is it metaphysics?" 
 
 "Nor that." 
 
 "Is it some language ?" 
 
 "Nay, it is no language." 
 
 "Is it a trade?" 
 
 " Nor a trade neither." 
 
 "Why, then, whatis't?" 
 
 " Indeed, sir, as a time may soon come for me to go 
 upon Pilgrimage, I am desirous to note what is com- 
 monly done by persons in my case, and where are the 
 ugliest Sloughs and Thickets on the Road; as also, what 
 
 70 
 
AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS 
 
 manner of Staff is of the best service. Moreover, I lie 
 here, by this water, to learn by root-of-heart a lesson 
 which my master teaches me to call Peace, or Content- 
 ment." 
 
 Hereupon Mr. Worldly Wiseman was much com- 
 moved with passion, and shaking his cane with a very 
 threatful countenance, broke forth upon this wise: 
 "Learning, quotha!" said he; "I would have all such 
 rogues scourged by the Hangman ! " 
 
 And so he would go his way, ruffling out his cravat 
 with a crackle of starch, like a turkey when it spread its 
 feathers. 
 
 Now this, of Mr. Wiseman's, is the common opinion. 
 A fact is not called a fact, but a piece of gossip, if it does 
 not fall into one of your scholastic categories. An in- 
 quiry must be in some acknowledged direction, with a 
 name to go by ; or else you are not inquiring at all, only 
 lounging ; and the work-house is too good for you. It 
 is supposed that all knowledge is at the bottom of a well, 
 or the far end of a telescope. Sainte-Beuve, as he grew 
 older, came to regard all experience as a single great 
 book, in which to study for a few years ere we go hence ; 
 and it seemed all one to him whether you should read 
 in Chapter xx., which is the differential calculus, or in 
 Chapter xxxix., which is hearing the band play in the 
 gardens. As a matter of fact, an intelligent person, 
 looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, with 
 a smile on his face all the time, will get more true edu- 
 cation than many another in a life of heroic vigils. There 
 is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found 
 upon the summits of formal and laborious science; but 
 it is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking, 
 
 7> 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 that you will acquire the warm and palpitating facts 
 of life. While others are filling their memory with a 
 lumber of words, one-half of which they will forget be- 
 fore the week be out, your truant may learn some really 
 useful art: to play the fiddle, to know a good cigar, or 
 to speak with ease and opportunity to all varieties of 
 men. Many who have "plied their book diligently," 
 and know all about some one branch or another of ac- 
 cepted lore, come out of the study with an ancient and 
 owl-like demeanour, and prove dry, stockish, and dys- 
 peptic in all the better and brighter parts of life. Many 
 make a large fortune, who remain underbred and pa- 
 thetically stupid to the last. And meantime there goes 
 the idler, who began life along with them — by your 
 leave, a different picture. He has had time to take care 
 of his health and his spirits ; he has been a great deal in 
 the open air, which is the most salutary of all things for 
 both body and mind ; and if he has never read the great 
 Book in very recondite places, he has dipped into it and 
 skimmed it over to excellent purpose. Might not the 
 student afford some Hebrew roots, and the business man 
 some of his half-crowns, for a share of the idler's know- 
 ledge of life at large, and Art of Living ? Nay, and the 
 idler has another and more important quality than these. 
 I mean his wisdom. He who has much looked on at 
 the childish satisfaction of other people in their hobbies, 
 will regard his own with only a very ironical indulgence. 
 He will not be heard among the dogmatists. He will 
 have a great and cool allowance for all sorts of people 
 and opinions. If he finds no out-of-the-way truths, he 
 will identify himself with no very burning falsehood. His 
 way takes him along a by-road, not much frequented, 
 
 72 
 
AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS 
 
 but very even and pleasant, which is called Common- 
 place Lane, and leads to the Belvedere of Commonsense. 
 Thence he shall command an agreeable, if no very noble 
 prospect; and while others behold the East and West, 
 the Devil and the Sunrise, he will be contentedly aware 
 of a sort of morning hour upon all sublunary things, with 
 an army of shadows running speedily and in many dif- 
 ferent directions into the great daylight of Eternity. The 
 shadows and the generations, the shrill doctors and the 
 plangent wars, go by into ultimate silence and empti- 
 ness ; but underneath all this, a man may see, out of the 
 Belvedere windows, much green and peaceful landscape; 
 many fi relit parlours; good people laughing, drinking, 
 and making love as they did before the Flood or the 
 French Revolution ; and the old shepherd telling his tale 
 under the hawthorn. 
 
 Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk 
 or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a 
 faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a 
 strong sense of personal identity. There is a sort of 
 dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely 
 conscious of living except in the exercise of some con- 
 ventional occupation. Bring these fellows into the coun- 
 try, or set them aboard ship, and you will see how they 
 pine for their desk or their study. They have no curi- 
 osity ; they cannot give themselves over to random pro- 
 vocations ; they do not take pleasure in the exercise of 
 their faculties for its own sake; and unless Necessity 
 lays about them with a stick, they will even stand still. 
 It is no good speaking to such folk : they cannot be idle, 
 their nature is not generous enough ; and they pass those 
 hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furi- 
 
 73 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 ous moiling in the gold-mill. When they do not re- 
 quire to go to the office, when they are not hungry and 
 have no mind to drink, the whole breathing world is a 
 blank to them. If they have to wait an hour or so for a 
 train, they fall into a stupid trance with their eyes open. 
 To see them, you would suppose there was nothing to 
 look at and no one to speak with; you would imagine 
 they were paralysed or alienated; and yet very possibly 
 they are hard workers in their own way, and have good 
 eyesight for a flaw in a deed or a turn of the market. 
 They have been to school and college, but all the time 
 they had their eye on the medal; they have gone about 
 in the world and mixed with clever people, but all the 
 time they were thinking of their own affairs. As if a 
 man's soul were not too small to begin with, they have 
 dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a life of all work and 
 no play ; until here they are at forty, with a listless atten- 
 tion, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and not 
 one thought to rub against another, while they wait for 
 the train. Before he was breeched, he might have 
 clambered on the boxes ; when he was twenty, he 
 would have stared at the girls; but now the pipe is 
 smoked out, the snuffbox empty, and my gentleman 
 sits bolt upright upon a bench, with lamentable eyes. 
 This does not appeal to me as being Success in Life. 
 
 But it is not only the person himself who suffers from 
 his busy habits, but his wife and children, his friends 
 and relations, and down to the very people he sits with 
 in a railway carriage or an omnibus. Perpetual devo- 
 tion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sus- 
 tained by perpetual neglect of many other things. And 
 it is not by any means certain that a man's business is 
 
 74 
 
AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS 
 
 the most important thing he has to do. To an impar- 
 tial estimate it will seem clear that many of the wisest, 
 most virtuous, and most beneficent parts that are to be 
 played upon the Theatre of Life are filled by gratuitous 
 performers, and pass, among the world at large, as 
 phases of idleness. For in that Theatre, not only the 
 walking gentlemen, singing chambermaids, and diligent 
 fiddlers in the orchestra, but those who look on and 
 clap their hands from the benches, do really play a part 
 and fulfil important offices towards the general result. 
 You are no doubt very dependent on the care of your 
 lawyer and stockbroker, of the guards and signalmen 
 who convey you rapidly from place to place, and the 
 policemen who walk the streets for your protection; 
 but is there not a thought of gratitude in your heart for 
 certain other benefactors who set you smiling when 
 they fall in your way, or season your dinner with good 
 company ? Colonel Newcome helped to lose his friend's 
 money; Fred Bayham had an ugly trick of borrowing 
 shirts; and yet they were better people to fall among 
 than Mr. Barnes. And though FalstafTwas neither sober 
 nor very honest, I think I could name one or two long- 
 faced Barabbases whom the world could better have 
 done without. Hazlitt mentions that he was more sen- 
 sible of obligation to Northcote, who had never done 
 him anything he could call a service, than to his whole 
 circle of ostentatious friends; for he thought a good 
 companion emphatically the greatest benefactor. I know 
 there are people in the world who cannot feel grateful 
 unless the favour has been done them at the cost of pain 
 and difficulty. But this is a churlish disposition. A 
 man may send you six sheets of letter-paper covered 
 
 75 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 with the most entertaining gossip, or you may pass half 
 an hour pleasantly, perhaps profitably, over an article of 
 his; do you think the service would be greater, if he 
 had made the manuscript in his heart's blood, like a 
 compact with the devil ? Do you really fancy you should 
 be more beholden to your correspondent, if he had been 
 damning you all the while for your importunity ? Pleas- 
 ures are more beneficial than duties because, like the 
 quality of mercy, they are not strained, and they are 
 twice blest. There must always be two to a kiss, and 
 there may be a score in a jest; but wherever there is an 
 element of sacrifice, the favour is conferred with pain, 
 and, among generous people, received with confusion. 
 There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of 
 being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous 
 benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even 
 to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise no- 
 body so much as the benefactor. The other day, a 
 ragged, barefoot boy ran down the street after a mar- 
 ble, with so jolly an air that he set every one he 
 passed into a good humour; one of these persons, 
 who had been delivered from more than usually black 
 thoughts, stopped the little fellow and gave him some 
 money with this remark: "You see what some- 
 times comes of looking pleased." If he had looked 
 pleased before, he had now to look both pleased and 
 mystified. For my part, I justify this encouragement 
 of smiling rather than tearful children; I do not wish to 
 pay for tears anywhere but upon the stage; but I am 
 prepared to deal largely in the opposite commodity. A 
 happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a 
 five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of good- 
 
 76 
 
AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS 
 
 will ; and their entrance into a room is as though another 
 candle had been lighted. We need not care whether 
 they could prove the forty-seventh proposition ; they do 
 a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate the 
 great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life. Conse- 
 quently, if a person cannot be happy without remaining 
 idle, idle he should remain. It is a revolutionary pre- 
 cept; but thanks to hunger and the workhouse, one not 
 easily to be abused ; and within practical limits, it is one 
 of the most incontestable truths in the whole Body of 
 Morality. Look at one of your industrious fellows for 
 a moment, I beseech you. He sows hurry and reaps 
 indigestion ; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, 
 and receives a large measure of nervous derangement in 
 return. Either he absents himself entirely from all 
 fellowship, and lives a recluse in a garret, with carpet 
 slippers and a leaden inkpot; or he comes among people 
 swiftly and bitterly, in a contraction of his whole nerv- 
 ous system, to discharge some temper before he returns 
 to work. I do not care how much or how well he 
 works, this fellow is an evil feature in other people's 
 lives. They would be happier if he were dead. They 
 could easier do without his services in the Circumlocu- 
 tion Office, than they can tolerate his fractious spirits. 
 He poisons life at the well-head. It is better to be beg- 
 gared out of hand by a scapegrace nephew, than daily 
 hag-ridden by a peevish uncle. 
 
 And what, in God's name, is all this pother about? 
 For what cause do they embitter their own and other 
 people's lives ? That a man should publish three or thirty 
 articles a year, that he should finish or not finish his 
 great allegorical picture, are questions of little interest to 
 
 77 
 
"VIR.GINIBUS PUERISQyE" 
 
 the world. The ranks of life are full ; and although a 
 thousand fall, there are always some to go into the 
 breach. When they told Joan of Arc she should be at 
 home minding women's work, she answered there were 
 plenty to spin and wash. And so, even with your own 
 rare gifts! When nature is " so careless of the single 
 life," why should we coddle ourselves into the fancy 
 that our own is of exceptional importance ? Suppose 
 Shakespeare had been knocked on the head some dark 
 night in Sir Thomas Lucy's preserves, the world would 
 have wagged on better or worse, the pitcher gone to the 
 well, the scythe to the corn, and the student to his book ; 
 and no one been any the wiser of the loss. There are 
 not many works extant, if you look the alternative all 
 over, which are worth the price of a pound of tobacco to 
 a man of limited means. This is a sobering reflection 
 for the proudest of our earthly vanities. Even a tobacco- 
 nist may, upon consideration, find no great cause for 
 personal vainglory in the phrase ; for although tobacco 
 is an admirable sedative, the qualities necessary for 
 retailing it are neither rare nor precious in themselves. 
 Alas and alas ! you may take it how you will, but the 
 services of no single individual are indispensable. Atlas 
 was just a gentleman with a protracted nightmare ! And 
 yet you see merchants who go and labour themselves 
 into a great fortune and thence into the bankruptcy court ; 
 scribblers who keep scribbling at little articles until their 
 temper is a cross to all who come about them, as though 
 Pharaoh should set the Israelites to make a pin instead 
 of a pyramid; and fine young men who work them- 
 selves into a decline, and are driven off in a hearse with 
 white plumes upon it. Would you not suppose these 
 
 78 
 
AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS 
 
 persons had been whispered, by the Master of the Cere- 
 monies, the promise of some momentous destiny ? and 
 that this lukewarm bullet on which they play their farces 
 was the bull's-eye and centrepoint of all the universe ? 
 And yet it is not so. The ends for which they give 
 away their priceless youth, for all they know, may be 
 chimerical or hurtful ; the glory and riches they expect 
 may never come, or may find them indifferent; and they 
 and the world they inhabit are so inconsiderable that the 
 mind freezes at the thought. 
 
 79 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 
 
 BY a curious irony of fate, the places to which we are 
 sent when health deserts us are often singularly 
 beautiful. Often, too, they are places we have visited in 
 former years, or seen briefly in passing by, and kept ever 
 afterwards in pious memory; and we please ourselves 
 with the fancy that we shall repeat many vivid and 
 pleasurable sensations, and take up again the thread of 
 our enjoyment in the same spirit as we let it fall. We 
 shall now have an opportunity of finishing many pleasant 
 excursions, interrupted of yore before our curiosity was 
 fully satisfied. It may be that we have kept in mind, 
 during all these years, the recollection of some valley 
 into which we have just looked down for a moment 
 before we lost sight of it in the disorder of the hills ; it 
 may be that we have lain awake at night, and agreeably 
 tantalised ourselves with the thought of corners we had 
 never turned, or summits we had all but climbed: we 
 shall now be able, as we tell ourselves, to complete all 
 these unfinished pleasures, and pass beyond the barriers 
 that confined our recollections. 
 
 The promise is so great, and we are all so easily led 
 away when hope and memory are both in one story, 
 that I daresay the sick man is not very inconsolable when 
 
 80 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 
 
 he receives sentence of banishment, and is inclined to re- 
 gard his ill-health as not the least fortunate accident of 
 his life. Nor is he immediately undeceived. The stir 
 and speed of the journey, and the restlessness that goes 
 to bed with him as he tries to sleep between two days 
 of noisy progress, fever him, and stimulate his dull 
 nerves into something of their old quickness and sensi- 
 bility. And so he can enjoy the faint autumnal splendour 
 of the landscape, as he sees hill and plain, vineyard and 
 forest, clad in one wonderful glory of fairy gold, which 
 the first great winds of winter will transmute, as in the 
 fable, into withered leaves. And so too he can enjoy the 
 admirable brevity and simplicity of such little glimpses 
 of country and country ways as flash upon him through 
 the windows of the train ; little glimpses that have a char- 
 acter all their own ; sights seen as a travelling swallow 
 might see them from the wing, or Iris as she went 
 abroad over the land on some Olympian errand. Here 
 and there, indeed, a few children huzzah and wave their 
 hands to the express ; but for the most part, it is an in- 
 terruption too brief and isolated to attract much notice ; 
 the sheep do not cease from browsing; a girl sits bal- 
 anced on the projecting tiller of a canal boat, so precari- 
 ously that it seems as if a fly or the splash of a leaping 
 fish would be enough to overthrow the dainty equi- 
 librium, and yet all these hundreds of tons of coal and 
 wood and iron have been precipitated roaring past her 
 very ear, and there is not a start, not a tremor, not a turn 
 of the averted head, to indicate that she has been even 
 conscious of its passage. Herein, I think, lies the chief 
 attraction of railway travel. The speed is so easy, and 
 the train disturbs so little the scenes through which it 
 
 81 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 takes us, that our heart becomes full of the placidity and 
 stillness of the country ; and while the body is borne for- 
 ward in the flying chain of carriages, the thoughts alight, 
 as the humour moves them, at unfrequented stations; 
 they make haste up the poplar alley that leads towards the 
 town ; they are left behind with the signalman as, shad- 
 ing his eyes with his hand, he watches the long train 
 sweep away into the golden distance. 
 
 Moreover, there is still before the invalid the shock 
 of wonder and delight with which he will learn that he 
 has passed the indefinable line that separates South from 
 North. And this is an uncertain moment; for some- 
 times the consciousness is forced upon him early, on 
 the occasion of some slight association, a colour, a 
 flower, or a scent; and sometimes not until, one fine 
 morning, he wakes up with the southern sunshine 
 peeping through the persiennes, and the southern patois 
 confusedly audible below the windows. Whether it 
 come early or late, however, this pleasure will not end 
 with the anticipation, as do so many others of the same 
 family. It will leave him wider awake than it found 
 him, and give a new significance to all he may see for 
 many days to come. There is something in the mere 
 name of the South that carries enthusiasm along with it. 
 At the sound of the word, he pricks up his ears ; he be- 
 comes as anxious to seek out beauties and to get by 
 heart the permanent lines and character of the landscape, 
 as if he had been told that it was all his own — an es- 
 tate out of which he had been kept unjustly, and which 
 he was now to receive in free and full possession. Even 
 those who have never been there before feel as if they 
 had been; and everybody goes comparing, and seeking 
 
 82 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 
 
 for the familiar, and finding it with such ecstasies of 
 recognition, that one would think they were coming 
 home after a weary absence, instead of travelling hourly 
 farther abroad. 
 
 It is only after he is fairly arrived and settled down in 
 his chosen corner, that the invalid begins to understand 
 the change that has befallen him. Everything about him 
 is as he had remembered, or as he had anticipated. Here, 
 at his feet, under his eyes, are the olive gardens and the 
 blue sea. Nothing can change the eternal magnificence 
 of form of the naked Alps behind Mentone; nothing, 
 not even the crude curves of the railway, can utterly 
 deform the suavity of contour of one bay after another 
 along the whole reach of the Riviera. And of all this, 
 he has only a cold head knowledge that is divorced from 
 enjoyment. He recognises with his intelligence that 
 this thing and that thing is beautiful, while in his heart 
 of hearts he has to confess that it is not beautiful for him. 
 It is in vain that he spurs his discouraged spirit; in vain 
 that he chooses out points of view, and stands there, 
 looking with all his eyes, and waiting for some return 
 of the pleasure that he remembers in other days, as the 
 sick folk may have awaited the coming of the angel at 
 the pool of Bethesda. He is like an enthusiast leading 
 about with him a stolid, indifferent tourist. There is 
 some one by who is out of sympathy with the scene, 
 and is not moved up to the measure of the occasion; 
 and that some one is himself. The world is disen- 
 chanted for him. He seems to himself to touch things 
 with muffled hands, and to see them through a veil. 
 His life becomes a palsied fumbling after notes that are 
 silent when he has found and struck them. He cannot 
 
 83 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 recognise that this phlegmatic and unimpressionable 
 body with which he now goes burthened, is the same 
 that he knew heretofore so quick and delicate and alive. 
 
 He is tempted to lay the blame on the very softness 
 and amenity of the climate, and to fancy that in the rig- 
 ours of the winter at home, these dead emotions would 
 revive and flourish. A longing for the brightness and 
 silence of fallen snow seizes him at such times. He is 
 homesick for the hale rough weather; for the tracery 
 of the frost upon his window-panes at morning, the re- 
 luctant descent of the first flakes, and the white roofs 
 relieved against the sombre sky. And yet the stuff of 
 which these yearnings are made, is of the flimsiest: if 
 but the thermometer fall a little below its ordinary Med- 
 iterranean level, or a wind come down from the snow- 
 clad Alps behind, the spirit of his fancies changes upon 
 the instant, and many a doleful vignette of the grim 
 wintry streets at home returns to him, and begins to 
 haunt his memory. The hopeless, huddled attitude of 
 tramps in doorways; the flinching gait of barefoot chil- 
 dren on the icy pavement; the sheen of the rainy streets 
 towards afternoon ; the meagre anatomy of the poor de- 
 fined by the clinging of wet garments ; the high canor- 
 ous note of the North-easter on days when the very 
 houses seem to stiffen with cold : these, and such as 
 these, crowd back upon him, and mockingly substitute 
 themselves for the fanciful winter scenes with which he 
 had pleased himself a while before. He cannot be glad 
 enough that he is where he is. If only the others could 
 be there also; if only those tramps could lie down for a 
 little in the sunshine, and those children warm their 
 feet, this once, upon a kindlier earth ; if only there were 
 
 8 4 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 
 
 no cold anywhere, and no nakedness, and no hunger; 
 if only it were as well with all men as it is with him ! 
 
 For it is not altogether ill with the invalid, after all. If 
 it is only rarely that anything penetrates vividly into his 
 numbed spirit, yet, when anything does, it brings with 
 it a joy that is all the more poignant for its very rarity. 
 There is something pathetic in these occasional returns 
 of a glad activity of heart. In his lowest hours he will 
 be stirred and awakened by many such ; and they will 
 spring perhaps from very trivial sources; as a friend 
 once said to me, the "spirit of delight" comes often on 
 small wings. For the pleasure that we take in beauti- 
 ful nature is essentially capricious. It comes sometimes 
 when we least look for it; and sometimes, when we 
 expect it most certainly, it leaves us to gape joylessly 
 for days together, in the very home-land of the beauti- 
 ful. We may have passed a place a thousand times and 
 one; and on the thousand and second it will be trans- 
 figured, and stand forth in a certain splendour of reality 
 from the dull circle of surroundings; so that we see it 
 "with a child's first pleasure," as Wordsworth saw the 
 daffodils by the lake side. And if this falls out caprici- 
 ously with the healthy, how much more so with the 
 invalid. Some day he will find his first violet, and be 
 lost in pleasant wonder, by what alchemy the cold earth 
 of the clods, and the vapid air and rain, can be trans- 
 muted into colour so rich and odour so touchingly 
 sweet. Or perhaps he may see a group of washer- 
 women relieved, on a spit of shingle, against the blue 
 sea, or a meeting of flower-gatherers in the tempered 
 daylight of an olive-garden ; and something significant 
 or monumental in the grouping, something in the har- 
 
 85 
 
"VIRGIN1BUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 mony of faint colour that is always characteristic of the 
 dress of these southern women, will come home to him 
 unexpectedly, and awake in him that satisfaction with 
 which we tell ourselves that we are the richer by one 
 more beautiful experience. Or it may be something 
 even slighter: as when the opulence of the sunshine, 
 which somehow gets lost and fails to produce its effect 
 on the large scale, is suddenly revealed to him by the 
 chance isolation — as he changes the position of his sun- 
 shade — of a yard or two of roadway with its stones 
 and weeds. And then, there is no end to the infinite 
 variety of the olive-yards themselves. Even the colour 
 is indeterminate and continually shifting: now you 
 would say it was green, now grey, now blue ; now tree 
 stands above tree, like "cloud on cloud," massed into 
 filmy indistinctness; and now, at the wind's will, the 
 whole sea of foliage is shaken and broken up with little 
 momentary silverings and shadows. But every one 
 sees the world in his own way. To some the glad mo- 
 ment may have arrived on other provocations; and their 
 recollection may be most vivid of the stately gait of 
 women carrying burthens on their heads ; of tropical ef- 
 fects with canes and naked rock and sunlight; of the 
 relief of cypresses; of the troubled, busy-looking groups 
 of sea-pines, that seem always as if they were being 
 wielded and swept together by a whirlwind ; of the air 
 coming, laden with virginal perfumes, over the myrtles 
 and the scented underwood; of the empurpled hills 
 standing up, solemn and sharp, out of the green-gold 
 air of the east at evening. 
 
 There go many elements, without doubt, to the mak- 
 ing of one such moment of intense perception ; and it is 
 
 86 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 
 
 on the happy agreement of these many elements, on the 
 harmonious vibration of many nerves, that the whole 
 delight of the moment must depend. Who can forget 
 how, when he has chanced upon some attitude of com- 
 plete restfulness, after long uneasy rolling to and fro on 
 grass or heather, the whole fashion of the landscape has 
 been changed for him, as though the sun had just broken 
 forth, or a great artist had only then completed, by some 
 cunning touch, the composition of the picture ? And 
 not only a change of posture — a snatch of perfume, the 
 sudden singing of a bird, the freshness of some pulse of 
 air from an invisible sea, the light shadow of a travel- 
 ling cloud, the merest nothing that sends a little shiver 
 along the most infinitesimal nerve of a man's body — 
 not one of the least of these but has a hand somehow in 
 the general effect, and brings some refinement of its own 
 into the character of the pleasure we feel. 
 
 And if the external conditions are thus varied and 
 subtle, even more so are those within our own bodies. 
 No man can find out the world, says Solomon, from be- 
 ginning to end, because the world is in his heart; and 
 so it is impossible for any of us to understand, from be- 
 ginning to end, that agreement of harmonious circum- 
 stances that creates in us the highest pleasure of admi- 
 ration, precisely because some of these circumstances 
 are hidden from us for ever in the constitution of our 
 own bodies. After we have reckoned up all that we 
 can see or hear or feel, there still remains to be taken 
 into account some sensibility more delicate than usual 
 in the nerves affected, or some exquisite refinement in 
 the architecture of the brain, which is indeed to the 
 sense of the beautiful as the eye or the ear to the sense 
 
 87 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 of hearing or sight. We admire splendid views and 
 great pictures ; and yet what is truly admirable is rather 
 the mind within us, that gathers together these scattered 
 details for its delight, and makes out of certain colours, 
 certain distributions of graduated light and darkness, 
 that intelligible whole which alone we call a picture or 
 a view. Hazlitt, relating in one of his essays how he 
 went on foot from one great man's house to another's in 
 search of works of art, begins suddenly to triumph over 
 these noble and wealthy owners, because he was more 
 capable of enjoying their costly possessions than they 
 were; because they had paid the money and he had re- 
 ceived the pleasure. And the occasion is a fair one for 
 self-complacency. While the one man was working to 
 be able to buy the picture, the other was working to be 
 able to enjoy the picture. An inherited aptitude will 
 have been diligently improved in either case; only the 
 one man has made for himself a fortune, and the other 
 has made for himself a living spirit. It is a fair occasion 
 for self-complacency, I repeat, when the event shows a 
 man to have chosen the better part, and laid out his life 
 more wisely, in the long run, than those who have 
 credit for most wisdom. And yet even this is not a 
 good unmixed ; and like all other possessions, although 
 in a less degree, the possession of a brain that has been 
 thus improved and cultivated, and made into the prime 
 organ of a man's enjoyment, brings with it certain in- 
 evitable cares and disappointments. The happiness of 
 such an one comes to depend greatly upon those fine 
 shades of sensation that heighten and harmonise the 
 coarser elements of beauty. And thus a degree of ner- 
 vous prostration, that to other men would be hardly 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 
 
 disagreeable, is enough to overthrow for him the whole 
 fabric of his life, to take, except at rare moments, the 
 edge off his pleasures, and to meet him wherever he 
 goes with failure, and the sense of want, and disenchant- 
 ment of the world and life. 
 
 It is not in such numbness of spirit only that the life 
 of the invalid resembles a premature old age. Those 
 excursions that he had promised himself to finish, prove 
 too long or too arduous for his feeble body; and the 
 barrier-hills are as impassable as ever. Many a white 
 town that sits far out on the promontory, many a comely 
 fold of wood on the mountain side, beckons and allures his 
 imagination day after day, and is yet as inaccessible to his 
 feet as the clefts and gorges of the clouds. The sense 
 of distance grows upon him wonderfully; and after 
 some feverish efforts and the fretful uneasiness of the 
 first few days, he falls contentedly in with the restric- 
 tions of his weakness. His narrow round becomes 
 pleasant and familiar to him as the cell to a contented 
 prisoner. Just as he has fallen already out of the mid 
 race of active life, he now falls out of the little eddy that 
 circulates in the shallow waters of the sanatorium. He 
 sees the country people come and go about their every- 
 day affairs, the foreigners stream out in goodly pleasure 
 parties; the stir of man's activity is all about him, as he 
 suns himself inertly in some sheltered corner; and he 
 looks on with a patriarchal impersonality of interest, 
 such as a man may feel when he pictures to himself the 
 fortunes of his remote descendants, or the robust old 
 age of the oak he has planted over-night. 
 
 In this falling aside, in this quietude and desertion of 
 other men, there is no inharmonious prelude to the last 
 
 8g 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 quietude and desertion of the grave ; in this dulness of 
 the senses there is a gentle preparation for the final in- 
 sensibility of death. And to him the idea of mortality 
 comes in a shape less violent and harsh than is its wont, 
 less as an abrupt catastrophe than as a thing of infinitesi- 
 mal gradation, and the last step on a long decline of way. 
 As we turn to and fro in bed, and every moment the move- 
 ments grow feebler and smaller and the attitude more 
 restful and easy, until sleep overtakes us at a stride and 
 we move no more, so desire after desire leaves him; 
 day by day his strength decreases, and the circle of his 
 activity grows ever narrower; and he feels, if he is to 
 be thus tenderly weaned from the passion of life, thus 
 gradually inducted into the slumber of death, that when 
 at last the end comes, it will come quietly and fitly. If 
 anything is to reconcile poor spirits to the coming of 
 the last enemy, surely it should be such a mild approach 
 as this ; not to hale us forth with violence, but to per- 
 suade us from a place we have no further pleasure in. 
 It is not so much, indeed, death that approaches as life 
 that withdraws and withers up from round about him. 
 He has outlived his own usefulness, and almost his own 
 enjoyment; and if there is to be no recovery; if never 
 again will he be young and strong and passionate, if the 
 actual present shall be to him always like a thing read 
 in a book or remembered out of the far-away past; if, 
 in fact, this be veritably nightfall, he will not wish 
 greatly for the continuance of a twilight that only strains 
 and disappoints the eyes, but steadfastly await the per- 
 fect darkness. He will pray for Medea: when she 
 comes, let her either rejuvenate or slay. 
 And yet the ties that still attach him to the world are 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 
 
 many and kindly. The sight of children has a signi- 
 ficance for him such as it may have for the aged also, but 
 not for others. If he has been used to feel humanely, and 
 to look upon life somewhat more widely than from the 
 narrow loophole of personal pleasure and advancement, 
 it is strange how small a portion of his thoughts will be 
 changed or embittered by this proximity of death. He 
 knows that already, in English counties, the sower fol- 
 lows the ploughman up the face of the field, and the 
 rooks follow the sower; and he knows also that he may 
 not live to go home again and see the corn spring and 
 ripen, and be cut down at last, and brought home with 
 gladness. And yet the future of this harvest, the con- 
 tinuance of drought or the coming of rain unseason- 
 ably, touch him as sensibly as ever. For he has long 
 been used to wait with interest the issue of events in 
 which his own concern was nothing; and to be joyful 
 in a plenty, and sorrowful for a famine, that did not in- 
 crease or diminish, by one half loaf, the equable suffi- 
 ciency of his own supply. Thus there remain unaltered 
 all the disinterested hopes for mankind and a better 
 future which have been the solace and inspiration of his 
 life. These he has set beyond the reach of any fate that 
 only menaces himself; and it makes small difference 
 whether he die five thousand years, or five thousand 
 and fifty years, before the good epoch for which he 
 faithfully labours. He has not deceived himself; he has 
 known from the beginning that he followed the pillar 
 of fire and cloud, only to perish himself in the wilder- 
 ness, and that it was reserved for others to enter joy- 
 fully into possession of the land. And so, as everything 
 grows greyer and quieter about him, and slopes towards 
 
 91 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 extinction, these unfaded visions accompany his sad 
 decline, and follow him, with friendly voices and hope- 
 ful words, into the very vestibule of death. The desire 
 of love or of fame scarcely moved him, in his days of 
 health, more strongly than these generous aspirations 
 move him now; and so life is carried forward beyond 
 life, and a vista kept open for the eyes of hope, even when 
 his hands grope already on the face of the impassable. 
 
 Lastly, he is bound tenderly to life by the thought of 
 his friends; or shall we not say rather, that by theit 
 thought for him, by their unchangeable solicitude and 
 love, he remains woven into the very stuff of life, beyond 
 the power of bodily dissolution to undo ? In a thousand 
 ways will he survive and be perpetuated. Much of 
 Etienne de la Boetie survived during all the years in 
 which Montaigne continued to converse with him on 
 the pages of the ever-delightful essays. Much of what 
 was truly Goethe was dead already when he revisited 
 places that knew him no more, and found no better con- 
 solation than the promise of his own verses, that soon 
 he too would be at rest. Indeed, when we think of 
 what it is that we most seek and cherish, and find most 
 pride and pleasure in calling ours, it will sometimes 
 seem to us as if our friends, at our decease, would suffer 
 loss more truly than ourselves. As a monarch who should 
 care more for the outlying colonies he knows on the map 
 or through the report of his vicegerents, than for the 
 trunk of his empire under his eyes at home, are we not 
 more concerned about the shadowy life that we have in 
 the hearts of others, and that portion in their thoughts 
 and fancies which, in a certain far-away sense, belongs 
 to us, than about the real knot of our identity — that 
 
 92 
 
ORDERED SOUTH 
 
 central metropolis of self, of which alone we are imme- 
 diately aware — or the diligent service of arteries and 
 veins and infinitesimal activity of ganglia, which we 
 know (as we know a proposition in Euclid) to be the 
 source and substance of the whole ? At the death of 
 every one whom we love, some fair and honourable por- 
 tion of our existence falls away, and we are dislodged 
 from one of these dear provinces ; and they are not, per- 
 haps, the most fortunate who survive a long series of 
 such impoverishments, till their life and influence narrow 
 gradually into the meagre limit of their own spirits, and 
 death, when he comes at last, can destroy them at one 
 blow. 
 
 Note. — To this essay I must in honesty append a word or two of 
 qualification ; for this is one of the points on which a slightly greater 
 age teaches us a slightly different wisdom: 
 
 A youth delights in generalities, and keeps loose from particular 
 obligations; he jogs on the footpath way, himself pursuing butterflies, 
 but courteously lending his applause to the advance of the human spe- 
 cies and the coming of the kingdom of justice and love. As he grows 
 older, he begins to think more narrowly of man's action in the general, 
 and perhaps more arrogantly of his own in the particular. He has not 
 that same unspeakable trust in what he would have done had he been 
 spared, seeing finally that that would have been little; but he has afar 
 higher notion of the blank that he will make by dying. A young man 
 feels himself one too many in the world; his is a painful situation: he 
 has no calling; no obvious utility; no ties, but to his parents, and these 
 he is sure to disregard. 1 do not think that a proper allowance has been 
 made for this true cause of suffering in youth ; but by the mere fact of 
 a prolonged existence, we outgrow either the fact or else the feeling. 
 Either we become so callously accustomed to our own useless figure in 
 the world, or else — and this, thank God, in the majority of cases — we 
 so collect about us the interest or the love of our fellows, so multiply 
 our effective part in the affairs of life, that we need to entertain no 
 longer the question of our right to be. 
 
 91 
 
<* VIRGINIBUS PUERISQy E " 
 
 And so in the majority of cases, a man who fancies himself dying, 
 will get cold comfort from the very youthful view expressed in this 
 essay. He, as a living man, has some to help, some to love, some to 
 correct; it may be, some to punish. These duties cling, not upon hu- 
 manity, but upon the man himself. It is he, not another, who is one 
 woman's son and a second woman's husband and a third woman's 
 father. That life which began so small, has now grown, with a myriad 
 filaments, into the lives of others. It is not indispensable; another will 
 take the place and shoulder the discharged responsibility; but the bet- 
 ter the man and the nobler his purposes, the more will he be tempted 
 to regret the extinction of his powers and the deletion of his personality. 
 To have lived a generation, is not only to have grown at home in that 
 perplexing medium, but to have assumed innumerable duties. To die 
 at such an age, has, for all but the entirely base, something of the air 
 of a betrayal. A man does not only reflect upon what he might have 
 done in a future that is never to be his; but beholding himself so early 
 a deserter from the fight, he eats his heart for the good he might have 
 done already. To have been so useless and now to lose all hope of 
 being useful any more — there it is that death and memory assail him. 
 And even if mankind shall go on, founding heroic cities, practising he- 
 roic virtues, rising steadily from strength to strength ; even if his work 
 shall be fulfilled, his friends consoled, his wife remarried by a better 
 than he; how shall this alter, in one jot, his estimation of a career 
 which was his only business in this world, which was so fitfully pur- 
 sued, and which is now so ineffectively to end? 
 
 94 
 
^S TRIPLEX 
 
 THE changes wrought by death are in themselves so 
 sharp and final, and so terrible and melancholy 
 in their consequences, that the thing stands alone in 
 man's experience, and has no parallel upon earth. It 
 outdoes all other accidents because it is the last of them. 
 Sometimes it leaps suddenly upon its victims, like a 
 Thug; sometimes it lays a regular siege and creeps upon 
 their citadel during a score of years. And when the 
 business is done, there is sore havoc made in other peo- 
 ple's lives, and a pin knocked out by which many sub- 
 sidiary friendships hung together. There are empty 
 chairs, solitary walks, and single beds at night. Again, 
 in taking away our friends, death does not take them 
 away utterly, but leaves behind a mocking, tragical, and 
 soon intolerable residue, which must be hurriedly con- 
 cealed. Hence a whole chapter of sights and customs 
 striking to the mind, from the pyramids of Egypt to the 
 gibbets and dule trees of mediaeval Europe. The poor- 
 est persons have a bit of pageant going towards the 
 tomb ; memorial stones are set up over the least mem- 
 orable; and, in order to preserve some show of respect 
 for what remains of our old loves and friendships, we 
 must accompany it with much grimly ludicrous cere- 
 
 95 
 
"VIRGIN1BUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 monial, and the hired undertaker parades before the 
 door. All this, and much more of the same sort, ac- 
 companied by the eloquence of poets, has gone a great 
 way to put humanity in error; nay, in many philoso- 
 phies the error has been embodied and laid down with 
 every circumstance of logic ; although in real life the 
 bustle and swiftness, in leaving people little time to 
 think, have not left them time enough to go danger- 
 ously wrong in practice. 
 
 As a matter of fact, although few things are spoken of 
 with more fearful whisperings than this prospect of 
 death, few have less influence on conduct under healthy 
 circumstances. We have all heard of cities in South 
 America built upon the side of fiery mountains, and 
 how, even in this tremendous neighbourhood, the in- 
 habitants are not a jot more impressed by the solemnity 
 of mortal conditions than if they were delving gardens 
 in the greenest corner of England. There are serenades 
 and suppers and much gallantry among the myrtles 
 overhead ; and meanwhile the foundation shudders un- 
 derfoot, the bowels of the mountain growl, and at any 
 moment living ruin may leap sky-high into the moon- 
 light, and tumble man and his merry-making in the 
 dust. In the eyes of very young people, and very dull 
 old ones, there is something indescribably reckless and 
 desperate in such a picture. It seems not credible that 
 respectable married people, with umbrellas, should find 
 appetite for a bit of supper within quite a long distance 
 of a fiery mountain ; ordinary life begins to smell of 
 high-handed debauch when it is carried on so close to a 
 catastrophe; and even cheese and salad, it seems, could 
 hardly be relished in such circumstances without some- 
 
 96 
 
MS TRIPLEX 
 
 thing like a defiance of the Creator. It should be a place 
 for nobody but hermits dwelling in prayer and macera- 
 tion, or mere born-devils drowning care in a perpetual 
 carouse. 
 
 And yet, when one comes to think upon it calmly, 
 the situation of these South American citizens forms only 
 a very pale figure for the state of ordinary mankind. 
 This world itself, travelling blindly and swiftly in over- 
 crowded space, among a million other worlds travelling 
 blindly and swiftly in contrary directions, may very well 
 come by a knock that would set it into explosion like a 
 penny squib. And what, pathologically looked at, is 
 the human body with all its organs, but a mere bagful 
 of petards ? The least of these is as dangerous to the 
 whole economy as the ship's powder-magazine to the 
 ship; and with every breath we breathe, and every meal 
 we eat, we are putting one or more of them in peril. If 
 we clung as devotedly as some philosophers pretend we 
 do to the abstract idea of life, or were half as frightened 
 as they make out we are, for the subversive accident 
 that ends it all, the trumpets might sound by the hour 
 and no one would follow them into battle — the blue- 
 peter might fly at the truck, but who would climb into 
 a sea-going ship ? Think (if these philosophers were 
 right) with what a preparation of spirit we should af- 
 front the daily peril of the dinner-table : a deadlier spot 
 than any battle-field in history, where the far greater 
 proportion of our ancestors have miserably left their 
 bones! What woman would ever be lured into mar- 
 riage, so much more dangerous than the wildest sea ? 
 And what would it be to grow old ? For, after a certain 
 distance, every step we take in life we find the ice grow- 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 ing thinner below our feet, and all around us and behind 
 us we see our contemporaries going through. By the 
 time a man gets well into the seventies, his continued 
 existence is a mere miracle; and when he lays his old 
 bones in bed for the night, there is an overwhelming 
 probability that he will never see the day. Do the old 
 men mind it, as a matter of fact ? Why, no. They 
 were never merrier; they have their grog at night, and 
 tell the raciest stories ; they hear of the death of people 
 about their own age, or even younger, not as if it was 
 a grisly warning, but with a simple childlike pleasure at 
 having outlived some one else; and when a draught 
 might puff them out like a guttering candle, or a bit of 
 a stumble shatter them like so much glass, their old 
 hearts keep sound and unaffrighted, and they go on, 
 bubbling with laughter, through years of man's age 
 compared to which the valley at Balaclava was as safe 
 and peaceful as a village cricket-green on Sunday. It 
 may fairly be questioned (if we look to the peril only) 
 whether it was a much more daring feat for Curtius to 
 plunge into the gulf, than for any old gentleman of 
 ninety to doff his clothes and clamber into bed. 
 
 Indeed, it is a memorable subject for consideration, 
 with what unconcern and gaiety mankind pricks on 
 along the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The whole 
 way is one wilderness of snares, and the end of it, for 
 those who fear the last pinch, is irrevocable ruin. And 
 yet we go spinning through it all, like a party for the 
 Derby. Perhaps the reader remembers one of the hu- 
 morous devices of the deified Caligula: how he en- 
 couraged a vast concourse of holiday-makers on to his 
 bridge over Baise bay ; and when they were in the height 
 
 98 
 
>ES TRIPLEX 
 
 of their enjoyment, turned loose the Praetorian guards 
 among the company, and had them tossed into the sea. 
 This is no bad miniature of the dealings of nature with 
 the transitory race of man. Only, what a chequered 
 picnic we have of it, even while it lasts ! and into what 
 great waters, not to be crossed by any swimmer, God's 
 pale Praetorian throws us over in the end ! 
 
 We live the time that a match flickers; we pop the 
 cork of a ginger-beer bottle, and the earthquake swal- 
 lows us on the instant. Is it not odd, is it not incon- 
 gruous, is it not, in the highest sense of human speech, 
 incredible, that we should think so highly of the ginger- 
 beer, and regard so little the devouring earthquake? 
 The love of Life and the fear of Death are two famous 
 phrases that grow harder to understand the more we 
 think about them. It is a well-known fact that an im- 
 mense proportion of boat accidents would never hap- 
 pen if people held the sheet in their hands instead of 
 making it fast; and yet, unless it be some martinet of a 
 professional mariner or some landsman with shattered 
 nerves, every one of God's creatures makes it fast. A 
 strange instance of man's unconcern and brazen bold- 
 ness in the face of death ! 
 
 We confound ourselves with metaphysical phrases, 
 which we import into daily talk with noble inappro- 
 priateness. We have no idea of what death is, apart 
 from its circumstances and some of its consequences to 
 others ; and although we have some experience of living, 
 there is not a man on earth who has flown so high into 
 abstraction as to have any practical guess at the mean- 
 ing of the word life. All literature, from Job and Omar 
 Khayyam to Thomas Carlyle or Walt Whitman, is but an 
 
 99 
 
"V1RGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 attempt to look upon the human state with such large- 
 ness of view as shall enable us to rise from the consider- 
 ation of living to the Definition of Life. And our sages 
 give us about the best satisfaction in their power when 
 they say that it is a vapour, or a show, or made out 
 of the same stuff with dreams. Philosophy, in its 
 more rigid sense, has been at the same work for ages ; 
 and after a myriad bald heads have wagged over the 
 problem, and piles of words have been heaped one upon 
 another into dry and cloudy volumes without end, phil- 
 osophy has the honour of laying before us, with modest 
 pride, her contribution towards the subject : that life is 
 a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. Truly a fine re- 
 sult ! A man may very well love beef, or hunting, or 
 a woman ; but surely, surely, not a Permanent Possibil- 
 ity of Sensation ! He may be afraid of a precipice, or a 
 dentist, or a large enemy with a club, or even an under- 
 taker's man ; but not certainly of abstract death. We 
 may trick with the word life in its dozen senses until 
 we are weary of tricking; we may argue in terms of all 
 the philosophies on earth, but one fact remains true 
 throughout — that we do not love life, in the sense that 
 we are greatly preoccupied about its conservation ; that 
 we do not, properly speaking, love life at all, but living. 
 Into the views of the least careful there will enter some 
 degree of providence; no man's eyes are fixed entirely 
 on the passing hour; but although we have some antici- 
 pation of good health, good weather, wine, active em- 
 ployment, love, and self-approval, the sum of these an- 
 ticipations does not amount to anything like a general 
 view of life's possibilities and issues; nor are those who 
 cherish them most vividly, at all the most scrupulous of 
 
yES TRIPLEX 
 
 their personal safety. To be deeply interested in the ac- 
 cidents of our existence, to enjoy keenly the mixed tex- 
 ture of human experience, rather leads a man to disregard 
 precautions, and risk his neck against a straw. For 
 surely the love of living is stronger in an Alpine climber 
 roping over a peril, or a hunter riding merrily at a stiff 
 fence, than in a creature who lives upon a diet and walks 
 a measured distance in the interest of his constitution. 
 There is a great deal of very vile nonsense talked 
 upon both sides of the matter: tearing divines reducing 
 life to the dimensions of a mere funeral procession, so 
 short as to be hardly decent; and melancholy unbe- 
 lievers yearning for the tomb as if it were a world too 
 far away. Both sides must feel a little ashamed of their 
 performances now and again when they draw in their 
 chairs to dinner. Indeed, a good meal and a bottle of 
 wine is an answer to most standard works upon the 
 question. When a man's heart warms to his viands, 
 he forgets a great deal of sophistry, and soars into a 
 rosy zone of contemplation. Death may be knocking 
 at the door, like the Commander's statue; we have 
 something else in hand, thank God, and let him knock. 
 Passing bells are ringing all the world over. All the 
 world over, and every hour, some one is parting com- 
 pany with all his aches and ecstasies. For us also the 
 trap is laid. But we are so fond of life that we have 
 no leisure to entertain the terror of death. It is a honey- 
 moon with us all through, and none of the longest. 
 Small blame to us if we give our whole hearts to this 
 glowing bride of ours, to the appetites, to honour, to 
 the hungry curiosity of the mind, to the pleasure of the 
 eyes in nature, and the pride of our own nimble bodies. 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 We all of us appreciate the sensations ; but as for car- 
 ing about the Permanence of the Possibility, a man's 
 head is generally very bald, and his senses very dull, 
 before he comes to that. Whether we regard life as a 
 lane leading to a dead wall — a mere bag's end, as the 
 French say — or whether we think of it as a vestibule or 
 gymnasium, where we wait our turn and prepare our 
 faculties for some more noble destiny; whether we 
 thunder in a pulpit, or pule in little atheistic poetry- 
 books, about its vanity and brevity; whether we look 
 justly for years of health and vigour, or are about to 
 mount into a Bath-chair, as a step towards the hearse ; 
 in each and all of these views and situations there is but 
 one conclusion possible : that a man should stop his ears 
 against paralysing terror, and run the race that is set be- 
 fore him with a single mind. No one surely could have 
 recoiled with more heartache and terror from the thought 
 of death than our respected lexicographer; and yet we 
 know how little it affected his conduct, how wisely and 
 boldly he walked, and in what a fresh and lively vein 
 he spoke of life. Already an old man, he ventured on 
 his Highland tour; and his heart, bound with triple 
 brass, did not recoil before twenty-seven individual cups 
 of tea. As courage and intelligence are the two quali- 
 ties best worth a good man's cultivation, so it is the first 
 part of intelligence to recognise our precarious estate in 
 life, and the first part of courage to be not at all abashed 
 before the fact. A frank and somewhat headlong car- 
 riage, not looking too anxiously before, not dallying in 
 maudlin regret over the past, stamps the man who is 
 well armoured for this world. 
 
 And not only well armoured for himself, but a good 
 
/ES TRIPLEX 
 
 friend and a good citizen to boot. We do not go to 
 cowards for tender dealing ; there is nothing so cruel as 
 panic ; the man who has least fear for his own carcass, 
 has most time to consider others. That eminent chemist 
 who took his walks abroad in tin shoes, and subsisted 
 wholly upon tepid milk, had all his work cut out for him 
 in considerate dealings with his own digestion. So 
 soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like 
 a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis 
 of generous acts. The victim begins to shrink spiritually ; 
 he develops a fancy for parlours with a regulated tem- 
 perature, and takes his morality on the principle of tin 
 shoes and tepid milk. The care of one important body 
 or soul becomes so engrossing, that all the noises of the 
 outer world begin to come thin and faint into the parlour 
 with the regulated temperature; and the tin shoes go 
 equably forward over blood and rain. To be overwise 
 is to ossify ; and the scruple-monger ends by standing 
 stockstill. Now the man who has his heart on his 
 sleeve, and a good whirling weathercock of a brain, who 
 reckons his life as a thing to be dashingly used and 
 cheerfully hazarded, makes a very different acquaintance 
 of the world, keeps all his pulses going true and fast, and 
 gathers impetus as he runs, until, if he be running to- 
 wards anything better than wildfire, he may shoot up and 
 become a constellation in the end. Lord look after his 
 health, Lord have a care of his soul, says he; and he has 
 at the key of the position, and swashes through incon- 
 gruity and peril towards his aim. Death is on all sides 
 of him with pointed batteries, as he is on all sides of all 
 of us; unfortunate surprises gird him round; mim- 
 mouthed friends and relations hold up their hands in 
 
 103 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 quite a little elegiacal synod about his path : and what 
 cares he for all this ? Being a true lover of living, a 
 fellow with something pushing and spontaneous in his 
 inside, he must, like any other soldier, in any other stir- 
 ring, deadly warfare, push on at his best pace until he 
 touch the goal. "A peerage or Westminster Abbey! " 
 cried Nelson in his bright, boyish, heroic manner. These 
 are great incentives; not for any of these, but for the 
 plain satisfaction of living, of being about their business 
 in some sort or other, do the brave, serviceable men of 
 every nation tread down the nettle danger, and pass fly- 
 ingly over all the stumbling-blocks of prudence. Think 
 of the heroism of Johnson, think of that superb indiffer- 
 ence to mortal limitation that set him upon his diction- 
 ary, and carried him through triumphantly until the end! 
 Who, if he were wisely considerate of things at large, 
 would ever embark upon any work much more consider- 
 able than a halfpenny post card ? Who would project a 
 serial novel, after Thackeray and Dickens had each fallen 
 in mid-course ? Who would find heart enough to begin 
 to live, if he dallied with the consideration of death ? 
 
 And, after all, what sorry and pitiful quibbling all this 
 is ! To forego all the issues of living in a parlour with a 
 regulated temperature — as if that were not to die a 
 hundred times over, and for ten years at a stretch ! As 
 if it were not to die in one's own lifetime, and without 
 even the sad immunities of death! As if it were not to 
 die, and yet be the patient spectators of our own piti- 
 able change ! The Permanent Possibility is preserved, : 
 but the sensations carefully held at arm's length, as if 
 one kept a photographic plate in a dark chamber. It is 
 better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it 
 
 104 
 
AS TRIPLEX 
 
 like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it, 
 than to die daily in the sickroom. By all means begin 
 your folio; even if the doctor does not give you a year, 
 even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push 
 and see what can be accomplished in a week. It is not 
 only in finished undertakings that we ought to honour 
 useful labour. A spirit goes out of the man who means 
 execution, which outlives the most untimely ending. 
 All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, 
 have done good work, although they may die before 
 they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat 
 strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind 
 it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. 
 And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and 
 in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning 
 monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their 
 mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once 
 tripped up and silenced : is there not something brave and 
 spirited in such a termination ? and does not life go down 
 with a better grace, foaming in full body over a preci- 
 pice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy del- 
 tas ? When the Greeks made their fine saying that 
 those whom the gods love die young, I cannot help be- 
 lieving they had this sort of death also in their eye. 
 For surely, at whatever age it overtake the man, this is to 
 die young. Death has not been suffered to take so much 
 as an illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tip- 
 toe on the highest point of being, he passes at a bound 
 on to the other side. The noise of the mallet and chisel 
 is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blow- 
 ing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, this happy- 
 starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land. 
 
 105 
 
EL DORADO 
 
 IT seems as if a great deal were attainable in a world 
 where there are so many marriages and decisive 
 battles, and where we all, at certain hours of the day, 
 and with great gusto and despatch, stow a portion of 
 victuals finally and irretrievably into the bag which con- 
 tains us. And it would seem also, on a hasty view, 
 that the attainment of as much as possible was the one 
 goal of man's contentious life. And yet, as regards the 
 spirit, this is but a semblance. We live in an ascend- 
 ing scale when we live happily, one thing leading to 
 another in an endless series. There is always a new 
 horizon for onward-looking men, and although we 
 dwell on a small planet, immersed in petty business and 
 not enduring beyond a brief period of years, we are so 
 constituted that our hopes are inaccessible, like stars, 
 and the term of hoping is prolonged until the term of 
 life. To be truly happy is a question of how we begin 
 and not of how we end, of what we want and not of 
 what we have. An aspiration is a joy for ever, a pos- 
 session as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we 
 can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a 
 revenue of pleasurable activity. To have many of these 
 is to be spiritually rich. Life is only a very dull and ill— 
 
 106 
 
EL DORADO 
 
 directed theatre unless we have some interests in the 
 piece; and to those who have neither art nor science, 
 the world is a mere arrangement of colours, or a rough 
 footway where they may very well break their shins. 
 It is in virtue of his own desires and curiosities that any 
 man continues to exist with even patience, that he is 
 charmed by the look of things and people, and that he 
 wakens every morning with a renewed appetite for 
 work and pleasure. Desire and curiosity are the two 
 eyes through which he sees the world in the most en- 
 chanted colours: it is they that make women beautiful 
 or fossils interesting: and the man may squander his 
 estate and come to beggary, but if he keeps these two 
 amulets he is still rich in the possibilities of pleasure. 
 Suppose he could take one meal so compact and com- 
 prehensive that he should never hunger any more; sup- 
 pose him, at a glance, to take in all the features of the 
 world and allay the desire for knowledge; suppose him 
 to do the like in any province of experience — would not 
 that man be in a poor way for amusement ever after ? 
 
 One who goes touring on foot with a single volume 
 in his knapsack reads with circumspection, pausing often 
 to reflect, and often laying the book down to contem- 
 plate the landscape or the prints in the inn parlour; for 
 he fears to come to an end of his entertainment, and be 
 left companionless on the last stages of his journey. A 
 young fellow recently finished the works of Thomas 
 Carlyle, winding up, if we remember aright, with the 
 ten note-books upon Frederick the Great. "What!" 
 cried the young fellow, in consternation, "is there no 
 more Carlyle ? Am I left to the daily papers ? " A more 
 celebrated instance is that of Alexander, who wept bit- 
 
 107 
 
"VIRG1NIBUS PUER1SQUE" 
 
 terly because he had no more worlds to subdue. And 
 when Gibbon had finished the Decline and Fall, he had 
 only a few moments of joy; and it was with a " sober 
 melancholy " that he parted from his labours. 
 
 Happily we all shoot at the moon with ineffectual ar- 
 rows ; our hopes are set on inaccessible El Dorado ; we 
 come to an end of nothing here below. Interests are 
 only plucked up to sow themselves again, like mustard. 
 You would think, when the child was born, there would 
 be an end to trouble; and yet it is only the beginning 
 of fresh anxieties; and when you have seen it through 
 its teething and its education, and at last its marriage, 
 alas ! it is only to have new fears, new quivering sensi- 
 bilities, with every day; and the health of your chil- 
 dren's children grows as touching a concern as that of 
 your own. Again, when you have married your wife, 
 you would think you were got upon a hilltop, and 
 might begin to go downward by an easy slope. But 
 you have only ended courting to begin marriage. Fal- 
 ling in love and winning love are often difficult tasks to 
 overbearing and rebellious spirits; but to keep in love 
 is also a business of some importance, to which both 
 man and wife must bring kindness and goodwill. The 
 true love story commences at the altar, when there lies 
 before the married pair a most beautiful contest of wis- 
 dom and generosity, and a life-long struggle towards an 
 unattainable ideal. Unattainable ? Ay, surely unattain- 
 able, from the very fact that they are two instead of one. 
 
 "Of making books there is no end," complained the 
 Preacher; and did not perceive how highly he was 
 praising letters as an occupation. There is no end, in- 
 deed, to making books or experiments, or to travel, or 
 
 1 08 
 
EL DORADO 
 
 to gathering wealth. Problem gives rise to problem. 
 We may study for ever, and we are never as learned as 
 we would. We have never made a statue worthy of 
 our dreams. And when we have discovered a conti- 
 nent, or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find 
 another ocean or another plain upon the further side. 
 In the infinite universe there is room for our swiftest 
 diligence and to spare. It is not like the works of Car- 
 lyle, which can be read to an end. Even in a corner of 
 it, in a private park, or in the neighbourhood of a single 
 hamlet, the weather and the seasons keep so deftly chang- 
 ing that although we walk there for a lifetime there will 
 be always something new to startle and delight us. 
 
 There is only one wish realisable on the earth; only 
 one thing that can be perfectly attained : Death. And 
 from a variety of circumstances we have no one to tell 
 us whether it be worth attaining. 
 
 A strange picture we make on our way to our chi- 
 maeras, ceaselessly marching, grudging ourselves the 
 time for rest; indefatigable, adventurous pioneers. It is 
 true that we shall never reach the goal ; it is even more 
 than probable that there is no such place; and if we 
 lived for centuries and were endowed with the powers 
 of a god, we should find ourselves not much nearer 
 what we wanted at the end. O toiling hands of mortals ! 
 O unwearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! 
 Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on 
 some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, 
 against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. 
 Little do ye know your own blessedness ; for to travel 
 hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true 
 success is to labour. 
 
 109 
 
THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS 
 
 "Whether it be wise in men to do such actions or no, I am sure it 
 is so in States to honour them." — Sir William Temple. 
 
 THERE is one story of the wars of Rome which I have 
 always very much envied for England. Germanicus 
 was going down at the head of the legions into a dan- 
 gerous river — on the opposite bank the woods were full 
 of Germans — when there flew out seven great eagles 
 which seemed to marshal the Romans on their way; 
 they did not pause or waver, but disappeared into the 
 forest where the enemy lay concealed. "Forward!" 
 cried Germanicus, with a fine rhetorical inspiration, 
 " Forward! and follow the Roman birds." It would be 
 a very heavy spirit that did not give a leap at such a 
 signal, and a very timorous one that continued to have 
 any doubt of success. To appropriate the eagles as 
 fellow-countrymen was to make imaginary allies of the 
 forces of nature; the Roman Empire and its military 
 fortunes, and along with these the prospects of those 
 individual Roman legionaries now fording a river in 
 Germany, looked altogether greater and more hope- 
 ful. It is a kind of illusion easy to produce. A particular 
 shape of cloud, the appearance of a particular star, the 
 holiday of some particular saint, anything in short to re- 
 mind the combatants of patriotic legends or old suc- 
 cesses, may be enough to change the issue of a pitched 
 
THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS 
 
 battle ; for it gives to the one party a feeling that Right 
 and the larger interests are with them. 
 
 If an Englishman wishes to have such a feeling, it 
 must be about the sea. The lion is nothing to us ; he 
 has not been taken to the hearts of the people, and 
 naturalised as an English emblem. We know right well 
 that a lion would fall foul of us as grimly as he would of 
 a Frenchman or a Moldavian Jew, and we do not carry 
 him before us in the smoke of battle. But the sea is our 
 approach and bulwark; it has been the scene of our 
 greatest triumphs and dangers; and we are accustomed 
 in lyrical strains to claim it as our own. The prostrat- 
 ing experiences of foreigners between Calais and Dover 
 have always an agreeable side to English prepossessions. 
 A man from Bedfordshire, who does not know one end 
 of the ship from the other until she begins to move, 
 swaggers among such persons with a sense of hereditary 
 nautical experience. To suppose yourself endowed with 
 natural parts for the sea because you are the countryman 
 of Blake and mighty Nelson, is perhaps just as unwar- 
 rantable as to imagine Scotch extraction a sufficient 
 guarantee that you will look well in a kilt. But the 
 feeling is there, and seated beyond the reach of argument. 
 We should consider ourselves unworthy of our descent 
 if we did not share the arrogance of our progenitors, and 
 please ourselves with the pretension that the sea is Eng- 
 lish. Even where it is looked upon by the guns and 
 battlements of another nation we regard it as a kind of 
 English cemetery, where the bones of our seafaring 
 fathers take their rest until the last trumpet; for I sup- 
 pose no other nation has lost as many ships, or sent as 
 many brave fellows to the bottom. 
 
"V1RGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 There is nowhere such a background for heroism as 
 the noble, terrifying, and picturesque conditions of some 
 of our sea fights. Hawke's battle in the tempest, and 
 Aboukir at the moment when the French Admiral blew 
 up, reach the limit of what is imposing to the imagina- 
 tion. And our naval annals owe some of their interest 
 to the fantastic and beautiful appearance of old warships 
 and the romance that invests the sea and everything 
 sea-going in the eyes of English lads on a half-holiday 
 at the coast. Nay, and what we know of the misery 
 between decks enhances the bravery of what was done 
 by giving it something for contrast. We like to know 
 that these bold and honest fellows contrived to live, and 
 to keep bold and honest, among absurd and vile sur- 
 roundings. No reader can forget the description of the 
 Thunder in Roderick Random : the disorderly tyranny ; 
 the cruelty and dirt of officers and men ; deck after deck, 
 each with some new object of offence; the hospital, 
 where the hammocks were huddled together with but 
 fourteen inches space for each; the cockpit, far under 
 water, where, " in an intolerable stench," the spectacled 
 steward kept the accounts of the different messes ; and 
 the canvas enclosure, six feet square, in which Morgan 
 made flip and salmagundi, smoked his pipe, sang his 
 Welsh songs, and swore his queer Welsh imprecations. 
 There are portions of this business on board the Thunder 
 over which the reader passes lightly and hurriedly, like 
 a traveller in a malarious country. It is easy enough to 
 understand the opinion of Dr. Johnson: ''Why, sir," 
 he said, "no man will be a sailor who has contrivance 
 enough to get himself into a jail." You would fancy 
 any one's spirit would die out under such an accumula- 
 
 112 
 
THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS 
 
 tion of darkness, noisomeness, and injustice, above all 
 when he had not come there of his own free will, but 
 under the cutlasses and bludgeons of the press-gang. 
 But perhaps a watch on deck in the sharp sea air put a 
 man on his mettle again ; a battle must have been a cap- 
 ital relief; and prize-money, bloodily earned and grossly 
 squandered, opened the doors of the prison for a twink- 
 ling. Somehow or other, at least, this worst of possi- 
 ble lives could not overlie the spirit and gaiety of our 
 sailors ; they did their duty as though they had some in- 
 terest in the fortune of that country which so cruelly op- 
 pressed them, they served their guns merrily when it 
 came to fighting, and they had the readiest ear for a bold, 
 honourable sentiment, of any class of men the world 
 ever produced. 
 
 Most men of high destinies have high-sounding names. 
 Pym and Habakkuk may do pretty well, but they must 
 not think to cope with the Cromwells and Isaiahs. And 
 you could not find a better case in point than that of the 
 English Admirals. Drake and Rooke and Hawke are 
 picked names for men of execution. Frobisher, Rod- 
 ney, Boscawen, Foul- Weather Jack Byron, are all good 
 to catch the eye in a page of a naval history. Cloudes- 
 ley Shovel is a mouthful of quaint and sounding syllables. 
 Benbow has a bulldog quality that suits the man's char- 
 acter, and it takes us back to those English archers who 
 were his true comrades for plainness, tenacity, and pluck. 
 Raleigh is spirited and martial, and signifies an act of 
 bold conduct in the field. It is impossible to judge of 
 Blake or Nelson, no names current among men being 
 worthy of such heroes. But still it is odd enough, and 
 very appropriate in this connection, that the latter was 
 
 113 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 greatly taken with his Sicilian title. " The signification, 
 perhaps, pleased him," says Southey; "Duke of Thun- 
 der was what in Dahomey would have been called a 
 strong name ; it was to a sailor's taste, and certainly to 
 no man could it be more applicable." Admiral in itself is 
 one of the most satisfactory of distinctions ; it has a noble 
 sound and a very proud history ; and Columbus thought 
 so highly of it, that he enjoined his heirs to sign them- 
 selves by that title as long as the house should last. 
 
 But it is the spirit of the men, and not their names, 
 that I wish to speak about in this paper. That spirit is 
 truly English; they, and not Tennyson's cotton-spinners 
 or Mr. D'Arcy Thompson's Abstract Bagman, are the true 
 and typical Englishmen. There may be more head of 
 bagmen in the country, but human beings are reckoned 
 by number only in political constitutions. And the Ad- 
 mirals are typical in the full force of the word. They 
 are splendid examples of virtue, indeed, but of a virtue 
 in which most Englishmen can claim a moderate share; 
 and what we admire in their lives is a sort of apotheosis 
 of ourselves. Almost everybody in our land, except 
 humanitarians and a few persons whose youth has been 
 depressed by exceptionally aesthetic surroundings, can 
 understand and sympathise with an Admiral or a prize- 
 fighter. I do not wish to bracket Benbow and Tom 
 Cribb ; but, depend upon it, they are practically brack- 
 eted for admiration in the minds of many frequenters of 
 ale-houses. If you told them about Germanicus and the 
 eagles, or Regulus going back to Carthage, they would 
 very likely fall asleep ; but tell them about Harry Pearce 
 and Jem Belcher, or about Nelson and the Nile, and they 
 put down their pipes to listen. I have by me a copy of 
 
 114 
 
THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS 
 
 Boxtana, on the fly-leaves of which a youthful member 
 of the fancy kept a chronicle of remarkable events and 
 an obituary of great men. Here we find piously chron- 
 icled the demise of jockeys, watermen, and pugilists — 
 Johnny Moore, of the Liverpool Prize Ring; Tom Spring, 
 aged fifty-six ; ' ' Pierce Egan, senior, writer of Boxtana 
 and other sporting works" — and among all these, the 
 Duke of Wellington ! If Benbow had lived in the time 
 of this annalist, do you suppose his name would not 
 have been added to the glorious roll ? In short, we do 
 not all feel warmly towards Wesley or Laud, we cannot 
 all take pleasure in Paradise Lost ; but there are certain 
 common sentiments and touches of nature by which the 
 whole nation is made to feel kinship. A little while ago 
 everybody, from Hazlitt and John Wilson down to the 
 imbecile creature who scribbled his register on the fly- 
 leaves of Boxtana, felt a more or less shamefaced satis- 
 faction in the exploits of prize-fighters. And the exploits 
 of the Admirals are popular to the same degree, and tell 
 in all ranks of society. Their sayings and doings stir 
 English blood like the sound of a trumpet; and if the 
 Indian Empire, the trade of London, and all the outward 
 and visible ensigns of our greatness should pass away, 
 we should still leave behind us a durable monument of 
 what we were in these sayings and doings of the Eng- 
 lish Admirals. 
 
 Duncan, lying off the Texel with his own flagship, 
 the Venerable, and only one other vessel, heard that the 
 whole Dutch fleet was putting to sea. He told Captain 
 Hotham to anchor alongside of him in the narrowest 
 part of the channel, and fight his vessel till she sank. 
 " I have taken the depth of the water," added he, "and 
 
 115 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 when the Venerable goes down, my flag will still fly." 
 And you observe this is no naked Viking in a prehistoric 
 period; but a Scotch member of Parliament, with a 
 smattering of the classics, a telescope, a cocked hat of 
 great size, and flannel underclothing. In the same spirit, 
 Nelson went into Aboukir with six colours flying; so 
 that even if five were shot away, it should not be imag- 
 ined he had struck. He too must needs wear his four 
 stars outside his Admiral's frock, to be a butt for sharp- 
 shooters. "In honour I gained them," he said to ob- 
 jectors, adding with sublime illogicality, "in honour I 
 will die with them. " Captain Douglas of the Royal Oak, 
 when the Dutch fired his vessel in the Thames, sent his 
 men ashore, but was burned along with her himself 
 rather than desert his post without orders. Just then, 
 perhaps the Merry Monarch was chasing a moth round 
 the supper-table with the ladies of his court. When 
 Raleigh sailed into Cadiz, and all the forts and ships 
 opened fire on him at once, he scorned to shoot a gun, 
 and made answer with a flourish of insulting trumpets. 
 I like this bravado better than the wisest dispositions to 
 insure victory ; it comes from the heart and goes to it. 
 God has made nobler heroes, but he never made a finer 
 gentleman than Walter Raleigh. And as our Admirals 
 were full of heroic superstitions, and had a strutting and 
 vainglorious style of fight, so they discovered a startling 
 eagerness for battle, and courted war like a mistress. 
 When the news came to Essex before Cadiz that the at- 
 tack had been decided, he threw his hat into the sea. 
 It is in this way that a schoolboy hears of a half-holiday ; 
 but this was a bearded man of great possessions who 
 had just been allowed to risk his life. Benbow could 
 
 n6 
 
THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS 
 
 not lie still in his bunk after he had lost his leg; he must 
 be on deck in a basket to direct and animate the fight 
 I said they loved war like a mistress; yet I think there 
 are not many mistresses we should continue to woo 
 under similar circumstances. Trowbridge went ashore 
 with the Culloden, and was able to take no part in the 
 battle of the Nile. "The merits of that ship and her 
 gallant captain," wrote Nelson to the Admiralty, "are 
 too well known to benefit by anything I could say. 
 Her misfortune was great in getting aground, while her 
 more fortunate companions were in the full tide of hap- 
 piness." This is a notable expression, and depicts the 
 whole great-hearted, big-spoken stock of the English 
 Admirals to a hair. It was to be "in the full tide of 
 happiness " for Nelson to destroy five thousand five 
 hundred and twenty-five of his fellow-creatures, and 
 have his own scalp torn open by a piece of langridge 
 shot. Hear him again at Copenhagen: "A shot 
 through the mainmast knocked the splinters about; and 
 he observed to one of his officers with a smile, 'It is 
 warm work, and this may be the last to any of us at any 
 moment;' and then, stopping short at the gangway, 
 added, with emotion, 'But, mark you — I would not he 
 elsewhere for thousands. ' ' ' 
 
 I must tell one more story, which has lately been 
 made familiar to us all, and that in one of the noblest 
 ballads in the English language. I had written my 
 tame prose abstract, I shall beg the reader to believe, 
 when I had no notion that the sacred bard designed an 
 immortality for Greenville. Sir Richard Greenville was 
 Vice- Admiral to Lord Thomas Howard, and lay off the 
 Azores with the English squadron in 159 1. He was a 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 noted tyrant to his crew : a dark, bullying fellow appar- 
 ently ; and it is related of him that he would chew and 
 swallow wineglasses, by way of convivial levity, till the 
 blood ran out of his mouth. When the Spanish fleet 
 of fifty sail came within sight of the English, his ship, 
 the Revenge, was the last to weigh anchor, and was so 
 far circumvented by the Spaniards, that there were but 
 two courses open — either to turn her back upon the 
 enemy or sail through one of his squadrons. The first 
 alternative Greenville dismissed as dishonourable to 
 himself, his country, and her Majesty's ship. Accord- 
 ingly, he chose the latter, and steered into the Spanish 
 armament. Several vessels he forced to luff and fall 
 under his lee; until, about three o'clock of the after- 
 noon, a great ship of three decks of ordnance took the 
 wind out of his sails, and immediately boarded. Thence- 
 forward, and all night long, the Revenge held her own 
 single-handed against the Spaniards. As one ship was 
 beaten off, another took its place. She endured, accord- 
 ing to Raleigh's computation, "eight hundred shot of 
 great artillery, besides many assaults and entries." By 
 morning the powder was spent, the pikes all broken, 
 not a stick was standing, "nothing left overhead either 
 for flight or defence;" six feet of water in the hold; 
 almost all the men hurt; and Greenville himself in a 
 dying condition. To bring them to this pass, a fleet of 
 fifty sail had been mauling them for fifteen hours, the 
 Admiral of the Hulks and the Ascension of Seville had 
 both gone down alongside, and two other vessels had 
 taken refuge on shore in a sinking state. In Hawke's 
 words, they had "taken a great deal of drubbing." 
 The captain and crew thought they had done about 
 
 118 
 
THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS 
 
 enough; but Greenville was not of this opinion; he 
 gave orders to the master gunner, whom he knew to 
 be a fellow after his own stamp, to scuttle the Revenge 
 where she lay. The others, who were not mortally 
 wounded like the Admiral, interfered with some deci- 
 sion, locked the master gunner in his cabin, after having 
 deprived him of his sword, for he manifested an inten- 
 tion to kill himself if he were not to sink the ship; and 
 sent to the Spaniards to demand terms. These were 
 granted. The second or third day after, Greenville died 
 of his wounds aboard the Spanish flagship, leaving his 
 contempt upon the "traitors and dogs" who had not 
 chosen to do as he did, and engage fifty vessels, well 
 found and fully manned, with six inferior craft ravaged 
 by sickness and short of stores. He at least, he said, 
 had done his duty as he was bound to do, and looked 
 for everlasting fame. 
 
 Some one said to me the other day that they consid- 
 ered this story to be of a pestilent example. I am not 
 inclined to imagine we shall ever be put into any prac- 
 tical difficulty from a superfluity of Greenvilles. And 
 besides, I demur to the opinion. The worth of such 
 actions is not a thing to be decided in a quaver of sen- 
 sibility or a flush of righteous commonsense. The man 
 who wished to make the ballads of his country, coveted 
 a small matter compared to what Richard Greenville ac- 
 complished. I wonder how many people have been 
 inspired by this mad story, and how many battles have 
 been actually won for England in the spirit thus en- 
 gendered. It is only with a measure of habitual fool- 
 hardiness that you can be sure, in the common run of 
 men, of courage on a reasonable occasion. An army or 
 
 I!9 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 a fleet, if it is not led by quixotic fancies, will not be 
 led far by terror of the Provost Marshal. Even German 
 warfare, in addition to maps and telegraphs, is not above 
 employing the Wacht am Rhein. Nor is it only in the 
 profession of arms that such stories may do good to a 
 man. In this desperate and gleeful fighting, whether it 
 is Greenville or Benbow, Hawke or Nelson, who flies 
 his colours in the ship, we see men brought to the test 
 and giving proof of what we call heroic feeling. Pros- 
 perous humanitarians tell me, in my club smoking-room, 
 that they are a prey to prodigious heroic feelings, and 
 that it costs them more nobility of soul to do nothing in 
 particular, than would carry on all the wars, by sea or land, 
 of bellicose humanity. It may very well be so, and yet 
 not touch the point in question. For what I desire is to 
 see some of this nobility brought face to face with me 
 in an inspiriting achievement. A man may talk smoothly 
 over a cigar in my club smoking-room from now to the 
 Day of Judgment, without adding anything to man- 
 kind's treasury of illustrious and encouraging examples. 
 It is not over the virtues of a curate-and-tea-party novel, 
 that people are abashed into high resolutions. It may 
 be because their hearts are crass, but to stir them prop- 
 erly they must have men entering into glory with some 
 pomp and circumstance. And that is why these stories 
 of our sea-captains, printed, so to speak, in capitals, and 
 full of bracing moral influence, are more valuable to Eng- 
 land than any material benefit in all the books of polit- 
 ical economy between Westminster and Birmingham. 
 Greenville chewing wineglasses at table makes no very 
 pleasant figure, any more than a thousand other artists 
 when they are viewed in the body, or met in private 
 
THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS 
 
 life ; but his work of art, his finished tragedy, is an elo- 
 quent performance ; and I contend it ought not only to 
 enliven men of the sword as they go into battle, but 
 send back merchant clerks with more heart and spirit 
 to their book-keeping by double entry. 
 
 There is another question which seems bound up in 
 this; and that is Temple's problem: whether it was 
 wise of Douglas to burn with the Royal Oak ? and by 
 implication, what it was that made him do so ? Many 
 will tell you it was the desire of fame. 
 
 "To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite 
 grandeur of their renown, but to fortune ? How many 
 men has she extinguished in the beginning of their prog- 
 ress, of whom we have no knowledge ; who brought 
 as much courage to the work as they, if their adverse 
 hap had not cut them off in the first sally of their arms ? 
 Amongst so many and so great dangers, I do not re- 
 member to have anywhere read that Caesar was ever 
 wounded ; a thousand have fallen in less dangers than 
 the least of these he went through. A great many brave 
 actions must be expected to be performed without wit- 
 ness, for one that comes to some notice. A man is not 
 always at the top of a breach, or at the head of an army 
 in the sight of his general, as upon a platform. He is 
 often surprised between the hedge and the ditch; he 
 must run the hazard of his life against a henroost; he 
 must dislodge four rascally musketeers out of a barn ; he 
 must prick out single from his party, as necessity arises, 
 and meet adventures alone." 
 
 Thus far Montaigne, in a characteristic essay on Glory. 
 Where death is certain, as in the cases of Douglas or 
 Greenville, it seems all one from a personal point of 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 view. The man who lost his life against a henroost, is 
 in the same pickle with him who lost his life against a 
 fortified place of the first order. Whether he has missed 
 a peerage or only the corporal's stripes, it is all one if he 
 has missed them and is quietly in the grave. It was by 
 a hazard that we learned the conduct of the four marines 
 of the Wager. There was no room for these brave fel- 
 lows in the boat, and they were left behind upon the 
 island to a certain death. They were soldiers, they said, 
 and knew well enough it was their business to die; and 
 as their comrades pulled away, they stood upon the 
 beach, gave three cheers, and cried "God bless the 
 king ! " Now, one or two of those who were in the boat 
 escaped, against all likelihood, to tell the story. That 
 was a great thing for us ; but surely it cannot, by any 
 possible twisting of human speech, be construed into 
 anything great for the marines. You may suppose, if 
 you like, that they died hoping their behaviour would 
 not be forgotten ; or you may suppose they thought no- 
 thing on the subject, which is much more likely. What 
 can be the signification of the word "fame " to a pri- 
 vate of marines, who cannot read and knows nothing of 
 past history beyond the reminiscences of his grand- 
 mother ? But whichever supposition you make, the fact 
 is unchanged. They died while the question still hung 
 in the balance; and I suppose their bones were already 
 white, before the winds and the waves and the humour 
 of Indian chiefs and Spanish governors had decided 
 whether they were to be unknown and useless martyrs 
 or honoured heroes. Indeed, I believe this is the lesson : 
 if it is for fame that men do brave actions, they are only 
 silly felbws after all. 
 
 122 
 
THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS 
 
 It is at best but a pettifogging, pickthank business to 
 decompose actions into little personal motives, and ex- 
 plain heroism away. The Abstract Bagman will grow 
 like an Admiral at heart, net by ungrateful carping, but 
 in a heat of admiration. But there is another theory of 
 the personal motive in these fine sayings and doings, 
 which I believe to be true and wholesome. People usu- 
 ally do things, and suffer martyrdoms, because they have 
 an inclination that way. The best artist is not the man 
 who fixes his eye on posterity, but the one who loves 
 the practice of his art. And instead of having a taste for 
 being successful merchants and retiring at thirty, some 
 people have a taste for high and what we call heroic 
 forms of excitement. If the Admirals courted war like 
 a mistress ; if, as the drum beat to quarters, the sailors 
 came gaily out of the forecastle, — it is because a fight is 
 a period of multiplied and intense experiences, and, by 
 Nelson's computation, worth " thousands" to any one 
 who has a heart under his jacket. If the marines of the 
 Wager gave three cheers and cried ' ' God bless the king, " 
 it was because they liked to do things nobly for their own 
 satisfaction. They were giving their lives, there was no 
 help for that; and they made it a point of self-respect to 
 give them handsomely. And there were never four hap- 
 pier marines in God's world than these four at that mo- 
 ment. If it was worth thousands to be at the Baltic, I 
 wish a Benthamite arithmetician would calculate how 
 much it was worth to be one of these four marines ; or 
 how much their story is worth to each of us who read 
 it. And mark you, undemonstrative men would have 
 spoiled the situation. The finest action is the better for 
 a piece of purple. If the soldiers of the Birkenhead had 
 
 123 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 not gone down in line, or these marines of the Wager 
 had walked away simply into the island, like plenty of 
 other brave fellows in the like circumstances, my Ben- 
 thamite arithmetician would assign a far lower value to 
 the two stories. We have to desire a grand air in our 
 heroes ; and such a knowledge of the human stage as 
 shall make them put the dots on their own i's, and leave 
 us in no suspense as to when they mean to be heroic. 
 And hence, we should congratulate ourselves upon the 
 fact that our Admirals were not only great-hearted but 
 big-spoken. 
 
 The heroes themselves say, as often as not, that fame 
 is their object; but I do not think that is much to the 
 purpose. People generally say what they have been 
 taught to say ; that was the catchword they were given 
 in youth to express the aims of their way of life; and 
 men who are gaining great battles are not likely to take 
 much trouble in reviewing their sentiments and the 
 words in which they were told to express them. Al- 
 most every person, if you will believe himself, holds a 
 quite different theory of life from the one on which he 
 is patently acting. And the fact is, fame may be a fore- 
 thought and an afterthought, but it is too abstract an 
 idea to move people greatly in moments of swift and 
 momentous decision. It is from something more im- 
 mediate, some determination of blood to the head, some 
 trick of the fancy, that the breach is stormed or the bold 
 word spoken. I am sure a fellow shooting an ugly weir 
 in a canoe has exactly as much thought about fame as 
 most commanders going into battle; and yet the action, 
 fall out how it will, is not one of those the muse delights 
 to celebrate. Indeed it is difficult to see why the fellow 
 
 124 
 
THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS 
 
 does a thing so nameless and yet so formidable to look 
 at, unless on the theory that he likes it. I suspect that 
 is why ; and I suspect it is at least ten per cent of why 
 Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone have debated so 
 much in the House of Commons, and why Burnaby rode 
 to Khiva the other day, and why the Admirals courted 
 war like a mistress. 
 
SOME PORTRAITS BY RAEBURN 
 
 THROUGH the initiative of a prominent citizen, 
 Edinburgh has been in possession, for some au- 
 tumn weeks, of a gallery of paintings of singular merit 
 and interest. They were exposed in the apartments of 
 the Scotch Academy; and filled those who are accus- 
 tomed to visit the annual spring exhibition, with as- 
 tonishment and a sense of incongruity. Instead of the 
 too common purple sunsets, and pea-green fields, and 
 distances executed in putty and hog's lard, he beheld, 
 looking down upon him from the walls of room after 
 room, a whole army of wise, grave, humorous, ca- 
 pable, or beautiful countenances, painted simply and 
 strongly by a man of genuine instinct. It was a com- 
 plete act of the Human Drawing-Room Comedy. Lords 
 and ladies, soldiers and doctors, hanging judges, and 
 heretical divines, a whole generation of good society 
 was resuscitated ; and the Scotchman of to-day walked 
 about among the Scotchmen of two generations ago. 
 The moment was well chosen, neither too late nor too 
 early. The people who sat for these pictures are not 
 yet ancestors, they are still relations. They are not yet 
 altogether a part of the dusty past, but occupy a mid- 
 dle distance within cry of our affections. The little 
 
 126 
 
SOME PORTRAITS BY RAEBURN 
 
 child who looks wonderingly on his grandfather's watch 
 in the picture, is now the veteran Sheriff emeritus of 
 Perth. And I hear a story of a lady who returned the 
 other day to Edinburgh, after an absence of sixty years : 
 " I could see none of my old friends," she said, " until 
 I went into the Raeburn Gallery, and found them all 
 there." 
 
 It would be difficult to say whether the collection was 
 more interesting on the score of unity or diversity. 
 Where the portraits were all of the same period, almost 
 all of the same race, and all from the same brush, there 
 could not fail to be many points of similarity. And yet 
 the similarity of the handling seems to throw into more 
 vigorous relief those personal distinctions which Rae- 
 burn was so quick to seize. He was a born painter of 
 portraits. He looked people shrewdly between the 
 eyes, surprised their manners in their face, and had pos- 
 sessed himself of what was essential in their character 
 before they had been many minutes in his studio. 
 What he was so swift to perceive, he conveyed to the 
 canvas almost in the moment of conception. He had 
 never any difficulty, he said, about either hands or faces. 
 About draperies or light or composition, he might see 
 room for hesitation or afterthought. But a face or a 
 hand was something plain and legible. There were no 
 two ways about it, any more than about the person's 
 name. And so each of his portraits is not only (in 
 Doctor Johnson's phrase, aptly quoted on the catalogue) 
 "a piece of history," but a piece of biography into the 
 bargain. It is devoutly to be wished that all biography 
 were equally amusing, and carried its own credentials 
 equally upon its face. These portraits are racier than 
 
 127 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 many anecdotes, and more complete than many a vol- 
 ume of sententious memoirs. You can see whether you 
 get a stronger and clearer idea of Robertson the histo- 
 rian from Raeburn's palette or Dugald Stewart's woolly 
 and evasive periods. And then the portraits are both 
 signed and countersigned. For you have, first, the au- 
 thority of the artist, whom you recognise as no mean 
 critic of the looks and manners of men ; and next you 
 have the tacit acquiescence of the subject, who sits look- 
 ing out upon you with inimitable innocence, and ap- 
 parently under the impression that he is in a room by 
 himself. For Raeburn could plunge at once through 
 all the constraint and embarrassment of the sitter, and 
 present the face, clear, open, and intelligent as at the 
 most disengaged moments. This is best seen in por- 
 traits where the sitter is represented in some appropri- 
 ate action : Neil Gow with his fiddle, Doctor Spens shoot- 
 ing an arrow, or Lord Bannatyne hearing a cause. 
 Above all, from this point of view, the portrait of Lieu- 
 tenant-Colonel Lyon is notable. A strange enough 
 young man, pink, fat about the lower part of the face, 
 with a lean forehead, a narrow nose and a fine nostril, 
 sits with a drawing-board upon his knees. He has just 
 paused to render himself account of some difficulty, to 
 disentangle some complication of line or compare neigh- 
 bouring values. And there, without any perceptible 
 wrinkling, you have rendered for you exactly the fixed 
 look in the eyes, and the unconscious compression of 
 the mouth, that befit and signify an effort of the kind. 
 The whole pose, the whole expression, is absolutely di- 
 rect and simple. You are ready to take your oath to it 
 that Colonel Lyon had no idea he was sitting for his 
 
 128 
 
SOME PORTRAITS BY RAEBURN 
 
 picture, and thought of nothing in the world besides 
 his own occupation of the moment. 
 
 Although the collection did not embrace, I under- 
 stand, nearly the whole of Raeburn's works, it was too 
 large not to contain some that were indifferent, whether 
 as works of art or as portraits. Certainly the standard 
 was remarkably high, and was wonderfully maintained, 
 but there were one or two pictures that might have been 
 almost as well away — one or two that seemed want- 
 ing in salt, and some that you can only hope were not 
 successful likenesses. Neither of the portraits of Sir 
 Walter Scott, for instance, were very agreeable to look 
 upon. You do not care to think that Scott looked quite 
 so rustic and puffy. And where is that peaked fore- 
 head which, according to all written accounts and many 
 portraits, was the distinguishing characteristic of his 
 face? Again, in spite of his own satisfaction and in spite 
 of Dr. John Brown, I cannot consider that Raeburn was 
 very happy in hands. Without doubt, he could paint one 
 if he had taken the trouble to study it; but it was by no 
 means always that he gave himself the trouble. Look- 
 ing round one of these rooms hung about with his por- 
 traits, you were struck with the array of expressive 
 faces, as compared with what you may have seen in 
 looking round a room full of living people. But it was 
 not so with the hands. The portraits differed from each 
 other in face perhaps ten times as much as they differed 
 by the hand; whereas with living people the two go 
 pretty much together ; and where one is remarkable, the 
 other will almost certainly not be commonplace. 
 
 One interesting portrait was that of Duncan of Cam- 
 perdown. He stands in uniform beside a table, his feet 
 
 129 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUER1SQUE" 
 
 slightly straddled with the balance of an old sailor, his 
 hand poised upon a chart by the finger tips. The mouth 
 is pursed, the nostril spread and drawn up, the eye- 
 brows very highly arched. The cheeks lie along the 
 jaw in folds of iron, and have the redness that comes from 
 much exposure to salt sea winds. From the whole 
 figure, attitude and countenance, there breathes some- 
 thing precise and decisive, something alert, wiry, and 
 strong. You can understand, from the look of him, 
 that sense, not so much of humour, as of what is grim- 
 mest and driest in pleasantry, which inspired his address 
 before the fight at Camperdown. He had just overtaken 
 the Dutch fleet under Admiral de Winter. "Gentle- 
 men," says he, "you see a severe winter approaching; 
 I have only to advise you to keep up a good fire." Some- 
 what of this same spirit of adamantine drollery must have 
 supported him in the days of the mutiny at the Nore, when 
 he lay off the Texel with his own flagship, the Venerable, 
 and only one other vessel, and kept up active signals, 
 as though he had a powerful fleet in the offing, to intim- 
 idate the Dutch. 
 
 Another portrait which irresistibly attracted the eye, 
 was the half-length of Robert M 'Queen, of Braxfield, 
 Lord Justice-Clerk. If I know gusto in painting when I 
 see it, this canvas was painted with rare enjoyment. 
 The tart, rosy, humorous look of the man, his nose like 
 a cudgel, his face resting squarely on the jowl, has been 
 caught and perpetuated with something that looks like 
 brotherly love. A peculiarly subtle expression haunts 
 the lower part, sensual and incredulous, like that of a 
 man tasting good Bordeaux with half a fancy it has been 
 somewhat too long uncorked. From under the pen- 
 
 130 
 
SOME PORTRAITS BY RAEBURN 
 
 dulous eyelids of old age, the eyes look out with a half- 
 youthful, half-frosty twinkle. Hands, with no pretence 
 to distinction, are folded on the judge's stomach. So 
 sympathetically is the character conceived by the por- 
 trait painter, that it is hardly possible to avoid some 
 movement of sympathy on the part of the spectator. 
 And sympathy is a thing to be encouraged, apart from 
 humane considerations, because it supplies us with the 
 materials for wisdom. It is probably more instructive 
 to entertain a sneaking kindness for any unpopular per- 
 son, and, among the rest, for Lord Braxfield, than to 
 give way to perfect raptures of moral indignation against 
 his abstract vices. He was the last judge on the Scotch 
 bench to employ the pure Scotch idiom. His opinions, 
 thus given in Doric, and conceived in a lively, rugged, 
 conversational style, were full of point and authority. 
 Out of the bar, or off the bench, he was a convivial man, 
 a lover of wine, and one who "shone peculiarly" at 
 tavern meetings. He has left behind him an unrivalled 
 reputation for rough and cruel speech ; and to this day 
 his name smacks of the gallows. It was he who pre- 
 sided at the trials of Muir and Skirving in 1793 and 1794; 
 and his appearance on these occasions was scarcely cut 
 to the pattern of to-day. His summing up on Muir began 
 thus — the reader must supply for himself "the growl- 
 ing, blacksmith's voice " and the broad Scotch accent : 
 "Now this is the question for consideration — Is the 
 panel guilty of sedition, or is he not? Now, before this 
 can be answered, two things must be attended to that 
 require no proof : First, that the British constitution is 
 the best that ever was since the creation of the world, 
 and it is not possible to make it better." It's a pretty fair 
 
 131 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 start, is it not, for a political trial ? A little later, he has 
 occasion to refer to the relations of Muir with " those 
 wretches," the French. "I never liked the French all 
 my days," said his lordship, "but now I hate them." 
 And yet a little further on : "A government in any coun- 
 try should be like a corporation ; and in this country it is 
 made up of the landed interest, which alone has a right 
 to be represented. As for the rabble who have nothing 
 but personal property, what hold has the nation of them ? 
 They may pack up their property on their backs, and 
 leave the country in the twinkling of an eye." After 
 having made profession of sentiments so cynically anti- 
 popular as these, when the trials were at an end, which 
 was generally about midnight, Braxfield would walk 
 home to his house in George Square with no better es- 
 cort than an easy conscience. I think I see him getting 
 his cloak about his shoulders, and, with perhaps a lan- 
 tern in one hand, steering his way along the streets in 
 the mirk January night. It might have been that very 
 day that Skirving had defied him in these words : "It 
 is altogether unavailing for your lordship to menace me; 
 for I have long learned to fear not the face of man ; " and 
 I can fancy, as Braxfield reflected on the number of what 
 he called Grumbletonians in Edinburgh, and of how 
 many of them must bear special malice against so up- 
 right and inflexible a judge, nay, and might at that very 
 moment be lurking in the mouth of a dark close with 
 hostile intent — I can fancy that he indulged in a sour 
 smile, as he reflected that he also was not especially 
 afraid of men's faces or men's fists, and had hitherto 
 found no occasion to embody this insensibility in heroic 
 words. For if he was an inhumane old gentleman (and 
 
 132 
 
SOME PORTRAITS BY RAEBURN 
 
 I am afraid it is a fact that he was inhumane), he was 
 also perfectly intrepid. You may look into the queer 
 face of that portrait for as long as you will, but you will 
 not see any hole or corner for timidity to enter in. 
 
 Indeed, there would be no end to this paper if I were 
 even to name half of the portraits that were remarkable 
 for their execution, or interesting by association. There 
 was one picture of Mr. Wardrop, of Torbane Hill, which 
 you might palm off upon most laymen as a Rembrandt; 
 and close by, you saw the white head of John Clerk, of 
 Eldin, that country gentleman who, playing with pieces 
 of cork on his own dining-table, invented modern naval 
 warfare. There was that portrait of Neil Gow, to sit for 
 which the old fiddler walked daily through the streets 
 of Edinburgh arm in arm with the Duke of Athole. 
 There was good Harry Erskine, with his satirical nose 
 and upper lip, and his mouth just open for a witticism 
 to pop out; Hutton the geologist, in quakerish raiment, 
 and looking altogether trim and narrow, and as if he 
 cared more about fossils than young ladies ; full-blown 
 John Robieson, in hyperbolical red dressing-gown, and, 
 every inch of him, a fine old man of the world; Con- 
 stable the publisher, upright beside a table, and bearing a 
 corporation with commercial dignity; Lord Bannatyne 
 hearing a cause, if ever anybody heard a cause since the 
 world began ; Lord Newton just awakened from clan- 
 destine slumber on the bench ; and the second President 
 Dundas, with every feature so fat that he reminds you, 
 in his wig, of some droll old court officer in an illustrated 
 nursery story-book, and yet all these fat features instinct 
 with meaning, the fat lips curved and compressed, the 
 nose combining somehow the dignity of a beak with the 
 
 133 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 good nature of a bottle, and the very double chin with 
 an air of intelligence and insight. And all these portraits 
 are so pat and telling, and look at you so spiritedly from 
 the walls, that, compared with the sort of living people 
 one sees about the streets, they are as bright new sov- 
 ereigns to fishy and obliterated sixpences. Some dis- 
 paraging thoughts upon our own generation could 
 hardly fail to present themselves ; but it is perhaps only 
 the sacer vates who is wanting; and we also, painted 
 by such a man as Carolus Duran, may look in holiday 
 immortality upon our children and grandchildren. 
 
 Raeburn's young women, to be frank, are by no means 
 of the same order of merit. No one, of course, could be 
 insensible to the presence of Miss Janet Suttie or Mrs. 
 Campbell of Possil. When things are as pretty as that, 
 criticism is out of season. But, on the whole, it is only 
 with women of a certain age that he can be said to have 
 succeeded, in at all the same sense as we say he suc- 
 ceeded with men. The younger women do not seem to 
 be made of good flesh and blood. They are not painted 
 in rich and unctuous touches. They are dry and di- 
 aphanous. And although young ladies in Great Britain 
 are all that can be desired of them, I would fain hope 
 they are not quite so much of that as Raeburn would 
 have us believe. In all these pretty faces, you miss 
 character, you miss fire, you miss that spice of the devil 
 which is worth all the prettiness in the world ; and what 
 is worst of all, you miss sex. His young ladies are not 
 womanly to nearly the same degree as his men are mas- 
 culine; they are so in a negative sense; in short, they 
 are the typical young ladies of the male novelist. 
 
 To say truth, either Raeburn was timid with young 
 134 
 
SOME PORTRAITS BY RAEBURN 
 
 and pretty sitters ; or he had stupefied himself with sen- 
 timentalities ; or else (and here is about the truth of it) 
 Raeburn and the rest of us labour under an obstinate 
 blindness in one direction, and know very little more 
 about women after all these centuries than Adam when 
 he first saw Eve. This is all the more likely, because 
 we are by no means so unintelligent in the matter of old 
 women. There are some capital old women, it seems 
 to me, in books written by men. And Raeburn has 
 some, such as Mrs. Colin Campbell, of Park, or the 
 anonymous "Old lady with a large cap," which are 
 done in the same frank, perspicacious spirit as the very 
 best of his men. He could look into their eyes with- 
 out trouble; and he was not withheld, by any bashful 
 sentimentalism, from recognising what he saw there 
 and unsparingly putting it down upon the canvas. But 
 where people cannot meet without some confusion and 
 a good deal of involuntary humbug, and are occupied, 
 for as long as they are together, with a very different 
 vein of thought, there cannot be much room for intelli- 
 gent study nor much result in the shape of genuine com- 
 prehension. Even women, who understand men so 
 well for practical purposes, do not know them well 
 enough for the purposes of art. Take even the very 
 best of their male creations, take Tito Melema, for in- 
 stance, and you will find he has an equivocal air, and 
 every now and again remembers he has a comb at the 
 back of his head. Of course, no woman will believe 
 this, and many men will be so very polite as to humour 
 their incredulity. 
 
 '35 
 
child's play 
 
 THE regret we have for our childhood is not wholly 
 justifiable : so much a man may lay down without 
 fear of public ribaldry ; for although we shake our heads 
 over the change, we are not unconscious of the mani- 
 fold advantages of our new state. What we lose in 
 generous impulse, we more than gain in the habit of 
 generously watching others ; and the capacity to enjoy 
 Shakespeare may balance a lost aptitude for playing at 
 soldiers. Terror is gone out of our lives, moreover; 
 we no longer see the devil in the bed-curtains nor lie 
 awake to listen to the wind. We go to school no 
 more ; and if we have only exchanged one drudgery for 
 another (which is by no means sure), we are set free 
 for ever from the daily fear of chastisement. And yet a 
 great change has overtaken us; and although we do 
 not enjoy ourselves less, at least we take our pleasure 
 differently. We need pickles nowadays to make 
 Wednesday's cold mutton please our Friday's appetite ; 
 and I can remember the time when to call it red veni- 
 son, and tell myself a hunter's story, would have made 
 it more palatable than the best of sauces. To the grown 
 person, cold mutton is cold mutton all the world over; 
 not all the mythology ever invented by man will make 
 
 «36 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 
 
 it better or worse to him ; the broad fact, the clamant 
 reality, of the mutton carries away before it such seduc- 
 tive figments. But for the child it is still possible to 
 weave an enchantment over eatables ; and if he has but 
 read of a dish in a story-book, it will be heavenly manna 
 to him for a week. 
 
 If a grown man does not like eating and drinking and 
 exercise, if he is not something positive in his tastes, it 
 means he has a feeble body and should have some medi- 
 cine ; but children may be pure spirits, if they will, and 
 take their enjoyment in a world of moonshine. Sensa- 
 tion does not count for so much in our first years as af- 
 terwards; something of the swaddling numbness of in- 
 fancy clings about us ; we see and touch and hear through 
 a sort of golden mist. Children, for instance, are able 
 enough to see, but they have no great faculty for look- 
 ing; they do not use their eyes for the pleasure of using 
 them, but for by-ends of their own ; and the things I call 
 to mind seeing most vividly, were not beautiful in them- 
 selves, but merely interesting or enviable to me as I 
 thought they might be turned to practical account in play. 
 Nor is the sense of touch so clean and poignant in children 
 as it is in a man. If you will turn over your old memo- 
 ries, I think the sensations of this sort you remember 
 will be somewhat vague, and come to not much more 
 than a blunt, general sense of heat on summer days, or 
 a blunt, general sense of wellbeing in bed. And here, 
 of course, you will understand pleasurable sensations; 
 for overmastering pain — the most deadly and tragical 
 element in life, and the true commander of man's soul 
 and body — alas! pain has its own way with all of us; 
 it breaks in, a rude visitant, upon the fairy garden where 
 
 »37 
 
"VIRGIN1BUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 the child wanders in a dream, no less surely than it rules 
 upon the field of battle, or sends the immortal war-god 
 whimpering to his father; and innocence, no more than 
 philosophy, can protect us from this sting. As for taste, 
 when we bear in mind the excesses of unmitigated sugar 
 which delight a youthful palate, "it is surely no verv 
 cynical asperity " to think taste a character of the ma- 
 turer growth. Smell and hearing are perhaps more de- 
 veloped ; I remember many scents, many voices, and a 
 great deal of spring singing in the woods. But hearing 
 is capable of vast improvement as a means of pleasure ; 
 and there is all the world between gaping wonderment 
 at the jargon of birds, and the emotion with which a 
 man listens to articulate music. 
 
 At the same time, and step by step with this increase 
 in the definition and intensity of what we feel which ac- 
 companies our growing age, another change takes place 
 in the sphere of intellect, by which all things are trans- 
 formed and seen through theories and associations as 
 through coloured windows. We make to ourselves 
 day by day, out of history, and gossip, and econom- 
 ical speculations, and God knows what, a medium in 
 which we walk and through which we look abroad. 
 We study shop windows with other eyes than in our 
 childhood, never to wonder, not always to admire, 
 but to make and modify our little incongruous theo- 
 ries about life. It is no longer the uniform of a sol- 
 dier that arrests our attention; but perhaps the flowing 
 carriage of a woman, or perhaps a countenance that has 
 been vividly stamped with passion and carries an ad- 
 venturous story written in its lines. The pleasure of 
 surprise is passed away ; sugar-loaves and water-carts 
 
 138 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 
 
 seem mighty tame to encounter; and we walk the streets 
 to make romances and to sociologise. Nor must we deny 
 that a good many of us walk them solely for the purposes 
 of transit or in the interest of a livelier digestion. These, 
 indeed, may look back with mingled thoughts upon their 
 childhood, but the rest are in a better case; they know 
 more than when they were children, they understand 
 better, their desires and sympathies answer more nimbly 
 to the provocation of the senses, and their minds are 
 brimming with interest as they go about the world. 
 
 According to my contention, this is a flight to which 
 children cannot rise. They are wheeled in perambu- 
 lators or dragged about by nurses in a pleasing stupor. 
 A vague, faint, abiding wonderment possesses them. 
 Here and there some specially remarkable circumstance, 
 such as a water-cart or a guardsman, fairly penetrates 
 into the seat of thought and calls them, for half a mo- 
 ment, out of themselves ; and you may see them, still 
 towed forward sideways by the inexorable nurse as by 
 a sort of destiny, but still staring at the bright object in 
 their wake. It may be some minutes before another 
 such moving spectacle reawakens them to the world in 
 which they dwell. For other children, they almost in- 
 variably show some intelligent sympathy. " There is a 
 fine fellow making mud pies," they seem to say; "that 
 I can understand, there is some sense in mud pies." But 
 the doings of their elders, unless where they are speakingly 
 picturesque or recommend themselves by the quality of 
 being easily imitable, they let them go over their heads 
 (as we say) without the least regard. If it were not for 
 this perpetual imitation, we should be tempted to fancy 
 they despised us outright, or only considered us in the 
 
 139 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQLJE" 
 
 light of creatures brutally strong and brutally silly; 
 among whom they condescended to dwell in obedience 
 like a philosopher at a barbarous court. At times, in- 
 deed, they display an arrogance of disregard that is truly 
 staggering. Once, when I was groaning aloud with 
 physical pain, a young gentleman came into the room 
 and nonchalantly inquired if I had seen his bow and ar- 
 row. He made no account of my groans, which he ac- 
 cepted, as he had to accept so much else, as a piece of 
 the inexplicable conduct of his elders; and like a wise 
 young gentleman, he would waste no wonder on the 
 subject. Those elders, who care so little for rational 
 enjoyment, and are even the enemies of rational enjoy- 
 ment for others, he had accepted without understanding 
 and without complaint, as the rest of us accept the 
 scheme of the universe. 
 
 We grown people can tell ourselves a story, give and 
 take strokes until the bucklers ring, ride far and fast, 
 marry, fall, and die; all the while sitting quietly by the 
 fire or lying prone in bed. This is exactly what a child 
 cannot do, or does not do, at least, when he can find 
 anything else. He works all with lay figures and stage 
 properties. When his story comes to the fighting, he 
 must rise, get something by way of a sword and have 
 a set-to with a piece of furniture, until he is out of 
 breath. When he comes to ride with the king's par- 
 don, he must bestride a chair, which he will so hurry 
 and belabour and on which he will so furiously demean 
 himself, that the messenger will arrive, if not bloody 
 with spurring, at least fiery red with haste. If his ro- 
 mance involves an accident upon a cliff, he must clam- 
 ber in person about the chest of drawers and fall bodily 
 
 140 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 
 
 upon the carpet, before his imagination is satisfied. 
 Lead soldiers, dolls, all toys, in short, are in the same 
 category and answer the same end. Nothing can stag- 
 ger a child's faith ; he accepts the clumsiest substitutes 
 and can swallow the most staring incongruities. The 
 chair he has just been besieging as a castle, or valiantly 
 cutting to the ground as a dragon, is taken away for the 
 accommodation of a morning visitor, and he is nothing 
 abashed ; he can skirmish by the hour with a stationary 
 coal-scuttle; in the midst of the enchanted pleasance, 
 he can see, without sensible shock, the gardener soberly 
 digging potatoes for the day's dinner. He can make 
 abstraction of whatever does not fit into his fable ; and 
 he puts his eyes into his pocket, just as we hold our 
 noses in an unsavoury lane. And so it is, that although 
 the ways of children cross with those of their elders in 
 a hundred places daily, they never go in the same direc- 
 tion nor so much as lie in the same element. So may 
 the telegraph wires intersect the line of the high-road, 
 or so might a landscape painter and a bagman visit the 
 same country, and yet move in different worlds. 
 
 People struck with these spectacles, cry aloud about 
 the power of imagination in the young. Indeed there 
 may be two words to that. It is, in some ways, but a 
 pedestrian fancy that the child exhibits. It is the grown 
 people who make the nursery stories ; all the children 
 do, is jealously to preserve the text. One out of a dozen 
 reasons why Robinson Crusoe should be so popular with 
 youth, is that it hits their level in this matter to a nicety ; 
 Crusoe was always at makeshifts and had, in so many 
 words, to play at a great variety of professions ; and then 
 the book is all about tools, and there is nothing that de- 
 
 141 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 lights a child so much. Hammers and saws belong to 
 a province of life that positively calls for imitation. The 
 juvenile lyrical drama, surely of the most ancient Thes- 
 pian model, wherein the trades of mankind are succes- 
 sively simulated to the running burthen <( Ona cold and 
 frosty morning," gives a good instance of the artistic 
 taste in children. And this need for overt action and 
 lay figures testifies to a defect in the child's imagination 
 which prevents him from carrying out his novels in 
 the privacy of his own heart. He does not yet know 
 enough of the world and men. His experience is incom- 
 plete. That stage-wardrobe and scene-room that we 
 call the memory is so ill provided, that he can overtake 
 few combinations and body out few stories, to his own 
 content, without some external aid. He is at the experi- 
 mental stage; he is not sure how one would feel in cer- 
 tain circumstances ; to make sure, he must come as near 
 trying it as his means permit. And so here is young 
 heroism with a wooden sword, and mothers practise 
 their kind vocation over a bit of jointed stick. It may be 
 laughable enough just now ; but it is these same people 
 and these same thoughts, that not long hence, when they 
 are on the theatre of life, will make you weep and trem- 
 ble. For children think very much the same thoughts 
 and dream the same dreams, as bearded men and mar- 
 riageable women. No one is more romantic. Fame 
 and honour, the love of young men and the love of 
 mothers, the business man's pleasure in method, all 
 these and others they anticipate and rehearse in their 
 play hours. Upon us, who are further advanced and 
 fairly dealing with the threads of destiny, they only 
 glance from time to time to glean a hint for their own 
 
 142 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 
 
 mimetic reproduction. Two children playing at soldiers 
 are far more interesting to each other than one of the 
 scarlet beings whom both are busy imitating. This 
 is perhaps the greatest oddity of all. " Art for art" is 
 their motto ; and the doings of grown folk are only in- 
 teresting as the raw material for play. Not Theophile 
 Gautier, not Flaubert, can look more callously upon life, 
 or rate the reproduction more highly over the reality; 
 and they will parody an execution, a deathbed, or the 
 funeral of the young man of Nain, with all the cheerful- 
 ness in the world. 
 
 The true parallel for play is not to be found, of course, 
 in conscious art, which, though it be derived from play, 
 is itself an abstract, impersonal thing, and depends 
 largely upon philosophical interests beyond the scope 
 of childhood. It is when we make castles in the air 
 and personate the leading character in our own roman- 
 ces, that we return to the spirit of our first years. Only, 
 there are several reasons why the spirit is no longer so 
 agreeable to indulge. Nowadays, when we admit this 
 personal element into our divagations we are apt to stir 
 up uncomfortable and sorrowful memories, and remind 
 ourselves sharply of old wounds. Our day-dreams can 
 no longer lie all in the air like a story in the Arabian 
 Nights; they read to us rather like the history of a period 
 in which we ourselves had taken part, where we come 
 across many unfortunate passages and find our own 
 conduct smartly reprimanded. And then the child, 
 mind you, acts his parts. He does not merely repeat 
 them to himself; he leaps, he runs, and sets the blood 
 agog over all his body. And so his play breathes him ; 
 and he no sooner assumes a passion than he gives it 
 
 »43 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUER1SQUE" 
 
 vent. Alas ! when we betake ourselves to our intellect- 
 ual form of play, sitting quietly by the fire or lying prone 
 in bed, we rouse many hot feelings for which we can 
 find no outlet. Substitutes are not acceptable to the 
 mature mind, which desires the thing itself; and even 
 to rehearse a triumphant dialogue with one's enemy, 
 although it is perhaps the most satisfactory piece of play 
 still left within our reach, is not entirely satisfying, and 
 is even apt to lead to a visit and an interview which 
 may be the reverse of triumphant after all. 
 
 In the child's world of dim sensation, play is all in 
 all. "Making believe" is the gist of his whole life, 
 and he cannot so much as take a walk except in char- 
 acter. I could not learn my alphabet without some 
 suitable mise-en-scene, and had to act a business man 
 in an office before I could sit down to my book. Will 
 you kindly question your memory, and find out how 
 much you did, work or pleasure, in good faith and 
 soberness, and for how much you had to cheat yourself 
 with some invention ? I remember, as though it were 
 yesterday, the expansion of spirit, the dignity and self- 
 reliance, that came with a pair of mustachios in burnt 
 cork, even when there was none to see. Children are 
 even content to forego what we call the realities, and 
 prefer the shadow to the substance. When they might 
 be speaking intelligibly together, they chatter senseless 
 gibberish by the hour, and are quite happy because 
 they are making believe to speak French. I have said 
 already how even the imperious appetite of hunger suf- 
 fers itself to be gulled and led by the nose with the fag 
 end of an old song. And it goes deeper than this: 
 when children are together even a meal is felt as an in- 
 
 144 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 
 
 terruption in the business of life; and they must find 
 some imaginative sanction, and tell themselves some 
 sort of story, to account for, to colour, to render enter- 
 taining, the simple processes of eating and drinking. 
 What wonderful fancies I have heard evolved out of the 
 pattern upon tea -cups! — from which there followed a 
 code of rules and a whole world of excitement, until 
 tea -drinking began to take rank as a game. When my 
 cousin and I took our porridge of a morning, we had a 
 device to enliven the course of the meal. He ate his 
 with sugar, and explained it to be a country continually 
 buried under snow. I took mine with milk, and ex- 
 plained it to be a country suffering gradual inundation. 
 You can imagine us exchanging bulletins; how here 
 was an island still unsubmerged, here a valley not yet 
 covered with snow; what inventions were made; how 
 his population lived in cabins on perches and travelled 
 on stilts, and how mine was always in boats ; how the 
 interest grew furious, as the last corner of safe ground 
 was cut off on all sides and grew smaller every mo- 
 ment; and how, in fine, the food was of altogether 
 secondary importance, and might even have been nau- 
 seous, so long as we seasoned it with these dreams. 
 But perhaps the most exciting moments I ever had over, 
 a meal, were in the case of calves' feet jelly. It was 
 hardly possible not to believe — and you may be sure, 
 so far from trying, I did all I could to favour the illusion 
 — that some part of it was hollow, and that sooner or 
 later my spoon would lay open the secret tabernacle of 
 the golden rock. There, might some miniature Red 
 Beard await his hour; there, might one find the treas- 
 ures of the Forty Thieves, and bewildered Cassim beating 
 
 '45 
 
"VIRGIN1BUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 about the walls. And so I quarried on slowly, with 
 bated breath, savouring the interest. Believe me, I had 
 little palate left for the jelly; and though I preferred the 
 taste when I took cream with it, I used often to go 
 without, because the cream dimmed the transparent 
 fractures. 
 
 Even with games, this spirit is authoritative with 
 right-minded children. It is thus that hide-and-seek 
 has so pre-eminent a sovereignty, for it is the well- 
 spring of romance, and the actions and the excitement 
 to which it gives rise lend themselves to almost any sort 
 of fable. And thus cricket, which is a mere matter of 
 dexterity, palpably about nothing and for no end, often 
 fails to satisfy infantile craving. It is a game, if you like, 
 but not a game of play. You cannot tell yourself a story 
 about cricket; and the activity it calls forth can be justi- 
 fied on no rational theory. Even football, although it 
 admirably simulates the tug and the ebb and flow of 
 battle, has presented difficulties to the mind of young 
 sticklers after verisimilitude; and I knew at least one 
 little boy who was mightily exercised about the presence 
 of the ball, and had to spirit himself up, whenever he 
 came to play, with an elaborate story of enchantment, 
 and take the missile as a sort of talisman bandied about 
 in conflict between two Arabian nations. 
 
 To think of such a frame of mind, is to become dis- 
 quieted about the bringing up of children. Surely they 
 dwell in a mythological epoch, and are not the contem- 
 poraries of their parents. What can they think of them ? 
 what can they make of these bearded or petticoated 
 giants who look down upon their games ? who move 
 upon a cloudy Olympus, following unknown designs 
 
 146 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 
 
 apart from rational enjoyment ? who profess the tender- 
 est solicitude for children, and yet every now and again 
 reach down out of their altitude and terribly vindicate 
 the prerogatives of age ? Off goes the child, corporally 
 smarting, but morally rebellious. Were there ever such 
 unthinkable deities as parents ? I would give a great 
 deal to know what, in nine cases out often, is the child's 
 unvarnished feeling. A sense of past cajolery ; a sense 
 of personal attraction, at best very feeble ; above all, 1 
 should imagine, a sense of terror for the untried residue 
 of mankind : go to make up the attraction that he feels. 
 No wonder, poor little heart, with such a weltering 
 world in front of him, if he clings to the hand he knows! 
 The dread irrationality of the whole affair, as it seems to 
 children, is a thing we are all too ready to forget. " O, 
 why," I remember passionately wondering, "why can 
 we not all be happy and devote ourselves to play?" 
 And when children do philosophise, I believe it is usu- 
 ally to very much the same purpose. 
 
 One thing, at least, comes very clearly out of these 
 considerations ; that whatever we are to expect at the 
 hands of children, it should not be any peddling exacti- 
 tude about matters of fact. They walk in a vain show, 
 and among mists and rainbows; they are passionate 
 after dreams and unconcerned about realities; speech is 
 a difficult art not wholly learned; and there is nothing 
 in their own tastes or purposes to teach them what we 
 mean by abstract truthfulness. When a bad writer is 
 inexact, even if he can look back on half a century of 
 years, we charge him with incompetence and not with 
 dishonesty. And why not extend the same allowance 
 to imperfect speakers ? Let a stockbroker be dead stupid 
 
 •47 
 
"VIRG1NIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 about poetry, or a poet inexact in the details of business, 
 and we excuse them heartily from blame. But show us 
 a miserable, unbreeched, human entity, whose whole 
 profession it is to take a tub for a fortified town and a 
 shaving-brush for the deadly stiletto, and who passes 
 three-fourths of his time in a dream and the rest in open 
 self-deception, and we expect him to be as nice upon a 
 matter of fact as a scientific expert bearing evidence. 
 Upon my heart, I think it less than decent. You do not 
 consider how little the child sees, or how swift he is to 
 weave what he has seen into bewildering fiction ; and 
 that he cares no more for what you call truth, than you 
 for a gingerbread dragoon. 
 
 I am reminded, as I write, that the child is very in- 
 quiring as to the precise truth of stories. But indeed 
 this is a very different matter, and one bound up with 
 the subject of play, and the precise amount of play- 
 fulness, or payability, to be looked for in the world. 
 Many such burning questions must arise in the course 
 of nursery education. Among the fauna of this planet, 
 which already embraces the pretty soldier and the ter- 
 rifying Irish beggarman, is, or is not, the child to expect 
 a Bluebeard or a Cormoran ? Is he, or is he not, to look 
 out for magicians, kindly and potent ? May he, or may 
 he not, reasonably hope to be cast away upon a desert 
 island, or turned to such diminutive proportions that he 
 can live on equal terms with his lead soldiery, and go a 
 cruise in his own toy schooner ? Surely all these are 
 practical questions to a neophyte entering upon life with 
 a view to play. Precision upon such a point, the child 
 can understand. But if you merely ask him of his past 
 behaviour, as to who threw such a stone, for instance, 
 
 148 
 
CHILD'S PLAY 
 
 or struck such and such a match ; or whether he had 
 looked into a parcel or gone by a forbidden path, — why, 
 he can see no moment in the inquiry, and it is ten to 
 one, he has already half forgotten and half bemused him- 
 self with subsequent imaginings. 
 
 It would be easy to leave them in their native cloud- 
 land, where they figure so prettily — pretty like flowers 
 and innocent like dogs. They will come out of their 
 gardens soon enough, and have to go into offices and 
 the witness-box, Spare them yet a while, O conscien- 
 tious parent ! Let them doze among their playthings 
 yet a little ! for who knows what a rough, warfaring ex- 
 istence lies before them in the future ? 
 
 149 
 
WALKING TOURS 
 
 IT must not be imagined that a walking tour, as some 
 would have us fancy, is merely a better or worse way 
 of seeing the country. There are many ways of seeing 
 landscape quite as good ; and none more vivid, in spite 
 of canting dilettantes, than from a railway train. But 
 landscape on a walking tour is quite accessory. He 
 who is indeed of the brotherhood does not voyage in 
 quest of the picturesque, but of certain jolly humours — 
 of the hope and spirit with which the march begins at 
 morning, and the peace and spiritual repletion of the 
 evening's rest. He cannot tell whether he puts his knap- 
 sack on, or takes it off, with more delight. The excite- 
 ment of the departure puts him in key for that of the ar- 
 rival. Whatever he does is not only a reward in itself, 
 but will be further rewarded in the sequel ; and so pleas- 
 ure leads on to pleasure in an endless chain. It is this 
 that so few can understand ; they will either be always 
 lounging or always at five miles an hour; they do not 
 play off the one against the other, prepare all day for the 
 evening, and all evening for the next day. And, above 
 all, it is here that your overwalker fails of comprehen- 
 sion. His heart rises against those who drink their cu- 
 racoa in liqueur glasses, when he himself can swill it in 
 
 150 
 
WALKING TOURS 
 
 a brown John. He will not believe that the flavour is 
 more delicate in the smaller dose. He will not believe 
 that to walk this unconscionable distance is merely to 
 stupefy and brutalise himself, and come to his inn, at 
 night, with a sort of frost on his five wits, and a starless 
 night of darkness in his spirit. Not for him the mild 
 luminous evening of the temperate walker! He has no- 
 thing left of man but a physical need for bedtime and a 
 double nightcap; and even his pipe, if he be a smoker, 
 will be savourless and disenchanted. It is the fate of 
 such an one to take twice as much trouble as is needed 
 to obtain happiness, and miss the happiness in the end ; 
 he is the man of the proverb, in short, who goes further 
 and fares worse. 
 
 Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should 
 be gone upon alone. If you go in a company, or even 
 in pairs, it is no longer a walking tour in anything but 
 name ; it is something else and more in the nature of a 
 picnic. A walking tour should be gone upon alone, 
 because freedom is of the essence ; because you should 
 be able to stop and go on, and follow this way or that, 
 as the freak takes you ; and because you must have your 
 own pace, and neither trot alongside a champion walker, 
 nor mince in time with a girl. And then you must be 
 open to all impressions and let your thoughts take colour 
 from what you see. You should be as a pipe for any 
 wind to play upon. " 1 cannot see the wit," says Haz- 
 litt, "of walking and talking at the same time. When 
 I am in the country I wish to vegetate like the country." 
 — which is the gist of all that can be said upon the mat- 
 ter. There should be no cackle of voices at your elbow, 
 to jar on the meditative silence of the morning. And so 
 
 151 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 long as a man is reasoning he cannot surrender himself 
 to that fine intoxication that comes of much motion in 
 the open air, that begins in a sort of dazzle and sluggish- 
 ness of the brain, and ends in a peace that passes com- 
 prehension. 
 
 During the first day or so of any tour there are mo- 
 ments of bitterness, when the traveller feels more than 
 coldly towards his knapsack, when he is half in a mind 
 to throw it bodily over the hedge and, like Christian on 
 a similar occasion, "give three leaps and go on sing- 
 ing." And yet it soon acquires a property of easiness. 
 It becomes magnetic; the spirit of the journey enters 
 into it. And no sooner have you passed the straps over 
 your shoulder than the lees of sleep are cleared from 
 you, you pull yourself together with a shake, and fall 
 at once into your stride. And surely, of all possible 
 moods, this, in which a man takes the road, is the best. 
 Of course, if he will keep thinking of his anxieties, if he 
 will open the merchant Abudah's chest and walk arm- 
 in-arm with the hag — why, wherever he is, and whether 
 he walk fast or slow, the chances are that he will not 
 be happy. And so much the more shame to himself! 
 There are perhaps thirty men setting forth at that same 
 hour, and I would lay a large wager there is not an- 
 other dull face among the thirty. It would be a fine 
 thing to follow, in a coat of darkness, one after another 
 of these wayfarers, some summer morning, for the first 
 few miles upon the road. This one, who walks fast, 
 with a keen look in his eyes, is all concentrated in his 
 own mind ; he is up at his loom, weaving and weaving, 
 to set the landscape to words. This one peers about, 
 as he goes, among the grasses ; he waits by the canal to 
 
 152 
 
WALKING TOURS 
 
 watch the dragon-flies; he leans on the gate of the 
 pasture, and cannot look enough upon the complacent 
 kine. And here comes another, talking, laughing, and 
 gesticulating to himself. His face changes from time to 
 time, as indignation flashes from his eyes or anger clouds 
 his forehead. He is composing articles, delivering ora- 
 tions, and conducting the most impassioned interviews, 
 by the way. A little farther on, and it is as like as not 
 he will begin to sing. And well for him, supposing him 
 to be no great master in that art, if he stumble across 
 no stolid peasant at a corner; for on such an occasion, 
 I scarcely know which is the more troubled, or whether 
 it is worse to suffer the confusion of your troubadour, 
 or the unfeigned alarm of your clown. A sedentary 
 population, accustomed, besides, to the strange mechan- 
 ical bearing of the common tramp, can in no wise ex- 
 plain to itself the gaiety of these passers-by. I knew 
 one man who was arrested as a runaway lunatic, be- 
 cause, although a full-grown person with a red beard, 
 he skipped as he went like a child. And you would be 
 astonished if I were to tell you all the grave and learned 
 heads who have confessed to me that, when on walk- 
 ing tours, they sang — and sang very ill — and had a 
 pair of red ears when, as described above, the inauspi- 
 cious peasant plumped into their arms from round a 
 corner. And here, lest you should think I am exagger- 
 ating, is Hazlitt's own confession, from his essay On 
 Going a Journey, which is so good that there should be 
 a tax levied on all who have not read it: — 
 
 "Give me the clear blue sky over my head," says he, 
 "and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road 
 before me, and a three hours' march to dinner — and 
 
 153 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 then to thinking ! It is hard if I cannot start some game on 
 these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy." 
 
 Bravo! After that adventure of my friend with the 
 policeman, you would not have cared, would you, to 
 publish that in the first person ? But we have no bravery 
 nowadays, and, even in books, must all pretend to be as 
 dull and foolish as our neighbours. It was not so with 
 Hazlitt And notice how learned he is (as, indeed, 
 throughout the essay) in the theory of walking tours. 
 He is none of your athletic men in purple stockings, who 
 walk theirfifty miles a day : three hours' march is his ideal. 
 And then he must have a winding road, the epicure! 
 
 Yet there is one thing I object to in these words of his, 
 one thing in the great master's practice that seems to me 
 not wholly wise. I do not approve of that leaping and 
 running. Both of these hurry the respiration; they 
 both shake up the brain out of its glorious open-air con- 
 fusion ; and they both break the pace. Uneven walking 
 is not so agreeable to the body, and it distracts and irri- 
 tates the mind. Whereas, when once you have fallen 
 into an equable stride, it requires no conscious thought 
 from you to keep it up, and yet it prevents you from 
 thinking earnestly of anything else. Like knitting, like 
 the work of a copying clerk, it gradually neutralises and 
 sets to sleep the serious activity of the mind. We can 
 think of this or that, lightly and laughingly, as a child 
 thinks, or as we think in a morning doze; we can make 
 puns or puzzle out acrostics, and trifle in a thousand 
 ways with words and rhymes; but when it comes to 
 honest work, when we come to gather ourselves to- 
 gether for an effort, we may sound the trumpet as loud 
 and long as we please ; the great barons of the mind will 
 
 '54 
 
WALKING TOURS 
 
 not rally to the standard, but sit, each one, at home, 
 warming his hands over his own fire and brooding on 
 his own private thought! 
 
 In the course of a day's walk, you see, there is much 
 variance in the mood. From the exhilaration of the 
 start, to the happy phlegm of the arrival, the change is 
 certainly great. As the day goes on, the traveller moves 
 from the one extreme towards the other. He becomes 
 more and more incorporated with the material landscape, 
 and the open-air drunkenness grows upon him with 
 great strides, until he posts along the road, and sees 
 everything about him, as in a cheerful dream. The first 
 is certainly brighter, but the second stage is the more 
 peaceful. A man does not make so many articles to- 
 wards the end, nor does he laugh aloud ; but the purely 
 animal pleasures, the sense of physical wellbeing, the 
 delight of every inhalation, of every time the muscles 
 tighten down the thigh, console him for the absence of 
 the others, and bring him to his destination still content. 
 
 Nor must I forget to say a word on bivouacs. You 
 come to a milestone on a hill, or some place where deep 
 ways meet under trees; and off goes the knapsack, and 
 down you sit to smoke a pipe in the shade. You sink 
 into yourself, and the birds come round and look at you ; 
 and your smoke dissipates upon the afternoon under the 
 blue dome of heaven ; and the sun lies warm upon your 
 feet, and the cool air visits your neck and turns aside 
 your open shirt. If you are not happy, you must have 
 an evil conscience. You may dally as long as you like 
 by the roadside. It is almost as if the millennium were 
 arrived, when we shall throw our clocks and watches 
 over the housetop, and remember time and seasons no 
 
 «55 
 
"VIRG1N1BUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 more. Not to keep hours for a lifetime is, I was going 
 to say, to live for ever. You have no idea, unless you 
 have tried it, how endlessly long is a summer's day, 
 that you measure out only by hunger, and bring to an 
 end only when you are drowsy. I know a village 
 where there are hardly any clocks, where no one knows 
 more of the days of the week than by a sort of instinct 
 for the fete on Sundays, and where only one person can 
 tell you the day of the month, and she is generally 
 wrong; and if people were aware how slow Time 
 journeyed in that village, and what armfuls of spare 
 hours he gives, over and above the bargain, to its wise 
 inhabitants, I believe there would be a stampede out of 
 London, Liverpool, Paris, and a variety of large towns, 
 where the clocks lose their heads, and shake the hours 
 out each one faster than the other, as though they were 
 all in a wager. And all these foolish pilgrims would 
 each bring his own misery along with him, in a watch- 
 pocket! It is to be noticed, there were no clocks and 
 watches in the much-vaunted days before the flood. It 
 follows, of course, there were no appointments, and 
 punctuality was not yet thought upon. "Though ye 
 take from a covetous man all his treasure," says Milton, 
 "he has yet one jewel left; ye cannot deprive him of 
 his covetousness." And so I would say of a modern 
 man of business, you may do what you will for him, 
 put him in Eden, give him the elixir of life — he has still 
 a flaw at heart, he still has his business habits. Now, 
 there is no time when business habits are more mitigated 
 than on a walking tour. And so during these halts, as 
 I say, you will feel almost free. 
 But it is at night, and after dinner, that the best hour 
 156 
 
WALKING TOURS 
 
 comes. There are no such pipes to be smoked as those 
 that follow a good day's march ; the flavour of the tobacco 
 is a thing to be remembered, it is so dry and aromatic, 
 so full and so fine. If you wind up the evening with 
 grog, you will own there was never such grog; at every 
 sip a jocund tranquillity spreads about your limbs, and 
 sits easily in your heart. If you read a book — and you 
 will never do so save by fits and starts — you find the 
 language strangely racy and harmonious; words take 
 a new meaning; single sentences possess the ear for 
 half an hour together; and the writer endears himself to 
 you, at every page, by the nicest coincidence of senti- 
 ment. It seems as if it were a book you had written 
 yourself in a dream. To all we have read on such oc- 
 casions we look back with special favour. " It was on 
 the ioth of April, 1798," says Hazlitt, with amorous pre- 
 cision, " that I sat down to a volume of the new Heloise, 
 at the Inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a 
 cold chicken." I should wish to quote more, for though 
 we are mighty fine fellows nowadays, we cannot write 
 like Hazlitt. And, talking of that, a volume of Hazlitfs 
 essays would be a capital pocket-book on such a journey ; 
 so would a volume of Heine's songs; and for Tristram 
 Shandy I can pledge a fair experience. 
 
 If the evening be fine and warm, there is nothing bet- 
 ter in life than to lounge before the inn door in the sun- 
 set, or lean over the parapet of the bridge, to watch the 
 weeds and the quick fishes. It is then, if ever, that you 
 taste Joviality to the full significance of that audacious 
 word. Your muscles are so agreeably slack, you feel so 
 clean and so strong and so idle, that whether you move 
 or sit still, whatever you do is done with pride and a 
 
 '57 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 kingly sort of pleasure. You fall in talk with any one, 
 wise or foolish, drunk or sober. And it seems as if a hot 
 walk purged you, more than of anything else, of all nar- 
 rowness and pride, and left curiosity to play its part 
 freely, as in a child or a man of science. You lay aside 
 all your own hobbies, to watch provincial humours de- 
 velop themselves before you, now as a laughable farce, 
 and now grave and beautiful like an old tale. 
 
 Or perhaps you are left to your own company for the 
 night, and surly weather imprisons you by the fire. You 
 may remember how Burns, numbering past pleasures, 
 dwells upon the hours when he has been "happy think- 
 ing. " It is a phrase that may well perplex a poor modern, 
 girt about on every side by clocks and chimes, and 
 haunted, even at night, by flaming dial-plates. For we 
 are all so busy, and have so many far-off projects to re- 
 alise, and castles in the fire to turn into solid habitable 
 mansions on a gravel soil, that we can find no time for 
 pleasure trips into the Land of Thought and among the 
 Hills of Vanity. Changed times, indeed, when we must 
 sit all night, beside the fire, with folded hands; and a 
 changed world for most of us, when we find we can 
 pass the hours without discontent, and be happy think- 
 ing. We are in such haste to be doing, to be writing, 
 to be gathering gear, to make our voice' audible a mo- 
 ment in the derisive silence of eternity, that we forget 
 that one thing, of which these are but the parts — 
 namely, to live. We fall in love, we drink hard, we 
 run to and fro upon the earth like frightened sheep. 
 And now you are to ask yourself if, when all is done, 
 you would not have been better to sit by the fire at 
 home, and be happy thinking. To sit still and con- 
 
 158 
 
WALKING TOURS 
 
 template, — to remember the faces of women without 
 desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without 
 envy, to be everything and everywhere in sympathy, 
 and yet content to remain where and what you are — 
 is not this to know both wisdom and virtue, and to 
 dwell with happiness ? After all, it is not they who 
 carry flags, but they who look upon it from a private 
 chamber, who have the fun of the procession. And once 
 you are at that, you are in the very humour of all social 
 heresy. It is no time for shuffling, or for big, empty 
 words. If you ask yourself what you mean by fame, 
 riches, or learning, the answer is far to seek ; and you 
 go back into that kingdom of light imaginations, which 
 seem so vain in the eyes of Philistines perspiring after 
 wealth, and so momentous to those who are stricken 
 with the disproportions of the world, and, in the face 
 of the gigantic stars, cannot stop to split differences be- 
 tween two degrees of the inflnitesimally small, such as a 
 tobacco pipe or the Roman Empire, a million of money 
 or a fiddlestick's end. 
 
 You lean from the window, your last pipe reeking 
 whitely into the darkness, your body full of delicious 
 pains, your mind enthroned in the seventh circle of 
 content; when suddenly the mood changes, the 
 weathercock goes about, and you ask yourself one 
 question more: whether, for the interval, you have 
 been the wisest philosopher or the most egregious of 
 donkeys ? Human experience is not yet able to reply; 
 but at least you have had a fine moment, and looked down 
 upon all the kingdoms of the earth. And whether it was 
 wise or foolish, to-morrow's travel will carry you, body 
 and mind, into some different parish of the infinite. 
 
 1 59 
 
pan's pipes 
 
 THE world in which we live has been variously said 
 and sung by the most ingenious poets and phi- 
 losophers: these reducing it to formulae and chemical 
 ingredients, those striking the lyre in high-sounding 
 measures for the handiwork of God. What experience 
 supplies is of a mingled tissue, and the choosing mind 
 has much to reject before it can get together the mate- 
 rials of a theory. Dew and thunder, destroying Attila 
 and the Spring lambkins, belong to an order of con- 
 trasts which no repetition can assimilate. There is an 
 uncouth, outlandish strain throughout the web of the 
 world, as from a vexatious planet in the house of life. 
 Things are not congruous and wear strange disguises : 
 the consummate flower is fostered out of dung, and 
 after nourishing itself awhile with heaven's delicate dis- 
 tillations, decays again into indistinguishable soil; and 
 with Caesar's ashes, Hamlet tells us, the urchins make 
 dirt pies and filthily besmear their countenance. Nay, 
 the kindly shine of summer, when tracked home with 
 the scientific spyglass, is found to issue from the most 
 portentous nightmare of the universe — the great, con- 
 flagrant sun: a world of hell's squibs, tumultuary, 
 roaring aloud, inimical to life. The sun itself is enough 
 
 l6o 
 
PAN'S PIPES 
 
 to disgust a human being of the scene which he in- 
 habits; and you would not fancy there was a green or 
 habitable spot in the universe thus awfully lighted up. 
 And yet it is by the blaze of such a conflagration, to 
 which the fire of Rome was but a spark, that we do 
 all our fiddling, and hold domestic tea-parties at the 
 arbour door. 
 
 The Greeks figured Pan, the god of Nature, now ter- 
 ribly stamping his foot, so that armies were dispersed ; 
 now by the woodside on a summer noon trolling on his 
 pipe until he charmed the hearts of upland ploughmen. 
 And the Greeks, in so figuring, uttered the last word of 
 human experience. To certain smoke-dried spirits mat- 
 ter and motion and elastic ethers, and the hypothesis of 
 this or that other spectacled professor, tell a speaking 
 story ; but for youth and all ductile and congenial minds, 
 Pan is not dead, but of all the classic hierarchy alone 
 survives in triumph ; goat-footed, with a gleeful and an 
 angry look, the type of the shaggy world : and in every 
 wood, if you go with a spirit properly prepared, you 
 shall hear the note of his pipe. 
 
 For it is a shaggy world, and yet studded with gar- 
 dens; where the salt and tumbling sea receives clear 
 rivers running from among reeds and lilies ; fruitful and 
 austere; a rustic world; sunshiny, lewd, and cruel. 
 What is it the birds sing among the trees in pairing- 
 time ? What means the sound of the rain falling far and 
 wide upon the leafy forest ? To what tune does the fish- 
 erman whistle, as he hauls in his net at morning, and 
 the bright fish are heaped inside the boat ? These are 
 all airs upon Pan's pipe; he it was who gave them 
 breath in the exultation of his heart, and gleefully modu- 
 li 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 lated their outflow with his lips and fingers. The coarse 
 mirth of herdsmen, shaking the dells with laughter and 
 striking out high echoes from the rock; the tune of 
 moving feet in the lamplit city, or on the smooth ball- 
 room floor; the hooves of many horses, beating the 
 wide pastures in alarm ; the song of hurrying rivers ; the 
 colour of clear skies ; and smiles and the live touch of 
 hands ; and the voice of things, and their significant look, 
 and the renovating influence they breathe forth — these 
 are his joyful measures, to which the whole earth treads 
 in choral harmony. To this music the young lambs 
 bound as to a tabor, and the London shop-girl skips 
 rudely in the dance. For it puts a spirit of gladness in 
 all hearts ; and to look on the happy side of nature is 
 common, in their hours, to all created things. Some 
 are vocal under a good influence, are pleasing when- 
 ever they are pleased, and hand on their happiness to 
 others, as a child who, looking upon lovely things, 
 looks lovely. Some leap to the strains with unapt foot, 
 and make a halting figure in the universal dance. And 
 some, like sour spectators at the play, receive the music 
 into their hearts with an unmoved countenance, and 
 walk like strangers through the general rejoicing. But 
 let him feign never so carefully, there is not a man but 
 has his pulses shaken when Pan trolls out a stave of 
 ecstasy and sets the world a-singing. 
 
 Alas if that were all ! But oftentimes the air is changed ; 
 and in the screech of the night wind, chasing navies, 
 subverting the tall ships and the rooted cedar of the 
 hills ; in the random deadly levin or the fury of head- 
 long floods, we recognise the ''dread foundation" of 
 life and the anger in Pan's heart. Earth wages open 
 
 162 
 
PAN'S PIPES 
 
 war against her children, and under her softest touch 
 hides treacherous claws. The cool waters invite us in 
 to drown; the domestic hearth burns up in the hour of 
 sleep, and makes an end of all. Everything is good or 
 bad, helpful or deadly, not in itself, but by its circum- 
 stances. For a few bright days in England the hurri- 
 cane must break forth and the North Sea pay a toll of 
 populous ships. And when the universal music has 
 led lovers into the paths of dalliance, confident of Nat- 
 ure's sympathy, suddenly the air shifts into a minor, and 
 death makes a clutch from his ambuscade below the 
 bed of marriage. For death is given in a kiss ; the dear- 
 est kindnesses are fatal; and into this life, where one 
 thing preys upon another, the child too often makes its 
 entrance from the mother's corpse. It is no wonder, 
 with so traitorous a scheme of things, if the wise peo- 
 ple who created for us the idea of Pan thought that of 
 all fears the fear of him was the most terrible, since it 
 embraces all. And still we preserve the phrase : a panic 
 terror. To reckon dangers too curiously, to hearken too 
 intently for the threat that runs through all the winning 
 music of the world, to hold back the hand from the 
 rose because of the thorn, and from life because of death : 
 this it is to be afraid of Pan. Highly respectable citi- 
 zens who flee life's pleasures and responsibilities and 
 keep, with upright hat, upon the midway of custom, 
 avoiding the right hand and the left, the ecstasies and 
 the agonies, how surprised they would be if they could 
 hear their attitude mythologically expressed, and knew 
 themselves as tooth-chattering ones, who flee from Nat- 
 ure because they fear the hand of Nature's God ! Shrilly 
 sound Pan's pipes ; and behold the banker instantly con- 
 
 16} 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE" 
 
 cealed in the bank parlour! For to distrust one's im- 
 pulses is to be recreant to Pan. 
 
 There are moments when the mind refuses to be satis- 
 fied with evolution, and demands a ruddier presentation 
 of the sum of man's experience. Sometimes the mood 
 is brought about by laughter at the humorous side of 
 life, as when, abstracting ourselves from earth, we 
 imagine people plodding on foot, or seated in ships and 
 speedy trains, with the planet all the while whirling in 
 the opposite direction, so that, for all their hurry, they 
 travel back-foremost through the universe of space. 
 Sometimes it comes by the spirit of delight, and some- 
 times by the spirit of terror. At least, there will always 
 be hours when we refuse to be put off by the feint of 
 explanation, nicknamed science; and demand instead 
 some palpitating image of our estate, that shall repre- 
 sent the troubled and uncertain element in which we 
 dwell, and satisfy reason by the means of art. Science 
 writes of the world as if with the cold finger of a starfish; 
 it is all true ; but what is it when compared to the re- 
 ality of which it discourses ? where hearts beat high in 
 April, and death strikes, and hills totter in the earth- 
 quake, and there is a glamour over all the objects of 
 sight, and a thrill in all noises for the ear, and Romance 
 herself has made her dwelling among men ? So we 
 come back to the old myth, and hear the goat-footed 
 piper making the music which is itself the charm and 
 terror of things ; and when a glen invites our visiting 
 footsteps, fancy that Pan leads us thither with a gracious 
 tremolo; or when our hearts quail at the thunder of the 
 cataract, tell ourselves that he has stamped his hoof in 
 the nigh thicket. 
 
 164 
 
A PLEA FOR GAS LAMPS 
 
 CITIES given, the problem was to light them. How 
 to conduct individual citizens about the burgess- 
 warren, when once heaven had withdrawn its leading 
 luminary ? or — since we live in a scientific age — when 
 once our spinning planet has turned its back upon the 
 sun ? The moon, from time to time, was doubtless very 
 helpful ; the stars had a cheery look among the chimney- 
 pots ; and a cresset here and there, on church or citadel, 
 produced a fine pictorial effect, and, in places where the 
 ground lay unevenly, held out the right hand of conduct 
 to the benighted. But sun, moon, and stars abstracted 
 or concealed, the night-faring inhabitant had to fall back 
 — we speak on the authority of old prints — upon stable 
 lanthorns, two stories in height. Many holes, drilled in 
 the conical turret-roof of this vagabond Pharos, let up 
 spouts of dazzlement into the bearer's eyes ; and as he 
 paced forth in the ghostly darkness, carrying his own 
 sun by a ring about his finger, day and night swung to 
 and fro and up and down about his footsteps. Black- 
 ness haunted his path ; he was beleaguered by goblins 
 as he went; and, curfew being struck, he found no 
 light but that he travelled in throughout the township. 
 Closely following on this epoch of migratory lanthorns 
 1 65 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUER1SQUE" 
 
 in a world of extinction, came the era of oil-lights, hard 
 to kindle, easy to extinguish, pale and wavering in the 
 hour of their endurance. Rudely puffed the winds of 
 heaven ; roguishly clomb up the all-destructive urchin ; 
 and, lo ! in a moment night re-established her void em- 
 pire, and the cit groped along the wall, suppered but 
 bedless, occult from guidance, and sorrily wading in the 
 kennels. As if gamesome winds and gamesome youths 
 were not sufficient, it was the habit to sling these feeble 
 luminaries from house to house above the fairway. 
 There, on invisible cordage, let them swing! And sup- 
 pose some crane-necked general to go speeding by on 
 a tall charger, spurring the destiny of nations, red-hot in 
 expedition, there would indubitably be some effusion of 
 military blood, and oaths, and a certain crash of glass ; 
 and while the chieftain rode forward with a purple cox- 
 comb, the street would be left to original darkness, un- 
 piloted, unvoyageable, a province of the desert night. 
 
 The conservative, looking before and after, draws from 
 each contemplation the matter for content. Out of the 
 age of gas lamps he glances back slightingly at the mirk 
 and glimmer in which his ancestors wandered ; his heart 
 waxes jocund at the contrast ; nor do his lips refrain from 
 a stave, in the highest style of poetry, lauding progress 
 and the golden mean. When gas first spread along a 
 city, mapping it forth about evenfall for the eye of ob- 
 servant birds, a new age had begun for sociality and 
 corporate pleasure-seeking, and begun with proper cir- 
 cumstancej becoming its own birthright. The work of 
 Prometheus had advanced by another stride. Mankind 
 and its supper parties were no longer at the mercy of a 
 few miles of sea-fog; sundown no longer emptied the 
 
 166 
 
A PLEA FOR GAS LAMPS 
 
 promenade; and the day was lengthened out to every 
 man's fancy. The city-folk had stars of their own ; bid- 
 dable, domesticated stars. 
 
 It is true that these were not so steady, nor yet so 
 clear, as their originals ; nor indeed was their lustre so 
 elegant as that of the best wax candles. But then the 
 gas stars, being nearer at hand, were more practically 
 efficacious than Jupiter himself. It is true, again, that 
 they did not unfold their rays with the appropriate spon- 
 taneity of the planets, coming out along the firmament 
 one after another, as the need arises. But the lamp- 
 lighters took to their heels every evening, and ran with 
 a good heart. It was pretty to see man thus emulating 
 the punctuality of heaven's orbs; and though perfection 
 was not absolutely reached, and now and then an indi- 
 vidual may have been knocked on the head by the lad- 
 der of the flying functionary, yet people commended his 
 zeal in a proverb, and taught their children to say, " God 
 bless the lamplighter!" And since his passage was a 
 piece of the day's programme, the children were well 
 pleased to repeat the benediction, not, of course, in so 
 many words, which would have been improper, but in 
 some chaste circumlocution, suitable for infant lips. 
 
 God bless him, indeed ! For the term of his twilight 
 diligence is near at hand ; and for not much longer shall 
 we watch him speeding up the street and, at measured 
 intervals, knocking another luminous hole into the 
 dusk. The Greeks would have made a noble myth of 
 such an one ; how he distributed starlight, and, as soon 
 as the need was over, re-collected it; and the little bull's- 
 eye, which was his instrument, and held enough fire to 
 kindle a whole parish, would have been fitly commem- 
 
 167 
 
"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQLJE" 
 
 orated in the legend. Now, like all heroic tasks, his 
 labours draw towards apotheosis, and in the light of 
 victory himself shall disappear. For another advance 
 has been effected. Our tame stars are to come out in 
 future, not one by one, but all in a body and at once. 
 A sedate electrician somewhere in a back office touches 
 a spring — and behold! from one end to another of the 
 city, from east to west, from the Alexandra to the Crys- 
 tal Palace, there is light! Fiat Lux, says the sedate 
 electrician. What a spectacle, on some clear, dark 
 nightfall, from the edge of Hampstead Hill, when in a 
 moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the design of the 
 monstrous city flashes into vision — a glittering hiero- 
 glyph many square miles in extent; and when, to 
 borrow and debase an image, all the evening street- 
 lamps burst together into song! Such is the spectacle 
 of the future, preluded the other day by the experiment 
 in Pall Mall. Star-rise by electricity, the most roman- 
 tic flight of civilisation; the compensatory benefit for 
 an innumerable array of factories and bankers' clerks. 
 To the artistic spirit exercised about Thirlmere, here is 
 a crumb of consolation ; consolatory, at least, to such 
 of them as look out upon the world through seeing eyes, 
 and contentedly accept beauty where it comes. 
 
 But the conservative, while lauding progress, is ever 
 timid of innovation ; his is the hand upheld to counsel 
 pause; his is the signal advising slow advance. The 
 word electricity now sounds the note of danger. In 
 Paris, at the mouth of the Passage des Princes, in the 
 place before the Opera portico, and in the Rue Drouot 
 at the Figaro office, a new sort of urban star now 
 shines out nightly, horrible, unearthly, obnoxious to 
 
 168 
 
A PLEA FOR GAS LAMPS 
 
 the human eye; a lamp for a nightmare! Such a light 
 as this should shine only on murders and public crime, 
 or along the corridors of lunatic asylums, a horror to 
 heighten horror. To look at it only once is to fall in 
 love with gas, which gives a warm domestic radiance 
 fit to eat by. Mankind, you would have thought, 
 might have remained content with what Prometheus 
 stole for them and not gone fishing the profound 
 heaven with kites to catch and domesticate the wildfire 
 of the storm. Yet here we have the levin brand at our 
 doors, and it is proposed that we should henceforward 
 take our walks abroad in the glare of permanent light- 
 ning. A man need not be very superstitious if he 
 scruple to follow his pleasures by the light of the Ter- 
 ror that Flieth, nor very epicurean if he prefer to see 
 the face of beauty more becomingly displayed. That 
 ugly blinding glare may not improperly advertise the 
 home of slanderous Figaro, which is a back-shop to 
 the infernal regions ; but where soft joys prevail, where 
 people are convoked to pleasure and the philosopher 
 looks on smiling and silent, where love and laughter 
 and deifying wine abound, there, at least, let the old 
 mild lustre shine upon the ways of man. 
 
 109 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
TO 
 
 MY MOTHER 
 
 IN THE NAME OF PAST JOY AND PRESENT SORROW 
 
 f S>efcfcate 
 
 THESE MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 S.S. "Ludgate Hill" 
 
 within sight of Cape Race 
 
NOTE 
 
 This volume of papers, unconnected as they are, it 
 will be better to read through from the beginning, rather 
 than dip into at random. A certain thread of meaning 
 binds them. Memories of childhood and youth, por- 
 traits of those who have gone before us in the battle, — 
 taken together, they build up a face that " I have loved 
 long since and lost awhile," the face of what was once 
 myself. This has come by accident; I had no design 
 at first to be autobiographical ; I was but led away by 
 the charm of beloved memories and by regret for the 
 irrevocable dead ; and when my own young face (which 
 is a face of the dead also) began to appear in the well as 
 by a kind of magic, I was the first to be surprised at the 
 occurrence. 
 
 My grandfather the pious child, my father the idle 
 eager sentimental youth, I have thus unconsciously ex- 
 posed. Of their descendant, the person of to-day, I 
 wish to keep the secret : not because I love him better, 
 but because, with him, I am still in a business partner- 
 ship, and cannot divide interests. 
 
 Of the papers which make up the volume, some have 
 appeared already in The Cornhill, Longman 's, Scribner, 
 The English Illustrated, The Magazine of Art, The Con- 
 temporary Review; three are here in print for the first 
 time ; and two others have enjoyed only what may be 
 regarded as a private circulation. 
 
 R. L. S. 
 
I. THE FOREIGNER AT HOME 
 
 " This is no my ain house; 
 I ken by the biggin' o't." 
 
 TWO recent books, 1 one by Mr. Grant White on 
 England, one on France by the diabolically clever 
 Mr. Hillebrand, may well have set people thinking on 
 the divisions of races and nations. Such thoughts should 
 arise with particular congruity and force to inhabitants 
 of that United Kingdom, peopled from so many different 
 stocks, babbling so many different dialects, and offering 
 in its extent such singular contrasts, from the busiest 
 over-population to the unkindliest desert, from the Black 
 Country to the Moor of Rannoch. It is not only when 
 we cross the seas that we go abroad ; there are foreign 
 parts of England; and the race that has conquered so 
 wide an empire has not yet managed to assimilate the 
 islands whence she sprang. Ireland, Wales, and the 
 Scottish mountains still cling, in part, to their old Gaelic 
 speech. It was but the other day that English triumphed 
 in Cornwall, and they still show in Mousehole, on St. 
 Michael's Bay, the house of the last Cornish-speaking 
 woman. English itself, which will now frank the trav- 
 eller through the most of North America, through the 
 greater South Sea Islands, in India, along much of the 
 
 i i 88 i . 
 '77 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 coast of Africa, and in the ports of China and Japan, is 
 still to be heard, in its home country, in half a hundred 
 varying stages of transition. You may go all over the 
 States, and — setting aside the actual intrusion and in- 
 fluence of foreigners, negro, French, or Chinese — you 
 shall scarce meet with so marked a difference of accent 
 as in the forty miles between Edinburgh and Glasgow, 
 or of dialect as in the hundred miles between Edinburgh 
 and Aberdeen. Book English has gone round the world, 
 but at home we still preserve the racy idioms of our 
 fathers, and every county, in some parts every dale, has 
 its own quality of speech, vocal or verbal. In like man- 
 ner, local custom and prejudice, even local religion and 
 local law, linger on into the latter end of the nineteenth 
 century — imperia in imperio, foreign things at home. 
 
 In spite of these promptings to reflection, ignorance 
 of his neighbours is the character of the typical John 
 Bull. His is a domineering nature, steady in fight, im- 
 perious to command, but neither curious nor quick about 
 the life of others. In French colonies, and still more in 
 the Dutch, I have read that there is an immediate and 
 lively contact between the dominant and the dominated 
 race, that a certain sympathy is begotten, or at the least 
 a transfusion of prejudices, making life easier for both. 
 But the Englishman sits apart, bursting with pride and 
 ignorance. He figures among his vassals in the hour of 
 peace with the same disdainful air that led him on to 
 victory. A passing enthusiasm for some foreign art or 
 fashion may deceive the world, it cannot impose upon 
 his intimates. He may be amused by a foreigner as by 
 a monkey, but he will never condescend to study him 
 with any patience. Miss Bird, an authoress with whom 
 
THE FOREIGNER AT HOME 
 
 I profess myself in love, declares all the viands of Japan 
 to be uneatable — a staggering pretension. So, when 
 the Prince of Wales's marriage was celebrated at Men- 
 tone by a dinner to the Mentonese, it was proposed to 
 give them solid English fare — roast beef and plum pud- 
 ding, and no tomfoolery. Here we have either pole of 
 the Britannic folly. We will not eat the food of any for- 
 eigner; nor, when we have the chance, will we suffer 
 him to eat of it himself. The same spirit inspired Miss 
 Bird's American missionaries, who had come thousands 
 of miles to change the faith of Japan, and openly pro- 
 fessed their ignorance of the religions they were trying 
 to supplant. 
 
 I quote an American in this connection without scruple. 
 Uncle Sam is better than John Bull, but he is tarred with 
 the English stick. For Mr. Grant White the States are 
 the New England States and nothing more. He won- 
 ders at the amount of drinking in London ; let him try 
 San Francisco. He wittily reproves English ignorance 
 as to the status of women in America ; but has he not 
 himself forgotten Wyoming ? The name Yankee, of 
 which he is so tenacious, is used over the most of 
 the great Union as a term of reproach. The Yankee 
 States, of which he is so staunch a subject, are but 
 a drop in the bucket. And we find in his book a 
 vast virgin ignorance of the life and prospects of Amer- 
 ica; every view partial, parochial, not raised to the ho- 
 rizon ; the moral feeling proper, at the largest, to a clique 
 of States; and the whole scope and atmosphere not 
 American, but merely Yankee. 1 will go far beyond 
 him in reprobating the assumption and the incivility of 
 my countryfolk to their cousins from beyond the sea; I 
 
 179 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 grill in my blood over the silly rudeness of our news- 
 paper articles ; and I do not know where to look when 
 I find myself in company with an American and see my 
 countrymen unbending to him as to a performing dog. 
 But in the case of Mr. Grant White example were better 
 than precept. Wyoming is, after all, more readily ac- 
 cessible to Mr. White than Boston to the English, and 
 the New England self-sufficiency no better justified than 
 the Britannic. 
 
 It is so, perhaps, in all countries ; perhaps in all, men 
 are most ignorant of the foreigners at home. John Bull 
 is ignorant of the States ; he is probably ignorant of In- 
 dia; but considering his opportunities, he is far more 
 ignorant of countries nearer his own door. There is one 
 country, for instance — its frontier not so far from Lon- 
 don, its people closely akin, its language the same in all 
 essentials with the English — of which I will go bail he 
 knows nothing. His ignorance of the sister kingdom 
 cannot be described ; it can only be illustrated by anec- 
 dote. I once travelled with a man of plausible manners 
 and good intelligence, — a University man, as the phrase 
 goes, — a man, besides, who had taken his degree in life 
 and knew a thing or two about the age we live in. We 
 were deep in talk, whirling between Peterborough and 
 London ; among other things, he began to describe some 
 piece of legal injustice he had recently encountered, and 
 I observed in my innocence that things were not so in 
 Scotland. "I beg your pardon," said he, "this is a 
 matter of law." He had never heard of the Scots law; 
 nor did he choose to be informed. The law was the 
 same for the whole country, he told me roundly ; every 
 child knew that. At last, to settle matters, I explained 
 
 1 80 
 
THE FOREIGNER AT HOME 
 
 to him that I was a member of a Scottish legal body, and 
 had stood the brunt of an examination in the very law in 
 question. Thereupon he looked me for a moment full 
 in the face and dropped the conversation. This is a 
 monstrous instance, if you like, but it does not stand 
 alone in the experience of Scots. 
 
 England and Scotland differ, indeed, in law, in his- 
 tory, in religion, in education, and in the very look. of 
 nature and men's faces, not always widely, but always 
 trenchantly. Many particulars that struck Mr. Grant 
 White, a Yankee, struck me, a Scot, no less forcibly; 
 he and I felt ourselves foreigners on many common pro- 
 vocations. A Scotchman may tramp the better part of 
 Europe and the United States, and never again receive 
 so vivid an impression of foreign travel and strange 
 lands and manners as on his first excursion into Eng- 
 land. The change from a hilly to a level country strikes 
 him with delighted wonder. Along the flat horizon 
 there arise the frequent venerable towers of churches. 
 He sees at the end of airy vistas the revolution of the 
 windmill sails. He may go where he pleases in the 
 future ; he may see Alps, and Pyramids, and lions ; but 
 it will be hard to beat the pleasure of that moment. 
 There are, indeed, few merrier spectacles than that of 
 many windmills bickering together in a fresh breeze 
 over a woody country ; their halting alacrity of move- 
 ment, their pleasant business, making bread all day 
 with uncouth gesticulations, their air, gigantically hu- 
 man, as of a creature half alive, put a spirit of romance 
 into the tamest landscape. When the Scotch child sees 
 them first he falls immediately in love ; and from that 
 time forward windmills keep turning in his dreams. 
 
 181 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 And so, in their degree, with every feature of the life 
 and landscape. The warm, habitable age of towns and 
 hamlets, the green, settled, ancient look of the country ; 
 the lush hedgerows, stiles and privy pathways in the 
 fields; the sluggish, brimming rivers; chalk and smock- 
 frocks ; chimes of bells and the rapid, pertly-sounding 
 English speech — they are all new to the curiosity; they 
 are all set to English airs in the child's story that he tells 
 himself at night. The sharp edge of novelty wears off; 
 the feeling is scotched, but I doubt whether it is ever 
 killed. Rather it keeps returning, ever the more rarely 
 and strangely, and even in scenes to which you have 
 been long accustomed suddenly awakes and gives a 
 relish to enjoyment or heightens the sense of isolation. 
 One thing especially continues unfamiliar to the 
 Scotchman's eye — the domestic architecture, the look 
 of streets and buildings; the quaint, venerable age of 
 many, and the thin walls and warm colouring of all. We 
 have, in Scotland, far fewer ancient buildings, above all 
 in country places ; and those that we have are all of hewn 
 or haded masonry. Wood has been sparingly used in 
 their construction; the window-frames are sunken in 
 the wall, not flat to the front, as in England ; the roofs 
 are steeper-pitched ; even a hill farm will have a massy, 
 square, cold and permanent appearance. English houses, 
 in comparison, have the look of cardboard toys, such as 
 a puff might shatter. And to this the Scotchman never 
 becomes used. His eye can never rest consciously on 
 one of these brick houses — rickles of brick, as he might 
 call them — or on one of these flat-chested streets, but he 
 is instantly reminded where he is, and instantly travels 
 back in fancy to his home. " This is no my ain house ; 
 
 182 
 
THE FOREIGNER AT HOME 
 
 I ken by the biggin' o't." And yet perhaps it is his 
 own, bought with his own money, the key of it long 
 polished in his pocket; but it has not yet, and never 
 will be, thoroughly adopted by his imagination; nor 
 does he cease to remember that, in the whole length 
 and breadth of his native country, there was no building 
 even distantly resembling it. 
 
 But it is not alone in scenery and architecture that we 
 count England foreign. The constitution of society, the 
 very pillars of the empire, surprise and even pain us. 
 The dull, neglected peasant, sunk in matter, insolent, 
 gross and servile, makes a startling contrast with our 
 own long-legged, long-headed, thoughtful, Bible-quot- 
 ing ploughman. A week or two in such a place as Suf- 
 folk leaves the Scotchman gasping. It seems incredible 
 that within the boundaries of his own island a class 
 should have been thus forgotten. Even the educated 
 and intelligent, who hold our own opinions and speak 
 in our own words, yet seem to hold them with a differ- 
 ence or from another reason, and to speak on all things 
 with less interest and conviction. The first shock of 
 English society is like a cold plunge. It is possible that 
 the Scot comes looking for too much, and to be sure his 
 first experiment will be in the wrong direction. Yet 
 surely his complaint is grounded ; surely the speech of 
 Englishmen is too often lacking in generous ardour, the 
 better part of the man too often withheld from the social 
 commerce, and the contact of mind with mind evaded 
 as with terror. A Scotch peasant will talk more liber- 
 ally out of his own experience. He will not put you by 
 with conversational counters and small jests; he will 
 give you the best of himself, like one interested in life 
 
 183 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 and man's chief end. A Scotchman is vain, interested 
 in himself and others, eager for sympathy, setting forth 
 his thoughts and experience in the best light. The ego- 
 ism of the Englishman is self-contained. He does not 
 seek to proselytise. He takes no interest in Scotland or 
 the Scotch, and, what is the unkindest cut of all, he does 
 not care to justify his indifference. Give him the wages 
 of going on and being an Englishman, that is all he asks ; 
 and in the meantime, while you continue to associate, 
 he would rather not be reminded of your baser origin. 
 Compared with the grand, tree-like self-sufficiency of 
 his demeanour, the vanity and curiosity of the Scot seem 
 uneasy, vulgar and immodest. That you should con- 
 tinually try to establish human and serious relations, that 
 you should actually feel an interest in John Bull, and de- 
 sire and invite a return of interest from him, may argue 
 something more awake and lively in your mind, but it 
 still puts you in the attitude of a suitor and a poor rela- 
 tion. Thus even the lowest class of the educated Eng- 
 lish towers over a Scotchman by the head and shoulders. 
 Different indeed is the atmosphere in which Scotch 
 and English youth begin to look about them, come to 
 themselves in life, and gather up those first apprehen- 
 sions which are the material of future thought and, to a 
 great extent, the rule of future conduct. I have been to 
 school in both countries, and I found, in the boys of the 
 North, something at once rougher and more tender, at 
 once more reserve and more expansion, a greater habit- 
 ual distance chequered by glimpses of a nearer intimacy, 
 and on the whole wider extremes of temperament and 
 sensibility. The boy of the South seems more whole- 
 some, but less thoughtful ; he gives himself to games as 
 
 .84 
 
THE FOREIGNER AT HOME 
 
 to a business, striving to excel, but is not readily trans- 
 ported by imagination ; the type remains with me as 
 cleaner in mind and body, more active, fonder of eating, 
 endowed with a lesser and a less romantic sense of life 
 and of the future, and more immersed in present circum- 
 stances. And certainly, for one thing, English boys are 
 younger for their age. Sabbath observance makes a 
 series of grim, and perhaps serviceable, pauses in the 
 tenor of Scotch boyhood — days of great stillness and 
 solitude for the rebellious mind, when in the dearth of 
 books and play, and in the intervals of studying the 
 Shorter Catechism, the intellect and senses prey upon 
 and test each other. The typical English Sunday, with 
 the huge midday dinner and the plethoric afternoon, 
 leads perhaps to different results. About the very cradle 
 of the Scot there goes a hum of metaphysical divinity ; 
 and the whole of two divergent systems is summed up, 
 not merely speciously, in the two first questions of the 
 rival catechisms, the English tritely inquiring, "What 
 is your name ? " the Scottish striking at the very roots of 
 life with, ' ' What is the chief end of man ? " and answer- 
 ing nobly, if obscurely, "To glorify God and to enjoy 
 Him for ever." I do not wish to make an idol of the 
 Shorter Catechism ; but the fact of such a question being 
 asked opens to us Scotch a great field of speculation ; 
 and the fact that it is asked of all of us, from the peer to 
 the ploughboy, binds us more nearly together. No Eng- 
 lishman of Byron's age, character and history, would 
 have had patience for long theological discussions on 
 the way to fight for Greece; but the daft Gordon blood 
 and the Aberdonian schooldays kept their influence to 
 the end. We have spoken of the material conditions; 
 
 185 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 nor need much more be said of these: of the land lying 
 everywhere more exposed, of the wind always louder 
 and bleaker, of the black, roaring winters, of the gloom 
 of high-lying, old stone cities, imminent on the windy 
 seaboard; compared with the level streets, the warm 
 colouring of the brick, the domestic quaintness of the 
 architecture, among which English children begin to 
 grow up and come to themselves in life. As the stage 
 of the University approaches, the contrast becomes more 
 express. The English lad goes to Oxford or Cambridge ; 
 there, in an ideal world of gardens, to lead a semi-scenic 
 life, costumed, disciplined and drilled by proctors. Nor 
 is this to be regarded merely as a stage of education ; it 
 is a piece of privilege besides, and a step that separates 
 him further from the bulk of his compatriots. At an 
 earlier age the Scottish lad begins his greatly different 
 experience of crowded class-rooms, of a gaunt quad- 
 rangle, of a bell hourly booming over the traffic of the 
 city to recall him from the public-house where he has 
 been lunching, or the streets where he has been wander- 
 ing fancy-free. His college life has little of restraint, and 
 nothing of necessary gentility. He will find no quiet 
 clique of the exclusive, studious and cultured; no rotten 
 borough of the arts. All classes rub shoulders on the 
 greasy benches. The raffish young gentleman in gloves 
 must measure his scholarship with the plain, clownish 
 laddie from the parish school. They separate, at the 
 session's end, one to smoke cigars about a watering- 
 place, the other to resume the labours of the field beside 
 his peasant family. The first muster of a college class 
 in Scotland is a scene of curious and painful interest; so 
 many lads, fresh from the heather, hang round the stove 
 
 1 86 
 
THE FOREIGNER AT HOME 
 
 in cloddish embarrassment, ruffled by the presence of 
 their smarter comrades, and afraid of the sound of their 
 own rustic voices. It was in these early days, I think, 
 that Professor Blackie won the affection of his pupils, 
 putting these uncouth, umbrageous students at their 
 ease with ready human geniality. Thus, at least, we 
 have a healthy democratic atmosphere to breathe in 
 while at work ; even when there is no cordiality there 
 is always a juxtaposition of the different classes, and in 
 the competition of study the intellectual power of each 
 is plainly demonstrated to the other. Our tasks ended, 
 we of the North go forth as freemen into the humming, 
 lamplit city. At five o'clock you may see the last of us 
 hiving from the college gates, in the glare of the shop 
 windows, under the green glimmer of the winter sun- 
 set. The frost tingles in our blood ; no proctor lies in 
 wait to intercept us ; till the bell sounds again, we are 
 the masters of the world; and some portion of our lives 
 is always Saturday, la tr£ve de Dieu. 
 
 Nor must we omit the sense of the nature of his 
 country and his country's history gradually growing in 
 the child's mind from story and from observation. A 
 Scottish child hears much of shipwreck, outlying iron 
 skerries, pitiless breakers, and great sea-lights; much 
 of heathery mountains, wild clans, and hunted Cove- 
 nanters. Breaths come to him in song of the distant 
 Cheviots and the ring of foraying hoofs. He glories in 
 his hard-fisted forefathers, of the iron girdle and the 
 handful of oatmeal, who rode so swiftly and lived so 
 sparely on their raids. Poverty, ill-luck, enterprise, 
 and constant resolution are the fibres of the legend of 
 his country's history. The heroes and kings of Scot- 
 
 187 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 iand have been tragically fated ; the most marking inci- 
 dents in Scottish history — Flodden, Darien, or the 
 Forty-five — were still either failures or defeats; and the 
 fall of Wallace and the repeated reverses of the Bruce 
 combine with the very smallness of the country to teach 
 rather a moral than a material criterion for life. Britain 
 is altogether small, the mere taproot of her extended 
 empire; Scotland, again, which alone the Scottish boy 
 adopts in his imagination, is but a little part of that, 
 and avowedly cold, sterile and unpopulous. It is not 
 so for nothing. I once seemed to have perceived in an 
 American boy a greater readiness of sympathy for lands 
 that are great, and rich, and growing, like his own. It 
 proved to be quite otherwise: a mere dumb piece of 
 boyish romance, that I had lacked penetration to divine. 
 But the error serves the purpose of my argument; foi 
 I am sure, at least, that the heart of young Scotland will 
 be always touched more nearly by paucity of number 
 and Spartan poverty of life. 
 
 So we may argue, and yet the difference is not ex- 
 plained. That Shorter Catechism which I took as being 
 so typical of Scotland, was yet composed in the city of 
 Westminster. The division of races is more sharply 
 marked within the borders of Scotland itself than be- 
 tween the countries. Galloway and Buchan, Lothian 
 and Lochaber, are like foreign parts; yet you may 
 choose a man from any of them, and, ten to one, he 
 shall prove to have the headmark of a Scot. A century 
 and a half ago the Highlander wore a different costume, 
 spoke a different language, worshipped in another 
 church, held different morals, and obeyed a different 
 social constitution from his fellow-countrymen either 
 
 1 88 
 
THE FOREIGNER AT HOME 
 
 ©f the south or north. Even the English, it is recorded, 
 did not loathe the Highlander and the Highland cos- 
 tume as they were loathed by the remainder of the 
 Scotch. Yet the Highlander felt himself a Scot. He 
 would willingly raid into the Scotch lowlands ; but his 
 courage failed him at the border, and he regarded 
 England as a perilous, unhomely land. When the 
 Black Watch, after years of foreign service, returned to 
 Scotland, veterans leaped out and kissed the earth at 
 Port Patrick. They had been in Ireland, stationed 
 among men of their own race and language, where 
 they were well liked and treated with affection; but it 
 was the soil of Galloway that they kissed at the ex- 
 treme end of the hostile lowlands, among a people who 
 did not understand their speech, and who had hated, 
 harried, and hanged them since the dawn of history. 
 Last, and perhaps most curious, the sons of chieftains 
 were often educated on the continent of Europe. They 
 went abroad speaking Gaelic ; they returned speaking, 
 not English, out the broad dialect of Scotland. Now, 
 what idea had they in their minds when they thus, in 
 thought, identified themselves with their ancestral ene- 
 mies ? What was the sense in which they were Scotch 
 and not English, or Scotch and not Irish ? Can a bare 
 name be thus influential on the minds and affections of 
 men, and a political aggregation blind them to the na- 
 ture of facts ? The story of the Austrian Empire would 
 seem to answer, No; the far more galling business of 
 Ireland clenches the negative from nearer home. Is it com- 
 mon education, common morals, a common language or 
 a common faith, that join men into nations ? There were 
 practically none of these in the case we are considering. 
 
 180 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 The fact remains : in spite of the difference of blood 
 and language, the Lowlander feels himself the senti- 
 mental countryman of the Highlander. When they 
 meet abroad, they fall upon each other's necks in spirit ; 
 even at home there is a kind of clannish intimacy in 
 their talk. But from his compatriot in the south the 
 Lowlander stands consciously apart. He has had a dif- 
 ferent training ; he obeys different laws ; he makes his 
 will in other terms, is otherwise divorced and married ; 
 his eyes are not at home in an English landscape or with 
 English houses; his ear continues to remark the Eng- 
 lish speech; and even though his tongue acquire the 
 Southern knack, he will still have a strong Scotch accent 
 of the mind. 
 
 190 
 
II. SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES 1 
 
 IAM asked to write something (it is not specifically 
 stated what) to the profit and glory of my Alma 
 Mater; and the fact is I seem to be in very nearly the 
 same case with those who addressed me, for while I am 
 willing enough to write something, I know not what to 
 write. Only one point I see, that if I am to write at all, 
 it should be of the University itself and my own days 
 under its shadow; of the things that are still the same 
 and of those that are already changed : such talk, in 
 short, as would pass naturally between a student of to- 
 day and one of yesterday, supposing them to meet and 
 grow confidential. 
 
 The generations pass away swiftly enough on the high 
 seas of life; more swiftly still in the little bubbling back- 
 water of the quadrangle ; so that we see there, on a scale 
 startlingly diminished, the flight of time and the succes- 
 sion of men. I looked for my name the other day in last 
 year's case book of the Speculative. Naturally enough 
 I looked for it near the end ; it was not there, nor yet in 
 the next column, so that I began to think it had been 
 dropped at press ; and when at last I found it, mounted 
 on the shoulders of so many successors, and looking in 
 
 1 Written for the " Book" of the Edinburgh University Union Fancy 
 Fair. 
 
 I9« 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 that posture like the name of a man of ninety, I was 
 conscious of some of the dignity of years. This kind of 
 dignity of temporal precession is likely, with prolonged 
 life, to become more familiar, possibly less welcome; 
 but I felt it strongly then, it is strongly on me now, and 
 I am the more emboldened to speak with my successors 
 in the tone of a parent and a praiser of things past. 
 
 For, indeed, that which they attend is but a fallen 
 University ; it has doubtless some remains of good, for 
 human institutions decline by gradual stages; but de- 
 cline, in spite of all seeming embellishments, it does ; 
 and what is perhaps more singular, began to do so 
 when I ceased to be a student. Thus, by an odd chance, 
 I had the very last of the very best of Alma Mater; the 
 same thing, I hear (which makes it the more strange), 
 had previously happened to my father; and if they are 
 good and do not die, something not at all unsimilar will 
 be found in time to have befallen my successors of to- 
 day. Of the specific points of change, of advantage in 
 the past, of shortcoming in the present, I must own 
 that, on a near examination, they look wondrous cloudy. 
 The chief and far the most lamentable change is the ab- 
 sence of a certain lean, ugly, idle, unpopular student, 
 whose presence was for me the gist and heart of the 
 whole matter; whose changing humours, fine occa- 
 sional purposes of good, flinching acceptance of evil, 
 shiverings on wet, east-windy, morning journeys up to 
 class, infinite yawnings during lecture and unquencha- 
 ble gusto in the delights of truantry, made up the sun- 
 shine and shadow of my college life. You cannot fancy 
 what you missed in missing him ; his virtues, I make 
 sure, are inconceivable to his successors, just as they 
 
 192 
 
SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES 
 
 were apparently concealed from his contemporaries, for 
 I was practically alone in the pleasure I had in his so- 
 ciety. Poor soul, I remember how much he was cast 
 down at times, and how life (which had not yet begun) 
 seemed to be already at an end, and hope quite dead, 
 and misfortune and dishonour, like physical presences, 
 dogging him as he went. And it may be worth while 
 to add that these clouds rolled away in their season, 
 and that all clouds roll away at last, and the troubles 
 of youth in particular are things but of a moment. So 
 this student, whom I have in my eye, took his full share 
 of these concerns, and that very largely by his own 
 fault ; but he still clung to his fortune, and in the midst 
 of much misconduct, kept on in his own way learning 
 how to work ; and at last, to his wonder, escaped out 
 of the stage of studentship not openly shamed ; leaving 
 behind him the University of Edinburgh shorn of a good 
 deal of its interest for myself. 
 
 But while he is (in more senses than one) the first 
 person, he is by no means the only one whom I regret, 
 or whom the students of to-day, if they knew what they 
 had lost, would regret also. They have still Tait, to be 
 sure — long may they have him! — and they have still 
 Tait's class-room, cupola and all; but think of what a 
 different place it was when this youth of mine (at least 
 on roll days) would be present on the benches, and, at 
 the near end of the platform, Lindsay senior 1 was airing 
 his robust old age. It is possible my successors may 
 have never even heard of Old Lindsay; but when he 
 went, a link snapped with the last century. He had 
 something of a rustic air, sturdy and fresh and plain; he 
 1 Professor Tait's laboratory assistant. 
 *93 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 spoke with a ripe east-country accent, which I used to 
 admire ; his reminiscences were all of journeys on foot 
 or highways busy with post-chaises — a Scotland before 
 steam ; he had seen the coal fire on the Isle of May, and 
 he regaled me with tales of my own grandfather. Thus 
 he was for me a mirror of things perished ; it was only 
 in his memory that I could see the huge shock of flames 
 of the May beacon stream to leeward, and the watchers, 
 as they fed the fire, lay hold unscorched of the windward 
 bars of the furnace ; it was only thus that I could see my 
 grandfather driving swiftly in a gig along the seaboard 
 road from Pittenweem to Crail, and for all his business 
 hurry, drawing up to speak good-humouredly with 
 those he met. And now, in his turn, Lindsay is gone 
 also ; inhabits only the memories of other men, till these 
 shall follow him ; and figures in my reminiscences as 
 my grandfather figured in his. 
 
 To-day, again, they have Professor Butcher, and I 
 hear he has a prodigious deal of Greek ; and they have 
 Professor Chrystal, who is a man filled with the mathema- 
 tics. And doubtless these are set-offs. But they can- 
 not change the fact that Professor Blackie has retired, 
 and that Professor Kelland is dead. No man's educa- 
 tion is complete or truly liberal who knew not Kelland. 
 There were unutterable lessons in the mere sight of that 
 frail old clerical gentleman, lively as a boy, kind like a 
 fairy godfather, and keeping perfect order in his class by 
 the spell of that very kindness. I have heard him drift 
 into reminiscences in class time, though not for long, 
 and give us glimpses of old-world life in out-of-the-way 
 English parishes when he was young; thus playing the 
 same part as Lindsay — the part of the surviving mem- 
 
 194 
 
SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES 
 
 ory, signalling out of the dark backward and abysm of 
 time the images of perished things. But it was a part 
 that scarce became him ; he somehow lacked the means : 
 for all his silver hair and worn face, he was not truly 
 old ; and he had too much of the unrest and petulant 
 fire of youth, and too much invincible innocence of 
 mind, to play the veteran well. The time to measure 
 him best, to taste (in the old phrase) his gracious nature, 
 was when he received his class at home. What a pretty 
 simplicity would he then show, trying to amuse us like 
 children with toys ; and what an engaging nervousness 
 of manner, as fearing that his efforts might not succeed ! 
 Truly he made us all feel like children, and like children 
 embarrassed, but at the same time filled with sympathy 
 for the conscientious, troubled elder-boy who was work- 
 ing so hard to entertain us. A theorist has held the view 
 that there is no feature in man so tell-tale as his spec- 
 tacles ; that the mouth may be compressed and the brow 
 smoothed artificially, but the sheen of the barnacles is 
 diagnostic. And truly it must have been thus with Kel- 
 land ; for as I still fancy I behold him frisking actively 
 about the platform, pointer in hand, that which I seem 
 to see most clearly is the way his glasses glittered with 
 affection. I never knew but one other man who had 
 (if you will permit the phrase) so kind a spectacle; and 
 that was Dr. Appleton. But the light in his case was 
 tempered and passive; in Kelland's it danced, and 
 changed, and flashed vivaciously among the students, 
 like a perpetual challenge to goodwill. 
 
 I cannot say so much about Professor Blackie, for a 
 good reason. Kelland's class I attended, once even 
 gained there a certificate of merit, the only distinction 
 
 195 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 of my University career. But although I am the holder 
 of a certificate of attendance in the professor's own hand, 
 I cannot remember to have been present in the Greek 
 class above a dozen times. Professor Blackie was even 
 kind enough to remark (more than once) while in the 
 very act of writing the document above referred to, that 
 he did not know my face. Indeed, I denied myself 
 many opportunities ; acting upon an extensive and highly 
 rational system of truantry, which cost me a great deal 
 of trouble to put in exercise — perhaps as much as would 
 have taught me Greek — and sent me forth into the 
 world and the profession of letters with the merest 
 shadow of an education. But they say it is always a 
 good thing to have taken pains, and that success is its 
 own reward, whatever be its nature ; so that, perhaps, 
 even upon this 1 should plume myself, that no one ever 
 played the truant with more deliberate care, and none 
 ever had more certificates for less education. One con- 
 sequence, however, of my system is that I have much 
 less to say of Professor Blackie than I had of Professor 
 Kelland; and as he is still alive, and will long, I hope, 
 continue to be so, it will not surprise you very much 
 that I have no intention of saying it. 
 
 Meanwhile, how many others have gone — Jenkin, 
 Hodgson, and I know not who besides; and of that tide 
 of students that used to throng the arch and blacken the 
 quadrangle, how many are scattered into the remotest 
 parts of the earth, and how many more have lain down 
 beside their fathers in their " resting-graves ! " And 
 again, how many of these last have not found their way 
 there, all too early, through the stress of education! That 
 was one thing, at least, from which my truantry protected 
 
SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES 
 
 me. 1 am sorry indeed that I have no Greek, but I should 
 be sorrier still if I were dead ; nor do I know the name 
 of that branch of knowledge which is worth acquiring 
 at the price of a brain fever. There are many sordid 
 tragedies in the life of the student, above all if he be 
 poor, or drunken, or both ; but nothing more moves a 
 wise man's pity than the case of the lad who is in too 
 much hurry to be learned. And so, for the sake of a 
 moral at the end, I will call up one more figure, and 
 have done. A student, ambitious of success by that 
 hot, intemperate manner of study that now grows so 
 common, read night and day for an examination. As he 
 went on, the task became more easy to him, sleep was 
 more easily banished, his brain grew hot and clear and 
 more capacious, the necessary knowledge daily fuller 
 and more orderly. It came to the eve of the trial and 
 he watched all night in his high chamber, reviewing 
 what he knew, and already secure of success. His win- 
 dow looked eastward, and being (as I said) high up, and 
 the house itself standing on a hill, commanded a view 
 over dwindling suburbs to a country horizon. At last 
 my student drew up his blind, and still in quite a jocund 
 humour, looked abroad. Day was breaking, the east 
 was tinging with strange fires, the clouds breaking up 
 for the coming of the sun ; and at the sight, nameless 
 terror seized upon his mind. He was sane, his senses 
 were undisturbed ; he saw clearly, and knew what he 
 was seeing, and knew that it was normal ; but he could 
 neither bear to see it nor find the strength to look away, 
 and fled in panic from his chamber into the enclosure of 
 the street. In the cool air and silence, and among the 
 sleeping houses, his strength was renewed. Nothing 
 
 •97 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 troubled him but the memory of what had passed, and 
 an abject fear of its return. 
 
 4 ' Gallo canente, spes redit, 
 Aegris salus refunditur, 
 Lapsis fides revertitur," 
 
 as they sang of old in Portugal in the Morning Office. 
 But to him that good hour of cockcrow, and the changes 
 of the dawn, had brought panic, and lasting doubt, and 
 such terror as he still shook to think of. He dared not 
 return to his lodging; he could not eat; he sat down, 
 he rose up, he wandered ; the city woke about him with 
 its cheerful bustle, the sun climbed overhead ; and still 
 he grew but the more absorbed in the distress of his 
 recollection and the fear of his past fear. At the ap- 
 pointed hour, he came to the door of the place of ex- 
 amination ; but when he was asked, he had forgotten his 
 name. Seeing him so disordered, they had not the heart 
 to send him away, but gave him a paper and admitted 
 him, still nameless, to the Hall. Vain kindness, vain 
 efforts. He could only sit in a still growing horror, writ- 
 ing nothing, ignorant of all, his mind filled with a single 
 memory of the breaking day and his own intolerable fear. 
 And that same night he was tossing in a brain fever. 
 
 People are afraid of war and wounds and dentists, all 
 with excellent reason ; but these are not to be compared 
 with such chaotic terrors of the mind as fell on this young 
 man, and made him cover his eyes from the innocent 
 morning. We all have by our bedsides the box of the 
 Merchant Abudah, thank God, securely enough shut; 
 but when a young man sacrifices sleep to labour, let him 
 have a care, for he is playing with the lock. 
 
HI. OLD MORTALITY 
 
 THERE is a certain graveyard, looked upon on the 
 one side by a prison, on the other by the windows 
 of a quiet hotel; below, under a steep cliff, it beholds 
 the traffic of many lines of rail, and the scream of the 
 engine and the shock of meeting buffers mount to it all 
 day long. The aisles are lined with the inclosed sepul- 
 chres of families, door beyond door, like houses in a 
 street; and in the morning the shadow of the prison 
 turrets, and of many tall memorials, fall upon the graves. 
 There, in the hot fits of youth, I came to be unhappy. 
 Pleasant incidents are woven with my memory of the 
 place. I here made friends with a certain plain old gen- 
 tleman, a visitor on sunny mornings, gravely cheerful, 
 who, with one eye upon the place that awaited him, 
 chirped about his youth like winter sparrows ; a beauti- 
 ful housemaid of the hotel once, for some days together, 
 dumbly flirted with me from a window and kept my 
 wild heart flying; and once— she possibly remembers 
 —the wise Eugenia followed me to that austere inclo- 
 sure. Her hair came down, and in the shelter of the 
 tomb my trembling fingers helped her to repair the 
 braid. But for the most part I went there solitary and, 
 with irrevocable emotion, pored on the names of the 
 
 199 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 forgotten. Name after name, and to each the conven- 
 tional attributions and the idle dates : a regiment of the 
 unknown that had been the joy of mothers, and had 
 thrilled with the illusions of youth, and at last, in the 
 dim sick-room, wrestled with the pangs of old mortal- 
 ity. In that whole crew of the silenced there was but 
 one of whom my fancy had received a picture ; and he, 
 with his comely, florid countenance, bewigged and 
 habited in scarlet, and in his day combining fame and 
 popularity, stood forth, like a taunt, among that com- 
 pany of phantom appellations. It was then possible to 
 leave behind us something more explicit than these 
 severe, monotonous and lying epitaphs ; and the thing 
 left, the memory of a painted picture and what we call 
 the immortality of a name, was hardly more desirable 
 than mere oblivion. Even David Hume, as he lay com- 
 posed beneath that "circular idea," was fainter than a 
 dream; and when the housemaid, broom in hand, 
 smiled and beckoned from the open window, the fame 
 of that bewigged philosopher melted like a raindrop in 
 the sea. 
 
 And yet in soberness I cared as little for the house- 
 maid as for David Hume. The interests of youth are 
 rarely frank ; his passions, like Noah's dove, come home 
 to roost. The fire, sensibility, and volume of his own 
 nature, that is all that he has learned to recognise. The 
 tumultuary and gray tide of life, the empire of routine, 
 the unrejoicing faces of his elders, fill him with con- 
 temptuous surprise ; there also he seems to walk among 
 the tombs of spirits; and it is only in the course of 
 years, and after much rubbing with his fellow-men, that 
 he begins by glimpses to see himself from without and his 
 
 200 
 
OLD MORTALITY 
 
 fellows from within : to know his own for one among 
 the thousand undenoted countenances of the city street, 
 and to divine in others the throb of human agony and 
 hope. In the meantime he will avoid the hospital doors, 
 the pale faces, the cripple, the sweet whiff of chloro- 
 form — for there, on the most thoughtless, the pains of 
 others are burned home ; but he will continue to walk, 
 in a divine self-pity, the aisles of the forgotten grave- 
 yard. The length of man's life, which is endless to the 
 brave and busy, is scorned by his ambitious thought. 
 He cannot bear to have come for so little, and to go 
 again so wholly. He cannot bear, above all, in that 
 brief scene, to be still idle, and by way of cure, neglects 
 the little that he has to do. The parable of the talent is 
 the brief epitome of youth. To believe in immortality 
 is one thing, but it is first needful to believe in life. 
 Denunciatory preachers seem not to suspect that they 
 may be taken gravely and in evil part ; that young men 
 may come to think of time as of a moment, and with 
 the pride of Satan wave back the inadequate gift. Yet 
 here is a true peril ; this it is that sets them to pace the 
 graveyard alleys and to read, with strange extremes of 
 pity and derision, the memorials of the dead. 
 
 Books were the proper remedy : books of vivid hu- 
 man import, forcing upon their minds the issues, pleas- 
 ures, busyness, importance and immediacy of that life 
 in which they stand; books of smiling or heroic temper, 
 to excite or to console ; books of a large design, shad- 
 owing the complexity of that game of consequences to 
 which we all sit down, the hanger-back not least. But 
 the average sermon flees the point, disporting itself in 
 that eternity of which we know, and need to know, so 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 little; avoiding the bright, crowded, and momentous 
 fields of life where destiny awaits us. Upon the aver- 
 age book a writer may be silent; he may set it down 
 to his ill-hap that when his own youth was in the acrid 
 fermentation, he should have fallen and fed upon the 
 cheerless fields of Obermann. Yet to Mr. Arnold, who 
 led him to these pastures, he still bears a grudge. The 
 day is perhaps not far off when people will begin to 
 count Moll Flanders, ay, or The Country Wife, more 
 wholesome and more pious diet than these guide-books 
 to consistent egoism. 
 
 But the most inhuman of boys soon wearies of the 
 inhumanity of Obermann. And even while I still con- 
 tinued to be a haunter of the graveyard, I began insen- 
 sibly to turn my attention to the grave-diggers, and was 
 weaned out of myself to observe the conduct of visitors. 
 This was dayspring, indeed, to a lad in such great dark- 
 ness. Not that I began to see men, or to try to see 
 them, from within, nor to learn charity and modesty 
 and justice from the sight ; but still stared at them ex- 
 ternally from the prison windows of my affectation. 
 Once I remember to have observed two working-wo- 
 men with a baby halting by a grave ; there was some- 
 thing monumental in the grouping, one upright carry- 
 ing the child, the other with bowed face crouching by 
 her side. A wreath of immortelles under a glass dome had 
 thus attracted them ; and, drawing near, I overheard their 
 judgment on that wonder. " Eh ! what extravagance! " 
 To a youth afflicted with the callosity of sentiment, this 
 quaint and pregnant saying appeared merely base. 
 
 My acquaintance with grave-diggers, considering its 
 length, was unremarkable. One, indeed, whom I found 
 
 202 
 
OLD MORTALITY 
 
 plying his spade in the red evening, high above Allan 
 Water and in the shadow of Dunblane Cathedral, told 
 me of his acquaintance with the birds that still attended 
 on his labours; how some would even perch about him, 
 waiting for their prey ; and in a true Sexton's Calendar, 
 how the species varied with the season of the year. 
 But this was the very poetry of the profession. The 
 others whom I knew were somewhat dry. A faint fla- 
 vour of the gardener hung about them, but sophisticated 
 and disbloomed. They had engagements to keep, not 
 alone with the deliberate series of the seasons, but with 
 mankind's clocks and hour-long measurement of time. 
 And thus there was no leisure for the relishing pinch, 
 or the hour-long gossip, foot on spade. They were 
 men wrapped up in their grim business; they liked well 
 to open long-closed family vaults, blowing in the key 
 and throwing wide the grating; and they carried in their 
 minds a calendar of names and dates. It would be "in 
 fifty-twa " that such a tomb was last opened for " Miss 
 Jemimy." It was thus they spoke of their past patients — 
 familiarly but not without respect, like old family ser- 
 vants. Here is indeed a servant, whom we forget that 
 we possess ; who does not wait at the bright table, or 
 run at the bell's summons, but patiently smokes his pipe 
 beside the mortuary fire, and in his faithful memory 
 notches the burials of our race. To suspect Shake- 
 speare in his maturity of a superficial touch savours of 
 paradox ; yet he was surely in error when he attributed 
 insensibility to the digger of the grave. But perhaps it 
 is on Hamlet that the charge should lie ; or perhaps the 
 English sexton differs from the Scotch. The "good- 
 man delver," reckoning up his years of office, might 
 
 203 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 have at least suggested other thoughts. It is a pride 
 common among sextons. A cabinet-maker does not 
 count his cabinets, nor even an author his volumes, save 
 when they stare upon him from the shelves; but the 
 grave-digger numbers his graves. He would indeed 
 be something different from human if his solitary open- 
 air and tragic labours left not a broad mark upon his 
 mind. There, in his tranquil aisle, apart from city clam- 
 our, among the cats and robins and the ancient effigies 
 and legends of the tomb, he waits the continual passage 
 of his contemporaries, falling like minute drops into 
 eternity. As they fall, he counts them ; and this enu- 
 meration, which was at first perhaps appalling to his soul, 
 in the process of years and by the kindly influence of 
 habit grows to be his pride and pleasure. There are 
 many common stories telling how he piques himself on 
 crowded cemeteries. But I will rather tell of the old 
 grave-digger of Monkton, to whose unsufTering bedside 
 the minister was summoned. He dwelt in a cottage 
 built into the wall of the churchyard; and through a 
 bull's-eye pane above his bed he could see, as he lay 
 dying, the rank grasses and the upright and recumbent 
 stones. Dr. Laurie was, I think, a Moderate : 'tis cer- 
 tain, at least, that he took a very Roman view of death- 
 bed dispositions; for he told the old man that he had 
 lived beyond man's natural years, that his life had been 
 easy and reputable, that his family had all grown up and 
 been a credit to his care, and that it now behoved him 
 unregretfully to gird his loins and follow the majority. 
 The gravedigger heard him out; then he raised himself 
 upon one elbow, and with the other hand pointed 
 through the window to the scene of his life-long labours. 
 
 204 
 
OLD MORTALITY 
 
 " Doctor/' he said, " I ha'e laid three hunner and fower- 
 score in that kirkyaird; an it had been His wull," indi- 
 cating Heaven, "I would ha'e likit weel to ha'e made 
 out the fower hunner." But it was not to be; this tra- 
 gedian of the fifth act had now another part to play ; 
 and the time had come when others were to gird and 
 carry him. 
 
 I would fain strike a note that should be more heroical ; 
 but the ground of all youth's suffering, solitude, hysteria, 
 and haunting of the grave, is nothing else than naked, 
 ignorant selfishness. It is himself that he sees dead ; 
 those are his virtues that are forgotten ; his is the vague 
 epitaph. Pity him but the more, if pity be your cue; 
 for where a man is all pride, vanity, and personal aspi- 
 ration, he goes through fire unshielded. In every part 
 and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be gainer; to 
 forget oneself is to be happy ; and this poor, laughable 
 and tragic fool has not yet learned the rudiments ; him- 
 self, giant Prometheus, is still ironed on the peaks of 
 Caucasus. But by and by his truant interests will leave 
 that tortured body, slip abroad and gather flowers. 
 Then shall death appear before him in an altered guise ; 
 no longer as a doom peculiar to himself, whether fate's 
 crowning injustice or his own last vengeance upon those 
 who fail to value him ; but now as a power that wounds 
 him far more tenderly, not without solemn compensa- 
 tions, taking and giving, bereaving and yet storing up. 
 
 The first step for all is to learn to the dregs our own 
 ignoble fallibility. When we have fallen through story 
 after story of our vanity and aspiration, and sit rueful 
 
 205 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 among the ruins, then it is that we begin to measure the 
 stature of our friends : how they stand between us and 
 our own contempt, believing in our best; how, linking 
 us with others, and still spreading wide the influential 
 circle, they weave us in and in with the fabric of con- 
 temporary life ; and to what petty size they dwarf the 
 virtues and the vices that appeared gigantic in our youth. 
 So that at the last, when such a pin falls out — when 
 there vanishes in the least breath of time one of those 
 rich magazines of life on which we drew for our supply 
 — when he who had first dawned upon us as a face 
 among the faces of the city, and, still growing, came to 
 bulk on our regard with those clear features of the loved 
 and living man, falls in a breath to memory and shadow, 
 there falls along with him a whole wing of the palace of 
 our life. 
 
 HI 
 
 One such face I now remember; one such blank some 
 half a dozen of us labour to dissemble. In his youth he 
 was most beautiful in person, most serene and genial by 
 disposition; full of racy words and quaint thoughts. 
 Laughter attended on his coming. He had the air of a 
 great gentleman, jovial and royal with his equals, and 
 to the poorest student gentle and attentive. Power 
 seemed to reside in him exhaustless ; we saw him stoop 
 to play with us, but held him marked for higher des- 
 tinies; we loved his notice; and I have rarely had my 
 pride more gratified than when he sat at my father's 
 table, my acknowledged friend. So he walked among 
 us, both hands full of gifts, carrying with nonchalance 
 the seeds of a most influential life. 
 
 206 
 
OLD MORTALITY 
 
 The powers and the ground of friendship is a mys- 
 tery ; but, looking back, I can discern that, in part, we 
 loved the thing he was, for some shadow of what he 
 was to be. For with all his beauty, power, breeding, 
 urbanity and mirth, there was in those days something 
 soulless in our friend. He would astonish us by sal- 
 lies, witty, innocent and inhumane; and by a misap- 
 plied Johnsonian pleasantry, demolish honest sentiment. 
 I can still see and hear him, as he went his way along 
 the lamplit streets, Li ci darem la mano on his lips, 
 a noble figure of a youth, but following vanity and 
 incredulous of good; and sure enough, somewhere 
 on the high seas of life, with his health, his hopes, 
 his patrimony and his self-respect, miserably went 
 down. 
 
 From this disaster, like a spent swimmer, he came 
 desperately ashore, bankrupt of money and consider- 
 ation; creeping to the family he had deserted; with 
 broken wing, never more to rise. But in his face there 
 was a light of knowledge that was new to it. Of the 
 wounds of his body he was never healed; died of them 
 gradually, with clear-eyed resignation ; of his wounded 
 pride, we knew only from his silence. He returned to 
 that city where he had lorded it in his ambitious youth ; 
 lived there alone, seeing few; striving to retrieve the 
 irretrievable; at times still grappling with that mortal 
 frailty that had brought him down ; still joying in his 
 friend's successes ; his laugh still ready but with kindlier 
 music; and over all his thoughts the shadow of that 
 unalterable law which he had disavowed and which 
 had brought him low. Lastly, when his bodily evils 
 had quite disabled him, he lay a great while dying, still 
 
 207 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 without complaint, still finding interests; to his last 
 step gentle, urbane and with the will to smile. 
 
 The tale of this great failure is, to those who re- 
 mained true to him, the tale of a success. In his youth 
 he took thought for no one but himself; when he came 
 ashore again, his whole armada lost, he seemed to think 
 of none but others. Such was his tenderness for others, 
 such his instinct of fine courtesy and pride, that of that 
 impure passion of remorse he never breathed a syllable; 
 even regret was rare with him, and pointed with a jest. 
 You would not have dreamed, if you had known him 
 then, that this was that great failure, that beacon to 
 young men, over whose fall a whole society had hissed 
 and pointed fingers. Often have we gone to him, red- 
 hot with our own hopeful sorrows, railing on the rose- 
 leaves in our princely bed of life, and he would patiently 
 give ear and wisely counsel; and it was only upon 
 some return of our own thoughts that we were re- 
 minded what manner of man this was to whom we 
 disembosomed : a man, by his own fault, ruined ; shut 
 out of the garden of his gifts ; his whole city of hope 
 both ploughed and salted ; silently awaiting the deliv- 
 erer. Then something took us by the throat; and to 
 see him there, so gentle, patient, brave and pious, op- 
 pressed but not cast down, sorrow was so swallowed 
 up in admiration that we could not dare to pity him. 
 Even if the old fault flashed out again, it but awoke our 
 wonder that, in that lost battle, he should have still the 
 energy to fight. He had gone to ruin with a kind of 
 kingly abandon, like one who condescended ; but once 
 ruined, with the lights all out, he fought as for a king- 
 dom. Most men, finding themselves the authors of 
 
 208 
 
OLD MORTALITY 
 
 their own disgrace, rail the louder against God or des- 
 tiny. Most men, when they repent, oblige their friends 
 to share the bitterness of that repentance. But he had 
 held an inquest and passed sentence: mene, mene ; and 
 condemned himself to smiling silence. He had given 
 trouble enough ; had earned misfortune amply, and fore- 
 gone the right to murmur. 
 
 Thus was our old comrade, like Samson, careless in 
 his days of strength ; but on the coming of adversity, 
 and when that strength was gone that had betrayed 
 him — "for our strength is weakness" — he began to 
 blossom and bring forth. Well, now, he is out of the 
 fight: the burden that he bore thrown down before the 
 great deliverer. We 
 
 " in the vast cathedral leave him: 
 God accept him, 
 Christ receive him ! " 
 
 IV 
 
 If we go now and look on these innumerable epitaphs, 
 the pathos and the irony are strangely fled. They do 
 not stand merely to the dead, these foolish monuments ; 
 they are pillars and legends set up to glorify the difficult 
 but not desperate life of man. This ground is hallowed 
 by the heroes of defeat. 
 
 I see the indifferent pass before my friend's last rest- 
 ing-place; pause, with a shrug of pity, marvelling that 
 so rich an argosy had sunk. A pity, now that he is 
 done with suffering, a pity most uncalled for, and an 
 ignorant wonder. Before those who loved him, his 
 memory shines like a reproach; they honour him for 
 
 209 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 silent lessons; they cherish his example; and in what 
 remains before them of their toil, fear to be unworthy 
 of the dead. For this proud man was one of those who 
 prospered in the valley of humiliation ; — of whom Bun- 
 van wrote that, "Though Christian had the hard hap to 
 meet in the valley with Apollyon, yet I must tell you, 
 that in former times men have met with angels here ; 
 have found pearls here; and have in this place found the 
 words of life." 
 
 2IO 
 
IV. A COLLEGE MAGAZINE 
 
 ALL through my boyhood and youth, I was known 
 l and pointed out for the pattern of an idler; and 
 yet I was always busy on my own private end, which was 
 to learn to write. I kept always two books in my pocket, 
 one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was 
 busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words ; when 
 I sat by the roadside, I would either read, or a pencil 
 and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note 
 down the features of the scene or commemorate some 
 halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what 
 I thus wrote was for no ulterior use, it was written con- 
 sciously for practice. It was not so much that I wished 
 to be an author (though I wished that too) as that I had 
 vowed that I would learn to write. That was a profi- 
 ciency that tempted me ; and I practised to acquire it, as 
 men learn to whittle, in a wager with myself. Descrip- 
 tion was the principal field of my exercise ; for to any 
 one with senses there is always something worth de- 
 scribing, and town and country are but one continuous 
 subject. But I worked in other ways also; often ac- 
 companied my walks with dramatic dialogues, in which 
 I played many parts; and often exercised myself in writ- 
 ing down conversations from memory. 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 This was all excellent, no doubt; so were the diaries 
 I sometimes tried to keep, but always and very speed- 
 ily discarded, finding them a school of posturing and 
 melancholy self-deception. And yet this was not the 
 most efficient part of my training. Good though it was, 
 it only taught me (so far as I have learned them at all) 
 the lower and less intellectual elements of the art, the 
 choice of the essential note and the right word : things 
 that to a happier constitution had perhaps come by 
 nature. And regarded as training, it had one grave de- 
 fect ; for it set me no standard of achievement. So that 
 there was perhaps more profit, as there was certainly 
 more effort, in my secret labours at home. Whenever 
 1 read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, 
 in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with 
 propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous 
 force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit 
 down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I 
 was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and 
 was again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but 
 at least in these vain bouts, I got some practice in 
 rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the co-or- 
 dination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape 
 to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas 
 Browne, to IDefoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Bau- 
 delaire and to Obermann. I remember one of these 
 monkey tricks, which was called The Vanity of Morals: 
 it was to have had a second part, The Vanity of Knowl- 
 edge; and as I had neither morality nor scholarship, 
 the names were apt; but the second part was never 
 attempted, and the first part was written (which is my 
 reason for recalling it, ghostlike, from its ashes) no less 
 
A COLLEGE MAGAZINE 
 
 than three times : first in the manner of Hazlitt, second 
 in the manner of Ruskin, who had cast on me a passing 
 spell, and third, in a laborious pasticcio of Sir Thomas 
 Browne. So with my other works : Cain, an epic, was 
 (save the mark!) an imitation of Sordello: Robin Hood, 
 a tale in verse, took an eclectic middle course among 
 the fields of Keats, Chaucer and Morris : in Monmouth, 
 a tragedy, I reclined on the bosom of Mr. Swinburne; 
 in my innumerable gouty-footed lyrics, I followed many 
 masters; in the first draft of The King's Pardon, a 
 tragedy, I was on the trail of no lesser man than John 
 Webster; in the second draft of the same piece, with 
 staggering versatility, I had shifted my allegiance to 
 Congreve, and of course conceived my fable in a less 
 serious vein — for it was not Congreve's verse, it was 
 his exquisite prose, that I admired and sought to copy. 
 Even at the age of thirteen I had tried to do justice to 
 the inhabitants of the famous city of Peebles in the style 
 of the Book of Snobs. So I might go on for ever, through 
 all my abortive novels, and down to my later plays, of 
 which I think more tenderly, for they were not only 
 conceived at first under the bracing influence of old 
 Dumas, but have met with resurrections : one, strangely 
 bettered by another hand, came on the stage itself and 
 was played by bodily actors ; the other, originally known 
 as Semiramis: a Tragedy, I have observed on bookstalls 
 under the alias of Prince Otto. But enough has been 
 said to show by what arts of impersonation, and in what 
 purely ventriloquial efforts I first saw my words on 
 paper. 
 
 That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write; 
 whether I have profited or not, that is the way. It was 
 
 213 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 so Keats learned, and there was never a finer tempera- 
 ment for literature than Keats's ; it was so, if we could 
 trace it out, that all men have learned ; and that is why 
 a revival of letters is always accompanied or heralded 
 by a cast back to earlier and fresher models. Perhaps 
 I hear some one cry out : But this is not the way to be 
 original ! It is not ; nor is there any way but to be born 
 so. Nor yet, if you are born original, is there anything 
 in this training that shall clip the wings of your origin- 
 ality. There can be none more original than Montaigne, 
 neither could any be more unlike Cicero ; yet no crafts- 
 man can fail to see how much the one must have tried 
 in his time to imitate the other. Burns is the very type 
 of a prime force in letters : he was of all men the most 
 imitative. Shakespeare himself, the imperial, proceeds 
 directly from a school. It is only from a school that 
 we can expect to have good writers ; it is almost invari- 
 ably from a school that great writers, these lawless ex- 
 ceptions, issue. Nor is there anything here that should 
 astonish the considerate. Before he can tell what 
 cadences he truly prefers, the student should have tried 
 all that are possible ; before he can choose and preserve 
 a fitting key of words, he should long have practised 
 the literary scales; and it is only after years of such 
 gymnastic that he can sit down at last, legions of words 
 swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase simul- 
 taneously bidding for his choice, and he himself knowing 
 what he wants to do and (within the narrow limit of a 
 man's ability) able to do it. 
 
 And it is the great point of these imitations that there 
 still shines beyond the student's reach his inimitable 
 model. Let him try as he please, he is still sure of fail- 
 
 214 
 
A COLLEGE MAGAZINE 
 
 ure; and it is a very old and a very true saying that fail- 
 ure is the only highroad to success. I must have had 
 some disposition to learn; for I clear-sightedly con- 
 demned my own performances. I liked doing them 
 indeed; but when they were done, I could see they 
 were rubbish. In consequence, I very rarely showed 
 them even to my friends ; and such friends as I chose to 
 be my confidants I must have chosen well, for they had 
 the friendliness to be quite plain with me. " Padding," 
 said one. Another wrote: " I cannot understand why 
 you do lyrics so badly." No more could I! Thrice I 
 put myself in the way of a more authoritative rebuff, by 
 sending a paper to a magazine. These were returned ; 
 and I was not surprised nor even pained. If they had 
 not been looked at, as (like all amateurs) I suspected 
 was the case, there was no good in repeating the experi- 
 ment; if they had been looked at — well, then I had not 
 yet learned to write, and I must keep on learning and 
 living. Lastly, I had a piece of good fortune which is 
 the occasion of this paper, and by which I was able to 
 see my literature in print, and to measure experiment- 
 ally how far I stood !>om the favour of the public. 
 
 The Speculative Society is a body of some antiquity, 
 and has counted among its members Scott, Brougham, 
 Jeffrey, Horner, Benjamin Constant, Robert Emmet, and 
 many a legal and local celebrity besides. By an acci- 
 dent, variously explained, it has its rooms in the very 
 buildings of the University of Edinburgh : a hall, Tur- 
 key-carpeted, hung with pictures, looking, when lighted 
 
 215 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 up at night with fire and candle, like some goodly din- 
 ing-room ; a passage-like library, walled with books in 
 their wire cages ; and a corridor with a fireplace, benches, 
 a table, many prints of famous members, and a mural 
 tablet to the virtues of a former secretary. Here a mem- 
 ber can warm himself and loaf and read ; here, in defi- 
 ance of Senatus-consults, he can smoke. The Senatus 
 looks askance at these privileges; looks even with a 
 somewhat vinegar aspect on the whole society ; which 
 argues a lack of proportion in the learned mind, for the 
 world, we may be sure, will prize far higher this haunt 
 of dead lions than all the living dogs of the professorate. 
 I sat one December morning in the library of the Spec- 
 ulative ; a very humble-minded youth, though it was a 
 virtue I never had much credit for; yet proud of my 
 privileges as a member of the Spec. ; proud of the pipe 
 I was smoking in the teeth of the Senatus ; and in par- 
 ticular, proud of being in the next room to three very 
 distinguished students, who were then conversing be- 
 side the corridor fire. One of these has now his name 
 on the back of several volumes, and his voice, I learn, is 
 influential in the law courts. Of the death of the second, 
 you have just been reading what I had to say. And the 
 third also has escaped out of that battle of life in which 
 he fought so hard, it may be so unwisely. They were 
 all three, as I have said, notable students; but this was 
 the most conspicuous. Wealthy, handsome, ambitious, 
 adventurous, diplomatic, a reader of Balzac, and of all 
 men that I have known, the most like to one of Balzac's 
 characters, he led a life, and was attended by an ill for- 
 tune, that could be properly set forth only in the Come' 
 die Humaine. He had then his eye on Parliament ; and 
 
 216 
 
A COLLEGE MAGAZINE 
 
 soon after the time of which I write, he made a showy 
 speech at a political dinner, was cried up to heaven next 
 day in the Courant, and the day after was dashed lower 
 than earth with a charge of plagiarism in the Scotsman. 
 Report would have it (I daresay, very wrongly) that he 
 was betrayed by one in whom he particularly trusted, 
 and that the author of the charge had learned its truth 
 from his own lips. Thus, at least, he was up one day 
 on a pinnacle, admired and envied by all; and the next, 
 though still but a boy, he was publicly disgraced. The 
 blow would have broken a less finely tempered spirit; 
 and even him I suppose it rendered reckless; for he took 
 flight to London, and there, in a fast club, disposed of 
 the bulk of his considerable patrimony in the space of 
 one winter. For years thereafter he lived I know not 
 how ; always well dressed, always in good hotels and 
 good society, always with empty pockets. The charm 
 of his manner may have stood him in good stead; but 
 though my own manners are very agreeable, I have 
 never found in them a source of livelihood ; and to ex- 
 plain the miracle of his continued existence, I must fall 
 back upon the theory of the philosopher, that in his case, 
 as in all of the same kind, "there was a suffering rela- 
 tive in the background." From this genteel eclipse he 
 reappeared upon the scene, and presently sought me out 
 in the character of a generous editor. It is in this part 
 that I best remember him ; tall, slender, with a not un- 
 graceful stoop ; looking quite like a refined gentleman, 
 and quite like an urbane adventurer; smiling with an 
 engaging ambiguity; cocking at you one peaked eye- 
 brow with a great appearance of finesse ; speaking low 
 and sweet and thick, with a touch of burr ; telling strange 
 
 217 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 tales with singular deliberation and, to a patient listener, 
 excellent effect. After all these ups and downs, he 
 seemed still, like the rich student that he was of yore, 
 to breathe of money; seemed still perfectly sure of him- 
 self and certain of his end. Yet he was then upon the 
 brink of his last overthrow. He had set himself to found 
 the strangest thing in our society : one of those periodi- 
 cal sheets from which men suppose themselves to learn 
 opinions ; in which young gentlemen from the univer- 
 sities are encouraged, at so much a line, to garble facts, 
 insult foreign nations and calumniate private individuals ; 
 and which are now the source of glory, so that if a man's 
 name be often enough printed there, he becomes a kind 
 of demigod ; and people will pardon him when he talks 
 back and forth, as they do for Mr. Gladstone; and crowd 
 him to suffocation on railway platforms, as they did the 
 other day to General Boulanger; and buy his literary 
 works, as I hope you have just done for me. Our fa- 
 thers, when they were upon some great enterprise, would 
 sacrifice a life ; building, it may be, a favourite slave into 
 the foundations of their palace. It was with his own 
 life that my companion disarmed the envy of the gods. 
 He fought his paper single-handed ; trusting no one, for 
 he was something of a cynic ; up early and down late, 
 for he was nothing of a sluggard ; daily ear-wigging in- 
 fluential men, for he was a master of ingratiation. In 
 that slender and silken fellow there must have been a 
 rare vein of courage, that he should thus have died at 
 his employment; and doubtless ambition spoke loudly 
 in his ear, and doubtless love also, for it seems there was 
 a marriage in his view had he succeeded. But he died, 
 and his paper died after him ; and of all this grace, and 
 
 2lS 
 
A COLLEGE MAGAZINE 
 
 tact, and courage, it must seem to our blind eyes as if 
 there had come literally nothing. 
 
 These three students sat, as I was saying, in the cor- 
 ridor, under the mural tablet that records the virtues of 
 Macbean, the former secretary. We would often smile 
 at that ineloquent memorial, and thought it a poor thing 
 to come into the world at all and leave no more behind 
 one than Macbean. And yet of these three, two are 
 gone and have left less ; and this book, perhaps, when 
 it is old and foxy, and some one picks it up in a corner 
 of a book-shop, and glances through it, smiling at the 
 old, graceless turns of speech, and perhaps for the love 
 of Alma Mater (which may be still extant and flourish- 
 ing) buys it, not without haggling, for some pence — 
 this book may alone preserve a memory of James Walter 
 Ferrier and Robert Glasgow Brown. 
 
 Their thoughts ran very differently on that December 
 morning; they were all on fire with ambition; and 
 when they had called me in to them, and made me a 
 sharer in their design, I too became drunken with pride 
 and hope. We were to found a University magazine. 
 A pair of little, active brothers — Livingstone by name, 
 great skippers on the foot, great rubbers of the hands, 
 who kept a book-shop over against the University build- 
 ing — had been debauched to play the part of publishers. 
 We four were to be conjunct editors and, what was the 
 main point of the concern, to print our own works ; 
 while, by every rule of arithmetic — that flatterer of cre- 
 dulity — the adventure must succeed and bring great 
 profit. Well, well: it was a bright vision. I went 
 home that morning walking upon air. To have been 
 chosen by these three distinguished students was to me 
 
 219 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 the most unspeakable advance ; it was my first draught 
 of consideration ; it reconciled me to myself and to my 
 fellow-men ; and as I steered round the railings at the 
 Tron, I could not withhold my lips from smiling pub- 
 licly. Yet, in the bottom of my heart, I knew that 
 magazine would be a grim fiasco ; I knew it would not 
 be worth reading ; I knew, even if it were, that nobody 
 would read it; and I kept wondering how I should be 
 able, upon my compact income of twelve pounds per 
 annum, payable monthly, to meet my share in the ex- 
 pense. It was a comfortable thought to me that I had 
 a father. 
 
 The magazine appeared, in a yellow cover which was 
 the best part of it, for at least it was unassuming; it 
 ran four months in undisturbed obscurity, and died 
 without a gasp. The first number was edited by all 
 four of us with prodigious bustle ; the second fell prin- 
 cipally into the hands of Ferrier and me; the third I 
 edited alone; and it has long been a solemn question 
 who it was that edited the fourth. It would perhaps 
 be still more difficult to say who read it. Poor yellow 
 sheet, that looked so hopefully in the Livingstones' win- 
 dow ! Poor, harmless paper, that might have gone to 
 print a Shakespeare on, and was instead so clumsily 
 defaced with nonsense! And, shall I say, Poor Editors? 
 I cannot pity myself, to whom it was all pure gain. It 
 was no news to me, but only the wholesome confirma- 
 tion of my judgment, when the magazine struggled 
 into half-birth, and instantly sickened and subsided into 
 night. I had sent a copy to the lady with whom my 
 heart was at that time somewhat engaged, and who 
 did all that in her lay to break it ; and she, with some 
 
 220 
 
A COLLEGE MAGAZINE 
 
 tact, passed over the gift and my cherished contributions 
 in silence. I will not say that I was pleased at this ; but 
 I will tell her now, if by any chance she takes up the 
 work of her former servant, that I thought the better of 
 her taste. I cleared the decks after this lost engage- 
 ment; had the necessary interview with my father, 
 which passed off not amiss ; paid over my share of the 
 expense to the two little, active brothers, who rubbed 
 their hands as much, but methought skipped rather less 
 than formerly, having perhaps, these two also, em- 
 barked upon the enterprise with some graceful illusions ; 
 and then, reviewing the whole episode, I told myself 
 that the time was not yet ripe, nor the man ready; and 
 to work I went again with my penny version-books, 
 having fallen back in one day from the printed author 
 to the manuscript student. 
 
 in 
 
 From this defunct periodical I am going to reprint one 
 of my own papers. The poor little piece is all tail-fore- 
 most. I have done my best to straighten its array, I have 
 pruned it fearlessly, and it remains invertebrate and 
 wordy. No self-respecting magazine would print the 
 thing; and here you behold it in a bound volume, 
 not for any worth of its own, but for the sake of the 
 man whom it purports dimly to represent and some of 
 whose sayings it preserves ; so that in this volume of 
 Memories and Portraits, Robert Young, the Swanston 
 gardener, may stand alongside of John Todd, the Swan- 
 ston shepherd. Not that John and Robert drew very 
 close together in their lives; for John was rough, he 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 smelt of the windy brae; and Robert was gentle, and 
 smacked of the garden in the hollow. Perhaps it is to 
 my shame that I liked John the better of the two; he 
 had grit and dash, and that salt of the Old Adam that 
 pleases men with any savage inheritance of blood ; and 
 he was a wayfarer besides, and took my gipsy fancy. 
 But however that may be, and however Robert's pro- 
 file may be blurred in the boyish sketch that follows, he 
 was a man of a most quaint and beautiful nature, whom, 
 if it were possible to recast a piece of work so old, I 
 should like well to draw again with a maturer touch. 
 And as I think of him and of John, I wonder in what 
 other country two such men would be found dwelling 
 together, in a hamlet of some twenty cottages, in the 
 woody fold of a green hill. 
 
 222 
 
V. AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER 
 
 I THINK I might almost have said the last: some- 
 where, indeed, in the uttermost glens of the Lam- 
 mermuir or among the south-western hills there may 
 yet linger a decrepit representative of this bygone good 
 fellowship ; but as far as actual experience goes, I have 
 only met one man in my life who might fitly be quoted 
 in the same breath with Andrew Fairservice, — though 
 without his vices. He was a man whose very presence 
 could impart a savour of quaint antiquity to the baldest 
 and most modern flower-plots. There was a dignity 
 about his tall stooping form, and an earnestness in his 
 wrinkled face that recalled Don Quixote; but a Don 
 Quixote who had come through the training of the 
 Covenant, and been nourished in his youth on Walker's 
 Lives and The Hind let Loose. 
 
 Now, as I could not bear to let such a man pass away 
 with no sketch preserved of his old-fashioned virtues, I 
 hope the reader will take this as an excuse for the pres- 
 ent paper, and judge as kindly as he can the infirmities 
 of my description. To me, who find it so difficult to 
 tell the little that I know, he stands essentially as a 
 genius loci. It is impossible to separate his spare form 
 and old straw hat from the garden in the lap of the hill, 
 
 223 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 with its rocks overgrown with clematis, its shadowy 
 walks, and the splendid breadth of champaign that one 
 saw from the north-west corner. The garden and gar- 
 dener seem part and parcel of each other. When I take 
 him from his right surroundings and try to make him 
 appear for me on paper, he looks unreal and phantasmal : 
 the best that I can say may convey some notion to those 
 that never saw him, but to me it will be ever impotent. 
 The first time that I saw him, I fancy Robert was 
 pretty old already: he had certainly begun to use his 
 years as a stalking horse. Latterly he was beyond all 
 the impudencies of logic, considering a reference to 
 the parish register worth all the reasons in the world. 
 " I am old and well stricken in years/' he was wont to 
 say ; and I never found any one bold enough to answer 
 the argument. Apart from this vantage that he kept 
 over all who were not yet octogenarian, he had some 
 other drawbacks as a gardener. He shrank the 
 very place he cultivated. The dignity and reduced 
 gentility of his appearance made the small garden cut a 
 sorry figure. He was full of tales of greater situations 
 in his younger days. He spoke of castles and parks 
 with a humbling familiarity. He told of places where 
 under-gardeners had trembled at his looks, where there 
 were meres and swanneries, labyrinths of walk and 
 wildernesses of sad shrubbery in his control, till you 
 could not help feeling that it was condescension on his 
 part to dress your humbler garden plots. You were 
 thrown at once into an invidious position. You felt 
 that you were profiting by the needs of dignity, and 
 that his poverty and not his will consented to your 
 vulgar rule. Involuntarily you compared yourself with 
 
 224 
 
AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER 
 
 the swineherd that made Alfred watch his cakes, or 
 some bloated citizen who may have given his sons and 
 his condescension to the fallen Dionysius. Nor were 
 the disagreeables purely fanciful and metaphysical, for 
 the sway that he exercised over your feelings he ex- 
 tended to your garden, and, through the garden, to 
 your diet. He would trim a hedge, throw away a 
 favourite plant, or fill the most favoured and fertile sec- 
 tion of the garden with a vegetable that none of us 
 could eat, in supreme contempt for our opinion. If you 
 asked him to send you in one of your own artichokes, 
 " That I wull, mem/' he would say, "with pleasure, 
 for it is mair blessed to give than to receive. ' ' Ay, and 
 even when, by extra twisting of the screw, we pre- 
 vailed on him to prefer our commands to his own in- 
 clination, and he went away, stately and sad, professing 
 that "our wull was his pleasure/' but yet reminding 
 us that he would do it " with feelin's/' — even then, I 
 say, the triumphant master felt humbled in his triumph, 
 felt that he ruled on sufferance only, that he was taking 
 a mean advantage of the other's low estate, and that 
 the whole scene had been one of those "slights that 
 patient merit of the unworthy takes." 
 
 In flowers his taste was old-fashioned and catholic; 
 affecting sunflowers and dahlias, wallflowers and roses, 
 and holding in supreme aversion whatsoever was fantas- 
 tic, new-fashioned or wild. There was one exception 
 to this sweeping ban. Foxgloves, though undoubtedly 
 guilty on the last count, he not only spared, but loved ; 
 and when the shrubbery was being thinned, he stayed 
 his hand and dexterously manipulated his bill in order 
 to save every stately stem. In boyhood, as he told me 
 
 225 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 once, speaking in that tone that only actors and the 
 old-fashioned common folk can use nowadays, his heart 
 grew "proud " within him when he came on a burn- 
 course among the braes of Manor that shone purple 
 with their graceful trophies ; and not all his apprentice- 
 ship and practice for so many years of precise garden- 
 ing had banished these boyish recollections from his 
 heart. Indeed, he was a man keenly alive to the beauty 
 of all that was bygone. He abounded in old stories of 
 his boyhood, and kept pious account of all his former 
 pleasures ; and when he went ( on a holiday ) to visit 
 one of the fabled great places of the earth where he had 
 served before, he came back full of little pre-Raphaelite 
 reminiscences that showed real passion for the past, 
 such as might have shaken hands with Hazlitt or Jean- 
 Jacques. 
 
 But however his sympathy with his old feelings might 
 affect his liking for the foxgloves, the very truth was 
 that he scorned all flowers together. They were but 
 garnishings, childish toys, trifling ornaments for ladies' 
 chimney-shelves. It was towards his cauliflowers and 
 peas and cabbage that his heart grew warm. His pref- 
 erence for the more useful growths was such that cab- 
 bages were found invading the flower-plots, and an out- 
 post of savoys was once discovered in the centre of the 
 lawn. He would prelect over some thriving plant with 
 wonderful enthusiasm, piling reminiscence on reminis- 
 cence of former and perhaps yet finer specimens. Yet 
 even then he did not let the credit leave himself. He 
 had, indeed, raised "finer o' them" ; but it seemed that 
 no one else had been favoured with a like success. AH 
 other gardeners, in fact, were mere foils to his own su- 
 
 226 
 
AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER 
 
 perior attainments ; and he would recount, with perfect 
 soberness of voice and visage, how so and so had won- 
 dered, and such another could scarcely give credit to his 
 eyes. Nor was it with his rivals only that he parted 
 praise and blame. If you remarked how well a plant 
 was looking, he would gravely touch his hat and thank 
 you with solemn unction ; all credit in the matter falling 
 to him. If, on the other hand, you called his attention 
 to some back-going vegetable, he would quote Scrip- 
 ture: "Paul may plant and Apollos may water" ; all 
 blame being left to Providence, on the score of deficient 
 rain or untimely frosts. 
 
 There was one thing in the garden that shared his 
 preference with his favourite cabbages and rhubarb, and 
 that other was the bee-hive. Their sound, their indus- 
 try, perhaps their sweet product also, had taken hold of 
 his imagination and heart, whether by way of memory 
 or no I cannot say, although perhaps the bees too were 
 linked to him by some recollection of Manor braes and 
 his country childhood. Nevertheless, he was too chary 
 of his personal safety or (let me rather say) his personal 
 dignity to mingle in any active office towards them. 
 But he could stand by while one of the contemned rivals 
 did the work for him, and protest that it was quite safe 
 in spite of his own considerate distance and the cries of 
 the distressed assistant. In regard to bees, he was 
 rather a man of word than deed, and some of his most 
 striking sentences had the bees for text. " They are in- 
 deed wonder fu' creatures, mem, ' ' he said once. " They 
 just mind me o' what the Queen of Sheba said to Solo- 
 mon — and I think she said it wi' a sigh — ' The half of 
 it hath not been told unto me'/' 
 
 227 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 As far as the Bible goes he was deeply read. Like 
 the old Covenanters, of whom he was the worthy rep- 
 resentative, his mouth was full of sacred quotations ; it 
 was the book that he had studied most and thought 
 upon most deeply. To many people in his station the 
 Bible, and perhaps Burns, are the only books of any 
 vital literary merit that they read, feeding themselves, for 
 the rest, on the draff of country newspapers, and the 
 very instructive but not very palatable pabulum of some 
 cheap educational series. This was Robert's position. 
 All day long he had dreamed of the Hebrew stories, and 
 his head had been full of Hebrew poetry and Gospel 
 ethics ; until they had struck deep root into his heart, 
 and the very expressions had become a part of him ; so 
 that he rarely spoke without some antique idiom or 
 Scripture mannerism that gave a raciness to the merest 
 trivialities of talk. But the influence of the Bible did 
 not stop here. There was more in Robert than quaint 
 phrase and ready store of reference. He was imbued 
 with a spirit of peace and love : he interposed between 
 man and wife : he threw himself between the angry, 
 touching his hat the while with all the ceremony of an 
 usher: he protected the birds from everybody but him- 
 self, seeing, I suppose, a great difference between offi- 
 cial execution and wanton sport. His mistress telling 
 him one day to put some ferns into his master's partic- 
 ular corner, and adding, "Though, indeed, Robert, he 
 doesn't deserve them, for he wouldn't help me to gather 
 them," "Eh, mem," replies Robert, "but I wouldnae 
 say that, for I think he's just a most deservin' gentle- 
 man." Again, two of our friends, who were on in- 
 timate terms, and accustomed to use language to each 
 
AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER 
 
 other, somewhat without the bounds of the parliament- 
 ary, happened to differ about the position of a seat in 
 the garden. The discussion, as was usual when these 
 two were at it, soon waxed tolerably insulting on both 
 sides. Every one accustomed to such controversies 
 several times a day was quietly enjoying this prize- 
 fight of somewhat abusive wit — every one but Robert, 
 to whom the perfect good faith of the whole quarrel 
 seemed unquestionable, and who, after having waited 
 till his conscience would suffer him to wait no more, 
 and till he expected every moment that the disputants 
 would fall to blows, cut suddenly in with tones of 
 almost tearful entreaty : " Eh, but, gentlemen, I wad hae 
 nae mair words about it!" One thing was noticeable 
 about Robert's religion: it was neither dogmatic nor 
 sectarian. He never expatiated (at least, in my hear- 
 ing) on the doctrines of his creed, and he never con- 
 demned anybody else. I have no doubt that he held all 
 Roman Catholics, Atheists, and Mahometans as consid- 
 erably out of it; I don't believe he had any sympathy 
 for Prelacy ; and the natural feelings of man must have 
 made him a little sore about Free-Churchism; but at 
 least, he never talked about these views, never grew 
 controversially noisy, and never openly aspersed the 
 belief or practice of anybody. Now all this is not gen- 
 erally characteristic of Scotch piety ; Scotch sects being 
 churches militant with a vengeance, and Scotch believ- 
 ers perpetual crusaders the one against the other, and 
 missionaries the one to the other. Perhaps Robert's 
 originally tender heart was what made the difference ; 
 or, perhaps, his solitary and pleasant labour among 
 fruits and flowers had taught him a more sunshiny 
 
 229 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 creed than those whose work is among the tares of 
 fallen humanity ; and the soft influences of the garden 
 had entered deep into his spirit, 
 
 " Annihilating all that's made 
 To a green thought in a green shade." 
 
 But I could go on forever chronicling his golden say- 
 ings or telling of his innocent and living piety. I had 
 meant to tell of his cottage, with the German pipe hung 
 reverently above the fire, and the shell box that he had 
 made for his son, and of which he would say patheti- 
 cally : ' ' He was real pleased wi' it at first, but I think 
 he 's got a kind o' tired o J it now" — the son being then 
 a man of about forty. But I will let all these pass. 
 "Tis more significant : he's dead." The earth, that he 
 had digged so much in his life, was dug out by another 
 for himself; and the flowers that he had tended drew 
 their life still from him, but in a new and nearer way. 
 A bird flew about the open grave, as if it too wished 
 to honour the obsequies of one who had so often quoted 
 Scripture in favour of its kind: "Are not two sparrows 
 sold for one farthing? and yet not one of them falleth to 
 the ground." 
 
 Yes, he is dead. But the kings did not rise in the 
 place of death to greet him "with taunting proverbs" 
 as they rose to greet the haughty Babylonian ; for in his 
 life he was lowly, and a peacemaker and a servant of 
 God. 
 
 230 
 
VI. PASTORAL 
 
 TO leave home in early life is to be stunned and quick- 
 ened with novelties ; but when years have come, 
 it only casts a more endearing light upon the past. As 
 in those composite photographs of Mr. Galton's, the im- 
 age of each new sitter brings out but the more clearly 
 the central features of the race ; when once youth has 
 flown, each new impression only deepens the sense of 
 nationality and the desire of native places. So may 
 some cadet of Royal Ecossais or the Albany Regiment, 
 as he mounted guard about French citadels, so may 
 some officer marching his company of the Scots-Dutch 
 among the polders, have felt the soft rains of the Hebri- 
 des upon his brow, or started in the ranks at the remem- 
 bered aroma of peat-smoke. And the rivers of home are 
 dear in particular to all men. This is as old as Naaman, 
 who was jealous for Abana and Pharpar; it is confined 
 to no race nor country, for I know one of Scottish blood 
 but a child of Suffolk, whose fancy still lingers about the 
 lilied lowland waters of that shire. But the streams of 
 Scotland are incomparable in themselves — or I am only 
 the more Scottish to suppose so — and their sound and 
 colour dwell for ever in the memory. How often and 
 willingly do I not look again in fancy on Tummel, or 
 Manor, or the talking Airdle, or Dee swirling in its " 
 
 231 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 Lynn; on the bright burn of Kinnaird, or the golden 
 burn that pours and sulks in the den behind Kingussie ! 
 I think shame to leave out one of these enchantresses, 
 but the list would grow too long if I remembered all ; 
 only I may not forget Allan Water, nor birch-wetting 
 Rogie, nor yet Almond ; nor, for all its pollutions, that 
 Water of Leith of the many and well-named mills — 
 Bell's Mills, and Canon Mills, and Silver Mills; nor Red- 
 ford Burn of pleasant memories; nor yet, for all its 
 smallness, that nameless trickle that springs in the green 
 bosom of Allermuir, and is fed from Halkerside with a 
 perennial teacupful, and threads the moss under the 
 Shearer's Knowe, and makes one pool there, overhung 
 by a rock, where I loved to sit and make bad verses, and 
 is then kidnapped in its infancy by subterranean pipes 
 for the service of the sea-beholding city in the plain. 
 From many points in the moss you may see at one 
 glance its whole course and that of all its tributaries ; the 
 geographer of this Lilliput may visit all its corners with- 
 out sitting down, and not yet begin to be breathed; 
 Shearer's Knowe and Halkerside are but names of adja- 
 cent cantons on a single shoulder of a hill, as names are 
 squandered (it would seem to the inexpert, in superflu- 
 ity) upon these upland sheepwalks ; a bucket would re- 
 ceive the whole discharge of the toy river; it would take 
 it an appreciable time to fill your morning bath ; for the 
 most part, besides, it soaks unseen through the moss; 
 and yet for the sake of auld lang syne, and the figure of 
 a certain genius loci, I am condemned to linger awhile 
 in fancy by its shores ; and if the nymph (who cannot 
 be above a span in stature) will but inspire my pen, I 
 would gladly carry the reader along with me. 
 
 232 
 
PASTORAL 
 
 John Todd, when I knew him, was already "the old- 
 est herd on the Pentlands," and had been all his days 
 faithful to that curlew-scattering, sheep-collecting life. 
 He remembered the droving days, when the drove roads, 
 that now lie green and solitary through the heather, were 
 thronged thoroughfares. He had himself often marched 
 flocks into England, sleeping on the hillsides with his 
 caravan; and by his account it was a rough business 
 not without danger. The drove roads lay apart from 
 habitation ; the drovers met in the wilderness, as to-day 
 the deep-sea fishers meet off the banks in the solitude 
 of the Atlantic ; and in the one as in the other case rough 
 habits and fist-law were the rule. Crimes were com- 
 mitted, sheep filched, and drovers robbed and beaten; 
 most of which offences had a moorland burial and were 
 never heard of in the courts of justice. John, in those 
 days, was at least once attacked, — by two men after 
 his watch, — and at least once, betrayed by his habitual 
 anger, fell under the danger of the law and was clapped 
 into some rustic prison-house, the doors of which he 
 burst in the night and was no more heard of in that 
 quarter. When I knew him, his life had fallen in quieter 
 places, and he had no cares beyond the dulness of his 
 dogs and the inroads of pedestrians from town. But 
 for a man of his propensity to wrath these were enough ; 
 he knew neither rest nor peace, except by snatches ; in 
 the gray of the summer morning, and already from far 
 up the hill, he would wake the " toun " with the sound 
 of his shoutings ; and in the lambing time, his cries were 
 not yet silenced late at night. This wrathful voice of a 
 man unseen might be said to haunt that quarter of the 
 Pentlands, an audible bogie ; and no doubt it added to 
 
 233 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 the fear in which men stood of John a touch of some- 
 thing legendary. For my own part, he was at first my 
 enemy, and I, in my character of a rambling boy, his 
 natural abhorrence. It was long before I saw him near 
 at hand, knowing him only by some sudden blast of 
 bellowing from far above, bidding me ' ' c' way oot amang 
 the sheep." The quietest recesses of the hill harboured 
 this ogre; I skulked in my favourite wilderness like a 
 Cameronian of the Killing Time, and John Todd was 
 my Claverhouse, and his dogs my questing dragoons. 
 Little by little we dropped into civilities ; his hail at sight 
 of me began to have less of the ring of a war-slogan ; 
 soon, we never met but he produced his snuff-box, 
 which was with him, like the calumet with the Red 
 Indian, a part of the heraldry of peace; and at length, in 
 the ripeness of time, we grew to be a pair of friends, and 
 when I lived alone in these parts in the winter, it was 
 a settled thing for John to "give me a cry" over the 
 garden wall as he set forth upon his evening round, and 
 for me to overtake and bear him company. 
 
 That dread voice of his that shook the hills when he 
 was angry, fell in ordinary talk very pleasantly upon the 
 ear, with a kind of honied, friendly whine, not far off 
 singing, that was eminently Scottish. He laughed not 
 very often, and when he did, with a sudden, loud haw- 
 haw, hearty but somehow joyless, like an echo from a 
 rock. His face was permanently set and coloured ; ruddy 
 and stiff with weathering; more like a picture than a 
 face ; yet with a certain strain and a threat of latent an- 
 ger in the expression, like that of a man trained too fine 
 and harassed with perpetual vigilance. He spoke in 
 the richest dialect of Scotch I ever heard ; the words in 
 
 214 
 
PASTORAL 
 
 themselves were a pleasure and often a surprise to me, 
 so that I often came back from one of our patrols with 
 new acquisitions; and this vocabulary he would handle 
 like a master, stalking a little before me, "beard on 
 shoulder," the plaid hanging loosely about him, the yel- 
 low staff clapped under his arm, and guiding me uphill 
 by that devious, tactical ascent which seems peculiar to 
 men of his trade. I might count him with the best 
 talkers ; only that talking Scotch and talking English 
 seem incomparable acts. He touched on nothing at 
 least, but he adorned it; when he narrated, the scene 
 was before you ; when he spoke (as he did mostly) of 
 his own antique business, the thing took on a colour of 
 romance and curiosity that was surprising. The clans 
 of sheep with their particular territories on the hill, and 
 how, in the yearly killings and purchases, each must be 
 proportionally thinned and strengthened ; the midnight 
 busyness of animals, the signs of the weather, the cares 
 of the snowy season, the exquisite stupidity of sheep, 
 the exquisite cunning of dogs : all these he could pre- 
 sent so humanly, and with so much old experience and 
 living gusto, that weariness was excluded. And in 
 the midst he would suddenly straighten his bowed back, 
 the stick would fly abroad in demonstration, and the 
 sharp thunder of his voice roll out a long itinerary for 
 the dogs, so that you saw at last the use of that great 
 wealth of names for every knowe and howe upon the 
 hillside ; and the dogs, having hearkened with lowered 
 tails and raised faces, would run up their flags again to 
 the masthead and spread themselves upon the indicated 
 circuit. It used to fill me with wonder how they could 
 follow and retain so long a story. But John denied 
 
 235 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 these creatures all intelligence ; they were the constant 
 butt of his passion and contempt; it was just possible 
 to work with the like of them, he said, — not more than 
 possible. And then he would expand upon the subject 
 of the really good dogs that he had known, and the one 
 really good dog that he had himself possessed. He had 
 been offered forty pounds for it ; but a good collie was 
 worth more than that, more than anything, to a "herd " ; 
 he did the herd's work for him. "As for the like of 
 them ! " he would cry, and scornfully indicate the scour- 
 ing tails of his assistants. 
 
 Once — I translate John's Lallan, for I cannot do it jus- 
 tice, being born Britannis in montibus, indeed, but alas ! 
 inerudito sceculo — once, in the days of his good dog, 
 he had bought some sheep in Edinburgh, and on the 
 way out, the road being crowded, two were lost. This 
 was a reproach to John, and a slur upon the dog; and 
 both were alive to their misfortune. Word came, after 
 some days, that a farmer about Braid had found a pair 
 of sheep ; and thither went John and the dog to ask for 
 restitution. But the farmer was a hard man and stood 
 upon his rights. " How were they marked ? " he asked ; 
 and since John had bought right and left from many 
 sellers and had no notion of the marks — "Very well," 
 said the farmer, " then it's only right that I should keep 
 them — "Well," said John, "it's a fact that I cannae 
 tell the sheep ; but if my dog can, will ye let me have 
 them ? " The farmer was honest as well as hard, and 
 besides I daresay he had little fear of the ordeal ; so he 
 had all the sheep upon his farm into one large park, and 
 turned John's dog into their midst. The hairy man of 
 business knew his errand well; he knew that John and 
 
 236 
 
PASTORAL 
 
 he had bought two sheep and (to their shame) lost them 
 about Boroughmuirhead ; he knew besides (the Lord 
 knows how, unless by listening) that they were come 
 to Braid for their recovery ; and without pause or blun- 
 der singled out, first one and then another, the two 
 waifs. It was that afternoon the forty pounds were of- 
 fered and refused. And the shepherd and his dog — 
 what do I say ? the true shepherd and his man — set 
 off together by Fairmilehead in jocund humour, and 
 "smiled to ither" all the way home, with the two re- 
 covered ones before them. So far, so good ; but intelli- 
 gence may be abused. The dog, as he is by little man's 
 inferior in mind, is only by little his superior in virtue ; 
 and John had another collie tale of quite a different com- 
 plexion. At the foot of the moss behind Kirk Yetton 
 (Caer Ketton, wise men say) there is a scrog of low 
 wood and a pool with a dam for washing sheep. John 
 was one day lying under a bush in the scrog, when he 
 was aware of a collie on the far hillside skulking down 
 through the deepest of the heather with obtrusive 
 stealth. He knew the dog ; knew him for a clever, rising 
 practitioner from quite a distant farm ; one whom per- 
 haps he had coveted as he saw him masterfully steer- 
 ing flocks to market. But what did the practitioner so 
 far from home ? and why this guilty and secret man- 
 oeuvring towards the pool ? — for it was towards the pool 
 that he was heading. John lay the closer under his 
 bush, and presently saw the dog come forth upon the 
 margin, look all about to see if he were anywhere ob- 
 served, plunge in and repeatedly wash himself over head 
 and ears, and then (but now openly and with tail in air) 
 strike homeward over the hills. That same night word 
 
 237 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 was sent his master, and the rising practitioner, shaken 
 up from where he lay, all innocence before the fire, was 
 had out to a dykeside and promptly shot; for alas! he 
 was that foulest of criminals under trust, a sheep-eater; 
 and it was from the maculation of sheep's blood that he 
 had come so far to cleanse himself in the pool behind 
 Kirk Yetton. 
 
 A trade that touches nature, one that lies at the foun- 
 dations of life, in which we have all had ancestors em- 
 ployed, so that on a hint of it ancestral memories revive, 
 lends itself to literary use, vocal or written. The for- 
 tune of a tale lies not alone in the skill of him that writes, 
 but as much, perhaps, in the inherited experience of 
 him who reads ; and when I hear with a particular thrill 
 of things that I have never done or seen, it is one of 
 that innumerable army of my ancestors rejoicing in past 
 deeds. Thus novels begin to touch not the fine dilet- 
 tanti but the gross mass of mankind, when they leave 
 off to speak of parlours and shades of manner and still- 
 born niceties of motive, and begin to deal with fighting, 
 sailoring, adventure, death or child-birth ; and thus an- 
 cient out-door crafts and occupations, whether Mr. Hardy 
 wields the shepherd's crook or Count Tolstoi swings 
 the scythe, lift romance into a near neighbourhood with 
 epic. These aged things have on them the dew of 
 man's morning; they lie near, not so much to us, the 
 semi-artificial flowerets, as to the trunk and aboriginal 
 taproot of the race. A thousand interests spring up in 
 the process of the ages, and a thousand perish ; that is 
 now an eccentricity or a lost art which was once the 
 fashion of an empire ; and those only are perennial mat- 
 ters that rouse us to-day, and that roused men in all 
 
 238 
 
PASTORAL 
 
 epochs of the past. There is a certain critic, not indeed 
 of execution but of matter, whom I dare be known to set 
 before the best : a certain low-browed, hairy gentleman, 
 at first a percher in the fork of trees, next (as they re- 
 late) a dweller in caves, and whom I think I see squat- 
 ting in cave-mouths, of a pleasant afternoon, to munch 
 his berries — his wife, that accomplished lady, squat- 
 ting by his side : his name I never heard, but he is often 
 described as Probably Arboreal, which may serve for 
 recognition. Each has his own tree of ancestors, but 
 at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal ; in all our veins 
 there run some minims of his old, wild, tree-top blood ; 
 our civilised nerves still tingle with his rude terrors and 
 pleasures; and to that which would have moved our 
 common ancestor, all must obediently thrill. 
 
 We have not so far to climb to come to shepherds ; 
 and it may be I had one for an ascendant who has 
 largely moulded me. But yet I think I owe my taste 
 for that hillside business rather to the art and interest of 
 John Todd. He it was that made it live for me, as the 
 artist can make all things live. It was through him the 
 simple strategy of massing sheep upon a snowy even- 
 ing, with its attendant scampering of earnest, shaggy 
 aides-de-camp, was an affair that I never wearied of 
 seeing, and that I never weary of recalling to mind : the 
 shadow of the night darkening on the hills, inscrutable 
 black blots of snow shower moving here and there like 
 night already come, huddles of yellow sheep and dar* 
 ings of black dogs upon the snow, a bitter air that took 
 you by the throat, unearthly harpings of the wind along 
 the moors ; and for centre piece to all these features and 
 influences, John winding up the brae, keeping his cap- 
 
 239 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 tain's eye upon all sides, and breaking, ever and again, 
 into a spasm of bellowing that seemed to make the 
 evening bleaker. It is thus that I still see him in my 
 mind's eye, perched on a hump of the declivity not far 
 from Halkerside, his staff in airy flourish, his great voice 
 taking hold upon the hills and echoing terror to the 
 lowlands; I, meanwhile, standing somewhat back, until 
 the fit should be over, and, with a pinch of snuff, my 
 friend relapse into his easy, even conversation. 
 
 240 
 
VII. THE MANSE 
 
 I HAVE named, among many rivers that make music 
 in my memory, that dirty Water of Leith. Often 
 and often I desire to look upon it again ; and the choice 
 of a point of view is easy to me. It should be at a cer- 
 tain water-door, embowered in shrubbery. The river 
 is there dammed back for the service of the flour-mill 
 just below, so that it lies deep and darkling, and the 
 sand slopes into brown obscurity with a glint of gold ; 
 and it has but newly been recruited by the borrowings 
 of the snuff-mill just above, and these, tumbling merrily 
 in, shake the pool to its black heart, fill it with drowsy 
 eddies, and set the curded froth of many other mills 
 solemnly steering to and fro upon the surface. Or so it 
 was when I was young; for change, and the masons, 
 and the pruning-knife, have been busy ; and if I could 
 hope to repeat a cherished experience, it must be on 
 many and impossible conditions. I must choose, as 
 well as the point of view, a certain moment in my 
 growth, so that the scale may be exaggerated, and the 
 trees on the steep opposite side may seem to climb to 
 heaven, and the sand by the water-door, where I am 
 standing, seem as low as Styx. And I must choose the 
 season also, so that the valley may be brimmed like a 
 
 241 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 cup with sunshine and the songs of birds ; — and the 
 year of grace, so that when I turn to leave the riverside 
 I may find the old manse and its inhabitants unchanged. 
 
 It was a place in that time like no other: the garden 
 cut into provinces by a great hedge of beech, and over- 
 looked by the church and the terrace of the churchyard, 
 where the tombstones were thick, and after nightfall 
 "spunkies" might be seen to dance, at least by chil- 
 dren ; flower-plots lying warm in sunshine ; laurels and 
 the great yew making elsewhere a pleasing horror of 
 shade; the smell of water rising from all round, with an 
 added tang of paper-mills; the sound of water every- 
 where, and the sound of mills — the wheel and the dam 
 singing their alternate strain ; the birds on every bush 
 and from every corner of the overhanging woods peal- 
 ing out their notes until the air throbbed with them ; and 
 in the midst of this, the manse. I see it, by the stan- 
 dard of my childish stature, as a great and roomy house. 
 In truth, it was not so large as I supposed, nor yet so 
 convenient, and, standing where it did, it is difficult to 
 suppose that it was healthful. Yet a large family of 
 stalwart sons and tall daughters was housed and reared, 
 and came to man and womanhood in that nest of little 
 chambers ; so that the face of the earth was peppered 
 with the children of the manse, and letters with outland- 
 ish stamps became familiar to the local postman, and 
 the walls of the little chambers brightened with the 
 wonders of the East. The dullest could see this was a 
 house that had a pair of hands in divers foreign places : 
 a well-beloved house — its image fondly dwelt on by 
 many travellers. 
 
 Here lived an ancestor of mine, who was a herd of 
 
THE MANSE 
 
 men. I read him, judging with older criticism the re- 
 port of childish observation, as a man of singular sim- 
 plicity of nature; unemotional, and hating the display 
 of what he felt ; standing contented on the old ways ; a 
 lover of his life and innocent habits to the end. We 
 children admired him : partly for his beautiful face and 
 silver hair, for none more than children are concerned 
 for beauty and, above all, for beauty in the old ; partly 
 for the solemn light in which we beheld him once a 
 week, the observed of all observers, in the pulpit. But 
 his strictness and distance, the effect, I now fancy, of 
 old age, slow blood, and settled habit, oppressed us 
 with a kind of terror. When not abroad, he sat much 
 alone, writing sermons or letters to his scattered family 
 in a dark and cold room with a library of bloodless books 
 — or so they seemed in those days, although I have 
 some of them now on my own shelves and like well 
 enough to read them ; and these lonely hours wrapped 
 him in the greater gloom for our imaginations. But the 
 study had a redeeming grace in many Indian pictures, 
 gaudily coloured and dear to young eyes. I cannot de- 
 pict (for I have no such passions now) the greed with 
 which I beheld them ; and when I was once sent in to 
 say a psalm to my grandfather, I went, quaking indeed 
 with fear, but at the same time glowing with hope that, 
 if I said it well, he might reward me with an Indian 
 picture. 
 
 " Thy foot He'll not let slide, nor will 
 He slumber that thee keeps," 
 
 it ran: a strange conglomerate of the unpronouncea- 
 ble, a sad model to set in childhood before one who was 
 
 243 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 himself to be a versifier, and a task in recitation that 
 really merited reward. And I must suppose the old 
 man thought so too, and was either touched or amused 
 by the performance ; for he took me in his arms with 
 most unwonted tenderness, and kissed me, and gave 
 me a little kindly sermon for my psalm ; so that, for that 
 day, we were clerk and parson. I was struck by this 
 reception into so tender a surprise that I forgot my dis- 
 appointment. And indeed the hope was one of those 
 that childhood forges for a pastime, and with no design 
 upon reality. Nothing was more unlikely than that my 
 grandfather should strip himself of one of those pictures, 
 love-gifts and reminders of his absent sons; nothing 
 more unlikely than that he should bestow it upon me. 
 He had no idea of spoiling children, leaving all that to 
 my aunt ; he had fared hard himself, and blubbered un- 
 der the rod in the last century ; and his ways were still 
 Spartan for the young. The last word I heard upon his 
 lips was in this Spartan key. He had over-walked in 
 the teeth of an east wind, and was now near the end of 
 his many days. He sat by the dining-room fire, with 
 his white hair, pale face and bloodshot eyes, a some- 
 what awful figure ; and my aunt had given him a dose 
 of our good old Scotch medicine, Dr. Gregory's pow- 
 der. Now that remedy, as the work of a near kinsman 
 of Rob Roy himself, may have a savour of romance for 
 the imagination ; but it comes uncouthly to the palate. 
 The old gentleman had taken it with a wry face; and 
 that being accomplished, sat with perfect simplicity, like 
 a child's, munching a ''barley-sugar kiss." But when 
 my aunt, having the canister open in her hands, pro- 
 posed to let me share in the sweets, he interfered at 
 
 244 
 
THE MANSE 
 
 once. I had had no Gregory; then I should have no 
 barley-sugar kiss : so he decided with a touch of irrita- 
 tion. And just then the phaeton coming opportunely to 
 the kitchen door — for such was our unlordly fashion — 
 I was taken for the last time from the presence of my 
 grandfather. 
 
 Now I often wonder what I have inherited from this 
 old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond 
 of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never 
 heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them. 
 He sought health in his youth in the Isle of Wight, and 
 I have sought it in both hemispheres; but whereas he 
 found and kept it, I am still on the quest. He was a 
 great lover of Shakespeare, whom he read aloud, I 
 have been told, with taste; well, I love my Shakespeare 
 also, and am persuaded I can read him well, though I 
 own I never have been told so. He made embroidery, 
 designing his own patterns ; and in that kind of work 
 I never made anything but a kettle-holder in Berlin 
 wool, and an odd garter of knitting, which was as 
 black as the chimney before I had done with it. He 
 loved port, and nuts, and porter; and so do I, but they 
 agreed better with my grandfather, which seems to me 
 a breach of contract. He had chalk-stones in his 
 fingers; and these, in good time, I may possibly in- 
 herit, but I would much rather have inherited his noble 
 presence. Try as I please, I cannot join myself on with 
 the reverend doctor; and all the while, no doubt, and 
 even as I write the phrase, he moves in my blood, and 
 whispers words to me, and sits efficient in the very 
 knot and centre of my being. In his garden, as I played 
 there, I learned the love of mills — or had I an ancestor 
 
 245 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 a miller? — and a kindness for the neighbourhood of 
 graves, as homely things not without their poetry — 
 or had I an ancestor a sexton ? But what of the garden 
 where he played himself? — for that, too, was a scene 
 of my education. Some part of me played there in 
 the eighteenth century, and ran races under the green 
 avenue at Pilrig; some part of me trudged up Leith 
 Walk, which was still a country place, and sat on the 
 High School benches, and was thrashed, perhaps, by 
 Dr. Adam. The house where I spent my youth was 
 not yet thought upon; but we made holiday parties 
 among the cornfields on its site, and ate strawberries 
 and cream near by at a gardener's. All this I had for- 
 gotten; only my grandfather remembered and once 
 reminded me. I have forgotten, too, how we grew 
 up, and took orders, and went to our first Ayrshire 
 parish, and fell in love with and married a daughter of 
 Burns's Dr. Smith — "Smith opens out his cauld ha- 
 rangues." I have forgotten, but I was there all the 
 same, and heard stories of Burns at first hand. 
 
 And there is a thing stranger than all that; for this 
 homunculus or part-man of mine that walked about 
 the eighteenth century with Dr. Balfour in his youth, 
 was in the way of meeting other homunculos or part- 
 men, in the persons of my other ancestors. These 
 were of a lower order, and doubtless we looked down 
 upon them duly. But as I went to college with Dr. 
 Balfour, I may have seen the lamp and oil man taking 
 down the shutters from his shop beside the Tron; — 
 we may have had a rabbit-hutch or a bookshelf made 
 for us by a certain carpenter in I know not what wynd 
 of the old, smoky city; or, upon some holiday excur- 
 
 246 
 
THE MANSE 
 
 sion, we may have looked into the windows of a cot- 
 tage in a flower-garden and seen a certain weaver plying 
 his shuttle. And these were all kinsmen of mine upon 
 the other side; and from the eyes of the lamp and oil 
 man one-half of my unborn father, and one-quarter of 
 myself, looked out upon us as we went by to college. 
 Nothing of all this would cross the mind of the young 
 student, as he posted up the Bridges with trim, stock- 
 inged legs, in that city of cocked hats and good Scotch 
 still unadulterated. It would not cross his mind that 
 he should have a daughter; and the lamp and oil man, 
 just then beginning, by a not unnatural metastasis, to 
 bloom into a lighthouse-engineer, should have a grand- 
 son ; and that these two, in the fulness of time, should 
 wed ; and some portion of that student himself should 
 survive yet a year or two longer in the person of their 
 child. 
 
 But our ancestral adventures are beyond even the 
 arithmetic of fancy; and it is the chief recommenda- 
 tion of long pedigrees, that we can follow backward 
 the careers of our homunculi and be reminded of our 
 antenatal lives. Our conscious years are but a moment 
 in the history of the elements that build us. Are you a 
 bank-clerk, and do you live at Peckham ? It was not 
 always so. And though to-day I am only a man of 
 letters, either tradition errs or I was present when there 
 landed at St. Andrews a French barber-surgeon, to tend 
 the health and the beard of the great Cardinal Beaton , 
 I have shaken a spear in the Debatable Land and shouted 
 the slogan of the Elliots; I was present when a skipper, 
 plying from Dundee, smuggled Jacobites to France after 
 the '15; I was in a West India merchant's office, per- 
 
 247 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 haps next door to Bailie Nichol Jarvie's, and managed 
 the business of a plantation in St. Kitt's ; I was with my 
 engineer-grandfather (the son-in-law of the lamp and 
 oil man) when he sailed north about Scotland on the 
 famous cruise that gave us the Pirate and the Lord of 
 the Isles; I was with him, too, on the Bell Rock, in the 
 fog, when the Smeaton had drifted from her moorings, 
 and the Aberdeen men, pick in hand, had seized upon 
 the only boats, and he must stoop and lap sea-water 
 before his tongue could utter audible words ; and once 
 more with him when the Bell Rock beacon took a 
 "thrawe," and his workmen fled into the tower, then 
 nearly finished, and he sat unmoved reading in his Bible 
 — or affecting to read — till one after another slunk back 
 with confusion of countenance to their engineer. Yes, 
 parts of me have seen life, and met adventures, and 
 sometimes met them well. And away in the still 
 cloudier past, the threads that make me up can be 
 traced by fancy into the bosoms of thousands and mil- 
 lions of ascendants : Picts who rallied round Macbeth 
 and the old (and highly preferable) system of descent 
 by females, fleers from before the legions of Agricola, 
 marchers in Pannonian morasses, star-gazers on Chal- 
 daean plateaus ; and, furthest of all, what face is this that 
 fancy can see peering through the disparted branches ? 
 What sleeper in green tree-tops, what muncher of 
 nuts, concludes my pedigree ? Probably arboreal in his 
 habits. . . . 
 
 And I know not which is the more strange, that I 
 should carry about with me some fibres of my minister- 
 grandfather; or that in him, as he sat in his cool study, 
 grave, reverend, contented gentleman, there was an ab- 
 
 248 
 
THE MANSE 
 
 original frisking of the blood that was not his ; tree-top 
 memories, like undeveloped negatives, lay dormant in 
 his mind ; tree-top instincts awoke and were trod down ; 
 and Probably Arboreal (scarce to be distinguished from 
 a monkey) gambolled and chattered in the brain of the 
 old divine. 
 
 249 
 
VIII. MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET 
 
 THOSE who try to be artists use, time after time, 
 the matter of their recollections, setting and re- 
 setting little coloured memories of men and scenes, 
 rigging up ( it may be ) some especial friend in the attire 
 of a buccaneer, and decreeing armies to manoeuvre, or 
 murder to be done, on the playground of their youth. 
 But the memories are a fairy gift which cannot be worn 
 out in using. After a dozen services in various tales, 
 the little sunbright pictures of the past still shine in the 
 mind's eye with not a lineament defaced, not a tint im- 
 paired. Gliick und Unglilck wird Gesang, if Goethe 
 pleases ; yet only by endless avatars, the original re- 
 embodying after each. So that a writer, in time, begins 
 to wonder at the perdurable life of these impressions ; 
 begins, perhaps, to fancy that he wrongs them when 
 he weaves them in with fiction ; and looking back on 
 them with ever-growing kindness, puts them at last, 
 substantive jewels, in a setting of their own. 
 
 One or two of these pleasant spectres I think I have 
 laid. I used one but the other day: a little eyot of 
 dense, freshwater sand, where I once waded deep in 
 butterburrs, delighting to hear the song of the river on 
 both sides, and to tell myself that I was indeed and at 
 
 250 
 
MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET 
 
 last upon an island. Two of my puppets lay there a 
 summer's day, hearkening to the shearers at work in 
 riverside fields and to the drums of the gray old garri- 
 son upon the neighbouring hill. And this was, I think, 
 done rightly : the place was rightly peopled — and now 
 belongs not to me but to my puppets — for a time at 
 least. In time, perhaps, the puppets will grow faint; 
 the original memory swim up instant as ever; and I 
 shall once more lie in bed, and see the little sandy isle 
 in Allan Water as it is in nature, and the child (that 
 once was me) wading there in butterburrs; and won- 
 der at the instancy and virgin freshness of that memory ; 
 and be pricked again, in season and out of season, by 
 the desire to weave it into art. 
 
 There is another isle in my collection, the memory of 
 which besieges me. I put a whole family there, in one 
 of my tales ; and later on, threw upon its shores, and 
 condemned to several days of rain and shellfish on its 
 tumbled boulders, the hero of another. The ink is not 
 yet faded; the sound of the sentences is still in my 
 mind's ear; and I am under a spell to write of that island 
 again. 
 
 The little isle of Earraid lies close in to the south-west 
 corner of the Ross of Mull : the sound of Iona on one 
 side, across which you may see the isle and church of 
 Columba; the open sea to the other, where you shall 
 be able to mark, on a clear, surfy day, the breakers run- 
 ning white on many sunken rocks. I first saw it, or 
 first remember seeing it, framed in the round bull's-eye 
 of a cabin port, the sea lying smooth along its shores 
 
 251 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 like the waters of a lake, the colourless, clear light of 
 the early morning making plain its heathery and rocky 
 hummocks. There stood upon it, in these days, a sin- 
 gle rude house of uncemented stones, approached by a 
 pier of wreckwood. It must have been very early, for 
 it was then summer, and in summer, in that latitude, 
 day scarcely withdraws; but even at that hour the 
 house was making a sweet smoke of peats which came 
 to me over the bay, and the bare-legged daughters of 
 the cotter were wading by the pier. The same day we 
 visited the shores of the isle in the ship's boats ; rowed 
 deep into Fiddler's Hole, sounding as we went, and hav- 
 ing taken stock of all possible accommodations, pitched 
 on the northern inlet as the scene of operations. For it 
 was no accident that had brought the lighthouse steamer 
 to anchor in the Bay of Earraid. Fifteen miles away to 
 seaward, a certain black rock stood environed by the 
 Atlantic rollers, the outpost of the Torran reefs. Here 
 was a tower to be built, and a star lighted, for the con- 
 duct of seamen. But as the rock was small, and hard 
 of access, and far from land, the work would be one of 
 years ; and my father was now looking for a shore sta- 
 tion, where the stones might be quarried and dressed, 
 the men live, and the tender, with some degree of safety, 
 lie at anchor. 
 
 I saw Earraid next from the stern thwart of an Iona 
 lugger, Sam Bough and I sitting there cheek by jowl, 
 with our feet upon our baggage, in a beautiful, clear, 
 northern summer eve. And behold ! there was now a 
 pier of stone, there were rows of sheds, railways, trav- 
 elling-cranes, a street of cottages, an iron house for the 
 resident engineer, wooden bothies for the men, a stage 
 
 252 
 
MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET 
 
 where the courses of the tower were put together ex- 
 perimentally, and behind the settlement a great gash in 
 the hillside where granite was quarried. In the bay, 
 the steamer lay at her moorings. All day long there 
 hung about the place the music of chinking tools; and 
 even in the dead of night, the watchman carried his 
 lantern to and fro in the dark settlement, and could light 
 the pipe of any midnight muser. It was, above all, 
 strange to see Earraid on the Sunday, when the sound 
 of the tools ceased and there fell a crystal quiet. All 
 about the green compound men would be sauntering in 
 their Sunday's best, walking with those lax joints of the 
 reposing toiler, thoughtfully smoking, talking small, as 
 if in honour of the stillness, or hearkening to the wail- 
 ing of the gulls. And it was strange to see our Sabbath 
 services, held, as they were, in one of the bothies, with 
 Mr. Brebner reading at a table, and the congregation 
 perched about in the double tier of sleeping bunks ; and 
 to hear the singing of the psalms, "the chapters," the 
 inevitable Spurgeon's sermon, and the old, eloquent 
 lighthouse prayer. 
 
 In fine weather, when by the spy-glass on the hill 
 the sea was observed to run low upon the reef, there 
 would be a sound of preparation in the very early morn- 
 ing; and before the sun had risen from behind Ben 
 More, the tender would steam out of the bay. Over 
 fifteen sea-miles of the great blue Atlantic rollers she 
 ploughed her way, trailing at her tail a brace of wallow- 
 ing stone-lighters. The open ocean widened upon either 
 board, and the hills of the mainland began to go down 
 on the horizon, before she came to her unhomely des- 
 tination, and lay-to at last where the rock clapped its 
 
 253 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 black head above the swell, with the tall iron barrack 
 on its spider legs, and the truncated tower, and the 
 cranes waving their arms, and the smoke of the engine- 
 fire rising in the mid-sea. An ugly reef is this of the 
 Dhu Heartach ; no pleasant assemblage of shelves, and 
 pools, and creeks, about which a child might play for a 
 whole summer without weariness, like the Bell Rock 
 or the Skerryvore, but one oval nodule of black-trap, 
 sparsely bedabbled with an inconspicuous fucus, and 
 alive in every crevice with a dingy insect between a 
 slater and a bug. No other life was there but that of 
 sea-birds, and of the sea itself, that here ran like a mill- 
 race, and growled about the outer reef for ever, and 
 ever and again, in the calmest weather, roared and 
 spouted on the rock itself. Times were different upon 
 Dhu Heartach when it blew, and the night fell dark, and 
 the neighbour lights of Skerryvore and Rhu-val were 
 quenched in fog, and the men sat prisoned high up in 
 their iron drum, that then resounded with the lashing of 
 the sprays. Fear sat with them in their sea-beleaguered 
 dwelling; and the colour changed in anxious faces when 
 some greater billow struck the barrack, and its pillars 
 quivered and sprang under the blow. It was then that 
 the foreman builder, Mr. Goodwillie, whom I see before 
 me still in his rock-habit of undecipherable rags, would 
 get his fiddle down and strike up human minstrelsy 
 amid the music of the storm. But it was in sunshine 
 only that I saw Dhu-Heartach ; and it was in sunshine, 
 or the yet lovelier summer afterglow, that the steamer 
 would return to Earraid, ploughing an enchanted sea; 
 the obedient lighters, relieved of their deck cargo, rid- 
 ing in her wake more quietly ; and the steersman upon 
 
 254 
 
MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET 
 
 each, as she rose on the long swell, standing tall and 
 dark against the shining west. 
 
 But it was in Earraid itself that I delighted chiefly. 
 The lighthouse settlement scarce encroached beyond its 
 fences ; over the top of the first brae the ground was all 
 virgin, the world all shut out, the face of things un- 
 changed by any of man's doings. Here was no living 
 presence, save for the limpets on the rocks, for some old, 
 gray, rain-beaten ram that I might rouse out of a ferny 
 den betwixt two boulders, or for the haunting and the 
 piping of the gulls. It was older than man ; it was found 
 so by incoming Celts, and seafaring Norsemen, and Co- 
 lumba's priests. The earthy savour of the bog plants, 
 the rude disorder of the boulders, the inimitable seaside 
 brightness of the air, the brine and the iodine, the lap of 
 the billows among the weedy reefs, the sudden spring- 
 ing up of a great run of dashing surf along the sea-front 
 of the isle, all that I saw and felt my predecessors must 
 have seen and felt with scarce a difference. I steeped 
 myself in open air and in past ages. 
 
 " Delightful would it be to me to be in Uchd Ailiun 
 
 On the pinnacle of a rock, 
 That I might often see 
 
 The face of the ocean ; 
 That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds, 
 
 Source of happiness; 
 That 1 might hear the thunder of the crowding waves 
 
 Upon the rocks : 
 At times at work without compulsion — 
 
 This would be delightful; 
 At times plucking dulse from the rocks; 
 
 At times at fishing." 
 
 255 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 So, about the next island of Iona, sang Columba him- 
 self twelve hundred years before. And so might I have 
 sung of Earraid. 
 
 And all the while I was aware that this life of sea- 
 bathing and sun-burning was for me but a holiday. In 
 that year cannon were roaring for days together on 
 French battlefields ; and I would sit in my isle (I call it 
 mine, after the use of lovers) and think upon the war, 
 and the loudness of these far-away battles, and the pain 
 of the men's wounds, and the weariness of their march- 
 ing. And I would think too of that other war which is 
 as old as mankind, and is indeed the life of man: the 
 unsparing war, the grinding slavery of competition ; the 
 toil of seventy years, dear-bought bread, precarious hon- 
 our, the perils and pitfalls, and the poor rewards. It 
 was a long look forward; the future summoned me as 
 with trumpet calls, it warned me back as with a voice 
 of weeping and beseeching; and I thrilled and trembled 
 on the brink of life, like a childish bather on the beach. 
 
 There Was another young man on Earraid in these 
 days, and we were much together, bathing, clambering 
 on the boulders, trying to sail a boat and spinning round 
 instead in the oily whirlpools of the roost. But the most 
 part of the time we spoke of the great uncharted desert 
 of our futures ; wondering together what should there 
 befall us ; hearing with surprise the sound of our own 
 voices in the empty vestibule of youth. As far, and as 
 hard, as it seemed then to look forward to the grave, so 
 far it seems now to look backward upon these emotions ; 
 so hard to recall justly that loath submission, as of the 
 sacrificial bull, with which we stooped our necks under 
 the yoke of destiny. I met my old companion but the 
 
 256 
 
MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET 
 
 other day ; I cannot tell of course what he was think- 
 ing; but, upon my part, I was wondering to see us both 
 so much at home, and so composed and sedentary in 
 the world ; and how much we had gained, and how 
 much we had lost, to attain to that composure; and 
 which had been upon the whole our best estate : when 
 we sat there prating sensibly like men of some experi- 
 ence, or when we shared our timorous and hopeful 
 counsels in a western islet. 
 
 *57 
 
IX. THOMAS STEVENSON 
 
 CIVIL ENGINEER 
 
 THE death of Thomas Stevenson will mean not very 
 much to the general reader. His service to man- 
 kind took on forms of which the public knows little and 
 understands less. He came seldom to London, and 
 then only as a task, remaining always a stranger and a 
 convinced provincial ; putting up for years at the same 
 hotel where his father had gone before him ; faithful for 
 long to the same restaurant, the same church, and the 
 same theatre, chosen simply for propinquity; steadfastly 
 refusing to dine out. He had a circle of his own, in- 
 deed, at home; few men were more beloved in Edin- 
 burgh, where he breathed an air that pleased him ; and 
 wherever he went, in railway carriages or hotel smok- 
 ing-rooms, his strange, humorous vein of talk, and his 
 transparent honesty, raised him up friends and admirers. 
 But to the general public and the world of London, 
 except about the parliamentary committee-rooms, he 
 remained unknown. All the time, his lights were in 
 every part of the world, guiding the mariner; his firm 
 were consulting engineers to the Indian, the New Zea- 
 land, and the Japanese Lighthouse Boards, so that Ed- 
 inburgh was a world centre for that branch of applied 
 science; in Germany, he had been called "the Nestor 
 
 25 8 
 
THOMAS STEVENSON 
 
 of lighthouse illumination; " even in France, where his 
 claims were long denied, he was at last, on the occasion 
 of the late Exposition, recognised and medalled. And 
 to show by one instance the inverted nature of his repu- 
 tation, comparatively small at home, yet filling the 
 world, a friend of mine was this winter on a visit to the 
 Spanish main, and was asked by a Peruvian if he " knew 
 Mr. Stevenson the author, because his works were much 
 esteemed in Peru ? " My friend supposed the reference 
 was to the writer of tales ; but the Peruvian had never 
 heard of Dr. Jekyll ; what he had in his eye, what was 
 esteemed in Peru, were the volumes of the engineer. 
 
 Thomas Stevenson was born at Edinburgh in the year 
 1818, the grandson of Thomas Smith, first engineer to 
 the Board of Northern Lights, son of Robert Stevenson, 
 brother of Alan and David ; so that his nephew, David 
 Alan Stevenson, joined with him at the time of his death 
 in the engineership, is the sixth of the family who has 
 held, successively or conjointly, that office. The Bell 
 Rock, his father's great triumph, was finished before 
 he was born ; but he served under his brother Alan in 
 the building of Skerryvore, the noblest of all extant 
 deep-sea lights; and, in conjunction with his Brother 
 David, he added two — the Chickens and Dhu Heartach 
 — to that small number of man's extreme outposts in 
 the ocean. Of shore lights, the two brothers last named 
 erected no fewer than twenty-seven ; of beacons, 1 about 
 twenty-five. Many harbours were successfully carried 
 out : one, the harbour of Wick, the chief disaster of my 
 
 1 In Dr. Murray's admirable new dictionary, I have remarked a flaw 
 sub voce Beacon. In its express, technical sense, a beacon may be de- 
 fined as " a founded, artificial sea-mark, not lighted." 
 
 259 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 father's life, was a failure ; the sea proved too strong for 
 man's arts; and after expedients hitherto unthought 
 of, and on a scale hyper-cyclopean, the work must be 
 deserted, and now stands a ruin in that bleak, God-for- 
 saken bay, ten miles from John-o'-Groat's. In the im- 
 provement of rivers the brothers were likewise in a large 
 way of practice over both England and Scotland, nor 
 had any British engineer anything approaching their ex- 
 perience. 
 
 It was about this nucleus of his professional labours 
 that all my father's scientific inquiries and inventions 
 centred ; these proceeded from, and acted back upon, 
 his daily business. Thus it was as a harbour engineer 
 that he became interested in the propagation and reduc- 
 tion of waves ; a difficult subject in regard to which he 
 has left behind him much suggestive matter and some 
 valuable approximate results. Storms were his sworn 
 adversaries, and it was through the study of storms that 
 he approached that of meteorology at large. Many 
 who knew him not otherwise, knew — perhaps have 
 in their gardens — his louvre-boarded screen for instru- 
 ments. But the great achievement of his life was, of 
 course, in optics as applied to lighthouse illumination. 
 Fresnel had done much ; Fresnel had settled the fixed 
 light apparatus on a principle that still seems unimprov- 
 able; and when Thomas Stevenson stepped in and 
 brought to a comparable perfection the revolving light, 
 a not unnatural jealousy and much painful controversy 
 rose in France. It had its hour; and, as I have told 
 already, even in France it has blown by. Had it not, it 
 would have mattered the less, since all through his life 
 my father continued to justify his claim by fresh advances. 
 
 260 
 
THOMAS STEVENSON 
 
 New apparatus for lights in new situations was contin- 
 ually being designed with the same unwearied search 
 after perfection, the same nice ingenuity of means ; and 
 though the holophotal revolving light perhaps still re- 
 mains his most elegant contrivance, it is difficult to give 
 it the palm over the much later condensing system, 
 with its thousand possible modifications. The number 
 and the value of these improvements entitle their author 
 to the name of one of mankind's benefactors. In all 
 parts of the world a safer landfall awaits the mariner. 
 Two things must be said : and, first, that Thomas Ste- 
 venson was no mathematician. Natural shrewdness, a 
 sentiment of optical laws, and a great intensity of con- 
 sideration led him to just conclusions; but to calculate 
 the necessary formulae for the instruments he had con- 
 ceived was often beyond him, and he must fall back on 
 the help of others, notably on that of his cousin and 
 lifelong intimate friend, emeritus Professor Swan, of St. 
 Andrews, and his later friend, Professor P. G. Tait. It is 
 a curious enough circumstance, and a great encourage- 
 ment to others, that a man so ill equipped should have 
 succeeded in one of the most abstract and arduous walks 
 of applied science. The second remark is one that 
 applies to the whole family, and only particularly to 
 Thomas Stevenson from the great number and impor- 
 tance of his inventions : holding as the Stevensons did a 
 Government appointment, they regarded their original 
 work as something due already to the nation, and none 
 of them has ever taken out a patent. It is another cause 
 of the comparative obscurity of the name : for a patent 
 not only brings in money, it infallibly spreads reputa- 
 tion; and my father's instruments enter anonymously 
 
 261 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 into a hundred light-rooms, and are passed anonymously 
 over in a hundred reports, where the least considerable 
 patent would stand out and tell its author's story. 
 
 But the life-work of Thomas Stevenson remains: 
 what we have lost, what we now rather try to recall, 
 is the friend and companion. He was a man of a some- 
 what antique strain : with a blended sternness and soft- 
 ness that was wholly Scottish and at first somewhat 
 bewildering; with a profound essential melancholy of 
 disposition and (what often accompanies it) the most 
 humorous geniality in company ; shrewd and childish ; 
 passionately attached, passionately prejudiced; a man 
 of many extremes, many faults of temper, and no very 
 stable foothold for himself among life's troubles. Yet 
 he was a wise adviser; many men, and these not incon- 
 siderable, took counsel with him habitually. "I sat at 
 his feet," writes one of these, "when I asked his advice, 
 and when the broad brow was set in thought and the 
 firm mouth said his say, I always knew that no man 
 could add to the worth of the conclusion." He had ex- 
 cellent taste, though whimsical and partial; collected 
 old furniture and delighted specially in sunflowers long 
 before the days of Mr. Wilde ; took a lasting pleasure in 
 prints and pictures ; was a devout admirer of Thomson 
 of Duddingston at a time when few shared the taste; and 
 though he read little, was constant to his favourite books. 
 He had never any Greek; Latin he happily re-taught 
 himself after he had left school, where he was a mere 
 consistent idler: happily, I say, for Lactantius, Vossius, 
 and Cardinal Bona were his chief authors. The first he 
 must have read for twenty years uninterruptedly, keep- 
 ing it near him in his study, and carrying it in his bag 
 
 262 
 
THOMAS STEVENSON 
 
 on journeys. Another old theologian, Brown of Wam- 
 phray, was often in his hands. When he was indis- 
 posed, he had two books, Guy Mannering and The 
 Parenfs Assistant, of which he never wearied. He was 
 a strong Conservative, or, as he preferred to call himself, 
 a Tory ; except in so far as his views were modified by 
 a hot-headed chivalrous sentiment for women. He was 
 actually in favour of a marriage law under which any 
 woman might have a divorce for the asking, and no 
 man on any ground whatever; and the same sentiment 
 found another expression in a Magdalen Mission in 
 Edinburgh, founded and largely supported by himself. 
 This was but one of the many channels of his public 
 generosity; his private was equally unstrained. The 
 Church of Scotland, of which he held the doctrines 
 (though in a sense of his own) and to which he bore 
 a clansman's loyalty, profited often by his time and 
 money; and though, from a morbid sense of his own 
 unworthiness, he would never consent to be an office- 
 bearer, his advice was often sought, and he served the 
 Church on many committees. What he perhaps valued 
 highest in his work were his contributions to the de- 
 fence of Christianity ; one of which, in particular, was 
 praised by Hutchinson Stirling and reprinted at the re- 
 quest of Professor Crawford. 
 
 His sense of his own unworthiness I have called mor- 
 bid ; morbid, too, were his sense of the fleetingness of 
 life and his concern for death. He had never accepted 
 the conditions of man's life or his own character; and 
 his inmost thoughts were ever tinged with the Celtic 
 melancholy. Cases of conscience were sometimes griev- 
 ous to him, and that delicate employment of a scien- 
 
 26} 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 tific witness cost him many qualms. But he found res^ 
 pite from these troublesome humours in his work, in 
 his lifelong study of natural science, in the society of 
 those he loved, and in his daily walks, which now 
 would carry him far into the country with some congen- 
 ial friend, and now keep him dangling about the town 
 from one old book-shop to another, and scraping roman- 
 tic acquaintance with every dog that passed. His talk, 
 compounded of so much sterling sense and so much 
 freakish humour, and clothed in language so apt, droll, 
 and emphatic, was a perpetual delight to all who knew 
 him before the clouds began to settle on his mind. His 
 use of language was both just and picturesque; and 
 when at the beginning of his illness he began to feel the 
 ebbing of this power, it was strange and painful to hear 
 him reject one word after another as inadequate, and at 
 length desist from the search and leave his phrase un- 
 finished rather than finish it without propriety. It was 
 perhaps another Celtic trait that his affections and emo- 
 tions, passionate as these were, and liable to passionate 
 ups and downs, found the most eloquent expression 
 both in words and gestures. Love, anger, and indig- 
 nation shone through him and broke forth in imagery, 
 like what we read of Southern races. For all these emo- 
 tional extremes, and in spite of the melancholy ground 
 of his character, he had upon the whole a happy life; 
 nor was he less fortunate in his death, which at the last 
 came to him unaware. 
 
 264 
 
X. TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 "Sir, we had a good talk." — Johnson. 
 
 " As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle 
 silence." — Franklin. 
 
 THERE can be no fairer ambition than to excel in 
 talk ; to be affable, gay, ready, clear and welcome ; 
 to have a fact, a thought, or an illustration, pat to every 
 subject; and not only to cheer the flight of time among 
 our intimates, but bear our part in that great interna- 
 tional congress, always sitting, where public wrongs 
 are first declared, public errors first corrected, and the 
 course of public opinion shaped, day by day, a little 
 nearer to the right. No measure comes before Parlia- 
 ment but it has been long ago prepared by the grand 
 jury of the talkers ; no book is written that has not been 
 largely composed by their assistance. Literature in many 
 of its branches is no other than the shadow of good 
 talk ; but the imitation falls far short of the original in 
 life, freedom and effect. There are always two to a talk, 
 giving and taking, comparing experience and according 
 conclusions. Talk is fluid, tentative, continually "in 
 further search and progress ; " while written words re- 
 main fixed, become idols even to the writer, found 
 wooden dogmatisms, and preserve flies of obvious error 
 
 265 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 in the amber of the truth. Last and chief, while litera- 
 ture, gagged with linsey-woolsey, can only deal with a 
 fraction of the life of man, talk goes fancy free and may 
 call a spade a spade. Talk has none of the freezing im- 
 munities of the pulpit. It cannot, even if it would, be- 
 come merely aesthetic or merely classical like literature. 
 A jest intervenes, the solemn humbug is dissolved in 
 laughter, and speech runs forth out of the contemporary 
 groove into the open fields of nature, cheery and cheer- 
 ing, like schoolboys out of school. And it is in talk 
 alone that we can learn our period and ourselves. In 
 short, the first duty of a man is to speak; that is his 
 chief business in this world ; and talk, which is the har- 
 monious speech of two or more, is by far the most ac- 
 cessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money ; it is 
 all profit ; it completes our education, founds and fosters 
 our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in 
 almost any state of health. 
 
 The spice of life is battle; the friendliest relations are 
 still a kind of contest; and if we would not forego all 
 that is valuable in our lot, we must continually face some 
 other person, eye to eye, and wrestle a fall whether in 
 love or enmity. It is still by force of body, or power of 
 character or intellect, that we attain to worthy pleasures. 
 Men and women contend for each other in the lists of 
 love, like rival mesmerists ; the active and adroit decide 
 their challenges in the sports of the body; and the sed- 
 entary sit down to chess or conversation. All sluggish 
 and pacific pleasures are, to the same degree, solitary 
 and selfish; and every durable bond between human 
 beings is founded in or heightened by some element of 
 competition. Now, the relation that has the least root 
 
 266 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 in matter is undoubtedly that airy one of friendship ; and 
 hence, I suppose, it is that good talk most commonly 
 arises among friends. Talk is, indeed, both the scene 
 and instrument of friendship. It is in talk alone that 
 the friends can measure strength, and enjoy that ami- 
 cable counter-assertion of personality which is the 
 gauge of relations and the sport of life. 
 
 A good talk is not to be had for the asking. Humours 
 must first be accorded in a kind of overture or prologue; 
 hour, company and circumstance be suited; and then, 
 at a fit juncture, the subject, the quarry of two heated 
 minds, spring up like a deer out of the wood. Not 
 that the talker has any of the hunter's pride, though he 
 has all and more than all his ardour. The genuine artist 
 follows the stream of conversation as an angler follows 
 the windings of a brook, not dallying where he fails to 
 "kill." He trusts implicitly to hazard; and he is re- 
 warded by continual variety, continual pleasure, and 
 those changing prospects of the truth that are the best 
 of education. There is nothing in a subject, so called, 
 that we should regard it as an idol, or follow it beyond 
 the promptings of desire. Indeed, there are few sub- 
 jects ; and so far as they are truly talkable, more than 
 the half of them may be reduced to three : that I am I, 
 that you are you, and that there are other people dimly 
 understood to be not quite the same as either. Where- 
 ever talk may range, it still runs half the time on these 
 eternal lines. The theme being set, each plays on him- 
 self as on an instrument ; asserts and justifies himself; 
 ransacks his brain for instances and opinions, and brings 
 them forth new-minted, to his own surprise and the 
 admiration of his adversary. All natural talk is a fes- 
 
 267 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 tival of ostentation ; and by the laws of the game each 
 accepts and fans the vanity of the other. It is from that 
 reason that we venture to lay ourselves so open, that 
 we dare to be so warmly eloquent, and that we swell 
 in each other's eyes to such a vast proportion. For 
 talkers, once launched, begin to overflow the limits of 
 their ordinary selves, tower up to the height of their 
 secret pretensions, and give themselves out for the 
 heroes, brave, pious, musical and wise, that in their 
 most shining moments they aspire to be. So they 
 weave for themselves with words and for a while in- 
 habit a palace of delights, temple at once and theatre, 
 where they fill the round of the world's dignities, and 
 feast with the gods, exulting in Kudos. And when the 
 talk is over, each goes his way, still flushed with vanity 
 and admiration, still trailing clouds of glory ; each de- 
 clines from the height of his ideal orgie, not in a mo- 
 ment, but by slow declension. I remember, in the 
 entr'acte of an afternoon performance, coming forth into 
 the sunshine, in a beautiful green, gardened corner of a 
 romantic city ; and as I sat and smoked, the music mov- 
 ing in my blood, I seemed to sit there and evaporate 
 The Flying Dutchman (for it was that I had been hear- 
 ing) with a wonderful sense of life, warmth, well-being 
 and pride; and the noises of the city, voices, bells and 
 marching feet, fell together in my ears like a sympho- 
 nious orchestra. In the same way, the excitement of 
 a good talk lives for a long while after in the blood, the 
 heart still hot within you, the brain still simmering, and 
 the physical earth swimming around you with the col- 
 ours of the sunset. 
 Natural talk, like ploughing, should turn up a large 
 268 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 surface of life, rather than dig mines into geological 
 strata. Masses of experience, anecdote, incident, cross- 
 lights, quotation, historical instances, the whole flotsam 
 and jetsam of two minds forced in and in upon the 
 matter in hand from every point of the compass, and 
 from every degree of mental elevation and abasement — 
 these are the material with which talk is fortified, the 
 food on which the talkers thrive. Such argument as is 
 proper to the exercise should still be brief and seizing. 
 Talk should proceed by instances; by the apposite, not 
 the expository. It should keep close along the lines of 
 humanity, near the bosoms and businesses of men, at 
 the level where history, fiction and experience intersect 
 and illuminate each other. I am I, and You are You, 
 with all my heart; but conceive how these lean proposi- 
 tions change and brighten when, instead of words, the 
 actual you and I sit cheek by jowl, the spirit housed in 
 the live body, and the very clothes uttering voices to 
 corroborate the story in the face. Not less surprising is 
 the change when we leave off to speak of generalities — 
 the bad, the good, the miser, and all the characters of 
 Theophrastus — and call up other men, by anecdote or 
 instance, in their very trick and feature ; or trading on a 
 common knowledge, toss each other famous names, 
 still glowing with the hues of life. Communication is 
 no longer by words, but by the instancing of whole 
 biographies, epics, systems of philosophy, and epochs 
 of history, in bulk. That which is understood excels 
 that which is spoken in quantity and quality alike; 
 ideas thus figured and personified, change hands, as we 
 may say, like coin; and the speakers imply without 
 effort the most obscure and intricate thoughts. Strangers 
 
 269 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 who have a large common ground of reading will, for 
 this reason, come the sooner to the grapple of genuine 
 converse. If they know Othello and Napoleon, Con- 
 suelo and Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin and Steenie Steen- 
 son, they can leave generalities and begin at once to 
 speak by figures. 
 
 Conduct and art are the two subjects that arise most 
 frequently and that embrace the widest range of facts. 
 A few pleasures bear discussion for their own sake, but 
 only those which are most social or most radically hu- 
 man ; and even these can only be discussed among their 
 devotees. A technicality is always welcome to the ex- 
 pert, whether in athletics, art or law ; I have heard the 
 best kind of talk on technicalities from such rare and 
 happy persons as both know and love their business. 
 No human being ever spoke of scenery for above two 
 minutes at a time, which makes me suspect we hear 
 too much of it in literature. The weather is regarded 
 as the very nadir and scoff of conversational topics. 
 And yet the weather, the dramatic element in scenery, 
 is far more tractable in language, and far more human 
 both in import and suggestion than the stable features 
 of the landscape. Sailors and shepherds, and the peo- 
 ple generally of coast and mountain, talk well of it; and 
 it is often excitingly presented in literature. But the 
 tendency of all living talk draws it back and back into 
 the common focus of humanity. Talk is a creature of 
 the street and market-place, feeding on gossip ; and its 
 last resort is still in a discussion on morals. That is the 
 heroic form of gossip ; heroic in virtue of its high pre- 
 tensions ; but still gossip, because it turns on personali- 
 ties. You can keep no men long, nor Scotchmen at all, 
 
 270 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 off moral or theological discussion. These are to all the 
 world what law is to lawyers; they are everybody's 
 technicalities; the medium through which all consider 
 life, and the dialect in which they express their judg- 
 ments. I knew three young men who walked together 
 daily for some two months in a solemn and beautiful 
 forest and in cloudless summer weather; daily they 
 talked with unabated zest, and yet scarce wandered 
 that whole time beyond two subjects — theology and 
 love. And perhaps neither a court of love nor an as- 
 sembly of divines would have granted their premises 
 or welcomed their conclusions. 
 
 Conclusions, indeed, are not often reached by talk any 
 more than by private thinking. That is not the profit. 
 The profit is in the exercise, and above all in the experi- 
 ence; for when we reason at large on any subject, we 
 review our state and history in life. From time to time, 
 however, and specially, I think, in talking art, talk be- 
 comes effective, conquering like war, widening the 
 boundaries of knowledge like an exploration. A point 
 arises; the question takes a problematical, a baffling, 
 yet a likely air; the talkers begin to feel lively presenti- 
 ments of some conclusion near at hand; towards this 
 they strive with emulous ardour, each by his own path, 
 and struggling for first utterance; and then one leaps 
 upon the summit of that matter with a shout, and almost 
 at the same moment the other is beside him ; and behold 
 they are agreed. Like enough, the progress is illusory, 
 a mere cat's cradle having been wound and unwound 
 out of words. But the sense of joint discovery is none 
 the less giddy and inspiriting. And in the life of the 
 talker such triumphs, though imaginary, are neither few 
 
 271 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 nor far apart; they are attained with speed and pleasure, 
 in the hour of mirth ; and by the nature of the process, 
 they are always worthily shared. 
 
 There is a certain attitude, combative at once and 
 deferential, eager to fight yet most averse to quarrel, 
 which marks out at once the talkable man. It is not 
 eloquence, not fairness, not obstinacy, but a certain 
 proportion of all of these that I love to encounter in my 
 amicable adversaries. They must not be pontiffs hold- 
 ing doctrine, but huntsmen questing after elements of 
 truth. Neither must they be boys to be instructed, but 
 fellow-teachers with whom I may wrangle and agree 
 on equal terms. We must reach some solution, some 
 shadow of consent; for without that, eager talk becomes 
 a torture. But we do not wish to reach it cheaply, or 
 quickly, or without the tussle and effort wherein pleas- 
 ure lies. 
 
 The very best talker, with me, is one whom I shall 
 call Spring-Heel'd Jack. I say so, because I never knew 
 any one who mingled so largely the possible ingredients 
 of converse. In the Spanish proverb, the fourth man 
 necessary to compound a salad, is a madman to mix it: 
 Jack is that madman. I know not which is more re- 
 markable; the insane lucidity of his conclusions, the 
 humorous eloquence of his language, or his power of 
 method, bringing the whole of life into the focus of the 
 subject treated, mixing the conversational salad Jike a 
 drunken god. He doubles like the serpent, changes and 
 flashes like the shaken kaleidoscope, transmigrates bod- 
 ily into the views of others, and so, in the twinkling of 
 an eye and with a heady rapture, turns questions inside 
 out and flings them empty before you on the ground, 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 like a triumphant conjuror. It is my common practice 
 when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to attack it in the 
 presence of Jack with such grossness, such partiality 
 and such wearing iteration, as at length shall spur him 
 up in its defence. In a moment he transmigrates, dons 
 the required character, and with moonstruck philosophy 
 justifies the act in question. I can fancy nothing to com- 
 pare with the vim of these impersonations, the strange 
 scale of language, flying from Shakespeare to Kant, and 
 from Kant to Major Dyngwell — 
 
 "As fast as a musician scatters sounds 
 Out of an instrument — " 
 
 the sudden, sweeping generalisations, the absurd irrele- 
 vant particularities, the wit, wisdom, folly, humour, 
 eloquence and bathos, each startling in its kind, and yet 
 all luminous in the admired disorder of their combina- 
 tion. A talker of a different calibre, though belonging 
 to the same school, is Burly. Burly is a man of a great 
 presence ; he commands a larger atmosphere, gives the 
 impression of a grosser mass of character than most men. 
 It has been said of him that his presence could be felt in 
 a room you entered blindfold ; and the same, I think, 
 has been said of other powerful constitutions condemned 
 to much physical inaction, There is something boister- 
 ous and piratic in Burly's manner of talk which suits 
 well enough with + his impression. He will roar you 
 down, he will bury his face in his hands, he will undergo 
 passions of revolt and agony ; and meanwhile his attitude 
 of mind is really both conciliatory and receptive; and af- 
 ter Pistol has been out-Pistol'd, and the welkin rung for 
 hours, you begin to perceive a certain subsidence in 
 
 273 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 these spring torrents, points of agreement issue, and you 
 end arm-in-arm, and in a glow of mutual admiration. 
 The outcry only serves to make your final union the 
 more unexpected and precious. Throughout there has 
 been perfect sincerity, perfect intelligence, a desire to 
 hear although not always to listen, and an unaffected 
 eagerness to meet concessions. You have, with Burly, 
 none of the dangers that attend debate with Spring- 
 Heel'd Jack; who may at any moment turn his powers 
 of transmigration on yourself, create for you a view you 
 never held, and then furiously fall on you for holding it. 
 These, at least, are my two favourites, and both are 
 loud, copious, intolerant talkers. This argues that I 
 myself am in the same category; for if we love talking 
 at all, we love a bright, fierce adversary, who will hold 
 his ground, foot by foot, in much our own manner, sell 
 his attention dearly, and give us our full measure of the 
 dust and exertion of battle. Both these men can be 
 beat from a position, but it takes six hours to do it; a 
 high and hard adventure, worth attempting. With 
 both you can pass days in an enchanted country of the 
 mind, with people, scenery and manners of its own; 
 live a life apart, more arduous, active and glowing than 
 any real existence ; and come forth again when the talk 
 is over, as out of a theatre or a dream, to find the east 
 wind still blowing and the chimney-pots of the old 
 battered city still around you. Jack has the far finer 
 mind, Burly the far more honest; Jack gives us the 
 animated poetry, Burly the romantic prose, of similar 
 themes ; the one glances high like a meteor and makes 
 a light in darkness; the other, with many changing 
 hues of fire, burns at the sea-level, like a conflagration ; 
 
 274 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 but both have the same humour and artistic interests, 
 the same unquenched ardour in pursuit, the same gusts 
 of talk and thunderclaps of contradiction. 
 
 Cockshot 1 is a different article, but vastly entertain- 
 ing, and has been meat and drink to me for many a long 
 evening. His manner is dry, brisk and pertinacious, 
 and the choice of words not much. The point about 
 him is his extraordinary readiness and spirit. You can 
 propound nothing but he has either a theory about it 
 ready-made, or will have one instantly on the stocks, 
 and proceed to lay its timbers and launch it in your 
 presence. "Let me see," he will say. "Give me a 
 moment. I should have some theory for that." A 
 blither spectacle than the vigour with which he sets 
 about the task, it were hard to fancy. He is possessed 
 by a demoniac energy, welding the elements for his 
 life, and bending ideas, as an athlete bends a horseshoe, 
 with a visible and lively effort. He has, in theorising, 
 a compass, an art; what I would call the synthetic 
 gusto; something of a Herbert Spencer, who should 
 see the fun of the thing. You are not bound, and no 
 more is he, to place your faith in these brand-new opin- 
 ions. But some of them are right enough, durable even 
 for life ; and the poorest serve for a cock-shy — as when 
 idle people, after picnics, float a bottle on a pond and 
 have an hour's diversion ere it sinks. Whichever they 
 are, serious opinions or humours of the moment, he 
 still defends his ventures with indefatigable wit and 
 spirit, hitting savagely himself, but taking punishment 
 like a man. He knows and never forgets that people 
 talk, first of all, for the sake of talking; conducts him- 
 
 1 The late Fleeming Jenkin. 
 
 275 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 self in the ring, to use the old slang, like a thorough 
 "glutton," and honestly enjoys a telling facer from his 
 adversary. Cockshot is bottled effervescency, the sworn 
 foe of sleep. Three-in-the-morning Cockshot, says a 
 victim. His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry 
 champagnes. Sleight of hand and inimitable quickness 
 are the qualities by which he lives. Athelred, on the 
 other hand, presents you with the spectacle of a sin- 
 cere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He is 
 the most unready man I ever knew to shine in conver- 
 sation. You may see him sometimes wrestle with a 
 refractory jest for a minute or two together, and per-, 
 haps fail to throw it in the end. And there is some- 
 thing singularly engaging, often instructive, in the 
 simplicity with which he thus exposes the process as 
 well as the result, the works as well as the dial of the 
 clock. Withal he has his hours of inspiration. Apt 
 words come to him as if by accident, and, coming from 
 deeper down, they smack the more personally, they 
 have the more of fine old crusted humanity, rich in 
 sediment and humour. There are sayings of his in 
 which he has stamped himself into the very grain of 
 the language; you would think he must have worn the 
 words next his skin and slept with them. Yet it is not 
 as a sayer of particular good things that Athelred is 
 most to be regarded, rather as the stalwart woodman 
 of thought. I have pulled on a light cord often enough, 
 while he has been wielding the broad-axe; and between 
 us, on this unequal division, many a specious fallacy 
 has fallen. I have known him to battle the same ques- 
 tion night after night for years, keeping it in the reign 
 of talk, constantly applying it and re-applying it to life 
 
 276 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 with humorous or grave intention, and all the while, 
 never hurrying, nor flagging, nor taking an unfair ad- 
 vantage of the facts. Jack at a given moment, when 
 arising, as it were, from the tripod, can be more radi- 
 antly just to those from whom he differs; but then the 
 tenor of his thoughts is even calumnious; while Athel- 
 red, slower to forge excuses, is yet slower to condemn, 
 and sits over the welter of the world, vacillating but still 
 judicial, and still faithfully contending with his doubts. 
 
 Both the last talkers deal much in points of conduct 
 and religion studied in the "dry light" of prose. In- 
 directly and as if against his will the same elements 
 from time to time appear in the troubled and poetic talk 
 of Opalstein. His various and exotic knowledge, com- 
 plete although unready sympathies, and fine, full, dis- 
 criminative flow of language, fit him out to be the best 
 of talkers ; so perhaps he is with some, not quite with 
 me — proxime accessit, I should say. He sings the 
 praises of the earth and the arts, flowers and jewels, 
 wine and music, in a moonlight, serenading manner, as 
 to the light guitar; even wisdom comes from his tongue 
 like singing; no one is, indeed, more tuneful in the upper 
 notes. But even while he sings the song of the Sirens, 
 he still hearkens to the barking of the Sphinx. Jarring 
 Byronic notes interrupt the flow of his Horatian humours. 
 His mirth has something of the tragedy of the world for 
 its perpetual background; and he feasts like Don Gio- 
 vanni to a double orchestra, one lightly sounding for the 
 dance, one pealing Beethoven in the distance. He is 
 not truly reconciled either with life or with himself; and 
 this instant war in his members sometimes divides the 
 man's attention. He does not always, perhaps not often, 
 
 277 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 frankly surrender himself in conversation. He brings 
 into the talk other thoughts than those which he ex- 
 presses; you are conscious that he keeps an eye on 
 something else, that he does not shake off the world, 
 nor quite forget himself. Hence arise occasional disap- 
 pointments ; even an occasional unfairness for his com- 
 panions, who find themselves one day giving too much, 
 and the next, when they are wary out of season, giving 
 perhaps too little. Purcel is in another class from any I 
 have mentioned. He is no debater, but appears in con- 
 versation, as occasion rises, in two distinct characters, 
 one of which I admire and fear, and the other love. In 
 the first, he is radiantly civil and rather silent, sits on a 
 high, courtly hilltop, and from that vantage-ground 
 drops you his remarks like favours. He seems not to 
 share in our sublunary contentions; he wears no sign 
 of interest; when on a sudden there falls in a crystal of 
 wit, so polished that the dull do not perceive it, but so 
 right that the sensitive are silenced. True talk should 
 have more body and blood, should be louder, vainer 
 and more declaratory of the man ; the true talker should 
 not hold so steady an advantage over whom he speaks 
 with ; and that is one reason out of a score why I prefer 
 my Purcel in his second character, when he unbends 
 into a strain of graceful gossip, singing like the fireside 
 kettle. In these moods he has an elegant homeliness 
 that rings of the true Queen Anne. I know another 
 person who attains, in his moments, to the insolence of 
 a Restoration comedy, speaking, I declare, as Congreve 
 wrote; but that is a sport of nature, and scarce falls 
 under the rubric, for there is none, alas! to give him 
 answer. 
 
 37 8 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 One last remark occurs: It is the mark of genuine 
 conversation that the sayings can scarce be quoted with 
 their full effect beyond the circle of common friends. 
 To have their proper weight they should appear in a 
 biography, and with the portrait of the speaker. Good 
 talk is dramatic ; it is like an impromptu piece of acting 
 where each should represent himself to the greatest ad- 
 vantage; and that is the best kind of talk where each 
 speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and where, 
 if you were to shift the speeches round from one to an- 
 other, there would be the greatest loss in significance 
 and perspicuity. It is for this reason that talk depends 
 so wholly on our company. We should like to intro- 
 duce Falstaff and Mercutio, or FalstafT and Sir Toby ; but 
 Falstaff in talk with Cordelia seems even painful. Most 
 of us, by the Protean quality of man, can talk to some 
 degree with all ; but the true talk, that strikes out all the 
 slumbering best of us, comes only with the peculiar 
 brethren of our spirits, is founded as deep as love in the 
 constitution of our being, and is a thing to relish with 
 all our energy, while yet we have it, and to be grateful 
 for for ever. 
 
 279 
 
XI. TALK AND TALKERS* 
 
 IN the last paper there was perhaps too much about 
 mere debate ; and there was nothing said at all about 
 that kind of talk which is merely luminous and restful, 
 a higher power of silence, the quiet of the evening shared 
 by ruminating friends. There is something, aside from 
 personal preference, to be alleged in support of this 
 omission. Those who are no chimney-cornerers, who 
 rejoice in the social thunderstorm, have a ground in 
 reason for their choice. They get little rest indeed ; but 
 restfulness is a quality for cattle ; the virtues are all ac- 
 tive, life is alert, and it is in repose that men prepare 
 themselves for evil. On the other hand, they are 
 bruised into a knowledge of themselves and others; 
 they have in a high degree the fencer's pleasure in dex- 
 terity displayed and proved; what they get they get 
 upon life's terms, paying for it as they go ; and once the 
 talk is launched, they are assured of honest dealing from 
 an adversary eager like themselves. The aboriginal 
 man within us, the cave-dweller, still lusty as when he 
 fought tooth and nail for roots and berries, scents this 
 kind of equal battle from afar; it is like his old primaeval 
 days upon the crags, a return to the sincerity of savage 
 
 1 This sequel was called forth by an excellent article in The Spectator. 
 280 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 life from the comfortable fictions of the civilised. And 
 if it be delightful to the Old Man, it is none the less 
 profitable to his younger brother, the conscientious gen- 
 tleman. I feel never quite sure of your urbane and 
 smiling coteries; I fear they indulge a man's vanities in 
 silence, suffer him to encroach, encourage him on to be 
 an ass, and send him forth again, not merely contemned 
 for the moment, but radically more contemptible than 
 when he entered. But if I have a flushed, blustering 
 fellow for my opposite, bent on carrying a point, my 
 vanity is sure to have its ears rubbed, once at least, in 
 the course of the debate. He will not spare me when 
 we differ ; he will not fear to demonstrate my folly to 
 my face. 
 
 For many natures there is not much charm in the still, 
 chambered society, the circle of bland countenances, the 
 digestive silence, the admired remark, the flutter of af- 
 fectionate approval. They demand more atmosphere 
 and exercise; "a gale upon their spirits," as our pious 
 ancestors would phrase it; to have their wits well 
 breathed in an uproarious Valhalla. And I suspect that 
 the choice, given their character and faults, is one to be 
 defended. The purely wise are silenced by facts; they 
 talk in a clear atmosphere, problems lying around them 
 like a view in nature ; if they can be shown to be some- 
 what in the wrong, they digest the reproof like a thrash- 
 ing, and make better intellectual blood. They stand 
 corrected by a whisper; a word or a glance reminds 
 them of the great eternal law. But it is not so with all. 
 Others in conversation seek rather contact with their 
 fellow-men than increase of knowledge or clarity of 
 thought. The drama,* not the philosophy, of life is 
 
 281 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 the sphere of their intellectual activity. Even when 
 they pursue truth, they desire as much as possible of 
 what we may call human scenery along the road they 
 follow. They dwell in the heart of life; the blood 
 sounding in their ears, their eyes laying hold of what 
 delights them with a brutal avidity that makes them 
 blind to all besides, their interest riveted on people, liv- 
 ing, loving, talking, tangible people. To a man of this 
 description, the sphere of argument seems very pale and 
 ghostly. By a strong expression, a perturbed counte- 
 nance, floods of tears, an insult which his conscience 
 obliges him to swallow, he is brought round to knowl- 
 edge which no syllogism would have conveyed to him. 
 His own experience is so vivid, he is so superlatively 
 conscious of himself, that if, day after day, he is allowed 
 to hector and hear nothing but approving echoes, he 
 will lose his hold on the soberness of things and take 
 himself in earnest for a god. Talk might be to such an 
 one the very way of moral ruin ; the school where he 
 might learn to be at once intolerable and ridiculous. 
 
 This character is perhaps commoner than philosophers 
 suppose. And for persons of that stamp to learn much 
 by conversation, they must speak with their superiors, 
 not in intellect, for that is a superiority that must be 
 proved, but in station. If they cannot find a friend to 
 bully them for their good, they must find either an old 
 man, a woman, or some one so far below them in the 
 artificial order of society, that courtesy may be particu- 
 larly exercised. 
 
 The best teachers are the aged. To the old our 
 mouths are always partly closed ; we must swallow our 
 obvious retorts and listen. They sit above our heads, 
 
 282 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 on life's raised dais, and appeal at once to our respect 
 and pity. A flavour of the old school, a touch of some- 
 thing different in their manner — which is freer and 
 rounder, if they come of what is called a good family, 
 and often more timid and precise if they are of the mid- 
 dle class — serves, in these days, to accentuate the dif- 
 ference of age and add a distinction to gray hairs. But 
 their superiority is founded more deeply than by out- 
 ward marks or gestures. They are before us in the 
 inarch of man ; they have more or less solved the irking 
 problem; they have battled through the equinox of life; 
 in good and evil they have held their course; and now, 
 without open shame, they near the crown and harbour, 
 ft may be we have been struck with one of fortune's 
 darts; we can scarce be civil, so cruelly is our spirit 
 tossed. Yet long before we were so much as thought 
 upon, the like calamity befell the old man or woman 
 that now, with pleasant humour, rallies us upon our in- 
 attention, sitting composed in the holy evening of man's 
 life, in the clear shining after rain. We grow ashamed 
 of our distresses, new and hot and coarse, like villain- 
 ous roadside brandy; we see life in aerial perspective, 
 under the heavens of faith ; and out of the worst, in the 
 mere presence of contented elders, look forward and 
 take patience. Fear shrinks before them " like a thing 
 reproved," not the flitting and ineffectual fear of death, 
 but the instant, dwelling terror of the responsibilities 
 and revenges of life. Their speech, indeed, is timid ; 
 they report lions in the path ; they counsel a meticulous 
 footing; but their serene, marred faces are more eloquent 
 and tell another story. Where they have gone, we will 
 go also, not very greatly fearing; what they have en- 
 
 283 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 dured unbroken, we also, God helping us, will make a 
 shift to bear. 
 
 Not only is the presence of the aged in itself remedial, 
 but their minds are stored with antidotes, wisdom's 
 simples, plain considerations overlooked by youth. 
 They have matter to communicate, be they never so 
 stupid. Their talk is not merely literature, it is great 
 literature ; classic in virtue of the speaker's detachment, 
 studded, like a book of travel, with things we should 
 not otherwise have learnt. In virtue, I have said, of the 
 speaker's detachment, — and this is why, of two old 
 men, the one who is not your father speaks to you with 
 the more sensible authority ; for in the paternal relation 
 the oldest have lively interests and remain still young. 
 Thus I have known two young men great friends; each 
 swore by the other's father ; the father of each swore by 
 the other lad; and yet each pair of parent and child 
 were perpetually by the ears. This is typical : it reads 
 like the germ of some kindly comedy. 
 
 The old appear in conversation in two characters: the 
 critically silent and the garrulous anecdotic. The last is 
 perhaps what we look for ; it is perhaps the more in- 
 structive. An old gentleman, well on in years, sits 
 handsomely and naturally in the bow-window of his 
 age, scanning experience with reverted eye ; and chirp- 
 ing and smiling, communicates the accidents and reads 
 the lesson of his long career. Opinions are strength- 
 ened, indeed, but they are also weeded out in the 
 course of years. What remains steadily present to the 
 eye of the retired veteran in his hermitage, what stili 
 ministers to his content, what still quickens his old 
 honest heart — these are "the real long-lived things" 
 
 284 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 that Whitman tells us to prefer. Where youth agrees 
 with age, not where they differ, wisdom lies ; and it is 
 when the young disciple finds his heart to beat in tune 
 with his grey-bearded teacher's that a lesson may be 
 learned. I have known one old gentleman, whom I 
 may name, for he is now gathered to his stock — Robert 
 Hunter, Sheriff of Dumbarton, and author of an excel- 
 lent law-book still re-edited and republished. Whether 
 he was originally big or little is more than I can guess. 
 When I knew him he was all fallen away and fallen in ; 
 crooked and shrunken; buckled into a stiff waistcoat 
 for support; troubled by ailments, which kept him 
 hobbling in and out of the room; one foot gouty; a 
 wig for decency, not for deception, on his head ; close 
 shaved, except under his chin — and for that he never 
 failed to apologise, for it went sore against the traditions 
 of his life. You can imagine how he would fare in a 
 novel by Miss Mather; yet this rag of a Chelsea veteran 
 lived to his last year in the plenitude of all that is best 
 in man, brimming with human kindness, and staunch 
 as a Roman soldier under his manifold infirmities. You 
 could not say that he had lost his memory, for he would 
 repeat Shakespeare and Webster and Jeremy Taylor and 
 Burke by the page together; but the parchment was 
 filled up, there was no room for fresh inscriptions, and 
 he was capable of repeating the same anecdote on 
 many successive visits. His voice survived in its full 
 power, and he took a pride in using it. On his last 
 voyage as Commissioner of Lighthouses, he hailed a 
 ship at sea and made himself clearly audible without a 
 speaking trumpet, ruffling the while with a proper 
 vanity in his achievement. He had a habit of eking 
 
 285 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 out his words with interrogative hems, which was 
 puzzling and a little wearisome, suited ill with his ap- 
 pearance, and seemed a survival from some former stage 
 of bodily portliness. Of yore, when he was a great 
 pedestrian and no enemy to good claret, he may have 
 pointed with these minute guns his allocutions to the 
 bench. His humour was perfectly equable, set beyond 
 the reach of fate; gout, rheumatism, stone and grave! 
 might have combined their forces against that frail tab- 
 ernacle, but when I came round on Sunday evening, he 
 would lay aside Jeremy Taylor's Life of Christ and 
 greet me with the same open brow, the same kind for- 
 mality of manner. His opinions and sympathies dated 
 the man almost to a decade. He had begun life, under 
 his mother's influence, as an admirer of Junius, but on 
 maturer knowledge had transferred his admiration to 
 Burke. He cautioned me, with entire gravity, to be 
 punctilious in writing English ; never to forget that I 
 was a Scotchman, that English was a foreign tongue, 
 and that if I attempted the colloquial, I should certainly 
 be shamed : the remark was apposite, I suppose, in the 
 days of David Hume. Scott was too new for him ; he 
 had known the author — known him, too, for a Tory; 
 and to the genuine classic a contemporary is always 
 something of a trouble. He had the old, serious love 
 of the play ; had even, as he was proud to tell, played 
 a certain part in the history of Shakespearian revivals, 
 for he had successfully pressed on Murray, of the old 
 Edinburgh Theatre, the idea of producing Shakespeare's 
 fairy pieces with great scenic display. A moderate in 
 religion, he was much struck in the last years of his 
 life by a conversation with two young lads, revivalists. 
 
 286 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 "H'm," he would say — "new to me. I have had 
 — h'm — no such experience." It struck him, not 
 with pain, rather with a solemn philosophic interest, 
 that he, a Christian as he hoped, and a Christian of so 
 old a standing, should hear these young fellows talking 
 of his own subject, his own weapons that he had fought 
 the battle of life with, — " and — h'm — not understand/' 
 In this wise and graceful attitude he did justice to him- 
 self and others, reposed unshaken in his old beliefs, 
 and recognised their limits without anger or alarm. 
 His last recorded remark, on the last night of his life, 
 was after he had been arguing against Calvinism with 
 his minister and was interrupted by an intolerable pang. 
 "After all," he said, "of all the 'isms, I know none so 
 bad as rheumatism." My own last sight of him was 
 some time before, when we dined together at an inn ; 
 he had been on circuit, for he stuck to his duties like a 
 chief part of his existence; and I remember it as the 
 only occasion on which he ever soiled his lips with 
 slang — a thing he loathed. We were both Roberts; 
 and as we took our places at table, he addressed me 
 with a twinkle: "We are just what you would call 
 two bob." He offered me port, I remember, as the 
 proper milk of youth; spoke of "twenty-shilling 
 notes;" and throughout the meal was full of old-world 
 pleasantry and quaintness, like an ancient boy on a hol- 
 iday. But what I recall chiefly was his confession that 
 he had never read Othello to an end. Shakespeare was 
 his continual study. He loved nothing better than to 
 display his knowledge and memory by adducing par- 
 allel passages from Shakespeare, passages where the 
 same word was employed, or the same idea differently 
 
 287 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 treated. But Othello had beaten him. "That noble 
 gentleman and that noble lady — h'm — too painful for 
 me." The same night the hoardings were covered 
 with posters, " Burlesque of Othello/' and the contrast 
 blazed up in my mind like a bonfire. An unforgettable 
 look it gave me into that kind man's soul. His ac- 
 quaintance was indeed a liberal and pious education. 
 All the humanities were taught in that bare dining- 
 room beside his gouty footstool. He was a piece of 
 good advice ; he was himself the instance that pointed 
 and adorned his various talk. Nor could a young man 
 have found elsewhere a place so set apart from envy, 
 fear, discontent, or any of the passions that debase ; a 
 life so honest and composed; a soul like an ancient vio- 
 lin, so subdued to harmony, responding to a touch in 
 music — as in that dining-room, with Mr. Hunter chat- 
 ting at the eleventh hour, under the shadow of eternity, 
 fearless and gentle. 
 
 The second class of old people are not anecdotic; they 
 are rather hearers than talkers, listening to the young 
 with an amused and critical attention. To have this 
 sort of intercourse to perfection, I think we must go to 
 old ladies. Women are better hearers than men, to be- 
 gin with ; they learn, I fear in anguish, to bear with the 
 tedious and infantile vanity of the other sex; and we 
 will take more from a woman than even from the old- 
 est man in the way of biting comment. Biting com- 
 ment is the chief part, whether for profit or amusement, 
 in this business. The old lady that I have in my eye is 
 a very caustic speaker, her tongue, after years of prac- 
 tice, in absolute command, whether for silence or at- 
 tack. If she chance to dislike you, you will be tempted 
 
 288 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 to curse the malignity of age. But if you chance to 
 please even slightly, you will be listened to with a par- 
 ticular laughing grace of sympathy, and from time to 
 time chastised, as if in play, with a parasol as heavy as 
 a pole-axe. It requires a singular art, as well as the 
 vantage-ground of age, to deal these stunning correc- 
 tions among the coxcombs of the young. The pill is 
 disguised in sugar of wit; it is administered as a com- 
 pliment — if you had not pleased, you would not have 
 been censured ; it is a personal affair — a hyphen, a trait 
 d 'union, between you and your censor; age's philan- 
 dering, for her pleasure and your good. Incontestably 
 the young man feels very much of a fool; but he must 
 be a perfect Malvolio, sick with self-love, if he cannot 
 take an open buffet and still smile. The correction of 
 silence is what kills; when you know you have trans- 
 gressed, and your friend says nothing and avoids your 
 eye. If a man were made of gutta-percha, his heart 
 would quail at such a moment. But when the word is 
 out, the worst is over ; and a fellow with any good-hu- 
 mour at all may pass through a perfect hail of witty 
 criticism, every bare place on his soul hit to the quick 
 with a shrewd missile, and reappear, as if after a dive, 
 tingling with a fine moral reaction, and ready, with a 
 shrinking readiness, one-third loath, for a repetition of 
 the discipline. 
 
 There are few women, not well sunned and ripened, 
 and perhaps toughened, who can thus stand apart from 
 a man and say the true thing with a kind of genial cru- 
 elty. Still there are some — and I doubt if there be any 
 man who can return the compliment. The class of 
 man represented by Vernon Whitford in The Egoist 
 
 289 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 says, indeed, the true thing, but he says it stockishly. 
 Vernon is a noble fellow, and makes, by the way, a 
 noble and instructive contrast to Daniel Deronda; his 
 conduct is the conduct of a man of honour; but we 
 agree with him, against our consciences, when he re- 
 morsefully considers "its astonishing dryness." He is 
 the best of men, but the best of women manage to com- 
 bine all that and something more. Their very faults 
 assist them ; they are helped even by the falseness of 
 their position in life. They can retire into the fortified 
 camp of the proprieties. They can touch a subject and 
 suppress it. The most adroit employ a somewhat elab- 
 orate reserve as a means to be frank, much as they wear 
 gloves when they shake hands. But a man has the fuM 
 responsibility of his freedom, cannot evade a question, 
 can scarce be silent without rudeness, must answer for 
 his words upon the moment, and is not seldom left face 
 to face with a damning choice, between the more or 
 less dishonourable wriggling of Deronda and the down- 
 right woodenness of Vernon Whitford. 
 
 But the superiority of women is perpetually menaced; 
 they do not sit throned on infirmities like the old; they 
 are suitors as well as sovereigns ; their vanity is engaged, 
 their affections are too apt to follow; and hence much 
 of the talk between the sexes degenerates into something 
 unworthy of the name. The desire to please, to shine 
 with a certain softness of lustre and to draw a fasci- 
 nating picture of oneself, banishes from conversation all 
 that is sterling and most of what is humorous. As soon 
 as a strong current of mutual admiration begins to flow, 
 the human interest triumphs entirely over the intellec- 
 tual, and the commerce of words, consciously or not, 
 
 290 
 
TALK AND TALKERS 
 
 becomes secondary to the commercing of eyes. But 
 even where this ridiculous danger is avoided, and a man 
 and woman converse equally and honestly, something 
 in their nature or their education falsifies the strain. An 
 instinct prompts them to agree ; and where that is im- 
 possible, to agree to differ. Should they neglect the 
 warning, at the first suspicion of an argument, they find 
 themselves in different hemispheres. About any point 
 of business or conduct, any actual affair demanding set- 
 tlement, a woman will speak and listen, hear and answer 
 arguments, not only with natural wisdom, but with 
 candour and logical honesty. But if the subject of de- 
 bate be something in the air, an abstraction, an excuse 
 for talk, a logical Aunt Sally, then may the male debater 
 instantly abandon hope ; he may employ reason, adduce 
 facts, be supple, be smiling, be angry, all shall avail him 
 nothing; what the woman said first, that (unless she 
 has forgotten it) she will repeat at the end. Hence, at 
 the very junctures when a talk between men grows 
 brighter and quicker and begins to promise to bear fruit, 
 talk between the sexes is menaced with dissolution. 
 The point of difference, the point of interest, is evaded 
 by the brilliant woman, under a shower of irrelevant 
 conversational rockets; it is bridged by the discreet 
 woman with a rustle of silk, as she passes smoothly 
 forward to the nearest point of safety. And this sort of 
 prestidigitation, juggling the dangerous topic out of 
 sight until it can be reintroduced with safety in an al- 
 tered shape, is a piece of tactics among the true drawing- 
 room queens. 
 
 The drawing-room is, indeed, an artificial place ; it is 
 so by our choice and for our sins. The subjection of 
 
 291 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 women ; the ideal imposed upon them from the cradle, 
 and worn, like a hair-shirt, with so much constancy; 
 their motherly, superior tenderness to man's vanity and 
 self-importance; their managing arts — the arts of a civ- 
 ilised slave among good-natured barbarians — are all 
 painful ingredients and all help to falsify relations. It is 
 not till we get clear of that amusing artificial scene that 
 genuine relations are founded, or ideas honestly com- 
 pared. In the garden, on the road or the hillside, or 
 ttte-a-tete and apart from interruptions, occasions arise 
 when we may learn much from any single woman ; and 
 nowhere more often than in married life. Marriage is 
 one long conversation, chequered by disputes. The 
 disputes are valueless ; they but ingrain the difference ; 
 the heroic heart of woman prompting her at once to nail 
 her colours to the mast. But in the intervals, almost 
 unconsciously and with no desire to shine, the whole 
 material of life is turned over and over, ideas are struck 
 out and shared, the two persons more and more adapt 
 their notions one to suit the other, and in process of 
 time, without sound of trumpet, they conduct each other 
 into new worlds of thought. 
 
 292 
 
XII. THE CHARACTER OF DOGS 
 
 THE civilisation, the manners, and the morals of dog- 
 kind are to a great extent subordinated to those of 
 his ancestral master, man. This animal, in many ways 
 so superior, has accepted a position of inferiority, shares 
 the domestic life, and humours the caprices of the tyrant. 
 But the potentate, like the British in India, pays small 
 regard to the character of his willing client, judges him 
 with listless glances, and condemns him in a byword. 
 Listless have been the looks of his admirers, who have 
 exhausted idle terms of praise, and buried the poor soul 
 below exaggerations. And yet more idle and, if possi- 
 ble, more unintelligent has been the attitude of his ex- 
 press detractors ; those who are very fond of dogs ' ' but 
 in their proper place"; who say "poo' fellow, poo' 
 fellow," and are themselves far poorer; who whet the 
 knife of the vivisectionist or heat his oven ; who are not 
 ashamed to admire "the creature's instinct " ; and flying 
 far beyond folly, have dared to resuscitate the theory of 
 animal machines. The "dog's instinct" and the "au- 
 tomaton-dog," in this age of psychology and science, 
 sound like strange anachronisms. An automaton he 
 certainly is; a machine working independently of his 
 control, the heart like the mill-wheel, keeping all in 
 
 291 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 motion, and the consciousness, like a person shut in the 
 mill garret, enjoying the view out of the window and 
 shaken by the thunder of the stones ; an automaton in 
 one corner of which a living spirit is confined : an au- 
 tomaton like man. Instinct again he certainly possesses. 
 Inherited aptitudes are his, inherited frailties. Some 
 things he at once views and understands, as though he 
 were awakened from a sleep, as though he came " trail- 
 ing clouds of glory." But with him, as with man, the 
 field of instinct is limited ; its utterances are obscure and 
 occasional ; and about the far larger part of life both the 
 dog and his master must conduct their steps by deduc- 
 tion and observation. 
 
 The leading distinction between dog and man, after 
 and perhaps before the different duration of their lives, 
 is that the one can speak and that the other cannot. 
 The absence of the power of speech confines the dog 
 in the development of his intellect. It hinders him 
 from many speculations, for words are the beginning 
 of metaphysic. At the same blow it saves him from 
 many superstitions, and his silence has won for him a 
 higher name for virtue than his conduct justifies. The 
 faults of the dog are many. He is vainer than man, 
 singularly greedy of notice, singularly intolerant of rid- 
 icule, suspicious like the deaf, jealous to the degree of 
 frenzy, and radically devoid of truth. The day of an 
 intelligent small dog is passed in the manufacture and 
 the laborious communication of falsehood ; he lies with 
 his tail, he lies with his eye, he lies with his protesting 
 paw; and when he rattles his dish or scratches at the 
 door his purpose is other than appears. But he has 
 some apology to offer for the vice. Many of the signs 
 
 -9\ 
 
THE CHARACTER OF DOGS 
 
 which form his dialect have come to bear an arbitrary 
 meaning, clearly understood both by his master and 
 himself; yet when a new want arises he must either 
 invent a new vehicle of meaning or wrest an old one to 
 a different purpose; and this necessity frequently re- 
 curring must tend to lessen his idea of the sanctity of 
 symbols. Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own con- 
 science, and draws, with a human nicety, the distinc- 
 tion between formal and essential truth. Of his pun- 
 ning perversions, his legitimate dexterity with symbols, 
 he is even vain ; but when he has told and been detected 
 in a lie, there is not a hair upon his body but confesses 
 guilt. To a dog of gentlemanly feeling theft and false- 
 hood are disgraceful vices. The canine, like the human, 
 gentleman demands in his misdemeanours Montaigne's 
 "je ne sais quoi de genereux. " He is never more than 
 half ashamed of having barked or bitten ; and for those 
 faults into which he has been led by the desire to shine 
 before a lady of his race, he retains, even under physi- 
 cal correction, a share of pride. But to be caught lying, 
 if he understands it, instantly uncurls his fleece. 
 
 Just as among dull observers he preserves a name for 
 truth, the dog has been credited with modesty. It is 
 amazing how the use of language blunts the faculties of 
 man — that because vainglory finds no vent in words, 
 creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to de- 
 tect a fault so gross and obvious. If a small spoiled 
 dog were suddenly to be endowed with speech, he 
 would prate interminably, and still about himself; when 
 we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a 
 garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his 
 foible for falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone 
 
 295 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 far to weary out our love. I was about to compare him 
 to Sir Willoughby Patterne, but the Patternes have a 
 manlier sense of their own merits ; and the parallel, be- 
 sides, is ready. Hans Christian Andersen, as we behold 
 him in his startling memoirs, thrilling from top to toe 
 with an excruciating vanity, and scouting even along 
 the street for shadows of offence — here was the talk- 
 ing dog. 
 
 It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed 
 the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. 
 The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his 
 independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the 
 audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised 
 and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once 
 he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the 
 Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentle- 
 man of leisure ; and except the few whom we keep 
 working, the whole race grew more and more self- 
 conscious, mannered and affected. The number of 
 things that a small dog does naturally is strangely small. 
 Enjoying better spirits and not crushed under material 
 cares, he is far more theatrical than average man. His 
 whole life, if he be a dog of any pretension to gallantry, 
 is spent in a vain show, and in the hot pursuit of admi- 
 ration. Take out your puppy for a walk, and you will 
 find the little ball of fur clumsy, stupid, bewildered, 
 but natural. Let but a few months pass, and when 
 you repeat the process you will find nature buried in 
 convention. He will do nothing plainly; but the sim- 
 plest processes of our material life will all be bent into 
 the forms of an elaborate and mysterious etiquette. In- 
 stinct, says the fool, has awakened. But it is not so. 
 
 296 
 
THE CHARACTER OF DOGS 
 
 Some dogs — some, at the very least — if they be kept 
 separate from others, remain quite natural ; and these, 
 when at length they meet with a companion of experi- 
 ence, and have the game explained to them, distinguish 
 themselves by the severity of their devotion to its rules. 
 I wish I were allowed to tell a story which would radi- 
 antly illuminate the point; but men, like dogs, have an 
 elaborate and mysterious etiquette. It is their bond of 
 sympathy that both are the children of convention. 
 
 The person, man or dog, who has a conscience is 
 eternally condemned to some degree of humbug; the 
 sense of the law in their members fatally precipitates 
 either towards a frozen and affected bearing. And the 
 converse is true; and in the elaborate and conscious 
 manners of the dog, moral opinions and the love of the 
 ideal stand confessed. To follow for ten minutes in the 
 street some sv/aggering, canine cavalier, is to receive a 
 lesson in dramatic art and the cultured conduct of the 
 body ; in every act and gesture you see him true to a re- 
 fined conception; and the dullest cur, beholding him, 
 pricks up his ear and proceeds to imitate and parody 
 that charming ease. For to be a high-mannered and 
 high-minded gentleman, careless, affable, and gay, is 
 the inborn pretension of the dog. The large dog, so 
 much lazier, so much more weighed upon with matter, 
 so majestic in repose, so beautiful in effort, is born with 
 the dramatic means to wholly represent the part. And 
 it is more pathetic and perhaps more instructive to con- 
 sider the small dog in his conscientious and imperfect 
 efforts to outdo Sir Philip Sidney. For the ideal of the 
 dog is feudal and religious; the ever-present polythe- 
 ism, the whip-bearing Olympus of mankind, rules them 
 
 297 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 on the one hand ; on the other, their singular difference 
 of size and strength among themselves effectually pre- 
 vents the appearance of the democratic notion. Or we 
 might more exactly compare their society to the curious 
 spectacle presented by a school — ushers, monitors, and 
 big and little boys — qualified by one circumstance, the 
 introduction of the other sex. In each, we should ob- 
 serve a somewhat similar tension of manner, and some- 
 what similar points of honour. In each the larger animal 
 keeps a contemptuous good humour; in each the smaller 
 annoys him with wasp-like impudence, certain of prac- 
 tical immunity ; in each we shall find a double life pro- 
 ducing double characters, and an excursive and noisy 
 heroism combined with a fair amount of practical timid- 
 ity. I have known dogs, and I have known school 
 heroes that, set aside the fur, could hardly have been 
 told apart; and if we desire to understand the chivalry 
 of old, we must turn to the school playfields or the 
 dungheap where the dogs are trooping. 
 
 Woman, with the dog, has been long enfranchised. 
 Incessant massacre of female innocents has changed the 
 proportions of the sexes and perverted their relations. 
 Thus, when we regard the manners of the dog, we see 
 a romantic and monogamous animal, once perhaps as 
 delicate as the cat, at war with impossible conditions. 
 Man has much to answer for; and the part he plays is 
 yet more damnable and parlous than Corin's in the eyes 
 of Touchstone. But his intervention has at least created 
 an imperial situation for the rare surviving ladies. In 
 that society they reign without a rival : conscious queens ; 
 and in the only instance of a canine wife-beater that has 
 ever fallen under my notice, the criminal was somewhat 
 
 298 
 
THE CHARACTER OF DOGS 
 
 excused by the circumstances of his story. He is a lit- 
 tle, very alert, well-bred, intelligent Skye, as black as 
 a hat, with a wet bramble for a nose and two cairn- 
 gorms for eyes. To the human observer, he is decidedly 
 well-looking; but to the ladies of his race he seems ab- 
 horrent. A thorough elaborate gentleman, of the plume 
 and sword-knot order, he was born with a nice sense 
 of gallantry to women. He took at their hands the 
 most outrageous treatment ; I have heard him bleating 
 like a sheep, I have seen him streaming blood, and his 
 ear tattered like a regimental banner; and yet he would 
 scorn to make reprisals. Nay more, when a human 
 lady upraised the contumelious whip against the very 
 dame who had been so cruelly misusing him, my little 
 great-heart gave but one hoarse cry and fell upon the 
 tyrant tooth and nail. This is the tale of a soul's trag- 
 edy. After three years of unavailing chivalry, he sud- 
 denly, in one hour, threw off the yoke of obligation ; 
 had he been Shakespeare he would then have written 
 Trottm and Cressida to brand the offending sex; but 
 being only a little dog, he began to bite them. The 
 surprise of the ladies whom he attacked indicated the 
 monstrosity of his offence ; but he had fairly beaten off 
 his better angel, fairly committed moral suicide; for al- 
 most in the same hour, throwing aside the last rags of 
 decency, he proceeded to attack the aged also. The fact 
 is worth remark, showing, as it does, that ethical laws 
 are common both to dogs and men ; and that with both 
 a single deliberate violation of the conscience loosens all. 
 " But while the lamp holds on to burn," says the para- 
 phrase, u the greatest sinner may return." I have been 
 cheered to see symptoms of effectual penitence in my 
 
 299 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 sweet ruffian ; and by the handling that he accepted un- 
 complainingly the other day from an indignant fair one, 
 I begin to hope the period of Sturm und Drang is 
 closed. 
 
 All these little gentlemen are subtle casuists. The 
 duty to the female dog is plain ; but where competing 
 duties rise, down they will sit and study them out, like 
 Jesuit confessors. I knew another little Skye, some- 
 what plain in manner and appearance, but a creature 
 compact of amiability and solid wisdom. His family 
 going abroad for a winter, he was received for that 
 period by an uncle in the same city. The winter over, 
 his own family home again, and his own house (of 
 which he was very proud) reopened, he found himself 
 in a dilemma between two conflicting duties of loyalty 
 and gratitude. His old friends were not to be neg- 
 lected, but it seemed hardly decent to desert the new. 
 This was how he solved the problem. Every morning, 
 as soon as the door was opened, off posted Coolin to 
 his uncle's, visited the children in the nursery, saluted 
 the whole family, and was back at home in time for 
 breakfast and his bit of fish. Nor was this done with- 
 out a sacrifice on his part, sharply felt ; for he had to 
 forego the particular honour and jewel of his day — his 
 morning's walk with my father. And, perhaps from 
 this cause, he gradually wearied of and relaxed the prac- 
 tice, and at length returned entirely to his ancient hab- 
 its. But the same decision served him in another and 
 more distressing case of divided duty, which happened 
 not long after. He was not at all a kitchen dog, but the 
 cook had nursed him with unusual kindness during the 
 distemper; and though he did not adore her as he 
 
 300 
 
THE CHARACTER OF DOGS 
 
 adored my father — although (born snob) he was criti- 
 cally conscious of her position as " only a servant " — 
 he still cherished for her a special gratitude. Well, the 
 cook left, and retired some streets away to lodgings of 
 her own ; and there was Coolin in precisely the same 
 situation with any young gentleman who has had the 
 inestimable benefit of a faithful nurse. The canine 
 conscience did not solve the problem with a pound of 
 tea at Christmas. No longer content to pay a flying 
 visit, it was the whole forenoon that he dedicated to his 
 solitary friend. And so, day by day, he continued to 
 comfort her solitude until (for some reason which I 
 could never understand and cannot approve) he was 
 kept locked up to break him of the graceful habit. Here, 
 it is not the similarity, it is the difference, that is worthy 
 of remark; the clearly marked degrees of gratitude 
 and the proportional duration of his visits. Anything 
 further removed from instinct it were hard to fancy ; 
 and one is even stirred to a certain impatience with 
 a character so destitute of spontaneity, so passionless 
 in justice, and so priggishly obedient to the voice of 
 reason. 
 
 There are not many dogs like this good Coolin, and 
 not many people. But the type is one well marked, 
 both in the human and the canine family. Gallantry 
 was not his aim, but a solid and somewhat oppressive 
 respectability. He was a sworn foe to the unusual and 
 the conspicuous, a praiser of the golden mean, a kind 
 of city uncle modified by Cheeryble. And as he was 
 precise and conscientious in all the steps of his own 
 blameless course, he looked for the same precision and 
 an even greater gravity in the bearing of his deity, my 
 
 301 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 father. It was no sinecure to be Coolin's idol : he was 
 exacting like a rigid parent; and at every sign of levity 
 in the man whom he respected, he announced loudly 
 the death of virtue and the proximate fall of the pillars 
 of the earth. 
 
 I have called him a snob ; but all dogs are so, though 
 in varying degrees. It is hard to follow their snobbery 
 among themselves; for though I think we can perceive 
 distinctions of rank, we cannot grasp what is the crite- 
 rion. Thus in Edinburgh, in a good part of the town, 
 there were several distinct societies or clubs that met in 
 the morning to — the phrase is technical — to " rake the 
 backets " in a troop. A friend of mine, the master of 
 three dogs, was one day surprised to observe that they 
 had left one club and joined another; but whether it 
 was a rise or a fall, and the result of an invitation or an 
 expulsion, was more than he could guess. And this 
 illustrates pointedly our ignorance of the real life of 
 dogs, their social ambitions and their social hierarchies. 
 At least, in their dealings with men they are not only 
 conscious of sex, but of the difference of station. And 
 that in the most snobbish manner; for the poor man's 
 dog is not offended by the notice of the rich, and keeps 
 all his ugly feeling for those poorer or more ragged than 
 his master. And again, for every station they have an 
 ideal of behaviour, to which the master, under pain of 
 derogation, will do wisely to conform. How often has 
 not a cold glance of an eye informed me that my dog 
 was disappointed ; and how much more gladly would 
 he not have taken a beating than to be thus wounded 
 in the seat of piety ! 
 
 I knew one disrespectable dog. He was far liker a 
 302 
 
THE CHARACTER OF DOGS 
 
 cat; cared little or nothing for men, with whom he 
 merely coexisted as we do with cattle, and was entirely 
 devoted to the art of poaching. A house would not 
 hold him, and to live in a town was what he refused. 
 He led, I believe, a life of troubled but genuine pleasure, 
 and perished beyond all question in a trap. But this 
 was an exception, a marked reversion to the ancestral 
 type; like the hairy human infant. The true dog of the 
 nineteenth century, to judge by the remainder of my 
 fairly large acquaintance, is in love with respectability. 
 A street-dog was once adopted by a lady. While still 
 an Arab, he had done as Arabs do, gambolling in the 
 mud, charging into butchers' stalls, a cat-hunter, a 
 sturdy beggar, a common rogue and vagabond; but 
 with his rise into society he laid aside these inconsistent 
 pleasures. He stole no more, he hunted no more cats; 
 and conscious of his collar, he ignored his old compan- 
 ions. Yet the canine upper class was never brought to 
 recognize the upstart, and from that hour, except for 
 human countenance, he was alone. Friendless, shorn 
 of his sports and the habits of a lifetime, he still lived in 
 a glory of happiness, content with his acquired respecta- 
 bility, and with no care but to support it solemnly. 
 Are we to condemn or praise this self-made dog ? We 
 praise his human brother. And thus to conquer vicious 
 habits is as rare with dogs as with men. With the 
 more part, for all their scruple-mongering and moral 
 thought, the vices that are born with them remain in- 
 vincible throughout; and they live all their years, glory- 
 ing in their virtues, but still the slaves of their defects. 
 Thus the sage Coolin was a thief to the last; among a 
 thousand peccadilloes, a whole goose and a whole cold 
 
 303 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 leg of mutton lay upon his conscience; but Woggs, 1 
 whose soul's shipwreck in the matter of gallantry I have 
 recounted above, has only twice been known to steal, 
 and has often nobly conquered the temptation. The 
 eighth is his favourite commandment. There is some- 
 thing painfully human in these unequal virtues and mor- 
 tal frailties of the best. Still more painful is the bearing 
 of those "stammering professors " in the house of sick- 
 ness and under the terror of death. It is beyond a 
 doubt to me that, somehow or other, the dog connects 
 together, or confounds, the uneasiness of sickness and 
 the consciousness of guilt. To the pains of the body 
 he often adds the tortures of the conscience; and at 
 these times his haggard protestations form, in regard to 
 the human deathbed, a dreadful parody or parallel. 
 
 I once supposed that I had found an inverse relation 
 between the double etiquette which dogs obey; and 
 that those who were most addicted to the showy street 
 life among other dogs were less careful in the practice 
 of home virtues for the tyrant man. But the female 
 dog, that mass of carneying affectations, shines equally 
 in either sphere; rules her rough posse of attendant 
 swains with unwearying tact and gusto ; and with her 
 master and mistress pushes the arts of insinuation to 
 their crowning point. The attention of man and the 
 regard of other dogs flatter (it would thus appear) the 
 same sensibility ; but perhaps, if we could read the 
 canine heart, they would be found to flatter it in very 
 
 1 Walter, Watty, Woggy, Woggs, Wogg, and lastly Bogue; under 
 which last name he fell in battle some twelve months ago. Glory was 
 his aim and he attained it ; for his icon, by the hand of Caldecott, now 
 lies among the treasures of the nation. 
 
 304 
 
THE CHARACTER OF DOGS 
 
 different degrees. Dogs live with man as courtiers 
 round a monarch, steeped in the flattery of his notice 
 and enriched with sinecures. To push their favour in 
 this world of pickings and caresses is, perhaps, the busi- 
 ness of their lives ; and their joys may lie outside. I am 
 in despair at our persistent ignorance. I read in the 
 lives of our companions the same processes of reason, 
 the same antique and fatal conflicts of the right against 
 the wrong, and of unbitted nature with too rigid custom ; 
 1 see them with our weaknesses, vain, false, inconstant 
 against appetite, and with our one stalk of virtue, de- 
 voted to the dream of an ideal ; and yet, as they hurry 
 by me on the street with tail in air, or come singly to 
 solicit my regard, I must own the secret purport of their 
 lives is still inscrutable to man. Is man the friend, or is 
 he the patron only ? Have they indeed forgotten na- 
 ture's voice? or are those moments snatched from 
 courtiership when they touch noses with the tinker's 
 mongrel, the brief reward and pleasure of their artificial 
 lives ? Doubtless, when man shares with his dog the 
 toils of a profession and the pleasures of an art, as with 
 the shepherd or the poacher, the affection warms and 
 strengthens till it fills the soul. But doubtless, also, the 
 masters are, in many cases, the object of a merely in- 
 terested cultus, sitting aloft like Louis Quatorze, giving 
 and receiving flattery and favour; and the dogs, like 
 the majority of men, have but foregone their true exist- 
 ence and become the dupes of their ambition. 
 
 305 
 
XIII. "a penny plain and twopence coloured " 
 
 THESE words will be familiar to all students of 
 Skelt's Juvenile Drama. That national monu- 
 ment, after having changed its name to Park's, to 
 Webb's, to Redington's, and last of all to Pollock's, 
 has now become, for the most part, a memory. Some 
 of its pillars, like Stonehenge, are still afoot, the rest 
 clean vanished. It may be the Museum numbers a full 
 set; and Mr. Ionides perhaps, or else her gracious 
 Majesty, may boast their great collections; but to the 
 plain private person they are become, like Raphaels, 
 unattainable. I have, at different times, possessed 
 Aladdin, The Red Rover, The Blind Boy, The Old Oak 
 Chest, The Wood Dcemon, Jack Sheppard, The Miller 
 and his Men, Der Freischut^, The Smuggler, The For- 
 est of Bondy, Robin Hood, The Waterman, Richard L, 
 My Poll and my Partner Joe, The Inchcape Bell ( im- 
 perfect ), and Three-Fingered Jack, the Terror of Ja- 
 maica; and I have assisted others in the illumination of 
 The Maid of the Inn and The Battle of Waterloo. In 
 this roll-call of stirring names you read the evidences 
 of a happy childhood ; and though not half of them are 
 still to be procured of any living stationer, in the mind 
 of their once happy owner all survive, kaleidoscopes of 
 changing pictures, echoes of the past. 
 
 306 
 
"A PENNY PLAIN AND TWOPENCE COLOURED" 
 
 There stands, I fancy, to this day (but now how 
 fallen ! ) a certain stationer's shop at a corner of the wide 
 thoroughfare that joins the city of my childhood with 
 the sea. When, upon any Saturday, we made a party 
 to behold the ships, we passed that corner; and since 
 in those days I loved a ship as a man loves Burgundy 
 or daybreak, this of itself had been enough to hallow 
 it. But there was more than that. In the Leith Walk 
 window, all the year round, there stood displayed a 
 theatre in working order, with a " forest set," a " com- 
 bat," and a few " robbers carousing" in the slides; and 
 below and about, dearer tenfold to me! the plays them- 
 selves, those budgets of romance, lay tumbled one 
 upon another. Long and often have I lingered there 
 with empty pockets. One figure, we shall say, was 
 visible in the first plate of characters, bearded, pistol in 
 hand, or drawing to his ear the clothyard arrow; I 
 would spell the name: was it Macaire, or Long Tom 
 Coffin, or GrindorT, 2d dress ? O, how I would long 
 to see the rest! how — if the name by chance were 
 hidden — I would wonder in what play he figured, and 
 what immortal legend justified his attitude and strange 
 apparel ! And then to go within, to announce yourself 
 as an intending purchaser, and, closely watched, be 
 suffered to undo those bundles and breathlessly devour 
 those pages of gesticulating villains, epileptic combats, 
 bosky forests, palaces and war-ships, frowning fort- 
 resses and prison vaults — it was a giddy joy. That 
 shop, which was dark and smelt of Bibles, was a load- 
 stone rock for all that bore the name of boy. They 
 could not pass it by, nor, having entered, leave it. It 
 was a place besieged; the shopmen, like the Jews 
 
 307 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 rebuilding Salem, had a double task. They kept us at 
 the stick's end, frowned us down, snatched each play 
 out of our hand ere we were trusted with another; 
 and, increditable as it may sound, used to demand of 
 us upon our entrance, like banditti, if we came with 
 money or with empty hand. Old Mr. Smith himself, 
 worn out with my eternal vacillation, once swept the 
 treasures from before me, with the cry: "I do not 
 believe, child, that you are an intending purchaser at 
 all!" These were the dragons of the garden; but for 
 such joys of paradise we could have faced the Terror 
 of Jamaica himself. Every sheet we fingered was an- 
 other lightning glance into obscure, delicious story; it 
 was like wallowing in the raw stuff of story-books. I 
 know nothing to compare with it save now and then in 
 dreams, when I am privileged to read in certain unwrit 
 stories of adventure, from which I awake to find the 
 world all vanity. The crux of Buridan's donkey was 
 as nothing to the uncertainty of the boy as he handled 
 and lingered and doated on these bundles of delight; 
 there was a physical pleasure in the sight and touch of 
 them which he would jealously prolong; and when at 
 length the deed was done, the play selected, and the 
 impatient shopman had brushed the rest into the gray 
 portfolio, and the boy was forth again, a little late for 
 dinner, the lamps springing into light in the blue win- 
 ter's even, and The Miller, or The Raver, or some 
 kindred drama clutched against his side — on what gay 
 feet he ran, and how he laughed aloud in exultation I 
 I can hear that laughter still. Out of all the years of 
 my life, I can recall but one home-coming to compare 
 with these, and that was on the night when I brought 
 
 308 
 
"A PENNY PLAIN AND TWOPENCE COLOURED" 
 
 back with me the Arabian Entertainments in the fat, 
 old, double-columned volume with the prints. I was 
 just well into the story of the Hunchback, I remember, 
 when my clergyman-grandfather ( a man we counted 
 pretty stiff) came in behind me. I grew blind with ter- 
 ror. But instead of ordering the book away, he said he 
 envied me. Ah, well he might! 
 
 The purchase and the first half-hour at home, that was 
 the summit. Thenceforth the interest declined by little 
 and little. The fable, as set forth in the play-book, 
 proved to be not worthy of the scenes and characters : 
 what fable would not? Such passages as: " Scene 6. 
 The Hermitage. Night set scene. Place back of scene 
 i, No. 2, at back of stage and hermitage, Fig. 2, out of 
 set piece, R. H. in a slanting direction " — such passages, 
 I say, though very practical, are hardly to be called good 
 reading. Indeed, as literature, these dramas did not 
 much appeal to me. I forget the very outline of the 
 plots. Of The Blind Boy, beyond the fact that he was 
 a most injured prince and once, I think, abducted, I 
 know nothing. And The Old Oak Chest, what was it 
 all about? that proscript (1st dress), that prodigious 
 number of banditti, that old woman with the broom, 
 and the magnificent kitchen in the third act (was it in 
 the third?) — they are all fallen in a deliquium, swim 
 faintly in my brain, and mix and vanish. 
 
 I cannot deny that joy attended the illumination ; nor 
 can I quite forgive that child who, wilfully foregoing 
 pleasure, stoops to "twopence coloured." With crim- 
 son lake (hark to the sound of it — crimson lake! — the 
 horns of elf-land are not richer on the ear) — with crim- 
 son lake and Prussian blue a certain purple is to be com- 
 
 309 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 pounded which, for cloaks especially, Titian could not 
 equal. The latter colour with gamboge, a hated name 
 although an exquisite pigment, supplied a green of such a 
 savoury greenness that to-day my heart regrets it. Nor 
 can I recall without a tender weakness the very aspect 
 of the water where I dipped my brush. Yes, there was 
 pleasure in the painting. But when all was painted, it 
 is needless to deny it, all was spoiled. You might, in- 
 deed, set up a scene or two to look at ; but to cut the 
 figures out was simply sacrilege; nor could any child 
 twice court the tedium, the worry, and the long-drawn 
 disenchantment of an actual performance. Two days 
 after the purchase the honey had been sucked. Parents 
 used to complain ; they thought I wearied of my play. 
 It was not so: no more than a person can be said 
 to have wearied of his dinner when he leaves the 
 bones and dishes ; I had got the marrow of it and said 
 grace. 
 
 Then was the time to turn to the back of the play- 
 book and to study that enticing double file of names, 
 where poetry, for the true child of Skelt, reigned happy 
 and glorious like her Majesty the Queen. Much as I 
 have travelled in these realms of gold, I have yet seen, 
 upon that map or abstract, names of El Dorados that 
 still haunt the ear of memory, and are still but names. 
 The Floating Beacon — why was that denied me ? or 
 The Wreck Ashore} Sixteen-String Jack, whom I did 
 not even guess to be a highwayman, troubled me awake 
 and haunted my slumbers ; and there is one sequence 
 of three from that enchanted calendar that I still at times 
 recall, like a loved verse of poetry : Lodoi&ka, Silver Pal- 
 ace, Echo of Westminster Bridge. Names, bare names y 
 
 310 
 
"A PENNY PLAIN AND TWOPENCE COLOURED" 
 
 are surely more to children than we poor, grown-up, 
 obliterated fools remember. 
 
 The name of Skelt itself has always seemed a part and 
 parcel of the charm of his productions. It may be dif- 
 ferent with the rose, but the attraction of this paper 
 drama sensibly declined when Webb had crept into the 
 rubric : a poor cuckoo, flaunting in Skelt's nest. And 
 now we have reached Pollock, sounding deeper gulfs. 
 Indeed, this name of Skelt appears so stagey and piratic, 
 that I will adopt it boldly to design these qualities. 
 Skeltery, then, is a quality of much art. It is even to 
 be found, with reverence be it said, among the works 
 of nature. The stagey is its generic name; but it is an 
 old, insular, home-bred staginess ; not French, domes- 
 tically British ; not of to-day, but smacking of O. Smith, 
 Fitzball, and the great age of melodrama: a peculiar 
 fragrance haunting it; uttering its unimportant message 
 in a tone of voice that has the charm of fresh antiquity. 
 I will not insist upon the art of Skelt's purveyors. These 
 wonderful characters that once so thrilled our soul with 
 their bold attitude, array of deadly engines and incom- 
 parable costume, to-day look somewhat pallidly; the 
 extreme hard favour of the heroine strikes me, I had al- 
 most said with pain ; the villain's scowl no longer thrills 
 me like a trumpet; and the scenes themselves, those 
 once unparalleled landscapes, seem the efforts of a pren- 
 tice hand. So much of fault we find ; but on the other 
 side the impartial critic rejoices to remark the presence 
 of a great unity of gusto; of those direct clap-trap 
 appeals, which a man is dead and buriable when he 
 fails to answer; of the footlight glamour, the ready- 
 made, bare-faced, transpontine picturesque, a thing noc 
 
 311 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 one with cold reality, but how much dearer to the 
 mind! 
 
 The scenery of Skeltdom — or, shall we say, the king- 
 dom of Transpontus ? — had a prevailing character. 
 Whether it set forth Poland as in The Blind Boy, or 
 Bohemia with The Miller and his Men, or Italy with 
 The Old Oak Chest, still it was Transpontus. A bota- 
 nist could tell it by the plants. The hollyhock was 
 all pervasive, running wild in deserts; the dock was 
 common, and the bending reed; and overshadowing 
 these were poplar, palm, potato tree, and Quercus Skel- 
 tica — brave growths. The caves were all embo welled 
 in the Surreyside formation ; the soil was all betrodden 
 by the light pump of T. P. Cooke. Skelt, to be sure, 
 had yet another, an oriental string : he held the gorgeous 
 east in fee ; and in the new quarter of Hyeres, say, in 
 the garden of the Hotel des Isles d'Or, you may behold 
 these blessed visions realised. But on these I will not 
 dwell; they were an outwork; it was in the occidental 
 scenery that Skelt was all himself. It had a strong fla- 
 vour of England ; it was a sort of indigestion of England 
 and drop-scenes, and I am bound to say was charming. 
 How the roads wander, how the castle sits upon the 
 hill, how the sun eradiates from behind the cloud, and 
 how the congregated clouds themselves uproll, as stiff 
 as bolsters! Here is the cottage interior, the usual first 
 flat, with the cloak upon the nail, the rosaries of onions, 
 the gun and powder-horn and corner-cupboard; here 
 is the inn (this drama must be nautical, I foresee Captain 
 Luff and Bold Bob Bowsprit) with the red curtain, pipes, 
 spittoons, and eight-day clock ; and there again is that 
 impressive dungeon with the chains, which was so dull 
 
 312 
 
"A PENNY PLAIN AND TWOPENCE COLOURED" 
 
 to colour. England, the hedgerow elms, the thin brick 
 houses, windmills, glimpses of the navigable Thames 
 — England, when at last I came to visit it, was only 
 Skelt made evident: to cross the border was, for the 
 Scotsman, to come home to Skelt; there was the inn- 
 sign and there the horse-trough, all foreshadowed in 
 the faithful Skelt. If, at the ripe age of fourteen years, 
 I bought a certain cudgel, got a friend to load it, and 
 thenceforward walked the tame ways of the earth my 
 own ideal, radiating pure romance — still I was but a 
 puppet in the hand of Skelt; the original of that regret- 
 ted bludgeon, and surely the antitype of all the bludgeon 
 kind, greatly improved from Cruikshank, had adorned 
 the hand of Jonathan Wild, pi. i. "This is mastering 
 me," as Whitman cries, upon some lesser provocation. 
 What am I ? what are life, art, letters, the world, but 
 what my Skelt has made them ? He stamped himself 
 upon my immaturity. The world was plain before I 
 knew him, a poor penny world; but soon it was all 
 coloured with romance. If I go to the theatre to see a 
 good old melodrama, 'tis but Skelt a little faded. If I 
 visit a bold scene in nature, Skelt would have been 
 bolder ; there had been certainly a castle on that moun- 
 tain, and the hollow tree — that set piece — I seem to 
 miss it in the foreground. Indeed, out of this cut-and- 
 dry, dull, swaggering, obtrusive and infantile art, I seem 
 to have learned the very spirit of my life's enjoyment; 
 met there the shadows of the characters I was to read 
 about and love in a late future ; got the romance of Der 
 Freischiitz long ere I was to hear of Weber or the 
 mighty Formes ; acquired a gallery of scenes and char- 
 acters with which, in the silent theatre of the brain, I 
 
 3«3 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 might enact all novels and romances; and took from 
 these rude cuts an enduring and transforming pleasure. 
 Reader — and yourself? 
 
 A word of moral: it appears that B. Pollock, late J. 
 Redington, No. 73 Hoxton Street, not only publishes 
 twenty-three of these old stage favourites, but owns the 
 necessary plates and displays a modest readiness to issue 
 other thirty-three. If you love art, folly, or the bright 
 eyes of children, speed to Pollock's, or to Clarke's of 
 Garrick Street. In Pollock's list of publicanda I per- 
 ceive a pair of my ancient aspirations : Wreck Ashore 
 and Sixteen-String Jack ; and I cherish the belief that 
 when these shall see once more the light of day, B. Pol- 
 lock will remember this apologist. But, indeed, I have 
 a dream at times that is not all a dream. I seem to my- 
 self to wander in a ghostly street — E. W., I think, 
 the postal district — close below the fool's-cap of St. 
 Paul's, and yet within easy hearing of the echo of the 
 Abbey bridge. There in a dim shop, low in the roof 
 and smelling strong of glue and footlights, I find myself 
 in quaking treaty with great Skelt himself, the aborigi- 
 nal, all dusty from the tomb. I buy, with what a chok- 
 ing heart — I buy them all, all but the pantomimes; J 
 pay my mental money, and go forth ; and lo ! the pack- 
 ets are dust. 
 
 W 
 
XIV. A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S 
 
 THE books that we re-read the oftenest are not always 
 those that we admire the most; we choose and 
 we revisit them for many and various reasons, as we 
 choose and revisit human friends. One or two of 
 Scott's novels, Shakespeare, Moliere, Montaigne, The 
 Egoist, and the Vicomte de Bragelonne, form the inner 
 circle of my intimates. Behind these comes a good 
 troop of dear acquaintances; The Pilgrim's Progress in 
 the front rank, The Bible in Spain not far behind. There 
 are besides a certain number that look at me with re- 
 proach as I pass them by on my shelves : books that I 
 once thumbed and studied: houses which were once 
 like home to me, but where I now rarely visit. I am 
 on these sad terms (and blush to confess it) with Words- 
 worth, Horace, Burns and Hazlitt. Last of all, there is 
 the class of book that has its hour of brilliancy — glows, 
 sings, charms, and then fades again into insignificance 
 until the fit return. Chief of those who thus smile and 
 frown on me by turns, I must name Virgil and Herrick, 
 who, were they but 
 
 11 Their sometime selves the same throughout the year," 
 
 must have stood in the first company with the six 
 names of my continual literary intimates. To these six, 
 
 315 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 incongruous as they seem, I have long been faithful, 
 and hope to be faithful to the day of death. I have never 
 read the whole of Montaigne, but I do not like to be 
 long without reading some of him, and my delight in 
 what I do read never lessens. Of Shakespeare I have 
 read all but Richard III. , Henry VI. , Titus Andronicus, 
 and All's Well that Ends Well; and these, having al- 
 ready made all suitable endeavour, I now know that I 
 shall never read — to make up for which unfaithfulness 
 I could read much of the rest for ever. Of Moliere — 
 surely the next greatest name of Christendom — I could 
 tell a very similar story ; but in a little corner of a little 
 essay these princes are too much out of place, and I pre- 
 fer to pay my fealty and pass on. How often I have 
 read Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, or Redgauntlet, I have 
 no means of guessing, having begun young. But it is 
 either four or five times that I have read The Egoist, and 
 either five or six that I have read the Vicomte de Br age- 
 lonne. 
 
 Some, who would accept the others, may wonder 
 that I should have spent so much of this brief life of 
 ours over a work so little famous as the last. And, in- 
 deed, I am surprised myself; not at my own devotion, 
 but the coldness of the world. My acquaintance with 
 the Vicomte began, somewhat indirectly, in the year of 
 grace 1863, when I had the advantage of studying cer- 
 tain illustrated dessert plates in a hotel at Nice. The 
 name of d'Artagnan in the legends I already saluted like 
 an old friend, for I had met it the year before in a work 
 of Miss Yonge's. My first perusal was in one of those 
 pirated editions that swarmed at that time out of Brus- 
 sels, and ran to such a troop of neat and dwarfish vol- 
 
 316 
 
A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S 
 
 umes. I understood but little of the merits of the book; 
 my strongest memory is of the execution of d'Eymeric 
 and Lyodot — a strange testimony to the dulness of a 
 boy, who could enjoy the rough-and-tumble in the 
 Place de Greve, and forget d'Artagnan's visits to the two 
 financiers. My next reading was in winter-time, when 
 I lived alone upon the Pentlands. I would return in the 
 early night from one of my patrols with the shepherd ; 
 a friendly face would meet me in the door, a friendly re- 
 triever scurry upstairs to fetch my slippers; and I would 
 sit down with the Vicomte for a long, silent, solitary 
 lamp-light evening by the fire. And yet I know not 
 why I call it silent, when it was enlivened with such a 
 clatter of horse-shoes, and such a rattle of musketry, 
 and such a stir of talk; or why I call those evenings 
 solitary in which I gained so many friends. I would 
 rise from my book and pull the blind aside, and see the 
 snow and the glittering hollies chequer a Scotch gar- 
 den, and the winter moonlight brighten the white hills. 
 Thence I would turn again to that crowded and sunny 
 field of life in which it was so easy to forget myself, 
 my cares, and my surroundings : a place busy as a city, 
 bright as a theatre, thronged with memorable faces, and 
 sounding with delightful speech. I carried the thread 
 of that epic into my slumbers, I woke with it unbroken, 
 1 rejoiced to plunge into the book again at breakfast, it 
 was with a pang that I must lay it down and turn to 
 my own labours; for no part of the world has ever 
 seemed to me so charming as these pages, and not even 
 my friends are quite so real, perhaps quite so dear, as 
 d'Artagnan. 
 Since then I have been going to and fro at very brief 
 
 3*7 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 intervals in my favourite book; and I have now just 
 risen from my last (let me call it my fifth) perusal, hav- 
 ing liked it better and admired it more seriously than 
 ever. Perhaps I have a sense of ownership, being so 
 well known in these six volumes. Perhaps I think that 
 d'Artagnan delights to have me read of him, and Louis 
 Quatorze is gratified, and Fouquet throws me a look, 
 and Aramis, although he knows I do not love him, yet 
 plays to me with his best graces, as to an old patron of 
 the show. Perhaps, if I am not careful, something may 
 befall me like what befell George IV. about the battle of 
 Waterloo, and I may come to fancy the Vicomte one of 
 the first, and Heaven knows the best, of my own works. 
 At least, I avow myself a partisan; and when I compare 
 the popularity of the Vicomte with that of Monte Cristo, 
 or its own elder brother, the Trots Mousquetaires, I 
 confess I am both pained and puzzled. 
 
 To those who have already made acquaintance with 
 the titular hero in the pages of Vingt Ans Apres, per- 
 haps the name may act as a deterrent. A man might 
 well stand back if he supposed he were to follow, for 
 six volumes, so well-conducted, so fine-spoken, and 
 withal so dreary a cavalier as Bragelonne. But the fear 
 is idle. I may be said to have passed the best years of 
 my life in these six volumes, and my acquaintance with 
 Raoul has never gone beyond a bow ; and when he, who 
 has so long pretended to be alive, is at last suffered to 
 pretend to be dead, I am sometimes reminded of a say- 
 ing in an earlier volume : "Enfin, dit Miss Stewart, ' ' — 
 and it was of Bragelonne she spoke — " enfin il a fait 
 quelquechose : c'est, ma foil bien heureux." I am re- 
 minded of it, as I say; and the next moment, when 
 
 318 
 
A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S 
 
 Athos dies of his death, and my dear d'Artagnan bursts 
 into his storm of sobbing, I can but deplore my flip- 
 pancy. 
 
 Or perhaps it is La Valliere that the reader of Vingt 
 Ans Apris is inclined to flee. Well, he is right there 
 too, though not so right. Louise is no success. Her 
 creator has spared no pains ; she is well-meant, not ill- 
 designed, sometimes has a word that rings out true; 
 sometimes, if only for a breath, she may even engage 
 our sympathies. But I have never envied the King his 
 triumph. And so far from pitying Bragelonne for his 
 defeat, I could wish him no worse (not for lack of malice, 
 but imagination) than to be wedded to that lady. Ma- 
 dame enchants me; I can forgive that royal minx her 
 most serious offences; I can thrill and soften with the 
 King on that memorable occasion when he goes to up- 
 braid and remains to flirt; and when it comes to the 
 "Allons, aime^-moi done," it is my heart that melts in 
 the bosom of de Guiche. Not so with Louise. Readers 
 cannot fail to have remarked that what an author tells 
 us of the beauty or the charm of his creatures goes for 
 nought; that we know instantly better; that the heroine 
 cannot open her mouth but what, all in a moment, the 
 fine phrases of preparation fall from round her like the 
 robes from Cinderella, and she stands before us, self- 
 betrayed, as a poor, ugly, sickly wench, or perhaps a 
 strapping market-woman. Authors, at least, know it 
 well; a heroine will too often start the trick of "getting 
 ugly ; " and no disease is more difficult to cure. I said 
 authors ; but indeed I had a side eye to one author in 
 particular, with whose works I am very well acquainted, 
 though I cannot read them, and who has spent many 
 
 319 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 vigils in this cause, sitting beside his ailing puppets and 
 (like a magician) wearying his art to restore them to 
 youth and beauty. There are others who ride too high 
 for these misfortunes. Who doubts the loveliness of 
 Rosalind ? Arden itself was not more lovely. Who 
 ever questioned the perennial charm of Rose Jocelyn, 
 Lucy Desborough, or Clara Middleton ? fair women 
 with fair names, the daughters of George Meredith. 
 Elizabeth Bennet has but to speak, and I am at her 
 knees. Ah ! these are the creators of desirable women. 
 They would never have fallen in the mud with Dumas 
 and poor La Valliere. It is my only consolation that not 
 one of all of them, except the first, could have plucked 
 at the moustache of d' Artagnan. 
 
 Or perhaps, again, a proportion of readers stumble at 
 the threshold. In so vast a mansion there were sure to 
 be back stairs and kitchen offices where no one would 
 delight to linger; but it was at least unhappy that the 
 vestibule should be so badly lighted ; and until, in the 
 seventeenth chapter, d'Artagnan sets off to seek his 
 friends, I must confess, the book goes heavily enough. 
 But, from thenceforward, what a feast is spread ! Monk 
 kidnapped ; d'Artagnan enriched ; Mazarin's death ; the 
 ever delectable adventure of Belle Isle, wherein Aramis 
 outwits d'Artagnan, with its epilogue (vol. v. chap, 
 xxviii.), where d'Artagnan regains the moral superiority; 
 the love adventures at Fontainebleau, with St. Aignan's 
 story of the dryad and the business of de Guiche, de 
 Wardes, and Manicamp; Aramis made general of the 
 Jesuits; Aramis at the bastille; the night talk in the 
 forest of Senart; Belle Isle again, with the death of 
 Porthos ; and last, but not least, the taming of d' Arta- 
 
 320 
 
A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S 
 
 gnan the untamable, under the lash of the young King. 
 What other novel has such epic variety and nobility of 
 incident? often, if you will, impossible; often of the 
 order of an Arabian story ; and yet all based in human 
 nature. For if you come to that, what novel has more 
 human nature ? not studied with the microscope, but 
 seen largely, in plain daylight, with the natural eye ? 
 What novel has more good sense, and gaiety, and wit, 
 and unflagging, admirable literary skill ? Good souls, 
 I suppose, must sometimes read it in the blackguard 
 travesty of a translation. But there is no style so un- 
 translatable; light as a whipped trifle, strong as silk; 
 wordy like a village tale; pat like a general's despatch; 
 with every fault, yet never tedious ; with no merit, yet 
 inimitably right. And, once more, to make an end of 
 commendations, what novel is inspired with a more 
 unstrained or a more wholesome morality ? 
 
 Yes ; in spite of Miss Yonge, who introduced me to 
 the name of d'Artagnan only to dissuade me from a 
 nearer knowledge of the man, I have to add morality. 
 There is no quite good book without a good morality ; 
 but the world is wide, and so are morals. Out of two 
 people who have dipped into Sir Richard Burton's 
 Thousand and One Nights, one shall have been offended 
 by the animal details; another to whom these were 
 harmless, perhaps even pleasing, shall yet have been 
 shocked in his turn by the rascality and cruelty of all the 
 characters. Of two readers, again, one shall have been 
 pained by the morality of a religious memoir, one by 
 that of the Vicomte de Bragelonne. And the point is 
 that neither need be wrong. We shall always shock 
 each other both in life and art; we cannot get the sun 
 
 321 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 into our pictures, nor the abstract right (if there be such 
 a thing) into our books; enough if, in the one, there 
 glimmer some hint of the great light that blinds us from 
 heaven ; enough, if, in the other, there shine, even upon 
 foul details, a spirit of magnanimity. I would scarce 
 send to the Vicomte a reader who was in quest of what 
 we may call puritan morality. The ventripotent mu- 
 latto, the great eater, worker, earner and waster, the 
 man of much and witty laughter, the man of the great 
 heart and alas ! of the doubtful honesty, is a figure not 
 yet clearly set before the world ; he still awaits a sober 
 and yet genial portrait ; but with whatever art that may 
 be touched, and whatever indulgence, it will not be the 
 portrait of a precisian. Dumas was certainly not thinking 
 of himself, but of Planchet, when he put into the mouth 
 of d'Artagnan's old servant this excellent profession: 
 "Monsieur, j'etais une de ces bonnes pates d'hommes 
 que Dieu a fait pour s'animer pendant un certain 
 temps et pour trouver bonnes toutes choses qui accom- 
 pagnent leur sejour sur la terre. ' ' He was thinking, as 
 I say, of Planchet, to whom the words are aptly fitted ; 
 but they were fitted also to Planchet's creator; and per- 
 haps this struck him as he wrote, for observe what fol- 
 lows : "D' Artagnan s'assit alors pres de la fenetre, et, 
 cette philosophie de Planchet lui ay ant paru solide, il y 
 reva. " In a man who finds all things good, you will 
 scarce expect much zeal for negative virtues : the active 
 alone will have a charm for him ; abstinence, however 
 wise, however kind, will always seem to such a judge 
 entirely mean and partly impious. So with Dumas. 
 Chastity is not near his heart; nor yet, to his own sore 
 cost, that virtue of frugality which is the armour of the 
 
 322 
 
A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S 
 
 artist. Now, in the Vicomte, he had much to do with 
 the contest of Fouquet and Colbert. Historic justice 
 should be all upon the side of Colbert, of official hon- 
 esty, and fiscal competence. And Dumas knew it well : 
 three times at least he shows his knowledge ; once it is 
 but flashed upon us and received with the laughter of 
 Fouquet himself, in the jesting controversy in the gar- 
 dens of Saint Mande ; once it is touched on by Aramis 
 in the forest of Senart ; in the end, it is set before us 
 clearly in one dignified speech of the triumphant Colbert. 
 But in Fouquet, the waster, the lover of good cheer and 
 wit and art, the swift transactor of much business, 
 " Vhomme de bruit, Vhomme de plaisir, I'homme qui 
 n'est que parceque les autres sont," Dumas saw some- 
 thing of himself and drew the figure the more tenderly. 
 It is to me even touching to see how he insists on Fou- 
 quet's honour; not seeing, you might think, that un- 
 flawed honour is impossible to spendthrifts ; but rather, 
 perhaps, in the light of his own life, seeing it too well, 
 and clinging the more to what was left. Honour can 
 survive a wound ; it can live and thrive without a mem- 
 ber. The man rebounds from his disgrace ; he begins 
 fresh foundations on the ruins of the old ; and when his 
 sword is broken, he will do valiantly with his dagger. 
 So it is with Fouquet in the book ; so it was with Dumas 
 on the battlefield of life. 
 
 To cling to what is left of any damaged quality is 
 virtue in the man; but perhaps to sing its praises is 
 scarcely to be called morality in the writer. And it is 
 elsewhere, it is in the character of d'Artagnan, that we 
 must look for that spirit of morality, which is one of the 
 chief merits of the book, makes one of the main joys of 
 
 323 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 its perusal, and sets it high above more popular rivals. 
 Athos, with the coming of years, has declined too much 
 into the preacher, and the preacher of a sapless creed; 
 but d'Artagnan has mellowed into a man so witty, 
 rough, kind and upright, that he takes the heart by 
 storm. There is nothing of the copy-book about his 
 virtues, nothing of the drawing-room in his fine, nat- 
 ural civility ; he will sail near the wind ; he is no district 
 visitor — no Wesley or Robespierre; his conscience is 
 void of all refinement whether for good or evil ; but the 
 whole man rings true like a good sovereign. Readers 
 who have approached the Vicomte, not across country, 
 but by the legitimate, five-volumed avenue of the Mous- 
 quetaires and Vingt Ans Apres, will not have forgotten 
 d'Artagnan's ungentlemanly and perfectly improbable 
 trick upon Milady. What a pleasure it is, then, what a 
 reward, and how agreeable a lesson, to see the old cap- 
 tain humble himself to the son of the man whom he had 
 personated! Here, and throughout, if I am to choose 
 virtues for myself or my friends, let me choose the vir- 
 tues of d'Artagnan. I do not say there is no character 
 as well drawn in Shakespeare; I do say there is none 
 that I love so wholly. There are many spiritual eyes 
 that seem to spy upon our actions — eyes of the dead 
 and the absent, whom we imagine to behold us in our 
 most private hours, and whom we fear and scruple to 
 offend: our witnesses and judges. And among these, 
 even if you should think me childish, I must count my 
 d'Artagnan — not d'Artagnan of the memoirs whom 
 Thackeray pretended to prefer — a preference, I take the 
 freedom of saying, in which he stands alone; not the 
 d'Artagnan of flesh and blood, but him of the ink and 
 
 324 
 
A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S 
 
 paper; not Nature's, but Dumas's. And this is the par- 
 ticular crown and triumph of the artist — not to be true 
 merely, but to be lovable; not simply to convince, but 
 to enchant. 
 
 There is yet another point in the Vicomte which I 
 find incomparable. I can recall no other work of the 
 imagination in which the end of life is represented with 
 so nice a tact. I was asked the other day if Dumas 
 made me laugh or cry. Well, in this my late fifth read- 
 ing of the Vicomte, I did laugh once at the small Coque- 
 lin de Voliere business, and was perhaps a thought 
 surprised at having done so : to make up for it, I smiled 
 continually. But for tears, I do not know. If you put 
 a pistol to my throat, I must own the tale trips upon a 
 very airy foot — within a measurable distance of unreal- 
 ity ; and for those who like the big guns to be discharged 
 and the great passions to appear authentically, it may 
 even seem inadequate from first to last. Not so to me; 
 I cannot count that a poor dinner, or a poor book, 
 where I meet with those I love; and, above all, in this 
 last volume, I find a singular charm of spirit. It breathes 
 a pleasant and a tonic sadness, always brave, never hys- 
 terical. Upon the crowded, noisy life of this long tale, 
 evening gradually falls ; and the lights are extinguished, 
 and the heroes pass away one by one. One by one 
 they go, and not a regret embitters their departure ; the 
 young succeed them in their places, Louis Quatorze is 
 swelling larger and shining broader, another generation 
 and another France dawn on the horizon; but for us 
 and these old men whom we have loved so long the 
 inevitable end draws near and is welcome. To read 
 this well is to anticipate experience. Ah, if only when 
 
 525 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 these hours of the long shadows fall for us in reality 
 and not in figure, we may hope to face them with a 
 mind as quiet! 
 
 But my paper is running out; the siege guns are fir- 
 ing on the Dutch frontier ; and I must say adieu for the 
 fifth time to my old comrade fallen on the field of glory. 
 Adieu — rather au revoir! Yet a sixth time, dearest 
 d'Artagnan, we shall kidnap Monk and take horse to- 
 gether for Belle Isle. 
 
 3* 
 
XV. A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE 
 
 IN anything fit to be called by the name of reading, 
 the process itself should be absorbing and voluptu- 
 ous ; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of 
 ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled 
 with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, inca- 
 pable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if 
 the book be eloquent, should run thenceforward in our 
 ears like the noise of breakers, and the story, if it be a 
 story, repeat itself in a thousand coloured pictures to 
 the eye. It was for this last pleasure that we read so 
 closely, and loved our books so dearly, in the bright, 
 troubled period of boyhood. Eloquence and thought, 
 character and conversation, were but obstacles to brush 
 aside as we dug blithely after a certain sort of incident, 
 like a pig for truffles. For my part, I liked a story to 
 begin with an old wayside inn where, "towards the close 
 of the year 17 — ," several gentlemen in three-cocked 
 hats were playing bowls. A friend of mine preferred 
 the Malabar coast in a storm, with a ship beating to 
 windward, and a scowling fellow of Herculean propor- 
 tions striding along the beach; he, to be sure, was a 
 pirate. This was further afield than my home-keeping 
 fancy loved to travel, and designed altogether for a larger 
 canvas than the tales that I affected. Give me a high- 
 wayman and I was full to the brim ; a Jacobite would 
 
 327 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 do, but the highwayman was my favourite dish. I can 
 still hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moon- 
 lit lane; night and the coming of day are still related in 
 my mind with the doings of John Rann or Jerry Aber- 
 shaw; and the words " postchaise," the "great North 
 road," "ostler," and "nag" still sound in my ears like 
 poetry. One and all, at least, and each with his par- 
 ticular fancy, we read story-books in childhood, not for 
 eloquence or character or thought, but for some quality 
 of the brute incident. That quality was not mere blood- 
 shed or wonder. Although each of these was welcome 
 in its place, the charm for the sake of which we read 
 depended on something different from either. My elders 
 used to read novels aloud ; and I can still remember four 
 different passages which I heard, before I was ten, with 
 the same keen and lasting pleasure. One I discovered 
 long afterwards to be the admirable opening of What 
 will he Do with It: it was no wonder I was pleased with 
 that. The other three still remain unidentified. One 
 is a little vague; it was about a dark, tall house at night, 
 and people groping on the stairs by the light that es- 
 caped from the open door of a sickroom. In another, 
 a lover left a ball, and went walking in a cool, dewy 
 park, whence he could watch the lighted windows and 
 the figures of the dancers as they moved. This was the 
 most sentimental impression I think I had yet received, 
 for a child is somewhat deaf to the sentimental. In the 
 last, a poet, who had been tragically wrangling with his 
 wife, walked forth on the sea-beach on a tempestuous 
 night and witnessed the horrors of a wreck. 1 Different 
 
 1 Since traced by many obliging correspondents to the gallery of 
 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 328 
 
A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE 
 
 as they are, all these early favourites have a common 
 note — they have all a touch of the romantic. 
 
 Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry 
 of circumstance. The pleasure that we take in life is 
 of two sorts — the active and the passive. Now we 
 are conscious of a great command over our destiny; 
 anon we are lifted up by circumstance, as by a break- 
 ing wave, and dashed we know not how into the 
 future. Now we are pleased by our conduct, anon 
 merely pleased by our surroundings. It would be hard 
 to say which of these modes of satisfaction is the more 
 effective, but the latter is surely the more constant. 
 Conduct is three parts of life, they say ; but I think they 
 put it high. There is a vast deal in life and letters both 
 which is not immoral, but simply a-moral; which either 
 does not regard the human will at all, or deals with it 
 in obvious and healthy relations; where the interest 
 turns, not upon what a man shall choose to do, but on 
 how he manages to do it ; not on the passionate slips 
 and hesitations of the conscience, but on the problems 
 of the body and of the practical intelligence, in clean, 
 open-air adventure, the shock of arms or the diplomacy 
 of life. With such material as this it is impossible to 
 build a play, for the serious theatre exists solely on 
 moral grounds, and is a standing proof of the dissem- 
 ination of the human conscience. But it is possible to 
 build, upon this ground, the most joyous of verses, and 
 the most lively, beautiful, and buoyant tales. 
 
 One thing in life calls for another; there is a fitness in 
 events and places. The sight of a pleasant arbour puts 
 it in our mind to sit there. One place suggests work, 
 another idleness, a third early rising and long rambles 
 
 329 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 in the dew. The effect of night, of any flowing water, 
 of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, of the 
 open ocean, calls up in the mind an army of anony- 
 mous desires and pleasures. Something, we feel, 
 should happen ; we know not what, yet we proceed in 
 quest of it. And many of the happiest hours of life 
 fleet by us in this vain attendance on the genius of the 
 place and moment. It is thus that tracts of young fir, 
 and low rocks that reach into deep soundings, particu- 
 larly torture and delight me. Something must have 
 happened in such places, and perhaps ages back, to 
 members of my race ; and when I was a child I tried in 
 vain to invent appropriate games for them, as I still try, 
 just as vainly, to fit them with the proper story. Some 
 places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud 
 for a murder ; certain old houses demand to be haunted ; 
 certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck. Other spots 
 again seem to abide their destiny, suggestive and im- 
 penetrable, "miching mallecho." The inn at Burford 
 Bridge, with its arbours and green garden and silent, 
 eddying river — though it is known already as the place 
 where Keats wrote some of his Endymion and Nelson 
 parted from his Emma — still seems to wait the coming 
 of the appropriate legend. Within these ivied walls, 
 behind these old green shutters, some further business 
 smoulders, waiting for its hour. The old Hawes Inn at 
 the Queen's Ferry makes a similar call upon my fancy. 
 There it stands, apart from the town, beside the pier, 
 in a climate of its own, half inland, half marine — in 
 front, the ferry bubbling with the tide and the guard- 
 ship swinging to her anchor; behind, the old garden 
 with the trees. Americans seek it already for the sake 
 
 330 
 
A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE 
 
 of Lovel and Oldbuck, who dined there at the begin- 
 ning of the Antiquary. But you need not tell me — 
 that is not all ; there is some story, unrecorded or not 
 yet complete, which must express the meaning of that 
 inn more fully. So it is with names and faces ; so it is 
 with incidents that are idle and inconclusive in them- 
 selves, and yet seem like the beginning of some quaint 
 romance, which the all-careless author leaves untold. 
 How many of these romances have we not seen deter- 
 mine at their birth; how many people have met us 
 with a look of meaning in their eye, and sunk at once 
 into trivial acquaintances ; to how many places have we 
 not drawn near, with express intimations — "here my 
 destiny awaits me " — and we have but dined there and 
 passed on! I have lived both at the Hawes and Bur- 
 ford in a perpetual flutter, on the heels, as it seemed, of 
 some adventure that should justify the place; but 
 though the feeling had me to bed at night and called 
 me again at morning in one unbroken round of pleas- 
 ure and suspense, nothing befell me in either worth 
 remark. The man or the hour had not yet come ; but 
 some day, I think, a boat shall put off from the Queen's 
 Ferry, fraught with a dear cargo, and some frosty night 
 a horseman, on a tragic errand, rattle with his whip 
 upon the green shutters of the inn at Burford. 1 
 
 Now, this is one of the natural appetites with which 
 any lively literature has to count. The desire for knowl- 
 edge, I had almost added the desire for meat, is not 
 more deeply seated than this demand for fit and strik- 
 
 i Since the above was written I have tried to launch the boat with 
 my own hands in Kidnapped. Some day, perhaps, 1 may try a rat- 
 tle at the shutters. 
 
 33« 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 ing incident. The dullest of clowns tells, or tries to 
 tell, himself a story, as the feeblest of children uses in- 
 vention in his play ; and even as the imaginative grown 
 person, joining in the game, at once enriches it with 
 many delightful circumstances, the great creative writer 
 shows us the realisation and the apotheosis of the day- 
 dreams of common men. His stories may be nourished 
 with the realities of life, but their true mark is to satisfy 
 the nameless longings of the reader, and to obey the 
 ideal laws of the day-dream. The right kind of thing 
 should fall out in the right kind of place; the right kind 
 of thing should follow ; and not only the characters talk 
 aptly and think naturally, but all the circumstances in a 
 tale answer one to another like notes in music. The 
 threads of a story come from time to time together and 
 make a picture in the web ; the characters fall from time 
 to time into some attitude to each other or to nature, which 
 stamps the story home like an illustration. Crusoe re- 
 coiling from the footprint, Achilles shouting over against 
 the Trojans, Ulysses bending the great bow, Christian 
 running with his fingers in his ears, these are each cul- 
 minating moments in the legend, and each has been 
 printed on the mind's eye forever. Other things we 
 may forget; we may forget the words, although they 
 are beautiful ; we may forget the author's comment, al- 
 though perhaps it was ingenious and true; but these 
 epoch-making scenes, which put the last mark of truth 
 upon a story and fill up, at one blow, our capacity for 
 sympathetic pleasure, we so adopt into the very bosom 
 of our mind that neither time nor tide can efface or 
 weaken the impression. This, then, is the plastic part 
 of literature : to embody character, thought, or emotion 
 
A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE 
 
 in some act or attitude that shall be remarkably striking 
 to the mind's eye. This is the highest and hardest 
 thing to do in words; the thing which, once accom- 
 plished, equally delights the schoolboy and the sage, 
 and makes, in its own right, the quality of epics. Com- 
 pared with this, all other purposes in literature, except 
 the purely lyrical or the purely philosophic, are bastard 
 in nature, facile of execution, and feeble in result. It is 
 one thing to write about the inn at Burford, or to de- 
 scribe scenery with the word-painters; it is quite an- 
 other to seize on the heart of the suggestion and make 
 a country famous with a legend. It is one thing to re- 
 mark and to dissect, with the most cutting logic, the 
 complications of life, and of the human spirit; it is quite 
 another to give them body and blood in the story of 
 Ajax or of Hamlet. The first is literature, but the second 
 is something besides, for it is likewise art. 
 
 English people of the present day 1 are apt, I know not 
 why, to look somewhat down on incident, and reserve 
 their admiration for the clink of teaspoons and the accents 
 of the curate. It is thought clever to write a novel with 
 no story at all, or at least with a very dull one. Re- 
 duced even to the lowest terms, a certain interest can 
 be communicated by the art of narrative ; a sense of hu- 
 man kinship stirred ; and a kind of monotonous fitness, 
 comparable to the words and air of Sandy's Mull, pre- 
 served among the infinitesimal occurrences recorded. 
 Some people work, in this manner, with even a strong 
 touch. Mr. Trollope's inimitable clergymen naturally 
 arise to the mind in this connection. But even Mr. 
 Trollope does not confine himself to chronicling smaJ 1 
 
 11882. 
 
 333 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 beer. Mr. Crawley's collision with the Bishop's wife, 
 Mr. Melnette dallying in the deserted banquet-room, 
 are typical incidents, epically conceived, fitly embodying 
 a crisis. Or again look at Thackeray. If Rawdon Craw- 
 ley's blow were not delivered, Vanity Fair would cease 
 to be a work of art. That scene is the chief ganglion 
 of the tale ; and the discharge of energy from Rawdon's 
 fist is the reward and consolation of the reader. The 
 end of Esmond is a yet wider excursion from the author's 
 customary fields ; the scene at Castlewood is pure Du- 
 mas; the great and wily English borrower has here bor- 
 rowed from the great, unblushing French thief; as usual, 
 he has borrowed admirably well, and the breaking of 
 the sword rounds off the best of all his books with a 
 manly, martial note. But perhaps nothing can more 
 strongly illustrate the necessity for marking incident 
 than to compare the living fame of Robinson Crusoe 
 with the discredit of Clarissa Harlowe. Clarissa is a 
 book of a far more startling import, worked out, on a 
 great canvas, with inimitable courage and unflagging 
 art. It contains wit, character, passion, plot, conversa- 
 tions full of spirit and insight, letters sparkling with un- 
 strained humanity ; and if the death of the heroine be 
 somewhat frigid and artificial, the last days of the hero 
 strike the only note of what we now call Byronism, be- 
 tween the Elizabethans and Byron himself. And yet a 
 little story of a shipwrecked sailor, with not a tenth 
 part of the style nor a thousandth part of the wisdom, 
 exploring none of the arcana of humanity and de- 
 prived of the perennial interest of love, goes on from 
 edition to edition, ever young, while Clarissa lies upon 
 the shelves unread. A friend of mine, a Welsh black- 
 
 334 
 
A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE 
 
 smith, was twenty-five years old and could neither 
 read nor write, when he heard a chapter of Robinson 
 read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up to that moment he 
 had sat content, huddled in his ignorance, but he left 
 that farm another man. There were day-dreams, it ap- 
 peared, divine day-dreams, written and printed and 
 bound, and to be bought for money and enjoyed at 
 pleasure. Down he sat that day, painfully learned to 
 read Welsh, and returned to borrow the book. It had 
 been lost, nor could he find another copy but one that 
 was in English. Down he sat once more, learned Eng- 
 lish, and at length, and with entire delight, read Robin- 
 son. It is like the story of a love-chase. If he had 
 heard a letter from Clarissa, would he have been fired 
 with the same chivalrous ardour? I wonder. Yet 
 Clarissa has every quality that can be shown in prose, 
 one alone excepted — pictorial or picture-making ro- 
 mance. While Robinson depends, for the most part 
 and with the overwhelming majority of its readers, on 
 the charm of circumstance. 
 
 In the highest achievements of the art of words, the 
 dramatic and the pictorial, the moral and romantic in- 
 terest, rise and fall together by a common and organic 
 law. Situation is animated with passion, passion 
 clothed upon with situation. Neither exists for itself, 
 but each inheres indissolubly with the other. This is 
 high art; and not only the highest art possible in words, 
 but the highest art of all, since it combines the greatest 
 mass and diversity of the elements of truth and pleasure. 
 Such are epics, and the few prose tales that have the 
 epic weight. But as from a school of works, aping the 
 creative, incident and romance are ruthlessly discarded, 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 so may character and drama be omitted or subordinated 
 to romance. There is one book, for example, more 
 generally loved than Shakespeare, that captivates in 
 childhood, and still delights in age — I mean the Ara- 
 bian Nights — where you shall look in vain for moral or 
 for intellectual interest. No human face or voice greets 
 us among that wooden crowd of kings and genies, sor- 
 cerers and beggarmen. Adventure, on the most naked 
 terms, furnishes forth the entertainment and is found 
 enough. Dumas approaches perhaps nearest of any 
 modern to these Arabian authors in the purely material 
 charm of some of his romances. The early part of 
 Monte Cristo, down to the finding of the treasure, is a 
 piece of perfect story-telling; the man never breathed 
 who shared these moving incidents without a tremor; 
 and yet Faria is a thing of packthread and Dantes little 
 more than a name. The sequel is one long-drawn 
 error, gloomy, bloody, unnatural and dull; but as for 
 these early chapters, I do not believe there is another 
 volume extant where you can breathe the same unmin- 
 gled atmosphere of romance. It is very thin and light, 
 to be sure, as on a high mountain; but it is brisk and 
 clear and sunny in proportion. I saw the other day, 
 with envy, an old and a very clever lady setting forth 
 on a second or third voyage into Monte Cristo. Here 
 are stories which powerfully affect the reader, which 
 can be reperused at any age, and where the characters 
 are no more than puppets. The bony fist of the show- 
 man visibly propels them; their springs are an open 
 secret; their faces are of wood, their bellies filled with 
 bran ; and yet we thrillingly partake of their adventures. 
 And the point may be illustrated still further. The last 
 
A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE 
 
 interview between Lucy and Richard Feverel is pure 
 drama ; more than that, it is the strongest scene, since 
 Shakespeare, in the English tongue. Their first meet- 
 ing by the river, on the other hand, is pure romance; it 
 has nothing to do with character; it might happen to 
 any other boy and maiden, and be none the less delight- 
 ful for the change. And yet I think he would be a bold 
 man who should choose between these passages. Thus, 
 in the same book, we may have two scenes, each capi- 
 tal in its order: in the one, human passion, deep calling 
 unto deep, shall utter its genuine voice; in the second, 
 according circumstances, like instruments in tune, shall 
 build up a trivial but desirable incident, such as we love 
 to prefigure for ourselves; and in the end, in spite of 
 the critics, we may hesitate to give the preference to 
 either. The one may ask more genius — I do not say it 
 does; but at least the other dwells as clearly in the 
 memory. 
 
 True romantic art, again, makes a romance of all 
 things. It reaches into the highest abstraction of the 
 ideal; it does not refuse the most pedestrian realism. 
 Robinson Crusoe is as realistic as it is romantic: both 
 qualities are pushed to an extreme, and neither suffers. 
 Nor does romance depend upon the material importance 
 of the incidents. To deal with strong and deadly ele- 
 ments, banditti, pirates, war and murder, is to conjure 
 with great names, and, in the event of failure, to double 
 the disgrace. The arrival of Haydn and Consuelo at 
 the Canon's villa is a very trifling incident; yet we may 
 read a dozen boisterous stories from beginning to end, 
 and not receive so fresh and stirring an impression of 
 adventure. It was the scene of Crusoe at the wreck, 
 
 337 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 if I remember rightly, that so bewitched my blacksmith. 
 Nor is the fact surprising. Every single article the cast- 
 away recovers from the hulk is "a joy for ever" to the 
 man who reads of them. They are the things that 
 should be found, and the bare enumeration stirs the 
 blood. I found a glimmer of the same interest the other 
 day in a new book, The Sailor's Sweetheart, by Mr. 
 Clark Russell. The whole business of the brig Morn- 
 ing Star is very rightly felt and spiritedly written ; but 
 the clothes, the books and the money satisfy the read- 
 er's mind like things to eat. We are dealing here with 
 the old cut-and-dry, legitimate interest of treasure trove. 
 But even treasure trove can be made dull. There are 
 few people who have not groaned under the plethora 
 of goods that fell to the lot of the Swiss Family Robin- 
 son, that dreary family. They found article after arti- 
 cle, creature after creature, from milk kine to pieces of 
 ordnance, a whole consignment ; but no informing taste 
 had presided over the selection, there was no smack or 
 relish in the invoice ; and these riches left the fancy cold. 
 The box of goods in Verne's Mysterious Island is another 
 case in point : there was no gusto and no glamour about 
 that; it might have come from a shop. But the two 
 hundred and seventy-eight Australian sovereigns on 
 board the Morning Star fell upon me like a surprise that 
 1 had expected ; whole vistas of secondary stories, be- 
 sides the one in hand, radiated forth from that discovery, 
 as they radiate from a striking particular in life ; and \ 
 was made for the moment as happy as a reader has the 
 right to be. 
 
 To come at all at the nature of this quality of ro- 
 mance, we must bear in mind the peculiarity of our atti- 
 
 33« 
 
A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE 
 
 tude to any art. No art produces illusion ; in the theatre 
 we never forget that we are in the theatre ; and while 
 we read a story, we sit wavering between two minds, 
 now merely clapping our hands at the merit of the per- 
 formance, now condescending to take an active part in 
 fancy with the characters. This last is the triumph of 
 romantic story-telling: when the reader consciously 
 plays at being the hero, the scene is a good scene. Now 
 in character-studies the pleasure that we take is critical ; 
 we watch, we approve, we smile at incongruities, we 
 are moved to sudden heats of sympathy with courage, 
 suffering or virtue. But the characters are still them- 
 selves, they are not us ; the more clearly they are de- 
 picted, the more widely do they stand away from us, 
 the more imperiously do they thrust us back into our 
 place as a spectator. I cannot identify myself with 
 Rawdon Crawley or with Eugene de Rastignac, for I 
 have scarce a hope or fear in common with them. It is 
 not character but incident that woos us out of our re- 
 serve. Something happens as we desire to have it 
 happen to ourselves ; some situation, that we have long 
 dallied with in fancy, is realised in the story with entic- 
 ing and appropriate details. Then we forget the char- 
 acters; then we push the hero aside; then we plunge 
 into the tale in our own person and bathe in fresh ex- 
 perience; and then, and then only, do we say we have 
 been reading a romance. It is not only pleasurable 
 things that we imagine in our day-dreams; there are 
 lights in which we are willing to contemplate even the 
 idea of our own death ; ways in which it seems as if it 
 would amuse us to be cheated, wounded or calumni- 
 ated. It is thus possible to construct a story, even of 
 
 ?19 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 tragic import, in which every incident, detail and trick 
 of circumstance shall be welcome to the reader's 
 thoughts. Fiction is to the grown man what play is 
 to the child ; it is there that he changes the atmosphere 
 and tenor of his life; and when the game so chimes 
 with his fancy that he can join in it with all his heart, 
 when it pleases him with every turn, when he loves to 
 recall it and dwells upon its recollection with entire de- 
 light, fiction is called romance. 
 
 Walter Scott is out and away the king of the roman- 
 tics. The Lady of the Lake has no indisputable claim to 
 be a poem beyond the inherent fitness and desirability 
 of the tale. It is just such a story as a man would make 
 up for himself, walking, in the best health and temper, 
 through just such scenes as it is laid in. Hence it is that 
 a charm dwells undefinable among these slovenly verses, 
 as the unseen cuckoo fills the mountains with his note; 
 hence, even after we have flung the book aside, the 
 scenery and adventures remain present to the mind, a 
 new and green possession, not unworthy of that beau- 
 tiful name, The Lady of the Lake, or that direct, roman- 
 tic opening, — one of the most spirited and poetical in 
 literature, — "The stag at eve had drunk his fill." The 
 same strength and the same weaknesses adorn and dis- 
 figure the novels. In that ill-written, ragged book, The 
 Pirate, the figure of Cleveland — cast up by the sea on 
 the resounding foreland of Dunrossness — moving, with 
 the blood on his hands and the Spanish words on his 
 tongue, among the simple islanders — singing a sere- 
 nade under the window of his Shetland mistress — is 
 conceived in the very highest manner of romantic inven- 
 tion. The words of his song, "Through groves ot 
 
 340 
 
A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE 
 
 palm," sung in such a scene and by such a lover, clench, 
 as in a nutshell, the emphatic contrast upon which the 
 tale is built. In Guy Mannering, again, every incident 
 is delightful to the imagination; and the scene when 
 Harry Bertram lands at Ellangowan is a model instance 
 of romantic method. 
 
 " • I remember the tune well,' he says, 'though I can- 
 not guess what should at present so strongly recall it 
 to my memory.' He took his flageolet from his pocket 
 and played a simple melody. Apparently the tune 
 awoke the corresponding associations of a damsel. . . 
 She immediately took up the song — 
 
 " ' Are these the links of Forth, she said; 
 
 Or are they the crooks of Dee, 
 Or the bonny woods of Warroch Head 
 
 That I so fain would see ? ' 
 
 " ' By heaven ! ' said Bertram, * it is the very ballad. ' " 
 On this quotation two remarks fall to be made. First, 
 as an instance of modern feeling for romance, this famous 
 touch of the flageolet and the old song is selected by 
 Miss Braddon for omission. Miss Braddon's idea of a 
 story, like Mrs. Todgers's idea of a wooden leg, were 
 something strange to have expounded. As a matter of 
 personal experience, Meg's appearance to old Mr. Ber- 
 tram on the road, the ruins of Derncleugh, the scene of 
 the flageolet, and the Dominie's recognition of Harry, 
 are the four strong notes that continue to ring in the 
 mind after the book is laid aside. The second point is 
 still more curious. The reader will observe a mark of 
 excision in the passage as quoted by me. Well, here is 
 how it runs in the original: "a damsel, who, close be- 
 
 34» 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 hind a fine spring about half-way down the descent, 
 and which had once supplied the castle with water, was 
 engaged in bleaching linen." A man who gave in such 
 copy would be discharged from the staff of a daily paper. 
 Scott has forgotten to prepare the reader for the pres- 
 ence of the "damsel"; he has forgotten to mention the 
 spring and its relation to the ruin ; and now, face to face 
 with his omission, instead of trying back and starting 
 fair, crams all this matter, tail foremost, into a single 
 shambling sentence. It is not merely bad English, or 
 bad style ; it is abominably bad narrative besides. 
 
 Certainly the contrast is remarkable ; and it is one that 
 throws a strong light upon the subject of this paper. 
 For here we have a man of the finest creative instinct 
 touching with perfect certainty and charm the romantic 
 junctures of his story ; and we find him utterly careless, 
 almost, it would seem, incapable, in the technical mat- 
 ter of style, and not only frequently weak, but frequently 
 wrong in points of drama. In character parts, indeed, 
 and particularly in the Scotch, he was delicate, strong 
 and truthful ; but the trite, obliterated features of too 
 many of his heroes have already wearied two genera- 
 tions of readers. At times his characters will speak with 
 something far beyond propriety with a true heroic note ; 
 but on the next page they will be wading wearily for- 
 ward with an ungrammatical and undramatic rigmarole 
 of words. The man who could conceive and write the 
 character of Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot, as Scott has 
 conceived and written it, had not only splendid roman- 
 tic, but splendid tragic gifts. How comes it, then, that 
 he could so often fob us off with languid, inarticulate 
 twaddle ? 
 
 342 
 
A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE 
 
 It seems to me that the explanation is to be found in 
 the very quality of his surprising merits. As his books 
 are play to the reader, so were they play to him. He 
 conjured up the romantic with delight, but he had 
 hardly patience to describe it. He was a great day- 
 dreamer, a seer of fit and beautiful and humorous vis- 
 ions, but hardly a great artist; hardly, in trie manful 
 sense, an artist at all. He pleased himself, and so he 
 pleases us. Of the pleasures of his art he tasted fully; 
 but of its toils and vigils and distresses never man knew 
 less. A great romantic — an idle child. 
 
 3-, J 
 
XVI. A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE 1 
 
 WE have recently 2 enjoyed a quite peculiar plea- 
 sure: hearing, in some detail, the opinions, 
 about the art they practise, of Mr. Walter Besant and 
 Mr. Henry James ; two men certainly of very different 
 calibre : Mr. James so precise of outline, so cunning of 
 fence, so scrupulous of finish, and Mr. Besant so genial, 
 so friendly, with so persuasive and humorous a vein of 
 whim: Mr. James the very type of the deliberate artist, 
 Mr. Besant the impersonation of good nature. That 
 such doctors should differ will excite no great surprise; 
 but one point in which they seem to agree fills me, f 
 confess, with wonder. For they are both content to 
 talk about the "art of fiction; " and Mr. Besant, wax- 
 ing exceedingly bold, goes on to oppose this so-called 
 " art of fiction " to the "art of poetry." By the art of 
 poetry he can mean nothing but the art of verse, an art 
 of handicraft, and only comparable with the art of 
 prose. For that heat and height of sane emotion which 
 we agree to call by the name of poetry, is but a liber- 
 tine and vagrant quality ; present, at times, in any art, 
 
 1 This paper, which does not otherwise fit the present volume, is re- 
 printed here as the proper continuation of the last. 
 ' 21884. 
 
 344 
 
A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE 
 
 more often absent from them all; too seldom present in 
 the prose novel, too frequently absent from the ode and 
 epic. Fiction is in the same case; it is no substantive 
 art, but an element which enters largely into all the arts 
 but architecture. Homer, Wordsworth, Phidias, Ho- 
 garth, and Salvini, all deal in fiction ; and yet I do not 
 suppose that either Hogarth or Salvini, to mention but 
 these two, entered in any degree into the scope of Mr. 
 Besant's interesting lecture or Mr. James's charming 
 essay. The art of fiction, then, regarded as a definition, 
 is both too ample and too scanty. Let me suggest an- 
 other; let me suggest that what both Mr. James and 
 Mr. Besant had in view was neither more nor less than 
 the art of narrative. 
 
 But Mr. Besant is anxious to speak solely of "the 
 modern English novel," the stay and bread-winner of 
 Mr. Mudie; and in the author of the most pleasing novel 
 on that roll, All Sorts and Conditions of Men, the de- 
 sire is natural enough. I can conceive then, that he 
 would hasten to propose two additions, and read thus : 
 the art of fictitious narrative in prose. 
 
 Now the fact of the existence of the modern English 
 novel is not to be denied ; materially, with its three vol- 
 umes, leaded type, and gilded lettering, it is easily distin- 
 guishable from other forms of literature ; but to talk at 
 all fruitfully of any branch of art, it is needful to build 
 our definitions on some more fundamental ground than 
 binding. Why, then, are we to add "in prose?" The 
 Odyssey appears to me the best of romances ; The 
 Lady of the Lake to stand high in the second order; and 
 Chaucer's tales and prologues to contain more of the 
 matter and art of the modern English novel than the 
 
 345 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 whole treasury of Mr. Mudie. Whether a narrative be 
 written in blank verse or the Spenserian stanza, in the 
 long period of Gibbon or the chipped phrase of Charles 
 Reade, the principles of the art of narrative must be 
 equally observed. The choice of a noble and swelling 
 style in prose affects the problem of narration in the same 
 way, if not to the same degree, as the choice of meas- 
 ured verse ; for both imply a closer synthesis of events, 
 a higher key of dialogue, and a more picked and stately 
 strain of words. If you are to refuse Don Juan, it is 
 hard to see why you should include Zanoni or (to 
 bracket works of very different value) The Scarlet Letter; 
 and by what discrimination are you to open your doors 
 to The Pilgrim's Progress and close them on The Faery 
 Queen ? To bring things closer home, I will here pro- 
 pound to Mr. Besant a conundrum. A narrative called 
 Paradise Lost was written in English verse by one John 
 Milton ; what was it then ? It was next translated by 
 Chateaubriand into French prose ; and what was it then ? 
 Lastly, the French translation was, by some inspired 
 compatriot of George Gilfillan (and of mine) turned 
 bodily into an English novel ; and, in the name of clear- 
 ness, what was it then ? 
 
 But, once more, why should we add "fictitious?" 
 The reason why is obvious. The reason why not, if 
 something more recondite, does not want for weight. 
 The art of narrative, m fact, is the same, whether it is 
 applied to the selection and illustration of a real series 
 of events or of an imaginary series. Boswell's Life of 
 Johnson (a work of cunning and inimitable art) owes its 
 success to the same technical manoeuvres as (let us say) 
 Tom Jones : the clear conception of certain characters of 
 
 346 
 
A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE 
 
 man, the choice and presentation of certain incidents out 
 of a great number that offered, and the invention (yes 
 invention) and preservation of a certain key in dialogue. 
 In which these things are done with the more art — in 
 which with the greater air of nature — readers will dif- 
 ferently judge. Boswell's is, indeed, a very special case, 
 and almost a generic ; but it is not only in Boswell, it is 
 in every biography with any salt of life, it is in every 
 history where events and men, rather than ideas, are 
 presented — in Tacitus, in Carlyle, in Michelet, in Ma- 
 caulay — that the novelist will find many of his own 
 methods most conspicuously and adroitly handled. He 
 will find besides that he, who is free — who has the 
 right to invent or steal a missing incident, who has the 
 right, more precious still, of wholesale omission — is 
 frequently defeated, and, with all his advantages, leaves 
 a less strong impression of reality and passion. Mr. 
 James utters his mind with a becoming fervour on the 
 sanctity of truth to the novelist ; on a more careful ex- 
 amination truth will seem a word of very debatable 
 propriety, not only for the labours of the novelist, but 
 for those of the historian. No art — to use the daring 
 phrase of Mr. James — can successfully " compete with 
 life;" and the art that seeks to do so is condemned to 
 perish montibus avtis. Life goes before us, infinite in 
 complication; attended by the most various and sur- 
 prising meteors; appealing at once to the eye, to the 
 ear, to the mind — the seat ot wonder, to the touch — 
 so thrillingly delicate, and to the belly — so imperious 
 when starved. It combines and employs in its mani- 
 festation the method and material, not of one art only, 
 but of all the arts. Music is but an arbitrary trifling 
 
 347 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 with a few of life's majestic chords ; painting is but a 
 shadow of its pageantry of light and colour ; literature 
 does but drily indicate that wealth of incident, of moral 
 obligation, of virtue, vice, action, rapture and agony, 
 with which it teems. To "compete with life," whose 
 sun we cannot look upon, whose passions and diseases 
 waste and slay us — to compete with the flavour of 
 wine, the beauty of the dawn, the scorching of fire, the 
 bitterness of death and separation — here is, indeed, a 
 projected escalade of heaven ; here are, indeed, labours 
 for a Hercules in a dress coat, armed with a pen and a 
 dictionary to depict the passions, armed with a tube of 
 superior flake-white to paint the portrait of the insuffer- 
 able sun. No art is true in this sense : none can ' ' com- 
 pete with life:" not even history, built indeed of indis- 
 putable facts, but these facts robbed of their vivacity and 
 sting; so that even when we read of the sack of a city 
 or the fall of an empire, we are surprised, and justly 
 commend the author's talent, if our pulse be quickened. 
 And mark, for a last differentia, that this quickening of 
 the pulse is, in almost every case, purely agreeable; 
 that these phantom reproductions of experience, even 
 at their most acute, convey decided pleasure ; while ex- 
 perience itself, in the cockpit of life, can torture and slay. 
 What, then, is the object, what the method, of an 
 art, and what the source of its power ? The whole se- 
 cret is that no art does "compete with life." Man's 
 one method, whether he reasons or creates, is to half- 
 shut his eyes against the dazzle and confusion of reality. 
 The arts, like arithmetic and geometry, turn away their 
 eyes from the gross, coloured and mobile nature at our 
 feet, and regard instead a certain figmentary abstraction. 
 
 34 8 
 
A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE 
 
 Geometry will tell us of a circle, a thing never seen in 
 nature ; asked about a green circle or an iron circle, it 
 lays its hand upon its mouth. So with the arts. Paint- 
 ing, ruefully comparing sunshine and flake-white, gives 
 up truth of colour, as it had already given up relief and 
 movement; and instead of vying with nature, arranges 
 a scheme of harmonious tints. Literature, above all in 
 its most typical mood, the mood of narrative, similarly 
 flees the direct challenge and pursues instead an inde- 
 pendent and creative aim. So far as it imitates at all, it 
 imitates not life but speech : not the facts of human des- 
 tiny, but the emphasis and the suppressions with which 
 the human actor tells of them. The real art that dealt 
 with life directly was that of the first men who told 
 their stories round the savage camp-fire. Our art is 
 occupied, and bound to be occupied, not so much in 
 making stories true as in making them typical; not so 
 much in capturing the lineaments of each fact, as in 
 marshalling all of them towards a common end. For the 
 welter of impressions, all forcible but all discreet, which 
 life presents, it substitutes a certain artificial series of im- 
 pressions, all indeed most feebly represented, but all aim- 
 ing at the same effect, all eloquent of the same idea, all 
 chiming together like consonant notes in music or like 
 the graduated tints in a good picture. From all its chap- 
 ters, from all its pages, from all its sentences, the well- 
 written novel echoes and re-echoes its one creative and 
 controlling thought; to this must every incident and 
 character contribute ; the style must have been pitched in 
 unison with this ; and if there is anywhere a word that 
 looks another way, the book would be stronger, clearer, 
 and (I had almost said) fuller without it. Life is mon- 
 
 349 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 strous, infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant; a work of 
 art, in comparison, is neat, finite, self-contained, rational, 
 flowing and emasculate. Life imposes by brute energy, 
 like inarticulate thunder; art catches the ear, among the 
 far louder noises of experience, like an air artificially made 
 by a discreet musician. A proposition of geometry does 
 not compete with life; and a proposition of geometry is 
 a fair and luminous parallel for a work of art. Both are 
 reasonable, both untrue to the crude fact; both inhere 
 in nature, neither represents it. The novel, which is a 
 work of art, exists, not by its resemblances to life, which 
 are forced and material, as a shoe must still consist of 
 leather, but by its immeasurable difference from life, 
 which is designed and significant, and is both the 
 method and the meaning of the work. 
 
 The life of man is not the subject of novels, but the 
 inexhaustible magazine from which subjects are to be 
 selected ; the name of these is legion ; and with each 
 new subject — for here again I must differ by the whole 
 width of heaven from Mr. James — the true artist will 
 vary his method and change the point of attack. That 
 which was in one case an excellence, will become a de- 
 fect in another; what was the making of one book, will 
 in the next be impertinent or dull. First each novel, 
 and then each class of novels, exists by and for itself. 
 I will take, for instance, three main classes, which are 
 fairly distinct : first, the novel of adventure, which appeals 
 to certain almost sensual and quite illogical tendencies 
 in man ; second, the novel of character, which appeals 
 to our intellectual appreciation of man's foibles and 
 mingled and inconstant motives; and third, the dra- 
 matic novel, which deals with the same stuff as the 
 
 350 
 
A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE 
 
 serious theatre, and appeals to our emotional nature and 
 moral judgment. 
 
 And first for the novel of adventure. Mr. James re- 
 fers, with singular generosity of praise, to a little book 
 about a quest for hidden treasure ; but he lets fall, by 
 the way, some rather startling words. In this book he 
 misses what he calls the "immense luxury" of being 
 able to quarrel with his author. The luxury, to most of 
 us, is to lay by our judgment, to be submerged by the 
 tale as by a billow, and only to awake, and begin to 
 distinguish and find fault, when the piece is over and 
 the volume laid aside. Still more remarkable is Mr. 
 James's reason. He cannot criticise the author, as he 
 goes, "because," says he, comparing it with another 
 work, " I have been a child, hut I have never been on a 
 quest for buried treasure/' Here is, indeed, a wilful 
 paradox ; for if he has never been on a quest for buried 
 treasure, it can be demonstrated that he has never been 
 a child. There never was a child (unless Master James) 
 but has hunted gold, and been a pirate, and a military 
 commander, and a bandit of the mountains; but has 
 fought, and suffered shipwreck and prison, and imbrued 
 its little hands in gore, and gallantly retrieved the lost 
 battle, and triumphantly protected innocence and beauty. 
 Elsewhere in his essay Mr. James has protested with 
 excellent reason against too narrow a conception of ex- 
 perience; for the born artist, he contends, the "faintest 
 hints of life " are converted into revelations ; and it will 
 be found true, I believe, in a majority of cases, that the 
 artist writes with more gusto and effect of those things 
 which he has only wished to do, than of those which 
 he has done. Desire is a wonderful telescope, and Pis- 
 
 351 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 gah the best observatory. Now, while it is true that 
 neither Mr. James nor the author of the work in question 
 has ever, in the fleshly sense, gone questing after gold, 
 it is probable that both have ardently desired and fondly 
 imagined the details of such a life in youthful day- 
 dreams ; and the author, counting upon that, and well 
 aware (cunning and low-minded man!) that this class 
 of interest, having been frequently treated, finds a 
 readily accessible and beaten road to the sympathies of 
 the reader, addressed himself throughout to the build- 
 ing up and circumstantiation of this boyish dream. 
 Character to the boy is a sealed book ; for him, a pirate 
 is a beard, a pair of wide trousers and a liberal com- 
 plement of pistols. The author, for the sake of cir- 
 cumstantiation and because he was himself more or 
 less grown up, admitted character, within certain limits, 
 into his design; but only within certain limits. Had 
 the same puppets figured in a scheme of another sort, 
 they had been drawn to very different purpose ; for in 
 this elementary novel of adventure, the characters need 
 to be presented with but one class of qualities — the 
 warlike and formidable. So as they appear insidious in 
 deceit and fatal in the combat, they have served their 
 end. Danger is the matter with which this class of 
 novel deals ; fear, the passion with which it idly trifles ; 
 and the characters are portrayed only so far as they 
 realise the sense of danger and provoke the sympathy 
 of fear. To add more traits, to be too clever, to start 
 the hare of moral or intellectual interest while we are 
 running the fox of material interest, is not to enrich but 
 to stultify your tale. The stupid reader will only be 
 offended, and the clever reader lose the scent. 
 
 352 
 
A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE 
 
 The novel of character has this difference from all oth- 
 ers : that it requires no coherency of plot, and for this 
 reason, as in the case of Gil Bias, it is sometimes called 
 the novel of adventure. It turns on the humours of the 
 persons represented; these are, to be sure, embodied in 
 incidents, but the incidents themselves, being tributary, 
 need not march in a progression; and the characters 
 may be statically shown. As they enter, so they may go 
 out ; they must be consistent, but they need not grow. 
 Here Mr. James will recognise the note of much of his 
 own work : he treats, for the most part, the statics of 
 character, studying it at rest or only gently moved ; and, 
 with his usual delicate and just artistic instinct, he 
 avoids those stronger passions which would deform the 
 attitudes he loves to study, and change his sitters from 
 the humourists of ordinary life to the brute forces and 
 bare types of more emotional moments. In his recent 
 Author of Beltraffio, so just in conception, so nimble 
 and neat in workmanship, strong passion is indeed em- 
 ployed ; but observe that it is not displayed. Even in 
 the heroine the working of the passion is suppressed ; 
 and the great struggle, the true tragedy, the scene-a- 
 faire, passes unseen behind the panels of a locked door. 
 The delectable invention of the young visitor is intro- 
 duced, consciously or not, to this end : that Mr. James, 
 true to his method, might avoid the scene of passion. 
 I trust no reader will suppose me guilty of undervalu- 
 ing this little masterpiece. I mean merely that it be- 
 longs to one marked class of novel, and that it would 
 have been very differently conceived and treated had it 
 belonged to that other marked class, of which I now 
 proceed to speak. 
 
 353 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 I take pleasure in calling the dramatic novel by that 
 name, because it enables me to point out by the way a 
 strange and peculiarly English misconception. It is 
 sometimes supposed that the drama consists of inci- 
 dent. It consists of passion, which gives the actor his 
 opportunity; and that passion must progressively in- 
 crease, or the actor, as the piece proceeded, would be 
 unable to carry the audience from a lower to a higher 
 pitch of interest and emotion. A good serious play 
 must therefore be founded on one of the passionate 
 cruces of life, where duty and inclination come nobly 
 to the grapple ; and the same is true of what I call, for 
 that reason, the dramatic novel. I will instance a few 
 worthy specimens, all of our own day and language; 
 Meredith's Rhoda Fleming, that wonderful and painful 
 book, long out of print, x and hunted for at book-stalls 
 like an Aldine ; Hardy's Pair of Blue Eyes; and two of 
 Charles Reade's, Griffith Gaunt and The Double Mar- 
 riage, originally called White Lies, and founded (by an 
 an accident quaintly favourable to my nomenclature) 
 on a play by Maquet, the partner of the great Dumas. 
 In this kind of novel the closed door of The Author of 
 Beltraffio must be broken open; passion must appear 
 upon the scene and utter its last word ; passion is the 
 be-all and the end-all, the plot and the solution, the 
 protagonist and the deus ex machina in one. The char- 
 acters may come anyhow upon the stage: we do not 
 care ; the point is, that, before they leave it, they shall 
 become transfigured and raised out of themselves by 
 passion. It may be part of the design to draw them 
 with detail ; to depict a full-length character, and then 
 
 1 Now no longer so, thank Heaven ! 
 
 354 
 
A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE 
 
 behold it melt and change in the furnace of emotion. 
 But there is no obligation of the sort; nice portraiture 
 is not required ; and we are content to accept mere ab- 
 stract types, so they be strongly and sincerely moved. 
 A novel of this class may be even great, and yet con- 
 tain no individual figure; it may be great, because it 
 displays the workings of the perturbed heart and the 
 impersonal utterance of passion; and with an artist of 
 the second class it is, indeed, even more likely to be 
 great, when the issue has thus been narrowed and the 
 whole force of the writer's mind directed to passion 
 alone. Cleverness again, which has its fair field in the 
 novel of character, is debarred all entry upon this more 
 solemn theatre. A far-fetched motive, an ingenious 
 evasion of the issue, a witty instead of a passionate 
 turn, offend us like an insincerity. All should be plain, 
 all straightforward to the end. Hence it is that, in 
 Rboda Fleming, Mrs. Lovel raises such resentment in 
 the reader; her motives are too flimsy, her ways are 
 too equivocal, for the weight and strength of her sur- 
 roundings. Hence the hot indignation of the reader 
 when Balzac, after having begun the Duchesse de Lan- 
 geais in terms of strong if somewhat swollen passion, 
 cuts the knot by the derangement of the hero's clock. 
 Such personages and incidents belong to the novel of 
 character ; they are out of place in the high society of 
 the passions; when the passions are introduced in art 
 at their full height, we look to see them, not baffled and 
 impotently striving, as in life, but towering above cir- 
 cumstance and acting substitutes for fate. 
 
 And here I can imagine Mr. James, with his lucid 
 sense, to intervene. To much of what I have said he 
 
 355 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 would apparently demur; in much he would, some- 
 what impatiently, acquiesce. It may be true; but it is 
 not what he desired to say or to hear said. He spoke 
 of the finished picture and its worth when done ; I, of 
 the brushes, the palette, and the north light. He ut- 
 tered his views in the tone and for the ear of good 
 society ; I, with the emphasis and technicalities of the 
 obtrusive student. But the point, I may reply, is not 
 merely to amuse the public, but to offer helpful advice 
 to the young writer. And the young writer will not so 
 much be helped by genial pictures of what an art may 
 aspire to at its highest, as by a true idea of what it must 
 be on the lowest terms. The best that we can say to 
 him is this : Let him choose a motive, whether of char- 
 acter or passion; carefully construct his plot so that 
 every incident is an illustration of the motive, and every 
 property employed shall bear to it a near relation of con- 
 gruity or contrast; avoid a sub-plot, unless, as some- 
 times in Shakespeare, the sub-plot be a reversion or 
 complement of the main intrigue; suffer not his style 
 to flag below the level of the argument ; pitch the key 
 of conversation, not with any thought of how men talk 
 in parlours, but with a single eye to the degree of pas- 
 sion he may be called on to express ; and allow neither 
 himself in the narrative nor any character in the course 
 of the dialogue, to utter one sentence that is not part 
 and parcel of the business of the story or the discussion 
 of the problem involved. Let him not regret if this 
 shortens his book ; it will be better so ; for to add irrele- 
 vant matter is not to lengthen but to bury. Let him 
 not mind if he miss a thousand qualities, so that he 
 keeps unflaggingly in pursuit of the one he has chosen. 
 
 356 
 
A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE 
 
 Let him not care particularly if he miss the tone of 
 conversation, the pungent material detail of the day'* 
 manners, the reproduction of the atmosphere and the 
 environment. These elements are not essential : a novel 
 may be excellent, and yet have none of them ; a passion 
 or a character is so much the better depicted as it rises 
 clearer from material circumstance. In this age of the 
 particular, let him remember the ages of the abstract, 
 the great books of the past, the brave men that lived 
 before Shakespeare and before Balzac. And as the root 
 of the whole matter, let him bear in mind that his novel 
 is not a transcript of life, to be judged by its exactitude ; 
 but a simplification of some side or point of life, to 
 stand or fall by its significant simplicity. For although, 
 in great men, working upon great motives, what we 
 observe and admire is often their complexity, yet under- 
 neath appearances the truth remains unchanged: that 
 simplification was their method, and that simplicity is 
 their excellence. 
 
 Since the above was written another novelist has en- 
 tered repeatedly the lists of theory : one well worthy of 
 mention, Mr. W. D. Howells; and none ever couched 
 a lance with narrower convictions. His own work and 
 those of his pupils and masters singly occupy his mind; 
 he is the bondslave, the zealot of his school ; he dreams 
 of an advance in art like what there is in science ; he 
 thinks of past things as radically dead ; he thinks a form 
 can be outlived : a strange immersion in his own history ; 
 a strange forgetfulness of the history of the race ! Mean- 
 while, by a glance at his own works (could he see them 
 
 357 
 
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS 
 
 with the eager eyes of his readers) much of this illusion 
 would be dispelled. For while he holds all the poor 
 little orthodoxies of the day — no poorer and no smaller 
 than those of yesterday or to-morrow, poor and small, 
 indeed, only so far as they are exclusive — the living 
 quality of much that he has done is of a contrary, I had 
 almost said of a heretical, complexion. A man, as I 
 read him, of an originally strong romantic bent — a cer- 
 tain glow of romance still resides in many of his books, 
 and lends them their distinction. As by accident he 
 runs out and revels in the exceptional; and it is then, 
 as often as not, that his reader rejoices — justly, as I 
 contend. For in all this excessive eagerness to be cen- 
 trally human, is there not one central human thing that 
 Mr. Howells is too often tempted to neglect: I mean 
 himself? A poet, a finished artist, a man in love with 
 the appearances of life, a cunning reader of the mind, 
 he has other passions and aspirations than those he loves 
 to draw. And why should he suppress himself and do 
 such reverence to the Lemuel Barkers ? The obvious is 
 not of necessity the normal ; fashion rules and deforms ; 
 the majority fall tamely into the contemporary shape, 
 and thus attain, in the eyes of the true observer, only a 
 higher power of insignificance ; and the danger is lest, 
 in seeking to draw the normal, a man should draw the 
 null, and write the novel of society instead of the ro- 
 mance of man. 
 
 358 
 
PKstto 
 
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 V. 13