Chapter VII: Part 7

Believing this--that the book would be its own best antidote--Mr. Stead epitomized it in his _Review_, printed copious extracts, and wound up by indicating his own views and what he deemed the true moral of the discussion. The _Review_ was published and, so far as Messrs. W.H. Smith & Son were concerned, passed without comment. But to the Editor's surprise (he tells the story in the _Westminster Gazette_ of the 2nd inst.), no sooner was it placed on the market in Ireland than he received word that every copy had been recalled from the bookstalls, and that Messrs. Eason had refused to sell a single copy. On telegraphing for more information, Mr. Stead was sent the following letter:--

"DEAR SIR,--Allen's book is an avowed defence of Free Love, and
a direct attack upon the Christian view of marriage. Mr. Stead
criticises Allen's views adversely, but we do not think the
antidote can destroy the ill-effects of the poison, and we
decline to be made the vehicle for the distribution of attacks
upon the most fundamental institution of the Christian
state.--Yours faithfully,
------."

Mr. Stead thereupon wrote to the managing Director of Messrs. Eason & Son, and received this reply:--

"DEAR SIR,--We have considered afresh the character of the
February number of your _Review_ so far as it relates to the
notice of Grant Allen's book, and we are more and more confirmed
in the belief that its influence has been, and is, most
pernicious.

"Grant Allen is not much heard of in Ireland, and the laudations
you pronounce on him as a writer, so far as we know him, appear
wholly unmerited.

"At any rate, he appears in your _Review_ as the advocate for
Free Love, and it seems to us strange that you should place his
work in the exaggerated importance of 'The Book of the Month,'
accompanied by eighteen pages of comment and quotation, in which
there is a publicity given to the work out of all proportion to
its merits.

"I do not doubt that the topic of Free Love engages the attention
of the corrupt Londoner. There are plenty of such persons who are
only too glad to get the sanction of writers for the maintenance
and practice of their evil thoughts, but the purest and best
lives in all parts of the field of Christian philanthropy will
mourn the publicity you have given to this evil book. It is not
even improbable that the perusal of Grant Allen's book, which you
have lifted into importance as 'The Book of the Month,' may
determine the action of souls to their spiritual ruin.

"The problem of indirect influence is full of mystery, but, as
the hour of our departure comes near, the possible consequences
to other minds of the example and teaching of our lives may
quicken our perceptions, and we may see and deeply regret our
actions when not directed by the highest authority, the will of
God.--We are, dear Sir, yours very truly (for Eason & Son,
Limited),

"CHARLES EASON, Managing Director."

Exception may be taken to this letter on many points, some trivial and some important. Of the trivial points we may note with interest Mr. Eason's assumption that his opinion is wanted on the literary merits of the ware he vends; and, with concern, the rather slipshod manner in which he allows himself and his assistants to speak of a gentleman as "Allen," or "Grant Allen," without the usual prefix. But no one can fail to see that this is an honest letter--the production of a man conscious of responsibility and struggling to do his best in circumstances he imperfectly understands. Nor do I think this view of Mr. Eason need be seriously modified upon perusal of a letter received by Mr. Stead from a Mr. James O'Hara, of 18, Cope Street, Dublin, and printed in the _Westminster Gazette_ of March 11th. Mr. O'Hara writes:--

"DEAR SIR,--The following may interest you and your readers. I
was a subscriber to the library owned by C. Eason & Co., Limited,
and in December asked them for _Napoleon and the Fair Sex_, by
Masson. The librarian informed me Mr. Eason had decided not to
circulate it, as it contained improper details, which Mr. Eason
considered immoral. A copy was also refused to one of the
best-known pressmen in Dublin, a man of mature years and
experience.

"Three days afterwards I saw a young man ask the librarian for
the same book, and Eason's manager presented it to him with a low
bow. I remarked on this circumstance to Mr. Charles Eason, who
told me that he had issued it to this one subscriber only,
because he was Prince Francis of Teck.

"I told him it was likely, from the description he had given me
of it, to be more injurious to a young man such as Prince Francis
of Teck than to me; but he replied: 'Oh, these high-up people
_are different_. Besides, they are so influential we cannot
refuse them. However, if you wish, you can now have the book.'

"I told Mr. Eason that I did not wish to read it ever since he
had told me when I first applied for it that it was quite
improper."

The two excuses produced by Mr. Eason do not agree very well together. The first gives us to understand that, in Mr. Eason's opinion, ordinary moral principles cannot be applied to persons of royal blood. The second gives us to understand that though, in Mr. Eason's opinion, ordinary moral principles _can_ be applied to princes, the application would involve more risk than Mr. Eason cares to undertake. Each of his excuses, taken apart, is intelligible enough. Taken together they can hardly be called consistent. But the effects of royal and semi-royal splendor upon the moral eyesight are well known, and need not be dwelt on here. After all, what concerns us is not Mr. Eason's attitude towards Prince Francis of Teck, but Mr. Eason's attitude towards the reading public. And in this respect, from one point of view--which happens to be his own--Mr. Eason's attitude seems to me irreproachable. He is clearly alive to his responsibility, and is honestly concerned that the goods he purveys to the public shall be goods of which his conscience approves. Here is no grocer who sands his sugar before hurrying to family prayer. Here is a man who carries his religion into his business, and stakes his honor on the purity of his wares. I think it would be wrong in the extreme to deride Mr. Eason's action in the matter of _The Woman Who Did_ and Mr. Stead's review. He is doing his best, as Mr. Stead cheerfully allows.

The reasonable Objection to Bookstall Censorship.

But, as I said above, he is doing his best under circumstances he imperfectly understands--and, let me add here, in a position which is unfair to him. That Mr. Eason imperfectly understands his position will be plain (I think) to anyone who studies his reply to Mr. Stead. But let me make the point clear; for it is the crucial point in the discussion of the modern Bookstall Censorship. A great deal may be said against setting up a censorship of literature. A great deal may be said in favor of a censorship. But if a censorship there must be, the censor should be deliberately chosen for his office, and, in exercising his power, should be directly responsible to the public conscience. If a censorship there must be, let the community choose a man whose qualifications have been weighed, a man in whose judgment it decides that it can rely. But that Tom or Dick or Harry, or Tom Dick Harry & Co. (Limited), by the process of collaring a commercial monopoly from the railway companies, should be exalted into the supreme arbiters of what men or women may or may not be allowed to read--this surely is unjustifiable by any argument? Mr. Eason may on the whole be doing more good than harm. He is plainly a very well-meaning man of business. If he knows a good book from a bad--and the public has no reason to suppose that he does--I can very well believe that when his moral and literary judgment came into conflict with his business interests, he would sacrifice his business interests. But the interests of good literature and profitable business cannot always be identical; and whenever they conflict they put Mr. Eason into a false position. As managing director of Messrs. Eason & Son, he must consider his shareholders; as supreme arbiter of letters, he stands directly answerable to the public conscience. I protest, therefore, that these functions should never be combined in one man. As readers of THE SPEAKER know, I range myself on the side of those who would have literature free. But even our opponents, who desire control, must desire a form of control such as reason approves.

THE POOR LITTLE PENNY DREADFUL

Oct. 5, 1895. Our "Crusaders."

The poor little Penny Dreadful has been catching it once more. Once more the British Press has stripped to its massive waist and solemnly squared up to this hardened young offender. It calls this remarkable performance a "Crusade."

I like these Crusades. They remind one of that merry passage in _Pickwick_ (p. 254 in the first edition):--

"Whether Mr. Winkle was seized with a temporary attack of that
species of insanity which originates in a sense of injury, or
animated by this display of Mr. Weller's valour, is uncertain;
but certain it is, that he no sooner saw Mr. Grummer fall, than
_he made a terrific onslaught on a small boy who stood next to
him_; whereupon Mr. Snodgrass--"

[Pay attention to Mr. Snodgrass, if you please, and cast your memories back a year or two, to the utterances of a famous Church Congress on the National Vice of Gambling.]

"--whereupon Mr. Snodgrass, in a truly Christian spirit, and in
order that he might take no one unawares, announced in a very
loud tone that he was going to begin, and proceeded to take off
his coat with the utmost deliberation. He was immediately
surrounded and secured; and it is but common justice both to him
and to Mr. Winkle to say that they did not make the slightest
attempt to rescue either themselves or Mr. Weller, who, after a
most vigorous resistance, was overpowered by numbers and taken
prisoner. The procession then reformed, the chairmen resumed
their stations, and the march was re-commenced."

"The chairmen resumed their stations, and the march was re-commenced." Is it any wonder that Dickens and Labiche have found no fit successors? One can imagine the latter laying down his pen and confessing himself beaten at his own game; for really this periodical "crusade" upon the Penny Dreadful has all the qualities of the very best vaudeville--the same bland exhibition of _bourgeois_ logic, the same wanton appreciation of evidence, the same sententious alacrity in seizing the immediate explanation--the more trivial the better--the same inability to reach the remote cause, the same profound unconsciousness of absurdity.

You remember _La Grammaire_? Caboussat's cow has eaten a piece of broken glass, with fatal results. Machut, the veterinary, comes:--

_Caboussat._ "Un morceau de verre ... est-ce drole? Une vache de
quatre ans."

_Machut._ "Ah! monsieur, les vaches ... ça avale du verre à tout
âge. J'en ai connu une qui a mangé une éponge à laver les
cabriolets ... à sept ans! Elle en est morte."

_Caboussat._ "Ce que c'est que notre pauvre humanité!"

Penny Dreadfuls and Matricide.

Our friends have been occupied with the case of a half-witted boy who consumed Penny Dreadfuls and afterwards went and killed his mother. They infer that he killed his mother because he had read Penny Dreadfuls (_post hoc ergo propter hoc_) and they conclude very naturally that Penny Dreadfuls should be suppressed. But before roundly pronouncing the doom of this--to me unattractive--branch of fiction, would it not be well to inquire a trifle more deeply into cause and effect? In the first place matricide is so utterly unnatural a crime that there must be something abominably peculiar in a form of literature that persuades to it. But a year or two back, on the occasion of a former crusade, I took the pains to study a considerable number of Penny Dreadfuls. My reading embraced all those--I believe I am right in saying all--which were reviewed, a few days back, in the _Daily Chronicle_; and some others. I give you my word I could find nothing peculiar about them. They were even rather ostentatiously on the side of virtue. As for the bloodshed in them, it would not compare with that in many of the five-shilling adventure stories at that time read so eagerly by boys of the middle and upper classes. The style was ridiculous, of course: but a bad style excites nobody but a reviewer, and does not even excite him to deeds of the kind we are now trying to account for. The reviewer in the _Daily Chronicle_ thinks worse of these books than I do. But he certainly failed to quote anything from them that by the wildest fancy could be interpreted as sanctioning such a crime as matricide.

The Cause to be sought in the Boy rather than in the Book.

Let us for a moment turn our attention from the Penny Dreadful to the boy--from the _éponge á laver les cabriolets_ to _notre pauvre humanité_. Now--to speak quite seriously--it is well known to every doctor and every schoolmaster (and should be known, if it is not, to every parent), that all boys sooner or later pass through a crisis in growth during which absolutely nothing can be predicted of their behavior. At such times honest boys have given way to lying and theft, gentle boys have developed an unexpected savagery, ordinary boys--"the small apple-eating urchins whom we know"--have fallen into morbid brooding upon unhealthy subjects. In the immense majority of cases the crisis is soon over and the boy is himself again; but while it lasts, the disease will draw its sustenance from all manner of things--things, it may be, in themselves quite innocent. I avoid particularizing for many reasons; but any observant doctor will confirm what I have said. Now the moderately affluent boy who reads five-shilling stories of adventure has many advantages at this period over the poor boy who reads Penny Dreadfuls. To begin with, the crisis has a tendency to attack him later. Secondly, he meets it fortified by a better training and more definite ideas of the difference between right and wrong, virtue and vice. Thirdly (and this is very important), he is probably under school discipline at the time--which means, that he is to some extent watched and shielded. When I think of these advantages, I frankly confess that the difference in the literature these two boys read seems to me to count for very little. I myself have written "adventure-stories" before now: stories which, I suppose--or, at any rate, hope--would come into the class of "Pure Literature," as the term is understood by those who have been writing on this subject in the newspapers. They were, I hope, better written than the run of Penny Dreadfuls, and perhaps with more discrimination of taste in the choice of adventures. But I certainly do not feel able to claim that their effect upon a perverted mind would be innocuous.

Fallacy of the "Crusade."

For indeed it is not possible to name any book out of which a perverted mind will not draw food for its disease. The whole fallacy lies in supposing literature the cause of the disease. Evil men are not evil because they read bad books: they read bad books because they are evil: and being evil, or diseased, they are quickly able to extract evil or disease even from very good books. There is talk of disseminating the works of our best authors, at a cheap rate, in the hope that they will drive the Penny Dreadful out of the market. But has good literature at the cheapest driven the middle classes from their false gods? And let it be remembered, to the credit of these poor boys, that they do buy their books. The middle classes take _their_ poison on hire or exchange.

But perhaps the full enormity of the cant about Penny Dreadfuls can best be perceived by travelling to and fro for a week between London and Paris and observing the books read by those who travel with first-class tickets. I think a fond belief in Ivanhoe-within-the-reach-of-all would not long survive that experiment.

IBSEN'S "PEER GYNT"

Oct. 7, 1892. A Masterpiece.

"_Peer Gynt_ takes its place, as we hold, on the summits of
literature precisely because it means so much more than the poet
consciously intended. Is not this one of the characteristics of
the masterpiece, that everyone can read in it his own secret? In
the material world (though Nature is very innocent of symbolic
intention) each of us finds for himself the symbols that have
relevance and value for him; and so it is with the poems that are
instinct with true vitality."

I was glad to come across the above passage in Messrs. William and Charles Archer's introduction to their new translation of Ibsen's _Peer Gynt_ (London: Walter Scott), because I can now, with a clear conscience, thank the writers for their book, even though I fail to find some of the things they find in it. The play's the thing after all. _Peer Gynt_ is a great poem: let us shake hands over that. It will remain a great poem when we have ceased pulling it about to find what is inside or search out texts for homilies in defence of our own particular views of life. The world's literature stands unaffected, though Archdeacon Farrar use it for chapter-headings and Sir John Lubbock wield it as a mallet to drive home self-evident truths.

Not a Pamphlet.

_Peer Gynt_ is an extremely modern story founded on old Norwegian folk-lore--the folk-lore which Asbjörnsen and Moe collected, and Dasent translated for our delight in childhood. Old and new are curiously mixed; but the result is piquant and not in the least absurd, because the story rests on problems which are neither old nor new, but eternal, and on emotions which are neither older nor newer than the breast of man. To be sure, the true devotee of Ibsen will not be content with this. You will be told by Herr Jaeger, Ibsen's biographer, that _Peer Gynt_ is an attack on Norwegian romanticism. The poem, by the way, is romantic to the core--so romantic, indeed, that the culminating situation, and the page for which everything has been a preparation, have to be deplored by Messrs. Archer as "a mere commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen had not outgrown when he wrote _Peer Gynt_." But your true votary is for ever taking his god off the pedestal of the true artist to set him on the tub of the hot-gospeller; even so genuine a specimen of impressionist work as _Hedda Gabler_ being claimed by him for a sermon. And if ever you have been moved by _Ghosts_, or _Brand_, or _Peer Gynt_ to exclaim "This is poetry!" you have only to turn to Herr Jaeger--whose criticism, like his namesake's underclothing, should be labelled "All Pure Natural Wool"--to find that you were mistaken and that it is really pamphleteering.

Yet Enforcing a Moral.

To be sure, in one sense _Peer Gynt_ is a sermon upon a text. That is to say, it is written primarily to expound one view of man's duty, not to give a mere representation of life. The problem, not the picture, is the main thing. But then the problem, not the picture, is the main thing in _Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, _Faust_. In _Peer Gynt_ the poet's own solution of the problem is presented with more insistence than in _Alcestis_, _Hamlet_, or _Faust_: but the problem is wider, too.

The problem is, What is self? and how shall a man be himself? And the poet's answer is, "Self is only found by being lost, gained by being given away": an answer at least as old as the gospels. The eponymous hero of the story is a man essentially half-hearted, "the incarnation of a compromising dread of self-committal to any one course," a fellow who says,

"Ay, think of it--wish it done--_will_ it to boot,
But _do_ it----. No, that's past my understanding!"

--who is only stung to action by pique, or by what is called the "instinct of self-preservation," an instinct which, as Ibsen shows, is the very last that will preserve self.

The Story.

This fellow, Peer Gynt, wins the love of Solveig, a woman essentially whole-hearted, who has no dread of self-committal, who surrenders self. Solveig, in short, stands in perfect antithesis to Peer. When Peer is an outlaw she deserts her father's house and follows him to his hut in the forest. The scene in which she presents herself before Peer and claims to share his lot is worthy to stand beside the ballad of the Nut-browne Mayde: indeed, as a confessed romantic I must own to thinking Solveig one of the most beautiful figures in poetry. Peer deserts her, and she lives in the hut alone and grows an old woman while her lover roams the world, seeking everywhere and through the wildest adventures the satisfaction of his Self, acting everywhere on the Troll's motto, "To thyself be enough," and finding everywhere his major premiss turned against him, to his own discomfiture, by an ironical fate. We have one glimpse of Solveig, meanwhile, in a little scene of eight lines. She is now a middle-aged woman, up in her forest hut in the far north. She sits spinning in the sunshine outside her door and sings:--

_"Maybe both the winter and spring will pass by,
And the next summer too, and the whole of the year;
But thou wilt come one day....
* * * * *
God strengthen thee, whereso thou goest in the world!
God gladden thee, if at His footstool thou stand!
Here will I await thee till thou comest again;
And if thou wait up yonder, then there we'll meet, my friend!"_

At last Peer, an old man, comes home. On the heath around his old hut he finds (in a passage which the translators call "fantastic," intending, I hope, approval by this word) the thoughts he has missed thinking, the watchword he has failed to utter, the tears he has missed shedding, the deed he has missed doing. The thoughts are thread-balls, the watchword withered leaves, the tears dewdrops, etc. Also he finds on that heath a Button-Moulder with an immense ladle. The Button-Moulder explains to Peer that he must go into this ladle, for his time has come. He has neither been a good man nor a sturdy sinner, but a half-and-half fellow without any real self in him. Such men are dross, badly cast buttons with no loops to them, and must go, by the Master's orders, into the melting-pot again. Is there no escape? None, unless Peer can find the loop of the button, his real Self, the Peer Gynt that God made. After vain and frantic searching across the heath, Peer reaches the door of his own old hut. Solveig stands on the threshold.

As Peer flings himself to earth before her, calling out upon her to denounce him, she sits down by his side and says--

"_Thou hast made all my life as a beautiful song.
Blessed be thou that at last thou hast come!
Blessed, thrice-blessed our Whitsun-morn meeting_!"

"But," says Peer, "I am lost, unless thou canst answer riddles." "Tell me them," tranquilly answers Solveig. And Peer asks, while the Button-Moulder listens behind the hut--

"_Canst thou tell me where Peer Gynt has been since we parted_?"

Solveig.--_Been_?

Peer.-- _With his destiny's seal on his brow;
Been, as in God's thought he first sprang forth?
Canst thou tell me? If not, I must get me home_,--
_Go down to the mist-shrouded regions_.

Solveig (smiling).--_Oh, that riddle is easy_.

Peer.-- _Then tell what thou knowest!
Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man?
Where was I, with God's sigil upon my brow_?

Solveig.--_In my faith, in my hope, in my love_.

A Shirking of the Ethical Problem?

"This," says the Messrs. Archer, in effect, "may be--indeed is--magnificent: but it is not Ibsen." To quote their very words--

"The redemption of the hero through a woman's love ... we take to
be a mere commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen, though he
satirised it, had by no means fully outgrown when he wrote _Peer
Gynt_. Peer's return to Solveig is (in the original) a passage of
the most poignant lyric beauty, but it is surely a shirking, not
a solution, of the ethical problem. It would be impossible to the
Ibsen of to-day, who knows (none better) that _No man can save
his brother's soul, or pay his brother's debt_."

In a footnote to the italicized words Messrs. Archer add the quotation--

"No, nor woman, neither."

* * * * *

Oct. 22, 1892. The main Problem.

"Peer's return to Solveig is surely a shirking, not a solution of the ethical problem." Of what ethical problem? The main ethical problem of the poem is, What is self? And how shall a man be himself? As Mr. Wicksteed puts it in his "Four Lectures on Henrik Ibsen," "What is it to be one's self? God _meant something_ when He made each one of us. For a man to embody that meaning of God in his words and deeds, and so become, in a degree, 'a word of God made flesh' is to be himself. But thus to be himself he must slay himself. That is to say, he must slay the craving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, and must strive to find his true orbit, and swing, self poised, round the great central light. But what if a poor devil can never puzzle out what God _did_ mean when He made him? Why, then he must _feel_ it. But how often your 'feeling' misses fire! Ay, there you have it. The devil has no stancher ally than _want of perception_."

And its Solution.

This is a fair statement of Ibsen's problem and his solution of it. In the poem he solves it by the aid of two characters, two diagrams we may say. Diagram I. is Peer Gynt, a man who is always striving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, who never sacrifices his Self generously for another's good, nor surrenders it to a decided course of action. Diagram II. is Solveig, a woman who has no dread of self-committal, who surrenders Self and is, in short, Peer's perfect antithesis. When Peer is an outlaw she forsakes all and follows him to his hut in the forest. Peer deserts her and roams the world, where he finds his theory of Self upset by one adventure after another and at last reduced to absurdity in the madhouse at Cairo. But though his own theory is discredited, he has not yet found the true one. To find this he must be brought face to face in the last scene with his deserted wife. There, for the first time, he asks the question and receives the answer. "Where," he asks, "has Peer Gynt's true self been since we parted:--

"Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man?
Where was I with God's sigil upon my brow?"

And Solveig answers:--

"In my faith, in my hope, in my love."

In these words we have the main ethical problem solved; and Peer's _perception_ of the truth (_vide_ Mr. Wicksteed's remarks quoted above) is the one necessary climax of the poem. We do not care a farthing--at least, I do not care a farthing--whether Peer escape the Button-Moulder or not. It may be too late for him, or there may be yet time to live another life; but whatever the case may be, it doesn't alter what Ibsen set out to prove. The problem which Ibsen shirks (if indeed he does shirk it) is a subsidiary problem--a rider, so to speak. Can Solveig by her love redeem Peer Gynt? Can the woman save the man's soul? Will she, after all, cheat the Button-Moulder of his victim?

The poet, by giving Solveig the last word, seems to think it possible. According to Mr. Archer, the Ibsen of to-day would know it to be impossible. He knows (none better) that "No man can save his brother's soul or pay his brother's debt." "No, nor women neither," adds Mr. Archer.

Is Peer's Redemption a romantic Fallacy?

But is this so? _Peer Gynt_ was published in 1867. I turn to _A Doll's House_, written twelve years later, and I find there a woman preparing to redeem a man just as Solveig prepares to redeem Peer. I find in Mr. Archer's translation of that play the following page of dialogue:--

_Mrs. Linden_: There's no happiness in working for oneself, Nils;
give me somebody and something to work for.

_Krogstad_: No, no; that can never be. It's simply a woman's
romantic notion of self-sacrifice.

_Mrs. Linden_: Have you ever found me romantic?

_Krogstad_: Would you really--? Tell me, do you know my past?

_Mrs. Linden_: Yes.

_Krogstad_: And do you know what people say of me?

_Mrs. Linden_: Didn't you say just now that with me you could
have been another man?

_Krogstad_: I am sure of it.

_Mrs. Linden_: Is it too late?

_Krogstad_: Christina, do you know what you are doing? Yes, you
do; I see it in your face. Have you the courage--?

_Mrs. Linden_: I need someone to tend, and your children need a
mother. You need me, and I--I need you. Nils, I believe in your
better self. With you I fear nothing.

Ibsen's hopes of Enfranchised Women.

Again, we are not told if Mrs. Linden's experiment is successful; but Ibsen certainly gives no hint that she is likely to fail. This was in 1879. In 1885 Ibsen paid a visit to Norway and made a speech to some workingmen at Drontheim, in which this passage occurred:--

"Democracy by itself cannot solve the social question. We must
introduce an aristocratic element into our life. I am not
referring, of course, to an aristocracy of birth, or of purse, or
even of intellect. I mean an aristocracy of character, of will,
of mind. That alone can make us free. From two classes will this
aristocracy I desire come to us--_from our women and our
workmen_. The social revolution, now preparing in Europe, is
chiefly concerned with the future of the workers and the women.
On this I set all my hopes and expectations...."

I think it would be easy to multiply instances showing that, though Ibsen may hold that no man can save his brother's soul, he does not extend this disability to women, but hopes and believes, on the contrary, that women will redeem mankind. On men he builds little hope. To speak roughly, men are all in Peer Gynt's case, or Torvald Helmer's. They are swathed in timid conventions, blindfolded with selfishness, so that they cannot perceive, and unable with their own hands to tear off these bandages. They are incapable of the highest renunciation. "No man," says Torvald Helmer, "sacrifices his honor, even for one he loves." Those who heard Miss Achurch deliver Nora's reply will not easily forget it. "Millions of women have done so." The effect in the theatre was tremendous. This sentence clinched the whole play.

Millions of women are, like Solveig, capable of renouncing all for love, of surrendering self altogether; and, as I read Ibsen, it is precisely on this power of renunciation that he builds his hope of man's redemption. So that, unless I err greatly, the scene in _Peer Gynt_ which Mr. Archer calls a shirking of the ethical problem, is just the solution which Ibsen has been persistent in presenting to the world.

Let it be understood, of course, that it is only your Solveigs and Mrs. Lindens who can thus save a brother's soul: women who have made their own way in the world, thinking for themselves, working for themselves, freed from the conventions which man would impose on them. I know Mr. Archer will not retort on me with Nora, who leaves her husband and children, and claims that her first duty is to herself. Nora is just the woman who cannot redeem a man. Her Doll's House training is the very opposite of Solveig's and Mrs. Linden's. She is a silly girl brought up amid conventions, and awakened, by one blow, to the responsibilities of life. That she should at once know the right course to take would be incredible in real life, and impossible in a play the action of which has been evolved as inevitably as real life. Many critics have supposed Ibsen to commend Nora's conduct in the last act of the play. He neither sanctions nor condemns. But he does contrast her in the play with Mrs. Linden, and I do not think that contrast can be too carefully studied.

MR. SWINBURNE'S LATER MANNER

May 5, 1894. Aloofness of Mr. Swinburne's Muse.

There was a time--let us say, in the early seventies--when many young men tried to write like Mr. Swinburne. Remarkably small success waited on their efforts. Still their numbers and their youth and (for a while also) their persistency seemed to promise a new school of poesy, with Mr. Swinburne for its head and great exemplar: exemplar rather than head, for Mr. Swinburne's attitude amid all this devotion was rather that of the god than of the priest. He sang, and left the worshippers to work up their own enthusiasm. And to this attitude he has been constant. Unstinting, and occasionally unmeasured, in praise and dispraise of other men, he has allowed his own reputation the noble liberty to look after itself. Nothing, for instance, could have been finer than the careless, almost disdainful, dignity of his bearing in the months that followed Tennyson's death. The cats were out upon the tiles, then, and his was the luminous, expressive silence of a sphere. One felt, "whether he received it or no, here is the man who can wear the crown."

And Her Tendency towards Abstractions.

It was not, however, the aloofness of Mr. Swinburne's bearing that checked the formation of a Swinburnian school of poetry. The cause lay deeper, and has come more and more into the light in the course of Mr. Swinburne's poetic development--let me say, his thoroughly normal development. We can see now that from the first such a school, such a successful following, was an impossibility. The fact is that Mr. Swinburne has not only genius, but an extremely rare and individual genius. The germ of this individuality may be found, easily enough, in "Atalanta" and the Ballads; but it luxuriates in his later poems and throughout them--flower and leaf and stem. It was hardly more natural in 1870 to confess the magic of the great chorus, "Before the beginning of years," or of "Dolores," than to embark upon the vain adventure of imitating them. I cannot imagine a youth in all Great Britain so green or unknowing as to attempt an imitation of "A Nympholept," perhaps the finest poem in the volume before me.

I say "in Great Britain;" because peculiar as Mr. Swinburne's genius would be in any country, it is doubly peculiar as the endowment of an English poet. If there be one quality beloved above others by the inhabitants of this island, it is concreteness; and I suppose there never was a poet in the world who used less concreteness of speech than Mr. Swinburne. Mr. Palgrave once noted that the landscape of Keats falls short of the landscape of Shelley in its comparative lack of the larger features of sky and earth; Keats's was "foreground work" for the most part. But what shall be said of Shelley's universe after the immense vague regions inhabited by Mr. Swinburne's muse? She sings of the sea; but we never behold a sail, never a harbor: she sings of passion--among the stars. We seem never to touch earth; page after page is full of thought--for, vast as the strain may be, it is never empty--but we cannot apply it. And all this is extremely distressing to the Briton, who loves practice as his birthright. He comes on a Jacobite song. "Now, at any rate," he tells himself, "we arrive at something definite: some allusion, however small, to Bonny Prince Charlie." He reads--

"Faith speaks when hope dissembles;
Faith lives when hope lies dead:
If death as life dissembles,
And all that night assembles
Of stars at dawn lie dead,
Faint hope that smiles and trembles
May tell not well for dread:
But faith has heard it said."

"Very beautiful," says the Briton; "but why call this a 'Jacobite Song'?" Some thorough-going admirer of Mr. Swinburne will ask, no doubt, if I prefer gush about Bonny Prince Charlie. Most decidedly I do not. I am merely pointing out that the poet cares so little for the common human prejudice in favor of concreteness of speech as to give us a Jacobite song which, for all its indebtedness to the historical facts of the Jacobite Risings, might just as well have been put in the mouth of Judas Maccabæus.

Somebody--I forget for the moment who it was--compared Poetry with Antæus, who was strong when his feet touched Earth, his mother; weaker when held aloft in air. The justice of this criticism I have no space here to discuss; but the difference is patent enough between poetry such as this of Herrick--

"When as in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes."

Or this, of Burns--

"The boat rocks at the pier o' Leith,
Fu' loud the wind blaws frae the ferry,
The boat rides by the Berwick-law,
And I maun leave my bonny Mary."

Or this, of Shakespeare--

"When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight."

Or this, of Milton--

"the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb,
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesolé,
Or in Valdarno...."

And such lines as these by Mr. Swinburne--

"The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world's life
Imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread,
Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife,
Informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead.
No service of bended knee or of humbled head
May soothe or subdue the God who has change to wife:
And life with death is as morning with evening wed."

Take Burns's song, "It was a' for our right-fu' King," and set it beside the Jacobite song quoted above, and it is clear at once that with Mr. Swinburne we pass from the particular and concrete to the general and abstract. And in this direction Mr. Swinburne's muse has steadily marched. In his "Erechtheus" he tells how the gods gave Pallas the lordship of Athens--

"The lordship and love of the lovely land,
The grace of the town that hath on it for crown
But a headband to wear
Of violets one-hued with her hair."

Here at least we were allowed a picture of Athens: the violet crown was something definite. But now, when Mr. Swinburne sings of England, we have to precipitate our impressions from lines fluid as these:--

"Things of night at her glance took flight: the
strengths of darkness recoiled and sank:
Sank the fires of the murderous pyres whereon wild
agony writhed and shrank:
Rose the light of the reign of right from gulfs of
years that the darkness drank."

Or--

"Change darkens and lightens around her, alternate
in hope and in fear to be:
Hope knows not if fear speak truth, nor fear whether
hope be not blind as she:
But the sun is in heaven that beholds her immortal,
and girdled with life by the sea."

I suspect, then, that a hundred years hence, when criticism speaks calm judgment upon all Mr. Swinburne's writings, she will find that his earlier and more definite poems are the edge of his blade, and such volumes as "Astrophel" the heavy metal behind it. The former penetrated the affections of his countrymen with ease: the latter followed more difficultly through the outer tissues of a people notoriously pachydermatous to abstract speech. And criticism will then know if Mr. Swinburne brought sufficient impact to drive the whole mass of metal deep.

A Voice chanting in the Void.

At present in these later volumes his must seem to us a godlike voice chanting in the void. For, fit or unfit as we may be to grasp the elusive substance of his strains, all must confess the voice of the singer to be divine. At once in the range and suppleness of his music he is not merely the first of our living poets, but incomparable. In learning he has Robert Bridges for a rival, and no other. But no amount of learning could give us 228 pages of music that from first to last has not a flaw. Rather, his marvellous ear has taken him safely through metres set by his learning as so many traps. There is one metre, for instance, that recurs again and again in this volume. Here is a specimen of it:--

"Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle,
for notes a dove,
Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines wherethrough
thy soul from afar above
Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose
fire is the fount of love."

These lines are written of Sir Philip Sidney. Could another man have written them they had stood even better for Mr. Swinburne. But we are considering the metre, not the meaning. Now the metre may have great merits. I am disposed to say that, having fascinated Mr. Swinburne, it must have great merits. That I dislike it is, no doubt, my fault, or rather my misfortune. But undoubtedly it is a metre that no man but Mr. Swinburne could handle without producing a monotony varied only by discords.

A MORNING WITH A BOOK

April 29, 1893. Hazlitt's Stipulation.

"Food, warmth, sleep, and a book; these are all I at present
ask--the _Ultima Thule_ of my wandering desires. Do you not then
wish for--
_a friend in your retreat
Whom you may whisper, 'Solitude is sweet'?_

Expected, well enough: gone, still better. Such attractions are
strengthened by distance."

So Hazlitt wrote in his _Farewell to Essay Writing_. There never was such an epicure of his moods as Hazlitt. Others might add Omar's stipulation--

"--and Thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness."

But this addition would have spoiled Hazlitt's enjoyment. Let us remember that his love affairs had been unprosperous. "Such attractions," he would object, "are strengthened by distance." In any case, the book and singer go ill together, and most of us will declare for a spell of each in turn.

What are "The Best Books"?

Suppose we choose the book. What kind of book shall it be? Shall it be an old book which we have forgotten just sufficiently to taste surprise as its felicities come back to us, and remember just sufficiently to escape the attentive strain of a first reading? Or shall it be a new book by an author we love, to be glanced through with no critical purpose (this may be deferred to the second reading), but merely for the lazy pleasure of recognizing the familiar brain at work, and feeling happy, perhaps, at the success of a friend? There is no doubt which Hazlitt would have chosen; he has told us in his essay _On Reading Old Books_. But after a recent experience I am not sure that I agree with him.

That your taste should approve only the best thoughts of the best minds is a pretty counsel, but one of perfection, and is found in practice to breed prigs. It sets a man sailing round in a vicious circle. What is the best thought of the best minds? That approved by the man of highest culture. Who is the man of highest culture? He whose taste approves the best thoughts of the best minds. To escape from this foolish whirlpool, some of our stoutest bottoms run for that discredited harbor of refuge--Popular Acceptance: a harbor full of shoals, of which nobody has provided even the sketch of a chart.

Some years ago, when the _Pall Mall Gazette_ sent round to all sorts and conditions of eminent men, inviting lists of "The Hundred Best Books"--the first serious attempt to introduce a decimal system into Great Britain--I remember that these eminent men's replies disclosed nothing so wonderful as their unanimity. We were prepared for Sir John Lubbock, but not, I think, for the host of celebrities who followed his hygienic example, and made a habit of taking the Rig Vedas to bed with them. Altogether their replies afforded plenty of material for a theory that to have every other body's taste in literature is the first condition of eminence in every branch of the public service. But in one of the lists--I think it was Sir Monier Williams's--the unexpected really happened. Sir Monier thought that Mr. T.E. Brown's _The Doctor_ was one of the best books in the world.

Now, the poems of Mr. T.E. Brown are not known to the million. But, like Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. Brown has always had a band of readers to whom his name is more than that of many an acknowledged classic. I fancy it is a case of liking deeply or scarce at all. Those of us who are not celebrities may be allowed to have favorites who are not the favorites of others, writers who (fortuitously, perhaps) have helped us at some crisis of our life, have spoken to us the appropriate word at the moment of need, and for that reason sit cathedrally enthroned in our affections. To explain why the author of _Betsy Lee_, _Tommy Big-Eyes_ and _The Doctor_ is more to me than most poets--why to open a new book of his is one of the most exciting literary events that can befall me in now my twenty-ninth year--would take some time, and the explanation might poorly satisfy the reader after all.

My Morning with a Book.

But I set out to describe a morning with a book. The book was Mr. Brown's _Old John, and other Poems_, published but a few days back by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. The morning was spent in a very small garden overlooking a harbor. Hazlitt's conditions were fulfilled. I had enjoyed enough food and sleep to last me for some little time: few people, I imagine, have complained of the cold, these last few weeks: and the book was not only new to me for the most part, but certain to please. Moreover, a small incident had already put me in the best of humors. Just as I was settling down to read, a small tug came down the harbor with a barque in tow whose nationality I recognized before she cleared a corner and showed the Norwegian colors drooping from her peak. I reached for the field-glass and read her name--_Henrik Ibsen_! I imagined Mr. William Archer applauding as I ran to my own flag-staff and dipped the British ensign to that name. The Norwegians on deck stood puzzled for a moment, but, taking the compliment to themselves, gave me a cheerful hail, while one or two ran aft and dipped the Norwegian flag in response. It was still running frantically up and down the halliards when I returned to my seat, and the lines of the bark were softening to beauty in the distance--for, to tell the truth, she had looked a crazy and not altogether seaworthy craft--as I opened my book, and, by a stroke of luck, at that fine poem, _The Schooner_.

"Just mark that schooner westward far at sea--
'Tis but an hour ago
When she was lying hoggish at the quay,
And men ran to and fro
And tugged, and stamped, and shoved, and pushed, and swore.
And ever an anon, with crapulous glee,
Grinned homage to viragoes on the shore.

"So to the jetty gradual she was hauled:
Then one the tiller took,
And chewed, and spat upon his hand, and bawled;
And one the canvas shook
Forth like a mouldy bat; and one, with nods
And smiles, lay on the bowsprit end, and called
And cursed the Harbour-master by his gods.

"And rotten from the gunwale to the keel,
Rat riddled, bilge bestank,
Slime-slobbered, horrible, I saw her reel
And drag her oozy flank,
And sprawl among the deft young waves, that laughed
And leapt, and turned in many a sportive wheel
As she thumped onward with her lumbering draught.

"And now, behold! a shadow of repose
Upon a line of gray
She sleeps, that transverse cuts the evening rose,
She sleeps and dreams away,
Soft blended in a unity of rest
All jars, and strifes obscene, and turbulent throes
'Neath the broad benediction of the West--

"Sleeps; and methinks she changes as she sleeps,
And dies, and is a spirit pure;
Lo! on her deck, an angel pilot keeps
His lonely watch secure;
And at the entrance of Heaven's dockyard waits
Till from night's leash the fine-breathed morning leaps
And that strong hand within unbars the gates."

It is very far from being the finest poem in the volume. It has not the noble humanity of _Catherine Kinrade_--and if this be not a great poem I know nothing about poetry--nor the rapture of _Jessie_, nor the awful pathos of _Mater Dolorosa_, nor the gentle pathos of _Aber Stations_, nor the fine religious feeling of _Planting_ and _Disguises_. But it came so pat to the occasion, and used the occasion so deftly to take hold of one's sympathy, that these other poems were read in the very mood that, I am sure, their author would have asked for them. One has not often such luck in reading--"Never the time and the place and the author all together," if I may do this violence to Browning's line. Yet I trust that in any mood I should have had the sense to pay its meed of admiration to this volume.

Now, having carefully read the opinions of some half-a-dozen reviewers upon it, I can only wonder and leave the question to my reader, warning him by no means to miss _Mater Dalorosa_ and _Catherine Kinrade_. If he remain cold to these two poems, then I shall still preserve my own opinion.

MR. JOHN DAVIDSON

April 7, 1894. His Plays.

For some weeks now I have been meaning to write about Mr. John Davidson's "Plays" (Elkin Mathews and John Lane), and always shirking the task at the last moment. The book is an exceedingly difficult one to write about, and I am not at all sure that after a few sentences I shall not stick my hands in my pockets and walk off to something easier. The recent fine weather has, however, made me desperate. The windows of the room in which I sit face S. and S.-E.; consequently a deal of sunshine comes in upon my writing-table. In ninety-nine cases out of the hundred this makes for idleness; in this, the hundredth case, it constrains to energy, because it is rapidly bleaching the puce-colored boards in which Mr. Davidson's plays are bound--and (which is worse) bleaching them unevenly. I have tried (let the miserable truth be confessed) turning the book daily, as one turns a piece of toast--But this is not criticism of Mr. Davidson's "Plays."

His Style full of Imagination and Wit.

Now it would be easy and pleasant to express my great admiration of Mr. Davidson's Muse, and justify it by a score of extracts and so make an end: and nobody (except perhaps Mr. Davidson himself) would know my dishonesty. For indeed and out of doubt he is in some respects the most richly-endowed of all our younger poets. Of wit and of imagination he has almost a plethora: they crowd this book, and all his books, from end to end. And his frequent felicity of phrase is hardly less remarkable. You may turn page after page, and with each page the truth of this will become more obvious. Let me add his quick eye for natural beauty, his penetrating instinct for the principles that lie beneath its phenomena, his sympathy with all men's more generous emotions--and still I have a store of satisfactory illustrations at hand for the mere trouble of turning the leaves. Consider, for instance, the imagery in his description of the fight by Bannockburn--