Chapter III: Part 3

An admirable rebuke!--if only Thackeray had remembered it when he sat down to write those famous Lectures on the English Humorists, or at least before he stood up in Willis's Rooms to inform a polite audience concerning his great predecessors. Concerning their work? No. Concerning their genius? No. Concerning the debt owed to them by mankind? Not a bit of it. Concerning their _lives_, ladies and gentlemen; and whether their lives were pure and respectable and free from scandal and such as men ought to have led whose works you would like your sons and daughters to handle. Mr. Frank T. Marzials, Thackeray's latest biographer, finds the matter of these Lectures "excellent":--

"One feels in the reading that Thackeray is a peer among his
peers--a sort of elder brother,[A] kindly, appreciative and
tolerant--as he discourses of Addison, Steele, Swift, Pope,
Sterne, Fielding, Goldsmith. I know of no greater contrast in
criticism--a contrast, be it said, not to the advantage of the
French critic--than Thackeray's treatment of Pope and that of M.
Taine. What allowance the Englishman makes for the physical ills
that beset the 'gallant little cripple'; with what a gentle hand
he touches the painful places in that poor twisted body! M.
Taine, irritated apparently that Pope will not fit into his
conception of English literature, exhibits the same deformities
almost savagely."

I am sorry that I cannot read this kindliness, this appreciation, this tolerance, into the Lectures--into those, for instance, of Sterne and Fielding: that the simile of the "elder brother" carries different suggestions for Mr. Marzials and for me: and that the lecturer's attitude is to me less suggestive of a peer among his peers than of a tall "bobby"--a volunteer constable--determined to warn his polite hearers what sort of men these were whose books they had hitherto read unsuspectingly.

And even so--even though the lives and actions of men who lived too early to know Victorian decency must be held up to shock a crowd in Willis's Rooms, yet it had been but common generosity to tell the whole truth. Then the story of Fielding's _Voyage to Lisbon_ might have touched the heart to sympathy even for the purely fictitious low comedian whom Thackeray presented: and Sterne's latest letters might have infused so much pity into the polite audience that they, like his own Recording Angel, might have blotted out his faults with a tear. But that was not Thackeray's way. Charlotte Brontë found "a finished taste and ease" in the Lectures, a "something high bred." Motley describes their style as "hovering," and their method as "the perfection of lecturing to high-bred audiences." Mr. Marzials quotes this expression "hovering" as admirably descriptive. It is. By judicious selection, by innuendo, here a pitying aposiopesis, there an indignant outburst, the charges are heaped up. Swift was a toady at heart, and used Stella vilely for the sake of that hussy Vanessa. Congreve had captivating manners--of course he had, the dog! And we all know what that meant in those days. Dick Steele drank and failed to pay his creditors. Sterne--now really I know what Club life is, ladies and gentlemen, and I might tell you a thing or two if I would: but really, speaking as a gentleman before a polite audience, I warn you against Sterne.

I do not suppose for a moment that Thackeray consciously defamed these men. The weaknesses, the pettinesses of humanity interested him, and he treated them with gusto, even as he spares us nothing of that horrible scene between Mrs. Mackenzie and Colonel Newcome. And of course poor Sterne was the easiest victim. The fellow was so full of his confounded sentiments. You ring a choice few of these on the counter and prove them base metal. You assume that the rest of the bag is of equal value. You "go one better" than Sir Peter Teazle and damn all sentiment, and lo! the fellow is no better than a smirking jester, whose antics you can expose till men and women, who had foolishly laughed and wept as he moved them, turn from him, loathing him as a swindler. So it is that although _Tristram Shandy_ continues one of the most popular classics in the language, nobody dares to confess his debt to Sterne except in discreet terms of apology.

But the fellow wrote the book. You can't deny _that_, though Thackeray may tempt you to forget it. (What proportion does my Uncle Toby hold in that amiable Lecture?) The truth is that the elemental simplicity of Captain Shandy and Corporal Trim did not appeal to the author of _The Book of Snobs_ in the same degree as the pettiness of the man Sterne appealed to him: and his business in Willis's Rooms was to talk, not of Captain Shandy, but of the man Sterne, to whom his hearers were to feel themselves superior as members of society. I submit that this was not a worthy task for a man of letters who was also a man of genius. I submit that it was an inversion of the true critical method to wreck Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_ at the outset by picking Sterne's life to pieces, holding up the shreds and warning the reader that any nobility apparent in his book will be nothing better than a sham. Sterne is scarcely arrived at Calais and in conversation with the Monk before you are cautioned how you listen to the impostor. "Watch now," says the critic; "he'll be at his tricks in a moment. Hey, _paillasse_! There!--didn't I tell you?" And yet I am as sure that the opening pages of the _Sentimental Journey_ are full of genuine feeling as I am that if Jonathan Swift had entered the room while the Lecture upon him was going forward, he would have eaten William Makepeace Goliath, white waistcoat and all.

Frenchmen, who either are less awed than we by lecturers in white waistcoats, or understand the methods of criticism somewhat better, cherish the _Sentimental Journey_ (in spite of its indifferent French) and believe in the genius that created it. But the Briton reads it with shyness, and the British critic speaks of Sterne with bated breath, since Thackeray told it in Gath that Sterne was a bad man, and the daughters of Philistia triumphed.

* * * * *

October 6, 1894. Mr. Whibley's Edition of "Tristram Shandy."

We are a strenuous generation, with a New Humor and a number of interesting by-products; but a new _Tristram Shandy_ stands not yet among our achievements. So Messrs. Henley and Whibley have made the best of it and given us a new edition of the old _Tristram_--two handsome volumes, with shapely pages, fair type, and an Introduction. Mr. Whibley supplies the Introduction, and that he writes lucidly and forcibly needs not to be said. His position is neither that so unfairly taken up by Thackeray; nor that of Allibone, who, writing for Heaven knows how many of Allibone's maiden aunts, summed up Sterne thus:--

"A standing reproach to the profession which he disgraced,
grovelling in his tastes, indiscreet, if not licentious, in his
habits, he lived unhonoured and died unlamented, save by those
who found amusement in his wit or countenance in his
immorality."[B]

But though he avoids these particular excesses; though he goes straight for the book, as a critic should; Mr. Whibley cannot get quit of the bad tradition of patronizing Sterne:--

"He failed, as only a sentimentalist can fail, in the province of
pathos.... There is no trifle, animate or inanimate, he will not
bewail, if he be but in the mood; nor does it shame him to dangle
before the public gaze those poor shreds of sensibility he calls
his feelings. Though he seldom deceives the reader into sympathy,
none will turn from his choicest agony without a thrill of
disgust. The _Sentimental Journey_, despite its interludes of
tacit humour and excellent narrative, is the last extravagance of
irrelevant grief.... Genuine sentiment was as strange to Sterne
the writer as to Sterne the man; and he conjures up no tragic
figure that is not stuffed with sawdust and tricked out in the
rags of the green-room. Fortunately, there is scant opportunity
for idle tears in _Tristram Shandy_.... Yet no occasion is
lost.... Yorick's death is false alike to nature and art. The
vapid emotion is properly matched with commonness of expression,
and the bad taste is none the more readily excused by the
suggestion of self-defence. Even the humour of My Uncle Toby is
something: degraded by the oft-quoted platitude: 'Go, poor
devil,' says he, to an overgrown fly which had buzzed about his
nose; 'get thee gone. Why should I hurt thee? This world surely
is big enough to hold both thee and me.'"

But here Mr. Whibley's notorious hatred of sentiment leads him into confusion. That the passage has been over-quoted is no fault of Sterne's. Of My Uncle Toby, if of any man, it might have been predicted that he would not hurt a fly. To me this trivial action of his is more than merely sentimental. But, be this as it may, I am sure it is honestly characteristic.

Still, on the whole Mr. Whibley has justice. Sterne _is_ a sentimentalist. Sterne _is_ indecent by reason of his reticence--more indecent than Rabelais, because he uses a hint where Rabelais would have said what he meant, and prints a dash where Rabelais would have plumped out with a coarse word and a laugh. Sterne _is_ a convicted thief. On a famous occasion Charles Reade drew a line between plagiary and justifiable borrowing. To draw material from a heterogeneous work--to found, for instance, the play of _Coriolanus_ upon Plutarch's _Life_--is justifiable: to take from a homogeneous work--to enrich your drama from another man's drama--is plagiary. But even on this interpretation of the law Sterne must be condemned; for in decking out _Tristram_ with feathers from the history of Gargantua he was pillaging a homogeneous work. Nor can it be pleaded in extenuation that he improved upon his originals--though it can, I think, be pleaded that he made his borrowings his own. I do not think much of Mr. Whibley's instance of Servius Sulpicius' letter. No doubt Sterne took his translation of it from Burton; but the letter is a very well known one, and Burton's translation happened to be uncommonly good, and the borrowing of a good rendering without acknowledgment was not, as far as I know, then forbidden by custom. In any case, the whole passage is intended merely to lead up to the beautiful perplexity of My Uncle Toby. And that is Sterne's own, and could never have been another man's. "After all," says Mr. Whibley, "all the best in Sterne is still Sterne's own."

But the more I agree with Mr. Whibley's strictures the more I desire to remove them from an Introduction to _Tristram Shandy_, and to read them in a volume of Mr. Whibley's collected essays. Were it not better, in reading _Tristram Shandy_, to take Sterne for once (if only for a change) at his own valuation, or at least to accept the original postulates of the story? If only for the entertainment he provides we owe him the effort. There will be time enough afterwards to turn to the cold judgment of this or that critic, or to the evidence of this or that thief-taker. For the moment he claims to be heard without prejudice; he has genius enough to make it worth our while to listen without prejudice; and the most lenient "appreciation" of his sins, if we read it beforehand, is bound to raise prejudice and infect our enjoyment as we read. And, as a corollary of this demand, let us ask that he shall be allowed to present his book to us exactly as he chooses. Mr. Whibley says, "He set out upon the road of authorship with a false ideal: 'Writing,' said he, 'when properly managed, is but a different name for conversation.' It would be juster to assert that writing is never properly managed, unless it be removed from conversation as far as possible." Very true; or, at least, very likely. But since Sterne _had_ this ideal, let us grant him full liberty to make his spoon or spoil his horn, and let us judge afterwards concerning the result. The famous blackened page and the empty pages (all omitted in this new edition) are part of Sterne's method. They may seem to us trick-work and foolery; but, if we consider, they link on to his notion that writing is but a name for conversation; they are included in his demand that in writing a book a man should be allowed to "go cluttering away like hey-go mad." "You may take my word"--it is Sterne who speaks, and in his very first chapter--

"You may take my word that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or
his nonsense, his success and miscarriages in this world, depend
upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and
trains you put them into, so that when they are once set
going--whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter--away
they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same
steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as
plain and smooth as a garden walk, which, when once they are
used to, the devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive
them off it."

This, at any rate, is Sterne's own postulate. And I had rather judge him with all his faults after reading the book than be prepared beforehand to make allowances.

* * * * *

Nov. 12, 1895. Sterne's Good-nature.

Let one thing be recorded to the credit of this much-abused man. He wrote two masterpieces of fiction (one of them a work of considerable length), and in neither will you find an ill-natured character or an ill-natured word. On the admission of all critics My Father, My Mother, My Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, and Mrs. Wadman are immortal creations. To the making of them there has gone no single sour or uncharitable thought. They are essentially amiable: and the same may be said of all the minor characters and of the author's disquisitions. Sterne has given us a thousand occasions to laugh, but never an occasion to laugh on the wrong side of the mouth. For savagery or bitterness you will search his books in vain. He is obscene, to be sure. But who, pray, was ever the worse for having read him? Alas, poor Yorick! He had his obvious and deplorable failings. I never heard that he communicated them. Good-humor he has been communicating now for a hundred and fifty years.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] But why "elder"?

[B] "Pan might _indeed_ be proud if ever he begot
Such an Allibone ..."
_Spenser (revised)._

SCOTT AND BURNS

Dec. 9, 1893. Scott's Letters.

"_All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf. The new edition fifty
volumes long"_

--says Bishop Blougram. But for Scott the student will soon have to hire a room. The novels and poems alone stretch away into just sixty volumes in Cadell's edition; and this is only the beginning. At this very moment two new editions (one of which, at least, is indispensable) are unfolding their magnificent lengths, and report says that Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton already project a third, with introductory essays by Mr. Barrie. Then the Miscellaneous Prose Works by that untiring hand extend to some twenty-eight or thirty volumes. And when Scott stops, his biographer and his commentators begin, and all with like liberal notions of space and time. Nor do they deceive themselves. We take all they give, and call for more. Three years ago, and fifty-eight from the date of Scott's death, his Journal was published; and although Lockhart had drawn upon it for one of the fullest biographies in the language, the little that Lockhart had left unused was sufficient to make its publication about the most important literary event of the year 1890.

And now Mr. David Douglas, the publisher of the "Journal," gives us in two volumes a selection from the familiar letters preserved at Abbotsford. The period covered by this correspondence is from 1797, the year of Sir Walter's marriage, to 1825, when the "Journal" begins--"covered," however, being too large a word for the first seven years, which are represented by seven letters only; it is only in 1806 that we start upon something like a consecutive story. Mr. Douglas speaks modestly of his editorial work. "I have done," he says, "little more than arrange the correspondence in chronological order, supplying where necessary a slight thread of continuity by annotation and illustration." It must be said that Mr. Douglas has done this exceedingly well. There is always a note where a note is wanted, and never where information would be superfluous. On the taste and judgment of his selection one who has not examined the whole mass of correspondence at Abbotsford can only speak on _a priori_ grounds. But it is unlikely that the writer of these exemplary footnotes has made many serious mistakes in compiling his text.

Man's perennial and pathetic curiosity about virtue has no more striking example than the public eagerness to be acquainted with every detail of Scott's life. For what, as a mere story, is that life?--a level narrative of many prosperous years; a sudden financial crash; and the curtain falls on the struggle of a tired and dying gentleman to save his honor. Scott was born in 1771 and died in 1832, and all that is special in his life belongs to the last six years of it. Even so the materials for the story are of the simplest--enough, perhaps, under the hand of an artist to furnish forth a tale of the length of Trollope's _The Warden_. In picturesqueness, in color, in wealth of episode and +peripeteia+, Scott's career will not compare for a moment with the career of Coleridge, for instance. Yet who could endure to read the life of Coleridge in six volumes? De Quincey, in an essay first published the other day by Dr. Japp, calls the story of the Coleridges "a perfect romance ... a romance of beauty, of intellectual power, of misfortune suddenly illuminated from heaven, of prosperity suddenly overcast by the waywardness of the individual." But the "romance" has been written twice and thrice, and desperately dull reading it makes in each case. Is it then an accident that Coleridge has been unhappy in his biographers, while Lockhart succeeded once for all, and succeeded so splendidly?

It is surely no accident. Coleridge is an ill man to read about just as certainly as Scott is a good man to read about; and the secret is just that Scott had character and Coleridge had not. In writing of the man of the "graspless hand," the biographer's own hand in time grows graspless on the pen; and in reading of him our hands too grow graspless on the page. We pursue the man and come upon group after group of his friends; and each as we demand "What have you done with Coleridge?" answers "He was here just now, and we helped him forward a little way." Our best biographies are all of men and women of character--and, it may be added, of beautiful character--of Johnson, Scott, and Charlotte Brontë.

There are certain people whose biographies _ought_ to be long. Who could learn too much concerning Lamb? And concerning Scott, who will not agree with Lockhart's remark in the preface to his abridged edition of 1848:--"I should have been more willing to produce an enlarged edition; for the interest of Sir Walter's history lies, I think, peculiarly in its minute details"? You may explore here, and explore there, and still you find pure gold; for the man was gold right through.

So in the present volume every line is of interest because we refer it to Scott's known character and test it thereby. The result is always the same; yet the employment does not weary. In themselves the letters cannot stand, as mere writing, beside the letters of Cowper, or of Lamb. They are just the common-sense epistles of a man who to his last day remained too modest to believe in the extent of his own genius. The letters in this collection which show most acuteness on literary matters are not Scott's, but Lady Louisa Stuart's, who appreciated the Novels on their appearance (their faults as well as their merits) with a judiciousness quite wonderful in a contemporary. Scott's literary observations (with the exception of one passage where the attitude of an English gentleman towards literature is stated thus--"he asks of it that it shall arouse him from his habitual contempt of what goes on about him") are much less amusing; and his letters to Joanna Baillie the dullest in the volume, unless it be the answers which Joanna Baillie sent. Best of all, perhaps, is the correspondence (scarcely used by Lockhart) between Scott and Lady Abercorn, with its fitful intervals of warmth and reserve. This alone would justify Mr. Douglas's volumes. But, indeed, while nothing can be found now to alter men's conception of Scott, any book about him is justified, even if it do no more than heap up superfluous testimony to the beauty of his character.

* * * * *

June 15, 1895. A racial disability.

Since about one-third of the number of my particular friends happen to be Scotsmen, it has always distressed and annoyed me that, with the best will in the world, I have never been able to understand on what principle that perfervid race conducts its enthusiasms. Mine is a racial disability, of course; and the converse has been noted by no less a writer than Stevenson, in the story of his journey "Across the Plains":--

"There were no emigrants direct from Europe--save one German
family and a knot of Cornish miners who kept grimly by
themselves, one reading the New Testament all day long through
steel spectacles, the rest discussing privately the secrets of
their old-world mysterious race. Lady Hester Stanhope believed
she could make something great of the Cornish; for my part I can
make nothing of them at all. A division of races, older and more
original than that of Babel, keeps this dose, esoteric family
apart from neighbouring Englishmen."

The loss on my side, to be sure, would be immensely the greater, were it not happily certain that I _can_ make something of Scotsmen; can, and indeed do, make friends of them.

The Cult of Burns.

All the same, this disability weighs me down with a sense of hopeless obtuseness when I consider the deportment of the average intelligent Scot at a Burns banquet, or a Burns _conversazione_, or a Burns festival, or the unveiling of a Burns statue, or the putting up of a pillar on some spot made famous by Burns. All over the world--and all under it, too, when their time comes--Scotsmen are preparing after-dinner speeches about Burns. The great globe swings round out of the sun into the dark; there is always midnight somewhere; and always in this shifting region the eye of imagination sees orators gesticulating over Burns; companies of heated exiles with crossed arms shouting "Auld Lang Syne"; lesser groups--if haply they be lesser--reposing under tables, still in honor of Burns. And as the vast continents sweep "eastering out of the high shadow which reaches beyond the moon," and as new nations, with _their_ cities and villages, their mountains and seashores, rise up on the morning-side, lo! fresh troops, and still fresh troops, and yet again fresh troops, wend or are carried out of action with the dawn.

Scott and Burns.

None but a churl would wish this enthusiasm abated. But why is it all lavished on Burns? That is what gravels the Southron. Why Burns? Why not Sir Walter? Had I the honor to be a fellow-countryman of Scott, and had I command of the racial tom-tom, it seems to me that I would tund upon it in honor of that great man until I dropped. To me, a Southron, Scott is the most imaginative, and at the same time the justest, writer of our language since Shakespeare died. To say this is not to suggest that he is comparable with Shakespeare. Scott himself, sensible as ever, wrote in his _Journal_, "The blockheads talk of my being like Shakespeare--not fit to tie his brogues." "But it is also true," said Mr. Swinburne, in his review of the _Journal_, "that if there were or could be any man whom it would not be a monstrous absurdity to compare with Shakespeare as a creator of men and inventor of circumstance, that man could be none other than Scott." Greater poems than his have been written; and, to my mind, one or two novels better than his best. But when one considers the huge mass of his work, and its quality in the mass; the vast range of his genius, and its command over that range; who shall be compared with him?

These are the reflections which occur, somewhat obviously, to the Southron. As for character, it is enough to say that Scott was one of the best men who ever walked on this planet; and that Burns was not. But Scott was not merely good: he was winningly good: of a character so manly, temperate, courageous that men read his Life, his Journal, his Letters with a thrill, as they might read of Rorke's Drift or Chitral. How then are we to account for the undeniable fact that his countrymen, in public at any rate, wax more enthusiastic over Burns? Is it that the _homeliness_ of Burns appeals to them as a wandering race? Is it because, in farthest exile, a line of Burns takes their hearts straight back to Scotland?--as when Luath the collie, in "The Twa Dogs," describes the cotters' New Year's Day:--

"That merry day the year begins,
They bar the door on frosty winds;
The nappy reeks wi' mantling ream,
An' sheds a heart-inspirin' steam;
The luntin' pipe an' sneeshin' mill
Are handed round wi' richt guid will;
The cantie auld folks crackin' crouse,
The young anes rantin' through the house,--
My heart has been sae fain to see them,
That I for joy hae barkit wi' them."

That is one reason, no doubt. But there is another, I suspect. With all his immense range Scott saw deeply into character; but he did not, I think, see very deeply into feeling. You may extract more of the _lacrimæ rerum_ from the story of his own life than from all his published works put together. The pathos of Lammermoor is taken-for-granted pathos. If you deny this, you will not deny, at any rate, that the pathos of the last scene of _Lear_ is quite beyond his scope. Yet this is not more certainly beyond his scope than is the feeling in many a single line or stanza of Burns'. Verse after verse, line after line, rise up for quotation--

"Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird
That sings beside thy mate;
For sae I sat, and sae I sang,
And wist na o' my fate."

Or,

"O pale, pale now, those rosy lips
I aft hae kissed sae fondly!
And closed for aye the sparkling glance
That dwelt on me sae kindly!
And mouldering now in silent dust
The heart that lo'ed me dearly--
But still within my bosom's core
Shall live my Highland Mary."

Or,

"Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met--or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted."

Scott left an enormous mass of writing behind him, and almost all of it is good. Burns left very much less, and among it a surprising amount of inferior stuff. But such pathos as the above Scott cannot touch. I can understand the man who holds that these deeps of pathos should not be probed in literature: and am not sure that I wholly disagree with him. The question certainly is discutable and worth discussing. But such pathos, at any rate, is immensely popular: and perhaps this will account for the hold which Burns retains on the affections of a race which has a right to be at least thrice as proud of Scott.

However, if Burns is honored at the feast, Scott is read by the fireside. Hardly have the rich Dryburgh and Border editions issued from the press before Messrs. Archibald Constable and Co. are bringing out their reprint of the famous 48-volume edition of the Novels; and Mr. Barrie is supposed to be meditating another, with introductory notes of his own upon each Novel. In my own opinion nothing has ever beaten, or come near to beat, the 48-volume "Waverley" of 1829; and Messrs. Constable and Co. were happily inspired when they decided to make this the basis of their new edition. They have improved upon it in two respects. The paper is lighter and better. And each novel is kept within its own covers, whereas in the old editions a volume would contain the end of one novel and beginning of another. The original illustrations, by Wilkie, Landseer, Leslie, Stanfield, Bonington, and the rest, have been retained, in order to make the reprint complete. But this seems to me a pity; for a number of them were bad to begin with, and will be worse than ever now, being reproduced (as I understand) from impressions of the original plates. To do without illustrations were a counsel of perfection. But now that the novels have become historical, surely it were better to illustrate them with authentic portraits of Scott, pictures of scenery, facsimiles of MSS., and so on, than with (_e.g._) a worn reproduction of what Mr. F.P. Stephanoff thought that Flora Mac-Ivor looked like while playing the harp and introducing a few irregular strains which harmonized well with the distant waterfall and the soft sigh of the evening breeze in the rustling leaves of an aspen which overhung the fair harpress--especially as F.P. Stephanoff does not seem to have known the difference between an aspen and a birch.

In short, did it not contain the same illustrations, this edition would probably excel even that of 1828. As it is, after many disappointments, we now have a cheap Waverley on what has always been the best model.

A Protest.

'SIR,--In your 'Literary Causerie' of last week ... the question
is discussed why the name of Burns raises in Scotsmen such
unbounded enthusiasm while that of Scott falls comparatively
flat. This question has puzzled many another Englishman besides
'A.T.Q.C.' And yet the explanation is not far to seek: Burns
appeals to the hearts and feelings of the masses in a way Scott
never does. 'A.T.Q.C.' admits this, and gives quotations in
support. These quotations, however excellent in their way, are
not those that any Scotsman would trust to in support of the
above proposition. A Scotsman would at once appeal to 'Scots wha
hae,' 'Auld Lang Syne,' and 'A man's a man for a' that.' The very
familiarity of these quotations has bred the proverbial contempt.
Think of the soul-inspiring, 'fire-eyed fury' of 'Scots wha hae';
the glad, kind, ever fresh greeting of 'Auld Lang Syne'; the
manly, sturdy independence of 'A man's a man for a' that,' and
who can wonder at the ever-increasing enthusiasm for Burns' name?

Is there for honest poverty
That hangs his head and a' that?
The coward slave we pass him by--
We dare be poor for a' that.'
* * * * *
'The rank is but the guinea stamp--
The man's the gowd for a' that.'

"Nor is it in his patriotism, independence, and conviviality
alone that Burns touches every mood of a Scotsman's heart. There
is an enthusiasm of humanity about Burns which you will hardly
find equalled in any other author, and which most certainly does
not exist in Scott.

'Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.'
* * * * *
'Why has man this will and power
To make his fellow mourn?'

"These quotations might be multiplied were it necessary; but I
think enough has been said to explain what puzzles 'A.T.Q.C.' I
have an unbounded admiration of Sir W. Scott--quite as great as
'A.T.Q.C.' Indeed, I think him the greatest of all novelists;
but, as a Scot, somewhat Anglicised by a residence in London of
more than a quarter of a century, I unhesitatingly say that I
would rather be the author of the above three lyrics of Burns'
than I would be the author of all Scott's novels. Certain I am
that if immortality were my aim I should be much surer of it in
the one case than the other. I cannot conceive 'Scots wha hae,'
'Auld Lang Syne,' etc., ever dying. Are there any of Scott's
writings of which the same could be said? I doubt it....

--I am yours, etc., "J.B.
"London, June 18th, 1895."

The hopelessness of the difficulty is amusingly, if rather distressingly, illustrated by this letter. Here again you have the best will in the world. Nothing could be kindlier than "J.B.'s" tone. As a Scot he has every reason to be impatient of stupidity on the subject of Burns: yet he takes real pains to set me right. Alas! his explanations leave me more than ever at sea, more desperate than ever of understanding _what exactly it is_ in Burns that kindles this peculiar enthusiasm in Scotsmen and drives them to express it in feasting and oratory.

After casting about for some time, I suggested that Burns--though in so many respects immeasurably inferior to Scott--frequently wrote with a depth of feeling which Scott could not command. On second thoughts, this was wrongly put. Scott may have _possessed_ the feeling, together with notions of his own, on the propriety of displaying it in his public writings. Indeed, after reading some of his letters again, I am sure he did possess it. Hear, for instance, how he speaks of Dalkeith Palace, in one of his letters to Lady Louisa Stuart:--

"I am delighted my dear little half god-daughter is turning out
beautiful. I was at her christening, poor soul, and took the
oaths as representing I forget whom. That was in the time when
Dalkeith was Dalkeith; how changed alas! I was forced there the
other day by some people who wanted to see the house, and I felt
as if it would have done me a great deal of good to have set my
manhood aside, to get into a corner and cry like a schoolboy.
Every bit of furniture, now looking old and paltry, had some
story and recollections about it, and the deserted gallery, which
I have seen so happily filled, seemed waste and desolate like
Moore's

'Banquet hall deserted,
Whose flowers are dead,
Whose odours fled,
And all but I departed.'

But it avails not either sighing or moralising; to have known the
good and the great, the wise and the witty, is still, on the
whole, a pleasing reflection, though saddened by the thought that
their voices are silent and their halls empty."

Yes, indeed, Scott possessed deep feelings, though he did not exhibit them to the public.

Now Burns does exhibit his deep feelings, as I demonstrated by quotations. And I suggested that it is just his strength of emotion, his command of pathos and readiness to employ it, by which Burns appeals to the mass of his countrymen. On this point "J.B." expressly agrees with me; but--he will have nothing to do with my quotations! "However excellent in their way" these quotations may be, they "are not those that any Scotsman would trust to in support of the above proposition"; the above proposition being that "Burns appeals to the hearts and feelings of the masses in a way that Scott never does."

You see, I have concluded rightly; but on wrong evidence. Let us see, then, what evidence a Scotsman will call to prove that Burns is a writer of deep feeling. "A Scotsman," says "J.B." "would at once appeal to "Scots wha hae," "Auld Lang Syne," and "A man's a man for a' that." ... Think of the soul-inspiring, 'fire-eyed fury' of 'Scots wha hae'; the glad, kind, ever fresh greeting of 'Auld Lang Syne'; the manly, sturdy independence of 'A man's a man for a' that,' and who can wonder at the ever-increasing enthusiasm for Burns' name?... I would rather," says "J.B.," "be the author of the above three lyrics than I would be the author of all Scott's novels."

Here, then, is the point at which I give up my attempts, and admit my stupidity to be incurable. I grant "J.B." his "Auld Lang Syne." I grant the poignancy of--

"We twa hae paidl't i' the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine:
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin auld lang syne."

I see poetry and deep feeling in this. I can see exquisite poetry and deep feeling in "Mary Morison"--

"Yestreen when to the trembling string,
The dance ga'ed thro' the lighted ha',
To thee my fancy took its wing,
I sat, but neither heard nor saw:
Tho' this was fair, and that was braw,
And yor the toast a' the town,
I sigh'd and said amang them a'
'Ye are na Mary Morison.'"

I see exquisite poetry and deep feeling in the Lament for the Earl of Glencairn--

"The bridegroom may forget the bride
Was made his wedded wife yestreen;
The monarch may forget the crown
That on his head an hour has been;
The mother may forget the child
That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
And a' that thou hast done for me!"

But--it is only honest to speak one's opinion and to hope, if it be wrong, for a better mind--I do _not_ find poetry of any high order either in "Scots wha hae" or "A man's a man for a' that." The former seems to me to be very fine rant--inspired rant, if you will--hovering on the borders of poetry. The latter, to be frank, strikes me as rather poor rant, neither inspired nor even quite genuine, and in no proper sense poetry at all. And "J.B." simply bewilders my Southron intelligence when he quotes it as an instance of deeply emotional song.

"Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
His riband, star and a' that.
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that."

The proper attitude, I should imagine, for a man "of independent mind" in these circumstances--assuming for the moment that ribands and stars _are_ bestowed on imbeciles--would be a quiet disdain. The above stanza reminds me rather of ill-bred barking. People of assured self-respect do not call other people "birkies" and "coofs," or "look and _laugh_ at a' that"--at least, not so loudly. Compare these verses of Burns with Samuel Daniel's "Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland," and you will find a higher manner altogether--

"He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity and malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same;
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of men survey?

"And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil?" ...

As a piece of thought, "A man's a man for a' that" unites the two defects of obviousness and inaccuracy. As for the deep feeling, I hardly see where it comes in--unless it be a feeling of wounded and blatant but militant self-esteem. As for the _poetry_--well, "J.B." had rather have written it than have written one-third of Scott's novels. Let us take him at less than his word: he would rather have written "A man's a man for a' that" than "Ivanhoe," "Redgauntlet," and "The Heart of Midlothian."

_Ma sonties!_

CHARLES READE

March 10, 1894. "The Cloister and the Hearth."

There is a venerable proposition--I never heard who invented it--that an author is finally judged by his best work. This would be comforting to authors if true: but is it true? A day or two ago I picked up on a railway bookstall a copy of Messrs. Chatto & Windus's new sixpenny edition of _The Cloister and the Hearth_, and a capital edition it is. I think I must have worn out more copies of this book than of any other; but somebody robbed me of the pretty "Elzevir edition" as soon as it came out, and so I have only just read Mr. Walter Besant's Introduction, which the publishers have considerately reprinted and thrown in with one of the cheapest sixpennyworths that ever came from the press. Good wine needs no bush, and the bush which Mr. Besant hangs out is a very small one. But one sentence at least has challenged attention.

"I do not say that the whole of life, as it was at the end of the
fourteenth century, may be found in the _Cloister and the
Hearth_; but I do say that there is portrayed so vigorous,
lifelike, and truthful a picture of a time long gone by, and
differing, in almost every particular from our own, that the
world has never seen its like. To me it is a picture of the past
more faithful than anything in the works of Scott."

This last sentence--if I remember rightly--was called a very bold one when it first appeared in print. To me it seems altogether moderate. Go steadily through Scott, and which of the novels can you choose to compare with the _Cloister_ as a "vigorous, lifelike, and truthful picture of a time long gone by"?

Is it _Ivanhoe_?--a gay and beautiful romance, no doubt; but surely, as the late Mr. Freeman was at pains to point out, not a "lifelike and truthful picture" of any age that ever was. Is it _Old Mortality_? Well, but even if we here get something more like a "vigorous, lifelike, and truthful picture of a time gone by," we are bound to consider the scale of the two books. Size counts, as Aristotle pointed out, and as we usually forget. It is the whole of Western Europe that Reade reconstructs for the groundwork of his simple story.

Mr. Besant might have said more. He might have pointed out that no novel of Scott's approaches the _Cloister_ in lofty humanity, in sublimity of pathos. The last fifty pages of the tale reach an elevation of feeling that Scott never touched or dreamed of touching. And the sentiment is sane and honest, too: the author reaches to the height of his great argument easily and without strain. It seems to me that, as an appeal to the feelings, the page that tells of Margaret's death is the finest thing in fiction. It appeals for a score of reasons, and each reason is a noble one. We have brought together in that page extreme love, self-sacrifice, resignation, courage, religious feeling: we have the end of a beautiful love-tale, the end of a good woman, and the last earthly trial of a good man. And with all this, there is no vulgarization of sacred ground, no cheap parade of the heart's secrets; but a deep sobriety relieved with the most delicate humor. Moreover, the language is Charles Reade's at its best--which is almost as good as at its worst it is abominable.

That Scott could never reach the emotional height of Margaret's death-scene, or of the scene in Clement's cave, is certain. Moreover in the _Cloister_ Reade challenges comparison with Scott on Scott's own ground--the ground of sustained adventurous narrative--and the advantage is not with Scott. Once more, take all the Waverley Novels and search them through for two passages to beat the adventures of Gerard and Denis the Burgundian (1) with the bear and (2) at "The Fair Star" Inn, by the Burgundian Frontier. I do not think you will succeed, even then. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that to match these adventures of Gerard and Denis you must go again to Charles Reade, to the homeward voyage of the _Agra_ in _Hard Cash_. For these and for sundry other reasons which, for lack of space, cannot be unfolded here, _The Cloister and the Hearth_ seems to me a finer achievement than the finest novel of Scott's.

And now we come to the proposition that an author must be judged by his best work. If this proposition be true, then I must hold Reade to be a greater novelist than Scott. But do I hold this? Does anyone hold this? Why, the contention would be an absurdity.

Reade wrote some twenty novels beside _The Cloister and the Hearth_, and not one of the twenty approaches it. One only--_Griffith Gaunt_--is fit to be named in the same day with it; and _Griffith Gaunt_ is marred by an insincerity in the plot which vitiates, and is at once felt to vitiate, the whole work. On everything he wrote before and after _The Cloister_ Reade's essential vulgarity of mind is written large. That he shook it off in that great instance is one of the miracles of literary history. It may be that the sublimity of his theme kept him throughout in a state of unnatural exaltation. If the case cannot be explained thus, it cannot be explained at all. Other of his writings display the same, or at any rate a like, capacity for sustained narrative. _Hard Cash_ displays it; parts of _It is Never Too Late to Mend_ display it. But over much of these two novels lies the trail of that defective taste which makes _A Simpleton_, for instance, a prodigy of cheap ineptitude.

But if Reade be hopelessly Scott's inferior in manner and taste, what shall we say of the invention of the two men? Mr. Barrie once affirmed very wisely in an essay on Robert Louis Stevenson, "Critics have said enthusiastically--for it is difficult to write of Mr. Stevenson without enthusiasm--that Alan Breck is as good as anything in Scott. Alan Breck is certainly a masterpiece, quite worthy of the greatest of all story-tellers, _who, nevertheless, it should be remembered, created these rich side characters by the score, another before dinner-time_." Inventiveness, is, I suppose, one of the first qualities of a great novelist: and to Scott's invention there was no end. But set aside _The Cloister_; and Reade's invention will be found to be extraordinarily barren. Plot after plot turns on the same old tiresome trick. Two young people are in love: by the villainy of a third person they are separated for a while, and one of the lovers is persuaded that the other is dead. The missing one may be kept missing by various devices; but always he is supposed to be dead, and always evidence is brought of his death, and always he turns up in the end. It is the same in _The Cloister_, in _It is Never Too Late to Mend_, in _Put Yourself in His Place_, in _Griffith Gaunt_, in _A Simpleton_. Sometimes, as in _Hard Cash_ and _A Terrible Temptation_, he is wrongfully incarcerated as a madman; but this is obviously a variant only on the favorite trick. Now the device is good enough in a tale of the fourteenth century, when news travelled slowly, and when by the suppression of a letter, or by a piece of false news, two lovers, the one in Holland, the other in Rome, could easily be kept apart. But in a tale of modern life no trick could well be stagier. Besides the incomparable Margaret--of whom it does one good to hear Mr. Besant say, "No heroine in fiction is more dear to me"--Reade drew some admirable portraits of women; but his men, to tell the truth--and especially his priggish young heroes--seem remarkably ill invented. Again, of course, I except _The Cloister_. Omit that book, and you would say that such a character as Bailie Nicol Jarvie or Dugald Dalgetty were altogether beyond Reade's range. Open _The Cloister_ and you find in Denis the Burgundian a character as good as the Bailie and Dalgetty rolled into one.

Other authors have been lifted above themselves. But was there ever a case of one sustained at such an unusual height throughout a long, intricate and arduous work?

HENRY KINGSLEY

Feb. 9, 1895. Henry Kingsley.

Mr. Shorter begins his Memoir of the author of _Ravenshoe_ with this paragraph:--

"The story of Henry Kingsley's life may well be told in a few
words, because that life was on the whole a failure. The world
will not listen very tolerantly to a narrative of failure
unaccompanied by the halo of remoteness. To write the life of
Charles Kingsley would be a quite different task. Here was
success, victorious success, sufficient indeed to gladden the
heart even of Dr. Smiles--success in the way of Church
preferment, success in the way of public veneration, success,
above all, as a popular novelist, poet, and preacher. Canon
Kingsley's life has been written in two substantial volumes
containing abundant letters and no indiscretions. In this
biography the name of Henry Kingsley is absolutely ignored. And
yet it is not too much to say that, when time has softened his
memory for us, as it has softened for us the memories of Marlowe
and Burns and many another, the public interest in Henry Kingsley
will be stronger than in his now more famous brother."[A]

A prejudice confessed.

I almost wish I could believe this. If one cannot get rid of a prejudice, the wisest course is to acknowledge it candidly: and therefore I confess myself as capable of jumping over the moon as of writing fair criticism on Charles or Henry Kingsley. As for Henry, I worshipped his books as a boy; to-day I find them full of faults--often preposterous, usually ill-constructed, at times unnatural beyond belief. John Gilpin never threw the Wash about on both sides of the way more like unto a trundling mop or a wild goose at play than did Henry Kingsley the decent flow of fiction when the mood was on him. His notion of constructing a novel was to take equal parts of wooden melodrama and low comedy and stick them boldly together in a paste of impertinent drollery and serious but entirely irrelevant moralizing. And yet each time I read _Ravenshoe_--and I must be close upon "double figures"--I like it better. Henry did my green unknowing youth engage, and I find it next to impossible to give him up, and quite impossible to choose the venerated Charles as a substitute in my riper age. For here crops up a prejudice I find quite ineradicable. To put it plainly, I cannot like Charles Kingsley. Those who have had opportunity to study the deportment of a certain class of Anglican divine at a foreign _table d'hôte_ may perhaps understand the antipathy. There was almost always a certain sleek offensiveness about Charles Kingsley when he sat down to write. He had a knack of using the most insolent language, and attributing the vilest motives to all poor foreigners and Roman Catholics and other extra-parochial folk, and would exhibit a pained and completely ludicrous surprise on finding that he had hurt the feelings of these unhappy inferiors--a kind of indignant wonder that Providence should have given them any feelings to hurt. At length, encouraged by popular applause, this very second-rate man attacked a very first-rate man. He attacked with every advantage and with utter unscrupulousness; and the first-rate man handled him; handled him gently, scrupulously, decisively; returned him to his parish; and left him there, a trifle dazed, feeling his muscles.

Charles and Henry.